All language subtitles for Becoming.Evil.Serial.Killers.S01E02.WEBRip.HI

[thunder rumbling]

- [Narrator] Ordinary names,

but for serial killers,

ordinary names are
never good enough.

We have to give them names
that capture their dark souls,

names that capture the
evil they have become.

Capture the rare unthinkable.

- When we here about
somebody who moves,

from community to community,

calculating who to kill next,

which prostitute to get.

These crimes shock
the conscience,

because they are so
out of the ordinary.

They are so different

from what sadly, we've
become quite used to,

the more ordinary rape,

the more ordinary assault,

the more ordinary robbery,

the more ordinary kidnapping.

There are these crimes that
just shock the conscience,

and so I fully understand

why the public is
preoccupied with them.

I think they are
so outside the box,

that we have this
understandable need

to try to grasp, why
would somebody do that?

That's human nature.

Why would somebody take a rifle,

sit behind

a barricade and wait

for innocent victims,

why would somebody do that?

Why would somebody look
for vulnerable children,

kidnap them, torture them
sexually, and kill them?

It's hard for us to
wrap our minds around

these kinds of crimes.

And it makes
complete sense to me,

that the average human being,

would be both
fascinated by this,

horrified by this,
mystified by this,

and preoccupied by this.

Why, why, why?

[eerie electronic music]

Gary Ridgway, also known
as the Green River Killer,

one of the best-known,

and most prolific serial
killers of all time,

confessed to 71 murders.

His victims, sex workers,

women with vulnerable
lifestyles,

even runaway teenage girls.

Steven Egger, a
professor of criminology,

came up with a term for these
vicious killers' victims.

- The "less dead"
is a term I coined

to deal with and try to explain

the phenomenon of all or most

of the victims of
serial killers.

According to a database that
my wife and I have developed,

at least 75% of the
victims we can find,

within the last 105, 110 years,

would classify as "less dead,"

and by less dead,
they were less alive.

In other words, they are
marginalized people of society.

They're throwaways.

People don't care about them.

They're prostitutes, they're
women out by themselves,

they're say, elderly
women all by themselves,

they're hospital patients
who are helpless.

They're young kids
who are runaways.

People just consider
them as below society.

They don't want to see them.

And of course when they're
gone, they don't see them.

Another way to put it
is the best commonality

that I can come up with,

for a serial killer,

is that he or she,

in most cases,

will attack a vulnerable victim.

- There's people that
society values more,

for whatever reason,

and that mere fact,

is part of what allows
these killers to

get to the victims
that they want,

and to get away with
doing what they want,

for as long as they did.

- [Narrator] No case better
illustrates this point,

than the case of the
Green River Killer.

Gary Leon Ridgway was born
on February 18th, 1949,

in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Raised near Seattle's
Pacific Highway,

in a rundown neighborhood
near Sea-Tac Airport,

Ridgway was a poor student.

After high school, he
was sent to Vietnam.

When he returned, he got
a job painting trucks,

which he kept for 30 years.

Though he married three times,

and was fanatical
about religion,

Ridgway was a frequent
customer of prostitutes,

prostitutes he brought
to his home, strangled,

then left their bodies
in woodsy, remote sites.

The search for the infamous
Green River Killer,

began on July 15th, 1982,

after the body of
Opal Charlene Mills

was discovered on the
banks of the Green River,

a quiet little stream, south
of Seattle, Washington.

It was along the secluded
banks of this river,

the Green River Killer
disposed of his victims.

His MO was simple.

- The Green River
Killer is a repeat

of a very common thread
in serial murder,

in that, the
overwhelming majority,

if not all of his
victims, were prostitutes,

and he took them from a place
in the urban environment

where they were picked
up, out into the country.

He dumped their bodies,
often in the same location,

multiple victims in
the same location,

because he evaded forensic,

any discovery of
forensic evidence

by depositing the
bodies in places

where they weren't
immediately discovered,

where time would allow
animal depridation,

and the decomposition
of the victim,

or he put them in water,

so that potential evidence
could be washed away.

- [Narrator] As the
bodies piled up,

more than 50 in
less than 10 years,

and no evidence could be found,

Seattle police hoped profiling

would help them put
away their killer.

- Profile's a tool.

What the public
doesn't understand is,

a profile provides a

tool to narrow the possible

group of suspects.

Because frequently in a
serial murder investigation,

who are your suspects?

Everyone.

