July 24, 2024 • 39 mins
We take a deep dive into the many factors believed to shape the mind of a murderer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
While there are many similarities between psychopaths and sociopaths, there
are many differences too.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You're somebody who has had such close contact with so
many of these prolific killers that it's frankly probably impossible
to boil it down to one key ingredient.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
His first killings were actually a mass murder, and after
that with his second killing, is where he really became
a serial killer.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
This is the Idaho Massacre, a production of Kat's Studios
and iHeartRadio, Season two, Episode seven, Mind of a Murderer.
I'm Courtney Armstrong, a producer at Kat's Studios, with Stephanie
Leidecker and Gabe Castillo. In the aftermath of the senseless
(00:54):
tragedy of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kayla
Solvs's murders on November thirteenth, twenty twenty two. There are
countless unanswerable questions. Some will be answered a trial, and
many may linger forever. We can't know what was in
the murderer's mind, or even at this point who the
(01:15):
murderer is. The accused is presumed innocent unless proven guilty
in a court of law, but in an effort to
try and understand the unthinkable and offer context and perspective
to the inner workings of violent criminals. Stephanie speaks with
doctor Scott Bond, a criminologist and author of books including
Why We Love Serial Killers The Curious Appeal of the
(01:37):
World's Most Savage Murderers. Here's Stephanie, how.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
And why did you even get in this business to
begin with?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Well, in terms of the origin of my interest in
all things that go bump in the night, I really
have to go back to my childhood because I was
always fascinated by human nature, by human motivations, both the
good and the bad. So I always was fascinated by
sort of what we would perceive as evil or the
(02:11):
criminal mind, but delving deeper than just the stereotypes and
just the superficial stamp of evil it's often placed on this.
So I, throughout my entire life, I've always wanted to
penetrate stereotypes and dig beneath the surface and truly understand
motivations and behavior.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Do you believe people are born evil or is that
conditioning environment? I know that's a loaded question, but do
you have a feeling on that?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well, yeah, the word evil is a very explosive, powerful
and dangerous word in my mind, because once you put
that stamp of evil on a group or an individual,
there's really no room for discussion any longer because you
can't have a meaningful conversation with evil. What can you
do with evil? You can exterminate it, right, so you
(02:59):
basically eliminate all other possibilities. And I think that in
criminology and sociology we call that reductionism. And once you
place a label on something, it's really hard to remove
that label. So in terms of evil, does evil exist, Yes,
but I believe that it is manifested in actions and
deeds and thinking. But I don't believe that there is
(03:21):
an evil gene. I don't think anyone is born inherently evil.
I think that once again, evil is manifested in the
things that people do, and in terms of our people
born that way. Well, that gets to the old nature
versus nurture debate, And based upon all of my study
and experience, like most things in life, it's more complicated
(03:42):
than one would seem on the surface, and in fact
it's a combination of nature and nurture. And in the
case of serial killers, for example, about seventy five percent
of all serial killers are either psychopaths or sociopaths, and
according to the American's psychiatric clinically speaking, that means that
(04:03):
they are not mentally ill in terms of a clinical diagnosis,
they are what are known as antisocial personality disorders, for
which there is no cure. While there are many similarities
between psychopaths and sociopaths, there are many differences too. That
one thing that they have in combination, of course, is
just a disdain toward the feelings of others and a
(04:27):
complete rejection of the laws, rules and more rays of society.
And they don't mind hurting people to get what they want.
They tend to be very opportunistic, aggressive and goal oriented,
and they don't care who they step one to get
to their goal.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Because people often use the terms sociopath and psychopath interchangeably,
as well as sometimes more widely than is warranted, Stephanie
asked Scott Bond to extrapolate on the distinctions between and
origins of the two.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Psychopaths are a function of nature and sociopaths are a
function of nurture, sociology, socialize. That's hence sociopath a psychopath
is born with a brain that simply doesn't function like
the normal human brain. The psychopathic brain is incapable of
(05:22):
an emotional connection with other human beings. I like to
use the analogy of a say, a hair dryer. If
you pull the cord out of the wall, you've got
a pretty useless hair dryer. Well, in the case of
empathetic understanding and emotional connection, a psychopath is simply disconnected.
They can't feel it. They're incapable of forming emotional bonds
(05:44):
with other people. But the sociopath is different. They are
born with a normal functioning brain, but over time they
become conditioned into predatory behavior, and an example of that
is through trauma, through abuse, through neglect, and to torture
(06:06):
and torment. And sociopaths are actually much more common. They
outnumber psychopaths about eight to one in terms of their
existence in society. And psychopaths are more dangerous because of
the fact that they simply do not have a feeling
when they hurt someone else, and they don't know fear.
(06:28):
They're unflappable. Nothing bothers them. If you think about it,
it makes them pretty much perfect killing machines.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Because they lack empathy and They also are not petrified
of the law and don't have the same level of
shame and guilt and human emotion that would come across
as obvious. If you were considering something violent, I think
you might have told me this. Is it true that,
of course, not all psychopaths become serial killers. In fact,
there are many psychopaths that probably run very fancy tech
(07:00):
companies and our industry makers.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
However, most serial killers do have some sort of psychopathic behavior.
Is that accurate?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
You described it very well. There is an area of
overlap between psychopaths and serial killers, and in the case
of serial killers, it's a big overlap. But by no
means are all psychopaths serial killers, and not all serial
killers are psychopaths. There are overrepresentation of psychopaths in the
(07:32):
bastions of power, whether it be in business, finance, guess what, politics,
and even things like neurosurgery, any type of field which
demands incredible focus and discipline, guess what, psychopaths tend to
do very well because they're unflappable. When it comes to
(07:53):
serial killers, at least seventy five percent are either psychopaths
or sociopaths. And of that, let's say it's seventy five percent,
probably fifty percent of the total, or two thirds of
that group are psychopaths. So psychopaths do make up the
largest single group among serial killers. Why they're almost perfectly
(08:15):
born bred killing machines.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
If somebody is a psychopath, do they know it?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's a great question. And they are very good at compartmentalizing,
and so they can have multiple realities which they take
very much as proof depending upon which compartment they're in.
And I'm not describing multiple personality to disorders here. I'm
(08:41):
talking about an individual and I'm going to use a
specific example who I am very familiar with through correspondence
and long term connection, and that is Dennis Rader, who
called himself because he's a psychopath BTK, which stands for
buying torture kill.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
From almost the moment of accused murderer Brian Coberger's arrest
in December twenty twenty two, his name has been used
in the same sentences as BTK. In the course of
his criminology education, the accused studied under a renowned BTK expert,
and many have theorized about commonalities between the two. Here's Stephanie.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
I had heard also that Brian Coberger for certain had
to have been a study of BTK in his murderous ways,
and there does seem to be some alignment in that
also the intimacy factor. So in Brian Coberger's case using
the knife, if in fact that's accurate, you know, it's
close contact that is considered a very intimate kill, much
like strangulation.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And it's sexual too, the penetration of it sexual status.
