When a Killer Calls Quotes

“As long as individual men and women have the power and agency to exercise free will and choice, evil will continue to exist, and it must be challenged and fought.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls: A Haunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town

“Bob and I were soon joined, always on an informal basis since they were officially tied up with teaching and research, by Roy Hazelwood, a brilliant agent whose special area of expertise was interpersonal violence and who had gone down to Atlanta with me four years before to work ATKID-Major Case 30: the Atlanta Child Murders, and the equally brilliant Kenneth Lanning, who focused on crimes against children.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“This kind of thing, seeing a grief-stricken family further victimized by an opportunist without a conscience, which unfortunately is not uncommon, always enrages me.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“Often, I’d found that local law enforcement was not particularly thrilled to have us consulting on a case. Either they were wary of the Bureau’s reputation for moving in and then claiming all the credit because they wanted to control the investigation on their own, or they were worried our analysis wouldn’t conform with the theory both the police and the community had firmly in mind.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“In the dirt, bare footprints led from the car to the mailbox, but—ominously—there were none leading back.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“But in all of my years of behavioral analysis and criminal investigation, I have almost never seen someone whose urges to harm others were actually uncontrollable.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“I don’t want it to happen again,” Bell replied. “But this fellow sitting right here did not do it.”

“You know it happens to you, and you want to stop it so bad you don’t know what in the world to do. It’s destroying you,” Perry asserted.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“What was apparent to me at that moment was that Dawn herself had become a profiler of sorts, analyzing what the offender said and laying it out for him, probing, looking for any clue to what could have led him to destroy her family, yet giving him a sense that she actually cared about his feelings.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“The point is, serial killers and violent predators, whatever is going on inside, do not look or act like monsters in everyday life. If they did, it would be much easier to identify and catch them. Their advantage is that we tend to look right through them.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“I remember Mom and me riding in complete silence,” Dawn recalled. “There was nothing to be said. I think we were so exhausted, we were spent every way you can imagine. And I don’t know that we could even allow ourselves to believe it was actually going to be over, because it felt like it would never end, that he would never be caught.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“With his voice quivering, Bell responded, “When I think about it, a nine-year-old girl. I heard it on the news. When you tell me that, I can’t believe I did that. It’s like God strike me dead for doing something like that to either the nine-year-old girl or the other girl. But I can’t see me doing that. I can’t relate to that, not really either one of them.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“I know for a fact that Larry Gene Bell did not do that to these poor women,” he insisted. “I’m not lying to you. I’ll do everything I can to help you, but I can’t confess for someone else. I’m sorry.” Then, still speaking of himself in the third person, he said, “I don’t want this Larry Gene Bell to be executed for something he didn’t do.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“I’ve always felt that intuition can be a powerful force and Ellis swore to Shuler that he’d never question his wife’s again.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“IN WHAT SEEMED LIKE THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, I THOUGHT I HEARD BANGING; yes, it was banging on the door. For a moment I thought I was back in Seattle, lying on the floor of my hotel room, unable to move. Then, as I awakened and my mind clicked into gear, I realized that back then I had heard nothing because I was unconscious.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“For me, just as when I often go by places—streets, woods, schoolyards, wherever—they remind me of crime scenes or body dump sites, it’s impossible to go through a major holiday without thinking about all the families who are having experiences different from mine because one of their loved ones has been taken away by someone.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“It still brings tears to my eyes to recall a support group meeting for survivors of homicide victims Mark and I attended in which the speaker talked about sprinkling red, white, and blue foil stars on her daughter’s grave for Independence Day and a small wreath in front of the headstone for Christmas. As Bob Smith observed on Shari’s eighteenth birthday, time does heal wounds, but the scar remains forever.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“So, I would argue that rather than Bell being under an uncontrollable compulsion, he abducted, assaulted, and murdered his victims because it was the one element in his otherwise ordinary, uneventful, and largely unsuccessful life that gave him satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, and sexual fulfillment.

