Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. You've probably heard of criminal psychiatric profiling, commonly just called profiling. It's a way of using evidence and information about the victim as a way of figuring out who might have done the crime. Now, this technique was popularized by law enforcement in the '80s to catch serial killers. But when you consider the people who really established the methodology, one woman stands out.

Dr. Ann Burgess started her career as a psychiatric nurse, but soon transitioned to working with victims of sexual assault. The FBI noticed her talent for getting people to open up, and she began to consult for the Behavioral Science Unit, where the first ever profiling was taking place. She and the team developed this skill and the method was used to find criminals across the country.

And despite this success, you might not have heard of Dr. Ann until more recently. While her male colleagues stepped into the limelight doing interviews and consulting on movies, Dr. Ann stayed behind the scenes, finding more criminals. A new series on Hulu tells the story behind Dr. Ann Burgess, the impact she's had on how law enforcement catches criminals, and her work, which she continues today at almost 90.

The series is from showrunner Dani Sloane, it's called Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer, and it's available now on Hulu. With us today, we have Dani Sloane and Dr. Ann Burgess. Dr. Ann, Dani, welcome to All Of It. Thanks for joining us.

Dani Sloane: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Thank you for having us.

Kousha Navidar: It's a pleasure to have you both here. And listeners, before we get started, if at any time during this conversation you need support, please call the sexual assault hotline. It's at 800-656-HOPE, that's 800-656-4673, or go online to hotline.rainn.org/online to chat.

So, Dr. Ann, I want to start with you. The beginning of the doc goes through how limited the options were for women who wanted careers when you were starting out. When you were trying to pick a career, you say you picked being a nurse because you wanted to know how people feel. Where do you think that curiosity comes from? How was it for you starting a career?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, I had medical professionals in the family, and I think that from a young age, I would help my uncle, who was a country doctor, go out, he'd delivered a lot of babies. I think that's where I really got some interest. Then, of course, in high school, I was a candy striper. That, I don't know if they have them anymore, but you went around and gave people cold water and so forth, so I really had a lot of interest in that in general, certainly not in the other two options that were available. I was not interested in being a secretary and not interested at that time in being a teacher.

Kousha Navidar: Did you know that you always wanted a career from the earliest memories you had?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, yes. It was something you had to do. My mother always said, "Well, you have to support yourself." I guess that is what she was saying. Because I wanted to be a pianist. I wanted to be a concert pianist. I had these great fantasies of playing maybe at Carnegie Hall or something like that, and she really discouraged me, saying, "Well, I don't think they make too much money," so I became much more practical. She had a lot of influence on me, that's for sure.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, it sounds like a lot of family influence there that give you a sense of what direction you wanted to go. Sloane, you've worked on projects about food and media and corporations, but true crime seems to really be your lane. Why are you drawn to these stories?

Dani Sloane: It's not so much true crime as it is stories about extraordinary people who have done extraordinary things, have suffered in some way. To me, the thing that makes a documentary or a story great is that we can all take some sort of universal truth from it. In telling Dr. Burgess's story, it's like, pick something. There's so many things from her story, especially as a young woman, to really take from her life and her breadth of experience that I think I personally carry with me and I think so many other young women watching this film will be able to take and implement in their own lives.

Whether it's being a woman in a boy's club, holding on to your ideas with such conviction, even when other people tell you that they're not right or really just being this driving force in changing culture before culture is ready for it. I always look for stories that I think people can learn from and will resonate with them in the long term.

Kousha Navidar: Part of the doc is that Dr. Ann's story is not well known. How did you find out about her?

Dani Sloane: Look, like so many other people, Mindhunter was our first exposure to this unit within the FBI. We all know what profiling is now, but that was the very first time, I think, the general public understood where this term and this methodology came from. That was my first exposure to a little, little small piece of her, but as we very quickly realized when we read her book, that is not Dr. Burgess at all. And I had seen Dr. Burgess pop up in other specials and documentaries. She's been interviewed for so many things because as you see in our film, she's been involved with so many of the major cases that we know about over the years. But it really wasn't until I read her book that I understood, wow, there is so much more to this story about this extraordinary woman and people need to know it.

Kousha Navidar: Did she take some convincing to do the doc?

Dani Sloane: Not to speak for Dr. Burgess, but Dr. Burgess is-- what makes her such an incredible documentary subject is just how humble she is. Dr. Burgess did not want to do this film because she wanted her moment in the spotlight or she wanted her notoriety or she wanted her name known. She did this because she wanted the work to continue and she wanted a new generation to understand where we had come from and what there is still to do.

