When two women disappeared from a lake party just outside of Seattle in July of 1974, detectives called on Dr. John Liebert to develop a criminal profile of the possible kidnappers.

When two women disappeared from a lake party just outside of Seattle in July of 1974, detectives called on Dr. John Liebert to develop a criminal profile of the possible kidnappers.

Liebert, an accomplished psychiatrist, criminologist and author currently working on a book about rampage murder, episodic violence and suicide, set up a team of psychologists and detectives to interview everyone who came in contact with the girls at the party that day, he said.

In doing so, they obtained a good description of a man who approached the two women and took them to a brown Volkswagen Beetle under the pretense of assisting him with his sailboat.

The man introduced himself to the girls as Ted, according to Liebert, but at that time, no one knew they were dealing with a man who would become known as one of America’s most infamous serial killers — Theodore “Ted” Bundy.

Growing up in White Fish Bay, Wis. — the town the television show “Happy Days” was written about — murder wasn’t really a part of Liebert’s life, he said. He got into the business through the back door.

For years, Liebert ran a psychiatric practice in Seattle, but when Boeing laid off more than half of its workforce in the early 1970s, he lost most of his patients, he said.

To make a living, he took a job evaluating some of Seattle’s most violent incarcerated felons.

After interviewing nearly 100 murderers — in an effort to understand their mental states at the time they committed the murders — Liebert became interested in the field, he said.

Some of the killers remembered everything, while others — completely dissociated at the time — couldn’t remember a thing. Some felt remorse while others would go back and do it again.

“We all have our thresholds,” Liebert said. “Under the right circumstances, when pushed, we do things that are out of character and we call it a dissociated state … a percentage of murders are done in that state of mind … without the capacity to formulate specific intent.”

However, about 10 percent of serious violent crimes, including murder, are committed by the seriously mentally ill — men and women who might not be prone to violence if they were treated properly, Liebert said.

Liebert said he doesn’t believe the amount of serial killers is on the rise in America, but incidences of episodic violence and rampage murder, such as school and mall shootings, do appear to be increasing beyond the growth of the population, he said.

Liebert can only speculate about the reasons, he said, but the trend toward financially-managed mental health services is definitely a factor.

In the 1950s and 1960s, seriously mentally ill patients were housed in state mental hospitals — many of which were run quite well, according to Liebert.

He worked in mental hospitals before major tranquilizers like Thorazine were introduced in the late 1950s and the change was dramatic, he said. Many of the more bizarre and violent behaviors could essentially be cleared with the drug.

“It didn’t take long for the ‘bean-counters’ who were paying for the state hospitals to do the math and figure out that a couple doses of Thorazine a day and a couple visits to the psychiatrist every month was a lot cheaper than paying for the hospitals,” Liebert said. “Gradually, they started shutting the hospitals down.”

Nowadays, state mental hospitals are managed primarily by finance, according to Liebert — meaning they’re essentially impoverished and provide only minimal services to patients.

As a result, domestic violence, child abuse, substance abuse, episodic violence and bullying are all contributing to increases in violence.

“Violence begets violence,” Liebert explained.

The increases are likely to continue until engines are reversed and there’s a return to clinicalization of mental health services, Liebert said.

Seung-Hui Cho, the college student who murdered 32 people at Virginia Polytechnic Institute on April 16, didn’t go for an appointment, Liebert said, and that’s part of the tragedy of what profession-als call “de-institutionalization.”

Liebert was already contracted to write a book exploring episodic violence and rampage murder when Cho went on a killing spree earlier this year, he said, and since many know the case, it will serve as the front end to enter the field.

The book, which is due out in June, is a textbook for criminology students and law enforcement professionals, Liebert said, but it will also likely be converted into a trade book for general audiences.