Interview with retired supervisory special agent (BAU) Mark Safarik

Mark E. Safarik is a retired Supervisory Special Agent who served 23 years with the FBI, including 12 years as a criminal profiler in the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). He co-founded Forensic Behavioral Services International, where he consults on complex violent crime cases and has appeared on numerous television programs, including CSI: Las Vegas, Bones, and Killer Instinct. Safarik has authored extensively on criminal behavior and has been featured in international journals and textbooks, contributing significantly to the field of forensic behavioral analysis.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome to Unforbidden Truth. I'm Andrew. Today I'll be speaking
with Mark Saffreck. Mark Saffreck is a retired supervisory special
Agent from the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, better known
as the BAU. Mark is widely recognized for his expertise
in criminal profiling and behavioral analysis, with over thirty years
in law enforcement, including twenty three years with the FBI,

(00:41):
during which he consulted on numerous high profile national and
international violent crime cases, specializing in serial and mass murders,
sexual assaults, and complex crime scenes. After retiring from the FBI,
Mark co founded Forensic Behavioral Services International alongside fellow profiler
Robert Wrestler, and, following Wrestler's passing in twenty thirteen, continue

(01:03):
to lead the firm, offering expert analysis and consultation on
intricate criminal and civil cases across the globe. In addition
to his operational work, Mark is a respected academic, holding
an MS in Criminal Justice from Boston University and serving
as an adjunct faculty member at Boston College. Having lectured
to more than twenty thousand law enforcement professionals worldwide and

(01:25):
taught institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania and the
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. His research has made contributions
to the understanding of violent crime, particularly in the area
of elder sexual homicide, and he has authored numerous scholarly
articles and book chapters, including work featured in the Rutlelich
International Handbook of Sexual Homicide Studies. Here's my interview with

(01:46):
Mark Saffreck.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
My name is Mark Saffrick. I am retired FBI criminal profiler.
Started my law enforcement career in nineteen seventy seven. I
was a police officer in California. I worked patrol for
about three and a half years, and I promoted into detectives,

(02:10):
started in property crimes and then went into crimes against persons,
sexual assaults, homicides, adw is, assaultmate, deadly weapons. And I
went to this homicide school nineteen eighty two, excuse me, nineteen, yes,
nineteen eighty two, and there was a couple FBI profilers

(02:32):
that came out to give us two days of instruction,
and I was absolutely mesmerized by this different way of
looking at violent crime from a behavioral perspective, from an
integration of forensic evidence, behavioral evidence and physical evidence. And

(02:52):
I had a couple of complex homicide cases that I
was working, so long story short, I ended up submitting
those through the Sacramento FBI office to the behavioral Unit,
and that's what started my association with the unit. And
after about a year, I decided that's really the direction
I wanted to take my career, so I applied to

(03:15):
the FBI. It took me about a year to get in,
and then it took me about eleven years to get
into the unit, so it was a long, long haul.
I spent almost thirteen years in the behavioral analysis Unit
before retiring and joining one of the legends in this discipline,

(03:37):
Bob Wrestler, who's written a number of books and was
really one of the one of the first people to
you know, decide that we should be interviewing spree killer,
serial killers, mass murders to understand, you know, them, the
dynamics of their crimes and how they make decisions and

(04:03):
sort of the rest is history. I joined him, and
then I essentially took over the business about a year
later when he was getting ill. And now I've had
forensic behavioral services for about almost eighteen years.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Now.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
That's amazing. That's quite the resume.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
So yeah, it's you know, people ask me, you know,
what's the most interesting case you've ever worked, and it's
very it's a very hard thing for me to say,
because typically the take the types of cases that I work,
both when I was in the unit and even now,

(04:44):
are very complex homicide cases and they all have their
own sort of interesting dynamics. Some can have multiple offenders,
multiple victims, a lot of what I would describe as
psychopathology within the crime scene, within the crime and crime scene, and.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
They're all unique. I mean, they're all very different.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
So it's really hard for me to say I can't
really pick out a single case. I can pick out
a number of cases that are interesting for different reasons.
But the challenge, you know, I think one thing that people,
I think what they most of the general public thinks

(05:32):
that the FBI's profilers can profile any homicide. And it's
really that's really not true because the vast majority of
violent crimes, and not just homicides, but sexual assaults and
equivocal deaths, the vast majority are readily solved by competent

(05:57):
homicide investigators. They don't, you know, there's a history. It
could be a domestic violence history, could be gang activity history,
could be drug activity history, but there's usually you know,
connecting factors that.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
The police readily hone in on. So those kinds of.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Cases really, you know, they don't need the type of
assistance or analysis that I can provide. So it's only
when you get into sort of that sort of if
you look at a bell shaped curve of violent behavior,
that extreme end of violent behavior is where is sort

(06:39):
of the area that I work in those complex cases
that have a lot of psychopathology within the scene, excessively violent,
a lot of time spent at the crime scene, a
lot of interaction between the offender and victim, multiple offenders,
multiple victims. So those are the kinds of cases that, uh,

(07:03):
you know, the more psychopathology we have, the better it
is for us. So most cases just simply they just
don't have that level of interest. I mean, they don't
have that level of complication. And you know, for the
most part, homicide detectives solve those cases on their own.