That's often not the case, to be able to sit with somebody who is not doing this for any other motivation other than just the pure love of the work. So, yes and no. I think she saw the value in this, although I don't want to speak for her.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, well, let's turn it over to Dr. Burgess. How did you feel when Dani approached you about doing something not just about your work, but about you and your life?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, I stopped to think, "What are they going to say? What could they find that would be of interest?' You have to have messages and interests and all that in today's world. That's where I was coming from, is what would they find? I was not-- absolutely, as Dani said, I was not real excited about this in any way in the beginning, and then I got curious about it because it's a whole new area. I like new areas and I had never gotten into anything where there's production and you have to put these things together and so forth. From a, just a learning situation, I thought, "Well, maybe I could learn something from this that would be helpful some other way," so that's how we agreed.

Kousha Navidar: Well, and on the other side of it, do you feel like you learned something that was really valuable to you from going through this experience?

Dr. Ann Burgess: I did. I really did, because a lot of students where I teach at Boston College, they were in the film and communications and so forth, so I learned a whole new area. I was very interested when students would then want to do something. I tried to make them as creative as we could so that they could match. When they're taking something in crime, they could take it and put it into their expertise, if you will, the communications area. So it was good. It was a really good match.

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. We're talking about the new docuseries, Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer. It's out on Hulu now. We're talking with the showrunner, Dani Sloane, and the subject, Dr. Anne Burgess. And Dr. Burgess, I love to go into your career a little bit. Early in your career, your work centered around sexual assault. What was it like doing the research back then?

Dr. Ann Burgess: That was really very important and it actually did start my career. I was brand new to academe. I did not go to graduate school in any way intending to do this. I wanted to just be a psychotherapist, nurse psychotherapist. I quickly learned that you have to publish. It's the old saying, publish or perish. Luckily, there was another young-- a sociologist, Lynda Lytle Holmstrom, who was actually looking for a new topic and had approached me and had several that she was thinking about doing.

She had just finished her dissertation, and so she told me about them. The one that really made me sit up and listen was the one she said rape is going to be a big issue for women. Lynda was part of the women's movement at that time. She was into all of these consciousness raising groups, and I was just fascinated listening to her and at that time said, "Can a psychiatric nurse work with a sociologist, if you will? If we can, let's try it," and that's how it all started, and I was at Boston College.

Kousha Navidar: For context there, at the time, you say rape cases weren't being investigated, and they were turning cold. How were you hoping your research would change this?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, we were just going to research what it was like for a woman, usually a woman coming in with the complaint of rape. One of the first things we learned is half of them coming in never would have come in on their own, somebody else brought them in. Even so, it isn't just that they were raped. It's just that they didn't know what to do after this experience.

We quickly, and it didn't take very long for us to really pick up the patterns of these women. We were called each time that there was one that came into Boston City Hospital, which is a large urban hospital in a crime area, if you will. We had 146 people over one year. That's a lot of people to be called out for. It ranged in age, from three was our youngest, three-year-old up to a 73-year-old, so we almost had a 70-year span, if you will, on the age of the victim.

Kousha Navidar: Dani, for you, sexual assault is obviously a sensitive topic. How did you want to navigate what to include about Ann's work while you were thinking about the documentary?

Dani Sloane: I think our litmus test, and this goes for the details of a lot of these crimes as well, not even just around rape and sexual assault, is always are we including this because we're making a larger point? We never want to include gratuitous detail. We never want to re-traumatize anyone. This goes for interview subjects, too, especially-- We had Andrea Constand that we interviewed for this film, who has been so constantly traumatized by this story coming back in the media and has chosen to speak out about her experience with Bill Cosby because she sees the value in it.

When we're sitting down with people who have been through something like this, we ask them questions and want to hear their story, but we really try to be sensitive to where they're at in their healing and in their journey. Then when we go to edit the film, we really try to continue that practice through the editing of the piece as well. We want to make sure that viewers understand what happened, but there's definitely a bar for what to include and what not to include, and it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly as you're editing these films.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, and there's another element that is throughout the film as well, which is the sexism that you, Dr. Burgess, faced once you move on to Quantico, because you end up at the FBI as a consultant to discuss these assault cases with agents. You say that you were laughed at, not taken seriously. Some even asked you-- this is in the first episode, some even asked you if you'd been raped. We're going listen to the clip of something like that happening to you from the documentary. Here's that clip.

Sarah Cailean: There was a magazine piece, and it's this great shot of all these men in suits standing around a desk, and it is rage-making. Dr. Burgess had done really important, incredible work, and yet the men in that photo did not see fit to ask her to join them.

Kousha Navidar: Dani, why was this specific incident so important for you to include?

Dani Sloane: I think there's so many kind of stories like this from Dr. Burgess's time and her career at the FBI and elsewhere, but this is a visual representation of it, right? Like in the film, we show the magazine article and at that point, we've understood Dr. Burgess's contributions up until that point. She obviously went on to do many, many, many things after that article was printed, but we understand how integral she was to this unit getting to the place that they got to by the time they start getting national recognition and the phone starts ringing off the hook for other for them to help with other cases.

