Ashleigh Banfield: On Location

MSNBC

Oct. 9, 2002

BANFIELD: You've been doing this for such a long time.

WALSH: Right.

BANFIELD: You've got a history of knowing some of these people.

WALSH: Right.

BANFIELD: How many cases are like this in the past where someone's got this God complex?

WALSH: No, most of them don't. Most of them are, you know, everybody is trying to put a label on this guy, right, you know. I mean when we tracked down Andrew Cunanan, he truly was a spree killer that wanted to get caught. He left plenty of evidence behind. When we tracked down the hobo serial killer Resendez Ramirez, he didn't want to get caught. He was smart and kept jumping on trains and trying to get away and get away with that. This guy is different than all of them. This person obviously has some kind of, you know, megalomaniac complex, that they can pick anybody they want at any time and kill them and then leave this bizarre calling card. The only person that I've ever done on America's Most Wanted that this reminds me of is we revisited the old Zodiac Killer from San Francisco.

BANFIELD: Right.

WALSH: Who's been on...

BANFIELD: Decades ago.

WALSH: Decades ago, because the Zodiac Killer after all these years, the FBI believed the Zodiac Killer started to send me mail, started to send me letters when America's Most Wanted got very popular and said, I'm going to come out of retirement and the one person I'm going to kill is John Walsh. That will be the challenge of my lifetime to kill the man hunter. And the letters to me were in crypt very much like the crypt that the zodiac killer used to send to the papers in San Francisco and they were signed in blood. The FBI psychological profilers determined that the signature was human blood, probably his own blood. So, the zodiac killer always believed that he was smarter than police, that the police would never catch him and that he could kill who he wanted to kill. This killer is the same way. He thinks that he's smarter than police and that he can kill whoever he wants.

BANFIELD: You know the police were quite concerned that this bit of information about the investigation got out, that the Tarot card with the message to police "I am God" is in the public and that the press took it to the public. Why do you suppose the police were trying to keep it quiet?

WALSH: Well, because I think what people now understand, yes we all, all of us that are in the media believe that the public have the right to know but we have someone now who shot eight innocent people, killed six of them. If there's a crucial piece of evidence that might break this case, even though I'm in the media, even though I do this for a living, I'll agree with most Americans, we don't need to know. What we really care about is, let's get him before he shoots the next 13-year-old. Let's get him before he shoots the next person. So there are certain things that police have in their possession with cases. For example, when we profile people on America's Most Wanted we don't tell everything we know on a Saturday night. We hold things back to make sure that the caller does know something about the criminal. So, I agree with the cops. They have every right to be mad when these things get out.

BANFIELD: Would the Tarot card, though, have been able to narrow the search and someone out there who saw someone unusual with Tarot cards might have been able to give a good tip that would have stopped the 13 attacks or 14 attacks?

WALSH: Absolutely. It's very, very possible that when crucial pieces of evidence are leaked to the media that it compromises the investigation because it may have been someone that the killer had visited. It may have been someone maybe a psychic or someone that uses Tarot cards that this psychic may have said, you know, I have delusions or I believe God sent me on a mission, or that someone, you know, had gone and bought Tarot cards. These are crucial pieces of evidence. The police say let us follow them through before you warn the killer that we have this information.

BANFIELD: Your whole show America's Most Wanted works off of tips and the tips have led to how may captures now?

WALSH: Seven hundred and twenty-two.

BANFIELD: Well, let's hope it's 723 coming up soon.

WALSH: Right.

BANFIELD: In any case, when you deal with tipsters, do you think it's possible that this perpetrator is one of the callers?

WALSH: Oh, many times we've had criminals call us, call the America's Most Wanted hotline, to throw us off. Lots of times we know from voice recognition or they sound exactly like maybe we'd had a tape recorder voice about this person. You know, we've had people call and say, oh yes the criminal is in North Dakota when the guy really is in Florida. He's trying to throw us off himself. That's not unusual for criminals to call the America's Most Wanted hotline. But you know what, we're pretty good at wading through those things.

BANFIELD: Worst case scenario, like the zodiac killer, what if this person is never caught? How does the community get back to normal?

WALSH: They have to get back to normal, just like 9/11. Americans have to go back to their normal lives. We can not let these people hold us hostage and terrorize us. We're tough. We will get back to normal. People are getting back to normal. We just have to stay on the hunt and catch this creep before he kills somebody else.