← UNMARKED: A True Crime Podcast
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- [00:00]
On Deck Advertiser
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Interviewer / Host
Long before a serial kill claims a victim, something else happens. Fantasy. For years, and in some cases decades, violent offenders rehearse their crimes in their imagination before acting them out in the real world. But what role do those fantasies actually play? Are we talking about harmless thoughts or are they the foundation on which serial murder is built? Today I'm joined by best selling true crime author and host of the podcast Crossing the Line, M. William Phelps. Together we're going to explore one of the most misunderstood aspects of serial homicide fantasy development. When I look at all these cases, fantasy plays such a huge role with these offenders. It seems to be there in childhood, it's developed in adolescence, and then it's really the motive that is driving these behaviors, at least as far as I can see. And no one has looked into these cases as much as you, so I want to get your take on this.
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M. William Phelps
Well, when we talk about fantasy, it's almost like it's the primary engine right behind serial offenses of all kinds, rape,
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Interviewer / Co-host
murder,
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M. William Phelps
thievery, whatever it is. And look, we all fantasize. Everybody fantasizes all day long. However, for the serial killer. And you know, I say serial killer, so I'm speaking in general terms for
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Interviewer / Co-host
most of them, not all of them, but a good portion of them.
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M. William Phelps
It's all about the fantasy. And that fantasy is like a, it's on a loop, it's like a cassette tape in their head and it's just on a loop and it just keeps going. And Going, and, and that's their motivation
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Interviewer / Co-host
when they go out to, to kill
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M. William Phelps
or to abduct is to live out that fantasy.
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Interviewer / Host
How do you see fantasy for a sexually violent psychopath as opposed to fantasy for a normal person? And you kind of alluded to this, you know, this like obsessive fixation that's on a loop inside your head.
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M. William Phelps
Well, I, I think for a lot of people fantasy is about hitting lottery
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Interviewer / Co-host
or getting that girl at the corner that you see at the store every week and she's going to come over and she's going to fall in love with you and you know, or you get, you shoot five eagles playing golf
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M. William Phelps
or whatever, whatever you're, you know, it's very much adolescent, it's very much nostalgia driven type of stuff for normal people. You know, my fantasy is for my
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Interviewer / Co-host
dahlias to do really well this year out in my garden. That's my fantasy right now. And they're doing, they're doing great. So, so my fantasy is being met, I should say,
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M. William Phelps
for the psychopath. Let me just give you, I'll give you a narrative example of a.
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Interviewer / Host
Sure, yeah, that'd be great.
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M. William Phelps
And how it connects to the mind. So I had this guy, this serial
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Interviewer / Co-host
killer who I was communicating with, writing about, et cetera for, for a while, quite a while.
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M. William Phelps
And, and when I looked at his career of murder, his primary victim was
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Interviewer / Co-host
a large breasted woman, very large breasted.
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M. William Phelps
So, so that was within his fantasy.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Okay.
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M. William Phelps
And then his, his, the other part of all the murders he left behind was he, you could say he staged the murders. I don't know if we called staging, but he did leave them a certain way. Okay. With their tops off and he would stab them around the breasts. Okay.
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Interviewer / Host
Okay.
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M. William Phelps
So that was his M.O. now when I looked at this, I said, where does that come from?
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Interviewer / Co-host
Right?
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M. William Phelps
Where is that rooted? Because that's obviously his fantasy was to, or probably still is in prison is to have a large breasted woman be totally incapacitated and totally at his mercy and he can do whatever he wants. And what he wanted to do and what he did was he'd get on top of them, straddle them, he wouldn't rape them, he'd do his business on them, he'd masturbate on them and then he'd kill them. Okay, where is, where does this fantasy, where does it reside in him? Where did it come from? Because that is not a fantasy that we wake up as a 10 year old child and say, you know, I, I think I'm going to go after large breasted women and toss off on them and then stab them. You know, you don't just think of that, right? So I kept digging and digging and digging. And finally I got to this one
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Interviewer / Co-host
detective who said, listen, you know, you know, I found out what makes Ned tick.
