Simple Conversations
Hi I’m ASG,
I’m a curious overthinker with an abundance of questions about everything.
If you need something more productive to listen to when commuting, doing chores or you’re just bored, this is the place for you.
Dive into the minds of best-selling authors, athletes, musicians and even doctors through the medium of Simple Conversations
Simple Conversations
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HUMAN BEHAVIOURS IN CRIMINALS - #43
What’s been annoying you this week?
David Hayes is an author, criminologist and consultant working in criminal behavior, adult education, and Title IX issues. He is a media specialist.
Follow ASG for BTS
Check Out David's Work
As a True Crime Fan, ASG was over the moon when Criminologist - David Hayes agreed to join him. David has studied the behaviours of many criminals, actively educates criminals and has worked on many cold cases.
Expect to learn about the breaking point for criminals, the delusion involved in crimes, the trauma involved and even the madness behind Jeffrey Dahmer + Ted Bunny.
If you could take some time to Like, Comment, Share it would really help me out.
If you are listening on Spotify or Apple, please rate the show as it will help build a much better show.
Peace.
01) So tell me, who's David Hayes?
David Hayes (00:04) David Hayes is currently a forensic psychologist and criminologist working in prison education, cold cases, and some adult education fields currently, as well as still dabbling in the entertainment world as a screenwriter and novelist. And he's quite handsome, if you're listening.
ASG (00:30) I can't confirm. What's annoying you this week David?
David Hayes (00:36) wow, what's annoying me this week is we're in the United States, I'm in the United States of course, and we're celebrating our Thanksgiving holiday coming up. And the Thanksgiving holiday is essentially a giant cultural lie that really annoys me because it's predicated on the idea that settlers from England came and made nice with the native populations. and had a wonderful meal and traded ideas and things. And it really was just a bunch of settlers coming in and dominating a, you know, indigenous people and essentially, you know, ruining their lives and taking their land. So our celebration is for this. It's not going to stop me from eating too much because, you know, I have to assimilate and fit in with my culture. But yes, that's that's currently my annoyance of the week.
ASG (01:30) I forgot about Thanksgiving. knew it exists by now. I don't know the date, I'm not that familiar, but I've been trying to batch book guests for the next few weeks so I can record and then when it comes to Christmas forget that I ever had a podcast. But I sent it out to a guys. I one guy in particular who's a singer, he made a Super Bowl song, but I asked him if he could do in between these dates because it was the only time I really had free and he just wrote back, Thanksgiving equals drunk.
David Hayes (01:42) Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ASG (02:00) I forgot all about it, he was so right, I felt like such a dick.
David Hayes (02:00) It's true. Thanksgiving does, I mean, don't, please don't, because, know, I mean, my annoyance means I want you to be annoyed with Thanksgiving and forget about it. But so that's, that's, that's where we're at with it. It's a, I joke with people about this. all, know, schools will put on Thanksgiving pageants with this wonderful, the, the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts making friends with.
ASG (02:10) You
David Hayes (02:30) the indigenous tribes and they had all these wonderful meals laid out together when it really is just about smallpox blankets and taking over land and completely taking advantage of a group of people that didn't have a word for personal ownership in their language.
ASG (02:49) Yeah, something tells me if if you went by that raw definition, there wouldn't be a lot of turkey being given out or beers being drank to be honest. I think there'd be more tissues in front of an open fire trying to console each other.
David Hayes (02:58) There would. There might be, might, there's probably, you know, it's the States, there's still going to be beer and overeating. So, you know, we can't give up too many things.
ASG (03:05) Hahaha! Right, we need to try and switch gears here because this conversation is gonna be very different to celebrating and Thanksgiving to be honest, so I mean Let me try and figure out where I can go from here. So People are gonna hear those two titles you have of forensic psychologist and criminology and they're gonna get a little bit spooked because to me it spooked me a little bit too because You can tell what world it's on. You can tell it's in the world of crime and cases and stuff
David Hayes (03:18) Well, it might, it might. Sure.
ASG (03:40) But it does sound a little bit harsh. Can you give like a little bit of an idea definition of what those are?
David Hayes (03:46) So they goes into two different areas really. So like the idea of forensic psychologist is really broad. It's huge. So it's anything where the science of psychology interacts with criminal justice world. So wherever that happens. it could be, you know, counseling a police officer with mental health issues. It could be decided or doing some tests to see if someone's, you know, fit for trial. It goes all the way to looking at criminal behavior. in terms of a crime and trying to figure out who it is. So there's lots of areas for it. It kind of narrows into the idea of criminologist and a criminologist as opposed to a criminalist. So a criminalist is that forensics person, the science and the math and the things I don't know anything about. And the criminologist is someone who looks at essentially criminal behavior, criminal trends, and goes into like predictive models of it.
