I have discovered that a most interesting real-life parallel to Mindhunter resides in the office I've been working in the past few months. Our UPM, an older American Spirit-smoking woman with a very wry sense of humor, revealed to me that she had produced back in the early 80s for HBO what was for all intents and purposes the first ever documentary on the subject of serial killers, the term having been only recently coined at the time. Chief among their interviewees was Mr. Edmund Kemper himself; all of the famous footage of him from that period - much of which provided a great deal of Kemper’s dialogue in Season 1 - stems from this very documentary, therefore placing her right there in the room with him as he muses on all the nightmarish shit he made his name on. She claims they had a short-lived correspondence as well, this at the behest of whoever was treating him at the time, apparently in an effort to encourage healthier relationships with women. She also spent time and corresponded with Bundy, amongst a few other unfortunate notables. After telling me all of this, she turned to leave for the evening, then paused, chuckled, and said something under her breath to the effect of, “I oughta dig those out…”.
Here’s the doc, if interested:
Note: She has some cool credits as UPM and/or Producer: Leon: The Professional, Empire Records, Spanish Prisoner, a handful of Whit Stillman's....
