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Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
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Speaker 5: Evening experience some of the most intense hostage, serial homicide,
Speaker 5: mass casualty, stalking, and violent true believer cases encountered by
Speaker 5: an expert during his thirty year police and forensic psychology career.
Speaker 5: Some of the scariest and most interesting criminals are broken
Speaker 5: down and analyzed by doctor Chris Muhandi, an expert police
Speaker 5: and forensic psychologist who has met and evaluated some of
Speaker 5: the most dangerous people who have walked among us. This
Speaker 5: book has numerous first hand accounts of his work and
Speaker 5: interviews for cases like the Angel of Death, serial killer, racist,
Speaker 5: serial assassin, Joseph Paul Franklin, and even the OJ Simpson case.
Speaker 5: Detailed case information, including excerpts of interviews he's conducted with
Speaker 5: these Offenders provides a platform to learn shocking new information
Speaker 5: about hostage takers, serial killers, mass murderers, violent true believers, terrorists,
Speaker 5: and some of the worst predators on the planet. The
Speaker 5: book that we're featuring this evening is Evil Thoughts Wicked Deeds,
Speaker 5: with my special guest, forensic psychologist and author, doctor Chris Mohandi.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 5: this interview, doctor Chris Mohandy.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dan, nice to meet you, Nice to meet you.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much for joining us today. Fantastic, grateful
Speaker 5: as you do. Thank you. Let's get right into this.
Speaker 5: This is just such a fascinating work, and you've evaluated
Speaker 5: and spoken with so many incredible criminals, killers, and you
Speaker 5: have such a fascinating work here for us to listen
Speaker 5: to about evil thoughts and wicked deeds. Take us back
Speaker 5: to nineteen eighty eight, when you were twenty four years old,
Speaker 5: your second year internship. You were moonlighting after hours out
Speaker 5: of private practice, and you tell us about meeting doctor
Speaker 5: Martin Reiser, becoming involved in his orbit. Tell us how
Speaker 5: that happened, how you became interested. Tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about that, as you do in the book.
Speaker 3: Well, nineteen eighty eight. I didn't know where I was
Speaker 3: going with my career per se. I mean, I thought
Speaker 3: I was going to hang a shingle out and maybe
Speaker 3: see clients on an ongoing basis and treat the worried well.
Speaker 3: And in walks into this private practice where I was
Speaker 3: moonlighting a guy who was contemplating a workplace mass casualty event.
Speaker 3: And back then we didn't really know all that much
Speaker 3: about these things. They were just starting to happen. The
Speaker 3: words going postal was just, you know, we're just being coined.
Speaker 3: And you know, here I am. I don't have my PhD,
Speaker 3: I don't have my you know, malpractice insurance, and didn't
Speaker 3: really know quite what I was doing. And this gentleman
Speaker 3: walks in and you know, wants to tell his story
Speaker 3: and maybe get some help. And he had felt mistreat
Speaker 3: his workplace. He had blown the whistle on, you know,
Speaker 3: on some you know, cost overrun issues in this defense
Speaker 3: contracting firm, and based upon the aftermath of that, felt
Speaker 3: he'd been retaliated against. And his response was to file
Speaker 3: a workers comp case, and in that adversarial process, felt
Speaker 3: that his reputation had been maligned and that he'd been destroyed,
Speaker 3: and his solution was to create a list of people
Speaker 3: he wanted to kill, purchasing you know, an uzi on
Speaker 3: the black market for eighteen hundred dollars and basically come
Speaker 3: to the opinion that if the final hearing didn't go
Speaker 3: his way, he was going to kill all the people
Speaker 3: on his list. And here I am a wide eyed,
Speaker 3: twenty four year old kid, and uh oh, you know
Speaker 3: what do I do? Feeling overwhelmed? And that was nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty eight, and that was my first taste of this stuff.
Speaker 3: And thankfully that that all kind of worked out, but
Speaker 3: it was it was scary.
Speaker 5: Now, how did you come to learn of this Director
Speaker 5: of Behavioral Science Services Section, doctor Martin Martin Reiser? And
Speaker 5: then how did you become involved with him? You said,
Speaker 5: the journey was about to begin.
Speaker 3: There is the founder of police psychology, first in house
Speaker 3: police psychologist and any department in the world. I think
Speaker 3: it was nineteen sixty eight that was established at the LAPD.
Speaker 3: And you know, in nineteen eighty eight, I was in
Speaker 3: graduate school still and there was a small little advertisement
Speaker 3: on the bulletin board at my grad school that said
Speaker 3: halftime unpaid internships at the LAPD with doctor Martin Reiser,
Speaker 3: and you know, I'd already done one year of an
Speaker 3: internship at the Anaheim Police Department doing juvenile diversion counseling
Speaker 3: a couple of years prior, and I thought, you know
Speaker 3: that I've got a little bit of experience here, and
Speaker 3: I spent more time talking to the officers. It seems
Speaker 3: this seems like it's right on point, and not realizing
Speaker 3: the legend that I was reaching out to, I said,
Speaker 3: I'm going to look into this. It might be a
Speaker 3: nice niche. So I contacted doctor Reiser, I think it
Speaker 3: was January of nineteen eighty nine, went interviewed with him,
Speaker 3: and he said, as soon as you graduate in May,
Speaker 3: I'll take you on as an intern. And in that
Speaker 3: time period, somebody said, hey, do you know who that is.
Speaker 3: That's the guy that founded police psychology. He developed investigative hypnosis,
Speaker 3: He developed the protocols for how you deal with officers
Speaker 3: after shootings. He he's the guy that was the kind
Speaker 3: of the first police psychologist to be attached to negotiation teams.
Speaker 3: LAPD may have been the third to get hostage negotiation
Speaker 3: in the seventies, but part of their ground floor development
Speaker 3: of their hostage teams was to have a psychologist attached
Speaker 3: to the team and roll out on all these events.
Speaker 3: And that's in you know, no small measure because of
Speaker 3: doctor Riser's you know, groundbreaking work and establishing his credibility.
Speaker 3: So I got lucky, saw an ad and went in
Speaker 3: and was well and I was well received, and that
Speaker 3: was the beginning of that was the real beginning of
Speaker 3: my education.
Speaker 5: Certainly now you talk about, write about it in this book,
Speaker 5: the practical world that you were in, the psychology operational
Speaker 5: psychology that you were involved with, and you talk about
Speaker 5: a Vietnamese man that was high on crack. Again, you
Speaker 5: talked about earlier about a successful basically intervention when you
Speaker 5: ran to the supervisor and said, listen, what should we do?
Speaker 5: And he ran back and you negotiated with him. You said,
Speaker 5: wrote in the book that you would have done things
Speaker 5: differently today now talking to that man, but.
Speaker 3: Don't bet and what you just said, it's very astute
Speaker 3: of you to call what we did in that room
Speaker 3: with the guy that wanted to kill all his supervisors
Speaker 3: and people at his at his workplace a negotiation, because
Speaker 3: in retrospect, you're right, that's what that was. Before I'd
Speaker 3: even had any training in it. We were working this
Speaker 3: guy basically helping him come to his conclusion that hey,
Speaker 3: this is not the best solution. There are other solutions
Speaker 3: to this p problem and it doesn't involve hurting people.
