transcript

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Speaker 6:
[00:30] Welcome to True Spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time.

Speaker 7:
[00:37] Suddenly out of the dark, it's appeared in lobby.

Speaker 6:
[00:39] You'll meet the people who live life undercover. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position?

Speaker 7:
[00:48] Vengeance felt good. Seeing these people pay for what they've done felt righteous.

Speaker 6:
[00:54] True Spies from Spyscape Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 8:
[01:00] Hey, it's Micah Sargent from Tech News Weekly, and this is an excellent episode for you to check out. Amanda Silberling is here from TechCrunch. We talk about journalism getting into AI for writing stories, for drafting stories, and we talk about the implications there. And also a New York Times look at the Google AI Overview Accuracy. Rod Pyle of This Week in Space telling us all about Artemis II and Scott Stein of CNET predicting the next 50 years from Apple. You can check out this episode of Tech News Weekly at twit.tv/tnw or just search for Tech News Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 9:
[02:06] Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Most Notorious Podcast. I'm Erik Rivenes. Thank you for joining me. My guest today is Jeffrey Smalldon. He is a board-certified forensic psychologist who spent decades studying the minds of violent offenders and consulting on hundreds of death penalty cases. Over the course of his career, he corresponded with and interviewed some of the most notorious killers in history, including members of the Manson family, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy. The focus of our interview today is his 2024 memoir, That Beast Was Not Me, A Forensic Psychologist Looks Back on Five Decades of Murder. Great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 3:
[02:56] Thanks for having me, Erik. Good to be here.

Speaker 9:
[03:00] When did you first become interested in true crime? Do you remember when it kind of clicked for you?

Speaker 3:
[03:06] Yeah, I do remember. We were living in Bethesda, Maryland. My dad was an FBI agent and he was assigned to headquarters in Washington. I just remember we took a family trip to Ford's Theater. I always say, I was eight years old and most kids probably would have come away with a renewed fascination in Lincoln or the Civil War, but I was fixated on the eight conspirators in the plot to kill the president. My parents bought me a book called The Crime at Ford's Theater. I just whored over it and I memorized the histories of all eight members of the plot to kill Lincoln. I still have, after 60 years, I still have vivid, almost photographic memories of each of them. It's emblazoned on my brain somehow. Around that same time, I remember there were repeated teasers on television for a documentary on the Great Train Robbery. I remember arguing with my mom because I wanted to stay up late so I could watch that. I just had the Great Train Robbery, I don't know. I thought it sounded incredibly interesting. She wouldn't let me stay up. But those are two things that happened at around the same time that I usually look back to as sort of the first indicators of what became a long-term interest, not just in criminals and killers, but in outsiders of all kinds. As I said, I was the son of an FBI agent, and one thing that meant in those days was that we moved every year or two FBI agents kept getting transferred. Our family was always on the move by the time we settled in Western New York, a town in the North Town of Wanda, near Buffalo and Niagara Falls, right before the beginning of my fourth grade year, we had lived eight different places. I was a wanderer in my early years, and often felt like an outsider myself, having to adjust to new places, new schools, make new friends and so on. And maybe that contributed to my sensitivity to the outlook of the outsider or my interest in it. But before too long, I said I was eighth grade at the time of the trip to Ford's Theatre, and it wasn't long before I developed an enduring interest in things like sideshow performers and serpent handlers who drank strychnine and handled venomous snakes during their worship services. And all kinds of other outsiders, nudists, dowsers, roller derby queens. I mean, I was just always interested in sort of the strange, unusual people.

Speaker 9:
[06:08] So your father was a G-man, basically?

Speaker 3:
[06:10] He was.

Speaker 9:
[06:11] Was he an on-the-ground field agent? And was he involved in any cases that we might recognize?

Speaker 3:
[06:19] Probably not. He was a street. He referred to himself as a street agent. And that one year that he's been assigned to the Bureau headquarters in Washington in 1961, 62. He didn't really like that because too much of his job was administrative and he wanted to get back on the street. He really enjoyed cultivating networks of informants and so on. And I said that we moved to a town near Magra Falls just before the start of my fourth grade year. And my dad before long became in charge of the satellite FBI office in Niagara Falls and the mafia was his main beat because there was so much organized crime activity around the border. And so he loved, as I said, working the streets, developing his informants. And that's what he did for many years while we lived in Western New York. And yeah, I mean, I always describe my dad as a Hoover era G-man because it conjures just the right image of my dad. Briefcase and suit and when he would come home for lunch, shoulder holster with a pistol in it. And yeah, I mean, I think of him as an old school G-man.

Speaker 9:
[07:49] Did he ever have interactions with J. Edgar Hoover?

Speaker 3:
[07:52] Yeah, yeah, he would have certainly during that year. He spent a sign to headquarters. One time he took our whole family into Meet Hoover on my website. I have a picture of our family with J. Edgar Hoover. It's sort of a classic in any number of ways. Hoover has got his hands on my sisters and my shoulders. And my sister, she wins the prize for best accessory in that picture. She had a lucky rabbit's foot dangling from her purse. And I looked like my parents were way, way behind a growth spurt. I had a sport coat on that was about three sizes too small for me. But I remember that day still vividly after all these years, my parents, my paternal grandmother and my sister and me with J. Edgar Hoover.

Speaker 9:
[08:46] Wow. So it was early on, right in college, when you developed a fascination with the book Helter Skelter, right?

