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The Self-Proclaimed Serial Killer - Serial Killer Documentary · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:05
Speaker 1: In September two thousand and three, on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado,
0:10
Speaker 1: Richard Paul White was arrested on suspicion of killing his
0:13
Speaker 1: closest friend.
0:15
Speaker 2: That was a cold blooded murder, bloody shooting.
0:20
Speaker 1: Detectives who questioned White quickly realized he'd more than just
0:24
Speaker 1: one crime to get off his chest.
0:27
Speaker 3: And you, guys, hi soberkat, because I've had girls running
0:31
Speaker 3: down to streep away from me and handcoaser.
0:34
Speaker 1: Richard Paul White was happy to describe his brutal murders
0:38
Speaker 1: in graphic detail.
0:40
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you that quick in heart or remember
0:42
Speaker 3: this punch in the faith hand cover and a time
0:45
Speaker 3: not to get up off the ground.
0:48
Speaker 2: I think he enjoyed what he was doing.
0:50
Speaker 4: The more they that he'd do it, the less he
0:53
Speaker 4: would have feelings about it.
0:55
Speaker 1: White blamed his violence on his childhood, on God, and
0:59
Speaker 1: on the innocent women he abducted and attacked.
1:04
Speaker 5: He had a real issue with women who didn't want
1:07
Speaker 5: the straight and arrow.
1:09
Speaker 1: With four confirmed murders and many more traumatized survivors, Richard
1:13
Speaker 1: Paul White had confessed to being one of the world's
1:16
Speaker 1: most evil killers. In September two thousand and three, when
1:44
Speaker 1: Richard Paul White made his detailed and disturbing confession to
1:48
Speaker 1: Colorado detectives, it sparked a statewide search for the people
1:53
Speaker 1: he claimed to have killed.
1:55
Speaker 5: He gave us a very detailed description for it occurred.
2:00
Speaker 2: Thinking about the whole time.
2:03
Speaker 3: That's likes jarliat five hours with somebody in your car.
2:09
Speaker 6: He goes into detail about two bodies and where's this posed?
2:14
Speaker 6: For thirty He also maintains another two bodies have been
2:19
Speaker 6: dumped in a canal in La Hunter.
2:23
Speaker 4: We have these bloodhounds from Douglas County come down and
2:28
Speaker 4: a sniff.
2:30
Speaker 2: I can't tell you if there were two other women
2:34
Speaker 2: that he killed, or if this is just something that
2:37
Speaker 2: he made up.
2:38
Speaker 1: Some of White's stories checked out, others may have been
2:42
Speaker 1: nothing more than fantasy. Joel Humphrey was one of the
2:46
Speaker 1: Denver detectives task was separating truth from fiction.
2:51
Speaker 5: There was no record who we could find of anyone
2:54
Speaker 5: being dragged to death behind a car, and of course
2:57
Speaker 5: that is such a horrific act that it was certly
3:00
Speaker 5: be investigative records about it.
3:03
Speaker 1: Investigators soon realized that both the crimes White committed and
3:07
Speaker 1: the ones he imagined were the product of an incredibly
3:11
Speaker 1: dark and twisted mind. This killer story begins on the
3:16
Speaker 1: twenty ninth of October nineteen seventy two in Denver, Colorado.
3:21
Speaker 1: Richard Paul White and his two younger sisters had a
3:25
Speaker 1: miserable childhood. Their mother and father's volatile marriage broke down
3:30
Speaker 1: when the children were still small.
3:33
Speaker 2: His parents got divorced, and then his mother took up
3:36
Speaker 2: with a drunken, abusive man who abused everybody beat up
3:41
Speaker 2: his mother. Kids would see the beatings and then he
3:44
Speaker 2: would force her to have sex. Those kinds of things.
3:49
Speaker 7: Along with violence and neglect.
3:52
Speaker 1: White and his sisters suffered psychological torture at the hands
3:55
Speaker 1: of their stepfather.
3:58
Speaker 8: He would engrave the initials of the children onto bullets
4:04
Speaker 8: and then hold a gun to their head. That's sadistic, controlling,
4:09
Speaker 8: abusive behavior.
4:12
Speaker 2: White role with his sisters was he was kind of
4:16
Speaker 2: the protector and he would do anything to protect those
4:20
Speaker 2: two girls as they were growing up.
4:24
Speaker 1: White and his sisters did not enjoy a settled, stable childhood.
4:31
Speaker 6: He moved around a lot. I think he attended twenty
4:33
Speaker 6: three elementary schools.
4:36
Speaker 8: And that would have created an awful lot of instability
4:39
Speaker 8: and inability to make friends at school to build relationships
4:44
Speaker 8: with the teachers.
4:45
Speaker 1: In his teens, Richard Paul White lived with his father
4:49
Speaker 1: in the isolated town of Messita in Costia County, about
4:53
Speaker 1: five hours drive from Denver. The house there was poor,
4:57
Speaker 1: with dirt floors. As White entered adolescence, those around him
5:05
Speaker 1: noticed signs that all was not well with his mental state.
5:10
Speaker 6: White got his sister's pet parakeet and twisted its head
5:15
Speaker 6: off and threw it on the ground so the cat
5:17
Speaker 6: could eat it.
5:19
Speaker 8: Cruelty to animals in children is just one of those
5:23
Speaker 8: flags that says there's something wrong here.
5:27
Speaker 6: White was late to claim to the police that he
5:31
Speaker 6: committed his first rape when he was a young teenager
5:33
Speaker 6: in eighth grade.
5:35
Speaker 1: If this was true, it was just one indicator of
5:38
Speaker 1: the unhealthy attitude White was developing towards women, perhaps as
5:43
Speaker 1: a result of his experiences at home.
