When you meet her, Dr. Ann Burgess, 87, most resembles a real-life Betty Crocker. With her welcoming smile, inviting eyes, and signature pearls, most people would never guess her true profession.
Then again, what is a psychiatric nurse and professor who has made a living working opposite some of America's most-well known killers supposed to look like? Betty Crocker, apparently. As the subject of Hulu's new three-part docuseries , Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer , Dr. Burgess will step into the spotlight for the first time in her six decades and counting career.
It's not that she shied away from attention—but rampant sexism at Quantico often meant that her male peers would get the accolades. And for the most part, the woman who is basically a blueprint for Olivia Benson didn't mind. As long as serial killers were being apprehended, and the discussion around trauma victims was changing, then Dr.
Burgess was fine staying in the background. Still, her name is one you need to know. Her research with victims began when she co-founded one of the first hospital-based crisis counseling programs at Boston City Hospital.
In 1975, she began lecturing at the FBI Academy and consulted with special agents to study serial killers, helping to develop the FBI's modern playbook for profiling these heinous individuals. (Dr. Burgess was the inspiration for Anna Torv’s character, Dr.
Wendy Carr, in Netflix's Mindhunter .) Dr. Burgess has questioned some of the nation's most notorious killer.