The public has had a long held fascination with detectives detective sy aside of life. The average person is never exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome back to part two of my chat with doctor an Bergers, who is a legend amongst law enforcement agencies across the globe, particularly with those detectives responsible for investigating
murders and serial offenders. If you miss part one, we're talking about how doctor Burger's skills developed as a psychiatric nurse and evolved into her working with the FBI, developing a process of understanding the mind of serial killers and profiling criminals in order to understand and most importantly, catch killers. Doctor an Burgers, Welcome.
Back, Welcome, glad to be back.
Okay, At the risk of embarrassing myself, I'm going to let you into a little little secret here. Early in my career as a homicide detective, I'd read John Douglas's book Mind Hunter, and quite often myself and my partner at the time, Paul Jacob, we'd be standing at murder scenes going what would John Douglas do in this situation? In that what I liked about it, and bearing in
mind we're talking thirty years ago. I'd read the book but what I took away from it was you've got to be proactive in the way that you approach an investigation. And I see failings of homicide investigations. I see where people saw the stand, they gather the evidence, everyone's trying to solve the murder, but they're not proactive in their thinking and the way of initiating things happening in the
crime scene. And I remember, like John Douglas away that or the things that I picked up from that book and other literature that i'd read at the time, was about the strategy that's required when dealing with the media, because most killers, and this is in my experience, do listen to the media, and when they've committed a crime, they're fascinated. And back in the day it was the front page paper or the evening news when stories were broken,
they'd be fascinated by what the detectives were saying. And my biggest criticism of police and the use of media is where I see someone standing there at police officer, usually a senior police officer, standing there going We've got no idea what's happened. There's no witnesses, there's no forensic evidence and whatever. And I'm thinking, if I was a crook, if I was a suss go, I'd be sitting there going, yes, great, if I keep my mouth shut, I get away of it.
What's your thoughts on strategies and the use of the media when you're investigating investigating crimes.
Well, we looked into this, and interestingly enough, when you go way back to Jaker Hoover, who was one of the first directors of the FBI, one of the things he felt very strongly that he wanted to make a wanted to influence the media. He had several of his agents assigned to that task, and what they would do is to play to the media. They would send if they knew a birthday or an anniversary, they'd send cards, they said, always would say things. So they really use
the media in a very positive way. And he knew that the way that the media portrayed them had a lot to do with their public approval, so that was very useful. So that's where I would say that John Douglas really and Bob Rustler knew how to play the media and felt that that was very important in any kind of a an investigation they were doing. That was one I would say one of them, and John was very good at being able to engage the media and to you know, get the information out, so the media
felt a part of it. It was really having them work with them. They realized they couldn't catch suspects all by themselves sometimes so that they had to that and that John Joe Barcase was an excellent example of that, where they made it very clear that the community had to all be on board to catch this this person. So that's one of their story. I think that's one of their strongest points that the two agents had and they taught that to their junior ones coming along.
Yeah, well, I you said, I'm just trying to think of examples that used the media. And a high profile case I was investigating, it's still unsolved and it basically cost me my career was the abduction of three year old William Tyrell, a young boy dressed in a spider Man suit, from his grandparents' house on a small rural town dead end street ten years ago. This crime occurred when I took over the investigation. This was sort of five months after his disappearance. A couple of things that
I did. I made a call that when I took it over, I said, it's a homicide lead investigation because there was speculation that was missing adventure. I wanted to put pressure on the perpetrator by it's homicide. Looking at it now, we're not looking at We're not going to forget about this. And there weren't that many places in there, So I said, anyone that was in a square kilometer and had a map of the area from where William disappeared that now hasn't come forward, I'd be wondering why
you haven't come forward? Makes me very suspicious. Why you haven't come forward because we did canvases, door knocks and public appeals and all that. The other strategy in that particular investigation, and this was in consultation with doctor Sarah Ull as well, we got a million dollar reward for anyone that had information. That was the first time a million dollar reward had been announced. Would you agree with that type of approach? Do you see there's benefits in that type of approach.
I would agree with that. The other when you have a child. It reminds me of a case in which the wrestler did is he said, we need to talk with the mother because maybe he felt the suspect was going to get in touch with her. And he did, and he tried to she's alive and I've taken her here there and all that, And so the mother was able to on the anniversary. This was the case that
really dragged out. Actually they thought that they knew who it was, and she said, I've been waiting for you to call and took such surprise, you know, in other words, use the technique that she didn't know necessarily if it was, but but just saying waiting for you to call with a great statement to be able to say and that's what Bob.
