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Kathy Reichs and John Douglas Discuss Their Work
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Bestselling authors Kathy Reichs, the forensic anthropologist, and John Douglas, the FBI’s legendary profiler and also an author, met on March 6, 2000 to discuss their approaches to crime writing and crime solving in fact and fiction. Jocelyn McClurg, former book critic for the Hartford Courant, moderated.
JOCELYN McCLURG:
I want to talk about why we as readers are interested in murder. Kathy, in your new novel, Deadly Decisions, your fictional forensic anthropologist and alter-ego, Temperance Brennan says, "Violent death is the final intrusion. And those who investigate it are the ultimate voyeurs."
I'd like to ask both you and John, are readers who read true crime books and murder mysteries also voyeurs? Why are we as human beings so fascinated by murder? And maybe the two of you as professionals in this area could talk about your own interest in the topic as well.
KATHY REICHS:
Well, I think that murder mystery readers are definitely voyeurs. Why they're intrigued with murder and death is a tougher question. But I think you read murder mysteries going all the way back to Sherlock Holmes or whoever it might be because you're able to vicariously participate or observe without really putting yourself into danger. You're able to work your way through the entire situation.
I think the other thing that's satisfying about the murder mystery is that usually it does resolve itself. And good wins over evil and the bad guy ends up in jail or removed from a position where he or she can do that kind of violence again. So I think there's that satisfaction in reading the murder mystery.
What's appealing about the modern murder mystery, the type of thing that I write or the profiling, is bringing science to bear on these questions, rather than the intuitive approach that might have been more typical of some of the earlier, and some modern, mystery writers. I think we bring science to the question of "who done it."
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I underscore everything Kathy says. And I think basically it comes down to an interest in what we writers quaintly call "the human condition." We want to know why people are the way they are.
In the things that Kathy and I both write about, whether in fiction or non-fiction, and I do both, and Kathy has a very non-fiction oriented job and then a fictional job as a novelist as well, we want to know why. And what we write about really are the basic elements of the human condition. Jealousy, greed, revenge, love, hate. I mean, that's very primal.
And the mystery story, whether it's true crime or fiction, allows us to get to those primal elements that we're all interested in in a very raw manner. As a result, I think we can live this vicariously, as Kathy says, without having to go through the trauma ourselves. And in another respect, I think it allows the reader a window into a world that he or she may know nothing about. For example, the technique of the detective, whether it's an FBI agent, a policeman, or a journalist.
We also learn a lot about subject matter. Reading Kathy's new book, I learned a tremendous amount about not only the Canadian justice system, but the whole subculture of motorcycle gangs that I knew very little about.
JOCELYN:
What do you both feel that you've learned about the human condition?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
It all comes down to the basic issue of why. Why do people do the things they do? I think Kathy would agree that all of us have had murderous thoughts and angry rages. But what is it that inhibits and socializes most of us? And in others it doesn't. What could possibly make somebody vicious enough to do the things they're doing?
One of the fascinations about the Jack the Ripper murders is it was the first time most people in polite society had come to grips with the idea that there was just random evil out there. That somebody was killing strangers for no apparent reason other than it gave him satisfaction to do so.
And I think there's certainly a lot of that in Kathy's work.
PAT:
I was reading a profile of Patricia Highsmith, the novelist who's written Strangers on the Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. And it was her belief that human beings walked a fine line. That anybody could be capable of the most hideous evil at just the turn of something. You know, John spends his life tracking that down. And Kathy, you see these people. I mean, you must be aghast at some of the damage that you see because I think as modern people we tend to think that one bullet is enough. One good whack on the head can do you in.
And yet, you've always said bones don't lie. You see repeated injuries. You must have to reflect on this anger.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Yeah, we refer to this as "overkill."
KATHY REICHS:
Overkill, exactly. I tend to work more with the physical evidence. I deal with the victims rather than the perpetrators. I'm often asked, "Do I really interact with families and with the perpetrators?" And I rarely do. I see the perpetrator across the courtroom when I'm testifying. Generally, I'm underwhelmed. I'm always shocked by how totally normal they look. They look like my Uncle Frank, usually.
I tend to deal with the victims and to look more at the how of it. You know, I end up with the putrefied body or the burned corpse or the cranium with the fracture pattern. So I'm dealing more with that kind of physical evidence, trying to figure out what happened and how it happened and what was done to the victim.
Of course that leads you into speculation as to why. You know, why was someone hit in the head 53 times? Or stabbed 106 times before their head and hands were cut off? But where I tend to get into the emotional, sentimental side of it in my books is from the point of view of those of us who are working with the victims, who are cleaning up the mess made by the people that John and Mark profile.
I tend not to speculate on why they did this, to this victim. Where I'm speculating or talking about feelings has to do more with those of us who are on the law enforcement end of it.
JOCELYN:
I have a question that sort of ties into your comments. John, you’ve written that the serial killer profiler must get inside the head of his subject, to try to imagine the crime from the killer's point of view. Kathy, I imagine as a novelist that to a certain degree you must go through this same process.
How unpleasant is it to try to get inside the mind of a depraved individual? And how do you feel about these people when you're writing about them?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Well, I would say that one of the great fallacies of fiction and of crime fiction--and Kathy, fortunately, is not guilty of this in the three books of hers that I've read--is that there seems to be this mystical idea that the best detective or the best profiler is somebody who has this incredible double-edged-sword ability to think like the criminal. To get inside the criminal's mind and actually think like he does.
Of course they do. But so what? I mean, that's sort of the basic, not a particular skill. That's something you better have if you're going to go into detective work. And then you move on from there. I mean, to think that that's some kind of special skill is kind of making fun of the whole subject.
Of course you have to be able to think like a criminal. Or as Kathy in her scientific work has to be able to work backwards from physical evidence. That's a given. To think that that's a particular gift that some detectives have is kind of simplifying the whole thing.
JOCELYN:
You were talking about the question of why the killers kill. I think that's what I'm trying to drive at. The imagining that on a fictional level.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Well, I think the thing that most people find very difficult to understand and what we try to explicate is that the kind of killer that we're talking about-- the sexually motivated repeat offenders, serial killers, rapists and sexual predators--they do it because they enjoy it. Because it gives them satisfaction. Because it makes them feel alive in a way that nothing else in life does. And it's very difficult for people to understand that they do it because they want to. At least, that's been my experience.
KATHY REICHS:
And in the three books that I've written, I'm going at very different motivational forces. Deja Dead is more similar to what John and Mark Olshaker are doing--you've got a serial killer. Death du Jour is about a cult, where you've got a very, very different psychological make up. A very, very different reason for why someone might not only kill him- or herself, but take a large number of others with him or her.
