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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, the Nightstalker BTK. Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good Evening. The FBI's pioneer of criminal profiling, former Special Agent John Douglas, has studied and interviewed many of America's most notorious killers, including Manson, Son of Sam, killer David Berkowitz,
and BTK strangler. Dennis Rader's trained FBI agents investigators around the world and helped educate the country about these deadly predators and how they operate, and has become a legend in popular culture, fictionalized in the Silence of the Lambs and the hit television shows Criminal Minds and mind Hunter. Twenty years after his famous memoir, the man who literally wrote the book on FBI criminal profiling opens his case
files once again. In this rivetting work of true crime, he spotlights four of the most diabolical criminals he's confronted, interviewed, and learned from going deep into each man's life and crimes. He outlines the factors that led them to murder and how he used his interrogation skills to expose their means, motives, and true evil. Like the hit Netflix show, The Killer Across the Table is centered around Douglas's unique interrogation and
profiling process with his longtime collaborator Mark Olshaker. Douglas recounts the chilling encounters with these four killers as he experienced them, revealing for the first time his profile methods in detail, a glimpse into the mind of a man who has pierced the heart of human darkness. The Killer Across the Table unlocks the ultimate mystery of depravity and the techniques and approaches that have countered evil in the name of justice.
The book that we're featuring this evening is The Killer Across the Table, Unlocking the secrets of serial killers and predators with the FBI's original Mindhunter, with my special guest journalist and author Mark Ohlshaker. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Mark Olshaker and thank you for having me.
Dan, It's always a pleasure.
Thank you very much. I wanted to say too. In nineteen ninety five five, you and John formed John Douglas Mindhunters, Incorporated, and then you released mind Hunter, inside the FBI's elite serial crime unit, and the Netflix series Mindhunter was made in twenty seventeen as a hit series. And today we are discussing your latest collaboration with John Douglas, The Killer across the Table. Tell us what this book is, What this book is about primarily.
Well, Dan, since you mentioned mind Hunter, this really follows directly from that. The first season of mind Hunter is really about the beginning of the behavioral Profiling program, which was when John and his partner Robert Wrestler, who were tasked with going around the country and speaking to different police departments and teaching FBI investigative methods and criminal psychology.
While they were around the country, John decided it would be a good idea to go into the penitentiaries and prisons and try to speak to the most dangerous of the violent predators there, the serial killers and other violent predators, and see.
What he could find out and what they did.
After going through this process was to be able to correlate for the first time what was going on in the offender's mind for during and after the offense, to correlate that with the evidence left at the crime scene, forensic evidence, behavioral evidence, scientific evidence eventually DNA and things like that, and that these interviews are really what led to the modern discipline of criminal profiling and criminal investigative
analysis as the FBI practices it. So what we decided to do in this book is for the first time take a deep dive into this interviewing process to show exactly how it was done, what the beats are, what the techniques are, how John got these people to open up about what was really going on in their minds.
And while we do talk about his encounters with the famous ones, with the Ted Bundyes, with the David Berkowitz, the son of Sam, with Ed Kemper, the co ed killer who was featured prominently in the first series of first season of Mind Hunter, and others like that Charlie Manson, for instance, what we did primarily in this book was to take four cases, four violent predators who John has encountered, and to really show what the encounter was all about
how these people's minds work and what the outcome was. Now, most people will not know these cases. They're not as well publicized, So that allows the reader to approach them objectively, without any preconceived biases, and for us to essentially use the great thriller technique of letting the reader find out for him or herself what happens next.
Now, you talked about some of the pioneering techniques that he used to for the very very important, crucial interview. Tell us about some of the things that right from the beginning they used and learned to set up an interview so that it'll be more effective.
Well, that's a very interesting question, Dan, because the first thing they realized was that they couldn't really tape them, to record them or to take notes, because these guys tend to be these criminals in prison tend to be very paranoid, and anything that you do to encourage that behavior is going to take away from the candidness of
the interview. So what they realized was they better just go in without a tape recorder, without notes, and talk extensively, and when I say extensively, I mean hours at a time to these predators knowing everything about the case so that they couldn't be snowed or fooled.
And then as soon as they.
