Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “Michael Jackson, The Clintons, & Criminal Minds." – Investigating with Serial Killer Profiler Jim Clemente

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Former serial killer profiler for the FBI and writer for ‘Criminal Minds’, Jim Clemente, spills all on investigating some of the biggest crimes in history — from Michael Jackson and JonBenét Ramsey, to the Clintons.Alex Clark and Jim get into what factors, if any, can predestine someone to become a killer, the differences between a sociopath and a psychopath, and the INSANE story of how Jim ended up working for the FBI. This episode will cause the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up.Lo...

Did you ever watch that Kristen Bell crime thriller parody on Netflix called The Woman in the House across the street from the girl in the window? I mean, such a ridiculous title. Kristen Bell's husband in the show, though, played by Michael Ely, is a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI and specializes in serial killers. One particular case that he's assigned is for a cannibal killer named Massacre Mike. Of course, the show is a parody, like I said. So the writers come up with this plot where Kristen Bell's husband, Douglas, brings their daughter to work one day for Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. Well, his work is actually at a prison, and his job is to interview these maniacs.

One thing leads to another, and Douglas leaves his daughter in the interview room with Massacre Mike. And, well, he eats her. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous, which is the point. But there are real people, like Massacre Mike out there. And there are real people like Douglas who study serial killers and predators and why they do what they do. Today's guest is not only a former serial killer profiler for the FBI. He also uses his firsthand experience of understanding why people kill to make award-winning shows like criminal minds as realistic as possible. He even has his own Hollywood production company XG Productions that is dedicated to telling the crime stories I love to watch.

Today, we're going to cover everything from the scariest killers he's profiled to the things each killer has in common, the Clintons and Michael Jackson, both of which our guest has investigated. And you may also know who he is because he is the co-host of the podcast of our, well, one of our first guests to ever appear on The Spillover, Francie Hakes. You're going to want to sleep with the light on after this episode. Please welcome Jim Clemente to The Spillover. Jim, I think it's important that we start at the very beginning of your story because it really is like a movie, how you ended up working for the FBI. So I'll just let you take it away and start at the beginning of when this all kind of happened for you. Well, it wasn't a plan. I didn't think about it.

Although when I was a kid, I kind of always wanted to be a detective. I loved figuring things out. And I thought that would be a really cool job, a profession. And what ended up happening was I majored in chemistry in college and then went to law school. And I became a prosecutor. And I really liked it. It was intense. I had over 200 cases in my caseload going to trials all the time.

It was very, very stressful, but really invigorating. I loved doing it. And one day I got a call for my brother and my older brother. And he said, now that you're a prosecutor, we should go after the director of the camp we were out when we were kids. And I was like, why? And he said, because one day when no one was around, I snuck into his office.

And I found three paper bags filled with Polaroid pictures of him molesting boys. And I said, I thought I was the only one. And I said, why didn't you tell me? He said because the next time he saw me, he pulled out his 30-06 rifle and pointed at me, pulled the trigger, and said it would be that easy. So he must have known, and so I was scared to death. And before that point, had you ever shared with your family what had happened to you? No. And how many years did that go on while you're going to this camp?

Well, it went on. I went to the camp over the course of two or three. summers, but it happened at the end of the second one. And then I didn't go back. And then he came to where my job was and basically, like, scared me into coming back. As you were a teenager. Yes. And I was, I was too afraid to say no. And I didn't know how to stay away from him and not have my whole world collapse. But I did learn how to stay away from him and not alone with him, so I wasn't molested again. But it was a very stressful time for sure. And then luckily, I graduated from high school, and then I went to college, and I went away, and, you know, pretty much avoided him,

although I remember vividly when I got a call from him in college. And it turns out he had called my old home number, talked to my mother, and my mother thought, oh, how sweet. He's trying to follow up on, you know, Jimmy at the time. And it was just terrible. It was just like be living it all over again. It was a real manipulation technique just to make sure that you knew that you were still in his grasp. He could follow me. Yes, that you were still in his grasp. Exactly. And so what ended up happening was after I call with my brother, I, you know, after a lot of soul searching that night, I went to the FBI and YPD task force the next morning, the sexual exploitation of children task force, and I told them what had happened to me and what my brother had found.

And they opened an investigation. And over the course of the next 18 months, they found that he had taught at 13 different Catholic schools. Wow. And each time there was an allegation, he was approached, confronted. He didn't say anything, resigned on the spot, and walked. down the street to another school and another school and another school. And this was, this is like a Catholic camp or what? It was. Yeah, it was a CYO camp, Christian youth organization. And it was run by the Catholic Church and he taught at Catholic schools and coached at Catholic schools. And he was

just allowed to go on and on. And it turns out later that he was actually in the seminary and was kicked out because of sexually acting out. That's incredible, the cover up. And, and, and what I found out recently because I recently filed a lawsuit against the church on this subject. Really? Yes, because it turns out that in the late 60s, the Boy Scouts in Long Island wrote a letter to the Catholic Church to tell them that he had molested one of the boys in their troop and that he should no longer be associated with the church because he's going to do it again. And that was, you know, years before he molested me.

And over 200 other boys over the course of his offending career. He worked at children's homes. He worked as a teacher. He worked as a coach. And just to get access to kids. But the good thing is that during the course of that investigation, we found out all this information. But unfortunately, they couldn't find any victims that were within the same. statute of limitations. And so they said they wanted me to meet with him and wear a wire. And I said,

are you kidding me? I can't sit down and have a conversation with this guy. What are you talking about? I mean, when I've thought about it in my head, in dreams, I've met him in an alley with a machine gun, you know, not sit down and talk to him like everything's great. But when you, when he would, just a pause, when he would contact you like the time he called you when you were in college, for example, would he bring up what he had done to you? Or was it this? big secret, like he would talk to you just to manipulate you, but he would never admit or talk about it. Oh, absolutely. He would never bring it up. I remember one time being at the county fair with my girlfriend, and he comes walking up with two other young guys, like teenage guys. And I just froze.

I mean, it just, you know. You wonder what was he doing to them? Of course. I wondered, yeah. And I worried, and I felt like I couldn't say anything about it. So then did you think like, okay, well, he's never done. brought this up or talk to me sense. Like even if I'm wearing a wire, what makes you think that I'm going to be able to get something out of him? Well, I wasn't even going there because I did not have any way that I could possibly believe that I could sit down and talk to this guy civilly. So I just said, no. And they said, all right, but the investigation may go away. And that was really disturbing. They said, we'll keep waiting. We'll keep thinking. We'll keep trying to figure out if we can get

somebody else. But, you know, right now we can't really do much else. And, and, And, you know, right at that time, though, I had graduated from law school, passed the bar, and I was working as a prosecutor, but you get 18 months to file your paperwork with the bar. And it's about 26 pages of background. And I didn't want to list the camp as a place that I'd live because I would have to put his name down as the director. And I just started an investigation against him. And I didn't want anybody to know, and I didn't want him to know where I would. was what I was working at. And so I was really conflicted. And my boss came in and said, if you don't get this in by the end of the week, you're going to lose your job. Wow.

