Original subtitles

I am tired and weary, but I must

toil on till the Lord comes to call,

call me away.

It is fair as the day.

He reached 5550192. Please leave a message.

Rachel, it's Bailey.

If you dare pick up.

Agent Burke.

Hello?

Look, I'm not jumping to conclusions, but is this a bad time?

Only if you've got something against incline presses.

Sorry to ruin your Saturday morning, but I've been contacted by a people in

Phoenix.

Last night, the freak who's been riding the rails claimed his eighth victim.

We've been requested to assist in the investigation.

We'll meet at the plane in 30 minutes.

All right, I have to shower.

In 30 minutes.

Fine, then I'll sit next to you.

I want you to create a database through VICAP and NCIC.

There have been a series of railway murders in Texas, New Mexico, and last

in Arizona.

We need a complete history and victimology from each case, but you can

on the plane.

Well, Bailey, I really think I can handle that from the shop.

You need to get out of the shop.

Well, we're doing a complete overhaul of the projection system this week. I

think I really need to be there.

George, you're part of the team. I want you with us.

I'll see you at the airport.

Taylor's M .O. seems consistent.

Strangulation without literature, although he struck at different hours of

day. There's an additional aspect of the signature, but we'll discuss that on

the plane.

I know you've got a lot on your plate, Gracie.

So if you need help finding someone to stay with Jason, let me know.

The first kill was in Amarillo back in December.

Victims have been found in empty boxcars and within a couple of hundred yards of

the tracks.

There have been five male victims and three females, ranging in age from 62 to

80.

Four of the males were transients, hobos.

The females were old housewives who lived within a mile or so of the tracks.

We're in the air in 20 minutes.

You're not really going to leave.

I have to, babe.

Can't they work one case without you?

What can I say? It's hell being indispensable.

Saturday morning, 7 .15. You try getting a locksmith on the phone. What'd he

charge you? 85 bucks, which as far as I'm concerned, is extortion. Maybe so,

you'd have never gotten that headboard on the plane.

Cigarette burns.

On his face. So they'd be seen.

Could be the killer's way of showing the world his power.

I can be more definitive once I get him on a table, but it looks to me like his

esophagus was collapsed.

Speaks to the rage of the attack or the age of the killer.

Hey, who's watching Jason?

Morgan. He's in an apartment a few miles from the house. A woman answered, Gwen.

Tell him he was moving out because he needed to find himself.

Gwen must be helping him look.

Pockets are empty.

But to torture him like this, for what?

A couple of bucks, a bottle of booze?

He burned the faces of his male victims, but not the females.

So he's a ladies' man.

Agent Malone?

I'm Sheriff Jerome Cunningham. This is Agent John Grant.

I assume you've already met Agents Burke and Alvarez.

So folks call you Jerry?

Sheriff Cunningham.

Can you attach a name to this body?

If I had, we would have transmitted it to you, but they tend not to use given

names. Could you transmit to us what they do use?

Handles, nicknames.

Usually they describe some physical trait or habitual behavior.

What's his handle?

Oil can Charlie.

What kind of trait does that describe?

I have no idea.

Do you have any background on him? If I had, we would have transmitted it to

him.

Are we having a problem, Sheriff?

Not at all.

You ask a question, I answer it.

Feels like I haven't eaten in days.

When can we get some good Chinese?

Mr. Chow's in Atlanta.

Yeah, yeah.

What you want, Jim?

Cunningham seemed right to you.

I get warmer greetings from the IRS.

You guys know the myth about hobos, right?

But a lot of them have big -time money socked away.

They ride boxcars instead of limos. It's a choice.

You're saying cigarette burns were a way of forcing them to tell them where they

stashed their cash.

Uh -uh. No, that's what you're saying.

But look at the other victims.

Elderly white people who you'd think would trust banks, but I don't know,

they keep their money in soup cans or under the mattress.

You saved me from a heart attack.

Here.

Oh, and here's 20 for your trouble.

No, thank you.

Well, go on and take it, boy. You earned it.

Looked to me like he could use it.

Are you deranged or what, boy?

