BEN KISSEL
Hey, what's up everyone, how you doing? Ben Kissel here hanging out with Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you all so much for giving to our Patreon, without you were absolutely nothing. Today we are honored to be with an absolute icon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a legend of true crime, yes.
BEN KISSEL
Expert. Legend of true crime Dr. Katherine Ramsland. Thank you so much for being here. I know you wrote 'How To Catch a Killer: Hunting and Capturing the World's Most Notorious Serial Killers' along with 68 other books.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot. It's incredible.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
It is. But I love it, I'm so happy to have all the opportunities.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But today we wanted to talk about because we know that right now we have out a brand new series you've been working on called BTK: Confession of a Serial Killer. And I watched the first episode of it. And I can say as a group of people that just also wrote a book on serial killers that it's showing BTK in a way that I have never seen him before, an approach to him in a way that's really, really interesting.
BEN KISSEL
A loving, kind approach. Sympathetic almost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean Dr. Ramsland, you really do. But you figured out a way to talk to probably one of the biggest villains in American history.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah, it took a while. I mean I don't think I've put more time into any book than that one. And that took us about five years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Can you go into that process a little bit about reaching out to somebody like Dennis Rader, Bind Torture Kill, a man who is so notorious? How did that process even come around?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Well it wasn't my idea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You weren't like, 'Oh I hope Dennis says hello.'
BEN KISSEL
One day. I wish upon a star every night that BTK shows up at my window and he did.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
It was an odd convergence of things. I was writing a book that looked back over 100 years on mental health experts who had taken a lot more time to spend with extreme offenders, mass and serial killers, to learn a lot more about them. So they'd spend weeks, months, years. So I just published that book called 'The Mind of a Murderer'. And then I saw this woman on Facebook who had claimed in 2005 when Rader was arrested that she was going to be writing a book with him. So I just sent her a message saying whatever happened to your book with Dennis Rader? And she immediately asked me if I would take it over, she didn't want to write it, she didn't know how to write it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is it just because of the nature of dealing with him or is it just because they didn't have the resources? Or they were like well you're the expert, you need to do this?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Sort of a blend of those factors. And she had one of my books that she was using as a model and so she knew who I was. But that still wasn't a done deal. I had to be vetted by the victim's families because proceeds from this book go to them. And also they did not want a book about him or with him or by him but they knew it was inevitable so they wanted some control over the type of book. So I had to write a proposal saying I wanted to write a book that would benefit criminology, psychology, and law enforcement.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Other people had approached them by the way and they said no. But because my credentials, my intent, etc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So then we had to convince Rader to switch out from the first person that he really liked to me.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my gosh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So we ended up playing chess together for about a year before all of this, all the legalities and everything got into place.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And and so that took a while and he warmed up to me but it wasn't it wasn't like I wrote him and said, 'Oh I want to write a book with you.' It was this bunch of weird things that all happened at once to turn a book over to me and then I reshaped it completely.
BEN KISSEL
I can't even imagine sitting across from BTK just playing chess. That's absolutely...
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Well it was through the mail. It was through the mail.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it was through the mail!
BEN KISSEL
He's not good at mail by the way, he tends to get caught.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does. But you also, at the beginning of the show, like I don't want to bust it, I really don't want to tell too many too much about what happens inside of 'BTK: Confession of a Serial Killer' because it's very interesting. But I do want to talk about the main themes which is the idea that the extreme offender can be stopped, it can be prevented which I think is fascinating and I'm gonna get into that. But I also want to talk about the games he started to play in the very beginning. It wasn't just chess, right? He sent you codes to work out.
BEN KISSEL
Like The Riddler.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah. First he told me not to cheat at chess.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I'm so happy. He has a moral compass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does.
