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Speaker 9: You are now listening to true Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 9: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 9: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every week,
Speaker 9: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 9: killers in true crime history true murder with your host
Speaker 9: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good evening. In Why We Love Serial Killers, Drew University
Speaker 6: Criminology Professor Scott Bond, PhD simultaneously examines the publics and
Speaker 6: the media's fascination with the monsters among us, and the
Speaker 6: fascination in the ways in which that attention impacts them.
Speaker 6: He writes about serial killers' behaviors and the research from
Speaker 6: the FBI's original work to more recent models, then informs
Speaker 6: the law enforcement professionals charged with profiling, catching and studying them.
Speaker 6: A real bonus is doctor Bond's correspondence with Dennis Rader
Speaker 6: bt K or bind Torture Kill, for its insight into
Speaker 6: the mind of an especially chilling, murderous psychopath. As such,
Speaker 6: it is a stark reminder that, irrespective of any deceptively
Speaker 6: benign appearances to the contrary, that they are never like us.
Speaker 6: The book that is featured this evening is Why We
Speaker 6: Love Serial Killers, The Curious Appeal of the world's most
Speaker 6: savage Killers. With my special guest journalists and author and
Speaker 6: professor doctor Scott Bond. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 6: you for a Green dis interview Doctor Scott Bond.
Speaker 8: Well, thank you, Dan. It's really good to be here
Speaker 8: and it's my pleasure so so I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 6: Well, thanks very much. And this is again I applaud
Speaker 6: you for something unique in the animals of true crime
Speaker 6: here in a book that really looks at how we
Speaker 6: look at serial killers and how we and why that
Speaker 6: is so. And you've been many many important issues with
Speaker 6: this book and it's very, very fascinating and a lot
Speaker 6: of fun actually and makes you kind of wonder. So anyway,
Speaker 6: well let's get right to this. How much of this
Speaker 6: phenomena of why we love serial killers? Is fascination with
Speaker 6: serial killers is an American phenomena? Tell us how American
Speaker 6: really this whole fascination and the whole serial killer phenomena
Speaker 6: itself really is.
Speaker 8: Well, that's a great question. And you know, if you
Speaker 8: if you trace it back to sort of the roots,
Speaker 8: the first sort of celebrity serial killer, if you will,
Speaker 8: was probably Jack the Ripper, who of course was in London.
Speaker 8: So the roots of it really go back to London.
Speaker 8: And for the sake of your of your listeners. The
Speaker 8: reason we can really point to Jack the Ripper is
Speaker 8: it was the proliferation of broadsheet newspapers that had just
Speaker 8: recently come on the horizon in major cities like London
Speaker 8: in the late nineteenth century, and it was those media
Speaker 8: vehicles that really propelled Jack the Ripper into the stratosphere
Speaker 8: in terms of making him a crime celebrity. But in
Speaker 8: the say along the same vein, I think the reason
Speaker 8: that we're so familiar with the Ted Bundy's and the
Speaker 8: Jeffrey Dahmers is because the United States is the mediate
Speaker 8: capital of the world. So it's serial killers here who,
Speaker 8: particularly starting in the nineteen seventies, then really became what
Speaker 8: I would call celebrity monsters. And actually that's the term
Speaker 8: that I used in that book to describe these individuals
Speaker 8: that have been transformed into almost like larger than light ghules,
Speaker 8: almost like Dracula like characters.
Speaker 6: Right, And you really say that, well, I'll let you
Speaker 6: say about how what serial killers really represent in society.
Speaker 6: At one time there was more these not fairy tales,
Speaker 6: but tall tales and tales that were passed on from
Speaker 6: generation to generation, tales of the boogeyman, tell us what
Speaker 6: serial killers seem to represent in today's society, Like you say,
Speaker 6: from predominantly from the sixties and the seventies in America.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah. Well, in fact, the term serial killer, we
Speaker 8: believe that it was coined in nineteen seventy four by
Speaker 8: Robert Wrestler, the late Robert Wrestler, who was one of
Speaker 8: the premier and original FBI profilers, and he came up
Speaker 8: with that term based upon you're using the analogy of
Speaker 8: serial adventures from the nineteen forties in movie theaters, the
Speaker 8: Lone Ranger and Batman and so forth, and he likens
Speaker 8: serial killers to that because they would just you know,
Speaker 8: go from one to another, multiple victims. And I would
Speaker 8: say that these individuals have really become sort of popcorn
Speaker 8: entertainment in our popular culture. And what I mean by
Speaker 8: that is the way that they're treated both both real
Speaker 8: serial killers, the Ted Bundy's, the Jeoffrey Dahmers, the btks,
Speaker 8: as well as fictional serial killers like Cannibal, the Cannibal Lecture.
Speaker 8: They're almost indistinguishable. They're there, they're presented in this highly stylized,
Speaker 8: larger than life fashion. I did it an analysis of
Speaker 8: two leading media vehicles in New York Times as well
Speaker 8: as Time Magazine, who are you know, quite prestigious uh
Speaker 8: uh publications, And what I what I found is that
Speaker 8: they still would rely on very sensationalized language, typically referring
Speaker 8: to serial killers as evil as monsters, devils, vampires, using
Speaker 8: those sort of terms. Well, those are inhuman terms, and
Speaker 8: so so what tends to happen is these individuals become
Speaker 8: almost you know, like gothic monsters in the popular culture.
Speaker 8: And you know, and as such, you know, my argument
Speaker 8: or a lot of my uh the premise of my
Speaker 8: book is that that these individuals become indistinguishable from one
Speaker 8: another fact versus fiction. In fact, when Jeffrey Dahmer was
Speaker 8: was caught, he was referred to as the real life
Speaker 8: Hannibal Lecture. So there was a blurring of fact and
Speaker 8: there and one of my also one of my arguments,
Speaker 8: and here's where I think it does harm to society, Dan,
Speaker 8: is that when you focus on the serial killers and
Speaker 8: transform them into these, as I said, sort of gothic monsters,
Speaker 8: you lose sight of the victims, and you lose sight
Speaker 8: of the fact that it's real humans who are being
Speaker 8: destroyed and the lives that are being destroyed here to
Speaker 8: the extent that everybody knows the name of Ted Bundy.
Speaker 8: Everybody knows Jeffrey Dahmer, But what about the dozens and
Speaker 8: dozens of victims? Ted Bundy killed thirty six women? At
Speaker 8: least can anyone actually recall the name of one of
Speaker 8: the victims itself? In my experience, very few people can.
Speaker 6: Well, I can't agree with you, and I see your point,
Speaker 6: but I was thinking about that after reading your book
Speaker 6: and then now hearing your response to that as well.
Speaker 6: But I got to say that I think a fair
Speaker 6: amount is that if you have thirty three victims, or
Speaker 6: forty nine victims, or seventeen victims, and the media does
Speaker 6: what the media does, and you keep playing the name
Speaker 6: of the perpetrator over and over again, it's just easier
Speaker 6: to remember the killer. But I think, as a you know,
Speaker 6: a real big true crime reader myself, that we empathize
Speaker 6: with the victims. But you know, just like everyone else
Speaker 6: who may not even empathize with the victims, And like
Speaker 6: you talk about, there's a difference between how some people
Speaker 6: look at the same information in that regard, in that
Speaker 6: I think that a lot of us really really empathize
Speaker 6: with the victim. But we are really, I think guiltily
Speaker 6: fascinated with the psychology of why these people are so
Speaker 6: inhumane or so much on the again outer limit of humanity,
Speaker 6: as you describe in your book as well.
Speaker 8: Yes, absolutely, And part of the attraction, part of the
Speaker 8: the morbid fascination with these with these individuals is is
Speaker 8: the fact that they are larger than life. And one
Speaker 8: of the analogies that I like to use is, you know,
Speaker 8: there are people who are fascinated with natural disasters, things
Speaker 8: like earthquakes, things like avalanches, tsunamis, title waves, and at
Speaker 8: the same time, we're also fascinated, many of us with
Speaker 8: predators in nature that are larger than life and rare
Speaker 8: and exotic, like great white sharks. Well, I would argue
Speaker 8: that serial killers in many ways are like a title
Speaker 8: wave or a great white shark. They're rare, they're exotic,
Speaker 8: they're powerful, and they're deadly. And I think that has
Speaker 8: to do with the fascination as well.
Speaker 6: Now, speaking of deadly predators and the like, it was
Speaker 6: very interesting for me to because I think it's a
Speaker 6: lot of people that study serial killers, the psychiatrists especially
Speaker 6: that have studied serial killers, have done it on will say,
Speaker 6: very limited amount of time in terms of those interviews.
Speaker 6: Now you tell us about your two years with bt
Speaker 6: K and why b d K, and they just tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about your correspondence with Buying Torture
Speaker 6: Killed BTK. Dennis Rader, Sure.
Speaker 8: Sure, absolutely well. The I can trace the sort of
Speaker 8: the roots of this book why we Love serial Killers.
Speaker 8: I can almost trace it back to to in many ways,
Speaker 8: my students. I'm a criminology professor, and what I've noticed
Speaker 8: over the years is whenever the topic goes to serial
Speaker 8: killers in the classroom, my students are on the edge
Speaker 8: of their seats. They just cannot wait. They're practically vibrating
Speaker 8: in their seats, They're so excited to hear about serial killers.
Speaker 8: And I realized that that, you know, there are a
Speaker 8: lot of people that way, and myself included, who are
Speaker 8: fascinated by, you know, by these individuals. And so when
Speaker 8: I when I started thinking about this book, I thought
Speaker 8: about it from the terms that that some of these
Speaker 8: individuals actually have brand names, if you think about it,
Speaker 8: Son of Sam, the knight Stalker, Jack the Ripper, BTK,
Speaker 8: Buying Torture Kill, the knight Stalker. As I said, the
Speaker 8: Boston Strangler. These are almost brand names, and you can
Speaker 8: actually buy merchandise and products and books and films and
Speaker 8: games and puzzles that have these names associated with it.
