Robert Riggs
I'm Robert Riggs, and this is True Crime Reporter. Follow me into the darkest corners of the human mind, with stories rip from the pages of my reporter's notebook.
Stephen Michaud
The true crime reporter never settles for standing outside the yellow crime scene tape. You knock on doors, dig through records, and cultivate sources to get to the bottom of the story. I'm Robert Riggs, the host and creator of the True Crime Reporter podcast. Back with another story from three decades of investigative reporting. In this episode, I pulled out my reporters' notebooks. My law enforcement sources opened up their confidential case files. We sat down together to talk, and you can listen in to our journey into darkness. But before you do, be advised that this podcast is for a mature audience and not for the faint of heart. Some episodes may contain profanity and graphic details of violent crimes. Kenneth Allen McDuff ranks among the most heartless and sadistic serial killers in American history. But what is it that creates the McDuffs and Ted Bundys of this world? That's a question that many of you have been asking me through the True Crime reporter website, our Facebook page, and in reviews on Apple Podcast. When I started investigating how the diabolical triple killer got out of prison on parole three decades ago, I asked those same questions. I received an invaluable understanding from two former FBI profilers who were among the original founders of the Behavioral Science Unit, based at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. During my journalism career, I made many trips to Quantico, covering stories about new FBI agent training, serial bank robbers, simulated training for arresting armed high-risk fugitives, high-speed vehicle pursuit training, the hostage rescue team, and weapons of mass destruction. I met profilers John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood after they had retired from the bureau. At that time, they were not widely known outside of law enforcement circles, today the Netflix crime drama Mind Hunter is loosely based on John Douglas's role in pioneering profiling at the FBI. His fellow profiler Roy Hazelwood became the world's leading expert on the strangest, most dangerous of all aberrant offenders: the sexual criminal. Hazelwood was an FBI agent for 22 years. He spent 16 of those years with the Behavioral Science Unit, starting with its inception in 1972. Hazelwood is now deceased. He co-authored landmark books about the minds of sexual predators with Stephen Michaud. Michaud is a friend and fellow investigative reporter who used to be based here in Dallas. Stephen is the expert on Ted Bundy. He tape recorded 150 hours of audio with a serial killer when Bundy was imprisoned in a Florida state prison in 1983. Misho and another giant of investigative reporting, Hugh Ainsworth, wrote the book, *The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy* In 2019, Netflix premiered a four-episode docu-series based on Michau's tapes titled "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. Bundy and Kenneth McDuff share many traits. Bundy received two death sentences. McDuff received three and was executed by lethal injection in the Texas death chamber in 1998. But Mcduff, unlike Bundy, did not become a household name. Many of our listeners had never heard of Macduff before this podcast. Macduff was dubbed the Broomstick Killer for his shockingly brutal triple murder of teenagers in August of 1966, but publicity about the serial killer was overshadowed by the mass shooting at the University of Texas Tower. Charles Whitman, armed with rifles, triggered a 96-minute killing spree from the 27th floor of the tower. He gunned down pedestrians in a five-city block area on or around. The campus, killing 14 people, including an unborn child, and wounded 31 others. At the time of the massacre, it was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history. It spurred the formation of police SWAT teams across the country. And here's a coincidental factoid for you, Gary Lavergne, the author of *Bad Boy from Rosebud: The Murderous Life of Kenneth Macduff* who you have heard on the True Crime Reporter podcast, also wrote *Sniper in the Tower* It's the definitive book about the mass murderer. In August of 1992, my reporting about Mcduff in national news coverage was suddenly interrupted by Hurricane Andrew, which I covered. The Category Five hurricane, the nation's costliest disaster at the time, devastated South Florida and the Louisiana coast.
Stephen Michaud
Macduff received a second reprieve from national publicity in February of 1993, when the branch Davidian cult at Waco murdered ATF agents during a gun raid, I covered the subsequent 51-day siege by the FBI in the final moments of the fiery inferno. And know this: when I talk about cases on True Crime Reporter and the Justice Facts podcast, I was there along with the law enforcement officers you hear from. We do not regurgitate information found on the internet. We lived it. Now, here's my telephone conversation with fellow investigative reporter Stephen Michaud to help answer your questions about what goes on inside the minds of serial killers. It's a journey into darkness.
Stephen Michaud
Stephen, you spent a number of years with Roy Hazelwood, one of the early, maybe original profilers for the FBI. I think many of our listeners, their perception of the profilers has been shaped by Silence of the Lambs and more recently Mind Hunter, which is loosely based on John Douglas,
Stephen Michaud
would would you give us an accurate depiction of exactly what they do and how they came about?
Stephen Michaud
Well, the the behavioral science unit was founded in the early 1970s, and staffed by the FBI agents he just mentioned, and several other ones. Most of them have now moved on, but the the a core of what of what they did and do is trying to understand for law enforcement how a sociopath, or also known as a psychopath, operates, and it's not the same kind of study that you would see, say, from a clinical psychologist, because what they're really interested in is what you can do if you're in law enforcement to combat what these people do. So let me give you a sort of a little bit of an over overview of
Stephen Michaud
it. Yes,
Stephen Michaud
there's two features of the sociopathic or psychopathic personality that are pretty well established and have been for a long time. One is that they feel no guilt for anything that they do, and two, they have no remorse, which sets them apart from all the rest of this because it's in essence you're saying they don't have a conscience. I remember in my conversations with Ted Bundy at Florida State Prison, he would from time to time go off on these long kinds of speeches about how he didn't feel any guilt, and he thought that was a very liberating thing. That people who go around feeling guilt for things that they've done are are constrained by that, and they can't fully appreciate what's available out there. For law enforcement, there's two other factors though that are are very important that you see, typically see in in in sociopaths who are also serial killers, and that's narcissism and paranoia. Narcissism you could understand, I guess, best as self-love. The narcissist is fascinated with him or herself, and they tend to be very, very charismatic. You'll see a lot of narcissists who will come into. A company, say, or into an organization, and who very quickly create a following because they're they're interesting, they they they're good talkers, they're bright as a rule, but the the the sociopath who is has who is a narcissist also typically will have paranoia, and the paranoia is almost the opposite of the of the narcissism in that there it's fear. They they look over their shoulders all the time. They are they they are never really 100% comfortable. Now, in in in a criminal situation, you can see where narcissism would allow someone like Ted, for example, who was quite handsome and and articulate, to bluff his way into and in and out of any sort of situation, and certainly approach unsuspecting young females with what we would have called a few years ago his line, and so the narcissism is a is a tool, is a is a personality tool, but the paranoia teaches them caution, teaches them to look over their shoulders,
Stephen Michaud
yes,
Stephen Michaud
and and is a kind of a Preservation, if you will, trade. If you if you see these guys in court, you'll see the narcissism when they stand up in court and say, "I want to defend myself and my and my own attorney, and that usually that that narcissistic move has underneath it a paranoid motive, and that is they don't trust their own lawyers; they don't trust anybody. So those are examples of how how that works. The criminal sociopath also exhibits typically exhibits a whole range of what they call paraphilias today. These used to be called these to be called perversions, but paraphilia is the new term for them. And a typical, I mean, a range of paraphilias would be peeping tom isms, looking in through windows, making dirty phone calls, exposing yourself To to people, and the one that that Ted, of course, was well known for, was necrophilia-that he would kill a victim and then revisit her her body for, in some cases, weeks because he felt inside of him that it was a way to get has some sort of mind meld, if you will, with his victim. So that's that's kind of a $5 tour of what you're talking about when you're talking about about killers, sociopaths, serial killers, and and and how their minds work.
