Meet the 87-year-old who helped create the FBI’s serial killer profile

How did a Boston nurse end up developing the FBI’s modern day psychological profile for serial killers?

Hulu’s “Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer” shares 87-year-old Dr. Ann Burgess’ story of working with victims of sexual assault, and how her research caught the attention of the FBI in the ’70s and ’80s.

The three-episode series, directed by Abby Fuller and produced by Elle and Dakota Fanning, documents the phone call that led to Burgess’ participation in a new FBI task force aimed at catching sexual predators, to Burgess publishing a groundbreaking study — all while balancing her life as a mother of four.

Burgess and the docuseries’ director Abby Fuller tell TODAY.com over Zoom about the creation of the series, and how trying to get Burgess’ life story into three 45-minute episodes was not easy.

“We spent a year and a half from when I first sat down and talked to Dr. Burgess to when we finished,” Fuller says. “There’s such a rich history with her work, so it was definitely a process. How do we whittle this down to the most emotionally powerful, the most defining cases and squeeze as much as we can into three episodes?”

How Burgess went from nurse to profiler

The series starts with Burgess’ career as a nurse. Burgess says she was pleased that Fuller wanted to highlight the nursing profession throughout the series.

“This is a profession that is well recognized for the kinds of things that we do in forensics, so that was really, really rewarding to me,” Burgess says. “It wasn’t so much me, as it was hopefully going to be the profession that nursing can get recognition for.”

Burgess’ work as a nurse and her research with survivors of sexual assault catapulted her into working with the FBI, which was researching the other side — the perpetrators of these crimes.

As seen in the series, Burgess was hesitant to work with the Bureau at first because she was a mother to four young children, but she eventually decided the results would be too important.

“I was feeling pressured to make the right decision. I mean, I didn’t care much about the offenders, they were killers,” Burgess says in the series. “The biggest motivation from my perspective was helping victims. I focused on that as much as I could.”

Though Burgess agreed to help out with studies on perpetrators at the FBI, it was an unusual setup, as she wasn’t an agent at the Bureau. FBI agent Robert Ressler, who coined the term “serial killer,” decided to go forward with the off-the-books arrangement with Burgess as a guest lecturer, according to the documentary.

‘Victimology’

Burgess’ team at the FBI the first to find links to find similar trauma among high-profile killers, like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and more.

Her work and research helped build out the framework of victimology, or the scientific study of crime victims and the experience’s psychological effects.

Burgess explains that before victimology, much of the focus at the FBI was on criminology, or the study of criminals and the criminal justice system.

“I brought — I hope — victimology to better understand why these criminals were focusing in on the victim,” Burgess says.

“It’s not from the standpoint of the victim and what she’s doing and wearing all that kind of mythology, but it’s what’s going on with the offender that I think is so important — why he’s interested in the victim,” she continues. “And what type of victim also tells us more about his vulnerability and its vulnerability that’s going to get him caught.”

While the documentary’s creators recognize an inherent fascination with serial killers, they worked worked to focus on the victims of the crimes in the series, Fuller says.

“It was something that Dr. Burgess and I and the rest of the team were really aligned on, which is let’s not sensationalize offenders. Let’s actually bring the victim perspective into the story, and Dr. Burgess’ perspective,” Fuller says.

After working in the profiling and victimology space for more than 50 years, Burgess says she would like see more information become available to help catch offenders faster, as well as better legal outcomes, so that more victims can feel comfortable coming forward.

“We still don’t even have 50% of cases coming in that should,” she says, referring to unreported crimes. “So that needs to change, and then the court system is so hard. I’m not sure it’s the right way to do it because victims just don’t want to go to court, and I can’t blame them. It’s very intimidating. I’ve done a lot of it, and (it’s) still intimidating to testify.”

Fuller says that through her discussions with Burgess and others in the documentary, it’s clear to see how much has changed within the past 50 years, but also how much hasn’t changed.

“Obviously the stigma around rape and sexual assault is not like it was in the ’70s when it was strictly, ‘Women want to be conquered, they secretly are asking for it,'” Fuller says. “There’s more reporting, there’s less stigma about coming forward.

“But there’s only conviction rates of 1 to 2%, which is really abysmal and a pretty depressing number,” she continues. “And so I think that as much as there has been progress made, we’re still in a in a time where victims are not receiving the justice that they deserve.”

Burgess adds that the conviction rates keep her going in her work and research: “We’re not getting even half of the killers out there … the numbers are not good for trying to get them off the street.”

Where is Ann Burgess now?

As mentioned at the end of Episode Three, Burgess is still teaching at Boston College and working on multiple studies and projects, well into her 80s.

Burgess jokes that her family doesn’t want her home at the time, before sharing what keeps her going at work.

“I enjoy working and I like teaching and working with all the things I’m doing, so I don’t have a good reason to stop,” she says. “I don’t have any more books to read or places to go or any whatever you’re supposed to do when you stop.”

Fuller adds that she thinks a huge part of what drives Burgess to keep going is how much knowledge she can share to younger generations as a mentor.

“So many of her students, and even her granddaughter, and also younger generations of of nurses and and criminologists — she does tremendous work and continues to inspire and share her knowledge,” Fuller says.

And for how she’s feeling about people learning her story through the Hulu series? Burgess is a little less than enthused.

“I’m not crazy about that part of it. I kind of liked it better the way it was. So we’ll have to see whether how it goes from here. Somebody’s gonna recognize me in the grocery store.”