Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer (2024) s01e01 Episode Script
To Listen to A Killer
1
My earliest memory is
my mother working
on that typewriter.
And its keys were,
like, super loud.
It was just a blur of
machine gun sound, like
Typing, typing,
typing, typing, typing.
- It was
- Just like
- No
- No.
You'd never know in the house
growing up what she did for work.
Good morning, Mrs. Burgess.
Nice to have you with us.
Dr. Ann Burgess.
Dr. Burgess, it was
my experience
Well, I guess I knew that my mother
did things that were different.
You know, we would have FBI
agents come over to the house.
I remember some magazines,
certainly the TV shows.
A professor of
psychiatric nursing.
The minute any type
of violence occurs.
For the offender, it
gives him a record.
Her books are in the house.
Book on sexual assault, child
molestation, a nursing book,
crime classification manual,
book on homicide.
Like, I knew all that.
But it really wasn't
until late high school
that I learned she was
working with serial murderers.
Severing the human
head, two of 'em
It's in a tourniquet,
so it cut off the air.
Stabbed her i-i-in the back.
This is the person
you grew up with
who brings dinner to the table,
and when you're crying
she wipes your tears.
I was, like, shocked to
know that she was involved
in trying to solve these crimes.
Oh, yes.
Police believe they may have a
serial killer on their hands.
No one knows what is
driving them to kill.
Murders of 13 girls
- Killed as many as 21
- Thirty-six women
We are a violent people
in a violent country.
Getting inside the mind of evil
to help them solve
serial killings.
The state's top law
enforcement officer
called a press conference tonight
in the ski mask rape case.
Fits the pattern of some 20 rape
cases in the past two years.
The rapist would sneak into a
house through an open window
or door to surprise his victim.
Police are advising women
to be very, very careful.
Well, I'm very, very scared.
I have all the windows locked.
The nine states where ski
mask rapes have occurred
may just be the
tip of the iceberg.
The FBI needs to
change their tactics
if agents want to catch
the Ski Mask Rapist.
There are approximately
four million girls
who will be going out
within the next few years
to make careers for themselves
in a busy and toughly
competitive world.
When I graduated
from high school,
there were three
options for women.
To be a teacher,
to be a secretary,
or to be a nurse.
I said, "Well, I can be a nurse 'cause
I can ask everybody how they feel.
That's what I'll learn."
I'm always interested
in how people feel.
But in academe, in
terms of nursing,
nobody else cared
about how they felt.
They said, "You should research
physical illness only."
That was the mindset
at that time.
"You're not gonna get
anywhere with this."
But if I wanted to do
something, I was going to do it.
I began to talk to the patients
with traumatic experiences.
It is very hard for
people to listen
to what has happened
to another human being.
It makes them feel helpless,
and they don't realize that listening
is a very powerful strategy to help.
In '78, I was a professor of
nursing at Boston College.
I also had four young children.
One day my, uh, research assistant is
looking very sheepish in the doorway
saying, "You've got a phone call."
I'm saying, "Take it, Anna."
And she says, "I think you'd
better. It's the, um, FBI."
You know, somethin' with
my taxes or something?
Why are they calling me?
You know, what did I do?
And he says he'd like
to invite me down
to talk about the
book that I wrote.
50% of the time,
women ask for it.
If I'm on top and you say,
"Alright, yeah, yeah."
Then a couple minutes later they say,
"Oh, stop, stop." I ain't gonna stop.
If a woman wants to get even with
her husband after an argument,
just yell rape.
They would blame the victim.
"Why weren't you taking
care of your kids?
What are you doing
out at night?"
I-I remember I was
being pushed on the bed,
and then he put a
sheet over my face.
At that time, I felt that my whole
frame of reference for the world
had sort of fallen apart.
When Lynda Holmstrom and I started
studying the problem of rape,
I was told, "Pick another topic.
Rape is not a problem."
And it was, but nobody was
paying attention to it.
I believe that every
woman has a story.
I certainly had some.
We lived in the nurse's dorm,
and I wanted to go to
my sorority meeting.
The college was
up this big hill.
I got up there and then they said, "Oh,
just stand over there by that road,
and lots of people go down,
you can just hitch a ride."
This car picked me up
and got me about halfway
down and he pulled off.
I knew I was in trouble.
I was really, really scared.
I hit the horn and I said, "I'll get
out, I'll walk the rest of the way."
Luckily, he took off.
When they would say,
"Rape is not a problem,"
I didn't believe that.
I thought, "We've got to get
people aware of this problem."
When the FBI called,
rape cases weren't
being looked at.
They were just being
put in the shelf.
The cases are going cold.
She was somebody who had
this set of knowledge
that nobody else had.
She had spoken to those victims,
and she could go and
teach the men of the FBI
everything that she had learned about
rape and trauma and sexual assault.
When you're looking for
who can you influence
to change a broken system,
the FBI was the top of the list.
So I felt I could
make a difference.
Being down at Quantico was
very much a culture shock.
The firing range opened at 6:00.
They loved their guns.
FBI agents were kinda like
these mythical cowboy figures,
sort of classic Americana.
And that was the image
Hoover wanted to cultivate,
was the FBI as superheroes.
The special agent must
be a good marksman
and have the courage
to shoot it out
with the most venomous
of public enemies.
If law enforcement in
general was this boys club,
the FBI was kind of the
cool kids of the boys club.
Ann thought, "Great, there's
these saviors of America"
"ready to learn from me
and to help do something
about this immense issue."
I'm Ann Burgess,
and I'd just like to again
personally welcome all of you.
You all have been selected for
your expertise in a wide area.
She looked out at this
audience of 40 FBI agents
who were all men,
and she started
talking about rape,
and there were some
snickers in the audience.
Her sort of whole view of these lofty,
high-minded G-men suddenly crashed.
And of course, the one question they
would always say to me, "Were you raped?"
Wow, what a question to
come from the audience.
You know, here's all these men.
There are few other female
agents teaching at that time.
There clearly was
discrimination.
No current connection
They would be very confrontational
in their questions.
Not about, "Well, how
did the victim feel?"
I mean, you would hope
that they would ask more,
"Tell me more about being a
victim in from your lecture."
All of my research is
in the area of victims
and the impact of
victimization on
They thought rape was just sex.
"Women secretly wanted it
or they were out there
and asked for it."
I hope that many of you will be
able to listen to what has
The problem with the
other side of the story
is they don't want to hear it.
You've gotta be very
kind of resourceful in
how you bring it in.
She used that first session
to really show sexual assault
as it actually occurs.
Once she was able to get the agents to
understand the severity of the issue,
they did start paying
a lot of attention,
and they did start
asking her questions
and they did see the value of being
able to intervene and to help victims.
Throughout those early days,
Roy Hazelwood, who had been the
one to initially invite her down,
he would introduce
her to other agents.
