Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Gaesy, Bundy, Dalhmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 2: On May thirty first, nineteen eighty five, two days before
Speaker 2: her high school graduation, Erry Smith was abducted from the
Speaker 2: driveway of her family home in South Carolina. Based on
Speaker 2: the crime scene and the abductors repeated and taunting calls
Speaker 2: to the family, law enforcement quickly realized they were dealing
Speaker 2: with a sophisticated and highly dangerous criminal. A letter arrived
Speaker 2: the next day entitled Last Will and Testament, in which Sherry,
Speaker 2: knowing she was to be murdered, wrote bravely and achingly
Speaker 2: of her love for her parents, siblings, and boyfriend, saying
Speaker 2: that while they would miss her, she knew they would
Speaker 2: persevere through their faith. The abduction rocked her quiet town,
Speaker 2: triggering a massive man hunt and bringing in the FBI,
Speaker 2: which enlisted profiler John Douglas. A few days later, a
Speaker 2: phone call told the family where they could find Sherry's body.
Speaker 2: Then nine year old Deborah may Helmick was kidnapped from
Speaker 2: her yard, confirming the harsh realization that Smith's murder was
Speaker 2: no random act. A serial killer was evolving, and the
Speaker 2: only way to stop would be to use the study
Speaker 2: of criminal behavior to anticipate his next move before he
Speaker 2: could kill again. Douglas devised a risky and emotionally fraught
Speaker 2: strategy to use Sherry's lookalike older sister Dawn as bait
Speaker 2: to draw out the unknown subject. Dawn and her parents
Speaker 2: courageously agreed. One of the most haunting investigations of Douglas's
Speaker 2: story career, this case details how the eerily accurate profile
Speaker 2: he created, alongside his carefully crafted and stage managed manipulation
Speaker 2: of the killer psychology, combined with dedicated police work and
Speaker 2: cutting edge forensic science to end a reign.
Speaker 3: Of criminal terror.
Speaker 2: As Sherry's family took incredible personal risks to lure her
Speaker 2: killer from the shadows, Douglas and the FBI pushed criminal
Speaker 2: profiling to its limits, culminating in one of his most
Speaker 2: dramatic and effective confrontations with a sadistic and remorseless killer.
Speaker 2: The book that we're featuring this evening is When a
Speaker 2: Killer Calls, a haunting story of murder, criminal profiling, and
Speaker 2: justice in a small town, with my very special guest,
Speaker 2: legendary FBI criminal profiler and best selling author, John Douglas.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 2: this interview.
Speaker 3: John Douglas. Hello, Welcome to the program. John Douglas. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining me.
Speaker 4: You've been busy, You've done so many reviews. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you. I've had the privilege of working with
Speaker 3: people like yourself. It's a great thrill and it's an
Speaker 3: honor to be able to be able to discuss a
Speaker 3: book like When a Killer Calls with you. Let's talk
Speaker 3: about first as you do in the book When a
Speaker 3: Killer Calls May thirty first, nineteen eighty five, and tell
Speaker 3: us a little bit about Sherry Smith and her family
Speaker 3: and what she was doing on May thirty first, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, on May thirty first, nineteen eighty five, Scherry Face
Speaker 4: Smith was at a pool party earlier that day with
Speaker 4: her friends and her boyfriend. And it's a Friday, and
Speaker 4: on Sunday, she's going to be graduating from high school.
Speaker 4: She'll be singing the national anthem. She had a beautiful voice.
Speaker 4: She was going to be in a music major. And
Speaker 4: in looking back on the case at that time, then
Speaker 4: we learned that they were before they came home. They
Speaker 4: were in a parking lot at a store, probably you know,
Speaker 4: saying goodbye or kissing each other. But little did they
Speaker 4: know that someone was watching them. This is in Lexington,
Speaker 4: South Carolina. And so she drives home and she gets
Speaker 4: to front of her house as a mailbox. The house
Speaker 4: sits back about two hundred yards from the mailbox. Mister
Speaker 4: Smith is in the front room. He has an office.
Speaker 4: He looked out. He sees she drives up in a
Speaker 4: little car chavette, and she's usually does that and checks
Speaker 4: the mail. So she's seen going to the mailbox. Really
Speaker 4: doesn't pay attention anymore. He leaves the room and he
Speaker 4: comes back about five ten minutes later, and he sees
Speaker 4: the car down there, But where's his daughter. His daughter
Speaker 4: is not there, So he jumps in his own car
Speaker 4: and he drives down to the mailbox. The car is
Speaker 4: still turned on. Her handbag is on the front seat
Speaker 4: passenger seat. In that handbag besides her valuables, there's medication
Speaker 4: that she must take. She has a rare form of diabetes,
Speaker 4: and if she doesn't take that medicine, she just will
Speaker 4: become dehydrated so quickly unless she just drinks really gallons
Speaker 4: of water at a time. There's a set of footprints
Speaker 4: she's coming from a pool party, shen't have shoes on,
Speaker 4: footprints from her vehicle to the mailbox, but not coming
Speaker 4: back away from the mailbox. And then there's mail on
Speaker 4: the ground in front of the mail bucks. She's nowhere
Speaker 4: to be seen. And so this is how it begins
Speaker 4: that the family then contacts the police. The police right
Speaker 4: away they think, well, you know, maybe she ran away. Now,
Speaker 4: that doesn't fit the profile. The family says, there's nothing.
Speaker 4: You know, she would not be a runaway. She has
Speaker 4: graduating Sundays singing in the national anthem. So sheriff mets
Speaker 4: for Lexington County Sheriff's Department. They create the biggest man
Speaker 4: hunt at that time ever in the state of South Carolina.
Speaker 4: I'm back at the Chronico and at the time we're
Speaker 4: not a unit yet. I'm the program manager. I have
Speaker 4: about six agents assigned to me to train them in
Speaker 4: criminal profiling. And I got these agents in three eighty
Speaker 4: eighty four, and most of them came in eighty four.
Speaker 4: In beginning eighty five, after I nearly died on the
Speaker 4: Green River murder case, those of Red mind Hunter I
Speaker 4: know collapsed on the on that case, had viral encephalitis,
Speaker 4: immune system, was shot and nearly died, came home paralyzed
Speaker 4: and had to go through rehab for months and months.
Speaker 4: At the point in my life too where I thought,
Speaker 4: my I came so close to death that I have
Speaker 4: what it takes anymore, because the doctor said is as
Speaker 4: they were planning to bury me, that his brain has
Speaker 4: been fried to a crisp. I had such a high
Speaker 4: theater when I was in a coma. But anyway, so
Speaker 4: we get the call, and so we will provide a
Speaker 4: preliminary analysis, uh, you know, on the on the case.
Speaker 4: Not right away. It's going to be a couple of days,
Speaker 4: like within a day or so when because now the
Speaker 4: the offender. I've never had a case like this in
Speaker 4: my career where the offender is calling the family. He's
Speaker 4: using some type of electronic device. We thought to change
Speaker 4: his voice tone and you know, and and pitch, and
Speaker 4: he is telling the family that that he has Sherry,
Speaker 4: you know, and here we're like together with one God
Speaker 4: and at giving them hope that their daughter is alive.
