THE KILLER'S SHADOW-John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

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his hunting rifle ready. The October eighth, nineteen seventy seven shooting was a forerunner to the tragedies and divisiveness that plagued us today. John Douglas, the FBI's pioneering first full time criminal profiler, hunted the shooter, a white supremacist named Joseph Paul Franklin, whose Nazi inspired belie propelled the three year reign of terror across the US, targeting African Americans, Jews,

and interracial couples. In addition, Franklin baumed the home of Jewish leader Morris Amite, shot and paralyzed Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flint, and seriously wounded civil rights leader Vernon Jordan. The fugitive supported his murderous spree, robbing banks in five

states from Georgia to Ohio. Douglas and his writing partner partner Mark Olshaker reached turned to this disturbing case that reached the highest levels of the Bureau, which was fearful Franklin will become a presidential assassin and haunted him for years to come as the threat of copycat domestic terrorist

killers increasingly became a reality. Detailing the dogged pursuit of Franklin and employed profiling psychology and meticulous detective work, Douglas and Olshaker relate how the case was a make or break test for the still experimental behavioral science unit and revealed a new type of determined, mission driven serial killer whose only motivation was hate. A riveting cautionary tale rooted

in history that continues to echo today. The Killer's Shadow is a terrifying and essential exploration of the criminal personality in the vile grip of extremism and what happens when rage filled speech evolves into deadly action, and hatred of the other is allowed full reign. The book featuring this evening is The Killer Shadow, The FBI's Hunt for a White supremacist serial killer with my special guests John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. Welcome for the first part of this interview.

Legendary FBI profiler John Douglas.

how they portray it. The local police thinks of something like witchcraft and the headquarters. You know, why are we doing something like that, interviewing, you know, people in prison because I came back as an instructor in the behavioral science,

you know, teaching criminal psychology. And the reason I started doing the interviews was I want to be a good instructor because the instructors, the ones we had, while they were good entertaining, but they were getting their facts wrong and they were being challenged in the classroom by police investigators attending the FBI National Academy eleven week program where

they took a course in criminal psychology. And I'd be auditing the class because one day I'm going to be in front of that class and handman go up to one of the instructors and say, hey, you got your facts wrong. Man, what are you talking about? I said, I worked the case, you got your facts, you know. So here I'm auditing and I saying, holy mackerel, this is nuts. So that's when I started doing the going

out doing the research. I mean, we were on the road anyway, call them road schools for a week or two. Let's go into the prisons. Let's interview. Let's see if Manson will talk to us. Let's see David Burke with Richard Speck, you know whomever you know, ed Kemper, see if they'll talk. So we're the Bureau was against that initially, and even when I got that call in October, Dave Cole knew me and he knew what I was doing. So he said, John, do you think you know? We

have this case, a serial murder case. It's different than the kind of cases that you've been working, and you work on subcases, on subject cases, trying to identify who's responsible. Here, we know who it is. This is this guy named Joseph Paul Franklin. It's racist, a serial offender who's traveled all over the country and he just escaped out of a local jail in Kentucky. We have no idea you know where he is, and we're about ready to put him make him a top ten fugitive. So can you

come up here. We'd like you to do an assessment. You think you can do it, so I don't know. I don't I'll see what you have on him. So I go to headquarters and they give me box loads of material that I will take with me and Dave. Dave said, you know, hey, John, you know we're good friends. He said, don't screw up with this one man. He said, you'll be working cattle wrestling cases out in Butte, Montana if you if you mess up on this one, you know. So I get the I get the boxes, and I

go through everything. And his background is very similar, very very similar to the other cases that that I was working, where you have this real dysfunction in the background, you have the abusiveness by the mother. In his case, the mother and the father. Uh and uh they would beat him. He had he had two sisters and one other brother, but he would get the brunt of this and uh he got into volved in the animal cruelty and all that kind of stuff. He was bullied upon in school.

And then I saw he had a physical ailment that he got accidentally when he was a youngster. He he was playing with a shade on the window shade and there was a with his brother and they twisted it in such a way with this spring flew out and struck him in the eye, struck him in his right eye, and uh wait, how's this guy? He's good, he's a sniper and he and he lost his eye. And what really made it even worse for him because I would later interview him as well, but he his mother took

him to the emergency room. But the doctor there said, you know, okay, we have to let a heel a while, but bring him back in a couple of months. Well she never brought him back, and that's what and that's how he lost his eye. And he was just angry as hell at his at the mother and the father as you know as well. So here kind of interesting you see an over conversation for the loss of that eye,

where now he gets obsessed with weaponry. He wanted to be a police officer and when then when he found out he couldn't be a police officer, which is like out of serial offenders to when you ask some what profession would you like to go into? Because they see it his power and over others. So so he uh ended up being this crackerjack shot and go to the range and over compensated, you know, for that for that illness, and he drops out of high school and he then, uh,

he's floundering around looking to belong. He feels like alienated, isolated, you know, it's like an insignificant nobody, and what can he do to become a somebody, you know what? And he's looking for groups. He sees groups of people that he can target that he'll in his mind believe that they're inferior, they're inferior to him, their religion, inferior of their race, like so many of these groups where you see some of these, uh, these followers will join, you know,

these type of organizations, and he does that. He joins the KKK and the Nazi Party and some others. But he's floundering around because he sees that the FBI we pretty much have them infiltrated. Those organizations we have, we have sources in them. And he also saw them as a bunch of a bunch of drunks that would sit around in halls or basement somewhere talking to talk, but not walking the walk. And then based on that he finally becomes what we call today is the lone wolf type of an offender.

