Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 92 | The Killer Across The Table | Guest: John Douglas

Episode Date: May 4, 2019

Jeffy brings you a very special guest to talk about his latest book "The Killer Across The Table." It's time to get inside the criminals mind on Chewing The Fat John Douglas is the inspiration for the character of Holden Ford on Netflix’s MINDHUNTER—we expect season two to drop sometime this year. John Douglas is a highly sought after speaker and can speak to various ‘news of the day’ crimes but this is his time to shine.  He has directly worked and/or had overall supervision in over 5,000 violent crime cases over the past 48 years. He is currently chairman of the board of the “Cold Case Foundation.” One of the foremost experts and investigators of criminal minds and motivations, he is a fascinating topic in his own right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Douglas, the FBI criminal profiler and the inspiration for the hit Netflix series Mind Hunter. And if you haven't seen Mind Hunter yet, what are you doing with your life? Such a loser. He has a book out called The Killer Across the Table. And it's unlocking the secrets of serial killers and predators with the FBI's original mine hunter, John Douglas. And, right. And John, thank you so much for coming on chewing the fat. First of all.

It's a honor to have you here. Well, thank you. So you, as a profiler, years ago, started thinking to yourself, man, these guys might have something in common. What was the first thing that clicked in your head that brought that to your attention? Because you were the first to think of something like that. Well, when I came back to the FBI Academy, I was only 32 years old and kind of like the character portraying me in the show.

And I was in the military, I had four years there, I had seven years in the field as an agent, a Hoss negotiated, and a SWAT team member, and a couple of graduates. So he hadn't done much. He hadn't done much before you came back to the FBI. So I got back to Quantico, what they were teaching, they were teaching a lot of war stories about offenders. And for example, like Charles Manson, they'd be talking about Charles Manson. Then all of a sudden the hand shoots up in the audience and say, wait a minute, I worked that case. You got your facts wrong.

So the concept was to, while doing. we'd call road schools. You'd be out for two weeks in a row for in California. Let's go into San Quentin. Let's see if Manson would talk to us. So really, initially I did it for survival to be just a good instructor being so young back at the FBI Academy. But then as we did a couple of more, then by coincidence, Dr. Ann Burgess from Boston College, who in the series is playing Wendy. She was a, she's basically a numbers cruncher, and does instruction in the area of forensic, forensic nursing. And she used to want to tell us, you know, let's come up with an instrument, a protocol.

What you're doing is very similar to a heart attack research study that we just completed where we, we have 20,000 men and we're able to predict what are the indicators. What causes it right, right, right. We'll have a heart attack. So we did the same, she said, let's do the same. she said, let's do the same thing. And then that's when we come up with the instrument, and then you start doing the interviews. And you start seeing some patterns.

And the theory, and what I always say, it's why plus how equals who, when it's an on-sub case, on-known subject case, you're trying to determine the who. Now, in the case of incarcerated subjects, we know who they are. And let's really get into the hows and the whys of the behavior. Why this particular victim? why they did the things that they did?

And is there any similarities in their background? Or how about pre-offense behavior? What happened prior to the crime and post-defense behavior? What did you do? Where'd you go? So you start seeing patterns. And then you start applying it to cases that were being submitted to me at Quantico. So as you're coming and talking to these guys, you know, obviously the killer across the table,

when did you realize that what these guys had in common when did you realize that holy cow I mean this really is something most of them without exception we found dysfunction in the families

that they came they came from their abuse of some type of sexual physical type of abuse families that were broken, you know, broken up. And then came, they started seeing some indicators on the part of them, where we call it the Homicidal Triangle. We have aneurysus bedwining because of emotional problems

that the child is being abused. That may show up in a teacher who has this student. You also see fire setting showing up, but the big one was animal cruelty that showed up in early childhood. In fact, just a year ago, the FBI stress is now tracking animal cruelty and is having police fill out forms that specifically addresses animal cruelty. Because it's a couple of years, but they realized, hey, maybe, you know, Douglas and Wrestler back in the 70s and 80s, they knew something about it. You feel like that would have already been going on, though, for some reason. You would have thought that.

