Interview with Kerrie Droban – S. 10, Ep. 14

This week’s Crime Cafe interview features journalist, attorney, podcaster, and true crime writer Kerrie Droban. We talk about psychopaths and writing about them. And other stuff. You can download a copy of the interview here. Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is an award-winning true crime author, podcaster, attorney, and television journalist. She writes about violent subcultures such as outlaw motorcycle gangs and about criminal pathology. She has appeared on numerous television documentaries and shows. Her books have been adapted to create the show Gangland Undercover and have been optioned for film. It's my pleasure to have Kerrie Droban with me today. Hey, Kerrie. How are you doing? Kerrie: Good. Thank you so much for having me. Debbi: I'm so glad you're here with us today. I was just checking your website and I was fascinated to see that you grew up in a "spy family". What was that like? Kerrie: I did. I know. Everybody asks me that. It was actually the perfect backdrop for true crime and really sort of set the ball in motion, unbeknownst to me until a lot of years later. I grew up in a family of secrets and undercover operations and I really didn't know anything about what my parents did until I was 17. And so it really just sort of set this whole career in motion of what does that do to somebody who lives in a duplicitous world where you're not really sure what's real, what isn't real? What are the stakes of keeping secrets and living in a family where you at one point, on one occasion you have to protect them while they're trying to protect you at the same time. You know, you really just don't really know who to trust and who your confidences are. It was an interesting world. I had two brothers, and my brothers and I, none of us really knew what the other knew. So it was one of those sort of compounded duplicity. You couldn't really ask, and so we sort of lived in a world of walking on eggshells, not really knowing who knew what and what was real. I grew up in a family of secrets and undercover operations and I really didn't know anything about what my parents did until I was 17. And so it really just sort of set this whole career in motion of what does that do to somebody who lives in a duplicitous world where you're not really sure what's real, what isn't real? Debbi: Oh my gosh. What a background to have as a person getting into crime writing of any sort. Kerrie: Yes, yes. It was perfect. Debbi: Yeah. And you had a Masters in writing, essentially from the writing seminar program at Johns Hopkins University first before you went to law school. Kerrie: Yes. I started out actually as a poet. I mean, that's a very circuitous route into true crime, but I wound up honing my skills as a poet and realized you really can't make a living as a poet, and unless I wanted to be a poetry professor, I really wasn't going to go very far with poetry. So that's what launched me into law school. Debbi: That's interesting, because I had a similar story except it was with history. I was a journalism major, and I thought about getting a Masters in History and decided I don't really plan on teaching history and ended up in law school. Kerrie: Oh, wow. Debbi: Funny how that happens. Kerrie: I know. It's sort of like your practical brain says, okay, how are you going to actually feed yourself, you know? Debbi: Exactly. Kerrie: Poverty was not fun. Debbi: Oh, God. I can name some classes that were totally not fun. I hated Estates and Trusts for one thing. Lord, Lord. I read your guest post and I thought it was really good. I wanted to recommend that everybody read it. What struck me about it was kind of the general sense that psychopaths can't really be fixed as such, in any sense that we would normally think of "fixing" a person. And in fact, we have to be better educated to avoid being in danger from them. That's kind of what seemed to be your point. I just wondered if you had any thoughts on how environ...