RAYMOND M. PIERCE: I was appointed to the New York City Police Department in 1970, and in 1973 I was promoted to detective. I worked predominantly in a very tough area, the Seven-Five (75th) Precinct in Brooklyn, which is East New York. It's a high-crime area, every year we led the city in homicides. In the detective squad we worked on all types of cases, from sexual assaults, child molestation cases, robberies, kidnappings, as well as homicides.
In the early 80s they developed a sex crimes squad, which is now called the Special Victims squad, which handles only sexual assault cases, whether children or adults, so that was taken away from the detective squad. But I also worked with the crime scene unit for a while, doing forensic recovery. So I saw the forensic side, but I was never trained in the behavioral aspects of crime. Why does someone commit that crime? I would have to track them down, arrest them, take them to court, but I was never really interested in why they committed that crime. The training that I received in Quantico and my readings and studies afterward-it's really given me an insight into why that person commits that crime. For my purposes … it's to understand that person in order to then short-cut the criminal career of another person in the future.
I received an assignment to go down to the FBI's Behavioral Science unit in Quantico, Virginia and worked for a year with them. It was an intensive study of serial murder, serial rape, understanding the criminal mind, and the process called "psychological profiling." What a profile does is, it provides an investigator with a description of the individual based on the information at the crime scene or based on information developed from a series of crimes.
If you're dealing with a sexual offender, let's say a it's a serial rapist or a child predator. What can that live victim tell us about the crime? If the victim has been killed, and it's been a sexually related assault or a series of murders, what evidence at the scene-not the forensic evidence, which is very important-but when we don't have enough forensic evidence to identify an individual, what does that person do at the scene that can give me an idea of the personality of the individual?
Based on the research, many times you can come up with a description of the individual that will help the investigators go in the right direction. It's a general description, more or less what we would have received if we had that little old lady in the window that saw the killer walking or running away from the scene-kind of a general description, race, background, male, female, type of clothing the person would prefer, and also the type of work the person would prefer; what connection the person may have had with the victim also.
I was there in Quantico for a year in the fellowship program, then I returned to New York City, and then from 1986 to 1998 that's what I did in New York City and surrounding jurisdictions. In October of '98 I retired, and that's what I'm doing now in retirement.
MIM: Consulting work, in other words?
RMP: Yes, I assist police departments, private investigators, corporate security, and just about anyone who needs assistance with an unsolved crime.
MIM: And you use profiling as one of your tools.
RMP: Crime scenes and any type of negative behavior [are] a reflection of your own personality. If this were my desk at home, it would be a lot messier than it is right now. It's that personality, it's what people give priority to. Little clues are given away, in a person's writing habits, or whatever.
MIM: What are your definitions of "pornography," and related terms like "soft-core pornography," "hard-core pornography," "violent pornography"?
RMP: I have no need to differentiate between "soft core," or "hard core" pornography. I know what the media defines as "soft core" and "hard core." For me it's anything written, spoken, printed, photographed or videotaped to elicit a sexual response from an individual. What the general public may consider soft-core pornography, that's enough stimulation for a criminal. It depends on what goes on in the individual's mind. If there's enough stimulation for a criminal to use to fantasize before a committing a crime; sometimes they use it during a crime and many times they use it afterwards.
MIM: So pornography is one word, essentially, for you.
RMP: For me it is yes.
MIM: Do you believe, from your experience, that there's a greater consumption of pornography among sex offenders in contrast to non-offenders?
RMP: In my experience, offenders in general have a heavy exposure to pornography. I cannot tell you what the general population's exposure is, but it's available for them in different forms.
Many times when you've been looking for a person for a while, particularly for a serious crime, whether it be sexual in nature or not, well, when you arrest the person you ask, "Well, where were you for four days? What did you do for four days?" "Well, I had committed the crime, I had to get out of sight." "Well, where did you go?" "I went to a sleazy motel, got a prostitute to come in, or one of these motels that have X-rated videos constantly going on 24 hours a day…" And that's how they relieve their tension.