I mean, it's just, no, over the years I've done so much in the area of not just criminal profiling and becoming in contact with forensic psychologists and correctional personnel. It just surprises me. You would think that from the research that we did, and what my saying, what I've always said is to understand the artist you must look at the crime. So how can you, Mr. Probation Officer or Mrs. Parole Officer, or you, who's making decisions regarding whether they should stay in prison or the treatment. If you don't even look at the crime, the crime is reflection of the offender, and you must look at the crime, and hopefully if you don't understand what it, how to interpret it, how to interpret it,

they'll have somebody interpret it for you, and that should have an indication of whether or not this person should receive treatment or what kind of treatment, or should we let this person, you know, out of prison after he or she serves, you know, serves their sentence. term, yes. But they still don't do it. They don't make, they don't, a lot of times they get angry at me and they'll say, we don't, we don't want to see that material. It'll prejudice us.

If we see what the subject did to a victim, whether rape, murder, or whatever. And I said, well, then you don't have no business making those decisions. It's supposed to make a difference. So, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, yeah, no, it should. And it's just, you know, that's why, as I do. developed the program at Quantico, I got away from the psychiatric side and started,

developed what we have is the crime classification manual that I did as part of a doctorate and just it throws out terms like psychopath and schizophrenia. It doesn't mean anything to police officers. Plus, when you interview these guys in prison, they'll have multiple diagnosis. And what does it tell you? So went more to descriptors of the crime, that this is a disorganized crime scene. What do you mean by that? That means that if the person who perpetrate his crime is sloppy, careless, probably indicative of youthful offender,

could be under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time or have some mental disability versus organized in the crime, not organized crime in the mafia, but organized crime, meaning it's precipitate. You have this planning involved in the case. The subject goes out of his way not to leave much evidence. The crime is maybe a little bit more sophisticated. And so you start, you know, we start getting away, you know, from the psych terms. But even to the day, I mean, you still have people, they don't want to look or the, I can't look at that. It'll give me nightmares.

I'll have nightmares. Well, you have no business that I'm making these decisions regarding a convicted balance. So we're talking to John Douglas, author of The Killer Across the Table, which is available Tuesday, May 7th, but you can pre-order it on Amazon or wherever books are sold. John, when you first started, the information super highway was not even a highway. It was barely, might not even have been a paved road. It was probably a dirt road. So, but when I watch, when you watch your show Mind Hunter or you watch the Bundy episodes, you see how much information didn't get passed from police department to police department,

which helped the criminal so much. How with what we have today as far as information, and really we're just now, you said, keeping track of animal cruelty cases, which is really surprising. But with the information superhighway that we have today, how's that helped? Well, has it.

It has it. Yeah, I don't know. The problem we have in this country is we have over 17,000 and different law enforcement agencies. And there's not really a standard of training for them. And I really got to see this since I've left the Bureau, and I've done cases to help free people from being wrongfully convicted and giving false confessions.

So we tried to develop in the early 80s a program called VICAP, violent criminal apprehension program, and where police will submit information pertaining to their homicides. It goes back to Quantico, We've run it through the computer system to see if there are other cases similar that's going on around the country. The problem is they have ICAP today, but even today, since the early 80s, but it's not a success. And the reason it's not a success is that unless you make the program mandatory, that the police you must submit these cases to the FBI, or you've got to cut off funding or do something like that.

So it's a voluntary program. They don't want it like, oh, this is more paperwork for us to do. So the Information Highway, it's there. I mean, it's there, but it's not being used. And I mean, I've been involved in cases on a local level where it's not even so much the information highway. It's just the interaction between departments. And you would think that, you know, we're competing or against each other. There's a tug-a-war to which lab is going to handle the forensic evidence.

and so it's, it could be much better. I'm just surprised after all these years that we have not, you know, we train the Canadians, and they call it by class, violent crime classification system that's successful, but it makes a little easier for them because they have, you know, fewer territories, and so it's easy for them to, you know, to tie in a few police agencies to tie it altogether. But in this country, it's a voluntary program, and therefore it does no good. It's no good if, say, LATD participates in Orange County doesn't.