BEN KISSEL
And he has a moral code.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
They all do. John Wayne Gacy had one too, he just thought people in America were getting too many divorces.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, there's 26 bodies in your floorboards but have we thought about the state of marriage in this country?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seriously. He becomes Steve Harvey.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah. Well and that's part of Rader's story is those life frames, each of which has its own sense of morality. So he wants me to be honest, he didn't like that the police had lied to him, etc, etc. And then before he would work with me I had to agree to solve a series of codes. That was in part because he wanted to tell the story through some codes to keep prison guards from seeing what he was doing but also he wanted to see if I would play the game.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And of course I will play the game. I want to watch his behavior no matter what it is. I want to see not just what he's saying but his whole way of dealing with me and with this subject matter.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So the code thing was really interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Well let's definitely continue on with BTK. But just first, just for the victim's family because I thought that was really interesting that obviously true crime can be a double edged sword and I think sometimes it opens up wounds for people who are already victims. What was one of the things that they told you where they're like can you just please treat the subject in this kind of way? Was there something where you're like okay, I understand where you're coming from.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
They did not limit me. Some of them wanted their story to be included and I said no because this is an autobiography and this is not where your story should be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I just think you should not read this book, so you should not have your story in this book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
The book has a different, it's not a true crime book, it's an exploration of a criminal mind which is different. The way the story has been mostly told from the point of view of the investigation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And the citizens of Wichita, etc. Not from his point of view. So this is from his point of view. But they were fine, the ones that I met with were fine.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
They did not restrict me in any way. They knew it was gonna be graphic to some extent but I didn't put the worst police photos in. And also I was friends with the DA before it ever started. So once I convinced her this is a worthwhile book, I stayed with her, she had me look at her whole stash of stuff and we went over a lot of what she thought would be useful. And so I got a lot of good information from her, from other people.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Was there any images that were so shocking, you just said you didn't put the most shocking in the book. Anything that maybe our audience isn't aware of? Because as Henry said I think he's maybe the scariest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One of the stories. Because on Last Podcast on the Left we belittle serial killers to humanize them and show people that they are not supernatural creatures, that they're not demons.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I feel a lot of true crime portrays serial killers as truly like they have powers, like they they can control time and space and they're super clever. And a lot of times serial killers we say a lot are born out of extreme mediocrity. They come from somebody who doesn't have tangible skills and they end up destroying things because it's a little bit easier than building something. But there's something about him, especially because of what he revealed from his childhood, that you really now get to see some of why he did it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I think it's important to look through his eyes because again, he's one of the most frightening figures in true crime and if you're going to try to understand any of them I think he's the one to try to understand.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. So any images just jump out at you and be like wow, okay, I'm dealing with someone who is really out there?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Well first of all the images of himself and self bondage, there were a lot of them and they were really interesting in terms of the positions he would put himself in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
He sometimes almost held himself captive because he'd lose a key to handcuffs or he'd be upside down in a tree and not be able to get out of his rig.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We did a whole bit on stage. I did a whole bit once about him trying to set up the camera while in the bondage gear. How does that work?
BEN KISSEL
Seriously, how does it work?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
He's the selfie king way before smartphones.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, he's probably so jealous of all the kids now with their iPhones. Back in my day...
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah, they have tablets in the prisons now. No, he had a remote control thing all rigged up with his Polaroid camera. So he figured out how to do it. So the camera was set up and then he would just use the wire to take the picture. And he had a lot of them. But the shocking ones to victim's families, I think if you read the descriptions you can probably figure out what the pictures would be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yes. The crime scenes are awful and he did that on purpose too I imagine in many ways that he liked leaving an impact. He knew that he was creating layers of trauma too right, he knew that the cops would be fucked up seeing it and anybody else who saw it would see how serious a bad guy he was.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
He wanted to terrorize Wichita, he wanted to command their attention. And remember 1974, that's even before we know much about Bundy. It's January '74, not July '74.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So we don't really know much of anything about serials killers. There's been the Boston Strangler, we've had Manson and a few other stories but nothing like this invading person who's in your home.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And he wanted to hold Wichita in terror, he wanted that feeling of domination and control over his immediate town.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So when you're talking to him, so I know that you built a trust with him. A roadblock we find in our show that we talk about a lot is how do you believe a word out of any one of these guys mouths?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it's like he's telling you these intimate details about his childhood now, he's opening up the floodgates to talk to you. What is the key to you that shows that he's telling the truth or you think that he's telling the truth? Or do you know that well I don't know who I'm meeting here, I don't know if I'm meeting a representative. You know what I mean? Because he talked about his personality being a cube.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
