MindHunter /// Dr. Ann Burgess | Forensic Files

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limited time. [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] All right, with me I have the wonderful
and very impressive, the brilliant Dr. and Burgess. And I also have Stephen, is it Constantine?
>> Yep, you got it. >> Boom. Nailed it. All right. Um, they are here to talk with us about their new
book, A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mind Hunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind. And for everyone out
there that may not be aware, Dr. Anne Burgess is the real life woman and doctor behind the character, the female
character from the hit Netflix series Minehunter. So, welcome both of you. Both of you are currently working at
Boston College. Do I have that right? >> Yes. School of Nursing, Canel School of
Nursing. >> And how long have you been there, doctor? >> I've been I started here uh back when
this actually the pro uh study was going on. and then I left to go to University
of Pennsylvania and then back in 2000. So essentially back since 2000. >> One thing that I find absolutely
fascinating about this new book is Mind Hunter the show really kind of shows us and highlights some of the very infant
the infancy of the behavior science unit. But your book really discusses a lot of stuff that was even pre behavior
science unit and or behavioral science unit and sort of the genesis of how that all came about and a lot of the behind
the scenes work as well as your transition because you were a doctor before this whole thing got started.
Correct. >> That's right. I was. >> What was your expertise? because you find yourself at the FBI in a very
different way than many find theirelves at the FBI, right? Most people like aspire to be an FBI agent and they they
spend their whole life working toward that. They get educated, maybe they serve some time in the military. Uh
they, you know, keep their nose clean, stay out of trouble and hope one day that they can be an agent. But for you,
you're so brilliant that the FBI calls you on the phone and says, "Hey, we we need to talk to her." Tell us a little
bit about that. Sure. Um I was at Boston College and this was back at a time when
the issue of rape was just starting to be if you will put on a front burner. Uh the women's movement had been pushing
for better treatment, better care for victims. And so I with a colleague Linda Lidle Holmstrom who was in the sociology
department at Boston College actually approached me to see if I would join her in a project on u rape victims and she
was having trouble finding rape victims which is still a problem. They are very they they're very hidden and very
silent. But I knew that they would be coming into a hospital. And since I had access to the major hospitals in Boston,
I said, "Let me see if we can get access somehow." And I did. I was able to uh work the project through the Boston City
Hospital. And we were called every time a rape victim came in and we went right in at the time and we followed the
victim. So that was over a um uh one-year period. We saw 146 people between the ages of 3 and 73. And
that made up the basis, if you will, for the study. And out of that study came uh
three rather important papers. One was the back in 1973 was just called the rape victim in the emergency room and it
was published in the American Journal of Nursing which is our major journal. Uh the year later Linda and I started
publishing uh what we called the rape trauma syndrome and that was distributed to a larger audience a psychiatric
mental health audience. Well, at the same time as this was our study was going on, the um FBI was getting
pressure to do something about teaching rape investigation. And so Roy Hazelwood
got tasked with that. That was his assignment. And he happened to be out on the West Coast at the Los Angeles Police
Department and was kind of bemoning the fact that he had this new assignment. Did anybody know anything about rape,
etc. And after his uh he was actually uh talking on hostage negotiation which was
the big issue for them at that time. Rita connect a police officer came up to him and said she had just read this
article in the American Journal of Nursing. Now Rita was also a nurse. She was a nurse that then went on to become
a police officer. But she told Roy that this article maybe he would like to look
up the authors because they were on the east coast. And Roy did uh actually I got a call from Roy. I was a little bit
unnerving because the way they ask uh for you they say this is the FBI and etc. And I'm sitting there thinking oh
my gosh you know >> they make it sound like you've done something wrong. >> I know I know my income tax or
something. And then I thought and then I thought uh he said, "Well, did you write
this article uh the rape victim in the emergency room?" And I and I thought, "Oh my heavens, did I say something bad
in that article?" And then he relaxed a bit and that uh very authoritative FBI voice uh went away. He was more relaxed
and he said, "We'd like to invite you down to to teach our our agents about rape since this is a new area, etc.,
etc." And that's it. That's how it happened. Um, I went down there. I was interested and told him. I wanted to see
what they were teaching their investigators about rape because uh that's something that I I learned from
the women's groups that they and rape crisis centers that they were not very happy with the way investigations were
going. So that and once I was down there, they were being told by their new director who happened to be William
Webster that they had to start doing their own research because the FBI Academy was the education arm, if you
will, of the FBI. And so um I did I did do a project with Roy first and then Roy
had introduced me to Bob Wrestler and to John Douglas. And once that happened, I
