True crime author, show host, visits library

WINSTED — Residents learned about the motives of criminals and the process behind criminal investigations when the Beardsley and Memorial Library held a discussion by Vernon native M. William Phelps on Saturday, Jan. 19.Phelps is the co-host of the television show “Dark Minds” for the Investigation Discovery Channel and is the author of 23 books about crime.The show is about unsolved serial murder cases which Phelps investigates during the course of the program.Phelps started his talk to an audience of 50 residents by speaking about his investigation methods. “Through the journey of my investigation, I consult with a criminal profiler, a psychotherapist and a criminal serving time in prison,” Phelps said. “This guy, who on the program we call ‘Raven’, is an animal and a monster. He has killed between five and 20 women. He calls me a couple times a week and we talk about the case that we’re investigating.”Phelps said the show keeps the identity of the criminal anonymous in order for the show to not glorify him in any way.“We don’t want him to get any credit for what he did,” Phelps said. “All we are looking for is his input on how a killer might think. He gives me the insight that no one else can because he tells me and the viewer what it is like to actually take somebody’s life. What goes through his mind is very important to us because he describes what he is thinking when he committed his murders.”Phelps said, out of any question he has been asked in his career, the one question he has been asked the most is why do people kill.“Any of us are capable of killing,” Phelps said. “The quick answer to why someone kills is that there is no answer. There are only three motivations for murder: love, money and revenge. There are a lot of sub-categories under those three motivations.”He said the purpose of the “Dark Minds” television show is not to all-out solve cold murder cases, but to try to present information on the cases in order to generate interest and get potential information from the public in order to finally solve them.“On the show, I go out and interview police officers and family members of the victims,” Phelps said. “It seems as if the more I got involved in these cases, the more active the investigation in each case became. If you watch the show, it may seem like each investigation takes less than 43 minutes to complete. The truth is that each investigation takes a long period of time to complete, sometimes more than two years. In this upcoming season of the show, we are presenting one case that I worked on for five years. These are all cases where they cannot find the perpetrator.”While other true crime television shows, including “Criminal Minds,” use criminal profilers in order to get information pertaining to a case, Phelps said his television show does not use them.“Criminal profiling is like throwing darts at a dartboard,” Phelps said. “Most of the time profilers are wrong. If they find information, most of the time it does not help the case. We can speculate about what the culprit does for a living but that does not help the case.”Phelps said while most people may think the murder rate is high in America, in truth it is much lower than it was 20 years ago.“Because of television and the Internet, the reporting of murders has gone up, which makes it seem like murder rates have gone up,” he said. “For example, last week in New York City there was not one murder. If you look at the murder rates in Hartford and other cities you will see they have all dropped. In about 999 out of 1,000 murder cases, the perpetrator is someone who knew the victim. The chances of someone being killed randomly are pretty low.”As for writing true crime books, Phelps said he mainly writes about serial killers and female murderers because, to him, they are much more interesting to write about than male murderers.“A male, unless he is a serial killer, is not really interesting to write about for 500 pages,” he said. “Females are just a lot more interesting. A male can be cruising along, pick up a hitchhiker and throw them out of a car. It’s just a primordial instinct men have to hunt and kill. However, a female is much more systematic. A female will take her time to find the target then go to a grocery store to check out what kind of poison they offer. A few weeks after that, she will purchase the poison, put it in a cabinet at home, then think about it over the course of a few weeks. Then she will take the poison out, start experimenting on a squirrel or a cat, then a few weeks after that she will finally get her intended victim. There is just a lot more that goes into the thought process for a female killer than there is for a male killer.”Phelps went on to give a preview of his next book, “The Kiss of the She Devil,” which is due out in March.“I did not title the book,” Phelps said. “Usually, you submit a title to the book publisher. The book publisher then goes to a marketing team that comes up with a title for you that they think will sell books.”Phelps said the book is about the case of a Michigan librarian who was leaving work one night and was murdered in front of the library building.“The library surveillance video that night shows a car that pulls up to her as she is standing in front of the building, then someone gets out of the car and shoots her,” he said. “People I interviewed told me she did not have an enemy in the world and was loved by all. I spoke with my serial killer source who told me that even for people in the world who do not have an enemy, there is usually someone out there who doesn’t like them.”