John E. Douglas

John Edward Douglas (born June 18, 1945) is a retired special agent and unit chief in the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was one of the first criminal profilers and has written books on criminal psychology. 2Early life John Edward Douglas was born in Brooklyn, New York. A veteran of four years in the United States Air Force (1966–1970), he holds several degrees: a B.S. in sociology/physical education/recreation from Eastern New Mexico University; an M.S. in education psychology/guidance and counseling from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; an Ed.S. in Administration and Supervision/Adult Education from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; and a PhD in comparing techniques for teaching police officers how to classify homicides from Nova Southeastern University. 2Career Douglas joined the FBI in 1970 and his first assignment was in Detroit, Michigan. In the field, he served as a sniper on the local FBI SWAT team and later became a hostage negotiator. He transferred to the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) in 1977 where he taught hostage negotiation and applied criminal psychology at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia to new FBI special agents, field agents, and police officers from all over the United States. He created and managed the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program and was later promoted to unit chief of the Investigative Support Unit, a division of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).While traveling around the country providing instruction to police, Douglas began interviewing serial killers and other violent sex offenders at various prisons. He interviewed some of the most notable violent criminals in recent history as part of the study, including David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, Lynette Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, Edmund Kemper, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Richard Speck, Donald Harvey, and Joseph Paul Franklin. He used the information gleaned from these interviews in the book Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, followed by the Crime Classification Manual (CCM