Original subtitles

Glenn: There´s no better place for a serial killer to hide

than a hospital.

Their charge is the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.

He was really conducting his own sick experiments.

Burckley: And it wasn´t just once or twice.

It was four times, and it might be more times.

This was totally out of character

to the person we know.

Many people were just outraged at the accusation.

There was never any motive.

It´s insane.

Davis: So to be honest with you, I´m glad you came.

I´ve been waiting for an opportunity like this.

Alright, guys, so obviously,

we´ve been working this case for quite...

I´m Bryanna Fox.

I´m a psychological criminologist

and a former FBI special agent.

I study violent offenders to evaluate

their personality traits and patterns of behavior.

And I developed psychological profiles

to help law enforcement catch dangerous criminals.

As a former FBI special agent,

I learn techniques to interrogate and analyze

some of the nation´s most violent serial offenders.

Now I´m a professor at the University of South Florida,

where I´m training the next generation of criminologists.

Together with a team of my top graduate students,

we are reinvestigating violent crimes in order to learn

how to probe the mind of a convicted murderer...

Davis: I´m not a serial monster,

if that´s what you´re wondering.

Fox: to understand, why did this killer kill?

Do you believe that you´re going to heaven? I do.

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

[ Cell door slams ]

♫♫

Farmacka: My dad was a very easygoing man.

My mom and dad were married for 50 years.

They had just had their 50th anniversary.

They had only dated for, like, three months.

So that´s pretty crazy that they would, you know,

be together for 50 years.

He liked to be the hero.

You know, if me and my brother needed something,

he took pride in being able to provide for his family.

Super easy to talk to and very, very animated

when he told stories.

Everybody loved my dad.

[ Siren wailing ]

You know, he went in to the hospital,

and they did the bypass that morning.

You know, they expected him to make a full recovery.

♫♫

I first found out something was wrong with my dad...

My mom and my brother called.

I kept asking, "Is he okay? Is he okay?"

They wouldn´t tell me.

They just said, "You need to come.

Come up here."

When I got to the hospital, they told us that he was brain dead.

You know, my dad was just laying there and...

that we...

We just couldn´t talk to him anymore.

And about six months later, I´m on my way to work

and I hear a, you know... Over the radio,

they were saying the news about this Tyler nurse

that had just been arrested,

that had been killing his patients.

When I heard that, I thought, "That was my dad.

That had to be my dad."

The only question, you know, I kept asking myself

is, "Why did he choose my dad?"

♫♫

♫♫

Fox: In 2017 at the Heart Hospital in Tyler, Texas,

patients began mysteriously dying.

There´s risks involved with every medical procedure.

And so when things go poorly, sometimes that´s not unexpected.

These were just unexplained events.

Roberts: Medicine is pretty highly advanced these days.

When the patients come in, they score them

based on their probability of how well they should do.

And people that were scoring really high

and should have done well were not.

Dr. Turner, he knew something was not right,

and he couldn´t quite put his finger on it.

When another patient, Mr. Greenaway,

had a negative outcome,

he ordered a CT or a CAT scan of the head.

It was a genius move, in my opinion.

And it captured air in the brain,

which should not occur under these circumstances.

Most of the patients who died died from massive strokes

caused by air embolisms.

♫♫

Fox: Based on the scans, experts conclude

that someone has been deliberately injecting air

into the patient´s arterial lines.

Your brain´s gonna die within about six minutes

of it having an air block there.

Fox: Finally, the hospital realized

patients were being murdered,

but it wasn´t until they put security cameras up

that they realized who was responsible.

Roberts: So when they put the video cameras up,

a pattern started to emerge that Mr. Davis was on duty.

On several of the victims, he was in the room at the time

that they had their significant event while they´re crashing.

And he really had no reason to go in those rooms.

They were not his patients.

Law enforcement was consulted

and an investigation was started

by the Tyler Police Department

and the Smith County District Attorney´s Office.

Fox: Ultimately, registered nurse Will Davis was linked

to seven victims who died

and five who were left with permanent neurological damage.

In 2021, Davis was sentenced to death for his crimes.

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

What would make a nurse who took an oath to do no harm

become a serial killer?

To try to understand, my students

need to build a profile of his characteristics.

But first, they need to understand

the basic facts of the case.

So to start, I´d like to talk

about what do we know about Will Davis?

We know that he worked at a heart hospital

and was convicted of these four murders.

My name is Jordan Teuber.

I work for the state attorney´s office in Hillsborough County.

My specialty is drilling down on the evidence

so that we can really build a case for prosecution.

We know that 12 in total were investigated by Tyler P.D.,

and we got convictions for four of them,

but if 12 are being investigated,

there´s certainly a possibility

that there are others that were his victims that just...

