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Jana Monroe is a retired FBI Special Agent who was one of the first women to serve in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, the organization known for pioneering criminal profiling.
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00:00My name is Jana Monroe.
00:01I was an FBI agent for over 20 years.
00:04I specialized in interviewing and profiling killers and serial killers.
00:08This is how crime works.
00:12In conducting these interviews, that is such high stakes, you get one shot.
00:16One of the serial killers that I had interviewed, he would be talking about what he did, his
00:20crimes, and it would be pretty heinous.
00:23Being a sociopath, he did not understand remorse, but I could appeal to their ego.
00:34So many of the serial killers that were sociopaths or psychopaths, they have no remorse.
00:42FBI profiling is, it's a structured process that integrates different elements, behavioral
00:49analysis, psychology, victimology, criminology, forensic evidence, and investigative techniques.
00:57It's a tool that narrows down who and what you're looking for through a sign of behaviors
01:03and they have an offender that they want to elicit a confession.
01:07It's how to handle that, whether it's a soft approach, a harder approach, and they give
01:11the investigators that type of guidance.
01:14So my time that I spent in the behavioral science unit, which is now called the behavioral analysis
01:19unit, I worked on approximately 850 cases.
01:23So the behavioral analysis unit became involved with the Jeffrey Dahmer case initially, although
01:29he was arrested by the local department in Wisconsin.
01:32But after they served a search warrant on his house and realized they had a bunch of different
01:38victims and body parts that belonged to different victims, they weren't sure what they were
01:42looking at or what they had, and they thought it was important to have some background on that
01:46before they conducted interviews.
01:48Initially, he was not speaking to investigators.
01:51So they brought all of the evidence and the arrest reports down to Quantico and spent about seven
01:56hours with us at that point just relating the crime, showing us the evidence, and us being
02:02able to come up with an interview strategy for that.
02:05But because of the way that some post-mortem activity that he had where he severed heads and
02:12hands, and had even put some different body parts together, almost like with popsicle stick
02:18sort of a thing, I mean, that's very aberrant behavior.
02:21So you don't go in and just ask, well, why did you do that?
02:24So you've got to put together a whole strategy so that you can get around to that, you know,
02:29what were you thinking at the time?
02:31And when did this start?
02:32Do you remember the first time that you had a fantasy like this?
02:37Yes.
02:37And Jeffrey Dahmer was involved in a lot of post-mortem activity and sexual activity after
02:44death.
02:45And so just asking if, how that happened, you just, you know, you don't wake up one
02:49day and just have all of these things.
02:51So was it something that started at childhood?
02:54Did he recognize it?
02:55Did he talk to anybody about it?
02:58How did it manifest?
02:59All of those types of questions I wanted to ask.
03:02Moving forward, after he was convicted and he was in prison, I had made an appointment
03:07to go and interview him.
03:08He was killed two days prior to the date I was going to be there.
03:12What we have learned is more common when you have a series of sexual assault or rape cases
03:18that you start looking at where all the victims were.
03:21So I was working on a case.
03:22They were close to each other.
03:24They lived in a similar neighborhood.
03:25And then it kind of branched out a little bit.
03:27And they were all at a similar time frame.
03:29And none of the victims were killed.
03:31So we got statements from all of them.
03:33And there was a consistent statement about how the offender smelled.
03:38And he said, which actually, it was a good smell he had on cologne.
03:41And it smelled like he had just bathed.
03:43And when you look at profiling something like that, typically the offender starts out close
03:49to where he is comfortable.
03:51And then as he becomes more emboldened, he kind of moves out of that area a bit.
03:56And this fit that pattern exactly.
03:59And what happened was the offender worked in a factory not too far from where he lived
04:03in this neighborhood.
04:04And he would always, he worked a night shift, but he got off at 2 a.m.
04:08And he would take a shower before going home.
04:11And when they had a search warrant of his locker of where he worked, they found men's cologne,
04:16which then they presented to the victims.
04:19And most of them could identify the cologne.
04:20I'm Liz Merriweather, creator and executive producer of Hulu's new crime thriller, Furious.
04:27And I'm Chitra Raghavan, a clinical psychologist, and I specialize in extreme violence.
04:32Revenge is a slow, cold poison that sits with you and that you plan and plan.
04:39And it's an addictive emotion.
04:41What the show dives into is a character who has felt both rage and revenge.
04:48She's investigating the murders of these men, but really she's investigating her own feelings
04:55about the violence that was committed against her.
04:59I think it's true that you can be rageful and revengeful at the same time.
05:04It's something that we don't consider much.
05:06Rage is a reaction to being threatened or harmed.
05:09I always want, in this show in particular, the audience to never get comfortable with
05:15a character and whether or not they're good or bad, or whether or not they forgive them
05:20or blame them.
05:21If something happened to you that changes your ability to deal with the world at well
05:29what point are you to blame for what you do?