Speaker 4: You know, what is the motivation? Is it ransom? No,
Speaker 4: he's not asking for money. Is a sexual motivation? Yes,
Speaker 4: it's probably going to be a sexual motivation and involved here.
Speaker 4: But why does the offender feel compelled to call the family, open,
Speaker 4: taunt up and taunt them believing that their daughter is
Speaker 4: still alive? And so at that point in time, the
Speaker 4: undershriff will come up to Chronica with crime scene because
Speaker 4: what will happen next is that he will give very
Speaker 4: detailed directions where her body is found a couple of
Speaker 4: days later. And you could tell from first you can
Speaker 4: tell from the tape, you can audio tapes. You can
Speaker 4: tell that just when he speaks, he's very very obsessive, compulsive,
Speaker 4: and when he's talking to the family, if he's interrupted,
Speaker 4: it just he has to backtrack it. He can't, he
Speaker 4: loses his train of thought. And so but now he
Speaker 4: gives these directions to find the body of Sherry days smith.
Speaker 4: He doesn't say that she's dead. He just says that
Speaker 4: in fact was plural that like will be there, you'll
Speaker 4: find kind of like us, we will be there and
Speaker 4: he's telling the other sister this dawn the directions, and
Speaker 4: to give such detailed directions, it's kind of reinforced the
Speaker 4: research we were conducting how offenders will go back through
Speaker 4: the crime scenes that the victims aren't aren't found, you know,
Speaker 4: right away, for various reasons, some to symbolically roll in
Speaker 4: the dirt and relive and fantasize about the crime like
Speaker 4: Ted Bundy did, and many many you know, others, but
Speaker 4: details that he had to go back to come up
Speaker 4: with these specific details. And so it's when now her
Speaker 4: body is going to be found and we're still we're
Speaker 4: not dispatched down there yet because at any given time, Dan,
Speaker 4: we're working you know, at that time, at the time,
Speaker 4: he could be working maybe a couple of hundred cases.
Speaker 4: At that time when I retire from the bureau, we
Speaker 4: were doing a thousand cases a year, and these cases
Speaker 4: Linum just stay open until new leads are developed. So
Speaker 4: then now with the death of sheriffs, they smith the
Speaker 4: undershriff comes up. And what's advantageous to us is that
Speaker 4: the under sheriff and the sheriff both attended the FBI
Speaker 4: Academy's National Academy course and it's an eleven week course
Speaker 4: that they take from police from all They come in
Speaker 4: from all over the world to this eleven week program.
Speaker 4: It's very prestigious. They take various courses from forensic science, firearms,
Speaker 4: to management courses and behavioral science. And it was in
Speaker 4: that behavioral science class that each of them took where
Speaker 4: they learned about this new investigative tool they're calling criminal profiling.
Speaker 4: And so it was because of that. You know, a
Speaker 4: lot of the cops when they take that course and
Speaker 4: they see these cases, they think, I will never have
Speaker 4: anything they need this and we have crimes like that.
Speaker 4: Well they did, and so he comes up and they're
Speaker 4: very open and which will make it very easy for
Speaker 4: us to work with the police because because sometimes you're
Speaker 4: invited on cases and it doesn't necessarily mean they want
Speaker 4: you there. It's because the pressure may be put on
Speaker 4: them by the media, the general public, or maybe sometimes
Speaker 4: someone who tended the FBI National Academy want you there,
Speaker 4: but you got to happy working with other detectives don't
Speaker 4: want you snooping around on their case. And just so
Speaker 4: the audience knows too, Dan, we get involved in these
Speaker 4: cases under a domestic police cooperation and it's a violation
Speaker 4: that calls sixty two D as in dog sixty two D.
Speaker 4: And if it's a Canadian case, it'll be international police cooperation.
Speaker 4: And what you do, what you're doing here is if
Speaker 4: we have something that another country doesn't have or a
Speaker 4: local police doesn't have something, maybe forensically in this case,
Speaker 4: in this prime analysis, we can get involved in the case.
Speaker 4: We won't prosecute the case, but we will assist the
Speaker 4: local police. So the Lewis McCarty, the un the sheriff
Speaker 4: comes up and we listened to tapes, have the crime scene,
Speaker 4: the crime scene, and then we start drawing up a
Speaker 4: profile based upon what evidence or information that has developed.
Speaker 4: And these crimes dan are. We saw this particular one
Speaker 4: is going to be a white male. It showed a
Speaker 4: degree of some criminals sophistication. First he's using the device
Speaker 4: electronically to alter his voice. Also, we find when we
Speaker 4: found the body there was there was the duct tape
Speaker 4: residue on the face of it of the ferry faced myths,
Speaker 4: sticky substance from the duct tape. And also our hair
Speaker 4: had then cut and it was cut in our opinions
Speaker 4: to make it more easily to remove the duct tape,
Speaker 4: and the reason he removed the duct tape was because
Speaker 4: he didn't want to lead any evidence. Duct tape is
Speaker 4: a good way whenever it's used for the lab to
Speaker 4: develop the fingerprints Slayton fingerprints off of the tape. So
Speaker 4: we come up with that. We come up with an
Speaker 4: age group general. Generally, when you get a case with me,
Speaker 4: I usually start off with violent crime around in the
Speaker 4: twenty five age bracket, and based upon the degree in
Speaker 4: the level of criminal sophistication that we will either deduct
Speaker 4: age or increase. As with him, with how the victim
Speaker 4: was abducted clear daylight at her mailbox. Probably the offender
Speaker 4: has some type of weapon to control or gone nice
Speaker 4: to control, or so we had him placed somewhere in
Speaker 4: the late twenties into the early thirties. With someone like this,
Speaker 4: you would find a criminal history. We believe you just
Speaker 4: don't start off perpetrating this type of crime. So there
Speaker 4: would be crimes from I've seen telephone calls to voyeuristic activities,
Speaker 4: to possibly other cases of abduction or attempted abduction based
Speaker 4: upon the device he was using electritronically to all through
Speaker 4: his voice we believe he would have some he's a
Speaker 4: blue collar, have some kind of background in electrical uh, electronics,
Speaker 4: some type of background there another thing, someone like like
Speaker 4: call me on sut. The unknown subject would not necessarily
Speaker 4: be married. Someone like this cannot sustain a marriage. So
Speaker 4: you'll find I just married and then in divorce. Someone
Speaker 4: like this could not really survive in the military. They
Speaker 4: go in the military like someone particularly at that time
Speaker 4: in the eighties and in the seventies and eighties, a
Speaker 4: lot of some of the in the people I interviewed,
Speaker 4: they joined for the action they wanted to They wanted
Speaker 4: to shoot, They wanted to shoot people. So with Bell
Speaker 4: he we would find out later on arth Under would
Speaker 4: join the military. He didn't get assigned to anything at
Speaker 4: words the scene action so supposedly accidentally shot himself in
Speaker 4: the leg, which got him out of the military. I
Speaker 4: believe he'd probably shot himself purposely because he was not
Speaker 4: getting anywhere doing the things he wanted, you know, to do. Also,
Speaker 4: we believe as time went on that if we get
Speaker 4: a suspects that they'll change their appearance after the crime
Speaker 4: or I mean by that, I mean they could if
Speaker 4: they're heavy, they could lose weight, clean shaven, and grow
Speaker 4: a beer. They have a beerd they'll get rid of
Speaker 4: the beer, try to maybe perhaps establish an alibi, you know,
Speaker 4: as you know as well, we're also looking we have subjects,
Speaker 4: and he will do this. We already know this. He's
Speaker 4: injecting himself into the investigation, like Dennis Rader, who I interviewed,
Speaker 4: like David Berkowitz's son of Sam, or I interviewed like
Speaker 4: the Zodiac case, whose case remains unsolved. So we provided
Speaker 4: that to him and then he took it back to Lexicon,
Speaker 4: told the sheriff and they went public and they said,
Speaker 4: we went to the FBI, we got we know who
Speaker 4: we're looking for. We just now we just have to
Speaker 4: find him. We just have to find him. I will
Speaker 4: not personally get involved in the case. We'll provide on
Speaker 4: site consultation until Sharry's sister Dawn gets a call because
Speaker 4: he's focusing in on the other sister now, and he
Speaker 4: tells her, do you know about this Deborah Helmet case?
