10-30-2019, 01:35 PM
WROW Radio, The Dave Lucas Radio Show, Albany, NY, January 30, 1999
DAVE LUCAS: On line we have Dale Yeager, the executive director of SERAPH. Hello Mr. Yeager. Welcome to the program.
DALE YEAGER: Hi, how are you?
DAVE LUCAS: Very Good. Mr. Yeager has been involved in the training of law enforcement officers in "less than lethal" tactics for more than ten years. He's a trained criminal analyst who's consulted on more than 130 criminal cases - including the murder investigation of JonBenét Ramsey. Now, you were hired by the Boulder Police Department. Tell us about that.
DALE YEAGER: I was hired by the district attorney’s office to work with the investigative team. Originally we were asked to do an analysis of the ransom note and then in the spring of last year we were asked to write a psychological profile on Patsy Ramsey.
Excuse me for being bold but I've been sitting here listening to this now for three hours. I am one of the few people, my team of people are one of the few people that actually worked on this case. We are not reading things in the newspaper, we are not getting things off of CNN. I had information to do my work that none of these guests had -- and these theories are just... I'm blown away by this.
DAVE LUCAS: There are some ???? theories aren't they?
DALE YEAGER: You know there's a lot of "wanna be experts" out there and it really disgusts me that this case has become a magnet would like to theorize in an area they have no right to be in. I have done this for 10 years. I've worked on cases like this before and some of these theories have no basis in reality. I think that your listeners need to understand that there's significant, some significant issues here that need to be dealt with and some issues here that affect our society as a whole and I just think that needs to be brought out.
DAVE LUCAS: Well, who killed JonBenét Ramsey?
DALE YEAGER: Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter.
DAVE LUCAS: What evidence do you have to support that?
DALE YEAGER: The evidence is very clear. Patsy Ramsey is a sociopath. There are basically two types of people who commit violent acts. There are sociopaths and psychopaths. A sociopath is a person who is very controlling. A sociopath is a person that must be in charge at all times. They pick someone in their life to control, or multiple people to control. When they can no longer control that individual, they lash out at them - either by isolating them out of their life - more than likely killing them. OJ Simpson is a sociopath and it's not very hard to understand the basic motive behind this murder. The problem is that all the so-called "experts" we heard tonight who get all their media attention really are using logic to understand an illogical act. We have a woman here who has been immersed in a subculture of religious fervor- that has never been brought out as far as the motivation here. She is a religious delusional sociopath and it would take me literally six hours to explain to - to commit to people how that works. The bottom line is that her daughter was growing up and becoming more independent. The bedwetting was part of that... different things that... anyone could read the newspaper... you could see there was a split between her and her daughter.
DAVE LUCAS: Let me ask you, what about the sexual abuse?
DALE YEAGER: There's... You know what? Let me tell you something. First of all, autoerotic asphyxiation ... there... if you talk to child abuse experts, the occurrence of that with an adult on a child, there are no cases of that. Show me a case where that has happened involving a child. Normally it is done in a solo act of masturbation -- or it has been done with couples...
[SNIP]
DALE YEAGER: OK - the bottom line is that the motivation for killing a child is very simple - either jealousy, control, sex or rage. It's not that difficult - this isn't brain surgery we are talking about here. We have a woman who is very controlling. We have a woman here who has shown signs of violence in the past -- it's not that difficult to see the connection here. When her daughter starts becoming more aggressive, becoming more independent and she lashes out at her. You know these elaborate theories that have been perpetuated by people who really have a financial interest in the case more than anything else....
CALLER: Have you ever seen a religious delusion murder situation which involved an elaborate cover-up like this one was?
DALE YEAGER: One of my specialties, one of the things that we do a lot of with murder cases, are murder cases that involve people who are using... who have committed an act of violence or murder with some kind of religious motivation whether it be ritualistic.. something like that. As far as "elaborate cover-up, I will agree that the ransom note is the central key feature to the evidence in this case. It certainly hasn't been given the attention that it deserves. You know, as far as "coded messages" are concerned, I find that kind of ironic since the ransom note itself is poorly written. It's obviously written in haste. It's written by someone who has limited knowledge of grammar if nothing else. As far as the religious motivation is concerned, you can look at Patsy's writings, you can look at her involvement with the charismatic movement, and you add to that a near death experience like having..... cancer. You add to that her sociopathic tendencies and you get a fairly scary individual, you get a violent individual. I just think people need to understand this is more common than just this case. People do have religious delusions and they take things out of context. We've always believed that the 118 was related to scripture that showed up in many of her writings and ....