(07:24):
They don't, they don't need it. It's only when you
have you know, very aberrant behavior, very unusual behavior, or
some of their dynamic that they're not that they're not
really you know, used to seeing.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
Right, right.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
So, I know you mentioned a little bit about the
BAU already, but can you talk about how it all
started and wo it entailed when it came to your
work at the BAU.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
So the so originally, and this is more of an
internal thing, and I think some people still refer to it,
but originally it was the Behavioral Sciences Unit, which still exists,
that was really part of the FBI Academy's training academy.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Right.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
What was happening was in the early nineteen seventies, the
FBI was hosting national academies. So the FBI hosts about
two hundred and twenty five law enforcement officers.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
From around the world four.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Times a year for eleven week sessions. They live at
the academy. A lot of these agencies were bringing these unsolved,
very interesting homicide cases and asking the Behavioral Sciences Unit,
like can you offer an opinion about this case? And
what we learned is we really didn't know much about

(08:43):
serial killers and spree killers and mass murders, sexual homicide offenders.
And that was really sort of the impetus to start
that research, which began really in the probably the early
to mid nineteen seventies, and an interesting fact and most
people don't really know this, but you know, if you

(09:05):
want to study something, you have to you have to
identify it. And we actually there was really no term
serial killer until nineteen seventy seven, when my former partner
Bob Wrestler identified, you know, categorized certain types of killers
as serial killers and we actually you know, wrote up

(09:28):
a definition for it. But before that, they were called
rampage killers, multiple murders, series killers. Oftentimes they were called
mass murders. So you can't study something unless you've defined it,
and we had never defined it. No one really had.

(09:49):
And that was where that whole dynamic started really about
the mid nineteen seventies, and then you know, we started
the unit, started doing research and looking at other types
of crimes related to violence, and teaching law enforcement agents

(10:10):
around the world in the National Academy, you know what
we were learning in the research. I joined the unit
in nineteen ninety five. It's when the when the director
of the FBI decided to split off the I guess

(10:31):
sort of the operators in the Behavioral Sciences Unit from
the academics. So the academics remained in the Behavioral Sciences Unit,
and then the actual profilers who were going out into
the field and working cases. They split off into what
is known now as the Behavioral Analysis Unit and really

(10:54):
has been since about that time frame. At the time,
we had Adult Crimes Unit, which is what I was in,
so we handled everything from a serial murderer, spree murders,
mass murders, equivocal deaths, serial sexual assaults, sexual homicide, and

(11:17):
unusual cases. And then the Child Crimes Unit handled generally
crimes against children, child exploitation, child sexual exploitation. And after
nine to eleven, the FBI developed or put together a
third Threat Assessment Terrorism Unit to deal with that. So

(11:41):
at the time I retired, there were three three units.
And then of course we had our ViCAP unit, which
was the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. That was an you know,
something that all of us used for a resource, and
of course it's you know, it was just signed for
law enforcement agencies to input their cases and to see

(12:04):
if there were matches around the country. After I left
in two thousand and seven retired, they started a Cyber
Crimes Behavioral Unit, So so now there's that additional cyber
crime behavior unit. So it's it's, uh, you know, we've

(12:26):
done a lot of research. We uh teach law enforcement.
We work cases around the world, mostly in the US,
but but I have worked cases all over the world
from the unit. I've traveled to South Africa and to
Brazil and Ireland and Germany to work cases. Uh, it

(12:48):
just depends, you know who's making the request and you know,
if it's something within our wheelhouse that you know, we
think we can assist them with.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Are you able to talk about any serial homicide cases
that you have worked, whether they were actively killing or
you were just there to simply interview them.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Sure, So yeah, we've worked. I've worked a number of
serial cases when the killings were going on, and typically
what happens is that a task force is formed from
the various agencies that have cases that they believe are
linked to a particular offender unknown offender. So I've worked

(13:32):
on the Spokane serial murder case. I testified in the
in the death penalty case that that's not Spokane. At
the time, Spokane had I think fourteen cases or so,
but there were two additional cases outside of Pierce County,

(13:55):
which was on the coast right just south of Spoke
out south of Seattle. So I worked that case when
the offender was unknown at the time. We had a
number of cases, I think maybe sixteen or seventeen cases,
so I was out there to go to the crime
scenes to a first figure out do we actually or

(14:18):
all of these cases linked right, So that's what we
want to first discover do we have a linkage?

Speaker 3 (14:24):
But you know, I've worked those cases. I've worked.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
I was on the Derek Todd Lee case with the
Task Force out of Baton Rouge or Button Rouge as
they say, for a couple of weeks. Derek Todd Lee
wasn't known at the time. They had another serial killer
that was active at the same time, so I was
working on that with my partner at the same time

(14:51):
we were working the Derek Todd Lee case. I worked
a number of serial cases over the years. I worked
a case out of South Africa with with forty homicide victims,
worked with the South African Police Service. I've worked I
worked a serial rapist case out of the UK. I've

(15:14):
worked serial rapist cases unknown here. So yeah, I've worked
a number of active cases before the killers were known.
And then of course I've done a number of interviews
with you know, incarcerated offenders both for television and also
as part of research. We had research projects going on.

(15:40):
I did and specialized in research that I developed looking
at the sexual homicides of elderly women, and I developed
an expertise in that and actually a worldwide expertise. Nobody
was really looking at those types of cases. So in

(16:00):
a number of my cases are serial, were serial murder cases.
A lot of them were single homicide cases, sexual homicide cases,
but that that victim group had had not really been
studied before. So that was, you know, we're just adding
to the research. A lot of research and sexual homicide,
but this was one group of victims that we hadn't

(16:24):
really studied in terms of homicides. We had there had
been some research looking at elderly females in terms of
sexual assault.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
Some of them.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Lived, some of them did not, But this one was
this research was focused specifically on murder cases sexual homicide cases.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
But yeah, I've.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Done you know, cases where they're active and the offender
is unknown, cases where the offender is incarcerated. Typically in
a serial murder case, you're not you're not going to
be interviewing somebody that's been arrested, but not sure Pride
yet just because of the dynamics of you know, having
a defense and not having gone to trial. But I

(17:09):
haven't interviewed incarcerated offenders on various crime, serial merk cases
and others.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
You mentioned going to South Africa. Was that happened to
be for Moses Sitthole by.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Chance it was? I don't think so. It was a
series of all male victims, all African males, young, mostly

(17:42):
from twelve to like fifteen, But I think the offender
was not well known.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
It wasn't that case.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
I'm just curious because that case has always been interested
to mean, Moses Sittholds is like a phenomenon in itself
in South Africa, probably one of the most high profile
at that huh.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Well maybe outside of Oscar Pastorius. Right right, right, So,
although he wasn't a serial killer or anything, but in
terms of notoriety.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
You know, his case was very high profile.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Right. So, can you talk about criminal profiling when it
comes to serial offenders with the processes of creating a
profile for that offender or offenders?

