Rachel Corbett

In places they know because they know, you know, kind of for practical reasons in a way, they know the landscape, they know everything.

you know, where to go, where's dark and hidden or that kind of thing.

Well, I think there was a lot banked on profiling.

You know, for the FBI to kind of admit that it wasn't working, it would have to admit that it was really ignoring a lot of the evidence for a long time about profiling.

Because in the 70s and then into the 80s, when there was this so-called epidemic of serial killers, this was the Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy era, the FBI was...

was kind of exaggerating the threat.

They were saying that something like 4,000 to 5,000 people are killed every year by serial murderers, and actually it was more like 400 to 500, and they didn't correct these errors.

And they would hold these very splashy press conferences where they'd bring out their profilers and say, you know, we've got this huge problem on our hands and we've got the solution for it.

And the reason behind the scenes was that

The FBI was really left in disgrace after J. Edgar Hoover left and their funding had been gutted and they needed to kind of rebrand themselves and they needed to get more money.

So by creating this really sensationalized problem and a really kind of sexy solution with these mind hunters,

They were able to get the public on board and public, you know, pressure Congress to fund them.

And so it really worked in a certain way and they had a reason for making it seem more effective than it was.

And then I think, you know, slowly over the years, it kind of just petered out a little bit quietly.

They kind of kept everything quiet.

There's a very famous case about this that often gets told, and some of your listeners might even know it.

It's about the so-called Mad Bomber, this bomber who was terrorizing New York City in the 1930s and, or was it 40s?

I can't remember.

I think it was the 40s actually.

But he was leaving pipe bombs in movie theaters and around the city.