Zooming In on a Mindhunter with Dr. Ann Burgess
Transcript:
Melissa Milner 0:09
Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever changing. And I hope with each season, you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the fifth season of The Teacher As... and it's exciting to see the growth in how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy The Teacher As... please rate it on Apple podcast and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. Thanks for listening.
Ann Burgess 0:41
My name is Ann Burgess. I am a professor at Boston College Connell School of Nursing that is in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. And I've been a professor all of my academic life, but I also am a clinician, in fact, I started out my education. I just wanted to be a clinician, I wanted to be a nurse psychotherapist. I was trained as that my education at Boston University was in that vein, but I got kind of pulled in to academia. And once I got into there, I met Lynda Lytle Holmstrom. And that was very important because she really is the one I give all the credit to who got me into this whole crime field. And Linda had said she knew women's issues were her important topics. She was a sociologist. And she had just finished her first study on women's issues in a two career family, which is unheard of now, I mean, everybody has a two career, but back then it was a very new thing. But she knew that rape was going to be an important issue. And so she was having trouble finding victims. And she talked with me and I said, "Well, let's see if I can find some because I'm in the healthcare field, and they must come into the hospital." So long story short, that's really how we establish a relationship. We always had thought we should write a book, or an article called Can a Psychiatric Nurse and a Sociologist Work Together? I never wrote it. But we certainly have plenty of product that said that we did.
Ann Burgess 2:17
I was able to get access to Boston City Hospital. And we started our study there. And she told me, she said you have to publish if you're going to be an academia. So I saw so I just really just followed her. She was very well socialized into academia. And we started seeing victims at Boston City Hospital, rape victims. And that's really what got me started. And she, for a short time, she went into other kinds of things, but I stayed with the crime field. And that's actually how I got asked to come down to the Behavioral Science Unit down at Quantico, because what was happening from a cultural standpoint is that the women's movement was really putting pressure on Congress, which is the right thing to do, to get funding so that they could have the whole issue of rape taken care of and looked into. So that kind of coincided that what was important there is FBI were called in because of Congress would, whenever they're called into Congress, they respond. And they had to start training their special agents in rape victimology. And they had no one that could do that.
Melissa Milner 3:34
Right.
Ann Burgess 3:35
So, what they do in those cases is the youngest one or the newest, Special Agent coming into the academy, the FBI Academy, that was their teaching arm, their educational arm, and so poor Roy Hazelwood got tasked with having to teach something in rape victimology. And he didn't have any clues. But luckily, he was doing these little road schools and he was out in California, near Los Angeles. And he at the end of his one of the hostage negotiation lectures he was giving said he had this new assignment that anyone know anything about rape. Now this is to a whole group of men. There was one police officer female there, she said nothing at the time, but afterwards came up to him and said, you know, she was also a nurse. She had started out as a nurse then turned and took police what became a detective in the police unit, but she had been work keeping her nursing license up. And she said she just read this new article, and it was in the American Journal of Nursing, and it was on the rape victim in the emergency ward. So my message to all of your read your audience is you never know.
Melissa Milner 4:53
Right?
Ann Burgess 4:53
Who is going to be reading your work. So anyway, she told Roy to get hold of me because we're on the East Coast and of course, Roy was on the east coast at Quantico is down in Virginia. And he called me up, which was a whole thing. And I get this phone call, you know, I told my RA to take it, I was busy doing something else. And she wouldn't move. She stayed right in the room. And I said, Anna, what is it? And she said, she said, I think you'd better take it as the FBI.
Melissa Milner 5:25
Oh, my goodness.
Ann Burgess 5:28
You know, all I could think of did I not pay my taxes. Okay, with the FBI on me.
Melissa Milner 5:34
Okay, first of all, wow. That was a great introduction, because you got to most of the pieces. And I just want to stop you and say that we connected through retired Lieutenant Eugene Neault.
Ann Burgess 5:45
Yeah.
Melissa Milner 5:46
From Boston College. So, I wanted to thank because I know he's going to be listening. I wanted to thank Gene, for that introduction. I've always been fascinated by this and I just want to let my listeners know that, yes, there's gonna be a lot of talk about education. But this is also selfish. I just love this stuff. And I, I and I also love the Netflix show, MindHunter, and the female character in that was based on Dr. Ann Burgess. So I am very, very honored to have you on the podcast, I wanted to talk about because you just got to what I want to talk about, which is that unconventional teaching that you did when you went and met these FBI agents. And in your book, A Killer by Design, you talk about each individual one and how there were different ways to kind of get to know them. And you very, you very keenly knew how to really do that, which I think I think just was instinct for you. Right?