If you can look at a crime
scene, look at the victim,

look at all the information
the police have gathered,

and come up with a type
of person you think

may have committed this crime,

which is really
what a profile is,

then you have narrowed
their group of suspects

to a manageable number,
as opposed to everyone.

- [Narrator] The FBI
originated profiling,

and touted it as a
breakthrough science

to stop serial killers.

On the outside, it looked
like a brilliant idea,

but it had flaws.

- Part of the last
resort approach

that the FBI takes
is to use profiling,

and I think you have
to keep in mind,

when you evaluate
behavioral profiling,

that it is often
used as a last resort

in the most difficult
cases of all,

but it doesn't always work.

Sometimes it does,

but sometimes it leads to
irrelevant information,

and it can even mislead.

- [Narrator] The real advances
in serial killer capture,

turn out to be meticulous
crime scene investigation,

and advances in
forensic science,

particularly the use of DNA.

- The changes that I've
seen in forensic science

are absolutely astounding.

Back in the day, we used
to collect blood at a scene

and hopefully be
able to type it,

and maybe come up with
the killer's blood type,

but it didn't really tell
us who the killer was.

We had something to match it to,

and it would be consistent with,

but it wouldn't necessarily
tell us who the killer was.

Or you would have saliva,

or other bodily fluids
left at a scene,

where you could
determine if that person

was a secretor or
a non-secretor.

Again, you can eliminate about
a third of the population,

but it still doesn't tell
you who your suspect is.

Now, especially with
the advent of computers,

and the technology in DNA,

those two things have vaulted us

into 21st, 22nd, 23rd century,

because of the things
that we're able to do,

and especially with DNA.

It's technology that's
changing almost daily.

They're able to
amplify DNA more so

than they ever have
been able to do.

I've been able to get
DNA, not me personally,

but a lab that I use
has been able to get DNA

from bones that have been
buried for 52 years, 53 years.

They were able to get
DNA from those bones,

and not only get DNA,

but to develop a
profile from it.

And so, they're able
to take that profile

and enter it into a database,

so that if a maternal
relative of that person

is ever located and
their DNA entered,

it'll come up as a hit on that.

So DNA's probably one of the
biggest things that we rely on.

One of the other
things that's really

coming along with DNA also,
is what you call "touch DNA."

and we're starting to do this
more at property crime scenes,

not just where there's
blood, or bodily fluids,

or anything like that.

If you have fingerprints
at a crime scene,

you probably have DNA.

And so, you can take a
photograph of that fingerprint,

and then swab that fingerprint,
and submit that to the lab,

and develop a DNA profile
just from that fingerprint.

- [Narrator] In many ways,

the future started with the
Green River Killer case.

DNA evidence proved
the Seattle police case

against Gary Leon Ridgway,

the man they had
for years suspected,

but could not nail,
for the murders.

- Well signature in
the Green River case,

was not really as
important as DNA.

As it turned out,
as some suspected,

including the profiler,

Ridgway returned to his
crime scenes, fairly often.

And in most instances,
had sex with corpses.

In other words, he
was a necrophiliac.

On almost all of his victims.

- [Narrator] Ridgway
eluded the law until 2001,

when newly developed
DNA testing technology

produced a match
between evidence

collected from the
victims, and Ridgway.

He escaped execution
in return for showing

where he dumped some
of his victims' bodies.

- I watched Gary Ridgway,
I watched his confession,

and he was willing
to talk about it.

He didn't mind going to
prison for being a murderer,

but when it got to the
part of why he did it,

he didn't want to
talk about that,

because that meant that
he had to talk about

the fact that he
was a necrophile,

and he did not want to
get into that at all.

But he finally did.

He finally opened up to it.

- I believe there's such
a thing as a victim pool,

and the serial killer tries to

access that victim pool
as often as he can.

So the victim pool means,

he might prefer blonde
women with blue eyes.

That's his victim pool.

He very very seldom, if
ever, deviates from that.

He might like hitchhikers.

He might like children.

There was a serial
killer in the Midwest,

in Minneapolis and the Dakotas,

who killed developmentally
disabled people

living in group homes.

That was his victim pool.

That's who he
wanted to be around,

so he got jobs in
those kind of homes,

so he'd have access to
the victims of his choice.

- [Narrator] For Floyd Tapson,

those were his easy,
helpless, female victims.

- Who do serial killers target?

Mostly,

prostitutes,

hitchhikers,

runaways,

drug addicts,

street children.

