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Transcript

Detroit Predator: Benjamin Atkins · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine surviving a serial killer. Like you are lured into
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: an abandoned building in the middle of the night. You're
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: bound with your own winter coat.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You are sexually assaulted. And then, you know, the man
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: violently attempts to strangle the life out of you.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: It's just horrifying.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: But somehow through just pure adrenaline and a sheer will
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: to survive, you fight him off. You escape into the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: freezing air and you gather this unimaginable courage to walk
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: into a police precinct. You hand the authorities the physical description,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the hunting ground, the street name of a monster who
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: is actively tearing through your city.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: The whole key to the case.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the police look across the desk at you,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: file a piece of paper, and simply say, go home.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: It defies belief. I mean, it represents a level of
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: systemic failure that is almost difficult to comprehend when you
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: first encounter it in the source material.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It really is. Today, we are unpacking the true story
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: of how an entire city's apathy shielded a predator. We
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: are taking a massive stack of primary source materials, you know,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: documentary transcripts, police accounts, victim family statements, psychological profiles.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: There's a lot to go through.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: There is. And we are using all of that to
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: distill the chilling reality of one of the 1990s most
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: prolific and fast-moving serial killers, Benjamin Atkins.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Because to really understand this case... We have to look
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: past that surface level true crime narrative. We were looking
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: at a hyper localized reign of terror. Eleven murders in
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: less than a single year between 1991 and 1992.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Which is an insane pace.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: It really is. And this was all concentrated across Detroit
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: in the neighboring city of Highland Park, Michigan.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: But the mission of this deep dive isn't just to
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: like recite a timeline of horrific events. We are going
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to explore how this killer essentially weaponized the physical and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: economic decay of an American city.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: And even more incredibly, we're going to look at how
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: a marginalized survivor, the woman who was initially told to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: just go home, ultimately became the hero who brought him down. Okay,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: let's unpack this.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: So, if we want to understand how a predator can
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: operate so openly for so long, we have to examine
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: the collision of three distinct elements. Extreme urban decay, profound
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: psychological trauma, and the glaring... Almost deliberate blind spots within
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: the criminal justice system of that era.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Right. So if the city's infrastructure is going to act
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: as camouflage for a killer, we need to understand how
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: that camouflage was built in the first place. The setting
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: is absolutely vital here.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Yes. The geography is essentially a character in this story. Exactly.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: We are in Detroit, but more specifically, an enclave called
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Highland Park in 1991. Now, if you look at the
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: historical trajectory of Highland Park, it's fascinating.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: It wasn't always this decaying landscape.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Not at all. It was literally the birthplace of mass
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: automotive production. Henry Ford built the first moving assembly line there.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: It was a beacon of the American middle class.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: But by the late 80s and early 90s, that economic
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: engine had entirely stalled out. Highland Park mirrored the broader,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: catastrophic economic collapse of Detroit.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we aren't just talking about a neighborhood with
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: a few boarded-up shops or, you know, a struggling Main Street.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: No, the sources describe the Southern Woodward Avenue corridor during
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: this time as a landscape defined by total emptiness. There
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: were hundreds, if not thousands, of completely abandoned residential homes.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Decaying apartment complexes, too.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Right, and massive commercial buildings that had just been left
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: to rot.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: It's like looking at a compromised immune system. The city's
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: economic collapse weakened the infrastructure so severely that it essentially
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: wiped out the white blood cells.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: That's a really good way to frame it.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Because there was no economic vitality left to flush out
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the crime. And into that physical vacuum pours a tidal
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: wave of crisis, which was the crack cocaine epidemic.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: The introduction of crack cocaine to this specific ecosystem really
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: cannot be overstated. It was incredibly cheap, highly addictive. And
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: it just flooded the streets, creating this massive addiction crisis
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: that entirely overwhelmed any remaining civic resources.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: And who is tasked with managing that unprecedented crisis? The
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: police departments. Right. But if the tax base has evaporated
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: because the businesses and the middle class fled, the city
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: has no money. The sources actually point out that the
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: police departments were desperately underfunded. They had literally just laid
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: off officers in the midst of the worst drug epidemic
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the city had ever seen.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Which is a mathematical impossibility for public safety. You have
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: a shrinking police force trying to manage an exponentially expanding crisis.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: This is exactly why the physical geography matters so much.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Serial killers require a habitat.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they need camouflage.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They need an ecosystem that offers them unquestioned access
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: to victims and absolute concealment. Those thousands of abandoned buildings
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: provided pre-made hidden crime scenes.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Because think about it. If a predator takes a victim
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: into a fully functioning hotel or, you know, a residential
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: neighborhood where people are mowing their lawns and walking their dogs.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Somebody is going to hear a scream.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Right. Somebody notices a strange car or hears a struggle.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: But in an abandoned, decaying commercial block on Woodward Avenue,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a killer can commit a horrific act of violence, and
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: the body won't be discovered for weeks.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Or even months.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The environment itself acts as a silent accomplice.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: And that physical decay of the buildings... perfectly mirrored a
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: societal decay. It reflected who society chose to look out
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: for and who it consciously chose to ignore. The physical
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: abandonment of those structures was just a metaphor for the
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: abandonment of the people who were still trying to survive
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: inside them.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Which begs the question, if the city's infrastructure is completely compromised,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: providing this perfect camouflage, who exactly is the predator hunting
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: in that camouflage? Like, who does a serial killer look
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: for when they know the police don't have the resources
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to care?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Well, they look for the vulnerable. Between December 1991 and
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: January 1992, bodies begin to be discovered in these abandoned spaces.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Debbie Friday, Bertha Mason, Patricia Cannon George, Vicki Truelove.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: These were women who were known to struggle with severe
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: drug addiction, right?