05:38The process for getting the FBI involved in a killer or serial killer case, because typically
05:43it's not federal violation, is for the local law enforcement to have exhausted all of their
05:49resources and send all of their materials to Quantico, which is where the Profiling Unit,
05:55the Behavioral Analysis Unit, is located.
05:58Typically, FBI protocol is you have two agents when you're interviewing a killer.
06:03The ones that I interviewed, it was in an interview room, if you will, but there was a glass similar
06:09to like a plexiglass there, and you had some holes in it so that you could hear and you could
06:15speak to one another.
06:16And they were also shackled and usually handcuffed, and you had a guard or two in the room with you.
06:22At the time that I was conducting these interviews, I wanted to give eye contact, I wanted to be amenable,
06:28I wanted to be present.
06:29And it's really listening, professional listening, and it's hard to do that while you're writing
06:37also. So that was a lot of when I finished my interview with someone, I would go into another
06:43room and try to take as many notes as possible or record my own notes so that I got the
06:48accuracy.
06:49But the very important part of this was to make sure that I knew the case backward and forward,
06:55because I wanted to be able to catch him in a lie. I had an interview that I was anxious
07:03before going
07:04into. And the reason is, it was a female, a mother, that we were suspicious that she was doing
07:12Munchausen by proxy. And what that is, it's in her case, she had just had her fifth child die,
07:21which is extremely unusual. And she had said that she had bad luck. A couple of them were SIDS death,
07:28that sudden incident death syndrome. So a baby dies in the crib. The others, there had been numerous
07:33hospital visits. And as hideous as it sounds, the syndrome is where the mother's looking for attention.
07:41She wants the attention on her. My partner and I both were very suspicious that it was her. And I
07:47think
07:48the more genuine that you can appear, the better the likelihood of getting some of the information
07:54that you want. I worked very closely with Bill Hagmeyer and we were collaborating on how to
08:02interview Ted Bundy. Well, Bill went ahead to Stark prison and made that first initial contact,
08:08came back and told me that he did not want to speak to a female and he only wanted to
08:12speak with Bill.
08:13Special Agent Hagmeyer went ahead and he conducted the interviews and was very successful in getting
08:18confessions from him. After Bill Hagmeyer had conducted these interviews, he'd come to the
08:24office, we'd collaborate, make sure that the notes made sense so that we could give the facts to them,
08:30as Bundy had indicated. And some of them were able to actually locate the victims after all those years.
08:36He was then executed at Stark prison.
08:44Another part that was very challenging and frustrating was in interviewing so many of these
08:50serial offenders. They committed some pretty hellacious crimes and they were very casual about it.
08:57I would have to really listen to the words to realize, you know, they're talking and describing in
09:01detail what they did. One of the things that has always stuck with me was so many of the serial
09:07killers
09:08that were sociopaths or psychopaths, you know, they have no remorse. They have a flat affect of emotions.
09:16It was almost a chilling effect, kind of goosebumps when he would be talking about what he did, his crimes,
09:23and it would be pretty heinous, pretty grisly, gruesome, right? But with a flat affect on their voice,
09:29no emotional response that you could detect at all. And yet was speaking about it like he was mowing a
09:35lawn or having a haircut or something. And that part was very disturbing. And I wanted to make sure
09:41that I didn't have a response. I mean, you're not going to get someone to open up to you, confess
09:47what
09:48they have done. And most of them are extremely intelligent. So they know what they have done is
09:52wrong, but they don't feel what they have done is wrong. So made sure that I didn't go like,
09:57ew, or, you know, make any kind of a grimace or something, passing no physical signs of passing
10:04judgment on what they were telling me. Some of these serial killers, in my observation,
10:10were feigning remorse. And one of the, I think a great example, I've got a video of Edmund Kemper,
10:16who was a prolific serial killer. And he just happened to be in size, like six foot nine at
10:21the time, weighed over 300. So I mean, he's somebody that would stand out, very, very intelligent. But
10:26being a sociopath, he did not understand remorse. And that before one of the parole boards,
10:32he was trying to feign remorse. And one of the matricide, his last victim was his mother.
10:39And I'm sure he had been told by psychiatrists that that's horrible, you know, to kill one's mother.
10:44So he said, yeah, matricide is awful. And then he paused. And it was like he was trying to conjure
10:50up
10:51a tear. It was, he was trying to make his eyes water. And he just couldn't accomplish that.
10:57There's all kinds of things that are indicators, not absolutes, of lying. There's nothing so
11:03standardized as that somebody's looking off to the right or somebody's looking off to the left.
11:06You have to talk to them enough to see what their normal pattern is. And then when you ask somebody,
11:12you know, what's your name? What's your date of birth? You know, those are questions that most
11:16people are at ease with, right? And then when you start getting into the ones that are more like,
11:21you know, did you kill someone? Or have you been in that house before? Or that's when if someone is
11:26lying, and especially when you're looking at the serial killers or killers, they tend to deviate
11:32from that pattern. And it might be a little blink, a little look down, a little look up.
