Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers For The FBI Quotes
"It is better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission."
"Profiles don’t catch killers, cops on the beat do, often through dogged persistence and with the help of ordinary citizens, and certainly with the aid of a little bit of luck."
"Most people conceive of the murderer as being a kind of Jekyll and Hyde: One day he’s normal and on the next a physiological drive is taking hold—his hair is growing, his fangs are lengthening—so that when the moon is full, he’ll have to seize another victim. Serial killers are not like that."
"The psychotic desire to fuse oneself through assassination with a notable figure is common among men such as Sirhan, John Hinckley, Mark Chapman, and Arthur Bremer."
"The greatest number of sexual killers are white males in their twenties and thirties; this simple fact allows us to eliminate whole segments of the population when first trying to determine what sort of person has perpetrated one of these heinous crimes."
"If a door is locked, that means you’re not welcome."
"I was a little older, a little wiser, and a little more used to the ways of a military or quasimilitary bureaucracy than the average recruit, and so stood it reasonably well."
"Once something was out on paper in a request format, if it was then denied, the project was dead. But if it’s not on paper… well, you get the idea."
"Contrary to what the general public often thinks about the military—that inside such an organization, talent and drive get lost—the Army has developed ways of trying to intrigue and retain good people by watching them closely and offering them good assignments."
"The key to these murderers, if there is one, lies in the unremittingly sexual nature of their deeds."
"Not everyone who is unable to participate in kissing games becomes a sexually dysfunctional adult."
"The ability to initiate, maintain, and develop good interpersonal relationships begins in childhood."
"People whose childhoods have been deeply impaired do not go on to wholly normal lives."
"Most previous researchers into the mind of the murderer thought that the roots of violent behavior were in childhood trauma."
"Organized crimes are premeditated, not spur of the moment."
"The main perpetrator would definitely have had a chronic sexual problem, indicating deviance and bizarre sexual experiences, throughout his life."
"He would likely be an avid reader of pornography, and may have been involved in experiments of a bizarre nature throughout his adolescence."
"The organized offender often uses a ruse or con to gain control over his victim."
"The disorganized killer walks to the scene or takes public transportation, whereas the organized offender drives his own car."
"Power over the victim’s life is what this type of offender seeks."
"The disorganized offender grows up in a household where the father’s work is often unstable."
"The organized offender, rather than internalizing hurt, anger, and fear, externalizes them."
"Instead of feeling inferior to people, organized killers feel superior to nearly everyone."
"Organized and disorganized: two types of killers."
"No two crimes or criminals are exactly alike."
"Murder is a horrific crime that scars the family, friends, and associates of the victim."
"Analyzing the communications, I immediately discounted the idea that Gail Jackson was about to be killed by a group of seven white men."
"Often, the best way to approach a profile is through victimology, through looking at the victim’s background."
"His inadequate English made it certain that he was not a college graduate, therefore not a commissioned officer."
"The latest Forces of Evil letters had mentioned the name of another black woman, Irene."
"I thought it likely that he’d been in a number of scrapes in his life, one of which might have led to the termination of his most recent employment."
"I’m Jack. I see you are still having no luck catching me."
"The unknown killer was called the Yorkshire Ripper, and he had murdered eight women in Yorkshire, most of them prostitutes."
"The killer, we said, was undoubtedly in his late twenties or early thirties, probably a school dropout or a man who had not been through higher education."
"He was thunderstruck. John Douglas concurred in my evaluation of the tape."
"The curtain rod seemed to have been placed gently down on the floor without harming or wrinkling the curtains on it."
"I told him that the FBI would probably not agree to hire anyone with a prison record."
"The actual act of murder, Kemper concluded, was never as good as the fantasy, and never would be."
"I believe they should not be executed but, rather, imprisoned and counseled so we can learn from them what we may do to prevent other would-be murderers from following their paths."
"In feeding the frenzy, we were using an old tactic in Washington, playing up the problem as a way of getting Congress and the higher-ups in the executive branch to pay attention to it."
"One day, Kemper came up behind his grandmother as she was typing a letter at her desk... He shot his grandmother with a rifle, then stabbed her."
"By the time the body count was complete, there were thirty-three victims (twenty-nine in and under the house, four in the river), more than had died at the hands of any other single individual in the history of American crime."
"The first was that Gacy’s view of himself was as a "nice guy," which Ziporyn said meant heterosexual, "helpful, friendly, generous, loving, virile and courageous."
"I recall saying to Pierce that if VICAP began officially in 1985, it would not be fully operational until 1995."
"The difficulty was that some people in the bureaucracy went too far in their quest for attention."
"The best man for the job was a Department of Justice supervisor, Robert O. Heck, who had shepherded the large grant through the bureaucratic mills."
"Kemper states that two or three of his former employees were involved in the crimes."
"As a society, we seem to be flying too close to the flame, looking for stimulation—we are bored audiences more attuned to fantasy than to reality, in danger of falling completely into the abyss about which Nietzsche warned us."
"I felt that if the FBI was going to be involved in the filming, to the extent of allowing Quantico to be used as a set, we ought to exert more influence to make the film realistic."
"They begin killing cautiously, frightened of their crimes. Then the pace picks up, and they progress to become effective and efficient killing machines."
"I was glad that no matter what way the court proceedings would go, he would spend the rest of his life in custody."
"My position is neither for nor against Dahmer, but is most definitely for using my expertise to bring all parties to the correct level of understanding where they can fairly adjudicate the matter at hand."
"The state of Florida spent seven or eight million dollars to execute Ted Bundy, money that might have been better used to build a forensic penal facility."
"I can’t tell what effect my testimony, separate from others, had on the outcome, but Greene was sentenced to death."
"The entire incident renews my belief that more training is needed for the police in this area."
"If we can assure the public that these monsters will not be allowed to complete a few years of incarceration and then slip back into our society—if we can agree to keep them in custody for the rest of their lives—then we will have made progress."
"The existence of a Jeffrey Dahmer spurs me to press on with my research."