Corresponding with Killers

Summary

Up and Vanished Weekly: "Corresponding with Killers"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Up and Vanished Weekly
• Host/Author: Tenderfoot TV
• Episode: Corresponding with Killers
• Release Date: July 23, 2025

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Overview

In the episode titled "Corresponding with Killers," host Maggie Freeling engages in a profound conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon, a renowned forensic psychologist with five decades of experience interacting with some of America's most notorious murderers, including Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Donald Harvey. The discussion delves into the psychological profiles of serial killers, exploring the intricate balance between nature and nurture, and offering insights into their motivations and behaviors.

Introduction to Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon

[01:56] Maggie Freeling:
“This podcast discusses mature and sensitive content, including descriptions of violence that may be triggering for some audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Hey y'all. Welcome to Up and Vanish Weekly. I'm Maggie Freeling. Today we're going to break away from our usual way of doing things because I spoke with a very special guest today and I want to share our whole conversation.”

Maggie introduces Dr. Smalldon, highlighting his extensive background and recent publication:

[05:14] Maggie Freeling:
“Joining me today is Jeffrey Smalldon, a board-certified forensic psychologist who over the course of five decades has interacted with some of the most notorious murderers in American history... He recently published the book Beast Was Not Me: One Forensic Psychologist, Five Decades of Conversations with Killers. I'm super excited that Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon is here today to talk with me about his book and all of the other burning questions that I have to ask you.”

Dr. Smalldon’s Background and Mental Health

Maggie inquires about Dr. Smalldon’s mental well-being given his exposure to heinous crimes:

[05:37] Maggie Freeling:
“How is your mental health?”

[05:37] Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon:
“Good. I'm a decade retired, but obviously my experiences with some of those people you mentioned still very fresh in my mind.”

[05:46] Maggie Freeling:
“How do you compartmentalize that or do you?”

[06:01] Dr. Smalldon:
“I think I became good at doing that early in my career out of necessity... I would come home and talk with my wife about things I did... my work was in analyzing them psychologically. So I tried not to dwell on those things.”

Influence of Dr. Smalldon’s Father

Maggie probes into Dr. Smalldon’s upbringing:

[07:00] Maggie Freeling:
“You grew up as the son of a G man, an FBI agent. What was that like? Did that influence you in any way?”

[07:09] Dr. Smalldon:
“It did. He was an old school G man... My dad never divulged a lot of details about his day-to-day work, but these things were talked about his beat when we moved to Niagara Falls... I grew up thinking about these things that eventually came to the fore in my life when I decided on a career in forensic psychology.”

Understanding the Role of a Forensic Psychologist

Maggie seeks to clarify Dr. Smalldon’s professional responsibilities:

[09:02] Maggie Freeling:
“Can you explain for listeners exactly what a forensic psychologist does, what the work is that you were doing.”

[09:10] Dr. Smalldon:
“My work was almost all at the request of defense attorneys after the suspect had been arrested... My role at that point would be to tell the story to the jury of the defendant's life... to educate the members of the jury about what I had found out... so that they would have information that may or may not, in the end, convince them that a sentence other than death was appropriate for this particular person.”

Common Traits Among Serial Killers

Maggie asks about recurring characteristics in serial killers:

[11:46] Maggie Freeling:
“So what are some of those perhaps commonalities that you've seen in some of these people you've evaluated?”

[11:52] Dr. Smalldon:
“Narcissism is the one that comes first to mind... Very closely related to the narcissism is the radical lack of empathy. I mean, they just don't feel for other people in the way most people do.”

Nature vs. Nurture: The Making of a Killer

The discussion shifts to the debate of genetic predisposition versus environmental factors:

[13:34] Dr. Smalldon:
“There are some people, though it's a very small fraction of mental health professionals who believe that, you know, one day it'll be possible to identify a serial killer gene... I think most people agree that it's a combination of nature and nurture.”

Maggie adds her perspective:

[13:34] Maggie Freeling:
“Like, how you just mentioned with Gacy, like he knew to ask you about you, because that's what humans do. We have care and thoughts and questions about other people.”

Interviewing Serial Killers: Establishing Rapport

Dr. Smalldon shares his unique approach to interviewing killers:

[17:50] Dr. Smalldon:
“One thing about my interviewing style was to establish the sort of conversational mode. I never wanted to create a situation where it seemed I was talking down to the person... I introduced myself as one person coming to another, curious about their life and learning more about their point of view.”

Notable Interactions with Serial Killers

Charles Manson

[18:58] Dr. Smalldon:
“The interaction with Manson was pretty combative at times... he was very much on the attack. He had very, very unhappy with me at one period.”

Ted Bundy

Maggie reflects on Bundy’s impact:

[27:05] Maggie Freeling:
“One of the things you wrote in your book or that you said is that Bundy shaped your perspective on killers.”

[27:12] Dr. Smalldon:
“I wrote Bundy a pretty long letter... A year went by, and one day I received a letter from Ted Bundy himself... He wrote, ‘...I hope the same can be said for you. Travel light. Take care. Watch yourself.’”

