Interview with Dr Elspeth Grant PhD
Professor
Elspeth Grant is one of our most distinguished criminologists,
frequently assisting the police as a Profiler. She is also a senior
academic and Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She has more
doctorates than I have had wives.
Rare photo of Dr. Elspeth Grant, during Oxford Convocation ceremony. She is fourth from the left
I
first met her at a conference in Los Angeles where she gave a brilliant
lecture on body language, something the FBI had been developing for
years. To come to America and teach the FBI a thing or two was both
audacious and somewhat brave - characteristics for which Elspeth Grant
is famous back in the UK. She is also eccentric, feisty and forthright
in her views.
It
was, therefore, with some trepidation that I grabbed her during a
coffee break and introduced myself. Since we were both graduates of
Wadham College, Oxford the ice was soon broken. So you see, an expensive
education at the best University on the planet does have its advantages
after all!
All Souls College (right), Oxford
Elspeth
Grant is short, somewhat stout and with long brown hair that she
usually wears in a tight chignon, held in place by an ornate comb. She
must be fifty-something although I did not have the nerve (then or
subsequently) to inquire any closer. Despite the heat that August
morning, she was dressed in Scottish tweeds and sensible shoes - as if
she planned to walk back to her hotel. Walking in LA is an offense so I
hope that that was not her plan!
Anyway,
she agreed to meet up with me in Oxford later that month and it was in
her rooms at All Souls College that I finally had a chance to properly
interview one of the greatest Profilers police forces all over the world
have had the good fortune to employ.
For security reasons, Dr Grant is reluctant to be photographed. She has forbidden her students to take photos of her. This is a rare photograph of her entering All Souls College, Oxford
All
Souls (Elspeth calls it ‘Arseholes’) is a Gothic confection in the
middle of medieval Oxford. It’s a graduate college and is said to
contain the finest brains in the country, many of them preserved in
alcohol. It is also the richest college in Oxford with an endowment said
to be worth £220 million. Elspeth’s rooms are large, paneled in oak
and rather uncomfortable. There is a large sofa (on which we both sat)
and a huge desk at one end of the room, covered in papers and police
files - that’s what they looked like, anyway. Elspeth Grant may be
hugely intelligent but she is not exactly tidy.
At least we have one attribute in common!
I
began (glass in hand - Elspeth loves fine red wine) by asking her how
she got into the murky waters of hunting down serial-killers and other
criminally deranged individuals.
EG.
‘Curiosity, mainly. The criminally insane are hugely entertaining. Mind
you, its notoriously difficult to tell what the bastards are planning
to do next, even if you are an experienced Profiler. Hence the
challenge. I read law at Wadham but soon got bored. Lawyers can be very
pompous and I did not want to turn into some smug QC earning millions.
So I switched to psychology, specializing in the criminal mind. The
rest, as they say, is history!’
MH. ‘But what makes a good Profiler? Experience? Instinct?’
EG.
‘Both, plus a huge amount of luck. You guys in the press only get to
hear about our celebrated victories, not the ones that get away. It’s
also a deadly game in which you try to think like a criminal. Get inside
their heads. The danger, of course, is that if you get too close they
get inside yours! Remember Hannibal Lector? He may be fictional but the
really dangerous bastards can screw you too if you let them get too
near.’
MH. ‘Has that ever happened to you?’
EG. ‘Yes. James
Ledbetter, Scotland’s most celebrated serial-killer, was an extremely
dangerous individual. He actually enjoyed mutilating his victims. I
think on that case I got too close and at times lost sight of the ‘big
picture’. Getting close is essential but you must always retain the
ability to step back and look objectively at your subject. Dennis Nilsen
was another, although I only read about his case. His acts of butchery
were so horrendous that at first the police were incredulous and that
slowed down their investigation. Had I been on that case, with the
knowledge that I have now, I could have told them that there were many
other bodies in that flat.’
MH. What are you working on at the moment?
EG.
‘Ah, now that would be telling! Come back in a few months time, once
the trial is over and I will tell you. One interesting case, though,
that I covered recently involved poison-pen letters. Not your most
sensational crime perhaps but fascinating in itself.’
MH. ‘Sounds like one for ‘Miss Marple’!’
EG.
‘Quite. It began with an entire village in Cumbria receiving poison-pen
letters, each of which was a prelude to blackmail. Being British, of
course, no one told anyone else - until, that is, a farmer hanged
himself. The police found a letter in his pocket accusing him of
deliberately exposing his cattle to others known to have
foot--and-mouth. His motive was to get compensation, like many of his
‘get rich quick’ neighbors.’
MH. ‘What happened then?’
EG.
Following his death, the local Catholic priest stepped forward. He knew
everything because each of his parishioners had confessed to him and
told him all about the letters they had each received. Although his vows
forbade him to reveal anything said in the confessional, the death of
the farmer proved too much for his conscience. The police then broadened
their investigation and gathered together all the letters. There were
twenty-three in all, some typed and some hand-written but all quite
different. It was then that I was called in.’
MH. ‘Do you mean that there was more than one person writing these letters?’
EG.
‘Well, that’s what the police believed. I disagreed. To begin with,
each letter revealed a complete lack of DNA - by anyone. That in itself
was suspicious. Close examination of the letters also showed me that
although each was typed on a different typewriter or hand-written
with a different pen and in a completely different writing style, what
they had in common was their syntax. Its like a writer’s DNA. Choice of
words, grammar or sentence construction is unique to each of us. That’s
why scholars can tell if a text is in Shakespeare’s hand or that of some
other, near contemporary writer. I proved that there was only one
person at work.’
MH. ‘So it was blackmail then?’
EG. ‘On the contrary. It was murder!’
MH. ‘Murder?’
EG.
‘Yes. The poison-pen letters were a very clever ‘smoke-screen’ to make
it look as if the farmer, faced with exposure, had killed himself. His
murderer had therefore made it look as if he had hanged himself because
of the incriminating letter found in his pocket.
MH. ‘But who did it? Who was the murderer?‘
EG.
‘He turned out to be a neighbor - who had also sent himself a letter!
It seems that he had held some long-standing grudge, now culminating in
murder. He nearly got away with it - had I not intervened. Forensic then
took a closer look at the victim and discovered traces of some sedative
in his body. Clearly the murderer had fist drugged his victim then
strung him up in the barn. When the poor man came to he found himself
hanging by the neck, his hands tied behind his back. By which time it
was too late. Once dead, the murderer untied his victim’s hands and
slipped away into the night. Clever, eh?’
To be continued….
