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Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 2: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 2: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 2: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good evening.
Speaker 1: Learn the terrifying truth behind the world's deadliest serial killers.
Speaker 1: Serial Killers haunt our dreams and inspire the terrifying villains
Speaker 1: of TV shows and horror movies. But how much do
Speaker 1: you really know about the minds behind the world's deadliest killers?
Speaker 1: What drives these murderers to kill and kill again, and
Speaker 1: what fuels our fascination with the true stories of their
Speaker 1: horrific crimes. Now, forensic Psychologists, private investigator and crime writer
Speaker 1: doctor Joni E. Johnston brings you the answers to these
Speaker 1: questions and more. Serial Killers one hundred and one Questions
Speaker 1: True Crime Fans Ask, dives into the case files of
Speaker 1: the most infamous murders in history and answers the questions
Speaker 1: true crime fans have been dying to ask. The book
Speaker 1: that we're featuring this evening is Serial Killers one hundred
Speaker 1: and one questions true crime fans ask with my special
Speaker 1: guest journalists and author and doctor doctor Joni Johnston. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview,
Speaker 1: Doctor Jony Johnston.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Dan.
Speaker 3: I am just delighted to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to have you on. This is such a
Speaker 1: fascinating book. First off, tell us a little bit more
Speaker 1: about your background and how you came to want and
Speaker 1: write this incredible book.
Speaker 3: Well, I grew up with a mom who was, I guess,
Speaker 3: a true crime buff before we even thought about true
Speaker 3: crime buffs. She used to watch all those shows Mannics
Speaker 3: and Ironside and Hawaii five O and all these shows,
Speaker 3: and so I always watched her watch those that got
Speaker 3: interested in that. And then when I was fourteen, we're
Speaker 3: on a family vacation and I picked up the book
Speaker 3: Helter Skelter, which is about Charles Manson and whose family,
Speaker 3: and I just was, I don't know how to even
Speaker 3: say it, like captivated by the story. I couldn't understand it.
Speaker 3: Of course, I was horrified by it, and I was
Speaker 3: also just intrigued in terms of why would somebody do
Speaker 3: these things, especially to somebody that they don't even know.
Speaker 3: And so I think that first piaqued my curiosity. And
Speaker 3: then when I was a senior in high school, Ted
Speaker 3: Bundy escaped from a prison in Colorado made its way
Speaker 3: to FSU, which was about eighty miles from my house,
Speaker 3: and I was around the same age at the time,
Speaker 3: and so it was huge news and just horrifying to
Speaker 3: the community. And I think that really solidified and turned
Speaker 3: me from being somebody who would have always been interested in,
Speaker 3: I think crime, into it, really becoming a profession and
Speaker 3: deciding to go into it.
Speaker 1: You say that you first worked right out of grad
Speaker 1: school with victims of abuse and neglect, then later on
Speaker 1: you worked at a maximum maximum security prison, So view
Speaker 1: the entire gamut tell us a little bit about that experience,
Speaker 1: but more so the parts of this book that you've
Speaker 1: put together based on that experience.
Speaker 3: I feel really fortunate that I've been able in my
Speaker 3: career to work with both victims and family members of
Speaker 3: victims as well as perpetrators, because it really, I'm hoping,
Speaker 3: has given me a well rounded perspective. So, yeah, I
Speaker 3: started out my first year at a graduate school working
Speaker 3: with families who had been court ordered into treatment for
Speaker 3: some kinds of neglect, child abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse,
Speaker 3: and really witness firsthand the devastation that that reeks on children,
Speaker 3: also how resilient children are, all the things that can
Speaker 3: make that trauma worse, things that can make that trauma better.
Speaker 3: But it really was such a tough beginning in some
Speaker 3: respects to my professional career, because it's one thing to
Speaker 3: read about it or research it. It's another thing to
Speaker 3: really witness it on a regular basis. And I think
Speaker 3: there was a point in my early career when I
Speaker 3: just would feel such anger and rage toward these perpetrators
Speaker 3: who were doing these horrible things. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: I remember sometimes Dan going to testify in termination of
Speaker 3: parental rights trials, you know, where these kids are going
Speaker 3: to be permanently removed, and I would just be, you know,
Speaker 3: very passionate and a crusader about going and testifying. And
Speaker 3: then I'd go and I would see this mom or
Speaker 3: this dad, mainly a mom who looks like a baby herself.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm going to be like, you know, I
Speaker 3: would have all this this all these feelings and this
Speaker 3: anger and stuff, and you know, I would kind of
Speaker 3: be like, where do I direct this? Because you can
Speaker 3: see the kind of multi generational patterns of dysfunction and
Speaker 3: violence and abused kind of kind of handed down. So
Speaker 3: I do think sometimes, like I said, it was such
Speaker 3: a blessing in a way to be able to witness
Speaker 3: that side of crime and the very personal side of crime.
Speaker 3: And then you're right, I did kind of come full circle.
Speaker 3: Many years later, I worked in a maxim security prison
Speaker 3: for a couple of years. I've spent probably fifteen years
Speaker 3: evaluating offenders, oftentimes violent offenders. And what's interesting is that,
Speaker 3: you know, I have seen a lot of things and
Speaker 3: recognize that just as there's so many factors that you know,
Speaker 3: affect victims in terms of the again, their ability to
Speaker 3: recover from it, how they were victimized, why they were victimized,
Speaker 3: the circumstances, I found the same thing with so many perpetrators.
Speaker 3: That know, every perpetrator was unique and they had their
Speaker 3: own story and it never excused what they did, but
Speaker 3: it did help me understand I think that you know,
Speaker 3: not all perpetrators obviously are the same, and there are
Speaker 3: people in there who, you know, if life circumstans answers
Speaker 3: were different. I don't think they would have ever ended
Speaker 3: up there. And then there were people in there that
Speaker 3: I felt like I would never want to meet in
Speaker 3: a dark alley, So it really I think, you know.
Speaker 3: I was teaching at a graduate program recently and I
Speaker 3: really encouraged all the students. You know, if you're going
Speaker 3: to be in forensic psychology, please consider making sure that
Speaker 3: you work with everybody involved in that system, because I
Speaker 3: think it does help you know understand the complexity of it.
Speaker 1: You write about how this book is organized by questions.
Speaker 1: Where were those questions derived from? You talk about your
Speaker 1: Psychology Today blog, but tell us where other sources of
Speaker 1: these questions came from.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting the idea directly came from my reader.
Speaker 3: So I've been writing a Psychology Today blog called the
Speaker 3: Human Equation for over ten years now and just have
Speaker 3: been very lucky to have so many great readers who
Speaker 3: follow the column, and I literally would get people write
Speaker 3: me all these questions, and a lot of them I
Speaker 3: knew from our research, and some of them I didn't.
