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Billy Mansfield Jr. - Serial Killer Documentary · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:07
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, a search at Billy Mansfield Junior's sprawling,
0:12
Speaker 1: rural property in Florida turned up the bodies of four
0:16
Speaker 1: young women.
0:17
Speaker 2: You have a driver and look for girls hitchhiking and
0:20
Speaker 2: abduct them, or he'd hang out at malls.
0:24
Speaker 1: A serial killer by his early twenties, Mansfield Junior's abuse
0:28
Speaker 1: of women had begun in his teens.
0:31
Speaker 3: Mansfield Junior is someone that was raised in the world
0:34
Speaker 3: of violence and retaviock in violence on anyone he came
0:37
Speaker 3: into contact with.
0:39
Speaker 4: His sexual crimes escalated over time, both in terms of
0:42
Speaker 4: how violent they were, to eventually resulting in.
0:44
Speaker 1: Murders convicted of killing five victims. No young woman who
0:49
Speaker 1: crossed paths with Billy Mansfield Junior was safe.
0:53
Speaker 5: These women as or he doesn't value life at all.
0:58
Speaker 6: Mansfield could be approachable charming, but that was the mask
1:03
Speaker 6: over this much more malevolent, depraved human being.
1:08
Speaker 1: Billy Mansfield Junior's short but deadly spree was brought to
1:12
Speaker 1: an end in nineteen eighty when he was exposed as
1:15
Speaker 1: one of the world's most evil killers. In nineteen eighty
1:40
Speaker 1: when a woman was found dead the morning after leaving
1:43
Speaker 1: a bar in Watsonville, California with twenty four year old
1:47
Speaker 1: drifter Billy Mansfield Junior. Detectives were shocked at how little
1:51
Speaker 1: the killer had done to cover his tracks.
1:54
Speaker 5: That kind of good spur, if you will, speaks to
1:58
Speaker 5: his feeling that he he was more clever than anyone
2:02
Speaker 5: else and that he could do whatever he wanted to do.
2:05
Speaker 5: He acted with complete impunity. He did not care.
2:09
Speaker 4: Sometimes he even boasted about his crimes and kind of
2:12
Speaker 4: derived joy out of being able to recollect his crimes
2:16
Speaker 4: and what he did, almost like these were accomplishments that
2:18
Speaker 4: he should be rewarded for.
2:20
Speaker 6: I don't believe he ever showed remorse, and I don't
2:22
Speaker 6: think he even feels remorse. I don't think he's capable
2:25
Speaker 6: of it.
2:27
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins in a shack on the edge
2:30
Speaker 1: of Grand Rapids, Michigan, in nineteen fifty six.
2:36
Speaker 5: He had a trouble childhood. He was bullied. It wasn't bullied.
2:41
Speaker 1: Billy's parents were William Mansfield Senior and Virginia Mansfield. He
2:46
Speaker 1: was their first child. They would have four more after him,
2:50
Speaker 1: three boys and a girl.
2:53
Speaker 6: You could say it was a completely dysfunctional family on
2:58
Speaker 6: the edge of the law at all times, the boys
3:02
Speaker 6: were encouraged to fight amongst each other by their father.
3:06
Speaker 3: Oh, he was reared in a world of violence. At
3:09
Speaker 3: one point, the father was seen chasing some of the
3:12
Speaker 3: kids down the street with a gun.
3:18
Speaker 4: So this is the first instance that Billy is learning
3:21
Speaker 4: about the rules of life and all this is coming
3:23
Speaker 4: from his father who was This is a way that
3:25
Speaker 4: Billy is learning even from a young age.
3:27
Speaker 7: This is how you solve problems when people don't agree
3:29
Speaker 7: with you.
3:30
Speaker 4: And the family was actually very well known to the
3:33
Speaker 4: police because there were a number of different charges, both
3:37
Speaker 4: violent and non violent, between the men and the boys
3:40
Speaker 4: of the family.
3:42
Speaker 1: Bringing did not prepare Billy Mansfield Junior for a successful
3:46
Speaker 1: school life.
3:47
Speaker 3: Mansfield Junior attended school in Grand Rapids and was often
3:52
Speaker 3: described as a social misfit and often got into trouble
3:55
Speaker 3: in school. By the age of fourteen, Mansfield Junior was
3:58
Speaker 3: already charged with larceny, which is stealing in effect. It's
4:01
Speaker 3: an additional allegation against Manfield Junior was that he sexually
4:05
Speaker 3: assaulted a fourteen year old girl on her way home
4:07
Speaker 3: from school.
