Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Animal Intuitive channel. I’m Anne Angelo Webb, and our usual focus is on supporting animals and their caregivers, and tonight is really no different in that we have to think about How can we give animals a voice in every way possible? So those of us who cherish the bond between humans and animals must recognize that understanding the root causes of violence towards both humans and animals is essential to figuring out ways to help prevent future violence and protect the innocent.

Our esteemed guests tonight, Dr. Anne Burgess, Dr. Catherine Ransom, and Dr. Gary Brucato have [00:01:00] dedicated their expertise to understanding violence against humans and have contributed significantly to understanding its relationship to violence against animals. They have gained invaluable insights from human victims of violence and by direct access to the minds of many violent criminals.

Together, this panel also forms the Extraordinary Coalition as they are all consultants with the Cole Case Foundation, whose mission is to raise public awareness and create partnerships to assist and provide law enforcement with whatever resources are needed to bring closure to unsolved cases. Our panel members have become sought-after featured guests in major media outlets, and tonight we have an opportunity, an incredible opportunity, to explore these topics and also talk about early warning signs, how to recognize potential indicators of future violence in children, and possible intervention strategies for children and adults with these different behaviors that we’re going to talk about.

And join us as we delve [00:02:00] into the shadows, focusing on shining a light on the path toward, dare I say, possible hope for change. I do want to mention a trigger warning. Some may find this content disturbing, so I encourage you to prepare yourself emotionally beforehand. And if you believe that you will find the discussion too traumatizing, you may choose not to watch.

Before we begin our discussion, or traumatizing at all, don’t watch. Before we begin our discussion, I want to take a moment to tell you a little bit more about each of our guests. And I’m just going to check the, yes, I’m not getting anybody telling me they can’t hear me. I wanted to just check on that. Because we do have some people in the chat and we’ll say hello in just a moment.

But I want to introduce our guest. So, I’m just going to go through an order of not in any particular order, but acquaint you a little bit with the people that we have here on the panel. Some of you are familiar with them. But some of you who, who usually come to watch things about animals may not be so.

There is much more on their list of accomplishments than I have [00:03:00] even time to mention in this introduction. But please check out the description afterward below and go and look at their books and other publications and the links I have there for them. So let me start with Dr. Ann Burgess. She is an internationally recognized pioneer in the assessment and treatment of victims of trauma and abuse.

for joining us. She is the author of an extensive body of work, including best selling books such as A Killer by Design, Murders, Mine Hunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind. Many of you may be familiar with the Netflix series, Mine Hunter. Dr. Burgess is the model for the character of Dr. Wendy Carr.

As Dr. Burgess played a significant role as a consultant with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in putting their early, in their early criminal profiling efforts. Dr. Burgess worked with the FBI Academy Special Agents to study serial offenders and the links between child abuse, juvenile delinquency, and subsequent violent behavior.

As a [00:04:00] distinguished author, researcher, and clinician, Dr. Burgess is a trailblazer in forensic nursing, having significantly impacted the understanding of trauma research and victim advocacy. She is a professor at Boston College teaching courses in Victimology, Forensic Science, Forensic Mental Health, Case Studies and Forensics, and Forensic Science Lab.

And Dr. Burgess has been given the honor of Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing. Dr. Catherine Ramsland is a seasoned professor, forensic psychologist, and renowned expert in the field of criminal justice. She is the inaugural director for the Center of Teaching Excellence. Professor Emerita at DeSales University and Dr. Ramsland is the author of more than 1500 articles and 68 books, including How to Catch a Killer, the Psychology of Death Investigations, and The Mind of a Murderer. She worked with. The B. T. K. serial killer, Dennis Rader, and his autobiography. And Dr. Ramsland currently [00:05:00] pens the Shadow Boxing blog on psychology today and teaches seminars on extreme offenders to death investigators and homicide detectives.

Dr. Ramsland trains law enforcement professionals and speaks internationally about forensic psychology, investigative psychology, jury dynamics. Suicidology and Extreme Offenders. She has also assisted and co-written books with former FBI profilers such as John Douglas in his book The Cases That Haunt Us.

She also co-authored The Real World of a Forensic Scientist with Elaine M. Pagliaro and renowned forensic criminalist Henry C. Lee. Dr. Gary Brucato. Dr. Gary Brucato is an accomplished clinical psychologist, researcher, and expert in early psychosis, severe violence, and personality disorders. He co-authored with Dr.

Michael Stone, who recently left behind an esteemed legacy, wrote the book The New Evil, Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime. He has published over [00:06:00] 100 articles for peer-reviewed journals on psychotic illness and violence, two books, and multiple book chapters, and contributes articles to Psychology Today.

Dr. Brucato is regularly consulted by investigators, families, and clinicians seeking his expertise. He is in full-time private practice. In New York City, he conducts psychological and forensic evaluations, provides expert testimony in criminal and civil courts, and co-created the Columbia Mass Murder Database.

Dr. Brucato is a visiting scholar at Boston College, where he collaborates with Dr. Ann Burgess and Victor, Dr. Victor Petreca on forensic research. Welcome everyone to the show.

Dr. Gary Brucato: To be here. I’m exhausted listening to that. I’m so tired. Thank you.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: I’m so glad people are still here hanging in (laughter).

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS:(Greeting the viewer’s in the chat)

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: [00:08:00] But let’s, let’s move along and you know, let’s, let’s go on. I just want to lay some foundation here and ask the group to clarify for everyone the meaning behind the diagnosis of antisocial personal personality disorder versus psychopathology.

And just to provide any thoughts that you have about the fact that we have this sort of division about those, those terms.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: Do you mean? Psychopathy. And what did I say?

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: (Laughter) Psychopathology. Oh, sorry. Psychopathy. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Yes,

Dr. Gary Brucato: I can address that if you’d like. I wrote about that, that whole section on how to distinguish those in the new evil.

So you want to understand that psychopathy, which is a. Constellation of personality traits that have to do with a kind of amorality [00:09:00] a tendency to be kind of bored and sensation-seeking glibness, interpersonally, taking advantage of others without much remorse, being charming, et cetera, was described, I mean, historically there are people who talked about these features, but it was really systematically described by Cleckley in a book called The Mask of Sanity, and then described more fully by Hare, Robert Hare, who was a prominent Canadian psychologist, and he developed the famous checklist, the psychopathy checklist.

What wound up happening really, and I mean the short version of it, is that when the DSM was being written, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, there was such a movement. To make medical and objective diagnoses that they removed the aspects of psychopathy that are not really objectively observed but are felt by a person, and as a consequence, [00:10:00] a lot of the key features of psychopathy that people like hair had identified were sort of set aside and you wind up with a somewhat watered down version of a condition so that People who have antisocial antisocial personality disorder can be can run the gamut right from very high functioning, you know, kind of politicians or lawyers or people like that, or, or people who are engaging in things like, you know, knocking over the deli and holding, you know, killing somebody who’s a witness, except all the way up to the most extreme psychopaths who engage in torture repeatedly or murder.

And it’s a very problematic diagnosis for that reason, I think. So that I think when you look at the, at the, the personality structure that these people, you want to envision a spectrum that kind of runs from narcissism through to varying degrees of. psychopathy into ultimately sadism, which I think we’re going to be touching on a lot in talking about animal [00:11:00] abuse.

I think it’s really sadism that you start thinking about hurting animals.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Okay. And so maybe just to start out, what are, what are some identifiers that people might recognize if they just had someone in their life day to day, someone they that might be somewhere on this scale or spectrum? How might you recognize like, are there certain red flags that people could help identify them or make them stand out even when they’re not doing something, you know, obviously sadistic or just or not at all?

Is it

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: no deceptive, manipulative, callous, without remorse unmotivated, cruelty, things like that. Breaking promises.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Yeah. Okay. And You know, what have you found in your work and in your studies and, you know, of [00:12:00] course, kind of putting these questions out to anybody to answer for in, in any, whoever wants to jump in, but what, what portion of those that might have antisocial personality disorder or, or whatever we want to say would be, what estimate would you have those of those that would act out violently?