Got out of the interview, they would refer to a fifty six page written document what they called the assessment Protocol, and they would write down all the answers to all the questions in that before they forgot them. And then these protocols were all correlated, eventually into a major study which in turn led to a book, an academic book called Sexual Homicide Patterns and Motives, and then eventually to the Crime Classification Manual, which is a systematized approach to
violent crime. Now there were different techniques for different people, and somebody like Charlie Manson, who was very short and diminutive, he as soon as they got into the prison with him, he climbed up on the back of the chair so that he could lord over these two FBI agents and
they let him do it. Sometimes they would position the offender looking out a window, sometimes away from it, depending on his personality, always with the same goal, which is to get as much information about what really happened, what was really going on in the minds of the killers or the predators as they were committing the crime, as well as what they were thinking before and how they reacted afterwards.
You cite the four examples of Joseph McGowan and Donald Harvey, Todd Cole Hep and Joseph Condro. What was it about Let's start with, as you do in the book, talk about Joseph McGowan. What was it about the Joseph McGowan case that interested John Douglass in the first place? And was there any other reason why he was involved.
With this shot?
Well, first of all, the reason he was involved is in this case, all of these encounters that we talk about now happened after John retired from the FBI, so he was actually much freer to do whatever he wanted. He wasn't constrained by any FBI protocols m In McGowan's case, John was called by the chairman of the New Jersey State Parole Board and asked to interview this individual and
see whether he was a proper candidate for parole. Now, what was very interesting about Joseph McGowan, What was very macabre? He was a high school science teacher in New Jersey. He had a master's degree. He was very well respected. In other words, he was not a marginal character. He was someone who was totally invested in the system, if you will.
And what he did was.
He killed, he assaulted, brutalized, and murdered a seven year old young lady, a girl who had come to his house to collect two dollars from an order he had made for Girl Scout cookies. She was a Brownie, she lived around the corner from him. As soon as he and he told John, after John took him through hours of interviews and got him to relive, to go back into this one time and place, he said, John. As soon as she rang the doorbell and I saw who it was through the screen door, I knew I was
going to kill her. Now, what makes somebody who is totally invested in the system, who was respected, who has students, who lives in a nice house, what makes him give up everything to kill a totally innocent, beautiful child like this? This was really important to know. The next case, Joseph Condro was not quite so invested in the system. He was kind of a ne're dwell on the fringes of society, and he raped and murdered young girls, young teenage girls.
Now what's interesting and completely chilling about his case is he didn't murder strangers. He chose the daughters of friends of his. Why because he felt it would be easier to get to them, because they would go with him willingly. He had already established a trust relationship with them, which of course he completely violated. And he thought he was so close to the situation that no one would suspect him. That was his particular perversion and mo then on the third case, Donald Harvey.
We think of people like.
Ted Bundy as the most prolific serial killers in American history, people like Bundy who cut a swath of destruction and murder from Seattle all the way down to Florida. And in fact, as horrible as people like Bundy are, Donald Harvey was probably the most prolific serial killer in American history.
Why what did he do?
He was a nurse's aide and an orderly in a series of hospitals he probably killed. We'll never know for sure, but he probably killed close to one hundred people over a seventeen year period before anyone realized a murder had taken place. These are considered natural debts, and yet he was causing them in hospitals. He was there as victims were there. He didn't have to hunt, he didn't have to be predatory in the sense that most of them do.
People were looking right through him. And then we finish up with a man named Todd coleheb a successful real estate broker in South Carolina. He drove fancy sports cars, he had an airplane, he had a whole staff of people working for him, and he'd also killed seven people. The only reason he was found out was because you may remember this case from a couple of years ago.
Sheriff's deputies discovered a young woman who he had kept chained up in a shipping container, large shipping container as you would see on a boat, in his rural property in South Carolina. He'd kept her there chained up for six weeks. Everyone assumed that she was a sex slave for him. In fact, that was not the case.
The case was.
He had killed her boyfriend and she had witnessed it, and he didn't really know what to do with her, so he just kept her trying to figure it out. So, what makes all of these guys tick, and they're almost always guys, by the way, what makes them tick? That's what we needed to know. That's why this book is important. This is about the human condition at the real extreme.
Stand now with each one of these cases. Let's go back to Joseph McGowan. Sure, John employs many techniques as well. To start, and you explain as well that going into this he originally he thought when they have preconceptions in the beginning of criminal profiling, they thought that a lot of inmates might not want to talk to them. In fact, many of these did. In fact, it was the opposite of that. Why would Joseph McGowan talk to him. We
know that he's up for parole. There's a felony, first degree felony murder, so it means that he was up for parole after fourteen years. So there was a couple of one parole hearing where he was denied in the second parole hearing, and then John came into the picture to inform that parole board after interviewing him. Explain a little bit more about how important John was in this parole process.
