Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 395 - Greg Cooper - Criminal Profiling and the Mind of Human Predators

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Greg Cooper has worked as an FBI Profiler, Law Enforcement Administrator, Police Training/Instructor, University/College Professor, and an International and Domestic Threat Assessment Advisor. He is an expert in Criminal Profiling, Prescriptive Interviewing and Interrogation, Investigations, and Multi-Agency Investigative Task Force consultation. Cooper has given Expert Witness testimony based on his work in serial crimes and cases involving homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping, terrorism, political corruption, white collar crime, product tampering, abduction, arson, and bombing. The Cold Case Foundation: https://www.coldcasefoundation.org/ Today's Sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com BetterHelp: Visit https://www.BetterHelp.com/CLEAREDHOT today to get 10% off your first month.

Okay, got the red smoke. Oh, west of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Oh, one minute. Where would I start, Greg? Well, it depends on you want to start directly with the foundation or how I got into it.

What, where I started that brought me here? I think talking about how you got ending with the foundation, not ending, but working our way to how you got to the foundation, would probably make more sense. Okay. I was reading the, who's either the insight? cover or the back cover. And the behavioral science unit at the FBI, please tell me that this is what the TV show Mind Hunters is based on.

It is. Yes. Yes, it is. One of the few TV shows where I was legitimately bummed, they didn't do a season two. Actually, no, wait. No, they did two. They did two. They didn't do it three.

That's right. Because I didn't find it until after they had done the two seasons, which is how I kind of prefer to find these shows because I can just, at my own pace. Yeah. And about halfway through season two started Googling when season three is coming out. It never happened, yeah.

It was a great show. They could have been successful. I don't know why they didn't. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. And if you are familiar with the podcast, you should be familiar with this brand. Some of my best friends are the founders of this organization. I love what they are doing,

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the Magnum PI. Looks like we're playing here with some camo, black tiger camo, a little traditional Vietnam tiger camo there. And of course, Tropical Thunder, who doesn't love that, some tanks, a water bottle. And then, of course, as you scroll down, I've talked about this many time, this rotating bar right here. It gives you every blend that Black Rifle makes from light to dark. You can shop subscriptions, shirt, sticker, or ECS, the exclusive coffee club, subscription. This bag of coffee was amazing, the knot tea blend. I believe I celebrated with that near or on the 4th of July. Like I said, they have been a supporter of mine for years. I couldn't be prouder of my relationship with them. I own one of their coffee shops here in

Montana. It's the only coffee that I drink. I say that when I'm actually in the valley when I'm traveling, I'll stop and get coffee wherever I need to. But if I ever have a choice, if I actually plan ahead, this is the coffee that I drink at all times. Is it because the coffee is good? Yes, but guess what? It's because the brand is even better. Black Riflecoffee.com. Check it out. Get some yourself. Yeah. Why the director, I don't know if he's the director or the producer, but he decided against it for some reason. I don't know why.

How close did that mirror the actual behavioral science unit, the creation of it? Because that started actually with the origin story of it, didn't it? Those two? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it did. Now, I will tell you, John Douglas, from my perspective, and most. He's got about, I know, 14, 15 books that he's co-authored after he retired from the FBI. He was the one modern-day pioneer, if you will, for the profiling unit and the profiling program for the FBI. He, excuse me, he is the one that trained me. I met him early on in my career as an FBI agent and stuck very close to him. because my whole perspective and desire was to become a profiler when I joined the FBI.

How would you heard about that? Because that's a very niche desire. Yeah. Well, I was a police chief of a small town. I tried to the mic about a fist away just for the audit. Yep, you're good. Closer than you would think. Okay. Yeah, you're good. So I was a police officer, Provo, Utah. That's where I started my law enforcement career. Finished a couple degrees there and had a actually applied to the FBI. Unfortunately, there was a hiring freeze that was put on. I went through all the interviews and all the tests, et cetera, and it looked like it was

going to happen. But there ended up being a hiring freeze, and I had to do something. So I finished my education, the bachelor's and a master's degree, and I ended up taking a job in about five years into my job with the Provo Police Department. and functioned as a patrolman and a detective and a undercover narcotics officer. After I graduated, with the master's degree, I thought, I want to do something different here. I want to do something getting into administration. I was enamored with my police chief, fantastic individual.

He was a mentor to me. So anyway, I saw this job that came up in Delta, Utah, small town. And I thought, well, why not? So I applied for it. And I was probably one of 12 people that applied for it. I was 27 years old and was probably the only guy that accepted the job after if they interviewed everybody. So I did that for two and a half years in Delta as a police chief. While I was there, and keep in mind, again, I was hoping that the FBI would open up and they'd start hiring me again.

So while I was there, a flyer came across my desk. And it had to do with this thing called profiling, criminal profiling. I was enamored by it. I thought, man, this is fascinating. This is something brand new. This is probably the early 90s or, excuse me, the late 80s. And I thought, here's an opportunity to get some training by two Epiope. agents that were going to come out to the Salt Lake Community College and teach this thing

on criminal profiling. It was going to be three days worth of training. So I attended. And I was overwhelmed. I thought, man, this is for me. I'm built for this. This is what I want to do. They showed some of that in the show, right, them traveling around to law enforcement.

Yeah. Absolutely. And so I went to the, went back to the office, you know, and I thought this is what I'm going to do. So the only thing I wanted to do in the FBI was to become a profiler. I had no other interest. But I was still waiting for the opportunity to get on to the FBI. So I went back to the job, and I'd say probably within about, luckily, within about

four months, I got a phone call from the FBI. I said, hiring freezes off. Are you still interested? Timing was perfect. That was 1985. and so I went in the FBI at 85 of April of 85. Once I got in there, again, my whole focus was to become a profiler. So I knew that John Douglas was the man.

He was running the program at the time. And so going back to the TV show, The Mind Hunter, he and Robert Ressler are the two main guys in the FBI that really started this whole concept. And the thing that made them stand out, of course, was the interview of the 33 or 36 serial killers. And all the information that they acquired during that time came as a result of those interviews. And they tried to find out the commonalities between these guys, what the pre-incident behavior was, the post-incident behavior, the kinds of behaviors that they engaged in during the commission of the crime between the victim and the offender.

And so with that information, eventually that was published in a book called sexual homicide patterns and motives. But John wrote his first book after he retired called Mind Hunter. And that's where that TV show came from that you're talking about. Why, again, my optic on this is based through the television show. It seemed like at least portrayed in the show, the 30 people that they talked with, they were clearly talking with law enforcement officers. Yes, they had already been caught and they were already incarcerated. But they were really, they just were really open and transparent.

And they knew that the FBI was going to use that information to try to target other people like them. Do they just assume that that behavior, like it's just their normal? So to them, it's just like having a conversation about what they had for dinner? I think they liked having a spotlight put on them as well. So there is a portion of that personality that once all the appeals have been completed, and they've got nothing else to lose, they know they're going to spend the rest of their life in prison, what do they have to lose now? In fact, from their perspective, they have everything to gain, because they're the experts.

Nobody understands it like they do. And John and Robert knew that, understanding this ego base that we all. have. It's no different with these particular kinds of offenders. If they've got nothing to lose and can act as, if you will, a hero type now because they can be the expert. They can teach you, the FBI agents. They can teach them this area that not many people have delved it into and who are experts at it and can provide information and insights that nobody else can.

And it goes back to the concept. If you're going to understand artwork, you want to talk to the artist. And that's who these people are. It's their artwork, and that's how they look at it. Yeah, I can see it from the point if they have nothing to lose

unless they're maybe in a state that doesn't have a death penalty and they talk a little bit too much about another state and a different activity and get moved. Yeah. That's true. That's right. And the interesting thing about these guys is their personalities. There are portions of their personalities that you like as human beings.

This is something that they've done. They've certainly violated the most unconscionable acts and committed the most unconscionable acts, you can imagine. But they're also human beings. And they also have basic needs like all of us do. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, or the 14 human motivators, if you want to talk about the id, the ego, the super ego, it's all there. And it's also manifest during the commission of these crimes. And what their motivating factors are about why they commit these crimes. But you asked earlier how close was the TV show to the book, Mind Hunter. And I will tell you that the interviews of the offenders, very, very close.

really accurate, did a fantastic job. But they did take some liberties with respect to characterizing John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Anne Burgess. They're nothing like the people that they displayed in the TV show. Their personal lives, there are some similarities. But very, very, very different, very different. Yeah, it's a constant battle between authenticity. and entertainment.

Yeah. I would hope that, well, first of, there's nothing to make a show about my life, but if they were going to, they need to have somebody way more exciting than myself. So I would be okay with that. Yeah, well, reading a little bit about your background, you're one of those true American heroes.

I think... I would strike all of that sentence, actually. I know you would. I get it, but it's people like you that they make movies about. They write books about. Oh, man, that would be a low Rotten Tomato score in my movie.

I'll be honest with you. I don't feel like I've ever done anything heroic in my life, but I was surrounded by people who they did things that I think you would tell yourself I could also do that. But you just don't know until the situation presents itself. Exactly. It's easy to sit back and be like, yep, yeah, well, we went through the same training program. I could do that too. Yeah. Like, God damn, I just watched that.

And I don't know if I wanted any part of that. Yeah. I can say that I was on a SWAT team. I was a sniper for a SWAT team in the FBI. but I didn't do anything in the things that you're doing and have done. That's for the better, though. It's, yeah. I love that the average police sniper shot is 77 yards.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. What's yours? Average? Oh, man. A couple miles. No, a couple miles is out there. When I went through the course, when this is back in 99,

I mean, we were shooting out well past 1,000 yards. But, again, there's also some inaccuracies and inauthent, authentic aspects of that. I hear a lot of people, they make a lot of claims about their military service. I tell people the claim I want to be known for is the seal sniper with the most confirmed misses. Because I can miss, like, I just just slap that trigger. Close your eyes and flinch a little bit.

So, yeah, we trained out to a thousand yards and on a static range where it's an E-type silhouette that comes up, okay, I probably have a good chance at least winging the thing at a thousand yards. You put it on a two-way range, an altitude, an angle. and wind and I mean, I might scare the guy. Yeah, well, I'll bet. A bit it scares him. If I do hit them, let's just say the luck bucket is a little bit full on that one and the

skill, you know, it's, yeah, I wish this stuff was as cool as people thought it was. And it's probably the same about your old job, too. Sure. Yeah, if people's only optic on what you did was Mindhunter, they probably have a little bit of a skewed optic on what the reality was. It's like, I don't know if you've ever watched Criminal Minds. Mm-hmm. And that's about our unit.

Yeah. And what the agents do in the unit and did mostly. I'm not sure what's going on back there right now. They still have profilers, but they're not doing the level, at least my understanding is they're not doing the level of research that they once did. Why is that? Would you imagine? I wish I knew the answer to that. And when you say research, are you talking about historical case?

Because I'm going to ask you, I mean, first off, how do you teach somebody how to teach somebody how? to be a profile. I would imagine a lot of it is looking backwards or looking at the information that you have. What would be an argument for reducing the amount of research that you do? Yeah, there wouldn't be. Not in our opinion. There was a lot of research done by the original group and the secondary group. I would be in the secondary group. And now they're probably three, four, probably four generations down now. They don't, if they are researching, they're not publishing a lot. That may be the difference.

Maybe they're researching, they're just not publishing it. Okay. But there is no, in my opinion, there is no excuse not to research and to continue to maintain a level of accuracy and integrity in the system. To be sure that, you know, what we, for example, what John and Robert did with, sexual homicide patterns and motives. Those were 30 serial killers. Is it the same thing

that they provided to us? Can they go out and corroborate that same information today with the current serial killers? Have things changed? Have things changed with respect to their backgrounds, their experiences, their family lives? Because you've got to find consistency or understand why the things have changed.

Well, they're access to people. has changed too. I mean, electronics, exposure, exposure, who knows what scrambles people's eggs, right? I don't know what makes a serial. Maybe you do. Why do some people end up as serial killers? Craig? Oh, that's okay. That's great question. We're glad you asked it. Well, I'd ask because... No, it's good. Do you come out of the box that way? Is it exposure in life, the combination of two, something traumatic happens?

Because the world that you grew up in, and I was probably at the tail end of that, and I say that saying, I remember my first interaction with the Internet. Yeah. So I'm probably the last generation or the generation right behind me will remember the transition between the two. My children don't remember a world without the Internet. Yeah. And I constantly remind them and other people that the internet and a smartphone is not giving your children access to the world. It's giving the world access to your children. So whatever it is that causes people to have that experience or to break them is the way I kind of look at it because normal people don't do those things.

