Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
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Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 2: The Crack City Strangler The Homicides of serial killer Benjamin
Speaker 2: Atkins offers a chilling, in depth account of the horrifying
Speaker 2: crimes committed by one of America's most notorious serial killers.
Speaker 2: Award winning journalists VR Bates delves into the twisted life
Speaker 2: of Benjamin Tony Atkins, whose reign of terror in Detroit
Speaker 2: spanned less than a year in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Known for targeting vulnerable women in Detroit's most dangerous neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: Atkins attacked at least twelve women, killing eleven along a
Speaker 2: mile and a half stretch of Woodward Avenue, one of
Speaker 2: the city's most iconic streets. Akins' crimes were brutal and relentless,
Speaker 2: leaving victims abandoned in the dark corners of the Cast
Speaker 2: Corridor and Highland Park. Only when the lone survivor of
Speaker 2: his horrific spree came forward did law enforcement begin to
Speaker 2: connect the dots and ultimately capture the monster behind the
Speaker 2: killings through meticulous research. In this second book, in her
Speaker 2: murders in the Motor City series, Bates uncovers the complex
Speaker 2: web of motivation, abuse, and desperation that led Atkins to
Speaker 2: target sex workers, while also exploring the societal pressures and
Speaker 2: systemic neglect that shaped his dark path. A poignant look
Speaker 2: at a killer psychology, Baits invites readers to understand how
Speaker 2: this troubled life could give rise to such monstrous behavior.
Speaker 2: The book that we're featuring this evening is The Crack
Speaker 2: City Strangler, The Homicides of serial killer Benjamin Atkins, with
Speaker 2: my special guest, journalist and author br Baits. Welcome to
Speaker 2: the program. Welcome back to the program, and thank you
Speaker 2: very much for this interview, bur Baits.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me back.
Speaker 2: On Congratulations on this latest book, The Crack City Strangler.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, thank you. It's been a labor of love
Speaker 3: in some ways and I'm glad to see it released.
Speaker 2: Now. First question, how did you come to be involved
Speaker 2: in this book project? Tell us about the genesis of
Speaker 2: this book.
Speaker 3: This book really followed from the first book I did,
Speaker 3: and the Murders and the Motor City series. I researched
Speaker 3: the case of John Eric Armstrong for the first book,
Speaker 3: The Baby Doll serial Killer, and that really came from
Speaker 3: meeting one of the people who had worked the case
Speaker 3: back in the day, back in the nineteen nineties early
Speaker 3: two thousands, doctor Jerald Cliff. He had always thought that
Speaker 3: the case would make a good book project. So we
Speaker 3: have a mutual friend who introduced us, and then the
Speaker 3: collaboration went from there. And I enjoyed the research so much.
Speaker 3: I'm really a big follower of true crime on television,
Speaker 3: and so I really enjoyed this research because I felt
Speaker 3: like it returned me to my journalism, roots, to my
Speaker 3: newspaper roots, for one thing. But I just found it
Speaker 3: so fascinating. And so when I finished that book, I
Speaker 3: wanted to work on another. And when you talk about
Speaker 3: Detroit serial killers, Armstrong is a big one, but this one,
Speaker 3: the subject of the second book is another well known
Speaker 3: Detroit cereal.
Speaker 2: Give us the setting in nineteen ninety one, Detroit and
Speaker 2: Highland Park and the state of the city at that time.
Speaker 2: As you write in this book.
Speaker 3: Well, Detroit has added its ups and downs. Detroit is
Speaker 3: doing great nowadays. If you go to the city, if
Speaker 3: you go to downtown, it's like a whole different city.
Speaker 3: I live there in the latter nineteen nineties, from nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five to two thousand and two or so, and
Speaker 3: I saw a lot of changes in the downtown at
Speaker 3: that point. And that was a few years after this
Speaker 3: case took place. But at the time, Detroit was really
Speaker 3: not doing well. If you went through downtown on a
Speaker 3: Sunday morning, like I often did, because living there, I'd
Speaker 3: get out and walk like early on the weekends, and
Speaker 3: it was like a ghost town. There was no one around.
Speaker 3: Definitely a lot of economic troubles, lot of economic depression,
Speaker 3: and so not a very pretty place.
Speaker 2: You take us to a central figure in the story,
Speaker 2: and her name is Darlene Saunders, and she knew a
Speaker 2: person as Tony. She had known him for say, four
Speaker 2: years beforehand, but she knew him as Tony in the
Speaker 2: area around Woodward Avenue. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about Darlene Saunders, how she ends up on the streets
Speaker 2: at this time. Tell us a little bit about Darlene Saunders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Darlene, she had a family, she had kids, she
Speaker 3: had been married, but she did have an addiction to
Speaker 3: drugs and she was very very honest about that later
Speaker 3: on after this case was being investigated, And so she
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time on the street. And there
Speaker 3: was one particular night that she was out walking and
Speaker 3: she would go to and fro here and there, and yeah,
Speaker 3: she knew this guy named Tony. She had seen him
Speaker 3: around a lot. They even smoked together before, and they
Speaker 3: went to some of the same crack houses to make
Speaker 3: their purchases. And so there was one night that she
Speaker 3: saw him and he said, Hey, I've got something to smoke,
Speaker 3: you want to go smoke? And it was a night
Speaker 3: like any other night. There was nothing unusual about it.
Speaker 3: And there was nothing about Tony that gave Darlene any
Speaker 3: feeling like there was any danger. This was just a
Speaker 3: guy that she saw around that everybody seemed to know.
Speaker 3: He was part of the landscape of Woodward Avenue in Detroit.
Speaker 3: And this is where the story takes place. And so
Speaker 3: they went together to an abandoned structure. It actually used
Speaker 3: to be a Howard Johnson's restaurant. It was right next
Speaker 3: to a motel called the Monterey, which was very well
Speaker 3: known in the area and was quite the hotel back
Speaker 3: in the day, maybe the nineteen fifties nineteen sixties. It
Speaker 3: was a great place and a lot of people came
Speaker 3: to stay there. But over time it I think the
Speaker 3: story was it reverted to the city for back taxes
Speaker 3: or unpaid utility, something to that effect. It became abandoned,
Speaker 3: it changed ownership, and somebody tried to make a homeless
Speaker 3: shelter out of it at one time and that didn't fly.
Speaker 3: But it was an empty structure. And so it was
Speaker 3: sitting there on Woodward Avenue, which is essentially Detroit's main
Speaker 3: street and Highland Park's main street, and so sitting there
Speaker 3: right in the center of town, and there was a
Speaker 3: Howard Johnson's restaurant also abandoned as part of it, on
Speaker 3: the same property, and so Darlene and Tony went over
Speaker 3: and they were sitting outside, like right probably near the
Speaker 3: entrance of the restaurant, and they were going to smoke,
Speaker 3: but Tony suggested, you know, it's a little breezy out here,
Speaker 3: let's go inside. And so they went inside, and that's
Speaker 3: really when things went sideway. He had other things on
Speaker 3: his mind than getting high, and so he started to
Speaker 3: assault Darlene. She tried to fight him off. He actually
Speaker 3: raped her, and then at one point in the scuffle,
Speaker 3: he was trying to drag her deeper into the building,
Speaker 3: like down to the basement, and she knew that that
Speaker 3: was really bad news, and so she fought him off
Speaker 3: even more. She was able to, I guess, knock him
Speaker 3: off his feet, kick him or whatever to get him
Speaker 3: off his feet so that she could get a few
Speaker 3: steps out the door. And at that point she's yelling
Speaker 3: and screaming, and someone nearby heard her, and that man
Speaker 3: yelled back, Hey, where are you at? I hear you?