Speaker 3: That your method of problem solving here, sir, is one method,
Speaker 3: and here's some others. But you're right, And then I
Speaker 3: end up finding my way to real negotiation training at
Speaker 3: the LAPD. I went into it the first course that
Speaker 3: they had when I got on board, I got to
Speaker 3: sit in on that. It's a forty hour course. But yes,
Speaker 3: I did have a prelude of that in the practice
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 5: Now, tell us about this Vietnamese man and this really
Speaker 5: vivid scene that you write about with this man and
Speaker 5: you're trying your best to avert him being killed. So
Speaker 5: tell us about this and the negotiations therein.
Speaker 3: So, this was a gentleman of Vietnamese mail who had
Speaker 3: been estranged from his family. The title of the chapter
Speaker 3: in the book is It's a good day to die,
Speaker 3: Because that morning he called his Psakaiah interest, who had
Speaker 3: been seeing for a worker's complaim he had he had
Speaker 3: thought he'd been mistreated at his workplace too interesting themes here,
Speaker 3: and yet that psychiatrist had had come to the opinion that,
Speaker 3: you know what, it's your drug problem, not how people
Speaker 3: are treated you that's causing these issues in the workplace.
Speaker 3: And so he had but he had called that psychiatrist
Speaker 3: that in the morning, having reached the end of his rope,
Speaker 3: and said, you know what, doctor Griffin, today is a
Speaker 3: good day to die. And and that is what prompted
Speaker 3: the call to the location. And what had happened was
Speaker 3: is that he had gone there to kill his family
Speaker 3: and then himself. And fortunately his his family had escaped.
Speaker 3: Yet his three year old daughter, Janet had not been
Speaker 3: so fortunate, and she ends up stuck with her dad,
Speaker 3: who is on a collision course with you know, fatal destiny,
Speaker 3: and he's you know, he's basically, you know, wanting to
Speaker 3: kill her and kill himself. So it's a her suicide
Speaker 3: in progress. He's armed with a handgun, he's been smoking
Speaker 3: crack and he's coming down and he's he's done, you know,
Speaker 3: he wants to he wants to end his life. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: that's where he was at and he wanted to take
Speaker 3: his daughter with him. Was horrible and a little bit
Speaker 3: more to His story was is that he had fallen
Speaker 3: out of favor with his family. There had been some
Speaker 3: shame issues related to a death side vigil with his
Speaker 3: brother in law. He had said some inappropriate things. The
Speaker 3: family had basically ostracized him as they as they should
Speaker 3: have given what he was saying and doing. He had
Speaker 3: driven several thousand miles to a famous treatment center, Hazelton
Speaker 3: in Minnesota, spent a couple of days there and checked
Speaker 3: himself out Ama because you know, it was too much
Speaker 3: like the prison camp he'd been in when he was
Speaker 3: in Vietnam, so being locked even for treatment wasn't an
Speaker 3: option for him. So as we as you know, so
Speaker 3: he drives back, tells the family, hey, I couldn't do it,
Speaker 3: he said. See, he didn't even finish that. He drives
Speaker 3: back again to try to get himself back in the facility.
Speaker 3: They say, nope, we're not taking you. And now he's
Speaker 3: at the end of his rope. And that's when he
Speaker 3: arrives back in Los Angeles, you know, basically held bent
Speaker 3: on destruction. And so we find out from the good
Speaker 3: doctor that had been treating him about this history, and
Speaker 3: of course that goes to the difficulty in negotiating with him,
Speaker 3: because if we're going to try to help him, he
Speaker 3: is not willing to check himself in anywhere, let alone
Speaker 3: go to jail. So in his own mind, he had
Speaker 3: created no way out other than death and destruction. So
Speaker 3: it was it was one of the worst hostage incidents
Speaker 3: I've ever been at. You've got an innocent life and
Speaker 3: the balance a guy that you know wants to end
Speaker 3: his own but not before taking his own flesh and blood.
Speaker 3: And it's just a matter of time. And here I am,
Speaker 3: you know, is nineteen ninety two or whatever. I'm you know,
Speaker 3: twenty nine years years old, and you know, I'm given
Speaker 3: input to this team and part of my job as
Speaker 3: a consultant to the hostage negotiation teams of the SWAT
Speaker 3: team at LAPD is is this negotiable?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: You know, is is there any hope here? And we
Speaker 3: can we work this guy? And I had to basically
Speaker 3: weigh in after having tried all kinds of talking strategies
Speaker 3: with our really excellent negotiators who were Vietnamese language speakers.
Speaker 3: They hadn't been through the training yet, but they did
Speaker 3: everything they were supposed to do, and it was just
Speaker 3: not going to end with a verbal resolution, and so
Speaker 3: that was I was thrust into life and death you
Speaker 3: know kind of decision making, which is not what graduate
Speaker 3: school prepares you for. Dan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, this was a heartbreaking story. And this is
Speaker 5: early in the book as well as because because he
Speaker 5: really it really shows the police and yourself and the
Speaker 5: negotiating team did everything they could to prevent this. Really
Speaker 5: really was I mean, it's not an it's not to
Speaker 5: be understated. Is that he had every opportunity, especially with
Speaker 5: these Vietnamese officers that did a stellar job of connecting.
Speaker 5: You told them to call them, you know, a brother,
Speaker 5: and so they looked like it looked like there was
Speaker 5: very there was some hope here. It looked like there
Speaker 5: was a lot of hope actually based on the techniques
Speaker 5: that you guys employed. But in the end heartbreaking. No,
Speaker 5: he year old with no far.
Speaker 3: Hel fit into a corner and just he was having
Speaker 3: none of it. And then you have the chemical influence Dan,
Speaker 3: of you know, being high on on on crack cocaine,
Speaker 3: which you know in stimulants are very much associated with
Speaker 3: high risk and for violence potential. But then when you're crashing,
Speaker 3: you know, the despair that one may already feel is
Speaker 3: amplified by you know, the neurochemical and balance that has
Speaker 3: been created by the up, you know, because what goes
Speaker 3: up must come down, and that's what was happening. So
Speaker 3: that's what we were up against, and you know, it
Speaker 3: was it was. It was, you know, kind of my
Speaker 3: first foray into just how bad things can get and
Speaker 3: how quickly they could go bad, and then just how
Speaker 3: important it is what law enforcement does and the efforts
Speaker 3: and negotiation to buy time. Even if you can't negotiate,
Speaker 3: you know, solutions will present themselves the more time you
Speaker 3: can buy, and we're able to do that and you know,
Speaker 3: wear him down and ultimately, uh, you know, there is
Speaker 3: it's not going to be a great outcome for him.
Speaker 3: I don't want to spoil anything unless you want to
Speaker 3: ask about it. But it was. It was intense.
Speaker 5: Absolutely you learned from all of these situations, ones that
Speaker 5: turn deadly and ones that don't, and ones that you've
Speaker 5: prevented things from happening. You talk about a serial killer,
Speaker 5: unlikely in terms of where you might find this person,
Speaker 5: and that's at a hospital.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: Let's talk Let's talk about ephrin Celdovar.
Speaker 3: Oh Efren Saldivar, the so called Angel of Death that
Speaker 3: was preying on patients at the Glendale Adventist Hospital here
Speaker 3: in Glendale for many years. You know, he's kind of
Speaker 3: a low key, affable, you know, seemingly affable guy. He
Speaker 3: would he would not send off your Spidey senses. Is
Speaker 3: a guy that is a threat or a menace. You know.
Speaker 3: At one point he had been a checker at the
Speaker 3: local supermarket and uh, you know, he saw a guy
Speaker 3: come through the line with a stethoscope on and the scrubs,
Speaker 3: and he says, how do I get one of those?
