Journey Into Darkness Quotes

“There are certain crimes that are simply too cruel, too sadistic, too hideous to be forgiven.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“When rehabilitation works, there is no question that it is the best and most productive use of the correctional system. It stands to reason: if we can take a bad guy and turn him into a good guy and then let him out, then that’s one fewer bad guy to harm us. . . .

Where I do not think there is much hope. . .is when we deal with serial killers and sexual predators, the people I have spent most of my career hunting and studying. These people do what they do. . .because it feels good, because they want to, because it gives
them satisfaction. You can certainly make the argument, and I will agree with you, that many of them are compensating for bad jobs, poor self-image, mistreatment by parents, any number of things. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to rehabilitate them.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“One final note here: you’ve probably noticed that whenever I mention serial killers, I always refer to them as “he.” This isn’t just a matter of form or syntactical convenience. For reasons we only partially understand, virtually all multiple killers are male. There’s been a lot of research and speculation into it. Part of it is probably as simple as the fact that people with higher levels of testosterone (i.e., men) tend to be more aggressive than people with lower levels (i.e., women). On a psychological level, our research seems to show that while men from abusive backgrounds often come out of the experience hostile and abusive to others, women from similar backgrounds tend to direct the rage and abusiveness inward and punish themselves rather than others. While a man might kill, hurt, or rape others as a way of dealing with his rage, a woman is more likely to channel it into something that would hurt primarily herself, such as drug or alcohol abuse, prostitution, or suicide attempts. I can’t think of a single case of a woman acting out a sexualized murder on her own. The one exception to this generality, the one place we do occasionally see women involved in multiple murders, is in a hospital or nursing home situation. A woman is unlikely to kill repeatedly with a gun or knife. It does happen with something “clean” like drugs. These often fall into the category of either “mercy homicide,” in which the killer believes he or she is relieving great suffering, or the “hero homicide,” in which the death is the unintentional result of causing the victim distress so he can be revived by the offender, who is then declared a hero. And, of course, we’ve all been horrified by the cases of mothers, such as the highly publicized Susan Smith case in South Carolina, killing their own children. There is generally a particular set of motivations for this most unnatural of all crimes, which we’ll get into later on. But for the most part, the profile of the serial killer or repeat violent offender begins with “male.” Without that designation, my colleagues and I would all be happily out of a job.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“The key attribute necessary to be a good profiler is judgment—a judgment based not primarily on the analysis of facts and figures, but on instinct.”
― John Edward Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“This was a crime of power and rage and anger and I don’t know any cure for those in their most extreme form.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“The problem with psychiatry in a forensic setting is that it is based on self-reporting. If you go to a therapist as a private patient, it is presumably because you are unhappy or mentally troubled and therefore have a vested interest in telling that therapist the truth so he or she can help you. If you see a therapist as an offender, your goal is to get out of whatever institution you’ve been placed in and therefore have a vested interest in telling that therapist whatever you have to in order to accomplish your goal. A psychiatrist might hope his patient is getting better; naturally, that will make him feel more effective as a professional and better as a human being. He will want to believe what the subject is telling him and give him a shot back in normal life. But if by doing so, he’s possibly putting the lives of more potential victims at risk, then that’s a price I, for one, am not willing to have us pay.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“I wasn’t getting anything out of Richard Speck, mass murderer of eight student nurses in a South Chicago town house, when I interviewed him in prison in Joliet, Illinois, until I abandoned my official Bureau detachment and berated him for taking “eight good pieces of ass away from the rest of us.” At that point he shook his head, smiled, then turned to us and said, “You fucking guys are crazy. It must be a fine line, separates you from me.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“As parents we may not always be able to prevent all the horrible things that I've seen happen to kids. But we can prevent some of them if we try to understand the nature of the threat and the range of personality types and motivations of the threateners. It's critical that we try.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. —VIKTOR E. FRANKL, Man’s Search for Meaning”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“Their message to other families was simple: You will never again be the same and you will never again be whole, but you can get through this, you can go on, your lives can still have real value, and you can keep your loved one’s memory alive in a happy and positive way. “Fundamentally, we share our experience with them,” says Jack. “We say, ‘We’re making it, we’re not so special. You can make it too.’ “But it’s really not so much what you say; there are no magic words. It’s simply letting your compassion show through, and they’ll know you understand. You might just put your arm around them and simply say, ‘God, I’m sorry,’ and give them a hug and look into their eyes. And don’t be afraid if tears start falling. We’ve learned so much about ourselves and about grieving since this happened to us.