'...he wasn't even a suspect." - Dr. Harry Krop

In this, the Season 2 Finale, Chris and Alison speak with Dr. Harry Krop.  Dr. Krop is a forensic psychologist who has been involved in over 2000 homicide cases as an expert witness and started the very first sexual abuse treatment center in Florida in 1977.  We talk with Dr. Krop in-depth about two of the most high-profile homicide cases:  Danny Rolling and Aileen Wuornos. 

IMDB information about the film "Monster" a film base on the life of Aileen Wuornos.

These conversations are not appropriate for children. People with their own traumatic histories should be aware that we discuss violent crimes, exploitation, sexual trauma, child abuse, and incarceration.

Transcript

Krop_Transcript.mp3

Interviewer [00:00:04] This is Trauma InJustice. This is a podcast about the ways that people confront and manage trauma in the justice system. These conversations touch on seriously troubling topics. This podcast is not appropriate for children. People with their own traumatic histories should be aware that we discuss violent crimes, exploitation, sexual trauma, child abuse and incarceration. I'm Alison DeBelder and I'm Chris Moser. Our guest today is Dr. Harry. Dr. Krop is a forensic psychologist. He got his Ph.D. from the University of Miami. He's been practicing since 1971, and he's been specializing in forensic psychology since 1977. He's been involved in over 2000 homicide cases as an expert witness. And he started the first sexual abuse treatment center in Florida in 1977. He originally worked in VA hospitals, which will become relevant when we talk to him about trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. Welcome, Dr. Krop. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:01:17] Thank you. Nice to be here. 

Interviewer [00:01:19] If somebody wants to get in touch with you to hire you on a case, what's the best way for them to do that? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:01:27] I sound like an ambulance chaser when you ask me that question. My email is Harry Krop at gmail.com. 

Interviewer [00:01:38] I understand that you started practice in 1971, came to forensic psychology in 77. What was happening between those years? How did you end up interested in doing forensic work? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:01:51] Well, back then, I'm not sure there was such a thing as forensic psychology. There certainly wasn't any training for it specifically in any kind of graduate schools. I started my practice at the VA hospital, where I started a program for veterans. I guess this will show my age, but I started this program for veterans who are returning from Vietnam and post-traumatic stress disorder, or was pretty much a new phenomenon, at least being labeled that way. We all know that individuals in the military always go through stress and exposure to extreme stressors. It used to be called traumatic neurosis, but eventually it became a specific diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. So I started a PTSD group for the first time in the VA, and that's how pretty much not only was I getting my own exposure to individuals who have experienced trauma, but also my start in forensic psychology. One of the lawyers in town contacted me knowing my involvement in the VA and said that he had a client who was on death row and asked me if I would go to death row and evaluate him because the lawyer thought that he had post-traumatic stress disorder. He was a veteran and that it was relevant to the crime itself, but it was never, never really talked about during the mitigation stage of his trial. And so that was my first case. I wrote a report saying he did have PTSD. I thought it was a significant contributor to the crime. And I wrote a report. Apparently, my report was viewed favorably, and after that, I started getting calls from other attorneys about doing an evaluation for their clients. And pretty much the rest is history. I was very fortunate. I had a wonderful supervisor at the VA and he arranged it so that I could go part time at the VA and start my private practice, which was around 1977. And then I eventually went full time private practice around 1980. The name of my practice is community behavioral services, and I've been doing that other than some teaching I've been in private practice since that time. 

Interviewer [00:04:32] Dr. Kropp, what was the name of that client, do you recall? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:04:36] I have no idea. I don't remember that at all. At the time, I didn't know how significant it would be in terms of my my practice. 

