EX-COP PUTS HIS FINGER ON `TRIGGERS'
TV detective Joe Kenda delves into the psychology of his specialty: killers
Retired detective Lt. Joe Kenda didn’t expect to have a second career as a true crime television star after leaving the force.
Kenda spent 23 years with the Colorado Springs Police Department and served as a homicide detective and commander of the major crimes unit, where he and his team solved 356 of 387 homicide cases. But his deep voice, matter-of-fact storytelling and sense of humor eventually landed him the gig hosting “Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda,” a true crime documentary series that ran from 20112020 on Investigation Discovery.
Each episode featured Kenda recounting one of his cases in detail with the aid of some of the victims’ families and others who were at the scene, with a cast reenacted the crimes for television. It was a hit and afforded Kenda the opportunity to author two books: “I Will Find You: Solving Killer Cases From My Life Fighting Crime” in 2017, and his latest, “Killer Triggers,” which is just out in paperback.
“It’s very therapeutic for me,” he said of writing the books and hosting TV gigs during a recent phone interview from his home in Virginia. “All the years I did that for a living, I never discussed much of it with anyone. Including my wife. When she was watching the show when it first started, instead of looking at the show, she was looking at me. I said, ‘What are you looking at?’ She said, ‘I never knew you did that.’ So, it’s been good for me to offload the emotion, and I feel immensely better as a result.”
In “Killer Triggers,” Kenda goes deep into 10 of his cases and explores the triggers, or motives, behind each one. Those triggers include greed, fear, rage, revenge, drugs, lust and, in some cases, multiple triggers all firing at once.
“The usual thing about humans is that they tend to be dangerous,” Kenda said, noting that it’s hard to say which trigger is the most common. “That depends on the individual because some people are driven by certain things more than the others. But revenge, that’s a big one. The other is jealousy. It all depends on the personality involved and what sets that ball of violence in motion because that ball of violence is in all of us. Human nature never changes. No matter what you say, no matter what you legislate, no matter how much you complain, humans are what they are.”
Amid the discussion of these cases, Kenda relates what was happening with his home life at the time. His wife, Kathy, and two kids, Kris and Dan, were along for this wild ride with him. He writes about not being home as much as he wanted to be and the real dangers his family faced due to his career.
“I think that the reading public, or I hope that the reading public, finds that interesting,” he said of including his personal life along with the true crime stories. “It was important to me that they understand me a little bit. I’m not one-sided. I have multiple sides and I wanted to show that at times you have to juggle all this and keep all the balls in the air all the time. It’s not easy.”
Though the writing, hosting gigs and appearances at true crime conventions now keep him busy, Kenda said he’s happy to report that he is still enjoying some of the benefits of retirement.
“I’m able to spend time with my children and my wife and travel, and we enjoy ourselves and we don’t talk about all of this,” he said. “I also don’t have as much PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] as I did have. The best way to describe PTSD is you’re having a nightmare while you’re awake. It’s a very bizarre thing and, sure, sometimes it lasts 15 or 20 seconds, but it’s intense.”
He does see an improvement in the treatment of mental health, with police departments having psychologists or psychiatrists on the payroll. The difficulty, he said, is getting those on the force to say, “Hey, I need help.”
“I would try to counsel people all of the time, some without success and others with success,” he said, noting that he clearly sees a benefit in talking with someone about some of the more stressful scenarios police face daily.
“You do need to talk to somebody other than the mirror because whatever you’re saying to yourself doesn’t appear to be working,” Kenda said he’d tell others. “You also have to get another perspective to realize that the world isn’t just filled with animals.”
Kenda launched a new TV show last year, “American Detective With Lt. Joe Kenda,” which is streaming on Discovery+. Since he’d shared so many of his cases on the first show, the new series shines the spotlight on other detectives across the country who have gone to great lengths to put killers behind bars.
“I wanted to showcase law enforcement because we do get bad press, which is normal,” he said. “I want people to understand that I’m no lone ranger; a lot of people do this for a living and they do it very well. Whether it’s in a small town or big city, it doesn’t matter. These people work like dogs for little or no money because they want to catch the bad guy. It’s an honorable profession if you do it correctly. Now, we do have people in that business that shouldn’t be in that business and we try to identify those people, but that’s difficult, too. You have to remember that we have to recruit our members from the ranks of the human race. That’s always a problem.
“It always goes back to humans being the problem.”