MAN HUNTER

Meet Robert K. Ressler,
the man who studies serial killers.

Ressler’s notion that serial killers often act according to a predictable pattern, and his unparalleled access to interview America'smost prolific killers, resulted in the creation of FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit.

Interview: Suzan Ryan

You were born in Chicago in 1937—an era of bootlegging, gangsters and war. As a boy, you investigated a child abduction (part of the famous ‘Lipstick Murders’). Did this venture into detecting ignite your interest in criminology?

"My father was in the newspaper business, and so I was constantly in the habit of scanning the pages of the daily newspaper. I became fascinated with the Lipstick Murder case as it was in the news everyday and had the city on edge. Phillip Kozlowski and I formed the RK-PK Detective Agency and its headquarters were in the basement at Phillip’s house. We did not wear any disguises, but during the summer we did carry a cap gun.

"Even as a child, I was drawn to the investigative aspects of crime solving—especially high-profile cases. At the time, I did not realise that this interest was to later become my passion. I was a boy doing what boys like to do; it’s just that I pursued it more than your average middle-school boy did."

Is it true that notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy once delivered groceries to your home as a teenager?

"Gacy lived on the same street as I did, but about two blocks away. It is true that he delivered groceries to our house—that was certainly very common in those days, and because of his proximity it really wasn’t that unusual to learn that later on. It was a sort of macabre preview of our later connection."

Most people have an inherent ability to find a particular skill-set easier to pursue than others—the left brain/right brain skew. Did you always feel this with detection and investigation?

"I think I was predisposed towards the challenges of conducting investigations, as evidenced by my boyhood sleuthing. Perhaps I inherited that curious nature from my father? My father was an investigator of sorts, working for the Chicago Tribune and writing, so I was cognisant of whatever crime stories were in the news.

"I have always felt completely comfortable in a law-enforcement environment and was drawn to the investigation of violent crimes, especially homicide.

"I am fascinated by the diverse and complex nature of human behaviour. There is nothing more egregious than the murder of one human being by another. It is often a difficult and perplexing crime to solve because the victim is unable to assist you or provide any substantive information—except, of course, indirectly through evidence.

"Some homicides are straightforward—where you can discern a motive quickly and there is a history between the victim and the offender that provides significant useful information, but when you fuse together extreme violence, sexual components and substance abuse or mental health issues in the homicide, the outcome can be very complex.

"Motives can be multi-layered and obscure one another. They can rise and fall in importance, and even develop during the crime. It is the study of such dynamic and aberrant behaviour that focused my interests."

You once said that one must be careful when looking into the abyss, as the abyss looks back. Did this understanding of balance come to you naturally, or incrementally via your hundreds of interviews with violent criminals?

"Actually, the quote you mentioned, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster, and if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you,” is from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.

"Things get added to our personalities because of our mere presence. In studying some of the worst human behaviour, we must take care that in spending so much time in such toxic environs we do not assimilate those parts of evil.

"It is a process of finding balance and maintaining objectivity. A key aspect that makes one successful at conducting these analyses is the ability to remain emotionally disconnected from the trauma of what you are assessing. This should not be interpreted to mean that you are not empathetic or don’t care—quite the opposite.

"If you become emotionally involved with the crimes, distracted by the brutal nature of the violence, or attached to the victims or offenders, your ability to conduct an objective and accurate assessment of the dynamics of the crime become compromised."

You majored in criminology and joined the army, where you gravitated towards the Criminal Investigation Division (which led to the FBI, in 1970). Did some of the work you did there shape your later career?

"I was the Provost Marshal in Aschaffenburg, Germany, in charge of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID). The first night I served as the Provost, a murder was committed on my watch. I later became the head of CID in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and while stationed there I worked with the FBI out of the Chicago Division, which is where they recruited me to become an FBI Special Agent.

"As the head of CID, I didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t able to engage in the role of investigator as often as I would have liked. When the opportunity presented itself, I would accompany my investigators to crime scenes; I always wanted to be out with the men in my command, and not stuck in the office pushing papers around."