Okay, I've checked Union Pacific, BNSF, and Conrail, and with respect to

reported incidents of trespassing and vandalism, there were no unusual levels

activity and no repeat offenders during the last three months.

George, take a breath.

Of course, records are spotty, because a lot of the freight companies can't

afford to keep their own security records, so they've started using

agencies, and information naturally has fallen through the cracks.

But I'm still looking.

There's a pattern to these kills. I don't see it.

Seems like he's just going wherever the next train takes him.

No direction.

You know, the lack of direction may be the point.

He may feel liberated by the act of getting on a train, not knowing where

going. What does it tell you about his past life?

That it might have been constrained, either emotionally or physically.

Boundaries of behavior or movement could have been imposed upon him.

He could have been chained to a bed or locked in a closet. That could be the

reason he feels the need to keep moving.

That?

The assumption he doesn't want to get caught.

There you are.

You get an idea on the victim in the box?

Seems like every guy in the train yard knew Oil Can Charlie.

I talked to Luther the Cat, Night Train Matt.

Quickdoor Shorty and Ed.

Problem is, none of them knew oil can by any other name.

But they weren't surprised he got rolled.

He had money hidden somewhere.

According to these guys, he was the Rockefeller of the rail.

Well, thank you very much.

I'm just not sure. It's about money.

I can't tell you why. I just... I think he killed his victims because of what

they meant to him, not because of what they had.

This is all my resources.

But take it. Just don't hurt me.

Take it.

No, thank you.

When you ever show the resources, you come looking for me. And ask for two

root. You hear?

Nothing new here.

Manual strangulation.

Stain burns to the face.

Looks like he ran out of faith.

Ronald Taylor, 62.

Reminds me of the previous male victims.

We need to know if the killer went into the house.

He didn't.

Pretty definitive.

I know how to conduct an investigation.

I wasn't impugning your expertise.

The hell you weren't.

Sheriff, you do have a problem.

And since I'm too busy to guess what it is, why don't you spill it?

These murders have been going on for a year.

Over three states and 26 jurisdictions.

But the VCTF takes over the investigation on my watch?

The governor contacted the attorney general, requesting our assistance.

The governor's office gave me your name.

They didn't send me your picture.

How naive you think I am. I haven't given it a minute's thought.

I'll work this case with your cooperation or without it.

But I expect to get it. Because before anything else, you belong to the

Brotherhood of Law Enforcement.

How naive you think I am.

Did John say whether or not the victim was a smoker?

Mm -mm.

John hasn't had the chance.

That would be no one smoking.

Hey, Bailey.

Found these over by the shed.

This across the yard, up against the porch.

Why torture the victim to give up his stash and then do this?

Maybe the victim thought he was destitute trying to pay him for his

The offer of money could have insulted him.

That's what set him off.

That might have been the trigger.

I mean, we're on the sticks. If he wanted to rob him, he would have had all

Then the other victims were robbed out of necessity. That wasn't the

So what was?

The victim's appearance, the need to help.

This is different.

Skin tissue and blood underneath his nails.

Enough for a workup?

And some.

The old guy put up a pretty good fight.

Last attack was two days ago.

We're seeing an acceleration of incidents.

The killing started in Amarillo, then El Paso, Las Cruces.

We're thinking they're not so random after all. Or at least moving in a

direction that makes sense to him.

Some place that has significance for him.

If he didn't torture his victims for their treasure, why the cigarette burns?

A mirror of the abuse the killer suffered?

He could be moving toward or away from where the abuse happened.

He killed him with his bare hands. I wouldn't rule out the need for him to

the life drain out of his victim's eye.

We assume the burns were inflicted while the victims were still alive.

But what if they were already dead?

Then the burns wouldn't be about torture. They'd be about marking.

Like a brand.

Sign of persecution. A scarlet letter.

You thinking the burns got some kind of literary significance?

Some kind of statement?

His concerns are more immediate.

Food, shelter.

He's living hand to mouth. What if the marks are symbolic, of a birthmark that

keeps him from having a normal life?

It keeps him moving, always on the run.

