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All Of It with Alison Stewart
The Woman Behind the Science of FBI Criminal Profiling
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The Woman Behind the Science of FBI Criminal Profiling
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McDonald's Customer
I' ma put you on, nephew.
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McDonald's Employee
All right, unc. Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order, miss?
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McDonald's Customer
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back. Listener supported WNYC Studios.
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Kusha Navadar
This is all, all of it on wnyc. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. You've probably heard of criminal psychiatric profiling. Commonly just called profiling, it's a way of using evidence and information about the victim as a way of figuring out who might have done the crime. Now, this technique was popularized by law enforcement in the 80s to catch serial killers. But when you consider the people who really established the methodology, one woman stands out. Dr. Ann Burgess started her career as a psychiatric nurse, but soon transitioned to working with victims of sexual assault. The FBI noticed her talent for getting people to open up, and she began to consult for the behavioral science unit where the first ever profiling was taking place. She and the team developed this skill, and the method was used to find criminals across the country. And despite this success, you might not have heard of Dr. Anne until more recently. While her male colleagues stepped into the limelight doing interviews and consulting on movies, Dr. Anne stayed behind the scenes finding more criminals. A new series on Hulu tells The story behind Dr. Ann Burgess, the impact she's had on how law enforcement catches criminals, and her work, which she continues today at almost 90. The series is from showrunner Danny Sloan. It's called To Think Like a Killer, and it's available now on Hulu. And with us today, we have Danny Sloan and Dr. Ann Burgess. Dr. Ann Dani. Welcome to all of it. Thanks for joining us.
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
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Kusha Navadar
And it's a pleasure to have you both here and listeners. Before we get started, if at any time during this conversation you need support, please call the sexual assault hotline. It's at 800-656-HOPE. That's 800-656-4673. Or go online to hotline RAINN. That's RAIN with two N's. So, Dr. Ann, I want to start with you. The beginning of the doc goes through how limited the options were for women who wanted careers when you were starting out. So when you were trying to pick a career, you say you picked being a nurse because you wanted to know how people feel. Where do you think that curiosity comes from? How was it for you starting a career?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Well, I had medical professionals in the family And I think that from a young age I would help my uncle, who was a country doctor, go out. He delivered a lot of babies. So I think that's where I really got some interest. And then, of course, in high school, I was a candy striper that I don't know if they have them anymore, but he went around and gave people cold water and so forth. So I really had a lot of interest in that in general, certainly not in the other two options that were available. I was not interested in being a secretary and not interested at that time in being a teacher.
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Kusha Navadar
And did you know that you always wanted a career from the earliest memories you had?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Well, yes, I mean, that was. That was taken for, you know, it was something you had to do. My mother always said, well, you have to support yourself. I guess she. That is what she was saying because I wanted to be a pianist. I wanted to be a concert pianist. I had these great fantasies of. Of, you know, playing maybe at Carnegie hall or something like that. And she really discouraged me, saying, I don't think they make too much money. So I became much more practical. And she had a lot of influence on me, that's for sure.
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Kusha Navadar
Yeah, it sounds like a lot of family influence there, that they give you a sense of what direction you wanted to go. And Sloan, you've worked on projects about food and media and corporations, but true crime seems to really your. Your lane. Why are you drawn to these stories?
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McDonald's Employee
So, you know, it's not so much true crime as it is stories about extraordinary people who, you know, have. Have done extraordinary things, have. Have, you know, suffered in some way. I mean, to me, the thing that makes a documentary or a story great is that we can kind of all take some sort of universal truth from it. And in telling Dr. Burgess story, I mean, it's. It's like pick. I mean, there's so many things from her story, especially as a young woman, to really. To really take from her life and her breadth of experience that I think, you know, I personally carry with me and I think so many other young women watching this film will be able to take and implement in their own lives. Whether it's, you know, being a woman in a boys club, you know, holding onto your ideas with such conviction, even when other people tell you that they're. They're not right or really just being this driving force in changing culture before culture is ready for it. I, you know, I always look for. For stories that I think people can. Can learn from and can kind of, you know, will resonate with them. In the long term.
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Kusha Navadar
You know, part of the doc is that Dr. Ann's story is not well known. How did you find out about her?
