Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit

By the early 1980s, the FBI had fielded an increasing number of requests for assistance from all around the country. Douglas, the only agent with a fulltime case load, had to determine which cases had priority. For cold cases, Douglas reached out to the requesting agency to inquire why they wanted FBI assistance at this particular moment. For active cases, Douglas determined the motive behind the request, observing that political matters like jurisdictional feuds, increased political pressure and attention, and others often explained the urgency. At the start of the program, Douglas provided written analyses, but as the requests for help increased, he no longer had the time to do so. As he sifted through the cases, Douglas learned to recognize that “the more ordinary and routine the crime, the less behavioral evidence there was to work with” (168). He usually began his case file reviews by reading the medical examiner’s report, followed by the preliminary police report and crime scene photos or schematic drawings. After a full and detailed study of the crime scene, which led to a comprehensive understanding of the victims and how they may have reacted to the offender, Douglas was then able to put himself in the shoes of the offender.

Douglas discusses a case involving two violent offenders named Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, who tortured and killed teenage girls in a van they named Murder Mac. When they met in prison, they discovered a mutual interest in hurting young women. Bittaker and Norris were both paroled in 1979, and they met in Los Angeles to plan the kidnap, rape, torture, and murder of a group of girls, one representing each teen year from 13 through to 19 years of age. One of their victims managed to escape, but by the time the men were caught, they had already killed five girls. Behaviorally, Norris was the more compliant partner; Bittaker was more vicious and aggressive. Norris was the first to confess after police interrogation in exchange for a plea deal. He agreed to turn on his partner and lead the police to the bodies if prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

According to Douglas, this dynamic between partners was not unusual, and “the ones who need partners to carry out their work are the most inadequate of all” (173). He cited James Russell Odom and James Clayton Lawson as another example of this phenomenon. Like Bittaker and Norris, Odom and Lawson met while incarcerated, and when they were imprisoned at California’s Atascadero State Mental Hospital, they discovered that they had separate but related interests. Lawson wanted to torture women, and Odom wanted to rape them. After they were released, they managed to abduct a young 7-Eleven store clerk at gunpoint. After her rape and mutilation, Lawson killed the young woman, and the duo discarded her clothing and attempted to flee. Her body was quickly discovered, and Odom and Lawson were apprehended a few days after the murder. The behavioral evidence that the duo left behind indicated two distinct personalities; one was more disorganized than the other. Upon his arrest, Odom confessed to the rape but denied murdering the victim. Lawson, on the other hand, made it clear that he did not rape the victim and that he was solely interested in her destruction. Odom was convicted of rape, weapons possession, and accessory to murder, and he was given a life sentence plus 40 years. Lawson was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death.

Another case that involved strong behavioral evidence suggesting two distinct perpetrators was the murder of Betty Jane Shade. She was found severely beaten, stabbed, raped, and badly mutilated in an illegal garbage dump site in Pennsylvania. Based on the facial trauma and the removal of her hair, Douglas surmised that the victim knew her attacker well. Douglas profiled that her killer would have a menial job that would allow him to be nocturnal; this way, he could move the body and revisit the final dump site. He would be someone who had a dysfunctional childhood that taught him to fear women. The killer would be a white male, aged seventeen to twenty-five, who was thin, socially inept, and interested in pornography. These characteristics did not add up to one killer.

Based on Douglas’s profile, police later arrested the victim’s live-in boyfriend, Charles F. Soult Jr. Charles Soult had informed the police that he was Shade’s fiancé and that they were in love, but Shade also dated and was sexually active with other men. Soult fit the profile that Douglas provided to local law enforcement, but, because the victim had been raped between her initial assault and her murder, Douglas did not believe that “a disorganized, sexually inadequate, mother-dominated young man” (179) such as Soult would be capable of rape. Charles Soult‘s brother, however, came from the same dysfunctional family background, and he had a history of violence and poor anger management. Douglas postulated that Soult and Shade got into an argument that quickly escalated to physical assault, and that Soult likely contacted his brother to help him with the unconscious Shade. Mike Soult then raped her, Charles Soult then murdered her, and the brothers, along with their sister, Cathy Wiesinger, disposed of the body. Charles Soult likely returned to the disposal site in the days after the murder to mutilate the victim. Charles Soult was later convicted of first-degree murder. Mike Sault was offered a plea agreement and sent to a mental institution. 

Douglas believes that everyone is vulnerable and that something always exists that can make a person upset. That point of vulnerability is the key to a successful interrogation. Douglas discusses two cases where interviewers were used their suspicions to create “a vulnerable point of truth” (183), or a stressor, that would force a physical or emotional reaction.