Speaker 3: And I've kept this running tally of questions that people
Speaker 3: have asked and as well as I guess myths and
Speaker 3: miss misconceptions. So it's probably a combination of the research,
Speaker 3: the misunderstandings that I saw in the media over and
Speaker 3: over again, and then again the questions the readers asked me,
Speaker 3: and then a couple of years ago, the beginning of COVID,
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, this is a great time for
Speaker 3: me to really sit down from my readers first and foremost,
Speaker 3: and then just to make sure I know as much
Speaker 3: as I can answer those questions in a very you know,
Speaker 3: hopefully readable format. And that's just what I did.
Speaker 1: You have all of these parts, could you tell us
Speaker 1: the parts and what they represent?
Speaker 3: Well the parts of the book. I did try to
Speaker 3: like look for themes as I was going through, because
Speaker 3: one hundred and one questions is a lot of questions,
Speaker 3: and I thought, okay, how do we categorize these? And
Speaker 3: so I just started out pretty much with the basics.
Speaker 3: You know, what is a serial killer? How many are there?
Speaker 3: You know, are there? Or some of the things that
Speaker 3: we think about serial killers true For example, many of us,
Speaker 3: particularly if we follow true crime, part of something called
Speaker 3: the McDonald's triad, which is bedwetting, fire setting, and animal cruelty.
Speaker 3: At an early age, we used to think that that
Speaker 3: was like the you know, the crystal ball of who's
Speaker 3: going to become a serial killer. It's become much more
Speaker 3: complicated as we know. So the first part was just
Speaker 3: kind of like this basic kind of definitions demographics, and
Speaker 3: then I kind of started looking again at some of
Speaker 3: the serial killer psyche. You know, what are the motives
Speaker 3: of serial killers? Are their common backgrounds, is it nature
Speaker 3: versus nurture, those kinds of things. And then I, you know,
Speaker 3: looked at some one of my favorite topics, which is
Speaker 3: female serial killers. For some reason, have kind of an
Speaker 3: interest in female still killers. And I also think that,
Speaker 3: you know, we as a country tend to be somewhat ethnocentric, right,
Speaker 3: you know, we kind of tend to focus, which is
Speaker 3: probably two of every country. You're You're focused on what's
Speaker 3: happening here, and yet there are some very interesting serial
Speaker 3: killers from around the world, and so I wanted to
Speaker 3: be sure that I included those, and then you know,
Speaker 3: and looked at modern day serial killers. It's just amazing
Speaker 3: to me, especially you know, during the past couple of years,
Speaker 3: we've seen so many programs and documentaries and shows about
Speaker 3: kind of the serial killers of the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 3: So we've seen you know, John Wayne Gacy, We've seen
Speaker 3: Ted Bundy, We've seen Richard Ramirez, and yet there are
Speaker 3: a lot of stori killers, less of course than the
Speaker 3: heyday of serial killers in the seventies and eighties, but
Speaker 3: there are serial killers today, and so I wanted to
Speaker 3: be sure and kind of go, hey, even though we're
Speaker 3: very lucky that the number and prevalence of serial killers
Speaker 3: does seem to have decreased, don't think that they aren't
Speaker 3: out there and that they're still happening. So I wanted
Speaker 3: to be sure that I covered at some of them,
Speaker 3: and then I want to just spend some time just
Speaker 3: talking about kind of I guess, coming full circle again
Speaker 3: and talking about some of the you know, the friends
Speaker 3: and the families and the impact of that, and also
Speaker 3: some of the heroic stories, because it's amazing how many
Speaker 3: stories there are of courageous victims you managed to get
Speaker 3: away or who are willing to testify and look that
Speaker 3: person in the face who did horrible things to them.
Speaker 3: And there's even at least one case where the family
Speaker 3: was responsible for capturing the serial killers. I just want
Speaker 3: to be sure and just say, hey, you know, victims
Speaker 3: are survivors, and sometimes they're more than that.
Speaker 1: You right that since nineteen hundred there have been three
Speaker 1: thousand identified American serial killers responsible for close to ten
Speaker 1: thousand deaths. What have you found about the prevalence of
Speaker 1: serial killing in the US as opposed to other countries,
Speaker 1: and tell us a little bit more expand a little
Speaker 1: bit more about some of the myths that we have
Speaker 1: about the serial killers.
Speaker 3: Right to start, well, certainly this proble will come as
Speaker 3: surprise to nobody that the United States leads the world
Speaker 3: in terms of the number of serial killers that have
Speaker 3: been identified and captured. And I want to make sure
Speaker 3: I underline that because there's I think there's probably no
Speaker 3: question that there have been more serial killers in the
Speaker 3: United States, but we also tend to be better at
Speaker 3: catching them, and so there's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: cavity out there that, yeah, we definitely lead by a lot,
Speaker 3: you know, a real lot. I think the UK is second,
Speaker 3: and then South Africa's third, and they are way way, way,
Speaker 3: way way down in comparison to US. So but there
Speaker 3: is again there's a whole issue that we tend to
Speaker 3: be better at catching them. So you know, there's all
Speaker 3: kinds of theories as to why that's the case, because
Speaker 3: if you look at violence in general, we tend to
Speaker 3: fall in the middle as a country, so we're not
Speaker 3: like necessarily the most violent country in the world, but
Speaker 3: we just for some reason have the most serial killers.
Speaker 3: And then talking about myths, I think there are a
Speaker 3: lot of myths about steal killers. I've kind of alluded
Speaker 3: to one that they all have this kind of triad
Speaker 3: that we can identify them early on. I think another
Speaker 3: pretty common myth is this kind of evil genius myth
Speaker 3: that stial killers are just super super smart and they
Speaker 3: get away with our crimes because they're just cunning and
Speaker 3: they just can kind of outsmart everybody. And we know
Speaker 3: that there are some outliers, and there have been some
Speaker 3: very very smart killers, but if you look as a group,
Speaker 3: they aren't particularly smart. We tend to find serial killers
Speaker 3: overrepresented at the end of the spectrum, so you have
Speaker 3: more probably gifted serial killers than the normal population, but
Speaker 3: you also have a lot more serial killers who are
Speaker 3: at the lower end of the spectrum. So that tends
Speaker 3: to be kind of an interesting finding. But certainly this
Speaker 3: idea that Hannibal Lecter, you know, is the poster child
Speaker 3: for serial killers is really really a myth. And I
Speaker 3: guess the last thing I would mention in terms of
Speaker 3: a misconception is and I think it's because, you know,
Speaker 3: the media tends to focus on sexually motivated serial killers,
Speaker 3: and those kinds of killers tend to get the most
Speaker 3: coverage and the most press. And again that's you know,
Speaker 3: our you know, Richard Ramires or the dating game killer,
Speaker 3: or the Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer, and there's
Speaker 3: a bunch we can name. Those are all sexually motivated
Speaker 3: serial killers. And I think it's important to realize that
Speaker 3: there are lots of different motives that drive serial killing,
Speaker 3: and money, for one thing, is a huge motive in
Speaker 3: a significant number of serial killers. Revenge can be, psychosis
Speaker 3: can be. So our perception of who is a serial killer,
Speaker 3: I think is somewhat narrow. When you look at the definition,
Speaker 3: it's much broader.