11:37When people are lying, when you're making up a story and a vacuum, you're not looking for your
11:42memory. If you're looking at your memory, you can look straight ahead. Like, okay, that was last
11:46Tuesday. But then if you're thinking, oh, I don't want to tell them it was Tuesday. That was a week
11:52ago,
11:52Thursday. There's going to be different changes. Some people have, they're subconsciously, they'll,
11:57you know, they'll touch their nose or do this. Sometimes women play with their hair. That doesn't
12:01mean they're lying. If they're doing that in the initial part, that's just kind of their behavior.
12:05It's when they start doing something differently, when you're asking different questions.
12:09That's what you key in on. And it's a variety of things. I had one killer that I was interviewing,
12:15his hands were like this the entire time. And then when he started,
12:19I believe, fabricating things, he would do, you know, instead of looking here or there,
12:24I think he was, you know, tactically trying to just touch himself because he wanted to keep the eye
12:29contact. I think he knew enough that if you break eye contact, they're going to think you're lying.
12:33But it's going to come out somewhere. And for him, it was in his hands because we all have that
12:38little
12:38hairs stand up. There's something that just doesn't seem right. There's a catch. And I think it's
12:43something that is very underestimated. And in law enforcement, at least initially, you know,
12:50and it's officers and agents, you know, we want facts. We want facts. What experience taught me was
12:55not to ignore that and to go ahead and say, I don't know what it means right now, but I'm
13:00going to pay,
13:01this is a data point, and I'm going to pay attention to that. And I think our own bodies tell
13:06us a lot,
13:07but when you've been trained to kind of ignore that and only go with facts, that's when it's minimized,
13:12and I don't think it should be. One of the serial killers that I had interviewed,
13:16he had been apprehended and convicted of two. He did not confess to them, but he'd forensically
13:22been convicted. We had some unsolved that I was very suspicious that he was involved in.
13:28So I was interviewing him about those. And that's when his behavior changed. And it changed from him
13:36actually having pretty good eye contact to shifting, shifting in his chair a lot, and looking down a
13:44little bit. Again, these things are subtle. It's not real overt, like, aha, you know, I mean, people would
13:48like to have that seem like it's something that anybody can detect. But it was something where he was
13:54visibly uncomfortable. The founding principles from the interviews of serial killers were the takeaways
14:07of motive and motivation. And what we learned was there was typically a very healthy or unhealthy
14:14fantasy life. And there was also, as the killers grew more confident, let's say, you know, they killed
14:22somebody. Nobody was even, you know, suspicious of them. They were more emboldened at that. Like,
14:28Bundy's a perfect example. He would pick the area where he was going to dispose of the body before he
14:33even selected the victim. The age-old question is, are, you know, serial killers born or are they made?
14:40Nature, nurture? Yes, it's both. I totally agree with that. And the reason is, when you look at data,
14:46you look at research, you will find people, you know, siblings in the same family. One becomes a
14:52serial killer, another becomes a doctor, another becomes an attorney. I know Bundy had said, well,
14:57he looked at pornography at an early age. I know a lot of people who did, and they didn't become
15:02prolific serial killers. There was a predictive model that we used called the triad. And that was,
15:07if a child is exhibiting some of the behaviors, if they're a fire setter, enuresis, which means bedwetting
15:13after the age that you really should be, and then cruelty to animals, if they exhibited all three of those,
15:19the likelihood of them being a violent offender was much more probable.
15:24The bedwetting, what's the reasoning or the thought behind that being?
15:28The thought behind that was a lack of control. And when you look at a lot of the serial killers,
15:35one of the biggest components, more so than the sexual drive, is control. So I think that was the
15:39frustrating part of it, and the acting out was the other part of the triangle. You do have the triangle
15:45of behavior that they use for children. I also worked on a couple of cases where they were very
15:50graphic in art. They were artists, but the type of things they chose to draw were very violent and
15:56very graphic. And we're talking at age, you know, seven, eight, nine years old.
16:05The Oba Chandler serial killer case in Tampa, Florida, is a unique one for me. If I was a
16:13coordinator for the FBI in Tampa and the Rogers family, it was a mother and Joan Rogers and her
16:20two daughters, Christie and Michelle, that lived in Ohio. And for the oldest daughter, who was 17,
16:26they had not been out of the state of Ohio. And so she wanted to go to Disney World in
16:31Orlando and then
16:32see the ocean. So they drove to Tampa. Unfortunately, they were killed and it was a hideous death.
16:39They went missing on June 1st, 1989. And then their bodies were found floating on June 4th, 1989.