Speaker 4: And she's what a Deborah Helmet case? A nine year old? Yes,
Speaker 4: and then he gives directions. This little nine year old
Speaker 4: was abducted in front of her trailer her and her
Speaker 4: parents just moved into her dad was home that day
Speaker 4: and she was adductive about fifty sixty feet from the
Speaker 4: front of that trailer and drives off with her. So
Speaker 4: he's giving directions now to Dawn on where to find
Speaker 4: just like he did with Sherrif Fay Smith, the specifics
Speaker 4: of where we can find her body. And that's what happened.
Speaker 4: Cops went out there, they found the body. Now the
Speaker 4: call comes in from the Lexington Police to to South
Speaker 4: or South Carolina FBI office in Columbia, South Carolina, requesting
Speaker 4: on site consultation. And so that's when I go and
Speaker 4: I get a relatively newer agent in the unit, Ron Walker.
Speaker 4: It's real solid guy, but relatively new in the unit,
Speaker 4: to go with me down to South Carolina. We go
Speaker 4: down to South Carolina, they meet the sheriff again. On
Speaker 4: the sheriff, they take us to all the different locations
Speaker 4: and particularly that the last case held in the case
Speaker 4: and the problem that sheriff says is that the killer
Speaker 4: stopped calling. He stopped calling. We need him to call.
Speaker 4: And this the subject on sub here new enough to
Speaker 4: stay off the phone. He'd have to stay on the
Speaker 4: phone fifteen minutes for us to do at traps and
Speaker 4: trace on the telephone back. Then he would he would
Speaker 4: get off the phone and within minutes, sometimes knowing that
Speaker 4: would be out there and we would find you know
Speaker 4: where he called from a pay telephone booth. We process
Speaker 4: that and send it to the last have the coins
Speaker 4: and everything, looking for any potential, you know, anything for
Speaker 4: instically off him. But so I tell this, he tells
Speaker 4: me he stopped calling. I said, I'll get him to call.
Speaker 4: You'll get him to call. Yeah, I'll get him. I'll
Speaker 4: get him to call. But one thing I want to
Speaker 4: do is I want to meet the family. And number two,
Speaker 4: I want to meet with an investigative reporter. And so
Speaker 4: what happened is I go out to that to the
Speaker 4: family and Robert Smith is a late lay minister. He
Speaker 4: works in the counseling inmates. Even he was a potential suspect.
Speaker 4: At one point we're thinking, or or someone he came
Speaker 4: in contact with in the prisoner is his retaliation perhaps
Speaker 4: against him, But we quickly eliminate, eliminated that the idea.
Speaker 4: So me, I mean, it's it's a terrible situation. People,
Speaker 4: everyone's destroyed, obviously crying and you're coming in on this.
Speaker 4: And and I meet everyone and they thank us, thank me,
Speaker 4: and you know, for trying to help. I said, I
Speaker 4: think we can. I can come up with some idea.
Speaker 4: But I'm kind of hemming and hawn dan, I'm not
Speaker 4: really you know, you know, should I tell him? I should?
Speaker 4: I suggest this idea? And the idea is, and I say,
Speaker 4: mister Smith, is that I can tell and you can
Speaker 4: probably tell, is that if this person is on sub
Speaker 4: here is focusing his attention on your other daughter. Now,
Speaker 4: don I think we got to get him to talk.
Speaker 4: I think we can. We can get him to talk
Speaker 4: if I can work with don and give her some
Speaker 4: skills that we use in hostage negotiation. He was afraid,
Speaker 4: he said, what if he comes and tries to kill
Speaker 4: my daughter? I said, this is not this. This guy's
Speaker 4: a coward, Missus Smith. He's not the type. He's going
Speaker 4: to pull up into your your your driveway here and
Speaker 4: everyone will be you know, be uh protected. And so
Speaker 4: he agrees to this, and then Down takes me into
Speaker 4: Sherry Fay's Smith's bedroom and where she's collector of Koala bears.
Speaker 4: She had dozens of Koala bears. I see what I'm
Speaker 4: kind of thinking in my head, what can I do
Speaker 4: here proactively? And I'm thinking ahead of the funeral memorial service,
Speaker 4: So I take one of the koala bears are real
Speaker 4: small and about three inches where the type week. If
Speaker 4: you squeeze the back of the shoulders, the paws open
Speaker 4: up and then you'll let go and they close. And
Speaker 4: so that koala bear I'll be using at a memorial
Speaker 4: service where I'm going to have Dawn place that Koala
Speaker 4: bear on a flower, and I'm going to have a
Speaker 4: podium painted white and going to have a picture of
Speaker 4: Dawn in the podium. Why am I doing that, Dan,
Speaker 4: Is that from so many of the interviews I've done fenders,
Speaker 4: they will take souvenirs and trophies we call them from
Speaker 4: there from the victims, and when they go to they
Speaker 4: go back to the scenes or they go back to
Speaker 4: the cemeteries for various reasons. In the case of Ted
Speaker 4: Bundy and some others I am My Holley's interview, they
Speaker 4: have sex with the victims even through advanced stages of
Speaker 4: the decomposition. Others go back to symbolically kind of roll
Speaker 4: in the dirt that this nobody, this in significant nobody
Speaker 4: now is becoming infamous as this a serial killer, so
Speaker 4: they kind of fantasize and you know, and relive it.