“As a child, I was drawn to the investigative aspects of crime solving. At the time, I did not realise that this interest was to later become my passion”

What were your experiences with understanding the mind and motive of a killer in your early years at the FBI, before behavioural profiling was officially used, or even consciously understood?

"My early years in the FBI were in the Cleveland Division. I eventually transferred to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, where I began teaching. I felt that in order to be true to what I was teaching about behaviour in violent offenders, I needed to better understand why these killers made the choices they did. This is what spurred me to go into the prison system and start interviewing these violent offenders.

"At the time I didn’t have FBI permission to do these interviews, but eventually I developed a protocol to conduct them. The FBI recognised the importance of such interviews and eventually I was able to garner its support for moving the research forward. I wanted to understand how these men felt about their crimes, their victims, getting caught, and the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the attempts by law enforcement to track and capture them.

"This was something completely new for the FBI. We were breaking new ground and essentially making it up as we went. We were unencumbered by the laws that are now in place to protect these killers. Today, all interviews with offenders have to be reviewed by Institutional Review Boards. These IRBs decide whether it might be harmful for these men to relive their crimes by talking about them. By the time you get through with the paper work the inmates have to sign, most won’t talk with you."

How was your early work with the FBI received by other law-enforcement agencies, considering the attitude towards ‘head-shrink’ strategies during that time?

"Our approach was always to try to do what was best for the law-enforcement agency we were assisting. Our goal was, and continues to be, the service of the case. We felt that by studying these criminals and their crimes, we would learn much about their decision-making process. We needed to see the big picture, to be able to incorporate the behaviour with what we knew forensically. Of course, you can’t develop that degree of insight without talking to the offenders and asking the appropriate questions.

"What made it valuable was that this was not strictly an academic exercise but an attempt to better understand these offenders so that we could identify them more quickly and get them off the street. When you are dealing with a serial killer, every day that he remains on the street people are at risk of being killed. That is exactly what we were trying to prevent."

I understand that former head of the FBI, William Webster, was instrumental in providing support to begin this new facet of official crime study and analysis…

"Actually, Director Webster did nothing to help. us, or further this cause. My real mentor was Ken Joseph. He was the Assistant Director in charge of the FBI Academy and instrumental in supporting this program and the attendant research. He was the one person who kept it moving forward towards the successes it ultimately enjoyed."

“I wanted to understand what these men felt about their crimes, their victims...and the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of law enforcement’s attempts to track and capture them”

Your interviews with America’s most prolific serial killers resulted in unprecedented insight into the criminal mind. How did you break into their psyche to access such information—allowing them to drop the façade of feigned innocence or, conversely, smug bravado?

"It was important to understand the person you were going to interview. You had to know the crimes they committed inside and out because they would test you to see if you really knew what you were talking about.

"Many of these offenders’ cases had been adjudicated years before and they were languishing in prison. They were anxious to talk to us because we were going to give them some personal attention. They could become the teachers and we the students, and they liked the thought of that.

"Many of the offenders we interviewed had narcissistic qualities. They thought very highly of themselves and wanted to tell you how good a criminal they were, and how much smarter they were than the cops who hunted them. Of course, we were also keenly aware that they were very good liars, so it was important to know their cases very well. When they started to minimise their role or change the facts, we could call them on it. They knew we had done our homework and, in a sense, respected that.

"We often played to their egos, letting them teach us. In most cases, that is exactly what we wanted to do. We were in a different place than the police investigators who came to them hoping to solve cases. We were there to learn from them, to understand why they did what they did and how they felt when they were doing it."

Were the majority of these serial killers what you refer to as ‘organised types’? Men who understand right and wrong and actively plan their crimes, but are sociopathic in their lack of empathy and driven to continue killing?

"The typology of killers being organised, disorganised and mixed was developed in the Behavioral Unit as a way to classify lust killings. Today, law enforcement uses the term rather loosely to include all types of killers.

"In general, when you examine a serial killer’s degree of organisation, the amount of planning they engage in and the steps they take to avoid being identified and apprehended, most serial killers are going to exhibit more rather than less organisation.