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Yes. And they engaged in street-level sex work just to survive.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: And the tragic reality, which is explicitly noted by law
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: enforcement in our sources, is that finding a deceased sex
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: worker was not considered an anomaly in Detroit at that time.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: That's just so grim. It is.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: The police actually categorized their deaths as typical homicides.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Typical homicides.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were basically absorbed into the background noise of
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: a violent, struggling city. There was no immediate realization that
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: this was the escalating pattern of a singular predator.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: To understand how deeply ingrained this apathy was, we really
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: have to look at the story of Darlene Saunders. Let's
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: go back slightly to October 1991. So this is before
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the murders you just mentioned even happened. Right.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: This is crucial.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Darlene is 34 years old. She's a mother to young boys,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: a wife, a known visible member of the Highland Park community.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: But she is also caught in the grip of the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: crack cocaine epidemic. She's spending time on the streets to
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: feed that addiction.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: And it is a very cold night. Around three or
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: four in the morning, she is out on the street,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: and she's approached by a man she vaguely knows from
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the neighborhood. She knows him only as Tony.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: And the interaction starts out so terribly normal for that
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: specific environment. Like, he doesn't jump out of an alley
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: with a knife. No. He walks up to her and asks,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: do you have a pipe? He offers to smoke with her.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: It's a highly calculated disarming tactic. He uses their shared
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: addiction as the lure. He remarks that it's windy and
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: cold outside. suggesting they step into an abandoned restaurant nearby
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: to smoke. He's lowering her defenses by presenting this logical,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: mutually beneficial scenario.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: But the moment they cross the threshold into that abandoned space,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: the trap springs. As Darlene reaches for the pipe, Tony attacks,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and he moves incredibly fast.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he grabs her own winter coat.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Violently pulls it down over her shoulders, binding her arm
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: so she can't fight back. He rapes her. And then
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the violence escalates from sexual assault to attempted murder. He
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: begins to strangle her.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: The physiological terror of manual strangulation is profound. But Darlene
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: experiences this incredible surge of pure survival instinct. She fights
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: back with everything she has.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Which is amazing. It is.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: She manages to strike him hard enough to break his grip.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: She bursts out of the abandoned restaurant and she just
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: screams for help.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And just the sound of her screaming... And, you know,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: a nearby pedestrian approaching is enough to spook Tony and
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: he runs away. Darlene survives.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: She is a living, breathing witness who has just experienced
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: the exact, precise methodology of a serial killer. But initially,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: she doesn't go to the police.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: And you really have to put yourself in her shoes.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, imagine the trauma, but also the crushing stigma
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: of her lifestyle. Right. She is a mother struggling with
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: addiction out at four in the morning. She believes the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: police will just judge her or even arrest her for
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: drug possession. So she goes home, utterly traumatized, and the
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: sources say she just hugs her 12-year-old son Rashad all
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: night long.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking. But as the months pass, the bodies of Debbie, Bertha, Patricia,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: and Vicki start appearing on the local news. In March
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: of 1992, Darlene watches these reports and a horrifying realization
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: sets in.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: She puts it together. Exactly.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The man who attacked her, Tony, the man who
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: binds his victims and strangles them in abandoned buildings, he
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: is the monster killing these women.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: So Darlene finds this immense monster. profound courage. She pushes
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: past the shame, past the fear of the police, and
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: she walks into a precinct to tell them exactly what
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: happened to her back in October.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: She gives them everything.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Everything. The physical description, the M.O., the hunting ground, and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the name. She hands them the key to the entire
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: case on a silver platter.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And the police file a report. And they dismiss her.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: The sources detail that they essentially looked at her and said,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: go home, darling.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It is so enraging. Like, how does an investigator hear
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: an exact match to a string of local murders and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: just dismiss it out of hand?