It's the victims that
are easily accessed.

They don't cause a stir.

They're not investigated
quite rapidly,

because no one even
knows they're gone.

Didn't even know where
they were to start with.

So, yeah, that's the
"less than dead."

- [Narrator] What about
gay serial killers?

What's their victim pool?

- There are a fair
number of gay killers

who bring the victims back
to their home on a pretense.

Of course, Dahmer brought
them back on a pretense,

to pay them for photographing
them in the nude.

There have been other
gay serial killers,

but they don't generally pick up

gay prostitutes on the streets.

They're more

involved, they get more
involved with their victims,

than say someone who would
pick up a prostitute,

just from the street, or grab
a stranger they don't know.

They want to get more
involved with the victims.

Certainly Dahmer wanted to get

very involved with his victim,

he wanted them to
stick around forever.

So it's a bit different in
terms of the gay killings.

- [Narrator] Two gay serial
killers broke this mold,

did not get to
know their victims,

did not spend so-called
normal time with them,

as did Chicago's
John Wayne Gacy,

and Milwaukee's Jeffrey Dahmer.

They were William
Bonin, and Randy Kraft,

also known as "The
Highway Killers."

- Each serial murderer
has their own reasons,

their own psychological
need to kill.

You can have a guy like
Randy Kraft, for example,

who was a serial
killer in California

in the late 70's and early 80's.

Here's a man who by all
accounts drove incessantly,

continually at night,

driving hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds

of miles on the highways.

For a person like this,

I think the difference in
time between his crimes,

had less to do with being sated,

sexually or psychologically,

and more to do with opportunity.

His eyes were open
as he drove around

for the opportunity to
pick up a hitchhiking boy,

he killed young men.

His desire was there

pretty much continually,

but he knew that there were
only certain circumstances

that he could control,

and until those
circumstances were in place,

he would just keep driving.

- [Narrator] In this
way, Randy Kraft

was like a straight
male serial killer.

Unsuspecting male hitchhikers

along the coastal highways
in California and Oregon

were Randy Kraft's victims.

- Randy Kraft, for example,
was a homosexual killer,

and they can be extremely
sadistic, homosexual murderers.

Some say they're worse than
the people who are straight.

No, not worse, sometimes
they do it differently.

We often see sadism involved.

They will often
cut the body parts.

Not always, but we
see them, they'll,

there are cases where they'll

cut off the penis of the victim

and cut off their heads and
put it down their esophagus,

and things like that.

- [Narrator] Kraft was
born in California in 1945.

As a kid, he was bright,
with an IQ over 130.

He was admitted to the
prestigious Claremont College,

where he joined the ROTC,

and was an
enthusiastic supporter

of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

He graduated in 1968,

but by this time he was
leading the gay life,

and becoming addicted to drugs.

Indications are that he
needed drugs or booze,

needed to be high,

to do his killing.

In 1969, Randy Kraft
joined the Air Force.

However, he was
discharged one year later,

and as a civilian, resumed
his gay, bar-hopping life.

Then, at the age of 26, in 1971,

Randy Kraft claimed
his first victim,

a 30-year-old gay bartender.

There were several
trademarks of his killings.

The victims were frequently
burned on their left nipple,

with an automotive
cigarette lighter.

Some of them had their
left testicle cut out,

while they were alive.

Some had objects shoved
into their rectums,

and of course, the use
of drugs was common,

usually Valium
ingested with alcohol.

The murders were truly horrific.

In one instance, the victim's
eyelids were cut off,

to prevent him from closing
his eyes during the torture.

For the next 12 years,

Kraft's need to kill and
torture, was insatiable.

- His MO was to pick up
like, perhaps a young marine,

off on a weekend,

and he would offer them,

hey I have some beers,
you want a beer?

Hey I have some pot,
how about some drugs,

do you want to do some drugs?

He would either spike
the beer with Valium

or other tranquilizers,

or he would just offer them

as a means to
continue the party.

Once he had control
of his victim,

sometimes the
victims were tortured

to an extreme degree,

emasculated, and he would then

just dump the bodies
out on the highway.

He made very little
effort, if any effort,

to hide most of his victims,

and would just dump 'em out

on the side of the
road as he drove.

Just yet another
indignity to perform.

What's interesting about Kraft,

is that the police
knew for a long time,

that they had more than one.

- [Narrator] From 1971 to 1978,

dead men and boys
were regularly found

dumped along
California's highways.