I think the rest of the book kind of goes into how we worked. It was first called the criminal personality
project because we wanted to do more than one type of criminal. And we actually started out with the serial
killer uh which of course is what the um the book is based on. But also they were
just starting a more uh organized way of doing profiling. And so that was a second pro
that was a second objective of that initial project. >> Well, and you become so valuable to what
it is that they want to do in the future, right? because they're bringing you in really in large part from and
again I'm just some dumb guy here taking a guess but it looks to me like they bring you in because you have a a a
wealth of knowledge and understanding in regard to these rape victims and rap, you know, sexual assault survivors and
persons that had to go through that horrible experience. But they bring you in because they are
now transitioning. The FBI is in a bit of a transition period where rather than just identifying and catching and
stopping crime. We want to kind of learn and research why does this stuff happen
and and who commits these. But to have a good understanding of that, we also need
to have a really good understanding of the the victims as well. >> Absolutely. and victimology. If you
notice in in their writings and even today, that victimology is almost the very first thing that they look for to
analyze who the victim is when there's been a homicide. And and I think the other important thing is they were
getting these cases in which they couldn't come up with a motive. >> Uh it wasn't, you know, like a white
collar crime or it wasn't u a criminal enterprise or something like that. And so that really is where we put a lot of
effort in analyzing the data that we got from the 36 killers that we specifically
studied and that's where we understood that it was a sexual homicide. So we added a category to the existing
categories for homicide and as you say yes it's very it was very important. I also had wanted to speak for the victim
that didn't survive. I felt that uh we were Linda and I were speaking for obviously for victims who did survive,
but there there had to be something that we could say about the victim that did not. So that that was one of my
particular interests. And what I love and what I'm so fascinated and impressed by your work in in direct regard to is
you seem to me to be the one that's going to have to organize all of the chaos like right like like Douglas and
Hazelwood and Wrestler. They all are they they all know what they're doing. They, you know, maybe not educated in
the same ways that you are and don't share the same expertise, but they certainly have a bit of a knack for it.
And you're kind of brought in to not only help with the victimology and then understanding uh rape victims and and
just the the crime of of rape anyway, but the but to organize what it is that they are already somewhat actively
doing, right? It's it's it's applying kind of u >> it's applying not just organization to
it but also how do we learn from what we're doing and then how do we teach others uh what we've learned.
>> Right. That that that's exactly but even more important was to get it written
down. >> They had a their profession was more um word of mouth. they would teach, you
know, about cases and so forth, but a lot wasn't written down. And so I can remember asking them what they were kind
of a script were they using for interviewing the serial killers and they didn't have one. It was like we just
keep them talking. I thought, well, they certainly do talk. I mean, that is one characteristic of serial killers. They
usually like to talk, but but they didn't have any categories, any organization. And so, as you say, that's
exactly what the project was. maybe and Stephen was really good at pulling all of that out from what we did with the
agents and he can probably speak better to that part of um of the book. >> Yeah, absolutely. I would just I would
just add that um one thing that's important to remember is in the late 70s early 80s when Dr. Burge was doing her
work with victims of sexual assault and sexual violence, it was actually one of the uh three most common crimes in the
country at the time. Uh but it was unknown, unresarched uh and you know in response the FBI was
under immense pressure to start figuring out what they could do about this how they could respond and that's the reason
that they they really sought Dr. Burgess out and brought her in is because she was pretty much the only person out
there at the time that had any expertise on the topic. And there's so much science and psychology involved,
especially when we talk about serial offenders, right? whether it be a serial rapist or a serial killer, there's so
much to to learn from from them and their their actions and how they kind of how they kind of become this because
with a lot of them and you know it's probably as much nature as nurture in most cases,
but there's, you know, they they rarely wake up one day and just decide to start
killing people or to start sexually assaulting people there there is something that they are kind of created
and there's a way to learn. We're never going to be able to turn the faucet completely off, right? But there's there
is a way to kind of learn from it, not only to help us better detect these types of crimes, but also uh solve them
and and have some resolve. >> Yeah. So then that was one of the points. How can we decrease the number
of victims by understanding quicker what is uh triggering all this? And and one thing you said is almost exactly what
one of the serial killers said to me. He said, you know, I didn't wake up in the
get up in the morning and start thinking this is what I'm going to do today. >> Um but think and that's what we tried to
get at. So if that isn't what happened, then what did happen that took you down that road for to kill so many victims?
