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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 3: Good Evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 3: program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 3: history and the authors that have written about them. For
Speaker 3: twenty five years, John E. Douglas worked for the FB
Speaker 3: where he headed the Elite Investigation Support Unit, the real
Speaker 3: life model for FBI agent Jack Crawford in Silence of
Speaker 3: the Lamb. He's had a brilliant and terrifying career getting
Speaker 3: inside the minds of notorious murderers and serial killers, including
Speaker 3: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and David Berkowitz, Son of Sam.
Speaker 3: Written with longtime collaborator Mark Lsheger, Law and Disorder is
Speaker 3: Douglas's most provocative and personal book to date. In it,
Speaker 3: he addresses every law enforcement professional's worst nightmare, those cases where,
Speaker 3: for one reason or another, justice was delayed or even denied,
Speaker 3: through a series of character driven case histories from the
Speaker 3: earliest trials in Phalam, Massachusetts to the bungled trial of
Speaker 3: Amanda Knox. Douglas shows what happens when the system breaks
Speaker 3: down and bias, media coverage, and other influences get in
Speaker 3: the way of a dispassionate pursuit of the evidence. Here
Speaker 3: also are Douglas's personal reflections on his ongoing search for
Speaker 3: the truth, from painful lessons learned early in his career
Speaker 3: to his controversial findings in the West Memphis three and
Speaker 3: John Vana Ramsey investigations. Brimming with procedural detail, Law and
Speaker 3: Disorder is an eye opening insider's account of the exhilaration
Speaker 3: and frustration that attend the quest for justice. The book
Speaker 3: we're featuring this evening is Law and Disorder and with
Speaker 3: my special guest, author and documentary and filmmaker Mark Olshaker.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the program, and thank you for the agreeing
Speaker 3: to this interview.
Speaker 8: Mark, Thank you, Jan thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I hope that's the proper pronunciation of your name, Mark, Yes,
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 8: You did very well, the name like Spanski. I guess
Speaker 8: you can appreciate a name like Oldshaker.
Speaker 3: Well, uh, that you can pronounce my name is fantastic.
Speaker 3: Then one it around here so it's amazing. I've heard everything,
Speaker 3: so thank you very much for this is a big thrill.
Speaker 3: Like I had said to you just previous that we've
Speaker 3: got to speak a little bit. You know, mind Hunters
Speaker 3: is huge. I first got introduced to your book, your
Speaker 3: writing with John Douglas mind Hunters and then Journey into Darkness.
Speaker 3: So and of course you know, you guys are just
Speaker 3: legendary in terms of now that you see Criminal Minds
Speaker 3: a big series on television and so much emphasis on
Speaker 3: the stuff that you were involved with way back when.
Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit because I had I was
Speaker 3: just fascinated with your background. But you and if I'm
Speaker 3: not correct to date, in nineteen ninety two, you you
Speaker 3: eventually won an Emmy for this, a PBS series on Nova,
Speaker 3: the Mind of a serial Killer and a serial Killer.
Speaker 3: Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that,
Speaker 3: because we want to get the background on how you
Speaker 3: two guys teamed up. Basically, this is not similar to
Speaker 3: some of the relationships where, uh, you know, they're a
Speaker 3: law enforcement guy and there's a journalist and author. So
Speaker 3: you guys are an actual team and you got together
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety four, Mindhunters Incorporated tell us about though
Speaker 3: the Mind of a serial Killer in nineteen ninety that series. Please.
Speaker 8: What happened then was I, like so many other people,
Speaker 8: I had read Silence of the Lambs, the book by
Speaker 8: Thomas Harris, and I was fascinated by it. And when
Speaker 8: I heard that they were going to make a movie
Speaker 8: of it, I went to my producers at Nova, the
Speaker 8: PBS Science series and said, look, I read this book,
Speaker 8: which I loved, and if the movie is anywhere near
Speaker 8: as good, I had no idea it would be the
Speaker 8: huge hit it was. I said, people are going to
Speaker 8: be very interested in this subject, and why don't we
Speaker 8: go in and get the real story. And at that
Speaker 8: point the FBI was very cooperative. They were happy to
Speaker 8: have the publicity. And I brought my production team into
Speaker 8: the FBI Academy at Quantico and we started looking into it,
Speaker 8: and I said, this is a fascinating subject, and the
Speaker 8: most fascinating part of it was this guy, John Douglas,
Speaker 8: who I had not known before, but who himself had
Speaker 8: been a legend in criminal investigative analysis circles as the
Speaker 8: behavioral profiling pioneer, and he was the one who the
Speaker 8: character of Jack Crawford in Silence of the Lambs was
Speaker 8: based on and he was the head of this group
Speaker 8: of profilers called the Investigative Support Unit, and we made
Speaker 8: a film Mind of a Serial Killer, as you talk about,
Speaker 8: which shows how this unit brought a repeated serial rapist
Speaker 8: and murderer to ground and got him prosecuted and convicted.
Speaker 8: And the show did very well, as you say, it
Speaker 8: had emi consideration, and interestingly enough, once it was on PBS,
Speaker 8: the Investigative Support Unit overnight started getting even more requests
Speaker 8: than it already had. And I just became fascinated by
Speaker 8: this unit that where the people could look at a
Speaker 8: crime scene or as John did, look at photographs, crime
Speaker 8: scene investigative materials and say, okay, you're looking for a
Speaker 8: twenty two to twenty seven year old white male loaner
Speaker 8: who lives within a mile of the crime scene. He
Speaker 8: went to high school, he graduated high school, but not college.
Speaker 8: He is on psychotropic drugs of some some type. He
Speaker 8: lives with his parents or some other family member. He
Speaker 8: does not drive, he has no driver's license. He is nocturnal,
Speaker 8: he is underemployed. Oh and by the way, you've already
Speaker 8: interviewed him, and this describes This actually describes someone who
Speaker 8: is now serving a life term for murder in the
Speaker 8: New York correctional system. So I became fascinated by this.
Speaker 8: I often say to people that as a previous novelist
Speaker 8: of thrillers and as a documentary filmmaker, you're always looking
Speaker 8: for great characters. And I found one right in front
Speaker 8: of me, a living character who was fascinating. And then
Speaker 8: a couple of years later, when John got ready to
Speaker 8: retire from the Bureau, after as you say, twenty five
Speaker 8: years of service, Dan, he called me and said would
Speaker 8: I be interested in working with him on a memoir
Speaker 8: of his experience? And I said, yes, I would. Let's
Speaker 8: want and I I'll introduce you to my agent. We'll
Speaker 8: go to New York and see if there's any interest. Well,
Speaker 8: there was a tremendous amount of interest, and out of
Speaker 8: that book came the book mind Hunter that you mentioned,
Speaker 8: and it did well enough that we were asked to
Speaker 8: do other books, and this book we've just published, Law
Speaker 8: and Disorder, is our eighth book together now. And so
Speaker 8: I don't know how you describe our relationship. We often
Speaker 8: joke that John is a detective pretend to be a writer,
Speaker 8: and I'm a writer pretending to be a detective, but
Speaker 8: in fact we really do have sort of a Sherlock
Speaker 8: Holmes and doctor Watson relationship, and we now investigate cases
Speaker 8: together and write about them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fantastic. Now, this latest book that you've penned together,
Speaker 3: is what is the intention or what is the focus
Speaker 3: of this book Line Disorder?
