Mindhunter (10 page)

Pam was scheduled to be an exchange student in Coventry, En gland, for the fall semester. By late August, when she flew over, I was pretty sure she was the girl I wanted to marry. It never occurred to me at the time to ask Pam if she had similar feelings about me. I just assumed that she must.

While she was away, we wrote to each other constantly. I spent a lot of time at her family’s house at 622 Alameda Street, near the Michigan State Fairgrounds. Pam’s father had died when she was a little girl, but I took advantage of the hospitality of her mom, Ro salie, eating there several nights a week and profiling her, as well as Pam’s brothers and sisters, to try to figure out what Pam was like.

During this time, I met another woman whom Pam thereafter referred to (though she had never met her) as the "golf babe." Again, we met at a bar, and when I look back on it, I must have been spending more than my share of time in bars. She was in her early twenties, quite attractive, and recently out of college. We’d practically just met when she insists I come home with her to dinner.

It turns out she lives in Dearborn, which is Ford World Headquarters, and her father is a major auto executive. They live in this big stone house with a swimming pool, original art, fancy furniture. Her father is in his late forties, the image of corporate success. Her mother is gracious and elegant. We’re sitting at the dinner table, flanked by my new friend’s younger brother and sister. I’m profiling this family, trying to figure out their net worth. At the same time, they’re trying to assess me.

Everything is going too well. They seem impressed that I’m an FBI agent, a welcome change from what I’m used to from Pam’s circle. But, of course, these people are as establishment as they come. I’m really getting nervous, and I realize the reason is that they’ve practically got me married off.

The father is asking me about my family, my background, my military service. I tell him about my job running Air Force base athletic facilities. Then he tells me that he and an associate own a golf course near Detroit. He goes on about this fairway and that dogleg and I’m upping my estimate of his assets by the second.

"John, do you play golf?" he asks.

"No, Dad," I respond without missing a beat, "but I’d sure like to learn."

That was it. We all break up. I spent the night there, on the couch in the den. In the middle of the night I was visited by the girl, who had somehow managed to "sleepwalk" down to see me. Maybe it was the idea of being in this fancy house, maybe it was my instinctive fear since I’d joined the Bureau of being set up, but I was scared off by her aggressiveness, which matched that of the rest of her family. I left the next morning, having enjoyed their hospitality and a terrific dinner. But I knew I’d lost my shot at the good life.

Pam came home from England a couple of days before Christmas, 1971. I had decided to pop the question and had bought a diamond engagement ring. In those days, the Bureau had contacts for just about anything you wanted to buy. The company from whom I bought the ring was grateful to us for cracking a jewelry heist and gave excellent deals to agents.

With this preferred price, the biggest diamond ring I could afford was 1.25 carats. But I decided if she first saw it at the bottom of a champagne glass, not only would she think I was exceedingly clever, it would also make the diamond look as if it were three carats. I took her to an Italian restaurant on Eight Mile Road near her house. My intention was that whenever she got up to go to the ladies’ room, I’d drop the ring into her glass.

But she never went. So the next night, I took her to the same restaurant again, but with the same results. Having sat on numerous stakeouts by that time, where sitting in a car for hours on end and having to hold it in was a genuine occupational drawback, I really had to admire her. But maybe this was supposed to be some sort of divine message that I wasn’t ready to jump into marriage.

The next night was Christmas Eve and we were at her mother’s house, with the entire family crowded around. This was my now-or-never moment. We’d been drinking Asti Spumante, which she loved. Finally, she left the room for a minute to go into the kitchen. When she came back, she was sitting in my lap, we drank a toast, and if I hadn’t stopped her, she would have swallowed the ring. So much for looking like three carats; she never even saw it until I pointed it out. I wondered if there was a message here.

The important thing, though, was that I had set up my "interrogation scene" to obtain the intended result. Having staged the scene so carefully, surrounding us with her siblings and her mother, who adored me, I hadn’t left Pam many options. She said yes. We would be married the following June.

