Interview

John Douglas: Hello, Mark?

Forensic Teacher: Yes, John. Thank you for calling me.

JD: I’m working on an A&E pilot and with another retired FBI agent. In fact, he does some of the consulting and writing for the TV show Criminal Minds. I was thinking the public thinks that Criminal Minds is really the way that my unit operated when I was still in the Bureau.

FT: Oh, yes they do.

JD: And so now, for TV, I’d be doing a real case, and they want it to look like Criminal Minds. [chuckles] There are certain things that are true about how we operate and the types of people in the unit, but you know we don’t make an arrest or kick down doors and things like that. And you can’t solve the case in an hour or so either. That’s just kind of crazy. They want me to go on a case, so we’d be going down on a double homicide, and they expect you can solve it, like Name That Tune [ed.note: this was a popular game show in the 1970s).

FT: Oh, that’s just unrealistic. Come on, it’s two days.

JD: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, I mean, we’ve got a tight schedule. You know, they want a couple of days, it’s just goofy.

JD: No we didn’t, no we didn’t [chuckles]. We flew coach, [laughs]. We were in the Bureau and on per diem. In fact, sometimes I have been invited to give a presentation at a major conference at a beautiful hotel. And then after, they see me leaving, they said, “Where are you going, John?” I said, “Back to my hotel.” They said, “You’re not staying here?” I said, “Are you kidding me? I’m staying at La Cucaracha” I said, “I can’t afford this place. The government won’t allow me to stay here.” But they had really built things up on television and it’s just – it’s just so unrealistic.

FT: Right.

JD: Because you’re going in on a case. In fact, I was just telling the guy on the phone. I said, “As far as wanting the solution, you go out on a case and get an idea that it’s an unknown subject case. Of course, you get the materials you need to do the analysis, the crime scene photographs, and the autopsy reports and information on the victim and the overall crime in the neighborhood, all of those things. And then you do your analysis. Now the analysis may end up hitting a suspect they have and then if you’ve been doing assessment of the suspect, you tell them, ‘Hey, you’re on the right track and stay focused here.”

FT: Okay.

JD: And more times than not, you may get on a case and they go off in a different direction and you do the analysis and you say, “Hey, I can’t reinforce you here in your investigation yet. You have to refocus.” And they might say, “Yeah, but the guy were looking at you know, he’s really bad, he’s bad ass.” That’s true, but that person you’re talking about after doing an assessment of him would not have perpetrated this particular crime in this particular way.

FT: Ooooh.

JD: Yeah. For example, a bombing case. He can make a bomb, but he doesn’t have the skills necessary to make this particular bomb.

FT: I see.

JD: He can make a pipe bomb, but he can’t make the kind of bombs that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber was making.

FT: Right.

JD: I don’t even like to watch Criminal Minds. It just aggravates the heck out of me.

FT: [laughs]

JD: They used all of my books without paying me a nickel. And so, I just get aggravated every time – in fact, my wife may look at it or my son and other children, and they say, “Dad, they did a case of yours, they changed the name of it. You know, it’s such and such a case.” And yeah, they can do that, so why pay when you can just take something and just kind of twist a few little things?

FT: Sure.

JD: Make the victim older, or younger, of different gender, and it’s not mine. It’s not my case. So, it’s not John Douglas’s case.

FT: Oh man.

JD: Hollywood stuff.

FT: Are there any TV crime-related shows you do enjoy?

JD: I like the ones that are like a reenactment. I like those, which are actually real cases and you have real detectives talking. And there’s been a bunch of profiling shows and here I’m doing a profiling show. But what really disturbed me has been that you can call yourself anything, you can be an expert in, let’s say, criminal profiling, and you see these people on these shows on television like Nancy Grace, and others – and all of sudden here comes the expert profiler shooting her mouth off, and they have no information at all about the case. They have no credentials.

FT: Yes.

JD: Playing the profilers – and unfortunately, producers look for women, they want women. In fact, I’ve had certain networks call up, and say, “John, we need a woman around 30 years of age who has, you know, a couple of graduate degrees and she’s blonde and that would be really good. But we’ll take a brunette and we want to use her as profiler.” I said, “What are you talking about?” First, the average age of new FBI agent coming into the Bureau office is around 28 years of age. By the time, they know what they’re doing as a street agent, they need about five years more now.

FT: Right.

JD: Then, if they’re interested in the field of profiling, they can’t come directly in. They think like your students. They’re thinking coming right out of college and come in “Boom!” right, into the Criminal Profile Behavioral Analysis Unit.

FT: That’s right.

JD: We pick from the field, it’s tough, and it’s just few positions. Now, since I retired it’s increased and it’s like a couple of dozen positions. So then, you bring a person in the field in as a profile coordinator. And that means like in Richmond, Virginia, there’s one or two or maybe three agents who are profile coordinators. We give them some training like a week or two of training in behavioral science and forensics and different types with different guest speakers and legal aspects of the investigations. And then, they go back to the field and are only our seeing eye dogs to work with police, see cases that the police registered, and then bring the case or send the case back to Quantico.