ASG (04:46) Have you ever watched the TV show Mindhunter? Are you basically one of those people?
David Hayes (04:49) I have. So, Mindhunter could have been on my annoying things of the week too. So, Mindhunter is loosely based off of the work that the FBI did, the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the States in the early 1970s, where they kind of developed this idea of serial predators and who is doing what and forming these models. And although groundbreaking at the time, it's kind of resulted in some misinformation.
ASG (04:58) toxic
David Hayes (05:23) and really that's persisted over the course of decades. And what they did, and in Mindhunter, can see how they build these profiles and how they put these together. And what's accurate within Mindhunter, show, and the real life Douglas and Restler who did this, were the fact that they kind of used some pretty bad science. The science wasn't there, or the scientific method wasn't there. And so we now are living with the perception of like serial predators are all like super genius white males. And it's not true, but that's the only people they talk to then. So that's the only pool that happened. So yeah, mindhunter wonderful, presentation. I think I like anything that's going to expand on the idea and the reach of, criminology and, know, forensic psychology and you know, loosely the term criminal profiler, but I also really don't like the continuation of misinformation.
ASG (06:31) Yeah, I think any kind of recreation show is going to have a lot of inaccuracies because I don't know how anyone could accurately make a recreation without the people involved directly being involved, which I don't think anything. don't think Netflix is going to do that. They're going to probably think that their directors are the best.
David Hayes (06:52) So, I mean, that's part of it. But also is that the misinformation started in real life with the science from the FBI and then it's perpetuated again in the TV show. So they're not gonna, I mean, that's accurate. They're accurately reporting what they did, which was off, if that makes any sense. it's, and that's just something that we've been battling for years and years and years really. And you know, some of the things we discussed earlier that we're going to talk about, that idea of that misinformation really persists. And you know, it's, it's, it's, it's sells now too. So as a self-avowed, true crime addict, like you mentioned before we started, there's lots of you out there, but then to perpetuate people watching true crime and people still involved with it, we have to have that, that interest level there. And the interest level is the sexy, strange stuff. The serial killers who are not common. It is not a common thing, but it is everywhere because that's what people are looking for. They want the strangest and the... It's kind of like a horror movie where you want the scariest part of it because you're really safe in your area watching it.
ASG (08:08) Have you been able to use that to your advantage when you're screenwriting? You know the facts but then you also know what sells so you can build a middle ground and kind of bridge it together.
David Hayes (08:22) Well, I'm really terrible at doing what sells historically. So just as a caveat, but so my, my psychology adventure started because I wanted a better grasp of human behavior to begin with. And so that's when I was at a university and creating their film program there. And then I started to take the psychology classes and everything just went crazy from there as just a, a way to inform myself. But when,
ASG (08:24) I'm the same.
David Hayes (08:51) I think the most important thing is that not only do we have like character behavior and we're able to map that and we'll be able to accurately convey that in the film, we can also put together the film and the screenplay and the movie in a way where we can sort of predict that audience reaction to it because audience behavior is the same thing. You we have to take all these different levels of behavior into account. the fictional characters, of course, but then the real live audiences and how those will potentially react. So it's really kind of a nice synthesis of the two as far as the film world's concerned.
ASG (09:32) Have you ever done any studies on specific criminals to find out how they work? Maybe they've done something a little bit out of the ordinary.
