Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder

by David McGowan

The specter of the marauding serial killer has become a relatively common feature on the American landscape. Reactions to these modern-day monsters range from revulsion to morbid fascination-fascination that is either fed by, or a product of, the saturation coverage provided by print and broadcast media, along with a dizzying array of books, documentary films, websites, and "Movies of the Week". The prevalence in Western culture of images of serial killers (and mass murderers) has created in the public mind a consensus view of what a serial killer is. Most people are aware, to some degree, of the classic serial killer 'profile.' But what if there is a much different 'profile'-one that has not received much media attention? In Programmed to Kill, acclaimed and always controversial author David McGowan takes a fresh look at the lives of many of America's most notorious accused murderers, focusing on the largely hidden patterns that suggest that there may be more to the average serial killer story than meets the eye. Think you know everything there is to know about serial killers? Or is it possible that sometimes what everyone 'knows' to be true isn't really true at all?

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Conspiracy Theories, Politics, Crime, History, Psychology

404 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2004

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Reviews

[Nick Imrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Flick through to the end of the book and you'll see that most of the references are newspaper articles, if McGowan has even bothered to put a reference in. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. No original research.

It's best to treat this book as a jumping off point - it's a great look at some conspiracy theories around serial killers - but you'll have to find other authors to actually show you the evidence. For example, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties makes an excellent, well-supported case that there's far more to the Manson story than the official narrative.

McGowan, on the other hand, is a conspiracy nut. This is most annoyingly evident in the way that he ominously reminds the reader of the 'occult' significance of various dates. Whenever anything happens on a solstice or equinox McGowan feels the need to remind the reader that strangely enough this is a highly significant day for Satanists. Other important occult days include Candlemas (which is a Christian holiday, but whatever) and Hitler's birthday.
Just to be clear, McGowan is not trying to make any point. There's no analysis to show that serial killers are more likely to strike on pagan holidays. (I mean, some of them claim more than 800 victims - they're killing every day they can). There's no attempt to show that the serial killers are actually Nazi. He does this for everything: if a US grand jury issues an indictment on 17th April, McGowan feels the need to remind you that this is just 2 days shy of Hitler's birthday.
What is the point? Is he trying to insinuate that the court dates are set by secret Nazis? No, I don't think so, I think he's just adding the vibe. It's annoying.

He also assumes his reader to be a bit of a conspiracy nut as well. So, he boldly asserts that many serial killers are victims of government programs like MK-Ulltra or the Phoenix Program, but he doesn't go into any detail about what these programs actually are. I don't think I'd ever heard of the Phoenix program before I read this, and I wasn't much better informed by the end.

OK, OK, so that's enough bitching. What prevented it from being a one-star read?

McGowan's thesis is this: that serial killers are presented to the public as inexplicably evil men who have spontaneously developed hideous sadistic urges (usually involving rape and murder) which they are compelled to act out on innocent victims again and again until caught.

In fact, McGowan claims, serial killers are deliberately created in government programs. The government uses them as assassins, and to take the blame for crimes committed by drug-traffickers and child prostitution/pornography rings patronised by wealthy and powerful Satanists and run by the CIA. According to McGowan the methods of creating serial killers were tested out in the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and in South American murder squads, before being brought home to the USA.

Most of the book is detailed descriptions of the various victims of serial-killers. I have not checked McGowan's sources, and I'm not sure I entirely trust him, but if his facts are correct then he does demonstrate that:

- some of the crimes could not have been committed by 1 man, either because it must've taken 2 men, or because the crimes happened in different locations at the same time.
(According to McGowan this means the crimes are committed by gangs of satanists, drug-traffickers, and child abusers, and the alleged 'serial killer' is set-up to take the fall).

- Some victims simply don't fit a pattern. They're killed in a totally different way, or they're not raped, or they're a completely different demographic than the killers alleged preference.

- Many victims are associated with local child-prostitution/pornography or local drug trafficking (The killer is silencing potential witnesses for local crime rings).

- Many survivors describe totally different men and don't correctly identify the killer until coached by police, or, even more interesting, they appear to have known the killer - but McGowan doesn't support that assertion very well, he depends on a lot of speculation.

- The local police and FBI often refuse to investigate until very late, they lose evidence, and never follow up on other likely suspects. I mean really likely: like the other well-known local pederast, or the abusive step-father, or the angry pimp.
McGowan sort of wants to have his cake and eat it at this point. He wants to claim on the one hand, that the diversity of victims is evidence that these are government hitjobs. But on the other hand, the anomalous victims are actually normal family murders. But on the third hand, the police credit the serial killer with any old local murder in order to get it off their books.
Obviously the outlier cases can't simultaneously be explained by all three alternatives. Is McGowan trying to make an argument for government conspiracy or is he just defending serial killers with everything he can throw at the wall?

- Serial killers are often convicted on extremely shakey evidence. There's often no forensic evidence except very tenuous 'fibre' evidence which is easy planted. Their own confessions often come under duress, and include so many errors that it seems as if they don't know how the killings actually happened (although to be fair if I'd killed 800 people I might have a hard time remembering them all too).

- Trials of serial killers are often an absolute shitshow, with the judge, prosecution, defense, and even jury, biaised against the accused from the start.

