All language subtitles for The.Friday.the.13th.Murders.S01E02.We.All.Go.a.Little.Mad.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

The horror cliché is
that it happens on a dark,

stormy night.

And that's what this was.

I was working
at the patrol division,

but the rain was so torrential,
and the storm was so bad,

you couldn't drive.

I chose to take shelter
in my patrol car.

This man approached
my car and he said,

"Thank you for meeting me here."

I had no idea.

I said,
"What are you talking about?"

and he said, "Well, I called
Little Rock dispatch

"and asked him to send
an officer here

'cause I was worried
about my client."

"I'm the attorney and my client
just called me and told me

"to rush over to his home.

"Phone went dead.

"I've tried to call,
and I'm not getting him.

I'm a little concerned."

I asked him, "Was there
anyone else in the home?"

And he said, "Yes, his wife
and their two daughters."

I approached the home.
It was very dark.

And I noticed
that the front door of the home

is cracked six to eight inches,
just enough for me to see.

But I'm not hearing anything.

So I called for backup.

I had only been a police
officer for a year and a half.

I was nervous.

Your adrenaline is running.

We don't know
what we're gonna find.

And then, I noticed...

there was blood.

This is a photo of me
in 1987

as a rookie patrol officer,
21 years old.

Dispatch called me
to the scene.

Walking in the door,
the power was still out.

It was like something
out of a horror film to me.

I was nervous.

The house just had
this weird feeling.

Then I knew something
was bad there.

You can smell blood,
and the blood it has

a distinct smell to it.

You could really
smell it there.

And then during this time,
we lost radio traffic.

We could not
communicate with our dispatch.

We could not communicate
with other officers.

No cell phones in 1987,
so we were kind of stuck

out there by ourselves.

It was pretty creepy.

It was just kind of

uh, dead silent.

The lights are off
in the home.

We're using our flashlight,
looking in corners

of different rooms and things.

We noticed to the right,
an office area

where there was a body laying.

It was John Markle.

He was laying against a wall.

He was deceased, and there was
blood on each side of the head.

After we found his body,
that's the moment where we had

a concern that we had
a homicide.

Now, my concern was
the safety of the family.

Knowing that there were
a wife and possibly

two children in the home,

so we backed out and moved
on through the home quickly.

I was nervous walking up
those stairs, what I might find.

We kinda said,
"Who's going first?"

My pulse and my heart rate
was pounding.

On the second floor
it was just a TV

sitting in the middle
of a hallway for some reason

on a cart.

And there were bedrooms
either side of the hallway.

I was like,
"Ugh, you know, this is,

you know, kind of creepy."

We go into a little
girl's room.

I remember first seeing
the walls were pink.

There was a record player
there in the room, posters,

stuffed animals and stuff.

And then I look up,

there's blood
all over those pink walls.

This is very vivid to me.

I find a young child
in the bed,

and I walk around
to the other side of the bed,

and there's a second child.

We found her in the same bed
next to her sister.

Thirteen-year-old Amy...

and nine-year-old Suzanne.

Both been shot to death.

In the master bedroom,

we found 45-year-old
Christine Markle

sprawled across the bed
with gunshot wounds.

She was in her nightgown.

To me, it looked like
she had woke up,

put her feet on the floor,
went to sit up or stand up.

Or maybe she heard something
and she was getting out of bed.

She had what appeared to be
gunshots to the face

and the head.

This was an entire family
that had been murdered.

Their life stopped...

at that moment for that family.

The electricity, the power
did come back on.

The video was a horror movie,
"Nightmare on Elm Street."

It was pretty freaky.

I remember walking down
those stairs,

just kind of numb
from what I'd seen.

We got our radio traffic
going again.

We radioed
to communications or dispatch,

letting them know at that time
that we obviously

had a homicide.

So the detectives
began their investigation.

They went through
the house room-by-room,

taking anything
that they believed

could help them
in the investigation.

And they found
dozens of letters

and documents.

And then I could see
that there was a briefcase

sitting there with some note
attached to it.

The note said basically
that, "I murdered my wife,

Christine, my daughters,
Amy and Suzanne."

He signed it, John Markle.

At first glance, this would
seem like an open-and-shut

murder-suicide from everything
that you saw right there.

But there were some things
that seemed odd.

I remember vividly
that there was a mask

that was laying
near John Markle's body,

like an old man mask.
There was blood on that mask.

The mask found at the scene,
at first I wondered,

you know, why?
Why is that there?

Because it was not a ski mask,
not even a hockey mask.

It was a Halloween mask.
So that stuck with me.

