Mindhunter (47 page)

I asked the detective to tell me about the victim. She was a beautiful girl who’d always done well in school. But last year she’d had a baby and had had some problems with her family, particularly her father, about support. Her grades had been going to hell lately, especially after the stalking began.

I said not to say anything to the father just yet in case I was wrong and the young woman ended up dead, but this sounded to me like a hoax. Who would stalk her? She had a steady boyfriend and no recent breakups. Generally, when a noncelebrity is stalked, it is by someone who knows that person in one way or another. Stalkers aren’t that good or careful at what they do. If she saw the stalker, her father and boyfriend should not have missed him each time. No one else ever got the phone calls. And when police put a trap and trace on the line, the calls suddenly stopped. It also happened that the kidnapping took place right before final exams—not at all a coincidental finding.

The proactive strategy, I suggested, would be to have the father be interviewed by the media, emphasize the positiveness of their relationship, say how much he loves her and wants her back, appealing to the kidnapper to let her go. If I was right, she should turn up a day or two later, banged up and dirty with a story about how she was abducted, abused, and thrown out of a car on the side of a road.

This is what happened. She was pretty banged up and filthy with a story of abduction. I said that the interrogation—in this case in the form of a debriefing—should focus on what we really believed had happened. It should not be accusatory, but acknowledge that she was having a lot of trouble with her parents; going through a lot of stress, trauma, and pain; was panicked by exams; and needed a face-saving way out. She should be told that she didn’t need punishment, what she needed was counseling and understanding, and that she would get it. Once that was made clear, she confessed to the hoax.

This is one of those cases you sweat, though. If you’re wrong, the consequences are horrible, because when stalking is for real, it can be a terrifying and, too often, deadly crime.

Most often, whether we’re talking about the stalking of a celebrity or an ordinary person, the stalking begins with love or admiration. John Hinckley "loved" Jodie Foster and wanted her to return his love. However, she was a beautiful movie star going to Yale and he was an inadequate nobody. He believed he had to do something to equalize the situation and impress her. And what could be more "impressive" than the historic act of assassinating the president of the United States? In his more lucid moments, he must have realized that his dream of the two of them living happily ever after together wasn’t going to come about. But through his act, he did achieve one of his goals. He became famous, and in a perverse way, he would be forever connected to Foster in the public mind.

As with most of these cases, there was an immediate stressor with Hinckley. Around the time he shot President Reagan his father had given him an ultimatum about getting a job and supporting himself on his own.

Secret Service agent Ken Baker conducted a prison interview with Mark David Chapman, the assassin of John Lennon. Chapman felt a strong connection to the former Beatle and, on a superficial level, tried to emulate him. He collected all of Lennon’s songs and even went through a string of Asian girlfriends, to imitate Lennon’s marriage to Yoko Ono. But as happens with many of these types, eventually he reached a point where his inadequacy was overwhelming. He could no longer deal with the disparity between himself and his hero and so had to kill him. Chillingly, one of the things that moved Hinckley to commit his crime and become famous (
notorious
is actually a much better word) was the example of Chapman.

I interviewed Arthur Bremmer, who stalked and then attempted to assassinate Alabama governor George Wallace in Maryland while he was running for president, leaving Wallace paralyzed and in chronic pain for life. Bremmer didn’t hate Wallace. Prior to the shooting, he’d stalked President Nixon for several weeks but couldn’t get close enough to him. He just got desperate to do something to show the world his worth, and Wallace was approachable, essentially another victim in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The cases of stalking that have turned to assassination are alarming in their number. In the case of political figures, there is the construct of a "cause" for the killing, although this is virtually always a cover for a deeply inadequate nobody who wants to be a somebody. In the case of movie stars and celebrities like John Lennon, even that excuse is meaningless. Among the most tragic of the cases is the murder of twenty-one-year-old Rebecca Schaeffer in front of her Los Angeles apartment in 1989. The beautiful and talented young actress, who had become widely known as Pam Dawber’s younger sister on the television series
My Sister Sam,
was shot once, as she answered the front door, by Robert John Bardo, an unemployed nineteen-year-old from Tucson whose most recent job had been as janitor in a Jack in the Box. Like Chapman, Bardo had begun as an adoring fan. His adoration had grown into obsession, and if he couldn’t then have a "normal" relationship with her, he would have to "possess" her in another way.

