Smashing Interviews Magazine

Compelling People — Interesting Lives



September 2010



Pat Brown Interview: 'Van der Sloot Most Likely Date Rapist with Rage Problem'

Written by , Posted in Interviews Newsmakers

Pat Brown

Fifty-five year old Maryland resident Pat Brown is one of the few women profilers who assist police departments and victims’ families by analyzing physical and behavioral evidence to make determinations about crime suspects. She is also a television commentator, author, and founder and CEO of The Sexual Homicide Exchange.

In Brown’s latest book, The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths, written with Bob Andelman, she tells the story of how a murder suspect living right under her nose practically thrusts her into a career as a criminal profiler.

"As a matter of fact, psychics are one of the biggest detriments I’ve ever encountered on a homicide case. They disturb the family tremendously."

In The Profiler, the authors also give readers a better understanding of deductive criminal profiling and how this scientific analysis that is based on physical and behavioral evidence, can be one of the most beneficial tools available to law enforcement officers today.

Brown has a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice from Boston University and has been a frequent guest on Nancy Grace and Jane Velez-Mitchell, as well as making several appearances on The Today Show, The Early Show, Larry King, FOX & Friends, America’s Most Wanted, Inside Edition, and The Montel Williams Show.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Pat, according to your book, The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths, a murder in your hometown basically began your career as a criminal profiler.

Pat Brown: Correct.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You suspected that your house boarder whom you identify as “Walt Williams,” was a killer. Many people would not have taken the chance to search his room for evidence even though they were suspicious of his guilt. Why did you?

Pat Brown

Pat Brown (Joyce Lundeen Public Relations)

Pat Brown: Yeah, sometimes I look back and wonder that myself (laughs). It would have been easier just to say that it was silly and that it just couldn’t be true. That’s a common reaction for most people. Somebody they know just couldn’t be the guy. You say, “I’ve seen him making noodles for lunch and going to a movie. He can’t be a serial killer.”

The tendency is to downplay your gut feelings or evidence (because I’ve never liked gut feelings). This can be true for personal relationships as well with a spouse or significant other. You have evidence that they’re controlling or that they lie, but somehow you say, “Well, everybody has their quirks so maybe I’m judging him wrongly. I’m not perfect either.”

My ex-husband (as much as I dislike him at the moment) walked down that same path as where the girl was killed, but I know he’s not a serial killer. But, my boarder not only walked down that path, he called women sluts, bitches, and whores, and liked the story of killing women in the park at the time a woman is brutally murdered. You just can’t ignore that.

What really bothered me was that if I knew information about this man and did not come forward, I would be one of those people that would let a killer go free even if it was an uncomfortable situation to be in. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night because I’d think about that girl being murdered and her family.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): I’m sure it was frustrating when the police basically dismissed you.

Pat Brown: Yeah, I was actually stunned. I wanted them to take him in and interview him. I was shocked when they didn’t even show any interest in him. That boggled my mind because I knew I was being logical. I went back and re-read my notes and thought, “Oh my God, what an overwhelming amount of information!” For that to be ignored was just stunning to me.

I was very pleased six years later when I did get the case reopened and the investigator said, “What the heck were they thinking? How could they have not looked at this man?” It was nice to hear that. They did think it was their guy, but he wasn’t convicted. He lives a mile down the road from me, but at least I feel somewhat exonerated.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Are you afraid to this day that "Walt Williams" will still come after you?

Pat Brown: No. Actually, that fear was cured a decade ago when I had sufficiently studied serial killer behaviors. Unlike almost every movie and television portrayal, serial killers do not go after profilers and detectives. They would not risk the link back to them.

If they are enraged that someone is trying to put them away, they will simply go take out that rage and feeling of powerlessness on a stranger, then they will feel better. In reality, serial killers tend to be cop wannabes and would rather chat with cops than kill them, play mind games with them in interviews, than destroy them.

They also think that profilers actually "get" them and that it is kind of cool. So, IF "Walt Williams" is guilty of any homicides, I don't worry about him coming after me like I was years ago; I only worry he will commit more crimes.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): What does happen when the hunter becomes the hunted?