All right, so first of all this goes across the board to any offender you're going to talk to but especially once you anticipate will be manipulative and deceptive and narcissistic. You need to know their story as well as you can before you get to talk to them. So I have corroborating sources, I had the police files, I had their interrogation, I had things that other people have said about him, I had the DA. I had a number of things that I would know to some extent, certainly not completely but to some extent when he's not telling me the truth.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To cross reference.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah, he didn't like that I had some of that stuff because of course he wants to spin his own image to me and some of the things in the back interrogation went against what he wanted me to think. So I had to call him at a couple of times on stuff and that didn't sit well with him.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. How did that work when you called out one of the most notorious serial killers in history? How do you do that? How does that work?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I think because I have credentials, academic and therapeutic type of credentials, there's a certain aura in that that they think maybe I see more than than I really do. I don't know. But I know that he would withdraw and then the next time we talked he's got two or three pages filled up with justification or explanation. So I kind of figured out his pattern when I would say, 'Now that that doesn't really jive with what I know.' I figured yeah, he'd get grumpy, cranky but then he'd come back, he'd think it through and he'd come back. Because one of the things about him and Bundy and Gacy and a few others that are very loquacious, who like to talk a lot, is they really trust that that their narrative will control the situation. They trust that the language they put out there is going to be the defining thing for everyone who hears it. They believe that. So I knew that he would always come back with something to respond to this.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
We never got to the point where he was really angry at me. I thought that he might be especially after the book came out. And he doesn't get to read it by the way but people will tell him stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And also after the A&E documentary, some of his friends said that I threw him under the bus and blah, blah, blah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no! You threw BTK under the bus. I can't believe you would do that.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And he immediately said well that's her job.
BEN KISSEL
So in that capacity he defended you.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
He defended me, we've been talking now for 12 years, he called me on Sunday, everything's fine. I really sort of thought some of this stuff might get under his skin in a way that he would just decide that's it, I don't want to do this anymore. But he hasn't gotten to that point.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's got such a superiority complex that I do think in a way, it's what you said and you say that in the show which I think is really interesting is that you did what I did to get my first LA apartment, I dropped names. I literally was like, I knew how to jump in front of couples. I was like I've done some work, I tried to jump in. You did the thing where you're like I am very accredited, this is my body of work. And there's something about that where it kind of feels like Dennis Rader is like well if anybody's gonna throw at me under the bus, at least it's her.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's the one I trust to do it.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I like the way you put that. But I do think that also buffers me because because I'm not a groupie. He has terms for various types of people who write to him and I'm not in those groups because the credentials set me apart in his mind. And so yeah, I am not afraid to use that because I need his buffering.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You need to be protected, yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I want to keep that level of authority there, right?
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So that's another thing because some of the people I know who talk to serial killers let them run roughshod all over them, call them at all hours night and day, make demands of them to keep them on the phone for hours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I know.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I set limits and keep them.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah you have to have boundaries. So you mentioned how he was correcting or he was lying basically to you and you had to correct the record. What were some of the things that he was lying about? What were some of the issues that I guess he doesn't like being true?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really likes to stress how good a dad he was.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does like to stress how good of a husband and father he was which is very interesting to think.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Oh yeah, that was one thing. And it took several years to get to this point and they should have put this in the documentary I thought because they wanted something unusual and this was. He has often said that he never cheated on his wife and stayed faithful as if...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All the things that he did.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
However there was a woman whose house he was installing a security system and he admitted that he made a pass at her and had she not fended him off, he would have definitely gone further. And I said well doesn't that kind of defeat your idea about your fidelity, that you're a good husband? And he admitted yeah. But he had that compartmentalizing thing, right? The cubing thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The cubing. The cubing is so fascinating.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah. He said the cube doesn't really care what the other side does.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But that's interesting. So for him obviously being a good Christian man, he's very pious. So for him that's a deal breaker, you don't commit infidelity. The psychology is so fascinating with these people because they do have morals and then meanwhile they're also doing the most atrocious things of all time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They have codes almost.