what are his vulnerabilities? If he has, if he has any where will he go. I'm learning through the research that I'm doing with other violent offenders, both not just serial murders, but single murders, but serial rape cases, arson cases, you know as well, looking for comfort zone area like you and I may have. I may have a favorite watering hole, the bar that I'd like to go to, or a place in the park where I'd like to get away from it and get away from people and

feel comfortable. Well, serial offenders, they particularly the first cases, they perpetrate generally in areas where there is this comfort zone. A little bit of problem I had though with Franklin and this this Franklin comfort zone. Really he was all over the place, he's all over the map. He's he's up in the northeast here, up and around Maryland, but then he's around Midwest, and then he went out as

far as California, you know one time. I mean he's in Utah killing you know, killing you know, people in a racial couples. So that's what made it so difficult. Thus it made it difficult early on for investigators. They never even linked any of these cases together because there was just so many and they were different, different weapons used, filing the ID number off, even leave the weapons at the crime scene. He didn't care because he they wouldn't be able to trace it. So what with where would

he go? He said, John, we don't even know where. We don't even know where he is, and can you can you come up with that? So I saw the comfort zone would be really where he began his life would be in Mobile. He was prolific bank robbery down there and never never got caught for any of the bank robberies. In fact that we went, that's how he

make his money when he was roaming around the country. Also, he got married when he was seventeen to a sixteen year old girl and ended in a divorce after four months. But then when he was twenty seven, he married another girl sixteen or seventeen years of age, and they had

a child together, had a daughter. And so being I'm looking at him proficient in bank robberies and also his only accomplishment in life are those kinds of things criminal accomplishments, but also personal accomplishment would be that would be the daughter, not so much the wife so much, but the daughter. But wherever the wife was, the daughter would be there. So where he's going to end up, he's going to be, what I said when out in those days of the teletype,

would be in amobile area. And then so if you're going to saturate the area, saturate the area in Alabama, and then further south too. He was roaming around further south and even into the Florida and what was unusual here. He robbed the bank, maybe get a couple of grand but he would also give his blood. He went to blood donor places and would get five bucks ten bucks for his plasma, which was odd. So that was another lead.

So he went out. If they saturated all the blood banks around in the Deep South, gave out photographs of him. He had very distinctive tattoos on his arms that they would see when he gave he gave blood, and so no, sooner they'd go out, and when the tilet type that went out all over the country. And let me tell you,

I'm just starting to develop this program. If he would have if I would have said, if he ended up in Washington, and I said, Mobile, you wouldn't be talking to me today, Dan, because they never would have developed this program. Because this was like a test, because the bureau is like the first one for the Bureau now to the others right after this on the heels of

this one here. So the teletype goes out. And what was kind of funny at the time, I thought it was kind of ridiculous, was the agent in charge of the Mobile office calls me up. He said, John, He said, we have information. Now he's in he's in our area. He's in Mobile. Ah, that's good, yeah, yeah. But what is the name of the bank? What bank and savings and loan? Is? He could a rob? Next? I said, what I said he wants to do? I said, that's like me providing the name and address of a serial

killer in an on show case. And I said, I don't know, I said, I don't know what banker savings alone. You guys, we didn't even know what city was in. I told you what city he was going to. He's going to be a mobile, so you know, it was kind of at the time, it was kind of ridiculous. So uh, he ended up actually being identified down in Florida. Doctor did a good job keeping them there well because he recognized the tattoos, called the office and then they

came over and the rest of him. I gave some ideas to the investigators and how best to interview interview him.

They were going to take him back to Utah where he killed h two African American males there, and they were good at flying back, so they end up it was thought of the best way to fly him back would be through a private plane and taking a long time, a long way back because he's also afraid of heights, so we could spend a lot of more hours with him than on a private private plane versus a public plane. And that's what they did that and they got a little bit of information out of him, not a lot.

It wasn't until later on when I got to interview him about eight years later, because then I was shifting over to his assassination research and interviewing like Arthur Bremer and Sir Hans Sirhan and James R. Alray Squeaky from who Shot Forward, Sarah Jane Moore Shot Forward and then other assassined type of personalities with I was doing a secret Service agent, and surprisingly I was asked to do cases for them when I was evolving, and they never

had a behavioral science unit, and they would end up sending one of their agents over Ken Baker to learn to understudy us. I even had the CIA came down to go to interviewing me at the time of what I was doing, of how you know, and to me, Dan, it's just it's just common sense, It's just it was.

So if I wanted to be good at anything, it seems I should go to the people that have been successful, although they were incarcerated, so they got one hundred percent successful, But many of the ones have gotten away with crimes for a long long time, and how are they able to do it and why did they do the things they did? And I'm looking for I'm looking for patterns and characteristics, you know, in their crimes and that I

could apply to other cases in the future. And what happened to me is by the time, by the time I end up retiring, I'm kind of de emphasizing profiling a little bit. In the specifics. I may give a rough profile, but I was getting more into behavior because I may miss a characteristic, like a like an educational level. And what you're trying to do at some point, once you provide the analysis of the police, then you go public.

