AMERICAN SERIAL KILLERS-Peter Vronsky

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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
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killers in true crime history and the authors that have
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written about them Geese, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
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week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
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infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
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journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
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Good evening. Fans of mind Hunter and true crime podcasts
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will devour these chilling stories of serial killers from the
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American Golden Age nineteen fifty to two thousand. With books
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like Serial Killers, Female serial Killers, and Sons of Cain,
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Peter Vronsky has established himself as the foremost expert on
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the history of serial killers. In his first definitive History
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of the Golden Age of American serial Murder, when the
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number and body count of serial killers exploded, Vronsky tells
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the stories of the most unusual and prominent serial killings
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from the nineteen fifties to the early twenty first century,
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from Ted Bundy to the Golden State Killer. Our fascination
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with these classics serial killers seems to grow by the day,
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American serial Killers gives true crime junkies what they crave,
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with both perennial favorites Ed Kemper, Jeffrey Dahmer in lesser
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known cases, Melvin Rhees, Harvey Glatman. The book they were
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featuring this evening is American serial Killers the Epidemic Years
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nineteen fifty to two thousand, when my special guests historian,
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journalist and author Peter Vronsky. Welcome to the program, and
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thank you so much for this interview. Peter Vronsky, Hi, Dan,
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thanks for having me on. Thank you so much for
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joining me once again with this incredible American serial Killers.
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Tell us just the genesis of this book and what
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you intended to prove I guess and determine with this
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American serial Killers.
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Well, it's been a long time in the making. Certainly
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I became aware myself serial killers during this era after
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I had quite a random, very briefly encountered and all
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apprehended serial killer in December of nineteen seventy nine in
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New York City, and it was a dramatic encounter. He
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was fleeing the scene of a double homicide that he
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had committed in a hotel he had beheaded to sex
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workers in his room, set their torsos on fire, and
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then fled with the heads. And as she was doing that,
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he held up the elevator, which really annoyed me because
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I was in the lobby trying to go up and
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take a look at this hotel, whether I wanted to
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stay there or not. You know, this was a rough
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period in New York's history. You would check into a
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hotel if you're not familiar with it without first looking around.
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So you know, he probably held up the elevator for
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maybe forty seconds tops. But I'm twenty three, I'm impatient,
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and so he annoys me.
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And when the elevator.
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Starts coming down, I you know, I gave him this
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kind of hard look. So I had a good look
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at him. When I went up to walk through the hotel,
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I chose the floor that at random that he had
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been on the top floor, and of course at that
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point I walked into the smoke coming from the torsos
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that he had sat on fire. I never ended up
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staying there. I ended up, you know, evacuating out of
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the hotel and left as the fire department was arriving.
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So that was my first encounter. Who it was I
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later learned about almost eight months nine months later he
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had been arrested, and I saw his pictures and I realized,
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you know who it was I encountered on the elevator,
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and he was this ordinary looking guy, Richard Cottingham, the
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Times Square Corso killer, and so fascinated with what the
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hell this was? And the term serial killer did not
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exist at that time, certainly not in public usage. Law
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enforcement had been using it amongst themselves, but newspapers didn't
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use it. It really doesn't enter into our popular lexicon
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until May of nineteen eighty one, when The New York
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Times uses that term to describe Wayne Williams, the child
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murderer in Atlanta. So, you know, not having that word
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made me kinda left an impression of almost like a
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supernatural monster and Alfred Hitchcock movie serial Killer. I mean,
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serial killers have been in our consciousness certainly since easily
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since Jack the Ripper eighteen eighty eight and Blonde before that,
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but we didn't really have a word for them, and
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without the word, there was no concept. We called them
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recreational killers. We refer to them as stranger on stranger killers.
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Sometimes we call them as mass killers, which of course
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today has a whole different meaning than it did when
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that term was used. So I didn't have any of
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those concepts to kind of comfort me in on understanding
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what it was that I had encountered. And so it
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was this lifelong fascination with these monsters, and as the
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word serial killer entered into our lexicon, I I kind
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of realized what that was, but remained fascinated with their history,
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their origins and so forth. And you know, when I
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retired from television production and decided to take a shot
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at writing a book, you know, they say write what
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you know, and that's what I started up with and
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really haven't looked back since. I think this is maybe
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my fourth book on serial killers. And this era of
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the nineteen seventies and nineteen nineteen seventies to nineteen the
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end of nineteen nineties, when.
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We had something like about eighty two percent of all
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serial killers in the twentieth century appeared just in these
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three decades.
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It clearly was an epidemic and was called an epidemic
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at that time. You know, the Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy,
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Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, the Hillside Stranglers era of serial killers.
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You know, some approximately two thousand, three hundred serial killers
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identified in that era. That's a lot of serial killers.
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And so I've been writing about serial killers for about
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twenty years now.
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And.
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You know, I never really took a hard look at
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exactly this, and no one has, no one has really
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written a history of this three decade era. And so
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after doing Sons of Cain, where you know, there were
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several chapters that I looked at this era, I still
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felt I had a bucket me just about the whole era.
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So I look kind of at the ramp up starting
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from nineteen fifty essentially where you start beginning to see
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the steady rise of cerial homicides in the United States,
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and then with the nineteen seventies, you suddenly have this
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surge that essentially will run until the mid nineteen nineties,
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when we begin to see the first time not only
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a decline in the number of serial killers being apprehended,
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but as well in general murders and violent crime in
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the United States begins to dramatically drop at that point.
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Let's talk about the impetus and the genesis of this
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surge of serial killing in the seventies and the nineties.
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You say that there was some seeds planted, and that
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there are social and cultural and historical reasons for this,
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and you provide those Yes, tell us, yeah, as you
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discovered some of the reasons for the rise of this phenomenon.
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Well, my hypothesis is going to be one of a
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you know, a historian. I don't claim to be an
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expert or a profile of serial killers. You know, my
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expertise is in their history. And so we, including myself
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in my earlier books, always associated, you know, this surge
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in the nineteen seventies to the nineteen nineties with a
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general change in American culture that begins in the nineteen sixties.
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You know, we have the civil rights struggle and kind
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of upheavals around that. We have the Vietnam War protests,
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we have the emergence of youth culture, we have the
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sexual revolution, the kind of disintegration of the nuclear family,
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and you know, there is a rise, as I say,
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in violence and disorder in general in American society, and
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so we often associated serial murder with that period and
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with contemporary serial killers at that time. The problem with
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this model is that on average, a serial killer kills
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their first victim around the age of twenty seven twenty eight,
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but their obsessions, their psychopathology begins developing as early as
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the age of five, and often you have a kind
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of a complete cycle by the time they're around the
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age of fourteen. And so that means that if we're
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going to look at you know, Ted Bundy, for example,
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you got to back him out of the era in
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which he was committing as murders to the era in
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which he was a child when he's being kind of formed,
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and that of course brings us back, you know, twenty
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twenty five years Ted Bundy, typically of that generation is
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born in nineteen forty six, and so we got.