Interviewer [00:04:44] The reason why I was asking is Dale Rosenow, who's the lead chaplain for Florida's death row, has come and talk to my class and talked in public and has written books referencing veterans on death row, some of whom were commended with Purple Hearts. And then later in trial, the state attorney had used their training, quote unquote, as killers to aggravate and argue for the death penalty. So I was just curious if maybe the person you were speaking of is the same person that Mr. Senala talked to me about. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:05:22] I wouldn't know, but I can tell you about a recent case. I guess it was probably the last time which was just about a month ago that I testified in a case. It was not a murder case. It was actually a sexual abuse case. But it had all the elements of PTSD in the sense of the defendant had served 19 years in the military in Afghanistan, had been wounded three different times. One, all kinds of awards or medals came back to the United States, finished his military career in the reserves and then after that, or during that time period, got involved in police work. He attended the police academy and he worked for the I believe it was the Clay County Sheriff's Office. And during that time, he was involved in DUI investigations, and he was involved in on the scene investigations where he described something like 14 or 15 accidents, where in there were beheadings, there were decapitation, there were two month old. Babies killed. And basically, as a result of the PTSD that he experienced over serving our country, the PTSD that he experienced also serving in law enforcement just couldn't cope with it anymore and began drinking and self-medicating with illicit drugs. And on one particular occasion, he made a significant mistake and engaged in inappropriate conduct with a younger girl. I am not in any way excusing, nor was he excusing his behavior, but I testified in terms of mitigation in that case, explaining that what the VA now calls poly trauma, which is one trauma being piled up on another trauma and instead of the state or the court in that matter, seeing this person as an individual and everything that he had done good except for that one incident, the state argued he should have known better, and he was essentially hammered in terms of the sentence. This was in federal court, so there were a minimum mandatories. But again, that's not a homicide. But it's still, I think, is an example of how individuals who experience trauma end up getting involved in the criminal justice system. 

Interviewer [00:08:13] Let me back up for just a second. Can you explain to our listeners what you mean when you say trauma? I know you've given some examples in that case, but in general, what is trauma and why does it matter? What does experiencing trauma do to us? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:08:31] Well, I think trauma the word itself. I think a lot of people think that that trauma is the event itself, that a person is exposed to, whether it be in the military, whether it be sexual abuse, whether it be serious injuries in an accident, natural disasters. They are not traumas in themselves. The trauma is how the person emotionally experiences and the emotions that come out as a result of those experiences. So two people can experience the exact same event. And in fact, on cross-examination, sometimes one of the common questions that I'm asked by, let's say, a prosecutor, when two children grew up in the same household, they were both physically abused. Maybe they were both sexually abused. One goes on, goes to college, becomes a professional on the other, gets involved in the criminal justice system. Well, they both were exposed to the same environment. Yet the way they dealt with that exposure differed from one person to another. So depending on my evaluation, I might diagnose that one person with PTSD, whereas the other person had dealt with it in a lot more adaptive ways. Sometimes individuals will cope with the stressor by hitting it face on. Other times, individuals will tend to try and avoid not only the stressor, but anything that reminds them of the stressor. And so therefore the one individual might have a psychological disorder, whereas the other one has coped with it much more adaptively. So when we use the word trauma, it's not the event itself, it's the emotional response that the individual has in dealing with that particular stress event. 

Interviewer [00:10:25] What's the gold standard for what should happen when somebody experiences something traumatic, so say it's revealed that a child has been sexually abused with one of the examples that you gave or somebody witnesses a violent crime? What should they be doing in order to manage their response appropriately? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:10:49] My initial response to that would be, and I might say something here that's controversial, but my initial response would be for that person to get treatment if possible and not just go to a therapist to talk about the trauma, but go to a therapist who has experience in working with PTSD. And the individual doesn't necessarily have to meet full criteria to have PTSD. A person can have PTSD features and still be having difficulty coping. But the therapist should be specifically trained and have experience in working with PTSD. The reason I mention controversy is because there are some professionals that believe that every single, let's say, child who has been sexually abused should have treatment. Now it's possible that if a child is too young to remember what happened and is doing well, that child may not need treatment. I mean, there's always the the theory that the child has repressed they abuse, and at some point in their lives, it may come out. I mean, there's also controversy in terms of whether there is such a thing as repressed memory, but we're not going to get into that today. But most of the time, I would say that getting treatment at some phase at one stage in the person's life would be helpful if the child, as I said, is aware of the abuse. I believe it's important to get that child treatment as soon as possible and teach the child coping strategies and what to do if they are in situations. For example, there's some research that shows that children who are sexually abused are more vulnerable to being sexually abused in the future, which is why it's important not only to help that child through the initial sexual abuse, but to teach the child and educate the child and the child's parents, assuming that it wasn't a parent that did the abusing. How to avoid being in those situations. How to recognize those situations in the future. 