Speaker 8: Well, that's actually the critical question, Dan, and what all
Speaker 8: of our other books have really been about showing showing
Speaker 8: how to get the bad guy. And what we realized
Speaker 8: here when John got out of the Bureau and he
Speaker 8: started working for on other cases like the John Benet
Speaker 8: Ramsey case, what we realized was that the skills that
Speaker 8: he developed in the Bureau, what we call criminal investigative
Speaker 8: analysis or or behavioral profiling, were not only applicable to
Speaker 8: catching the bad guys, but they were just as applicable
Speaker 8: to getting to the truth of cases that are already
Speaker 8: been adjudicated and exonerating people who had been unfairly or
Speaker 8: wrongfully convicted, or, if not convicted in the courts, convicted
Speaker 8: in the arena of the public or the media, as
Speaker 8: was the case of John ben Ay Ramsey's parents, who
Speaker 8: were almost immediately convicted in that court of public opinion,
Speaker 8: and as soon as John began working on the case,
Speaker 8: he realized that they didn't do it. And so what
Speaker 8: this book is really about is the unending and difficult
Speaker 8: quest for real justice. And we go through a number
Speaker 8: of cases, including the Ramsey case, including the West Memphis
Speaker 8: three case, which has been quite celebrated and John was
Speaker 8: involved with all, so the Amanda Knox case in Perusia, Italy,
Speaker 8: in which it should have been obvious to investigators what
Speaker 8: actually happened, but instead the wrong people were convicted. And
Speaker 8: what we do is we go through these cases and
Speaker 8: show what happens, what the horrible consequences can be when
Speaker 8: preconceived notions or an already existing worldview or prejudice or
Speaker 8: whatever else takes the place of rigorous investigation and evidence
Speaker 8: based investigation and searching. And this can apply to police,
Speaker 8: to prosecutors, to the media, to the public in general.
Speaker 8: And what happens is when you get all of them together,
Speaker 8: you have a perfect storm which leads to false convictions.
Speaker 8: And one of the things that amazed me Dan when
Speaker 8: I started researching this book with John, is how many
Speaker 8: times cases hang on what we call false confessions in
Speaker 8: other words, a confession that is not true, and there
Speaker 8: are any number of reasons for them. But one of
Speaker 8: the things we realized was that anybody who is reasonably
Speaker 8: trained in investigative techniques, and you don't even have to
Speaker 8: be a John Douglas, I consider consider myself one of those,
Speaker 8: at this point I could get I could get a
Speaker 8: confession from almost anybody on anything, anything, if you give
Speaker 8: me enough time and resources, and I don't even have
Speaker 8: to touch the person. I don't have to beat them
Speaker 8: up or threaten them. I just need enough time with
Speaker 8: them and I can get a confession. So getting a
Speaker 8: false confession is not that difficult. Getting a true confession
Speaker 8: is more problematic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you know what I found interesting with
Speaker 3: this book too, is that you really do basically spell
Speaker 3: out that profiling really is just the you know we've
Speaker 3: always talked about, well it's not the all and be all,
Speaker 3: it's just absolute. But really profiling and the work that
Speaker 3: John Douglas has done with this Investigative Special Unit is
Speaker 3: that really it's just better evidence analysis. It's looking, like
Speaker 3: he says, you can't just profile the crime scene. You
Speaker 3: have to profile everything. You have to profile the environment,
Speaker 3: the location, the situation. So again it's looking at the
Speaker 3: crime scene, the crime itself, the perpetrator, the interview, just
Speaker 3: looking at it a little more or a lot more progressively.
Speaker 8: You're absolutely right, Dan, I think that's a tremendous point
Speaker 8: to emphasize. And here would be a perfect example of
Speaker 8: what you're talking about would be the John Benet Ramsey case.
Speaker 8: Everybody in the public and the police was convinced that
Speaker 8: these parents had killed this little girl because that's what
Speaker 8: parents do and that's what they expected. But if you
Speaker 8: study the medical examiner's report, in other words, nothing to
Speaker 8: do with profiling, You study the medical examiner's report on
Speaker 8: how this child died, and then you try to correlate
Speaker 8: that with the behavior on the scene and what we know,
Speaker 8: you will see, as we explain in this book, that
Speaker 8: the parents couldn't have done it. So what this is
Speaker 8: doing is this is taking good, solid, scientific evidence, evidence
Speaker 8: based investigation, correlating it with what we know about profiling
Speaker 8: and human behavior, and coming up with your conclusion in
Speaker 8: a logical, methodical way based on that evidence.
Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, but you also point out in the book
Speaker 3: too that it's also understandable sometimes not necessary obviously not tolerable,
Speaker 3: but that there's a certain amount of pressure created by say,
Speaker 3: irresponsible media or absolutlure to have solved something recently. So
Speaker 3: there ends up being this very human nature coming into
Speaker 3: play where there's a lot of pressure. And so again
Speaker 3: justice is not does not prove absolutely.
Speaker 8: And you've and you've brought up another very good point, Dan,
Speaker 8: which is that justice does not take place in a vacuum.
Speaker 8: There always is a social public media context to do
Speaker 8: everything is you've pointed out, and and you can't dismiss
Speaker 8: that when you're evaluating the case.
Speaker 3: What I found very very interesting and I was laughing,
Speaker 3: and then I found it very humorous and of course fascinating.
Speaker 3: And I didn't know that where I thought I knew
Speaker 3: quite a bit about the Salem and then of course,
Speaker 3: and then of course concern So tell us about the
Speaker 3: beginning of the book and why you included and maybe
Speaker 3: you can tell us about it, but also why you
Speaker 3: included a story about Salem, Massachusett and tell us about
Speaker 3: that place.
Speaker 8: Another another good question. Everybody knows the name Salem Witch trials,
Speaker 8: not many of us know that much about them. What
Speaker 8: was interesting is what a metaphor it was for the
Speaker 8: worst of criminal injustice. Today we start we start the book,
Speaker 8: as you say, with the Salem witch Trials sixteen ninety
Speaker 8: three in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the first person
Speaker 8: to be brought before the uh what they called at
Speaker 8: that point, the Court of Oya and Termina, was the
Speaker 8: woman named Bridget Bishop.
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Speaker 8: Nover necessarily Daly Ripod where everybody lost in terms of
Speaker 8: conditions eighteen lassop. She always wore black. She was considered
Speaker 8: odd by the community, and she didn't go to church.
Speaker 8: Three hundred years later, exactly nineteen ninety three, in West Memphis, Arkansas,
Speaker 8: three eight year old boys are apparently brutally murdered in
Speaker 8: a wooded ravine. The first person they bring to trial
Speaker 8: as a defendant is an eighteen year old kid named
Speaker 8: Damien Eccles. He is accused of having murdered these kids
Speaker 8: in a satanic ritualized way. What's interesting about Damien And
Speaker 8: remember what I just said about Bridgid Bishop. He always
Speaker 8: wore black, he was considered odd by the community, and
Speaker 8: he didn't go to church. And he was convicted and
Speaker 8: sentenced to death. Now that's three hundred years separate these
Speaker 8: two events, but not much else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is fascinating and tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: more about the original Salem trials and what if what
Speaker 3: you're trying to convey it in its representation, Well, this is.
