Original subtitles

[distant sirens]

[man] There's still so many things

we don't understand about this case,

and probably never will.

We just had bits and pieces

of some kind of strange puzzle.

And even if we could put them all together,

I don't know if I want to see whatever picture they make.

[tense music playing]

[clears throat]

- [producer whispers] - Yeah.

Uh-huh.

My name is Joseph Kirby.

I'm a former lead detective sergeant

in San Bernardino County.

I was supervising the Major Crimes Unit

between 2007 and 2015.

San Bernardino County is about 60 miles east

of Los Angeles.

And is a part of California's

Inland Empire region.

We have a population of about two million.

We've seen our share of violent crimes,

gang-related homicides,

relatively large-scale drug busts,

what have you.

We probably ran

upwards of 65 murders a year

in the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau,

which is higher than the national average.

But I had never seen anything like what happened

to the Sheridan family on Alton Avenue.

Nobody had.

[dial tone]

[dispatcher] 911, what is your emergency?

[female voice]

[dispatcher]

[female voice] My name...

My name is Kacie Porter,

and I was friends with Tiffany Sheridan.

Our kids went to the same elementary school.

[laughs] When you have kids that age,

and you meet a lot of parents that you don't always care for,

but Tiff and I, we just hit it off.

We were supposed to meet at this restaurant for lunch,

but she never showed, and I just...

I figured she had forgotten, so I let it go. Um...

But then Lauren came home, and she said

that Sam hadn't been to school in a few days.

And, um, I kept calling

and I kept texting, but I never got a reply back.

And I just knew, in the back of my head,

that something is wrong.

[female voice]

[operator]

I'm Will Martinez.

I'm a deputy sheriff

with the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department.

Me and my partner were the first officers

to arrive on scene.

We got a call regarding a welfare check

for a residence in the Shandin Hills.

Nice area. Um...

It was a gated community, as I remember.

[tense music playing]

The whole thing felt weird.

Something about it was just off.

[tense music playing]

Police department!

Police department!

Anybody home?

[woman speaking on radio]

- [tense music playing] - [gate rattles]

[Martinez] We need to go around.

[doorknob rattles]

Police department! Anyone home?

My partner called out,

identified ourselves again,

but there was no movement.

[Martinez] Hello?

Anybody home?

[tense music playing]

[whispering] Mother of God.

[tense music playing]

This was a crime scene.

[tense music playing]

[Kacie] Oh, what happened to them...

I think about it every day.

I have nightmares about it.

[tense music playing]

Why them?

[tense music playing]

That... was a bad day.

[tense music playing]

When I saw that, I was...

floored.

I looked at my partner and I said,

"Oh, my God, he's back."

[dramatic music playing]

Hi.

My name's Lexi Taylor.

I'm a senior homicide detective

for the San Bernardino P.D.

I worked as a patrol officer for about nine years

before being offered a job in the homicide bureau,

and that's when I started working with my partner,

Joe Kirby.

Growing up, my mom worked two jobs

to support me and my older brother.

Saw a rotating door of less-than-great men,

you would say, come and go in her life.

I think that's when I first started

thinking that, maybe, I would like

to try to help people.

You know, maybe I could help someone

like my mom out of a tough situation.

I actually never intended to be a cop.

I had aspirations of being a drummer in a metal band.

But one of my friend's brothers

was in the Academy, and I thought it sounded cool.

I liked how you had to think on your feet,

use your brain as well as your body.

After a couple of days in training,

I was hooked, man.

[Taylor] That is how I have always approached my career in law enforcement.

Try to be there for people when things are at their worst.

And, fuck, it was never worse than on this case.

[Kirby] Between 1993 and 1995, there were three murders

in Riverside and San Bernardino County

that we eventually realized were serial murders,

and which had some ritualistic aspects.

[man] I think this is it.

Yeah.

Okay, she was covered with a blue tarp.

Um, you could see it easily from the road.

This is a service road, not a lot of people

come down it.

It was just horrible. I mean, you never expect

to see something like that.

[Kirby] On August 8th, 1993,

the torso of 24-year-old Shifra Gutierrez

is discovered in San Bernardino

National Forest.

She had been dismembered.

Her genitals mutilated.

Uh, the uterus removed.

The coroner gave a best-guess estimate

she'd been there two weeks,

but it's difficult to tell.

[woman] Shifra was my best friend in high school. Um...

She was a dope bitch.

[laughs]

Um...

She just had this joy for living,

and this lust for life, you know?

And she was funny as fuck.

Um...

She wasn't a bad person.

You know, she just, um...

I don't know, she just got into some bad shit,

like a lot of people out here do.

I was always telling her, I was like,

"This is dangerous, Shifra.

You know, you gotta stop doing this."

Oh, shit, I said I wasn't going to do this.

[Taylor] There's an area off the 91

in the Casablanca neighborhood,

and that's where Shifra was last seen.

We do know she went up to a room at a motel

called Dean's Corner that was frequented by sex workers.

And there was a man with her, but...

clerk couldn't remember what he looked like.

He could've killed her there.

Could've been strangulation, for example.

We'll probably never know.

What we do know for sure

is that she was somehow moved

from that room without anybody noticing.

Or somebody noticed and just didn't care.

But we got our first lead.

A name.

All guests had to fill out a ledger,

and the suspect had written down

the name Albert Shiny.

And the case went cold.

I don't need to tell you that, especially at that time,

sex workers and marginalized people

tended to get the short end of the stick

in the criminal justice system.

I'm not saying it was right. I'm just saying it was,

and is the reality.

So, it was written off as an isolated incident.

But we were wrong.

A grisly crime scene has police on high alert

in Arlanza tonight,

not far from the Riverside Municipal Airport,

where the body of 82-year-old Ambrose Griffith

was discovered murdered in his apartment earlier today.

Mr. Griffith was disabled and, apparently,

suffered from MDS, a blood condition

that required daily assistance from a caretaker.

[Kirby] Nine months after Shifra Gutierrez is killed,

Ambrose Griffith is found murdered

in his assisted living facility.

On the night of June 3rd, 1994,

someone scaled the back side of his building

and entered his unit through a sliding glass door

that was apparently left unlocked.

He was bludgeoned with an oxygen tank that was in his room,

and then stabbed more than 30 times

with a box cutter.

That was brutal.

And you gotta understand, this guy was bedbound.

I mean, he could not walk, or could barely walk, on his own.

So, he was totally defenseless to the attack,

which was obviously unprovoked.

No one else in the building heard so much as a peep

from his room.

So, it must've happened fast, which is...

some comfort, I guess.

One of his eyes was also removed.

[Taylor] It was a sloppy scene.

A murder committed by somebody in a frenzy

who was not thinking it through at all.

It's probably why we were able to get our first real clue.

[Kirby] The print was run through the system, but nothing came back.

The lab guys stayed on it for weeks,

but it was only a partial.

No motive.

82-year-old victim

with no family and few friends,

except the few people that lived in his building

who were just as sick as he was.

So, the police didn't make any connection to the Gutierrez murder.

Not yet.

- [sobs] - [man] Come here. Come here.

It's okay. It's okay.

It's okay. It's okay.

We want to thank everyone

from the Riverside Police Department

with their continued support.

Someone out there

knows what happened to our little boy, and-and...

[voice breaking] We are begging

for you to help us

return him home

safely and unharmed.

