Dancing With Devils

Name any high-profile crime or incident of the past 15 years and chances are that Dietz has had a role. Among his "cases": the trials of would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley, Jr., Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Ng (Dietz turned down the O.J. Simpson criminal case); the Tawana Brawley investigation; the sieges at Ruby Ridge and Waco; the search for the Atlanta Olympics bomber (Dietz helped tie the explosion to two others in the city at a lesbian nightclub and an abortion clinic and to one at a clinic in Birmingham, and constructed a detailed "profile" of the bomber that led to the identification of Eric Rudolph as a suspect). Dietz is currently preparing for the criminal trials of Russell Weston, accused of killing two officers in the Capitol Hill shooting in Washington, D.C., and Michael Laudor, the schizophrenic Yale law school graduate charged with stabbing his fiancee to death, as well as civil suits surrounding the Jenny Jones show (one guest murdered another after being on the program) and the shooting at the Empire State Building.

Dietz, who earned an M.D., a master's in public health and a Ph.D. in sociology, all from Johns Hopkins, is credited with elevating the standards for the field of forensic psychiatry. Taking his cue from the study of accidents, which was undergoing a paradigm shift, Dietz pioneered stringent research of murders, sex offenses and bizarre behavior. "Accidents had always been regarded as sort of uncontrolled supernatural events," he explains. "But researchers were beginning to study them analytically, counting up the ways in which people suffered injuries and looking for patterns in the way accidents occurred. The goal was to prevent them from happening." Dietz has applied that exhaustive approach for classic studies of product tamperers, celebrity stalkers, sexual sadists and people who push waiting passengers onto subway tracks.

His preparation in cases is legendary; not only does he pore over police reports, photos, military records, employment documents, diaries, letters and books, he often will inspect murder and burial sites. Coupled with that thoroughness is a rare ability to translate technical jargon into simple terms that are clear to jurors and useful to police. In fact, FBI agents have been so impressed that they passed along tales of their consultant's exploits to visiting writer Thomas Harris. They joke that Dietz is the model for Harris' Hannibal Lecter -- just the biting mind part, they're quick to add.

Dietz, who heads the Threat Assessment Group (TAG) and Park Dietz & Associates, both based in Newport Beach, California, recently sat down with PT's Editor-in-Chief for an incisive discussion of his work, crime and human nature.

AT: What attracted you to forensic psychiatry? Were there any early experiences that explain your interest in bizarre behavior?

PD: One summer during high school, a friend of mine was raped by a young man that I also knew quite well. I was away for the summer and when I came back, she told me about this guy having raped her. I remember the pain she experienced with that and the anger I felt toward him about it. I don't know if it's possible to determine whether an event like that influences one's choice of a career, but it's occurred to me that it could. But I didn't really gravitate to the subject until college. I didn't know there was such a thing to gravitate to.

AT: How did you find out?

PD: While I was in college, I stumbled on a text called Forensic Medicine by Keith Simpson. It had the most extraordinary photos. There was a young man who hanged himself from a tree with pornography strewn around, a trunk containing a disarticulated skeleton. There were pictures of infanticides, ghastly stab wounds and mutilations.

AT: Most people would be repulsed, but you weren't.