Speaker 8: Why we decided to use these because what the theme
Speaker 8: of this book really is is what happens when a
Speaker 8: crime occurs that, rather than thinking about it as an
Speaker 8: individual crime, it fits into the preconceived notions or worldview
Speaker 8: of the community. Now, this community in Salem believed in witches.
Speaker 8: They believed in witchcraft and the supernatural, and so when
Speaker 8: a group of young and teenaged girls started acting in
Speaker 8: a very peculiar manner and started doing things that were
Speaker 8: not explainable in any kind of rational sense. It was
Speaker 8: assumed that they had been possessed by witches, and so
Speaker 8: the first thing you do is you look for the witches.
Speaker 8: And they were all too eager to identify the witches,
Speaker 8: and then they started. Then they started prosecuting them. Now
Speaker 8: we think of medieval witches being burned at the steak
Speaker 8: and all of that, well this was a little more
Speaker 8: modern than that. Nobody was burned at the steak. Here,
Speaker 8: these witches were hanged, but they were in fact executed.
Speaker 8: And what happened was soon the community just started cannibalizing
Speaker 8: and turning on itself, and you never knew who was
Speaker 8: going to be accused next. And there are so many
Speaker 8: interesting parallels to the present. For example, they thought they
Speaker 8: had good scientific evidence, and the scientific evidence that they
Speaker 8: had was if somebody saw a accused witch's shape or specter,
Speaker 8: in other words, their supernatural embodiment lurking above them. That
Speaker 8: was considered good scientific proof that that person was a witch,
Speaker 8: and that was used to condict people. But then Cotton Mather,
Speaker 8: who was one of the one of the most important
Speaker 8: clerics of the day in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, said,
Speaker 8: you know, I think you may have it wrong. This
Speaker 8: is not good science. And the reason it wasn't good
Speaker 8: science was because if this was all, if these witches
Speaker 8: were all acting on behalf of the devil, the devil
Speaker 8: could assume any shape he wanted. Everybody knew that, so
Speaker 8: they could have been misinterpreting the evidence. It might not
Speaker 8: have been these individuals themselves who were accused of being
Speaker 8: a witch. It could have been the devil. And suddenly
Speaker 8: everybody said, oh, you know, maybe the science isn't so
Speaker 8: good after all. What was and what's fascinating is we
Speaker 8: still have bad scientific evidence today. Now again, going back
Speaker 8: to West Memphis three hundred years later, this was a
Speaker 8: community and a law enforcement establishment that believed in Satanism.
Speaker 8: They believed Satanic activity was happening all over the place.
Speaker 8: So when three young boys were killed in what looked
Speaker 8: like a rich at first a ritualistic fashion, they figured,
Speaker 8: all right, who's likely to have committed that kind of thing?
Speaker 8: And they rounded up three kids, one of them whom
Speaker 8: was illiterate and had a functional like Q of about
Speaker 8: sixty five, and they got him to confess to a
Speaker 8: crime which clearly he hadn't done, and named to other
Speaker 8: people who he hardly knew. Again a very interesting parallel,
Speaker 8: But the parallel almost stops there, because by the next year,
Speaker 8: by sixteen ninety four, the people around Massachusetts Bay, had
Speaker 8: serious second thoughts about what they had done, particularly when
Speaker 8: Cotton Mather's father Increased Mather, who was the president of
Speaker 8: Harvard University and a very distinguished cleric. He had been
Speaker 8: in England and when he got back he said, you know,
Speaker 8: this does not seem like the right thing. And people
Speaker 8: started rethinking it, and within a year anybody who was
Speaker 8: left in prison had been let out. The families of
Speaker 8: those killed had been paid reparations by the state legislature,
Speaker 8: and they started immediately to try to live it down
Speaker 8: in West Memphis, Arkansas. It took eighteen years for people
Speaker 8: like John Douglas and other investigators to get these three
Speaker 8: innocent young men not exonerated, just let out of prison,
Speaker 8: which happened about two years ago. And by the time
Speaker 8: Damian Eccles, the supposed ringleader, was let out, he went
Speaker 8: from age eighteen when he was convicted. He was let
Speaker 8: out of jail, of prison, off of death row when
Speaker 8: he was thirty six years old. He had spent half
Speaker 8: of his life on death row for a crime he
Speaker 8: not only didn't commit, but was nowhere near. And this
Speaker 8: is something dan the community, the police should have known.
Speaker 8: It should have been obvious by the type of crime,
Speaker 8: by the type of evidence, by the lack of evidence.
Speaker 8: And yet it took somebody like John Douglas coming into
Speaker 8: the community and saying you've totally misinterpreted this crime, and
Speaker 8: then having the scientific experts to back him up with good,
Speaker 8: hard science, which they never had before. And it's really
Speaker 8: a shame. The same thing with the Amanda Knox case
Speaker 8: in Italy. You have this twenty year old American girl
Speaker 8: who is convicted of ritualistically satanically killing her flatmate in
Speaker 8: this bizarre ceremony. Now I submit to you that, first
Speaker 8: of all, the idea of satanic murder basically does not exist.
Speaker 8: It's a myth of those who believe and some in
Speaker 8: law enforcement. The FBI has no documented cases of a
Speaker 8: taking place in any Western country. And yet the prosecutor
Speaker 8: was sure that this is what had taken place, and
Speaker 8: so all evidence then pointed to this young girl who
Speaker 8: had never been in trouble in her life suddenly being
Speaker 8: seized with the idea that she should kill her roommate
Speaker 8: in a ritualized sexual orgy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And uh and the and the evidence just wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 8: And what was particularly interesting in this case is the
Speaker 8: evidence of who actually did it was there. They they
Speaker 8: caught that, the police did catch that person. His DNA
Speaker 8: was all over the place, Amanda's was nowhere, and yet
Speaker 8: they stuck to their story and she spent five years
Speaker 8: in prison before she was let out.
Speaker 3: Well, it is I've done a few programs of wrongly
Speaker 3: convicted persons in the US, and it seems over zealous
Speaker 3: prosecuted prosecutors, even when they're faced with DNA evidence, are
Speaker 3: reluctant to let Like you say, there was methmis they
Speaker 3: could have been leading wasn't exonerated, but they reluctantly let
Speaker 3: him out. I mean that's right. Not only was John
Speaker 3: Douglas uh involved with that, And there was Hollywood stars
Speaker 3: lined up for this. There was a lot of people
Speaker 3: that were that were It seemed obvious to a lot of.
Speaker 8: People and Johnny Depp it was involved. Metallica. Metallica, yes,
Speaker 8: so many people were involved and uh, and a lot
Speaker 8: of it was financed and orchestrated by Peter Jackson, the
Speaker 8: director of Lord of the Rings, who with his life
Speaker 8: companion fran Walsh, we're really tremendous heroes in this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's shameful that, you know, a proud judicial system
Speaker 3: is actually being it's you know, it's it's it's shameful
Speaker 3: that the reputation of that judicial system is marred by
Speaker 3: these Again, people didn't have If you're wrong, you're wrong,
Speaker 3: and you have to say that.