Speaker 3: And the guy says, well, I'm a respiratory therapist. And
Speaker 3: how much education does that take? And he guy says, well,
Speaker 3: here's what it takes. He goes, geez, I could do that,
Speaker 3: you know, I could have the seeming power of of
Speaker 3: the outfit and you know the things that I get
Speaker 3: to do but without having to, you know, go to
Speaker 3: medical school. So he was attracted to the power of
Speaker 3: the job, but not the kind of guy that would
Speaker 3: that would seem like a wolf. He was a wolf
Speaker 3: in sheep's clothing, and unbeknownst to those around him, his
Speaker 3: yearning and his hunger for power over life and death
Speaker 3: and the playing god aspect of that had been had
Speaker 3: been sown years before through his upbringing and through his
Speaker 3: reading of a book called Upon a Pale Horse's kind
Speaker 3: of a comic book style, you know, kind of in
Speaker 3: the dark sense, where a guy ends up startling the
Speaker 3: grim reaper or Death as he's sending souls either to
Speaker 3: heaven or hell. Death ends up dying and the guy
Speaker 3: in the book has to assume Death's role. I think
Speaker 3: Saldivar was in his teens when he read this book,
Speaker 3: and he had an epiphany and identification with that character
Speaker 3: that kind of laid dormant years later. When I would
Speaker 3: interview him after he was ultimately victed of the of
Speaker 3: some of the homicides that he perpetrated in the hospitals,
Speaker 3: he he remembered that that experience of having read the
Speaker 3: book and and and the impact it had upon him,
Speaker 3: and then he tried to downplay it, but it was
Speaker 3: clear that that it had filled a void for him,
Speaker 3: an inner sense of purpose and meaning, and that for
Speaker 3: a guy like him who had never felt powerful or
Speaker 3: any sense of potency, kind of an inadequate guy, it
Speaker 3: it elevated him and the secrecy aspect of what he
Speaker 3: was doing is he self, you know, approached people in
Speaker 3: the hospital that supposedly met his code. It it fulfilled him,
Speaker 3: and it lifted him out of depression. It lifted him
Speaker 3: out of despair, and it served a purpose for him.
Speaker 5: You write that he his hero. He told you in
Speaker 5: an interview that his Kavorkian doctor Orkin was a hero
Speaker 5: to him, and he and you and you he actually
Speaker 5: gave you some enlightenment to his situation by saying, what
Speaker 5: really triggered this sort of well obsession and interest watching
Speaker 5: a man suffocate? Tell us what you've gleaned from him,
Speaker 5: what he told you about this incident and how it
Speaker 5: influenced them, and then you can talk about the drug
Speaker 5: that you talk about full cognitive awareness.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, So the there was a there was
Speaker 3: a life changing experience he describes where he perceived that
Speaker 3: there was a person that was dying and that was
Speaker 3: supposedly dead or dying in the hospital and you know,
Speaker 3: life life ending measures had been terminated and supposedly it
Speaker 3: was you know, it was this person was supposedly just
Speaker 3: going to succumb to you know, his natural death didn't happen,
Speaker 3: and his accounting of it is that a nurse or
Speaker 3: somebody there tournament, we got to do something. This isn't
Speaker 3: this isn't good. And at that point, you know, he said, well,
Speaker 3: I guess this is what I'm supposed to do. And
Speaker 3: then you know, his version of the story is that
Speaker 3: he finished, you know, what was supposed to happen naturally,
Speaker 3: that is end of this. This guy's life that was
Speaker 3: life saving measures were supposed to end. He was supposed
Speaker 3: to die naturally. Now I keep saying his version because
Speaker 3: there is a tendency among these these types of individuals
Speaker 3: to attribute more approval from those around them than than
Speaker 3: you know, is likely really being given. But in his
Speaker 3: own mind, uh, he concluded this is I guess this
Speaker 3: is what I'm supposed to do. And that was like
Speaker 3: kind of the intersection between the fantasy of being in
Speaker 3: the role of death, the grim reaper, and the reality.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of like, you know, I often use
Speaker 3: the the the I guess analogy of you know, once
Speaker 3: the gen analogy or metaphor that once the genie is
Speaker 3: let out of the bottle, you can't put him back
Speaker 3: in again, and the genie being the I've done it
Speaker 3: and it's in the world of possibility and probability. And
Speaker 3: once he kind of done it, meaning taking human life
Speaker 3: in this fashion for these purposes, it becomes something that
Speaker 3: they just can't stop doing. Now they may have cooling
Speaker 3: off periods, you know that serve the purpose of not
Speaker 3: getting caught. But you know it's like once they've had
Speaker 3: a drink, they can't they can't put the bottle down.
Speaker 3: And and so his task was, you know, as he
Speaker 3: saw it, was to find out, well, how do I
Speaker 3: do this and and what does he have access to
Speaker 3: As a respiratory therapist. He has access to these agents
Speaker 3: suck sycoline and pavlon, which are Cherai like substances that
Speaker 3: are designed to allow him to intubate patients. And thus
Speaker 3: it needs to induce paralysis so that they're not choking
Speaker 3: and gagging. But what it does is it stops the breathing,
Speaker 3: so the breathing tube can be put in, an artificial
Speaker 3: respiration can occur, and yet the person is completely conscious.
Speaker 3: So the person is aware that they can't breathe and
Speaker 3: they're suffocating until the tube goes in and it's done.
Speaker 3: But if a person is administering this as a method
Speaker 3: of homicide, it's a particularly traumatic You know, all forms
Speaker 3: of death in some ways arguably are some less than others.
Speaker 3: But in this case, you have full wakefulness and awareness
Speaker 3: in the victims, but with a complete inability to say
Speaker 3: or do anything about it. So it's like frozen terror
Speaker 3: that's completely perceived, experienced fully, but they're immobilized and they
Speaker 3: can't do anything to express it. So if you think
Speaker 3: about those dreams you may have had where you know
Speaker 3: you can't move and your body's still and these things
Speaker 3: are happening around you that we might experience in that
Speaker 3: transition from wakefulness to sleep, it's like that, but with
Speaker 3: absolute terror. And that was the kind of death that
Speaker 3: he was inducing in his patients. So it seems peaceful
Speaker 3: because they're not struggling and not moving because they can't,
Speaker 3: but it's it's absolute horror and terror.
Speaker 5: Now, you we talked about your evaluations. Tell us what
Speaker 5: these cases all about? Evaluation? Now, go ahead, No, that's
Speaker 5: what I wanted to ask.
Speaker 3: In a way, I mean, when I'm out, when i'm
Speaker 3: out on a hostage incident, my I'm doing an assessment.
Speaker 3: My job is to assess in the moment what's going
Speaker 3: on and what strategies might be and recommend strategies, assess negotiability,
Speaker 3: things to do, things not to do, and strategies that
Speaker 3: might help diminish risk, you know, those kinds of things.
