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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. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. 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 Zufanski.
Good evening. In Why We Love Serial Killers, Drew University Criminology Professor Scott Bond, PhD simultaneously examines the publics and the media's fascination with the monsters among us, and the fascination in the ways in which that attention impacts them. He writes about serial killers' behaviors and the research from the FBI's original work to more recent models, then informs the law enforcement professionals charged with profiling, catching and studying them.
A real bonus is doctor Bond's correspondence with Dennis Rader bt K or bind Torture Kill, for its insight into the mind of an especially chilling, murderous psychopath. As such, it is a stark reminder that, irrespective of any deceptively benign appearances to the contrary, that they are never like us. The book that is featured this evening is Why We Love Serial Killers, The Curious Appeal of the world's most savage Killers. With my special guest journalists and author and
professor doctor Scott Bond. Welcome to the program, and thank you for a Green dis interview Doctor Scott Bond.
Well, thank you, Dan. It's really good to be here and it's my pleasure so so I'm looking forward to it.
Well, thanks very much. And this is again I applaud you for something unique in the animals of true crime here in a book that really looks at how we look at serial killers and how we and why that is so. And you've been many many important issues with this book and it's very, very fascinating and a lot of fun actually and makes you kind of wonder. So anyway, well let's get right to this. How much of this phenomena of why we love serial killers? Is fascination with
serial killers is an American phenomena? Tell us how American really this whole fascination and the whole serial killer phenomena itself really is.
Well, that's a great question. And you know, if you if you trace it back to sort of the roots, the first sort of celebrity serial killer, if you will, was probably Jack the Ripper, who of course was in London. So the roots of it really go back to London.
And for the sake of your of your listeners. The reason we can really point to Jack the Ripper is it was the proliferation of broadsheet newspapers that had just recently come on the horizon in major cities like London in the late nineteenth century, and it was those media vehicles that really propelled Jack the Ripper into the stratosphere
in terms of making him a crime celebrity. But in the say along the same vein, I think the reason that we're so familiar with the Ted Bundy's and the Jeffrey Dahmers is because the United States is the mediate capital of the world. So it's serial killers here who, particularly starting in the nineteen seventies, then really became what
I would call celebrity monsters. And actually that's the term that I used in that book to describe these individuals that have been transformed into almost like larger than light ghules, almost like Dracula like characters.
Right, And you really say that, well, I'll let you say about how what serial killers really represent in society. At one time there was more these not fairy tales, but tall tales and tales that were passed on from generation to generation, tales of the boogeyman, tell us what serial killers seem to represent in today's society, Like you say, from predominantly from the sixties and the seventies in America.
Yeah, yeah. Well, in fact, the term serial killer, we believe that it was coined in nineteen seventy four by Robert Wrestler, the late Robert Wrestler, who was one of the premier and original FBI profilers, and he came up with that term based upon you're using the analogy of serial adventures from the nineteen forties in movie theaters, the Lone Ranger and Batman and so forth, and he likens serial killers to that because they would just you know,
go from one to another, multiple victims. And I would say that these individuals have really become sort of popcorn entertainment in our popular culture. And what I mean by that is the way that they're treated both both real serial killers, the Ted Bundy's, the Jeoffrey Dahmers, the btks, as well as fictional serial killers like Cannibal, the Cannibal Lecture. They're almost indistinguishable. They're there, they're presented in this highly stylized,
larger than life fashion. I did it an analysis of two leading media vehicles in New York Times as well as Time Magazine, who are you know, quite prestigious uh uh publications, And what I what I found is that they still would rely on very sensationalized language, typically referring to serial killers as evil as monsters, devils, vampires, using
those sort of terms. Well, those are inhuman terms, and so so what tends to happen is these individuals become almost you know, like gothic monsters in the popular culture. And you know, and as such, you know, my argument or a lot of my uh the premise of my book is that that these individuals become indistinguishable from one another fact versus fiction. In fact, when Jeffrey Dahmer was was caught, he was referred to as the real life
Hannibal Lecture. So there was a blurring of fact and there and one of my also one of my arguments, and here's where I think it does harm to society, Dan, is that when you focus on the serial killers and transform them into these, as I said, sort of gothic monsters, you lose sight of the victims, and you lose sight of the fact that it's real humans who are being destroyed and the lives that are being destroyed here to the extent that everybody knows the name of Ted Bundy.
Everybody knows Jeffrey Dahmer, But what about the dozens and dozens of victims? Ted Bundy killed thirty six women? At least can anyone actually recall the name of one of the victims itself? In my experience, very few people can.
Well, I can't agree with you, and I see your point, but I was thinking about that after reading your book and then now hearing your response to that as well. But I got to say that I think a fair amount is that if you have thirty three victims, or forty nine victims, or seventeen victims, and the media does what the media does, and you keep playing the name of the perpetrator over and over again, it's just easier
to remember the killer. But I think, as a you know, a real big true crime reader myself, that we empathize with the victims. But you know, just like everyone else who may not even empathize with the victims, And like you talk about, there's a difference between how some people look at the same information in that regard, in that I think that a lot of us really really empathize
with the victim. But we are really, I think guiltily fascinated with the psychology of why these people are so inhumane or so much on the again outer limit of humanity, as you describe in your book as well.
Yes, absolutely, And part of the attraction, part of the the morbid fascination with these with these individuals is is the fact that they are larger than life. And one of the analogies that I like to use is, you know, there are people who are fascinated with natural disasters, things like earthquakes, things like avalanches, tsunamis, title waves, and at the same time, we're also fascinated, many of us with predators in nature that are larger than life and rare
and exotic, like great white sharks. Well, I would argue that serial killers in many ways are like a title wave or a great white shark. They're rare, they're exotic, they're powerful, and they're deadly. And I think that has to do with the fascination as well.
Now, speaking of deadly predators and the like, it was very interesting for me to because I think it's a lot of people that study serial killers, the psychiatrists especially that have studied serial killers, have done it on will say, very limited amount of time in terms of those interviews. Now you tell us about your two years with bt K and why b d K, and they just tell us a little bit about your correspondence with Buying Torture Killed BTK. Dennis Rader, Sure.
Sure, absolutely well. The I can trace the sort of the roots of this book why we Love serial Killers. I can almost trace it back to to in many ways, my students. I'm a criminology professor, and what I've noticed over the years is whenever the topic goes to serial killers in the classroom, my students are on the edge of their seats. They just cannot wait. They're practically vibrating in their seats, They're so excited to hear about serial killers.