5:46
Speaker 2: Watching his mother be abused stay in the relationship she
5:51
Speaker 2: was in. You know, her stepfather would beat her and
5:54
Speaker 2: then he would rape her, and the next day they'd
5:58
Speaker 2: go drinking again.
6:00
Speaker 8: Makes it look like violence can be a normal part
6:04
Speaker 8: of relationships.
6:06
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, at the age of twenty six,
6:09
Speaker 1: Richard White met twenty two year old Hazel at a
6:12
Speaker 1: bar in South Denver, and he wasted no time in
6:16
Speaker 1: demonstrating to her his twisted attitude towards women.
6:25
Speaker 9: He was determining and nice to me and asked me
6:28
Speaker 9: out on a date a couple times before I went.
6:31
Speaker 9: The first date that we had, we went out to
6:34
Speaker 9: drinking at the bars and we came back to his
6:36
Speaker 9: house and he was violent that first night by like
6:39
Speaker 9: smacking something out of my hand, got really angry with me.
6:42
Speaker 9: But then the next morning he drew me a bath
6:45
Speaker 9: and got me flowers, which is I guess kind of
6:48
Speaker 9: a typical thing for the abusers to do. But I
6:52
Speaker 9: didn't know that at the time because I'd never been
6:53
Speaker 9: in an abusive relationship. So I forgave him and we
6:56
Speaker 9: kept on dating.
6:58
Speaker 7: Hazel moved in with White, who she called RP.
7:03
Speaker 9: When I moved in, there is when it got The
7:05
Speaker 9: abuse got worse and the control.
7:10
Speaker 5: And there was a very abusive relationship. He would beat her.
7:14
Speaker 9: I thought that it would like it was just like
7:17
Speaker 9: a one off thing. Maybe he's just got angry and
7:20
Speaker 9: it won't happen again. But it continued to happen and
7:23
Speaker 9: escalated to the point where you know he would if
7:27
Speaker 9: I left him. He was threatening to, you know, kill
7:29
Speaker 9: my family or do something to my dad or my sister.
7:33
Speaker 10: I was scared to leave.
7:38
Speaker 8: He probably would have absolutely meant that, but it tells
7:42
Speaker 8: us what a controlling individual he is. He sees relationships
7:48
Speaker 8: as something he is an owner of.
7:53
Speaker 1: Control and violence became part of Hazel's daily life.
7:59
Speaker 9: Was pretty much everyday thing that he beat me. At
8:03
Speaker 9: first it was maybe in the face and places where
8:05
Speaker 9: people could see, and then he got better at hiding
8:08
Speaker 9: the bruises, like punch me on my legs or my back,
8:12
Speaker 9: or he'd point guns at me all the time. He'd
8:15
Speaker 9: make me, you know, give him, you know, sexual favors.
8:18
Speaker 9: With the gunpoint at me. He raped me over and over.
8:22
Speaker 1: To In two thousand and two, the couple moved into
8:27
Speaker 1: Hazel's father's vacant house in North Denver. Four years into
8:32
Speaker 1: the unhappy relationship. Hazel was doing what she could to cope.
8:37
Speaker 9: I was smoking pots so that I could block out
8:40
Speaker 9: what was going on in my life, and drinking.
8:43
Speaker 10: He drank a lot.
8:44
Speaker 9: Usually he was a little happier when he was drinking,
8:47
Speaker 9: but sometimes it would escalate. At that point, I was
8:50
Speaker 9: working from like five am to five pm and then
8:54
Speaker 9: going to college until eleven pm, just so I could
8:58
Speaker 9: be away from these as much as possible.
9:02
Speaker 1: Hazel's fear of her boyfriend was made worse by his
9:05
Speaker 1: obvious fascination with violence and murder.
9:09
Speaker 9: Oh are peused to read a lot of books about
9:11
Speaker 9: serial killers.
9:12
Speaker 10: That was kind of a hobby of his.
9:14
Speaker 9: He'd like to learn about the specifics about how they
9:17
Speaker 9: got away with it. When he would read them or
9:19
Speaker 9: tell me about him, he always had this look in
9:22
Speaker 9: his eye that was really scary.
9:25
Speaker 8: He was obsessed with one particular awful film that had
9:29
Speaker 8: been banned in fact, and he used to make Hazel
9:33
Speaker 8: watch this film.
9:35
Speaker 10: It was awful. I hate watching that.
9:37
Speaker 9: Maybe think about what kind of person he was, or
9:39
Speaker 9: what kind of person would listen or watch those kind
9:42
Speaker 9: of things.
9:42
Speaker 1: White also revealed to Hazel that he'd given more than
9:45
Speaker 1: a passing consideration to the practicalities of getting away with murder.
9:51
Speaker 9: He would tell me about how he thought it would
9:53
Speaker 9: be so easy to pick up people who like prostitutes,
9:59
Speaker 9: who have family members looking for them, or you know,
10:02
Speaker 9: no one would miss them, and he could do whatever
10:07
Speaker 9: with them do you would kind of have this excitement
10:10
Speaker 9: about him when he talked about it.
10:14
Speaker 1: Though Hazel was terrified of White, she never suspected that
10:18
Speaker 1: his fantasies might become a reality. In January that year,
10:24
Speaker 1: a young woman whom we're calling Tracy, went missing from
10:28
Speaker 1: East Colfax Avenue, less than three miles away.
10:32
Speaker 2: She was the mother of two children. She lived with
10:34
Speaker 2: their grandmother, and she was last seen at a bus
10:38
Speaker 2: station on Coalfax.
10:43
Speaker 1: The disappearance of twenty five year old Tracy, who was
10:46
Speaker 1: blind in one eye, left a hole in her family's life,
10:50
Speaker 1: especially her young children.
