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Serial Killer Documentary - How A Fake $20 Bill Led Agents To A North Carolina Serial Killer · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In Charlotte, North Carolina, in April of 1983, an armored
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: truck drove up to a local bank to make its
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: daily deposit The courier was delivering the day's receipts from
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: an area mall.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Good morning, ma'am.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Hi, Jack. Good morning.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: Big deposit today, huh? Absolutely.
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
• 0:53
  Speaker 5: All right, there you go. Thank you.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: See you tomorrow.
• 0:54
  Speaker 6: See you tomorrow.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Most banks in the US use automatic counters calibrated to
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: reject any bills that are an odd size or paper thickness.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: The machine rejected one of the notes. A worn looking
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: $ 20 bill. Suspecting it may be counterfeit, the clerk contacted
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the nearest office of the Secret Service Although it is
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: known for providing protection to the president, the Secret Service
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: was originally founded to investigate counterfeit currency. An agent was
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: dispatched to the bank to try and determine where the
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: bill came from. The Secret Service canvassed the mall to
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: determine if any of the retailers could identify the passers.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Agents interviewed employees throughout the mall where the bill had been.
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: Passed.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: The cashiers couldn't recall who had passed the fake bill.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Special Agent Dennis Foose worked the case.
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: In many cases, counterfeit bills will be received by a merchant,
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: not detected as counterfeit, go into the till and might
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: be given back to the next customer in the form
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: of change. So it's not uncommon for someone to innocently
• 2:33
  Speaker 5: pick up a counterfeit bill and then even pass it
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: on to another merchant.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: The Secret Service sent the counterfeit $ 20 note to their
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: forensics lab in Washington, D.C. Lorelei Pagano is a counterfeit specialist.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: It is her job to analyze the counterfeit notes.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: They're examined for information about the paper, the printing process,
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: the inks, any simulation of security features, any investigative information
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: that we can give back to the field to help
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: them stop the counterfeiting.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: The examiner focused her attention on the style of printing.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: The counterfeit bill was flat and slick. The printing process
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of the US Mint creates raised areas on the bill
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: where the ink is applied. The US Treasury has a
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: series of safeguards to discourage counterfeiting. In the 1980s, the
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: paper they printed on was embedded with red and blue fibers.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: This counterfeiter had printed red and blue lines on the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: bills to simulate the look of the paper. Comparing the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: bill to previously passed notes, The technician noticed these defects
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: were similar to others she had seen.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: We associate notes together by determining if there's significant individuality
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: of two portions of a note that allows us to
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: define that they're coming from the same counterfeiting operation. And
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: in that sense, we then create families of counterfeits.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: This family of counterfeit bills began appearing in the early
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: 1980s and were cataloged under Circular 7215. This was the 7,215th
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: run of counterfeit bills in US history. Agents telexed a
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: notice to branch offices around the country. Since 1980, the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Secret Service had recovered more than a thousand variations of
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: circular 7215. The counterfeit bills had been passed for the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: most part in shopping malls. Because of this, they dubbed
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: their suspect the Mall Passer. The agents had very little
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: information about their suspect. They didn't know if he was
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: working alone or if he was part of a counterfeit ring.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: All they knew for certain was that his fake $ 20
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: bills had defrauded the US out of thousands of dollars.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you. You too. Greg Mertz, a former homicide detective,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: had been with the Secret Service only a year and
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a half when he began investigating the case.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: The counterfeit money he produced was a fairly good quality note.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, it passed.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: If that's your standard or your barometer as to how
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: good a counterfeit bill is, can it pass on the
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: general public? The majority of the bills did pass.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: For years, the Secret Service struggled to find a lead.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Thousands of dollars in counterfeit 20s with the same telltale
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: flaws had turned up in malls all across the country.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Secret Service agent Jane Vazares worked the case.