And I realized that that, you know, there are a lot of people that way, and myself included, who are fascinated by, you know, by these individuals. And so when I when I started thinking about this book, I thought about it from the terms that that some of these individuals actually have brand names, if you think about it, Son of Sam, the knight Stalker, Jack the Ripper, BTK, Buying Torture Kill, the knight Stalker. As I said, the
Boston Strangler. These are almost brand names, and you can actually buy merchandise and products and books and films and games and puzzles that have these names associated with it. And so I said to myself, these are commodities. These are it's pop culture entertainment in many ways. So I decided to go to the source as part of my research, go to Son of Sam and BTK as you mentioned,
and question them why did they name themselves? Because those are two individuals who named themselves son is David Birkwoitz called themselves son of Sam, and Dennis Rader called himself buying torture killed. So I questioned, why why did you do this? What was the purpose? What did you get out of it? Were you aware of the public's fascinating in the fact that public was absorbed in these stories? And so I decided to go to the as I said, go to go to the very sources as part of
my investigation. And in the case of bt K, he was only too willing to uh correspond and and uh and through the mail with me. And I told him I'm writing a book, and I sort of played Clarice Starling. I said, I, you know, I can learn from you. I can uh you know, uh the silence of the lamb and uh you know, so I'd love to question you and as part of the research for my book. And again he's he thinks he's the most interesting fellow in the world. So he was more than happy to
cooperate because it feeds his ego. And what I learned is if this is a truly truly psychopathic, narcissistic individual, he the only thing that he really regrets. He sort of gives lip service to the fact that he that that he regrets his murders. I don't believe that he really does. What he really regrets is getting caught. And he he likens himself to a natural born killer, a predator. In fact, he uses the analogies like a shark, a hawk,
a wolf to describe himself. Even to the extent that Dan and I think your listeners may find this fascinating, is that he has created his own little logo for himself, his name Dennis. When he signs his letters, he draws it in the shape of a shark with huge teeth. So that's what he's actually created, like his own little prison logo. Fascinating his just sense of the individual, So just a.
Sense of the narcissism too. Now, what were you most surprised? Yeah, I mean you're not a guy to be surprised too often with this. But what was, if anything, surprising or what did you actually learn that you didn't think he would go going in with? What were you surprised at learning from Dennis Raider?
Well, bt K the one of the interesting things and fascinating things about him. Uh, that I that I learned, and it shocked me at first, But the more that I thought about it, it's very consistent. He's not able to live out his fantasies the way he did on the outside. Uh, serial killers that, as you know, their killing is is based in fantasy. They fantasize about it in advance. Many of them have a particular type of victim that they're interested in. And as as Dennis Rader
definitely did, and he called it trolling. He would look for the next perfect victim and he would seek them out, and he watched them and so forth. Well, he can't fantasize in prison that way any any longer. In fact, his media is even screened. They are, they're careful what he is allowed to look at. And and view because of the fact that it could create an erotic sense of arousal and and and feed his fantasy needs. So he still fantasizes he is a need to for a
fantasy outlet. So what he's done is he's created an investment strategy. He actually he sits in his in his little eight by ten cell and meticulously follows the stock market and the real estate and commodity markets. And he's created a fantasy investment portfolio that he tracks meticulously all day long, listening to the radio, tracking his investments. And he's proud to both that he's made a fortune since
he's been in prison in two thousand and five. So he's created a fantasy investment portfolio for himself and that's the way he lives at his fantasy needs now. So it was very surprising, but it's also very consistent with his his his needs.
There is there a common I know there's a lot of shared characteristics from serial killers, but at the same time that's part of the mythology as well, that they all a profile can fit them into a nice tight little slot, and that everybody has the same kind of behavior. But really as a shared characteristic, how important or not was the idea of re living the crimes by talking to people like you or people like me or other authors.
How important was it to relive if you didn't have anything left but that How important was that?
Well, that's also a great question. It is important to say that that serial killers are motivated by by very very different things. One of the myths is that it's all about sex. Well that's just not true. Probably somewhere around fifty percent or maybe slightly more than fifty percent of all serial killers are motivated by sex. But sex
isn't necessarily even the primary motive there. It might well be the control and domination of the individual is the primary sense of satisfaction that they get, and sex is really is secondary, so, you know, And they're motivated sometimes by having a mission. There are serial killers who feel the need to rid society of a particular type of individual, prostitutes or homeless people, for example. So some of them are mission mission oriented. They believe that they've been given
some you know, some agenda to fulfill. In the case of a BTK, now, he is an individual that is incredibly narcissistic and there or loves attention. So anything anything that is going to draw attention to him and put himself in the spotlight, is going to feed his ego. And one of the stories that he told me in his letters to me, and I think, you know again this it just shows his narcissism. He Dennis Raider for
a while carried a badge. He was not a law enforcement officer per se, but what he did he carried a city badge and he was uh and it's basically a home inspector for various statutes and compliance. So he could tell you to cut your lawn or keep your dog in a leash. You know that, that's that kind of thing. And he loved it. Of course that was a power trip for him. Well, because Wichitai is you know, it's a modest sized city. It's not a huge it's not New York City. Much of the of city Hall
is confined to one or two buildings. So when Dennis Rader went to city Hall to get his badge to be this this the compliance officer. Guess what he was introduced to. He was shown the BTK war room where all of the detectives had set up the the investigation to track VTK, and they took they took Dennis Rader in and showed it to him. He said, in the letter to me, he said, what a rush with an
exclamation point. That was probably, you know, one of the highlights of his life that moment, because there he was asking in the glory of the investigation, thinking to himself, you fools, you have no idea that it's me.
Yeah, And they had no idea his His his veneer was quite good, wasn't it.
Absolutely for thirty years. You know, he basically was able to avoid the detection and apprehension for thirty years. And the reason that he that he got caught if for your for your listeners who may not be aware, it was basically his own ego and unarraticism that that tripped
him up. He had he had been corresponding through through the mail with the late ken Landworth, the UH homicide detective who had been tracking him and chasing him for a number of years, and they had developed, you know, a bit of a relationship like kind of like Clarice Starling and had an elector through the mail, and Dennis Rader actually asked ken land where I'm going to send you a floppy disc with some information on in a letter you can't trace the information on that, can you?
And ken Landber said no, of course not, please, you know, send send that that sloppy disc right on through. Well, believe it or not, Rader had deleted the address of the church and his name where he was the president of the Lutheran Church Association, so they traced it right to him. And this gets to the fact that that Dennis Rader is not a stupid man. He's anything but
a stupid man. But in his psychopathic mind, he really believed that he had a relationship with ken land work and ken would never violate that, that ken would never betray him, and he was shocked. Denis Rader was actually shocked that ken Landwark would lie to him. So he was undone by his own massive ego.
Well, you know, I don't know if it's always the case, but I know there's a few cases where it's just
really testament. I think to the strategy that the officers the detectives that are going to interview some of these guys employ and really attuned to that narcissism and get on their side rather than look at them with the kind of discuss that they probably do have and just become their buddies there for you know, whatever long it takes for these people to really because they really want to tell someone, they know they're going to have to tell someone.
Well again, in the case of a BTK, he actually relished when he was finally caught. Once he that the jig was up, so to speak, then he was more than happy to sit with the law enforcement officers. And then ultimately in court, you know, he pled guilty to all the murders because he knew the jig was up. But now he got to be the big man on stage once again and say, look how I fooled you for thirty years. Look at all the things.
