February 19, 2025 • 8 mins
Dr. Rachel Toles, a renowned Clinical Psychologist and criminal expert, explores the terrifying minds of the world's most infamous serial killers in her show. You can see her live Sat, Mar 15 @ 8:00 pm @ The Astro Theater.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A lot of people have been entertained lately by the
idea of a you know, true crime, the true crime
shows and podcasts. It really gets people fascinated with the
entire story. But what about the mind of the people
that actually commit these crimes. You haven't really talked about
that that much, and somebody is going to try to
(00:22):
bring that to you. And that's what the Psychology of
a Murderer Tour is all about. And joining us is
the person that's going to be talking to you on
that tour, Doctor Rachel Toles. Doctor Toles, thanks so much
for being on the show today.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to
be here.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Okay, So here we are in Omaha, Nebraska, and we're
you know, sitting trying to you know, just live our
day to day lives. And a lot of people find
learning about these crimes a very entertaining or a very
fascinating part of you know, coverage because these are high
profile but there are a lot of people who have
committed these crimes in the past. What is this tour
(01:00):
about in kind of what approach do you take to
try to educate people on kind of what creates the
menace of the people who actually commit these crimes.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Well, you know, Okay, So my first tour was about
I kind of call it the albino squirrel, the serial
killers who are very rare when it comes to murder.
They're not too many of them. So this tour is
about the murderer in the everyman, so the murderer in
all of us. So ultimately, it's not just a journey
into the mind of a killer. It's also a journey
(01:32):
into your own mind, looking at the parts of you that,
given the right circumstances, given the right escalation points and
boundary violations and various things that happen that lead to
these things, it's amazing what all humans are capable of.
So I get people to, instead of being so quick
to point the finger at other people, re examining what
(01:56):
it means to be humans, what it means to have
a shadow side, what it means to have anger, and
what happens when this anger is repressed and basically shamed,
which a lot of people who wind up being like
a pressure cooker that explodes and snaps. They've pushed down
a lot of feelings. And so it's kind of a
cautionary tale, if you will, because I'm trying to show
(02:19):
people this is preventative if we can actually look at
the points, the escalation points and things that can get
us there. And the problem with true crime stories, in
my opinion, is that I call them all puzzle piece A.
Like all the shows show you the horrific crime, and
eventually the killer's caught, he's labeled a psychopath the end.
(02:41):
What I bring is puzzle piece B, where we go
to the back to the original crime gain which is
the family of origin, family lineage and other, and then
of course current situations that cause the escalation points that
wind up leading a person to cross the forbidden line.
And then it's amazing how we just thought oficly assume
these people are well, they're just no longer human, And
(03:03):
how is that that one action? The action might be
bad and evil and you know, and despicable, but to
then write the whole person off In some ways, that
black and white thinking is what causes the person to
be that way in the first place.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
It's real interesting stuff. We're speaking with doctor Rachel Toles
on the show here. The tour is called The Psychology
of a Murderer, and it's visiting Omaha at the astro
on Saturday, the fifteenth of March.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So in just a few weeks.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Your background, certainly you'd have to be studying something like
this to kind of get yourself into a place of
knowledge and authority on this type of topic.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
What is your personal background?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
What got you kind of interested in, you know, having
this fascination and the ability to speak on exactly how
we get to the point where some people commit these
heinous crimes that we think are unthinkable.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Well, okay, so I've always been interested in death and
murder and all these dark things, even as a very
young child. And I think we all can relate to
the moment, whether we remember it or not, that existential
angst where we find out that death is a thing
and that we all are going to die, that at
any point it's going to happen. We don't know how
or or you know, who could possibly kill us, or
(04:22):
if it's going to be an accent, or if it's
going to be just you know, some rible horrible thing
like cancer, Like we just don't know when or how,
but we're we're all going to the same place. So
we have that in common. We have the existential angst
when it comes to that kind of thing, and so
I think one of the things that maybe makes me
unique from other forensic psychologists is that I also have
(04:42):
a very heavy background in family systems theory, looking at
family systems and boundary crossing and violations and things that
can lead to black and white thinking, because I think
the criminal world does a good job of just labeling
people's psychopaths, and prosecutors are really big fans of that word,
because once you get a doctor and stamps the label
(05:03):
of psychopaths on something, then you know the jury's be
going to be more likely to give them a death sentence.
Whereas it's very very separate because psychopathy, for example, is
not there's no official medical terms that is psychopathy. It's
a theory, it's a great proposal, but there's no real
scientific evidence that it actually a that anyone's ever born
(05:23):
with it. So we don't really know what causes the
differences in the brains that we say, well, that's the
psychopathic brain. So ultimately I'm looking at what are the
things that lead people to do this, and in my opinion,
you can't figure that out without having a deep sense
of family systems and family lineages, because that's where it starts,
and then of course the families that they often create,
(05:46):
and then what caused them to annihilate those families or
what caused them to shoot up the school, Because the
school is just a representative of a subsequent system. Everything
that people do later in life is a subsequent system
that represents in some way way the original system. So
you've got to understand the original system and their way
of examine looking at their original system in order to
(06:07):
understand how they view this system through a lens that
allows them to then say, I'm going to take a
bunch of people.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Out, very very intriguing. We're speaking with doctor Rachel Toles.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
She's on tour with the Psychology of a Murderer tour
coming to Almaha at the ashtro on Saturday, March fifteenth.
