Did the Real-Life Agent Ford Just Reveal the Cases We Could See on 'Mindhunter' Season Three?
Groundbreaking criminal profiler John Douglas serves as the basis for Mindhunter’s agent Holden Ford, and he talked about his work in a new interview with Vulture. In it, he revealed which killers he found the most fascinating (Gary Heidnik, Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris), shared some of his thoughts on the Atlanta Child Murders (he doesn’t believe Wayne Williams was the only killer), and, most tantalizingly of all, he might have offered a hint as to what to expect in season three.
Though executive producer and director David Fincher has reportedly said he plans to make multiple seasons of the show, we might be in for a bit of a wait before we see any new Mindhunter episodes. There was a nearly two-year-long break between the show’s first and second seasons and Netflix has yet to confirm a third, which suggests that the streaming platform is is cool with taking their time on this one. And Fincher is working on a new film, which might push Mindhunter to his back burner for a while.
While it featured one-off interviews with famous killers including Charles Manson and David Berkowitz, season two largely focused on the Atlanta Child Murders, a case that was closed, however unsatisfyingly, with the finale. The BTK murders loom large over the series, but since they weren’t solved until 2004, after Douglas’s retirement, they’d make for a pretty disappointing focal point a third season. But in describing his other cases from the early eighties, Douglas offers some potential stories that the show might dive into. "By 1981, not only did I have the Atlanta child killings, but I had the Tylenol murders," Douglas told Vulture. "We had the Unabomber case up in Chicago. Then we had other cases, Buffalo’s .22-caliber killer."
The Unabomber, who murdered three people and injured nearly two-dozen others with mail bombs, wasn’t caught until 1996. That’s a year after Douglas retired from the FBI, so much like the BTK killings, the bombings wouldn’t necessarily make for the most intriguing fodder for a major storyline.
And the Tylenol murders, which found seven people poisoned to death in the Chicago area by cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules, were never solved at all. That might not make it the most satisfying case for Mindhunter to tackle, but the murders inspired copycat killings that were eventually resolved and authorities have identified suspects, which means there’d be plenty Agents Ford and Tench to dig into. And for a series that has been pretty focused on sexually-motivated crimes, a series of random poisonings would be an interesting departure.
Buffalo’s ".22-caliber killer,” as Joseph Christopher was known, could also offer promising fodder for the show. Christopher, who was white and suffered from schizophrenia, killed at least 10 black and Hispanic men in killings carried out across New York state. Like the Atlanta Child Murders, these crimes would give the show the opportunity to examine killings that that inflamed broader racial tensions, and he was caught in 1981, which would give the story a satisfying ending. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another two years to find out what crimes Mindhunter will examine next.
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