10:53
Speaker 2: We had a little girl that wanted to know what
10:55
Speaker 2: happened to her mother. She thought she'd been abandoned by
10:58
Speaker 2: her mother, that her mother and just left town. Didn't
11:01
Speaker 2: care about her birthdays, didn't care about ever seeing her again.
11:07
Speaker 1: In the late summer of that year, another woman went
11:11
Speaker 1: missing from the same stretch of highway.
11:14
Speaker 4: Victoria Tarpin was dal that lived in Denver and East
11:20
Speaker 4: Colfax with her sister.
11:24
Speaker 5: East Colefax is the longest street in the United States.
11:28
Speaker 5: The portion that goes through Denver has deteriorated. It has
11:32
Speaker 5: deteriorated to the point that it really that it is
11:35
Speaker 5: a place you would not want to go. It is prostitutes,
11:40
Speaker 5: people purchasing drugs, and people selling drugs. Victoria Trippin was
11:45
Speaker 5: from Salt Lake City. She had a criminal history. She
11:48
Speaker 5: was working as a sex worker.
11:51
Speaker 2: She went out, told her sister she has gone out
11:53
Speaker 2: for cigarettes, but she decided then that she had the
11:56
Speaker 2: opportunity to make some money.
11:59
Speaker 1: As the mother of two approached a potential client, a
12:03
Speaker 1: woman she knew a fellow sex worker want her not
12:06
Speaker 1: to go.
12:08
Speaker 5: She advised Victoria Turpin that the individual that was picking
12:12
Speaker 5: her up had a reputation among the sex workers for
12:16
Speaker 5: being violent. She was willing to take that risk in
12:19
Speaker 5: order to get the quick money so she could buy drugs.
12:24
Speaker 2: She never came back.
12:27
Speaker 6: Victoria was last seen on the twenty ninth of August
12:30
Speaker 6: two thousand and two. She failed to turn up to
12:35
Speaker 6: her thirty third birthday party. In September.
12:38
Speaker 1: Victoria's sister reported her missing, but in reality, it was
12:43
Speaker 1: not unusual for Victoria to disappear from time to time.
12:49
Speaker 5: The sex workers in Denver would frequently go missing or
12:53
Speaker 5: do frequently go missing, and it attracts no attention. It
12:58
Speaker 5: is part of their lifestyle that they may disappear for
13:01
Speaker 5: a while. They may find another area to work, They
13:04
Speaker 5: may find an individual to live with, may may be
13:09
Speaker 5: arrested and incarcerated. The other people that they work with
13:14
Speaker 5: are not particularly concerned about this because it is such
13:17
Speaker 5: a regular fact of life.
13:19
Speaker 1: Less than a month after Victoria Turpin got into a
13:23
Speaker 1: client's car and vanished, another woman disappeared in similar circumstances.
13:29
Speaker 5: And Alicia Gonzalez was picked up at Colfax and Pearl,
13:33
Speaker 5: who's twenty six years old. She had had a very
13:35
Speaker 5: troubled life. She was certainly loved by her family. She
13:40
Speaker 5: met people that introduced her to drugs. She became a
13:43
Speaker 5: drug addict, and then she turned to prostitution to find
13:48
Speaker 5: a means of getting the money for drugs on a
13:51
Speaker 5: regular basis.
13:53
Speaker 1: After a short stint in prison and a month in
13:55
Speaker 1: rehab in the summer of two thousand and two, an
13:59
Speaker 1: Alicia moved in with her mother and tried to stay clean.
14:03
Speaker 5: But then in August, she told her mother she was
14:06
Speaker 5: going to go out and party.
14:08
Speaker 1: Just weeks after returning to a life of drugs and
14:11
Speaker 1: sex work, and Alicia Gonzalez seemingly vanished into thin air.
14:17
Speaker 5: Her sister became concerned after she spoke to her on
14:21
Speaker 5: September the ninth and then never heard from her again.
14:25
Speaker 2: There were things like birthdays and things like that that
14:27
Speaker 2: her mother would not have thought she would have missed,
14:31
Speaker 2: and her mother was concerned she was missing.
14:34
Speaker 1: While the families of the missing women hope for their
14:37
Speaker 1: safe return. In the autumn of two thousand and two,
14:41
Speaker 1: in a house just a few miles away, twenty six
14:44
Speaker 1: year old Hazel was in the process of breaking away
14:47
Speaker 1: from her abusive boyfriend, Richard Paul White.
14:52
Speaker 9: Finally I got the courage to talk to people about it,
14:56
Speaker 9: start talking to people about his abuse. I called the
15:00
Speaker 9: safe house here in Denver, and then I told my
15:02
Speaker 9: dad about it, and I told RP that I had
15:06
Speaker 9: told these people. I think he was worried of being
15:09
Speaker 9: found out that he was an abuser. And finally he
15:13
Speaker 9: said that one night I could if I didn't want
15:16
Speaker 9: to be with him, it was okay.
15:17
Speaker 10: That he would leave.
15:20
Speaker 7: It was not a clean break.
15:23
Speaker 1: For months, White refused to leave the home they shared,
15:27
Speaker 1: a house which belonged to Hazel's father.
15:30
Speaker 9: He didn't have a place to go, he didn't have
15:32
Speaker 9: a whole lot of friends, and he didn't have a
15:35
Speaker 9: job at that time anymore.
15:36
Speaker 10: And when he left, he kept calling me.
15:40
Speaker 9: He was calling me at work, he was calling me
15:42
Speaker 9: on my cell phone, you know, at home. I had
15:44
Speaker 9: to get a restraining order against him.