Well, he was crucial as it turned out. Dan, Yes, I think there's different motivations for the killers to speak. Sometimes they're bored, they don't get a lot of most killers don't get a lot of visitors. Sometimes they think it will increase their stature with the prison, with the prison staff. Sometimes they think it will help with their parole chances. Sometimes they just want to relive their crimes. A lot of these people live by fantasy and that's
what they want to do. And in some cases they just think it's a battle of wits and they can out with an FBI agent or.
A FED Now.
In McGowan's case, he really thought this was going to help with his parole chance. And what he didn't realize was and John came into the case, I have to say, totally objective. He didn't know whether this individual should be parolled or not. But one thing that McGowan and some of these others don't realize is that when John goes in to interview one of these people, he goes in
totally prepared. He knows every aspect of the case. He's gone completely through the case files, he's gone completely through the autopsy photographs, the autopsy protocols. He knows everything about the case. So that these people can't snow him, they can't be self serving. He gets to what's really going on, and he's also very patient and tries not to be judgmental, at least overtly judgmental. He wants these people to tell
their own stories in their own way. So in the case of McGowan, he went through hours of interviewing until McGowan finally felt comfortable enough and was unguarded enough so he would tell what really happened. It's almost like this is your life kind of television program. He got McGowan to go back to relive what had happened more than twenty years before. He said, tell me what happened. Tell me what was going on when this little girl approached
your steps, And he got McGowan to tell him. And he also got mcgallen to explain to him that he was often acting out of rage. He called it red rage and white rage, and red rage he said he could control if he had to, but when it was white rage that controlled him. And in the case of seeing this little girl, when he was already upset about other things, which we go into in the book and we really uncover the mystery of why he killed this girl. But when white rage took hold of him, he couldn't
control it anymore. And what John really talking to him and what he was then presented before the parole board was McGowan might get out of prison and he would be okay for a while, but then when he got into a situation where the white rage took hold of him, he would still be a very dangerous individual. And that's why he recommended that McGowan not be paroled, and McGowan remains in prison to this day.
You spoke about that he really broke down. He had been examined by many other psychiatrists and other personnel, and yet John broke through and got to much more. And that's his goals, to get to the actual truth. So many things he didn't believe based on his experience, and
he broke through with that. Well, I thought was fascinating was the even though this seemed like a very very bright parole board, that he still John had some emphatically told them some big lessons about what he had learned, especially concerning McGowan, but also just about perpetrators in general. Tell us about that, well, you know, that's.
A very interesting subject you bring up, Dan, because what John will say is, you know, he is like a specialist. Other doctors might see ordinary things, but if you have a rare or unusual condition, you have to go to a specialist who sees this kind of stuff all the time, and that's what John is. John sees the predators, he sees the worst of the worst from all over, and
he's an expert in that. Many times, when these people are examined by psychologists or psychiatrists, they don't really know how to deal with these people because they don't have that kind of experience. I mean, when most of us go to a therapist, it's because we don't feel well, we don't like what we're thinking, we have anxiety or depression, and so it's to our advantage to tell the truth and tell the doctor the therapist how we're really feeling.
That's not the case all the time with incarcerated criminals. They want to get out, that's what their job is, so they don't want to tell the truth. They want to tell whatever sounds best. And we have many cases of individuals being able to fool psychiatrists who are thinking the best about people. One of the major cases that was featured in the first season of mind Hunter on Netflix is the case of Ed Kemper, the so called
co ed killer. He was on parole and under supervision for having killed his grandparents when he was a teenager and he had court mandated appointments with a psychologist or a psychiatrist. One time he had a very good visit, in a very clean bill of health from the psychologist he went to see, and it just so happened that that day, in the trunk of his car which he drove to the appointment, he had the head of one
of his young victims. So it's not that these people don't try, they just don't necessarily have the experience to be as skeptical as John does to have their antennas up in the same way.
You cite a couple other dramatic examples, and including Arthur Shawcross as well in this which I think is important.
Well, Arthur Shawcross was a man in upstate New York.
He had.
Raped and assaulted a young boy and a young girl. He was put in prison for fifteen to twenty five year sentence. I believe he was let out after fifteen. It turns out he just picked up where he had left off in this case, he graduated from killing children to killing prostitutes in the Rochester, New York area, prostitutes and helpless people. Now, it may seem that these are completely different victims of choice, victims of preference, but they're
not really children. Prostitutes and street people and old people, elderly people have one thing in common, which is that they are all vulnerable. And sometimes that's all these predators are looking for, is the vulnerable victim.
