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Criminal profiler job isn't like TV's image

July 9, 2002 1:00 am

Youth Correspondent

I HAVE STALKERS. I have wackoes calling me all the time. I have killers who, if they get out of jail, are going to come after me because I've kept them in there for so long."

Welcome to the life of criminal profiler John Douglas.

Douglas, who lives in the Washington area, joined the FBI in 1970 after meeting an agent at the gym. In the 31 years since, he has emerged as the pioneer of criminal profiling and worked on world-renowned cases--including those of O.J. Simpson, John Benet Ramsey and Wayne B. Williams.

He's interviewed serial killer Charles Manson, among others, and was the first pick for Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs.

"John Douglas knows more about serial killers than anybody in the world," says Jonathan Demme, director of the movie. "And he's a great guy, very articulate, very sweet."

Criminal profiling, unlike what some popular TV shows suggest, is based on a deep understanding of the criminal psyche. If an agent knows what makes bad guys tick, he can take crime-scene evidence and put together a fairly accurate profile, or description, of the criminal. Police, in turn, can use the profile to narrow down manhunts and eventually arrest the right suspect.

"The show, "Profiler," makes it seem like a psychic thing," Douglas says. "But it all comes from interviewing a lot of subjects (i.e. bad guys) and getting a sense of what they're all about."

Sounds very simple and logical, but in the '70s, it was unheard of. At the time, Douglas was one of nine agents assigned to the Behavioral Science Unit--a group whose assignment was to go around the country and teach applied criminal psychology to police officers.

The only problem was that the cops often knew more about the cases than the agents themselves.

"The police would say, 'Wait a minute so-and-so. I've worked the case. You've got your facts wrong,'" Douglas explains.

"Sometimes--say for example it was David Berkowitz, a killer in New York--the instructors would ask, 'Is there anyone from New York?' just to make sure that before they started yakking they wouldn't be challenged."

But FBI agents weren't the only ones without enough first-hand knowledge. Psychologists were also in the dark.

"Say you're going to be making a decision concerning probation, parole and treatment, and you don't even know what a guy did" in his past, Douglas points out. "Mr. Psychologist or Psychiatrist, you're dealing with these people, you should [conduct a behaviorally-oriented interview with the criminal].

"When they say they rely on self-reporting, I say, 'You actually believe that a criminal sitting across the table is going to be telling you the truth? If you believe that, you're pretty naïve.'"

All this time, Douglas had been wondering what to do with the two weeks of downtime between each session of teaching cops. Now he knew.

"I said, 'Let's go into the penitentiaries and see if these guys will talk to us. Let's see if Manson will talk to us.'"

On the surface, the idea was revolting. But to Douglas, it was revolutionary. Interviewing criminals, he reasoned, was the best way to find out--first-hand--trends and patterns in their behavior. The FBI could use this knowledge to predict how a criminal would act in any given situation--and, furthermore, profile the perpetrator of any given crime.

"We didn't ask permission [from the FBI]," Douglas explains, smiling. "'Cause we used to say, 'It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.'"

What's really remarkable, however, is Douglas' lack of fear going into this operation.

"It's an intimidating environment," he concedes, once pressed. "to hear the doors clanging behind you. You don't even trust the guards because they're buddies with the bad guys. But the actual interview is really nothing."

Thus, armed with a 57-page interview protocol, Douglas sat face to face with some of crime's most gruesome personalities.

To his surprise, the offenders were willing and even eager to talk about their escapades.

"A criminal's fantasy is like a CD playing over and over again," he explains. "You can lock up the physical body, but the brain and the fantasy you can't change. I have to reach into the brain and turn on the CD."

Douglas did exactly that in his interview of Joe Magnum in New Jersey.

In 1973, Magnum raped and murdered a Girl Scout selling cookies from door to door. Even after serving 25 years in prison, he wouldn't confess to his crimes--and now he was up for parole.

That's when Douglas received a call from a Trenton Correctional System staffer who had read his books and thought maybe he could help.

"I went up there and interviewed him in a cold, dark cell," the profiler recalls. "The killer recognizes me 'cause he's seen me on television in jail. So I start interviewing him, and what I try to do is get into the fantasy. I play on his ego and how he was able to fool the police for a long time."

Two hours into the interview, Magnum gets "the thousand-yard stare."

"He looks into the distance," Douglas explains. "And now he's back 25 years ago. He goes through the specifics of the case and what he did to this girl. He talks about red rage and white rage.

"I ask him what he means by that and he says, 'Well John, red rage is something where, if you push me around, I can deal with that. But white rage is something I can't control. On the day that she came knocking on my door, I looked out, and I knew I was going to kill her.'"

Douglas knows he's hit jackpot.

"The next day I go before the parole board," he says laughing. "And if you think Michael Jordan can do a slam dunk, you should see the slam dunk I do on this guy."

As a result of Douglas' testimony, Magnum has to serve an additional 25-year sentence.

It is through such interactions that the profiler was able to gain insight into the criminal mind.

Part 2: On the hunt

ZAAHIRA WYNE is a rising first-year student at the University of Virginia.