[Kirby] Noah Lafone was abducted

while walking home from school

on October 7th, 1995.

He was 12 years old.

There were no witnesses,

and pretty much no information to go on.

There was a pretty extensive search

and media effort this time to try to find him.

We were doing door-to-doors.

This was the first case I was on involving a child,

so I really threw myself into it.

I'd get off work and I'd go join Search and Rescue.

People put in hundreds of hours,

but days turned into weeks

and it gets harder and harder to stay positive.

Three months later, in January,

his body is discovered in a shallow creek

near Silverwood Lake.

He had been weighed down by concrete bricks,

and his body was in pretty bad shape.

[tense music playing]

There were multiple lacerations to his abdomen,

and his liver had been removed.

Twelve years old.

Whole life ahead of him.

Poof.

We also found a box cutter, the weapon,

as well as Noah's school backpack

and all its contents.

This is where we got our second lead.

There was a page that had been written on

and then torn out,

but you could still see an imprint.

Kaliban.

What the heck was Kaliban?

A bird from the Caribbean, we found out.

Or a character from Shakespeare.

I mean, was this some kind of a code?

Was it another Zodiac Killer?

About two weeks after his body was discovered,

the Riverside Police Department

received a letter in the mail.

Provided details of the three killings.

It was unreleased information only the police would know,

which basically proves whoever wrote it

was the killer, or at least someone

who had direct contact with the killer.

And there was a message.

[distorted male voice] Thanks for not catching me!

Was he telling us he was planning on killing ten more?

Was that what he meant?

This was the first time we realized

this was an actual serial killer.

It's worth mentioning the jurisdictional problems

that can arise when someone commits a murder

across county lines.

It can make connecting them

a lot more difficult.

But this guy wanted us to know.

He wanted us to know what he did,

and that he wasn't finished.

And he signs the letter with that symbol.

[Kirby] Years went by.

The cases went cold.

Detectives at that time figured

whoever was responsible for the three deaths

was either incarcerated for another crime

or had died,

because they probably wouldn't have stopped killing

on their own.

But as soon as I saw that symbol on the ceiling,

I realized that was the killer from '95.

He wasn't bluffing in his letter.

He hadn't stopped.

He'd just taken a 15-year break.

Why?

We're still trying to figure that one out.

One thing's for sure.

If his first murder spree had felt sloppy

and unplanned,

this new one was anything but.

[dramatic music playing]

[Taylor] The suspect gained entry

through a first floor bathroom window,

cut through a screen on the side of the house,

then attacks Ted and Tiffany sometime after 1:15 a.m.,

after Tiffany sends her last work email.

There was bruising on Ted's face.

Struck by a blunt object.

We think the suspect probably roughed him up

as a form of intimidation,

and convinced him and Tiffany

to go downstairs willingly.

This little girl, Samantha...

Yeah, it looks like she put up more of a fight.

Some of the furniture in her room,

her comforter,

all disturbed and in disarray.

The suspect zip-ties their hands and feet,

wraps duct tape around their mouths.

You see, this guy had gotten smarter.

He'd learned from the murders in '95.

Less sloppy, more methodical.

I mean, the buckets? What the fuck?

Pardon my French.

He ties the three of them

to chairs around the dining room.

Deliberately facing each other, do you understand?

He places their feet

in these five-gallon painters buckets.

He prepared these things ahead of time.

Like, they had their names on them.

Literally.

Like, "Ted," "Tiffany,"

"Samantha" written out.

He draws three lines

on each of them, like the kind you'd find on a measuring cup.

Except this wasn't for measuring out rice.

It was for their blood.

By volume.

Going.

Going.

Gone.

The suspect used a box cutter

to make a small, six-centimeter incision

through the skin on each victim.

And the result was fatal blood loss.

There's about a gallon and a half of blood

in the human body.

It takes maybe 15 minutes for that to drain out,

but you can be dead in as soon as three.

The femoral artery is at your groin,

basically the top of your thigh.

If you're sitting upright,

gravity just kind of does its thing.

The technical term for this is exsanguination.

[Kirby] Part of what really earns that term,

"ritualistic,"

in my opinion, is anything done post-mortem.

So, you know, normal homicide,

you stab a person, shoot a person,

you get the heck out of there.

You don't stick around. Every second you wait

is another second to get caught.

From what we can put together,

our suspect hung around another two hours at least.

He leaves the house,

comes back with a 24-foot extension ladder

that he gets from his vehicle,

and then he goes to work painting this thing on the ceiling.

And it's not a small room,

and he goes almost wall to wall.

It's almost 20 feet.

And he does a good job.

He's careful,

does a couple of layers,

almost no drips on the floor.

Then he positions the bodies.

And all this

he does without any neighbors

hearing a sound or seeing a thing.

No fingerprints, no DNA left at the scene.

No motive.

No relation to the victims.

Three days later, another letter arrives in the mail.

[distorted male voice] Hope you blue baddies

[reporter] A gruesome discovery was made just this morning

by a jogger of a human head here,

in Perris Hill Park.

The jogger, Chelsea Lunsford,

has been coming here every weekday morning for two years.

She enjoys the serenity of the landscape,

and was not prepared for what she would find.

My friend was just telling me how I should bring a mace

or a stun gun or something with me

when I go running, and, um...

Yeah, I guess she was right.

[Taylor] On the night of November 8th,

the suspect entered the home of the two victims,

Tamara Latour and her boyfriend, Glen Sandweiss,

through a dog door in the back of the house.

They were watching TV in the living room.

The volume was up, which allowed him to sneak up

on them undetected until the last minute.

According to Mr. Sandweiss, he attacks Tamara first,

uses a stun gun to incapacitate her.

We think the suspect was not expecting Sandweiss to be home.

Sandweiss says that he seems confused.

There's a brief struggle before Sandweiss

is overpowered by the suspect,

brought to the floor.

That's when the attack with the propane torch begins.

He literally burns this guy's face off.

Is there anything else you can remember

that would help us catch who did this?

[Glen]

[Taylor]

[Glen and Taylor]

[Glen sighs]

[Glen]

[dramatic music playing]

[Glen] I've no fucking idea. Jesus Christ...

What the fuck is happening?

Oh, God, what am I going to do?

[clicks lighter]

What do you want to know?

The fuck you think I haven't?

You really think I was going to be able

to be a teacher looking like this?

Standing up in front of a group of fifth-graders?

They'd be terrified.

[yells]

[producer]

Doing what?

Telling my story?

Huh?

Trying to be inspirational?

I can't work.

Got no friends.

Nerve damage.

Feels like my face is on fire all the time.

I'm already dead, man.

I'm just not in the ground...

like Tamara is.

Fuck!

You... You got what you need. I'm fucking done.

Give me my money and get the fuck out of my house.

[Kirby] Tamara's head, the sculpture,

the weird trinkets on the ground,

all of it was carefully examined.

And, once again, no fingerprints,

no DNA left behind.

We had nothing.

Until we got lucky.

A woman who works at the strip mall

down the street from the park said she had seen a guy

with a truck unloading several garbage bags

into a dumpster the morning of the murder.

White truck, red lettering, she said.

So, we pulled footage from a Credit Union's ATM

at the strip mall and...

It wasn't a great angle,

but it did catch something.

[tense music playing]

[Taylor] The owner of the white truck, Victor Shamaz,

was a 45-year-old man living in Riverside

who had a small house painting business.

