Original subtitles

Police are hunting a mass murderer believed

to have killed as many as 21 prostitutes.

Police have been trying to find

a man they call the Green River Killer.

We knew that we, at that time, had a serial murderer on our hands.

In the late '80s, there was a new breed of serial killer.

It wasn't until last March

that investigators began linking the cases

as the so-called Happy Face Killer.

These were killers that were more sophisticated.

They were contacting the media.

The man who calls himself the BTK Killer...

Letters claiming responsibility

were sent by a man who referred to himself

by the initials BTK.

We were looking at males and females

that might be murdered, and children.

They're not killing for the same reasons

that the early serial killers that we studied were.

Behavioral Science, Ressler.

The word got out that we were doing profiling.

We were just besieged with cases.

Approximately 300-a-year profile requests are coming in now.

They are coming in faster than we really can manage it.

We were somewhat limited 'cause we didn't have a lot of profilers.

A string of disappearances, rapes, and murders...

Cases weren't being looked at.

They were just being put on a shelf.

It's so dangerous. I mean, these are people that are killing.

We should be doing a better job.

In the late '80s,

one of the things that the team realized

was that, to a degree, they had built profiling for themselves.

Dr. Burgess wanted to advance profiling

so that it could be this tool that was really applicable

to law enforcement as a whole.

European attendees asking for additional information...

We wanted to train law enforcement to use this tool.

We had to publish.

With Ann's input, I can see a publication taking place here

that would be used within law enforcement circles.

I hoped this research would make a difference.

The obsessions, the fantasies.

I would not allow myself to walk into even a potential trap.

I keep craving something which is harder and harder.

The organized, disorganized...

Two separate personality types.

Somebody wants somebody bad enough,

it's nearly impossible to prevent it.

To try to chunk down that whole process

by studying the people that are doing it.

The classification based on what they did at the scene,

more likely to live alone, live near the scene of the crime.

You're dealing with a guy who is not your introverted, weird loner.

A good number of these individuals are

in the bright, very superior group.

All of that material was published

in an academic book called Sexual Homicide.

For me and for the whole team, it was huge.

Huge breakthrough.

We're teaching in courses all over the country,

information that has come from our efforts thus far.

The program started to really expand.

There are now 29 known victims

of the Green River Killer.

The local police turned to a special FBI unit

for help with the case

FBI was notoriously a one-way street.

We don't give you anything.

And then the Behavioral Science Unit comes along,

and all of a sudden they're not only gathering information,

but they're coming back to you to help solve crimes.

We have used the Behavioral Sciences Unit

that the FBI has established at Quantico, Virginia.

It's really a teamwork, but profiling has become

a key tool for law enforcement.

The information helped law enforcement investigate

these crimes and catch killers.

Authorities arrested 59-year-old Dennis Rader

for BTK's eight murders.

The arrest of one of the country's

most prolific serial killers.

Keith Jesperson says he wants

to make a full confession for his crimes

as the so-called Happy Face Killer.

Green River Killer Gary Ridgway confessed

to killing 48 women.

I think there's not any doubt, uh,

that there probably would've been more.

So, good work by all these agencies.

For the first time, we had a profiler working

in almost every state,

and we were clearing more cases than we ever had before.

Robert Ressler has made a career

out of tracking and apprehending

some of our nation's most violent serial killers.

He was a consultant on the book

which was the basis for the movie Silence of the Lambs.

What I wanted to ask you about first was the movie.

- Did you like it? - I thought it was a tremendous movie.

In the movie, Douglas was played by actor Scott Glenn.

- Good morning. - Morning, Mr. Crawford.

Douglas and Ressler were quick to write their books,

and they were quick to consult on TV shows

and to share their story in whatever ways possible.

Really to do the job effectively, you really have to...

He inspired TV shows...

It was interesting talking with Ann

about why her story had remained hidden.

She didn't really wanna take on the sort of cultural mystique

like a bunch of the other agents had wanted to.

She always had a behind-the-curtain quality,

partly because of her own style

of being not particularly self-promoting.