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To look at not only the culture and time in
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which children who will become serial killers are being raised,
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but as well at the parents to that family and what.
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Was affecting the family at that time, in particular the fathers.
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And of course that gives us these two American traumas,
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the Great Depression and the Second World War combined together
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has an impact on both males and females. Certainly, you
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have a generation of males who lose their sense of
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pride in the Great Depression when they are no longer
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the bread winners that they work. A lot of men
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could not really handle that and just abandon their families.
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And you know, you have now a generation of women
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that have to single handedly bring up their children. And
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one thing we do see, and there are various psychological
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explanations for it, but one thing we do see in
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many serial killer biographies, not at all, but in many
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is the presence of a kind of a controlling, dominant mother.
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That would be the expression, you know, we might use
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what you know, more politely put, what we're seeing is
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of course, independent, assertive women that have to play both
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role of father and mother, and that is only more
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intensified by the Second World War as the husbands begin
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to leave and women are single handedly raising children. And
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of course when the husband's return from the Second World War,
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they're not the same. And we completely underestimated the trauma
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that our fathers and grandfathers went through in the Second
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World War. We think it was like it's portrayed in
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the movies, and it wasn't at all that. And you know,
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I discovered that astonishing thirty seven percent of GI ground
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combat troops deployed in World War Two were discharged and
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sent home as neuropsychiatric casualties thirty seven percent, So that's
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a a huge amount. And we didn't have the kind
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of diagnosis we have of post traumatic stress disorder. In
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the post Vietnam War era. We had these vague terms
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combat stress reaction CSR, battle fatigue, battle neuroses, but we
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didn't understand what it was. And basically, traumatized soldiers come home,
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they're told to just suck it up. There's no treatment,
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there's no understanding of what they were experiencing. And as
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I looked at that era of serial killers and began to,
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you know, collect these accounts of serial killers describing, you know,
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their fathers, particularly those who served in the Pacific, coming
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back from the war and just totally disconnected from them,
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their family, just in this kind of sullen silence in
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which they you don't have to suffer. So that adds
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yet another level to the childhoods of these young males
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that are born in the baby bloomer generation. Adding to that,
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on top of it, it's never one thing. Adding to that,
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we have this ubiquitous popular literature in the form of
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true detective magazines and pulp advent men's pulp adventure magazines
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that well, first of all, we're sold mainstream next to
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Life magazine, Time Magazine, Ladies, Home, you know, Home, Garden Journal,
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and so forth, which depicted and celebrated the abduction, restraint, torture, rape,
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and murder of women. It you know, all the detective
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magazines often featured a model who posed in the photograph.
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She was bound, she was you know, her clothing was
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in a sense of disorder. None of these were blatantly pornographic,
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but clearly the implication was here that this is a
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woman who's abducted, tortured, rape, sexually assaulted, and will probably
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be murdered. And often the victim in these cover magazines
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looked out at the buyer of the magazines. It was,
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you know, you could have her for the price of
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the magazine. Was essentially the message, and the same thing
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with the men's adventure magazines, except the covers were painted
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rather than posed the photographically. So by the nineteen fifties
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has homicide investigations of serial homicides begin to unfold the
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presence of these magazines and kind of scripts from these
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magazines become evident. In some of these cases, particularly I
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described in my book the case of Hardy Glackman, who
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was so obsessed with these magazines that he actually would
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lure in Los Angeles freelancing photo bottles, telling them that
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he had an assignment to shoot a true detective magazine cover,
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and he would pose them as if they were in
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a true detective magazine cover and then enter into the
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cover and do what he wanted with them. They killed
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a number of women that way. Those photographs are you know, survived,
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and at that time, those photographs of you know, actually
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a serial killer's victim in the process of being victimized
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were published throughout the United States. They still circulate on
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the Internet today, and their absolute duplicates of what Harvey
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Blackman was seeing in these two detective magazines. He as
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well was subscribing to bondage literature as well, which also
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wasn't you know, technically pornographic either. Right, So these this
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now on top of kind of the parental trauma whatever
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you know, serial killers experience. There's a whole matrix of
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things that happened to children who become serial killers. Plus
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these magazines begin to kind of give them a script
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on which to express their obsessions, express their compotions, So
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it's not that these magazines necessarily made them into serial killers,
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but it inspired what they would do their their script.
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You know, other serial killers are inspired by biblical passages,
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you know. Dennis Radar, the BTK Killer, described how he
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would be turned on by Boom Winkle cartoons, you know,
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the ones that feature Dudley do Right d r CMP
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the mountie who's rescuing now and now is often bound
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and tied to a railway track by the villain right,
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and Dudley do Right comes to rescue her. Well, Dennis
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Radar described how, you know, he was aroused by these
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cartoon images of now being tied to the railway track.
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So anything, anything can inspire a you know, budding serial
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killer in expressing already what's inside of them was brewing
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inside of them and gives them shape and gives the form.
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And of course that's what profiles begin to focus in
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on in the nineteen seventies. They begin to discern certain patterns,
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certain imprint signatures, as they call it, and those signatures
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come from our culture, from our era. You know, when
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I looked at serial murder in the nineteenth century, for example,
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you know, there was a period where serial killers had
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an obsession with servant girls the way later serial killers
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have an obsession with sex workers, right, so, servant girls
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and the type of silk clothing they wore. So in
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the early you know, from about eighteen hundred to about
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eighteen fifty eighteen sixty, you had a number of serial
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killing cases where the victims were servant girls. They were
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lured into some remote place, and often they were killed
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for their clothing and the whole servant girl fetish. In fact,
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it is still with us today. I mean, you know,
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walk through the aisles of the costume department in any
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kind of adult novelty spoor and there you'll see the
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you know, servant girl costumes. It's still a theme in
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kind of sexual play.
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You talked about the scripts becoming more involved, more in
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incorporating and exhibiting more complex and extreme fetishistic fetistic elements
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and necrophilic mutilations as well, and you say this, by
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the thirties, these scripts are becoming more elaborate and incorporating
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these things that we hadn't seen previously. In the run
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up to the seventies and the nineties, you cite certain
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examples of particular killers that were and then just as
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you mentioned, about Glatman. Meanwhile, you talked about Glatman being
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featured in a True Detective magazine and Dennis Raider finding
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a True Detective magazine in his father's truck apparently and
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being influenced and seeing, geez, look at these are the
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kinds of things I've been dreaming of.
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So the groundwork for ground.
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Work for some of the things that you saw in
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sexual serial murderers from the seventies and nineties, the infamous
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ones were where the groundwork was laid before, wasn't it.