And this goes all the way back to Jack the
Ripper who hated women, and so what more vile thing
than you can can you do than penetrate them over
and over, you know, with a knife. So I really
think there was a deep seated underlying insecurity there and
actually an anger toward women that may have well been
(10:03):
manifested through these murders with a knife.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Can you just give us a little brief history on
BTK for anyone who doesn't know that case as closely.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Dennis Raider grew up in Wichita, Kansas. He had a
relatively normal childhood. He was a boy scout. He loved knots,
which was a foreshadowing for things later. He did have
some compulsions throughout his youth. For example, he was obsessed
with blood. He was obsessed with dismemberment. And he at
(10:32):
the age of ten is where the seed was really planted,
because he witnessed his grandmother kill a chicken in the
backyard on her farm for dinner. And he became sexually
aroused at the age of ten, but he didn't even
know what it was. At ten, he didn't even know
what it was, but he knew he liked that sensation,
and he nurtured that over time, and he became a
(10:53):
peeping tom and he would break into women's homes, steal
their underwear. He would fantasize and great lengths and have
fetish rituals and also sexually release himself. That fed this,
and over time, as he reached early adulthood, he began
trolling women, that's what he referred to it as in Wichitak, Kansas,
(11:15):
watching them come and go. And he put together a
whole list, a whole list of potential victims, a card
cataloged almost of photographs and details on someone that he
might kill because he was obsessed. This hunger was growing
inside of him, but all the while outside he was
a normal seeming guy. He was gone to night school,
(11:38):
he got married, he was starting a family, but by
age twenty eight he couldn't stand it any longer. It
reached what I like to call it a tipping point,
and he reached the point where he had to kill
for the first time. And he had set his sights
on a family named Ottero, a Latino family in Wichita, Kansas,
and he was obsessed with the mother and the beautiful
(12:00):
eleven year old daughter, Josephine, and he went there one
morning in January of seventy four, but things went awry.
He didn't expect that four members of the family would
actually be there, the mom, dad, the little son, and Josephine.
But as he told me, he said, I didn't get
all dressed up for nothing, And being the unflappable psychopath
(12:23):
that he was, he was armed with a gun. He
went in the back door and he told them, as
long as you cooperate, no one will get hurt. I'm
here to simply rob you. They complied, and then he
became buying torture kill for the very first time, and
tortured and killed every member of the family, living out
(12:45):
the fantasies that had been developing for fifteen years. And
so his first killings were actually a mass murder. And
after that with his second killing is where he really
became a serial killer. But he ultimately killed ten people.
He ultimately killed ten people that we know. I suspect
there might be others out there and they're looking at
cold cases. Now.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Scott Bond continues his explanation of how many psychopaths are
pathological in their capacity to compartmentalize. Here's Scott with Moron
how BTK explained it to him.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
He described it as his multifaceted life is like a
photographic cube. You know, maybe you remember those photocubes where
there'd be a different picture on each side of the
cube and you look at it that way. He sees
his life that way. And so when he's looking at
the picture that is daddy Dennis with his two children,
(13:40):
that's all he sees. And so the psychopathic serial killer
is on a different side of the cube that is nonexistent.
So when he's in daddy mode, there is nothing else.
He is the religious president of his Lutheran church association,
which he truly was. He's the doting father, he is
the boy Scout leader in town. He is the toast
(14:01):
of Wichita, Kansas. People loved him. Flip that thing now
to BTK buind torture kill. Now he is the bloodthirsty,
completely psychopathic, malignant narcissist, malignant narcissist meaning narcissistic tendencies with
sadism thrown in for good measure. And it's a completely
(14:21):
different thing. And yes, he knows exactly what he when
he's in BTK mode. He knows who he is, he
knows what he wants. He just doesn't care. He told me,
he said, Scott, I know that it's wrong to kill.
I know that society has these rules. I don't care.
Nothing is going to stop me. And he told me,
(14:42):
he said, the reason that he's compelled to do this,
in fact, is because he was a strangler. And when
he had his hands around the neck of his victim
and he crushed their throats and saw the light of
life distinguish in their eyes, he said, at that moment,
I know that I am God.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
He is such a scary example of someone who's able
to live in both lives. And I've heard interviews with
his daughter, who by all account says he was like
the greatest, most loving dad, like you just reported. And
I guess that's what's so scary about it is just
the idea that somebody can be so functional in the
world and be so dysfunctional in the world and kind
(15:22):
of TikTok between both universes with very little tells. So
how did you get involved with BTK?
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I was writing this book, which is why we love
serial killers, the curious appeal of the world's most savage murderers.
And what I wanted to do is I wanted to
understand serial killers from different perspectives. I'm a criminologist, but
I'm trained in sociology, and so from a sociological perspective,
everything has its place and meaning and even purpose in society.
(15:53):
And what's the mosaic? How do these things fit together?
So I sought out the news media who have reported
on cases like BTK and Son of Sam. I developed
a very great friendship with Roy Hazelwood, one of the
premier FBI profilers from whom I learned so much, and
unfortunately he's passed away a few years ago. But I'd
(16:13):
also decided I've got to go to the serial killers
themselves and try to understand their own identities that they
create for themselves, because some of them and BTK is
sitting up there at the top of the heat is
a highly narcissistic individual that was very aware of his
own narrative and wanted to create his profile. And he
(16:38):
even named himself. I mean he called himself bind, torture,
kill BTK, because that's what he does. And after his
first couple of killings, when he didn't believe that he
had gotten enough notoriety, he started writing to news media
in which ofa Kansas saying, how many people do have
to kill before I get a little notoriety here? I
want a little press, right, So I thought, who better
(17:01):
to represent the truly narcissistic, self absorbed psychopath than BTK.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
a moment. Scott Bond explains what was occurring between BTK
and law enforcement in the three decades between committing his
heinous crimes and when authorities captured him.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
All the while, he was playing cat and mouse with
the police because he's the ultimate control freak, and he
would send letters to law enforcement, letters to the media.
He would send personal items from his victims so that
they would be sure that this was actually him, and
he would lay clues and basically demonstrate that he was
(17:56):
the puppet master. He was in control, He was much
smarter than law enforcement, and he played this game for
thirty years before it ultimately caught up to him and
he was finally apprehended. But all the while he was
living this dual life where he was the boy Scout
leader in town, he was the president of a Lupian
(18:16):
church association. It's absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And at that time when you spoke with him, and
in the times that you've had these conversations with him,
do you get a cold chill? Does it seem obvious
in retrospect that he was somebody who was capable of
this level of violence because he was really top of
the list of one of the more sick and sadistic
violent murderers.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Do you get that sense?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Because he always seemed a little like you said, a
regular man.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Let me say first of all, Roy Hazelwood once again,
who was my friend, who was one of the pioneer
FBI profilers. Roy told me, he said, without a doubt,
the most cold blooded, stone cold psychopath that he had
ver sat across from was Dennis Rader. So you have
it from you know, from Hazelwood himself. Now in my case,
because I am not law enforcement, I'm not FBI. I
(19:11):
wasn't able to sit with him. So all of our
of our communication is through correspondence. But we are talking
voluminous correspondence over a period of years. And yes, the
detachment that you're talking about is always present. His writings
are almost business like and clinical. He rarely, if ever,
(19:32):
demonstrates or indicates any sort of emotional response. One of
the few times that I got a sense of it,
well one when I ask him, what you know what
killing does for him? Then he told me that I
am God, you know. I mean, that's pretty telling there
right there. But another one I asked him, I said,
what did you find the most satisfying moment of your life?
(19:53):
He said, well, I received a badge. And this is true.
He got a badge from the City of Wichita. He
always wanted to be police officer. He never quite made it,
but he did become a compliance officer for the City
of Wichita. That gave him a badge which enabled him
to come to people's homes and say, put your dog
on a leash, trim your trees, trim your lawn. And
(20:14):
this gave him that sense of power and entitlement and
authority that he really really craved. Well, so here's the story.
He's in the midst of his killing screen. Now the
BTK killer is at large, and he goes into city
Hall to get his little badge as a compliance officer,
and while he's there, they say, oh, Dennis, let's take you.
(20:38):
Let us take you into the BTK war room where
we can show you everything that we're doing to catch
this maniac. This you know, this madman. And so he
gets a tour of the war room that's set up
for them, and he's smiling like the cat that ate
the canary, thinking to himself, I truly am a genius.