And then the third book, Deadly Decisions, which is coming out now, deals with motorcycle bikers. And here we have yet a very different motivation, which is pure economic or business or profit motive. So you're always going to speculate.
Whenever I have a pile of bones in front of me or a charred body or a putrefied corpse out of the river, of course you're going to speculate. Even though as a scientist you try to look at the physical evidence, you do speculate beyond why were they killed? Why did they kill themselves? Everything I work on isn't necessarily murder.
That's one of the things I try to bring out in my character. No matter what she's working on and how nasty it is, it is a human being. And you're always going to be projecting what that human being was in life and what happened to them.
Even when I did archeology and I'd work on bones that were five, ten thousand years old, you're still thinking, "Well, what did this person think the last day they were alive?"
JOCELYN:
What made you want to start writing about what you do for a living, Kathy?
KATHY REICHS:
(LAUGHS) Well, there were a number of things that came together in '94, when I started Deja Dead. I had just finished working on a serial murder case in Montreal. I'd just testified in that. I had also just arrived at full professor at the university, so I was a little freer to do what I felt like doing.
If you're writing fiction in a science department, it's not like writing fiction in an English department. You're sort of suspect for doing that. So I was a little freer. And I also sat down with a very dear friend of mine, Bill Maples, who had just published a book called Dead Men Do Tell Tales.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Which is a very good book, by the way.
KATHY REICHS:
Excellent book. And Bill just encouraged me to go ahead and give it a try. So all of those things kind of came together at that time and I decided to do it.
JOCELYN:
We've touched on this a little bit, and Pat did too, I think. But in some ways, your books approach murder from two ends of the spectrum. Kathy, as you said, you and your heroine are dealing more with the victims, finding clues through autopsies and bone analysis. John and Mark Olshaker are writing primarily about the minds of serial killers. What do you feel your work has in common and by the same token, how is it very different?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I think what we have in common is that we're all we're both pursuing the key question of why. Why did this happen? First of all, what happened? Which is the first thing a detective has to figure out. And then why.
KATHY REICHS:
Ultimately, leading to who. Of course.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Exactly.
KATHY REICHS:
You know. Who did it?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
As I’ve said before, why plus how equals who.
KATHY REICHS:
I think we also are basically using the scientific method to do it. We're looking at physical evidence that is left behind at a scene, putting it together, generating a hypothesis. Then testing that hypothesis until the right person fits it.
Where I could see our work really coming together is that I work with the physical remains left at a crime scene. Specifically I work with the victim. And I assume John and Mark could fit that into their profile, if there's patterning, if there's display versus hiding of the victim.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
One of the things that Kathy can figure out, and I found it fascinating in her work, is how much she can reconstruct from bones and physical fragments what actually happened. And when you say what actually happened, we call that "behavior." And behavior is how we infer or intuit the personality of the "unsub" or unknown subject.
Kathy is actually trying to come up with the identity of the unknown subject. You know, if even as far as name and address. We're just trying to figure out the personality. But we start from the kind of evidence and behavioral clues that she and other people give us.
KATHY REICHS:
And in both of our cases, we're one cog in an entire wheel.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Exactly.
KATHY REICHS:
We're one member of a team that includes the ballistics people and the DNA people and the anthropologist and the profiler and the investigator.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Yeah, I think that's an important point to make, Jocelyn. Forensic anthropologists don't catch criminals. And profilers don't catch criminals. They're part of the process that helps the front line people, the detectives, the officers catch the criminals.
JOCELYN:
Your new book is called The Cases That Haunt Us. I wanted to ask both of you before we get into specifics about your book, are there cases that haunt you, Kathy? Are there ones that weren't solved, that you didn't put together the way you wanted to, that you remember?
KATHY REICHS:
I have my own anthropology lab in the larger medical legal lab in Montreal. And in my lab I have a warehouse. And that warehouse is filled with shelves. And each one of those contains a box. Shelves full of boxes, each of which contains a case. And many of those cases are unsolved. These are individuals that have never been identified. And in each case there's a family somewhere, probably. Or friends or associates, wondering where these people are. Missing these people. So each of those haunts me.
I think there are some that bother you more than others. In my case, I've got some children with dental work. Children whose parents took the time to take them to a dentist before the age of five who have never been identified.
JOCELYN:
In your book that's coming out this summer, you have a case in which there are bones in two different locations. Is that based on a real case?
KATHY REICHS:
There actually was a case which I believe was associated with the Green River serial murderer in which skeletal parts were found in one state and a cranium with a particularly unique medical identifier was found in another state. And those turned out to be from the same victim. So I took the idea from that.
JOCELYN:
John, are there cases that haunt you? Even ones that you haven't necessarily written about in your books that you just can't get out of your head sometimes?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Oh, sure. There are a number of cases that we've written about that are absolutely searing in their tragedy, their implications. One of the ones that's always gotten to me was the Sherry Faye Smith case that we wrote about in our first book Mind Hunter.
A 17 year old young woman from South Carolina who was just about to graduate from high school is abducted in front of a mailbox of her home town in a very low crime area. She was taken by this unknown subject and essentially told that she was going to be killed. She was a very religious young woman, and actually sent her parents what she titled her last will and testament, which told them that she was prepared to die.
It's probably the most searing document I've ever seen related to crime. And the unknown subject then absolutely sadistically taunted the family by calling them and trying to engage this woman's sister. But ironically enough, it was that sadistic communication which allowed me to profile the killer and come up with a proactive strategy that ultimately led to his capture.
JOCELYN:
Let's talk a little bit about your new book. And if you don't mind, start with the Jon-Benet Ramsey case, which seems to be endlessly fascinating. We just had a TV movie of the week about, which was sort of mind boggling. But I think you were initially criticized in some quarters for your work with the Ramseys and--
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I think I still am. Yes.
JOCELYN:
(LAUGHS) And believing in their innocence. I'm just wondering if you can tell us what we're going to learn that's new in your forthcoming book about this case, if you can speak to that at all.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Well, it's not so much what we're going to learn that's new. We're going to strip away all of the misconceptions about this case. Because I have to tell you, it's been very poorly reported. And this is a case where it's very difficult to have it add up.
But my co-writer, Mark Olshaker, and I want to go through it step by step, behavior by behavior and say, "What can we say about this case? And why do we think the parents did not do it when everybody else seems to think that they did?" Including many of my colleagues at the FBI. What is it about this case? It seems to have struck a nerve. I think all of the cases that we're doing in this book do strike a nerve in one sense or another. Jack the Ripper really is about, as I said, the randomness of evil. The Lizzie Borden case is about families and the evil that can lurk there. And I think the Ramsey case is really about parents and children. And what are parents capable of vis-a-vis their children?