Speaker 3:
[08:56] I did. And it's funny, Erik, that when the murders that gave rise to Charles Manson's infamy took place in August of 1969, I was oblivious. My preoccupations at that time were getting ready for football season of my junior year in high school and hanging out with my friends and listening to music. So I didn't follow that case at all. I never watched TV. I didn't read the newspaper. So I was oblivious to it. But then I went to England to spend my junior year abroad in Cambridge. And while I was traveling with a buddy of mine, I picked up off one of those bus depot wire rotating stands that hold paperback books. And there was one on there with just a resting picture, the English edition of Ed Sanders' The Family about the Manson family. And I thought, well, that looks interesting. I was drawn to the picture of Manson's face on the cover. And I read that and I just, you know, I raced through it. I thought it was so interesting. And then when I returned to the United States for the second half of my junior year and then my senior year, in that year, 1974, that's when Helder Skelter came out. And so I immediately got it because I'd been interested in the Manson case after reading The Family. And I couldn't put down Helder Skelter. I read it in a single setting, starting at about early one afternoon and going all night caffeine-fueled binge and finished it at about 11 o'clock or noon the next day. I couldn't put it down. And one day I was taking a class in abnormal psychology my senior year, and my professor mentioned in class one day that he had read Helder Skelter. I thought, well, I'm going to stay around after class and talk with him about it. So I did. And while we were talking about it, I made a comment about how intriguing it was that any number of the people who gathered around Manson and seemed prepared to do his bidding came from middle class families, not all that unlike my own. And I said to my professor, you know, if you just read newspaper accounts of these people, you'd get the impression that they were zombies who had basically surrendered their free will and were just willing to do anything at Manson's behest. And I said, I wonder if things are a little more complicated than that. And he said, yeah, I wondered the same thing when I read Helder Skelter. Have you ever considered writing to some of those people? And no, that thought had never, ever crossed my mind. And he said, well, it might be interesting to hear what they sounded like speaking in their own voices. And so I didn't act on that right away. But after a few weeks, I decided, well, okay, I doubt when any of these people will answer my letter, but I'll give it a shot. And so I wrote to Manson. And at around the same time, I wrote to the person who was widely recognized as his second command. She was not in custody at the time. Lynette Squeaky Fromm, who, as it turns out, was living in Sacramento near Folsom Prison with another fanatic Manson devotee, Sandy Good. And much to my surprise, Manson wrote me back almost immediately. He responded to my first letter in a very prickly way, saying in so many words, you're full of shit, don't bother me unless you're willing to be honest about who you are and why you're really writing me. I was certainly capable of my own manipulation at that time. And I had tried to convince him in my first letter that the main reason I was writing was because I was interested in his songs and lyrics. I knew he was a frustrated musician. And I threw that out as my bait, hoping that it would prompt a response. And he saw right through that. I knew that wasn't my main interest. So he wrote that prickly response. And then I wrote him back a much more self-revealing letter. I told him I was a senior in college. I read Helter Skelter and The Family by Ed Sanders. And my hook this time was to say, so I've read a lot about your case, but I'm very open to the possibility that the authorities got some things wrong. And I was sure that would interest him because I knew by that time that he thought the authorities had gotten lots of things wrong. And so he wrote me back a much more contemplative, interesting letter. And it was in that second letter that he said in one of the first sentences, that beast was not me, referencing media portrayals of him as this monster. And he said, that beast was not me, but it's what everyone needs me to be. So they make me up to be a reflection of their fears, lies, and bullshit. And that statement always struck in my mind. And when it came time to settle on a title for my book, I used that, that beast was not me, because it stands for repeat killers' reluctance to accept anyone else's definition of who they are, or explanation for why they did what they did. They're much too self-centered to want to accept anyone else's limiting description of who they are. And I also used, there was a second reason why I chose That Beast Was Not Me, and that's the, you know, that sounds on its surface like that's me announcing that there's a very bold line between these people who've interested me, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and myself. But throughout my book, I raise questions about difficulties that arise whenever we try to draw too bold a line between the rest of us and the people who commit these crimes. So I chose it for that reason as well. Now, around that same time that I wrote to Manson, I wanted to write, I was really interested in the Manson girls, the so-called Manson girls. And I wanted to write to Squeaky Fromm, but I didn't know where she was. I had no idea where she was. I just knew she wasn't in custody. So this was a real long shot, but looking back, I applaud myself for my resourcefulness. I remembered reading in Helter Skelter that there was an assistant prosecutor in the same office that prosecuted Manson and four of his followers and secured death sentences for them. But there was an assistant prosecutor in that office who had befriended the Manson women while they were sitting vigil outside the Hall of Justice where his trial was. And in the book, he was quoted as saying, there's a great deal about these people that I admire. I admire their interest in peace, love. He apparently bought some things that to me seem like they would have been hard to buy, but he did. And his wife baked them Christmas cookies and so on. So I thought, I wonder if he could steer me to Squeaky Fromm and Sandy Good, because I knew they would be together. They were best buds. And so I wrote a letter to Squeaky and Sandy and put it in an envelope, left the address blank, and I sent it to him, Kira, the prosecutor's office in LA. And I, in my cover letter to him, I said, if you know where Squeaky and Sandy are, would you be willing to send them my letter, complete the address on my envelope and send them my letter? And I thought, he's never going to respond to this. There's this kid in the Midwest who he's never heard of before. But he did. He responded right away. And he said, yes, I do know where they are. I can't give you their address. That'll be up to them if they want to. But I've sent them your letter. And then within a week, Squeaky responded. And that began a very interesting three or four month correspondence between her and her roommate Sandy and me. And if I can, while I'm on that subject, just jump ahead a little bit. Initially, their letters were all peace, love, and yes, the family, as the media calls us, were bound together by our belief in harmony and community and so on. And in retrospect, I can see it was a kind of love bombing, telling me all these, you know, oh, trying to make me believe that they were well-meaning hippies basically. But as the correspondence progressed, it got increasingly disturbing. And the first sign to me, they wanted me to do things for them. And I knew that meant do things for Manson, with whom they were in very close touch. He was nearby in Folsom Prison. And they wanted me to do things for them. And one of their letters in June began, we're moving out of the realm of words. Words don't do much, actions do. And a little further down on that same page, it said, if you're really concerned about your world, give me your life. And I thought, for one thing, the realm of words is the only one I want to occupy with you. And I'm not prepared to give you my life. So my antennas went up at that point. And I thought, hmm, this is turning into something I didn't quite anticipate, but should have. And yeah, I was a kid. I was 20, 21 years old when this was going on. And then came a letter, a 16 page handwritten letter from Sandy Good. They wanted me to call heads of different corporations that they believed were damaging the environment in Western New York, where at the time I was staying with my parents. My dad was still an FBI agent and I was corresponding not only with Manson, but with Sandy and Squeaky using my parents' home address. So these letters were coming to my parents' house. And on June 30th, Sandy wrote me and she said, I want you to call these corporation executives, use your meanest voice and tell them Manson says. And if they say Manson who? Tell them Manson remembers Sharon Tate. And then they began to talk about people getting their arms chopped off. And she said, a wave of assassins will sweep through these people's homes and splash blood from room to room. And at that point, I thought, okay, now I definitely need to find a way out of this. And I did. I wrote a letter to them and sent it to a friend of mine who lived in Wisconsin and asked her to mail it from there to get a Wisconsin postmark. And in my letter, I told them I had left my Western New York address and was hitchhiking around the country for the summer. And that worked as a way of getting them off my path. But then two and a half months later, the national headlines screamed that Squeaky had attempted to assassinate then President Gerald Ford in a park in downtown Sacramento. So it became very obvious that when I had read signs of increasing urgency and desperation on their part, I was reading the signs accurately.

