The Mall Passer: Inside the Mind of James Mitchell “Mike” DeBardeleben

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Humans are capable of incredible kindness and

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unspeakable cruelty.
This is human wreckage where weexcavate the darkest ruins of
human behavior.
The stories are real.
Names are real, and the horrors,they are very real.
Today we enter the mind not justof a killer, not just a serial
rapist, not simply a mastercounterfeiter.
Today we peel back the layers ofJames Mitchell Mike D Bartleban

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a man experts described asperhaps the most calculated
sexual sadist ever investigatedin American criminal history.
They called him the Mallpasser.
But that name barely scratchesthe surface.
Child of Chaos.
James Mitchell Debarteleban Jr.
was born March sixth, nineteenforty, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
His father was an Air Forceofficer distant, rigid,

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emotionally unavailable.
His mother volatile, cruel, andunpredictably abusive.
From a young age, he absorbedtwo lessons.
Power is pain.
Control is everything.
He later wrote in his journals.
Pain is clarity, power isexistence.
He moved constantly due to hisfather's military career.
Each new city meant new schools,no friends, no stability.

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He learned to watch peopleinstead of connect with them, to
mimic instead of feel.
By age ten, he was settingfires, torturing animals,
fantasizing about control,dominance, and eventually
torture.
At age fifteen, he was arrestedfor auto theft.
At sixteen, burglary anddisorderly conduct.
His mother grew tired of him,sick of him.

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She told the police, take him, Idon't want him back.
He never forgot it.
Somewhere inside him somethingshut off, or maybe something
finally turned on.
As a young man, Debardlebenbriefly joined the Air Force,
but was court martialed sixmonths later.
He forged checks, impersonatedofficers, crafted fake
identities.

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He knew how to blend in.
He drifted across the countryTennessee, Virginia, Texas,
Georgia, always watching, alwaysstudying people, lying to
survive, learning people'sweaknesses.
Crime wasn't his impulse, it washis profession.
Darkness didn't fuel him, itdefined him.
He began impersonating policeofficers.
A fake badge, flashing redlights, the illusion of

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authority.
And with that he discovered hisultimate weapon, power without
suspicion.
One victim recalled.
He looked like a cop.
He spoke like a cop.
He felt like a cop.
I didn't feel scared until itwas too late.
The Mall Passer In the earlynineteen eighties, the United
States Secret Service launchedan investigation.

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Not for kidnapping, not forrape, not for murder, but for
counterfeit money.
Thousands of fake twenty dollarsbills were circulating across
malls in the eastern UnitedStates.
The bills were high quality andstrangely always passed at
shopping malls.
The suspect earned a nickname,the mall passer, but what agents
didn't know, was that shoppingmall merely his hunting grounds?

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He wasn't just passingcounterfeit bills.
He was watching women, studyingthem, selecting victims.
He learned their walks, theirroutines, their confidence,
their fear.
He would wait for one walkingalone, for one distracted, for
one who believed the world wassafe.
And then he became the lastperson they ever saw.

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Abduction methods.
DeBodliben didn't attackimpulsively.
He planned.
He scouted public areas fordays.
He studied parking lots, busstations, grocery stores,
shopping malls, rest stops, andresidential neighborhoods.
He knew how to watch withoutbeing seen.
He knew how to pretend withoutsuspicion.
His favorite method of abductionwas chillingly simple.

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He pretended to be lawenforcement.
He would flash a badge and say,There's been a break in near
your vehicle.
I need you to come with me foridentification.
And once they got close enough,they never walked away, his
toolkits included, policebadges, fake IDs, handcuffs and
gags, rope, straps, metalclamps, tape recorders, Polaroid

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cameras, and a video recorder.
Medical devices designed forrestraint and torture.
He kept journals, not ofvictims' names, but of their
reactions.
He didn't care who they were.
He cared how they responded tofear.
Profiler accounts describe himas not just a sexual sadist, but
a controlled, methodicaldestroyer of human identity.
He did not pursue pleasure.

