The Evil That Men Do Part 12

Hazelwood was the first profiler to routinely bridge that distance by conducting a series of research projects on violent s.e.xual criminals.

The first of these encounters was with Jon Barry Simonis, the Ski Mask Rapist, who would prove as challenging, and enlightening, as any offender Roy has ever interviewed.*

Hazelwood entered the case in 1980, when he received a request for a.s.sistance from the police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

For the past year, Baton Rouge and jurisdictions in many other states had shared a common problem, a particularly vicious traveling s.e.xual criminal and thief known as the Ski Mask Rapist.

A white male, about six feet two inches tall, with a slender frame and dark hair, the Ski Mask Rapist targeted residences exclusively. He habitually entered a house between dusk and 1:00 a.m., gaining access through open or unlocked doors and windows.

He usually was armed with a gun or a knife. In his later attacks, he occasionally carried both. He sometimes struck when victims already were home. Other times he waited in their darkened houses for them to return.

After gaining their attention with his weapon, he would rea.s.sure his victims that no one would get hurt. Once they were bound, however, he s.e.xually a.s.saulted the women. He commonly committed these attacks in full view of their husbands, fathers, brothers, or boyfriends, a key behavioral clue in Roy's subsequent profile.

Afterward, he usually robbed the household, and he frequently fled in the victim's car, which he ditched many blocks away.

Roy agreed to prepare a profile, and asked the police for official reports and victim statements from five of the Ski Mask Rapist's earliest known cases, plus five cases from the middle of his criminal career, as well as five of his latest offenses.

In this way, Hazelwood hoped both to produce a behavioral portrait of the UNSUB and possibly to predict his future patterns.

Roy noted among the early a.s.saults that the rapist used a screwdriver or some similar tool to enter his victim's residence. He'd capture her, bind her with her own articles of clothing, and s.e.xually a.s.sault her. But he did not subject his early victims to any added, gratuitous, physical a.s.sault. He stole mostly home appliances: stereos, microwaves, and televisions-all easy items to p.a.w.n.

In the middle group of crimes, the Ski Mask Rapist began bringing his own handcuffs with him (a sign to Hazelwood that this criminal was capable of learning and improving his MO) and began to physically a.s.sault his victims. He demanded a.n.a.l s.e.x and forced women to f.e.l.l.a.t.e him. He punched the women, often in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The level of violence applied by a s.e.x offender is part of his ritual, not his MO.

"How much physical force a rapist uses against his victim is a matter of satisfying himself, not simply to overcome her resistance," Hazelwood explains.

The Ski Mask Rapist therefore seemed to Roy to be evolving from a power a.s.sertive rapist, who applies moderate force or coercion, toward s.e.xual sadism. His psychos.e.xual needs were changing. A whole new criminal character was emerging.

In one case, he forced a woman to f.e.l.l.a.t.e her date, and then to f.e.l.l.a.t.e him, while her date watched.

In another, he surprised a thirteen-year-old baby-sitter, whom he forced to perform oral s.e.x.

Afterward, when she warned him that he better run because he was in a police officer's home, the Ski Mask Rapist seemed delighted. "No s.h.i.t?" he said. "What time does he get home? I'll wait for him."

When the officer and his wife did return, the intruder forced them to handcuff one another. Then he v.a.g.i.n.ally raped the woman.

"Are you all right?" her husband asked her at one point.

"Yes, he's being a gentleman," his wife replied.

At that, the Ski Mask Rapist grew enraged and began brutally pummeling the woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. So serious were her injuries that a double mastectomy later was necessary.

Roy recognized that the UNSUB was highly macho. Hazelwood based this conclusion on the offender's deliberate habit of committing his s.e.xual a.s.saults in front of his victims' male companions.

"That told me he was extremely confident," Roy says. "He was not at all threatened by the male's presence. In fact, he wanted to humiliate him. That is an unambiguous expression of macho. He thinks of himself as macho, and he projects a macho image."