Or L.O. doesn't participate. And it just seems like it would work to everyone's advantage. I know that, you know, while they're making it mandatory is another argument, but it just seemed that it would work to everyone's advantage to do it. Yeah, and then you could, the other thing, I mean, we have a very good handle on in the era of rape, rape classification. And we've done a lot of research. We've interviewed men who've raped five or more women.

And we know that if we computerize this, we computerize the program sharing information, we could be able to tie on those cases. And what makes it easier is because you have a surviving victim. So when you do a behaviorly-oriented-type interview with the victim, you're looking for three areas, and that is the verbal assault, the sexual and the physical assault. And, for example, verbal from the initial confrontation,

if during the Sex Act, if there was verbal going on, with the subject, and then how he left the victim. What did he say to the victim? Did he threaten or just we walk out the door? And the same thing was sexual. What all did he do, first, second, third? If there is a first, second, third. And then it's the process.

The physical, how much forces you use. So if we get that information and you have a computerized system, and police were participating, we can, you know, link cases together, you know, relatively, you know, easy. But it's just just not being involved. employed. Amazing. So John Douglas, author of The Killer Across the Table, in the book, you decided on four

big cases. And I know that, you know, you talk about, you know, the Y plus the how equals the who. How did you decide what you were going to do for the book, what you were going to use? Well, these four were kind of ones I've even done after, after I got out of the bureau. And I still do interviews. And Donald Harvey, he killed, you know, we don't need no exact number, but. 70 plus patients when he was like an orderly in hospitals. I was involved when I was still in the bureau when that case came in and I helped the

agents on the interrogation techniques to use. So that was involved with Todd Colhep from South Carolina was a new one and I did a show it's going to air the end of the summer for investigative discovery on Todd Colette. Very interesting case, 15 years old. He rapes a 14-year-old girl, typical background. dysfunction, neglected, abandoned, and smart. A smart guy, but a 15, he rapes a 14-year-old girl. He spends 15 years in prison, gets out, and it comes back to South Carolina, where he will

kill four people in a motorcycle shop, and then he kills three others, and what was really interesting, the one in 2016 that got him caught was he kept a woman in a container in South Carolina for a couple of months, and he wishes he would have killed him when I I did the interview because he doesn't like being incarcerated. But when he got out of prison, he got two college degrees. He got a real estate license, then a broker's license, then he owned a real estate company. He also had a private pilot's license, a real smart guy. He's asking me, you know, like, why do I do this?

And why did I do these crimes? I said, you know, I said it's predictable. It's kind of predictable. I don't forgive you. You made the choice. You made bad choices. But your background, man. Look at your abandoned by your mother.

Your mother's having affairs with other men. You see that. You're abused by your grandfather. You try to make it back to Arizona where your dad is, and he really doesn't want anything to do with you. And so that night you go out and you raped a girl in your neighborhood at 15 years of age. So all they did, they put him in prison for 15 years,

and all you do is you put him on ice, I say. You put him on ice for 15 years, and you haven't really changed what's going on. We don't really have any rehabilitation. No, what I usually say, Jeff, is that you can't rehabilitate those who would not have habilitated to begin with. So they're really, what are you going to try to bring them back to? I mean, right from early childhood, and this is not for all offenders. I'm talking about predatory type of offenders.

It's nothing you can do for them. Oh, sure, you'll say, oh, yes. he's a model prisoner. Well, yeah, he should be a model prisoner. Yeah, I mean, what do you want? He's got three square of meals and a cot, and he gets to work out in the gym and get muscles. So, I mean, it's just, he should be a model prisoner, and they release these guys.

You would think that a lot of, and to me, and maybe, you know, you've found different, but to me, it would seem that someone like this man would almost enjoy the strict rundown of what prison gives him. Yeah. Yeah, he's in South Carolina. Now he's communicating back and forth. I mean, he doesn't like a lot of murders inside the prison where he is. But he's a big, he's a big tough guy.

