Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / The Vancouver Child Killer

Transcript

The Vancouver Child Killer · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:02
  Discretion is advised. This is ten minuted murder. Wesley Alan Dodd began sexually
• 0:35
  harassing the other kids in his neighborhood in nineteen seventy four, when he himself
• 0:40
  was only thirteen years old. At first, he was just exposing his genitals
• 0:45
  to them, causing them to feel uncomfortable and go and complain to his parents.
• 0:50
  At first, he was just exposing his genitals to them, causing them
• 0:54
  to feel uncomfortable and go to his parents and complain. Wesley's father, Jim,
• 1:00
  later admitted that he was aware of Wesley's harassment of the other kids,
• 1:03
  but he decided to ignore it. His reasoning was that, apart from the
• 1:07
  indecent exposure, Wesley was quote a well behaved child who never had problems with
• 1:14
  drugs, drinking, or smoking. So I guess let's just ignore the other
• 1:18
  deeply troubling and completely inappropriate behavior on Wesley's part. Right, So, Wesley
• 1:25
  never saw any consequences for his actions, and it allowed him to begin to
• 1:29
  escalate his crimes. By the time he was in high school, he had
• 1:33
  started to molest younger children. He began with his cousins and his father's girlfriend's
• 1:38
  young children and then made an effort to advertise his babysitting services around the neighborhood.
• 1:46
  At his babysitting gigs, he would assault the children that he was paid
• 1:49
  to look after. Now, being a parent myself, I don't know how
• 1:53
  you can entrust Wesley with looking after your kids, knowing that he's the neighborhood
• 1:59
  flash. So you have to think that these parents had no idea that this
• 2:02
  was the kind of kid they had looking after their children. When Wesley was
• 2:07
  fifteen years old, somebody called the cops on him for exposing his genitals in
• 2:12
  public. Yet again, he was arrested, but then quickly released with the
• 2:15
  recommendation that he should attend some counseling sessions. And Wesley's crimes continued. He
• 2:23
  tried to kidnap two young girls a few years later, but the girls escaped
• 2:28
  and contacted the police. Once again, there were no legal consequences. A
• 2:34
  month later, Wesley joined the Navy and moved to Bangor Base in Washington,
• 2:38
  where he quickly began targeting the children whose families lived there. At one point,
• 2:44
  he tried to pay some young boys fifty dollars to come up and play
• 2:46
  strip poker with him in a nearby motel room, and finally his actions resulted
• 2:52
  in an arrest, but even though he told the officers that he had intended
• 2:55
  to molest the boys, the police decided to release him without filing charges.
• 3:01
  After he was caught once again after that, exposing himself to a child on
• 3:06
  the base. Wesley spent just under three weeks in jail and was ordered to
• 3:10
  attend counseling and was dishonorably discharged from the Navy. From his early teens,
• 3:16
  Wesley had stopped viewing young children as human. Instead, he viewed them as
• 3:22
  targets for his sexual perversions. His whole life revolved around hunting down his targets.
• 3:28
  He chose his jobs based on how easily he'd be able to gain the
• 3:30
  trust of children, and chose to move into a block of apartments because he
• 3:35
  knew that families with young kids lived there. He molested the toddlers of a
• 3:39
  family who lived next door, but after their family found out, she refused
• 3:44
  to press charges, believing that the process would only add to the victim's trauma.
• 3:50
  In nineteen eighty seven, twenty six year old Wesley approached a child and
• 3:53
  tried to convince the boy to follow him into an abandoned building nearby. Sensing
• 3:59
  that Westley was not to be trusted, the boy said no and he ran
• 4:02
  to the police. At this point, Wesley had a lengthy list of past
• 4:08
  sexual offenses, and the prosecution suggests that a sentence of five years behind bars,
• 4:13
  But he was able to escape justice yet again because while there was no
• 4:17
  doubt he'd intended to molest the boy, he had not actually committed a crime.
• 4:24
  The next year, Wesley's hunt for potential targets continued. He identified David
• 4:29
  Douglas Park in Vancouver as being an ideal spot for hunting. The park covered
• 4:34
  a large area, was full of dense woodland, and had a collection of
• 4:39
  isolated trails where he knew he wouldn't be interrupted while he was with his victims.