You're trying to get lead value. And if I miss an age, if I miss an educational level, you know, someone would say, oh, everything fits. But the guy I know, I mean, he's he's a lot younger, he's a lot younger, and everything else right on the mark. So what I was one hundred percent felt good about was behavior on cases, not every case, but somewhere I really got a good grasp. But you know, what was this guy doing before the crime, the pre offense behavior?

a minehood. The show has them doing every interview that would now that's not it really wasn't like that. I would coach people to do the detectives or agents and select who would be best to conduct the interview. Maybe a woman detective of a certain age group should be doing this interview. So that's how that's how it began to evolve around me. So here here's something that was just like, just become a good instructor and then the next thing you know, I'm a program manager of criminal profiling.

And then the next thing, you know, now comes this case Unibama case Tail and all murders, Atlanta child killings, Buffalo twenty two caliber killer killing males. And also at the same time we had two cab drivers hearts were cut out of their bodies at the same time and brought in on that case, besides all the all the local cases. So we started off fifty nine cases around that time, about fifty nine, and was about fifty nine

nineteen seventy nine eighty about one hundred. But by the time I left, we were doing a thousand cases a year through all of it all over the world, quite a few from Canada of course, here South America, Central America,

over in England. So it's just it really grew. Meanwhile, I was getting turned out along the way, and by nineteen eighty three I would nearly die on the Green River murder case and see in Seattle, Washington, just burned out violencephalitis, brains split, bleeding from my right temporal lobe, in a coma, actually in a hotel room floor for three days before they kick down the door, and then

in a coma for a week. It came home to my family in a wheelchair, paralyzed and I had to go through I went to do five months of rehab and then after five months, back at it again, back at Quantico. Now I got the resources, I got the people, but I have to train these people. And it takes two years to train somebody to be any good at this,

and then they're really good by five years. But by five years a lot of them are beginning to get burned out themselves and they want they want to go somewhere, somewhere else.

it's just police stress, things like that. Just there was an agent dabbling in this, an old timer dabbling in this. But he he never really never went out and did the interviews and did the research. And really what happened was that doctor Ann Burgess. You ought to get her on your show. Sometimes she's really she's in the mind Hunter series. She's the would be the nurse. But she does a lot of testimony in crimes against victims. She's done a lot of academic books. She's doing a trade

book now. But we did like a book together in sexual homicide Patterns and Motives and the Crime Classification Manual. But she is not she's not like the character. Fincher, David Fincher, the director, developed a Minehunter. She was not telling us how to conduct investigations or do how to do research. She wouldn't. She helped us develop the computerized instrument, an interview form fifty seven pages long, thousands of questions that we had brainstorms sitting around a dining room table

up in West Newton, Massachusetts. And we sit there and everything pertaining to the victim, to the crime itself, to the offender, and all the questions around the victim and this subject and early childhood and all that, and we would we would uh fill that form out and and unlike on television, Uh, well they hadn't even gotten to the formula on television. But we didn't go in with tape recorders. Only did that once with Ed Kemper. Because if you go in with a tape recorder or you're

taking notes, even they're very suspicious. What are you doing? What are you writing down? Who's going to see these notes here?

didn't use them. Uh. And as far as the form, fill out the form, we would fill out the form as much as we could with the background basic stuff

before the interview, and then we'd ask the questions. But we have to memorize, you know, what that form was like and what the questions and we so after we completed the interview with the subject, we then we'll go back to the motel, hotel, whatever, and we we'd fill out the rest We fill out the rest of the forms of the fifty seven and that was the data that we would turn over to doctor Anne Burgess at

Boston College. The crunch, the crunch, the data you know on these uh, you know, you know on these people.

actually brought a New York Daily newspaper. My dad was a printer and president of a hypographical union up in New York and had this headline, have son of Sam terrorized in New York City. And I said, a hundred years from now, David and I whip out the paper. No one's going to know John Douglas or Bob Wrestler here my FBI partner. But one hundred years from now, everyone will know you David Berger's the son of Sam.

And but so what I knew from him, I knew from him and others they follow, they follow the press. And if they to follow the press, you know, that's you know, you know, that's a good thing. Uh, dude, is to try to create create pressure, you know, through the media on the on the subject. I may be able to get a subject to inject himself into the police investigation. Uh. I've done that on you know, on several cases. I'll just give you a quick example out in uh San Diego, there was a guy, uh who

was arrested. This was the crime. A woman ran out of gas along a highway. Uh. They would then find her abandoned car and find her up in his foothills with a dog collar chain around her neck. And she's been sexually assaulted and and murdered. UH. Got the case from the police, and I told the police, Okay, this is what we're gonna do because because where where the this happened has occurred, there's traffic there. I want to give this guy the impression that someone saw him at

that at that car. So for the first so then not what I have to do is get with an investigative reporter, h one who works with police we can trust. And so bring that investigative reporter in and the first article would be something like, we're going out to the public that this woman she ran out of gasoline here she was found murdered. UH, and we are hoping that people would have noticed this person alongside of the highway stopping to supposedly to help this help this woman out.

So you go out with that. Then we're going to follow it up with We're getting very very good to feedback from the public. And you know now, and we appreciate the help you know, something along that line, and you come out with another one that now we we've come up with finally have a description of the car, description of that of an individual you know that was there, but we don't know really if this person is involved in the case or happened to go by or whatever.