Stephen Michaud
Well, and I'm focused on serial killer Kenneth McDuffin. Interestingly, we've talked about
Stephen Michaud
this. I mean, my my information, much of this, I've gained personally, but of course, I worked with Roy for a long time on cases involving serial murder, serial murderers, and their and their habits.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah, and and Roy's expertise was in the sexual criminals,
Stephen Michaud
right? Roy, Roy did not focus on on murder nearly as much as people like John Douglas has, and Douglas's old partner, the late Bob Ressler, they did the that original, well-known study of incarcerated serial killers. Roy was really more interested in in non how would you call it, sex crimes, I guess, is just the way to put it. And there, of course, was a huge range of those, from pedophilia, which is, of course, a problem in this country, to to really specific types of criminal situations. One, one he called the the complicit wife or complicit companion. Roy had done a tremendous amount of research on on serial killers and serial rapists who had convinced their their their significant others or their wives to be their accomplice, and they would help you know women who would help men find victims and be be actually part of the criminal of the criminal activity, and some cases actually went to prison. With their husbands, or went to prison after their husbands were killed, something like that. Roy Roy's ranged into all sorts of strange sort of niche type of criminality, and in some cases, it wasn't even criminality; it just was strange, like autoeroticism. He used to testify frequently in court trials where somebody was found dead in the most peculiar circumstance, like they're all tied up, hanging from a tree or something like that, and he would meticulously point out to the jury that everything that they had seen there was consistent with a person trying to achieve hypoxy, the lack of air, which is that which gives you a high, and they would tie themselves up and hang themselves in trees and maybe get a cramp, and sometimes couldn't untie themselves, and would die these horrible deaths in the in the course of of experimenting with sex. So you know, he Roy had an interesting way of explaining all this. He said, you know, think of think of aberrant criminals as usually. they're sexually aberrant. He says, think of them as a as a nine person baseball team. Now they all wear the same uniform and they all are playing basically the same game, but the third baseman doesn't have any idea what it's like to be a catcher, and the pitcher the pitcher doesn't know what the first baseman is doing it's specialized, and no no two aberrant killer, serial killer or rapist is going to have the same set of paraphilias, the same set of fantasies, and the same set of of of preferred victims. They are all they are all unique unto themselves, and interestingly enough, they often are amazed to learn of what some of their fellow killers like to do, and are disgusted by it. Well, they think that their own issues, what they call sex, are perfectly fine.
Stephen Michaud
Well, and I'm focused on serial killer Kenneth McDuff in this series, Free to Kill, and a number of the listeners are want to understand in the case of serial killer Kenneth McDuff, you know what created this monster and what drives them. Now, in interestingly, when you talked about the narcissism, we saw that in at trial at two trials where he told his attorneys to shut up. He got on the stand and gave this rambling account that was ridiculous. But you could tell he thought he believed it, and he thought everyone that the jury was believing it because he was saying it. We saw that aspect of him.
Stephen Michaud
Well, you know, there, There's underlying a lot of this behavior is whatever sort of life these these people led when they were quite young. I mean, there's a there's there's a great deal not now known about what kind of of environment is not completely determinative? I think it was important to to emphasize this that you can have a family of five children, all of whom were raised essentially the same from all at least from all intents and purposes, and only one of them becomes a serial killer, so there's there's obviously an interplay here somewhere between what's you know what's going on around them and the way they're processing what's going on around them, and that's you know that science is going forward, but it's still pretty much in its infancy. I I can tell you though that a hallmark of the serial killer is the extraordinary anger that is evident what he does to his victims or she does to her victims as a rule. For example, think of Jeffrey Dahmer. He murdered his victims, and they cooked them and ate them. Bundy was a necrophiliac. After he killed his, he would visit them, as I said, you know, post mortem. But if you look at what, if their victims are found, if their remains are found. You often see evidence of this enormous anger, of mutilation, and there's a there's a theory in among people who study serial killers is that they have an inability to feel the. The way other people do, their you know their their lack of guilt, their lack of remorse, they don't have the same set of of tools, if you will. And one of their one of their purposes in killing is is is anger at people who can feel things appropriately, and they they they they not literally but figuratively want want to consume that victim to try to to try somehow to to get from skew from take from that person the ability to respond naturally to the world around them, and so you could say that that the serial killer, in some ways, is envious of his victims and wants to obliterate them because they are a reminder that he's incomplete, that he's that he is he doesn't have what what regular people do, and he's very very jealous about that.
Stephen Michaud
Well, in the case with McDuff, he was it was rape and sadistic torture, and long, long periods of time of sadistic torture, almost taking them to the point of death, and bringing them back. But when he had reached the end of everything, his term was, I'm now I'm going to use her up. That was always his term. I'm going to use her up.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah.