Speaker 1: You also discussed the latest research as well that what
Speaker 1: causes someone to become a serial killer. Obviously we have
Speaker 1: no idea, but we as you right, we are learning.
Speaker 3: We are learning.
Speaker 1: You said there's no single recipe.
Speaker 2: What have you learned?
Speaker 3: Well, there is no single recipe. I mean what we
Speaker 3: think is if you are trying to put together a
Speaker 3: recipe in terms of, okay, how can we develop a
Speaker 3: serial killer or create one? You would probably put things
Speaker 3: in the mix, like somebody who has a GEP genetic
Speaker 3: predisposition to psychopathy. You would also put in some childhood trauma,
Speaker 3: most often parental abuse or neglect. It would be helpful
Speaker 3: probably to throw in a head injury. They might have
Speaker 3: some difficulties and adolescents some kind of formative sexual experience.
Speaker 3: You're talking about sexually motivated serial killers, and so you're
Speaker 3: kind of developing all these ingredients that are more prevalent
Speaker 3: in you know, still killers as opposed to the average population.
Speaker 3: But again they are exceptions to every rule. So you
Speaker 3: can find serial killers who seem to have not only
Speaker 3: a normal childhood, but some of them seem to have
Speaker 3: almost an idyllic childhood, and if they turn out that way.
Speaker 3: So I think we know some ingredients, But what we
Speaker 3: don't know, I think is that perfect recipe. I think
Speaker 3: because it's just more complex than that, and there always
Speaker 3: seems to be this kind of X factor, you know,
Speaker 3: that we don't quite figure out. Because Tanna, it's like
Speaker 3: for every person who has a terrible childhood, and I've
Speaker 3: met people who just really had nightmare childhoods who became
Speaker 3: not only very empathetic, but they became crusaders for us.
Speaker 3: There are people with similar experiences. So what does that mean? Right?
Speaker 3: It means that most people who are abused, even horribly
Speaker 3: don't become murderers or violent or serial killers. So why
Speaker 3: does this put person become this way? And that's I
Speaker 3: think the part that we're trying to really tease out
Speaker 3: and understand.
Speaker 1: You include a story that's completely perplexing, despite what you
Speaker 1: just said, and use this example of the Stainer family.
Speaker 1: When young Steven, seven years old, is abducted by predator
Speaker 1: Kenneth Parnell and convinced that his family doesn't want him anymore,
Speaker 1: he takes care of him, and taking care of him
Speaker 1: means continued sexual assault until he decides to abduct the
Speaker 1: five year old. Tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 1: this story that you include.
Speaker 3: That is one of the most interesting stories to me,
Speaker 3: not only in the book, but just in general. How
Speaker 3: can you have a family where you have a victim
Speaker 3: of a child predator who I mean, this is an
Speaker 3: extreme example, you're right, of this sexual predator abducts this
Speaker 3: young boy off the street, convinces him that his family
Speaker 3: doesn't want him, basically threw them away, gave him to him.
Speaker 3: He's with him for years, you know, is subjected to
Speaker 3: all these terrible things. And yet when apparently, you know,
Speaker 3: Stephen is the predator, Parnell I think starts thinking that,
Speaker 3: you know, Stephen has kind of aging out of his
Speaker 3: sexual interest range, and so he decides to abduct another victim.
Speaker 3: And here's this person who's gone through all this for years,
Speaker 3: and you're right, he decides I'm not letting this happen
Speaker 3: to somebody else and has the courage to literally rescue
Speaker 3: this five year old. And of course, is you and
Speaker 3: I both know the irony of this. Not only is
Speaker 3: here's somebody who's been victimized for years who becomes the
Speaker 3: savior of another child and uses that experience to do that,
Speaker 3: but now has a brother, Carrie, who becomes a serial
Speaker 3: killer himself. And that is just really it's almost like it,
Speaker 3: you know, if it was a fiction movie or a
Speaker 3: fiction book, you just be like, this is ridiculous, this
Speaker 3: can ever happen.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. You also discuss many people believe that mental illness
Speaker 1: has a bigger role in serial killing than you have found,
Speaker 1: but also the role of psychopathy. Tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about what you found.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a couple of things. The whole mental illness issue
Speaker 3: is kind of a hot button for me, and I
Speaker 3: think it is a hot button just because you know,
Speaker 3: whenever you see a horrific murder, whether it's a mash shooting,
Speaker 3: whether it's you know, a serial killer, whatever, what is
Speaker 3: the first headline, right is this mentally ill person has
Speaker 3: gone off the rails and done these horrible things. And
Speaker 3: I think the first question is how do we define
Speaker 3: mental illness? You know, most of us define mental illness
Speaker 3: as are things like depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, sit what
Speaker 3: we call severe mental illnesses. And if you look at that,
Speaker 3: very few serial killers have ever had that, or been
Speaker 3: diagnosed with that, or exhibited symptoms consistent with that. There
Speaker 3: have been a few, but again that's there was a
Speaker 3: man named Herbert Mullins, for example, who clearly was psychotic,
Speaker 3: developed the delusion that there was going to be these
Speaker 3: that could be these horrible earthquakes in San Francisco that
Speaker 3: were going to destroy the whole city and just kill
Speaker 3: thousands of people. And the only way to prevent that
Speaker 3: was to make human sacrifices, basically, and so he began
Speaker 3: killing people in his mind, thinking he was, I guess,
Speaker 3: sacrificing a small number for the greater good. And a
Speaker 3: colleague of mine interviewed him not only around the time
Speaker 3: that he was arrested, but several years later, and this
Speaker 3: clearly was somebody who was under the influence of a
Speaker 3: severe middal illness, and genuinely, even you know, twenty thirty
Speaker 3: years later, continue to believe that he had done the
Speaker 3: right thing. That is incredibly, incredibly rare. Now, when you're
Speaker 3: talking about do most serial killers meet some kind of
Speaker 3: diagnostic criteria where if you include things like a personality disorder,
Speaker 3: which you know most of us would not consider necessarily
Speaker 3: a serious mental illness, yes, you're going to find an
Speaker 3: overrepresentation of a personality disorder. If you're talking about sexually
Speaker 3: motivated serial killers, you're going to find a greater prevalence
Speaker 3: of paraphilias, you know, sexual sadism and those kinds of things.