And this is part of a central part of the profiling process for jonas that he tries to look at the central motivation, not a sure somebody might look at initially as a motivation or the motivation. He goes, like you say, much deeper into finding the actual motivation, which is a surprise to a lot of people. You talk about the Joseph Chondro case and the role of an MSNBC TV producer pilot series and being the impetus for John interviewing Joseph Condro despite what the MSNBC producers wanted.
What was John's intent and tell us a little bit more about why he wanted to What was interesting about Joseph Condro's case.
Again, very very interesting case and really tells us a lot about the way people are all across the board. Joseph Contro, as I said, was itinerant, handyman.
He had been a painter.
He worked on construction. He'd been married a number of times and had a number of children with women who weren't his wife, and his predilection was to.
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What everydls urder young girls and you would think that you'd look elsewhere than your own backyard essentially for these victims, but he didn't want to have to go to the trouble of trying to figure out how to get them under his control, so he focused on the children, the daughters of friends of his, and he would take them out into the woods or into other rural areas and he would commit his crimes there because this was a complete violation of trust. These girls trusted him, and so
he took complete advantage of that. And it's just kind of amazing to see something like that. And what was very interesting is this interview that you mentioned with Joseph Condro, which lasted several hours, was done for a television program originally on MSNBC several years ago, and the producers, i mean the executive producers at the network were not happy with the program. What were they not happy with? They thought Joseph Condro was fine. He was, if you will,
a nice, good performer on the show. What they were unhappy with was John's performance because what they really wanted was something dramatics and fireworks. They wanted him to confront Condro, almost to attack him, to show his absolute anger and revulsion. But as John pointed out, that may be good television, but that's not what helps in these situations. If you're going to react that way to one of these offenders, they're not going to open up to you, they're not
going to share anything. You have to be very neutral. You have to encourage them, you have to bring them along and not be judgmental if you want to get the most out of them, and that's exactly what he did. So it's very interesting that you bring that up then, because what may be seen dramatic is not what's useful from an investigative, investigatory point of view.
John also, I think, well, at least you write that he was also despite all his history and his background, he found the psychopathology of Joseph Kandro still shocking.
Will say, it's pretty it is pretty shocking. I mean, how can you how can you not think so? And particularly John has two daughters of his own plus a son. And if you can just put yourself in the position of the parents and think you know nothing, you know. We say, nothing is worse than in life, perhaps than losing a child. Nothing is worse than in losing a child,
than losing a child to murder. And to go one step further, nothing could be worse than losing a child to murder at the hands of somebody you trusted.
I mean, don't you think, yes, absolutely, what did not to give anything away? But what was some of the breakthroughs, at least with Kndro to be able to find out the truth that was elusive to other people the deeper truth about his motivation for these murders.
Well, I think one of the things was that everybody has different perceptions of risk. Most people would think that it's very risky to commit crimes around people you know, and so that kind of insight will help guide your investigation.
But Condro turned the tables on this and gave John an investigators a radically different insight, which was that Condro considered it a lesser risk if he would if he would target children he knew children, young girls, young teenagers that he knew because they would not suspect him, They would not resist him until it was too late, so that he would not have to fight, He would not have to do anything that might compromise his identity in
terms of an investigation. And he understood that, and he told John that the most important thing to him was get rid of the body and hide it well, because if there was no body, it was very difficult to undertake a prosecution. So what's eerie and horrible to contemplate, but very very important from an investigative point of view, is that while he was doing these completely depraved crimes, I being raping and murdering girls who he knew. At the same time, he was thinking very carefully about the
crime and how to get away with it. And the other lesson we hear we get from him is that though the rest of us can't understand it, these people are completely without empathy and nobody else's feelings really matter. What was staggering to me about Kandro is after he committed one of his murders, he then comes back to town and with one of his ex wives, he goes to a parent teachers meeting for one of his children.
I mean that to me is just staggering that he could kill one child and then go to a parent teachers meeting on behalf of another child.
What shocked John Douglas, as I mentioned, but also shock anyone that would read this despite what kind of criminal that you read about, is that he was so close with the family, friends with the stepfather, friends with these people, let them stay at their home. He was given the secret password that this little girl had and to make sure something like this didn't happen. Is that something and so we talked about the neighbor of Joseph McGowan, and
so he was familiar with that little girl. But this crime, these crimes take it to some other kind of level in terms of what he was able to do during before and then especially afterwards, joining.