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (18:29):
So, you know, I think when most people think of
the FBI's profiling in it, they think of criminal profiling. So,
but criminal profiling is one one aspect of the types
of services that the FBI offered under the umbrella of
criminal investigative analysis. So when you talk about criminal profiling,

(18:54):
you're talking about linking the offender characteristics within a crime
scene to a particular individual. Most of the cases that
we would work would be unknown offender cases where you're
trying to develop essentially excuse me, a behavioral profile or

(19:19):
a personality profile of an individual their habits to help
law enforcement narrow the full focus of, say, a potential
pool of suspects. So criminal profiling isn't allowed in US

(19:41):
courts because we are not allowed to talk about the
dynamics of the crime scene and then link them to
a particular individual. That really invades the purview of the
jury and the judge. But what we do oftentimes is
crime scene and analysis. Literally everything that we do, whether

(20:03):
it's advice on search warrant considerations, expert testimony work, personality
indirect personality assessment, search warrant considerations, what kind of language
language should go into a search warrant, all of those

(20:24):
require us to analyze the dynamics of.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
The crime scene.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
So I would say that's sort of the that's the
most important thing for us to do, and then we
can do for a lot of agencies like an unknown
offender profile like what does this individual look like? What
are his relationships going to look like? What is driving
the crime? What is going on here?

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Right?

Speaker 2 (20:52):
We can do that by assessing injuries, by assessing the
whole process of the crime, planning, the evidence or lack
of evidence of planning, and organization, injuries, weapon use, mo
other behavioral dynamics like staging behavior, ritualized behavior, undoing behavior, depersonalization.

(21:21):
Those are the kinds of dynamics that appear in the
cases that we typically work on. And as I said before,
when you're working a serial murder case, right, the idea
is to figure out are all these cases linked? Because
you may have an agency that says, I think this
case is part of the series. It may may or

(21:44):
may not be right, So clearly establishing a linkage. Now,
maybe that linkage is done through forensic evidence. Maybe you
have hairs, fibers, DNA, right fingerprints, But if you don't
and you're relying on the behavioral aspects of the case,

(22:04):
then that's you know, where we can assess. Right, So
in a serial case, it's important I think from our
perspective to understand when the series started. And once you
start looking at the cases, rendering an opinion of whether
the case, the first case that we're looking at is

(22:27):
actually the first case. There may be aspects to the
cases where I would say, based on this behavior, this
case that we're identifying as the first case is not
his first case. There are previous cases, So that's important

(22:48):
looking at the cases chronologically to understand what the time
separation in this is. And that's difficult sometimes because you
may have a case that predates another case, but the
victim isn't found until after later cases, So trying to

(23:08):
figure out where in the series this particular case is
based on perhaps decomposition or last scene records, you know
when people say last time I saw her was this
night and then you know, supposed to get together with
the next day, she didn't show up. So actually getting

(23:28):
the order right and then looking for escalation or perhaps
de escalation among the cases, and you know, is there
a learning curve because typically with the modus operandi, offenders
are learning to be better offenders and they do this
oftentimes through trial and error, and so you know, they

(23:51):
they do something and an aspect of that may not
work out for them, and then they try to compensate
for that in the next they do. So I'm looking
to see is there progression through the series? Is he
getting better or is she getting better through the series?
Are they learning right so? Or is there an escalation

(24:15):
of violence?

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Right?

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Is this fantasy driven? And if so, is the fantasy
not fulfilling? You know what the individual's hoping for? And
so we see successfully more violent crimes and all of that.
You know, in a serial case, I follow literally the

(24:39):
same protocol in every case, and that is that first,
I want to understand victimology. I have to understand who
the victim is. I remember getting a call on the
on the Gilgo Beach killer when they first identified some
of these remains, and they want, you know, they asked me,

(25:04):
you know, is this a serial killer? I said, I
have no idea, because you don't really know anything until
you know who your victims are. If you don't have
a victim identity, that's your starting point. You've got to
identify the victims. If you have no identity, you really

(25:25):
there's no way to comment on anything like that.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
And that was the.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Problem initially in the Gilgo beach killings. As I was
being asked to render opinions about unidentified remains, Well, there's
nothing you can really say till we know.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Who these people are.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
So victimology is one of the keys because I want
to understand why this particular person became the victim of
this violent crime. Is it something in their criminal history?
Is it something in their social history, sexual history, financial history?
What are their relationships like as this person married, I'm married, divorced?

(26:06):
What's that dynamic look like? What kind of job do
they do? How do they get there? What do their
financial records look like?