And it was not just once or twice. Over and over again it would be, "I went up to my friend's apartment, I had a girl come up there for a while, and we watched videos." "What did you watch?" "Pornographic videos," or violence-oriented videos -- Schwartzegger movies -- Terminator seemed to be a favorite one, anything with that violence there.
MIM: Can you give us a rough idea of the percentage of the people who've committed sexual crimes that you've investigated that had pornography?
RMP: Anything I could say would be an approximation, but many times I wouldn't even ask, because I wasn't oriented that way back then when I was making those arrests prior to that [FBI profiling] training. But it would just come up. My partners and I would say, "Well, there's another one, another one, that's all they seem to do. And then we'd start to circulate in the area of these hotels, going to the back of hotels, looking for cars that were similar, because we knew that they were going to these locations afterwards.
Realistically, I would say over 75 percent would resort to something like that. It quite possibly could be 100 percent. I really don't know. I wish I would have been thinking that way back then, to collate that information, but I just didn't.
MIM: You've mentioned to us that you had experience with research on incarcerated pedophiles and their sexual preferences. What can you tell us about such persons' exposure to porn generally, and also prior to committing an unlawful sexual act?
RMP: Let's say if we're talking about a child predator, if it's a male, attacking young boys, let's say. For many of these people-I use the word "attack," but in their mind, they're not attacking these children. In their twisted mind, they're helping these children.
You would have a male living in an one-bedroom apartment, somewhere in the city, where he has a full-sized Coke machine in his living room, where he has every video game known to man and child in there, as well as pornography. He'll have a tremendous amount of heterosexually oriented pornography in his home, yet his preference would be for boys. He would also have homosexually oriented pornography.
Well, what's the reasoning there? What I've learned is they would get a child in, a young boy in the neighborhood, oh, here's a Coke machine, have a Coke here, play the video games or whatever, look at these pictures, see these girls here, see what these girls are doing here, see what they're doing with these men here or these guys here-and let the kid go home. Then get them back another day, get his interest fueled, have the child come back again, show him the heterosexually oriented pornography, and then slowly ease him into the homosexually oriented pornography, look at them, see what they're doing, well we can't do that, but look at this, we can do this.
I find that pornography is prominent in what these people do. What I've had to learn about them is that they may have a job, eight hours, ten hours a day, but their fantasy life is every waking moment. Every waking moment when they're working, they're fantasizing about what they're going to do; the pornography that they have that fuels that; that's obviously there also.
MIM: So when you said you searched these residences, you generally found porn there all the time, or most of the time?
RMP: In the few instances where I did actually search an apartment, I would find pornography there, but in my training, in the research conducted by the FBI, more and more, their research indicated that.
MIM: How many criminal cases involving sexual murders, rapes, or assaults on adults have you consulted on or investigated, and in what percentage of those was there evidence that the perpetrator was a user of pornography?
RMP: I've investigated somewhere between 750 and a thousand cases, but was I looking for it all the time? No, I wasn't. But my estimation would be that pornography is expected by the police in those cases. It's expected that they [the suspects] read pornographic literature and magazines. Anywhere between 60 and 80 percent of the cases, if I was looking for it, I would have found it. But realistically, well over 80 percent.
MIM: What were the percentages of finding porn involved in serial sexual murders, rapes and assaults, in your estimation?
RMP: Almost always. … Quite frequently, particularly with serial killers, they have a great problem with power and control. Many times they'll have hidden away storage areas. There was one case I can think of - it was a Maryland case, they found over 160 pornographic photographs in one of these industrial storage lockers. Along with some of the photographic equipment this person had, they found over 160 photographs of different women, many, many photographs, hundreds and hundreds of photographs, of 160 different women were depicted in these photographs, and many were victims of this killer.
MIM: Do you find that the serial killers have sexually assaulted their victims in the normal course of events, or did they just kill them?
RMP: In disproportionate numbers, the victims of serial killers are women. That we know of. And almost always, sexual abuse would be involved with those victims.