He had a rap sheet. It was relatively clean.

Few minor narcotics citations,

a B&E from a decade earlier.

But he had a restraining order taken out against him recently

for apparently stalking a woman he met online.

That didn't sit well with us.

We called him in for questioning and he agreed.

[Taylor] Mr. Shamaz,

thank you for meeting with us today.

Yeah. It's...

Yeah. Just, you know, wanted to help.

Yeah, yeah.

[Kirby]

[Taylor] So, just to be clear,

[Taylor]

[Kirby] Shamaz continues to claim he has no knowledge

of any crimes, that he simply didn't notice

his work truck was stolen.

We asked him if he'd be willing to take

a polygraph test, to which he agrees.

- [examiner] Is your name Victor Shamaz? - Yes.

[Taylor] He bombs the polygraph test about as badly as you can.

Chose to be evasive,

or lying about nearly every question asked.

In fact, the only question he actually

appears to tell the truth on are his name and address.

Of course, polygraph tests aren't always accurate,

and they're not admissible in court.

It's just a useful tool.

But it was pretty obvious Shamaz was lying.

[camera shutter clicks]

So, Shamaz manages to get himself arrested

after it's discovered he's carrying

a fairly large amount of methamphetamine

and an unregistered handgun.

Looks like Shamaz was trying to skip town.

I, uh, just wanted to come and clear the air, you know?

I was at this Quick-N-Go...

[Kirby] Okay, slow down.

It became evident

Shamaz wasn't our guy.

I mean, he was a scumbag, but he wasn't our scumbag

and he didn't really know anything.

Although he did give us one new piece of information.

[Taylor]

No, I... Yeah, I saw him.

I should've mentioned that, but...

You know?

[tense music playing]

[Taylor] He started wearing a mask.

That meant only one thing.

He'd seen us on the news and knew we were actively pursuing him.

Oh, he wanted to make that loud and clear in his next letter.

[distorted male voice]

[Taylor] A few months go by, nothing new happens.

And of course, a part of me is thinking,

hoping, maybe that's it.

Maybe it's already over and this guy's finished.

Yeah, but another part of me, the cynical part,

knows that can't be true.

He'll let us know when he's finished.

It's about 6:00 in the morning and I get a call from Joe.

They found another body.

Earlier this morning, a horrific discovery

was reported to police here,

at the North Riverside Aquatic Center.

This was a bad one.

A group of skate kids broke into the building

to check the place out and smoke weed.

You know, just a couple of dumb teenagers.

They're not going to be doing that again anytime soon.

- [tense music playing] - [Taylor speaking indistinctly]

When you first saw the body, it looked like...

like it was covered in mud or slime or something,

'cause it was so shiny.

[Taylor] Coroner's official cause of death?

Fatal loss of blood by leeches.

[tense music playing]

[Kirby] Victim's name was Dennis Zao,

a 43-year-old Chinese immigrant living in Riverside.

He was last seen leaving an apartment he shared

with several other people to catch a bus

and was never seen again.

Body's found four days later,

and he had only been deceased less than a day.

[Taylor] Our suspect had been breeding them, right?

This particular type of leech takes about three weeks

for the eggs to form and hatch,

then another two weeks to reach maturity.

So, he'd been preparing this thing for over a month.

Coming here, day after day,

checking in on his babies, feeding them,

keeping their water clean, checking the pH.

He might be a monster,

but he does have some kind of paternal instinct.

Then he abducts Dennis Zao and brings him here,

strips him naked, puts him in the water.

He creates this barrier

around the deep end and all along the edges

so he can't get out no matter how hard he tries.

Then he begins releasing these things into the pool.

[man] The species found in the pool with Mr. Zao

is called H. stagnalis.

In the case of H. Stagnalis,

it has this sucker on the front of its body that it uses

to attach to the host.

They have three small jaws

that create a Y-shaped incision.

It's how they get the tasty paydirt.

[dramatic music playing]

Leeches will consume up to ten times

their own body weight in blood,

which sounds like a lot but it's really...

It's like two teaspoons.

[Kirby] This bloodletting-by-leeches

process went on for nearly three straight days.

The suspect just methodically keeps

fishing out full leeches, adding more empties,

on and on... as Dennis Zao becomes

more and more incapacitated.

I've always been lousy at math, but, basically,

it took a shit load of leeches to kill Dennis Zao.

Eventually, after he was naked

in this filthy, leech-filled water,

he finally succumbed to his injuries.

Oh, and the reason no one ever hears screaming

from the building?

Zao's tongue was cut out.

[Kirby] A leech bite

looks a little like the symbol, doesn't it?

See how it's sort of a triangle?

But like most clues, this just led to more questions.

What do these dots mean?

What the hell am I looking at?

We later figured out that the suspect

first got in contact with Mr. Zao

because of a Craigslist ad he posted.

They had exchanged a few messages

and then arranged to meet up for sex

at a motel down the street from the pool.

This finally led to the big break in the case.

Our technicians were able to identify the IP address

where the Craigslist ad was originally posted.

The ad and subsequent back-and-forth messaging

had been made from a coffee shop

in Mission Grove on February 11th.

This was a huge lead.

We finally were able to trace the suspect's

whereabout outside of a crime scene.

I mean, I gotta admit, I was really starting to think

we were chasing a ghost or a vampire or something.

We did surveillance on the place for about a week.

The last thing we wanted to do

was draw any attention to ourselves.

If this guy was a regular, for example,

and came in all the time...

I mean, we were always hoping and praying

maybe he swings by for a cup of coffee

or place another ad,

and just like that, we'd have him.

No such luck.

There were three employees working that day.

None of them could remember the suspect.

It's a popular place,

so he may have picked it for that reason.

No surveillance system, no cameras anywhere at all.

But the area does have a large homeless population.

[Kirby] Hey. Excuse me, sir.

You mind if I talk to you for a sec?

That's...

You're talking about the one near Andulka Park?

Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

I'm just sitting there, right?

And he...

He comes up to me and...

I knew what he wanted.

"I want to hire you as day labor."

[Kirby] Did he say what kind of labor?

Uh... landscaping.

Working on a house or something.

[Kirby] And you get in his car?

- Yep. - [Kirby] What kind of car?

Like a...

sedan or something.

Like a, like a blue Camry.

[Kirby] When I started talking to this guy,

my jaw was on the floor, man.

I mean, if he was telling the truth, this was huge.

We even had a vehicle description.

But it gets even better.

Mr. Johnson tells us

he knows where the suspect's house is.

Apparently, the suspect had driven him to it.

Okay, see that [inaudible]?

It wants you to go left, but you're going to go straight.

[Taylor] He didn't know the street address,

but he says he thinks he can remember

how to get there by memory.

Apparently, he'd been driven to a residence in Highgrove,

where the suspect says he needs to grab

some tools before they went to the so-called "job site."

[Kirby] And that's what brought us to 144 Artesian Avenue.

After picking up a duffel bag,

they get on the 215 headed north.

Mr. Johnson says the guy seems normal, friendly.

I mean, even conversational.

And that brings us to the bracelet.

Johnson says he found this bracelet

in a trash container a few years ago.

Says he just likes to wear it, thinks it's cool.

Apparently, the suspect asks him about it,

starts grilling him.

"How long have you been a diabetic?

Do you take insulin?" etc.

Johnson tells him the bracelet's not his.