BEN KISSEL
They have codes, yeah. And going back to that, when you were corresponding with him and you just said you spoke on Sunday, what was that first process like when you received something from him? Do you feel like there was a certain amount of energy attached to it? Like wow, this is coming from a notorious killer.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
That's so amazing, I just wrote a blog about that very thing yesterday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nice. Yes!
BEN KISSEL
Yes! I still got it.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I talked about the aura that seems to transfer when you first, especially the first letter. The first letter really stands out. There is something, this is a serial killer, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And so he's not the first serial killer, that's the one thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean you've talked to a lot of these losers, yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
The very, very, very first one was about 25, 26 years ago, maybe more than that. And that envelope was really startling. And I was just getting into this field, I had been teaching philosophy at Rutgers. So this was all very different for me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And getting that envelope, it did seem to have that aura like (gasp).
BEN KISSEL
And who sent that one?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Just like the telephone bill, that is an envelope that contains something.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And yeah, so with Rader, yeah I think the first time because as you know this arrangement was unusual and so I had mailed him first and introduced myself, that I'm the one who's going to take this over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And so the first letter back was obviously momentous, a lot was at stake. He could have said yeah no way, I am not letting you do this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
But he was very polite. And one thing about him that is different from some of the other killers who I've seen dealing with associates is he's polite. He does not use vulgar language, he recognizes limits I've set, he always treats me respectfully. And that first letter set the tone. It was respectful, appreciative, he wanted to play chess, let's get to know each other. And do the codes. So he kind of laid out the groundwork to see what I would do.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
But I was game for anything because when you're doing psychology you want all the layers, all the behaviors, even if it's lies and manipulation. You want all of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Because there's a lot you can tell from somebody about how they lie, what they lie about, right, how they approach subjects.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have a question, this is a general question I want to ask, I do again want to get into what the center of the documentary is about. But I wanna ask a general question about serial killers, maybe just what your first thoughts are. Because when I read about serial killers that have quote unquote "a functioning family life" on top of their serial killer activity, especially somebody like Dennis Rader who had such a deep and intense fantasy life. You even asked the question was your fantasy life more real than your real life? And he kind of admitted yeah, sort of, it kind of felt like that. In my estimation when I read this stuff, it always kind of feel like the functional life is how they say like Bruce Wayne is not the real guy, that's the cover and Batman is the real guy. Is Dennis Rader the family man, is that like a sexual game too? Is that another like look, see what I can do, I can also can control myself enough that I can have all of this and my dark world?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I don't think so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it was genuine for him, his family.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
It was genuine and also he's falling into place in what he's trained up to do in America's midwest is you go to church, you find a woman who will make a good wife and mother, you have the children, you get a job, you support them. He was going through the whole menu that he was trained that this is what you do. So that and he'd just come back from military service, met Paula, it was all working. It wasn't a game. And yeah, I think the cubing thing is a secret to Dennis Rader, not all the gamesmanship. The game is on one side of the cube, not all of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That's so interesting.
BEN KISSEL
So do you think he fully understands the difference between these two realities that he lives in seamlessly? Or do you think that he was a little bit surprised by his own actions?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Sometimes surprised. He does say something kind of interesting in the book about he's a metaphor where he's kind of on this raft pushing himself away from shore, the shore being his moral foundation. And as he's thinking about and stalking women and thinking about murder, he's pushing away from the shore. In his mind, the shore will always be back there to return to. And then one day he turns around it's not there. So that's kind of a good metaphor of what's going on with him is he's moving in a certain direction without recognizing how much he's changing.
BEN KISSEL
He's already lost at sea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's really interesting. So all right, so maybe it goes into the core of your thesis of the docuseries which is this idea that this can be prevented, the extreme offender can be prevented. Now what is it about Dennis Rader's story that pointed you towards that? Like okay, this has proven a thing, like maybe this is what we look for. What causes someone to kick off from the shore?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I mean in a way it's a re-education of society that as you guys say they're not these 24/7 monsters that are set apart. We have to understand that it's a continuum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And that these kids who are having this fantasy life, we have these weird formulas about serial killers that came from the 1980s so it's very outdated.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The MacDonald Triad, right, all of that?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah. It hangs on because it's a nice formula for TV and novels. So that's unfortunate because we're missing the nuances. Humiliation, something understudied. That is a huge role in so many of these offenders lives.
