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Candice DeLong is a former FBI agent and profiler. She has interviewed dozens of female killers and at least one convicted female serial killer, Vickie Dawn Jackson.
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00:00My name is Candace DeLong.
00:01I was an FBI agent for 20 years.
00:04I specialized in profiling and tracking violent offenders and serial killers.
00:10This is how crime works.
00:14There are certain crimes and certain people that I think even in their mid-80s in prison
00:21should never get out.
00:22I interviewed a female serial killer who was a nurse.
00:27She is responsible for the murders of 10 of her patients.
00:32Had she not been caught, God only knows how high the body count would be.
00:41About 8% of all serial killers are women.
00:46And sometimes they start when they're teenage girls.
00:50Some female killers are very prolific.
00:53They may kill many, many people over a few years.
00:58And it's astounding that no one notices something might be amiss.
01:03Serial killers by FBI definition is three victims, not all at once.
01:10The series of murders that were eventually determined to have been committed by Eileen Wuornos, the
01:16detectives were assisted by the FBI profiling unit.
01:20But this was also at a time when it was believed women were not violent serial killers.
01:26Our society wasn't ready to accept that women could be killers.
01:34Women were seen as the life givers.
01:38But Eileen Wuornos would hitchhike, men would stop.
01:43She wanted a single male alone in that car, sticks her thumb out, he lets her in the car, he
01:51ends up dead.
01:53She would talk him into pulling over, they could go have sex off the road, and that wasn't her intention
02:00at all.
02:00Her intention was to murder, and the interesting thing about Eileen Wuornos and her motivation, it appeared to me to
02:12be motivated killing men by hitchhiking, was revenge, as well as financial gain.
02:21She was horribly sexually abused when she was a young girl, had a very, very difficult childhood and adolescence.
02:30She killed seven men, had her lover not turned her in, she would have kept doing it.
02:37She was eventually convicted, sentenced to death, and executed.
02:41Female serial killers, like all serial killers, generally speaking, plan the murder.
02:51It's not a spontaneous thing.
02:54Sometimes the first murder wasn't planned, it happened, and then the killer realizes after
03:02the murder they got away with it, and perhaps they benefited in some way.
03:08And then they think, well, that was easy.
03:12Women use various methods when they kill people.
03:18A frequently seen method is poisoning.
03:22What makes murder easy for the poisoner, they have no trouble contaminating food or drink or anything
03:33else because chances are they live with the victim.
03:36It's rare for a female killer to torture and sexually assault their victim prior to killing
03:45them.
03:45We see that far more often in male serial killers.
03:50What I think is sadistic, however, is the female poisoner who puts enough poison in the food
03:59to make their victim sick but not die.
04:03Just historically, women get away with murder a lot easier than men do, especially in an era
04:11when we didn't have the medical healthcare that we have.
04:14You have a sick child now that's not getting well, you take them to the doctor or to an emergency
04:18room.
04:19But back in the 1800s and early 1900s, you could just poison the child and people would feel
04:28badly for you.
04:28Oh my gosh.
04:29You know, she's just had so much bad luck with her.
04:33She's lost five or six of her family members.
04:35And did you hear her mother died last week unexpectedly?
04:38That made it very easy over centuries for women to get away with murder.
04:45I'm Liz Merriweather.
04:47I'm the creator and executive producer of Hulu's new crime thriller, Furious.
04:52It's a show about an FBI agent, a female serial killer, and the different paths that they
04:58take to find justice and revenge.
05:00We have such iconic male serial killer characters in our minds.
05:05I was just really interested in complicating that narrative in Furious and really trying
05:09to show a killer who you're both feeling for and scared of.
05:16One of the reasons I always gravitate personally to watch these kinds of shows is the why.
05:22What can drive a person to kill another person?
05:25Women are so often underestimated and can really disappear in plain sight.
05:31I think that there aren't as many female serial killers, but in my darkest moments, I sort
05:36of wonder if there are, but we just have never found them.
05:45Generally speaking, female serial killers have different motivation than male serial killers.
05:53Female serial killers are motivated by one of three things.
05:58The most common motivation is they do it for financial gain.
06:04Oftentimes they may be married and will have life insurance on their husband and kill him.
06:11And they do it over and over and over with a new husband.
06:15An infamous female serial killer motivated for financial gain is Dorothea Puente.