Pat Brown: This happens more with non-serial killer psychopaths who are covering up their crime or who are angry that you are interfering in their lives. This can be very frightening especially if someone has not much to lose. When the killer becomes a stalker, he is very dangerous, as stalkers are often willing to die before taking you down.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You were dismissed and treated like a desperate housewife by the police.

Pat Brown: Correct. Ever since then it has been obvious to me that there is a communication problem between the police and the community. I have been reluctant even in minor things to give a tip. I’ve seen it from both sides. They get so many tips that are bogus and have to deal with so many nuts, that they become cynical. So when you call things in you get that police voice that says, “What are you calling in about? Where is that? We’ll take your information. Goodbye.” Then you never hear from them again or they sound like they don’t believe you.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Is this on a tip number or a Secret Witness number?

Pat Brown: No, it’s just a regular police number you call when you report some suspicious activity. One time I reported a guy who was drunk and he almost hit three cars in a row because he was swerving from one side of the road to the other side. I reported it, but they wouldn’t pursue it. Sometimes I understand their attitude because people call me and say, “My boyfriend is stalking me. He comes in my house and moves all of the furniture around.” I say, “Do you have evidence of this?” They say, “No.”

There are some legitimate people, though, and you have to learn how to discern the two and try not to become too snarky and cynical with the people who are really seeking help. The police need to work on talking to a citizen and gathering the information that might be extraordinarily useful to their case in spite of the fact they kind of hate talking to them.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): I’m sure we’ve all had those kinds of experiences with the police.

Pat Brown: One time a detective was actually wonderful. I told him that I appreciated the way he took me to his office, sat down, and took my information. I gave him kudos for his fine treatment, even if he called me a flaming nut case after I left (laughs). That’s one of the things we work on in police training of sexual assessment cases. You can get information for your cases without making the citizen mad. So I do understand both sides of the coin. I’m definitely not anti-law enforcement.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): What are the differences in real criminal profilers and the ones we see on such television shows as Criminal Minds and Law & Order: Criminal Intent?

Pat Brown: The profilers on television tend to be able to pick out information about the serial killer out of the air. They see a couple of pieces of information and are able to deduce 20 pieces of information about the guy. They can draw a whole picture of him including his height, weight, race, whether he’s married or living with his mommy (laughs). Interestingly enough, some profilers in real life say the same thing. It’s so bogus that it really upsets me.

There are instances when a profiler will say, “I just looked at him and I was able to tell you all this stuff about him.” I say, “I can’t do that. How can you do that?” They like to think they are geniuses and that no one else can learn to be a profiler. But, anyone can learn to be a profiler if you are a logical person and can learn how to do analysis and study the components of profiling which are forensics, crime scene reconstruction, and those kinds of things.

Richard Walter, a forensic psychologist, made this statement, “There are only five profilers in the United States and everybody else is a fraud and a charlatan.” I don’t think I was on his list so I must be one of the frauds (laughs). That leads people again to believe you must have a genius IQ like the folks on TV in order to be able to develop such an incredible picture of the un sub. That’s just bogus.

Basically profiling is about doing strong analysis of forensic and behavioral evidence in the case and basing everything you say on information that exists, not just in your own mind and not in generalities. When you do the profile, you back it up with a scientific process about how you came to that conclusion. Many misconceptions about profilers come from television and that’s why I fight hard for deductive profiling and saying we need more profilers out there. I am not the only one and do not want to be the only one. I would like a profiler in every police department.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Do you believe in psychics, especially those who have claimed to help police solve cases?

Pat Brown: No. As a matter of fact, psychics are one of the biggest detriments I’ve ever encountered on a homicide case. They disturb the family tremendously. Almost every missing person case of unsolved homicide, at one point or another, uses a psychic. The families become so desperate and the psychic gives them hope. They convince the family they have that incredible amazing ability to pull it out of the air, which we profilers cannot do.