Look at this. They have no idea that I am
(20:59):
the man and they're looking for. And so he said
to me, he said, this was the greatest rush of
my life. The greatest rush of my life was that moment.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
This does sort of fishtail into the Idaho massacre and
the accused Brian Coburger. Again, to be clear, he is
claiming his innocence. In no way are we trying to
prove his guilt. But some of the things I kind
of cross over with BTK that we have heard reported
about Brian Coburger is exactly law enforcement. You know, he
had a real pension for wanting to be in law enforcement,
(21:34):
and in his later high school years had joined a
certain part of his high school that was for law
enforcement want to be so essentially he wanted to be
a cop. Ultimately he got removed from that, and that
might have been a cross section for him, we're told
where maybe he then loathed law enforcement as a result.
But at one point he wanted to wear a badge.
And I wonder if that teeters into the same territory
(21:57):
of wanting to be God right, because as law, maybe
from a young person's mind, is law the land, and
I keep it in check. And I could see how
that could have crossover in a more demented way into
wanting to control people through violence like BTK did. That's one,
and then also the fact that he was, you know,
seemingly a really ordinary guy that came from a really
(22:19):
loving family, and he had a lot of opportunity and
just the emotional regulation that you have to have to
go in this case, if again, what Brian Coberger is
being accused of is accurate, to go from killing four
people and then headed back to class to be in
the beehive the next day and talk about the case.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
He didn't miss any school.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
He was a teacher's assistant and was there the next
day and was still grading papers. And to your earlier point,
something that had come up in a recent interview that
I did was with one of the classmates that was
in his classroom before and after the killings. And it
was a large class, like three hundred students or so,
and he was one of those teachers assistants that gave
a lot of notes. It's a lot of red lines
(23:01):
through papers and assignments and many many notes in those columns,
and after the murders, her real notice was that the
grades had gotten significantly better. There was still as much detail,
lots of notes in the columns and lots of red lines.
He was equally as thorough, but that where he would
normally be a hard grader, post the murders, he was
(23:22):
a very easy grad. It was a's, a's.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
And a's.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
And I asked her what she felt about that, and
her interpretation of that was that maybe he knew that
law enforcement was looking for him and that he wanted
the class to like him a little bit more should
they get interviewed.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
My brain went to he was just a little happier.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
If what he's been accused of is true, he had
that release that you're speaking of, and much like BTK
seeing the war room with all of the kills for him,
if this was true, then maybe that was the high.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
That was the high he was hoping for.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I think that there's absolutely merit to what you're saying.
As a matter of fact, as you were talking, I
was thinking along those same lines that he had finally
achieved something that he had been building up to for
a long time. And similar to BTK, I do believe
that he had been evolving, progressing, percolating for years and years.
(24:17):
No one wakes up one day and says, this is
a great day to start killing people. You know, it
just doesn't work that way. Whether you are a mass
murderer and it's a one time event, it just doesn't
happen that way. This evolves over a long period of time,
and they reached this tipping point. Now there are definitely
similarities between BTK and Coburger.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
It's worth noting again that, like every other US citizen
accused murderer, Brian Coberger is presumed innocent as stipulated by
the fifth, sixth, and fourteenth Amendments. Here again, criminologist doctor
Scott Bond.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
As I said earlier, you know BTK killed four members
of the same family. That was his first outing as
a killer. Now people ask me all the time, do
I think the coburger killed previously? And I believe the
answer to that is no. He made rookie mistakes, not
the least of which was leaving a knife sheath lying
next to one of his victims with touch DNA on it.
(25:17):
I mean that's I mean, you talk about murder one
oh one, you don't leave that behind. And he also
very foolishly, and I'm surprised, given his study of forensics
and so forth, that he would do this, but he
turned his phone off during the time period of the
killing and then turned it back on. Just leave your
phone at home, you know, you don't need to turn
(25:37):
it off. Just leave it in your apartment and go
and kill and come back. I do believe that, having
looked at his progression, and I've looked at his history
quite a bit, this was a troubled individual. He had
weight problems, he lost a tremendous amount of weight. He
had drug problems. He had posted early online years before,
(25:58):
some of his troubled thoughts and things that he was
wrestling with, and so very much like BTK, and BTK
told me this that he was interested in forensics, he
was interested in psychology, he was interested in the mind,
partially to understand himself. And I think that this could
very well be true of Brian Coberger. These individuals are
(26:18):
self aware. They know that something is happening here, and
as much as it may be stimulating, exciting and thrilling
to them, this growing need to kill, at the same time,
they recognize that this is a little bit abnormal and
they want to try to understand it. BTK did, and
I suspected that Coburger did as well, which is what
(26:39):
led him into this, you know, this study. And in
terms of the possible connection between the two, Raider says
he's never corresponded with Coburger, although he has said he
thinks that Coburger was in fact a clone. Then again,
and everything is about Dennis Rader, so naturally he's going
to say that. But the one thing that we do
know is that he had entered his doctoral he had
(27:00):
previously gotten a master's degree at Dessal's University, and there
he was exposed to a forensics class taught by a
professor who has also written about BTK, and I am
sure in her research and in her classes she discussed BTK.
So there's no question that I think Coburger would have
been pretty versed in the background of BTK as well.
(27:25):
And in my experience, serial killers do often study one another.
They're what I like to refer to as students of
the game, and they will even be jealous of one another.
For example, when I told Dennis Rader BTK that I
was also correspondent with David Burker, who was the son
of Sam, he scoffed. He said, he's not a real man.
(27:47):
He shot people. Real killers strangle, real men strangle. So
he belittled a son of Sam. He obviously was very aware,
and he was even jealous of son of Sam, who
was had an occult sim and David Berkowitz did during
that same timeframe BTK was killing. He came up with
his own little BTK symbol. He was a copycat in
(28:08):
that regard. So these individuals, they do look at one another,
they do follow one another's headlines.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
If you will, can you just give a little brief
snippet on Son of Sam.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, falls into a category
of serial killer known as that visionary serial killer. And
by visionary, what we mean is he was obsessed with
the notion, the fantasy that he was killing for Satan,
that he was being beckoned to do this, and this
fantasy built in him over a period of time. He
became obsessed with the occult. He became obsessed with Satan,
(28:42):
and by nineteen seventy six he believed that he had
to act out on this, and he went out and
he bought himself a gun, a revolver, and he shot
his way into the history books. And he didn't buy
just any gun. He got paid what is known as
a Bulldog forty four caliber revolver, which is a big, heavy, powerful,
loud handgun. This appeal to David Berkowitz's lack of self esteem.
(29:07):
He was very insecure in his manhood, and I think
that this was almost like a phallic Freudian sexual thing.
The size of it appealed to him, made him feel strong.
He began his shooting spree, which lasted a little more
than a year, in New York City and it took
several crime scenes before they realized they had a serial
(29:28):
killer when they linked the ballistics from the Chell's from
the crime scenes, and he became known as the forty
four caliber killer initially, but it was when he started
his own terrorist terrorizing letter campaign to the news media
and law enforcement that it became the thing of epic
proportions and legend because he left the letter next to
one of his victims and it was addressed to Captain
(29:50):
Joe Borelli, who was heading up the task force, the
serial Killer task Force, and in this letter he introduced
himself to the world as the son of Sam, and
he said, I must provide Papa Sam Satan with blood
and his thirst is unquenchable, so I will be killing
again and again and again, so you can only imagine
(30:12):
all hell broke loose when this letter was published in
the news media, and over a period of a year,
Berkowitz sent letters to everybody from Jimmy Breslin, one of
the notorious journalists of New York City at the time,
at law enforcement. He started this terror campaign much like BTK,
but for different reasons, but he did the same thing,
(30:34):
and when it became a parent that he was targeting
young white women with long, dark hair. Everything exploded because
women began to cut their hair, dye their hair, wear
wigs by the summer of nineteen seventy seven, which became
known as the Summer of Sam in New York City
because he had the entire city of eight million people
(30:54):
and at death grip, you couldn't even buy a female
wig anymore in New York City. So he truly one man,
held the city in this death gript and that's why
he is the thing of legend. He ultimately shot thirteen people,
killed six and permanently disabled others, but he terrorized millions.
