Killer Lies: Chasing a True Crime Con Man (2024) s01e01 Episode Script
Murder He Wrote
1
[sirens]
[sirens]
-Something terrible
happened to somebody
close to me.
While I was in United States.
I had a girlfriend.
She got killed.
Violently.
Very violently.
-What are you accused of?
-Killing 34 women.
- Stéphane Bourgoin.
- Stéphane Bourgoin.
- Stéphane Bourgoin.
- Stéphane Bourgoin.
[Lauren Collins]
Stéphane Bourgoin had become
one of the foremost experts
on serial killers in France.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] What were
those morbid games that you
played with your sister?
-He was this titan of
the true crime industry.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] I don't
think there is anybody in the
world who has seen as many
serial killers as I did.
[Lauren Collins] But
nothing was what it seemed.
-With Stéphane, there is a
fascination for violence.
-People had this slew
of theories about
what could have happened.
[Aja Raden] They told themselves
they were perusing justice.
-Lies have a funny way
of becoming real.
[Maât] I didn't trust him,
for some reason.
I thought I was the only one.
-This whole charade
blew up in his face.
-This is a very strange con
story that took place over
the course of decades.
And the longer I've gone on
the more questions it's raised.
[Valak] We had a
target in mind.
And we were all
consumed by it.
-Is he dangerous?
Why all this
attention for serial killing?
[Lauren Collins] He took a
masterclass from these guys.
-People's going to
believe what they
want to believe anyhow.
-Really there was only
one person who could
speak to the why.
And that was
Stéphane Bourgoin.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] I would do
it again and again and again.
[in French] Silence, please.
[speaking French]
-Take one.
[slate tap]
-The story begins in 2019.
-Stéphane Bourgoin is at the
height of his public notoriety.
[Lauren Collins] He's
this master of true crime.
[Lauren Collins] Bourgoin had
power, access, and influence.
And the thing that got
him attention were these
extraordinary stories
that he retailed.
-For me, he was the man that
gave me my first informations
about who are serial killers
and what makes them tick.
-This time of the history of
criminology in France
he was the one and only.
Whatever happened
in the crime field.
He was there.
[Lauren Collins] That brought
him into contact with real
law enforcement, real
criminal profilers.
[Lauren Collins] He actually
even claimed that he had
solved some crimes himself.
[Alain Bauer] He's
hypnotized by criminals.
Which mean going
on the dark side.
[Lauren Collins]
He's a little creepy.
He's gory, he's a little
inappropriate,
he's pushing the limits.
And within a year, he was
going to abruptly lose it all.
[Lauren Collins] But to really
understand what happened,
we have to go back
to the beginning of his
true crime career.
[director] Carol Kehringer ITV.
Take one.
[director] Rolling, rolling.
[gunshots]
[John Douglas] A serial killer,
uh, uh, has a very good chance
of getting away with his crimes.
[gunshots]
[Stéphane Bourgoin]
And I got some tips from
John Douglas also
-Oh, did you?
[Stéphane Bourgoin]
to interview Kemper.
[FBI agent] John has talked
to Kemper I think three times.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Yes.
[Olivier Raffet] Before leaving
we went to the FBI gift shop.
Stéphane was very interested
in buying all kind of
things from that store.
[in French] Yes.
-Then we go to Florida.
To Stark Prison.
And this is where we would meet
the two first serial killers.
Stéphane was of course
very excited to be there.
[Olivier Raffet] For me, it is
a bit scary this fascination
for true crime
and serial killers.
[Sarah Weinman]
Serial killers are not a
uniquely American phenomenon.
[reporter] Parts of bodies
leading them to believe
[reporter] The murder trial
of John Gacy did indeed
get underway today.
[reporter] Los Angeles police
today arrested the man they
believe is the
so-called Night Stalker.
[Sarah Weinman] What is unique
in America is the frequency
of serial killers.
It's understood that the term
serial killer was coined by
Robert Ressler and John Douglas,
who was an FBI profiler
and the founder of
the Behavioral Science Unit.
[John Douglas] What I did was,
for the first time,
was to go into
penitentiaries and interview
serial killers and rapists.
Uh, murderers of all types.
[Sarah Weinman] Thomas Harris,
a reporter for the
Associated Press,
decided to embed with
these profilers, and from that,
he created a character
named Hannibal Lecter.
And that cemented the serial
killer as a fictional archetype.
Media properties elevated serial
killers to supervillains.
[Hannibal Lecter] Morning.
-I think for
someone like Bourgoin,
that can be very exciting.
[Olivier Raffet] We had seen
that movie Silence of the Lambs,
so we didn't know
whether there would
be glass in between us.
-Hell, I can do that in here
[suspenseful music playing]
[Oliver Raffet]
But the guard left us
without anybody watching.
Ottis Toole was known the
Jacksonville Cannibal because
he claimed to eat his victims.
Authorities think the number
of people he murdered could
be over a hundred.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Your
recipe for the barbecue sauce.
I must tell you
that I tried it.
-Was it any good?
[Stéphane Bourgoin]
Yeah, it was very good.
Although I didn't try it on the
same kind of meat that you did.
[laughs]
-It's good
on any kind of meat.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Yeah?
On any kind, yes.