Speaker 3: Where you at? And Atkins was coming out after her.
Speaker 3: He was right behind her out the door of this restaurant,
Speaker 3: and then he heard the other voice, and so it
Speaker 3: was enough to make him run off. And that's what
Speaker 3: really saved Darlene's life. Well, a combination of things, but
Speaker 3: that certainly helped immensely in ending the assault and saving
Speaker 3: her life.
Speaker 2: Now, you're right, does she report this incident to police?
Speaker 2: And if not, why not?
Speaker 3: Yeah, she thought about it, but when you are on
Speaker 3: the street, and she was admittedly not just doing drugs
Speaker 3: on the street, but she was working prostitution, and so
Speaker 3: she was trying to get extra money. She was trying
Speaker 3: to buy drugs. She's part of that culture, and a
Speaker 3: lot of females who are in that culture will tell
Speaker 3: you that going to the police really doesn't help things
Speaker 3: for them. Oftentimes the police do not believe them, and
Speaker 3: oftentimes they won't really investigate anything even if they do
Speaker 3: believe the story. So she considered it, but she let
Speaker 3: it go and she did not report it at that time.
Speaker 3: This is in the fall nineteen ninety one, and she
Speaker 3: would see Tony around town still. She even ran into
Speaker 3: him at a crackhouse not long after that, and she
Speaker 3: asked him. He was standing at the door of this
Speaker 3: crack house and she was about to go in, and
Speaker 3: he was holding the door for her to go in,
Speaker 3: and she said, Tony, why did you do that? And
Speaker 3: he said, I don't want to talk about it. And
Speaker 3: it was such an eerie, chilling encounter, but it did
Speaker 3: not do anything to help how she felt about being
Speaker 3: assaulted by him. So as time went on, she did
Speaker 3: decide to make a report to police. She thought about
Speaker 3: it and thought about it, and then of course as
Speaker 3: the case progressed, it was in the news. And that's
Speaker 3: really what drove her to the police in March to
Speaker 3: file a report. Is when people realize that police realized
Speaker 3: there was a serial killer in Detroit and Highland Park
Speaker 3: and three women were found on the same day at
Speaker 3: the Monterey Motel. And so at that point Darlene is like,
Speaker 3: I think that could be Tony. So she went to
Speaker 3: the police in March, but unfortunately, they took a report,
Speaker 3: they listened to her, they logged it, but then nothing
Speaker 3: came of it. It was basically just a dead report
Speaker 3: until months later when some phone calls and some more
Speaker 3: conversations finally caused police to bring her into the station
Speaker 3: and really hear her story. So that's said because that
Speaker 3: could have if it was better investigated at the time,
Speaker 3: it could have saved some lives.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go back now, because you now introduce some
Speaker 2: of the characters that go missing and encounter this mysterious
Speaker 2: Tony person. Patricia Cannon George last seen by her family
Speaker 2: around Thanksgiving November twenty eighth, nineteen ninety one. She was
Speaker 2: one of eight siblings and she went by the name
Speaker 2: pat You provide the account of this serial killer talking
Speaker 2: about how he lured this woman, Tricia Cannon George to
Speaker 2: her death. Tell us about some of the things the
Speaker 2: ruse he uses. We talked about Darlene Saunders. What was
Speaker 2: the ruse according to the serial killer to lure Patricia
Speaker 2: Cannon George to her death?
Speaker 3: It was all about drugs. Every one of these women
Speaker 3: who he encountered, who he assaulted, they were all working
Speaker 3: prostitution and they were all doing drugs. They were all
Speaker 3: basically addicted to drugs. And for a lot of these
Speaker 3: women living at risk on the street, that is what
Speaker 3: puts them out on the street is an addiction to drugs,
Speaker 3: and so they're trying to get money to get their drugs.
Speaker 3: And so, just like with Darlene, it's just really casual. Hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I got something to smoke. Let's go smoke.
Speaker 3: Let's go party. Sometimes it was an invitation to have sex,
Speaker 3: but it was always involving drugs. It was all like,
Speaker 3: I've got this, I know you want to smoke some
Speaker 3: so let's go. Let's go smoke. So that's the way
Speaker 3: it was with Patricia Cannon George as well, and then
Speaker 3: things escalated from there.
Speaker 2: You introduced Valerie Brown, Chalk again. Her family reported her
Speaker 2: missing at some point. Tell us about Valerie Brown Chalk
Speaker 2: and her family's search for her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was one that her family. You know, I've
Speaker 3: heard prostitutes called the missing missing, Like when a female
Speaker 3: who's working doing sex work on the street comes up missing,
Speaker 3: she's the missing missing And I heard that on a
Speaker 3: true crime TV special one time, and really it addresses
Speaker 3: the idea that before she ever really disappears, she's missing
Speaker 3: from her family too. And that's how a lot of
Speaker 3: these family members feel about their loved one who's on
Speaker 3: the street, is that, Okay, I never see her. And
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of the time when the female does,
Speaker 3: like if something like this does happen, they don't even
Speaker 3: realize it for a while. The police go to question
Speaker 3: and them it's like, okay, I last saw her on
Speaker 3: the seventh or wasn't the tenth, And you know, it's
Speaker 3: really hard to even pinpoint when she actually disappeared, which
Speaker 3: is very sad. But for Valerie Brown Chalk, her family
Speaker 3: intensely missed her and knew right away when she was gone.
Speaker 3: She was very much loved. She had grown up in
Speaker 3: a good family, a nuclear family. She went to church.
Speaker 3: She sang in the choir. She had a beautiful voice,
Speaker 3: her son told me. And she had kids, and so
Speaker 3: she was definitely missing that her family when she came
Speaker 3: up missing. This was the fall nineteen ninety one too.
Speaker 3: She probably is the second person killed by Tony, the
Speaker 3: third or fourth person attacked, depending on how you count it.
Speaker 3: When she came up missing, it was also like late
Speaker 3: November early December, and they put up flyers all over town.
Speaker 3: They made a big deal out of it. And then
Speaker 3: later on in the case when women started being found
Speaker 3: and unidentified, because these females do not exactly carry a
Speaker 3: driver's license and generally they have to be identified. Later,
Speaker 3: when these females started being found, Valerie's family came to
Speaker 3: the police station. You know, I want to know if
Speaker 3: this might be Valerie, and so her prints were run
Speaker 3: a number of times to try to id her. But
Speaker 3: it wasn't until several weeks later when she actually was
Speaker 3: found in id positively.