Speaker 8: And so I said to myself, these are commodities. These
Speaker 8: are it's pop culture entertainment in many ways. So I
Speaker 8: decided to go to the source as part of my research,
Speaker 8: go to Son of Sam and BTK as you mentioned,
Speaker 8: and question them why did they name themselves? Because those
Speaker 8: are two individuals who named themselves son is David Birkwoitz
Speaker 8: called themselves son of Sam, and Dennis Rader called himself
Speaker 8: buying torture killed. So I questioned, why why did you
Speaker 8: do this? What was the purpose? What did you get
Speaker 8: out of it? Were you aware of the public's fascinating
Speaker 8: in the fact that public was absorbed in these stories?
Speaker 8: And so I decided to go to the as I said,
Speaker 8: go to go to the very sources as part of
Speaker 8: my investigation. And in the case of bt K, he
Speaker 8: was only too willing to uh correspond and and uh
Speaker 8: and through the mail with me. And I told him
Speaker 8: I'm writing a book, and I sort of played Clarice Starling.
Speaker 8: I said, I, you know, I can learn from you.
Speaker 8: I can uh you know, uh the silence of the
Speaker 8: lamb and uh you know, so I'd love to question
Speaker 8: you and as part of the research for my book.
Speaker 8: And again he's he thinks he's the most interesting fellow
Speaker 8: in the world. So he was more than happy to
Speaker 8: cooperate because it feeds his ego. And what I learned
Speaker 8: is if this is a truly truly psychopathic, narcissistic individual,
Speaker 8: he the only thing that he really regrets. He sort
Speaker 8: of gives lip service to the fact that he that
Speaker 8: that he regrets his murders. I don't believe that he
Speaker 8: really does. What he really regrets is getting caught. And
Speaker 8: he he likens himself to a natural born killer, a predator.
Speaker 8: In fact, he uses the analogies like a shark, a hawk,
Speaker 8: a wolf to describe himself. Even to the extent that
Speaker 8: Dan and I think your listeners may find this fascinating,
Speaker 8: is that he has created his own little logo for himself,
Speaker 8: his name Dennis. When he signs his letters, he draws
Speaker 8: it in the shape of a shark with huge teeth.
Speaker 8: So that's what he's actually created, like his own little
Speaker 8: prison logo. Fascinating his just sense of the individual, So
Speaker 8: just a.
Speaker 6: Sense of the narcissism too. Now, what were you most surprised? Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean you're not a guy to be surprised too
Speaker 6: often with this. But what was, if anything, surprising or
Speaker 6: what did you actually learn that you didn't think he
Speaker 6: would go going in with? What were you surprised at
Speaker 6: learning from Dennis Raider?
Speaker 8: Well, bt K the one of the interesting things and
Speaker 8: fascinating things about him. Uh, that I that I learned,
Speaker 8: and it shocked me at first, But the more that
Speaker 8: I thought about it, it's very consistent. He's not able
Speaker 8: to live out his fantasies the way he did on
Speaker 8: the outside. Uh, serial killers that, as you know, their
Speaker 8: killing is is based in fantasy. They fantasize about it
Speaker 8: in advance. Many of them have a particular type of
Speaker 8: victim that they're interested in. And as as Dennis Rader
Speaker 8: definitely did, and he called it trolling. He would look
Speaker 8: for the next perfect victim and he would seek them out,
Speaker 8: and he watched them and so forth. Well, he can't
Speaker 8: fantasize in prison that way any any longer. In fact,
Speaker 8: his media is even screened. They are, they're careful what
Speaker 8: he is allowed to look at. And and view because
Speaker 8: of the fact that it could create an erotic sense
Speaker 8: of arousal and and and feed his fantasy needs. So
Speaker 8: he still fantasizes he is a need to for a
Speaker 8: fantasy outlet. So what he's done is he's created an
Speaker 8: investment strategy. He actually he sits in his in his
Speaker 8: little eight by ten cell and meticulously follows the stock
Speaker 8: market and the real estate and commodity markets. And he's
Speaker 8: created a fantasy investment portfolio that he tracks meticulously all
Speaker 8: day long, listening to the radio, tracking his investments. And
Speaker 8: he's proud to both that he's made a fortune since
Speaker 8: he's been in prison in two thousand and five. So
Speaker 8: he's created a fantasy investment portfolio for himself and that's
Speaker 8: the way he lives at his fantasy needs now. So
Speaker 8: it was very surprising, but it's also very consistent with
Speaker 8: his his his needs.
Speaker 6: There is there a common I know there's a lot
Speaker 6: of shared characteristics from serial killers, but at the same
Speaker 6: time that's part of the mythology as well, that they
Speaker 6: all a profile can fit them into a nice tight
Speaker 6: little slot, and that everybody has the same kind of behavior.
Speaker 6: But really as a shared characteristic, how important or not
Speaker 6: was the idea of re living the crimes by talking
Speaker 6: to people like you or people like me or other authors.
Speaker 6: How important was it to relive if you didn't have
Speaker 6: anything left but that How important was that?
Speaker 8: Well, that's also a great question. It is important to
Speaker 8: say that that serial killers are motivated by by very
Speaker 8: very different things. One of the myths is that it's
Speaker 8: all about sex. Well that's just not true. Probably somewhere
Speaker 8: around fifty percent or maybe slightly more than fifty percent
Speaker 8: of all serial killers are motivated by sex. But sex
Speaker 8: isn't necessarily even the primary motive there. It might well
Speaker 8: be the control and domination of the individual is the
Speaker 8: primary sense of satisfaction that they get, and sex is
Speaker 8: really is secondary, so, you know, And they're motivated sometimes
Speaker 8: by having a mission. There are serial killers who feel
Speaker 8: the need to rid society of a particular type of individual,
Speaker 8: prostitutes or homeless people, for example. So some of them
Speaker 8: are mission mission oriented. They believe that they've been given
Speaker 8: some you know, some agenda to fulfill. In the case
Speaker 8: of a BTK, now, he is an individual that is
Speaker 8: incredibly narcissistic and there or loves attention. So anything anything
Speaker 8: that is going to draw attention to him and put
Speaker 8: himself in the spotlight, is going to feed his ego.
Speaker 8: And one of the stories that he told me in
Speaker 8: his letters to me, and I think, you know again
Speaker 8: this it just shows his narcissism. He Dennis Raider for
Speaker 8: a while carried a badge. He was not a law
Speaker 8: enforcement officer per se, but what he did he carried
Speaker 8: a city badge and he was uh and it's basically
Speaker 8: a home inspector for various statutes and compliance. So he
Speaker 8: could tell you to cut your lawn or keep your
Speaker 8: dog in a leash. You know that, that's that kind
Speaker 8: of thing. And he loved it. Of course that was
Speaker 8: a power trip for him. Well, because Wichitai is you know,
Speaker 8: it's a modest sized city. It's not a huge it's
Speaker 8: not New York City. Much of the of city Hall
Speaker 8: is confined to one or two buildings. So when Dennis
Speaker 8: Rader went to city Hall to get his badge to
Speaker 8: be this this the compliance officer. Guess what he was
Speaker 8: introduced to. He was shown the BTK war room where
Speaker 8: all of the detectives had set up the the investigation
Speaker 8: to track VTK, and they took they took Dennis Rader
Speaker 8: in and showed it to him. He said, in the
Speaker 8: letter to me, he said, what a rush with an
Speaker 8: exclamation point. That was probably, you know, one of the
Speaker 8: highlights of his life that moment, because there he was
Speaker 8: asking in the glory of the investigation, thinking to himself,
Speaker 8: you fools, you have no idea that it's me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And they had no idea his His his veneer
Speaker 6: was quite good, wasn't it.
Speaker 8: Absolutely for thirty years. You know, he basically was able
Speaker 8: to avoid the detection and apprehension for thirty years. And
Speaker 8: the reason that he that he got caught if for
Speaker 8: your for your listeners who may not be aware, it
Speaker 8: was basically his own ego and unarraticism that that tripped
Speaker 8: him up. He had he had been corresponding through through
Speaker 8: the mail with the late ken Landworth, the UH homicide
Speaker 8: detective who had been tracking him and chasing him for
Speaker 8: a number of years, and they had developed, you know,
Speaker 8: a bit of a relationship like kind of like Clarice
Speaker 8: Starling and had an elector through the mail, and Dennis
Speaker 8: Rader actually asked ken land where I'm going to send
Speaker 8: you a floppy disc with some information on in a
Speaker 8: letter you can't trace the information on that, can you?
Speaker 8: And ken Landber said no, of course not, please, you know,
Speaker 8: send send that that sloppy disc right on through. Well,
Speaker 8: believe it or not, Rader had deleted the address of
Speaker 8: the church and his name where he was the president
Speaker 8: of the Lutheran Church Association, so they traced it right
Speaker 8: to him. And this gets to the fact that that
Speaker 8: Dennis Rader is not a stupid man. He's anything but
Speaker 8: a stupid man. But in his psychopathic mind, he really
Speaker 8: believed that he had a relationship with ken land work
Speaker 8: and ken would never violate that, that ken would never
Speaker 8: betray him, and he was shocked. Denis Rader was actually
Speaker 8: shocked that ken Landwark would lie to him. So he
Speaker 8: was undone by his own massive ego.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I don't know if it's always the case,
Speaker 6: but I know there's a few cases where it's just
Speaker 6: really testament. I think to the strategy that the officers
Speaker 6: the detectives that are going to interview some of these
Speaker 6: guys employ and really attuned to that narcissism and get
Speaker 6: on their side rather than look at them with the
Speaker 6: kind of discuss that they probably do have and just
Speaker 6: become their buddies there for you know, whatever long it
Speaker 6: takes for these people to really because they really want
Speaker 6: to tell someone, they know they're going to have to
Speaker 6: tell someone.
Speaker 8: Well again, in the case of a BTK, he actually
Speaker 8: relished when he was finally caught. Once he that the
Speaker 8: jig was up, so to speak, then he was more
Speaker 8: than happy to sit with the law enforcement officers. And
Speaker 8: then ultimately in court, you know, he pled guilty to
Speaker 8: all the murders because he knew the jig was up.