- Key witnesses sure do die before they can testify.

-Serial killers are mentally ill. This fits perfectly with the mainstream hypothesis "they are crazy sadists", but McGowan goes to some effort to show that their insanity is a consequence of government brainwashing torture tactics.

After reading all the details laid out by McGowan I'm certainly interested to read the same arguments properly sourced. And in the meantime, I'm persuaded:
- cops are corrupt
- serial killers are mad
- child molesters are evil
- people in the 60s/70s sure did join a lot of weird cults
- don't do drugs.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is fascinating alternate view of serial killers, mass killings, violent crime, child pornography, human trafficking, and pedophilia in modern America. The view becomes even more disturbing when recent cases like Jerry Sandusky at Penn State and Jimmy Saville in the UK are reconsidered (this book was published before those cases emerged). I don't normally read books about these topics, but this author is presenting the information in a slightly different way. Some readers will find his conclusions too speculative for their tastes, but the overall picture that is presented will disturb anyone who stops to think about the information with a fresh perspective.

A little background information is provided, but a reader new to the subjects of CIA operations, the occult, and mind control (yes,it's a real thing) will have to seek credible, informative additional sources on their own. McGowan does provide some suggestions in the text of the book, but fails to properly source some claims about connections to the CIA's infamous MKULTRA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam.

One other suggestion I would make is to seek out an un-aired Discovery channel documentary from the early 90s called "Conspiracy of Silence" (you can definitely find it on youtube) which is about something called the "Franklin cover-up" or the "Franklin scandal." There are also a couple of books on the subject that I have not read yet ("The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska" by John DeCamp and "The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal" by Nick Bryant).

Some of the conclusions the author comes to are, as I stated, speculative, but it is made clear in the course of the text how he comes to those conclusions; he doesn't just leap to them, and he doesn't shove them down your throat either. He leaves it up to the reader to question the nature of perceived reality, which I always find to be a positive, rewarding mental exercise. You don't have to believe everything you read here, but it will definitely make anyone with a little common sense stop and think. For example, the Jon Benet Ramsey case (which the author addresses briefly at the end of the book) has always seemed exceedingly odd (to say the least) to me. Some of the conclusions I came to on my own were profoundly disturbing on multiple levels. The amount of odd, unexplored anomalies and coincidences in well-known serial killer cases, and the fallout of these cases, certainly indicate something even darker beneath the surface.

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it was entertaining and it would not surprise me at all if some of these serial killers were mkultra victims gone haywire and/or patsies taking the fall for others this book is just full of really bad research and speculation. It is undeniable that there are pedophile rings where many political figures and the rich and powerful are involved but he just states too many things that are not factual at all. McGowan spent a lot of time in 80s "Satanic Panic" mode throughout this. Constantly implying activity from Satanists on Solstice, Walpurgis and Samhain when those are pre-Christian European Pagan holidays that have nothing to do with Satanism. He makes the false claim Nicholas Schrek cut off his own ear in a pact with Satan when the only semi credible story I have heard it was bitten off when some homeless guy attacked him. I didn't completely give up on this book until it named the Society of Creative Anachronism as a Medieval based cult that does sacrifices when its a bunch of Ren Faire and Larper nerds into history re-inactment.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think there is a sort of club of people who have incorporated this book into their worldview, and when I first heard/read several of them talk about it I was highly intrigued. They're all fairly intelligent and of a leftist/libertarian mold, and they all talk about this book mainly via insinuation and other winking phrases. The message is very clearly an if-you-know-you-know kind of sentiment, yet without ever explicitly or concretely stating what everyone allegedly knows. I was looking forward to reading it just to finally find out what everyone knows.

And then the book itself was just more of the same vague insinuations and winking allegations without ever explicitly or concretely stating what we're supposed to make of any of it. McGowan sprinkles the word "curiously" throughout, yet without ever bothering to explain what exactly is curious about it. We're just supposed to understand what he's getting at I guess. And while citing hundreds of news articles about his serial killers, he could not apparently be bothered to link the articles to specific claims he makes in the text, so we'll just either have to take his word on all of it, or read every one of the dozens of articles per chapter in order to figure out for ourselves which one contains the fact he listed in his chapter. It is one of the laziest, most cowardly and most tedious compilations of conspiracy theory I've ever come across, and as a result one of the most frustrating books I've ever read.

I really need to emphasize -- can't overstate enough -- how little McGowan actually bothers to construct an overarching explanation for all of the sinister innuendo he lays out. There's not even a conspiracy HYPOTHESIS here, let alone a conspiracy theory.

The basic claims McGowan makes that I was able to figure out -- again I cannot overstate how little he clearly comes out and says ANY of this -- is:

-Almost every serial killer ever did not work alone
-They all came from broken homes and were abused (many of their moms were prostitutes)
-They mostly spent time in the military, but also maybe just were near a base or in a mental hospital that was linked to the military at some point
-They were all from 1 to 6 degrees removed from very famous/influential people
-All of their trials were illegitimate and rammed through by the FBI
-Many witnesses who disputed their guilt ended up dead
-Many of them had links to Satanism
-Many of them had links to Nazis
-Drug-trafficking was almost always involved

There's more but that'll give you a taste. If you put all of these claims together, what you get (again not specifically laid out or hypothesized at any moment in this book) is:

The U.S. Military/CIA groomed/brainwashed abused children (who were often already predisposed to violence) in order to make them more violent and be able to serve as assassins for drug/child-trafficking rings that were also Satanic Nazi cults (the implication of the Satanic Nazis is never really addressed) and then were made patsies when the killings drew too much attention, even though they were violent and probably killing lots of other people anyway.