In y're absolutely right, You're absolutely right, Dan. And the fact that he was given the secret code word by the parents that meant to the children that the person who had this code word was safe and you could then go with him. That just seems to me the ultimate betrayal of trust, and it tells us something about the total lack of conscience that these people have, and that really helps us form the profiles of the kind
of people we're dealing with. Kandro was unusual because of his choice of victims, and that was a real eye opener. In other ways, he was typical because of his total lack of empathy, his total lack of remorse, who was totally matter of fact to him, and even his dealing with the law once he was caught was completely procedural
and well thought out. He essentially traded away the possibility of a death penalty by saying he would cooperate in finding some of the bodies of the children he had killed. At the same time, he told John very matter of factly that he should have been executed and that he would want anybody who did something like this to one of his kids to be executed, but at the same time he worked it out so that he wouldn't be executed.
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this was another MSNBC pilot. This was a second time that he had undertaken interviews on behalf of them. Tell us the circumstances in which he came to interview Donald Harvey.
Now, what was very interesting about Donald Harvey was he was a very mild mannered man. He was friendly, he was totally non threatening, and as I say, he was probably among the most prolific serial killers in American history. And the reason was because people were looking right through him.
The fact.
What we very interesting, what we learned from Donald Harvey was that he had figured out completely how to blend in with his situation. And when I say blend in with the situation, I mean not just to take a job as an orderly or a nurse's aide in the hospital. He would analyze the situation in that given hospital completely.
He would know who wore, what color, and what form of uniforms on any given day, so that if he wanted to blend in to another part of the hospital where he didn't belong, he knew where the uniforms were stored and the name tags so that he could blend in so that he could steal one and do that.
He became an.
Expert on all kinds of drugs and the and what the lethal dosage were was, so that they could so that he could administer it when he wanted to. He knew when the shifts changed so that when people would be looking for him when they wouldn't be, when there would be a lot of people on the floor when there weren't. He knew the symptoms for every disease that people had, so that he could mimic them, whether it was a heart attack or a stroke, or a blood
clot or anything like that. So this was somebody who had completely analyzed.
His environment.
If you will, and as I said before, most predators have to go out on the hunt, as if you're chasing wild animals. Donald Harvey didn't have to do that. It was like he was in a zoo where all the animals were they are contained for him. All of his potential victims were there right in front of him, and nobody suspected anything. He claimed that his motive was mercy killing, that he was putting people out of their misery, but that was patently not true. This was just like
other serial killers. This was a manifestation the manipulation of domination and control, of a sense of godlike power over people and the idea that he could do whatever he wanted, that he had the he had the power of life and death over people. He could do whatever he wanted. And the longer it went on dan, the more he was successful, the more he became omnipotent. He could do whatever he wanted, and people, as I said, just looked right through him.
In the interview, How does John, for example, how does John counter some of the lies that have already come with them, that they've already said for years and years. How does he prepare to be able to counter them and challenge them? And how does he garner enough respect from them to be able to do that where no one else can. What is this secret?
That's a very good question, and the answer is that he is totally prepared. And once these people realize that they can't put anything over on him, then they start telling the truth because they feel they have no alternative. In other words, in Donald Harvey's case, when he would say, well, I killed so and so because he was dying of cancer or heart disease or whatever, and I put him out of his misery, if John knows the actual circumstances of the case, he can confront him and say, no,
that's not what happened. He wasn't dying, or there was a chance to save him, and you did this because you wanted to or you did this in such a way that it caused a lot of pain so you couldn't possibly even putting him out.
Of his misery.
Or you admitted that you didn't like this person ahead of time. Here's a perfect example. When John went to Attica Prison, New York to interview David Berkowitz, the son of Sam, who had terrorized New York City as the forty four caliber killer in the summer of nineteen seventy seven. The word on the street and what Berkowitz had told
everybody was that he had been motivated. He had been under the control of his neighbor, Sam's two thousand year old demon dog, and the demon dog was the one who had forced him to kill, who had told him to kill. And when John confronted him with the actual circumstances of these murders, of the fact that he was on the hunt nightly, that it was always the same kind of person, that it was always a boy and a girl, or a young man and a young woman in a car together loving each other, as in an
experience that David had never had in his life. When John confronted him with all of that, and Berkowitz said, well, you know, the two thousand year old dog made me do it. And John said, essentially, cut the crap. But he didn't say it in words that He said, David, that's not true. That's not what the dog didn't make you do it. And Berkowitz said, you're right, John. Here, you know, here's to ask me what you want to Well, here's another example. Sometimes we tend to overinterpret, and we
can learn things from the criminals. For instance, Burkowitz ays, the son of Sam wrote a number of letters that became public. He wrote letters to Joseph Borelli, the chief of Detectives of the New York City Police Department, explaining who he was and wanting and wanting glory. And at the top of the page he had made intricate patterns on the stationery. And then John said, well, why did you do that? What was the significance of these patterns that you drew on the top of the letter head?