Stephen Michaud
The thing I found interesting, and I appreciate your insights from your background in, is that he always had an accomplice, and my my sense was it was performance art. He knew in the past, accomplices had got him in trouble, but he still needed an accomplice. And when he was out hunting, he would have an accomplice. It was like he needed someone there to show off for. Working with with Roy, did you ever see that in his work?
Stephen Michaud
Oh yeah, it's it's it's not as common as as one guy or one person, one woman, because there are female serial killers. But a famous case was the hillside strangler out on the west coast. Yes, a long time ago, and he had a he had a an uncle who was who was would go out and hunt with him, and and of course the accomplice. We spoke a little bit about the complicit girlfriend or wife or whatever. That's an accomplice as well. The what militates against an accomplice in these situations is the paranoia because the paranoia will make him suspicious all the time, and and so you can't really be a team if you if you don't trust the other person. You know what I mean? But I think I think you've lit your finger on something about it being performance art because you know they do want an audience, and even if the even if a you know they're they're lone lone wolf killers, the way they leave the body is a form of performance art. You know, some of these guys will will position their victims in a very specific way, because they're having a they're having a conversation, if you will, with the investigators who are are are chasing them down, and they will have that's something that they do that no other killer does, and and the cops who are studying them are aware of that, and it becomes a part of the game between the the hunted and the hunters when the hunter becomes the hunted and and vice versa. It's a it's very primitive, but it's very very very kind of deep behavior, if you will. So yeah, that's a roundabout way of saying yes, you're right. They they do have accomplices at times.
Stephen Michaud
In the weeks in leading up to his execution, he was convinced in one case tricked into revealing the location of some of his victims, and it was seven years later he knew the exact spot and told them exactly how the the body would be positioned in the grave, and they were buried in very, very remote areas. They would have never been found unless years later there was excavation or something. Remote rural areas, but he knew exactly where they all were.
Stephen Michaud
Well, you know, there's another there's another strain of these guys. I've studied a lot of them and written about a lot of them, and one of their fantasies, a common fantasy among these guys, is to own a super furnace for incineration, and they they actually have fantasies about building one way out in the. In the middle of nowhere, and maybe having a buried house and buried garage at the same time, so they could live unseen, and and they would have a place to go do what they wanted to do, and then dispose of their bodies. And that it's almost like they all read the same cookbook sometimes, you know.
Stephen Michaud
Well, one of the things we know he did do, and we know it from all this underworld of ex-cons he traveled in, and they all talked to investigators. And one of the things he would do is be driving in the rural central Texas and places, and then suddenly look over and say, "That would be a good place to bury a body. It was like he was always looking for that special spot.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah. Well, he's a hunter, right? Yes. And it's and you know it's Ted said to me on a number of occasions that he should have understood that the real thrill was not in the actual kill, but it was in the stocking and planning of it, because that's you're you're you're exhibiting your your power and your intelligence and and to and to insinuate yourself into somebody's life and have them not even know that that you can kill them at any time you want is a huge thrill. I don't know about McDuff, but I know Ted and other serial killers have not atypically would break into a woman's house while she was asleep in bed and just stand there or occupy her space and then leave without without her ever knowing that he was there and maybe do it several times until he says, "Oh, now now it's time to kill her. Again, it's a, it's, it's. They're on a different power gradient than the rest of us.
Stephen Michaud
And Macduff was about abduction. He was a huge man, and it was about stalking and grabbing. And interestingly, in talking to investigators shortly before his execution, he described it as the hunt. He was on the hunt. That was his word, the hunt, and they got his credit card records for months and months and tracked him, and he drove hundreds and hundreds of miles.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah, you know, there is something to that. Serial killers don't, as a rule, gravitate towards big cities, and one of the reasons for it is that they are like any hunter, any think of any any top of the food chain predator, lion or whatever, and they rely upon stealth, and they rely upon having control of the situation. And I remember talking to Ken about it, and he said, "You know, I went to New York City to, but you know, how can you, how can you, how can you, you know, stalk somebody when you don't know when, you know, all of a sudden, you know, you know, an explosion is going to hit, or there's a car wreck, or you know it's New York City. It's you know it's wild. It's and it's it is wild, and so these guys really want to be away. They want they have to go into cities and towns to get their victims, or or get them as they're hitchhiking say. But there, the idea is to get them out and away as far as you possibly can, to at your at your leisure, if you will, do what you want to do.
Stephen Michaud
Well, interestingly, too, he had a preference. His victims were in their 20s. I notice they were slim, petite, small-breasted, short, and he typically would grab them by the throat, lift them off of the ground, feet dangling, them kicking, and control them. Is he up massive size hands? He'd do this one handed. What is it about they they have a preference of a type of woman they're looking for?
Stephen Michaud
Well, Robert aerial murder. sexual serial murder, is driven by fantasy. The fantasy is the is the foundation urge, if you will, and you can understand what they're doing as a an attempt to achieve in real life, what they have fantasized about, and so their fantasy. When I was talking about the baseball team, I sort of touched on this. They their fantasy begins in most cases when they're quite young, and and it and it evolves as they get older, so that a an 18 year old serial killer might have a very different victim pool, if you will, at 18 than he he would if he's still active when he's 25. And they these fantasies are are 24/7 with them. They they go to. They go to sex shops, video stores, books, whatever, looking for images that that they can incorporate into their fantasies, and then they look looking for victims who approximate what they're fantasizing about. So in in the case of Macduff, he he had an ideal woman, an ideal you know that and and you know he he's he's not going to preferentially he's not going to attack a woman who does not as come as close as possible to the physical type that he's looking for. I remember asking Bundy once about when he was talking to me in the third person. I said, "Well, how does this person select a victim? How you know how how do you do it? And I said, "Well, for instance, you know, would you would you would you attack and kill an unattractive woman, a woman who's at least unattractive to you. And he looked at me sort of haughtily, and he said, "Well, everyone has their standards. So, again, this point where you know McDuff had a very, very specific to him mo Fantasy and all the and all the tricks of his craft that kept him ahead of the police for a long, long time. Unfortunately,
Stephen Michaud
well, before his execution, one of my friends, Gary Lavern, writer down here, you probably know Gary wrote Sniper in the Tower. He interviewed Mcduff just talked in circles, but there was one interesting point where Gary said, "Kenneth, what was this preference for prostitutes? And he Mcduff laughed and said, "Well, it's kind of hard to get a date when you've been on death row.
