MINDHUNTER
Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit
John Douglas
and Mark Olshaker
A Lisa Drew Book
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Copyright ©1995 by Mindhunters, Inc.
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Includes index.
ISBN 0-684-86447-9
eISBN 978-0-6848-6447-1
By the Same Authors
John Douglas
Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, with Robert K. Ressler and Ann W. Burgess
Crime Classification Manual, with Ann W. Burgess, Allen G. Burgess, and Robert K. Ressler
Mark Olshaker
Nonfiction
The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience
Fiction
Einstein’s Brain
Unnatural Causes
Blood Race
The Edge
To the men and women of the FBI Behavioral Science and Investigative Support Units, Quantico, Virginia, past and present—fellow explorers, partners on the journey.
Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them,
to men’s eyes.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Authors’ Note
This book has been very much a team effort, and it could not have been accomplished without the tremendous talents and dedication of each member of that team. Chief among them are our editor, Lisa Drew, and our project coordinator and "executive producer" (and Mark’s wife), Carolyn Olshaker. Right from the beginning, they both shared our vision and provided the strength, confidence, love, and good counsel that nurtured us through the effort to realize it. Our profound gratitude and admiration go equally to Ann Hennigan, our talented researcher; Marysue Rucci, Lisa’s able, indefatigable, and endlessly cheerful assistant; and our agent, Jay Acton, who was the first to recognize the potential of what we wanted to do and then made it happen.
Our special thanks go to John’s father, Jack Douglas, for all of his recollections and for so carefully documenting his son’s career, making organization a breeze; and to Mark’s father, Bennett Olshaker, M.D., for all of his advice and guidance on issues of forensic medicine and psychiatry and the law. We are both extremely fortunate to have the families we do, and their love and generosity are always with us.
Finally, we want to express our appreciation, admiration, and heartfelt thanks to all of John’s colleagues at the FBI Academy in Quantico. Their character and contribution is what made the career chronicled in this work possible, which is why the book is dedicated to them.
—John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, July 1995
Contents
Prologue: I Must Be in Hell
Chapter 1: Inside the Mind of a Killer
Chapter 2: My Mother’s Name Was Holmes
Chapter 3: Betting on Raindrops
Chapter 4: Between Two Worlds
Chapter 5: Behavioral Science or BS?
Chapter 6: Taking the Show on the Road
Chapter 7: The Heart of Darkness
Chapter 8: The Killer Will Have a Speech Impediment
Chapter 9: Walking in the Shoes
Chapter 10: Everybody Has a Rock
Chapter 11: Atlanta
Chapter 12: One of Our Own
Chapter 13: The Most Dangerous Game
Chapter 14: Who Killed the All-American Girl?
Chapter 15: Hurting the Ones We Love
Chapter 16: "God Wants You to Join Shari Faye"
Chapter 17: Anyone Can Be a Victim
Chapter 18: Battle of the Shrinks
Chapter 19: Sometimes the Dragon Wins
Photo Insert
Prologue
I Must Be in Hell
I must be in hell.
It was the only logical explanation. I was tied down and naked. The pain was unbearable. My arms and legs were being lacerated by some kind of blade. Every orifice of my body had been penetrated. I was choking and gagging from something shoved down my throat. Sharp objects had been stuck in my penis and rectum and felt like they were tearing me apart. I was bathed in sweat. Then I realized what was happening: I was being tortured to death by all the killers and rapists and child molesters I’d put away in my career. Now I was the victim and I couldn’t fight back.
I knew the way these guys operated; I’d seen it over and over again. They had a need to manipulate and dominate their prey. They wanted to be able to decide whether or not their victim should live or die, or how the victim should die. They’d keep me alive as long as my body would hold out, reviving me when I passed out or was close to death, always inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible. Some of them could go on for days like that.
They wanted to show me they were in total control, that I was completely at their mercy. The more I cried out, the more I begged for relief, the more I would fuel and energize their dark fantasies. If I would plead for my life or regress or call out for my mommy or daddy, that would really get them off.
This was my payback for six years of hunting the worst men on earth.
My heart was racing, I was burning up. I felt a horrible jab as they inched the sharp stick even farther up my penis. My entire body convulsed in agony.
Please, God, if I’m still alive, let me die quickly. And if I’m dead, deliver me quickly from the tortures of hell.
Then I saw an intense, bright white light, just like I’d heard about people seeing at the moment of death. I expected to see Christ or angels or the devil—I’d heard about that, too. But all I saw was that bright white light.
But I did hear a voice—a comforting, reassuring voice, the most calming sound I’d ever heard.
"John, don’t worry. We’re trying to make it all better."
That was the last thing I remembered.
"John, do you hear me? Don’t worry. Take it easy. You’re in the hospital. You’re very sick, but we’re trying to make you better," was what the nurse actually said to me. She had no idea whether or not I could hear her, but she kept repeating it, soothingly, over and over again.