Roy enumerated several corollaries to that core judgment.

The Ski Mask Rapist probably consumed alcohol and/or used marijuana, Hazelwood said, because in the rapist's perception that is what real men did. Likewise, he would be athletic, a sports partic.i.p.ant as well as a spectator, who took care of his body, worked out, and exercised a good deal. Appearance meant a lot to him. He liked to show off his muscles.

Roy speculated that the rapist had served in the military and had chosen the ground forces-the army or marines-because to him those were the most manly services to join. His car would be a reflection of that macho image, too: a fast, flashy vehicle. The Ski Mask Rapist would not drive a sensible four-door sedan.

Roy profiled the UNSUB in his late twenties or early thirties, roughly the same age range as his victims. "Based on my research, I know that rape is basically a young man's crime," says Hazelwood. "He would a.s.sault females who were about his own age. Also, macho offenders do not rape preteens or old people."

The Ski Mask Rapist was single and never married, Roy believed, for the same reasons. Loving and being true to one woman did not suit his self-image. Marriage was for suckers.

His demonstrated ability to learn indicated he was of at least average intelligence. Based on the BSU's familiarity with other offenders who fit this profile, Hazelwood further believed the rapist's education or training extended beyond high school, possibly including college. He either was currently employed in a job requiring some sort of special skill, Roy thought, or once had worked in such a position.

Although never married, the Ski Mask Rapist had ongoing consenting relationships with various women, again a conclusion based on BSU research, but he would never be faithful to any of them.

Roy's final conclusion was in fact an admonition. The Ski Mask Rapist was growing ever more violent. Hazelwood predicted that unless he was caught, he seemed likely someday to cross the threshold and become the Ski Mask Killer.

On the night of October 29, 1981-approximately one year after Roy submitted his UNSUB profile-a policeman in Gonzales, southeast of Baton Rouge, noticed a bright red Pontiac Trans Am parked alone in a city lot. The vehicle struck the cop as suspicious, out of place in the neighborhood.

That same night, a ski-masked gunman surprised three women, recently returned from shopping together, in a Gonzales residence. He bound all three, plus one woman's husband, with ligatures he'd brought with him. Then he robbed the females of their jewelry, raped all three of them, and departed in one of the victims' cars.

The Gonzales police officer learned of the a.s.saults over his car radio. On a hunch, he returned to where he'd seen the red Pontiac. It was gone. But parked near where the Trans Am had been was the rape victim's missing car. On the ground nearby, police also found a pair of men's gloves similar in description to those worn by the rapist that night.

Members of the multijurisdictional Ski Mask Rapist Task Force, only recently formed, immediately were told of the incident in Gonzales. Several reported back that a distinctive red Trans Am also had been seen in their communities prior to a.s.saults believed committed by the Ski Mask Rapist.

A regional BOLO (be on the lookout) bulletin was issued for the car.

Weeks pa.s.sed. Then on the Monday before Thanksgiving, off-duty Louisiana state trooper Herman Rogers saw a bright red Trans Am in Lake Charles, near the Texas border, and jotted down its license number.

The owner turned out to be thirty-one-year-old Barry Simonis, a former all-state high school quarterback, army veteran, and onetime hospital cardiovascular technician.

Hazelwood's profile had been dead on.

After identifying Simonis, the police surveilled him for nearly a week, keeping the suspected Ski Mask Rapist in their sights while investigators all over the Southeast and Southwest worked to see if they could connect him with their known cases.

"He loved to drive," state police lieutenant Butch Milan told a reporter. "He would drive right by us and never look at us. He just wandered aimlessly."

As Simonis enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at his mother's house, the investigators made do on 7-Eleven fare.

When they finally had their affidavits and arrest warrants in order, they tailed him to a Lake Charles convenience store and grabbed him as he walked out.

Simonis was barefoot as he stepped from the store, carrying a loaf of bread and two packs of cigarettes.