So I said, all right, I basically agonized over it all night. I called in the next day sick and I just wrote, filled out the entire application and, you know, listed everywhere I ever lived, all my contacts, all my travel, all that kind of stuff. It's all really intense background investigation. And so I'd gotten it done and you're supposed to mail it to your law school, get your transcripts attached, and then they send it to the bar. But my law school was six blocks away. So I walked it into the registrar's office. And when I went through the door, who do you think is sitting behind the desk? But Michael J. O'Hara, the guy who molested me. What? He is sitting behind the desk at the registrar's office of Fordham University School of

where I just graduated a year and a half earlier. I was, I couldn't believe it. I was in complete and utter shock. I was like, I just convinced myself that this would never happen, that I would never have to see him again, that it was ridiculous for me to, like, still be afraid of him. And there he was. I was frozen in place. I didn't know what to do.

What was he doing there? He had just got fired from another school and picked up a night job at the law school. Did he know that that's where you had gone? Well, the first words out of his mouth were, yeah. I noticed you graduated from here a couple of years ago. He was sitting right next to the alumni file. So the exact thing that I was so worried about and had just convinced myself would never happen was playing out in front of my eyes at my law school. I mean, it was just unbelievable.

It was unbelievable to me. So I had to sort of think in the moment. We got an investigation going. They want me to wear a wire. Here he is. I know where he is. I made an excuse and got out of there. Well, luckily the dean walked in.

I had her personally handle my stuff and and then I got out of there. Well, as I was leaving, he said, by the way, I was really sorry to hear about your mother's passing. And that got me because ever since I got molested, you know, I was close with my mother, but once I got molested, I was so worried that she would find out that I just kept her at a distance. And I kept everybody at distance. It shut me down. I was, I was afraid. I felt like I was damaged goods. I felt like it was stamped across my forehead. And it just really changed my life. And then he said that because she had died a few years earlier from cancer. And I never got to resolve it with her and tell her what was really going on.

She used to always say to me, Jimmy, you were such a happy kid, what happened? Why don't you talk to me anymore? You know, that kind of stuff. And you were like, I can't tell you what happened. Yeah. And so him saying that just firmed up my resolve and I went outside. I called the FBI. I said, look, I know where he is right now. Come and wire me up. We set up a meeting at this bar down the street and the FBI agent and the detectives that were working the case sat me down and coached me on how I should talk to him. And they said, look, offenders like this know that they're despised by the public. And they're always searching for friends. So you have to open the possibility that you, you don't hate him, that you think what he did was okay, you just didn't understand it at the time. Oh, and did that just make you sick your stomach to think I have to act like I want to be this guy's friend after what he did to me? Absolutely. It made me sick to my stomach. And I, you know, I said, I don't think he's going to fall for it. I said, I don't think he's going to believe that from me. And they said, look, we've been doing this a long time. Trust us. Just say these words, right? And so I said, all right. And I met him. And what year was this, by the way?

This was in 1985. Okay. And I remember it was Halloween night. This is getting spooky. I remember walking from my apartment and being conscious of my footballs on the street and watching these ghosts and goblins and Dracula's walking around and thinking, this is so utterly bizarre. My life has been turned upside down since the day I walked into.

that office and saw him and I can't believe I'm going to meet him so it was kind of crazy but I went to the bar I waited for him in a booth that we had picked out there was a detective and an agent in another booth and they were listening to to my recording and and he came in and he sat down and you know almost immediately he was like you know so what did you want to talk about and I said you know I just got my beer can I just at least have a drink and chill out, you know, because I was nervous, but for another reason. Right. And so he said, yeah, you always were a wimp, never could stand on your own two feet,

immediately trying to reset that imbalance of power that he had when I was a little kid, right? So he wanted to be in charge. And so I went with it. I let him feel like he was in charge. And I was like, yeah, this is kind of really difficult for me to talk about. I don't know. And they told me this to say this. There's no one else in the world that I can talk to about this.

And he said, all right, well, I'm the teacher. Correct me if I'm wrong. He said, this is about what happened between us, right? This is about sex, right? And kids. It's so gross that that's what he called it, like as if it was consensual, you know? And I just went like this. How did you know?

You know? Amazing acting. And he ran with it. And he, for like two hours and 45 minutes, talked to me about how. how, you know, he first molested this kid when he was, you know, volunteering at a, at a boy's home or something. But what would he say? Because obviously he wasn't going to say molested, right? No, no. He said, he would say you could do anything with them. The kids wanted it. Things

like that. You know, I mean, they're boys, you know, so they wanted it, you know, that kind of stuff. And it went on and on and on. And literally he talked about all these kids maybe like something like 50 kids by name, date, place, and everything, but they were all long before the statute of limitations. So there's no way we could prosecute him for any of this. It's good evidence, but we can't prosecute him for any of those cases. So I ended up having to meet with him six times. Oh my gosh. And the last time was at his house. And I have to tell you, I was really, really nervous. Was his house a place that you had been abused before? No, no. It was only. at the camp. But it was scary going to his house. And let me tell you, it was, it was just

unbelievable. Do you have a gun on you or anything in those situations? I don't. I was, I was just a prosecutor, but there were two cops and one agent outside, you know, sort of driving by and listening on the radio transmitter and so forth. But I didn't feel safe, that's for sure. But I got him to trust me and I also saw something that he didn't know I saw so it was a picture on one of his dressers a kid going like this with a basketball and you could see the number of his jersey and he told me about a kid a special kid and I knew what he meant this must have been a kid that he molested and he said he was on his championship team and on that picture it said congratulations champs. So I was like, this has got to be him. So I memorized the number and told the agents

and they went and they interviewed the guy and he denied being a victim. And the agent was smart. He went back to the school and he said, look, is there anybody else that was on this team that we haven't talked to? And she said, well, there's one kid who didn't make the team. He was a scorekeeper. So they went and interviewed him and he disclosed. And then he said this. Let's say the guy had number 23 on him. He said one day when I was leaving his house after he molesting me, I saw number 23 coming towards his house. And he saw me. His eyes went wide and then he just looked down and he walked into the house and he never talked to me again at school. Wow. And so the agent went back to 23 and he said, yeah, it happened to me. So now they could arrest him. They got a

search warrant for his house. They didn't find any child pornography in his house, but he had shown me child pornography. But at the camp. No, he showed me child pornography in his house. Oh, while you were an adult during this investigation? When I was undercover, and I took two of the little thumbnail pictures and I gave him to the, to the agent. What was he? He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, was showing you that just thinking that you would like it. Yeah. And so did you have to pretend? Yes. Well, I had to pretend, wow, this is, where do you get stuff like this? You know, that kind of stuff. You know, I was trying to tell him that, you know, I had mixed feelings, you know, before I was really afraid.