And then the suspect gets very visibly angry,

pulls off the highway, tells him to get out,

drives off, and that's that.

Johnson never sees him again.

He's incredibly lucky.

I believe if that bracelet had been real,

if Johnson had fit whatever criteria

our suspect was looking for,

he would most definitely be dead right now.

[Taylor] After learning all this we go to the house.

Just a normal house. We knock.

Nobody's home.

But we can't just kick the door in without probable cause.

I mean, all we've got is the word of an unemployed drifter

with a minor criminal record

who we also paid for the information he gave us.

It's not going to get us a warrant.

And that's when I see it above the door,

staring us in the face.

[Kirby] We kept most of the evidence we had, which wasn't much,

pretty close to the chest as far as the media was concerned.

That symbol, the image,

was never released to the public.

So, nobody could know about it unless they were involved in one of the crimes.

That was enough.

We called in the cavalry.

[tense music playing]

[officer] Big windows on left.

Alright.

[tense music playing]

All clear!

[Kirby] I don't know what I was expecting

to find in there.

Torture dungeon, haunted house,

something from a horror movie.

But it wasn't like that at all.

It was... banal.

Mundane.

That doesn't mean it wasn't a little weird.

[tense music playing]

But weird doesn't necessarily make you guilty.

There was no evidence the person that lived there was involved in anything,

other than the symbol over the doorway,

and that was purely circumstantial.

[Kirby] Look at this.

That's just lovely, isn't it?

The property owner was an older woman who lived in San Diego

who said she'd been renting the house to...

You guessed it, someone who called themselves

Albert Shiny.

Apparently, Mr. Shiny was willing to pay

for a year upfront in cash,

so she didn't ask too many questions

and had only met him twice.

So, we start dusting for fingerprints

but we can't find any, literally. Not one print.

Which makes no sense for the inside of someone's house.

There should be thousands of them.

I mean, was this guy wearing gloves

every second of every day?

[Kirby] Finally, we found some fingerprints

on a telescope that was outside, on the deck.

We immediately got them out to the lab

and ran through the computer.

And boom, we got a hit.

The print matched the partial that was found in '95

from the Noah Lafone murder.

I couldn't believe it.

We might have our guy.

The fingerprints belonged to a Leslie Sykes,

born December 20th, 1962 in Branson, Missouri.

Homer Johnson, the homeless gentleman,

swore Sykes was the person who had given him a ride.

The woman who rented the house also IDed him off his photo.

[Taylor] Sykes had no criminal record, no employment history,

no current address, no phone number

or bank account and, big surprise,

the guy hadn't paid taxes in more than two decades.

Yeah, he really was a ghost, but he was our ghost

and we had to find him before he killed again.

Riverside police are asking for the public's help

in locating this man.

Fifty-year-old Leslie Sykes is a person of interest

in what has been dubbed as "the Mr. Shiny murders."

The killer in that case has now taken the lives

of eight people in both San Bernardino

and Riverside counties, and is still at large.

We tried to do a total media blitz,

get this guy's picture in front of as many people as possible.

The story got carried all over California,

even in a few other surrounding states,

but no one was really paying attention.

But one person that did see the coverage

was Leslie Sykes.

[distorted male voice]

[Kirby] Five to go and then we'll know...

what?

It was a sick game to him,

but it was also absolutely serious.

Would he really stop at five?

The next murder happened less than a month later,

March 19th.

The victim was a 16-year-old

high school student named Victoria Macenroe.

Sixteen.

She was alone at her parents' home in Hiland.

They had gone out to visit friends in Rancho Cucamonga.

Sykes jumped the gate and entered

through a first floor window at or around 9:21.

And we know this

because it was caught on camera.

Okay, so this is the Color Dreams palette

by Adorable Damage.

I am just obsessed with this brand lately.

I actually reviewed their Shimmer Shadow palette

in my top ten video

and they are just killing it, okay?

What I'm going to do

is I'm going to go in

for kind of a smoky look with this one right here.

And then, you can just go in, like, a circular motion.

You don't have to do a bunch of back-and-forth

windshield-wiper crap.

So, start...

"Windshield wiper," that sounds stupid.

[heavy steps]

Hey, I thought you were going to text me on the way home!

I'm starving!

Mom? Mom?

Dad?

[Victoria screams]

No, please! Please! I'll do anything. Please! My parents...

I'll do anything! Please! No!

[tense music playing]

[tense music playing]

[ethereal whispering]

[audio distorts]

[Kirby] The video glitches pretty bad there

and it's hard to tell what's going on.

We've combed over it frame by frame,

but it's just too messed up to see anything clearly.

But obviously, Sykes was performing

some kind of ritual.

[man] Ritual murder, strictly speaking,

is a relatively obscure phenomenon

not just in the United States, but worldwide.

It just doesn't happen that often in its purest form.

To this day, people still believe

that the Manson Family was a satanic cult.

It's not true.

Of course, that's not to say

that ritual murder never happens.

There were the murder-suicides in the Solar Temple cult,

the Fall Rivers cult, Order of the Black Sun.

The Mr. Shiny murders definitely seem ritualistic,

but I didn't recognize any of the iconography.

This wasn't some goetic rite

pulled from a grimoire, there was nothing Abrahamic.

As I told the police at that time,

whatever it was,

this guy was a true believer

and very, very dangerous.

And this is all crazy in its own right,

but what's truly unexpected is what happens next.

[panting]

[Victoria moans in pain]

Somehow, Victoria survives being shot

not only in the head, but in the back twice

and the shoulder.

This is probably because a 22-caliber weapon

was used, and just incredible luck.

[woman] Victoria?

[woman screams] Oh, my God!

Emergency workers arrive in about 15 minutes

and they're able to stabilize Victoria

on her way to St. Bernardine Medical Center.

I wish I could tell you the story ended there.

After going through surgery, she was put in the recovery ward,

and I had multiple officers assigned to guard her room, just in case.

And the hospital security was put on alert.

It should've been enough.

[tense music playing]

Sykes attacks and subdues a nurse

just getting off his shift in the hospital parking lot,

takes his uniform and entry badge.

He walks straight through the front doors,

right past security, and goes to Macenroe's floor.

I mean, he seems to know exactly where to go.

He goes to the nurses' station,

introduces himself to the other staff,

says he was transferred from Pediatrics.

They believe him.

Says he knows all the vernacular and hospital procedure.

Sykes quite literally cares for three different patients

over a four-hour period.

He walks by police and security several times

and is never noticed.

Yeah, including by Joe or me.

[Kirby] He was right there.

We practically touched each other.

If I'd just been paying attention,

if I'd just looked into his eyes...

I'll never forgive myself for not realizing

just how bold he might really be.

He waits until there's a shift change,

enters the room for storing pharmaceuticals,

and proceeds to poison an AB negative blood transfusion bag

with an industrial cleaner

he finds in a custodial closet.

He knows that Macenroe is the only with AB negative

in the wing and is the only one who will receive that bag.

Then he leaves.

Later that night, a nurse comes in to rotate out

Macenroe's backup bag

and unknowingly replaces it

with the poisoned one.

Victoria was dead within minutes,

but Sykes was long gone by then.

This was a huge blow

to everyone involved in the case.

The one victim that survived,

we couldn't protect her.

I mean, we were right there.

We could've had him.

Yeah, that was one of the roughest nights

in my entire life.

Could we take a break?