Sometimes they took an interest,
a lot of times they didn't 'cause she
wasn't there in any official capacity.
She wasn't even, you know,
fully consulting yet.
So, when Ann came
as this outsider,
the one group that would accept
her were the other outsiders.
The Behavioral Science Unit
was a small part of the
academic branch of the FBI.
The agents were all working on these
sort of not-by-the-book projects,
some of which were approved,
some of which were
not so approved.
It kinda didn't matter 'cause they
were in the basement of Quantico
where no one was really
paying them attention anyway.
I remember the first time going,
and you get on that elevator
that doesn't have any numbers,
and then you get down two
floors and there are no windows.
It's a bomb shelter, literally.
She started to learn more
about two agents in particular,
John Douglas and Rob Ressler.
Ressler was a steady
hand at the BSU.
He was calm, which was sort
of a juxtaposition to Douglas.
Douglas was the most polarizing
figure within the BSU.
Strong opinions and
a lot of confidence,
and there were certain people that
that definitely rubbed the wrong way.
I remember being at Quantico in
John Douglas' office and he's got
- a dress hanging in the corner.
- Yes.
Did he call it J. Edgar
Hoover's dress? Yeah, okay.
And then the power goes out.
He's like, "I got a
flashlight here somewhere."
- When he turns it on, it's under his chin.
- Of course.
Douglas, uh, you had to
get on his good side,
especially if you're
gonna work with Ressler.
And I wanted to
work with Ressler
'cause Ressler was interested in a
population that wasn't studied at all.
I was talking to victims,
and he was talking with the
other half, if you will.
I wanted to put the
two halves together.
The murder of people in series,
or serial murders,
has police departments
across this country worried.
Motiveless, random killings,
sometimes thousands
of miles apart.
Their victims are strangers.
Their motives unknown.
For Ressler, that was
always the big question.
"How many serial
killers are out there?"
A lot, that we knew of.
The unsolved Zodiac murders.
- The Hillside Strangler.
- Son of Sam.
In the '70s, we saw
this really steep rise
in the number of
serial killers active.
The scientists say
there is no way
to spot a mass
killer in advance.
Even when they're caught, serial
killers are seldom well understood.
Arresting and convicting
serial killers
is still, for the most
part, a matter of luck.
The mind of the serial predator
was not something that
was at all understood.
Seven killings in two weeks.
Well up into the 15, 16 victims.
Thirty-three victims that
we know of, and maybe more.
We don't understand it.
A conventional
investigation is lacking.
We're, we're missing
something here.
Why would somebody
choose to kill strangers
over and over and over again?
What makes him so different
from the rest of us?
Robert Ressler realizes
that he has to do something
to begin to better understand the men
who are committing serial killing.
Ressler said we need
to go in and speak
with criminals like the ones of
these cases we're trying to solve.
They operate by a
different sense of logic.
So there's really no
way to understand them
unless you talk to them.
If we don't start
looking at serial killers
and learning
something about them,
10, 15, 20 years from now,
we're gonna be right
back where we are today.
This guy is a person
to understand,
and to understand
is to stop this guy.
Ressler was the dr he
was the driving force,
and he wanted to
do the interviews.
Of course, that could be a problem
because they were serial killers.
And at that time, Ressler
was doing single interviews,
and he liked this Ed Kemper.
He was finished
the interview.
It was around three o'clock,
and he was getting really kind
of nervous looking at his watch
and Kemper turns
to him and said,
"You know, they the, uh,
guard isn't coming back.
They're on change of shift. He's
not gonna be here for 30 minutes."
He says, "In that
time, you know,
I could snap your head and
leave it on the table."
He said, "I'd own
the prison then.
I killed an FBI agent."
Luckily, the guard came
and as they're leaving,
Kemper turns to him and says,
"You know I was just
kidding, didn't you?"
So that changed policy quick.
He never went alone again.
And Douglas was the one that
was willing to go with Ressler.
It's important to understand
that when Ressler and Douglas
and-and others were going in and
interviewing these offenders,
they were doing so in a
kind of unstructured way,
conversing with them,
asking them general details,
taking whatever information
they were willing to share.
They would interview serial
killers face-to-face,
and then they would
just have a conversation
about, "What does this
mean? What does that mean?"
They had no idea what they had.
They didn't have the tools to
make some sense out of them.
The agents were really
interested in Dr. Burgess' work
because this rape
study that she had done
involved this unwieldy
data coming in
from just these people
telling their story.
She was able to quantify
that information,
do something
productive with that.
So, the agents were interested
in learning what her process was
and seeing if they could
apply it to their research
and so they just
shared it with Ann.
Something snapped in me.
- I picked up a rock.
- Mm-hmm.
And, um
big size, softball size,
- and I hit her
- Mm-hmm.
With the rock
upside of her head.
- It, it knocked her unconscious
- Mm-hmm.
And I left.
Once you kill
another human being,
you'll never be the
same person again.
The tapes that
they brought back,
the cases were so horrific.
We had Charles Manson.
Since I was 10 years old,
I used to lay down and have to get
my ass whipped till I couldn't walk.
Tell me about some pain.
Pain's not bad, it's good.
It teaches you things.
We had a number of Kemper
tapes that came in.
I lived as an ordinary
person most of my life.
Even though I was living a parallel
and increasingly sick life.
He was so articulate.
Ted Bundy was
equally articulate.
I-I can see how certain
feelings and ideas
developed in me to the point
where I began to act out on them.
Certain very violent and
very destructive feelings.
Montie Rissell, really
quite forthcoming.
He talked and he
talked and he talked.
It was like I was just spinning out
of control during the day, right?
But at night when
I could dominate,
it was just
exhilarating, I guess.
I listened closely until
each cassette stopped.
I took notes and listened again.
I laid her on the hood of
the car, and I raped her.
I said, "You do
exactly what I say!"
So if you're gonna
kill somebody,
y-you just put it on their neck
and twist it three times
What I heard was
like eavesdropping
on the rawest
fringes of humanity.
I cut off her head.
I had a utility knife,
and I cut her throat.
I think I stabbed her
four or five more times.
Be walking up the stairs
with a camera bag that
had her severed head.
I saw potential in the study, but I
also had to think about my family.
I hesitated 'cause it
might take up extra time,
nighttime, weekend time.
That was hard because I
had the young children.
I was feeling pressured to
make the right decision.
I mean, I didn't care
much about the offenders.
They were killers.
The biggest motivation
from my perspective
was helping victims.
I focused on that
as much as I could.
I think there is an empathy, a
compassion that she understands
because of-of the
lived experience.
My Uncle Frank was very
caring and very supportive.
My uncle's house in Maryland
had a grand piano in one
part of the living room
and a organ, real organ.
I think that I still probably
have his sheet music, yeah.
And he could play by ear, so
he could almost do anything.