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McDonald's Employee
So, I mean, look, like so many other people, Mindhunter was kind of our first exposure to this, you know, this unit within the FBI. We all know what profiling is now, but that was kind of the very first time, I think the general public understood where this. This term and this, you know, methodology came from. And so that was kind of my first exposure to a little, little, small piece of her. But as we very quickly realized when we read her book, that is not Dr. Burgess at all. You know, and I had seen Dr. Burgess pop up and in other specials and documentaries, she's been interviewed for so many things because, as you see in our film, she's been involved with so many of the major cases that we know about over the years. But it really was. Wasn't until I read her book that I understood, wow, there is so much more to this story about this extraordinary woman, and people need to know it.
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Kusha Navadar
Did she take some convincing to do the doc?
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McDonald's Employee
You know, not to speak for Dr. Burgess, but, you know, Dr. Burgess is what makes. What makes her such an incredible documentary subject is just how humble she is. You know, Dr. Burgess did not want to do this film because she wanted her moment in the spotlight or she wanted her notoriety or she wanted her name known. She did this because she wanted the work to continue, and she wanted, you know, a new generation to understand where we had come from and what there is still to do. So, you know, that's often not the case. I mean, to be able to sit with somebody who is not doing this for any other motivation other than just the kind of pure love of the work. So, yes and no. I mean, I think she. She saw the value in this, although I don't want to speak for her.
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Kusha Navadar
Yeah. Well, let's turn it over to Dr. Burgess. I mean, how did you feel when. When Danny approached you about doing something not just about your work, but about. About you in your life?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Well, that I. Well, I stopped to think, you know, what are they going to say? What. What. What could they find that would be of interest? You have to have, you know, messages and interest and all that in today's worlds. So that's where I was kind of coming from is what they. What would they find? So I was not absolutely, as Danny said, I was not real excited about this in any way in the beginning. And then I got curious about it because it's a whole new area. I like New areas. And I had never gotten into anything where there's production and you have put these things, you know, together and so forth. So from a. Just a learning situation, I thought, well, maybe I could learn something from this that would be helpful some other way. So that's how we agreed. Agreed.
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Kusha Navadar
And on the other side of it, do you feel like you learned something that was really valuable to you from going through this experience?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
I did, I really did because a lot of students at where I teach at Boston College, they were in the film and communications and so forth. So I learned a whole new area and I was very interested when students would then want to do something. I try to make them as creative as we could so that they could match when they're taking something in crime, they could take it and put it into their expertise, if you will, the communications area. So it was good. It was a really good match.
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Kusha Navadar
That's wonderful. We're talking about the new docu series, Mastermind to Think Like a Killer. It's out on Hulu now. We're talking with the showrunner, Danny Sloan, and the subject, Dr. Ann Burgess. And Dr. Burgess, I'd love to go into your career a little bit. So early in your career, your work centered around sexual assault. What was it like doing the research back then?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
That was really very important and it actually did start my career. I was brand new to academe. I did not go to graduate school in any way intending to do this. I wanted to just be a psychotherapist, nurse psychotherapist. And so I quickly learned that you have to publish. And it's the old saying, publisher perish. And luckily there was another young, a sociologist, Linda Lytle Holmstrom, who was actually looking for a new topic and had approached me and had several that she was thinking about doing. She had just finished her dissertation and so she told me about them. And the one that really made me sit up and listen was the one she said, rape is going to be a big issue for women. Linda was part of the women's movement at that time. She was into all of these consciousness raising groups and I was just fascinated listening to her and, and said. And that at that time said, can a psychiatric nurse work with a sociologist, if you will, and if we can, let's try it. And that's how it all started. And I was at Boston College.
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Kusha Navadar
And for context there at the time you say rape cases weren't being investigated and they were turning cold. How were you hoping your research would change this?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Well, we were just going to Research what it was like for a woman, usually a woman coming in with the complaint of rape. And one of the first things we learned is half of them coming in never would have come in on their own. Somebody else brought them in. Even so it isn't just that they were raped, it's just that they didn't know what to do after this experience. So we quickly, and it didn't take very long for us to really pick up the patterns of these women. And we were called each time that there was one that came into Boston City Hospital, which is a large urban hospital in, in a very good in the crime area, if you will. And so we had 146 people over one year. That's a lot of people to be called out for. And it ranged in age from three was our youngest three year old up to a 73 year old. So we almost had a 70 year spran, if you will, on the age of the victim.