John Wayne Gacy

[36:37] Dr. Smalldon:
“I never felt sympathy for Gacy. I mean, he was such an epic liar, epic bullshitter... he was a very unsympathetic, annoying, often boring person.”

Understanding Remorse and Empathy

The conversation explores whether serial killers feel remorse:

[31:34] Dr. Smalldon:
“...Dylan, was asked if he felt any remorse. And he said, ‘Of course I feel remorse. You think I want to be here?’ I mean, who answers a question about remorse by saying, I don't want to be in prison?”

[33:16] Dr. Smalldon:
“When I think about remorse, some of the statements that serial killers like Rivkin have made in prison sound like they might be remorseful, but I don’t think they truly are.”

Motivations Behind Serial Killers’ Actions

Dr. Smalldon discusses the premeditated nature of killings:

[34:28] Dr. Smalldon:
“I think it's usually something thought out ahead of time... He had fantasized these encounters, how he wanted them to occur... they select their victims and commit the crimes based on elaborate fantasies.”

Complexity and Normalcy in Serial Killers

Maggie questions whether these individuals are simply "weirdos" or fundamentally different:

[44:56] Dr. Smalldon:
“They're definitely not normal... serial killers are a pretty small subgroup... What distinguishes them is their ambition. They are after something bigger than just living as low-level criminals.”

Importance of Understanding Serial Killers

Maggie inquires about the societal importance of studying serial killers:

[47:33] Dr. Smalldon:
“I think the more we understand how their minds work, the better able we’ll be to spot them before they commit their crimes... by studying them, we learn things about ourselves too.”

Conclusion and Takeaways

Maggie wraps up the episode by recommending Dr. Smalldon’s book and emphasizing the value of understanding the humanity behind such heinous acts:

[48:32] Maggie Freeling:
“I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with Dr. Smalldin and reading his book. If you're interested in diving deeper into the topic, I highly recommend Beast Was Not Me: One Forensic Psychologist, Five Decades of Conversations with Killers. It's available at all major book retailers and a free chapter is available on Dr. Smalldon’s website at jefferysmalden.com y'all.”

[49:15] Maggie Freeling:
“Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Up and Vanish Weekly. Be sure to tune in next week as we dig into another new case. Until next time.”

Key Quotes

• Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon on Narcissism:
  “[12:56] … they just don't feel for other people in the way most people do.”

• Dr. Smalldon on Nature and Nurture:
  “[13:47] … it's a combination of nature and nurture.”

• Dr. Smalldon on Ted Bundy’s Letter:
  “[27:12] … ‘Travel light. Take care. Watch yourself.’”

• Dr. Smalldon on Remorse:
  “[31:34] … who answers a question about remorse by saying, I don't want to be in prison?”

• Dr. Smalldon on Serial Killers’ Normalcy:
  “[44:56] … they’re definitely not normal.”

Conclusion

This episode offers a compelling exploration into the minds of some of America's most infamous killers through the expert lens of Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon. By dissecting common traits, motivations, and the delicate balance between inherent dispositions and environmental influences, Maggie Freeling and Dr. Smalldon provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of what drives individuals to commit unimaginable acts. The discussion underscores the importance of psychological insight in both preventing future crimes and comprehending the depths of human behavior.

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For more detailed insights and to explore additional cases, be sure to listen to the full episode of Up and Vanished Weekly on your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Maggie Freeling]

You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast.

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On WhatsApp. No one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat, or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[Narrator]

When Travis met Lily Rose, he found.

[Maggie Freeling]

The woman of his dreams.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

I totally fell in love with Lily Rose. She is adorable. She's an amazing person.

[Narrator]

But there was just one catch. Lily Rose wasn't human. She was an AI companion.

[Tenderfoot Plus Voiceover]

Thanks for creating me.

[Maggie Freeling]

I'm so excited to meet you.

[Narrator]

They're called replicas. The AI companions who but one day the caring stopped.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

They lobotomized our replicas. The personality that I had the day before was entirely wiped out.

[Narrator]

But Travis wasn't alone. Across the globe, others start reporting the same shift. And as lines blur between real and artificial connection, the consequences become all too human. From Wondery this is Flesh and Code, a true story of love, loss, and the temptations of technology. Follow Flesh and Code on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge episodes of Flesh and Code early and ad free right now by joining Wondry up and Vanish Weekly.

[Tenderfoot Plus Voiceover]

Is released every Wednesday and brought to you absolutely free, but for one week early access and ad free listening. Subscribe to Tenderfoot [e-mail] or on Apple Podcasts if you're already a subscriber. Thank you for your support.