The first case involved the murder of a 12-year-old girl named Mary Frances Stoner. She had been abducted from her driveway in December 1979. She was found raped and murdered 10 miles from home. She was killed by blunt force trauma to the head, with fracturing consistent with a large rock. Stoner was considered a low risk victim; she was an outgoing and friendly child, and she had no history of substance abuse issues or promiscuity. Douglas postulated that her murder was a crime of opportunity committed by a white married male in his twenties with a blue-collar job; he had above average intelligence and a criminal history of arson and/or rape. He was former military and likely from the area. After hearing this description, local law enforcement informed Douglas that the subject they had just released fit that description almost perfectly. Darrell Gene Devier was a 24-year-old tree trimmer who was working on Stoner’s street. Based on the case file, Douglas predicted that Devier would not break if he was accused. Douglas advised the local police to stage the interrogation—it should take place at night, without meal breaks, and it should be conducted by both the local police and the FBI, so that Devier understands that the full weight of the federal government is against him. Stacks of file folders with his name on them and the bloodstained rock found at the crime scene should be placed on the table in the interrogation room. These details create what Douglas calls the “high ass-pucker factor” (190) especially when the visible pressure is combined with faux empathy and well-timed questioning. The interrogation was conducted just as Douglas suggested, and just as he predicted, Devier confessed to her murder. He was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1995.

The second case involved the armed robber and plane hijacker Gary Trapnell. In his interview, Trapnell informed Douglas that he would be able to evade law enforcement if he ever escaped prison. Douglas was familiar with Trapnell’s background, and he knew that Trapnell was close with his father, a decorated high-ranking officer who was buried at Arlington Cemetery. Douglas also knew that Trapnell’s father’s death was a stressor for Trapnell. He said to Trapnell that if agents staked out his father’s grave around the holidays, his father’s birthday, or the anniversary of his father’s death, agents would be likely to find him. Trapnell admitted that he agreed with Douglas. Douglas concludes that it does not matter if an individual is aware of the strategy or knows that it is being employed: “If the triggering stressor is a legitimate, valid concern, it will have a good chance of working” (197). 

From 1979 to 1981, Atlanta was terrorized by a series of murders, beginning in July 1979 with the bodies of two black adolescent boys—Alfred Evans and Edward Smith. By March 1980, four more black children had been found murdered. The Atlanta Police Department had not connected the cases to each other; aside from ethnicity, none of the murders appeared to be related. The parents of the murdered children, however, believed in the possibility of linkage, and they joined together to form the Committee to Stop Children’s Murders. Five more children were abducted and/or found murdered, and law enforcement recognized the pattern and formed the Missing and Murdered Task Force; only when another abduction and another homicide took place did the police realize that the investigation should be conducted under the supposition that the murders were connected. The FBI was not initially involved, until the family of kidnapping victim Earl Terrell received several calls demanding a ransom; the calls indicated that Earl had been taken to Alabama. Since the case had crossed state lines, the FBI was able to step in. When the calls were identified as a hoax, however, the FBI stepped out. Atlanta’s mayor at the time, Maynard Jackson, asked the White House for FBI assistance after yet another boy was reported missing.

By the time Douglas and Hazelwood arrived in Atlanta, there were sixteen cases. After reviewing the case file, they agreed that these cases were not hate crimes committed by the Ku Klux Klan, which was the prevailing theory prior to the FBI’s involvement; they believed a black offender was responsible. Many of the bodies were found in predominantly black neighborhoods where a white offender would have been highly noticeable. The crimes were not staged as “highly public, highly symbolic acts” (199), like most Klan-related crimes were. The FBI also believed that not all of the cases were related; in some situations, the manner of death or abduction was just too unique. While Douglas and Hazelwood believed that more than one person was responsible for the crimes, they theorized that many of these cases were linked to one individual who would not stop killing until he was caught. This individual was a single black male in his late twenties, who was sexually inadequate and used a very convincing ploy to lure young boys away from safety.

Coincidence and the highly publicized nature of the crimes led to many red herrings and setbacks. The police tried to lure the offender into the open by offering a free ticket to a benefit concert featuring Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., and they held memorials at crime scenes. The medical examiner’s office announced that hair and fibers linked several of the murders together. As a result of this announcement, the killer started stripping and disposing his victims’ remains in nearby rivers to ensure that there would be no trace evidence. After weeks of surveillance, Wayne Williams was pulled over after an officer spotted his car stopping in the middle of the Jackson Parkway Bridge in the early hours of May 22, 1981. The police did not have enough evidence for a search warrant or arrest, so they put Williams under constant surveillance. They witnessed him destroying what appeared to be evidence before washing out his car. When they finally executed a search warrant, they found hair and fiber in his vehicle, and this evidence linked him to the twelve murders that Douglas believed were perpetrated by the same killer. Williams was apprehended on June 21, 1981. His trial for the murder of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne began on January 1982, and Douglas assisted the prosecution with trial strategy. Williams was convicted on February 27, 1982 and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. He steadfastly maintained that he was not guilty of any of the Atlanta child murders of 1979-1981 and was never tried for any of them. Douglas, however, believes that there is sufficient evidence to link him to the murders of eleven young men from that time period. Douglas also maintains that Williams is not responsible for all, or even most, of the disappearances and murders from that time period.