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“An innocent girl died because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a monster needed to vent his rage. But on another level, it accomplished a tremendous amount. It caused us to become much better people, more caring and compassionate. It also inspired us to become active in a civic and political way—fighting for justice for crime victims and their families. It made us reach out to help others whom we might never have helped before.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“Now, ever since Suzanne died, every distress I experience—pain, tension, frustration, anxiety, loss, whatever—all of those things I offer up for her sake. I ask God to apply their merits back to Suzanne at the time of her final agony and terror so that her pain can be lessened by that same amount.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“No child should be hurt,” she later told Linda Kohl of the St. Paul Dispatch. “Every adult is responsible for the children’s welfare. If I could assist the police in bringing that person to justice, or assist in making sure that person never touches a child again—then it was right, it was important. We are responsible for our children, whether it’s yours or somebody else’s.” I firmly believe that if Janice Rettman’s attitude was more widely held and acted upon, we’d all be living in a lot safer, more humane society.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“Over the years, as it became my responsibility to evaluate and hire new people for my unit, I developed a profile of what I wanted in a profiler. At first, I went for strong academic credentials, figuring an understanding of psychology and organized criminology was most important. But I came to realize degrees and academic knowledge weren’t nearly as important as experience and certain subjective qualities. We have the facilities to fill in any educational gaps through fine programs at the University of Virginia and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. What I started looking for was “right-brained,” creative-type thinkers. There are many positions within the FBI and law enforcement in general where engineering or accounting types do the best, but in profiling and investigative analysis, that kind of thinker would probably have some difficulty. Contrary to the impression given in such stories as The Silence of the Lambs, we don’t pluck candidates for the Investigative Support Unit right out of the Academy. Since our first book, Mindhunter was published, I’ve had many letters from young men and women who say they want to go into behavioral science in the FBI and join the profiling team at Quantico. It doesn’t work quite that way. First you get accepted by the Bureau, then you prove yourself in the field as a first-rate, creative investigator, then we recruit you for Quantico. And then you’re ready for two years of intensive, specialized training before you become a full-fledged member of the unit. A good profiler must first and foremost show imagination and creativity in investigation. He or she must be willing to take risks while still maintaining the respect and confidence of fellow agents and law enforcement officers. Our preferred candidates will show leadership, won’t wait for a consensus before offering an opinion, will be persuasive in a group setting but tactful in helping to put a flawed investigation back on track. For these reasons, they must be able to work both alone and in groups.”
― John Edward Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“would go back to the body dump site. The prison interviews helped us see and understand the wide variety of motivation and behavior among serial killers and rapists. But we saw some striking common denominators as well. Most of them come from broken or dysfunctional homes. They’re generally products of some type of abuse, whether it’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or a combination. We tend to see at a very early age the formation of what we refer to as the “homicidal triangle” or “homicidal triad.” This includes enuresis—or bed-wetting—at an inappropriate age, starting fires, and cruelty to small animals or other children. Very often, we found, at least two of these three traits were present, if not all three. By the time we see his first serious crime, he’s generally somewhere in his early to mid-twenties. He has low self-esteem and blames the rest of the world for his situation. He already has a bad track record, whether he’s been caught at it or not. It may be breaking and entering, it may have been rape or rape attempts. You may see a dishonorable discharge from the military, since these types tend to have a real problem with any type of authority. Throughout their lives, they believe that they’ve been victims: they’ve been manipulated, they’ve been dominated, they’ve been controlled by others. But here, in this one situation, fueled by fantasy, this inadequate, ineffectual nobody can manipulate and dominate a victim of his own; he can be in control. He can orchestrate whatever he wants to do to the victim. He can decide whether this victim should live or die, how the victim should die. It’s up to him; he’s finally calling the shots.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness

“point. We work on the principle that behavior reflects personality and generally divide the profiling process into seven steps: 1. Evaluation of the criminal act itself. 2. Comprehensive evaluation of the specifics of the crime scene or scenes. 3. Comprehensive analysis of the victim or victims. 4. Evaluation of preliminary police reports. 5. Evaluation of the medical examiner’s autopsy protocol. 6. Development of a profile with critical offender characteristics. 7. Investigative suggestions predicated on construction of the profile. As the final step indicates, offering a profile of an offender is often only the beginning of the service we offer. The next level is to consult with local investigators and suggest proactive strategies they might use to force the UNSUB’s hand— to get him to make a move. In cases of this nature we try to stand off at a distance and detach ourselves, but we still may be thrust right into the middle of the investigation. This may involve meeting with the family of a murdered child, coaching family members how to handle taunting phone calls from the killer describing how the child died, even trying to use a sibling as bait in an effort to lure the killer to a particular place.”
― John E. Douglas, Journey Into Darkness