Professor Scott Bonn has dedicated his life to trying to understand what makes the darkest souls among us tick. The host of “The Killing Hour with Doc Bonn” podcast took some time while traveling between his first few dates of the tour to share what he’s already learned on the road and what he intends to bring to his Tower Theatre audience May 21.
Oklahoma Gazette: How does your live show differ from what you’re used to doing, whether it’s podcasting or writing essays and books?
Bonn: For me, being able to get a live audience reaction in real time to things that I typically just write about, or my commentary on TV, but don’t have the opportunity to actually get real time live feedback is really incredible. It’s a wonderful thing. It validated certain things that I might be talking about or a perspective that I have.
OKG: Have you done this at all before, or is this kind of your maiden voyage?
Bonn: In terms of a theatrical event, this is my first time … I’ve had sort of parallel experiences. I’ve done a lot of speaking at criminology conferences, and on TV and podcasts and I’m also a professor, so I’ve been in the classroom for years, but it’s different getting on stage with the lights and the audience. They’re hanging on every word.
OKG: Without giving away too many spoilers, what’s the format of the show?
Bonn: It’s broken up into two acts. In act number one, I attempt to tell the audience everything that they perhaps have always wanted to know about serial killers but maybe we’re afraid to ask. I would say a pretty thorough deep dive into the psychology into the motivations, the various types of serial killers, how many of them there are and a little bit of background on the FBI and profiling and things like that. And, of course, it’s not just me talking. We have interview clips from some very notorious serial killers themselves and also little short clips of some of my colleagues and some people that I regard very highly and their insights, so we intersperse these little clips in there as well. And then act number two is really exciting, because this is where I get to take the audience up close and personal, as I like to say, with two of the most infamous serial killers of the 20th century. And those are the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, and Dennis Rader, who actually gave himself the brand name Bind, Torture, Kill [BTK] of all things. And I had extensive correspondence and interviews with Berkowitz in particular and correspondence with Rader and so I tell incredible stories and one-of-a-kind anecdotes about those experiences. And then we do a little switch and we go into a Q&A session. We have an opportunity there during the intermission for people to write questions and put them in a bowl and then I attempt to, in a very rapid fire fashion, end the show by trying to answer as many questions as possible. The bowl the last couple of nights, it was filled with questions. I I know people are interested in this topic, that’s why I’m doing it, but the number of questions is just absolutely incredible.
OKG: Was there a particular reason for choosing Berkowitz and Rader?
Bonn: The book that I wrote, it’s called Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Murderers. It’s in depth, there’s a lot of meat in there about serial killers, but it’s almost as much about us, the public and our fascination with them. It’s almost like turning the mirror around and saying, “the monster without, the monster within” and taking a look at ourselves. And that I found that that really, really resonates with people. To answer your question. The reason that I deliberately picked Rader and Berkowitz is because these were two serial killers, who were during the 1970s, that’s when they started out, it’s now called the “me decade.” And these were serial killers who craved ,who hungered for public notoriety, so much so that they gave themselves their own brand name. They named themselves Son of Sam and Bind, Torture, Kill [BTK]. And then they toyed with the police and the media. They’d write letters and play cat and mouse. “Catch me if you can.” To me, this is the epitome of the narcissistic serial killer that actually needs public feedback. So I thought, who better to get the direct feedback from and to provide the perspective than these two guys? And I’m telling you, they snapped at the opportunity. They jumped at it, because they think they’re the smartest cats in the world and most interesting cats in the world. So when I told him that I am, at that time, a college professor and I’m writing a book, I immediately got letters back from them saying that they would be happy to be involved.
OKG: I also read a piece that you published in Psychology Today about mass shooters. Obviously, we’ve seen more of a trend in that direction. You wrote that you do not think, because of the planning that goes into such events, that these people “snapped.” Do you think that that has to do anything with the transmutation of these impulses, or is that an entirely separate phenomena?
Bonn: Great question. Completely different motivations. We’re definitely seeing an uptick, unfortunately, in these terrible events. But the motivations themselves are very, very different. A serial killer is driven by an internal compulsion. Oftentimes, it takes the form of a fantasy need, something to play God, to be God. Sometimes it’s about sex. Other times they have a mission — they give themselves a mission to kill homeless people, something like that. But it’s a craving that doesn’t go away, and they want to scratch that itch over and over again, where as these mass shooters tend to be very angry, fatalistic individuals who want to go out and make a bold statement, kill as many people as possible, and then frequently turn the gun on themselves, or die as a result of suicide by cop. More than 50 percent of those mass shooters die right there at the crime scene, so they don’t they don’t have the exit plans. They don’t have an escape plan, whereas serial killers always want to live to kill another day.
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