Journey into Darkness

by John Douglas

  And others we interviewed told us that they had taken a companion, generally a woman, on a trip to the general area of the crime, then made some excuse to leave her long enough to actually revisit the scene. One killer told us of taking his sometimes girlfriend on a camping trip, then leaving her briefly with the excuse that he had to relieve himself in the woods. That was when he would go back to the body dump site.

  The prison interviews helped us see and understand the wide variety of motivation and behavior among serial killers and rapists. But we saw some striking common denominators as well. Most of them come from broken or dysfunctional homes. They’re generally products of some type of abuse, whether it’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or a combination. We tend to see at a very early age the formation of what we refer to as the “homicidal triangle” or “homicidal triad.” This includes enuresis—or bedwetting—at an inappropriate age, starting fires, and cruelty to small animals or other children. Very often, we found, at least two of these three traits were present, if not all three. By the time we see his first serious crime, he’s generally somewhere in his early to mid-twenties. He has low selfesteem and blames the rest of the world for his situation. He already has a bad track record, whether he’s been caught at it or not. It may be breaking and entering, it may have been rape or rape attempts. You may see a dishonorable discharge from the military, since these types tend to have a real problem with any type of authority. Throughout their lives, they believe that they’ve been victims: they’ve been manipulated, they’ve been dominated, they’ve been controlled by others. But here, in this one situation, fueled by fantasy, this inadequate, ineffectual nobody can manipulate and dominate a victim of his own; he can be in control. He can orchestrate whatever he wants to do to the victim. He can decide whether this victim should live or die, how the victim should die. It’s up to him; he’s finally calling the shots.

  Understanding the common background is very important in understanding a serial killer’s motivation. After spending many hours with Charles Manson at San Quentin, we concluded that what motivated him in inspiring among his followers the butchery of Sharon Tate and her friends one night in Los Angeles in 1969 and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the next was not the apocalyptic blood lust of “Helter Skelter” as had been widely thought. Born the illegitimate son of a sixteen-year-old prostitute who had grown up with a fanatically religious aunt and sadistic uncle until he began living on the streets at age ten and in and out of prisons thereafter, Manson craved fame, fortune, and recognition, just like the rest of us. What he really wanted to be was a rock star. Short of that, he could set himself up as a guru and would settle for a free ride through life with susceptible followers providing the food, shelter, and drugs. His “family” of social misfits and middle-class dropouts provided him with enough opportunity for manipulation, domination, and control. To keep them in line and interested, he preached apocalypse, an ultimate social and race war symbolized by the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter” in which he alone would emerge victorious.

  Everything was okay with Charlie until August 9, 1969, when Manson follower and would-be usurping leader Charles “Tex” Watson broke into the Beverly Hills home of director Roman Pølanski and his eight months pregnant wife, movie star Sharon Tate. After the brutal slaughter of five people (Polanski was not home at the time), Manson realized he had to assume control, make it seem that he had actually intended these murders as the beginning of Helter Skelter, and direct his family into another killing, or else he would lose credibility and surrender his leadership to Watson. Then his free ride would be over. In Manson’s case, the violence began not when he began his manipulation, domination, and control, but when he began losing control.

  All that we learned from Manson doesn’t mean he’s any less a monster than what we thought, it only means he turns out to be a somewhat different type of monster. Understanding the differences gives us insight into his type of crime and, equally important, his type of charisma. What we learned from Manson we were later able to apply to an understanding of other cults, such as the one led by the Reverend Jim Jones, David Koresh’s Branch Davidians at Waco, the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, the Freemen in Montana, and the entire militia movement.

  Through our interview and research efforts we came up with a number of observations which have had significant bearing on our ability to analyze crimes and predict behavior of criminals. Traditionally, investigators have given great weight to a perpetrator’s modus operandi, or MO. This is the way the perpetrator goes about committing a crime—whether he uses a knife or gun, or the method he uses to abduct a victim.

  Theodore “Ted” Bundy, who was executed in 1989 in the electric chair of the Florida State Penitentiary at Starke with my colleague Bill Hagmaier not far away, was handsome, resourceful, and charming, well-liked by those around him and the model of a “good catch.” He was a perfect example of the reality that serial killers don’t often look like monsters. They blend in with the rest of us. He was one of the most notorious serial killers in American history, a man who abducted, raped, and murdered young women all along the way from Seattle to Tallahassee, having developed a ruse in which he would have his arm in a sling and removable cast, making him appear disabled. He would then ask the assistance of his intended victim in moving some heavy object. When her guard was down, he would whack her. Novelist Thomas Harris used this particular MO in creating the character of Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.