Here is this visual representation that we, as the audience can now look at and having understood all the context that we understand about what she did up to this point, here's this group of men, and she's nowhere to be seen. She's not mentioned in the article. There's no mention of her. It's like she's invisible from this, but we know that she was there. I think it's Sarah Cailean in that clip, who's an incredible interview subject in our film, it is rage-making. The idea I think is for the audience to look at that too and be equally as enraged, because why isn't she there? Why isn't she part of this? It doesn't make any sense.

Kousha Navidar: It's interesting because after the clip in the doc, Dr. Burgess, you say you weren't enraged. In fact, you say the exclusion didn't bother you. I'm wondering, tell me more, what was it like working in that environment?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yes, well, particularly, that didn't bother me at all because I was so happy that they were getting some recognition. This is the very first, if you will, media presentation of back in 1980. It was on the Psychology Today, which is a big-- at that time was a very important magazine and they finally were getting some recognition, which of course I was a part of in terms of the profiling, but I didn't feel like I would need to be in there. It might even look odd if you have, at that time, had a female in that. Maybe it's better I wasn't in it.

I love it that we can go back and forth and Dani can say why they picked it, why it was important for them to tell their story, whereas I was telling a whole different story and it didn't bother me. Also, I had to be very careful down there because I was very new to the unit in terms of gender, and I just wanted to stay under the radar. I didn't want to draw any attention to that, and much of what we were doing was that. It wasn't that well known or approved. Not that it was a secret project, but we were just as happy not to get too much recognition until you had a good breakthrough that happened to be a case that was real important.

Kousha Navidar: I was wondering about that breakthrough. Was there a breakthrough moment for you when you felt like, "Oh, what I am doing is making a big difference," where it felt maybe revolutionary?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Oh, not me. I didn't feel that, but I felt for the unit. I felt that it was important to get the profiling. I guess that was their project. It wasn't my project. I mean, I had a role in it, so I didn't feel that way. That's just the way it was. Anytime that they hit on a case was wonderful. You were trying to get rid of killers. I saw that as a plus for our side, because there would be less victims if you could get rid of these serial killers. Obviously, they were looking at it from a whole different standpoint.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, and can you tell a little bit about the role that you did play within consulting for the unit, what you were doing to help catch those criminals?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Yes, I was basically what they call the methodologist, in other words, how to put together all of this data that are coming in. They were going out and doing the interviews, but as I said to them, I said, "Well, what are you talking to these killers about?" and they said, "We're just getting them to talk. It's just very interesting. I said, "Well, do you ask them the same questions each time so that we can maybe look at some patterns, we can have something? You can't just willy-nilly just talk to them."

So I, first task was to get a questionnaire, make sure we were getting not only the interview, but to get all of the background information and that is what we put together. From a methodology standpoint, the project was going to stand on how good was the methodology. Would it pass the academic tests, which are very strict out there? Not only was I up against the males in this whole project, but the academics at that time were primarily male and they were-- is not a welcoming group, let me put it that way. It was more with the agents. That was something very different, but for the academic world, that was another matter.

Kousha Navidar: In the second episode, we see you were looking for John Joubert, who targeted and killed young boys and with the evidence, you determined that the killer must be weak in stature. How did you train yourself to pick up those little details which led to his arrest?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, I was listening while the agents were talking, and they weren't necessarily putting that kind of information together. They had-- I said, "How many footprints? It was snowing, and so how many footprints went in?" and they said, "Two." So two people had walked into the woods and then I said, "Did they come out?" and they said, "Only one set came out." So how do you explain it?

So then we go around and talk about, could it be-- Well, it turned out to be that it was decided that he was smaller and he couldn't carry them, and so the offender should be small. His first victim, if you remember, was just left by the side of the road and later found another victim, and he was just left there. This time he moved the victim to another location and killed him there. That showed-- is that escalation? What did that show? Until we begin to try to work and see what other cases we had that would be like that.

Kousha Navidar: Dani, when you think about doing something as a three-episode series, and then you have to encapsulate the long, storied career of one individual, in this project specifically, were there any times where it was really difficult to figure out what to leave on the cutting room floor?

Dani Sloane: Oh, my God, yes. Especially, I mean, you read her book, Dr. Burgess was involved in so many cases and her involvement in all these cases was different. Some she consulted on, some she was very involved with, some she was more hands on with, some she was more hands off with and just kind of in the background on. So, yes, there were just so many cases, and definitely as a team, when we were in the edit, we-- there's so much left on the cutting room floor of stories that she's told us, little scenes that we put together about cases that didn't end up making it to air.

