Would You Be Able to Recognize a Serial Killer?
Could your neighbor or relative be a serial killer? The problem is, even if he was, you likely would not know. There is often a disconnect between the public’s perception of a serial killer as an easily recognizable monster and the grim reality of an average-looking individual who commits unspeakable acts of brutality against another human being. Serial killers look and act like our co-workers, neighbors, and sometimes our friends—a fact that is not only uncomfortable, but incomprehensible for most of us. We want them to be recognizably different in external appearance, manner, and affect. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that what makes serial killers so successful at their craft is, in fact, their ordinariness, their uncanny ability to appear normal, to blend in, to be as unassuming as you and I, to avoid drawing attention to themselves, and ultimately to make you believe that they are like everyone else you know.
Jim Graves, a friend and confidant of Charlie Brandt, and former brother-in-law by marriage to Brandt’s sister Angela, trusted his instincts about his ability to read people. He thought he knew Brandt. In reflection, what does it say about a person when he has so terribly misjudged the character of someone he called a friend? Jim thought he should have seen, sensed, and realized something that would have opened his eyes. He chose to explain away the sometimes odd behavior of his friend, instead of letting it stand on its own. In the end, he wished he had recognized the clues for what they were.
I saw this scenario many times during my 23 years as an FBI Special Agent, particularly while working as a senior profiler in the FBI’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, known to most as the Profiling Unit. After spending another dozen years studying, researching, writing about, and interviewing rapists and murderers of all types, I am intimately familiar with the ability of serial killers to deceive almost anyone.
Brandt was a master manipulator, always in control. The psychopathology of his twisted desires lay beneath his superficial personality, well disguised from everyone. Each of us has a public life, the face we show to the world. We also have a private life, which is revealed only to those very close to us. But then there is our secret life, known only to us. To truly plumb the depths of that secret life in a serial killer, you must have the key that unlocks access to that crucial piece of the puzzle. It is extraordinarily difficult to peel back that façade, layer by layer, slowly revealing the depravity that shocks a normal person’s conscience.
Jim Graves confided in his friend, Sean Robbins, the story of his friend and brother-in-law, the serial killer. Robbins sought out Diana Montane and together they collaborated on this book.
Diana Montane is an expert not only at finding the key, but at putting the puzzle together. Uncovering the ugly, naked truth about Brandt was a complex task that involved interviewing those who knew Brandt and the victims and investigators who worked the murder cases. Diana in turn reached out to one of my colleagues, Florida Department of Law Enforcement profiler Leslie D’Ambrosia, to help provide meaning, context, and behavioral linkage to some of those missing pieces. Extracting Brandt’s puzzle pieces from the investigative reports, crime scene photographs, mountains of collected evidence, and each victim’s personal story involved an extraordinary effort. Diana and Sean were tireless in their pursuit to understand a man that almost no one did.
When I lecture and provide expert testimony, I am always careful to explain that the crime can only make sense when considered in its totality, thus providing context to the behavior. Diana and Sean’s task was made all the more daunting because Brandt was dead before anyone even knew he was a killer. They have masterfully succeeded in putting Brandt, his life, and his crimes into context, so we get a clear picture of that secret life.
Lastly, every victim deserves her own justice; she deserves to be understood as a person with goals and dreams, with family and friends who loved them. Diana and Sean, in their journey to make sense of the incomprehensible, never forget about the victims. They give them a voice and help us to understand them as people, not simply as a nameless number in the trail of death left by Brandt.