Uncle Frank was
a country doctor,
and Frank really nurtured
her love of music.
They would play together.
She said many times
that she wanted to be a pianist,
but that's not
how it played out.
Uncle Frank had a driver,
and the driver, we didn't
know, was into drugs
and doctors have drugs.
They got into a fight,
and my uncle was killed.
It was quite a struggle
because I know that
even months later
they were finding blood
in the back of lamps.
And, of course, that changed the
whole landscape, if you will.
She had firsthand experience of what it's
like to lose somebody you love so dearly.
So for my mom, one outlet
for her is her work.
She's very devoted
to try to figure out
how to prevent this from
happening in the future.
Her work helps her deal with some of
the tragedy that she's experienced.
So, I decided this
was important.
I would help with the study.
It's not necessarily
a fully sanctioned,
approved, by-the-book's move
to be bringing
Dr. Burgess into the room.
She's not officially an agent.
She's a guest lecturer.
But Ressler says, "Forget about it.
We'll deal with the consequences later.
Just get in here, help
me figure this out."
The tapes that I listened
to were fascinating.
Now the problem was we had
to make sense out of it.
That data hadn't come in
in a standardized way,
and how do you
make sense of that?
How do you sort of
quantify that information?
How do you set up a, a project?
That is where the
academic comes in.
These were agents that
never had done research.
They needed help
with a methodology.
So we had to come up
with this questionnaire.
We can't just go in
willy-nilly and chitchat.
You have to ask
the same questions
in order to be able
to find common themes.
What are our research questions?
Through those first recordings,
she was able to say, "Here's
where I would follow up."
"Here's where I would
expand on this."
"How did you get
him to say this?"
"How was he able
to tell you that?"
Maybe we'd learn
a good question.
What should the order
of the questions be?
How far back do you have to go?
You'd say, "Did you see something
or did you hear something?"
When you'd learned
something, "Let's put it in."
We put together this 57-page
questionnaire, color-coded it,
which made it easier
for the agents,
and we started
collecting the data.
Finally, there
would be uniformity
of information that
they were asking,
and so the agents learned what
was really happening in the field
and they would take that information
and they would bring it back to Ann,
who would then make sense of it.
Well, that's where we were
starting to learn things.
How many siblings do you have?
How many older brothers?
Have you ever thought
about suicide?
Do you have a history of bedwetting?
Sleepwalking, nail-biting
I would listen. I
would hear something.
I would jot it down to see what
was coming up over and over.
So if we see this in another guy,
alright, that's really interesting.
If we see it in a third,
okay, this is a pattern.
What are the patterns?
- Categories.
- Data sets.
So the data began piling up.
And now we have
we have something
we can work with.
To meet the challenges of today
and prepare for the
challenges of tomorrow,
your FBI remains in the forefront
of both the training and technology
for criminal investigation.
We were pretty quiet
in the beginning.
We didn't want anyone
really knowing too much
because we didn't
know if we were right.
So they knew something was going on
'cause we were always huddling together.
They had to figure out
something we're talking about,
and we'd just say we're
talking about cases.
There were certain
types of projects
that were more highly
ranked than others.
Forensics made sense.
Stuff that had to
do with psychology
that was less grounded in a
crime scene, less tangible,
seemed a little more like "woo."
Mm-hmm, yeah.
They weren't ready for it.
That these agents wanted
to spend FBI resources
focusing on these
dredges of society,
the FBI did not want to have
anything to do with that.
We didn't have the
approval of the FBI,
but it was something that
we had to do in secret.
I felt the stakes were
really, really high.
All I can think about is
what he did to her.
What were her thoughts?
How long did she suffer?
And those thoughts are
with me all the time.
I read about 'em in the paper.
They happen in New York City.
They don't happen in
Ellensburg, Washington.
The whole unit was
developing a tool
that might be
useful to the field.
That was our whole goal is,
"How can you prevent it?"
The agents of the BSU understood
they were developing a tool
that could shift the paradigm
of how law enforcement was
able to catch criminals.
Ann is a person who helped to develop
the tools that assisted profilers.
Ann was the brains
of the operation.
She saw the potential for using
interviews with serial killers
to be predictive of
who a killer might be.
Who identified characteristics
of the offender
based on previous people
who did similar things.
She thought if you can
recognize the patterns,
you can do something to stop
that pattern from continuing.
The state's top law
enforcement officer,
Colonel Bo Garrison of the
Louisiana State Police,
called a press conference tonight
in the ski mask rape case.
The case involving burglary
and crime against nature
fits the pattern of some 20 rape
cases throughout South Louisiana.
A state police spokesman says
most of the break-ins
involve sexual assault.
The rapist would
sneak into a house
through an open window or
door to surprise his victim.
Then in many cases,
he would wait
until the woman's husband
or boyfriend returned.
After tying up the husband,
the attack would start.
Governor Dave Treen instructed
state police commander Bo Garrison
to make capture of the Ski
Mask Rapist top priority.
In the late '70s, I was a member
of the Louisiana State Police.
When he came into the house,
he was very domineering,
very commanding.
When there started
to be media reports
of a ski mask rapist,
it created a sense of
fear and huge concern.
Police are advising women
to be very, very careful.
I really don't feel safe.
Just I'm just afraid,
that's all. Really afraid.
Some residents have decided
that locking doors and
windows isn't enough.
South Louisiana saw an
increase of gun sales
by well over a thousand percent.
It was a community that was lost
for the violence that
was taking place.
I'm very, very scared.
I have all the windows locked
and, uh, the dogs loose at night,
and I think I'm gonna
put some bars in my window.
Well, local police departments
had never seen a case like this.
Law enforcement was so frantic
that the community was so scared
that they reached out to the BSU
and said, "We really need help."
Hazelwood, when he was looking
at these case files that came in,
he was noticing an escalation.
Early cases were what you
might call a traditional rape.
And the more recent rapes, he
had not only tied up the victim,
but had also tied up
the victim's husband
to force the husband to watch
as he was raping the wife.
Hazelwood wasn't sure
what to make of it,
so he shared cases that had come
in with Ann to get her opinion.
We decided to see if we could
compare it to our other cases
to see what we could learn.
One of the profilers said,
"This case sounds just
like Montie Rissell."
Montie Rissell was very different
from some of the serial killers.
He had a whole series of rapes
before he started killing.
We wanted to see if there
was some pattern there.
Internally, we're dealing
with a trusted group here,
certainly on a
case just like it.
In this particular case, we had
a young man by the age of 14,
had raped his first victim.
I talked to this guy for
probably 12, 14 hours.
He told us a lot.
Let's look at the first rape.
What really led
you up to doing it?
When I climbed up the balcony,
I don't think I even
had that intention.
It was more or less
maybe to just break in
and rob something
or steal something.
I walked into the bedroom
and she was in, in her bed.
- Just hearing the fear
- Mm-hmm.