That's yeah, that subtleness of it, but yeah, very powerful, powerful way of encouraging.
So that's another way that you can use media. You can find out, especially when you have a child that you've got access to to a grantic and you know, trying to and if you engage them and say this is the way that we can, you can you can help us. In other words, you can can and that empowers them to be able to want to work with you rather than fight you or you know how sometimes people get annoyed with the media and so forth. You
don't want that. So and and they they played it along and it got so that he actually broke down with This was the I think this is the Meyerhoff case, one of the early cases that Bob worked on that worked. That works in another one they were able to they couldn't figure out where the suspect would know about. It was a missing teenager, I think, And it turned out that it was the man that was babysitting the house or watching the house, and he had written down a note.
They looked at the paper and realized there's indentation on it and were able to get phone number. And that's how they tracked them down, so that was another contact. So there are all these little techniques that media is. If you don't have any other suspects media, you've got to try media or try some of these other strategies.
It's funny because I bought into that, and I can attribute it back to reading John Douglas's book about the use of the media, and there's other places that know, we're not going to use the media, and I just say, there's a tool. There was another interesting case. I wasn't involved in it, but friends of mine were involved in. It was a ripe in a very violent rape in a small country town. Talking to a couple of hundred people.
They put a question there out in the town and on what do you think should happen to the person if we catch this person? There was yeah, two hundred and ninety nine responses going, you know, you should be doing time, blah blah blah. And there was one response, well, everyone makes mistakes and get reguards and guess who the person was. Oh look, oh look something standing out there right right?
Absolutely, well we're using social media.
Now, yeah, well you'll have to buy into that, yes, yep, Now.
That's really important and I saw. I have my undergraduate students watching the social media and especially if they get a suspect that we try to right away get the information and run it through AI to see if we can learn something. Because it's pretty clear that they have to tell someone and they can brag about it, there is that need to not keep it so secret, and so they do social media. That's a new technique. I think that's very, very useful.
Well, it's something that we've got to got to adopt now because the power of the media is shifting to that social media side, isn't it to get to get that message out. It's definitely something that we've got to embrace. And I want to talk about AI. But a little a little bit later, if we could crime scenes? What
the what the crime scenes to you? Because I find that another fascinating part of being a detective, interpreting the crime scene, taking your time to really taking what you're seeing and get a sense of what we're what we're dealing with here.
Right Well, the crime scene, of course, is I think is absolutely critical. So you can get you can certainly get evidence. Douglas was very good at just going to a crime scene and getting a feel as he would say about what happened and what he would he would say, you have to walk in the shoes of the killer to really understand it. And I think that's true because you get so familiar with cases and so just looking at it that it's where they will take time just
to try to think of where was he? Where was the victim? Because you do have a victim. That's why the victimology is so critical. And what position is she and what what might she be saying? Did she struggle? Was there? You know, how was she located? How was she targeted? Where did they encounter each other? Just a lot of questions, So get in the line of the investigator how this happened and why it happened, Why was
she targeted? Why did she become a victim? And I think that's a one eighty degree turned from the way it used to be. Where, Oh, she shouldn't have been there, she shouldn't have been out walking. What does she think was going to? You know, the blaming of the victim? Unfortunately a lot of it started. You got to go back to say where was he or where was the killer? You know, what was he doing?
And on that blame blaming the victim. And I'm sure you again, probably the work that you did change that thinking too that yeah, it's and I think society has moved on and we understand better, not just law enforcement, but you know the comments, well, she shouldn't have been out late at night and those and the impact that that has on victims, making them feel like they're they're
to blame for the crime. And you would have seen it as I saw it, dealing with victims where no matter the circumstances, it always crosses their mind that they're at fault, or even the families of murdered victims are blaming themselves should have done something. And I'm always at pain to explain, no, you're the victim here, you're you're not not the offender. Don't blame lay the blame there. Linking crimes. So, and we talked in Part one a little bit about that and experiences I've had over here
in New South Wales. The courts we've got tendency and coincidence evidence. So if we're trying to if there's a serial rapists, we're looking at tendency and coincidence evidence. If a certain type of crime, the mannerisms in which that crime has been committed and then put that person before court. Instead of charging the person with perhaps five offenses, we might put ten offenses on him because the other crimes
are so strikingly similar. Can you talk us your understanding and your knowledge of what you look for when you're trying to determine if crimes are linked.