Interviewer [00:13:00] I want to ask you about direct trauma that you have experienced in the course of your career. And specifically, I'm wondering if you would be willing to share with our listeners about your involvement in Danny Rawlings case. Would you explain who he was and how you came to be involved in his life? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:13:27] Well, first, let me say that there are clients that I've had defendants that I've had that I can't talk about because of confidentiality, but then there are clients who once I have been placed on the witness list, I am able to discuss their cases because my testimony has probably already been made public. Just last week, I was involved in a documentary that the A&E network was putting on, and they asked me to talk about a couple of my serial killers, one being Danny Rawling and the other being Eileen Wuornos. The question you asked me was my own trauma or how it's affected me, and I didn't realize how much the Danny rolling incident. Danny rolling. For those of you who don't know was a serial killer who happened to kill his victims in Gainesville, where I live. He has since been executed. But the reason it had an effect on me was because of how it touched not only me personally, but everybody else that was living in Gainesville. He brutally murdered four actually five college students, four females, and it was orientation week here in Gainesville at the University of Florida, which is usually supposed to be this fun. Kids are coming to college for the first time and it's usually a very happy week. But it wasn't back then because we started hearing about students who were not only killed but decapitated, mutilated, sexually assaulted. And parents were petrified they were bringing their kids back home, they were not allowing, I mean, Gainesville basically emptied out that week. I just as an individual who lived in Gainesville, was also scared, scared for my family. I remember walking my dogs at night and always looking around, looking over my shoulder because nobody knew who this person was, what kind of person this was. The interesting thing is my my life sort of both my professional life and my personal life sort of merge during that time period. CNN and all the major networks were the trucks were all over Gainesville. And because I had a reputation of being the person in that area who did forensic psychology, they would want to interview me. They would talk about, is this person from what you know so far to meet a particular profile. They were somewhat disappointed. When I say I don't particularly believe in profiles that each individual is different, the motives are different. So I about two or three weeks after the last person, at least as far as we knew the body had been found. I got a call from a public defender in Ocala, which is Marion County, which is about 40 miles south of Gainesville. I got a call. It was on a late Friday afternoon and said, we have this individual in the jail. He's been charged with attempted armed robbery, and there's something off about this person. Would you be willing to go down and see him as soon as possible? And they stress the urgency, I wasn't sure why, and I said, sure, I'll go down tomorrow. It was a weekend and so I drove down to Al Carla and I actually didn't have any written authority from that public defender to see this person. But the staff at the Marion County Jail knew who I was, and I said, I'd like to see this guy named Danny rolling and they let me see him. So I met Danny. He walked in, he said, Who are you? And so here he had no idea I was coming. He had no idea who I worked for because the public defender didn't have time to communicate with them. And I said, I'm a psychologist who your public defender asked to do a psychological evaluation that she felt that it might be helpful for you to have an evaluation. And in fact, she said, and I forgot to bring this up that you actually even asked to talk to a mental health professional. And he said, yes, that's true. And he had rashes all over his face. He was extremely anxious. He was not this cool, collected Danny rolling that everybody was talking about. I explained to him that this was confidential, and he said, Well, it doesn't matter. I just need to talk to somebody. And so we talked for about two hours about his case, the armed robbery that he had come up from Tampa and he was heading back to Gainesville that he had been in Gainesville before. And he spent a couple of weeks in Tampa and needed money and so forth and so on. At the end of the two hours when I was getting ready to leave, I felt that he was competent to proceed. I felt that based on what he told me regarding the case, that I was there for that, he was saying, and he asked, Do you mind sitting down and giving me a few more minutes? And I said, Sure. And he asked me, he said, Is everything I tell you confidential, even if it's not related to this case? I said yes, with the exception of if you were to tell me. And I was almost jokingly when I said this, I said, unless you told me that you were going as soon as you get out to kill somebody, then I would have to warn that person if I knew. But I said, you could even have killed a bunch of people. And I couldn't tell anybody. And he said, I did. Wow. I said, What do you mean you did? He then went on, For the next three and a half four hours. I sat there, probably said one sentence in the next period of time. It was in the evening now to give me specific information about how he killed the five people in Gainesville. 

Interviewer [00:19:41] And what was this attitude while he was doing this? Was this like tearful confession? Did he have a flat affect? Was he asking for help? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:19:50] It was flat affect. He was not emotional. I tried not to be emotional. I tried also to be as flat with my feelings as possible. I didn't even ask any questions other than saying, go ahead and keep going because I wanted this free flowing kind of narrative. Once I started to think about this might be legitimate. At first, I thought he was just some copycat or somebody who was just wanting some notoriety. But the details that he told me now again, I didn't know all the details because a lot of the details were not put in the newspaper, and all I knew is what I read in the newspaper or saw on TV. But he was so specific and gave this chronological linear order to how he did everything. And one of the things that he told me that was really interesting was after the second homicide, he went to get something to a 7-Eleven, a convenience store to get something to drink, and he realized that he didn't have his wallet. And so he presumed that he left his wallet at the crime scene, so he went back to the crime scene for a second time. The body obviously had not yet been discovered, and it was at that time that he decapitated one of the girls, took that girl's head and put it on the mantel for for shock value. 

