Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / Who Was the Skid Row Stabber?

Transcript

Who Was the Skid Row Stabber? · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In the late seventies, someone was stabbing homeless men to
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: death in downtown LA and doing it with the kind
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: of confidence usually reserved for people who know no one's watching.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: The press called him the skid Row Stabber. Police called
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: in a guy named Bobby Joe Maxwell, who had the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: wrong vibes, a weird diary, and the bad luck of
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: knowing someone who'd snitch for a sandwich. Today's story isn't
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: just about a killer. It's about what happens when you
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: need a name more than you need the truth before
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: we dive in. If you like your true crime brief
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and bingeable, you're in the right place. Hit follow now
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: for at least two new episodes every week. This is
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: ten minute murder. Let's get into it. Nineteen seventy eight,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: downtown Los Angeles. The city's heartbeat was loud, but in
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the background, barely audible to the people not paying attention.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Something much darker had started to stir in the alleys,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: beneath overpasses, and in forgotten corners of skid Row. Someone
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: was preying on the people who had already been failed
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: in every possible way. Most of them didn't have homes.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: If they were lucky. They had a blanket or a tarp,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: maybe a shopping cart of things they called theirs. Many
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: battled addiction, many lived with untreated mental illness, and some
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: were just people who'd been chewed up and spit out
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: by life. Skid Row wasn't where you started. It was
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: where you lived when every other door slammed shut, and
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: then people started dying. In October of seventy eight, police
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: found fifty year old Jesse Martinez stabbed to death. No witnesses,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: no known enemies, no reason, just dead. About a week later,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: thirty two year old Jose Cortes turned up dead, same
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: brutal ending, and not long after that it was forty
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: six year old Bruce Drake. Something was happening, and the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: people it was happening too. Society barely noticed. Weeks passed
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: and the bodies kept showing up. Most were left where
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: no one would notice them until morning, alleyways, behind dumpsters,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: tucked into forgotten folds of the city. But then came
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Frank Garcia. Frank wasn't left in the shadows. He was
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: murdered in broad daylight near City Hall, right in the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: middle of downtown. People were everywhere, hundreds of them. Yet
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: somehow the miller managed to vanish into the crowd like smoke.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: The only thing left behind was a handprint, no name,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: no weapon, just proof that whatever this was didn't care
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: about being seen. By the time the killings stopped in
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, at least eleven people were dead. That's
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: just the official count. There could have been more. Skid
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Row isn't exactly known for accurate record keeping when it
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: comes to the homeless and the invisible. The press finally
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: gave the killer a name, the skid Row Stabber, but
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: figuring out who he was that was harder. A few
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: people claimed they saw him, but their accounts didn't carry
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: much weight, not because they didn't care, but because they
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: lived on the streets, and when you're homeless, even your
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: eyewitness status comes with an asterisk. After the murder of
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: a man named David Jones, three of his friends stepped forward.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: They said the man who killed him didn't just walk
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: up and attack. He talked to them first, chatted for
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: several minutes, said his name was Luther, described him as
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: a thirty year old black man with a Puerto Rican accent.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: This guy hung around like he was just another face.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: In the crowd until he pulled a knife and turned
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: a conversation into a murder. Three months after David Jones
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: was murdered, a note turned up in a public toilet
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: at the Los Angeles bus terminal, scrawled like a manifesto
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: from someone who wanted credit for their crimes but didn't
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: want to actually face anyone. It read, my name is Luther.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I kill whinos. I put them out of their misery.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So now we had a name from witnesses and a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: weird toilet confession signed the same way. That was enough
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: for police to start drawing a connection. But when they
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: made their move, they didn't grab a guy named Luther.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: They zeroed in on someone else entirely enter Bobby Joe Maxwell.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Bobby was twenty nine, worked janitorial jobs when he could
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: keep them, and had just relocated from Tennessee after a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: stint in prison. He'd moved in with his sisters in
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: la and yes, he was known to hang out around
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: skid Row, not to help people, just to lurk. His
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: reputation wasn't great and it wasn't improving. In December of
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: seventy eight, not long after the first few skid rowe killings,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Bobby was arrested. Cops said they found him standing over