In her voice and-and not
knowing what was going on,
it was like an-an
adrenaline rush.
Ann discovered these offenses
looked very much like the pattern
we see in people
with an addiction.
Less violent at first,
peeping through windows,
stealing underwear,
calling up somebody and using
foul language and hanging up.
And then there's a need to keep
increasing the stimulus, like a drug.
There was an adrenaline
rush, a power trip, control.
Just to be able to
take another person
and dominate 'em
and-and control 'em.
When it stops being exciting enough,
that's when you can get the murder.
I mean, th-that's
what's so scary.
She's the one that
first mentioned to me,
if I didn't hurt her,
she'd have sex with me,
thinking that she could
control the situation.
Once you kill
another human being,
you'll never be the
same person again.
It's like a junkie wanting
another shot of dope.
We learned that the
excitement piece,
the adrenaline rush was
an underlying theme.
It was like drugs, a
little isn't enough.
At first, it is,
and as you adjust to that
psychologically and physically,
you take more and more and more.
It's the same process.
Like an addiction, you
keep craving something
which is harder, harder,
something which gives
you a greater excitement.
Through the Montie Rissell case,
we began to see the pattern
of the Ski Mask Rapist.
If you don't catch
'em fast enough,
they just escalate further.
The Ski Mask Rapist was doing such
sadistic things to the victim's body
that my feeling was that
we better catch him fast
or we're gonna lose,
physically lose the victim.
At this point in time, the Ski Mask Rapist
had committed dozens of known assaults.
So Hazelwood was tasked to share
whatever resources he could
on the FBI's behalf
to try and stop this individual.
There was this idea
that if Ann brought
her understanding of psychology
into interviews of the victims,
she could learn information
that could glean insight
into who this individual was.
Even though she was
only a consultant,
Ann was sent down there
to interview victims.
The fact that a lone
female came down
representing
herself with the FBI
led authorities there
to call the FBI to say,
"Somebody's down here
impersonating an agent."
It wasn't widespread
to have females in these roles,
so I can see where authorities in
Louisiana might be a little skeptical.
I felt very anxious to go out
because to be an actual part
of an ongoing investigation
was unusual for me.
The pressure I was feeling
was really a question of,
"Would I be able to
contribute to the case?"
And I could have just
gone in and said,
"What do you remember?
What can you tell me?"
But I chose to take it from
a more human standpoint.
How do you get someone
to trust you in an hour?
That's the hard work.
We had to explain to the
victim how important it was
for her to give us very
detailed information.
I told her that they were asking
because they wanted
to get the offender.
She's helping in this process,
and once she knew that, she
realized I really believed her
and she would give
out the information.
It took a great art to make
people comfortable enough
to be able to attest
to those things.
That was a really unique skill
set that nobody in the FBI had
and very few people
in the country had.
And a lot of it did
go back to, you know,
her early work with
victims of sexual assault.
It's quite loud. It's more
effective than using your own voice.
I think the women's movement
has drawn attention to rape.
Before, it was an
unspeakable crime.
We're saying that it is not
her fault that she got raped.
Ann saw this case as an opportunity
to continue to destigmatize
this idea of being
a victim of rape.
If we are raped, we don't
have to be humiliated,
we don't have to hide.
They were finding out how many
cases were not being heard,
were not even being reported.
So, in this case, women
were told to report it.
So, some of those barriers of,
you know, "Don't report"
finally weren't there.
There have been three rapes
in the past four months.
Where there have been attacks,
police security
has been beefed up.
The more that these
cases were heard,
law enforcement can
learn from that,
and they could start
to take action.
When you can find new witnesses,
you're gonna find new stuff
and you think, "Okay, now
there's real possibility there."
Based on Ann's work,
the best way to get to
the heart of what went on
is to talk to the
surviving victims.
And why it was that
person was chosen,
that'll tell you something
about the offender as well.
The victim will actually
help you solve the case.
I realized that how he selected
victims, there's a similar pattern.
He would go after wealthy women,
and I always felt that
that was very important.
And what could I gain
from that information?
In the fall of 1981,
the escalation of the occurrences
was rapidly progressing,
but we were fearful
that one of these days
we were gonna have
a deceased victim.
When I came back to Quantico,
I gave the information on
the victim to the agent.
The agents have to figure out
what the characteristics were.
Age? Were they working or not?
Were they married? Were they
single? Who did they live with?
The behavioral things
that you could check out.
Even though Dr. Burgess
wasn't allowed in the room
for that profiling session,
the profilers
leaned on her ideas
to take all these
different inputs,
the crime scene, witness testimony,
interviews with serial killers,
and turned them into a
viable law enforcement tool.
Based on how long
he'd been active,
they classified him as a man
in his late 20s or early 30s.
His domineering behavior
showed that he saw
himself as an alpha male.
Twenty-five rapes attributed
to the Ski Mask Rapist.
Rape cases in five
Louisiana cities.
It started to be constant
reporting, almost weekly,
into Mississippi, into Texas.
We've been getting calls
from California, Wisconsin.
I had two calls
yesterday from Ohio.
Seventy different jurisdictions
across the United States
that were investigating
this crime.
Oklahoma, Florida, Ohio
His evasiveness and the
frequency with which he moved
showed that he was educated
and served in the military.
Nine states where ski
mask rapes have occurred
may just be the
tip of the iceberg.
He did one attack in Columbus, drove
30 miles, attacked another woman,
and before the night's out, he is
in Virginia and then headed to Ohio.
Seventy-seven break-ins and
robberies in a dozen states.
Violence was becoming
an important part
of the offender's ritual.
Not violence as a tool to
overcome the victim's resistance,
but violence as pleasure.
He was taking broom
handles and hairbrushes
and violating women
with those items.
He was also taking
cigarettes and burning them.
We know that he
liked nice things
and he's profiting off
what he could steal.
And we thought that suggested
he would have a flashy car.
Finally, they were able
to get the profile out.
Authorities have been working with a
psychological profile of the rapist.
The profile called an individual a
good looker who picks up women easily,
but is likely to beat them up
and is incapable of
long-lasting relationships.
That he most likely would
kill a resisting victim
and that he would probably
drive a fancy car.
And we were distributing, um, the
flyer all throughout South Louisiana.
- Assaulted a woman
- 137 rapes
Three rapes there October 29.
- In 17 states.
- Rapes in cities across
The brutal rapes of
three family members
The center of a
multi-state crime spree.
In September, he had
actually shot a husband.
That told us, in fact,
this guy was ready to
take the next step.
As many as 130 rapes in
cities across the nation
And I tried to pull it away
from my throat and he said,
"Don't touch my knife
or I'll kill you."
When I could dominate, it was
just exhilarating, I guess.
State police spokesman said the
investigation will continue
Seventy-seven
different assaults
When I realized that he wants
to be able to control me,
then he was gonna kill me.