David Hayes (09:43) not specific studies on criminals, but we've done, been a part of like larger studies on just generalized criminal behavior. And what I, so I do a lot of work in, the prison systems in the States. So I teach within the prison systems and I'm, you know, I talk to murderers every day. And how they get to where they're at varies greatly. And a lot of this is going to be, based on a kind of a structuralist aspect. I ascribe to a couple of different areas within psychology is like a behavioralist and a structuralist. So this idea that behavior is comprised of many different things, not the least of which is responses to social structures. So for example, if you live in a community, And then within that community, for generations and generations, you're expected to engage in criminal behavior. That's just your norm. That's the baseline. You're going to live up to those family expectations and those social expectations because you don't want to be ostracized from your in-group. You don't want to be blackballed from the family or the group or put aside. So you'll continue to engage in that. And it works the same way when I, you have a class of police officers and I'll ask them, so what did your father do? And my father's a police officer. What'd your grandfather do? My grandfather was a police officer. What if you wanted to be a baker? And they're like, well, no, no, no, I couldn't do that. It's the same thing. So you can see like societal structures and what's accepted and what's not accepted kind of put that together in many instances. And then you look at something, so outside the norm. So say like a serial killer, like if you grow up in a family that are killing people, you know, that doesn't really happen, right? You're not going to have that hand me down from them. So where does that happen? And there's no definite answers. There's no definite answers. But most of the time, we want to look at these in terms of how an individual person is built. And then remember that the act of of killing someone, the act of murder is a choice after that. A lot of people have the same terrible situations, for example, that like a Ted Bundy would come from. But Ted Bundy chose to act on it in this manner. And there are various personality disorders that ascribe to it. And like we talked about before, all that misinformation doesn't help either. So many people believe that, you know, the serial killer just can't stop and it's going to get worse and worse and worse. And well, no, that's, that's not true. You know, it can stop. It's a choice. You know, there's not these horrible urges, the, this, addiction, for example, to, killing people, it's, it's gets down to different factors, different catalysts, social and political structures. combined with personality disorders, maybe chemical imbalances, and all these things will interweave and combine to create any of our choices. So we're all making these choices every day. They're just choosing to go in that direction.
ASG (13:14) Yeah that choice has always fascinated me because I think anybody loving will know people that they are angry people they are they'll go to the point of fighting someone or threatening someone they'll never really go above that and it's always fascinating to me what that small little like trait or behavioral instinct is that pushes those criminals past that point of I'm angry at someone to I want to do some highly legal and just finish them off here.
David Hayes (13:48) It's, it's, it's fast standing. so I think it varies for everyone, but I think what it all it's going to relate to is this idea of your ability to control your environment. for example, if you have very little control over your daily life, like you go to work and you're told what to do all day, you come home and you're told what to do. you, you don't get to choose this. Your financial circumstances don't allow you to, buy the things you want, or maybe even. live up to the standard you think that you're supposed to be. You know, we just had a really contentious election in the United States and a lot of that was about, you know, a person's lack of control over their daily lives in their world results in who they're going to vote for, for example. So if you have very little control, then you're constantly looking to exert control over something else. And if there's no real outlets for that control, if there are things that that you can't exert that control in. Like many people have hobbies, for example, or they do theater or whatever it is that lets them have some sort of control over the world, depending on a personality disorder or the chemical imbalance or whatever could be wrong with them in the normal quote unquote type of makeup, they'll choose to exert that control in the ultimate way. And you know, killing someone is the ultimate level of control and power. So we see that with people who are serial rapists, for example. A lot of times it's not about the sex act, it's about the control and the control and the power. And when you exert that control and that power that charges you up, that makes you feel good. I worked on a case where the person who was arrested did actually commit multiple, multiple murders. and said in an interview that once he did that, once he killed somebody, he was charged up. He was powerful and his daily life didn't give him that at all. So there's this point of deviancy that we can't really pinpoint that's allowing people to make that choice to go that far. But again, it's a conglomeration of different kind of facets, but I think it all relates to control.
ASG (16:13) Yeah, a lot of these criminals that will do something, they'll always say something pushed them to that point. How often do you see criminals that accept accountability for what they've done and they've said, I've done this because whatever reason.
David Hayes (16:28) So in my work in the prisons, I see that a lot where it's just like, yeah, I did it. The reasoning for why is not always clear. I don't think they always know what the reasoning for why is. And I'm not in like a therapeutic talking with a client sort of thing with them. So we don't talk about our dreams and decide how we got someplace. But the accountability is usually there. And that's very interesting to me. So I didn't expect that prior to working with this population for these for over these years. But the accountability is there and there equally is as unsure as to why that point snapped too. Because most of the people in at least the and I assume worldwide prisons are reasonable human beings that made an incredibly horrible decision on an incredibly bad day. And they just made this terrible decision that's affected them for the rest of their lives, maybe ended somebody else's life, affected families, you know, forever. And I think that most of the people that I deal with take accountability for it. Sometimes it was in, you know, the commission of an act. We see a lot of horrible crimes happen under the influence of different drugs and alcohol. You know, addiction and things related to addiction are probably the biggest progenitor of criminal activity, like violent criminal activity worldwide, I would assume. And there's studies, of course, I just didn't look any of them up. So I'm saying I assume, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is. But so you could talk, I'll talk to someone who, for example, trying think of a good one here. Or not good, an interesting one. Good and fun are the bad words. I actually just, I just had, did a little bit of a case study for a different show. And there was a woman who, who put her baby in an oven and then cooked the child. And she said that it was an accident. And so,
ASG (18:23) Yeah, good, it's not a good description of it.