Then, in 1979, there
was a sudden explosion

of dead male bodies beside
the Los Angeles freeways.

These were obviously the work
of a homosexual serial killer.

But the way these
men were killed,

did not fit with the other
mutilated bodies found earlier.

This new frenzy of
highway serial killing,

was the work of William Bonin,

California's second highway
homosexual serial killer.

Two years younger
than Randy Kraft,

he was born and
raised in Connecticut,

with a drunkard father,
and a frail mother,

he ended up spending much of
his time with his grandfather,

a convicted child molester.

Soon, William Bonin,
was doing this himself.

After high school, he
joined the military,

and distinguished himself
in the Vietnam War.

Returning home in
1969, at the age of 23,

he resumed molesting young
boys, for which he was arrested.

By 1979, he was back on
the streets, living in LA.

Resuming his molesting,
he told a friend

that he would never
go to prison again,

because he would
never leave a witness.

For the next year,
he raped and killed

an estimated 40
young men and boys.

Put under surveillance
by the police,

he was arrested for
molesting a 15-year-old boy.

Once in custody, he
confessed to abducting,

raping, and killing,
21 young boys.

For most people, and the press,

the capture of
William Bonin heralded

the end of the highway killings.

But when the murders continued,
the public was baffled.

However, the police
knew all along,

that there had been two killers.

As is often the case,

Randy Kraft was
caught by dumb luck.

- They had a task
force in place,

for many, many years,
looking for Mister Kraft,

and were unable to do so,

but one night on a lonely
stretch of highway,

a couple of highway patrolmen
saw a car weaving around,

they pulled him over.

The driver got out of the
car, and came back to them,

which is I think a red
flag for the police

to think that there might
be something going on

in the car that the driver
doesn't want them to know about.

There was a young man in
the front seat of the car,

who appeared asleep, but he
wasn't asleep, he was dead.

And not only was there a
dead young man in his car,

there were photographs
of other young men,

who had turned up on
the side of the road

in the recent past, in there,

and perhaps most chilling,

a list of I believe
60-some little

memory triggers, for him.

Little two, one or two or
three word descriptions,

of various killings
that he'd performed,

on this piece of paper.

So he was convicted I
believe of 11 murders,

but the notion is that his list

contained 60-plus entries,

and was perhaps even
then, not complete.

Randy Kraft and William
Bonin were two of the most

prolific serial
killers of all time.

With these two cases,

and their combined body
count of over a hundred,

law enforcement got a
better understanding

of the difference between
a serial killer's MO,

his modus operandi,
and his signature,

his perverted
psychological need.

William Bonin and Randy
Kraft had the same MO,

but different signatures.

One got psychological
gratification from
raping and killing.

The other got gratification
from killing and mutilating.

But their MO's were the same,

targeting hitchhikers
from a car,

and then dumping the
bodies along the highway.

So the largest subset of victims

in the serial
killer victim pool,

is made up of the "less dead,"

followed by easy prey,

such as folks in a
hospital, or nursing home.

But sometimes it is a
specific characteristic,

an unsuspecting
victim might possess.

Ted Bundy liked brunette
women, with blue eyes,

who resembled a girlfriend.

Sometimes victims are just

in the wrong place
at the wrong time,

as were five coeds at the
University of Florida,

all victims of the Gainesville
Ripper, Danny Rolling.

Danny Rolling was born in
1954 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

His father James,
a police officer,

often abused him, his mother,
and his brother, Kevin.

In 1990, Danny left Louisiana,

but not before
killing three people,

with the signature
of mutilation,

that would become his
trademark of killing.

And when he killed
again in Florida,

he fit the definition
of a serial killer.

Allusions to serial murderer
Ted Bundy were inevitable.

The Washington-born
killer had murdered coeds

at Florida State University
in Tallahassee in 1976.

But the slaughter of
the Gainesville victims,

was more like Jack the Ripper.

Like the London ripper,

death had not been
enough for Danny Rolling.

- Danny Rolling, who killed
five college students

at the University
of Florida in 1990,

would excise the nipples

of his female victims,

and carry 'em off in
a little plastic bag,

to enjoy himself with later on.

- [Narrator] Never
showing any remorse

for his heinous crimes,

Danny Rolling, a
true psychopath,

was put to death by lethal
injection on October 25th, 2006.

