I finished my rewatch of Mindhunter series last couple of months, and it left me wanting more! On my first watch, I was probably more focused on the story so I missed a lot of small details. On my rewatch, I appreciated a lot of small details and classic beautifully executed scenes, I also noticed how well thought out the casting was. While pondering on it again, I noticed some things that I didn’t get or understand the first time to watch. Like the case where Holden worked out the dismissal of elementary principal, who had the potential to commit a crime. I only realized on the second rewatch na this happened back in the old days when gathering of information and data are not yet that easy, so you cannot say on that time if its right to accused the principal even if he didn’t commit any crime yet. Today, if you do those kind of inappropriate things to children, you will be automatically judged and remove in your position.
The rewatch was more interesting than the first time. It felt like I was savoring each scene and I appreciated it much more on my rewatch. My favorite scene was when Holden and Bill interviewed Charles Manson. In my opinion, the heated exchange between Bill and Manson was the best scene in the entire series. Considering Bill’s family problems at home and Charles Manson’s troubled childhood, it was like two parallel world aligning, the best classic scene!
With that, my recent searches and read online are more about Mindhunter, specifically about detectives, crimes and investigations. Then I decided to order in Amazon the book where the series is based on, Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker.
I really loved the series, BUT I enjoyed the book even more. It was a wild read! It started off slow, with Douglas alternating between stories from his personal life and the crime cases they solved. I am a fan of detective and investigative stories, maybe that’s one of the reason why I loved this book. There are more cases and stories in the book compare to the series. But my most favorite story in the book is the Jud Ray story, it is the most badass scene in the book! Jud Ray was portrayed as Jim Barney in the Netflix series.
The book allows for a deeper exploration of the psychological theories and methodologies developed by Douglas and his team. It provides comprehensive insights into the minds of some of the most notorious serial killers, such as Ed Kemper and Ted Bundy, and explains how these insights were used to create profiles that could predict future behavior. Douglas’s firsthand accounts of interviews with killers, coupled with his psychological analysis, offer a level of depth that the series, constrained by its episodic format, cannot fully replicate.