And that's why I reacted so badly. You know, I didn't understand you were just trying to teach me, you know, just feeding the things that the agents had told me. And, you know, it worked. I mean, he totally bought it. But he did tell me this. He goes, you know, when you came back to me, when we met in that bar that night, I have to tell you, you're the last one of my boys that I thought would have come back. And I was like, why? You know, I had to pretend like, why would you think that? Why would you think badly about me? Why would I think badly about you?

And it was all acting. It was all, unfortunately, something I had to do. It was disgusting. But when the agents met me at my apartment afterwards, as soon as they took, off the wire, ran it to the bathroom and puked my guts up because it was disgusting. But in the end, they locked them up. But do you know that he got a five-year split sentence and he served about a year in jail and then was free? Why? Because they didn't at the time give child sex offenders long sentences. And so what ended up happening to him? Well, he ended up getting a job as a

car salesman in Long Island and I told him if you ever go near another boy I'm going to be on you in a second and I had the commissioner probation watch him closely and you know as far as we know he didn't molest anybody else and then he he died you know years ago what is that like when you're an adult and your abuser dies years later how do you process that is it a feeling of joy? Is it still sadness? Well, let me tell you something, an interim fact that affected that. I was presenting in Toronto, I believe, with Sheldon Kennedy, who's a NHL star, right? And he has disclosed that he was a victim, that he's a survivor.

And we spoke on a panel and, you know, before a fairly big crowd. And people were asking questions at the end. and somebody stood up and asked me, did you ever forgive O'Hara? I was like, what? What? He never asked me to forgive him. And they said, well, they don't have to ask you

for you to give forgiveness. And it's just like something clicked in my head. I said, you know what? Let God deal with him. Yeah, I forgive him. And it felt immediately like this weight got lifted off my shoulders. Like, forget about him.

I don't have to deal with him anymore. He's not in my life anymore. I mean, I'm carrying around all this, you know, anger and hatred and guilt because of him and shame. I really don't have to. And it was such a freeing moment. Now, I can't tell everybody, just forgive the people that do horrible things to you. But I can tell you that in my experience, it actually lifted a weight off my shoulder. and allowed me to just move on with my life.

And so when he passed away, I was like, well, that's a relief that he can't molest any more kids. But it really, it's a neutral event. I really don't have any feelings about it anymore because I've gone out with my life. I've become a professional in this field. I've helped a lot of other kids and adult survivors. And that's the important thing. So what year is it when this case with your abuser wraps up? All right.

I just want to, I think you should avoid saying you're abuser. Oh, okay. Tell me. No, this is something that I teach survivors all the time. They're not connected to you. They have no right to have a connection to you. They are the people that committed crimes against you. The criminal, you could call them, the offender, the person who did this.

But he's not my abuser. That's great. I don't have a connection with him. And no victims should have to suffer with a connection like that. It just keeps you in the sort of victim category as opposed to a survivor and thriver who's moved on. And so this is in 1986. And after the case, the agent took Agent Al McDonald took me to lunch or breakfast. I can't remember.

And he kind of slid this big pile of papers over to me. And I said, what's that? And he said, it's an application to the FBI, we want you. And I said, you would take me even though I was a victim? I actually said that. And he said, are you kidding me? First of all, being a victim of a crime is not a crime. And secondly, you went undercover for us.

You transcribed all the tapes because he was very difficult to understand. You did all this amazing work. You're a prosecutor. Of course we want you. And it changed my life. because I went from somebody who was hiding this to somebody who had no shame about it at all. And what was crazy is I go through the FBI Academy. It's about a year process of the background and then going through the academy.

Is it actually just like Silence of the Lambs? It's not actually just like that because you don't get to investigate serial killers while you're in the academy. I'm sorry. That's what I was wondering. Okay. Yeah, but 10 years later, you do if you're lucky like me. So I go through the academy and I get my assignment. I only wanted to work in New York.

And that was the first time they let people decide if they were from New York, they could go back to New York. Because they were having so much trouble getting people to go to New York. It's so expensive. Yeah. So I get assigned to the very squad that had just finished investigating my case. Whoa. So the people that had basically saved me are now my colleagues. I'm working with that.

Totally changed everything. I didn't have to hide anymore. And what was your actual title with them? I was a special agent. Yeah, I was a special agent on the violent crimes, sexual exploitation of children task force, NYPD FBI task force in the New York office of the FBI. So let me ask you. The beginning of a 22 year career.

Why would they immediately put you on that task force, though, as someone who's gone through that? that would, they didn't think that that wouldn't like mess with you emotionally to have to be involved with crime similar to your own that you endured or anything? They said, if you can do this in your own case, it shouldn't be any worse doing it in other cases. Wow. And it's just true.

I mean, it literally became, I had an insight that most of the other people didn't. And I say most because who knows how many of them were also victimized. But the fact is that I was able to do something about it, fortunate enough to do. do something about it and also to move on and also use what I've learned to help other people. And so I became really good at building rapport with victims getting them to trust us and open up and to help them and to be safe and create a safe space for them. And that became my, you know, making lemonade out of lemons. And so there's no hesitation on my part to try to help other people.

people. To me, that made it all worthwhile. So how do you, so first your special agent and then is there, is there like a promotion that happens to you becoming a serial killer profiler or how does that transition work? Well, while I was going through the academy, Pete Smirich talked to us about the James de Bartleaven case, very, very prolific and horrific serial killer. And after he did that class, I walked up to him and said, Mr. Merrick, I love what you do. I want to do what you do. And he's like, all right, kid, go out and get 10 years of experience and then come back and see me. And it was nine years and eight months later that I got promoted into the unit.

I worked as many big cases as I could. I worked violent crimes. I worked everything I could. I volunteered. I became a evidence tech at the FBI as well, which is the, the FBI's evidence response team. And because I was a chemist, I was really good with that sort of thing.

And then I worked a lot of major cases. And I did pretty well. So I applied and I got into the unit. You compete to get in. There's only 25 spots at the time and there was 14,000 agents. So it's pretty competitive. But the fact that I was a prosecutor

and I prosecuted sex crimes, and I investigated sex crimes, among other things like homicides and equivocal deaths. I had a very good broad range of experience, which is what they're looking for. They want people with a broad range of experiences and perspectives so that when the profilers sit around that round table, they actually can all pick it apart from their different perspectives and see things that their colleagues might not see. What was the first high-profile case that you can talk about that you worked as a profiler? Wow. Well, you know, when you say it's used the word high-profile. And there are cases like Green River Killer and John Bonae Ramsey and the Unabom investigation.