[producer] Yeah.

[sad music playing]

[man] It was a roller-coaster.

Realizing that she might be hurt,

then thinking that she might be okay...

thinking that she was okay, and...

Some days I feel like she's still here.

[sad music playing]

[producer]

Yeah.

We couldn't touch it.

I think about that saying a lot,

"you really die the last time someone says your name."

And I guess we kept all her stuff

because we didn't want her to die.

Even though I know she's dead.

[reporter] Victoria Macenroe was serial killer

Leslie Sykes' ninth and most recent victim

in the Mr. Shiny murders,

a killing spree that spans three counties

and over 18 years.

Authorities continue to urge the public

to keep a watchful lookout for Sykes,

who remains at large and is considered armed

and extremely dangerous.

Residents of the Hiland neighborhood

where Macenroe was murdered

have expressed their frustration at police

for their inability to capture,

or even come close to capturing,

the elusive killer.

It's unacceptable.

It's insane.

Somebody in the San Bernardino Police Department

should be held accountable

for letting it get out of hand like this.

It's messed up how they haven't caught the guy yet.

This used to be a pretty great place to live,

but, honestly, I'm really scared.

And that girl, she just lives, like,

a couple blocks from here!

So, I mean, who's next, right?

[Taylor] We were really feeling the pressure by this point.

Macenroe's murder seemed to be

the straw that broke the camel's back

in terms of public outrage.

But I felt for all of them.

Every single victim deserved justice.

And for everything we'd done up until this point,

until you catch your guy, you haven't done shit.

We'd already been offering a cash reward

for any lead that led to the arrest of Leslie Sykes,

but I convinced the D.A.'s Office to substantially up it.

It ended up being one of the highest

in San Bernardino's history.

$80,000 for just one person.

At the same time, we were digging

into Sykes' past, trying to figure out

everything we could, which wasn't easy.

All his known relatives were dead.

He had been briefly married in '88

to a woman named Suzanne Hemler,

but that was over by '91.

Tried to contact her, but she committed suicide in 2008.

We started reaching out to people

Sykes went to high school with,

but nobody seems to remember him.

Finally, we find someone who will talk to us.

A guy named Jared Kelly.

And he's like, fucking...

[Kirby] How so?

[Jared] Just, like, agitated,

distracted.

[Taylor] A cave?

[Taylor] Like what?

It's, like, ingrained.

Which is metal as fuck.

[dial tone]

[dispatcher]

[male voice]

[dispatcher]

[male voice] Police.

- [male voice] - [woman sobbing in background]

[dispatcher]

[Taylor] Sykes attempts to break into the residence

of Miles and Kelly Harris,

an older couple living in Rancho West.

He scaled the fence into their backyard,

but is almost immediately attacked

by the Harrises' 48-pound pit bull, Caesar.

Mr. Harris overhears the commotion,

looks into his backyard

and sees the struggle happening.

I mean, this was a big animal,

and it's able to physically knock Sykes off his feet.

We know he was hurt pretty bad

because we find blood on the ground

in multiple places.

Sadly, the dog's only able to keep this up

for so long before Sykes uses a bladed weapon and stabs it repeatedly,

then he jumps the fence again.

[Kirby] This time, I was not going to let

the same thing happen to the Harrises

that happened to Victoria Macenroe.

They were immediately put into protective custody.

Not that it mattered, because Sykes must have had

a backup plan for that night.

31-year-old Leo Deetz was working a night shift

at a 24-hour doughnut shop

in La Sierra when he was attacked.

[Leo] Yeah, I don't like fantasy shit,

but this one's actually pretty dope.

It's, like, violence and sex and stuff. I don't know.

It's based on books, so it seems pretty legit.

[chuckles]

Yeah. Yeah, you too, man.

Yeah. Peace!

[tense music playing]

[Leo mumbles]

[Leo groans in pain]

[Leo screams]

[dramatic music playing]

[Taylor] Leo Deetz is found the next morning

with his heart removed from his body.

[tense music playing]

A security guard sees Sykes exit the back of the shop

and tries to confront him, but Sykes flees.

[guard] Honestly, I was just doing my job.

I was wrapping up my rounds for the evening here in this complex.

I was going to take some doughnuts home to me and the girlfriend.

I saw a man leaving the shop

in a very, very weird mask.

[Taylor] The guard still manages to grab

his license plate number and report it to the police.

I'm just bummed I didn't get the reward money.

In the surveillance video from the doughnut shop,

you could tell Sykes was in pain from the dog bite.

He's unfocused and unprepared.

Then he's forced to ditch his car

after it's reported by the guard,

which we find abandoned

near the 91 and 215 interchange.

The more desperate Sykes became,

the more likely he was to make a mistake.

That was the hope.

[Kirby] We'd kind of hit a brick wall

digging into Sykes' past.

He just vanished into thin air after '91.

That's when we realized it's because he wasn't in the country.

Turns out Sykes had used his late ex-wife's credit card

to purchase a one-way ticket to, of all places, Jerusalem.

[sighs] I know, what the F, right?

I mean, we were just baffled.

And we also realized this was beyond the scope

of our resources, so we reached out

to the FBI and asked for their help.

They, in turn, got in contact with Interpol

and a whole side investigation got underway,

trying to find out what Sykes was doing over there.

What was found out was...

Let's just say it didn't clear anything up.

Sykes flies to Jerusalem in '96,

not long after the murder of Noah Lafone,

and then, evidently, he passes into Syria.

Now, the information here is sketchy at best,

but apparently, Sykes was living in northern Iraq for two years,

but then flees after Operation Desert Fox

in '98.

As far as we know, Sykes didn't speak Arabic,

but apparently, he learned.

Sykes then crosses the border into Turkey,

and then into Italy in 2001.

While there, he attends a museum exhibit

on Etruscan pottery in the city of Mantua

and gets into some sort of altercation and is arrested.

I don't know what Sykes is doing

looking at Etruscan pottery,

but he doesn't stay in Italy long

before moving on to Germany in 2003.

And that's where we learn of someone who claims

to have had direct contact with him there.

I met Mr. Sykes when I was living in Xanten.

He contacted me through the internet

about several books that I was selling.

Specifically, he was looking to buy

my copy of a printed work from the late Middle Ages,

a manuscript known as...

It's a very valuable book,

only half a dozen copies or something still exist.

[producer]

It's a book of spells, basically.

Witchcraft.

[producer]

Well, he wanted to buy it off me,

but I wasn't selling.

I don't know if he was for real or not,

but he offered some wild prices.

100, 150,000 euro.

The guy kind of creeped me out, to be honest.

So, when my shop was vandalized

a couple days later and the book was gone,

I immediately knew who did it.

To know that I came that close in contact

with a serial killer...

The thing that gets me more than anything else

though is what the hell happened to that book.

[Kirby] We had hoped, maybe, that Sykes

would be deterred by how bungled

the last few attacks had been.

We didn't think he would stop, but maybe just slow down

long enough for us to find him.

If anything, it must have reinvigorated his cause.

- Get in the fucking car, Coby! - [Coby] Wait!

- This is not our issue. - We can't just leave him!

Are you fucking kidding me? This is not our problem!

- I'm leaving. - [Coby] Emily! Wait!

[tense music playing]

Holy shit.

This is fucking crazy.

[Kirby] The victim was Saroj Mallick,

the security guard that saw Sykes behind the doughnut shop

and reported his plate to police.