David Hayes (18:47) Of course everyone's yelling, no you did it on purpose, you did it on purpose. Well it turns out yes she did do it on purpose, but there's kind of precedent too for these atrocious things happening. I'm only bringing this up because there's so many different layers to different things, but there were cases of women who were having epileptic episodes and not a seizure, but an episode where they would mistakenly put their child on the stove and a tea cuddle in a bassinet. And so, you know, it was just, this is transposing of things. In this particular case, this woman was, you know, engaging in some illicit drug use, some hardcore things, also suffering from postpartum psychosis, not depression, psychosis, which is a far, it's more of a kind of like a psychotic break because of it. And it was incredibly jealous of the child based on her social media. that there was now a baby getting the attention that she never got. And so this led to this break largely induced with, with, you know, narcotic usage. And so resulted in, you know, a horrible tragedy, that the woman made the choice to do on purpose, but there were these mitigating circumstances and a lot of it results in, like I said, because this conglomeration of things. So growing up, not being the center of attention or not having anyone pay attention to her or the child taking what little attention there was away, probably a lack of control over now being a single mother. Drug use, postpartum psychosis, so we have a real mental issue and then drug use. it's these perfect storms of things that can all combine to make something terrible happen.
ASG (20:43) Yeah, it's wild. It's going to take a lot of blood to digest. So I might have nightmares tonight. Thanks for that David.
David Hayes (20:49) Well, you know, that's my job. One of my jobs.
ASG (20:50) So we've touched on their environment will impact it and you've mentioned that there's some of that are under the influence of something. Do you think that they're maybe trying drugs and excessive alcohol to numb that trauma or that potential decision being made and it's just not working so they've just given?
David Hayes (20:56) Mm-hmm. So that's an interesting thing. So my mentor worked on the Jeffrey Dahmer case. He's been all over the place. He worked at the Unabomber. worked on all these big, big things. And he related how Dahmer, for example, would try and get really inebriated to stop these urges. in all reality, was it, in all reality, the being inebriated probably left them more open to doing the terrible things. Right, he's going to the bars and just to be really drunk. And we see substance abuse as, you know, at least some sort of substance usage as a part of most, you know, like serial sexual predator murders.
ASG (21:48) Yeah, he was going to bars, wasn't he?
David Hayes (22:11) we see, you know, there's, some kind of, drug use going on. think the, I think Bundy did as well. some, it's not all the time, of course, again, these things vary where they're at, but yeah, I mean, it could conceivably be that someone's trying to, you know, dull trauma and in dulling that trauma, they're, they're opening themselves up to even making poor decisions than they would normally.
ASG (22:36) Yeah, even with your expert knowledge and stuff, has there ever been a situation or a person in specific you really struggled to analyze or study? There didn't seem to be anything that should have provoked them.
David Hayes (22:52) No, I not really. I mean I have the same biases as other people. So nothing in that sense, but I know that if I walk into a situation where I'm dealing with someone who is, for example, like child exploitation, that's something that like really gets to me. And it gets to me. It's not like anything new. You know, it should get to people. And so if someone is accused of this or they're in prison on this, I have to like really step back and take care of my own biases in that regard. and not try and vilify this person just immediately right off the bat because I have to be as clinical as I possibly can in dealing with them. Even if I, you know, from that sense or even if I have them in a class, I'm going to know who's done what. And so that's probably the hardest thing for me. So it's not an analyzing somebody else sort of thing. If they're being honest, if someone's not being honest and they're closed off and you're not getting the information you need, of course, that's going to be difficult. But it's more of case that I'm the difficult one and I have to police myself prior to going in.
ASG (24:00) Yeah, you have to almost remove emotion from the situation from your point of view.
David Hayes (24:06) Right, yep, the emotion part of it, the preconceived notion part of it. Yeah, that's really the only situation where I have trouble is in the kid stuff.
ASG (24:22) How do you do that? Because you mentioned earlier you're dealing with murders and stuff every day and you know there must be some that have done some sick things. How do you get yourself to that point where you can be non-biased?