Interviewer [00:21:19] Did he tell you why when he was doing this, did he say why he felt compelled to do this? Did he say that they made him angry? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:21:26] No. And at that point I didn't ask. I didn't want to interrupt the flow of events. 

Interviewer [00:21:31] This is maybe really a minor point, but was his wallet in fact there? Did he say he retrieved it or did he say I went back there and it wasn't there, but I did this anyway? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:21:41] Yes, he he said. He retrieved it. Wow. So again, I wasn't there for that case, but I told him again when I was leaving that I could not share that information. I appreciated him telling me. I said, Do you want me to tell your attorney who hired me, the public defender? And he said, Well, it's up to you. I didn't tell the attorney at least immediately. I went home, I remember going out to the parking lot. I was the only car in the parking lot and I just sat there for about a half hour with my head on the steering wheel because I was just too anxious and to emotionally upset. Part of the reason that I was so emotionally upset besides having heard all the gruesome details, was that he wasn't even a suspect. So here I know I had this information. There are all kinds of theories floating around Gainesville. I remember when I was asked by one of the I think it was CNN about, well, we heard that the male that he killed by stabbing was very precise. And is it possible that this is a medical student or somebody who's had surgical experience, that it was so precise and so forth? So here I'm hearing all these rumors about who the person could be. And then another twist to the story was that another individual? I can't remember his first name. It might have been Chris, but his last name was Humphrey, and he was arrested as a suspect down in, I think, Brevard County. I'm not totally sure 

Interviewer [00:23:26] he was in jail for allegedly a battery on. I think it's a grandmother. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:23:30] Yes. 

Interviewer [00:23:31] And then he had scars on his face, and he had lived somewhere where one of the victims lived in the same complex. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:23:37] And yes, and he had bipolar disorder. He was a very mentally ill individual. And so here he was, the suspect, the only suspect so far. So I know, first of all, that there's someone who is innocent could be charged with serial murders. And I also know that the individual who by that time, I felt confident that he was who he said he was had killed five people and who could be free could get out of jail based on what happens with this other case. The other thing that he told me right at the end when I was leaving, he said, Oh, by the way, I also killed three other people in Louisiana, but I'd rather not talk about that at this time. So that was the information that I had at that time. I went home and as I mentioned before, my wife, who was a partner, is a partner in my practice and who also is a mental health counselor I could share since we worked in the same business together, same practice I could share with her information and thank goodness I had somebody to be able to do that with. The other thing is, I mentioned I had a nine year old daughter and she, like every other kid, probably in Gainesville, was petrified about what was going on. We tried hiding some of the details, but it was really hard. Kids in school were talking about it. And so she would have us every night look under the bed before we tucked in and read her book. And that night I was able to say to her, I really can't say a whole lot, but I just want you to know that the bad guy can't bother you anymore. That was a relief actually just being able to tell her that much. Couple weeks went by and I get a call from the public defender's office in Gainesville saying that Danny Rolling has been determined to be a suspect in the murder cases. Could I get involved with the defense team in Alachua County now? At that point in time, they didn't know that I had already been involved with him, so I felt obligated to tell them about that to see if they thought that that was a conflict of interest. They said no. In fact, it's good because he already told us that you had seen him and that he wanted you. He trusted me and he wanted for me to be involved. So that was the beginning. 

Interviewer [00:26:07] At that point, had you told the assistant public defender on the armed robbery who had attached you, had you confided in her what he had told you? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:26:19] No. But the public defender in Alachua County had contacted her as well because he was still in the Marion County Jail. And so she had known, of course, the public defender in Ocala knew that I was involved in that case. So the Gainesville public defender told her that they were using me as well, and she said, That's good. We can work together. 

Interviewer [00:26:40] And she may have had a suspicion, you know, urging you to come so quickly on a case. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:26:46] Yeah, she told me later that she did. Yes. And she was one of the top public defenders at the time who worked with homicide. And so that's also why she may have been assigned to the case as well. 

Interviewer [00:26:59] During that time before he was arrested and your involvement grew? Did it ever occur to you that you might want to spill the beans knowing that it would mean giving up your license, knowing that you'd have to? Have you ever felt tempted to do that? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:27:16] I was. I went to talk to the chief judge, who I also knew personally and gave him a hypothetical. And he said, You can't tell anybody it could mean a mistrial. I knew it could mean my license that I was aware of breaking confidentiality like that. I also talked to the state attorney in Alachua County again, who I knew personally and gave a hypothetical and got the same same feedback. So it was pretty clear that I knew at that point that I was stuck with this information and that once I of course, became involved in the homicide cases and I spoke to Danny again, I told him that I had not told anybody, including his own attorney. 