BEN KISSEL
As in they were humiliated as children?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
They were humiliated in a way that they don't forgive or forget.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And it stays with them. We see that a lot in mass murderers, that's very much the formula that goes into their makeup. But we have not really looked at it with serial killers. But it does mix in with as they're going into puberty, it mixes in with lust, it mixes in with their fantasy life and the decisions they make subsequently. So we have to understand the role of things beyond just outright abuse. We talk about oh they've been abused, head injuries, etc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Kids who don't have those things also have become serial killers. So we have to look at, we watch a kid who might be withdrawing. Rader would draw his girl traps right there on the blackboard, right in front of the teachers. Girl traps!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. We saw that with Leonard Lake used to do the same activity too, he got obsessed with The Collector. And it's weird because it really is out in the open, it's like that story of the little kid that the parents gave the gun and he was drawing killing people for days.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's so sad, that story, yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Exactly. That's a dysfunctional family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course!
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, absolutely. But the kid is telling everybody, like he's screaming for attention.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So how do we change the parameters that we can listen to? Because we actually said this on our Jeffrey Dahmer episode, we were like this idea that if he as a 10 year old boy could tell somebody I have these thoughts about sleeping with sleeping people, this idea of I like people when they're asleep and still. How do we start that conversation?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah, one of the problems is we're uncomfortable. First of all, sometimes we don't observe our own protocols. In the case of the kid in Michigan, they had a team in place for understanding these signals and they did not call them in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
What's with that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Right?
BEN KISSEL
But why do you think that is? Why do you think it is so difficult for adults to address these issues in children who are obviously crying out?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I think it's uncomfortable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I think it's uncomfortable. We don't know what to do with a kid who's doing deviant things, it's weird and we just think if we put them out of class or send them home or get them a little bit of counseling then that's all it takes. But it takes teamwork and it takes consistency in a period of time. It's not just, 'Oh stop drawing that.' You know what happened when Jerome Brudos' mother told to stop wearing high heeled shoes? He didn't stop!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he didn't stop. Yeah, you can't just go, 'Stop. Hey now, hey.' But honestly even wearing heels is fine. It's just that idea, a part of it I think is the shame attached.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Well that's what happened, she shamed him, he took it underground and it became hotter for him as a thing, a forbidden secret.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So now it became a really big deal in a way that might not have been had she not made such a big fuss and made it made him feel ashamed. Rader's mother shames him on several occasions and he stopped trusting women.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And do you think it's also, it's got to be mixed with an antisocial kind of personality makeup too right? Because some of these people, they find it super hot and then they become shoe designers, I'm certain that happened to Balenciaga.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? Like at some point he got shit and all of a sudden now he's developing shoes. And there's a creative way. But it must also be mixed with this kid also has a bad batch inside of him.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Everything is a combination of biology and environment, everything is.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And there's no formula for which one matters more in someone's life than another. Yes, we are finding a lot of research on the brain that tells us psychopathic individuals have different brain disconnects especially over things like moral processing, focus on reward, long term decision making, especially in adolescents for example. So yeah, certainly those things play into it, absolutely. Are we at the point yet where we can actually anticipate and predict what's going to happen? No, we're not. We don't have pods, we can't go get them and stuff them in like Minority Report.
BEN KISSEL
Seriously.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
In no way can we decide what the predictive quality is. But we do know that if someone's brain shows these aspects that they are going to have trouble with consequences of their actions, with decision making, perhaps with hyperactivity, they are going to have some trouble with that. Those are the kids I think that we can build programs around, taxpayers coming into the picture too. So they don't want to pay for those programs, who cares whether we have well designed programs or not? They have a great one in Wisconsin for adolescent boys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They better.
BEN KISSEL
That's my home state.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man, it's where the most serial killers have come out of any other state. They need it.
