T¸ZHE NINE by Mark Sevi EPISODIC and LONG FORM NARRATIVE DRAMA PITCH OUTLINE THE PITCH: A pioneering group of men seek to understand and apprehend the most depraved human beings in the history of mankind. OVERVIEW: This dramatization series begins at the very early stages of criminal profiling (1960's) and takes us through to the modern day BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit), focusing on The Nine - the FBI profilers who conceived the criminology processes of finding and bringing to justice true human monsters. "The Nine" explores these true crime cases, the toll on the profilers and their families, and the shattered lives of the victims of serial killers. THE WHY: In 2011 shortly before his death, I had the honor of staying at the home of legendary FBI profiler Robert Ressler (ret.) for seven days to interview him for a film of his life. During that time, Ressler and I sat for many hours and discussed all aspects of his amazing career, and the lives of other dedicated profilers. I was living a dream of meeting and interacting with this true American hero. During my time with Ressler, I watched slideshow after slideshow of the worst, most violent crime scenes I had ever imagined. Even having been involved with years of research I was not prepared for the mayhem I was witnessing. Women, men, children violently torn from this life in ways that could not be imagined. Ressler knew all the cases intimately and brought the horror into sharp focus as the slides flashed across the screen in his home office, each image, each story of mayhem more horrible than the last. Robert Ressler had been on the forefront of not only most of the FBI violent crimes cases since 1970, but he had written multiple books on his and the FBI's efforts to not only capture the worst violent offenders in the world, but also to understand them which he felt would lead to better ways to bring these monsters to justice. This concept actually started with Bud Mullany and Howard Teten, two legendary profilers who put it into crude practice in the mid-60's. As cogent as it seems now, the idea of finding criminals based on the profile of their crimes was contrary to not only the FBI's thinking, but to all local law enforcement. I had known about Ressler and the incredible world of FBI profilers from the late 80's. As I explored his legacy I found a group of nine men, including Ressler, who were consistently instrumental in bringing our understanding of violent crime to a finer point. It took thousands of hours, tens of hundreds of people, and many crime agencies to gain this knowledge, but a core of nine kept coming back to me. This then was the impetus of the hybrid episodic/long form narrative TV series I conceived called "The Nine" about the pioneers of violent criminal apprehension. Their individual stories comprise the bigger picture of the progression of barely-whispered horror to the shout of anguish that is the toll these crimes take on all; lives lived around and in the cesspools of the minds of the world's sickest and most depraved human beings. ABOUT and SCOPE: "The Nine" is a dramatized version of the lives of FBI profilers, conceived to be a five-season series of perhaps 10-13 episodes each. It is broken down into decades: 60's through the 90's. Each decade focuses on one or more of the major profilers of that era. The scope details the progression from a crude form of profiling to the science it has become. The series starts with the men who created what would become the nascent Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) in the mid-60's. At that time, it was only an FBI class taught by Howard Teten with Bud Mullany called applied criminology. It quickly evolved into so much more, as new methodology was instituted and a psychology of criminality was conceived and applied. The 70's (season two) is the beginning of the so-called "modern era" with Robert Ressler on board as one of the finest in a class of superior crime fighters. He shaped much of what became the modern BSU (now called BAU,) bringing insight and techniques that many times clashed with his superiors' ideas of crime fighting. Ressler retired in the early 90's but he tracked and found serial murderers for four decades going back to his time in the Army CID even before he was an FBI agent. His legacy and the legacy of all these profilers cannot be understated. Parts of Ressler's early life, like the early lives of all of The Nine, are covered as each is introduced as part of the overall story told season by season. Ressler, like others in the FBI, will drop in and out of every decade that the show covers, hence the overlap in styles, killers, and the progression of crime fighting techniques. In the 80's (season three and four) the media became acutely aware of the existence of the profilers. Authors, filmmakers, reporters (and groupies) all flocked to Quantico and made these men (and now a few women) superstars. Books like "Red Dragon" and movies like "Manhunter" and "Silence of the Lambs" brought a rabid response from audiences even as the killers themselves evolved into the more sophisticated genre of violent and deviant offenders. This then also became part of the fabric of the decades-long story of the profilers as they wove themselves into the daily narrative of putrescence that is serial murder. The 90's (seasons four and five) continues with different profilers but also with the characters already introduced who overlap the others: people like Ken Lanning who shifted the mission statement slightly as he investigated Satanic Ritual Murder and abuse that screamed from the headlines of major newspapers, and church pulpits as preachers proclaimed to their frightened flocks that Satan walked the earth. The show itself is a 5-decade dramatization of the men, women and organizations that made the current Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) what it is today. The progression from crude profiling to the sophisticated crime tool it's become is detailed and explored in aspects never before seen. SUSTAINABILITY: A WEALTH OF MATERIAL: Almost any serial killer or mass murderer case known from 1965 to 1999 is covered by this show. All were hunted and most were brought to justice by the nine men that this show covers. As importantly, the impact on the men and their families is also detailed. Most had some form of PTSD from their lives of dealing with the most incredible horror any human being can imagine. Very few law enforcement men or women ever come into contact with as violent and tragic a crime as a sadistic, serial murder. Imagine doing it day after day for years. Some of these men could not handle the mayhem and had nervous breakdowns. Some took early retirement. All were impacted and had families that were impacted in severe and disturbing ways. The show will dip into both the brutality of the hundreds of cases of serial and mass murder, but also the terrible toll these crimes created tangential to the actual mayhem. FBI agents aren't usually first responders to these horrific crimes but they live with them far longer than any law enforcement entity. None involved were left unaffected or