My earliest memory is
my mother working
on that typewriter.
And its keys were,
like, super loud.
It was just a blur of
machine gun sound, like
Typing, typing,
typing, typing, typing.
- It was
- Just like
- No
- No.
You'd never know in the house
growing up what she did for work.
Good morning, Mrs. Burgess.
Nice to have you with us.
Dr. Ann Burgess.
Dr. Burgess, it was
my experience
Well, I guess I knew that my mother
did things that were different.
You know, we would have FBI
agents come over to the house.
I remember some magazines,
certainly the TV shows.
A professor of
psychiatric nursing.
The minute any type
of violence occurs.
For the offender, it
gives him a record.
Her books are in the house.
Book on sexual assault, child
molestation, a nursing book,
crime classification manual,
book on homicide.
Like, I knew all that.
But it really wasn't
until late high school
that I learned she was
working with serial murderers.
Severing the human
head, two of 'em
It's in a tourniquet,
so it cut off the air.
Stabbed her i-i-in the back.
This is the person
you grew up with
who brings dinner to the table,
and when you're crying
she wipes your tears.
I was, like, shocked to
know that she was involved
in trying to solve these crimes.
Oh, yes.
Police believe they may have a
serial killer on their hands.
No one knows what is
driving them to kill.
Murders of 13 girls
- Killed as many as 21
- Thirty-six women
We are a violent people
in a violent country.
Getting inside the mind of evil
to help them solve
serial killings.
The state's top law
enforcement officer
called a press conference tonight
in the ski mask rape case.
Fits the pattern of some 20 rape
cases in the past two years.
The rapist would sneak into a
house through an open window
or door to surprise his victim.
Police are advising women
to be very, very careful.
Well, I'm very, very scared.
I have all the windows locked.
The nine states where ski
mask rapes have occurred
may just be the
tip of the iceberg.
The FBI needs to
change their tactics
if agents want to catch
the Ski Mask Rapist.
There are approximately
four million girls
who will be going out
within the next few years
to make careers for themselves
in a busy and toughly
competitive world.
When I graduated
from high school,
there were three
options for women.
To be a teacher,
to be a secretary,
or to be a nurse.
I said, "Well, I can be a nurse 'cause
I can ask everybody how they feel.
That's what I'll learn."
I'm always interested
in how people feel.
But in academe, in
terms of nursing,
nobody else cared
about how they felt.
They said, "You should research
physical illness only."
That was the mindset
at that time.
"You're not gonna get
anywhere with this."
But if I wanted to do
something, I was going to do it.
I began to talk to the patients
with traumatic experiences.
It is very hard for
people to listen
to what has happened
to another human being.
It makes them feel helpless,
and they don't realize that listening
is a very powerful strategy to help.
In '78, I was a professor of
nursing at Boston College.
I also had four young children.
One day my, uh, research assistant is
looking very sheepish in the doorway
saying, "You've got a phone call."
I'm saying, "Take it, Anna."
And she says, "I think you'd
better. It's the, um, FBI."
You know, somethin' with
my taxes or something?
Why are they calling me?
You know, what did I do?
And he says he'd like
to invite me down
to talk about the
book that I wrote.
50% of the time,
women ask for it.
If I'm on top and you say,
"Alright, yeah, yeah."
Then a couple minutes later they say,
"Oh, stop, stop." I ain't gonna stop.
If a woman wants to get even with
her husband after an argument,
just yell rape.
They would blame the victim.
"Why weren't you taking
care of your kids?
What are you doing
out at night?"
I-I remember I was
being pushed on the bed,
and then he put a
sheet over my face.
At that time, I felt that my whole
frame of reference for the world
had sort of fallen apart.
When Lynda Holmstrom and I started
studying the problem of rape,
I was told, "Pick another topic.
Rape is not a problem."
And it was, but nobody was
paying attention to it.
I believe that every
woman has a story.
I certainly had some.
We lived in the nurse's dorm,
and I wanted to go to
my sorority meeting.
The college was
up this big hill.
I got up there and then they said, "Oh,
just stand over there by that road,
and lots of people go down,
you can just hitch a ride."
This car picked me up
and got me about halfway
down and he pulled off.
I knew I was in trouble.
I was really, really scared.
I hit the horn and I said, "I'll get
out, I'll walk the rest of the way."
Luckily, he took off.
When they would say,
"Rape is not a problem,"
I didn't believe that.
I thought, "We've got to get
people aware of this problem."
When the FBI called,
rape cases weren't
being looked at.
They were just being
put in the shelf.
The cases are going cold.
She was somebody who had
this set of knowledge
that nobody else had.
She had spoken to those victims,
and she could go and
teach the men of the FBI
everything that she had learned about
rape and trauma and sexual assault.
When you're looking for
who can you influence
to change a broken system,
the FBI was the top of the list.
So I felt I could
make a difference.
Being down at Quantico was
very much a culture shock.
The firing range opened at 6:00.
They loved their guns.
FBI agents were kinda like
these mythical cowboy figures,
sort of classic Americana.
And that was the image
Hoover wanted to cultivate,
was the FBI as superheroes.
The special agent must
be a good marksman
and have the courage
to shoot it out
with the most venomous
of public enemies.
If law enforcement in
general was this boys club,
the FBI was kind of the
cool kids of the boys club.
Ann thought, "Great, there's
these saviors of America"
"ready to learn from me
and to help do something
about this immense issue."
I'm Ann Burgess,
and I'd just like to again
personally welcome all of you.
You all have been selected for
your expertise in a wide area.
She looked out at this
audience of 40 FBI agents
who were all men,
and she started
talking about rape,
and there were some
snickers in the audience.
Her sort of whole view of these lofty,
high-minded G-men suddenly crashed.
And of course, the one question they
would always say to me, "Were you raped?"
Wow, what a question to
come from the audience.
You know, here's all these men.
There are few other female
agents teaching at that time.
There clearly was
discrimination.
No current connection
They would be very confrontational
in their questions.
Not about, "Well, how
did the victim feel?"
I mean, you would hope
that they would ask more,
"Tell me more about being a
victim in from your lecture."
All of my research is
in the area of victims
and the impact of
victimization on
They thought rape was just sex.
"Women secretly wanted it
or they were out there
and asked for it."
I hope that many of you will be
able to listen to what has
The problem with the
other side of the story
is they don't want to hear it.
You've gotta be very
kind of resourceful in
how you bring it in.
She used that first session
to really show sexual assault
as it actually occurs.
Once she was able to get the agents to
understand the severity of the issue,
they did start paying
a lot of attention,
and they did start
asking her questions
and they did see the value of being
able to intervene and to help victims.
Throughout those early days,
Roy Hazelwood, who had been the
one to initially invite her down,
he would introduce
her to other agents.