Speaker 8: But now he got to be the big man on
Speaker 8: stage once again and say, look how I fooled you
Speaker 8: for thirty years. Look at all the things.
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Speaker 8: Westy retails that I did and you couldn't catch me.
Speaker 8: You only caught me because of this floppy disc And
Speaker 8: so he was it fed his ego once again that
Speaker 8: he was able to, you know, basically perform on stage
Speaker 8: and and explain to the world how brilliant he had
Speaker 8: been for thirty years. So he to get back to
Speaker 8: your original question, this is an individual who definitely uh
Speaker 8: loves the attention in any way that he can he
Speaker 8: can possibly get it. But not all serial killers are
Speaker 8: that way. You know, not all serial killers raise attention.
Speaker 8: And you know, Joel Riskin, for example, who was the
Speaker 8: most prolific serial killer in the state of New York,
Speaker 8: was not an attention seeker. At all. And in fact,
Speaker 8: he's another one who was pulled over by in a
Speaker 8: very sort of unlikely way. He had killed seventeen prostitutes,
Speaker 8: and he had the seventeenth victim, his seventeenth prostitute in
Speaker 8: the truck of his car, or excuse me, in the
Speaker 8: in the under a tart in the back of his truck,
Speaker 8: and he was pulled over for a traffic infraction. His
Speaker 8: plate had expired, his license plate had expired, and he
Speaker 8: simply got sloppy and careless. He was driving around with
Speaker 8: this decomposing body, and the state trooper who pulled him
Speaker 8: over for the traffic infraction smelled the scent of death,
Speaker 8: and Joel Rifkin, being a psychopath, however, simply said, yes,
Speaker 8: it's a prostitute. I picked her up in New York City.
Speaker 8: I had sex with her, but then things went bad
Speaker 8: and I had to kill her. Do you think I
Speaker 8: should get a lawyer? And of course the state trooper
Speaker 8: was completely dumbfounded by this. But not until they got
Speaker 8: into the police station and they began to interrogate Rifkin
Speaker 8: did they even realize that there was a serial killer
Speaker 8: and that Rifkin was he. Ultimately, he confessed of the
Speaker 8: seventeen murders. So there really had been under the radar
Speaker 8: the whole his work had really been killings had really
Speaker 8: been completely under the radar.
Speaker 6: Right now, what did you learn from Son of Sam Berkowitz? Now,
Speaker 6: for those that don't know, you could or you can
Speaker 6: tell us and tell the audience if you like, about
Speaker 6: the insanity claim. And at the time that you interviewed him,
Speaker 6: was he clearly sane or was he still feigning insanity?
Speaker 8: Well, David Berkowitz is you know, the son of Sam
Speaker 8: has been been in prison now for thirty seven years,
Speaker 8: and so he's been in prison well over half his life.
Speaker 8: He's sixty one years old and he's been in present
Speaker 8: prison for thirty seven years now. He was never found insane,
Speaker 8: He's he's never he's never been diagnosed as being insane.
Speaker 8: He's never been on any sort of medication. What I
Speaker 8: believe about David Berkowitz is that he simply became obsessed
Speaker 8: with Satan, And I really see it more as almost
Speaker 8: like a drug addiction. I think he was. It became killing,
Speaker 8: became a bloodlust and an obsession with him. Now, the
Speaker 8: thing that is perhaps most fascinating about David Berkowitz is
Speaker 8: that he is also now a born again Christian. He
Speaker 8: became a born again Christian in prison in I believe
Speaker 8: it was either nineteen eighty six or nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 8: so he had been in prison for about ten years.
Speaker 8: And he said that he had a moment of clarity
Speaker 8: one night where he believed that he couldn't live another day,
Speaker 8: that he simply wanted to die, and he fell on
Speaker 8: his knees and he said that the hand of God
Speaker 8: touched him. And he has been a different human being
Speaker 8: ever since then, since nineteen eighty like I said, roughly
Speaker 8: nineteen eighty six, And so he now calls himself the
Speaker 8: son of Hope. He's no longer son of Sam, He's
Speaker 8: the son of Hope. And what he has been doing
Speaker 8: since then is he's in the Sullivan Correctional Facility, which
Speaker 8: is up in the Catskills upstate New York. And Sullivan
Speaker 8: is a facility that is mostly for inmates who or
Speaker 8: wifers there there for life sentences, and many of them
Speaker 8: would be considered a mental and or physically compaired in
Speaker 8: some way. And so David Berkowitz actually now helps out
Speaker 8: the chaplain in the prison church or the prison chapel,
Speaker 8: and he serves as a mobility guide for some of
Speaker 8: these prisoners who have problems and so forth. He helps
Speaker 8: them read, he helps them write letters. And he's been adopted,
Speaker 8: so to speak, by an evangelical Christian organization outside of
Speaker 8: the prison that operates a website for him, So he
Speaker 8: actually has a following. He has a worldwide following of
Speaker 8: evangelical Christians who have been moved by his expression of
Speaker 8: remorse and religious conversions. So you can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 8: He has become somewhat of an evangelist in his own
Speaker 8: way and has that following. Is something like two hundred
Speaker 8: and fifty thousand people have come to his website to effect.
Speaker 6: Well, I have no comment there. What I want to ask.
Speaker 6: What I want to ask is did you find it
Speaker 6: he had any real insights into his initial motivation? You
Speaker 6: talk about Satanism and drugs, and but what were his
Speaker 6: insights into what was going on in his mind at
Speaker 6: that time?
Speaker 8: Okay, sure, sure, sure, A great question. Well, well, first
Speaker 8: of all, people asked that. Let me let me start
Speaker 8: by saying, people ask me, do I believe you know,
Speaker 8: you know, in his his conversion, and and I'm going
Speaker 8: to tell you this. I spent half a day with him,
Speaker 8: close to five hours, and we had lunch together. We sat,
Speaker 8: we talked, and this is after having you know, as
Speaker 8: I said, corresponded for a couple of years and so
Speaker 8: so I I mean, I was sitting literally nose to
Speaker 8: nose with him. And if he's not sincere in terms
Speaker 8: of his conversion, then he is the Daniel day Lewis
Speaker 8: actor of serial killers, because he literally sat and sat
Speaker 8: and wept in in front of me with expressing tremendous remorse.
Speaker 8: And he actually reconciled with the mother of his final victim.
Speaker 8: His final victim was Stacey Moskowitz, and he actually reconciled
Speaker 8: with with Stacy's mother before she died. They exchanged letters
Speaker 8: and she said that she forgave him. She was a
Speaker 8: I don't know if I'm born again Christian, but she
Speaker 8: was a Christian herself, so he actually had some you know,
Speaker 8: reconciliation there. So it's it's a fascinating story. I mean,
Speaker 8: I have an entire chapter devoted of the saga of
Speaker 8: from Son of Son of Sam to Son of Hope
Speaker 8: in my book and it's it's rather I just found it.
Speaker 8: You know, rather fascinating. But getting back to your to
Speaker 8: your your question, Dan, the legend of Son of Sam,
Speaker 8: the the sort of the media created legend is that
Speaker 8: he was compelled to kill by a demonic dog named Harvey,
Speaker 8: that was the dog of his next door neighbors, Sam Carr,
Speaker 8: and that somehow this dog, through its nocturnal barkings with
Speaker 8: you know, would would would cause him to kill. And
Speaker 8: there are also parts of the legend that that have
Speaker 8: been uh presented, is that he was part of a cult,
Speaker 8: part of a killing cult, that he didn't act alone.
Speaker 8: And I think that that that these these are are
Speaker 8: just complete mythology, uh, that he was not. I do
Speaker 8: not believe that he was part of a cult, and
Speaker 8: I do not believe that he believes that a dog
Speaker 8: was compelling him to kill. What I believe, and this
Speaker 8: is based upon our conversations, uh, is this David Berkowitz
Speaker 8: grew up as a a emotionally disturbed, very lonely and
Speaker 8: isolated young man. And when he was old enough, he
Speaker 8: enlisted in the military, and he enlisted in the army.
Speaker 8: And he told me that he did clo to try
Speaker 8: to find kind of meaning in his life, some kind
Speaker 8: of structure and meaning, but he didn't find it. He
Speaker 8: came out of the army, he said, more lonely and
Speaker 8: lost than ever. And it was at this time, at
Speaker 8: the age of twenty one, and he started to become
Speaker 8: interested in the occult and Satan, and he became a
Speaker 8: devoted to Satan. He became a Satan worshiper. And what
Speaker 8: I think happened is this, he became obsessed with Satan,
Speaker 8: and he was so lost and so miserable. Somehow in
Speaker 8: his mind, in his mind, it became twisted, and he
Speaker 8: felt that by killing for Satan that somehow he would
Speaker 8: find purpose and satisfaction and some kind of relief in
Speaker 8: his life. Now it's very twisted, but I think that
Speaker 8: in his mind that's what he believed at the time,
Speaker 8: not mentally ill. It was more of an obsession and
Speaker 8: a compulsion. It became a bloodlust. But what happened was
Speaker 8: as he began to kill, or with each shooting, you know,
Speaker 8: he was a shooter. He used a fulldog forty four revolver,
Speaker 8: you know, unlike a lot of serial killers were stranglers
Speaker 8: or whatever. He shut his victims. No killing gave him
Speaker 8: any satisfaction. He felt no sense of relief. He felt
Speaker 8: no sense of closure or satisfaction from his killings. Each
Speaker 8: one left him feeling more empty than before. So he
Speaker 8: was compelled to kill again and again and again, searching
Speaker 8: for some kind of fulfillment, as I said, which never came.
Speaker 8: And he was ultimately caught in August of nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 8: And he told me that he was so obsessed with Satan,
Speaker 8: in fact, that he thought for the first couple of
Speaker 8: years while he was at Attica in prison, that Satan
Speaker 8: was going to somehow come and opened the door magically
Speaker 8: of his prison and let him out. And of course
Speaker 8: that never happened, and that's when he became despondent, and
Speaker 8: after almost ten years in prison, he really wanted to die,
Speaker 8: and that's when he had his self proclaimed religious conversion. However,
Speaker 8: along the way, it's important to also note that he
Speaker 8: was attacked by another inmate. Got here from ear to ear,
Speaker 8: and I've seen the nasty star that required approximately sixty stitches,
Speaker 8: and it's a really nasty star along his you know,
Speaker 8: his his throat. He almost died, He almost led to death,
Speaker 8: but they were able to stitch him back together. But
Speaker 8: they did not do a particularly good job. It's a
Speaker 8: very nasty star.