We found inside the briefcase,
there was a birth certificate,

passport, car title.

But what really stood out
was the cash

that was found
in there.

Items that somebody
might have in there

if they were getting ready
to disappear

or try to leave the country
or something like that.

But one of the oddest things...

was the fact that John Markle
was shot

with two different guns

at the same time in the head.

Found near his body was
a western-style .45, and a .45

is a very large caliber.

And then
also a .38 caliber revolver.

I don't know the odds
of someone being able

to shoot themselves
simultaneously

with a gun on each side
of the head.

It seems to me like
it'd be one in a million.

I wanna try to figure
out, how did this happen?

What caused this to happen?

Are we sure that John Markle
killed his family

and killed himself?

Is this, in fact,
what happened?

Or is this what somebody
wants us to see?

People start hypothesizing,

there's gotta be a crazy man
out there that did this.

I later learned
that "Friday the 13th" was

just a few days
before the Markle murders.

So between the movie,

the old man mask,

and the evil bad luck day,

we just had some feeling
that there's something going on

that we didn't
quite understand.

I covered the Markle murders.

And it was all-hands-on-deck.

Everybody was trying
to get the scoop

on what really happened.

Here in Little Rock,

everybody knew the Markles.

It is something that catches
everybody off guard.

A whole family
slaughtered like that.

I was a close friend
with Amy Markle.

This is a picture of me
at 13 at that time.

Amy and I met in 1986
at the beginning

of our seventh grade year.

Amy was an exceptional student
and just a very caring person

about everybody.

My father had to move
to Dallas,

and John was a parental figure
that would listen to me

and kind of take me
under his wing.

I remember Suzanne as being
kind of more boisterous,

more talkative,
but when she was frightened,

would turn to her sister.

But like during storms,
she would often climb in bed

with her sister
just so she'd feel safe.

The mom, Christine,
was kind of a classic mom,

as you saw on like TV shows
and such back in the '80s,

literally in the PTA,
and did a bunch

of volunteering.

John Markle, he was
a very loving father.

He loved his daughters dearly,
and he would do

anything for them.

John was the son
of Hollywood royalty.

His mother was
Mercedes McCambridge,

an Academy Award-winning
actress

for "All the King's Men."

Later on, she voiced
the demon's voice

in "The Exorcist."

They were
the all-American family.

Dad had this great job.

The girls were
enrolled in school.

They were traveling
in the right circles.

They were attending
the right churches.

They had the right friends.

They were just a happy,
all-American family.

News broke about the murder.

And it was a police officer
who went inside the house

and found Markle, his wife,
and his two daughters.

The city was just completely--
just shocked.

I was watching TV
with my family

in the morning before school.

And I see these body bags
being rolled out

of a big downtown house.

I remember Froot Loops being
in my mouth

and just saying,
"That's-- that's Amy's house."

Multiple bodies came out,
and I just started

just bawling.

It was devastating.

I was a detective with the
Little Rock Police Department

in 1987, and I had been
a detective

for a little over a year.

I was assigned
to the Markle murders

to investigate the financial
aspects of it.

At first glance,
everything appeared to be

an open-and-shut case
because, you know,

the scene, the suicide note.

But nobody had ever heard
of this suicide with using

two guns simultaneously.

I was directed to go out
and do a neighborhood canvass.

We knocked on doors
and saw if anybody

heard anything overnight.

On the night of the murders,
there were reports

that John left the house

and he was followed
by a white truck.

And then a short while later,
his family was dead.

At that point, detectives
are working on this case,

doing their background
investigations into the family

and looking into everything
John was involved in.

We had to see if there was
anybody else out there

that may have been involved
or had motivation

to hurt the Markles.

We learned John Markle
was a vice president

at Stevens Inc.

He was supposedly
a financial whiz.

He would work these
incredibly long hours.

He was raking in
$3 million in trades.

John Markle moved in a world
where fortunes were made

and lost overnight.

It was said that the Markles
knew the Clintons,

Bill and Hillary.

Amy Markle's friend was
Chelsea Clinton.

The girls knew each other,
played together.

In fact, Hillary Clinton
and Chelsea Clinton both

attended the family's funeral.

And when you have
an influential family,

it's gonna make it
a high-profile case.

A lot of rumors,
a lot of questions.

So, we'd started looking
into the Markles'

financial records.

We then started to discover
various red flags popping up.

The one thing that was
out of the norm was

that he was writing
a number of checks every week...

to cash.

This was to the tune
of $600 to $1,000 a week.

With inflation today,
that would be approximately

$10,000 a month.

So the fact that these checks
were so consistent

really raised my curiosity as
to where this money was going.