Interviewer [00:28:03] Dr. Krupp, can you talk a little bit about the duty of confidentiality that you have when you meet a criminal defendant at the request of a public defender or a private attorney? And how the system, you know, essentially wouldn't work without confidentiality between client and attorney and the doctors that are brought in to assist in the defense. Because I think a lot of the public, there's a lot of judgment on, well, how could you not say anything or they don't understand how critical confidentiality is in representing people in the adversarial system just in general? Could you speak to that? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:28:46] Sure. Well, I think the public, as you mentioned, have some of the same thoughts about defense attorneys who represent these horrible people knowing that they're guilty. How can they do that? And of course, I have the same confidentiality my ethics not only as a forensic psychologist, but if a person came to me in therapy, I have the same confidentiality in terms of the client therapist privilege when I work in a forensic setting. I have the same confidentiality obligation as the attorney does if I'm hired confidentially. There are many cases, especially now, during the pandemic, and that's another story. But I'd probably get more what we call court-appointed evaluations where in the court order, it specifically says I am to send my report to the court, to the judge, to the state attorney and a defense attorney. Now my obligation is to make sure that I inform the client of those limits of confidentiality. And if I'm doing, for example, a competency evaluation just to see how the person's current mental state is one of the issues in competency is can that person that he or she understand the charges and what the allegations are if it's not a confidential evaluation? I do not ask the client to talk to me about the incident. I say, Can you tell me what you've been accused of? Can you tell me what evidence they have? But I never ask, although sometimes they want to. I never asked the client to actually tell me what they did or what they didn't do. If it's not a confidential, but if it's a confidential, most of the time, I will ask them to talk to me about the incident because we're looking to see what kind of mental state the person was, you know, it was in at the time of the offense. But from an ethical standpoint, confidentiality, it's the way our judicial system works. And I still think despite the fact there are many cases of injustice and in my opinion, sometimes the wrong decisions like that individual I talked about earlier who, you know, served our country in so many ways. But it's still the best system in the world. And the only way that it would work is to be able to have a trusting relationship between the client and his or her attorney and in my case, his or her mental health professional. 

Interviewer [00:31:11] I think that you mentioned that Danny Rolling ended up being convicted and ultimately executed by the state of Florida. Can you share what it means to you to have the burden in some ways of a person's life in your hands when you're opining in cases where the death penalty is on the table? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:31:37] Let me tell you if I can. Just briefly the very first case that I ever testified in. I remember it was in Orlando, and it was a young 19 year old kid who was charged with first degree murder and they were seeking the death penalty. Very first case I ever testified. Very few psychologists we're talking many, many years ago had really been involved. Even the lawyers didn't know much about what mitigation was, which is what individuals like myself do when we evaluate an individual who's accused of a homicide. In terms of when the state is seeking the death penalty. When I look back at that testimony and when I got through being cross-examined, I was so wet with sweat and felt that I did a terrible job. And in fact, I think I probably did. And I have talked to that state attorney who then ironically, was the judge Jani, who became a judge on the Casey Anthony case, which I also did. And I told him that he was very instrumental in my life because after I got through that case testifying, I remember also sitting in my car and thinking, I have two options. I will never do this again. I will never do another death penalty case again, or I'm going to be prepared the next time, and I'm not going to let this happen because I started realizing and it turned out that he got life, didn't get the death penalty, but I didn't feel like I helped him very much either. And I thought, What if I screw up on one of these cases and the person gets the death penalty because I screwed up? I've had to get to a point where maybe the best analogy that I can think of is a surgeon who at work has somebody's heart in his hand. I have to tell myself, number one, that I'm not the one that put that defendant there in the first place. And it's my job ethically, just like it's the defense attorney's job and the prosecutor's job is to do ethically the best and most competent job they can do. So I try not to think that if I screw up or don't do the best job that I could, that that person's going to be executed because of me and Danny rolling case. Danny eventually, of course, got the death penalty and he actually pled guilty rather than going even through a trial. And one of the conditions which I'm not sure a lot of people know is that the state agreed not to have him prosecuted or even charged with the three cases in Louisiana. But basically, I testified the best that I could and what I had. I talked about Danny's horrendous, possibly traumatic childhood that he went through. But at the same time, the prosecutor basically kept asking me, Didn't Mr. Rolling tell you he did this? And my I had to sit there and say Yes, sir, and go on and on and on. And I knew Danny was going to be convicted. I mean, I think that was pretty much a no brainer, but I still felt that I wanted to try and do the best that I can to present to a jury who Danny Rolling was and how he got to that point. 