After leaving work on April 2nd,

he was supposed to meet his girlfriend at a bar

at 8:30 but never shows.

He doesn't show up for work the next day either,

and his cell phone is off.

Although his coworkers are a little concerned,

nothing's reported to police.

I guess he had a habit of just blowing out

to Vegas for the weekend without telling anybody.

But he didn't go to Vegas.

[Taylor] The following day he's found hung

from a public playground swing set.

"Displayed" is the word.

It was a form of torture the ancient Vikings

used to use called "blood eagle."

The flesh of the back is cut open,

ribs are bent back,

then both lungs are pulled out.

The mutilation resembles...

Yeah, you guessed it, wings.

Blood eagle.

It was clearly done for dramatic effect.

When the Fire Department is getting his body down,

they find this CD.

[digital sounds]

[soft music playing]

[digital sounds]

[dance music in background]

[man groans]

[man] The fuck?

Hello?

Hello?

Anybody, help!

Hello!

Help!

Hello!

Let me out of here!

Yo, yo, yo, yo! Okay, okay!

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Sir, please no, no, no!

Oh! Oh, shit!

No! No! Please! Fuck!

- No! Shit! Help me! Stop, please! - [drill whirring]

Stop it! Somebody!

Okay, I'll say anything! I'll do anything!

Please stop! Please stop! Please stop!

[ringing sound]

Okay.

"I have been selected

because of my direct actions.

I should not have interfered with the Great One's plan.

And for my blasphemies, I will be put into transit."

Hello?

Hello?

[screams]

He wanted us to know

he was punishing this guy

for trying to stop him.

He was saying,

"Stay out of his way or else."

He was saying,

"This is your fault, not mine."

[producer]

Oh, but I do.

No, I'll carry his death, and all of their deaths,

on my conscience until the day I leave this planet.

[Taylor] After the Mallick murder, a lot less tips came in.

People were afraid.

I guess they had every right to be.

We picked apart Sykes' house with a fine-toothed comb

and found almost nothing useful at all.

We excavated parts of the backyard.

There was nothing but dirt.

We knew Sykes used Presto brand toothpaste,

the one DVD he owned was season two

of Meet the Furballs,

and his favorite drink was 2% milk.

Yikes.

He ate there,

he slept there, but it didn't seem

like he lived there.

It was like a front.

It was like a show being put on to pretend

the person that lived there was vaguely normal.

After a long day of chasing some leads

that went nowhere,

I went to the backyard of Sykes' house

to get some fresh air.

I think I was hoping I'd have some transcendent moment

a lot of profilers talk about, you know,

when you enter the headspace of the killer

and you start to think like them.

That never happened.

None of it made any sense to me.

So, it was like 2:00 in the morning

and I'm just...

you know, zoning out, looking up at the stars.

And then I remember that telescope

that we pulled Sykes' prints from.

What stars was Leslie Sykes looking at?

The area in the sky that Leslie Sykes

had his telescope pointed at was interesting for two reasons.

First, he was looking at Ophiuchus.

Now, most people hadn't even heard of Ophiuchus.

It's one of the 13 major constellations

along the ecliptic,

smack in between Scorpius and Sagittarius.

It's also called the...

The so-called 13th zodiac sign,

although that's getting into astrology and not hard science.

My wife would kill me for explaining it that way.

The ancient Greeks were the one that named

all the constellations as we know them today.

Pisces is a fish, Taurus is a bull, etc.

Ophiuchus is the serpent bearer,

a man battling a giant snake.

The reason I mention Ophiuchus

is because a rare celestial event

was taking place in its constellational borders that exact month.

A planetary alignment

where Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn

come in earshot of each other

in a way that happens once every 800 years or so.

This is a real thing, you can look it up.

May 13th, 2011.

You could view it with a naked eye.

But only for a few hours, which is why it's so special.

The symbol.

A leech bite.

Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn.

The rare planetary alignment that was only a few weeks away.

So, is this all one big coincidence?

One thing they really drill into your brain

at the Academy is that the human mind

is very adept at finding patterns

in things, even if they aren't there.

They tell you to watch out for it, to not get carried away,

to remember Occam's razor.

The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

But sometimes, it's actually the strangest.

We had brought in these big halogen lights

to Sykes' house because the place

was so dark at night.

But as soon as we turned it on, it blew a fuse.

So, one of the deputies is trying to reset the breaker

and realized the subpanel in the closet wasn't working.

As he's messing with it,

the whole thing just comes out of the wall.

Like everything in that house, it was a fake.

Behind it, there was a space with a lockbox.

Of course, we cleared the house

and called the bomb squad, just in case.

They used one of those little robots and everything.

No bomb.

But that didn't seem like his style, anyway.

The box was just a cheapo,

we just pried it open with a crowbar.

And inside, just two things.

Leslie Sykes' passport,

expired from 2003,

and a key with an attached keychain.

[Kirby] We drove over there straight away

and went inside the unit.

In retrospect, it was pretty stupid of us.

I mean, the thing could've been booby-trapped,

or he could've been waiting in there for us.

Who knows.

But it felt like we'd run out of time.

We just got lucky.

Everywhere my light goes, you go, okay?

Jackpot, winning-lotto-ticket, royal-flush lucky.

[tense music playing]

[Kirby] Here's why we never get fingerprints.

Guy wears a full-on hazmat suit.

This is the mold, we believe, for the mask he's been seen in.

Yeah, this guy is big into space.

[officer] Over here.

[Kirby] Real big.

[Taylor]

[Kirby chuckles]

[Taylor] Oh, you gotta check this out.

This is... early-childhood reading for... late night.

"Celestial Witchcraft of Early England."

[tense music playing]

This right here

we think is Dennis Zao's tongue, alright?

Unless he's cut out other tongues.

This here's Victoria Macenroe, we think it is because it's...

We watched her hair get cut off.

And that is Saroj Mallick.

- [Taylor sighs] - [tense music playing]

[Kirby] He's been here recently.

[Taylor] Yeah.

[Taylor exhales]

Over here is what we think

is Sheridans' blood.

[officer] What about this shit up here?

[Kirby] "Hail Azragor."

And then this weird...

altar.

Is this Azragor?

[producer]

[Jonas] Azragor? No.

[producer] How about Kaliban?

Like in Shakespeare?

The Thorn of Time sounds familiar.

I've heard that. Where have I heard that?

This is pre-cuneiform

so it's all very cryptic, but here.

[reads in foreign language]

"The temple of the outer gate

beyond the thorn of time."

[in foreign language] I've heard before.

That means...

Krönung.

Crowning...

Coronation.

[Kirby] Whereas before we had little to no evidence

to go on, we now had way too much.

Sykes had collected tons of information

on each of his victims, had them all

in a filing cabinet.

Criminal history, medical records,

information the public does not have access to,

so he must've been paying off cops

or private investigators.

And every murder had been meticulously documented.

There were photos, drawings,

hundreds of hand-written pages

by Sykes with his ramblings.

A pure window into a man's madness.

[Taylor] We were pulling all-nighters

in that horrible space.

Even after the bodies were removed,

the smell never went away.

We were going crazy.

On May 8th, the manager of the place comes looking for us.

Someone sent mail to the office for us.

It was another letter.