16:49And the way that the crime had been committed was that they all had cinder blocks, 55-pound cinder blocks,
16:56concrete. Their hands and feet were tied. The purpose of that, they were thrown into the water
17:02alive, was to weight them down. And what the killer underestimated was the buoyancy and gases
17:08of a dead body. And they ended up floating to the surface. So I became involved when the bodies were
17:15found. One of the other coordinators, Stan Jacobson and I, we were not invited, but we went to the
17:22crime scene as they were fishing the bodies out of the water. They were in different locations, but
17:27close enough that they, you know, we thought this must be the same thing going on. St. Petersburg
17:33Police Department had the jurisdiction on that. My initial impression in looking at the Rogers case
17:41was just real sadness. It was my first emotion on that. And then later, when I was actually helping
17:48the police department and we were just kind of going over some facts and whatnot, I found that the sad
17:53turned to mad. I got very angry because I really felt for them and I felt, oh my god, you
17:59know, for the
18:00husband, the father, he just lost his whole family. Fast forward, I was transferred shortly thereafter
18:07to Quantico to become a profiler. They, the investigators in St. Petersburg, continued to
18:13investigate the case, but then it went cold. And it was such a heinous crime. So they asked for help
18:21from Quantico. So we looked at all of the evidence again, basically started from zero. Again, there's got
18:27to be a detail. There's got to be something that we missed. And there was a note, a handwritten note
18:34in, in cursive, that was a part of the evidence. It was in the console of the rental car. And
18:40so my
18:40question was, who wrote that note? And they said, well, Joan Rogers. I said, well, how do we know? How
18:46do we
18:46know that? And there was silence. So what happened was the investigators went to Ohio, asked the husband
18:53slash father. Is this your wife or your daughter's handwriting? And he said, no, not at all. So
18:59that's when we came to the conclusion that that was an important element that had been overlooked,
19:04is that this handwriting must have belonged to the offender. So we blew the handwriting up and put it
19:10on numerous billboards. It had a phone number that said, make sure that you contact, you know, St.
19:15Petersburg PD or the Tampa FBI. And had quite a few calls, but there were three, I believe, that all
19:22had the
19:22same name. And that was Oba Chandler. Oba's kind of, I'd never heard that name before, kind of unique.
19:26I think this case, it was behavioral, the profiling training, in addition to the regular FBI training.
19:33Don't, you know, overlook any little piece of evidence. In this case, it was, you know, it was
19:37the handwriting. That was your regular FBI work. But I think the behavioral part of it that was some
19:43assistance was the afterwards then in getting search warrants and surveilling the suspect, Oba Chandler.
19:50So the surveillance was conducted by the local law enforcement in the Tampa area. He was ultimately
19:57arrested. And when he was being interviewed, there was some information, not that he confessed to this,
20:03but led investigators to some other women he had abducted and tried to kill and was not successful.
20:09And then there was a homicide subsequent to the Rogers that he was suspected of being the offender.
20:15Because, um, I had the opportunity to be involved from the beginning, they were also gracious enough
20:20and let, um, let us know when he was apprehended and then when, um, he was executed.
20:31There's quite a few cases that would have no name recognition, but one of them that stands
20:36out is the, uh, Susan Smith case. And that's a case where she had claimed she had two little boys
20:43that were in a car seats in the backseat of her car. And she had claimed that she had been
20:48abducted
20:50by an African-American male and he drove off with the car with the two little boys in it.
20:54It went to help on that one. And it was like, okay, this makes no sense of where it occurred.
20:59And it was predominantly a Caucasian area. So a black male in that area, somebody might have seen,
21:05they might've seen a car driving. Plus it made no sense, uh, as to why if somebody's going to carjack,
21:09they'd take the responsibility of two, an infant and a baby, uh, in the backseat of a car,
21:14if that was not their motivation. And, uh, the issue where we had to handle it very sensitively
21:19is that the community considered her an excellent mom. She was, it was a small area, so she was known.
21:24And so there was that sentiment that you didn't want to come in and be the bad guy,
21:29but we were suspicious initially because of what I just mentioned. And as it ended up,
21:34she had pushed the car into a body of water and actually drowned her children.
21:39One of the first successful profiling cases would have been the Wayne Williams case,
21:44the Atlantic child murders. And that one was very high profile and extremely alarming.
21:49It was occurring in, uh, the black community of Atlanta and there were, seemed to be no
21:55eyewitnesses from the neighborhood. There was nobody that was standing out, uh, that they could say,
22:00we saw this strange person or this person was, you know, out of the ordinary here, uh, which,
22:05which made it, um, unusual. So a special agent in charge, SAC, John Glover was the first African
22:12American SAC and he was in the Atlanta division. And he offered, uh, any help that the FBI could give
22:19investigators when they were investigating the Wayne Williams case. And that was our laboratory and
22:23the, uh, profilers. The profiling unit was, was very helpful in the Wayne Williams case was because
22:29the neighbors and community didn't see anything out of the ordinary, um, because the suspect ended up
22:35being African American. And that's very unusual. Serial killers tend to be, to be white, but, um,
22:41Wayne Williams lived in that area and he did not stand out.