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Westy retails that I did and you couldn't catch me. You only caught me because of this floppy disc And so he was it fed his ego once again that he was able to, you know, basically perform on stage and and explain to the world how brilliant he had been for thirty years. So he to get back to your original question, this is an individual who definitely uh loves the attention in any way that he can he can possibly get it. But not all serial killers are
that way. You know, not all serial killers raise attention. And you know, Joel Riskin, for example, who was the most prolific serial killer in the state of New York, was not an attention seeker. At all. And in fact, he's another one who was pulled over by in a very sort of unlikely way. He had killed seventeen prostitutes, and he had the seventeenth victim, his seventeenth prostitute in the truck of his car, or excuse me, in the in the under a tart in the back of his truck,
and he was pulled over for a traffic infraction. His plate had expired, his license plate had expired, and he simply got sloppy and careless. He was driving around with this decomposing body, and the state trooper who pulled him over for the traffic infraction smelled the scent of death, and Joel Rifkin, being a psychopath, however, simply said, yes, it's a prostitute. I picked her up in New York City. I had sex with her, but then things went bad and I had to kill her. Do you think I
should get a lawyer? And of course the state trooper was completely dumbfounded by this. But not until they got into the police station and they began to interrogate Rifkin did they even realize that there was a serial killer and that Rifkin was he. Ultimately, he confessed of the seventeen murders. So there really had been under the radar the whole his work had really been killings had really been completely under the radar.
Right now, what did you learn from Son of Sam Berkowitz? Now, for those that don't know, you could or you can tell us and tell the audience if you like, about the insanity claim. And at the time that you interviewed him, was he clearly sane or was he still feigning insanity?
Well, David Berkowitz is you know, the son of Sam has been been in prison now for thirty seven years, and so he's been in prison well over half his life. He's sixty one years old and he's been in present prison for thirty seven years now. He was never found insane, He's he's never he's never been diagnosed as being insane. He's never been on any sort of medication. What I believe about David Berkowitz is that he simply became obsessed with Satan, And I really see it more as almost
like a drug addiction. I think he was. It became killing, became a bloodlust and an obsession with him. Now, the thing that is perhaps most fascinating about David Berkowitz is that he is also now a born again Christian. He became a born again Christian in prison in I believe it was either nineteen eighty six or nineteen eighty seven, so he had been in prison for about ten years.
And he said that he had a moment of clarity one night where he believed that he couldn't live another day, that he simply wanted to die, and he fell on his knees and he said that the hand of God touched him. And he has been a different human being ever since then, since nineteen eighty like I said, roughly nineteen eighty six, And so he now calls himself the son of Hope. He's no longer son of Sam, He's
the son of Hope. And what he has been doing since then is he's in the Sullivan Correctional Facility, which is up in the Catskills upstate New York. And Sullivan is a facility that is mostly for inmates who or wifers there there for life sentences, and many of them would be considered a mental and or physically compaired in some way. And so David Berkowitz actually now helps out the chaplain in the prison church or the prison chapel, and he serves as a mobility guide for some of
these prisoners who have problems and so forth. He helps them read, he helps them write letters. And he's been adopted, so to speak, by an evangelical Christian organization outside of the prison that operates a website for him, So he actually has a following. He has a worldwide following of evangelical Christians who have been moved by his expression of remorse and religious conversions. So you can't make this stuff up. He has become somewhat of an evangelist in his own
way and has that following. Is something like two hundred and fifty thousand people have come to his website to effect.
Well, I have no comment there. What I want to ask. What I want to ask is did you find it he had any real insights into his initial motivation? You talk about Satanism and drugs, and but what were his insights into what was going on in his mind at that time?
Okay, sure, sure, sure, A great question. Well, well, first of all, people asked that. Let me let me start by saying, people ask me, do I believe you know, you know, in his his conversion, and and I'm going to tell you this. I spent half a day with him, close to five hours, and we had lunch together. We sat, we talked, and this is after having you know, as I said, corresponded for a couple of years and so so I I mean, I was sitting literally nose to
nose with him. And if he's not sincere in terms of his conversion, then he is the Daniel day Lewis actor of serial killers, because he literally sat and sat and wept in in front of me with expressing tremendous remorse. And he actually reconciled with the mother of his final victim. His final victim was Stacey Moskowitz, and he actually reconciled with with Stacy's mother before she died. They exchanged letters
and she said that she forgave him. She was a I don't know if I'm born again Christian, but she was a Christian herself, so he actually had some you know, reconciliation there. So it's it's a fascinating story. I mean, I have an entire chapter devoted of the saga of from Son of Son of Sam to Son of Hope in my book and it's it's rather I just found it.
You know, rather fascinating. But getting back to your to your your question, Dan, the legend of Son of Sam, the the sort of the media created legend is that he was compelled to kill by a demonic dog named Harvey, that was the dog of his next door neighbors, Sam Carr, and that somehow this dog, through its nocturnal barkings with
you know, would would would cause him to kill. And there are also parts of the legend that that have been uh presented, is that he was part of a cult, part of a killing cult, that he didn't act alone. And I think that that that these these are are just complete mythology, uh, that he was not. I do not believe that he was part of a cult, and I do not believe that he believes that a dog
was compelling him to kill. What I believe, and this is based upon our conversations, uh, is this David Berkowitz grew up as a a emotionally disturbed, very lonely and isolated young man. And when he was old enough, he enlisted in the military, and he enlisted in the army. And he told me that he did clo to try to find kind of meaning in his life, some kind of structure and meaning, but he didn't find it. He came out of the army, he said, more lonely and
lost than ever. And it was at this time, at the age of twenty one, and he started to become interested in the occult and Satan, and he became a devoted to Satan. He became a Satan worshiper. And what I think happened is this, he became obsessed with Satan, and he was so lost and so miserable. Somehow in his mind, in his mind, it became twisted, and he felt that by killing for Satan that somehow he would find purpose and satisfaction and some kind of relief in
his life. Now it's very twisted, but I think that in his mind that's what he believed at the time, not mentally ill. It was more of an obsession and a compulsion. It became a bloodlust. But what happened was as he began to kill, or with each shooting, you know, he was a shooter. He used a fulldog forty four revolver, you know, unlike a lot of serial killers were stranglers or whatever. He shut his victims. No killing gave him any satisfaction. He felt no sense of relief. He felt
no sense of closure or satisfaction from his killings. Each one left him feeling more empty than before. So he was compelled to kill again and again and again, searching for some kind of fulfillment, as I said, which never came. And he was ultimately caught in August of nineteen seventy seven.
