Original subtitles

[theme music playing]

MAN: There's this thing inside of me, it's like...

the appetite.

It's like a wolf that's...

filling...the hunger.

♪♪

MAN: It has happened again.

Still again, a woman has been found murdered

in one of the most painful forms of murder.

MAN #2: Detectives say they found the nude body of

a 43-year-old woman.

The victim has been identified as

Donna Bennett Johnston of Baton Rouge.

The cause of death -- strangulation.

MAN #3: Sean Gillis is Baton Rouge's

latest suspected serial killer.

The most recent homicide --

43-year-old Donna Bennett Johnston.

It's interesting that Gillis had a live-in

partner and fulfilled the role of step-parent.

We do see this sometimes with individuals who

are psychopathic.

They live a public life that appears on paper to look like

everybody else.

Gillis wants to blend in,

which is part of how I think he lured his victims in.

SAHNI: She's not even really able to fight back.

I think that's where you see a streak of

sadism in him that even in this very focused kill

that was quick, by his own description,

he still needed that moment for her to plead, to beg.

I think that it was a necessary first step

to start the process of the arousal for him.

BERRILL: His willingness to act this out and make his arms

go limp and demonstrate

what a dead body might look like hanging out of a trunk --

it just moves, you know,

the theatrical dimension of his behavior forward

and also gives you some clue as to the kind of fantasies

that he has -- have complete

control over the body as if it were a doll or an object is

apparently amusing to him.

SAHNI: The photography allowed him to have a token to take with

him to relive the crime, and the purpose of reliving

the crime, when someone is a sexual sadist is

to recreate that arousal sexually for themselves.

Those days when he felt bored or flat or disengaged,

which is very common for psychopaths,

those photographs fill that void.

BERRILL: He was suggesting to the profiler

that this is every boy's fantasy.

Now, is it really?

You know, I think he is mistaken,

but it lets you know, from an early age, that there was

something wrong with him.

SAHNI: When you're dealing with someone who's

this psychopathic, you have to take a lot of

what they're saying with a grain of salt,

because a very cliche stereotypical belief a lot of

criminals have is that

psychologists have this anchored belief that boys want

to have sex with their moms.

So this is really him playing to the profiler.

He wants to be studied. Okay, come study me.

I'm such an interesting, complex person.

So he's giving her what he thinks she wants to hear.

BERRILL: He compared her to a Barbie doll,

something lifeless, nonetheless, arousing for him.

The average person would find this grotesque.

He likes it better if they're dead,

because therefore, there's no conversation.

There's no being challenged on his motives

or his desires,

and therefore, he can revel in his

perverse fantasies.

This gives us a window into

where Gillis's fantasies may have begun.

He had to plot and correct and reform

and restage the fantasy in his mind

before he actually went out and started hunting real live women.

SAHNI: So there's that hunting behavior, getting to know

his specimen,

his kill -- being in the zone is really that high.

Once he gets locked and loaded on the idea that he's gonna go

kill again and torture, he's ready to go do it.

BERRILL: Well, then who took the pleasure?

What is he blaming? His brain and not himself.

So that's where you see, he's being disingenuous.

It comes across as bologna.

SAHNI: He's splitting off parts of himself,

There's the monster, there's the brain,

and these things are different than Gillis.

That's what he's essentially saying to us -- it's not true.

We understand it's all part and parcel of

himself as one collective person who's doing these acts.

But I think there's a part of him

that does struggle to understand his own fantasies.

SAHNI: It's important to note that he incapacitated

her by running her over with his car.

There was no fighting for her life.

There was no begging, there was no pleading,

and a sadist needs that arousal,

creating fear in someone,

and so maybe he is learning something about

what turns him on and what turns him off.

SAHNI: Whether it happened or not is almost irrelevant.

Gillis is giving us a window into how clear

his sexual fantasies were and how far back

they go, and there is a component of the need for them

to be dead and unresponsive.

These things are not about relationships.

These things are about objectification and power

because he wants him dead.

It's a really twisted way of pursuing your sexual interests,

making death of precursor.

To be this murderous and perverse,

you have to have a well of despair and emptiness.

SAHNI: This is victim number seven.

He likely is also experiencing a greater need for intensity,

for that thrill and that high,

which means it takes more and more to get the same rise

and maybe killing somebody close to him

gave him that arousal that he wanted.

I mean,

I was willing to kill someone I knew,

because I had this kind of itch -- that is frightening.

You kind of get a feel for how disturbed he really is.

BERRILL: He's reflecting a kind of tender attitude, and the fact

that he would paint her fingernails,

essentially pretty her up, does

suggest something a little bit fetishistic.

It's a very peculiar behavior, and it harkens back to

his mother, dressing her up like a Barbie doll.

SAHNI: For Gillis, human beings aren't whole entities.

They're a compilation of parts, sort of how

he talked about his brain being different than him.

I find myself wondering whether those hands are

reminiscent of some earlier experiences that he had had.

SAHNI: This display of emotion is synthetic.

It doesn't appear to be sincere or real,

and I think it's a load of crap.

You have a situation with a father who is estranged from

his son -- they have no relationship at all.

So I find it hard to believe that he would have sent his son

over to the house to pick up some things, and he just leaves

all of these things about his personal sex life out and about.

Gillis's references to the whips

and the chains and orgies and things of that nature

I think really just gives us a window into

how his leap into pornography addiction may have gone.

It may have started with interests

in sadomasochism and became increasingly more dark.

I think the hands makes for a good story.

It's too convenient.

It fits together too cleanly -- his father left

when he was one or two years old,

and so he's just adopting this new story

right before our very eyes in this interview.

I don't find it credible.

So I really take this as superficial attempts to look

like he cares, like he has

a sense of emotion or empathy, when in fact, he doesn't.

BERRILL: He is feeling bad for himself,

you know, feeling like he's nothing,

and he levels the playing field by murdering

and dismembering people.

He can go from feeling bad about

himself and terrible to feeling, uh,

grandiose and powerful.

It's a high and a low, and the end result is self-loathing.

This is true of all, you know, serial murderers.

It's like a cycle.

So he is definitely a psychopath

and a frightening person,

and if not caught, predictably would continue

to do what he did.