the basis for the protagonist of the show mindhunter. also the inspiration for the character of jack Crawford in silence of the lambs.
Douglas joined the FBI in 1970 and his first assignment was in Detroit, Michigan. In the field, he served as a sniper on the local FBI SWAT team and later became a hostage negotiator. He transferred to the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU) in 1977 where he taught hostage negotiation and applied criminal psychology at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia to new FBI special agents, field agents, and police officers from all over the United States. He created and managed the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program and was later promoted to unit chief of the Investigative Support Unit, a division of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).[1][2][3]
While traveling around the country providing instruction to police, Douglas began interviewing serial killers and other violent sex offenders at various prisons. He interviewed some of the most notable violent criminals in recent history as part of the study, including David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, Lynette Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, Edmund Kemper, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Richard Speck, Donald Harvey, and Joseph Paul Franklin. He used the information gleaned from these interviews in the book Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, followed by the Crime Classification Manual (CCM). Douglas later received two Thomas Jefferson Awards for academic excellence from the University of Virginia for his work on the study.[1][2][3]
Douglas examined crime scenes and created profiles of the perpetrators, describing their habits and attempting to predict their next moves. In cases where his work helped to capture the criminals, he built strategies for interrogating and prosecuting them as well. At the time of criminal profiling's conception, Douglas claimed to have been doubted and criticized by his own colleagues until both police and the FBI realized that he had developed an extremely useful tool for the capture of criminals.[4]
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“There are certain crimes that are simply too cruel, too sadistic, too hideous to be forgiven.”
“When rehabilitation works, there is no question that it is the best and most productive use of the correctional system. It stands to reason: if we can take a bad guy and turn him into a good guy and then let him out, then that’s one fewer bad guy to harm us. . . .
Where I do not think there is much hope. . .is when we deal with serial killers and sexual predators, the people I have spent most of my career hunting and studying. These people do what they do. . .because it feels good, because they want to, because it gives
them satisfaction. You can certainly make the argument, and I will agree with you, that many of them are compensating for bad jobs, poor self-image, mistreatment by parents, any number of things. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to rehabilitate them.”
“I've come out many times publicly in support of the death penalty. I've stated that I'd be more than willing personally to pull the switch on some of the monsters I've hunted in my career with the FBI. But Bruno Hauptmann just doesn't fit into this category -- the evidence just wasn't, and isn't, there to have confidently sent him to the electric chair. To impose the one sentence for which there is no retroactive correction requires a far higher standard of proof than was seen here. Blaming him for the entire crime was, to my mind, an expedient and simpleminded solution to a private horror that had become a national obsession.”
“Now, on the subject of deterrence, I admit that there can be little doubt that as presently administered in the United States, the death penalty is not a general deterrent to murder in many, if not most, situations. . . .
But of one thing I am certain: it is, by God, a specific deterrent. No one who has been executed has ever taken another innocent life. And until such time as we really mean it as a society when we say ‘imprisonment for life,’ I, and the families of countless victims, would sleep better at night knowing there is no chance that the worst of these killers will ever again be able to prey on others. Even then, I personally believe that if you choose to take another human life, you ought to be prepared to pay with your own.”
“More police and courts and more prisons and better investigative techniques are fine, but the only way crime is going to go down is if all of us simply stop accepting and tolerating it in our families, our friends, and our associates...Crime is a moral problem. It can only be resolved on a moral level.”
“I showed him some of the gruesome crime-scene photos we worked with every day. I let him experience recordings made by killers while they were torturing their victims. I made him listen to one of two teenage girls in Los Angeles being tortured to death in the back of a van by two thrill-seeking killers who had recently been let out of prison. Glenn wept as his listened to the tapes. He said to me, “I had no idea there were people out there who could do anything like this.” An intelligent, compassionate father with two girls of his own, Glenn said that after seeing and hearing what he did in my office, he could no longer oppose the death penalty: “The experience in Quantico changed my mind about that for all time.”
“It all comes down to this: Whenever theory supersedes evidence, and prejudice deposes rationalism, there can be no real justice.”
"I try to imagine what the victim would have been saying at the time of the attack. I try to think how [the offender] would have been reacting. I even visualize the expression on his face. . . . I can see the style of hair, maybe the kind of clothing this guy would be wearing."
"I'd let the guy talk, let him project the blame onto someone else, even the victims. Then I'd challenge him. I'd say, 'I know your case. I looked at the crime-scene photos. You cannibalized that woman.' What they like is when you tell them about themselves. Then they open up. "
[recalling how his obsession with finding the Green River Killer almost killed him] "I didn't have a support system. I came back, I took out Inca Protection insurance, and life insurance, I went out to Seattle before I left, I told my family about my life insurance. 'You shouldn't go, what's wrong with you? You don't look right'. I'm getting headaches, I just don't feel right, but they're depending on me to go out there. I go before the task force, and that night I tell them 'Don't bother me, I'm not going out tomorrow, I'm getting the flu'. I collapse in my hotel room, they find me two days later with a lesion on my brain, I had viral encephalitis, related to the stress just burnt me out. Brain swelled, split the brain, left side paralysis, 220 heartbeat, 105-107 body temperature, my eyes were dilated, my whole system shut down. I'm in this coma now, and they take me to the hospital, but I'm aware, I'm aware something's going on around me. And they're starting to, I feel pain, and they're putting tubes in every body orifice in me, and I feel pain, and the last thing was the life support system, and they're forcing it down my throat. And I think I'm in hell; I think all these guys I've been after, they got me now, I'm being tortured, and now I'm being choked to death, I can't breathe."
"You examine a crime scene with all its particular attributes in order to develop a general physical and psychological description of the person who committed the crime -- a profile. Then, in logical terms, you build a set of suspects who fall within the profile. Then, you move logically back to the particular. You try to find the specific criminal within that group."