I mean, Unabomber, BTK, the Larry Nassar case, like, just to name a few, there's just so much. We could have gone for many more episodes and really filled a much longer series with telling her story.

Kousha Navidar: So then, for you, what were the elements that made those stories that you did choose to bring to the front? What were they? What were those elements?

Dani Sloane: I think the rule that we kind of applied early on in our process was Dr. Burgess had to learn something very specific from each case, and that knowledge, case-to-case, had to build on each other. For example, the Ski Mask Rapist case, this was the first time she was in the field, this was the first time that profiling was implemented in a big way, and that was considered a win for the BSU. Obviously, then going chronologically, we look at the Joubert case, we look at the Melissa Ackerman case, and we go from there.

Chronologically, obviously, everything has to fit together, but that knowledge has to keep growing, and there has to be something about profiling or behavior or the methodology that she's learning, she's refining, she's changing in order to get to this place where ultimately, profiling is able to stand on its own as a tool that is used across the country and around the world now.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, so it is that idea. One thing that you said that really sticks out to me is that Dr. Burgess had to learn something very specific, and it builds on that, and that creates the narrative. What's interesting to me when I was watching this was that it wasn't just about the work, it was about the life as well. Dr. Burgess, your husband and kids are featured in the doc. Was there anything they said that was surprising or that they'd never shared with you?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Most all of it was a surprise. I was surprised because we didn't talk about those kind of things. I love learning some of those things, and even since then, have heard many more stories, so that was really great.

Kousha Navidar: You were a working mom through this all and seemed to manage it well, but on the other side, the work that you were doing is extremely difficult on the mind and the spirit. Did you have to separate-- obviously, you separated the two, but how did you not get overwhelmed by what you would see and hear in your job?

Dr. Ann Burgess: I think it's my nursing background that we learn that early. You take care of patients, you see all kinds of other things, so that you kind of compartmentalize it, and I think that's what I did. Also, it was good to come home at night so to have something very different, have to deal with the kids. They'll all have some kind of thing, so it would take my mind off of anything that I had necessarily seen that day.

Kousha Navidar: I don't want to ruin too much about the doc, so I'm going to leave this as an open-ended question to you, Dr. Burgess. Eventually, you do leave Quantico, and you decide to retire. Can you just give a taste of what happens in your career after that, in terms of your work after that, retirement?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Well, what happens is I get more into the legal system. My cases, I get more cases, I get to both criminal and civil cases, so I really am into that area. I'm still teaching, and I do that because I can use my cases as ways to teach. That's in my way to get the word out and to teach students so that the next generation can carry on this work.

Kousha Navidar: Thinking about contemporary work, now bringing it to the modern era, at the station, actually, on the team, on the All Of It team, we were having a discussion recently about serial killers, and the main question was basically, where did they all go? In your professional opinion, why aren't we hearing about them so much anymore? Did profiling do its job?

Dr. Ann Burgess: It did its job. There certainly are some serial killers out there now, but there are very few. What I think, unfortunately, has happened is the crime has taken a turn and the crime now has gone to more mass shooters and it places all of us at risk. I think that's what's so different. Serial killers tended to have one target, whereas mass shooters, any of us can be a target for the grocery store or we're at some kind of a gathering, you just-- you don't know. Now you have to teach more about how do you avoid, if you can, any danger.

Kousha Navidar: I was going to ask you, how does that influence your work moving forward or how has it already?

Dr. Ann Burgess: Oh, it already has. We're into looking at mass shooters. Look at what happened over the weekend. We are doing shows on that now, how would you profile it and what prevention can you do? There's all kinds of work to be done. It's unfortunately never going to be all done.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Dani, for you, thinking about the documentary, how did you come up with the title?

Dani Sloane: It's one of those things when you're making a film, either you have it in the beginning and it's your title all the way through, or it's something that you try to find at the end. This was one really from the beginning that we had, and it was always just, "This was Mastermind," and it fit her. This is who she is. She's this-- Hidden Figures was already taken, but she is this hidden figure who was at all of these really important junctures of history and involved in all these cases and all these moments that we as a society know about, but we didn't know she was there.

So just this idea of here is this person behind the scenes who you never really knew about, but she influenced your life probably in some way, it just fit her. So much of this was giving Dr. Burgess her due after all these years and as you heard, she is truly the most humble person that there is. She's never going to take credit for work that was a team effort or for work that perhaps she was heavily involved with, but there were other people involved. We wanted to give her that credit because we, as the team saw how important it was.

Kousha Navidar: Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer is out on Hulu. Now, I've been speaking with the subject of the documentary, Dr. Ann Burgess and the showrunner, Dani Sloane. Well, Dr. Burgess first, thank you so much for all of your work and both of you, thank you so much for putting this story together and for coming and chatting with us.

Dr. Ann Burgess: Thank you for the opportunity.

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