And look, I'll be the first to admit, we've written about many cases where parents do kill their children. This one doesn't seem to add up in that way. And we're going to tell you why. We're going to go through the behavior and we're going to try to come up with a scenario that makes sense.
It is a strange case. But whatever scenario you come up with, I can probably talk you out of it by telling you how it doesn't make sense. And yet one of the scenarios you come up with will be correct, and I'll still be able to talk you out of it. So it's a very strange case.
JOCELYN:
Will it ever be solved, do you think?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
All the loose ends just don't add up.
JOCELYN:
Do you think it will ever be solved?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Less than 50/50 chance, I think. It's possible, but it's tough to come up with new evidence. And I'm always suspect when people do come up with new evidence this far after the fact.
KATHY REICHS:
And I think a complicating factor in that case is that the crime scene was the family home.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
And it was completely corrupted. Unlike some of the cases that Kathy deals with where the evidence is incomplete and then you find something, I think everything is here. I mean, I don't think there's any new evidence to look at.
JOCELYN:
How often in criminal cases is there botched evidence? It seems that in the last few years we've heard so much. The accusations that O.J. Simpson made. There's a case going on right now in New Haven, Connecticut, where a Yale professor is the primary suspect. He's never been charged in the murder of his student and the claim is that that was also a botched crime scene.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Well, of course, that probably happens 100 percent of the time. The question is how do you know to what extent? Now nobody's perfect, and Kathy can probably speak to this better than I can because she actually deals with law enforcement agencies on a regular basis, but you do have a lot of botched evidence. The question is, how botched, and can you still use it? Because it's very easy to look backwards and say what should have been done differently. But when you're making it up as you go along, it's very difficult.
KATHY REICHS:
This is the main point of what I do at Quantico. We teach a body recovery workshop to special agents who are evidence recovery technicians. Because the type of physical evidence I work with, of course, is human remains. And the tendency when a body's found is to go out and get it.
Even though the body may have been lying there for two years, or two days, we've got to go out, get it, bring it in immediately. So we train them in very specific techniques of collecting not just that body, but every single bit of physical evidence. Or even environmental contextual evidence that might be associated with it.
So hopefully law enforcement is becoming much more sophisticated. I don't deal with ballistics or paint chips or hair and fiber or any of that kind of thing. But certainly that's our goal in teaching this kind of course.
JOCELYN:
That raises the question of a number of the cases that you talk about, John, in your new book that are several decades old or in at least one case, I guess it's now two centuries ago.
As people who write about serial killers and a lot of technology, what are you bringing to these cases that would have made them perhaps solvable back then, that we know now, for example?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Well, if you go back as far as Jack the Ripper, if some of the techniques that are available now had been available then--even something as basic as fingerprinting, which didn't come in until about seven years afterwards, and actually wasn't used until 16 years after the Jack the Ripper murders--that probably would have helped. Blood typing. Things like that.
But the basic issue was that there was a fundamental lack of understanding of what I and Roy Hazel, another expert on it, have called lust murder. I mean, there had been some, probably, but no one had ever really seen it or knew how to recognize it.
So they didn't know what it was they were looking for, other than a wild-eyed madman. And that wasn't going to do much as far as catching them. But I think what we're trying to do in a sense is deconstruct these cases. They are very powerful. They seem to hit a nerve with people.
But what are they really all about? What do they come down to? And what can we then say about them? And what does that say about ourselves and our interest?
JOCELYN:
I've always, since I was a kid, been fascinated with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on in that chapter?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Yeah, that's a fascinating case. Mark and I were just up in New Jersey a couple of weeks ago. We actually toured the house where the baby was taken and walked through every room. We were in the room where the baby was abducted. We were in the room right downstairs where Colonel Lindbergh was sitting at the time.
We walked through the woods where the kidnapper would have had to come. And then we went to the state police archives in Trenton and looked at all of the physical evidence. Like the ladder and the ransom notes and the clothing that was actually on the baby. It is a very eerie feeling to be that close to that kind of historical evidence.
But I can tell you that the crime just doesn't add up. We've analyzed this from a behavioral point of view, from a forensic point of view. And I can't say at this point that justice wasn't done, but I'm telling you the case doesn't add up.
We're not saying that Bruno Richard Haufmann was not involved, because if he wasn't involved, the evidence against him makes him the unluckiest human being in the world. But it just doesn't add up that this man could have pulled off this crime by himself. I can get into specific reasons, if you like. But the main one is that he would not have had the knowledge that was necessary to pull off this crime. The actual intelligence information.
This baby was in a place where he wasn't supposed to be. How would this immigrant German carpenter from New York have known where he was going to be that night without some help? And Mark and I also went to the scene, and we couldn't figure out behaviorally how one person could have pulled off the crime by himself.
JOCELYN:
Are there other cases in the book in which you're taking a slightly different view from the conventional wisdom?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Yeah. Well, we're telling who we think Jack the Ripper actually was.
JOCELYN:
We have to wait for the book?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Somewhat. Although everybody has a theory, we think our theory is a good one. And we're telling why from a behavioral point of view. We're also telling why all of the other ideas like that it was the Duke of Clarence, grandson of Queen Victoria, why that--sexy as it may be--is a silly-- theory.
I think that we're taking a kind of an unusual position in the Boston Strangler case. We don't believe that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler because his behavior just doesn't add up. Albert DeSalvo was a known rapist, but his methodology was so different.
His behavior was so different from the Strangler cases that it seems virtually impossible that he could have been the Boston Strangler. And we're going to explain why. And in the process we hope give some insight about about human behavior and motivation. The same thing that Kathy does in her work.
JOCELYN:
Well, Kathy, can I ask you as someone who deals with physical evidence how some of this strikes you. Do you ever think that serial profiling may be a little bit speculative?
KATHY REICHS:
Well, I don't want to speculate on this subject. (LAUGHTER) But I do prefer to see the physical evidence. And in some of these cases, it exists for extraordinarily long periods of time after the crimes have actually taken place. And we can take that physical evidence and apply new techniques that exist today. The application of DNA technology to the Sam Shepherd case would be an example of that.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
And the same is actually being done on the Boston Strangler, I understand. I believe they're trying to match up some of the victims with DeSalvo with either semen or blood, I'm not sure.
KATHY REICHS:
Okay. That's the type of re-analysis that I feel, coming from my position, is the strongest. When you can take new technology, exhume Melanie Shepherd, get something from under her fingernails, look at the DNA of that physical evidence. That, to me, is the most persuasive type of argument.
PAT:
This is so controversial. The public in a sense, falls in love with the myth of who did what or something. Maybe they love that the German carpenter got nailed. And what do you do when it becomes controversial?
