Nightmare Alley
To catch killers, FBI profiler William Hagmaier probes the dark side of the human psyche
ACROSS THE HILLS OF SPOTSYLVANIA, where Robert E. Lee once tangled with U.S. Grant, death again haunts the Virginia countryside. This time the fallen aren't soldiers but three slender, dark-haired girls-a serial killer's prey. Their murders might never have been connected- much less become one of the country's most closely watched ies-- save for a single fact: The girls lived within a few miles of William Hagmaier, chief of the FBI's Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit and a veteran criminal profiler."I couldn't sleep, but then I never sleep much anyway," says Hagmaier, 50, a workaholic father of two accustomed to limitted shut-eye and late dinners, frequently interrupted by calls from frantic parents of missing children. "Lots of people were suspicious that these cases were related, and it bothered me." Late one night last July, Hagmaier phoned the director of the state forensics lab and asked him to take another look at the evidence in the first of the slayings, that of 16-year-old Sofia Silva in September 1996. His instincts were right. Fiber tests linking a suspect, Karl Roush, to the Silva case were flawed. Embarrassed prosecutors swiftly dropped charges against Roush, who had been in jail when Kristin Lisk, 15, and her sister Kati, 12, were killed last May.
Hagmaier's hunches are often correct. "He is the smartest cop I've ever met," says author Tom Clancy, who turned to him for technical advice when writing his 1993 crime thriller Without Remorse. "He is brilliant looking around a crime scene. He'll say, 'White male, 36 to 40,' and he's always right. Somehow he just reads people."
Credit decades of studying the darkest corners of the psyche. Since joining the FBI in May 1978, the Pittsburgh native, who holds a master's degree in psychology, has logged countless hours constructing meticulous criminal profiles by analyzing crime scenes, peering through a magnifying glass at grisly photos of victims, poring over autopsy and police reports-all in the hope of finding the tiny detail that might trip up a killer. "He used to bring cases home and view the films here--I would walk in and see this person stabbed to death on the screen," says Hagmaier's wife, Barbara, 46, a former special education teacher. "I told him, 'I don't want to see dead people. Do that at work.'"
But for Hagmaier and the 29 agents under his command since December 1994, it's hard to put the job behind them when they leave their Quantico, Va., office. They know their quarry doesn't stop working at 5 p.m. "Today Is serial killer and child abductor is far more sophisticated than those we found 10 years ago," says Hagmaier, whose unit is currently tracking some 30 serial killers but estimates there may be as many as three times that number on the loose. "The bad guys used to read detective magazines to learn how other people are caught. Now we've got books by former law enforcement people, reenactment TV, movies."
Often the resources at the disposal of the serial killer-typically a white male loner in his 20s, with superior intelligence, who thinks of himself as engaged in an endgame of wits with his pursuers-shame those of the average cop. Pointing out that more than half
the police departments in the U.S. consist of fewer than 10 officers, "they can very quickly become overwhelmed," Hagmaier says. "They haven't been exposed to these predators, who are very sophisticated and transient."
To help even the odds, as of March 1996 the FBI stopped waiting 24 hours before intervening in cases of child abduction-a critical step since these young victims usually perish within the first day and a half. "This could make the difference between life or death," says Hagmaier. "I'll put my people on a plane anywhere." In October his squad started shipping out 17,500 new Child Abduction Response Plan workbooks that show local police, step by step, how to investigate and interview suspects and how to avoid contaminating a crime scene. And he lobbies tirelessly for mandatory centralized reporting of violent crimes, which would improve the FBI's chances of identifying similar cases in different states that might be the work of a serial killer.
In the meantime some of the most potent weapons in Hagmaier's arsenal come from the unlikeliest of sources. Whether out of hubris or remorse, a number of killers, like the five imprisoned murderers he is currently debriefing, have provided invaluable insights into what makes them tick. "Why shouldn't we listen to them," he asks, "if it will save lives?"
For four unforgettable, draining days in January 1989, Hagmaier heard the death-row confessions of Ted Bundy who in his final hours admitted killing at least 30 women and girls. "Bundy brought with him files of newspaper clippings, manuals on police techniques and law enforcement material I didn't even know existed," says Hagmaier. "He wanted me to understand how sophisticated serial killers have become. The ones that get caught are greedy, cocky, drunk or stupid." Or, in Bundy's case, just plain unlucky. Scrupulous about not leaving bodily fluids on his victims, Bundy was nipped by bite marks; journals had yet to report that they could be matched. "As a student of criminal behavior, obviously I found him intriguing and informative, " Hagmaier says. "He went to places I'll never go."
But once you've visited these places, even vicariously, you're never quite the same, the agent admits. "As I was dressing my children for church, I got a call from the mother of a 9-year-old," Hagmaier remembers.
"She said, 'You know they found Jimmy in three different pieces.' What do you say? These aren't cases you can put in a drawer and go home."
Especially not now, when Hagmaier's own backyard has become an edgy encampment. Ever since the murders of the Lisk sisters, school buses are trailed by anxious parents scribbling down the license plate numbers of passing strangers, youngsters rarely stray outside, and, over at the historic Spotsylvania Courtliouse, a task force including three or four of Hagmaier's troops operates seven days a week. "When this happened, it was like a storm coming through the area and uprooting souls, hearts and minds," says Maj. Howard Smith of the county sheriff's office. "Bill threw himself into the case to help us."
"The way I look at it is that we all try to make a qualitative difference in life", Hagmaier says. "I know I can no longer be the best baseball player there ever was. I'm never going to be the brightest FBI agent. The most important thing is that when I kiss my little girl good-night-and others can't -that I do something about it."
PAM LAMBERT .
JANE SIMS PODESTA in Spottsylvania
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