[Olivier Raffet] So after
the interview with Toole,
the guard came back
with Gerald Schaefer.
Gerald Schaefer was
a sheriff's deputy,
was convicted of
killing two teenagers.
He was suspected of being
involved in the deaths of
more than two dozen
other victims.
He told us that he
wrote books about killings.
[Gerald Schaefer] No I said,
"I ought to put these into
a book format,
into an anthology.
And fictionalize them.
And maybe I can get across the
horror of what serial murder
is all about."
-After the
interview was done,
Stéphane asked Gerald Schaefer
to autograph books
he had brought.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Well
you know I'm a writer also?
[Gerald Schaefer]
Are you really?
[Stéphane Bourgoin] We
write the same books, yes.
-I have written
this documentary.
-How did you like this?
Did you enjoy this?
-Yes, I liked it very much.
[Hannibal Lecter] May I
see your credentials?
That expires in one week.
You're not real FBI, are you?
[Lauren Collins]
Silence of the Lambs
set up this idea
that there were more dimensions
to serial killers.
That there was more to
be probed and discovered.
Whatever his motivation was,
Bourgoin was clearly fascinated.
[Clarice Starling] I'm
here to learn from you.
[Lauren Collins] But, the way
he conducted these interviews
took that fascination
to a whole new level.
[Olivier Raffet] After Florida
we went to California to the
jail where Ed Kemper
was imprisoned.
[dramatic music playing]
[prison buzzer]
Edmund Kemper was
known as the "Co-ed Killer."
He was convicted of
killing eight people,
including his mother.
-Hi.
[Oliver Raffet] He was known
also for raping corpses
of his victims.
[Edmund Kemper] The decapitation
fantasies were even there.
They were in place
by then already.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] What
where those fantasies?
-What were they?
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Oh, yes.
-Um possessing the
severed heads of women.
That got caught up in
my morbid fascination.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] And
did you take Polaroids also?
-At first, I did, yeah.
But that stopped.
[Stéphane Bourgoin]
Why did you do that?
-At first, I was
hoping I could get off,
I could get a vicarious thrill
in seeing those pictures and
say, well, this will
be satisfying enough.
One
two people die, that's it,
doesn't have to go past that.
And I'll see why I
don't wanna do it again.
[theme music playing]
[Olivier Raffet] At the time
we shot this film I did not
realize what we got to
film was exceptional.
-Those tapes
kicked off his career.
They opened doors,
they launched his brand.
[Lauren Collins] He
had the documentary.
Then he had a book.
[Lauren Collins] Once you
have a book, you get on TV.
[Lauren Collins]
Once you're on TV
[Lauren Collins] you're the
expert.
Stéphane Bourgoin is very
conscious of this zeitgeist.
He knew that he could
repackage this thing as like
a hot new trend in France.
[Lauren Collins]
And by the 2000s,
Bourgoin had legions of fans,
who hung on his every
word on social media and who
turned out in droves for
his book conferences.
[cheering and applause]
[Maât] I must have found one
of his books, you know,
in one of the
libraries I went to.
I thought finally somebody
who's writing about
true crime in French.
Finally, it's about time.
And I read one of his books,
then two of his books,
then three.
[Valak] The first book I read
about serial killers was
The Cannibal of Milwaukee
by Stéphane Bourgoin.
In three or four days
the book was finished.
[Maât] He was everywhere on TV
at some point, and I noticed
that he was always rehashing
the same things, all over again.
[Maât] Always the same words.
[Maât] Always,
almost in the same way.
[Maât] In the same order.
[Maât] I had a weird tingling
on the back of my neck going,
like, something's wrong.
That's probably what raised
the first real red flag.
It's almost a circus act.
I mean it's rehearsed.
[mysterious music playing]
[Valak] I reread some
books by Stéphane Bourgoin.
That's when I realized
there were anomalies.
I thought it was just a
mistake around dates.
[notification alerts]
[notification alert]
[notification alerts]
[mouse click]
[various keystrokes]
[Maât] When this whole started
to get really serious,
we decided to find a name for
our little group, and then we
thought about the name of
Bourgoin's bookstore in Paris,
which was The Third Eye.
[Maãt] The third eye is
the eye that sees everything.
It's the all-known,
all-seeing eye.
So we became The Fourth Eye.
We are here to
correct his view.
[Valak] We were
watching Bourgoin,
but he didn't know it yet.
There's something
wrong with this man
and we had nothing to lose.
[mysterious music playing]
[Aja Raden] True crime
about murders,
particularly serial killers,
has a sort of
epic component to it.
- He went from
victim to victim.
[Aja Raden] That's as evil,
as grotesque as crime gets.
Stéphane Bourgoin, he had a
particular kink for people
being murdered in grotesque
ways, and he was performing
for a giant audience,
who said "We love it.
More, more, more."
[Soledad O'Brien] Stéphane
checked all the boxes.
Most people had not
interviewed a serial killer
and he could talk about,
you know,
these things that were riveting.
-Working on TV news,
you could see very easily that
true crime
got a lot of traction.
- And what if
the threat came down to
one individual, a single
terrorist, lone blackmailer,
solo nut, now able
to make his own bomb?