Because I knew that would have happened. I knew it had be traffic there. He saw traffic there, and so he What the long and short of it is is that he injects himself into the police investigation. But they were ready for someone to inject himself into the police investigation, and too he looked for looking for a legitimate way to put himself there. That yet said, I was driving by and I saw this woman off the side of the highway. She looked distressed, and so I pulled over.

Apparently she ran out of gasoline. I offered to take her to her service station, but she's said no, no, thank you, and then went on my merry way. Well turned out, you know, that was the guy. That was the guy now, I then I brought up between brought up to FBI headcroarters, the Internal Affairs called OPR Officer of Professional Responsibility, and I sit down with a bunch of lawyers, and you know there they say, John, you're not are you lying to the press? Are you what

are you lying to the press? And what are you talking about? Are you providing false inflammation? I said, well, wait a minute, I said, well, I said, let me tell you about the case. They weren't aware of this case that I had just done. Uh, they were talking about other cases. I said, and I said, this is what I did, and this is what happened. And and they looked at each other and they said, well, you know, if this ever backfires, you know that, you know, we're

going to have your your head. I mean, why what what am I doing this? You know that's uh, you know that's wrong here. So you always had to fight, uh, you know, fight within in time in the FBI, and we always had the expression, you know, you know, uh asked for forgiveness rather than permission because you have analysis paralysis and you never get anything done. So there's some high risk. There's some high risk, but but you you put pressure on someone, just like Bunday when he was

a fugitive top ten, he was pressure on him. He broke down. But unfortunately he's breaking down he's killing, but he's leaving evidence, all kinds of evidence you know, behind and he would you know, subsequently be you know, apprehended.

changes his name. He was thinking about going to Rhodesia to kill people over there fighting these wars, so he needed a name change. But he took the name Joseph Goebel propagandist for Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebel. And they took the name Franklin for Benjamin Franklin. Thinks a great patriot sounded good to him, so he then put it all together of Joseph Paul Franklin. And we talked about the

confession that that was gained by those detectives. But there was other crimes that people felt, police felt, uh and FBI felt that he was responsible for. You didn't get to seat until after he was in prison for eight years. So in the interim, what did you learn and what was suspected of him? And then we can talk about when you finally do get to interview him.

have been you know, it could have been more. And what's difficult, Dan, Well, first, when he finally go for the go for the case, which case is they look for the case it's good to get him the toughest penalty, and that the death penalty, and that was the one in Missouri where he shoots a man coming out of a Jewish synagogue, and that's the one that's good to get him, get him the you know, capital punishment. What was the rest of it? I lost my train of thought, Dan,

What was the other part of the linkage of case. Well, yeah, the thing about the two there are probably cases beyond just the twenty twenty one case they suspected in because in nineteen eighty there's no computer system. There's nothing that can link cases together. There are seventeen thousand different law enforcement agencies. There's not a national clearinghouse or sharing of information. We wouldn't come up with a program until about nineteen

eighty three. About eighty three called the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a computerized program. But here we are now the year twenty twenty. That program is a voluntary program. So it means is that not every police department is participating in that program. It's a system that's fantastic, but you have to have a mandatory everyone has to be participating in

that program. So maybe again going back to the difficulty of linking him to cases unless he's going to confess to him, which he would have confess to some of the cases here, they were all just so different. He was different. He didn't just stay with one particular type of weapon. His victims were. It was all over the map as far as the cities where he was. Interracial couples, two young boys, walking down the street and I believe Utah shoots and kills kills them. I mean, it's just

it makes it made it very very difficult. Today. We have all the computers, we have all that, you know, some good information, we have great stuff we can do through forensics, but we still don't necessarily have necessarily the best communication between us, and it varies from city to city, town to town with police sharing information with other other investigative agencies, and which then makes it again you get

a traveling mobile type of offenders. It's still it's a challenge, a challenge for law enforcement.

Put it. He felt he'd be safer in certain a state state prison or be taken down south, you know, somewhere. But what they end up doing, they just moved him to a different a different site within Marion where he had more protection with kind of like criminals, and so he didn't he didn't have to fear the an attack by the criminals and his his his unit. When when he brought him out again, we were addressed in suits, you know. He came out in his prison garb and

uh yeah, very animated. Uh shook our hands and uh we we really didn't We wasn't that hard to get inflammation at him. He wanted he wanted to talk. Uh. He was very pleased with himself of what he did. He went through the some of the crimes of what Larry Flint, you know why he shot Flint. Flint in his magazine Hustler depicted inter racial couples and uh that drove him crazy. He happened to be in the area

where Flint was going through some some trial. Uh and UH learned through the media where he would go to lunch every day. And then he said he he went scouted at the area and lucky for me, he said he found an abandoned building across the street from from the luncheonette. And he went the night before what he would do oftentimes to go the night before and gets set up, even bring the weapon and leave the weapon at the crime scene. And he scratched the idea off

the weapon. And after he does the shooting, he just leaves the weapon there. He doesn't want to be carrying it seen carrying it. He covered make sure he didn't leave any prince, any prince behind. So Hick hims Flint and his attorney walking down the street and he takes a couple of shots at them, striking Flint, Larry Flint in the back, which would paralyze him. He shoots the other his attorney leave in the back, and he will survive. He will survive that. When I talked to him, he

