Mindhunters | John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

Author

John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

Posts by: "John Douglas and Mark Olshaker"

In Memory of Stephanie

By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker On June 30, 2014 · 8 Comments

Willa Cosgrove & Peggy Schmidt

As with several other relationships, we met Peggy and Gene Schmidt and their daughter Jeni under terrible circumstances. We were researching and writing about the murder of their beautiful daughter Stephanie – Jeni’s older sister – at the hands of a paroled sex offender in Pittsburg, Kansas, on July 2, 1993. Two days later, on the Fourth of July, Stephanie would have been 20 years-old. The Schmidt family’s story – equal parts sad and inspiring – is related in our book, Obsession.

We learned a lot from the Schmidts, and not just about murder.

[Continue Reading…]

Would You Take a Chance?

By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker On June 20, 2014 · 5 Comments

Cory Roberts

This past Monday, Cory Roberts, 37, was released from a detention center for sexually violent predators in Seattle, Washington, and placed in a halfway house in Tacoma. As a 13-year-old in 1990, Roberts raped and beat a three-year-old girl he was babysitting, leaving her near death, brain damaged and partially paralyzed. He was freed from incarceration in 2001, but within weeks, he had committed another sexually predatory crime, this time on a three-year-old boy. He was convicted and re-incarcerated.

Now, psychologists who examined him have determined that Mr. Roberts is no longer dangerous, no longer sexually attracted to young children, and that he does not have the “mental abnormality” necessary to keep him locked up.

What is wrong with this picture?

[Continue Reading…]

Hellish Creatures?

By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker On June 5, 2014 · 12 Comments

Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier

Heavenly Creatures Movie

Mass shootings have become so tragically commonplace in our culture that the “What could have been done to prevent this horror?” exercise has become routine. But two pretty 12-year-old girls trying to stab a third girl to death after a sleepover? It’s almost beyond the mind to contemplate.

According to the complaint, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier of Waukesha, Wisconsin – their names were released because they are being charged as adults for attempted first-degree murder – took part in a sleepover with a third girl. The next morning, they allegedly lured her into a wooded park for a game of hide and seek, then stabbed her 19 times and left her for dead.

How could this have happened?

[Continue Reading…]

Loser Keith Luke Finally Succeeds

By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker On May 20, 2014 · Add Comment

Keith Luke

Keith Luke, a 28 year-old neo-Nazi serving two consecutive life terms for murder and rape, was pronounced dead last week at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester after being found unresponsive in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts.

Few tears were shed over the apparent suicide. But a cursory review of Luke’s short and miserable life confirms just about everything most of us already knew instinctively about this despicable excuse for a man and all of the others of his ilk.

[Continue Reading…]

A Matter of Expectation

By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker On May 16, 2014 · 3 Comments

Meriam Ibrahim and her husband

Why is it that coverage of the Amanda Knox-Raffaele Sollecito trials for the murder of Meredith Kercher has been a worldwide news staple for more than half a decade now, yet the case of Meriam Yahya Ibrahim, recently sentenced to death in Sudan for renouncing Islam, got only a single day in the world media headlines? In today’s New York Times it was reduced to one paragraph in a news roundup at the bottom of Page A14.

Is it because Amanda and Meredith were pretty, white girls of the West and Meriam is a pretty, dark-skinned African Middle Easterner? We don’t think so. While race and ethnicity do figure in many legal injustices, they are irrelevant in this case.

So why has the Kercher-Knox case received so much attention and this one will practically slip past under the radar?

In a word: Expectation.

[Continue Reading…]