And he told me that he was so obsessed with Satan, in fact, that he thought for the first couple of years while he was at Attica in prison, that Satan was going to somehow come and opened the door magically of his prison and let him out. And of course that never happened, and that's when he became despondent, and after almost ten years in prison, he really wanted to die, and that's when he had his self proclaimed religious conversion. However, along the way, it's important to also note that he
was attacked by another inmate. Got here from ear to ear, and I've seen the nasty star that required approximately sixty stitches, and it's a really nasty star along his you know, his his throat. He almost died, He almost led to death, but they were able to stitch him back together. But they did not do a particularly good job. It's a very nasty star.
That his death.
Well, I want to talk about what you've examined as well, in terms of the common myths and a couple of the not so common myths about serial killers. What did you find What was one of the more important myths that you've debunked in this book.
Okay, the you know, the one of the great myths is that serial killers are all men, and that's simply not the case. The serial killers that have become these sort of household names and celebrity monsters as I call them, are typically meant the Ted Bundy's, the Jeffrey Dahmers, that, et cetera, the btks. But throughout recorded history, let's say the last hundred years, about fifteen percent or at least fifteen percent of all serial killers have been women. We
just typically don't know their names. And the one who probably has received the most attention come to the greatest infamy with probably the Eileen Warnos who was portrayed by Charlie Ferron and the Academy Award winning movie Monster. If she did a marvelous job, you know, a marvelous job in that. So there was some you know, the massive attention that movie received. Eileen Warnos is somewhat of a well known commodity in these circles, but many other female
serial killers we simply don't hear about. And one of the reasons it's the nature of the way that they kill. Female serial killers are motivated by different things than men. Men tend to be motivated by power, control, lust, domination, that sort of thing. Many female serial killers are motivated by what's referred to as either comfort or gain. They
oftentimes it's material things. So female serial killers are more likely to be of the black widow variety, the ones who stereotypically maybe running a rooming house and they prey
on their elderly residents, that sort of thing. And a classic example of that is Dorothea Poente out in California, who she ran a rooming house and she had elderly house guests there and she would extort them for not extort them, but manipulate them to get their their they're checks, their aids, Federal aid checks, and their insurance, and then she would kill them and bury them in the backyard.
So she was a predator black widow type, and they just don't receive the same amount attention that men do who are killing, oftentimes women by in a more graphic, brutal fashion, and that's what tends to get the media attention. So there's that's one of the big myths. And another one is that that serial killers are all Caucasian, that
they're all white, and that's simply not true either. About twenty percent of all serial killers in the last hundred years have been African Americans, so they're actually much more proportionate to the population the makeup of the population, but many of them simply don't become household names. And the one who maybe is the best known African American serial killer is the Sunday Mo Slasher who prayed back in
the early nineteen nineteen eighties. But just recently, just recently in Gary, Indiana, there has been Darren Van who was just captured recently, who was killing African American prostitutes in Gary, Indiana and Hammond, Indiana. But and here this gets to a rather controversial notion, but I firmly believe this is the media tends to focus on white male serial killers
who are killing white female victims. African American serial killers who were killing African American victims simply don't seem to receive the same amount of media attention. Although there have been at least seventy five to one hundred African American serial killers in the last hundred.
Years, I've also seen I think you'd take it even further, and I mean it's I think it's just the nature of television itself. I you know, if I'm not correct, but you almost see the the more handsome killers, the more handsome victim, the more innocent of victim, and predominantly, of course, the white victim, but the the richer victim and the more important victim. So if you put that
all together, that's just what the media loves. And it I don't think it's the public as much as the media itself somehow has decided at some time and they continue with that.
Well it's it's it's I understand your point, but it's two sides of the same coin. If the public didn't want to see it, If if the public didn't sure it didn't respond, that it would be something else. But but yes, you know, the the most if if you think of even the ant serial killers, think about just huge crime cases, trials that that that we focus on almost in variably there's a very attractive white female victim, and more recently it's been an attractive white female perpetrator.
Think about Jody Arius or Casey Anthony, an attractive white female perpetrator. So yes, very frequently there's an attractive white woman involved in the equation somewhere.
Now, you talked about the myth of being all white killers. What's the percentage of killers that are not white? Serial killers that are not white? And say the fras about.
About fifty percent believe it or not, In the last hundred years only I say only, but about fifty percent of all serial killers have been white males. Okay, white males. The myth is that they're all white males, but in reality, about fifty percent have been white males. The other fifty percent have been people of color and females.
Now, what did you find in your in your in your research about profiling itself as a tool. Tell us what some of the things that you've learned.
Oh yeah, well again a great question. You know, the the you watch these shows and admittedly they're very entertaining, you know, the dramatic series, the c S I S. The you know, Law and Order. More more recently, the following and uh uh, true detective, all of you know, all these shows that are that are you know, so much fun. You would think that it's an exact science, and you would think that you very quickly draw a profile and you and you catch a predator, and it's
it's simply not the case. It's a it's a it's actually what I would call an inexact science that is complemented by just a lot of intuition and that experiential thinking and the way that it actually works is quite fascinating. And this goes back dates back to the work of John Douglas, Roy Hazelwood and Robert Wrestler. Predominantly in the
nineteen seventies. What they began to do, and computers aided this is as these serial predators were captured, they would interview them extensively and they would create a profile based upon all of the crime scene information, behavioral characteristics, psychological characteristics, everything that was known about the victims, all of the
crime scenes, and they put it into the computer. And they did this initially with about thirty six serial predators, and this database since that has just been expanded as more serial killers are apprehended and the way it works is when and I'm sure this is exactly what has happened recently in Gary, Indiana with the Barren van is when a serial killer is operating in the local community.
The local police don't have the wherewithal, the ability, the tools to profile and in a sophisticated way put together a strategy to capture this individual, so they typically reach out to the FBI. And what happens then is all of the information that's known about this local case, the information from the crime scenes, anything that's known about the victims, are fed into the computer, into this profiler computer, and
the attempt to match it up with solve cases. So what you're trying to do is match up an unsolved case where you have a you know, a living serial killer on the loose who's unknown, and try to match the characteristics of with solve cases. And that provides a sort of a blueprint for narrowing down the suspect pool, which is what it really does. It helps to narrow
down the suspect pool. And one of the more ingenious things that the FBI profilers came up with, and this is the credit here goes to de Roy Hazelwood, who I actually he helped me in tremendously with the research and background for my book. He was very cooperative in terms of an interview with me, and he's given the credit for what's known as the organized versus disorganized dichotomy of of of serial creditors, and what that means for anyone who hasn't heard is in very broad categories. There
tend to be two types of serial killers. There is the absolutely meticulous Ted Bundy type who plan everything out, if they have escape routes, they know what they're going to do with the bodies, they attempt to hide them, etc. Very meticulous. These tend to be the complete psychopaths who are just very cold blooded. That's one type of serial killer.
But then you have the other or another who is much more spontaneous, much more impulsive in nature, who just strikes almost like an animal in the wild, and will leave the victim right where they find them, no attempt to hide the body, no attempt to cover up the evidence, and leave what's known a very disorganized crime scene. Now, the psychological Grand.