Well, I know

Dr. Ann Burgess: that they’ve done some studies. I can only speak to more from a developmental standpoint. I find it helpful to look at. Are you talking about a child who is a just school age or a teenager or a young adult, et cetera. And when does it start? I think that that’s kind of of important to to look at.

And what is it? What is it that you’re, you’re looking at? And where do you begin to get some complaints? I can think of a, of a case that I’ll tell you at the end who, who, which serial killer it was, but [00:13:00] what would a parent do say who comes home every day after work and has these lovely fish and a fish tank and finds a few of them, you know, floating at the top of the, of the water?

And cleans it up the next day. It’s the same thing. So again, that’s a very simple kind of example of when does somebody get concerned and that isn’t even looking at A cat or a dog or, you know, the, the other kinds of things they can do, but just fish, somebody’s killing the fish and how do you find out?

And how do you investigate? And who do you go to? What should a parent do?

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: And that’s definitely something I want to talk about. Oh, go ahead. Dr Ricardo.

Dr. Gary Brucato: I was just going to, I was just going to add that, that we want to remember that. Antisocial personality or psychopathy, whichever we’re going to discuss, these are things that would really date all the way back to childhood.

A personality disorder doesn’t [00:14:00] just erupt when a person is 18, right? They’re, it’s going to be there a long time. And when we, when we ask the question about predicting violence, you have to ask, what kind of violence? If you’re talking about serial homicide, well, you can’t do much better than to ask the people here.

I mean, I mean, Ann, for example, was very instrumental in the project that helped to to make household knowledge out of some of the childhood antecedents. And one of the key things we’ll see is fantasy. A lot of these people. are experimenters and are curious about living things. And we can start to see hurting animals, for example, out of a strange intellectual curiosity about what’s inside of them or what happens to them when you hurt them.

And then you get the type that’s more interested in seeing it suffer. But But the point is, and I think it would be really interesting to hear and Catherine talk about this from some of their encounters. People who’ve done this is you know that there’s a kind of [00:15:00] projection onto other people or animals or, or, or both feelings of having been made to feel humiliated or out of control or, or so forth.

And then, so it’s all about a kind of assertion. of domination, control, manipulation that seems to have its roots in childhood. And then as a person ages, and I guess more stressors and gets older, we finally see this explosion at this escalation and to acting out those fantasies. And and so that’s like the pathway to that kind of violence.

But then we see psychopathic people committing all kinds of other violence, but there isn’t necessarily a serial killing component. That’s why I think there’s a very wide spectrum. And I mean Catherine and Anne, I think you’d agree. I mean, we’ve seen the whole gamut of of cruel behaviors. One final point I’ll make is that it’s very characteristic of people who are psychopathic Hayer called Criminal versatility, which really means that you don’t [00:16:00] just hear about them doing one thing wrong.

When you hear about somebody being a serial killer, you might find out that they were also writing bad checks, robbing banks, you know, looking at illegal pornography you know hitting a, a, a spat, you know, etc. There’s just a whole array because the amorality is, is so all encompassing.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Yeah, and, you know, In just doing research for this topic, I was looking at the Link, coalition has a really good list of sort of statistics. I’m not going to sit there and read, sit here and read all of them, but it does talk about 100 percent of sexual homicide offenders had a history of cruelty towards animals.

70 percent of all animal abusers have committed at least one other criminal offense. And almost 40 percent have committed violent crimes against people, but they talk a lot about witnessing violence in the home as children [00:17:00] and that being a major issue. So I know that you know, we’re also kind of getting into the, the younger years version.

When we talk about maybe conduct disorder and what kids fall into that category and the callous and emotional traits, maybe we could talk a little bit about that. What, in detail, I know we kind of, we touched on it, but, but what goes on, where’s the cross, where’s the, where do things get crossed, where it becomes, let me, you know, I’ve seen these things in my home, I’ve had trauma in my life, what, what, at what point does it cross over to, I’m going to take this out on an animal?

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: Well, the obvious one is that the animals, the more helpless creature in the home and maybe they’ve been abused, the kids have been abused, they have nowhere to turn, so the animal is the easy target and they take out their frustrations on the animal. That can, that sometimes can happen or [00:18:00] they are beginning to have fantasies, they’re, they’re not sure about where to go with it and they know the animal’s not going to talk.

So the witness, if the witness survives, the witness isn’t going to say anything to anybody. So it’s, it’s fairly easy for them to turn to the animal to do that. Or they’re doing experiments on the animal, like Dennis Rader would. He liked bondage. He would tie up dogs to watch them struggle. He didn’t think that was abusive.

He didn’t think he was doing anything to them that was negative. But he wanted to see their terror. Because it made him feel more powerful.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yeah. The Iceman did that with cats if I remember. He would tie their tails together and then see what they would do. So, the ability to orchestrate, if you will, their own little sadistic scenario, is and they get a lot of pleasure out of that.

I think that’s the point, I think you’re trying to ask us about, [00:19:00] Anne, is the when, when does it become something that should be reported or something that you should be concerned about. I read some statistics where you can have, some of, some of this is quote, normal. I’m just quoting, I don’t know what study they did, but that a lot of kids will do things to, uh, animals.

And in the service of trying to, I don’t think they think it’s abusive, but to get a reaction out of the animal. And in some way, that seems to get a reaction out of them.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Yeah,

Dr. Gary Brucato: We all know that the McDonald triad, you know, that was supposedly so predictive of committing these kinds of offenses, you know, fire starting, bed wetting, and animal torture.

I saw recently a pretty exhaustive meta-analysis that tried to ask the question of whether that actually predicts anything. And it turns out that it does only if you have two of them. Two or more of them. It’s not [00:20:00] adequate to have only one. So the, the, the, I guess the clinical takeaway from that would be you wouldn’t be horribly alarmed by hurting an animal alone, but if you’re additionally doing one of those other things, then you start getting a sense of a disinhibited, angry person who, you know, is asserting power in this way.

I, I think, and then Catherine, would you agree there have been cases of offenders doing this even as small children? I mean, children and teenage, there’s no clear time. It starts, right, because I’m aware of cases where they were 6, 7, 8 years old doing things like that. And I’m certainly aware of teenagers who start doing it.

Anyone know an average age? I’ve seen it all over the map.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: I don’t know. I, and I think the pro part of the problem, is the kids admitting to doing it. They either have to be caught or they have to voluntarily admit, but I think a lot of them would keep that secret

Dr. Gary Brucato: in the case of [00:21:00] the boy that in Michigan that was recently convicted for the mass shooting Ethan Crumbly. The parents are, you know, in some hot water, you know, being involved in him getting a firearm. One of the things that I found very haunting about his story was that he had brought, reportedly brought the decapitated head of a bird into school in a small jar and left it in the bathroom, I think, for other students to see.

And there’s an incident which has not yet been tied to him. It may never be where the Children were playing in the schoolyard, and then there was a thud. And the severed head of a deer came rolling off of the roof and just sort of plopped into the yard and you know, if he is responsible for that, in addition to the bird, I think again, you start to see you know, this incredible provocative, haunting kind of expression of anger and you know, of a person who’s trying to say, you know, [00:22:00] Don’t mess with me.

You know, because it’s really very creepy. But I also think that there’s an oddness to some of these people because there is that detached experimental quality. Some of these people will talk about dissecting animals simply to, like the way a scientist would. You know, that they keep notebooks or record, you know, this is what happened when I did this to this animal.

And then they apply it. They try to apply it later to people. And but, but what I just wanted to stick in here is a, is that there also sometimes is a very clear pattern where we can see a child being abused and then they go out and hurt animals and then they may apply that to a human being, you know, and you sort of watch the.