Speaker 3: So that's and that's a form of psychological assessment, you know,
Speaker 3: for negotiation. In the situation I was retained in for
Speaker 3: the South of our case, the Angel of Death, I
Speaker 3: was brought in in another operational role, and that was
Speaker 3: as a consultant to the task force, which which I
Speaker 3: consulted with them for like four to five years, because
Speaker 3: it took that long to put the case together. Once
Speaker 3: it was disclosed that there might have been victims and
Speaker 3: there might have been might be a case. My role
Speaker 3: that in that matter was to help understand how these
Speaker 3: kinds of offenders offend. We actually went and interviewed some
Speaker 3: other ones, reviewed other cases, interviewed other offenders that had
Speaker 3: killed in hospitals, one of whom was Donald Harvey in Ohio,
Speaker 3: to feed that information to the investigation because the task
Speaker 3: of the investigation at that point was to gosh, you know,
Speaker 3: thousands of people have died in this hospital, many of
Speaker 3: natural causes. How do we find the twenty bodies that
Speaker 3: we want to exhum and increase of likely that if
Speaker 3: they were victims of Saldivar that they would be, you know,
Speaker 3: within his pool of victims, that is his victimology. And
Speaker 3: so my assessment there was, you know, what kind offend
Speaker 3: are we dealing with here? You know, how do we
Speaker 3: approach him? You know, how do we think about who
Speaker 3: he was selecting? So that's a different form of evaluation
Speaker 3: or assessment in this operational sphere. And then there's times
Speaker 3: when I work on cases I won't get too far,
Speaker 3: you know, into the specifics of certain ones, but I
Speaker 3: do a lot of insanity cases where I'm retained, you know,
Speaker 3: like somebody's killed one or more people or hurt people,
Speaker 3: and and their and their defense is I was insane
Speaker 3: at the time, you know, And my job is to
Speaker 3: actually going in interview, do traditional psychological testing maybe and
Speaker 3: then assess whether they didn't know what they were doing
Speaker 3: and did or didn't know that it was wrong because
Speaker 3: of a mental disorder. And I've done you know, I
Speaker 3: do a fair amount of that to present day, usually
Speaker 3: in homicide cases. And then sometimes I'll get brought in
Speaker 3: on death penalty cases to do assessments both for defense
Speaker 3: and for prosecution around issues of mitigation or aggravation that
Speaker 3: you know a lot of times the defense will raise
Speaker 3: an issue tough childhood or gosh, he's got mental problems,
Speaker 3: and then there's other hypotheses to explore. Maybe the person
Speaker 3: just a stone cold psychopath. And so I get brought
Speaker 3: in on those cases I've done, you know, some serial case,
Speaker 3: serial murder cases in that regard. I was on the
Speaker 3: Grim sleeper case in la for example, and then the
Speaker 3: Aurora Theater shooting case I consulted to the prosecution in Colorado.
Speaker 3: So that's a different form of assessments. And then there's
Speaker 3: threat assessment work that I do, which might be a
Speaker 3: company hires me, or a school they've got somebody they're
Speaker 3: worried about. That's that's that's a potential risk or danger,
Speaker 3: and then I might get brought in either to directly
Speaker 3: or into directly assess whether they're in fact are risks.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of different forms of assessment and evaluation, Dan,
Speaker 3: and that's what makes my job never a dull moment.
Speaker 5: Absolutely tell us about who coined the term violent true believer?
Speaker 5: Explain what you mean by violent true believer before we
Speaker 5: talk about Joseph Paul Franklin.
Speaker 3: A violent true believer is a term to describe a
Speaker 3: philosophically motivated killer, a guy that a woman, guy who
Speaker 3: is doing it for a purpose that might be, you know,
Speaker 3: to advance some sort of cause, like it could be
Speaker 3: because there is there Islamist, and I use the term
Speaker 3: Islamist not as Islam, but as a person that's advocating
Speaker 3: radical versions of Islam to to to to go after
Speaker 3: people that are infidels, you know, like the nine one
Speaker 3: one hijackers, would be Islamists as opposed to true Muslims
Speaker 3: or people practicing the usual peaceful forms of Islam. Then
Speaker 3: there are violent true believers that might be single issue offenders,
Speaker 3: people like that are against abortion or animal rights, people
Speaker 3: that are that advocate violence to fulfill their higher purpose
Speaker 3: or objectives. And then there's people that have a racist agenda,
Speaker 3: like you know, white supremacists. Those would be some examples
Speaker 3: of violent true believers. The term true believer comes from
Speaker 3: a book by Eric Hoffer called The True Believer and
Speaker 3: in the Aftermath of nine one one, doctor Reed molloy,
Speaker 3: who's a very well regarded for forensic psychologist, a good
Speaker 3: friend of mine and I were saying, gosh, you know,
Speaker 3: we didn't oulsis of it. We published it, and in
Speaker 3: that process we were going to use the term true believer,
Speaker 3: and Reid said, you know, doctor Malloy said, you know
Speaker 3: that it's really not just true believer. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of true believers out there. We're talking about violent true believers,
Speaker 3: people that are willing to use violence in favor of it.
Speaker 3: And thus the term was coined in our Homicidal and
Speaker 3: Suicidal States of Mind article that came out in two
Speaker 3: thousand and one, just after nine to one one happened,
Speaker 3: and it was read that suggested putting the violent in
Speaker 3: front of the true believers. So I give him credit for,
Speaker 3: you know, the violent true believer label. And then the
Speaker 3: article was one that was co authored by him, myself
Speaker 3: and some other noted people in the area of mass
Speaker 3: homicide publications and scholarly research. And it's fun now that's
Speaker 3: in usage. It's used a lot. I remember watching a
Speaker 3: James Bond movie, uh I think it was. It might
Speaker 3: have been the first one with Daniel Craig, and I
Speaker 3: remember him saying, well, he's not even a true believer,
Speaker 3: and it's like, wow, this this term has been has
Speaker 3: now you know, become dispersed and is in use by
Speaker 3: the people that we want to be using it, you know,
Speaker 3: in the in the in the intelligence and anti encounter
Speaker 3: terrorism communities, and now it's found its way into you know,
Speaker 3: into the art that imitates life.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, let's use this as an opportunity to stop for
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Speaker 5: Now, Chris, we were talking about to talk about Joseph
Speaker 5: Paul Franklin particularly interesting case, and tell us about your
Speaker 5: meeting with him, and your interview in prison with him,
Speaker 5: what he had to say about the why.
Speaker 3: Joseph Paul Franklin was probably one of the most interesting
Speaker 3: serial murderers that I've ever met, one of the scariest
Speaker 3: and one of the most disturbing because of what he
Speaker 3: represents and the fact that it's still this kind of
Speaker 3: person is still out there and these ideas are still
Speaker 3: being put out to inspire people like this. But Joseph
Speaker 3: Paul Franklin I came across a couple of years before
Speaker 3: I actually interviewed him myself. I had gone out on
Speaker 3: an interview for a show that I've been involved with
Speaker 3: where they were interviewing him. The show never aired, or
Speaker 3: I think the pilot only aired or whatever. But based
Speaker 3: upon hearing what he had to say and learning more
Speaker 3: about him, I said, I got to get it back
Speaker 3: out there and talk to this guy. This is like,
Speaker 3: this is intense. And it was because he'd killed twenty
Speaker 3: three people in racially motivated homicides. He was trying to
Speaker 3: start a racial holy war. He was hoping to, you know,
Speaker 3: cause a war between African Americans and Caucasians and divide,
Speaker 3: you know, our society. And he actually was sort of inspired,
Speaker 3: well not sort of inspired. He was inspired by, you know,
Speaker 3: some of the racists, like the White Knights of the
Speaker 3: ku Klux Klan, the original ones Nathaniel bed from Forrest,
Speaker 3: who founded the KKK back then as a terrorist organization.
Speaker 3: Josephaul Franklin had actually been in some of the KKK
Speaker 3: groups in his part of the country, in the South,
Speaker 3: and found them too moderate for him. Thought it was
Speaker 3: all just a bunch of uh, you know, parades and
Speaker 3: you know that kind of thing. And he thought, you know,
Speaker 3: this is this We need action, and so he decided
Speaker 3: to embark on what he called his mission. And his
Speaker 3: epiphany was a moment when he was I think it
Speaker 3: was Christmas Eve, about a year before he did what
Speaker 3: he did. He was frustrated because he couldn't get a
Speaker 3: job as a quote white man, and then he fell
Speaker 3: back in all the rhetoric he'd been you know, immersing
Speaker 3: himself in people like Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church
Speaker 3: of God and other you know, the guy that wrote
Speaker 3: Turner Diaries, William Pierce. All these people were part of
Speaker 3: the you know, the voices that he listened to and
Speaker 3: was inspired by, and at that moment in uh in Maryland.