Speaker 4: So here the goal was to get the guy to call,
Speaker 4: and I worked with an investigative reporter to poetically describe
Speaker 4: what was going to be taking place and what took
Speaker 4: place at that cemetery. And then we're going to have
Speaker 4: we're going to be monitoring all the vehicles. Unfortunately from
Speaker 4: and we had no control over. This should be buried
Speaker 4: very close to the road within they within say one
Speaker 4: hundred feet. We should be risky on the part of
Speaker 4: the subject, but the police would be taking down a
Speaker 4: license place and we would later moving ahead for a second.
Speaker 4: We will later know if we won't catch them the
Speaker 4: way we will ultimately catch him. We would have came
Speaker 4: up with his name, because he did in fact drive
Speaker 4: by and he stopped and we got his plate, and
Speaker 4: then we would have done promote on all these people
Speaker 4: and would have found out that this guy Larry jene
Speaker 4: Belle had called criminal history one of the things. If
Speaker 4: you don't mind me ke talking only she wanted to
Speaker 4: jumped in stand But is the with the calls where
Speaker 4: and the last will and testament that he made Sherry
Speaker 4: Fay Smith wrote saying goodbye to her mother, her father,
Speaker 4: her brother Robert, boyfriend Richard, and she's going to be
Speaker 4: with Jesus now. And I want to have a closed,
Speaker 4: closed casket, not an open casket. So she knew she
Speaker 4: was going to die. She knew, you know, what was
Speaker 4: going to happen to you know, to her, to her body.
Speaker 4: And how someone could write a letter, you know like this.
Speaker 4: When I talked to mister Smith. Even to this day
Speaker 4: we communicate with each other. There's no such thing as
Speaker 4: closure in cases like this. We always talk about closure
Speaker 4: and an arrest been made the guys, but it really
Speaker 4: never really closure. How can you okay, you have an arrest,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't bring back my daughter. But the only
Speaker 4: thing he felt somewhat a bit of closure. It was
Speaker 4: from that last one. Testama knew how strong her daughter,
Speaker 4: his daughter was, when to write that, and knowing that,
Speaker 4: you know, she's going to be with God, and that
Speaker 4: helped him psychologically. It didn't not so much with the mother,
Speaker 4: and she would die not too many years thereafter. And
Speaker 4: I've seen that in so many cases where it's just unbearable,
Speaker 4: but they go through like Patsy Ramsay and the John
Speaker 4: Benny Ramsey cases, Who's cancer Answer Return? And what made
Speaker 4: this guy, this guy not just a serial killer but
Speaker 4: a sadistic serial killer was the taunting of the family.
Speaker 4: And then when he talks to the mother, Hilda on
Speaker 4: this one call and he and he tells, she asks him,
Speaker 4: did my daughter know she was going to die? And
Speaker 4: he says, yes, And I gave her a choice. And
Speaker 4: your daughter was given the choices of a gunshot, drug overdose,
Speaker 4: or suffocation, and your daughter selected suffocation. And that's when
Speaker 4: he duct tapes. He duct taps her head and she says, Oh,
Speaker 4: my God, how good you could you do this to
Speaker 4: my daughter? Oh, please have God forgive us all and
Speaker 4: forgive me, and then he hangs he hangs up on her.
Speaker 4: And so this guy is not a type generally a
Speaker 4: type of serial killer would work. He goes beyond the killing,
Speaker 4: the sexual assault, to the taunting, the police, taunting the
Speaker 4: family and giving them false hope, and then to the
Speaker 4: middle of all this and he's calling out, He's he
Speaker 4: Then he calls and speaks with Down and he says,
Speaker 4: in so many words, what he's telling her is, you
Speaker 4: can't be protected forever, you know, one day, one month,
Speaker 4: one year, like you're next year, you're going to be uh,
Speaker 4: you know, be next So it was important, you know,
Speaker 4: so important to solve the case. The pressure it was,
Speaker 4: it was just you know, you know, I'm unbelievable. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: at the lab, the letter, the last will and testament
Speaker 4: that was that the victim, Sherry Smith wrote, is being
Speaker 4: processed in the lab for air and fiber evidence. And
Speaker 4: they're also using the technique where which will will attempt
Speaker 4: through some electrostatic device. They put a chemical on the
Speaker 4: on the paper they searched for indented handwriting, and so
Speaker 4: we have the last will and testament. Maybe there was
Speaker 4: there were sheets of paper on top of that that
Speaker 4: on sub ripped off before we made her, you know,
Speaker 4: write the last will, you know, in testament. And so
Speaker 4: so we're you know, we're on site work with the family,
Speaker 4: police and everything. It's about two o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 4: one to two o'clock in the morning when they contact
Speaker 4: us in the motel we were staying at that They
Speaker 4: got a great lead, you know, on the case, and
Speaker 4: the lead is is that the lab was able to
Speaker 4: come up with what appeared to be first a grocery
Speaker 4: list on a sheet of paper or that was on
Speaker 4: top of that last hole and testament, maybe several sheets
Speaker 4: on top of that last whole in testament, as well
Speaker 4: as a telephone number. The telephone number the area code
Speaker 4: would take him to Alabama and the prefix so the
Speaker 4: number would take him to Huntsdal, Alabama, and then all
Speaker 4: but one digit was missing and to the prosible in
Speaker 4: the nation. They came up with a telephone number that
Speaker 4: would take him back to the Lexington, South Carolina, to
Speaker 4: a family known as a Shepherd family, and everyone is
Speaker 4: a static, you know this Shepherd family. The under sheriff
Speaker 4: goes out with detectives and knocks on the door, believing
Speaker 4: that they're going to be knocked on the door of
Speaker 4: the killer here. But here comes to the door a
Speaker 4: middle aged man, he stiffish, and his wife same age,
Speaker 4: and they're kind of initially they're disappointed, go inside and
Speaker 4: they pretty much they don't this guy doesn't fit the
Speaker 4: profile here. And they find out that this missus Shepherd
Speaker 4: is is an electrician and he's been away for six
Speaker 4: weeks in California, and he tells him that they've while
Speaker 4: he was gone at someone house sitting here. It was
Speaker 4: an employee of mine as an electrician. His name is
Speaker 4: Larry Jean Larry Jean Bell. They provide him a profile,
Speaker 4: the FBI profile that we did, and the family, the
Speaker 4: husband wife, They look at each other and they say,
Speaker 4: that's described. You're describing Larry Jean Bell. And then they
Speaker 4: played a sample of the audio tape tape of the
Speaker 4: call that he was making and they said, you know
Speaker 4: that's him, you know, you know that's him. Can we
Speaker 4: see his bedroom? And they said yeah, and he slept
Speaker 4: over here. So they go into the bedroom where Belle
Speaker 4: was staying. Also, he looked for a gun. Mister Smith.