Stephen Michaud
Well, they're a victim class, but you know, there's a lot of victim classes. There's small boys. There's old women. There's prostitutes. I mean, in the case of prostitutes, I mean, where else do you find somebody who will come up to your car and willingly get in the car with you and drive away?
Stephen Michaud
Right. Right.
Stephen Michaud
You know, without having to subdue them or anything, right?
Stephen Michaud
Yes, yes. Stephen, let's pause for a moment. I want to take a break, and when we come back, I want to talk about again the the making of a serial killer. Okay, Stephen, we're back from the break. We were talking earlier about the making of a serial killer. You know, it's the old question: Is it nature or nurture? What did you learn from Roy Hazelwood on that question?
Stephen Michaud
Roy, Roy never pronounced himself so so sure of his research and so so you know, so certain of of his conclusions that he would ever have come down one side or the other on that issue. Roy Roy once told me that if if I you know if I if if I or anybody told him that a a a palmist had called up and said she had seen a vision of of something happening out in the woods that she thought was close to what you know that he was looking for. He would go out and talk to her because you never know exactly what you know what she has in her head, but to the nature versus nurture, I don't think that you can come down on either side to the exclusion of the of the of either side. And my personal experience with Ted, he he he felt that there was something inside of him that was a predisposition that he was born with. That there was some kind of flaw in his his his his mind or his or his being, but that it had to be triggered. That without a trigger, that flaw would not necessarily express itself as murder. His example was that if he had lived in a more repressive society, less free society than than the United States, he might have ended up being a demon stamp collector instead of a murderer. That and but I think without putting thoughts into Roy's head and words into his mouth, Roy was very sensitive to anything. Whether or not it had to do with nature or nurture, that would advance, you know, his knowledge, his practical knowledge again of of serial murder. I another another investigator who you I'm sure knew Bob Keppel out in Seattle, who chased around after Ted for a while. When he started invest, when he started interviewing him, Ted kept saying, "I want to, I want to talk about the antecedents and we what you know what made me who I am and the why of who I am, and and Keple said, I'm not interested in the why. I'm interested in the what, where, and when, and how.
Stephen Michaud
Yes,
Stephen Michaud
and you know that's those are two different cops talking about the same thing. But it's it's I think it illustrates how it's you have to be careful about getting yourself too carefully into one camp or the other because these guys are not all the same.
Stephen Michaud
Well, one thing that really struck me in McDoff and the investigators was his mother. She was this domineering, mean, mean figure. That going back to his days in elementary school, she was called the pistol packing mama because yeah, when the bus driver scolded him on the bus, she showed up waving a pistol around. the The entire small town of Rosebud in Central Texas was scared to death of this woman, and then during the manhunt for him, the investigators ended up afraid of her, and all of them told these stories of just how nasty she was, always defending him, always that you're framing him. He was framed for his murders in 1966. Yet on the other hand, there was a sense when Gary Lavergne spoke to him in on death row before the execute final execution that he hated his mother. Should we? What and some people said, "Well, that mother was. That's the stereotype right there.
Stephen Michaud
I think you could, I think you could make a case that whether or not there was overt craziness, beatings, maliciousness, whatever it was, that you could use a broader term and say that she was not available to him in her mother mode. Ted's mother was was was was the paradigm of a sweet little old lady, but it was clear that you know that he had some issues with her, and you know, and there were other things wrong with his with his early his early upbringing. They they these guys don't come out of perfectly balanced, healthy families. I'm not sure of how many perfectly balanced, healthy families there are, but they they undergo they undergo stresses and they undergo experiences when they're very young that imprint on them, and depending on how you know what they're exposed to later on, and and and a lot of other changeable factors. They they do or they do not graduate into becoming serial killers.
Stephen Michaud
You know when we see them, once we know they're a serial killer, and we know these monstrous, you know, horrendous acts that they've committed. They're spooky looking. They're, you know, oh, we think they look like a pervert. But the thing that I found, particularly with McDuff, if you wouldn't talk to people that had worked around him or been at a trade school, he looked normal, kind of normal, just plain. Didn't really notice him. One person, a convenience store, just trying to say he was kind of goofy. On the other hand, I talked to cellmates when he was in maximum security prison. Said he would be that way, and then you could trip a switch, and this violent rage would come out, and it would scare everyone to death. So much so that he went through prison with no tattoos and no association with the gangs. Although he leaned toward the Aryan Brotherhood, the racist group, but that was the kind of fear that he he carried around, but on the other hand, seemed normal. When I've been contacted by listeners that are like, "Well,
Stephen Michaud
yeah,
Stephen Michaud
what should I be look on the lookout for?
Stephen Michaud
Ah,
Stephen Michaud
yeah, do they look like a monster? Does the child abductor look spooky and scary? And I'm I'm always like all the ones I ever saw look pretty normal until you really hear what they did.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah, you you're touching on something that's very important: is that they they they don't jump out at you. The the ones that who are who are clearly troubled, you can you know you you can see them a half mile away. Probably are psychotic. They're they're they're schizophrenics. They have psychotic breaks. They you know they they do strange things. The people we're talking about a personality disorder. They're they're they're they're not they don't fit into the into the psychiatric categories of the of the really mentally ill. They're they look and talk and act like all the rest of it, which makes them so effective and makes them so chilling for people to think about. And I, you know, McDuff, from what I I know, which is not nearly what you know, was was not distinguishable from from any other guy who, you know, who came out of the same world that he came out of. It was only it was only when when he was actually acting out his fantasies that he was clearly you know who he really was. The rest of the time is hidden, and the you know the the worst mistake you you can make if you're a member of the victim class is to think that you can spot somebody who is who is clearly a a proto serial killer or is serial killer. They are they you know the they're one of us, for better or for worse, and that's that's not going to change. The only thing that will change is how they get what they want, which is now today. I mean, Jeff never would have been much of a hand on the internet, but if he were around today, you can bet that he would be on the internet.
