March 24, 2024
Birch Bay, Washington
Retired FBI “MindHunter” now agrees with Original Longtime Heirens Defender Dolores Kennedy that “Heiren’s was Innocent”
In 2003 in Black Dahlia Avenger, in regards to psychological profiling in general and specifically in response to FBI Profiler John Douglas’ then profile of the 1947 killer of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short, I wrote:
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It has been my experience that at best, these “profiles” should be considered an investigative tool; at worst, they can be dangerously speculative demographically overweighted, and misleading, and, if given too much credence, can actually misdirect and impair an investigation. Profiles or patterns of predictability, like one’s daily horoscope, often make more sense ex post facto. Human beings, especially human beings who murder, and above all, those who murder and get away with it, are rarely predictable. Like wild beasts, they are cunning, predatory, and instinctual, and their environment has taught them survival and how best to avoid trappers.
In the Black Dahlia case, for example, John Douglas, former head of the FBI’s serial crime division, provided over the past five years several separate published profiles on Elizabeth Short’s killer. In virtually everything, his profiles were wide of the mark. He theorized: 1) that the killer was a white man in his late twenties; 2) he had no more than a high school education; 3) he lived alone and made his living working with his hands rather than his brains; and 4) though Douglas had made no review of any of the police files, he stated to a “certainty” that Elizabeth Short’s death was the result of a “stranger murder,” in other words that she was a victim of opportunity.
Douglas actually went on record “to a certainty,” informing the public that there was no previous relationship between the victim and her killer. Simply put, “he was absolutely certain that her killer did not know her.”
The esteemed “Mind Hunter” was also on record back then that after having personally interviewed Bill Heiren’s, “Chicago’s Lipstick Killer” in prison for the 1945-6 serial killings he also believed that Heiren’s was guilty of those three horrific murders.
Knowing that John Douglas had taken that firm position some thirty-plus years ago and finding myself working with Dolores Kennedy and meeting with her and Bill Heiren’s at the prison in the attempt to establish Heiren’s innocence, it was with welcome, albeit decades late eyes and ears that I learned of his current change of heart and mind and his present belief that “HEIREN’S DID NOT COMMIT THE CHICAGO LIPSTICK MURDERS AND SPENT 64 YEARS IN PRISON AS AN INNOCENT MAN.”
In their book Law & Disorder (2013), co-authored by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, Douglas writes:
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When William Heirens–frail, sickly, and wheelchair-bound passed away on March 5, 2012, at the Dixon Correctional Center, at the age of eighty-three, he was the longest-serving prisoner in the United States. In addition to his previously mentioned educational achievements, his record over the years was essentially spotless, and he had earned the respect of numerous prison officials.
Several efforts to have him pardoned, or at least paroled and released, were mounted, the most formidable by Dolores Kenedy, a legal assistant with the Northwestern University Center on Wrongful Convictions and author of the book William Heirens: His Day in Court/Did an Innocent Teenager Confess to Three Grisly Murders? He was denied parole at least thirty times.
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But, after examining all of the available facts and evidence from my years of experience in profiling and criminal investigative analysis, I no longer believe him to have been a killer, and he spent the vast majority of his life behind bars for nothing. Though he is now beyond our justice, I would be happy to testify to those beliefs under oath in a court of law.
I wish I had known enough when I first encountered Bill Heirens to have come to this conclusion and put forth these views. I have spent considerable energy both in and after my FBI service to make up for my initial naivete.”
Additionally, in a separate interview with Mark Olshaker and John Douglas, in a more reflective tone both have this to say:
THE READERS’ WRITERS: Bestselling authors John Douglas and Mark Olshakera
By DA Kentner (2013)
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JOHN) In some ways, “Law & Disorder” is a departure for us. Our previous books, from “Mindhunter” through “The Anatomy of Motive,” all had as a general theme the idea of catching the bad guys and delivering justice to victims and their families. “The Cases That Haunt Us” was kind of a transition, in that we were taking cold murder cases from Jack the Ripper to JonBenet Ramsey and trying, after you clear away all the myth and hype, to figure out what actually happened and didn’t happen. When I was in the bureau and headed up the Investigative Support Group at Quantico, we were overwhelmed by case consultation requests and could only work for the police/prosecution side. Except for rare exceptions like David Vasquez in Virginia, we were not in the exoneration business. But when I retired and started getting consulting requests from both sides, I came to realize that profiling and the kind of behavior-based criminal investigative analysis we had developed was just as applicable in determining who had not committed a given crime as it was in determining who the actual perpetrator might have been. This caused me not only to agree to work for the defense in certain cases but also to reflect on and re-evaluate a number of cases throughout my career. It’s difficult ever to admit you might have been wrong in a certain case, but if you have gained the insight and perspective to understand why you might have been wrong, that can be a very useful and enlightening experience. Why investigations and prosecutions go bad and what can be done differently is one of the main themes of “Law & Disorder.” It is really a cautionary tale of what happens when theory supersedes evidence and prejudice deposes rationalism.
MARK) John is referring to a case early in his career, that of the so-called Chicago “Lipstick Killer” William Heirens, whom John interviewed in prison for his serial killer study. Revisiting that case made us both realize that an investigator can only be as good as the evidence and case materials he is presented with. And we’re not saying it’s easy.
SKH Note-
In a sense, I guess we can consider Bill Heiren’s “lucky” in that his sentence “life without the possibility of parole,” he got to live into his Eighties instead of being executed in his late teens. Sixty-four years for a crime he did not commit is NOT JUSTICE. In 2022 the prison population in the United States was 1,200,000. It is estimated that 4-6% of those prisoners are innocent. Let’s call it 5%. That means that currently, there are 60,000 innocent individuals incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. These are TODAY’s numbers. Back in Bill Heiren’s day, police corruption was commonplace throughout the United States. Consequently, the false arrests/imprisonments, manufactured evidence, perjury, and wrongful execution numbers were much higher.
In presenting my father’s suspect crimes in “The Early Years Part I (1920s) and Part II (1930s), In those books I present several cases of false arrest of another for crimes committed by George Hodel. These were identical crime signatures to the Suzanne Degnan child kidnap sexual assault murder from 1946. Sadly, one of those crimes resulted in the execution of a young man totally innocent of the crimes. See the below books and audiobooks for complete details.
The post Former “Mind Hunter” FBI Profiler John Douglas in Contrite Admission Now Believes 1946 “Chicago Lipstick Killer” Bill Heirens Who Served 64 Years for Crimes Was Innocent on All Three Murders and Were He Alive Douglas Would So Testify Under Oath appeared first on Steve Hodel.