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Every 33 00:01:21.959 --> 00:01:25.640 week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and 34 00:01:25.719 --> 00:01:30.200 infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, 35 00:01:30.640 --> 00:01:33.159 journalist and author Dan Zupanski. 36 00:01:43.400 --> 00:01:47.840 Good evening. Fans of mind Hunter and true crime podcasts 37 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:51.079 will devour these chilling stories of serial killers from the 38 00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:56.359 American Golden Age nineteen fifty to two thousand. With books 39 00:01:56.400 --> 00:01:59.959 like Serial Killers, Female serial Killers, and Sons of Cain, 40 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:05.120 Peter Vronsky has established himself as the foremost expert on 41 00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:09.599 the history of serial killers. In his first definitive History 42 00:02:09.599 --> 00:02:12.719 of the Golden Age of American serial Murder, when the 43 00:02:12.840 --> 00:02:17.159 number and body count of serial killers exploded, Vronsky tells 44 00:02:17.199 --> 00:02:20.360 the stories of the most unusual and prominent serial killings 45 00:02:20.360 --> 00:02:24.199 from the nineteen fifties to the early twenty first century, 46 00:02:24.759 --> 00:02:28.280 from Ted Bundy to the Golden State Killer. Our fascination 47 00:02:28.439 --> 00:02:31.919 with these classics serial killers seems to grow by the day, 48 00:02:32.639 --> 00:02:36.560 American serial Killers gives true crime junkies what they crave, 49 00:02:37.039 --> 00:02:41.080 with both perennial favorites Ed Kemper, Jeffrey Dahmer in lesser 50 00:02:41.120 --> 00:02:45.360 known cases, Melvin Rhees, Harvey Glatman. The book they were 51 00:02:45.360 --> 00:02:49.599 featuring this evening is American serial Killers the Epidemic Years 52 00:02:49.719 --> 00:02:53.360 nineteen fifty to two thousand, when my special guests historian, 53 00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:57.560 journalist and author Peter Vronsky. Welcome to the program, and 54 00:02:57.599 --> 00:03:02.280 thank you so much for this interview. Peter Vronsky, Hi, Dan, 55 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:05.479 thanks for having me on. Thank you so much for 56 00:03:05.599 --> 00:03:09.479 joining me once again with this incredible American serial Killers. 57 00:03:10.360 --> 00:03:16.280 Tell us just the genesis of this book and what 58 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:21.000 you intended to prove I guess and determine with this 59 00:03:21.080 --> 00:03:23.039 American serial Killers. 60 00:03:24.199 --> 00:03:29.199 Well, it's been a long time in the making. Certainly 61 00:03:29.639 --> 00:03:36.759 I became aware myself serial killers during this era after 62 00:03:36.840 --> 00:03:42.159 I had quite a random, very briefly encountered and all 63 00:03:42.319 --> 00:03:46.599 apprehended serial killer in December of nineteen seventy nine in 64 00:03:47.039 --> 00:03:53.280 New York City, and it was a dramatic encounter. He 65 00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:57.479 was fleeing the scene of a double homicide that he 66 00:03:57.639 --> 00:04:03.520 had committed in a hotel he had beheaded to sex 67 00:04:03.599 --> 00:04:07.840 workers in his room, set their torsos on fire, and 68 00:04:07.879 --> 00:04:11.680 then fled with the heads. And as she was doing that, 69 00:04:11.960 --> 00:04:16.399 he held up the elevator, which really annoyed me because 70 00:04:16.439 --> 00:04:19.199 I was in the lobby trying to go up and 71 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:21.839 take a look at this hotel, whether I wanted to 72 00:04:21.839 --> 00:04:23.680 stay there or not. You know, this was a rough 73 00:04:23.720 --> 00:04:27.759 period in New York's history. You would check into a 74 00:04:27.839 --> 00:04:32.079 hotel if you're not familiar with it without first looking around. 75 00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:34.839 So you know, he probably held up the elevator for 76 00:04:34.920 --> 00:04:39.879 maybe forty seconds tops. But I'm twenty three, I'm impatient, 77 00:04:40.040 --> 00:04:41.519 and so he annoys me. 78 00:04:42.079 --> 00:04:43.639 And when the elevator. 