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CNN Live Today

Talk with Former FBI Profiler John Douglas

Aired October 25, 2002 - 12:14   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Before yesterday's arrest, we heard from any number of experts who shared any numbers of theories and educated guesses. And inevitably, many of those turned out to be wrong. John Douglas is a retired FBI profiler, who wrote the book "Anatomy of Motive," and who's considered the inspiration for the Scott Glenn character in the movie "The Silence of the Lambs."
His newest book is a novel "Man Down," and he joins us now this hour from our bureau in New York. Thanks so much for joining us.

John you didn't want to go on TV during the weeks that the sniper killings were under way. Why?

JOHN DOUGLAS, AUTHOR, "MAN DOWN": I was hounded by every venue in the country. I felt that the FBI, the police were doing a good job. As a profiler, one of my things is that we would try to develop proactive techniques. In a case like this, profiling the unknown subjects is particularly difficult for a profiler. So what you have to do, the posture you have to take is to develop some type of proactive technique. Once you get the killers to communicate with you, then it becomes a question of coaching. And in this case I'm sure my colleagues were coaching the police, police Chief Moose Down there, trying to establish some type of dialogue. Once you have a communique, then you have something to analyze, you have something to interpret.

And so what I saw and what I was listening to on television was a lot of guesses, and I really was concerned that some the people were making comments that really inspired these killers. I know from research, I still go into the penitentiary to interview assassins, serial killers and the like, and they do follow the press, and they obtain their knowledge from the press. And these particular type of killers, they really are driven by ego, and because of the ego, what begins to happen is a lot of people think that they get sloppy, or it's because they want to get caught. They really become risk takers. They get caught up in the media.

But when I saw that, when I worked these kinds of cases, I really loved that, because I know now that we can move in and we can catch these guys.

BLITZER: It seems, based on what we know now and we only know tiny little tidbits right now, they were basically living in the car, sleeping in the car. So they clearly didn't have necessarily access to cable television, cable news channels, so they didn't have much access to TV, though they probably were listening to the radio while they were driving around. God knows all sorts of speculation on talk radio as well.

But do you think if they were watching television, they managed to stop places and catch some of the news on television that what our profilers, or experts or pundits were speculating about could have made matters even worse?

DOUGLAS: I'm convinced. It bothers me had I hear the governor of the state of Maryland say that this guy's a coward. I've been involved in cases in the Midwest in similar situations, where a psychiatrist got on there, and was referring to this killer as a coward, he's a nobody. Well, he went out and he killed a few more people and wrote a letter to say, hey, I am in fact a somebody. When someone goes on the air and says that this guy thinks he's God, well, then we have a young child being shot and a tarot card thrown down at the scene, and says that, dear policemen, I'm God. So they do respond.

Not all killers will respond this way. Some killers respond by the way they position a body, posing the body in a particular fashion. They began to communicate, but they really weren't that bright. The case you see, what happens the case starts out referred to being organized. Organized means it's very premeditated, very calculated. They leave few clues at the scene.

But what happens is kind of like in a fugitive state that a lot of fugitives go in, when they know the police are after them, they're having difficulty sleeping, they can't get a good night's rest, they start drinking. They're looking over their shoulder every few minutes, and the good part for the police, and that's why the police through the press conferences, constantly had to put the United Front up and talk very, very positively, because what happens psychologically at the time of the unknown subjects, is they begin to break down, and now they begin to get sloppy, begin to get careless, and begin to become risk takers. That's when they make the mistakes, and that's what leads a good police investigation like this case to identifying these subjects.

BLITZER: You obviously, I'm sure, like all of us, were watching the sniper killings unfold over three weeks plus here in the greater Washington area. You must have had some sense, some opinions of your own over these three weeks, even though you didn't want to share them on television. Are you surprised now by the two suspects, their backgrounds, that they are now being accused of these crimes?

DOUGLAS: I had some cases over the years, there's one it was Carlton Gary and Deborah Brown, and they were black, one was brown and one was female, and they were on a killing spree in the Midwest. And based upon doing an assessment of them, I knew that the nature of the beast was to return to the area that where they would be most comfortable. In their case, it was Chicago. So we were waiting for them in Chicago where we made the apprehension.

In this particular case here, they had the geographical profiling. We'd been doing this really since 1980. We didn't give it that fancy name. But when you see a series of cases, you see that cluster, that's the home turf for the subject. They may go away from and go to a secondary home turf, a secondary comfort zone, but they go back. We know now that that particular area there, I think it was Clinton, Maryland, was where his ex-wife was living. It was just a matter of time.

One of the things I'd really like to see in our country, though, and which would help link these places together is we have a program in the FBI since 19 called the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, where police are supposed to put in facts relative to modus operandi, signature, victimology, method and cause of death. And because this is a voluntary program, the FBI only gets a smattering of cases. So when police submit a case of theirs into this computer, we're not seeing the whole picture. I really think something has to happen here in Congress to make it mandatory. The police just have to fill out this form and submit it.

BLITZER: Very briefly, before I let you go, because we only have a few seconds left, would you give the police high marks or bad marks for the way they conducted this investigation?

DOUGLAS: I give them an A plus-plus. They did a tremendous job. I'm really proud of the law enforcement and how they worked together.

BLITZER: OK, John Douglas, one of the best in the business. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate having you on the program.