For their second-year assignments, most of the single agents were being sent to New York or Chicago, under the logic that it would be less of a hardship for them than the married guys. I didn’t have any particular preference and ended up assigned to Milwaukee, which sounded like an okay city even though I’d never been there and had no real idea where it was. I would move there in January and get settled in, then Pam would join me after the wedding.

I found a place in the Juneau Village Apartments, on Juneau Avenue, not too far from the Milwaukee Field Office in the federal building on North Jackson Street. This turned out to be a tactical mistake, because whatever happened, the response was always, "Go get Douglas. He’s only three blocks away."

Even before I arrived in Milwaukee, the women in the office knew who I was: specifically, one of only two single agents. In my first few weeks they fought to take my dictation, even though I had little to do. Everyone wanted to be around me. But after a few weeks, when word gradually got around that I was engaged, I quickly became like the sixth day of a five-day deodorant.

The atmosphere in the Milwaukee Field Office turned out to be a replay of Detroit, only more so. My first SAC there was a man named Ed Hays, whom everyone called Fast Eddie. He was always red as a beet (and dropped dead from high blood pressure shortly after his retirement), and was always walking around snapping his fingers and shouting, "Get out of the office! Get out of the office!"

I said, "Where am I supposed to go? I just got here. I don’t have a car. I don’t have any cases."

He shot back, "I don’t care where you go. Get out of the office."

So I left. In those days, it wasn’t uncommon to go into a library or walk down Wisconsin Avenue near the office and find several agents window-shopping because they had nowhere else to be. It was during this time that I bought my next car, a Ford Torino, through a car dealer with whom the Bureau had contacts.

Our next SAC, Herb Hoxie, was brought in from the Little Rock, Arkansas, Field Office. Recruiting was always a big issue for SACs, and as soon as Hoxie arrived, he was already under the gun. Each field office had a monthly quota for both agents and nonclerical personnel.

Hoxie called me into his office and told me I was to be in charge of recruiting. This assignment generally went to a single guy because it involved a lot of traveling around the state.

"Why me?" I asked.

"Because we had to take the last guy off and he’s lucky not to be fired." He’d been going into the local high schools and interviewing the girls for clerical positions. Hoover was still alive and there were no female special agents in those days. He would ask them questions, as if from a prepared list. One of them was, "Are you a virgin?" If she answered no, he’d ask her out on a date. Parents started complaining and the SAC had to slam-dunk him.

I started recruiting all over the state. Soon, I was bringing in almost four times the quota. I was the most productive recruiter in the country. The problem was, I was too good. They wouldn’t take me off. When I told Herb I really didn’t want to do it anymore, that I hadn’t joined the FBI to do personnel, he threatened to put me on the civil rights detail, which meant investigating police departments and officers accused of brutalizing suspects and prisoners or of discrimination against minorities. This was not exactly the most popular job in the Bureau, either. I thought this was a hell of a way to reward me for my good work.

So I cut myself a deal. Cockily, I agreed to continue producing the big recruiting numbers if Hoxie would assign me as his primary relief, or substitute, and if I got the use of a Bureau car and a recommendation for Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) money for graduate school. I knew that if I didn’t want to spend my entire career out in the field, I needed a master’s degree.

I was already somewhat suspect in the office. Anyone who wanted this much education must be a flaming liberal. At the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where I began pursuing a master’s in educational psychology nights and weekends, I was perceived as just the opposite. Most of the professors were suspicious of having an FBI agent in their classes, and I never had much patience with all the touchy-feely stuff that was so much a part of psychology ("John, I want you to introduce yourself to your neighbor here and tell him what John Douglas is really like").

One class, we were all sitting around in a circle. Circles were big in those days. It gradually dawns on me that no one is talking to me. I try to become part of the conversation, but no one will say anything. Finally, I just said, "What is the problem here, folks?" It turns out I have a metal-handled comb sticking out of my jacket pocket and they all think it’s an antenna—that I’m recording the class and transmitting it back to "headquarters." The paranoid self-importance of these people never ceased to amaze me.

