What's up ladies, this is your girl Lisa Billew and today I've got a conversation.

I'm telling you, just not going to want to miss. It's so fascinating and intriguing and of course, as always, it's real frickin' talk. Now, I want to share a quick story about when I was about 13 years old. I was walking down the street going coming back from school and I started to feel car slowly approach me. I look over my shoulder and there's this guy sitting in the car and he's just driving slowly and he's just staring at me.

I then in that moment trusted my car and I fricking ran. I'm 45 now and I look back at that moment as being one of those moments that what if he was a predator? What if I didn't run? What if I didn't ignore my car? Would I be here? That weighs on me so much and I don't know if you do, which I know a lot of ladies do. I've just got an obsession with crime and serial killers and understanding the way they think, their psychology and I find it super useful to be able to understand how you can start to identify if somebody is a psychopath or a sociopath or a narcissist or a conman because trust me, that 13-year-old girl that I go back to thank the Lord I trusted my god. And so on that topic on the idea of us women needed the skill sets to be able to identify when someone really is trying to con us or trying to manipulate us or trying to stalk us which sometimes it does unfortunately go to that extreme. How on earth did we protect ourselves? How on earth did we spot the signs? Well, I'm glad you asked, because today we're talking about how to not ignore our got and our feelings because it could really be a matter of life and death. Now I'm talking about the subject with the one, the only, the number one detective, Paul Holes. Yes, he is an investigator who's actually freaking cracked the Golden State Killer case. He's literally dedicated his life to understanding the minds of psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists and predators. And he is right here right now to teach us how on earth we can protect ourselves from becoming the next victim. Which if you're like me and you watch all the serial killer shows, you're going to want to make sure you are not that person. Paul is helping us understand how predators and conmen and gnosis actually look for specific behaviors to target their victims. And he goes on to explain how we can make sure that we do not become one of them. He also talks about why trusting that gut feeling isn't just an instinct, it's an actual survival and how you can start to cultivate that in yourself. And finally, in this part, we talk about the simple steps that you can take to stay alert and safe, even in their most unpredictable situations. And guys, this isn't about fear, it's not about hopefully about getting killed, but it's about actually taking your power back, identifying who can be a predatory person, who can be the manipulator, who can trick you in trap you in ways that you don't realize, and it's about taking a damn power back which is why you're here on Women of Impact and you listen to this podcast. It is about how to protect yourself emotionally, mentally and physically, all in one go, so let's just jump in right now into the eye opening conversation with the number one detective Paul Holtz. I'm Lisa Bilyu, welcome to Women of Impact. Every woman at some point has felt like she's being followed and when it comes to let's face it being manipulated, conned or even killed, we live in constant fear that maybe we are the next target.

As the investigator who has studied victimology and caught the golden state killer, what can we actually look out for so that we can make sure that we don't become the next prey? The reality is that there are men that are out there that want to victimize women. in essence, a big part of a woman becoming a victim is the situation. The offender is looking for the ability to make that woman a victim at lower risk to himself. The offender is always going to be assessing. So the situation is what the offender is going to be evaluating

first. And that is going to be how can I lure and isolate this potential victim and do it in a way in which I'm not going to be seen or caught if you're talking about somebody like, let's say a Ted Bundy, right?

One case is he lures a woman out of a crowd. And he does it in such a way where he's not drawing attention to himself. Well, this is a skill set that that offender, Ted Bundy had, you know, not all the offenders can do that. So the part of the offender's situational assessment is what their skill is. And so, talk golden state killer. He was a skilled burglar. So how is he isolating his victims within their own homes? He's using the structure of the residents as a way to isolate so he can attack and do what he wants to do. Other offenders, like Ted Bundy, have that gift of gab to put women at ease and their goal is to isolate, to lure out of a bar. Of course now some offenders are going to be a little bit more particular about who the victim is, what she looks like. Does that victim remind him of somebody? Serial killer Phil Hughes, for one of his cases that he was convicted of, he went to his wife and said, I have that urge. I need to kill somebody who looks like my ex-girlfriend, Kathy. So the wife starts listing off her coworkers at the bank downtown San Francisco. One of her coworkers becomes Phil's victim. So this particular serial killer had a particular physical need for a victim in terms of how she looked. Many offenders don't have any type of physical trait that they're looking for. They are looking for a victim of opportunity. Again, minimize risk to themselves. Any woman that happened to walk into a particular location at a particular time is going to become that guy's victim. But when you start talking about a woman that that's walking, you know, and there's a guy behind me, you know, this is where it really comes down to that whole situational awareness. What is happening today? Everybody's on their phone. They got their headphones in. Okay? The offender is assessing that woman going, oh, hold on. I am going to be on top of her before she's even aware. It shifts the advantage to him just from the physical act of now carrying out the crime. Does he have to move her someplace as he going to blitzer an attacker right at that location? If you're not aware of your surroundings, that puts the advantage to the offender to be able to carry out an attack. So having that situational awareness is huge. Keep your head on a swivel. Be aware of your surroundings. The other aspect is also avoid putting yourself in the situations. Be aware that going down that alley looks a lot sketchier than if I stay on this main street and it might take me 10 more minutes to walk around, take the extra 10 minutes.

Thank you for breaking that down. So I'm trying to get in the head of the killer to know as a woman, when I'm out and about, how do I protect myself? When I'm in my house, how do I protect myself? If I'm getting coffee at Starbucks, is the person serving me coffee, a secret psychopath, and trying to trap me and going to kill me eventually? Like, I kind of joke about it, but I kind of mean it.