So that's why we were trying to explore the mind, the thinking patterns because thoughts drive behavior. And that's what
this was all about is to try to find out what the thoughts were. >> And a lot of these creeps, they're
fantasizing about this sort of stuff well in advance. And those fantasies are changing and evolving or devolving
throughout a period of time until they end up actually and and I hate hate to phrase it this way because they're these
are horrible acts, but once they finally get up the courage to to go out and and
try to live out one of these horrible fantasies that they've created. >> Yeah, that's that's absolutely right.
That's one thing that Dr. Burgers and the team really found in their studies was that fantasy was a common element.
And these offenders practiced, rehearsed these fantasies over and over in their heads until
fantasy itself became more authentic than reality. You know, fantasy to them was the sacred. And so they had to act
that out. That was the their their compulsion. That was their need. >> Stephen, talk about the book a little
bit. And I mean like the behind the scenes type of stuff with the book because there's no question about it.
Dr. Burgess has led a very fascinating and brilliant career. So, it the the interesting level
was going to be a 10 no matter what. But now you come in and we're going to we're
going to piece this thing out and put together a story and and and add some storytelling to it. Tell us what is your
role and your uh uh working relationship with Dr. Burgess. >> Sure. Yeah, it was wonderful to work
with Dr. Burgess. um you know, she's smart, she's done amazing things, uh she's able to share her knowledge in in
really easily accessible ways, which is uh very helpful for writing the book. Um
and one of her ideas early on with this book was not just to tell the story of the individual cases, which is something
that had been done before, but was to sort of fold these individual cases into the greater story of profiling itself.
uh how profile how profiling got started, you know, how there was intense opposition to it at the beginning uh and
what it took for it to become successful. So, that's a story that's never really been told and also telling
it from her perspective uh as one of the few women that was in the FBI at that time uh and sort of that larger cultural
context uh is really unique. Um and I learned a lot from her. I think readers will learn a lot from her as well. Uh,
and it was just, you know, she's fantastic. She's really inspiring and I think a lot of that comes through in the
book. >> Well, and Killer by Design is a fantastic book, but I want to give a little a little praise that uh needs to
be given here. So, True Crime Garage, we've done 540ome episodes and then off the record, we've done over 130. So,
we've covered a lot of cases uh on this show. And now one thing that I really strive to do is I really and this is my
own sickness that I have and I don't think that there's a cure for it but I have this drive that I have to have some
kind of intimate knowledge or understanding of a case and of a crime and maybe even the perpetrator and and
victims themselves. and two tools that I keep in my my tool box here in the garage. And I these are two of the the
most useful reference materials that I've collected over the years. One is the crime
classification manual uh that Dr. Burgess, you are directly responsible for this. I I uh and as well as the
sexual homicide patterns and motives. So, I wanted to make sure that >> Thank you. They gave us some u credit
where credit is due and thank you for those wonderful reference materials. They're they're educational to me. The
the the person that's never stepped foot inside of uh Quantico or any other FBI office for that matter.