If that sounds incoherent and extremely convoluted to you, you're not alone. If it sounds pretty intuitive then you will love this book. Here are some of the questions that McGowan never answers:

-Why would authorities in charge of these brainwashed killers want to release some of them early, have others spend life in prison, and have others executed, without seeming rhyme or reason? If you were in charge of such a program wouldn't you want your patsies silenced as quickly as possible via assassination?
-What percentage of drug/child-trafficking rings are you actually alleging are Satanic Nazis, and what impact has this apparently huge plague of Satanic Nazis had on our society?
-Which murders specifically were government-ordered hits, and which ones were just unfortunate randos who fell prey to psychopathic Nazi Satanists? And if you're not sure, what makes you so certain that any were hits at all?

There are more questions raised but I'm getting a little tired of this review already, so let's keep it moving. There's one obvious question that McGowan does give a laughable answer to, and the question is "Why? Why any of this? Why go to these lengths?" His answer, given in a couple paragraphs toward the end, is so they could terrify the U.S. public and justify cultivation of a police state. That's literally it. At no point is there any acknowledgment of the many other, less Satan-y ways that the government was objectively and with heavy documentation cultivating a police state since the 1970s, y'know with little known phenomena such as the entire War on fucking Drugs.

What McGowan seems to actually think, although he is too cowardly to explicitly state it, is that our country is run by literal Nazi Satanists who have an entire stable of psychopaths they can sic on their political and economic enemies. It is unclear whether he believes that Satanism is real and actually confers powers on our rulers, or if it's just a weird hobby they have. I would not be surprised at the former.

I almost forgot one of the most ridiculous things about the book which is his continual insinuations that court dates and murder dates are somehow significant because they occur near Hitler's birthday or a few days around some other pagan/Satanist holiday. Like WTAF are you talking about dude, now all the judges and courthouse schedulers and juries are Nazi Satanists too?

The most irritating part of all this is that just the tiniest shred of Marxist education could dispel the vast majority of this bullshit. Is it Nazi Satanists with their psychopathic henchmen that we should be fearing, or is it actually the capitalist elite with their police/military (also mostly psychopathic henchmen fwiw!) that are effectively doing the same thing (i.e. ruling as all with impunity)? Seeing the level of brain activity that goes into concocting these elaborate fantasies of magical thinking, when there is a very simple, obvious explanation for every single bit of it, is as maddening as it is pitiful.

So yeah, I hated this book, and after finishing I did something with it that I've never done before in my entire life: I threw it away. I don't want to sell it and I don't want to donate it, because I literally don't want anyone else to read it. Not only is it trash and pretty depressing to read, but it feels like it could be actively dangerous in the wrong hands, for two separate reasons: 1) encouraging delusional, conspiratorial thinking that does not seem too far up the path from Illuminati and Lizard-men, and 2) all the descriptions of grisly murders and child abuse could very easily normalize that type of depravity or even titillate certain readers.

It's really bad all around folks, please stay away.

Not Bad Reviews

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of supporting material is presented in the first 300 pages. It is not until page 306 that the author finally shares his conclusions about what he feels is really going on. The most effective way to control people is through fear, whether it is one individual or an entire country. Random killings keep people off balance and more accepting of their loss of liberty and growing government control. This book discusses the enormity of child abuse and its appeal to the rich and powerful. It discusses the use of mind control to create programmed assassins and also the patsies who often end up taking the fall. The collusion of law enforcement and the justice system allows for the proliferation of atrocities. This book is both disturbing and fascinating. It is well worth the time to read it. Having read it I am certainly much less trusting of the intentions of those in positions of power.

[Sir Michael Röhm · Rating 3 out of 5]

McGowan's primary weakness is that he submerges the reader in pure information and data, which can be overwhelming. As a "conspiracy theorist," I'm inclined to agree with him on many points, but his works desperately needed an editor to make them more understandable.

Don't get me wrong - he's intelligent and knows his stuff. But his books can be difficult to get through, and he's inclined to leaps in logic which need more evidence than his word.

This is all said with love and admiration, because he was a unique talent and he will be missed.

[Jeremy Maddux · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a comprehensive drop down the rabbit hole of the psychopathic/sociopathic model the media and alphabet soup government institutions have conditioned us to believe. I hate writing reviews, but I may review this one at some point when I've gathered my thoughts.