Sometimes they took an interest,
a lot of times they didn't 'cause she
wasn't there in any official capacity.
She wasn't even, you know,
fully consulting yet.
So, when Ann came
as this outsider,
the one group that would accept
her were the other outsiders.
The Behavioral Science Unit
was a small part of the
academic branch of the FBI.
The agents were all working on these
sort of not-by-the-book projects,
some of which were approved,
some of which were
not so approved.
It kinda didn't matter 'cause they
were in the basement of Quantico
where no one was really
paying them attention anyway.
I remember the first time going,
and you get on that elevator
that doesn't have any numbers,
and then you get down two
floors and there are no windows.
It's a bomb shelter, literally.
She started to learn more
about two agents in particular,
John Douglas and Rob Ressler.
Ressler was a steady
hand at the BSU.
He was calm, which was sort
of a juxtaposition to Douglas.
Douglas was the most polarizing
figure within the BSU.
Strong opinions and
a lot of confidence,
and there were certain people that
that definitely rubbed the wrong way.
I remember being at Quantico in
John Douglas' office and he's got
- a dress hanging in the corner.
- Yes.
Did he call it J. Edgar
Hoover's dress? Yeah, okay.
And then the power goes out.
He's like, "I got a
flashlight here somewhere."
- When he turns it on, it's under his chin.
- Of course.
Douglas, uh, you had to
get on his good side,
especially if you're
gonna work with Ressler.
And I wanted to
work with Ressler
'cause Ressler was interested in a
population that wasn't studied at all.
I was talking to victims,
and he was talking with the
other half, if you will.
I wanted to put the
two halves together.
The murder of people in series,
or serial murders,
has police departments
across this country worried.
Motiveless, random killings,
sometimes thousands
of miles apart.
Their victims are strangers.
Their motives unknown.
For Ressler, that was
always the big question.
"How many serial
killers are out there?"
A lot, that we knew of.
The unsolved Zodiac murders.
- The Hillside Strangler.
- Son of Sam.
In the '70s, we saw
this really steep rise
in the number of
serial killers active.
The scientists say
there is no way
to spot a mass
killer in advance.
Even when they're caught, serial
killers are seldom well understood.
Arresting and convicting
serial killers
is still, for the most
part, a matter of luck.
The mind of the serial predator
was not something that
was at all understood.
Seven killings in two weeks.
Well up into the 15, 16 victims.
Thirty-three victims that
we know of, and maybe more.
We don't understand it.
A conventional
investigation is lacking.
We're, we're missing
something here.
Why would somebody
choose to kill strangers
over and over and over again?
What makes him so different
from the rest of us?
Robert Ressler realizes
that he has to do something
to begin to better understand the men
who are committing serial killing.
Ressler said we need
to go in and speak
with criminals like the ones of
these cases we're trying to solve.
They operate by a
different sense of logic.
So there's really no
way to understand them
unless you talk to them.
If we don't start
looking at serial killers
and learning
something about them,
10, 15, 20 years from now,
we're gonna be right
back where we are today.
This guy is a person
to understand,
and to understand
is to stop this guy.
Ressler was the dr he
was the driving force,
and he wanted to
do the interviews.
Of course, that could be a problem
because they were serial killers.
And at that time, Ressler
was doing single interviews,
and he liked this Ed Kemper.
He was finished
the interview.
It was around three o'clock,
and he was getting really kind
of nervous looking at his watch
and Kemper turns
to him and said,
"You know, they the, uh,
guard isn't coming back.
They're on change of shift. He's
not gonna be here for 30 minutes."
He says, "In that
time, you know,
I could snap your head and
leave it on the table."
He said, "I'd own
the prison then.
I killed an FBI agent."
Luckily, the guard came
and as they're leaving,
Kemper turns to him and says,
"You know I was just
kidding, didn't you?"
So that changed policy quick.
He never went alone again.
And Douglas was the one that
was willing to go with Ressler.
It's important to understand
that when Ressler and Douglas
and-and others were going in and
interviewing these offenders,
they were doing so in a
kind of unstructured way,
conversing with them,
asking them general details,
taking whatever information
they were willing to share.
They would interview serial
killers face-to-face,
and then they would
just have a conversation
about, "What does this
mean? What does that mean?"
They had no idea what they had.
They didn't have the tools to
make some sense out of them.
The agents were really
interested in Dr. Burgess' work
because this rape
study that she had done
involved this unwieldy
data coming in
from just these people
telling their story.
She was able to quantify
that information,
do something
productive with that.
So, the agents were interested
in learning what her process was
and seeing if they could
apply it to their research
and so they just
shared it with Ann.
Something snapped in me.
- I picked up a rock.
- Mm-hmm.
And, um
big size, softball size,
- and I hit her
- Mm-hmm.
With the rock
upside of her head.
- It, it knocked her unconscious
- Mm-hmm.
And I left.
Once you kill
another human being,
you'll never be the
same person again.
The tapes that
they brought back,
the cases were so horrific.
We had Charles Manson.
Since I was 10 years old,
I used to lay down and have to get
my ass whipped till I couldn't walk.
Tell me about some pain.
Pain's not bad, it's good.
It teaches you things.
We had a number of Kemper
tapes that came in.
I lived as an ordinary
person most of my life.
Even though I was living a parallel
and increasingly sick life.
He was so articulate.
Ted Bundy was
equally articulate.
I-I can see how certain
feelings and ideas
developed in me to the point
where I began to act out on them.
Certain very violent and
very destructive feelings.
Montie Rissell, really
quite forthcoming.
He talked and he
talked and he talked.
It was like I was just spinning out
of control during the day, right?
But at night when
I could dominate,
it was just
exhilarating, I guess.
I listened closely until
each cassette stopped.
I took notes and listened again.
I laid her on the hood of
the car, and I raped her.
I said, "You do
exactly what I say!"
So if you're gonna
kill somebody,
y-you just put it on their neck
and twist it three times
What I heard was
like eavesdropping
on the rawest
fringes of humanity.
I cut off her head.
I had a utility knife,
and I cut her throat.
I think I stabbed her
four or five more times.
Be walking up the stairs
with a camera bag that
had her severed head.
I saw potential in the study, but I
also had to think about my family.
I hesitated 'cause it
might take up extra time,
nighttime, weekend time.
That was hard because I
had the young children.
I was feeling pressured to
make the right decision.
I mean, I didn't care
much about the offenders.
They were killers.
The biggest motivation
from my perspective
was helping victims.
I focused on that
as much as I could.
I think there is an empathy, a
compassion that she understands
because of-of the
lived experience.
My Uncle Frank was very
caring and very supportive.
My uncle's house in Maryland
had a grand piano in one
part of the living room
and a organ, real organ.
I think that I still probably
have his sheet music, yeah.
And he could play by ear, so
he could almost do anything.
Uncle Frank was
a country doctor,
and Frank really nurtured
her love of music.