22:49I joined the Behavioral Profiling Unit in 1985. When I hired on, there were 12 of us in the unit
22:56and we were the Behavioral Science Unit. So the Behavioral Science Unit training was an 18-month
23:01program, but it was 18 months while during, doing on-the-job training. So, um, it continued to work.
23:08We ended up looking at crime scenes, uh, went along for, uh, crime scene ride, if you will,
23:14with NYPD. And then there were certain, uh, videos or films that we would watch of, uh, John Wayne Gacy,
23:21Edmund Kemper, Ted Bundy. It would be ones for specific reasons. Like, okay, here, look at how he's
23:27looking, what he's doing, and this is where we think he's lying, and this is why. And this is how
23:31you would
23:32be able to confer this to, you know, what we had in evidence already. The skill sets that are valuable,
23:38and, of course, they're enhanced by the training are, number one, knowing how to interview to,
23:42to begin with, and understanding an approach and being an excellent listener. When you're interviewing,
23:48none of it's about you, um, and it's about the person that you're trying to elicit information from.
23:54The Behavioral Analysis Unit, uh, it works as a group think tank kind of methodology, if you will.
24:01And what that means is, like I said, there were 12 of us when I was there,
24:04and everybody working on different cases, and all of us brought something different to the table.
24:09Typically, there were like three or four, and on some really significant cases, we had, you know,
24:14five, six, seven of us. And again, we brought in different skill sets. We brought in different
24:18experience levels. Initially, the Behavioral Science Unit was in the basement. It was never intended to be
24:25office space. It was, uh, supposed to be J. Edgar Hoover's bomb shelter, in case of bombing, but
24:31they didn't know where to put us, and so that's where, where we were. But it started off, um, like
24:36that, looking just at the behaviors to be able to help with forensics, and then morphed or transitioned
24:41into, uh, an actual unit where it was the serial killer research, uh, was part of the initial part,
24:48is, is getting all the interviews of the serial killers to look for that information to motive,
24:53motivation, background, those sorts of things. I think by, um, the general agent population,
25:00their perspective was, you know, what do those people do? And, and because we were located in
25:05the basement, it even exacerbated that. We would do things like go to the medical examiner's office,
25:11or the coroner, depending what they had in that area, and we'd watch autopsies. And it was very,
25:16very valuable to see how an autopsy was performed, what the medical examiner came up with.
25:22So the serial killer interviews, I learned from each and every one of them, but none of them
25:26were the same. It's, it's like, you know, human beings, there's going to be some differences. But
25:31one of the things that was the same for me, being on the interview side of it, was making sure
25:38that
25:38I could appeal to their ego. Everybody has an ego, but some are larger than others. But when I'm
25:45interviewing them, the FBI could not offer them anything. We couldn't offer a stay of execution,
25:49we couldn't offer better food, transfer to a different prison. So, you know, why? What's
25:54their motivation for talking to us? And what we used was that appeal to the ego, something to the
26:00effect of, well, you were very successful at this. And in fact, law enforcement never apprehended you.
26:05You turned yourself in, or it took years. You were so efficient at that. Could we learn from you?
26:11And the other, if you could ascertain from them that maybe they were remorseful, or at least were
26:17pretending to be remorseful, you could say something like, I'm sure you don't want other men to follow
26:23in your footsteps. So how can you help us, law enforcement, help other people that might have
26:29a tendency towards violent crime? The hardest part of the job was not knowing how cases ended. It was,
26:39I don't even want to call that hard. I guess it was just frustrating. Because I know most of us
26:44really did pour our heart and soul into this. You're looking at, the victims can't speak on this. And
26:50it was frustrating sometimes to see the name recognition with certain prolific serial killers.
26:55And nobody knew who the victim was. It's not just the victim, it's her family, her spouse,
27:00people in the community, whatever she did. So there's a lot of people that are negatively impacted.
27:09The movie, The Silence of the Lambs, a large part of it was filmed at Quantico. So the whole cast
27:15and crew came down to do the filming there. I was selected to work with Jodie Foster because I was
27:21the only female in the unit. And so it was like I was Clarice Starling to her. So we went
27:29over what an
27:31agent, and especially a new agent like that, what her demeanor would be like, how she would be in
27:35interviewing somebody as diabolical as the fictitious Dr. Hannibal Lecter. We sat in my office
27:41and she had the script and would say, at this part, they say Clarice says this or says that. And
27:48she
27:48would ask me, would a real agent say that or not? And I'd either say yes or no, I think
27:54a response like
27:55this might be better. Or they never say anything like that. I had no influence, but she did. And she
28:00was
28:00actually able to get some of the verbiage changed, some of the script changed. I think the scene of
28:05where she's walking down the hall to the prison cell where she's going to speak to Dr. Hannibal Lecter
28:10was very realistic. And it brought back memories to me because being the only woman walking down
28:19that aisle, you get hoots and hollers and, you know, that kind of stuff that you don't want to react
28:24to.