Speaker 3 (26:13):
Are is there a.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Psychiatric history here? So not all of that is applicable
to every case, but I want to delve into their
background to understand, you know, at what risk are they
for becoming the victim of a violent crime. Risk level
is important, And on the flip side, victimology helps me

(26:37):
to understand what level of risk the offender is willing
to take to commit the crime. So you have different dynamics.
You can have the same victim. For instance, you can
have a sex worker who's working when her risk is

(26:58):
very high because she's engaging with people she doesn't know
under the cover of darkness, she's going to isolated locations.
The risk for the offender at that time is low,
the risk for her is high. That informs me, but
the potential size of the offender pool. Now the converse,

(27:24):
you may have the exact opposite. You may have the
same sex worker who's not working, who is in a
locked environment with her kids and her dog, and she
gets someone breaks in and attacks her in the residence.
So now her risk level is much much lower, but

(27:48):
the level of risk for the offender to assault her
at that time is much higher. So understanding that victim
an offender risk dynamic informs motive for me. It informs
whether the crime is targeted or opportunistic. It informs the

(28:12):
access It informs whether what obstacles someone either disregarded or
had to overcome to commit the crime. So victimology, there's
a lot of components to it, but that's really a
key piece. And then I want to understand what are

(28:34):
the injuries, what is the cause of death, what is
the weapon? How many weapons do we have? Injury is
very important. I have published on injury. I developed a
homicide injury scale which has been used by others and
is found to be a valid scale. But so injury

(28:57):
is very important, and you know what is the and
how many injuries, When were they inflicted, how are they inflicted?
Are the injuries post mortem? Are they anti mortem? Are
they pery mortem? Are they superficial injuries? Are they defensive injuries?
Are they fatal injuries? And I gleaned that information from

(29:19):
the medical examiner's report, So I'm leaning on another expert
to tell me, you know, and of course I've read
thousands of autopsies, so I have a very good understanding
of what I'm reading and can draw my conclusions based
on the types of injuries.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
And not only that, but.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
You know, the where the injuries were inflicted, What does
the scene look like, How did the offender access the scene?
You know, was this did this appear to be a
planned crime or is there a lot of disorganization? What
post defense behaviors do we have going on? What did
the offender do with the victim after the homicide? Are

(30:02):
they engaging with the victim? Are they just leaving the
victim at the scene. So there are all these various
nuances that I'm looking at within a crime scene, and
some of them are very subtle. Others aren't so subtle.
Some are applicable when you know when I look at

(30:24):
when I use the same template things, some things just
don't apply based on the case or the victim or
the location, and other things are more important because what
I'm really trying to understand is what happened here? How
did the events unfold both chronologically and temporarily, and ultimately

(30:49):
can we answer the why? Why this question? Why this person,
why this day, why this time, why this location?

Speaker 3 (31:00):
Why this way?

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Sometimes I can't answer all those buts that's my goal.
So in a serial murder case, I'm doing that with
each case, and I already know. First I would say,
you know, I know that the cases are linked. And
then secondly, I know the best I can know the

(31:24):
series of the cases. You know who was first, second, third,
I don't always know that, But so once I have
that information, then I can start analyzing the cases and
I look at each one because each case is different,
each victim's different scenarios are different, and that's really the process.

(31:51):
I use that process really for any case, whether it's
a sexual assault, serial sexual assault, whether it's a sexual homicide.
You know, a single case, it's not a it's not
a not a serial case if it's an equivocal death.
And I don't know if your listeners know what an
equivocal death is, but an equivocal death is where the

(32:14):
manner of death is unknown. So in the in the
United States, we have five manners of death if homicide, natural, suicide, accident,
and then we have a category called undetermined. Sometimes you
can't tell what it is. You can eliminate one or

(32:38):
two of the manners, but you don't know is it
suicide or homicide, is it is it an accident.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Or is it natural? Is it suicide or accident?

Speaker 2 (32:55):
So then those are really some of the most difficult
cases to do because when you have a homicide, you
you know what you have. You know you have a homicide,
so you work from that premise. But if you don't
know what you have, if you don't know the manner
of death, you may know the cause of death, but

(33:16):
you may not know the manner of death. And then
so now you're basically, you know, hypothesizing. You know, here
are the things that are consistent with homicide. Here are
things that are inconsistent with homicide. Here are things that
are consistent with suicide or with accident. So those are

(33:37):
almost more difficult types of cases because you have to
you have to go through the process you know to
to and in the end you're just rendering an opinion,
right based on your analysis. My opinion is that this
is more likely than not based on what I've what

(33:58):
I've proffered here. You know this manner versus this.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
So do you have any memorable interviews or any memorable
cases that you worked on that you were just excited
to close or somebody just excited to interview?

Speaker 2 (34:16):
You know, I've had cases that are unsolved that I've
worked on that have perplexed me for.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
My career.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
I worked on the Jennifer Lynn case out of Castro Valley, California,
outside San Francisco. I worked on that case with Henry
Lee Henry Henry as a friend of mine. I was
out to that scene three different times. I know what happened,

(34:52):
I know how it happened pretty sure, I know why,
but I don't know the who. It's very frustrating and
I don't think that case will ever be solved. I
had an interesting case out of Washington State. A mother
and daughter murdered up in the in the woods with

(35:15):
a lot of really unusual behavior. As I assessed the case,
I was pretty sure I knew the dynamics of everything,
but I didn't you know, I couldn't figure out who
it was. Yeah, I think I don't know what's that
case is, but it was unsolved. The last time I

(35:35):
saw interesting interviews, I would say I interviewed a guy
named Reggie McFadden. He's a serial killer. Reggie was a
very interesting interview. He's quite articulate, quite engaging, and charismatic.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Really liked to.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Pull the conversation in his direction. Some some suspects are
very good at that, like moving the direction of where
you want to go to where they want to go.
I found myself constantly trying to pull him back. Okay,
so that's fine, but here's what I asked you. Right,

(36:26):
but you know, sort of a charming guy, right, you
understand when you're talking to him, how he could be
very affable with potential victims. I thought his interview was
very interesting, contrasted with Joel Rifkin, who I interview Joel Rifkin.