It seems as if it used to be based probably on physically the world that's around you, but now we live in a world where you can see a lot of the world that you would never go to. And to me, personally, I would think you'd have to almost kind of circle back and make sure that everything that you're basing the system on still holds water. Definitely. I agree with that. And to answer, try to answer your question about why do people become serial offenders? Is it nurture versus genetics? You know, is it a combination of the same? from my perspective and my experience in dealing with these folks

and the cases that I've studied and the people that I've interviewed, it comes down for me to free will and choice. So why does one choose this direction versus another? Generally, you can find for most of these folks that there's been some level of exposure to sexual abuse, emotional, psychological abuse, physical abuse, some level to it. Not all of them. Now, you can get two people to grow up in the same family, two brothers grow up in the same family, as somebody like Ted Bundy would tell you. Ted Bundy, although it was a bit different

for his family life, he had all stepbrothers and sisters. Or I should say, say half brothers and sisters. Not step. He had a stepfather. Didn't know who his father was. But he started very young. And he indicated that he was introduced into pornography very, very early. You almost find that by far the majority of these people are introduced to pornography,

particularly certain types of pornography. And you can imagine the access that's available now. That is exactly where my head just went. The velocity and age at which people are exposed to that. Absolutely. If you were to put it on a scale, it's diving closer to, well, as men, I think I'm almost grown up at 47. I'm not actually trying very hard to be. So I'm not worried about it.

Women do, in fact, having somebody who has two sons and a daughter, they move at a faster space growing up. But it's diving back towards that inability of the brain to process, that exposure to it. Absolutely. I mean, I've heard stories of single. single-age, you know, single-digit kids. And I don't know if they mean to find it, but they find it. Oh, yeah. And I don't know if you can erase that from the hard drive once you have that exposure.

Oh, it's amazing. You think of these kids that are exposed at 12 years old, 11, 12, 13 years old, that are engaging in autoerotic activity. You know, where do they find out about this stuff? Well, they've been exposed to it somewhere, whether it's been on the Internet, whether they've read about it, whether they've been abused. at one level, have been introduced to it. It's incredible.

And with that access, I predict that we're going to go through a generation of some of the most heinous types of violence that we've ever seen. Is that just because, to use a gross, not meaning like disgusting, but a wide analogy, if you're a dial that's a zero to ten, and because of that exposure, you start off closer to a nine or a ten that you have to be so extreme to feel anything? Is that what's causing that? Yeah, I think what happens early on, they get exposed to some traumatic experiences.

Or they get introduced to a concept that may be thrilling to them, very curious, that their imaginations go with it. They see something on TV. Let's say they see a cop show. and here's the cop it's chasing a serial killer or somebody that's committed violence and then here's it in the same movie

a serial killer who has committed sexual violence and homicide but for some reason this individual is focusing not on becoming the cop or solving the crime but he's becoming

more enamored, more curious, more imaginative about this personality over here So I'd just like to point out that Michael watches our dog when we're gone. And more often than not, he still leaves Dexter as the TV show that he was watching, which is about, so I'm just letting you know that I'm on to you. I can already know. I've never watched Dexter at your house.

Oh, is it Tyler then? Must be Tyler, yeah. All I'm saying is when I'm gone, I come back. Who is watching season 19 of Dexter? Somebody between you and my middle son, this is playing at it. As soon as you started saying that, I'm like, oh, no. I get it. Think about the show Dexter.

Yeah, there you go. I'm going to assume that the producers, showrunners, creators didn't sit around a table like this and say, Greg, here's what we're going to do. Create a society of people that want to be exactly like this. They wanted to make a TV show. But that whole show, and again, there's the vigilante aspect. He's only targeting people that are evil. Explain it however you want to. There's season after season after season.

reason. I could 100% see that becoming as infatuating to a young, malleable mind as somebody who grew up watching pro baseball. And that's all that they were exposed to. And that's what they wanted to do instead. You bet. Probably, I mean, there's very different expressions of life. But yeah, I see where you're going with that. You know, and I think it's a combination of things. They've got bad experiences, whether it's sexual or violence, abuse, when we're talking about, or emotional and psychological, all of it overlaps.

And they have this sense of a lack of control in their lives. All of us need to have or believe that we have some control in our lives. Don't we all suffer from that to a degree? Yes. I certainly have my moments where, you know, and I don't think I'm unique in comparison to anybody else. It's normal and natural. And the difference becomes with these individuals who have been abused and not all abusers become serial offenders or even commit violence.

Like I said, you can get two people in the same household gone through the exact same experience. One becomes a criminal. Another one becomes a social worker. Yeah. So eventually he, he, she is going to identify with one or the other. And they feed that identification or that fantasy. We are a product of our imagination. You will agree, definitely looking at your background and experience.

You had to fantasize a lot about the things that you did in the military. They were all wrong, though. I had an idea of what I thought I was getting into completely wrong. That's right. It seemed like a good idea. Well, I just didn't have an imagination that was capable enough at that age to even hypothesize where the world would have let us. Sure. I had no – like, there's just no way.

What introduced you to it? My father. The first time I ever heard about the term Navy SEAL was with my dad, who was not a SEAL. Okay. He was in the Brownwater Navy, the first squadron of patrol boats that went to Vietnam. So he worked with them as an insertion extraction platform. And I don't know why it was, but I do remember the actual car ride that we had. I started working for my dad when I was 11 for an illegal amount of money at the time.

I still am pissed at how little he paid me per hour. And I bring it up to me because I, yeah, but you're only worth half that much anyway. That's your God. You're an apprentice. You're an apprentice. I guess. I got the apprentice to the apprentice wages. And I remember the car ride.

And I don't remember him. He didn't oversell it by any stretch. My dad did not have, as many people did not have. have a great experience in Vietnam, as well as the homecoming from Vietnam as well. So I think it's safe to say my mom's side of the family was an army brat side. My dad's side was a Navy side. Neither side of the family was shaking pom-poms when I said I decided I wanted to go into the military.

So he certainly didn't slide an idea out and then reinforce it. It was something that just stuck with me. There was probably an aspect of the statistical unlikely of making it through the training. the, exactly. Well, for some people, that turns them off. And for me, the fastest way to motivate me is to tell me I can't do something. I'm likely going to dive headlong at it. The exclusive nature of it probably had something to do with it.

And the job just sounded cool. But yeah, they certainly didn't sell that. It was a really uncommon narrative for the people I grew up around, but an incredibly common narrative for the guys that I worked with. For whatever reason, that job, you're surrounded by people who are like, yeah, about 10 or 11. heard this concept and it just stuck with them. Yeah. And it was, I mean, it was weird. It's odd.

It's certainly, well, statistically anomalous, I guess, would be a better term. But yeah, I didn't have the creativity at the time. Not to understand exactly what it was going to be. But that was the origin, though, was that car ride from, we were coming back from an area in California called SoCal. It's in the Monterey Bay. We had done a job. We were driving from Soquel to Santa Cruz on the way home.

And that was, at this point, 36 years. ago and I still remember that conversation. It stuck with me that much. And you'd respected your father? Yeah. It was a good ride, good experience. I won the genetic lottery with my parents. You got the best of both?

I had the best of both. Honestly, I did. They definitely oriented and helped me set my true north for a moral compass. And then honestly, the military and the community that I was in, they helped me refine it. You bet. I got very lucky. But yeah, immense amount of respect for my father. Still alive.

Actually, drug him out of cow. California finally, and now he lives up here a mile from my house. Lucky guy. And I don't know how lucky I am. He's an absolute nightmare to deal with. And Michael has to deal. Michael's watching his dog right now. He has to deal with them.

He knows, indeed. Oh, boy, a number of times I have to, like, I am sorry. My dad does not understand social skills. No, he will not say that to you again in public. See, that's what he was saying about you as a kid. Now you get to say it about him. I can also just see the right. I'm like, I'm telling my kids now, I'm like, pay attention.

This is his dad at one age. You get to do the same thing. That's right. It's great to have him up here. I bet. But yeah, I respected him for sure. But he wasn't, they weren't pushing yet. And I was very aware that my dad did not have a good experience in Vietnam.

Okay. So I don't know. I wonder if he regrets having, and I don't even know how the conversation came up. I don't remember that what the spark was that he brought that up. Because, again, he wasn't his seal. He just worked with them very infrequently. But you identified with it for some reason. I did, yeah.

For whatever it was, it was like a fish hook that I couldn't get out. Yeah. So that's the same kind of thing, I think, that happens to many of us, all of us at some level, as an example in my own situation. I have often wondered why I became a profiler or why even wanted to go into law enforcement. Of course, as a kid, I'm watching all the TV shows. You used to watch FBI. The FBI was in the FBI, obviously. I watched police woman.

Just the first introduction of women into law enforcement. And I thought, well, maybe those things influenced me. You know, then I remembered an experience I had as a six-year-old kid. My parents had just gone through divorce, and I live in Las Vegas. My dad moved back out to the south where he was from in Louisiana. And my mother and I lived in a studio apartment, and she was a waitress there in Vegas at the Flamingo Hotel. And so one afternoon, Knot came at our door, and she kind of peaked.

through the blinds to see who was out there. And she saw that it was a cop. And she told me, she says, look, and I'm going to take you into the bathroom. I'm going to put you out through the window. And I want you to go around to the manager, tell the manager to come

back up here, tell this cop that I'm not here. Nobody's here. It's very intricate plan. I also feel like she had thought about this before this happened. In case this happens. Or she's great on on the fly planning. Both. Yeah, for her. She was something. So she takes me into the bathroom, opens the bathroom window, and she starts to let me down over that window. And she stops. She brings me back out. She says, we're not doing this. She walks back to the front door, opens the door. Police officers introduces himself. Are you, she identifies herself. And he says, well, I have a warrant for your arrest. She said, well, what?

parking tickets. Now this is in Vegas, of course, this is a long time ago. I'm 70, going on 71. I was six years old at the time. Vegas was a different world back in those days. They actually arrested people for parking tickets. And it's not the Metropolitan Police Department that you're familiar with today. So, and as it was, he arrested her. But he couldn't leave me by myself, so he brings me with him. and takes me down to the police department. And she's going to have to spend the night in jail, if you can imagine. She couldn't post bail.

He didn't have the money for bail. But she happened to know a detective on the police department as a result of waitressing at the Flamingo. They used to come in and eat, and she knew this guy in the detective division. So she contacted him. Once she got to the police department, she rang down there and contacted him and say, look, I'm in a bind. I need your help.

I'm going to be here till tomorrow morning. I've got to post bail in the morning. I don't have it tonight. Would you watch my boy? No. You think they do that today? In my head, as you're telling the story, I'm wondering how fast CPS we called.

Exactly. And then my second thought is, is our world better because that's the path we would take now? Or is our world better when you could call somebody you barely knew and you could trust him with your kids? Exactly. You know, and what did he do? Oh, yeah, I'll take care of it.

This is your first ride along, no big deal. Yeah. So he takes me, he comes down to the jail, picks me up, walks me over the detective division, and he sits me down with the secretaries, and they're getting me pencils and paper and crayons that they bring it from their own kids that they've got in their purse. And I just had a great old time. And he takes me home to his family that night to spend the night. And I can remember, I was six years old, I can remember as if it was today.

Introducing me to his family and he had a normal what I would call a normal family at that time here I am with my single mother and And he's got two kids and they sit around the kitchen table and having dinner And they include me as if I'm a member of the family His wife didn't know who I was but did she mind? Oh not a bit She was more than happy to have me and I can remember when all the evening activities were done the games were over and It's time to go to bed. He and his wife take me into a guest bedroom and tuck me into this bed. And they kiss me on my forehead.

And that's what happened. And I know that that has had to have been the thing that has hooked me. I've never forgotten that. For whatever reason, I identified with that man and wished that I could have told him what became of me and my career. but what kindness can do. And the little things that people do in young people's lives, the difference that it can make. And considering the background that I came from,

it made all the difference because a police officer was willing to bring me home to his family and stay with him for a night. That's an amazing thing. Yeah. It's something I think about a lot. And it's still an emotional thing. thing for me too, you know, as an old guy, you know, I'm thinking back in it. Those feelings all

emerge as a kid today, as if I was just experiencing it. But I think that's, for me, that's where that first introduction came. And because of my youth and family life, questionable male examples in my life, they came not within the family, but outside the family. My best friend's father, my police chief when I got hired, these people were mentors to me. John Douglas, who's a mentor. He's a very, very good friend who like brothers, brothers who like each other. So you say I can go one of two ways, yeah. Fist fight brothers and brothers are like each other.

And so those mentors have made all the difference in my life. But I do remember people in my life also that pretty. presented just the opposite type of an example. But I identified with these other men in my life that made all a difference for me. That split you're talking about. Bundy, first off, he seems fascinating. It may have consumed every documentary that I could find about him. Sure.