(31:15):
Is he still alive, Yes, he is, and I spent
an entire day with him in a maximum security prison.
I had lunch with him, and he is no longer.
Your audience may be aware, and they may not be aware.
He had a self described spiritual awakening. He became a
born again Christian in nineteen eighty six when God visited
(31:36):
his prison cell and washed away his sins, and he
was no longer the son of Sam serial killer. He
is now the son of hope, minister and evangelist who
is doing God's good work. Scoff If you will. But
he has become something of a darling of the evangelical
Christian community, and they actually operate a website in his
(31:57):
name that has drawn hundreds of thousands of people from
around the world who were drawn by his message of inspiration.
And so yeah, I spent an entire day with him
in prison, and he insisted that we say the Lord's
Prayer together. He wept tears of contrition, he wept tears
(32:18):
of joy as he manifested the new son of Hope.
So the son of Sam is now the Son of Hope,
and we ate together. This is pretty remarkable. Cafeteria is
just surrounded by vending machines. And so I showed up
that day with a huge bag of quarters because the
staff told me, if you feed him, he will talk.
So I was ready. I was ready. It's like going
(32:40):
to the zoo. You know we're gonna, you know we're gonna,
We're gonna. He's gonna perform. And I wasn't disappointed, because man,
he ate and he ate, and he ate and he
ate three huge bags of Dorito's cool ranch flavored Dorito's.
He took me on this incredible journey and I'm sitting
there and I'm thinking, and if he's acting, he's pretty
(33:01):
darn believable. He deserves an Academy Award because he's like
the Robert de Niro of serial killer actors. If you know,
if he's really this good, And then I'm thinking, well,
all right, maybe it's true. You know, maybe he has transformed.
You know, I got a PhD. But it's not in
like spiritual rebirth. So maybe maybe it's true. But then
the more cynical side of me said, he's full of shit.
(33:22):
You know, he's definitely full of shit. I've come to
believe that reality is probably somewhere in the middle, as
truth often is. So my take on David Berkowitz is
he's exactly where he needs to be. He never should
be set free. But if he through his correspondence and
he's got an old fashioned Smith Corona typewriter that he
corresponds with thousands of Christians around the world, if he's
(33:44):
doing God's good work and he's helping these people, let
him do it from behind bars.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Let him do it.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
And I think of anything I've learned, not only in
this from you, but just just working in true crime,
is that a person could be many things at once.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Let's stop here for another break. We'll be back in
a moment. Stephanie brings up a point from her conversation
with Cassie, which was covered at length in episode three.
Cassie's the former student who was in the criminology class.
The accused was a teacher's assistant in at the time
(34:23):
of the murders.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think that kind of is unsettling for her. That
just doesn't add up in terms of whether he's guilty
or not. Is the fact that she was, like, I
was not overly even paying attention in class, and even
I know not to bring your cell phone to the
scene and turn it off. It was such a tier
one rookie mistake that they learned in that class that
he was the TA of that. That actually is what
(34:47):
makes her think that maybe he didn't do it because
it was just so messy and sloppy.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
What do you make of that.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I believe that it's a you know, like I said,
a rookie error, and serial killers do refine their techniques
over time. Any any serial killer from from Bundy to
Dahmer said that their most nerve wracking kill was the
first one and if they made mistakes, it was the
first time. To the extent that they get away with it,
(35:12):
they obsess about it and they perfect it and they
get better at it, which is the scary thing. But
the more prolific they are, the more successful and the
more efficient that they are. So no, I think it's
very consistent with a you know, like I said, a
rookie error on his part. But it also didn't make sense.
Is they priangulated his cell phone, and he had visited
(35:34):
that house that area a number of times, and they
got a ping later that morning once his cell phone
turned back on at nine o'clock in the morning, they
got a ping from his cell phone right outside the house.
Well that's pretty telling, right there. Turn the cell phone off,
go and kill the people, turn the phone back on,
and then revisit the crime scene. And many killers do
(35:55):
love to revisit their crime scenes.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
It's hard to wrap your brain around it.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
You know. One of the things that you had said
to me that I found so comforting, and I think
we should just quote it directly because I've thought about
it so many times, is that although we talk about
serial killing, and you do so importantly in your book,
it's really rare, right.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I frequently compare serial killers to sharks, because they're both
predators in nature, and the thing that they have in
common is that they are both rare, exotic, and deadly,
and when it gets to the odds of being a
victim of either one, they're remarkably similar. The odds of
being attacked by either a shark or a serial killer
(36:34):
are about one hundred and fifty million to one, so
those are really good odds. But if you really want
to feel good, you are twice as likely to be
killed by a soft drink vending machine falling on top
of you and crushing you than you are to become
a victim of a serial killer. So I think we
can all really go home and sleep well tonight.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
There is something scary about the notion of somebody crawling
through your windows, certainly when you talk about it all
the time. So I found that to be so comforting,
and also just the deep dive going through the rabbit
hole with you about I think we are. I mean,
myself included, is so interested in the why, and maybe
that's just inherently unanswerable. But you're somebody who has had
such close contact with so many of these prolific killers
(37:16):
that it's frankly, probably impossible to boil it down to,
you know, one key ingredient, whether they're a psychopath or
a sociopath, bringing it full circle, but typically they're functional,
and that's scary. We want them to seem like Hannibal Lecter, right,
we want to know what the answer is. I want
to get the feeling of a chill when I walk
by a killer. And I know that's not true.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, that's that's absolutely correct. And I've done extensive research
into the whole psychology with the fascination of serial killers
in the draw, you know, a lot of it is
based upon this, what is this curious fascination with the macabre,
you know, and with serial killers? And part of it
is just that. And what women consistently tell me is
(37:56):
I want to be able, as you said, to identify
the next Ted Bundy if he shows up in my backyard.
I want to be able to have the ability to
identify this sociopath or psychopath before I potentially get involved
with it. Nobody wants to date or get married to
the next BTK or Ted Bundy, So what should I
(38:16):
be looking for the draw of all this? And I
think this is particularly true for women has a lot
to do with empathy, both in terms of empathizing with
the victim, who more often than not is another woman,
and so therefore, but for the grace of God, go I,
but also empathy or at least a desire to understand
(38:38):
the thinking of an individual like a Bundy or a BTK,
because what they do is so horrible and so terrifying
that it's incomprehensible. So if you can just give me
the tools so I can somehow understand this, then maybe
it's not so terrifying. After all, the thing that we
don't understand is more terrifying than that we do understand.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
More on that next time. For more information on the
case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat
Underscore Studios. The Idaho Masker is produced by Stephanie Leideger,
Gabriel Castillo and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design
by Jeff Toois, Music by Jared Aston. The Idaho Masker
(39:27):
is a production of KT's Studios and iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts like this, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. For more information
on criminologist Scott Bond. You can visit his website doc Bond,
that's doc b o n N. There you can also
(39:48):
book tickets to his fascinating nationwide show Serial Killers with
doctor Scott Bond, the curious appeal of the world's most
terrifying murderers.