Speaker 3: So I'm not saying that, you know, most serial killers
Speaker 3: are free of any mental health symptoms if you include
Speaker 3: all these other things. But we tend to. You know,
Speaker 3: when we read things about somebody being mentally ill, we
Speaker 3: do tend to jump to these ones that we're all
Speaker 3: aware of. And again, the relationship between those specific diagnoses
Speaker 3: like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, etxetera, posteumatic stress disorder,
Speaker 3: the relationship between those diagnoses and serial killing is almost zero.
Speaker 1: Yes, you write about a poster child for psychopathy, Peter Woodcock,
Speaker 1: and this is also the was other questions about our
Speaker 1: serial killers ever rehabilitated. Tell us about this Peter Woodcock
Speaker 1: story and what it demonstrates.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, you know, I do want to to
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about psychopathy, because you know, psychopathy
Speaker 3: is obviously something I think that's gotten a lot of
Speaker 3: buzz in the literature, in the in the any of
Speaker 3: the late literature, we always I'm always reading stories like
Speaker 3: if your significant other likes black coffee a psychopath? Or
Speaker 3: what else do we read? You know, like I don't
Speaker 3: know if this person is a scorpio.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: They're just these kind of strange correlations, you know. So psychopathy,
Speaker 3: I think it also can meet everything from this person
Speaker 3: meets that you know, the diagnosaur criteria I've given them
Speaker 3: the psychopagy checklist all the way to I'm mad at
Speaker 3: my ex boyfriend right because he broke my heart or
Speaker 3: he was selfish or he was a jerk or whatever,
Speaker 3: and he's a psychopath. So I think that term tends
Speaker 3: to be overused. So that's I think the first thing
Speaker 3: I wanted to say. But we do know again, I
Speaker 3: think that there are a significant number, if not the majority,
Speaker 3: of serial careers who wouldn't meet the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, one of the challenges that
Speaker 3: we have is knowing what to do with individuals who
Speaker 3: meet that criteria. You know, we know, as children, they
Speaker 3: begin to exhibit some different behaviors, different traits at a
Speaker 3: relatively early age, and there's some promising research that suggests
Speaker 3: that if we can kind of catch that early on,
Speaker 3: we might be able to kind of reverse that course.
Speaker 3: But as adults, it's very challenging in terms of knowing
Speaker 3: what to do. And one of the things that we
Speaker 3: know also is that, you know, psycho people who meet
Speaker 3: the I keep saying, I hate to say psychopaths because
Speaker 3: it's like saying schizophrenics. It's like, this person might have this,
Speaker 3: but they're not that right. So we'll just say, you know,
Speaker 3: people with psychopathy sometimes do not do very well in
Speaker 3: traditional therapy. Number one, they don't want to go to therapy.
Speaker 3: Number two, they just become better manipulators, you know, sometimes
Speaker 3: they do go to therapy. And so you have people
Speaker 3: like Peter Woodcock who are able to really you know,
Speaker 3: work the system and convince people that they're healthier, they're
Speaker 3: normal or whatever, and they just repeat things over and
Speaker 3: over again.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about female serial killers. You say that in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century they made up thirty percent of all
Speaker 1: serial killers, which is very very interesting. You say today
Speaker 1: that's about ten percent. Just tell some of the things
Speaker 1: that you found of the differences between female serial killers
Speaker 1: and their male counterparts, and some of the other things
Speaker 1: that you found in this interesting research.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I thought it was really fascinating when I came
Speaker 3: across the statistic that in nineteen hundred to think about
Speaker 3: at least thirty percent of serial killers being women, because
Speaker 3: we oftentimes don't even think that there are female serial killers,
Speaker 3: and how much it's gone down. I think there's a
Speaker 3: couple of different kind of interesting hypotheses about that. One
Speaker 3: is that the primary motive for female stir killers tends
Speaker 3: to be money, are financially motivated, which is different from
Speaker 3: male serial killers. Not that male stir killers don't serially
Speaker 3: kill four money, but that's not the number one goal
Speaker 3: oftentimes like it is for female show killers. And so
Speaker 3: my guess is that the reason there were so many
Speaker 3: more statistically female SOO killers back to the nineteen hundreds
Speaker 3: is because there were so many more limited opportunities economically
Speaker 3: for women. So if you couldn't own property, if you
Speaker 3: couldn't get a divorced ub permission, if you had trouble
Speaker 3: getting a job, or you couldn't work, it isn't like
Speaker 3: most women thought, well, okay, I'm going to have to
Speaker 3: you know, use serial widowhood, you know, as a career path,
Speaker 3: right or start killing people. But I think it did
Speaker 3: probably tempt a few people who maybe were deviant to
Speaker 3: begin with, and I think that that has something to
Speaker 3: do with it. And I think as those economic opportunities
Speaker 3: opened up, there was less of a motivation, you know,
Speaker 3: money was less of a motivation.
Speaker 1: You said that some of the differences were though that
Speaker 1: the targets of the killing for female serial killers as well,
Speaker 1: and also that they enjoyed much more of a longevity
Speaker 1: in terms of their killing careers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that when you look at female serial killers,
Speaker 3: you're looking at who they are, who they're interested in.
Speaker 3: You know that when you look at females serial killers,
Speaker 3: they are gathering people, right, They're gathering people around them.
Speaker 3: They are victimizing, for the most part, their own children.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just kind of what it's almost like
Speaker 3: what we think about when you think about females, I mean,
Speaker 3: male serial killers hunting and hunting for not just for victims,
Speaker 3: but for strangers and those kinds of things. It is
Speaker 3: a typical hunter gatherer thing. I think a lot of
Speaker 3: times is that as female store killers, we tend to
Speaker 3: gather people around us. We tend to victimize people around us.
Speaker 3: It's just different, and we tend to get away with
Speaker 3: that longer because of that.
Speaker 1: You cite Alien Warnow's because it's probably one of the
Speaker 1: most prominent serial killers period that people will cite when
Speaker 1: they talk about female serial killers. Is there anything about
Speaker 1: Aileen Warnos that seemed to be much different than the
Speaker 1: modern day research about female serial killers and their motivations.
