Scattered Episode 25: All About That (Data)base – Interview with Dr. Sasha Reid

Dr. Sasha Reid is an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, teaching in the Departments of Sociology, Psychology, and in the Faculty of Law. She is also currently a law student at the University of Calgary. Sasha came to media attention when she developed a serial homicide database that suggested patterns in homicides in Toronto that may indicated a possible serial killer. That serial killer was later identified as Bruce McArthur. She has also developed a missing and murdered database (MMD) that has become the largest database of missing and murdered indigenous persons.

I wanted to talk to Sasha primarily about developing a database and what’s involved.

In this episode we talk about:

• Sasha’s academic journey and how she developed an interest in psychopathy and developmental psychology.
• How and why she developed the serial homicide database.
• Tips and tricks for developing a database (and predictive model).
• The possibility of using Chat GPT and AI with her databases.
• Why she developed the Missing Murdered Database (MMD).
• Her teams which help with the databases.
• How her work intersects developmental psychology, law, predictive analysis, advocacy and cold cases.

You can contact Sasha at:

• Email: Sasha.reid@mail.utoronto.ca
• Instagram: sashareidxoxo

Further Reading:

• Bruce McArthur case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932017_Toronto_serial_homicides
• West Memphis Three: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three
• Pickton case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton
• Reid, S. (2017). Compulsive criminal homicide: A new nosology for serial murder. Aggression and violent behavior, 34, 290-301.

Vancouver Sun: Why these women are building a database of 12,000 missing, murdered people in Canada and Why victims’ families want Robert Pickton evidence kept and why police say it’s no longer needed

Notes from the start:

We’ve published the first scholarly article for the Alberta portion of the Scavenging Study! The taphonomic impact of scavenger guilds in peri-urban and rural regions of central and southern Alberta. Part I – Identification of forensically relevant vertebrate scavengers is available here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1556-4029.15443

Support the podcast and my research and Buy Me A Coffee. Your contributions will go toward my research, webhosting, and my time. Want to find out more about my research? Check out the Scavenging Study.

Contact me through ykjorlien@gmail.com or through my contact form. Follow me on Facebook at The Reluctant Archaeologist, or through Instagram @yvonnekjorlien

Do you have a suggestion for a topic on the Scattered podcast?

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Drop Yvonne a line at ykjorlien@gmail.com

Transcript

Yvonne Kjorlien: So go ahead and say who you are and what you’re currently your current position. I guess if that’s applicable.

Sasha Reid: Yeah, this is actually I think and I hope the hardest question of today.

You know why? Because I’m not anything. I am everything, and so I like to introduce myself as hi. I’m Sasha. I’m a person who does a lot of things. I have a PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Toronto. I studied there. I got my Master’s degrees there in criminology and applied psych. and then my PhD’s in developmental. And then I am a law student right now at the University of Calgary in my last year – wahoo — And I am also an adjunct professor at Ontario Tech, which is awesome and new. So yeah.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Wow, and what faculty are you in adjunct there?

Sasha Reid: Faculty of sociology

Yvonne Kjorlien: Sociology. Wow, it’s cool being an adjunct because then you get to work with and meet all sorts of new people where you may not have a chance to before. Yeah.

Sasha Reid: I know that there’s some people there who are doing their dissertations on serial homicide and I know I’ve been asked to be a committee member in order to be a committee member. I have to be affiliated with the university in some ways that this is the only reason why I haven’t adjunct.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah. Yeah, as far as I know in Canada, at least, you don’t get paid for being an adjunct. It’s kind of just a status thing.

Sasha Reid: Yes, it is a thankless position.

Yvonne Kjorlien: All right so, let’s delve into your past a little bit and bring us up to date. What attracted you to doing psychology developmental and serial killers and all that good stuff and why go to school? Especially because you’ve probably been doing for over 10 years now, I would imagine.

Sasha Reid: I think we’re coming up on 20. So, okay here’s the rundown…

Yvonne Kjorlien: alright

Sasha Reid: There was never a period in my life where monsters have not been front and center of my daily thoughts. Never. When I was a kid…

Yvonne Kjorlien: Did you encounter a monster when you were a kid?

Sasha Reid: No, I didn’t. I mean, I tried. I went monster hunting with — and I’m not even kidding — my favorite show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and we lived in the woods. So my lovely next door neighbor and I would go find the best wood, whittle it down into a stake, and then go at night, hunting vampires in the forest.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Oh, that’s awesome.

Sasha Reid: We’re always looking for something scary. And obviously I didn’t find anything and I grew up a little and I realized monsters do exist, but they’re not like the movies; they’re not vampires and werewolves and whatnot. They’re people and that’s even scarier in a way.

My parents divorced in both the married some very not so kind people and that’s kind of where my introduction to, and I put in quotes, ‘monsters’ that are humans really began to develop. And it was such an isolating experience as a kid feeling so uncomfortable at home and so alone. So I spent a lot of time at the library just reading books, of course about monsters and witchcraft. You kind of just do a little circle and you loop around into abnormal psychology, at least in my library. So I started studying all the abnormal psychology books and I started learning about psychopathy and I thought that’s so interesting. That’s a type of person and it explains, at least in the mind of a child, it explains the bad things that happen to me as a kid. And so just knowing that why did this happen made me feel so much more empowered and safer, and so I wanted to give that to other people too. So then I went into Psych.

Yvonne Kjorlien: I love the question “why?”. I love asking it of everything. I want to know the behind, why something works, why it doesn’t work, why did that happen? Lovely, lovely question.

Sasha Reid: yeah, and you hear it …victims’ family members. They always want to know why. People, I think, are just drawn to the why, and sometimes it’s the most impossible answer. It’s impossible sometimes, and sometimes why isn’t good enough and when you get to that, it’s so traumatizing because it’s not good enough.

Yvonne Kjorlien: I imagine for families who have had a member of their family disappear, has something happened to them, that it’s been a long time and it’s a traumatic experience. And so they probably built In their minds. They want something like horrific and monumental to explain all of this that they’re going through and to have that come across the killer or whoever, the perpetrator, the bad guy say, “I don’t know”, or “They were just there”…

Sasha Reid: Yeah.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah. It’s not good enough.

Sasha Reid: No, it’s also interesting. I’ve heard it from many different accounts, like many different people have said fortunately in their cases they were solved and they got to actually go to court and see the person who killed their family member and so many people say, “That’s it?” “They’re so small”, or “I had expected something so much different.” “That’s it?” They were expecting actual monsters. It’s interesting.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Wow. So let’s go through your academic journey to bring you to your PhD. What lead in your undergrad to have you go into grad and then to get a PhD, because that’s a big step.

Sasha Reid: Yes, that’s a huge if you know anything about me, it is I don’t think a lot. I do everything with very little thought. If I had put an ounce of thought into this, I don’t know if I would have done it, but here I am. So undergrad. I started at Lakehead University and it was great. It was close to home, but I wanted to