• 5:52
  Speaker 6: A particular area would be hit by this note and
• 5:56
  Speaker 6: you would see that there was a 20 passed in
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  Speaker 6: a bookstore and then a 20 passed in a stationary
• 6:02
  Speaker 6: store and then maybe 20 passed, you know, in a
• 6:05
  Speaker 6: small area, but not large numbers. And it was over
• 6:12
  Speaker 6: a long span of time and it was over a
• 6:15
  Speaker 6: large geographic area of this country. And that was peculiar.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: To the agents, the passer's odd behavior made it seem
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: as if his counterfeiting was hiding something else. Then they
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: got a break. A clerk in Burnside, Minnesota, took in
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: a $ 20 bill that didn't feel right to her. She
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: suspected it was fake. The clerk observed the passer as
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: he got into his car and drove away. She later
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: gave the Secret Service their first description of the suspect.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: She also described his car as a white Ford, but
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: was unable to read the license plate. The Secret Service
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: distributed a sketch based on the clerk's description to shopping
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: malls all across America.
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: We established that he had visited every state east of
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: the Mississippi River and many states west of the Mississippi
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: River and would hit malls, shopping malls, generally during weekends
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: or busy periods. Holiday weekends were a favorite.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: The mall passer always made small purchases. He would buy
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a pair of socks, a book, or a single greeted card.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: He passed his bills 120 at a time, collecting his
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: change and moving on. He never went for the big score.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: He was patient and methodical. The Secret Service was puzzled
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: by the mall passers' mobility. He would drop a bill
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: in Florida and the very same day a dozen fake
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: 20s would appear 500 miles away. They weren't certain whether
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: his fake bills were in circulation or whether he was
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: in fact passing them. If he was, they thought he
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: might be someone who traveled for a living.
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: We started with a notion that because of the distances
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: that the passes occurred from each other, that one possibility
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: might be that the notes were being passed by a pilot.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: One of the mall passers counterfeit bills turned up at
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: a parking lot near an airport in Washington, DC. The
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: secret service got a description of the passer from the
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: parking lot attendant. A similar note had been passed in
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: that lot exactly one year before. The next day agents
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: showed a composite drawing of their suspect to a ground
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: crew who identified him as a pilot. Airline officials provided
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: a picture.
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: I laid the composite next to the photograph of their
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: pilot and got a little excited because it appeared that
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: the composite drawing could have been traced from that very picture.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: The Secret Service followed the pilot to see if he
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: was passing fake bills. They surveilled him in and out
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: of airports. There you go, that's $ 3.
• 9:57
  Speaker 6: 45.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: When they saw him spending money, they would retrieve the
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: bill to see if it was counterfeit.
• 10:08
  Speaker 7: They also checked his flight record.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: His assignments had not taken him near any of the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: counterfeit passes. They concluded he could not be the mall passer.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: The investigators hit a dead end.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: When you look at the total dollar amount that this
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: individual was passing, it was insignificant compared to the total
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: amount of counterfeit pass in the country or the world. However,
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: this one individual was beating the Secret Service, year after year,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: for three years straight.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Investigators observed that the mall passer often traveled Interstate 95
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: up and down the eastern United States. He would take
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: smaller routes, but he always returned to 95. Agents began
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: to suspect that he made his home in the Washington, D.C.
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: Area.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: If so, he was right under their noses. In May
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: of 1983, as the Memorial Day holiday approached, they anticipated
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: his passing would intensify.
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: We went out and hit various malls, showing our composite
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: and alerting them to the possibility that the mall passer
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: might be hitting during that time frame. We not only
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: did that in Washington, D.C., but we set up sort
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: of a band that would cover these common routes that
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: we knew that he took, which extended across to Tennessee.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: The Secret Service contacted thousands of stores up and down
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the East Coast. A report came in from the Knoxville
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: office that a phony bill had been passed at a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: shop in Kingsport, Tennessee. The Secret Service confirmed it came
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: from the mall passer. If the predictions of his travel
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: patterns held true, Knoxville would be next. Agents at the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: local field office were dispatched to cover the newly opened mall.
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  Speaker 4: Pete Allison, Secret Service.