79 00:04:43.160 --> 00:04:46.160 Starts coming down, I you know, I gave him this 80 00:04:46.360 --> 00:04:48.639 kind of hard look. So I had a good look 81 00:04:48.680 --> 00:04:52.879 at him. When I went up to walk through the hotel, 82 00:04:53.199 --> 00:04:56.079 I chose the floor that at random that he had 83 00:04:56.120 --> 00:04:58.879 been on the top floor, and of course at that 84 00:04:58.959 --> 00:05:03.720 point I walked into the smoke coming from the torsos 85 00:05:03.720 --> 00:05:06.879 that he had sat on fire. I never ended up 86 00:05:06.920 --> 00:05:09.800 staying there. I ended up, you know, evacuating out of 87 00:05:09.839 --> 00:05:13.560 the hotel and left as the fire department was arriving. 88 00:05:13.879 --> 00:05:19.639 So that was my first encounter. Who it was I 89 00:05:19.720 --> 00:05:24.560 later learned about almost eight months nine months later he 90 00:05:24.959 --> 00:05:28.839 had been arrested, and I saw his pictures and I realized, 91 00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:32.319 you know who it was I encountered on the elevator, 92 00:05:32.360 --> 00:05:36.959 and he was this ordinary looking guy, Richard Cottingham, the 93 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:42.720 Times Square Corso killer, and so fascinated with what the 94 00:05:42.759 --> 00:05:46.399 hell this was? And the term serial killer did not 95 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:51.199 exist at that time, certainly not in public usage. Law 96 00:05:51.319 --> 00:05:56.199 enforcement had been using it amongst themselves, but newspapers didn't 97 00:05:56.319 --> 00:06:01.319 use it. It really doesn't enter into our popular lexicon 98 00:06:01.639 --> 00:06:04.439 until May of nineteen eighty one, when The New York 99 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:09.720 Times uses that term to describe Wayne Williams, the child 100 00:06:09.879 --> 00:06:15.759 murderer in Atlanta. So, you know, not having that word 101 00:06:16.720 --> 00:06:20.439 made me kinda left an impression of almost like a 102 00:06:20.519 --> 00:06:26.120 supernatural monster and Alfred Hitchcock movie serial Killer. I mean, 103 00:06:26.199 --> 00:06:30.920 serial killers have been in our consciousness certainly since easily 104 00:06:30.959 --> 00:06:34.800 since Jack the Ripper eighteen eighty eight and Blonde before that, 105 00:06:35.199 --> 00:06:38.720 but we didn't really have a word for them, and 106 00:06:38.800 --> 00:06:41.199 without the word, there was no concept. We called them 107 00:06:41.480 --> 00:06:46.439 recreational killers. We refer to them as stranger on stranger killers. 108 00:06:46.480 --> 00:06:49.600 Sometimes we call them as mass killers, which of course 109 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:52.399 today has a whole different meaning than it did when 110 00:06:52.399 --> 00:06:55.720 that term was used. So I didn't have any of 111 00:06:55.759 --> 00:07:00.839 those concepts to kind of comfort me in on understanding 112 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:05.360 what it was that I had encountered. And so it 113 00:07:05.959 --> 00:07:11.000 was this lifelong fascination with these monsters, and as the 114 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:15.920 word serial killer entered into our lexicon, I I kind 115 00:07:15.959 --> 00:07:21.360 of realized what that was, but remained fascinated with their history, 116 00:07:21.439 --> 00:07:25.920 their origins and so forth. And you know, when I 117 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:32.399 retired from television production and decided to take a shot 118 00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:34.560 at writing a book, you know, they say write what 119 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:37.480 you know, and that's what I started up with and 120 00:07:38.160 --> 00:07:42.000 really haven't looked back since. I think this is maybe 121 00:07:42.040 --> 00:07:48.079 my fourth book on serial killers. And this era of 122 00:07:48.160 --> 00:07:53.639 the nineteen seventies and nineteen nineteen seventies to nineteen the 123 00:07:53.720 --> 00:07:55.959 end of nineteen nineties, when. 124 00:07:56.360 --> 00:08:03.959 We had something like about eighty two percent of all 125 00:08:04.680 --> 00:08:08.399 serial killers in the twentieth century appeared just in these 126 00:08:08.839 --> 00:08:10.759 three decades. 