All those are probably high-profile cases. but to us we didn't really give a damn about the media. We really cared about the victims. And it's funny because later in life a lot of people will ask me, what about this serial killer or that serial killer and they'll name them? And I'll say, I don't remember the name, but who did he kill?

Who are the victims? And they tell me and then I know the case. Because we worked for the victims. And we did not ever name a serial killer, give them a moniker. We don't do that. We focus on the victimology. That's the first thing that we discuss. We analyze that because it reveals a tremendous amount about the offender.

So explain that a little bit. Okay, sure. So victimology is everything you could possibly want to know about the victim. And it's their life circumstances, their dreams, their age, their gender, their goals, or their family, everything that you can know about them, because every offender picks a particular victim at a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular manner, for a particular purpose. And those choices reveal something about that offender, what they want to do and what they're capable of doing. And so if a victim is a street worker or a drug addict who's out in the open,

who's very exposed, who's very vulnerable, and an offender takes that person, well, the risk level that the offender takes is very low. But getting to a middle class housewife in the privacy and security of her own home over and over and over again, that takes an incredibly higher amount of risk and sophistication. So this person has skills that this person doesn't have. And why? So we start, you see how we start to evolve the profile from just those choices that they make. And then how much time do they spend with the victims? How much time do they spend preparing for these crimes? Are they organized or disorganized? Are they educated or not? Are they forensically sophisticated? Do they leave all the implements they used in the crime? Or do they take them with them? Do they cover

up for themselves or they leave everything out in the open? All those things tell you what kind of person they are and it reflects in their real life. So we can say if somebody is really sloppy at the crime scene. They're probably impulsive in their real life. They probably can't hold jobs or relationships. And they may move from place to place to place. They don't keep up their car. It's going to look dumpy. Whereas this guy, it will be impeccably clean. It will be something that he really, his image is tied to how people see him. His self image is tied to how people see him. So he's going to make sure that he expresses that in a way that makes people look up to him. Because he's, he's he feels bad about himself inside or something else like that.

You know what you just said that stuck out to me right there talking about victimology is finding things out about the victim and just everything about how they live and where they live and everything tells you something about the killer. And one of my favorite episodes of Best Case, Worst Case, that you did was about a case that you worked, which was the Danielle Van Dam case. And one thing that I was like, this guy is brilliant, is that you talked to. about working that case that this little girl lived back in a neighborhood. That was one of the key pieces.

Yeah, the key elements of her case that helped you figure out who would have killed her because she didn't live right on the road. It was like way back in a neighborhood. Could you explain that case and why that was important? One of the first things I did was take out a map and look at the street layout in her neighborhood. And this was she was seven years old. I mean, just a wonderful little girl. But what we found out was that she played in her backyard.

And the backyard was walled in with almost a six-foot-high cinder-block wall. And she didn't play out in the front in the street. But the street itself was in a very convoluted set of neighborhood streets. And it took seven to nine turns from the main road to get to her house. Who's going to find this little girl in the middle of the night? in that neighborhood. It had to be someone who could see over that wall. Wow. Who saw her play, who fixated on her, and took all the steps necessary to get into that house.

So right away, we ruled out somebody passing by or, you know, sex offenders who were from, you know, across the county or across the state. We were looking for somebody who was very close by. And then, you know, when a child gets abducted, we have the child abduction, response plan that we put out and we gave to law enforcement across the country and around the world. And it starts with concentric searches around the last known sighting area. And she was taken from her bed in the middle of the night in her home. And that's a extremely high risk behavior, especially because dad and mom and her brothers were there. So how did this guy do this? This is almost like he's a ghost. He's not seen. He's not heard. They have a dog.

But then it turns out the dog had his larynx removed so he wouldn't bark. So the dog didn't help us. But on the other hand, the dog sheds. So the dog did help us. And so one of the things I said was she loved that dog. Wherever she went, that dog hair is going to be on her. And if somebody came into the house, they could also get dog hair on them. You're turning a lot of people into a pet person now.

Because this is like a whole, besides barking, this is another thing that's like super smart. Absolutely. And so it turns out that when they did the concentric circle searches around the house, the neighbors on this side were interviewed, the neighbor in front of the house was interviewed, the neighbor behind the house was interviewed, the neighbor on caddy corner behind the house were interviewed. The neighbor right next door was not interviewed. Why? Because he had gotten into his RV and driven about 300 miles.

weekend and came back to a neighborhood filled with TV cameras and satellites and everything and it was interesting because when he rolled up all the news went to him and said did you know what happened da da da da no I've been away and they said we'd like to interview you and he he said hold on a minute hold on a minute and he went inside and got a baseball cap and put it on and he said does this do I look all right Oh, that's weird. And so, yeah, bizarre. There's seven-year-old next-door neighbor.

So we start asking the mom about this. And there's a complicated relationship with the parents. And this guy's been in on death row for 30 years. But all three of the people that had testified against him had recanted years ago. And it turns out that the mom had been out at the week before. four at a club and the neighborhood approached her and her friends and tried to buy him drinks and wanted to dance with her. Even though she was

married? Yes. And then well, she was married but they were swingers. Oh, that's right! Somehow he knew that and she had never told him that, but a week earlier she had gone to this bar and the next door neighbor had

had approached her and her friends and tried to dance with them and buy him drinks and they kind of were like, no go away and the next week she bought Danielle around to sell Girl Scout cookies last house they went to was their next door neighbor and he invited them in and he bought cookies and then he said to the mother hey I know you guys have partner swapping parties so can I get your number and she gave him her husband's number because she didn't want to give him her number. He said, so are you going to be out at the bar again tonight with your friends?

She said, no, my husband's going away with the boys, so I'm going to be home alone with Danielle. And Saturday night comes. And she does go out to the bar. And so what's in his mind? He goes and approaches them again. He gets turned off, turned away, and he thinks husband's away with the boys. Danielle's at home alone. It's not true because the husband is there and the boys are there, but in his mind, Danielle would be at home alone. So we hear this information, and we start focusing on him. And we find out that when the cops first went to talk to him,

that it was an overwhelming smell of bleach. He had loads of laundry piled on top of the washer and dryer, And, you know, he was cleaning up the house in a major way. So got a search warrant. And one of the first things I said to check, I said pull that lint thing from the dryer. How in the world did you know to ask that or say that, Jim? Well, because I heard that she had a dog. It's a short-haired dog that sheds a lot.