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a man who was sleeping on the sidewalk holding a knife.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Not a great look. They charged him with deviant behavior,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: which is doing a lot of vague heavy lifting. And
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: he spent a few weeks behind bars. And here's where
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: it got messy. While Bobby was locked up, the killings stopped.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: When he got out, the final known murder happened. Add
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: to that, the handprint left at the Frank Garcia crime scene.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: It matched Bobby so lapd had a pattern, a print,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and a guy with a sketchy background. That was enough.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Bobby so Maxwell was arrested again, this time for murder.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: When the police searched Bobby's place, they found a knife
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: same size and same length as the one used in
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the murders. Not the knife, just a knife that looked similar.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: But that wasn't even the headline for detectives. What really
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: got them buzzing was his diary. Inside they found pages
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: of ramblings that leaned heavily into satanic imagery, dark disturbing
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: stuff enough to make a prosecutor start connecting dots that
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: weren't necessarily close together to the lapd This diary looked
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: like a motive on a silver platter. He wasn't just violent,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: They said he was doing it for the devil. But
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the thing was that was basically it. A knife that
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: resembled the murder weapon and a diary that creeped people out.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Nothing that actually placed him at the scene of the crimes.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: No eyewitnesses who weren't already deemed unreliable, no murder w repon,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: just a vibe. Then came the twist, Sidney's storch. Sidney
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: had been Bobby's cellmate for three weeks. According to Sidney,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Bobby spilled everything. He said he'd killed multiple homeless men
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: as a sacrifice to Satan, just told him flat out
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: like they were sharing ghost stories before lights out. Bobby
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: denied ever saying that or anything remotely like it. But
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Sidney's testimony, plus those original witnesses who claimed to recognize
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Bobby from the night David Jones was murdered that combo
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: was all prosecutors needed, and just like that, Bobby Joe
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Maxwell's fates was basically sealed. In the end, Bobby Joe
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Maxwell's trial was a mixed bag of verdicts. He was
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: acquitted of three murders, five more ended and mistrials, but
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: two stuck first degree murdered, with special circumstances that bumped
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: him into death penalty territory. His life was now in
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: the hands of a jury that had to pick between
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: the gas chamber or life without parole. They chose life.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: The jury wasn't convinced enough to kill him, especially with
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the growing number of exonerations and death row cases, but
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the sentence matched the vibe of the entire case. A
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: lot of uncertainty and even more what ifs. Some folks
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: believed Bobby was really the skid Row stabber. Others looked
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: at the evidence or black thereof, and started asking questions.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Because here's the truth. There was no hard evidence tying
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Bobby's directly to the actual murders, no DNA, no fingerprints
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: at multiple scenes, just that one partial handprint from City Hall,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: and Bobby was known to hang around there. As for
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the knife they found at his place, it was the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: right size, sure, but that's like saying someone with big
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: shoes must be bigfoot. The case rested entirely on witness testimony,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and that started falling apart fast. The three men who'd
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: originally id'd Bobby as the guy who killed David Jones,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: began backing away. One never got the chance. He was
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: killed during the trial. The other two eventually admitted in
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: twenty ten, more than three decades after Bobby's conviction, that
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: they'd been pressured by investigators to lie, coerced into pointing
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the finger. And then there was Sidney's storch. Sidney wasn't
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: just a jail house snitch. He was a professional jail
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: house snitch. He had a reputation for reading about high
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: profile cases in the papers, then claiming his cellmate confessed
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: and surprise, he just happened to know all the details.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: He'd offer that confession in exchange for a reduced sentence,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: which is exactly what he did in Bobby's case. Bobby
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: swore he never told Sidney anything, but that didn't matter.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Sidney used the headlines as a script, fed it to
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the cops, and walked out of prison early because of it.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: The jury never heard that part. It took years for
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Sidney's full scam to come out. He helped wrongfully convict
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: at least six people before dying in prison himself. By
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: the time anyone could do something about it, the damage
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: was already done. Eventually, with everything crumbling, an appellate court
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: overturned Bobby's conviction and granted him a new trial. But
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: life had one more punch to throw Before that second
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: chance could happen. Bobby had a massive heart attack. He
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: fell into a coma and never woke up. His legal
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: team kept fighting, kept hoping he'd come back around long