So I'm trying to figure out what are those things that they're looking for that can potentially put me as the person they choose. So environmental criminologists have studied these like serial burglars, you know, and how they can assess a neighborhood in which houses to hit. So with somebody like Golden State Killer, if we have these two houses side by side, one's a two story and one's a one story. Two story bedrooms are upstairs. The only way to get up there is typically through a stairwell. That's the funnel of death. So the Angelo almost never attacked neighborhoods attacked a neighborhood that had two story houses, in part because of that, when you start talking about offenders that are evaluating women out on the street. This is now where the offender is going to be assessing that woman from a personality standpoint. Is she somebody that is going to be compliant or she somebody that looks like she's going to fight back or make a lot of noise, right? It's the way you carry yourself. These guys are very in touch with that. If you are somebody that he's assessing, oh, you know, I can grab her and I hit her once and I've got her. She's not going to fight. She's just going to cower. He may choose that type of personality over somebody who's looking confident, looking in shape. Maybe he's seeing, you know, you're in the line with the cashier and you're more boisterous and it's like, okay, hold on, you know, she could be a problem, you know, from me being able to actually approach her in the parking lot and try to get her into my car. And that's a type of criminal that is out there. So would they then potentially try and ask you a question like a stranger to see how you would respond to see whether you're Confident or not. This is an approach that the offenders who have interpersonal skills Will will adopt and yes, you know, there is going to be an Assessment during that verbal exchange. Maybe there's a simple conversation, you know how my wife's wife's expecting me, you know, ha me, you know, you got any dinner plans tonight with your husband or whatever. You know, if you notice that, you have a ring on and she's going, well now, you know what, actually, I'm home alone. Now, you're going, okay. I now have an opportunity here because nobody's home waiting for her. So I have time. I just need to be able to figure out how to isolate her. And then there's a period of time in which nobody's expecting her. Or she just told me she's going to be home alone. I'm going to go attack her there. So know, so there is that type of intelligence gathering that these offenders will do. But that again, that type of offender is one that has the interpersonal skills and is one that the woman is not immediately going something wrong with this guy. I mean, huge believer in women's intuition. Absolutely. Women have evolved in a innate ability to sense, this is a bad guy, and I need to get away. The hair is on the back of the neck or standing up, up and beyond what us men have, right? Listen to that intuition. If you just have, no, this is something that's not right about this. This is where, you know, so, my favorite murder podcast, Karen in Georgia, Fuck Politeness, is their phrase. This is where it's like, get away from me, you know? Would that actually, I made me think about them, wouldn't that be one of the characteristics that could be to make of an easier victim is someone that is super like empathetic and like vulnerable because I can see that if you're a people pleaser, you're not saying for politeness, you've been taught, you always help out when someone asks for help. So when Tebunny comes up to you with an arm in the cast and asks for your help, you're the person that walks with him to his Volkswagen Beetle because you're like, this poor man needs help. When you start talking about women out in the public space and interacting with strangers, you know, this is where you have to have that elevated, just sense of there is a chance that this guy is not who he is pretending to be. Yeah, growing up in England here and about like Fred and Rose West and things like that, very much fascinated me of the psychology of how some people can do the most heinous crimes. And so I'd read up a lot about the Green River Killer, Ted Bundy, those two specifically. And I'm in Virginia of all places, in the middle of nowhere, and my husband's at work and had this event, so I'm driving around and I'm out of gas. So when I'm filling up my gas tank, this is about 15 years ago, I'm filling it up, and I go to pay, and as I'm coming out, this guy says, hey Miss, hey Miss, can help me please? It's like, oh what's the problem?

Because can you get in my car and start the engine because I just need to fiddle with... Hey, it goes right up on the back of my head. I think immediately Ted Bundy's trying to kill me and I just turn around and run. Now as I turn around and run, even knowing everything, I'm like, I feel really silly. poor guy probably needs help but to your point I'd rather look stupid then end up being

the next victim. But what if I hadn't read the books? What if I didn't know that politeness in me? We were like, yeah, this poor guy needs help. Absolutely, you know, you did the right thing under that scenario. I'm the type of guy. If I find myself walking on a sidewalk behind a woman and we're like the only ones around, I cross the street, right? Because I want her to know I'm not a threat. If I have car problems and it's like, there's this woman I have no idea and I'm going, hey, can you sit in my car? No, this is isolation, right? That he is now isolating you inside the vehicle. I mean, some of these guys have these vehicles set up. They have no door handles. They're locked. God, one poor case, Mitzi Sanchez was a young girl abducted. Curtis Dean Anderson was the offender. He abducts her and he has her shackled to a bolt, eye bolt, that he has installed in the floorborne of the vehicle. So this is where, you know,

that situational awareness,

I'll keep coming back to it.

It's like, this isn't right.

And then you're intuition,

the hair was going up,

because there's something not about this guy.

As a guy, I know I can't do that.

Men have to be kind of cognizant

of how they are interacting with women in that type of scenario. And I just, I think there's so many men that are just completely oblivious that they may be absolutely innocent in terms of what they're doing, but they're putting fear in that woman because she knows there are examples of that exact scenario where a victim has resulted. It's actually super interesting. We should then be teaching men that as well because to your point, if a guy's never been in that scenario, if a guy doesn't feel the threat of another man walking, there is a part of me that kind of sees that they wouldn't necessarily think about it. It's like you ask every single woman,

what do you do before you leave the house if you're going out at night for dinner? It's very different than if you ask a guy. The woman has to think about, have I got my phone? Is my phone fully charged? Do I have my keys? Do I make sure that I've got a ride home? If not, where's my friend going to be? Like, we plan to make sure, hopefully a lot of women do at least I do, we plan to make sure

that I have to be safe so I have to think of all these things but I don't think a guy does.

Okay so in your book I've pulled out a few other things that you talk about in regards to women.

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