Pardon me?
Caller: I know that people sometimes kill their children in a brief delusional state, a brief psychotic episode. You don't see it as that. What evidence do you have that she is sociopathic?
DALE YEAGER: Well, a sociopath is very easy to define - a sociopath is a person that likes to control the situation, they like to control the people around them. Their opinion is the only one that matters. They tend to be very aggressive verbally. They tend to be very aggressive physically. When they are attacked, they become the victim, "poor pitiful me". They are kind of a chameleon in a social setting. They are usually leaders, the type of person who takes charge in a situation. And then you add to the fact that she comes from a southern culture.... and that's a whole other aspect... women in southern cultures... you know, the.. the whole aspect of women being reared in southern cultures where protecting your family by lying, protecting your family by any means is something almost genetically drilled into that subculture. There's a lot of aspects to this but the bottom line is it's a very common crime - a child being killed by their parents, especially the mother. You look at her past, you look at her personality, the evidence is there that she's committed this crime. My job as a profiler with investigative teams is to give them some kind of an idea of motivation. The motivation here is somewhat simple but it has some complicated aspects to it. And mainly it's this feeling that we believe she felt she was going to die and she started to see a need for a sacrifice that she had to make and the murder of her daughter becomes a sacrifice. You can't understand those kinds of motivations with logical thought. Everyone's coming at this tonight from a very forensics perspective and I have a great deal of respect for forensic scientists, a very important part of solving crimes, but there are other aspects to trying to figure out motive than just forensics.
LANCE MATTHEWS: Evidence of stun gun or TAZER - any... is that crap??
DALE YEAGER: Well, look, I do not claim and never have claimed to be a forensic expert. My responsibility in the investigation of a crime is to assess motive, to research anomalies in that crime, and to provide questions for the interview of suspects. So I just don't claim to be a forensics person, at best it would be guessing. I do agree with your current guest that's on with me, I'm sorry I forget your name, about the series of events in regards to how the death occurred. I do agree with that. I think that the evidence is very clear that that is how things occurred.
But remember too, that strangulation is a very intimate type of crime. There's two types of intimate crimes and that is strangulation and stabbing someone with an edged weapon. So whenever you see that in a murder scene, you know there was some kind of an intimate connection between the two people - when that's the method of killing. Strangulation or using an edged weapon. They're very intimate ways of killing. There's enough evidence here to point to the people closest to this poor young girl.
Program was interrupted.... problems at studio...
Apologies from DAVE LUCAS -
DALE YEAGER: Maybe it's an omen...
LANCE MATTHEWS: Where were we?
DALE YEAGER: We were talking about the method of the killing which really points to some specific motive in itself...
Caller from Albany suggesting making this a federal case.
DALE YEAGER: I think that the district attorney.... I finally quit and said enough is enough. I refused to work anymore on the case. My partner who wrote those reports with me agreed ... there were a lot of us who left basically at the same time that Steve Thomas left. We'd had enough. I think the district attorney - I think your caller is correct in the sense that the district attorney I think has political aspirations and this is my opinion, my personal opinion, I think he believes that is he tries the case and loses it, that his political aspirations will go down the drain similar to the district attorney in Los Angeles who lost the OJ case. And I think that's why this incompetent investigation from the district attorney's perspective. I think the police who have been involved, the detectives who have been involved have been top notch and I think they've tried to do their job but they've been hampered by a district attorney who is more concerned about perception than doing the job that he was hired to do.
CHARLES BOSWORTH: No, Hunter has no political aspirations - he is dead politically. "The DA has been bribed. Period."
No one really knew where John Ramsey had all his money - a bribe could be paid in the future.
"How much does the family have?
DALE YEAGER: There was quite a bit.
CHARLES BOSWORTH: How much?"
DALE YEAGER: I've been told 30 million... or 45....
CHARLES BOSWORTH: -- Is that all?
DALE YEAGER: What's that?
Have you checked the value of the stock lately?