(36:48):
You know, I was very surprised that for as long
as he had been incarcerated and no doubt had been
examined by psychiatrists and psychologists throughout his criminal career because
of the trials that.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
He went through.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
That he I would have expected that he had a
better grasp on why he did certain things.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
But he didn't.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
I mean, even for you know, somebody in the medical
field to explain to him right what, you know, what
their diagnosis was, and why he thought about certain things
certain ways, he seemed to not grasp any that.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
I was surprised.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
I expected someone who would have a better understanding of,
you know, why they were doing what they were doing.
Although he was interesting in the sense that when we
started talking about some cases, I could see that he
was drifting away, like playing it over in his mind,

(38:06):
the crime. They're like a real a film reel, that
he was reliving the event.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
I could.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
I could just see the way he drifted away from
me when we talked about certain cases. I think I
even commented to him about that that he was he
was reliving the case. He was seeing, you know, seeing
what had happened again in his mind. He had it
all captured. Those are those are two interesting interviews. I

(38:38):
interviewed a serial rapist, Christopher Hubbard. He was an interesting you.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
Know, some people.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
Are really you know, in tune with why they're doing
certain things and others aren't.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
He was. He was pretty clear about why he was
engaging in rape.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
There was another serial killer I interviewed who his name
escapes me at the moment. He's actually incarcerated in Virginia.
He raped and murdered seven women when he was about
seventeen years old. I think it was over. It was
within a one year time span. Excuse me, money, Ristol

(39:23):
is the guy MONI is very interesting, a very interesting interview,
very astute, freely admits what he did, very introspective about
his crimes.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
So you know, some people are like that.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
They're very introspective, they know what they did, why they
did it, they explain it to you. And then others
just seem not to be really in touch with that
component of themselves. When you expect that, they probably would
be considering the length of time they been incarcerated.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Right, did you ever after people were arrested or when
you were doing interviews, was there anybody that ever like
creeped you out or got under your skin to the
point where you just like didn't want to be around them.
I'm sure you've dealt with.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
So, yeah, not really in that sense.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
I mean, you know, I'm six six, about two and
forty pounds, so I'm not a small person, right, So
I'm not you know. And I was a cop before
so work patrol, and yeah, I arrested a lot of people,
and I've rested guys.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
Who threatened me, threatened my.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Life multiple times, so that I'm not, you know, I've
never been intimidated by that kind of dynamic. I did interview.
So there are two serial killers. I interviewed Henry Lucas.
I interviewed him with Ray BEYONDI now passed with he

(40:57):
was lieutenant in charge of Sacramento County Homicide Unit. And
John Compston from a Nevada Division of Investigations homicide.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
The three of us.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Interviewed Henry in Williamson County, Texas. Henry was an interesting interview.
I was actually one thing that astounded me about it,
Henry because he has almost oh well he's deceased now,
but he had almost no education but his recall of

(41:31):
so he wasn't he wasn't book smart, but he was
he was very smart in terms of where he'd ben.
He could describe places that he'd been, So he was
a predator but all of his intelligence, I would say,

(41:51):
was related to places he'd been. And I think this
related to his ability to survive because he'd been on
the street for so long that you know, you have
to develop this sense of where you are, what's safe,
what's not safe. He was, he was very had tremendous

(42:12):
recall for four places. But his partner, who I also
interviewed in Florida, Luke Autist Tool that was the only
kind of creepy guy I ever not because I felt threatened.
I didn't, but Autus was just a very odd duck.

(42:34):
I spent about ten hours with Ottis, and.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
He was.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
He was always just he was making a hard hard
to explain it. I understood that he liked candy cane
because I think we were interviewing him around Christmas time,
that he liked peppermint, so I bought I bought a
broad for him, this large peppermint stick, which he pretended

(43:05):
to treat like a phallic symbol throughout the entire interview, right,
constantly like doing things, looking to see, for watching, you know,
just to like just to get under your skin. Right,
It's just an odd guy, very odd. Probably the oddest
interview that I've ever done for a serial offender. Not threatening,

(43:28):
but just bizarre. So I would say, yeah, he's probably
the weirdest interview I've ever done.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
So what's the most fascinating thing you've learned from a
serial offender throughout your career?

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Well, I think I think the most important thing that
I would take away is that serial offending is there's
there's no template for serial offenders. That they're all different.
They come from all races, all creeds, all colors, all

(44:10):
parts of the world. And I learned this too in
my spree Killers. I wrote a book on spree killers.
Have four hundred and nineteen spree killers in the book,
the same thing forty seven different countries. Serial murder isn't
unique to the United States, It's not unique to any country.

(44:31):
Every country has serial killers. They all have different interests,
They have different victim types, or maybe they don't really
have a victim type.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Maybe you know.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
They're willing to attack males or females, young, old, others
have very specific victim types and won't work outside of that.
But they're all very different. And this is what I
tell people when you are assessing a serial murder case,

(45:09):
that you have to do the same analysis for that
case as any other serial case. Even within the series,
They're going to be differences and you have to understand
what those differences are and hopefully why you're seeing changes
or differences in the cases. But there's no one template

(45:33):
for serial killers. They're males, they're females. Although females, they're
typically a lot less female serial killers and a lot
less you know, the motives for serial killing for females
is oftentimes different than for males. But you know, they

(45:55):
killed the old, they killed the young. It's there's a
there's a serial killer out there who will target, you know,
a various dynamic, various type of victim in a various
type of location that will be completely different than another

(46:18):
serial killer. They're they're all different. They all have different motives.
Some work in teams, some most work alone. But I
think the variety is that is probably the biggest takeaway
I would tell from I would tell most people that
you can't pigeonhole serial killers, and I would say that

(46:42):
the vast majority of them are price psychopaths. It is
it is the hallmark of what allows them to repeatedly
kill in sometimes very egregious, vicious and brutal ways and
act like they're completely normal a half an hour later.