We have to use logic. Sometimes the psychics even cheat. They go find a landmark, run around the area where the crime occurred, find a red barn with a white side, and go tell the family they’ve never been in the area before but the body’s buried near a red barn with a white side. It’s called showmanship and it’s false. The police will sometimes bring in psychics before profilers just to say they used them. I despise it because I think its abuse of the families.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Can you speak briefly on how predators use the Internet to kill?

Pat Brown: The Internet is a real location in the universe where people meet and relationships flourish. Predators find victims on the Internet and set up opportunities to rape and murder them. Sometimes they can become a puppeteer and encourage someone else to commit murder. And sometimes they can cause people to harm or kill themselves.

The Internet is a huge hunting ground, ripe with many more victims than one would find if one had to physically leave one's home and troll for them. The odds of finding a victim and committing a crime are highly increased.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): The seven-year-old Portland, Oregon boy Kyron Horman has been missing since June 4, 2010. His parents recently had to endure his 8th birthday without him. If his stepmother, Terri, was involved in the disappearance, the police have mentioned that perhaps she had an accomplice.

Pat Brown: They believe there are people who know more than they might have been telling, that someone may have aided and abetted Terri in some fashion perhaps after the crime, during the crime, maybe with full knowledge, limited knowledge, or no knowledge. They’re thinking that when her friend went to stay with her she may have gotten information from Terri or discussed things with her that will be useful to the investigation.

Anybody who hangs around Terri Horman has to be a little bit questionable. Her behaviors are so concerning. Even if I didn’t think she was guilty of anything, I don’t know that I would want to be her buddy. She has a lack of interest in Kyron, she’s constantly focusing on herself rather than him, and she has bizarre behaviors like sexting, which brings negative attention to herself.

The only behaviors Terri should have ever exhibited would have been a desire for the investigators to do their jobs, to find Kyron, and to do everything she could not to make things more difficult or more confusing. But, she does the opposite and in doing this she is bringing attention to herself whether she’s guilty or not.

This may just mean she’s showing signs of psychopathy or narcissism and may have nothing to do with the crime. On the other hand, this is the kind of person that would commit that crime. It’s not impossible for her to have committed a crime like this if that was true of her. That’s why the focus is on her.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Do you think it’s inevitable that Terri will be arrested?

Pat Brown: No, they have to come up with something that’s going to work in a court of law.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Like finding a body.

Pat Brown: Yes, they need a body. I don’t think they’re going to find a live body no matter what. It just makes no sense that the child was taken and put somewhere. There’s no logic behind that. Could I be wrong? Gosh, I hope so. I’d be happy if Kyron is found alive. But, realistically, they’re looking for his body.

They have Terri Horman acting in a very peculiar manner, failing a polygraph (which is not admissible in court), covering up a crime because she likes to lie or perhaps was having an affair and didn’t want her husband to find out about that. But, there’s no proof she abducted Kyron, took him someplace, hurt him or killed him. You haven’t got a case to go to court no matter how much you believe she’s involved.

It was the same thing with the original case I worked with my house boarder, “Walt.” I had more circumstantial evidence on him than they do on Terri. It’s possible he got dumped, got angry, walked down the path, missed the crime by ten minutes, waded across the stream, and threw his clothes away because he’s a weirdo. A defense lawyer can put that up there. Is that likely? No. Is it likely he’s guilty? Yes. Could I prove it? No.

If they’d brought him in originally they may have found the briar marks and scratches all over his body and they may have found DNA. But they did not do that. So consequently six years later what they had was a squirrelly dude who admitted to being in the area and throwing his clothes away. That doesn’t make a case even though you believe it’s him and he fails a polygraph. Terri is right at the same point now. I think they have more suspicions than they know what to do with but nothing to prove it.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): They recently arrested a suspect, Elias Abuelazam, in the stabbing attacks in Michigan, Virginia, and Ohio from May until August.

Pat Brown: Now, they have a lot of evidence in that case.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Doesn’t this suspect differ from the serial killer “norm” because it appeared that he didn’t want to kill his victims?

