Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowIn the third segment of this recurring series, Ben, Matt and Noel return to the grisly world of true crime, killers who not only committed multiple murders but were never caught and, in some cases, may well be alive and free today. Several of these murderers may be people you've never heard of, while others may be infamous. One thing's for sure, however: Many of these cases remain open and unsolved, and you or someone you know may be the person who can finally provide a lead, solve the crime and finally put these monsters behind bars.
This week's classic episode is part of a part of a continuing series that frankly, I don't think any of us like doing. It's it's a grizzly thing, and it's just it's necessary to talk about it. But once you get past all the fiction and the crime dramas and stuff, serial murderers are an incredibly evil thing.
It is something of a modern, you know creation.
I guess at the very least, the obsession with them is uh, And we try not to, you know, be on that tip in terms of just being so focused on the grizzly, gory details of these kinds of things. We try to just report the facts and really let you know about this very distinctly modern construct that is the serial killer.
Yeah, because you don't even know that it's a serial killer until someone in law enforcement or in investigator connects enough cases to realize, oh wait, there is a serial killer. Which is why there are some known serial killers we're going to talk about in this episode that were never caught or are perhaps still out there, and there are many others that are likely just unknown and existing anonymously.
Yeah. And although the current technological innovations regarding surveillance make it more difficult for people to for killers to function that way. It is far from impossible, and so there are still here in twenty twenty three serial killers on the loose, from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.
They call me Ben. We are joined with our long suffering, super tolerant super producer Paul Decant. Most importantly, you are here. You are you that makes this stuff they don't want you to know? Part three in a continuing series, The Trinthnity, an unfortunately continuing series, we should add as well. You see, folks, this is part three in our series on unapprehended serial killers and in the past. In previous episodes we covered the new Bedford Highway killer remains unapprehended, the Lisbon Ripper, also unapprehended, Pedro Lopez, famously known as the Monster of the Andes.
Once apprehended, then not anymore.
Yes, once apprehended then escaped. In a few years ago, Interpol release a warrant or a call to find this guy. And then we also covered the Connecticut River Valley Killer and the possibilities of that killer's true identity. We also covered the Long Island serial killer aka the Craigslist Ripper.
Yeah, and then we had Bible John thrown in there from the last one the Babysitter, which was an odd name I remember for a killer. The Freeway Phantom was one, and the Maniac of Novasbiersk. Yeah, I believe that's how you say it.
That sounds right to me.
Okay, cool.
And you can check out our previous episodes, one which has a guest on the show who was not themselves a serial killer so far as we know, and there you can find some deep dives into both the methods of murder, the times these killers were own to be active, and the latest research at the time of the recording regarding whether or not they will be apprehended. And we did this along with serial killers who almost got away who very well would have gotten away had they not returned to an active state, and those would be people like the Grim Sleeper or Dennis Radar also known as BTK, or the bind Torture Kill.
And we've also explored the stories of the original night Stalker, which was that was a tough one in the Highway.
Of Tears, especially which continues.
Man in Canada, there's a lot to go back and listen to, so I would recommend just getting those archives, go way back and explore it. But it's a grizzly.
Ride, and don't do it while you're eating, please. And as we said at the top, more serial killers remain on the loose today. We're boiler alert, not going to have any chance of covering them all in this episode. So as you are listening, if there is one that you think your fellow listeners would find particularly fascinating, or most importantly, if you think there might be some sort of lead that could ultimately result in the apprehension, conviction, or arrest of one of these unidentified killers, whether or not they're on this show. Let us know several of the killers we're exploring today have little or no chance of facing up to the consequences of their crimes. Those crimes being serial murder, right, so this is different from a garden variety homicide, not to diminish the tragedies inherent in that. And first, let's have a quick recap of what exactly defines a serial killer.
So the base level criteria for a serial killer are that this individual commits at least three murders in at least three separate locations, and that there is something of a cooling off period in between. It's almost like a kind of hibernation, almost.
Yeah. And that comes from the nineteen ninety two Crime Classification Manual, and that's where it outlines all that stuff. But that's not where the term serial killer originates, right.
The term serial killers we understand it today was coined in the mid nineteen seventies by former director of the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a man named Robert Wrestler. He chose serial for peak behind the Curtain here because the police in England called these types of murders crimes in a series quote unquote, and because of the serial films that he grew up watching. In Part two of the series, in the previous episode on Uncaught serial Killers, we examined some of the methods that have been used to classify this type of order based on their motivations, their processes, the very rough demographics from killers who were caught or were observed in enough detail by witnesses or survivors to create a reasonable a reasonable shot at a physical description. And what we've learned from these various investigations is that real life serial killers, as exceedingly rare as they are, don't often match the image of a killer of this type that you would see in so many works of fiction.