People whispered
about their wealth,

their influence,
and their connections,

and now they were whispering
about something else.

Murder.

In the 1980s, Arkansas
was ground zero for some

of the largest scandals
in the country.

They were all kinds of crazy
stories that came to light.

The Whitewater bank fraud
that occurred,

where corruption ran
so deep that ultimately

a number of banks
failed nationwide.

The cost to the taxpayers was
$500 billion.

This was a time in Arkansas
where all the right people

got rich and everybody else
got screwed.

A fair amount of other crime
was occurring within the state.

There was conspiracy theories
at that time of two boys

that were found

that had supposedly died
on the railroad tracks

just outside of Little Rock.

The investigation initially
ruled it as a suicide.

A subsequent autopsy then led
to believe that, in fact,

they were murdered.

Because the Markle murders
occurred during this timeframe,

all the other deaths,
suicides, murders,

it just played into
the ongoing conspiracies.

And two months
prior to the murders

at the Main Street residence
of the Markles,

another high-profile,
eerily similar case

occurred in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Judge Vincent Sherry,
who was a municipal judge,

and his wife Margaret,
who is a city councilwoman

in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Somebody came
through the front door

and shot Judge Vincent Sherry.

This was conducted by somebody
with professional marksmanship

and skill to be able to move
through the house

without being detected.

And then they executed
Margaret Sherry.

She was shot
in the back of the head.

Neither one showed
any apparent signs of struggle

and were slain where they were.

Investigators were
interviewing prison inmates

several hundred miles away.

Eventually, detectives
uncovered the motivations

behind the crime, that it was
tied back to a financial fraud

that had occurred.

Sherrys was killed
because a hit was put on them.

The primary suspects were
involved with what was referred

to as the Dixie Mafia,

also known
as the Cornbread Mafia.

So we wanted to explore if
anybody associated or affiliated

with the Dixie Mafia
was involved...

with John Markle or his family.

Was this a family tragedy
or was this

something more calculated?

Everything started screaming
that it was

something calculated.

Suzanne had five shots,
Amy had four,

Chris had three, John had two,

and there was one bullet
left in the chamber.

I can only interpret that
as a message.

I have heard of a group
called the Dixie Mafia

since I started at
the Police Department in 1984.

They were an organized group
of southern criminals

that stretched from Arkansas
down to Mississippi, Louisiana.

The Dixie Mafia was bound
together by one thing,

and that was money.

They would do burglaries,

armed robberies of banks
or armored cars

and things of that nature.

Dixie Mafia had
politicians and businessmen

in their pockets.

One of the signature moves
that you get with the mafia

in this area, the Dixie Mafia,
is murders that are staged

to look like suicides.

The phrase is "suicided."

If John Markle had gotten
involved with some bad people,

maybe they did this to him.

Sometimes you can find
yourself in trouble

with the wrong people.

Any leads, that's when
the toxicology reports came in,

They noticed something
a little unusual in the reports.

All of them had Elavil
in their system.

Elavil is an antidepressant,
and it can cause drowsiness.

It was somehow introduced
to their bloodstream

in an apparent attempt
to make them drowsy.

If this was a hit
by the Dixie Mafia,

they could have drugged
the family to incapacitate them

so they could take 'em out.

But there were some things
that started to line up

and not really fit the mold.

Why so much violence?

Probably, you could have
killed them with the medication.

You didn't really
need the weapons.

Why do you need
to shoot them so many times

with what turned out to be
pretty high-caliber guns, too,

you know, that would do
a lot of damage.

What happened to the Markles
was totally different

from what occurred
in Mississippi.

They were shot and killed
in a manner that just

didn't add up.

You had different
weapons involved.

And then the fact,
you know, that that mask

over near the victim's body.

"Nightmare on Elm Street" movie
being played in the TV

that night.

I was thinking,
what's that about?

Was it left there by someone
trying to leave

a message or a warning?

Was it something
much more sinister?

If John Markle had gotten
involved with something bigger,

then we needed to prove that.

That's when they started
looking back

at John Markle's briefcase
and the contents

of what was in the briefcase.

We culled through
all those documents.

We then started to discover
he was deeply in debt.

As detectives dug deeper,
they found a secret account.

It led us to one date.

And that's the date
that everything unraveled

for John Markle.

And that was Friday the 13th.

Markle was a top-earner
at the company,

but it turns out he was actually
involved in a big scheme

where he was manipulating money,
moving trades around,

and covering his tracks
while doing so.

Over $5 million had been
embezzled out of the accounts

over the years.

His employer confronted him,
and at that point,

he admitted to his wrongdoing.

