Mindhunter (26 page)

Everybody Has a Rock

One evening years before, when I was back home after my ill-fated college experience in Montana, I was having dinner with my parents at a pizza and beer place in Uniondale, Long Island, called Coldstream. Just as I took a bite out of my slice of everything-with-extra-cheese, my mother—out of the blue—said, "John, have you ever had sexual relations with a woman?"

I swallow hard, trying to gulp down what I had just bitten off. This isn’t the kind of question nineteen- or twenty-year-old kids are used to being asked by their mothers in the mid-1960s. I turn to my father for some sign of support, but he’s stone-faced. He’d been caught as much off-guard as I had.

"Well, have you?" she persists. She wasn’t a Holmes for nothing.

"Uh . . . yeah, Mom. I have."

I see this look of revulsion come over my mother’s face. "Well, who was she?" she demands.

"Ah . . . Well . . ." I’ve sort of lost the healthy appetite I’d come into the place with. "Actually, there’ve been several."

I don’t tell her one had been in her mid-teens in a home for unwed mothers in Boseman. But you’d have thought I just told her where I’d hidden the bodies after I’d dismembered them, and it had been right in their basement. "Who is going to have you as a husband now?" she laments.

Again I turn to my unusually silent father.
Come on, Dad, help me out!

"Oh, I don’t know, Dolores. It’s not a big deal these days."

"It’s always been a ’big deal,’ Jack," she counters, then turns back to me. "What would happen, John, if your future bride someday asked you whether you had had relations with another woman before you met her?"

I pause in mid-bite. "Well, Mom, I would tell her the truth."

"No, don’t say that," my father pipes up.

"What do you mean, Jack?" my mother asks.
Okay, Dad, let’s see you get out of this one.

The interrogation session ended in an uneasy stalemate. I’m not sure if I got anything out of the encounter. I either told Pam of my past or she suspected it. At any rate, she did agree to marry me, despite my mother’s fears. But when I thought back to that grilling from my perspective as a federal law enforcement official, profiler, and expert on criminal behavior and psychology, an important realization did dawn on me. Even if I’d had all the training and analytical experience that I have now, I still wouldn’t have handled my mother’s inquisition any better!

Because she’d gotten to me on a vulnerable point of truth.

I’ll give you another example. Ever since I became the FBI’s chief profiler, I personally selected and trained all of the other profilers. For that reason, I’ve enjoyed a particularly close and cooperative relationship with all the men and women who’ve been on my team. Most of them have become stars in their own right. But if I could ever be said to have had a true disciple among them, it would be Greg Cooper. Greg left a prestigious job as chief of police in a town in Utah while still in his early thirties and joined the FBI after hearing Ken Lanning and Bill Hagmaier speak at a law enforcement seminar. He distinguished himself in the Seattle Field Office, but always had the dream of coming to Quantico to work in Behavioral Science. He had requested and studied all of my profiling and analysis of the Green River Killer, and when I flew out to Seattle to appear on a viewer-participation television special called
Manhunt Live,
Greg volunteered to be my chauffeur and guide. When I became chief of the reorganized Investigative Support Unit, Greg was working in an FBI resident agency in Orange County, California, and living in Laguna Niguel. I brought him back to Quantico, where he became an outstanding performer.

When he first came into the unit, Greg was assigned to share an underground, windowless office with Jana Monroe, a former police officer and homicide detective in California before she became a special agent who, among her many other fine qualities, happens to be a smashingly attractive blond. In other words, she puts it all together. Now, not too many men would find this a hardship assignment, but Greg happens to be a devout Mormon, a very straight and devoted family man with five lovely children and a stunning wife named Rhonda, to whom it was a major sacrifice to move from their sunny California paradise to sleepy, hot, and humid Virginia. Every time she asked about his office mate, Greg would hem and haw and try to change the subject.

Finally, about six months after he’d been on the job for us, Greg brings Rhonda to the unit Christmas party. I’m not there because I’m working a case out of town, but the naturally vivacious Jana is. And typical for her in a party situation, she’s wearing a subtle, understated, short, and form-fitting bright red dress with a plunging neckline.