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  Speaker 1: They went to every shop, showing clerks a photograph of
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the sketch they had made of the mall passer. Agent
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Pete Allison remembers the manager of one of the shops
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: recognized the picture.
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  Speaker 4: The clerk felt like he would know this person because
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: he had been shown this photograph before in Memphis. The
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: person victimized him at the historian Memphis. And he told
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: me that if this person walked in the store, he
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: would recognize them immediately.
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  Speaker 5: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Incredibly, a few minutes after the agent left, the mall
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  Speaker 1: passer entered the shop. Agents finally got the break they
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: had been waiting for when the clerk reported seeing the passer.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Suspect spotted outside mall.
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  Speaker 5: Respond immediately.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Over.
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Allison, I'm on the way. The clerk told agents he
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: had seen the suspect enter a bookstore nearby. A security
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: officer checked out the bookstore, but the mall passer was
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: not there. Then they spotted him coming out of a
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  Speaker 1: shoe store. Aware he was being followed, he began running
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  Speaker 1: toward a store that was under construction. Two police officers
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: pulled up outside the unfinished area where the mall passer
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: had disappeared. The suspect tried to bluff his way past
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  Speaker 1: the officers by telling them that the police had already
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  Speaker 1: cleared him to leave. The officers didn't believe him. They
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: searched him and found a gun in his front pocket.
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  Speaker 1: They also found some counterfeit money. It matched the bill
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: passed at the shop. After years of searching, they knew
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: they finally had the mall passer. They questioned the suspect
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to see if his car was nearby. He continued to
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: deny having a car, but again, the agents did not
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  Speaker 1: believe him.
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  Speaker 4: If this is the guy who's been driving all over
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  Speaker 4: the country, there could be all kinds of evidence in
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  Speaker 4: that car of his other passes.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Investigators waited until nightfall to check them all for unattended vehicles.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Only three cars were left in the lot. The mall
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: passers' keys fit one of them, a 1971 Chrysler. The
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: agent closed the vehicle and sought a search warrant. The
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: next morning, the suspect's car was towed to an impound
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: garage where police began processing it. The car had been
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: equipped with a police siren. Inside the trunk, they found
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: more police paraphernalia. What appeared to be stolen license plates
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: and a collection of women's underwear. The investigators began to
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: suspect that there was more to the mall passer than
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: simply passing fake bills. After tracking the mall passer for years,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: The Secret Service finally had him in custody in Knoxville, Tennessee.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: He'd been arrested after passing a fake 20 in a
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: local mall. Agents searched the mall passers car. As they did,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: they uncovered disturbing evidence. The car was outfitted with a
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: police siren and police lights. Inside, agents recovered a loaded
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: semi-automatic pistol. The search turned up thousands of dollars in
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: counterfeit currency in small bundles. Each bundle was labeled with
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the name of a different city. An itinerary found above
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the visor listed various dates, cities and aliases used, motels
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and how much money was spent. The counterfeiter had kept
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: meticulous records of his travels. In the trunk, they found
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: a stack of stolen license plates, some with magnets attached.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: They also found other items that surprised Special Agent Allison.
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: These stolen tags with the magnets on them, those were
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: fairly normal for a counterfeiter to try to hide his identification,
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: to get away. But then the police lights, the police
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: badges that we found, the police siren and the spotlight
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: in the front of the car, we suspected then that
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: we had a police impersonator. But we had no idea why.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: The trunk contained several forged driver's licenses, all of them
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: bearing the suspect's picture.