FT: Oh.

JD: But, some of those people now have gotten off in calling themselves profilers who never actually came back to Quantico where we put them through an assessment. We do an inspection of their strengths and weaknesses. And for example Mark, if you came back and said, “I’ve got forensic science, instructed 10 years, these are my good years of specialties in forensics science”, I’d say man, “That’s great. It’s really good. Now, how about your background like in death investigation, have you done anything like that?” “No, I never had it.” “Well, I’m going to make arrangements and have you ride with the New York City Police Department for a while.” So we’re going to make arrangements to go up to New York City or maybe Baltimore PD and ride with them. Someone else may come in, they may not have all the academics that we want them to, so we’ll send them off to UVA, or Virginia Commonwealth down in Richmond.

FT: Right, we’re in Delaware.

JD: You’re in Delaware?

FT: Uh-huh.

JD: Yeah. In fact, Delaware was my – I did the first serial murder case in Delaware. The first, what the hecks the guy there –

FT: Steven Pennell.

JD: Steven Penell, I testified in that case.

FT: You’re kidding.

JD: I testified in that case as an expert witness and relative to the signature versus modus operandi. It was interesting to see. The attorneys are saying, “How can you say Mr. Douglas that these cases are related, when over here, this woman was hit with a hammer and over here the women’s breast was squeezed with a pair of pliers and other part of her body were squeezed with pliers and all together these are different cases” I said, “Well, actually, it’s pretty easy for me to say, because it’s not so much what weapons was used, as much as the common denominator, the common theme here is torture.

FT: Oh yes.

JD: The common theme. If it’s torture and these victims were tortured prior to being killed. And then the other thing, they were killed in a small tight area and there was no effort on the part of the killer to conceal the victim.

FT: That’s true.

JD: Pretty much found out in the open, open view.

FT: Right.

JD: But that was the first case in Delaware and I’ll never forget it. They came over to pick me up in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a little local airport and they flew me over there. I had already done the analysis and my people at Quantico helped me. The police were very good and the prosecutors were excellent, I can’t remember their names, woman and the male. They did a great job. And he’s been executed, right?

JD: I believe some years ago now.

FT: He’s gone. And wow, it’s small world.

JD: Yeah. Almost every state. I’ve done so many cases over the years along with my colleagues, I have 5000 cases or so. And I’ve interviewed hundreds of violent offenders and I continue to do that and I’m really – that’s what I really enjoy. I really learn. I mean, I could have been going to high school or college or whatever, but even as a young kid I always liked to be around older people. I liked to listen and learn from older people which is just kind of weird. But you could learn so much.

FT: Oh, yes.

JD: By being around them and their stories, and what they would say kind of stayed with me as I grew older and eventually, when I did end up in the Bureau, I saw that, “Well, anyone can make an arrest.” I mean, it’s working in violent crimes, bank robberies, and we call them USAF, unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, like the guy wanted for murder. But upon the arrest, we’d turn them over now to U.S. Marshals or the local police, whatever the case may be.

FT: Right

JD: But I always want to know the “why’s?” The why’s of their behavior and that’s what fascinated me about you know, what really motivates you? Why this particular bank over another bank and what precipitated you to do this?

FT: This is great.

JD: Okay, so what precipitated this? I came into Bureau at the age of 25. I just came out of the Air Force. And I was an enlisted guy when I went in, I was almost 21, in 1966. And by the time I get out, I was maybe 25. And I think, ‘I’ve got to accelerate myself.’ I immediately got involved in educational programs that really made me grow up quickly. I was 21, but was in the mind of 16 year-old, probably.

So, I have to grow up, and grow up I did. By the time I put my four years in the military, I also earned an undergraduate degree in behavioral science and then got a masters degree. But while in the Air Force, I was in graduate school and staying in New Mexico, Eastern New Mexico University where the base was. And it was there that an agent recruited me. I always liked people that were nice and polite. I don’t believe in luck, you know, someone is in the right place at the right time. You can put yourself in the right place at the right time.

In the gym where I worked out, it was a crappy old gym, dilapidated but they were very good people, professional people there and, they would get to know you and be respectful. But there’s one individual who came up to me one day and it turns out he’s an FBI agent. I kidded people that I didn’t even how to spell FBI. He gets me under his wing and talks to me. Within 90 days I took this test and I was afraid. I was not ready for college. I was raised on Long Island and I wanted to be a vet. I worked on farms sponsored by Cornell University.

FT: Now, when you say college, do you mean in the Air Force or do you mean after the Air Force?

JD: Even before the Air Force.

JD: I went to high school as an athlete. But I wanted to be a vet, I love animals. And Cornell, it was a big vet school.