Speaker 3: That his death.
Speaker 6: Well, I want to talk about what you've examined as well,
Speaker 6: in terms of the common myths and a couple of
Speaker 6: the not so common myths about serial killers. What did
Speaker 6: you find What was one of the more important myths
Speaker 6: that you've debunked in this book.
Speaker 8: Okay, the you know, the one of the great myths
Speaker 8: is that serial killers are all men, and that's simply
Speaker 8: not the case. The serial killers that have become these
Speaker 8: sort of household names and celebrity monsters as I call them,
Speaker 8: are typically meant the Ted Bundy's, the Jeffrey Dahmers, that,
Speaker 8: et cetera, the btks. But throughout recorded history, let's say
Speaker 8: the last hundred years, about fifteen percent or at least
Speaker 8: fifteen percent of all serial killers have been women. We
Speaker 8: just typically don't know their names. And the one who
Speaker 8: probably has received the most attention come to the greatest
Speaker 8: infamy with probably the Eileen Warnos who was portrayed by
Speaker 8: Charlie Ferron and the Academy Award winning movie Monster. If
Speaker 8: she did a marvelous job, you know, a marvelous job
Speaker 8: in that. So there was some you know, the massive
Speaker 8: attention that movie received. Eileen Warnos is somewhat of a
Speaker 8: well known commodity in these circles, but many other female
Speaker 8: serial killers we simply don't hear about. And one of
Speaker 8: the reasons it's the nature of the way that they kill.
Speaker 8: Female serial killers are motivated by different things than men.
Speaker 8: Men tend to be motivated by power, control, lust, domination,
Speaker 8: that sort of thing. Many female serial killers are motivated
Speaker 8: by what's referred to as either comfort or gain. They
Speaker 8: oftentimes it's material things. So female serial killers are more
Speaker 8: likely to be of the black widow variety, the ones
Speaker 8: who stereotypically maybe running a rooming house and they prey
Speaker 8: on their elderly residents, that sort of thing. And a
Speaker 8: classic example of that is Dorothea Poente out in California,
Speaker 8: who she ran a rooming house and she had elderly
Speaker 8: house guests there and she would extort them for not
Speaker 8: extort them, but manipulate them to get their their they're checks,
Speaker 8: their aids, Federal aid checks, and their insurance, and then
Speaker 8: she would kill them and bury them in the backyard.
Speaker 8: So she was a predator black widow type, and they
Speaker 8: just don't receive the same amount attention that men do
Speaker 8: who are killing, oftentimes women by in a more graphic,
Speaker 8: brutal fashion, and that's what tends to get the media attention.
Speaker 8: So there's that's one of the big myths. And another
Speaker 8: one is that that serial killers are all Caucasian, that
Speaker 8: they're all white, and that's simply not true either. About
Speaker 8: twenty percent of all serial killers in the last hundred
Speaker 8: years have been African Americans, so they're actually much more
Speaker 8: proportionate to the population the makeup of the population, but
Speaker 8: many of them simply don't become household names. And the
Speaker 8: one who maybe is the best known African American serial
Speaker 8: killer is the Sunday Mo Slasher who prayed back in
Speaker 8: the early nineteen nineteen eighties. But just recently, just recently
Speaker 8: in Gary, Indiana, there has been Darren Van who was
Speaker 8: just captured recently, who was killing African American prostitutes in Gary,
Speaker 8: Indiana and Hammond, Indiana. But and here this gets to
Speaker 8: a rather controversial notion, but I firmly believe this is
Speaker 8: the media tends to focus on white male serial killers
Speaker 8: who are killing white female victims. African American serial killers
Speaker 8: who were killing African American victims simply don't seem to
Speaker 8: receive the same amount of media attention. Although there have
Speaker 8: been at least seventy five to one hundred African American
Speaker 8: serial killers in the last hundred.
Speaker 6: Years, I've also seen I think you'd take it even further,
Speaker 6: and I mean it's I think it's just the nature
Speaker 6: of television itself. I you know, if I'm not correct,
Speaker 6: but you almost see the the more handsome killers, the
Speaker 6: more handsome victim, the more innocent of victim, and predominantly,
Speaker 6: of course, the white victim, but the the richer victim
Speaker 6: and the more important victim. So if you put that
Speaker 6: all together, that's just what the media loves. And it
Speaker 6: I don't think it's the public as much as the
Speaker 6: media itself somehow has decided at some time and they
Speaker 6: continue with that.
Speaker 8: Well it's it's it's I understand your point, but it's
Speaker 8: two sides of the same coin. If the public didn't
Speaker 8: want to see it, If if the public didn't sure
Speaker 8: it didn't respond, that it would be something else. But
Speaker 8: but yes, you know, the the most if if you
Speaker 8: think of even the ant serial killers, think about just
Speaker 8: huge crime cases, trials that that that we focus on
Speaker 8: almost in variably there's a very attractive white female victim,
Speaker 8: and more recently it's been an attractive white female perpetrator.
Speaker 8: Think about Jody Arius or Casey Anthony, an attractive white
Speaker 8: female perpetrator. So yes, very frequently there's an attractive white
Speaker 8: woman involved in the equation somewhere.
Speaker 6: Now, you talked about the myth of being all white killers.
Speaker 6: What's the percentage of killers that are not white? Serial
Speaker 6: killers that are not white? And say the fras about.
Speaker 8: About fifty percent believe it or not, In the last
Speaker 8: hundred years only I say only, but about fifty percent
Speaker 8: of all serial killers have been white males. Okay, white males.
Speaker 8: The myth is that they're all white males, but in reality,
Speaker 8: about fifty percent have been white males. The other fifty
Speaker 8: percent have been people of color and females.
Speaker 6: Now, what did you find in your in your in
Speaker 6: your research about profiling itself as a tool. Tell us
Speaker 6: what some of the things that you've learned.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, well again a great question. You know, the
Speaker 8: the you watch these shows and admittedly they're very entertaining,
Speaker 8: you know, the dramatic series, the c S I S.
Speaker 8: The you know, Law and Order. More more recently, the
Speaker 8: following and uh uh, true detective, all of you know,
Speaker 8: all these shows that are that are you know, so
Speaker 8: much fun. You would think that it's an exact science,
Speaker 8: and you would think that you very quickly draw a
Speaker 8: profile and you and you catch a predator, and it's
Speaker 8: it's simply not the case. It's a it's a it's
Speaker 8: actually what I would call an inexact science that is
Speaker 8: complemented by just a lot of intuition and that experiential
Speaker 8: thinking and the way that it actually works is quite fascinating.
Speaker 8: And this goes back dates back to the work of
Speaker 8: John Douglas, Roy Hazelwood and Robert Wrestler. Predominantly in the
Speaker 8: nineteen seventies. What they began to do, and computers aided
Speaker 8: this is as these serial predators were captured, they would
Speaker 8: interview them extensively and they would create a profile based
Speaker 8: upon all of the crime scene information, behavioral characteristics, psychological characteristics,
Speaker 8: everything that was known about the victims, all of the
Speaker 8: crime scenes, and they put it into the computer. And
Speaker 8: they did this initially with about thirty six serial predators,
Speaker 8: and this database since that has just been expanded as
Speaker 8: more serial killers are apprehended and the way it works
Speaker 8: is when and I'm sure this is exactly what has
Speaker 8: happened recently in Gary, Indiana with the Barren van is
Speaker 8: when a serial killer is operating in the local community.
Speaker 8: The local police don't have the wherewithal, the ability, the
Speaker 8: tools to profile and in a sophisticated way put together
Speaker 8: a strategy to capture this individual, so they typically reach
Speaker 8: out to the FBI. And what happens then is all
Speaker 8: of the information that's known about this local case, the
Speaker 8: information from the crime scenes, anything that's known about the victims,
Speaker 8: are fed into the computer, into this profiler computer, and
Speaker 8: the attempt to match it up with solve cases. So
Speaker 8: what you're trying to do is match up an unsolved
Speaker 8: case where you have a you know, a living serial
Speaker 8: killer on the loose who's unknown, and try to match
Speaker 8: the characteristics of with solve cases. And that provides a
Speaker 8: sort of a blueprint for narrowing down the suspect pool,
Speaker 8: which is what it really does. It helps to narrow
Speaker 8: down the suspect pool. And one of the more ingenious
Speaker 8: things that the FBI profilers came up with, and this
Speaker 8: is the credit here goes to de Roy Hazelwood, who
Speaker 8: I actually he helped me in tremendously with the research
Speaker 8: and background for my book. He was very cooperative in
Speaker 8: terms of an interview with me, and he's given the
Speaker 8: credit for what's known as the organized versus disorganized dichotomy
Speaker 8: of of of serial creditors, and what that means for
Speaker 8: anyone who hasn't heard is in very broad categories. There
Speaker 8: tend to be two types of serial killers. There is
Speaker 8: the absolutely meticulous Ted Bundy type who plan everything out,
Speaker 8: if they have escape routes, they know what they're going
Speaker 8: to do with the bodies, they attempt to hide them, etc.
Speaker 8: Very meticulous. These tend to be the complete psychopaths who
Speaker 8: are just very cold blooded. That's one type of serial killer.
Speaker 8: But then you have the other or another who is
Speaker 8: much more spontaneous, much more impulsive in nature, who just
Speaker 8: strikes almost like an animal in the wild, and will
Speaker 8: leave the victim right where they find them, no attempt
Speaker 8: to hide the body, no attempt to cover up the evidence,
Speaker 8: and leave what's known a very disorganized crime scene. Now,
Speaker 8: the psychological Grand.
