The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey Into the Minds of Sexual Predators (19 page)

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 sexual behavior at fifteen? Is that right? With window-peeping?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How long did you continue to window-peep?”

“Oh, off and on until the times I was actually going into the houses.”

“You stopped at that time?”

“Well, I classify window-peeping as just looking, and not doing anything else. There were lots of times I’d peek in a window and see women who might be undressed but it was more to get an idea who was home, and where they were at. It wasn’t just looking and leaving.”

What about the exhibitionism?

Simonis said it started when he was in Europe in the army at age twenty-four.

“How long did that go on?”

“Off and on for about three years.”

“The purpose was to get a response from the women?”

“Exactly. A lot of times I got a stimulating feeling just on the reaction of people. A lot of times it was to induce fear, or surprise, and see how they responded to it. I would feed off this fear. It was like a source of fuel for me.”

Lanning asked about the telephone scatology.

“Ah, yes. That was around ’77 or ’78, around in there.”

Neither Hazelwood nor Lanning at first fully comprehended the importance of what Simonis had revealed about paraphilias: that they do not appear in isolation from one another. This important disclosure would later be borne out in research conducted by Dr. Gene Abel, an Atlanta mental health expert who specializes in the study and treatment of child molesters. Roy would be among the first investigators to make practical use of it.

“You also said you masturbated a considerable number of times,” Lanning said to Simonis. “What kind of fantasies did you have during masturbation?”

“It was a multitude of things. It might consist of bondage or the fantasy of a rape, or maybe multiple males and multiple females.”

“And how long did you masturbate?”

“Sometimes four or five times a day. But there were times when it was as much as ten or twelve times.”

“During the time you were committing your rapes,” Roy asked, “were you also having consenting sexual relations?”

“Yes. Quite a bit.”

“Did you ever live with a woman?”

“Several of them, yes.”

This, Hazelwood would learn, was not atypical for rapists. Of the forty-one in his survey, only one was not in a consenting sexual relationship at the time he was also raping.

“Why do you think you were so successful for such a long period of time?” Lanning asked.

“I think it was just a natural instinct I developed, and relied on heavily. It always paid off for me.

“It got to be a cat and mouse game with the police. I knew they were after me by 1980. From there on I figured that if I kept on going I just could not create a definite pattern. I had to stagger my attacks and my robberies in different states. Always change my clothing, have new stuff after every job. Throw the old stuff away. Never kept any evidence.

“I tried to think like the cops would think. For instance, after I left one job I figured they’d probably block the interstates. So I used the back roads. It was a kind of guessing game with them.”

Both Hazelwood and Lanning locked on to what Simonis was explaining. Both agents knew that criminals refine their MO over time, but Simonis was saying that an important part of the process was the guessing game he played with the police.

Clearly, just as the seasoned bank robber or jewel thief might alter his MO in order to avoid capture, so, too, did the more intelligent deviant offenders.

The message for police was not to become too predictable. If the investigators followed repeat patterns, the smart criminal would pick up on that and use it to his advantage, as Simonis did.

“Was traveling in a lot of jurisdictions part of those efforts?” asked Lanning.

“Oh, yes. Spreading them out. There was less chance of people associating those crimes with me.”

“Did you ever use your occupation to select victims?”

Here, Simonis had chilling news.

“Oh, yes. When I worked in a hospital I had access to all the medical records. I knew where the patients lived; what their husbands did; whether he worked in or out of town; who was home during the day, and who wasn’t.

“Also, if they were having surgery, I’d have access to their keys, which they usually left in their nightstands by their
beds. I’d go down and have a copy made and return the original and copy down their address and later on use that to get in their house.”

“Did you ever take advantage of patients under sedation?”

“Oh, sometimes. I had neurology patients we had to sometimes sedate. So there were times for that, yeah.”

Halfway through the daylong interview three lunches arrived from the prison kitchen. Word was around Angola that the two suits talking to Simonis were federal agents, meaning that a surprise very likely was hidden somewhere in their meals, probably bodily excretions contributed by one or more inmates in the Angola kitchen.

Simonis advised Hazelwood and Lanning of that possibility, and was thanked for his consideration.

Lunch was returned to the kitchen untouched.

“What was the youngest victim you sexually assaulted?” Lanning resumed the questioning.

“Agewise I really don’t know,” Simonis answered a little warily. “About thirteen or fourteen.”

Consistent with his hypermasculine point of view, Simonis was careful that the agents didn’t think him a baby raper—the lowest form of life in the prison class system—or that he preyed on the elderly, also the sort of crime that is beneath the virile self-image of the macho offender.

“And the oldest victim?”

“There was one in Houston who was fifty,” he answered, then added, “but she was really well preserved. She looked more like thirty-eight or forty.”

“You mentioned that you would take things that were easily transportable, easily concealed,” said Hazelwood. “Why?”

“Well, in the beginning I took a lot of things like televisions and video recorders, but I was exposing myself to the chance of being caught. Later on, I started taking just jewelry. Easy to conceal and lightweight. It didn’t bog me down in case I had to move or run or get away quickly.”

“What type of vehicle did you drive?”

“I started off driving a ’78 Buick Regal. It was gray and I had it painted black. I also had a ’79 Kawasaki motorcycle that I’d use especially out in the country, where I could conceal it quite well.

“Later on, I sold the Buick and the bike and bought an ‘81 red Trans Am.”

“Did you like to drive?”

“Oh, yes. I put about eighty thousand miles on it in ten months.”

“Why did you like to drive so much?”

“I just liked to travel. It gave me a sense of freedom. I didn’t have to worry about what I did. I didn’t have to worry about answering to people.”

Ken Lanning leaned forward, fingers clasped together.

