Mindhunters | Serial Killers

Killing For Fun

By Mark Olshaker On December 10, 2012 · 7 Comments

Israel Keyes

On Sunday, December 2, thirty-four-year-old Israel Keyes committed suicide by slitting his wrists and strangling himself with the bedding in his jail cell in Anchorage, Alaska. It was, perhaps, the first time in his sorry life he had done something that benefited society rather than merely feeding his own dark desires. If only he would have done it years ago. He left behind a legacy of burglary, bank robbery, arson, kidnapping, rape and murder.

Before checking out on his own terms, Keyes granted an interview to an Anchorage police officer and an FBI agent. And it is the report of this interview that has shocked and outraged so much of the public and law enforcement community.

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Conversation With a Serial Killer

By John Douglas On November 18, 2012 · 3 Comments

Exclusive: Legendary FBI Profiler John Douglas Talks to BTK, the Most Disturbing Serial Killer Ever

BTK Killer

What happens if you find yourself looking into the eyes of a vicious serial killer? I suggest you look away fast, and get far away even faster—it’s a sight that may haunt you for the rest of your life, which might not be long if the killer is a free man and has taken an interest in you.

But in John Douglas’s world, it works differently—he seeks these predators out. It was not only his job (he was the man who cultivated the science of profiling within the FBI in the late ‘70s) but an obsession. Maybe it was Douglas’s calling, or perhaps it was destiny, but somehow his life turned into a mission to help catch human monsters who commit unpardonable acts against helpless victims.

The profiler has paid a severe price for his work—a tortured psyche, sleepless nights, terrifying nightmares, and a cataclysmic descent into a near-fatal coma from nervous exhaustion—by climbing inside the minds of the killers and their victims. (Don’t even try to imagine what this is like.)

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Profiling Britain’s Deadliest Serial Killer

By John Douglas On October 25, 2012 · Add Comment

Dr. Harold Shipman

Doctors are supposed to save lives, or at least make them better. But Dr. Harold Shipman wanted more. Rather than the satisfaction he could have derived from extending lives, he craved the power that comes with knowing he was snuffing them out.

Shipman is the British physician who was recently found guilty of murdering 15 of his female patients, all middle aged or elderly, by injecting them with deadly doses of morphine. The speculation is that he may have killed 150 women, maybe more, and there are reports that he might have started targeting his patients 25 years ago.

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Violent Predators Hide Behind Insanity Defense

By John Douglas On October 20, 2012 · Add Comment

Angel Maturino Resendiz

But They Know the Difference Between Right and Wrong

Angel Maturino Resendiz, the so-called Railway Killer, has admitted killing nine people in two years. His victims were bludgeoned, raped, beaten, stabbed, clubbed or shot. Some were hacked into pieces.

In his death penalty trial for the Dec. 17, 1998, murder of Dr. Claudia Benton, Maturino Resendiz has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. His attorneys have stated that he committed all the murders he’s accused of, including Benton’s, but insist he was “insane at the time.”

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Organized vs. Disorganized Slayings

By John Douglas On October 14, 2012 · Add Comment

How to Describe a Crime Scene

People ask me why I use the terms “Organized,” “Disorganized” and “Mixed” for describing criminals. The practice dates to when I first began research into the mind of the killer. Then, I noticed that the behavioralists were using psychological jargon — “psychopaths,” “antisocial,” “sociopath” — to describe basically the same person. These terms were very confusing to me as well as to others in law enforcement.

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