Pat Brown: Well, yeah. He is actually unusual. Most serial killers commit sexual homicides. They commit them against women or children.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): He attacked males only.

Pat Brown: Yes he did. Most serial killers make sure their victims are dead because (a) they like the thrill of killing them and watching the life drain out of them, and (b) they want to be sure they have no witnesses and want to keep doing this forever.

This guy started out as a serial killer but he’s really more of a spree killer in the sense that he was very careless. He was obviously very enraged and wanted to get back at people, humanity, and society for the fact that he was a loser (which he was) and he was attacking people not necessarily because they were black.

There’s no evidence he was picking them because they were African American. He could’ve used that as a justification in his mind and said, “Oh yeah, I’m going to attack African Americans because they took my job away.” Serial killers, spree killers, and mass murderers often make up a good excuse why they kill people.

One reason he may have picked this particular group was that he figured the police wouldn’t bother them for a long time because the law enforcement in the area wouldn’t jump to the conclusion there was a serial killer. The people were poor there and the crime wouldn’t get reported that well in the newspaper. He was quite accurate about that because they didn’t respond to the first killings that quickly as far as going public with it, so he was right about his victim group.

The second reason is he simply might have known the area. He worked in a liquor store and this was an area where you had many people unemployed, were weaker, maybe were disabled older fellows in a poor area of town where many people go in and out of liquor stores. He just may have been very familiar with the territory and knew that he could get away with this crime in that part of town. He knew how to handle the people there and he looked for his victims in that location.

Leesburg was his big downfall because when things were too hot for him in Flynt, he went to the other location. That was an incredibly stupid thing to do. He’d already been sloppy, they’d seen his face over and over again and had great composites, and had seen his vehicle. Then he goes to Leesburg. That city is not big and you have to pass Washington, D.C. and go out into Virginia. Really, how many people from Flynt, Michigan have visited Leesburg? One? So, that was a huge mistake he made.

They knew what he looked like and what his van looked like so it wasn’t really hard for someone to ID him. He really was, as I say, a little more of a spree killer because he seemed to be so irrational and the choices he was making were not very careful. Serial killers are usually quite careful.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Can we call the Beltway Snipers (John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo) spree killers?

Pat Brown: Yes they were. In the beginning, they did all kinds of crimes and they probably did have some serial homicides, but they got into the whole cheap thrill of killing and running and have everybody chase them. So, yes, they turned into spree killers.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): I’m in Montgomery, Alabama, where two shootings (and one murder) occurred on September 21, 2002, and where evidence found at the scene eventually tied that murder to the Beltway attacks.

Pat Brown: Oh, where the fingerprint was (laughs). That was interesting. I got raked over the coals in that particular commentary that was made about the profiling in that case. People were saying the profilers said the killers were white. I said that we had no idea about that. Serial killers come in all races. I never would have said that.

I did say that chances are they’re very obsessed with weapons because their thing is sniping people. People who snipe people from a distance usually have a militaristic background. I also said that they might have a stack of guns and ammo magazines. I was saying all this in a television commentary, so I wasn’t as cautious and possibly a little less scientific as if I was profiling for the police department. But, where did they find Malvo’s fingerprints? They found them on a gun and ammo magazine.

What got them caught was the fact that Mohammed was a real arrogant son of a gun, but funnily enough he had true respect for all the police work being done. He assumed since they had never caught them in the Montgomery, Alabama crime that they had done their work. It turns out they never ran the fingerprints so he bragged about a crime that eventually got them caught. He got caught because he thought the police had done a better job than they had done (laughs).

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): I think the Montgomery County, Maryland police recently reopened the investigation.

Pat Brown: They’re looking for more crimes because they bragged there were more crimes. It’s always hard to tell if that’s true or not because one reason you brag about it is so you can delay something or get more attention. On the other hand, they may have committed more crimes and they were simply overlooked.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): William Shatner interviewed Malvo for an A&E special and he said that he and Mohammed also had other collaborators.