Stephen Michaud
Yes, well, I remember in one of your books with Roy Hazelwood, he talked about there were two essential lessons from his casework, and one was there are no boundaries to what a particular individual might do to other people, and secondly, right,
Stephen Michaud
correct,
Stephen Michaud
when it comes to sexual behavior, there are no limits to what a person might find erotically stimulating.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah. Well,
Stephen Michaud
how do you apply that to his work?
Stephen Michaud
We talked about that a lot, and the way the way Roy handled it, he said, you know, it's when you talk about sex with these people or about these people, you got to remember that you're talking about what they call sex, and what what what Macduff called sex was very different from what other people, most other people, call sex, different from sane people or non those not afflicted with personality disorders, but also, as I said, different from other other killers. The the the variety of things that will interest people is sort of interest is is one of the the the hallmarks of this. As we talked about paraphilias, it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn if it ever came to light that Macduff was a crossdresser, that he did it just because he wanted to see what it felt like, or that he that he may have in fact picked up a small boy or or somebody who was not in his victim class just to see what it felt like. So, they as a as a behavioral science unit, they call these people trisexuals. They'll try anything, and it's it's not it's not at all unusual. Not at all. So it's and again a warning to anybody who would who would become a profiler or become a detective is to say that you know everything you need to know about this person that you're hunting because you don't.
Stephen Michaud
Well, back when I was on the McDuff's trail and ferreting out the corruption in the parole and prison system that had released him, Roy provided you know a couple of pieces of very valuable advice to me to understand this, and one was he said. Look, he's always on the hunt. He might be going out for a pack of cigarettes or a six-pack of beer, and if he sees that preferential victim, he's going to strike. Secondly, he said that look, one of the most most strongest primal drives of human beings is sex, and if you tie that to violence and pleasure. There's no one going back. There's no rehabilitation. You've you've got trouble on your hands.
Stephen Michaud
He talked. Roy talked a lot to Park Deets, these these psychiatrists, and and I did too in those days. And Deets was very interesting About that, he said, "You know, what bothers me or worries me about violent movies is that they often will have scenes. There'll be sequences where there is sex. There's a sex scene, and it immediately is followed by a really violent murder of some sort, and that the the viewer is unconsciously connecting violence with sex, and it's and it's and it's it's reinforced by what he sees in this movie theater with all these regular people in there. It tends to legitimize it, and so yeah, I mean, Roy gave me the same lecture, and it's absolutely true. They they are. It's never very far, never very far from their their their conscious mind, and it's by far the most favorite thing to do.
Stephen Michaud
Well, you know, in your 2001 book, Dark Dreams, that you did with Roy, Roy at that time said this is 19 years ago. There said saw two disturbing trends. One was there was a conceptualization of crimes at a much earlier age, and secondly, the the fantasies he thought were growing more complex, and in some cases deadlier over time. What do you think he would say today?
Stephen Michaud
Well, you know, there's more input. I mean, just take yourself back to say the 1880s. The 1880s, in you know, and you're living in a frontier village, you know, the the sensory inputs are are pretty are pretty shallow and and and not at all sophisticated. I mean, you you know, then compare that with with the sophistication of modern pornography, or whatever you want to call it, you know, sexual literature, and a a person who is susceptible to this message has this huge Variety of of different types of of sexual behavior that they can incorporate into their own private fantasy and make it more sophisticated, make it more make it more pleasurable, if you will, and drive them harder and harder to try to make it, try to make it real, try to recreate it in their their lives, which they none of them ever figure out that they can't do that. It's not a fantasy is not the same as the real real world, but none of them ever understand it. They keep chasing it right to the end.
Stephen Michaud
Stephen, I was always struck, really just amazed by Roy's ability and the other members of the behavioral science unit to analyze a crime scene and then do what they call victimology-study the victim and come up with a profile of who they surmised did it-and it was pretty doggone accurate when they caught the people. It would help catch them, and so Roy engaged in a thing called linkage analysis, of where looking at mo and ritual characteristics. Can you kind of go into that and help our listeners to understand how do how do they do that?
Stephen Michaud
Well, linkage, linkage. He's talking about looking at two different crimes and seeing if there's there are things that signs that you can see in the crime scene or what is ever known about the crime scene that links it to another crime scene, and therefore strongly suggest that the same person did both these killings. They try. They try to to to computerize that with with VICAP, the Violent Violent Offender Apprehension Program. Specifically, though, linkage analysis, and here's an example that Roy told me about one time we wrote about it together. Actually, there there were there was a killing, and in associated with the killing, they they discovered that there were a bunch of of small ceramic items that had been very carefully lined up on the sill of a of a window, a window sill. They were small little animals. I can't remember exactly what they were. And Wright pondered that. He Pondered that, he said, "You know, that's a clue. He says, "But I don't know what kind of clue it is. And but on a kind of a almost a whim, he he he went around and canvassed local nearby facilities for the criminally insane, looking to see if that he could find that kind of behavior, and he did. He found he found he interviewed a guy, and he was sitting in the guy's room with him. They said all these little things lined up on this, and that was a linkage, and he was able to to to kind of back investigate it, and the guy, in fact, was the killer, and he had he had managed to get into a into a facility like that, and and but he was given away by the linkage. So yeah, the linkages. He was Roy was great about that, and and but you know it almost that that kind of thing almost gets into do you have a feel for this kind of work or don't you and you know Roy was highly intuitive and and the whole BSA was sort of an intuitive organization. They they really rested a lot of what they they taught and and and and talked about with old police detectives who had gathered all this this incidental information in long careers, and it was the kind of stuff that when these guys would retire, all their knowledge would retire with them.
Stephen Michaud
Yes,
Stephen Michaud
and so Roy and and and the rest of them tried to systematize that a bit, and that's you know that's where the the linkage analysis came from. It was also you know you you're certainly familiar with an organized versus a disorganized crime scene, and that you know, Roy came up with that idea in the shower, and then he just went out to see if you know if if you if you could test it empirically to see if you know is it is it just something that I think may be interesting, or or is it is it real? And it turns out that there there is a correlation. It's not the only correlation, but if you find a a scene, a crime scene that is really messy, disorganized, you're going to see signs of that disorganization in in the killer himself. Likewise, an organized crime scene, which which which indicates planning, care for details, all that sort of stuff. That you will find traces of that in how this guy runs his own life and kills other people. It's very rare for a an organized killer to become disorganized or vice versa. So that's what I say. With you know, a lot of the, a lot of the, a lot of the things that they accomplished was really the pulling together strands of of lore and and experience in an in a part of the word in an organized way to make it available to other to other criminology criminologists and detectives.