DOUGLAS: Thanks, Wolf.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired October 25, 2002 - 12:14   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Before yesterday's arrest, we heard from any number of experts who shared any numbers of theories and educated guesses. And inevitably, many of those turned out to be wrong. John Douglas is a retired FBI profiler, who wrote the book "Anatomy of Motive," and who's considered the inspiration for the Scott Glenn character in the movie "The Silence of the Lambs."
His newest book is a novel "Man Down," and he joins us now this hour from our bureau in New York. Thanks so much for joining us.

John you didn't want to go on TV during the weeks that the sniper killings were under way. Why?

JOHN DOUGLAS, AUTHOR, "MAN DOWN": I was hounded by every venue in the country. I felt that the FBI, the police were doing a good job. As a profiler, one of my things is that we would try to develop proactive techniques. In a case like this, profiling the unknown subjects is particularly difficult for a profiler. So what you have to do, the posture you have to take is to develop some type of proactive technique. Once you get the killers to communicate with you, then it becomes a question of coaching. And in this case I'm sure my colleagues were coaching the police, police Chief Moose Down there, trying to establish some type of dialogue. Once you have a communique, then you have something to analyze, you have something to interpret.

And so what I saw and what I was listening to on television was a lot of guesses, and I really was concerned that some the people were making comments that really inspired these killers. I know from research, I still go into the penitentiary to interview assassins, serial killers and the like, and they do follow the press, and they obtain their knowledge from the press. And these particular type of killers, they really are driven by ego, and because of the ego, what begins to happen is a lot of people think that they get sloppy, or it's because they want to get caught. They really become risk takers. They get caught up in the media.

But when I saw that, when I worked these kinds of cases, I really loved that, because I know now that we can move in and we can catch these guys.

BLITZER: It seems, based on what we know now and we only know tiny little tidbits right now, they were basically living in the car, sleeping in the car. So they clearly didn't have necessarily access to cable television, cable news channels, so they didn't have much access to TV, though they probably were listening to the radio while they were driving around. God knows all sorts of speculation on talk radio as well.

But do you think if they were watching television, they managed to stop places and catch some of the news on television that what our profilers, or experts or pundits were speculating about could have made matters even worse?

DOUGLAS: I'm convinced. It bothers me had I hear the governor of the state of Maryland say that this guy's a coward. I've been involved in cases in the Midwest in similar situations, where a psychiatrist got on there, and was referring to this killer as a coward, he's a nobody. Well, he went out and he killed a few more people and wrote a letter to say, hey, I am in fact a somebody. When someone goes on the air and says that this guy thinks he's God, well, then we have a young child being shot and a tarot card thrown down at the scene, and says that, dear policemen, I'm God. So they do respond.

Not all killers will respond this way. Some killers respond by the way they position a body, posing the body in a particular fashion. They began to communicate, but they really weren't that bright. The case you see, what happens the case starts out referred to being organized. Organized means it's very premeditated, very calculated. They leave few clues at the scene.

But what happens is kind of like in a fugitive state that a lot of fugitives go in, when they know the police are after them, they're having difficulty sleeping, they can't get a good night's rest, they start drinking. They're looking over their shoulder every few minutes, and the good part for the police, and that's why the police through the press conferences, constantly had to put the United Front up and talk very, very positively, because what happens psychologically at the time of the unknown subjects, is they begin to break down, and now they begin to get sloppy, begin to get careless, and begin to become risk takers. That's when they make the mistakes, and that's what leads a good police investigation like this case to identifying these subjects.

BLITZER: You obviously, I'm sure, like all of us, were watching the sniper killings unfold over three weeks plus here in the greater Washington area. You must have had some sense, some opinions of your own over these three weeks, even though you didn't want to share them on television. Are you surprised now by the two suspects, their backgrounds, that they are now being accused of these crimes?

DOUGLAS: I had some cases over the years, there's one it was Carlton Gary and Deborah Brown, and they were black, one was brown and one was female, and they were on a killing spree in the Midwest. And based upon doing an assessment of them, I knew that the nature of the beast was to return to the area that where they would be most comfortable. In their case, it was Chicago. So we were waiting for them in Chicago where we made the apprehension.

In this particular case here, they had the geographical profiling. We'd been doing this really since 1980. We didn't give it that fancy name. But when you see a series of cases, you see that cluster, that's the home turf for the subject. They may go away from and go to a secondary home turf, a secondary comfort zone, but they go back. We know now that that particular area there, I think it was Clinton, Maryland, was where his ex-wife was living. It was just a matter of time.

One of the things I'd really like to see in our country, though, and which would help link these places together is we have a program in the FBI since 19 called the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, where police are supposed to put in facts relative to modus operandi, signature, victimology, method and cause of death. And because this is a voluntary program, the FBI only gets a smattering of cases. So when police submit a case of theirs into this computer, we're not seeing the whole picture. I really think something has to happen here in Congress to make it mandatory. The police just have to fill out this form and submit it.

BLITZER: Very briefly, before I let you go, because we only have a few seconds left, would you give the police high marks or bad marks for the way they conducted this investigation?

DOUGLAS: I give them an A plus-plus. They did a tremendous job. I'm really proud of the law enforcement and how they worked together.

BLITZER: OK, John Douglas, one of the best in the business. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate having you on the program.

DOUGLAS: Thanks, Wolf.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com