Mommy Black’s background is in academia. At a very young age, she recognized that, while she had an interest in psychology and human behavior, she had very little patience for friends’ patterns of poor choices (see “Evolve or die” later). Her fascination with sexual predators began around 12-years-old, when she read The Minds of Billy Milligan; after which, she read all of the books on serial killers, their victims, and their psychology that she could get her tiny little hands on. As a teen, she gravitated toward the odd and macabre and spent most of her time with the AP Goth kids (super smart weirdies). Incidentally, her dark background is what led her to choose the name Mommy Black (← the best color [or absence of color] evaar)!

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At 16, Mommy Black graduated from High School and while attending college, she volunteered at The Alliance Against Family Violence as a sexual assault crisis counselor. During college, she studied in England for a year, Mexico for a summer, and graduated with a BA in Psychology from UC San Diego. Her favorite class, and one that had the most lasting impression, was a behavioral neuroscience course. She learned the limitations of human perception and the concept that two people experiencing the same event can have two very different memories of what occurred (our brains are nutty).

 

While others in her classes prepared for future study as clinicians, Mommy Black knew that she was more interested in pursuing research. She wanted to know the causes and mechanics behind predatory behavior - nature vs nurture - and why the switch to commit crimes flipped-on for some and not for others. At the time, the only higher learning institution in the United States that offered advanced training in Criminal Profiling was John Jay College of Criminal Justice in NYC; so, off she went to the Big Apple.

 

While earning her MA in Forensic Psychology, she met lots of great (and twisted people). She quickly discovered effective ways of coping with extremely disturbing subjects (hello, darkest sense of humor on Earth). After graduating, she began working on a research project for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York.

In 2001, Mommy Black received a graduate fellowship for the PhD program in Criminology. She moved to Albany to further her understanding of research design and criminalistics, while she continued her work remotely with the OCME. However, on 9/11 everything changed. Everything.