Speaker 4: Shepherd left a weapon, a gun, and it wasn't in
Speaker 4: this usual place in the house when they did find
Speaker 4: he did find the weapon. It was recently discharged, they determined,
Speaker 4: and we felt that she was probably when the sheriff
Speaker 4: was abducted, a knife, you know, or a gun. There
Speaker 4: they removed a mattress and under the is a woman
Speaker 4: in a and a bound up and spread eagles with
Speaker 4: with with tape on her. And this is in between
Speaker 4: the two mattresses. So, now, what's going to happen next?
Speaker 4: He iss Unless you want to jump in, Dan, I'm talking.
Speaker 4: I'm talking a lot. I'll tell you how he proceeded
Speaker 4: now to the to the interrogation.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, let's stop for a second to hear these messages.
Speaker 3: The evidence in the break I just cut you off. Sorry,
Speaker 3: But about the condition of of the what what you
Speaker 3: surmised from going into the bedroom of the Shepherd crailer again,
Speaker 3: give us what you surmised what you found?
Speaker 4: Okay? In the within the Shepherd house, Shepherd house was
Speaker 4: they would find a handgun that mister mister Shepherd had
Speaker 4: which was misplaced. Someone removed it. It was probably Bell,
Speaker 4: Larry Larry Bell, who was staying staying there, And underneath
Speaker 4: the between the mattresses was this pornographic magazine. Uh In
Speaker 4: the magazine on the cover was a woman in in
Speaker 4: a crucive fixed position and bound up in a crucifix
Speaker 4: and a bondage type of you know, type of position.
Speaker 4: So pretty much you know they had they know there,
Speaker 4: they got the guy. Now they got Bell. Now whether
Speaker 4: or not he's going to testify, that's another question because
Speaker 4: in South Carolina you have the death penalty, and it
Speaker 4: makes it really difficult to get a confession out of
Speaker 4: somebody unless you provide some type of faith saving scenario.
Speaker 4: So they're going to haul him into to the police station.
Speaker 4: But I tell the sheriff to the they didn't have
Speaker 4: a task force room, So I said, you have to
Speaker 4: create a taskforce room. And so what they had was
Speaker 4: a trailer outside back that they got in a in
Speaker 4: a drug deal and they were able to confiscate that
Speaker 4: from these drug dealers. What we did we made that
Speaker 4: trailer into a command center within within a couple of hours.
Speaker 4: And how do you do that? You put on you know,
Speaker 4: signs a major crime task force. The office you've you
Speaker 4: inside the trailer. We had files upon files of pure
Speaker 4: just to show how thorough the investigation was, with his
Speaker 4: name on the on these file cabinets, victims' names on
Speaker 4: the file cabinets, maps showing with like tape from the
Speaker 4: point where Bell lives where the abduction of the victim
Speaker 4: took place, down back to where the shepherds lived, all
Speaker 4: these these lines everything leading to Bell. And so we
Speaker 4: did that in a couple of hours. We're not going
Speaker 4: to be initially involved in the interviews because of the
Speaker 4: if you got involved so involved in all the interviews,
Speaker 4: all you'd be doing. You wouldn't be able to work
Speaker 4: your cases back in a chronica, you'd just be testifying,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, all the time flying around the country.
Speaker 4: So we try to pick you pick some who would
Speaker 4: best be the right person, you know for a particular interview,
Speaker 4: was to be male, female, a certain age group. Whatever
Speaker 4: we do, you know, something like like that. And we
Speaker 4: had two very experienced detectors and who we felt could provide,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe some type of face saving scenario. So
Speaker 4: they make arrest an arrest of Bell early in the morning.
Speaker 4: He's back living with his with his parents. We actually
Speaker 4: included that in the in the profile as well, and
Speaker 4: they take him the thirty five years of age. Everything fits.
Speaker 4: The other thing too, when I left out, is that
Speaker 4: what the Shepherd family said is that when when Larry
Speaker 4: Gendal picked us up at the airport, and we picked
Speaker 4: us up at the airport, we hardly could recognize him.
Speaker 4: And why is that? Because he lost weight and he
Speaker 4: grew a beard, and he looked so different, and he
Speaker 4: was just seeming pre occupied and he was just obsessed
Speaker 4: about this case about these two young girls being murdered.
Speaker 4: In fact, when he got back to our house, he
Speaker 4: had newspaper clippings. He should he saved us news paper
Speaker 4: clippings to look at these and read about these, you know,
Speaker 4: these two two cases. So they make their arrest. They
Speaker 4: and that is where they arrest them. They find because
Speaker 4: he was so obsessive compulsive, and that was part of
Speaker 4: the analysis too, and how structure he was that when
Speaker 4: he went looked in his closet, everything was lined up
Speaker 4: and neat and orderly. Everything in his vehicle same way, highly,
Speaker 4: highly maintained and rigid. In the garage tools it would
Speaker 4: be like guys like him, we would say, would outline
Speaker 4: a screwdriver like in paint. And so the screw guy,
Speaker 4: screwdriver goes here and the hammer goes there over here.
Speaker 4: They rest him without incident. They take him to the trailer.
Speaker 4: We're not in the trailer. Who are at least going
Speaker 4: to do this. We're with the sheriff and on the sheriff,
Speaker 4: the prosecutor which he calls solicitor. Donnie Myers is his
Speaker 4: name down in South Carolina. His nickname was doctor Death.
Speaker 4: He had so many death murder and death convictions down there,
Speaker 4: capital punishment conditions. So we're waiting, wait and waiting, getting
Speaker 4: we're getting debriefed and they're really not getting, you know, anywhere,
Speaker 4: and we leave. We're me and my partner. We're in
Speaker 4: the under Sheriff's room, and everyone else now is in
Speaker 4: the sheriff's room, and solicitor, sheriff Mets and the under sheriff,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, without warning, the door opens up,
Speaker 4: and here is the prosecutor, the solicitor, with the sheriff,
Speaker 4: under sheriff and the subject Larry Jene Dell. You know,
Speaker 4: we're not even know what was going on. And so
Speaker 4: the solicitor character and Donnie Myers real southern drawl, says Larry.
Speaker 4: He said, you know who these boys are. These boys
Speaker 4: are from the FBI, and they profiled you right down
Speaker 4: to he you know, everything about you. And and so
Speaker 4: Bell is just looking and he's just looking at us.
Speaker 4: We're you know, I'm looking at Bell. And this was
Speaker 4: you know, this was not rehearsed or anything. And then
Speaker 4: they they take off, leaving Bell behind. They leave him
Speaker 4: behind for us to talk. You know, you know tu
Speaker 4: nim so I said, you know, take a seat, And
Speaker 4: so he sits in a couch and I sit on
Speaker 4: like a coffee table in front of him by not
Speaker 4: really violating space, you know, five feet four feet away
Speaker 4: and five feet away, and my other agent is back,
Speaker 4: you know, behind me's just standing leaning up against a bookcase.