you know, he was he was sorry. He just didn't kill Flint. You know, Larry Flint. He hated what the stuff he was putting in the trash, he said in his magazine. But when it was interesting when I saw he has to go to YouTube you can see an investigative reporter, a woman investigative reporter, talking to him just before his execution and how bad he feels about Larry Flint and shooting Larry Flint. Well, he's full of maloney because he feels bad about it because Larry Flint does

not want him to be executed. Larry Flint is against the death penalty. He thinks that's punishment enough for him to spend the rest of his life, you know, in prison. So he had a change of heart, Franklin, but he didn't have a change of heart when we talked to him, and he was just his planning. He got more a little more better plan than earlier crimes. But like shooting the outside of the Jewish synagogue in Missouri, he went the night before, stole a bicycle, riot drives over to

the synagogue where he's going to be setting up. He sees a telephone pole. He has a spiked nail. He hammers into the pole and he wraps that with cloth. And he's good and the reason for that, he's good to arrest his rifle, you know, on that the next morning he then goes away. He leaves U leaves the weapon there, hides it, and then he scoots away on

his bicycle. The next day, comes back on the bicycle and then he sets up and he just waits anyone, anyone coming out of that Uh, that synagogue is going to die. And so he he was surprised he didn't shoot more so the first one he shot was his mail. Uh. He came out. And then after he just wash spraying shots all over. So there was some some wounded, but he killed one. He then leaves the weapon and he

gets back on the bicycle, goes back to his car. Uh. And then he has a police scanner, which was very popular. Then he's listening to police and the police, you know, they they're at a loss. They don't know where where he is or who he is. There's no vehicle. Uh and uh he goes on his merry way and goes to the next next city to commit commit more crimes. His goal was was to create who's hoping a race

for He idolized Charles Manson. He thought it was amazing On Manson, who I interviewed, was able to uh have this so called Manson family to carry out the deeds of of of Manson. He would have liked to been like a Manson, but he was. Manson was very charismatic. He this is this guy is not a charismatic type of the individual he's He was a profiler in a way. He would pick up girls see him hitchhiking, but when he got in the car, in his mind, I will

decide now if you live or die. He's not telling the girls that, but he would ask questions about, hey, where are you from, and who do you date well? And have you have a date a black guy or and and if they said yes, it was a girl said she she went to Jamaica and I was dating a guy down there when she was on vacation. She you know, she died. Another one he picked up one time, saying things she had a boyfriend, was it was black? You know she died. Others they didn't weren't so inclined

to to date outside their race. You live, you know, you lived, and so it was just it was just a real difficult case. He would have loved being around today. I mean, what's going on? Uh you know today in the Internet, where you can you can find so easily others who have the same the same disliked, dislikes, whatever you're looking for, whatever your problem is. Uh, you'll, you'll, you can probably find somebody who believes the same way

you believe. You believe what you believe in. And whereas in the old days, you know, even like the news you listen to like a field time, like Walter Cronkite, and you got the news. You get the news in the morning into five o'clock, eleven o'clock. Uh get that. You got news. Now you're getting all talking heads twenty four hours a day news. And you you could turn on the channel whichever supports you know, your belief system.

Even in presidential election, you be able to CNN, you want to go to Fox or MSNBC, you know whatever. So the internet is uh yeah, and it makes a real tough dam of the because you can't be surveiling every every site. You can't do that. And and not every person belonging to these groups are going to be necessarily violent. I mean, who knew when they were marching

in down in Charlottesville. Uh and was there three years ago, and and they were chanting, you know, Jews will will not replace us, and blood and soils and stuff out of the nasty Germany regime there that one person there would jump in the car and try to mow down the you know, mow down some people. I mean, just don't. Yeah,

it's really it's really hard. And law enforcement since nine to eleven and the FBI emphasis was on international terrorism, and you only have so many thousands of agents working over three hundred different violations, so it's I mean, you're really spread thin. So you have to really rely You have to educate the public on different signs of like the early childhood kind of stuff like that, and how this rhetoric may become become stronger and vile, and and

we talk about killing and becoming obsessed with weapons. You have to rely on the public to provide information, you know, to you and and then you may have something to take a look at. It's just like a police a school shooter. I mean, it's just there are certain things. It's not one hundred percent, but there's certain red flags that you'll see the isolation of a of a student from others, maybe a particular type of garb that they'll be wearing, and so they're totally different than the rest

of the you know, of the school. A social not anti so it's more of a a social obsessed with violent video games are assessed with weaponry. I mean, you have to have someone who's got to talk to this to this person. But if as long as you know what to look for and teachers know what to look for. So it takes an educational uh program too. But but it's difficult. And that's we talk about the shadow, the killer shadow would mean by that too, is the shadow

that Franklin uh cast. I mean there's others, uh, but where he left off. The kid in Charleston, South Carolina Ruf Dylan Rufe who goes into the church. The ministers there, I think the eight of his flock sitting around in a Bible class and here he comes walking in dylan roof and he he wants to join the group. And then in the middle of the of the lesson, he stands up and he for the forty five and he kills them all. And he when I didn't interview him, but I know I know his background. He's he was

not saddened by what he did. He hopes that others will carry uh you know, carry uh you know out this uh, this this hatred, this bitterness and and create create this uh, this war. You know, are they psychotics? Now they're not psychiic. There's certainly a mental problem, but they know right from wrong. But this is their way of becoming a somebody, becoming that one grain of sand on a beach of billions and billions of grains of sand where where they feel they're nobody and nothing. But

now now they've accomplished something. They've they've there. They are somebody you know in in their mind.

