When we know who the criminal is, we can understand what set him off. In a homicide situation, we do the inverse. We ask, "What happened? Why did it happen that way?" Which narrows the search for who did it. But what if our killer is someone who's not rational? Why do we behave the way we do? It's a question asked by poets, and philosophers, and theologians since time immemorial. The playground of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Freud. The stuff of Crime and Punishment and Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The greatest minds in history have been fascinated by the vagaries of behavior. So, in a case where we can't immediately divine a motive, we shouldn't panic. It's a riddle, but it can be solved. It's complex, but it's human.
All S1
Characters
Holden FordJonathan Groff · 30 quotes
Bill TenchHolt McCallany · 25 quotes
Wendy CarrAnna Torv · 10 quotes
Debbie MitfordHannah Gross · 4 quotes
Edmund KemperCameron Britton · 4 quotes
Kay ManzLauren Glazier · 3 quotes
Montie RissellSam Strike · 3 quotes
Most scenes together: Holden Ford & Bill Tench (14), Holden Ford & Wendy Carr (4), Holden Ford & Debbie Mitford (4)
S1 E15Unfinished Business
LBLeo Buchanan
[teaching] Personality and character far outweigh the presence of psychotic or defective diagnoses. In other words, by extrapolation, are criminals born or are they formed?
You get onto a crowded elevator, and you face the opposite direction, the back of the elevator, and everybody freaks out. They're uncomfortable for reasons they can't even articulate. But if you turn around and face the front, everybody relaxes.
Okay. Well, how do we do that?
What do we have in common? What unites us? What keeps us all awake at night?
The question is not only why did the killer do it, but why did the killer do it this way?
[squabbling about their differing methods] Let me ask you something else. Do you have a girlfriend?
I do now, Bill, as it happens.
Okay. So next time you're a long way from home and you flip your shit, you find a pay phone and you tell it to your girlfriend. Okay?
Okay.
How's that sound?
It sounds okay, Bill.
Holden, they're not gonna let you in with a sidearm.
The guy is six foot nine, weighs 300 pounds.
That's right.
So what's he gonna do?
He's gonna take the fuckin' thing away, kill you with it, and then have sex with your face.
UCUnit Chief Shepard
Can you make him shut up?
I have not been able to, sir.
How do we get ahead of crazy if we don't know how crazy thinks?
UCUnit Chief Shepard
I like you, Bill. I don't particularly like him, but I like you... Okay, you may continue with your little sideshow. However, no one can know about it. Clear? You will relocate yourselves to the basement beneath Behavioral Sciences, reporting directly and exclusively to me.
The basement? I'm 44 years old.
You don't think you could benefit from psychiatry?
I already did all that in the institution. It didn't take. For me, I think surgery might give me the best chance.
And if surgery doesn't take, in this modern society, what do we do with the Ed Kempers of the world?
Well, isn't that your department?
From your perspective...
Death by torture?
You see, Bill, I knew a week before she died I was gonna kill her. She went out to a party, she got soused, she came home alone. I asked her how her evening went. She just looked at me. She said, "For seven years." She said, "I haven't had sex with a man because of you, my murderous son." So I got a claw hammer and I beat her to death. Then I cut her head off, and I humiliated her. And I said, "There, now you've had sex." If there's one thing I know, it's this: A mother should not scorn her own son. If a woman humiliates her little boy, he will become hostile, and violent, and debased. Period.
Butchering people is hard work. Physically and mentally. I don't think people realize. You need to vent. What are you writing down?
[freely showing his notebook] Oh, I just think it's an interesting choice of words, "vocation."
Well, what would you call it? A hobby? I'd say it's more than that. Look at the consequences. The stakes are very high.
Imagine, like truly imagine what it takes to bludgeon someone to death. The lust for control, the feeling of arousal, the decision to rape the severed head of your victim, to humiliate her corpse. How could you possibly get that from an ordinary police report? You know why it took me nearly a decade to publish my book? Because narcissists don't go to the doctor. Psychopaths are convinced that there is nothing wrong with them. So these men are virtually impossible to study. Yet you have found a way to study them in near perfect laboratory conditions.
So you're saying you don't think this, us interviewing these killers, is crazy?
Just the opposite. I mean, crazy in the way that anyone with a truly new idea is crazy. But no.
Wow, okay. That's a relief. That hasn't really been the feedback we've gotten so far.
Actually, this is the only feedback we've gotten so far.
I'm sorry, Ed, do you mean that violence in the movies drove you to kill those women?
No. My point is, in reality it doesn't work the way you expect. When you stab somebody they're supposed to fall dead. They go, "Oh," and they fall dead, right?
Right.
In reality, when you stab somebody, they lose blood pressure and they leak to death, very slowly.
There's nothing behind Kemper's eyes. It's like standing near a black hole.
Right.
And he thinks we're his friends. Well, he thinks you're his friend. Which makes you a pretty great FBI agent.
So what are you teaching?
Um, I'm teaching a class on the intersection of sociopathy and fame. People like, um, Andy Warhol, Jim Morrison. Their celebrity becomes the only thing they need to sustain their ego.
Nixon was a sociopath.
Very similar.
How do you get to be president of the United States if you're a sociopath?
The question is, how do you get to be president of the United States if you're not? That's why this work is so vital. It goes so much further than the FBI.
All the way to the White House.
Perhaps, yeah.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Mindhunter pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.