FT: Oh yes, still is.

JD: But then I needed to work on these farms. But when it came time, I did it – all through my summers in high school, while the other kids were at the beach. I was ready for the big, fat envelope that would be an acceptance to Cornell, but it turned out that they said, “No John, your grade point average is you know – if you would have had a really strong B, B plus, you could have made it. But we’d like to recommend you to another school.” And, “What’s that?” “It was Montana State.” I said, “Montana, where in the hell was that, Montana State?” Then it was Montana State College. Now it’s Montana State University.

FT: No kidding.

JD: So, I went off and, while there, I was very immature. I wasn’t ready. I was a late bloomer. I was not ready for that. I got caught up; I was in a fraternity, I got caught up with alcohol, drinking as a minor.

FT: Right.

JD: And I was working in bars. I was doing bouncing work and stuff, so I said, “Oh, my gosh. My parents are disappointed in me, and that’s when I was drafted. And then, I had a choice to go into the military and that’s why I picked the Air Force and I said, ‘I’ve got to grow up. I’ve got to get with the program.’ That’s why I ended up getting educational awards from the Air Force. And then I was recruited by this FBI agent and I went back to Quantico, 1970, the youngest agent at 25.

FT: Right.

JD: But, what’s interesting, going back to learning from people, is that when I got to Detroit as my first office, it had over 800 homicides a year. It was a violent jurisdiction; we couldn’t even drive because the violent snipers and even the firefighters, they couldn’t go into certain areas to put out fires. But one of the biggest cases occurred on Super Bowl Sunday, I think it was 1972. J. Edgar Hoover was alive then, and he wanted us to make a thousand arrests of organized crime figures throughout the country. And we had a huge family, an active family of Mafia there. We promised a third of those arrest, a third. So we’re going to arrest like 300 people.

FT: Right.

JD: We brought in agents from all over the country and we all hit the doors at the same time. The point is, how I got into understanding and liking the behavior and trying to figure it out is that, just one fellow I arrested kind of looked like Paul Newman, a young Paul Newman. And I was 26, 27 years old and he was in his early 30s.

FT: Okay.

FT: Yeah.

JD: “Kid,” he said, “you don’t get it.” And I said, “What do you mean I don’t get it?” It was raining that day and he looks over to the window and he says, “You see those 2 raindrops over here?” And I said, “Yeah, what about them? And he says, “I bet you that the rain drop on the right gets down to the bottom of the glass before the one on the left. I said, “Okay, okay I’ll bet you.” So we’re watching those raindrops and Frank’s raindrop beats mine, he wins and he says, “You get it? You get it now?” And I said, “So what? You just beat me on a raindrop race what’s the big deal?”

FT: Go on.

JD: And he says, “No man, you don’t get it. John,” he said. “We don’t need a Super Bowl, got it man? We don’t need a super bowl, all we need are two raindrops. We are who we are and you’re not going to change that.” Yeah, and that was just so enlightening, and that’s what I enjoyed—asking questions and learning, and like your young students, just ask questions of people who have expertise in areas. That’s just how you learn. Like what you’re doing here, what made you end up becoming who you are, and why did you do it? So by listening to him, when I finally got transferred out of Detroit I went to Milwaukee while I continued graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. I picked up a couple of graduate degrees there, but in my spare time I would hang around the medical examiner’s office. Then I wondered about the world of the violent offender. I wondered if it’s the same thing, that that’s who they are and you can’t change them. You hear a lot about rehabilitation, probation, and parole. There was no degree program there for this sort of thing so the closest I could come was to become a hostage negotiator. Then after I got my graduate degrees, I was recruited by the behavioral department and they would deliberately call us the Behavioral Science Unit like in the movie Silence of the Lambs, and they didn’t have the program. But what I decided to do when I got back there, I was the youngest instructor at the FBI academy. There were 110 instructors in all the different areas. I was the youngest of all of those. I was now 32,; although I was good at speaking, I needed more depth. I was placed in criminal psychology classes. The problem was the instructors there were telling war stories to people I was supposed to be mentoring and they were telling war stories without having experiences. So what happens is some agent would be in class talking about Charles Manson and the next thing you know someone raises their hand and I’ll be in the back of the room watching. I’m supposed to be learning from this instructor and a hand pops up and say, “Hey”, it says, “You’re wrong about your facts on Manson”, “No, No” the instructor would say, “I’m not wrong.”

“I worked the case,” the officer would say. “Yeah, your facts are all wrong.”

FT: In front of classroom students.

JD: Oh man this was embarrassing.

FT: Oh yeah.

JD: You’re supposed to go up now in front of cops, I know I’m getting the wrong information. I got to learn it myself. What I would do is we used to go out on two weeks road schools we call them. And then after teaching let’s say to about 4 o’clock in the afternoon there’s really not much to do after a while. On weekends in between the trips we’d say let’s go in to the prison. Let’s go in there and see and talk to the experts themselves.