DALE YEAGER: I don't know. I think the district attorney... there's a possibility that that has occurred. I've heard some things to that, only rumors. Because he stepped in front of a lot of bullets for the family
CHARLES BOSWORTH: We need a federal...
DALE YEAGER: I do agree with that assessment
Lance Matthews pointed out that Hal Haddon is multi-million dollar partners with DA Alex Hunter -- talk about lax legal system in Colorado...
DALE YEAGER:.... Someone has to step in and intervene in this case because it has dragged on too long. I said before there are social implications of this case on a national basis that I think no one has really talked much about. I think one of them is that there is a lot of classism that has been brought to the surface because of this case. I get a lot of people asking me - when I work out at the YMCA or when I am at church - about the case. And invariably, as much as this is an amateur survey, invariably, white wealthy women will say to me, "I can't perceive that happening. Why... how can a mother kill her daughter?" And I will always say to them, "Well, if she was Black or Hispanic, would you feel the same way?" And they ALWAYS say, "Well, no. That happens in that society."
LANCE MATTHEWS: "Let's go to Patsy's origins - let's go with Southern women."
DALE YEAGER: This is an subject that will probably annoy certain listeners but try to understand it from a criminal analysis perspective.
Our culture, American culture, is really made up of a lot of subcultures. For example, I am Pennsylvania Dutch. My family has been in Pennsylvania since 1703 and that's a subculture and there are certain norms about that subculture. One of the things we know about Southern culture is that women in Southern cultures, with exceptions but for the most part, are raised in a very specific way. And one of the things that the Justice Department, where I received my training, did a study of this and found that there is a... what is called a sociopathic tendency to childrearing as it relates to women in Southern culture. I know this sounds bizarre but is very real and the best way to explain that is the case of the woman in Texas several years ago who attempted or did kill the girl who took her daughter's spot on the cheerleading team. If you remember that case.
LANCE MATTHEWS: I remember that one.
DALE YEAGER: When she was interviewed by detectives, she said, "I was taught by my mother that you protect your family at all costs." And we call it "The Cult of the Family". James Dobson is probably the greatest perpetuator of this "The Cult of the Family".
The family is more important than anything else and it becomes an obsession. And so these woman of the southern culture are taught that lying to protect your family, doing illegal acts or unethical things is part of your process of being a mom.
DAVE LUCAS: On line we have Dale Yeager, the executive director of SERAPH. Hello Mr. Yeager. Welcome to the program.
DALE YEAGER: Hi, how are you?
DAVE LUCAS: Very Good. Mr. Yeager has been involved in the training of law enforcement officers in "less than lethal" tactics for more than ten years. He's a trained criminal analyst who's consulted on more than 130 criminal cases - including the murder investigation of JonBenét Ramsey. Now, you were hired by the Boulder Police Department. Tell us about that.
DALE YEAGER: I was hired by the district attorney’s office to work with the investigative team. Originally we were asked to do an analysis of the ransom note and then in the spring of last year we were asked to write a psychological profile on Patsy Ramsey.
Excuse me for being bold but I've been sitting here listening to this now for three hours. I am one of the few people, my team of people are one of the few people that actually worked on this case. We are not reading things in the newspaper, we are not getting things off of CNN. I had information to do my work that none of these guests had -- and these theories are just... I'm blown away by this.
DAVE LUCAS: There are some ???? theories aren't they?
DALE YEAGER: You know there's a lot of "wanna be experts" out there and it really disgusts me that this case has become a magnet would like to theorize in an area they have no right to be in. I have done this for 10 years. I've worked on cases like this before and some of these theories have no basis in reality. I think that your listeners need to understand that there's significant, some significant issues here that need to be dealt with and some issues here that affect our society as a whole and I just think that needs to be brought out.
DAVE LUCAS: Well, who killed JonBenét Ramsey?
DALE YEAGER: Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter.
DAVE LUCAS: What evidence do you have to support that?
DALE YEAGER: The evidence is very clear. Patsy Ramsey is a sociopath. There are basically two types of people who commit violent acts. There are sociopaths and psychopaths. A sociopath is a person who is very controlling. A sociopath is a person that must be in charge at all times. They pick someone in their life to control, or multiple people to control. When they can no longer control that individual, they lash out at them - either by isolating them out of their life - more than likely killing them. OJ Simpson is a sociopath and it's not very hard to understand the basic motive behind this murder. The problem is that all the so-called "experts" we heard tonight who get all their media attention really are using logic to understand an illogical act. We have a woman here who has been immersed in a subculture of religious fervor- that has never been brought out as far as the motivation here. She is a religious delusional sociopath and it would take me literally six hours to explain to - to commit to people how that works. The bottom line is that her daughter was growing up and becoming more independent. The bedwetting was part of that... different things that... anyone could read the newspaper... you could see there was a split between her and her daughter.
