Hundreds will spend Friday night talking about serial killers in Charlotte. Why?
%20-%20Photo%20Credit_%20Mark%20Sutton.jpg "Touring forensic psychologist Dr. Rachel Toles discusses creepy audience encounters in N.C., die-hard true-crime fans, nervous laughter — and baking shows.")
After years spent studying serial killers, forensic psychologist Dr. Rachel Toles has a confession:
“It can be a little boring for me. I mean, after a while, I don’t really want to talk about the skulls found in Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment anymore,” she says during a recent interview to promote her touring show, “The Psychology of Serial Killers,” which comes to the Carolina Theatre on Friday, May 15, as part of a U.S. tour stopping in nearly 30 cities this spring.
But to be clear, Toles is only talking about the first hour of the show — the rehearsed lecture portion covering Dahmer, Ted Bundy and other infamous murderers. She stresses that while the material may no longer surprise her, she fully expects it will still captivate the audience.
The second hour, meanwhile? That’s the part that still gives her a rush.
The audience reactions. The nervous laughter. The people processing their own fears and traumas through true crime. The strange communal energy created when hundreds of strangers gather in a theater to hear dark stories together.
“Anything can happen,” Toles says of the live Q&A portion of the show.
A serial killer in the audience?
In fact, she says, the atmosphere can occasionally become genuinely unsettling.
Last year in Raleigh, Toles found herself unnerved by a man in the second row wearing what appeared to be an obvious disguise: cowboy hat, sunglasses, fake handlebar mustache. By the end of the night, she wondered whether she may have just unknowingly performed for a serial killer.
Read on for more about her encounter with this mystery man; why a forensic psychologist touring the country talking about serial killers has started to feel more like a live performer than a lecturer; and why — after spending her days immersed in humanity’s darkest impulses — she unwinds by watching baking shows.
The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
%20-%20Photo%20Credit_%20Mark%20Sutton.jpg "Psychology of (9) - Photo Credit_ Mark Sutton.jpg")
Q. Obviously there’s a huge audience for true crime, most of which seems to get digested typically through documentaries or podcasts. So how did you realize, or at what point did you realize, that people still did want to experience that type of content in podcast form or documentary, but there was a way to turn it into a live experience?
Before these shows, I had a very private life. I was actually not on social media at all. I was just working with lawyers, working in forensics and working in my own private practice for a very long time — almost two decades of that. But I was seeing 50 people a week, and I was getting burnt out because I’m like, I just want to help as many people as possible. Because I could see the ripple effect of what was happening in the room, and how their lives were improving, and how the lives of the people in their lives were improving. And I was like, I just want to have a bigger ripple effect, where I can touch the lives of other people, bring them to a place of hope or catharsis.
I just thought, I need a bigger platform. So that’s when I started putting myself out there on social media, doing videos. Then the Jeffrey Dahmer series dropped (Netflix’s ”Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” in September 2022), and they got a bunch of things wrong. I’d been studying Jeffrey Dahmer for 20 years. So I was like, I’m gonna point out what they got wrong. And boom, my videos just started going viral, viral, viral. Then all of a sudden, I was ... scouted, I guess, is the best term — by a touring company that said, “Would you ever be willing to talk about this on the road?”
There was not anything in my body that said no. It was an immediate yes. And I always listen to my body. That’s one of the things I tell my audience members. I always say, “How do you know if you’re in the presence of a serial killer?” And I was like, “Just listen to your body, because your body doesn’t lie.” So I always do that. I listen to my body. And it was an immediate yes. So then I just started doing the shows.
Q. So when you watch any sort of dramatization of a serial-killer saga, are you able to at all experience it as entertainment?
When I watched “Dahmer,” I never watched any of the moments where he was doing his kills, because it had taken me years to even read about the actual details of the murders. Even though I studied him, I was studying his psychology, not so much the details of how gruesome it got. Because to me, I’ve never been interested in that.
I have watched “Mindhunter,” which I really did like. But generally, I just find dramatizations to be pretty depressing. So I almost never watch them. I mean, I’d rather just watch documentaries of the real thing. For some reason, documentaries don’t feel as depressing as actors who are playing really sad parts. But I don’t even watch much true crime. Of course, when I have to do my research, I have to watch it. But for the most part, I watch baking shows. To just get my mind off of the stuff, I’m gonna watch baking shows. Because people are nice to each other on baking shows.
Q. From videos I’ve seen of your shows, you almost have, like, a stand-up-comedy vibe to you, in terms of the expressiveness of your delivery and your timing. In terms of the way you think about what it is you’re doing on stage — I guess it’s a lecture, but it’s almost performative, too, right?