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: It really comes down to a sociological concept known as
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: the less dead. It is an implicit systemic bias where
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: marginalized individuals, so sex workers, drug addicts, the unhoused, and
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: very frequently women of color, are systematically undervalued by law
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: enforcement and society at large. Right. The investigators looked at Darlene,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: saw a sex worker with a drug addiction, and subconsciously
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: decided her trauma was just an occupational hazard of her lifestyle.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, I understand the theory of the less dead,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: but the systemic failure here is just so blatant it
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: borders on complicity. If you're listening to this, imagine if
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: a suburban mother from a wealthy neighborhood had walked into
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: that exact same precinct And reported being lured into a building,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: bound with her own coat and strangled by a man
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: named Tony.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: The entire city would have been locked down. They would
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: have formed a multi-agency task force by 5 p.m. So
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: why does the system put a variable value on a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: victim's credibility strictly based on their socioeconomic struggles?
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Because the system is operated by human beings with ingrained prejudices.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: They assume that individuals operating in illicit economies are inherently
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: unreliable narrators.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: They conflate a victim's moral choices or their struggle with
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: addiction with their value as a witness. By dismissing Darlene,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: they didn't just insult her. They granted the killer absolute freedom.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: They handed him this invisible shield of systemic prejudice.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: And the killer realizes this, right? Like if you attack
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: a woman and she escapes, you would normally go to ground.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: You would hide, assuming the police are knocking on doors
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: looking for you. Right.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: You lay low.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: But he realizes no one is coming. He realizes the
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: people he is hunting are considered too invisible to warrant protection.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Which completely emboldens him. When a predator realizes his hunting
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: ground is unmonitored, the violence inevitably escalates. He increases his frequency.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: And that unchecked escalation directly leads to a discovery that finally,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: violently shatters that police apathy. It forces them to wake up.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: We move forward to February 17, 1992, in a location
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: that becomes the absolute epicenter of this nightmare, which is
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the Monterey Motel.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: The Monterey Motel is essentially a physical embodiment of Highland
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Park's entire trajectory. Years prior, it was a prosperous, functioning
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: establishment right on the Woodward Corridor.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: But by 1992, it had degraded into an utterly derelict,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: abandoned shell. It was a haven for vagrants, filled with
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: just unimaginable amounts of debris.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: So a man who makes his living scavenging for scrap
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: materials is navigating this motel. He walks into the bathroom
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: of one of the empty freezing rooms, sifting through the garbage,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: and he sees what he initially thinks is a discarded
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: mannequin part.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Then he realizes it's the leg of a deceased woman.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: He panics, runs out, and alerts the Highland Park public
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: safety officers.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: When the officers arrive... They have to physically navigate through
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: an unbelievable amount of trash. I mean, mounds of food wrappers,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: liquor bottles, decaying drywall, human waste. The smell is described
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: as overpowering.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: And as they are securing that first room, they continue
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: to search the rest of the abandoned motel.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: And in doing so, they don't just find the one victim.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: They find a second body in another room. And then
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: a third body in yet another room.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: But this is a massive critical juncture in the case.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that the autopsy reports detailed in
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: the sources reveal that these three women were killed at
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: completely different times.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. They had been dead for varying lengths of time.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: But they were all killed in the exact same fashion.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: They'd all been manually strangled. They had all been sexually assaulted.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: And toxicology showed they all had crack cocaine in their systems.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: The identification process was incredibly difficult, though. If you're wondering
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: why they didn't just run DNA... You have to remember,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: this is early 1992. Forensic genetic genealogy and massive DNA
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: databases simply weren't the standard tools they are today.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Right. They had to rely on older methods.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The victims were identified primarily by matching fingerprints on file.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Two of the women were identified as Valerie Chalk and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Juanita Hardy. But the third victim's prints didn't trigger a match.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: She remained a Jane Doe.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: The discovery at the Monterey Motel is a psychological watershed
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: moment for the investigators. Up until this day, the police
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: were stubbornly writing off the previous bodies found around the
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: city as random, isolated incidents of drug-related violence. Yeah. But
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: finding a cluster of bodies? That changes the entire paradigm.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Because you can't blame random violence when it's neatly stacked
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: in one building. This is the moment the horror movie
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: shifts from a shadow in the corner to the monster
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: standing right in front of you.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Precisely. If one person is murdered in an abandoned building, sure,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: it could be a drug deal gone wrong. But finding
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: three bodies killed weeks or months apart, all with the
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: exact same methodology, hidden in a single abandoned location. That
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: is the undeniable psychological signature of a serial killer returning
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: to a comfort zone.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: It's like unearthing a geological strata of violence. Finding bodies
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: in different states of decay in the exact same location
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: gives the police a physical, horrifying timeline of his escalation.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Think about the scrapper who found the first body.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: You have to wonder, like, how many other people, unhoused individuals,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: other scrappers, teenagers, walked past those rooms or even slept
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: in the rooms right next door without ever noticing?