127 00:08:11.160 --> 00:08:14.600 It clearly was an epidemic and was called an epidemic 128 00:08:14.639 --> 00:08:19.279 at that time. You know, the Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, 129 00:08:19.399 --> 00:08:28.160 Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, the Hillside Stranglers era of serial killers. 130 00:08:28.800 --> 00:08:34.120 You know, some approximately two thousand, three hundred serial killers 131 00:08:34.240 --> 00:08:39.000 identified in that era. That's a lot of serial killers. 132 00:08:39.039 --> 00:08:43.279 And so I've been writing about serial killers for about 133 00:08:43.279 --> 00:08:44.519 twenty years now. 134 00:08:45.039 --> 00:08:45.440 And. 135 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:50.039 You know, I never really took a hard look at 136 00:08:50.080 --> 00:08:53.159 exactly this, and no one has, no one has really 137 00:08:53.159 --> 00:08:57.600 written a history of this three decade era. And so 138 00:08:58.440 --> 00:09:02.799 after doing Sons of Cain, where you know, there were 139 00:09:02.879 --> 00:09:05.679 several chapters that I looked at this era, I still 140 00:09:05.720 --> 00:09:08.440 felt I had a bucket me just about the whole era. 141 00:09:08.679 --> 00:09:12.480 So I look kind of at the ramp up starting 142 00:09:12.480 --> 00:09:16.559 from nineteen fifty essentially where you start beginning to see 143 00:09:16.600 --> 00:09:21.360 the steady rise of cerial homicides in the United States, 144 00:09:21.440 --> 00:09:24.519 and then with the nineteen seventies, you suddenly have this 145 00:09:24.720 --> 00:09:31.519 surge that essentially will run until the mid nineteen nineties, 146 00:09:31.559 --> 00:09:34.200 when we begin to see the first time not only 147 00:09:34.200 --> 00:09:37.879 a decline in the number of serial killers being apprehended, 148 00:09:37.919 --> 00:09:42.879 but as well in general murders and violent crime in 149 00:09:42.919 --> 00:09:48.240 the United States begins to dramatically drop at that point. 150 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:53.240 Let's talk about the impetus and the genesis of this 151 00:09:54.360 --> 00:09:56.879 surge of serial killing in the seventies and the nineties. 152 00:09:56.919 --> 00:10:00.200 You say that there was some seeds planted, and that 153 00:10:00.279 --> 00:10:05.080 there are social and cultural and historical reasons for this, 154 00:10:05.320 --> 00:10:08.720 and you provide those Yes, tell us, yeah, as you 155 00:10:08.879 --> 00:10:14.399 discovered some of the reasons for the rise of this phenomenon. 156 00:10:15.879 --> 00:10:19.120 Well, my hypothesis is going to be one of a 157 00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:22.679 you know, a historian. I don't claim to be an 158 00:10:22.679 --> 00:10:27.440 expert or a profile of serial killers. You know, my 159 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:33.200 expertise is in their history. And so we, including myself 160 00:10:33.320 --> 00:10:37.320 in my earlier books, always associated, you know, this surge 161 00:10:37.360 --> 00:10:41.960 in the nineteen seventies to the nineteen nineties with a 162 00:10:42.200 --> 00:10:46.919 general change in American culture that begins in the nineteen sixties. 163 00:10:47.759 --> 00:10:52.039 You know, we have the civil rights struggle and kind 164 00:10:52.080 --> 00:10:57.080 of upheavals around that. We have the Vietnam War protests, 165 00:10:57.159 --> 00:11:01.480 we have the emergence of youth culture, we have the 166 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:08.960 sexual revolution, the kind of disintegration of the nuclear family, 167 00:11:09.279 --> 00:11:13.360 and you know, there is a rise, as I say, 168 00:11:13.679 --> 00:11:17.360 in violence and disorder in general in American society, and 169 00:11:17.440 --> 00:11:23.679 so we often associated serial murder with that period and 170 00:11:23.720 --> 00:11:28.799 with contemporary serial killers at that time. The problem with 171 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:36.759 this model is that on average, a serial killer kills 172 00:11:36.799 --> 00:11:41.159 their first victim around the age of twenty seven twenty eight, 173 00:11:42.200 --> 00:11:50.559 but their obsessions, their