15:46
Speaker 1: But by May two thousand and three, Hazel's ordeal at
15:50
Speaker 1: White's hands appeared to be over. He stopped calling and
15:54
Speaker 1: stopped making threats. While Hazel attempted to move on with
15:59
Speaker 1: her life, White appeared to have stalled.
16:03
Speaker 9: I think our Pew was staying with his sister some
16:05
Speaker 9: of the time and also was just homeless, might have
16:09
Speaker 9: been staying in his car.
16:11
Speaker 10: He didn't really call me.
16:13
Speaker 1: Hazel had nothing of her ex boyfriend for four months.
16:18
Speaker 7: Then one evening.
16:19
Speaker 1: In September two thousand and three, she learned that one
16:22
Speaker 1: of White's only friends, Jason Reichart, had died unexpectedly.
16:29
Speaker 5: Jason Reichart worked at a printing company with Richard White
16:33
Speaker 5: at one time. Their friendship began there.
16:37
Speaker 1: White met Jason in the late nineteen nineties at a
16:40
Speaker 1: print shop in Denver. He introduced his friend and co
16:43
Speaker 1: worker to his then girlfriend Hazel.
16:47
Speaker 10: We hung out with them.
16:49
Speaker 9: We've go over to his house and hang out and
16:51
Speaker 9: drink and you know, have barbecues and stuff like that.
16:56
Speaker 9: Jason was a really sweet and giving man. He was
17:02
Speaker 9: fun to be around. He was always nice to everyone.
17:05
Speaker 9: I've never seen him like in a bad mood or
17:08
Speaker 9: be rude to anyone I know.
17:10
Speaker 10: Jason was close to his family.
17:12
Speaker 9: He owned his own house, and he had a nice truck,
17:14
Speaker 9: and you know, his friends with his neighbors.
17:18
Speaker 10: He had a good job.
17:20
Speaker 1: When Richard White left the printing company, the friend stayed
17:23
Speaker 1: in touch. In August two thousand and three, White turned
17:27
Speaker 1: up on Jason's doorstep in Aurora, a city just outside Denver.
17:32
Speaker 1: He was now single and jobless.
17:35
Speaker 2: And he kind of was living in his truck, and
17:38
Speaker 2: I think that mister Riker took pity on him, took
17:42
Speaker 2: him in, gave him a place to stay, and then
17:46
Speaker 2: he also got him a job at the printing place
17:50
Speaker 2: where he was working.
17:52
Speaker 1: This happy domestic arrangement lasted just a few weeks. On Monday,
17:58
Speaker 1: the eighth of September two, two thousand and three, twenty
18:02
Speaker 1: seven year old Jason failed to turn up for work.
18:05
Speaker 2: He was one of those employees who never missed and
18:09
Speaker 2: when he was late, didn't show up. His boss got concerned.
18:13
Speaker 6: He tries to call him, can't find him, and eventually
18:17
Speaker 6: contacts the police.
18:20
Speaker 2: They did a welfare check at his house and upstairs
18:23
Speaker 2: in a bedroom they found Jason's body.
18:28
Speaker 6: They find Jason Reichart dead in a pool of blood
18:32
Speaker 6: in his bedroom.
18:34
Speaker 1: The sudden death of good Samaritan Jason Reichardt was a
18:39
Speaker 1: shock to those who knew and loved him. Investigating officers
18:43
Speaker 1: worked quickly to make sense of the scene.
18:49
Speaker 2: He was shot in the forehead, one shot right in
18:52
Speaker 2: the middle of his forehead. He was shot with a pistol.
18:56
Speaker 2: The pistol was there still at the crime scene, and
18:59
Speaker 2: at one point there was a question was this a
19:01
Speaker 2: suicide or was this a homicide?
19:04
Speaker 6: But there was no suicide note, no shellcasing, nothing. It's
19:09
Speaker 6: also significant is that his car is Dodge car is missing.
19:16
Speaker 2: Things like credit cards atm cards, those kind of things
19:21
Speaker 2: were gone, Things had been wiped down. There had been
19:24
Speaker 2: an attempt to hide things like fingerprints on the doorknobs,
19:28
Speaker 2: that type of thing, so there was some indication that
19:31
Speaker 2: was possibly a robbery.
19:34
Speaker 1: There was no sign of Jason's temporary housemate, thirty year
19:38
Speaker 1: old Richard Paul White. The following day, local media reported
19:43
Speaker 1: Jason's death as a potential suicide. Hours later, however, White's
19:48
Speaker 1: sister contacted the Aurora Police Department with a different story.
19:55
Speaker 2: White's sister knew it wasn't a suicide. White had told
19:59
Speaker 2: her it was an accidental shooting, that he had killed
20:03
Speaker 2: Jason while they were inspecting the gun, and so she
20:08
Speaker 2: took him to a place in the pine forest. He
20:12
Speaker 2: told her he was going camping there, but he was
20:15
Speaker 2: really hiding out, trying to avoid being arrested. It didn't
20:19
Speaker 2: take him that long. I think it was a few
20:23
Speaker 2: hours before they captured mister White.
20:26
Speaker 1: Back at the Aurora Police headquarters, Richard pull White stuck
20:31
Speaker 1: to his story that Jason Reichardt's death had been an
20:35
Speaker 1: unfortunate accident.
20:37
Speaker 5: He initially stated that they were cleaning pistols and it
20:41
Speaker 5: was an accidental discharge.
20:43
Speaker 2: Its bread.
20:44
Speaker 3: I cleaned my clo when then that were sitting there
20:47
Speaker 3: talking Latin and next night I think that a good.
20:52
Speaker 1: White insisted he had no reason to want his friend dead.
20:57
Speaker 11: You know, here's Jason and Jason that told me out.
21:00
Speaker 11: He'd let me to sleep on a couch, he helped
21:01
Speaker 11: me get a job. You know he was my only friend.