And Berkowitz said, I just liked them. They just look nice to me. So you know, sometimes we can over interpret too. So we've got we've got to keep our eye on the big picture.
You do, right, though, at least in the case of Todd coleb that some of these people are highly intelligent and at least claimed so that they would like to have more insight into how they became who they became.
Yeah, I think that's Todd Colhep's case. I think that is true. He was highly intelligent, very very industrious. He he had the misfortune, if you will, to assault a friend of his, a sixteen year old girl when he was about seventeen, and as a result of that crime and that complete lack of judgment and desperation on his part, he was sentenced to eighteen years in prison, and the judge didn't know what to do with him, sent him
to an adult prison. So this is a guy who essentially grew up in prison, and that has to warp your sensibility, you know. I don't think it was an improper sentence, but it was just a very unfortunate situation. So when he got out, he essentially was in his twenties and had no adolescence. He really didn't know how to behave in the world, so he tried to figure
it out for himself. He got a college degree, he became a real estate agent, very successful, but he still had this rage inside and he still had this sense that he could control things, and that if people insulted him or dissed him in any way, it was his right and his obligation almost to revenge himself. And that's how he committed some of his murders. So, you know, one of the themes of this book, The Killer Across the Table, is the balance between nature and nurture. Another
way of saying this is our serial killers made or born? Well, the answer is, in most cases it's both. They certainly have a probably an organic, hardwired predilection toward violence or risk taking or impulsive behavior, and if they end up with a bad background, abuse, or any other kind of problems growing up, that can become a very serious and dangerous situation. And that's essentially what happened in Todd Coleheb's case.
He was shuttled back and forth between his divorced parents, neither one of them really seemed to want him, and he essentially had nobody he could trust growing up. And you know what, he grew up without trust, and anybody who he thought was taking advantage of him he struck, struck out at and tried to take revenge.
You also say, just to this mix, and not to add commentary whether this is right or wrong, but just only that he because of this minor, relatively minor, will say not to discount him relatively minor offense involving his friend at a young age. He got him, that netted him. In eighteen years he was designated as a sex offender, and that followed him around and complicated his business to a great degree.
You also write that I was just gonna say, you've written a book very carefully, Dan.
I appreciate that.
Yes. Think you also write that John coming to this case and interviewing Todd was also very interesting because before he had known who it was, he and his staff had also worked on the Superbike murders profile, and so he was gratified that he was accurate with that.
Yeah, this case started when there was a motorcycle shop called Superbikes around in South Carolina, around the Columbia area, and four people were murdered in what looked like cold blood. There was no real motive or involved that anybody could tell. Wasn't like money was taken or anything like that. Four people who worked in the actually three people who worked in the shop and then the owner's mother were all killed in this motorcycle shop toward the end of the day.
This case was notorious down there, and when unsolved for years and years, John was called in and asked to profile it, and he became convinced that the killer was a disgruntled customer who in some way had been disrespected by the staff. And when the case was finally solved, that's exactly what it turned.
Out to be. And Todd Cole at that point.
Owned up to owned up to the case. And this is a man who loved guns. He was very meticulous. He felt that he had been disrespected by the staff. And so in spite of again being invested in society, having a good job, having people depend on him, he went back to this place and watched it very carefully to make sure in his you know, he had his own sense of morality, that no customers were there, that
it was only staff. He waited till the end of the day, he walked in and as efficiently as possible, he killed all four people in the shop and walked out.
And that was that.
And later on years later, when he was when he was interrogated by the by the Sheriff's office in Spartanburg, South Carolina, I watched the watch the tape. He's very matter of fact about the whole thing. He's almost proud of not having killed these people people, but in his proficiency at having killed. So this is a very so,
this is a very mixed up guy. And I will say that in this case, the reason he agreed to cooperate with John is he really did and I believe him in this case, he really didn't want to understand himself and why someone as successful as him felt this compulsion, this motivation to even the score, to get back at people and kill. And that's what he did with Lucky Lancelots.