Speaker 2: Well, let's explain before we introduced another victim, Vicky and Truelove.
Speaker 2: But let's explain how the bodies were discovered at the
Speaker 2: Monterey Hotel.
Speaker 3: There was it seemed to be a familiar refrain in
Speaker 3: this case that okay, all of the women involved in
Speaker 3: this case were found in abandoned structure, abandoned houses or
Speaker 3: buildings of some kind, and often they were found because
Speaker 3: someone went in looking for something to fix the toilet
Speaker 3: at their house, or look, there were scrappers. They basically
Speaker 3: were scrappers going into these buildings, and that tended to
Speaker 3: be often how these women were found. And that was
Speaker 3: the case with the Monterey Motel, is that someone went
Speaker 3: into the motel. It was well known to be abandoned
Speaker 3: and it was used quite a lot actually, because there
Speaker 3: was just trash everywhere all through the motel, every room.
Speaker 3: This was a two story motel with like two wings
Speaker 3: or two buildings, I guess you would say, and it
Speaker 3: had quite a few rooms in it and they were
Speaker 3: all trashed, and people were coming and going all the
Speaker 3: time to do drugs and to have sex or to
Speaker 3: stay the night. Homeless people slept there. In fact, Tony
Speaker 3: slept there quite a few times. So a scrapper came
Speaker 3: in and was looking for parts and went into the
Speaker 3: bathroom of one of the rooms and saw what looked
Speaker 3: like a part of a human being, and so ran out,
Speaker 3: got the police the police were called. Highland Park Public
Speaker 3: Safety responded to the call and it was in the
Speaker 3: afternoon on February seventeenth and nineteen ninety two, and so
Speaker 3: they arrived and you know, they started processing the scene.
Speaker 3: They called in their evidence text, yes, we do have
Speaker 3: a dead body here, and then they realized, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe we should look around in the motel. And so
Speaker 3: sure enough they did a sweep of the motel and
Speaker 3: they found two other females in two other rooms, again
Speaker 3: in the bathroom. All three women left in the shower
Speaker 3: stuff of the bathroom of a room, but at different times.
Speaker 3: It was pretty clear they were killed at different times,
Speaker 3: but they were fairly decomposed. And so that really blew
Speaker 3: this case wide open because a few other females had
Speaker 3: been found up to that point, a couple other There
Speaker 3: was two people found in December, there was one or
Speaker 3: two I think two in January. So two in December,
Speaker 3: two in January, and then in February. They had to admit, okay,
Speaker 3: we've got a serial killer here, because this is the
Speaker 3: same mo this is the same demographic of female victim,
Speaker 3: same victimology every time. And the case crossed between Detroit
Speaker 3: and Highland Park and then Detroit and Highland Park really
Speaker 3: realized they had been working on the same case for
Speaker 3: a couple months now. So, yeah, that was the Monterey Motel.
Speaker 3: It was a big, a big event.
Speaker 2: In this case, you've met the mo but we haven't
Speaker 2: talked about that. In that case, there is very very
Speaker 2: similar similarities in as far as how the bodies were found,
Speaker 2: how the victims were found. They were bound behind their back,
Speaker 2: but he also put one of their socks most times
Speaker 2: in their mouth, then secured that sock as a gag
Speaker 2: with either torn shirt or sweater material that he have
Speaker 2: or he'd find, and placed that around her head to
Speaker 2: secure that gag. Also, they were strangled affixiation through strangulation
Speaker 2: and so. But what they found in many of these
Speaker 2: scenes was initially frustrating them was that there was a
Speaker 2: lot of evidence among potential debris or so there was
Speaker 2: a lot that they had to sort through. They didn't
Speaker 2: know what was relevant evidence in those crime scenes, but
Speaker 2: they had all those similar characteristics which once they did
Speaker 2: put their head together. And you do write about the
Speaker 2: again constant theme I think that police don't cooperate between jurisdictions.
Speaker 2: So tell us about the Highland Park Public Safety and
Speaker 2: also the Detroit Police Department. And also how this Paul
Speaker 2: Lindsay from the FBI gets involved in this case.
Speaker 3: M Highland Park Public Safety. The Highland Park had its
Speaker 3: own struggles over the years, its own financial difficulties. One
Speaker 3: time it was the headquarters of Chrysler, and Henry Ford
Speaker 3: built a big plant there that produced the Model T.
Speaker 3: So it grew up with the auto industry and it
Speaker 3: flourished through the thirties, forties, fifties, but then Chrysler left.
Speaker 3: Later Henry Ford shut that plant down, and so it
Speaker 3: came down when the auto industry left too, and so
Speaker 3: Highland Park was definitely financially struggling. And their fire and
Speaker 3: safety at that point had been combined into one department.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't always that way. They used to have
Speaker 3: separate police and fire departments, but at that time, in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one and nineteen ninety two, it was a
Speaker 3: combined department and it had oh gosh, I think that
Speaker 3: I spoke with John Maddox, who was the director of
Speaker 3: Highland Park Public Safety at the time, and I think
Speaker 3: what he told me is they had ninety two people,
Speaker 3: ninety two staff members. But when they got a murder.
Speaker 3: It was big. They were a small town and it
Speaker 3: in some ways it felt like a small town. Darling's
Speaker 3: son Rashat, even told me that that, yeah, it was
Speaker 3: like a small town, like everybody kind of knew everybody else.
Speaker 3: And when you're from Highland Park, it is more of
Speaker 3: a small town feel. And this town is only is
Speaker 3: only about three or so square miles and it's centered
Speaker 3: right on Woodward Avenue, which also runs right up through
Speaker 3: the center of Detroit, and Highland Park is what they
Speaker 3: call an enclave that is completely surrounded by the city
Speaker 3: of Detroit, so it's a city within a city. But
Speaker 3: the Highland Park Public Safety they first had found the
Speaker 3: body of Debbie Friday in mid December nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 3: and for them that was a big thing. Detroit at
Speaker 3: that time, believe it or not, saw about six hundred
Speaker 3: in some homicides in the year nineteen ninety one. Highland Park,
Speaker 3: in contrast, would see about twenty nineteen or twenty homicides
Speaker 3: around that time nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety one to
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two, and so a dramatic difference. And so
Speaker 3: they investigated their mid December find quite strenuously, and then
Speaker 3: when it came to later December, and then in early January,
Speaker 3: there were a couple more victims, but they were found
Speaker 3: in Detroit, and so Detroit logged those crime scenes, but
Speaker 3: perhaps did not approach them in the same way because
Speaker 3: Detroit saw a lot of homicides. So after the start
Speaker 3: of nineteen ninety two, then these women start they keep
Speaker 3: showing up. There was another one in January. As I mentioned,
Speaker 3: the two jurisdictions still don't realize that this is a
Speaker 3: single perp who has killed all of these females. But
Speaker 3: as you know, they do see the similarities. They see
Speaker 3: the sock in the mouth. That is not every time,
Speaker 3: but it's often he did that. He definitely gagged them,
Speaker 3: and he definitely bound their hands behind them, and he
Speaker 3: strangled them. And so they were seeing the similarities in
Speaker 3: these cases. But Hyland Park really felt it first, and
Speaker 3: their guys got together in public safety, they're detectives that
Speaker 3: were investigating this case. They're like, you know, we got
Speaker 3: to go to Detroit and we got to have a
Speaker 3: meeting with them. We got to all sit down, we
Speaker 3: got to share notes, because this is the same guy.