I'm helping you. I'm like a coach. But but this is your case and and uh uh and it really it made the unit very strong where there are times where where the police parmists wanted to come directly with us, uh, call us directly rather and go through the channels. And you have to go through the channels. But they really trusted us and knew that we were always trying to help them there number one. Uh and so it's uh no, it's been very very uh rewarding. And uh I'm still around.

I'm like a dying one of the flash of the dinosaurs still around, Dan.

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came from headquarters itself. It came from the Civil Rights Division in Washington, because this was a very dangerous individual who they were very afraid might be on the track of trying to assassinate President Jimmy Carter. So this really was in many ways a make or breakcase for John's unit and John personally to try to prove the value of the behavioral science program and to show that it

could actually help in real life situations. And as anybody who reads the book will find out, the Fugitives Fugitive assessment that John did basically immediately at the request of the Civil Rights Division was largely responsible for helping to bring Joseph Paul Franklin to ground and stop a three year spree that included at least to our knowledge, twenty two murders and plus the severe wounding of civil rights icon Vern and Jordan and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flint.

There may be other cases that we still don't know about. So this was very important to answer the other part of your question, Dan, I think the case is important and the book is important because even though Joseph Paul Franklin was caught and put on trial and eventually executed several years ago, his shadow, the killer's shadow still looms

large in this country, as we all know. And I think one of the reasons that John was so affected by this case was this was not you know, the kind of individual sexually motivated serial killer that you and I have talked about on this program in the past. This was somebody who had a mission to start a race war in the United States, and many people have

followed him. So Joseph Paul Franklin, though dead, has many spiritual children today, including you know, ones that have been in the news, those who marched in Charlottesville in twenty seventeen, Dylan Rufe who and so on. So unfortunately, we're saying, I mean, you know, it's in some ways we're we're like doctors taking on very dangerous case. Is you don't want anybody to be sick. At the same time, you

want to do the best you can. And this book, I think is unfortunately very relevant today because of that.

his own paranoia felt was communist motivated. I believe we didn't get the first African American special agent the FBI till about nineteen seventy, which was only two years before Hoover's death, So I think it's fair to say that even though they did some investigating of early civil rights cases like those in Mississippi, the three civil rights workers Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner in nineteen sixty four, and church bombings and things like that, they were kind of half hearted attempts.

So the FBI really had a lot to make up for and a lot to catch up with. So by nineteen eighty, I think it was when I believe Judge Webster William Webster was the director, they really had a lot to make up for, and as a result of the Civil Rights era, they needed to be part of this. Now what's interesting is jurisdiction. As you know, the FBI is a federal agency and it doesn't have any state

jurisdiction unless it's brought into a case. Were under very special circumstances, like it being a federal reservation like an army base or something like that. However, the Civil Rights legislation allowed it to investigate crimes that had some kind of civil rights discriminatory or prejudicial element to them. So

that's where the Civil Rights Division was coming from. And this was, as I say, a particularly urgent case because this was a very unusual serial killer in that he traveled around a lot, He had no particular comfort zone for his killings. He didn't know almost any of the people that he murdered. It was completely impersonal. Not only did he move around, he used different methods. He was a sniper, He did some handguns directly directly to his victims.

He did several bombings, so this was a very versatile guy. And also because he had previously threatened then candidate Jimmy Carter, the Secret Service was extremely concerned that a Carter made his campaign President Carter now made his campaign swing through the South, that he would be a target for Franklin. So the clock really was ticking on this. And you know,

I think so this was a multi jurisdictional effort. The FBI was involved a number of local police departments and sheriffs' agencies, the Secret Service, and you almost anybody you can think of.

for eight years after he was arrested. So now tell us what he did learn from being involved in those historic cases. Well, again, that's another very interesting question, Dan, because when he was called down to Atlanta where in nineteen eighty eighty one, when the murders, these horrible murders of black boys and girls, mostly boys, but both were taking place. There was a general consensus that this must

be a clan type operation. This must be an organized hate group, maybe the American Nazi Party or what it was then called, the National Socialist White People's Party. And when John Douglas and his teaching and profiling partner, the late Roy Hazelwood, who was also another brilliant profiler, went down to Atlanta, that's what they expected to find. But then when they started looking at at all the scenes,

they said, this is not a clan type operation. This does not do the kind of things that Joseph Paul Franklin was doing. There was nothing symbolic about this. There was no attempt to do this publicly as Franklin had done. There was no symbolism to the crime scenes. They were unlike previous clan activities. They hadn't left the bodies in full view. This was no warning.

A white person, particularly a white group of people as the clan would represent, would have stuck out like a sore thumb. They would have been easily identified, and there was no such thing. So one of the things that John learned and accepted was you have to go with the evidence, not with what the confirmation bias or where the particular local sentiment is. So it was very difficult for him and Roy to convince the task force and then the public that no, this was not a hate group.