Speaker 8: So exactly, a.
Speaker 3: Person like John Douglas, which has been on on the
Speaker 3: side of law and certainly not you know, he talks about,
Speaker 3: you know, a murderers being executed and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: he doesn't shy away from that verdict. Absolutely for him
Speaker 3: to be basically on the other side of the system
Speaker 3: looking for innocent people among convicted people is an interesting
Speaker 3: and profound testament itself.
Speaker 8: Thank you for saying that.
Speaker 3: I agree with you, Yeah, and enough that you're going
Speaker 3: to dedicate a whole book to this as well, you know,
Speaker 3: and so I applaud you guys for doing that as well.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, we we there are a number of primes.
Speaker 8: In this book, we've been very reflective and John has
Speaker 8: said where he was wrong in past cases because of
Speaker 8: things he didn't understand, or because he assumed that all
Speaker 8: evidence he got he received from local police or local
Speaker 8: investigators was good evidence. And you know, John had to
Speaker 8: go through a lot of soul searching and introspection when
Speaker 8: we wrote this book because he had to understand and
Speaker 8: admit the times when he was wrong. Or here's another
Speaker 8: perfect example, years after the all that to do in
Speaker 8: the John Benet Ramsay case, when the Boulder District Attorney
Speaker 8: finally identified John Mark Carr, who was that very strange
Speaker 8: young man who they apprehended in Thailand who said that
Speaker 8: he had been there when John Benet had died and
Speaker 8: had given all kinds of strange stories about that. And
Speaker 8: John and I believed that they had finally gotten the
Speaker 8: right guy. Why did we believe that? We believed it
Speaker 8: because of a preconceived notion of ours, which was that
Speaker 8: with all that they'd been through, with all the embarrassments,
Speaker 8: with all of the false leads in that case, the
Speaker 8: Boulder District Attorney's office certainly wouldn't have gone public and
Speaker 8: made a big deal out of this if they didn't
Speaker 8: have this guy dead to right, so if they didn't
Speaker 8: know everything about him and were sure that they finally
Speaker 8: had the right guy, then when they extradited him and
Speaker 8: brought him back to Colorado and his DNA didn't even
Speaker 8: match exemplars they had from the crime scene, we threw
Speaker 8: up her hands and said, what are they out of
Speaker 8: their minds to do something like this? But we were
Speaker 8: taken in because we couldn't believe that they would make
Speaker 8: the same mistake again. So you know, we were taken in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, incredible, and you know in the media media basically
Speaker 3: what it also taught me a lesson too, because this
Speaker 3: was I was much younger and obviously much more naive.
Speaker 3: A lot of people try to judge a lot of
Speaker 3: things a politician by a debate or by commercial or
Speaker 3: and it's the same when you see Ramsey. She was
Speaker 3: distraught and she was obviously on medication. So to someone
Speaker 3: like me at that time, I thought she was disingenuous,
Speaker 3: and so I convicted her in my mind from her
Speaker 3: reaction on television, which is irresponsible, and the media preyed
Speaker 3: upon that as well.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, Dan, you're absolutely right, and this goes
Speaker 8: back a long way back in nineteen thirty two, when
Speaker 8: Charles Lindbergh's toddler's son, Charlie Junior, was kidnapped in New Jersey.
Speaker 8: A lot of people thought that Lindbergh himself must be
Speaker 8: in because he was so stoic, and he never showed
Speaker 8: any emotion and he seemed so control oriented, And you
Speaker 8: just have to realize everybody reacts in their own way,
Speaker 8: and this is a man who knew that the only
Speaker 8: way to survive in desperate situations like flying across the
Speaker 8: Atlantic Ocean by yourself for the first time, is to
Speaker 8: be in total control, to be totally dispassionate, and he
Speaker 8: was able to do that, and so it's very easy
Speaker 8: to misinterpret somebody's One of the things we realized in
Speaker 8: dealing with all the victims and victims families that we've
Speaker 8: dealt with over the years is you really don't know
Speaker 8: how you're going to react in the time of crisis
Speaker 8: and horror and tragedy. And if we evaluate or judge
Speaker 8: other people who we see in those situations, we do
Speaker 8: so at our peril because we don't know how we
Speaker 8: would react ourselves. I swear to you, yeah, yeah, Well.
Speaker 3: The thing is that if you're basing it on that,
Speaker 3: and that's that's what normal police procedure was. They did
Speaker 3: have tunnel vision and narrowly focused on suspects that they
Speaker 3: felt were good and did a lot of this gut instinct.
Speaker 3: Profiling really does a lot of excluding of people. Like
Speaker 3: you were saying with this book, is you've got to
Speaker 3: the point where you can't exclude people even in retrospect.
Speaker 3: You can go that's absolute information.
Speaker 8: And I think that's another important point to get across,
Speaker 8: which is profilers like John Douglas, they don't catch criminals.
Speaker 8: The police catch criminals. They help what they What profiling
Speaker 8: can do for a for a local investigation is either
Speaker 8: reaffirm or redirect the investigation, in other words, show that
Speaker 8: you're on the right track with the suspects you have
Speaker 8: or that you should readjust and go in a different direction.
Speaker 8: That's what it can do. And then when a suspect
Speaker 8: is apprehended, you can also evaluate and see, well does
Speaker 8: this person meet the right criteria and uh, if not,
Speaker 8: go in a different direction. And if he does, how
Speaker 8: can you interrogate him?
Speaker 3: What? What?
Speaker 8: What are some good interrogation techniques you can use? What
Speaker 8: are proactive techniques, and then if he gets to trial,
Speaker 8: we also have good trial strategy that profilers can help with.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: The basic art or science of profiling has been criticized
Speaker 3: by some people. But what's interesting is that, and probably
Speaker 3: why you have so much credibility as well, is that
Speaker 3: the when you had the attempt at identifying a suspect
Speaker 3: through profiling with your mind of a serial killer, you guys,
Speaker 3: are accurate but one detail. And even that one detail
Speaker 3: you're still confident because you say that one detail can
Speaker 3: be explained as well. That's very interesting.
Speaker 8: And you're talking you're talking about age, of course I know,
Speaker 8: and uh. And in this in the mind of a
Speaker 8: serial killer, the profilers got the age wrong by fifteen years. Uh.
Speaker 8: And what was very interesting is then when you looked
Speaker 8: at the suspects record, he had been imprisoned on sexual
Speaker 8: charges for fifteen years, so essentially he'd been put on ice,
Speaker 8: his development had been arrested, and when he was let out,
Speaker 8: he picked up right where he left off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tell us more about that profiling that you did. Do.
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Speaker 3: And the identification, the whole process that you were successful
Speaker 3: in identifying, and this is you know, back in ninety two.
Speaker 3: So tell us a little bit more about the bit
Speaker 3: of the not the victim, but the suspect itself and
Speaker 3: how you were successful and was what made up the
Speaker 3: profile itself.
Speaker 8: Well, the first thing you do is you look at
Speaker 8: the crime scenes, you see what kind of person it is.