David Hayes (24:37) So, I mean, at the very baseline, there's connective tissue between everybody. So there's this fun communication and psychology theory called the identification theory, which means that we have identification points with everybody. Even the most terrible criminal and the most beautiful angelic person are more alike than they're different. And I try and ascribe to that aspect of it where Okay, so you know, A, we're all human. There we are, boom, baseline. You know, all the same species. Most of the time, like I said before, it's someone who's just made these horrible, horrible decisions on a couple of bad days. And that's just your normal everyday crime stuff. When you get to the stranger things, I have to remember that, you know, for someone to get to a point where they're going to choose to, for example, commit multiple murders. They are, they know first and foremost that they're going to be breaking the law. It's not like no one knows this. They know that when it's found out, they will be ostracized. They know that their family will probably hate them. You know, if they care about somebody, that person will probably leave them. So I have to like get myself to the point where I'm thinking, okay, this person has gone through something or there's some problem or there's some reason. where they're gonna make all these choices to actively ruin their lives. everyone, victims' lives too, and their families' lives, but also actively ruin their lives. And so that's kind of where I try and, get like, all right, let's find out what that is. And if I look at it in terms of, not a puzzle is the wrong term, but more in terms of, if I can find like what the foundational aspects of that decision were, then that lets me, get a little bit more clinical about it. Like, yeah, it's a real person. Yeah, it's real human. Yeah, they did horrible things that affected many other people. But we do have the central research question. And the central research question is going to allow me to explore that I can hopefully help someone in the end is really where we get to it. Can I help families? Can I help this person? Can we get closure on other things? So wherever that we can pay it forward is kind of what I keep in mind.
ASG (27:03) someone who watches a lot of true crime I can see whenever I see someone doing something to someone they know or someone they supposed to love someone in their life it's not that I can understand them but I can I can see the concept of the situation I can kind of understand how they've went from point A to point B The ones that do things to people they don't know is the one that kind of freaks me out a little bit. Like the two people we've mentioned, Geoffrey Dahmer and Tad Bondy. What is it that's different from those people who can commit crimes on what seems to be unassociated civilians to the ones that do it on their own loved ones?
David Hayes (27:33) Mm-hmm. think it goes back to this idea of control. So if you are targeting people you don't know and choosing that you want to perpetuate the behavior. You want to, you want, this is gonna, this is a continuing thing. you know, in the Dahmer case though, you know, he did get to know some of these people. He dated them. in, terms of Dahmer, it's just a tragic case. because he was crazy and, and what he did was terrible.
ASG (28:09) crazy.
David Hayes (28:14) But there was so much that he could not control in his life. And he was abandoned so many times in different areas that the entire purpose of this was to make some like forever friends that would never leave, which is terrifying to begin with. And then also so incredibly pathetic that, that, then, you know, the substance abuse and all these things continue to do it. Bundy on the other hand, was, was targeting prey.
ASG (28:36) Yeah
David Hayes (28:44) like a hunter and you know, exacting control. So two, they were both looking for control of something. Dahmer and control of relationships and control of people abandoning in him and control of companionship. And then, you know, Bunny in control of power. And so, you know, I think that if one of Dahmer's experiments would have worked, then, if he made a zombie that would live with them forever, then they would have stopped. that need would have been fulfilled. But I don't think Bundy would ever stop because he was, he's continually looking for the idea of power and control. Then we go to someone who's a loved one, then your, your reasoning's different at that point. So if we can take out the idea of like killing somebody for money, or like you're going to kill your parents because you want the inheritance, or you're trying to, you're getting a horrible divorce and you think the only way out is, is killing somebody. Or, you know, you're a kid and you're all wrapped up in
ASG (29:15) Yeah.
David Hayes (29:43) whatever lifestyle you decide to and you're gonna you take out your your brothers and sisters whatever it is the people that you know it still goes back to control if someone's killing their parents for money they feel they have zero control over their lives and they want that inherent so they can have their life move forward if you're trying to get out of a horrible marriage that's control so it always goes back to this idea of power and control and and having that manifest a destiny for yourself and so and it'll, it'll man, it'll, it'll come up in different levels too. You know, not everybody, of course, you know, hires a hit man to kill their husband. Some people simply just get divorced, you know, and ended. So we, we'd have to talk to these people individually and see where like, where did this trauma come from and, why, why did you choose this level of it? And we can see how it's built once we get into these conversations, get specific. But I think everything really kind of goes back to the idea of, of their locus of control and how much they have in their life.
ASG (30:24) You You mentioned obviously that you're now in a way teaching these criminals now things. You're in some sort of like children's scheme. How open are they to learning about something new?
