Dr. Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) / Ann Wolbert Burgess The third Mindhunter musketeer is Dr. Wendy Carr, a psychology professor played by Anna Torv. The real woman who inspired Carr, nurse and Boston College professor Ann Wolbert Burgess, DNSc, APRN, FAAN, is considered "an internationally recognized pioneer in the assessment and treatment of victims of trauma and abuse," according to her faculty bio . Like Carr, Burgess worked with FBI Academy special agents to study serial offenders, analyzing the links between child abuse, juvenile delinquency, and later criminality. Now, her work focuses on studying elder abuse in nursing homes, cyberstalking, and Internet sex crimes. At Boston College Connell School of Nursing, she teaches courses in Victimology, Forensic Science, Forensic Mental Health, Case Studies in Forensics, and Forensic Science Lab. Netflix / Getty Images
Regi Davis / Maynard Jackson In Mindhunter season two, Regi Davis takes on the role of Maynard Jackson, the first African American mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. He served three terms, from 1974 to 1982 and again from 1990 to 1994, per the Encyclopedia Britannica . During Jackson's second term, the Atlanta Child Murders plagued the city, with 29 black children murdered between 1979 and 1981. Greg Pridgeon, a former Jackson aide, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the time period was a difficult one for the mayor. "It was something that created turmoil inside of him, " Pridgeon said. "He wanted to get it resolved and catch the perpetrator." In the hopes of doing just that, Jackson put extra pressure on local police and himself because "seeing young Atlantans, whom he loved dearly... hurt him," according to Pridgeon. Eventually, a black man, Wayne Williams, was convicted of 24 of the 29 murders, though evidence only tied him to two cases (the other five went unsolved). City and state authorities reopened the Atlanta Child Murders case in March 2019. Getty Images
Cameron Britton / Edmund Kemper Cameron Britton plays the first serial killer the fictional Ford and Tench interview: Edmund Kemper. In real life, "The Co-Ed Killer" also gravitated toward authority, applying to be a state trooper. He was rejected because he was too bigweighing 300 pounds at 6 feet, 9 inches tall. Still, Kemper hung around some Santa Cruz police officers, according to Biography . Despite these career aspirations, Kemper committed his first murder at age 15, killing both of his grandparents to "see what it felt like," per Biography. Afterward, Kemper underwent a variety of psychological tests, which found that he possessed a very high IQ but suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He was sent to a maximum-security facility for mentally ill convicts but was released in 1969. Soon after, in the 1970s, he murdered six young women in the Santa Cruz, California, area before killing his mother and her friend. Kemper also had sex with his mother's decapitated head, per Oxygen , just as the character said he did in Mindhunter. He almost immediately turned himself in to the police and is now serving eight concurrent life sentences at California Medical Facility in Vacaville. Netflix / Getty Images
ADT Serviceman (Sonny Valicenti) / Dennis Rader The nameless ADT serviceman haunting the beginning of every Mindhunter episode in season one is based on none other than serial killer Dennis Rader, a.k.a. BTK. (Yes, everyone thinks the actor looks strikingly like the real-life version.) Rader worked for the Wichita ADT office from November 1974 to July 1988, according to The Wichita Eagle . Rader called himself BTK because that's what he did to his victims: bind, torture, and kill. His killing spree spanned three decades, from 1974 to 1991, per the Eagle. Despite the fact that BTK sent daunting letters to the police, media, and crime victims until 1979, because he led a seemingly normal life (with a wife and two children), he flew under the radar for quite a while. It wasn't until 2005 that Rader was finally arrested in Park City, Kansas, on suspicion of 10 counts of first-degree murder. He's currently in prison in south-central Kansas. Netflix / Getty Images
Sam Strike / Monte Rissell One of the main serial killers Ford and Tench interview in Mindhunter is Monte Rissell (played by Sam Strike). Rissellwhose photos aren't confirmed onlinebegan his life of crime at age 14: He raped women before being sent away to an institution for petty burglary, per The Telegraph. Unlike his Mindhunter character (who let an ex-girlfriend go on her merry way after she broke up with him), the real 19-year-old Rissell murdered his former girlfriend when she tried to end things. That set off five more killings of women before Rissell was captured and put in jail, where he remains today. tk
Happy Anderson / Jerome "Jerry" Brudos A serial killer and necrophiliac, Jerome Brudos targeted young woman out of anger over the way his mother treated him (a recurring motive in the fictional Mindhunter world), according to The Telegraph. He also had a foot fetish and, as a teen, would knock women unconscious to steal their shoes. At 17, Brudos was sent to a mental hospital after kidnapping and assaulting a woman, according to Biography . When Brudos was released, he, like Rader, was able to protect a fairly normal public persona and got married. Later, however, the "Salem Shoe Fetish Slayer" dressed as a woman and went on a murder spree, killing four women he tricked into trusting him. His "normal" life didnt last longhe was arrested and confessed to the murders, per The Telegraph. While in prison, he ordered shoe catalogues to his cell. Brudos died of liver cancer in 2006. Netflix / Getty Images
Adam Zastrow / Darrell Gene Devier Though not a serial killer per se, Darrell Gene Devier (of whom no clear pictures are widely available) raped and killed 12-year-old Mary Frances Stoner in 1979, according to The New York Times . The murder weapon was a rock, which in both Mindhunter and reality, Ford's character put directly in front of Devier to get him to confess during the agent's first proper interrogation. (Yes, that really happened as it was portrayed on-screen.) Devier was executed via electric chair in May 1995 in Georgia, per the Atlanta-Journal Constitution . Netflix
Jack Erdie / Richard Speck In the summer of 1966, Richard Speck became one of the most notorious mass murderers in U.S. history when he brutally killed eight student nurses on Chicago's South Side. But bodies seemed to turn up wherever Speck went even before this event, according to Biography . While working as a carpenter in the April before the killings, he viciously raped and robbed a 65-year-old woman and, 11 days later, brutally beat another woman to death. Speck deflected police questioning and escaped at first, but authorities soon discovered some of the first woman's belongings in his hotel room, linking him to her attack. He went on to murder another eight women, all between ages 19 and 24, torturing them for hours before strangling and stabbing them. But Speck didn't notice that one woman was able to hide herself under a bed and survived. She testified in court and identified Speck, who was then found guilty of all eight murders. Originally sentenced to death, Speck's prison sentence was changed to 50 to 100 years following the Supreme Court's outlawing of capital punishment in 1972 (which has since been reversed). He died of a heart attack on December 5, 1991. Netflix / Getty Images
Damon Herriman / Charles Manson Mindhunter season two reacquainted viewers with an unfortunately familiar facethat of Charles Manson. After a troubled childhood and adolescence spent in and out of reform schools and prison, Manson became the infamous cult leader who convinced his "family" to carry out gruesome murders, per CNN . Around this time, he met Gary Hinman, a music teacher who introduced Manson to Beach Boys member Dennis Wilson. In July 1969, Hinman was murdered by Manson's followers, at Manson's request. The next month, on August 8, the Manson family murdered pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four othersWojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, and Steven Parentat her Hollywood home. The next day, Mansondispleased at his followers' previous sloppinesswent on the hunt for other victims with different members of his "family" and ended up killing supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife. In October 1969, Manson and his followers were arrested on suspicion of auto theft. Some of Manson's followers confessed, and on January 25, 1971, all defendants were found guilty of the murders. Initially, Manson and three of his followers received the death penalty in 1971, but he ended up serving a life sentence in prison (as the death penalty was temporarily outlawed). Manson died in prison on November 19, 2017 at age 83 of natural causes. Netflix / Getty Images