Speaker 3: He said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this
Speaker 3: and uh, he was frustrated he couldn't get a job,
Speaker 3: and he and again he attributed it to his racist
Speaker 3: beliefs that the society was not taking care of the
Speaker 3: white man anymore. And so for a year he read
Speaker 3: it him read to himself for his mission. He was
Speaker 3: born under a different name.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: I think his first name was Vaughn, and he ended
Speaker 3: up changing his name to Joseph Paul Franklin legally, uh,
Speaker 3: Joseph Paul as homage to the Nazi propaganda ministered. Uh.
Speaker 3: Just Paul Gebbels was one of his heroes, and then
Speaker 3: Franklin in homage to Benjamin Franklin, who he considered one
Speaker 3: of the first true Americans. So his identity literally became
Speaker 3: synonymous with his mission. And he started, you know, targeting
Speaker 3: Jewish people, mixed race couples. And then he's actually the
Speaker 3: guy that shot Larry Flint in I think it was
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven because he had seen in Hustler publications
Speaker 3: Larry Flint had the first mixed race sexually explicit pictorial.
Speaker 3: And when he saw it, when just Paul Franklin saw it,
Speaker 3: he was enraged that I'm gonna kill him, and so
Speaker 3: then he and then he targeted him Vernon Jordan, and
Speaker 3: then twenty three other people that lost their lives, including
Speaker 3: one police officer, because of his desire to perpetuate or
Speaker 3: promote supremacy and to try to start a racial holy war.
Speaker 3: And just one last footnote on that one of his
Speaker 3: other heroes was Charles mann And many people think of
Speaker 3: Charles Manson as the cult leader that he was, but
Speaker 3: if you look closer, Charles Manson was also racially motivated.
Speaker 3: The whole Helter Skelter thing was about causing a war
Speaker 3: between whites and blacks in our society at the time,
Speaker 3: and so Josephaul Franklin was aligned with those ideas as well.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about the interview lasted several hours, but
Speaker 5: he's talk about some of the some of the things
Speaker 5: you say about in terms of suicide and homicide being
Speaker 5: very very similar or just opposite sides of the coin.
Speaker 5: But you can explain, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, you know there are there's a
Speaker 3: guy named Schneidman who wrote a really exceptional book on
Speaker 3: the suicidal mind, and he identified ten commonalities that we
Speaker 3: see in suicidal individuals, one of which is that it's
Speaker 3: it's an attempt at solving a problem. It's not a
Speaker 3: it's not a problem solving method we recommend, but it
Speaker 3: is an attempt. It's a flawed problem solving mechanism. It
Speaker 3: also stems from a perceptual distortion of restricted ability to
Speaker 3: see options. So we call that perceptual constriction and an
Speaker 3: inability to see that, you know what, there there are
Speaker 3: other options other than taking your life. And then there
Speaker 3: is an emotional state of hopelessness. And then and then
Speaker 3: we talk about the consistency of lifelong styles that the
Speaker 3: way a person goes about there suicide typically reflects the
Speaker 3: way they live their lives. If they're more organized or impulsive,
Speaker 3: the act of suicide is going to reflect that. In
Speaker 3: looking at a lot of the homicides that I've seen,
Speaker 3: there is a very similar process among people where it
Speaker 3: is a dysfunctional way of trying to solve an interpersonal problem.
Speaker 3: Usually there is constriction of their of the person's ability
Speaker 3: to see other options, and the way they go about
Speaker 3: it does typically reflect lifelong styles, and it usually there
Speaker 3: usually is some hopelessness, you know, kind of wrapped into
Speaker 3: the equation, so there are a lot of commonalities. And
Speaker 3: in seeing a lot of like the mass casualty suspects,
Speaker 3: the people that like Joseph Paul Franklin, that are willing
Speaker 3: to die, not necessarily intending to die, and then looking
Speaker 3: at violent true believers, notice that you know that there
Speaker 3: is a fair amount of overlap between these populations. So
Speaker 3: that which is part of the reason why we see
Speaker 3: a lot of times the end of a mass cast
Speaker 3: the event as the person taking their life, because the
Speaker 3: same factors that got them to direct that outward are
Speaker 3: started with initially directed inward at self destruction, because to
Speaker 3: hurt other people, in my opinion, is a form of
Speaker 3: self destruction. It is against our species not only to
Speaker 3: hurt ourselves, but to hurt others. And just as a
Speaker 3: footnote here, if anybody out there is feeling hopeless or
Speaker 3: helpless and like hurting themselves or others, there is hope,
Speaker 3: There are people that care, and this too shall pass.
Speaker 3: And all the people that I've ever talked to that
Speaker 3: have made the decision like that guy at the beginning
Speaker 3: of my book, they've all been glad that they did
Speaker 3: not do it. So that's an important message to get
Speaker 3: out there. I have that message in my book, but
Speaker 3: I think this is a nice place to put it in.
Speaker 3: But there is overlapping harming others and harming oneself, both
Speaker 3: in the internal processes that get you there and in
Speaker 3: terms of if one is thinking about hurting oneself. I'm
Speaker 3: not saying most people are suicidal or homicidal, but I
Speaker 3: will say that there is a greater risk of being
Speaker 3: a if you've already got over thou shalt not kill
Speaker 3: thyself because of your distorted thinking. That that I believe
Speaker 3: lessens the inhibitions against harming other people. Again, I want
Speaker 3: to be clear, most people that want to hurt themselves
Speaker 3: do not want to hurt other people. But if you
Speaker 3: compare populations of those that are contemplating self harm versus
Speaker 3: those that are not, you're going to find statistically, I
Speaker 3: believe more people that have also gotten over the hurdle
Speaker 3: of hurting other people in me I got over hurting
Speaker 3: myself population. You say that makes sense, You're right, Yes,
Speaker 3: it does.
Speaker 5: Certainly. You write that you learned much more from one
Speaker 5: particular person named Jeffrey Cox. Tell us what you learned
Speaker 5: and why you learn more from this person that survived,
Speaker 5: which is rare.
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Cox was one of the first school shooters. And
Speaker 3: when I say I learned more, I learned a lot
Speaker 3: more about school shootings from talking to him, and he
Speaker 3: never even you know, it really wasn't completed, but all
Speaker 3: the variables were there. It was February of nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: which was before all these other school shootings had really happened,
Speaker 3: the ass of them. And he was at a small
Speaker 3: school here near my home in Pasadena, California, in San
Speaker 3: Gabriel High School in Alhambra, and he had come to
Speaker 3: the conclusion that he needed to take his class hostage,
Speaker 3: maybe hurt some people, maybe demand some money, and plane
Speaker 3: tickets to Brazil as his way of resolving the fact
Speaker 3: that he wasn't going to be graduating and he didn't
Speaker 3: want to be forgotten about. So what he got all
Speaker 3: in this situation. You've got suicidality, you've got weapon seeking,
Speaker 3: you've got him talking to his friends about it beforehand.
