Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer

A police officer out of Lake Charles, Louisiana

had seen the car

that matched the profile of the Ski Mask Rapist.

He said, "I saw the car.

"I saw the guy driving it.

No doubt it's him."

I had an LTD, which had a police interceptor motor in it,

and those things would scream.

We wanted to get this guy before he could find another victim.

Found the car parked in a hotel.

I got the license plate.

It allowed me to start investigating him.

This is the guy.

They scrambled an airplane.

They brought about 30 units,

and they descended on Lake Charles.

He came out of the house about30

and drove to a convenience store just around the street.

At55, Simonis comes walking out of the store

with a loaf of bread and two packs of cigarettes.

We got him.

I have approximately about 21 life sentences

plus addit-- an additional

2,386 and a half years to go.

The arrest of Jon Simonis,

the Ski Mask Rapist,

was really a win for the BSU.

It was also the first time I had listened to a recent offender.

It got to be a cat-and-mouse game with the police after a while.

I knew they were after me back in 1980,

and, uh, from there on, I figured all I had to do

was not to create a definite pattern.

I learned two really important things

out of the Simonis case.

One of course was signature.

The signature piece for him

was having witnesses there.

To induce fear or-or, uh, surprise

and to see how they responded to it.

And I would feed off of this,

this fear and it would--

It was like a, a source of fuel for me.

Simonis gave a lot of very good information

on method and how he played the police.

This was new information,

and I was just getting started.

I need that job as badly as any man, and I will work for my money.

Those times when one needs to be with one's family.

Certainly there was some negative feedback.

There was still some negative feedback.

But we've been seeing signs that family life is making a comeback.

We're remembering that with freedom comes personal

and parental responsibility.

She has a family as all of this is happening

and a whole separate career at the same time.

Yes, I certainly had other things going on in my life.

I was the dean of the School of Nursing,

and I headed up the National Center

for the Prevention and Control of Rape.

Research was being done,

publishing, traveling between Boston and Quantico,

and I was taking care of the kids.

It was pretty much a blur.

-She's not gonna make a risotto. -Right.

She doesn't have time for that.

So she could put something in the oven,

go upstairs, bang away on her typewriter.

That would burn or that would get lumpy.

And my father always saying,

"Your mother treats me like a God.

She gives me burnt offerings."

I was very, very fortunate in having a husband

that was very supportive of my work.

There was no question that I would have a career.

None of us would've had our careers

if there wasn't somebody that supported it.

You know, nobody does it alone.

They were dearly in love with one another.

'Cause he believes in his wife, and he adores her.

She was a bright woman

and to waste me as a brain was not gonna happen.

She enlightened the whole world.

Just quite proud of her.

I also remember a time when...

You can't do everything,

and I didn't do everything.

There were certain parts of our family life

that didn't get full attention.

It was hard. I admit it was very hard

to leave them.

So we began to travel as a family.

We took them to Quantico. They had to work, don't forget.

I remember phone calls

coming into the house from the FBI.

My mom saying, "I'm coming in."

Dad would be, "Okay, that's gonna be however many flight hours."

And you'd have to figure out how to get down there.

I have a flight instructor certificate,

an official flight instructor certificate,

a multi-engine pilot certificate,

a commercial pilot certificate.

So, yes, I'm a pilot.

We'd all pile into the plane,

and Dad would fly us to Quantico.

I've heard stories of people with famous parents.

They think every family's like that, and that's kinda like what we were.

This is what everybody does.

On top of all her activities,

my mom was learning how to fly.

I had to learn about flying,

and I was really good except on the landings,

which was kind of crucial.

I would bounce it in, and you're not supposed to bounce it in.

Profiling, we're making a big deal out of it here.

We've get a lot of people together to talk about it.

We've got a lot of interest in this area.

This is still the early days of the BSU.

The agents were working on a shoestring budget.

I think we must have had six profilers by that time.

They had multiple responsibilities.

Profiling was really a side part of their job.

The main goal that they had at that point was to show

that profiling wasn't a one-off success.

It wasn't a one-hit wonder.

There was pressure that we had to be good,

we had to be better than good.

That came down from the top.

We were very anxious about getting it right.

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

to see whether, you know, what has actually occurred...

Regardless of the success of the Ski Mask Rapist case,

Dr. Burgess herself was still not being fully accepted.

So, a lot of the agents keep her at arm's distance,

and they're not quite ready to fully listen to her.

And she feels that a little bit.

Everybody who comes into that environment

has to prove themselves.

Everybody.

But once a man has proven himself

and the rest of the team says, "Alright,"

that part of the process is done for them.

For a woman in that position, the test is ongoing.

Fear gripped Sarpy County and many surrounding communities.

Thirteen-year-old Danny Joe Eberle,

went to deliver papers early Sunday morning

about nine o'clock.

One of the search teams found what they hoped they wouldn't find.

Father identified that the young man was his son.

As of now, they have no time of death.

They have no suspects and no motive.

Sarpy County officials tonight

will only say that the evidence in the Eberle case

has been sent to the FBI for analysis.

Who could have done this?

I remember being very invested to see how they were going to profile this.

Ressler flies to Nebraska.

He's offering his expertise as a profiler

to the local law enforcement officers.

Ressler ends up creating a profile.

"Resident of Bellevue.

Single, lower education, low-income blue collar job."

Passes off this profile.

He was thinking of a pedophile.

They rounded up anyone that had

a prior sexual assault against a child.

They arrested a man who was known to pay for boys

to have sex in his car with him.

Ressler flies back to Quantico with another win for the BSU.

Case closed.

Another boy has gone missing

in Sarpy County.

Christopher Walden disappeared Friday morning

on his way to school.

One thing authorities did confirm today,

they definitely do not consider Christopher Walden a runaway.

Someone does have him.

We'd like to have him returned safely, please.

It was just devastating.

We thought it was over with.

But Ressler's profile was wrong.

From my point, I wanted to understand the case.

When I looked at it, first of all,

the most obvious is the first profile

was very, very, very vague.

It's only about seven lines.

Ressler acknowledges that there's not a lot

of information to go off of.

So, it's sort of basic.

It was just Ressler on that first profile,

which was part of the reason it failed 'cause profiling works best

when you have a group bouncing ideas off of each other.

Ressler was called up to the director of the FBI,

William Webster's office.

Webster chewed out Ressler saying,

"You've got the green light to do some profiling work,

"but, you know, you better figure this out and do it right.

It's my reputation at stake, too."

When I came in,

profiling was much more of an art form than a science.

And that was one of the things that made it