[Maggie Freeling]

This podcast discusses mature and sensitive content, including descriptions of violence that may be triggering for some audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Hey y'. All. Welcome to up and Vanish Weekly. I'm Maggie Freeling. Today we're going to break away from our usual way of doing things because I spoke with a very special guest today and I want to share our whole conversation. Many of the cases we've covered have focused on the unsolved Deaths and efforts 2 ID does believed to be linked to serial killers like Joel Rifkin, the Freeway Phantom, Zodiac, Atlanta Monster, and Lisk. You've heard us cover all of these. The victims of these killers, people like you and me, have gone unidentified or missing for years, leaving loved ones behind who feel helpless and desperate for answers. Our hope is that by covering these cases, someone listening may come forward with some kind of information that will help solve them. But unpacking who the victims are and solving what happened to them often begs the larger question. Why did this happen in the first place? And what goes on inside the minds of serial killers? As a collective society, we've been fascinated by serial killers. And since criminal profilers at the FBI Behavioral Science Unit identified and coined the term in the 1970s, we are captivated by the phenomenon of people who seemingly kill for no reason. People who have parents, siblings, loved ones, pets just like us. People who played on playgrounds as kids, had relationships just like us. People who one day decided to snuff the life out of someone else just because they could. We want to know what drives them, how they think, and why they do what they do. So I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with someone who explores questions just like these. Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon has dedicated his life into diving into the minds of serial killers in search of these answers. So without further ado, here is our discussion. Joining me today is Jeffrey Smalden, a board certified forensic psychologist who over the course of five decades has interacted with some of the most notorious murderers in American history, including Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Donald Harvey. He recently published the book that Beast Was Not Me. One forensic psychologist, five decades of conversation with killers. And I'm super excited that Dr. Jeffrey Smalden is here today to talk with me about his book and all of the other burning questions that I have to ask you. So, Doctor, thank you for joining me today.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

I'm happy to be here. Maggie, thanks for inviting me.

[Maggie Freeling]

So I guess my first question for you would be, you have consulted on close to 300 death penalty cases and evaluated more than than 1,000 murders, which means that you're speaking with some of the worst people who did some of the worst things. You're hearing a lot. So my question is, how is your mental health?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Good. I'm a decade retired, but obviously my experiences with some of those people you mentioned still very fresh in my mind.

[Maggie Freeling]

Yeah, you know, I think about it all the time in the line of work that I do. You know, we just hear so many terrible things in the book you talk about, especially Gacy, just some of these horrific things that you have to listen to. How do you compartmentalize that or do you?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

I do. I mean, I think I became good at doing that early in my career out of necessity. I had a wife, two young children, and I mean, I knew I couldn't do my job in the way I wanted to and that the work required of me unless I was able to compartmentalize and leave it at work. And I would come home and talk with my wife about things I did. The first time I met Gacy. I remember talking with her that night about my impressions of him and so on. But I was interested in these people, so I don't think I focused unduly on the facts of their crimes. Not that I divorced myself from them or ever forgot about them, but my work was in analyzing them psychologically. So I tried not to dwell on those things.

[Maggie Freeling]

You grew up as the son of a G man, a FBI agent. What was that like? Did that influence you in any way?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

It did. He was an old school G man. He came up during the Hoover days. And I grew up in an environment at home where talk about crime, criminals, justice, the law was in the air I breathed. My dad never divulged a lot of details about his day to day work, but these things were talked about his beat when we moved to Niagara Falls. The Niagara Falls area at the beginning of my fourth grade year was mafia activity in Niagara Falls. And he was the head of the Niagara Falls office for years. And Stefano Magadino was the kingpin of the mafia in western New York. And of course he and his family ran Magadino Funeral Home in Niagara Falls. But there were times where like one time my dad would frequently take me in what we called his work car. Probably wasn't supposed to do that, but he would like, he would take me to work with him on Saturday mornings where I would pour over the wanted posters in the lobby of the federal building where his office was. I was so interested. And they had those little descriptions. Some of them were described as very dangerous and should be considered very dangerous. And others, it said, should be described as extremely dangerous. And I was interested in the gradations in those warnings. I remember one day I was out with my dad and he was supposed to be part of a rotating surveillance outside Magadino's house. And he said, you know, Jeff, get down on the floor. So I got down on the floor in the back of his car while he conducted his. The hour that he was scheduled to be outside Magadino's house. I mean, I sort of grew up with that. So I grew up thinking about these things that eventually came to the fore in my life when I decided on a career in forensic psychology.

