Original subtitles

[eerie music playing]

The thing inside of me, it's like...

the appetite -- it's like a wolf that's...

feeling the hunger.

REPORTER: Early this morning,

first responders answered a desperate 911 call from

Albee's trailer park -- before the caller could

identify himself,

the line fell silent -- when investigators arrived,

they searched the trailer park before finally locating him,

but it was too late.

40-year-old Randy Tomjack was found

stabbed to death inside his home.

Ball is starting this interview off

with impression management from go.

He's brought in for questioning, and his response is

he tries to take off -- most law enforcement

have a perspective that innocent people don't run.

Essentially what he's addressing with the detective

that he's sorry he had that reaction.

He realizes that wasn't the right thing to do.

But I think what Ball is really doing

is realizing that really made him look quite guilty.

When looking at this case,

one of the things that stands out about Ball

is his own narcissism.

He's somewhat entitled.

The reaction most of us would have to finding out that

a close friend had just been violently killed

would not be that this is an inconvenience for me.

TUSSEY: First of all, he's saying that he's a friend

of Randy, but he actually shuts him out

and locks the door and ignores him half of the time.

So the only time he really

wants Randy is when he wants something.

So what I see here is someone who is manipulative,

sort of parasitic,

just using someone when they need them.

This willingness to use people

however you need to and dispose of them when you don't

is transactional.

That's really a marker of psychopathic behavior.

SAHNI: He says he thinks that his best friend

killed himself, and he's laughing about it.

There's no grief there, there's no sadness there.

Then he goes so far as to throw the victim under

the bus and tell all his dirty deeds, that he's now gambling.

The motivation behind it

really seems to be more about humiliating the victim.

He really believes that he's gonna get away with it.

This is very classically psychopathic, feeling superior,

feeling grandiose, and enjoying your own contempt

because it makes you feel powerful.

He does not think that there's any

proof to link him to the murder.

Ball is stalling instead of answering,

"Yes, there's blood in my truck," or "No, there isn't."

He just flips the narrative on the detective,

and he's doing something that is a strategic

and manipulative technique.

It's a tactic.

It's consistent with somebody who

is failing to take any responsibility.

Here we have somebody who's

obviously being questioned about a murder.

Even if you didn't do anything,

you would typically respond with a little more deference

than what we're seeing Ball respond with.

And he is actually coming as very grandiose,

trying to turn the questioning around on the investigator.

SAHNI: On first glance, this argument and interaction with

the detective, you might think Ball is being childish,

but it actually adds to his risk level,

because the confidence and brazen behavior

that he's showing is somebody who is willing to

assert control and authority in a very impulsive way.

He's not thinking about the consequences.

RAGHAVAN: This whole interaction to me felt like Ball

was losing his balance,

and he got a little bit scared, because he's starting to

feel cornered.

And so he's speaking impulsively.

He doesn't understand the nature of the question.

He's trying to figure out why I didn't want him to die,

why that's important.

SAHNI: Through all of this,

what we don't actually see is any sincere remorse.

You see no real emotion. You see no sadness.

You see no guilt over any aspect of, "My friend died."

[crying]

[sniffles]

[sighs]

What it does seem like is he's had time to think in his cell

that the evidence is so overwhelmingly against him

that maybe he can salvage his circumstances

if he chooses to give them what they want.

So what we're really still seeing here

is a manipulative tactic.

It's a strategy to try and gain an advantage,

and to mistake it

for real empathy or regret or remorse is to be duped.

So they worked together, and then this other job

came up, but he didn't get it, and Randy did.

And so he seems to have, you know,

become intensely envious, jealous, outraged.

He took it as a huge insult, and he felt

that he didn't get the job even though he was superior.

This is the narcissistic part of psychopathy.

I am so great.

You know, why was I ignored?

I am better than you. Why was I discarded?

And this path from anger to envy to jealousy

to revenge is very much part of the --

a psychopathic trajectory of anger.

It's interesting he uses language like, well, you know,

"I planted the knife" rather than "I stabbed him."

I mean, that language strikes me as his way of softening,

manipulating his role in the way that it comes across

in the -- in the interview.

Blackout states don't work

the way Ball is describing the memories

he has and the memories he doesn't have.

One of the things that Ball may have been doing was

starting to set up

a situation where he wasn't going to be culpable for

the murder itself.

But this was very much premeditated.

It was calculated -- to enter the victim's home

at night, knowing that the victim was sleeping,

where the victim had little to no chance to fight back.

He didn't even see him coming.

RAGHAVAN: It doesn't quite make sense to say

he doesn't remember the knife when he picked it up,

and he's able to dispose of certain things,

and he remembers some pieces of evidence,

so he's not forensically smart

about how to describe the blackout.

And I think that's what gives him a little bit away.

It's the manner of the blackout

that he's describing doesn't ring true.

TUSSEY: He did stab him 59 times according to the autopsy,

which would suggest that he was in a fit of rage at

that moment.

The entire murder doesn't seem impulsive at all.

He was able to plan enough to get a weapon, bring a knife in,

make sure he attacked the victim in the middle of

the night whenever he was asleep,

and had the forethought to also put his clothes, or evidence

basically, in the fireplace so that he could destroy it.

It seems like it was something that was calculated.

The irony of choice of masks that Ball selects,

the Grim Reaper,

the Angel of Death, really speaks to this fantasy

that he had going in his own head about

what it would be like to kill someone,

how it might make him powerful.

Ball strikes me as somebody who has

spent most of his life being unremarkable.

He hasn't accomplished a whole lot.

He has been in and out of various institutions

and facilities.

Ultimately, the purpose of choosing the Grim Reaper

may have been about Ball's own arrogance,

his own narcissism and his own ability to say,

"I am that important."

RAGHAVAN: So on the one hand,

he's careful about masking, burning the clothes.

On the other hand, he leaves fingerprints,

traces of blood in Randy's trailer as well as in his car.

So this feels like he thought he could come back

and just clean up the mess later, and everything would

be okay.

The one thing he didn't expect was that Randy called 911,

and he didn't expect that,

because he knew that he had stabbed Randy

59 times.

SAHNI: It seems like Ball is very much wanting

to see what he's accomplished.

Going back to the scene to see the mayhem

and chaos, there's police officers there,

there's a crime scene that's taped off,

there's a crowd of people, and ultimately, Ball is quietly

able to take pride in the fact that he did that.

And while he says, "I try not to do damage anymore,"

that's him talking about this impulse that he finally gave

into on the night of the crime.

And maybe this is something he had fantasized about

for a while -- he wanted to revel in it.