• 4:45
  Over the next three years, Wesley was arrested on multiple occasions. Each
• 4:49
  time he served minimal time behind bars and attended court ordered counseling sessions. One
• 4:56
  of the psychiatrists who examined him stated that he believed the the man was a
• 5:00
  sexual psychopath. By now, Wesley Dodd had molested or exposed himself to and
• 5:05
  estimated fifty children, most of them were male. Several were toddler age,
• 5:12
  and every single one of them was less than twelve years old with minimal repercussions.
• 5:17
  Wesley began to consider escalating his crimes. He now didn't just want to
• 5:23
  molest and release his victims. He wanted to abduct and kill them. Quote
• 5:29
  the more I thought about it, the more exciting the idea of murder sounded.
• 5:33
  I planned many ways to kill a boy. On the fourth of September
• 5:38
  nineteen eighty nine, Wesley went to his favorite hunting ground, David Douglas Park.
• 5:43
  He was armed with a knife, and he was determined to commit his
• 5:46
  first murder. Soon after, he met two boys, eleven year old Coal
• 5:51
  Near and his younger brother William. He convinced the two boys to follow him
• 5:57
  into an isolated trail. He then tied them both to a tree, took
• 6:00
  the clothes off, and sexually assaulted them. Once the assault was over,
• 6:05
  he used the knife to stab them to death and then ran away. Despite
• 6:11
  Wesley's belief that the large park would allow a body to go undiscovered for some
• 6:15
  time, the boys were quickly found. Cole had already died from his wounds,
• 6:20
  and William was still alive but passed away during the drive to the hospital.
• 6:27
  After killing Cole and William, Wesley became obsessed with the murders. He
• 6:30
  kept a collection of newspaper articles about the case and his scrap book. The
• 6:34
  following month, after traveling to Portland, Oregon, he killed again. While
• 6:40
  scoping out a small park, Wesley saw four year old Lee Isley playing on
• 6:45
  a slide while his older brother, Justin watched nearby. After Justin decided to
• 6:49
  walk back to the house, Wesley told Lee that he would give him a
• 6:54
  ride home. Instead, he abducted Lee, driving him back to his Vancouver
• 6:59
  apartment, where he tied him to the bed and repeatedly molested him. He
• 7:03
  documented this abuse overnight, taking photos and writing diary entries about his crimes.
• 7:10
  When morning came, Wesley was reluctant to kill the boy, but to prevent
• 7:15
  Lee from telling anyone about the crime, he ended up strangling him to death.
• 7:19
  Wesley waited until November nineteen eighty nine to strike again. This time,
• 7:25
  he traveled twelve miles east to a theater in Chemis, Washington, where he
• 7:30
  saw a young boy, six year old James Kirk the Second, in a
• 7:33
  public restroom. He tried to abduct James but the boy attracted attention by kicking
• 7:39
  and screaming, and the employees came running. Wesley attempted to carry the boy
• 7:44
  out to his car, but the employees followed behind him, so he put
• 7:48
  James down and fled the scene in his car. When James's mother's boyfriend,
• 7:54
  William Ray Graves was informed that James had almost been kidnapped, he set off
• 7:59
  in pursuit, armed with only a description of the attacker. As luck would
• 8:03
  have it, Wesley's car had actually broken down less than a mile away from
• 8:07
  the crime scene, and he was desperately trying to restart the engine. Ray
• 8:13
  didn't want to make the man suspicious, so he offered to help Wesley with
• 8:16
  his car troubles. Then, as soon as Wesley's guard was down, he
• 8:20
  put him in a headlock and marched him back to the theater. The police
• 8:24
  were called to the theater and quickly realized that this man might be the killer
• 8:28
  they were looking for. After three days of interrogation, Wesley broke and confessed
• 8:35
  to killing Lee, William and Cole. A search of his apartment revealed a
• 8:39
  collection of newspaper clippings about the murders, as well as a photo album full
• 8:43
  of pictures of Lee being tortured, a detailed handwritten diary about the crimes,
• 8:48
  and what officers described as a homemade torture rack. Wesley was charged with three
• 8:54
  counts of aggravated first degree murder, as well as attempting to kidnap James Kirk.
• 9:01
  At his trial, quotes from his diary were read to the jury alongside
• 9:05
  the photos he had taken. The evidence against Wesley was gruesome and damning.