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Speaker 8: Edutical profile and the behavioral profiles of those two types
Speaker 8: of killers are very, very different. So that's an example
Speaker 8: of one of the things that they that they attempt
Speaker 8: attempt to do. And because not all serial killers are
Speaker 8: the meticulous Ted Bundy type, some are very much sort
Speaker 8: of spontaneous killers. And a classic example of there would
Speaker 8: be all the way back to our legendary killer Jack
Speaker 8: the Ripper. Jack the Ripper was would be in that
Speaker 8: disorganized variety where he just pounced out of the shadows
Speaker 8: and slashed with a knife and made no attempt to
Speaker 8: cover up his tracks and just left the body right
Speaker 8: where it where it lay.
Speaker 6: You speak about Ted Bundy and in terms of what
Speaker 6: we could learn from Ted Bundy and what they did
Speaker 6: learn from Ted Bundy, and in terms of the representation
Speaker 6: when you're talking about how sometimes fiction and nonfiction really
Speaker 6: are blurred. Those lines. Talk a little bit about Ted
Speaker 6: Bundy like you do in the book.
Speaker 8: Okay, well Bundy that you know, Bundy in many ways
Speaker 8: is the quintessential serial killer. And what makes him particularly frightening,
Speaker 8: both compelling and frightening to a lot of people is
Speaker 8: he could be anybody. Here's a guy who was very
Speaker 8: good looking, he was very charming, he was very well educated,
Speaker 8: he was active in politics. He was basically the young
Speaker 8: man about town who people were expecting was going to,
Speaker 8: you know, make big things of himself.
Speaker 3: And he was.
Speaker 8: Actually considered to be, you know, quite a catch. He
Speaker 8: had girlfriends and that that he that that he dated
Speaker 8: who he did not kill. But yet he had this
Speaker 8: dark side. He had this compartmentalized life where he had
Speaker 8: this need to to prey upon women. And because he
Speaker 8: was so charming and because he was so unassuming, women
Speaker 8: would make themselves vulnerable. And one of his typical ploys
Speaker 8: that he would that he would enact in order to
Speaker 8: trap them is he would pretend to have a uh
Speaker 8: an injury, have his arm in a sling or something
Speaker 8: like that. And and people may recall if you if
Speaker 8: you watch Silence of the lambs. That's what Buffalo Bill
Speaker 8: would do. He would be the character in silence of
Speaker 8: the Lambs. He pretended to be injured. Well that they
Speaker 8: pulled that right for Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy would would
Speaker 8: ask a young woman to help him get into his car,
Speaker 8: or help him bring a package over to his car,
Speaker 8: or something like that. He had a VW bug And
Speaker 8: when he when they got over to the car, guess what,
Speaker 8: the front seat, the passenger side, front seat was missing.
Speaker 8: He'd chloroform them and throw them into the car and
Speaker 8: drive away. And but because he was so again so
Speaker 8: innocuous or so seemingly innocent, that these women would would
Speaker 8: would freely go with him. And again he was, you know,
Speaker 8: a very good looking guy. So he's I think he
Speaker 8: frightens the heck out of this because it's the idea
Speaker 8: that anyone could be a serial killer. I mean, Ted
Speaker 8: Bundy could be your next door neighbor. He could be
Speaker 8: the guy uh uh living down the hall from you.
Speaker 8: He could be your your boss, he could be your employee.
Speaker 8: You could be anyone. And I think that's particularly frightening
Speaker 8: to people. And at the same time, these uh uh uh,
Speaker 8: the victims could be anyone because the serial killers tend
Speaker 8: to have a particular type that is attracted to them.
Speaker 8: But these are complete strangers. It's not like they're preying
Speaker 8: on people that they know. And another this is also
Speaker 8: an important myth that we that I want to debunk,
Speaker 8: is there's a myth in society that most murders are
Speaker 8: committed by complete strangers. You know, that you're likely to
Speaker 8: be victimized by a complete stranger, and that's absolutely not true.
Speaker 8: The vast majority of murders are committed among people by
Speaker 8: people who know one another, and that's at least two
Speaker 8: thirds of the cases. Now. Serial killers, however, completely contradict
Speaker 8: that pattern of most homicides because they are killing complete strangers.
Speaker 8: So one of the reasons that that serial killers are
Speaker 8: both fascinating and frightening to us is because virtually anyone
Speaker 8: could be a serial killer Bundy, and virtually anyone could
Speaker 8: be a victim. And I think that that just keeps
Speaker 8: us up at night.
Speaker 6: You talk also a little bit about Ted Bundy in
Speaker 6: terms of the the amazing amount of characteristics that are
Speaker 6: contained in one serial killer. Kid to me of a
Speaker 6: serial killer, if you can tell us a little bit
Speaker 6: about about that, because that's early on. I think that
Speaker 6: was even surprising to the well, it was surprising to
Speaker 6: even the most seasoned veterans. There's only a few people
Speaker 6: that knew that there was even such a type of creature.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: The thing is that about Ted Bundy is he it
Speaker 8: wasn't necessarily about the sex per se. He he had
Speaker 8: a particular type and the type of woman that he
Speaker 8: liked tended to have long, dark hair, and these were
Speaker 8: white women, and they actually he looked very much like
Speaker 8: his first girlfriend who had jilted him, which is why
Speaker 8: he probably targeted women that looked like his first girlfriend.
Speaker 8: And the insane thing, however, is after he would kill
Speaker 8: these women, he would have sex with them after they
Speaker 8: were dead, and he would even go back and have
Speaker 8: sex with them a long time later, you know, once
Speaker 8: they were decomposing. So he was a necrophile as well.
Speaker 8: And it's just so hard to imagine that an individual
Speaker 8: who seems so charming and seems so normal could be
Speaker 8: absolutely that twisted. And the indication of his psychopathy, the
Speaker 8: fact that he was a complete psychopath, with the fact
Speaker 8: that he would dehumanize his victims. He referred to them
Speaker 8: as objects, and he explained it. He said, I if
Speaker 8: I humanize them, if I call them by their name,
Speaker 8: then it's very difficult to do to them what I
Speaker 8: feel that I need to do to them. So he
Speaker 8: would just refer to them as objects. And and BTK
Speaker 8: did a very similar thing. He didn't call it his
Speaker 8: victims objects. He called them projects. They were interesting projects
Speaker 8: for him to work on. And psychopaths like that, They
Speaker 8: that those are ways that they aren't able to are
Speaker 8: able to rationalize their behavior. These aren't really human beings.
Speaker 8: These are just our interesting objects and projects to work with.
Speaker 8: And because Bundy was such a psychopath, and an important
Speaker 8: characteristic of a psychopath is their ability to mimic emotion
Speaker 8: and ability to mimic feelings even though they don't actually
Speaker 8: feel them. They they're they it's almost like if their
Speaker 8: their empathy chord, if it's like an imagine, like an
Speaker 8: electrical chord in the wall, the ability to connect to
Speaker 8: another human being is just absolutely pulled out of the wall.
Speaker 6: They don't have it.
Speaker 8: They don't have the ability to connect on another human being,
Speaker 8: which is what enables them to do these horrible things,
Speaker 8: feel nothing, and also to be very good at it
Speaker 8: because they don't have fear, they don't have emotions, they
Speaker 8: don't have anxiety like the average person does. So therefore
Speaker 8: they make very few mistakes, which is what enabled Bundy
Speaker 8: to kill thirty six plus women.
Speaker 6: Well, we're talking about psychopaths. You also talk I was surprised,
Speaker 6: and I think this is a bit controversial, but maybe
Speaker 6: we'll get you to explain. You think there's a genetic
Speaker 6: predisposition for psychopathology, and yes, yes, And then tell us also,
Speaker 6: and tell us also, how the wires, how you think,
Speaker 6: how you theorize these wires can get severely crossed and
Speaker 6: the feelings of murder and sexual desire an.
Speaker 8: Absolutely great question. And once again, you know, Bundy and
Speaker 8: Dahmer and BTK are great examples here. The uh yeah,
Speaker 8: there's there's more and more evidence, more and more emerging
Speaker 8: evidence that the brain of a psychopath simply doesn't work
Speaker 8: the same way as the average person. They don't process
Speaker 8: stimuli the same way, they don't process information the same way.
Speaker 8: This has been it's been shown electrochemically in the way
Speaker 8: that they you know, they do MRIs of the of
Speaker 8: the brain. And look at how the the their their brains,
Speaker 8: the synapses fire and different parts of the brain light
Speaker 8: up for a psychopath than a normal person. They just
Speaker 8: process information differently. So imagine you know that they're just
Speaker 8: born with a with a different a different makeup they
Speaker 8: h and and fortunately, I mean, if there's good news here,
Speaker 8: gets that a very small percentage of the US population
Speaker 8: has the psychopathic tendencies. And there's three three hundred million,
Speaker 8: roughly people in the United States. And if DESTI made
Speaker 8: it that maybe one million have these psychopathic tendencies. And
Speaker 8: not all psychopaths become killers, and not all killers are psychopaths.
Speaker 8: And this gets to your question about how you know
Speaker 8: it's triggered. There are psychopaths who go through their entire
Speaker 8: lives who never hurt anyone, who never kill anyone, and
Speaker 8: in fact sometimes just become extremely successful in whatever endeavor
Speaker 8: they choose because they are not inhibited by a concern
Speaker 8: about hurting someone else's feelings or stepping on someone along
Speaker 8: the way. So you actually have psychopaths who are very
Speaker 8: successful in business, in politics, in various endeavors because they're
Speaker 8: again they're just you know, they don't they don't care
Speaker 8: whether they hurt other people's feelings. So they all become killers.
Speaker 8: But what appears to happen with a few individuals like
Speaker 8: BTK and Bundy and Dahmer and others is somewhere around
Speaker 8: the age of twelve or thirteen, around the age of puberty.
Speaker 8: Those individuals with this psychopathic pattern or psychopathic tendencies, somehow
Speaker 8: their sexual interests and fantasies become intertwined with violence. That
Speaker 8: violence and sex become intermingled to such an extent that
Speaker 8: they become sexually aroused by violence, and sometimes it's manifested
Speaker 8: even earlier with the dead animals. Jeffrey Dahmer talked about
Speaker 8: finding dead animals along the road, you know, roadkill, and
Speaker 8: he put his hands inside of these animals dead bodies
Speaker 8: and would become sexually aroused. One of the more chilling
Speaker 8: stories that I heard was that of Richard Ramirez, the
Speaker 8: knight Stalker. He actually witnessed his cousin, his first cousin,
Speaker 8: kill his wife in front of him. Richard Ramirez witnessed this.