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Then, was John interested in the completely different victimology that would maybe confuse an amateur profiler when they were looking at all these different times.
Yeah, these.
Todd Colehead's victims were not linked by the police. There were the four people in the bike shop, and then several years, a number of years later, a man and a woman were killed. Their bodies weren't found at the time, they just ended up missing. And then sometime after that he killed another man and that's what he put at the girlfriend, the man's girlfriend in this shipping container, because
he didn't know what to do with her. So yes, I mean, one of the things we learned about killers from the Todd Coleheab case is that, you know, sometimes we have linkage blindness. We call it when we either link cases that shouldn't have been linked, or we don't link cases that should have been And there was no reason to think that the same person would have killed people in these different situations until you understood the psychology
of what he was doing and why. And in his case, his motivation was any time he thought he was being taken advantage of, that's when the killing instinct rose in him.
The most movie.
Asked and let me just and let me answer but he freely, and he freely admitted in prison that had he not been caught and if anybody else had done this to him, he would have killed again.
Willingly, certainly, certainly. It's the most movie asque part of this book, very very vivid visual is the when they got a tip when when she had disappeared, this woman had disappeared and Caleb Brown had disappeared, calib Brown had disappeared, and they got a tip that she was on a remote property on a hundred acre wooded area. Then they got a hold of her cell phone and there was some connection with this person that seemingly from this successful
forty five year old real estate developer. But they had enough for a warrant, so they went and searched and they found this, as you mentioned, the cortex container, very very interesting when they saw the five locks on there and they tried to get in there. What happened tell.
Us well, first of all, and the way that they located it that this particular property was and you're now out of my technical level of sophistication, and John's too, but as I understand it, you're able to locate where the signal on a cell phone is coming from if you can identify which cell phone towers it is pinging during during a call, and apparently the cell phone tower that this phone had pinged was either on or very
near Todd Colheb's property. Combined with this tip, that was enough to get a warrant to search, and they searched the property and for quite a while before they came upon this container and as you say, it had five locks on it, which certainly arouses suspicion. What could possibly be in there that you need five locks for. They tried to break the locks and get them off. They couldn't do.
It at first.
Eventually they went to a barn on col Heap's property and found some of his own tools, and they used those tools to open it up. And as they got as they started opening up, they heard sounds. And when they finally got the fifth lock off and opened the door and aimed their flashlights into this darkened container and saw a young woman with a chain around her neck chaine to the wall. I mean, you can imagine how
shocked they would have been. At the same time, another contingent of Sheriff's deputies arrived at Todd Colehep's house in the city and interviewed him. He denied everything. And then as soon as they said, well, we've already been to your property out in the country and we have Caleb Brown, and at that point he knew the jig was up.
Yes, and this too, you say that this incredible case of the superbike murders. Is also a documentary producer, Maria Oz. Maybe I'm mispronouncing her name, Yeah, but she inadvertently became involved with this and was introduced to Todd Coleip and was produced a series, a six episode series after that tell us about that.
Yes, this is very interesting and this series will be on Investigative Discovery in the fall. It's going to be called Devil on a Chain, which is a reference to a line about Todd Coleeth from the probation report that was done during that original crime when he was that original sexual assault when he was sixteen.
And what happened was.
Maria who is a former investigative journalist, television journalist and a documentary film producer in Minneapolis. She got a call one day from the cousin of somebody who worked for her, and this cousin was a real estate agent in South Carolina and said Maria, I need some advice from you. My boss, my ex boss. He'd actually stopped where he'd gone over to another firm at that point, but he said, my ex boss at the real estate company has just
been invited for murder, for multiple murder. He called me from the jail and he'd like me to write about him.
What do I do?
And so that began Maria's quest to find out what makes this guy tick. And what happened was she didn't feel that she had enough information or understanding. She called in John and said can you help us? And John said, well, I can help you if he'll agree to talk to me.
And so.
In the prison Warden was unwilling to let John actually into talk to him. But what we did was that fifty seven page UH protocol Assessment, the assessment protocol that I mentioned earlier.
UH.
We were able to get Todd Cole have to fill that out, and in fact, he filled it out so completely that he needed numerous extra pages to do this. So we have probably one of the most complete UH and I believe Ken did self examinations of a serial killer that you know has ever been produced, and it's all reflected in this book. The killer across the table.
Why what was it about Todd though that that he was able to do this? And also you you talk about self reporting to psychiatrists and the Bolli in that what was exceptional about Todd and his ability to be able to give you something that John believed was accurate.