  Additional aspects of the character were taken from other serial killers with whom we acquainted Harris during a visit he made to Quantico before writing his previous novel, Red Dragon. Buffalo Bill kept his victims in a pit dug in his basement. In real life, this is what Gary Heidnick did with the women he captured in Philadelphia. Buffalo Bill’s penchant for using the skins of women to create a female “costume” for himself came from Ed Gein, the 1950s killer in the small Wisconsin farming community of Plainfield. Harris wasn’t the first to borrow the idea, though. Robert Bloch had already used parts of it in his own memorable novel, Psycho, made into the film classic by Alfred Hitchcock.

  What’s important to note here is that while using an arm cast and sling to abduct women is a modus operandi, killing and flaying women to use their skins is not. The term I coined to describe that was “signature,” because like a signature, it is a personal detail that is unique to the individual. The MO is what the offender does to effect the crime; the signature, in a sense, is why he does it: the thing that fulfills him emotionally. Sometimes there can be a fine line between MO and signature, depending on the reason why it was done. Of the three aspects of the Buffalo Bill composite, the cast is definitely MO, the skinning is signature, and the pit could be either, depending on the situation. If he keeps his captives in the pit as a means of holding and controlling them, then I would classify that as MO. If he gets some emotional satisfaction out of holding them down there, of seeing them degraded and pleading in fear, then that would fall under signature.

  I have found that signature is a much more reliable guide to the behavior of serial offenders than MO. The reason for this is that signature is static, while MO is dynamic; that is, it evolves as the offender progresses in his criminal career and learns from his own experience. If he can come up with a better means of abducting a victim or transporting or disposing of a body, he’ll do it. What he won’t change is the emotional reason he’s committing the crime in the first place.

  Clearly, in a routine crime such as bank robbery, MO is the only thing that matters. The police will want to know how he’s pulling off the job. The reason he’s doing it is obvious—he wants the money. But in a sexually based serial crime—and virtually all serial murders are sexually based in one sense or another—signature analysis may be critical, particularly in being able to link a series of crimes together.

  Steven Pennell, the “I-40 Killer” in Delaware, lured prostitutes into his specially equipped van where he raped, tortured, and murdered them. His me
thods of getting the women into his van varied; that was his MO. What stayed consistent was the torture; that was his signature, and that is what I testified to at his trial. That was what gave him emotional satisfaction. A defense attorney might claim that various cases are not related and do not represent the work of the same subject because the instruments used or the methods of torture might have been different. But this is insignificant. What is significant is the torture itself, and that remained consistent and static.

  One final note here: you’ve probably noticed that whenever I mention serial killers, I always refer to them as “he.” This isn’t just a matter of form or syntactical convenience. For reasons we only partially understand, virtually all multiple killers are male. There’s been a lot of research and speculation into it. Part of it is probably as simple as the fact that people with higher levels of testosterone (i.e., men) tend to be more aggressive than people with lower levels (i.e., women). On a psychological level, our research seems to show that while men from abusive backgrounds often come out of the experience hostile and abusive to others, women from similar backgrounds tend to direct the rage and abusiveness inward and punish themselves rather than others. While a man might kill, hurt, or rape others as a way of dealing with his rage, a woman is more likely to channel it into something that would hurt primarily herself, such as drug or alcohol abuse, prostitution, or suicide attempts. I can’t think of a single case of a woman acting out a sexualized murder on her own.

  The one exception to this generality, the one place we do occasionally see women involved in multiple murders, is in a hospital or nursing home situation. A woman is unlikely to kill repeatedly with a gun or knife. It does happen with something “clean” like drugs. These often fall into the category of either “mercy homicide,” in which the killer believes he or she is relieving great suffering, or the “hero homicide,” in which the death is the unintentional result of causing the victim distress so he can be revived by the offender, who is then declared a hero. And, of course, we’ve all been horrified by the cases of mothers, such as the highly publicized Susan Smith case in South Carolina, killing their own children. There is generally a particular set of motivations for this most unnatural of all crimes, which we’ll get into later on. But for the most part, the profile of the serial killer or repeat violent offender begins with “male.” Without that designation, my colleagues and I would all be happily out of a job.

  Until that happens—which, if the last several thousand years of human history are any indication, won’t be anytime in the foreseeable future—some of us are going to have to continue making that journey into darkness: into the dark mind of the killer and the dark fate of his victim.

  That’s the story I want to tell here.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Motive Behind the Murder

  I’ve often said that what we do in analyzing a murder, that what any good homicide detective does, is very similar to what a good actor does in preparing for a role. We both come to a scene—in the actor’s case a scene in a play or movie script, in ours, a murder scene—we look at what’s there on the surface—written dialogue between the characters or evidence of a violent crime—and we try to figure out what that tells us. In other words, what really happened between the principal characters in this scene? Actors call this “subtext,” and what they’ll tell you they need to know for themselves before they can act a scene is: What does the character want? Why does he say this particular thing or take this particular action?

  What is the motive?