This was an individual, most likely a young black male himself, who was doing this. Now, I must put in that though we definitely believe that Wayne Williams was involved and perpetrated a number of these murders, he certainly didn't do all of them. Some were not related, which also brings up another point Germaine, to what you asked, which is

the whole idea of linkage and linkage blindness. One of the most difficult one of the most difficul called aspects of the Joseph Paul Franklin case, and this was not only true for John and the FBI, but for all of the various jurisdictions that were that were investigating these cases, was that how do you link them? How do you link the the bombing of a synagogue in Tennessee with the with the sniper killing of somebody else in Johnstown, Pennsylvania,

for instance. So these were very difficult cases and linkage was a big issue, and in some cases, as you know from looking at the book, some of the linkages really weren't established until Franklin had long been in prison and started talking on his own, perhaps to alleviate his boredom. He said it was to be transferred to a state facility rather than Marion Federal Penitentiary in Illinois, which he didn't like very much and thought he was in danger in,

and also just for the for the recognition. He eventually said that he wanted to have the the most murders. Plus, as we've recalled, he was he was trying to start a race war, so he was trying to inspire other people to follow in his footsteps.

call them, the perpetrator is following. For example, in the in the case of the Atlanta child murders, once, once the Medical Examiner's office said that while we're starting to find some some physical evidence, some you know what we now call c s I type evidence, hair and fibers on some of the victims. Now John predicted rightly, So he said, all right, clearly, the perpetrator, the unsub, is

following the media. So I believe that he will start trying to disposed of the bodies in such a way that that kind of evidence, that kind of physical hair and fiber evidence will not be available. He said, I think he's going to start dumping bodies in the rivers around Atlanta, the Chattahoochee or other rivers. And as we all know from the history of the case, now, that's

where Wayne Williams was eventually caught. The bridges over the rivers were being surveilled by police cadets from the Atlanta Police Department, and on the last day of what was supposed to be the scheduled surveillance of one of the cadets noticed a car stop in the middle of a bridge on the Chattahoochee River, heard a splash underneath, and that's how Wayne Williams was identified.

it's not just profiling. That's that's a tool and that helps, but it's the idea of profiling and proactive techniques that profiling have taught us, along with the forensic evidence, with the out and out traditional detective work, with reaching out to the media to see who knows what, who's seen everything, All of those things together are what generally contribute to a successful case conclusion.

particular type of killing. And John, in Franklin's case, he was good at several different types of killing. And so John was accompanied by Ken Baker, also deceased now unfortunately, but a terrific Secret Service agent who had come over to John's unit to help study this. And so they were very interested in the personality. They were very interested in how he chose his victims, how he went from

one place to another. They found out that. And first of all, to go back to what John probably told you is before you go into any of these prison interviews, and this goes from the first one he did with Ed kem for all the way up to what he still does today, is you have to know the case inside and out, and you have to know as much about the offender as you can, because it's so easy for them to lie. It's so easy for them to

tell you what you want to hear. He probably told you, and we certainly relate in the book about the case of David Berkowitz, the forty four caliber son of Sam Killer, who insisted that he was motivated by instructions from a demon contained in a two thousand year old dog that belonged to his neighbor Sam. And when John listened to this, and he finally said, all right, David, cut the crap. You know what's it all about? And he admitted that

it just sounded better. It gave him more of a personality, more of an aura, which a lot of them want. And so it was important for John to understand to understand Franklin's motivations and his background. I mean this confirmed, for example, that, as we say, most serial killers and repeat predators come from bad backgrounds, and Franklin was clearly abused by both of his parents, came from a very

poor background. And then when he was about six or seven years old, he had a serious accident with a with actually with a window blind that left him almost blind in one eye as a result of his mother not following up on medical care that he should have gotten. So he had a resentment, and so to begin with, he had anger. He grew up in poverty. He probably we constantly talk in our books about nature versus nurture, and in the case of these kind of predators. It's

almost always an intersection of both. Plus Franklin lived in the segregated South. He was born in nineteen fifty in Alabama. And all of these guys, and I think we can talk about the QAnon people today, all of the white supremacists, whoever you want to talk about, Dan, These are people who, almost exclusively and Franklin is a perfect example of this, have a deep seated sense of inferiority and inadequacy. And this is warring with a constant feeling of grandiosity and entitlement.

And those are triangulated by a resentment that they're not getting what the world should give them, what they deserve in life, and so they find some body to strike out against, somebody who they perceived to be either inferior to them or manipulating them. And as soon as Franklin, who I say was grew up in a very racist environment, as soon as he read Mine komf Hitler's autobiography and manifesto,

he felt he had the answers. The Jews were manipulating him and manipulating people like him, and society and African Americans were inferior and in danger of corrupting him and his society. So this gave him a mission, This gave him a reason to live, This gave him a self importance.

And what John probably told you also is that Franklin joined all of these groups like the Ku Klux Klan, like the like the National White National Socialist White People Party, which had been the American Nazi Party, like the National States Rights Party, but he eventually left these groups because of his own paranoia and the sense that they were all talk, that they didn't want to do anything, but

he wanted action. So he became a lone wolf. And one of the things that John certainly learned from the prison interview, and there's still an issue today with us in law enforcement, is it's very very difficult for us to know to be able to predict which of these haters, which of these far right wings extremists and white supremacists are just going to talk and just going to resent and just going to carry tiki torches and in Charlottesville and shout slogans like Jews will not replace Us and

blood and soil, which was one of the prime Nazi German slogans, and which ones are going to evolve into these lone wolves like Dylan roof. And what's very interesting about Dylan Ruth is when he was interviewed in prison, even though he'd been given both a death penalty and a life sentence, he was not concerned about these things because when the race war that he also thought he

was fomenting. When that took place, the winners, the people who would follow after him, would come and release him from jail.