I know that kids who love dogs, they get hair all over them. And if she went there, she came with some hair. and so if he washed the sheets or you know throws or or blankets which were all over the place on top of the which are all piled up on top of the washer and dryer then we'd probably get it and sure enough they found a lot of her dog's hair in his lint basket wow and so that was we got a search warrant then for his RV and they unfortunately were able to find a palm print of hers on the wall next to the bed in the RV and blood of hers. Her body was not discovered for some time so it was very difficult.

The forensics were tough, but we were able to determine that he killed her and he was convicted. Had he ever killed before? No. Was it just a retaliation crime because he was mad about being rejected? I think he was very, I think you're right, it was a retaliation crime, but I think he was also fixated on her. It turns out when we search his computer, I said, if he is a guy who likes adults and children, he's probably sexually diverse. Is that a real thing?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't even know. Oh, you have to understand that people always talk about pedophiles. Pedophilia is a small segment of child sex offenders. There's a whole spectrum of behavior. And there are offenders who are exclusively attracted to children. Some are exclusively attracted to prepubescent children. Those are called pedophiles if they're diagnosed. But there are also people who are sexually attracted to all children or any child or a certain age group of child that's outside of prepubescent, and they're called preferential child sex offenders. So it's a spectrum of behavior. There are the exclusive ones, and there are people who are sexually attracted to adults as

well, and we call them sexually diverse. They have multiple sexual attractions, but those offenders we found will typically categorize the pornography they look at. They'll have child pornography, bestiality, S&M, any, and they'll categorize it. And I said, you should expect that if you look at his computer. Absolutely. That's what he had. But he also had anime.

But the anime he had, which are Asian cartoons. Right. But was the, you're talking about anime porn. He did. He had anime porn. And in one of them, it was a guy, an older white guy, lurking in the bushes and a little schoolgirl comes by and he abducts and rapes and kills that schoolgirl

in this anime porn. I mean, it was disgusting, but it did lay the foundation for a motive in this case. What are the common denominators in almost every serial killer that you've profiled? I mean, what causes them to turn out that way? All right, well, you just use the bad word. What?

Cause. See, what it is, it's not nature versus nurture, it's a mix of a number of things. It's bio, psycho, and social. All right. Let's talk about it. So I like to say genetics loads the gun, personality and psychology aims it, and your experience has pulled the trigger. Wow.

So what does that mean? See, the cause, when you use the word cause, it sounds like they didn't have a choice. But we're given genetics, and that can give you a potential. to do good or bad things. And then you have your life experiences, but your personality and psychology are the filter through which you have those experiences. It changes the way things look to you

based on your own personality and your psychology. And the thing is, we help develop our own personalities and our psychologists by the hundreds of thousands of private decisions you make in the privacy of your own brain. as you grow up, you know, you maybe do something that's a little wrong and your parents scold you. And do you say, okay, next time, I'm going to make sure they don't find out.

Or you just say next time I'm going to try to be a good person. So now you're scaring me because I'm definitely the type this is next time they're not going to find out. Well, apparently, unless you've really evaded detection for a very long time, apparently you actually have not gone to the dark side too far. Okay, good. All right. But. Because what if we find out during this podcast, Jim, that I'm actually a serial killer.

Well, do you think it's a coincidence that I'm here today? I mean, my team is waiting patiently outside. There's SWAT team right outside. That's why we had the black curtain. But what happens is that people embrace the bad side. They figure out ways to get away with the bad things. and certain people are born with, let's say, less tools to actually connect other human beings.

A lack of empathy. That's a major signpost of psychopathy. But what helps somebody to develop the right tools? Is it environment? Is it how your parents raise you? Well, those are factors that can influence. But you can have the same parents who raise twins. And one of them can say...

Like Kane and Abel. Yeah, look at our parents. They struggle. They don't eat so we can have food. When I grow up, I want to take care of them. I don't want them to want for anything. And the other one says, look at them. They're losers.

They don't even give me what I deserve. I hate them. I want to kill them. Twins, same exact experience, same genes. Different personalities, different filters. So he chose to hate his parents. He chose to look at them as failures because it was all about him. Whereas the brother had empathy for his parents,

saw the things they did to sacrifice for him. So that personal decision is what makes somebody criminally responsible. So nothing caused either of them. They interpreted the experiences. And it's a snowballing effect. You keep going to that dark side. Nothing's going to stop you from going down that hill and becoming a bigger and bigger snowball. But you push away from it and you try to go to the good side and you stay on that level ground.

And you're going to be a regular, normal person. It's your choice. When you go back and look at a serial killer's childhood and their life, does almost every single killer exhibit signs that something is not? right in their childhood or not always. Well, if you look at the psychopathy checklist, you'll see that there are a bunch of questions about childhood acting out and behavior. So there are a number of signs.

But I know head injuries, bedwetting. Yeah, well, there was the homicidal triad, bedwetting, fire setting, cruelty to animals. Right. Now we've changed it to a much longer list of violence indicators. What's a few things that have been added? I don't want to tell you. Sorry. I'm not trying to educate people.

Okay. I just worry about what people should look for if their own children are being weird. Well, they know. Okay. They know. And they should bring them to somebody who is a professional to help. Okay. But there's a number of risk factors.

And although head trauma can reduce someone's inhibitions. In other words, the policeman in their head could have gotten injured and is unable to stop them from acting out. And sometimes there are severe injuries that prevent that from happening, but they still have to form the thought to do the bad thing. So it's only the control that they're lacking, not the ideation. That ideation doesn't pop into everybody's head. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be a killer. There are hundreds of millions of people who have head injuries as a child who never do violent things. So although you see it as a commonality, you can never see it as a commonality.

You can never say that henry and this abuse by the parents and this bedwetting, this guy will be a serial killer. No, you can't do that. You can never predict it forward. That's the kind of profiling that people are talking about when they're talking about racial profiling. You can never say a bunch of characteristics is going to lead somebody to kill. Right. Uh-uh. Because it's all in their head.

They decide. They make that decision. Profiling is actually looking at behavior that already happened and reverse engineering back to the kind of person who committed that crime. And the only predictive aspect is if there's a known pattern of behavior, that that increases the chances of continuing that behavior. But it doesn't on its own predict that somebody will go kill. Talk about the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. Because this is, people get very confused and I feel like they use these words and they don't

even know what they mean. A lot of times people do use those words. But the basic distinction is that a sociopath is a diagnosis in the DSM. The diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychological Association is where they keep all the criterion for all their diagnoses. Sociopath is in there or it wasn't there. It's been taken out. I don't know. I don't know if it's still in there.

I haven't seen them since DSM4. But they've changed it a lot. anti-social personality disorder. They may have changed it to that. But the fact is that that is a diagnosis. And that means somebody, a trained psychologist or psychiatrist, has tested and interviewed and actually assessed someone and diagnosed them. Psychopathy, on the other hand, is for indirect personality assessments.