[Soledad O'Brien] ABC's 20/20
was among the very first.
They really, in the '70s, set
the stage for creating content
by following these
stories of crime.
After that, there was
48 Hours of course.
So now there is
a ticking clock.
[John Walsh] The portrait of
a serial killer is always
a chilling one.
[Soledad O'Brien]
American's Most Wanted
with John Walsh brought
true crime kind of a bit of
a different direction
with that personal element of
a dad who had lost his son.
- There's only one
hope for justice.
You.
-And an audience
wanting to participate,
wanting to take part.
- If you can help, call.
Because the next victim
might be someone you love.
[Soledad O'Brien] Then on
cable news, suddenly it is
unfolding live in front of us.
[reporter] The intersection
of the five and the 91 freeway.
[Soledad O'Brien]
And because it's cable,
we have the capacity,
we don't have to
break away to commercial.
[reporter] An inside look at
one of the most sensational
murder trials in years.
[Soledad O'Brien] We're talking
about the Menendez brothers.
[reporter] The body
of JonBenét Ramsey,
strangled and beaten.
-JonBenét Ramsey.
We're talkin'
about OJ Simpson.
[reporter] He killed her.
[Soledad O'Brien] If you layer
in celebrity, suddenly your
eyeballs are just massive.
- Tonight, the clock is ticking.
[Soledad O'Brien] There
are channels then, right,
that if you love true crime
it is the place to go.
Technology made
participation so much easier.
[reporter] Do you have
any new clues or theories?
- Follow us on our
Facebook page.
[Soledad O'Brien] Social
media really tapped into that.
[reporter] The next
question is from Kiru.
[Soledad O'Brien] It's much
more interesting if you're
actually part of a story.
If you're part of moving it
along and seeing where
that story goes.
[Lauren Collins] Bourgoin was
very conscious of the power of
fandom, and he did everything
that he could to stoke that.
The Fourth Eye is effectively
people who met on Facebook.
He taught all these fans
how to investigate,
how to understand
the mind of a liar,
how to penetrate myth
and mania and deception.
[keystrokes]
[Maât] We thought that it would
be good to start investigating.
[ominous music playing]
[Maât] In 1995 Gerard Schaefer
was stabbed by another inmate
and cremated afterwards.
[Maât] Why on earth
would anybody send him
the remains of Schaefer?
Why?
That makes no sense.
So, of course, we contacted
the family of Schaefer.
[whimsical music playing]
[notification alert]
[Maât] So we were thinking what
else could he be lying about?
Why, why?
It's a big question mark.
We looked in books and
magazines, newspapers,
and the more we digged,
the more we found,
and the more we found,
the more it got deeper
and deeper, and deeper.
[melodic music playing]
-In the 2000s,
Stéphane Bourgoin is everywhere.
Not only is he still writing
books and making documentaries,
but he starts
fielding invitations
from police academies.
[Lauren Collins] And so we see
him cross this line from media
talking head, to somebody
who could actually train law
enforcement on how to
think like a serial killer.
[Lauren Collins] I think
he wanted to be the famed
FBI profiler John Douglas.
But as The Fourth Eye started
to look critically at the life
of Stéphane Bourgoin, they
began to question whether he'd
really interviewed dozens
of serial killers at all.
[Maât] You can be addicted
to your own fame and then
you tend to be more
and more, and more.
[Maât] It's like his
ego inflated, literally.
[Maât] He was constantly saying
that he met 77 serial killers.
[Valak] John Douglas is the
FBI's leading special agent,
an expert criminal profiler
and in his lifetime only ever
interviewed 36 serial killers.
[Valak] We saw that Bourgoin
interviewed eight serial killers
in front of cameras.
Only eight.
He said he was not
allowed to show the others.
That seemed strange to us.
I started to write to other
serial killers that he could
have possibly met with.
Among those who responded
to me, there was BTK.
I asked him if
he knew Bourgoin.
No.
Robert Yates?
No.
William Suff?
He didn't know him either.
Phillip Jablonski?
He didn't know him either.
I sent three or four
almost every weekend.
The majority said
they didn't know him.
[Lauren Collins] And yet,
when Bourgoin talked about
interrogating killers,
he'd give incredibly detailed
accounts of meeting
them face-to-face.
That included an encounter
he said he'd had with
Charles Manson, one of the
most notorious cult figures
in the world.
[Maât] And I'm like, wait a
minute, I read that somewhere.
So I looked.
And it was exactly
like in Mindhunter,
a book from John Douglas.
[John Douglas] He
was extremely small.
As I did the interview, he
sat up on top of the chair to
dominate us during the
interview and interrogation.
[Maât] Bourgoin said the
exact same sentence in French.
And I'm like, what?
[laughs]
[Lauren Collins] He was creating
a persona for himself
that essentially
authorized him to
interrogate and investigate
serial killers.
[Lauren Collins] And
no one questioned it,
because Bourgoin claimed
he'd been trained by the FBI.
[Valak] Bourgoin made
people believe that he had
worked with the FBI.
[Valak] We had some doubts,
so we went to the source.
[notification alert]
[Maât] And he was kind enough
to answer to our questions.
He told us that Bourgoin was
never a trainee at the FBI.