But no, he doesn't like that. He wouldn't, he wouldn't, I ask him about being sexually abused in prison. He wouldn't admit to that. I really think he probably was because he was only 15 when he went to a man's, a men's penitentiary in Arizona. So he's a real interesting guy. And then this guy, you know, up in Joseph McGowan in New Jersey, it was, that I got involved.

And he raped and murdered a seven-year-old child collecting Girl Scout cookies and came to his house. And he was a schoolteacher and was over Easter time. And it was amazing doing the interview. The probation and parole kind of swore me in, calling Queen for a day, and I went in there, and he knew who I was, but I had low lighting, very dark room, very little furniture, and I just talked generally about things, and finally kind of got to the crime without using violent words or referring to her as a little girl,

and it was amazing. All of a sudden he kind of drifts off, looks off to the side, and he's just in a trance, and he's sweating and it's freezing and it's jail cell that we're in. And his pecks and his chest are trembling as he's talking to me and he says, John, when I heard the knock on the screen door, I knew I was going to kill her. I looked up to the screen door and I knew I was going to a killer. So then he takes me through this whole thing, this whole thing. And I'm very supportive of him.

And I don't talk like, you know, you're not going to get out because my analysis will determine if he gets out. He served the maximum sentence 30 years in prison and he could get out. And what really was revealing, and the parole board was shocked at the information provided. But I asked him, I said, when you get out, where are you going?

And he says, New York, and I said, man, I said, you know, I was raised in New York. It's expensive. And he looks to see if the guards are looking at him. And he whispers to me, I got money, John. You got money? I'm making license plates. How do you get money? Joe. And he said, when my

mother died, I got life insurance money. When my grandmother died, he was living with his mother, and he was 28 years old school teacher with a master's degree, living with his grandma. She died, got money, and the house is sold, got money. He says, and I said, where's the money? And I said, where's the money? I put it out of state. Why did you put it out of state? So the victim, family can't get any of the money. And how much you got? He says, 600,000. I said, wow. I said, you'll do, you'll do real great, you know, New York, man, you'll live it up. You get to New York. Well, the next day, I slam dunk his ass, man. I go, I go back to the parole board.

I go over to parole board. I take them all through this. And they're looking at me. And how did you get that? And I got it. Because I went in there, not taking notes, no notes. I just knew his case. I studied his case backwards and forwards.

No tape recorder, unlike the show Mind Hunter, always taping none. That's, they're paranoid. dealing with paranoid individuals. You can't be taking notes and taping the interviews. And I just knew the case upside down and backwards and forwards. And I told him how I went about doing it. And so he ended up giving them a hit. They give him another 30-year hit, which doesn't mean they'll get another 30, but I could get out sooner. Speaking of that, though, the paranoid individuals and not being able to, you know, not recording and not taking notes, how, how, how do you difficult was it to reach a point where you're not thinking, you bastard?

I don't even want to talk to you. No, sometimes what I do sometimes, I'll be looking in the eyes. And I'm looking in the eyes and I'm looking in the eyes and I'm thinking, you know, and say this guy was like Ed Kemper, this big six foot nine, you're right. A guy who I interviewed several times. And I'm looking at these are the eyes, these are the eyes that the victims were looking at. But the facial expression was, I'm thinking it wasn't like this. totally, totally different, this rage.

And so you have to, you know, I was really good at it. One of the worst I interviewed was a guy on California named Biddecker. His nickname in prison was Plyers Biddecker because he would, he would torture his victims. And when he was incarcerated as a rapist, he met another guy named Norris. And while in prison, they fantasized when they got out, they were to rape teenagers for every year of a teenager's life from 13 to 19. And they built a van called a murder Mac. And then they started going around, picking up victims.

And they would, insulated the van, windowless van, insulated so no one can hear any screaming or anything inside. And then they tape recorded the torturing of the victims and scripted the victims. Oh, my God. By scripting me, they want them to say things. Almost as they want to say things like they're enjoying being tortured. So I interviewed him and I'm thinking, and that was interesting, as I was with a woman, a female FBI agent, and she would ask a question, he would never look at her.

