UA graduate and retired FBI Special Agent Charlie Dorsey spent a little more than an hour in Farrah Hall Thursday debunking myths about the forensic field for interested faculty and students.
Dorsey had two goals for his lecture. The first was to rectify some of the media glorification of criminal profiling by subjecting his audience to the shocking reality of crime scene investigations.
“There’s the myth, what we see on TV, and then there’s reality,” Dorsey said.
“What’s the reality of serial murder? Well it’s jackasses like you see up on the screen,” Dorsey continued, showing a slide of Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK killer, and Charles Cullen, known as the Angel of Death.
He also showed several graphic slides of actual crime scene photos, even inviting the audience to offer basic guesses to the sort of killer who would commit the depicted murders, or to compare one photo to another and explain why or why not the victims could have been killed by the same perpetrator.
“I’m not doing this to shock you or show you that I’m a big deal,” Dorsey said. “That’s just the reality of what you work with when you’re in this arena.”
His second goal for the evening was to offer advice to anyone who wanted to know how to excel in the forensic field, especially in the FBI. Dorsey told the students in the audience not to stress over whether to take a certain psychology or criminal justice class, but rather to maximize experience and common sense.
His lecture offered other tips and pointers, and after he concluded his lecture, Dorsey dismissed the general audience but invited anyone with a question to stay and ask it personally, instead of fielding it in front of the crowd. He stayed after the lecture until every interested student was addressed.
The speech left more than a dozen people standing along the wall in a room that has more than 150 seats. Many students were there seeking extra credit in various criminal justice classes, but there were several audience members who simply didn’t want to miss the opportunity to hear a UA alumnus with so much experience speak.
“I think most people would have come with or without the extra credit for a presentation like this,” said Mark Lanier, chair of the department of criminal justice.
“[Dorsey] was a very good speaker,” said Ethan Sandifer, a senior majoring in psychology. “He did an excellent job in taking on and tackling the myths surrounding criminal profiling.”
Overall, Lanier was very pleased with the event, despite too little time and too small a venue. Dorsey limited himself to an hour of lecture, and with 28 years of federal law enforcement, as well as experience in Guantanamo Bay and Pakistan dealing with threats to national security, there was a great deal he had to leave unaddressed for the evening.
“I wish he’d talked more about his time and experience interrogating terrorists,” Lanier said. “Other than the size of this room, that’s the only thing I would have changed.”
Lanier said this was the fourth public guest lecture the department of criminal justice has hosted this year, and by far the best attended.
“We tried not to advertise and publicize too much, because we knew this room wouldn’t accommodate a big crowd,” Lanier said. “But so many people came anyway. I just can’t believe how many people showed up.”