Yeah, and you know, this is the first uncaught serial Killers episode we've done since mind Hunter has been out on Netflix.
Oh, that's true.
Well, and that's just one of those shows that really gets you into the behavioral science department of the FBI and how they're thinking about crimes in a series really has evolved over time, and how the psychology of some of these people, how it functions.
I think it's interesting how little action that show has, but how it still keeps you on the edge of your seat, and it really reveals so much about the inner workings, and like a lot of the tension comes from conversation rather than.
Confrontation kind of. And I think it's really really great show.
But unlike some of the highlights from a show, a fictionalized show like that, these murderers are not brilliant masterminds. Many times, a lot of times they are just like you and I they have families, they have networks of friends, they drive cars, they have a car note that they pay, They've got a mortgage perhaps or something to that effect, and they might even be on social media.
And these impulses that we're talking about, like this urge to kill in this way is less some sort of calculated mastermind kind of thing, and as it is like an addiction that you're constantly struggling with and fighting every day and having to kind of figure out how to incorporate it into that family life and not be discovered, you know. I mean, it's a really fascinating psychological landscape for these.
Crimes and serial killers like many other people, because ultimately, these are not some sort of superpowered subspecies of humanity. These are people at base right, and ultimately they are as varied in terms of their demographic description or their motivations as another person would be about their own, you know, socioeconomic status, thrown genetic makeup their aims and desires. Just as there are serial killers who feel they have voices commanding them to do something, there are also serial killers who have a belief that you know, as Noel said, there there's maybe a compulsion and then there may also be a belief that a certain amount of people must be killed in a certain way for some sort of design. These are not cookie cutter profiles. And we want to emphasize again the damning thing about the information we do have, we being human civilization law enforcement at large, is that we are basing these classifications almost entirely on incomplete evidence, because we're only talking usually about the ones who get caught.
Yeah, because how do you talk about the ones who are still out there? I mean, if you can't interview someone and they can't tell you something, you're just inferring from what you find at a crime scene.
So we've mentioned in previous episodes that again pre mind Hunters, a lot of people would be most familiar with certain fictional characters when they think of serial killers, like a Hannibal Lecter, sure or Dexter for instance.
Right.
And in both of those cases, the killers are they ultimately transform into anti hero right. And they are also meticulous and brilliant and very rarely driven by passion rather than premeditation, which in real life is not always the case.
Have you guys seen Manhunter, the original appearance of Hanniballecter, the original no it's weird, it's very eighties, but it's it's very beautifully shot. And Brian Cox plays Hannibal elect which is interesting because we know, you know the Anthony Hopkins portrayal of that role so well, because it's so over the top, kind of like you see him in that role and you're almost like, how would anyone not peg that dude for a psycho a mile away? Brian Cox plays it much more understated and much more like, you know, he could pass for a regular dude, Whereas Anthony Hopkins, while that performance is captivating, I kind of feel like, how would you not know that that guy's got bodies in his basement?
I have to say really fast. When I hear Brian Cox, I think of the physicist that I remember from our days with Discovery, the younger cern. I believe he's a certain physicist, and I don't think I know what Brian Cox, the actor looks like.
Well you are in luck.
Oh yes, okay, very familiar.
Okay, So for everyone who can't see, because this is of course coming to you as the audio podcast, Noel pulled up a photograph of Brian Cox for Matt's illumination.
And meanwhile, I'm looking at the English author and physicist.
He does come up first, though I know why. I think I spelled Brian's name wrong. He has an English spelling maybe br a n versus No, No, their names are spell identically, but Brian Cox, the physicist, definitely comes up before the actor.
Good on you, Google.
You know what. I will take that a step further and say, good on you humanity.
Maybe it's because Stephen Hawking died today and so physics are at top of mind.
Yeah, I got to work. That was a tough thing.
That's true. Yes, as we're recording this, it is both the anniversary of Albert Einstein's birth, it is Pie Day, and it is the day that Stephen Hawking's legendary astrophysicist expired. This may well be old news by the time this hits the airwaves, but hopefully it's still relevant. And what a fascinating what a fascinating person. But wait, you may be saying, isn't this an episode about uncaught serial killers? It is indeed, and we'll dive into that after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
There are so many serial killers that have been active over the years that are still uncaught that may be active right now, maybe we're just unaware of it.
Or that have been caught and released or caught and then you know, evidence, very compelling evidence exists.