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: As we were searching the car, I thought that we
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: were looking for counterfeit evidence. And the more we found,
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: the more I realized this guy must be into something
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: else besides counterfeiting.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: At the Secret Service office, agents interviewed the suspect to
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: obtain his personal history. At the time of his arrest,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: he was carrying a North Carolina driver's license in the
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: name of Roger Collin Blanchard. When he told them his
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: birth date, it was different than the date on his
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: driver's license.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: The month was the same, the year was the same,
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: but the day was different. So I reasoned then that
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: there's something not right here.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Checking the address on the driver's license, agents found it
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: belonged to a motel. The management of the motel said
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: they had never heard of a Roger Collin Blanchard. Agent Roberts.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Agents in Tennessee contacted the Washington D.C. field office. The
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: car's license plates had been stolen, but the vehicle was
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: registered to a James R. Jones of Alexandria, Virginia. Special
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Agent Greg Mertz discovered that Jones had also registered the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: vehicle in Albany, New York. Jones had the same height, weight,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and birthdate as Blanchard.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: I called back down to Knoxville and I said, hey,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think this guy's name is Roger Collins Blanchard.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: I think his real name is James R.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Jones.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: And I said, why don't you FedEx his fingerprints up
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: and we'll hand carry him to the bureau the next
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: morning and try to get a true identification.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: On the guy. A search of the FBI's records uncovered
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the mall passer's identity. He was James Mitchell de Bartleaben II,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: a 44-year-old career criminal. He had been arrested by the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Secret Service years earlier in 1976 for passing counterfeit $ 100 bills.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Special Agent Foose pulled up the report and realized the
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: investigating agent still worked in the Secret Service's Washington field office.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: When Foose showed Special Agent Mike Stevens to Bartleaben's new
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: arrest photo, Stevens recognized him instantly.
• 20:59
  Speaker 7: I knew Foose was working the mall passer case, and
• 21:03
  Speaker 7: then he told me that he had been arrested in Knoxville, Tennessee,
• 21:08
  Speaker 7: as a mall passer. Well, naturally, I got a lump
• 21:14
  Speaker 7: in my throat, and I said, certainly, I do remember him.
• 21:18
  Speaker 7: I immediately wanted a piece of this new investigation because
• 21:22
  Speaker 7: I knew probably more about him than most people.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Stevens briefed Foose on what they found when they first
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: arrested de Bartleman. The morning after DeBartolaben's 1976 arrest, agents
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: obtained a warrant to search his residence. They were looking
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: for his printing press. On the second floor, they entered
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: a darkened bedroom.
• 21:59
  Speaker 7: And we hit a light switch to turn the light on.
• 22:03
  Speaker 7: And immediately, a movie projector came on and projected pornography
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: on the wall. It frightened us a little bit because
• 22:15
  Speaker 7: it startled us, because we don't know exactly what we're
• 22:17
  Speaker 7: getting into.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: All around them was amateur pornography. Much of it involved
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: torture and bondage scenarios. The agents found a stack of
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: index cards with the names of women, their addresses, and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: descriptions of their physical attributes. It appeared the cards included
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: a crude rating system. Under the pillows, they found a
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: 38 caliber revolver and a nine millimeter automatic pistol. Both
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: weapons were loaded. Stevens went on to tell the agents
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that during the 1976 search of de Barthelaben's home, they
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: discovered the second locked bedroom. Using a sledgehammer, they smashed
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the door.
• 23:34
  Speaker 7: And there was the printing press operation, the 1250 Multilith,
• 23:38
  Speaker 7: which was a surprise to us because it's very heavy.
• 23:43
  Speaker 7: And it was a surprise that it was up on
• 23:45
  Speaker 7: the second floor. Money was screwed all over the floor
• 23:49
  Speaker 7: of the room.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Stevens told the agents de Bartleaben served only 23 months
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: for his prior 1976 counterfeiting conviction. Special Agent Stevens always
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: felt there was more to de Bartleaben than counterfeiting.
• 24:07
  Speaker 7: We had him arrested now in Knoxville, and he was
• 24:10
  Speaker 7: using various different aliases. I think, total, I think we
• 24:16
  Speaker 7: ended up with about 40 different aliases that he used.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Investigators now had to find out what he had been
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: doing since his release. They set out to learn everything
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: they could about James Mitchell de Barta-Laban. After a three
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: year search, Secret Service agents in Tennessee finally apprehended the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: mall passer. But they still found no clues as to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: where he kept his printing press and supplies. On the
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: windshield of his car, they noticed a parking sticker for
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: an apartment complex in Alexandria, Virginia. Agents from the Washington
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: DC office were dispatched to check out the apartment. It
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: was only 15 miles from the Secret Service office. Agent
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Jane Vazares worked the case.