BEN KISSEL
Serial eaters, my friend. That is Wisconsin.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Cheese! Cheeseheads.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And of course the education system has been gutted which has been very unfortunate. So perhaps our audience already knows this but it's newish to me, the Macdonald Triad is no longer considered to be accurate, correct?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
It has never been considered to be accurate until the FBI guys started putting it out there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So the FBI is the reason.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
There's no research support for it and if you look back to its origins, to Macdonald, Dr. Macdonald, not the hamburger gut. Dr. Macdonald was thinking well maybe there are some risk factors we can look at. And he had a small group of violent patients under his care. So right off the bat it's an unrepresentative sample, the sample is too small to say anything. He didn't even find the results he was looking for. So someone else along the line decided oh, that looks like a good experiment. They expanded it, they didn't get the results either. But it's a nice formula.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So suddenly people who want to think more simplistically see this as here's the precursors for becoming a serial killer.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And it became part of TV shows, movies, novels, even crime textbooks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
It's unfortunate but it's not true. There isn't any kind of triad that will definitely predict serial killers. Animal cruelty, one of the notches of the triad, yes, lots of animal cruelty in their background. But not all kids who are cruel to animals become serial killers or even offenders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Not the bed wetting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. I know several comedians, professional comedians who wet the bed until they were 15 years old.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Well even in the FBI's own small unrepresentative study, they still didn't find even 50% had all three of those. So how do they end up making these statements?
BEN KISSEL
I mean that's a great question.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause again, it's a way to boil something down. It's trying to, which we always talk about in terms of the show in terms of conspiracy theory where oftentimes people feel a comfort.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's comforting to feel like we can figure it out.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Yeah it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's so scary, it's such a phenomenon. And it's also especially such an American phenomenon.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
But it makes you less safe to believe in a formula that isn't true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I agree.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Over your years of work Katherine Ramsland, that's who we're speaking with, she's a fantastic author and a legend in the field, what's the largest myth that you would like to see busted? In your work, 69 books, obviously you have a truth that you're trying to tell. What is one thing broad perhaps that you really just wish that we could all understand so then we can kind of be on the same playing field when just starting to have these conversations about psychology?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Well I'll tell you that I write a blog for Psychology Today, I've been doing it for 10 years. And I wrote one called 'The number one question about serial killers' that I always get from high schoolers all the time, like once a week at least.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
The nature vs nurture. How much is nature, how much is nurture? Are serial killers born? To which I say you are treating serial killer as a criminal type. It is a description of a behavior. That's all it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
At least two victims, one victim on two occasions. So unrelated, two occasions, two victims. That's it. That's a description of a behavior. And the range and diversity of approaches, motives, weapons, victims, range of activity is so diverse, you can't pack it into a criminal type. So that's one that I don't like the idea that we can find the few traits and behaviors of a serial killer so that we understand exactly who they are. I think that's ridiculous.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Secondly that they all want to be caught. Just a silly thing. Why would they want to be caught? They want to do what they're doing, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They're living their dreams.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
They don't want to sit in a cell, they want to do what they're doing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Very few have turned themselves in, very few. They have or some have committed suicide but that's rare and I do know it came from a case in the 1940s, the Lipstick Killer who wrote on the mirror, 'Catch me.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, catch me.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And it's partly too because people want to believe serial killers have a conscience and so they feel terrible about what they've done. That's a myth. They don't feel terrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ted Bundy, we bring up this quote quite a bit, I don't know the exact quote but he's like you spend years properly planning how to do the crime or you plan and prepare and then one day you lose the wrench, you lose the thing you're trying to do. Is it just that the wheels fall off half the time? And does that have something to do with kind of literally their mental illness where they get to a point where they kind of self destruct because they're following their id all the time?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Well you can ask that of the Zodiac I guess, when did he self destruct?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
True, true.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So there are some who do, it's called devolving and Bundy did that. But he's become sort of the prototype.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
But he's only one case. We have over 5000 documented, we don't even have all of them because who knows what goes on in other countries in terms of documentation and investigation? But we do have a lot that we know about. Bundy's behavior is not the prototype at all, it's just become the media prototype and that's a very different animal.
BEN KISSEL
Is there a prototype?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
But yeah, he's right. He's right that it's age, lower testosterone, less interest, less challenge, dopamine in the brain just doesn't come up for it anymore. There's a lot of different things depending on how old they are, whether they've failed at some of it, whether something has just dried up and they don't want to do it. But again we have serial killers who are in their 50s and 60s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They still operate.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
So it's going to be different from one to another, it's very hard to generalize that.