As we all know by now, stalking targets are not limited to the famous. There are, of course, frequent cases of people being stalked by former spouses or lovers. The deadly stage is reached when the stalker finally thinks, "If I can’t have her (or him), no one else can either." But Jim Wright, our unit’s most experienced specialist on stalking and among the leading experts on the subject in law enforcement, points out that anyone who deals with the public, particularly women, may be vulnerable to stalkers. In other words, the object of a stalker’s desire need not be on television or the movie screen. She might be a waitress at the restaurant down the block or a teller at the local bank. Or she could even work in the same store or business.

That was what happened to Kris Welles, a young woman who worked for Conlans Furniture Company in Missoula, Montana. Kris was efficient and well respected and worked her way up in the company first to sales manager and then, in 1985, to overall manager.

At the same time Kris worked in the office, a man named Wayne Nance worked in the warehouse . He tended to keep to himself, but he seemed to like Kris, and she was always cordial and friendly to him. Still, Wayne’s personality blew hot and cold, and the temper she perceived just beneath the surface scared her. No one had any complaints with Wayne’s work habits, though. Day in and day out, he consistently worked the hardest of anyone in the warehouse.

What neither Kris nor her husband, Doug, a local gun dealer, knew was that Wayne Nance was obsessed with her. He watched her all the time and kept a cardboard box filled with souvenirs of her—snapshots, notes she had written at the office, anything that belonged to her.

The other thing neither the Welleses nor the Missoula police knew was that Wayne Nance was a killer. In 1974, he had sexually molested and stabbed a five-year-old girl. It was later discovered he had also bound, gagged, and shot several adult women, including the mother of his best friend. Alarmingly, all of this had taken place in counties neighboring where he now lived. Yet even in sparsely populated Montana, one police jurisdiction had no idea of the criminal activity recorded in another jurisdiction.

Kris Welles didn’t know any of this until the night Nance broke into her and Doug’s home outside of town. They had a female golden retriever, but the dog put up no resistance to him. Armed with a handgun, he shot Doug, tied him up in the basement, then forced Kris upstairs into the bedroom where he tied her to the bed so he could rape her. She obviously knew him well and he made no attempt to hide his identity.

Meanwhile, in the basement, Doug had managed to wriggle free from his bonds. Weak and on the verge of unconsciousness from pain and loss of blood, he staggered over to a table where a rifle loader from his store was set up. He managed to feed one round into the rifle, then mustering all his remaining strength, he pulled himself slowly and agonizingly up the basement stairs. As quietly as he could, he made his way up the stairs to the second floor, and in the hallway, his eyes blurring, he took aim for his one shot at Nance.

He had to get him before Nance saw him and went for his own gun. Nance was unhurt and had more shots available. Doug would be no match for him.

He squeezed the trigger. He hit Nance, knocking him backward. But then Nance got up again and started coming for him. The shot hadn’t been deadly enough. Nance kept coming for him toward the staircase. There was nowhere to go and Doug couldn’t leave Kris alone there, so he did the only thing he could. He charged forward at Nance, using his empty rifle as a club. He kept hammering at the powerful Nance until Kris could get herself free and help him.

To this day, the Welles case remains one of the few on record in which intended victims of a serial killer were actually able to fight back and kill their attacker in self-defense. Their story is a miraculous one, and we have had them out several times to speak to classes at Quantico. This unassuming couple have been able to give us rare insight from the perspective of victims who became heroes. Having been to hell and back that night, they are amazingly warm, sensitive, and "together" people.

At the end of one of their presentations at Quantico, a police officer in the class asked them, "If Wayne Nance had lived and there was no death penalty—that is, if he were still sharing the earth with you—would you both be as mentally sound as you are now?"