Victims are from different social classes, both male and female, spread

a thousand miles.

Their only commonality is race and age.

What if they're surrogates? He's killing both men and women. What if they're

surrogates for parents, couples, grandparents considering their age? Who

have shown him love and understanding.

But didn't.

These are traits usually associated with older caregivers. Maybe that's what's

attracting him to his victims.

Maybe his grandparents were behind the abuse.

So, we've got a white male, early 20s, a drifter or transient, who suffered a

history of abuse from older caregivers.

If we're talking drifters, a lot of them have drug addictions, disease,

hepatitis. I'll have George check public health records.

Assuming he's had a checkup in the last ten years, your killer had no

addictions, no diseases.

By sheer luck, it's my guess.

He was never inoculated.

Not for chickenpox, diphtheria, typhoid, polio.

Oh, that's abuse.

But the cigarette burns weren't. Based on the lack of lymph fluid, they were

inflicted post -mortem. And here's something I bet you weren't expecting.

I did a hemoglobin electrophoresis test, standard operating procedure.

Your killer is African American.

He's the carrier of sickle cell anemia.

Only black people can be carriers.

When was the last serial case you worked with a suspect was black?

Let me think.

Never. If this was a race crime, then all our assumptions are wrong.

Money, surrogates.

Not necessarily. What if the victims were surrogates for a foster family?

People who adopted them.

Adopt it, then abuse them.

Marking could be the equivalent of a burning cross.

Well, now you're trying to make it fit into the category of a traditional race

crime. Tell me why it doesn't.

Because there's an element of restraint here.

Restraint?

Those killings were brutal.

They could have been a lot more brutal if he burned them when they were alive.

Why didn't he?

Because.

At one time, they were kind to him.

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe he remembers kindness and abuse, and he can't reconcile them.

I want to emphasize you're not under arrest.

I simply want to ask you a few questions.

We don't care about jumping rails, trespassing, or vagrancy.

We've got a far more serious situation on our hands, and it's vital that each

you cooperate, answer all...

Where is he?

Well, his legs are over there, and the rest of him's on his way to Tucson.

Now you've got a problem.

There's a lot about my job I don't like.

I don't like getting punched in the mouth by subordinates. For which I was

appropriately sent. You should have been fired.

I also don't like getting on a plane at 7 a .m. in Washington after the Attorney

General just breakfast on my ass.

We're having our heads handed to us. Every paper and network in the country

saying the FBI is all about racial profiling.

That's a load of crap and you know it. Tell me those 12 suspects at the train

yard were not rounded up because of their race. I can't tell you that

they were.

The hemoglobin test said conclusively that the killer is black. That's not

racial profiling.

That's science.

Was it science that made you chase him under the wheels of a train?

We chased him because he ran.

He ran because for 300 years, every time a black man saw two white police

officers chasing him, it meant he was going to be beaten until he confessed to

something. He ran because he's a fugitive, Mr. Miller.

Randall Parker, convicted of attempted murder in Florida, escaped from Rayford.

Two weeks before the first railway killing was reported.

He may very well have committed these murders.

You didn't know that at the time.

But I do know two things at this time.

I know that he handled the situation precisely according to procedure.

And I know that you're sitting in my chair.

Sorry.

Randall Parker is not our killer.

At least he didn't kill the woodchopper. His DNA does not match the sample we

found under the old man's fingernails.

You got any good news?

I like to save it for last.

The cigarette we found in Taylor's front yard was used to burn him, also post

-mortem. I tested the saliva on the filter.

Our kill is a secretor.

When I was a DA, we convicted a guy because he was a secretor.

We found traces of blood in his saliva on an envelope that he licked 17 years

ago. They comprise 1 % of the population, which can narrow a pool of

a hurry.

Yeah, if you have a pool of suspects.

Rachel, it's me, George.

Did I wake you?

It's 3 .30 in the morning. I'm sorry.

You said you were a night owl. A night owl, not a bat.

Oh, God. Okay, I am sorry.

We'll take this up in the morning, first thing.

Wait, George, I'm up. I'm up. What is it?