  Motive is one of the thorniest issues in criminal investigative analysis. It is also among the most critical. Until you can figure out why a particular violent crime was committed, it is going to be very difficult trying to come to meaningful conclusions regarding the behavior and personality of the UNSUB. Even if you do catch him, it can still be very problematic prosecuting him successfully. That was the problem Hank Williams faced going into the Sedley Alley trial, and that was why he called me in. In the case of bank robbery, the motive—like its related element, the signature—is obvious: the offender wants the money and he doesn’t want to work for it legitimately. But let’s say you’re investigating a breaking and entering in which the resident of the apartment was raped and killed. Was the primary motive burglary, sexual assault, or murder? Either way, the victim is still dead, but it makes a big difference to us in figuring out what kind of person the killer is.

  During the fall of 1982, we got a call from a police department in the Midwest investigating the rape-murder of a twenty-five-year-old woman. The crime occurred in the living room of the apartment she and her husband had lived in for about six months. When the husband returned home, he found the place had been completely ransacked, leading police to wonder whether the primary motive had actually been burglary and the rape and murder a secondary crime of opportunity.

  The crime scene photos were very complete and welldone. The victim was found face-up on the living room floor, with her dress up around her waist and panties pulled down to her knees. Despite the disarray in the room, there was no evidence of struggle and no defense wounds on the body. The murder weapon was a hammer belonging to the victim and her husband. It was found in the kitchen sink, where it appeared the UNSUB had placed it to wash off the blood. The husband reported that some of his wife’s jewelry had been taken.

  In interesting contrast to the appearance of the crime scene, the ME’s report found no apparent evidence of sexual assault and no traces of semen on the victim or her clothing. However, tox screens did show that she had been drinking shortly before the attack. This was where I said, “Bingo!” The crime was staged to look like what an inexperienced person thinks a rape-murder is supposed to look like.

  I told the surprised detective I was pretty sure he’d already interviewed the killer, and that the motive wasn’t burglary. It wasn’t even sexual aggression.

  This is what I visualized having happened:

  The victim and the offender had been drinking together in her apartment. They got into an argument, probably a rehash and continuation of one they’d had many times in the past. The tension reached a threshold that the offender could no longer stand. He grabbed the closest weapon of opportunity, which happened to be the hammer in thekitchen, returned and angrily struck the victim several times on her head and face until she collapsed. Realizing he would be the obvious suspect, the offender rushed to the kitchen sink to wash blood from his hands and bloody fingerprints from the handle of the hammer. He then went back to the dead victim and rolled her over into a face-up position, lifted her dress and pulled down her underpants to stage a sexually motivated assault. He then ransacked the drawers to make it appear that the intruder had come in searching for money or valuables.

  At this point in my narrative the detective said, “You just told me the husband did it.”

  I coached him on how to reinterview the husband. During the polygraph, I said, the key thing would be to stress that the police knew he got blood on his hands and tried—unsuccessfully—to wash the bloody evidence away.

  Within a few days the husband was polygraphed, failed the test, and then admitted his guilt to the polygraph examiner.

  Sometimes you’re faced with a case in which the motive should be apparent, but something doesn’t quite add up. That’s what happened early in the afternoon of January 27, 1981, in Rockford, Illinois.

  About 1:00 P.M. someone walked in to Fredd’s Groceries and shot and killed the fifty-four-year-old owner, Willie Fredd, and an employee, Fredd’s twenty-year-old nephew, Albert Pearson. There were no witnesses.

  Fredd was found face-down on the floor behind the counter. Detectives determined that he must have been sitting behind the counter when he was shot twice with .38 caliber slugs—one in his neck, the other in his spleen. The younger victim was found halfway out the swinging doors to the outside. He’d been shot three times in the chest by the same weapon, evidently while backing away from his assailant. Strangely, there was no evi
dence of anything of value being taken from the store. Fredd and Pearson, it should be noted, were black.

  Around 8:45 the following morning, a man coming in for gas at a Clark Oil Company Super 100 service station in Rockford came upon the body of the attendant in the station’s supply storage room. The victim was an eighteen-year-old white male identified as Kevin Kaiser. He was propped against the wall where he’d fallen after being shot five times with a .38 caliber weapon, though ballistics tests later showed it was not the same weapon that had killed the two men at the grocery store the previous day. Four of the bullets had passed through his chest. The fifth entered the right side of his face and exited the left side of his neck, clearly shot at close range. The lack of bleeding at either the entry or exit wound meant the heart had already stopped; the young victim was dead before this last shot was fired.

  As far as victimology, people who knew Kevin had nothing but good things to say about him, describing him as hardworking and “a real nice kid.” And like the incident the day before, nothing of value appeared to have been taken. There was a description of a possible suspect in the area, however: a black male in his late twenties, medium height with short hair and a mustache.