He always looked, he always looked at me, and it was just really strange, and she was real soft-spoken, but if he could, he would tear her head off, he had the opportunity. So he was one. I played that tape. I have the tapes of that, and I played the tape for Scott Glenn. when he portrayed my character in silence of the lambs. And it was against the death penalty until he heard that.

And he said, and he was really emotional. And he said, John, I never knew there were people like this. And I said, there are people like this. And we're dealing with this all the time. And to portray, hopefully they'd be portraying the unit correctly. And I do this with other actors. Hopefully they're portraying it. Because I nearly died at age 38.

on the green river murdochase of viral encephalitis and it was in a coma on a hotel room for three days and and i was when i came out of a coma a week later paralyzed i'm okay today but but back then i came home in a wheelchair and and i was i was just uh i was just book speaking when i went to psychologist he said you have post traumatic stress disorder plus if you didn't have this uh if this didn't happen see you would have a heart attack or something and I was just drained, just drained. So it's difficult, it's difficult work. And some of the shows on television you see today,

some are good betraying, you know, others are just, it's just Hollywood, really Hollywood eyes. You don't have to, and I don't expect you to say which ones, but you can if you want, go ahead. Well, yeah. Well, something, you know, like, well, the criminal minds are very popular. It's a very, and they have my name and my picture. on their website, which I never,

they're trying to indicate that I have something to do with the show, which I did not. But it's, John, you didn't ask for a cut. We don't, I mean, you're not pulling your gun,

really, when you get back to Quantico. Right. You're not pulling your gun. You're coaching police. You're a coach. You're coaching prosecutors. That wouldn't be much of a show,

though, John. No, yeah, no. So even in my show, in the, well, the Mindhunter show,

yeah, it's, it's funny, I'll tell you, Jeffrey. My wife, I've been a school teacher for 47 years and there's a sex scene in the first or second episode there and where this girlfriend

is showing him some things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, and my wife says, is that supposed to be me? You know, here she is teaching in the small community. And so, I'm like, sure as hell isn't me. I can tell you that bad much. No, that was my girlfriend, honey. Don't worry about it.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. So speaking of the death penalty, though, John, you know, I've been, you know, I'm, you know, really a proponent of it for you know i mean if you've been found guilty and and we've gone through the process it should happen but while we're finding we're seeing more and more in today's world where uh you know really the great state of texas that i live in is about the only one that's got a fast track and all the other states are trying to put a halt on it are you still a believer in it i am but they have to have i am they have to have more when you get to trial more than say like eyewitness testimony and and the confessions are

And like when I was on, I did a show just a couple weeks ago with the Mandanax from Italy. I helped free her out of Italy, and I helped Damien Eccles of the West Memphis Three. And Joe Burlinger moderated because he did Paradise Law Series about those cases. And in both those cases, you're getting false confessions, the tactics used. And I've seen other cases around here in Virginia where I am, you have in Norfolk Four, were four sailors individually confessed to the crime. Then they did DNA. Well, it's not his DNA.

Well, but he must have been there. So they work on this guy and he confesses or gives the name of somebody else. So I have problems there. But when you talk about cases where you have the forensic, we have the DNA or we have, you know, really good, you know, from witness testimony, you know, and particularly multiple, you know, A series of cases. No, I believe in it. It's just some of the...

I usually say, it's easier to get an innocent person to confess than a real guy to confess a real subject because an innocent person like Amanda Knox was tag teamed by 10 interrogators over a 40-hour period of time, tag teamed her and even that so she finally you know kind of gives in it gives in to them because he starts to say this person well they'll straighten us out when my attorney and I get my attorney and we'll straighten us out because you know they'll see that you know that I'm innocent well no that's not that doesn't happen that way because they have you down you're confessing you know to a crime or you're doing whatever so it's but yeah when I see these predatory types or

Or I see, I think we should have it too in corrections. The job of a correctional officer is, it's a tough job, a terrifying job. Yeah, no kidding. But if you kill a pull of corrections, and you say you're in there for life, you've got life imprisonment. But you don't get death. You don't have death. Who's to stop you from killing a correctional guard or other inmates? Other inmates, yeah.