But some technicality has allowed them to walk free.
It's possibility, or as also happens, they may have been apprehended for another crime and not tied to the murders right as the case might be, but instead be languishing in prison ye some time.
And then maybe police are out, authorities are looking for someone and they right under their noses. We just don't know.
So let's travel to India, to Mumbai, and let's look at some specific examples of serial killers on the loose or at least unapprehended. Today, we're looking at a killer known as beer Man. That's our first example. And yes, that is beer br like something you would you know, cold, when you would crack open with the boys, to paraphrase Reddit. So between October two thousand and six and January two thousand and seven, by India, the press and law enforcement were on the track of a killer they called beer Man because according to them, them being the press and law enforcement, one of the primary linkages between these deaths was the presence of beer bottles near the bodies. But you'll find conflicting info about this case.
Yeah. One source said there were only two beer cans found throughout the entirety of this serial killer's run, and it was only two victims and they were in fact beer cans. But again, this is reporting from India and the sources were using or everything from the Times of India to NDTV to there's a blog called open Something that I can't recall any of it right now, but they're varying sources and we're definitely getting conflicting information. Hear U.
How in most movies about serial killers, the cops always are super pissed when the press gives a snappy nickname to a killer like that is not serving their goals. Usually they're usually very annoyed, or if someone refers to them like that as an internal memo, they're like, you know, you better not let this get out.
Yeah, And that happens in real life too, because one of the one of the things that puts the press and law enforcement and loggerheads in the investigations of these crimes is going to be the idea of the good scoop, the exclusive scoop versus the need to hold information back so they can real identify the killer. Because another trope in fiction that does turn out to be true, unfortunately, is that when the specific details of a murder or a murderer's rituals are released, copycat people or people who want the attention will just call into the police department and say, you know, you got me. I am the Bago Badger's butcher or whatever.
I knew it was you all along.
Ben, Oh, this is my Paul impression.
I like it, no, but it's true.
And I mean, can you imagine being a cop responsible for solving one of these crimes? How annoying and like muddling it must be when this information starts flooding the press and you're constantly having to differentiate between real information and these jerks that are just trying to like waste your time and.
Get a little you know, get a little rise. You know, I can't, I mean, I you know.
But then from a journalist's perspective, it's almost your duty to inform the people around you, the public like dangers that exist. So you have those two competing things.
It's very true, and you know, we can't assign motives to journalism entire because it's also true that journalists will seek to gain the most credibility in the media marketplace, and it's also true they want to sell the most maybe sell the most papers back in the day, get the most clicks online nowadays. And yes, by the way, side note, it's entirely possible that an active serial killer today is on social media just because of the numbers. However, one one thing that we have noticed in the past is that there have been times where journalists have assigned a killer or a perceived killer a nickname that the killer themselves objected to, you know, like don't call me the baby rubber I am, you know, the King of Darkness, and then it becomes it introduces this whole new layer of complication with investigating the case. And you know, one of the things that law enforcement doesn't want a killer to do. One of the reasons they dislike nicknames in general, is because some of these murders have latched onto this in the past. Right Jack the Ripper, right the axe man in New Orleans, or let's see, did the Zodiac killer self assigned?
That's a weird one though, right, because I feel like he set the terms for his role, and then the press kind of fed back into it and became this like weird feedback loop. But I kind of want to say he at least had a symbol of some kind or did he sign his letter Zodiac.
We're going to have to dive in. We could do an entire episode on the Zodiac killer. For now, let's look at the beer man. Let's go back to India. Current speculation as we record this puts the number of victims at between six to eight individuals. Their methods of murder differ. They were killed by being hit on the head with a stone, in some cases bludgeoned, or in other cases, according to in DTV, they were stabbed in the chest.
Yeah, several different types of bludgeonings occurred in stabbings. From the reports we had read, though, all the men there were there were several men. The first victim was a taxi driver that was found. All the men were poor or not at least not wealthy. Some of them were homeless. It was surmised that the killer himself was probably not poor. And this is for several several reasons. Because first of all, he drinks beer out of cans, which I guess is a factor. And then also because he must have been or was probably operating a vehicle of some sort, and you have to have a certain amount of money in India in that area to own or at least operate a vehicle.
In any part of the world, wouldn't drink beer?
Had a glass bee fancy here?
Possibly, I don't. I don't know the customs in that area, but yeah, it was. It was given as drinking beer from a can was one of the reasons.