Speaker 3: This has got to be the same guy, and so
Speaker 3: they arranged a meeting. About six or seven officers between
Speaker 3: Detroit and Highland Park both got together and they had
Speaker 3: a meeting. But the inspector they called that job position
Speaker 3: and basically was the leadership of homicide at the time.
Speaker 3: His job title was inspector. He was part of the meeting,
Speaker 3: but he said, no, this is not a serial killer.
Speaker 3: This is not a serial killer. He pretty adamantly opposed
Speaker 3: that idea that I was a serial killer. And so
Speaker 3: the Highland Park public safety officers got pretty frustrated. They
Speaker 3: came away from that meeting frustrated thinking, well, this didn't
Speaker 3: help at all because we're not sharing notes, we're not
Speaker 3: sharing knowledge, we're not any closer to finding this guy
Speaker 3: because they're not even willing to admit that as a
Speaker 3: serial killer. And so time went on and eventually, through
Speaker 3: some more conversations and some more maybe pressure than other
Speaker 3: agencies were brought in as women continued to be discovered.
Speaker 3: Then we had the Michigan State Police being pulled in.
Speaker 3: We actually had the FBI, the Detroit office of the
Speaker 3: FBI get pulled in. Even the Wayne County Sheriff's department
Speaker 3: got pulled in. So Eventually, as this investigation went on
Speaker 3: in the ensuing months, it became an inner agency task force.
Speaker 3: And that's what really helped helped the investigation.
Speaker 2: Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: you say there's a hunt for a serial killer. Police
Speaker 2: don't want to release that officially, and you say that
Speaker 2: one of the central characters in this from Highland Park,
Speaker 2: Jim Dobson, had to ask a reporter what a serial
Speaker 2: killer even was.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, actually that was John Maddox, the director of
Speaker 3: public safety. Yeah that you know, serial killers, I guess
Speaker 3: had their heyday in the eighties and nineties. And there
Speaker 3: was a reporter at the Detroit News at the time.
Speaker 3: His name was Corey Williams, and he knew John Maddox
Speaker 3: over at Island Park Public Safety, and yeah, John was
Speaker 3: really not familiar with the term serial killer. I guess
Speaker 3: perhaps it was a relatively new term at that point
Speaker 3: in the late eighties early nineties. And so this reporter
Speaker 3: from the News, I think he lent him a book
Speaker 3: that talked about serial killers, and he told him about
Speaker 3: the case of the Green River killer, which is pretty
Speaker 3: well known, and that helped him you know understand, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is a thing, this whole idea of a serial killer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: kind of funny.
Speaker 2: Let's get to you went. Let's go back and let's
Speaker 2: talk about Darlene Saunders again. You say that she had
Speaker 2: this violent encounter with who she thought was a person
Speaker 2: named Tony. She saw him again a couple times. She
Speaker 2: even confronted him and said, why'd you do that to me?
Speaker 2: She finally calls police, makes a report. It's ignored, but
Speaker 2: at some point other people intervene and get police to
Speaker 2: listen to what she has to say. Tell us about
Speaker 2: that effort.
Speaker 3: Yes, she knew someone who worked in a Highland Park
Speaker 3: public safety. She knew an officer named Donna, and then
Speaker 3: she had I don't know if it was her brother
Speaker 3: or Rashad. I talked to her son Rashad about this
Speaker 3: and he said, yeah, it was my uncle who called
Speaker 3: the station and said, you know, you people are finding
Speaker 3: these women and you had a police report in March
Speaker 3: on the guy that could be this killer, and you
Speaker 3: didn't even listen to Darlene when she told you about this.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, this was a family member of Darlene
Speaker 3: who called the police and really advocated on her behalf
Speaker 3: and just really pressed into the police and said, you
Speaker 3: told her to go home. You said go home, Darleyne.
Speaker 3: We're not even listening to you. Just go home. Because
Speaker 3: I guess the police knew her. Rashad told me that
Speaker 3: the police had seen her around and they knew Darley.
Speaker 3: And Darlene actually had been a business owner in Highland
Speaker 3: Park at one time with her husband. They owned a
Speaker 3: hardware store and so they were well known in the
Speaker 3: community for that too. But at the time she filled
Speaker 3: out a report in March, they just like shook their
Speaker 3: head and just sent her home. And so it took
Speaker 3: a couple people to advocate for her and tell the police,
Speaker 3: you really need to take this seriously. And so finally
Speaker 3: at that point, it was Jim Dobson that you had
Speaker 3: mentioned before at Highland Park Public Safety. He was the
Speaker 3: officer in charge of this case, and he was the
Speaker 3: one who brought Darlene in and finally gave her the
Speaker 3: audience that she needed and that they needed as well
Speaker 3: to help break this case open.
Speaker 2: So tell us about this journey that they take, because
Speaker 2: she thinks she can identify him and see him again,
Speaker 2: so somebody has to take her up on this offer
Speaker 2: and that person dresses up as a homeless person to
Speaker 2: aid in this Search'll tell us about this search for
Speaker 2: the serial killer.
Speaker 3: Well, as I mentioned, this was an inner agency task
Speaker 3: force at this point, and this is August nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: Probably July is when they started involving Darlene in the investigation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it was July when she came in and
Speaker 3: was able to talk with Jim Dobson about this. But
Speaker 3: it was a Michigan State trooper named Royce Alston, and
Speaker 3: so he was part of this task force. He was
Speaker 3: one of the officers that was going to help out
Speaker 3: with this case. And they were pursuing different leads. They
Speaker 3: actually had a couple different suspects who had come and
Speaker 3: gone in the investigation. They had a couple people they
Speaker 3: were looking at pretty seriously that they thought looked good
Speaker 3: and then it just fizzled out. So they were pursuing
Speaker 3: other leads, and to them, Darlene was one of the
Speaker 3: leads that they were pursuing. What she was saying about
Speaker 3: this tony guy, Okay, you know, maybe we'll find this
Speaker 3: guy and talk to him and see if it goes anywhere.