BEN KISSEL
What is the prototype, do you think?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
There isn't one. No, there's there's no portrait, there's no profile of a serial killer.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. It does make it scarier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
And the FBI always say that, they say that their publications all the time, will people stop saying there's a profile of a serial killer, there isn't one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. Do you take any of this home? Does this screw with your actual personal life, dealing with all of this on some level? Having Dennis Rader have your telephone number, does it fuck with you?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Great. Honestly because you're facing it in a very specific way.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I mean I guess it would if he made threats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you've never had to deal with that in the past, someone flipping on you?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I've had stalkers but they aren't the people you think they are going to be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, yeah. They're true crime fans.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
No they're not, they're like an academic dean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
You would expect the true crime fans, no, they treat me with respect. I've had weird stalkers that have nothing to do with any of my work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god, that's even worse.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I know, it is.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's even worse.
BEN KISSEL
Sleep well tonight, everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't thank you enough.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
That is one of the things about the Rader book is that he was a person praying next to you, singing church hymns with you, leading your church, your neighbor talking with you about the flower gardens. You need to understand it is possible, they are not monsters 24/7. They are ordinary people for the most part and it doesn't mean they're nice guys but they sure know how to play nice guys when they need to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One of them is probably hosting the podcast you're talking to right now. But man, I seriously can't thank you enough for talking to us.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have done us a great honor to dare treat our stupidity with your words.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, thank you.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I'll look for you guys at CrimeCon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I can't wait to go back.
BEN KISSEL
Can't wait to go back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna go back, it's been a while. We went to the very first one, that's where we met Nancy Grace.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
The Vegas one was 5000.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't even imagine.
BEN KISSEL
I mean my god.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
It's astonishing.
BEN KISSEL
Katherine Ramsland, thank you so much for being here. You are a pioneer and you're saving lives truly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you so much, Dr. Ramsland. Check out BTK: Confessions of a Serial Killer, it's truly good.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And our audience gets exactly-
BEN KISSEL
Oh they're gonna love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's our group. Because we are all just like them, it's for the people who know true crime and really it's great. Thank you so much.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Appreciate being here. Great questions.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you Katherine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're trying. That's so nice you said that we did good.
BEN KISSEL
So nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're not trying to embarrass you, doctor.
BEN KISSEL
And please come back if you have anything else you want to promote or you're working on, we'd love to talk with you again. You're wonderful.
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
I do have another one going but I can't say what.
BEN KISSEL
I assume that you do, yeah. Unless you're gonna stop at 69 books for some random reason.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, man. You gotta do it. Keep pushing. Thank you, Dr. Ramsland.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you. All right there it was, our conversation with Katherine Ramsland. I'm horrified.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She is very, very good.
BEN KISSEL
I kind of actually enjoy the idea of answers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, we all do.
BEN KISSEL
But those don't exist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no, there's not. She just basically says what we do. But I honestly think it kind of goes hand in hand with what we do, while we try to understand that they are not invincible creatures, it's just important remember in the fact that that serial killers are human, that means they can be your neighbor and they can hang around.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I do believe what I had heard about Dennis Rader, which I think is true, is that he was also a fucking asshole. So there is that too.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where sometimes which was also joked about on the show, I'll probably bringing up the next time we speak to her about sometimes you do see them coming.
BEN KISSEL
Sometimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's the prick.
BEN KISSEL
I love that when there's an interview and they don't say, 'I never expected Jeffrey.' I love it when they're like, 'Yeah, he was a fucking dickhead and if anyone in the neighborhood was going to be a killer, we knew it was gonna be him.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We knew it was gonna be him.
BEN KISSEL
Well thank you all so much for listening. We hope you're doing well out there. Thank you for giving to our Patreon. And yeah, anything else?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you for your fucking money.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. All right everyone, hail yourselves! We'll talk to you soon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan, fuckers. I'm just kind of bowled over.
BEN KISSEL
It was amazing. Megustalations everyone!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.