undy has been portrayed by actor Zac Efron in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
Dumfries And Galloway Standard)
“I had a call saying they wanted to keep him alive so they could study him some more, but I said no, it's really not necessary,” Douglas recounted.
“I said I'd got to know him fairly well, there's nothing more he can tell us.”
Not long afterwards, Bundy was executed in January 1989, aged 42.
But Douglas said that from Bundy he learned that many killers return to the scene of their crimes - a fact that helped catch killer Gary Ridgway, who was responsible for 71 murders.
Charles Manson was convicted in January 1971 (
Regarding the serial killer and rapist's portrayal on film, the ex-FBI man said: “I don't think he's glorified in the movies, but I would have liked to see more on the impact on the victims and their families.
“These people destroy lives.”
Another notorious figure who Douglas interviewed, Charles Manson, is set to be portrayed in upcoming movie Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.
Describing his meetings with Manson, the profiler recalled: “He's 5ft 2ins, it surprised me how small he was.
“He stood up on a chair to exert himself over us. I knew he was going to do that because it was something he would do on his ranch. He was very difficult to interview, and some were very intimidated by him.
“I interviewed him a couple of times, he said 'You have to give me something. They know in the yard that the FBI are here.'
“He said he wanted my sunglasses, which were a pair of Ray Bans. He wanted them so he could go back and show them that he'd ripped us off.
“So I gave him the sunglasses, and he talked.”
Manson's followers were behind the murder of actress Sharon Tate
From Manson, Douglas learned how cult members carried out the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others at her home in August 1969.
In the hope of starting a race war, follower Lynette Fromme also attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in Sacramento.
“I used a lot of buzz words to try and win his confidence, I tried to blend in and use the phrases I knew the Manson family used,” Douglas revealed.
“In the end he said I was as nutty as him.
“He was so into the helter skelter of creating a race war that his followers wanted to show they could be a somebody.”
Charles Manson was determined to incite a race war
The profiler said interviews would normally take place inside prisons at night, because the jailed monsters would often feel more at ease.
When this wasn't possible, FBI agents would dim lights to make it as dark as possible while serial killers talked.
Others who Douglas interviewed in the early days of profiling included murderers Gary Ridgway – who confessed to killing 71 – John Wayne Gacy, who killed 33, Edmund Kemper and Gary Speck.
He said the case that still haunts him the most is that of Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, who became known as the Tool Box Killers during a killing spree which claimed the lives of five women.
Tool Box Killer Lawrence Bittaker used to record his victim's screams
Roy Norris raped and tortured five teenagers
They raped and killed their teenage victims over a period of five months in Southern California in 1979.
“They made audio tapes of the torture, they would kick back, open a Guinness and play it over again,” Douglas said.
“You could hear the screams. It was nauseating, I could only listen to a few seconds.”
Douglas was the inspiration for FBI character Jack Crawford in the Hannibal Lecter movies, and worked with producers during the filming of Silence of the Lambs.
To hammer home the true horror of his work, he played a segment of Bittaker and Norris' audio to Scott Glenn, who played Crawford, ahead of filming.
“He was in tears, he was so emotional,” Douglas recalled. “Until then he said he was against the death penalty, but that changed it.”
As a young agent he was determined to speak to serial killers to find out if there were any similarities that could help identify other murderers faster.
From his work came the realisation that animal cruelty as a child could be a sign of evil deeds to come, and many experienced difficult childhoods.
“They lack empathy, they see themselves as the victim,” said Douglas.\
John Douglas interviews Edmund Kemper at Vacaville Prison
“They can't identify with those they kill. If you do get them to cry, they're putting on an act.
“You have to show a feigned empathy with them to get what you want. Some agents would get angry and want to choke the guy, but you can't do that.
“I would find myself looking in the face of one of them and you'd try to imagine what this face would look like when they were raping and murdering their victims, what the victim would see in the last moments of their life.
“In most cases they don't look like they're capable of the crimes they committed, but you know they're guilty.”
Evil killer Edmund Kemper laughed as he described disposing of his mother's body ( Image: Santa Cruz Sheriff Department)
Kemper, who killed 10 including his grandparents and mother, was the first killer to be interviewed by Douglas and his small team.
“He was talking about disposing of his mother's body, joking about it,” he said.
“After we did that interview myself and the other agent got in the car and looked at each other, exhausted. We both needed a drink.”
BTK killer Dennis Rader was motivated by his love of bondage, Douglas discovered
Another breakthrough Douglas recalls was with Dennis Rader, who became known as the BTK killer – which stood for 'Bind, Torture and Kill'.
He was responsible for 10 deaths between 1974 and 1991.
“I asked him what motivated him, and he said it was all about the rope,” Douglas revealed.
“His thing was bondage, he sent sketches of his victims to the police.
The character of Jack Crawford, played by Scott Glenn in 1990 movie Silence of the Lambs, was based on Douglas
“The main question I wanted to ask him was why he stopped for three years at a time.
“In answer to that he told me he'd got caught. One day he came home at lunchtime and put on a female victim's clothes and face mask, he was into autoeroticism.
“His wife walked in on him, but she never put two-and-two together and realised he was the BTK killer.
“He said: 'John, I only stopped because I got caught.'”
At its height, Douglas' department would be working on 1,000 cases a year.
He believes there are between 35 and 50 serial killers carrying out murders each year in the United States - and poor communication between hundreds of law enforcement agencies means many are getting away with their crimes longer than they could be.
In Netflix show Mindhunters, which is due to return for a second series in the summer, Douglas is represented by idealistic young agent Holden Ford, played by Jonathan Groff.
“The first series begins to show the toll that his work takes on him,” said Douglas.
“I suffered anxiety attacks because of it.
“In 1983 I was teaching in New York City and I thought I was having a heart attack.”
Days later, at the age of 38, he collapsed in a hotel room in Seattle.
“I nearly died,” he said. “I laid on the floor for three days because I had a do not disturb sign on the door.
“I was in a coma, and it needed months of rehabilitation.
“I told the bureau that I couldn't return to active duty because I couldn't lift a firearm, but they told me they just needed my brain.
“At that time my brain was shot to pieces.”
Nevertheless it would be more than a decade until Douglas retired from the FBI in 1995.
His first book, Mindhunter, was published the same year.