Speaker 3: Well, we certainly thought, you know, for a while thought
Speaker 3: that Aileen Warnos was the only female serial killer, and
Speaker 3: I think it's because she operated in a very kind
Speaker 3: of a more masculine way. You know, she was shooting strangers,
Speaker 3: she wasn't poisoning them, she was suffocating them. I mean,
Speaker 3: she was kind of doing things that we think male
Speaker 3: serial killers do. And I think because of that, that
Speaker 3: really did kind of throw things off a little bit
Speaker 3: in terms of, oh, there's nobody like Aileen Awaarenos, and
Speaker 3: it's like, well, she may have operated differently, but yeah,
Speaker 3: this is somebody who's going out and killing strangers and
Speaker 3: being very violent. She's not being sneaky, She's being very
Speaker 3: upfront and doing what she wants to do. And I
Speaker 3: think that's very much more like a man. We think
Speaker 3: about serial killers, we think about men shooting, we think
Speaker 3: about men hunting, we think about those kind of aggressive
Speaker 3: things where, you know, and we talk about women we
Speaker 3: tend to be mean, sneakier, less under the radar, and
Speaker 3: because of that getting away with things a lot longer.
Speaker 1: How has the perception, our perception, the media's perception changed
Speaker 1: viewing the female serial killer.
Speaker 3: I think we've we've developed a little bit more in
Speaker 3: a weird kind of way appreciation for her because again,
Speaker 3: I think she has been better able to kind of
Speaker 3: fly under the radar for long because we know that
Speaker 3: they're killing. Their killing careers tend to be a lot
Speaker 3: longer and to have more victims. And I think again,
Speaker 3: it's because it's almost like a role model kind of reversal,
Speaker 3: where we do you know, we do look at female
Speaker 3: serial killers and underestimate them on a regular basis. We know,
Speaker 3: for example that you know, when you're talking about somebody
Speaker 3: who uses poison, forty percent of the time they do
Speaker 3: it again. So I think again that you know, women,
Speaker 3: female social killers are just flying under that radar a
Speaker 3: lot more than we think.
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Speaker 1: smartest way to hire Now, Jonny, we were talking about
Speaker 1: female serial killers and the interesting and surprising information that
Speaker 1: you unearthed via these questions and your research about female
Speaker 1: serial killers in the world, and you cite some incredible
Speaker 1: cases in the US. Lori Valo, now that's before the
Speaker 1: media right now, and Charles Dabll and religion's rule in
Speaker 1: serial killing? What did you find in terms of help
Speaker 1: prevalent religion is in serial killing?
Speaker 3: Lori Valo and Charles day Bell is kind of a
Speaker 3: classic example. I mean just in terms of you know,
Speaker 3: when you have three or four people who've been murdered,
Speaker 3: who died, I mean, that certainly does count. But you know,
Speaker 3: when I think about, like I said, when I think
Speaker 3: about religion, you know, it does have a whole different
Speaker 3: kind of meaning. Does the meat does that? Does the
Speaker 3: religion impact people's behavior? I mean I mentioned that the
Speaker 3: serial killer Herbert Mullins, who thought that, you know, he
Speaker 3: had some divine need to save people from an earthquake.
Speaker 3: And there's clearly an idea of somebody who is influenced
Speaker 3: by religion and is killing because of that. And then
Speaker 3: when you have situations like that, you know, Lorivell Valo
Speaker 3: and Charles day Bell, that's a whole other thing. And
Speaker 3: it brings up an interesting question of what is mental
Speaker 3: illness versus what is religious beliefs or extreme Richish beliefs
Speaker 3: and I think where it's one thing we're trying to
Speaker 3: kind of figure out what does that mean, because when
Speaker 3: you look at the law, it's pretty black and white
Speaker 3: in terms of of you know, if somebody's in a cult,
Speaker 3: we don't oftentimes give them a pass legally. It's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you could have chosen to have these beliefs, So if
Speaker 3: you do bad things under the influence these beliefs, you're
Speaker 3: going to be legally responsible, Whereas that's not the case.
Speaker 3: If you are severely male ill and you're having religious delusions,
Speaker 3: then you might be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Speaker 3: And those are the tricky things to kind of tease out.
Speaker 1: You write about, how often do serial killers start off
Speaker 1: as rapists? What's the prevalence?
Speaker 3: Well, we do, and I mean, you know, I think
Speaker 3: we'd have to kind of parse out that we're talking
Speaker 3: about sexually motivated serial killers. It is very common to see.
Speaker 3: It's almost yeah, it's almost inevitable since we're you know,
Speaker 3: we're talking again about a specific kind of a serial killer.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we almost always have this kind of escalation
Speaker 3: where you're talking about a sexual still killer who starts
Speaker 3: out with peeping or stealing underwear. And those kinds of things,
Speaker 3: and then you know, things just kind of start escalate.
Speaker 3: You know, so you have somebody going from what we
Speaker 3: call them fetish burglaries and then they go to you know,
Speaker 3: sexual assault, and then you have you know, murder, and
Speaker 3: then you know, it just kind of becomes you know, this,
Speaker 3: this escalation tends to happen.
Speaker 1: Someone asked you how prevalent, over indulgent families were in
Speaker 1: to contribute to the serial killer phenomena itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's another interesting way because we always
Speaker 3: think we're going to have this horrible you know, childhood background,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of necessary and sufficient. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean we're talking about different I guess ranges of inappropriate
Speaker 3: behavior and how that kind of works into everything. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we were talking about you know, starting out with this
Speaker 3: kind of progression of fantasies and you know how that
Speaker 3: works itself out. But yeah, it's just there's just a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of things to think about, and
Speaker 3: we're talking about again, sexually motived serial killers starting with
Speaker 3: what you know, we don't even know exactly what starts it,
Speaker 3: what starts somebody having an unusual you know, have an
Speaker 3: unusual idea about you know, I'm trying to think what
Speaker 3: I was going to say here, just again, just when
Speaker 3: you're looking at the progression when you're talking about sexually
Speaker 3: motivated stir killers and how that does oftentimes start out
Speaker 3: in a kind of an innocuous thing and then kind
Speaker 3: of escalate over time and become something that almost takes
Speaker 3: in a life of its own.
Speaker 1: You talk about the that some of these people have
Speaker 1: this privilege and then some of the parents tell them
Speaker 1: how unique they are, and so that contributes that to
Speaker 1: their narcissism, which we can later under the right environment,
Speaker 1: develop into much more serious things like psychopathy. But you
Speaker 1: also discuss because people have asked, is fame a new motive?
Speaker 3: I think that the same part of it certainly applies
Speaker 3: to when you're talking about mass shooters or mass murderers.