Pat Brown: That’s one of the problems when you have someone interviewing a psychopath. They lie like dogs. They’ll say whatever works to get what they want out of the interview so you have to be very cautious.

One of the reasons information on serial killers is so long is because they lie to FBI profilers about what they did, their reasoning, what the victims did, etc. Unless you can verify that they had a really bad childhood or that their victims did something to provoke them, you have to take everything with a grain of salt.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Are women that kill their own children serial killers?

Pat Brown: Oh yes, absolutely. They just pick a different victim group. They get the same type of thrill the men get. They get power and control and the thrill of murder usually to gain attention. Women like to get attention within family groups, friends, and their community.

They can also create another victim by getting pregnant. She can elicit sympathy and people can comment, “Oh, so nice you’re pregnant again after the death of your last child.” Even nurses say to them, “Oh, you’ve suffered so much you poor dear.” They also use Munchausen’s Syndrome and Munchausen’s by Proxy. They get attention by harming their children one way or the other. Women have the same thrills with the same down time in between murders that the men do, they just have a different methodology.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): So that’s the basic difference between men and women serial killers?

Pat Brown: Yes. Women also kill their patients if they are nurses, there are the black widow serial killers, there are women who help their boyfriends kill, and some who are more masculine types of serial killers.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You always hear of male serial killers having overprotective mothers. Is that more of a myth than a reality?

Pat Brown: Not really. Actually it’s not that most are overprotective per se, it’s that they’re over giving. They often do have missing or distant fathers or cold kind of fathers so the mothers are making up for the loss of the father in their child’s life, but they overdo it and allow them to get away with too much and become apathetic toward others.

Some of the mothers seem like they are pretty darned decent people because they’re not 100% involved in creating a serial killer son. There’s also the father, society, and his own personality. Sometimes no matter what you do the guy turns out to be a creep. But there is certainly a tendency to have a dysfunctional family.

I’ve never found a serial killer to come from a super functional family, but most dysfunctional families don’t create serial killers. They create narcissistic personalities, other levels of self-centeredness, and other levels of psychopathic personalities, not necessarily serial killers.

In the end we’re not going to have an exact answer for why this person decided to become a serial killer. The only thing I can tell you is once he’s there he’s not the cute little baby you once knew. He’s like a rabid dog that will bite and kill you. You have to put him down because that’s the only choice you have, regardless of how sorry you feel for him or how he got into that situation.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Do you believe Joran van der Sloot killed Natalee Holloway and Stefany Flores?

Pat Brown: There is absolutely no question in my mind that Joran van der Sloot is responsible for the murders of Holloway and Flores and I believe he was attempting to rape both of these women when they fought back and he killed them.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Do you think his confession (in the murder of Flores) will be thrown out of court?

Pat Brown: I absolutely hope not. I don't think it will be, but I don't think he is going to get very long sentences and I don't think he is going to suffer all that much in prison.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Is he a serial killer?

Pat Brown: No. A serial killer plans the murders of his victims and makes sure no one sees him with his victims (unless he is in a careless mode). Van der Sloot is most likely a date rapist with a rage problem. If the girls had willingly had sex with him or given in to him or been unconscious enough, they would still be alive. But, they did not cooperate and Joran van der Sloot doesn't like being told "no." This is why we will probably not find a string of murder victims; rape victims, yes, murder victims, no.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): When he extorted $25,000 from the Holloway family in exchange for information leading to the location of the body, was he actually doing that to taunt them or to get revenge on them for going after him for years?

Pat Brown: I think he just wanted the money and he thinks Beth Holloway is a chump.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Allegedly Beth Holloway snuck into the Peru prison with a hidden camera and didn't have permission to be there. What are your feelings about Beth Holloway recently visiting Joran van der Sloot in prison?

Pat Brown: I think it was a bad move. Joran van der Sloot is not going to give her any information and he probably enjoys watching Beth "grovel." He gets a kick from her pain.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Pat, why can't Beth find closure in this case and get on with her life?