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: It really speaks to the overwhelming sensory overload of the environment.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: The sheer volume of debris, the overpowering smells of rot
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: and garbage, and the absolute neglect inherent in these buildings
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: provided a flawless cover. The camouflage was so effective, so impenetrable,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: that the killer felt perfectly secure utilizing the exact same
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: building over and over again.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Three bodies at once completely removes all plausible deniability from
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the police department. You cannot write this off as random
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: street crime anymore. They finally knew a monster was operating
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: in their city. Now they just had to figure out
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: exactly what kind of monster they were hunting.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: And this is when the investigation pivots from traditional homicide
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: detective work to behavioral analysis. The Michigan State Police bring
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: in a profiler, David Minzey, to evaluate the crime scenes,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the victimology, and construct a psychological and demographic framework of
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: the offender.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: And Minzey's profile is remarkably, almost terrifyingly accurate. He posits
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: that the killer is a local black male. He stresses
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: that this is not a predator driving in from the
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: affluent suburbs on the weekend to hunt in the inner city.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: This killer is a permanent part of the Woodward Avenue ecosystem.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: He blends in perfectly. He knows the alleys. He knows
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the abandoned buildings. And he doesn't draw a single second
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: of attention to himself, which is exactly how he operates
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: so efficiently.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: A killer who blends in is vastly more dangerous than
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: one who stands out. And Minzy's profile perfectly aligns with
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: the man who would eventually be unmasked, Benjamin Atkins.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: So to understand Benjamin Atkins, we have to look deeply
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: into his genesis. The source's detail is background, and it
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: is catastrophic. He was born in August 1968 in Ohio.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: By 1970, his father vanishes entirely from his life. He
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: is left in the sole care of his mother, Judy,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: who is battling a severe, all-consuming heroin addiction and who
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: engages in sex work to fund that addiction and just survive.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: The developmental trauma he was exposed to from infancy is staggering.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: The sources explicitly state that as a very young child,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Atkins would regularly watch his mother have sex with Johns
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: in their home. The psychological damage of witnessing that level
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: of transactional intimacy and vulnerability at an age when the
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: brain is desperately trying to form secure attachments is catastrophic.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: And then by the time he is four or five
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: years old, the state intervenes and he and his brother
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: are thrust into the foster care system. Now, the foster
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: care system in the 1970s was wildly under-regulated and Atkins
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: is shuttled from home to home, experiencing zero stability until
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: he eventually lands in a boys' home facility.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: And while he is institutionalized in this boys' home facility,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: he's subjected to daily horrific physical and sexual abuse. He's
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: essentially tortured by older boys and allegedly staff members.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: We have to pause here because this is where the
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: system's failure is just as pronounced as the police ignoring Darlene.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: He is in state custody. He's being brutally abused daily.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And what does the system do? At age 11, they
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: simply discharge him. They send him right back to his mother,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: where absolutely nothing has changed. Her addiction is still rampant.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: The environment is still wildly unsafe.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: So left entirely to his own devices, a deeply traumatized
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: preteen with zero coping mechanisms turns to the only environment
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: that accepts him, which is the streets. He starts hustling.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: He eventually begins selling himself to older men just for
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: survival money. And from there, he graduates to a severe
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: crack cocaine addiction. The drug becomes a chemical escape hatch
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: from a reality that was frankly unendurable.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: It is an unrelenting, decade-long timeline of abuse, neglect, and
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: systemic abandonment. And this perfectly explains David Minzy's profile. Atkins
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: was deeply embedded in the trauma and addiction of the
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Woodward Avenue corridor because that corridor basically raised him.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: When we analyze the victims Atkins ultimately chooses, we see
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: a textbook, deeply disturbing case of psychological displacement. Atkins wasn't
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: just indiscriminately killing women he stumbled across. He was systematically,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: intentionally targeting women who mirrored his mother's exact demographics and lifestyle.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Women of color struggling with debilitating addiction, frequenting the streets,
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: engaging in sex work.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: As one investigator in the documentary materials noted, he wasn't
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: just killing these women. Psychologically, he was symbolically killing his
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: mother over and over and over again. He was projecting
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: all of his rage for his abandonment and abuse onto
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: these vulnerable women.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: But, you know, here's where it gets really interesting. I
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: want to push back on this, or at least explore
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the tension here, because this is the hardest part of
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the case to reconcile for me. We look at this history.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And we see the exact recipe for creating a violent predator. Right.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: The building blocks are all there.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Severe childhood sexual abuse, absolute neglect, the neurobiological damage of
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: early trauma, plus a heavy crack cocaine addiction that destroys
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: impulse control. But on the other hand, I mean, millions
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of people suffer unspeakable childhoods. Millions of kids grow up
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in abusive foster homes and they never heard a fly.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: That's very true.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: They become advocates or social workers or they just live quiet,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: decent lives. So from a psychological standpoint, at what point
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: does the severely traumatized child become the fully culpable monster?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Like if his brain was literally wired by severe abuse
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: before age five, does he actually have the same free will,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the same moral agency as someone raised in a safe environment?
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate philosophical debate in forensic psychology. Does
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: trauma negate free will? From a neurobiological perspective, severe childhood
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: trauma physically alters brain development. The amygdala, which processes fear
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: and aggression, becomes hyperactive. The prefrontal cortex, which governs impulse
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: control and moral reasoning, is stunted. So, yes, his baseline
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: for aggression and his capacity for empathy were fundamentally broken
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: by the adults who were supposed to protect him.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: So you're saying he never really had a chance?