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Edutical profile and the behavioral profiles of those two types of killers are very, very different. So that's an example of one of the things that they that they attempt attempt to do. And because not all serial killers are the meticulous Ted Bundy type, some are very much sort of spontaneous killers. And a classic example of there would be all the way back to our legendary killer Jack
the Ripper. Jack the Ripper was would be in that disorganized variety where he just pounced out of the shadows and slashed with a knife and made no attempt to cover up his tracks and just left the body right where it where it lay.
You speak about Ted Bundy and in terms of what we could learn from Ted Bundy and what they did learn from Ted Bundy, and in terms of the representation when you're talking about how sometimes fiction and nonfiction really are blurred. Those lines. Talk a little bit about Ted Bundy like you do in the book.
Okay, well Bundy that you know, Bundy in many ways is the quintessential serial killer. And what makes him particularly frightening, both compelling and frightening to a lot of people is he could be anybody. Here's a guy who was very good looking, he was very charming, he was very well educated, he was active in politics. He was basically the young man about town who people were expecting was going to, you know, make big things of himself.
And he was.
Actually considered to be, you know, quite a catch. He had girlfriends and that that he that that he dated who he did not kill. But yet he had this dark side. He had this compartmentalized life where he had this need to to prey upon women. And because he was so charming and because he was so unassuming, women
would make themselves vulnerable. And one of his typical ploys that he would that he would enact in order to trap them is he would pretend to have a uh an injury, have his arm in a sling or something like that. And and people may recall if you if you watch Silence of the lambs. That's what Buffalo Bill would do. He would be the character in silence of the Lambs. He pretended to be injured. Well that they
pulled that right for Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy would would ask a young woman to help him get into his car, or help him bring a package over to his car, or something like that. He had a VW bug And when he when they got over to the car, guess what, the front seat, the passenger side, front seat was missing. He'd chloroform them and throw them into the car and drive away. And but because he was so again so innocuous or so seemingly innocent, that these women would would
would freely go with him. And again he was, you know, a very good looking guy. So he's I think he frightens the heck out of this because it's the idea that anyone could be a serial killer. I mean, Ted Bundy could be your next door neighbor. He could be the guy uh uh living down the hall from you. He could be your your boss, he could be your employee. You could be anyone. And I think that's particularly frightening
to people. And at the same time, these uh uh uh, the victims could be anyone because the serial killers tend to have a particular type that is attracted to them. But these are complete strangers. It's not like they're preying on people that they know. And another this is also an important myth that we that I want to debunk, is there's a myth in society that most murders are
committed by complete strangers. You know, that you're likely to be victimized by a complete stranger, and that's absolutely not true. The vast majority of murders are committed among people by people who know one another, and that's at least two thirds of the cases. Now. Serial killers, however, completely contradict that pattern of most homicides because they are killing complete strangers.
So one of the reasons that that serial killers are both fascinating and frightening to us is because virtually anyone could be a serial killer Bundy, and virtually anyone could be a victim. And I think that that just keeps us up at night.
You talk also a little bit about Ted Bundy in terms of the the amazing amount of characteristics that are contained in one serial killer. Kid to me of a serial killer, if you can tell us a little bit about about that, because that's early on. I think that was even surprising to the well, it was surprising to even the most seasoned veterans. There's only a few people that knew that there was even such a type of creature.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The thing is that about Ted Bundy is he it wasn't necessarily about the sex per se. He he had a particular type and the type of woman that he liked tended to have long, dark hair, and these were white women, and they actually he looked very much like his first girlfriend who had jilted him, which is why he probably targeted women that looked like his first girlfriend.
And the insane thing, however, is after he would kill these women, he would have sex with them after they were dead, and he would even go back and have sex with them a long time later, you know, once they were decomposing. So he was a necrophile as well. And it's just so hard to imagine that an individual who seems so charming and seems so normal could be absolutely that twisted. And the indication of his psychopathy, the fact that he was a complete psychopath, with the fact
that he would dehumanize his victims. He referred to them as objects, and he explained it. He said, I if I humanize them, if I call them by their name, then it's very difficult to do to them what I feel that I need to do to them. So he would just refer to them as objects. And and BTK did a very similar thing. He didn't call it his victims objects. He called them projects. They were interesting projects
for him to work on. And psychopaths like that, They that those are ways that they aren't able to are able to rationalize their behavior. These aren't really human beings. These are just our interesting objects and projects to work with. And because Bundy was such a psychopath, and an important characteristic of a psychopath is their ability to mimic emotion and ability to mimic feelings even though they don't actually
feel them. They they're they it's almost like if their their empathy chord, if it's like an imagine, like an electrical chord in the wall, the ability to connect to another human being is just absolutely pulled out of the wall.
They don't have it.
They don't have the ability to connect on another human being, which is what enables them to do these horrible things, feel nothing, and also to be very good at it because they don't have fear, they don't have emotions, they don't have anxiety like the average person does. So therefore they make very few mistakes, which is what enabled Bundy to kill thirty six plus women.
Well, we're talking about psychopaths. You also talk I was surprised, and I think this is a bit controversial, but maybe we'll get you to explain. You think there's a genetic predisposition for psychopathology, and yes, yes, And then tell us also, and tell us also, how the wires, how you think, how you theorize these wires can get severely crossed and the feelings of murder and sexual desire an.
Absolutely great question. And once again, you know, Bundy and Dahmer and BTK are great examples here. The uh yeah, there's there's more and more evidence, more and more emerging evidence that the brain of a psychopath simply doesn't work the same way as the average person. They don't process stimuli the same way, they don't process information the same way. This has been it's been shown electrochemically in the way that they you know, they do MRIs of the of
the brain. And look at how the the their their brains, the synapses fire and different parts of the brain light up for a psychopath than a normal person. They just process information differently. So imagine you know that they're just born with a with a different a different makeup they h and and fortunately, I mean, if there's good news here, gets that a very small percentage of the US population has the psychopathic tendencies. And there's three three hundred million,
roughly people in the United States. And if DESTI made it that maybe one million have these psychopathic tendencies. And not all psychopaths become killers, and not all killers are psychopaths. And this gets to your question about how you know
it's triggered. There are psychopaths who go through their entire lives who never hurt anyone, who never kill anyone, and in fact sometimes just become extremely successful in whatever endeavor they choose because they are not inhibited by a concern about hurting someone else's feelings or stepping on someone along
the way. So you actually have psychopaths who are very successful in business, in politics, in various endeavors because they're again they're just you know, they don't they don't care whether they hurt other people's feelings. So they all become killers. But what appears to happen with a few individuals like BTK and Bundy and Dahmer and others is somewhere around the age of twelve or thirteen, around the age of puberty.