Well, the linking of crimes was something that I remember Bary Hazel would spend a lot of time on looking. He would take he had to have a case where there are at least ten crimes, and he would look at the first, the middle, and the last crime and see what were the common themes there. And that's what a lot of his research was because he was interested in Sometimes it changed, as I said before, the m OL change, the method of operation change, but not necessarily
the signature. So the linkage part sick is the age? What is there a certain age? Is a certain gender? You know? Is it a child? Is it an adolescent? Is it a because that will give you some idea of what age you're looking for. Also, race is important because more likely than not it's going to be same race. It's it doesn't have to be, but if you want just more than fifty percent it's going to be that. So that can give you that the age of the
person you're looking for, the gender, the race. Then then you would look if you're at the crime scene, then you're going to be able to look and see what was the weapon. But weapon doesn't weapon. They can use multiple weapons, so weapon isn't always a good indicator, but it will tell you if it was hands, you know, blunt force trauma, or whether it was gone or a knife. Certain cultural groups tend to, you know, use we always
go back to the Mad Bomber. I don't know that case anyway that profile that it would because he would be Middle Eastern because they tended to use bombs, and this was now bomber. Obviously he was in New York City buying, so sometimes that he would even be able to be that precise, and then the personality features. Isn't that clean? Crimes in the deep pickup thing nick it the way that kind of thing.
I would look at the crime scenes, including where the body, because sometimes the body is not where the actual murder has occurred, but whether a weapon was introduced, if it was brought there, or there's some planning that's gone into it. The way the body is disposed of. Quite often that it doesn't necessarily have to be a serial killing, but I can see where there's a panic in the way
that the body's been disposed of. So the crime that's telling me that the crime it wasn't planned, it escalated. So you're looking for something that triggered that and the way that the body has been disposed of, because quite often that's that's the unraveling of the offender, because it's they leave a trial like tracking an elephant through the snowl What what do you look at in terms of the way the body is disposed of and the injuries
to the body. So digging deep into that, what type of thing are you looking at to there?
Well, I think that any bruising that you see, it's going to be anger. I mean I something has triggered either it's somebody else and he's using this as what we call a displacement. He's angry why it's then so he takes it out on this other person. Elderly victims are often being a substitute for somebody that they knew in their childhood. That's an unusual Although there's a lot
of crime against the elderly physical. I think the other important factor is that you mentioned is whether the body was moved, how long did they spend with the body? That's important, and that's going to give you a lot of the fantasy and that you can pretty much figure out what is going on in the mind. If you think it's a fantasy, usually it is and a sexual homicide. He's acting out something's not over and over, So that's important. What else, let's see whether it's been is it posed
as the body posed? The other thing is is it just discarded? Is it just dumped as a word that they said, just by the side of the road, in other words, just discarded to no emotional attachment of any kind is there? And or is that just showing what he thinks of that type of person. I'm just going to give you an example that I thought in determining the size, the size of the offender, if he's big, tall, whatever. And then on the Joe Bet case, the first boy
was just left right kind of off the road. The second body was found inside the forest and woods. And what was important there is there are two footprints going set of footprints going in, only one coming back. So what that said, Yeah, so what that said is that he was not able to carry the victim in, so he marched him in, did what he did to him, and then came up.
I like that again, good detective work. Yeah, it seems simple, but these are the little things that can be missed. And I think I spent some time in the early hours of the morning with someone trying to show me where he disposed of a body ten years before. And we pulled up there. It's dark, it was in the National Park, and he walked in a certain distance and he walked hundreds of meters or one hundred and fifty meters,
which is a long way to carry a body. He was, genuinely, I believe, trying to tell us where he disposed of the body in a shallow grave. We had no success. We searched the area that he indicated, and then we tried something. We put him in the actual car that he was driving at the time. We managed to get access to that at the time he was disposing of the body, and we put a manequin. The rescue squad
uses eighty kilos. It's the weight of a body, a limp body, put it in the boot of the car, drove down to the location and then said to him, look, we've got something in the boot. You show us how you where you think you took this body in the dark, in the bush, and how difficult it was, And that made him sort of rethink about the distance in which he carried it and it was in fact not one hundred meters in from the road, that was only about twenty five meters in from the road.
So yeah, very good.
Yeah, I look at homicide. Some homicides are very simple to solve. The more difficult ones. I look at opportunity, capability, and motive. There are three factors that I fit him got You might have literally hundreds of persons of interest, and I look at opportunity, I can tick that off pretty easy. If the person's in prison, they haven't committed that crime, right. Capability looking at is this person capable physically capable of committing the crime? Or does this person
have access to the type of weapons? So that's sort of a little bit more subjective. That motive is always. Motive is the one that is always. I think motive points you in the direction when you're looking for a suspect. What's your thoughts on motive, Because if one person understands motive, it would be you.