You just need it. You just, you know, for safety, you know, safety, you know, reasons. But I show a lot of empathy during the interviews, but afterwards, you know, people think, did you change, John? Yeah, I said, no, not really. I said, if you need someone to volunteer to pull a switch, I'm here. You know, I just finished doing the interview where I was his best buddy. Right. We're talking to John Douglas, author of Killer Across the Table, and obviously part of, you know, Netflix series Mind Hunter.

Again, if you haven't seen it, why? but you should see it. And his latest book, The Killer Across the Table, available on Tuesday, May 7th, and you can pre-order it wherever books are sold. So, John, let me ask you, and by the way, thank you for coming on today. Oh, thanks for having me.

Very fascinating. I could sit here and talk to you for another hour, and you'll probably tell me, I have to go and click the phone. But over the years, what is the, just a couple last questions. What's the scariest thing that you learned over the years up to today? Because you never know what's going to turn the corner tomorrow.

The scariest thing. That made you really, was there anything? Well, first of the saddest thing is that when you see the backgrounds of some of these people, you know down the line they're going to be perpetrating the crime. If only they were taken out of the environment, Red Kemper was taken out of the environment that he was in. He never would have turned out to be a true. Okay.

Okay. So you say that. So are you, you know, we're talking about, we talk a lot now about, you know, as we go into, you know, that minority report thought of, you know, the pre-crime. How far do we go with that? Oh, I mean, yeah, you can't really. I mean. I know.

That's, I realize. I realize it's a fine line. I got it. Yeah. It's tough. But how far, I mean, do we go down that road? I mean, as far as like intercepting them in a young age. Yeah.

Yeah. I know, see, school teachers will come up to you, and they say, John, I see these indicators now. But sometimes you don't get the support. Then they don't want the administration doesn't want them to get involved. The teachers themselves don't want to get involved from some of the things that they see. They might get involved later down the road and not do it. Yeah, that's right. They will get involved.

But, you know, it's a shame. And then some of the bigger, the bigger schools, schools, these kids get lost in the shuffle. And, you know, the teachers just don't, they just don't have the time. You got to do their, you know, the preparation for the classes,

grading papers, and they don't want to get involved, you know, with the student or with the parents of, of the student, the parents are even around or wanting to help their, you know, their child.

So sad. But the scariest, I know, I guess the scariest is just, overall, it's just, they'll, when you do some of his worst crimes,

like, This Raider, the BTK Strangler, who I interviewed, it's just so nonchalant. It's like, let's go out to lunch. What do you want to eat for lunch? You know, it's just nothing. Right. There's nothing there. It doesn't really fit.

Yeah, nothing, you know, there. There's no remorse. And what's interesting is some of them live kind of so-called normal lives. Like Raider was married and had two kids and. Mr. Churchgoer, Mr. and everything all about him. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And you look past them.

So there's not even a look. Look or like, or he looks like a killer. You know, not at all. Monday was a pretty fairly attractive guy. Now, in the show right now, it's criticism because of Zach Ephraim. He's too handsome. He's too handsome. They're glorifying.

I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, it's not out of yet. Oh, the Ephraim. Yeah, the Ephraim one. Yeah. The Netflix one was pretty good, I thought. Yeah, I saw that one. Yeah.

Yeah, so Berlinger, I see where he's been defending about with Zach Ephraim. They're not trying to glorify him and make him. But that's who it was at the time, right? I mean. Well, it was, yeah. Oh, yeah, because I knew people when he was arrested down in Florida, I had an assistant director come up to me. He said, you know, my wife thinks that he's innocent.

And I said, your wife is wrong. He's guilty as sin. He's guilty as sin. I mean, we've been glorifying these people for years, in this country. I'm not saying it's a bad, well, I am, it is kind of a bad thing. But, I mean, if you watch the Netflix show with Bonnie and Clyde, which is fascinating, I don't know if you've seen it or not, if you have an opportunity to see it, but how they glorified them at the end and during the whole process was almost sickening.