While there are many similarities between psychopaths and sociopaths, there
are many differences too.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You're somebody who has had such close contact with so
many of these prolific killers that it's frankly probably impossible
to boil it down to one key ingredient.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
His first killings were actually a mass murder, and after
that with his second killing, is where he really became
a serial killer.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
This is the Idaho Massacre, a production of Kat's Studios
and iHeartRadio, Season two, Episode seven, Mind of a Murderer.
I'm Courtney Armstrong, a producer at Kat's Studios, with Stephanie
Leidecker and Gabe Castillo. In the aftermath of the senseless
(00:54):
tragedy of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kayla
Solvs's murders on November thirteenth, twenty twenty two. There are
countless unanswerable questions. Some will be answered a trial, and
many may linger forever. We can't know what was in
the murderer's mind, or even at this point who the
(01:15):
murderer is. The accused is presumed innocent unless proven guilty
in a court of law, but in an effort to
try and understand the unthinkable and offer context and perspective
to the inner workings of violent criminals. Stephanie speaks with
doctor Scott Bond, a criminologist and author of books including
Why We Love Serial Killers The Curious Appeal of the
(01:37):
World's Most Savage Murderers. Here's Stephanie, how.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
And why did you even get in this business to
begin with?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Well, in terms of the origin of my interest in
all things that go bump in the night, I really
have to go back to my childhood because I was
always fascinated by human nature, by human motivations, both the
good and the bad. So I always was fascinated by
sort of what we would perceive as evil or the
(02:11):
criminal mind, but delving deeper than just the stereotypes and
just the superficial stamp of evil it's often placed on this.
So I, throughout my entire life, I've always wanted to
penetrate stereotypes and dig beneath the surface and truly understand
motivations and behavior.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Do you believe people are born evil or is that
conditioning environment? I know that's a loaded question, but do
you have a feeling on that?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well, yeah, the word evil is a very explosive, powerful
and dangerous word in my mind, because once you put
that stamp of evil on a group or an individual,
there's really no room for discussion any longer because you
can't have a meaningful conversation with evil. What can you
do with evil? You can exterminate it, right, so you
(02:59):
basically eliminate all other possibilities. And I think that in
criminology and sociology we call that reductionism. And once you
place a label on something, it's really hard to remove
that label. So in terms of evil, does evil exist, Yes,
but I believe that it is manifested in actions and
deeds and thinking. But I don't believe that there is
(03:21):
an evil gene. I don't think anyone is born inherently evil.
I think that once again, evil is manifested in the
things that people do, and in terms of our people
born that way. Well, that gets to the old nature
versus nurture debate, And based upon all of my study
and experience, like most things in life, it's more complicated
(03:42):
than one would seem on the surface, and in fact
it's a combination of nature and nurture. And in the
case of serial killers, for example, about seventy five percent
of all serial killers are either psychopaths or sociopaths, and
according to the American's psychiatric clinically speaking, that means that
(04:03):
they are not mentally ill in terms of a clinical diagnosis,
they are what are known as antisocial personality disorders, for
which there is no cure. While there are many similarities
between psychopaths and sociopaths, there are many differences too. That
one thing that they have in combination, of course, is
just a disdain toward the feelings of others and a
(04:27):
complete rejection of the laws, rules and more rays of society.
And they don't mind hurting people to get what they want.
They tend to be very opportunistic, aggressive and goal oriented,
and they don't care who they step one to get
to their goal.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Because people often use the terms sociopath and psychopath interchangeably,
as well as sometimes more widely than is warranted, Stephanie
asked Scott Bond to extrapolate on the distinctions between and
origins of the two.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Psychopaths are a function of nature and sociopaths are a
function of nurture, sociology, socialize. That's hence sociopath a psychopath
is born with a brain that simply doesn't function like
the normal human brain. The psychopathic brain is incapable of
(05:22):
an emotional connection with other human beings. I like to
use the analogy of a say, a hair dryer. If
you pull the cord out of the wall, you've got
a pretty useless hair dryer. Well, in the case of
empathetic understanding and emotional connection, a psychopath is simply disconnected.
They can't feel it. They're incapable of forming emotional bonds
(05:44):
with other people. But the sociopath is different. They are
born with a normal functioning brain, but over time they
become conditioned into predatory behavior, and an example of that
is through trauma, through abuse, through neglect, and to torture
(06:06):
and torment. And sociopaths are actually much more common. They
outnumber psychopaths about eight to one in terms of their
existence in society. And psychopaths are more dangerous because of
the fact that they simply do not have a feeling
when they hurt someone else, and they don't know fear.
(06:28):
They're unflappable. Nothing bothers them. If you think about it,
it makes them pretty much perfect killing machines.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Because they lack empathy and They also are not petrified
of the law and don't have the same level of
shame and guilt and human emotion that would come across
as obvious. If you were considering something violent, I think
you might have told me this. Is it true that,
of course, not all psychopaths become serial killers. In fact,
there are many psychopaths that probably run very fancy tech
(07:00):
companies and our industry makers.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
However, most serial killers do have some sort of psychopathic behavior.
Is that accurate?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
You described it very well. There is an area of
overlap between psychopaths and serial killers, and in the case
of serial killers, it's a big overlap. But by no
means are all psychopaths serial killers, and not all serial
killers are psychopaths. There are overrepresentation of psychopaths in the
(07:32):
bastions of power, whether it be in business, finance, guess what, politics,
and even things like neurosurgery, any type of field which
demands incredible focus and discipline, guess what, psychopaths tend to
do very well because they're unflappable. When it comes to
(07:53):
serial killers, at least seventy five percent are either psychopaths
or sociopaths. And of that, let's say it's seventy five percent,
probably fifty percent of the total, or two thirds of
that group are psychopaths. So psychopaths do make up the
largest single group among serial killers. Why they're almost perfectly
(08:15):
born bred killing machines.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
If somebody is a psychopath, do they know it?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's a great question. And they are very good at compartmentalizing,
and so they can have multiple realities which they take
very much as proof depending upon which compartment they're in.
And I'm not describing multiple personality to disorders here. I'm
(08:41):
talking about an individual and I'm going to use a
specific example who I am very familiar with through correspondence
and long term connection, and that is Dennis Rader, who
called himself because he's a psychopath BTK, which stands for
buying torture kill.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
From almost the moment of accused murderer Brian Coberger's arrest
in December twenty twenty two, his name has been used
in the same sentences as BTK. In the course of
his criminology education, the accused studied under a renowned BTK expert,
and many have theorized about commonalities between the two. Here's Stephanie.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
I had heard also that Brian Coberger for certain had
to have been a study of BTK in his murderous ways,
and there does seem to be some alignment in that
also the intimacy factor. So in Brian Coberger's case using
the knife, if in fact that's accurate, you know, it's
close contact that is considered a very intimate kill, much
like strangulation.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And it's sexual too, the penetration of it sexual status.