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: No, I'm saying his neurological deck was incredibly stacked against him. But,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: and this is the crucial distinction here. While trauma explains
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: the origin of the urge to violence, it does not
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: erase the conscious choice to act on it. Right. The
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: lack of impulse control explains a sudden bar fight. It
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: does not explain luring a woman into an abandoned building,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: binding her arms so she can't fight back, and meticulously
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: strangling her. That requires planning. That requires intent. The trauma
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: explains why he felt the rage, but It does not
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: legally or morally excuse the methodical execution of 11 human beings.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: That distinction between the urge and the planning is vital.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: The trauma explains the why, but the premeditation locks in
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the culpability. And while the profilers were mapping out this
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: psychological origin story, the reality on the ground was pure,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: unadulterated terror. The killer's pace was rapidly accelerating.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: The community is in an absolute frenzy. The sources describe
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: the streets of Highland Park and the surrounding Detroit neighborhoods
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: as being entirely barren as soon as the sun went down.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Women were genuinely terrified to walk to the grocery store
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: to wait for a bus.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: The community is demanding answers. They are flooding the police
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: departments with calls, demanding to know why a monster is
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: allowed to hunt in their backyards. And while the community
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: is panicking, the law enforcement response is being severely hampered
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: by incredible bureaucratic tribalism.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Interagency friction in the early 1990s was a massive hurdle.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: You have the Highland Park public safety officers who found
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: the bodies at the Monterey Motel, realizing they have a
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: serial killer. They look at the map, realize victims are
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: crossing the border into Detroit, and they reach out to
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: the Detroit Police Department Homicide Division to share intelligence.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: And Detroit Homicide completely denies that a serial killer is
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: operating in their jurisdiction. The sources say Detroit PD literally
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: told the Highland Park officers to buzz off.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: It is the fatal flaw of bureaucratic ego. Serial killers
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: do not respect municipal borders. But police departments are often
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: fiercely territorial. They didn't have shared digital databases back then.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Right. It's 1992.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Information lived in filing cabinets in specific precincts. A body
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: found one block inside Detroit was Detroit's problem, not Highland Park's.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: If you're listening to this and wondering how on earth
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Detroit police could just ignore a neighboring department when bodies
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: are piling up, it's like two fire departments arguing over
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a property line while the whole neighborhood burns down.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: The killer absolutely relied on that lack of communication. While
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: they were busy arguing over jurisdiction and protecting their egos,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: The killer was adapting. His victimology was broadening. And this
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: brings us to the deeply tragic case of Vicki Marie
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Beasley Brown.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Vicki Marie's story shatters the overly simplistic narrative the police
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: were stubbornly clinging to. Exactly. She is found in April 1992.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: She is 43 years old. And the documentary materials feature
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: an interview with her daughter, Renee Beavers, who was living
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: in Germany with a military family at the time of
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: the murder.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The way Renee describes her mother is so vital
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: because it restores her humanity. She describes Vicki Marie as
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: this innocent, creative, charismatic ball of energy. She loved singing, drawing,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and cooking. She was a mother to two young girls
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: who lived at home with her.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: And critically for the investigation, while Vicki Marie did struggle
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: with a drug addiction that occasionally pulled her into the streets,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: she was not a sex worker. She had a stable home.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: But her addiction put her in the geographical path of
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: the predator.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Renee noted that her mother lacked street sense. She trusted
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: people too much. She likely just went out looking for drugs,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: ran into a friendly-seeming man named Tony, and ended up
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: That's just devastating.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: And then the terror continues. A couple of months later
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: in June, police are called to an abandoned commercial building.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: The 911 call didn't even come in as a suspected homicide.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: A neighbor called simply to complain about a foul smell. Right.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: An officer goes in, sees a massive swarm of flies,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: assumes it's just rotting garbage until he looks down and
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: sees a human leg protruding from beneath the debris. That
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: was the 10th victim, Joanne O'Rourke.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: What the cases of Vicki Marie and Joanne highlight is
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: the extreme fatal danger of law enforcement prematurely profiling their victims.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Because the police had rigidly assumed all the targets were
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: sex workers, they developed severe tunnel vision.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they stopped looking at the bigger picture.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: They assumed the victims were entirely transient. They weren't looking
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: for mothers with stable homes. Innocent people were caught in
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the crossfire because the police didn't understand the breadth of
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: the killers' hunting grounds.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: So the investigation is spinning its wheels. The task force
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: that was finally formed is utterly overwhelmed by false leads
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: from panicked citizens. Every domestic dispute turns into a tip.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Girlfriends are turning in their ex-boyfriends. Wives are calling the