My name is Jacquie Burckley,

and I was a cryptologic technician for networks

for the United States Navy for eight years.

So we know his method of murder was injecting the air

into the arterial line. So it says...

My name is Vanessa Centelles.

My research lies with victimology,

which basically means that I´m more interested

in the facts of the victim rather than the offender.

And for some patients, he even injected it

straight into their veins.

My name is Xavier Burch, and my role in the team

is to challenge every piece of evidence

to make sure that we get to the truth.

He´s very religious.

You know, I wonder how he can reconcile

these actions with his religiosity.

My name is Nate Lawshe.

I´ve always been a statistics guy.

I really love getting, like, a data set together.

And what I bring to the table is I´m the human computer.

There´s not a lot known about Will Davis.

He didn´t even testify at his own trial.

But incredibly, he agreed to do an interview with me.

So what is it that we want to get out of this case?

What are our main goals?

Burckley: I think one of the most important things

that we need to find out, if we can, is the motive.

Why did he do this? Burch: And I also think

that we should really try to see if there´s more victims

that he can possibly admit to or talk about.

Centelles: And I think it´s really important

to try to bring that closure to those families, too.

♫♫

One thing we know is that Will Davis,

even after he was charged with these crimes,

he was in jail for two and a half years

before he was ultimately convicted of them.

And that entire time, he maintained his innocence.

But after Davis was convicted,

he finally took responsibility for his crimes.

I think that really leads up to one important moment.

Nate, would you mind queuing up the audio phone call?

Yeah, sure thing.

[ Telephone rings ]

He says a potential reason for it.

So maybe he´s got some mitigation in his mind.

I mean, we know that, you know,

theoretically, sometimes people

that endure excessive financial stressors

or, like, multiple stressors

are more likely to engage in criminal behavior.

Burch: But come on now, it doesn´t make sense.

Like sicker people, you may get overtime,

but dead people, you´re not gonna get anything.

I do not think he told us the real reason

about why he killed those people. Not at all.

Fox: To begin the process of building a profile,

we need to speak to people who knew Will Davis

to help us understand his past and behavior.

What do you guys think we should investigate next?

Maybe his mom or his family members?

Teuber: I think it´ll also be really interesting

to hear from some of the other nurses.

Burch: I think we should also talk to the wife as well

to see if she has some insight on the stress.

Absolutely. Maybe there´s something

that could help us understand why he did this,

the real reason.

♫♫

♫♫

Fox: Vanessa and I travel to Henderson, Texas,

to meet Will Davis´ mother,

who has kindly agreed to talk with us about her son.

Anyone who knew Will Davis as a child calls him Billy.

Reagan: Billy loved football.

Centelles: Was he a natural

or did he have to work a little harder?

Billy would play on the front lines.

He didn´t care if they were tree trunks.

He was bringing them down. That´s just how he played.

This is when he was in the parade.

He was Mr. West Rusk,

and he was driving homecoming queen.

She was on the back of the car.

Fox: Holy cow.

So what did his dad say when...?

Oh, he was very proud of that picture.

He was very proud of Mr. West Rusk and...

Oh, yeah, yeah, most definitely proud.

We were all proud of that

because he, um, he excelled very well.

He did very well. The teachers are who elected

Mr. West Rusk and Miss West Rusk.

Really? They always elected them.

Yes. They loved him. Yes, they did.

Fox: Typically when we´re looking at serial-killer cases,

there´s a lot of dysfunction in the home.

They´re not doing well in school.

There´s a lot of trauma or abuse.

It was unusual that that´s not what we heard from Brenda.

[ Birds chirping ]

As someone who knew Will Davis well,

we´re eager to hear from his ex-wife.

She prefers to protect her identity.

Ex-wife: Whenever I first met William,

he was already a registered nurse.

He wanted to excel in his career.

He was very funny. William was very funny.

William would make faces, just being humorous.

He would cross his eyes on purpose

and we would just laugh.

You know, he was just carefree.

Fox: However, to a fellow nurse,

Davis´ jokes weren´t always so funny.

Nawaz: When we were

in our critical-care nursing residency together,

I was a new nurse.

I was there to learn

and constant, you know, disruption from him

and an instructor having to pause and tell Will to be quiet.

I mean, it was a little... Definitely a little annoying

because we were not in high school anymore.

There was a particular prank that he pulled.

We had a nurse, and Will did put some medicine...

It was a laxative-type medicine that he put in her coffee.

So, I mean, it was a little unprofessional.

Not to mention just a little cruel to someone,

you know, that´s a friend of ours.

And I think he might have just liked the attention.

Well, that was a poor choice and maybe shows

that he wasn´t really thinking through his decisions.

That´s not entirely uncommon with serial killers.

A lot of them are very narcissistic, grandiose.

That is actually the early indicators of what later

became the lack of empathy that facilitated serial killing.

