Mindhunter

by John Douglas, Mark Olshaker

  Though they didn’t have anything solid enough for an arrest, the police told me they had two suspects they considered strong. One was her live-in boyfriend and self-described fiancé, Charles F. Soult Jr., known as Butch. He would certainly have to be strongly considered. But the police were very high on the other one: the man who found the body and whose story didn’t quite add up. He was a machinist for the railroad, out on disability. He said he’d been out on a nature walk but had found the body at an obvious trash dump. An elderly man out walking his dog said he had seen this individual urinating at the scene. He was dressed inappropriately for a long hike, and though it had been raining, he was completely dry. He lived within four blocks of Betty Jane Shade’s house, and had tried unsuccessfully to pick her up on several occasions. He was nervous in his encounters with the police and said he had been afraid to report the body because he didn’t want to be blamed for the crime. This is a typical excuse by a subject who comes forward proactively to inject himself into the investigation and tries to deflect suspicion from himself. He was a beer drinker and heavy smoker, certainly strong enough to kill and dispose of the body himself. He had a history of antisocial behavior. On the night of the murder, he and his wife claimed to be home watching television by themselves, which provided them with no solid alibi. I told the police that someone like this would contact an attorney and be uncooperative from then on. That was exactly what had happened with him, they reported. He’d gotten a lawyer and refused a polygraph.

  All of this sounded pretty promising. But what bothered me most was that he was married with two children and living with his wife. This wouldn’t have been his style. If a married guy had done the murder, he would have a lot of sadistic rage toward women. He would draw out the killing, abuse her more before death, but not mutilate her afterward. He was also thirty, which struck me as being on the high side.

  Soult looked like a stronger choice to me. He fit virtually all of the profile elements. His parents had separated when he was young. His mother was a domineering woman, overly involved in her son’s life. At twenty-six, he was inept with women. He told police he had had just two sexual encounters in his life, both with an older woman who made fun of him because he couldn’t get it up. He said he and Betty Jane were very much in love and engaged to be married, though she dated and had sexual relationships with other men. I felt sure that if she were still alive, she’d tell a completely different story. At her funeral, he said he wanted to dig up the coffin and climb in there with her. And when interviewed by the police, he had cried incessantly over the loss of Betty Jane.

  Butch Soult and his brother, Mike, worked as trash haulers, the police said.

  "Jesus, this sounds pretty good," I replied.

  They had access to the dump site, reason to know about it and go there, and a means of transporting the body.

  But as much as I liked Butch as a suspect, two things bothered me. First, as I’d expected, he was kind of a little twerp who wasn’t much bigger than Shade. I didn’t think he was capable of moving the body or arranging it into the froglike position with the legs spread and bent at the knees in which it was found. Second, semen was found in the victim’s vagina, indicative of a traditional rape. I would not have been surprised to find semen on the body, in her underpants or other clothing, but not this. Like David Berkowitz, this guy would be a masturbator, but not a rapist. He had to get his sexual satisfaction indirectly. It didn’t add up.

  This was a mixed organized-disorganized presentation, in many ways similar to the murder of Francine Elveson in New York, with the same early blitz attack, facial disfigurement, and genital mutilation. Whereas Elveson’s nipples had been cut off, Shade’s entire breasts had been removed.

  But in the New York case, the larger Carmine Calabro had carried the tiny victim a couple of floors up and left her. And the ejaculation had all been masturbatory.

  Keeping the lessons from Odom and Lawson in mind, I thought there was only one logical possibility. I believed it was likely Butch Soult had met Betty Jane on the street after she left her job, they got into an argument, he beat her up and probably rendered her unconscious, then transported her to a secluded location. I also believed he could have struck the blow that killed her, cut off her hair, mutilated her body, and kept the breasts as souvenirs. But between the time she was first attacked and the time she was killed, she had been raped, and I didn’t think a disorganized, sexually inadequate, mother-dominated young man such as Soult was capable of that. And I didn’t think he had moved the body by himself.