Speaker 8: You can tell a lot about crime scenes from crime scenes,
Speaker 8: and one of the things that became clear in this
Speaker 8: case is, first of all, all of the victims were
Speaker 8: prostitutes or street people. Now what's interesting is you wouldn't
Speaker 8: think of it at first, but we can often lump prostitutes, children,
Speaker 8: and the elderly into some of the same categories. And
Speaker 8: that category is that they are the most vulnerable, They
Speaker 8: are the least able to defend themselves. But somebody who
Speaker 8: would attack a prostitute, we would start by concluding, this
Speaker 8: is not somebody who feels good about himself. This is
Speaker 8: not somebody like a Ted Bundy who is handsome in
Speaker 8: glib and feels that he has the gifts to seduce
Speaker 8: a woman and get her under his influence on his own.
Speaker 8: With a prostitute, all you have to do is say
Speaker 8: come along. And so we knew immediately that this was
Speaker 8: not somebody who felt good about himself who had a
Speaker 8: lot of social skills. So that tells you something. We
Speaker 8: we found out from the crime scenes that this person
Speaker 8: was coming back to the crime scenes after death, so
Speaker 8: he probably had some necrophiliac interests, and he was masturbating
Speaker 8: on the at the scenes. We also, uh, there were
Speaker 8: a number there were a number of uh uh indications
Speaker 8: that he had already injected himself into the investigation. So
Speaker 8: we started looking at places that police tended to hang out.
Speaker 8: And from experience, we knew that each of these things
Speaker 8: we were finding out has other elements and attributes attached
Speaker 8: to them. And then and eventually he was he was identified,
Speaker 8: He was caught and convicted. He he admitted the crimes
Speaker 8: but claimed could be a multiple personality, which is very
Speaker 8: interesting because we find out that in most multiple personalities
Speaker 8: seemed to develop post arrest.
Speaker 3: But he he was.
Speaker 8: He was convicted and put in prison in New York
Speaker 8: and and died in prison, fortunately for the rest of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, successful conclusion. How did he how did what was
Speaker 3: the evidence that he had? What exactly was the evidence
Speaker 3: that he had injected himself into the investigation?
Speaker 8: You know, I don't remember at h at this point anymore,
Speaker 8: but I think you know, you can tell if what.
Speaker 8: One of the things that you can that you can
Speaker 8: do is uh there are proactive techniques where you can
Speaker 8: put out certain pieces of information which you can then
Speaker 8: see if the unsub or unknown subject is responding to.
Speaker 8: And sometimes you can plant information that is that only
Speaker 8: he would know or that he would not know is
Speaker 8: not true. So there are and I'm not giving away
Speaker 8: any secrets, there are any number of ways that police
Speaker 8: and investigators have of manipulating subjects so that their behavior
Speaker 8: will give them away. And I can tell you the
Speaker 8: more you try to if you're a if you're an offender,
Speaker 8: the more you try to cover up your behavior, the
Speaker 8: more behavioral evidence you are going to display.
Speaker 3: Although, serial killers that are listening.
Speaker 8: Uh, and if you know, if, if and if they're listening,
Speaker 8: the one thing I want to get across, and we've
Speaker 8: said this over and over again, there are no hannibal
Speaker 8: lecters out there. That's a that's a figment of a
Speaker 8: writer's imagination.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 8: Most serial killers, most predatory sexual offenders are inadequate, nobody unaccomplished,
Speaker 8: nobody's whose only whose, only accomplishment and only quest in
Speaker 8: life is for this manipulation, domination and control of those
Speaker 8: that he perceives weaker than him so that he can
Speaker 8: get satisfaction. And that's the only way he can get satisfaction.
Speaker 8: And when they're not on the hunt. They're fantasizing about it.
Speaker 8: And so these are not heroic individuals. These are not
Speaker 8: macho individuals. These are deeply inadequate, cowardly individuals.
Speaker 3: Yea, and not so bright and not so bright.
Speaker 8: Thank god, it's one thing, one thing we have working
Speaker 8: for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, evil genius, Yeah exactly. Now. The thing is what
Speaker 3: you include in your book too, is is the a
Speaker 3: case in nineteen forty six with the Suzanne Daignan that
Speaker 3: was kidnapped. Now what did this tell us about this case?
Speaker 3: And when you finished, then we can I'll ask you
Speaker 3: what you've learned from this and why it felt it
Speaker 3: necessary to feature it in the book. What exactly you're
Speaker 3: you're trying to convey in.
Speaker 8: The book with story this case that you're referring to,
Speaker 8: this was someone who was terrorized post war Chicago in
Speaker 8: nineteen forty six. It was the so called lipstick killer.
Speaker 8: And he was called the lipstick killer because he killed
Speaker 8: two adult women and supposedly.
Speaker 3: On on.
Speaker 8: The mirror of a bathroom mirror of one of them.
Speaker 8: He wrote in lipstick for for heaven's sake, catch me
Speaker 8: before I kill more. I cannot control myself and then supposedly.
Speaker 8: And you'll see why I say supposedly in a moment, Uh,
Speaker 8: this same killer killed a young girl, Susan Degnan, who
Speaker 8: you talked about, and chopped up her body and put
Speaker 8: it in very foot pieces in various parts of the
Speaker 8: sewer sewers. The police went. The Chicago Police went through
Speaker 8: a lot of suspects before they finally found a young student,
Speaker 8: a young college student named William Herron's.
Speaker 3: H E I R E N S.
Speaker 8: And he we know that he was kind of a
Speaker 8: petty thief. He did breaking and entering. He had he
Speaker 8: liked collecting sun years that he from places that he
Speaker 8: broke into. And after going through a number of other
Speaker 8: suspects who I must say, according to the records, we
Speaker 8: found the police treated brutally, some of whom ended up
Speaker 8: in the hospital. After interrogations, they decided that Heron's was
Speaker 8: their guy. They got him. They caught him in a
Speaker 8: breaking and entering. They got him after several attempts to
Speaker 8: sign a confession, threatening him with the death penalty if
Speaker 8: he didn't. He signed the confession, went to trial, went
Speaker 8: before a judge, pleaded guilty on the advice of his
Speaker 8: court appointed lawyers. Almost immediately recanted his testimony, and he
Speaker 8: died last year as the longest serving prisoner in the
Speaker 8: American penal system. Now. He was one of the first
Speaker 8: people that John Douglas interviewed when he was a young
Speaker 8: FBI agent trying to do this study of actual incarcerated killers,
Speaker 8: and what he said was and what John said at
Speaker 8: the time was, boy, this guy he's got an answer
Speaker 8: for everything he said. If I hadn't seen the record,
Speaker 8: if I hadn't seen the fingerprints themselves, if I hadn't
Speaker 8: seen the confession, if I hadn't seen the crime scene photos,
Speaker 8: I'd believe this guy was telling the truth. I'd believe
Speaker 8: he was innocent. And that's actually what we said in
Speaker 8: our first book, Mindhunter. And then in light of all
Speaker 8: of the other things that we've learned since John left
Speaker 8: the Bureau, and that all evidence is not equal and
Speaker 8: that all investigations are not properly conducted, we started looking
Speaker 8: into all of the elements of this, and we realized
Speaker 8: that William Heron's previous behavior did not fit in with
Speaker 8: the kind of crimes that the lipstick so called lipstick
Speaker 8: killer committed. His crimes did not at all relate to
Speaker 8: those of somebody who would murder a little girl, chop
Speaker 8: her up in pieces, and put her body in the sewer.