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Kusha Navadar
And Danny, for you, you know, sexual assault is obviously a sensitive topic. How did you want to navigate what to include about Anne's work while you were thinking about the documentary?
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McDonald's Employee
You know, I think our sort of litmus test. And this is, this goes for, you know, kind of the details of a lot of these crimes as well. Not even just around rape and sexual assault is always, you know, are we including this because we're making a larger point? You know, we never want to include gratuitous detail. We never want to kind of re. Traumatize anyone. And this goes for interview subjects too, especially, you know, we had Andrea Constan that we interviewed for this film, who has. Has been so constantly traumatized by, you know, this story coming back in the media and has chosen to speak out about her experience with Bill Cosby because she sees the value in it. When we're sitting down with people who have been through something like this, you know, we ask them questions and want to hear their story, but we really try to kind of be sensitive to where they're at in their healing and in their journey. And then when we go to edit the film, we really try to kind of continue that practice through the editing of the piece as well. We want to make sure that viewers understand what happened. But there's definitely a bar for what to include and what not to include. And it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly as you're editing these films.
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Kusha Navadar
Yeah, and there's another element that is throughout the film as well, which is the sexism that you, Dr. Burgess faced once you move on to Quantico because you end up at the FBI as a conspiracy consultant to discuss these assault cases with agents. And you say that you were laughed at, not taken seriously. Some even asked you, this is in the first episode. Some even asked you if you'd been raped. We're going to listen to the clip of something like that happening to you from, from the documentary. Here's that clip.
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Narrator/Voiceover
There was a magazine piece, and it's this great shot of all these men in suits standing around a desk. And it is rage making. Dr. Burgess had done really important, incredible work, and yet the men in that photo did not see fit to ask her to join them.
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Kusha Navadar
Danny, why was this specific incident so important for you to include?
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McDonald's Employee
I mean, I think there's so many kind of stories like this from Dr. Burgess Time and her career at the FBI and elsewhere. But this is a visual representation of it, right? Like in the film we show the magazine article. And at that point, you know, we've. We've understood Dr. Burgess contributions up until that point. She obviously went on to do many, many, many things after that article was printed. But, you know, we understand how integral she was to this unit, getting to the place that they got to by the time they start getting national recognition and the phone starts ringing off the hook for other. For them to help with other cases. And, you know, here is this visual representation that we as the audience can. Can now look at. And having understood all the context that we understand about what she did up to this point. Here's this group of men and she's nowhere to be seen. She's not mentioned in the article. There's. There's no mention of her.
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Dr. Ann Burgess
It's.
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McDonald's Employee
It's like she's invisible from this. But we know that she was there. And I think, you know, for. It's Sarah Cullian in that, in that clip who's, you know, an incredible interview subject in our film. You know, it is rage making. And the idea, I think, is for the audience to look at that too and be equally as enraged, because why isn't she there? Why isn't she part of this? It doesn't make any sense.
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Kusha Navadar
And it's interesting because after the clip in the doc, Dr. Burgess, you say you weren't enraged. In fact, you say the exclusion didn't bother you. I'm wondering, tell me more, what was it like working in that environment?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Yeah, well, particularly that didn't bother me at all because I was so happy that they were getting some recognition. This is the very first, if you will, media presentation of back in 1980. It was on the Psychology Today, which is a big, you know, at that time was a very important magazine and they finally were getting some recognition, which of course I, I was a part of in terms of the profiling. But I didn't feel like I would need to be in there. It might even look odd if you have at that time had a female in there. Maybe it's better I wasn't in it. So I love it that we can go back and forth and, and Danny can say why at. Why it was important for them to tell their story, whereas I was telling a whole different story and it didn't bother me. Also, I would never, I had to be very careful down there because I was very new to the unit in terms of gender and I just wanted, I wanted to stay under the radar. I didn't want to draw any attention to that. And much of what we were doing was that it wasn't that well known or approved. And so not that it was a secret project, but. But we were just as happy not to get too much recognition until you had a good breakthrough that happened to be a case that was real important.