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Speaker 9:
[24:06] And we have returned. Were you thinking that you would have some use for this down the road, or was it just purely curiosity, self-interest?

Speaker 3:
[24:17] It was based on my own interest at the time. I had no thought that I would ever write about this or do anything. I was just absorbed in this personal investigation into these people who I found fascinating. One just footnote on that, Erik, that's interesting, I think. After Squeaky Fromm's attempt to assassinate President Ford, the FBI in Sacramento sent, at the time, I don't even think they had fax machines. He was in the mid-70s, probably a teletype or something, to the FBI office in Buffalo where my dad was working at the time. They said, Gee, we found this large cache of letters in Squeaky's apartment from someone named Jeff Smalldon and he's using Agent Jack Smalldon's address. My boss called my dad in and said, Gee, Jack, I don't know what this is about, but the FBI says they found a bunch of letters from someone named Jeff Smalldon and he's citing your address as his return address. So my dad needed to explain to his boss that, yeah, that's my wayward son, Jeff. He's not a danger to anyone. I think they were mainly concerned about me, that other Manson family sympathizers might try to get in touch with me, and that I could be in danger.

Speaker 9:
[25:48] Yeah. So at this point, what were you thinking direction-wise? Did you want to become a forensic psychologist at this point, or was your mind going in a different direction?

Speaker 3:
[26:00] Definitely thinking a different direction. The thought of becoming a forensic psychologist had never entered into my mind. It was the furthest thing from my mind. I was going to get my PhD in English and become an English professor. That was the long-term plan. After getting my undergraduate degree, I went to do my master's in English at Purdue. Then I returned to my alma mater, Valparaiso University, and taught in the English department there for a year. Then I get a grant to study modern Irish literature at Trinity College in Dublin. I went to Ireland and spent a year there. It was an absolutely fantastic year. But during that year, it gradually dawned on me that even though I loved studying literature, I didn't think academia would be a good fit for me. At the time, the prevailing ethos around graduate departments in English was publish or perish. I didn't want to place myself in that kind of environment where I'd be expected to prove my intellectual medal over and over again. I just thought, I don't think I'd be happy doing that. I literally, and this is a major fulcrum point in my story, I returned from Ireland with no real plan. My first thought was, well, I've always put dad on a pedestal. Maybe I should become an FBI agent like him. He put me in touch with the guy who he worked with, who was in charge of screening applicants. And I went down to take this three-part test. And one was a spelling test of all things. I think we're reflecting Hoover's obsessive interest in accuracy and spelling and so on. There was a spelling test. Then there was what was called a general information test. And then there was a personality inventory. And after I took these tests, I went in to meet with the agent who had been in charge of setting up my testing. And he said, well, you aced the spelling test. You got the highest score I can remember of anyone on the general information test. But your personality test presents a problem. And I remember I said, well, what kind of problem? And he said, well, you come across as someone who doesn't easily yield to authority and of course, my internal dialogue is something like duh. But he didn't really know me. And he said, I'll tell you what, Jeff, I'm going to let you take that test again. And I'm sure he did that just because he was a friend of my dad's. And he said, when you take it again, I want you to take it with the mindset that you're in the military where chain of command and hierarchies are very important. And being willing to obey commands of your superiors is very important. I want you to think like that when you take the test the next time. So I said, I'll give it my best. And I took it again and he said, well, the results are basically the same. So my personality type basically ended my FBI dreams. And then once that didn't pan out, I literally had no idea what I was going to do. And my mom, who was a nurse at the local hospital, said, have you ever thought of hospital administration? And I said, no, not only have I never thought of hospital administration, I don't have any idea what it is. And she said, well, there are a couple of good looking young men down at the hospital where I work. I've heard them referred to as administrators. They're always friendly when they greet me in the hallway. Why don't you go down and talk to one of them? I didn't have anything else going on, so I did. And I like this guy I talked with, and I think he responded positively to me. And at the end of our hour, he said, I'll tell you what, Jeff, go do your masters at George Washington University, which is where he had done his, and then come back and work for me. And it almost sounded like a job offer. I thought, wow, okay, well, so I did. I applied to George Washington. It was the only school I applied to had they not accepted me. I would have gone on to taking some other path forward, but they did accept me, weirdly enough, even though I'd never taken a business class in my life. And I got a generous financial package, so I went there. And for the second portion of that degree, we had to do a one-year administrative residency at a hospital somewhere in the United States. And I had friends who went to San Francisco and Boston and Miami, all over the place. And I ended up in Columbus, Ohio, which is where I still live. I ended up in Columbus, Ohio, at what was then the largest private general hospital in Ohio. And I had never been to Ohio before, never been to Columbus, so it was totally new for me. And I think at the end of my residency, I was well-liked and they saw me as kind of an up-and-coming striver. So I stayed on and I kept getting promoted. And by 1983, two years after I had landed there, I was an assistant vice president. I had responsibility for 138-bed mental health and addiction services unit and a number of other smaller departments in the hospital. And one of those smaller departments was a research lab that had a total of six employees. And it was located just off the corridor from the hospital's main corridor. It had a single door that served as entrance and exit. And it was about the size of an average living room. It was a small lab. And before Christmas that year, 1983, as administration's representative, I attended their small department Christmas party. And everyone seemed upbeat, talking about their plans for the holidays. And then I went home to my parents in Western New York. And I get a call while I'm there. I don't remember the exact date of it. It must have been shortly after the New Year. I get a call from the public relations director. And she says, Jeff, we've had a horrible tragedy. And I'm thinking something has gone wrong in the mental health unit, because we had had a couple of horrible tragedies there already. And that's what I was expecting. And instead she says, Joyce McFadden and Patty Maddox were murdered in the research lab on Friday afternoon. And I said, what? Like literally nothing could have shocked me more than that. And she said, yeah, someone between 430 and 505 in the afternoon killed Joyce and Patty. Both women had had many stab wounds, like 20 or more. One of them was found in a freezer that was used to store tissue samples. The other one was laid out on the floor. And I said, yeah, I couldn't think to say anything except no way. And we ended that conversation and I guess I waited a day and then drove back to Columbus. And in the days after, the police didn't arrest anyone. There were no identified primary suspects. All of us who worked at the hospital had our favorite suspects who we thought might have committed the murders. And the person who was my favorite suspect, I was interacting with every day. He was the director of that small research lab. He was the first one on the crime scene who identified the first body and then ran out in the hallway screaming for help. But he would come to my office and weep over Joyce's and Patty's deaths. And I'm sitting there thinking, I think there's a good chance that you did this. Even though before the murders, it never would have crossed my mind that he would be capable of killing someone. But my point, I guess, is that it made going to work very stressful for me. And after a number of months, I decided this little foray into the business environment, hospital administration was an interesting gambit for me, but that was never going to be the right niche. I was never meant to be a businessman. So I thought, I'm going to go back to graduate school, get my PhD, and hopefully be able to establish forensic practice where I can get a close vantage point from which to study the minds and motives of killers. Because by that time, I thought the whole Manson chapter had been almost a decade before. And now this double homicide in one of the departments I had administrative responsibility for and I felt like death is somehow following me, or I'm meant to do something because death has returned to my life again after the period of the Manson correspondences. So that's what I did. And then I went on to open a forensic practice. And over a period of about 25 years, I worked on close to 300 death penalty cases in both state and federal court. So I kind of did what I set out to do, but it was a long winding road to get to the point where I set out to do that.