"Most serial killers are also psychopaths. The motto for a psychopath is, “What is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine”. It is their lack of empathy that allows them to carry on after a murder as if nothing has happened. They are unencumbered by feelings or guilt or remorse because they do not feel them. They continue to kill because it satisfies a psychological or emotional need—and they enjoy it."

You say that you found Ted Bundy to be such an unusually organised killer that he might even require a unique profile. Can you clarify what you mean by this?

"Bundy was very good at using his superficial charm to engage people and bring them over to his way of thinking. He was very charismatic. Most people could not square the fact that he was a sadistic monster when they saw the public persona he projected.

"I saw Bundy as a higher-functioning individual than most of the killers I had met, and he was better educated. Rather than requiring a unique profile, I would say that he used his intelligence, education and superficial charm to get what he wanted, and this combination made him a more successful and prolific killer than most."

With the majority of serial crimes featuring a sexual aspect, some research suggests that sex crimes could be reduced dramatically by legalising prostitution. What are your thoughts on this?

"I do not think that legalising prostitution would reduce sex crime offences—especially those that end in homicide. Offenders who choose to commit violent crimes within a sexual context will do so regardless of whether their access to prostitutes is legal or not.

"When you fuse together violence, sexual gratification and a need to engage in both, the result is unpredictable. Add in mental health issues and/or substance abuse, and that mixture can be lethal.

"The argument for legalising might be that what motivates these offenders is the need for sex and having access to it legally makes it both more accessible and acceptable. We know from well-documented research—including my own—that most of these offenders are not motivated by sexual desire but by the need for power and control over their victims.

"Legalising prostitution may impact other criminal activities, such as drug offences, theft and robbery, but I would not expect it to impact sex crimes."

Explain the genesis of Vi-CAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). It seems incredible to have achieved national co-ordination and maintenance of so many separate law-enforcement entities. Was there a catalyst for its adoption?

"Pierce Brooks, a Los Angeles Police homicide detective, and I first discussed the concept of a system that could be used to identify commonalities in certain types of violent crimes—especially serial homicide and serial rape. We knew that we were developing the ability to link various homicide cases by the behaviour demonstrated at the crime scene, but there was no systematic way to identify and link such cases across police jurisdictions, especially those in different states.

"Pierce became the first director of Vi-CAP, which was housed at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. We felt that a national system with a standardised set of questions would provide the vehicle for law-enforcement agencies to submit their unsolved homicide cases, crimes that appeared to be motiveless, or crimes suspected of being part of a series."

“If you observe something long enough, aspects of it can become part of you. In studying the worst human behaviour, we must take care…that we do not assimilate those parts of evil”

"We also encouraged the submission of missing-persons cases and unidentified dead, where it was strongly suspected that foul play was involved. Although the VI-CAP system is not mandated by either State or Federal statute, it has widespread support among law-enforcement agencies. A number of other countries—including Australia—have adopted a similar linkage database called ViCLAS, the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System. VI-CAP has been a valuable tool in solving many cases that were old and widely distributed across the country."

You also endorse the work of crime psychics—a landmark in the usually conservative world of law enforcement. Cops have long stated that cases are solved with a combination of gut instinct and evidence, so why not other insight?

"It is very important to keep an open mind when thinking about ways to improve our crime-fighting abilities. There are so many disciplines that have a direct impact on the discipline of behavioural analysis. Look at the advances in some of the hard sciences, such as DNA analysis, forensic bloodstain interpretation, and the recovery of fingerprints and shoe prints.

"We use cadaver dogs, toxicology, the analysis of trace evidence [hairs and fibres] and psycholinguistics [the analysis of threatening communications]. Most of these were unheard of 30 years ago. You only have to watch television shows like CSI, Criminal Minds and Bones, along with reality forensic shows, to see how much more we know.

"I suspect that in 20 years we will know that much more. It is important not to close your thinking to any new avenue of investigation."

Your work has inspired not only generations of law enforcement, but also popular culture in the understanding of what drives the criminal mind. What is your take on this?

"In the early years of our efforts to understand the criminal mind and what motivated serial killers and violent sexual offenders, I had no idea how fascinated the general public, academia, and law enforcement would become. I feel very fortunate to have been presented the opportunities to engage in this research, and to surround myself with other experts who shared the same passion I did for the journey, the cases, and what we discovered in the process.