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: tip line on their husbands.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Pure chaos.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: They are drowning in noise. They desperately needed a break.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: And the most frustrating, agonizing part of this entire story,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: that break had been sitting in a filing cabinet gathering
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: dust since March.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: This brings us back to Darlene Saunders. It is the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: summer of 1992. Under immense pressure from Darlene's family, who
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: are furious that the police ignored her assault, the task
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: force finally dusts off her report. Finally. Finally. They finally
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: realize that the woman who came to them months ago
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: holds the key to the entire city's nightmare.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: So they decide to leverage her knowledge. They assign Darlene
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: to a Michigan State trooper named Royce Alston. And the
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: strategy they formulate is incredibly dangerous, but profoundly necessary. They
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: know the killer hunts at night, specifically targeting the Woodward
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Avenue corridor. So Trooper Alston starts driving Darlene around in
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: an unmarked car in the pitch dark a few nights
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: a week, hoping her traumatic memory will trigger if she
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: spots him.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I really want you to pause and imagine the profound,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: almost incomprehensible bravery that takes. Imagine being so invisible to
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the system that you literally have to serve as both
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the bait and the bloodhound to catch the man who
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: violently raped and strangled you. It is undeniably heroic, but
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: it is deeply, profoundly tragic that she had to do this.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: The psychological toll on Darlene must have been immense. She
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: is being asked to repeatedly navigate the exact ecosystem where
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: she was almost murdered. She is essentially the ultimate guide
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: to an underworld the police are blind to. She's taking
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Trooper Alston through the hidden drug dens, the crumbling alleys,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: the invisible architecture of the city's underbelly.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: They are sitting in that dark car for hours. Darlene
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: is telling Alston harrowing stories about the realities of street life,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: like women having to jump out of second-story motel windows
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: just to survive violent johns, and Alston is trying to
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: keep her focused, telling her to scan the faces illuminated
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: by streetlights, looking for a ghost.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: And then, in August 1992, the breakthrough happens. Darlene is
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: in the passenger seat with Alston driving slowly down the corridor. Suddenly,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Darlene starts to hyperventilate.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: The trauma response.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, the physiological reaction to extreme unresolved trauma kicks in
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: before her conscious brain even processes what she's seeing. Her
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: body remembers the terror.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: She starts panicking, pointing out the window. Alston physically shakes
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: her by the shoulder, asking, what's wrong? What is it?
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: And she points to a man standing casually at a
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: corner payphone and says, that's him. That's Tony.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Alston immediately stops the car. He approaches the man at
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: the payphone. He asks a simple question. Are you Tony?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: The man calmly replies yes. Alston asks if he knows
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: who he is talking to. And Tony looks at him
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: and says, yeah, you're a state trooper that's been looking
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: for me.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: He knew they were coming.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Alston draws his service weapon, points at center mass, and
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: delivers a line that must have chilled the blood of
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: everyone on that street. He says, you got two choices.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: You're either going to lay down on the ground or
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: you can die.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: The arrest is made. without a single incident of violence.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: The man known as Tony on the streets, the phantom
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: terrorizing the city, is placed in handcuffs. He is 24-year-old
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Benjamin Adkins.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Which means, if we connect this to the bigger picture,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Darlene Saunders is the absolute crux of this entire case.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Without her intimate knowledge of that specific street ecosystem, without
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: her terrifying willingness to return to the darkest trauma of
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: her life and scan those streets night after night, Atkins
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: would have continued killing indefinitely.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The police had no forensic leads. They had no suspects.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Darlene stopped a serial killer.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: It is entirely accurate to say she is the sole
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: reason the murders ended. But capturing Benjamin Atkins was only
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: half the battle. They had him secured in an interrogation room,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: but they needed to tie him definitively, legally, to 10
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: unsolved homicides. And getting a fast-moving, deeply remorseless killer to
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: confess requires an absolute psychological masterclass.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Right, because Atkins is in custody. And for the first
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: day and a half, he gives the investigators absolutely nothing.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Nothing at all.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: He denies knowing any of the murdered women. He denies
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: ever being at the abandoned buildings. He is a total
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: brick wall. The profiler, David Minzy, advises the team that
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: you can't just walk in and demand a confession from
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: a personality type like this. Brute force interrogation will only
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: make him shut down further.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: So the task force brings in a highly specialized Detroit
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: police interrogator named Ron Sanders. Sanders takes the time to
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: assess the psychological profile of Atkins. He recognizes the massive,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: fragile ego. He understands the deeply ingrained childhood trauma. And
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: most importantly, he recognizes Atkins' absolute need for control.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Which leads Sanders to utilize a highly specific, brilliantly manipulative technique.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: He uses what is called a redemption approach.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: But how does that actually work mechanically?