They turned and looked at each other and then silently agreed on their response. "Almost definitely not," said Doug Welles.

Battle of the Shrinks

What kind of person could have done such a thing?

During our serial-killer study, Bob Ressler and I were in Joliet, Illinois, where we’d just interviewed Richard Speck. I was back in my hotel room that evening and was watching CBS news when I saw Dan Rather interviewing another killer, named Thomas Vanda, who also happened to be incarcerated at Joliet Penitentiary. Vanda was in for killing a woman through multiple stab wounds. He’d been in and out of mental institutions for much of his life, and every time he’d been "cured" and let out, he would commit another crime. Before the murder for which he was now doing time, he’d killed once before.

I called Ressler and said we had to talk to him while we were here. From the televised interview, I could tell he was the perfect inadequate type. He could as easily have been an arsonist as a killer. Or, if he had the tools and skills, he could have been a bomber.

We went back to the prison the next day and Vanda agreed to see us. He was curious as to what we were doing there, and he didn’t get many visitors. Before the interview, we went over his file.

Vanda was white, about five foot nine, and in his mid-twenties. He had a soft, inappropriate affect and smiled a lot. Even while smiling, he still had "the look"—eyes darting back and forth all the time, nervous twitches, hand-rubbing. You wouldn’t comfortably turn your back on this guy. The first thing he wanted to know was how I thought he looked on TV. When I told him he looked good, he laughed and loosened up. Among the things he told us was that he had joined a Bible study group in prison and thought it had helped him a lot. It may very well have. But I’ve seen a lot of inmates nearing parole-board appearances join religious groups to show they’re on the right path to be released.

You could argue about whether this guy belonged in a maximum security prison or a secure mental hospital, but after the interview, I went to see the staff psychiatrist who treated him. I asked him how Vanda was doing.

The psychiatrist, who was around fifty, gave me a positive response, saying Vanda was "responding very nicely to medication and therapy." The psychiatrist mentioned the Bible study group as one example and said Vanda could be ready for parole if this progress continued.

I asked him if he knew the specifics of what Vanda had done. "No, I don’t want to know," he replied. "I don’t have the time, with all the inmates I have to deal with here." And, he added, he didn’t want to unfairly influence his relationship with the patient.

"Well, Doctor, let me tell you what Thomas Vanda did," I insist. Before he can protest, I went on to relate how this asocial, loner-type personality joins a church group, and how, after a meeting when everyone else is gone, he propositions the young woman who hosted the meeting. She turns him down and Vanda doesn’t take the rejection real well. Guys like that generally don’t. He knocks her down, goes to her kitchen, comes back with a knife, and stabs her numerous times. Then, as she’s on the floor dying, he inserts his penis into an open wound in her abdomen and ejaculates.

I’ve got to say, I find this amazing. She’s like a rag doll at this point. Her body is warm, she’s bleeding, he’s got to be getting blood on himself. He can’t even depersonalize her. And yet he’s able to get an erection and get it off. So you’ll understand why I insist this is a crime of anger, not sex. What’s going through his mind is not sex—it’s anger and rage.

This, by the way, is why it doesn’t do any good to castrate repeat rapists—as satisfying and fulfilling as the idea may be to some of us. The problem is, it doesn’t stop them, either physically or emotionally. Rape is definitely a crime of anger. If you cut someone’s balls off, you’re going to have one angry man.

I finished my story about Vanda. "You’re disgusting, Douglas!" the psychiatrist declared. "Get out of my office!"

"I’m disgusting?" I countered. "You’re gonna be in a position to make a recommendation that Thomas Vanda is responding to therapy and could be freed, and you don’t know who in the hell you’re talking to when you’re dealing with these inmates. How are you supposed to understand them if you haven’t taken the time to look at the crime-scene photos or reports, to go over the autopsy protocols? Have you looked at the way the crime was committed? Do you know if it was planned? Do you understand the behavior leading up to it? Do you know how he left the crime scene? Do you know if he tried to get away with it? Did he try to establish an alibi?
How in the hell do you know if he’s dangerous or not?
"