[Valak] He responds and says
it's a visitor badge with a
t-shirt that was sold at
the FBI souvenir shop.
[Maât] It was an endless
pit of discrepancies and
lies upon lies, upon lies.
It's a lasagna of lying
if I can say it like this.
[Lauren Collins] The Fourth Eye
was uncovering an
elaborate ruse that was so
much bigger than any single
lie or exaggeration.
It was a pattern that gave
Bourgoin the bona fides he
needed to propel his career,
and the lies were alarmingly
bold and even dangerous.
[camera shutters clicking]
[Lauren Collins] Bourgoin
had positioned himself as a
psychological
war correspondent.
As a guy who would go to
the scariest, you know,
darkest places on earth with a
sense of mission and purpose.
He wants in on the action.
[Valak] So we decided to
contact the people who knew
Stéphane Bourgoin and we
started by sending an email
to Micki Pistorius.
She was a profiler on
the Stewart Wilken case.
She's one of the best
profilers in the world and the
subject of that Bourgoin book.
[Micki Pistorius] I was a
profiler in the South African
police from 1994 to 2000.
And I was the founder of the
Investigative Psychology Unit
in the South African police.
That is how the people of
the Centre Intenational de
Criminale Penal read about me
and invited me to France to be
one of their keynote speakers.
Stéphane was signing
books in the foyer.
They introduced me to him as
an author on serial killers.
And then when I was
back in South Africa,
he suggested that we
make a documentary.
He arrived in South Africa with
the director Fred Tonolli
-Yeah.
[Micki Pistorius] And the three
cases that they selected was
Stewart Wilken,
which was in Port Elizabeth,
the Phoenix serial killer,
which was in Durban,
and the last one was
the Saloon serial killer
which was in Piet Retief.
All the serial killers were
already arrested by then.
It was not
ongoing investigations.
But the detectives would
take Stéphane and the team
to places where crime
scenes were processed before.
Places where the
bodies were left.
It was quite stressful for me
going back to the crime scenes.
[in French] Hello.
[Micki Pistorius] I think it
was clear he wanted to become
a profiler like me.
At some stage, I gave him
a copy of the manuscript to
my book, the autobiography
called Catch Me A Killer.
He'd written many books
about serial killers,
this was my first one,
and he said,
"Do you mind if I take it along
so that I can
finish reading it?"
And I said,
"Well, I suppose so."
And then he took it
along with him to France.
And at some stage, he
called me, and he said,
"By the way, I wrote
a book about you."
And that's when my
instinct told me
there was something wrong.
-I'd always experienced
Stéphane as an odd person.
As far as Stéphane goes, I
didn't have contact with him
for years and years and didn't
follow his career or nothing
until The Fourth Eye Corporation
contacted me.
[notification alert]
[Valak] The first time we
wrote to Micki Pistorius,
we told her we were a small
group of French people
investigating Stéphane Bourgoin.
We translated a part of the book
that Stéphane Bourgoin wrote.
[Micki Pistorius] And they said,
"We think he copied
parts of your book."
My book is my autobiography,
so it covered my life from my
very first day in the police,
and Stéphane's book,
as he said, was just about the
documentary that we filmed.
But it wasn't.
If you look at his book, you
can see page after page,
after page is just a
direct copy of my book.
That is plain,
downright plagiarism.
This is page one of my
book and page two of my book.
This is a direct
translation of what he has.
The next page, that's
page three of my book.
He was completely
impersonating me.
[Valak] And she replies,
"He's stealing from my life.
Moments of my life."
[Micki Pistorius] During the
radio interviews, he would
tell the journalists that he
interrogated Stewart Wilken.
[Derrick Norsworthy] This was
the old clipping after it was
related to the press that
he was a serial killer.
[Micki Pistorius] But obviously
that was the detective.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Have you
ever thought what you would
feel if you hadn't
arrested Wilken?
[Micki Pistorius] I mean,
by the time Stéphane got to
South Africa for
the documentary,
Stewart Wilken had already
been arrested for
more than a year, and he
was already convicted.
And then on the back cover of
the book it just got worse.
It reads, "For several months,
the author, that is Stéphane,
has accompanied Micki Pistorius
in her daily work on
crime scenes in morgues,
police stations, and even in
high-security prisons."
It's just not true.
The blurb at the back of his
book, his selling point,
is a complete lie.
It's a complete lie.
I can't say I'm angry.
I'm deeply disappointed.
I'm astounded, especially
after what he told me during
the shooting of
the documentary.
-His girlfriend was killed
by a serial killer.
[Micki Pistorius] Something
like that stays with you
for the rest of your life.
[speaking in French]
-I remember he
said that he had a girlfriend
who had been found murdered.
And that the crime was
attributed to a serial killer.
[Lauren Collins] I think
people thought okay, well,
maybe he's a little off,
but understandably.
[Lauren Collins] There's
actually a beautiful photograph.
You see these two young
gorgeous smitten people
staring into
each other's eyes.
And naturally, you feel a lot of
empathy for the one left behind.
But the irony is that there
are all these traits that
he's taught us to look out
for in serial killers.
A lack of empathy, a facility
with lying, a lack of remorse,
that we see in Bourgoin too.
I don't know, there are
people who think that there's
something even more
sinister to be unearthed.
Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.
[sirens]
[sirens]
-Something terrible
happened to somebody
close to me.
While I was in United States.
I had a girlfriend.
She got killed.
Violently.
Very violently.
-What are you accused of?
-Killing 34 women.
- Stéphane Bourgoin.
- Stéphane Bourgoin.
- Stéphane Bourgoin.
- Stéphane Bourgoin.
[Lauren Collins]
Stéphane Bourgoin had become
one of the foremost experts
on serial killers in France.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] What were
those morbid games that you
played with your sister?
-He was this titan of
the true crime industry.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] I don't
think there is anybody in the
world who has seen as many
serial killers as I did.
[Lauren Collins] But
nothing was what it seemed.
-With Stéphane, there is a
fascination for violence.
-People had this slew
of theories about
what could have happened.
[Aja Raden] They told themselves
they were perusing justice.
-Lies have a funny way
of becoming real.
[Maât] I didn't trust him,
for some reason.
I thought I was the only one.
-This whole charade
blew up in his face.
-This is a very strange con
story that took place over
the course of decades.
And the longer I've gone on
the more questions it's raised.
[Valak] We had a
target in mind.
And we were all
consumed by it.
-Is he dangerous?
Why all this
attention for serial killing?
[Lauren Collins] He took a
masterclass from these guys.
-People's going to
believe what they
want to believe anyhow.
-Really there was only
one person who could
speak to the why.
And that was
Stéphane Bourgoin.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] I would do
it again and again and again.
[in French] Silence, please.
[speaking French]
-Take one.
[slate tap]
-The story begins in 2019.
-Stéphane Bourgoin is at the
height of his public notoriety.
[Lauren Collins] He's
this master of true crime.
[Lauren Collins] Bourgoin had
power, access, and influence.
And the thing that got
him attention were these
extraordinary stories
that he retailed.
-For me, he was the man that
gave me my first informations
about who are serial killers
and what makes them tick.
-This time of the history of
criminology in France
he was the one and only.
Whatever happened
in the crime field.
He was there.
[Lauren Collins] That brought
him into contact with real
law enforcement, real
criminal profilers.
[Lauren Collins] He actually
even claimed that he had
solved some crimes himself.
[Alain Bauer] He's
hypnotized by criminals.
Which mean going
on the dark side.
[Lauren Collins]
He's a little creepy.
He's gory, he's a little
inappropriate,
he's pushing the limits.
And within a year, he was
going to abruptly lose it all.
[Lauren Collins] But to really
understand what happened,
we have to go back
to the beginning of his
true crime career.
[director] Carol Kehringer ITV.
Take one.
[director] Rolling, rolling.
[gunshots]
[John Douglas] A serial killer,
uh, uh, has a very good chance
of getting away with his crimes.
[gunshots]
[Stéphane Bourgoin]
And I got some tips from
John Douglas also
-Oh, did you?
[Stéphane Bourgoin]
to interview Kemper.
[FBI agent] John has talked
to Kemper I think three times.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Yes.
[Olivier Raffet] Before leaving
we went to the FBI gift shop.
Stéphane was very interested
in buying all kind of
things from that store.
[in French] Yes.
-Then we go to Florida.
To Stark Prison.
And this is where we would meet
the two first serial killers.
Stéphane was of course
very excited to be there.
[Olivier Raffet] For me, it is
a bit scary this fascination
for true crime
and serial killers.
[Sarah Weinman]
Serial killers are not a
uniquely American phenomenon.
[reporter] Parts of bodies
leading them to believe
[reporter] The murder trial
of John Gacy did indeed
get underway today.
[reporter] Los Angeles police
today arrested the man they
believe is the
so-called Night Stalker.
[Sarah Weinman] What is unique
in America is the frequency
of serial killers.
It's understood that the term
serial killer was coined by
Robert Ressler and John Douglas,
who was an FBI profiler
and the founder of
the Behavioral Science Unit.
[John Douglas] What I did was,
for the first time,
was to go into
penitentiaries and interview
serial killers and rapists.
Uh, murderers of all types.
[Sarah Weinman] Thomas Harris,
a reporter for the
Associated Press,
decided to embed with
these profilers, and from that,
he created a character
named Hannibal Lecter.
And that cemented the serial
killer as a fictional archetype.
Media properties elevated serial
killers to supervillains.
[Hannibal Lecter] Morning.
-I think for
someone like Bourgoin,
that can be very exciting.
[Olivier Raffet] We had seen
that movie Silence of the Lambs,
so we didn't know
whether there would
be glass in between us.
-Hell, I can do that in here
[suspenseful music playing]
[Oliver Raffet]
But the guard left us
without anybody watching.
Ottis Toole was known the
Jacksonville Cannibal because
he claimed to eat his victims.
Authorities think the number
of people he murdered could
be over a hundred.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Your
recipe for the barbecue sauce.
I must tell you
that I tried it.
-Was it any good?
[Stéphane Bourgoin]
Yeah, it was very good.
Although I didn't try it on the
same kind of meat that you did.
[laughs]
-It's good
on any kind of meat.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Yeah?
On any kind, yes.
[Olivier Raffet] So after
the interview with Toole,
the guard came back
with Gerald Schaefer.