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Yes, absolutely, And the groundwork is laid of course when
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these crimes were being committed, when these guys were children. Indeed,
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Dennis Radar in fact says that he was around fourteen
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years old when in his father's truck he picked up
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a two Detective magazine and it was actually the Harvey
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Glatman case with those photographs said were published everywhere that
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suddenly captured his attention. And we can see it kind
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of an escalation from the kind of more innocent now
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the cartoon figure tied to the rails to now an
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actual photograph of a bound woman that Harvey Gladman used
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to resynthesize the fake detective magazine covers, and now you
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have the next generation Dennis Radar, who begins to reenact
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these kinds of bondage scenarios, often using himself as a
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model in them. He kind of uses himself as almost
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a three dimensional image of his fantasy, imagines himself being
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actually the woman. So it's a very kind of creepy,
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circular psychological process that eventually spins out of just being
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inside the mind of the serial killer. It spins out
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of that into an actual murder when he takes it
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on the road essentially, and again that statistically begins to
340
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occur around the age twenty seven twenty eight. You know,
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that's when many of serial killers really mature into it.
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That's the term we might use, mature into you know,
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real serial killers who are no longer just fantasizing about it,
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but are doing it. But the fantasies are often decades old,
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slowly evolving.
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What are the some of the factors that you cite
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to enable some of the numbers, because that's one of
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the important aspects of the phenomena seventies to the nineties
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was the incredible numbers of victims. What were some of
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the factors that you cite that would enable these serial
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killers to rack up these kinds of big numbers.
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I think, firstly, just a basic lack of knowledge, and
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you know that we don't even have a definition for
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what it is they're doing. The biggest problem facing law
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enforcement then and still to this day, to a great extent,
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was the problem of linkage blindness, where you had, you know,
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murders and different jurisdictions, and jurisdictions do not communicate with
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each other. You also had murders in the same jurisdiction
359
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that were linked together. Police investigators in the nineteen sixties
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had a much more simplistic motion of sexual murders. You know,
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if somebody say, for example, you know, strangled an adolescent girl,
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but then maybe suffocated a teenager, it was considered to
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be too different for it to be the same perpetrator.
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And so, you know, serial killings weren't linked. And I'm
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working on a particular case right now as an investigative
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historian with jurisdictions in New York and in New Jersey,
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in fact, dealing with the serial killer that I had
368
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encountered way back in nineteen seventy nine. I've been introduced
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to him several years ago by the daughter of a victim,
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and the you know, some of his cases which are
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now being closed. Last year I announced that three cases
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from nineteen sixty eight and sixty nine of schoolgirls in
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New Jersey, he confessed to those killings.
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At that time, the media kind of made possible links
375
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between these murders, but there was no official position that
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these are serial murders.
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And when I reviewed the case, the cases I was given,
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they all occurred in the same county, in Bergen County,
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New Jersey, and I was given them opportunity to review
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his confession and compare it to the actual case files.
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There was nothing in the case files that suggested that
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the murder in the next town was connected to this
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other murder. It just was inconceivable to police, and often
384
00:28:42.799 --> 00:28:46.799
is inconceivable today, you know, because serial homicide, despite kind
385
00:28:46.839 --> 00:28:49.519
of the prominence it has in our culture and our
386
00:28:49.880 --> 00:28:56.079
entertainment and so forth, it's an extraordinarily rare crime, and
387
00:28:56.480 --> 00:29:00.839
more so today, and so often there is a resistance
388
00:29:01.759 --> 00:29:08.039
in policing to jump to the serial killer scenario. It's
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00:29:08.359 --> 00:29:11.559
one that the police, and they have good reason to
390
00:29:12.039 --> 00:29:16.440
usually contemplate as the last possibility. And we had that
391
00:29:16.519 --> 00:29:19.400
problem here in Toronto a few years ago with the
392
00:29:19.400 --> 00:29:24.200
Bruce MacArthur murders. These were murders of you know, gay
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males who had a similar ethnic background. They vanished in
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00:29:30.039 --> 00:29:34.720
the gay community here, and you know, the police were
395
00:29:34.839 --> 00:29:41.160
very resistant to declaring this as a serial homicide case
396
00:29:41.759 --> 00:29:46.480
because they simply didn't have, you know, any evidence confirming that.
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00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:52.759
And and so without that solid evidence, the by police
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00:29:52.759 --> 00:29:55.960
departments essentially as you know, this is not a serial
399
00:29:56.079 --> 00:29:59.440
murder until we have evidence, even though they suspected it
400
00:29:59.559 --> 00:30:03.160
was that, investigated it as that, and eventually when they
401
00:30:03.160 --> 00:30:06.920
found the evidence, you had the apprehension. But you know,
402
00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:11.480
there's there's an inquiry now as to whether the Toronto
403
00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:15.519
police should have treated this in a different way. So
404
00:30:15.559 --> 00:30:18.880
there is a reluctance, as I say, to declare something
405
00:30:18.920 --> 00:30:23.039
as a serial murder case unless they have just absolute
406
00:30:23.559 --> 00:30:26.279
evidence like you know, DNA for example.
407
00:30:28.279 --> 00:30:31.599
Right, let's use this, Peter as an opportunity to stop
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fabfitfund dot com. Now, Peter, we were talking about the
441
00:32:48.079 --> 00:32:52.559
police and their difficulty even wrapping their minds around the
442
00:32:52.599 --> 00:32:56.839
phenomena of serial killing until it until they had a
443
00:32:56.880 --> 00:33:01.400
confession or they had some overwhelming as that put this together,
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00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:04.680
and we didn't talk and you do talk about we
445
00:33:04.720 --> 00:33:07.720
didn't mention, but you do talk about the FBI when
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00:33:07.759 --> 00:33:11.920
they finally became a clearinghouse for a serial murder, when
447
00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:15.279
they first became involved in any serial murder, and also
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00:33:15.400 --> 00:33:20.319
the rise of profiling and the mind hunters.
449
00:33:21.440 --> 00:33:25.480
Yes, well, indeed, a homicide is not really in the
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00:33:25.599 --> 00:33:32.400
jurisdiction of the FBI. You know there. Of course, the
451
00:33:32.599 --> 00:33:40.480
FBI investigates primarily federal crimes. They will investigate when a
452
00:33:40.599 --> 00:33:46.240
victim might be taken across state lines or if a murder,
453
00:33:46.319 --> 00:33:49.559
you know, occurs a number of murders across state lines.
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But you know, we see kind of the image popular
455
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image of the FBI rushing to these serial murder cases,
456
00:33:58.359 --> 00:34:02.359
but that is not the case. If they make an appearance,
457
00:34:02.400 --> 00:34:08.880
it's often they're invited in. So the Behavioral Sciences Unit
458
00:34:09.239 --> 00:34:14.719
in the nineteen sixties was primarily formed to deal with
459
00:34:15.840 --> 00:34:21.280
hostage takers and the psychology applied to talking down a
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00:34:21.599 --> 00:34:28.320
hostage taker or a hijacker. And at that period, this
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00:34:28.519 --> 00:34:32.679
was shortly after Hoover had passed away. Jan Gar Hoover.