Well, yeah, I mean that that's crucial. Now you don't have to prove it in court, but they always want you to, right.
Yeah, yeah, they want the faction in the narrative. Yeah.
Yeah, they don't want you going the course. I don't any idea why he did this. I mean, that's the last thing that you want to say. You want to have some idea or at least have some what we call hypotheses that are that are going to be plausible that or he will understand. Yeah, because a lot of times they may say this is just a horrible murder because maybe there's been dismemberment. Dismemberment can sometimes be because they can't carry the body, they can't get it to
another place. And that's so it's it's more of a practical motive, if you will, of why that happened, rather than any deep seated psychological rationale. Because I did a case like that where he it was he had really cut the body up and he just left he just left it all because he couldn't. He tried putting him in bags, and I mean it was so I always remember that to say, don't go beyond any un reasonable
explanation kind of thing. So I think that that's really really important as a motive, is that we have four categories of motive. The first one is criminal enterprise. Is this something that like a hit or an insurance killing, or something that's going to be more gun weapon kind of thing, or is it The biggest category is more the personal cause, in other words, is this personal to
the person. They are about fourteen categories there of whether it's vene or whether it's not sexual, sexual as a whole, separate unit. And then the fourth is group cause. But the personal cause, as I said, we have about twelve or fourteen categories that to the person, and I think they make sense. It could be domestic, it could be a variety of others. But that's why we do the studies we're doing. We're doing one now on Indigenous murdered and missing men and comparing them to a group we've
done on women. Why did they do this in their culture? So I do think that that's something that's really important to do to get that motive.
Yeah, and it's interesting and the understanding that you're given and people quite often they want it all tied up in a bow. This is what's happened, and this is the motive. And again I learned a lot from dealings with Sarah Yule in that and even reference to the William Tyrell case that she said, the person that's committed this crime mightn't even know why they've committed this crime. So, you know, it's really hard to nail down the motive on the crime like that a three year old child.
The public wanted all to be a pedophile, a scary person. That seems to be what the public perceived if a three year old child's disappeared. But Sarah was always at pains to point out to me when we're working the case that the person responsible for the case mightn't even know why.
They may not know why. That was in mind Hunter, that was one of the cases that they did and Mighty Russell. They so they said, we're here to study men and why they do what they do. And he says, I hope you can tell me why I did what I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great, very honest.
Absolutely, you get you sit down in an interview room and you're interviewing someone and they've got all the detail and why did you do it? I'm not really sure it's yeah, fascinating, fascinating, fascinating will serial killing and mass killings I'm thinking here and I haven't got the facts and figures in front of me, but mass killing seem to be more prominent than serial killing in current current times. Do you is that something that you're a trend that you've seen or.
Yes, that's what I said. You're right that serial killings. That's why I think we don't hear about them. I don't think they're being done as much as that more people are moving into mass shootings, especially shootings, which makes every bit at risk. You know, you can be out of the grocery store, or you could be in the mall and you've got mass shooting and everybody gets hit.
So it's I think it's it's a very much more fearful for the average person than the cereal Most people think, well, I don't think any I'm going to encounter or any serial killer, because they usually try to get some kind of conversation going, you know, and some kind of relationship, whereas a mass shooting doesn't. It's all very impersonal.
And what in the work that you can do, like I know over here for that type of the lone wolf situation ideology where there's ideology crossing too, you know action, what type of views do you have on the prevention of that type of crime.
Well, right now you're venturing into an area we're looking at and that's a school shooter. We're having a terrible school shooter, and so we almost think that's a separate We're looking at a whole data set to see if we can justify that the it's separate from a weight supremist or an extremist or an insult that there's something
unique there. So we've got about thirty cases we're going to look at and run through AI to see if we can come up with something because I think you're onto something and we're onto it too.
Yeah, that would be interesting if you see a pattern emerging and you look back when the crime's being committed, and you look back and you think red flag, red flag, red flag. But to stop that happening, we've got to identify the seriousness of the offense of I think Laura Richard's made the point with stalking. If someone's been in a relationship and he's being stalked by a person that they've been in an intimate relationship with and that person
then makes a threat to kill that person. There's a fifty to fifty chance that'll be carried out, so we look at yes. So I always thought stalking was a really dangerous crime that we didn't jump on with the full weight of the law that needed or given the importance, because I think it tells me something about the mindset of a person that's prepared to stalk another person.