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Kusha Navadar
I was wondering about that breakthrough. Was there a breakthrough moment for you when you felt like, oh, what I am doing is making a big difference where it felt maybe revolutionary.
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Oh, not me. I didn't feel that, but I felt for the unit. I felt that it was important to get the profiling because that was their project. It wasn't my project. I mean, I had a role in it, so I didn't feel that way. It's just the way it was. Anytime that the they hit on a case was wonderful. You were trying to get rid of killers. I saw that as a plus for our side because there would be less victims if you could get rid of these serial killers. Obviously they were looking at it from a whole different standpoint. Yeah.
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Kusha Navadar
And can you tell a little bit about the role that you did play within consulting for the unit, what you were doing to help catch those criminals?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Yeah, I was basically what they call the methodologist. In other words, how to put together all of this data that are coming in. They were going out and doing the interviews, but as I said to them, I said, well, what are you talking to these killers about? And they said, we're just getting them to talk. It's just very interesting. And I said, well, do you ask them the same questions each time so that we can maybe look at some patterns? We can have something. Can't just willy nilly just talk to them. So I first Task was to get a questionnaire, make sure we were getting not only the interview, but to get all of the background information. And that is what we put together. So from a methodology standpoint, the project was going to stand on how good was the methodology? Would it pass the academic tests, which are very strict out there? And not only was I up against the males in this whole project, but the academics at that time were primarily male and they were. Is not a welcoming group, let me put it that way. It was more with the agents that was something very different. But for the academic world that was another matter.
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Kusha Navadar
In the second episode we see you were looking for John Jubert, who targeted and killed young boys. And with the evidence you determined that the killer must be weak in stature. How did you train yourself to pick up those little details which led to his arrest?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Well, I was listening to how the. While the agents were talking and they don't necessarily, they weren't necessarily putting that kind of information together. They had. I said how many footprints? It was snowing and so how many footprints went in? And they said two. So two people had walked into the woods. And then I said did they come out? And they said only one set came out. So how do you explain it? So then we go around and talk about could it be. Well, it turned out to be that it was decided that he was smaller and couldn't just, he couldn't carry him. And so the offender should be small. His first victim, if you remember, was just left by the side of the road and later found another victim and he was just left there. This time he moved the victim to another location and killed him there. And so that showed, is that escalation, what did that show? Until we begin to try to work and see what other cases we had that would be like that.
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Kusha Navadar
Danny, when you think about doing something as a three episode series and then you have to encapsulate the long storied career of one individual in this project. Specifically. Were there any times where it was really difficult to figure out what to leave on the cutting room floor?
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McDonald's Employee
Oh my God, yeah, especially, I mean, you read her book. Dr. Burgess was involved in so many cases and her involvement in all these cases was different. You know, some she, she kind of consulted on some she was like very involved with some she was more hands on with some she was more hands off with and just kind of in the background on. So yeah, I mean there were just so many cases and definitely as a, as a team, when we were in the edit, we, there's, I mean so much left on the cutting room floor of stories that she's told us, little scenes that we put together about cases that didn't end up making it to air. I mean, Unabomber, btk, you know, the Larry Nassar case, like, just to name a few. There's just so much. I mean, we could have gone for many more episodes and really filled a much longer series with telling her story.
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Kusha Navadar
So then for you, what were the elements that made those stories that you did choose to bring to the front? What were they? What were those elements?
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McDonald's Employee
So I think the rule that we kind of applied early on in our process was, you know, Dr. Burgess had to learn something very specific, specific from each case. And that knowledge, case to case, had to kind of build on each other. So, you know, for example, the ski Mask rapist case, this was the first time she was in the field. This was the first time that, you know, profiling was implemented in, you know, a big way, and that was considered a win for the bsu. And obviously, then going chronologically, we look at the Joubert case, we look at the Melissa Ackerman case, and we kind of go from there. And so, you know, chronologically, obviously, everything has to fit together, but that knowledge has to keep growing, and there has to be something about profiling or behavior or the methodology that she's learning, she's refining, she's changing in order to get to this place where, you know, ultimately, profiling is able to stand on its own as a tool that is used, you know, across the country and around the world now.