Those individuals with this psychopathic pattern or psychopathic tendencies, somehow their sexual interests and fantasies become intertwined with violence. That violence and sex become intermingled to such an extent that they become sexually aroused by violence, and sometimes it's manifested even earlier with the dead animals. Jeffrey Dahmer talked about finding dead animals along the road, you know, roadkill, and he put his hands inside of these animals dead bodies
and would become sexually aroused. One of the more chilling stories that I heard was that of Richard Ramirez, the knight Stalker. He actually witnessed his cousin, his first cousin, kill his wife in front of him. Richard Ramirez witnessed this. He was around twelve or thirteen years old, so in puberty, he saw his cousin killed his wife, and Richard Ramirez remembers becoming sexually aroused by seeing that happen. So again,
what appears to happen is that they're in puberty. For these individuals with these psychopathic natures, that sex and violence become intertwined and it becomes a fixation for him, and they fantasize about it, and it grows until to a point where they need to satisfy it somehow, and that's when they begin the killing process.
But are there conclusive brain scans to indicate that it's genetic or or whether it's whether it's environmental or genetic.
Is it well, it's I think it's a combination. My sense is I'm not a neuroscientist. I have colleagues who you know, who study these things. But there's more and more emerging evidence that there is a genetic nature to to psychopathy than what I think happens. This is where it's it's the it's the old nature versus nurture. Are they made or are they born? Well, I think it's both.
I think that these individuals who have this this psychopathic pattern, you know, this chemical or genetic abnormality, are then aroused and triggered when sex and violence become you know, intertwined for them during puberty. So it's a combination of the two I see it as as a combination of the of nature and nurture.
Interesting. Now, what what is some of the more interesting things that you found in terms of how society, How society responds to serial killers and why?
Uh?
A great question once again. The serial killers are, as I said, an enter really an entertainment commodity. And and and what I mean by that is their products, you know, were there are books and and movies and games and puzzles and jokes and and poems and and there you know, Jeffrey dahmers On, I just got anything you can possibly imagine, and and and as such, Uh, there they really fall into that that entertainment commodity until it strikes the individual.
When suddenly, when you know, if if a serial killer, uh is responsible for taking your sister or someone in your family, it becomes real. But until then, it's it's a form of entertainment. And I've actually had people describe it to me as as a guilty pleasure. It's almost like eating the extra candy bar or the or the uh, you know, having an extra serving of ice cream. And and they people are not even sure entirely why they're
they're so fascinated by these things. It's it's almost like a you know, you see an accident on the side of the road and you feel compelled to look at it, but you're not even sure why. It's just this sort of morbid fascination. And I think that serial killers fall into that category for a lot of people. And and we can't deny that the visceral aspect of it. There's a visceral appeal. There's there's there's the uh, the adrenaline rush that we get from these things, and that goes
all the way back to childhood. We love boogeymen and monster movies and and uh, you know, being frightened by by Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers on Halloween. Well, serial killers are for adults in many ways what monster movies are for you for for children. And I think that there's this there's this tendency. There's there's this tendency to
on the one hand, humanize these individuals. We want to try to understand what to compel someone to to do these horrible things, But then simultaneously there's also a need to try to dehumanize them, turn them into monsters, so that we they that they become the other they become the thing that we don't really need to understand. They're boogeymen, they're just monsters, so we don't really need to understand them. So there, there's there's it's there's sort of a push
and a pull. You know, we we want, we feel the need to understand them, but we can't because they're just too incomprehensible.
So what do we do?
We turn them into these you know, sort of larger than life monsters and boogeymen.
Do the true crime stories inform the fictional stories which may then influence killers who may influence other killers. What I'm asking is are killers competitive? Do they see each other as in a competition? And do they look to fiction from your research or true crime story? Do they look to all that they're part of that? But how affected are they by the what we might see as a competition between serial killers?
Well, yeah, that's also a great question. And I would not go as so as far as far to say that true crime stories or anything like that inspire people to do something that they're not already going to do. Right, someone doesn't become a serial killer just because they read about BTK or Jeffrey Dahmer. That doesn't happen. But in my experience, they are students of the game and they do steady each other. In fact, they are the ones who are incredibly narcissistic. Well they will they will find
ways of making themselves feel superior to others. For example, in my in my correspondence with BTK, I mentioned to him that I was also corresponding with David Burkerwitz, with
son of Sam Well. In Btk's own way, he sort of put Burkowitz down by by insinuating, well, you know, he's shot, he used a gun, he didn't really want to get his hands dirty, you know, so he's not really a serial killer, you know, so there is a sense of competition and you know, one another one of the sort of myths that's associated with these folks is that they're all cops. You know, as soon as a serial killer is on the loose, they assume that, you know,
it's a former detective or something like that. But the reality is is these guys tend to study police work because it makes them better killers if they if they're familiar with how long it takes a nine to one one call to be responded to, for example, it's only going to make them that much better at what they do.
So the vast majority of these guys are not tops, but they tend to be very familiar with policing practices and activities, And in fact, BTK actually has a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, so he was very interested in this stuff.
And it seems too that there's been a development to the guys that thought they could burn all of the evidence. Now with DNA especially, it seems that some people are learning about disposal techniques as well.
Oh absolutely, yes, absolutely, though you know, you have to look at it this way. To be as as prolific as some of these individuals are killing ten twenty thirty forty people, you have to know what you're doing. And these individuals are obsessed. They're compulsive. They are absolutely driven to do this. And BTK actually had a name for it. He came up with a term for his compulsion or his motivation, and he called it factor X. And factor X was basically what it is. It was this overwhelming
desire that he didn't really understand. I really don't think that Dennis Rader understands the compulsion. He knows when he felt it, he knows when he had to go out and fill. But he couldn't really understand it, so he just he gave it a name. He called it Factor X. And you know you asked me earlier one of the more you know, shocking things about him, and this pretty
well would would would sum it up. He in his in his pathological mind, actually thinks that society should be grateful that he learned how to satisfy in himself to autoerotic fantasy. He would he would keep the trophies and souvenirs uh and relive his crimes in the privacy of his of his basement with dolls and so forth, that he would pretend to strangle and and sexually, you know, please himself. And he said, by doing that, I was able to delay and put off having to kill another victim.
So I guess he thinks that we should feel grateful to him in some way. And which is your further indication of his of his maniacal and narcissistic mind.
Yes, now you talked about what I found interesting, and I agree with you totally too, is that you talked that irrespective of any deceptively benign appearances, to the contrary, and again not appearances, but even appearances meaning extensive interviews. They are never like us, and when you talked about psychopathology, I just want to get to this issue and it's
just I just want to put this out there. I think is that what's interesting is that the psychiatric communit has now Robert Hare has come and popularized this idea that that there are a lot of psychopaths. It's still rare, but there's a fair amount of psychopaths, but almost no psychopaths killed. There's just even that's rare, that the psychopathic
mind can be a psychopathic killer. But what I find is that isn't that sort of normalizing the an excusing Again, if you're going to say genetic predisposition or genetic is a big component and then environment and you know I'm up in Canada, so this is these aren't mitigating circumstances. This can get you walking out the door sometimes. So the nurture was bad, your environment was bad, genetic predisposition. Dad was in prison and twelve years old, he saw
some slasher movies or was exposed to like Ramirez. Something isn't this on the pathway of some kind of excuse or as opposed to what you're saying, is that them are never the same as us. Is this sort of getting us close to that. You know they're a psychopath at work in the psychopath may be your boss. But then if the right factors are there at twelve or thirteen years of age, anything can happen.