David Hayes (30:56) Absolutely 100%. So I mean, I don't have this isn't in the United States. It's not available to everybody. So you have to have some behaviors within prison. You have to qualify for different programs. I teach in a university program. So I'll teach psychology or English, whatever class I have for the for these groups of students. And they're like regular psychology and English classes like like one would have a university wherever. And but but like to a person, they're really open to learning new things. And I think a lot of so when we see in at least in the United States, the prison populations are filled with people who normally didn't have the privilege to either the privilege or the social structure wasn't there to continue an education or to move forward in an education or to have the idea of education in some form change their lives in some manner. There's many, you know, social areas and demographics where like a high school education is a given or even through a primary education is a given. And if that doesn't happen, then it's really hard for someone to see the value of it too. So I think that, so we know that, for example, someone who has a high self-esteem when they're in prison, when they leave, there's less recidivism. So there's less crime they commit outside of prison once they're gone. And we know that really the only statistical way to raise that self-esteem in prison is education. from a prisoner standpoint, yeah, really into it, know that this is something that can be life-changing. And it's not just a piece of paper at that point. It's experiencing these different areas and these different points of view. And then we know that when someone's outside of prison, once they leave, then this is a way for them to stay out of prison subsequently. So yeah, mean, it's, and I'll run through everything. So I'll have a class with people with drunk driving charges all the way to, you know, maybe a serial killer. So it's a very, very open class if someone qualifies.
ASG (33:30) I want to touch on something here that I read about today that there's been a real uproar about and I want to kind of link in your two areas of knowledge here with being able to screenwrite and obviously know a lot about the behaviors and criminals and things like that. There's been a lot of uproar about the Monsters TV series not being accurate and like making people look worse than they were.
David Hayes (33:48) Mm-hmm.
ASG (33:58) and I've seen that there's a lot now about the Zodiac documentary as well where there's a lot of people having a lot of backlash saying that they've twisted things and they stuff out. Ken, is there a reason things can't be completely accurate?
David Hayes (34:18) No. There isn't a reason why it can't be completely accurate. I don't know. How am I saying it?
ASG (34:19) No. So they could make it accurate if they wanted to, but they just choose not to.
David Hayes (34:28) Someone could make it accurate. Yes. Now it's interesting though. So and the people complaining, are they...this is where things get a little weird in persuasion and crime and all these things. Are the people complaining, complaining about the things they don't believe happened? Or are they complaining about factual inaccuracies? So if you have a belief set and like, okay, this is the guy and the documentary is about another guy.
ASG (34:50) Yeah.
David Hayes (34:58) Well, that's inaccurate. You know, and so are we looking at it that way? But again, we have to remember here. like documentaries and true crime media and all of that. And this is like a lot of what my dissertation was on. I did a study on whether or not homicide investigators were influenced by true crime. And I used the Ted Bundy case and I watched an ungodly amount of Ted Bundy media. And I developed a survey based off of that to kind of see, right, what does a homicide investigator believe? Do they reject the myths? Do they reject the stereotypes? All the things that are inaccurate in these pieces of media. And the document said, or the end of the study eventually came out that the homicide investigators largely believe the same things that everyone else believes because they don't run into this type of crime very often. So it's not like they have real world knowledge of it. it's kind of like, it's, there are a couple of areas like in terms of psychopathy and other things where they rejected the stereotypes, but overall they kind of bought into this idea of the stereotypes of, for example, for the serial murder, quote unquote. And so what we're left with here is, okay, so we've got this large batch of media that tons and tons of people are interested in. And the only thing it's beholden to, is the ratings of that media, the clicks, the downloads, and the money that it makes. Because there's, mean, there isn't, you don't have to, just to say something's a documentary, you can just say it. Like right now, I could tell you a wonderful story about, you know, how I, you know, built the White House in Washington, DC. And I'll say it's a documentary, it's totally true. And I don't have to back it up. I can just say it. And that's kind of where we're at here. So we know, like, are you familiar with, the case of Ed Gein.
ASG (36:57) No, but I've heard his name.
David Hayes (36:59) Right, 1950s in Wisconsin, in the States, and he was mainly a ghoul. He killed one person for sure, we think his mom, and then he largely just dug people up and made furniture from their bodies. And like skin and things, made clothes and stuff. You know, just, you I'm saying it like it's just, yeah, you know, nothing weird, just that. But you'd see like, okay,
ASG (37:21) North of Naxxra, just...