Dr. Burgess has been doing this work

with the BSU for over a decade now,

and she's starting to rethink

how she can best continue her pursuit

of being in service to victims.

Most of the agents that I had worked with had retired.

I wanted to move on. I was ready to move on.

It just seemed the right thing to do.

Oh, the turkeys are here.

I've gotta feed 'em.

I felt it was the right time...

but I didn't know what I was gonna do next.

I had my own career, certainly, in nursing,

so that was all going on.

As an academic, I had to be into new areas,

write grants, get published.

She has expressed that it felt a little like,

let me step back...

take a breath,

examine my surroundings

and see in what other way can I put this work to use.

One day, a defense attorney called me

and asked me if I had heard about this case

out of Los Angeles.

And I had not.

And so, he tells me to go down to the local store

and pick up a copy of People magazine.

And I said, "Oh,

this is now gonna be my reading material on cases?"

I've heard of very few murders

that were more savage than this one was.

No signs of a break-in or a burglary.

Only the bodies of entertainment executive Jose Menéndez

and his wife Kitty in the family TV room.

Jose Menéndez was shot five times,

a fatal wound through the back of the head into the brain.

His wife Kitty was unrecognizable.

Four separate shots in the head and face,

six in her arms, chest, hips, legs.

Their sons, Erik and Lyle, said they found the bodies,

but new evidence ranging from records of the family psychologist

to a movie script about a rich kid who kills his parents

now indicates the brothers did it.

They killed their wealthy parents.

Lyle and Erik Menéndez were arraigned yesterday

on charges they murdered their parents

to inherit a $14 million estate.

It was a high-profile case,

and I had never done a defense case before.

The prosecution saying this was for money wasn't adding up.

There had to be something else,

so I agreed to go out,

at least to meet with them.

When I met with Erik, that was the first time

that I was actually in the room with a killer.

I'm looking at somebody that killed his mother and his father.

He was likable.

I mean, we could talk about sports and tennis

and, you know, everything except the crime.

I needed to know exactly what happened

and also to understand why they did it.

I was wondering how he was gonna be able to talk about it...

and that's what I decided to use the drawings,

because that would give him something concrete

to be able to focus on.

He wouldn't have to be looking directly at me

to talk about the situation.

We spent a whole day on the drawings.

This is the very first one that really gave me an inkling

of heart of the motive.

The father looking very large,

compared to this little teeny Erik.

Erik wanted to go away to college

and the father said, "No, you're not going to.

"You're gonna come home.

I want you home during the week to sleep here."

It gave me an idea of how controlling the father was.

That was the start of the week that escalated.

Something happened that really set into motion

that they had no other choice

but to shotgun their parents.

Based on the father, a very domineering person,

I felt there's some abuse issue here.

It could have been psychological,

it could have been physical.

There are a lot of these drawings that

the father and the son are in Erik's bedroom,

which I thought was a very unusual place.

I used that as a way to say,

"What are the other kinds of things maybe that you could tell me

that went on in the bedroom?"

You could see how hard it was for him to get it out.

I knew it then, this was sexual abuse,

which in itself is very difficult, but also was incest.

He was somewhat stoic about it. It happened.

The two brothers were very bonded,

very, very caring of each other.

Erik tells his older brother about the sexual assault.

He told me Lyle was abused early,

but the father had a preference for young boys.

That's why Erik became the next victim.

The mother... didn't protect her sons.

The abuse had now been exposed.

Lyle confronts the father.

The father was an executive in the music industry.

An incest secret coming out would have ruined Jose,

no question about it.

The father was threatening them.

You could just see them talking about

how fearful they were then,

and they felt that the parents were going to kill them.

They were frantic.

They felt it was imminent

that something was gonna happen to them

so they had to act Sunday night.

They killed their parents.

Absolutely no matter what the circumstances are,

that's still wrong,

but they certainly were abused.

I could sympathize with what they had to put up with.

And so, I decided to testify for the defense.

One of the things that people always wonder about too is

how Ann could start working for the defense

when she switched over to trial cases.

Right off the bat, she was challenged by fellow agents.