The pattern. And in fact, a little later, I’ll talk about a case where that very clearly happened. But I think the key may be that a lot of them are physically abused themselves. And then Catherine, would you say there, there does appear to be [00:23:00] some relationship between corporal punishment, humiliation being physically abused or sexually abused, and.

hurting the bodies of these animals. But it may not be a clear correlation.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: The Crumbly case is interesting because that’s more a case of neglect and reactive anger. Whereas, I mean, the parents had horses. It’s not like they were animal abusers themselves. They obviously loved their horses because they were out with the horse rather than their son in some of these occasions.

So that’s an interesting and complex case. I don’t know that he was abused so much as the neglect made him angry, and he’s reacting.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yeah. The, the other thing I think it, it matters as who is the animal, is the animal a pet of theirs? Is the animal belong to, you know, are they trying to harass the neighbor and do things?

We certainly have examples of that. Or is, is it just a stray? All [00:24:00] of those things can, need to be put into for if you’re going to be looking at the impact.

Yeah,

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: I agree. Because Raider had a dog that he loved, but he would hang cats in the barn, approved by his grandmother, who didn’t like cats. So that to him was not abuse, it was that’s what she wanted.

And yet he did certainly have feelings for a pet dog, several pet dogs that he had. Yeah.

Dr. Gary Brucato: There are also serial killers who talk about that it was a kind of a bonding ritual, something that made them feel virile when their father, for example, would take them out hunting. That hunting is something else that figures into, for a lot of these guys, is that, that it may not be enough to just have an animal in front of you that you’re abusing, but there’s the excitement and the thrill of running after it.

And having it be helpless and, and trapping it and so that, and then you start to see that played out later with humans [00:25:00] and so, so I think that’s another, I mean, this is not to disparage people, everyone who hunts, I simply mean that in these cases, it can take on a very dark meaning.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Right. And I, yeah, I see some people in the chat are kind of related to what you’re saying there.

If an adult in the home kicks and beats an animal, the child sees this as okay. Then as they get older, could it move from animals to humans? They’re wondering. Well,

Dr. Ann Burgess: it

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: could. It doesn’t necessarily. I mean, we, one thing we do see that just because kids are abusive to animals in their teen years doesn’t mean they’ll go on to keep doing that in their adult years.

So they do often outgrow it. But so yes, they’re asking, could it be? Yes, it could be. I don’t know what the percentage would be, though.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: And also the questions coming here. Would it be helpful to teach children from an early age in schools? It seems especially in Ireland, children [00:26:00] learn from peers how to treat animals.

Dr. Ann Burgess: I know it’s some places when you’re trying to treat juveniles who have committed really aggressive acts that they try to teach them more compassion and so forth. They see if they can care for, for animals. I don’t know of any specific program, but I remember hearing, and I always thought that was quite interesting because they could watch that with supervision and they saw the person, it sounds like it’s more boys than girls, this is not necessarily, this is more gender related to males.

So, it is the question, what if a parent or somebody in the home witnesses, um, or is it If

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: the child witnesses an adult in the home.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Right. Well, that’s complicated because if the, if the adult is doing it and can say, well, I’m just making the, the dog behave or whatever the issue is, it and doesn’t explain it to the child.

Sure. That could be an issue [00:27:00] of repeating,

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Well, I, you know, I’m wondering what you do think about, I mean, I know that there are these programs now that they’re training programs, they kind of call them, they have all these different types but they’re all sort of the same design focused on children who seem to have these issues early on, where you’re focusing more on warmth and reward based parenting and teaching this is the way to parent as opposed to, you know, the opposite sort of punishment based because there seems to be some information that there’s these kids, if they have this, if they really have, you know, as children, they’re going to maybe become adults who would have maybe ASPD that they don’t respond to taking things away or, you know, negatives as far as like punishment based.

[00:28:00] Have you seen that in your work that there’s, in the people you’ve spoken to and think they don’t respond to that? I

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: think you might be talking about children at risk for being, becoming adult psychopaths who might in fact be born with a certain brain condition that involves callousness, emotional blunting and not responding to any kind of behavioral controls.

So I think that might be what you’re, you’re talking about. And, and so that’s difficult and requires, I think, very intensive one on one kind of training. But whether that would end up becoming animal abuse, I mean, it’s certainly not a given that it would.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Yeah, I’m wondering, from the individuals that you’ve, any of you have spoken to, does that kind of ring a bell from what they’ve talked about?

Like, just not really getting punishment based, and I don’t [00:29:00] mean punishment even necessarily like, Hitting and things like that, but, um, you know, non reward based responses to things that these kids have done wrong, you know, or instead of it being like a positive, like, oh, you get rewards for doing good.

You, instead they’re getting in trouble for doing, sorry, I’m going to echo again for some reason. I don’t know why, but does that ring a bell from the individuals that you’ve spoken to that it just didn’t work for them? It didn’t.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, I’ve had some experience where a teacher will get concerned about a child’s behavior in the classroom and will want to have some kind of consultation on it.

That’s one way. I don’t know if that’s what you’re talking about,

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: but well, I mean, more like it seems like there seems to be some indication that kids who maybe Are showing signs that [00:30:00] maybe down the line as adults, they would be growing up to have what would be called antisocial personality disorder.

It’s kids with maybe they’re being diagnosed with conduct disorder, for instance, that they respond best to reward based and they don’t, they kind of don’t get The traditional form of like, for some reason the words slip in my mind. Not negative, but when you Reinforcement? Negative, yeah, like, like Punishment.

Well, well, it, it’s

Dr. Gary Brucato: punishment, but Yeah. Yeah. Punishment. Yeah. I mean, it, it, it’s important to remember that when, when we are disciplined what, what’s really happening is a fear response in the brain. It’s like an amygdala brain reaction, right? And, and then we sort of, it imprints on us. It says like, don’t, don’t touch that stove again.

You know, and those of us who, you know, if you have a. Kind of functioning conscience [00:31:00] or morality, moral compass, you might also learn by empathy and kind of seeing that you’ve or compassion or had an effect on another person that hurt them. But imagine an individual that doesn’t really have an appropriate fear reaction and that same blunted emotional.

Aspect makes it difficult for them to feel guilt or empathy or compassion for another person. How would a person like that learn? Well, they would learn basically from a totally transactional relationship with somebody, where if you want this, this is what you’re going to do. If you don’t want this to happen, this is what you’re going to do.

And you see that, I’ve seen it more in in interventions that are designed for Offenders where it’s like, how do we get them to behave in a prison setting and you know, and, and, and, you know, even in psychotherapy, for example, when it’s utilized in that setting, one of the things you learn is, is that they learn to [00:32:00] mimic the compassionate insights that the therapist teaches them and then to use them transactionally to get what they want, like to sort of act kind to, to get privileges or to seem like you’re, you’ve gotten healthier or gained insight.

And so I think it becomes very transactional because it’s just not going to be about fear and you know, that, that’s the whole thing. In fact, for some of these guys. Getting in trouble and chaos and so forth can actually be the closest they come to getting really excited I mean, you know can almost take on a masochistic quality with some of them, you know, oh, I almost got caught Engaging in some highly sexualized inappropriate.

We certainly saw that with Raider Catherine I don’t know if that’s something you want to talk about. But I, but I think there is that, that quality of drawing your excitement from the ever increasing risk taking partly as a way of dealing with that numbness, that, that [00:33:00] shrieking numbness that they experienced about everything.

Cause imagine walking through life, unafraid and not really caring much about anything is, is a difficult inner experience.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Yeah. You know, I guess I’m wondering, what do we think is, or you know, where are you all at in what your, your research as far as what leads to this? Is it just the brain abnormality combined with the trauma?

Like, what, what are you finding? Is the pattern, or is there any, is it just all over the place?

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: Well, there’s no formula about any of this, and I think it’s, each case has its own developmental trajectory, its own triggers, its own influences. And so to, to try to box it into some kind of, is it nature or nurture, it just doesn’t really serve any purpose in terms of really treating somebody.