So the split, though, you're saying, so same family at that young age, somebody is on the receiving end of that, and they may either go down the path of cascading it downhill to others in society, or going, you know, the social worker route versus I want to wear people's skin like a leotard route. Is there an age at which they generally make that decision? I wonder if they, do you think they even recognize that decision is made or it's just a concrete change in their personality? Yeah, I think it's a transformational experience. It doesn't happen necessarily in one experience, I suspect. As for all of us, we can look at specific experiences and say that definitely influence.

me. But typically it's a combination of a lot of experiences over time. And whatever those dominant things are and dominant themes are in our life, we have for whatever reason a tendency to identify with. If, as an example, I'm, if I had gone through the experience of being abused as a child, there was some emotional abuse, but not the sexual and physical stuff. And so what happens? These kids feel a complete loss of control in their life. And eventually, if at some point, while they're maturing, at school, for example, even in their relationships at school, teachers can identify, very bizarre behaviors that kids go through and who they suspect as having certain experiences.

And between the ages of 10 to 12 years old, I think, are some of the most influential times when those choices or I guess there's proclivity to move in one direction or another. And eventually as they start to reinforce, okay, if I don't have power and control in my own life, other people have it, I don't have power and control over others. So in order to have power and control in my life, I'm going to be sure I've got it over others. You've heard maybe of the homicidal triad? I don't think so. Okay, so you can imagine a triangle, and at each of the apexes, there's three things. One is abusive to animals, fire setting, and bedwetting in uresis. Okay. So what does that tell us? And some will debate it back and

forth now. It's not as modern, obviously, has been around a long time. There's other things that people talk about now that influence. But if you've got a child that is engaging in at least two of these activities and immersing themselves

in it, cruelty to animals, fire setting, and bedwetting, what's the common theme here? It's the lack of control. bedwetting in and of itself, more often than not, is something that we grow out of. We all did it as a child, a young child, right? And at some point, we're able to grow out of it, mature out of it.

Well, for some kids, it's a biological issue. And when parents don't deal with it in a normal, healthy way, they'll use force, domination, degrading, shaming, all kinds of tactics in order to control that behavior. So what may that child go out and do to substitute their lack of behavior? Cruelty to animals, cruelty to younger children, infants, and fire setting to become destructive. That's their effort. attempt to have that control in their lives that they don't have in their childhood. And it grows from there.

And there's many different approaches, I think, and theories that apply to that. But that's just an example that if there's not some intervention during that period of time when they're maturing and they're engaged in those activities, at least two of those activities, over an extended period of time, and it's not being dealt with. There's got to be some intervention. either get medication for the one or a social, psychological intervention for the others.

And we're talking about extreme stuff. We're talking about killing of animals, setting animals on fire, stabbing animals. Those are very serious issues, obviously, and eventually what will happen to some people who have experienced these things. Pretty soon it doesn't do it.

for them anymore. Setting fires and that interest said, now I want to do it to other human beings. And the lack of control that I've had in my life, I'm going to have control over other human beings as others have had over me. Can they articulate that?

I think many can as they've gone through therapy, particularly those that are institutionalized. Prior to therapy, would they just control it or would they call it an uncontrollable desire? Yeah. Yeah, they wouldn't understand what it was themselves, why they would do those.

I'm just curious how self-aware, and I'm sure it's a spectrum as human beings are, I would be, there's no, like, better or worse serial killer, I guess. Let's not put them on a spectrum, but I'd be more worried about the person who 100% understands exactly why and who they are and is just driving headlong down that activity. Yeah. It's not any better for somebody who doesn't understand themselves and is doing that. but the self-aware one. Dangerous. That's not the dude you want to find in your closet when you get home. No, that's the Hannibal Lecters of society.

Yeah. Yeah, I think at some point, let's talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We all have them. Bring out a little bit closer. Thanks. Oh, dang, you got yelled at by Michael. What? That's rare.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We all have those needs. Yeah. Right? And eventually, once we've gone through the basic needs of safety and protection, sustenance, food, shelter, eventually we move into this thing called self-esteem and then self-actualization, the two top tiers. We all have the need to have self-esteem and a good, healthy self-esteem in the way in which we do those things and eventually be self-actualized. For me, I've been self-actualized through my experiences in law enforcement profession. You, through your experiences and business experiences that you have now, you're still carrying on the same kinds of things.

In other words, you know what you're about. You know what your mission in life is. I can at least identify what I'm not. Yeah. I don't know if I could define who I am, but I generally can tell people what I don't agree with or believe. Well, you keep it up. You're doing a great job. It's a struggle.

I just call it stumbling forward in life and hopefully you just don't fall down. Well, we make a lot of mistakes, don't get along the way and learn from them. But eventually, you know, everybody wants to have that experience. When I attended that, as I mentioned, that three-day profiling school, I had that a ha experience. I just knew that I knew that I knew this is what I was supposed to do and be. And I didn't stop until I got it. and it was a very difficult process getting there.

I had to find out what steps to take, had to compete with a lot of people, was told by one of those two agents that taught the class, don't get your hopes too high. It's really difficult. First you've got to get in the FBI, and then you've got to pass through all these other hoops. Well, I ended up supervising him years later.

Who would have thought? we make a commitment and focus on and what we're about, what we're going to accomplish. I can't imagine the level of self-discipline and mental discipline that you had to go through just the training to get through that, much less carry out missions. I wish I could say it was that. I was very young and didn't have a plan B. I mean, I'm being honest. Didn't really have anything else I wanted to do.

Wasn't it difficult? Yes. Yes, it was difficult. But also, I didn't have. How many people? How many people fail? My class started with 180. We graduated 18.

There you go. I honestly didn't have anything else I wanted to do. It took discipline. When you're kind of dumb, you just kind of stay in the moment. You know, you're like, hey, we. You can carry on that story if you like. Well, you know, people knock on me for saying that. They don't know the people that I worked with.

You know, the people that I worked with, I still scratched my head at some of the things they were able to do. I feel like I was fortunate to be able to be on the team. I get it. I mean, they're your heroes, too, aren't they? They're your mentors. And it's hard to describe the influence they can have on your life in that way. Yeah, positive and negative. Not all influences are good.

True. But you had an inclination toward one versus the other. Yeah, I did for sure. Yeah. So the role of a profiler, when does the FBI bring the profiler in? Because obviously, there's not enough profilers for it. It's like, hey, we can't. find, you know, somebody is murdered somewhere or whatever it is.

You can't swing the bat at every ball that comes across the plate. So how do they decide when they deploy those assets for a case? Okay. Well, another good question. And that it's unlike that you see on the TV show Mine Hunter. There's some similarities, as I mentioned, but criminal mines. You know, you solve a case within 50 minutes and you get to fly around the country. in your private jet. No, it's nothing like that. The cases are similar, but it takes hours to days,

to weeks, to months, to years to solve these crimes. So when is the FBI called in? They're called in at the request of a local law enforcement agency. Typically, they're cold cases, really cold cases. they may be or they just may be weeks old to months to years to decades the oldest case that I looked at was well with the cold case foundation as an example was 45 years old and it was a case out of Montana double homicide so what I mean there's so many questions one why would they wait that long to ask for help because and I can imagine they may not necessarily know who to ask for help because and I can imagine they may not necessarily know who to ask for help. But is there also, I can't imagine there is just a fleet of profilers out there, FBI or outside of it. Does it need to be more than one victim? Do they look for a trend? Is there something that it has, is there a threshold that it has to cross before you start looking at a profiler coming in? I mean, about six people a year get killed here in Calispell.

Honestly, I think those are easier to solve. Generally, just based off my law enforcement friends that I talk to. Sure. But even if one went unsolved, how would they know when they're supposed to bring a profiler in? It's been unsolved for years, and typically it will take a transition of management or personalities and attitudes and opinions. Maybe the challenge, the uniqueness of the case. Most smaller departments, the medium-sized departments don't have serial. killers coming through their community. Most don't. But when it happens, they're not familiar

with that personality necessarily because they just lack the exposure to it. Most of the homicides that they have typically are maybe domestic or something like gang related, if they have any kind of violence going on in their community as it relates to that. And those Those are fairly ABC type of homicide investigations. But when you get a sexual homicide that comes into your community and you walk up on a crime scene where the body has been disrobed, posed in a graphic sexual display, eviscerated, with internal organs removed, you're dealing with a complete different personality now. Do they do most of that after they're finished with their sexual act, the posing, the eviscerating? What is that about?

Okay. So the two specific types of behaviors that we look at as profile, to try to link cases together or understand personalities. One is M.O. Method of Operation, which is typically the logical, rational, behavior that an individual goes through during the commission of the crime to ensure their success to escape, avoid identity, and incarceration. The other is this thing called signature. So, MO, modus operandi, that behavior which is necessary to successfully commit a crime, logical, rational behavior. signature aspect of a crime, we're now introducing an offender's personality into the crime scene,

what their proclivities may be, or what they may be emphasizing in their fantasy life. It's unique behavior. It's that behavior which is unnecessary to successfully commit the crime. Yeah, those two things seem like they'd be at odds with each other. Completely. In fact, MO is all about avoiding detection. Signature requires the offender to spend more time, be more involved, take the chance, elevating their own risk level of being seen or remembered if you have a surviving victim.

But we talk about personalities. There are those things in our personalities that drive us instinctively to do things. Let's say an OCD type of personality. Individuals, obsessive, compulsive with certain types of behaviors. And they have to go through a lot in order to overcome those kinds of behaviors. But as a criminal, a criminal is not interested in disciplining those behaviors. they're interested in engaging the behavior because of the, it's a creative force, a creative imagination that they experience while they engage in them.

And there's all kinds of different types of signatures. One that I just described for you would be something that we refer to as a lust murder. And that is, it's beyond that which is necessary to successfully commit the crime. and they may engage in all kinds of bizarre types of behaviors with the victim after the crime has been committed, once deceased. They do something as simple as just pose the body in a graphic way and walk out. Is that for them? It is. It is.

their artwork. And it's a way that they extend their level of power and control, even to the, not just the audience who finds them, typically victims' families, oftentimes, or friends, neighbors, but police. Yeah. They're leaving a message and a statement to the police as well. And some of them aren't that, are not that sophisticated. They're not thinking about those kinds of things.

They're just doing what's coming natural and what they, their creative force, if you will. So posing a body may be something. Overkill may be another signature aspect. So stabbing somebody 100 times versus two or three times to a mortal wound, you know. So what is stabbing somebody 100 times? What's going on here? What's happening here? They're extending themselves, expressing themselves into the crime scene.

their levels of emotion and thoughts and feelings about this particular victim. Typically with overkill, what we call overkill, and that would be a signature. Oftentimes, it can be anything from, and that's why you have to look at the totality of the circumstances and the crime. What we refer to as the ten filters of profiling, what I refer to as is a model that I created when I was serving as a, a profiler and teaching at the FBI National Academy. I go through its process of 10 filters, taking all the information of the crime, the crime scene,

and filtering it down through 10 separate, distinguishable areas. First is victimology. And then we move into original contact site between the victim and the offender. Where did it happen? Why were they there at that particular time? We have many, many questions, diagnostic questions that we review to understand those behaviors and why they did that. The crime scene, where the crime scene was, what's the crime scene look like, the recreation of the crime within that place and time.

Physical assault. Sexual assault. There's many, many different diagnostic applications that we go through in these processes and each of these. phases. The area where the disposal site, why did the offender take the victim to that particular disposal site? Is it, is the initial contact site, the crime scene and the disposal site all the same? Is it the same location? Or are they all separate? So now we start moving into, what does that tell me about the offender? How much experience do they have? The organized versus disorganized application of their criminal behavior.

Does it tell me that they're experienced, or are they a novice? Are they in the beginning stages of committing these crimes? Or have they been doing it for a period of time? And now we're talking about a serial offender who's practiced their art, if you will, and become very good at what they do. We look for the risk level that the offender puts themselves in when they commit these crimes and then any information of the characteristics of the offender that witnesses may have seen.

So when we look at all that, we have this M.O. versus signatures, another one of those filters. I would say that the more the likelihood of the presence of signature, in my opinion, is going to suggest that you, have an individual that is a budding serial offender or is a serial offender who's just beginning in that serial nature, meaning that they're going to go out most likely and commit more crimes. Or does this suggest to me that they've committed crimes before?

And they've been engaged into it for a while. Have you ever heard the stat, actually you guys, the FBI, probably the ones who came up with this, that on average there's between 12 to 18 active serial killers in the U.S. at any given time. Yes, I have heard that. I've also heard that there's as many as 50. One per state. Perfect.