Gerald Schaefer was
a sheriff's deputy,
was convicted of
killing two teenagers.
He was suspected of being
involved in the deaths of
more than two dozen
other victims.
He told us that he
wrote books about killings.
[Gerald Schaefer] No I said,
"I ought to put these into
a book format,
into an anthology.
And fictionalize them.
And maybe I can get across the
horror of what serial murder
is all about."
-After the
interview was done,
Stéphane asked Gerald Schaefer
to autograph books
he had brought.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Well
you know I'm a writer also?
[Gerald Schaefer]
Are you really?
[Stéphane Bourgoin] We
write the same books, yes.
-I have written
this documentary.
-How did you like this?
Did you enjoy this?
-Yes, I liked it very much.
[Hannibal Lecter] May I
see your credentials?
That expires in one week.
You're not real FBI, are you?
[Lauren Collins]
Silence of the Lambs
set up this idea
that there were more dimensions
to serial killers.
That there was more to
be probed and discovered.
Whatever his motivation was,
Bourgoin was clearly fascinated.
[Clarice Starling] I'm
here to learn from you.
[Lauren Collins] But, the way
he conducted these interviews
took that fascination
to a whole new level.
[Olivier Raffet] After Florida
we went to California to the
jail where Ed Kemper
was imprisoned.
[dramatic music playing]
[prison buzzer]
Edmund Kemper was
known as the "Co-ed Killer."
He was convicted of
killing eight people,
including his mother.
-Hi.
[Oliver Raffet] He was known
also for raping corpses
of his victims.
[Edmund Kemper] The decapitation
fantasies were even there.
They were in place
by then already.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] What
where those fantasies?
-What were they?
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Oh, yes.
-Um possessing the
severed heads of women.
That got caught up in
my morbid fascination.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] And
did you take Polaroids also?
-At first, I did, yeah.
But that stopped.
[Stéphane Bourgoin]
Why did you do that?
-At first, I was
hoping I could get off,
I could get a vicarious thrill
in seeing those pictures and
say, well, this will
be satisfying enough.
One
two people die, that's it,
doesn't have to go past that.
And I'll see why I
don't wanna do it again.
[theme music playing]
[Olivier Raffet] At the time
we shot this film I did not
realize what we got to
film was exceptional.
-Those tapes
kicked off his career.
They opened doors,
they launched his brand.
[Lauren Collins] He
had the documentary.
Then he had a book.
[Lauren Collins] Once you
have a book, you get on TV.
[Lauren Collins]
Once you're on TV
[Lauren Collins] you're the
expert.
Stéphane Bourgoin is very
conscious of this zeitgeist.
He knew that he could
repackage this thing as like
a hot new trend in France.
[Lauren Collins]
And by the 2000s,
Bourgoin had legions of fans,
who hung on his every
word on social media and who
turned out in droves for
his book conferences.
[cheering and applause]
[Maât] I must have found one
of his books, you know,
in one of the
libraries I went to.
I thought finally somebody
who's writing about
true crime in French.
Finally, it's about time.
And I read one of his books,
then two of his books,
then three.
[Valak] The first book I read
about serial killers was
The Cannibal of Milwaukee
by Stéphane Bourgoin.
In three or four days
the book was finished.
[Maât] He was everywhere on TV
at some point, and I noticed
that he was always rehashing
the same things, all over again.
[Maât] Always the same words.
[Maât] Always,
almost in the same way.
[Maât] In the same order.
[Maât] I had a weird tingling
on the back of my neck going,
like, something's wrong.
That's probably what raised
the first real red flag.
It's almost a circus act.
I mean it's rehearsed.
[mysterious music playing]
[Valak] I reread some
books by Stéphane Bourgoin.
That's when I realized
there were anomalies.
I thought it was just a
mistake around dates.
[notification alerts]
[notification alert]
[notification alerts]
[mouse click]
[various keystrokes]
[Maât] When this whole started
to get really serious,
we decided to find a name for
our little group, and then we
thought about the name of
Bourgoin's bookstore in Paris,
which was The Third Eye.
[Maãt] The third eye is
the eye that sees everything.
It's the all-known,
all-seeing eye.
So we became The Fourth Eye.
We are here to
correct his view.
[Valak] We were
watching Bourgoin,
but he didn't know it yet.
There's something
wrong with this man
and we had nothing to lose.
[mysterious music playing]
[Aja Raden] True crime
about murders,
particularly serial killers,
has a sort of
epic component to it.
- He went from
victim to victim.
[Aja Raden] That's as evil,
as grotesque as crime gets.
Stéphane Bourgoin, he had a
particular kink for people
being murdered in grotesque
ways, and he was performing
for a giant audience,
who said "We love it.
More, more, more."
[Soledad O'Brien] Stéphane
checked all the boxes.
Most people had not
interviewed a serial killer
and he could talk about,
you know,
these things that were riveting.
-Working on TV news,
you could see very easily that
true crime
got a lot of traction.
- And what if
the threat came down to
one individual, a single
terrorist, lone blackmailer,
solo nut, now able
to make his own bomb?
[Soledad O'Brien] ABC's 20/20
was among the very first.
