Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Epigraph
Introduction
Chapter 1 - First Glance
Chapter 2 - Sexual Predators: Female Victims
Chapter 3 - Sexual Predators: Male Victims
Chapter 4 - Killers on the Road
Chapter 5 - Team Killers
Chapter 6 - Killing Couples
Chapter 7 - The Family That Preys Together
Chapter 8 - The Fairer Sex
Chapter 9 - The Helpless Ones
Chapter 10 - Angels and Heroes
Chapter 11 - Killers with a Cause
Chapter 12 - Group Dynamics
Chapter 13 - Safe at Home
Chapter 14 - Celebrity Stalkers
Chapter 15 - Blood Suckers and Flesh Eaters
Chapter 16 - On Other Shores
Chapter 17 - The Strangest of the Strange
Chapter 18 - The Real Profilers
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PHOTO CREDITS
INDEX
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Mariotte, Jeff.
Criminal minds : sociopaths, serial killers, and other deviants / Jeff Mariotte. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-63625-1 (paper : acid-free paper); ISBN 978-0-470-77051-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-87218-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-87219-2 (ebk)
1. Criminal minds (Television program) 2. Criminals—United States—Biography. I. Title.
HV6785.M297 2010
364.1092’273-dc22
2010016889
He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it’s the dead me he wants.
—John Fowles, The Collector
Introduction
CRIME TOUCHES US ALL. In ways large and small, direct and indirect, our lives are affected by the criminal acts of others. Our taxes support law enforcement and the judicial and penal systems. Retail prices factor in the expectation of a certain amount of shoplifting. Some of our pensions have been reduced or even eliminated because of white-collar crime in corporate boardrooms.
Then there are the more personal effects of crime, the kinds that happen one-to-one. In my life, I’ve had a few things stolen, and once in the 1970s I was mugged at knifepoint in a large city in California. The mugger left with seven dollars and change; I left with a little round hole in the back of my neck.
A girl I went to junior high and high school with became the first murder victim in our Virginia town. Another high school friend (at least, he was my friend until I decided he couldn’t be trusted; the first time I used the phrase pathological liar was, I believe, in reference to him) became one of the most successful bank robbers in U.S. history; he died in a shoot-out with the police.
While researching this book, I learned that yet another high school classmate had probably been murdered by John Brennan Crutchley, who was known as the Vampire Rapist. I also discovered that the apartment complex in which my wife and I lived for a while in a second-floor unit was where serial killer and sexual predator Cleophus Prince took his first victim—from a second-floor unit—a couple of years before we moved in. You’ll meet both the Vampire Rapist and Mr. Prince in these pages.
The CBS television series Criminal Minds deals with crimes like Crutchley’s and Prince’s, the heinous acts people commit against one another. It does so by telling the stories of profilers working in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), a real entity that does spectacular work in bringing to justice kidnappers, rapists, murderers, and others. The cases depicted on Criminal Minds are fictional, but there may be elements that are similar to ones that have actually happened. In addition, during any given episode of Criminal Minds, one or more real-life criminals or crimes might be specifically mentioned as examples. Those true stories are what this book is about. (The book assumes that the reader has seen the episodes, or at least doesn’t mind knowing the resolution, because sometimes in discussing the true crimes, the episode’s mysteries must be unveiled.)
Some of the stories contained herein have been told many times, even fictionalized and filmed, with the result that the details are often murky or contradictory. Others have been told hardly at all, which means that there are few sources from which to learn about them. Wherever I found contradictions, I dug deeper still, looking for contemporary or firsthand accounts, settling on one version only when I could find multiple sources that agreed.
Details that are still not certain are described in that way. The reader should remember that some of the details of any crime are subject to interpretation—often the only people actually present were the criminal and the victim. The victim isn’t talking, and the criminal is, in most cases, a liar; even detailed confessions are spun to achieve the criminal’s own end. These accounts are as true and accurate as I could make them, given those uncertainties.
Criminal Minds is excellent television, with strong writers and one of the best casts in the business. Every actor is a standout, playing action scenes, tense interrogations, and tender character moments with equal credibility. Although the show focuses on solving crimes, the human aspects of the characters’ lives and the effects of such a harrowing career are never shortchanged.
Just as important, the victims on the series are shown respect. In real life, it should also be that way. The bad men and women murder, rape, kidnap, and steal, but in the end it’s the victims and their families, friends, and loved ones who have to spend the rest of their days
in the shadow of those acts. The survivors and those close to them often show incredible courage and grit, whether they launch public anticrime initiatives or simply continue living their lives, refusing to be brought up short by a psychopath’s heartless act.