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Well, serial killers build an impenetrable psychological fortress to justify
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: their crimes to themselves. If an interrogator attacks that fortress directly,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: you know, calling them a monster, showing them gruesome crime
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: scene photos, the killer's ego defenses go up and they
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: stop talking.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: Sanders realized he had to act as a collaborator, not
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: an adversary. He sits down with Atkins, lowers his voice,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: and essentially says, Look, Benjamin, you can't save these women now.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: What's done is done. We know you did it. But
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: you can't help yourself. You can set the record straight. Wow.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: So he frames the confession not as a surrender to
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the police, but as an opportunity for Atkins to take
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: control of his own narrative.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He is feeding Atkins' ego. He is offering him
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: a stage to explain his work. rather than treating him
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: like a cornered animal in a prison cell. And it
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: worked flawlessly. By giving Atkins the illusion of control, Sanders
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: bypassed the defensive walls. Atkins completely broke.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: He didn't just break. He opened the floodgates. He confesses
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: to all 10 murders, plus the rape and attempted murder
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: of Darlene Saunders. And he does it with absolutely zero remorse.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: He systematically signs confession after confession as Sanders writes out
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the details. Yeah. And the details he provides about his
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: exact modus operandi, they are horrifying in their clinical precision.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: It was a rigorously methodical process. He confirmed everything Darlene experienced.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: He would use crack cocaine as the friendly lure. He
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: would guide them into a secluded, abandoned space, smoke with
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: them to lower their guard, and then launch a sudden,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: overwhelming physical attack.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: He would bind their arms with a piece of their
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: own clothing, rape them, and then proceed to manual strangulation.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: But the specific detail that truly shook the seasoned homicide
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: investigators was what Atkins did immediately after he strangled them.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: He didn't just choke them until they passed out and
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: run away in a panic. Once they were unresponsive, he
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: would physically press his hands on their chests, feeling for
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: the mechanical movement of lungs. He would check their stomachs.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: He would press his fingers to their necks to feel
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: for a pulse and check for breath against his skin.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: just to ensure they were absolutely biologically dead before he
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: left the building.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: That specific clinical detail is incredibly critical from a legal standpoint.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Because it proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: the murders were highly calculated and premeditated. In a courtroom,
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: a defense attorney might try to argue that an addict
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: in a crack-fueled frenzy accidentally choked a woman too hard
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: during a sexual encounter, attempting to get a manslaughter charge
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: instead of first-degree murder.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: But a man who methodically checks a victim's pulse to
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: verify termination? That completely dismantles any defense of accidental death.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: It establishes profound, cold-blooded intent.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? The way he checked
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: their pulses, he wasn't lost in a blind rage. He
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: was performing a clinical checklist. He wanted them dead, and
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: he performed quality control to ensure his goal was met.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: That is the definition of cold-blooded.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: And just when the task force investigators think they finally
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: have the complete, horrifying picture, Atkins shocks them one last time.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: He looks at Sanders and casually offers up a secret.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: He tells them, I'm going to give you a body
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: that you guys haven't found.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: An 11th victim. Yes.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Wait, really? A woman named Cece Wehmer. Atkins tells them
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: he killed her at the end of May. He directs
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: the police to an empty garage behind an abandoned house
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: in Highland Park.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: The police go out to the location. The officer who
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: routinely walked that specific beat didn't even know the garage
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: had a sublevel basement. They probably open the doors, go
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: down into the dark, and because the temperature in that
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: subterranean basement was so incredibly cold, the body was perfectly preserved.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: It was a pristine crime scene.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: So armed with 11 ironclad signed confessions, a mountain of
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence linking Atkins to the abandoned buildings, and Darlene
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Saunders as a surviving, incredibly credible eyewitness, the prosecution had
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: an airtight case.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: They did.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: But as the trial commenced in January 1994, Atkins and
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: his defense team tried one last desperate legal maneuver.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: First, we need to talk about the atmosphere of the
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: trial itself, because it is a really depressing commentary on
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: our society's priorities. Think about the sheer scale of this crime.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Eleven women murdered in under a year.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: It's massive.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: But by January 1994, the media had essentially packed up
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: and moved on. When the killer was an unknown phantom,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: it was front page sensational news. But once Adkins was
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: caught and the victims were publicly identified largely as women
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: struggling with addiction or engaging in sex work, the narrative shifted.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: The public lost interest.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The judge presiding over the case literally called it
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: a cliché. The cameras vanished.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: It exposes a very short societal attention span and a
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: profound lack of empathy for marginalized victims. The tragedy was
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: no longer deemed sensational enough for the evening news cycle,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: which meant the closure of the trial, the moment of
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: justice for these 11 families, happened largely in the shadows,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: unnoticed by the broader public.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: And inside the courtroom, Atkins' defense attorney realizes he's up
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: against an insurmountable wall of evidence. So he attempts the
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: only avenue left, which is an insanity plea. Right. Atkins
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: suddenly starts claiming that he suffers from auditory hallucinations. He
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: claims he hears voices, that he has alternate personalities fractured
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: by his childhood trauma, and that the dominant personality, who