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Kusha Navadar
Yeah, so it is that idea. One thing that you said that really sticks out to me is that Dr. Burt just had to learn something very specific, and it kind of builds on that, and that creates the narrative. And what's interesting to me when I was watching this was that it wasn't just about the work. It was about the life as well. And Dr. Burgess, your husband and kids are featured in the doc. Was there anything they said that was surprising or that they'd never shared with you?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Most all of it was a surprise because we didn't talk about those kind of things. So I love learning some of those things and even since then, have heard many more stories. So that was really great.
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Kusha Navadar
You know, you were. You were a working mom through this all and seemed to manage it well. But. But. But on the other side, that the work that you were doing is extremely difficult on the mind and the spirit. Did you have to separate the. I mean, obviously you separated the two, but how did you not get overwhelmed by what you would see and hear in your job?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
I think it's my nursing background that we learn that early. You take care of patients, you see all kinds of other things so that you kind of compartmentalize it. And I think that's what I did. And also was it good to come home at night so to have something very different, have to deal with the kids and they'll all have some kind of thing. So it would take my mind off of anything that I had necessarily seen that day.
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Kusha Navadar
Yeah. I don't want to ruin too much about the doc, so I'm going to leave this as an open ended question to you, Dr. Burgess, but eventually you do leave Quantico and you decide to retire. Can you just give a taste of what happens in your career after that, in terms of your work after that, Retirement?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Well, what happens is I get more into the legal system, my cases, I get more cases. I get to both criminal and civil cases. So I really am into that area. I'm still teaching and I do that because I can use my cases as ways to teach. And that's in my way to get the word out and to teach students so that the next generation can carry.
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Kusha Navadar
On this work and thinking about contemporary work now, bringing it to the modern era. At the station, actually on the team, on the all of it team, we were having a discussion recently about serial killers. And the main question was basically, where did they all go? In your professional opinion, why aren't we hearing about them so much anymore? Did profiling do its job?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
It did its job. There certainly are some serial killers out there now, but there are very few. What I think unfortunately has happened is the crime has taken a turn and the crime now has gone to more mass shooters. This is what. And it places all of us at risk. I think that's what's so different. And serial killers tended to have one target, whereas mass shooters. Any of us can be a target for, you know, the grocery store or at some kind of a gathering. You just, you don't know. So now you have to teach more about how do you avoid, if you can, any, any danger.
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Kusha Navadar
I was going to ask you, how does that influence your, your work moving forward or how has it already?
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Oh, it already has. We're into looking at mass shooters. I mean, look at what happened over the weekend. We are doing cases, we're doing shows on that now. How would you profile it and what prevention can you do? So there's all kinds of work to be done. It's unfortunately never Going to be done. All done, yeah.
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Kusha Navadar
Danny, for you, thinking about the documentary, how did you come up with the title?
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McDonald's Employee
You know, it's one of those things when you're making a film, either you have it in the beginning and it's your title all the way through, or it's something that you kind of try to find at the end. This was one really, from the beginning that we had, and it was always just, this was Mastermind. This is. You know, and it just. It fit her. I mean, this is who she is. She's this. This, you know, Hidden Figures was already taken, but she is this hidden figure who was kind of at these. At all of these really important junctures of. Of history and involved in all these cases and all these moments that we as a society know about, but we didn't know she was there. So just this idea of here is this person behind the scenes who you never really knew about, but she influenced your life probably in some way. It just fit her. I mean, it just. And, you know, so much of this was giving Dr. Burgess her due after all these years. And, you know, as. As you heard, she is truly the most humble person that there is. She's. She's never going to take credit for. For work that was, you know, a team effort or for work that, you know, perhaps she was heavily involved with. But, you know, there were other people involved, and, you know, we. We wanted to give her that credit because we, as, you know, the team, saw how important it was. Yeah.
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Kusha Navadar
Mastermind to Think Like a Killer is out on Hulu. Now, I've been speaking with the subject of the documentary, Dr. Ann Burgess, and the showrunner, Danny Sloan. Well, Dr. Burgess, first, thank you so much for all of your work. And both of you, thank you so much for putting this story together and for coming and chatting with us.
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Dr. Ann Burgess
Thank you for the opportunity.
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McDonald's Customer
I'mma put you on, nephew.
- [27:26]
McDonald's Employee
All right, unc. Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order, miss?
- [27:29]
McDonald's Customer
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years now. It's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.