Well, I know that in cases with glass bottled beverages like Thumbs Up, which is popular soda, that the glasses are typically purchased and returned and then refilled. That makes sense, so that might play a role in there. They also attempted to build a profile, and they said that the killer was likely young, early thirties, thirty to thirty five, and in pretty good physical shape because he was able to overpower his victims easily. The killers well, the sites of the murders were secluded spots, which to them indicated that this murderer knew South Mumbai well, or here's the terrifying thing, knows South Mumbay well.
And the perpetrator of these crimes was believed to have had sex with five of his victims before killing them.
At the fourth scene. The killer allegedly left a note which was written in very.
Polished English, and while he may have had good English, he did not have good hand running, apparently because most of the text of the letter was undecided, or it's possible that the cops chose not to release the contents in full and just exert it instead. But one of the things that was contained in the note was the quite chilling welcome to the clan.
Yeah yeah, what does that mean? Like an initiation of some sort?
Right c LA and not kl right yeah. So again there are differences in them the mode of operation here, specifically stabbing versus bludgeoning or also strangulation. Police believe that these murders have been committed by the same man, and then things took a turn. On January twenty second, two thousand and seven, Mumbai law enforcement arrested someone for the murders.
A man named Revendra Control and it's also written contrallou in a couple of places, So Revendra cantrol I think that's what we'll probably call him for this. They rested him for the murders and according to the Times of India, once he was in custody, he was subjected to several tests, some of which I at least personally was not familiar with. They called it one narco analysis, which we think is probably just a drug test of some sort, brain mapping which I have not seen used in law enforcement, and polygraph So let's go through these really fast. The narcoanalysis tests that mister Ravendro went through, they seemed to clear up the beer mystery, according to the Times of India, saying okay, so he allegedly said, as he's going through this test that he would make him his victims drink beer before killing them. But he did deny, according to the Times of India, any sexual conduct with his victims.
And a lot of homophobia draws into this part of the investigation, which has happened before. For instance, one of John Wayne Gacy's primary things that he stuck to for his entire time in prison was that he was not a homosexual, and he was very irritated and frustrated that he felt the press was unfairly calling him that. And there's an echo of this here with the suspect revengra Control saying that he was being falsely accused of being attracted to the same sex.
And that trope actually going to come into play later on in today's episode in a very big way.
Now, the other test, one the other ones, was called brain mapping, and with this one, Controlla was attached to a device that looked at I guess, brain signals, brain waves, if you will, while he's looking at pictures of victims from these the beer Man killings.
Sounds like some black mirror stuff, right, it.
Does, right, And allegedly, according to these sources, he showed signs of recognizing several of the photographs.
So maybe the activity in a certain region of his brain spiked when he saw certain photographs. And then we're assuming if it were to be a valid test, they would also present him with pictures of strangers, yes, and contrast those those findings.
So yeah, but we don't have the specifics of these tests that were performed over Vendra. The last one is polygraph which is inadmissible in US.
Courts because it's a load of whoy.
Yes, And those are the tests you know this already, but those are the tests that look at how your body is responding to stress while you're under questioning.
Oh, did we tell everybody the way to beat a polygraph on this show or the way to render it.
Is like the thumbtack method. I know that's one.
That's one. Yeah, yeah, what is the thumb tag?
I think if you just have like a baseline of pain that you have, it can skew the entire results. So if you like sneak in a thumbtack and it's like stab yourself in the lag with a thumbtack the entire time, it's going to skew the results, where the baseline of like calmness I guess that it's looking for is going to be much more difficult to ascertain, and it may look like a faked test, it's like you know, or it may look like a botch test or something was wrong, but they.
Certainly can't actually get anything useful out of it, hear.
This, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's it's similar to the other approach, which is to just for the entire length of the interview really flex your butt and like really put some put some effort into it so that again there's this strain that alters the baseline.
You know.
For Atlanta Monster, we had we interviewed a gentleman who performed a polygraph on Wayne Williams. And one of the things he said is there are sensors now in the chairs to prevent that. Oh no, that very thing, so you clenching anything like that. They do like a full search now if they ever do these, not that polygraphs are just you know, being used all over the place in law enforcement. But they yeah, they that method was real.
So let's all get some thumb tacks or maybe not kill people.
That's also the why it's laughable when someone accused of sexual misconduct will come up, come out and say, but look, I took a polygraph by my own, you know, I volunteered to do it.
Here are the results.
Check it out.
It's like, dude, you just played yourself.
Yeah. Oh and just the one last thing with those polygraphs, dwayn Williams. They performed three tests, so they run the same questions three times and they don't look at one individual test. They come like, look at how each question changes each time you answer it?
Right, to build a more robust data set. Well, what did this alleged beer man say during his polygraph?