[distorted male voice]

[dial tone]

[dispatcher]

[woman]

[dispatcher]

[woman screams]

[indistinct loud noises]

[dial tone]

Around midnight on May 12th,

Sykes breaks into the home

of Glenn and Stephanie Courtland via a garage window

and abducts their three-month-old baby, Sawyer.

[tense music playing]

[baby crying]

[Taylor] He could've killed that child

in his crib right then and there,

but he was waiting. I mean, he was deliberately

waiting for something.

But what?

[Kirby] But we had no idea where Sykes

was going or what his plan was,

but it didn't seem like a coincidence

that the triangle in the sky

was supposed to appear that morning.

That was a Friday, by the way.

The 13th.

Coincidence, right?

[man] I am just getting to work, it's around 3:00 a.m.,

and... Let's see.

Okay, right here.

Right here, not 20 feet from where I found

that woman's body,

I see this red SUV parked.

The vehicle is empty.

I just got a weird vibe.

So, I called it in.

I immediately got a reply

that the automobile has been stolen,

and that the driver is armed and dangerous.

Now, I...

I watched the news closely

and I was like, "Is this Mr. Shiny?"

They found Sykes' SUV

right in the spot of the very first murder

in '93.

He ran out of gas right there,

of all places.

What are the odds?

[Taylor] This three-planet alignment

was going to be visible between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m.

I mean, that gave us just a matter of hours

to find Sykes and baby Sawyer.

But one way or another, this thing was going to end.

[tense music playing]

[insect chirping]

[woman 1] But [inaudible], that...

That's a pretty believable thing that he died. I don't know.

- I... - I don't know.

- [woman 1] I believe that's the case. - Do you want

- a marshmallow? - [woman 2] Ready. Yeah.

Made the s'mores.

- [woman screams] - Oh!

I was going to do it.

- [woman laughing] - Mm.

This is disgusting, I'm so sorry.

[woman laughing]

[woman] We all went to UC Riverside together,

but I was moving out of state for my Master's degree,

so it was sort of a last hurrah

with the girls.

We didn't even know that thing

with the planets was even happening.

[woman 1] I think we're just getting old, dude.

- Old asses for life. - [woman 1 laughs]

- [twig breaks] - [police sirens]

[Elizabeth] Do you hear that?

[police sirens]

[Kirby] We had units coming in from Arrowhead,

Crestline, even Big Bear,

but they were spread out all over the place.

If Sykes was on foot, he could only get so far,

but we still needed a lot of manpower.

Best we could do in that first hour

was two cars.

Two.

That park is almost a million acres.

[man] When we were on the way out there,

you know, I was actually excited.

[producer]

'Cause Sykes was the boogeyman of Berdoo.

I mean, even the FBI was after him.

If we were the arresting officers...

[chuckles]

That would be huge.

So fucking stupid.

[Taylor] They started going from campsite to campsite

in a grid.

Every tent, RV,

Porta-Potty out there,

they were shining a light into it.

- [officer] Who's in there with you? - It's just my daughter.

[Pearce] Nobody was being cooperative

or wanting to talk to us,

but, I mean, who would be?

- [officer] Anybody else here with you? - [woman] No.

Imagine you're asleep in your tent

and a cop shines a light in your face.

Like, I'd be pissed too.

[officer] You see anything suspicious tonight?

You see a man with a baby?

[man] A baby?

[Taylor] It was a clusterfuck.

Heavy brush, too dark, lots of places to hide.

Even now, GPS maps in that kind of area

just aren't that reliable.

Neither are cell phones.

But luckily, some places still had landlines.

[dial tone]

[dispatcher]

[crying]

There's a property out there where you can rent

these individual cabins for the night.

Sykes forces his way inside one of these cabins

where Martin and Silvia Vallejo are staying.

It's about four o'clock in the morning at this point.

He's able to subdue Martin,

but Silvia gets away

and calls 911 at the cabin next door.

[police sirens]

[tense music playing]

- [officer] Did you make the call, ma'am? - [crying] Yes!

He's in there with my husband!

- [officer] Where's the cabin? - Third cabin on the right! Please help him!

- [officer] Stay here. - He has a child!

- There's a baby with him! - [officer] Stay here.

[Taylor] The two closest units arrived at the cabin around 4:50 a.m.

Backup was on the way, but ended up getting lost

and wouldn't get there for over an hour.

These guys had no idea

what they might be walking into.

[police sirens]

[tense music playing]

[officer 1] Check out the front door.

[tense music playing]

[Pearce] Clear.

[officer 1 indistinct]

[indistinct]

[Pearce] Alright, it's clear.

[officer 1] Stand by.

[Kirby] The place was deserted, alright?

Extremely bad vibes.

[Pearce] Are you seeing this?

I think that's...

that's when I started to get scared.

Then we found Mr. Vallejo.

[officer 1] Looks like a bedroom.

- We got a suspect. - [officer 2] We got a suspect!

[officer 1] Let me see your hands!

[Pearce] Hands! Hands!

[officer 1] Give it up.

It looks like he's duct-taped. His hands.

[Pearce] What the fuck?

- I got him. I got him. - [officer 1] Get the mask.

- [Pearce] Oh my God. Get medical out here! - [officer 1] He's injured.

[Taylor] Sykes essentially lobotomizes the man...

leaves the body to be found like that.

[Pearce] It was just bad, bro, I...

I don't know what else to say.

An empty glass is found on the kitchen counter

with remnants of milk from the fridge,

and Sawyer's dirty diapers' thrown in the garbage.

Even then, he was still taking care of the baby.

After this pit stop, he leaves into the woods.

[tense music playing]

[officer] Closer ETA on RO unit, over.

- [gunshot] - What the hell was that?

[man screams]

- [baby cries] - [officer 2] We should go check it out.

[Pearce] Shouldn't we wait for backup?

[officer 2] But, dude, he's got a baby.

[Pearce] I didn't even want to go, you know?

But it was a baby, right? Like, what would you do?

Imagine that's your kid.

But I should've said no.

I should've waited at the car.

[exhales]

If that makes me a coward,

I don't give a shit.

[tense music playing]

[Pearce] Oh, shit.

You heard that?

[baby cries]

He was doing witchcraft out there, man.

You saw the video.

What else would you call it?

Yo, what the fuck is this, man?

[gunshot]

- [tense music playing] - [officer shouts indistinctly]

[gunshot]

[Pearce] Where the fuck's the shooter?

- [baby cries] - [gunshot]

- [twig snaps] - [Pearce gasps]

[Pearce screams in pain]

Fuck!

[screams]

Fuck!

[screams]

Shit!

Fuck!

[groaning]

[baby cries]

[Pearce] I didn't understand at the time

what exactly that wood thing was, but...

You know, I found out they have a name for it.

A pyre.

That's where the... the crying was coming from.

[baby cries]

Sykes...

[distorted audio]

Oh, shit.

[loud rumbling]

What is that? What the fuck?

[tense music playing]

I don't know what we saw or didn't see.

It was strange.

If you looked at it from one angle, you could see it.

From another, it wasn't as clear.

The videos don't do it justice at all.

I'm just still not convinced any of that...

what do you call it? Karmic phenomena?

- [producer] - Cosmic phenomena.

I mean, sky looked weird that morning, no doubt about that,

but there's plenty of weird stuff that happens in the sky.

Aurora borealis?

[producer]

Okay, but you can't tell me

that's not some weird looking space stuff too, right?

[Pearce] I don't remember much.

