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Dr. Gary Brucato is a clinical and forensic psychologist, researcher and author known internationally for his work in the areas of violence, including serial, mass and spree killing and sexual offenses, and severe mental illness, including personality and psychotic disorders. He is a Visiting Scholar at Boston College, where he collaborates with Dr. Ann W. Burgess on research into diverse forensic topics, including homicide, rape, mutilation and dismemberment, crimes against Native Americans, and the insanity defense. He is on the expert panel for the Cold Case Foundation, which assists law enforcement throughout the world with challenging unsolved cases and provides educational resources. Dr. Brucato is also in private clinical practice, conducts forensic evaluations and provides risk assessments for the City University of New York (CUNY) college system.
Previously the Assistant Director of the Center of Prevention and Evaluation (COPE) and an Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and The New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City, he was the co-creator of the Columbia Mass Murder Database, the largest and most definitive study of mass murder ever conducted. During his time at COPE, he and his colleagues helped to elucidate the signs and symptoms of attenuated psychotic illness and explored the potential relationship between psychosis and violence risk.
In 2019, Dr. Brucato co-wrote The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime, expanding prior work by his coauthor, Dr. Michael H. Stone, to present a comprehensive system of categorizing motives for a wide array of offenses, ranging from self-defense to severe torture in the context of serial killing. They examined the contributions of aberrant personality structures, including narcissism, psychopathy and sadism in such acts, as well as the potential influences of cultural changes in the modern Western world. The New Evil is presently used as a textbook in several American forensic training programs and, in 2020, was ranked #91 in ShortForm's list of "The Best Forensic Psychology Books of All-Time." Dr. Brucato also co-authored the book Understanding and Caring for People with Schizophrenia: Fifteen Clinical Cases (2020) with Drs. Ragy R. Girgis and Jeffrey A. Lieberman. He has written nearly 100 articles for peer-reviewed journals and book chapters and given over 400 professional presentations on the symptoms, prediction and impacts of psychosis and violence.
Dr. Brucato is active in the media, appearing on or consulting for several true crime documentary series, including First Blood for A&E, The Serial Psyche for Reelz, Helter Skelter: An American Myth for Epix, and Violent Minds: Killers on Tape for Oxygen True Crime. His work has been featured or referenced by numerous news outlets on the subjects of psychotic illness; personality disorders; serial, mass and spree murder; and sexual assault, such as Newsweek, Psychology Today, USA Today, The New York Times, NewsNation, Court TV, Nancy Grace's Crime Stories, WebMD, Volksrant, Science Magazine, WINK News, and The Cut, as well as on various true crime- and mental health-related podcasts. He is regularly featured on the YouTube program The Interview Room, hosted by Chris McDonough. In 2021, Dr. Brucato was invited to write for Psychology Today, authoring the blog Probing the Unfathomable: Understanding Modern Violent Crime.