Yeah, I understand your question. I can't comment on Canadian criminal law, but I can on US criminal law. The psychopaths. First of all, psychopathy and for that matter, sociopathy does not constitute mental illness in the US criminal justice system. These individuals who are psychopaths or sociopaths, they're considered antisocial
personality disorders and they're not mental illness. It's not like it's not like schizophrenia or psychosis with the full see visions and they they they're they're out of touch with reality. In fact, somebody like a Dennis Raider or or or a Ted Bundy are acutely aware of what they're doing. They know that what they are doing is wrong. They absolutely know that murder is wrong, which is the definition of sanity or insanity in the US criminal justice system.
The only way you were insane criminally is if you didn't know that it was wrong at the exact moment that you did it, not five minutes before and not five minutes later, at the exact moment you did it. Which is why these individuals almost never are able to use the insanity defense because they simply don't. It doesn't apply. They knew it was wrong, they just don't care. They were they were going to kill and they were determined to kill them. They don't care whether it was right
or wrong. So from a very practical standpoint, psychopaths, they don't. They do not benefit in any way from the insane the defense.
No, I understand that issue. What I'm just saying, it's sort of society wise, we've turned the psychopath into the sociopath and sort of normalized it to a certain degree in that, oh, well, jeez, your boss as a psychopath, But it doesn't mean he could be a killer. And that that is in that conflicts with you know them or not us. And that's what I really truly believe
is that regards you know, irrespective of everything. I really do believe that that's what the fascination is for me and I think for a lot of people in that we do not see ourselves in these people at all, And that's what's fascinating about them. We don't share any of these characteristics, these impulses, these compulsions, these fantasies. So that's just my take on it.
Well, I think there though my research, and this is talking to both investigations detective as well as the general public. There there's a bit of, Uh it gets us to question what might I do? You know, Uh, could could I ever do these sort of things? And and so I I one of the argument arguments that I make in my book is that serial killers sort of define the outer realm of humanity, what one human can do to another. They sort of delineate the the distinction between
man and monster. And you know, I mean what Ted Bundy did after capturing, torturing, mutilating, killing necro Field, I mean, what's left. There's just nothing left really that one human being can do to another. And so they sort of really are that distinction between, you know, between human and monster, and they serve a purpose to the extent that they they were. They remind us that that, uh, we're not you know, and you know, thank god, I might not.
You know, I might not always be the best parent, I might not always be the best husband or boyfriend. But I'm not killing and eating people, you know, and so they they do, they do set that boundary and
serve a purpose to to that end. But at the same time, I think we are compelled to understand them, We are compelled to try to understand why they would do these absolutely horrible things, and as such it gets us to you know, to think about human nature, you know, to a certain extent, because like it or not, these aren't monsters. That that's you know, the whole point of my book. These aren't boogeymen. They're not Michael Myers, They're
not they're not Freddy Krueger. They are human beings who just happen to be doing very, very horrible things.
Yeah, it's very interesting too that you really that you have a vivid betrayal too of Sam the son of Sam Berkowitz, David Berkowitz in his transformation, like you say, unless he's the Daniel day Lewis of Conman, then there
is has been some dramatic and profound transformation. So to really show the humanity what can happen in twenty five years, even for diehards like me that figure to lock them up and leave them there, you know that at least that there is you know, there is a huge difference between what the media portrayed him, and he went along with it as well. That the photographs of him seem it's almost like a very demonish but sort of childlike
in sort of a way too. But a lot of these guys have never had that kind of attention, so maybe it's kind of natural as well that they would feed into that.
Well, he told me he was very aware, and he told me he was very very aware of what he was doing at the time, and he wanted to terrorize the city, you know, the summer, at the so called Summer of Sam nineteen seventy seven, he held New York
City a completely hostage and he loved it. He because here's a guy who had basically been you know, very insecure and and uh lost as a young man, and now he's got an entire city is at his uh you know, beck and call so to speak, and and and it's it's certainly uh he got off on it, you know, with with without a doubt. But you know, I I'm very practical, I guess I would say, in
pragmatic in terms of my reaction to David Berkowitz. I mean, I was I was moved, I have to say, as he sat and wept in front of me, as he as he talked about his uh, the remorse he had,
I was, I was moved by by the experience. But from a very practical standpoint, if he's doing some positive things behind bars and corresponding around the world with cancer patients and all the things that he's doing, and if even one person feels better and gets some sort of relief from from what he's doing and and their life is better for it, and I'd say let him continue. You know, he's he's not going anywhere. He's not he's never getting out of prison, and he knows he's never
getting out of prison. So uh, you know, let him, let him continue to do it.
Well, there's a whole lot of redemption available. I'm sure now you you make the case that you know not not to be anti death penalty, but you state the case it's very important to interview these type of people, and you that really is testament in your book with bt K and David Berkowitz, and that it's very important to be able to speak to these people. That profiling has been very important and a and a useful tool. Despite it not being as good as criminal minds on television.
But so tell us a little bit about the time.
Yeah, well, I mean these individuals are I mean, fortunately, they are rare and they are extreme in in what they did. But as such, it's important to talk to them and to get an understanding of their motivations and what compelled them, because that's what leads to apprehension in
the future. I mean, that is part of the profiling process, is that to understand a Ted Bundy, to understand a BTK enables law enforcement to be that much better prepared to catch the next one, because this is the you know, they're not going away, you know, they're these individuals. The good news is in the United States at least, homicide is going down, and it's gone down precipitously since the
nineteen nineties. They're in. The peak year of homicide in the United States was nineteen ninety three, and last year it was less than fifteen thousand murders. In nineteen ninety three it was almost twenty five thousand murders, So it's gone down tremendously, and serial killing has gone down proportionately as well. The serial killers. Here's another myth people think that serial killers are responsible for a much higher percentage of all murders than they are, and that's just not
the case. It's about one percent in the United States of all homicides our result of of of serial killers just one percent. So it's a fraction. But because of the of the disproportionate amount of media attention that they get, it seems like they're responsible for a law work.
The is it a myth that we know there's more serial murderers in America than other countries, even if it's proportionally, But how much are we talking about just a little bit? What's what's the actual.
Well, there's there's there's serial killers all over the world. I mean, there was one just recently in Brazil who apparently is one of the most prolific serial killers of you know, the last hundred years. So they exist all over the world. They just don't get the same level of media attention as they do in the United States, and the statistics, the data is not as readily available
in other countries. There are serial killers everywhere. There are serial killers in Russia, in China, in Iran, in Canada. You know, obviously, you know they they but they just don't receive the same amount of attention that they do in the in the United States. So, uh, serial killers are not an American a purely American phenomenon. They that
that's another myth. It has to do with the the nature of the media market, uh in the United States and the fact that it's the United States is the media capital of the world.