FT: You had no trouble getting access?

FT: Sure.

JD: When I was in Quantico we were affiliated with the University of Virginia and a sociology professor there invited us down to speak. It was me and another agent, but I pretty much took over the presentation. It was a 101 sociology class and he had about 150-200 students in his class. He introduced us and he sat in the front row, and it was obvious that we were being set up, that he had his students wanting to ask us questions about an investigation back then called the ABSCAM Scandal that was an undercover operation down in Louisiana. There was some mistakes made by the Bureau. But it really, had nothing to do with me, I’m a totally different area. So I started talking about my job, and I say you know how you learn is you learn by going out, you talk to people, you do individual research, you critique other people’s research not like some professors who sit back and all they do is write books, but they have no life experience. They never experience any life experiences at all. [chuckles] Meanwhile this guy, this professor, he ends up slipping out of the classroom. The class is out to be like a career day where the students are loving it and then they’re asking questions about investigations, what we do, how do you get into the bureau, what’s attributes you think you should have. Totally, the audience gave us a standing ovation.

FT: That’s funny.

JD: And I told my partner we had to find this professor, we’re not going to let him get away. We hunted him down and we had to climb up at some tower at the University of Virginia. We had to climb these stairs and we trapped him up there and didn’t really stop because he was embarrassed.

FT: Oh, yeah.

JD: I told him, “You kind of left suddenly. We just want to thank you for inviting us here to speak with your students. I think your students, you will find, got a lot out of our presentation. Too bad you had to leave.” [Laughs]

FT: Well that’s funny. That’s funny and you talked a couple of times about the why, the why fueled your curiosity, the why fueled your drive to learn

JD: Right.

FT: I think with most people the why is very important. Many forensics students at the high school or even the college level, the why really goes back to why it matters to them. You know what I mean?

JD: Why what matters to them?

FT: I mean, well, you wanted to know why somebody did something.

JD: Oh, I get it yeah, because the formula when you look at a case is basically WHY plus HOW equals WHO. And so why are those blood splatter wounds in the area, where they are? What happened? What was the position of the body?

FT: Exactly.

JD: How is it done? Was a knife used or was it a blunt force trauma instrument and then and also why this victim? Why? What’s going on, what happens is, like this case I’m doing right now for this A&E thing, I mean, it is such a difficult crime, difficult in the standpoint of figuring out motive and really the whys of behavior. Because, you have one victim shot in the eye, a female, and the other one is shot in the neck. The girl is 16, the guy is in his early 20s. It’s either drug activities, promiscuous sex, everyone and all their friends drink heavily, heavy in the drugs scene, the risk level, they’re such high risk all of them to be the victim of a violent crime and it’s hard. I just tell them that I think it’s really hard because there so many different things. This could have been a drug deal gone bad, it could’ve been this girl who is only 15 years of age just playing around with different guys getting other guys jealous. It’s really difficult to pinpoint and forensically there’s not a whole lot. I mean shot at close range, the gun powder residue, I mean trace and the hand was trying to block the weapon. It’s really more, there’s some staging of the crime scene. They did a little staging there trying to make it kind of look drug related.

I did a book one time, the Crime Classification Manual. A lot of forensic students liked that book too by the way and they used it, University of Penn uses it, Boston College uses it.

FT: Okay

JD: It includes forensic stuff in there, and it breaks it down to four major types of crimes by motive: personal cause homicide, criminal enterprise, group cause sexual homicide. And then I do the same thing on arson cases, the same thing on a rape case, and so on.

FT: Very interesting

JD: They like it cause it mixes in the forensics, and is based upon some of the forensic findings to help you in the analysis so you know some of the whys of behavior.

For example, we have a case of a woman I use in the presentation. She’s going to be found in the crawl space under the house. The husband comes home, he’s separated from his current wife, but the ex-wife still comes over to clean the house and he takes their boy out to the park. He comes home one day and can’t find his wife. The bedding is off the bed; the kitchen drawer where they keep the knives is pulled out.

FT: To hide her?

JD: Yes. Hide her and that’s the reason why and it’s kind of from who, he wants to hide her from.

FT: The husband?

JD: The husband did the killing. The husband takes the child to the park. On this day he had to come back into that house for some reason. And he killed her; he can’t leave her there because he’s got his son out in his vehicle and he’s got to come back with the son so he’s got to hide the ex-wife from the son. But he also knows that she’s going to be found by the police. So he’s going to make this thing look like a sex crime.