He made the choice.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“This story emerged from an apparent call by the same UNSUB to a telephone tip line the previous weekend, stating when and where he would strike again—another two-week interval after the Smith and Helmick kidnappings. Whether this was actually Larry Gene Bell, we weren’t sure. But as a result, the sheriff’s departments and SLED agents were desperate to find the guy before Friday, June 28.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“Hilda looked straight at Bell and what she said next, whether I had the urge to kill him or not, I knew I never would have been able to bring myself to say if I was in her place. “Even though I sit this close and look at you and know you’re the man that called my house, I don’t hate you. There is not enough room in my heart for more pain.” She later wrote that it was only by the grace of God that she was able to tell him that.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“Teresa K. Weaver reported the story in the Columbia Record, quoting seventeen-year-old Robin Hutta, a friend of Shari’s at Lexington High, as saying she felt “a lot better” and “more safe” after the arrest. “I’ve been staying in the house and not doing anything alone—I haven’t been myself since this started.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“I recognize your face from TV and the picture in the paper,” Bell replied. Then he went on to elaborate, “It’s just the bad side of me that caused all this horrible destruction in people’s lives: your sister and that little girl. It’s just something in me.”

But Dawn wasn’t letting him off the hook. “You honestly can’t think back and remember my voice, because you know we talked? Do you remember what you called me on the phone?”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“I said, “How do you feel about it now? Larry, as you’re sitting here now, did you do this thing? Could you have done it?” We had learned from our serial predator research that it was always best to stay away from accusatory or inflammatory words like kill or murder.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“Going into the penitentiaries and interviewing all of these subjects,” I elaborated, “one of the things we’ve found is that the truth almost never gets out about the background of the person. And generally, when a crime like this happens, it’s like a nightmare to the person who commits it. They’re going through so many precipitating stressors in their life—financial problems, marital problems, problems on the job, or problems with family or a girlfriend. There are compulsions in your body and mind that you may not be aware of. People can have blackouts and dark sides to their personalities.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“I didn’t ask him outright at that point if he had committed the abductions and murders, because if I phrased it that way, we were certain to get a denial. He had already built up that emotional armor in the interrogation this morning and afternoon, so if we were going to get into his head, it had to be via the “side door.” Instead of confronting him directly, I leaned in close to him and in a slow, quiet voice, I said, “When did you first start feeling bad about the crime, Larry?” Without trying to give away any physical cues, Ron and I both remained silent and held our breaths.
After a couple of silent beats, Bell replied, “When I saw a photograph and read a newspaper article about the family praying in the cemetery on Shari’s birthday.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“Once someone in your family has been the victim of a violent crime, and murder, of course, is the very worst, a world of pain is opened up. Often the only way to get through it is to go through it.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“Despite the fact that it was staged, the ceremony was almost unbearably moving, and I found myself choking up several times as I observed each family member’s quiet and dignified grief, all the more difficult, I was sure, because it was on public display.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“She’d told me beforehand that she felt manipulative acting out this scenario, which was preplanned rather than a spontaneous gesture, and as I watched her, I had to concede to myself that I was manipulating her, just as the UNSUB had been doing. Though the motivation was different, I knew it was still distressing to her.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“Bob made an observation that I knew to be all too true from my many encounters with families that had lost loved ones to murder: “You know, the injury heals but the scar doesn’t ever go away.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls

“Dawn, who had had the major role, was particularly affected. She later told us, “I was really angry that I was having to do this koala thing and do all these other things to try to coax this man into reaching out to my family, because we thought that was the only way he would be caught. And so, while it was so upsetting on the inside, you wouldn’t have seen it on the outside because that was my job. But then, of course, once those little assignments were done, we fell apart. My family fell apart when nobody was watching. I would go upstairs into my bedroom and just sob. But we had amazing friends and family, and people there to support us, to help us so we didn’t go through it alone.”
― John E. Douglas, When a Killer Calls