Speaker 3: So she was one of those leads, and Royce Elston
Speaker 3: was assigned to help that lead along. And that meant
Speaker 3: that the two of them grabbed an old plunker car
Speaker 3: and they drove around the Woodward Avenue area of Detroit
Speaker 3: where all of these women had turned up. Along Woodward Avenue,
Speaker 3: that was the hunting ground for Tony. And so they
Speaker 3: drove around because Darlene was, yeah, like you said, pretty
Speaker 3: sure that she was going to see him again. She
Speaker 3: had seen him around a lot, and she had seen
Speaker 3: him before the attack, and she had seen him after
Speaker 3: the attack. So he was out there, and so she
Speaker 3: wanted to id him and so they rode around. They
Speaker 3: drove around, but then they also walked around. They were
Speaker 3: on foot part of the time too, and she took
Speaker 3: him into places that law enforcement were not they were
Speaker 3: not even aware of. Crack houses and places of ill
Speaker 3: repute all over Woodward Avenue in the Cast Corridor, a
Speaker 3: lot of seedy joints, a lot of places that you
Speaker 3: wouldn't even know they were there from the outside. And
Speaker 3: you kind of have to know if you know, you know.
Speaker 3: And so he kind of joked to me when I
Speaker 3: interviewed him that he said, well, there were a couple
Speaker 3: of places he went to that he had to wait
Speaker 3: a few days, but then after that he had the
Speaker 3: cops go in and raid the place because it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is a new place we had never seen before.
Speaker 3: It was several weeks that he took Darlene out, and
Speaker 3: then finally one night in August, it bore fruit and
Speaker 3: she spotted Tony.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. You have a very vivid scene in this
Speaker 2: book where they talk about they were driving and she
Speaker 2: was very very talkative, and then she spotted them, and
Speaker 2: he saw her hyperventilating and noticed that there was something
Speaker 2: dramatically wrong and she had indeed spotted this Tony.
Speaker 3: Now, Darley, you will admit that, or she would admit
Speaker 3: she has passed since then in more recent years, but
Speaker 3: she would admit at the time that she was still
Speaker 3: even on drugs. Even at this point. She really did
Speaker 3: not get off the drugs until they quite literally locked
Speaker 3: her up after the arrest of the perp, just to
Speaker 3: make sure that they could have her for trial because
Speaker 3: she was so important for this case. They actually put
Speaker 3: her under house arrest. I guess maybe you would say
Speaker 3: it wasn't until that point that she got off the drugs.
Speaker 3: So when she was with Royce Aalston. She was sometimes
Speaker 3: high and he had a handful on his hands, you know.
Speaker 3: He had a little bit of trouble sometimes getting her
Speaker 3: to focus because she was telling them all kinds of
Speaker 3: stories about her life on the street and it was
Speaker 3: very lively. And so at the night that they finally
Speaker 3: that she finally spotted Tony and this was near the
Speaker 3: Cast Corridor, which Woodward kind of goes into this area
Speaker 3: of Detroit that's called the Cast Corridor where cass Avenue is,
Speaker 3: and she saw him, I think it was at a payphone,
Speaker 3: and she reacted. She just reacted so like you said, hyperventilating,
Speaker 3: and that's how he described it to me, like she
Speaker 3: just all of a sudden, you know, started going a
Speaker 3: little bit crazy next to him in the car, and
Speaker 3: he's like, okay, Darlene, calmed down, calmed down, and she said,
Speaker 3: it's him. It's him. And he said, calm down, you
Speaker 3: have to focus. You have to be absolutely sure because
Speaker 3: I might have to kill this man, so you have
Speaker 3: to be sure. And so yeah, she finally said, over
Speaker 3: and over, it's him, it's him, It's Tony. And so
Speaker 3: at that point he got out of the car and
Speaker 3: he drew his weapon and he walked up to him
Speaker 3: and he said Tony, and he looked at him and
Speaker 3: he said yes, and he said do you know who
Speaker 3: I am? And Tony said yes, and he said who
Speaker 3: am I? And Tony said, you're the state trooper has
Speaker 3: been looking for me so so much for that cover.
Speaker 3: You know, word gets around on the street, and so
Speaker 3: Royce Elston told him. He said you have two choices,
Speaker 3: and he said, okay, what are my choices? And he
Speaker 3: said you could lay down or die? And Tony said,
Speaker 3: I'd choose to lay down and that was it. He
Speaker 3: called for backup, and well he had actually already called
Speaker 3: for backup. A backup arrived and they were able to
Speaker 3: make the arrest and bring the guy in, and as
Speaker 3: it turns out, it was Tony and it was the
Speaker 3: killer that they were looking for.
Speaker 2: And that person is a person named Benjamin Atkins.
Speaker 3: M hm. Yes, that was his real name, even though
Speaker 3: he had come on police radar a couple times previously
Speaker 3: and he had given different names. One time, he even
Speaker 3: gave his brother's name to police.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Benjamin Thomas Atkins, you say that right away.
Speaker 2: Police try to hide the arrest from the media. They
Speaker 2: just arrested him on a misdemeanor, but they were ready
Speaker 2: and set to question him. And you say that they
Speaker 2: set up a room and they had people observing, and
Speaker 2: then they put in somebody that was very skilled interrogation,
Speaker 2: you write, and that was a person named Ron Sanders
Speaker 2: from the Detroit Police Department.
Speaker 3: Yes, they had set up they had this building that
Speaker 3: was converted from a school and the police, Detroit police
Speaker 3: were talking about now Detroit had used it now and
Speaker 3: then for these kind of purposes, maybe to question of
Speaker 3: suspect or for offices or whatever. And it was a
Speaker 3: location that the media did not know about. It was
Speaker 3: over it Brush Street in Detroit, and so they decided
Speaker 3: to use that location. They had been followed, these police
Speaker 3: officers who were working this case had been followed around
Speaker 3: by the media. The TV news anchors or reporters were
Speaker 3: following them. They were going to the station and feeling
Speaker 3: the hood of their cars to see if they had
Speaker 3: just been out, they had just gotten back or whatever.
Speaker 3: And so even Jim Dobson, he had a really good
Speaker 3: friend who was a high profile TV reporter in Detroit,
Speaker 3: and he even asked her, It's like, why do you guys,
Speaker 3: why are you guys doing this stuff? You know, we're
Speaker 3: trying to We're trying to solve the case here, basically, like,
Speaker 3: you know, why is the media so aggressive? And so
Speaker 3: they knew that the media really wanted to blow this
Speaker 3: wide open if there was a suspect in custody, and
Speaker 3: so they did keep it on the down low. They
Speaker 3: questioned him I think a day and a half or
Speaker 3: so after he was arrested, and they questioned him at
Speaker 3: this obscure location that nobody really know about knew about.
Speaker 3: And then when they were finally able to draw the
Speaker 3: confessions out of him, that's when everything really went crazy
Speaker 3: in the media and everybody started talking about Benjamin Atkins,
Speaker 3: and the media went out and interviewed people he knew,
Speaker 3: people in the building where he sometimes lived with his brother,
Speaker 3: and people who knew him growing up, you know, anybody
Speaker 3: they could find to learn more about this mysterious character
Speaker 3: of Benjamin Atkins.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, it's very interesting with this Ron Sanders,
Speaker 2: he has a different interrogation technique. Many police officers will
Speaker 2: employ certain techniques to try to relate to the killer, saying,
Speaker 2: what about the families? You can sleep at night? This
Speaker 2: guy had a completely different approach. And also many officers
Speaker 2: would approach slowly and gradually and listen to the story
Speaker 2: even though they knew it was nonsense or ridiculous. Ron
Speaker 2: Sanders had a different approach. Tell us about his different approach.