Yeah, it's very dangerous, and I'm doing a case right now. Quadruple killing horrible. And it was so clear it was sexual jealousy that we're not sure was even possible that she We haven't had any confirmation and we won't because of course she was murdered. But this whole matter, when you look at a pattern that's a common pattern in these domestic killings, that it's it's a paranoia, is suspicious that the partner is having, you know, some kind of
affair with somebody else. So that is really I would agree that it's very and it's hard to stop. You can't stop it. The only way you stop it is you can't in any way encourage it, and you have to almost disappear. In that particular case, he had done that to an earlier partner, and she were two years, went underground nobody, she gave her information out, didn't let anybody know where she was. That's what it took for her.
And then of course he then gets into this other relationship and he ends up killing and killing anybody that was guarding her. That was you know, she had a detective order out. I mean, she did everything that she possibly could.
Yeah. I look, we've had a spate of domestic related murders, and quite often it's that jilted lover or jilted partner and ends up in someone being killed. We've had a real spade of them at the moment in this country. But I think we've got to start. We're changing. We're bought in new legislation coercive control, which I think is a step in the right direction. And that's because police hands were tied in that you'd turn up to a
domestic situation where there hasn't been the physical assault. What can we charge this person with now? Coercive control because again indicators that lead up to the eventual act, which tends to be a very violent, violent crime.
Sure. Well, the other thing, just to go back to that case, that I'm working on now. Sheeve was so scared she wanted to carry a little knife to protect herself, and because she was on probation for another matter, they said, no, you can't have it. She might have been able to have protected herself when he comes in because he changes weapons, he changes from gun to knife, so the personal the use of a knife is so much more personal, and you might have been able to pull that in and
saved herself. So it's awful.
Another question I want I want to ask you that I get asked a lot, and I think you've got a lot more you know, understanding of it than myself. Nature or nurture, like people often often raise that with me, is a homicide to take the Do you think it was the environment or do you think that will bone that? Why? What? What's your what's your type natural nurture.
I don't think that it's genetic. I don't that there's any genetic link. But they've grown up in an atmosphere. If they've grown up in an atmosphere where there is role modeling, if you will uh that that can be very dangerous and that they can they can learn, you know, it's what we kind of call from a learning if they've been abuse, say, our father can be very aggressive and very physically damaging to his son, and especially if he's targeted as the favored child, not favor necessarily positively
that I think environment is very very important. As to the nature part, I think not so much. But they've never had I've never seen any studies that have compermed it. It's a very would be very hard to do that. So I'm much more that the environment, environment, and especially the people that they are around. Yeah, and that they themselves have been traumatized in some way that has stuck
with them. Don't forget. We use the theory that it's a fantasy that gets nurtured and kind of acted out and it's got to come from somewhere, and that it could come from something that happened to them, and that that's a way that they're expressing it.
Okay, I had I'm not sure if you're familiar with the work of James Fallon, the neuroscientists that did pet scans of the people that were considered psychopaths, including some
serial killers. He made the observation he did pet scans on the brains and the frontal cortex or whatever and clearly I'm not a brain expert, but said there was a pattern that he would see in people that have been identified as psycho paths, and he needed something to cross reference the study, so he got a PET scan done of his own brain and other people he knew he had the same predisposition of some of the psychopaths that whose brains that pet scan was done on. But
he came to the conclusion. I found this interesting. He came to the conclusion that his environment that he grew up in those nurturing years from birth to the age of three, those crucial years, was in a loving, caring environment. And then he's looking at these other ones that have acted out as a psychopath as he would think and turned into the trust killers have grown up in that traumatic environment when there wasn't love, there wasn't nurturing and
all that. And so that his take on it was almost like a combination, and it seemed to make sense what he was saying there, and it ties into what you're saying about the environment having a part in.
It, right right. I just think it's critical, and the trauma piece is critical too. But I think that if he's got some good research that you can't ignore it.
You know.
That's really good. That's an addition to the feit.
Yeah, yeah, well it was. It was interesting. You've mentioned a AI a lot, and yeah, I'd like to think I embraced technology. I'm coming along to that thinking I've recently started to delve into AI and a lot of stuff that I'm doing, and I keep reflecting back, and I've been out of the police for four or so years and I'm reflecting back. How handy that would be.
You've referenced a lot. Can you just talk to us about how you're using AI and what you're seeing in contemporary law enforcement, how they're using AI these days.