Speaker 8: None of his previous crimes, none of his previous behavior
Speaker 8: correlated with these cases. In fact, we found suspects that
Speaker 8: the Chicago police had dealt with who actually made more sense.
Speaker 8: And we concluded that in all likelihood, William Herrins, though
Speaker 8: a petty thief and a breaking and entering guy, was
Speaker 8: probably innocent and spent his whole life in prison needlessly.
Speaker 3: And that was.
Speaker 8: Quite a revelation, quite something to have to deal with.
Speaker 8: We realized. We looked back at all the evidence, the fingerprints, everything,
Speaker 8: and there was nothing to say it couldn't have been planted.
Speaker 8: And then when we looked at the behavior of the
Speaker 8: Chicago police at that point, we realized that, as yourself
Speaker 8: pointed out Dan at the beginning of the show, it
Speaker 8: was very important to them to stop this reign of
Speaker 8: terror and this public demand for blood. It was very
Speaker 8: important for them to have a suspect and then a
Speaker 8: convicted defendant, and that's what they got. Well, So so
Speaker 8: that became an object lesson for John and me and
Speaker 8: uh and it stayed with us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of comprehension when you see that
Speaker 3: they beat the one suspect enough that he's got this
Speaker 3: huge settlement.
Speaker 8: For the time exactly.
Speaker 3: And so then they were talk about increased pressure. They
Speaker 3: were pressured enough to beat this guy alf dead right,
Speaker 3: and then from there they were really looking for somebody
Speaker 3: to just cover their own tracks.
Speaker 8: Absolutely. Yeah. And also if you are if you are
Speaker 8: a if you are a publicly elected prosecutor, which is
Speaker 8: another thing we think, you know, we don't believe the
Speaker 8: judges or prosecutors should be a publicly elected If you're
Speaker 8: a publicly elected prosecutor and you have a major crime
Speaker 8: and you have the choice to make of whether to
Speaker 8: indict someone or leave the case open, there's a you
Speaker 8: were going to find be very hard pressed not to
Speaker 8: come up with a suspect that your voters won.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In Canada, we don't have that system. We don't
Speaker 3: vote for judges and we don't prosecutors and sheriffs, so
Speaker 3: we don't have that the politics coming into play, yeah,
Speaker 3: which is very which is very good. It's better. It's
Speaker 3: better in that respect, I think, especially when you see
Speaker 3: over zealous again convictions, you know, so in small places
Speaker 3: as well, So by the time anybody looks at these things,
Speaker 3: you know, the the small center, I mean, not the
Speaker 3: just small town, but you know, things can take on
Speaker 3: a whole life of their own.
Speaker 8: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Now, the the other idea, or pardon me, the other
Speaker 3: idea with William Herron's how certain and this I'm just
Speaker 3: speaking as somebody that might be again looking at this
Speaker 3: and saying, how how can you just make that kind
Speaker 3: of decision that you said, Well, there could be possibly
Speaker 3: the fingerprint planted, and apparently there was. There wasn't enough
Speaker 3: for the fingerprint to be conclusive. Wasn't it nine points.
Speaker 8: Out of twelve something like that or nine out of
Speaker 8: eighteen or whatever whatever the current the standard of the
Speaker 8: time was, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But right so certain based on the technique of profiling itself.
Speaker 3: I know you said that when you talk about that
Speaker 3: he could not have committed this crime because the level,
Speaker 3: the level of sophistication, or the level of the gravity,
Speaker 3: and based on that he didn't have any of that
Speaker 3: background whatsoever. Again, were enough?
Speaker 8: Sure? I understand. One of the one of the things
Speaker 8: you look at is past behavior, and every criminal evolves
Speaker 8: in a certain way. In other words, nobody suddenly wakes
Speaker 8: up one day and says, well, I think I'll go
Speaker 8: commit the perfect crime, or I think I'll go out
Speaker 8: and murder somebody just because I feel like it. There's
Speaker 8: usually an a and there's usually a connection. And we
Speaker 8: found that criminals generally stay within their own comfort zone
Speaker 8: or they evolve in the same direction they're going. William
Speaker 8: Herons was a student in school. He was a smart guy.
Speaker 8: He had a bad family background and he took it
Speaker 8: out through breaking and entering. But when we looked at him,
Speaker 8: there was nothing in his background, nothing in his psychological
Speaker 8: profile that would suggest that he would then become a.
Speaker 3: Murderer.
Speaker 8: Now this is complicated by the fact that he did
Speaker 8: carry a gun and when he was apprehended he did
Speaker 8: shoot at a policeman, but there is there was nothing
Speaker 8: predator that was defensive on his part, although certainly wrong,
Speaker 8: there was nothing in his background that we could describe
Speaker 8: as predatory or looking for looking to be a rapist
Speaker 8: or a murderer. And so when you put it all together,
Speaker 8: when you put the totality of the case together with
Speaker 8: the fact that there were other suspects who actually were
Speaker 8: more related in their backgrounds and in the evidence to
Speaker 8: these three crimes, we conclude that, and then when you
Speaker 8: take into consideration the fact that he was brutally interrogated,
Speaker 8: that he had court appointed lawyers who believed he was guilty,
Speaker 8: who were just trying to save his life, that they
Speaker 8: tried to get him to confess several times and he didn't.
Speaker 8: He did once, then he went back on it, and
Speaker 8: he went back and forth on that. He finally confessed,
Speaker 8: signed a confession after a tremendous amount of coercion, and
Speaker 8: almost immediately withdrew it. You have to say, when if
Speaker 8: you look at the totality of the evidence, if you
Speaker 8: look at the context of the time and what we
Speaker 8: know that the Chicago police were doing to get confessions
Speaker 8: at that point, the overwhelming lar likelihood when you take
Speaker 8: all of that in totality is that this was a
Speaker 8: bad conviction. Again, I can't say one hundred percent, but
Speaker 8: the preponderance of the evidence certainly suggests that at this point.
Speaker 8: And the other the other evolution, if I might just
Speaker 8: add dan the other thing is for sixty some years
Speaker 8: he was a model prisoner. He gave nobody any trouble
Speaker 8: after that in prison. Yeah, well, there are a lot
Speaker 8: of nothing aggressive about him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The thing is what I found interesting is that
Speaker 3: you talk about that there was no and again this
Speaker 3: is the evolution of the of the research that John
Speaker 3: Douglas was involved with early as a pioneer, and then
Speaker 3: there has been an evolution, and like you say that
Speaker 3: John has realized that his past naivity regarding this and
Speaker 3: he had a different outlook regarding some of the evidence
Speaker 3: that the way he looks at it as opposed to
Speaker 3: the way he would have looked at it.
Speaker 8: That's why I talk.
Speaker 3: About that there was no traumatic event in William Herron's
Speaker 3: life that would then turn him into something like this.
Speaker 3: There was nothing that would precipitated this. There was nothing
Speaker 3: that would there was no trigger.
Speaker 8: There was no trigger, no precipitating incident. That's right.