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M. William Phelps
And he said it goes back to his dad. So his dad was taking Ned, little Ned when he was 8 or 9, around the neighborhood. And the dad was a peeping Tom. And the dad would look at the women, naked women, and his kid would be there and the dad would toss off. So do you see now how that is implanted in his brain now? In his brain, he sees the. The breasted women, you know, the bare breasted women.
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Bluff Advertiser
And.
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M. William Phelps
And he equates that with masturbation. So later on, when he becomes a killer, this is where he feels most comfortable, right? That's how he feels most comfortable. So he ends up doing that. And when they do that, they're in their element. They're in their. Like, for example, happy face killer Keith Jesperson, his fantasy was. Was to incapacitate women. His fantasy was to get women into his comfort zone, we call it, and have them totally at his mercy. Bound, gagged. He could do then whatever he wanted
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Interviewer / Co-host
to do with them.
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M. William Phelps
And where did that come from? Well, when, when, when Jesperson was little, he had no control over his life.
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Interviewer / Co-host
His father controlled his whole life.
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M. William Phelps
So he wants power and control. He wants. It's a compulsion. It's all the compulsion. This is why I say, and to any of your female listeners or viewers, I would say this. You know, if you are ever coming
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Interviewer / Co-host
out of the library or the store
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M. William Phelps
and somebody comes up and they grab you.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Right, Right.
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M. William Phelps
Fight them, do whatever you can. Scratch at their eyes, scream. Because you know what that does that breaks the loop of that fantasy. It takes that tape in their head and it stops it. And once that fantasy is. Is no longer, they can no longer execute that fantasy. They're uninterested. It throws them off their game and they move on to somebody where they
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Interviewer / Co-host
can execute that fantasy.
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Interviewer / Host
That reminds me of several episodes that we've covered exactly what you're speaking to, where you have men like, I'm thinking of Dennis Rader or David Berkowitz, who had these fantasies of control and domination. But when they actually went to act out on these fantasies, they find victims, or they found victims who were not cooperative, who would scream, who would run away, and that would ruin the experience for them.
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M. William Phelps
It would cause their fantasy is not being met and it's all about the fantasy playing out exactly how they have
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Interviewer / Co-host
it in their head.
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M. William Phelps
So it becomes, you know, look, fantasy rarely matches real life, right? Fantasy rarely is perfect in real life
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Interviewer / Co-host
as it is in the mind. So when you break that, when you
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M. William Phelps
break that for them, you cut that tape, they're totally thrown off their game. BTK is an excellent, excellent example of
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Interviewer / Co-host
the fantasy, the, the, the binding, all of that stuff.
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M. William Phelps
Remember, we're talking about a guy, BTK who never raped any of his victims. Why, why didn't he rape them? His comment to my good friend Dr. Katherine Ramslin was
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Interviewer / Co-host
rape them.
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M. William Phelps
That, that would be cheating on my wife. I would never do that. But it's okay to strangle them, right? It's okay to put a bag over their head and strangle them, but I'm not going to rape them because that's cheating on my wife. So they have this really skewed. The psychopath has this really skewed version of reality.
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Interviewer / Co-host
You know, it's. It's not, it's not right.
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Interviewer / Host
And I think you raise another good point in that if you are a psychopath, if you're a normal person, I should say, if you're a normal person who has the ability to attach to other people, say you fantasize about hurting potential partners or women. If you fantasize about that, that's one thing. But when you, when, I would imagine when you, when that person attempts to do that in real life, the reality of their suffering becomes problematic because they are able to attach other people. But when you're talking about a psychopath, and this is what you're speaking about, I believe, is that a psychopath sees other people as objects, sees women as objects, so they fantasize about them as objects. And when they go to do that in real life, there is no barrier because they see them as objects in
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Interviewer / Co-host
real life as well, you're 100% accurate. They're nothing more than a pawn on a chessboard.