Okay, in the period of 1978 to 1982, there are only five recorded cases of a

black child being adopted by an older white couple, and I have accounted for

five of them.

Three of them are currently enrolled in East Coast colleges.

One of them is playing baseball in Japan, and one of them is a record

So, basically, you woke me up at 3 .30 to tell me nothing.

Boy, it's not nothing.

That's what I am doing.

George, are you all right? Yes. I think I just... I think I just got so caught

up in this, I've lost track of the time. I'm sorry.

George. Okay.

I need to get some sleep.

Good night. Yeah.

Back again.

I was hoping this time you were gone for good.

the bathroom?

I don't know. I can't see.

I'm not going to drop this thing until I know he's in the bathroom.

Get closer.

Polly!

Polly!

Oh my gosh, Polly!

Polly!

Polly! Oh my gosh, Polly!

Polly? Polly, what happened?

He pushed him down!

You son of a bitch! Alan!

I want you gone.

Pack up your stuff and get out.

You'd better get him to the hospital.

I'll go in with you, Dad.

It's okay.

It'll be okay.

Bailey, we assumed the killer was white.

And then we discovered that he was black.

What if he's both?

One parent black, the other white.

It happens.

He could be light -skinned.

He's rejected by both sides because he's not enough of either.

The abuse came from the white grandparents.

He's been killing surrogates for them.

He doesn't feel connected to either side, so he drifts.

Riding the rails is a part of that.

They're all drifters.

Rejecting society or rejected by it.

What are you doing?

I'm leaving.

He told me to... You don't have to leave, Andrew.

I took care of that.

God, you make it so hard on yourself, Andrew.

I didn't push him.

I know you didn't.

Then why didn't you say anything?

You just have to do a better job of staying out of Alan's way. It's only

he... We didn't get off to a very good start.

But I want you to stay.

Why should I stay?

Because... your mother because i wouldn't give you up when you were a

and i won't give you up now

in

a family of racial intolerance it doesn't matter whether the mother is

black if the mother has a child of mixed race the family would most likely

reject both mother and child.

Why didn't she just end the pregnancy?

She may have been afraid to say anything until it was too late.

If the father had any say in it, I can tell you from personal experience, black

families are reluctant to have abortions.

And a mixed marriage was definitely out of the question.

Well, if she had a child out of wedlock, that would exacerbate the problem, but

the rejection would already exist.

The child would be a living reminder.

State police in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah have reported in.

We're receiving photos and files of three light -skinned African -American

with arrests and or incidents of vagrancy within a couple of miles of the

death line.

Adam Anderson and Thomas Gilhooly.

Both are in lockup on petty stuff that clears them.

What about this guy?

Theodore Barlow. Armed robbery?

Assault?

Whereabouts?

Unknown.

Let's get his photo out to every agency in the Four Corners region.

Armed robbery, drug trafficking.

His violence is a means to an end.

He's a career criminal, drug dealer.

Violence is part of their business.

So, am I still sending it out?

Send it.

He's wanted for questioning.

If the mother was a rebellious teenager, it's most likely she would have

committed other acts of defiance. She might even have a criminal past.

The burn markings, that might suggest an arson.

Arson or some other form of destruction of property, but specifically aimed at

him, her own father.

You want to narrow down the time frame?

We're putting the killer in his early 20s, born to a mother in the middle

Focus between the years 1973 and 78.

You can start in Arizona, with the acceleration of kills, the last two

in Ames.

It suggests he might have grown up in the area.

Honey. Mom.

Something for the boys again?

I wish you wouldn't do that.

Grandparents are supposed to spoil their grandchildren.

Something smells great.

Need help in the kitchen?

Thanks.

Victimization most likely came from the grandfather, since he's bringing the

male, but not the female.

But he's still killing them.

Maybe because the grandmother did nothing to stop the abuse.

Killing interrogates give method to his anger, marking each one of them as he

gets more and more used to the idea.

But the markings aren't a brand of ownership.

They're the mark of rejection, banishment from his own family.

What? Oh!

You're going to ease up on me, David?

I'm not as young as I used to be, you know.