Great. Yeah. Oh, you can imagine. Yeah, we probably have at least one per state. I mean, that'll keep you up at night. Yeah. People don't want to hear that number. No.

No, and to make matters, I hate to say it, worse. 19, let's say 20, 23, there were about almost, 20,000 homicides, probably 34 to 36% unsolved in the country. How many unsolved homicides do we have in the country now? The average is anywhere between 250, in my opinion, to 300,000 unsolved homicides. Now, these are homicides that been classified as homicides, that the police department knows that the individual died as a result of homicide. And so they reported as such.

But then you add to that missing persons. So at any one time, they suggest that there's at least 100,000 missing persons at any one time. They've been recorded as many as 600,000 missing persons annually and less, but at least 100,000 at any one point in time annually, speaking. And then let's talk about unidentified remains, probably about 3,500 to 4,000 unidentified remain cases per year. So with 100,000 missing persons at any one time, say out of that 20,000, let's say, if we're lucky, only 30% go unsolved. So 6,000 unsolved homicides. if that's all it was per year.

Right there, there's 6,000 unsolved homicides, 100,000 missing person cases. And let's be really conservative and say 90% of these 100,000 are accounted for, leaving 10%. Now we've got 6,000. That's 10 more,000. That's now we've got 16,000. And then you add to that the unidentified.

remains that haven't been logged in as homicides. And they may be related to some of these missing people. But you add those together. You're somewhere around 18 to 20,000 unsolved cases a year. Is this a resource issue? It's a resource issue. It's an experience issue. It's a training issue. And I think it's a funding issue. And that's primarily the reason why we started the Cold Case Foundation. With all these cold cases, police officers still have to do all the other work

that they do day in and day out. And large departments, most of them have cold case units where they're focusing on just the cold cases. And they're overwhelmed by them. You go to L.A., Chicago, New York. But when you think about that, 250 to 300,000 cold cases unsolved in our country at any one time.

And these investigators are trying to work them. They can work with the resource that they have, the amount of money that's available to the organization, the training, they try to put them through, et cetera. And then how long do they keep that assignment? On the average, maybe five years, three to five years. Then they move them into another. spot and bring somebody new in.

Now they start from scratch, working those same cases. It had been worked for, say, 50 years. Do they really just start at zero again, too? They've got to become familiar with it. They start reading that file right from the beginning. Well, I was going to ask you where you start with the foundation. Is it just literally familiarity with the case and you start looking at the evidence? They send everything to us.

And we review from the first day of arrival to the dispatch all the way through the suspects that have been developed. Well, talk to me about the foundation and where it exists. When you say they send it to you, we're talking law enforcement? Police departments. Do families ever reach out to you as well? All the time. I would imagine so.

In fact, we have more families reach out to us than law enforcement. That doesn't surprise me. It's changed. We've got many more law enforcement agencies now. Of course, we've been doing this for 13 years now. But first starting, I'd say probably 65, 75, 70% of the cases that came to us came from families. And the primary frustration with the families is we don't know the status of our loved one's case. We haven't been contacted by the police department in many years.

Or worse, they won't talk to us. They won't tell us anything about it. That's the worst case scenario. And it's getting better. And there are legitimate reasons for those things. It's not the best practice. You want to make friends with victims' families because they can be very resourceful. to you, particularly in the public's eye.

So between those things and the lack that's constant being changed from one position to another, the lack of money, lack of overtime money, and the small amount of police officers, detectives who can specialize in cold case investigation or homicide investigations, generally. generally is low. You don't get a guy typically, he goes into a homicide unit and stays there his whole career. It's a position among many. Now, there are some unique examples that they do, and they become very, very good at what they do. But with all that, we still have 250,000 unsolved cases. And we're getting better and better at what we do. Scientifically, we're getting better. You know, you've got all this forensic evidence now. That's becoming amazing.

the genealogy DNA and the DNA itself. It's just incredible, the stuff that's being done. Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. And for those of you who don't have a podcast or who have never done an ad read, you get talking points sent to you, brand talking points. And I have a bunch of them in front of me from the brand. And I'm not going to read a single one of them. Because what I'm going to do instead is talk about the personal experience that I have had with

counseling in my life. To some, I might seem like a broken record on this. And I don't care. because of the volume of emails that I have received from people talking about starting their own journey through counseling and therapy, the impact it has had on their life and my own personal experience. People will say, you know, becoming a seal, that pipeline, the training, the time away, the deployments, let alone in peacetime, you add wartime to that, the stress on yourself, family, loved ones. Yeah, it's all real. People would easily say that's got to be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life. and I'm here to tell you right now, it's not. What has tested me most and taken me to my lowest point as a human being made me question my place in the world.

Was I a good enough man to continue to be a father for my children? Did I ever deserve to find a partner again? Was my divorce. The lowest point I have ever been to. Now, I know there are people that can get out of places like that on their own, but let me ask you this. Why would you want to? people are out there who are educated, who are trained to help you put together systems, to look at things objectively, to take a step to the side and view something differently,

to put together a structure and approach, to be neutral, to be non-judgmental, and to help you find your way through these low points. Because the reality is this. We have to walk through valleys to get to the peaks in our life. Now, what does that have to do with better help? Well, depending on where you live, you might have limited options. Well, in the modern era, if you have a phone or a laptop in front of you like I do, then you can access better help.

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That is BetterHelp, H-E-L-P-H-E-L-P-H-E-O-E-O-P-P-A.com slash cleared hot. And there's a link directly in the show notes. Back to the show. But with all those things in mind, we created the Cold Case Foundation. And it brought together a cadre of experts retired and still working from law enforcement all over the country. We've gone internationally now as well. And so a law enforcement agency will reach out to us, request assistance, and we'll either sit down with them as a case review, Zoom.

Anything came out of COVID, the Zoom program is the best thing that happened. I don't ever want to participate in another one, though, to be honest. What a disaster. It's kind of cool, but also I hate it. But to Zoom calls have saved our lives. financially for sure. And so we'll have as many people as anywhere between three to 10. We've had as many as 15. And over time, when we become embedded with that law enforcement agency, work in that case, 30 people, experts that have brought to bear their specialization. And it's

all volunteer. So no cost to law enforcement or victims' families. So the good that's been done, That's what this book is about, the Cold Case Foundation, how a group of experts are solving homicides and missing persons cases. That's just a kind of a smattering of cases that we've worked with over the years. How long does a case have to be active before they consider it cold? Great question. Or is it more a matter that you just are smashing your head against the wall and you can't see past it? That's the wise one.

It shouldn't be a period of time. It is, we've done everything we can, and we're just coming up with nothing right now. We may have suspects, but we're. We'd like to have another set of eyes look at it and a group of experts. These experts represent forensic science, psychological, forensic psychologists, profilers, veteran homicide detectives, arsonists, every level of expertise you can imagine. We either have it, we've got over 200 people on our website right now with their resumes and photographs.

And the nice thing about that is they have a network of experts that they deal with all the time as well. So we're constantly expanding. So we'll pick and choose those people that we think are going to be really good for this particular case to look at. We'll bring them together in a Zoom call. The detective will present the case and we'll have around Robin.

And he can ask any question he needs to or she needs to ask about forensics, psychological, issues, interview interrogation, crime scene investigations, whatever the issues are, anthropologists, they can have the answers or the questions answered right then and there. They don't have to wait and call somebody, miss the call, et cetera. So that's one of the advantages, I think, of the system. And they're experts from various fields. So we've found that the more multidisciplinary approach to the review of the case, the more effective we are. Even just what you're describing, other than the largest police departments in the world, they'd never be able to source that internally.

That's right. And even those largest police departments in the world, most of them aren't equipped with that level of expertise and the variety of expertise in one location at one time or several times, whatever it's going to require to review those cases. specifically in your wheelhouse of profiling, how accurate do they get? When you profile somebody, is it broad, hey, look out for this range of characteristics? How down to the Nats ass can it actually be? It can be pretty specific. I've never in all my years, I've been doing this a long time, I've been doing profiling for probably 30 years. 35, I guess.

I've never, ever had the experience where we've not been able to provide observations and input to a case that didn't add value to it. Now, did it solve the case? Many, it's helped solve. And we don't like to say, particularly from the foundation's perspective, we don't like to say we're all about solving cases. Well, yes, we are about solving cases, but we don't take credit for solving cases. We work as a support group for law enforcement agencies. We work for them. They're the ones that are in charge.

We have no jurisdiction to work these cases. We just have background experience, training, and expertise to help them and assist them. As an example, there's a case in there that is a case right out of here in Montana. It was our first case, as a matter of fact, in the Cold Case Foundation. and it was a double homicide, a married couple. She was definitely primarily the target. He happened to be there, her husband, who was also a former military out of Vietnam. Bronze star, Purple Heart, guy could take care of himself, strong, very adept.

and he was doing a cement work. A lot of heavy labor work at the time. And so one has to ask how does somebody come into an environment like that? Get control over a husband, be able to separate them, end up killing the husband, sexually assaulting his wife, and killing her, and walk out of their unscathed. And the case goes for 45 years before it solved. How does that happen? I'd say it's somebody who knew with them and ambushed them.

Good. Absolutely. It's somebody that knew them. In fact, you'd have to have access. Definitely. Did he break into the house? Probably was invited in. He was.

Yeah. See? So you already have some of these skills. Because why? Because people think about this stuff. Guy with your background experience? I just hate predators. You understand predators.

You understand predators. You'd have to take care of the husband first. You'd have to ambush him first. Exactly. Especially the guy with his background experience, right? So what do they do? What does the guy do? He somehow gets control over that husband.

How might he go about controlling that husband? Probably threatening the wife. Yeah. With what? Bottley harm. And what kind of weapon might he use? Probably a knife. Yeah. Scary, man.

Yeah. It's the last thing you want. I want to be responsible for any injury to my wife. All right, everything's fine. The guy's telling you, everything's going to be fine. I'm just going to take a few things, and I'll be out of here. Never, ever believe that storyline. Somebody's in your house when they shouldn't be,

and they're taking control of your family. You know they're not there to play checkers. It would be a weird way to start a game. Wouldn't it be? And you're going to fight like hell to ensure that, He's not the one that wins the game. I mean, yeah, he can either go out on your knees on your shield. The choice is yours.

Absolutely. Well, you know, he had to be manipulated to get control over him. And he's the only one that has an injury to the back of his head. So at some point, the individual is commandeering him into another room, hits him with a hammer or something like that on the back of the head, renders him unconscious, ties him up. places boot laces, leather boot laces from his own boot. From the killer's own boot or the guy's own boot?

The victim. Damn. Around his, exactly, around his ankles and his wrists behind him. The wife is in a separate bedroom. And of course, she's disrobed. He is sexually assaulted her. And she too has been tied up with a, similar kind of a situation, shoelaces. And then he takes the shoelaces from her. He's removed all of her

underwear from the house. Oh, this person's known them for a while. He's lusted over that woman for a while. Exactly. He's taking all of her underwear. In fact, he even takes a suitcase, their suitcase, to pack her underwear in and leave it. Now, here's an interesting question for you. So there's a negligee left over the chair in the master bedroom, which is where the husband is. The question was asked by one of the detectives of me when we were going through this case. Why does he take all over underwear, but he doesn't take that negligee? What do you think?

Any thoughts on it? Why does he take? First off, as far as the category of questions that I think, I thought I would never be asked in my life. We're reaching the top of the hill here. Todd, I want to say he brought it with him. Okay. No, not in this case.

It does it. It was wearing it. We've had cases like that. Why would he do that? So he takes all the other intimate clothing, but not that one. Think about this from a symbolic perspective. Because that was a bond between those two. There you go.

That was a bomb between her and her husband. Exactly. Yeah. I don't want to think about that. Yeah. I own her. I possess her. So he takes all of her underwear.

That was hers, her intimate underwear. He had nothing to do with him. And he keeps it for himself. So some of the things we come up with from a behavioral perspective, John Douglas and I had a chance to work on this together. He works with her, at least. He may have been subcontracted to work in that house. the house was just being in the finishing stages of building the home.

And he was subcontracting with various people who came in and do finishing work for him, the owner's husband and wife. He may have been a subcontractor or he works with her, is around her, sees her, obsesses with her, look for, he may have paid attention to her, may have come on to her, but, Most likely not. I don't think that he feels like he has the confidence to do something like that. He also turns down the thermostat to like six, or turns it off, excuse me, and it's six degrees outside. This takes place in winter. Yeah. And then opens all the windows.

Because he wanted it preserved? Yeah. Yeah. He's trying to manipulate. decomposition process, most likely. So he has some knowledge, some interest, some awareness, right? Now, something that was very odd about this particular case, too, is that there was a bowl, a plastic bowl, placed beside her with ice cubes in it.

