Dangerous Minds
Former FBI Agent John Douglas Wrote The Book On Serial Killers – Literally
For nearly five decades, John Douglas has gazed into the eyes of deepest evil – and tried to understand it.
He is the “monster whisperer,” the former FBI agent who coined the term “serial killer” and invented serial killer profiling. He was the model for Jack Crawford, the FBI profiler in the 1991 thriller “The Silence of the Lambs,” and agent Holden Ford in the hit Netflix series “Mindhunter.” (The second season of which debuts in August.) Starting with his 1978 interview with Ed Kemper – the Californian who murdered 10, including his grandparents and mother – Douglas has personally interviewed virtually every major serial killer.
As he speaks with murderers, one peculiar pattern stands out, he says: “The thing that’s really interesting is their memory. They can remember specifics of the case, of what happened and who said what.”
His mission is undertaken with the hope that the formula “Why? + How? = Who” can find killers. And he’s usually right. Douglas, 73, has a number of profiling victories to his credit, including Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams.
Now, with the publication of the latest in his long series of best-selling books, “The Killer Across the Table: Unlocking the Secrets of Serial Killers and Predators with the FBI’s Original Mindhunter,” he delves more deeply into what makes murderers tick.
“Predators like these easily exist on two distinct psychic planes,” Douglas writes, noting that they keep their evil deeds apart from their daily lives. “This is what separates the criminal sociopath from the rest of us.”
He adds: “My focus is on understanding why people commit violent and predatory acts, not to help them become better, more law-abiding citizens, but to aid in catching them, prosecuting them and putting them away.”
Douglas, an Air Force veteran originally from Brooklyn, has supervised more than 5,000 violent crime cases. His extensive education includes a doctorate in comparing techniques for teaching police officers to classify homicides from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. Though retired in Fredericksburg, Virginia, he continues to write, consult with police departments and serve as chairman of the Cold Case Foundation.
Despite working with serial killers for more than 48 years, he’s continually amazed by one thing they commonly fail to do, he says.
“They don’t show remorse.” O