"I feel honoured to know that I have contributed to the knowledge of man for the greater good. It is a very satisfying feeling."

Your work has inspired books and films, including Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, Copycat, and The X-Files. Do you consult with authors or producers in the entertainment industry?

"Yes. I consulted with Thomas Harris on Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and with Angelina Jolie on Taking Lives, which is about an FBI profiler tracking a serial killer. I have consulted on a number of shows, as well as offered insight for various reality and forensic programs.

"I have always enjoyed sharing my insight into these offenders, since most people simply cannot comprehend what drives these people to commit such unspeakable and horrible crimes, or how someone like me can study such aberrant and disturbing human behaviour through the detailed analysis of the crimes they commit."

Some people claim that TV shows such as CSI assist criminals in avoiding detection, but with serial killers, do you believe their arrogance will always be their downfall?

"There are many shows on TV now that in one way or another educate criminals. These shows range from fiction, like CSI, to reality shows, like The New Detectives. I don’t think anyone would argue that criminals have become aware of various law-enforcement and forensic techniques that they have used in order to avoid being apprehended."

“Most serial killers are psychopaths as well. The mottor for a psychopath is: ‘What is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine’. They are unencumbered by feelings or guilt or remorse because they do not feel them”

"I believe that serial killers in general share traits of psychopathy and narcissism that make them feel superior to others. They think they are smarter than the police, and the fact that they got away with murder only reinforces this belief. I would not go so far as to attribute their eventual arrest solely to their level of arrogance, but it certainly is contributory.

"Since your retirement from the FBI, you’ve helmed Forensic Behavioral Services, consulting on serial and sexual homicide, threat assessment and analysis, and interpreting offender behaviour and motivation. What sort of non-law enforcement work do you do there?

"Although I am still the Director of Forensic Behavioral Services (www.FBSInternational.com), I don’t do much of the work these days. Most of the work is handled by my partner, Mark Safarik, who I lured away from the FBI. He retired from the Bureau in 2007, serving his last 12 years as a senior behavioural profiler.

"In the FBI, we were only allowed to receive assistance requests from law-enforcement agencies or prosecutors’ offices. Now we do work for both criminal and civil attorneys.

"In work for civil attorneys, we have been hired by both the plaintiff and defence. Even though the cases are civil, most of them have arisen out of a prior violent crime such as homicide, sexual assault, or armed robbery. We are often retained by private citizens looking for assistance in cases where they do not feel their case has been adequately addressed by law enforcement."

“I’ve consulted with Thomas Harris on Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and Angelina Jolie on Taking Lives, as well as offering insight for various reality and forensic programs”

What are your thoughts on criminological organisations such as the Vidocq Society?

"Both Mark and I are members of the Vidocq Society, which is headquartered in Philadelphia. Vidocq members freely donate their time and expertise to address unsolved homicides. Groups like the Vidocq Society allow law-enforcement agencies—especially smaller ones—to seek outside assistance at no cost. It gives them an opportunity to address cases that might not otherwise get a second look."

Do you think that no matter what your course, you may have always ended up doing what you have?

"As much as people like to think I use a crystal ball and Ouija board to predict some types of human behaviour, I can’t really predict what else I might have done. However, the nature of my interests and personality inevitably led me into an investigative field, where I thrived as a military officer, and later as a law-enforcement agent. I have thoroughly enjoyed the adventures I’ve had in my career and do not have any regrets."

With your career spent studying the darkest facets of human behaviour, how did you maintain the light in your personal life?

"There must always be balance. You cannot allow yourself to be enveloped and consumed by the human tragedy you study. The balance in my life has always come from my wife, Helen—the love of life—and my three great children. It is my family that has always kept me on an even keel. They made me realise that the aberrations in human behaviour I spent my life studying and writing about are the exceptions and not the rule."

What is the most resonant fact that you have learned about human behaviour?

"Just when I think I could not be shocked by the depth of human depravity, I take on another homicide case and am rudely jolted back to reality. I have never ceased to be amazed at the capacity for cruelty one human being can have for another."