Interviewer [00:34:56] Just one more question about his case. Do you know if it was his idea to waive his right to a trial and plead guilty, or if it was a strategic decision? So the jury wouldn't hear a lot of and see a lot of very violent, traumatic evidence that would be very hard for anyone to put aside. And I'm thinking in the news recently with Nicholas Cruz entering a plea and going straight to sentencing if it has some similarities or if it was Danny driving the ship and going, You know what? I just want to do this. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:35:31] It was ultimately Danny's decision, but I think exactly what you just said. He had an excellent team of defense attorneys, and I believe that they discussed that with Danny. In fact, I was part of those discussions. I wasn't there when he decided to plea. But they explained to him that these autopsy pictures were going to come in, and I'd seen some of the autopsy pictures. And they're just brutal. They're horrible to look at. Also in the guilt phase that would all come in and then they would do it all over again for the most part in the sentencing phase, so he knew. I mean, there was no way he was not going to be convicted, so he felt that it was in his best interest to plea 

Interviewer [00:36:15] just a side note. Did you diagnosed him as having a paraphilia as a sadist? Do you remember 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:36:23] I diagnosed Danny with antisocial personality disorder? And I also diagnosed him with a paraphilia, several paraphilias. For those who don't know, paraphilia is basically the diagnosis of somebody who has sexually deviant proclivities and behaviors. I diagnosed him as a paraphilia voyeurism, sadism and also neKrophilia for those people who. And I don't know if that ever came up in his trial, but he also engaged in sexual activity with two of the women after they were deceased. And he, of course, neKrophilia, which is having sex with corpses. Isn't this a pleasant conversation we're having? Once you have an opportunity to develop an understanding of where the person's sexual deviance comes from. First of all, in death penalty cases such as Danny Rowlings, it's easier to communicate this to a jury rather than just say this guy is a sexual pervert. In Danny's case, it was the most sort of interesting beginnings of a sexually deviant behavior. Danny said at one point that he was sexually abused on one occasion by a woman. But he was 14 or 15, and he took it not to be a sexual abuse incident. But Danny's own sexually deviant behavior actually started as a result of this dysfunctional family situation, which was the only real mitigation that I could present at his case, and that his father, who was a police officer and was a hometown hero as the police officer, everybody loved him. Everybody respected him when he came home and took off his police uniform and his badge and put his gun down. The way Danny and Danny's mother described him was a totally different person. He was controlling. He was rigid, he was verbally abusive. He was physically abusive to both the mother and Danny. But what stood out in what Danny told me is that despite all the physical and emotional abuse, the thing that bothered him the most was when the father came home. He expected dinner to be on the table, the newspaper sitting there, and for everybody else to leave him alone so that he could enjoy his meal in private because he had such a stressful day and he wanted to come home and relax. Danny and his mother got into the habit essentially of either eating in another room or Danny told me several times he would just have dinner before his father came home. But in order to avoid how emotionally devastating this was for Danny, he'd start wandering the streets. And while he walked around in his neighborhood. This is where his history of voyeurism began. He would look in windows, not necessarily will, not definitively for any kind of sexual gratification. But he would look in the windows where families were eating dinner and start fantasizing about seeing himself and being in that family and what it would be like to sit down with his mother and father and siblings or grandparents and eat with them and talk about their day and so forth. 

Interviewer [00:40:05] That's a heartbreaking image. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:40:08] It really is, and it's the first time I've heard something like this, but again, I talked to Danny, like you said, when you have some time to develop a relationship, I spoke to Danny probably seven or eight different times and, you know, numerous hours over the time that I worked with him. But he told me that he did this for months at a time. And then one night he was around dusk. He looked in a window of one of the houses that he had been typically looking at, but he looked in a different window and he saw the teenage daughter getting out of the shower and he saw her partially undressed. After that, he started not only looking for to be part of a family, but he started becoming sexually aroused to these fantasies of or directly observing women in partial undress and so forth. And that was the beginning of his first sexually deviant behavior. And in fact, that's what contributed to the three people he killed in Louisiana. He would look in that family's home would see the daughter, who was an adult daughter with a child, but she was relatively young and he started stalking her without her knowing it would follow her. And one night he followed her home. He broke into the house and he didn't realize that that woman's father and her child was there. And so he killed the two family members, sexually assaulted the woman and then killed her as well in the very same M.O. that he did with the women in Gainesville. 