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00:34:34.119 --> 00:34:39.400
The Behavioral Sciences Unit a FBI agents. They also were
463
00:34:40.440 --> 00:34:47.440
teaching in quantical the academy. There they would give various
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00:34:47.480 --> 00:34:54.400
courses on criminal psychology for visiting police detectives who were
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you know, upgrading their qualifications, and they were encouraged to
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00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:02.960
look on a camp on a civilian university to carry
467
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:08.320
out their own research and and and so a number
468
00:35:08.400 --> 00:35:14.679
of these behaviorists began to notice that there's this increase
469
00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:19.239
of serial homicides. They didn't quite know as a you know,
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what to call it. That all different names for it.
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Robert Ressler eventually, and I think most historians have kind
472
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of settled on the Robert Ressler version of how that
473
00:35:34.760 --> 00:35:37.519
term was coined. Robert Wrestler said it came to him
474
00:35:38.119 --> 00:35:41.480
when he was lecturing in in in England, in fact,
475
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at the police Academy there. He used the term serial
476
00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:55.000
and it was inspired by Saturday Afternoon serials cliffhangers, and
477
00:35:55.239 --> 00:36:00.079
he described serialal murder as kind of that kind of
478
00:36:00.239 --> 00:36:05.199
cliffhanger where the perpetrator commits the murder but it's left
479
00:36:05.280 --> 00:36:09.719
unsatisfied by it, kind of a cliffhanger if he wants
480
00:36:09.760 --> 00:36:14.159
to see the next episode or commit the next episode.
481
00:36:14.440 --> 00:36:17.840
And so A Wrestler says that in the mid seventies
482
00:36:17.880 --> 00:36:23.440
that inspired that that term serial killer. But these guys
483
00:36:23.480 --> 00:36:29.880
began to in the way that they were interviewing hostage
484
00:36:29.920 --> 00:36:34.239
takers and you know, why did they surrender and things
485
00:36:34.280 --> 00:36:38.559
like that, they began privately interviewing serial killers as well,
486
00:36:38.599 --> 00:36:46.480
and mass killers and assassination assassins, attempted assassins as well.
487
00:36:47.159 --> 00:36:53.320
And so wrestler John Douglas that late generation began this
488
00:36:53.480 --> 00:36:59.800
intensive series. They got a brand to make this official.
489
00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:04.639
Man began interviewing serial killers. I think they interviewed something
490
00:37:04.719 --> 00:37:11.400
like thirty two serial sexual murders and maybe another four
491
00:37:11.519 --> 00:37:16.920
or five sexual murderers who weren't serial killers. They engage
492
00:37:17.519 --> 00:37:22.039
a forensic nurse and Burgess to give them kind of
493
00:37:22.079 --> 00:37:29.760
an academic discipline approach to this research project. And so
494
00:37:29.840 --> 00:37:33.639
they started in the late seventies and nineteen eighty six
495
00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:39.039
they published their results. It's kind of this monumental book
496
00:37:39.159 --> 00:37:47.079
still is Sexual serial Murder Patterns and Motives is the title.
497
00:37:47.199 --> 00:37:51.880
This becomes kind of almost a handbook for profilers. They
498
00:37:52.079 --> 00:37:58.639
categorized serial killers is either organized or disorganized or mixed
499
00:37:58.679 --> 00:38:03.519
category serial killers. I should say, by the way, FBI
500
00:38:03.639 --> 00:38:07.360
profiles today don't use that model. That's just the movies.
501
00:38:08.760 --> 00:38:10.920
You know, nobody comes to a scene and says, you know,
502
00:38:11.039 --> 00:38:14.320
this is an organized or disorganized you know, that's that's
503
00:38:14.400 --> 00:38:17.960
not the model that's that's used. But at that time
504
00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:21.400
it was the first attempt to first of all name
505
00:38:21.760 --> 00:38:27.559
the phenomenon, and so serial killer, you know, becomes that
506
00:38:27.559 --> 00:38:34.239
that term, you know, and rules book on Ted Bundy,
507
00:38:34.280 --> 00:38:37.440
which I think is kind of the seminal true crime
508
00:38:37.599 --> 00:38:41.599
book that introduces us to the notion of a serial killer.
509
00:38:42.639 --> 00:38:45.440
When that book was published at first time in nineteen eighty,
510
00:38:45.480 --> 00:38:48.920
the term serial killer never appears in it. Imagine a
511
00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:51.840
book on Ted Bundy without the word serial killer in it.
512
00:38:53.280 --> 00:38:59.360
So they now create this kind of diagnosis and what's
513
00:38:59.400 --> 00:39:04.840
expected the organized, disorganized serial killer, and and and and
514
00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:11.079
so that's how the behavioral sciences unit comes into this.
515
00:39:11.119 --> 00:39:15.480
This position is kind of a clearing house on serial murder.
516
00:39:15.559 --> 00:39:19.519
And and of course you as well. At that point
517
00:39:19.679 --> 00:39:26.880
in time, politicians began to dig into this and and
518
00:39:26.880 --> 00:39:30.199
and so there is this kind of call, especially after
519
00:39:30.280 --> 00:39:34.639
Ted Bundy, a call for kind of a centralized database
520
00:39:34.719 --> 00:39:41.320
system where unsolved homicides data on them can be entered
521
00:39:41.360 --> 00:39:47.159
into this database, various characteristics perhaps being able to make
522
00:39:47.480 --> 00:39:53.679
a match to other serial killers. And so you get
523
00:39:53.719 --> 00:40:00.599
the birth of VISCAP. This this database which acts is
524
00:40:00.639 --> 00:40:06.440
not a gain used as often as it's you know,
525
00:40:06.559 --> 00:40:11.400
purported to be in popular literature or or or the movies.
526
00:40:12.280 --> 00:40:19.039
And and so there's very few, if any serial killers
527
00:40:19.079 --> 00:40:23.679
that have been apprehended solely by the virtue of profiling,
528
00:40:24.280 --> 00:40:28.079
you know, profiling is a good tool. It helps. It
529
00:40:28.159 --> 00:40:32.840
particularly helps once you have a suspect in mind, you know,
530
00:40:32.920 --> 00:40:36.599
does he come near the profile. It helps as well
531
00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:42.239
in interviewing the suspect. There you know, there's a psychological
532
00:40:42.280 --> 00:40:47.199
approach that a certain type of serial killer might be
533
00:40:47.280 --> 00:40:51.960
more vulnerable too. So you know, that behavioral issue is
534
00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:58.119
important to policing. But it's not the magic bullet that
535
00:40:58.239 --> 00:41:03.039
we see portrayed in Hollywood or on television. But definitely
536
00:41:03.159 --> 00:41:08.039
these congressional hearings that's where the term serial killer epidemic
537
00:41:08.119 --> 00:41:13.280
is actually used. In these congressional hearings, in particular the
538
00:41:13.360 --> 00:41:18.679
question of missing children. And there were these allegations and
539
00:41:18.719 --> 00:41:23.440
of course John Welsh from America's Most Wanted he you know,
540
00:41:23.519 --> 00:41:27.880
his son was a murder victim, possibly victim of a
541
00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:36.239
serial killer. And so Walsh had testified before the congressional hearings.