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M. William Phelps
They're nothing more than, you know, the fantasy is this stage play in their head.
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Interviewer / Co-host
And their victims are just actors, players in this. They just don't care about them. They. They will do whatever they have to do.
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M. William Phelps
And again, a lot of it goes
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Interviewer / Co-host
back to the power and the control, you know, and whenever you see staging going on at a crime scene, you can bet your ass that serial killer is working within a fantasy, because staging is a huge part of it. Posing the victims, leaving souvenirs, taking trophies.
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M. William Phelps
And another, Another thing is overkill. Whenever you see overkill, you. That's that's a guy who is acting
- [11:42]
Interviewer / Co-host
out on a fantasy because the, the inflicting of the injuries, the, the inflicting of death is part of the fantasy, you know, and they, they, you know,
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M. William Phelps
they're really obvious a lot of times
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Interviewer / Co-host
who they are with what they leave behind.
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- [13:03]
Interviewer / Co-host
That, that, that is just in BTK again is another good example of that.
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Interviewer / Host
How do we apply this to a real world scenario? I feel law enforcement has been over overly reliant on behavioral profiling, looking for things like signatures and types of serial killers, organized versus disorganized. And none of these categorizations, none of this kind of pseudo academia leads to the arrest of serial killers or at least not in an efficient manner.
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Interviewer / Co-host
That's a great point.
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Interviewer / Host
How could you, knowing that all these crimes are motivated by fantasy, how could law enforcement use that to, to more tailor their investigations as opposed to like a behavioral profile?
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Interviewer / Co-host
Well, first of all, profiling is nonsense. It's bullshit.
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M. William Phelps
Because, because serial killers, when you, when you, when you look at a majority
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Interviewer / Co-host
of the serial killers, we're talking about blue collar electrician, plumber, you know, homeless
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M. William Phelps
guy, you know, down and out transients. We're not talking about, you know, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy. We're not talking about those Hollywood serial killers. That is not what the serial killer out there is, right?
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Interviewer / Host
That's a minority of personalities.
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Interviewer / Co-host
It's.
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M. William Phelps
Those are anomalies, right?
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Interviewer / Co-host
Those guys.
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M. William Phelps
That's why they're on Netflix, because You
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Interviewer / Co-host
know, they dress up in a clown suit or whatever. They, they skin people. So, you know, they end up on Netflix because we like really gross stuff. That's who we are, you know, so
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M. William Phelps
the majority of the serial killers are just these down and out kind of alcoholics, drug addict guys. You know, you can almost, you can almost guarantee they live in squalor, you know what I'm saying, that sort of thing.
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Interviewer / Host
Right.
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M. William Phelps
So the profiling aspect, it can't help catch anything. You can't, you can't pro, you can't look at say five women left in a 90 mile radius and profile a
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Interviewer / Co-host
guy and then go find that guy.
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M. William Phelps
That's it. It. Some of your profile might match when you find the guy. But you know what, all the profiles seem to be the same.
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Interviewer / Host
Yeah, right.
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M. William Phelps
There's, you know, they call it a science. So what can we do?
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Interviewer / Co-host
Your question is, is, is when we
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M. William Phelps
look at different scenes, different. Well, the, the biggest thing we can do is to educate the community in
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Interviewer / Co-host
which serial killers pray.
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M. William Phelps
And that community is sex worker community. That's, that's the number one community they target.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Right.
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M. William Phelps
You know, the, the, the most prolific serial killers in this country are truck drivers. I mean, the FBI has a study. If, if you haven't seen it, look at it where they've, they've, they've, they've, you know, they've come down to it where, you know, they believe there's, you know, probably 100 truck drivers on the
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Interviewer / Co-host
road that are serial killers be.
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M. William Phelps
Just because the job offers that kind of.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Really?