So he pulled her jeans down to her knees and just leaves the panties up around to the groin, and her head is covered, covered over and the cops are right on top of it. They are too emotional. They couldn’t see it, they couldn’t see it. I said this is a personal cause homicide. This is a domestic homicide which means the husband did it. The husband is distraught and the husband did it because why? Why is it necessary to put the victim in the crawl space? Of course he thinks he wants you to believe that it’s a sex crime. It’s not sex crime. He did this after she was dead, pulled the pants down. Plus, the evidence is strangulation and some blunt force trauma, which is usually the way these things start. Yeah, it turned out to be the husband. It’s just so simple, but you have to kind of look at things from a distance.

FT: Now how did the guys know that he went back to the house? Was it the son who spilled it?

JD: No. Dad came back into the house, he had to bring back his son to the house. Because the ex-wife was cleaning his house; she has custody of the child so he had to bring the child back it’s his own house and pass the son off to his ex-wife.

FT: Oh, so the kid stayed in the car while he went inside and killed mom?

JD: Yeah, that’s right.

FT: Oh, okay.

JD: The kid never saw any of it

FT: Ahhh. Okay.

JD: I don’t know if you heard about the West Memphis Three.

FT: Yes.

JD: In the news?

FT: Three kids were killed?

JD: Are you familiar with that?

FT: A little bit.

JD: Oh, it’s a great forensic case, let me tell you. You can Google it. Three little boys on May 5th 1993 were found in a bayou, they were naked, and tied with their shoe laces from their tennis shoes; they couldn’t even find all the clothing. Three teens were targeted by the police, a 16, 17, and 18 year old. The long and short of it is that the 17 year old by the name of Jessie Misskelley gave a confession after about a 14 hour interrogation. It turns out that they turned the tape recorder on for about only 45 minutes. Jessie Misskelley has an IQ of 72.

FT: Really?

JD: So he gives a confession, you can tell they’re putting words in his mouth even in those 45 minutes. A great video you might want to see—it’s called Paradise Lost, it’s with HBO. And it’s great for forensics for your students, it would be excellent because what will happen here is prosecutors and the police will say that this was a satanic murder, they will bring a so-called expert in from Ohio who got a mail order degree from California Coast University, making him an expert on satanic murder. And the judge allows his testimony.

FT: Really?

FT: Dr. Lowell Levine.

JD: Yes, he was brought into this. So I do an analysis, my analysis says that it’s not satanic murder and I did a group analysis and it’s not satanic, this is a personal cause, homicide, go on and on and on, all are the same. Who’s funding this defense group by the way, that’s what came out, was Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings.

FT: Wait, wait, wait. The movie director?

JD: He took an interest in this case, and knowing what he knew and his wife Fran Walsh was a forensic buff herself. They were behind it. They went and got all the others.

FT: I see.

JD: What the doctor said about the knife, the serrated knife was used that he couldn’t have done this under the best conditions. They sent the materials out, the defense did, and these kids were just released like three weeks ago. They’re men now. They were convicted; the one got death and the others got life sentences. It’s forensics. They were trying to link forensics and a BS defense of satanic murder into these kids because they wore black and they liked gothic music and all that.

FT: Oh my.

JD: So, independently, Mark, different experts looked at the bite mark and they all came to the same conclusion independently: that there were no knifes wounds at all. A knife was not used in this crime. The cause of death was force trauma and drowning, and that so called serrated knifework identified by Dr. Peretti was from animal predation, and probably snapping turtles.

FT: No kidding.

JD: In the bayou where these kids were thrown into the water, Dr. Spitz told me that this Dr. Peretti down there, the forensic pathologist, even to this day has still not passed this board examinations. He didn’t pass them in ‘93 when he took it, and he hasn’t passed it yet. Dr. Spitz said you know you could fail the first time, that’s common because you don’t know what to expect. but to fail three times or more, that’s bad.

FT: Oh man. Oh yeah.

JD: What they did to these guys 3 weeks ago is they let them out—one was on death row 18 years, and the other two in prison serving life sentences.

They let them plea an Alford plea, which is weird [Ed, note: an Alford plea is where the defendant does not admit guilt, but agrees to sentencing by a judge to avoid a potentially worse sentence if found guilty by a jury. This is sometimes used if sufficient evidence exists to convince a jury of guilt and the defense is weak.] What the defense was trying to do was to present all this evidence, so you can’t blame them. But you just don’t know, because if you see Paradise Lost you’ll see what a mockery the justice system is down there. There was another one that HBO did they called Paradise Lost Revelations, and the third one is out right now, it’s being played in Canada. But rather than go through the trial, they were afraid, and that’s what makes them convicted felons, it still makes them like child killers serving 18 years. And they don’t have any of the freedoms; they can’t get any money from the state for reparations for serving their time. But I’m doing a book, which is going to be looking at a lot of cases where they have faulty science used. And the experts.

FT: Right. I’ve heard that called junk science.