KATHY REICHS:
Or they fall in love with the myth of the controversy. With the myth of the unsolved. Once we solve it and put it away, perhaps people lose interest.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I think that's true. And Pat, I don't think I'm giving away anything to say that once we weigh in our opinions on these great cases, it won't stop the controversy. I mean, everyone's not going to say, "Oh, well, JOHN DOUGLAS solved that one. I guess we'll move on." (LAUGHTER) That doesn't happen.
One of the things that we're trying to do in The Cases That Haunt Us is get people to approach crime the way it should be approached, which is from the evidence, from the crime scene, from the event itself. There's such a tendency in famous, controversial popular cases to start with a theory and work your back and make the facts fit the theory.
And one thing I can tell you, having spent a number of years now in the forensic psychiatric game looking at what insanity is and whether people are responsible for their crimes or whether there's an organic basis, is that you can very easily come up with the answers you seek, whatever they are.
I mean, the evidence can be interpreted that way. So we're making a conscious effort to try to do on a behavioral basis just what Kathy does with the hard science. Which is to let the evidence direct us, rather than applying a theory and making it fit.
JOCELYN:
There's one question I want to ask you both about as experts in crime. We talked about what a shock it was when Jack the Ripper committed his crime, because no one had ever seen it. Well, unfortunately you can rattle off the names of serial killers with a great amount of ease these days.
What do you both feel has happened between Jack the Ripper and Jeffrey Dahmer that this kind of murder seems to have become all too common? And in a related question, so much has been talked about, in the last year it was school shootings in the United States. And most recently, of course, a six year old kid killing another six year old kid.
First of all, why is this happening? And then secondly, are you two shocked when a six year old kills another six year old? Or do you see it as sort of a sad, logical kind of extension of the kind of crime that we've been living with for the last X number of years in this country?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Well, I think that's two questions. I think when a six year old kills another six year old, that's more a question of access to guns. When a 14 or 15 year old kills another 14 or 15 year old, I think you've got a real social phenomenon going on.
JOCELYN:
Well, I think you actually said in Anatomy of a Motive that the same figures apply for poorly adjusted kids as for poorly adjusted adults.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Sure they do. The school shootings in a way are really just an extension downward in age of the problem we have with workplace violence, of people going in an dshooting up the post office, or any kind of office, or when they go in and shoot up a McDonald’s or something like that. It's just getting younger and younger as we have more access to guns.
I think we always had crime in school. But something that might have been settled with fists is now settled with guns, because that's part of our culture. And it is very discouraging and very distressing.
One of the real problems that school administrators and law enforcement officers have-and I don't know if this is the case in Canada, Kathy can comment on this-is you have somebody who's picked out.
And then the counselors or the parents or the lawyers will come and say, "Oh, well, you know, you're ruining this person. You're stigmatizing him. You're labeling him. And he's just acting out and this is fantasy and it's not really a problem. And look at what you're doing, you're traumatizing him." And then if they do go and take out a cafeteria one day, everybody beats their breasts and says "Why was this not recognized?"
So I think you've got a real problem here. Very few of these people do not have precursors in their behavior. I mean, it's difficult to pick out but if you're aware, these kids can get help sometimes, they can be stopped. Some of them can't be. But I think we can cut down on it.
JOCELYN:
Do you feel that Kip Kinkel or Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris in some ways fill the kind of profiles that you see in older killers?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Sure they do. You've got these people who are withdrawn. They are socially resentful. They have this very dangerous combination of very low self-esteem and a sense of personal aggrandizement and superiority at the same time. And that's a very dangerous combination, particularly when they say, "Yeah, I'm gonna get back at everybody."
After Columbine, I guarantee you, there are 100 young boys out there today who are looking at this and not being appalled.
But they're gonna say, "Boy, what a way to go. Boy, I'd like to go out in a blaze of glory like that, if I just had the means. If I just had the courage."
JOCELYN:
Kathy, do you see the same kind of crimes in Canada that we see in this country?
KATHY REICHS:
Well absolutely the same kinds of crime exist. It's the frequency: there's a tremendous difference.
JOCELYN:
And why do you think that is?
KATHY REICHS:
Just look at the numbers. Absolute numbers. The homicide rate there is a fraction of what it is here. The gunshot deaths there are a fraction of what the gunshot deaths are here. Since I work in a medical legal lab, I see autopsies every day. I have to say that the serial killer is still an extraordinarily rare phenomenon.
There's a lot of interest in that, it's very sexy, it's very glamorous, it's makes a good story. But I do think the number of serial killers is still exceedingly low. Both in Canada and in the States, the majority of homicides are either domestic or they're drug related.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
If you compare the serious violent crime rates in Seattle, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia, which are relatively the same size and very close to each other, it's startling the difference.
KATHY REICHS:
In my opinion, it's directly related to the availability of guns. I also agree with what you said about rage. I talk about this a little bit in Death du Jour when I'm addressing the topic of why people join cults. Why do they do that, even though often it has very lethal results for them?
I think it's a time when there's a lot of social change going on. We're seeing changing relationships between men and women. Changing structuring within the family. Changing gender roles. In many cases, this can lead to a tremendous amount of rage. It can either lead to someone becoming isolated and cutting themselves off, in the case of Klebold and his friend. Or to the joining of a cult, where you're looking for some sort of family or network or basis or something along those lines.
But I think when there is this build up of rage or isolation and you throw guns into that formula, then you come up with these really, really explosive situations.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I think Kathy's just captured the whole situation in a nutshell. I would just absolutely subscribe to everything she just said.
JOCELYN:
Your new book, Kathy, is about outlaw motorcycle gangs in Canada. And this is based on actual gang wars among them?
KATHY REICHS:
It is. Quebec province right now has the only active biker war in the world. There was one going on between the Hell's Angels and the Banditos in Scandinavia, but they sat down and signed a truce. (LAUGHS) In Quebec, it involves a group called The Rock Machine, which is home grown, and the Hell's Angels, who moved into the province somewhere in the early '70s.
It's over control of the drug trade in the province. And it's a very lethal dispute. It involves the disappearance or death of about 120 people over the last five or six years. Which is huge, given the low homicide rates in Quebec province. So as a result of this, actually as the result of the death of an 11 year old boy in the mid-1990s, a multi-agency task force was formed called the Wolverine Unit.
That's made up of the RCMP, the city police and the provincial police. So I spent a lot of time with them, riding surveillance and visiting biker clubhouses and doing a lot of research. It's a fascinating subculture. They tend to come to me.
Some of the earliest cases that I did were biker cases, either gunshot victims that had been found later decomposed and in bad condition. Or a very common MO was to shoot someone and then set the car on fire. So that would again be the type of case that would come to the forensic anthropologist: a very badly charred victim to establish identification, and then also to figure out bullet trajectories and that kind of thing.
JOCELYN:
Now you started out as an anthropologist looking at old bones. What got you interested in crime and in the more recent cases?