Speaker 3: I think that's become really a direct motive. The serial
Speaker 3: killer thing. I don't know that I've seen fame be
Speaker 3: so much a motive when you're talking about fame, you know,
Speaker 3: with steial killers, sometimes you have copycats that kind of
Speaker 3: are reflected. It's just it is very very complicated. I think.
Speaker 3: You know, when you're talking about different people and what
Speaker 3: their motives are and those kinds of things.
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Speaker 1: Now you also flu in this I thought was very interesting.
Speaker 1: I'd never read about this before. When people say has
Speaker 1: there ever been someone asked you, has there any been
Speaker 1: anyone like the fictional character Dexter of Revenge, the serial
Speaker 1: killer hell bent on Revenge of other serial killers? And
Speaker 1: then you cite the case of Pedro Rodriguez Filo, our
Speaker 1: killer Pete tell us a little bit more about this
Speaker 1: dexter type criminal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's from South America. I mean has just killed.
Speaker 3: We don't even know how many people that he's killed,
Speaker 3: but he seemed to have a coping strategy of killing
Speaker 3: all the people who were in prison where he was.
Speaker 3: So it's almost like he wanted to kill. He had
Speaker 3: this desire to kill, and he just kind of continued that.
Speaker 3: He kept Yeah, I'm trying to think what's the easiest
Speaker 3: way to kind of kind of talk about that. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is somebody who I think thought, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 3: to turn my love killing, your interest in that kind
Speaker 3: of on its head. And so he would go into
Speaker 3: the prison and did this over and over and over
Speaker 3: again and just would wipe out and kill all these
Speaker 3: people that he justified that these are people who deserve
Speaker 3: to be killing. And he talked very openly about the
Speaker 3: fact that he really enjoyed that and he had no
Speaker 3: remorse whatsoever, because again he said, I don't think he
Speaker 3: knew about Dexter, but in his mind, I'm targeting the
Speaker 3: people who need to be eliminated. I need to hear,
Speaker 3: couldn't just be wiped from the face of the earth. Yes,
Speaker 3: So he thought he was turning it into something good
Speaker 3: in an odd kind of way.
Speaker 1: You have a chapter called Victims Who Got Away, and
Speaker 1: you say that they are the real unsung heroes, and
Speaker 1: you cite a case July eighteenth, twenty fifteen, where a
Speaker 1: woman named Heather Saul calls nine to one one that
Speaker 1: a man had pointed a gun at her this Neil Falls,
Speaker 1: and tried to rape her, and so he lost control
Speaker 1: of the gun, as you write, and she took that
Speaker 1: gun and shot him in self defense. So when they
Speaker 1: looked in the trunk of Neil Falls, they found a
Speaker 1: kill kit, a list of future kills. They later connected
Speaker 1: him to ten other murders in Nevada and Ohio, I believe.
Speaker 1: And also the things that were in that kill kit
Speaker 1: were very blatant. Bulletproof vests, four sets of handcuffs, bleach restraints,
Speaker 1: so everything in there to prove that this woman had
Speaker 1: just avoided and then helped to capture a serial killer
Speaker 1: that was not on the radar of police whatsoever. Very
Speaker 1: interesting story of Victims who Got Away, And you cite,
Speaker 1: of course, the other famous cases of Richard Ramirez, his
Speaker 1: victim Whitney Bennett escaped Ted Bundy. Of course, Carol Durance escaped,
Speaker 1: and you talk about another woman from a serial killer,
Speaker 1: Juan David Ortez, this eric A Pina. She jumps out
Speaker 1: of a car with a gunpoint another. So some of
Speaker 1: the more interesting research that you had in this book
Speaker 1: is how people could avoid being a victim of a
Speaker 1: serial killer. The notion of compliance will say, tell us
Speaker 1: what you've found.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that we did that we
Speaker 3: did find out pretty consistently is once you get in
Speaker 3: a car with somebody, that seems to just turn things
Speaker 3: into a very bad place. And that, yeah, there might
Speaker 3: be some differences in terms of how much you fight,
Speaker 3: depending on how that approaches you, but in general, once
Speaker 3: somebody has you kind of under their control, the odds
Speaker 3: of you surviving and getting out of that go way down.
Speaker 3: So you know, overall, it seems to be better to
Speaker 3: fight than not because again, once you are confined, once
Speaker 3: that happens, it really does start leading in a start
Speaker 3: leading in a very difficult direction. And yeah, that was
Speaker 3: directly result of this this study that looked and kind
Speaker 3: of said, okay, how do people so how do people survive?
Speaker 3: You know, how do they survive? And that's yeah, that's
Speaker 3: pretty much what we found is. You know, as long
Speaker 3: as the person you know, this person is is. You know,
Speaker 3: when you're captured, the odds of you surviving are going
Speaker 3: way down. We do have we do have examples of
Speaker 3: people who've jumped out the cars, you know, have've managed
Speaker 3: to call out of windows. But yeah, it's it's very
Speaker 3: very scary and discouraging. You know, we don't want you know,
Speaker 3: we don't want people. You know, we need to protect people.
Speaker 1: You also talk about the the toll that it takes
Speaker 1: when a serial killer because you cite some cases in
Speaker 1: here where people confess to being a serial killer and
Speaker 1: they pointed the finger at their partner. There was a
Speaker 1: famous case that Keith Jasperson had to basically plead with
Speaker 1: his attorney at court to prove that he was actually
Speaker 1: the killer after this woman had implicated herself and her
Speaker 1: partner and her partner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a pretty pretty strange, very very strange scenario.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine here's a serial killer and yet you know,
Speaker 3: this person's kind of a way kind of getting off
Speaker 3: because a woman was so angry or trying to get
Speaker 3: away from her boyfriend that not only does she confess,
Speaker 3: but she confessed for him and they spent a few
Speaker 3: years in prison, and really ironically, it was a serial
Speaker 3: killer himself who worked diligently to get this couple freed.
Speaker 3: They would never the judge was so angry at her,
Speaker 3: he would never essentially exonerate her. He basically let her
Speaker 3: conviction stand even though she was able to get out
Speaker 3: of prison. He did exonerate her boyfriend, who she was
Speaker 3: really trying to target. But yeah, it was pretty pretty
Speaker 3: amazing to think of that.
Speaker 1: You say that there were sixty two serial killers who
Speaker 1: killed one hundred and fourteen additional victims after an innocent
Speaker 1: person was incarcerated, and you say those victims could have
Speaker 1: been saved. And as we say, it would be better
Speaker 1: when that we've seen in the movies the perpetrator points
Speaker 1: the gun at somebody from say, a few feet away,
Speaker 1: and says, walk with me or come with me.
Speaker 3: You right that very much?
Speaker 1: That person would be better off screaming and running away.