A lot of them said, "Why are you standing up for the bad guys?"

John Douglas came up to her and said,

"You're making the wrong choice."

Agents always testify for prosecution.

So when he heard I was gonna be on defense

on the case that I was on,

I would say he was not happy.

The Menéndez case could ruin her reputation.

People could say, "This woman who was always for the good guys,

she's lost her way."

To me, it was important in terms of getting the truth out

about trauma and abuse.

This colleague of hers came up and said,

"You can't defend these boys.

"If you do, other boys might start coming forward

and talking about their sexual abuse, too."

And she was like, "Yeah, that's the point."

This is the right thing to do.

A sensational murder trial opened today in California.

The defendants: two brothers.

The victims: their parents.

Their defense: self-defense.

Legally, neither Lyle nor Erik Menéndez

can be found innocent.

They admit they killed their parents,

only their motives were at issue in the trial.

Jurors will have to decide whether they were motivated

by fear for their own lives or by greed.

If convicted of involuntary manslaughter,

they could go free with time served.

If convicted of first-degree murder,

it could mean the death penalty.

In the trial of people versus Erik Menéndez.

The defense may call its next witness.

Thank you, Your Honor. The defense calls Dr. Ann Burgess.

You do solemnly swear that the testimony will be the truth,

the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

- so help you God? - I do.

Please take the stand and state your name...

I knew it was gonna be an uphill battle.

This was not an easy case.

Ann Wolbert Burgess.

Before this, there had been defenses built

around victims, abuse, and fear,

but it had only been used with wives

who killed their husbands.

It had never been used with a male victim in the past.

She knew that it was a long shot.

After your 50 hours of the interview with Erik Menéndez,

did you formulate an opinion as to whether or not

he was sexually molested as a child?

- Yes, I did. - And what is that opinion?

And my opinion was that he was.

Literature suggests that it is more difficult,

particularly for an adolescent boy,

to admit a same-sex molestation.

Yes, it's much harder for an adolescent male. Yes.

That seems to be related to the mythology of male sexuality.

There is this belief that males, regardless of age,

are supposed to be able to manage

and to perhaps even enjoy any type of sexual activity

and that they should not complain.

Dealing with that last week

leading up to the shootings,

have you determined critical factors

that contributed to the occurrence of the shootings in this case?

Yes, I have.

Erik's father's insistence that he continue to live at home,

which Erik understands to mean that the sexual abuse would continue.

Erik's disclosure of his sexual abuse to Lyle.

Lyle's confrontation with the father,

prompting the father's threat

to protect the secret at all costs.

The father always said one of the things

that he could do is just wipe out the family

and get a new one and start all over again.

Now, by wipe out,

he wasn't talking about killing them, was he?

Or was he?

Well, I don't think that, uh, that was ever made clear.

Because the Menéndez trial has been available live on Court TV,

millions of Americans have watched it,

finding a live drama

every bit as riveting as any soap opera.

Expert witness claims the brothers were

so traumatized by years of alleged abuse,

it actually changed the gray matter inside their head.

That's not my favorite thing to do, is to go into court,

because all they wanna do is discredit you.

The cross-exam can really be vicious.

Prosecutor Pam Bozanich implied

the brain change theory was about as credible

as the research of Dr. Frankenstein.

Dr. Burgess, could you tell the jury

what suggestibility is?

Suggestibility is a concept

that says very young children

in the questioning by therapists

in some way conduct their interview

so as to suggest to the child, uh, a response.

Dr. Burgess, do you know what psychobabble is?

Well, my reaction to that was, um, she doesn't get it.

She's never gonna get it.

And I really felt that there were bullets coming at me,

not only from the prosecutor,

but certainly in the public arena.

That was hard.

There's no evidence that supports the abuse excuse.

All they have are doctors who listen to their story

and basically say, "We believe them."

How was the jury manipulated in this case?

It's vigilante defense.

I'm sympathetic with the battered women's syndrome

in the real cases where there's no option to leave,

but when it's extended to apply

to young, mobile, wealthy men like the Menéndez brothers,

raises grave dangers to the liberty of all Americans.