“Barry, you indicated earlier that you had these tremendous urges that kind of drove you. Yet in some cases you’d rob and burglarize and not sexually assault. What are some of the factors that determined whether or not you sexually assaulted a victim?”

“The victims herself plays a part in that,” he answered. “If they’d show fear or apprehension, sometimes I’d feed off that. That might cause me to make a sexual attack. Some I had no sexual contact with at all. I don’t know why.”

“Were there ever practical reasons why you wouldn’t sexually assault?”

“Well, sometimes if the assault jeopardized getting away with the robbery, I wouldn’t.”

“Did you ever take anything that wasn’t valuable?” Hazelwood wondered. He knew that many sexual offenders take away souvenirs of their crimes.

“Just some articles of clothing, and maybe a driver’s license on a few occasions. They were just temporary things to hang on to.”

“And what did they represent to you?”

“Like a trophy. Kind of a reminder. It helped me visualize
in my mind the scene when I reenacted the fantasy in my mind.”

“You said you’d dress in a particular way for your assaults. What would you do with that material later?”

“Oh, I’d always discard it. Put it in Dumpsters. Rip it up and throw it out the window along the interstate. Usually, this was a long distance away. I’d never dump it right there in the community where I committed the crime.”

“What would be your first response when a woman resisted you?” Roy asked, lighting his second or third Lucky Strike of the afternoon.

“In the early stages, if they would have put up a scream it probably would dissuade me from sticking around.”

“What would happen later on?”

“It would have been a point of agitation to me and I would probably have retaliated by taking a physical action against them.”

“Such as?”

“Beating them. Or kicking them. Or burning them. Any way to inflict pain to get them to be quiet.”

Lanning asked Simonis to describe the assaults.

“Well, their hands were tied, and usually their feet were, too, but not always. Uh, I’d slam my fist to their breasts or into their stomach. Sometimes I hit them across the face. There were times I’d light a cigarette and touch it to their breasts.”

Roy reminded Simonis of the police officer’s wife.

“She said you were being a gentleman, and then you assaulted her.”

“Correct. I struck her across the mouth a couple times.”

“What was the reason for that?”

“I felt she was trying to patronize me. Like she was talking down to me. Treating me like a child. It irritated and agitated me. I decided to let her know I was in control and she would not dictate to me what was going on.”

Simonis’s sharp loathing for women was evident. What he
said reminded Roy of Mike DeBardeleben’s extended reflections on the same subject, handwritten and tape-recorded material he’d just recently had analyzed for the Secret Service. DeBardeleben and Simonis had much in common.

“You mentioned compulsive urges just a moment ago,” said Lanning. “Yet you were able to control the urge so as not to bring harm to yourself. If you had an urge to assault but you knew the area to be dangerous, what would you do?”

“My safety came first. If I thought I could pull it off, I would pull it off. If not, I’d go somewhere else, or try from a different angle.”

“So you did not have an irresistible impulse?”

“No. Not total domination. Later on it did get to where it controlled me a lot more than I wanted it to. But I wasn’t at its mercy completely.”

“I’d like to talk a little bit about pornography,” said Lanning. “Did you ever view or collect it?”

“Yes. I had a small note binder full of different pictures I’d get from
Playboy
magazine and other skin books.”

“How did you use these pictures?” Lanning asked.

“I’d look at them for masturbation.”

“Did you ever view pornography when you were younger?”

“Yes, I did. But not to get off on it. I was about six or seven, I think, the first time I actually came in contact with any kind of pornography. It was something like
Stag.”

Simonis explained that from his very earliest memory, sex was connected to violence and pain in his imagination.

“It had an artist’s conception of a woman, completely nude, with her hands tied together and bound above her head, tied to a rope that went up to the ceiling, and there was a man standing there with a smile on his face, holding a large knife. It looked like he was getting ready to inflict bodily harm, a form of mutilation, almost.

“It wasn’t so much the nude woman that excited me. It was the overall picture.”

“Do you think the picture had an impact on you?”

“I think it did. It’s stayed in my subconscious all these years. I’m not saying it was a contributing factor to me doing the things that I did. I have to take full blame for that. But I think it does contribute in some way.”

“A while back we were talking about sexual bondage,” Roy said, “and you mentioned tying your victims in a variety of positions. Where did you get the idea for that?”

“From magazines.”

“Was it your goal to inflict pain on your victims?”

“Yes, that was the most stimulating part, I guess. To inflict pain and terror to a woman. The attacker kind of feeds off it. It’s kind of like adding fuel to the body. The more you see it the more it stimulates you, the more it gets a person going.”

“Is the pain itself the goal? Or is it the victim’s response?”

“I think it’s the initial response that they give off, that’s produced by their pain. That is what the sadistic person’s actually looking for. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy inflicting the pain, but the final product is the reaction you get from it. If you inflicted pain and they showed no response whatsoever, it would be like making sex to a dead person. You’d get no thrill out of it.”

“What was the turn-on?” Roy asked. “Was it sexual intercourse or control?”

“It was a multitude of things. The rapes were a sexual thing a lot of the time, but it was also mainly the idea of being dominant, having complete control, having the woman at your disposal and mercy to do what you wanted to do.”

The interview continued for another seven and a half hours.

“Barry, will you tell us what your sentence is?” Roy asked in closing.

“I’m not sure I remember them all. I have about twenty-one life sentences, plus an additional 2,386½ years to go.”

“Any possibility of parole?”

“Zero possibility.”

Off camera, Simonis made several further disclosures to Hazelwood. He said that although he had no chance of ever legally walking free of Angola, he was glad in a way to have been stopped when he was. Rape, said Simonis, was beginning to bore him. About the time Lieutenant Milan arrested him outside the Lake Charles convenience store, his fantasies increasingly were of murder.