  Butch’s brother, Mike, was the logical second suspect. He came from the same background and had the same job. He had spent some time in a mental institution, and had a record of violence, behavior problems, and poor anger control. The main difference was he was married, though their mother was so domineering in his life as well. The night Betty Jane Shade was abducted, Mike’s wife had been in the hospital having a baby. Her pregnancy was a major stressor, plus it had deprived him of a sexual release. It made perfect sense that after the attack, the panicked Butch had called his brother, who had raped the young woman while Butch looked on, then, after the murder, had helped him dispose of the body.

  I told the police an indirect, nonthreatening approach would be best. Unfortunately, they had already interviewed Butch several times and polygraphed him. As I knew it would, the exam showed no deceit on his part, but inappropriate emotional reactions. I thought the best approach now would be to focus on Mike, hammering home that all he did was have sex with Shade and help dispose of her body, but that if he didn’t cooperate at this point, he would be in as much hot water as his brother.

  This tactic paid off. Both brothers—and their sister, Cathy Wiesinger, who claimed to be Betty Jane’s best friend—were arrested. Cathy, according to Mike, had been in on the body disposal as well.

  So what happened? I believe Butch had been trying to have sex with this sexually attractive, sexually experienced woman, but couldn’t. His resentment built up until it didn’t take much to set him off. After he attacked Shade, he panicked and called in his brother. But his anger built even further when Mike could have sex with her and he couldn’t. His anger continued, and four days later he mutilated the body, giving him "the final word."

  One of the victim’s breasts was recovered. Mike told police that Butch kept the other one, which didn’t surprise me. Wherever he hid it, it was never found.

  Charles "Butch" Soult was convicted of first-degree murder and Mike, following a plea arrangement, was sent to a mental institution. Chief Reeder commented publicly that we were directly instrumental in developing the investigation and obtaining statements from the perpetrators. We, in turn, were fortunate to have a local partner like him who had been trained in our methods and understood the collaborative process between police and Quantico.

  Because of this cooperation, we were able to take out a killer and his accomplice before they had a chance to kill again. Chief Reeder and his men and women went back to the business of keeping the peace in Logan Township, Pennsylvania. And I went back to my 150-odd other active cases, hoping I’d learned something that would help me in at least one of them to walk in the shoes of both perpetrator and victim.

  Chapter 10

  Everybody Has a Rock

  One evening years before, when I was back home after my ill-fated college experience in Montana, I was having dinner with my parents at a pizza and beer place in Uniondale, Long Island, called Coldstream. Just as I took a bite out of my slice of everything-with-extra-cheese, my mother—out of the blue—said, "John, have you ever had sexual relations with a woman?"

  I swallow hard, trying to gulp down what I had just bitten off. This isn’t the kind of question nineteen- or twenty-year-old kids are used to being asked by their mothers in the mid-1960s. I turn to my father for some sign of support, but he’s stone-faced. He’d been caught as much off-guard as I had.

  "Well, have you?" she persists. She wasn’t a Holmes for nothing.
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  "Uh . . . yeah, Mom. I have."

  I see this look of revulsion come over my mother’s face. "Well, who was she?" she demands.

  "Ah . . . Well . . ." I’ve sort of lost the healthy appetite I’d come into the place with. "Actually, there’ve been several."

  I don’t tell her one had been in her mid-teens in a home for unwed mothers in Boseman. But you’d have thought I just told her where I’d hidden the bodies after I’d dismembered them, and it had been right in their basement. "Who is going to have you as a husband now?" she laments.

  Again I turn to my unusually silent father. Come on, Dad, help me out!

  "Oh, I don’t know, Dolores. It’s not a big deal these days."

  "It’s always been a ’big deal,’ Jack," she counters, then turns back to me. "What would happen, John, if your future bride someday asked you whether you had had relations with another woman before you met her?"

  I pause in mid-bite. "Well, Mom, I would tell her the truth."