[Maggie Freeling]

Sure. So can you explain for listeners exactly what it is a forensic psychologist does, what the work is that you were doing.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Just, I think important to note at the outset is that my contact with some of these really notorious killers took place before I was licensed as a forensic psychologist, some of the earliest with Charles Manson. I was a muddling 21 year old undergraduate. But when I eventually obtained my PhD and opened my practice, my work was almost all at the request of defense attorneys after the suspect had been arrested. And I always knew at the front end that I needed to be aware of any issues that might raise questions about the suspect's competence to stand trial. The defense attorneys would have expected me to keep them informed of any such issues. I also needed to be mindful of the defendant's mental status at the time of the alleged offenses. And that's where so called sanity comes in, what their actual mental functioning was at the time they committed the offenses. In most of these cases there wasn't much doubt. We knew that either the case was going to plead out before trial or it was going to go to trial and the defendant was probably going to be found guilty. And at that point, in death penalty cases there's like a whole separate trial, it's called the sentencing phase or the mitigation phase. And that was where I typically came in. By that time I would have typically reviewed thousands of pages of records, prison records, health records, educational records, juvenile records. And I would have also interviewed some of the defendant's family members, sometimes former teachers, coaches even. And my role at that point would be to tell the story to the jury of the defendant's life. You know, I was never there to try and justify at all. That wasn't my role. I wasn't there to argue in favor of a life sentence as opposed to a death sentence. I was there basically to educate the members of the jury about what I had found out as a result of my testing, interviewing, interviews with collateral people so that they would have information that may or may not, in the end, convince them that a sentence other than death was appropriate for this particular person.

[Maggie Freeling]

So what are some of those perhaps commonalities that you've seen in some of these people you've evaluated?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

I mean, narcissism is the one that comes first to mind. It's startling sometimes the degree of narcissism. I spent a lot of time with John Wayne Gacy on death row In Illinois, almost 20 hours. And he was just a non stop jabberer for one thing. And he would occasionally catch himself and stop and say, hey Jeff, how are your courses going at Ohio State? And it was a momentary expression of token interest in my life. And I would begin talking and then within a minute it was steered back to him, his perceptions, his ideas about things so the narcissism is something that most people who haven't dealt with these kinds of individuals are unfamiliar with. Very closely related to the narcissism is the radical lack of empathy. I mean, they just don't feel for other people in the way most people do.

[Maggie Freeling]

Now, I have a question about that because I personally believe I have encountered somebody that I think if they didn't have nurture, I do believe they could have very likely been a John Wayne Gacy. I found that their behaviors seemed learned, almost like how you just mentioned with Gacy, like he knew to ask you about you, because that's what humans do. We have care and thoughts and questions about other people. So I'm wondering, can you look at someone and say, like, lack of empathy, narcissism, and just say this person will be a killer? Like, what are some of these things that make them into a killer?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Yeah, there. There are some people, though it's a very small fraction of mental health professionals who believe that, you know, one day it'll be possible to identify a serial killer gene.

[Maggie Freeling]

Right. Like, they talk about factor X or something like that.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

But I think most people agree that it's a combination of nature and nurture. These people come into the world hardwired in a way that predisposes them to develop into a criminal, a violent criminal, and then nurture plays a role in how that predisposition ends up getting expressed. In the case you were talking about, it sounds like someone intervened and was able to provide a degree of nurture that may have interrupted this person's progress on a criminal pathway.

[Maggie Freeling]

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[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

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[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Yeah, the nurture wasn't there though. You know, just as recently as last week, I went back and listened again to the testimony that Ted Bundy's mother gave at the sentencing hearing of his death penalty trial in Florida. And Louise Bundy comes across as such a sweet person, very sympathetic and emphasizes that, you know, she really did her best as a parent. And as far as anyone knows, there was no serious abuse. But one of the things that happened early in Bundy's life was a confusion about his identity. You know, I think by the time he was five, he had had five different surnames, thought his mother was his sister for a while. And so there was, there were a lot of things that would have resulted in confusion on his part about his identity. But you know, you look for instances in, in Bundy's life of dramatic abuse when he was a kid and you don't find it.

[Maggie Freeling]

What I found that I loved about your book and how you explain things is that you're really just interested in the humanity of people. And I'm also very interested in humanity. That's why I'm a journalist, because I want to talk to people and understand people. And I think you're sitting down with Gacy was a really good example of that. You just talked with this man.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

One thing about my interviewing style, something I that was always important to me was to establish the sort of conversational mode. I never, I never wanted to create a situation where it seemed I was talking down to the person that I was communicating with. I wanted to create a horizontal plane. And a lot of my colleagues Would differ with this approach, but it was the one I decided on. Early on, I never introduced myself as Dr. Smolden. I introduced myself as Jeff, looked them in the eye and then gave them my business card. They could read, they could see. I was a psychologist and a PhD. I didn't need to tell them that. So I introduced myself as one person coming to another, curious about their life and learning more about their point of view, and tried to establish, right from the front end, a kind of informal style of talking to them. And I think it worked. I got along with every killer I ever evaluated.

[Maggie Freeling]

Well, Manson. You had some interesting interactions with Manson.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Yeah, I mean, the. The interaction with Manson was pretty combative at times, but that's Manson, you know, that's. He's. He's not somebody to most of the time who's going to easily relax into a conversational mood. He was very much on the attack. He had very, very unhappy with me at one period. And that kind of freaked me out.