Speaker 9:
[36:20] So now was that double homicide solved? And did it have anything to do with your original suspect?

Speaker 3:
[36:28] I'm glad you asked me that, Erik. It's a fascinating story. I was wrong about my suspect, but the police didn't arrest anyone. Months went by, and finally in spring of 1986, so two and a half years after the murders had been committed, I pick up my paper one day from the front porch and a big screaming headline, Worst Shootout in FBI History. I think two agents were killed, four or five others wounded, and two suspects were killed in this shootout with the authorities. And the article said that the suspects killed had been identified with a series of brazen guerrilla type daytime bank robberies. They were suspected of at least one murder. So they had gone in this crime spree. And I'm reading down the first column of the article, and it said the two suspects killed in the shootout were Michael J. Platt and William Maddox, formerly of Columbus, Ohio. And I came to that and I thought, William Maddox? Not Bill Maddox, not that very conservative, Baptist church attending guy whose hand I shook at the memorial service for the two victims of the double homicide. Not that Bill Maddox. But then further on in the article, it said Maddox's wife was killed under mysterious circumstances two and a half years ago in Columbus, Ohio. And as it turned out, and this is one particularly poignant detail of that story. At the time these double homicides took place, Bill Maddox and his wife Patty had a four-month-old baby, their first child. And what everyone who's followed that case is sure happened is that Maddox decided, I'm bored with this suburban life. I'm bored with this relationship with my wife. I'm looking for more stimulation and excitement. I want to escape this world I'm in. And so he hooked up with an old army buddy of his, Michael Platt, and the two went to Florida. Bill Maddox took his infant daughter with him, and they started a lawn care business. Maddox joined a church singles group, remarried, fathered at least two children in Florida before he was killed in the shootout. And this is about a decade ago now. I had lunch with one of the chief homicides in the hospital murder case. And after the shootout in Miami, he went down there and searched the apartments of the two men who had been shot, Maddox and Platt, looking for some concrete evidence that would definitively tie Maddox to the murders in Columbus. And he didn't find any. But he said there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that those two were involved in the murders. One or the other of them committed the murders or they did it together. Interestingly enough, and this is the last thing I'll say about that, very recently, maybe three or four months ago, I was contacted by someone I had known during the days when I was at the hospital back in the early 80s. He was the head of the hospital's family practice center. And when the guy who discovered the crime scene, discovered the first body, ran out screaming into the hallway, he happened to be in the hallway. His name was Dr. Ed Boop. And so Dr. Boop went in and confirmed that the victim on the floor had no pulse, and they contacted the police, obviously. Soon after the police arrived. But Ed Boop, the doctor, who was a casual friend of mine back in the day, this is a long time ago, this is 1983, contacted me. He had read my book and read the chapter on the hospital murders and was very interested in it. And he said, would you be interested in me writing down my memories of my brief involvement that day? And I said, absolutely. So he did. And one of the interesting things he said, like back when those hospital murders took place, again, the idea of becoming a forensic psychologist had not yet even entered my mind. So I wasn't into crime scene analysis. Even though I was the administrator responsible for the lab, obviously it was marked as a crime scene initially until the police conducted their investigation and the hospital hired an outside crew to clean everything up. But I didn't go into the lab after the murders while it was still designated a crime scene. But when Ed Boop wrote his memories, one of the interesting things he said was, I immediately noticed that Joyce, who was the woman on the floor of the main lab, he said, I immediately noticed that there were no defense wounds. And I also noticed that she had been stabbed many times around the chest and throat. And I thought right away, two people had to have committed this murder. Someone would have needed to restrain her from behind so that someone could land that many stab wounds to the front of her body. Had there not been someone holding her still while she was being stabbed, there would have been evidence of a struggle, and there wasn't. And I thought that was fascinating because it pointed to the involvement of both Maddox, Bill Maddox, Patty's husband, and the other guy, Jay Platt.