psychopathology begins developing as early as 174 00:11:50.600 --> 00:11:54.039 the age of five, and often you have a kind 175 00:11:54.039 --> 00:11:56.600 of a complete cycle by the time they're around the 176 00:11:56.639 --> 00:12:01.799 age of fourteen. And so that means that if we're 177 00:12:01.799 --> 00:12:04.840 going to look at you know, Ted Bundy, for example, 178 00:12:05.639 --> 00:12:07.840 you got to back him out of the era in 179 00:12:07.879 --> 00:12:10.720 which he was committing as murders to the era in 180 00:12:10.759 --> 00:12:15.440 which he was a child when he's being kind of formed, 181 00:12:15.559 --> 00:12:18.879 and that of course brings us back, you know, twenty 182 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:23.320 twenty five years Ted Bundy, typically of that generation is 183 00:12:23.360 --> 00:12:27.720 born in nineteen forty six, and so we got. 184 00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:32.679 To look at not only the culture and time in 185 00:12:32.720 --> 00:12:37.440 which children who will become serial killers are being raised, 186 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:44.639 but as well at the parents to that family and what. 187 00:12:44.279 --> 00:12:47.879 Was affecting the family at that time, in particular the fathers. 188 00:12:48.200 --> 00:12:53.360 And of course that gives us these two American traumas, 189 00:12:53.679 --> 00:12:59.200 the Great Depression and the Second World War combined together 190 00:13:00.360 --> 00:13:05.200 has an impact on both males and females. Certainly, you 191 00:13:05.759 --> 00:13:09.559 have a generation of males who lose their sense of 192 00:13:09.720 --> 00:13:13.960 pride in the Great Depression when they are no longer 193 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:17.919 the bread winners that they work. A lot of men 194 00:13:18.559 --> 00:13:22.000 could not really handle that and just abandon their families. 195 00:13:23.240 --> 00:13:28.919 And you know, you have now a generation of women 196 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:33.240 that have to single handedly bring up their children. And 197 00:13:33.440 --> 00:13:37.519 one thing we do see, and there are various psychological 198 00:13:37.519 --> 00:13:39.840 explanations for it, but one thing we do see in 199 00:13:40.279 --> 00:13:44.799 many serial killer biographies, not at all, but in many 200 00:13:45.480 --> 00:13:50.200 is the presence of a kind of a controlling, dominant mother. 201 00:13:50.399 --> 00:13:52.600 That would be the expression, you know, we might use 202 00:13:53.000 --> 00:13:56.600 what you know, more politely put, what we're seeing is 203 00:13:56.639 --> 00:13:59.919 of course, independent, assertive women that have to play both 204 00:14:00.240 --> 00:14:05.519 role of father and mother, and that is only more 205 00:14:05.559 --> 00:14:09.559 intensified by the Second World War as the husbands begin 206 00:14:09.679 --> 00:14:16.879 to leave and women are single handedly raising children. And 207 00:14:16.919 --> 00:14:20.480 of course when the husband's return from the Second World War, 208 00:14:21.279 --> 00:14:27.440 they're not the same. And we completely underestimated the trauma 209 00:14:27.919 --> 00:14:31.679 that our fathers and grandfathers went through in the Second 210 00:14:31.720 --> 00:14:34.840 World War. We think it was like it's portrayed in 211 00:14:34.879 --> 00:14:39.639 the movies, and it wasn't at all that. And you know, 212 00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:46.840 I discovered that astonishing thirty seven percent of GI ground 213 00:14:46.919 --> 00:14:50.919 combat troops deployed in World War Two were discharged and 214 00:14:51.120 --> 00:14:59.399 sent home as neuropsychiatric casualties thirty seven percent, So that's 215 00:14:59.799 --> 00:15:06.120 a a huge amount. And we didn't have the kind 216 00:15:06.159 --> 00:15:10.440 of diagnosis we have of post traumatic stress disorder. In 217 00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:15.320 the post Vietnam War era. We had these vague terms 218 00:15:15.399 --> 00:15:21.320 combat stress reaction CSR, battle fatigue, battle neuroses, but we 219 00:15:21.399 --> 00:15:29.440 didn't understand what it was. And basically, traumatized soldiers come home, 220 00:15:29.960 --> 00:15:35.480 they're