KATHY REICHS:
I was sort of dragged into it. Since I was the local expert in bones, police started bringing cases to me. And as I started doing the forensic work, I just found it much more interesting. Much more rewarding. It's more exciting.
Archeology is intriguing but forensic anthropology more exciting. You're more involved in what's going on. And it's a way to bring my science to solving a really practical problem. It's like puzzle solving, putting the pieces together. And it's also very rewarding in that one is able to provide answers for families that have missing children or husbands and lovers or whatever.
JOCELYN:
Was it shocking, initially, to see conditions of bodies when you first began this?
KATHY REICHS:
Not really, because part of my graduate training was was in med school doing dissection. Of course, those are well-preserved cadavers rather than the type of thing that usually comes to me, crawling with maggots or whatever. (LAUGHTER) So it takes a little bit of adjustment.
JOCELYN:
Now, you and Temperance have the same job. I'm just wondering how you are like her and not like her.
KATHY REICHS:
Professionally, we're virtual mirror images. She works in Montreal, she works in North Carolina, she commutes back and forth. And a lot of the feelings, again, that I experience I express through her.
I'm told that her sense of humor is the same as mine. She's a bit of a smart mouth. But as far as the personal, the alcoholism, the dissolving marriage, all of that, that was just to give the character texture. Complexity.
JOCELYN:
There's no Andrew Ryan/Hal Rifkin in your life?
KATHY REICHS:
He's a composite. After Deja Dead was published I had a little bit of breathing space, because most of the people I work with had to wait until it came out in French. But when it did, I was a little bit nervous about going into the lab. There's a lot of speculation about who's who. And particularly the Claudell character, who tends to be a little bit rigid. (LAUGHS) But they're generally composite characters.
JOCELYN:
Okay. Well, that brings me to my next question, which is that Tempe struggles as a woman in a man's world. And Claudell, of course, is a big thorn in her side. I'm wondering if you've battled some of that sort of sexism in your job? And the other question is, if you want to address this secondly, is that Tempe gets herself in a lot of trouble. She's becomes a crime fighter, and she's almost died in your books. Have you ever gotten that personally involved.
KATHY REICHS:
The law enforcement personnel with whom I work have never been anything but appreciative and gracious. And I have not encountered the kind of difficulty some of my colleagues have. Some of my female colleagues have described those kinds of situations. I've never experienced that. The people that I've worked with have always been terrific. At the FBI, or in Montreal, or at the Central ID lab. I work for the military out in Hawaii.
I think this would not hold true if I went off and did some of the things that (LAUGHTER) that Tempe does on her own. When I go to a body recovery, it is always with an official crime scene recovery unit. I do not go off on my own, digging up bones or interviewing family members or anything along those lines. She takes a lot more risks than I do.
I have been threatened once while I was testifying in court. The defendant didn't particularly like what I had to say, so they did have to stop that trial because he said he was going to kill me. And therefore I'm very cautious in protecting my private life somewhat. Not so much because of the type of writing I do, more because of the type of work that I do. I take normal precautions.
JOCELYN:
John, what about you and Mark? Have there been killers who almost become obsessed with you once they've spoken to you about their lives? Did you ever have any problems?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Yeah, that does happen from time to time. Fortunately no one has overtly threatened us that way. Although we do we do get an enormous amount of strange mail. Not being a mental health care professional myself, with all the mail we've gotten, I can recognize a paranoid schizophrenic's letter as soon as I open it. Anything that's six or eight single spaced type written pages and all kinds of notes hand written in on the side, you can tell immediately.
But what we do get even more of are all these strange conspiracy and other theories about cases. When our book on the Unabomber came out, we were besieged by some weirdos, but also by some very respectable people who had an idea of who the Unabomber really was and wanted to give us all of the evidence and reasons. I dutifully took it all down and handed it over to the FBI.
But what we do, by its very nature, brings out a lot of strange people and a lot of strange attitudes. And when we do book signings, too. Every once in awhile, you'll see that person standing in line with the 40 yard stare, and you say, "What is he going to be asking me?"
JOCELYN:
Does that make you nervous?
KATHY REICHS:
Every now and then, there's one. Yeah.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I think it goes with the territory.
JOCELYN:
What about relaxing when it's all over?
KATHY REICHS:
When what's all over? Wait a minute. (LAUGHS) When's it ever all over? (LAUGHS)
JOCELYN:
At the end of a case. Or the end of a week. You mentioned several times finding maggots and bodies. I found a fly in a pancake mix and couldn't eat a pancake for six months. (LAUGHS) So how do you erase that at the end of a week? Or the end of a case? Or is there ever an end? How do you relax?
KATHY REICHS:
I think it's like any other profession. Whether you're a surgeon or a dentist or an oncologist or whatever, you develop techniques for separating. For leaving it behind at the lab. In my case, there are always those cases that you can't totally sever yourself from.
But I do feel if you become emotionally involved in every case, you're not going to be any good to anyone. So you do need to develop coping mechanisms.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I think that's very true. I mean, in a way you do have to separate yourself out. And the case becomes a puzzle. One of the other ways that that Mark and I have tried to keep whole with all of this is that there are a number of victim's families that we've become very close to.
In Journey Into Darkness, I spent three chapters writing about Suzanne Collins, the beautiful young Marine corporal who was brutally raped and murdered while jogging alone on a Marine Corps base in Tennessee. Mark and I have become very friendly with her parents. And they're some of our closest friends now.
I think what's fascinating is these are people who will ache every day for the loss of their child, for their lost opportunities and all that that means. And at the same time, it's hard to believe, they're people with a sense of humor. And goals in life.
It's very hard for people to understand that this does change your life forever. It's never the same. The pain never goes away. And yet you can live. It's not a question of just getting on with your life and putting that behind you. Because you never put it behind you.
What's fascinating to me and very poignant, and we've written about it several times, is how this changes your life, makes you a different person, becomes assimilated into your life. What I hear Kathy talking about from her perspective as an investigator, I think that becomes assimilated into your life, too.
It's not a question of walking away from it. It just becomes a part of what you are. And you learn to cope with it.
JOCELYN:
Now, John, you talked earlier about not wanting to glamorize serial killers. And then you said a little while ago that after Columbine, you thought there are probably 100 kids out there who are probably thinking, "Wow, I could be on the cover of Time magazine, too, if I shot up my high school." Do you ever worry about just the mere fact that you're writing about these people? I mean, of course you're telling the horrible things that they've done. But is there an aspect of it that that glamorizes them almost by default?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I would hope not. I mean, that's for the readers to decide. We hope that by showing these people up for what they really are, we're de-glamorizing them. We're showing that these people who may seem very dramatic and very powerful are actually deeply inadequate people. In most cases very sexually inadequate people.