Speaker 4: That day, when I got the call early in the morning,
Speaker 4: you know, one or two in the morning about developments
Speaker 4: in the case, I threw out a pair of light
Speaker 4: colored pants, like white, almost white, and in a white shirt,
Speaker 4: so which turned out perhaps a good thing because they
Speaker 4: look almost clinical and in retrospect when I look back
Speaker 4: on the case kind of like a clinical like I'm
Speaker 4: like a first sponder type of thing. So I got
Speaker 4: him in front of me, and what am I going
Speaker 4: to What am I going to do? What am I
Speaker 4: going to say? So I'm going to tell him I
Speaker 4: was going to talk to tell him about the research
Speaker 4: that that I am a colleagues that he's conducted going
Speaker 4: into prisons around the country, avoiding words like titles like
Speaker 4: murderers and a rapists or whatever, you know, just say
Speaker 4: interviewing inmate surround the country. He's different for different crimes.
Speaker 4: And I talk about myself and you know, in my background,
Speaker 4: I want to have I don't want to have an interrogation,
Speaker 4: and I just I just want to have this, like
Speaker 4: I try to have a conversation and let's see how
Speaker 4: intent he is. Because what he's doing, dan is is
Speaker 4: that he's looking past me. He's looking he's looking to trial.
Speaker 4: He's he even said one of his telephone calls to
Speaker 4: the family, he can't turn himself in anyone, you know,
Speaker 4: they'll electrocute me. I'll go to prison and electrocute me.
Speaker 4: So that's what what when you have somebody like you
Speaker 4: know that they're looking to that or or how they're
Speaker 4: going to be seeded in prison. Here, this guy is
Speaker 4: a child killer for portraying two homicides and he's going
Speaker 4: to be suspect to this day, to this to this
Speaker 4: day is today and two other two other homicides that
Speaker 4: are unsolved in South Carolina where he had close contact
Speaker 4: with each of these of those victims. So I go
Speaker 4: through all this and I tell him, I said, one
Speaker 4: of the things I found out when these interviews when
Speaker 4: he and uh, they said it was like almost like
Speaker 4: two sides of them when he that one side of
Speaker 4: them didn't even know the other side, like as if
Speaker 4: you know, do you ever hear multiple personality where old
Speaker 4: I told him, I said, Larry where one side just
Speaker 4: does something to the surprise of the other, may not
Speaker 4: even have any knowledge you know, of it. They wake
Speaker 4: up and have blood on them, or you know, something happened,
Speaker 4: something terrible happened. So I'm trying to provide him this
Speaker 4: space faving scenario. The only way is going to try
Speaker 4: to get out of this is going to try in
Speaker 4: my opinion, is and during that period of time in
Speaker 4: our toun tree, multiple personality was kind of in vogue,
Speaker 4: and then a lot of different killers used this biance.
Speaker 4: The Hillside Strangler he tried to, you know, use this
Speaker 4: as a as a defense, and many many a ferial
Speaker 4: rapists tried to use this, you know, as the defense
Speaker 4: was kind of in the end thing back then it
Speaker 4: was all bs, but they tried, they tried it. So
Speaker 4: when I went through this whole process with him, and
Speaker 4: I then segue into when did you start feeling bad
Speaker 4: about the case, and you know not and then I
Speaker 4: asked him did you do it? When did you start
Speaker 4: feeling bad? And he said when I looked in the
Speaker 4: newspapers and I saw the the memorial service and the family.
Speaker 3: So you were talking about his claims and what what
Speaker 3: you could in the conversation you were having with him.
Speaker 3: He was he was denying, but he was putting him
Speaker 3: in this third person character to say that Larry gene
Speaker 3: Oh wouldn't do anything like that.
Speaker 4: Right now. He concluded. What he said was, yeah, he
Speaker 4: says that the good Larry Jean Bell, you know, wouldn't
Speaker 4: do something like this, but the bad Larry Jean Bell,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, could have. That's as far as
Speaker 4: he would go, you know, with that, I would testify
Speaker 4: to that interview that I had with him in court.
Speaker 4: Then what I tried to do, which is was that
Speaker 4: bring him in front of Missus Smith and Don and right.
Speaker 4: I did that and I and I told Dawn, I said, Don,
Speaker 4: when you hear his voice, I want you to say,
Speaker 4: it's you. I recognize your voice, I know it, I
Speaker 4: know it's you know it's you. So the family comes
Speaker 4: in in the Sheriff's office and then we bring him
Speaker 4: in too, to the family. Miss not missus Smith. Mister
Speaker 4: Smith wasn't there Missus Smith and Kilda and Dawn. He
Speaker 4: SAIDs right in front of them, I'm kind of between
Speaker 4: them and right in front of the family, and he
Speaker 4: starts talking, you know, just to say who your name is,
Speaker 4: Larry Jean Bell, And he starts talking, and as he's talking,
Speaker 4: she makes the comment about it's you. I recognize your voice,
Speaker 4: you know, the one I spoke to, And then he
Speaker 4: went into that the good and the bad, Larry Jean Bell.
Speaker 4: You know, once again, what's amazing to me, Dan is
Speaker 4: how the family I couldn't. I could. I don't think
Speaker 4: I could do it. Their faith though, is just so
Speaker 4: so strong. But they're able to sit in front of
Speaker 4: in front of him like like that. And I think
Speaker 4: I mentioned it in the book. I'm pretty sure I did.
Speaker 4: As I'm sitting I'm thinking to myself, did they search
Speaker 4: the family to make sure that they're not armed? Right
Speaker 4: before they brought they brought Missus Smith and Dawn in
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about my god, so now my toes. But
Speaker 4: just in case, you know, if they didn't they they're armed,
Speaker 4: and you're here right before me, it'll be this guy
Speaker 4: would be shot and killed by the by the family.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, so that's as far as he went there.
Speaker 4: And then the other thing you provide to and people
Speaker 4: think all you do is just profiling. It's really a
Speaker 4: lot of cases you just can't do it. You can
Speaker 4: provide so many aspects to an investigation. Was the prosecutor
Speaker 4: Donnie Myers, And I told I told her, heyes, what
Speaker 4: do you think is going to happen? John? I said, well,
Speaker 4: what's gonda happened? He's good disrupt the very first day
Speaker 4: because he comes in here, he's going to disrupt hoop
Speaker 4: and holler and yelling, and and why because he's only
Speaker 4: there's only hope is he He's got to act like
Speaker 4: he's insane, that he's that he's you know, it's crazy.
Speaker 4: I mean, he got his goose is cooked, he got wet,
Speaker 4: so much evidence, you know, you know, on him, and
Speaker 4: true enough, first day of the trial he comes in screaming,
Speaker 4: yelling and saying he's God, He's Jesus and all this stuff.
Speaker 4: And then the trial proceed and in there during the
Speaker 4: trial and you go watch him. He's just like when
Speaker 4: he was writing the script when he would talk to
Speaker 4: the family, he followed the script. Here he is taking notes,
Speaker 4: real copious notes. During the trial. He would be convicted,
Speaker 4: convicted of you know, two counts, well, the helmet case
Speaker 4: would be tried separately, so abduction murder two counts, and
Speaker 4: he would he would be convicted about I think it's
Speaker 4: like forty seven minutes or so that the jurors came back.