told to just suck it up. There's no treatment, 221 00:15:35.679 --> 00:15:39.240 there's no understanding of what they were experiencing. And as 222 00:15:39.279 --> 00:15:42.679 I looked at that era of serial killers and began to, 223 00:15:43.279 --> 00:15:49.879 you know, collect these accounts of serial killers describing, you know, 224 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:54.320 their fathers, particularly those who served in the Pacific, coming 225 00:15:54.360 --> 00:15:58.759 back from the war and just totally disconnected from them, 226 00:15:58.919 --> 00:16:02.840 their family, just in this kind of sullen silence in 227 00:16:03.600 --> 00:16:07.679 which they you don't have to suffer. So that adds 228 00:16:08.279 --> 00:16:14.360 yet another level to the childhoods of these young males 229 00:16:14.559 --> 00:16:19.600 that are born in the baby bloomer generation. Adding to that, 230 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:23.320 on top of it, it's never one thing. Adding to that, 231 00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:30.000 we have this ubiquitous popular literature in the form of 232 00:16:30.039 --> 00:16:36.639 true detective magazines and pulp advent men's pulp adventure magazines 233 00:16:37.279 --> 00:16:42.279 that well, first of all, we're sold mainstream next to 234 00:16:42.399 --> 00:16:46.759 Life magazine, Time Magazine, Ladies, Home, you know, Home, Garden Journal, 235 00:16:46.799 --> 00:16:55.399 and so forth, which depicted and celebrated the abduction, restraint, torture, rape, 236 00:16:55.440 --> 00:17:01.120 and murder of women. It you know, all the detective 237 00:17:01.159 --> 00:17:06.799 magazines often featured a model who posed in the photograph. 238 00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:12.960 She was bound, she was you know, her clothing was 239 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:18.000 in a sense of disorder. None of these were blatantly pornographic, 240 00:17:18.359 --> 00:17:23.079 but clearly the implication was here that this is a 241 00:17:23.119 --> 00:17:27.519 woman who's abducted, tortured, rape, sexually assaulted, and will probably 242 00:17:27.599 --> 00:17:32.880 be murdered. And often the victim in these cover magazines 243 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:37.079 looked out at the buyer of the magazines. It was, 244 00:17:37.160 --> 00:17:39.559 you know, you could have her for the price of 245 00:17:39.599 --> 00:17:45.559 the magazine. Was essentially the message, and the same thing 246 00:17:45.599 --> 00:17:49.119 with the men's adventure magazines, except the covers were painted 247 00:17:49.279 --> 00:17:55.400 rather than posed the photographically. So by the nineteen fifties 248 00:17:56.200 --> 00:18:02.680 has homicide investigations of serial homicides begin to unfold the 249 00:18:02.720 --> 00:18:07.400 presence of these magazines and kind of scripts from these 250 00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:12.359 magazines become evident. In some of these cases, particularly I 251 00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:16.480 described in my book the case of Hardy Glackman, who 252 00:18:16.640 --> 00:18:21.240 was so obsessed with these magazines that he actually would 253 00:18:21.519 --> 00:18:28.359 lure in Los Angeles freelancing photo bottles, telling them that 254 00:18:28.440 --> 00:18:32.920 he had an assignment to shoot a true detective magazine cover, 255 00:18:33.599 --> 00:18:36.920 and he would pose them as if they were in 256 00:18:36.960 --> 00:18:40.720 a true detective magazine cover and then enter into the 257 00:18:40.759 --> 00:18:43.440 cover and do what he wanted with them. They killed 258 00:18:43.480 --> 00:18:48.319 a number of women that way. Those photographs are you know, survived, 259 00:18:48.319 --> 00:18:51.799 and at that time, those photographs of you know, actually 260 00:18:51.839 --> 00:18:55.680 a serial killer's victim in the process of being victimized 261 00:18:55.680 --> 00:18:59.480 were published throughout the United States. They still circulate on 262 00:18:59.519 --> 00:19:05.720 the Internet today, and their absolute duplicates of what Harvey 263 00:19:05.720 --> 00:19:09.720 Blackman was seeing in these two detective magazines. He as 264 00:19:09.799 --> 00:19:15.920 well was subscribing to bondage