DAVE LUCAS: Let me ask you, what about the sexual abuse?
DALE YEAGER: There's... You know what? Let me tell you something. First of all, autoerotic asphyxiation ... there... if you talk to child abuse experts, the occurrence of that with an adult on a child, there are no cases of that. Show me a case where that has happened involving a child. Normally it is done in a solo act of masturbation -- or it has been done with couples...
[SNIP]
DALE YEAGER: OK - the bottom line is that the motivation for killing a child is very simple - either jealousy, control, sex or rage. It's not that difficult - this isn't brain surgery we are talking about here. We have a woman who is very controlling. We have a woman here who has shown signs of violence in the past -- it's not that difficult to see the connection here. When her daughter starts becoming more aggressive, becoming more independent and she lashes out at her. You know these elaborate theories that have been perpetuated by people who really have a financial interest in the case more than anything else....
CALLER: Have you ever seen a religious delusion murder situation which involved an elaborate cover-up like this one was?
DALE YEAGER: One of my specialties, one of the things that we do a lot of with murder cases, are murder cases that involve people who are using... who have committed an act of violence or murder with some kind of religious motivation whether it be ritualistic.. something like that. As far as "elaborate cover-up, I will agree that the ransom note is the central key feature to the evidence in this case. It certainly hasn't been given the attention that it deserves. You know, as far as "coded messages" are concerned, I find that kind of ironic since the ransom note itself is poorly written. It's obviously written in haste. It's written by someone who has limited knowledge of grammar if nothing else. As far as the religious motivation is concerned, you can look at Patsy's writings, you can look at her involvement with the charismatic movement, and you add to that a near death experience like having..... cancer. You add to that her sociopathic tendencies and you get a fairly scary individual, you get a violent individual. I just think people need to understand this is more common than just this case. People do have religious delusions and they take things out of context. We've always believed that the 118 was related to scripture that showed up in many of her writings and ....
Pardon me?
Caller: I know that people sometimes kill their children in a brief delusional state, a brief psychotic episode. You don't see it as that. What evidence do you have that she is sociopathic?
DALE YEAGER: Well, a sociopath is very easy to define - a sociopath is a person that likes to control the situation, they like to control the people around them. Their opinion is the only one that matters. They tend to be very aggressive verbally. They tend to be very aggressive physically. When they are attacked, they become the victim, "poor pitiful me". They are kind of a chameleon in a social setting. They are usually leaders, the type of person who takes charge in a situation. And then you add to the fact that she comes from a southern culture.... and that's a whole other aspect... women in southern cultures... you know, the.. the whole aspect of women being reared in southern cultures where protecting your family by lying, protecting your family by any means is something almost genetically drilled into that subculture. There's a lot of aspects to this but the bottom line is it's a very common crime - a child being killed by their parents, especially the mother. You look at her past, you look at her personality, the evidence is there that she's committed this crime. My job as a profiler with investigative teams is to give them some kind of an idea of motivation. The motivation here is somewhat simple but it has some complicated aspects to it. And mainly it's this feeling that we believe she felt she was going to die and she started to see a need for a sacrifice that she had to make and the murder of her daughter becomes a sacrifice. You can't understand those kinds of motivations with logical thought. Everyone's coming at this tonight from a very forensics perspective and I have a great deal of respect for forensic scientists, a very important part of solving crimes, but there are other aspects to trying to figure out motive than just forensics.
LANCE MATTHEWS: Evidence of stun gun or TAZER - any... is that crap??
DALE YEAGER: Well, look, I do not claim and never have claimed to be a forensic expert. My responsibility in the investigation of a crime is to assess motive, to research anomalies in that crime, and to provide questions for the interview of suspects. So I just don't claim to be a forensics person, at best it would be guessing. I do agree with your current guest that's on with me, I'm sorry I forget your name, about the series of events in regards to how the death occurred. I do agree with that. I think that the evidence is very clear that that is how things occurred.