Though I had no idea at the time, I was in the intensive care unit of Swedish Hospital in Seattle, in a coma, on life support. My arms and legs were strapped down. Tubes, hoses, and intravenous lines penetrated my body. I was not expected to live. It was early December of 1983, and I was thirty-eight years of age.
The story begins three weeks earlier, on the other side of the country. I was up in New York, speaking on criminal-personality profiling before an audience of about 350 members of the NYPD, the Transit Police, and the Nassau and Suffolk County, Long Island, Police Departments. I’d given this speech hundreds of times and could just about do the whole thing on autopilot.
All of a sudden, my mind started to wander. I was aware I was still talking, but I’d broken out in a cold sweat and I was saying to myself, How in hell am I going to handle all these cases? I was just finishing up with the Wayne Williams child-killing case in Atlanta and Buffalo’s race murders. I had been called in to the "Trailside Killer" case in San Francisco. I was consulting with Scotland Yard on the "Yorkshire Ripper" investigation in England. I was going back and forth to Alaska, working on the Robert Hansen case, in which an Anchorage baker was picking up prostitutes, flying them out into the wilderness, and hunting them down. I had a serial arsonist targeting synagogues in H
artford, Connecticut. And I had to fly out to Seattle the week after next to advise the Green River Task Force in what was shaping up as one of the largest serial murders in American history, the killer preying mainly on prostitutes and transients in the Seattle-Tacoma corridor.
For the past six years, I had been developing a new approach to crime analysis, and I was the only one in the Behavioral Science Unit working cases full-time. Everyone else in the unit was primarily an instructor. I was handling about 150 active cases at a time with no backup, and I was on the road from my office at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, about 125 days a year. The pressure was tremendous from local cops, who themselves were under tremendous pressure to solve cases, from the community, and from the families of victims, for whom I always had enormous empathy. I kept trying to prioritize my workload, but new requests kept pouring in daily. My associates at Quantico often said I was like a male whore: I couldn’t say no to my clients.
During the New York speech, I continued talking about criminal-personality types, but my mind kept wandering back to Seattle. I knew that not everyone on the task force wanted me there, that was par for the course. As in every major case for which I was called in to provide a new service that most cops and many Bureau officials still considered one step removed from witchcraft, I knew I’d have to "sell" them. I had to be persuasive without being overconfident or cocky. I had to let them know I thought they’d done a thorough, professional job while still trying to convince the skeptics the FBI might be able to help. And perhaps most daunting, unlike the traditional FBI agent who dealt with "Just the facts, ma’am," my job required me to deal in opinions. I lived with the constant knowledge that if I was wrong, I could throw a serial investigation far off the mark and get additional people killed. Just as bad, it would hammer the lid on the new program of criminal-personality profiling and crime analysis I was struggling to get off the ground.
Then there was the traveling itself. I had already been to Alaska on several occasions, crossing four time zones, connecting to a white-knuckle flight close to the water and landing in darkness, and practically as soon as I got there and met with the local police, I would get back on the plane and fly down to Seattle.
The free-floating anxiety attack lasted maybe a minute. I kept saying to myself, Hey, Douglas, regroup. Get a grip on yourself. And I was able to do it. I don’t think anyone in that room knew anything was wrong. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something tragic was going to happen to me.
I couldn’t shake this premonition, and when I got back to Quantico, I went to the personnel office and took out additional life insurance and income-protection insurance in case I became disabled. I can’t say exactly why I did this, except for that vague but powerful feeling of dread. I was physically run-down; I was exercising too much and probably drinking more than I should have been to cope with the stress. I was having difficulty sleeping, and when I did fall asleep, often I’d be awakened by a call from someone needing my instant help. When I would go back to sleep, I’d try to force myself to dream about the case in hopes that that would lead me to some insight about it. It’s easy enough in retrospect to see where I was headed, but at the time there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.
Just before I left for the airport, something made me stop off at the elementary school where my wife, Pam, taught reading to learning disabled students, to tell her about the extra insurance.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, very concerned. I had a wicked headache on the right side and she said my eyes were bloodshot and strange-looking.
"I just wanted you to know about everything before I left," I replied. At that time, we had two young daughters. Erika was eight and Lauren was three.
For the trip to Seattle, I brought along two new special agents, Blaine McIlwain and Ron Walker, to break them in on the case. We arrived in Seattle that night and checked into the Hilton Hotel downtown. As I was unpacking, I noticed I had only one black shoe. Either I hadn’t packed the other one or somehow I’d lost it along the way. I would be making a presentation to the King County Police Department the next morning, and I decided I couldn’t go on without my black shoes. I have always been something of a flashy dresser, and in my fatigue and stress, I became obsessed with having black shoes to wear with my suit. So I tore out into the downtown streets, rushed around until I found an open shoe store, and came back to the hotel, even more exhausted, with a suitable pair of black shoes.
