Early on in the three-episode Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer, an overly earnest and downhome Montie Rissell, serial killer and rapist, says: “Once you kill another human being, you’ll never be the same person again.” It’s basic to the point of obvious, haunting in its simplicity, wielded with knifelike flatness. But it is a line that underscores the basis of the cottage industry phenomenon of true crime, the background soundtrack of so many of our working days, and the allure of the so-called Dead Girl Industrial Complex. In the ’70s, the FBI didn’t know why it was all so enticing either, why there was an exploding and alarming trend of spree criminals, with no real idea how to properly study their freshly coined term of “serial killer.”
Enter, as she’s called, somewhat aptly, “Batman.” Dr. Ann Burgess is the unofficial godparent of profiling and victimology, and, along with John Douglas and Robert Ressler, was key in establishing and validating the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. She is also the inspiration for the character Dr. Wendy Carr in Netflix’s Mindhunter. Dr. Burgess is more than deserving of her own spinoff miniseries documentary, based on her book Killer By Design. She needs little support, starring easily and charmingly, part Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote, part Clarice Starling, serving tea with bread and jam and a one thousand-watt smile, still wholly your favorite grandma. Well, that is if your favorite grandma revolutionized the study and treatment of rape victims.
Burgess began her career as a psychiatric nurse, with a keen interest in therapy, and the more quotidian and arms-open focus on “how people feel.” Her inquisitiveness about traumatic experiences, and frustration with the lack of investigation or understanding of rape, led her to become a pioneering researcher in sexual trauma, penning numerous books, a gamut that runs from Rape, Crisis, And Recovery up to Sexual Homicide.
Mastermind strikes the expected bad guy-hunting repertoire, cycling through True Detective-ish opening credits, flying news clippings of atrocities, rattling typewriters, and notecards Sharpied with ominous cop verbiage. Pins go into bulletin-boarded maps, phones archaically light up, ring, and are hastily slammed in frustration. 1970s and ’80s garb and facial hair abound, and mustaches furrow their foreheads. Police sketch artists turn out the usual—and, due to Dr. Burgess, accurate—portfolios of ruffled serial offenders with Ron Jeremy-esque shag and nefarious eyes described as driving “Pinto-like” cars.
Burgess’ major crime-fighting break came in the 1980 Ski Mask Rapist case. Local authorities in Louisiana asked the Bureau for help, eventually accusing Burgess of impersonating an agent once she showed up; she was a woman after all. Here, though, is the first true glimpse of her approach, near equal parts data collection and empathy, a soft objective stance that would eventually turn the idea of profiling from art to science. Focusing on methodology, the evidence-based undertaking was fresh, helpfully favoring quantifying data coming in from multiple victims, and in turn, informing the public as to any findings, casting a community-wide net.
Deep into the rigmarole of procedure, there’s that Serial-ized true-crime core pulse, the familiar notes of the taking-care-of-business report filing, a peppering of gruesome slide montages, so many official-looking manilla folders. Seeing the play-by-play becomes a comfortable B-side to My Favorite Murder, The Last Podcast On The Left, and every other podcast of the genre. There are trope-ish reenactments, grainy footage, paper headlines slowly zoomed into, and audio clips all subtitled in old-timey typewriter font, with just enough string section swell and ba dum bass to make it late-night spooky. Even though, at the core, this is all just as much about listening, compiling information, and breaking the barriers of the boys club of the FBI.
As a third-party consultant, weighing in on Ressler and Douglas’ unstructured conversations with serial killers like Ed Kemper and Ted Bundy, Burgess believed she was “eavesdropping on the rawest fringes of humanity.” At the same time, she was raising a family, bouncing between serene domesticity in Boston and the hellish quagmire of Quantico. With an easily assured manner and quick smile, hers is the warmth of someone you’d want to take care of you after a traumatic experience. It’s most on display with Opal Horton, a young girl who escaped her would-be kidnapper in Illinois in the mid-’80s. In audio playback, you can hear the tenderness, the slow roll of guiding patience, not even coaxing information as much as evoking humanity, a motherly and gentle hand, a calming foil to the nastiest side of humankind. As a witness, the doc can barely contain painting Burgess in a shade of beatitude, one not undeserved.
While working as a defense team expert for the Menendez brothers, she went to a standard in her playbook: Having them draw pictures of their family as if they were toddlers, unable to explain themselves. Burgess gently pries out a deep history of sexual and psychological abuse. An upsetting reassessment of the case, it is a reminder of the broken humanity that most of us remember as some gruesome tabloid fodder. Still shying from the spotlight, the third act of her career seems to be the discovery of just such a new way to help: Getting people to think differently about sexual trauma. As an advocate for the earliest accuser of Bill Cosby, Burgess reminds us that being believed is the first step to healing.
In her late ’80s, Burgess now teaches victimology, forensic science, and forensic mental health at Boston College, while also investigating missing indigenous women and various cold cases. So continues her spearheaded struggle against all of our genetic and societal aberrations. She’s a reminder of how and why we do care, and become fascinated with such stories. Along humanity’s lineage, the DNA, the anthropological classifications, every one of us isn’t so different. No person on earth is likely better versed in that connection.
Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer premieres on Hulu on July 11