28:25Right. And I think Jodie Foster did an excellent job. She didn't look terrified, but she looked anxious
28:30and she looked nervous because it is awkward. It is uncomfortable. And in fact, the file folder that
28:35she used in that was my file folder. That was an actual one that I'd had a case and obviously
28:39the
28:39notes were blank. My response to the final depiction in the film, I had to get out of FBI mode.
28:45So
28:45it's entertainment. You can't watch somebody type all day long. That's boring. I loved it. And I think
28:50they did an excellent job. I think the series Mindhunter, which is based on John Douglas's book
28:56by the same name, is very accurate for the profiling and for the unit. I think they depicted
29:03the interview process and how they responded to cases. I think that was pretty accurate.
29:09So in looking at the basement where the offices were located, that's very accurate. If you're talking
29:14about Criminal Minds and a bunch of other shows, Quantico, I haven't really watched too many others
29:20looking at bloody, battered bodies all day long. So I did not choose for a while to look at that
29:27for
29:27my entertainment. And I think there's a genuine fascination and it seems to be more so among women
29:33than men for the true crime piece. And I think a lot of that has to do with security and
29:38women wanting
29:39to feel secure and wanting to be able to identify something. And then also for the entertainment
29:44value of it. But I think overall they do a good job. I wrestle with there being so much name
29:52notoriety,
29:52serial killers again, and not victims. But I understand why that is.
30:02Unlike how it is portrayed oftentimes in the media and in the entertainment world,
30:08the FBI did have finite resources. And so it was a bit frustrating when you looked at budget constraints,
30:14because not only in the behavioral science unit, but in everything else. So my first office in Albuquerque,
30:20New Mexico, we're very budget conscious at that particular point in time. And my partner and I,
30:25my male partner and I had some interviews to do on the Indian reservations. So one of the hotels that
30:30we could
30:30afford that was within the bureau budget was, I mean, there were cockroaches in it. It smelled badly.
30:36Let's just put it that way. I thought, no, I just can't do that. So I ended up sleeping in
30:41my bureau car.
30:42I think to not be heavily disturbed by these things or go crazy yourself,
30:47I know I had to have what I refer to as a clinical detachment. I can make it analogous to
30:53a doctor,
30:53like oncologists, surgeons, people that have to give bad news to somebody. If they broke down every
30:59time they did that, they wouldn't be effective in their job. So I would compartmentalize what was being
31:04said to me. And so I would do the job and then later it would affect me and impact me.
31:10One of the more memorable things about working these types of crimes is the smell. And I can remember
31:17it from a, there's a distinct smell in a morgue versus working with a coroner where there has been a
31:23lot of blood or a lot of violence to the victims. And then actually at the crime scene itself.
31:30At the morgue, what I remember, it's like a smell of formaldehyde, it seems like to me,
31:35a very uninviting smell. And it's so, so horrific. And the other thing is I would remember I still had
31:40long hair at that time and I'd smell my hair and the, the odor would linger on that. So you,
31:46it was like hair wash, shampoo, shower right away when you got back.
31:55The FBI was always of an interest to me and I was kind of a abnormal child in that I
32:00knew at age 13
32:01what I wanted to do. And for two reasons. One, I love this country and that we're a nation of
32:07laws
32:08and liberties. And I hate bullies. I hate people who take advantage of others and others' vulnerabilities.
32:14I thought, how can I marry these two callings? And what can I do? And law enforcement seemed
32:19like the natural choice. Well, at the time, and it sounds like I'm 105, the FBI was not hiring women.
32:25So I looked at that as good experience in an effort to make me more marketable.
32:30I started off initially as a probation officer and then I worked as a police officer working
32:36juvenile cases. And then I joined the FBI through the Los Angeles office and went to Albuquerque,
32:43New Mexico as an investigator, Tampa, Florida as an investigator. And then I landed up in the
32:49behavioral science unit. Well, there was no welcome wagon for me at the FBI and I was not wanted there.