>> Very good. Very good. >> Let's talk about because Stephen kind of touched on this a little bit. You get
the call from Roy Hazelwood. What what's going through your mind like after you get off the phone? Are you are
you excited at do you look at this as an opportunity or do you look at it like it's the FBI I don't want to piss them
off. I'm at least going to take the meeting to uh to to make them happy. And again, John Douglas told me at the time
when he joined the FBI, and this was his joke, his words was that the FBI was male, Yale, or sorry, I'm going to I
know I'm going to get this wrong. Male, Pale, and Yale is what he said the described the FBI as when he joined. So
you you're a woman with this wonderful education and background and and and a superb expertise in something that they
need to learn about. You have to feel very much like an outsider. Not just not just being a woman, but also your your
background. >> Well, I was more curious, I think, is the word I would use. Um I felt uh I
needed to do it because I had never gone before a totally male group. You know, I
had only really up until that point uh talked to rape crisis centers, which is predominantly female, or nursing groups
because we were trying to get all of the emergency room nurses educated on the care of the rape victim. So, when that
came across uh my desk, I I thought, well, I I should do it. I want to be fair, right? Equal males and females.
And then I said I I was want to know what they actually were learning. And I was always very curious about Quanico
and all the stories I had heard. And I think it then getting there was really something interesting because you fly
into uh into Washington airport uh dollar. No, not Dallas. We went to the other one and they put you in this car
and you drive and drive and drive and it gets denser and denser and denser and it
was at night and there were trees all and I where is this place? and it's about an hour's drive and finally it
kind of pops up like brigadeon out of nowhere and uh that's it. So, uh you get there at night and of course
you're on the next morning and that was a going to be an interesting uh episode because they're all sitting there.
They're all in their little lookalike shirts, uh, pencils and, you know, looking like real students. And they're
sitting at these desks that have buzzers on it. And they tell me that if I want to ask a question and get an answer, I
can ask it. And they people have to buzz the right answer. And you can tell how many are getting your what you're saying
and how many aren't. and they're throwing all of this technology at me, which I was really impressed with
because I teach and of course I always looking for new things. But I I ended up not obviously asking them any questions
because I really didn't want to know if they knew the answers. But um it turned out to be very positive and after the
lecture and and going up for their it's just it's just like an academy you know you cafeteria walkth through and meeting
all the people the others to in the behavioral science unit was really a very positive positive experience and I
I really felt comfortable and uh felt like if they asked me again I I certainly would do it. So that was my
first day, my first experience if you will, down at the academy. TV's number one drama, High Potential,
returns with star Caitlyn Olsen as the crimesolving single mom with an IQ of 160. Every week, Morgan uses her
unconventional style and brilliance to crack LAPD's most perplexing cases. It's the perfect blend of humor and mystery.
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[Music] What is it like? Most of us will never experience this part. You've experienced
so many things that that most of us never will. But what is it like to turn on your TV and see somebody playing a
version of you or a dramatized uh create, you know, I know they took some creative liberties and things with with
some different directions on the show, but what is it like to be told we're making a show about a portion of your
career and you're we're making a character of you? >> Right. Well, see, I didn't even know
about the show until I started getting mind this Netflix series evidently came out and I started getting requests to do
interviews and I thought I better better watch this and and and you know the first session, the first season, you
know, they they do something which I think would never have happened in in a hostage negotiation. The guy that that
threatens to do what he was going to do actually does. And and that was I said that's not right. they would, you know,
no, no, neither Bob or John would ever do anything like that for hostage negotiation. So, I was a little that
that was kind of a a curious reaction. And then the second, nothing. And then the third is where this Dr. Wendy Carr
comes in. And I was really really interested to see how much they get right or not get right. And I was very
pleased to see that they got most of it right in terms of what actually happened. that really came through when
the agents came up. They wanted to talk. I was impressed with what they were doing. We talked about a book and that
whole scene where uh Douglas supposedly writes on his paper book did happen. Actually did happen.