What we want to be able to [00:34:00] do is see what are the early signs in any particular individual and how that, what kinds of resources do we have to be able to intervene in an early, point. It doesn’t, I mean, it doesn’t really much matter what’s the percentage of nature and nurture. It really matters what are we doing with these individual cases.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Someone in that makes sense. Yeah.

Dr. Ann Burgess: I would just add that it’s very hard when you want to get at what the thought is going on in the person’s mind that was activating the behavior. And that’s a, that’s the hard part is how do you find that out before the behavior happens, right?

Dr. Gary Brucato: Exactly. And there’s a shame because some of these guys, if they had been treated a little better by the world, you wonder if their sensation seeking, fearless kind of quality might have been used pro socially.[00:35:00]

This might have been the kind of person who would, you know, hurl themselves on a grenade to save a platoon, you know, as opposed to somebody that, that needs to go out and level the playing field because, you know. People have heard them. In fact, all across history, people with psychopathic traits have been leaders, and, and people that have been very sexy and attractive and powerful and all that.

And I think that’s because it’s a, you know, if the person’s on your side, all that fearlessness and so forth would be very strong and make you feel safe. It’s only when it’s utilized in an antisocial way that it’s terrifying to have a human predator like that, right? But, but we forget that, that those traits can be utilized in different ways.

And and I think you see that sometimes, but what’s even more confusing is you could have two kids that grow up in the same house, exposed to the same stuff, and one becomes psychopathic, and the other one is almost pro social, and then you, you don’t know how to make sense out of it, and I think, to Catherine’s point, [00:36:00] there is a growing body of evidence where you could do research like this, there is a growing body of evidence that they, some of these people actually have brain abnormalities, there are different, there are different sizes, to the amygdala, the frontal lobe, the connections between them, sometimes even an absence there can be, you know, and it some of them have been head injured and then completely change after they have those injuries.

And I think that’s a very uncomfortable model because it makes people think that you’re calling it a sickness or you’re taking away the moral question. But I think when we start applying that kind of stuff, we missed the point that These are not mystic, these are not mystical people or like, you know, they’re not walking around like the devil in red tights.

They’re within the realm of what could happen to a human. I mean, wouldn’t you say, Anne and Catherine, that’s almost what’s scariest about them. Yeah.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yes. Yeah,

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: and we have some people [00:37:00] in the chat. Do any, yeah, I think you’re asking about the, if there’s an animal abuse registry in their states. I think, actually they have in different states.

I, they’re asking if you know if there’s any in your state, if this is an important tool. This is someone in Ireland asking if, if this is an important tool to prevent further cruelties to both people and animals.

Dr. Gary Brucato: Well there’s no mandated reporting even for clinicians that I’m aware of. We’re not mandated to report animal abuse, child abuse, of course, things like that, but animal abuse.

No, to my knowledge. Do you know, Anne and Catherine, have you ever heard of mandated animal abuse

Dr. Ann Burgess: reporting? No, and I even looked up on ACES, you know, adverse childhood experiences, whether it was. listed. And I think really, as I got into how many of our school shooters and other things have a history of this, it really should be listed there.

I don’t know why it couldn’t be because that’s such a[00:38:00] I think it’s a red flag, but I don’t know of anything certainly not mandated that I know of unless you’re well, wait a minute. I guess I have someone you can’t do. Some fights, rooster fights or something. You can’t, what was that one?

Dr. Gary Brucato: Yeah,

Dr. Ann Burgess: I think at that level, but that would be for profit.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: You know, unfortunately we’ve had this discussion on the show and I am blanking on that and I know that it’s definitely been advocated for. And I know we’ve had a couple of people who have talked about it and I can’t remember, there’s some. There’s something to that where they’re trying to get something going at the very least and But I just can’t remember We talked I had somebody on a in December from animal victory you might want to check that episode because I think we talked about it there, but and [00:39:00] Was I gonna say about that if you I know that I’ve gotten Oh something came into my email that It, it was talking about, for instance, vets, it was a conference that was coming up and talking about this very thing, that potentially having veterinarians and some other people in the animal world become mandated reporters for, for animals.

And it completely makes, I mean, it’s. It’s ridiculous that they’re, they’re not, I mean, it’s, it’s crazy, these animals, especially with vets, like they’re, they’re in your care, just like a doctor who would have a child come into their care. Of course they should be mandated. I mean, I don’t, I

Dr. Gary Brucato: don’t, I don’t, well, I think it, you know, it’s even more horrifying when you realize that we’re talking about the physical abuse or killing of animals, but there are also sexual abuses of animals and, you know, and these are things that, you know, offenders.

And you know, I mean, that’s like It’s hard to even [00:40:00] say out loud. It’s it’s so disturbing. I will tell you from the mass murder database. We did that animal assault was actually extremely rare in people that commit mass murder, which I don’t think would be too surprising because the vast majority of people who commit mass murder are not.

Really psychopathic or motivated by sexual fantasy or any of that kind of stuff. It’s a very different kind of person, but there are about 11. 78 percent of mass murderers who are actually serial killers. They’ve killed previously or later. For example, Dennis Rader that Catherine has known and written about is a mass murderer.

In the Otero case, for example, is a mass murderer who is also a serial killer, and he is someone who assaulted animals. He’s in our database as a mass murderer and but so there seems to be a very to me. And in my work, there is definitely a closer relationship with the [00:41:00] personality structure of a serial killer.

than a mass murderer or a spree killer or someone of that type. In fact, I think it’s almost a hallmark a little more. Does that jive Ann and Catherine with your sense of things that it would be less common in a mass murderer?

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: Yeah, I will say mass murderers often have rigid personalities and we have an animal around that doesn’t obey.

They’re going to, they’re going to go after it. I mean, Well, that’s

Dr. Gary Brucato: true. That’s true. But I mean, the history of playing out fantasies in childhood on animals. No, I think fantasy

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: and animal abuse are two different things. Yes. Because you can be abusive to an animal without it being a sexual thing.

Dr. Gary Brucato: Exactly.

I think where it takes on a fantasy element, a sexual element, it’s more a hallmark of a person. Of a serial killer attack. In fact, I think you said and that you saw 100 percent that the stats said 100 percent of sexually motivated serial killers had some history of that.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: Yeah, I would actually want to see that [00:42:00] database.

That doesn’t sound right to me.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Yeah. And I’d like to see, you know, it has a link to where the reference was. And for some reason that page didn’t, it got cut off on my printer. So I can’t even tell you what the study was that they got it from, but it’s the link. Okay. Coalition,

Dr. Gary Brucato: I think I have the article with the citation.

I can send it to Catherine and

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Lee. Yeah. Yeah, and they actually the link referenced you, Dr. Mercado, because you maybe tell people a little bit about your in the new evil, the, um, People who may not be familiar with that book and the

Dr. Gary Brucato: well, it’s, it’s going to be a little difficult to do the quick version of this.

So this is all I’ll say. Michael stone, my mentor had, I think, pretty famously created a, a gradation for how shocking and excessive and cruel. And so he conceptualized evil, a word that is commonly used when people see these [00:43:00] acts, not so much in a religious way, but as a term having to do with the, the excess and the way we react emotionally to the act.

And so he had the sense that if we use people’s reaction to it as a kind of a. You can see that some acts are certainly worse than others, you know, killing someone out of jealousy is certainly lower on the scale than repeatedly torturing people and killing them, that kind of thing. And and so I think what the link talked about in the article they did was simply that they were pleased that when I edited for the new evil, I did an edit of Michael scale.

We built it up. I talked to him about including animal abuses as shockingly cruel acts that should be included in category 16, or if there’s a sexual kind of torture of animals to include it in 17, which, which in Michael’s scale was just about excessively cruel acts or sexualized acts against humans.

And and they were really very [00:44:00] happy about that because they thought that, you know, obviously it, it shed a light. And how a lot of these people can demonstrate cruelty like that and so that that’s what it’s about.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Okay. Yeah, definitely. It’s great that that was included. And I have some questions here.