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: We became actively involved in trying to figure out what
• 25:18
  Speaker 6: activities was he involved in here? Perhaps was this his
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: home base? Was he actually manufacturing the notes here? Did
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: he have a stash of counterfeit notes here?
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Residents of the apartment building recognized to Bartleaben's picture and
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: said they knew him as James Jones. The agents learned
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: which unit was his. They secured a warrant. When Special
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Agent Mertz entered the apartment, his hopes sank.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: It was a one-bedroom apartment, kitchen living room, you know, small,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: maybe 800, 900 square feet total. And we realized immediately
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: upon walking in that our investigation was going to continue
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: because we had not discovered the planned operation.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: DeBartolaben had learned from his 1976 arrest. He no longer
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: kept his printing press in his home. The agent searched
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the apartment but found nothing unusual, except for a large
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: quantity of men's socks.
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: We looked around. We found a number of small bags
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: with small purchases. You know, maybe a pair of socks,
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: a book, maybe a map, those kinds of little things.
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: which was very typical with the kind of behavior that
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: was exhibited by this individual because he would go in,
• 26:48
  Speaker 6: of course, and try to buy a very small dollar
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: item with a 20 to get the maximum amount of
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: change possible.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: The puzzling thing to the agents was that although it
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: appeared that Bartleaben had no use for any of the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: items he bought, he kept them. It seemed as if
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: they were trophies of his crimes. The Secret Service had
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: de Bartleaben in custody, but unless they could find his
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: printing press, they couldn't charge him with manufacturing counterfeit bills.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Here was a three-and-a-half-year investigation that had the attention of
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the entire Secret Service, and we were expecting to find
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: a large amount of counterfeit money. We were expecting to find,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: or hoping to find, a printing plant operation with a
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: printing press and printing plate negatives and plates. And we
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: found nothing.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: The sentence for passing was much lighter than the sentence
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: for manufacturing. They had to find the press. Agent Mertz
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: had an idea.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I leafed through every single page of the white pages,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Northern Virginia. It was three inches thick. Looking for any marks,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: any names that might be circled, anything of the nature
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: like that. I then started with the yellow pages. and
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: went to every single page in the Yellow Pages. When
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: I got to the M's in the Yellow Pages under
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: moving and storage, there was a small piece of paper.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: American movers and storage.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: We both kind of looked at each other, and we
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: knew that's where it was. He had everything in a
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: moving storage locker.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: They decided to canvas storage facilities in Alexandria, Virginia, starting
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: with the one nearest to Bartleaben's apartment. I, being somewhat
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: familiar with that location, knew that there were several storage
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: units in the area within a few blocks of the apartment.
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: So my function was to visit each of these storage
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: units and attempt to determine whether this person that we
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: had now identified as James DeBartolaben had rented any units
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: in any of these storage units. As it turned out,
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: the first storage unit that I went to got a hit.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: The clerk told the agents she had been waiting for them.
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: As a matter of fact, her comment to me was,
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: I was sort of wondering when the police would come
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: by and ask about this guy.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: One of their renters, a man named Jones, was up
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: to no good, she said. The clerk remembered, one night
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Jones left his locker open with the light on. When
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: she went to shut it off, she saw what she
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: thought were burglary tools. When shown to Bartleaben's picture, the
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: clerk identified him as Jones. This man. Investigators believe they
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: may have found de Bartleaben's printing plant. They obtained a
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: search warrant and returned to the storage locker. When they
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: opened it, they were surprised to find that it did
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: not contain the printing press. Nothing about this investigation was easy.
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: The very first thing that struck me when we opened
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: the door was a set of red lights and blue
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: lights and a siren, all designed with cigarette lighter plugs
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: to operate off of a car cigarette lighter.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: The locker was filled with the same type of items
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: found in de Bartelaben's car, only on a much bigger scale.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: The agents recovered box after box of counterfeit $ 20 bills.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Almost $ 50, 000 worth.
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: We did find what we were looking for as far
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: as evidence of counterfeiting. We found counterfeit money. We found
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: plates and negatives. But we also found items that led
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: us to believe that we were looking at evidence of
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: other crimes.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: The storage locker contained more phony police badges, fake identity cards,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: books on surveillance, and a number of weapons.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: It appeared that he was a police impersonator.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: The question is, why?
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Why was he a police impersonator? We thought he was
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: just passing counterfeit money. So we started thinking real hard, like,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: what do we have here?
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: As agents confiscated the evidence, they knew counterfeiting was the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: least of de Bartleaben's crimes. The disturbing thing was, whatever
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: he was doing, he was doing it full time. They
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: took the evidence back to their offices to be processed.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: They hoped the boxes held something that would give them
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: some idea of what he was doing. Special Agent Mertz
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: began by reading some of the hundreds of de Bartleaben's
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: notes stored in the boxes.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: He was a prolific note writer. He'd get up in
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: the morning and say, What are the five things I
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: have to do today?
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: And he'd write them down.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: And so there were little tiny slips of paper, three
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: by five cards, little post-it notes, you name it.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Late into the night, agents cataloged the evidence. Unfortunately, de
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Bartelaben's notes offered no clues as to the whereabouts of
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: his press. Agent Mertz discovered some audio tapes inside one
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: of the boxes. he decided to play.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: One of them.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: I thought, well, maybe since he's such a prolific note writer,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: maybe there's something, you know, he's so secretive, maybe there's
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: something on this tape. So I took the tape and
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: I just stuck it in my dictaphone player and I
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: hit play. I was shocked. The Bart Laban's tone in
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: his voice was very matter of fact, totally calm and control.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: and this woman is screaming, begging to be killed. I
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: listened to two or three minutes. I stopped the tape,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: and I just sat there and listened. I'm going, what
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: did I just hear?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Later that day, Mertz played the tape for the other agents.
• 33:42
  Speaker 6: You could hear a woman screaming, crying, pleading for him
• 33:47
  Speaker 6: to stop. It was extremely unsettling. Just, I can't find
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: words to adequately describe how terrible it was.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: The agents knew there was more to the case. They
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: could only speculate as to the terror that Bart Laban
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: inflicted on these women. The Secret Service was sifting through
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: evidence found in a storage locker rented to James Mitchell
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: de Bartolaba. They had caught him passing fake bills, which
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: they suspected he had printed himself. They still had not
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: found his press, but had uncovered a chilling audio tape
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: in which a woman was begging to be killed. Evidence
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: de Bartolaba was involved in something far more sinister. Desperate
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: to find out exactly what de Bartleaben was involved in,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: agents continued to pour over the evidence. They recovered hundreds
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: of receipts from the storage locker, a few of them
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: from other storage facilities. Special Agent Greg Mertz found a
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: telling piece of evidence.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: One of the significant things that I found was a
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: postal money order receipt made out to a moving and
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: storage facility in Manassas, Virginia.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: The manager of the facility said she was leasing a
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: locker to a J.R. Jones who worked for an electronics company.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Jones was one of DeBartolaben's aliases. Special Agent Mike Stevens
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: again obtained a search warrant.
• 35:37
  Speaker 7: We found the storage unit and took the lock off
• 35:40
  Speaker 7: it and opened it up. And as I recall, the
• 35:44
  Speaker 7: Manassas storage unit was what we would call the mother load.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Agents opened the locker to find at last the Bartleaben's
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: printing plant. A multi-lith 1250 offset press. Weighing almost 500 pounds,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: it was partly dismantled and surrounded by nearly a quarter
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: of a million dollars in fake $ 20 bills. Inside the locker,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: agents found a small arsenal of handguns and knives. The
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: search also turned up with the agents called kits. They
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: consisted of medical tape, pieces of rope, and lubricating jelly.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: As they looked farther, agents made a disturbing discovery. Photographs
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: of women in sexually compromising positions. Hundreds of photographs. Some
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: of the women had ligature marks on their wrists and
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: tape residue around their eyes indicating they had been tied
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: up and blindfolded.