Interviewer [00:41:49] Did he have normal relationships with women? Did he have girlfriends? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:41:55] He was married. He got married, and that didn't last very long. And there is speculation he didn't say this to me, and I'm not sure he was even aware of it. But the four women that he killed in Gainesville had the same hair coloring, the same length of hair as his wife. And so, I mean, there was speculation that they all reminded him of his wife and he was getting revenge on them because she left him after a fairly brief marriage. You know, when he left Gainesville after he killed the victims in this case and he went to Tampa and stayed down there for a while, and we learned that he actually dated a few girls. One of the girls said that he was charming. He wrote poetry for her. He sang songs, played the guitar for her. I can't imagine what she must have felt like when she found out later that she had been dating for about 10 days. This guy that killed women 

Interviewer [00:42:58] was he a psychopath? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:43:00] Was he a psychopath? Oh, yeah. Yes, for sure, and a narcissist. 

Interviewer [00:43:12] I was wondering if you would speak a little bit about a very different case that you already mentioned briefly, which is that of Eileen Wuornos, would you tell our listeners who aren't familiar with her case, who Eileen Wuornos was? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:43:31] Well, they want to become familiar with Eileen Wuornos, they can go to Netflix or whatever and do the movie the monster with. And I'm not sure I'm pronouncing her name right. Charlize Theron, who won an Academy Award for playing Eileen Wuornos Eileen Wuornos, was a woman who was the first serial killer in Florida. She was convicted of six homicides and there was a seventh victim, which she also admitted to all men. Eileen was a person who was sexually abused several times when she was younger, and she was also sexually abused by her grandfather. She became pregnant, not by her grandfather, but by someone else. When the grandfather, when the family found out that she was pregnant at 15, they kicked her out of the house. They had her put in some, I guess, back then a home for unwed mothers. She had the baby. She gave the baby up for adoption. She had nowhere to go. She had no skills. And so she began deriving income by becoming a prostitute and she became a priest. She was a prostitute, essentially for the rest of her life. And all of the individuals that she killed were men. Trick's Johns, whatever you want to call them. She would maybe have five to eight men in one day that she would engage in sexual activity with and then one day one of the men, according to Eileen, and I believed Eileen told me that this individual refused to pay her. They were in his truck and she said, You know, I'm not going to have sex with you if you don't pay me. He said, Yes, you are. He pulled out a knife, threatened her, began to sexually assault her, rape her, sodomized her. And as this was going on, she reached into her purse, pulled out her pistol, which she carried with her all the time and shot this individual and killed him. Over the next many, many months, there were six more victims that she killed, all in the same way. The difference is that and she admitted this to me. Those weren't done out of self-defense. They were done because the individual possibly was doing things to her that made her think of her childhood and her own sexual trauma. And this is where, you know, we talk about individuals who are exposed to to trauma. I mean, she was exposed to numerous traumas when she was younger. Somehow, it became easier and easier for her to become violent with these individuals and kill them. She went to trial. Obviously, they were seeking the death penalty against her first case was in Volusia County, which is Daytona. I testified in the case, and in my opinion, I didn't testify in the trial, but they used the self-defense defense, and in my opinion, it was a legitimate self-defense. She felt that her life was threatened. She had no other recourse. She was in this tight truck with this individual. Anyway, the jury convicted her mainly because in Florida, and you guys certainly know this the Williams role. It allows the prosecution to bring up what they call similar fact witnesses, which are other individuals who in this case, Eileen, had also murder. And so it was very difficult for a jury to accept that this person would murder seven individuals in self-defense, even though she never claimed that the others were self-defense. So she was convicted. She was one of her own worst enemies on her way out of the courtroom. After she was convicted, she called the jury a bunch of scumbags and that she hopes that they would have to go through what she's gone through. That didn't help in the sentencing phase because then the next day or two days later, they had to vote, whether they give her the death penalty or not. Eileen, unlike Danny, I felt very, very I had a lot of empathy for Eileen. I diagnosed her with a borderline personality disorder, a lot based on how she dealt with her own sexual abuse victimization. She was very difficult person to relate to. I had difficulty, although the first time that I saw her, she was cooperative. The next time I saw her, she saw me as one of the bad guys that's trying to kill her. So I never knew which Eileen I was going to see the day before or two days before the trial. I needed to see her again. And at that time, the jail staff were bringing the client to me. Now you have to go to the jail, especially on these kind of cases. And so they brought her up to my office in Gainesville, and I remember again, my wife being very familiar with my cases and talking about her. She decided, I said, I don't know which Eileen, I'm going to see today. So she decided to bake a pie. I still remember I think it was a blueberry cranberry kind of pie. My wife's a wonderful baker, but that's another story. And so we took the pie to the office, to be fair. We shared it with the officers we all who brought her. We also made sure that they knew there was no knife or anything inside that we were going to smuggle in to Eileen. And so Eileen ate two pieces of the pie, and she was the most cooperative she ever was with me that day and I didn't last. 