When I get back, Jim Wright, the unit’s second-in-command who has taken over for me as profiling program manager, tells me there were real fireworks between Rhonda and Greg after the party. She’s none too happy about his spending his days in such close confines with a beautiful, tough, charming agent who knows her way around a firing range and dance floor with equal facility.

So I have my secretary get Greg out of a meeting and tell him I want to see him right away. He gets to my office looking somewhat concerned. He’s only been here six months, this unit has been his dream, and he really wants to make good.

I look up from my desk and say, "Close the door, Greg. Sit down." He does, even more disturbed by my tone of voice. "I just got off the phone with Rhonda," I continue. "I understand you’ve had some problems."

"You just got off the phone with Rhonda?" He’s not even looking at me. He’s staring straight at the call-director phone on my desk.

"Look, Greg," I said in my most soothing counselor tones, "I’d like to cover for you, but when you and Jana go on the road together, I can’t make any special provisions. This is something you’re going to have to deal with on your own. Rhonda obviously knows what’s going on between you and Jana and—"

"Nothing’s going on between me and Jana!" he splutters.

"I know there are a lot of stresses in this job. But you’ve got a beautiful, terrific wife, nice kids. Don’t throw it all away."

"It’s not what you think, John. It’s not what she thinks. You have to believe me." And all the time he’s still staring at that telephone, maybe thinking if he concentrates hard enough, he’s going to be able to burn it right through the desk. He’s broken out in a cold sweat. I can see the carotid artery pounding in his neck. He’s heading south fast.

So at that point I let up. "Look at you, you miserable wretch!" I grin triumphantly. "You call yourself an interrogator?" At the time he was preparing a chapter on interrogation for the
Crime Classification Manual.
"Have you done anything to be guilty about?"

"No, John. I swear!"

"And look! You’re putty in my hands! You’re completely innocent. You’re a former chief of police. You’re an experienced interrogator. And yet I was able to play you like a yo-yo. So what do you have to say for yourself?"

At that particular time, as the sweat of relief rolled off his balding head, he didn’t have anything to say for himself, but he got the point. I knew I could jerk him around like that because it had been done to me with equal success and could be again if the situation arose.

We’re all vulnerable.
It doesn’t matter how much you know, how experienced you are, how many suspect interrogations you’ve handled successfully. It doesn’t matter if you understand the technique. Each of us can be gotten to—if you can just figure out where and how we’re vulnerable.

I’d learned this during one of my earliest cases as a profiler, and I put it to use many times thereafter—not only in demonstrations to my own team. It was the first time I actually "staged" an interrogation.

In December 1979, Special Agent Robert Leary from the Rome, Georgia, Resident Agency called with the details of a particularly horrible case and asked me to give it my top priority. The week before, Mary Frances Stoner, a pretty and outgoing twelve-year-old girl in Adairsville, about a half-hour from Rome, had disappeared after being dropped off by the school bus at the driveway to her house, approximately a hundred yards back from the road. Her body was later found about ten miles away in a wooded lovers’ lane area by a young couple who noticed the bright yellow coat over her head. They contacted police and did not disturb the scene, a critical consideration. The cause of death was determined to be blunt-force trauma to the head. Postmortem examination detected skull fracturing consistent with a large rock. (There’s a bloodstained one right near her head in the crime-scene photos.) Marks on the neck also indicated manual strangulation from the rear.

Before I looked at the case materials, I wanted to know as much as possible about the victim. No one had anything other than wonderful things to say about Mary Frances. She was described as friendly to everyone, gregarious, and charming. She was sweet and innocent, a drum majorette in the school band who often wore her uniform to school. She was a cute twelve-year-old who looked twelve, rather than trying to look eighteen. She wasn’t promiscuous, she’d never been involved with drugs or alcohol. The autopsy clearly indicated she’d been a virgin when raped. All in all, she was what we would characterize as a low-risk victim taken from a low-risk setting.