542
00:41:36.719 --> 00:41:41.599
But and Rule did too, and they made some outlandish
543
00:41:41.679 --> 00:41:45.079
claims as to how many serial killers were out there
544
00:41:45.199 --> 00:41:50.400
and how many children were being abducted by serial killers.
545
00:41:51.559 --> 00:41:57.000
That helped, certainly, those dramatic numbers helped the FBI get funding.
546
00:41:57.320 --> 00:42:01.199
But as Robert Wrestler himself later wrote, you said, you know,
547
00:42:03.079 --> 00:42:07.199
we needed the money. We just you know, exaggerated the
548
00:42:07.320 --> 00:42:11.679
extent of the epidemic, and it turned out that most
549
00:42:11.800 --> 00:42:15.639
child abductions in fact are you know, by by family
550
00:42:15.719 --> 00:42:19.440
members or people who are known to the children rather
551
00:42:19.519 --> 00:42:24.599
than strangers the way it was you know, implied during
552
00:42:25.440 --> 00:42:30.320
those fearings. But it brought funding for VISCAP. It you know,
553
00:42:30.760 --> 00:42:36.159
it's still running, it's still going, it's gone through several generations.
554
00:42:36.239 --> 00:42:40.039
And you know the problem with vi CAP, of course,
555
00:42:40.199 --> 00:42:46.599
is firstly, you know, it required the completion of very
556
00:42:46.639 --> 00:42:50.840
complicated and long form. There's like over a hundred questions
557
00:42:50.880 --> 00:42:55.119
and paperwork and cops don't mix very well, right, so
558
00:42:55.880 --> 00:43:00.079
very few police officers were ready to you know, fill
559
00:43:00.119 --> 00:43:04.880
out this long form then mail it all right and
560
00:43:04.880 --> 00:43:09.000
and and get nothing out of it. Eventually, once you
561
00:43:09.360 --> 00:43:14.199
everybody had you know, desktop computers, you could now fill
562
00:43:14.239 --> 00:43:16.760
out this form on a piece of software. You can
563
00:43:16.960 --> 00:43:19.400
you know, you rather than filling it out by hand
564
00:43:19.440 --> 00:43:22.280
on a typewriter or a typewriter, you can now do
565
00:43:22.360 --> 00:43:27.679
it on this piece of software and then facts the form.
566
00:43:27.719 --> 00:43:31.960
The third kind of prereation was you can just now
567
00:43:32.159 --> 00:43:36.760
just go online and complete the form. But until the
568
00:43:36.800 --> 00:43:44.280
early two thousands, police departments could not query ViCAP. You
569
00:43:44.280 --> 00:43:47.599
had to submit the form and then wait for ViCAP
570
00:43:47.719 --> 00:43:51.639
to do the analysis and then sing you the you know,
571
00:43:51.719 --> 00:43:56.599
their results it. You know, individual police departments did not
572
00:43:56.760 --> 00:44:02.800
have access to the ViCAP database. And that changed, you
573
00:44:02.840 --> 00:44:06.639
know in let's say around two thousand and five, somewhere
574
00:44:06.639 --> 00:44:11.960
in there. Police departments now are can tap into the
575
00:44:12.400 --> 00:44:17.599
master database themselves rather than waiting for FBI analysts to
576
00:44:17.679 --> 00:44:22.599
do that. But those things kind of hindered the use
577
00:44:22.639 --> 00:44:26.079
of vi CAAP and so by the two thousands, a
578
00:44:26.079 --> 00:44:29.840
lot of new police officers who came on you know,
579
00:44:32.880 --> 00:44:36.000
enlisted in the in the police, weren't even aware of
580
00:44:36.199 --> 00:44:39.760
v CAP. You know, the FBI kind of stopped sending
581
00:44:39.800 --> 00:44:46.840
bulletins on it. They stopped sending FBI asians to kind
582
00:44:46.840 --> 00:44:51.320
of brief police departments on what's available. And so it's
583
00:44:51.320 --> 00:44:54.119
in the two thousand, around two thousand and five that
584
00:44:54.360 --> 00:44:59.119
the FBI kind of again restarted the bulletins on the
585
00:44:59.239 --> 00:45:03.280
VISCAP and and began informing officers and or hey, you know,
586
00:45:03.480 --> 00:45:06.320
there is this tool that's available to you, and and
587
00:45:06.360 --> 00:45:08.800
so forth. So it had its ups and downs, as
588
00:45:09.559 --> 00:45:15.199
you know, the whole profiling, and it is an art essentially.
589
00:45:15.199 --> 00:45:19.199
It's not exactly a science. It's kind of an art.
590
00:45:19.239 --> 00:45:23.000
I guess the way you know, psychiatry is kind of
591
00:45:23.079 --> 00:45:27.440
a little bit of intuitive understanding of your patient and
592
00:45:27.480 --> 00:45:31.079
their psychology, and you know some degree of sciences on
593
00:45:31.159 --> 00:45:35.920
mental illness and so forth. The same thing applies to profiling.
594
00:45:35.960 --> 00:45:37.239
It's a bit of an art, it's a bit of
595
00:45:37.280 --> 00:45:42.920
a science, and it's only as good as the profiler themselves.
596
00:45:43.000 --> 00:45:49.760
And some people are better, more adapt at profiling, while
597
00:45:50.320 --> 00:45:52.559
others are not so. Certainly, it's a talent.
598
00:45:54.800 --> 00:45:57.199
Let's use as an opportunity to stop for just a
599
00:45:57.239 --> 00:45:58.400
second for these messages.
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611
00:46:32.159 --> 00:46:36.800
Now, you talked about the psychology of profiling and its development,
612
00:46:37.559 --> 00:46:41.000
but in this book you also do the background on
613
00:46:41.039 --> 00:46:44.360
a lot of these infamous serial killers, and there seems
614
00:46:44.360 --> 00:46:49.320
to be a common characteristic in regarding head injuries. So
615
00:46:49.639 --> 00:46:52.920
let's talk about the prevalence of the head injury and
616
00:46:53.000 --> 00:46:57.239
what that would mean in terms of motivation for these
617
00:46:57.280 --> 00:47:01.880
types of crimes. Let's talk about that before we talk
618
00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:08.079
about your theory about this throwback to primordial time.
619
00:47:10.320 --> 00:47:14.320
Head injuries. Certainly, we've always known that there's kind of
620
00:47:14.320 --> 00:47:24.599
a behavioral aspect to some head injuries, particularly frontal lobe injuries.