(47:05):
That lack of empathy, that narcissistic approach to life, the
approach that everything really belongs to them. I think their's
motto is sort of like, what's mine is mine, what's
yours is mine. That's the way they look at the world.

(47:27):
If I want to take it, I will take it.
If it hurts you, that's okay with me. But I
would say that psychopathy is probably very prevalent in almost
all serial killers, some rather significant level of psychopathy. So
those are probably the two big takeaways. And you start

(47:49):
to see this when you interview these individuals and when
you do research on these types of individuals, and when
you read the research that has been done by others.
This is a big takeaway. And you have to be
careful when you are looking at cases that you believe

(48:10):
maybe linked. And that's why I said one of the
first things that we do in serial cases is understand
do we actually have linked cases?

Speaker 1 (48:23):
So to round this out, I want to ask you
about two different cases, and the first being the Zodiac Killer.
Have you ever gone down to a rabbit hole with
that case? And if so, do you have any theories
on who might have done it or do you know
who done it?

Speaker 2 (48:38):
No, I've read a lot on the Zodiac case. I've
never i never worked to the Zodiac case. So I've
never gone down that rabbit. No, I haven't other than
you know, just superficially reading the case. You know, when
I was a cop, two of the homicides, or one

(49:02):
of the homicides it should have been a double homicide
happened at Lake bary Essa, which was very close to
where I lived. And in fact, just as the side.
When I was a police officer, I actually worked on
the Golden State killer case because there were several homicides

(49:24):
that happened in my jurisdiction and I was working. We
were pretty sure that this was a fairly athletic individual
and he was coming across Fields, parking way out on
county roads and then coming across Fields, and so I
remember a number of nights working all night long with

(49:47):
night vision equipment, surveying, you know, from like ten pm
to six am, surveying these areas that we thought he
would be coming through. That was back when he was
known as the East Area rapist. He had various monikers
over time, but that was one of my first actual

(50:09):
introductions too, working on a serial killer case that I,
you know, at the time was knew nothing about profiling.
He had actually ever heard of it at the time.
It was probably nineteen seventy eight, seventy seven or seventy eight.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
The Zodiac case.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Other than just reading, I read the book on the Zodiac,
but I think it was Gray's book. I think that's
the authors in Gray. I have it over there, one
of the I've got hundreds of books on various vendors.
But I did read the book on the Zodiac, but

(50:55):
I never worked on the case and really don't have
an opinion on it to you know. I know there's
various individuals that have been proffered as being you know,
the Zodiac, but I don't think it's ever been definitive.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
As to who he is, right.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
I know, there's like college kids that claim that they've
cracked the code and this and that, but I know
nothing's ever really been likely out there as it being
completely solved, which I don't think it ever will.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
Yeah, probably not at this point. You know. It's kind
of like the the Jennifer Lynn case.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
You know that the home all of that areas completely changed,
and and that was a lot. It was a long
time ago. Unless somebody on their deathbed in midst to
it and can provide, you know, evidence to show that
they have proprietary information, probably won't be solved.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Right right, Yeah, Another offender I want to ask you
about it as Richard Allen Davis. And the only reason
I want to ask you about him is because I
spent almost three hours with him a few weeks ago
doing an interview with him, and he said, after he
was arrested for the kidnapping of polyclass, somebody from the
BAU had came or either somebody or a few people
had came and spoke to him. I was curious if

(52:16):
you were one of those people that had spoke to
him at the time.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
No, that was my partner, Mary Ellen O'Toole. So I
had a partner in the BAU. She I originally came
from the Sacramento Division and she came from the San
Francisco Division. We were both the National Center for the
Analysis of Violent Crime coordinators in the FBI before we

(52:39):
both promoted into the Behavioral Analysis Unit. We knew each
other for years before that we worked each other as cases.
Her case was the Jennifer Lynn case. I worked that
case with her and then took that case over when
I got.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Into the BAU.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
We both got into the BAU about the same time,
and she was my partner for you know, almost thirteen years.
But she was the one that spent time with Davis,
interviewed him, and mostly because she that had been her territory,
the San Francisco Bay, San Francisco Field Office, So she

(53:18):
was the one that worked that case.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
I did Todd.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
So I've asked him before if he's committed any other homicides,
and he told me that there were three marijuana farmers
somewhere in I forget that, I forget what. It's Humboldt County,
and he cleared there were three marijuana farmers that were
tortured and murdered and their hands and feet were nailed
to the ground, and he claims responsibility for it. Have
you guys ever suspected of him committed other murders?

Speaker 3 (53:43):
I couldn't answer that. I don't really know.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
But why why would he why would he kill them
that way? Did he did explain?

Speaker 1 (53:52):
He didn't. He just said that he robbed their marijuana.
There was pounds and pounds of marijuana. Then he just
killed them just for mere fun. Really, But I don't
know if I really believe him because all these.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
It doesn't really, it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
And what you're describing is it takes a lot of effort, right,
And how do you control them in this process? In
other words, they're alive and so you have to capture
them that how do you do that?

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Right?

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Well, he told me he had a gut on them
and then he tied them all up, and then he
nailed their hands and feet to the ground, and he
basically tortured them to death. But I've known him for
almost ten years and told me this about two years ago,
and I asked him why it took him so long
to telling me, and he's like, well, I just didn't
I just didn't trust you. I don't trust anybody like Okay,
I'm not sure if I believe that, but it's an
interesting story.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
Nonetheless, Yeah, it doesn't you know.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
I guess you have to look at his history, but
I mean, it doesn't make sense, you know. I always
look at can can someone control somebody like that? Individuals
who are growing marijuana probably very wary individuals you know,
they're not unlike to be taken by surprise. Why would
he be up there by himself, even if you have

(55:04):
a gun, trying to capture three individuals at the same time.
It's difficult, and what would be the point of, you know,
engaging in all that other behavior. He doesn't sound like
a sexual sadist. That's what a sexual sadist would do.
That's a fairly rear type of offender. He doesn't strike

(55:25):
me that way. There's nothing in his history that would
suggest that. His writings, his drawings, and nothing that I
would see in his history that would suggest that. But
that behavior he's describing is would be a sexual sadist, right,
certainly a sadist. But yeah, it doesn't really make much sense.