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: he conveniently names Tony, was the one who actually took
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: over and committed the murders.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: It's a fascinating, albeit incredibly transparent, legal strategy. The psychological
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: evaluators had to determine, was there a true fractured psyche,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: like dissociative identity disorder or resulting from the severe childhood
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: abuse he suffered? Or was it a highly manipulative pretense
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: designed to avoid a life sentence? Right.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: They have to figure that out.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: The state psychiatrists evaluated him thoroughly and ruled that he
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: was entirely legally sane and fit to stand trial. The
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Tony defense was a calculated fiction. an attempt to use
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: his trauma as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: And then the prosecution's star witness takes the stand. Darlene Saunders.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: She walks into that courtroom completely clean and sober from drugs.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: And she bravely testifies, just feet away from the man
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: who violently raped her and tried to end her life.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: That takes so much strength.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: She faces down a brutal cross-examination from the defense designed
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: to destroy her character and highlight her past addictions. But
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: she refuses to be broken. At one point, she actually
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: physically grabs the prosecutor to demonstrate to the jury exactly
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: how Adkins pulled the coat over her arms and tried
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: to strangle her. She was powerful, and she was undeniable.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: The jury saw straight through the defense's smoke and mirrors.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: It took them less than three days of deliberation to
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: return a verdict. Benjamin Atkins was found guilty on all
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: 11 counts of first-degree murder, plus the rape of Darlene Saunders.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: He was sentenced to 12 life sentences without the possibility
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: of parole.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: And at his sentencing hearing, when the judge gave him
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to speak, he showed absolutely no remorse for
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: the 11 women he destroyed. He only talked about his
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: own suffering, his own abusive childhood.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: He was ultimately transferred to a maximum security correctional facility
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: in Jackson, Michigan. But His time in the prison system
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: was remarkably short. On September 17, 1997, after serving just
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: over three years of his life sentence, Benjamin Atkins died
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: of complications from HIV AIDS. He was 29 years old.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: It's a sudden anticlimactic end to a horrific chapter. But
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: the story doesn't entirely stop with his death because the
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: ripples of his actions and the legacies of the women
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: he killed continue to resonate.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: They absolutely do.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: It took decades for some of these families to find
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: any semblance of peace. In fact, just recently, in 2023,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: modern forensic genetic genealogy finally managed to identify the Jane
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Doe from the Monterey Motel. After over 30 years of
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: being a question mark in an evidence box, her family
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: finally has answers.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: And Darlene Saunders, the woman who risked her life and
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: her sanity to stop him, lived for another decade. She
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: continued to battle her addictions. Trauma of that magnitude doesn't
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: just disappear with a guilty verdict. But she was clean
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: for a year before she passed away in 2002. Her
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: son Rashad continues to speak about her, remembering her not
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: just for her struggles with addiction, but for the immense
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: love she had for her family and the staggering, world-altering
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: bravery she displayed when it mattered most.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: When we think about the legacies of the victims in
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: this case, I keep coming back to the interview with
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Renee Beavers, Vicki Marie's daughter. She said, you can't control
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: what happens to you, but you can control how you
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: navigate it.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: That's a beautiful quote.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: It's a powerful, necessary reminder that these 11 women were
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: entire universes of experience. They were mothers who loved their children, daughters, sisters,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: and friends. They were not just case files, and they
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: were certainly not just disposable statistics in a decaying city.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: That really is the ultimate takeaway of this case. The physical,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: structural decay of Highland Park and Detroit provided the literal,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: concrete shadows for Benjamin Atkins to hide in. But it
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: was the systemic apathy, society's refusal to see the humanity
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: and value in its most vulnerable citizens, that gave him
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: his true, horrifying power.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: It was only through the unyielding bravery of one survivor,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Darlene Saunders, the woman they told to go home, that
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: the light was finally brought into those shadows. She forced
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: the police system to look. She forced them to act.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: She really did.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: As we wrap up this incredibly intense deep dive, I
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: want to challenge you as you go about your day
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: to think about the narratives that society constantly feeds us.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Who do we subconsciously consider valuable? Who do we rush
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: to protect? And who do we implicitly ignore when they
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: ask for help? This case might be a historical true
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: crime story from the early 90s. But the systemic biases
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: and prejudices it highlights are very much alive in our
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: justice system today.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: And to build on that thought, consider the revelation of
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: the Monterey Motel Jane Doe finally being identified in 2023.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: It forces us to ask a deeply unsettling question. How
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: many other Jane Does from the crack epidemic era of
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: the late 80s and early 90s are sitting in cold
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: case evidence boxes right now? How many forgotten victims are
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: just waiting for the intersection of modern DNA technology and
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: a detective who finally decides that their story is worth finishing?
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: That is a thought that should stick with all of us.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: The criminal justice system might not always give us a clean,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: easy answer, but we have to keep demanding that it
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: looks closer. And we have to keep valuing every single
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: human life, regardless of their struggles. Thank you so much
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: for joining us on this deep dive into the darkness
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and the light of the Benjamin Atkins case. Stay curious,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: stay empathetic, and we'll catch you on the next deep dive.