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M. William Phelps
Yeah, yeah. I mean, they have a list of like 500 plus victims found all over
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Interviewer / Co-host
the country by major highways that they believe truck driver serial killers are responsible for. So.
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Interviewer / Host
Yeah, that's incredible.
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M. William Phelps
Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a big study they did. You just go on the FBI site and look at this study and, and you'll see and it's. You know, I don't give the FBI credit for a lot of things, but I will give them credit for this because credit is due. It's a really good study. Says one thing. It screams one thing to me. You know, if, if you're a woman who's a sex worker, don't be hanging around truck stop lots because there's a good chance you're going to run across one of these guys. You know, so we can do things like that, educate people. And look, the message I want to say too is serial killing is one of the most rarest forms of murder there is. I mean, it doesn't happen. You know, it just does. It's not like as prolific as we think the reporting of it in the media is, but the actual murders is not. It's a very, very low percentage of murder in the country, which is really down to begin with. Murder rates are way, way, way, way,
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Interviewer / Co-host
way down right now.
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M. William Phelps
So it's, it's not something you shouldn't be walking around.
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Interviewer / Co-host
You know, there's a serial killer following me. That, that doesn't happen.
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M. William Phelps
And, and serial killers don't target like suburban neighborhoods. I mean again, Israel Keys is an anom, is an anomaly.
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Interviewer / Host
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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M. William Phelps
They don't, they don't like, do random
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Interviewer / Co-host
people, you know, they, they did they
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M. William Phelps
find kids or they find sex workers
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Interviewer / Co-host
or they find down and out people.
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M. William Phelps
They don't go after, you know, normal people.
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Interviewer / Host
But to your point, you could very much drastically reduce the incidence of serial murder, however small it is, but you could drastically reduce it by targeting education towards the vulnerable populations. So for example, if you had better policing at truck stops to just prevent prostitution or sex work at truck stops altogether, you would save hundreds, if not thousands of lives. And it reminds me of, of cases like Gary Ridgeway or Lonnie Franklin Jr. The green, the Grim Sleeper, in which they were targeting vulnerable populations within blocks of their home for decades. But police were so overly focused on this mythological idea of a serial killer that they almost missed the very obvious answer, that a man living very nearby was simply cruising the strip and picking up sex workers and then killing them.
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M. William Phelps
I mean, that's generally the case. There's a case in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Same thing. The New Bedford Highway.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Serial kills up in your neck of the woods.
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M. William Phelps
The highway of Tears.
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Interviewer / Co-host
I mean, look, I mean there's truckers involved.
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M. William Phelps
I did that case on Dark Minds.
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Interviewer / Co-host
I did the highway of Tears.
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M. William Phelps
I traveled all through British Columbia, way up to Smithers, Canada. I mean, you know, I and, and, and interviewed people and, and that's, you know, that's an indigenous thing. So there's a whole different conversation about, about how the RCMP treat that.
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Interviewer / Co-host
But so, but you're right.
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M. William Phelps
I mean, yeah, police truck stops, you know, kick those girls out of there, right, because, you know, don't hitchhike, you know, don't, don't take a ride from a trucker who pulls over to pick you up. You know, I mean, simple things like that can lead to saving people's lives
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Interviewer / Co-host
more than, you know, a bunch of high paid people in business suits sitting around Quantico, you know, making PowerPoints, you
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M. William Phelps
know, that you know, I mean, you know, I mean it just, to me,
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Interviewer / Co-host
the profiling,
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M. William Phelps
I'm glad to see that profiling is kind of moving away right now. It's, it's kind of, it's kind of
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Interviewer / Co-host
starting to say, people are starting to say, wait, wait a minute, you know, that's fucking junk science, man. You know, it really is.
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Interviewer / Host
Fundamentally, profiling is backwards. I mean, not only is there a lot of now empirical research show that it doesn't work, which it doesn't, but it's not effective. But it's backwards. It's looking at someone's external life, at their external behavior. When these people, the people these offenders were, we're talking about specifically are not driven by external factors, they're driven entirely by fantasy, by internal factors. So.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Absolutely.
