Dr. Ann Burgess was the subject of the Hulu docuseries "Mastermind:To Think Like A Killer", based on her work. Through interviews and finding patterns among the serial killers, her team was the first to find similar trauma among serial killers.
Dr. Burgess co-founded one of the first hospital-based crisis counseling programs at Boston City Hospital with Boston College sociologist, Lynda Lytle Holmstrom. Together, she and Holmstrom conducted extensive research regarding 1960s rape victims in Boston. She interviewed victims and quantified their experiences.
This caught the attention of the FBI. She began to consult for John E. Douglas, Robert Ressler, and other FBI agents in the Behavioral Science Unit to develop modern psychological profiling for serial killers. The BSU was interested in doing similar research to Burgess, except with perpetrators rather than victims. Burgess was granted access to the early cassette tapes that were recorded during the first serial killer interviews, such as discussions with Edmund Kemper, Ted Bundy, and Charles Manson.
She has also served as a consultant or expert witness on cases involving the Menendez Brothers, Bill Cosby, Opal Horton and John Joubert. She is the author of "A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind" and the character of "Wendy Cox" in the Netflix series "Mindhunters" is inspired by her work. She is a professor at the William F. Connell School of Nursing at Boston College. She received her Master's degree from the University of Maryland and her Doctorate from Boston University.