So people are saying, Okay, so she's not on a
television show that I need to watch. She's not, you know,
I can actually just like I'm going to the asstro
to see her. Tell me about the show itself or
what people can expect when they come to the ass
(06:36):
show on March fifteenth, Well.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
They want, for example, I am on shows. So if
people like the show very scary people it's the Donny
Waldberg Show. I think they've got six seasons out right now.
One of the episodes I'm on is in this current season,
season six, episode seven, The Real Hannibal looks at a
less known serial killer Scott Lee Kimball, and his nickname
(06:59):
is Hannibal, and the entire narrative is my breakdown of
how someone psychologically winds up becoming a serial killer. So
if they want to get a sense, for example, of
how I break things down, that might give them a
good sense. I also am on other shows about the
Brian Coburger case or the Gilgo Beach killer Rex Hureman.
So but I would say that what the live show
(07:22):
brings that's very different than these shows you can watch
online is that a there's a Q and A section
in the second half of the show is all devoted
to live Q and A, which means any true crime
case that you maybe feel like you haven't had your
questions answered and you've got these burning questions because again
a lot of these shows they skip over the most
important questions and you get to ask them and I
(07:44):
get to answer them right there on the spot for you.
So there's that, and then of course that. The other
part is the lecture where I take four of the
most notorious true crime cases in US history, and I
walk you through puzzle piece b the sense of okay,
from how did they get here to doing this horrible thing,
and all of a sudden you see puzzle piece a
(08:05):
completely differently. That's the hope, because now you're seeing the
other pieces, parts of the puzzle piece that you know
what you know, fill in the gaps, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, I mean it's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
If you go to psychology over Murderer dot com, you
can see all of the tour dates, including the Astro
at Omaha, and there's a button right there that says
get tickets for Saturday, March fifteenth, Beware the IDEs of March.
Doctor Rachel Tols, this is great. Thank you so much
for joining the show, and congrats on the success of
the tour here.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Oh, thank you so much, and you have a wonder
that it has been great talking with you.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Absolutely big thanks to doctor Tols for joining us, and
that tour again is coming through the area the Astro
on Saturday the March fifteenth, and just go to Psychology
Overmurderer dot com and you can find the tickets.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
There should be a lot of fun and very informative
A lot of people have been entertained lately by the
idea of a you know, true crime, the true crime
shows and podcasts. It really gets people fascinated with the
entire story. But what about the mind of the people
that actually commit these crimes. You haven't really talked about
that that much, and somebody is going to try to
(00:22):
bring that to you. And that's what the Psychology of
a Murderer Tour is all about. And joining us is
the person that's going to be talking to you on
that tour, Doctor Rachel Toles. Doctor Toles, thanks so much
for being on the show today.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to
be here.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Okay, So here we are in Omaha, Nebraska, and we're
you know, sitting trying to you know, just live our
day to day lives. And a lot of people find
learning about these crimes a very entertaining or a very
fascinating part of you know, coverage because these are high
profile but there are a lot of people who have
committed these crimes in the past. What is this tour
(01:00):
about in kind of what approach do you take to
try to educate people on kind of what creates the
menace of the people who actually commit these crimes.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Well, you know, Okay, So my first tour was about
I kind of call it the albino squirrel, the serial
killers who are very rare when it comes to murder.
They're not too many of them. So this tour is
about the murderer in the everyman, so the murderer in
all of us. So ultimately, it's not just a journey
into the mind of a killer. It's also a journey
(01:32):
into your own mind, looking at the parts of you that,
given the right circumstances, given the right escalation points and
boundary violations and various things that happen that lead to
these things, it's amazing what all humans are capable of.
So I get people to, instead of being so quick
to point the finger at other people, re examining what
(01:56):
it means to be humans, what it means to have
a shadow side, what it means to have anger, and
what happens when this anger is repressed and basically shamed,
which a lot of people who wind up being like
a pressure cooker that explodes and snaps. They've pushed down
a lot of feelings. And so it's kind of a
cautionary tale, if you will, because I'm trying to show
(02:19):
people this is preventative if we can actually look at
the points, the escalation points and things that can get
us there. And the problem with true crime stories, in
my opinion, is that I call them all puzzle piece A.
Like all the shows show you the horrific crime, and
eventually the killer's caught, he's labeled a psychopath the end.
(02:41):
What I bring is puzzle piece B, where we go
to the back to the original crime gain which is
the family of origin, family lineage and other, and then
of course current situations that cause the escalation points that
wind up leading a person to cross the forbidden line.