literature as well, which also 265 00:19:16.079 --> 00:19:23.119 wasn't you know, technically pornographic either. Right, So these this 266 00:19:23.279 --> 00:19:27.759 now on top of kind of the parental trauma whatever 267 00:19:28.880 --> 00:19:32.559 you know, serial killers experience. There's a whole matrix of 268 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:37.480 things that happened to children who become serial killers. Plus 269 00:19:37.519 --> 00:19:41.680 these magazines begin to kind of give them a script 270 00:19:41.960 --> 00:19:47.960 on which to express their obsessions, express their compotions, So 271 00:19:48.519 --> 00:19:53.200 it's not that these magazines necessarily made them into serial killers, 272 00:19:53.799 --> 00:19:58.119 but it inspired what they would do their their script. 273 00:19:58.480 --> 00:20:02.359 You know, other serial killers are inspired by biblical passages, 274 00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:09.200 you know. Dennis Radar, the BTK Killer, described how he 275 00:20:09.279 --> 00:20:13.559 would be turned on by Boom Winkle cartoons, you know, 276 00:20:13.640 --> 00:20:18.000 the ones that feature Dudley do Right d r CMP 277 00:20:19.039 --> 00:20:26.720 the mountie who's rescuing now and now is often bound 278 00:20:26.799 --> 00:20:30.240 and tied to a railway track by the villain right, 279 00:20:30.319 --> 00:20:33.839 and Dudley do Right comes to rescue her. Well, Dennis 280 00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:38.519 Radar described how, you know, he was aroused by these 281 00:20:38.559 --> 00:20:42.000 cartoon images of now being tied to the railway track. 282 00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:49.720 So anything, anything can inspire a you know, budding serial 283 00:20:49.839 --> 00:20:54.839 killer in expressing already what's inside of them was brewing 284 00:20:55.400 --> 00:20:58.400 inside of them and gives them shape and gives the form. 285 00:20:58.799 --> 00:21:02.440 And of course that's what profiles begin to focus in 286 00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:07.599 on in the nineteen seventies. They begin to discern certain patterns, 287 00:21:07.839 --> 00:21:12.359 certain imprint signatures, as they call it, and those signatures 288 00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:15.400 come from our culture, from our era. You know, when 289 00:21:15.400 --> 00:21:19.039 I looked at serial murder in the nineteenth century, for example, 290 00:21:20.119 --> 00:21:23.160 you know, there was a period where serial killers had 291 00:21:24.400 --> 00:21:28.440 an obsession with servant girls the way later serial killers 292 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:34.119 have an obsession with sex workers, right, so, servant girls 293 00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:40.119 and the type of silk clothing they wore. So in 294 00:21:40.160 --> 00:21:42.880 the early you know, from about eighteen hundred to about 295 00:21:42.880 --> 00:21:47.799 eighteen fifty eighteen sixty, you had a number of serial 296 00:21:47.960 --> 00:21:52.519 killing cases where the victims were servant girls. They were 297 00:21:53.039 --> 00:21:57.759 lured into some remote place, and often they were killed 298 00:21:57.839 --> 00:22:01.720 for their clothing and the whole servant girl fetish. In fact, 299 00:22:01.720 --> 00:22:03.759 it is still with us today. I mean, you know, 300 00:22:03.880 --> 00:22:07.000 walk through the aisles of the costume department in any 301 00:22:07.640 --> 00:22:12.400 kind of adult novelty spoor and there you'll see the 302 00:22:12.440 --> 00:22:16.680 you know, servant girl costumes. It's still a theme in 303 00:22:16.759 --> 00:22:18.000 kind of sexual play. 304 00:22:20.559 --> 00:22:26.920 You talked about the scripts becoming more involved, more in 305 00:22:26.920 --> 00:22:34.200 incorporating and exhibiting more complex and extreme fetishistic fetistic elements 306 00:22:33.400 --> 00:22:40.000 and necrophilic mutilations as well, and you say this, by 307 00:22:40.039 --> 00:22:45.480 the thirties, these scripts are becoming more elaborate and incorporating 308 00:22:45.559 --> 00:22:49.160 these things that we hadn't seen previously. In the run 309 00:22:49.279 --> 00:22:52.440 up to the seventies and the nineties, you cite certain 310 