21:08
Speaker 11: I did not mean to kill him.
21:11
Speaker 5: The question in that investigation is whether that gunshot was
21:15
Speaker 5: fired by accident or whether it was fired deliberately. There
21:18
Speaker 5: were a number of inconsistencies. He initially stated it happened
21:22
Speaker 5: in one room. He later changed that to stating that
21:25
Speaker 5: happened in another room.
21:28
Speaker 1: Homicide detectives interviewing White did not believe his story of
21:32
Speaker 1: the gun going off accidentally, especially when he told them
21:36
Speaker 1: what he'd done immediately after Jason's death.
21:41
Speaker 10: I jumped in his truck and he had a car
21:44
Speaker 10: with in there.
21:45
Speaker 3: I went to an ATM machinery cook out two hundred
21:49
Speaker 3: and forty dollars, and then I ran around picked up
21:53
Speaker 3: some hookers.
21:54
Speaker 1: White had used Jason's money to cruise the red light
21:58
Speaker 1: district all these coal picking up three different women before
22:02
Speaker 1: he called his sister and went on the run.
22:05
Speaker 2: This was a robbery. He was taking advantage to somebody
22:09
Speaker 2: who had helped him out, and he killed him and
22:12
Speaker 2: then he took his belongings, he took his money, took
22:15
Speaker 2: his truck. Clearly was not an accident.
22:18
Speaker 1: As Aurora detectives probed Richard White's story to get to
22:22
Speaker 1: the truth. They had difficulty keeping him on the topic
22:26
Speaker 1: of Jason Reichhart.
22:28
Speaker 5: On several occasions, he interrupted them and said, I've done
22:32
Speaker 5: this before. Don't you want to talk to me about
22:35
Speaker 5: the other ones? I could give you the world. I
22:38
Speaker 5: could make your day, And finally they told him, okay,
22:42
Speaker 5: we'll talk about the other ones.
22:44
Speaker 1: When the police officers finally allowed White to expand on
22:48
Speaker 1: his claims, nothing could have prepared them for what he
22:52
Speaker 1: had to say.
22:53
Speaker 6: He tells the police he's killed at least three times.
22:58
Speaker 6: He also admits to abducting, torturing, and hurting other women
23:07
Speaker 6: as well.
23:10
Speaker 10: I can't start doing things.
23:12
Speaker 2: I can't start cruising the backs. I can't stop. I
23:16
Speaker 2: need to start. I don't need to die or to
23:19
Speaker 2: be alway forever.
23:22
Speaker 1: Richard Paul White told the police that he'd been abducting
23:25
Speaker 1: sex workers from Denver's East Colfax Avenue. In horrifying detail,
23:31
Speaker 1: White outlined his murderous routine he stayed.
23:35
Speaker 5: In each case, he picked up his victims off the street.
23:39
Speaker 5: Once they arrived at his house, he would punch them
23:43
Speaker 5: and knot them down, at which point he would begin
23:47
Speaker 5: sexually assaulting them.
23:49
Speaker 1: White described putting his victims through a prolonged, sadistic ordeal.
23:54
Speaker 2: These women weren't just strangled to death. They were tortured
23:58
Speaker 2: for hours, twenty four hours. Sometimes they were handcuffed, They
24:04
Speaker 2: were forced to pray with him. He would go through
24:07
Speaker 2: these states of rage where he would beat them, where
24:10
Speaker 2: he would strangle them almost to death, and they let
24:13
Speaker 2: them come back the whole time raping them.
24:17
Speaker 5: At some point that he would strangle each of them
24:20
Speaker 5: and then he would dispose of them, and in a
24:23
Speaker 5: manner that he thought they wouldn't be found.
24:26
Speaker 2: During that conversation, that initial conversation, the number of three
24:31
Speaker 2: became five. He didn't know any of his victims and
24:35
Speaker 2: they didn't know him.
24:37
Speaker 1: The officers were shocked at the possibility that the serial
24:41
Speaker 1: killer could have snatched multiple victims without anyone noticing. Denver detectives,
24:47
Speaker 1: including Joel Humphrey, took over the investigation to find out
24:51
Speaker 1: if White's confession held Walter.
24:53
Speaker 5: He advised as that the first individual that he killed
24:57
Speaker 5: was blind in one eye, had a scar on her
24:59
Speaker 5: left or. He stated that he had abducted her taken
25:04
Speaker 5: her to his house. Originally his own intention was to
25:07
Speaker 5: rape her. He stated, at first it was desire then
25:11
Speaker 5: it was power. And then after he had raped her,
25:16
Speaker 5: he became concerned that she would inform the police about that,
25:20
Speaker 5: and out of fear, he killed her.
25:23
Speaker 1: White told detectives he'd committed his first murder in January
25:27
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. He said he'd then driven the
25:30
Speaker 1: young woman's body two hundred and eighty miles to Costia County,
25:35
Speaker 1: where he'd once lived with his father. He left her
25:38
Speaker 1: body in a shallow grave in the remote desert.
25:42
Speaker 5: He did that with the intention of her body being
25:46
Speaker 5: eaten by animals.
25:49
Speaker 2: Southern Colorado in that location is not a lot of people.
25:53
Speaker 2: Nobody's going to go hiking over her body or that
25:57
Speaker 2: kind of thing.
25:59
Speaker 1: White and he'd made the five hour drive to check
26:02
Speaker 1: on the body a number of times.
26:05
Speaker 10: Been after several times.
26:06
Speaker 2: It's the year that.
26:09
Speaker 5: Richard White stated that the last time he viewed her body,
26:14
Speaker 5: the only thing that was left of her body was repelvis.