And then it's amazing how we just thought oficly assume
these people are well, they're just no longer human, And
(03:03):
how is that that one action? The action might be
bad and evil and you know, and despicable, but to
then write the whole person off In some ways, that
black and white thinking is what causes the person to
be that way in the first place.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
It's real interesting stuff. We're speaking with doctor Rachel Toles
on the show here. The tour is called The Psychology
of a Murderer, and it's visiting Omaha at the astro
on Saturday, the fifteenth of March.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So in just a few weeks.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Your background, certainly you'd have to be studying something like
this to kind of get yourself into a place of
knowledge and authority on this type of topic.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
What is your personal background?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
What got you kind of interested in, you know, having
this fascination and the ability to speak on exactly how
we get to the point where some people commit these
heinous crimes that we think are unthinkable.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Well, okay, so I've always been interested in death and
murder and all these dark things, even as a very
young child. And I think we all can relate to
the moment, whether we remember it or not, that existential
angst where we find out that death is a thing
and that we all are going to die, that at
any point it's going to happen. We don't know how
or or you know, who could possibly kill us, or
(04:22):
if it's going to be an accent, or if it's
going to be just you know, some rible horrible thing
like cancer, Like we just don't know when or how,
but we're we're all going to the same place. So
we have that in common. We have the existential angst
when it comes to that kind of thing, and so
I think one of the things that maybe makes me
unique from other forensic psychologists is that I also have
(04:42):
a very heavy background in family systems theory, looking at
family systems and boundary crossing and violations and things that
can lead to black and white thinking, because I think
the criminal world does a good job of just labeling
people's psychopaths, and prosecutors are really big fans of that word,
because once you get a doctor and stamps the label
(05:03):
of psychopaths on something, then you know the jury's be
going to be more likely to give them a death sentence.
Whereas it's very very separate because psychopathy, for example, is
not there's no official medical terms that is psychopathy. It's
a theory, it's a great proposal, but there's no real
scientific evidence that it actually a that anyone's ever born
(05:23):
with it. So we don't really know what causes the
differences in the brains that we say, well, that's the
psychopathic brain. So ultimately I'm looking at what are the
things that lead people to do this, and in my opinion,
you can't figure that out without having a deep sense
of family systems and family lineages, because that's where it starts,
and then of course the families that they often create,
(05:46):
and then what caused them to annihilate those families or
what caused them to shoot up the school, Because the
school is just a representative of a subsequent system. Everything
that people do later in life is a subsequent system
that represents in some way way the original system. So
you've got to understand the original system and their way
of examine looking at their original system in order to
(06:07):
understand how they view this system through a lens that
allows them to then say, I'm going to take a
bunch of people.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Out, very very intriguing. We're speaking with doctor Rachel Toles.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
She's on tour with the Psychology of a Murderer tour
coming to Almaha at the ashtro on Saturday, March fifteenth.
So people are saying, Okay, so she's not on a
television show that I need to watch. She's not, you know,
I can actually just like I'm going to the asstro
to see her. Tell me about the show itself or
what people can expect when they come to the ass
(06:36):
show on March fifteenth, Well.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
They want, for example, I am on shows. So if
people like the show very scary people it's the Donny
Waldberg Show. I think they've got six seasons out right now.
One of the episodes I'm on is in this current season,
season six, episode seven, The Real Hannibal looks at a
less known serial killer Scott Lee Kimball, and his nickname
(06:59):
is Hannibal, and the entire narrative is my breakdown of
how someone psychologically winds up becoming a serial killer. So
if they want to get a sense, for example, of
how I break things down, that might give them a
good sense. I also am on other shows about the
Brian Coburger case or the Gilgo Beach killer Rex Hureman.
So but I would say that what the live show
(07:22):
brings that's very different than these shows you can watch
online is that a there's a Q and A section
in the second half of the show is all devoted
to live Q and A, which means any true crime
case that you maybe feel like you haven't had your
questions answered and you've got these burning questions because again
a lot of these shows they skip over the most
important questions and you get to ask them and I
(07:44):
get to answer them right there on the spot for you.
So there's that, and then of course that. The other
part is the lecture where I take four of the
most notorious true crime cases in US history, and I
walk you through puzzle piece b the sense of okay,
from how did they get here to doing this horrible thing,
and all of a sudden you see puzzle piece a
(08:05):
completely differently. That's the hope, because now you're seeing the
other pieces, parts of the puzzle piece that you know
what you know, fill in the gaps, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, I mean it's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
If you go to psychology over Murderer dot com, you
can see all of the tour dates, including the Astro
at Omaha, and there's a button right there that says
get tickets for Saturday, March fifteenth, Beware the IDEs of March.
Doctor Rachel Tols, this is great. Thank you so much
for joining the show, and congrats on the success of
the tour here.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Oh, thank you so much, and you have a wonder
that it has been great talking with you.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Absolutely big thanks to doctor Tols for joining us, and
that tour again is coming through the area the Astro
on Saturday the March fifteenth, and just go to Psychology
Overmurderer dot com and you can find the tickets.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
There should be a lot of fun and very informative
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