Speaker 9:
[42:56] It sounds like you have an interest in crime scene investigation. Do you have an intuitive ability to do that?

Speaker 3:
[43:04] No, I wish I could say yes to that, Erik, but I can't. My job, unlike what a lot of people assume when they hear the phrase forensic psychologist, really had nothing to do with crime scene analysis and forensics. There are people who specialize in crime scene analysis, but they're associated with police departments and the FBI. The FBI has a couple of psychologists on their staff in Quantico who do behavioral profiling or assist with it, but I never did any profiling and I never did any crime scene analysis. What I did was typically when a suspect was arrested on a death penalty case, the defense attorneys would retain me to conduct an evaluation of their client and advise them on any issues related to competency to stand trial or the possibility of a mental health defense, which almost never happened, and to prepare for sentencing. If the person was found guilty, then the defense gets an opportunity during what's typically referred to as the sentencing part of the trial or the mitigation phase. And the defense is able to put on family members and expert witnesses to provide the jury with information that might or might not influence their decision about whether to come back with a death verdict. And that's typically where I would come in, not as any kind of advocate for the defense or certainly for the defendant, but as an educator to tell the jury what I've found out as a result of my multiple interviews with the defendant, extensive battery of tests, typically interviews with family members and other collateral informants. So that was my typical role. Again, not profiling, not crime scene analysis. I wish I could say that I thought I had, you know, good intuitive understanding of crime scenes that allowed me to draw inferences from them about what kind of person would have committed the crime, how the crime went down. But I really don't. I mean, I think if I, if I credit myself with, you know, intuitive skills, it was more as an interviewer. I think I was a good interviewer in the sense that I was able to establish a rapport even with these very violent men. In part because they saw me as someone who could potentially assist them at the sentencing phase of their trial through my testimony. But also, not all forensic psychologists would agree with this approach, but it's the approach that worked best for me. I always tried to establish a horizontal plane so that I was speaking on the same plane as the defendant. I never wanted to come across as an expert in interrogating them or, I don't know, treating them less than because I had my PhD. I tried to establish a kind of conversational, very informal basis for the interview. If they told me that one of the... I carried around a mental outline in my head for conducting these interviews. And one of the things I would always do is say, you know, do you have any special interests or things you really enjoy doing? And if they responded with something that I had a basis for relating to, either because I had the same interest or I had a particular interest in what they said was their interest, I was very willing to kind of go off script and talk about that with them for a while. And sometimes that provided a good basis for rapport. So I don't know if it was instinct or skills developed during my graduate studies, but I think I was a good interviewer and had a pretty good intuitive grasp of how to draw people out.

Speaker 9:
[47:33] Another quick break, back in a gif.

Speaker 3:
[47:35] Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go!

Speaker 4:
[47:39] Get ready for a new case.

Speaker 5:
[47:40] We're going to crack this case and prove we're the greatest partners of all time.

Speaker 3:
[47:44] New friends. You are?

Speaker 2:
[47:46] Gary the Snake.

Speaker 3:
[47:47] And your last name? The Snake. Dream Team.

Speaker 8:
[47:50] In new habitats.

Speaker 4:
[47:52] Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home.

Speaker 8:
[47:58] You're clearly working it.

Speaker 4:
[48:00] Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus rated PG.

Speaker 5:
[48:05] Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7 PM. You'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors and learn about our associate degree in nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at carrington.edu/events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington.edu/sci.

Speaker 2:
[48:35] Every Tuesday, we talk security and privacy on Security Now. This is one you don't want to miss. Join me, Leo LaPorte and Steve Gibson as we talk about the FCC's router ban. Is it about security or is it about something else? Plus, LinkedIn's giant JavaScript blob is forcing down your throat. And why, that and a whole lot more this Tuesday and every Tuesday at Security Now. You'll find it at twit.tv/sn or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 9:
[49:05] And we have returned again. So can I ask about your correspondence with Ted Bundy?

Speaker 3:
[49:12] Absolutely. I started graduate school in fall of 1985. And the Riverside murders were less than they had occurred in December 1983. So they were less than two years in the rearview mirror, but still very much on my mind. The police hadn't arrested anyone. The shootout in Miami hadn't occurred yet. That would be eight months down the road. So when I started graduate school, I got to thinking I was an obsessive reader of true crime back then. But I thought, I wonder if I could engage someone who has firsthand knowledge of murder and maybe as a result of a correspondence, if I could develop one, develop some insights into how these people think. And specifically, maybe I could get them to talk about the hospital murders and how they thought those might have gone down. And so I started thinking who might have some insight that they would be willing to share. And I thought of Ted Bundy, who was on death row in Florida serving two separate death sentences, and had been named as a suspect in close to 100 murders of young women in different locations throughout the United States. He hadn't yet conceded or acknowledged guilt in any of those murders. He was still claiming that all of this was a horrible misunderstanding. But I knew that one book about his case had been called The Only Living Witness. And in that book, Bundy agreed to talk about the murders he was alleged to have committed in the third person, talking as though he was looking at it from outside, like this is what I think the murderer would have done. This is what I think the murderer would have been thinking. A game for him that I'm sure he enjoyed playing. But I thought maybe I could get him, even if only in the third person, to talk with me. So I wrote him a letter and it was a long handwritten letter. He would have known from my letter that I knew a lot about his case. And I told him, I'd really like if you're willing to have a dialogue with you about some issues that remain unresolved in my mind about your case. But if you don't respond to my letter, you'll never hear from me again. I'm not trying to bother you. So then I figured the ball's in his court and he didn't respond. So I thought, oh, okay, that's not going to go anywhere. And I basically wrote it off. But then about a year later, I get an envelope in my mailbox with Ted Bundy's return address on it. And in the envelope was a card wishing me and my family all the best in the upcoming year. And saying I think it said, I hope the next year is the best year for you and your family. And then there was a short letter. And the letter has always been a source of fascination for me. I almost know the contents of it by heart. It was a short letter. It said, Dear Jeffrey, I've kept your letter all this time amongst my papers. That's what he said, amongst my papers. Like he was a professor or something. And then he said, I've only just recently come upon it again. Around the time you wrote, I retreated into a cocoon of sorts and stopped communicating with almost everyone. I'm only now getting back in touch. Anyway, I thought the questions you asked were very searching and thoughtful. All I can really say in response is, I've never felt better in my life spiritually, physically and emotionally. I hope the same can be said for you. And then this is the part I always thought was so fascinating. He knew that I knew that the thing he was best known for is the incredible distances that he would travel in search of his victims. He killed women in the Pacific Northwest, in Colorado, Utah. And then he ended up down in Florida. So he signs off his letter, take care, watch yourself, travel light. Peace, Ted. Oh, boy. My back of my neck stood up and I thought, what? And I learned later that the serial killers love the gamesmanship. They love the tease. They love to withhold information as a way of ensuring your ongoing interest in them. They're game players. And Bundy was a consummate game player. And the more I thought about that sign off, I thought, well, on one hand, it could be read as a recipe for how to succeed if you're a predator like me. Always be ready to move at a moment's notice, be vigilant, know your surroundings. But it could also be read as an instruction for how to avoid falling victim to someone like me. Again, be careful. Know where you are and with whom. Always be ready to move quickly if you need to. And I think Bundy was very pleased with himself. He would have known the double meaning. And I think he knew I would have known exactly what he was saying, but I sort of got the joke as it were. And I remember thinking it's a sort of a perverse kind of compliment for Bundy to know that I knew what he was referring to. But I never wrote him back because there was no indication that that correspondence was going to go where I had hoped initially that it would go.