00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:58.519 examples of particular killers that were and then just as 311 00:22:58.519 --> 00:23:02.799 you mentioned, about Glatman. Meanwhile, you talked about Glatman being 312 00:23:02.839 --> 00:23:07.559 featured in a True Detective magazine and Dennis Raider finding 313 00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:11.519 a True Detective magazine in his father's truck apparently and 314 00:23:11.640 --> 00:23:14.400 being influenced and seeing, geez, look at these are the 315 00:23:14.480 --> 00:23:15.720 kinds of things I've been dreaming of. 316 00:23:16.799 --> 00:23:19.759 So the groundwork for ground. 317 00:23:19.519 --> 00:23:21.279 Work for some of the things that you saw in 318 00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:25.200 sexual serial murderers from the seventies and nineties, the infamous 319 00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:30.039 ones were where the groundwork was laid before, wasn't it. 320 00:23:30.759 --> 00:23:36.000 Yes, absolutely, And the groundwork is laid of course when 321 00:23:36.079 --> 00:23:39.640 these crimes were being committed, when these guys were children. Indeed, 322 00:23:40.960 --> 00:23:47.079 Dennis Radar in fact says that he was around fourteen 323 00:23:47.200 --> 00:23:50.559 years old when in his father's truck he picked up 324 00:23:50.559 --> 00:23:54.400 a two Detective magazine and it was actually the Harvey 325 00:23:54.400 --> 00:24:00.400 Glatman case with those photographs said were published everywhere that 326 00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:05.000 suddenly captured his attention. And we can see it kind 327 00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:10.119 of an escalation from the kind of more innocent now 328 00:24:10.480 --> 00:24:14.319 the cartoon figure tied to the rails to now an 329 00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:21.720 actual photograph of a bound woman that Harvey Gladman used 330 00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:27.200 to resynthesize the fake detective magazine covers, and now you 331 00:24:27.279 --> 00:24:33.000 have the next generation Dennis Radar, who begins to reenact 332 00:24:33.359 --> 00:24:37.720 these kinds of bondage scenarios, often using himself as a 333 00:24:38.079 --> 00:24:43.359 model in them. He kind of uses himself as almost 334 00:24:43.359 --> 00:24:51.079 a three dimensional image of his fantasy, imagines himself being 335 00:24:51.160 --> 00:24:56.559 actually the woman. So it's a very kind of creepy, 336 00:24:56.680 --> 00:25:04.440 circular psychological process that eventually spins out of just being 337 00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:08.240 inside the mind of the serial killer. It spins out 338 00:25:08.240 --> 00:25:11.359 of that into an actual murder when he takes it 339 00:25:11.440 --> 00:25:16.799 on the road essentially, and again that statistically begins to 340 00:25:17.359 --> 00:25:21.200 occur around the age twenty seven twenty eight. You know, 341 00:25:21.319 --> 00:25:26.960 that's when many of serial killers really mature into it. 342 00:25:27.119 --> 00:25:32.000 That's the term we might use, mature into you know, 343 00:25:32.200 --> 00:25:35.920 real serial killers who are no longer just fantasizing about it, 344 00:25:35.960 --> 00:25:40.880 but are doing it. But the fantasies are often decades old, 345 00:25:41.240 --> 00:25:42.480 slowly evolving. 346 00:25:44.799 --> 00:25:47.039 What are the some of the factors that you cite 347 00:25:47.480 --> 00:25:50.319 to enable some of the numbers, because that's one of 348 00:25:50.359 --> 00:25:54.000 the important aspects of the phenomena seventies to the nineties 349 00:25:54.079 --> 00:25:57.119 was the incredible numbers of victims. What were some of 350 00:25:57.160 --> 00:26:00.680 the factors that you cite that would enable these serial 351 00:26:00.759 --> 00:26:04.200 killers to rack up these kinds of big numbers. 