Speaker 8: He was around twelve or thirteen years old, so in puberty,
Speaker 8: he saw his cousin killed his wife, and Richard Ramirez
Speaker 8: remembers becoming sexually aroused by seeing that happen. So again,
Speaker 8: what appears to happen is that they're in puberty. For
Speaker 8: these individuals with these psychopathic natures, that sex and violence
Speaker 8: become intertwined and it becomes a fixation for him, and
Speaker 8: they fantasize about it, and it grows until to a
Speaker 8: point where they need to satisfy it somehow, and that's
Speaker 8: when they begin the killing process.
Speaker 6: But are there conclusive brain scans to indicate that it's
Speaker 6: genetic or or whether it's whether it's environmental or genetic.
Speaker 8: Is it well, it's I think it's a combination. My
Speaker 8: sense is I'm not a neuroscientist. I have colleagues who
Speaker 8: you know, who study these things. But there's more and
Speaker 8: more emerging evidence that there is a genetic nature to
Speaker 8: to psychopathy than what I think happens. This is where
Speaker 8: it's it's the it's the old nature versus nurture. Are
Speaker 8: they made or are they born? Well, I think it's both.
Speaker 8: I think that these individuals who have this this psychopathic pattern,
Speaker 8: you know, this chemical or genetic abnormality, are then aroused
Speaker 8: and triggered when sex and violence become you know, intertwined
Speaker 8: for them during puberty. So it's a combination of the
Speaker 8: two I see it as as a combination of the
Speaker 8: of nature and nurture.
Speaker 6: Interesting. Now, what what is some of the more interesting
Speaker 6: things that you found in terms of how society, How
Speaker 6: society responds to serial killers and why?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 8: A great question once again. The serial killers are, as
Speaker 8: I said, an enter really an entertainment commodity. And and
Speaker 8: and what I mean by that is their products, you know,
Speaker 8: were there are books and and movies and games and
Speaker 8: puzzles and jokes and and poems and and there you know,
Speaker 8: Jeffrey dahmers On, I just got anything you can possibly imagine,
Speaker 8: and and and as such, Uh, there they really fall
Speaker 8: into that that entertainment commodity until it strikes the individual.
Speaker 8: When suddenly, when you know, if if a serial killer,
Speaker 8: uh is responsible for taking your sister or someone in
Speaker 8: your family, it becomes real. But until then, it's it's
Speaker 8: a form of entertainment. And I've actually had people describe
Speaker 8: it to me as as a guilty pleasure. It's almost
Speaker 8: like eating the extra candy bar or the or the uh,
Speaker 8: you know, having an extra serving of ice cream. And
Speaker 8: and they people are not even sure entirely why they're
Speaker 8: they're so fascinated by these things. It's it's almost like
Speaker 8: a you know, you see an accident on the side
Speaker 8: of the road and you feel compelled to look at it,
Speaker 8: but you're not even sure why. It's just this sort
Speaker 8: of morbid fascination. And I think that serial killers fall
Speaker 8: into that category for a lot of people. And and
Speaker 8: we can't deny that the visceral aspect of it. There's
Speaker 8: a visceral appeal. There's there's there's the uh, the adrenaline
Speaker 8: rush that we get from these things, and that goes
Speaker 8: all the way back to childhood. We love boogeymen and
Speaker 8: monster movies and and uh, you know, being frightened by
Speaker 8: by Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers on Halloween. Well, serial
Speaker 8: killers are for adults in many ways what monster movies
Speaker 8: are for you for for children. And I think that
Speaker 8: there's this there's this tendency. There's there's this tendency to
Speaker 8: on the one hand, humanize these individuals. We want to
Speaker 8: try to understand what to compel someone to to do
Speaker 8: these horrible things, But then simultaneously there's also a need
Speaker 8: to try to dehumanize them, turn them into monsters, so
Speaker 8: that we they that they become the other they become
Speaker 8: the thing that we don't really need to understand. They're boogeymen,
Speaker 8: they're just monsters, so we don't really need to understand them.
Speaker 8: So there, there's there's it's there's sort of a push
Speaker 8: and a pull. You know, we we want, we feel
Speaker 8: the need to understand them, but we can't because they're
Speaker 8: just too incomprehensible.
Speaker 3: So what do we do?
Speaker 8: We turn them into these you know, sort of larger
Speaker 8: than life monsters and boogeymen.
Speaker 6: Do the true crime stories inform the fictional stories which
Speaker 6: may then influence killers who may influence other killers. What
Speaker 6: I'm asking is are killers competitive? Do they see each
Speaker 6: other as in a competition? And do they look to
Speaker 6: fiction from your research or true crime story? Do they
Speaker 6: look to all that they're part of that? But how
Speaker 6: affected are they by the what we might see as
Speaker 6: a competition between serial killers?
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, that's also a great question. And I would
Speaker 8: not go as so as far as far to say
Speaker 8: that true crime stories or anything like that inspire people
Speaker 8: to do something that they're not already going to do. Right,
Speaker 8: someone doesn't become a serial killer just because they read
Speaker 8: about BTK or Jeffrey Dahmer. That doesn't happen. But in
Speaker 8: my experience, they are students of the game and they
Speaker 8: do steady each other. In fact, they are the ones
Speaker 8: who are incredibly narcissistic. Well they will they will find
Speaker 8: ways of making themselves feel superior to others. For example,
Speaker 8: in my in my correspondence with BTK, I mentioned to
Speaker 8: him that I was also corresponding with David Burkerwitz, with
Speaker 8: son of Sam Well. In Btk's own way, he sort
Speaker 8: of put Burkowitz down by by insinuating, well, you know,
Speaker 8: he's shot, he used a gun, he didn't really want
Speaker 8: to get his hands dirty, you know, so he's not
Speaker 8: really a serial killer, you know, so there is a
Speaker 8: sense of competition and you know, one another one of
Speaker 8: the sort of myths that's associated with these folks is
Speaker 8: that they're all cops. You know, as soon as a
Speaker 8: serial killer is on the loose, they assume that, you know,
Speaker 8: it's a former detective or something like that. But the
Speaker 8: reality is is these guys tend to study police work
Speaker 8: because it makes them better killers if they if they're
Speaker 8: familiar with how long it takes a nine to one
Speaker 8: one call to be responded to, for example, it's only
Speaker 8: going to make them that much better at what they do.
Speaker 8: So the vast majority of these guys are not tops,
Speaker 8: but they tend to be very familiar with policing practices
Speaker 8: and activities, And in fact, BTK actually has a bachelor's
Speaker 8: degree in criminal justice, so he was very interested in
Speaker 8: this stuff.
Speaker 6: And it seems too that there's been a development to
Speaker 6: the guys that thought they could burn all of the evidence.
Speaker 6: Now with DNA especially, it seems that some people are
Speaker 6: learning about disposal techniques as well.
Speaker 8: Oh absolutely, yes, absolutely, though you know, you have to
Speaker 8: look at it this way. To be as as prolific
Speaker 8: as some of these individuals are killing ten twenty thirty
Speaker 8: forty people, you have to know what you're doing. And
Speaker 8: these individuals are obsessed. They're compulsive. They are absolutely driven
Speaker 8: to do this. And BTK actually had a name for it.
Speaker 8: He came up with a term for his compulsion or
Speaker 8: his motivation, and he called it factor X. And factor
Speaker 8: X was basically what it is. It was this overwhelming
Speaker 8: desire that he didn't really understand. I really don't think
Speaker 8: that Dennis Rader understands the compulsion. He knows when he
Speaker 8: felt it, he knows when he had to go out
Speaker 8: and fill. But he couldn't really understand it, so he
Speaker 8: just he gave it a name. He called it Factor X.
Speaker 8: And you know you asked me earlier one of the
Speaker 8: more you know, shocking things about him, and this pretty
Speaker 8: well would would would sum it up. He in his
Speaker 8: in his pathological mind, actually thinks that society should be
Speaker 8: grateful that he learned how to satisfy in himself to
Speaker 8: autoerotic fantasy. He would he would keep the trophies and
Speaker 8: souvenirs uh and relive his crimes in the privacy of
Speaker 8: his of his basement with dolls and so forth, that
Speaker 8: he would pretend to strangle and and sexually, you know,
Speaker 8: please himself. And he said, by doing that, I was
Speaker 8: able to delay and put off having to kill another victim.
Speaker 8: So I guess he thinks that we should feel grateful
Speaker 8: to him in some way. And which is your further
Speaker 8: indication of his of his maniacal and narcissistic mind.
Speaker 6: Yes, now you talked about what I found interesting, and
Speaker 6: I agree with you totally too, is that you talked
Speaker 6: that irrespective of any deceptively benign appearances, to the contrary,
Speaker 6: and again not appearances, but even appearances meaning extensive interviews.
Speaker 6: They are never like us, and when you talked about psychopathology,
Speaker 6: I just want to get to this issue and it's
Speaker 6: just I just want to put this out there. I
Speaker 6: think is that what's interesting is that the psychiatric communit
Speaker 6: has now Robert Hare has come and popularized this idea
Speaker 6: that that there are a lot of psychopaths. It's still rare,
Speaker 6: but there's a fair amount of psychopaths, but almost no
Speaker 6: psychopaths killed. There's just even that's rare, that the psychopathic
Speaker 6: mind can be a psychopathic killer. But what I find
Speaker 6: is that isn't that sort of normalizing the an excusing Again,
Speaker 6: if you're going to say genetic predisposition or genetic is
Speaker 6: a big component and then environment and you know I'm
Speaker 6: up in Canada, so this is these aren't mitigating circumstances.
Speaker 6: This can get you walking out the door sometimes. So
Speaker 6: the nurture was bad, your environment was bad, genetic predisposition.