The Beltway Snipers,

John Allen Muhammad,
and Lee Boyd Malvo,

who randomly killed 17
innocent victims in 2002,

chose victims randomly,

as did the Zodiac Killer,

still at large today,

who took the lives of at least

five unsuspecting young victims,

in the San Francisco Bay area.

And, the Son of Sam,
David Richard Berkowitz,

who shot six unsuspecting
victims in the summer of 1977.

And, Richard Ramirez,
the Night Stalker,

who killed ordinary
people like you,

who thought they were
safe in their homes.

So, just because you do not meet

the stereotypical serial
killer victim pool,

never think you're
entirely safe.

In all these cases,

the media played a role.

Right after World War
II, American news media,

particularly television,

focused its bright lights on
the serial killer phenomenon.

Case in point, the
1946 Lipstick Killer,

William Heirens.

The press has always
given serial killers,

A/K/A's, or nicknames,

denoting the gruesomeness
of their crimes.

At the turn of the 20th century,

it was Jack the Ripper, HH
Holmes, the Doctor of Death,

Jane Toppan, the Angel of Death.

Then in the 1920's, came the
Brooklyn Vampire, Albert Fish.

It's as if these mad killers
possessed an alter-ego,

a split personality,

a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.

This idea would play a role

in the defense of
William Heirens.

William Heirens was different
from earlier serial killers.

Born in 1929, he grew up
an affluent Chicago family,

and started his killing at
early age, as a teenager.

- The Lipstick Killer, he would,

after killing a female victim,

go into her bathroom
and take her lipstick,

and scrawl, "catch me
before I kill again."

He apparently felt guilty,

and wanted to get apprehended.

- [Narrator] By the age of 13,

young Bill had become
a pretty strange boy.

He took to petty crime,
burglary, and cross-dressing.

Then, on June 3rd, 1945,

Heirens was looting
the Chicago apartment

of Josephine Ross,

when his victim woke, and
caught him in the act.

Attacking ruthlessly,
he cut her throat,

and stabbed her several times.

Later, he said.

- [William] I wandered
aimlessly from room to room,

enjoying multiple orgasms.

- [Narrator] Five months later,
33-year-old Frances Brown,

emerged from her
bathroom to find Heirens

rifling through her purse.

As she began to scream,
he shot her twice,

and then fetched a kitchen
knife to finish off the job.

Dragging his victim
into the bathroom,

Heirens tried in vain
to wash her blood away,

then left her draped
across the tub,

half-covered with a housecoat.

This is when he
wrote in lipstick.

- [William] For heaven's sake,
catch me before I kill more.

I cannot control myself.

- [Narrator] A month later,
on January 7th, 1946,

he invaded the bedroom of
six-year-old Suzanne Degnan,

abducting the child,

and leaving a written
demand for $20,000 ransom,

as a ruse to baffle the police.

Retreating to a nearby basement,

Heirens murdered the child

and dismembered her remains
with a hunting knife.

Six months later, the
17-year-old Heirens

was caught attempting
another burglary,

and confessed to
killing the three women.

Except, Heirens
claimed that it was not

actually he who
killed the women,

it was his alter
personality, George Murman,

short for "murder man,"

who killed those women.

As the youngest serial
killer every incarcerated,

young William Heirens
spent the rest

of his long life in jail.

Many criminologists
saw that serial killers

had entered the
American consciousness

through the new
electronic media.

Television and radio had taken

the sex and violence
of serial killing,

and turned it into drama,

along with all the
suggestive nicknames.

Almost overnight, the
idea of serial killing

had become a part
of our fantasies.

- And then they loved names,

and the media usually is the
one responsible for that.

But sometimes the
killer is, himself.

BTK, signed his notes
to the police, BTK,

Bind, Torture, Kill, BTK.

And a couple of times he wrote,

how many more people
do I have to kill

before I can get some
attention from you guys?

So, BTK, Son of Sam,
where did that come from?

That came from him.

The Zodiac, that came from
him, he named himself.

But some of them get named,

like D'Angelo,

the media named him,

the Original Night Stalker,
California rapist, et cetera.

Sometimes the names
come from the press,

sometimes they come
from themselves,

sometimes they come
from the police.

- Media, which means,

fiction and non-fiction,

documentaries, news reports,

through the whole basket,

is always looking
for an audience,

always needs to find something

that will keep an
audience attention,

making an audience
tune in, or buy a book,

or read a newspaper,

so headline-grabbers,
are more important than

somebody who's just killing
prostitutes, for example.