06:21Dorothea ran a boarding house in the Sacramento area and she would rent out rooms and she eventually
06:29started killing her tenants for the sole purpose of collecting their social security check.
06:36That social security check comes in, she cashes somebody else's check, there's her reward
06:42right there for killing again.
06:44Dorothea Astra Obese outras medalists a lot.
06:45She was eventually caught in 1988.
06:48On rare occasion, we will see a female serial killer that killed to have power and control
06:54over someone or they are angry at the world and they want someone to pay for it.
07:00An example of a female serial killer motivated by power and revenge is Joanna Denaghy of Great Britain.
07:08Joanna is an interesting case because it's unusual for women to kill for that reason.
07:16There was no financial gain at all.
07:18And it appears that she saw herself as some kind of maybe avenging angel.
07:25But of course, that's nonsense.
07:27She was walking up to total strangers.
07:30One evening, she stabbed two men.
07:33They were walking their dogs in the park.
07:35Generally speaking, female serial killers victimize people that they know.
07:42I interviewed a female serial killer who was a health care killer.
07:47She was a nurse working in a very, very small rural hospital in Texas, Vicki Jackson.
07:55Part of her motivation was frustration and anger about her life.
08:01And she took out that negative energy on killing people, people who were dependent on her for care.
08:10Between the year 2000 and 2001, she is responsible for the murders of 10 of her patients.
08:19She would kill her patients by overdosing them with some kind of medication that she had access to.
08:24I've interviewed hundreds of people in my first career as a psychiatric nurse and then second as an FBI agent.
08:32And Vicki Jackson was the toughest nut to crack I ever talked with.
08:37She steadfastly refused to admit that she did what she was convicted of.
08:43Had she not been caught, God only knows how high the body count would be.
08:54The term profiling or profiler is a popular description.
09:02My certificate upon completion of my training does not say profiler.
09:09It says crime scene analyst because that's where profiling begins, analyzing the crime scene.
09:19Of course, the autopsy is very, very important to know exactly what happened.
09:23And there's a lot to be learned from analyzing a crime scene.
09:28For example, when someone who is severely mentally ill, such as with schizophrenia or some other types of serious mental
09:39illnesses where they are hearing voices,
09:42when they kill someone, the crime scene is going to be very chaotic, messy.
09:49It's going to be a different crime scene.
09:51I was with my partner at a woman's house in suburban Chicago.
09:58She had been stabbed to death by an intruder.
10:03And my partner and I were there a couple of days afterwards.
10:07We're outside figuring out how did the guy get in.
10:11And a woman walks up to us with her little boy, who is about four years old.
10:19And I looked down at this cute little boy who's got a crumpled newspaper in his hands.
10:25And he holds it up.
10:27And I think I said to him, what have you got there, little man?
10:31And I took it from him and I unfolded the newspaper.
10:34It was the murder weapon.
10:36I call it a Rambo knife.
10:38The blade was this long, bloody blade.
10:43She said he found it under his swing set.
10:46The reason this was important to us was it told us where the offender fled after he killed the victim.
10:57After a murder like that, the killer runs to safety.
11:04Home, he dropped the knife, probably panicked,
11:07and just got up and resumed running into that neighborhood over there.
11:12And he was eventually apprehended, walking up to someone on the street, shooting them, and running away.
11:19There's not much of a crime scene there.
11:22When we're talking about serial killers, they're usually playing out some kind of fantasy they have.
11:28And the more chaotic and gruesome and horrible a crime scene is, such as blood smearing, evidence perhaps that the
11:37killer drank blood at the crime scene,
11:41that tells profilers a lot about the type of person they're looking for.
11:45And it also tells profilers, this is going to happen again, maybe pretty soon.
11:51Back in the 80s, the FBI started a program, the Department of Justice, called the VICAP, V-I-C-A
12:00-P.
12:00And it is a database where, let's say a detective is working on an unsolved murder in San Francisco.
12:10And he fills out all this information on a form.
12:14It goes to VICAP.
12:15It's put in the central computer.
12:18And a detective from Minneapolis does the same thing on a murder she's working on or he's working on and
12:26sends it into VICAP.
12:28And VICAP, well, wait a minute.
12:30We have an exact same bizarre behavior happened in San Francisco.
12:36And it looks identical to what happened here in Minneapolis.
12:40Could this be the same person?
12:42And the answer is, yes, it could be.
12:44One of the things we do know about serial killers is they tend to travel for a variety of reasons.