And this goes all the way back to Jack the
Ripper who hated women, and so what more vile thing
than you can can you do than penetrate them over
and over, you know, with a knife. So I really
think there was a deep seated underlying insecurity there and
actually an anger toward women that may have well been
(10:03):
manifested through these murders with a knife.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Can you just give us a little brief history on
BTK for anyone who doesn't know that case as closely.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Dennis Raider grew up in Wichita, Kansas. He had a
relatively normal childhood. He was a boy scout. He loved knots,
which was a foreshadowing for things later. He did have
some compulsions throughout his youth. For example, he was obsessed
with blood. He was obsessed with dismemberment. And he at
(10:32):
the age of ten is where the seed was really planted,
because he witnessed his grandmother kill a chicken in the
backyard on her farm for dinner. And he became sexually
aroused at the age of ten, but he didn't even
know what it was. At ten, he didn't even know
what it was, but he knew he liked that sensation,
and he nurtured that over time, and he became a
(10:53):
peeping tom and he would break into women's homes, steal
their underwear. He would fantasize and great lengths and have
fetish rituals and also sexually release himself. That fed this,
and over time, as he reached early adulthood, he began
trolling women, that's what he referred to it as in Wichitak, Kansas,
(11:15):
watching them come and go. And he put together a
whole list, a whole list of potential victims, a card
cataloged almost of photographs and details on someone that he
might kill because he was obsessed. This hunger was growing
inside of him, but all the while outside he was
a normal seeming guy. He was gone to night school,
(11:38):
he got married, he was starting a family, but by
age twenty eight he couldn't stand it any longer. It
reached what I like to call it a tipping point,
and he reached the point where he had to kill
for the first time. And he had set his sights
on a family named Ottero, a Latino family in Wichita, Kansas,
and he was obsessed with the mother and the beautiful
(12:00):
eleven year old daughter, Josephine, and he went there one
morning in January of seventy four, but things went awry.
He didn't expect that four members of the family would
actually be there, the mom, dad, the little son, and Josephine.
But as he told me, he said, I didn't get
all dressed up for nothing, And being the unflappable psychopath
(12:23):
that he was, he was armed with a gun. He
went in the back door and he told them, as
long as you cooperate, no one will get hurt. I'm
here to simply rob you. They complied, and then he
became buying torture kill for the very first time, and
tortured and killed every member of the family, living out
(12:45):
the fantasies that had been developing for fifteen years. And
so his first killings were actually a mass murder. And
after that with his second killing is where he really
became a serial killer. But he ultimately killed ten people.
He ultimately killed ten people that we know. I suspect
there might be others out there and they're looking at
cold cases. Now.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Scott Bond continues his explanation of how many psychopaths are
pathological in their capacity to compartmentalize. Here's Scott with Moron
how BTK explained it to him.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
He described it as his multifaceted life is like a
photographic cube. You know, maybe you remember those photocubes where
there'd be a different picture on each side of the
cube and you look at it that way. He sees
his life that way. And so when he's looking at
the picture that is daddy Dennis with his two children,
(13:40):
that's all he sees. And so the psychopathic serial killer
is on a different side of the cube that is nonexistent.
So when he's in daddy mode, there is nothing else.
He is the religious president of his Lutheran church association,
which he truly was. He's the doting father, he is
the boy Scout leader in town. He is the toast
(14:01):
of Wichita, Kansas. People loved him. Flip that thing now
to BTK buind torture kill. Now he is the bloodthirsty,
completely psychopathic, malignant narcissist, malignant narcissist meaning narcissistic tendencies with
sadism thrown in for good measure. And it's a completely
(14:21):
different thing. And yes, he knows exactly what he when
he's in BTK mode. He knows who he is, he
knows what he wants. He just doesn't care. He told me,
he said, Scott, I know that it's wrong to kill.
I know that society has these rules. I don't care.
Nothing is going to stop me. And he told me,
(14:42):
he said, the reason that he's compelled to do this,
in fact, is because he was a strangler. And when
he had his hands around the neck of his victim
and he crushed their throats and saw the light of
life distinguish in their eyes, he said, at that moment,
I know that I am God.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
He is such a scary example of someone who's able
to live in both lives. And I've heard interviews with
his daughter, who by all account says he was like
the greatest, most loving dad, like you just reported. And
I guess that's what's so scary about it is just
the idea that somebody can be so functional in the
world and be so dysfunctional in the world and kind
(15:22):
of TikTok between both universes with very little tells. So
how did you get involved with BTK?
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I was writing this book, which is why we love
serial killers, the curious appeal of the world's most savage murderers.
And what I wanted to do is I wanted to
understand serial killers from different perspectives. I'm a criminologist, but
I'm trained in sociology, and so from a sociological perspective,
everything has its place and meaning and even purpose in society.
(15:53):
And what's the mosaic? How do these things fit together?
So I sought out the news media who have reported
on cases like BTK and Son of Sam. I developed
a very great friendship with Roy Hazelwood, one of the
premier FBI profilers from whom I learned so much, and
unfortunately he's passed away a few years ago. But I'd
(16:13):
also decided I've got to go to the serial killers
themselves and try to understand their own identities that they
create for themselves, because some of them and BTK is
sitting up there at the top of the heat is
a highly narcissistic individual that was very aware of his
own narrative and wanted to create his profile. And he
(16:38):
even named himself. I mean he called himself bind, torture,
kill BTK, because that's what he does. And after his
first couple of killings, when he didn't believe that he
had gotten enough notoriety, he started writing to news media
in which ofa Kansas saying, how many people do have
to kill before I get a little notoriety here? I
want a little press, right, So I thought, who better
(17:01):
to represent the truly narcissistic, self absorbed psychopath than BTK.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
a moment. Scott Bond explains what was occurring between BTK
and law enforcement in the three decades between committing his
heinous crimes and when authorities captured him.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
All the while, he was playing cat and mouse with
the police because he's the ultimate control freak, and he
would send letters to law enforcement, letters to the media.
He would send personal items from his victims so that
they would be sure that this was actually him, and
he would lay clues and basically demonstrate that he was
(17:56):
the puppet master. He was in control, He was much
smarter than law enforcement, and he played this game for
thirty years before it ultimately caught up to him and
he was finally apprehended. But all the while he was
living this dual life where he was the boy Scout
leader in town, he was the president of a Lupian
(18:16):
church association. It's absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And at that time when you spoke with him, and
in the times that you've had these conversations with him,
do you get a cold chill? Does it seem obvious
in retrospect that he was somebody who was capable of
this level of violence because he was really top of
the list of one of the more sick and sadistic
violent murderers.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Do you get that sense?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Because he always seemed a little like you said, a
regular man.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Let me say first of all, Roy Hazelwood once again,
who was my friend, who was one of the pioneer
FBI profilers. Roy told me, he said, without a doubt,
the most cold blooded, stone cold psychopath that he had
ver sat across from was Dennis Rader. So you have
it from you know, from Hazelwood himself. Now in my case,
because I am not law enforcement, I'm not FBI. I
(19:11):
wasn't able to sit with him. So all of our
of our communication is through correspondence. But we are talking
voluminous correspondence over a period of years. And yes, the
detachment that you're talking about is always present. His writings
are almost business like and clinical. He rarely, if ever,
(19:32):
demonstrates or indicates any sort of emotional response. One of
the few times that I got a sense of it,
well one when I ask him, what you know what
killing does for him? Then he told me that I
am God, you know. I mean, that's pretty telling there
right there. But another one I asked him, I said,
what did you find the most satisfying moment of your life?
(19:53):
He said, well, I received a badge. And this is true.
He got a badge from the City of Wichita. He
always wanted to be police officer. He never quite made it,
but he did become a compliance officer for the City
of Wichita. That gave him a badge which enabled him
to come to people's homes and say, put your dog
on a leash, trim your trees, trim your lawn. And
(20:14):
this gave him that sense of power and entitlement and
authority that he really really craved. Well, so here's the story.
He's in the midst of his killing screen. Now the
BTK killer is at large, and he goes into city
Hall to get his little badge as a compliance officer,
and while he's there, they say, oh, Dennis, let's take you.
(20:38):
Let us take you into the BTK war room where
we can show you everything that we're doing to catch
this maniac. This you know, this madman. And so he
gets a tour of the war room that's set up
for them, and he's smiling like the cat that ate
the canary, thinking to himself, I truly am a genius.