  "No, don’t say that," my father pipes up.

  "What do you mean, Jack?" my mother asks. Okay, Dad, let’s see you get out of this one.

  The interrogation session ended in an uneasy stalemate. I’m not sure if I got anything out of the encounter. I either told Pam of my past or she suspected it. At any rate, she did agree to marry me, despite my mother’s fears. But when I thought back to that grilling from my perspective as a federal law enforcement official, profiler, and expert on criminal behavior and psychology, an important realization did dawn on me. Even if I’d had all the training and analytical experience that I have now, I still wouldn’t have handled my mother’s inquisition any better!

  Because she’d gotten to me on a vulnerable point of truth.

  I’ll give you another example. Ever since I became the FBI’s chief profiler, I personally selected and trained all of the other profilers. For that reason, I’ve enjoyed a particularly close and cooperative relationship with all the men and women who’ve been on my team. Most of them have become stars in their own right. But if I could ever be said to have had a true disciple among them, it would be Greg Cooper. Greg left a prestigious job as chief of police in a town in Utah while still in his early thirties and joined the FBI after hearing Ken Lanning and Bill Hagmaier speak at a law enforcement seminar. He distinguished himself in the Seattle Field Office, but always had the dream of coming to Quantico to work in Behavioral Science. He had requested and studied all of my profiling and analysis of the Green River Killer, and when I flew out to Seattle to appear on a viewer-participation television special called Manhunt Live, Greg volunteered to be my chauffeur and guide. When I became chief of the reorganized Investigative Support Unit, Greg was working in an FBI resident agency in Orange County, California, and living in Laguna Niguel. I brought him back to Quantico, where he became an outstanding performer.

  When he first came into the unit, Greg was assigned to share an underground, windowless office with Jana Monroe, a former police officer and homicide detective in California before she became a special agent who, among her many other fine qualities, happens to be a smashingly attractive blond. In other words, she puts it all together. Now, not too many men would find this a hardship assignment, but Greg happens to be a devout Mormon, a very straight and devoted family man with five lovely children and a stunning wife named Rhonda, to whom it was a major sacrifice to move from their sunny California paradise to sleepy, hot, and humid Virginia. Every time she asked about his office mate, Greg would hem and haw and try to change the subject.

  Finally, about six months after he’d been on the job for us, Greg brings Rhonda to the unit Christmas party. I’m not there because I’m working a case out of town, but the naturally vivacious Jana is. And typical for her in a party situation, she’s wearing a subtle, understated, short, and form-fitting bright red dress with a plunging neckline.

  When I get back, Jim Wright, the unit’s second-in-command who has taken over for me as profiling program manager, tells me there were real fireworks between Rhonda and Greg after the party. She’s none too happy about his spending his days in such close confines with a beautiful, tough, charming agent who knows her way around a firing range and dance floor with equal facility.

  So I have my secretary get Greg out of a meeting and tell him I want to see him right away. He gets to my office looking somewhat concerned. He’s only been here six months, this unit has been his dream, and he really wants to make good.

  I look up from my desk and say, "Close the door, Greg. Sit down." He does, even more disturbed by my tone of voice. "I just got off the phone with Rhonda," I continue. "I understand you’ve had some problems."

  "You just got off the phone with Rhonda?" He’s not even looking at me. He’s staring straight at the call-director phone on my desk.

  "Look, Greg," I said in my most soothing counselor tones, "I’d like to cover for you, but when you and Jana go on the road together, I can’t make any special provisions. This is something you’re going to have to deal with on your own. Rhonda obviously knows what’s going on between you and Jana and—"

  "Nothing’s going on between me and Jana!" he splutters.

  "I know there are a lot of stresses in this job. But you’ve got a beautiful, terrific wife, nice kids. Don’t throw it all away."