Ann Burgess 6:49
Well, I didn't do it intentionally. I just did it. You know, I was just invited down there to give a lecture than done lectures everywhere. So it was no big deal there. But it was fascinating, because when you're done with that FBI Academy, there's no place you can go after hours, it's in the middle of nowhere. And, you know, we flown in so but we were kind of stuck. But they invited me down to their pub, where they would go at five o'clock, and they just sit around, have a beer just kind of relax. And they started talking stories. And they talk cases. And I was fascinated with the kinds of cases. I mean, they would talk so nonchalant about these unbelievable cases, because the police would send them cases that they had never seen before. So they were getting all these cases coming in. And the other thing that worked in my favor is that William Webster was appointed to in 70, I think 78 or 79, Director of the FBI, and he was very forward thinking and he said, we're an academic institution, we have to be doing research. So he said all of the agents have to start doing their own research. So that put a fire under them, so to speak. And in meeting with them, they were all kind of scrambling. And here I am telling them about our research study. Yeah, yeah. And so they just caught on to that. And that's where I met Bob Ressler and John Douglas. And that's really what set into motion the whole matter of serial killing study.
Melissa Milner 8:23
Yes. And you I mean, in your book, you talk about how you and Ressler were very close, like really?
Ann Burgess 8:29
Yeah.
Melissa Milner 8:29
That that was really very cool after seeing mine hunter to then read that. Because again, Mindhunter'ss giving a version of the real world that just a version, so that your book is much more interesting to be honest.
Ann Burgess 8:44
Yeah. I really wish that they had gotten our backgrounds better. They have so different and I know they were doing it for Hollywood. I think that hurt. The cases they did. They had to happen. They were good because they had all our material. They had all our interviews and everything so they were really okay there. But the backgrounds I think really hurt.
Ann Burgess 9:04
Yeah.
Ann Burgess 9:05
Poor Ressler having a 10 year old serial killer kid. I mean that was so awful.
Melissa Milner 9:11
Yeah. It got a little over the top. But you know, the work you did? I know I want you to go in depth of how you kind of taught them to organize the data and research, analyze the research. At one point you were writing in the book, it said there were just files of recordings that had never been analyzed. That's like what a waste.
Ann Burgess 9:34
That was a funny thing. I would say to them, they weren't starting to go out and interview. Now they picked assassins for some reason they had Squeaky Fromme and and maybe that was because these were federal cases. I don't know. When I said to them, I said well, how are you interviewing them? What are you asking? And they looked at me with a blank face. What we're just getting them to talk and I said we have to go If you gotta be organized, you have to, if you're going to be looking at serial killers, multiple ones, you ought to ask the same questions all the time. That's really how it started. So they really brought me in as a methodologist to getthemorganized, they didn't have any credentials and research.
Melissa Milner 10:16
It's unbelievable. It really is. Like, just telling them go research. Now, are they trained as researchers?
Ann Burgess 10:24
Now they have, they have brought in people with PhDs. Many of the agents only have bachelor's. So they didn't even have masters. I mean, it was really, very, very early in the development, I don't think I think it was 1972 when they I mean, so that's not, that's not a long time for them to get up to speed. And I came in late 70s. And that's going with the study.
Melissa Milner 10:53
Wow. So I had a couple more questions about this. Again, in your book you were talking about, you want to make the killers measurable, like a way of comparing them. So that would, like you said, kind of asking the same types of questions. Is that what makes them...
Ann Burgess 11:12
What we what we did is we developed a 57 page interview guide. And we color coded it so that they would know what was the victim data? What was the crime data? What were the demographics, what was the outcome? What was the legal outcome, and it was really nice, because he had these sections, and we could kind of mix and match but they would get the beautiful thing about it is they could get any kind of a record they want. I could say to them, Bob, I need to have his school records the next day or be on my desk.
Melissa Milner 11:48
It's FBI.
Ann Burgess 11:49
I know. It's FBI, they can really move and they know where all the things are hidden. So wow, part of that was important. Yeah, the thing I think that was important is we did get the we pulled from a I think a list of about 85. We narrowed it down to 36 that the agents could go in and interview. But before they went into interview, they would get the record so they knew those cases cold. And that was important, because they though if those guys tried to start lying to them, they could count call them on it. Remember David Berkowitz? I think it was a Ressler or Douglas that said, Oh, come on, David, you know, this idea that there's a dog talking to you is really we're not we're not buying that.