Speaker 3: And as a break and enter artist, he really even
Speaker 3: wasn't really wasn't there for the goods. It wasn't He
Speaker 3: wasn't a desperate thief. He didn't need the money so much.
Speaker 3: So I think this is a you know, this is
Speaker 3: how far profially has gone that you guys can look
Speaker 3: at this evidence and again a completely different perspective.
Speaker 8: And again you have to be mature enough to say
Speaker 8: you may have been wrong in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it makes that hard for prosecutors absolutely go
Speaker 3: back twenty five years and to a mint something like
Speaker 3: that that they've been holding on because of course somebody's
Speaker 3: sitting in jail for twenty five years, that that would
Speaker 3: weigh heavy on your conscience.
Speaker 8: Say, it certainly would weigh heavily on your conscience. But
Speaker 8: we we end the book with.
Speaker 3: With a.
Speaker 8: With a vitation of a case from nineteen thirty five
Speaker 8: that went before the Supreme Court in Burger versus the
Speaker 8: United States, and that established the principle that which I'm
Speaker 8: sure you have in Canada and should have elsewhere in
Speaker 8: the world. Where a prosecutor is not there solely solely
Speaker 8: to convict. A defense attorney is there solely to defend
Speaker 8: an accused man or woman defendant. But a prosecutor has
Speaker 8: a higher responsibility. The prosecutor is supposed to determine that
Speaker 8: justice is being served, and the prosecutor, if he does
Speaker 8: not think that there is sufficient evidence to bring a conviction,
Speaker 8: that prosecutor is supposed to stand up and say this
Speaker 8: is not a good case. And very few have the
Speaker 8: courage to do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see a lot of cases of circumstantial evidence
Speaker 3: being put to a jury. Where not to talk about
Speaker 3: Canada so much, but Canadian courts will if there isn't
Speaker 3: enough evidence, then that case is going to collapse. If
Speaker 3: it doesn't, if they don't take it to a jury,
Speaker 3: at least the jury is instructed, or at least the
Speaker 3: case proceeds that that person is is not convicted.
Speaker 8: You know when circumstantial evidence, you know, sometimes gets a
Speaker 8: bad name, but if it's good circumstantial evidence, that's as
Speaker 8: good as anything else. I mean, eyewitnesses can be wrong,
Speaker 8: as you know, as we've said, confessions can be wrong.
Speaker 8: So it's the totality of the case. And one thing
Speaker 8: which we you know, which we say is you know,
Speaker 8: you're a communicator, as am I you're you're a journalist.
Speaker 8: What we do is tell stories. But that's also what
Speaker 8: the criminal justice system is all about. In a trial,
Speaker 8: you have both sides are using basically the same fact pattern,
Speaker 8: and yet the prosecutor and the defense tell two stories.
Speaker 8: And the one that the jury thinks rings the most true,
Speaker 8: is the most interesting, is the most likely, is the
Speaker 8: one that wins.
Speaker 3: Certainly, certainly, now tell us a little bit about when
Speaker 3: you talked about your team that you have you and John.
Speaker 3: He's part detective, you're part reporter, that he is the
Speaker 3: analyst and you're the interpreter. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: more more about about this mind Hunter Inc. That you
Speaker 3: came up with in nineteen ninety four. What was your
Speaker 3: goal and how do you guys actually work well.
Speaker 8: What we decided was that we get along very well,
Speaker 8: and I guess we both have our own egos, but
Speaker 8: I think we really appreciate each other's skills and talents.
Speaker 8: And so when John got out of the out of
Speaker 8: the bureau and we started writing books, we formed mind
Speaker 8: Hunters Incorporated as an entity, and we've written our books
Speaker 8: through that. When we have had to hire other researchers
Speaker 8: or investigators, we do it through that entity, and we've
Speaker 8: now started investigating cases that John has been called into.
Speaker 8: We also now have a website in which we post
Speaker 8: our own views and commentaries on perspectives on profiling and
Speaker 8: criminal justice. The web addresses www dot mind Huntersinc. Dot com,
Speaker 8: m I N D h U N T E R
Speaker 8: S dot com, i NC dot com, which we invite
Speaker 8: all of your listeners to look at, and we kind
Speaker 8: of act as a team now, John is certainly the
Speaker 8: lead investigator on that team, and we try to pick
Speaker 8: cases where we think he can make an impact, as
Speaker 8: is the case with West Memphis three, where when he
Speaker 8: went down and started looking into that case, what he
Speaker 8: really did was redefined the entire crime away from a
Speaker 8: satanic ritualized group cause homicide into what we call a
Speaker 8: personal cause homicide, where he said, this is not three people.
Speaker 8: There's no evidence of three people. This is one person.
Speaker 8: It has nothing to do with satanic ritual and it
Speaker 8: is clear from the behavioral evidence that the killer actually
Speaker 8: knew at least one of the three boys and probably
Speaker 8: all three, whereas the three defendants who were convicted didn't
Speaker 8: know any of these kids. It never met them.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, very interesting. Now you have another project and
Speaker 3: I don't know the first one was with John, but
Speaker 3: is this new Nova project on TVs who killed Lindbergh's baby?
Speaker 8: Yes, John is involved in that. One that was actually
Speaker 8: based on a book we did a number of years
Speaker 8: years ago called The Cases That Haunt Us, where we
Speaker 8: investigated prominent cases where of murder cases where there was
Speaker 8: no satisfactory outcome, where it was never solved. We started
Speaker 8: with Jack the Ripper, went all the way up through
Speaker 8: John Benet Ramsay and explained took a completely fresh look
Speaker 8: at each case and said, what can we at this
Speaker 8: point tell and what can't we tell. I do believe
Speaker 8: that we actually solved the Jack the Ripper case. Other
Speaker 8: people may disagree with us. We analyzed the Lizzie Borden
Speaker 8: case and Lindbergh and we've gotten through one of our
Speaker 8: correspondents who had read the book, we got some potentially
Speaker 8: interesting new evidence on the Lindberg case, which in American courts,
Speaker 8: in American newspapers was called the crime of the Century
Speaker 8: nineteen thirty two. You have to remember at the time,
Speaker 8: Charles Lindbergh was the most famous man in the world.
Speaker 8: He and his wife Anne were like American royalty, and
Speaker 8: when his baby twenty month old son was kidnapped, it
Speaker 8: was like the Prince of England had been kidnapped. And
Speaker 8: so we went back and examined this eighty year old case,
Speaker 8: went back to the actual crime scene, to the house
Speaker 8: where it took place, and said, what can we tell
Speaker 8: about this, what new things can we learn or what
Speaker 8: at this late day can we say conclusively about this crime?
Speaker 8: And we said several things. The big controversy all these
Speaker 8: years has been well, was Bruno Richard Haufman who was
Speaker 8: convicted and executed? Was he really guilty or was he
Speaker 8: set up? We determined several things. One he was definitely guilty.
Speaker 8: Number two, he did not act alone. And we did
Speaker 8: this through a combination of profiling and scientific analysis, and
Speaker 8: we have a reasonably good candidate for who worked with him.
Speaker 8: That program is you can take a look at it now.