(55:47):
And of course he can say that because.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
You know, where was it?

Speaker 2 (55:50):
You know, you don't know, and you know, did they
ever find these individuals? I mean, you know, the three
people that are murdered and tortured, and he didn't bury
the bodies or do anything else to them where they
ever located. It seems that they should have been right,
somebody would have missed them. So yeah, those kind of
stories sound good, but you know, until there's something that

(56:15):
can provide some veracity to it. I think that's you know,
you're right to like And as you said, why didn't
you tell me about these earlier? Right? I've been talking
to you for years, right, we have a level of rapport,
and even that information you're telling me, now, there's something
I can really do with that. There isn't any specificity

(56:38):
to it other than what you're telling me, But there's
no specific location to go to. You don't know the
names of who these people were, so you know, to
throw that out there at this late date sounds gratuitous.
And you know what does it really get him other

(56:58):
than you know, you talking. Maybe he uses that, use
that to keep you talking to him. I don't know, right,
but you know I'm wary of that because you know,
deal with lots of offenders to claim claim doing lots
of different things for for various reasons, you know, to

(57:19):
sound good to others. Most of it is you know
it's not true, you know. And then we have people
that claim to have killed made done killings when they
didn't do them at all, right, right, right, So yeah,
so unless you con vet that information, you know, that

(57:41):
type just remains. You know, I just hold it out
here and go, Okay, that's what you said.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Can you prove it?

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Do you have anything that can provide any veracity to
what you're telling me?

Speaker 3 (57:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yeah, I think he just thought that I would be glible.
And like he he did send me a piece of
paper that he had like a I don't know if
it's like a warn or whatnot, but they took a
blood test from him, and he claims it was for
the marijuana farmers cold case homicides. But then I asked him,
you know, what were their names? Oh, I don't know.
This was in like the seventies, and you know how old,

(58:19):
Like what color was their hair? How old do you
think they were?

Speaker 3 (58:21):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
This was such long ago. I was strung out in
drugs this And then I'm like, okay, so.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Well why why why would they be taking his blood
in the seventies? Is that what he said?

Speaker 2 (58:30):
This?

Speaker 1 (58:31):
No, this was recently, this was maybe like ten years ago. Okay, yeah,
this was like a He said that this was for
like a cold case, a triple cold case homicide, and
he sent me the paper, but it mentioned nowhere on
the paper that this was for you know, a cold case,
triple homicide anything like that. It was just a routine
blood dross. I don't know if he was trying to

(58:51):
string me along or whatever, but it, I mean, he's
he's an interesting guy to say the least.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
I mean, he was it. What was it? I mean,
what was it? Who was the age agency? What agency
was working this?

Speaker 1 (59:02):
It was the it was something in California. I forget
what it was, but it was it was some type
of like law enforcement agency. But I guess it could
have been for anything, you know. I don't know if
they routinely take blood from prisoners to like running in
the system for cold cases or whatnot.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
But I'm well, his blood would have already been taken
a long time ago and placed in Dakotas, So I mean,
there wouldn't be any reason to draw blood on him
unless there's you know, they're trying to identify whether he's
currently using you know, illicit substances or I mean, I
can't think of any other reason why you would be

(59:37):
drawing blood at this time. He's been incarcerated for I don't.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Know a long time, yeah, like at least almost forty years,
I would say, at least, I mean since since I've
been more and at least he's been locked up.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
Yeah, so what would be the point of drawing blood
at this point, right, right?

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Yeah, kind of kind of weird, but he's always been
one that's trying to get me to believe certain things,
like he'll always he's he's a prison gossip er too.
He always tells me about the gossip in the prison,
who's getting stabbed, who's having sex with the guards, all this,
so on and so forth. I don't think either, right right, Yeah.

(01:00:15):
He recently got moved from two different prisons because there
was there was attempts on his life. Actually, you know,
because they're they're on the way to abolishing the death
penalty in California, and everybody knows who the three strikes
guy is, so I guess they've been I guess they
ran into his cell at a previous prison and they
tried to beat him up and they knocked him out,
and we're trying to stab him and all this. I
think it's a matter of time before Davis leaves this

(01:00:37):
world because he is really sick too. And I guess
every prison he goes to he's on mainline now and
he doesn't want to go to PC, so it's it's
a matter of time before I think they take him out.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
Honestly, Yeah, where is he? Where is he now?

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Last I knew he was that? Uh, iron what I
want to say. But he's waiting to be He's waiting
to get moved again because the last two prisons he's
gone to, he's got beat up the time he's gone
to and he refuses PC, which I don't really understand
why he does. I mean, he knows that he's not
going to make it. And he's in a wheelchair now
too at that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
So, oh, maybe maybe he doesn't want to be in isolation.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Right right, Yeah, maybe he just wants to He just
probably wants to go, because he's told me that he's
not afraid to die, and he's just ready to go.
I mean, he knows he's never going to get out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
I mean he's well, it doesn't you know, honestly, in California,
doesn't really matter if they abolish a death penalty. I
think they've executed anybody for an exceptionally long period of time.
I think California has more inmates on death row than
any other state by a long stretch. I think they've
got it, maybe a thousand people on death row.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, close to that, Yeah, for sure, and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
There's never executed. I don't when was the last execution
in California. I think it was Stanley Tokey Williams. Actually,
I'm pretty sure he was the last execution, and I
want to say that was in like the eight I
want to say he was like a cript leader. But
besides that, don't, I don't, I can't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
A very long time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Yeah, even if they didn't abolish it, there there's no
likelihood then that he would be subject to the death
I mean that he would be killed right, executed.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Anyway? Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Yeah, you know, you have to take with a grain
of salt when these individuals tell you, honestly, unless somebody
is willing to provide, you know, something concrete evidence that
shows that they were involved, or could provide some information
that would be considered hold back information by the agency,