On Friday the 13th on 1987,

Markle was fired
from his job.

It was the day
that he lost everything.

We wanted to explore
who may have benefited

from the financial embezzlement.

So we went out
and subpoenaed bank records,

interviewed a number of people
that worked with him,

trying to follow the path
of the money.

We started looking into where
this money was going.

Some of it we were able
to trace going back

to someone close to the Markles.

Someone John blamed
for killing his entire family.

Everybody that knows
Little Rock,

you're gonna hear
about that Markle house.

It sits kind of by itself
up on that hill.

And you can just look
at that house and tell,

especially at night,
that there's something

off there.

I read stories of
the ghost of Suzanne appearing,

and that just-- that kind
of thing just-- is just sad.

It's, "Oh, it's a ghost,"
but this is a friend,

this is somebody I cared about.

I just wanted to know,
why did this happen?

As we all know,
Friday the 13th is

one of the unluckiest days
of the year, supposedly.

A lot of people
don't wanna do anything.

They don't wanna fly,
they don't wanna go anywhere.

And in November 1987,
it happened to be

the unluckiest day
for John Markle

of his life
at that point.

John Markle had gotten
caught up in an embezzlement

and stealing money
from his company.

So as we started looking
into where this money was going,

we were able to trace going back
to John Markle's own mother,

Mercedes McCambridge,
to her house in San Diego,

as well as her accounts
out there.

My primary goal was to see
whether or not she was aware

of what he was doing
and whether or not she had

financial benefited
from this arrangement.

I made contact with Mercedes.

She was guarded
in her response.

She denied being involved.

She said that she provided
the money to invest

in her granddaughters'
education.

And I could see that
as she processed that thought,

some sadness came over her.

And what we learned was
she didn't know anything

about the embezzlement.

But there was never a clear
and concise reason

why he did this.

When detectives searched
the home again

and started taking
any financial documents

that could show what was
going on in his life,

they found dozens of letters
and documents

that John had written.

There was one letter
that stood out.

It was a 12-page letter
addressed to his mother,

Mercedes McCambridge.

Based on this letter
that John wrote to his mother,

his relationship with her
was not very good.

In the letter that John Markle
wrote to his mother,

he said, "I was conceptualized
to save a bad marriage.

"I was essentially raised
by live-in maids and relatives.

You were working."

He felt she was more, you know,
in tune to being in Hollywood

and doing the actress/movie star
role than being his mother.

He talks about the way
that he tried to prove himself

to her by getting a PhD,
by getting this

great-paying job, by starting
his own family and prospering,

but did not feel that anything
was ever good enough

for his mother.

John blamed his mother
for the problems he was facing.

And he said,
"She's a demon."

And in fact, she voiced
the demon's voice

in "The Exorcist,"

the movie
that changed her life.

"The Exorcist" isn't really
just a horror movie.

There's something dark that was
attached to the project.

Crew members suffered
from freak accidents,

broken bones, severed fingers.

Nine people connected
with the film died eerie deaths.

There was a fire.

It burned everything
except the room

where the possession was
to take place.

Linda Blair, the little girl
that played Regan,

suffered severe spinal damage
from an accident on set.

Her real screams of pain
made it into the final cut

of the film.

Eventually, the director had
to bring in a priest

to perform an exorcism on set.

The exorcist became
more than a role.

It became an obsession
for Mercedes.

It wasn't hard
for me...

to imagine the rage.

She claimed to have
chain-smoked and drank heavily

to bring the demon's voice
to life.

That isn't hard.

As we dug deeper
into John's letter,

one story stood out
regarding the car accident

that he was involved in
where he almost died.

He was in ICU,
had a significant head trauma,

and she never once visited him.

In the letter he wrote,

"I'm released
from the hospital.

"I kept calling you
and the phone was always busy.

"I called a cab
and I go to your apartment."

"My head is wrapped
in bandages and gauze.

"I see you naked on the floor.

"Pills and bottles
all over the floor,

and your suicide note."

And ends up having to call
for help to save her life.

The only thing that he ever
wanted from his mother was

for her to love him.

But she wasn't capable...

of being a true mother
to her own son.

She kind of became the demon,

and she passed that
on to her son.

So as we were looking into it,
it was hard to understand

why he was sending money
back to his mother.

I think that she had
so much control over him

that he was just powerless.

Markle was fired from his job.

He was going to lose
his license,

no doubt, lose his house.

He had been entertained
the thought

of moving to Australia.

He was gonna go to jail,
possibly, or have to pay back

millions of dollars.

And at this point,

John reached out with
an olive branch to his mother,

asking her for help.