Speaker 9:
[55:35] Right. John Wayne Gacy was different though. I mean, you not only communicated with him through mail, but you also found a way to interview him in person.

Speaker 3:
[55:47] No, that's correct. After the Bundy, the dead end, as I saw it in the Bundy correspondence, I again thought, well, who else might I write and who might be willing to engage with me? And thought right away of Gacy about whose case I had read widely. So Gacy was on death row in Illinois. And I wrote him a letter and his initial response, like Manson's initial response, was very prickly. If you think you know anything about me from all those books you've read, I got something to tell you, you know nothing about me. All you've heard are myths and speculation and hypotheses. You know nothing about me. But then at the end of his letter, he invited me to write him back, which I did. And that was the beginning of a correspondence that spanned three calendar years and we would exchange letters roughly every two weeks. So it was a very regular correspondence. We got, I'm sure, you know, hundreds of pages or well over 100 pages of letters from Gacy. And at one point, this was in 1986, I had finished my first year of graduate school and Gacy and I had begun corresponding, I think, in February. And then we started talking on the phone occasionally. And Gacy said, you know, why don't you come visit me? And it was 450 miles away from where I lived. So I didn't make the decision easily, but I thought this is a rare opportunity. I should take advantage of it. And something I always have to remind people when I talk about these things, is that I was at the end of my first year in graduate school, I had literally never been in the same room with someone known to have committed murder, even one murder. And so I go out to see Gacy, who was convicted of 33 murders of boys and young men, 26 of the bodies of his victims were found buried in the crawl space underneath his suburban house, three others were buried on his property, and then he began disposing of bodies in the Des Plaines River. So I think there were four of them that he disposed that way. So I remember when I decided to go see Gacy, I viewed the prospect of meeting in person with him with some trepidation. I knew what he sounded like on the phone. I had read multiple books about the horrendous sadistic murders that he was convicted of committing, but I had no idea what it would be like to be with him in person. So I went out there and I remember the day of my... I ended up going to visit him twice, and each time I spent two days with him. But this was the first day of my first visit. I remember going through all the checkpoints and so on, and the guard who was escorting me to what he referred to was the condemned unit, it was Death Row. When we got to the Death Row visiting area, we were in front of a huge steel door, and he unlocked it, and he said, you'll be meeting with Mr. Gacy in the first room to the right. There's a video camera on the wall, but there won't be any prison officials or guards on your side of this iron gate. I thought, okay. He opens the gate, and just as I'm about to walk through, I'm nervous about meeting Gacy, because he said, you and Mr. Gacy will have to handle your own introductions, there won't be anyone else back there. As I'm about to walk through the gate, he says, can I just pause this for a minute? I said, yeah. He says, I know you've traveled a long way to come here, and I'm sure you're aware of Mr. Gacy, why Mr. Gacy is on our condemned unit. But I want you to be aware of something. Once you go back to that room with Mr. Gacy, not only will there not be any corrections officers with you, but should anything go awry or God forbid, should a hostage situation develop, you'll be on your own, because it's against prison policy to negotiate with inmates. Do you understand what I'm saying? I remember.

Speaker 9:
[60:46] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[60:47] I remember thinking, yeah, I mean, what I said was yes, but my internal dialogue was more like, yeah, but that's not what I was expecting here at all. And so I went back, Gacy joined me. His legs were manacled and he had handcuffs on. But we were able to shake hands and introduce one another. And so I spent that day with him and the next day, and then on a subsequent trip to Illinois, I spent two more days with him, so close to 20 hours altogether.

Speaker 9:
[61:28] What were your impressions of him? What were your interactions like? And what, in hindsight, do you feel you were able to learn from him?