Speaker 6: Dad was in prison and twelve years old, he saw
Speaker 6: some slasher movies or was exposed to like Ramirez. Something
Speaker 6: isn't this on the pathway of some kind of excuse
Speaker 6: or as opposed to what you're saying, is that them
Speaker 6: are never the same as us. Is this sort of
Speaker 6: getting us close to that. You know they're a psychopath
Speaker 6: at work in the psychopath may be your boss. But
Speaker 6: then if the right factors are there at twelve or
Speaker 6: thirteen years of age, anything can happen.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I understand your question. I can't comment on Canadian
Speaker 8: criminal law, but I can on US criminal law. The psychopaths.
Speaker 8: First of all, psychopathy and for that matter, sociopathy does
Speaker 8: not constitute mental illness in the US criminal justice system.
Speaker 8: These individuals who are psychopaths or sociopaths, they're considered antisocial
Speaker 8: personality disorders and they're not mental illness. It's not like
Speaker 8: it's not like schizophrenia or psychosis with the full see
Speaker 8: visions and they they they're they're out of touch with reality.
Speaker 8: In fact, somebody like a Dennis Raider or or or
Speaker 8: a Ted Bundy are acutely aware of what they're doing.
Speaker 8: They know that what they are doing is wrong. They
Speaker 8: absolutely know that murder is wrong, which is the definition
Speaker 8: of sanity or insanity in the US criminal justice system.
Speaker 8: The only way you were insane criminally is if you
Speaker 8: didn't know that it was wrong at the exact moment
Speaker 8: that you did it, not five minutes before and not
Speaker 8: five minutes later, at the exact moment you did it.
Speaker 8: Which is why these individuals almost never are able to
Speaker 8: use the insanity defense because they simply don't. It doesn't apply.
Speaker 8: They knew it was wrong, they just don't care. They
Speaker 8: were they were going to kill and they were determined
Speaker 8: to kill them. They don't care whether it was right
Speaker 8: or wrong. So from a very practical standpoint, psychopaths, they don't.
Speaker 8: They do not benefit in any way from the insane
Speaker 8: the defense.
Speaker 6: No, I understand that issue. What I'm just saying, it's
Speaker 6: sort of society wise, we've turned the psychopath into the
Speaker 6: sociopath and sort of normalized it to a certain degree
Speaker 6: in that, oh, well, jeez, your boss as a psychopath,
Speaker 6: But it doesn't mean he could be a killer. And
Speaker 6: that that is in that conflicts with you know them
Speaker 6: or not us. And that's what I really truly believe
Speaker 6: is that regards you know, irrespective of everything. I really
Speaker 6: do believe that that's what the fascination is for me
Speaker 6: and I think for a lot of people in that
Speaker 6: we do not see ourselves in these people at all,
Speaker 6: And that's what's fascinating about them. We don't share any
Speaker 6: of these characteristics, these impulses, these compulsions, these fantasies. So
Speaker 6: that's just my take on it.
Speaker 8: Well, I think there though my research, and this is
Speaker 8: talking to both investigations detective as well as the general public.
Speaker 8: There there's a bit of, Uh it gets us to
Speaker 8: question what might I do? You know, Uh, could could
Speaker 8: I ever do these sort of things? And and so
Speaker 8: I I one of the argument arguments that I make
Speaker 8: in my book is that serial killers sort of define
Speaker 8: the outer realm of humanity, what one human can do
Speaker 8: to another. They sort of delineate the the distinction between
Speaker 8: man and monster. And you know, I mean what Ted
Speaker 8: Bundy did after capturing, torturing, mutilating, killing necro Field, I mean,
Speaker 8: what's left. There's just nothing left really that one human
Speaker 8: being can do to another. And so they sort of
Speaker 8: really are that distinction between, you know, between human and monster,
Speaker 8: and they serve a purpose to the extent that they
Speaker 8: they were. They remind us that that, uh, we're not
Speaker 8: you know, and you know, thank god, I might not.
Speaker 8: You know, I might not always be the best parent,
Speaker 8: I might not always be the best husband or boyfriend.
Speaker 8: But I'm not killing and eating people, you know, and
Speaker 8: so they they do, they do set that boundary and
Speaker 8: serve a purpose to to that end. But at the
Speaker 8: same time, I think we are compelled to understand them,
Speaker 8: We are compelled to try to understand why they would
Speaker 8: do these absolutely horrible things, and as such it gets
Speaker 8: us to you know, to think about human nature, you know,
Speaker 8: to a certain extent, because like it or not, these
Speaker 8: aren't monsters. That that's you know, the whole point of
Speaker 8: my book. These aren't boogeymen. They're not Michael Myers, They're
Speaker 8: not they're not Freddy Krueger. They are human beings who
Speaker 8: just happen to be doing very, very horrible things.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's very interesting too that you really that you
Speaker 6: have a vivid betrayal too of Sam the son of
Speaker 6: Sam Berkowitz, David Berkowitz in his transformation, like you say,
Speaker 6: unless he's the Daniel day Lewis of Conman, then there
Speaker 6: is has been some dramatic and profound transformation. So to
Speaker 6: really show the humanity what can happen in twenty five years,
Speaker 6: even for diehards like me that figure to lock them
Speaker 6: up and leave them there, you know that at least
Speaker 6: that there is you know, there is a huge difference
Speaker 6: between what the media portrayed him, and he went along
Speaker 6: with it as well. That the photographs of him seem
Speaker 6: it's almost like a very demonish but sort of childlike
Speaker 6: in sort of a way too. But a lot of
Speaker 6: these guys have never had that kind of attention, so
Speaker 6: maybe it's kind of natural as well that they would
Speaker 6: feed into that.
Speaker 8: Well, he told me he was very aware, and he
Speaker 8: told me he was very very aware of what he
Speaker 8: was doing at the time, and he wanted to terrorize
Speaker 8: the city, you know, the summer, at the so called
Speaker 8: Summer of Sam nineteen seventy seven, he held New York
Speaker 8: City a completely hostage and he loved it. He because
Speaker 8: here's a guy who had basically been you know, very
Speaker 8: insecure and and uh lost as a young man, and
Speaker 8: now he's got an entire city is at his uh
Speaker 8: you know, beck and call so to speak, and and
Speaker 8: and it's it's certainly uh he got off on it,
Speaker 8: you know, with with without a doubt. But you know,
Speaker 8: I I'm very practical, I guess I would say, in
Speaker 8: pragmatic in terms of my reaction to David Berkowitz. I mean,
Speaker 8: I was I was moved, I have to say, as
Speaker 8: he sat and wept in front of me, as he
Speaker 8: as he talked about his uh, the remorse he had,
Speaker 8: I was, I was moved by by the experience. But
Speaker 8: from a very practical standpoint, if he's doing some positive
Speaker 8: things behind bars and corresponding around the world with cancer
Speaker 8: patients and all the things that he's doing, and if
Speaker 8: even one person feels better and gets some sort of
Speaker 8: relief from from what he's doing and and their life
Speaker 8: is better for it, and I'd say let him continue.
Speaker 8: You know, he's he's not going anywhere. He's not he's
Speaker 8: never getting out of prison, and he knows he's never
Speaker 8: getting out of prison. So uh, you know, let him,
Speaker 8: let him continue to do it.
Speaker 6: Well, there's a whole lot of redemption available. I'm sure
Speaker 6: now you you make the case that you know not
Speaker 6: not to be anti death penalty, but you state the
Speaker 6: case it's very important to interview these type of people,
Speaker 6: and you that really is testament in your book with
Speaker 6: bt K and David Berkowitz, and that it's very important
Speaker 6: to be able to speak to these people. That profiling
Speaker 6: has been very important and a and a useful tool.
Speaker 6: Despite it not being as good as criminal minds on television.
Speaker 6: But so tell us a little bit about the time.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, I mean these individuals are I mean, fortunately,
Speaker 8: they are rare and they are extreme in in what
Speaker 8: they did. But as such, it's important to talk to
Speaker 8: them and to get an understanding of their motivations and
Speaker 8: what compelled them, because that's what leads to apprehension in
Speaker 8: the future. I mean, that is part of the profiling process,
Speaker 8: is that to understand a Ted Bundy, to understand a
Speaker 8: BTK enables law enforcement to be that much better prepared
Speaker 8: to catch the next one, because this is the you know,
Speaker 8: they're not going away, you know, they're these individuals. The
Speaker 8: good news is in the United States at least, homicide
Speaker 8: is going down, and it's gone down precipitously since the
Speaker 8: nineteen nineties. They're in. The peak year of homicide in
Speaker 8: the United States was nineteen ninety three, and last year
Speaker 8: it was less than fifteen thousand murders. In nineteen ninety
Speaker 8: three it was almost twenty five thousand murders, So it's
Speaker 8: gone down tremendously, and serial killing has gone down proportionately
Speaker 8: as well. The serial killers. Here's another myth people think
Speaker 8: that serial killers are responsible for a much higher percentage
Speaker 8: of all murders than they are, and that's just not
Speaker 8: the case. It's about one percent in the United States
Speaker 8: of all homicides our result of of of serial killers
Speaker 8: just one percent. So it's a fraction. But because of
Speaker 8: the of the disproportionate amount of media attention that they get,
Speaker 8: it seems like they're responsible for a law work.
Speaker 6: The is it a myth that we know there's more
Speaker 6: serial murderers in America than other countries, even if it's proportionally,
Speaker 6: But how much are we talking about just a little bit?
Speaker 6: What's what's the actual.
Speaker 8: Well, there's there's there's serial killers all over the world.
Speaker 8: I mean, there was one just recently in Brazil who
Speaker 8: apparently is one of the most prolific serial killers of
Speaker 8: you know, the last hundred years. So they exist all
Speaker 8: over the world. They just don't get the same level
Speaker 8: of media attention as they do in the United States,
Speaker 8: and the statistics, the data is not as readily available
Speaker 8: in other countries. There are serial killers everywhere. There are
Speaker 8: serial killers in Russia, in China, in Iran, in Canada.