Speaker 4: It was really really quick. And then when we later
Speaker 4: on we had the helmet case, it was the same
Speaker 4: same thing as a very quick turnaround for the jurors.
Speaker 4: The thing that surprised me is how he died. Bell
Speaker 4: is that he got the death penalty. You could take
Speaker 4: some space's choice. Nowadays, the space would have the capital punishment,
Speaker 4: lethal injection, or the electric chair, and he's selected the
Speaker 4: electric chair. And it was just surprised me that this
Speaker 4: coward would pick the electric chair until I started thinking
Speaker 4: about it, and I thought, now it's more or less
Speaker 4: fits because because when you commit a crime like this,
Speaker 4: committing young perpetrating crimes against young young people like this,
Speaker 4: you are low on the totem pole in prison. I think,
Speaker 4: in fact, you're not only going to get it from
Speaker 4: other inmates, but even the correctional guards are going to
Speaker 4: be treating you like crap when you get in there.
Speaker 4: And I just believe that he just wanted to show
Speaker 4: at the very end how tough he is, and that
Speaker 4: he's a real tough guy. He's you know, inadequate, you know,
Speaker 4: type and so he's the the electric chair and then,
Speaker 4: like I said, ten years later, he was he was executing.
Speaker 4: Had a criminal history too, involving you know, all kinds
Speaker 4: of had he went to prison for for a period
Speaker 4: of time for abduction, and he had another he's just
Speaker 4: busted for I've seen telephone calls against young children, and
Speaker 4: he had not been caught, he would have gotten on
Speaker 4: and on, you know, and on. And what I really
Speaker 4: like about the case and is really the police did
Speaker 4: a great job. And all you're doing is providing, you know,
Speaker 4: an investigative tool and to help them. And that's why
Speaker 4: when I when I was in the bureau, it was
Speaker 4: really difficult in the beginning because the relationship. Hoover died
Speaker 4: in seventy two. I came back to Klantico in seventy seven.
Speaker 4: I was the youngest agent at thirty one, just then
Speaker 4: just turned thirty two. And cops, you know, in those days,
Speaker 4: you know, the europe maybe basically looking for credit where
Speaker 4: credit isn't and wasn't wasn't doing cases that really the
Speaker 4: locals did. And so what my goal was accomplished. And
Speaker 4: for us and the people, we always give credit, even
Speaker 4: if you think we played a bigger role than we did.
Speaker 4: Give credit to it, you know, to the police and
Speaker 4: the work, the work they've done, and they did, they
Speaker 4: did do a great job in the laboratory. And unfortunately
Speaker 4: it doesn't always. All cases don't always happen, you know,
Speaker 4: you know that way, but it was a tremendous case.
Speaker 4: But emotionally, I had a daughter, aged Deborah Helmet at
Speaker 4: the time, you know, upsetting, you know, like I said,
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to get over all the stuff I
Speaker 4: went through in nineteen eighty three and eight nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: the stress and nearly dying. And now I'm back from
Speaker 4: back in again. I have people in the unit, which
Speaker 4: is great, but it's like any business, it takes a
Speaker 4: while to learn the business. Takes you probably about two
Speaker 4: years to feel kind of good about it, and then
Speaker 4: maybe five years before you feel real comfortable and in
Speaker 4: my job. And people who didn't do what I do,
Speaker 4: usually about five years they start getting burned out and
Speaker 4: they want out, they want to can't take it anymore,
Speaker 4: they want to move on to somewhere else. In my
Speaker 4: fave my organization, and it just that's probably it took
Speaker 4: an emotional toll and to this day. I had contact
Speaker 4: with mister Smith. They established a a fund for the daughter,
Speaker 4: a scholarship fund. It was in music and art, that's
Speaker 4: what she was going into. She would go to the university.
Speaker 4: A wonderful man. Just just their faith is so strong
Speaker 4: and just very I mean even forgiving, forgiving, uh you
Speaker 4: know him and even Hild at some point too, which
Speaker 4: before she passed away, forgave him, just to get it
Speaker 4: out of her brain and try to try to move
Speaker 4: on with the you know, with their lives. And then
Speaker 4: Dawn is today, she's this spiritual leader. She's she sings
Speaker 4: the gospel and she's made albums, she's affiliated with churches,
Speaker 4: she's just done public speaking. Just a wonderful family.
Speaker 3: She won the Beauty Pageant shortly after too, Yes.
Speaker 4: You're at South Carolina. She was like runner up in
Speaker 4: the US A pageantry. Just really you know, terristic. It
Speaker 4: just it just breaks your heart. Those kind of cases,
Speaker 4: like I said, Dan and I just never you know,
Speaker 4: you have like Raider contacting the police and you know
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff, and and and or Berkowitz. You know,
Speaker 4: but this and they're all the inadequatized, but this is
Speaker 4: you know, one step although raider. He's in a statistic mode,
Speaker 4: you know too. But this guy goes his way, his
Speaker 4: way beyond, you know, way beyond you know that, and
Speaker 4: just never never had a case. I don't know of
Speaker 4: any other case quite, you know, quite like that. You'll
Speaker 4: have cases, you know you're from You're from Canada originally, right, yeah, Dan, Yeah,
Speaker 4: And the Clifford Olsen case up there. You're a Clifford
Speaker 4: Olsen who killed the children. Yes he can again. He
Speaker 4: killed like ten children and then he paunting the police.
Speaker 4: He would call me at the FBI. Uh, and I
Speaker 4: guess it was. The Canadians were up in air about
Speaker 4: because they paid it. They didn't know where the victims were.
Speaker 4: He killed like ten children, and they offered them, made
Speaker 4: a deal with them, giving them ten thousand dollars per victim.
Speaker 4: At The Canadians were up in arms about that. I
Speaker 4: didn't like that, but they never would have found these
Speaker 4: victims had they not done that. But this guy, he
Speaker 4: thought he was Hannibal Lecter with Theidolson when he was
Speaker 4: contacting me. They had him in a plexiglass sell like
Speaker 4: Hannibal Lecter. And the only reason he was in the
Speaker 4: place he had last cell is because the other inimates
Speaker 4: would throw cups of urine and feces on him. Was
Speaker 4: because he was some badass guy. And then I couldn't
Speaker 4: believe it. He was calling me on a cell phone
Speaker 4: he had. He was called me on the phone. He
Speaker 4: would give him a phone even at that time. This
Speaker 4: is this is in the nineties. He had not nineties
Speaker 4: even yeah, in the nineties. He had some type of
Speaker 4: TV computer. But he was trying, he was trying to
Speaker 4: tell me that he was the Green River murdering and
Speaker 4: trying to convince me. And why do you want me
Speaker 4: convince me? Is because he wanted out of prison. He
Speaker 4: wanted like a little break. And he following him around
Speaker 4: and the detectives and out in the Surgene County. Who'd
Speaker 4: you know, trying to where the bodies are. What a manipulator,
Speaker 4: you know he was. He died not too many too
Speaker 4: many years ago in prison. Good riddance to him.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was fascinating about this book. Among so many
Speaker 3: fascinating things, is the importance of this correspondence, especially the
Speaker 3: last will and testament that this sadistic killer who loved
Speaker 3: to taunt the family and her sister and the police
Speaker 3: in the community. But he had her write out this
Speaker 3: last Will and Testament, which she, as you write, showed
Speaker 3: such incredible composure and courage in the last note to
Speaker 3: her family, trying to make them feel brave and said
Speaker 3: things like I don't want this to ruin your life.