[Larry Ggggggggggggggggggggggggg · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s tiresome how often David McGowan brings up the details of the cases presented occurring on walpurgisnacht or hitler’s birthday but other than that this is a deeply unsettling look into some of the most infamous and nightmarish crimes in the history of the world. I strongly suspect many people consider this book and the claims therein fatuous; fantasies of a paranoiac and in the current age of lightning fast information warfare/mass psychosis that has birthed such piss-weak punchlines as Qanon I wouldn’t fault anyone for dismissing a work like this. In fact, you might be better off. Because the real horror of McGowan’s scalpel-precise look at these atrocities is that when you go looking for answers, especially looking at the declassified phoenix shit, the beginnings of the central intelligence agency (a golem forged out of the blood and guts of the second world war by monsters like bill donovan and James ‘the spider’ angleton), and the cointelpro/chaos operations in Reagan’s California none of it seems that far out there

[Joely · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author wildly misunderstands reality. McGowan proposes that all serial killers are a psi-op against the American public controlled by a secret mind controlling satanic cult AND the FBI/CIA/Govt. It's absolutely absurd and no one should ever read this garbage. It's also wildly offensive to the victims because the author essentially claims that all serial killer victims were part of some kind of assassination plot. The author claims that the entire mental health community is creating killers and victims. The majority of the book is brief versions of various serial killer narratives - McGowan intentionally leaves out lots of information in order to prop up his absurd theories and makes the narrative unreadable. Honestly this is one of the worst true crime books in history and I'd legitimately burn this book.

[Bonnie Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The profile of 'serial killers' that has been presented in this book is obviously one that is quite different from the one that has become a part of our collective conscience. Rather than the profile of a lone predator, driven by his own internal demons, we find instead a profile of controlled assassins and controlled patsies, conditioned and programmed by a variety of intelligence fronts, including military entities, psychiatric institutions, and satanic cults."

Scoff if you will, but if you are prepared to be skeptical, than in turn you best be prepared to explain the innumerable instances where the following elements recur and intersect, over and over, within the facts connected to some of the most high-profile criminal cases and within the lives of some of the most notorious serial killers known world over:

-pedophilia &/or history of child sex abuse
- the presence, overtly, covertly, sometimes both, of military affiliations and backgrounds within the crimes or within the lives of the killers
- presence, overtly, covertly, and sometimes both, of high-ranking politicians, both Right & Left, within the crimes or within the lives of the killers
- an undercurrent - again, sometimes covert, sometimes overt - of connection to satanism / satanic cults
- the presence, either directly or indirectly of drugs and / or drug trafficking
- a less-than-six-degrees-of-separation between the crimes, the killers, and operatives schooled in and directly connected to MK ULTRA Mind Control.
- the connections - some loose, some blatant - to the 'stars' of Hollywood and the music world to both the crimes and the killers.
- the recurrence of the same names or familial lineages, over and over - beyond the scope of what could be deemed as coincidence.

This is one of the most chilling, and perhaps the most provocative, true crime books I have ever read. The world lost an incredible mind and has missed out on a vast amount of dark-to-light when David McGowan died.
5 Stars

[AdamWho · Rating 1 out of 5]

The rantings of a loony conspiracy theorist

Other conspiracies promoted by David McGowan

Apollo moon landing denier

9-11 Truther

Satanic Ritual abuse

Government Mind control

Kennedy Assassination conspiracies

This guy is the king of stupid conspiracy theories and part of the reason the US is in the "post truth" era.

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/David_McG...

[Elissa]

Reading this made me mentally unwell

[Mike Winterrowd · Rating 3 out of 5]

The books reads well for about the 1st 2/3, but.....

3 big wins:
-author lists exhaustive amounts of US and OCONUS child abuse, child pornography and related criminal scandals. Bravo for shining such a bright light on such an awful yet underpublicized problem.
-author makes good use of interesting common threads between a surprising number of recorded US serial killers (see below, however)
-the book overall is a great jumping-off point for more detailed serious looks into the oddly skewed publicity, trials and judgements surrounding many serial killers

2 big fails:
-lack of illustrations. No, I don't mean gorehound autopsy stuff...Example: the author draws some seriously compelling ties between a number of serial killers, and a simple timeline and/or geographical map would've really served to drive the points home.
-lack of support for MK ULTRA and Phoenix references. Example: author asserts that Bundy underwent MK ULTRA testing....but no notes, references, or explanation?. The Phoenix Program is well-documented in vetted academic journals and textbooks, so no excuse for lack of support for the assertions regarding it . Example: that listed folks were part of the Program, when their military training and experience may have well been part of (and is described mostly as) unclassified green-side special operations.
-last third of the book feels like disjointed add-ons, rather than a conclusion, explanation or justification for the points made.

Absolutely worth the read and raises some disturbing questions about an already unsettling topic....just be prepared to want more and do more reading elsewhere to get it. I've read a lot of related academic and commercial materials, for work and for enjoyment, and no other book puts the 'pieces' together in quite this disturbing a way.

[Matt Bleak · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most frightening books I have ever read, and I don't make that statement lightly!

Paints a truly terrifying and vivid picture of out of control US government sponsored mind control programs involving mass murder and torture of civilians, child abuse and child pornography on a global scale.