Speaker 3: Yes, that seems to be a pretty you know, a
Speaker 3: pretty consistent finding. Again, you know, it really does seem
Speaker 3: like it. You know, if you're trapped in any way
Speaker 3: and the odds of you surviving are you know, are
Speaker 3: slim or none, and you know something I don't know
Speaker 3: that many of us have thought about, but it really
Speaker 3: does make a difference to think about. You know, what's
Speaker 3: that going to mean? You know, it's yeah, it's just
Speaker 3: kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: You right in this and near the end of this
Speaker 1: book that you've always been intrigued by the extremes extremes
Speaker 1: of human behavior, especially the dark ones, and it's in
Speaker 1: your nature. But you talk about the battle to fight
Speaker 1: against violent crime and whether law enforcement is winning that battle,
Speaker 1: and the use of research like yourself as a forensic
Speaker 1: psychologist in the aid to try to prevent violent crime,
Speaker 1: and the new tools that are being used, such as
Speaker 1: that was used to the Golden State killer was apprehended
Speaker 1: using new tools available to law enforcement. So, in your conclusion,
Speaker 1: what were some of the things that you could conclude
Speaker 1: about serial killing after writing this book.
Speaker 3: I think one thing, and probably the most significant thing,
Speaker 3: is just how diverse they are. I mean, our old
Speaker 3: idea of you know, a white guy who's in his
Speaker 3: twenties and thirties, and I'm trying to think of what
Speaker 3: will be another example of that. But I think the
Speaker 3: main thing is just that it's just much more broad.
Speaker 3: There's just so many different motives. There's so many different
Speaker 3: people and different experiences that this idea that serial killers
Speaker 3: fit into the small kind of mold is really a myth.
Speaker 3: There's all different motives, there's all different genders, there's all
Speaker 3: different races, there's all different ages, and so I think
Speaker 3: we really need to broaden our understanding of what a
Speaker 3: serial killer is. It's you know, it's really to be
Speaker 3: a serial killer. It just requires killing to people at
Speaker 3: different times. So it's much much broader than we've thought
Speaker 3: that it is, and we are making progress, I think,
Speaker 3: in identifying some of the characteristics and some of the
Speaker 3: life events that you know are kind of the hallmark
Speaker 3: of serial killers. But we have a lot more to
Speaker 3: learn about those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: You're right that mass murder is up statistically, a rape
Speaker 1: has also been increasing, and murder rates have decreased, but
Speaker 1: the national clearance rate is sixty percent.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Five, you write it was ninety percent, So you conclude
Speaker 1: that there was fewer people getting murdered, but also fewer
Speaker 1: cases getting solved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's such an interesting and interesting finding and so ironic,
Speaker 3: and it almost seems like there are fewer crimes that
Speaker 3: are getting committed, but more sophisticated crimes and more sophisticated criminals,
Speaker 3: And so in some respects there have been some hypothesis
Speaker 3: that say, maybe there are more serial killers out there
Speaker 3: that we don't know about because are getting away with
Speaker 3: it a lot longer. Now, the flip side of that is,
Speaker 3: as you alluded to, is there's a lot more technology,
Speaker 3: particularly this genetic genealogy is really a game changer when
Speaker 3: it comes to solving some of these cases. So I
Speaker 3: think that, you know, I do think it's true. I
Speaker 3: think both are true. I think we certainly have seen
Speaker 3: the murder rate go down, and yet I do believe
Speaker 3: that the murderers that are being committed are often being
Speaker 3: committed by more sophisticated criminals that are harder to detect.
Speaker 3: You know, they're watching all the crime shows, or they're
Speaker 3: watching forensic fiholes, they're learning, they're studying other serial killers,
Speaker 3: and they're just becoming smarter.
Speaker 4: You say that for.
Speaker 1: Forensic psychologists like yourself, you're still trying to find that
Speaker 1: elusive recipe that makes a serial killer. But you do
Speaker 1: know some of the common elements trauma, abuse, social isolation,
Speaker 1: genetic vulnerabilities, even a head injury.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we are learning some of those ingredients that we
Speaker 3: don't have their recipe, and of course that just you know,
Speaker 3: has implications for us in terms of maybe prevention at
Speaker 3: some point. I mean, we can start recognizing, as I
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, we can start recognizing vulnerabilities and children or
Speaker 3: vulnerabilities earlier on that can help us intervene and you know,
Speaker 3: before somebody starts killing, or after they kill one time,
Speaker 3: before they kill serially.
Speaker 1: You say that there's a lot of good that comes
Speaker 1: from the discussions and even from podcasts and television shows,
Speaker 1: documentaries and books. Again, what you write about some of
Speaker 1: this good, What has happened as a result of people
Speaker 1: being so fascinated and tuned in.
Speaker 3: Well, I think one thing it's just been pretty amazing
Speaker 3: is we've seen these kind of citizen detectives come up.
Speaker 3: I mean, there have been incredible assistance in some of
Speaker 3: these crimes. And obviously we don't want to interfere with
Speaker 3: law enforce and then we want to be a value
Speaker 3: add But I don't know how much you've followed the
Speaker 3: Lori Valu Chad Dabo case, but I've never seen anything
Speaker 3: like it. I mean, you had people who were literally
Speaker 3: following them around and they're confronting them as a you know,
Speaker 3: we're reporting where they were. The Gappy Patito case, you know,
Speaker 3: if it hadn't been for individuals who were out and
Speaker 3: listening to the media and listening to police asking for help,
Speaker 3: they literally, you know, two people actually literally located that van.
Speaker 3: So I do think that we're seeing people becoming much
Speaker 3: more willing, you know, if they see something to say something.
Speaker 3: I also think we're becoming much more safety conscious, understanding
Speaker 3: what you know, making sure that there's not that situational vulnerability,
Speaker 3: knowing what to do in certain situations. I know my
Speaker 3: teenage might have two daughters that are in college, and
Speaker 3: they are so much more aware of, you know, where
Speaker 3: they're going and making sure their friends know where they're
Speaker 3: going and being safe and having these little birdies which
Speaker 3: is kind of like a little you know, alarm system
Speaker 3: with them. And so I think there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of good that it's come out of some of the
Speaker 3: increased interest in true prime. I mean, of course there's
Speaker 3: a flip side of that as well, which we all
Speaker 3: know about. There's a line there between right, you know,
Speaker 3: we want to make sure that we're respectful of victims
Speaker 3: and recognizing these are real families, these are real lives
Speaker 3: that are being impacted. But I do think that there
Speaker 3: have been a lot of really good things everything as
Speaker 3: I mentioned, from awareness to providing useful tips and calling
Speaker 3: in things and not being as much of a bystander
Speaker 3: I think as we used to be.