32:55And there was a stereotype or a bias of what women should be doing. And this was not it. This
33:00was their
33:01job, their domain, their territory. And that's why I believe I had to work harder to prove myself
33:08that because there was no acceptance at that point in time. I'm not saying that people were sitting
33:12on the sidelines, you know, hoping I would fail, but they were certainly not doing anything to mentor
33:16or encourage me. Once I got into the FBI, like everybody else, I was what they called a field or
33:23street
33:23agent. But that's when I knew I wanted to get to Quantico and be a profiler. I had always been
33:29interested in working on homicide cases, but you know, serial homicide cases and the psychology and
33:35psychopathy that goes with that. Well, there weren't any women in the unit. And so to me, it's like,
33:40well, why not be the first? So I then became the coordinator in the Tampa office so that I could
33:46get
33:46as much experience and exposure as possible to the type of work that they would be doing. Well, the behavior
33:52science was a little bit out of the mainstream of the FBI. And I had worked with Special Agent Bill
33:57Hagmeyer, who was in the unit, and there was no advertising of an opening that was coming up. So
34:03he verbally told me, he said, hey, you know, we're going to have an opening in the unit. So I
34:08took a day of vacation
34:09and went and interviewed for the position. It started like a typical interview. And it was
34:15John Douglas, who was the unit chief at the time and another agent. And they asked me questions like,
34:20what skill sets do you bring to the table? What experience have you had? Then John took, I think
34:26it was about five, eight by 10 photos, looking at bloody, battered bodies and pushed them across the
34:32desk to me. But he didn't ask any questions. And so I'm looking at them and I said, well,
34:38what do you want to know? What are you, are you not asking me anything? And he goes, I know,
34:42I'm observing. And he said, I wanted to see if you had a reaction, like if you'd have a gag
34:46reaction,
34:46a gasp, if you look away, if, you know, and I said, well, why would I do that? And he
34:52said,
34:52well, we've interviewed some other females and that's, that's been their reaction. I said, well,
34:56I did some research and you were in the, uh, the military, I believe the Air Force and, and you
35:01were
35:01like a tennis or a golf instructor. So why would that make you more qualified than, than me? Now,
35:07that was not a good interview strategy and I do not recommend it. Um, but to his credit, he laughed.
35:13So, um, I was hired, I believe maybe three or four days, uh, after that interview and was very
35:20grateful that, uh, John took a, took a chance on me. I think there were a lot of advantages to
35:24being
35:25a woman, uh, in the FBI at that point in time. There are cases, especially, especially when you're
35:29dealing with female victims, witnesses, and a few offenders. So depending on the nature of the case,
35:36especially if you're getting into like a sexual assault or even some of the homicide cases,
35:40uh, women were much more likely to speak to me than they would be to some of my male counterparts.
35:47I eventually stepped away from profiling because actually my husband noticed it in me first and
35:52then I, uh, also recognized that I'd kind of gone to the dark side. Uh, it became a little more
35:57depressing. But after looking at, again, on a daily basis, all of these, these crimes and very vivid,
36:05uh, I started to go into a, to a dark place about human nature. I began to look at all
36:10human nature
36:11as, as bad, as, as negative. So it, it became just, uh, something to me that was like a cloud
36:17or an
36:17anvil, anvil hanging over. So I thought while Dale was, was gone, I had been working, uh, several cases
36:23where a knife was involved. They were all stabbing victims and all of them, the offender had come in
36:28and used their own knives, the victim's knives. And so I thought, aha, somebody breaks in here,
36:33they're not going to use our knives. They're going to have to bring their own knife. So I took all
36:37of
36:37our knives and put them downstairs in the dryer. And then, um, I was off interviewing, uh, some female
36:44prisoners. Uh, my husband Dale comes home. He wanted a knife to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
36:49He calls me and said, where, where are utensils? I told him and he said, uh, I think we need
36:55to talk
36:55when, when you come home. So I thought it would be healthier and better to, to get, you know, get
37:01above
37:01ground and get some perspective back. Well, after I transferred out of the profiling unit, I had
37:06the great opportunity. I went up the, the ranks of the, uh, the FBI. After the 9-11 attacks, the
37:12FBI
37:12did not have a cyber division. They had cyber entities, agents in each office, but not a program
37:18or a division. So, um, my remit, if you will, was to start that. I, I went into leadership and
37:23I did
37:24touch base with all of the, the different positions you're supposed to. So I was a supervisor in the San
37:28Diego
37:29office of white collar crime and financial institution, fraud, public corruption. I became
37:35an assistant special agent in charge in Denver over all of the criminal and terrorism. I became
37:40the special agent in charge. That's the, in charge of the office for Los Angeles before being sent
37:46back to Washington DC to be the assistant director of the cyber division. And then I ended my career
37:52as the special agent in charge of Phoenix. So I wrote a book. It's a, it's a memoir and it's
37:57called
37:57Hearts of Darkness. It's basically my memoir, but it predominantly focuses, um, not only on my time
38:04in the FBI, but in the behavioral science unit. Profiling was initially created and it was very
38:14rudimentary at the time. Howard Teton had a psychology background and he was interested
38:19in some of the behaviors of crime again, not just forensics. And that kind of grew and transitioned.
38:24It was about 1972 that it started, but it was very small and very preliminary at that point in time.