And that, we've come up with all kinds of different theories, but none that were really necessarily comfortable with. we've let our imaginations run with it, but we're not really confident exactly what the issue was, whether it was some kind of sexual proclivity that he had, that helped the process, facilitated the process, et cetera. Don't know. So we know that he's taken the suitcase, all the underwear,

suggested that somebody in this guy's life, some significant other, a wife, a girlfriend, has seen that suitcase. and wondered about it and knows what's in it. And he's had to give them some level of explanation as to why they had it, why he had it. He most likely showed up at the funerals of both individuals. His name most likely is going to be on the visitor's list.

Now, this case is not solved as a result of what we did as an organization. They did help focus the investigation. The individual that he ultimately is identified is done as a result of DNA extracted from cigarette butts. There were five cigarette butts that this individual left in the toilet bowl. And this is before DNA was in the issue. They held it until the technology got up. The fact that they extracted it and kept it, these cops had enough wherewithal. Who knows?

But we're taking it. Took it. And if it weren't for that, we never would have solved this case. How did they end up, did he get arrested for something else? How did they end up actually having something to match his DNA against? Okay. Okay. So we didn't have anything like that.

We meeting law enforcement agency. So you had the DNA from the cigarette butts and they ran it through CODIS and all the databases. Nothing. Nothing. Never been arrested before. A lot of people think that's the database of all Americans. Yeah. I hate to tell you, the Gov doesn't have your DNA.

They have a reason to come and get it for me. Exactly. You should feel good about that. Yeah. And so they ended up taking it to a genealogy DNA. They looked at the DNA and identified that it belonged to two brothers. They contacted one brother who had been deceased for 10 years. contacted the other brother. He eliminated him. In fact, he was happy to give his DNA, etc.

It happened to be the one that was deceased for the last 10 years prior to solving the case. Did he at least have a painful death? I'll tell you offline what some things that I heard about that. I hope it was very painful. Yeah, it more to do with what was done after the death, accidentally. But they didn't know anything about it. It was an accident. They didn't know anything about it. And you were looking at that case, would you guys have assumed or guessed that that was his first time doing something like that? No, in fact, I would have expected it was not his first time.

Certainly in those cases, it's possible that it's a one and done because he was so totally obsessed with her. And once it was finished, never experienced that again with any other woman. That's possible. But typically, if it was the first, we would have expected too, most likely, particularly with some of the signature aspects of the crime, of the taking of the underwear, taking of the suitcase, the way in which the bodies were tied up, etc. And that bowl with the ice in it, those are signature things typically that we look at, you know, that suggests this guy's going to do it again.

But they've never found anything else. Did he attend the funerals? He did. His name was right there. The name was right there. Why would he go to the husband's funeral? Power. Control.

Just so he could sit there and be like, yeah. Coat. Yeah. I mean, the wife is horrible. That one makes sense. Yeah. Possession. Yeah.

God. Was he a contractor, subcontracted? What kind of? They believe he was a carpet. He was the carpet contractor. Okay. Yeah. God damn you.

Unbelievable. Yeah. Exactly. It's dramatic, man. It's hard. I don't know of anybody that I've worked with over the years. It hasn't experienced physical health issues. When you immerse yourself into this stuff, you know, your body reacts.

You go through stress. And as you can imagine, as you know, yourself through combat situations. That's kind of how we go through combat. You know, you get into these cases. You have to vicariously experience what it's like to be the, offender and the victim. And understand being too. You imagine it. You recreate it. It's different in those two parties, though. I've talked with some strengths and Sykes about this as I don't have hard stats to show it, but anecdotally, it seems as if, and not that

post-traumatic stress doesn't exist at high levels inside of the special operations community. It seems to exist at lower levels than it does in conventional forces. And I was talking to a few psychiatrists or psychologists about this. And they were asking about the nature of the job. And I was talking to them about 2010 was the last time I was in Afghanistan. And there was a road that largely runs south to north or north to south. You could drive it in whichever direction you choose. A north-south road, if you will.

And there were people who were tasked with just driving vehicles and mine sweeping all day long. And we were, for a portion of the time, I was at a base where kind of a staging point and where they would get into these vehicles. And you could just see in their eyes the helpless nature of their job because they're sitting in an armored vehicle waiting to be vaporized by a 1,500 pound charge that goes off. No control. The job I had, 99.9% of the time, we initiated the violence. So we were not on the surprise. The locus of control is how the psychiatrists describe it. And the difference in geometry and what that can do to how your body processes it

could be the difference in you having a functional life at the end of that versus being destroyed by your experiences. Not that it's just because, hey, you've got to initiate the violence that it doesn't leave a fingerprint on you. But the difference between being largely in control versus being totally out of control, in their, it would be a hypothesis, I guess, they think that that has a large essence and aspect. Because there is a huge difference between being the aggressor and being the victim. I could see it in their eyes, the dread. Whereas for us, I mean, most of the time it was, this is the dude you're looking for.

Here's the house that he's at. We're going to get you to this location and you guys go do your job. And behind every door you're expecting violence. It's a different experience. That's fascinating. You know, one of the complaints, I think, for law enforcement and detectives who deal with these kinds of cases and profilers is, well, work a case, work a case, and it never gets solved. And you never forget a case. I've looked at over a thousand cases, easy in my career.

And I can remember every single one of them. How could you not? Oh, yeah. I mean, I can be driving down the road and just look off to the side of the road. and see an area that reminds me of a disposal site. And how many times do you drive down the road and you see hitchhikers, female hitchhikers? Not as much as you used to.

And these high-risk activities that people put themselves into and place themselves recklessly, innocently, but also recklessly without regard for their own personal safety. Sometimes they're in situations and environments and circumstances that force them into that situation. But many times victims will innocently and ignorantly put themselves into a situation and elevate their risk level. How do you deal with it when you're reminded of those things?

Because it happens to me too. Probably every single day I'll think about something that occurred in my previous career. Very often it's me laughing at something ridiculously stupid that one of my friends. did, but not always. I'm curious your strategy on how you deal with it. It's similar. We try to find what we call dark humor in what we do. It's not humor that's appreciated by most people. No, it's pretty unique. Very familiar with what you're talking about and best served behind closed doors. Yes, it is. My wife looks at me very frequently and says, what is wrong with you? Like what? My wife can appreciate that too. Did I say that out loud? Michael's been there for a few of those

where she's giving me the old look. Oh, yeah. Like what? You weren't thinking the same thing? She's like, everybody was thinking the same thing, but you can't say that. You didn't think that was funny? More times than not, right? Yeah, it's amazing.

I struggle with the balance between inside and outside voice. It's fine. Yeah, and, you know, you don't change. I think it's a way in which we deal with it. I try not to hold on to it. Yeah. I gave up trying to figure out a way to control my thoughts years ago. Definitely.

So I just let them run their course. And I try not to, I can't control what reminds me of what it reminds me of, but I can control whether or not I latch onto it and just try to go down that spiral. I just let it go. Yeah. I do the best I can to let it go. I think we're similar. I mean, we, in that experience, we'll do the best way.

As long as we've known, we've given everything we can possibly give to a case. And if there's ever anything more I think of later, I'll come back to that case and do something about it. That I've given it the best I can possibly give it. But I can walk away knowing I've done as much as I can and I'm capable of. But it certainly doesn't prevent nightmares. It doesn't prevent stress. It doesn't prevent the natural tendency to the effects of stress on our bodies. I don't know of any profiler that's done this for years

that hasn't had serious complications and health-related issues. Because although we may not consciously be aware of the stress, it's there. Subconsciously, it's there all the time. Does it jade you towards humanity at all? No doubt. No doubt. And I think for me,

what's helped me the most is I have a faith life. And in spite of all the evil that I've seen, I think, you know, with all this evil, there has to be good. I hope so. We know it's the truth. We're so screwed if it's not. That's right. I'm confident and very confident that there is. And I think for me, that's made all the difference.

Yeah. I've seen faith do amazing things for people. It sure has me. What is the most accurate profile that you've ever seen? Oh. Well, I want to hear, this man will have blue eyes and seven freckles on his left cheek based off a purely forensic evidence. You knock on the door and there he is. There's got to be some flyers.

You're like, you've got to be joking. This is so incredibly accurate. It's amazing. There are, I would say in the profiles that we do, I would say at least 85% of the characteristics that we're identifying. are accurate and consistent with the individual. And that's just based off black and white. It is. Not photos or, you know, black and white evidence,

you don't get to see the person. You don't understand their behaviors. You're looking at what is left behind and reverse engineering this. Exactly right. That is fascinating. We look at the physical behavior that's committed at the crime scene, the verbal behavior if there is a survivor, and the sexual behavior.

And we attempt to identify the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the individual that's experiencing those thoughts, feelings, and emotions through that behavior. So it's those three facets or forms of behavior and understanding what the translation of that is to thoughts, feelings, and emotions. And then where do these thoughts, feelings, and emotions come from? What kind of an individual would have those types of feelings toward this woman, as an example, who would commit those kinds of acts, who felt that level of disrespect and hate or rage? What would cause that rage? You walk into a crime scene and you see a body that's been bludgeoned to death. And the offender has taken the time, you'll catch on to this.

you've caught on this very quickly. It's natural for you. You should see my Netflix history. That's good. That's another one where my wife, like, we're going to go to bed soon. Are we going to watch this? Because as soon as I started, I tell I'm like, hey, I'm actually on the case right now. So.

I don't know. I go to go to go on and watch this first. We're talking historical stuff that I've already watched. She's like, you've already watched this. I'm like, yeah, but I'm back on the case and they need me. Yeah, I got to go right now. But if, for example, you've got a body now that's been bludgeon to death. Or let's take it less violent than that.

It's just a gunshot wound at the back of the head, 22 caliber. And it's a male. And an elderly male. And now you walk into the crime scene. And the body has been laid down on the couch, a pillow placed beneath their head. and a blanket has been taken and covered the body just up to the neck. And it's just one entrance wound to the back of the head. Bodies on this couch and the hands have been placed over their midsection like at to rest.

Who did it? You get it. Who did it? Who did it? Okay, you got elderly male. Yeah, it's going to be a family member. Okay. They would only do that to somebody if they care for them.

Exactly. Good. You got it? I'd say one of their kids. Okay. Good. Good. In this particular case, it was.

It was a mercy killing. My father's asked me to do the same thing. It's old enough. Not that way. His exact request was push his wheelchair into oncoming traffic. Which I feel like is harder. It's harder. It's harder on you. Yeah.

It's harder on you too. Well, if he keeps up his current behavior, it's going to be pretty easy. That's right. Tell them there are alternatives. Why go through all of that if you didn't have care for the person? Exactly. All of those things. Yeah.

Put a blanket on somebody who's dead. Like, they're not, do you not have to worry about being hot or cold anymore? But you're doing that because that's how you've thought about that person your entire life. Absolutely. Yeah. Here's another one for you. 22 is a ballsy choice, by the way. Skull is very thick.

Yeah. Let's hope it works. Scott. I don't, I was just going to recommend a caliber. I don't want to give anybody ideas. It's not give instruction. Here's one for you. Double homicide, male, female. The crime occurs in the bedroom. There's 120 stab wounds between them. Both of them are off of the bed. The initial attack occurs on the bed. And here's an interesting behavior, what we would call. And I'll ask you, what do we call this?

Because we've talked about it. Okay. A rat has been brought to the crime scene. Signature. Good. The rat's been killed. And laid... What the fuck is wrong with people?

Yeah. laid on the body of the male. What do you think? We don't know for sure, but we have some thoughts about it. I mean, that could be a metaphor for the person who did this, saying that the person, the rat is on top of, is a rat. Yeah, yeah. Were the stab wounds equally distributed between the male and female? More of the male.

So I would say it was probably targeted towards the male. Maybe the female was, maybe he was expecting the person to be alone, so he got wrapped up in what he was in. It's hard to find two rats, I think, so maybe, you know, probably only brought one. I'm assuming he got the rat long before he came into the house. And it was a domesticated rat. So it wasn't a wild. All right. I like the idea of more of him searching around with cheese in the forest.

Okay, so Petco can solve that problem. But that's a step you have to take. You're definitely premeditating this because you're thinking about what you would want to take. If there were going to be two people, would you take two? I don't know. Unless they're both. I mean, if they're both rats. I would say that, yeah, I would say the man was probably the main target,

and there has to be some level of significance with the rat placed on top of him. Good. I agree. I agree with you. Yeah. Now, this is kind of interesting, too. There's not a speck of blood outside. No, no transfer, no transfer blood outside.