And the phrase that comes back to me over and over again is a phrase that the philosopher/writer Hannah Arendt used in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem when she was covering the trial of Adolph Eichmann. And she referred to the banality of evil. And I think that's what we see.
There's nothing grandiose here. These are small-minded, very inadequate, pathetic people. And the only way that they can rise above that-people like Ted Bundy who was handsome and charming and intelligent-is by manipulating, dominating and controlling others. And having the power of life and death over them.
And I don't find anything glamorous about that. And I hope that comes through in our writing. I hope what comes through is the inadequacy of these people.
JOCELYN:
Well, I know I can remember a couple of examples where you were interviewing some of these killers in prison, and they're crying, but not for the victims, for themselves.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
They're crying for themselves. I mean, it's changed their lives. Getting caught has put a damper on things for them.
KATHY REICHS:
Isn't that the question?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I think that's hard for people. You know the cliche that these people are just like us and that we could all do this. But no, we couldn't. Most of us couldn't do these kind of terrible things. We could think about it, but we would never do it.
I'm willing to admit that virtually every sexual predator has some kind of mental illness, but they're not insane, by and large. At least the organized ones. They make a choice. And you know, other than why, the other big word that comes across over and over again in our books is choice. They choose to do what they do.
JOCELYN:
How do we stop them? Can we?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Well, as far as serial killers go, on the grim ledger of what we do is you stop one after one or two, that's a success story. It's often difficult to stop them. And I think we're never going to stop crime and the war goes on. The more we learn, we can sometimes short circuit the process.
But then again, we do not have a society, nor should we, where we can put people in jail because of what we think they might do.
JOCELYN:
Does either of you feel that in any way your books could help prevent crime? In other words, for women who might be reading your books in particular, John?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
We have, over and over again, particularly for women, told them the kind of things that they should be aware of and look out for. And also for children. One of the things which I think we tried to do in Journey Into Darkness and then again to some extent in Obsession, is we've tried to make children into profilers themselves.
I mean, if they're going to avoid being victims, they've got to understand what it is they can do. If a child is lost in a shopping mall, that child has to become a profiler and say, "Who can you trust?" And we tell them to look for certain types of people. You look for people in uniform. You look for people with name tags. You look for people behind counters. You look for pregnant women or women with other children.
Now, those are not foolproof, but they're good rules of thumb. Those are the kind of people you look for. To merely tell a kid not to talk to strangers is not going to be very helpful. In fact, it's going to be very detrimental. If a kid gets lost in a shopping mall, he's got nobody to talk to but strangers.
JOCELYN:
Does it make you both sad that we even have to tell kids in that much detail these days?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Oh, it breaks my heart.
KATHY REICHS:
I'm often asked that same question even though what I do is fiction. You know, are you encouraging, are you teaching criminals to be better criminals? And I think, as John said, the point of my books, at least, is to show that cults or serial killers or outlaw bikers or whatever not only cause pain for the victim who's dead, but also cause pain for the families. And cause pain for the people who have to come after them and clean up the mess and deal with the victims.
And also, getting back to the very beginning of this interview, the fact that my books are good old whodunit murder mysteries. That the bad guy gets caught. And he's going to go to jail. Or she is going to go to jail.
JOCELYN:
So is that a faction of your job, especially as a writer?
KATHY REICHS:
I think that's part of it. Being able to testify and yank some of these guys off the street.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
One of the things that Kathy and I both do, in both fiction and non-fiction, is take a moral stand. We take a very strong, definitive moral stand.
JOCELYN:
Can you expand on that, John? That's an interesting point.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I think that in the kind of crime writing we do there's a lot in the realm of human behavior. And a long continuum. But there's very little ambiguity about what we feel is right and wrong, and how people ought to behave, and what the consequences are and should be when they don't behave. And I think that that's probably equally true for both of us.
JOCELYN:
You know, there is still sort of a paradox there, which I think goes back to my first question. There was just a show the other night on Jeffrey Dahmer, which I watched, I think for the second time. (LAUGHTER) And you ask yourself, "Why am I so fascinated by this?"
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Because you couldn't. It's something you couldn't possibly imagine yourself doing.
KATHY REICHS:
I think that's it. They are just so outside the range of what you could ever imagine.
JOCELYN:
Now he's one case where he speaks as though he's a fairly intelligent, "normal" person. And that's what I think is so peculiar. That's another part of the fascination.
KATHY REICHS:
Well, it's also what's so frightening. As I said, when I go into court and you see these guys, they just look like the guy next door.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I like to say you can't tell sometimes who's the lawyer and who's the defendant. (LAUGHTER) That's really very misleading. Because what you've got to be able to bring out what that guy was like at the time of the crime--and that's one of the things that I do in my advice to prosecutors.
JOCELYN:
Before he gets on the fancy suit and the nice haircut, right?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Yes, they've always got the short hair and the nice suit. And they're very quiet. Remember, sexual predators are very good at is dissembling. They're very good at pretending to be something else. And most of them are very charming. They can charm an audience of jurors just as well as they can charm a potential victim.
JOCELYN:
John, of the people who you've written about, is there any one in particular who horrifies you more than others?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Well, not one particularly, but certainly the type that horrifies, appalls and disgusts me the most are what we call sexual sadists. The people who commit their crimes merely for the satisfaction of inflicting pain and control on others.
And I don't even want to mention specific names because, out of context, that might tend to glorify them. But there are a number of such people. And particularly when the victim is a child. I think that is so appalling and so upsetting that it is difficult for me to justify sharing the same earth with them.
PAT:
Do you sometimes see such hideous wounds you just think, "This is just over the top."
KATHY REICHS:
Every time--and I've said this in my books, I think. Every time you think you've seen it all, then you see something else. We have a case right now, John, I would love for you and Mark to come up. In Montreal, we have any number of young girls who have gone missing. Some of whom have turned up in pieces in the same general area. Many of whom have disappeared from bus terminals.
There is a patterning here, I think, although I'm not a profiler. And now we've just had a 13 year old who came to us in plastic bags, having been found in five pieces in a dump. And now we've just had another little ten year old go missing.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Yeah, you're talking about a very vulnerable population. As far as victims, we often group children, very old people and prostitutes. Because they are the three classes that are most vulnerable to strangers.
JOCELYN:
I just wanted to ask, because you both are writers, what writers you like. Who you read for relaxation. Do you read murder mysteries or have you had enough of that?
KATHY REICHS:
No, I read murder mysteries.
PAT:
Did you read all of Nancy Drew when you were little?
KATHY REICHS:
I did. I did read Nancy Drew.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I read the Hardy Boys. (LAUGHTER)
KATHY REICHS:
I read them as well. Penrod and Sam. I mean, I loved--
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Booth Tarkington
KATHY REICHS:
Yeah. I loved serials like that.