After being briefed, listening to Leary, and studying the files and crime-scene photos, I jotted down the following half-page note:

Profile

Sex—m

Race—w

Age—mid-twenties-late twenties

Marital—married: problems or divorced

Military—dishonorable, medical

Occupation—blue collar: electrician, plumber

IQ—average-above average

Education—H.S. at most; dropout

Criminal Record—arson, rape

Personality—confident, cocky, passed polygraph

Color Vehicle—black or blue

Interrogate—direct, projection

This was a rape of opportunity, and the murder had not been planned or intended. The disheveled appearance of the clothing on the body indicated that Mary Frances had been forced to undress, then was allowed to redress hurriedly after the rape. I could see from the photos that one shoe was untied, and the report noted bleeding in her panties. No debris was on her back, behind, or feet, which suggested she was raped in a car, not on the wooded ground where her body was found.

Looking intently at the rather routine crime-scene photos, I began to understand what had happened. I could imagine the whole thing.

Because of her youth, as well as her outgoing and trusting nature, Mary Frances would have been easily approachable in so nonthreatening an environment as the school bus stop. The UNSUB probably coaxed her up to his car, then grabbed her or forced her in with a knife or gun. The remoteness of the area in which her body was found indicated that he knew the region well and knew he wouldn’t be disturbed there.

From the abduction scene I could tell this wasn’t a planned crime, but rather one that took form as he drove past. Just as in the Odom and Lawson case, had anyone else happened upon the scene at the right time, the crime wouldn’t have gone forward. Because of the young girl’s cuteness and sunny disposition, in his own mind the fantasy-fueled offender had made over her innocent friendliness into promiscuity and the desire to play sexually with him.

Of course, in actuality, nothing could have been further from the truth. Once he assaulted her, she would have been terrified, in severe pain, crying out for help, and begging for her life. The fantasy he’d been nurturing for years was one thing, but the reality wasn’t pretty. He’d lost control of the situation with this little girl and realized he was in one hell of a mess.

At this point, he realizes the only way out for him is to kill her. But since she’s in fear for her life, controlling her is much more difficult than he’d imagined. So to make it easier on himself, to make her more cooperative and compliant, he tells her to get dressed quickly and he’ll let her go—either he’ll let her run away or maybe he’ll tie her to a tree and leave the scene himself.

But as soon as she turns her back on him, he comes up behind her and strangles her. He’s probably able to render her unconscious, but strangulation requires a lot of upper-body strength. He wasn’t able to control her before, and he can’t finish the job. He drags her under a tree, picks up the nearest large rock he can find, and drops it down on her head three or four times, killing her.

I didn’t feel the offender knew Mary Frances well, but they had seen each other around town enough for her to have recognized him and for him to have formed fantasies about her. He’d probably seen her going to school in her little majorette uniform.

I knew from the placement of the coat over her head that our UNSUB didn’t feel good about the crime. I also knew that time was against the police. In this type of crime and with this type of intelligent, organized offender, the longer he had to think about it, rationalize it, and justify it as the victim’s fault, the more difficult it would be to get a confession. Even if he were polygraphed, the results would be inconclusive at best. And as soon as he felt the heat was off and he wouldn’t arouse suspicion by leaving, he’d be off to another part of the country where he’d be difficult to trace and where some other little girl would be in danger.

To me, the UNSUB was clearly from the area and the police had almost assuredly interviewed him already. He’d be cooperative but cocky, and if the police accused him, he wouldn’t break. I told them a crime with this degree of sophistication would not be a first, although there was a good chance this was his first murder. His blue or black car would be several years old because he could not afford a newer one, but it would be functional and well maintained. Everything in it would be in place. From my experience, orderly, compulsive people like that generally favored darker cars.

After hearing all this, one of the officers on the phone said, "You just described a guy we released as a suspect in the case." He was still a suspect in another crime and he fit the profile to a T. His name was Darrell Gene Devier, a white male, twenty-four years of age, who’d been married and divorced twice and who was currently living with his first ex-wife. He was a tree-limb trimmer in Rome, Georgia, where he was a strong suspect in the rape of a thirteen-year-old girl, but had never been charged. He had joined the Army after his first divorce but had gone AWOL and was discharged after seven months. He drove a three-year-old black Ford Pinto that was well maintained. He admitted to having been arrested as a juvenile for possession of a Molotov cocktail. He dropped out of school after eighth grade, but IQ tests listed a range of 100 to 110.