Look at this. They have no idea that I am
(20:59):
the man and they're looking for. And so he said
to me, he said, this was the greatest rush of
my life. The greatest rush of my life was that moment.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
This does sort of fishtail into the Idaho massacre and
the accused Brian Coburger. Again, to be clear, he is
claiming his innocence. In no way are we trying to
prove his guilt. But some of the things I kind
of cross over with BTK that we have heard reported
about Brian Coburger is exactly law enforcement. You know, he
had a real pension for wanting to be in law enforcement,
(21:34):
and in his later high school years had joined a
certain part of his high school that was for law
enforcement want to be so essentially he wanted to be
a cop. Ultimately he got removed from that, and that
might have been a cross section for him, we're told
where maybe he then loathed law enforcement as a result.
But at one point he wanted to wear a badge.
And I wonder if that teeters into the same territory
(21:57):
of wanting to be God right, because as law, maybe
from a young person's mind, is law the land, and
I keep it in check. And I could see how
that could have crossover in a more demented way into
wanting to control people through violence like BTK did. That's one,
and then also the fact that he was, you know,
seemingly a really ordinary guy that came from a really
(22:19):
loving family, and he had a lot of opportunity and
just the emotional regulation that you have to have to
go in this case, if again, what Brian Coberger is
being accused of is accurate, to go from killing four
people and then headed back to class to be in
the beehive the next day and talk about the case.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
He didn't miss any school.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
He was a teacher's assistant and was there the next
day and was still grading papers. And to your earlier point,
something that had come up in a recent interview that
I did was with one of the classmates that was
in his classroom before and after the killings. And it
was a large class, like three hundred students or so,
and he was one of those teachers assistants that gave
a lot of notes. It's a lot of red lines
(23:01):
through papers and assignments and many many notes in those columns,
and after the murders, her real notice was that the
grades had gotten significantly better. There was still as much detail,
lots of notes in the columns and lots of red lines.
He was equally as thorough, but that where he would
normally be a hard grader, post the murders, he was
(23:22):
a very easy grad. It was a's, a's.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
And a's.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
And I asked her what she felt about that, and
her interpretation of that was that maybe he knew that
law enforcement was looking for him and that he wanted
the class to like him a little bit more should
they get interviewed.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
My brain went to he was just a little happier.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
If what he's been accused of is true, he had
that release that you're speaking of, and much like BTK
seeing the war room with all of the kills for him,
if this was true, then maybe that was the high.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
That was the high he was hoping for.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I think that there's absolutely merit to what you're saying.
As a matter of fact, as you were talking, I
was thinking along those same lines that he had finally
achieved something that he had been building up to for
a long time. And similar to BTK, I do believe
that he had been evolving, progressing, percolating for years and years.
(24:17):
No one wakes up one day and says, this is
a great day to start killing people. You know, it
just doesn't work that way. Whether you are a mass
murderer and it's a one time event, it just doesn't
happen that way. This evolves over a long period of time,
and they reached this tipping point. Now there are definitely
similarities between BTK and Coburger.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
It's worth noting again that, like every other US citizen
accused murderer, Brian Coberger is presumed innocent as stipulated by
the fifth, sixth, and fourteenth Amendments. Here again, criminologist doctor
Scott Bond.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
As I said earlier, you know BTK killed four members
of the same family. That was his first outing as
a killer. Now people ask me all the time, do
I think the coburger killed previously? And I believe the
answer to that is no. He made rookie mistakes, not
the least of which was leaving a knife sheath lying
next to one of his victims with touch DNA on it.
(25:17):
I mean that's I mean, you talk about murder one
oh one, you don't leave that behind. And he also
very foolishly, and I'm surprised, given his study of forensics
and so forth, that he would do this, but he
turned his phone off during the time period of the
killing and then turned it back on. Just leave your
phone at home, you know, you don't need to turn
(25:37):
it off. Just leave it in your apartment and go
and kill and come back. I do believe that, having
looked at his progression, and I've looked at his history
quite a bit, this was a troubled individual. He had
weight problems, he lost a tremendous amount of weight. He
had drug problems. He had posted early online years before,
(25:58):
some of his troubled thoughts and things that he was
wrestling with, and so very much like BTK, and BTK
told me this that he was interested in forensics, he
was interested in psychology, he was interested in the mind,
partially to understand himself. And I think that this could
very well be true of Brian Coberger. These individuals are
(26:18):
self aware. They know that something is happening here, and
as much as it may be stimulating, exciting and thrilling
to them, this growing need to kill, at the same time,
they recognize that this is a little bit abnormal and
they want to try to understand it. BTK did, and
I suspected that Coburger did as well, which is what
(26:39):
led him into this, you know, this study. And in
terms of the possible connection between the two, Raider says
he's never corresponded with Coburger, although he has said he
thinks that Coburger was in fact a clone. Then again,
and everything is about Dennis Rader, so naturally he's going
to say that. But the one thing that we do
know is that he had entered his doctoral he had
(27:00):
previously gotten a master's degree at Dessal's University, and there
he was exposed to a forensics class taught by a
professor who has also written about BTK, and I am
sure in her research and in her classes she discussed BTK.
So there's no question that I think Coburger would have
been pretty versed in the background of BTK as well.
(27:25):
And in my experience, serial killers do often study one another.
They're what I like to refer to as students of
the game, and they will even be jealous of one another.
For example, when I told Dennis Rader BTK that I
was also correspondent with David Burker, who was the son
of Sam, he scoffed. He said, he's not a real man.
(27:47):
He shot people. Real killers strangle, real men strangle. So
he belittled a son of Sam. He obviously was very aware,
and he was even jealous of son of Sam, who
was had an occult sim and David Berkowitz did during
that same timeframe BTK was killing. He came up with
his own little BTK symbol. He was a copycat in
(28:08):
that regard. So these individuals, they do look at one another,
they do follow one another's headlines.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
If you will, can you just give a little brief
snippet on Son of Sam.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, falls into a category
of serial killer known as that visionary serial killer. And
by visionary, what we mean is he was obsessed with
the notion, the fantasy that he was killing for Satan,
that he was being beckoned to do this, and this
fantasy built in him over a period of time. He
became obsessed with the occult. He became obsessed with Satan,
(28:42):
and by nineteen seventy six he believed that he had
to act out on this, and he went out and
he bought himself a gun, a revolver, and he shot
his way into the history books. And he didn't buy
just any gun. He got paid what is known as
a Bulldog forty four caliber revolver, which is a big, heavy, powerful,
loud handgun. This appeal to David Berkowitz's lack of self esteem.
(29:07):
He was very insecure in his manhood, and I think
that this was almost like a phallic Freudian sexual thing.
The size of it appealed to him, made him feel strong.
He began his shooting spree, which lasted a little more
than a year, in New York City and it took
several crime scenes before they realized they had a serial
(29:28):
killer when they linked the ballistics from the Chell's from
the crime scenes, and he became known as the forty
four caliber killer initially, but it was when he started
his own terrorist terrorizing letter campaign to the news media
and law enforcement that it became the thing of epic
proportions and legend because he left the letter next to
one of his victims and it was addressed to Captain
(29:50):
Joe Borelli, who was heading up the task force, the
serial Killer task Force, and in this letter he introduced
himself to the world as the son of Sam, and
he said, I must provide Papa Sam Satan with blood
and his thirst is unquenchable, so I will be killing
again and again and again, so you can only imagine
(30:12):
all hell broke loose when this letter was published in
the news media, and over a period of a year,
Berkowitz sent letters to everybody from Jimmy Breslin, one of
the notorious journalists of New York City at the time,
at law enforcement. He started this terror campaign much like BTK,
but for different reasons, but he did the same thing,
(30:34):
and when it became a parent that he was targeting
young white women with long, dark hair. Everything exploded because
women began to cut their hair, dye their hair, wear
wigs by the summer of nineteen seventy seven, which became
known as the Summer of Sam in New York City
because he had the entire city of eight million people
(30:54):
and at death grip, you couldn't even buy a female
wig anymore in New York City. So he truly one man,
held the city in this death gript and that's why
he is the thing of legend. He ultimately shot thirteen people,
killed six and permanently disabled others, but he terrorized millions.