12:51They don't want to draw attention to a particular area so that they can not be identified, elude, capture.
12:59Sometimes female killers will relocate if they're a black widow and they are targeting a man who has something they
13:09want, money, things, land, and they kill him.
13:14They acquire everything.
13:16Then they move on to another location and do the same thing again and again and again.
13:22Obviously, they do that so they are not drawing suspicion to themselves.
13:27Highly intelligent, methodical, organized serial killers, male or female, tend to not leave much evidence frequently.
13:35There's just a missing person report.
13:37The body isn't even found.
13:39Of course, that is not the case with health care killers and family mothers killing people in their family.
13:49It's more difficult for them to get away with it now than it was over 50 years ago because computerized
13:56systems can pick up things in the life insurance industry.
14:02And if one person is repeatedly buying life insurance policies on their kids and those kids are dying, it's going
14:11to get picked up.
14:12Health care killers such as Vicki Jackson was, the crime scene isn't recognized initially as being a crime.
14:22It's an older person generally who died and it's assumed, well, they're old, they are in the hospital because they're
14:30sick.
14:31These things happen, maybe a heart attack, a fatal stroke.
14:35So she didn't come under suspicion for quite a while until the body count started to get too high for
14:43a small rural hospital.
14:51Criminal profiling was developed by the FBI starting in the late 70s, early 80s.
14:57It is a way of looking at a crime scene and determining the type of person that committed that crime,
15:06their lifestyle, their education, how they live, what kind of car they drive.
15:12Profiling is part art, part science.
15:15I was a profiler.
15:17I was trained at Quantico and I worked with them, with John Douglas, Robert Ressler, Roy Hazelwood, the early founders
15:25of the profiling program.
15:27I worked with them on cases that were happening in the Chicago division where I was assigned and secondarily the
15:34San Francisco division.
15:35One of the things a good profile does is it draws a sketch, a personality sketch, and a lifestyle sketch
15:45of the unknown offender.
15:47Where do they live in relation to the victim?
15:50Are they employed?
15:51If they're employed, what type of job do they live in the neighborhood?
15:54Do they bring their own weapon?
15:57What we see a lot in male to female murders is strangulation.
16:03We rarely see strangulation as a method used by women when they kill.
16:09These are things police need to know to focus their investigation, and that's where profiling comes in, studying hundreds and
16:20hundreds of similar types of crimes.
16:23Also, a critical component of developing a profile is a victimology.
16:32This victim, what kind of person were they?
16:36Were they a sex worker that walked the streets to get customers, or were they a Sunday school teacher who
16:45rarely left her house?
16:46One of those types is far more likely to be victimized than the other type, so the victimology is very
16:55important.
16:56Crime scene analysts do not go into the case with a preconceived idea.
17:05It's important to let the photographs speak for themselves and let the autopsy explain what happened.
17:12The crime scene will look different from the experienced, highly intelligent, highly organized military officer than a 16-year-old
17:26pizza delivery boy.
17:27One of them is going to be much more chaotic than the other.
17:31A profile of an unknown offender, generally speaking, addresses the gender of the killer, the approximate age of the killer,
17:45the education, the marital status and sexual history of the killer, if it's a sexually motivated crime, which we rarely
17:54see on female killers to a male victim.
17:59The interesting thing about serial murders is each murder by the killer tends to look like the previous murder, and
18:11the reason for that is murdering someone is fantasy-driven, and fantasy-driven murders tend to be ritualized.
18:22It's highly unusual for serial killers to change the method of murder, and every time they get away with murder
18:31or think they got away with it, their anxiety goes down, they feel good about themselves.
18:37Wow, I pulled that off.
18:39I think I'll do it again.
18:41Some serial killers have a cooling-off period, could be weeks, months, years, before they do it again and again
18:52and again, and they get caught sooner.
18:59The VICAP system, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, was implemented in the early 80s, and it is alive and well today,
19:09but it's only as good as the information that's put into it.
19:12Unless a murder happens on federal land or in a federal building, it comes under the purview of the state
19:19where it happens, and homicide investigators are in charge of it.
19:23But frequently, they will ask the FBI because the resources are so vast, and some of that assistance might be
19:32to develop a profile of the unknown offender.
19:37Vicki worked in a small rural hospital.
19:40It didn't even have 100 beds.
19:43People were dying on the night shift at an unusually high rate.