It was a very humbling
situation for him,

because here he had always been
in that role of trying

to impress his mother,
and now he had to reach out

in a very, very embarrassing
situation and ask for help.

Markle is groveling
with his mother, begging,

pleading, almost on his hands
and knees, to get money

to get out of this trouble.

She essentially told him
that, "You made your bed,

you're gonna have
to sleep in it."

And I think for John,
this was the ultimate betrayal

from a mother who he had always
hoped would help him out.

Mercedes McCambridge
was a malignant narcissist.

The one time that
he really needed her,

she just wasn't there for him.

That's when his anger turned
to something much darker,

much more sinister.

But we still didn't know about
how his death had come about.

You know, there was no way
that one individual could have

shot himself simultaneously
with both handguns.

This all just makes it
that much more strange.

On Friday the 13th, 1987,
a switch was thrown.

Was that the trigger
in John Markle's mind?

The house of cards
essentially toppled down.

He was consumed
with the darkness of despair.

The only thing he was going
to run from or escape from

was life in itself...

and take his wife
and children with him.

This wasn't
a spur-of-the-moment,

spontaneous rampage
that he went on.

It was thought out and planned.

That night, those two
young children and Christine

were probably thinking
of, you know, going to school,

meeting up with their friends,
whatever activities

that they were looking forward
to the next day.

No idea that this was
their last day on earth.

Their father had introduced
Elavil into their bloodstream.

That night, John also rented
"Nightmare on Elm Street"

for the whole family to watch.

The movie "Nightmare
on Elm Street"

is about a man who killed people
who were sleeping.

So after the family
watched the movie

and the kids were in bed,
his wife went to bed

and John waited until they were
in a deep sleep

from the medication.

And after he was assured
of that is when he began.

That video that was
playing in the hallway upstairs

may have been a ploy
to scare the children?

To encourage both girls
to sleep together,

to be able to console each other
through the night,

both tucked in bed,
you know, with covers

pulled up around them.

He wouldn't have to go
to a separate bedroom

to kill each one.

And then he put his mask on

and went
to his children's bedroom.

This is the actual mask
that John Markle wore

when he killed
his entire family.

He couldn't bear for them
to see his face,

to know that he was the person
behind the mask

pulling the trigger
and taking their lives.

He planned the firing
of those bullets

to coordinate
with the horrible thunderstorm

in Little Rock that night.

The thunder, the lightning
would probably cover up

the sounds of the gunshots

and any screams
that may have happened.

Christine might have been
startled awake

and sat up because maybe
she heard the gunfire

in her daughter's room.

You Know, what is it
that Christine experienced

that night?

Did she see him
with the mask on?

How horrific it would have
been to be asleep in your bed

and someone shows up
with two guns and a mask on.

After he went back
downstairs to his study,

and he started writing
these letters,

He called the attorney
to the house.

There was gunshot
residue on John's hands.

They were in contact
with a weapon.

The fact that he was able
to shoot himself twice

you know, at the same time
with two different guns,

I guess it all just
makes it that much more...

um, strange.

I believe that I may have been
across the street

when the shootings occurred.

You know, I was there
for an hour or longer

with that storm.

Did I hear the final gunshots?

Did he see me pull up?

I don't know.

The big question was
why he struck out

against his own family
instead of striking out

at the person he was
really angry at,

which was his mother.

And in my mind, I think
that she had so much control

and power over him,
he couldn't strike out

against that monster.

So John Markle slaughtered
her entire family.

Out of all the scenes
that I've been to,

it's the one that stuck with me
the most over the last,

you know, almost 40 years.

I've never forgotten
those pink walls

with all the blood
and everything splattered

all over it.

In my mind, I go back
to the drawing

on the refrigerator,

on like, the colored
construction paper.

"Love you, Daddy.
Love you, Mommy."

And, uh, that was--
that was pretty...

devastating.

The Markle house has kind
of taken on a life of its own,

as things like this do.

It will always be recognized
as the murder house.

It's there and it's livable,
but it's vacant.

Nobody wants to live there.

I would think...

it would take a special person
to live there very long.

Somebody recently referred
to that house

as a scar in the city.

Even decades later,
people still remember

because some nightmares
don't die.

Some stories don't fade,
like this one about a woman

who gave a voice to a demon

and the son who became one.

[eerie music[

There is a history of
Cape Fear being cursed.

Barbara Ann Lewis was
strangled to death.

On Friday the 13th it
started happening again.

Is it going to be tonight?

Is it going to be
tomorrow night?

You didn't know when he was
going to strike again.

It's not safe to be alone.