Stephen Michaud
Well, of course, we we'd both been to the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, where new agents training takes place, but also they bring in local law enforcement to the academy for training, and in that basement, that's where the behavioral science unit was located. Do you do you think the FBI still got the commitment to research like they should?
Stephen Michaud
Well, you know, politics operate at a pretty fever pitch in any federal bureaucracy, and the I haven't had any contact with the BSA directly in a long time. They come; they sometimes contact me about specific killers' careers stuff, but so I can't speak to. Was too much authority on that. The serial killer thing was so strange because, as you know, it it kind of came out of nowhere with TED back in the 70s. Yes, the you know the term itself hadn't even been made up at that point, and that doesn't mean there weren't serial killers before. It's just that they they had never been you know recognized. They're kind of like a new specie event of you know killer, and it really caught the public's fancy, and you know people wanted to become criminal profilers and all the rest of it, and I, I don't know that if if they if if they're still adding significantly to their their trove of information, I I really don't know. It's a boundlessly industry interesting subject, but you know they they're doing other things as well, right? I mean, they you know they're they're off they're doing a lot of stuff, internet stuff and all that, which wasn't even thought of back when you know they were chasing around after after Bundy and and and your guy. So,
Stephen Michaud
and of course, after 911, much of the FBI's focus turned to terrorism. Well, there
Stephen Michaud
you go. I remember
Stephen Michaud
working on a big investigation of widespread mortgage fraud, and there was one loan agent who was overwhelmed, and yeah, well,
Stephen Michaud
yeah,
Stephen Michaud
yeah, and he and he and he said to me, Robert, you could do me a big favor by saying, going, reporting that international terrorists are involved in mortgage fraud, and I'll get plenty of resources.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's true. I mean, I, I can, I, I can imagine somebody saying that. So,
Stephen Michaud
you know, one one thing that helped McDuff evade capture is that he committed his crimes in different counties. So there's different policing jurisdictions, and they don't really talk to each other. Do you think we're better at that today? That kind of show. Okay.
Stephen Michaud
No, no. I, I, I talk to investigators a lot, just in the course of of people I've known for a long time. People I've known because I'm still actively writing about this stuff, and it's it's still the same problem that it was in in the year 1975. There is there is there's territoriality. There's there's laziness. There's there's a lot of factors that go into it. It's political. I I was involved in a case not too long ago. I can't be specific about, but there very very good chance that the the the remains of one of Ted's unknown Ted Bundy's unknown victims was buried about half mile from a police station, and they the cops would not get involved with it. They would not have anything to do with it, and and they basically shut down the whole thing. So there, it's still a problem, and it's and smart criminals, especially smart aberrant criminals, take advantage of that,
Stephen Michaud
and they are smart in their own. They're
Stephen Michaud
clever. They're clever. They're they're predators. You know, you probably could learn a lot about serial killers if you just watched your cat.
Stephen Michaud
Okay, now we've just made every cat lover on this podcast mad, but
Stephen Michaud
well, look, my cat is asleep right here in front of me, taking this all in. He doesn't seem upset with me. So, one
Stephen Michaud
of the things in the McDuff case that really struck everybody, angered lawmakers, was that, of course, there was corruption allegations surrounding his parole.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah,
Stephen Michaud
but the one thing we learned was that it wasn't just in his case, but the parole board was turning loose oh hundreds of violent offenders.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah,
Stephen Michaud
and we learned it was not like the movies. There's not a hearing where the offender comes in and sits down and states his or her case. It was they they passed a file to each other, and oftentimes the members didn't even read the file. They just kind of rubber stamped what one lead member thought, and also it's a political appointment. And what struck me is there's no forensic psychology requirement, And really, no protocol for evaluating is this person a danger to society if we release them. I don't see that that's changed. What? How should we be approaching then? What do you see?
Stephen Michaud
Well, I'm I'm reminded. Of a kind of reverse situation that you, of course, remember as well as I do, Henry Lee Lucas, right? Oh yeah. Henry Lee may have killed three or four people, maybe, and he was at one point good for 600. And police departments, not just in Texas, but all over the country, we're closing cases based on Henry saying, "Yeah, I did that one, and they didn't even they didn't even go so far to figure out well if if victim X is known to have died, you know, on a Monday in in El Paso, and we know for a fact that Henry, who had didn't have a car that could go more than 100 miles, which the next day was in Virginia, he probably didn't do that killing. But the case would be cleared, and the the you know the the file would be lost or or thrown away, and this speaks, I think, to your point, is that the the there's a lot we could do, a lot more we could do to keep people safe from these people, but you know, all of it comes down to to budgets. In one part, I mean, in one sense, I mean, an example apart from the the forensic stuff or the forensic psychological stuff. Look at all the police agencies that have got rape kits and DNA kits that are in some cases 10 years old that have never been processed, right?
Stephen Michaud
Right.
Stephen Michaud
And they don't-they can't do it because they don't have enough money to hire the people to do it. So that's a big issue. That's a big issue. You know, in some ways, I think you get as much police policing as you're willing to pay for, and and as we discussed, there's fashions that that that sweep the the area. I mean, there was a there was a great outcry about about about McDuff when when the issue of him and a lot of other guys being cut loose in a slapdash way, as you described. But nobody came forward and said, "Okay, I can fix this. Here's the plan. But you have to vote a you know you have to vote us another million five to do this. And all of a sudden, there everybody's enthusiasm for saving lives, kind of goes out the door.
Stephen Michaud
All comes down to money. If if if Roy Hazelwood was sitting on a parole board and had a violent offender to assess, how do you think he would approach it?