JD: Yes right. Faulty sciences has been used. I’m going to use a case in Texas, a guy named Willingham was convicted of murder, and Perry, the guy running for President, he was the governor at that time [Ed. note: Willingham’s story was written by David Grann, published in The New Yorker, and is reprinted in this issue beginning on page 42]. Right up to the point of execution he refused to look at the different reports that came in from independent scientists. They said there was faulty science used in analyzing this fire, this arson. And this was an accidental file, it was not arson. They went ahead and executed this guy. It really worries when you see cases like that or, the West Memphis Three case. We have a case in Virginia, the Norfolk Four. Four guys were interrogated independently and each of them confessed to a crime that they didn’t do. The detective, just this year, was convicted of strong arm tactics which he used in other cases as well. And so I’ll be writing about that too and the false confessions. It will be very interesting. If you could show your class Paradise Lost if you haven’t seen it, it’s there in the movie. I showed it to my younger son and it just frustrating to see what a mockery it was. They allowed cameras in the courtroom.

FT: Seriously?

JD: And it turned out, that Terry Hobbes had a criminal history, a violent criminal history, and DNA that was never analyzed after all these years. The defense analyzed it and they find his head hair that you could say is transference to his own stepson who was murdered. Hobbes’s head hair was found under a ligature of one of the other boys.

FT: No kidding.

JD: After all these years, yeah. I mean at the very least when I went down there and spoke to Little Rock Law School with these defense people. At the very least, the cops should have focused on this individual back there, but the case was highly biased by the media just like the Amanda Knox case.

FT: Oh yes, right.

JD: I’m involved with that case. Amanda Knox; she’s innocent. She had nothing to do with it. I said that a year ago. I’d be addressing that one in the book too, but its just overzealous prosecutors and faulty handling of forensic evidence.

FT: Can you comment on what you think happened in the Amanda Knox case?

JD: Yeah. The victim, Meredith Kercher, was murdered and tortured. She was murdered by Rudy Guede, this black guy; his DNA was all over the place. He sat on the toilet, went to the bathroom, he didn’t flush it, we have bloody prints, we have footprints, we have semen, she was raped. Even though Amanda lived in that same house with the victim and another girl, none of it was forensically there of hers or her boyfriend, this Rafael Socelito. There’s nothing at all, there’s nothing forensically, and the prosecutor was under indictment during the trial for misuse of his office, misuse of wire taps on another case.

FT: Oh good.

JD: It was, the Monster of Florence case over in Italy.

FT: I remember, in Perugia.

JD: And a writer, Douglas Preston, wrote about that, and he feared for his life. He thought he was going to be arrested; they were looking at him as a suspect in the case. That’s a writer.

FT: Oh my.

JD: So, they had nothing to do with it, but she ended up giving a false confession. It’s hard arm tactics, but they knew their prosecutor. The prosecutors over there get heavily involved with the investigations. They put teams of interrogators together that would interrogate her for days without a break at all.

FT: Now, over there, can she ask for a lawyer?

JD: No, no, and just like in these other cases too they just break them down, they break them down. You think that they’re going to be helpful, and then they turned. In her case she hardly can speak Italian. They broke her down where she ended up confessing that she was in there and there was this black guy because the cops knew there had to be a black guy because they saw a Negroid hair. Where does the black guy came in? So okay, we got Amanda we have Rafael the boyfriend, and she works for a black guy in this restaurant. It was probably him. Through interrogation tactics, they led her to confess that it’s her boss. And the boss, her, and her boyfriend are doing some crazy demonic sex exercise crime there, and so now she’s a liar. So even though she recants her testimony to use it in court, people don’t understand how people can break down.

FT: Wow.

FT: Oh geez. Well let me ask you, I mean along these lines, what do you think of the CSI effect?

JD: On the influence of jurors or everything?

FT: Yes, the jurors want more evidence because what they’ve seen in TV.

JD: Everyone is expecting a magic bullet. Everyone is thinking, where’s the DNA? So what happens is it’s really hurt prosecutors because prosecutors now have to run the screening. ‘Anybody here watch CSI or Criminal Minds?’ or whatever, and what do you think of the shows? And you have to explain to them that in not every case will you find DNA evidence, or blood evidence, or whatever. It could be circumstantial evidence.

FT: Right.

JD: Eye witness testimonies, different things. It does have an effect, like I said when we first started, it has such an effect that I’m getting ready to do a pilot, and the cable television thing said it’s just like it is on television, trying to make reality like a fictional show.

FT: Right.

JD: But it’s not the way it works.

FT: Have you ever seen the TV show The First 48?

JD: Oh yeah. I was doing an interview in prison. I was interviewing Doug Hardy in Ohio; he killed over 70 hospital patients. And when I was finished with him. They said the Cincinatti police wanted me to take a look at the case and they got The First 48 working with them. Okay it’s a long way to go but I don’t know if I can help them or anything.

FT: Okay.

