Stephen G. Michaud > Quotes

“To the sexual offender, possession is power, and total possession is absolute power.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“The day Spenkelink was put to death a popular Jacksonville disc jockey aired a recording of sizzling bacon and dedicated it to the doomed man.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy

“All were dissected or decapitated or sexually assaulted after death. He cut leg meat from two of his victims into a macaroni casserole he prepared and ate. Kemper bludgeoned his mother with a hammer as she slept. He sawed off her head, had sex with her corpse, and carved out her larynx and shoved it down the garbage disposal.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“With serial killers, for example, about the only safe generalization is that an inexplicably large percentage of them are named Wayne or Ricky Lee.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“Bundy wasn't just a savage killer; he was a degenerate, too.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Ted Bundy : Conversations with a Killer

“He said that a killer comes to hunting humans gradually. The appetite builds from a young boy’s undifferentiated anger and morbidity of mind to a search for ever more violent pornography, the visual and written material that Ted believed had shaped and focused his fantasy world. Then comes the window peeping, followed eventually by crudely conceived and unsuccessful assaults. In Ted’s case, these gave way, over time, to a sophisticated taste for the chase and its aftermath: the selection of what he called “worthy” victims, pretty and intelligent young daughters and sisters of the middle class, nice girls whom Ted desired to possess, he said, “as one would possess a potted plant, or a Porsche.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“On his first day in charge of his new command, Hazelwood inspected the MPs’ living quarters and equipment. “They were pretty awful,” he says. “I picked up one soldier’s rifle and discovered that it was rusted shut. “The first sergeant said, ‘Sir, here’s your chance to establish your authority. Court-martial the soldier.’ “I said, ‘No, I think I’ll put him on the lead Jeep on tomorrow’s four a.m. convoy escort—with this weapon.’ “That PFC spent the entire night cleaning his weapon.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“The rest of the story is better told in the concluding chapters of Terrible Secrets. With almost no chance of rescuing himself, Bundy nonetheless directly cleared four cases for Keppel, and indirectly confirmed he had killed the four other victims on Bob’s list. He denied, unconvincingly, his culpability for several other unsolved Washington state killings – including that of an eight-year-old child Keppel believes Ted killed when he was fourteen - and then suggested in their anxious final interview that three other of his Washington victims remained unaccounted for. He could not, or would not, say who they were, or where they were.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder

“Liebert and his team added that an offender so slick and bold and self-assured probably was practiced in committing this sort of crime and that he did so compulsively. He’d killed before and would want to kill again. There also was a good chance that he was a necrophile. If we ever found the victims, they likely would have been mutilated or dismembered.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder

“TB: The overexcited, overaroused, driven, compulsive state this person was in… could in no way be integrated with what we characterize as the moral, ethical, law-abiding part of the individual. We’d probably be more accurate if we stated that this normal self had been repressed… to such a degree that even the encounter with the first victim did not sufficiently arouse it… so it could take predominance.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer: The Death Row Interviews

“Alton Maddox later was suspended from practicing law for five years after refusing to cooperate with a lawyers’ disciplinary committee investigating his conduct during the Brawley affair.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“Bundy also cleared cases with detectives from three other western states, acknowledging in all a murder toll of 31 victims, certainly fewer cases than he actually committed, but as many as Ted in his confused final hours was prepared to admit.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder

“Every single sexual deviation is overwhelmingly dominated by white males. And most sexually related ritualistic crimes are committed by white males.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“When I asked if a guy so obviously crazy would have a history of mental problems, including institutionalization, neither of them believed he necessarily did. In contrast to the brutal and primitive murderer they described, Liebert and Berberich agreed that the public “Ted” obviously was highly credible, which suggested to them that he was well-concealed within his community and circle of friends. For that reason, he likely would be difficult to isolate as a suspect.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder

“To a degree, Sharpton, Mason, and Maddox succeeded in making the truth of the case irrelevant. They promulgated a “could have been” theory that had resonance for many blacks distrustful of white authority.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“Mike Fisher had extradited Bundy to Aspen in January from the Utah state prison in Draper, where the personable former law student was serving up to 15 years for the 1975 aggravated kidnap of a 19-year-old telephone operator. Bundy already had been caught in an escape attempt from the penitentiary print shop, “a miserable little plot that I hatched,” as he’d later describe it to me. At the time, I agreed with Mike Fisher and others that he’d probably try again. Since his arrival in Aspen, Ted had become a celebrity to many of the mountain resort’s young and irreverent fun seekers, who reacted to his dramatic courthouse leap with amusement.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder

“Though an incredibly destructive example of the so-called lust murderer, a fantasy-driven offender whose homicides are marked by a wild and primitive fury, Bundy was also a bright and smooth-talking psychopath, witty and urbane, handsome in his younger days, and the object of not a few young women’s sexual fantasies, as well. Until you got to know him, it was a battle (even for cops) to reconcile the pleasant and friendly defendant who so fascinated the press and the public with the beast that lurked within. These qualities, plus his extraordinary instincts as a predator, were major reasons Ted made it so devilishly difficult for us to stop him. As he’d later brag to me, “I have a Ph.D. in serial murder.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder

“Guilt? It’s this mechanism we use to control people. It’s an illusion. It’s a kind of social control mechanism – and it’s very unhealthy.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer: The Death Row Interviews

“Our captain, Nick Mackie, for some reason didn’t trust that Roger and I could interview anybody, so Mackie decided that the first round of interviews with witnesses at Lake Sam would be done by a team of local mental health professionals led by Dr. John Liebert and Dr. John Berberich, since deceased. Liebert is a forensic psychiatrist, and Berberich was a clinical psychologist, who advised police departments on internal issues. Both men taught at the University of Washington. Liebert advised King County Superior Court Judges on murder defendants’ potential for violence. For 20 years or more, he had interviewed every convicted murderer in the county and prepared a post-sentence report for the court.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder

“TB: A burden? No, I carry no burden, except being in prison.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer: The Death Row Interviews

“And yet, is there a more crucial phrase used in the criminal trial process?”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer: The Death Row Interviews

“One of our elusive killer’s critical advantages was the ingrained habit among police agencies not to share information with one another.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder

“TB: You have that period where he swore to himself that he’d never do it again. That was the end of it. That he felt he had it under control. It was the deceptive fashion, you might say, in which that psychopathology withdrew into this dormant stage that (led) the individual (to the) erroneous belief that he got it out of himself. (..) he would try to indulge himself in normal activities. (..) a state of mind, that was without the fear, the terror, and the harm. But slowly, the pressures, tensions, dissatisfactions which, in the very early stages, fueled this thing, had an effect. (Yet) it was more self-sustaining and didn’t need as much tension or as much disharmony externally as it had before. (..) this condition would generate its own needs.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer: The Death Row Interviews

“On July 13, 1998, after eight months of protracted and acrimonious legal wrangling, a six-person jury decided that Sharpton, Mason, and Maddox indeed had defamed Pagones. Sixteen days later, they assessed Sharpton $65,000 in damages, Maddox $95,000, and Mason $185,000.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators

“TB: I mean I don’t feel guilty for anything! I feel less guilty now than I’ve felt in any time in my life. About anything. And it’s not that I’ve forgotten anything, or else closed down part of my mind, or compartmentalized.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer: The Death Row Interviews

“C. Vernon Mason was disbarred for seven years by the New York State Supreme Court for price-gouging his poorer clients. He entered the New York Theological Seminary as a student.”
― Stephen G. Michaud, The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators