All language subtitles for Invisible.Monsters.Serial.Killers.in.America.S01E01.Part.1.The.Perfect.Storm.(1972-1974).1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-Cinefeel

[eerie ambient music]

- It's hard to believe
that someone could slip in

and abduct a young woman

right out of her bedroom

and without anybody
hearing a thing,

but that's what happened.

[intense ambient music]

- [Director] All right, so
let's roll sound.

- [Audio Engineer] Sound speeds.

- [Director] And AVP.

- [Male Crewmember]
We're good, Stephanie.

- When we talk about the
golden age of serial killers,

it all started in
the early to mid '70s

with this group of five.

Like Gacy and 33
bodies under his house.

Bundy traveling
across the country.

Rader terrorizing over decades

and taunting law
enforcement and the media.

Jeffrey Dahmer.

Even today, we find his crimes

to be on the extreme
end of human behavior.

Gary Ridgway, the
Green River Killer,

confessed to 71 murders over
the course of several decades.

- Five of the most
prolific serial killers

in American history were all
operating at the same time.

- It's easy for us
in hindsight to say,

well, why didn't that
person get caught,

or why weren't people
looking for them?

I think we have to keep in
mind historically, the era.

- In the '70s in
the United States

was an innocent sort of place.

- You find this sort of
trusting environment.

- It was normal for people

to just hang out with strangers

and to hop into strange cars.

- [Reporter] The murder
of people in series

has police departments
across this country worried.

- Law enforcement
didn't have a definition

for serial killers.

- Those police officers
back in the '70s

just simply did
not have the tools

that law enforcement
officers have now.

- Being able to quickly
run a name in a database,

that's something
that didn't exist.

- There were no computers.

- No internet.

- No cell phones.

- No DNA.

- There were no
surveillance cameras.

- Record keeping was in the
back of everybody's drawer.

- We didn't yet have
the 9-1-1 system.

And these killers took
full advantage of that.

- [Male Reporter] John
Wayne Gacy's criminal--

- [Male Reporter] Ted
Bundy is still alive--

- [Female Reporter] BTK might--

- [Male Reporter]
Jeffrey Dahmer--

- [Female Reporter]
Green River Killer.

[intense orchestral music]

Georgann Hawkins.
- Steven Tuomi.

- Lynda Ann Healy.
- Kathryn Bright.

- [Female Speaker] Steven Hicks.

[voices overlapping]

- [Female Speaker] Shirley Vian.

- He took me by the shoulder
and said, "Follow me."

Threatened to kill me
if I didn't comply.

- I thought that he
was just a normal man.

And I was just thinking,

I'm gonna get home and
everything's gonna be fine.

Little did I know it was
gonna be my worst nightmare.

- We kept trying to tell him,

but he's a kid, he's a kid.

He said, "Well, he's
telling us he's not a kid,

so who should we believe?"

Believe the white guy.

- These five killers

don't come across to the outside
world as frothing lunatics.

- And you could sit
next to him on a bus,

or a train, or a plane.

You would never associate them

with being the worst serial
killers in US history.

- Deep down inside is a monster
that you could never see.

[intense orchestral music]

- My mother had told me

that the only thing she
ever prayed for for herself

was to die peacefully
in her sleep.

And that's the one
thing she did not get.

- Wichita was a very calm city.

A city back in 1974 of
roughly 300,000 people

with a large agricultural base.

We didn't think about crime.

Nobody thought about crime.

Crime happened in the big city.

Crime did not happen
in Wichita, Kansas.

[slate claps]

- My family was a loving,

caring family of
typical Americans.

My mother and my father
were childhood sweethearts.

My mom was a good Catholic girl.

That is why there
was five of us,

one after the other
after the other.

I remember walking home.

I remember the snow
being almost knee deep.

Opened up the back
gate to the yard

and I saw my dog Lucky outside.

So I said, "Hey, lucky,

what are you doing
out here, boy?

You okay?

Come on."

I opened up the kitchen
door and there was no sound,

nobody.

And so I was like,

I yelled out, "Is anybody here?"

And one of my
siblings yelled out,

"Charlie, come quick.

Mom and dad are playing
a bad trick on us."

I ran down the hall,

went through the door
in their bedroom,

and saw my mom and my dad
there tied up

and dead.

[intense ambient music]

I could smell the
fear and the pain

that they had gone through.

I could feel it all in the room.

The physical pain is like,

if somebody pried
your chest open.

- The police had responded
to the house.

They opened a spare bedroom

and that's where
they found Joey Jr.

- The police believe
that he sat on the chair

and watched the child suffocate.

And every time I
think about that,

it's tough, you know?

- So then, the search
was on for Josephine.

That's when the
officers realized,

this house has a basement.

An officer went down there,

he didn't know where
the lights were,

and he was kind of
sweeping his arm,

trying to not bump
into something.

And he went against something

that he thought was a punching
bag hanging from the ceiling.

And then when he found a light,

it was Josephine who had
been hung from a sewer pipe

in the basement of the house.

- She will really struggle.

And then as she struggles,

he will describe masturbating.

- If I'd have seen
Joey and Josie,

it might've drove me mad.

Thank God I didn't see it.

Thank God.

- The crime scenes
back in the '70s

are not like they are now.

The Otero crime scene,

that is a crime scene that
would never happen today.

You had members of the media
wandering through the house.

You even had a uh,

higher up official in
the police department

decide to make himself
a drink of water.

And so he had left the
ice tray on the counter.

And so people thought,

well, the ice hadn't
melted completely,

so that must've been
the killer who did it.

- Back in 1974, we
couldn't even spell DNA.

The technology didn't
exist back then.

But at Josephine's
feet, there was a pool.

The crime scene investigator
had an incredible imagination

'cause he didn't
know what it was.

He didn't know
what its value was,

but he knew he wanted
to preserve it.

So he took a pillowcase

and he cut it up into
several small pieces.

And then he dipped
it in that pool.

31 years later,

a genetic profile would be drawn

from one of those preserved
pieces of evidence.

- The police department
thought at first

that this was a drug murder.

They took several
people into custody

and it turned out they weren't
related to the case at all.

- In 1974,

the idea that someone
would kill for pleasure

was unheard of.

It just wasn't something that
existed in anyone's mind.

- There had to be some motive.

Why does somebody just
pick out this family

and slaughter four people?

And so a lot of
opinions were sought

from psychologists of the day,

thinking that they
would have some insight

as to what would motivate
a person to do this.

- Dennis Rader, as a child,

had a perfectly
normal upbringing.

He said, "I was never abused.

Everything was
normal in my family."

But then he says,

"I knew from a young age
that I had factor X."

"Factor X is the demon
inside of me," he says,

"That caused me to have to
torture people and kill people."

- Rader will describe
a specific incident

when he was a kid

where he was at some
kind of family outing,

and they tied a
chicken to a tree stump

in order to kill the chicken.

And the tying of the
chicken to that stump

caused him to have

what he would describe
as sexual feelings.

- Dennis Rader was cultivating
this persona of churchgoer.

He was married.

He was relatively young.

He was 28 years old.

Relatively handsome.

So he should have
everything going for him.

And so when he loses
this job in 1973,

things weren't perfect.

He was not in control.

And some ways that people may
try to over-correct for that

is by gaining control in some
other aspect of their life.

And you know,
perhaps it triggered

his need to control
something or someone.

- When the Otero
family was killed,

the way he tells it,

he was between jobs, was bored,

didn't feel good about himself,

so factor X came out.

[intense ambient music]

- When you look back at
the first known kills

for these five serial killers,

you have to understand that

they have been
fantasizing about killing

for a long time.

It starts with developing
victim profiles in their head.

Where they would
get these victims,

how they would control them.

Rader's life centered
around a lot of fantasy,

but you can only
fantasize so long

before you cross that line.

And that was the case
with John Wayne Gacy.

[intense ambient music]

- In my mind,

John Gacy was the worst kind
of a killer you can imagine.

You know, like a shark
swimming around down there.

He would lay his eyes on

somebody walking
down the street.

And then in his mind,
that person was dead.

[dramatic music]

John Gacy frequented
homosexual areas in Chicago.

There was a couple of areas,

one called Bughouse Square
and the other called Boystown.

He patrolled down there.

I mean, he would go
around the block,

looking for somebody to pick up.

He had a black Oldsmobile

with a spotlight on
the driver's side.

He had some phony badges.

A lot of the kids
that he picked up,

a lot of them were homosexuals.

Many of them, he
took to his house.

And many of them, that
was a one-way trip.

[intense electronic music]

- Gacy picked up 16-year-old
Timothy Jack McCoy

at the Greyhound bus station.

- According to Gacy,

what happened was he
offered him money for sex.

He got him back to his
house, Gacy's house.

When he was in bed,

they did what they
did with one another.

- He wakes up in the morning

and the kid's standing
at the foot of his bed

with a big butcher
knife in his hand.

And he thinks the kid's coming
after him to attack him.

He jumps out of
bed, fights with him

takes the knife away from him,

and stabbed him in
the heart twice.

Killed him.

- What's interesting about this

is that for most normal people,

you would probably call somebody

because now you've
just killed somebody.

And Gacy reports being aroused

and orgasming in this
most intense way.

- He goes into the kitchen,

and there, the kid's
been preparing breakfast.

He was slicing the bacon.

These are Gacy's words,

but he said that he
probably wanted to know

how thick I wanted
my bacon sliced.

But unfortunately, he didn't
take it that way at the time,

and he says, defended
himself and killed him.

Buried him in the crawl space.

- This is when
Gacy crosses over,

when he has his first kill.

And now, he recognizes that
powerful arousal component

of controlling somebody's life,

essentially playing God,

deciding whether
they live or die.

And that's where

he then starts this
collection of young men

who he tortures
as a sexual sadist

and eventually kills.

So when we look back
at the serial killers,

we're typically looking
for a triggering event.

But in Gacy's life,

there was, I think, a series
of things that were going on.

- John Gacy was given
the middle name of Wayne.

His father wanted his
son to be this tough guy

named after this hero cowboy,

just like John Wayne.

Well, when his son
wanted to spend more time

with his mother and
do more gardening,

Gacy's father would
verbally assault,

emotionally assault,

and physically assault
John Wayne Gacy Jr.

- John Wayne Gacy, around
the age of four or five,

is at home upstairs
with a neighbor girl

who was much older than him,

a teenage girl.

And apparently, she was
fondling his genitals

or touching him in
sort of a sexual way.

Well, both mothers come
upstairs and discover this.

The mother of the girl
strikes her in front of Gacy.

A moment like this
is really significant

in that you have sexuality
being joined with shame,

being joined with
physical aggression.

A combination like that

would produce someone who is
capable of acting in a way

that is both sexual, and
aggressive, and shame inducing.

And that's exactly what
John Wayne Gacy did.

[slate clicks]

- I was molested
when I was a boy.

It's hard to think back on it
and admit it ever happened.

It takes away from how you
look at yourself as a male.

And that was part of the reason

I never told anybody
for all those decades.

When I was nine or
10 years old in 1956,

my mother and I went up to
resort in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

A fellow named John,
he was about 16.

He worked there,
he did odd jobs.

I didn't have any buddies
up there to spend time with

and so he befriended me.

He had some time off

and he wanted to know if I
wanted to go in a boat with him.

So he took me out in a boat.

I'd never been in
a rowboat before,

so that was fun for a little
nine or 10 year old boy.

We tied up the boat.

He ah, he took me in
the thicket and um,

ah, he did a terrible thing.

He did a terrible thing.

He took me by the shoulder
and said, "Follow me,"

threatened to kill me
if I didn't comply.

And I turned around.

He said, "Open your mouth."

I opened my mouth and um,

that's what happened.

Thank God it was over quickly.

It was over quickly.

Is a person born evil?

Do they become evil?

I don't have an answer for that.

- Serial sexual killers do
not snap at 30 years of age

and become serial killers.

It evolves over time.

And that time begins
when they're quite young.

As that desire for these violent
sexual fantasies continue,

offenders can look for
more and more opportunities

to satisfy those
urges and compulsions.

- In the 1960s,

Gacy started edging closer
and closer to murder.

He had sexual relations with
teenagers, underage kids.

This was his MO out there.

One of these young kids
was Donald Voorhees Jr.

He was the son of a state
representative in Iowa.

Gacy would show him
some stag films.

They did have sexual acts
together numerous times.

- When the boy finally told
his father what had happened,

his father went right
to the state police

and demanded that Gacy
be arrested and tried.

- He was charged with sodomy

of a 15 year old boy.

- They threw the book at him.

He got get the maximum 10 years.

- Well, I'm John Gacy.

I'm from Waterloo, Iowa.

- [Interviewer] And you're a
man of them authority here.

What is your title?

- Well, I'm first cook.

- Gacy was not only a
model prisoner at Anamosa.

He almost seemed
to run the prison.

The parole board looked at
Gacy's actions within the prison

and said, well, okay,

he could probably
be a model citizen.

Let's release him.

Out of his 10 year sentence,

Gacy only served 18 months.

- In the 1970s,

there was no such thing as
a sex offender registry.

It just didn't exist.

So essentially, Gacy is
allowed to go to Chicago

and begin his life
with a clean slate.

- If Gacy had served
his full sentence,

that would have brought about

one of the great ironies and
sad ironies to this case,

meaning that 33 young
lives would not be gone.

- The case stands out
because it was so brazen.

I mean, there were other

roommates in the home
at the time.

No one heard anything.

It was hard to believe
that someone could slip in

and abduct a young woman
right out of her bedroom

without anybody hearing a thing.

But that's what happened.

[downbeat rock music]

- In 1974, there was a
new freedom for women.

Law schools, medical schools,

you know, were forced to admit
women and people of color.

And it was about time.

It was a time when you
could aspire to anything.

- In 1974,

Ted Bundy was a graduate of
the University of Washington

and he was attending law school,

but living in the University
of Washington District.

He wanted to be a famous lawyer,

he wanted to be a politician.

He was trying to become

an up-and-comer among
people he admired.

- Lynda Healy.

She was a University
of Washington student

who was abducted from
her basement bedroom.

She just disappeared
without a trace.

- Lynda Healy lived off campus

in a house with some
of her girlfriends.

And her apartment
was in the basement.

- Her roommates hadn't
seen her for a day or two.

And finally, one
of them went down

and went into her room.

And it looked like
she had been there.

Her bed was perfectly made.

They spotted some blood though

and opened a closet

and found a nightgown
that had the blood on it.

- She was missing.

Nobody knew where she went.

Lynda was just gone.

The crime scene,

the place where Lynda Ann
Healy disappeared from

was processed to some extent

by the Seattle
Police Department.

- We didn't have crime
scene technicians.

We didn't have digital cameras.

And I remember my
Lieutenant telling me,

you have film, it's expensive.

You're using flash
bulbs, they're expensive.

Don't take a lot of pictures.

So crime scenes, you know,

even a homicide crime scenes

might only have like
20 or 30 pictures.

And today, we have hundreds.

- There weren't any particular
suspects at this point.

That was kind of a one-off case.

- It was the beginning
of that series

of young women disappearing
from college campuses

and other areas around
the Pacific Northwest.

- Our son is the best
son in the world.

He's a very normal, active boy.

He did all the things that
most boys liked to do.

- Ted Bundy was known to have
had a very unusual childhood.

He was considered an
illegitimate birth.

The mother was not
married at the time.

And then he was raised for the
first few years of his life

in the home of his
maternal grandparents.

- Ted Bundy was brought
up on the assumption

that his grandparents
are his parents

and his mother is his sister.

He's sort of brought into
this world or web of lies

and starts forming
his personality

based on this family dynamic

that is really an
unhealthy dynamic.

- I knew Ted Bundy from the
time I was five until I was 15.

My brother was Ted's age,

so most of the boys
hung out together

and I was the tag
along little sister.

My brother told me very early
on to stay clear of Ted.

He was just a mean spirited kid.

Ted liked building
holes in the ground

with sharp stakes pointing up.

And then he'd make this
big thing of leaves,

and sticks, and twigs

so that you couldn't
tell that it was there.

And one of the girls from
a couple of streets up

went through one

and got the whole side of
her leg gashed up really bad.

He liked that.

He liked scaring people,
especially little girls.

And he liked hurting them.

And he liked hurting animals
that were small and helpless.

There was a cat in
our neighborhood

that was hanging
from a clothes line

and it was on fire.

He'd lit it up with
gasoline, with lighter fluid,

and set it on fire.

And you could hear
that cat screaming.

It was horrible.

- In terms of the five serial
killers we're discussing,

animal cruelty may be
sort of a practice run

for violence and
aggression against humans.

If an individual has the
capacity to harm an animal,

it's really not
much more of a leap

for them to harm
another human being.

We certainly see
it with Ridgway,

we certainly see with Rader,

the same with Gacy
and then Bundy.

- His behavior spoke very
loudly of who he was.

And I doubt if any of the
people in the neighborhood

were surprised when
Ted was killing women.

[intense ambient music]

- By the time Ted Bundy
was a young teenager,

he was shoplifting,
he was lying.

He was a Peeping Tom
in Tacoma neighborhoods

when he was 14 or so.

He applied to the
University of Washington

and started attending.

And he learned in
a psychology class

that people will help somebody
who appears vulnerable.

- Prior to Ted
Bundy's first kill,

we want to look at what's
going on in his life.

He'd been dating a woman
named Stephanie Brooks.

- Stephanie Brooks represented
everything that he wanted,

but really just couldn't
achieve on his own.

Upper class life,
access, beauty.

And being with her, he
had those things by proxy.

- So, Bundy's low view
of himself

was really elevated by
dating Stephanie Brooks

until Stephanie
broke up with him.

This was a real turning
point for Bundy.

It was devastating for him.

He felt abandoned,
he felt betrayed.

And it's this point when Bundy,

who has been fantasizing
over a long period of time,

actually decides
he's going to act out

and try to capture
his first victim.

- In Bundy's case,

it's often discussed

how his victims had
a physical similarity

to the woman that broke
his heart basically.

And that perhaps,
and in that regard,

it might've been more
revenge, or retribution,

or along that lines.

- He was so angry at
her for breaking it off

that this entity in him,

this compulsion to
kill would take over.

He really couldn't control
his impulses anymore.

And a few years later,
Lynda Ann Healy was killed.

- There's something
about the first kill

that might've served a
particular psychological purpose

that they might have
become addicted to.

You see this with Bundy and
you see this with Dennis Rader.

- After the Otero murders,
police were really baffled.

They had absolutely
no suspects at all.

Three months after
the Otero murders,

Dennis Rader decided he
was going to kill again.

- This time, it's a
Wichita State student,

Kathryn Bright.

- Dennis saw Kathryn Bright

and he decided that she
would be his next victim.

And so for the next several
weeks, he stalked her.

- But he didn't plan
for her little brother

to be at the residence.

- While he's there,
he ties them both up.

And then Kevin
gets his feet loose

and he attacks Dennis Rader.

This is totally unexpected,

not in Dennis
Rader's plan at all.

- At that point, the killer

makes his way
back over to Kathryn.

There's quite a
struggle with her.

At some point during
that struggle,

a knife comes out and Kathryn
is stabbed multiple times

with quite a bit of ferocity.

Kevin still survived and
Kevin runs out the front door.

[suspenseful ambient music]

[suspenseful ambient music]

- Kevin Bright runs out,

runs to a convenience
store across the street,

and the police are called.

[siren blaring]

- By the time officers arrived,

Kathryn is on the floor
right outside her kitchen.

An officer asked her
initially, you know,

do you know who did this to you?

And she says, no.

That's really the last
communication she makes.

She's taken

and they try to save her
life for several hours,

but she dies later that day.

- He should have been
caught, but he wasn't.

And that's why in
the future kills,

he wanted to be very careful

to make sure, A, no
man was involved,

no dog was involved,

that everything went better.

- The description that
came from Kevin Bright

pretty much matches
Dennis Rader.

However, the description
didn't do much good.

They're looking for a loner.

They're looking for a criminal.

They're looking for someone
out of the ordinary.

- They were looking for somebody

that had a reason to
commit these murders.

And even though Dennis
Rader's right in their sight,

he is a church goer,

he is well known
in the community,

they don't see him

because they don't
see him as somebody

who could do
something like that.

- It stayed a big news
story for a long time.