19:47Yes, people sometimes check into a hospital and don't check out, but there's a predictable number.
19:54The problem that Vicki got herself into was she was very prolific.
20:01Too many people were dying on the night shift.
20:05She was the only nurse on duty, and people were dying at three or four times the rate.
20:11So suspicion landed at her doorstep.
20:19I never made an arrest where there weren't at least two or three other agents with me, usually bigger men.
20:28The day an FBI agent in training graduates from the academy, they are issued the gun they have been training
20:36with, and handcuffs, and you always have those with you.
20:41Early in my career, I was assigned to surveil a house where a suspect lived.
20:53And this suspect, a middle-aged man from Eastern Europe, was suspected of being a hitman for an organized crime.
21:05I was with another young agent.
21:07The subject of the surveillance came out of his house, and I thought, we've got to stop him.
21:16We can't let him go.
21:18So my partner and I, I got out of the car.
21:21I thought my partner was right behind me.
21:22I draw my gun, pointed at the guy, halt, FBI, don't move.
21:27And I realized, where's my partner?
21:30He, he was back in the car, calling the two agents that had left.
21:36Apparently, I scared the guy quite a bit, because when we were handcuffing him, he wet his pants.
21:42It happens.
21:43There has to be a certain amount of evidence indicating there is probable cause to believe that person committed that
21:55crime.
21:56And usually, an arrest warrant is sought beforehand.
22:01Vicki Jackson was arrested almost a year after her last murder.
22:07It takes time to build a case properly, and arresting someone too soon can sink a conviction.
22:21I've interviewed many female killers, and almost every single one of them denied that they are actually guilty of the
22:33crime they were in prison for.
22:35The most important thing about an interview, a police interview, an interrogation interview, is preparation.
22:44What you want to do is get them nailed down to a statement that you'll catch them in a lie,
22:50an incriminating lie.
22:52The suspect is the last person interviewed, if they are truly believed to be responsible for the crime.
23:00I had a partner.
23:02He had been a Chicago homicide detective before he became an FBI agent, and we went to profiling school at
23:09the same time.
23:11Sometimes, when we interviewed someone together, I would play dumb.
23:20Like, I was not very bright.
23:23And one of the things we found was that, especially if the suspect was a male suspect, that he would
23:33disregard that I was even in the room, because I was just a dumb broad.
23:37If my partner left, and then I, the room, and I would start interacting with the suspect, he is seeing
23:44me as a stupid woman.
23:47And I'm like, well, she's stupid.
23:50I could say anything.
23:52And it worked.
23:53We've got a lot of information that way.
23:55I don't mind being considered stupid if it's a path to get the information.
24:02I've interviewed hundreds of people between my two professions, psychiatric nurse for 10 years and an FBI agent.
24:12The only thing that made me nervous was fearing that I might not ask the right questions.
24:21But I got over that pretty quickly.
24:24I interviewed a male killer once who was on death row in Texas.
24:29In fact, two different men on death row in Texas.
24:34And one of them had been convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two sons while they were sleeping.
24:43His stance was, he didn't do it.
24:46I guess he figured I hadn't read the file.
24:49And he, toward the end of the interview, hit me with a veiled threat.
24:55And just for a moment.
24:58So he's on the other side of plexiglass.
25:00The way he glared at me was unsettling.
25:05And I remember thinking, oh, I hope this guy never gets out.
25:09Because I was just there to chat.
25:10I wasn't, I mean, I didn't convict him.
25:13And he agreed to do an interview.
25:15It was so menacing, the look.
25:18And for just a moment, I thought, if this is what his girlfriend and kids saw right before he killed
25:25them.
25:26Yikes.
25:28Serial killers I'm familiar with tend to be deniers.
25:33Ted Bundy, who is one of the most infamous serial killers in American history,
25:37responsible for at least 30 murders, but the FBI thinks possibly over 100,
25:44maintained until two days before his execution date that he didn't do it.
25:51And he actually married a woman that was in the courtroom.
25:58And she had his baby.
26:01She believed him to the last minute until two days before his execution, he decided to talk.
26:11Vicki Jackson was a tough interviewer.
26:13She was not forthcoming.
26:14She was a denier.
26:15The police are wrong.
26:17The FBI is wrong.
26:18Everybody's wrong.
26:18I didn't do it.
26:20I didn't.
26:21I didn't.
26:22But I knew she did.