It'd break me.

My dad had been molesting me.

"You see, my father raped me."

I never believed any of the other tears.

I think what you're seeing here is a, uh, couple of spoiled brats.

Can you tell the court who did murder your parents?

Our other two brothers,

Danny Menéndez and Jose Menéndez Jr.

Lyle and Erik Menéndez

have told horrific stories of parental abuse,

which makes them either victims or calculating liars.

The public had wanted to see the Menéndez brothers

as cold-blooded killers,

but in spite of the media pushback,

Dr. Burgess coming into the courtroom

and talking about abuse had cracked something open.

And just as she's done throughout her entire career,

the narrative around trauma started to shift.

It's a real interesting trial,

and I, I want them to be acquitted.

If they were convicted, I'd like to see what, what their side of the story is.

I got a lot of support from other victims,

people who never had talked about anything before.

And so, it certainly gave this segment

of our population a voice that I-I felt good about.

You may find Erik and Lyle Menéndez to be manipulative.

You may decide that they are credible

and that their story strikes a sympathetic chord.

You can reach your own verdict about them.

The court did receive a note this morning

from the... jury.

It states, uh, "We regret to inform the court"

"that we are unable to come to a unanimous decision

on any of the three counts."

We got a hung jury, which I was pleased with.

We had at least put enough doubt into the jury.

I believe that they were raised in an abusive household.

I don't believe Jose and Kitty

were planning on killing them that night at all,

but I do believe Lyle and Erik believed that.

And that's the difference.

Her testimony had a huge impact on the Menéndez case.

Going into it, the media basically dismissed any chance

that these brothers had of being acquitted.

But the case wasn't over.

The second trial, I didn't testify

because the judge would not allow any experts on abuse.

Well, I-I was shocked.

It has been hell.

Our whole theory of the defense,

which was a theory of self-defense, imperfect self-defense,

he refused to instruct on it.

The jury hadn't been allowed to hear the full truth of this story.

The impact was huge.

Yesterday, a Los Angeles jury found the brothers guilty

of first-degree murder for killing their parents.

Life without parole.

I felt sad for them.

And I still feel that life

without the opportunity for parole is wrong.

This isn't something they were gonna do again.

They're not serial killers.

What we did... it was awful,

um, and I wish I could go back.

We will spend the rest of our life in prison,

but if I'm not... if I'm not...

if we're not put in the same prison,

uh, there's a good probability I will never see him again.

And... and that, uh...

that I...

Some things that you cannot take

and there's some things that you can endure.

Uh...

with everything taken away, it would be the last,

you know, it's the last thing you can take.

I think that when you take away any type of hope from someone,

I feel that's wrong.

We heard the word "Menéndez" more

than we heard other cases.

I found it interesting that my mom was working

on such a public case.

There's always been a bit of her that does wanna stay private

and keep to her... uh, keep to herself.

But this was a situation where she saw things

in a different light than everybody else.

Dr. Burgess wasn't interested

in being this spokesperson for her work.

Working trial cases changed that.

Her big takeaway with the Menéndez case was that she could get people

to think differently about sexual trauma,

to change how people were thinking about victims.

Ann Burgess is a professor of psychiatric nursing

at the University of Pennsylvania.

She realized if she really wanted

to be an advocate for victims,

she had to step out of the shadows.

When we talk with battered women,

one of the things that we notice is that it depends

on the type of violence.

Become more of a public personality

and use that as a platform to leverage her work, her voice,

and to leverage victims' voices as well.

I felt I had the opportunity to influence a system.

I felt that that was so important,

so no matter what I had to put up with, it was worth it.

I decided I was going to accept cases

where I felt that I can make a difference.

I flew to Boston to meet with Dr. Burgess.

I didn't know a whole lot about her...

and at the time, no one was listening.

No one wanted to know about America's Dad.

There was no bringing down Bill Cosby.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Cosby.

Dentists tell you not to pick your teeth,

then you sit in their chair.

You know, Jell-O Pudding Pops is a winner

- with all the soapbox racers I know. - It is?

- Yeah, sure. - Few minor adjustments.