621
00:47:24.639 --> 00:47:28.079
We've known that since the nineteenth century. We just didn't
622
00:47:28.199 --> 00:47:35.199
have ways of measuring it or illustrating or documenting the
623
00:47:35.360 --> 00:47:38.440
actual effect of a head injury on the brain, which
624
00:47:38.840 --> 00:47:43.719
in the last twenty thirty years we've now developed we
625
00:47:43.920 --> 00:47:50.280
can deep scan brains. Doctor Keel in New Mexico is
626
00:47:50.360 --> 00:47:59.119
kind of the leading current forensic psychiatrist who has looked
627
00:47:59.159 --> 00:48:06.400
at tens of thousands of brain scans of incarcerated inmates
628
00:48:06.400 --> 00:48:13.280
who tested positive for psychopathy, and he can now he
629
00:48:13.320 --> 00:48:18.079
can actually look at a brain scan and say this
630
00:48:18.199 --> 00:48:24.119
individual will test positive on the hair psychopathy test. There's
631
00:48:24.159 --> 00:48:30.559
a test we use forty questions that are not filled
632
00:48:30.559 --> 00:48:33.159
out by the subject but actually are filled out by
633
00:48:33.159 --> 00:48:38.519
the analyst kind of behavioral issues and historical issues around
634
00:48:38.559 --> 00:48:43.199
a particular subject, and you score them on this forty
635
00:48:43.239 --> 00:48:47.639
point mark, and anybody who scores twenty five or upwards
636
00:48:47.880 --> 00:48:51.519
would be technically diagnosed as a psychopath. This is a
637
00:48:51.519 --> 00:48:56.280
test that's used by parole boards, by sentencing boards and
638
00:48:56.679 --> 00:49:00.559
so forth. It's a Canadian doctor hare that came up.
639
00:49:00.559 --> 00:49:04.480
A hair h A. R. E came up with this test,
640
00:49:04.519 --> 00:49:11.880
and so Keil discovered that there are certain physical brain
641
00:49:11.960 --> 00:49:17.039
abnormalities similar to those that we began to recently see
642
00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:21.679
in NFL players who have as well frontal lobe injuries,
643
00:49:23.320 --> 00:49:28.159
and so kill suggests that a lot of serial killers
644
00:49:28.559 --> 00:49:35.199
are actually not psychopaths or organic psychopaths, but have induced
645
00:49:35.280 --> 00:49:40.599
psychopathy from head injuries. And we have all these anecdotal
646
00:49:40.719 --> 00:49:46.239
stories from serial killers of brain injuries, you know, from
647
00:49:46.360 --> 00:49:52.079
Richard Ramirez to William Herron's to a lot of serial killers.
648
00:49:52.119 --> 00:49:55.320
There's a record of brain injuries, particularly in frontal lob
649
00:49:55.400 --> 00:50:01.079
injuries in their childhood history. But now over the recent decade,
650
00:50:01.199 --> 00:50:05.840
we could actually physically begin to make links between frontal
651
00:50:06.039 --> 00:50:13.519
lobat normalities and a psychopathy and of course criminal behavior,
652
00:50:13.679 --> 00:50:19.039
including serial homicide. So certainly, in the case of as
653
00:50:19.079 --> 00:50:24.039
I like to describe my serial killer, Richard Conningham, one
654
00:50:24.039 --> 00:50:27.880
of the things that interested me about him was his
655
00:50:28.199 --> 00:50:34.760
very stable childhood. I mean, here's an individual who both
656
00:50:34.800 --> 00:50:39.920
his parents were remained married. He came from a middle
657
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.440
class family. He you know, was a boy scout, a
658
00:50:44.559 --> 00:50:51.039
choir girl. He had three younger sisters who absolutely adored
659
00:50:51.119 --> 00:50:54.480
him right to the end. Couldn't believe that he was
660
00:50:54.519 --> 00:50:59.800
a serial killer, and I couldn't figure out, you know,
661
00:51:00.239 --> 00:51:03.920
the trauma was. And he certainly claimed to me that
662
00:51:04.039 --> 00:51:08.079
he had a completely normal childhood, there's nothing wrong in it,
663
00:51:08.159 --> 00:51:13.920
And indeed I couldn't find anything. But doing a search
664
00:51:13.960 --> 00:51:21.199
of newspapers, remarkably, I discovered that there's actually a brain
665
00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:26.920
injury in his history when he's four years old. It's
666
00:51:26.960 --> 00:51:30.840
so severe that it's reported in the newspapers he's hit
667
00:51:31.360 --> 00:51:34.320
by a car. He run his head first into a
668
00:51:34.440 --> 00:51:37.239
car as a four year old kid, and has taken
669
00:51:37.599 --> 00:51:43.239
serious enough that he's hospitalized, and and and so you know,
670
00:51:43.480 --> 00:51:47.440
even in you know, the one case that one serial
671
00:51:47.519 --> 00:51:50.840
killer with with with whom I am having you know,
672
00:51:50.960 --> 00:51:56.440
conversations with and interviewing and dealing with, this head injury
673
00:51:57.079 --> 00:52:02.400
scenario raises its its head. Whether if as a result
674
00:52:02.440 --> 00:52:07.280
of injury or whether there is other causes or that
675
00:52:07.360 --> 00:52:09.800
kind of brain pattern is left to be seen. But
676
00:52:10.199 --> 00:52:14.360
right now, that is the X you know. The current explanation,
677
00:52:14.719 --> 00:52:17.519
because we've got a problem with the trauma model, is that,
678
00:52:18.199 --> 00:52:26.519
you know, thousands millions of children grow up traumatized, subject
679
00:52:26.559 --> 00:52:29.719
to abuse, all sorts of horrible things happen to them,
680
00:52:30.159 --> 00:52:34.039
yet they don't necessarily become serial killers. So what is it?
681
00:52:34.280 --> 00:52:38.840
What is that X factor? And that remains. The more
682
00:52:38.920 --> 00:52:42.000
we study serial killers, the less we appear to know.
683
00:52:42.159 --> 00:52:45.800
We still don't know that X factor. And I write
684
00:52:46.760 --> 00:52:48.800
one of my books, I say, I think it's too
685
00:52:48.840 --> 00:52:53.559
early for us to just rule out old fashioned, the
686
00:52:53.599 --> 00:52:58.239
biblical evil, whatever that might be. You know, maybe one
687
00:52:58.320 --> 00:53:02.800
day we'll have a scientific firm ford an explanation. But
688
00:53:03.440 --> 00:53:07.119
we still haven't figured out why so many traumatized children
689
00:53:07.639 --> 00:53:13.559
end up not being serial killers and the few the do.
690
00:53:15.920 --> 00:53:19.280
In this book you cover and of course we haven't
691
00:53:19.320 --> 00:53:21.880
even touched on the examples that you provide in the
692
00:53:21.920 --> 00:53:26.960
book of infamous serial killers like Dean Coral, Calvin Jackson,
693
00:53:27.760 --> 00:53:30.880
fairly unknown, you call it the House of Horrors killer
694
00:53:31.440 --> 00:53:34.360
not so well known at all, David Berkowitz, Rodney Olkila,
695
00:53:35.119 --> 00:53:38.960
infamous ones, Herbert Mullen, the Die Song Killer, Edmund Kemper,
696
00:53:39.400 --> 00:53:46.239
Arthur shawcrast of Shawcross, we have John Juan, Corel Corona.
