The turning point for former FBI agent Jana Monroe came when her husband couldn’t find a single kitchen knife in their home.
Monroe had spent years studying serial killers, violent crime scenes, and the psychology behind some of the country’s most disturbing crimes. By then, she realized she had started bringing those cases home with her.
“I’d been working several cases where a knife was involved,” said Monroe, who spent over 20 years as an FBI agent across several units. “They were all stabbing victims, and all of them, the offender had come in and used their own knives — the victim’s knives.”
She gathered every knife in the house and hid them in the clothes dryer in the basement of the family’s three-story townhouse.
Psychologists and law-enforcement agencies sometimes describe this kind of reaction as occupational hypervigilance: the state of constantly scanning for danger that can be useful at work but difficult to turn off at home.
“I thought, ‘Aha. Somebody breaks in here, they’re not going to use our knives. They’re going to have to bring their own knife,'” Monroe told Business Insider for an episode of its video series “How Crime Works.”
Dennis Brack/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Her husband came home while Monroe was away interviewing female prisoners. Looking to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he called to ask where all the utensils had gone.
“I told him and he said, ‘I think we need to talk when you come home,'” Monroe recalled.
The moment crystallized something Monroe had already begun to notice.
“I’d kind of gone to the dark side,” she said.
Looking at humanity through crime scenes
Monroe joined the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in 1985 after becoming the first woman assigned to the elite profiling group.
Fun fact, she advised and coached Jodie Foster’s character in “The Silence of the Lambs,” Clarice Starling.
John Barr/Liaison
During Monroe’s tenure, she worked approximately 850 cases involving homicide investigations, interview strategies, and behavioral analysis.
Eventually, she said, it began changing how she viewed other people.
The same instincts that helped Monroe spot behavioral patterns in violent offenders also made it harder to see ordinary people as safe. She found herself expecting the worst from strangers, replaying violent scenarios, and making decisions at home based on crimes she’d investigated.
“I began to look at all human nature as bad,” Monroe said.
Many of her friends and colleagues also worked in law enforcement, meaning conversations often centered on violent crimes, terrorism investigations, or other disturbing cases.
“It became just something to me that was like a cloud or an anvil hanging over,” she said.
Learning to see the good again
Courtesy of Jana Monroe
Monroe’s reaction of hiding all the knives in her home was extreme, but the occupational risk behind it is well-documented.
Studies have estimated that roughly 4% to 19% of police personnel experience PTSD, though the rate varies depending on how researchers measure it.
The Justice Department has also warned that routinely operating in a state of hypervigilance can affect the nervous system, while repeated exposure to trauma can contribute to burnout, sleep problems, depression, and difficulties in personal relationships.
After the knives incident, Monroe ultimately decided to leave profiling and return to more traditional FBI assignments. She eventually became the bureau’s first assistant director of the cyber division.
Looking back, she said she doesn’t regret her years as a profiler. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Monroe said.
However, stepping away from profiling also helped restore something she felt she had lost.
“I started looking for and finding the good qualities in people,” she said. “It made me more tolerant because I know what we’re capable of as human beings, because I saw it, but I also know that there’s the good part too.”