In other words, law enforcement, enforcement when they don't know who the person is don't have the benefit of sitting down and talking to somebody and interviewing them. They also aren't tied to somebody's own words, which psychologists and psychiatrists may be. We don't rely on self-reporting. We look at their behavior. We believe their behavior speaks a lot louder than their words. Their actions tell us about what's really going on. So psychopathy is actually somebody who, It's a law enforcement tool, the PCR, the psychopathy checklist revised by Dr. Robert Hare, was set up for law enforcement so they can evaluate from afar what somebody is actually like.

And if you score high on the psychopathy checklist, like 30 or more, you're going to more likely be a psychopath. And that typically leans towards criminal behavior. You could be a sociopath and never commit a crime. But a sociopath would that just be like an extreme narcissist personality? Well, that is narcissism. Okay. So there's a lot more to sociopathy. This is why you're here.

I know. Well, there's a lot more to sociopathy. Okay. I know it's complicated, but, you know, it's just humans are complicated. Our brains are fascinating. But so sociopathy has a number of other characteristics, but again, they have to to be diagnosed, but they are doing antisocial things. They might be just trying to break up relationships

and hurt people emotionally. That could be the worst they ever do, but they can be a sociopath. Psychopaths typically have a criminal history. They've gotten into trouble, but there are also segments of psychopathy that could be applied to humans achieved very great things. The CEO's psychopath. Somebody who's gotten that high in a company may have done it because he stepped on other people to get there because he doesn't really

care about other people or she. How often are we, though, encountering true psychopaths in our everyday lives? Is it like every third person could be an actual psychopath? No, I wouldn't say every third person. Maybe every 10th or 20th person. So every, you know, estimated, 10th or 20, person that we interact with on a daily basis could very well be a potential. Be somewhere on that psychopathy level. But be someone that if, you know, just the wrong thing happens or triggers them or whatever that they kill? No, absolutely not.

Those are two totally different things. Okay. Just because you're a psychopath doesn't mean you're going to kill somebody. Good to know. Just because you score really high on the psychopathy checklist doesn't mean that you have the capacity to kill. Look at Dr. James Fallon. he is a professor at the University of California in Irvine.

He was studying psychopathy, believes he found the part of the brain that really shows it. And he was doing studies. And he used him and his family as control group. And he found out he was a psychopath. What? Yeah. Well, then his mother told him, you know, your great, great aunt is Lizzie Borden. Oh, my gosh.

And do you think that stuff does really trickle down generationally? Like I said earlier, genetics loads the gun, but your personality is the one that aims it. It can aim it at good. It doesn't have to do damage. It could aim it at targets just because you want to have a better skill at shooting. Or it could aim it at people. That's a bad thing. You know what I don't understand is someone like Jeffrey Dahmer, okay?

He murders 17 men and boys, eats them. and somehow during his trial, they determine that he's legally sane. But to me, a normal person who's not in this field, I think, well, he's killing and eating people and keeping their body parts. He's insane. Okay, well, it's just because you're using insane as a sort of generic term. There's a legal nicety there that insanity means that you don't know or appreciate the wrongfulness of your actions. If you don't actually know that it's wrong, then you can't be prosecuted for it.

But if you hide what you're doing, which he did, doesn't that indicate that you know it's wrong? That's true. Do you do it out in public in front of everybody? Or do you hide it? That's kind of an indicator for me. Do serial killers usually choose easier targets like women, almost always,

or have you ever in your career encountered a killer who enjoyed going after targets who would be tougher, like men or something just for the sport because they're more difficult. Well, certainly. You know, Casey versus Endomer versus the Green River killer or the Golden State Killer. The Golden State Killer is probably the perfect example because he went after men to punish them.

He went after a guy who actually said, you know, challenged him. in that city, it was like that city council meeting or whatever, talking about the crimes that had happened. And he was like, well, I'd like to see him come into my house and try to get me. And then he was one of the next victims, right? Yes. It's horrible. He was such, he was a psychopath. But, you know, he's in his, but Jim, he's in all these, like, court hearings that we've seen on TV in the last couple years since he's been caught with his little wheelchair and his walker.

100% crap. He's playing a role, right? Of course he is. Before they arrested him, he was out on his Harley, zooming around, cursive. people speeding all over the place, absolutely no problems getting around. It was 100% an act. Garbage. Is he ever going to talk? Like, I want someone to do a sit down interview with him and ask him, why did you do this? I want the truth from him, but will we get it? I don't know. I mean, we did interview a number. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of serial killers and serial offenders

and we were able to get them to talk to us in the behavioral analysis unit or the behavioral science unit before that. But I don't know about him. I mean, he's got, he's what I call a vulnerable narcissist. And so here's a guy who has a terrible self-image, and he feels horrible about himself, and he takes it out on other people. And it's horrible what he did, and the kids that he victimized,

and just in the women and the men, it's just horrible, horrible. And, you know, I just really don't, I don't like to utter his name or the name of any Syracur, really, but the fact is that the why he did it was because he wanted to, because he wanted to hurt people.

He chose to feel better himself and to get off on causing the pain and suffering of other people. That's sadistic. Can someone who kills ever truly be rehabilitated? Well, you just said someone who kills. There are millions of people who killed in war. Okay, well, a serial killer. Well, that's different.

A serial killer, if they actually want to, they can probably avoid killing. But can they be, quote, cured? It depends on their psychology. It depends where they started and where they got to, right? It could be way too late. Once you're in your late 20s, early 30s, your personality is pretty much a lot. locked in for the rest of your life. There's not a lot of change that goes on then.

So it depends when you get the person. I mean, one of the cases that I worked, this 10-year-old boy killed the three-year-old boy. That in and of itself is a horrible thing. But when you think about how he did it and what he did afterwards, I believe this kid was an emerging psychopath and I believe that kid could absolutely kill again,

absolutely but with the right intervention it could be prevented what sorts of things do you do to intervene and help someone like that well i mean they have to have intensive psychotherapy but none of that will work unless they're being honest and was that little bit being honest was he ever willing to be honest i have no idea wow he was a very very very bad kid and i worry about anybody that he comes in contact with. So, I mean, a kid like that who's killing at such a young age, is there a lot of environmental factors to speed that up, to turn them into a psychopath full-blown at such a young age or no?

In this particular case, I believe his mother died of cancer a few years earlier. His father went progressively blind, but he would do things like his father like to take apart, cameras and put the back together without seeing because it like it helped him you know therapeutically and he would come and steal pieces just a torment yeah he would throw rocks at people kids when they were walking to school and he used a very sophisticated ruse to get this kid away from his mother and took him to a place where he felt secure and he beat this three-year-old kid and and killed him and then stuffed him into a sewer pipe.