26:17
Speaker 1: Four days after White's confession, detective Joel Humphrey went to
26:21
Speaker 1: Masita to search for the woman's remains. They found only
26:26
Speaker 1: animal bones. Still having no idea if Richard Paul White
26:30
Speaker 1: was a serial killer or a fantasist, investigators set out
26:34
Speaker 1: to verify another of his claims.
26:37
Speaker 6: He says two bodies are buried in the backyard of
26:41
Speaker 6: a house that he and Hazel shared.
26:43
Speaker 5: Richard Whitehead told then that he had buried the victims
26:50
Speaker 5: in the flower bed that ran along the north wall.
26:52
Speaker 2: Of the house.
26:54
Speaker 5: Consequently, the homicide unit went out and excavated that area.
27:00
Speaker 1: In September two thousand and three, Mitch Morrissey was Denver's
27:05
Speaker 1: chief Deputy District Attorney. He attended the dig at the
27:10
Speaker 1: house where Richard Paul white once lived with his former girlfriend,
27:13
Speaker 1: Hazel white had since moved out.
27:18
Speaker 2: So I walked up to the men as they were
27:20
Speaker 2: working in the trench digging, and they said they already
27:25
Speaker 2: had one body out of the ground. And right next
27:27
Speaker 2: to me was a wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow was
27:31
Speaker 2: a half opened suitcase a bag. There was clearly a
27:37
Speaker 2: body in the bag, but it was packed in really
27:40
Speaker 2: tightly and it was discolored. I've been to hundreds of
27:46
Speaker 2: crime scenes and I've never seen anying like this.
27:50
Speaker 1: The female body was exactly who homicide officers had expected
27:55
Speaker 1: to find, twenty six year old and Alicia Gonzalez.
28:00
Speaker 5: She was immediately identified because Richard White had kept property
28:04
Speaker 5: of hers, and he had remembered the name, and he
28:07
Speaker 5: gave the name to the police when he made his confession.
28:12
Speaker 1: White had explained to police what he'd done after murdering
28:16
Speaker 1: at Alicia in September two thousand and two.
28:20
Speaker 5: She was bleeding and he put a plastic bag over
28:24
Speaker 5: her face to try to contain the blood, tied her
28:28
Speaker 5: up so he could put her in a suitcase. It
28:30
Speaker 5: then buried her in the flower bed that ran along
28:33
Speaker 5: the north wall of the house.
28:36
Speaker 2: There was still some remnants of that on her body
28:40
Speaker 2: when they did the autopsy. There was still ropes and
28:43
Speaker 2: things that tied her feet to her hands.
28:48
Speaker 1: Richard Paul White's graphic confession was being proven to be true,
28:53
Speaker 1: and the grizzly discoveries at his former home did not
28:57
Speaker 1: stop there.
28:58
Speaker 2: They had a map that had been drawn by mister White,
29:02
Speaker 2: and they were told there were too, so they are
29:04
Speaker 2: obviously looking for the second victim. She was in the
29:08
Speaker 2: ground with concrete on top of her.
29:13
Speaker 1: With some difficulty. The second woman in the yard of
29:16
Speaker 1: Richard Paul White's former home was disinterred while efforts began
29:21
Speaker 1: to identify her. Her body was taken for autopsy and
29:25
Speaker 1: it became clear that she and and Alicia had met
29:28
Speaker 1: a similar end.
29:31
Speaker 2: The question was how did these women die? And that
29:35
Speaker 2: was pretty clear. The cartilages in their necks were broken,
29:39
Speaker 2: and they had clearly been strangled to death, not manually,
29:45
Speaker 2: but with a ligature.
29:47
Speaker 1: What the autopsies could not show was how both the
29:50
Speaker 1: women had suffered at White's hands. Their bodies were too decomposed.
29:55
Speaker 1: But the killer was more than happy to supply the details.
30:01
Speaker 5: He would talk to them about their lives, where he
30:04
Speaker 5: would describe his life to them, and it basically would
30:09
Speaker 5: be an ongoing process of sexual assault, casual conversation, sexual assault,
30:16
Speaker 5: more casual conversation, and praying, sexual assault, more casual conversation
30:21
Speaker 5: and pray.
30:24
Speaker 1: Detectives couldn't believe what they were hearing. An interview that
30:27
Speaker 1: had begun with White confessing to accidentally killing his friend
30:32
Speaker 1: Jason Reichhart had turned into an horrific tale of a
30:36
Speaker 1: serial killer and the demise of at least two victims.
30:40
Speaker 1: White's former partner, Hasel was confronted with the fact not
30:44
Speaker 1: only that her ex boyfriend was a murderer, but also
30:47
Speaker 1: that he'd taken his victims' lives in the home that
30:50
Speaker 1: she and Richard Paul White had shared.
30:55
Speaker 10: I was I was freaking out. I was scared.
30:59
Speaker 9: I didn't have any I was just freaking out, like,
31:03
Speaker 9: how could that happen? How could that happen without me
31:06
Speaker 9: knowing as well? I suppose, how could he do that?
31:10
Speaker 9: Like in my own house.
31:12
Speaker 1: At least one of the victims had been held in
31:14
Speaker 1: the house. When Hazel was at home.
31:17
Speaker 5: He tied her up and placed her underneath the stairs
31:21
Speaker 5: in a storage area that they had that was walled
31:24
Speaker 5: off underneath the stairs, kept her there all night.
31:29
Speaker 10: Out the whole plan.
31:32
Speaker 3: And that's what I like, to have your girlfriend come
31:34
Speaker 3: home and eat that head bott You know.
31:37
Speaker 10: How long is she in these did?
31:38
Speaker 2: She did.
31:41
Speaker 10: Think so a.
31:42
Speaker 3: Little longer, But I don't know, because Rigging Morris didn't
31:45
Speaker 3: leave yet.