Well, the authority said that during these tests, Revendra had confessed to both being involved in twenty one criminal cases and to committing fifteen.
Murders finger swishing.
Yeah, so involved in twenty one crimes, but you know, committed fifteen murders according to the authorities.
That's a weird thing to admit.
It's a weird distinction to me too. It makes you wonder if there was torture involved.
Well now, well here's the thing. Now, remember this is you know, a report that came out right from sources. Then of course he went to trial and he only stood trial for three murders, so there was only enough evidence to connect him with three of them.
And he was found guilty on one count of murder. This led to him being sentenced to life imprisonment. However, things changed in September of two thousand and nine when the Bombay High Court made a ruling.
And what a ruling it was.
The Bombay High Court overruled in fact Revenger's conviction and declared Cantrol not guilty of the murders. And so he went on to open himself a little food truck fast food stall, and he sold the rights to have his story he adapted into a film, and as of now he is a freeman and the beer Man murders remain unsolved.
Yeah, that was when I was doing the research. That was my favorite part was the fast food stall and the rights to the film adaptation. You can find an interview where he talks about it. But he also says that his reputation by and large is ruined because you know, he was sentenced. He was convicted and sentenced, and after a sentence like that is overturned, it doesn't mean that the community forgets.
Yeah, and it's not like your picture wasn't all over the media so people can recognize you. And the other thing apparently he is now a usual suspect in Mumbai, so anytime anyone dies, they'll go and find him and bring him in for questioning.
Well, again to that point, he did confess to committing fifteen murders.
That's right, and like according to somebody.
So okay, right, And you know, and like we said, we don't know if these things were said under duress.
But you got a wonder too.
If you get a nickname like that, and that's your claim to fame, whether in good taste or not. If you've gone free, do you get to keep the nickname like can you call your food truck the beer Man. I'm sorry that's making a face.
It's just I don't I don't like the idea of a potential serial killer opening a food truck based on the name that was given to the serial killer by the media.
Well, you will be happy to learn that most of the serial killers who were committing acts accountabalism and a feeding unsuspecting people human flesh. A lot of them have been caught. Again, I can't make you feel one hundred percent better because we only know the ones that got caught.
But the thing it helps them.
Hey, you know, I'm here for you, man. But the interesting thing, the darkly fascinating thing about the power of nicknames here is that there was a case in Egypt with a serial killer who was known for heading a gang on the train where they would abduct people, children and other gang members, sexually assault them and kill them. He got caught, he was executed, but afterwards people began naming things after him, and his name caught on posthumously, which is a troubling statement. But he's not in this episode because he was definitely caught.
Okay, Well, Ben I, me and you had a conversation off Mike about that Museum of Death that I went to in la and the whole like the ethics of making money off of your crimes if you are actually incarcerated, whether you can sell let's say, like a work of art like John Wayne Gacy. In this museum there were a ton of John Wayne Gacy paintings that he had done of him as a clown, you know, various things like that, and there was even I can't remember the guy's name now, but he was an absolute monster. But he had this series of like these collages and these like almost pop up books, and there was a notebook of letters, and one of them was a dispute that he had with an art dealer about how they owed him money. And it was literally a correspondence between him and this art dealer, and you can see the back and forth. And I mentioned this to you Ben, and the theory was, it's technically not legal, I guess, to represent a known criminal like that for works that glory.
I don't know exactly what the laws are, but our theory was.
That maybe they did it to get him in the door, and then they were not they weren't going to pay him because he doesn't really have a leg to stand.
Maybe that's what it was, that he didn't really have a right to see them.
Yeah, due to the son of Sam law, which is a kind of an umbrella term for laws designed to keep not just serial killers, but any criminals from profiting of the result of their crimes. So not just you know, not just art for instance, but you can't sell the rights to your life story or film. Like if Matt and I apologize in dvance for using you as an example here, we've just got a system and your name came up. So if if Matt Frederick the give like the worst example, what's well.
Let's say let's say Matt Frederick is in I don't know, constant talks with a convicted serial killer and there are talks of selling rights to a story, and then the Georgia Department of Corrections finds out and then you have to go through the motions.
Right, let's just say hypathetically that happens. Well, the first the first law that will qualify his son of Sam law was created New York after David Berkowitz because there were all these rumors that publishers and movies studios, we're offering a lot of money to him directly, which is paying. If you think about it, it's not that far away from paying someone to kill people. That's essentially what it is. So yes, Noel is absolutely right. That is a debate that continues today because then the other question would be, well, is it as bad if we buy the rights to this? But the money legally is required to go to a fund for the surviving family members or something.