They really, in the '70s, set
the stage for creating content
by following these
stories of crime.
After that, there was
48 Hours of course.
So now there is
a ticking clock.
[John Walsh] The portrait of
a serial killer is always
a chilling one.
[Soledad O'Brien]
American's Most Wanted
with John Walsh brought
true crime kind of a bit of
a different direction
with that personal element of
a dad who had lost his son.
- There's only one
hope for justice.
You.
-And an audience
wanting to participate,
wanting to take part.
- If you can help, call.
Because the next victim
might be someone you love.
[Soledad O'Brien] Then on
cable news, suddenly it is
unfolding live in front of us.
[reporter] The intersection
of the five and the 91 freeway.
[Soledad O'Brien]
And because it's cable,
we have the capacity,
we don't have to
break away to commercial.
[reporter] An inside look at
one of the most sensational
murder trials in years.
[Soledad O'Brien] We're talking
about the Menendez brothers.
[reporter] The body
of JonBenét Ramsey,
strangled and beaten.
-JonBenét Ramsey.
We're talkin'
about OJ Simpson.
[reporter] He killed her.
[Soledad O'Brien] If you layer
in celebrity, suddenly your
eyeballs are just massive.
- Tonight, the clock is ticking.
[Soledad O'Brien] There
are channels then, right,
that if you love true crime
it is the place to go.
Technology made
participation so much easier.
[reporter] Do you have
any new clues or theories?
- Follow us on our
Facebook page.
[Soledad O'Brien] Social
media really tapped into that.
[reporter] The next
question is from Kiru.
[Soledad O'Brien] It's much
more interesting if you're
actually part of a story.
If you're part of moving it
along and seeing where
that story goes.
[Lauren Collins] Bourgoin was
very conscious of the power of
fandom, and he did everything
that he could to stoke that.
The Fourth Eye is effectively
people who met on Facebook.
He taught all these fans
how to investigate,
how to understand
the mind of a liar,
how to penetrate myth
and mania and deception.
[keystrokes]
[Maât] We thought that it would
be good to start investigating.
[ominous music playing]
[Maât] In 1995 Gerard Schaefer
was stabbed by another inmate
and cremated afterwards.
[Maât] Why on earth
would anybody send him
the remains of Schaefer?
Why?
That makes no sense.
So, of course, we contacted
the family of Schaefer.
[whimsical music playing]
[notification alert]
[Maât] So we were thinking what
else could he be lying about?
Why, why?
It's a big question mark.
We looked in books and
magazines, newspapers,
and the more we digged,
the more we found,
and the more we found,
the more it got deeper
and deeper, and deeper.
[melodic music playing]
-In the 2000s,
Stéphane Bourgoin is everywhere.
Not only is he still writing
books and making documentaries,
but he starts
fielding invitations
from police academies.
[Lauren Collins] And so we see
him cross this line from media
talking head, to somebody
who could actually train law
enforcement on how to
think like a serial killer.
[Lauren Collins] I think
he wanted to be the famed
FBI profiler John Douglas.
But as The Fourth Eye started
to look critically at the life
of Stéphane Bourgoin, they
began to question whether he'd
really interviewed dozens
of serial killers at all.
[Maât] You can be addicted
to your own fame and then
you tend to be more
and more, and more.
[Maât] It's like his
ego inflated, literally.
[Maât] He was constantly saying
that he met 77 serial killers.
[Valak] John Douglas is the
FBI's leading special agent,
an expert criminal profiler
and in his lifetime only ever
interviewed 36 serial killers.
[Valak] We saw that Bourgoin
interviewed eight serial killers
in front of cameras.
Only eight.
He said he was not
allowed to show the others.
That seemed strange to us.
I started to write to other
serial killers that he could
have possibly met with.
Among those who responded
to me, there was BTK.
I asked him if
he knew Bourgoin.
No.
Robert Yates?
No.
William Suff?
He didn't know him either.
Phillip Jablonski?
He didn't know him either.
I sent three or four
almost every weekend.
The majority said
they didn't know him.
[Lauren Collins] And yet,
when Bourgoin talked about
interrogating killers,
he'd give incredibly detailed
accounts of meeting
them face-to-face.
That included an encounter
he said he'd had with
Charles Manson, one of the
most notorious cult figures
in the world.
[Maât] And I'm like, wait a
minute, I read that somewhere.
So I looked.
And it was exactly
like in Mindhunter,
a book from John Douglas.
[John Douglas] He
was extremely small.
As I did the interview, he
sat up on top of the chair to
dominate us during the
interview and interrogation.
[Maât] Bourgoin said the
exact same sentence in French.
And I'm like, what?
[laughs]
[Lauren Collins] He was creating
a persona for himself
that essentially
authorized him to
interrogate and investigate
serial killers.
[Lauren Collins] And
no one questioned it,
because Bourgoin claimed
he'd been trained by the FBI.
[Valak] Bourgoin made
people believe that he had
worked with the FBI.
[Valak] We had some doubts,
so we went to the source.
[notification alert]
[Maât] And he was kind enough
to answer to our questions.
He told us that Bourgoin was
never a trainee at the FBI.
[Valak] He responds and says
it's a visitor badge with a
t-shirt that was sold at
the FBI souvenir shop.