31:46
Speaker 2: So I'm thinking the more than twenty four hours.
31:51
Speaker 10: I knew he was capable of that, And.
31:54
Speaker 9: If he had said that he had done those things
31:56
Speaker 9: to other women, I knew that that was very possible
32:00
Speaker 9: to be true, because he did the you know, he
32:03
Speaker 9: did pretty horrible things to me, and I was pretty
32:06
Speaker 9: close to death in a lot of the situations. And
32:11
Speaker 9: maybe because he had some kind of feelings.
32:13
Speaker 10: For me that I was spared. I was very lucky
32:16
Speaker 10: to be spared.
32:19
Speaker 1: On the twelfth of September, the search moved three hours
32:23
Speaker 1: south of Denver to La Hunter in Otero County. Local
32:28
Speaker 1: under Sheriff Ken Kimsey found himself drawn into white story.
32:34
Speaker 4: Two of them he allegedly brought down to Ottero County
32:37
Speaker 4: and dumped them. We found out that his grandmother lived
32:41
Speaker 4: in La Hunter. From visiting there his grandmother there, he
32:46
Speaker 4: knew some of the places to go and ended up
32:49
Speaker 4: going to that canal and dumping them.
32:54
Speaker 2: I've felt safety there after. Kind of rural.
32:57
Speaker 3: I think it's an irrigation show too.
32:59
Speaker 2: In honest bath here that.
33:03
Speaker 4: This canal is one of the bigger canals that runs
33:06
Speaker 4: in Otterill County and it's one hundred and fourteen miles long,
33:09
Speaker 4: runs towards the Kansas. So we brought some dogs out
33:13
Speaker 4: of Douglas County and they were dogs that would sniff
33:17
Speaker 4: like for bodies.
33:19
Speaker 1: Over a year had passed since White had allegedly thrown
33:22
Speaker 1: his victims off a bridge to dispose of their bodies.
33:28
Speaker 4: We weren't really able to find anything because of the
33:31
Speaker 4: time span. But I truly believe he did dump them there.
33:35
Speaker 4: Why would he lie about that now.
33:38
Speaker 1: On the seventeenth of September, while Canada's team continued to
33:42
Speaker 1: search in Ottero County, White was formally charged in Aurora
33:46
Speaker 1: with his friend Jason Reichardt's death. He had not yet
33:50
Speaker 1: been charged in relation to the women found buried in
33:54
Speaker 1: his backyard.
33:56
Speaker 2: He was in the Arapaho County jail and he was
33:59
Speaker 2: going to be there until he got convicted or acquitted
34:03
Speaker 2: in a trial, so we had some time to put
34:07
Speaker 2: together our case. Once it broke in the media, and
34:13
Speaker 2: once there were pictures of mister White in the newspaper
34:16
Speaker 2: on TV, women that had gotten away from him started
34:20
Speaker 2: to come forward and they had been raped by him,
34:24
Speaker 2: They had been tied up by him. Some of them
34:27
Speaker 2: had been taken back to the same house where we
34:30
Speaker 2: found the other victims, but had escaped him.
34:35
Speaker 5: For an initial interview of Richard White, Richard White stated
34:38
Speaker 5: that he had abducted one woman, sexually assaulted her multiple times,
34:45
Speaker 5: and that when he was taking her out of the house,
34:47
Speaker 5: he had her handcuffed and she ran from him.
34:53
Speaker 3: In fact, wit second, she's running down the street screaming
34:58
Speaker 3: from my house.
35:00
Speaker 10: With hand cuts and no cop shot.
35:03
Speaker 3: So I grab a AR fifteen, you know, and I'm thinking, okay,
35:08
Speaker 3: this is a bit as the end.
35:12
Speaker 5: He initially thought about shooting her, that thought better of that,
35:15
Speaker 5: and she ran off and got away. We were eventually
35:21
Speaker 5: able to identify her and we interviewed her.
35:24
Speaker 1: Three women would eventually come forward to tell police they
35:28
Speaker 1: had been abducted and violently attacked by Richard Paul White.
35:32
Speaker 1: One was able to successfully identify him from a lineup.
35:37
Speaker 1: Another led officers to the house where she'd been kept
35:40
Speaker 1: prisoner for almost twenty four hours.
35:43
Speaker 5: She attempted to appease him and make it appear as
35:45
Speaker 5: if she really had emotional feelings towards him. She also
35:49
Speaker 5: talked to him about music and how she liked hard
35:52
Speaker 5: rock and he liked hard rock. After multiple sexual assaults concluded,
35:57
Speaker 5: he drove her back and dropped her off. She survived.
36:01
Speaker 1: In White's interview with police, he said that God would
36:05
Speaker 1: often determine the outcome for the victims.
36:10
Speaker 3: Then we had to pray together, because two people come
36:12
Speaker 3: together in gardening and he'll listen.
36:14
Speaker 2: I told her I think to kill her.
36:16
Speaker 10: She was terrified, you know.
36:17
Speaker 2: She went straight to heaven. Because we've prayed.
36:19
Speaker 10: We prayed before I killed her.
36:22
Speaker 1: In December two thousand and three, investigators were able to
36:27
Speaker 1: identify this second woman, found in White's former garden in
36:31
Speaker 1: North Denver.
36:33
Speaker 5: Her picture was released and her sister came forward and
36:37
Speaker 5: advised us that her sister, Victoria Truppin, had been missing.
36:43
Speaker 1: A DNA match between a family member and the remains confirmed.
36:47
Speaker 1: The victim was thirty two year old mother of two,
36:50
Speaker 1: Victoria Turpin, who disappeared in August two thousand and two
36:55
Speaker 1: after going out to buy cigarettes.
36:58
Speaker 7: In May two thousand.