They would play together.
She said many times
that she wanted to be a pianist,
but that's not
how it played out.
Uncle Frank had a driver,
and the driver, we didn't
know, was into drugs
and doctors have drugs.
They got into a fight,
and my uncle was killed.
It was quite a struggle
because I know that
even months later
they were finding blood
in the back of lamps.
And, of course, that changed the
whole landscape, if you will.
She had firsthand experience of what it's
like to lose somebody you love so dearly.
So for my mom, one outlet
for her is her work.
She's very devoted
to try to figure out
how to prevent this from
happening in the future.
Her work helps her deal with some of
the tragedy that she's experienced.
So, I decided this
was important.
I would help with the study.
It's not necessarily
a fully sanctioned,
approved, by-the-book's move
to be bringing
Dr. Burgess into the room.
She's not officially an agent.
She's a guest lecturer.
But Ressler says, "Forget about it.
We'll deal with the consequences later.
Just get in here, help
me figure this out."
The tapes that I listened
to were fascinating.
Now the problem was we had
to make sense out of it.
That data hadn't come in
in a standardized way,
and how do you
make sense of that?
How do you sort of
quantify that information?
How do you set up a, a project?
That is where the
academic comes in.
These were agents that
never had done research.
They needed help
with a methodology.
So we had to come up
with this questionnaire.
We can't just go in
willy-nilly and chitchat.
You have to ask
the same questions
in order to be able
to find common themes.
What are our research questions?
Through those first recordings,
she was able to say, "Here's
where I would follow up."
"Here's where I would
expand on this."
"How did you get
him to say this?"
"How was he able
to tell you that?"
Maybe we'd learn
a good question.
What should the order
of the questions be?
How far back do you have to go?
You'd say, "Did you see something
or did you hear something?"
When you'd learned
something, "Let's put it in."
We put together this 57-page
questionnaire, color-coded it,
which made it easier
for the agents,
and we started
collecting the data.
Finally, there
would be uniformity
of information that
they were asking,
and so the agents learned what
was really happening in the field
and they would take that information
and they would bring it back to Ann,
who would then make sense of it.
Well, that's where we were
starting to learn things.
How many siblings do you have?
How many older brothers?
Have you ever thought
about suicide?
Do you have a history of bedwetting?
Sleepwalking, nail-biting
I would listen. I
would hear something.
I would jot it down to see what
was coming up over and over.
So if we see this in another guy,
alright, that's really interesting.
If we see it in a third,
okay, this is a pattern.
What are the patterns?
- Categories.
- Data sets.
So the data began piling up.
And now we have
we have something
we can work with.
To meet the challenges of today
and prepare for the
challenges of tomorrow,
your FBI remains in the forefront
of both the training and technology
for criminal investigation.
We were pretty quiet
in the beginning.
We didn't want anyone
really knowing too much
because we didn't
know if we were right.
So they knew something was going on
'cause we were always huddling together.
They had to figure out
something we're talking about,
and we'd just say we're
talking about cases.
There were certain
types of projects
that were more highly
ranked than others.
Forensics made sense.
Stuff that had to
do with psychology
that was less grounded in a
crime scene, less tangible,
seemed a little more like "woo."
Mm-hmm, yeah.
They weren't ready for it.
That these agents wanted
to spend FBI resources
focusing on these
dredges of society,
the FBI did not want to have
anything to do with that.
We didn't have the
approval of the FBI,
but it was something that
we had to do in secret.
I felt the stakes were
really, really high.
All I can think about is
what he did to her.
What were her thoughts?
How long did she suffer?
And those thoughts are
with me all the time.
I read about 'em in the paper.
They happen in New York City.
They don't happen in
Ellensburg, Washington.
The whole unit was
developing a tool
that might be
useful to the field.
That was our whole goal is,
"How can you prevent it?"
The agents of the BSU understood
they were developing a tool
that could shift the paradigm
of how law enforcement was
able to catch criminals.
Ann is a person who helped to develop
the tools that assisted profilers.
Ann was the brains
of the operation.
She saw the potential for using
interviews with serial killers
to be predictive of
who a killer might be.
Who identified characteristics
of the offender
based on previous people
who did similar things.
She thought if you can
recognize the patterns,
you can do something to stop
that pattern from continuing.
The state's top law
enforcement officer,
Colonel Bo Garrison of the
Louisiana State Police,
called a press conference tonight
in the ski mask rape case.
The case involving burglary
and crime against nature
fits the pattern of some 20 rape
cases throughout South Louisiana.
A state police spokesman says
most of the break-ins
involve sexual assault.
The rapist would
sneak into a house
through an open window or
door to surprise his victim.
Then in many cases,
he would wait
until the woman's husband
or boyfriend returned.
After tying up the husband,
the attack would start.
Governor Dave Treen instructed
state police commander Bo Garrison
to make capture of the Ski
Mask Rapist top priority.
In the late '70s, I was a member
of the Louisiana State Police.
When he came into the house,
he was very domineering,
very commanding.
When there started
to be media reports
of a ski mask rapist,
it created a sense of
fear and huge concern.
Police are advising women
to be very, very careful.
I really don't feel safe.
Just I'm just afraid,
that's all. Really afraid.
Some residents have decided
that locking doors and
windows isn't enough.
South Louisiana saw an
increase of gun sales
by well over a thousand percent.
It was a community that was lost
for the violence that
was taking place.
I'm very, very scared.
I have all the windows locked
and, uh, the dogs loose at night,
and I think I'm gonna
put some bars in my window.
Well, local police departments
had never seen a case like this.
Law enforcement was so frantic
that the community was so scared
that they reached out to the BSU
and said, "We really need help."
Hazelwood, when he was looking
at these case files that came in,
he was noticing an escalation.
Early cases were what you
might call a traditional rape.
And the more recent rapes, he
had not only tied up the victim,
but had also tied up
the victim's husband
to force the husband to watch
as he was raping the wife.
Hazelwood wasn't sure
what to make of it,
so he shared cases that had come
in with Ann to get her opinion.
We decided to see if we could
compare it to our other cases
to see what we could learn.
One of the profilers said,
"This case sounds just
like Montie Rissell."
Montie Rissell was very different
from some of the serial killers.
He had a whole series of rapes
before he started killing.
We wanted to see if there
was some pattern there.
Internally, we're dealing
with a trusted group here,
certainly on a
case just like it.
In this particular case, we had
a young man by the age of 14,
had raped his first victim.
I talked to this guy for
probably 12, 14 hours.
He told us a lot.
Let's look at the first rape.
What really led
you up to doing it?
When I climbed up the balcony,
I don't think I even
had that intention.
It was more or less
maybe to just break in
and rob something
or steal something.
I walked into the bedroom
and she was in, in her bed.
- Just hearing the fear
- Mm-hmm.