Bill Cosby has entertained millions

around the world while serving as an inspiration to all.

I had seen his TV shows.

I mean, everybody knew Bill Cosby.

I was a nobody, and he was a somebody.

People are gonna believe him.

They're not going to believe the sexual assault victim.

Being believed really will determine

how the survivor will ultimately heal.

I don't know whether this is true. You don't know whether this is true.

It's difficult to decide.

Do we even give a voice to allegations like this?

Cosby's attorney called the case "nonsense"

and labeled his accuser, Andrea Constand, a con artist.

District attorney has decided not to charge Mr. Cosby

and says he finds insufficient credible evidence.

Mr. Cosby looks forward to moving on with his life.

A victim that comes forward to report,

only 1% to 2% are gonna see justice.

The criminal case was denied,

so a civil case was the only shot at justice that I had.

All the odds were stacked up against me,

and that's ultimately how I came to meet Dr. Burgess.

"He said she said" are very difficult cases.

I was glad I-I was called on it.

We didn't have any rape kit or forensic evidence,

so in that respect, it just was her word.

We were up against a lot of skepticism.

It was very important to get the details.

She had a job to do.

It was to try to pull things from my memory.

Explain in your own words what happened.

I was the director of basketball operations

at Temple University.

I knew who Bill Cosby was.

I knew he was a pretty important man on campus.

I didn't have a reason to be scared of Bill Cosby.

After having a friendship with him for almost 18 months,

he invited me over to his home

to talk about making a career change.

He was like, "You seem really stressed about that."

And I said, "Yeah, you know, I probably haven't slept a whole lot."

He just randomly got up, excused himself from the table...

and he came down the stairs,

and he had three small blue pills in his hand.

And he said, "Take these.

They'll help take the edge off."

After about a half an hour,

I started to see two Bill Cosbys across the table from me.

And he said, "Well, you probably just need to lay down.

You just need to have a sleep."

Those were the last words that I remember.

She couldn't remember anything more.

This was not gonna be easy.

We have a lot of missing pieces, so I have to think,

"Is that anything that we can recover?"

Those are the kinds of questions that you try to get into

and have her remember as much as she could.

Even though you can't remember,

doesn't mean that it doesn't register.

You have to move to a different part of understanding memory

because it does register, you know?

It does register, even if you're unconscious.

The body keeps score.

I remember passing out, waking up.

I could feel that he had unzipped my pants.

I was completely paralyzed and was not able to scream.

It was the most horrifying thing in the world.

I had seen this technique used before, especially with children.

They would give them drugs

'cause then they could always say, "Well, you-you dreamt it.

This didn't really happen."

I give tests to document the trauma that she had

and back it up with some kind of scientific evidence.

What were you like before this happened?

How often does this come into your mind?

Do you have any anxiety?

Are you snappy? More irritated?

How is your sleep?

She thought, "Well, I'll get over this," but then it got worse and worse.

Couldn't stay at the job.

She had to go back and live with her parents.

She broke up with her partner.

I felt that she had, by this time, chronic PTSD.

Getting asked 300 questions

about the way you're sleeping, eating, living, loving,

I was able to understand

what that one night had done to me.

The fact that I was hearing myself actually say

what happened to me

and acknowledge that I survived a trauma,

that was really critical.

She believed me.

I don't think there's any financial amount

that a person can walk away from

to just automatically make everything better.

I was just happy that I could move on

because I really did wanna move on.

I really did wanna put it behind me.

This case, certainly for me,

was one way to kind of go back to where we had started.

We're now talking almost 30 years from when Lynda Holmstrom

and I started our rape study.

When she started doing her work,

there wasn't a culture of wanting to hold men accountable

for their wrongdoings against women.

This girl is not the rape victim,

but according to the judge, the way she's dressed illustrates

another reason that boys rape girls.

There had been a lot of changes for women.

Rape crisis center, women in the workplace.

There was a cultural shift.

But we knew it wasn't enough.

Sometimes you think you haven't made any progress,

but that's why it's important to keep fighting.

Time's up! Time's up! Time's up! Time's up!