There was a lot
of follow up on it

and there was some consternation

when they couldn't
find the killer.

And that became a
secondary news story.

Was the police
department doing its job?

Why haven't they caught the guy?

What are the leads?

- Now, you have five
homicides in Wichita, Kansas

within a few months
of one another.

- When we look at law
enforcement capability,

we have to understand

that they didn't have the
technological advances

that we have today to detect

or even make connections
between homicide cases.

Particularly in BTK's example,

Wichita, Kansas in the '70s,

small town, small police force.

They're not used to dealing
with homicide cases.

They're not trained in that way.

- In the early days,

nobody linked Kathryn Bright

and her brother to
the Otero murder.

There were maybe
some similarities,

but everybody thought

that these were just
individual murders.

We had no idea that it was going
to turn into something huge

and really something monstrous.

- By the spring of 1974,

Ted Bundy's MO was going
to college campuses

where he fit in.

I mean, he looked
like a student.

Well, at that time, college
campuses were a safe place.

A young woman on a campus
wouldn't think twice

about walking from the
library late at night

to her dorm room.

And of course,

parents obviously wanted
to send their children

to someplace safe.

- Sue was a dream child.

Very ambitious.

All she wanted from
the time she was tiny

was to go to school.

You know, mothers have
a certain second sense

when it comes to their children.

She was boarding the airplane.

She turned around
and she looked at me,

and she just gave a little wave.

And I told my husband,
I'll never see her again.

[somber music]

- Sue was loving everything
about college life.

She was so happy there.

This was her dream
and her destiny.

She had made arrangements
to meet another dorm mate.

And when she didn't come
back from that meeting,

her roommate knew immediately
that something was wrong.

So they called
the campus police.

- For her not to come
home was just not right.

She just wouldn't do
that kind of thing.

She just wouldn't.

- When my husband told me,

I just had this uneasy feeling.

He said, "Sue's missing
and they can't find her."

And I said, "No, she's dead."

It was a different world.

We didn't have computers,
or DNA, or Amber Alerts.

And the police departments

were not coordinating
with each other.

And we were out there
buying ads in Seattle paper.

You know, have you
seen this child?

- In a lot of the cases at
first involving Ted Bundy,

people sometimes
speculated that,

oh, well, the girl is
just off on her own

or maybe she's spending
a couple nights

with a new boyfriend.

In the '70s,

the concept of a serial
killer was something

that people pretty much
attributed to a horror movie.

So there wasn't a really
good understanding

about that concept.

- At one point, someone
asked my husband,

"Aren't you going to feel silly

when she shows up
married to somebody?"

And I think that kind of
was the mentality back then.

It's a different mentality
now, thank goodness.

- During the first half of 1974,

there were a series of murders,

about one a month,

pretty much of the same age.

They looked very
similar to one another

and they lived
similar lifestyles

as young women in 20s lived.

Ted Bundy's MO was to

try and get women to trust him

and go with him.

He was the kind of person

that could talk a young
woman into helping him,

a stranger.

He was looking for
the empathetic female

so he could overpower her
and ultimately kill her.

- The night she disappeared,

she walked across campus

and he was standing
at the library,

which she had to walk in
front of to get to her dorm,

with his arm in a sling.

And he called to her and asked
her to help carry his books.

Could you help me to my car?

It's just over there.

We teach our children to be
compassionate, to be helpful,

and to reach out to
those that are disabled.

You know, were we wrong
to bring her up that way?

I don't think so.

It's so important for
them to care for others.

And that's what happened.

She helped him.

- Contrary to what we
might think,

serial killers don't come
across to the outside world

as frothing lunatics.

- We are not some kinds
of inherent monsters.

We are your sons and
we are your husbands.

- Dennis Rader had a BTK side

and he had a Dennis Rader,
the family man side.

He much preferred the BTK side.

- With guys like Bundy,

you have a success, and then
another, and then another.

And pretty soon, you start
to believe you're invincible.

- John Wayne Gacy
built carefully

an entire life to live,
a facade, a duality.

- My brother says,

"Me and this boy
are working together

and we're digging
around Gacy's house."

Well, it ended up they were
digging their own graves.

[intense ambient music]