Do you think Paul Paul Gavias? Do you think that lack of morality can be an innate condition based on a myriad of developmental factors?

Dr. Gary Brucato: Complex. We would, we would win the Nobel Prize if we had to answer to that. Too broad for me.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: And also asking, how does your experience with these criminals affect your view of capital punishment? Kind of a different, a little off topic, but

if you’d like to answer, you don’t have to. I prefer not to. You don’t have to. That, yeah. And also, okay. Yeah. So you’re, [00:45:00] you’re campaigning for an all island animal cruelty registry in Ireland. Yeah. Oh, I think

Dr. Ann Burgess:that’s a great idea. Yeah, sure.

Dr. Gary Brucato: interesting thing to study a little further. It sort of makes me think, you know, and maybe in our research at Boston College, we can take a look at how many of our guys work.

We’re doing some of this stuff. I mean, like, for example, one of the things I, you know, a lot of people I think would be interested in is the relationship between domestic violence and animal abuse. And, having a look at the literature, I wasn’t too satisfied with the answer. I, I don’t, I think it’s not really very clear.

Do either of you know, Ann or Katherine if there’s any really strong evidence about those two things being linked in any way? What do,

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: linked, what do you mean?

Dr. Gary Brucato: Causally is one predictive of the other. Is domestic violence related to, I haven’t seen orchestrating domestic violence against a partner related [00:46:00] to animal abuse.

I mean, it seems like it would be, but is it shown in literature?

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: The, the literature I’ve seen shows that there, if there’s domestic abuse in the home, there’s a higher likelihood of kids potentially abusing animals because of the role model aspect to it and, and the instability of the home, the emotionality of the home.

But in terms of I don’t, I don’t, do you mean like somebody who’s being abused, like, like the wife or husband is now going to turn that on the animal? I don’t, I don’t know.

Dr. Gary Brucato: Yeah, I think it’s a little weak what we know about it in those areas. What do you think, Ann? Yeah, I haven’t.

Dr. Ann Burgess: I tried to take a quick look at some of the literature.

I didn’t see anything that would speak to that. It’s more of what I think Catherine said and more about if the child has been abused, that there’s a more likelihood that they may abuse an animal. And that makes sense because they can be recreating it or whatever [00:47:00] you want to call it as a way. But I do think that I was rather interested in how many of just a list.

What I just Googled in animal abuse and serial and murders or something like that. A lot came up. The one that was most outstanding is an international case. It was the Anders Behring Breivik over in, where is that, over in Norway. Norway, he would torment rats and put bumblebees in water so he could watch them drown and neighbors had made it clear to keep their Children had to stay away from him.

Just don’t come anywhere near him. And I think what that speaks to is that he would watch them die. Even, you know, these bumblebees, I guess, and that the neighbors knew about it. The kids knew about it. So that’s a pretty clear example. I think of someone who probably over time. There’s certainly things in his background, but, [00:48:00] um, Gary, your suggestion to do a, a little study.

Would be really quite interesting. It probably wouldn’t be that hard, but to get the information about what they did. I mean, this is evidently is there if we want to and all of the school shooters. I was really surprised at how many you’ve got, Michael Carney. You’ve got Nicholas Cruz. You’ve got Andy Golden.

All of these shooters have done things and it’s sometimes with their own pet people. Yeah,

Dr. Gary Brucato: so there’s got to be a, there are certainly a lot anecdotally, but when we did the, the large scale database, we found it to be pretty rare, but I, but I think that there has to be something to it that we, you know, that since there’s so many anecdotal cases, I think the case that, that it was really going around in my mind when we were invited to do this.

And I, I, I mean, we just don’t have the time to tell this whole story, but I’ll give you the short version [00:49:00] is there is a very infamous offender called Gary Heidnik Philadelphia based and Gary Heidnik had an extremely cruel and emasculating father who would do things like, you know, cause he was a bedwetter and the father felt that he had to humiliate Gary Heidnik to get him to stop wetting the bed and he would do things like dangle him outside the window by his ankles or put his wet sheets or underwear on a flagpole outside the window so that everyone would laugh and what happened is and I think this is where it’s so interesting Is that to start to get a feeling of taking it to getting this sort of sense of himself back, he started hanging animals, cats and other animals from trees. So you have a kid who’s being hanged by his father out the window now hanging animals. And then what happens with him, long story short is, is that he, after a whole series of separations from women that he had been [00:50:00] involved with and children, he had sired. He gets this million-dollar idea, he thinks, that he’s going to create a hole in the basement, a pit, in the basement of his home, and he’s going to get intellectually disabled women from a home that are going to live in the pit by force and sire him a line of children who are totally devoted to him for life.

So now he can’t lose anyone anymore, right? And he winds up torturing one of the women to death. By hanging or up, hanging, just like that. And then when he’s ultimately caught. He tries to hang himself in prison, and in jail that he tried to commit suicide by hanging himself. So I always thought there was something about that narrative arc where it’s like a hot potato, right?

Of like, dad abuses the kid, the kid takes out on the animal, he takes it out on an adult, and then finally it comes back around to the original object of abuse. And I think that’s just a beautiful [00:51:00] illustration of where the animal torment, the animal torture, just is an enormous Signifier and think about if somebody had said to him. What’s the meaning of doing this?

What are you trying to say? You know, that’s what always bothers me about these narratives about these guys is Where was the person who came in and said, Why are you doing that? I think we saw that with Jeffrey Dahmer’s dad When he was shocked to find things like Jeffrey Dahmer putting a crow in a box Until he no longer hears the squawk The squawk because it’s died in the box Or things like that I mean at some point the father gets horrified And kind of talks to him about it, but that’s the piece that that has always bugged me and the intervention by someone who says, you know, and and Catherine, haven’t you seen that to be missing and a lot of these narratives?

I mean, someone asking, what is this about? Why are you doing this?[00:52:00]

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yeah, I’d agree. You certainly would want to now, whether they ask it and it just doesn’t get reported. I don’t know. But I mean, it’s a such a logical statement.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Do you think it’s possible? Oh,

Dr. Gary Brucato: I’m sorry. Go ahead. No, it’s just that maybe the point is that no one cared.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: And I do think that in many instances, they’re trying to minimize the malignancy.

They’re, they’re trying to make it benign because they don’t want to face what it means, not just for the kid, for the child, but for the whole family. But what kind of stain is it on them as parents? So they tend to think it’s a passing phase that they’ll get over or, or they turn away from it and, and just not think about the, the impact of it and how significant it is.

I think you’re going to see that more. And I think Jeffrey Dahmer’s father’s entire book was all about that. And he admits it. He kept minimizing [00:53:00] things because he did not want to see what they meant.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: And for some reason, Dr. Ransom, you went a little blurry. I’m not sure why, but I don’t know if it’s when you pull away, you might be, might be trying to focus on you.

But this might be a little, two things. My husband did just post here. Thank you, husband. Some lawmakers in the state of New Jersey are trying to create a platform for businesses and organizations to easily identify animal abusers through an online animal abuse registry. He also texted me in 2014, the New York City Council passed the Animal Abuse Registration Act.

This act requires any adult convicted of an animal abuse crime after October 2nd, 2014, and residing in New York City. To contact the health department. They have to be added to the registry They’re prohibited from owning, possessing, residing with, having custody of, or intentionally engaging in any physical contact with an animal.

The registration period lasts for five years after sentencing or if incarcerated for five years after release from incarceration Which [00:54:00] is kind of concerning the short term of that, but there is bark. I had somebody from BARC on the show a lot Maybe it was the summer. I’m not even sure, but that’s a program for adults who have committed certain types of neglect would be one, not, not so much like severe animal abuse, but it is a program they can go through, and there does seem to be some effect for, for some of these people, but they may not be Hardcore, you know offenders, but and can therapists really talk people out of doing these things?

