My review of Netflix's "Mindhunter" S1 (Spoilers)

I've always liked looking at family pictures from the 1970's. The way my family dressed & looked back in those days always seemed interesting to me. The new Netflix series "Mindhunter" gets that seventies look right, the cars, the furniture, the music, the clothes. Even the movies, since there's a movie within a TV series when the main character & his girlfriend watch "Dog Day Afternoon" in a theater. 

The main character in "Mindhunter" is a young (single) FBI agent named Holden Groff. 
Groff's starting his career at the FBI, and has ambition to advance in his study of criminal behavior. 

The other main character is an older (married) FBI tough-guy-type named Bill Tench. 
Tench is consumed by his work, and he tries to lead a normal life in the suburbs with his wife and an adopted child who's always quiet. 

The series centers around Groff and Tench having conversations with serial-killers (a denomination which they apparently coined) to better understand these killers' sick mind.
The first serial killer interviewed, Edmund Kemper, is a nightmare, his crimes unbelievable: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Kemper
"Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer. He committed the murder of ten people, including his paternal grandparents and mother. He regularly engaged in necrophilia and claimed to haveconsumed the flesh of at least one of his victims, but later retracted this confession."

But in conversations with Groff & Tench, Kemper turns out to be a "chatty Kathy". Nevertheless, the fear in just a moment of silence or a dead stare from this killer is enough to remind you of the monster within.

The main female characters are Wendy and Debbie.
After the success of Kemper's interviews, we are introduced to brilliant professor Wendy who joins the FBI's effort to study serial killers.
The other main female character is Debbie, a smart college-age young woman who becomes Groff's girlfriend.

The second serial killer interviewed by Groff & Tench, is Monte Rissell, a young guy, who the older FBI agent Tench, has no patience for: 
http://murderpedia.org/male.R/r/rissell-monte.htm

"Yet another rapist-murderer, Monte Rissell killed five women in Alexandria, Virginia. A sexual deviant at a very early age, Rissell committed his first rapes at the unbelievably young age of only 14.

Arrested for one of his crimes while still in High School, Rissell was sent to an institution. It didn't stop him and he fooled his counselors into thinking he was improving as he continued to rape women during short escapes and once even in the institution's parking lot.

With this accelerated violent steak it is little wonder that he began to kill much earlier than most serial killers. His first kill occurred after a rape near his own apartment complex and took place when he was just 18."

The third serial killer interviewed, is Brudos (who somehow denies all his crimes): 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Brudos
"Jerome Henry "Jerry" Brudos (January 31, 1939 – March 28, 2006) was an American serial killer and necrophiliac who committed the murders of at least four women in Oregon between 1968 and 1969."

Groff gives a pair of stilettos as a gift to Brudos. Seems Brudos is a transvestite, which seems one of the reason for his many crimes until Wendy educates the audience (us viewers) about transvestism which is obviously not the cause. Wendy appears knowledgeable about gender identity because she's a lesbian which seems to be something to be kept quiet back in the seventies.    

The fourth killer is Richard Speck: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck

Richard Benjamin Speck^[1] (December 6, 1941 – December 5, 1991) was an American mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped, and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on the night of July 13–14, 1966.

He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later overturned due to issues with jury selection at his trial. Speck died of a heart attack after 25 years in prison. 

Speck is a loathsome character. Groff gets in trouble (trouble which will probably manifest itself in the second season) when he uses profanity demeaning to women in order to develop rapport with Speck.  

The last killer is:
Darrell Gene DEVIER Sr.
http://murderpedia.org/male.D/d1/devier-darrel-gene.htm

I've never liked watching serial killer movies or TV shows. But this series is different. "Mindhunter" makes it painfully clear about the danger women & girls face in this country & in this world. A fear and danger Groff is forced to feel in the final moments of the first season. 
Excellent series & no gratuitous violence or blood to achieve ultimate fear & discomfort. Although, words can be just as excruciating, I even had to stop watching (until the next day) when Groff (developing rapport again) was interrogating the last killer who murdered a twelve-year-old girl.