Melissa Milner 12:34
Right. Wow.
Ann Burgess 12:35
And then they would be able to get into more. Yeah. Because these are many of them were anti social, whatever you want to call them. They were they were good at lying. They were good at manipu you know, manipulating people. So it was a it's not an easy population to try to get good data on. But I think they did and because they were FBI, they were held in esteem in the prison. So that's why I think that's...
Melissa Milner 13:03
That goes with my question is, why didn't you ever go in and do this?
Ann Burgess 13:08
No, I never went in because this has to be an FBI study. Yeah. afterwards. I did. Afterwards, I had developed an attack in the book. Henry Wallace was one that I had worked with. They had Ressler and I go in, in his criminal case.
Melissa Milner 13:24
Yes.
Ann Burgess 13:25
Yeah.
Ann Burgess 13:25
Oh, and that. I know, you also mentioned that you obviously I already mentioned the Menendez if you want to know the full, I mean, up to that time in the 80s. Right. What was that 80?
Ann Burgess 13:37
I think it was 89 and the trial was in the 90s.
Melissa Milner 13:41
So the I believe it was the lawyer defending the Menendez brothers, I'm pretty sure was trying to get all of your information out to the court. So they knew how qualified you were. And it goes on and on and on, and every detail of your amazing career. It's, it's on YouTube. It's amazing. You should watch it. But there's two other things. So there's the three phases of research, which I thought was fascinating that you talked about in your book. And then I want to talk about victimology because I know victimology is really important. And I do know Dr. Laura Richards
Ann Burgess 14:19
Yes.
Melissa Milner 14:19
Yes. So her podcasts I love her podcasts Crime Analyst, which is her own podcast, and then she's on Real Crime Profile, as well. And that podcast, she talks about victimology and how it's i I've I've listened to that so much. And then I read in your book victimology victimology. So I'd love for you to talk about that too.
Ann Burgess 14:37
Right? Well, the three phases research had to do with how we put that we were two goals that we had. One is we wanted to do an in depth analysis of the 36 serial killers and look at the patterns that they showed. And in that research, the second phase was how they were organized or disorganized. That was the way that the agents would go to a crime scene and tell whether it was an of whether they felt it was organized or disorganized, that was really very important. And then of course, the third one was to see how all of that fit into the patterns that we came up with. Profiling was just going on. That's what I was intrigued with is they would go and they would get a case, they know who did it. They put out all these crime scenes on a big table. And then the agents would talk back and forth. What was his age? What was his education? Who did they live with? What was his work? And they go back and forth. And that's the way they came up with how to profile on what they called an unknown subject, not in terms of the name, people got that really wrong. They thought, Oh, this is awful. They're going to be profiling Joe Smith. No, they didn't have any names. It was just give a description back to the agency. And then they were the ones that had to look through all of their suspects.
Melissa Milner 15:57
Interesting.
Ann Burgess 15:58
That organized and disorganized was really, really important.
Ann Burgess 16:02
You're talking about how the murderer did the... Was it planned or not planned kind of thing?
Ann Burgess 16:08
Yes. And that's where you get into. Now, the interesting thing, if you're, when serial killers are trying to say, Well, they didn't plan it. Well, then why did they hide the body? Why did they, you know, why did we not leave any clues? Well, of course, they had planned it you know, and how to manage it. But anyway, that was a number of things that we were able to pretty much we hope put to rest on from a scientific standpoint.
Melissa Milner 16:32
It's fascinating. The victimology I just the story about the bank being the victim, I thought was so cool.
Ann Burgess 16:41
You know, they would, you'd be down there, and they would be sitting in their office and they get phone call after phone call, everybody started calling them because, hey, I just got a note in the bank said that there's going to be a bomb that's gonna go off and at one o'clock or something like that. And they would handle these cases over the phone and tell them what to do. So it didn't matter. And in the book, we said it didn't matter who the victim was, it could be the bank could be blown up, you know, it could be a person, it could be a building. And so we tried to make that very clear that there are a number of situations the victim was very, very important. And if anything, I think I'd like to think that about I helped in creating the victimology piece. Now, if you ever go back and watch that show before Mindhunter was Criminal Minds.
Melissa Milner 17:32
Yes.
Ann Burgess 17:33
And if you follow that, they picked up our method very early, and when they hold those meetings, you know, and they start off, okay, who's the victim? Tell us about the victim? Well, we started off with the victimology. So they had they got it right.