"State police," Butch Milan said as he approached the suspect. "You're under arrest. Are you armed?"

Simonis was not.

The capture received wide press attention-Barry Simonis confessed to rapes and burglaries from coast to coast. Roy learned of it back at Quantico, and was gratified to see that his profile had been so accurate. Hazelwood decided he wanted to talk to Jon Barry Simonis should the opportunity arise.

It did, almost three years later.

On a humid summer day in 1984, Simonis welcomed Hazelwood and Ken Lanning to his permanent address, the Louisiana State Prison at Angola. The penitentiary is set down in remote and forbidding backwaters along the Mississippi River, where the lower portion of the state of Mississippi juts westward into Louisiana like Homer Simpson's upper lip. Angola itself is too small to warrant its own dot on most atlases.

Swamps surround the facility, where consensus wisdom has it that if would-be escapees from the prison are not shot, the snakes or the alligators will get them.

At the time of Roy's visit to Angola with Lanning, there were only two air-conditioned areas within the prison. The warden's office was one. The wood-paneled conference room where Simonis met with the agents was the other.

Hazelwood and Lanning wore suits and ties, and sat opposite one another. The mustachioed Simonis in his white prison-issue T-shirt sat between the two agents. Coffee cups and ashtrays were scattered around. At Roy's nod, a video camera started recording, and the conversation began.

"What are you incarcerated for?" Roy asked.

"A series of armed robberies and rapes," Simonis answered evenly.

"What's the total number of those, combined?"

"I think we have a figure of one hundred forty robberies and rapes and robberies and rapes combined."

Simonis was unprepossessing, serious and alert and responsive, but with almost no edge to his voice, or much light in his eyes. That was intentional. The Ski Mask Rapist had learned the value of not being noticed.

He explained to Hazelwood that when he first arrived at Angola in 1982 the older cons advised him to deliberately score low on the standard IQ form so that prison authorities wouldn't expect too much of him, or watch him too closely. Simonis had scored a 108. When Roy had him retested by a psychologist, he scored a 128.

"And how many were rapes, specifically?" Hazelwood asked.

"Between forty-five and fifty rapes. Actual s.e.xual a.s.saults probably would get a little higher, anywhere between sixty and seventy-five."

"And what would you include in s.e.xual a.s.saults?"

"Uh, somebody who would perform oral s.e.x, masturbation, any kind of a s.e.xual act other than intercourse."

The discussion had the air of an employment interview, a tone that Hazelwood set deliberately. If they had any response besides clinical interest in what Simonis was saying, neither Hazelwood nor Lanning would betray it.

"And in what states did these take place, and what period of time are we talking about?" Roy continued.

"My first a.s.sault took place in November of 1978," Simonis answered, "and it ended in November of 1981. It went from Florida to Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and California."

"Would you say there was a progression, or an escalation of aggression or violence a.s.sociated with your attacks?"

"Oh, yes," Simonis answered. "It started out very mild and progressed quite heavily."

This part of Simonis's behavior already was evident from the case reports. The question that remained for Roy was how commonly did rapists' violence escalate? Was Simonis a rarity? The evidence from police agencies on this point was anecdotal and unscientific, a collection of memories and impressions, as is true for much investigative lore.

Hazelwood asked Simonis to describe his first a.s.sault. The Ski Mask Rapist didn't hesitate.

"The first one started out to be a burglary," he said. "I entered a house and was confronted by the lady who lived there-who I'd followed from a shopping center earlier that day.

"After confronting the woman I kinda let her know that I was in control. After I got the money from her and I kind of bound her hands, I took her into a bedroom and had her perform masturbation on me. I was unable to do v.a.g.i.n.al intercourse because I was unable to get an erection at the time. I was very nervous."

"You did not physically a.s.sault her?"

"No sir."

"How," Roy asked, "would that a.s.sault have occurred two to three years later?"