All right, go get your brother, Marsha, for supper.

Come on.

He's a great kid.

Well, what, now I can't wrestle with my grandson, huh?

I got time for a smoke.

Hey, what is it with you?

I don't like you spoiling the boys.

No, no, this isn't about the boys.

It's about him.

He was a mistake.

He's my son. He was a mistake, a mistake we've paid for.

You don't have to rub it in his face, Dad.

Haven't you done enough?

Enough?

Look, we've had this argument a thousand times. We're going to go on having it

as long as I live.

We took that boy in, raised him while you went off to college. Well, you sent

away. You never would have met Alan if it wasn't for our sacrifice.

You disgraced your mother and me, bringing him into the family.

He's lucky you had a home at all.

You want to give him a roof?

That's your business.

Just don't blow a good thing.

Teenage girls, which means there was plenty of rebellion to go around. George

dug up eight grand theft autos, stole their father's car, four who falsely

accused their fathers of sexual abuse, and three who committed armed robbery

using their father's gun.

Those were all for material or vindictive purposes.

It would be something that was rejection of a father without actually hurting

him physically.

Here's one.

An Arizona girl poisoned over 50 head of cattle from her father's herd.

Lynn Nelson.

15 pounds of pesticide into their feet.

Story made the papers.

Authorities thought a viral strain had hit the area.

She was 13.

Juvenile records are sealed.

That's why we've got George.

And her father's a rancher. That's her way of rejecting who he is.

Story disappeared after the charges were dropped.

This girl who killed her dad's cattle is going to love this. She gave birth in

1979 to an African -American male, Andrew Nelson.

So her dad filed charges to show her who's boss, and she spiked them by

child. Social Security now has her under the name Lynn Chandler of Ames,

Arizona. She's married.

Significant upgrade in her economic status according to their last tax

How many dependents did they claim? Two boys, David and Paul, nine and six years

old. And no mention of Andrew.

I don't know how much more convincing you need.

He almost killed Paulie. He just got the wind knocked out of him.

This time.

He said it was an accident.

Well, I'm tired of his accidents.

And I'm tired of being reminded how I got sandbagged.

Or did you just forget you had a child when we got married?

I do my best to keep him out of your way.

That's not the point, Lynn.

For you and me and our children.

Don't you see he's destroying it?

And what do you want me to do?

I want you to think about what's best for us.

For us.

Well, I can't just write him off.

You can't.

Or you won't.

How do you think those boys are going to feel when they learn that that... The

freak is their half -brother.

Lynn Chandler?

Yes. Do you have a son, Andrew Nelson?

Where is he?

Your son could be in trouble, Mrs. Chandler.

He lives in the trailer out back.

Do you have any idea where Andrew might have gone?

Well, he sort of comes and goes. I don't really know where.

Mrs. Chandler, your son may be involved in a series of murders.

He may be targeting people that remind him of your mother and your father.

Well, they were just here.

Your parents?

They wanted to take the kids out for ice cream before they went back home.

They should have been back by now.

You think it was easy for us, huh?

Having you in the house.

Always reminding us of what your mother did.

How she shamed us.

Didn't matter what you looked like. I knew what you are.

You hurt me.

It was for your own good.

Tried to raise you decent.

Accepted your mother's responsibility.

Fred! And tried to do the best we could for you. Stop it!

For God's sake, isn't it time to admit the truth?

You hated him because our daughter bore him.

You tortured him.

And I just stood by and let it happen.

Oh, Andrew, I'm guiltier than he is.

And if it would make any difference to say, I'm sorry.

We're doing this up here now.

Bailey!

Step away from the car and throw me your keys.

Do it now!

Haley, he's heading for the yard where the roundhouse is.

Head him off over there.

Give yourself up, man.

We'll get our final report in about a month.

Anxious to read it.

Hey, look.

Can we get out this way again?

Goodbye, Sheriff.

Jerry.

Jerry.

On the night I was here.

I couldn't sleep.

You know how it is.

I know. That one knocks on your door at 3 .30 in the morning to tell you

nothing.

I know that there's a problem.