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: enough to hear the good news. The charges were finally dropped.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Bobby Joe Maxwell was legally a free man after spending
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: more than thirty years behind bars. But he died without
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: ever knowing he'd been exonerated. And we're still left with
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the same question that haunted skid Row back in nineteen
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: seventy eight? Who was the real skid Row stabber? Thanks
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: for listening to ten minute murder Brief and bingeable True Crime.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I'm Joe the host, and yeah, that one sat a
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: little heavy. It's not hard to think about how many
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: lives were upended, how many people got written off by
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: a system that was more interested in closing a case
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: than getting it right. And Bobby he might have been
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the guy. He also might have just been the guy
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: standing too close when the system needed somebody to blame
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: either way, no one ever got real justice, not the victims,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: not the families, and definitely not Bobby, who died in
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: a coma while technically free. All right, before the spirals
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: into a Ted talk on wrongful convictions and broken systems,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: let me remind you, if you liked this episode, make
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: sure you're subscribed wherever you're listening. That way, you won't
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: miss the next story that will probably make you scream
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: into your pillow. You can find me on social media
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: at ten Minute Murder and head over to ten minute
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Murder dot com for more episodes merch place to drop
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: me a line if you've got a story you want
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: to hear. And speaking of that, I did an episode
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: that wasn't like a planned episode this past weekend. It
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: was called the Making of Ted Bundy Secrets, Shame and Silence.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I've done episodes in the past on Ted Bundy, and
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the most interesting part of every serial killer case to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: me is what happened to make them who they became,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: their whole backstories, their origin story, and the psychological slash
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: mental health aspect of it. That's the most interesting part
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: in all of these stories to me. So I wrote
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: a blog based on the research I'd done for previous
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Ted Bundy cases about just the beginning, just the early
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: part of his life. And that's at ten minute murder
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: dot com. And there are blogs that I'll write that
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: never turn into episodes, So if you want to check
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: some of that out, you can go do that. And
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: this one I just happened to have some free time
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and turned it into an episode that I released this
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: last weekend. And here's an email about Hi, Joe. I
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: found this episode fascinating. I'm intrigued by human psychology and
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: what shapes people. I always ask why would a person
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: behave that way? I constantly research the backgrounds of people,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: from entertainers to politicians to murderers. My family says I'm
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the most curious person in the world. Therefore, this episode
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: fed my curiosity. Could you make this a semi regular
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: part of your podcast. I don't want to overload you
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: with work, but having an episode titled the making of
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: once a month or once a quarter would be awesome.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: As a side notes, I realize it is impossible to
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: understand human motives completely when it comes to evil. I
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: believe that sometimes a small tear in a person's soul opens,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: allowing evil intentions to enter, and it just grows bigger
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: and wider until the person is completely enveloped by evil.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: What once satisfied now requires increasingly evil actions to satisfy.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Evil becomes addiction. Those are my dark thoughts this sunny
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Saturday morning. Now I'm off to in a bright day
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: and leave the darkness behind. Have a great weekend, Kelly, Omaha, Nebraska.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: First of all, thank you so much for the email. Kelly,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: and you and I are very much in a line
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: on what is the interesting part of these stories? As
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I have mentioned before reading your email, I can't tell
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: you how many times during the day something will pop
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: into my head and I'll just go research it. Like
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: in the moment, i could be standing in line trying
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to pay for my groceries or something, and then something
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: will pop in my head. I'm like, I've got to
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: know the answer to that right now, and I'll find
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: myself down rabbit holes of researching this and that, and
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling Kelly, you're kind of that same way.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: But to answer your question, I would love to do
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the making of once a month or once a quarter
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: or something like that. And I think I'm going to
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: attempt that. There is a blog that I've written about
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Dennis Rader and before he became bt K, so that
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: may be the next one I turn into an episode.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you for the email and thank you for listening,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: and that's going to do it. That is ten minute
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: murder for Today, brief and bingeable true crime. We'll see
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: you next time.