So, somebody who's
killing college students

is more important
to media, typically,

because it will get more
viewers and more readers.

In that case, you will
tend to have media

skewed toward certain
types of killers,

so audience then tend to
think of serial killers

along those types.

The famous ones
would be Ted Bundy,

John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer,

Son of Sam, the
Hillside Strangler.

You tend to have
those white guys

who seem to have it together,

who picked victims that make
the audience feel vulnerable,

so they want to tune in,

so it's quite titillating

and there's a lot of
sensation built around it.

And so, then you hear
statements from news reporters,

like there aren't any
black serial killers, well,

not in the media,

but they're certainly
in research books.

We know about them.

But I remember when Anthony
Sowell, in Cleveland,

was found with bodies in
his yard, and in his house.

They were prostitutes primarily.

That got some
headlines just because

the bodies were there in the
house where he was living.

- [Narrator] Anthony Edward
Sowell is an American

serial killer known as
the Cleveland Strangler.

He was arrested in October 2009

after the bodies of eleven
women were discovered

by police investigators at
his Cleveland, Ohio duplex.

In 2011, Sowell was charged

with 11 counts of
aggravated murder,

and 74 counts of
rape, kidnapping,

tampering with evidence,

and abuse of a corpse.

He sits on death row.

- Did anyone cover his, the
legal proceedings, the trial?

Not really.

There's very little
known about him,

aside from the
initial headlines.

I think he should
qualify in every way

like Jeffrey Dahmer
did, but he doesn't.

So, that's media.

Is it accurate?

Some of the documentaries
are accurate,

but I definitely had
media people who wanted

to believe certain myths,

and so if I didn't
say something to them

that confirmed those myths,

I'm cut, and the myths continue.

- You also can't deny
the role of the media.

Now I'm not a big believer in,

hey, you watch a serial
killer crime on TV,

you go commit one.

I don't necessarily believe

there's a causal
relationship there.

Maybe in some cases, maybe.

But more than that,
I think what it does,

it distributes the notion.

Maybe you're a mixed up person

with a lot of hatred and a
lot of negative feelings,

and you've been casting about

and expressing it a
lot of different ways,

but then you watch
a crime drama,

where somebody commits
some sort of act,

and you, yourself,
derive some satisfaction

out of vicariously experiencing
the act they committed.

Maybe that makes you
more likely to go

and try and commit the act.

Perhaps by reading
about serial murder,

by seeing it on TV,

you develop a fantasy that,

you know let's face it,

I think the centerpiece
of a lot of this crime,

is fantasy fulfillment.

You think about it, you think
about it, you think about it,

you think about it, you live
it, you live it, you live it,

and suddenly, the thing
that was purely imagination,

you desire to see that
fleshed out in reality.

- [Narrator] Once serial
killing became known,

once it saturated the
American family and home,

the fantasy became a
reality for some people.

- Sometimes this

steady drip, drip,
drip, exposure,

to violence in movies
and television,

may increase the likelihood,

because there's this
sense of familiar.

And when things are familiar,

sometimes we imitate,

sometimes we're
influenced by that.

But if one has seen
this kind of footage

for years and years and years,

there may not be anybody
out there saying,

go kill the person
you don't like,

but in that person's
psyche, in their bones,

there's this familiarity.

I think that's it.

I think there's a
familiarity with violence,

in this culture, that implicitly

may send a signal to somebody
with violent instincts.

You have permission to kill.

- [Narrator] Perhaps
the worst case

of copycat serial killing
belongs to two men,

two men who were health workers,

Charles Cullen
and Donald Harvey.

Harvey, the self-described
original Angel of Death,

was born in Ohio in 1952.

Harvey's killing spree,

moving from hospital to
hospital in that state,

lasted 17 years,

from 1970, to 1987.

- Donald Harvey was a young man

raised in Kentucky, eastern
Kentucky, as I recall.

He had been molested, been raped

by his uncle and his
next-door neighbor.

He promised never
to tell on them,

because if he did, they
promised to hurt his mother.

That was never gonna happen,
but he didn't know that,

he was just a little boy.

And so he never told,
he kept his secret,

and he was a good student,

but he became suicidal after
he graduated from high school.

He joined the military,
was suicidal there,

and then discharged
him from the military.

He, I think, figured things out

that he wasn't
gonna kill himself,

and got a job working in
a hospital as an orderly,

and over the course of
the next several years,

in three different
hospitals he killed 57 men,

and they were all of
the same age as the men

who had been abusing him.