Speaker 3: I think, what are the big differences? And the way
Speaker 3: that he explained it to me when I interviewed him.
Speaker 3: A lot of the time, when police are interrogating a suspect,
Speaker 3: especially a suspect that is possibly a killer, they might
Speaker 3: use this technique where they make the victim seem a
Speaker 3: little meaningless. Well, you know, they were just prostitutes. I
Speaker 3: can understand you got upset, you know whatever. They try
Speaker 3: to sympathize with the suspect, almost take their side and
Speaker 3: try to assume the view that that suspect is taking
Speaker 3: of the victim. Well, that was not Ron Sanders. Ron
Speaker 3: Sanders went into that room where Atkins was sitting and
Speaker 3: went right at it with him. How'd you get those scratches?
Speaker 3: You got scratches on your arms? How'd you get them? Well?
Speaker 3: Atkins said, my boyfriend did that because he was claiming
Speaker 3: to be gay at the time, and that did not
Speaker 3: go anywhere with police. That just kind of went up
Speaker 3: into the air and disappeared. But he claimed, Okay, my
Speaker 3: boyfriend did that. You know, things get a little rough. No,
Speaker 3: your boyfriend did not do that. That was the women
Speaker 3: you cam hold. And so he was very aggressive, went
Speaker 3: head on and just nailed them to the wall. Because
Speaker 3: from Ron Sanders' perspective, what the angle that he really
Speaker 3: was going to play was one of redemption. Okay, you
Speaker 3: did this. Now, don't worry about whether or not you
Speaker 3: did this, because we know you did this. Worry about
Speaker 3: your own redemption. So that was the angle he was
Speaker 3: going for, is what's going to happen to you? You know,
Speaker 3: we already know you did it. So it was a
Speaker 3: very aggressive method that he used, and it did cause
Speaker 3: Atkins to break. At one point he was finally, okay,
Speaker 3: I did them all. I'll tell you about it. And
Speaker 3: he told about all eleven women, and he even talked
Speaker 3: about Darlene, the one survivor that we knew about at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 2: What's most shocking is how he explains his killing technique
Speaker 2: where he would choke them unconscious and then he would
Speaker 2: rape them. He would then they would they would be revived,
Speaker 2: he would rape them again, he would choke them out again,
Speaker 2: and eventually he would strangle them completely and then make
Speaker 2: sure the air was out of them. He would check
Speaker 2: their pulse, their heartbeat, and then he would make sure
Speaker 2: the air was all out of her body. So he
Speaker 2: did this over and over again. When these victims didn't he.
Speaker 3: Yes, there was a certain torture element to what he
Speaker 3: was doing. Beyond the fact that he was killing these
Speaker 3: women and he was strangling them to kill them, there
Speaker 3: was a little bit of a torture element in that
Speaker 3: he did talk to police about the idea of choking
Speaker 3: her out, letting her pass out, then letting her wake up,
Speaker 3: and deliberately doing that. Sometimes a victim would just wake
Speaker 3: up like he was in the process. He often raped
Speaker 3: them after they passed out. That tended to be what
Speaker 3: he did. And sometimes they would just start to wake up,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't like he was allowing them to wake
Speaker 3: up so much as they just started to wake up,
Speaker 3: because that does happen with strangulation. Unfortunately, that does happen
Speaker 3: to wear You can pass out and then wake up again,
Speaker 3: and this can happen repeatedly. So, but there were times
Speaker 3: when he deliberately as if to torture them, let them
Speaker 3: wake up, and then strangle them again and finally finished
Speaker 3: them off. But he was very methodical about when he
Speaker 3: was going to leave them. He absolutely made sure that
Speaker 3: they were dead. And that was one thing that in contrast,
Speaker 3: John Eric Armstrong, the other Detroit serial I mentioned, did
Speaker 3: not do. He often left them alive and they later died.
Speaker 3: Sometimes he left them alive and they survived, and sometimes
Speaker 3: he thought they were dead, and sometimes I think he
Speaker 3: even thought they were alive and that was fine. He
Speaker 3: just left. So it's weird. That was a weird situation
Speaker 3: with him psychologically. But for Atkins, he definitely made sure
Speaker 3: that they were dead. And he had read in a book.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a library, a very well known
Speaker 3: library right there on Avenue that I imagine he even
Speaker 3: wandered into because he largely was homeless and he did
Speaker 3: not have a whole lot of schooling. But he said
Speaker 3: he read in a book how to make sure a
Speaker 3: person is gone. In that you press, you make sure
Speaker 3: that all the airs out of their lungs, You check
Speaker 3: their pulse, you listen for breathing. You know, you check
Speaker 3: for their breath out of their mouth, and so he
Speaker 3: would follow these steps every time to make absolutely sure
Speaker 3: that she was gone. She was dead. And he did
Speaker 3: tell police that he killed them because he did not
Speaker 3: want them going to the police to tell their story.
Speaker 3: And so that's interesting. It kind of makes you wonder, Okay,
Speaker 3: was he just out to rape and assault them to
Speaker 3: overpower them and he didn't really want to kill them.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I tend to think he just really
Speaker 3: was going to kill them all along. But the way
Speaker 3: that he phrased it to the police is that he
Speaker 3: killed them so that they could not tell the police
Speaker 3: their story. But yes, he did absolutely make sure that
Speaker 3: they were dead.
Speaker 2: The press plays it up finally with man confesses he's
Speaker 2: a serial killer. You say that initially or earlier on,
Speaker 2: when there was just a few bodies four or five,
Speaker 2: it wasn't even a blip on the radar, But now
Speaker 2: it's more than a blip on the radar, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, And it was. It made pretty big news. I
Speaker 3: want to say, it even made national news. But by
Speaker 3: the time he was tried, and even the verdict at
Speaker 3: his trial was I think maybe not even given as
Speaker 3: the attention that it probably should have had, unfortunately, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean to me, it's a big case. Eleven people
Speaker 3: in the span of about six to nine months. We
Speaker 3: know when his last murder was. That was CEC Weimer
Speaker 3: on the last day of May nineteen ninety two. If
Speaker 3: you backtrack from there, the first one could have been
Speaker 3: November or December, so it really could have been a
Speaker 3: span of as little as six months that he killed
Speaker 3: eleven people, and that to me is pretty significant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have the names Valerie Chalk, cc Weymer, Vicky Truelove,
Speaker 2: Bertha Mason, Patricia George, Juanita Hardy, an unknown woman you
Speaker 2: just call fifteen unfortunately, Debbie Friday, Joanne O'Rourke, Brenda Mitchell,
Speaker 2: Vicky Brown, and of course the survivor, Darlene Saunders.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we do know about one more survivor. Her
Speaker 3: assault happened the December before Darlene, so December nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: and she has never told her story until now. Her
Speaker 3: assault was not quite as violent. Her assault didn't really
Speaker 3: get physical like they had gone off. She knew Miss
Speaker 3: Tony again and they went off to smoke something, and
Speaker 3: he became a different person after he got high, and
Speaker 3: she realized, Okay, this is getting a little weird, and
Speaker 3: he was going to go for her throat and she
Speaker 3: was able to fight him off and basically talk her
Speaker 3: way out of that situation. In a nutshell, that's what
Speaker 3: happened with Margie. But so we know even of an
Speaker 3: additional survivor, and it really makes you wonder how many
Speaker 3: other how many others there could have been to varying degrees,
Speaker 3: like how many other encounters Atkins had with females on
Speaker 3: Woodward Avenue where maybe it didn't get that violent, or
Speaker 3: it could have become that violent. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: guess we won't know.