(31:15):
Is he still alive, Yes, he is, and I spent
an entire day with him in a maximum security prison.
I had lunch with him, and he is no longer.
Your audience may be aware, and they may not be aware.
He had a self described spiritual awakening. He became a
born again Christian in nineteen eighty six when God visited
(31:36):
his prison cell and washed away his sins, and he
was no longer the son of Sam serial killer. He
is now the son of hope, minister and evangelist who
is doing God's good work. Scoff If you will. But
he has become something of a darling of the evangelical
Christian community, and they actually operate a website in his
(31:57):
name that has drawn hundreds of thousands of people from
around the world who were drawn by his message of inspiration.
And so yeah, I spent an entire day with him
in prison, and he insisted that we say the Lord's
Prayer together. He wept tears of contrition, he wept tears
(32:18):
of joy as he manifested the new son of Hope.
So the son of Sam is now the Son of Hope,
and we ate together. This is pretty remarkable. Cafeteria is
just surrounded by vending machines. And so I showed up
that day with a huge bag of quarters because the
staff told me, if you feed him, he will talk.
So I was ready. I was ready. It's like going
(32:40):
to the zoo. You know we're gonna, you know we're gonna,
We're gonna. He's gonna perform. And I wasn't disappointed, because man,
he ate and he ate, and he ate and he
ate three huge bags of Dorito's cool ranch flavored Dorito's.
He took me on this incredible journey and I'm sitting
there and I'm thinking, and if he's acting, he's pretty
(33:01):
darn believable. He deserves an Academy Award because he's like
the Robert de Niro of serial killer actors. If you know,
if he's really this good, And then I'm thinking, well,
all right, maybe it's true. You know, maybe he has transformed.
You know, I got a PhD. But it's not in
like spiritual rebirth. So maybe maybe it's true. But then
the more cynical side of me said, he's full of shit.
(33:22):
You know, he's definitely full of shit. I've come to
believe that reality is probably somewhere in the middle, as
truth often is. So my take on David Berkowitz is
he's exactly where he needs to be. He never should
be set free. But if he through his correspondence and
he's got an old fashioned Smith Corona typewriter that he
corresponds with thousands of Christians around the world, if he's
(33:44):
doing God's good work and he's helping these people, let
him do it from behind bars.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Let him do it.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
And I think of anything I've learned, not only in
this from you, but just just working in true crime,
is that a person could be many things at once.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Let's stop here for another break. We'll be back in
a moment. Stephanie brings up a point from her conversation
with Cassie, which was covered at length in episode three.
Cassie's the former student who was in the criminology class.
The accused was a teacher's assistant in at the time
(34:23):
of the murders.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think that kind of is unsettling for her. That
just doesn't add up in terms of whether he's guilty
or not. Is the fact that she was, like, I
was not overly even paying attention in class, and even
I know not to bring your cell phone to the
scene and turn it off. It was such a tier
one rookie mistake that they learned in that class that
he was the TA of that. That actually is what
(34:47):
makes her think that maybe he didn't do it because
it was just so messy and sloppy.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
What do you make of that.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I believe that it's a you know, like I said,
a rookie error, and serial killers do refine their techniques
over time. Any any serial killer from from Bundy to
Dahmer said that their most nerve wracking kill was the
first one and if they made mistakes, it was the
first time. To the extent that they get away with it,
(35:12):
they obsess about it and they perfect it and they
get better at it, which is the scary thing. But
the more prolific they are, the more successful and the
more efficient that they are. So no, I think it's
very consistent with a you know, like I said, a
rookie error on his part. But it also didn't make sense.
Is they priangulated his cell phone, and he had visited
(35:34):
that house that area a number of times, and they
got a ping later that morning once his cell phone
turned back on at nine o'clock in the morning, they
got a ping from his cell phone right outside the house.
Well that's pretty telling, right there. Turn the cell phone off,
go and kill the people, turn the phone back on,
and then revisit the crime scene. And many killers do
(35:55):
love to revisit their crime scenes.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
It's hard to wrap your brain around it.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
You know. One of the things that you had said
to me that I found so comforting, and I think
we should just quote it directly because I've thought about
it so many times, is that although we talk about
serial killing, and you do so importantly in your book,
it's really rare, right.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I frequently compare serial killers to sharks, because they're both
predators in nature, and the thing that they have in
common is that they are both rare, exotic, and deadly,
and when it gets to the odds of being a
victim of either one, they're remarkably similar. The odds of
being attacked by either a shark or a serial killer
(36:34):
are about one hundred and fifty million to one, so
those are really good odds. But if you really want
to feel good, you are twice as likely to be
killed by a soft drink vending machine falling on top
of you and crushing you than you are to become
a victim of a serial killer. So I think we
can all really go home and sleep well tonight.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
There is something scary about the notion of somebody crawling
through your windows, certainly when you talk about it all
the time. So I found that to be so comforting,
and also just the deep dive going through the rabbit
hole with you about I think we are. I mean,
myself included, is so interested in the why, and maybe
that's just inherently unanswerable. But you're somebody who has had
such close contact with so many of these prolific killers
(37:16):
that it's frankly, probably impossible to boil it down to,
you know, one key ingredient, whether they're a psychopath or
a sociopath, bringing it full circle, but typically they're functional,
and that's scary. We want them to seem like Hannibal Lecter, right,
we want to know what the answer is. I want
to get the feeling of a chill when I walk
by a killer. And I know that's not true.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, that's that's absolutely correct. And I've done extensive research
into the whole psychology with the fascination of serial killers
in the draw, you know, a lot of it is
based upon this, what is this curious fascination with the macabre,
you know, and with serial killers? And part of it
is just that. And what women consistently tell me is
(37:56):
I want to be able, as you said, to identify
the next Ted Bundy if he shows up in my backyard.
I want to be able to have the ability to
identify this sociopath or psychopath before I potentially get involved
with it. Nobody wants to date or get married to
the next BTK or Ted Bundy, So what should I
(38:16):
be looking for the draw of all this? And I
think this is particularly true for women has a lot
to do with empathy, both in terms of empathizing with
the victim, who more often than not is another woman,
and so therefore, but for the grace of God, go I,
but also empathy or at least a desire to understand
(38:38):
the thinking of an individual like a Bundy or a BTK,
because what they do is so horrible and so terrifying
that it's incomprehensible. So if you can just give me
the tools so I can somehow understand this, then maybe
it's not so terrifying. After all, the thing that we
don't understand is more terrifying than that we do understand.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
More on that next time. For more information on the
case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat
Underscore Studios. The Idaho Masker is produced by Stephanie Leideger,
Gabriel Castillo and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design
by Jeff Toois, Music by Jared Aston. The Idaho Masker
(39:27):
is a production of KT's Studios and iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts like this, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. For more information
on criminologist Scott Bond. You can visit his website doc Bond,
that's doc b o n N. There you can also
(39:48):
book tickets to his fascinating nationwide show Serial Killers with
doctor Scott Bond, the curious appeal of the world's most
terrifying murderers.
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