Most interesting of all for me is McGowan's re-examination of some of the most famous cases of serial murder in 20th century USA. You start to see some frightening similarities between the different cases that are too hard to dismiss as mere coincidence. It would also appear that there has been a deliberately orchestrated effort on the part of law enforcement and government officials in the USA to hide many aspects of these cases and McGowan's thorough research of many of the more famous trials reveals that most of them were nothing but show trials that in any other circumstances would have caused uproar among the legal community and within the whole of society itself.

I do have problems with some of McGowan's conclusions, his obsession with supposed Satanic cults is the major one that to me leaves him skating dangerously close to 'Satanic Panic' style hysteria. I also have problems with his insistence on citing Maury Terry's 'The Ultimate Evil'as a source, a book which to me is nothing but a piece of sensationalist trash that helped fuel the great 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980s.

His research regarding the Satanic aspects of his theories is severely lacking in my opinion however his research into government mind control programs, serial killings and organized pedophile networks seems to be pretty spot on.

All in all this is a very mentally exhausting read that contains some very graphic descriptions of horrendous crimes and abuse, definitely not one for the feint of heart or those who are easily triggered.

[Hagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Omg! A great look into the true crime craze that's been drilled into the masses through the media since the 60s/70s. He goes into mind control, CIA experiments, elite p-phile rings, and how narratives and patterns are created for these serial killings. McGowan's research isn't perfect tho, there is a lot of speculation in here, too, and some stuff I don't agree with. But overall, I think he's definitely more right than wrong.

[Hugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

The very beginning serves as a decent indictment of political and sexual violence perpetrated under governmental auspices. That being said, the rest of the text is what I’d imagine would happen if I went off my meds for several months and started taking uppers again.

[Bmcnett · Rating 1 out of 5]

debunks the "lone serial killer" theory, but not far enough.

[Chris March · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is going to be a long one.

There's a sizable underground fanboy club surrounding the late David McGowan, a self-styled "researcher," who spent the better part of his adult life pushing forward conspiracy theories about the government, satanic cults, Illuminati rituals, mind control, crisis actors, false flag operations, etc. Eventually, I bit the bullet and read Programmed to Kill, his magnum opus, and I can assure you, even by conspiracy theory standards -- this book is garbage.

First, the quasi-positives. McGowan is proof in that a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. In Programmed to Kill, McGowan rehashes the lives of American serial killers, child abusers, and delves into notorious cold cases in the hopes of proving (he doesn't come close) various similarities among these murderers and butchers. He is particularly interested in dissociative states that often affect mass murderers, and points out that nearly every killer and abuser from time immemorial has come from a deeply traumatic upbringing. This would seem an excellent angle to pursue, but instead of actually doing research into the science and psychology behind these correlations and phenomena, McGowan is obsessive about shoehorning them to a far grander conspiracy which includes government mind control, satanic cults, and a judicial system that is unquestionably corrupt from the Bumfuck, Nowhere municipal court to the halls of SCOTUS. The books is frustrating because McGowan touches upon, and could have pursued, avenues truly worthy of research -- the CIA Phoenix Program, which we know existed through official disclosures and FOIA documents, and included government experimentation in mind-control and assassination; and, the MK-Ultra program, in which the CIA meddled domestically in LSD experimentation, hypnosis, and the subversion of the hippie movement. (These topics are discussed in far more credible books including Chaos by Tom O'Neill and Aberration in the Heartland of the Real by Wendy Painting, PhD).

But McGowan isn't a journalist. Nor is he a researcher. His references include nothing except newspaper articles and transcripts from television documentaries. In writing this book, McGowan did less work than an a high schooler submitting his final paper. He did not conduct one interview on his own, cite any academic articles or papers, request any court documents for the hundred cases he references, submit any FOIA requests or public record requests, do any fieldwork.

This book is written from excerpts of newspaper articles. It's 400 pages of talking to your uncle who only reads the New York Post and absorbs half the news story he's jazzed up about. It's frankly inexcusable. By Chapter 3, I started spot checking his assertions. In the two weeks it took me to read this book, I'd often spend more time fact-checking McGowan than actually reading the book. Programmed to Kill is teeming with errors. McGowan often gets wrong the most basic facts of the cases he's reporting on. What's worse, McGowan's tone throughout the book is one of smarmy self-assurance. This is obviously where his cult status comes in. There's a bizarre charisma to the man that is totally hollow. He throws a thousand factoids at the wall, almost always out of context and often flat-wrong, and then smirks at his reader as if saying, "Still a coincidence, huh?"

Before I share a few of the hundreds of errors in this book, two things immediately stuck out about McGowan: He is obsessive about dates, any killing, action, or fart committed by a serial killer which happens on Hitlers birthday, a solstice or pagan holiday is submitted to the reader as definitive proof the event was a cult ritual; and, David McGowan has no f*cking clue how the American legal system works. He doesn't have the simplest idea of court room procedure, of how evidence is submitted to the court, of how proper criminal defense works, of how standards of guilt work, of how appeals happen. It's painful stuff. And because he does not understand the basics of the legal system, every thing he doesn't grasp becomes (once again) definitive proof of judicial corruption and a coverup that reaches the presidency. All of this could have been helped by taking a undergrad pre-law class, which McGowan failed to do, because I'm assuming, he was too busy watching A&E documentaries on serial killers, which he cites several times in this book.