Yeah, and it almost, yeah, they weren't exactly Robin Hood, but yeah, it was, but you're right. But you're right. And look, Jeffrey, I mean, it's kind of good for me. It's kind of good for me there are so many conferences now on crime crime cons and I was just in one like the one in New York and I did one here in D.C.

I'm going to London to do one for the first time. They did something like that. There's such interest but it's really interesting when you do those the people are just so into the crimes and they were being bombarded through television. But the majority of the office is about 90. I mean I always say about 90% women and why is that because they are the victims

of these crimes and you know and why are they so interested and it's like to me it's just like how i was interested the why plus how equals who i mean they want to know why i mean why are they look like us but how are they different or why are they different uh you know you know than us so it's just uh you know the why it's so strange when you when you uh when you first before you got into this and you were you were thought to your did you ever think to yourself that you were going to do this? I mean, or do you stumble with this and realize, you know, hey, this is me?

No, I'll tell you what happened is, because I was interested in psychology, industrial psychology at the time. But when I was in Detroit, my first office where we had 800 murders a year back in the 70s. I was born in Saginaw about 100 miles north of Detroit.

That's nice. Saginaw is nice. We had quite a few murders in that town when I was growing up. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's just but it was Super Bowl Sunday and we were arresting a couple hundred guys. in Detroit, organized crime figures, loan sharks and mafia family was pretty active there.

And one of the guys I arrested at the end of the day, and I was young, I was only, then I was like 26. Right. 26. And I have this guy arresting on his late. I'm about mid-30s. Mid-30s. He looks like a Paul Newman.

And I had him in the backseat of the car, handcuffed in the front, and another agent's driving the car. We're going to take him to Armory to book him. And I just like talking about it. So, Frank, why? Why are you doing this stuff, man? You arresting you every year or two or the police.

And he says, he looks over the window. It was raining that day. He says, you see those two rain drops over there? Yeah, what about him? I bet you the one on the left gets down to the bottom of the glass before the one on the right. And I said, I said, okay. Let's take a bell. And I'm money, bell, betty.

Right. So he wins. He wins. He wins the races dropped. Okay, we got down on the bottom. And he said, you see what I'm talking about? And I said, why? You just beat me in a raindrop race.

He said, no, man. He says, you don't get a kid. He says, we don't need a Super Bowl. All we need are two raindrops. We are who we are. Either you, the FBI, or the police, state police, city police, you're not going to change us. It's in it. It's our mind.

It's the way we think. And so you take that, and then when you got back to Quantico, went through there to Milwaukee, a few years and back to Quantico in 77. I was thinking the same concept, and that was it, you know, the, you know, like the wise of the behavior, and getting into the, let's really study them and see what makes them tick. And can we really, can you really change? Like you asked me a little while ago, can you really change that mindset? And the answer is not really. I don't know.

I don't know if you can. And if you can, how early do you get it to change it? That's right. It has to be real early, like elementary school early. Or, I mean, or earlier. I don't know that. I certainly don't have the answer, but I don't know that. It just seems so strange. So are you part of what we should do? I got another million dollar idea for you, John. It's just you and me talking here, you know. But I know that they have, you know, you're talking about they have all these conferences now.

But they also have, you know, companies that send you a monthly catch a killer, you know, hunt a killer, monthly. Oh, I saw that. We should start doing that. We should start doing that. I mean, it's just sad. I saw that. They wanted me to be part of that, as a matter of fact. There you go. There you go. I mean, criminal minds is just putting your picture up saying you've got a part of it. So maybe this game thing is doing the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah, I've seen it. John Douglas, FBI criminal profiler, my gosh. I thank you so much. Oh, thanks, Jeffrey. I can spend some more time with you. I know you're busy man and be on your way, and I can talk to you for so much longer. But I really appreciate your time.

Oh, thank you, Jeff. The book is A Killer Across the Table. And if I can do anything for you in the future, you know, except talk to you across the table. in a prison cell. I'd love to make that happen. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you. Thanks, Jeffrey. Bye, bye. The book, Killer Across the Table, out May 7th, Tuesday, or you can pre-order it wherever books are sold. But, I mean, he is a fascinating man, and I really appreciate him coming on. Music