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: We became very alarmed when we saw the police equipment
• 36:55
  Speaker 6: and the pornography, which included photographs, not professionally done, but photographs,
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: home photographs, if you will, of naked women. And there
• 37:09
  Speaker 6: was a lot of it. And from the photographs, I mean,
• 37:14
  Speaker 6: you really couldn't tell if these were willing partners or not.
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: But when you put the whole thing together, the entire
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: context of what you found, it did not give you
• 37:26
  Speaker 6: a good feeling.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: The locker's contents were moved to the Washington field office.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: The storage units had yielded 144 boxes of potential evidence.
• 37:44
  Speaker 6: We had literally a mountain full of material. We had 30,
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: 40 roadmaps, and some of them would have an X
• 37:55
  Speaker 6: marked somewhere on the map, almost like a treasure map.
• 37:59
  Speaker 6: We had women's clothing, women's underwear. We had women's little
• 38:05
  Speaker 6: trinkets of jewelry. We had the police equipment. We had
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: multiple license plates from various states that obviously had been stolen.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Agents also recovered a number of women's driver's licenses and
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: nearly a hundred pairs of women's underwear. Some of them knew,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: some looked worn. The Secret Service was organized to combat counterfeiting.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: They were not equipped to investigate the type of evidence
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: they were finding.
• 38:39
  Speaker 6: The Secret Service as part of the Treasury Department for
• 38:43
  Speaker 6: the most part, our criminal investigations are financial investigations.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Secret Service agent Jane Vazares contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• 38:56
  Speaker 6: They indicated that you really don't have anything at this point.
• 39:01
  Speaker 6: I mean, you don't have any evidence. I mean, if
• 39:03
  Speaker 6: you came to us and said, you know, here, this
• 39:05
  Speaker 6: was used in a homicide, well, maybe, or a kidnap case,
• 39:09
  Speaker 6: Maybe they could do something with it, but we just
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: had our suspicion, and we had this mountain of material.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Because the Secret Service could not specifically identify any victims,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the FBI could not pursue the case. The Secret Service
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: knew if they didn't investigate this case, no one else could.
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: It was extremely unusual and awkward because typically you have
• 39:35
  Speaker 6: a crime and you solve the crime. Here, we believed
• 39:42
  Speaker 6: we were looking at a lot of evidence, but we
• 39:46
  Speaker 6: had no clue what the crime was or where the
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: crime occurred or when the crime occurred. But we all
• 39:54
  Speaker 6: had very strong convictions that certainly crimes had occurred.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: The agents approached the assistant director about having the Secret
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Service investigate the case themselves. As they played one of
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: the tapes, John Simpson, the director of the Secret Service,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: walked in.
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: Upon listening to the tapes, we heard some pretty chilling recordings.
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: Recordings of women being tortured, of women screaming, of women
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: begging to be killed.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: The director listened for a minute, shocked by what he
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: heard on the tape. Simpson gave the investigation his full support.
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: I don't think I'd ever been more proud of my
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: agency than at that moment when our director supported our
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: refusal to let this case just fade away.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Give them anything they need. The Secret Service was given
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: clearance to expand their investigation beyond counterfeiting.
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: At this point, the investigation took a complete turn. from
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: our concerns over the counterfeiting to the concerns of these
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: vicious crimes.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Their first task was to try and understand what they had.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: They cataloged each of the more than 10,000 bits of
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: potential evidence. Receipts, newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, postage stamp marks,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: anything that might eventually be a clue.
• 41:39
  Speaker 7: It didn't take a whole lot of experience to determine
• 41:42
  Speaker 7: that this person was involved in a multitude of criminal activity.