Like the TV series, this book focuses on the crimes and criminals. But the victims and the survivors have not been forgotten, and this author dedicates the pages that follow to them.
1
First Glance
AT FIRST GLANCE, you don’t see anything strange about the man. Maybe you don’t notice him at all; blending in is part of his technique, after all, and he looks just like anybody else out there. He might be young, like Bill Heirens, the Lipstick Killer. He might be huge, like Ed Kemper, the Coed Killer. He’s probably white, almost certainly male, most likely older than twenty but younger than forty. He might be staring directly at you, raising the fine hairs on the back of your neck. It’s possible that he’s unable to meet your gaze, so he glances away, pretending that his attention is elsewhere. Chances are he’ll be alone, but he might have a partner nearby, perhaps even a woman whose task is to lure you into complacency so he can strike.
The man is a predator. He’s driven by forces he doesn’t understand, by urges he can tamp down but never quell. And by the time you realize what he is, it’s probably too late.
Criminal Minds is about the worst of the worst: murderers, rapists, stalkers, kidnappers, molesters, predators of every sort. Avid viewers know that these criminals can be categorized in a number of different ways. There are organized and disorganized offenders. There are serial killers, spree killers, mass murderers, family annihilators. There are lust or thrill killers, visionary killers, mission-based killers, power or control killers. When we look at their crimes, it’s important to consider which aspects are part of their modus operandi (MO) and which represent their individual signatures.
In subsequent chapters, we’ll look at some of these real-life criminals in an organized fashion, grouping them by the types of crimes they commit, the types of victims on whom they prey, and so on. But we’ll start with some who, for one reason or another, resist classification or who simply deserve to stand apart from their less accomplished fellows, and we’ll allow them to demonstrate some of the characteristics of the categories above. Rarely do criminals fit exactly into one slot or another—for all their crimes, they’ re human beings, after all, and human beings tend to resist easy understanding.
I used the word accomplished in the previous paragraph with tongue somewhat in cheek; many of these people are, in fact, good at what they do and work hard at it, and they spend a lot of time and expend a great deal of energy and thought in pursuit of their avocations. Had they been willing to direct those resources toward useful goals, they might have contributed to society in some positive way.
Instead, they’ re the dregs, barely worth discussing, for the most part. However, they’re fascinating to examine as case studies, in some perverse way—for the same reason we go to horror movies, one supposes, to see at a safe distance things we hope never to encounter in our own lives. As noted FBI profiler John Douglas points out in several books devoted to his work, the better we can understand these human predators, the better we as a society can protect ourselves from them and try to prevent them from doing the things they do.
Within the five seasons of Criminal Minds (as of this writing), there have been two fictional serial killers who avoided arrest the first time they appeared, only to become serious threats to two of the show’s main characters. Readers familiar with the series will recall Frank Breitkopf; he was introduced in the episode “No Way Out” (episode 213) but escaped, only to return in “No Way Out II: The Evilution of Frank” (223) and kill a close friend of Supervisory Special Agent Jason Gideon.
Then there’s George Foyet, known as the Reaper, who first appeared in “Omnivore” (418) as unit chief Aaron Hotchner’s nemesis; he eventually murdered Aaron’s wife, Haley. Aaron beat him to death with his bare hands, in the powerful 100th episode of the series, titled simply “100” (509).
As of this writing, Karl Arnold, known as the Fox, has also made more than one appearance; introduced in “The Fox” (107), he returned in “Outfoxed” (508), but he’s in jail and not currently a threat.
Breitkopf and Foyet are both brilliant, brutal men, “ideal” killers with no real-life analogues. One possible parallel to Foyet might be one of the people most frequently mentioned on the series: David Berkowitz, popularly known as the Son of Sam, one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. The fictional BAU profilers on the series refer to Berkowitz in seven episodes: “Extreme Aggressor” (101), “Compulsion” (102), “Unfinished Business” (115), “A Real Rain” (117), “The Last Word” (209), “Lo-Fi” (320), and “Zoe’s Reprise” (415). Only the names Ted Bundy and Charles Manson come up more often.