How much of an influence does Hollywood have in this as well, because in the America and film industry really is the biggest other than Bollywood. So other countries have a healthy film industry. But how important is that and how much does that kind of dictate things?
Oh? Sure, well, I mean serial killers have become absolutely one of the you know, one of the prime commodities in the in the film industry. The girl who played with fire, the girl with the dragon tattoo, you know, I mean, this is a world worldwide sensation. There is a TV series, TV series very popular, the following Hannibal, based upon the early years of Hannibal Lecter True Detective.
You know.
So you've got the yeah, Dexter, You've got the TV shows, you've got film. So the media absolutely are are responsible in many ways for keeping serial killers on the horizon and making the public think that they're much more prevalent and much more responsible for the homicide problems than they
than they really are. And also the media, and it's not just the the entertainment media, fictional entertainment media, it's the news media that do the same thing in terms of turning them into these sort of larger than life looking you know, by the very nature of the of the description. I mean, you pick up you pick up an article in in virtually any news newspaper. And I'm not talking about the sort of the tabloid sensationalized newspapers.
Any newspaper, the New York Times, the London Times. And if there's a serial killer, almost invariably in the first paragraph you'll see the words evil, monster, devil, vampire. They're going to be right there, you know. And those terms are in human terms to describe something, you know, larger than life. And you know, like I said, like a Dracula character.
Now what seems to be a more popular or at least more not more popular, but more prevalent. And and of course then the attention of the media is focused on it is mass murder as opposed to serial killing. So what are your What are your thoughts on that in terms of supplanting one from the other.
Well, you bring up a very fascinating, uh point. In the United States, there's a very interesting thing happening and and and tragic. And actually it's not just the United States, it's it's worldwide. The the homicide rate is going down tremendously, but the suicide rate is going way up in the United States. We we have a basically an all time low in homicide in uh least in the last fifty years, whereas we have an all time high in suicide and
then and then, and they're going in opposite directions. If there's almost three suicides for every murder now in the United States. But to get to your your question, the one area of murder where there's a dramatic increase in the United States is mass murder, not serial murder. Mass murder. And that's the you know, the one off the Virginia Text, the Columbines, the Aurora, Colorado, James Holmes, you know, movie theater massacre. Those have gone up dramatically in the last
seven to ten years. So, uh, that is a you know, is one aberration to the whole thing. And I and This may well be the focus of the of the of the Future book. There's a if you think about the motivations for mass murder, they're very different than serial murder. Serial killers killed because they love it, are addicted to it,
they need to do it. Mass murderers are typically nihilistic, fatalistic individuals who have a vendetta against some group who they think has you know, some grievance, and they have no exit strategy. Typically they they're killed with the scene of the crime, many times when they turn the gun on themselves, so they have no intention to live with another day. So it's interesting that it's suicide and mass murder that are on the increase in the United States,
and the two are very much intertwined. So I think that's a very fascinating thing.
What are the trends in terms of disturbing in terms of familicide and like the killing of a family and then murder suicide.
Yeah, well, that's that's part of the whole thing. That that's that's part of this you know, of this process. Oftentimes, you know, people as soon as there's something horrible, like someone shoots their family and then turns the gun on themselves, they immediately the public says, why, you know, why didn't he just kill himself, Why did he have to kill
this entire family. Well, I've been doing some research into this and talking to a lot of people, even people who are have some suicidal plots themselves, and the way that and again, people who do something like this obviously they're not in the right mind when they do it. But what keeps people who may have suicidal tendencies sometimes from actually acting out on it is for fear and the concern about what would happen to their loved ones
if they kill themselves. And therefore, in a very perverse but kind of logical way, sometimes people will say, well, if I kill my entire family, then they won't be left to worry about me. So if I kill them first, then I can turn the gun on myself and kill myself, which is what I really want to do. So and granted it's a very perverse logic someone who's very disturbed, there's certainly internal logic to that, and so the goal, I don't think in some of those cases is really
to kill the family. The goal is to kill themselves, but they do it to relieve themselves of the guilt. Of leaving people behind. Now, in terms of you.
Why we love serial killers? You talked about the murder rate going down and the media and probably the public's attention focusing elsewhere. Is there really an abatement to the fascination to serial killers? If you looked at the last fifty years, is there any let up? I mean, Hollywood has got serial killer woven into every television series or movies.
But do you see any kind of slow down or focus towards something else or is there something about serial killers and the representation of evil and our our representation of good conquering evil in a very I guess, as you said, oversimplified way. Are we always going to be loving serial killers? Is what I'm asking about.
Yeah, I understand your question, and I certainly don't see any any let up. If anything, they're they're more popular in the in the entertainment media right now. Again, we you know, we rattle off some of the shows that are you Dexter which recently you know was completed, but True Detective which was just on last season the following Hannibal. Uh, there was a several BBC shows that focus on on, uh, serial killing. So I don't I don't think that the interest is going away at all, and I think it's
a rather timeless thing. Uh the the you know, it's again to the extent that we turn them into monsters. There's always been a fascination with pons, and there's you mentioned the whole good versus evil. Well, how how different really is ken Land where the detective chasing bt K in reality for years? How different is that than Doctor
Van Helsing chasing Dracula. It's very sim it's similar. You know, their morality plays their morality dramas good versus evil and we love those good versus evil stories.
Yes, absolutely, well, Scott, I'd like to thank you very much for this interview. For those that might want to contact you, how do you do that? Do you do the Facebook? And you have a website? Tell us HOWE might be able to contact you?
Sure? Absolutely. I Well, first of all, on Twitter, I my my Twitter handle is at doc bond and that's d O C b O n N. I have a doc Bond page again, d O C b O n N on Facebook, and I also have a dot von website and that's it's doc bond dot com and that my website is just packed with information on on serial killers and crime in general, and a lot of articles
I've written. I also have a blog. I do an almost weekly blog on Psychology Today dot com and that and the name of my blog is Wicket Deeds w I C K E D Wicket Deeds D E E D S. And so I invite people to check that out. I've written a lot of articles about psychopaz sociopez and serial killers and many other things as well. And uh, you know, and I certainly invite listeners hopefully they'll check out a new book while we love serial Killers, The
Curious Appeal of the World's Most Savage Murderers. And it's pretty much available everywhere Barnes and Noble in store and online, which is maybe most convenient at Amazon and Barnes and Noble indie books and should be available readily available, and you know, so invite people to check it out.
Yeah, I want to thank you very much. It's a very We've had a great conversation. It was really nice speaking with you, and I hope to hear from you again soon. I know you're a prolific writer, and I'm sure you've got another book in the works, no doubt. So I want to thank you very much and you have a great evening.
Thank you my pleasure, and thank you so much for having me on the show.
Okay, thank you, good night, iBOT