Jeffrey Smalldon

Authors at the Library

Jeffrey Smalldon, author of the book "That Beast Was Not Me: One Forensic Psychologist, Five Decades of Conversations with Killers," speaks on his book.

Authors at the Library
with Jeffrey Smalldon

Saturday, Jan 3 | 2 p.m.
Whetstone Branch | 3909 N. High St.

About the Author

What happens when a graduate student on his way toward becoming a forensic psychologist sits face-to-face with one of America's most notorious serial killers? That Beast Was Not Me isn't just another sensationalized true crime story—it's an intimate glimpse into the complex reality of studying the criminal mind, where claims of normalcy clash with the weight of unspeakable acts.

Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon grew up the son of a Hoover-era G-man. When he was still an undergraduate student, he followed the suggestion of his professor for a course in abnormal psychology and began corresponding with Charles Manson and many other members of the so-called Manson Family. One of those was Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme. After Fromme attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in September 1975, the FBI in Sacramento found a cache of Smalldon's letters in her apartment. Smalldon's father, still a special agent with the FBI, had some explaining to do when his boss summoned him for a debriefing.

In December 1983, almost a decade after the start of the Manson correspondences, two of Smalldon's co-workers were brutally murdered just off the main hallway at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, where Smalldon was an up-and-coming young administrator. In the aftermath of the Riverside murders, Smalldon left the field of hospital administration and began work toward his PhD in psychology at Ohio State. His goal was to become a forensic psychologist and secure for himself a close vantage point from which to study the minds and motivations of killers -- including the then-unknown monster who'd killed his co-workers and then disappeared into thin air.

During the course of his career, Dr. Smalldon consulted on close to 300 death penalty cases in both state and federal court. Along the way, he tangled with the likes of John Wayne Gacy (with whom he spent close to 20 hours in an unmonitored visiting room on Illinois's death row), Ted Bundy, Donald Harvey, Ohio serial sniper Thomas Lee Dillon, and many other notorious killers. 

Smalldon's acclaimed debut, That Beast Was Not Me, chronicles a personal and professional journey unlike any other.

Event Details

The event is free to the public and the author will do a book signing after his talk. Readers are welcome to bring books from home for Jeffrey to sign or purchase his books on site. 

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