26:23The difference between Vicki Jackson and some other killers that I've interviewed is she had an air of defiance.
26:32And I remember her sticking her chin up.
26:34I didn't do it.
26:35I didn't do it with a little bit of anger.
26:39Whereas almost all of the other people I interviewed that denied the murder they were convicted of were like,
26:46I didn't do it.
26:47It was more like, poor me.
26:50The jury got it wrong.
26:52The prosecutor really had it out for me.
26:54But I don't know why.
26:54I didn't do anything.
26:56Whereas Vicki was, you're stupid.
26:58I didn't do this.
27:00Everybody's stupid but me.
27:04And that actually, if anything, helped me see, yeah, she's probably 100% guilty.
27:18Vicki was convicted of murder, multiple murders, in 2006 and sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison.
27:27And juries are always advised the defendant has a right not to take the stand.
27:34Don't hold it against them.
27:35But they do hold it against them.
27:37Because if you are innocent, unless you are low IQ or mentally ill, you should be able to get on
27:44that witness stand, look at the jury and say, I did not do this.
27:47And so when you don't do that, juries are like, what am I doing here?
27:52I mean, you're on trial for your life, for your freedom, and you can't look at me and explain that
27:58you're wrongly arrested?
28:00Do people get convicted wrongly and go to prison?
28:04Yes.
28:05Not very often.
28:06There is one person I interviewed who was convicted of killing six people, a family, mom, dad, and four kids,
28:15that at the end of the interview, I thought to myself, this woman was wrongly convicted.
28:22She does not belong in here.
28:25Because she said something about the case when we were talking that indicated to me she did it, but it
28:34was not a premeditated murder.
28:36And she absolutely does not belong in prison.
28:39She was being held as a sex slave and abused by the couple.
28:44And she didn't know anything about fires, but had reason to believe if she started a fire, the place would
28:52fill up with smoke.
28:53The fire department would come, everybody would be rescued, and she could run away.
28:58But things didn't go the way she'd hoped.
29:00No prosecutors or a governor is going to let her out.
29:03There are some crimes in America that the facts don't matter as much as the horror that the community feels.
29:16Some of them are where there's a high body count.
29:19Somebody's going to prison.
29:20They just want to put away.
29:27The major difference between male serial killers and female serial killers is that most male serial killers are fantasy-driven
29:40murders with a sexual component.
29:43Victims of female serial killers are killed for some kind of financial gain for the killer.
29:52Female serial killers, generally speaking, kill people in their tight circle, starting with family.
30:01It's hard to imagine someone, a mother, killing their own baby or their own little child.
30:08But it's a fact.
30:10Male serial killers are far more likely to target a stranger.
30:15Their motivation, they are fantasy-driven, a fantasy they have been nurturing since they were an adolescent.
30:22And their crimes are highly ritualized.
30:25I've interviewed some male killers and serial killers that were honest, up front.
30:33Maybe they didn't tell me anything, but they admitted to the murders and why they did it.
30:37And then there are male killers that I've interviewed that were absolutely defiant and spent the entire three hours talking
30:49with me, trying to convince me that they were wrongly imprisoned.
30:52With women, I think some of the people I interviewed, including Vicki, were, their goal was to convince me they
31:02were wrongly convicted.
31:04The average killer in prison is not someone drooling at the mouth.
31:09They're not monsters.
31:12As such, have I interviewed some?
31:14Yes.
31:15And as difficult as it must be to accept that the person you're looking at in the mirror is a
31:22killer, still, there are certain crimes and certain people that I think, even in their mid-80s in prison, should
31:31never get out.
31:32There's no reason to believe, if they have the opportunity to kill again, that they won't.
31:38One of the first documented cases of a female serial killer is a woman who was royalty in Eastern Europe.
31:48She was the Countess Bathory.
31:51She was held in very high regard.
31:53And the village and the people there wonder what was happening to their daughters and sisters that would go to
32:02work in the castle and never be seen again.
32:05Well, she was killing them.
32:06Real serial killers generally are not as interesting as Hollywood makes them out to be.
32:13When Hollywood is doing a story of a female killer, she's usually pretty, charming, good verbal skills, and she's a
32:25trickster.
32:25She can get men into her bed easily, kill them and get away with it.
32:30But that's not how real life is.
32:34But we don't pay good money to see a movie that's boring about real life.
32:45Psychopath is a clinical term.