Anyway, here are just a few of the thousands of simple factual errors McGowan makes:

1) He cites that Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed in a ritual murder. There has never been a single shred of evidence that Pasolini was ritualistically murdered. While the identify of his killer was questioned, it is indisputable that he was killed on a beach outside Rome and the manner of his death was being run over by an automobile, likely driven by a young male prostitute he was attempting to solicit.

2) He states matter-of-factly that Manson cult victim Rosemary Labianca was a "known trafficker of methampethamine." He states this to offer up an alternative motive to the Tate-Labianca killings. No cite is given. In the many books about Manson out there, this meth-trafficking assertion is never repeated by anyone other than McGowan.

3) He states that Jon Benet Ramsey had pineapple in her stomach (true) and that her killer had fed her before her death (true). He states this to next assert that Ramsey was murdered outside of her house (in, you guessed it, some ritual pedo snuff film situation) and brought into the house dead and staged. This is patently false. From the earliest days of the investigation, investigators knew that both JBR and her brother had eaten pineapple before bed and the pineapple was located inside the Ramsey home.

4) On page 310, he simply writes, "An underground network of satanic cults has largely replaced the Mafia's "Murder Incorporated" as America's premier murder-for-hire organization." Any citation? Any follow-up? Anything at all to prove that point? No.

5) On page 294, he states that serial killer Gerard Schaefer was murdered in his prison cell in 1995 (true) and then states, "Some have blamed our old friend Otis O'Toole for his death." McGowan is obsessed with the Henry Lee Lucas/Otis OToole murders (too long to discuss here), so of course needs to create a connection. Except, Schaefer was actually killed by another inmate named Vincent Faustino Rivera, who was convicted of the murder in 1999.

6) He claims that Charles Ng was railroaded by the legal system, and that his trial postponements were caused by the court in an effort to -- I don't know, honestly -- frame him? Silence him? If McGowan did any amount of work, like a docket check, he'd realize Charles Ng's 7-year trial postponement was caused by Ng attempting to fire 10 lawyers appointed to him and because of his filing several frivolous lawsuits against the court and law enforcement. Obviously, if a motion is denied by a judge (e.g. a motion for venue change) it's definitive proof, of you guessed it, a satanic cabal conspiracy.

7) He states matter-of-factly (without citations) that any human being who spent time in Vietnam (Art Shawcross, Richard Ramirez's cousin Mike), saw action, and came back traumatized was 100% part of the Phoenix Program. No proof for those assertions.

8) He asserts that killer Bobby Joe Long was a cousin of Henry Lee Lucas. This is an unsubstantiated rumor. McGowan doesn't provide any cite.

9) McGowan states that the prosecution in Ted Bundy's case never offered up Polaroids Bundy supposedly had taken which showed his victims. He states, "As with so many other cases, such evidence was never produced. Why? Perhaps because those photographs would show actors other than, or in addition to [Bundy]?" Yes, yes, must be the conspiracy. In actuality, Bundy upon being released by authorities after his first detainment admitted to gathering up and destroying all the incriminating Polaroids, which he had taken and which a surviving victim attested to. So...not a conspiracy...

10) On page 193, he calls Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize winning The Executioner's Song (about the murderer Gary Gilmore) "Disinformational." No particular reason was given.

11) On page 194 he states that Ted Bundy was "forced to represent himself." This is patently untrue. But it sure makes the reader believe Bundy is being railroaded, eh?

12) On page 191, McGowan states, "the circumstances of Bundy's arrest were, to say the least, rather bizarre. He was stopped...[and] the only crime he appears to have committed on the night of his arrest...was driving down a street that happened to take him past the officer's house."

So many errors here. First, Bundy wasn't arrested outside an officer's house. He was arrested by a highway patrolman who saw him prowling in a residential area at 4am. When Bundy saw the patrolman's car, he initially tried to elude the officer. Upon being pulled over eventually, the patrolman "noticed that the Volkswagen's front passenger seat had been removed and placed on the rear seats, and searched the car. He found a ski mask, a second mask fashioned from pantyhose, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, a coil of rope, an ice pick, and other items initially assumed to be burglary tools."

David McGowan doesn't understand what probable cause or reasonable suspicion is, or how to request a publicly available arrest record, so we are left with his nonsense.

13) McGowan asserts that killer Ken Bianchi was proven to be suffering from multiple personality disorder, which accounted for his murders. In fact, it was proven by experts that Bianchi, a noted pathological liar, faked a multiple personality disorder after being taken in custody in an attempt to avoid capital punishment, going as far faking "tactile hallucinations," which are almost never associated with MPD. McGowan, of course, doesn't touch on this.

14) McGowan states that Ronald Hughes was the lead defense attorney for Charles Manson, which is not true. Hughes, who ended up dead before the trail ended, defended Manson follower Leslie van Houten in court. Inexcusable errors.

15) McGowan states that Anton Levay, of Church of Satan fame, formed a "close association with Roman Polanski," an uncited assertion stated as fact that is not reflected in any other known (to me) writing about the Manson murders.

16) McGowan flat out misspells murderer John Lindley Frazier's name at one point.