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Interviewer / Host
So the whole methodology of law enforcement, the whole approach should be focusing on the internal world of these men, not the external behaviors. They're not even aware of themselves.
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M. William Phelps
I, I mean, I mean, you sit down and you say, you know, I,
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Interviewer / Co-host
I believe he's a, you know, he's a white guy, late 30s, early 40s. What does that tell you?
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M. William Phelps
Well, that gives you, you know, 30% of the population you're looking at in that area.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Right.
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M. William Phelps
So what does that do? It does nothing. There's absolutely nothing. You know, you look at the profiles
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Interviewer / Co-host
of the Long island serial killer as they were looking into this case and
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M. William Phelps
none of them match guy, you know, and that guy's. Where's that guy? He's right in a community. Yeah, he's right, he's right there.
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Interviewer / Host
Rex Hereman. Yeah. And no one, and no one from the FBI ever says, you know what, there's got to be more than one of these men because the answer to the Long island serial question, which has been asked for decades, is that there were five or six of them. It wasn't one person. But exactly to what you're saying, no one is, no one is saying, hey, we should just do a geographic sweep within a five mile radius. And, and, and then, and that's a
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M. William Phelps
lot of these guys. Yeah, you're gon find a lot of these guys right.
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Interviewer / Co-host
In the community where they are.
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M. William Phelps
I, I, I've just started looking into
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Interviewer / Co-host
a case that I'm going to be doing for season seven of of Paper Ghosts, my podcast. And it's down south and
- [22:20]
M. William Phelps
there's three women and involved and then they, and then all of a sudden they stop and they're looking all over the country for this guy. It's unsolved and I'm, it's like, he's. He was right there. He was definitely.
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Interviewer / Host
He was right there.
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M. William Phelps
Yeah, he was right there. I mean, they all are. If you look at the Cleveland guy. I mean, you just look at all these guys, you know, very rarely does one move around.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Like, his real keys.
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M. William Phelps
I mean, that's just rare. And look, with anything we look at, there's always anomalies.
- [22:49]
Interviewer / Co-host
Always. You can't.
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M. William Phelps
So you got to kick them out. You know, there's a, there's a, there's a guy who. I encourage you to look him up.
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Interviewer / Co-host
Enzo Yannick is his name.
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M. William Phelps
And he did a complete, I don't
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Interviewer / Co-host
know, maybe five, eight year thesis, like
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M. William Phelps
doctoral work on the study of serial
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Interviewer / Co-host
crime and serial offenders.
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M. William Phelps
Because he, he was driven by that
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Interviewer / Co-host
whole profiling is nonsense kind of theory.
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M. William Phelps
And boy, the research he finds is
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Interviewer / Co-host
exactly what we're talking about. You know, it's.
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M. William Phelps
He, he, he nails it.
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Interviewer / Co-host
And he does a tremendous job at
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M. William Phelps
bringing serial killers into the real world and saying, hey, you know, these are guys that are hanging around truck stops, are hanging around at the gas station
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Interviewer / Co-host
down the street, working on your car,
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M. William Phelps
you know, and, and that's who they are. They're not, you know, drilling holes in people's heads and keeping penises and refrigerators and, you know, they're. That's not who they are. You know, and if, if we can just accept that and, and look at
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Interviewer / Co-host
it from that perspective, you know, we could serve the community a lot better as, as, as people who try to educate the community on this stuff.
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Interviewer / Host
Great. That's great. I think we can leave it there, Phelps. That's a great ending. Oh, I have had no luck lately.
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- [25:22]
On Deck Advertiser
Refreshers contain caffeine.
- [25:24]
Jay Uso
What's up, fools?
- [25:25]
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Bluff Advertiser
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- [25:51]
M. William Phelps
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