Speaker 3: You've got him in the throes of adolescent decision making,
Speaker 3: which isn't always the best. And you've got you know,
Speaker 3: him wanting notoriety. And back then there was no social
Speaker 3: media right. So it's like he just wanted to make
Speaker 3: the news in the newspaper and to be remembered. And
Speaker 3: we're seeing just so much of that now that if
Speaker 3: the first goal or all the issues that the person
Speaker 3: is struggling with and feeling ashamed or you know, worthless,
Speaker 3: and that violence has become the solution to the problem.
Speaker 3: The second layer we're seeing on a lot of these
Speaker 3: school shooting cases these days, not all of them, but
Speaker 3: a lot of them is the hunger to be remembered,
Speaker 3: you know, wanting you know, your fifteen minutes of fame
Speaker 3: or your followers to increase, you know, all that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff, and it's available on a scale that we've
Speaker 3: never seen before. But Jeff was the leader of the
Speaker 3: pack in a lot of respects and just taught me
Speaker 3: a lot about the thought process, the the way his
Speaker 3: DESI vision making was at the time, because he'd had
Speaker 3: time to reflect upon it and was very thoughtful, very bright,
Speaker 3: and talked about how his decision making was things were
Speaker 3: black and white, you need to do this, you do this,
Speaker 3: And his inability to kind of pull himself back once
Speaker 3: he had kind of told other people what am I
Speaker 3: going to do? Back out that would just, you know,
Speaker 3: my ego couldn't take that, and so there were just
Speaker 3: so many pure lessons in the interview he so graciously
Speaker 3: gave to me those years ago that I would when
Speaker 3: I would do school violence prevention or threat management workshops,
Speaker 3: which I still do to this day, I would invariably
Speaker 3: show like about five to seven minutes of clips of
Speaker 3: Jeff talking about how he came to that decision, what
Speaker 3: he was thinking, and kind of giving a living demonstration
Speaker 3: of how he got there and where the mistakes were
Speaker 3: in terms of managing it. And the lessons haven't really changed.
Speaker 3: Lessons were all encapsulated there.
Speaker 5: The story, the official story about Columbine, and you talk
Speaker 5: about the Columbine effect in this right, we can discuss that,
Speaker 5: but there are some things that happened in Columbine that
Speaker 5: official narrative that you dispense with. Here you dispel I
Speaker 5: should say, tell us a little bit about the Columbine
Speaker 5: effect and what you found out about Columbine shooting itself.
Speaker 3: The Columbine effect is the label that's been given over
Speaker 3: the last several years to the fact that many school
Speaker 3: shooters and even other mass casualty shooters have studied Columbine
Speaker 3: and refer to it as they contemplate their own event.
Speaker 3: The column an effect refers to the to the psychological
Speaker 3: phenomena of identification, and that there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: that that have had impulses to hurt others that have been,
Speaker 3: you know, disturbingly inspired by Columbine and used that as
Speaker 3: their template, if you will, to plan and unfortunately perpetrate
Speaker 3: some of these acts that have happened around the world.
Speaker 3: And so that's the label for that that phenomenon. And
Speaker 3: many of these people aren't even in America. There were
Speaker 3: several of from there's a couple from Finland and Germany
Speaker 3: that were inspired to do it, Brazil, Australia, of course, Canada,
Speaker 3: and and some of these people that have been inspired
Speaker 3: by Columbine weren't even born or conscious of these kinds
Speaker 3: of things because they were either not born yet or children.
Speaker 3: So what what happened is that it be came what
Speaker 3: we refer to in the profession as a watershed event,
Speaker 3: one that becomes a reference point culturally, part of the
Speaker 3: cultural script, and that those that have interest in this area,
Speaker 3: even if they weren't born yet, study it. And there's
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff unfortunately in social media. So the
Speaker 3: Columbine effect is refers to the fact that there's been
Speaker 3: at least at this point, one hundred known plots, some
Speaker 3: of which were interrupted and some which were carried out,
Speaker 3: that had resulted in the deaths of dozens of people
Speaker 3: that were unfortunately by individuals that identified with specifically the
Speaker 3: offenders at Columbine. The myths of Columbine, you know, there
Speaker 3: were these ideas that these two boys were horrendously bullied
Speaker 3: and that they had these tumultuous pass and they really didn't.
Speaker 3: They really weren't bullied any more than anybody else. You know.
Speaker 3: Bullying is a high profile or not a high profile,
Speaker 3: but a high frequency event on high school in middle
Speaker 3: school campuses, unfortunately, but it's so high frequency that if
Speaker 3: bullying were the cause of school shootings, we would be
Speaker 3: seeing like so many more than we than we actually do.
Speaker 3: It's estimated that forty percent of kids have some involvement
Speaker 3: in bullying at some point in their lives, either as
Speaker 3: a bully, as a victim, or both. And there was
Speaker 3: this claim or this you know, that that the offenders
Speaker 3: from Columbined, you know, were bullied, they were dishing it
Speaker 3: out just as much as they were receiving it. There
Speaker 3: was this myth that they were isolated. They weren't. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think one of them had actually gone with a
Speaker 3: bunch of his friends in a limo, all fancily dressed,
Speaker 3: you know, to prom the weekend or a weekend or
Speaker 3: two before the shooting. So there's more going on here
Speaker 3: than the simple explanation these poor suffering kids. They were
Speaker 3: not poor suffering kids. They were spoiled, over indulged kids
Speaker 3: with you know, you know, families that didn't know really
Speaker 3: quite what they had and then kind of enabled them
Speaker 3: instead of holding them accountable for when they were pushing
Speaker 3: limits and breaking rules and you know, didn't quite know
Speaker 3: what they were dealing with. Now, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: there aren't kids like I talk about Evan Ramsey from
Speaker 3: Alaska who have horrendous background. But you know these two kids, Yeah, No,
Speaker 3: they were the spoiled narcissistic variety.
Speaker 5: You discuss sanity. I don't want to discuss it too much,
Speaker 5: but there's a difference between a sanity hearing and then
Speaker 5: the idea that someone can be deemed insane. You, unlike
Speaker 5: many psychologists, I think at least might have a little
Speaker 5: diferent opinion about sanity in the courtroom. Tell us about
Speaker 5: some of the things you write about.
Speaker 3: Well sanity, we also say he must be insane. You know,
Speaker 3: that's an everyday you know, there's the everyday statement by people, Gosh,
Speaker 3: that guy did that horrible thing. He must be insane. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's the everyday use of the word insane in courts.
Speaker 3: It is a very specific legal definition that have to
Speaker 3: be proved by the defense once there's been a criminal
Speaker 3: trial of guilt. So there's two phases in most criminal trials,
Speaker 3: the guilt phase and then if the person puts their
Speaker 3: mental stated issue, there's the sanity phase. And the presumption
Speaker 3: in most states is that the person is in it
Speaker 3: is that the person is The presumption in most states
Speaker 3: is that the person is sane, and it's the job
Speaker 3: of defense if the evidence is there to prove that
Speaker 3: the person is insane. At it usually a lower threshold
Speaker 3: for ponderance of the evidence, as opposed to beyond a
Speaker 3: reasonable doubt. Now, there are several prongs that often come up.
Speaker 3: The first is do they really have a mental disorder.
Speaker 3: We're not talking that they're under the influence, and there's
Speaker 3: just difficult people that have trouble getting along with others,
Speaker 3: but a bona fide mental disorder like bipolar or schizophrenia,
Speaker 3: where they're hearing things or seeing things or just not
Speaker 3: perceiving the world in a realistic way. That's the first thing,
Speaker 3: do you have a mental disorder? And then it's the
Speaker 3: job to find out whether they didn't know what they
Speaker 3: were doing was wrong or that somebody was being hurt.