It gets hazy. So, that-that thing in the sky?

It looked like red eyes.

[woman 1] Jeez, dude.

Holy shit.

What the fuck?

[woman 1] What the fuck is that?

[Elizabeth] I don't know, dude.

[woman 1] Lizzie?

Lizzie?

Lizzie!

Liz!

Dude, Lizzie!

Lizzie! Lizzie! Lizzie!

Lizzie! Kate! Kate, wake up!

I need you to call 911! Kate, please!

[tense music playing]

[Pearce shouts indistinctly]

[gunshot]

[police sirens]

[baby crying]

[Pearce groans] Help! Help!

[Kirby] And just like that, it was over.

We got him.

[baby crying]

Helps on the way. Just stay there.

You'll be alright. How's the baby?

He's okay.

[Kirby] That was too goddamn close.

- [Pearce hyperventilates] - That was too damn close.

- [Taylor] He's gone! - [Kirby] What?

[Taylor] We need some help over here!

[Kirby] You've got to be fucking kidding me!

[tense music playing]

Leslie Sykes' body was found

about 100 yards from the cabin, in a creek...

covered in leeches.

He'd only been in the water for a matter of minutes.

It's like they were drawn to him.

They made any kind of visual identification impossible,

but we still confirmed it with fingerprint and DNA.

It looks like Sykes had been living out there

for at least a couple weeks.

Sleeping in a makeshift shelter,

stealing food from other people's campsites.

His final time on this earth was spent hungry,

cold, and alone.

[Taylor] No phantoms, no ghost.

A flesh-and-blood human.

Piece of shit human,

but human nonetheless.

[dramatic music playing]

[Monica] So, I was...

I was getting up for work that morning

and I was checking my Facebook,

and I had, like,

all of these messages, and I was like, what?

You know, what's going on here?

And then I realized they got him.

Like, they really fucking got him.

[police sirens]

[reporter] The Inland Empire can breathe a sigh of relief

with the news just coming in

that the hunt for serial killer

Leslie Sykes, a.k.a. Mr. Shiny,

has finally come to an end.

Police shot and killed Sykes this morning in a standoff

in the San Bernardino mountains,

but not before ending the life

of one Riverside Police Department deputy.

[Pearce] Richie...

um...

I don't want to talk about it.

Should've been me.

[man] I'm here to formally announce that Leslie Sykes,

otherwise known as Mr. Shiny,

died this morning at approximately 6:00 a.m.

Pacific standard time.

As a result of an extended gun battle

with local authorities.

[Monica] I couldn't believe it.

Like, all of this...

This, like, weight was

just lifted from my chest, you know?

Like Shifra could finally rest in peace, you know,

'cause that fucking asshole was dead.

I mean, nothing's ever going to bring my girl back, but, um...

at least we can all, like, start to heal now.

I feel no joy in Leslie Sykes' death.

I really don't.

I did in the beginning but, as time has gone on...

I wish I could've interviewed him.

I wish we could've gotten more information.

In the time span that Sykes was actively killing,

that we know about, there were over 100 unsolved homicides

in the two counties.

Could some of these be Sykes?

We'll never know.

Is it possible Sykes had an accomplice,

someone that helped him, funded him?

We'll never know.

[Pearce] He got off too easy, if you ask me.

Should've drawn and quartered that motherfucker.

Sorry, is... Was that too much or...?

[producer] No, that's actually perfect.

Happy I could set the record straight.

[April] When we first found out that they killed him...

I guess it was bittersweet.

I was just glad he couldn't hurt anybody else.

[April] We try to keep Victoria's memory alive,

but it gets harder as time goes on.

Friends lose interest.

I think about that saying a lot

that goes

"you really die the last time someone says your name."

[Jim] Honey, you already said this.

I know.

It's just so true.

Ted Bundy. Gacy.

These guys will live forever.

And now so will Mr. Shiny.

[reporter] Eight victims were honored today

at a memorial held at Pioneer Memorial Cemetery,

including those from the original crimes

in 1995.

Almost 1,000 people joined the service

to pay their respects to those lives

taken too soon

by serial killer Leslie Sykes.

[woman 1] Lizzie! Lizzie!

Kate! Kate, wake up! I need you to call 911!

[producer]

[Elizabeth] Yep.

Great place to have your first one, right?

[producer]

Started for the first time that night.

And I wasn't the only one who had bad luck, either.

Gail randomly started having vertigo

after that trip.

So, you know, you asked me if I believe

in ghosts and this paranormal stuff,

and I don't. But...

No, I don't believe in that stuff,

but I still wish we never went camping that weekend.

[Kacie] We moved to Portland.

I know it sounds superstitious,

but it just seemed like that whole county was cursed.

[producer]

I have no idea.

[producer]

What do you want me to say?

He was part of some apocalypse cult

trying to summon a six-million-year-old leech god?

Thorn of Time, Kaliban?

That's not something you put in a police report, pal.

That's not going to help the families

try and bring closure and heal from this mess.

What I can say for sure is this...

Leslie Sykes was a monster.

We caught him and we killed him.

[producer]

As Lexi likes to say,

"same shit, different day."

Same shit, different day.

[producer]

[Taylor] It's postdated two days before he died.

If he sent it, he must've had an inkling things

might not go to plan.

[producer]

Well, if it's true,

I guess we'll find out in another 800 years.

[distorted male voice]

[police sirens]

[unsettling music playing]

[Kirby] There's still so many things

we don't understand about this case,

and probably never will.

We just had bits and pieces

of some kind of strange puzzle.

And even if we could put them all together,

I don't know if I want to see whatever picture they make.

Yeah? Got what you need?

[producer] I think that's more than enough.

[continues indistinct]

Okay. Awesome.

Alright. Thanks, guys.

[unsettling music playing]

["Strange Harvest" playing]

♪ Night passing through windows ♪

♪ Turning them on ♪

♪ Turning them off ♪

♪ Sometimes all I've got is other people's windows ♪

♪ Sometimes all I've got is other people's windows ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Let them find you when you know you're lost ♪

♪ You've been kneeling in a false dawn ♪

♪ Let them take you 'cause you don't belong ♪

♪ In these waves ♪

♪ In these waves ♪

♪ Time will come to life again ♪

♪ My strange harvest ♪

♪ Will taste sweet again ♪

♪ Something I can't touch is reaching out for me ♪

♪ Something I can't touch is reaching out for me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Seeing through me ♪

♪ Let them find you when you know you're lost ♪

♪ You've been kneeling in a false dawn ♪

♪ Let them take you 'cause you don't belong ♪

♪ In these waves ♪

♪ In these waves ♪

♪ Let them find you when you know you're lost ♪

♪ You've been kneeling in a false dawn ♪

♪ Let them take you 'cause you don't belong ♪

♪ In these waves ♪

♪ In these waves ♪

♪ Let them find you when you know you're lost ♪

♪ You've been kneeling in a false dawn ♪

♪ Let them take you 'cause you don't belong ♪

♪ In these waves ♪

♪ In these waves ♪

[song fades]

[Kirby] Okay, August 23rd, 2023.

Back at Pinto again.

Went a little further south this time, but...

Yeah, it's a bust.

Something about this place just doesn't...

doesn't feel right.

Talked to a guy at a gas station,

he told me there's a series of caves down at a...

Coxcomb,

so we're going to try that next.

It's worth a shot.