36:59
Speaker 1: And four, Richard Paul White was charged with fifty three offenses,
37:04
Speaker 1: including the kidnap, sexual assault, and murder of Analysia Gonzales
37:09
Speaker 1: and Victoria Turpin, as well as the sexual assault, kidnap
37:13
Speaker 1: and attempted murder of the three survivors.
37:17
Speaker 2: When it came down to settling this case, either through
37:20
Speaker 2: a trial, seeking the death penalty, any of those kind
37:23
Speaker 2: of things, there was a plea bargain that was made.
37:27
Speaker 1: The deal related to locating the remains in Costia County
37:31
Speaker 1: of the woman White had admitted killing in January two
37:34
Speaker 1: thousand and two.
37:37
Speaker 6: The DIA suggests that if he shows them where the
37:41
Speaker 6: first body was buried, they won't proceed with a.
37:46
Speaker 7: Claim for the death penalty.
37:48
Speaker 1: White's cooperation would also mean he would not be charged
37:52
Speaker 1: with the woman's murder.
37:54
Speaker 2: He eventually took them to where the body was. What
37:59
Speaker 2: I remember is basically the a section of her pelvis
38:03
Speaker 2: and part of her backbone, and that was about it.
38:07
Speaker 2: And obviously there was nothing to indicate whose body this was.
38:15
Speaker 1: The remains that were found in September two thousand and
38:18
Speaker 1: four matched to White's description of what was left of
38:21
Speaker 1: the victim's body. That same month, Richard Paul White pleaded
38:25
Speaker 1: guilty to the murders of Jason Reichart and Alicia Gonzalez
38:30
Speaker 1: and Victoria Turpin on.
38:32
Speaker 6: The twenty ninth of November two thousand and four. White
38:36
Speaker 6: is indeed sentenced to two life terms without parole and
38:41
Speaker 6: one hundred and forty four years for the attacks on
38:44
Speaker 6: the women who are lucky enough to survive. In early
38:48
Speaker 6: December two thousand and four, he's given life without parole
38:54
Speaker 6: for the murder of Jason Raikart.
38:59
Speaker 1: Richard Paul or White will spend the rest of his
39:02
Speaker 1: days at the SuperMac Centennial Correctional Facility in Fremont County, Colorado.
39:09
Speaker 9: Just a sense of relief, I guess, knowing for a
39:14
Speaker 9: fact that he will never be out.
39:17
Speaker 10: He did write me a letter.
39:20
Speaker 9: And almost in almost mockingly told me that I don't
39:27
Speaker 9: even like saying the word, but he said, I'm sorry.
39:29
Speaker 9: I killed those hookers in your in your house and
39:34
Speaker 9: bury them in your yard. He might have written the
39:37
Speaker 9: words down, but I know that wasn't he wasn't sorry.
39:43
Speaker 1: After his sentencing, White sat down with a police artist
39:47
Speaker 1: to describe the victim whose partial remains he'd led police
39:51
Speaker 1: to in Messita. White remembered clearly the facial disfigurement of
39:56
Speaker 1: the woman he'd murdered in January two thousand and two.
40:00
Speaker 1: When the drawing was finished, a local detective recognized her immediately.
40:06
Speaker 2: He looked at the composite and he goes, I know
40:08
Speaker 2: who this woman is. This woman was a eyewitness to
40:13
Speaker 2: a homicide that I had about six years ago. He
40:16
Speaker 2: figured out her name. They were able to go back
40:19
Speaker 2: to her family and contact her children, contact her grandmother,
40:24
Speaker 2: and she had been missing for all that time.
40:28
Speaker 1: The body was confirmed as Tracy, the mother of two
40:31
Speaker 1: who disappeared from East Colfax early in two thousand and two.
40:36
Speaker 1: With this final identification, there was some closure for the
40:40
Speaker 1: women's families, as well as for Hazel, who had to
40:43
Speaker 1: process what her sadistic ex boyfriend had done right under
40:48
Speaker 1: her nose.
40:49
Speaker 9: I just felt horrible for those women and their families
40:52
Speaker 9: and remembered how he said that no one would ever
40:56
Speaker 9: miss them or know that they were gone.
41:00
Speaker 10: Obviously people do, and their families did.
41:03
Speaker 9: We contacted the families later on and then light a
41:07
Speaker 9: candle light vigil, and the families came over to the
41:10
Speaker 9: house and never able to light candles for that, which
41:13
Speaker 9: was good.
41:17
Speaker 1: While White's surviving victims continue to try and make sense
41:21
Speaker 1: of his devastating crimes, the killer himself has expressed ambivalence,
41:26
Speaker 1: saying that while he feels anger towards sex workers, he
41:30
Speaker 1: also feels sorry for them.
41:35
Speaker 5: He expressed remorse. He described himself as an evil person,
41:39
Speaker 5: and he stated that God was telling him to commit
41:46
Speaker 5: these crimes.
41:47
Speaker 10: O't directly labor. I know that there's something wrong with me.
41:53
Speaker 1: Serial killer Richard Paul White's worldview was dominated by ideas
41:58
Speaker 1: of good and evil, people who were worthy of respect
42:02
Speaker 1: and good treatment, and people whose lifestyle meant they were
42:06
Speaker 1: deserving of brutality and pain. This belief, along with his
42:11
Speaker 1: own sexual deviancy, led to White torturing and killing at
42:15
Speaker 1: least three innocent women and likely even more. White has
42:20
Speaker 1: never explained why he shot dead his friend Jason, but
42:24
Speaker 1: with four confirmed murders and many survivors who suffered at
42:28
Speaker 1: his hands, there is no doubt that Richard Paul White
42:32
Speaker 1: is one of the world's most evil killers.