JD: So I go there, this is the case, and then I sat down and I could actually help them out on the case. But what’s kind of funny to me was that the camera crews, there are different cities throughout the country, and they give the impression like a ticking clock 48 hours. I told these guys, “What’s the First 48? We’re talking, months here?” And they laughed and said that’s about it, because they had all these cameras there and they had these ticking clocks. It doesn’t all happen in 48 hours, but you know some say in law enforcement that they havetil 48 hours until the case gets cold and you really have to develop it. And those first two days you know first 48 hours. The impression is like you can get these things signed, sealed, and delivered in 48 hours. [chuckles] It’s ridiculous. I mean I like to watch the show, but as far as the time, I don’t get it.

FT: Oh that is funny. Well listen, let me just turn this a little bit more towards the classroom and what you said about learning. You sound like someone who is very self motivated because you got out of the Air Force and said, ‘Geez, I’ve got to get my butt in gear’ and you’re very inquisitive and you want to know why things happen, put things together, so I’m guessing you like puzzles.

JD: Yeah. Right, I like that kind of stuff.

FT: What advice do you have for teachers, current forensic teachers who have high school kids, maybe taking it as a science class, maybe taking it as an elective, to keep their kids interest or make it something extra special that they’re students would really look forward to?

JD: They have to bring in reality, they have to bring in real kind of experiences. Teachers are the ones who have to get the experience. They have to broaden their experiences too. Rather than just be, you know, taught at some University like I said earlier, publishing a bunch of books, they have to share their experiences, they have whether its through traveling, through their work. You know we’ve all taken classes, where, oh, my gosh, teachers are so dull. Then all of a sudden you bring in somebody and, oh my gosh this person has actually done the things he’s talking about here, whether it’s history, he or she has traveled to these different areas. Or science: he’s experimented; he’s trying to get it patented. It’s just to try to bring some reality, some hands on, and if they don’t have it bring in people who do. If you’re talking forensic science every one of your subscribers of your magazine should look inside the telephone book under the FBI. And every FBI office has someone there, a spokesperson, who can come to classes and talk about the bureau, talk about not just what it is that makes people a FBI agent, but all different areas, the forensic sciences or justice areas. Just whatever specialties that the class will be interested in because I did that when I was a street agent, out in the field.

FT: Cool.

JD: You know there are tons of different speakers from Quantico to Washington DC or a field office. Even in Delaware, you go into Delaware and Wilmington, there are people in that office that have expertise in various areas; we have evidence response teams now.

FT: Nice.

JD: And every one of our FBI field offices can talk to the kids about how they work their jobs, how they go out, how they collect evidence, how they preserve evidence.

FT: Oh that’s great. At the beginning of every year I put out a little survey to my students and ask why they were taking the course, what most interested them, and if they were, in any way, connected with anyone in law enforcement that we could use as a possible guest speaker. And I was very fortunate because we hosted a arson investigator, a judge, and a crime scene technician among, other people. I hear what you’re saying and it was great because it was a break from me, and the kids loved when an expert walked into the room.

JD: Yeah. I mean, I was doing some research to get some credibility, really. In the research it was Dr. Anne Burgess who co-authored the crime classification with me and another book, Special Homicide Patterns. And she had a class in personal violence up at Boston College and University of Penn. What she does is she just brings in a line-up of guess speakers in different areas. I mean, just look at arson. Go to the fire department. The fire marshal, the people on a state level who investigate arson.

FT: Absolutely.

JD: You can get them to talk about investigations, collection of evidence, what they look for, how they detect arson versus an accidental fire. They’ll do it’s great community relations. It’s great for them. We all like to do it and it’s there so, I mean, you can go for about like 2 hours. I mean, you could beat Billy Graham up there. That’s allowed. People didn’t nod off. We used to go out in teams and we’d take turns teaching so they can hear a different voice, different personality.

FT: Yeah.

FT: Yeah.

JD: And then they have arson experts in the department, even in a local level, or at state level.

FT: Absolutely.

JD: Federal. I mean, geez. If they, teachers, could take a case in the local newspapers, and you have a prosecutor to prosecute the case and, and with the forensics we use to implicate and convict the subject, contact them. You know, maybe what they should do is pick some of the students in class and see where their daddies and mommies are, and tap in. “You know Mrs. So-and-so, your son Tommy here in our class he talked about your job, you know. Would you mind coming in and talking about your position within—.” I mean they have like career day but we want to live more scientific. We want to be more educational.

FT: Right. That was my approach.

JD: Or how do you become whatever.

FT: Sure.

JD: You can do it. You can really learn from these kids. I know because I got suckered into a lot of these things [Laughs], but every time I do it I enjoy it. If I go out now people ask me about the career of profiling.

FT: Oh yeah.

JD: It’s in every major office so—

FT: Right.

JD: Delaware would certainly have one.

FT: Now, do people often kid you about that since you’re a profiler, and you’ve spent many, many years studying individuals and—

JD: I know what you’re going to say. Am I profiling you or some of them?

