by Colin Wilson
Agent Howard Teten, who taught one of the original FBI courses in applied criminology at the Academy, also seemed to have a natural talent for ‘profiling’ random killers, which he had been applying since the early 1970s. On one occasion, a California policeman had contacted him about a case in which a young woman had been stabbed to death by a frenzied killer. The frenzy suggested to Teten that the murderer was an inexperienced youth, and that this was probably his first crime, committed in a violently emotional state. And, as in the later case of the Bronx schoolteacher, Teten thought the evidence pointed to someone who lived close to the scene of the crime. He advised the policeman to look for a teenager with acne, a loner, who would probably be feeling tremendous guilt and would be ready to confess. If they ran across such a person, the best approach would be just to look at him and say, ‘You know why I’m here.’ In fact, the teenager who answered the door said; ‘You got me,’ even before the policeman had time to speak.
The FBI’s new insight into the mind of the killer and rapist began to pay dividends almost immediately. In 1979, a woman reported being raped in an East Coast city; the police realised that the modus operandi of the rapist was identical to that of seven other cases in the past two years. They approached the FBI unit with details of all the cases. The deliberation of the rapes seemed to indicate that the attacker was not a teenager or a man in his early twenties, but a man in his late twenties or early thirties. Other details indicated that he was divorced or separated from his wife, that he was a labourer whose education had not progressed beyond high school, that he had a poor self-image, and that he was probably a peeping Tom. In all probability, the police had probably already interviewed him, since they had been questioning men wandering the streets in the early hours of the morning. This ‘profile’ led the police to shortlist forty suspects living in the neighbourhood, and then gradually, using the profile, to narrow this list down to one. This man was arrested and found guilty of the rapes.
It soon became clear that psychological profiling could also help in the interrogation of suspects. The agency began a program of instructing local policemen in interrogation techniques. Their value was soon demonstrated in a murder case of 1980.
On 17 February the body of a woman was found in a dump area behind Daytona Beach Airport in Florida; she had been stabbed repeatedly, and the body was in a state of decomposition, which indicated that she had been dead for a matter of weeks. She was fully dressed and her panties and bra were apparently undisturbed; she had been partially covered with branches and laid out neatly and ritualistically on her back, with her arms at her sides. The FBI team would immediately have said that this indicated a killer in his late twenties or early thirties.
From missing person reports, Detective Sergeant Paul Crowe identified her as Mary Carol Maher, a 20-year-old swimming star who had vanished at the end of January, more than two weeks previously. She had been in the habit of hitching lifts. Towards the end of March, a local prostitute complained of being attacked by a customer who had picked her up in a red car. She had been high on drugs, so could not recollect the details of what caused the disagreement. Whatever it was, the man had pulled a knife and attacked her—one cut on her thigh required 27 stitches. She described her assailant as a heavily built man with glasses and a moustache, and the car as a red Gremlin with dark windows. She thought that he had been a previous customer, and that he might live in or near the Derbyshire Apartments.
Near these apartments an investigating officer found a red Gremlin with dark windows; a check with the Department of Motor Vehicles revealed that it was registered to a man named Gerald Stano. And the manager of the Derbyshire Apartments said that he used to have a tenant named Gerald Stano, who drove a red Gremlin with dark windows. A check revealed that Stano had a long record of arrests for attacking prostitutes, although no convictions; he apparently made a habit of picking up prostitutes who were hitchhiking.
A photograph of Stano was procured, and shown to the prostitute, who identified the man as her attacker.
It was at this point that Detective Crowe heard about the case and reflected that Mary Carol Maher had also been in the habit of hitching lifts—she had been an athletic young woman who was usually able to take care of herself. Crowe’s observations at the crime scene told him that Mary’s killer had been a compulsively neat man; he was now curious to see Stano.
The suspect was located at an address in nearby Ormond Beach, and brought in for questioning. Crowe stood and watched as a colleague, whom he had primed with certain questions, interrogated Stano. But his first encounter with Stano answered the question about compulsive neatness; Stano looked at him and told him that his moustache needed a little trimming on the right side.
What Crowe wanted to study was Stano’s body language, which was as revealing as a lie detector. And he soon discovered that Stano was an easy subject to read. When telling the truth, he would pull his chair up to the desk or lean forward, rearranging the objects on the desktop while talking. When lying, he would push back his chair and cross his legs, placing his left ankle on his right knee.
It was not difficult to get Stano to admit to the attack on the prostitute—he knew that she could identify him. Then Crowe took over, and explained that he was interested in the disappearance of Mary Carol Maher. He showed Stano the young woman’s photograph, and Stano immediately admitted to having given her a lift. ‘She was with another girl,’ he said, pushing back his chair and placing his left ankle on his right knee. After more conversation—this time about the fact that Stano was an orphan—Crowe again asked what had happened with Mary Carol Maher. Pushing his chair back and crossing his legs, Stano declared that he had driven her to a nightclub called Fannie Farkel’s—Crowe knew this was one of Mary’s favourite haunts, a place frequented by the young set—but that she had not wanted to go in. Crowe knew that the truth was probably the opposite; Stano had not wanted to mix with a younger crowd (he was 28). He asked Stano if he had tried to ‘get inside her pants’. Stano pulled the chair up to the desk and growled, ‘Yeah.’ ‘But she didn’t want to?’ ‘No!’