DAVID BERKOWITZ was determined to name himself to the New York Police Department (NYPD), but at first he appeared uncertain about what name he wanted to use. New Yorkers had started calling him the .44 Caliber Killer, because he was killing women with a Charter Arms .44 Bulldog handgun. In a letter addressed to NYPD captain Joseph Borrelli that was left at the scene of two murders, Berkowitz wrote, “I am the Son of Sam,” but he also wrote “I am the ‘Monster’—Beelzebub—the chubby behemouth.” A skilled speller Berkowitz was not. He signed his introductory missive “Mr. Monster.” He was indeed a monster, but Son of Sam was the name that stuck.
In the Criminal Minds premiere episode, “Extreme Aggressor,” Agents Gideon, Hotchner, and Greenaway must profile a serial killer to find a missing woman before she becomes his next victim.
Berkowitz began his criminal career stealing from his adoptive mother, Pearl Berkowitz, and committing petty vandalism. He shoplifted things his parents would have bought him, and he poisoned his pet fish, fed rat poison to his mother’s parakeet, and created a torture chamber for any insects unlucky enough to cross his path. Later in life, after Pearl had died and David’s adoptive father, Nathan Berkowitz, moved away with his new wife, David became even more dangerous. Between September 1974 and December 1975, according to detailed diaries he kept, Berkowitz set 1,488 fires in New York City and pulled hundreds of fire alarms. He enjoyed the power, the ability to upend people’s lives and to make the great city’s resources respond to his will.
Common early indicators of serial murder are bed-wetting, fire-starting, and animal torture, sometimes called the McDonald Triad (after psychiatrist J. M. McDonald, who described it in a professional journal) or the triad of sociopathy. Berkowitz had two out of three.
His first murder attempt was a failure. On December 24, 1975, he took a hunting knife back to the apartment complex he had lived in with his adoptive father and stabbed a young woman in the back. Instead of dying in an appropriately cinematic fashion, she screamed. Berkowitz fled the scene, dissatisfied. His account of this stabbing has never been confirmed, and the victim has never been identified. A short while later, with the urge still strong, he crossed paths with fifteen-year-old Michelle Forman and took another crack at it. He stabbed Forman six times. Like his previous victim, she screamed but didn’t die. After that, Berkowitz changed weapons. He wouldn’t be a stabber after all, but a shooter.
His next attempt proved more successful. He had started to regularly cruise New York’s streets, searching for victims. Early in the morning on July 29, 1976, he shot two teenagers, eighteen-year-old Donna Lauria and nineteen-year-old Jody Valenti, while they sat in Jody’s car outside the Lauria home in the Bronx. Berkowitz claimed that he didn’t know for sure if he had killed them until he read about the shooting in the newspapers, but he had managed to kill Donna and shoot Jody in the thigh. After the shooting, he returned to his apartment and slept soundly.
Most serial killers have a cooling-off period after a murder, and Berkowitz was no exception. By September, he had heated up again and returned to the hunt. His next target was Rosemary Keenan, eighteen, the daughter of a
police detective who would later become part of the task force hunting Berkowitz. On October 23, Keenan and her friend Carl Denaro were parked outside her home in Queens. Berkowitz, using the Charter Arms .44 that would become his trademark, fired repeatedly into the parked car. Keenan, in the driver’s seat, was unhurt, but Denaro was hit in the back of the head. He lived, but he had to have a metal plate put in his skull, and his air force career ended before it began.
Between then and the end of January 1977, Berkowitz struck twice more, killing Christine Freund, twenty-six, and injuring three others.
By this time, the police were beginning to suspect a connection among all these shootings. Although they were spaced out in time and there were no connections among the victims, they had all been shot with .44 bullets. Most of the victims were young women with long dark hair. In the cases in which Berkowitz had shot at men, they were with young women. Most were sitting in parked cars.
Things were changing in Berkowitz’s life, too. Before the shooting rampage started, he had sent a letter to Nathan. In it he wrote, “Dad, the world is getting dark now. I can feel it more and more. The people, they are developing a hatred for me. You wouldn’t believe how much some people hate me. Many of them want to kill me. I don’t even know these people, but still they hate me. Most of them are young. I walk down the street and they spit and kick at me. The girls call me ugly and they bother me the most. The guys just laugh. Anyhow, things will soon change for the better.”
After the murders, things looked brighter to him, at least for a little while. Berkowitz had worked menial jobs in construction and security and had then driven a cab, but shortly after he killed Christine Freund, he did well on a civil service exam, which enabled him to become a postal employee and earn the highest salary of his life. Like the fictional George Foyet and many real serial killers, Berkowitz was a man of above-average intelligence working at jobs below his real capabilities. Also like Foyet, although Berkowitz attacked victims of both sexes, he was most interested in his female victims.
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