That's exactly That's exactly how it's handled nowadays, goes to a fund for the victims' families.
But it doesn't bring anyone back and earlier, so now we have no we as in the human species, don't have any public clues for the beer Man murders. We do have other cases, and they're not just in India, they're not just in the United States. We will travel to a very different part of the world for our next example, after a word from our sponsors Johannesburg, South Africa. Beginning so far as we officially know, in twenty ten, an unknown individual or group of killers was meeting gay men online and forums, gaining their trust, traveling to their homes and brutally murdering them. At this point, you know, earlier in our beer Man example, we were able to say for a certain span of years, but at this point the years just ending question marks. We don't know when or if this stopped, because for years law enforcement would not identify the murders as linked, nor did they publicly describe this as the action of a serial killer. And this led community activists in in the area in Johannesburg to say that the police were slow to investigate due to rampant homophobia in South Africa, so slow in fact, that they were actively just not caring or prioritizing these violent crimes.
Yeah, and that sentiment is echoed by Dowie Nell, the director of Out, who says that police were sluggish the same thing. Police were sluggish in their investigation because of the sexuality of the victims, and as each murder becomes or became known to the media, Nell would call police to step up their investigations. Hey, come on, you guys, get on this. This is happening. This is very real. But apparently it just didn't do any good. And we have a quote from Dowie.
Up to this point there have only been three arrests. In one of the cases. We call on the police to please take this seriously and increase the urgency of their investigation to insure justice for the victims and their families.
And the police went on to state that they believe that there may be a gang of homophobic murderers targeting men, with the last reports as recently as twenty thirteen alleging that the killer or killers may have actually relocated to Cape Town, South Africa.
Which is strange. Isn't it that they moved from Johannesburg to Cape Town? If they are indeed related and in this instance, questions remain, we would be we'd be very interested in hearing your take on this if you lived in Cape Town or in Johannesburg during this time especially, We'd like to know if the local community believes these are ongoing or if this was a spate of things that were considered to have some definitive span of time and just remain unsolved. Again, the critics, LGBTQ activist and more say that the South African police forces are simply not prioritizing these murders due to the fact that it afflicts a stigmatized section of the population and when we go when we talk about this kind of cultural prejudice. It's deceptively easy to say, oh, that happens in another culture, right, Homophobia is so rampant in insert city or insert country here that it is an unfortunate fact of the matter. And it surely wouldn't be the case in I don't know, a country like Canada or Western Europe or the United States. Wait. Example number three, The Doodler.
Yeah, this one's tough. From nineteen seventy four to nineteen seventy five, a man known only as the Doodler killed up to fourteen gay men in San Francisco. He got this aim because he would meet his victims at gay bars and sketch their portraits before taking them to a location, having sex with them, and then stabbing them to death.
Yeah, and they'll mention that he would draw portraits, paintings, just drawings of his victims. None of these were ever released to the press. And although it's believed he killed fourteen people, it's much more likely that he took around five victims.
Yeah, and that can sound confusing. What that means is that up to fourteen people in similar circumstances disappeared or met a violent end around that time. But the investigation as it stands, the traces only five specifically to him, usually the eyewitness accounts right and months after his last killing in seventy five, the San Francisco Police Department did release one sketch related to the Doodler. It was not a sketch he made of his victims. It was a sketch law enforcement it made based on descriptions of the suspects. He was a black man in his early twenties, around six feet tall, with a slim build, and according to one witness, he described himself as someone studying commercial art. And one of the big questions that pops up in our minds when we look at this is why haven't we heard of this? You know, why is this murder, this series of murders in a very well known part of the United States. Why is it so unknown today? And in the great span of history. Nineteen seventy four nineteen seventy five was not that long ago. Many people listening to the show now were alive. Then here's part of why this may have been brushed aside. The murders took place around this same time as the notorious and likewise unsolved Zodiac murders, and as in the case with the Johannesburg murders, it seems that part of the official disregard and part of the legal obstacle course facing any pursuit of this criminal can be traced directly back to homophobia. In fact, the killer could have been caught.
Yes, because he left. There were some surviving victims of the doodler who were actually prominent people that could have gone to the police and said who they were. But there's a problem in doing that. You're going to out yourself to everyone if you admit to being a part of this.
Right.
Harvey Milk, who is a well known politician and activists in San Francisco, also a game man himself.
He said this to the Associated.
Press regarding his understanding of people's position in this case, said, I respect the pressure society is put on them. He estimated eighty five thousand homosexuals lived in San Francisco, and he said that of that number, a good twenty to twenty five percent are in the closet.