Does treatment work? So that’s the big question here. I know Dr. Ramsland has to jump off in a couple of minutes, but that is the big question. Does treatment work? We’ve kind of touched on that. But what do you what do you all think? Are you seeing hope in some of the literature at all?[00:55:00]

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: Well, since I’m blurred out, I’m not going to answer because I’m not a clinician myself. So I can’t tell you. I don’t know.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Thank you.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: this might be a good point for me to take my leave and allow the other two to answer questions.

Dr. Gary Brucato: You were about to say something and what was that?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yeah I was going to get into. I really was intrigued and with this assignment [00:56:00] of trying to get into some of the literature and see, and was surprised at how many and. And. You don’t know where they’re getting their information about what some of these adolescent school shooters have done, but any time that it has some example and some description, I think it’s wonderful.

Here’s Nicholas Cruz. Now, he was. Fairly recent back and he did the Parkland Florida shooting in 2018 and it was known that he did in elementary school. Now, that’s when what that’s when you’re in, what, 4th, 5th grade, he began shooting squirrels and chickens as a teenager, killed frogs, tried to maim a neighbor’s baby pot belly pigs, and tried to crush. animals trapped in rabbit holes. Now, that made me think of Ed Kemper, one of the serial killers who had, before he shot and [00:57:00] killed his grandparents they had got given him a gun to go out and shoot little animals. So, where do you draw the line if this is, you know, something that’s this is Montana or upper California, where it would be.

But the grandmother would always admonish him for killing certain ones. And he, she would say, don’t kill the, the, she didn’t like him killing the. birds, I think, and that it was okay if they killed a squirrel or something like that. But is that practice? I mean, I think, I don’t know whether Gary, you’ve seen that in any of your, but it’s really intriguing of where do you draw the line?

And, and once you Yeah. Yeah. Think across that line, how to, how to intervene. I think that’s what, Anne, you’re trying to, to get at, and maybe some of your viewers. When should you be concerned? And if you are concerned, what would you do? And who do we have that [00:58:00] can do it? I mean, how many of us know a therapist that could, has really in any way specialized with this?

I don’t know anybody that’s specialized in it, but I know that certainly therapists have been confronted with it.

Dr. Gary Brucato: I certainly had. over the years, I have had cases of people who tell me that they had been thinking, fantasizing about doing aggressive things, but that it helped that someone was kind to them. That on that particular day, when they were ready to snap, somebody said hi to them or whatever, you know, and it, it is very easy, especially when we conceptualize all these people as monstrous psychopaths.

That they’re kind of human with aberrations or a kind of amorality that isn’t black and white, right? They can, they can have friends and family and jobs and so forth and be a serial killer part of the dime. [00:59:00] And that’s what’s so horrifying about is that fragmentation, right? And and so some of these people will say, you know, it, it actually, you know, it mattered to me that somebody was nice to me, you know, and there are even there even been cases, for example, in mass shooters that I looked at in the database where they would spare the people who had been kind to them almost as a reward.

So you go around shooting, and then you skip over the one person who was nice to you, that kind of thing, right? And so I think it’s very difficult for us to understand the importance of stable relationships for these people. And you know, and, and that’s the other thing that’s always interesting to me is there are also serial killers who loved animals but hated people.

Who, who found the animals in their life to be very stabilizing and predictable. It was the people they loathed. And you know, that’s another interesting thing. I mean, I also want to make the point before it goes out of my head and [01:00:00] I don’t get to say it on this talk. Is that I resent when people call very violent people animals.

When they say he was just an animal, I don’t really like that. I make that point. I’m like the first page of The New Evil. I don’t care for it because you know, as Dostoevsky famously said that, that even if a tiger could. Nail a person up by his ears, he wouldn’t. Only humans have that inventive cruelty.

And because it’s all about symbolism and leveling the playing field and all that stuff. For animals, killing is a purely practical matter. And so that I think that comparison is an insult to some of these beautiful creatures, you know. So I think we have to be careful about that. But Ann, haven’t you seen some that, where the animals are actually a stabilizing force for that?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, one of the things you want to do with, especially with children who have perhaps been abused or neglected or whatever [01:01:00] is to give them a pet to have to care for because the pet, if they’re good to them, is going to respond. And so it could be a very positive healing kind of a situation.

So animals are very, very important. And in our lives and in people’s lives, so,

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: There is a program called Green Chimney.

Dr. Gary Brucato: The stable relationship is what so many of these people are missing. Absolutely. That’s the whole idea. So that it’s this thing that, you know, it just will never not love you, right?

Like, for example, right now, a very hot case in the news, of course, is the Idaho murders. Ann and I have had a lot to say about those Idaho murders. And one of the questions that gets asked is, “Why was Kaylee’s dog spared?” Right. And I can’t help but wonder if it’s because, and this is, of course, this person is innocent to prove guilty, but.

I can’t help but wonder if it’s because a person who was so [01:02:00] daunted by the unpredictability of relationships and people had a different attitude about animals. Remember, he was a vegan. He was a vegan, yeah. I mean, I always wondered, maybe animals were predictable to him, and he could love them. I don’t know, but it’s interesting to think about the dog was spared, especially because it probably would have been pawing and barking in the middle of the murders, right?

And it was left. So that’s really interesting. You know,

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, I’ve done a murder case where the animal, the dog was found locked in the, in a bedroom. And that seems really odd until you realize one who would do that, someone that the dog knows and so when it came down to who was the suspect, was it the husband or was it a stranger?

I think it became quite quite interesting. So a dog or animals can usually dogs can tell us an awful lot. I was going to go back to the original. To see what your viewers think if they noticed had fish [01:03:00] and started noticing all these fish dying, what they would do with it, would they look into it?

Because the story of who this turned out to be, it turned out to be someone who had been adopted and then found out that his mother, when he found his birth mother, had kept his sister. But had given him up for adoption. And the story goes that that’s when he began his killing, and he would kill, um, he used a gun.

And would kill couples that were parked in a car. And one psychological explanation of that was, and I’m just, I’m a messenger here, I didn’t say it, but he said that he was killing women so that they wouldn’t have children that would not be. love them or something like that. So it’s from the very little bit.

Oh, well, just some fish are dying all the way to this [01:04:00] killer. Serial killers. Outcome was quite interesting. I’m sure, Gary, you’ve got many, many stories that you can tell about how animals are, are were used in the cases that you examine.

Dr. Gary Brucato: I think it’s important to remember that About 50 percent it’s estimated, about 50 percent of the serial killers of the type we mean, sexually sadistic, fantasy-oriented, ego-driven, motivated by a desire to dominate and control, manipulate, to level the playing field, you know.

About 50 percent of them are of the slick Ted Bundy type, right? The, that kind of, you know. Almost like attractive, manipulative, kind of suave, you know, glib, kind of. But the other 50 percent are of the schizoid type. They’re more odd. The kind of person that the whole neighborhood would say was weird.

Isolative, peculiar, a little disorganized, etc. And those people [01:05:00] are the ones who tend To be more interested intellectually in cruelty. It’s not so much sadistic as it is experimenting with animals or people to see what’s inside of them Kemper was something like that. Kemper was very curious about what was inside of things. And I mean and could certainly talk about that. But you’re talking about a person who would talk about it like we would say I just want to see what happens It’s almost like the way some offenders talk about it is they’ll say I just don’t feel very much, and I want to see what it takes to make a person feel how much pain do they need before they’ll feel something because no matter what I went through, I never felt anything. It’s a kind of a strange experimentation and they have to see themselves. As, as doing this to animals, sometimes to be cruel, but it’s sometimes just to kind of see things, like, what they’ll do, how they escape, what sounds they make, what, you know, what happens to them when you touch [01:06:00] them with fire, what’s inside their bodies, you know, what happens if you keep their body parts, you know, etc.

What happens when you eat them? There have been some schizoid, kind of bizarre, more bizarre serial killers that will eat animals. For example, Richard Chase who was a schizophrenic serial killer. Had the belief that aliens were transmitting rays to his blood and putting powder inside his blood. So he needed to eat, you know, suck the blood of rabbits, cows, and other things by biting into them and then eventually started to do it to people. And then killed several people He was actually sort of caught by a friend of Ann’s and  and certainly a hero of mine. That was a Hazelwood case, wasn’t it?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Roy Hazelwood.