He couldn't kill them,

I think one had already died,

but he had a power to kill them.

He had the power
to kill these men.

So these were like
proxy murders,

and he would put
cyanide in them.

In fact his last murder,

there was enough cyanide
to kill an entire army.

It was amazing how much
cyanide he gave them.

He was a little
sadistic at times,

because he did use, in one
case for this elderly man,

who couldn't fight back,

he had a catheter and
he took a coat hanger

and put it up to the
catheter into his bladder,

several times, and
killed him that way,

very very, painful.

But I think for the most part,

it was, he would give them
large amounts of cyanide,

and it killed them
pretty quickly.

And he, in pleading guilty,

no death penalty.

- [Narrator] In 2017,
Harvey was beaten to death

in his prison cell.

A year after Harvey's
last victim died,

along came Charles Cullen
with his first victim

in a New Jersey hospital.

- Cullen has admitted
to 29 murders,

and six attempted murders.

Officials in this case
believe there are many more,

to which has not admitted.

He made a deal to give
up all his victims

in exchange for
no death penalty.

He was caught, he operated in
Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

I think there were 10 different
institutions in 16 years,

where he killed.

So he's a pretty prolific
healthcare serial killer.

He admired Donald
Harvey, who was another,

even more prolific healthcare
serial killer nurse.

So mostly he used medications,

he took advantage of medications
not being accounted for,

on computer systems,

not being locked up,

sometimes he would
just take them

and dump them in the
wastebasket, just because,

just to see, they're
not watching these.

He's given a long confession
of where he talks about,

here's how you thwart
someone like me.

But even when they
got computerized,

he figured out how to
manipulate the computer system,

so that it would seem like

he had taken a medication
and then put it back,

although he hadn't.

And then he would

use some toxic
medication on the patient

for whom that should
have never been used.

And it was actually someone
in the poison control center

who called the hospital where
he finally was arrested,

and said, you have a
serial killer there.

They said, no we don't,

and it went on for months
before they finally stopped him.

- [Narrator] Over his
16-year nursing career,

Cullen, like his
idol, Donald Harvey,

killed many patients who
would not have died otherwise.

This copycat serial
killer makes it clear

that any one of us can be at
risk for a serial murderer.

Serial murderers
are often spurred

by the myths of the media

in movies, television,
and true crime print.

More and more serial
murderers want to create

their own public legacy,

as the media creates anti-hero
status for these monsters,

while forgetting
about the victims.

- One thing about serial
murder that strikes me is that,

there's a preponderance,
there's just a plethora,

of ways to kill, of motivations.

It can be political, religious,

we have the traditional
sex and power and greed.

We have, in my
case, communication.

I did a study of a
thousand serial killers,

and I found that
three-quarters of them

communicate, before, during,
and after the crimes.

And it's purposeful
communication.

Things like the Mansons
writing in walls,

writing on walls with blood,

people carving words and
images into people's bodies.

So I think that
communication, is a major,

the need to communicate,
is a major motivation,

also the media coverage,
is a major motivation.

The BTK killer, in one of
his letters to the newspaper,

said, how many people
do I have to kill

before I get some
media attention?

Which kind of very bluntly
pushed that thesis.

Many killers are motivated
by the media coverage,

and while the
crimes are ongoing,

they eagerly and
zealously pursue

newspaper articles,
magazine articles,

and electronic accounts
of their crimes.

- [Narrator] Perhaps
the most famous case

of a serial killer,
using the media

as part of his heinous murders,

is the case of
the Zodiac Killer.

- Everybody who
becomes interested

in the subject of
serial killers,

sort of finds one
or another that

fascinates them maybe the most,

and I think for me, it's
gotta be the Zodiac Killer.

The fact that he
wasn't apprehended,

obviously plays into it,

but I think even more than that,

the letters to the police,

how the distance that he had.

It was obvious with Zodiac,

that killing was his aim.

He killed people in cars,

he killed couples, he obviously

had something against
young couples.

And there's some
psychology, I'm sure,

some psychology of the Zodiac,
I'm sure plays into that.

But also, the outfit, right?

On that one murder that
he committed by that lake,

near San Francisco.

One of the victims
survived to tell the tale

of this bizarre
outfit that he wore,

with like a squared
off bag on his head,

and the Zodiac
symbol on his chest,

that to me, adds a level of
fascination to the crimes,

simply because this is a
person whose fantasy life

was being led to such
an extreme degree,

that they actually produced
a uniform for themselves.