Speaker 3:
[61:37] Well, I learned a lot from him about the extraordinary lack of empathy of people like him, the incredible narcissism and self-absorption of people like him. But I remember he was very folksy and easy to talk with. He greeted me that first day after, you know, he said, I said, John, I'm Jeff, and we shook hands. And he said, Jeff, John, or you can call me JW if you want. That's what most of the guards call me. I called him John. But he said, I know, you're here looking for the monster, that monster you've read about in those books. But you're not going to meet the monster, you're going to meet the man. That's how he talked. You're going to meet the man. I said, okay, well, I'm glad I'll be meeting the man rather than the monster. But after that first day, I called my wife, I remember, and she said, well, what were your impressions of Gacy? And I said, you know, he's the kind of guy who if you met seated next to him at a bar or something, you'd start talking to him right away and you'd find he was very easy to talk with, very disarming in terms of his seeming availability. He could talk about politics or sports or all kinds of other things. But it wouldn't take you long before you'd realize that he had almost no interest in your point of view. It was all about him. He would stop and maybe ask you a token question, but then quickly revert to talking about himself. So that was one of my first impressions of him. Well, one of the things I write about in the prologue to my book that happened that first day, when the guard said what I said a few moments ago that he said as I was entering the death row visiting area, I was so taken aback that I kind of lost track of my thinking. I had planned to ask him, is there going to be a restroom back in the visiting area? Because I'd had three or four cups of coffee, I knew I was going to need one. But I forgot to ask him. So about three hours into my conversation with Gacy that first day, I started feeling a fairly urgent need to pee. I waited and waited because who really wants to ask a serial sex killer for help finding a restroom. I waited a while until I really couldn't wait any longer. I said, John, is there a restroom back here? And he said, hell no. You're going to have to go out and scream for those guards to let you out to use the restroom that's just around the corner outside the gate. But you're really going to have to yell because they're off somewhere playing poker and they won't give a shit about you, and they might respond and they might not. Oh, man. This is a ridiculous situation. I'm here alone with someone who's killed at least 33 people, and not only are there not any guards near where I am, there's a good chance I'm not even going to be able to summon them by yelling loudly. So I went out to the gate and yelled loudly several times and got no response at all. So I went back to where Gacy was seated and he had a shit eating grin on his face, obviously enjoying my plight and enjoying the sense that he really had control over me. He said, no, I mean, really yell, like really yell at the top of your lungs. That wasn't as loud as you can yell. So I went back out, barely able to walk at that point because I had to go so badly. And finally, the guard who had been my escort in the morning came sauntering out from behind a wall. And he said, can I help you? And I said, yeah, I really have to go to the restroom and it's kind of an emergency. And so he let me out and I was able to pee. But I mean, that anecdote was so important because it reminded me how very isolated I was back there with Gacy. And probably the thing that unnerved me most, most of the time, Gacy and I were sitting across from one another at a fairly narrow table. And he had brought with him to the meeting a couple of things he came in holding against his chest. Turned out one of them was his log book. He was so compulsive that he noted in this log book every item of mail he received, the time of every meal he had, any visitors he had, every phone call he made. And he presented that as evidence of how detail-oriented he was. And he said, had the authorities used the log that I kept before my arrest, they would have realized I couldn't possibly have committed a lot of these murders that they alleged I committed. So he had his log book with him. And then he had what would look like a photo album. And it turned out that's what it was. And so at one point, Gacy urged me to join him on his side of the table. And I remember thinking, I don't want to go over there. Right. You know, Gacy's handcuffed, but it would be so easy for him to put his arms over my head and squeeze my neck with his strong forearms. So I thought, well, I don't want to communicate fear to him, but I want to minimize my vulnerability. So I did go over to his side of the table and I kind of positioned my feet and my legs so I could make a quick lateral movement if it turned out I needed to. But that whole time I was sitting on that side of the table with him, I thought, well, you know, this is a very vulnerable position to be in. Years later, I read a book called The Last Victim by someone named Jason Moss, who when I saw Gacy, he still had hope that an appellate court would overturn at least his death sentence. So in a sense, I think he was on his best behavior with me. He didn't want to act out in a way that might undermine his chances for relief in the appellate courts. But by the time this Jason Moss visited him, Gacy knew that the gig was up, that his appeals had run out, and that he was probably going to be executed in just a few months. And Jason Moss had approached him as part of a school project during I think his freshman year in college, where he had a very well-known psychologist named Jeffrey Kotler as his advisor or professor. And Moss proposed a project whereby he would try to engage some notorious serial killers like Gacy, Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, and a couple of other people by presenting himself as their ideal victims. So when he wrote letters to Gacy, he portrayed himself as a sexually confused product of a very dysfunctional family and kind of like invited Gacy to act in the role of mentor almost. And this was like catnip for Gacy. And eventually they began exchanging very explicit sexual fantasies. Gacy encouraged him to initiate a sexual relationship with his younger brother. And then Gacy invited Moss to come and visit him, which Moss did. And in his book, The Last Victim, he focuses mainly on his relationship with Gacy and explains in detail what happened when he met Gacy. And his description makes it clear that he met him in the same room where I met Gacy. And Gacy just attacked him verbally, you know, emotionally, just brutal assaults and threatened to rape him in that room and said things like, you'll be lying on the floor bleeding and there won't be anyone who will respond to you. And, you know, threatening him physically, coming over to his side of the table and sort of peering over his shoulder. And when I read that book, I thought, hmm, I was in that exact same position. The only difference is that Gacy thought he might still get some relief in the courts. And by the time he met with Moss, he no longer had that hope. So that was a very sobering read for me, as you might imagine.

Speaker 9:
[71:03] Right, yes. Do you have the ability to tell when a killer is being honest versus when they're presenting a version of themselves that they want the world to see?