Dr. Gary Brucato: Yeah. And who wrote about it in a wonderful book called We Who Fight Monsters. Yeah. And and, and I, and I think you know, what, what I really want to drive home is the idea that [01:07:00] we cannot paint with a broad brush that people who abuse animals are all of that on that sort of trajectory towards traditional serial killing there.

You have to go into an individual case and determine the meaning of it. But I think. It would be pretty safe to say that if you have a child who is abusing animals, you may want someone to go in and find out why, because some of them are abused. I recently had to look at a case, and there’ll be no identifying information and I’m going to change this slightly, but I was asked about a case that had happened some time ago of someone who had put an object inside of a dog.

And when the person was questioned, they admitted that that had happened to them in childhood, that they have been a victim of parental abuse, and it was a way of sort of, they were, they knew they [01:08:00] experimented with that kind of a thing, but they weren’t violent, they were abused. And I think, again, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is.

For someone to just ask what this behavior is about. I mean, somebody had to find the hanging animals at the Heidnik yard, you know, and, and people saw that the father was abusing him. So, you know, I mean, and what you say, it’s like a failure of..

Dr. Ann Burgess: And it’s a very simple question you can say is, you know, “What are you thinking when, when you do that? Or what do you, what, what, what does that mean?” I think that that is just a basic kind of – or draw a picture if they’re not terribly verbal and they’re very young, see what they can draw for pictures. I see that one of these Woodham, Luke Woodham. Now, he was out of Mississippi, and he kept a journal.

Now, that journal, would be very important to look at and to see. And in the journal, he [01:09:00] evidently said that he had beaten his dog, Sparkle, with a club, doused her with lighter fluid, and set her on fire and threw her in a pond. Now, that’s very specific. You know, so, you

Dr. Gary Brucato:  For, for eventually playing that out with a person. You know, Michael Stone and a lot of other people always thought that cats were a favored animal victim for serial killers because of their resemblance to females. Michael Stone always thought that, that the face of a cat was very feminine, and that as a consequence, they were a common object of hostility.

It’s an interesting idea. It’s an old idea, but it’s interesting because I think one of the questions I cannot get an answer on from the literature, and anyone who knows me knows this is like a Dr. Mercado question. It bothers me, I don’t know the answer, is I don’t know statistically what the most common [01:10:00] animals are.

That are tortured by serial killers. I can’t answer that. So I want to know and but it certainly looks like it’s the typical animals that would be kept in a house. But, but, you know, cats, dogs yeah,

Dr. Gary Brucato: would think things like that. But it would be interesting to see. Yeah, if like Dahmer certainly went beyond and was skinning, you know, coyote, things like that, dogs you know, and other kind of animals, things that you could get out in the wild or he would keep the skulls that he found in the wilderness and sort of display them. But, but I think it’s an interesting question and maybe we’ll be the people to study it.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Do you think that maybe to some extent it’s just because of availability and like not getting caught or just because of how easy it is, it might actually be insects and bugs they find outside, and things like that could be maybe…

Dr. Gary Brucato: That’s a good point.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: But you do hear a [01:11:00] lot about cats. Like using a magnifying glass. Yeah, to burn them with a magnifying glass. A lot of kids do things like that. It makes them feel powerful. See that, and

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: that’s, I was going to ask you, you know, two things. One, you mentioned, you know, if people would just, if someone would have just asked.

This might be a little controversial, but there are, there’s some studies, right, that show that this is potentially hereditary, there’s some genetics possibly going on and with this callous-unemotional traits and maybe that puts them at risk of not having anybody ask because maybe possibly they’re not, the parent might not be, if they’re callous and unemotional themselves, they’re not reacting to these things the way that maybe others would.

Dr. Gary Brucato: How do we know if it’s genetic or if it’s just that the personality traits of the people that you’re exposed to cause you to sort [01:12:00] of mimic what you’re seeing around you?

I don’t know if it’s necessarily genetic or just picked up, you know, monkey see monkey do kind of a thing. But, but I mean, wouldn’t you say, Ann, you wouldn’t be able to tell the, the ideology of it from something like that.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yeah, I think, yeah, trying to get into etiology is way, way far down the road to any of this.

You haven’t even gotten basic statistics. I think some of Dr. Brucato’s questions need to be answered first, and then you can come up with hypotheses.

Dr. Gary Brucato: But I was horrified by, oh, go ahead, Anne.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Well, no, I was just curious. Do you think that there’s any other behaviors, peripheral behaviors, not animal abuse?

Like, what kind of things would people maybe If they’re really looking out and this might not even be family members, it might be teachers, whatever, that might indicate that there’s a problem in this kind of realm. 

Dr. Gary Brucato: flags. That’s a great question for [01:13:00] Ann about you know, antecedents to violence beyond animal abuse.

Right.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, I think anything that shows negative harmful, painful kinds of state, even verbally statements, how, how are people talked about or treated or something would, would certainly be something that you might want to follow up on. And, you know, I really do think that a famous psychiatrist once said, who knows their.

Their children best and I think mothers do and mothers may be no more than they will ever tell, but there’s got to be some way of helping mothers to talk about their concerns about their children. And that might be 1 way mother’s group or something like that. There, there’s certainly got to be. I would love to have talked on some of our serial killers with the mothers of them.

We talked with a few of them, but it would be [01:14:00] very revealing. I think and look at how many kill their mother. Yeah. I mean, that’s the other really scary thing. We just did a study of Indian, elder Indians where grandsons and grandsons had killed their mother, their grandmother. So something goes way back.

Dr. Gary Brucato: I think violent pornography, I think is very important to look for. I have found that in adolescents who, you know, who are. budding serial offenders. One of the first telltale signs is that fantasy drives them to look for visual depictions of, of people being abused. You know, so, for example, in the Rex Heuermann case, the accused Gilgo Beach killer, his search history contained things like children that had been beaten.

You know, there was sort of violent pornography, sexual assault, women, you know, girls [01:15:00] crying, being sexually all mixed up, right? Imagine bouncing back and forth between looking at pornography and images of people being beaten or crying. I mean, so that I think what you want to look for is some signs that the fantasy life., is demonstrating a fusion between violence and sex, that that’s an outlet, expression of violence, because what I think is, my sense is, that before the discovery of sex as that outlet animals are pretty common one.

It’s almost as if, like you, you realize you could go out and do it to women, or, you know, if you’re a male offender, you know, because they’re, they tend to be heterosexual offenders targeting females, although there are certainly homosexual serial killers that target men, virtually no women, or very few, you could count on a couple of hands who commit sexual homicide repetitively.

But it does seem that that, that there’s this kind of process of needing more and more [01:16:00] Cruelty more and more of a thrill and the wide-scale availability of violent pornography is a very dangerous, it’s a very dangerous thing It gets very addictive and then it gets boring because you’ve seen it all and then you need something more horrifying and more horrifying Just like what would happen with a drug Which is not enough for you anymore.

And this is what, I’m just writing about it with Ann. You know, for a book we’re doing on escalation. And I think that process of escalation is often about that. Of needing more and more of a thrill. And wouldn’t you say that offenders talk to you about that?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yes, they do. They’re aware of it.

There’s no secret to them. Yeah, I agree.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: It does look like there’s a study that, I don’t know, my husband is texting me instead of putting it in the chat, but he says in one study of him.

Dr. Gary Brucato: He’s indispensable, indispensable to have that (laughter).

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Like, I’m trying to look everywhere at the same time (laughter)

Dr. Ann Burgess: [01:17:00] Keep up with him there, Anne.laughter)

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: In one survey, 71 percent of domestic violence victims, victims reported their abusers also targeted pets. Researchers have found that pet abuse had occurred in 88 percent of families under supervision for physical abuse. And every 60 seconds, one animal suffers abuse.