Speaker 3: Maybe they thought by I had one guy that he
Speaker 3: stomped on a guy to death. I had one offender
Speaker 3: that stomped a person to death because he believed that
Speaker 3: that's in his deluded thinking, that that was breaking bread
Speaker 3: with Christ and that that was the person wasn't dying.
Speaker 3: It was simply a heavenly act of some sort. Okay,
Speaker 3: So he didn't even get that somebody had died when
Speaker 3: he stopped the person to death. Okay. So that's one
Speaker 3: way a person could be found insane is because their
Speaker 3: mental state prevents them from understanding that somebody's being hurt.
Speaker 3: Another is, hey, it wasn't wrong. I had another guy
Speaker 3: that shot two people to death that believed that there
Speaker 3: was a government conspiracy and the government had replaced all
Speaker 3: these people with fake people, and that there was this
Speaker 3: whole lawlessness that was going on, and then it wasn't
Speaker 3: against the law, that was they was defending himself against
Speaker 3: this government conspiracy. And again that goes to the wrongfulness prong. So,
Speaker 3: insanity is a very specific legal definition that does not
Speaker 3: apply to the vast majority of criminals that claim it.
Speaker 3: There's a small percentage that actually are found insane by juries,
Speaker 3: but most people are found I'm sane because there is
Speaker 3: very specific criteria for it.
Speaker 5: When they are deemed insane, does that prompt a trial
Speaker 5: if they were to be deemed sane by doctors?
Speaker 3: I'm not understanding the question.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, because when they're deemed insane by the courts
Speaker 5: in these rare cases, will those people then be tried
Speaker 5: for their crime once they're deemed if they're deemed sane
Speaker 5: by those same doctors.
Speaker 3: The typical way it's dealt with is the guilt phase
Speaker 3: is first. So there is a guilt phase. The person
Speaker 3: may be found guilty of first or second degree murder
Speaker 3: or whatever the crime might be, and then the person says, well,
Speaker 3: we're claiming not guilty by reason of insanity. Then there's
Speaker 3: usually in California, for example, a second trial on insanity
Speaker 3: and if they're found insane at that point by that
Speaker 3: court proceeding the jury says no, we think he's insane,
Speaker 3: then they're going to go to a psychiatric hospital until
Speaker 3: the hospital deems them saying and no longer a danger
Speaker 3: to the community, and there's assessments that take place. Some
Speaker 3: people are never found to be restored to sanity or
Speaker 3: beaned you know, uh, not a danger to the community
Speaker 3: if they're released, and then some are. They're released all
Speaker 3: the time with varying levels of controls. So there can
Speaker 3: be cases where they might hold other charges as as hey,
Speaker 3: if he gets out, these charges are waiting, but in
Speaker 3: most cases it's kind of an all or nothing thing,
Speaker 3: and they're convicted and then they're they're sent to a hospital,
Speaker 3: and then once the hospital deems them capable being released, boom,
Speaker 3: they're back out in the community again, at least in
Speaker 3: California for example.
Speaker 5: That's let's get to your work with stocking and oh yeah,
Speaker 5: of course, one of the most famous stokers of all time,
Speaker 5: if people don't know, is OJ Simpson. So tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about your work with stocking and your
Speaker 5: personal experience in the OJ case.
Speaker 3: So been doing stocking cases since probably my first year
Speaker 3: at LAPD. We started seeing stocking cases. Now, mind you,
Speaker 3: in eighty nine, stocking wasn't even a crime at that point.
Speaker 3: I think the first stocking statutes on the book were
Speaker 3: in California, like ninety ish. That came about from the
Speaker 3: tragic murder of Rebetta Schaeffer. And then LAPD formed the
Speaker 3: first Threat management unit to work stocking cases. And at
Speaker 3: that point I started consulting with the Threat Management Unit
Speaker 3: on their cases occasionally, and then we embarked on a
Speaker 3: massive research project where we looked at one thousand and
Speaker 3: five stockers. It's published in the Journal of Riensic Sciences.
Speaker 3: I think it was two thousand and six. It's the
Speaker 3: biggest single study of stalkers, and we developed a way
Speaker 3: of categorizing them into four primary categories. One is the
Speaker 3: intimate stocker. That's somebody that's pursuing a victim that they've
Speaker 3: had a relationship with, either married to ex boyfriend X
Speaker 3: girlfriend and then no longer they have a relationship and
Speaker 3: they're pursuing them. The second type is the acquaintance stalker.
Speaker 3: It might be you know, somebody that you were a
Speaker 3: co worker with, or it might be a victim who
Speaker 3: is a healthcare provider and it's their patient pursuing them,
Speaker 3: or a boss being pursued by an ex employee. That
Speaker 3: would be an acquaintance stoker. Then there's the public figure stocker,
Speaker 3: which is you know, when Hoskins was pursuing Madonna, he
Speaker 3: never knew Madonna. He just saared the media and said, hey,
Speaker 3: that's my wife, and he had all kinds of delusions,
Speaker 3: and most public many public figure stalkers are delusional, have
Speaker 3: serious mental produt problems. And then there's what I call
Speaker 3: the private stranger stockers. Somebody that's just in your environment.
Speaker 3: They might live in your neighborhood or work. We're working
Speaker 3: at the mall, and just some guy that's unstable forms
Speaker 3: a fixation upon you, but you've never met them. They
Speaker 3: might be somebody in the in the universe, at your college.
Speaker 3: It just becomes fixated upon you. And what we found
Speaker 3: was the highest violence rates were in the intimate stocking group.
Speaker 3: We had like I think a seventy four percent violence rate,
Speaker 3: and then the second highest was the acquaintance stokers at
Speaker 3: fifty percent. And then the private stranger stocker violence rate
Speaker 3: was thirty six percent, and then the public figure stocker
Speaker 3: rate was at two percent. Now, does that mean that
Speaker 3: if you've got if you're a public figure and you've
Speaker 3: got somebody like Hoskin's coming after you, that you should
Speaker 3: be not concerned. No. I think some of the low
Speaker 3: rate of that is because a lot of a lot
Speaker 3: of public figures have entourages and it may also have
Speaker 3: been an artifact of the data set that we were using.
Speaker 3: The issue is what is the person doing, you know,
Speaker 3: and and are they engaging in risky behavior? That's what
Speaker 3: we look at. But it was, it was it was
Speaker 3: a great study that we we managed to get published.
Speaker 3: It was myself read Malloy, Peter Collins I think was
Speaker 3: in it, and uh in a couple other people, and uh,
Speaker 3: it was. It was just super interesting. And but throughout
Speaker 3: the years, I've worked a ton of stocking cases. I've
Speaker 3: evaluated them, interviewed them in prison, I interviewed Hoskins and
Speaker 3: of course you allude to Uh. Of course you mentioned O. J.
Speaker 3: Simpson and that absolutely was an intimate stocking case where
Speaker 3: he was not letting go of uh. Uh Nicole Brown
Speaker 3: Simpson and uh, unfortunately what ends up happening is uh uh,
Speaker 3: he ends up killing her and Ron Goldman, who just
Speaker 3: happened to be I believe in the wrong place at
Speaker 3: the wrong time. My involvement in the O. J. Simpson
Speaker 3: case was on that faithful My involvement in the O. J.