Is this a recent case? Like since the TV show Dexter has been out? No, it's a little older than that. I worry about things like that. By the way, did you hear the dexter of these? He's got a new show come out. Yeah, they're resurrecting him. That's it.

It's Dexter resurrected, isn't it? I actually think that is the name of it. I mean, I don't know much about TV except they like making money, and it seems like there's no new show. So if that one was a... It was a hit. It was a hit. Wow. So that one is insolved.

They haven't figured that one. It's still unsolved. Still unsolved. But we've maintained with that department, constant contact. We meet with them at least monthly in review. You review things. Talk about investigative strategies. and what these interpretations may be.

I mean, I think about things. Did the guy sit there at the pet store and have to pick out which rat he thought was the appropriate rat for that person? It wouldn't surprise me. How long did, you know. How long do you? So it's not, oh, we can't have the white one because this guy isn't a white rat or whatever. And that one doesn't look. So he's sitting there selecting the rat that he's going to use.

That's the, like, what? That's right. And there's 15 of these people going. To them, it means something. It did. That's right. It's significant. No blood transfer outside of that room.

Yeah. And one wonders, how does that happen? Because this thing was like a butcher shop. For sure. Yeah, if people haven't been around a stabbing or a laceration type environment, it's, yeah, it's pretty gnarly. He's a mess. So to imagine, how is that possible? Most likely, he had to have, in my mind, a change of clothes.

Well, if you went to get the rat first and thought about that, I feel like this person likely thought about that as well. Exactly. It takes the time, premeditated, very sophisticated. Now, in a situation like that, would you say that's indicative to somebody on their first go-around or somebody who has put the time in to think about things like this before? I think it's probably somebody who's put the time in to think about it. To me, it may be suggestive also of drug gang type of activity. a rat stabbed too? Yeah.

Interesting. It's a message. Well, I know I'm not sleeping tonight, but whatever. And they were hit, they were attacked in their sleep. That's when it happened. But it woke, awakened them. How did they access the house? Had to have a key because there was no, it was not forced entry.

How would one get a key? Yeah. It's close, much closer than we think. We think we know. But we've got some issues that we're working on right now with investigative aspect of things. Okay. All right. When you were doing, or in your time as a profile, did you get to sit down and talk with serial killers like those first two agents did?

Yeah. Yeah. It was very, it's such a fascinating experience. I'll tell you about, oh, say you're serial rapist. Okay. This guy was good for 85 rapes in 20. 12 different states. And what we wanted to find out was, of course, what made him, first of all.

But how did he pick his victims? And out of those 85 rapes, he never killed anybody. There's a certain typology. He's a personality type, what we'd call a power reassurance rapist. And this particular type of individual is what I like to code as a wannabe. He wants to be desired by his victims. He fantasizes, or about women in general. He wants to be attractive to them.

He fantasizes about having these experiences with women who desire him, want him. And you can tell that, by the way, he engages in certain types of activities with these victims. How did you get into the house with 85 rapes? and never get caught. Are you telling me, and I asked him, he said, I got in through unlocked doors and windows, 85 of them. I said, are you telling me that you never forced your way into a home? I didn't have to.

How did he pick the 85 people who weren't locking their doors or windows? Goes up to the window, goes up to the door. goes up to the door. So the women, though, he had kind of targeted them, right? Yeah. God, and he, what? Was this just nostradamus of targeting people who didn't lock their doors? It comes that way.

They're all single women or single women with children. I feel like those would be the people most likely to lock their doors. You'd think. It's the most natural thing you would think of, right? The most common-sensical thing. Did he, was he capable of having a normal relationship with a woman? He was married. Because I was going to ask.

And had three dollars. You have got to be kidding me. Did she have any idea? None. So he had been living just a double life. How did he explain his time away? Yeah, a truck driver. Oh, God. Yeah. And he brought a bicycle with him. So he had traveled to different states to deliver his goods, took this bicycle, and when they drive into neighborhoods and watch. He would look for, say, vehicles that would be driving into a neighborhood. What kinds of things would cue you into this, most likely this car belongs to a female, not a male, definitely not a male. And definitely not a male that drives this vehicle, but definitely a female. What kinds of trinkets might you expect to see in a vehicle? Pink license plate holder. Except for in California.

It's not indication of anything. I say that as somebody who lived in California for a long time. I grew up there. Here in Montana, it's actually a tough because I'd say anything other than a lifted truck, even though I see a ton of women driving around a lifted truck. I'd probably be looking for a smaller sedan type car. There's going to be your lip gloss.

I mean, just the normal everyday items. Things hanging from the mirror, right? Totally. Well, maybe stuffed animals. Yeah, I guess. Maybe a car seat in the back. Yeah, good indication. Yeah.

And those are the kinds of things he looked for, which suggests they're vulnerable and by themselves. And one of the questions I asked me, I says, are you telling me that you never came across an unlocked door or window? He says, yeah, I just moved on. It was that simple of a thing for him not to go in. Predators aren't looking for hard targets. No, they don't want the fight.

They're not looking for a fight, most of them. So how did he get caught? He was caught as a result of this happened in the state of Utah, and he expanded out beyond Utah. And he was hitting what they referred to then as the Ogden serial rapist. So he was in an area and had many, many, victims in that area. And between the DNA, they knew that they're dealing with the same guy.

And then they scheduled him when he was hitting what nights, what parts of the week, how many days or hours, typically it was days, before he would strike again, oftentimes a week to two weeks. Well, where was he during that two weeks? Well, he was out hitting other states. and so they scheduled this thing out and he was in a particular neighborhood and had been in this area about it was a six mile radius

and they focused it in on it was getting tighter the circumference was getting tighter and tighter so they set up patrol one evening in this particular city and had several patrolmen out there waiting to get a call they felt that there was going to be a victim

and that's exactly what happened the rape occurred she called a place police and they converged onto that area and happened to be right in the middle where this crime analysis had taken place. They were trying to identify the location, approximate neighborhood, et cetera. And they happened to be accurate. They went into that neighborhood, converged. There was like 10, 15 cops that went in there.

And they found him. In fact, what he'd done, she called the cops right away. And they turned the lights and siren on to that area. Yeah. Well, it spooked him. So he jumped in bushes within a block. Oh, they contained him in the area? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. What's it like sitting next to somebody like that? And is he just talking about this stuff, matter-of-factly? It just is what it is?

Completely matter-of-factly. He would explain, as he did to us, that he had no intention of hurting them. This is his perspective. He didn't use violence. What he would do is go in and use, the assumed violence. Look at it. He says, just do what I say. I'm not going to hurt you.

So he would go in, wake them up, and the dead of sleep. Wake them up, flashlight in their eyes, disorient them, and just let them know, I'm not here to hurt you. Just do what I say, and everything's going to be fine. Or, better for him, I'm not going to hurt your kids.

I'm not even going to let your kids know I was here. And you'd be amazed what women will do to protect their children. I get that. God, that is a brazen approach to that. It is. Yeah. And so his thought was if they cooperated, which they did 99% of the time. That it was somehow not violence?

Not violence and consensual. What? Yeah. Amazing. Just incredible. Yeah, because they just invited him into the house, right? Yeah. Hey, if you didn't want me here, you'd have locked your doors and windows. That's their rationalization. That is a theory, I suppose. It's incredible.

Wow. Yeah, their whole mindset's different. Can they be convinced of that, that their mindset, or is that just the reality? With this particular guy had been in prison for 14 years. Yeah. He was going to be in there the rest of his life. And with a lot of therapy, and of course you can't trust everything comes out of these individuals' mouths. But he would tell you that he failed to connect the dots.

that he'd rationalize and justify it his behavior to avoid the guilt and the shame associated with him until he was caught. What's the point of spending that much time giving somebody in prison for those reasons therapy? Yeah. Yeah, you know, you wonder, these individuals that have not been habilitated

to begin with, how do you rehabilitate him in prison? Especially if they're never going to get out. Yeah. I would go with, here's a section of rope. I'm not going to tell you what to do with this, but use your imagination. Exactly. Which is why I'm not a therapist, by the way.

I don't think that's a good prescription for most clients. Nor do they allow me to go into prisons with sections of rope. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is crazy. Yeah, it's amazing. They compartmentalize as well, just like we do, to deal with these crimes.

Out of the 1,000 cases you said you looked at, is there anything that's sticks out with you out of all those is there's one that lands with you more than anything else yeah for me it was a tremendous experience i think um would have been my i was a profiler had been there in the unit for i got in there at my fifth year mark and most of the guys that i worked with had uh senior were my senior by 10 years senior mean time at the bureau and age and age as well okay so i was fortunate to get in there i can when in with two other guys, or excuse me, two other people, one male and another female. Jana Monroe, who you'll hear her name, I think, this year. She has a TV show that's coming out

about her experience in the Bureau and as a profiler. We're very good friends. And she's done some great things with her career. And she also has a book, I think it's already out. But anyway, the three of us went in together, and we were about the same age. I had five years experience. Jana had six, and I think David Gomez had seven years' experience. My background was former law enforcement, former police chief of a small town, and the fact that I had focused and emphasized as a specialization interview interrogation. So I was selected. I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to be considered out in the field to work these cases

to function as what's referred to as a coordinator for the National Center for the Nalienable. of violent crime. So we facilitated the submission of cases by law enforcement agencies back to the profiling unit. So I got there in my fifth year mark and we spent the first year in training, basically. And if you got through the training and all the testing that went with it, because you're on probation for a year while you're back there, if you're not passing the muster, they're going to send you back out to the field. It's very difficult to get those positions. There was only 12 of us out of the bureau. We had at that time probably 10, 11,000 agents. Oh, wow.

So having been there through that first year, I'm assigned, became assigned to the Northwest Territory of the United States. And I start the profiling. Of course, you always have a couple guys who are monitoring everything that you're doing, looking at your work, testing you, challenging you, et cetera. So you've got to justify everything. every attitude opinion that you've got about it, every analysis and assessment. So one afternoon, this is about a year and a half into the job, I'm now off of probation,

and I happen to be the only guy that's left of the profilers in the office. It's Friday afternoon. John Douglas is out of town, and this case came in from North Carolina. And so when Norman, who was a major case specialist for the violent criminal apprehension program, there was three programs that we had within our unit. John Douglas was the unit chief. We had the profiling program, the arson bombing and services program,

who were profilers of arson and bombers. And then also the VICAP, or violent criminal apprehension program. That's the national database of unsolved homicides studied by. crime analysts and majors case specialists, try to link cases together that were submitted by law enforcement agencies around the country to identify commonalities among cases and hopefully common offenders and try to hook those departments together and do a multi-agency investigative task force. So I'm there as a profiler. When Norman comes over, he's 30 years, Metropolitan Police Department, 20 years as a detective, homicide detective.

And he comes over, he says, hey, Coupe, he says, I got this, I've been talking to this prosecuting attorney out of North Carolina. And he says he's got these two cases. And he wants to know whether or not they can be linkable from a behavioral perspective. He says, I've looked at it. And it's just a different set of glasses. I've looked at it. I don't think they can be linked.

But, hey, wink, wink, wink, you're the profiler. Thanks, Wynn. Wynn's got a lot of experience. I'm thinking, if you don't think they're likable, what the hell? What I think, you know? So anyway, I take a look at these cases.

There are two cases, and I think, wow, looking at victimology, looking at these areas that I talked to you about, initial contact site, and the crime scene, disposal sites, physical injuries,

sexual injuries, the, information we had on an offender on one of the cases and the risk level that the offender posed to himself, I felt these are linkable. There are so many commonalities between these two cases, the victimology, they're almost like twins. These girls look so much alike and had some of the physical characteristics. Similarities. Both of them had minor defects, even. Easy to dominate, manipulate, and control. they were both seen at a country western nightclub, same country western nightclub,

before their disappearance. And this detective is telling you they're not linkable? Yeah. What? I mean, I've been a detective for like six minutes and I feel like I can link these. It's a clue. And so going through all these things, I thought, well, I'm going to call this prosecuting attorney and tell them, yeah, I think we can link these cases together.

Now, this was not my state. It belonged to another profiler who happened to be in general. Germany, and he would be back the following week. So my thought was, I'll give him my opinion, and I'll tell John about it when he gets back in on Monday, and the profile, when he gets in from out of country. And I explain this to the prosecuting attorney. It's not going to be my case. I'm just giving me my opinion. He says, well, I like your opinion.

It's required, because I'm not going to be successful linking these cases together. I want to link them together to show that he committed both. both of, not just one and possibly the other and not get a conviction. The only way I'm going to convict him on both is by putting these two cases together and convincing the judge and or jury that the same offender committed both homicides. So I told him what I thought. He says, well, it's fantastic. He says, what about this other profile?

