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actually approach the police with offers to help. When Wayne Williams was apprehended after he’d thrown the body of his latest victim into the Chattahoochee River (as we predicted he would), we learned that this police buff had offered his services to the investigators as a crime scene photographer.
    And others we interviewed told us that they had taken a companion, generally a woman, on a trip to the general area of the crime, then made some excuse to leave her long enough to actually revisit the scene. One killer told us of taking his sometimes girlfriend on a camping trip, then leaving her briefly with the excuse that he had to relieve himself in the woods. That was when he would go back to the body dump site.
    The prison interviews helped us see and understand the wide variety of motivation and behavior among serial killers and rapists. But we saw some striking common denominators as well. Most of them come from broken or dysfunctional homes. They’re generally products of some type of abuse, whether it’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or a combination. We tend to see at a very early age the formation of what we refer to as the “homicidal triangle” or “homicidal triad.” This includes enuresis—or bedwetting—at an inappropriate age, starting fires, and cruelty to small animals or other children. Very often, we found, at least two of these three traits were present, if not all three. By the time we see his first serious crime, he’s generally somewhere in his early to mid-twenties. He has low selfesteem and blames the rest of the world for his situation. He already has a bad track record, whether he’s been caught at it or not. It may be breaking and entering, it may have been rape or rape attempts. You may see a dishonorable discharge from the military, since these types tend to have a real problem with any type of authority. Throughout their lives, they believe that they’ve been victims: they’ve been manipulated, they’ve been dominated, they’ve been controlled by others. But here, in this one situation, fueled by fantasy, this inadequate, ineffectual nobody can manipulate and dominate a victim of his own; he can be in control. He can orchestrate whatever he wants to do to the victim. Hecan decide whether this victim should live or die, how the victim should die. It’s up to him; he’s finally calling the shots.
    Understanding the common background is very important in understanding a serial killer’s motivation. After spending many hours with Charles Manson at San Quentin, we concluded that what motivated him in inspiring among his followers the butchery of Sharon Tate and her friends one night in Los Angeles in 1969 and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the next was not the apocalyptic blood lust of “Helter Skelter” as had been widely thought. Born the illegitimate son of a sixteen-year-old prostitute who had grown up with a fanatically religious aunt and sadistic uncle until he began living on the streets at age ten and in and out of prisons thereafter, Manson craved fame, fortune, and recognition, just like the rest of us. What he really wanted to be was a rock star. Short of that, he could set himself up as a guru and would settle for a free ride through life with susceptible followers providing the food, shelter, and drugs. His “family” of social misfits and middle-class dropouts provided him with enough opportunity for manipulation, domination, and control. To keep them in line and interested, he preached apocalypse, an ultimate social and race war symbolized by the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter” in which he alone would emerge victorious.
    Everything was okay with Charlie until August 9, 1969, when Manson follower and would-be usurping leader Charles “Tex” Watson broke into the Beverly Hills home of director Roman Pølanski and his eight months pregnant wife, movie star Sharon Tate. After the brutal slaughter of five people (Polanski was not home at the time),