FBI pioneer, 87 reveals what really makes serial killers tick - and the crucial questions they must be asked to prevent further crimes

• e-mail

An FBI pioneer revealed what really makes serial killers tick- and the crucial questions they must be asked to help prevent further crimes.

Dr. Ann Burgess, 87, from Massachusetts, who revolutionized criminal profiling and applied her research to several serial killer investigations, is the subject of a three-part-docuseries Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer.  

Ann was working as a psychiatric nurse specializing in rape victimology in the 1970s when she was recruited by the FBI to help them understand the minds of violent sexual offenders and killers in order to catch them.

The mother-of-four observed patterns of behavior by interviewing dozens of notorious killers and found most offenders had dealt with some kind of childhood trauma. 

Speaking to The Guardian, she said: 'They had always said that these guys had domineering mothers; what we found out is they had an absent father.

Dr. Ann Burgess, 87, from Massachusetts, revealed what really makes serial killers tick- and the crucial questions they must be asked to help prevent further crimes

'You would have these young boys growing up where the mother is both parents and so, yes, it probably seemed to them that the mother was domineering but she had to handle both things. Who did he have as a model? Who did he look to learn about growing up as a male?'   

Ann said at the time the FBI were going into a crime scene and trying to figure out if it was 'organised or disorganised', but she wanted to change the questions they asked themselves when studying a scene. 

She wanted investigators to look out for 'different patterns' so they could create a profile of the perpetrator. 

She said: 'What was the gender of the person? What was the race of the person? What was the age? Did he work? Did he have any friends or was he married? All of those kinds of questions are what you need for a profile.' 

Ann said police interviews with suspects had been 'poorly structured', so she joined forces with Robert Ressler and John Douglas and contributed her knowledge of sex crimes and applied a proper research methodology to the project. 

Her research produced results and Ann developed a likely profile of the killer of two young boys, John Joseph Joubert IV, in Nebraska in 1983, who confessed to the murders and was later executed.  

She wrote in her 2021 book, A Killer by Design: 'We'd proven that there was value in understanding the criminal mind … to be able to actually use criminal profiling in an active case to hunt down a killer was the most satisfying reward of all.'

Ann interviewed dozens of notorious killers including Edmund Kemper The Co-Ed Killer, Dennis Rader BTK, Henry Wallace The Taco Bell Strangler and Jon Barry Simonis The Ski-Mask Rapist.

Ann who revolutionized criminal profiling and applied her research to several serial killer investigations, is the subject of a three-part-docuseries Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer

Ann interviewed dozens of notorious killers including Dennis Rader, BTK, the initials stand for 'Bind, Torture, Kill'

Ann said that serial killers are 'bright' and their 'cognitions are better than average', stating more often than not they wanted to be caught.

She revealed Ed Kemper, who killed his paternal grandparents as a young man and later murdered eight women, including his mother, actually gave himself up to police because he got 'bored with outsmarting them'.

The FBI pioneer admitted that most killers were 'very charming' and usually would open up about their offences when told they were 'good' at their crimes asked 'what was it that worked?'   

Ann grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, in the 1950s, and made the choice to become a nurse after being inspired by three of her uncles who were all doctors.

She attended Boston College to study nursing, where she did a psychiatric unit which piqued her interest in human behavior.

Ann had spent 'many years' studying human behavior and frequently interviewed victims of crime, learning how to draw the right information out of them to help identify their attackers.

The expert noted that she and her colleagues were often the first medical professionals to see victims after a crime, which put them in the best position to observe their behaviours and reactions.

Ann (pictured) research produced results and Ann developed a likely profile of the killer of two young boys, John Joseph Joubert IV, in Nebraska in 1983, who confessed to the murders and was later executed

Their findings were published in a 1973 article titled The Rape Victim in the Emergency Ward, suggesting that rape was more about power and control than sex

She completed her dissertation research to become an assistant professor at Boston College in 1969, which lead to her meeting Lynda Lytle Holmstrom - a sociologist at Boston University.

Holmstrom approached her with the idea of publishing a study about the victims of rape and sexual abuse, which was groundbreaking at the time since psychologists and law enforcement often disregarded such victims.

'The attitudes toward rape at the time were that it was not talked about, or, if it was, there was a blame-the-victim mentality,' she explained in an interview with Boston College.

Working with the Boston City Hospital, the pair interviewed rape victims after they had been admitted, speaking with a total of 146 survivors in total who ranged in age from three to 73 over the course of a year.

Their findings were published in a 1973 article titled The Rape Victim in the Emergency Ward, suggesting that rape was more about power and control than sex.

They also highlighted how police, health institutions, and the criminal justice system treated victims of rape.

Burgess and Holmstrom also urged for clinicians to be trained to recognise the signs of rape - particularly if patients don't mention an attack.

Ann attended Boston College to study nursing, where she did a psychiatric unit which piqued her interest in human behavior

Ann interviewed dozens of notorious killers including Edmund Kemper The Co-Ed Killer, Dennis Rader BTK, Henry Wallace The Taco Bell Strangler and Jon Barry Simonis The Ski-Mask Rapist

The article caught the attention of the FBI in 1978, and the then-director William Webster reached out to ask for Burgess' help with rape victims and their attackers.

Webster invited Burgess to the FBI academy to share her knowledge about rape victims and how talking to them helped track down their rapists.

The series documents Burgess' recruitment by the FBI, and how she pioneered research on sexual assault and trauma in the 1970s and 1980s.

At the time, the FBI was made up primarily of men, and sexual violence against women wasn't taken seriously.

Burgess' research led her to a discovery which changed the way criminals are tracked down forever - by getting into the minds of the killers.

The series documents the evolution of FBI's investigations in the Behavioral Science Unit and fine tuning the methodology to catching serial killers.

This included listening to and analyzing interviews with serial killers including Ed Kemper, Ted Bundy, and 'Ski Mask Rapist' Jon Barry Simonis.

As the nursing professor continued to listen to confessions and interact with the killers, she found patterns she had 'never noticed before,' and how her methodology for catching killers began to expand to cases around the US.   

Ann now sees the potential of AI to enhance criminal profiling by linking new cases to existing records.

The docuseries, which is made by executive producers Elle and Dakota Fanning, is inspired by the 2021 book: A Killer by Design: Murders, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher Criminal Minds, which was co-written by Burgess and Connell School of Nursing Associate Director of Marketing and Communications Steven Constantine.

Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer is out on Hulu in the US on 11 July and on Disney+ in the UK at a later date.