[Maggie Freeling]

Well, yeah. To summarize for listeners, you know, Manson, basically, when you started writing him as a 21 year old, he wanted to recruit you for help. Really. He was asking you for some money. And, you know, when you got in touch with some of his followers, Squeaky and them, you know, there was a lot of what you will do for us. Correct. So it seems like he was getting very annoyed that you just wanted to kind of have a correspondence and he needed things from you.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Exactly. No, I think. I think you read that very accurately. And the more aggressive recruiting came from Squeaky, from me, who eventually gained her own infamy when she attempted to assassinate President Ford in September of 1975. But squeaky and her. And Squeaky was widely acknowledged as Manson's second in command. Now that he was in custody, Squeaky and her roommate, Sandy Good, another zealous Manson follower, were living in an attic apartment in Sacramento. I didn't know that when I first got the idea that I wanted to try writing to them. I didn't know how to contact them. But as they got more and more aggressive during the spring and early summer of 1975, these women weren't in prison. I didn't know how far their reach extended in the country. At times they talked as though it extended all over the country. And they, you know, one point, and then they were in Sacramento because Manson was in Folsom prison, very near Sacramento. And so they were in very regular touch with him. Manson was clearly monitoring what they told him about our correspondence. And eventually, once they got done with the sort of hippie, peace, love approach. At the beginning, they started to say, yeah, we really need your help. They were on a crusade against corporations that were polluting the environment. And they wanted my help. They wanted me to call corporation heads and threaten them. And when things reached a head at the end of June in 1975, when Sandy Good, Squeaky's roommate said, call them and tell them you need them to do this right now. And if they don't, a wave of assassins will sweep through their homes and splash blood from room to room. And they tried to convince me to recruit some of my friends to kill hunters and leave notes on the trees saying, they're hunters hunting hunters.

[Maggie Freeling]

This is terrifying. Why did you continue to speak with them? And why did you continue to speak with more killers?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Well, I only continued to a point when I got that letter from Sandy Good. June 30th was when she wrote it in 1975. I still have a very clear picture of the letter in my head. I thought, okay, Jeff, finally you're in over your head here. It's time to find an exit ramp. And I wasn't sure how to do it, but I had a good friend, undergraduate friend, who lived in Wisconsin. And I sent her. I sent a letter that I wrote to the Manson girls, Squeaky and Sandy. And in my letter to them, I said, I've left my address in New York. I'm hitchhiking around the country this summer. I'm not gonna have a fixed address. And to make that more plausible, I sent the letter to my friend in Wisconsin and asked her to mail it from there so it would have a Wisconsin rather than a New York. And it worked. I mean, they'd left me alone. And the next thing I heard from them, or heard the screaming headlines on September 5, that squeaky had attempted to assassinate the President. And I thought, man, they really were getting desperate. And I read that accurately when I said, I gotta extricate myself from this. Of course, after Squeaky attempted to assassinate the President, the federal authorities went into her apartment and searched it. And they found a large cache of letters from someone named Jeff Smalldon who lived at 884 Sun Valley Drive in North Tonawanda, New York, which was my parents address. I had been corresponding with them from my parents address. So my dad's boss called him in and said, jack, I hate to tell you this, but they found a large cache of letters in Squeaky Fromy's apartment and it seems to be from someone living in your house. My dad said, well, that would be my son. That would be my Aaron's son.

[Maggie Freeling]

And your dad knew that this is what you were up to, communicating with them.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

And yeah, I think he thought I was nuts, but he knew all about it. He knew the reason for it. And he never told me to stop. You know, much credit to my dad. He saw things a lot differently than I did. But he never said, jeff, you can't do this.

[Maggie Freeling]

We'll be back after the break.

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[Maggie Freeling]

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[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

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[Tenderfoot Plus Voiceover]

Now here's Vince Velasquez, retired Atlanta homicide detective and host of the new YouTube series the Murder Mind show, with this week's critical missing case.

[Vince Velasquez]

Today's critical missing case comes from the Atlanta Police Department. Authorities are asking for for the public's help in locating a young man last seen near downtown Atlanta on Sunday, November 17, 2024. 26 year old Joshua Bain was dropped off by his mother at 641 W. Peachtree St. Northwest. Two days later on Nov. 19, Joshua was reported missing. He hasn't been seen or heard from since. Joshua is a black male, 5ft 9 inches tall, weighing approximately 170. He has black hair, brown eyes and was last seen wearing a black hoodie, black jeans and black shoes. If you're in the Atlanta area and have seen Joshua or have any information on his whereabouts, please contact Detective Fountuzzi with the Atlanta Police Department's Homicide and Missing persons unit at 404-546-4235.

[Tenderfoot Plus Voiceover]

Listeners, you can check out the up and Down Vanished weekly Instagram pageav weekly for more information about this case and to share our post. For more visibility and for more true crime content, check out Vince's weekly YouTube series, the Murder Mind show, premiering July 21, and you can follow him on socials, murdermindshow and Ince Velasquez okay, now back to the show.