Well, we're using it, mister Whitskoll, machine learning because it is the machine computer is a machine and we're looking at what we call topic modeling that when you enter, you put in the data, you're going to get patterns that come out. Now, we talked, we've talked about a lot patterned. But this doesn't like in five minutes where
we might have taken five years. We did that a comparison with a group out in Kansas, and we said, you send us and we do this for a threat assessment, you know, Leice will get in somebody saying I'm going to blow up a building or I'm going to kill somebody, and that's really scary and they have to decide. So I said, send us a case as much data as you can, and we'll run it through our algorithm. And they did, and it took fifteen minutes. We sent back back.
What we found as terms of this is it was a serious case where they weren't sure if this guy was crazy quote quote or whether he was really going to kill somebody, and they had decided that it was not a threat, so we ran it took fifteen minutes. They had taken almost fifteen months to look at it. They the poor woman that collapse you' I can't believe you did in fifteen minutes, but came up with many
of you. I felt badly for her, but it came with the other kinds of things that they hadn't thought of. So we sent it back to them and said, maybe you better keep this and if he gives you another threat, because he had given the multiple threats, this wasn't just slated one, that maybe you should take it seriously and let us know if there's anything. So that was just an example of how fast we were able to drub
the material that they had taken so long. So it's wonderful if you've got a large amount of data that you want to look at very quickly and if you get the right algorithm, I mean that that's your key. You've got to have that, and then it just whips through the data. So we've looked at twenty three murderers manifestos, some of them you know Rogers, any of the they're
on the lists. And now when we get a case, we could run the single case as comparison to the thirty twenty three that we have, and that will tell us what we're looking for. The whole thing is are they telling the truth? That's our next step is when we get data or they do an interview, are they telling us the truth? They're version of the truth. That's our next step. We have to come up with the algorithm. There. We're going to take some court testimony that was done
under oath. People'll start with the Menendez case and see whether they were the truth kind of thing. So that's where it's going.
It's something that we have to doing. Bryce, isn't I started in homicide and it was CODs that was. Yeah, there was CODs that we alphabetically the suspects information and all that and where we've got to now.
Yeah, yeah, we have to go with it. I don't think we can ignore it. I mean, everybody is into it so and it's it should be not fun, but it should be looked at as just another tool, another technique, and we shouldn't say have going to do it.
Yeah, no, it make sense reflecting on your career, some of the people that you've come into contact with, and there was I had a quote losing the paperwork here, but I had a quote from when you first started hearing the interviews that John Douglas and the team we're doing with some of the nia notorious serial killers, like eavesdropping on the rawest fringes of humanity. What can you
I would imagine that would have been fascinating. What are some of the people that or some of the cases you've looked at that you you just you think memorable, not for any particular reason, but just things that have stood that to you in the time that you've been working in the field, that you have.
Well, it's one of the things I always wondered about, but maybe I shouldn't is. And again I go back to Joe Bart. He was classic for that. He was one of our first is. They would do the horrendous killing and then they might go and have dinner, or have breakfast, or go to sleep. You know, it was like, oh nothing, It didn't seem to impact on them. And I remember Joe Bert saying in the interview we did with him, he said, you know, that's what the prosecutor said,
is how callous could it be? And he said it was so they admitted. I think that gets to your point about the psychopathic quality that they don't have any empathy. They're unable. So is that something that is genetic nature versus do they just learn it or do they so cold to it? But that's what Kemper'd say, that they would go home and sleep, I remember, or they would talk about how hard it was to kill someone, that
that it took a lot of energy. Oh yeah, no, I mean we have a horrible case here up in Idaho Univerversity where this one person killed four young women, three women and a man. He did it all within a very short time. I mean that took a lot of They haven't had the trial yet. They have a suspect, but that takes a lot of energy and a lot of time, and I don't think we think in those terms that we should be more just very very logical
about it and how can they do that? You know, that's always been when you say, what would surprise me? That that that is, that's that did, what they would do afterwards, or that how they would keep the souvenirs and what they would do with them, And it was just no can of what that meant to the family or what that meant, you know, it did that was used to that.
The bt K killer. What were you dealings or understanding we've that particular case and that particular person.
Well, no, it was needing to know that. I needed to know that. And when and doing other interviews, we would ask the same thing, what did you do right after? That was a new question. A lot of times they weren't thinking about that. Obviously, they were thinking about was there any evidence left or something to make their case. But this is a more human kind of psychological thing of what kind of behavior do they show and then how fast would they do another crime? Because we were
looking at cases and the escalation is clearly there. I think That's another major point that we found is that how fast the escalation when was one victim not enough? I think the other thing is when there would be multiple victims at the same time, How did that happen? Number one case, two little girls or two seven year old girls and they're both dead and post how did one person do it? It turned out, and it took a long time. He did two more murders before able
to finally. He would always read first until finally one read victim survived, and that's how they're able to get.