17) Lastly, my favorite, McGowan discusses the notorious Ripper Crew, which was responsible for over a dozen murders in Chicago. The murders purportedly had satanic overtones and the ringleader Robin Gecht employed a grisly MO of slicing off the breasts of his victims. In discussing these murders, McGowan puts forth a theory that many of the murders associated with the Ripper Crew were added-on by corrupt law enforcement and have zero ties to the killers.

He discusses the first alleged victim of the Ripper Crew, Linda Sutton, who was found dead in a field in an advanced state of decay. He asserts the fact that Sutton was in advanced decay and was found by medical examiners to be deceased only 3 days after body was found as definitive proof of some sort of malfeasance on part of the cops. That it was an improbable conclusion; the body must have been there far longer. However, in going back to the court records, it was found that Sutton WAS in an advanced state of decay and WAS, in fact, concluded to be dead for only 72 hours. What accounted for this oddity? The wet conditions of those days and the fact that the victim had her breasts sliced off, both of which hastened the decomposition process.

Anyway, Programmed to Kill is mostly garbage. It's poorly formulated, poorly researched and riddled with errors. After finishing this book, I did a quick dive on McGowan as a person. I came across his last known public appearance on a conspiracy talk show where he spent three hours calling victims of the Boston bombing crisis actors, pointing to grievously wounded victims in photographs and asserting that they weren't "acting like they just got hit by a bomb." In one instance, he showed a photo of two women post-surgery, both of whom lost their legs due to the bombing and asserted they must be crisis actors b/c they seemed "too happy" to be amputees.

David McGowan was a shill and unlike other conspiracy theorists who made the same mistakes (like Mike Ruppert) of forcing causation out of correlation, McGowan does so without even fact checking his starting premises. Not worth the read at all.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting alternate view of serial killers. It took me a little bit to get on board with what was being presented but things did start to click. There's A LOT of information in this book and a lot of graphic disturbing material. Check it out of you like conspiracies or have an interest in true crime.

[V. Prince · Rating 1 out of 5]

the sort of speculation that you can’t imagine someone wanting to buy into, made more insufferable by it holding 0 water — next!

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of the book was hard to read. It goes on at length to make the reader aware of the degree of sexual abuse and pedophilia that occurs in the world (much more than most people would expect). The author asserts that Sigmund Freud found that the majority of mental illness in his female patients was caused by ritualistic sexual abuse. Dropping well-known names lent some credibility to case the author builds. For example, he pointed out that Lewis Carol (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) enjoyed spending time with children and taking nude photos of them. He was banned from Alice's home by the time “Alice in Wonderland” was published.

Then the author reveals the advanced strategy that intelligence agencies have used to produce spies and intelligence couriers. Long ago psychologists and psychiatrists discovered the effects of extreme psychological trauma; the victim experiences a split in the psyche and compartmentalizes the abuse. Imagine the power a government would wield if they possessed assets (people) with split personalities. A secret intelligence courier, if caught behind enemy lines, could be tortured and would swear that he didn't know anything, he's just a journalist (or whatever) and that personality would be telling the truth. When the messenger is contacted by the intended recipient of the information, a trigger would cause the messenger to switch to the other personality and disclose the message. Furthermore, the same technique could be used to produce an assassin who would have no knowledge of their actions and could not reveal the name of any conspirators. Consider the case of Sirhan Sirhan.

The despicable part of this process is that the agents are created by artificially inducing the trauma during childhood and re-enforced through adulthood. Testimony by MK ULTRA victims in 1995 revealed that the CIA engaged in these practices. Valerie Wolf had compiled and presented information from 40 therapists from across the country whose clients had reported being subjects in radiation and mind-control experiments. The consistency of people's stories about the purpose of the mind-control and pain-induction techniques, such as electric shock, use of hallucinogens, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, dislocation of limbs and sexual abuse, is remarkable.

The most infuriating part was reading about the overwhelming examples of perpetrators and abusers not facing justice. It was shocking that they were able to get away with so many atrocities and were punished with only a slap on the wrist if at all.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

took me far too long to finish this probably as the subject matter is very difficult to grapple with. i would not recommend it for those with a history of childhood abuse that hasn't been properly worked through as there is quite a bit of talk of organized pedophile networks and what that necessarily entails.

i think i went into this book expecting something much different, perhaps moreso about Manchurian candidates and the procedural work of the actual "programming" of mass killers, some more connections to the spree killings that seem to have have subsumed McGowan's subject here. interestingly enough, only one chapter is dedicated to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam when i think the argument made there was strong enough to carry the whole book. nevertheless this was a very well researched book and McGowan dedicates a great deal of effort to being factual about important legal and documentary details of these crimes that don't add up.

one of the overarching ideas that stands out here is that in the case of many of these "serial murderers," their case is cobbled together from the actions of what appears to be multiple killers, mainly to obscure a black market of child sexual slavery, snuff pornography and other depraved commodities among the bourgeois. in this he makes quite a convincing case and it's a shame how the glimpses of this idea as it's been presented elsewhere (during the "Satanic Panic" for instance) have managed to distort what actually goes on. McGowan doesn't spend an excessive amount of time devoted to proving the existence of a single concerted program being managed by one intelligence agency, but he does have a lot to say about the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit as well a sort of network revolving around the Jack Parsons-affiliated Thelemites occultists and '60s Process Church that i think is very good work.