"Near the end of my criminal activities it got to be a much more violent thing, a form of degradation toward the women, making them feel completely dominated. My intentions were to inflict fear into them, to force them to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do."

Ken Lanning asked if Simonis's preparations for his crimes evolved as well.

"I progressed into a more disguised way," Simonis explained. "My face was covered. I wore gloves. I also wore baggy clothes, like coveralls, to kind of conceal my build. I also took into the place a pistol and precut lengths of rope to bind the victims with, or handcuffs. Duct tape to blind them, maybe tape their mouths. A pocketknife in case I needed to cut anything."

"What precautions did you take when you left?" Roy asked.

"I'd usually cut the phone and make sure they were tied securely where they couldn't get loose anytime soon. Sometimes I'd slash their tires to prevent them from traveling."

In this exchange, Simonis had provided Roy with his first glimpse of one of the serial rapist's central distinguishing characteristics. He is typically an intelligent offender, who reflects not only on the s.e.xual a.s.sault itself, but also on all the details of his pre- and postoffense behavior in order to perfect his crime, heighten the psychos.e.xual experience, and minimize the possibility of capture. Simonis was a perfect example of the highly organized offender, a thinking criminal.

Hazelwood asked how much money, in all, Simonis made from his thefts.

"After fencing the stuff, about a quarter million dollars," he guessed. "Retail it probably was worth three to four million."

"Was it necessary for you to work, as well?"

"Not at all. When I worked in the hospital as a cardiovascular specialist I was maybe making somewhere from fourteen thousand to eighteen thousand a year. I'd sometimes make that much in a month from thefts."

"Barry," Lanning said, "how did you identify your victims?"

"There were different ways. They usually were wealthy. As I drove through an area I'd pick out a house that looked to belong to a financially secure couple. Sometimes I'd pick somebody driving around in an expensive car. Or I might see somebody inside a store who might be wearing a gold watch or a large diamond. I'd wait outside in my car and then follow them to where they lived.

"If I didn't hit them directly, I'd probably hit somebody else in the neighborhood where they lived."

"What about a woman attracted you?"

"Attractive ones had an appealing effect on me. It wasn't always the motive for following them, but it was a major one. I figured that if a woman was attractive and her husband was well off, he'd do things to keep her happy. Buy her expensive jewelry and other nice things.

"This was the initial reason for a lot of the attacks. I'd rob and take what I could. The a.s.saults and rapes usually took place afterward."

"Tell us your understanding of why you did these things," Lanning asked.

"It's pretty complex. I think there was a mult.i.tude of things involved. Money was a motive. s.e.x was a factor. Urges just came on to me to the point that I was uncontrollable near the end. The effects on me when I saw women had more of a hold on me than I had on them."

"Did the robberies and burglaries, entering homes, satisfy some of your urges?"

Here, Simonis confirmed what many experts on criminal behavior have observed. Offenders get a psychic jolt from danger. They don't just rob for the money, or a.s.sault out of anger or a need for power. There's an adrenaline rush that lifts the experience to a higher plane for them.

"It got me high just going into a place that belonged to somebody else," Simonis explained. "Any kind of illegal activity, knowing there was a risk of being caught, created stimulation. It was a turn-on, so to speak. But it was a different high than the s.e.xual aspect. They kind of coincided with one another."

Prior to his arrest as the Ski Mask Rapist, Simonis's rap sheet included a 1978 arrest near Lake Charles for making indecent telephone calls. In a statement he gave police, he admitted window-peeping as early as 1975. Later, as a soldier in Europe, he said, he repeatedly exposed himself to women.

The obscene telephone calls, Simonis said, had begun in late 1977, when he was working at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, operating a heart-stress machine. He denied ever having committed a rape to that point.

Roy probed Simonis's paraphilias, or perversions, as they were once known, realizing they likely were manifested much earlier than his arrest record showed.

"You began deviant s.e.xual behavior at fifteen? Is that right? With window-peeping?" he asked.