The nature of the crimes that seen in your time. One thing that I was always at pains without understanding the depth of the psychology of it than the mindset of the people as you do. But I was always at pains when I'm doing briefings on murder investigations and people would go, but why would you do this if
you've done that? And I would say, you're trying to put a rational thought into an irrational action or an irrational mindset, because because I used to get frustrated where you talk about hypothesis and you're sitting around the briefing room and you're going, Okay, maybe this happened, but I couldn't have because he made a phone call ten minutes later. And I'm thinking, you're giving the rational thought to a totally irrational act or crime. Do you subscribe to my thought process there?
And absolutely you said it perfectly, You absolutely did. Is that How can we in our logic make sense out of it?
Yeah?
You can't. That's why we've got to get into what is driving that thought? What is driving it? Because the thought is what drives the behavior. So we have to get into the thought. Not that we know what he did, right, We know what he did, we know the act, but we don't know the thought.
Yeah. Interesting, Interesting, getting how do we get to that? Interesting? Getting your take on it. The other thing that's come up, or two things I'll just a touch on these. A lot of the people that you've dealt with, and I've seen it in my own investigation career, that upbringing in the resentment to the mother, the bond between what turns out to be this killer and what's taken place with the mother. It seems to come up time and time again. Thoughts on that situation, well, the mother.
And the father, the whole issue of parenting. It was interesting in the study, you know, we did thirty six serial killers. But what we found is that very often the family would disrupt around when the boy was around adolescent and at a very critical time, I think for not only boys, girls too, And so they would always complain about the mother and they had always wanted to be with the father. Well, the problem was the father deserted them, right, he was the absent father. So then
they only have the mother to blame. So I would often get annoyed early on. We would talk about the Domino mothers. Well, she was the only parent. She had to be both mother and father and discipline. And I said, they have no appreciation.
That makes sense, you know.
So I think we I wanted people to be a little careful about what they said about the bad mother, because I think it was unfair in some cases. No, maybe not all cases, but certainly in some cases. And some mothers tried to do the right thing. They saw their son having this odd behavior and they would take them to the psychiatrists, and a psychiatrist would say, oh, he'll grow out of it, he's just it's just that lesson thing. Well that's no help, you know, And and
so what would I try to do? This is the other area that I think we have to pay more attention to is how to help people who get these cases, whether they're clinicians or social workers, whatever they are, is
to pay attention to it and get some consultation. In other words, if you can't answer, and you really think that this is odd, but you don't know what to say, there are plenty of people that will be happy to do a consult you know, I do them all the time to help people, just to you know, this is this bad behavior, is this dangerous behavior, or is this behavior that will resolve, you know, by the next couple of years. Well, that's really important because people don't know
to how to handle the young adolescent. The emerging adult, I think is the correct term we should use now.
Yeah, well, and you quite rightly identified that that's such a crucial stage in development, isn't it where life can go off in different directions that that lescence stage.
And hormones are changing. We cannot deny that fast grown is going certainly for the young male. And that's that's that which is aggression, right, It's normal, So we shouldn't be afraid of it. If it gets off on the wrong track, we better be careful. We have a lot of cases here in the States where the parents and the schools get concerned and they won't do anything. They've got to do something. They can't put guns, give their kids guns.
Yeah, I really because we're watching from this country and we're just horrified with the school shooting. So I think it's fantastic that you're looking into that aspect of it, because it's just got it's got to stop. It's horrendous, such a horrendous, horrendous crime. The people that ingratiate themselves into investigations, that's another thing that I've seen, whether it's a murder investigation or it could be something at a
lower level. People that and I've always thought it's just a curiosity they want to know what's in or they're reflecting on their crime. Look at all the drama I've cause, did you encounter that a lot during during your studies and your work.
Trying to think of whether there certainly was a great deal of what we call narcissism, kind of taking pride in these horrible things that they were doing. So I think that that plays a bril in it that I don't know how much that plays into their denial. You know how many chapels say, oh, I don't know why I did what I did. Well, yeah, maybe you do know what you did and you're just saying that that's
what we have to get at. But I do think that there is the narcissism that they I can think of a number of cases where they did it because they felt they were entitled to be able to do it and get away with it. I think the boldness. I've had a couple of cases, just in rape cases where the boldness has astounded me that they felt they could just get away with it.
They didn't what was that base on the tournament or just they.