Melissa Milner 17:48
And the victimology helps you to understand the situation the victim's in and possibly help you figure out who might have done it.
Ann Burgess 17:58
Exactly. In other words, why was she a victim or he a victim? And that will help you with where should you look for a suspect is what type of person would go after this type of victim. And I think all of the research has been pretty clear on the victim offender relationship is so important. If you can narrow that down, it really helps your suspects. You know whether the person had a relationship, whether they knew him whether it was or totally a stranger.
Melissa Milner 18:26
Wow, you should have a podcast or you and Laura Richards should get together?
Ann Burgess 18:32
No, we let you all do it. You do it really well.
Melissa Milner 18:35
So, I know you're now a professor at Boston College. Right?
Ann Burgess 18:40
Right.
Melissa Milner 18:41
And what are you teaching?
Ann Burgess 18:42
I teach four courses I teach in the fall, I teach victimology. And I teach forensic science, which is putting the case where's your evidence? So one is the victim and we do a different crime each week. And then in forensic science, how do you look at evidence and how does it make a case. That's in the fall, and then in the spring, I do forensic mental health, which is on the offender. So we can do the same crimes, but this time, we'll be talking about the offender. And then I had a project with Wounded Warriors back about 10 years ago. And so I teach Wounded Warriors in transition, which is just one that to try to get on the there was a time when people weren't paying attention to veterans coming home and how hard it was for them to readjust into the community.
Melissa Milner 19:32
Yeah.
Ann Burgess 19:32
So I do that. And that's turned out to be pretty, pretty popular because unfortunately, you know, we're going to have more veterans now with the way the world is going.
Ann Burgess 19:42
Right. Okay, so you're what...40?
Ann Burgess 19:46
You're kind. Thank you.
Melissa Milner 19:48
So how old are you if you don't mind me asking.
Ann Burgess 19:51
Well, I started in, back in the seventies, so you do the math.
Melissa Milner 19:57
So, you're teaching four courses at BC?
Ann Burgess 20:02
Yes.
Melissa Milner 20:02
When are you going to stop, if ever?
Ann Burgess 20:04
Well, you know, I guess I do a lot of cases, you should know that I do a lot of court work. Yeah, obviously, in my field. I do. And I very careful how many homicide cases I take because they're very, they're very complicated. When we got one, I've just taken that quadruple murder. And that's out in Arizona. So I'll be doing but many of the cases I do are victim cases, both child and I've been doing a number of elderly You don't realize how much goes on in nursing homes with the elderly people just don't believe that this is happening. So I tried to help there because families, you can imagine how families feel they put energy into picking out a good nursing home, and then somebody injures their their mother awful, right? And whatever. So to answer your question, I'm trying to get the next generation moving along. And so I do that, and it's a I have large classes, I have 250 in each class, generally. But it is and we have a forensic minor now so that anybody in the university can take the six courses, but it's to try because unfortunately, crime is the big issue. And I always try to do it from a prevention standpoint.
Melissa Milner 21:22
Absolutely.
Ann Burgess 21:23
And what can everybody do, regardless of their career choice, you know, regardless what they get into at least they'll have had something.
Melissa Milner 21:29
That's a great point. So you're I mean, you're not stopping anytime soon. Because
Ann Burgess 21:34
No.
Melissa Milner 21:34
You're like, You got to get this info out there.
Ann Burgess 21:37
That's right.
Melissa Milner 21:37
Absolutely. I love it. So how do you pick which case? How do you decide what to focus on when you're teaching?
Ann Burgess 21:43
Well, when I'm teaching, I just have every type of crime that we can do. And I try to bring in sometimes I bring in actual victims to talk about what happened. I have Kira Wahlstrom comes in she was a victim in the Radisson Hotel in Boston garage. So she's pretty powerful. She tells that and how it's gone for her. And then I have Andrea Constand who was the victim of a Bill Cosby, that was very important for how hard it was for her to get people to believe her.
Melissa Milner 22:14
Oh, yeah.
Ann Burgess 22:15
And then I tried to bring in people that law enforcement. I have a retired FBI agent. I have Gene Neault that comes in. He's wonderful in terms of he does my fingerprinting class, and he does my gambling, gambling class.
Melissa Milner 22:32
Yeah.
Ann Burgess 22:33
And we do any summer course for high school at Boston College. And he comes in and does that.