• 9:09
  It was clear that he'd taken great pleasure in his crimes and that if he
• 9:13
  was ever released, he would not hesitate to continue. In nineteen ninety Wesley
• 9:18
  Allen Dodd was sentenced to death. He seemed to agree with the judge's verdict
• 9:24
  and refused to appeal his sentence, saying quote, I must be executed before
• 9:30
  I have an opportunity to escape or kill someone else. If I do escape,
• 9:33
  I promise you I will kill and rape again, and I will enjoy
• 9:39
  every minute of it. Wesley Dodd was executed by hanging on the fifth of
• 9:43
  January nineteen ninety three at twelve oh five am, while the family members of
• 9:48
  his three victims looked on. He was the first person to be hanged to
• 9:52
  death in the US in almost three decades, and the American Civil Liberties Union
• 9:58
  tried to take legal action that execution by hanging violated the Eighth Amendment. However,
• 10:03
  the lawsuit did not change the outcome of Wesley's execution for one simple reason.
• 10:09
  Wesley had requested to be hanged to death so that he could die in
• 10:13
  the same way that Lee had. That is ten Minute Murder for today Brief
• 10:28
  and bingeable True Crime. My name is Joe. I'm the host, and
• 10:33
  thank you for listening to today's episode. If you're new, welcome, happy
• 10:37
  that you're here. Make sure you subscribe wherever you are listening to this right
• 10:39
  now, and you'll more easily be able to catch up on all the back
• 10:43
  episodes. Just open the app of wherever you're listening and boom, Ten Minute
• 10:48
  Murder is gonna be right there, staring you in the face and welcoming you
• 10:50
  to listen to all of the back episodes. Connect with me on social media
• 10:54
  see the pictures of what we talk about here in the podcast. It's never
• 10:58
  grossing graphic stuff though. A quick email from one of you that listens,
• 11:01
  Hi, Joe Marina from Tacoma. Here hope all as well. Really love
• 11:05
  your podcast. My husband Austin and I listened to your podcast on Spotify.
• 11:11
  Have you ever heard of Sylvia Likens? We just watched the movie based on
• 11:15
  her life in American crime. It's bizarre. I also had a quick email
• 11:20
  question, if you had a chance to meet a serial killer in real life,
• 11:22
  who would it be? I ask because I just saw an episode of
• 11:26
  Peters Morgan interviewing Amber Wright. Happy Friday, Marina, And first of all,
• 11:31
  Marina, thank you so much for taking the time to reach out,
• 11:35
  and also thank you and your husband Austin for listening to the podcast. So
• 11:39
  first, Sylvia Likens, Yes, I've heard of that. I've seen that
• 11:41
  movie and I've done an episode on it, probably a couple of years ago.
• 11:46
  I did an episode on Sylvia Likens extremely disturbing case. So if you're
• 11:50
  listening to this now and you go back and you have no idea what the
• 11:54
  case is about, and you go back and find the episode, just know
• 11:58
  as disturbing as to Day's episode was, it's even more disturbing than that.
• 12:03
  And secondly, if I had a chance to meet a serial killer in real
• 12:07
  life, who would it be? None of them? I just don't have
• 12:09
  the desire to meet or talk to them. To me, I'm not a
• 12:15
  psychologist, I'm not a profiler with the FBI. I don't have any valid
• 12:18
  questions to ask them. It would just be me insulting them, I guess,
• 12:22
  like calling them names, telling them how pathetically I mean. That would
• 12:26
  be The interview is me asking zero questions, just telling them what I thought
• 12:30
  about them, and they would never agree to that, so what's the point.
• 12:33
  But I wouldn't want to sit down and ask them questions because that's been
• 12:37
  done by people that are qualified. I'm not qualified to do that, so
• 12:39
  it's already been done. I don't want to do that. I would be
• 12:43
  more interested in talking to and interviewing the people behind. Would put them behind
• 12:48
  bars, like the detectives, the forensic people, the criminal profilers. They're
• 12:52
  way more interesting to me than the actual killer themselves. Anyway, again,
• 12:56
  thank you Marina for listening, and thank you for your email. That's going
• 13:00
  to do it. That is ten minute Murder for today. Thank you so
• 13:03
  much for listening, and if you have a question, by the way,
• 13:05
  you can email me Joe at ten minute murder dot com. Thank you for
• 13:09
  listening. Have a good night,