And Milk's estimation proved to have some sand because the police questions survivors, including a quote well known entertainer, a diplomat from Europe, as as Matt had said prominent people, and for a year. For a year, the police were questioning a suspect that they believed was the doodler right, but he did not admit guilt, and none of the survivors to the earlier point were willing to testify. And this meant that there was no way to charge him. There wasn't any smoking gun evidence. He was not you know, he was not physically linked to this stuff. And the most important piece of the evidence. The survivors who could point at the guy in court and say, yes, that's the man who tried to kill me, were not willing to you know, having already risked their lives by surviving this ordeal, they were not willing to risk their lives again given the social stigmas of the time. And you can ask the San Francisco Police Department about these cases, they will give you the same response they gave journalists, which is.
We don't discuss open investigations. See that's fascinating that it's it's still an open investigation somehow. And I wonder what methods there could be to attain some of some of those records, because it's been since nineteen seventy four or seventy five. I don't know. I'm gonna look. I'm really seriously, I'm gonna look into that.
I mean, I feel like it's one of those things where when a case is that old and that cold, the only break you're.
Gonna get is someone running their mouth.
Yeah, you know, talking out of school in a bar that someone happens to overhear and then make a complaint and the next thing you know, you're in Buffalo Bills Dungeon, you.
Know what I mean.
Like that really does feel like like a short of you know, they call them cold cases, but they definitely get trundled off to the back to relegate it to the filing cabinets, you know. I mean, people are not actively working these cases, and they don't have the resources to do it right.
And especially in a time where news cycles move so quickly and news becomes so ephemeral, it's easy for these things to be forgotten. I like your point about somebody having to speak out of turn to release this kind of information that would be held up because you know, the reality is that murder cases, the national average is around a sixty somethingter percent clearance rate, which means that clearing a case means that it has been explained it was a spected murder. They either explained what happened or they found the person responsible or the people responsible. So with that, with that little less than forty percent unclosed uncleared case ratio, we know this kind of stuff happens. And in the course of our exploration today of uncaught serial killers, we found what we'd like to call a dishonorable mention, and it involves a case that may well encompass multiple assailants. It is the case that may be familiar to some true detective fans, known as the jeff Davis Eight.
Yes, between two thousand and five and two thousand and nine, there were eight women from the town of Jennings, Louisiana, is in the Jefferson Davis Parish. They were murdered and their bodies were dumped in ponds and canals in the area. And these victims died of various causes. Some had appeared to have been asphyxiated. Two of the women had their throats.
Slashed, one in a truck that was available to law enforcement covered in her blood.
Hmm. But the means of death aside the women of the jeff Davis eight had plenty in common. All of them were from South Jennings, the poor side of town, and they knew each other.
And they were all living in poverty and had criminal records full of drug abuse and petty crimes, and they often supported their drug habits with sex work.
Yeah, this sounds very familiar.
An author named Ethan Brown investigated this for a number of years. He wrote a book about it called Murder in the Bayou, and he also noted that all eight of the victims there in Jefferson Davis Parish were informants for local law enforcement about the drug sales in the drug trade there in Jennings, which is a very small town. Originally, investigators believed this was a single deranged serial killer. However, Brown, who was a New Orleans based PI, when he first heard of the murders in two thy ten, he thought there was something else to the story, and he was astonished that the police claimed they had no leads. To Brown, this sounded strange in a town that had around ten thousand people, and he visited the side himself over the next few years, connecting one dot after another. Here's some of the things he found. He found that all the victims had at some point stayed in the Bourdeau Inn, and this was a motel which is closed now, where the town's drug dealers and sex workers would get together to get high and to have their clients over. He also found that officers of the parish slept with some of the women who later became victims.
So this is some kind of like kinky police murder ring.
Well, Brown, to his credit, just connects dots and doesn't draw He's trying to be very journalistic about it, so he's not drawing hard conclusions. But I agree with you, does seem to be the case. He also found pretty compelling proof that evidence in these eight murder cases had been tampered with or was removed from the parish entirely. And one of the big things that went missing was that truck where the one victim atter a throat slashed. You would think that a truck that was a essentially rolling crime scene wouldn't disappear in that way. So additionally, prison nurse and a sergeant voiced concerns about this. They said they thought there was something rotten in the parish and they were fired. Several women who provided information about the initial murders later became victims themselves, leading Ethan Brown, like Nol to believe that there wasn't so much a serial killer active here as there was a cover up that was in some way directly connected to the sheriff's office.