Speaker 8: You know, obviously, you know they they but they just
Speaker 8: don't receive the same amount of attention that they do
Speaker 8: in the in the United States. So, uh, serial killers
Speaker 8: are not an American a purely American phenomenon. They that
Speaker 8: that's another myth. It has to do with the the
Speaker 8: nature of the media market, uh in the United States
Speaker 8: and the fact that it's the United States is the
Speaker 8: media capital of the world.
Speaker 6: How much of an influence does Hollywood have in this
Speaker 6: as well, because in the America and film industry really
Speaker 6: is the biggest other than Bollywood. So other countries have
Speaker 6: a healthy film industry. But how important is that and
Speaker 6: how much does that kind of dictate things?
Speaker 8: Oh? Sure, well, I mean serial killers have become absolutely
Speaker 8: one of the you know, one of the prime commodities
Speaker 8: in the in the film industry. The girl who played
Speaker 8: with fire, the girl with the dragon tattoo, you know,
Speaker 8: I mean, this is a world worldwide sensation. There is
Speaker 8: a TV series, TV series very popular, the following Hannibal,
Speaker 8: based upon the early years of Hannibal Lecter True Detective.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: So you've got the yeah, Dexter, You've got the TV shows,
Speaker 8: you've got film. So the media absolutely are are responsible
Speaker 8: in many ways for keeping serial killers on the horizon
Speaker 8: and making the public think that they're much more prevalent
Speaker 8: and much more responsible for the homicide problems than they
Speaker 8: than they really are. And also the media, and it's
Speaker 8: not just the the entertainment media, fictional entertainment media, it's
Speaker 8: the news media that do the same thing in terms
Speaker 8: of turning them into these sort of larger than life
Speaker 8: looking you know, by the very nature of the of
Speaker 8: the description. I mean, you pick up you pick up
Speaker 8: an article in in virtually any news newspaper. And I'm
Speaker 8: not talking about the sort of the tabloid sensationalized newspapers.
Speaker 8: Any newspaper, the New York Times, the London Times. And
Speaker 8: if there's a serial killer, almost invariably in the first
Speaker 8: paragraph you'll see the words evil, monster, devil, vampire. They're
Speaker 8: going to be right there, you know. And those terms
Speaker 8: are in human terms to describe something, you know, larger
Speaker 8: than life. And you know, like I said, like a
Speaker 8: Dracula character.
Speaker 6: Now what seems to be a more popular or at
Speaker 6: least more not more popular, but more prevalent. And and
Speaker 6: of course then the attention of the media is focused
Speaker 6: on it is mass murder as opposed to serial killing.
Speaker 6: So what are your What are your thoughts on that
Speaker 6: in terms of supplanting one from the other.
Speaker 8: Well, you bring up a very fascinating, uh point. In
Speaker 8: the United States, there's a very interesting thing happening and
Speaker 8: and and tragic. And actually it's not just the United States,
Speaker 8: it's it's worldwide. The the homicide rate is going down tremendously,
Speaker 8: but the suicide rate is going way up in the
Speaker 8: United States. We we have a basically an all time
Speaker 8: low in homicide in uh least in the last fifty years,
Speaker 8: whereas we have an all time high in suicide and
Speaker 8: then and then, and they're going in opposite directions. If
Speaker 8: there's almost three suicides for every murder now in the
Speaker 8: United States. But to get to your your question, the
Speaker 8: one area of murder where there's a dramatic increase in
Speaker 8: the United States is mass murder, not serial murder. Mass murder.
Speaker 8: And that's the you know, the one off the Virginia Text,
Speaker 8: the Columbines, the Aurora, Colorado, James Holmes, you know, movie
Speaker 8: theater massacre. Those have gone up dramatically in the last
Speaker 8: seven to ten years. So, uh, that is a you know,
Speaker 8: is one aberration to the whole thing. And I and
Speaker 8: This may well be the focus of the of the
Speaker 8: of the Future book. There's a if you think about
Speaker 8: the motivations for mass murder, they're very different than serial murder.
Speaker 8: Serial killers killed because they love it, are addicted to it,
Speaker 8: they need to do it. Mass murderers are typically nihilistic,
Speaker 8: fatalistic individuals who have a vendetta against some group who
Speaker 8: they think has you know, some grievance, and they have
Speaker 8: no exit strategy. Typically they they're killed with the scene
Speaker 8: of the crime, many times when they turn the gun
Speaker 8: on themselves, so they have no intention to live with
Speaker 8: another day. So it's interesting that it's suicide and mass
Speaker 8: murder that are on the increase in the United States,
Speaker 8: and the two are very much intertwined. So I think
Speaker 8: that's a very fascinating thing.
Speaker 6: What are the trends in terms of disturbing in terms
Speaker 6: of familicide and like the killing of a family and
Speaker 6: then murder suicide.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, that's that's part of the whole thing. That
Speaker 8: that's that's part of this you know, of this process. Oftentimes,
Speaker 8: you know, people as soon as there's something horrible, like
Speaker 8: someone shoots their family and then turns the gun on themselves,
Speaker 8: they immediately the public says, why, you know, why didn't
Speaker 8: he just kill himself, Why did he have to kill
Speaker 8: this entire family. Well, I've been doing some research into
Speaker 8: this and talking to a lot of people, even people
Speaker 8: who are have some suicidal plots themselves, and the way
Speaker 8: that and again, people who do something like this obviously
Speaker 8: they're not in the right mind when they do it.
Speaker 8: But what keeps people who may have suicidal tendencies sometimes
Speaker 8: from actually acting out on it is for fear and
Speaker 8: the concern about what would happen to their loved ones
Speaker 8: if they kill themselves. And therefore, in a very perverse
Speaker 8: but kind of logical way, sometimes people will say, well,
Speaker 8: if I kill my entire family, then they won't be
Speaker 8: left to worry about me. So if I kill them first,
Speaker 8: then I can turn the gun on myself and kill myself,
Speaker 8: which is what I really want to do. So and
Speaker 8: granted it's a very perverse logic someone who's very disturbed,
Speaker 8: there's certainly internal logic to that, and so the goal,
Speaker 8: I don't think in some of those cases is really
Speaker 8: to kill the family. The goal is to kill themselves,
Speaker 8: but they do it to relieve themselves of the guilt.
Speaker 8: Of leaving people behind. Now, in terms of you.
Speaker 6: Why we love serial killers? You talked about the murder
Speaker 6: rate going down and the media and probably the public's
Speaker 6: attention focusing elsewhere. Is there really an abatement to the
Speaker 6: fascination to serial killers? If you looked at the last
Speaker 6: fifty years, is there any let up? I mean, Hollywood
Speaker 6: has got serial killer woven into every television series or movies.
Speaker 6: But do you see any kind of slow down or
Speaker 6: focus towards something else or is there something about serial
Speaker 6: killers and the representation of evil and our our representation
Speaker 6: of good conquering evil in a very I guess, as
Speaker 6: you said, oversimplified way. Are we always going to be
Speaker 6: loving serial killers? Is what I'm asking about.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I understand your question, and I certainly don't see
Speaker 8: any any let up. If anything, they're they're more popular
Speaker 8: in the in the entertainment media right now. Again, we
Speaker 8: you know, we rattle off some of the shows that
Speaker 8: are you Dexter which recently you know was completed, but
Speaker 8: True Detective which was just on last season the following Hannibal. Uh,
Speaker 8: there was a several BBC shows that focus on on, uh,
Speaker 8: serial killing. So I don't I don't think that the
Speaker 8: interest is going away at all, and I think it's
Speaker 8: a rather timeless thing. Uh the the you know, it's
Speaker 8: again to the extent that we turn them into monsters.
Speaker 8: There's always been a fascination with pons, and there's you
Speaker 8: mentioned the whole good versus evil. Well, how how different
Speaker 8: really is ken Land where the detective chasing bt K
Speaker 8: in reality for years? How different is that than Doctor
Speaker 8: Van Helsing chasing Dracula. It's very sim it's similar. You know,
Speaker 8: their morality plays their morality dramas good versus evil and
Speaker 8: we love those good versus evil stories.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely, well, Scott, I'd like to thank you very
Speaker 6: much for this interview. For those that might want to
Speaker 6: contact you, how do you do that? Do you do
Speaker 6: the Facebook? And you have a website? Tell us HOWE
Speaker 6: might be able to contact you?
Speaker 8: Sure? Absolutely. I Well, first of all, on Twitter, I
Speaker 8: my my Twitter handle is at doc bond and that's
Speaker 8: d O C b O n N. I have a
Speaker 8: doc Bond page again, d O C b O n
Speaker 8: N on Facebook, and I also have a dot von
Speaker 8: website and that's it's doc bond dot com and that
Speaker 8: my website is just packed with information on on serial
Speaker 8: killers and crime in general, and a lot of articles
Speaker 8: I've written. I also have a blog. I do an
Speaker 8: almost weekly blog on Psychology Today dot com and that
Speaker 8: and the name of my blog is Wicket Deeds w
Speaker 8: I C K E D Wicket Deeds D E E
Speaker 8: D S. And so I invite people to check that out.
Speaker 8: I've written a lot of articles about psychopaz sociopez and
Speaker 8: serial killers and many other things as well. And uh,
Speaker 8: you know, and I certainly invite listeners hopefully they'll check
Speaker 8: out a new book while we love serial Killers, The
Speaker 8: Curious Appeal of the World's Most Savage Murderers. And it's
Speaker 8: pretty much available everywhere Barnes and Noble in store and online,
Speaker 8: which is maybe most convenient at Amazon and Barnes and
Speaker 8: Noble indie books and should be available readily available, and
Speaker 8: you know, so invite people to check it out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I want to thank you very much. It's a
Speaker 6: very We've had a great conversation. It was really nice
Speaker 6: speaking with you, and I hope to hear from you
Speaker 6: again soon. I know you're a prolific writer, and I'm
Speaker 6: sure you've got another book in the works, no doubt.
Speaker 6: So I want to thank you very much and you
Speaker 6: have a great evening.
Speaker 8: Thank you my pleasure, and thank you so much for
Speaker 8: having me on the show.
Speaker 6: Okay, thank you, good night, iBOT