Speaker 3:
[71:17] Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I have any special talent for doing that, but I do think over my years of working with very violent offenders, and they were often people who had been in the criminal justice system for years. There are certain tells, like when they're too emphatic in stating something, they repeat it over and over again. There are internal contradictions in what they say. Like Gacy just lied constantly. He lied about everything, but he presented himself as this forthright, straight-talking truth-teller, and nothing could have been further from the truth. He was a liar every time he opened his mouth, practically a lie came out. And, you know, I always, I knew he was lying, and I needed to figure out a way to best deal with his deceitfulness, his relentless deceitfulness. I learned early on that if I challenged him directly, he would become very prickly at one point before I met him for the first time. He was prepared to just bail out of our correspondence because I asked him some hard questions about claims he was making. And he said, I feel like you're interrogating me, and if that's what you're going to do, I'm done. I think we should stop writing. But then he didn't follow through on that. He continued writing, but I knew how prickly he could be. So I avoided directly confronting him about his line. But I would gently sometimes point out contradictions or things I perceived as contradictions and what he was saying and kind of invite him to talk his way out of the contradictions. And if I approached him in a gentle sort of circumspect way, he would do that or try to do that. But as for, you asked about like real tells that would alert me to the fact that someone wasn't telling the truth. I don't know that there were any, I can't say that flitting eyes or hand movements or things like that were clear signs of deception. I've never been like authority on signs indicating deception. Never really studied that. So I guess the answer to your question is not really, but I think I became pretty good over the years at knowing when I was being lied to. But some of them are, they're so good. And they, what they say, even though it's untrue, they say with such conviction that it's hard to believe they're lying until you get used to a sociopathic mind and how utterly uninterested they are in internal consistency among the things they're saying and telling the truth. They, I think for Gacy, Gacy was an interesting case because he was convicted of these 33 murders and suspected of more than that. And he just basically said, I didn't do it. Once he got in prison, he said, I didn't commit these crimes. This is a horrible mistake. And he, for the most part, maintained that position publicly until the end of his life. I thought maybe as his execution approached, he would finally say, okay, I did and I did commit these crimes and let me tell you about them. But he never did that, except, have you happened upon the, I think it's a Netflix documentary called Conversation with a Killer about Gacy?

Speaker 9:
[75:28] I have not seen it, no.

Speaker 3:
[75:32] I didn't see it either until within the last year, because there was another documentary called Conversations with a Killer about Gacy a number of years ago. I watched that one, and I thought this one being advertised was the same as that one, and it wasn't. It was a new documentary. It's absolutely worth your time if you're interested enough to go there, because this documentary consists of a recorded interview of Gacy talking to his attorneys, thinking that these conversations will forever be shielded by the attorney-client privilege, and no one else will ever hear them. But years later, the son of one of his attorneys, who apparently had legal authority to do this, decided to release them. In this documentary, you hear Gacy talking about the murders that he spent all those years denying, and he would say outrageous things like, at one point in the interview he says, those kids were trash. And he said, you know, you go to a store and you buy something and you take it home and something happens to it. But it doesn't matter because it's yours. You own it. Talking about his victims. And it's really chilling to listen to him talk when he thinks that these conversations are never going to see the light of day. And he not only admits to the murders, he describes any number of them in graphic detail.

Speaker 9:
[77:17] So evil, does evil exist? And if so, is he the most evil person you've ever met?

Speaker 3:
[77:26] Well, I'm sure Bundy is equally terrible. Bundy was not only a serial, prolific serial killer, but he was a necrophiliac and tortured some of his victims before killing them. Gacy was a sexual sadist and torturer. So I wouldn't say one of them was worse than the other. I generally avoid using the term evil, like most psychologists do, because it's more a religious term, and we tend to talk more in terms of sociopathy and those kinds of things. But certainly Gacy is up there. I mean, I said I worked on close to 300 death penalty cases. And so I dealt with a number of other just stone cold sociopaths who did some incredible things. I'm often asked, were there any of those death penalty cases that disturbed you more than the others? You must have developed a pretty good ability to compartmentalize the horrible details of the crimes these people you were evaluating committed. And I usually say, yeah, I did. You couldn't do the work I did unless you were pretty good at compartmentalizing those things. If you went home every night with images in your mind of the crime scene photos you had just reviewed that day and some of the things that these offenders told you about what they did to their victims, it would be very troubling at home. But I became pretty good at compartmentalizing those things. But there's one case toward the end of my career. And it wasn't a case of someone like Gacy, who killed again and again and again and again and again, without compunction, a total sociopath. But the facts of this crime were particularly disturbing to me. And keep in mind, by this time, I've worked on 275 or more death penalty cases. I've encountered some outrageous sets of facts. But this guy had undergone a very nasty divorce. And he and his wife had two young children. And after the divorce, she was given custody, and he was given visitation, or parenting time, with the kids. And he was very angry at his ex-wife, and angry at the limitations on his parenting time. And so one night, he had the children. And he was driving in his car. And he called his ex-wife and said, we really need to talk. You need to meet me at this so-and-so place, and we need to talk. She said, no, we don't. Enjoy your time with the kids. We don't need to talk. I don't have anything to say to you. And so he called her repeatedly throughout the night, and sounding increasingly urgent, I don't think you understand. We have to talk. And she finally just hung up the phone on him. And his kids were strapped in their car seats in the back of his car sleeping. And he slit both their throats. They were like five and three years old.

Speaker 9:
[80:58] Oh, so horrible.

Speaker 3:
[80:59] You know, when I think back on that crime, I think, wow, I mean, that just takes your breath away. And then after he killed the two kids, went and killed his ex-mother-in-law. So he wasn't a serial killer, but he was a really, really bad guy.

Speaker 9:
[81:20] Wow. Fascinating. And there's so much in this book that we didn't get to. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show and talking about some of your incredible life experiences. And of course, professional experiences. And you mentioned earlier, you do have a website, right? And people can see that family photo with J. Edgar Hoover. Among others.

Speaker 3:
[81:43] Yeah, it's jeffreesmaldon.com. And there's quite a lot of information there, both about my background and about my book. So I encourage your listeners to visit the website if they're interested. Be happy to have them check it out. And thank you very much for having me on as your guest, Erik. I appreciate it.

Speaker 9:
[82:07] Absolutely. Yes. It's been fun. I appreciate it, too. Again, I've been speaking to Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon. He is the author of That Beast Was Not Me. A forensic psychologist looks back on five decades of murder. This has been another episode of the Most Notorious Podcast, broadcasting to every dark and cobwebbed corner of the world. I'm Erik Rivenes, and I have a safe...

Speaker 2:
[83:15] Every week, we cover the week's tech news on This Week in Tech. Hi, this is Leo Laporte inviting you to join me and my panelists this week. Jason Heiner, Doc Rock and Mike Elgin will talk about Anthropix new AI. They say it's too dangerous to release. Sam Altman responds to the firebombing of his house, and Samsung jumps profits eightfold thanks to AI. You'll find Twitter at twit.tv or wherever you get your podcasts.