And here's where it gets even crazy. In twenty fourteen, Brown discovered that the Boudreau Inn was owned by Louisiana congressman named Charles Bustini. And this gentleman had himself slept with at least three of the murder victims.
So here's my question. Are they murdering them to keep them quiet?
Or is the murder like the kink that's being exploited here.
It's like sex isn't enough.
These powerful men like want to take lives, you know, for sport.
Well that's if he was actually involved. I'm just throwing it out there.
It's a good question, yeah, because we see So we can sketch this out in a little bit more detail here, which you can find in Ethan Brown's book. He connected the ownership of the inn in the following manner. A guy was a fixer and a representative for the congressman had the hotel purchase under an entity that controlled this enabled the congressman's office to say, oh, we had no knowledge that you owned, that we had no stake in this. Any allegations or grow to me are completely unfounded, completely untrue. What happened to these women that I again have never met, is a tragedy, and anyone living in town that you want to ask will tell you that I have not been with these people. Again. To rewind that a bit, anyone living in town can tell you I was not involved. Brown also found that law enforcement's own witnesses to the murders, the ones who weren't later killed, believe that members of the police force themselves are either directly responsible or know who is and aren't saying anything. As of today's episode, the murders remain, like the murders in our earlier cases, officially unsolved.
You mentioned True Detective before this one is the story was the basis for some of the rights of that season, like the good season True Detectives.
Well, you know, it's It's interesting because a lot of people, both fans of True Detective and people who would witness this dark story unfolding, felt that, uh, what's his name, Nick Pisoloato. They believe that he had taken inspiration from this. For his part, he says that he was not aware of these murders even though he was located in the rough area.
He got danged for ripping off some other source material too.
I believe Yellow King, right, well.
Nothing, The Yellow King was definitely referenced like as a work of fiction in the in the plot line. But I think there was another like a philosopher or something who he kind of stole from verbatim in some of the things that Cole, the Matthew McConaughey character said. It was a thing that came out in an article right when that was really hot, and I remember it was not particularly flattering.
Right, Yes, I remember that Thomas Legaudi, Yes, Thomas Leggatti a very dark philosophical horror writer as well. Yeah, I remember when we were talking about the article off air because we all we all stopped work because there was such true detective nuts that we had to we had to convene an emergency summit.
No, no, not Nick.
But yeah, for that part. And I think it is important to mention that this was not the only accusation of this author taking ideas from other people. But for this part, the author says that he was unaware of this uh, and the connections to Ethan Brown's articles were somewhat coincidental or entirely coincidental, would be Pisilado's argument. But regardless of what inspirational fount he drank from, it remains the case that these these murders are unsolved. The beer Man murders are. I guess now they're officially unsolved since the one case got turned over.
Yeah, I get they let that guy sell the rights to his story and open a food truck, so they must be on to the next thing. But I couldn't find anything more recent than just that guy walking.
So I guess they're back to the grindstone.
And in several of the cases outlined above, it is almost entirely certain that the killer why they're never be caught or never be convicted in court. It's true that there are additional cases wherein a killer is revealed after their death or while confessing on their deathbed. But going to our earlier point about people falsely confessing to things, there's also this troubling phenomenon wherein someone, perhaps due to the dementia of age or to some other desire right, some condition or desire, they will false confess to something they never did, and them people say, well, maybe they were this uncaught person. But in this case, in these cases rather the murderers listed in this episode have not been caught. Several of them walk free as we record this. I don't know if we should add a moral to this. I don't know if there is one. I think maybe instead we add a call for your help, both on behalf of the survivors and behalf of your fellow listeners, and on our behalf as well. Do you live near any of these areas where you alive while these crimes were taking place. In the course of our research for this episode, you know, we found numerous numerous cases of unsolved crimes from say the seventeen hundreds or the eighteen hundreds, well before criminologists had even attempted to make a term to encapsule this sort of practice. But those crimes have even less of a chance of being solved. These crimes, well, they have a very very very slim hope of being solved, are still not completely impossible to crack today.
So right to us on social media where we are at conspiracy stuff on Twitter and Facebook, we.
Also have a new Facebook group called Here's where it Gets Crazy, because that's the place where it gets crazy is in that Facebook group, and you can, you know, you can sign up and then we'll send us a pin and if we think you've got.
The stuff, we'll accept you. Yeah, spoiler alert, We accept.
Everybody we do. It's a great place to discuss an episode if you just want to talk with somebody else about it, and maybe nobody in your close family or friend group is interested in a specific thing, go there. There will be people who want to talk with you about.
It, and I guarantee it has the potential to create some fodder for future episodes and future discussions right here on the show.
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three st d WYTK. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
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