JOCELYN:
Who do you read now?
JOHN DOUGLAS:
I personally like Charles McCarry a lot. He writes spy fiction. His most recent book is called Lucky Bastard, which is a political novel. He's also written The Last Supper, Second Sight and Shelly's Heart, which are brilliant books. I would recommend them to anybody. I'm going to sound sexist here. I really like Norman Mailer. I love the fact he's willing to take a chance on everything. He's very experimental. I love Tom Wolfe. People who give a sense of what life is all about.
KATHY REICHS:
One of my favorites is the Douglas Addams series. The five books, I believe it is, of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (LAUGHTER) I love those. It's one of the few things I re-read because it's just nothing to do with anything I do. (LAUGHS)
JOCELYN:
Both of you, plus John, probably have a fantastic experience of simply going home and being with your families. And having those very simple things in life.
JOHN DOUGLAS:
Part of this is learning to strike the balance in life.
KATHY REICHS:
My kids have told me they knew when I'd been working on a child case, because I would be much more restrictive.
PAT:
John and Kathy, thanks for your time.
HBO.COM's Q & A with author and forensic anthropologist, Kathy Reichs
HBO.COM
Hello and welcome. Thank you for participating in this special Autopsy Q & A. First off, what attracted you to the field of forensic anthropology?
KATHY REICHS
I started out in archaeology. I was doing ancient remains. Eventually police started bringing cases to me. In working on these cases I found it somehow more compelling, more attractive, more fascinating, more relevant that I could actually have an impact on families, and on the legal system. I find it very rewarding to be able to give a family (of a victim) closure. To testify as an expert witness. And to be able to take some of these people (offenders) off the streets.
HBO.COM
What is your educational background? And what kind of specialized training is required to become a forensic anthropologist?
KATHY REICHS
Most forensic anthropologists come into it with Ph.D. in anthropology with a specialization in physical anthropology, skeletal biology and human genetics, human variation. Some people come through an MD route. But most of us have a Ph.D.. My undergraduate was at American University. With a Masters and Ph.D. at Northwestern. You then have to have three years of post doctorate experience on casework. And then you can apply for candidacy and take your board exam to become certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology.
HBO.COM
Although there is no such thing as a "routine" examination, give us an overview of what generally happens and what you look for in an examination?
KATHY REICHS
Well, I'm usually brought into cases by medical examiners and coroners, or law enforcement agencies, or occasionally by private parties. And it's cases in which the body is compromised. It's mummified. It's burned, decomposed. It's dismembered. It's putrefied. It's just a torso out of the river. It's just a skeleton. So the normal autopsy is having problems. And there's two primary questions: One would be who is it - the identity question. And the other would be trauma. Looking at bone trauma to figure out manner of death. Or sometimes to figure out what happened to the body after the person's death. And the common denominator is always the bones.
HBO.COM
Let's talk a little bit about reconstruction. What is involved in that process?
KATHY REICHS
Construction or reconstruction can take place on a number of different levels. It might be that I physically, literally have to reconstruct. Take fragments and glue them back together. Or put the pieces of bone back together. I've also reconstructed in the sense of reconstructing a biological profile. The age, the sex, the race, the height. Indicators of past medical history. Anything that would be helpful in identification. I construct then what I think of as that profile. What I look at depends on what I'm focusing on. If I'm looking at determining sex, the most useful part would be the pelvis. The male pelvis is different for obvious reasons than the female pelvis. The skull is useful. Males have bigger muscle attachment, brow ridges. All the bumps and ridges on the male skull are much more prominent.
For age it depends on the age of the individual when they die. With kids you can see more precisely because they're still developing and growing. You look at the development of the teeth. The long bones are not finished until sometime in puberty or late teenage years. So you're looking at those little bumps and crests and ridges and things and they fuse to complete the adult bone. So because kids are still growing and developing you can be pretty precise. With adults you can't be nearly as precise. You have to look at degenerative changes, breakdown. Some things occur at a regular rate. Changes in the ribs where they attach to the sternum, the breastbone, in front. Changes in the two parts of the pelvis where they meet in front. What it will look like at a particular phase in adulthood. So you're probably going to be able to age adults maybe plus or minus five years or ten years. With kids you can estimate plus or minus months or a year or two. For race, really the only useful area is the skull. I observe features of the shape of the skull. The mid-facial region is very good. There are a few dental features that are good for determining people of African and European versus Asian ancestry. I also take measurements and put them into a computer program which places my unknown relative to measurements that have been collected from known populations - black versus white versus Asian for example.
So that's what I do in constructing the biological profile. I rarely do a positive I.D myself. Those are done with dental records, medical records, DNA. But what I do is I give the detective the profile. We can then match that to missing persons to come up with a name. Once you've got a name you can then go to the dentist, you can go where the medical records might be.
Facial reconstruction is something else, probably best called facial approximation. It's really when nothing else has worked. You've got an "unknown." You cannot figure out who this person is. And as a last ditch effort, you might want to do a facial approximation. Get a sketch out to the media, see if someone recognizes it. You can do it by the old fashioned clay on the skull, three-dimensional technique. That's time consuming. It's also fixed. You can't change it once you've done it. You can do it two-dimensional, where you're doing line drawings of an individual based on the skull using other tissue standards. From these techniques you might come up with a line drawing.
The third technique - and it's the current one really or modern one - is using computer-generated models where you scan your skull in and then you lay the tissue on. The advantage to that is you can change it. You can make the person older, younger, heavier, lighter. Put glasses on, take glasses off, change the hairstyle.
But the goal of all the work - and they work in different ways - some of them work using databases of pre-existing features: eyes, nose, chin shape, etc. Others generate the face using mathematical formulas and laying the flesh on. So you've got the three techniques. Three-dimensional, the two-dimensional drawing and computer generated. They're all used as a last ditch effort. Again - I've had cases where - I had one case, I did a test. I had seven different facial approximations done by different people with different techniques. They were all different. So it's an art not a science.
HBO.COM
OK, so now we move on to the question of the National Disaster Medical System DMORT team and how you became involved with them and what your practices and procedures are as a member.
KATHY REICHS
DMORT is Disaster Mortuary Operational Recovery Team. And part of the National Disaster Medical System. DMORT deals with mass fatality. Where you've got a plane crash, a train crash, cemeteries that have floated up and you have to figure out who goes in what casket. That happened here in North Carolina and Georgia.
So the DMORT teams exist permanently but they're only deployed in these emergency situations. They're made up of anthropologists, pathologists, dentists, funeral directors, computer specialists, data entry personnel, etc. They rely on a program called VIP, which tracks the progress of remains, stores all data, and facilitates the comparison of antemortem and postmortem information.