And through the bat he used into a river to get rid of evidence. And then went back to the library. Just acted like nothing had happened? And took his computer class. And was sitting there when the cops arrived. Yeah. And then was so proud of lying to the psychologist or psychiatrist that interviewed him, bragging about lying about that.

yeah he was hopefully he got a lot of help hopefully but he could used to be walking among us could be i want to talk about some of the cases uh that you've worked that there are a lot of questions that the public has i feel like they are not necessarily cut and dry on the truth one of those being michael jackson okay do you believe that michael jackson was a child predator I have spoken to more than one of Michael Jackson's victims. There's no question in my mind that they were telling the truth. And Michael Jackson groomed them and their parents and the community and molested them. I've also seen, as a lot of people have, other victims come forward and speak on TV and documentaries.

and they all tell a very consistent story. But then you have people like McCulley Colkin who are saying he is not a predator. He never touched me. And what is your answer to that? If that's true, because you know most victims do not disclose. And the ones that do can take 30, 40, 50 years to disclose. And many times they only disclose after they have children that reach the age that they are, that they were when they were victimized.

So there's all those factors. But I hope he wasn't molested. Of course. However, if he wasn't molested, it doesn't mean that Michael Jackson didn't molest other people. How could possibly rule out Michael Jackson being a molester? But can a predator withhold acting on these impulses around certain kids and not others?

Remember what I said to you earlier about knowing that it's right and wrong, knowing whether it's wrong, and how do we know because you hide it? Well, sexual behavior is typically private behavior. Criminal sexual behavior is extremely private behavior. And because the victims feel shame and guilt, they are very unlikely to disclose. If you look at just the adult females who are raped who don't disclose,

at least two studies have said that 80% of women who, who are raped and go to a rape trauma treatment center do not disclose to law enforcement. Wow. Why? Because of how they're treated in the system. Right. Because of how they're victim blamed. Well, now those are adults.

Now point that same blame at children. And what if he's the most popular person on the planet? Do you think it's really easy for those victims? Do you know how they get attacked? I get attacked for standing up for them. Right. But I'll still do it to this day. I believe it because I actually spoke to the victims.

Now, you were, when you were investigating the Michael Jackson case, you talked about in an episode of Best Case, Worst Case, how you were inside of his house, I believe, and there were certain rooms that, I don't remember if it was video recordings or something, but like mysteriously it all caught on fire or something like that. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's not like that, but I'll just, all right, let me just go back.

Okay, so the crime scene videos that were taken during the search warrant of his house show that he had sort of, it was almost like a hallway kind of room. And they dubbed it the jerk off room where he had videotapes and he had briefcases with laptops and hard drives. They were all fried. That's what it was. They fried them. By fried, it's not fire. They weren't, they were electronically zapped so that nobody.

could retrieve anything from them. So there was that. But, you know, when you talk to the boys who were victimized, and I've also seen videotapes that were taken in two other cases that, you know, that where Michael actually did the videography was in the videos themselves. So I know it wasn't somebody who doctored something. But where, um, where, the same kinds of behaviors happened. And the things, the grooming and the the first approach, the first sexualization of the relationship, these, the

parallel stories that these victims have told over the years, it's cross-corroboration. Right. I absolutely believe it. And I'm glad that he's no longer capable of doing that. I grew up, you know, I was right around the same age as him and I listened to his music and I thought he was brilliant and I still think he was brilliant musically and as an entertainer. But that doesn't mean he can't be sexually attracted to children. And he says, I love children, but do you know how many times he said I would never hurt a child when he was

accused? I would never hurt a child. He loves children. Literally. He's a loving offender. He is somebody who literally falls in love with children. He had no other sexual outlet. His relationships were with children. He faked relationships with adult women, but they weren't real. Why do you do that? Is it just for your image, or is it because you really actually are sexually attracted to children? I believe that he was actually sexually attracted to children.

And he carried out that love that he felt for children. children in a sexual way. But he hit it. And he paid millions of dollars to some kids. And he picked on kids who were very vulnerable. And he didn't pick on kids who had a really good support system so that maybe they, if they disclosed, that would be found out right away. And that's what you believe probably happened with McCulley and why maybe he wasn't a victim. Or it could be something. Offenders have certain characteristics. So They look for availability, vulnerability, and desirability. So the kids around Michael Jackson would have been available to him, but are they vulnerable

and are they desirable? McCauley might not have fit that characteristic. It could have been his personality. It could have been something else. But the picture of McCauley Culkin on Michael Jackson's nightstand or desk or desk across the room from his bed was the picture from home alone with McCauley holding both his cheeks and his eyes and his mouth open and it said something like to to duty head from the blowhole kid seemed very weird yeah very weird I don't know what he was talking about but it seems very weird

in a room that other boys, and I absolutely believe Arvizo and Star Arvizo, was a witness, that I believe what they said happened in that room. And the whole warning system and all that, it's just, it's very creepy. And, you know, I just can't, I can't find any holes or any reason to disbelieve what these multiseled. what these multiple victims have said and how they cross corroborated each other. John Bonae. I think the brother did it. Who do you think did it?

Well, you know, the problem with the John Bonae case is when we had the case initially, I'll tell you who didn't do it. There is no evidence that has ever been uncovered that shows that somebody came into that house that night and killed John Bonnet Ramsey. There is plenty of evidence that showed indicators that the mother wrote the note. Yes, the handwriting. And called the police.

And her statements were untrue that she made to the police at that moment. Why? I'll ask you, why would a mother lie to the police in an investigation where she thought her daughter had been abducted and taken out of her house and didn't even know that she was dead in the basement already.

Why would she lie to the police? Here's what I think. I think the brother killed John Bonnet. The mom knew. I think that the mom was worried, okay, I've already lost one child. I don't want to lose another. I have to cover up that my son,

whether it was accident or not, killed my daughter. That's what I think happened. I think it was the whole eating the pineapple thing, that the brother got jealous and upset because John Bonnet started eating his pineapple. Well, it makes sense, but, you know, I can only state equivocally that the genetic evidence, the DNA evidence that they're talking about 10 years, 15 years ago, at least 15 years ago,

we at the FBI submitted, had that evidence resubmitted to the lab. We bought new packages of the same underwear that she was wearing, and every single pair had touched DNA. transferred DNA, from the people who packed it, from the people who sewed it together, from the people who transferred it. That is, it's just that our science has gotten so good at detecting DNA and identifying it, that trace amounts like that in certain cases, you have to look at the relevance of it. There is no indication that anybody came in that house.