In her voice and-and not
knowing what was going on,
it was like an-an
adrenaline rush.
Ann discovered these offenses
looked very much like the pattern
we see in people
with an addiction.
Less violent at first,
peeping through windows,
stealing underwear,
calling up somebody and using
foul language and hanging up.
And then there's a need to keep
increasing the stimulus, like a drug.
There was an adrenaline
rush, a power trip, control.
Just to be able to
take another person
and dominate 'em
and-and control 'em.
When it stops being exciting enough,
that's when you can get the murder.
I mean, th-that's
what's so scary.
She's the one that
first mentioned to me,
if I didn't hurt her,
she'd have sex with me,
thinking that she could
control the situation.
Once you kill
another human being,
you'll never be the
same person again.
It's like a junkie wanting
another shot of dope.
We learned that the
excitement piece,
the adrenaline rush was
an underlying theme.
It was like drugs, a
little isn't enough.
At first, it is,
and as you adjust to that
psychologically and physically,
you take more and more and more.
It's the same process.
Like an addiction, you
keep craving something
which is harder, harder,
something which gives
you a greater excitement.
Through the Montie Rissell case,
we began to see the pattern
of the Ski Mask Rapist.
If you don't catch
'em fast enough,
they just escalate further.
The Ski Mask Rapist was doing such
sadistic things to the victim's body
that my feeling was that
we better catch him fast
or we're gonna lose,
physically lose the victim.
At this point in time, the Ski Mask Rapist
had committed dozens of known assaults.
So Hazelwood was tasked to share
whatever resources he could
on the FBI's behalf
to try and stop this individual.
There was this idea
that if Ann brought
her understanding of psychology
into interviews of the victims,
she could learn information
that could glean insight
into who this individual was.
Even though she was
only a consultant,
Ann was sent down there
to interview victims.
The fact that a lone
female came down
representing
herself with the FBI
led authorities there
to call the FBI to say,
"Somebody's down here
impersonating an agent."
It wasn't widespread
to have females in these roles,
so I can see where authorities in
Louisiana might be a little skeptical.
I felt very anxious to go out
because to be an actual part
of an ongoing investigation
was unusual for me.
The pressure I was feeling
was really a question of,
"Would I be able to
contribute to the case?"
And I could have just
gone in and said,
"What do you remember?
What can you tell me?"
But I chose to take it from
a more human standpoint.
How do you get someone
to trust you in an hour?
That's the hard work.
We had to explain to the
victim how important it was
for her to give us very
detailed information.
I told her that they were asking
because they wanted
to get the offender.
She's helping in this process,
and once she knew that, she
realized I really believed her
and she would give
out the information.
It took a great art to make
people comfortable enough
to be able to attest
to those things.
That was a really unique skill
set that nobody in the FBI had
and very few people
in the country had.
And a lot of it did
go back to, you know,
her early work with
victims of sexual assault.
It's quite loud. It's more
effective than using your own voice.
I think the women's movement
has drawn attention to rape.
Before, it was an
unspeakable crime.
We're saying that it is not
her fault that she got raped.
Ann saw this case as an opportunity
to continue to destigmatize
this idea of being
a victim of rape.
If we are raped, we don't
have to be humiliated,
we don't have to hide.
They were finding out how many
cases were not being heard,
were not even being reported.
So, in this case, women
were told to report it.
So, some of those barriers of,
you know, "Don't report"
finally weren't there.
There have been three rapes
in the past four months.
Where there have been attacks,
police security
has been beefed up.
The more that these
cases were heard,
law enforcement can
learn from that,
and they could start
to take action.
When you can find new witnesses,
you're gonna find new stuff
and you think, "Okay, now
there's real possibility there."
Based on Ann's work,
the best way to get to
the heart of what went on
is to talk to the
surviving victims.
And why it was that
person was chosen,
that'll tell you something
about the offender as well.
The victim will actually
help you solve the case.
I realized that how he selected
victims, there's a similar pattern.
He would go after wealthy women,
and I always felt that
that was very important.
And what could I gain
from that information?
In the fall of 1981,
the escalation of the occurrences
was rapidly progressing,
but we were fearful
that one of these days
we were gonna have
a deceased victim.
When I came back to Quantico,
I gave the information on
the victim to the agent.
The agents have to figure out
what the characteristics were.
Age? Were they working or not?
Were they married? Were they
single? Who did they live with?
The behavioral things
that you could check out.
Even though Dr. Burgess
wasn't allowed in the room
for that profiling session,
the profilers
leaned on her ideas
to take all these
different inputs,
the crime scene, witness testimony,
interviews with serial killers,
and turned them into a
viable law enforcement tool.
Based on how long
he'd been active,
they classified him as a man
in his late 20s or early 30s.
His domineering behavior
showed that he saw
himself as an alpha male.
Twenty-five rapes attributed
to the Ski Mask Rapist.
Rape cases in five
Louisiana cities.
It started to be constant
reporting, almost weekly,
into Mississippi, into Texas.
We've been getting calls
from California, Wisconsin.
I had two calls
yesterday from Ohio.
Seventy different jurisdictions
across the United States
that were investigating
this crime.
Oklahoma, Florida, Ohio
His evasiveness and the
frequency with which he moved
showed that he was educated
and served in the military.
Nine states where ski
mask rapes have occurred
may just be the
tip of the iceberg.
He did one attack in Columbus, drove
30 miles, attacked another woman,
and before the night's out, he is
in Virginia and then headed to Ohio.
Seventy-seven break-ins and
robberies in a dozen states.
Violence was becoming
an important part
of the offender's ritual.
Not violence as a tool to
overcome the victim's resistance,
but violence as pleasure.
He was taking broom
handles and hairbrushes
and violating women
with those items.
He was also taking
cigarettes and burning them.
We know that he
liked nice things
and he's profiting off
what he could steal.
And we thought that suggested
he would have a flashy car.
Finally, they were able
to get the profile out.
Authorities have been working with a
psychological profile of the rapist.
The profile called an individual a
good looker who picks up women easily,
but is likely to beat them up
and is incapable of
long-lasting relationships.
That he most likely would
kill a resisting victim
and that he would probably
drive a fancy car.
And we were distributing, um, the
flyer all throughout South Louisiana.
- Assaulted a woman
- 137 rapes
Three rapes there October 29.
- In 17 states.
- Rapes in cities across
The brutal rapes of
three family members
The center of a
multi-state crime spree.
In September, he had
actually shot a husband.
That told us, in fact,
this guy was ready to
take the next step.
As many as 130 rapes in
cities across the nation
And I tried to pull it away
from my throat and he said,
"Don't touch my knife
or I'll kill you."
When I could dominate, it was
just exhilarating, I guess.
State police spokesman said the
investigation will continue
Seventy-seven
different assaults
When I realized that he wants
to be able to control me,
then he was gonna kill me.