697
00:53:46.719 --> 00:53:51.119
So you also provide some of these famous and not
698
00:53:51.239 --> 00:53:55.719
so famous cases and delve into them to show not
699
00:53:55.840 --> 00:54:00.119
only the influence of pornography and also the shift in
700
00:54:00.199 --> 00:54:04.079
society and culture and how that influenced their crimes and
701
00:54:04.119 --> 00:54:08.960
their behavior, but also dramatic examples like Jeffrey Dahmer. We
702
00:54:09.039 --> 00:54:12.599
don't have much time left in this interview, but can
703
00:54:12.639 --> 00:54:15.199
you tell us a little bit about Jeffrey Dahmer some
704
00:54:15.280 --> 00:54:19.079
of the things that you've pointed to and discovered in
705
00:54:19.239 --> 00:54:22.599
his story that demonstrate some of the things that you
706
00:54:22.800 --> 00:54:27.840
have expressed, and not only your theory about serial killer surge,
707
00:54:27.960 --> 00:54:31.760
but also just your study of serial killers in general.
708
00:54:32.480 --> 00:54:36.599
Well, certainly, I mean Jeffrey Dahmer is on that extreme
709
00:54:36.760 --> 00:54:42.039
end because he's getting into a very primitive thing, cannibalism,
710
00:54:43.360 --> 00:54:48.840
and you know, Jeffrey Dahmer, there's two kinds of cannibalism.
711
00:54:49.000 --> 00:54:52.559
There's you know, nutritional cannibalism you've got to eat and
712
00:54:52.599 --> 00:54:57.440
there's nothing else but your fellow human being. And then
713
00:54:57.480 --> 00:55:04.639
you have kind of ritual papalag cannibalism, where this cannibalism
714
00:55:04.760 --> 00:55:10.519
kind of is inspired by primitive urge, but it's not
715
00:55:10.639 --> 00:55:15.320
for nutritional purposes. It's it fulfills some other need. And
716
00:55:15.360 --> 00:55:18.480
in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, I mean, this was
717
00:55:18.519 --> 00:55:26.320
an individual who struggled not to kill. He was killing
718
00:55:26.519 --> 00:55:31.800
essentially to keep the objects of his love close to him.
719
00:55:32.599 --> 00:55:36.119
He didn't like to be left, and and and and
720
00:55:36.199 --> 00:55:40.320
so you know, at first he attempts he keeps a
721
00:55:40.480 --> 00:55:45.320
mannequin with him and and you know, he uses this
722
00:55:45.440 --> 00:55:48.800
mannequin kind of as a sex doll, but his grandmother
723
00:55:48.880 --> 00:55:51.440
finds it and forces him to get rid of it.
724
00:55:51.800 --> 00:55:55.480
But he's struggling not to be killing people. And it's
725
00:55:55.519 --> 00:55:58.679
not about killing for him, it's about having these people.
726
00:55:58.760 --> 00:56:01.639
In fact, he had one way he attempts not to
727
00:56:01.760 --> 00:56:06.000
kill his victims as he attempts to inject battery acid
728
00:56:06.119 --> 00:56:08.559
into the brain of one of his victims in the
729
00:56:08.599 --> 00:56:12.679
hope that he can just zombify them and keep them
730
00:56:12.840 --> 00:56:16.800
in this zombie state without taking their life. And of
731
00:56:16.800 --> 00:56:20.639
course it doesn't work, and so eventually he begins to
732
00:56:20.760 --> 00:56:25.360
resort to cannibalism to keep these people with him. It's
733
00:56:25.400 --> 00:56:31.920
the ultimate taking of a person. So he is collecting
734
00:56:32.000 --> 00:56:36.679
these corpses that become his love dolls. The killing for
735
00:56:36.840 --> 00:56:40.480
him is not part of his obsession. It's doesn't give
736
00:56:40.559 --> 00:56:43.880
him any pleasure at all. It's a chore. It's just
737
00:56:44.159 --> 00:56:49.480
keeping these people. And because cannibalism is a very primitive urge,
738
00:56:50.519 --> 00:56:55.440
as is fighting, as is the sexual reproductive impose. And
739
00:56:56.760 --> 00:57:01.159
if you take these urges and strip away, you know,
740
00:57:01.320 --> 00:57:05.559
cities and civilization, and you just throw human beings into
741
00:57:05.599 --> 00:57:09.119
the jungle or into the cave without any of these
742
00:57:10.719 --> 00:57:15.880
kind of structures of civilization, you know, we are left
743
00:57:15.880 --> 00:57:19.159
in an animal state. And what do animals do other
744
00:57:19.280 --> 00:57:24.239
than you know, half sex, eat, and fight, and run away.
745
00:57:24.679 --> 00:57:28.440
You know, I called it the four apps. Fleeing, fighting, feeding,
746
00:57:28.480 --> 00:57:33.599
and fucking. These are essential to the survival and evolution
747
00:57:33.719 --> 00:57:39.280
of any species. And you know, it's we've essentially only
748
00:57:39.360 --> 00:57:45.400
been civilized out of you know, anthropologists kind of have
749
00:57:45.480 --> 00:57:48.800
a very wide swap about how long are species of
750
00:57:48.920 --> 00:57:52.320
human beings Homo sapiens have been around. You know, some
751
00:57:52.400 --> 00:57:57.239
say it's around one hundred, one hundred thousand years, others saying,
752
00:57:57.360 --> 00:58:00.519
you know, as long as a million years. But we
753
00:58:00.639 --> 00:58:06.039
know one thing that we've only become civilized in approximately
754
00:58:06.400 --> 00:58:09.639
the last twelve thousand years. It's a drop in the bucket.
755
00:58:10.119 --> 00:58:13.280
Prior to that, we were living out there like cats
756
00:58:13.320 --> 00:58:17.239
and dogs and every other kind of animal species, including cockroaches,
757
00:58:17.320 --> 00:58:24.639
and we were all in order to survive, capable of fleeting, fighting, feeding,
758
00:58:24.840 --> 00:58:29.519
and you know, fornicating. Otherwise, if any one of those
759
00:58:29.559 --> 00:58:33.639
functions ceased, we wouldn't go around today. Our species would
760
00:58:33.639 --> 00:58:38.519
be gone. And so I don't think twelve thousand years
761
00:58:38.719 --> 00:58:44.840
is enough long enough for us to have been you know,
762
00:58:44.960 --> 00:58:50.159
kind of the mother nature taking that out of our
763
00:58:52.199 --> 00:58:57.920
human character, our instinct. We still have that instinct. I
764
00:58:58.000 --> 00:59:03.199
certainly remember as a child, fellow children being extremely violent.
765
00:59:04.519 --> 00:59:08.480
You know, there was a lot of biting and scratching
766
00:59:08.800 --> 00:59:17.400
and aggression, you know, among my playmates certainly, And so
767
00:59:17.960 --> 00:59:22.960
I think we're all born with these impulses and instincts,
768
00:59:23.159 --> 00:59:30.480
and it's socialization but essentially weeds that instinct out of us. It,
769
00:59:31.880 --> 00:59:39.360
you know, the rules, morality, religion, law, society begins to
770
00:59:39.639 --> 00:59:44.960
instill in us inhibitions. We're almost domesticated, so to speak.