[Maât] It was an endless
pit of discrepancies and
lies upon lies, upon lies.
It's a lasagna of lying
if I can say it like this.
[Lauren Collins] The Fourth Eye
was uncovering an
elaborate ruse that was so
much bigger than any single
lie or exaggeration.
It was a pattern that gave
Bourgoin the bona fides he
needed to propel his career,
and the lies were alarmingly
bold and even dangerous.
[camera shutters clicking]
[Lauren Collins] Bourgoin
had positioned himself as a
psychological
war correspondent.
As a guy who would go to
the scariest, you know,
darkest places on earth with a
sense of mission and purpose.
He wants in on the action.
[Valak] So we decided to
contact the people who knew
Stéphane Bourgoin and we
started by sending an email
to Micki Pistorius.
She was a profiler on
the Stewart Wilken case.
She's one of the best
profilers in the world and the
subject of that Bourgoin book.
[Micki Pistorius] I was a
profiler in the South African
police from 1994 to 2000.
And I was the founder of the
Investigative Psychology Unit
in the South African police.
That is how the people of
the Centre Intenational de
Criminale Penal read about me
and invited me to France to be
one of their keynote speakers.
Stéphane was signing
books in the foyer.
They introduced me to him as
an author on serial killers.
And then when I was
back in South Africa,
he suggested that we
make a documentary.
He arrived in South Africa with
the director Fred Tonolli
-Yeah.
[Micki Pistorius] And the three
cases that they selected was
Stewart Wilken,
which was in Port Elizabeth,
the Phoenix serial killer,
which was in Durban,
and the last one was
the Saloon serial killer
which was in Piet Retief.
All the serial killers were
already arrested by then.
It was not
ongoing investigations.
But the detectives would
take Stéphane and the team
to places where crime
scenes were processed before.
Places where the
bodies were left.
It was quite stressful for me
going back to the crime scenes.
[in French] Hello.
[Micki Pistorius] I think it
was clear he wanted to become
a profiler like me.
At some stage, I gave him
a copy of the manuscript to
my book, the autobiography
called Catch Me A Killer.
He'd written many books
about serial killers,
this was my first one,
and he said,
"Do you mind if I take it along
so that I can
finish reading it?"
And I said,
"Well, I suppose so."
And then he took it
along with him to France.
And at some stage, he
called me, and he said,
"By the way, I wrote
a book about you."
And that's when my
instinct told me
there was something wrong.
-I'd always experienced
Stéphane as an odd person.
As far as Stéphane goes, I
didn't have contact with him
for years and years and didn't
follow his career or nothing
until The Fourth Eye Corporation
contacted me.
[notification alert]
[Valak] The first time we
wrote to Micki Pistorius,
we told her we were a small
group of French people
investigating Stéphane Bourgoin.
We translated a part of the book
that Stéphane Bourgoin wrote.
[Micki Pistorius] And they said,
"We think he copied
parts of your book."
My book is my autobiography,
so it covered my life from my
very first day in the police,
and Stéphane's book,
as he said, was just about the
documentary that we filmed.
But it wasn't.
If you look at his book, you
can see page after page,
after page is just a
direct copy of my book.
That is plain,
downright plagiarism.
This is page one of my
book and page two of my book.
This is a direct
translation of what he has.
The next page, that's
page three of my book.
He was completely
impersonating me.
[Valak] And she replies,
"He's stealing from my life.
Moments of my life."
[Micki Pistorius] During the
radio interviews, he would
tell the journalists that he
interrogated Stewart Wilken.
[Derrick Norsworthy] This was
the old clipping after it was
related to the press that
he was a serial killer.
[Micki Pistorius] But obviously
that was the detective.
[Stéphane Bourgoin] Have you
ever thought what you would
feel if you hadn't
arrested Wilken?
[Micki Pistorius] I mean,
by the time Stéphane got to
South Africa for
the documentary,
Stewart Wilken had already
been arrested for
more than a year, and he
was already convicted.
And then on the back cover of
the book it just got worse.
It reads, "For several months,
the author, that is Stéphane,
has accompanied Micki Pistorius
in her daily work on
crime scenes in morgues,
police stations, and even in
high-security prisons."
It's just not true.
The blurb at the back of his
book, his selling point,
is a complete lie.
It's a complete lie.
I can't say I'm angry.
I'm deeply disappointed.
I'm astounded, especially
after what he told me during
the shooting of
the documentary.
-His girlfriend was killed
by a serial killer.
[Micki Pistorius] Something
like that stays with you
for the rest of your life.
[speaking in French]
-I remember he
said that he had a girlfriend
who had been found murdered.
And that the crime was
attributed to a serial killer.
[Lauren Collins] I think
people thought okay, well,
maybe he's a little off,
but understandably.
[Lauren Collins] There's
actually a beautiful photograph.
You see these two young
gorgeous smitten people
staring into
each other's eyes.
And naturally, you feel a lot of
empathy for the one left behind.
But the irony is that there
are all these traits that
he's taught us to look out
for in serial killers.
A lack of empathy, a facility
with lying, a lack of remorse,
that we see in Bourgoin too.
I don't know, there are
people who think that there's
something even more
sinister to be unearthed.
Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.