David Hayes (37:28) That one true crime story was the basis for Psycho and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They both say based on a true story, based off of this, two completely disparate versions, both inaccurate to the real story, but we can say anything is based on a true story. Because there's, there's not, it's not like a law. It's just one of those unwritten rules of documentary, right? And If we perpetuate myths like that, you know, it's it's interesting thing. There's actually a, a great theory called the agenda setting theory where it does it's in communication and it doesn't tell people what to think. It just tells people to what to think about. So if I'm out doing a talk and I'll, you know, I've got a large group of people and you know, the people in the true crime talks are going to be largely, you know, Caucasian women. Caucasian women, the biggest consumers of true crime media. And I'll ask them in the talk, all right, so who do you think is the most at-risk population of people? And they'll be like, Caucasian women, white women, all of everything we watch, there's white women being attacked. Like, yeah, that's true. Y'all relatively safe. It's generally black men. Black men are the most likely to die in a crime. After that, it's white men. because men do stupid things to one another and they make terrible choices. White women are relatively safe, but since they're the largest consumer of this media, they're going to be the focal point. We'll go back to identification theory. If I can identify it with the victim and I get scared watching my show, I'm going to watch another show because I'm scared in the safety of my home. you know, Aristotle is telling me that the cathartic, you know, responses is my, my, rush in my feelings for escaping near death in the comfort of my couch, you know, and our media tells us that we're going to come back to it. So what we're left with is this this idea that, is it accurate? No, no. Most documentaries, not accurate at all. They don't have an agenda. The only agenda is to perpetuate that documentary and then make the next one.
ASG (39:46) Have you ever watched a documentary called The Jink?
David Hayes (39:50) The Jinx. No, that sounds wonderful. What's it about?
ASG (39:54) It's about a murder case that was kind of never solved but there was a guy in particular they were interviewing and for this specific guy they hired a professional interviewer because they said the people investigating the case couldn't get him to answer anything that sounded like he was in any way related to this case yet he knew the victims, knew the people that were suspects, couldn't get anybody, couldn't get any answer linking him at all. So they got this interviewer in and he was playing hypothetical games with them the whole time. So he was making a hypothetical question, basing it loosely on what actually happened. And the guy was again, flawless, incredible, didn't say anything that sounded anything like it, but he got up and he went, can I have a break? I wanna go to the toilet. I wanna get something to eat. So they're like, yep, no problem. And the interviewer turned around and goes, keep his mic on because there's something he's not telling us.
David Hayes (40:33) Hmm.
ASG (40:51) And was on the toilet. You can hear him talking to himself saying that was close. Can't believe those detectives didn't question that because you've just got away with murder and the stormed of bathroom. And they were like, that is so stupid because they went down and asked the people to investigate it. And they said they had heard they had read blog posts from people who were close to the suspects and knew the victims, but not enough to be close to them.
David Hayes (41:03) Thank
ASG (41:19) and they were influenced by it so they didn't ask him any harsh questions and this interviewer hypothetically put him into a confession.
David Hayes (41:28) Nice. yeah, mean, that, you know, when we get into this idea of investigation too, the police are absolutely human. they have a different, like the idea of tunnel vision is really difficult too. So if anyone gets just narrowed in on a certain suspect, they're gonna block everything else out and kind of focus on it. I did watch, I think the Zodiac one you're talking about with, the kids and they're all they're they're older now and they're doing the interview about how they yeah that was so that's that's an interesting one so Arthur Allen the zodiac has been like a really it's been something that I I've dabbled in as well I'm a big fan of the criminal humanities so looking at like the writings of people and the media output of people and trying to determine you know behavioral aspects from from what they've written and what they what they put out there And of course the Zodiac ciphers and letters are fascinating. But yeah, so the Arthur Allen idea has been around for a really long time. And I know I usually, I mean, I don't know everything, of course. I haven't seen case files and like everybody else, I've seen what media has allowed me to see. I remember everything's edited too. You know, there's a distinct storyline happening in a documentary. It's not just straight information. You know, it would be a brochure at that point. And but so it's a it's I could see where that particular story if true would be a powerful, powerful indicator that Arthur Lee Allen was the Zodiac if it were true. That's where we're left.
ASG (43:13) You mentioned the human aspect of the police and we touched on it earlier about how they do have like support on their mental health and stuff and something that's hugely in the spotlight now is it's almost under a microscope is whatever the police do pretty much they have to tow a very straight line. Do you think the police in general could benefit from a little bit more focus on
David Hayes (43:25) Mm-hmm.
ASG (43:43) mental state.