MIM: And by sexual abuse you mean some type of sexual intercourse or torture?
RMP: Some type of bizarre sexual contact or torture, yes. A serial killer is a person who kills three or more people with a significant cooling-off period in between. So if you're talking about a hit man for the Mob, perhaps, where he's just going to go out and shoot someone-that contact isn't there, it's just a cold hit, move onto the next kill.
But the serial killer, as portrayed by the media, generally, that would occur almost always with brutality, sexual assault …
MIM: Male or female victims?
RMP: Almost always female victims. It's the rare serial killer that kills primarily male victims, as Jeffrey Dahmer was doing.
MIM: And the killing may be a way of covering up the sexual assault?
RMP: Again, it depends on the relationship between the victim and the killer. If the victim is unknown to the killer, generally there's no need to cover up any sexual assault. If the victim is known to the killer, perhaps then there's more of a reason to cover it up. But many times they're killed simply because there could be witnesses.
MIM: Ted Bundy said he never met a violent sex criminal in jail who was not addicted to pornography. What's your view of that statement?
RMP: An example would be David Berkowitz, here [in New York], who was the "Son of Sam" killer [1977]. There was a tremendous amount of pornography found in his apartment when he was arrested up in Yonkers [N.Y.]. He lived in a room about the size of this room and it was just filled with pornography, satanic material, and other things.
In my experience, what Bundy's saying is very true. In my study of Bundy's background, he was first introduced to pornography by his grandfather -- are you aware of his history?
MIM: Not that part of his history.
RMP: His grandfather seemed to be a disturbed person and early on he introduced Bundy to pornography.
In my experience … when a child is introduced to pornography as the norm, they get a twisted view of sexuality as they grow up. And that definitely is what happened to Bundy.
He was also engaged for a period of time, and he then wound up breaking up that relationship, but the conflict he had with his former fiancee and his mother-he never attacked them. He went out and killed women [he didn't know].
MIM: Do you believe that when Bundy told Dr. James Dobson in his death row interview that his (Bundy's) activities were fueled by pornography, that he was telling the truth?
RMP: I believe that Bundy was telling the truth at that point. Fueled by pornography and fueled by his fantasies also, about that pornography, about what he wanted to do with victims he would capture.
MIM: By that you mean his fantasy of committing a sexual assault on a female?
RMP: Yes. His thoughts, his daily thoughts, concentrated on what we could consider bizarre sexual activities. And I believe he was telling Dr. Dobson the truth when he said that. I think it can be documented that he wasn't telling the truth when he spoke about the all-American family he had.
MIM: Back in '86, the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, sometimes called the Meese Commission, said that substantial exposure to sexually violent materials bears a causal relationship to anti-social acts of sexual violence, and for some sub-groups, possibly unlawful acts of sexual violence. Do you agree with this conclusion?
RMP: Very much so.
MIM: Could you elaborate?
RMP: Well, no one can say without interviewing individuals and getting a straight answer from them -- perhaps if we did a study with polygraphs wired to the individual -- that this pornography caused me to commit anti-social acts. But in my experience, what you just read there is perfectly true. With many offenders, that seems to be the way. I can't say what happens with all offenders, but in my experience, that seems to be what occurs with them.
That constant exposure to violent, sexually oriented material, after a while, where that would be shocking at first, after a while, for that individual, that becomes the norm. And if that becomes the norm-on paper, on video, or whatever-well, when I have a girlfriend, or I have a person that I take into my control without consent, well, that's going to be the norm for me, that's what I'm going to do if I'm that type of person.
MIM: You mentioned earlier that you don't try to sub-divide pornography into soft-core, hard-core pornography. One study concluded that exposure to non-violent pornography increases aggression against women. Do you agree with that finding?
RMP: I can't disagree with it. But again, if non-violent pornography is something that would be depicted in "Playboy,"-if you have a person isolated, not in a relationship, and sees that as the norm every month, well, when they do approach a relationship, I can see where they would be more aggressive.