38:31The founders of the profiling unit were Howard Teton, John Douglas, and Bob Ressler. I did not know
38:37Howard, but I worked with and for both, uh, Bob Ressler and John Douglas. John Douglas was my unit
38:44chief. He hired me and then was my, my supervisor, my boss, my entire time there. The behavioral science
38:50unit then to the behavioral analysis unit was still 12 people when I left. A few years after that,
38:58it expanded and became, uh, four separate units. The behavioral analysis unit stayed the same,
39:04but then there was crimes against children and there was still the training unit. And then,
39:08then another one that actually helped more with terrorism because you figure, uh, after the 9 11 attacks,
39:14that fundamentally changed, uh, all of law enforcement. The crime classification where criminal
39:20had been the number one for years and years and years, um, went to number eight and you had terrorism
39:27and cyber, those sorts of things that were, you know, at the top tier. So the unit was designed to
39:31help
39:32with, um, counterintelligence and terrorism. I think that originally, um, the word science had that
39:39connotation almost like, you know, evidence, right? That if it's a science, then that's an absolute.
39:45And the cautionary statement then was about that is it's, it's not an absolute. Again,
39:50it's an investigative tool. Um, and the danger was that you would get an investigative tunnel vision
39:57because, uh, investigators would hear, oh, this, or, you know, somebody looks like this or so that they
40:03would exclude looking at others because this is what the science said on something like that.
40:08The Richard Jewell case, July 1996, is an example of one of those because he fit the profile. So if
40:15you will, you were looking for, you know, this is the, the bomb that went off in, in the park
40:19at the
40:20Olympics. And it's like, okay, he's going to be, you know, a loner, went through all of these things.
40:25And he did, he showed up there and he was trying to be helpful. A lot of times you'd see
40:29someone that
40:30they want to see what the chaos that they've created, right? So they will show up at the crime scene.
40:35So he fit all of these things that the profilers were, were saying that he would. And that was
40:40where the example where then they focused on him at the exclusion of other people. And it ended up
40:46that he was not responsible for that. Remember my husband, he was on HRT. They were there at the time.
40:51And then he was the one that led the effort to, that caught Eric Rudolph, who was the bomber.
41:01I think the future is actually very encouraging for profiling. And the reason is, as I mentioned
41:06previously, there tends to be more collaboration now with other agencies, other technologies. And
41:11I think AI is going to be transformative for a lot of things, but sticking with law enforcement
41:17piece of it, because it's such a valuable tool. But again, the operative word is tool. And I think
41:23you're still getting, it's not going to replace good investigators and people, but it's, it's going
41:28to be, it's going to assist in something like that. I remember when DNA came at my time and it
41:33was so
41:34exciting. I actually remember I was working on a case with a colleague by the name of Steve Mardegian.
41:39And one of the cases that he had, it was an old case that had gone cold. And fortunately,
41:45the officers or agents who had preserved the evidence had done it properly. That's why it's so
41:50important to preserve it that way. And they could take that old evidence. And with the DNA,
41:55they ended up finding the offender. And it was one of the ones that they had interviewed initially
41:59early on. And of course, geez, surprise, he lied. But there was no other corroborating evidence at the
42:05time. AI, if you look at its capabilities right now, and its predictive capabilities, it's amazing.
42:12However, there's an old movie called The Minority Report. And I reflect back on that,
42:16again, for the cautionary statements on this. I think at this point in time, who knows what it's
42:21going to transition into. But you've got to have human oversight and involvement for something like
42:27that, because you can't replace that at this time. And it is an assist, not a replacement.
42:32Serial killers, it seems like it's almost been superseded by active shooter, which has become so
42:38prevalent right now, which is very sad. But there's so many different active shooter cases. And they're
42:43very different. If you look at the motivations, you cannot make it analogous to a serial killer
42:48case versus an active shooter. But I do think serial killing has been shadowed. And part of that
42:54has been because of the technology. It's much more difficult to evade now than it had been,
43:00and for numerous reasons. I think it's going to become more and more difficult for serial killers to
43:05actually evade arrest. Reflecting back on my time in the behavioral science unit,
43:10I wouldn't trade it for anything. The way I feel about humanity these days, I've seen
43:14the egregious evil of the few. I've learned to recognize the good of the many. When I stopped
43:20doing some of the profiling work and was working with ordinary people, it warms my heart to be
43:29reintroduced and remember how good people can be. And again, we're all just people, right? But I started
43:34looking for and finding the good qualities in people. But I also know that there's the good part too.
44:04I believe that there's a lot of personal Excuse me and a lot of people. And I'm not willing to
44:05see, but the whole thing, I believe it will not be, it's a common goal of the human being.
44:05It's a great idea. It's a really big idea. And so I have to do that. We're going to do
44:05it.
44:05The whole thing with the team, I'm going to do it. It's like a national organization,
44:05this Carolina has been able to understand the most of the questions.
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