Absolutely. So it’s obviously my job. And it’s a heavy job, because here I am, a forensic psychologist, not only talking about the darkest of the darkest of humanity — the darkest parts of the mind, that most people don’t ever go there; but on top of that, I’m talking about their childhoods, which are just devastatingly dark. It’s so heavy that I have to bring some level of humor when it’s appropriate. So I have to make sure when I can get those moments in, to get them in, because you can just feel from the audience the need to have the release of the laughter.
People who like true crime, they are often — not always, but often — people who also have their own traumas, which is part of what draws them to true crime, because they can relate to different things. So there’ll be a part of them that’s processing their own traumas while I’m talking about the traumas of these murderers. But it’s heavy, and people want relief from that.
%20-%20Photo%20Credit_%20Mark%20Sutton.jpg "Psychology of (40) - Photo Credit_ Mark Sutton.jpg")
Q. In terms of your audiences — I’m trying to think of how to phrase this best. I was gonna ask, “Do they creep you out?” But I guess what I’m asking is: Is it weird to look out at a crowd of people who paid to spend their Friday night talking about serial killers?
Okay, well, this is the thing: 85 to 90% of the audiences are women. Women just love true crime. And I was a woman who loved my “Dateline” and stuff like that, and I would fall asleep to the Dahmer trial. This was years ago. But I had had my own true-crime period, where I was really into it. So I feel like I’m with people who I was likeminded with at an earlier stage in my life. I understand what they’re wanting, ideally.
But when I do get creeped out is at the meet-and-greets I do at these shows sometimes, if a single guy comes up and starts dropping hints that maybe he’s a serial killer. And I’m like, “You don’t really know?” Then that’s it. It’s like, Whoa! Okay, well, that was a crazy interaction.
I mean, I think the concern of some of my friends is that they don’t want these people to see me as the serial-killer whisperer, where all of a sudden, I’m the one they go to. I don’t think that’s what’s happening. But I’ve been creeped out a few times with a few male audience members. I’ve never been creeped out by females.
Q. Can you tell me something specific a male fan said to you at a show?
It actually happened in Raleigh, North Carolina, last year. I still think maybe this was a serial killer. Basically, this guy came in and he was in a second row, and he was wearing a big cowboy hat and a fake handlebar mustache and sunglasses. And at first it’s like, Haha! It looked like a total joke. He just looked like he obviously had put on a disguise. From the stage, I clocked the energy was a bit off.
But then my friend who lives there, she was at the show, and she saw him at the intermission, and she could tell something was really off with him. So she submitted a question (to be included in the live Q&A), which I didn’t see until after the show, because the moderator never read it out loud. But she wrote, “I think the guy in the second row with the cowboy hat is a serial killer, and I’m concerned.” The thing that creeped me out the most about him was at the end of the show, I was taking my bows in front of the audience, and everyone is cheering ... but this guy was staring at me, completely stone-faced, with no response — almost like he wanted to kill me. It was scary. I have never felt that in my life. And I’ve worked with murderers. This was a really eerie feeling. I mean, it was no joke.
And because I’m gonna do a Raleigh show (Wednesday, May 13), obviously, I’m thinking, I wonder if he’s gonna be back! Because I wouldn’t doubt it. I hope not. But at least (people involved with the show are) aware that this guy exists and that he was a Raleigh person. So we’re gonna probably keep our eyes open for that.
Q. I was just going to ask if you’d informed the authorities about him.
Yes, I have. And there’s been a couple others. So there’s one guy in Atlanta that we’re gonna keep an eye on that I saw at my last show; he contacts me through social media, and I’m like, Okay, I’m aware that you might have something going on there. Other guys, it’s more creepy in the way of, like, Oh, you probably want to just (have sex with) me or something. (Laughing.)
But again, the guy with that cowboy hat ... I’ve never felt that before.
Q. I mean, he’s probably wearing a different disguise this time, if he comes.
I think he’s going to, so I’m gonna basically have people keep their eyes open for a different maybe-obvious disguise again.
Q. You said the lecture part of the show can be a little bit boring for you. How do you keep it interesting for yourself?
What I do love more than anything in the world is telling stories. I like telling dark stories. I always have. So I treat each audience a little bit like they’re all kindergartners leaning in to get their scary-story fix. Children like to hear things over and over and over again. So I just say to myself, All right, well, imagine if this is what we’re dealing with: Children just wanting to hear the same scary story over and over.
See ‘The Psychology of Serial Killers’
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 15.
Where: Carolina Theatre at Belk Place, 230 N. Tryon St.
Tickets: $46.85 and up.
Details: thecarolina.com or psychologyofserialkillers.com.