Speaker 2: Tell us about the planned prosecution and the defense for
Speaker 2: Benjamin Atkins.
Speaker 3: The planned prosecution, I think the prosecuting attorney, Michael Reynolds,
Speaker 3: who has since passed on, I think he was very
Speaker 3: much in the lead up to trial anticipating an insanity defense.
Speaker 3: And indeed, the defense attorney, Jeffrey Edison did file emotion
Speaker 3: to allow for an insanity defense. So you know, when
Speaker 3: you have a guy that's idd by an assault survivor,
Speaker 3: and he actually had DNA evidence against him too from
Speaker 3: a couple of the scenes, and he's made all these confessions.
Speaker 3: So it comes time to trial, what on earth are
Speaker 3: you going to do to defend this client? You're going
Speaker 3: to probably go for an insanity defense. And so Atkins
Speaker 3: was evaluated by four different psychologists or psych psychiatrists in
Speaker 3: the let me see. He was arrested in August nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two. His trial began in January nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: so a year and a half or so, he was
Speaker 3: a valued evaluated by forty different professionals, and most of
Speaker 3: them well. The first two were for the record's court
Speaker 3: in Detroit, the Detroit City Court system, and then one
Speaker 3: was for the prosecution to basically establish, okay, he's not insane,
Speaker 3: and then the defense also had a professional evaluate him
Speaker 3: to hopefully say, yes, he is insane, but they were
Speaker 3: not able to do that. The psychiatrist who was hired
Speaker 3: by the defense, doctor Bramski, did do a pretty good
Speaker 3: evaluation of Atkins and brought up lots and lots of issues,
Speaker 3: but would not go so far as to say that
Speaker 3: he was insane. He did diagnose him with what he
Speaker 3: felt was a borderline personality disorder because at that point
Speaker 3: Atkins as things progressed with these evaluations, at Kins started
Speaker 3: to talk about hearing voices and started to imply or
Speaker 3: say that he was hearing voices and he had sort
Speaker 3: of alternate personalities who had egged him on to commit
Speaker 3: these crimes. And so doctor Bramski for the defense, did
Speaker 3: talk about the voices that Atkins claimed to hear, and
Speaker 3: he did believe that Atkins was hearing something was believing
Speaker 3: that he was hearing these voices. But he diagnosed Atkins
Speaker 3: with what he called splitting, and so not split personality,
Speaker 3: but splitting, which is a little bit different. And what
Speaker 3: it came down to, though, is that Atkins was not
Speaker 3: determined to be insane, so that sort of defense was
Speaker 3: just not going to work. But on the other side,
Speaker 3: Michael Reynolds had cueued up some people to testify for
Speaker 3: the prosecution who knew him. Atkins occasionally had a regular job.
Speaker 3: He worked at a pizza place, for instance, and so
Speaker 3: the prosecution had talked with some people who worked with
Speaker 3: him pizza place, and he seemed pretty normal. Never talked
Speaker 3: about hearing the voices there, you know, never talked about
Speaker 3: gaeling people, never talked about any of that stuff. They
Speaker 3: were preparing to head that insanity thing off at the past,
Speaker 3: and of course they were successful with it.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, what we haven't spoken about is that
Speaker 2: he talked to these psychiatrists, and psychiatrists were willing to
Speaker 2: testify to the damage done or the trauma done during
Speaker 2: his early background, his family background, and one of the
Speaker 2: most profound things that did elicit some sympathy from people
Speaker 2: when they look at this case is that at an
Speaker 2: early age, he and his brother were taken by their
Speaker 2: mother in a vehicle while she did perform sex acts
Speaker 2: on tricks on clients in the front seat of a car.
Speaker 2: So he very well knew what their mother did, but
Speaker 2: also got to had to witness the sex acts as
Speaker 2: a young child.
Speaker 3: That opens up a whole other area of this case
Speaker 3: that is a very very significant one, and that is
Speaker 3: at Kins's childhood, his upbringing. He had his brother was
Speaker 3: one year older, and they had all the same experiences
Speaker 3: growing up essentially, but they had a mom who was
Speaker 3: addicted to heroin and was working prostitution herself, and so yes,
Speaker 3: when they were little boys. What Atkins told police right
Speaker 3: away when he was making those confessions, and he and
Speaker 3: Ron Sanders were talking about this idea of redemption, and
Speaker 3: he was even telling Ron Sanders, don't tell my mom
Speaker 3: about any of this, which, you know, it was obvious
Speaker 3: that there was a lot going on there with him
Speaker 3: and his mom. And he did tell Sanders at that
Speaker 3: point that, yeah, mom used to take us along, me
Speaker 3: and my brother along. We'd be in the backseat and
Speaker 3: she would be in the front seat with a client.
Speaker 3: And so Atkins witnessed that as a very young child.
Speaker 3: And that was only part of the trauma that he suffered.
Speaker 3: He did suffer a great deal of trauma. So yes,
Speaker 3: those are things that came out in the psychological evaluations
Speaker 3: that were done for Atkins in his lead up to
Speaker 3: trial as well. And all of those factors are things
Speaker 3: that would just make you shake your head and think, Okay,
Speaker 3: no wonder, I mean, no wonder. We talk about nature
Speaker 3: versus nurture. But it was a very troubled life that
Speaker 3: Atkins led before his arrest at a very young age
Speaker 3: of only twenty three years old. He was a young man,
Speaker 3: but he had seen a lot in his life, a
Speaker 3: lot of trauma.
Speaker 2: Let's get to this very important factor, possibly potentially in
Speaker 2: this case, you right and near the end of this
Speaker 2: book that Atkins realized that he had HIV, and so
Speaker 2: the lawyer, his attorney said he had HIV and realized
Speaker 2: that at the time. Tell us how if that were true,
Speaker 2: that he knew he had HIV at that time, how
Speaker 2: that would factor into the motivation for these murders.