MIM: Another study said that consumers of non-violent porn have diminished sympathy with and compassion for the victims of sexual assault. Do you agree with that conclusion, based on your experience?
RMP: It's reasonable to understand why they would behave that way.
MIM: A researcher suggested that desensitization of men toward rape victims occurs as strongly with depiction of sexual themes without violence as those with violent themes. Do you agree with that conclusion?
RMP: Well, suddenly, if I'm fueled by pornography, whether it will be mild, intensive or outrageous, that's going to affect that normalcy, and I can see where aggression could come in. Suddenly, if you constantly see women in degrading poses, different positions, does that then become the norm? So will you be more aggressive, would you not understand with a consenting partner: "Well, why won't you do that? It's in this magazine. Why won't you do that? You'd better do that." So, I think that's reasonable.
MIM: There was a further study that indicated that non-violent porn has a greater influence than violent porn on forced sexual access on an unwilling partner. Do you agree with that?
RMP: Violence is taking over as the majority of pornography out there. Again, it goes back to my response to your earlier question. If someone has this non-violent pornography in their home, and that can be presented during a relationship, "Well, why won't you do this? This is what I see all the time in these magazines. Why won't you do that"-it's going to really affect what could be considered a normal relationship, and a person would be more aggressive-I would agree.
MIM: Do you find that the addiction to pornography breaks up marriages?
RMP: I don't really have any investigative experience with that. Any type of addiction in a marriage, which should be a sharing experience, now I'm very self-centered when I have that addiction. And if you're my partner in the marriage, we've been married ten years or whatever, and you suddenly don't want to give that to me, well, there's going to be a problem in the marriage. And then that's the type of person who may go out to see the prostitute.
When I say I haven't seen that in my investigative experience, now that I think of it I have, because rapists go out and do that. We have many rapists around the world that are married men. They're not getting that fantasy fulfilled, or fulfilled to a point, and now they're even so addicted to the pornography, so addicted to the sexual aggression, that they will go out and attack women on the street. So I have seen that.
MIM: Do you think that Jeffrey Dahmer was insane?
RMP: I hope he was, I really do. Dahmer, in his early childhood, fit a pattern of behavior, particularly of cruelty to animals. That's seen in a lot of serial murderers. When you think about it, why does someone suddenly - generally, serial killers, when they are identified, they find that they start killing after the age of 25, 28 or so. But what happens before that? How does one get up to that point?
I think we've all grown up with friends or associates or kids in the area, and they've tortured animals. Children generally grow out of that. Well, for serial killers, that's a point of experimentation. They like that feeling of power and control when they can torture and kill a defenseless animal. Dahmer had a history of that too.
He also had a history of pornography early on in life. And again, when a child looks at pornography and gets that twisted view of sexuality, "well, that's the way it should be when I grow up, every girl should do this what I've seen in a magazine," they just don't get the true message what a giving, caring, sharing relationship should be. And Dahmer, I think, is a very good example of that. I really hope he was insane. He was deemed not insane for the purposes of the court. But he was definitely a disturbed individual, with several personality disorders.
MIM: With the cannibalism, it sounds like he really went way off the edge.
RMP: To a reasonable person, it should. And why would someone do that? If I have this bizarre need for power and control, that I have to torture these people, do whatever sexual things he did with them, well, what more power and control can I have than first, actually taking someone's life and then, in a bizarre, twisted mind, perhaps that would be an extension of the power and control, consuming that person.
MIM: Based on your law enforcement career, would you say as a society we have given the correct priority to enforcing the laws on obscenity?
RMP: I don't think we have at all. I think the obscenity laws are being chipped away. If you ask the average person in the street -- When I received your background materials I had to look up in the dictionary, what is pornography? I know I don't think about it that much, but I know what pornography is. And if you ask the average police officer in the street, and say they're selling pornographic magazines or hard core, or whatever, he wouldn't know what's the cutoff.
MIM: What do you mean by "cutoff"?
RMP: What makes it illegal.
MIM: I don't expect he would.