Quote:
Douglas joined the FBI in 1970 and his first assignment was in Detroit, Michigan. In the field, he served as a sniper on the local FBI SWAT team and later became a hostage negotiator. He transferred to the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU) in 1977 where he taught hostage negotiation and applied criminal psychology at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia to new FBI special agents, field agents, and police officers from all over the United States. He created and managed the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program and was later promoted to unit chief of the Investigative Support Unit, a division of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).[1][2][3]
While traveling around the country providing instruction to police, Douglas began interviewing serial killers and other violent sex offenders at various prisons. He interviewed some of the most notable violent criminals in recent history as part of the study, including David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, Lynette Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, Edmund Kemper, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Richard Speck, Donald Harvey, and Joseph Paul Franklin. He used the information gleaned from these interviews in the book Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, followed by the Crime Classification Manual (CCM). Douglas later received two Thomas Jefferson Awards for academic excellence from the University of Virginia for his work on the study.[1][2][3]
Douglas examined crime scenes and created profiles of the perpetrators, describing their habits and attempting to predict their next moves. In cases where his work helped to capture the criminals, he built strategies for interrogating and prosecuting them as well. At the time of criminal profiling's conception, Douglas claimed to have been doubted and criticized by his own colleagues until both police and the FBI realized that he had developed an extremely useful tool for the capture of criminals.[4]
“There are certain crimes that are simply too cruel, too sadistic, too hideous to be forgiven.”
“When rehabilitation works, there is no question that it is the best and most productive use of the correctional system. It stands to reason: if we can take a bad guy and turn him into a good guy and then let him out, then that’s one fewer bad guy to harm us. . . .
Where I do not think there is much hope. . .is when we deal with serial killers and sexual predators, the people I have spent most of my career hunting and studying. These people do what they do. . .because it feels good, because they want to, because it gives
them satisfaction. You can certainly make the argument, and I will agree with you, that many of them are compensating for bad jobs, poor self-image, mistreatment by parents, any number of things. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to rehabilitate them.”
“I've come out many times publicly in support of the death penalty. I've stated that I'd be more than willing personally to pull the switch on some of the monsters I've hunted in my career with the FBI. But Bruno Hauptmann just doesn't fit into this category -- the evidence just wasn't, and isn't, there to have confidently sent him to the electric chair. To impose the one sentence for which there is no retroactive correction requires a far higher standard of proof than was seen here. Blaming him for the entire crime was, to my mind, an expedient and simpleminded solution to a private horror that had become a national obsession.”
“Now, on the subject of deterrence, I admit that there can be little doubt that as presently administered in the United States, the death penalty is not a general deterrent to murder in many, if not most, situations. . . .
But of one thing I am certain: it is, by God, a specific deterrent. No one who has been executed has ever taken another innocent life. And until such time as we really mean it as a society when we say ‘imprisonment for life,’ I, and the families of countless victims, would sleep better at night knowing there is no chance that the worst of these killers will ever again be able to prey on others. Even then, I personally believe that if you choose to take another human life, you ought to be prepared to pay with your own.”
“More police and courts and more prisons and better investigative techniques are fine, but the only way crime is going to go down is if all of us simply stop accepting and tolerating it in our families, our friends, and our associates...Crime is a moral problem. It can only be resolved on a moral level.”
“I showed him some of the gruesome crime-scene photos we worked with every day. I let him experience recordings made by killers while they were torturing their victims. I made him listen to one of two teenage girls in Los Angeles being tortured to death in the back of a van by two thrill-seeking killers who had recently been let out of prison. Glenn wept as his listened to the tapes. He said to me, “I had no idea there were people out there who could do anything like this.” An intelligent, compassionate father with two girls of his own, Glenn said that after seeing and hearing what he did in my office, he could no longer oppose the death penalty: “The experience in Quantico changed my mind about that for all time.”
“It all comes down to this: Whenever theory supersedes evidence, and prejudice deposes rationalism, there can be no real justice.”
"I try to imagine what the victim would have been saying at the time of the attack. I try to think how [the offender] would have been reacting. I even visualize the expression on his face. . . . I can see the style of hair, maybe the kind of clothing this guy would be wearing."
"I'd let the guy talk, let him project the blame onto someone else, even the victims. Then I'd challenge him. I'd say, 'I know your case. I looked at the crime-scene photos. You cannibalized that woman.' What they like is when you tell them about themselves. Then they open up. "
[recalling how his obsession with finding the Green River Killer almost killed him] "I didn't have a support system. I came back, I took out Inca Protection insurance, and life insurance, I went out to Seattle before I left, I told my family about my life insurance. 'You shouldn't go, what's wrong with you? You don't look right'. I'm getting headaches, I just don't feel right, but they're depending on me to go out there. I go before the task force, and that night I tell them 'Don't bother me, I'm not going out tomorrow, I'm getting the flu'. I collapse in my hotel room, they find me two days later with a lesion on my brain, I had viral encephalitis, related to the stress just burnt me out. Brain swelled, split the brain, left side paralysis, 220 heartbeat, 105-107 body temperature, my eyes were dilated, my whole system shut down. I'm in this coma now, and they take me to the hospital, but I'm aware, I'm aware something's going on around me. And they're starting to, I feel pain, and they're putting tubes in every body orifice in me, and I feel pain, and the last thing was the life support system, and they're forcing it down my throat. And I think I'm in hell; I think all these guys I've been after, they got me now, I'm being tortured, and now I'm being choked to death, I can't breathe."
"You examine a crime scene with all its particular attributes in order to develop a general physical and psychological description of the person who committed the crime -- a profile. Then, in logical terms, you build a set of suspects who fall within the profile. Then, you move logically back to the particular. You try to find the specific criminal within that group."