FT: No. Do you have trouble getting into a poker game?

JD: Oh no. I never even play cards. I like to watch, I like to watch people, you know, playing and trying to, figure out through body language what’s going on.

FT: Yeah.

JD: I thought you’re going to ask, “Are you profiling me right now?”

FT: [Laughs]

JD: No, no, don’t flatter yourself. I’m not profiling you. I said, “Criminals are profilers and they can pick up weaknesses and they can see a vulnerable child or person in a vulnerable situation, in a family situation. These predators can see what needs of that child are not being fulfilled.

FT: Right.

JD: Or a woman who just broke up with a boyfriend, or her husband divorced her. I had these guys tell me they could walk into a bar and they could spot her and see by just her body language and her posture, how they hold their drink and their head, like they’re down, like they’ve been broken.

FT: Yeah.

JD: They move in like the charming white knight on the white horse.

FT: Do you know who else are excellent profilers?

JD: Who’s that?

FT: Students. High School students have done nothing for the past 18 years but figure out how to make life easy for themselves.

JD: Yeah. You’re, you’re right.

FT: So the first time they see –

JD: And profiling teachers. Yeah, for sure. You’re right. I was one of them. You profile, you find out about Mr. So-and-so.

FT: Right. I mean if you, as a teacher, stand up in front of the class for the first time, they’re eyeing you up. If you don’t believe 100% that this classroom is yours, and this is where you belong, they smell that. And they can sense even 1% uncertainty.

JD: Yeah. That’s why substitutes go in there with their head down not even looking forward to that yet. My wife’s a school teacher. She got her 30 year pin the other day.

FT: Wow.

JD: And she has 8 more years from when she was in Detroit that they didn’t count. So, she runs a reading program and she’s working in a State school from Detroit and Milwaukee.

FT: Cool.

JD: But she’s pretty darn good in profiling the children.

FT: Oh yes.

JD: She gets after those other teachers who, who don’t see the full picture of why this child is doing the things they are doing or behaving, and she can end up seeing the life where this child is coming from.

FT: Yes.

JD: Where these kids maybe don’t want to go home if the best part of the day is going to school.

FT: I had some of those kids.

JD: That’s their life.

FT: Yup.

JD: And they have to go back home where there’s the domestic violence, even having two parents they’re lucky.

FT: Yes.

JD: And these kids they’ve always loved her and she’s been around some tough, tough kids too, and they really respect her. But she knows, because she was raised in Detroit, a tough city, and she goes places like Fredricksburg, Virginia and some of these teachers, they just have no patience with these kids. They are not taking time to really do a personal assessment.

FT: Oh yeah.

JD: And I was doing, you know, just like the programs that the state makes you do, you know. They have that certain scores and, and it’s like everyone has to be taught the same way and be on the same page at the same time and –

FT: Oh yes. I hate that.

JD: And that’s what really screwed me up because I was behind maturity-wise or certainly brain washed. It took a while for me to get going. I end up getting a Doctorate degree, but when I applied to Cornell University I was rejected. What was so fascinating was that four years ago they invited me to speak there.

FT: Really?

JD: At a thousand people in the audience and I told them they didn’t have any idea that they rejected me in the 1960s because I wasn’t good enough.

FT: Oh yeah.

JD: And I said, “I would have done this presentation for free, but you sent me off to Montana State because I wasn’t good enough.”

FT: [Laughs]

JD: I was not good enough for this place and I published a dozen books. I mean, I have a doctorate degree now and I busted their chops. But they were right in a way. I really wasn’t ready for Cornell; I would have bombed. And I wasn’t ready for Montana. I wasn’t ready until it hit me in the face: ‘My God, I’m going to be going down in the service for four years. When I get out I’ll have nothing. I got to accelerate my education. I got to get that foundation under me which I did.

FT: Good.

JD: I want to subscribe to your magazine. I got and I saw your website. This is really interesting. I know Dr. Henry Lee. You interviewed him. And you did Kathy Reichs?

FT: Yes.

JD: Yes, she was, she was with the same publisher that I was with one time, Scribners. She has great practical experience.

FT: Oh my, yes.

JD: And she writes well too because she can relate it.

FT: Oh yeah.

JD: Also, I belong to American College of Forensic Examiners. I think even undergraduate students can join it. They have a very good glossy magazine they put out 3 or 4 times a year. It’s really a chock full of good forensic articles.

FT: Cool. Well, listen John; it’s been a real pleasure talking to you.

JD: Likewise Mark. Yeah. I enjoyed it.

FT: And I want to say thanks again.

JD: Oh. Thank you.

John Douglas

John Douglas was the inspiration for one of the main characters in Silence of the Lambs, he started the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, and he’s made a career out of getting inside criminals’ heads. He talked to us about a lot of

things, including how forensics teachers can make lessons more real.