(01:02:43):
the law enforcement agency investigating the case, something specific that
only the killer would know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
But throwing out stuff like yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
I know killed these three guys that were grown marijuana
and Humboldt County.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
I don't know who they were. I can't remember where
it was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Yeah, yeah right, so yeah, I mean maybe it's true,
but most likely it's not right, right, Yeah, probably just
something to string me along. But he doesn't really need
to string me along because I find his case really
fascinating and he's an interesting you know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
But but you know, for entertainment's sake, for his own entertainment,
right right, Yeah, that's listening to you basically trying to
get information about it, right, entertains him.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
So right, Yeah, I've never thought about it that way. Yeah,
that's that's completely true. Well, I appreciate you giving me
your time today. I know we've been on here for
almost an hour or so. I you know, I appreciate you, know,
you give me your time. I've always wanted to speak
to you about the BAU and and different offenders. I've
spoke to doctor kathyin Ramslin, now doctor Burgess, doctor Michael Stone,

(01:03:50):
may he rest in peace, doctor Gary Pricado. So you're
basically the one that I Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
I know you know all of them.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
I mean, doctor Stone has passed, but as Catherine and
I have written in our book together, and we've written
a number of articles together as well, Anne Burgesson. I've
lectured for Ann a number of times, and and I
have published together. You know, she's she's a great individual. Yeah,
it's you know, it's a small world really, the people

(01:04:20):
that do this kind of work, and you know, you
know them, and you know the researchers that are doing
you know work in homicide and sexual homicide and multi sides.
You know, I just was co author and an article
that came out in the journal Forensic Sciences came out.

(01:04:41):
I came out online in November. I thought it was
supposed to be in the January issue of the Forensic
Sciences Journal, but it may be out this month. On
juvenile parricide, offenders who kill their juveniles, who kill their parents,
and you know, the various aspects of their crime scenes.

(01:05:02):
So yeah, still still fascinated by, you know, various dynamics
within you know, this is sort of a you know,
interesting aspect of youthful you know, offenders who kill, so
always interesting to stay in the stay in the research area,

(01:05:23):
whether I'm actually you know, doing analysis or or you
know reading. But yes, it's it's a big change from
you know, the mid seventies when we first started doing this, right,
It's it seems like a long time, but you know,
in the span of of you know, serial killings are

(01:05:46):
our knowledge base is you know, is a pretty short
times time frame. So but we've learned a tremendous amount
both behaviorally from offenders and forensically, right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
Yeah, I can only imagine how far, especially with technology.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
I mean there's yeah, and genetic genealogy has really really
helped solve a lot of interesting cases, long long cases
that have been around for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
So it's like the Golden State killer like you were
talking about, which.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Is yeah, yep, that's that's a good example of the case.
The serial killer of the I think he passed recently.
Sometimes these names, you know, I see the case and
he was in Texas, Texas Rangers for Dealing America. Yeah,

(01:06:41):
Sam Little, Yes, thank you for refreshing my recollection, Sam Little.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
So another case you know that you know what, do
we have caught this guy without you know, the advances
in forensic technology, you know, hard to say. I think
that's also why it's much more difficult to be a
long term serial killer now. You know the days of

(01:07:08):
Ted Bundy and and you know a lot of those
older type serial killers before the day of DNA and
genetic genealogy and law enforcement practices. Radio communications, twenty four
to seven news, surveillance, all of these are playing a

(01:07:33):
big role. I mean, look at the role surveillance played
in the in the recent United Healthcare killing up in
New York. Surveillance photographs in surrealans video played a huge role,
critical role in getting this guy identified. And you know,
we forget about that. You know, even things as simple

(01:07:56):
as databases you know before before the other databases, the
DEAs database, the bullet database, you know for YCAP, you know,
these are all you know, important in stopping offenders before

(01:08:22):
they become prolific. So I think, you know, we'll we'll
stop somebody after maybe two or three murders that that
twenty five years ago, thirty years ago would have been
a prolific serial killer. And I think that that we
intercept them much earlier now and they're in they're development, right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
I've heard a few experts tell me that the the
like the the old serial killers are basically nowadays mass
murderers because it's probably so hard to get away with
multiple murderers multiple murders nowadays, so they probably just go
out and kill a bunch of people out one time
to satisfy their needs or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Well, I think mass murders for different. I made spree
killers and are different than mass murders or different than
the serial killers. There's some crossover, but right, but I
think they're different. I think they're their motivations are different,
their outlook on you know, getting away or being not
being identified or are very different. Mass murders and serial

(01:09:24):
killers are very very different. That way, spree killers can
go one way or the other. But yeah, I think that.
I think it's a different it's a different type of killer.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Anyway, I enjoyed. I've enjoyed the conversation today. I hope
I hope your listeners will enjoy it as well.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Oh yeah, I'm sure they will. I appreciate your time again.
And uh, you know, maybe in the future if I
if I can land a big name serial killer, we
can do analysis or something like that. I mean, I
have so many in my catalog right now, but I'm
definitely after a couple right now.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
Okay, sounds good, Andrew.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Awesome, Thank you so much. You take care. Okay, you
bet you do the same, all right, Thanks bye, Thanks bye.
That was my interview with Mark Saffrick. If you would
like to pick up some merchant support the show head
on over to Unforbidden truth dot org. Thank you for listening,
See you on the next one.