Interviewer [00:49:16] Do you think that your wife would give us the recipe to post on social media? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:49:21] I'm yeah, I'm sure she would. 

Interviewer [00:49:23] I want to make Al make it for Thanksgiving. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:49:26] You know, after she was found guilty, given several death penalties, I went down to see her. The attorney said that she seemed to be coming delusional. I saw us later some interviews of her that individuals who were writing books about her. They did long interviews with her and it does sound like she was becoming delusional. She was on the women's death row, which was in Southwest Florida. I went down to see her. Obviously, she remembered me and she refused to talk to me. She wasn't hostile. She just said, I have nothing to say. I did what they said I did. I deserved to be executed. If I got out today, I would probably kill again. And she told other people that. So that was my last experience with Eileen. But as I said, I understand why the jury decided to vote to give her the death penalty. But she was one of the saddest people that I ever had to work with. She was really a tragic case. 

Interviewer [00:50:33] What do you do personally to manage just the stress of the work that you have having this busy practice? There's clinical stuff, there's forensic evaluations, there's courtroom testimony. I know that you missed tennis to be with us here this morning, so thank you for that. Is exercise a part of your routine? 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:50:53] Absolutely. I try when I can, but I think I'm fortunate I mentioned this before to have number one, my wife being a professional that I can talk to. I've also had a partner in my practice who is now retired and the person that I play tennis with Dr. Cliff Levin, who has been with me up until he retired last year for probably over 40 years. And so having a colleague not only about death penalty cases, but any kind of case that you're unclear about or you just need another opinion. I can't imagine what it's like to just be isolated and be yourself and not be able to talk, except possibly go to therapy and talk to your therapist about what you know what you're going through. But I've tried to tell myself, just like, you know, the analogy with the surgeon that I do not pick the person that I evaluate. I'm not responsible for that person's life. I am responsible ethically and professionally for doing the best job that I can, and I try and be as impartial and as objective as I can. I can't help the majority of people that I see, but when I feel like there is legitimate, for example, mitigation and I'm not only talking about death penalty cases, but any case I'm asked to be involved in, I think if there are some legitimate things that have happened to this person, I feel obligated to be able to share that information. And it's reinforcing when the court goes along with what I am bringing as a defense attorney, I think, you know, I asked defense attorneys what they view as wins or victories, and it's not always getting the person off. It's sometimes getting a person a lesser sentence then. And they tell me, usually about three out of 10 are successes. And I guess in baseball, when you're three for 10, that's three hundred. And I guess that's a success. But again, the attorneys are in the same position I am. They have a job to do, just like the prosecutors, have a job to do. And I have, you know, respect for individuals who cross-examine me. They're doing their job. Sometimes it gets out of hand and I believe they can become unprofessional. But for the most part, I have tremendous respect for all the parties involved in the adversarial process. 

Interviewer [00:53:26] Could you tell us a little bit about the scope of the book in the sense of even if it's a clinical text or is it something different than that? Do you have a working title or anything like that? And I'm sure that that's therapeutic too in some way and very healthy. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:53:44] It it may be if I have more time to do it, I think one of the one of the things that I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about the cases that I feel that the result was the appropriate result. And I'm not just talking about from my perspective, but just from guilt or innocence or the sentencing. I'm going to talk about those that I think were unfairly punished because they happen to be not so smart or made false confessions, things like that. Some of the cases, I'm also going to let the the reader be the judge. And so after I lay out the case and talk about the defense and so forth and what happened at the trial, I'm going to let the reader decide whether that the reader would have decided whether the person is guilty or not, whether they would have what kind of sentence. Obviously, I don't know what that person is going to say. Maybe I can figure out a way to get feedback from those persons. But so that's partly what I can say. But I'm also going to talk about my personal experiences. It's not going to be a super clinical book. 

Interviewer [00:54:51] I can't wait to read it. That's very exciting to. 

Dr. Harry Krop [00:54:56] Me too. 

Interviewer [00:54:57] Thank you so much for making the time to talk to us. Trauma injustice is created by Alison DeBelder and Chris Moser and engineered by Chris Higgins. Thanks for listening. To help us out, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a star rating and review us on Apple Podcasts and share with others who might be interested.