352 00:26:05.160 --> 00:26:08.880 I think, firstly, just a basic lack of knowledge, and 353 00:26:09.119 --> 00:26:11.240 you know that we don't even have a definition for 354 00:26:11.519 --> 00:26:17.359 what it is they're doing. The biggest problem facing law 355 00:26:17.440 --> 00:26:22.440 enforcement then and still to this day, to a great extent, 356 00:26:22.680 --> 00:26:28.599 was the problem of linkage blindness, where you had, you know, 357 00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:32.680 murders and different jurisdictions, and jurisdictions do not communicate with 358 00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:36.440 each other. You also had murders in the same jurisdiction 359 00:26:36.640 --> 00:26:44.319 that were linked together. Police investigators in the nineteen sixties 360 00:26:44.359 --> 00:26:52.240 had a much more simplistic motion of sexual murders. You know, 361 00:26:52.440 --> 00:26:58.480 if somebody say, for example, you know, strangled an adolescent girl, 362 00:26:58.559 --> 00:27:05.559 but then maybe suffocated a teenager, it was considered to 363 00:27:05.559 --> 00:27:08.519 be too different for it to be the same perpetrator. 364 00:27:10.079 --> 00:27:14.680 And so, you know, serial killings weren't linked. And I'm 365 00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:19.359 working on a particular case right now as an investigative 366 00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:25.519 historian with jurisdictions in New York and in New Jersey, 367 00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:29.119 in fact, dealing with the serial killer that I had 368 00:27:29.240 --> 00:27:34.319 encountered way back in nineteen seventy nine. I've been introduced 369 00:27:34.359 --> 00:27:38.480 to him several years ago by the daughter of a victim, 370 00:27:39.920 --> 00:27:44.440 and the you know, some of his cases which are 371 00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:48.160 now being closed. Last year I announced that three cases 372 00:27:48.200 --> 00:27:52.440 from nineteen sixty eight and sixty nine of schoolgirls in 373 00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:57.400 New Jersey, he confessed to those killings. 374 00:27:57.960 --> 00:28:04.759 At that time, the media kind of made possible links 375 00:28:04.799 --> 00:28:09.880 between these murders, but there was no official position that 376 00:28:09.960 --> 00:28:11.240 these are serial murders. 377 00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:17.000 And when I reviewed the case, the cases I was given, 378 00:28:17.079 --> 00:28:19.720 they all occurred in the same county, in Bergen County, 379 00:28:19.799 --> 00:28:23.119 New Jersey, and I was given them opportunity to review 380 00:28:23.240 --> 00:28:27.000 his confession and compare it to the actual case files. 381 00:28:27.119 --> 00:28:30.920 There was nothing in the case files that suggested that 382 00:28:31.359 --> 00:28:36.759 the murder in the next town was connected to this 383 00:28:36.880 --> 00:28:42.720 other murder. It just was inconceivable to police, and often 384 00:28:42.799 --> 00:28:46.799 is inconceivable today, you know, because serial homicide, despite kind 385 00:28:46.839 --> 00:28:49.519 of the prominence it has in our culture and our 386 00:28:49.880 --> 00:28:56.079 entertainment and so forth, it's an extraordinarily rare crime, and 387 00:28:56.480 --> 00:29:00.839 more so today, and so often there is a resistance 388 00:29:01.759 --> 00:29:08.039 in policing to jump to the serial killer scenario. It's 389 00:29:08.359 --> 00:29:11.559 one that the police, and they have good reason to 390 00:29:12.039 --> 00:29:16.440 usually contemplate as the last possibility. And we had that 391 00:29:16.519 --> 00:29:19.400 problem here in Toronto a few years ago with the 392 00:29:19.400 --> 00:29:24.200 Bruce MacArthur murders. These were murders of you know, gay 393 00:29:24.359 --> 00:29:29.680 males who had a similar ethnic background. They vanished in 394 00:29:30.039 --> 00:29:34.720 the gay community here, and you know, the police were 395 00:29:34.839 --> 00:29:41.160 very resistant to declaring this as a serial homicide case 396 00:29:41.759 --> 00:29:46.480 because they simply didn't have, you know, any evidence confirming that. 397 00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:52.759 And and so without that solid evidence, the by police 398 00:29:52.759 --> 00:29:55.960 departments essentially as you know, this is not a serial 399 00:29:56.079 --> 00:29:59.440 murder until we have evidence, even though they suspected it 400 00:29:59.559 --> 00:30:03.160 was that, investigated it as that, and eventually when they 401 00:30:03.160 --> 00:30:06.920