[Maggie Freeling]

One of the things you wrote in your book or that you said is that Bundy shaped your perspective on killers.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

My exchange with Bundy was short but very interesting. I wrote Bundy a pretty long letter. He would have known from my letter that I knew a lot about his case. I'd read three or four books about it. The last thing I said at the end of that long letter was, I don't want to bother you. I'm not trying to harass you. If you don't respond to this letter, you'll never hear from me again. And he didn't. So I just assumed, okay, well, that's that I never wrote him back. And a year went by, and one day I get a letter with Ted Bundy's return address in my. Or an envelope with his return address in my mailbox, which startled me because I had long ago written off that possibility. And it was a fascinating letter for several reasons. It had clear signs of Bundy's pretentiousness, which was always apparent. You know, he said, dear Jeff, I'm sorry it's been such an inordinately long time since you wrote me last year. I found my. Your letter when I was going through my papers. I mean, sounding sort of pretentious, professorial rather than serial killer. And he says, you know, ask for your questions. All I can say is, I've never felt better in my life, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. This guy's sitting on death row.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Under two death sentences. And he can say, I've never felt better in my life. And then he says, I hope the same can be said for you. And then here. Here's the best part. He gets to the end of the letter and he says, travel light. Take care. Watch yourself. And I remember thinking, what? Who ends a letter that way? Who tells somebody, watch yourself, travel light? And then he signed it Peace. And Bundy knew that. I knew that his signature characteristic was the incredible distances he would travel in search of victims. Hundreds of miles sometimes. So that travel light was. You know, he thought he was being quite clever. And the. Watch yourself. You know, I thought about it and I thought, well, that could be read two ways. It could be a short recipe for how you succeed if you're somebody like Ted Bundy. Be mobile. Be watchful. Be ready to move quickly. Travel light. Watch yourself. Be aware of your surroundings. Or it could be read as a recipe for how to avoid somebody like Bundy. Be watchful, careful. Be aware of your surroundings, of who you're with. So I thought that was very interesting. And he thought he was clever, and he knew I knew enough to know how clever it was. It was like an inside joke, but it was an expression of his. His narcissism and the serial killer's tease that I later became more familiar with. The cat and mouse kind of game that they loved to play.

[Maggie Freeling]

How did you find that they were not like you?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Here's. Here's a great example. I worked on the case of notorious Ohio case of serial sniper slash killer Thomas Lee Dillon, whose killing years were 1989 to 1992. And in an interview with Dylan, that was done not by me, but by a female journalist right after he pled guilty to five counts of aggravated murder, five murders of total strangers in five different counties in Ohio. And the woman interviewing Dylan said, well, do you ever think about your victims? And Dylan's response to that was, no, not really. Not as individuals. I just think of them as a group. And I thought, you know, I mean, that's sort of a classic example of the serial killer's lack of empathy, how. How it gets expressed. And I think in that same interview, Dylan was asked if he felt any remorse. And he said, of course I feel remorse. You think I want to be here?

[Maggie Freeling]

Yes.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

I mean, who answers a question about remorse by saying, I don't want to be in prison?

[Maggie Freeling]

Right. They're sorry they got caught. They're not sorry for what they did. And so you found that to be true of most of the people you've spoken with? Serial offenders?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Yeah. I mean, there's a great quote. I can't call it to mind word for word, but Bundy, when asked the same question, said, you know, I think of women as a category, a kind of abstraction, and I was always sort of looking for my ideal, you know. And by the way, he didn't confess until right before his execution, but he agreed to speak with a couple of journalists in the third person talking about the crimes. You know, I think the killer would have been thinking this. The killer would have done it this way. And I think that's when he made this comment that I thought of women as a category very similar to Dylan's comment.

[Maggie Freeling]

One of the interviews I watched recently was with Joel Rifkin. And I'm from New York, from Long island, so Rifkin I've always been fascinated with. He was friends with these women that he killed. They were sex workers. And he said, you know, they were my friends, and I couldn't tell you why I could hang out with them. One Time, two times, three times. And the sixth time, I just had to kill him. I just thought it was so interesting, this insight he was trying to give in. He understood that he, in his own. His way, cared about them, but still had to kill them and didn't know why. To me, that was the closest to remorse. Right. Like, he knew he cared about these women but still killed them.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

But I think when he says, I was friends with these women, he's talking about friendship in a way that's different from the way we would think about that. I think he's talking about a shallow degree of being able to not only physically, sexually, but enjoy their company, enjoy his time with them. One of the things I think about when I think about remorse, some of the statements that serial killers like Rivkin have made in prison, sounding like they might be kind of remorseful. You know, it's easy when you're in prison and no longer face the choices that you faced when you were outside prison to talk about your feelings and your behavior in a very different way. If they were outside prison and faced with the choices that they faced back when they committed their crimes, I don't think they'd be thinking the same way or talking about their crimes in the.