I said, well, she's going to have the same opinion. Very good. Well, thank you very much for your time. So Monday comes along. John comes back to the office. I tell him right away. He's our supervisor, the unit chief. I tell him right away.

This is what happened to me Friday evening before I left. And he says, man, a fascinating case. He says, what did you tell him? Now, I'd been off probation for six months. I said, well, I gave me my opinion. I can link them. I think they can be linked by this, this, this, and this. he says good

I agree I agree with you I said but so and so so is going to be coming in from out of town it's his area

and I'll tell him about it and he can call a prosecuting attorney back and he says who gave him his opinion was it this agent

was it this profile about it yeah was it this profiler no no I gave him my opinion he says well guess

whose case it is it's your case I said wait a second, John. Don't do this. Look, I'm the junior guy in here. It's going to piss a lot of people off. I'm the junior guy. And I'm the only guy at this point in time. I would have been the second guy to have testified of linking cases together as an expert witness for the FBI. John Douglas is the only other guy that had done it at that time. I'm intimidated to say the least. He says you're going to do fine.

Just do what you told, what you said you were going to do. I agree with you. You're going to do great. John, there's too much hanging on this thing. I was afraid I was going to, if I wasn't successful, it's going to cause all kinds of problems. For the unit, for me personally, for the Bureau, bad news, right? So anyway, I ended up with that case and make a long story short. 1991, this goes back a long way.

It's 1991 and 2. I testified against this guy twice. having outlined what he had done, why he selected, went through those different facets and filters I told you about, why he selected the victims, what he did to the victims, why he did it, and he's sitting there in the courtroom. And I'm having kind of like an out-of-body experience explaining as if I'm him, why he did what he did to them, what he did afterwards, why he left him the way they did, et cetera. and there was a connection I had with this guy. At least that was my experience.

I'd eye, I connected with him and told him everything, I know that I told him everything that he did and thought. And there was a sense of understanding that I experienced with him. And this is that, I think, this vicarious experience by immersing yourself into this stuff. And I'm wondering, what's he thinking right now, you know? How do I know? How do I know why he did what he did, et cetera?

And so that was the first case. He ends up getting convicted of the first case and gets the first death penalty. A year later, I testify against him on the second one. And as I'm coming in the courtroom, we walk by each other. And he's being, he's handcuffed, of course, and being brought in by a deputy. and after I testified against him on the second case, and he got convicted of the second case and received a second death penalty.

The deputy came out to me afterwards and said, I just want you to know that when he saw you come in, he made the reference, there's the SOB. It's going to make him I think I did this one too. And that's probably one of the best compliments I ever received from an individual. who under that set of circumstances, I was the voice for those victims, not just for him, but the voice for the victims.

And I think that's our primary client, is the victim primarily. Secondary is the victim's family. Third, I'd say, is law enforcement. We're here to help and do everything we possibly can to help and present these cases as ultimately solved to provide some kind of information that's going to help you progress the case. along. And when we talk about the stress and the difficulties we have and dealing with those stressors, the thoughts of those successes help me deal with that stress and make all these things worthwhile and working these kinds of cases. So it's a real privilege and honor to speak

in behalf of the victims. Are there ever women serial killers? Yes. I feel like we outnumber them pretty substantially. You think? Yeah, I would say like one out of, oh man, I hate to give you a number on it, but I can only give you a few names that I'm aware of. Eileen Warnos is one, or ones that I can think of. Eileen Warnos killed seven guys. I hear Michael over there typing away looking for female serial killers.

You just, you don't hear about them that much. No. I feel like, is that just a different psychology, a different set of motivation? experiences. What's the difference there between men and women? Well, men and men who are clearly idiots, but we start there. Have a desire to act out these things. Typically, that's where their violence is manifest. They're acting out that aggression. Those thoughts, feelings, and emotions in various ways. Women are much more calculated. In my experience, a violent male,

whether he's committing a crime or whether he's just acting out aggressively under a certain set of circumstances with a friend of his. You know, get into it, it's over, it's done, and let's walk on, let's get out of here. So they can express and decombust that level of anger and rage. females oftentimes, particularly serial females, they are much more calculated planning and methodical in the way in which we have seen them act these things out. Oftentimes they're caregivers, hospitals, for example. The angels of death if you were to ask them.

Yes. Yeah. And certainly we have males in that category as well, females. We've also seen what we refer to as the black widow, the woman who's been married to a number of different men over a period of time, and each one of them have, until the fifth one, finally realized that they have died suspiciously, you know, over time. There seems to be poisoning involved, and a lot of their victims. You yelled anti-freezing the coffee, if you will. Exactly.

Exactly. Are they harder to profile women? Yes. Damn it. Yeah. Sorry. Why do they have to be smarter than us? I know.

They're more calculated. They use their brain, you know. Well, again, that is probably the key difference between men or women. Believe it or not. You know, we say women are more emotional. Guys are more emotional in the way in which they act out. Exploding emotions, yeah. Yeah.

Uncontrollable emotions for sure. women have the the it's the long haul you know it's amazing to me how a woman a wife can poison a husband over an extended period of time watching them deteriorate and not change course yeah Michael I have to know Google who is the most famous female serial killer okay we must know it's probably Eileen Warnos probably out of Florida was she one of the Angela death lately No, no, she, is that it? That's what it says. What'd she do, Michael? Highway Processor was considered to be one of America's most prolific female serial killers in history. Yeah.

She killing the Johns? Yep. Well, they would pick her up. Yeah. One, sorry to say, happened to be a former police chief. People are people. Yep, exactly. So she would pick them up and purposely her focus was to kill him, to rob them and kill him.

So it wasn't one of these things where there had to be sex involved or anything like that. It wasn't that kind of a psychological thing for her. But she was quite the character. There's a movie made about it. I'm trying to remember the name of it, but Charlene Theron. Is that her name, the actress? Oh, yes. She played and got an Academy of Orr.

for it. Why is the name of this eluding me? She did a fantastic job. Is this the one where, I mean, Charlie's Theron is a resoundingly beautiful woman. Is this where she, she went the other direction with it? Gained a bunch of weight. Oh, man. What's that movie called, Michael? Monster. Monster. That's it. Okay.

I did not know that was about her. Yeah. I know what I'm turning on at 9 o'clock tonight when it's bedtime. Just don't show your wife. I'll just, she'll go into the bedroom. I'll turn it up louder. Yeah. It's, uh, tell me about the book? The book contains several cases that we have worked with law enforcement

agencies around the country, the Cold Case Foundation, how a group of experts and or a team of experts solved homicides and missing persons cases. So we talk about a number of different cases that we've worked together with law enforcement agencies, one of which is the one I mentioned to you, one out of here in 45, 45. years old at the time that we helped work that case and help solve it, and various other cases. And the message we want to get out is this service is available to law enforcement agencies around the country, that we provide experts at every level, every field that you can imagine that may be able to contribute to helping you solve your case at no cost.

It's all volunteer labor. All these folks that provide these services certainly obviously don't charge for their labor, but they're experts, they're expert witnesses in court as well and have years and years and years of experience and are only willing, happily, to provide this level of support to law enforcement agencies. And we'll work with agencies from any department,

or rather any jurisdiction, We don't take a case. We don't assume the case as our own. We're here only as consultants. And to provide whatever support that we can for them. We've helped pay for forensic tests for some agencies that couldn't afford it. So the monies that we're able to generate come, 100% of it is passed through to law enforcement agencies and victims' families. How do you guys generate money?

Obviously, the book can be an example. that, but do you take donations? We take donations, absolutely. Take donations as a result of PayPal, as an example, or the straight donations that come in. We have donations that come into us from organizations, estates. Most of the money that we have outside of donations come as a result of training that we provide to law enforcement agencies. We've been working with Bureau of Indian Affairs and the tribal police for

about the last five or six years. You've heard of the Lady Justice program. First started under Trump's first term, trying to address the unsolved homicides of female indigenous population. Of which there are a ton. We live in where we are right now. We're bordered north, south, and west by reservations. Oh, yeah.

It's unbelievable. It's terrible. There's about at least they're thinking 12 to 1,500 unsolved cases, indigenous population, females, of homicides and missing persons cases that we've been working with them. We provide consultation services we have to them, but mostly training. We've trained their new agents that have been assigned as investigators for those cases. We've been working with them for about five years now. Does profiling work regardless of country, given cultural different? Yeah, that's a great, great question. You wonder, is there a difference between one?

Just standards and norms and cultures. It affects people, certainly it influences them. But when we're talking about violence and people acting out in very bizarre, unique ways, they're very similar. Because the way in which you and I, me and somebody in Africa or South America or Germany, expresses thoughts, feelings in a moment. emotions, anger, rage, curiosity at a crime scene, or a sense of feeling sorry for what they've done, remorse. Those base feelings are expressed very similarly because we're all human beings. and we act those things out very, very commonly. So, yeah, I would say, no, there's not a lot of difference. There's difference maybe in some of their attitudes and opinions about nationalities

and their own identities in terms of their nationality. But when it comes to committing crimes and the types of crimes we're talking about, violent crimes, violent sexual crimes. It's all very similar. Yeah, I think we're far less unique than we would like to tell ourselves. Yeah. Man. You know, given how much you've looked into that world and the thousands of cases,

what advice you have for the average person to just enhance their safety? Yeah. I'll tell you. It's pretty simple. think of one of the first things we look at is victimology how did this person become a victim under this set of circumstances environment and situation by this particular type of offender and then we we look at a person's lifestyle based upon what's happening in the moment that the crime is being committed in terms of environment, situation, and circumstances.

And what's their lifestyle like? Low, medium, or high risk. So we stretch out a continuum, low, medium, high risk. What's happening in their own life? What do they do that could contribute themselves to becoming a victim of that type of a crime? And then we look at what's going on in the moment when the crime is being committed or just proximate to the crime is being committed and then engage themselves

on a continuum as to whether or not they're low, medium, or high risk. And of course, what we're suggesting to them is stay in low risk. Once you get to medium risk, immediately take action and bring yourself back down to that low risk category. Once you hit high risk, now you're looking at forfeiting, if you will,

to some extent, your power and influence of becoming a victim of a crime to somebody else. You're forfeiting it over to somebody else, a predator who's looking for an opportunity or prey. As an example, let's take a prostitute, a gangbanger, a hitchhiker. Are they engaging in activities? They're going to put them in a low, medium, or high, medium, or high. high risk. I'm going to go high. Yeah.

Good job. Yeah. And so what we've found is that the higher risk an individual is in their lifestyle and in what's happening within the environment, situation, and circumstances that the crime has occurred. The higher risk they are, the higher the probability that they have become victims of opportunity and that the victim and the offender are strangers. So let's go back down now to the opposite end of the spectrum or the continuum. Let's say you have a housewife married with four children,

they range 18 to 7 years old, 8 years old. And in the middle of the night, she gets a phone call. Let's pick a place like Provo, Utah, low crime rate, low violent crimes. She gets a phone call from her mother who lives. lives in St. George, Utah. And she says, I'm sorry to tell you, honey, that your dad has had a heart attack

and it's serious. And if you want to see him before the doctor's expected that he's going to pass, you need to get out of here as soon as possible. So here she finds herself in a situation. Her husband's out of town on work. She's got an 18-year-old son,

three other children, with him, that's four kids altogether. She's going to decide, under this very emotional set of circumstances, she's going to leave the younger ones in the protection and custody of the 18-year-old. She's going to pack a bag, get in that car, and get out to see her father as quickly as she possibly can. And she does. She's in a hurry.

She's not thinking about all the things that could happen. And let's say between Provo and St. Joe, She's out somewhere around CoFort, Utah. And she has a flat tire. She pulls over the side of the road, so she's got some things that she can do. First of all, does she know how to change a flat tire? And let's now say she's never changed a flat tire.

She's by herself. How about her phone? Can she call for help? She does have her phone, but she's in a dead zone. Now what can she do? she can wait hopefully for a highway patrolman that's going to come by help her out. So what's happening to her risk level with all these choices and decisions she's made? Innocently, ignorantly, haphazardly.

It doesn't change the fact it's going up. That's right. And if a highway patrolman drops by, well, she's right down there and low risk. But what if Robert Ben Rhodes drops by a serial killer truck driver? what if Ted Bundy drops by? Now, he owns her. No. Opportunity.

So you can have a low-risk victim who moves into a high-risk set of environment, situation, and circumstances just by the choices that they've made along the way. Typically, though, however, a low-risk victim, the lower-risk the victim's lifestyle is, she would be a low-risk victim. the lower risk her lifestyle, the higher the probability that if she dies as a result of a violent crime, the victim and the offender know each other at some level, and that she's been targeted.