David Hayes (43:45) I think everyone could, period. And, you know, at least in the United States, where, you know, mental health crises are still kind of reviled and looked at with like, you know, weakness, which I don't think is a true thing. But when we look at police and we look at military and we look at any industry, they're kind of a closed system, right? And when they close ranks like that, it's sort of protective. So we really don't get to see deeply inside there. But, you know, I think that we could benefit just overall from better mental health approaches and it's gotten better over the years. I'm pretty old now and I could remember how terrible it was before. And now we're actually at least talking about it, even in so far as the men's mental health, which has been largely shoved to the side for a few hundred years. You're not supposed to have problems. You're not supposed to be like that. There's a... You should be, you know, rub some dirt on it and walk it off. And it doesn't really happen like that all the time. But yeah, I think we are benefiting from that. think police are benefiting from, in a lot of different areas. And I also largely believe that, you know, there's, there's many times where people will look at a police investigation and say, they're not doing anything. And I don't think that's, that's accurate. think that most of the time, you know, vast majority of the time police are actually doing their job and working diligently. to find something they're not talking about anything. They're not showing it and there may not have anything that can be shown as far as progress is concerned because some of these things are pretty difficult. But I was asked to give a couple of quotes for two unsolved homicides here. One was, and they were both in the same article, and one was a... doctor, he was a gay doctor whose homicide in his own home, very fluent, was going, was not solved yet. And then the other homicide was a black trans woman in a hotel in Detroit, which was going unsolved. And I'm like, okay, so, you know, what we're looking at here are two different things. And I think that the organization wanted me to point out how police may not be doing their job, but they're actively, you know, from what I could tell actively really, know, pursuing these in whatever ways they can. If we know that an affluent doctor, regardless of, you know, sexual preference was murdered in their home, that's going to be a high profile, you know, perpetrator. Someone that you're going have to like work on kid gloves with, you know, get into someone's home with that much money and that much affluence, you know, easily. And then the other side, Black trans women are really the most likely group to have random violence happen, but simply for existing, you know, and in different cultural manifestations that person, that person who is, you know, a transitioning to a woman in the Black community is at risk for violence. So it could literally be, you know, one of those cases where it's just, it's random violence based from cultural predictors. So we've got these two different ideas. And of course, I think the police are working them to best of their ability. The doctor, can't really talk about because that's going to, when that comes out, it's going to come out big. And when this one is just hard, it just, could be anyone, anyone within this cultural sphere. So, you know, I think that the overall police are doing their job and, the speed of, of how things are solved and the speed of how information comes out I think is a large part of media as well. You know, there's this thing called the CSI effect. And the CSI effect is ever since the CSI TV shows, people believe that, you know, criminal science is in a flash, DNA can happen instantly. And, you know, everything needs to wrap up in this beautiful one hour segment when it really doesn't.
ASG (48:07) Yeah, there's unrealistic expectations. So before I get you to plug whatever you've got going on and take an ad break, you do some work on code cases and I wanted to ask you this now, obviously don't want sped up, don't want details, all respect to the people involved and stuff, but have you ever been involved in one that was actually solved?
David Hayes (48:35) Not actively. Now I've commented on some that have been solved from different things, but not yet. So still still working on that one. But they're really rare. It's it's sometimes we're dealing with things that are 40 and 50 years old. And the I I like it in terms of I know that there for everyone who is like survives and has a family member that may have been murdered 50 years ago or 40 years ago or or someone's been missing, I think that it's helpful to them to know that people are still working and people still care. you know, are the chances of solving them are very, very, very slim. They're like familial DNA has been wonderful recently, but that's incredibly expensive. And, you know, the couple of cases that I've gotten to, you know, do some follow-up work on that were solved with familial DNA only were solved because there was a grant from a nonprofit. that allowed that DNA to be checked. It's not like it's, it's, can just throw out there and, know, someplace is going to do it for free. So, there, there's a lot of factors that go into the familial DNA and the other cold cases are really just, just, it's your standard level police work and it's new eyes every few years and it's trying to break open these cases with maybe some new information or maybe something comes to light that didn't happen before. And technology has definitely helped in that regard. But really it's still this dogged determination. sadly, lot of municipalities and organizations don't really fund their cold cases. whoever's doing it, it's maybe a detective, maybe two, maybe just volunteers who are determined to try and help the victim families and survivors.
ASG (50:29) just about to ask do you want to plug whatever you're working on but that sounds so insensitive to ask somebody actively working in crimes don't know if I want you to plug your crimes in the moment
David Hayes (50:36) So, no, no, I'm not going to tell you any crimes I've done. my gosh, that'd be terrible. This would be proof. I will say that anyone can go to my website at HayesCriminology.com and I will actively help anyone who needs anything. if there is a case in your family or
ASG (50:43) Good, good. I'm gonna have a nut there. my god, I wanna upload this.
David Hayes (51:05) you know, something's not moving forward, I will do whatever I can to, you know, try and provide whatever help is possible in terms of that. If you, again, if anyone has questions or anything like that, or if anyone's a student listening and they need anything, I'm there for that as well. But really, you know, there's no, not like I charge money or anything. It's just a process of helping.