Time's up! Time's up! Time's up!

Dr. Burgess' work are those early ripples

that led to the Me Too Movement.

The story doesn't center around Dr. Burgess,

but she's a huge part of that story.

Hey hey, ho ho...

I'm just glad that she's been able to see

some of the fruits of her labor.

This is what Dr. Burgess

had been fighting for all along.

Finally, the culture was ready to believe victims.

Me too.

- Me too! - Me too!

Women who had been traumatized

and victimized years before were starting to come forward.

- It happened to me too. - Me too.

It happened to me too.

Their stories flooded social media

and painted a picture of just how many people

endure sexual abuse and harassment every day.

The Me Too Movement gave women an opportunity

to be in control, to be able to say, "This...

We-We aren't gonna put up with this."

I was really so proud of the women

for coming forward and demanding justice.

It was amazing.

And then, because of the Me Too Movement,

there's one more part to the Cosby case.

A flood of allegations from women

who say they were sexually assaulted by Cosby.

I couldn't believe it. He had drugged me.

Waking up in a bed with Mr. Cosby, naked.

Mr. Cosby is charged with aggravated indecent assault.

When Me Too happened, that's what it took.

Mr. Cosby, did you drug that woman?

I never expected that I would get an opportunity

to face my abuser in court.

Thirteen years after an alleged sexual assault,

Andrea Constand walked into a packed courtroom

to publicly tell her story.

She went in there and did a beautiful job testifying.

There has been a verdict.

The comedian, now 80, has been found guilty on all counts.

It was a miracle

to see the justice system working for survivors.

The culture had really changed.

In, um, 1970, I don't think you'd get a conviction

against Bill Cosby.

Andrea's case was very important in being able

to identify a high-profile person and get justice.

There's a handful of people

who played a big part in my "surviving"...

and Dr. Burgess is one of those people.

I'm trying to think of how it all started.

I can remember vividly in, uh... on the serial killer study,

which was generally...

The stuff that my mom's done is so helpful

that we'd love to see the work continue.

I think she'd be more than happy

if someone would pick up the torch.

First couple topics are ones that are most prominent

in their manifestos.

I'm working with my granddaughter

to study the manifestos of mass shooters.

Machine learning can find associations between words

and patterns and phrases.

We can't get her enough data.

She says, "Send me data." She loves that.

That might be something that, that would be of interest.

I believe that there is

a parallel universe somewhere

where Dr. Burgess was never invited to speak at the FBI,

and it is a scary world.

Profiling, victimology, behavioral psychology,

she had this really formative role

in all these different realms,

and it really shifted how the FBI functioned

as an organization.

Where other people just saw craziness,

she saw early on that there were patterns.

She said, "We've got significant data."

All of a sudden, that turns into something

that we can make sense of it.

There was no blueprint, and she created the blueprint.

We would like to look at the cases that have been profiled

to see whether, you know...

She's had to overcome the prejudice

that male agents had,

but she was always gonna have the last word

on criminal behavior

because she knew more than anybody in the room.

The impact of victimization on the family

and the community so that...

Making things better for victims,

for survivors going through the legal system.

And she's spent her whole career breaking the barriers down.

Simonis, without hesitation, pleaded guilty

to all charges against him.

John Joubert was arrested tonight

by the task force.

The FBI is charging 28-year-old Brian Dugan

with the kidnap and murder of Melissa Ackerman.

It is time for people to recognize

there is not an aspect of modern criminal psychology

that has not been significantly impacted

by Dr. Burgess' work

and it does matter that people know that.

A lot. I don't know.

Oh, over a dozen. Yeah.

To give you an idea of what we're trying

to do on campus from academic nursing.

There were a lot of native women

that were, um, murdered in...

- A lot. Oh, yes. - Yeah.

We-We have a database now of over 3,000 people.

It's a little bit different because we are hearing

from an actual person who has lost someone

and who it is an unsolved case.

Where are we at with our data?

'Cause we do need to talk about drafting

or at least getting the outline for a paper.

There's always some more work to do.

No time to celebrate. No. Keep going.