771
00:59:45.920 --> 00:59:49.719
And and so my argument is is probably we're all
772
00:59:49.760 --> 00:59:57.400
born in the infantile stage as these bundles of potentially raping, killing,
773
00:59:57.480 --> 01:00:02.800
cannibalistic existences that we have to get unmade from. And
774
01:00:03.199 --> 01:00:07.320
so what serial killers are essentially is a failure in
775
01:00:07.400 --> 01:00:11.840
the unmaking of our primitive state. That's basically my argument.
776
01:00:11.920 --> 01:00:16.679
And sons of sons of Cain. But serial killers are
777
01:00:16.719 --> 01:00:20.320
not made, they're actually, you know, where the rest of
778
01:00:20.400 --> 01:00:22.079
us are unmade from being there.
779
01:00:24.480 --> 01:00:28.400
You talk about all of the reasons and we've talked
780
01:00:28.440 --> 01:00:31.559
about some of those for this surge of serial killing
781
01:00:31.679 --> 01:00:34.599
between the seventies and the nineties, And you provide the
782
01:00:34.639 --> 01:00:39.920
reasons and the precursors and and the the rise up
783
01:00:40.320 --> 01:00:44.599
before the fifties to the two thousand and some of
784
01:00:44.639 --> 01:00:50.960
the infamous perpetrators. With giving the reasons for and the
785
01:00:51.559 --> 01:00:55.039
and the genesis of those serial killers from the seventies
786
01:00:55.039 --> 01:01:01.280
and nineties, what do you predict for the future based
787
01:01:01.320 --> 01:01:02.199
on those same theories.
788
01:01:02.239 --> 01:01:09.960
Yeah, my hypothesis is correct, it's not going to be
789
01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:14.760
a bright future because we have similar equivalents recently to
790
01:01:15.599 --> 01:01:18.639
the things that I associate with this surge.
791
01:01:18.840 --> 01:01:19.760
We have in two.
792
01:01:19.559 --> 01:01:26.000
Thousand and eight, we have an economic catastrophe very much
793
01:01:26.159 --> 01:01:31.320
as deep and as injurious as the Great Depression was.
794
01:01:32.760 --> 01:01:36.360
A lot of families were destroyed by that two thousand
795
01:01:36.360 --> 01:01:41.760
and eight crash, a lot of children lost their homes,
796
01:01:42.480 --> 01:01:48.199
ended up and you know, being raised in motels. We have,
797
01:01:48.360 --> 01:01:54.559
as well, a war that is a war on terror,
798
01:01:54.599 --> 01:01:58.400
and there therefore is kind of as clandestine in a
799
01:01:58.440 --> 01:02:02.280
way as the the Second World War was. And during
800
01:02:02.280 --> 01:02:04.320
the Second World War there was a kind of a
801
01:02:04.440 --> 01:02:08.599
cultural thing that soldiers, you know, we're not encouraged to
802
01:02:08.719 --> 01:02:11.599
talk about when they bought home, about what they you know,
803
01:02:11.760 --> 01:02:14.079
really happened. And of course the war on Terror is
804
01:02:14.079 --> 01:02:18.280
a clandestrian war also drops this kind of cone of
805
01:02:18.440 --> 01:02:22.800
silence on the soldiers that fighted it. Often they come
806
01:02:22.880 --> 01:02:25.920
home and by virtue of the nature of that war,
807
01:02:26.000 --> 01:02:30.559
they can't talk about it. Moreover, it's not just the
808
01:02:30.599 --> 01:02:35.400
fathers are coming home, but now it's the mothers as well,
809
01:02:35.440 --> 01:02:41.800
who sometimes go into combat and experience this this war.
810
01:02:41.960 --> 01:02:46.440
So there you have right away the double combination that
811
01:02:47.079 --> 01:02:52.079
I link the you know, sixties seventies, the growing baby
812
01:02:52.079 --> 01:02:56.719
boomer generation serial fillers too. You have similar kind of scenario,
813
01:02:57.880 --> 01:03:03.400
but it even gets worse. Only have the trauma of COVID.
814
01:03:04.440 --> 01:03:09.159
This is you know, we don't know yet what kind
815
01:03:09.159 --> 01:03:13.000
of psychological impact it's going to have on the young
816
01:03:13.639 --> 01:03:19.480
and the children. So we'll know in about fifteen years,
817
01:03:19.599 --> 01:03:24.639
twenty years whether my hypothesis is I hope I'm wrong,
818
01:03:25.199 --> 01:03:29.079
you know, because if I'm not, then you know that
819
01:03:29.280 --> 01:03:32.840
serial killer surge we saw between the seventies and nineteen
820
01:03:32.920 --> 01:03:34.519
nineties is going to look like a day at the
821
01:03:34.559 --> 01:03:37.079
beach compared to what's coming at us.
822
01:03:37.599 --> 01:03:40.599
Oh absolutely, I don't know. Thank you very much Peter
823
01:03:40.679 --> 01:03:43.400
Vronsky for coming on and talking about your incredible new book,
824
01:03:43.400 --> 01:03:47.360
American serial Killers The Epidemic Years nineteen fifty to two thousand.
825
01:03:47.920 --> 01:03:49.760
I know that the book is released today, so thank
826
01:03:49.800 --> 01:03:52.079
you so much for coming on for this interview. Is
827
01:03:52.079 --> 01:03:55.159
there a website Amazon page that people might refer to
828
01:03:55.519 --> 01:03:56.679
and find out more information?
829
01:03:58.639 --> 01:04:02.840
Well, I have a website Ronsky dot org and Peter
830
01:04:03.000 --> 01:04:06.360
Ronsky dot com. They it links to my books and
831
01:04:06.400 --> 01:04:09.480
my work and my bio and so forth, and otherwise.
832
01:04:09.519 --> 01:04:15.079
The book is available anywhere you would buy books on Amazon, iBooks,
833
01:04:16.119 --> 01:04:19.039
you know, bookstores will carry it. It's it's out in
834
01:04:19.119 --> 01:04:22.760
the hardcover. It's my first hardcover book, as supposed to
835
01:04:22.920 --> 01:04:25.800
kind of a trade soft cover edition, so it is
836
01:04:25.840 --> 01:04:29.039
out in the hardcover, and it's out as well in
837
01:04:29.199 --> 01:04:34.280
ebook form on Kindle and so forth. So it's it's
838
01:04:34.320 --> 01:04:36.440
available every word. Books are so.
839
01:04:38.199 --> 01:04:41.159
Well. Thank you so much. Peter Vronsky American Serial Killers
840
01:04:41.159 --> 01:04:43.840
the Epidemic Years nineteen fifty to two thousand, Thank you
841
01:04:43.880 --> 01:04:46.119
so much for this interview. You have a great evening.
842
01:04:47.360 --> 01:04:49.480
Good night, thanks Dan, and thanks for having me on.
843
01:04:50.559 --> 01:04:53.400
Good night great Dan.
844
01:04:53.519 --> 01:04:54.880
Thanks