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(Hes even developing a podcast based on his originalMindhunterbook.)
This season, I felt like I saw more of you in Bill Tench than Holden Ford.
What did you think?Youre right!
You know when Holden is getting chewed out at the retirement party?
Youre going to call me a twerp?
No, youre not going to get away with that.
I never challenged a person I was interviewing, either.
I would never call Manson you little shit or whatever the hell term was used.
No, I stroked his ego.
I let him feel like he was in control of the interview.
He did take the sunglasses.
[Mimicking back and forth with Manson] I want those glasses.
These are Ray-Ban glasses.
Ive got to take them back, man.
Ive got to show everybody I ripped you off.
So he took the glasses and he never gave them back!
Unlike in the show.
A lot of characters on the show are based on real people, but theyre pretty fictionalized.
What did you think about the story line with Tenchs son?
It was up in San Francisco.
A woman in a park with a 20-month-old toddler.
Two brothers, 10 years old and 7 years old, snatch the child.
So that did happen.
By 1981, not only did I have the Atlanta child killings, but I had the Tylenol murders.
We had the Unabomber case up in Chicago.
Then we had other cases, Buffalos .22-caliber killer.
I did the written analysis of the case and people didnt like it.
The FBI had me sit down and do an interview withPeoplemagazine.
In the interview, I say the suspect is going to be black.
He wasnt introduced at all in the show.
And so, I wasnt warmly welcomed.
They were afraid that I was going to create a race war.
I remember walking down to one of the crime scenes and a detective says, Youre Douglas?
And I say, Yeah.
And he said, I saw your profile.
Its a bunch of shit, man.
I said, Fuck you, man.
I didnt ask to be here.
I just want to go back to Quantico.
I got a lot of cases waiting for me back there.
Hes using the N-word, giving directions on where we can find another body.
I hear the tape and I said, Thats not the killer.
What do we do?
Were gonna show how stupid we really are.
You searched the other!
We traced the call and caught him.
Well, that ended up in the newspapers in Atlanta.
And who read it?
Within a day or so, we end up with a body on Sigman Road.
Now, for certain, we know they follow the press.
The crosses they used for the memorial were a real suggestion I had, too.
It was true that the Bureau was arguing among themselves whos going to make the crosses.
They went back and forth.
It was never done.
Thats why, after a while, I would do things without asking for permission.
Just asking for forgiveness if I screwed up.
The scene where they build the crosses never happened?No, never got to them!
I have several things that I wanted to do.
We can screen them right away.
We can get rid of all the females.
Well get rid of people who dont have cars.
We can eliminate through race.
Again, it was a great idea.
We know later on that Williams was at that concert.
Oh my God.Yeah, they wonder why I drink.
Do you think the right man was caught?
The Atlanta police reopened the case earlier this year.I never thought that Wayne Williams did all of those cases.
There are other cases that should not be on the list.
Two of the girls, Angela Lanier and Latonya Wilson, and some other ones that did not fit.
Now they are looking at it again.
Its not that [Williams] didnt do any [of the murders].
But its the question, did he do all 28 of them?
If investigators contacted you, would you help out on the reopened case?I definitely would go back.
Mindhunteris also slowly unravelingthe BTK case.
How frustrating was the actual investigation?
You started getting information on him in the 80s, right?
He wasnt caught until 2005.Dennis Rader, he wasnt any genius.
He was just very lucky.
In 1984, we said he was a police-buff pop in, attending college and probably in criminal justice.
He was a pseudoenforcement officer.
It wasnt because of super-duper police work.
He wasnt smart like Ed Kemper.
He was more on the lines of David Berkowitz, the same kind of average IQ.
But they got some othergreat cases.
The Green River murder case that nearly did me in.
Also, I interviewed assassins.
So it’s possible for you to even get into some of the assassination types.
Its just how long they want to take it.
It can go a long, long time, really.
Youve talked to so many infamous criminals over the years.
We knew he was going to claim that he was insane.
His crimes were certainly insane, but he knew right from wrong.
Another one was Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris out in California.
I have the tapes of these victims who are begging for their lives.
Lets end on a lighter question.
InMindhunterthis season, Holden says that he likes New Wave music.
Are you actually a New Wave fan?No, I like soul music.
Right now in my car, Sirius, I got the soul channel.
But not the spiritual soul.
I used to watchSoul Trainafter school.
Id be down in the basement with a black-and-white TV, learning the latest moves.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