Stephen Michaud
They would never put him on a parole board because he would take too much time. You know, they they process things, as you pointed out, and you know, I don't know if you've ever taken a deep look at who's on parole boards, but they often have no background of any sort that suggests they would be able be any better able to evaluate whether or not this person has a paid his or her debt to society, and b more importantly is is is a is a ongoing threat to society. I think Roy would say, I I'm not sure. I don't I don't know if I want to make that bet myself. I'll remind you of yet another very interesting Texas story. But you remember Doctor Death, the psychiatrist.
Stephen Michaud
Yes.
Stephen Michaud
Who, who in the penalty phase would always say that this person is a threat if you if you don't execute him or lock him up.
Stephen Michaud
Correct.
Stephen Michaud
And you know that was you know it was easy. All he had to say is yeah, he's a threat. And you know, and and you know, statistically, he probably was right, and you know, probably could apply the same pedalogic to winning at dice in a casino. But it it he didn't have any special insights or know anything. Yeah, and that's why they called they called him Doctor Death. He was a very nice guy, by the way. I'm sure you knew it.
Stephen Michaud
Well, the forensic psychiatrist Park Deeks that you've worked with,
Stephen Michaud
yeah,
Stephen Michaud
what do you think he would have a methodology of how how we should try to look at this to protect society?
Stephen Michaud
I mean, Deets will tell you that short of having a prisoner come at you with a knife the moment you meet him, it's a delicate and sometimes really involved process to really get to where you need to to be able to make an informed judgment about these people. They they tend to be pretty clever. It's hard to observe them in a. In their environment, which is you know they're incarcerated. That's when they're behind bars. Their demons tend to recede a little bit. They certainly did with Ted. If he didn't have pictures or or or access to to young women, just just you know a bunch of prisoners, he wasn't getting the stimulation that led led to the behavior. So, I just think that that that in our current state of knowledge and willingness to to to devote resources, it's it's probably a vain, probably a vain exercise. I mean, there's a guy, Doctor Hare from Robert Hare, Canada, who's yeah, Robert Hare, who's done that that socioe sociopathy checklist. That it's kind of a way of of breaking it down, you know, and it seems to be pretty useful in some circumstances. But you know, I I can tell you stories all day and all night about people who were cut loose after having been interviewed by you know 15 different people, and they went out the next day and kill somebody, right? And not and not you know not the gross problems that that that you know about with with your guy, but you know these are these are are trained professionals who know about aberrant behavior and they they made a mistake. So what do you do?
Stephen Michaud
So, one of the other questions I've had from listeners, from the women in the audience, is that, well, what what do I do if there's an attempted adoption at you know the car wash or gas station, what have you? Based on your experience, any any advice?
Stephen Michaud
You if you go into any reasonably well-functioning police station and talk to them about missing persons, you'll get that. You know, we get you know we have 15 missing people reported here every week, and 14 of them are just girls spending the nights with their boyfriends, and the 15th one is a runaway. We don't know what happened to her, something like that. Right, and they'll say we don't have the manpower. We don't. We know. We we can't. We can't be running down these things where we know statistically they're they're liable to be just. You know, they're they're mad. They ran away or whatever it is, and they're going to say, you know, we can't keep everybody safe unless you want to have cops on every corner. Roy would have said because Roy did say to me that you know that we could do a lot more self-policing in this society if we cared more, but we tend to deal in stereotypes. We tend to deal in in an over overhyped thing. We we love stories about you know the missing girl who finally found two weeks later and the viaduct, all the rest of it, there should be something in society short of uniformed policemen that that responds to that. I'm not making a prescription, but I'm just saying that that I I just don't think that you're ever going to have the the the time the resources of the money to have so such a well trained force to you know to actually be able to respond real time, and I don't know if you know in this society if if the cops said you know the only way we're going to do this is we're going to have to put you know surveillance cameras everywhere, which is basically what has happened. But everybody's going to say, "Well, where's our privacy? Well, there you go, right?
Stephen Michaud
Trade off.
Stephen Michaud
I do, I, I, I do point out when I speak about Ted's is that he would have to completely revise his mo because you know he would walk up to girls in parking lots. Well, today they would get him on a camera, right? So he would have you know he would have to come up with something. He would have to adapt, if you if you will. But I know I'm kind of wandering around here now, but I I just don't I think that the societal alterations necessary to make people safe from these people, really safe from these people, are you know are pretty much beyond us right now.
Stephen Michaud
Well, that's a good point to conclude, Stephen. But before we do, tell our listeners about your the Netflix special. You were involved in, and and some of your other books where they could get more information.
Stephen Michaud
Well, gee, there's a lot of them out there. There's Roy and I did two books together, and one is the evil that men do, and the other one is Dark Dreams. They're both still available in in soft cover. I've I've done a bunch of books about Bundy. I did a I did a a book about a guy who's not very well known named last name was De Bardelaben, and it's the the the current title of the book is beyond cruel, and Debardalabin is is is dead, deceased, but he's he's kind of every veteran police detectives and FBI investigators candidate for the absolutely worst criminal, lone lone wolf criminal who any of them had ever encountered. He did everything from bank robberies to counterfeiting to rape murders, abductions. I mean, he did everything. And if you want an introduction, you want to learn some more about Roy. There's quite a bit in there. He he brought the case to me, and it was certainly one of the more interesting ones that I did. I maybe I've seen too much of this stuff.
Stephen Michaud
Well, Stephen, you've also done the series on Netflix. Tell us a little about it.
Stephen Michaud
Netflix came about because when I interviewed Bundy at Florida State Prison, I tape recorded, audio tape recorded all our conversations, and
Stephen Michaud
and tell everybody briefly how you got in for that interview. It's amazing.
Stephen Michaud
Well, well, there's a reason why you don't see me in Florida too often anymore. I guess I'm okay, but I, I basically lied my way in. I, I told the, the authorities and my partner Hugh Ainsworth was involved with this too. That I was a an investigator working for for Bundy's for Bundy's appeals attorneys, and I got myself a PI license, and I got a friendly attorney to walk me into the the prison one day, and then for the next six months, I I just visited dead on death row, and I there there were some moments. I was certain that at any moment they were going to open the door and say, "Please come with us. But I got through with it, and it was it formed the basis of this four-hour series that ran on Netflix years. I guess it's still on, called Conversations with a killer, and it's a it's an unusual set of tapes because it you know I spoke to him for six months and I had to devise some little tricks to get Ted to talk, and so he reveals himself indirectly in in the third person, but then time to time moves into the first person, and it's all on tape. So you've got a TV, and you get Netflix. I'm sure you can see it. It's an interesting exercise. Four hours of Ted's a lot, though.