The third which shows that all of these people aren't, you know, sort of dumb hicks if you will, I mean, they come in all shapes and sizes, and this is about this is about a race war to overturn the supposedly oppressive government of the United States and give power

to the white supremacists. Now what's interesting is several years later, in nineteen eighty nine, Pierce wrote another book, another novel called Hunter, which is about alone wolf who takes it upon himself to defend the white race and destroy Jews, Blacks, and other people who are considered impure or improper or evil in some way. Obviously, this book was based on the exploits of Josephaul Franklin, and Pierce in fact dedicated the book to Franklin. So you see, there's kind of

a continuation of this story. And so one of the reasons that John has been so obsessed with the Franklin story for so many years, and so much more, if you will, disturbed by it than he has been even some other individual cases, is because, as you suggest, this one has legs, This one has influence. These kind of killers as opposed to know the normal, if you will, one of the mill sexually oriented predator. These people have a mission and they inspire other people with that mission.

And this mission, obviously is very dangerous to our society and very dangerous to our democratic way of life.

about being caught. But here's the really interesting part, Dan, is that, as you know, some of his victims turned out to be female hitchhikers. And Franklin had this idea as part of his mission, that it was his responsibility, his privilege, if you will, to defend white femininity, to defend the honor and security of white women. Now, however, if he would pick up a young woman in his car as a hitchhiker, he would start a dialogue with them.

In other words, he would start profiling them, and he would eventually get around to the subject of interracial dating. Interracial sexual or other kinds of relationships or intimacy. And if he learned that this girl or woman had had any kind of relationship with black men, that was considered a big threat to him, and rather than taking them safely to their destination, he would kill them. So, in

other words, he was God, He was the avenger. He was the one who decided life or death based on the behavior, and he did it all through his own kind of profiling. And when he told this to John, he was very matter of fact about it. This is how you do things, and this is what these girls and young women deserved if if that's what they did, because one of the greatest threats to him and his kind,

he felt was the intermixing of the races. And in fact, the reason he ended up deciding to shoot and try to kill Larry Flint was not because he was against pornography. He had a large pornography collection and was a great consumer of pornography. What he objected to was when he saw an issue of Hustler magazine that had a pictorial showing relations between an interracial couple.

number of escapes he had. He had several escapes, as you know, and the number of times he got away from close situations where if luck had not been with him, he would have been captured. He chalked this up to Jesus wanting him to get away. The other thing that's interesting is among his other talents was he was a very proficient bank robber. But he was not interested in the money for him itself. The money he used to support himself to support this mission he was on to create the race war.

kind of contact. So John was not so. John had a camera with him in the in the interview, and Franklin asked too if John would take some pictures of him and send them to his daughter. John agreed and then was and thought that he would. You know, I didn't know what kind of pictures he would want, But he was surprised when Franklin just started doing these you know,

like bodybuilding and self defense poses. In other words, this daughter, who he hardly knew, this was the kind of image that he still thought after all these years, should appeal.

This was the way he wanted to be portrayed. And then what's also very interesting is I don't know if he mentioned this, but Franklin continued to write letters to John after this interview, and in one letter he responded to something we'd written about the Scottsborough boy's case in a book, and he said, well, you know, you can say what you want, but how would you feel if your daughter was attacked by all these you know, n

words and all of that. And it was this is a time when Franklin was already proclaiming that he'd seen the light and he you know, didn't didn't have any hate in his heart anymore. But these letters, this letter certainly showed that he that he still did. And another letter he wrote to John really which really was kind of pathetic in its way, except for the fact that this guy was such a monster, is he asked John if he could try to locate Franklin's ex wife just

because he wanted to have a relationship with somebody. So, yeah, there are these little human twinges, I guess you could call them if you will. But he kind of, you know, remained, despite what he told people, in kind of an unregenerate monster and hater, you know, till his dying days.

same as so many other people had. And as we've said, John really never figured out, and to this day we still haven't how you distinguish the hater from the lone wolf, somebody who evolves into the kind of person who's going to take action on his own and do horrible damage, as Franklin did. And so this is one of the things we're still working on and I don't know that

we'll ever have an answer to this. And you know, one of the things that really bothers us is that in the last number of years, particularly during the last administration, a lot of these people have really come out from under the rock, and they've had many opportunities to do so.

So I think that, you know, which is why we're so glad people like you are publicizing this book and this concept, because we think we we really have to be continually vigilant and always aware that these kind of people are out there.

and we have limitations on ourselves. When you find somebody like this, who has no limitations, who has this anger, who has this sense of inadequacy that can only be fulfilled by this kind of murderous action and hurting other people. That's a very it's a very dangerous phenomenon and one which, as you say, we're seeing more and more of in more obvious ways.

into Darkness, Obsession, and the Cases that Haunt Us. Thank you so much, Mark, Thank you, Dan, take care, Thank you stay well, you too. You too good Night,