When families bring ante mortem records - dental records, photographs, descriptors, jewelry descriptions, blood type, anything - it's entered into the program as ante mortem data. The pathologists and the anthropologists and the dentists examine the remains they enter that are post mortem data and, hopefully, the unidentified bodies or body parts get matched up based on those pre-existing descriptors. It can also print out a hard copy report. It can also handle graphics like X-rays, dental x-rays, photographs. All that can be scanned in and be on file for each individual.
HBO.COM
You have also acted as an expert witness.
KATHY REICHS
Mm-hmm.
HBO.COM
Tell us a little bit about what that entails.
KATHY REICHS
I rarely have to testify about identity because usually they stipulate that, they don't question identity. More often than not what I've testified to is trauma. Either cause of death or body mutilation after death. And that can be as simple as examination, cross-examination. Or it can be far more complex depending on the case.
HBO.COM
Can you discuss a specific case?
KATHY REICHS
One case took place way up in northern Quebec, Canada, hundreds of miles north of Quebec City, which is really getting up there. And it was a native reserve where two young men had drowned accidentally. A government commission was formed because the tribe was unsatisfied that it was accidental and felt they were killed. So all kinds of evidence was brought before this commission. One piece of which was the physical, actual remains. So we did an exhumation. I looked at the - you know I had to clean everything down under the watchful eye of the tribal representatives, which took about two weeks because they were badly mummified. And then testified to the findings, which did not contradict the original autopsy findings.
HBO.COM
You also were involved with a case with Doctor Baden?
KATHY REICHS
Yes. When you do an exhumation you never know what to expect. So often it's the pathologist and the anthropologist. If it's a fresh body case, like the one Michael (Baden) and I did one out in Kansas in 1998. When we did this - it was 104 degrees - it was so bloody hot. That body was completely preserved. So I could step back. I looked at some of the trauma from the gun shot wounds in the bones. But Michael did a regular autopsy. The other end of the spectrum would be where you have a completely skeletonized case. Actually Michael and I did one of those. It was a policeman that had died back in 1967. And the coroner determined it was suicide, gun shot wounds to the chest. But his family felt he had been shot in the back. So again thirty years went by before they formed a commission and we dug him up. And in that case it was completely skeletonzied. Just bones. So that's a case where the anthropologist's expertise predominates.
HBO.COM
On the subject of what is often called "junk science," what are your thoughts as a certified forensic anthropologist and a board member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences?
KATHY REICHS
Most of your legitimate practitioners are members of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences: chemists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, entomologists, pathologists, you know they're multi-disciplinary. If a complaint is lodged either for ethical reasons or reasons of competency it goes before the ethics committee. And then those cases are brought to the board of directors, of which I am a member. So I do hear about complaints, some of which are legitimate, some of which are found not to be well grounded. Most forensic sciences have a certifying body to make sure that they regulate the qualifications and the behavior of their members. If a renegade is out there practicing who's not certified, there is no control over that person. If a board certified individual acts or testifies inappropriately that can be submitted to his or her board and the case would be evaluated. So that's part of the reason for certifying boards.
The other part is to make sure that people can put the letters after their name. So that relevant agencies, whether it's a prosecuting attorney or law enforcement or coroner, will know who it is that's qualified, you look for somebody who's certified. One of the things the American Academy of Forensic Sciences is in the process of doing right now is establishing a certifying board that will be in charge of certifying the certifying board itself, which in turn will help to establish a certification process within the forensic sciences field.
HBO.COM
Last couple of questions: what is one of the most unusual cases you've been involved with?
KATHY REICHS
Well I had an interesting one in Illinois. A woman died back in the late sixties in an automobile crash. And thirty years later her father came back and said, how is my daughter's homicide investigation? Of course many of the leading officers were dead. But it was an open file. And they checked, they looked into it. The police got very interested in it because nothing added up properly. The case was reopened. And they eventually brought charges against the husband thirty years later for homicide. I was asked to do the exhumation, which we did. And I found the coroner had put down cause of death as severe cranial injury. I found no cranial trauma. But I did find a classically fractured hyoid bone.
HBO.COM
Ah, strangulation.
KATHY REICHS
Yes. So that was an interesting case.
HBO.COM
Why would the medical examiner put down that the skull had been crushed when it was - ?
KATHY REICHS
It was a coroner case, not a medical examiner. It was thirty years ago. And he put - there was no autopsy - he put "severe cranial trauma."
HBO.COM
Many corners are glorified funeral directors, aren't they?
KATHY REICHS
I think he was a funeral director. [LAUGHS]
HBO.COM
[LAUGHS] You were also involved in a serial murder investigation that you helped solve.
KATHY REICHS
That was the case of Serge Archambault. He had killed two women. Following the second one, he used her bankcard. The police were eventually able to track down the transaction and arrested him. He had admitted to having killed a third victim two years earlier and cut her body up and buried it in five locations. So that's the case I came into. I helped with the identity in that case and also the way he had done the dismemberment. It was quite unique and showed a lot of skill going directly into the joints. I was able to say you're looking for someone who knows something about anatomy - an orthopedic surgeon or butcher. And it turned out he was a butcher.
HBO.COM
And what year was that case in?
KATHY REICHS
That was in 1994. I had just finished that case and he had just been convicted of three counts of first degree (murder) when I started Deja Dead and I drew on that. That's the kind of core idea.
HBO.COM
In terms of your work as an author, tell us what's that like in that you're both a highly regarded forensic anthropologist and author. How and when did that happen for you and how has it impacted your work?
KATHY REICHS
Well I started writing fiction in 1994, shortly after the Archambault trial. I had made full professor at the university and I felt that I wanted to try something different. And so I decided to write the novel. I had written textbooks. And didn't want to do another textbook or a journal article. I thought I'd try fiction. I find that my forensic experience continually influences my writing.
Death Du Jour was based on an episode with a murder-suicide cult in Quebec -- the Order of the Solar Templar. We did the autopsys at our lab. Deadly Decisions was based on murders that had taken place as a result of a biker war in Quebec and I worked on several of those victims. How has it impacted me? It's funny, I was testifying in one trial, shortly after that book came out. And we had talked about whether that would be an issue you know, "Dr. Reichs is that fact or fiction?" And sure enough as soon as I took the stand, I looked down under the defense counsel's feet was a copy of Deja Dead. And I thought, oh, great, here we go. But he never mentioned it. He just wanted me to sign a copy after the trial was over.
HBO.COM
[LAUGHS] Kathy Reichs, thank you very much for your time.
KATHY REICHS
You're welcome.
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hearing what KR has to say.. she is such an awesome speaker.
I think it's interesting too 
Me too!