Pat Brown: There is no closure for Beth as there is no closure for any family of a murder victim. They only find relief or purpose, sometimes, by fighting back. This is what Beth is doing, only I wish she would understand she is playing into Joran van der Sloot's hands and making him happy, not miserable.

I wish she would find a way to fight against predators and for murder victims that served a more useful purpose, or if she must go after Joran, find some method that would make him squirm and suffer, which unfortunately, would be hard to accomplish through any legal method.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Do you think that Melinda Duckett, who is now suing Nancy Grace, was involved in her son’s disappearance and that’s why she committed suicide?

Pat Brown: I believe the evidence pointed to her as being the only suspect in that disappearance. I believe she felt everything was closing in on her and she felt she was going to be indicted at some point. I believe the evidence points toward her and that it was a ridiculous lawsuit against Nancy Grace.

I was very lucky actually because when I did my pre-interview I said the exact same things Nancy said and they told me not to say that during the show. Then they ended up suing Nancy. But, Melinda came on the show of her own volition. She was asked basic questions, which she had the right to answer, or not answer. Just because she got upset about them doesn’t mean it’s Nancy’s fault.

Melinda went home and killed herself with her grandfather’s shotgun so I would like to know why the family isn’t suing granddaddy. You don’t provide an unstable woman with the weapon of destruction. He’s more at fault than Nancy Grace would be if you were going to blame someone.

People ask me all the time if I’m being fair in the media when I talk about people like Terri Horman and I say that the evidence points toward her. I say, “Look, if you have no concerning behaviors nobody is going to pay attention to you.” We are responsible for the way we behave. If we end up acting squirrely, we lie and get caught in our lies, people are going to be suspicious.

Going back to “Walt Williams” and the homicide on the bike path, my ex-husband knew the area extremely well but he did not call women names, didn’t have a breakup right before the murder, didn’t write stories about killing people, and didn’t throw his clothes away the next day. He didn’t say, “You don’t know what I’ve already done.” He didn’t exhibit the kinds of behaviors that “Walt” was exhibiting.

“Walt Williams” was as suspicious as heck because of his behaviors and actions, so is Terri Horman, and so was Melinda Duckett. You get yourself in trouble because you act that way. People have a right to be suspicious of you and that’s how they turn in information on you and that’s how the police focus their investigation on you. But, you’re not guilty of any crime legally until you’re convicted in court.

As someone who is in the media all the time I get trashed regularly for having an opinion, sometimes my words have been taken way out of context, sometimes it’s a splinter group that just wants to tag me with something outrageous, and sometimes it’s my fault and I actually did say that (laughs). When you’re on TV and radio ten times a week, the words aren’t going to come out right every time because sometimes you haven’t slept in three nights.

I had various attacks coming at me a couple of weeks ago from post partum groups. I said that post partum depression should not be used as an insanity defense. Being depressed doesn’t mean you kill your kids. That’s a manner of psychopathy and I don’t believe that post partum depression is chemically based. There’s no evidence of that. You are naturally depressed after a baby is born because life’s circumstances have changed and sometimes they are difficult to deal with.

That pissed off a huge amount of women who want to believe that their depression after the birth of a child is all about brain chemicals. They are madder than hell at me. They claim I’m causing women not to seek help. But I never said that they didn’t have a right to be depressed. Hey, your body looks like crap, you’re not getting sleep, you have no help, and you feel isolated. There are a million reasons why you could be depressed, but it’s normal.

Women get just as depressed when they adopt a child for the same exact reasons and you can’t blame that on hormones! I adopted my son at six years old and that kid didn’t smile for six months. I had my biological son and daughter, and then I got this new child at the same age as my other son.

I’m looking at this child thinking, “What have I done?” This child didn’t think of me as his mother and he wasn’t happy. I had to work myself through that depressive stuff, no hormones involved. Then one day after I yelled at him he started smiling because he realized I didn’t throw him out of the house after I yelled at him. Now that son is a beautiful 27-year-old man who is in law enforcement. I adore him so much, but every child comes with a challenge.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Is he also in profiling?