32:48Psychopath is under the category of a mental disorder known as antisocial personality disorder.
32:57If somebody is afflicted with this, they do not feel guilt about anything they did, hurting another person.
33:08They do not have remorse.
33:13And because they don't feel guilt, their crimes can become serialized.
33:20Guilt is a tremendously powerful motivator.
33:24If we feel guilty about something we did, the chances of us doing it again are pretty low and maybe
33:32it's not going to happen again.
33:34But serial killers don't feel that guilt.
33:37In fact, they do anything they can to relive the moment.
33:41Sometimes they go back to the crime scene.
33:45Sometimes they make recordings or take pictures, take jewelry, or take something from the victim to remind them.
33:55It's like a prop in a play.
33:58And they don't feel guilt.
34:02So they do it again and again and again.
34:05For serial killers, prior to the age of 18, if a child is engaging in harmful behaviors to others and
34:18doesn't feel guilt and has a chronic disregard for other people,
34:25they are not diagnosed with antisocial personality.
34:29They're diagnosed with conduct disorder.
34:32The reason for that is the human brain is not fully developed until someone is in their mid-20s.
34:42To put that label on someone before their brain is even formed as an adult is unfair and be wrong
34:52because there are cases of kids that were diagnosed with conduct disorder
34:56that grew out of it and became responsible adults that don't hurt other people.
35:02By the way, not everybody with that diagnosis hurts other people.
35:07They may be what's called a white-collar psychopath.
35:10They may be a thief.
35:12They may do bad things, steal, embezzle, that kind of thing.
35:17But they have no interest in raping or killing, torturing anybody.
35:24And that type of psychopath is more common than the violent kind.
35:28Insanity is not a clinical term.
35:31It is a legal term.
35:33And it means the individual, the accused, did not fully understand at the time they did the crime that it
35:42was a crime.
35:43For example, the Richard Trenton Chase was the Sacramento vampire killer, absolutely, totally believed he had to replace the blood
35:56in his own body with the blood of someone that he freshly killed, or he would die.
36:01That's crazy.
36:02That is psychotic.
36:05He was not in touch with reality.
36:07For 10 years as a psych nurse, I worked with people who had to be hospitalized to protect two things.
36:15To protect them from being hurt on the outside, because mentally ill people living on the street are frequently attacked
36:23and violated.
36:24So it's to protect them, but it's also to protect society.
36:28There's only three reasons anybody's ever admitted to a maximum security psychiatric unit.
36:34They are either homicidal or they are so gravely disabled because of their mental illness, they cannot take care of
36:41themselves.
36:42Crimes committed by the mentally ill, especially schizophrenics, are very rare.
36:47But when they do, it makes headlines because the crime scenes are so bizarre.
36:52Having studied Vicki Jackson's crimes that she was accused and convicted of before I sat down with her, I was
37:00pretty well convinced she was a psychopath or she wouldn't have done it 10 times.
37:08It was doing something for her.
37:10It was serving a need.
37:13If they feel guilt or remorse, they're not going to do it again.
37:17So I've never interviewed or studied a serial killer that was not a psychopath.
37:23And some of them are very open and honest, like, if you let me out, I'm going to continue killing.
37:29So don't let me out.
37:31The vast majority of serial killers, male or female, had terrible upbringings.
37:42Bad parenting, neglect, abuse, abuse can be physical, emotional, or sexual.
37:50We do see sexual abuse as a child in the histories of many killers.
37:57Every now and then, a killer will come along.
38:00A serial killer will be arrested, and a deep dive into their history and their family history and interviewing siblings
38:11and neighbors does not turn up anything.
38:14A couple of famous ones, Ted Bundy.
38:17Yes, there was some unusual things in his childhood, but not abuse.
38:22And he started being a real serious problem when he was 12 years old.
38:28The kids in the neighborhood avoided him.
38:30They knew something was wrong.
38:31It's a little bit different with women.
38:34Women tend to be little girls, being abused or neglected, tend to remain quiet about it.
38:47My first day of nursing school, I wanted to work with people that were mentally ill.
38:52I felt especially drawn to help someone that was having that much trouble getting through life through no fault of
39:03their own.
39:04So I graduated nursing school, and I eventually became a psychiatric nurse at Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago,
39:12where I, after many years, became head nurse at the Institute of Psychiatry.
39:17I was giving a community lecture on mental illness and mental health, and a gentleman came up to me and
39:28introduced himself, said he was an FBI agent, and he had been in the audience.