Speaker 3: I really believe, I really believe that was in there
Speaker 3: somewhere that as far as his mindset. He died in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven. And we all remember, well not all
Speaker 3: of us, but a lot of us were around back
Speaker 3: then when HIV and AIDS first hit the news. That
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember hearing about Rock Hudson and hearing
Speaker 3: Freddie Mercury, my beloved Freddie Mercury, who I loved very
Speaker 3: very much, these high profile cases, and it was known
Speaker 3: when AIDS first came on the pop culture radar. I
Speaker 3: guess you'd say that if you were diagnosed as having HIV,
Speaker 3: your life expectancy back then, before the drugs and the
Speaker 3: technology that we have now, the advancements, the scientific advancements,
Speaker 3: your life expectancy back then was about ten years. That
Speaker 3: was the general idea. And so he died in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, so you would think that he had had
Speaker 3: it for quite a few years. Now. I've heard at
Speaker 3: least one pop that worked the case that I was
Speaker 3: talking with him about this and he said, well, it
Speaker 3: is possible that he got it in prison and he
Speaker 3: just happened to die, and then you know, he died
Speaker 3: with it instead of of it. I guess you would say, yes,
Speaker 3: that's entirely possible. But I also remember back then you
Speaker 3: could get an HIV test completely anonymously. You could be
Speaker 3: given a number to where anybody do the testing would
Speaker 3: never even know your name, So you could completely anonymously
Speaker 3: get an HIV test, and it was protected, very much
Speaker 3: protected information even back then. And so it's possible he
Speaker 3: went to clinics from time to time. When he had
Speaker 3: his encounter with C. C. Weimer, he had to go
Speaker 3: get stitches at Detroit Receiving Hospital that morning the end
Speaker 3: of May June first, actually early morning hours, he got stitches.
Speaker 3: So he had to go to clinics and hospitals now
Speaker 3: and then, and he did get tested. There are medical
Speaker 3: records of his getting tests, and that kind of test
Speaker 3: would not be in these medical records necessarily, And so
Speaker 3: I really really in looking at all the case files.
Speaker 3: I really have to believe that he knew that he
Speaker 3: had HIV before he started killing these women, and so
Speaker 3: the defense attorney, Jeffrey Edison, did remember knowing it at
Speaker 3: the time before he has tried, but it did not
Speaker 3: come out in any of this. Nowhere, in any of
Speaker 3: this at trial or anywhere any questioning by police or
Speaker 3: anything like that, did this ever come out. And it
Speaker 3: could have been fairly explosive, I think as far as mindset,
Speaker 3: again back to the mindset and possible motive, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I am not a lawyer, so I shouldn't never even
Speaker 3: pretend to be a lawyer to know anything really about
Speaker 3: the law. But it just really makes me wonder what
Speaker 3: a factor it might have been. It was sort of
Speaker 3: in the case of Benjamin Atkins, it was sort of
Speaker 3: almost a footnote, Okay, nineteen ninety seven and this notorious
Speaker 3: serial killer has died behind bars, and oh he died
Speaker 3: with or of HIV. So it was kind of like that.
Speaker 3: But I just have a feeling it was more important
Speaker 3: than that, But again that's just my personal feeling.
Speaker 2: Very interesting, Darlene Saunders goes to court and testifies and
Speaker 2: it's a very very good witness, and you have that
Speaker 2: documented in this book, and the judge lauded her for
Speaker 2: her courage for coming forward and basically crack this case
Speaker 2: open with her courage by coming forward.
Speaker 3: Yes, she was definitely key to the case. You do
Speaker 3: have to wonder at what point he would have been
Speaker 3: arrested without Darlene to actually to actually get them off
Speaker 3: the sidewalk that night in August. I don't know, because
Speaker 3: he did have a cooling off period after C. C.
Speaker 3: Weimer end of May. He did tell police later that
Speaker 3: he got off drugs at that point he was trying
Speaker 3: to clean things up, but I think he had done
Speaker 3: that a few times before and so he probably likely
Speaker 3: would have bounced back into it and then start of
Speaker 3: killing again. So it is an interesting question. Okay, if
Speaker 3: there had not been a Darlene in the picture in
Speaker 3: this investigation, how much longer would this have gone on? So, yes,
Speaker 3: she was very important, and I hope that she realized that.
Speaker 2: There was various monikers for this killer, like the Woodward
Speaker 2: Avenue Court or Woodward Corridor Killer. There's another couple ones
Speaker 2: that were bandied about. But the title of this book
Speaker 2: is the Crack City Strangler tell us how you came
Speaker 2: to that title, and yeah, just tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about where that title came from.
Speaker 3: The Crack City Strangler was something that he was actually
Speaker 3: called at the time. During the investigation before Atkins was
Speaker 3: arrested in August of that year, this was all over
Speaker 3: the media, like I said, and there was a paper
Speaker 3: in camp that did a very splashy center is a
Speaker 3: tabloid newspaper. They did a splashy color center spread story
Speaker 3: on the case, and in that story they dubbed him
Speaker 3: the Crack City Strangler. Now they're over there in Canada
Speaker 3: looking at Detroit, like, okay, crack City. I guess that's
Speaker 3: what they were implying. Crack was Atkins's drug of choice.
Speaker 3: Crack is what he used to lure his victims, So
Speaker 3: I guess it possibly makes sense. At the time the
Speaker 3: papers were starting, the papers in Detroit were starting to
Speaker 3: call him the Woodward Corridor Killer or the Woodward Avenue
Speaker 3: Strangler or something to that effect. But yeah, Crack City Strangler,
Speaker 3: that was an interesting title for that paper in Canada
Speaker 3: to give him. And in that same story, I will
Speaker 3: note and this is crazy, and this also goes back
Speaker 3: to the previous thing. I think you know where I'm
Speaker 3: going with this. That that newspaper, the writer of that story,
Speaker 3: this is summer nineteen ninety two, before he was identified,
Speaker 3: they speculated that this killer, this serial killer that was
Speaker 3: being hunted down, could possibly have HIV and maybe got
Speaker 3: it from someone on the street and it sent him
Speaker 3: on a bit of a rampage starting to kill people.
Speaker 3: So that was interesting that the paper speculated that.
Speaker 2: They also you write that they also speculated that he
Speaker 2: was seeking revenge over treatment from his mother.
Speaker 3: Ah, yes, yes, wow, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 2: and talking about the Crack City strangler, the homicide of
Speaker 2: serial homicides of serial killer Benjamin Atkins. And this is
Speaker 2: Murders in the Mortar City Book two for those people
Speaker 2: that might want to take a look a further look
Speaker 2: at this. Do you have a website or do any
Speaker 2: social media? I know that you include your email at
Speaker 2: the end of this book.
Speaker 3: I have the domain brbaits dot com. So if you
Speaker 3: go to brbaits dot com, there's links to the books,
Speaker 3: there's links to different things, interviews that I've done, including
Speaker 3: with yourself, and that kind of thing. A little bit
Speaker 3: more of what went into the books a little bit
Speaker 3: more of a description of the book. So yeah, brbaits
Speaker 3: dot Com. I'm also on Instagram. I think it's brbaits
Speaker 3: dot author or something to that effect. I do YouTube,
Speaker 3: i do Pinterest a little bit too. I'm on Reddit,
Speaker 3: so I'm in different channels under br baits right.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, br Bates, The Crack City Strangler,
Speaker 2: The Homicides of serial killer Benjamin Atkins, Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for this interview, and you have a great interview,
Speaker 2: and good night, Thank you, Thank you so much.