Well, I think I think there's there's a couple of dynamics going on, and you've kind of hit on all of them.
Dan.
Number one is, unlike most of us so called normal people, a lot of these people can lead a very compartmentalized life. They can lead their normal life and their criminal life in two separate silos, if you will, and they don't
necessarily have to interact with each other. The other thing was, in Todd's case, I think he did have certain insights and sensitivities that most violent offenders don't have, which is that he realized he was going to be in prison for the rest of his life, which he will be, and he really was troubled and conflicted and really did
want to understand. So I think, based on the fact that he had what he had reported before was very true and we were able to check him on it when it came to time for him to write out these answers and tell us what he was thinking again before, during, and after each of these crimes, so that we could correlate this with the evidence left at the crime scene.
He was very credible. We believed him because everything that we were able to check him on he had been completely candid and honest about and he wasn't trying to wasn't trying to be anything that he wasn't. And one other thing Dan which was very interesting in Todd Coleeb's case, very few of these killers ed Kemper is a notable exception, but very few of these killers really do accept responsibility
for what they did. And in Todd Coleheb's case, once the jig was up, he absolutely accepted responsibility and said, yes, I did it. Now I'd like help in understanding why I did it. That was a rare opportunity for us.
What I thought was very interesting and probably surprising and was surprising to me was that his claim with calib Brown, you know, chained and shackled in this in this container, and she was the person we didn't mention. She was the person that said listen, He's the guy that told that. Todd told me he did the superbike murders, so.
That that's what opened it all up. Absolutely.
Yeah. Surprisingly I thought was that his claim of the contact he had with calib Brown, he said was consensual. How did John reconcile that claim?
Well, you know, uh, it's a little dicey because Calla didn't talk to us, so we have to take it from Todd's point of view. But everything he says makes a certain amount of sense. And what we suspect was he claims, and we have reason to believe him that he never actually raped her physically pushed himself upon her. There's no question that they had sexual relations and had had before this whole event. They knew each other from before. But it is believable that he did not force himself
on her. And anything that happened may have been initiated, may very well have been initiated by her. And I don't mean that there was anything perverse about her. I think this very likely could have been a survival mechanism on her part. For instance, he kept her chained up. On the other hand, when she asked for things, he would go out and buy her whatever she wanted, whatever food. He had an account that Amazon and whatever she wanted, he would buy for her. So again a very mixed up individual.
Yes, certainly the insight that he gave or he demonstrated, but also the insights into how he became, how he turned out. Did he achieve that? Did Todd achieve that with the help of John Douglas?
I think to a certain extent. I mean, motivation why we do these things, you know, ultimately may remain a mystery, but I think John did help him to understand the inherent conflicts in his growing up, in his development, in the problems he's had, he had as a result of spending most of his adolescents and young adulthood in prison. And ultimately, you know what we what we called this section of the book was just what.
He said, which was, no one made me do anything. He did it.
He did it because he had the choice, and he chose he chose the wrong direction. And we hope, we hope this is a lesson for anybody who might be going down that path. I mean, we don't expect ever to eliminate crime, and more than doctors expect to eliminate disease. We just try to learn more about it so that we can fight it.
And You also said too that really the John Douglas and everybody associated with the FBI and criminal profiling doesn't really care whether it's a disorder, it's a a disorder, a syndrome, a mental illness. It's just really you do say that it's a matter of choice with all of these people, but all that certainly, as long as they know right from wrong, that's the determination.
That is the determination. All of these people probably have some sort of mental illness, that's true. But unless they are actually delusional, unless they do not understand reality, to not comprehend reality and understand the difference between right and wrong, they are making a choice, and that choice is the critical element.
I want to thank you very much Mark for coming on and talking about the killer across the table, unlocking the secrets of serial killers and predators with the FBI's original mind Hunter. It has been fascinating for those that.
You want, it's always a pleasure to be on with you.
For those that might want to look at other work, Is there a Facebook page and a website they might people might take a look at it.
Yes, yes there is. You can.
You can look on mind hunters Inc. Dot com. That's m I. N. D h U n T E R s I n C dot com or mind hunters dot net. Either one will take you to our page. It'll show you our books, it'll tell you something about ourselves, and the other thing that we'll do is we'll give you actual pictures of the cases that we talked about in this book. So please please go there.
Absolutely. Thank you very much again, Mark Olshaker for coming on and talking about the Killer Across the Table. Fantastic book and the fascinating interview. Thank you very much, and you have a great evening. Thank you, Dan, good night.
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