39:32And he said, I think the FBI could use a woman like you.
39:38I remember looking at him and saying, well, in case you missed it, I'm a nurse.
39:43I didn't even know women could be FBI agents.
39:46The first female agent was admitted in 1972.
39:48One, one woman at the FBI Academy with hundreds of men.
39:53It turns out that night, I couldn't sleep.
39:58Well, I applied, and four months later, I was at the FBI Academy, Conoco, Virginia, and then spent, I got,
40:07went back to Chicago, and I began my 20-year career.
40:13About four years into my career, I found out there was a rapist in my neighborhood where I had just
40:22bought my first home.
40:23I wanted to get involved in the case.
40:25I was not a profiler.
40:27I was not trained.
40:28And I asked my supervisor, can I look into this and offer my services to the local police?
40:35Yes.
40:36And so I did that.
40:39He was eventually caught.
40:41He was known as the Burlington Rapist.
40:42He was raping women as they got off the Burlington train in the western suburbs of Chicago.
40:48And then in 1984, I'd been an agent for four years.
40:51The Behavioral Science Unit was just getting started.
40:54They wanted to have an agent in every field division, of which there's 57, to be trained by them to
41:02kind of be a liaison between the city where they were assigned, in my case, Chicago, and the Behavioral Science
41:08Unit at Quantico.
41:09And that's how it all got started.
41:11I worked a variety of cases.
41:13I was assigned to the Unabom investigation.
41:15It had nothing to do with profiling at all.
41:19We didn't know who we were looking for until David Kaczynski, Ted's brother, turned him in.
41:25So there was no profiling involved.
41:27Nothing prepared me more or better to be an effective FBI agent than having been a psychiatric nurse.
41:38They interact with people that are upset, are disturbed, are exhibiting behaviors that can be dangerous to them or to
41:49others.
41:49What was normal for me, dealing with people that are stressed out or ill or behaving badly or behaving crazily,
41:58that was no big deal to me.
42:00And there was one or two other agents in my class that had been homicide detectives or a detective on
42:08major police departments.
42:10And they, like me, were similarly prepared to be an effective agent.
42:17Interestingly enough, teachers, grade school teachers that become FBI agents, do very well on the testing to get in.
42:26And they're pretty effective as agents.
42:28Why?
42:29Hey, if you can control a classroom of 10-year-olds, you can handle a bad guy.
42:34When I learned about profiling was when I was first at the academy to become a special agent.
42:42And John Douglas came into our class one day and was showing slides, crime scene photos, and I was horrified.
42:53Part of the reason is the vast majority of cases that lend themselves to profiling are the victims or women
43:02or children.
43:04Well, I'm a woman and I had a child.
43:08So a little too close to home.
43:10But I wanted to do it.
43:12I was aware of a psychological phenomenon known as desensitization.
43:17If you're exposed to something over and over and over, it doesn't have the same impact.
43:23Excessive exposure to it minimizes the response.
43:28And that is exactly what happened.
43:31And so there, at that point, once I mastered that problem, I was on my way.
43:37When I graduated the academy, went back to Chicago, I became aware that there were 8,000 agents nationwide.
43:46And I was the 404th female agent.
43:51Definitely male-dominated profession at the time.
43:55I didn't have any problem with it because I was raised with three brothers and no sisters.
44:01Dealing with boys, men, or men acting like boys, was just common for me.
44:10It was no problem.
44:11A lot of teasing, sometimes jokes that weren't funny, things like that.
44:19But I just roll with it.
44:21Things have changed quite a bit for women and minorities in the FBI.
44:26It's no longer a novelty.
44:29For the last 30, 40 years, TV shows, movies are replete with female agents.
44:39Deadly Women was a show that I was asked to contribute to starting in 2005.
44:47And it's about women who kill.
44:49I created a show called Facing Evil.
44:53It was a prison interview show where I would actually sit down with someone convicted of murder.
44:59And talk with them about their life, what happened.
45:04And that show went on for five years.
45:07I interviewed 36 people.
45:09My podcast, Killer Psyche, we discuss a murder.
45:12And then I go in an in-depth study of why did this person end up taking the life of
45:20another person?
45:21What went on in their life?
45:22And I love it.
45:52So, for every day, I love it.
45:53If you were doubting here, were you?
45:54I like my pretty general answer.
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