Speaker 3: And that correspondence, like some energy from beyond was the
Speaker 3: thing that sealed this killer's fate.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, if it wasn't for if it wasn't for that, yeah,
Speaker 4: who knows. I mean may eventually, like through the license plate,
Speaker 4: you know, it could have been more, I mean the
Speaker 4: very least to be more victims. He would still be
Speaker 4: taunting Dawn because then he shifts his attention to don know, Dan,
Speaker 4: and you know that if one month, one day, one month,
Speaker 4: one year, you're next. You can't be protected forever. And
Speaker 4: then getting back to the last Will and Testament. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then she knows she's going to be dying, and
Speaker 4: she talks about having she wants to close casket, a
Speaker 4: closed casket. She knew because what was going to happen
Speaker 4: to her and how she would end up. And one
Speaker 4: of the reasons too, Dan, it was tells you that
Speaker 4: this guy had his criminalsphistication or certainly knowledge of crime.
Speaker 4: He would wait several days, three or four days, and
Speaker 4: it was really hot when we were down there, really
Speaker 4: hot and humid, and by waiting several days like that
Speaker 4: before pointing out the bodies, and we knew he had
Speaker 4: to go back because he gave these these precise directions
Speaker 4: where we can find the victims' bodies, that he wanted
Speaker 4: the bodies to be in an advanced state of decomposition,
Speaker 4: which they were in. So we really couldn't determine whether
Speaker 4: or not there was a sexual assault, or how the
Speaker 4: victims were, how the victims were killed. With dawn On
Speaker 4: with Sherry, we had that some residue on the face
Speaker 4: and we could tell the duct tapers was used with
Speaker 4: her and probably suffocation was the cause of death. But
Speaker 4: missus Smith, even with the last will and testament, Dan
Speaker 4: thought that there was still hopes that she may still
Speaker 4: be alive. And he just you know, he's calling the
Speaker 4: family thing. I know who you are, I know the family,
Speaker 4: and that's why I can't give myself in. And then
Speaker 4: he gives a description of his car, which was not
Speaker 4: his car.
Speaker 3: He has a red car.
Speaker 4: They almost got me, caught me the other day, you know,
Speaker 4: all this stuff. He just just got so caught up
Speaker 4: in the in this manipulation, and which is a downfall.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's really that was the downfall of a
Speaker 4: raider and he gets gets caught up and they reaches
Speaker 4: a point where they feel invincible. But it was just
Speaker 4: so stupid law enforcement. We can't catch you had raider
Speaker 4: held tight and not reached out like he did. The
Speaker 4: investigation wasn't really you know, close who nabbing him at all.
Speaker 4: It wasn't until a stupid jackass communicating with the police
Speaker 4: asking the police do you think we can would you
Speaker 4: be able to if I submit a disc to you,
Speaker 4: could you trace it back to you know, to me?
Speaker 4: And he's doing this, they're sending messages in the newspaper
Speaker 4: and so what do you think the police are going
Speaker 4: to say, Oh, oh yeah, we can trace it back
Speaker 4: to you. Now he says, no, we can't do that.
Speaker 4: So just his stupidity, and he pretty much had about
Speaker 4: the same I Q. They're not bright, neither raider or
Speaker 4: this guy Bell or not, you know, not any bright
Speaker 4: lighting in the attic, not at all. And they were lucky.
Speaker 4: They were lucky up to a point. But that was
Speaker 4: his downfall was that when he sends says, you know,
Speaker 4: you know the case backwards and forward, and you've had
Speaker 4: other guests on talking about the case that that case,
Speaker 4: that was the sloppy disk, and you didn't have to
Speaker 4: be any kind of a computer was to decipher it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: There was the name of the church. The church is
Speaker 4: Christ Baptist ch or something like that. And and then
Speaker 4: the president was Dennis Raider, and it was knew it
Speaker 4: was the president. So unfortunately with some cases we are
Speaker 4: are stymy, you're STYMI and you to keep them going.
Speaker 4: You want them to keep communicating, communicating, communicating, But just
Speaker 4: when when they stop, like the Zodiac, and they stop
Speaker 4: and then you really have anything going, it makes it. Yes,
Speaker 4: it's it's difficult. I don't know if you probably don't
Speaker 4: know this or your listeners for the Zodiac. The only
Speaker 4: time we got involved in the Zodiac is when they
Speaker 4: leave contacted us because a letter we hadn't heard from
Speaker 4: the Zodiac in a long time, and they said, we
Speaker 4: got this letter from the from the Zodiac, but we're
Speaker 4: going to send it back to you. We no sooner
Speaker 4: get the letter. It's followed up by a telephone call
Speaker 4: to get the letter and forget about it. Why because
Speaker 4: the detective work in the case. We're involved in the case.
Speaker 4: When the detectives wrote the letter, why it to perpetuate
Speaker 4: the case. It hadn't heard anything from the officers. So
Speaker 4: he was trying to create, trying to create you know,
Speaker 4: you know, some new kind of new kind of lead
Speaker 4: leads because they have you have nothing. You know, David
Speaker 4: Burke was writing the letters, you know, you're having something
Speaker 4: to you know, analyze. But the device that was used,
Speaker 4: the device that was used in this case, it wasn't
Speaker 4: developed for the back then yet. On the Burke was
Speaker 4: like analyzing the letters like you know, like the indented
Speaker 4: writing type of the type of stuff or the finger printing.
Speaker 4: It wasn't as sophisticated as it is today, like back
Speaker 4: you know, back then, so today's all automated analyzing prints.
Speaker 3: Yes, you you talk about this that this was a
Speaker 3: very fortunate combination of following the profile profiling and also
Speaker 3: the latest forensic science methodologies and and the strategies that
Speaker 3: you've been employed, like you say, were the thing that
Speaker 3: led him to do certain things. You prompted him to
Speaker 3: do certain things via the media and the cooperation with
Speaker 3: the sheriff, so he successfully brought this person to justice.
Speaker 3: I want to thank you very much John Douglas for
Speaker 3: coming on and talking about When a Killer Calls, a
Speaker 3: haunting story of murder, criminal profiling, justice in a small town.
Speaker 3: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 3: and doing this.
Speaker 4: This book will get released.
Speaker 3: I know this book will be released February first. Yes,
Speaker 3: will be available everywhere. Again, thank you so much John
Speaker 3: Douglas for coming on and talking about When a Killer Calls.
Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure. Thank you, and good night.