That's unique.

- [Narrator] Since the Zodiac
Killer was never caught,

there are no pictures,

no childhood stories to analyze,

only handwritten
letters and postcards,

and his infamous Zodiac costume.

Many have called him the
perfect serial killer.

The first to die,
was a teenage couple,

David Faraday, 17, and
Betty Lou Jensen, 16,

shot dead on
December 20th, 1968.

They were followed
six months later,

with another shooting,

Michael Mageau, 19,
and Darlene Ferrin, 22.

Darlene was killed
with nine bullets

from a nine millimeter
pistol, pumped into her body.

The young man, shot
four times, survived.

Now, the Zodiac called
the police, and said.

- [Zodiac] You will find
the kids in a brown car.

I shot them with a
nine millimeter Luger.

I also killed those
kids last year.

Goodbye.

- [Narrator] Clearly,
the Zodiac loved killing.

The power of controlling
life and death,

a power that he would extend
to manipulating and terrifying

a whole community
through the media.

No doubt, the Zodiac
had seen how television,

in its own twisted way,

glorified the killings
by the Manson family.

He was becoming the
first serial killer

to kill for killing's sake.

Then, he skillfully
used the press,

to exalt his supposed
God-like power.

- If they can't torture,

they can at least play a cat
and mouse game with the police,

taunting them with
cryptic clues,

feeling superior
to law enforcement,

that too, gives them
a sense of power.

And finally, if
everything else fails,

they can at least
terrify the community,

and become big shot celebrities,

making the front
page, the headlines,

the 11 o'clock news.

Everybody knows
who they are now,

even if it's only anonymously.

They have determined our agenda,

and that makes them feel
really good about themselves.

- [Narrator] Now the
killer began sending

a series of chilling
communications to the press,

each signed with
the astrological
symbol of the Zodiac.

The letters were encoded,

and contained a line of cipher,

decoded by two local
high school teachers.

The message read.

- [Zodiac] I will be
reborn in paradise,

and all those I have killed
will become my slaves.

I will not give you my name,

because you'll try to slow
or stop my collecting slaves

for my afterlife.

- [Narrator] Panic
spread throughout

the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Zodiac, as he
was now called,

would kill again on
September 29th, 1969.

On that fateful afternoon,

college students, Bryan
Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard,

were relaxing along the
shore of a Napa Valley lake.

According to Bryan,

Cecelia noticed a man lingering

in the shade of
some trees nearby.

Suddenly, he appeared,
wearing a black hood,

with eye slits, and the
Zodiac symbol painted on it.

The assailant held the
frightened students at gunpoint.

Bryan and Cecelia were
bound with clothesline.

And, just as they thought
the ordeal was about to end,

the Zodiac Killer set upon
them with a foot-long knife.

When the savage attack was over,

the stranger simply walked away,

and left his victims in agony.

To prove he was responsible
for this gory act,

he inscribed the Zodiac
symbol on the victims' car,

and once again,
reported his crime,

and its location to the police.

Cecelia Shepard was conscious
when the cops arrived,

and gave a detailed
description of the attacker.

Shepard lapsed into a
coma during transport
to the hospital,

and never regained
consciousness.

She died two days later.

But Hartnell survived to
recount his tale to the press.

The Zodiac's next, and
last, confirmed kill,

was a cab driver.

On October 11th, 1969,

Paul Stine met his maker.

- He killed a taxicab driver,

and it very well may be

that the only reason that
taxi driver was killed,

was just so he would
have another opportunity

to taunt the police.

He paused after
killing this person

to rip a piece of
their shirt off,

simply so he would be able
to send it in to the police

and have a way of
identifying, yes,

I really am the killer
of these people.

- [Narrator] Zodiac would
continue to taunt police,

and manipulate the
press for years.

A 340-symbol cipher,
mailed November 8th, 1969,

remains unsolved.

But there were no more
confirmed killings.

Although many were
suspected before,

and after the five he killed,

and the two he wounded,

the Zodiac would
never be identified.

He would become the most famous

never-captured serial killer,

after Jack the Ripper,

and perhaps is
still alive today.

American culture and
its urban settings,

streets of prostitution,

homeless and lost people,

will continue providing the
victim pool for serial killers,

and the media, with
its insatiable demand
for true crime,

books, movies, and television,

will continue telling
the brutal stories

of American serial killers.

[spooky electronic music]