Speaker 1: Finally, you do talk about some research because people are
Speaker 1: concerned about the psychopathic team, the teen that's capable of
Speaker 1: killing or sexual assault. What was in conclusion, what was
Speaker 1: some of the research concerning teens who kill young people?
Speaker 3: It is such a complicated topic. I'm actually doing right
Speaker 3: now a lot of forensic evaluations on adults who receive
Speaker 3: life with parole as juveniles. And so, as you can imagine,
Speaker 3: these are some horrific, horrific crimes that these teenagers have committed.
Speaker 3: And so the issue becomes what do we do with
Speaker 3: these juveniles who have committeed these horrendous crimes? And yet
Speaker 3: there's all these studies that show that the adolescent brain
Speaker 3: is not as developed as an adult brain. A child
Speaker 3: at fifteen is much more in general malleable, they're much
Speaker 3: more treatable. Their brain is does develop. I mean that
Speaker 3: the people that I see at forty and forty five
Speaker 3: and fifty are not the same people that they were
Speaker 3: at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen. At the same time,
Speaker 3: age does not mean a person is maturing in the
Speaker 3: sense that their sexual proclivities are necessarily disappearing. And so
Speaker 3: I think we're trying to find a way to accommodate
Speaker 3: the fact that a teenager who commits a violent crime
Speaker 3: is probably more rehabilitatable, is probably more amenable to development,
Speaker 3: to maturity, and to growing out of some of these crimes,
Speaker 3: and also at the same time recognizing that again that
Speaker 3: doesn't guarantee that we have to evaluate that person based
Speaker 3: on the crime, and I think we do have to
Speaker 3: build in some safeguards in terms of, you know, she
Speaker 3: just person we tried as an adult or as a juvenile.
Speaker 3: If they're tried as an adult, do we lock them
Speaker 3: up and throw away the key? And there are just
Speaker 3: some a lot of questions about that. I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't know if you're familiar with the Eric Smith case.
Speaker 3: This was the boy who at thirteen brutally murdered four
Speaker 3: year old little boy and was convicted as an adult
Speaker 3: at thirteen and was recently released. Recently being the past
Speaker 3: couple of months. He spent I think twenty six years
Speaker 3: in prison, and I was fortunate enough to be able
Speaker 3: to read all of his parole interviews and parole hearings
Speaker 3: from age I think he became eligible for parole technically
Speaker 3: at twenty two, and so he was denied parole. He
Speaker 3: was paroled on his eleventh parole hearing. What really struck
Speaker 3: me is that I did feel like, at forty one,
Speaker 3: he has done what we have required of him, we
Speaker 3: being the prison system, our criminal justice system. He has
Speaker 3: done everything asked of him to kind of be rehabilitated,
Speaker 3: and I felt like, at this point he's a relatively
Speaker 3: low inmate. I will also tell you in reading through
Speaker 3: his parole hearings at twenty eight, at thirty, I felt
Speaker 3: like he was incredibly high risk for reoffending. So we
Speaker 3: need to take an age into account, we need to
Speaker 3: take social maturity into account, but we also need to
Speaker 3: take into all these other variables to make sure that
Speaker 3: we're not just letting somebody out at twenty one who
Speaker 3: did something terrible at thirteen or fourteen, and that we
Speaker 3: don't throw, you know, again, locking them and throw away the.
Speaker 1: Key because they have and this is coming from somebody
Speaker 1: as you write, You're not a bleeding our liberal by
Speaker 1: any means.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not, But I do think it raises some
Speaker 3: interesting questions Dan, in terms of when you have somebody
Speaker 3: like Eric Smith, the question becomes, and this the art
Speaker 3: isn't there's no answer. Here's the question. The question is
Speaker 3: what is the purpose of our criminal justice system? Is
Speaker 3: it punishment? There's an argument being made for that. Is
Speaker 3: it rehabilitation. There's an argument to be made for that.
Speaker 3: And then the question becomes, Okay, how much rehabilitation do
Speaker 3: we ask for or do we just say, if you
Speaker 3: do this at thirteen or fifteen, you have forfeited your
Speaker 3: freedom for the rest of your life. And those are
Speaker 3: questions we have to answer as a society.
Speaker 1: And you also have the question of psychopathy and the
Speaker 1: notion that it cannot be rehabilitated.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, there seems to be a lot of
Speaker 3: evidence that we don't know too much how to change that.
Speaker 3: At the same time, it's important to recognize that most
Speaker 3: people who are psychopathic are not committing violent crimes. So
Speaker 3: just because you are a psychopath does not necessarily mean
Speaker 3: that you are a violent offender. You are not likely
Speaker 3: to be. But again, this is where it's like we're
Speaker 3: chasing our tails sometimes. If you are a violent offender
Speaker 3: and a psychopath, that is a problem. And because we
Speaker 3: know that there is a link between psychopathy in violent
Speaker 3: offenders and recidivism.
Speaker 1: Yes, I want to thank you very much for coming
Speaker 1: on doctor Joni Johnson talking about your book Serial Killers.
Speaker 1: One hundred and one questions true crime fans ask for
Speaker 1: those that might want to take a look at other work.
Speaker 1: Do you have a website? Let's talk about your blog
Speaker 1: and your podcast. Direct people to those please.
Speaker 3: My website is pretty easy. It's doctor Joni Johnston dot
Speaker 3: com and it's j O N I and then John
Speaker 3: sto N and it has tons and tons of articles
Speaker 3: on there. There's also a free newsletter called Mind Detectives
Speaker 3: that I send out once a week. It just is
Speaker 3: kind of an update on true crime cases. My psychology
Speaker 3: to blog is called The Human Equation. I'd love that
Speaker 3: I have the most amazing readers, and it also just
Speaker 3: talks about law and forensic psychology and crime and how
Speaker 3: those all kind of fit together. YouTube channel slash podcast
Speaker 3: is called Unmasking a Murderer and we just take cases
Speaker 3: and what I like to say is that I like
Speaker 3: to think of the story or the crime is really
Speaker 3: the launching pad. So my job as a psychologist hopefully
Speaker 3: is to educate and inform. So there's the entertaining part
Speaker 3: in terms of they're always interesting stories, but that is
Speaker 3: the beginning for me. Let's take what happened and then
Speaker 3: learn from it in some way.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, thank you so much, doctor Joni Johnston, Serial Killers,
Speaker 1: one hundred and one questions true crimes fans ask. It's
Speaker 1: been fascinating. Thank you so much. You have a great evening,
Speaker 1: good night, Thank you.
Speaker 3: You two