Crowe recalled being told by Mary’s mother that her daughter had, on one occasion, ‘beaten the hell’ out of two men who had tried to ‘get fresh’. ‘She could hit pretty hard, couldn’t she?’ ‘You’re goddam right she could,’ said Stano angrily. ‘So you hit her?’ Stano pushed back his chair and crossed his legs. ‘No, I let her out. I haven’t seen the bitch since.’
Crowe knew he now had the advantage. As he pressed Stano about the young woman’s resistance, it visibly revived the anger he had felt at the time. And when Crowe asked: ‘You got pretty mad, didn’t you?’ Stano snorted: ‘You’re damn right I did. I got so goddam mad I stabbed her just as hard as I could.’ Then he immediately pushed back his chair, crossed his legs, and withdrew his statement. But when Crowe pressed him to tell how he stabbed her, he pulled his chair forward again and described stabbing her backhanded in the chest, then, as she tried to scramble out of the door, slashing her thigh and stabbing her twice in the back—Crowe had already noted these injuries when he first examined the body. After this admission, Stano drove with Crowe to the dump behind the airport, and showed where he had hidden the body.
It was after Stano had signed a confession to killing Mary Carol Maher that one of Crowe’s fellow detectives showed him a photograph of a missing black prostitute, Toni Van Haddocks, and asked: ‘See if he knows anything about her.’ When Crowe placed the photograph in front of Stano, Stano immediately sat back in his chair and placed his left ankle on his right knee. But he persisted in his denials of knowing the woman. Two weeks later, on 15 April 1980, a resident of Holly Hill, near Daytona Beach, found a skull in his back garden. Local policemen discovered the scene of the murder in a nearby wooded area—bones scattered around by animals. When Crowe went to visit the scene, he immediately noted that four low branches had been torn off pine trees surrounding the clearing, and recognised Stano’s method.
Back at headquarters, he again showed Stano the photograph, asking: ‘How often do you pick up black girls?’ Stano pushed back his chair. ‘I hate them bastards.’ ‘But you picked her up.’ Stano stared at the photograph, his legs still crossed. ‘That’s the only one I ever picked up.’ It was at this point that Crowe realised that he was talking to a multiple killer.
Stano persisted in denying that he had killed Toni Van Haddocks. Crowe stood up to leave the room. ‘I know you did because you left your signature there.’ Stano stared with amazement, and then called Crowe back: ‘Hey, wait. Did I really leave my name there?’ Realising that he had virtually admitted to killing her, he went on to confess to the crime. But these two murders, he insisted, were the only ones he had ever committed.
Crowe did not believe him. Now he knew that Stano was a ritualistic killer, and that ritualistic killers often kill many times. There had been no more recent disappearances in Daytona Beach, so Crowe studied the missing persons files and records of past murders. He found many. In January 1976, the body of Nancy Heard, a hotel maid, had been discovered in Tomoka State Park, near Ormond Beach, where Stano lived. Reports said the death scene looked ‘arranged’. She had last been seen alive hitchhiking. Ramona Neal, an 18-year-old from Georgia, had been found in the same park in May 1976, her body concealed by branches. In Bradford County, a hundred miles away, an unknown young woman was found concealed by tree branches, while in Titusville, to the south, another young woman had been found under branches—a young woman who had last been seen hitchhiking on Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach.
When Stano had moved to Florida in 1973—from New Jersey—he had lived in Stuart. A check with the Stuart police revealed that there had been several unsolved murders of young women there during the period of Stano’s residence.
Stano’s adoptive parents told Crowe that they had fostered Gerald even after a New York child psychiatrist had labelled him ‘unadoptable’. He had been taken away from his natural mother as a result of ‘horrible neglect’. In all probability, Stano had never received even that minimum of affection in the first days of his life to form any kind of human bond. He had never shown any affection, and he had been compulsively dishonest from the beginning, stealing, cheating, and lying. He preferred associating with younger children—a sign of low self-esteem—and preferred women who were deformed or crippled—he had once impregnated a retarded young woman. He had married a compulsive overeater, but the marriage quickly broke down.
Crowe traced Stano’s wife, who was living with her parents in a house of spectacular untidiness—Crowe admitted that it reminded him of the home of the TV character Archie Bunker, who spends most of his time in his undershirt. There Stano’s ex-wife answered questions as she rested her huge breasts on the kitchen table. Stano’s sexual demands had been normal, as was only to be expected ‘with his itty-bitty penis’. But he had a peculiar habit of going out late at night, and returning, exhausted, in the early hours of the morning.
What had now emerged about Stano convinced Crowe of the need for further psychological profiling, and he called in an Ormond Beach psychologist, Dr Ann MacMillan, who had impressed police with her profile of mass killer Carl Gregory. The result of tests on Stano revealed a psychological profile almost identical with those of Charles Manson and David Berkowitz; she believed that it meant that his crimes were predictable, and that he belonged to a group that might be labelled ‘born killer’.