But remember too, that strangulation is a very intimate type of crime. There's two types of intimate crimes and that is strangulation and stabbing someone with an edged weapon. So whenever you see that in a murder scene, you know there was some kind of an intimate connection between the two people - when that's the method of killing. Strangulation or using an edged weapon. They're very intimate ways of killing. There's enough evidence here to point to the people closest to this poor young girl.
Program was interrupted.... problems at studio...
Apologies from DAVE LUCAS -
DALE YEAGER: Maybe it's an omen...
LANCE MATTHEWS: Where were we?
DALE YEAGER: We were talking about the method of the killing which really points to some specific motive in itself...
Caller from Albany suggesting making this a federal case.
DALE YEAGER: I think that the district attorney.... I finally quit and said enough is enough. I refused to work anymore on the case. My partner who wrote those reports with me agreed ... there were a lot of us who left basically at the same time that Steve Thomas left. We'd had enough. I think the district attorney - I think your caller is correct in the sense that the district attorney I think has political aspirations and this is my opinion, my personal opinion, I think he believes that is he tries the case and loses it, that his political aspirations will go down the drain similar to the district attorney in Los Angeles who lost the OJ case. And I think that's why this incompetent investigation from the district attorney's perspective. I think the police who have been involved, the detectives who have been involved have been top notch and I think they've tried to do their job but they've been hampered by a district attorney who is more concerned about perception than doing the job that he was hired to do.
CHARLES BOSWORTH: No, Hunter has no political aspirations - he is dead politically. "The DA has been bribed. Period."
No one really knew where John Ramsey had all his money - a bribe could be paid in the future.
"How much does the family have?
DALE YEAGER: There was quite a bit.
CHARLES BOSWORTH: How much?"
DALE YEAGER: I've been told 30 million... or 45....
CHARLES BOSWORTH: -- Is that all?
DALE YEAGER: What's that?
Have you checked the value of the stock lately?
DALE YEAGER: I don't know. I think the district attorney... there's a possibility that that has occurred. I've heard some things to that, only rumors. Because he stepped in front of a lot of bullets for the family
CHARLES BOSWORTH: We need a federal...
DALE YEAGER: I do agree with that assessment
Lance Matthews pointed out that Hal Haddon is multi-million dollar partners with DA Alex Hunter -- talk about lax legal system in Colorado...
DALE YEAGER:.... Someone has to step in and intervene in this case because it has dragged on too long. I said before there are social implications of this case on a national basis that I think no one has really talked much about. I think one of them is that there is a lot of classism that has been brought to the surface because of this case. I get a lot of people asking me - when I work out at the YMCA or when I am at church - about the case. And invariably, as much as this is an amateur survey, invariably, white wealthy women will say to me, "I can't perceive that happening. Why... how can a mother kill her daughter?" And I will always say to them, "Well, if she was Black or Hispanic, would you feel the same way?" And they ALWAYS say, "Well, no. That happens in that society."
LANCE MATTHEWS: "Let's go to Patsy's origins - let's go with Southern women."
DALE YEAGER: This is an subject that will probably annoy certain listeners but try to understand it from a criminal analysis perspective.
Our culture, American culture, is really made up of a lot of subcultures. For example, I am Pennsylvania Dutch. My family has been in Pennsylvania since 1703 and that's a subculture and there are certain norms about that subculture. One of the things we know about Southern culture is that women in Southern cultures, with exceptions but for the most part, are raised in a very specific way. And one of the things that the Justice Department, where I received my training, did a study of this and found that there is a... what is called a sociopathic tendency to childrearing as it relates to women in Southern culture. I know this sounds bizarre but is very real and the best way to explain that is the case of the woman in Texas several years ago who attempted or did kill the girl who took her daughter's spot on the cheerleading team. If you remember that case.
LANCE MATTHEWS: I remember that one.
DALE YEAGER: When she was interviewed by detectives, she said, "I was taught by my mother that you protect your family at all costs." And we call it "The Cult of the Family". James Dobson is probably the greatest perpetuator of this "The Cult of the Family".
The family is more important than anything else and it becomes an obsession. And so these woman of the southern culture are taught that lying to protect your family, doing illegal acts or unethical things is part of your process of being a mom.