I mean, the years he was in jail

awaiting trial, he´s calling you.

Was he maintaining his innocence that whole time?

Well, yes.

Uh, yes, it... Yeah.

I think parts of me are still in shock over all this,

because the day that they said he was guilty,

we had no idea whatsoever until that time

that he was guilty of this. We didn´t know.

So that was a big shift.

Because there was never any motive.

They can never give us a motive

as to why he would do something like that.

He´s going on this trajectory, which seems great.

Wonderful plan.

Wonderful plan, family, house,

lives, you know, a great life.

And so what do you think changed?

Well, I can´t talk about that because I know what changed.

But... but when you... When you talk to him,

he´ll tell you whatever he wants you to know about that

because it´s his story. So it was very...

The answers are very difficult for me to hear.

In 2017, I did not know there was any issues

going on with the patients.

In fact, the first time we were told

there was any kind of issue

was after Will was put on administrative leave.

William was very nonchalant about it.

Of course, he didn´t want me to worry.

He said, you know, there... there is some stuff

that´s going around the hospital.

They´re trying to blame me for a patient coding.

And it´s just all a misunderstanding.

He was terminated and his license was revoked.

That´s whenever they handcuffed him and put him in jail.

At that point, that´s whenever I was like,

"This... This is a big deal."

[ Handcuffs clicking ]

Nawaz: Will Davis was...

I feel like he was an excellent nurse.

He was certainly someone you could count on

to help you with whatever it is you needed.

But there were many people just couldn´t believe

that somebody they knew would do something heinous as this.

Ex-wife: He called me crying.

He was like, you know,

"I can´t believe this is happening."

And, you know, "We´re still gonna fight through this."

And I believed in him for eight years after that.

Certainly, we were all a little bit up in arms

because we felt that if... If this can happen to him,

this can happen to any one of us.

One of the biggest things we did

was the GoFundMe page that was set up.

And we raised almost $10,000 for that.

Ex-wife: He even told me that he wanted to go back

into the nursing field whenever he got out of jail.

He had goals.

And in the midst of all that, he knew exactly what he did.

And he led me and my family and his family on for so many years.

[ Sniffles ]

Scary.

Fox: Will Davis had charmed everyone so well.

Many couldn´t believe he had committed these crimes.

However, charm can often be superficial,

which is another characteristic of narcissism.

But that doesn´t make him a killer.

So what was going on inside his head?

Fox: So far, there aren´t many red flags

in Will Davis´ background, but some combination of factors

must have pushed him over the edge.

Fox: You have three other sons?

I do. In Billy´s mind, let´s say,

how did he feel he was comparing to his brothers?

I felt like because he was the oldest,

maybe he felt like he should do very well.

Do you feel like that was just a lot of pressure?

Maybe even he was putting on himself? It was self-imposed.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I believe that. Big time.

Now, I wanted to show you this one

because this is the first...

This is a really nice picture of Billy and his dad.

He was about a year old at that time.

But Billy´s daddy...

Now, don´t get me wrong, he loved his children,

very much so.

His boys were very important to him.

He wanted them to do very, very well.

And I think that if they didn´t do very, very well,

I think they feel like they let him down.

He gave them the impression that they couldn´t fail.

Fox: So how might an inner pressure to succeed

have manifested in later life?

Were you guys pretty financially stable yourselves?

No, I think because

they did not have a lot of things growing up.

So I think Billy wanted to make sure

that his children did have all those things,

you know, growing up.

Right. He did want to.

I will say in the beginning I did create a budget book

because he obviously struggled with his finances.

He started handling the finances himself in 2006

and everything was fine for a while.

Fox: Will Davis´ killing spree begins in June 2017.

So what was happening just before that?

So we actually went house hunting.

And initially, I wanted something smaller.

And that´s whenever William looked at me

and he said, you know, "Trust me,

if I couldn´t afford this house,

we wouldn´t even be looking at it."

He had a new vehicle. And I think at that time,

he was talking about putting in a swimming pool.

Fox: Pools are really expensive.

I think this one was around $40,000.

Holy cow.

That´s where he may get

a lot of his self-esteem and gratification.

There was always something external to him

that was giving him that positive feedback

and making him feel like,

"Oh, this is my identity. This is why I feel good."

Nawaz: I felt like it was a little bit

living outside of his means.

I knew what kind of money he made

because I made the, you know, similar amount.

Ex-wife: There would be times where the hospital

would call William in for work.

Honestly, I just wanted him to stay home for family time.

And I´m like, "Well, financially,

if we´re doing okay, I mean, do we really need it?"

He would work from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.

He worked night shifts.

Then he´d come home and study.

And his study, alongside of that,

was for acute care nurse practitioner.

And then we decided to extend our family

and that´s when we planned to have my daughter.

Did he ever come to you

and talk to you about any of that?

You know, say how he was feeling or say how he was...

The stress he was under

or discuss it with you in any way? No.

No. Because he knows what I would have said.

You need to be in church and you need to be praying

and you need to be reading your Bible.

Man on television: to survive.

Ex-wife: He never verbally came out to me

and said anything about the struggles

or the finances or anything.

You never think in a million years,

"Oh, well, he´s committing heinous crimes like...

Like a serial killer."

There was a great deal of stressors.

It was a perfect storm.

Fox: If stress is a factor that contributed to Will Davis

committing these murders,

then we might be able to see a correlation

between those stressors and the murders themselves.

I asked the students to dig into Davis´ financial history

and the patient deaths in the Tyler police report.

Comparing the timing of these stresses, the known murders,

and the other mysterious deaths at the hospital

may also reveal more victims.

There´s a lot of events to go, a lot of dates.

Let´s just get it on the board.

So let´s start with the earliest thing that we know of,

which I believe is the bankruptcy battle

that he went through in 2014, 2015, right?

Lawshe: When I looked through his bankruptcy files,

I saw that he had $135,000 in debt.

So, I mean, yeah, he was really deep in debt.

Teuber: We also have 2015,

where he begins his master´s degree in nursing.

So January 7, 2017, we have Patient "A,"

who suffered a health incident.

There was no neurological component to that,

but it was investigated under Davis.

Then in May of 2017, his wife found out

she was pregnant with baby number two.

They also had just bought a house.

We have June 14th, where Davis texted a co-worker

for anxiety meds.

That very night, a patient had a health episode.

You´re saying that was the same night?

It was the same night that he said that...

He asked for those anxiety meds

and he used the words before he gets into trouble.

There´s no imaging of the brain,

but the hospital didn´t even know

to look there at that point. Right?

Centelles: That´s all assuming that he had something to do

with that particular one.

Teuber: And then just two days later, June 16, for patient "D."

Burch: And then also on June 16,

there is a patient "E" who died of an insulin overdose.

How many people in that hospital

have ever died from an insulin overdose,

let alone during this exact same time period?

He could have been perhaps experimenting,

you know, what is the best method

and what´s the least traceable method.

Burckley: And so then the next day, I think we have

another patient, right? - Yep. Patient "F."

And then on June 22nd,

you have Patient "G," who dies.

Centelles: Which actually leads us

to one of the first convictions...

John Lafferty, and he dies of an air embolism.

Burckley: That´s on the 25th?

There´s a pattern here, guys.

How many of these can be attributed to him

and how many more are there?

Lawshe: From the trial and, like, my notes,

it´s just... the... It only points to one nurse.

I mean, there´s not like this cabal of nurses

going around, you know, like, killing people.

People think once in a while, there´s an unusual death.

It wasn´t until maybe June

that these deaths started happening so rapidly,

everyone took notice.

The June 14th date sticks out to me

where he has this anxiety-medication request.

I think the anxiety-meds request

was a call for help.

Like, "Please help me,

I´m gonna do something wrong."

And it´s like he knows

he´s hurtling towards this terrible place.

And, you know, it´s just that perfect concoction

that really, like, puts him into overdrive.

Fox: We know that there are lots of people

that experience stressors like this

and do not go on this negative path.

Just to show people, how many of you guys experience

these types of stressors... The financial pressures,

being in grad school,

having somebody that you know of be sick or pass away,

having a new family member?

Have any of you guys experienced one or all of those?

Multiple. All of us.

Oh, yeah.

How many of us have committed murder?

None. I think that really shows these murders are...

Even though he´s expressing that they´re due

to the stressors he was under,

we´ve all experienced these stressors

and none of us are responding the same way.

The data reveals some useful patterns in Will Davis´ life,

but there are other ways to try and discern

his possible motivation.

So I´ve arranged a re-creation of the crime

at the USF Nursing College.

I want my students to understand what Will Davis experienced,

to be in that room for one minute

and see the consequences of his actions.

Jacquie will spend one minute in the patient´s room,

just as Davis did.

Burckley: Ready.

Teuber: One minute.

[ Monitor beeping ]

♫♫

♫♫

Time´s up, Jacquie.

Fox: Will Davis´ actions resulted in a code alarm.

Now USF student nurses and doctors simulate

a response, using a mannequin.

Mr. Jones!

I got a code in 22.

I have no idea what happened.

He just started coding.

What´s going on with this patient?

He had heart surgery yesterday.

He was extubated this morning...

Fox: As the nurses try to save the patient´s life,

Will just stands and watches.

Let´s get the board underneath him.

Okay. 30 seconds to pulse check.

♫♫

♫♫

Okay. Pulse check, rhythm check.

Everybody, hands off.

Got v-fib on the monitor.

Charging 150.

[ Paddles charging ]

Okay, everybody clear. Hands up.

[ Flatline ]

Doctor: Time of death called at 12:04 a.m.

♫♫

[ Indistinct conversations ]

- That was intense. - Yeah, it was.

Centelles: That was a dummy.

I can´t even imagine a real person.

Lawshe: I am deeply disturbed.

You know, I felt pity for him, I think.

But I just... I don´t know anymore

after watching that, like, uh...

Yeah. I don´t know.

Burch: I just think of everybody in the room

and how hard they were working to actually try to help.

For someone to do that to someone

and then you have the audacity to stand in the doorway

and watch it happen,

I mean, it´s just no words to describe it.

I mean, it really made me upset. Right?

And so to think that this was an actual person

and it wasn´t just once or twice.

It was four times, and it might be more times.

Right?

Fox: So thinking about Will Davis´ risk factors,

there´s something that was missing

or something that he felt like he didn´t have,

that he had to turn to doing something as horrible as this

to feel like it was filling it.

What do you guys think that was?

- Control. - Control and power, yep.

Just had control over the situation.

It was just him and the patient.

You know, there´s no one else to tell him, to say no.

And, guys, how did you feel...

I mean, you´re criminologists, you study crime.

But a lot of the time, we study it in terms of data points.

I think our field needs to be a little bit more hands on

and stop sitting behind a desk.

Every data point is a person.

And I think that this experience

has really drilled that into my head.

All of this is still only preparation

for the ultimate part of our investigation...

An interview with Will Davis himself.

Fox: While stress seems to have been a contributing factor,

it is unlikely it is the only cause

of Will Davis´ murder spree.

We´re developing a theory

that Davis was seeking control over other people.

If that´s true, where did that need for control come from?

♫♫

♫♫

How did you know Will Davis?

He started working for my family,

and we went to church together.

And that´s how he got to know your cousin as well?

Yes. How old was she at the time?

Say, about 12 or 13, I guess.

And how old was he at the time?

16, 17.

Tell me about their relationship,

between Will and your cousin.

It was like he had to know where she was,

who she was with, what she was doing.

I think she was just liking the attention.

He came off as very, like, charismatic and smart,

and, like, the ability to do anything.

What kind of things would he do

when he then wasn´t the charming Will?

He would, like, push on her and grab her

and make her go where he was going.

Or, like, it was always a fight.

She was so young and moldable

that he could almost, in a sense,

make her believe everybody was against her but him.

What do you think his goal was of doing that?

Making her solely dependable on him.

I really, truly believe a lot of that

came from a relationship, like, with his dad.

He had to be in control, too,

and we all seen it.

His dad would, like, degrade the kids at times.

He had to be better in a sense.

And I think that Billy picked up

a lot of those traits, you know,

and that´s why he pushed so hard

to be so great at football or so great at this,

because he had to be better than somebody.

I think he really wanted to be liked.

When we see people

that are in such need for control over others,

it´s very difficult because they also sometimes want to be liked

by these people that they want to control.

And the active ingredient in that

to make that happen is manipulation.

Except that doesn´t usually last very long.

I think she really started to get scared.

And so they went and put a restraining order on him.

And did he respect the restraining order?

[ Sighs ]

No.

That´s when, I think,

the true colors started showing.

He said, "If I can´t be with you,

then I will kill your mom. I will kill your dad."

Like, "We will be together.

Nothing will stop me from being with you."

And that´s when he, you know,

went as far as trying to drive his vehicle

through their house.

♫♫

Just luckily, there was a tree.

When he hit the ditch, he hit the tree

and not the house, you know, because that was her bedroom.

That´s where she was asleep.

As awful as it sounds,

he´s right where he deserves to be, so...

That makes me emotional, so...

Just because I watched him torment her.

Yeah. I´m sorry.

So... sorry for being so emotional,

but it´s...

I think her life probably could have been

a lot different if he was never a part of it.

Humans are not the same way in every situation.

I can be nice to my mother,

but if I am feeling very insecure, out of control,

I have this deep-seated need for power over others

and I am having that power be taken away,

I can act out extremely aggressively

and that really actually helps build out this profile

because I heard under what circumstances Will could act

in a way that would be so unusual

compared to the circumstances

that his mother was telling me about

and maybe who he is on a general consistent basis.

But then to say, like,

he killed and harmed innocent people,

people that had nothing to do with him, you know,

nothing to contribute to his life, basically.

You know, I think that´s what catches me off guard

because is it just a control thing?

♫♫

Maybe only Will Davis knows for sure.

But will he tell the truth?

I still need more information so I can cross-examine

his version of events when I finally meet him.

Fox: In Will´s jail phone call,

he claimed the hospital denied him work.

Davis implies that he was trying to control his opportunities

for overtime,

but would a busy hospital really deny him work?

That certainly wasn´t true for Will´s co-worker.

Nawaz: I wasn´t a full-time employee,

but I was working full time hours.

And so in that time, I was doing three days a week

and then some extra here and there

and there´s only seven days in a week.

There´s only so many hours you can work.

Management was very supportive of the staff.

This was not due to staffing issues.

This was a new nurse.

Okay, then, you know, we could have gone a different route.

But this was a highly experienced nurse

that was doing something like this.

Very deliberate.

Fox: So if there was a lot of work available,

why would Davis jeopardize it?

How would patients dying be useful to him?

Research shows over 90% of serial killers choose strangers

to be their victims.

But that doesn´t mean victims were selected at random.

♫♫

One man who studied Davis closely during the investigation

is Detective Greg Roberts.

Roberts: He could have made overtime

without hurting or causing harm to people.

That´s available in the medical field.

I can tell you that for certain.

He was picking particular people for particular reasons,

not his patients, different ways of doing it.

So, I mean, this is meticulous in a way. Very organized.

So did you get the feeling

he was willing to do this to patients,

but he almost didn´t want it to be happening to his patients

because it would make him look bad?

Well, one of the theories that came out...

That´s a very good question...

Was that at the particular time,

he was studying to be a nurse practitioner,

which is a higher level of care provider

that he was aspiring to be.

He was actually in school for that,

which would give him more practice, more money,

a more prestigious position.

So one of my theories was maybe

he was pushing these negative outcomes on these people

so that he could say,

"Well, when I´m the nurse practitioner,

I can help because all of my patients,

I recovered them successfully.

These other people did not."

They were worse. Interesting. So almost he´s the hero.

But that´s where he clearly wants to be.

But he didn´t think he could do it on his own merit.

We don´t want to leave anything to chance

when we can control it or manipulate it.

And that comes in from that narcissism, I think.

Even when it comes to hurting and killing people.

Yeah, he´s gonna do whatever he can

to make himself the top dog.

So if we´re trying to look into whether or not

there´s more victims, I know the data are lacking.

So do you have any suggestions for us?

I would probably go straight to him and ask him.

He could shine that light for us.

Great advice. Hopefully we´ll be able to do that later this week.

If Will Davis was doing all of this just to advance his career,

then the patients were truly just collateral damage to that.

But what about the surviving victims?

What do they think about why Davis did this?

Lawshe: Would you tell me

a little bit about what happened,

if you don´t mind talking about it?

Well, I never dreamed that I would ever be

in jeopardy in a hospital.

I woke up and I felt like I couldn´t breathe,

and I had tubes everywhere.

And I told them I couldn´t breathe.

From what I can understand,

Will Davis was not even assigned to me, period.

He wasn´t even associated with my case at all.

Until I saw his picture in the paper,

I couldn´t even tell you what the man looked like.

Nor my family.

Wow.

How has your life changed since then?

You know, I mean, it´s kind of a big question.

It´s changed dramatically.

I mean, the strokes I had affected my left side.

I picked up a plate.

For example, I get a hamburger.

My hand just go to jumping and shaking

and I throw it all over the house.

I just can´t control it.

Taking that into account, I mean, how do you...

How do you feel now? Do you feel safe?

If I´m awake and breathing,

I´ve got a gun on. Yeah.

´Cause that´s... Even when somebody

pulls up in my yard, I don´t trust anybody.

During the trial or...

When did you see that security footage

and what did you think about it?

He actually was skipping down the hall.

It blew my mind.

I couldn´t believe somebody was

as sadistic... and...

And... And you want to know why.

I think Will enjoyed it.

I think it started out

him just seeing how much power he had.

And Will got to where he liked it

and exactly what they said in the courtroom.

There´s no better place for a serial killer to hide

than a hospital.

Fox: When we began this investigation,

we hoped to understand Davis´ motive

to help bring closure for victims like Ricky Glenn.

♫♫

So far, we´ve gathered a lot from people who knew Davis.

But for all our theories, there´s one person

that may know the answers better than anyone else...

The man himself.

♫♫

♫♫

[ Laughing ]

I´m sorry.

Okay. Hi, Will.

Hi, Miss Fox.

Hello. You can call me Bryanna.

Bryanna? Yes. Thank you for having me.

One thing I really wanted to talk to you about

was, you know, your childhood.

I think that was maybe one of the first times

that you started feeling

a lot of anxiety and depression. Depression.

I had a lot of depression in the fall of 2000.

Went to Kilgore College.

I felt like there is like no hope in life.

I didn´t know what I wanted to do for a career.

I´d went to the doctor at that time for that,

and he had prescribed me,

I guess, an SSRI for depression.

And then I wasn´t on it very long.

And after that, and then that´s when

I tried to run my truck into a tree, commit suicide.

And then I cut myself a few times.

I had a bunch of different acts like that

that, you know, weren´t... weren´t good.

They said I was bipolar,

put me on Depakote and lithium at that time.

To be honest, I really... I don´t feel like...

I never really thought I was bipolar,

but I know they had mentioned bipolar.

I never went back to get on that medication.

I just kind of more or less turning

to anti-anxiety, anti-depressive type...

What, if any, financial stressors did you have

and when did they begin?

I´m gonna be honest,

I´m horrible when it comes to finances.

When I became a nurse, I already had built up debt.

I paid my bills on time.

It´s just what the problem was, over time,

I started suffocating myself with so much stuff

where I´m just, like, basically paying the minimum payment

just to keep my credit good each month.

You´re just overwhelmed, stressed.

You think there´s no hope, there´s no way out of this.

How am I gonna... You know, what have I done to myself?

And all of these financial pressures?

I mean, can you explain mentally,

like where you were at while you´re going through them?

Well, I was taken Lexapro for depression,

and then I stopped taking Lexapro about April of ´17.

I was having sexual side effects from it.

And so it was very hard as a man, your pride,

your confidence, everything.

You know, it´s like, "Oh, my gosh,

what in the world´s going on?"

It´s like... And so I stopped taking it.

The first incident was, I think, June 15th.

But prior to that, I had gotten called off

a couple of different times and I thought,

"Okay, well, I´m going into overtime.

They need to call me off, let somebody else go in."

And so I thought, "Okay, that´s fine."

But then when I got to work the next time I go to work,

my co-workers would say, "Hey, Will,

where were you at last night?"

You know, "Well, I got called off.

They said I was gonna be in overtime.

So they had to call me off," and they said,

"Oh, man, we could have used you last night.

We were... We were... got hammered."

You know, they´re basically stressed out, low staffs.

So it just started building on my mind, like,

it really made me... I got really angry.

My co-workers are sitting there struggling.

I think that, for a lot of people,

you´re, you know, this young, upstanding nurse, citizen

and then this thing happened.

If I go ahead and explain, I think what...

I guess if I can explain. Please.

From the first, uh...

Like I said, started in June 2017,

Mr. Sanders, the very first patient,

that night,

everything started going went through my head,

like, about everything... Especially at the hospital.

More the upper people because I feel like, you know,

they´re up here sitting in the office getting bonuses,

taking and putting all these orders out

for us to do all these things.

And they don´t even know how hard it...

What we´re really doing

and they´re not down here with us.

I had to go check a blood sugar.

He was on an insulin drip.

And when I went in there,

it´s like I didn´t even see, like, the patient.

Mr. Sanders. I didn´t even see Mr. Sanders.

It´s like Mr. Sanders is there,

but my head is somewhere else.

I had a flush in my pocket. I had to check a blood sugar.

So you have to use the arterial line for that.

I took the syringe. How to explain it exactly...

I pulled it back. I put it back on there,

and I pushed it in there.

And while I was doing this, I´m getting this euphoria...

Like, this exhilarating force

going through my body in my head.

And I´m just like... It is feeling

like I´m out of this world.

You´re thinking, "Oh, my gosh," almost like a drug.

Like you´re getting high off a drug or something.

But then that feeling afterwards,

whenever people would come rushing in

or you´d have the code button going off

and people would rush in, you would get like...

It would amplify that feeling I had.

It gave me this control, the power,

that euphoria that went through,

that exhilarating rush that goes through your body.

After Mr. Sanders,

the next night was Mr. Lafferty.

I would walk in, go in, do the same thing,

and even afterwards, having that peace and that calm.

It´s like I didn´t worry about bills,

I didn´t worry about... Think about money.

I didn´t think about the stresses of life.

It was like I just kind of relaxed.

But then thereafter, it really became more of an addiction.

It´s horrible. I can´t even...

I don´t even like talking about it.

It´s... it´s horrible.

One question that I was wondering,

now is the opportunity, if there´s any other families

or any other people that you want to, you know,

I would say, you know, confess or have absolution,

get off your chest.

There was the 96-year-old elderly lady in 2016.

I did fail to mention her.

And that was more of a mercy thing.

She was 96. She was a DNR, do not resuscitate,

and she was basically end of life.

It´s hard to sit there and watch her suffering.

Oh, my gosh. This is it. This is the moment.

And you´re wanting to react to that.

You want to say, "How could you do that?

Why did you lie about it for so long?"

You want to yell all of that out,

but if you do, he´s gonna shut down.

Can you just tell me really quickly more about that?

So that was the first time.

And how... how did you go about that?

So basically, I just...

I gave her potassium chloride to stop her heart.

I gave her pain medicine, so she´d be comfortable.

I shouldn´t have played God. I should have done that.

I was wrong. But I just...

It was hard watching her suffer.

I do believe that maybe by doing that,

it might have opened a door that I shouldn´t have opened.

And this is my last question. You mentioned it earlier,

but do you believe that you´re going to heaven?

I do. I do.

I´ve... I´ve been... You know, I feel like, you know,

Jesus, I´ve turned my life around, back to him.

I focus on the Lord, and he´s forgiven me.

So... That was all I had.

I´m sorry it went so fast, Will.

I know it was quick.

I was hoping to get that, you know, that off my chest.

Lawshe: Wow.

So where to begin? Burckley: I´m, like, I don´t even know.

I have done... dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews

and asked people if they had committed other crimes,

let alone a murder.

And I don´t think I´ve had any at all

confessions to murder occur.

This is the first one.

I don´t know that we ever anticipated

that we would actually get that to happen.

I personally was shocked

that he had confessed to another murder.

My biggest thing is, throughout this entire interview,

did he cry once? Did he get emotional?

Really emotional once? This entire time,

I´m staring you dead in your eyes.

And there´s nothing on your face that says, "I´m sorry."

But do we really believe he waited then

a whole year, year and a half,

before he committed the next one?

Fox: How did you feel watching that

and hearing him explain it so honestly?

Horrified. One of the things that we learned

throughout the arrest report

was that just before his arrest,

he ended up doing an Internet search

for the list of serial killers by number of victims.

So I think that goes the point of manipulation is,

does he want this notoriety?

He compares himself to the higher-ups in admin,

that he still can´t obtain the goals and they somehow can.

And so he turns to illegitimate means to kind of deal

with those negative emotions.

But he´s also throwing things in there that he came with

after the fact that it happened,

after you spent three years in prison,

you were like, "Oh, okay, yeah, that´s what it was."

You had time to sort it out.

But at that time, he was more so confused.

It had nothing to do with the people above.

Because he himself has to live with those actions.

So he is rationalizing those actions to himself.

Teuber: Is he playing us and trying to make us feel like

it was all these sad things that happened in his life

and these hardships?

Or is he trying to play us?

I have no pity for him. He gets no pity from me at all.

I mean, I don´t care how much you´re going through.

You killed 12 people, and then you come

and say you have stress.

I don´t care. You stop being...

I´m sorry, but stop being a little punk.

I mean, it´s just that simple.

It´s almost as a revenge tactic.

Because he was upset with the hospital.

It´s insane.

And you can see that rationalization, too.

Like, she was end of life, right?

She was going to die anyway.

And he felt like he was,

you know, cutting... Cutting her suffering short.

But his reasons for doing it are completely different.

Never once did he invoke his medicine, his stressors,

his financial troubles,

anything that was going on... The hospital.

Instead, he said it was a mercy killing.

All the reasons, he said, for all the rest of the killings,

now all of a sudden went out the window.

I think the one constant, though,

is that need for power and control.

You know, regardless of whether it was frustration

with the administration,

whether he thought, you know, he could invoke

this God-like sense for that first mercy killing.

For some people who feel

like they have a lack of control in their life,

they feel like they have to do things, like use substances

or have eating disorders or have anxiety or depression.

Maybe Will Davis´ method was actually taking control

by taking control of other people´s futures and lives.

But no matter what, this is still somebody

that thought murder was an option.

But then he talks about how he felt during the killings.

I just feel like you can´t just... just make that up,

like this euphoric feeling

and then this addiction to taking people´s lives.

And, you know, and he was talking about, like,

the come up and the come down like it was a drug.

It´s like a redirection of emotion

and feeling where it´s like,

"Now I´m not just like a drug addiction.

I´m not feeling these negative emotions.

It´s a feeling of euphoria.

It´s more of I enjoyed the feeling itself."

Fox: A need for control may have made Davis a killer,

but it was his addiction to the thrill of killing

which made him a serial killer.

Burch: My biggest thing is how many people have you passed by

who has killed someone?

A lot of people think of serial killers as evil.

They´re, you know, you can spot them a mile away.

But the Will Davis that we´ve come to know is not like that.

So I think that also just should shift our mentality

about what serial killers are like,

what evil is like,

what maybe even the reasons that people commit crimes,

even if they don´t have a justifiable reason,

there still are reasons. Okay.

Our second major goal was identifying

if there are other potential victims.

I think now our next steps

are turning this information over to the prosecutors

and the police department and seeing

if they can identify the woman who he had killed

to see if that can bring closure to her family.

[ Line ringing ]

♫♫

Hello. This is Detective Roberts.

Hi, Detective Roberts, this is Bryanna Fox.

I promised you I would call you

after my interview with Will Davis,

and so I wanted to call you right away

and let you know what happened.

♫♫

♫♫