Melissa Milner 22:38
That's awesome.
Ann Burgess 22:39
We make a mess with the fingerprints. But we have a good time.
Melissa Milner 22:43
I love that. Yeah, it's that that's looking at the shapes to see, right? Because fingerprint is Yeah.
Ann Burgess 22:50
Oh, yeah. How many? How many points? You'll look at the points. Okay, you know, that has changed over time. It's always interesting how science does it, you have to have 15 points. And now I think it's down to eight points. And he's able to show how it's done, which is really great. And he has a bunch of cases that he's done.
Melissa Milner 23:07
So that's good. I love that you're bringing in different people to do that.
Ann Burgess 23:10
Yeah. I think it's good for students to see different ones in my Wounded Warriors. I have veterans come in and talk about when they had been deployed and what it was like for that.
Melissa Milner 23:20
Just to switch gears because you just mentioned, you know, you, you mentioned things you do as a teacher like bringing in people to speak, bringing in guest teachers like like, Gene. What are your words of wisdom for teachers how to teach well, how to lecture well, whatever, but also about your specialty?
Ann Burgess 23:40
Well, I have two points. One is I like to give cases because they're real. It's not hypothetical. I mean, and I know what the outcome is. And that's why even when we have cases that aren't solved, I'd like to the Idaho case of the we're watching that case, we're watching the Heuermann case down in Gilgo Beach, the Delphi case so that they can get a feel for when the case is ongoing. And we try to get their input the students to get them thinking we call the, you know, asking good questions, and analyzing and so forth. But my message for teachers is, this whole issue of threat assessment is really, really important. And we're seeing so many of the shooters that are going on, and we have to be able to get the red flags that there are warning signs, and that's all in social media. One of the things we're trying to do is to use AI and analyzing large data sets to see what it is that goes on in their mind. So one way you can hopefully try to find out what's going on is to analyze what they're writing because what they write is what they think and we knows that we know that thinking is what drives behavior. I'm we're trying we have up project going on with the Massachusetts State about threat assessment. And when should people what are the clues? You know, when should people be concerned, all of the school shootings they had was one just today. Very, very important that we get at that, and there was one like two weeks ago. So we're trying to measure that against we have 23 murder manifestos that we've analyzed.
Melissa Milner 25:26
Wow.
Ann Burgess 25:26
And so we're going to compare that to see if there's any pattern. So we're trying to do and I, my message to your audience is to be aware, when should you be concerned about a student? When should their writing and it's going to be in the writing. Or they're talking or something or their drawing or something that we should be? And then who can you go to to get help? To say, you know, am I being overly concerned? Or what? So I think every school should have a little team that looks at those things. That's my message.
Melissa Milner 26:00
You're saying it's mostly in the writing and in there, but is there any behaviors that teachers can observe that are concerning? Or is it not really doesn't really come out that way?
Ann Burgess 26:10
No, behaviors are very important. You're absolutely correct. Because you got to find out what's motivating the behavior? Why are they not conforming? Why are they not able to do with the rest of the kids are doing? Why are they getting up and walking around and or acting up or doing something aggressively, or there's always going to be something and teachers know that. I think that where teachers have trouble is, what do they do with that?
Melissa Milner 26:33
That's so true.
Ann Burgess 26:34
What you do with podcasts and so forth is so important to try to get it out there too. And then you ask your audience, as anyone been concerned about something that they've seen or heard, whether it's it's a student, or whether it's somebody, a neighbor, or whatever, people could tell you?
Melissa Milner 26:51
Absolutely. I think that I might have you back on just to talk about threat assessment.
Ann Burgess 26:58
Sure.
Melissa Milner 26:58
I think educators would really want that.
Ann Burgess 27:01
Yeah, yeah. Happy to because we have to be concerned about it.
Melissa Milner 27:04
Again, I could talk to you all night. Dr. Ann Burgess. Amazing, amazing. Amazing. Is there anything else?
Ann Burgess 27:10
No, let's see what your audience thinks if they have any questions. Yeah. Thank you for inviting me.
Melissa Milner 27:18
So, I think we will end that right there and have a you know, if you're listening to this, and you can go to theteacher as.com if you have questions about threat assessment, and then I can go ahead and wait get those questions or get those comments. And then we can schedule so I can schedule another chat. That would be fantastic. Thank you so much.
Ann Burgess 27:43
Bye bye. Thank you.
Melissa Milner 27:44
Bye.
Ann Burgess 27:45
For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.the teacher as.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.