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He pursued domination.
He didn't want intimacy.
He wanted a reaction.
He wanted screams, submission,silence, resistance.
It was all beta.
He saw people as experiments.
He saw fear as art.
He grated victims on.
Screen type.
Tears versus silence.
Resistance level.
How quickly they broke, whetherthey begged, whether they

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complied, whether they accepteddeath.
He did not want their death.
He wanted their dehumanization.
He once wrote, Death is toobrief.
Control must be lived.
Several survivors latertestified in court.
Their identities were sealed forprotection.
One victim described waking upgagged, hands and feet bound
with leather restraints.

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Metal clamps pinched her skin,he told her.
You exist because I permit youto exist.
Another victim reported himwhispering.
I want to see what fear doesover time.
He recorded audio.
He filmed their faces.
He photographed them in stagesdocumenting their emotional
collapse.
Some victims were released afterhours or days.

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Why?
Because he wanted them to livewith the memories.
They were his proof ofpsychological ownership.
He would say, They'll neverforget me, that means I will
never die.
He wasn't arrested forkidnapping.
He wasn't arrested for sexualassault or murder or torture.
He was arrested forcounterfeiting.
Secret Service agents trackedhim to a mall in Tennessee,

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watched him pass counterfeitbills, and followed him home.
They arrested him.
When they searched his storageunits, they found hell, hundreds
of photographs, audiorecordings, videotapes, folders
titled Projects, Blueprints ofRestraint Devices, detailed
scripts for interrogatingvictims emotionally, and a black

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leather journal with thehandwritten title Abduction and
Control A Study.
One agent said, We didn't justarrest a criminal.
We discovered a chamber ofpsychological warfare.
The unknown victims.
To this day, the full identityof many of his victims remains
unknown.
Some likely died.
Some may have escaped and neverreported it.

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Some may have been reportedmissing before their stories
ended in a basement or a storageunit.
Some crime scene photos showbodies that appear lifeless.
No movement between sequences,eyes opened, limbs positioned
unnaturally.
He was never convicted ofmurder, but no one who saw those
images believed he didn't kill.
No bodies were found.

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No case could convict him ofhomicide.
The truth died with him, trialand sentencing.
He stood trial in federal court.
He was charged with kidnapping,rape, sexual assault, aggravated
assault, counterfeiting,transporting victims across
state lines.
Victims spoke behind screens,some behind voice modulators.

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Some couldn't speak at all theirwritten statements were read by
others.
When asked if he felt remorse,he allegedly responded.
They were moments, they were notpeople.
He was sentenced to threehundred seventy five years in
federal prison.
But the judge said thissentencing is symbolic, because
evil does not retire.
He was not executed.

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He was contained, the prisonyears.
He did not apologize.
He did not confess further.
He offered no names, no bodies,no closure.
Psychologists continued to studyhim, but he offered little
insight.
He never acknowledged victims asreal humans.
He didn't request visitors, hedidn't write letters.
He didn't create art.

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He existed.
Like a void.
He spent his final yearsisolated, quiet, withdrawn.
One prison guard said, He didn'tlook evil, he looked absent.
He died on january twenty sixth,twenty eleven alone of natural
causes.
What he leaves behind, he didnot leave a legacy.
He left a question.
How many victims?

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How many never reported him?
How many never got found?
He once wrote.
The greatest accomplishment isnot to kill a body, but to erase
a person.
We don't know how many heerased.
We never will.
Evil does not always look like amonster.
Sometimes it looks like a manpushing a shopping cart, a man
holding a door, a man wearing abadge, a man walking behind you

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unnoticed.
Unremarkable, invisible, andthat is the most dangerous form
of all.
Monsters do not lurk under yourbed.
They walk past you every singleday.
This has been human wreckage.
Thank you for listening.
Stay safe, stay aware, andremember the darkness never
announces itself.