• 41:46
  Speaker 7: We didn't know who the victims were. We didn't know
• 41:49
  Speaker 7: exactly what. But we knew this was not a normal
• 41:54
  Speaker 7: counterfeit case. We realized that we had a lot of
• 41:58
  Speaker 7: work in front of us.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Once they had everything at their fingertips, they hoped clues
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: would emerge as to the extent of de Bartheleven's crimes.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: For years, the Secret Service tracked a counterfeiter through over
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: 30 states. When they finally arrested James Mitchell de Bartolaban,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: agents found a storage locker that held evidence of more
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: sinister crimes. They began to piece together the mountain of
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: evidence found in de Bartolaban's storage lockers. They wanted to
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: find out exactly what they had. Special Agent Jane Vazera
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: supervised the effort.
• 42:46
  Speaker 6: All we wanted to do was to be able to
• 42:49
  Speaker 6: identify what we had in a coherent manner so that
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: we could try to coordinate this with the rest of
• 42:59
  Speaker 6: the law enforcement community to see if it somehow matched.
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: any of the unsolved cases that they may have had.
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: One of the aspects of what we did early on
• 43:12
  Speaker 6: was to try as quickly as we could assess what
• 43:17
  Speaker 6: we thought he might have committed. And we did that by,
• 43:22
  Speaker 6: of course, looking at the totality of the evidence we had,
• 43:25
  Speaker 6: but also he was an incessant note-taker.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Through his meticulous record-taking, including the notes and the receipts
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: he kept, Agents were able to make a timeline of
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: de Bartleaben's travels. They also used the notes to better
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: understand the type of person de Bartleaben was.
• 43:45
  Speaker 6: He had lots of notes, handwritten notes that he wrote
• 43:49
  Speaker 6: about himself, about how to make himself appear more presentable.
• 43:58
  Speaker 6: more attractive to women, how to make himself appear more important,
• 44:05
  Speaker 6: you know, sitting in a bar, how he should sit,
• 44:09
  Speaker 6: you know, how he should look, what he should say,
• 44:11
  Speaker 6: all of those kinds of things.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Special Agent Mertz discovered DeBartolaben made lists of objectives.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: He also wrote pages and pages of goals of what
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: he wanted to do, the type of women he would
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: like the type of torture he wanted to inflict on women.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: DeBartolaben's to-do lists outlined how he would accomplish each thing.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: He wrote about equipping his car with a hinged license
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: plate that could be flipped up or down from inside
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: the car. Eyebolts on the floor of the vehicle and
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: in the trunk. He made reminders to install soundproofing, security
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: buzzers and alarms to his house. He wanted hidden compartments,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: a secret area where he could keep women locked up.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: DeBartolaben had even outlined the most opportune time to kidnap
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: a woman. The level of detail was chilling. Some of
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: his notes were easily understood, while others seemed to have
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: been written in code.
• 45:20
  Speaker 6: He had little initials like, you know, KRK, those kinds
• 45:25
  Speaker 6: of things, which in our minds we thought meant, perhaps, kidnap, rape, kill.
• 45:34
  Speaker 6: And he had notes to himself about, you know, first
• 45:37
  Speaker 6: of all, he thought he was very smart and that
• 45:41
  Speaker 6: cops were stupid and that he would never be caught
• 45:45
  Speaker 6: because he was smarter than us.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: His agents looked over the notes. They feared the photographs
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: found into Bartleaben's lockers were proof he had acted on
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: his plans. The agents found hundreds of photographs of nude
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: women engaged in sadistic sex.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Several of them appeared they had been in some act
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: of being bound up or had ligature marks. You could
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: see bright red rings around their wrist.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: DeBartolaben appeared to have posed many of his victims. Some
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: of the pictures appeared as if they had been taken
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: over a period of days. The victims, all of them women,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: seemed to grow more disheveled and hollow-eyed with each shot.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Investigators had no idea what had happened to these women.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: On the next FBI files. Open the register, now! As
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: federal agents learn more about James Mitchell de Barta Laban,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: they must confront the horrors he committed and begin a
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: desperate search for his victims.