The next morning, a Wednesday, I made my presentation to the police and a team that included Port of Seattle representatives and two local psychologists who had been brought in to help with the investigation. Everyone was interested in my profile of the killer, whether there could be more than one offender, and what type of individual he, or they, might be. I tried to get across the point that in this type of case, the profile wouldn’t be all that important. I was pretty sure of what kind of guy the killer would turn out to be, but just as sure there’d be a lot of guys who would easily fit the description.
More important in this ongoing cycle of murders, I told them, was to begin going proactive, using police efforts and the media to try to lure the guy into a trap. For example, I suggested the police might set up a series of community meetings to "discuss" the crimes. I was reasonably certain the killer would show up at one or more of these. I also thought it would help answer the question of whether we were dealing with more than one offender. Another ploy I wanted the police to try was to announce to the press that there had been witnesses to one of the abductions. I felt that might draw out the killer to take his own "proactive strategy" and come forward to explain why he might have been innocently seen in the vicinity. The one thing of which I felt most certain was that whoever was behind these kills wasn’t going to burn out.
I then gave the team advice on how to interrogate potential subjects—both those they generated on their own and the many sad crazies who inevitably come forward in a high-profile case. McIlwain, Walker, and I spent the rest of the day touring body dump sites, and by the time we got back to the hotel that evening, I was wiped out.
Over drinks at the hotel bar, where we were trying to unwind from the day, I told Blaine and Ron I wasn’t feeling well. I still had the headache, thought I might be coming down with the flu, and asked them to cover for me with the police the next day. I thought I might feel better if I spent the next day in bed, so when we said good night, I put the Do Not Disturb sign on my door and told my two associates I’d rejoin them Friday morning.
All I remember is feeling terrible, sitting on the side of the bed and beginning to undress. My two fellow agents went back to the King County Courthouse on Thursday to follow up on the strategies I had outlined the day before. As I’d requested, they left me alone all day to try to sleep off my flu.
But when I didn’t show up for breakfast on Friday morning, they began to get concerned. They called my room. There was no answer. They went to the room and knocked on the door. Nothing.
Alarmed, they went back to the front desk and demanded a key from the manager. They came back upstairs and unlocked the door, only to find the security chain on. But they also heard faint moaning from inside the room.
They kicked in the door and rushed inside. They found me on the floor in what they described as a "froglike" position, partially dressed, apparently trying to reach the telephone. The left side of my body was convulsing, and Blaine said I was "burning up."
The hotel called Swedish Hospital, which immediately dispatched an ambulance. In the meantime, Blaine and Ron stayed on the phone with the emergency room, giving them my vitals. My temperature was 107 degrees, my pulse, 220. My left side was paralyzed, and in the ambulance I continued having seizures. The medical report described me with "doll’s eyes"—open, fixed, and unfocused.
As soon as we arrived at the hospital, they packed me in ice and began massive intravenous doses of phenobarbital in an attempt to control the seizures. The doctor told Blaine and Ron he could pra
ctically have put the entire city of Seattle to sleep with what they were giving me.
He also told the two agents that despite everyone’s best efforts, I was probably going to die. A CAT scan showed the right side of my brain had ruptured and hemorrhaged from the high fever.
"In layman’s terms," the doctor told them, "his brain has been fried to a crisp."
It was December 2, 1983. My new insurance had become active the day before.
My unit chief, Roger Depue, went to Pam’s school to give her the news in person. Then she and my father, Jack, flew out to Seattle to be with me, leaving the girls with my mother, Dolores. Two agents from the FBI’s Seattle Field Office, Rick Mathers and John Biner, picked them up at the airport and brought them straight to the hospital. That’s when they knew how serious it was. The doctors tried to prepare Pam for my death and told her that even if I lived, I’d probably be blind and vegetative. Being a Catholic, she called in a priest to give me last rites, but when he found out I was Presbyterian, he refused. So Blaine and Ron gave him the hook and found another priest who didn’t seem to have these hang-ups. They asked him to come pray for me.
I hovered in the coma between life and death all week. The rules of the intensive care unit allowed only family members to visit, so my Quantico colleagues and Rick Mathers and others from the Seattle Field Office suddenly became close relatives. "You’ve certainly got a big family," one of the nurses commented wryly to Pam.
The idea of the "big family" wasn’t a complete joke in one sense. Back at Quantico, a number of my colleagues, led by Bill Hagmaier of the Behavioral Science Unit and Tom Columbell of the National Academy, took up a collection so that Pam and my dad could stay out in Seattle with me. Before long, they’d taken in contributions from police officers from all over the country. At the same time, arrangements were being made to fly my body back to Virginia for burial in the military cemetery at Quantico.
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