Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

“If your diary was on your computer, how come the police didn’t find it, and how come it didn’t provide you with an alibi?” I queried.

When I recounted the rest of this story to the D.A.’s lead investigator just after Bill’s death sentencing, I thought the big ex-cop would deck me right there in the courtroom. A vein thickened up and pulsed in his forehead like a rattlesnake uncoiling. The upshot is that the cops blew the Bill Suff case. When they finally suspected him, they shouldn’t’ve busted him, they should’ve tailed him, in which case they would have caught him in the act, would have recovered the killing kit, the killing clothes, and all the trophies. They would have closed more cases than they ultimately tried him for and there would be more families out there who could finally rest easy.

But the cops had run out of patience.

They also just did not understand their man.

Unlike the guards who chatted with me at San Quentin, the Riverside cops didn’t get that Bill was cleverer than them, and this was all something of a game to him. A kid’s game.

So, when the cops searched Bill’s apartment after they had him in custody, they really didn’t know what to look for. They thought he’d be like Dahmer with a fridge full of heads.

So the cops basically found nothing incriminating during their first search. Only on searches number two and three did they “find” effects and clothes from the murder victims. As noted, Ann says she found some of the items, and that may be what led the cops back. But other items mysteriously appeared during the later searches, even though Ann and Don had previously searched and not found those things. When cops really and truly believe they’ve got their man, they definitely try to make the proof easier for the prosecution, if you catch my meaning.

However, one thing the cops weren’t smart enough to take during the first search but then wised up and took during the second search was Billy’s computer.

“See, I don’t have a hard drive on my computer,” Bill said, “I kept my machine running twenty-four hours a day, put some data encrypted onto floppies, and kept everything else in RAM.”

Translated, this means that Bill saved some data—like his fiction writing—on diskettes which you could only access with a password. The way Bill had it, if you tried to access three times with the wrong password, then the information on the diskettes would automatically self-destruct.

So consider all that stuff gone—the cops blew it by trying to access it back at the police lab. But, again, that was his writing, not his diary.

The diary was another matter.

Imagine for a moment the scene in Bill’s apartment. Piles of books and magazines and newspapers all around. The computer gently humming, glowing, in the center of the room, an unavoidable altar.

“My diary I kept in RAM,” said Bill.

In the computer, in electronic blips that lived and breathed only so long as the computer stayed “on” was Bill’s diary, in Random Access Memory. Turn off the computer, and the diary vanished into space, never to return. Everything the police and the world needed to know about Bill Suff and his life and times, life and crimes, was right there at their fingertips, just waiting to be asked to unscroll on screen. No encryption, no password, no security. All you had to do was change windows to the open file of your choice. Like all Bill’s manipulations, this was his test, his booby trap. Were you man enough? Were you Indiana Jones— clever and brave enough to pass the test and snatch the golden idol—or were you some bumpkin who would let treasure slip right through your fingers?

So near and yet so far.

And then gone with the wind.

The searchers turned off the computer and schlepped it down to their lab. And everything you wanted to know went away. Poof!

“Too bad,” I said to Bill, “that diary could’ve given you an alibi. Right?”

He laughed.

“Let’s just say things would have been mighty different,” he said.

My great uncle Al invented the crash helmet. A humble man, he insisted that his inspiration was not brilliance, it was merely numbers. During the early days of flying, he started keeping statistics as to the type of flying and crash related injuries that were keeping Navy pilots from going back up into the skies. Head injuries topped the list. Ergo, protect the head and you keep the pilots flying.

So they can go to war.

Ironically, Bill Suff owes his life to my great uncle, I guess. In 1988 Bill had a motorcycle accident that should have left him dead. He pulled through, much to a lot of people’s present regret. Had he not been wearing a helmet, there wouldn’t have been this book.

However, like the crash helmet, profiles of serial killers are also nothing more than statistical inductions, and it wouldn’t hurt to wear a helmet when you do profiling. This is not to discount the brilliant FBI profilers any more than I discount Uncle Al. It’s easy to say you’re just crunching numbers, but then only a special few people truly have the insight and the focus to see how the numbers really add up. Profilers are a combination of Sherlock Holmes and The Amazing Kreskin. They won’t just tell you that you’re looking for an angry guy with a daunting deformity that he feels isolates him from the rest of society; they’ll tell you that he’s got a stammer rather than a limp, that he wears briefs rather than boxers, and that he never puts lemon in his tea.

But the profilers might be wrong.

And the profilers couldn’t tell you anything—right or wrong—were it not for their mental database of previous serial killers. That’s why no one caught Jack the Ripper. He left plenty of clues, but no one knew what they meant at the time. The whole deal was just too new. No one had the experience that would allow them to apply their intuition in the right direction. You have to reduce possibility to a reasonable number before insight can take hold.

Just by examining the crimes, the Riverside Prostitute Killer seemed an easy profile to make. You start with the obvious: This guy keeps getting away with picking up victims in the same small area, so he must be a guy who blends in and seems nonthreatening or acts authoritative. Since he’s careful, meticulous, and organized, clever to cover his tracks, he’s probably a guy who holds down a job and acts normal around his peers. He probably has a girlfriend or wife. And some stressor in his life—some problem at home or work—has exacerbated his rage and urge to kill. Next, as with virtually all serial killers, he has an abandoning father and a confused love/rejection relationship with his mother. From the git-go, this guy couldn’t win.

You want more detail? He’ll be a white male, mid- to late thirties, slightly overweight, slightly under average height, and no Mark Harmon. Why? Because that’s what the statistics say.

But stop for a moment. Stop and look at this profile. It describes an everyman. It describes someone who is absolutely normal and whose life appears normal and extremely average… except for those moments when he kills. So how does this profile help you catch your killer?

It doesn’t. In fact, it tells you that this guy is going to get away with murder after murder unless you just plain get lucky and happen to be in the right place at the right time to catch him.

That is, unless you try to manipulate him. Unless you put out the word of how you see him, and hope that he hears it and reacts to it in a way that reveals more about himself.