>> Uh what I didn't like is I think you've already touched on that is the way they
portrayed our backgrounds of the three of us. They they couldn't have gotten them more more wrong, right? You could
say they that was really They really dressed up the personal life of of each individual. And you know, I've spoke to
John Douglas a couple times and and I know that they took a lot of liberties uh on his personal life. And I've had
people, >> you know, it's it's hard to distinguish for a lot of people the difference
between TV and real life. And some people were not even really aware that this is sort of a version of what really
happened. Um, and that there are real people uh behind some of those characters. And I've even had people ask
me because I have a decent knowledge or or or some knowledge of of the behind-the-scenes stuff back then just
because I've read so many of the books that have been available over the years. Uh, I love Roy Hazelwood's books and
wrestlers books and uh, of course Douglas, he seems like he he's peddling a new book every year and every every
one of them are fascinating. But, you know, so since I've read all the books, I've had people say like, you know, did
did wrestler really have those troubles with his child? And um, and I'm like, no, I like the personal life stuff is
really dressed up to add >> some added which wasn't even needed. I mean, the work that you guys were doing
and and and the cases that you guys were working on were so exciting in their own
that I don't think it was necessary to to dress that stuff up, but it it made for a very exciting show.
>> Sure. Well, my son called me after he watched it and he said, "Mother, what have you not told us?"
>> Like, you know everything, son. Don't worry about it. >> One thing. So take me through this real
quick, too, because when you first come on at the FBI, you're acting more in a role of almost like a consultant, but at
some point you become a a real life FBI agent. Is that correct? >> No, I never become an agent, but I do
I'd come in as a consult probably as a lecturer, then consultant. Uh but never it had nothing to do with with the FBI
as a agent. No. But you're working in in in the walls of of Quantico and you are
a very instrumental part in some of these meetings that they're having when they when the quote unquote mind hunters
are sitting around and kicking around ideas about uh the crimes, the the perpetrator and the victim. Like you you
you are every bit of a mind hunter as these the people that you worked with. I mean, you you provided so much knowledge
as far as like post uh crime behavior by the perpetrator um and and really added
a lot of the psychology of the the of victimology and and things of that nature as well.
>> Oh, right. um those sessions were so important and that's actually what we decided uh to do for this book is that
luckily we had transcribed all of these profiling sessions and anything that they had done so it was not left to
people's memory and um that looking at the crime I mean it was absolutely incredible to go to a session they'd
have all these crime scenes laying on the table they'd all be sitting around and they would just go back and forth
and they were trying to figure out would be an an unsolved case. And they would go back and forth to try to work out
exactly what they could then put together and what they called the profile and send it back to the local uh
police department that had request and that's what we were trying that and Steven can speak much more to that
because he helped in the writing it so that it made more sense. It certainly made sense in terms of being there but
to organize it into some categories and things like that is what we tried to do and get published because we we wanted
to publish not only that was the promise that not only publish the book which you've mentioned as a sexual homicide
but to get some articles out to the wider audience we publish some of the papers in American Journal of Psychiatry
and any of the other kinds of journals that would go out to not only law enforcement. Yeah, I think it's
important to remember too that uh in the Hoover era of the FBI, it was completely
closed to outsiders. You know, you you were either in or you weren't. And Dr. Burgess joined uh in her role just after
that. So for her to be there as you know, sort of in a consultant position was unheard of at the time. Uh so she
was, you know, she quickly carved out her own niche and she was every bit as uh important to the uh beginnings of
profiling and the BSU as any of the agents there. But just for her to be there in the first place was a really
big deal. Well, and one thing that I think is absolutely fascinating and it's kind of missed, I think, a lot is that,
you know, detectives or or beat cops will say, "Yeah, you know, there's a very big difference between FBI and what
we do and and we don't um uh you know, maybe I don't understand what the profilers do." But but in all reality,
beat cops and detectives have been using their own form of profiling for for decades before the FBI even started
really organizing the whole idea and and educating. I mean, that that's part of of solving crimes, and it always has
been, you know, uh coming up with with ideas about the victim, ideas about the perpetrator, why they did what they did,
and profiling the crime scene itself. You guys are just taking this, you know, a hundred steps further and and coming
back to local law enforcement and saying, "Look, we've we've kind of organized this. We've we've learned much
more about it." uh and and reinforcing, hey, you're kind of already doing it. Now, here's a way to do it better, more
efficiently, and and use it at the local level. >> Sure. In fact, I was always amazed at
one of the first things when I started watching them do this profiling, they were they were so focused on the car, if
this was a car was involved, and they would spend so much time on trying to figure out what type of car it was and
how they could help the local police find them. And it got so funny that they and they would match the car to the
personality of the suspect. And so it would get so that they would say to to one of us that were they were one of
these outsiders, you know, what type of car they thought that we we drove. So you're right that they but they were
using the tools, if you will, that they were most familiar with and most uh comfortable with, which of course were
cars. I always had to to laugh at that. But uh we we moved them a little bit beyond the cars. That's for sure.