The doors were locked. But you don't have, you don't lean. any which way on the brother or the dad or the mom? I certainly do, but I cannot speak about it publicly without the fear of being sued by someone who sues everyone. It's just, it's just foolish to do it because they take advantage of the law. How often do you, not necessarily just the fear of being sued, but how often do you live with the fear that somebody might get out of prison?

or something and come after you personally? I have put a lot of bad people away. And I'm a very highly trained and skilled FBI agent. And I'm in a little better position than the average citizen in terms of protecting myself and the people that I care about. You can't live your life in fear of that. I did everything in my power to do the right thing and make sure that the people that I investigated and arrested

and had convicted were actually guilty of the crimes and I just live my life now. Really quick before we wrap up, I do want to touch on you investigated the Whitewater scandal. Do you, just knowing the Clintons being around them, just investigating them for that case, do you feel like the Clintons are capable of murder? murder? Do you believe the conspiracy theories about the Clintons? I can tell you, I do not.

As, you know, the Clinton's Bill and Hillary are very different people. They've been married a long time, but their personalities are radically different. They're both very bright people. No question about it. Some will say you're saying this because you're scared they're going to come after you. I'm not scared they're going to come after me. And I'll say that I do believe that Bill has serious issues in the past with sexual aggression and and I believe that the things that he did with Monica Lewinsky were a direct violation of the sexual harassment laws that he signed into law into law so that I think that's despicable but he's a charming charismatic guy brilliant guy and I don't know how much different he is from other presidents that we've had Hillary

also very bright, knew that she could not just go into politics herself, but sort of slingshot it off of his career. And, you know, she doesn't have the best personality. She's not the nicest person in the real world. But I don't think many politicians are in the real world. I would agree with you on that. But I unequivocally can say there's absolutely no question. They did not kill. Bill Vince Foster. He committed suicide. He was depressed. He was anorexic. He was insomniac. And he was trying to get treatment for that. But he was just too overwhelmed by being attacked in the press. And also attacked by illory because she felt he let them down. And that really hurt him. And I know there's been a number of people that think that they've killed a whole bunch of people.

I investigated them. I was on the first, the special, I was first on the special, I was first on the special counsel investigation under Robert Fisk and then the independent counsel investigation under Kenneth Starr. And I can say unequivocally that we found absolutely no evidence that they ever were involved in killing anyone. Well, you heard it here first. there it is someone that actually worked on the case so there you go and certainly this whole pizza shop baby killing sacrifice it's just complete garbage i i could talk to you about that for eight hours that is one of my number one pet peeves i seriously and my and my listeners know keyt servatives know that i cannot stand that stuff can we can we wait till next time then to do that yeah we can do that

we'll do that for the next part can i just do a little shout-outs yes yes you should francy you know what I have to say, Francie, if you're out there listening and watching, you know, I actually do love you. You know that. And I think it's so great that we get a chance to have a little playful brother-sister kind of banter all the time. And I really want to thank you for being my co-host on Best Case, Worst Case. So sweet. She was our episode three. If you need to go back on the spillover, Francie was our episode three.

She is Jim's co-host on Best Case Worst Case, which is one of my favorite true. crime podcast ever because you have real people that, you know, work on different crimes telling the story of their best and worst cases. And I think that's, you know, fascinating. We wanted to show the spectrum of the kinds of cases that cops have to deal with and other law enforcement officials. So speaking of shows, let's talk about your production company, XG productions, and why what you do in Hollywood is so special. And you're a writer for criminal minds. Yeah, I definitely, I wrote on it. I was involved in the show the entire 15 seasons. And hopefully when it comes back, I'll be involved in some way. but yeah the first scene I ever wrote for criminal minds it was a scene where Dr. Reed kind of they're talking about child abduction it was in wet fresh hell and Dr. Reed talks about the statistics and as he does so he kind of walks into a green screen and now he's out on a playground and he said of the kids who were abducted and killed 44% are killed in the first hour and half the kids on the playground just disappear and then 73% in the first three hours and then three quarters of them are gone and then he said he's

said 99% in the first 24 hours and there's one girl left swinging on a swing and she disappears in the swing and swinging empty and the hair stood up on the back of my neck when I had hair and it stopped me cold and I was realized that in that one minute I reached 18.2 million people wow I had been speaking to law enforcement audiences for 12 years when I was in the BAU and I I totaled about 60,000 people that I taught But I got to 18 million in that one minute and I said, oh my God, this is what I have to do. This is how you reach more people. And you can teach them when they're being entertained.

And that's why I decided to write for criminal minds. What projects do you have coming up real quick with XG productions that people can look forward to? Well, we just released, Am I Dating a Serial Killer on Audible? And it sounds like a fun topic, but there's a spectrum of people that came to us with their dating issues. And some of them may very well have been dating a serial killer. Oh my gosh. Reminds me of the Tinder Swindler. And the other one that we just dropped was solving the Black Dahlia. That's also a great investigative series.

So if you can check it out. And the last one that I dropped on Audible was where the devil belongs. And that was the statement that one of the last victims' wives in the serial killer, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, in that case, that's what she said to the judge, put him in the deepest, darkest dungeon, because that's where the devil belongs. So that became the title of that one. Jim, it has been an incredible honor. Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you for coming on the spillover. All right. Take care. Full disclosure, I could have talked to Jim for three hours. There was a lot more. I wish I could have got. into with him. And we were starting to go way over on time there at the end. So I do apologize if he didn't get to go as in-depth into a few things as you were hoping. If you liked this episode

and you do want more, we can definitely have him back for a part two. Let me know in the reviews if you would like that. For me, I have loved and admired Jim Clemente for so long, whether it's his passion for saving children in danger or preventing more children from becoming victims of horrendous crimes because he was able to get inside the criminal mind of a killer. He will always have an incredible legacy. And I especially admire that he's a grown man who's willing to talk about the sexual abuse he faced as a child. This is something that most men who were abused have a difficult time talking about. And yet, Jim shares his experience to bring awareness for victims everywhere. If you're impressed by the variety of guests that we have on this bill over, then click

subscribe and leave a five-star review because that's what keeps the lights on over here. Let me know what you think about Jim's opinions on Michael Jackson being a pedophile in the Clinton's not being as criminal as some of us might think. I know some of you may disagree with him, and that's okay. Share this episode far and wide to all of your true crime-loving friends. And if you're looking for new podcast to binge, check out Jim's latest with XG productions. Am I dating a serial killer? After the fall, Evil has a name, which is one of my all-time favorites about the capture

of the Golden State Killer, and Solving Black Dahlia, all available on Audible. New episodes of The Spillover come out every Thursday. day at 9 p.m. Pacific, midnight Eastern. And now you can watch live and participate in the chat on the Poplittics YouTube channel. It's lots of fun. It's weird. I read what everyone says. And I have got so much in store for you. So do not just click subscribe, but also follow Poplittics on Instagram so that you can be reminded of new spillover episodes every week when the trailers drop. I'm Alex Clark, and this is the Spillover. Love you, mean it. Bye.