So we start with that, and then we focus down on that funnel all the way down to suspect. What a fascinating line of work. It has been. How did you decide to leave the Bureau? That's an interesting question. I loved what I did. And in fact, I was running the, at the time, I was running the behavioral science unit. John Douglas had retired.

I was his relief supervisor at the time. I was also running the VICAP program, that violent criminal apprehension program, and teaching at the FBI National Academy. Loved my career. There were some changes that were being made. A new director had come in. and he was restructuring, reorganizing everything at the behest of some individuals that we became aware of. And I was not happy about it, to be honest.

Didn't think it was good for the unit. Didn't think it was good planning for the future. And I was going to resist that effort because I didn't think it was good for the situation that we were. in. And just at that time, during that period of time, I get a phone call from my former police chief, Provo, Utah. He says, I'm retiring. Are you interested? I said, well, you know, when I was there, all I ever wanted to do before I left Provo. And then I went to become a police chief of the small town Delta. I always wanted to be the police chief of Provo. So I wanted to come back eventually. So the timing was right for me. I thought, I've got nothing to lose. I'll go ahead and go on out

for the interview. So there were, I think, 12 people that applied, and I was offered the position. I made the choice in three weeks to pack up and make a move. And then started the Cold Case Foundation. I did spend a couple years after being a chief in Pro Bowl, spent a couple years with the Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security. And like I mentioned to you earlier, I had functioned as a law enforcement representative. of looking after all the public safety issues for the airports here in Montana. Which is they airtight. Yeah, airtight. Everywhere around the world.

Exactly. I'll tell you a quick story, how this comes full circle. It's included in the book. So as I mentioned, I was a police chief of a small town, little town. There were six guys when I got there. I was the chief. Like six cops or six people in the town? Six cocks.

Yeah. And we're going through a boom bus situation, though I thought it was going to be a good opportunity for me. You know, here I had a master's degree. I'd been a cop all the five years, and I'll apply for it because I want to be a police chief. I don't want to hang around and do all these other stuff. So I thought, I'm going to go ahead and go for it.

So I was offered the job. There was only two law enforcement agencies in the county. One was the Sheriff's Department, and then the Delta Police Department. And because it was a boom, bust, we had this influx of construction workers that moved in for the Intermountain Power Project. That really changed the nature of what had happened, what was going on in Delta. Higher crime in certain areas, domestic situations, drugs, alcohol, etc.

So we were required to grow as a result of that. And we grew to 12 people, 6 to 12. I mean, it's 100% of... Was it amazing? That's what I called it. So when the Bureau called me, because I had already applied to the FBI, as I mentioned to you, and they put that hiring freeze on. I still had to go out and work, right?

So they called me and said, are you still interested? Yeah, of course I was. So they came back, and I asked them, I'm going to have to retest and go through all this process again? No, no, no, everything's fine. We just want to come out and re-interview you because it's been three years. So the applicant coordinator comes out. with three or four other agents. And I'm really proud to show them what we've done out here in two and a half years.

Having a brand new city building and all these guys. 100% growth, you know. Anyway, offered the position. And I worked very closely with the sheriff out there. Fantastic guy. And they had some very bizarre cases. So I left, go to the bureau. The sheriff ends up eventually.

going to the FBI National Academy, visits me when I happen to be out there as a profiler at the academy. And we visit, he leaves, comes back, I spend my 10 years in the FBI, and I make this change, I come back to Provo now. And while I was teaching as a profiler in the FBI National Academy,

I went to one of the foremost profilers in the area of serial rapists. And I said, Roy, his name was Roy Hazelwood. I said, Roy, look, they've asked me to teach profiling. And I need some examples of cases that I can use. He says, I got the perfect case for you. You can use to teach other police officers. Robert Ben Rhodes case. He's a serial truck driver, serial killer truck driver.

And so I use that. I use that as an example in all the courses I taught, I don't know, hundreds of courses back there. And I bring it back with me, of course, and I've got a whole curriculum teaching profiling to law enforcement. So when I come back to Provo, I get this request from the Utah Police Chiefs Association to come out and give a presentation in some. St. George at the conference give a presentation on what you did back there. Oh, happy to do that. One of the cases I had focused on was the Robert Ben Rhodes case. I thought, you know, he was arrested, and this young girl, he was known to have picked up a 14-year-old girl and her boyfriend out of San Antonio, Texas, kills the boy immediately, in our opinion. I don't know for sure,

but we believe he did. And he keeps that 14-year-old. year old girl for up to 10 days. Jesus. Your imagination can run wild with you. Yeah, he did it all. What they end up getting him on was abduction. They can't prove that he was responsible for her death, even though they find her remains

in an abandoned barn out of Illinois. But they couldn't prove that he killed her, only proved as result of what happens here when he gets arrested. He happens to be in Arizona, parks his truck, in Arizona Highway Patrolman, kind of jumping around here, sorry, comes out to see what's going on in this truck. He finds this girl in the back of the sleeper berth, and she's chained up. She's got whip marks on

her. She's got handcuffs, ankle cuffs. And Robert Ben Rhodes comes around the front of the truck, and he approaches the highway patrolman. He says, hey, it's not what it looks like, et cetera, et cetera. Make a long story short. You can read about it in the book or you can get a book on it called Road Prey. He tells the highway patrolman, hey, she wanted this. He asked me to do this.

I just gave her a ride. She was hitchhiking, et cetera. Yeah, she was hitchhiking. He picked her up, and he kept her as a sex lad for the three days. And so the highway patrolman keeps him. And they charge him with abduction. And then they get a search warrant for his place. He has a separate place from where he also is married.

But he's got a separate place that his wife doesn't know about, an apartment. And they go and do a search warrant on that apartment. And they find all these photographs and young women's clothing. And these photographs are photographs of a young girl, and ends up being Regina Walters, 14 years old, who in the photographs are wearing some of the, she's wearing some of these clothing. So we know, we meeting law enforcement know that he had her. Well, and the next time they find her, and he's got all these photographs in the sleeper berth, chained up, in various modes and postures, etc.

And sexually sadistic activities. And then eventually her body's found. So they link him back to her as a result of that and get him for abduction. So a very upsetting case, distressedful case. But it taught the unique behaviors of what a serial killer does and all of their aspects of their life. which is interestingly very similar to types of activities that hunters will go through in terms of preparing to go out for the hunt. These guys do the same thing in preparing to go out for the hunt, just like a hunter will do for whatever they're interested in. So what ends up happening is, you know, I've got an attitude about this guy, and he's never cooperated with anybody.

He's never confessed to any of his crimes. So here we go now. I'm coming full circle back as the police chief in Provo. I've been asked to give this presentation out there in St. George, Utah. So I'm giving the presentation. And I'm going through this case, showing the photographs. And I show the map, his truck log, his travel log. And in 1990, 91, we see that this guy has been through.

Utah. Sheriff Phillips, who I worked with 13 years before, raises his hand at the back of the room. He says, hey, says those photographs, man, those areas that Regina is in, that he's taking photographs of her outside in the wild look familiar to me. They look like our area, Millard County. He says, show me again when he was in Utah. But back up the map, blushing through that. He says, I've got an unsolved case. Dead female, shot in the back of the head, stripped and left to decompose. 1990. Rhodes was there, 1990.

How can I get a hold of people who have some information on him? We put him in connection with all these cops that had worked these cases over the years and detectives that were involved in it and FBI agents. In that apartment, he's been keeping clothing, right, that belonged to Regina Walters as one, but others as well. There's a rag in there that had some blood on it. They did a DNA test on the blood, and don't you know that it gets linked? No way.

...their homicide there in Miller County. Now, here's a side note for you. So before I went out to give the presentation, I thought, you know, I'm going to call, get a hold of Robert Bin Rhodes to see if he'll talk to me. So I can take that information if he's willing to give it to me about certain cases and what his thought process was, etc. As we like to do with these serial offenders, talk to him, interview him, and take it into the presentation. So I make arrangements to call this guy on the phone. He's in Illinois in prison. and make the arrangements to bring him into a room that he's escorted into.

I'm on the phone waiting. He's escorted in, gets the phone, introduces himself. I introduce myself, tell him what I want to do, explain to him who I am, what my background is. I'd like to ask you some questions about the Regina Walters case. Regina Walters and he went off and called her every disgusting deplorable name in the book

tried to blame her homicide on her boyfriend etc. Anyway, it got to the point where I just had enough. And I thought, I'm not going to get anywhere with this guy. Now and not ever. So I'm just going to let him know

what I think about it. So I said, let me just tell you something. I'm going to commitment. my life to do something that's going to make your life more miserable than it already is. If I can do it, whatever that be, I've committed myself to it. But little did I know that I was just going to give this presentation there in St. George and solved that case in Miller County where they arrested him as a result for that case,

brought out they're going to charge him first degree homicide. and go after the death penalty, which the guy deserves. Unfortunately, they decided because of other cases that he agreed to confess to, that he would just agree to life in prison. But at least the voice again. You gave a voice to the victim. You solved another crime. But it's just one of those experiences where it's something as simple as passing information along.

Now, there happened to be a connection, and it was only because I had been showing his case for years. I can't imagine. I must have given that presentation two, three hundred times, easy. Did I ever think that by sharing the information about that case would have solved a case in the county that I worked in as a police chief 13 years before? No, not at all. But it's those kinds of things that create this nexus between the ability that we have in law enforcement

to communicate what we refer to as the four Cs, communicate with each other, cooperate, coordinate, and collaborate. If we'll do those things together, it's unmatched on how many cases that we can be part and parcel of the solving if we continue to work together highlighting those principles. Has there ever been a case where the serial killer was actually a profiler? No, not that I'm going to. Because that's a pretty good TV show.

Yes. Also, it'd be a really good place to learn. Let's hope that never happens. I mean, it depends on the long game. People who want to know what the authorities know, like hiding in plain sight, essentially. Exactly. Scary thought. Don't you dare try to write that movie, Michael?

Scary thought, Michael. Write it down. Oh, I am. It might be worth running a profile on him, to be honest. What do you want to leave people with? We've been out of for two and a half hours. Wow. You're going to show this whole thing?

Yeah. Really? I don't do any editing. We just fire away. Fantastic. Well, first of all, thanks. How can people support the Cold Case Foundation? That's probably the best way.

That'd be great. First of all, people can donate to the organization. They can volunteer. They can buy the book. And they can submit cases. Law enforcement agencies can submit cases to us. So we can assist them and provide. providing these services at no cost to them.

We have been partnering with law enforcement agencies for 13 years now and participated in solving many of those cases. It's not just because of what we do, it's because of what we can bring together in terms of resources. When you have that opportunity to bring together a brainchild of various disciplines, experience training and education, you create a whole new mind set, if you will, to be able to analyze a case

and provide thoughts and insights to an agency that's been looking at it for years and years and years over and over again to get some new perspectives on it. And, you know, when you get that opportunity to look at other people's experiences and training where they've specialized in these areas that have been somewhat foreign to them,

it's amazing what can happen. And we just want to be, part of that to help them. What's the best website or place that they could donate or find? Thank you. ColdcaseFoundation.org. Not bad as far as a website goes. It's in line. It says it all.

Anything else you want to close it out with? No, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Of course. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to the organization. And I just want to put a shout out to you and your associates and all the good work that you've done and represent.

for the United States of America and your military service. And also your brother's in some kind of arms, I suppose to some extent, is law enforcement. For sure. Or part and parcel in some areas. And the good work that's being done by people around the country. You imagine what the country would be like without law enforcement agencies. I actually can't because I've been to many countries where it doesn't exist. And you can talk about those things, right?

People don't believe me, though. They don't believe me. No. They're like, nope. It would never happen. It doesn't happen. Okay. Imagine, yeah.

It wouldn't take long for the society to fall apart. I forget the quote who it's associated to, but I believe it's nine meals from chaos. There you go. Wouldn't take long at all. No. No, it would not. No, but, you know, I commend you and you are a hero to many young men. I don't know where the census is going.

It's true. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I mean, some people say, well, I want to be a profiler, okay. Well, you can be a profiler if you do what I did to become a profiler. I want to be a Navy SEAL. Oh, yeah, do you? Well, this is what it's going to take.

They're taking applications. That's right. This is what it's going to take. And the experiences that you've had. I'm trying to talk Michael into it. I think he's smarter than that. We both agree he wouldn't make it, but I'm trying to get him to ruin his life. That's right.

On that note, let's get you guys back out and enjoying the hottest day of the year so far. Montana with the smoke that's just pouring in from Canada. Well, thanks again and love to come back anytime you want.

Perfect. We'll do another one for sure and you got to sign the book. That's one thing we've got to do. Absolutely. Cool. Got it.