Stephen Michaud
Stephen, what do you think it is with our fascination of serial killers and violent criminals, especially among women. I know my my audience is about 70% female.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah,
Stephen Michaud
and I've had some send me emails saying, you know, I listen to this and I I wonder if that significant other in my life might hold some dark secret.
Stephen Michaud
Um, Yeah, I you know I pondered this a great deal, and I I remember vividly sitting in courtrooms where Ted was being tried, and front row center would be all these young girls, young girls, teenage girls, and there was a there was a an untruth story about Ted that he had a he had a weakness for girls with long hair parted in the middle and wearing hoop earrings, and it was there was not a bit of truth to it, the only thing that was true about it was that in the early 1970s, into the mid 1970s, a lot of girls wore long straight hair part in the middle and hoop earrings. It was fashion, but these girls would come to to court with their hair parted in the middle. Grown out long, wearing hoop earrings, and try to get Ted's attention. And he would, you know, he never once in a while leaned back in the defense table and give him a little bit of a smile. And it was like Elvis, the Beatles. I mean, it was amazing. And they were fascinated by it. I, I, I still get a lot of correspondence from people, girls who are now not girls anymore. They're in their 70s and 80s, who are telling me stories of the night that Ted raped them. I think you know maybe some of them are true, but I think a lot of them are fantasies. So there's something about that, and that's you know that's I don't think guys have that quite that same fantasy, but guys fantasize about Ted in a very different way, and that is that they look at how he got away with what he got away with for so long. It you know maybe this maybe there's something primitive in in men that respond to that, but they women see that the way a potential victim would see him. Yeah, but a man, no man can ever, a very few men, I guess, would say could ever consider what it would be like to walk into a bar and know that there's very possibly somebody in that bar who would like to tear your head off for you. Who's you know, it's it's it's it's the fact that these these guys move among us undetected and undetectable, and then we start saying, well, if they can do that, they must have supernatural powers. They're, you know, just nobody could do that. Well, it's really easy to do. I, I, I remember when I did a lot more talking about this. I, I would say, you know, you probably would have a lot more like abducting and killing and and getting rid of the body, getting away with abducting and killing five women than stealing five airplanes or or maybe five candy bars. It it as long as as long as as the victim can't be connected to the killer by the normal connections of family, friendship, all the rest of it, if they are stranger crimes, they are very, very hard, very hard to solve. And you know, I example Macduff. I have no doubt has got bodies scattered around in Texas that'll never be found, and and I know that Ted certainly has bodies scattered all over the United States that'll never be found. The
Stephen Michaud
investigators do believe that about McDuff. They think their bodies all the way up to Kansas, perhaps in Mexico, that will never be found. They also think there are other accomplices that got away with murder.
Stephen Michaud
Well, that was for well again. McGuff is your your your area of special expertise, but you know he found that mo to work to have some you know some somebody along with him that worked for him. So he he would repeat it, you know, when appropriate.
Stephen Michaud
And so, yeah, for our listeners, mo is typically the behavior meant to ensure that the modular success gets away with it, protects his identity.
Stephen Michaud
Yeah, you can call it their signature,
Stephen Michaud
right?
Stephen Michaud
That they they know that this works and that this does not work. But it's important to to add when you talk about that is yeah it's how they operate, and it's and it is informed and directed by their experience. But also really important to it is what's going on in their heads and their fantasies because it's it's what they're trying to do is is is fulfill a fantasy as well as not get caught. So you have you know you have more than one agenda going on with an MO.
Stephen Michaud
So does the fantasy then play into what we call the ritual, the behavior that heightens yeah psychosis? Yeah, yeah. Ritual
Stephen Michaud
behavior it it it is Ritualized, certainly, yeah, but yeah, it's a you know you they all if they if they don't get caught they all change over time because the the fantasy is never static, and they learn you know sometimes they learn new things just in the course of committing their crimes, and they say, "Woo, is this fun or whatever? Let me try this or something else, or you know. And some of them pick up tips when they're incarcerated. You know, these guys, you know, they they talk to each other about trade craft, right?
Stephen Michaud
Yes.
Stephen Michaud
So that's a. That's another rich source of of inspiration, if you will.
Stephen Michaud
Well, Stephen, thank you for sharing your years of insight. I want to tell our listeners: Stephen has been described as one of the world's best true crime writers. I encourage you to pick up his books. You can't put them down. Stephen, thank you.
Stephen Michaud
Thank you, Robert. I I don't know if you can ever say you can enjoy one of these conversations, but I always I'm always glad for the opportunity to to talk about this stuff because it's there's a lot of room for mistakes and what people think about, and I I try to be an apostle for for clear-headedness if I can.
Stephen Michaud
We want to be your favorite podcast, and we'll appreciate your review wherever you are listening to this podcast. If you have a suggestion or know of a case we should look into, email us at [email protected]. To follow our email messages with updates and bonus information from episodes, please join our fan base at truecrimereporter.com. True Crime Reporter is a trademarked and copyrighted news production, hosted and written by me, Robert Riggs, executive producer Elizabeth Arnold, producer and operations manager Grace Woodward, producer Syler Burr, original music for the Free to Kill series, Blair King. Sound design for Free to Kill, Matt Stoker. Graphics, Brian David Kerr. You can read more about all of our news team members at TruecrimeReporter.com. Please tell your friends who love true crime that they can bypass secondhand tales and get their true crime fix here with authentic stories straight from my reporter's notebook. Sign up for my free newsletter, Stories to Keep You Safe, on the TrueCrimeReporter.com homepage. It's your gateway to a world of knowledge and awareness for personal safety. And while there, purchase my audio books and other books which feature serialized stories you won't hear on the podcast. This is a copyrighted production by True Crime Reporter in Dallas, Texas. Thanks for listening, and until we meet again, stay alert and stay safe. This is Robert Riggs reporting.