>> So the book is called A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mind Hunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind. Um
tell me about one of the one of the murders in the in the book just a little bit uh about one of the murders that
that uh you discuss in the book. We we start off with the uh murdering of the little news boy out in Nebraska.
>> And we we like that to start because it was one that really caught the attention, we think, of the outside
group, if you will, outside of law enforcement. And that was where a uh the body of a of a young 12-year-old boy was
found. And there are no clues, no nothing to go on. And Bob Wrestler was the one that was a scientist. you know,
each each each um agent would get an assignment. Sometimes it was just they were rotating. But anyway, so he came up
with the we had profiled it as best we could when the information came in and it was like in September, late August
and then nothing happened until November, late November when the snow started and the two hunters had come
across this young boy uh half covered in snow. And that was important because the
way that the um victim had been left, they differed. And so they weren't sure was this the same person, uh the killer,
the suspect. And as they went through the things, they decided definitely it was and and worked and tried to figure
out how the why the leaving of the body was different in each of the um two places. one being right by the side of
the road and one being inside into a wooded area and you could begin to see the escalation of the kinds of things
that happened. So I think that was important because the whole community this was very very upsetting to the
whole community when the second profile Bob changed his uh profile uh to where he was even identifying that he thought
this was an airman off of Offet Air Base which was right there in in near the town. And he even got it to where I
think the only thing he was off was was it a airman third class or an airman fourth class. I
mean he was that close. >> And when they finally uh because they had used media to tell everybody to be
on the lookout for certain things, it was a very observant uh teacher who happened to notice a suspicious car. got
its license plate all except I think the last digit was able to call that in and
once they were they they quickly were able to figure out the last digit and uh sure enough they zeroed in on um uh this
job it turned out to be who was at offet air base and that was uh the other important thing about the case is when
Bob was presenting the case at two agents at um in law enforcement back to Quanico after one of the classes is the
detective came up to him and he said, "Boy, the case you just presented, Jo sounds so much like a case that I had up
in Maine." He was from Maine. And he went back, sent everything to Bob. They reviewed it again. And sure enough, that
had been John Sha's first victim. And he had been a teenager at the time. And that was after that. He u it was
unsolved. He joined the service. That's why he went into the service to get away. and ended up out in Nebraska. So
the congressional record was the place where this was written up and everybody was given um uh kudos for the work that
they had done on it. And I think uh Stephen you you you saw how the um the working of the groups
together was really really important. >> Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the reasons we you know chronologically it
made sense but also in terms of the effect that it had. That's why we kicked off with that case. uh there wasn't a
lot of inter agency cooperation at the time. People were uh you know a little hesitant to necessarily trust or allow
the FBI into their investigations. So, one thing that was really big about that case was it the Joear case was that it
did rely on these different agencies and local investigators collaborating with their materials and their insights and
sharing it all with the BSU so that the BSU could come up with an incredibly accurate profile which they did which as
you know was just said that's why it was recognized in the record of Congress and
once the word got out there that the BSU used profiling to help solve this case that you know was going nowhere. Uh that
was sort of a catalyst and people realized this is a tool that we could use as well. And so a lot of um local
law enforcement officials started reaching out to the BSU and asking for their help and that was a big push
forward in the eyes of uh the FBI and helping legitimize the whole process. And to kind of flush that out a little
bit for the listeners here, as far as the crimes go, the reason why the FBI, why Bob Wrestler has to be brought in
and profiling profiling was so important in this case, as both of you said, there's there's really no leads for the
local law enforcement to work off of at the time because basically you have a child abduction and unfortunately later
a body found, but we don't have witnesses to the abduction. We don't have witnesses to the uh the body dump
and um really there's no breadcrumb trail until the FBI gets involved and starts telling the the local detectives,
you know, here's what we can here's what we think about the the likely offender here. and and really that starts starts
them on the right trail to apprehend a very dangerous individual uh who's committing one of the scariest crimes
out there. >> Yeah, absolutely. There were not a lot of breadcrumbs. It was up to the the
agents to look at the crime scenes and that was all they had to work with uh and to, you know, take from that and
sort of parse information from that as to who the most likely suspect could be. >> Yeah. Why did he, you know, why did the
offender abduct at the the the time and date when he did? And what does the body
dump site tell us? And how the the body is found and the injuries to the victim and how the victim is tied or not tied.