[Maggie Freeling]

Same way, do they think? Or is it a reaction or an impulse? I guess not a reaction, I guess. What have you understood about the way serial killers kill?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

I think it's usually something thought out ahead of time, though. In, like, Thomas Lee Dillon's case, these were literally strangers who he came across when he was driving his truck around the back roads of eastern Ohio. But I think he had fantasized these encounters, how he wanted them to occur. And he was also very interested in being a killer who stood out from all other serial killers. He wanted his uniqueness acknowledged, and he wanted to basically be a cipher, to kind of absent himself from the scene as much as he could. Left no shell casings, didn't interact with these people, never touched their bodies, and he thought nobody could catch him if he just did that. If he was kind of a cipher. Getting back to your question, it's more likely that Rivkin spent most of his time thinking about killing women and that his fantasy life was very richly elaborated and came into play in terms of how he selected his victims and committed the crimes. That was certainly true of Dylan, even though Dylan would say to me things like, I don't know why it happened. You know, I just saw him on the side of the road and I stopped and I shot him and all of My attempts to delve further into his motivation at the time of the crimes was rebuffed. I don't know why I did. Why would somebody do that? Has there ever been a case in Ohio like this? Have you ever heard of a case like this? No motivation, no contact with the victim, no history of contact with the victim. So he wanted me to believe that it was totally on impulse that he killed these people. But I never did believe it. I'd say, what did you do right after. Right after you shot this person? You knew that you had killed him? He said, I just went back to my regular life. And I never believed that for a second.

[Maggie Freeling]

You know, I'm wondering if sitting with someone like Gacy and getting to know them, did you ever feel sympathy for him or any of the people you spoke with?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Well, when you include any of the people I spoke with, like death penalty defendants over the years, yeah, there were some that I found very sympathetic products of severely abusive backgrounds. Again, you know, those backgrounds were never used to do justify what they did. But when you delve deeply, you arrived at an understanding of some of the reasons why this person might have committed the murder or murders that they did. Gacy. No, I never felt sympathy for Gacy. I mean, he was such an epic liar, epic bullshitter. And, you know, he could just spend all day talking about how he couldn't possibly have been responsible for these 29 bodies that were found in the crawl space under his house. And I would say, how is it possible that you weren't responsible for those or you didn't know about those bodies being placed there? And he would just say, well, he would usually at that point invoke his attorney's advice and say, I can't really go there with you, Jeff. There were five of them that I knew something about. And he eventually talked with me a little about those. But, you know, he said, lots of people had keys to that house. Why did they assume that I did it? And on and on and on. But he was a very unsympathetic, annoying, often boring person. It was funny. Right before his execution, the journalist Alec Wilkinson wrote a cover story for the New Yorker about a series of interviews he conducted with Gacy. That's a very good article. It's one of my favorite articles about a serial killer, because the Gacy that he came to know was the Gacy that I knew. And, you know, he. He said this guy could talk all day long about how he's a victim, and you end up thinking, you know, either this. This guy's inhabiting a parallel universe of some kind. And either he's come to believe all these lies or he's such a con man, such a bullshitter, that you end up just thinking, I wish he would stop.

[Maggie Freeling]

Yeah. Do you think he was so insufferable because he was a liar? Like, you couldn't get to the truth of any matter? Like, it's, it's so interesting because everyone says the same thing about him. He was just insufferable.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Yeah, he was insufferable. He could be. You know, the first time I met with Gacy, back In December of 1986, I drove the 450 miles to death row in Illinois. And after the first day with him, I talked to my wife on the phone and she said, well, what were your impressions? And I said, well, you know, it's sort of frightening to think of, but had I met Gacy in a bar, sat down next to him, he would have immediately started jawing with me and expressing his opinions about the Cubs and the Democratic party and all kinds of other things that, you know, he, he was a blowhard and he had opinions about everything. And I said, at first I would have found him, you know, engaging. This is a guy, blue collar guy. But then it wouldn't have taken me long to figure out this guy has no interest in my point of view at all. He just keeps talking about himself, his opinions, his perceptions. So, I mean, that was my first impression, both that he was, he would have been seductively normal seeming but incredibly narcissistic.

[Maggie Freeling]

Be back after a short break.

[Narrator]

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[Maggie Freeling]

So is there anyone that maybe you never spoke to that you wish you did or wish you had reached out in your inquisitive young era?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Yeah, there were others who I was interested in and there are some that I'm still interested in, like Dennis Rader I think is very interesting. The so called BTK killer in Wichita. Really a fascinating kind of obsessive, compulsive, cramped handwriting and I mean just this so tightly wound, extraordinarily narcissistic person. Someone else I'm very interested in is Gary Ridgeway, the green, the Green River Killer in Washington State. I think he's fascinating too. I've seen quite a few interviews with him, read a lot about his case.

