John Douglas - Mind Hunter: Inside the FBIs Elite Serial Crime Unit

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Copyright 1995 by Mindhunters, Inc.

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Includes index.

ISBN 0-684-86447-9

eISBN 978-0-6848-6447-1

John Douglas

Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, with Robert K. Ressler and Ann W. Burgess
Crime Classification Manual, with Ann W. Burgess, Allen G. Burgess, and Robert K. Ressler

Mark Olshaker

Nonfiction

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience

Fiction

Einsteins Brain
Unnatural Causes
Blood Race
The Edge

To the men and women of the FBI Behavioral Science and Investigative Support Units, Quantico, Virginia, past and presentfellow explorers, partners on the journey.

Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth oerwhelm them,
to mens eyes.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet

This book has been very much a team effort, and it could not have been accomplished without the tremendous talents and dedication of each member of that team. Chief among them are our editor, Lisa Drew, and our project coordinator and "executive producer" (and Marks wife), Carolyn Olshaker. Right from the beginning, they both shared our vision and provided the strength, confidence, love, and good counsel that nurtured us through the effort to realize it. Our profound gratitude and admiration go equally to Ann Hennigan, our talented researcher; Marysue Rucci, Lisas able, indefatigable, and endlessly cheerful assistant; and our agent, Jay Acton, who was the first to recognize the potential of what we wanted to do and then made it happen.

Our special thanks go to Johns father, Jack Douglas, for all of his recollections and for so carefully documenting his sons career, making organization a breeze; and to Marks father, Bennett Olshaker, M.D., for all of his advice and guidance on issues of forensic medicine and psychiatry and the law. We are both extremely fortunate to have the families we do, and their love and generosity are always with us.

Finally, we want to express our appreciation, admiration, and heartfelt thanks to all of Johns colleagues at the FBI Academy in Quantico. Their character and contribution is what made the career chronicled in this work possible, which is why the book is dedicated to them.

John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, July 1995

MINDHUNTER

Inside the FBIs Elite Serial Crime Unit

John Douglas
and Mark Olshaker

A Lisa Drew Book

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Prologue

I Must Be in Hell

I must be in hell.

It was the only logical explanation. I was tied down and naked. The pain was unbearable. My arms and legs were being lacerated by some kind of blade. Every orifice of my body had been penetrated. I was choking and gagging from something shoved down my throat. Sharp objects had been stuck in my penis and rectum and felt like they were tearing me apart. I was bathed in sweat. Then I realized what was happening: I was being tortured to death by all the killers and rapists and child molesters Id put away in my career. Now I was the victim and I couldnt fight back.

I knew the way these guys operated; Id seen it over and over again. They had a need to manipulate and dominate their prey. They wanted to be able to decide whether or not their victim should live or die, or how the victim should die. Theyd keep me alive as long as my body would hold out, reviving me when I passed out or was close to death, always inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible. Some of them could go on for days like that.

They wanted to show me they were in total control, that I was completely at their mercy. The more I cried out, the more I begged for relief, the more I would fuel and energize their dark fantasies. If I would plead for my life or regress or call out for my mommy or daddy, that would really get them off.

This was my payback for six years of hunting the worst men on earth.

My heart was racing, I was burning up. I felt a horrible jab as they inched the sharp stick even farther up my penis. My entire body convulsed in agony.

Please, God, if Im still alive, let me die quickly. And if Im dead, deliver me quickly from the tortures of hell.

Then I saw an intense, bright white light, just like Id heard about people seeing at the moment of death. I expected to see Christ or angels or the devilId heard about that, too. But all I saw was that bright white light.

But I did hear a voicea comforting, reassuring voice, the most calming sound Id ever heard.

"John, dont worry. Were trying to make it all better."

That was the last thing I remembered.

"John, do you hear me? Dont worry. Take it easy. Youre in the hospital. Youre very sick, but were trying to make you better," was what the nurse actually said to me. She had no idea whether or not I could hear her, but she kept repeating it, soothingly, over and over again.

Though I had no idea at the time, I was in the intensive care unit of Swedish Hospital in Seattle, in a coma, on life support. My arms and legs were strapped down. Tubes, hoses, and intravenous lines penetrated my body. I was not expected to live. It was early December of 1983, and I was thirty-eight years of age.

The story begins three weeks earlier, on the other side of the country. I was up in New York, speaking on criminal-personality profiling before an audience of about 350 members of the NYPD, the Transit Police, and the Nassau and Suffolk County, Long Island, Police Departments. Id given this speech hundreds of times and could just about do the whole thing on autopilot.

All of a sudden, my mind started to wander. I was aware I was still talking, but Id broken out in a cold sweat and I was saying to myself, How in hell am I going to handle all these cases? I was just finishing up with the Wayne Williams child-killing case in Atlanta and Buffalos race murders. I had been called in to the "Trailside Killer" case in San Francisco. I was consulting with Scotland Yard on the "Yorkshire Ripper" investigation in England. I was going back and forth to Alaska, working on the Robert Hansen case, in which an Anchorage baker was picking up prostitutes, flying them out into the wilderness, and hunting them down. I had a serial arsonist targeting synagogues in Hartford, Connecticut. And I had to fly out to Seattle the week after next to advise the Green River Task Force in what was shaping up as one of the largest serial murders in American history, the killer preying mainly on prostitutes and transients in the Seattle-Tacoma corridor.

For the past six years, I had been developing a new approach to crime analysis, and I was the only one in the Behavioral Science Unit working cases full-time. Everyone else in the unit was primarily an instructor. I was handling about 150 active cases at a time with no backup, and I was on the road from my office at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, about 125 days a year. The pressure was tremendous from local cops, who themselves were under tremendous pressure to solve cases, from the community, and from the families of victims, for whom I always had enormous empathy. I kept trying to prioritize my workload, but new requests kept pouring in daily. My associates at Quantico often said I was like a male whore: I couldnt say no to my clients.