Pat Brown: He was a federal officer with NASA and now he has joined the police department. My daughter is a police detective as well. But, everyone goes through depression moments in his or her lives. Sometimes it lasts for months, sometimes for years because you can’t get a grip on the unhappiness. I’m responsible for what I said but I didn’t know it would be taken that way.

Terri Horman should have toned down the sexting a bit because all eyes were on her. If the whole world is watching you, people are forming opinions. Most people that act that way have psychopathic disorders and don’t understand the behavioral part. That’s why they do things that make themselves look so bad. They have no understanding of how they should behave because they don’t care about other people, and only care about themselves.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): The other end of the spectrum is the psychotic and they’re insane. They don’t know that what they are doing is wrong.

Pat Brown: Well, yeah, there are many questions about how you become psychotic. Basically a psychotic behavior is a behavior that has such an unawareness of reality that the person doesn’t realize that doing certain things is so far outside of the norm; i.e., hearing Martian voices, thinking objects are implanted in your head, thinking people are watching you on the toilet with a video camera.

Some guy wanted me to join his society to help women deal with hanging breasts – the hanging breasts society – because he believed that problem had nothing to do with gravity (laughs). When a person is at that level he’s so involved in his own world that he’s not aware of what is real and what isn’t real. He’s made it real in his head so a psychotic will do things that are so outrageous, like walk in the middle of a shopping mall, stab someone to death, have an ice cream, and stand there with a bloody shirt on. That’s psychotic. But, when they know what they did and premeditated their particular crime, planning to get away with it and cover everything up, they are usually psychopathic.

We could probably say that most serial killers are psychopathic, perhaps 99.9%, but a few of them have shown some psychotic behavior. Then again, sometimes that it brought in by the defense attorney.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Is there a large amount of copycat killers out there?

Pat Brown: There are cases where you’ll have a certain kind of crime go down and somebody will copy that. They copy it because it was a great idea and sounded cool to them. Some of the mass murderers are copycatting in the sense that Columbine was so successful for the killers who got massive publicity and they want to have large amounts of publicity also.

True copycatting is when you have a series of crimes going down and you don’t know whether one guy committed all the crimes or some guy was copying those crimes and is doing the same thing. Then you’ve got two killers. There are just so many ways you can kill somebody.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Pat, have you begun your own profiling school?

Pat Brown: No, I developed a program for Excelsior College. I spent two years developing that very detailed program with the intentions of continuing to promote it and be a professor with them. Unfortunately, they decided they wanted to water down all my classes from fifteen weeks to eight weeks, cut out some of the material, but keep the same amount of audits.

I would turn in the students for plagiarism and they wouldn’t do anything about it because they wanted to keep their student numbers up. They allowed students to plagiarize and cheat and then said my student evaluations were low. Well, of course they were low, I called the students liars and cheats. The best students were saying I was the best professor they’d ever had either in brick and mortar or online, and the others were giving me bad evaluations.

They didn’t want to have a decent program there and we sort of parted in a sense that I didn’t want to teach a program that was completely screwed up. They didn’t want me in there making students work so I had to end up leaving the program. I no longer recommend the program, which is upsetting to me.

I don’t mind not teaching there, but I’d still like to recommend it. Right now, though, I’m not sure about the quality of the program. I was supposed to train the professors, but they didn’t want me to develop the training guide or anything so I have no idea what’s up there now. They still brag it’s my program and that I developed it.

I’m developing my own school but I have to get to the point of getting it all together. I have the material. It’s just a matter of getting a platform and it will take a lot of work, but it will happen. I’m not a genius profiler and I want more profilers out there.

I do hope when they read the book they see how methodical it’s done and how the profiling is actually achieved … what you base your conclusions on. Hopefully they can learn from that and understand, at least, how profiling should be done. I’m hoping also that people will understand how our justice system works.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Will you be writing another book?

Pat Brown: I’m hoping the next one will be on a completely different subject, one near and dear to my heart. But, I’m also going to write more books in the field and eventually a training book based on all my work for detectives and profilers in police departments.


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