Speaker 8: It was on January thirtieth in the United States. Anybody
Speaker 8: who wants to see it can go to PBS dot
Speaker 8: org and look up Nova who Killed Lindbergh's Baby? And
Speaker 8: you can now see the program online if you're interested.
Speaker 8: And John is the star of the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing. Now you guys are doing profiles of
Speaker 3: historic crimes. It's just incredible.
Speaker 8: So yeah, and I think that when we did Jack
Speaker 8: the Ripper, for instance, we went back to London, we
Speaker 8: retraced all of the crime scenes, we went back to
Speaker 8: Scotland Yard through their records, and we found out something
Speaker 8: that we thought was rather astounding. Aside from thinking we
Speaker 8: figured out who it was, we also realized and I
Speaker 8: think the evidence is very strong for this. Although it's
Speaker 8: not been made public public other than by us. Is
Speaker 8: that Scotland Yard actually knew the identity of Jack the
Speaker 8: Ripper and chose not to make it public.
Speaker 3: Incredible, incredible. Now, probably a lot of people were hinting,
Speaker 3: you know, out of Hell was there was not exactly that,
Speaker 3: but that sure might be some possibility. The other thing
Speaker 3: I thought was very fascinating was that you and again
Speaker 3: I've heard you know talk of this, but you guys,
Speaker 3: really I think nailed it. It was that the message,
Speaker 3: one of the messages left by Jack the Ripper was
Speaker 3: again not likely.
Speaker 8: Or exactly And that is one of the great ironies
Speaker 8: of the case that the only note from Jack the
Speaker 8: Ripper in which he calls himself Jack the Ripper, we
Speaker 8: believed to be a fake, whereas as you as you
Speaker 8: mentioned the from Hell note, which was another note we
Speaker 8: believed to be from the actual killer, in which there
Speaker 8: is no mention of the name Jack or the Ripper
Speaker 8: or anything else like that. And what's very interesting about
Speaker 8: all this, and the sort of the greater lesson is
Speaker 8: we were really hoping against hope that we would find
Speaker 8: out that the killer was one of the really interesting
Speaker 8: sexy possibilities like the son of the Prince of Wales,
Speaker 8: or the royal physician, or even Walter Sickert, the a
Speaker 8: Victorian painter, or somebody like that. The person it turned
Speaker 8: out to be was quite obscure. And that's the problem.
Speaker 8: If you have a case like Jack the Ripper, if
Speaker 8: you have a case like Amanda Knox, if you have
Speaker 8: a case like John Benet Ramsay, the press grabs hold
Speaker 8: of a story that's much more interesting in its way
Speaker 8: than what really happened. In other words, if you say,
Speaker 8: in the Amanda Knox case, this beautiful American teenager comes
Speaker 8: over and suddenly kills her roommate in this ritualized frenzy,
Speaker 8: that's a much more interesting and titillating story than to say,
Speaker 8: this African drifter from the Ivory Coast came in and
Speaker 8: to rob the place, look for drugs, and when he
Speaker 8: saw that somebody was home, opportunistically raped and then murdered her.
Speaker 8: Nearly as interesting as the first scenario I put forth.
Speaker 8: But that happens to be the truth.
Speaker 3: And the media loves good looking people, whether.
Speaker 8: That's absolutely or not, you know, absolutely absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3: And it was interesting too, is that you also spoke
Speaker 3: about the lipstick killer and the same thing that you
Speaker 3: determine that you know what, this might just have been
Speaker 3: the same thing where you know, very ambitious journalists said,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm going to make this story even better
Speaker 3: than it is.
Speaker 8: And what's very interesting, and that's that's absolutely right. And
Speaker 8: the lipstick killer case, all of the great reporting on
Speaker 8: that story, and when I say great reporting, I really
Speaker 8: mean great novel writing came from the Chicago Tribune. I
Speaker 8: mean it wasn't from the police. The Chicago Tribune made
Speaker 8: up the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, incredible. Yeah, you know, sometimes they stick with it.
Speaker 3: And you know it was a man in ox was
Speaker 3: another one where the Italian media had sort of a
Speaker 3: bone to pick with the US. So it turned into
Speaker 3: some of those evil American tourists want in women kind
Speaker 3: of you know, for the prosecutor again trying to say
Speaker 3: face a little bit. So that was another very very
Speaker 3: interesting aspect of the story that again it's understandable, but
Speaker 3: certainly not anyway there.
Speaker 8: And we and we tried to cover all of those
Speaker 8: dynamics of all of these cases in law and disorder
Speaker 8: and I hope your your listeners will will find it
Speaker 8: interesting and edifying. We try to tell stories that are
Speaker 8: story driven, that are character driven, and yet have a
Speaker 8: point to them. And I hope we've done it here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then some of the biggest cases that no
Speaker 3: matter how much analysis, whether you've read one book with
Speaker 3: this perspective that you guys have, with this different way
Speaker 3: of looking at things, and especially these cases again, it's
Speaker 3: just like a fresh look at some of the things
Speaker 3: you thought you knew. So it's very very, very interesting.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, the uh, I can't tell you, Dan,
Speaker 8: how many times people have come up to me and said, oh,
Speaker 8: you've written about Amanda Knox. Well, she really did it,
Speaker 8: didn't she? And I say no, and they said, you're kidding.
Speaker 8: And I said, well, what makes you think they have?
Speaker 8: And they'll say, well, I'm just assumed that she looks
Speaker 8: like she's done it. I mean they did. The press
Speaker 8: said that she did it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. It's a sad state that we don't learn
Speaker 3: anything from the media. I mean, it almost began with
Speaker 3: Jack the Ripper and HH Holmes.
Speaker 8: And absolutely, and I don't know how much.
Speaker 3: We've learned from that. The sensationalistic and titlizing media. Sometimes
Speaker 3: once they focus on something that's you know, it's incorrect,
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 8: That's right. It takes all the life of its own.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And to the again, to the miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 3: And really i'm glad that you guys have hammered home
Speaker 3: that point because sometimes it is just about when you know,
Speaker 3: some of the biggest source of information. Sometimes there's law
Speaker 3: and order on television which is fictional, but it really
Speaker 3: does come down to winning cases rather than let's keep
Speaker 3: in mind here what this whole system was set up
Speaker 3: to do exactly.
Speaker 8: Sometimes the best justice we can yeah, the best justice
Speaker 8: we can come up with is to say, we don't
Speaker 8: know who did it, but we know for sure who
Speaker 8: didn't do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And we got to keep that in mind.
Speaker 3: And that is the most virtuous of pursuits. So when
Speaker 3: we're talking about this, so of course that's why yourself
Speaker 3: and John have joined on this pursuit. So I want
Speaker 3: to thank you very much. I don't want thank you
Speaker 3: very much for coming on the show.
Speaker 8: Market well, thank you, Dan, and thank you for your
Speaker 8: astute and penetrating questions. It's always it's always a pleasure
Speaker 8: to be interviewed by somebody who has read the material,
Speaker 8: understands it and has thought about it well.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. This has been a big thrill
Speaker 3: and I'm sure the audiences enjoy this and I hope
Speaker 3: to talk to you again soon.
Speaker 8: In the very near future and any time to my pleasure.
Speaker 8: Thank you very good to take care my bye.