A Killer by Design
Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind
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Narrated by:
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Gabra Zackman
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Written by:
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Ann Wolbert Burgess
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Steven Matthew Constantine
About this listen
A vivid behind-the-scenes look into the creation of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit and the evolution of criminal profiling, written by the pioneering forensic nurse who transformed the way the FBI studies, profiles, and catches serial killers.
Lurking beneath the progressive activism and sex positivity in the 1970 to '80s, a dark undercurrent of violence rippled across the American landscape. With reported cases of sexual assault and homicide on the rise, the FBI created a specialized team - the “Mindhunters”, better known as the Behavioral Science Unit - to track down the country's most dangerous criminals. And yet narrowing down a seemingly infinite list of potential suspects seemed daunting at best and impossible at worst - until Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess stepped on the scene.
In A Killer by Design, Burgess reveals how her pioneering research on sexual assault and trauma caught the attention of the FBI, and steered her right into the middle of a chilling serial murder investigation in Nebraska. Over the course of the next two decades, she helped the budding unit identify, interview, and track down dozens of notoriously violent offenders, including Ed Kemper ("The Co-Ed Killer"), Dennis Rader ("BTK"), Henry Wallace ("The Taco Bell Strangler"), Jon Barry Simonis ("The Ski-Mask Rapist"), and many others. As one of the first women trailblazers within the FBI’s hallowed halls, Burgess knew many were expecting her to crack under pressure and recoil in horror - but she was determined to protect future victims at any cost. This book pulls us directly into the investigations as she experienced them, interweaving never-before-seen interview transcripts and crime scene drawings alongside her own vivid recollections to provide unprecedented insight into the minds of deranged criminals and the victims they left behind. Along the way, Burgess also paints a revealing portrait of a formidable institution on the brink of a seismic scientific and cultural reckoning - and the men forced to reconsider everything they thought they knew about crime.
Haunting, heartfelt, and deeply human, A Killer by Design forces us to confront the age-old question that has long plagued our criminal justice system: “What drives someone to kill, and how can we stop them?”
©2021 Ann Wolbert Burgess and Steven Matthew Constantine (P)2021 Hachette BooksYou may also enjoy...
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Bonus material! Includes an excerpt from John Douglas and Mark Olshaker’s Obsession! Discover the classic behind-the-scenes chronicle of John E. Douglas’ 25-year career in the FBI Investigative Support Unit, where he used psychological profiling to delve into the minds of the country’s most notorious serial killers and criminals - the basis for the upcoming Netflix original series.
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Performance
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Boring, confusing, repetitive
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Performance
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Story
Fans of true crime shows like CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Law and Order know that when it comes to “getting the bad guy” behind bars, your best chance of success boils down to the strength of your evidence—and the forensic science used to obtain it. Beyond the silver screen, forensic science has been used for decades to help solve even the most tough-to-crack cases.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Verteran investigative journalist Stevie Cameron first began following the story of missing women in 1998, when the odd newspaper piece appeared chronicling the disappearances of drug-addicted sex trade workers from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside. It was not until February 2002 that pig farmer Robert William Pickton would be arrested, and 2008 before he was found guilty, on six counts of second-degree murder. These counts were appealed and in 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its conclusion.
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Narration is bad. “You know, Like really bad ‘eh”
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Revisiting Dr. Michael Stone's groundbreaking 22-level Gradations of Evil Scale, a hierarchy of evil behavior first introduced in the book The Anatomy of Evil, Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato, a fellow violence and serious psychopathology expert, here provide even more detail, using dozens of cases to exemplify the categories along the continuum. The New Evil also presents compelling evidence that, since a cultural tipping-point in the 1960s, certain types of violent crime have emerged that in earlier decades never or very rarely occurred.
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The perfect followup to the Anatomy of Evil.
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Unmasked
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- Unabridged
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I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don’t even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. I’m drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can’t shake. Crime solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me to the point of obsession.
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Incredible, as expected!
- By Chelsea Suik-Thomas on 2022-04-28
Written by: Paul Holes, and others
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All That Is Wicked
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- Unabridged
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Edward Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer—some have called him a “Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter”—whose crimes spanned decades and whose victims were chosen out of revenge, out of envy, and sometimes out of necessity.
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Excellent
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Written by: Kate Winkler Dawson
What the critics say
“Of all the colleagues I’ve worked with, Ann is one of the sharpest - and one of the toughest. Ann’s behind-the-scenes work had a profound impact on the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, since she taught us how to harness the chaos of serial killers’ minds and helped us decipher the undecipherable. I’d recommend that everyone read A Killer by Design, not only is it a great page-turner, but it’s about time Ann’s story was heard.” (John E. Douglas, former FBI criminal profiler and best-selling author of Mindhunter)
“My career was shaped after reading the seminal text on sexual homicide co-authored by Dr. Ann Burgess - one of the original Mindhunters. Now, in A Killer by Design, Burgess shows how she helped refine the criminal profiling process, with an acute eye for detail and heartwarming compassion for the victims. This book has quickly become a permanent fixture on my bookshelf and is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand the history of exploring the predator's mind. Burgess is truly a hero in the fight against evil.” (Paul Holes, FBI Task Force officer, retired cold case investigator, and cohost of Jensen and Holes: The Murder Squad podcast)
“Countless investigators and detectives around the world do work every single day that is based on the research and discoveries of Dr. Ann Burgess - myself included. But here, for the first time, we are able to experience the fascinating - and often heart-wrenching - stories behind these facts, figures, and procedures alongside Ann as she worked the cases that would serve as the foundation of criminal profiling. This is a riveting book and will become a staple on the shelves of both experts, and armchair detectives.” (Sarah Cailean, criminal behaviorist)
What listeners say about A Killer by Design
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Charlie Belleville
- 2024-11-14
More lecturing than insightful, fleshing out previous works rather than standing on its own
Definitely read the works of Ressler and Douglas before this one. It mostly assumes you have, even as it reiterates a lot of what they’ve said.
While this does add the much needed voice of the third pillar of the BSU, it ultimately fails to be as insightful air scientific as one would hope. Instead it mostly oscillates between summarizing crimes, giving a shallow dive into the psychology, and then recriminations the audience for even reading/listening to that.
It’s frustrating that Ann herself has such a passion for this subject, but is angry about others who share it. She almost seems loathe to be writing this book. While she dedicates it to the victims, in truth she spends next to no time talking about them; Douglas actually did a better job speaking about the importance of victims and how profiling them matters, too.
I just don’t think Ann wanted to write this. I think she felt she had to.
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- Lexi
- 2023-10-16
Very interesting
Loved learning about Dr. Burgess' professional background. She is one heck of an accomplished woman.
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- Patty M.
- 2024-02-23
History of Formation of serial kiĺler dic within FBI
Dr. Ann Burgess has been a pioneer in identifying behavior patterns in serial killers since the inception of this unit. she has personally interviewed Bundy, Kemper, Ramirez, Gacy, Raider to name a few. Extremely interesting and particularly challenging for a woman in the early 70s working within FBI
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