Those are all things that uh wrestler and and the team are going to come in and and try to fill in those blanks and
and put meaning to those those different actions that were taken by the offender.
>> Absolutely. And then Dr. Burgess also has all the transcripts from that case from that profiling session and a lot of
other cases we talk about in the book. So you really get to see how the different agents thought about the
profiling process, what went into it and what makes that whole process tick. So it's it's really interesting to just
look at that in its uh rawest and cleanest form. >> Yeah. And the other the other thing is
John Jar when they when he was um arrested and and getting ready for trial gave many good interviews. He was very
open about talking that most of the talking about those two crimes. Don't forget he never admitted to or told
about the earlier crime. But he that was the start of finding out how we could inter have the agents interview the
suspects uh certainly after that they were convicted to get as much information as possible.
>> I felt like with this killer that he was in a weird way after apprehended or and
probably most of his life it sounded to me like he's trying to understand himself or why he does what he does or
why he has the fantasies that he did. That's a characteristic of of many of them that they don't know why. Uh
remember even Monty Rissell in the uh Mind Hunter series when they come in and they uh the agent said, "We're here to
study people uh like you and and why they do it." And he says, "Well, I hope you find out why I did it cuz I don't
know." >> And and that was so classic for many of the >> um serial killers. They didn't know
>> and they know that they're off and they know that there's something wrong with
them, but they don't know why they are the way that they are. >> Right. >> One thing that I thought was so
beautiful here, doctor, was you you kind of dedicated the book in memory of three
of your former colleagues. Would you would you wonderful people that that had fascinating careers and did such good
work? Could you tell us about each of those former colleagues just a little bit?
>> Sure. Sure. happy to um certainly Linda Lidle Holmstrom was most in influential.
She really got me into this whole field of um victimology if you will. And Linda
really taught me more of the research part. She was um schooled in the Chicago uh way of doing sociology where you took
very specific copious notes on everything when you're doing an interview. So, uh, when we would go in
to see a victim, each one of us would write up our own notes, type them up, and then share the the copy so that we
had her version, if you will, from the more sociological view, and then you had my more psychological one. So, Linda uh
was very very good at writing up. We actually did three books from that data set. We did rape crisis and recovery
just to get the uh rape crisis group notified. And then uh she did she took lead on the victim of rape which was
more of the sociological part. >> So she uh her career was in the health field in the feminist field. She was a a
pretty strict uh feminist and um she was just wonderful in terms of teaching me that and of getting our certainly
getting our material published in a variety of journals. That was the other thing is we published in I think we
published 25 separate articles from that whole data set and they went into a variety of journals and then Roy
Hazelwood was um certainly instrumental as we've already said to get me down to Quantico and I wrote uh a we wrote a
textbook Roy and I wrote a textbook for called Rape Investigation and we had five editions. I mean it was
a very uh well uh received book on the investigation. Roy was a very kind very uh caring kind of of uh agent always
interested in the victim and and um so that was and his career of course is pretty pretty much as is written up in
the book. And then the uh third person is uh Bob uh Wrestler. >> Mhm. >> And Bob was really the he he really was
the one behind getting this project going. He had started out by going in and interviewing criminals, saying that
if he was going to have to teach criminal psychology, he better talk to some criminals so he'd understand them a
bit. So he was spending time doing a lot of the uh let's see, like Squeaky From.