Over many months, Crowe’s interrogation of Stano continued. At some point, Stano realised that Crowe was reading his physical signals, and changed them. But his compulsive nature made it inevitable that he developed new ones, and Crowe soon learned to read these, too. Eventually, Stano confessed to killing 34 women; then, typically, he declared that this had been a stratagem to make him appear insane. His memory of his crimes was remarkably detailed—for example, he was able to describe a prostitute whom he had picked up in Daytona Beach as wearing a brown leather jacket, brown shoes, and a shirt with an inscription: ‘Do it in the dirt.’ When he led them to the woman’s skeleton—covered with branches—the police found that it was wearing precisely these clothes. With plea-bargaining, Stano finally agreed to admit to six murders. On 2 September 1981, he was sentenced to three consecutive terms of 25 years—75 years in all—and was taken to the Florida state prison. But a later trial resulted in a death sentence.
One of the most widely publicised cases of these early years of profiling began in Anchorage, Alaska, with the disappearance of a number of ‘exotic’ dancers. In Anchorage, the temperature is so low that it is impractical for prostitutes to walk the streets. The majority of them solve the problem by working in topless bars, and making appointments with clients for after hours. Few people notice when such a girl vanishes, although bar owners were often puzzled when their dancers failed to show up to collect their pay.
When, in 1980, building workers on Eklutna Road discovered a shallow grave, which had been partly excavated by bears, containing the halfeaten body of a woman, it seemed likely that she might be one of the missing women. Since the advanced state of decay made it impossible to identify the body, she became known in the records as ‘Eklutna Annie’.
Two years later, on 12 September 1982, hunters found another shallow grave on the bank of the Knik River, not far from Anchorage; this time it was possible to identify the body in it as 23-year-old Sherry Morrow, a dancer who had vanished the previous November. She had been shot three times, and shell casings near the grave indicated that the weapon had been a high-velocity hunting rifle that fires slugs—a .223 Ruger Mini-14. Here, once again, the investigation reached a dead end since it was impossible to interview every owner of such a rifle.
An odd feature of the case was that the clothes found in the grave had no bullet holes, indicating that the woman had been naked when she was killed.
A year later, on 2 September 1983, another grave was found on the bank of the Knik River; the woman in it had also been shot with a Ruger Mini-14. The victim was identified as Paula Goulding, an out-of-work secretary who had found herself a job as an exotic dancer in a topless bar. She had started work on 17 April 1983, and had failed to return eight days later, leaving her pay cheque uncollected. The bar owner commented that he had been reluctant to hire her because she had obviously been a ‘nice girl’, who was only doing this because she was desperate for money. Again, there were no clues to who might have killed her.
Investigators checking the police files made a discovery that looked like a possible lead. On the previous 13 June a frantic 17-year-old prostitute had rushed into the motel where she was staying, a handcuff dangling from her wrist, and told her pimp that a client had tried to kill her. A medical examination at police headquarters revealed that she had been tortured. She told of being picked up by a red-haired, pockmarked little man with a bad stutter, who had offered her $200 for oral sex. She had accompanied him back to his home in the well-to-do Muldoon area, and down to the basement. There he had told her to take off her clothes, then snapped a handcuff on her, and shackled her to a support pillar. The tortures that followed during the next hour or so included biting her nipples and thrusting the handle of a hammer into her vagina. Finally, he allowed her to dress. He told her that he owned a private plane, and was going to take her to a cabin in the wilderness. The young woman guessed that he intended to kill her—she knew what he looked like and where he lived. So as the car stopped beside a plane, and the man began removing things from the trunk, she made a run for it, and succeeded in flagging down a passing truck.
Her description of the ‘John’ convinced the police that it was a respectable citizen called Robert Hansen, a married man and the owner of a flourishing bakery business, who had been in Anchorage for 17 years. Driven out to the Muldoon district, the young woman identified the house where she had been tortured; it was Hansen’s. She also identified the Piper Super Cub airplane that belonged to him. The police learned that Hansen was at present alone in the house—his family was on a
trip to Europe.
When Hansen was told about the charge, he exploded indignantly. He had spent the whole evening dining with two business acquaintances, and they would verify his alibi. In fact, the two men did this. The prostitute, Hansen said, was simply trying to ‘shake him down’. Since it was her word against that of three of Anchorage’s most respectable businessmen, it looked as if the case would have to be dropped.
After the discovery of Paula Goulding’s body three months later, however, the investigating team led by Sergeant Glenn Flothe decided that the case was worth pursuing. If Hansen had tortured a prostitute, then decided to take her out to the wilderness, he could well be the killer they were seeking.
The investigators contacted the Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico. What they wanted was not a profile of the killer—they already had their suspect—but to know whether Robert Hansen was a feasible suspect.
Flothe spoke to Roy Hazelwood, who told them not too tell him anything about their suspect, but to begin by giving him the details of the crimes, and the story of the prostitute who had been tortured. When they had finished, Hazelwood gave them a word picture of the kind of person they could be looking for—some local businessman who loved hunting, who was psychologically insecure, and possibly had a stutter.