profoundly unchanged. The cases they covered stayed with these men for their entire lives. As Ressler states in his seminal book "Whoever Fights Monsters" if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss looks back at you. THE CHARACTERS: Having done years of study on serial murder and the men (and some women) who have pursued it, I am intimately knowledgeable on all of the pioneers responsible for starting and continuing the art and science of profiling. Their names are legendary: Ressler, Douglas, Lanning (who studied Satanic ritual murder including the McMartin Preschool case here in CA.) All were men of different character and backgrounds with one focused purpose: prevent the mayhem that serial, violent murder creates in families, communities, and the country. The other side of that equation are the criminals. The violent deviants who have given up their humanity cards to engage in the most incomprehensible behavior imaginable, perpetrated on sometimes the most helpless and innocent of victims. Monsters like: Dahmer who wanted to create a sex slave and poured acid into the brains of his young victims. Ramirez, The Night Stalker, who broke into homes, killed the man of the house and raped and mutilated their wives and girlfriends. Gacy (the Clown) who tortured and killed 15-yr-old boys while engaging in sexual games with his helpless victims. Kemper (the 6'9" monster) who kept the heads of his co-ed victims in his trunk and who eventually raped, tortured, and dismembered his own mother. Berkowitz, Bundy, Zodiac...the famously evil-known. But the others not as well-known are also covered like: Ng and Lake, who killed entire families while keeping the women of those families captive to their perversions; Arthur Shawcross, a killer of children who was released from prison only to kill again and again; the Toolbox Killers who used pliers and hammers to sexually torture 13-yr-old girls while recording their screams to re-live their sadistic perversion. Gary Ridgway, The Original Nightstalker, BTK...these horrifying men are also revealed over the scope of the show. Hundreds of appallingly violent, psychopathic men and The Nine who stood against them. THE PILOT In the pilot, we meet the pioneering men who started criminal profiling itself even before they were a team. Called Mutt and Jeff by their peers because of their physical differences, one being tall and thin, the other being short and stocky, Howard "Bud" Teten and Patrick Mullany met as FBI field agents and became partners not only in fact but in spirit as they fought the top brass (and each other) to bring profiling into being. One was an Orange County, CA. cop who became an FBI agent, and the other a former Marine, an intellectual whose curiosity led him to crime prevention and then the FBI. The 6'7" Teten was a crackerjack detective, wise from his years as a street cop. Mullany specialized in abnormal psychology with degrees from various colleges. Each brought a different set of skills to their collaboration and between them they developed a crude form of criminal profiling that proved itself both instantly effective - and was totally against every precept and facet of the FBI. Hoover stated to them "we catch criminals, we don't understand them." This caused no end of conflict for not only Teten and Mullany but subsequent profilers as well, like Ressler, as they struggled to expand on what Mutt and Jeff had created. Teten and Mullany's initial meeting, teaming up at the FBI, and beginning of the profiling concept against heavy opposition comprises the first episodes of season one. Also introduced is the Meirhofer murders, and crazy Charlie Manson and his crew just before they committed the Tate-LaBianca murders. The Helter Skelter 60's had begun indeed. THE SERIES BREAKDOWN: As previously discussed, this series will cover every violent crime and criminal from the mid-60's to the late 90's and perhaps beyond if it is given more than five seasons. The format is a hybrid of episodic television (stand-alone episodes) and long-form narrative as the story of these cases and the men's careers and personal lives unfold inside each episode and over several seasons. Some cases are solved quickly, some are never solved. A season-long focus on one killer can at times become a mission that takes over the profilers' lives. The crimes and criminals are disturbing, horrifying, and gut-wrenching. But they are also as fascinating a psychological study as the men who tracked them and the toll it took on all concerned. MARKETING: TRUE CRIME, EVERY EPISODE: What "X-files" was to scifi conspiracy "The Nine" will be to true crime. There is such a hunger for this material. To try to understand how something so base and profoundly disturbing can exist in our seemingly normal world entangles all who even dip a little into it. For the many who consume true crime it becomes somewhat of an obsession. Series after series (both dramatized real events like "Forensic Files" and dramas based on the concepts of profiling like "Criminal Minds"), movie after movie, book after book that has dealt with this material has been almost an instant, lasting hit. It has created legendary authors, television shows, and movies. The audience is there. We just have to tap into it by bringing every serial murder from the mid-60's to the late 90's but focusing on both the criminals and men who fought them. IN CONCLUSION: Beyond the astounding violence and tragedy that this material covers, these men, The Nine, are true American heroes, and too little is said about them and the incredible sacrifices they made to understand and apprehend the monsters who roam our dark streets. Many shows give these men lip service but no in-depth exploration in the scope of "The Nine" has been attempted. The stories themselves may take place in decades past but they are as fresh as today's headlines. As the Original Night Stalker is brought to justice, BTK resurfaces only to be finally apprehended, and new, as yet unseen, monsters make our sleeping hours restive and filled with images we can't shake. The only way to fully understand the present is to look at what created it. No show has ever done a comprehensive job of the history of criminal profiling and gone into the depth proposed here in such dramatic fashion dipping deeply into the public and private lives of all concerned. This is that story. Mark Sevi is an award-winning scriptwriter which has sold 32 scripts, 19 of which have been made into films. "The Nine", an episodic, long-form narrative hybridized series, is a result of a lifelong continuing study of serial violence and the men and women who have pursued the monsters responsible for the worst mayhem perpetrated against human beings. Mark is also a contributor to many writing periodicals. His book on scriptwriting is scheduled for 2019 publication. He is president of the Orange County Screenwriters Association and teaches scriptwriting through the Southern California Community College System. Mark is represented by Wayne Alexander at Alexander, Lawrence, Frumes & Labowitz, LLP. He can be contacted through marksevi.com Or ocscreenwriters.com. All Material © Mark Sevi