Dr. Clint VanZandt appeared on NBC’s The Today Show to discuss a potential serial killer targeting black males in Michigan. Click here to watch the video on TODAYshow.com.

Dr. Clint Van Zandt Interview on NBC Today Show Video Transcript

>>> let’s begin this half hour with a heartbreaking story about an american mother accused of murdering her own children in scotland. we have nbc’s martin fletcher in london with the latest on this story. martin, good morning.

>> ann, good morning. it is tragic. she’s still in serious condition in the hospital, but she’s been arrested and charged with murder killing her three children.

>> reporter: it appears to be a tragic tale of divorce and desperation. a mother who rather than surrender her children chose to allegedly kill them. sources say the woman from bakersfield, california, slit the throats of their twins and their 5-year-old sister, cecilia. her husband, the children’s father, an oil executive, has asked for privacy, quote, at this difficult time. she said in a statement, our family is struggling to come to terms with the immense and tragic loss of three beautiful children. an autopsy was carried out on the children friday. the results have not been made public, but following the autopsy, teresa riggi, 46 years old, was charged with murder. reports indicate that after killing the children, she caused a gas explosion, hoping a fire would conceal the murders, then jumped 40 feet from a balcony. in america, her mother said teresa, an accomplished violinist and doting mother, feared she’d lose custody of her children. in scotland where she took her children riding, instructors couldn’t believe it.

>> we didn’t understand it, but i don’t know if anybody does.

>> reporter: the parents were going through a bitter divorce. after teresa riggi failed to turn up at a custody hearing last week, the judge warned the children may be in danger. but social workers said by the time they received the judge’s instructions, the children were already dead. friends and family say they can’t understand it. they say teresa home schooled her children. her whole world revolved around them. ann?

>> martin fletcher, thanks.

>>> former profiler clint van zant joins us now. good morning.

>> hi, ann.

>> three beautiful children, a mother charged with their murder. based on your experience and what we know from this case, what do you think happened here, clint?

>> well, unfortunately, what we see happens a lot of times, ann, three to five children are killed every day in the united states by their own parents. 200 women kill their children every year in the united states. and at least a dozen of the 50 women on death row in america are there because they killed their own children. so even though you and i say, you know, as parents, i mean, we would give up our lives to save our children, there are, unfortunately, others out there who wouldn’t. and, in fact, in a case like this, may use the death of the children to punish the other biological parent.

>> you know, the statistics, let’s take a pause here. those statistics are chilling.

>> chilling.

>> i think most americans have no ideas that the numbers are that high. what other factors play into this? i mean, especially given that we’ve just heard from martin’s report that this mother was so dedicated to her children, she actually home schooled them, that she loved them so much, and that’s what everyone says about her.

>> sure. well, we look back at famous cases, susan smith, the south carolina mother who put her two children in car seats and drove the car into a lake to drown the children so she would be more marketable to her new boyfriend. and andrea yates, the texas woman who drowned her five children in the bathtub, believing in her own challenged mind that the children were going to have problems later in life. so in her mind, she thought she was saving them by killing them. so there are various reasons. but we can even go back to, you know, third century greek tragedies where the wife of jason, of jason and the argonauts, killed her two sons to punish her husband because he was having an affair with another princess. so this goes back in antiquity and forward the challenges. but the terrible thing is that innocent children wind up being pawns many times in these terrible battles between biological parents.

>> well, clint, if this happens so often, let’s talk about what signs we should be looking for. the people who know teresa– obviously, she’s charged. we don’t know the outcome of that case.

>> yeah.

>> they say they found no signs. but are there signs? is it possible that there wouldn’t be signs before something like this happens?

>> i doubt that seriously, ann. just like the case last week of the man who killed eight coworkers in connecticut in a violence in workplace, in a situation like this, there are always signs, increased pressure, signs of mental and physical challenge. we just choose to overlook them. we choose to miss them. in this woman’s case, we know that about a month ago she grabbed the three children, and she ran away from the family home. she hid someplace else. her husband knew she was experiencing challenges. in fact, told the court eventually that the children could be in danger. but by the time that information was conveyed, it was too late by the time they were located, the children were dead.

>> it looks like it was, from what we’ve been able to gather, just the day before they were found that he made that report. clint van zandt, thank you for your perspective.