  "It’s not what you think, John. It’s not what she thinks. You have to believe me." And all the time he’s still staring at that telephone, maybe thinking if he concentrates hard enough, he’s going to be able to burn it right through the desk. He’s broken out in a cold sweat. I can see the carotid artery pounding in his neck. He’s heading south fast.

  So at that point I let up. "Look at you, you miserable wretch!" I grin triumphantly. "You call yourself an interrogator?" At the time he was preparing a chapter on interrogation for the Crime Classification Manual. "Have you done anything to be guilty about?"

  "No, John. I swear!"

  "And look! You’re putty in my hands! You’re completely innocent. You’re a former chief of police. You’re an experienced interrogator. And yet I was able to play you like a yo-yo. So what do you have to say for yourself?"

  At that particular time, as the sweat of relief rolled off his balding head, he didn’t have anything to say for himself, but he got the point. I knew I could jerk him around like that because it had been done to me with equal success and could be again if the situation arose.

  We’re all vulnerable. It doesn’t matter how much you know, how experienced you are, how many suspect interrogations you’ve handled successfully. It doesn’t matter if you understand the technique. Each of us can be gotten to—if you can just figure out where and how we’re vulnerable.

  I’d learned this during one of my earliest cases as a profiler, and I put it to use many times thereafter—not only in demonstrations to my own team. It was the first time I actually "staged" an interrogation.

  In December 1979, Special Agent Robert Leary from the Rome, Georgia, Resident Agency called with the details of a particularly horrible case and asked me to give it my top priority. The week before, Mary Frances Stoner, a pretty and outgoing twelve-year-old girl in Adairsville, about a half-hour from Rome, had disappeared after being dropped off by the school bus at the driveway to her house, approximately a hundred yards back from the road. Her body was later found about ten miles away in a wooded lovers’ lane area by a young couple who noticed the bright yellow coat over her head. They contacted police and did not disturb the scene, a critical consideration. The cause of death was determined to be blunt-force trauma to the head. Postmortem examination detected skull fracturing consistent with a large rock. (There’s a bloodstained one right near her head in the crime-scene photos.) Marks on the neck also indicated manual strangulation from the rear.

  Before I looked at the case materials, I wanted to know as much as possible about the victim. No one had anything other than wonderful things to say about Mary Frances. She was described as friendly to everyone, gregarious, and charming. She w
as sweet and innocent, a drum majorette in the school band who often wore her uniform to school. She was a cute twelve-year-old who looked twelve, rather than trying to look eighteen. She wasn’t promiscuous, she’d never been involved with drugs or alcohol. The autopsy clearly indicated she’d been a virgin when raped. All in all, she was what we would characterize as a low-risk victim taken from a low-risk setting.

  After being briefed, listening to Leary, and studying the files and crime-scene photos, I jotted down the following half-page note:

  Profile

  Sex—m

  Race—w

  Age—mid-twenties-late twenties

  Marital—married: problems or divorced

  Military—dishonorable, medical

  Occupation—blue collar: electrician, plumber

  IQ—average-above average

  Education—H.S. at most; dropout

  Criminal Record—arson, rape

  Personality—confident, cocky, passed polygraph

  Color Vehicle—black or blue

  Interrogate—direct, projection

  This was a rape of opportunity, and the murder had not been planned or intended. The disheveled appearance of the clothing on the body indicated that Mary Frances had been forced to undress, then was allowed to redress hurriedly after the rape. I could see from the photos that one shoe was untied, and the report noted bleeding in her panties. No debris was on her back, behind, or feet, which suggested she was raped in a car, not on the wooded ground where her body was found.

  Looking intently at the rather routine crime-scene photos, I began to understand what had happened. I could imagine the whole thing.

  Because of her youth, as well as her outgoing and trusting nature, Mary Frances would have been easily approachable in so nonthreatening an environment as the school bus stop. The UNSUB probably coaxed her up to his car, then grabbed her or forced her in with a knife or gun. The remoteness of the area in which her body was found indicated that he knew the region well and knew he wouldn’t be disturbed there.