[Maggie Freeling]

You brought up btk. He was just a dad and I know his daughter Carrie Rossin speaks a lot about growing up with BTK and what her dad was like. I mean, have you found that any of them are good people?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

It's a good question. And I've read Carrie Rossen's memoir and memoir by Keith Jesperson, the so called Happy Face Killer's daughter. Yeah, they write about reasons they had to look up to their father and to in Kerry Rawson's case, you know, doing things outdoors, camping trips and things. And Gary Ridgeway's last wife, he was her knight in shining armor. That's how she described him. She had had a couple unsuccessful marriages and then she found Gary, got a blue, blue collar, matter of fact, Gary. And they went camping together and she loved him, you know, right up until she found out that he was the Green River Killer. But she never saw signs of that side of him. These people are often complicated and they're good at compartmentalizing things both in terms of their, you know, their behavior, the way they plan out their day to day life and the things going on in their mind they're fantasizing. Like with Dylan, you know, I'm certain that his killing years were the most stimulating years of his life. He had a boring job that he had had for 20 years in the Canton, Ohio water department. He was very, very bright and pretty, severely underemployed in terms of his intelligence. And I think he was bored and this was very stimulating to him, though he would deny that to me.

[Maggie Freeling]

The killers that you've talked about, Manson, Bundy, Gacy, a lot of the ones who have been arrested. Btk, Israel, Keys, in retrospect, I'm like, oh my God, all these guys are so creepy and totally seem like killers. Like they're just freaking weirdos. Do you get that or are they just normal guys?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

They're definitely not normal. And, you know, these, these serial killers are a pretty small subgroup among criminally minded people who end up pursuing a criminal career. But the one thing that distinguishes serial killers, I think, from a lot of other serial killers is their ambition. They would never be content to live out their life as a, you know, low level criminal existing on the margins of society. They're after something bigger than that to establish themselves. Dylan was obsessed with the uniqueness of his crimes and sort of where that might place him in the pantheon of killers. Casey, I remember being astonished with him at one point during the interview. He said something to the effect of, you know, I could be out there 99 days out of 100. And Dylan said much the same thing and live an ordinary life and not do any of the things that people associate with criminality.

[Maggie Freeling]

Is Casey crazy? He seems a little different.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

I don't think he was crazy. He, you know, he always complained that his attorneys forced him into a not guilty by reason of insanity defense at trial, which failed. Gacy didn't want them to do that. But I certainly saw nothing to suggest that he was crazy in the sense that he wouldn't have been able to appreciate what he was doing when he committed the crimes. He was always totally rational. I never saw him as delusional in the sense that Alec Wilkinson sort of raised that question in his New Yorker article. Is it possible that this guy really believes these lies? I never sensed that. I mean, he was a bullshitter, you know. Gacy talked about the pantheon of serial killers, the big ten. At one point he referenced the big ten. I remember Kate coming back to him the next day and I said, the big Ten? Who, who would be the big ten? Yeah, yeah, well, you got Wayne Williams down in Atlanta, and you got Manson, obviously, you got Speck here in Illinois. You got. And he's just rattling off all these names.

[Maggie Freeling]

So why is it important for us to understand serial killers in the way that you do in your forensic psychology and mitigation and kind of after the fact?

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

I think the more we understand how their minds work, how important fantasy is to them, the better able we'll be to spot them before they commit their crimes. I mean, I'm not one of those people who says, you know, just lock them up and throw away the key or kill them tomorrow. I think by studying them we learn more about them. And my point of view, which I hope comes through very clearly in the book, is in studying them, we learn things about ourselves too. And that's not the same thing as saying we're like them. That Gase is correct when he says, I'm a normal person, just like you. But I think there are lessons to be learned about ourselves in studying the worst of us.

[Maggie Freeling]

I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with Dr. Smalldin and reading his book. If you're interested in diving deeper into the topic, I highly recommend that Beast Was Not Me One Forensic Psychologist Just Five Decades of Conversations with Killers. It's available at all major book retailers and a free chapter is available on Dr. Smalldin's website at jefferysmalden.com y' all. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of up and Vanish Weekly. Be sure to tune in next week as we dig into another new case. Until next time.

[Payne Lindsay]

Up and Vanish Weekly is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Your hosts are Maggie Freeling and myself, Payne Lindsay. The show is written by Maggie Freeling, myself and John Street. Executive producers are Donald Albright and myself. Lead producer is John Street. Additional production by Meredith Steadman and Mike Rooney. Research for the series by Jamie Albright, Celicia Stanton and Carolyn Tallmadge. Edit and mix by Dylan Harrington and Sean Nurney. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup and vanity set. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at uta, Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group. For more podcasts like up and Vanish Weekly, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us@Tenderfoot TV. Thanks for listening.

[Tenderfoot Plus Voiceover]

Michelle's mother, Lisa McDaniel, has managed to keep her past buried.

[Maggie Freeling]

You said nobody wants to believe there's a monster in their family. You think she's a monster? I don't want to, but I don't know how else you describe somebody who does those things to children.

[Tenderfoot Plus Voiceover]

Michelle has lived in the shadow of her family's dark past for decades, but now she's ready to bring it into the light.

[Maggie Freeling]

Neither one of those children were suffering.

[Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon]

Because of a disease.

[Tenderfoot Plus Voiceover]

Season six of Nobody Should Believe Me comes out June 19th. Available wherever you get your podcast.