Close to 65 percent of all abused animals are dogs.

Dr. Gary Brucato: There you go. There’s your answer

Dr. Ann Burgess: Dogs are the preferred animal?

Dr. Gary Brucato: It’s very good that you found that. I would like to see the study, and it would be interesting to see the sample size, and if it’s anything we could replicate, but it’s interesting. I mean, there’s always something to build on in previous research, and it might even be interesting to see who the authors are.

That’s how we build our network of collaborators. I mean, anybody that’s interested in that question is a friend of ours. That’s a that’s a that’s our kind of topic.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: The Animal Legal Defense Fund is very up on these things. And, [01:18:00] and probably have a, they have a lot of information. I’m sure The Animal Legal Defense Fund, they’ve been on this show actually before but this, this information is coming from the Humane Society site.

It does say most often reported are dogs, cats, horses, and livestock and factory farming. That’s a whole other issue.

Dr. Gary Brucato: Horses. That’s interesting. Ann would you have expected horses on that list?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, I’m with you. What sample are they using that has a horse that they can…

Dr. Gary Brucato: I’m curious about the data. Yeah, but as Katherine said, we got to see the data.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yeah, one that’s divided into small animals and then large animals.

Dr. Gary Brucato: I think that. That may be also important.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Well I know, one question that, and I don’t want to keep you guys too much longer, I know that we had a, we wanted to get you out of here at a certain time, but wondering, what is it like to do what you [01:19:00] do?

Dr. Ann Burgess: It, it, oh, I teach, which is it? Like teach ?

Dr. Gary Brucato: Which part of it do you mean? We, well, we do so

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: many things. I think, I mean, more more the, the, the interaction that you, you have with individuals and maybe, maybe not so much currently, I don’t know. But like, you know, having to have had conversations with people about these things directly, um, who have done these kinds of acts.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, it depends on how old they are and what they’re in for. If there are, say, a convicted offender, serial killer, like we’ve written about. Yes, that’s, that’s always interesting to see if they’ll be able to talk about it or volunteer it. If you’re working with a group of children, young people, youth, that’s a whole different, different matter.

But to me, it’s, it’s learning, and it’s, it’s adding to what, to a [01:20:00] knowledge base because there isn’t, especially in this, there isn’t that much out there. I think it’s really important. I wish that we had asked that for all of our 36 serial killers. We only have some of that information hearsay, if you will, from prior.

So, and I don’t always like to do that. I like to have some first-hand information. But I don’t know Gary had the same thing in his mass murderers. You had to rely on a lot of records, and, and be great if they had included it in on intake, but they all didn’t ask the right Questions.

Dr. Gary Brucato: I’m sure you have 119 years of data, so it depended on when the case is, you know, stemmed from.

I mean, what period? I mean, you know, media reports are all you have sometimes, you know, and you know how the media is with accuracy. You need to find multiple reports that say the same thing. For example, a newspaper could report on a mass murder. The day it happened and say [01:21:00] four people were killed, but then two days later, it’s six people because more people have expired in the hospital.

The facts change, you know, it’s a moving, you know, thing. Well, my answer to that is, is that I always try to bear in mind that it’s sort of the way that a surgeon or a nurse, I mean, Ann is a nurse, that has to encounter blood and gore and terrible things in the interest of saving a life that you just sort of go through it to get to what you need because at the end, we always have to bear in mind is this work we’re doing ultimately informs what law enforcement does and what emergency personnel do and how know, how people profile and conceptualize offenders and go out and stop them.

And the ultimate goal of it is to spare victims, whether they’re human or animal or, you know, victims. And and for Anne and for me and certainly for Catherine, the emphasis is really always on that. I think we, we bristle with a kind of a [01:22:00] horror and irritation at the emphasis that the public places. on finding the offenders interesting.

I mean, the reality is, is that they are secondary, if any, importance in the story. We see them essentially as. Informational sources to figure out how to stop this from happening to people. That’s really what it is. So that, and I think I always have to bear that in mind. And then I think to give a little bit more of a complicated response, sometimes what’s difficult about it is you go in expecting to encounter a kind of a diabolical colossus of evil, and instead what you find is a kind of a pathetic small human that is sometimes able to attach to you very exaggeratedly or is seeking attention pathetically and sometimes you even like them. And then you leave feeling horrible that you liked them so [01:23:00] much. And you don’t know why because there is humanity in there.

I have to tell you, there are a few of them. I have encountered some offenders. They’re so into this stuff day in and day out that you walk away from them and there is an almost foreboding kind of feeling of, of evil, you know, that kind of thing. But most of them are pretty fragmented and pretty pathetic.I have to tell you.

And basically what it boils down to is because of their needs, or their mood, or their fantasy, or whatever, they have decided that they were entitled to somebody’s kid, or an animal, or somebody’s friend, or whatever, out of the world. And we just don’t want that to happen to anybody else.

That’s really what this is about. And so it’s difficult work. I mean, we’re human beings. We see horrible things. But I think we take a clinical approach. We’re pretty, we have to be clinical and detached or we won’t get anywhere. What you’re saying, I mean, it’s very doctor-like.

Dr. Ann Burgess: You have [01:24:00] to be able to

Dr. Gary Brucato: That’s what it is, so. Well, I hope this was interesting and

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Absolutely,

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yeah, very interesting. I, I got into things I wouldn’t normally get into, so certainly going to put that on the list to always check. It should be on ACES, I think. Wonderful.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: We, we, we really appreciate everyone in the chat is just saying how much they appreciate you, you talking about this.

And I think it is a conversation that’s important. And like we talked about, you know, the registry, things like that. We need to do more for animals and protecting them, but getting to the root of this is is so important. And I really want to thank you, first of all, for being here. And also maybe just to end on a fun note, what’s your favorite animal?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Oh, dogs are my favorite. Yeah. Gary, what are yours?

Dr. Gary Brucato: I have a, I have a soft spot for a number of animals. I’ve always been a very big lover of [01:25:00] elephants. I’m crazy about elephants. I’m a very big lover of any large cat. Especially you know, panthers and jaguars and lions and so forth, the tigers, especially, and and I, and I have a real soft spot for whales. I love them. I’m a big marine animal guy, but but whales in general. They just fascinate me. I mean, there’s something about them. So extraordinary. You ever see a whale come out of the water? It’s you never forget it. So majestic. And, you know, and so, but, but I do want to say before we end. I hope that some of the people viewing will consider pet adoption.

You know, good people in good homes have to remember that there is just a whole world of animals that are strays and, you know, that are born and, you know, mills and all this kind of stuff. And they’re just, they’re so adorable. Go look at them. You’ll fall in love, you know. You’ll, you’ll, you know, they’ll become the center of your life.

And, and I think if you have a heart big [01:26:00] enough for it, you know, I mean, cause it’s, it’s really tragic when you think about that some of these places won’t keep an animal forever, you know, and, and you, you know, you, you, you kind of give it a life, you give it hope, but you know, and, and so if you have it in your heart, I, I really think it’s important.

I, I know everybody here would echo that.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Well, and especially now, a lot of them are being, turning up now, people are, bringing them to the shelters because they adopted them during COVID working from home. Now they’re getting called back to the office and the shelters are now getting overrun with animals being sent back.

So that’s a very important message. Thank you for, for bringing that up.

Dr. Gary Brucato: Well, it was so nice to be invited.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Very good evening. Thank you very much, Anne.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: It was an honor to have you.

Dr. Gary Brucato: Gave us a lot to think about. We have a lot in our research.

Anne Angelo Webb, LCSW, MS: Yes. I can’t wait to hear about that down the road. Absolutely. So thank you so much. It was an honor to have [01:27:00] you and, and everyone in the chat thank you and everyone watching the replay. If you do think of it, please like, subscribe. I always forget to say that. And share and to everyone out there. God bless and have a wonderful evening. Thank

Dr. Gary Brucato: Thank you.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Bye-Bye.