Speaker 3: Simpson case was on that fateful Friday. I was on
Speaker 3: call for the hostage negotiation team at LAPD, and like
Speaker 3: many during that day, we were all watching the news
Speaker 3: because he was supposed to turn himself in at noon
Speaker 3: did not. And then what happens in our office at
Speaker 3: the Behavioral Sciences of LAPD As we start joking, I
Speaker 3: wonder what time he's going to be a call out,
Speaker 3: you know, that's what we called them, when we go
Speaker 3: out after hours or we'd have a barricade or a
Speaker 3: hostage incident. And I head home to Pasadena. I'm on call,
Speaker 3: and next thing I know, I'm listening to the radio,
Speaker 3: you know, listening to some rock and roll or whatever.
Speaker 3: They kept interrupting with a pursuit. Now, at that time
Speaker 3: frame in American history, pursuits were breaking in on TV
Speaker 3: all the time, and this was the first time one
Speaker 3: had interrupted a radio for agrammalic. What is this, And
Speaker 3: then I realized it was the slow speed pursuit that
Speaker 3: it was underway, and that caused me to call the
Speaker 3: hostage team of the SWAT headquarters and they said, yep,
Speaker 3: we're going to head to the residence. He's supposed to
Speaker 3: go there to surrender, and we need you to go there,
Speaker 3: and so I did. I raced over to the other
Speaker 3: side of town, which was a trip in and of itself,
Speaker 3: made it over there very fast, but not without seeing
Speaker 3: the craziness under on the overpasses, the crowds of people
Speaker 3: that were at the base of Rockingham when I pulled
Speaker 3: up my city car there. If I hadn't come behind
Speaker 3: the captain that oversaw Squat, I'd still be sitting out there.
Speaker 3: There were so many people at the base of that street, Dan,
Speaker 3: it was like five hundred people at the base of
Speaker 3: the street, chanting. It was a circus like none other.
Speaker 3: I get through that crowd, pushing and shoving against the
Speaker 3: car and park in front of the house and meet
Speaker 3: Mike Albanize, who you mentioned throughout my book. He was
Speaker 3: the sergeant of the time overseeing the negotiation. Said Robert
Speaker 3: Kardashian was there. We got a briefing from Robert Kardashian
Speaker 3: about what was going on with Simpson. Simpson at the
Speaker 3: time had just pulled it in the drive way, was
Speaker 3: barricaded in the car with ac in the front, and
Speaker 3: he had a gun to his chin. They put a
Speaker 3: bulletproof vest on me, sent me through the backyard and
Speaker 3: into the house. I'm doing my assessments going through the backyard.
Speaker 3: What kind of guy is this? I didn't watch much football.
Speaker 3: All I knew about Simpson was he'd gone to school
Speaker 3: with my dad. Well, my dad was the USC. But
Speaker 3: going through the backyard, it became very clear what kind
Speaker 3: of person he was. He had two full size statues
Speaker 3: of himself in the backyard, and his whole corrier walls
Speaker 3: were covered with pictures of himself. No family photos like
Speaker 3: you saw during the trial, just pictures of himself. We
Speaker 3: jokingly called it. The house was done in early OJ.
Speaker 3: I get in there, I get to the doorway, I'm
Speaker 3: behind Pete wire Eater, who was the negotiator. Pete Wireeater's
Speaker 3: handsome swat guy who also was one of our best negotiators.
Speaker 3: And if you ever see any movies like Clear and
Speaker 3: Present Danger, Pete was good friends with Harrison Ford would
Speaker 3: often appear in Harrison Ford movies playing different roles, which
Speaker 3: is where again art imitates life, life imitates art, but
Speaker 3: in this situation, it was life and Pete was negotiating
Speaker 3: with him, and OJ was not sure if he wanted
Speaker 3: to kill himself or whatever. And so the task at
Speaker 3: hand is to reinflate a narcissist who is deflated by
Speaker 3: the humiliation of all this. And we used what was there?
Speaker 3: Look at all these people you saw him. You still
Speaker 3: have a ton of people believe in you. He wasn't
Speaker 3: worried about his deceased x wife. For this man who
Speaker 3: lost life, Ron Goldman, all he was worried about was
Speaker 3: himself in his image. And that's what we did. I
Speaker 3: was in the ear of Pete. Just build him up,
Speaker 3: and that's what we did. And then he eventually surrendered.
Speaker 3: He wanted to talk to his mom, he wanted to
Speaker 3: use the rest room, and he wanted something to drink,
Speaker 3: and so he comes in. He collapses into the arms
Speaker 3: of the officers after after dropping his leaving the gun
Speaker 3: in the car and says, sorry, guys, I wasn't going
Speaker 3: to hurt you. I was just gonna hurt myself. And
Speaker 3: then they got him in the bathroom. They got him
Speaker 3: his call his mom because his mom was in the
Speaker 3: hospital time and then we're like, where's the drink coming from?
Speaker 3: Why is it taking so long to get a drink?
Speaker 3: We hear some swat cop in the kitchen, rummaging around
Speaker 3: like e t as Mike Alboy describes it, in the fridge.
Speaker 3: What could take so long? This guy's got a fully
Speaker 3: stocked fridge. Well, what it was was some swat cop
Speaker 3: with a sense of humor was looking for orange juice.
Speaker 3: So that the juice and that's what and that's and
Speaker 3: that's the truth. That's what happened. He walks up, mister Simpson, Uh,
Speaker 3: here's some orange juice for you.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, always got oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Always gallows humor is how many people survived these careers.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, amazing. This is an incredible book and
Speaker 5: it's been an incredible interview. I want to thank you
Speaker 5: very much, doctor Chris Mohndy. This is a post Till
Speaker 5: Press publication that this is the publisher of this book.
Speaker 5: I know that people might recognize you, or at least
Speaker 5: they've seen you on Id's Most Evil and the twenty
Speaker 5: eighteen series Breaking Homicide. For people that might just want
Speaker 5: to contact you. Is there a way they might contact
Speaker 5: you or see other work? Do you have an Amazon page?
Speaker 5: Tell us about any of that.
Speaker 3: I'm on Twitter. You know, Twitter is doctor Chris Mohandi,
Speaker 3: and I'm responsive. If you have any questions about the book,
Speaker 3: hit me up on Twitter. I respond all the time.
Speaker 3: Follow me, direct message me. I'll always acknowledge when a
Speaker 3: person follows me, and I'll answer the questions. I love
Speaker 3: taking questions. I'll be doing Doctor Oz this Tuesday. I'll
Speaker 3: be on on that show. And you know I'm still
Speaker 3: doing appearances here and there. But Twitter is the best
Speaker 3: way to reach out to me, and I'm very responsive
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. It's a fascinating book. Evil Thoughts,
Speaker 5: Wika Deeds. Thank you very much, doctor Chris Molhandi. It's
Speaker 5: been fascinating. You have a great evening. Again, thank you,
Speaker 5: thank you.
Speaker 3: Okay we off air, Well we're live, so okay. Well,
Speaker 3: thanks again. You asked great questions and it was an
Speaker 3: honor to uh. I'm grateful for the chance to talk
Speaker 3: with you, and thank you so much for reading it.
Speaker 3: I think it's a great book. I think it stayed
Speaker 3: true to form. Brian Skoloff, who was my co author,
Speaker 3: you know, he kept me on track. He's a wonderful writer.
Speaker 3: But everybody that's read it says, I feel like I'm
Speaker 3: in the room with you, Chris, because people that have
Speaker 3: heard me lecture before say it's definitely your voice. But
Speaker 3: Brian kept me moving.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, it's a brilliant book. And thank you very much
Speaker 5: for coming on talking about evil thoughts wicked deeds. It's
Speaker 5: been fascinating. Thank you very much. Good night.