Criminal Minds. Mindhunter and Manhunt. Cracker and Profiler. Nearly the whole of the Hannibal Lecter universe: Manhunter, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal (the movie and the TV series), Red Dragon… It goes on.

It seems we’re fascinated by forensic psychology, by mindhunting, by criminal profiling.

This hour, we look at three different criminal profilers: James Brussel, the psychologist who helped catch the Mad Bomber of New York in 1957; James Fitzgerald, the forensic linguist who caught the Unabomber; and Bill James, the father of sabermetrics, turns his data analysis on a century-old serial killer mystery that no one had even realized was a serial killer mystery before he and his daughter figured it out.

GUESTS:

• Michael Cannell - Author of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling
• James Fitzgerald - Retired FBI agent, criminal profiler, and forensic linguist; he’s the author of a series of memoirs, A Journey to the Center of the Mind
• Bill James - Former Senior Advisor on Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox; co-author of The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery
• Rachel McCarthy James - Co-author of The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery

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Colin McEnroe, Cat Pastor, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired November 7, 2017.

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