Murder Cop: A Profile of Vernon J. Geberth
Stranger Than Fiction
"I had a case of a fellow who fed his face to the dogs," Geberth recalls.� "I'd been called to the scene and the hospital at the same time.� When I went to the hospital, I observed a man whose face looked like hamburger meat on a gurney screaming bloody murder. When I arrived at the crime scene no one had gone in.� I was advised that there were wild dogs in the apartment. I told them to shoot the dogs with darts so we could go in.� It was a bloody mess.� He'd been under the influence of PCP, and in his psychosis he'd smashed a mirror and began peeling his face off his head.� He took his eyes out, cut his ears off, and cut his tongue out.� But I couldn't find the face.� The only explanation was the dogs.� I had them brought down to the ASPCA to pump the dogs' stomachs.� And they found pieces of flesh."
Geberth returned to the hospital. "The man had one eye floating in his head like a Cyclops.� The optic nerve was cut.� I told the doctors to get the gauze out of his mouth and I got close to him and said, 'What happened to you?'
"All of a sudden, he goes, 'Yayayayayayayaya.'� It was all this chatter and no face.� Well, I almost lost it.� Here I am talking to a cadaver and the cadaver is talking back.�� Amazingly, he survived!� His brain was damaged from the drugs and he became a ward of the state. But he did survive. The surgeons gave him a new face."
Then Geberth learned that author Thomas Harris, who had penned the bestselling novels, The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, had used the case without permission.� Apparently the FBI profilers who had allowed him inside Quantico had given him Geberth's book.� He was getting rich off the gruesome details that Geberth had provided.
"So I sent him a letter and told him he should have cited his sources.� Eventually, after six months, I received a Xeroxed note.� He apologized for using the information and said that future printings would acknowledge where it came from.� He did that in the paperback of Hannibal."���

Whenever Geberth uses cases in his books or seminars, he acquires permission, cites his sources, and mentions them in class.� He believes firmly in teamwork and in giving due recognition to the detectives who investigated the cases he uses to teach others.� He thereby passes on to them the importance of doing so and hopes that he will inspire in them the right attitudes.� If he does, he believes, everyone wins.�
His seminars are not just training courses; they're about teaching and supporting an attitude for homicide detectives to do the right thing.