At the beginning of May 1972, J. Edgar Hoover died quietly in his sleep, at home in Washington. Early in the morning, Teletype messages flew from headquarters to every field office. In Milwaukee, we were all called in by the SAC to hear the news. Even though Hoover was in his late seventies and had been around forever, no one really thought he’d ever die. With the king now dead, we all wondered where a new king was going to come from to take his place. L. Patrick Gray, a deputy attorney general and Nixon loyalist, was appointed acting director. He was popular at first for such innovations as finally allowing female agents. It wasn’t until his administration loyalties began to conflict with the needs of the Bureau that he began to slip.

I was recruiting in Green Bay a few weeks after Hoover’s death when I get a call from Pam. She tells me the priest wants to meet with us a few days before the wedding. I’m convinced he thinks he can convert me to Catholicism and score some points with the Church brass. But Pam is a good Catholic who’s been brought up to respect and obey what the priests tell her. And I know she’ll badger the hell out of me if I don’t surrender peacefully.

We come to St. Rita’s Church together, only she goes in to see the priest by herself first. It reminds me of the police station back when I was in college in Montana, when they separated all of us to check our stories. I’m sure they’re planning the conversion strategy. When they finally call me in, the first thing I say is, "What do you two have in store for the Protestant kid?"

The priest is young and friendly, probably in his early thirties. He asks me these general questions, such as "What is love?" I’m trying to profile him, trying to figure out if there’s a particular right answer. These interviews are like the SATs; you’re never sure if you’ve prepared properly.

We get into birth control, how the kids are going to be raised, that sort of thing. I start asking him how he feels about being a priest—being celibate, not having his own family. The priest seems like a nice guy, but Pam has told me St. Rita’s is a strict, traditional church and he’s uncomfortable around me, maybe because I’m not Catholic; I’m not sure. I think he’s trying to break the ice when he asks me, "Where did you two meet?"

Whenever there has been stress in my life, I’ve always started joking around, trying to relieve the tension. Here’s my opportunity, I think, and I can’t resist it. I slip my chair closer to him. "Well, Father," I begin, "you know I’m an FBI agent. I don’t know if Pam told you her background."

All the while I’m talking I’m getting closer to him, locking in the eye contact I’d already learned to use in interrogations. I just don’t want him to look at Pam because I don’t know how she’s reacting. "We met at a place called Jim’s Garage, which is a topless go-go bar. Pam worked there as a dancer and was quite good. What really got my attention, though, was she was dancing with these tassels on each of her breasts, and she got them spinning in opposite directions. Take my word for it, it was really something to see."

Pam is deathly quiet, not knowing whether to say anything or not. The priest is listening in rapt attention.

"Anyway, Father, she got these tassels spinning in opposite directions with greater and greater velocity, when all of a sudden, one of them flew off into the audience. Everyone grabbed for it. I leaped up and caught it and brought it back to her, and here we are today."

His mouth is gaping open. I’ve got this guy totally believing me when I just break up and start laughing, just as I did for my phony junior high school book report. "You mean this isn’t true?" he asks. By this point Pam has broken up, too. We both just shake our heads. I don’t know whether the priest is relieved or disappointed.

Bob McGonigel was my best man. The morning of the wedding was rainy and dreary and I was itching to get on with it. I had Bob call Pam at her mother’s house and ask if she’d seen or heard from me. She, of course, said no, and Bob offered as how I hadn’t come home the night before and he was afraid I was getting cold feet and backing out. Looking back on it, I can’t believe how perverse my sense of humor was. Eventually, Bob started laughing and gave us away, but I was a little disappointed not to have gotten more of a reaction out of her. Afterward, she told me she was so shell-shocked about all the arrangements and so concerned about having her curly hair frizz up in the humidity that the mere disappearance of the groom was a minor concern.

When we exchanged our vows in church that afternoon and the priest pronounced us husband and wife, I was surprised that he had some kind words to say about me.