We had we had a case where the the it was a rape and he liked elderly women. He went into a hospital and he went on the eighth floor. He got a victim and when the nurse came and said who are you and he said, I'm a nursing student. I mean, he lied, And then he goes to the seventh floor and that time he says that he's a family member. This is like one in the morning, so yeah, very quiet, and he gets to the sixth floor before finally security comes, and what does he do with security.
He said, he drives a hit him. He have saltson.
Okay, So I mean that.
That boldness, isn't it in the hospital.
Well, you've touched on one of our states most notorious serial killers, and a lot of people that I worked with worked the case was the granny killer and murdered six women and all elderly ladies living in a certain area in Sydney, a fairly affluent area in Sydney. And he was They got on to him because he was a pie salesman and he went to a nursing home
and was sexually assaulted one of the elderly victims. And that sort of a lot more layers to it than that, but that led it led it to tracking him down. But he had issues with his mother that her promiscurity, I believe it was. And the ladies that he attacked, he would pull their underwear down and display them in vulnerable positions and leave their bodies their And yeah, I think that changed the way because that would have it
was during the eighties. The way that we approach the criminal investigation taught us how to investigate serial killing because it was happening so frequently and it was just a hop profile situation. I want to ask you mindful of the time, but I just want to wrap up with the type of work that you've done and not done you're still doing clearly and full credit to you. It's been an absolutely amazing career. How do you keep your
faith in humanity? Because sitting down and chatting to you, you come across like you can laugh, you can smile, you've look like you've you're enjoying life. And how have you managed to step away or not be destroyed by the evil darkness that you've seen during your career.
No, that's a very fair question, but I think that as a nurse we're trained to separate ourselves from terrible situations. You know, we see all disease and sadness and so forth. So you have to be able to separate out and not let it that. That said doesn't mean that you don't think about the cases. Certainly I do, and some of them, really child cases really are are hard to take. But I think that that's where you have to be trained.
You have to be able to separate well you yourself as a you can't go taking your cases home at night or you'd be sleeping much so I think that that's something you have to learn and you have to be trained for, and that's what I do. The other thing is I do teaching. I try to translate what I'm doing for younger generations to be able to carry on and to understand so we can stamp out some of this. That's where I get most of my uh,
that's where I think that. I like to think that I'm doing something really good.
I get that, and it's nourishing, nourishing for you because it is a dark world, but you can you can work it and come out come out relatively unscathed. I found that that you can correct me if I'm wrong. But I read somewhere that you had some of the notorious serial killers sending you Christmas.
Cards Easter cards too.
I'm glad they didn't forget Easter bizarre. Well, how did you feel about that?
Well, I'd like to think that they, you know, they appreciated something for out of Mind Hunter or something like that. But it was pretty funny.
It is funny, and I've had situations, situations like that and you've just got to got to laugh about it.
And I knew that I knew where they were. They were Cecily locked up, so I wasn't worried.
Okay, yeah, that makes you a bit tougher and a bit braver if you know they're they're locked up. But the things that you've accomplished in your career and whining in the back, I'm focusing on the homicide, the stuff that you've done in nursing, and the role model that you've been for women in law enforcement and nursing. Full credit to you, and I mean that with the utmost
honestly and respect. And I think it's really funny that you guys wouldn't even appreciate how much respect you got over here with what I call the true homicide detectives that understand the of the work that you're doing. So full credit to you and getting you on eye catch Killers. I can't explain how excited I was getting you on so well.
I've certainly enjoyed it. You're wonderful to talk with. I enjoy it very much.
Well, Thank you, Thank you very much. One question, because the listeners will criticize me if I don't ask the character that you based loosely on you in Mind Hunters, Dr Wendy Carr, do you like they do you like the portrayal. She seems like a pretty cool lady to me, and what I've seen on the show.
I loved her as an actress. I thought she did a great job and she did the case as well, but I didn't like about her background. And the other two is they got it so wrong that and they must they did not consult with John about all that kind of stuff. They had all of our material, but I and I know it was just for Hollingwood that they wanted to get a wider audience. But dogs are my favorite cat. Sorry, well remember she with the cat, Remember she had the cat.
Well, as you said, it's for Hollywood, but look the way the way it's betrayed. And I've got to say on the on the show, I like the way they approach interviews. I like the the edginess of taking like the person sitting there expecting they're going to get a standard question and then they go off on the tangent. I love that aspect of it.
But look, it's very good.
Well, look all the best for all the best for the future. Thank you so much for your time, and our listeners are going to absolutely love love this chat and the stuff that you talk about such an interesting, interesting era.
Well, thank you for your coming words. I appreciate it.