He interviewed um >> um that whole group out in California is kind of where he started and I think he
also started with Ed Keer. But he had the idea uh he was also the used he got into profiling well before John Douglas
because he John Douglas was really the junior of the two partners. But Bob was mentored by um Pat Molany and um Taton,
Howard Taton, who were the two agents that did what we called, I guess, more informal kinds of profiling. And so Bob
would sit in on those and started learning the profiling there. Then Bob came and um joined with Douglas for his
partner. They always had each all of the ages down there have have a partner. on
any all of the work that they do. So those three uh who were so instrumental in in terms of my career uh I certainly
felt it was uh I certainly wanted to acknowledge the work that they had done. >> Stephen, is there anything that I didn't
touch on that we want to make sure that we include for the listeners? >> Yeah, I think um one thing that that's
really interesting to note about this book is it's not an academic book. It does touch on the profiling process and
how that works. Uh, but it's definitely more about the experiences that Dr. Burgess and the agents had of going
through the the BSU and developing that in the late '7s and early 80s. And one thing that really stood out to me during
the writing process was today this concept of serial killers is just sort of a cornerstone of pop culture. You see
it everywhere. It's talked about a lot. Uh, but but back then nobody had interest in them. there was very little
uh attention even paid to them. Their crimes were considered sort of irrational and just dismissed as that.
And so for the BSU to actually say there's something deeper here and if we can understand the behaviors, the
psychology of this group, we can learn something that maybe we can apply to crimes at large and do something really
good and beneficial. Um that was that was incredibly innovative and uh it's just really curious and um sort of just
interesting to to to follow their thought processes as it developed and see the impact it made on um you know
investigations at large. Well, and one thing that I find that I think is really wonderful is that it the book features
some of some more well-known cases, you know, talks about Ed Kemper or BTK, but also some lesserk known offenders, the
ski mask rapist, the Taco Bell strangler. But the thing that I think is is wonderful right now and really the
timing of this fantastic book coming out is I feel like the general public is starving for more mind hunter on Netflix
and I'm I'm half well so I just completed the uh last night glass of bourbon in hand next to the fire I read
the a female killer chapter so don't tell me how it it ends doctor um I I'm about halfway through and I'm loving
every minute of it. It's It's like reading the show Mine Hunter for those that that want more Mine Hunter. It's a
must readad. Is there another book in the future though because your your career I is so fascinating and I know
Stephen wants to tell more of your story. Um I'm hoping that uh this one wasn't too painful to put together and
maybe that there'll be a another one here at some point. >> Stephen, you want to answer? Yeah, there
are there's definitely a lot of material. Uh, you know, as an academic, Dr. Burgess did save all these
transcripts as we mentioned, but also video recordings of interviews with killers. Um, photos, just all sorts of
really fascinating and horrific stuff to see. So, there's there's certainly plenty of material. Um, we will see.
Time will tell. >> And I want to thank both of you. Both of you are absolutely brilliant. I want to
thank you for tolerating me for the last 45 minutes and coming on here to talk about this fantastic book, A Killer by
Design by the great Dr. Anne Burgess and Stephen Constantine. Thank you both. >> Thank you.
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MindHunter /// Dr. Ann Burgess

Nic is overjoyed to have a conversation with the great Dr. Ann Burgess - F.B.I. consultant and 1st generation Mind Hunter.

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Brief Summary

Dr. Anne Burgess and Stephen Constantine discuss criminal profiling and their book on understanding the psychology of murderers.

Key points

High Potential Returns. TV's number one drama, High Potential, stars Caitlyn Olsen as a brilliant single mom solving crimes.
A Killer by Design. Dr. Anne Burgess discusses her new book on understanding the criminal mind.
The Genesis of Behavioral Science. Dr. Burgess shares insights on the early days of the FBI's behavioral science unit.
High Potential Returns. TV's number one drama, High Potential, features a brilliant single mom solving LAPD's toughest cases.
Understanding OCD. Howie Mandel shares his personal battle with OCD and the importance of proper treatment.
The Impact of Profiling. The collaboration between local law enforcement and the BSU leads to significant breakthroughs in criminal cases.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She's breaking the mold without breaking a nail.

Describing the character Morgan from High Potential.

0:16WatchSep 17, 2025

Tension

45/ 100Some tension

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