[Kormak · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a waste of time!

I was initially intrigued to read this book due to its almost cult-like following on "conspiracy Twitter," but it's difficult to understand why. It is unbelievably poorly researched, as it relies on Satanic Panic-era news clippings and articles from disreputable sources, which I don't consider valid research. Moreover, the book is badly written and lacks any substantial evidence to support its main thesis.

The connections between serial killers, the rise of violence, child abuse, mass media hysteria, damaged war veterans, shady government and military projects, and the public's fascination with the darkest aspects of the human psyche are undoubtedly intriguing subjects worthy of exploration. However, this book fails to do justice to these topics. Almost every page is filled with an excessive use of qualifiers such as "reportedly," "allegedly," "many people said," and sensational claims like "it happened two days before an important pagan holiday!" or "the murder occurred during a Satanic holiday." McGowan appears to have a predetermined thesis, and he deliberately omits, distorts facts, and even resorts to lying in order to align historical events with his nonsensical conclusions.

Reading this book is an exercise in intellectual regression (= it makes you dumber), as it only serves to make you less informed and fall for the dumbest grifters in conspiracy field.

If you're genuinely interested in a well-researched conspiracy book that delves into the realm of weird serial killers, occultism, and politics, I recommend Peter Levenda's "Sinister Forces" trilogy and Tom O'Neill's "Chaos." These works offer a far more reliable and thought-provoking exploration of these subjects.

[Jennie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Crazy Tentacles.

I think he just wants to exhaust the reader with coincidences and trivia (confusing the two and additionally confusing these two separate things with proof or facts or that they mean something nefarious at all).

I seriously feel exhausted and I just want to read a good serial killer book now.

(I also feel like he wove sentences precisely to avoid libeling Ann Rule and Cora(Corazon)Amurao (see Richard Speck).)

At any rate this is a conspiracy theory screed and not a serial killer book, although there are serial killers and mass murderers in it. He assumes that readers just agree with him and know all these theories, which should be called fantasies, I guess. I tried to google the author and found out even more reasons to just place him in the conspiracy pile and doubt his credibility. I seem to recall enjoying Jim Marrs, but maybe my mood was different (not that I believe him either). I still want to haul it through his Laurel Canyon freak out, but not any time soon.I usually find conspiracies amusing, but this feeling faded well before the end of this book. Bear in mind I read Maury Terry too. It's all been too much.

Such a mess it annoyed me.

[Stanley Reeves · Rating 2 out of 5]

i may have been projecting my own views on the topic when i went into this expecting an analysis of the ways the specifics of capitalist individualism and the foundational violence and dehumanisation of the imperial core - when combined with factors such as personality disorder, increased policing or widespread lead poisoning - manifest themselves as the emergence of serial killers in midcentury. instead, mcgowan is kind of a crazy person and poses that the cia is linked to satanic pedophile murder cults which are designed to inflict such extreme trauma on children that DID will emerge and they can influence these divergent personalities into becoming serial killers under their control which they can use to commit political murders. which for more reasons than i have time to go into is pure fiction - more so established through the intellectually dishonest way through which the argument is presented, with most evidence presented originating from tabloid newspapers. despite itself, it’s a pretty fun read that sometimes glimpses at some truth before getting caught up once more in satanic panic theorising.
3/10

[Aaron Singleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say? This was an eye-opener for me. One doesn't like to think about the corruption inherent in many of out oldest and most-respected institutions, but after reading this book, it is difficult to ever return to ignorance. Wow. NOT for the squeamish. Not to be missed.

Update: The writer and researcher Dave McGowan died recently from cancer. He was an original thinker, a man who could find the weak point of any argument in seconds, a meticulous researcher, and a father, brother, son. I did not know the man, but I do feel his loss. I got to know him through his work and felt a connection. So, Rest in Peace, Dave, and thank you for all your writings.

[Michael Saurette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolute slog to get thru, doesn't get to the point until the last like 10th of the book. Suggestion that serial killers aren't necessarily what we are taught to believe they are is intriguing and they bring up a lot of interesting "isn't that strange?" Kind of points but fails to really draw any satisfying conclusions besides "something is definitely up here". Poorly edited on top of that, we basically end up with a book of Wikipedia retellings of crime sprees and trials that often just feels like a whirlwind of information without much purpose. Totally disappointing. I did think the suggested tie to the Phoenix program was interesting but again was not fleshed out at all.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read but desperately important. McGowan examines the "lone-nut" killer narrative as brought to us by FBI criminal profilers and pokes enough holes in it to sink it comprehensively, which in one part is reassuring (knowing that lone psychos are unlikely to gun you down on the streets or in your homes) but is immensely more terrifying when you realize that there is an entire system in place to protect the powerful cabals that actually perpetrate these exceedingly monstrous crimes.

McGowan is a personal favourite and well worth your time.

[sports123]

I prefer my version of the events

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was well written. The author did a great jod of compiling the evidence to back up his claims. I do think he is missing one big piece of the puzzle. But this was written 19 years ago so maybe he has it now.