4:12
Speaker 1: His father, William Mansfield Senior, had been tried for a
4:15
Speaker 1: similar offense. Some twenty years earlier, while still in his teens,
4:19
Speaker 1: he was acquitted, but it was the first of many
4:22
Speaker 1: such trials for the family.
4:24
Speaker 5: Patriarch served time for rape in both Michigan and in Nevada,
4:31
Speaker 5: and an armed robbery of in Michigan.
4:35
Speaker 4: His father had been charged with multiple non violent and
4:38
Speaker 4: violent crimes, including sexual molestation of multiple individuals who were underage.
4:44
Speaker 4: So perhaps even from that, just watching his father recognizing
4:48
Speaker 4: that this is something that people do, perhaps or maybe
4:50
Speaker 4: even his father explained those incidences away as.
4:53
Speaker 7: Things that were okay to do.
4:55
Speaker 4: So this is the first instance that Billy is learning
4:57
Speaker 4: about the rules of life.
5:00
Speaker 1: Already on a dark path. By the age of fourteen,
5:03
Speaker 1: Mansfield Junior, known to his family as Billy, decided that
5:07
Speaker 1: formal education wasn't for him.
5:11
Speaker 5: He dropped out of school when he was fourteen. He
5:15
Speaker 5: ordered his birth certificate, which back in those days is
5:19
Speaker 5: much easier to do than it is now, and wound
5:22
Speaker 5: up joining the Army.
5:25
Speaker 3: During his time in the army, Mansfield Junior was assigned
5:28
Speaker 3: to places such as Germany, but after about fourteen months
5:31
Speaker 3: of service, they determined that he really was not of
5:35
Speaker 3: age and that he allied about his age to enlist,
5:37
Speaker 3: and he was discharged.
5:40
Speaker 6: Mansfield maintained that that army career is where he became
5:46
Speaker 6: an alcoholic and first experiencing with drugs, which made him volatile,
5:52
Speaker 6: extremely volatile.
5:54
Speaker 1: Despite his troubles, at the age of seventeen, Mansfield settled
5:58
Speaker 1: down with his childhood sweetheart, Phyllis. The couple had first
6:02
Speaker 1: met at school in their early teens. By the time
6:05
Speaker 1: they married in nineteen seventy three, they already had a
6:09
Speaker 1: child together, and five months later a second baby followed.
6:15
Speaker 4: The marriage became very turbulent, very quickly. Whenever his wife
6:20
Speaker 4: threatened to leave or when they would have a fight,
6:23
Speaker 4: he would threaten aggression on her and threaten that he
6:26
Speaker 4: would kill her, and at one point, when she was
6:29
Speaker 4: holding their baby, he put a gun to her head.
6:35
Speaker 1: Phyllis would later tell investigators about her husband's sexual proclivities.
6:44
Speaker 5: She talked about how Billy was asexual. He would pick
6:47
Speaker 5: up men in gay bars, bring them home, make her
6:50
Speaker 5: watch him have sexual encounters with them.
6:55
Speaker 6: In nineteen seventy four, when Willie Mansfield Junior was eighteen,
7:00
Speaker 6: he was brought to trial for sex offenses, in fact,
7:05
Speaker 6: forcing two women to perform sex acts on him and
7:09
Speaker 6: at the same time it goes to trial and the
7:13
Speaker 6: jury find it impossible to believe that one man could
7:18
Speaker 6: coerce two women to act in ways they didn't want
7:22
Speaker 6: to act.
7:23
Speaker 1: It was around this time that the family took the
7:26
Speaker 1: opportunity to leave their legal difficulties in Michigan behind them.
7:32
Speaker 3: After a fire at the Mansfield property in Michigan, the
7:36
Speaker 3: Mansfield clan purchased a five acre plot in spring Hill, Florida.
7:40
Speaker 3: It was surrounded by dense grove. It was rural, it
7:43
Speaker 3: was rustic, and it had several trailers on the property
7:47
Speaker 3: in different places.
7:49
Speaker 5: Property was overgrown, It had John Carr's refrigerator parts, all kinds.
7:55
Speaker 1: Of things on a local Hernando County prosecuted. Brown quickly
8:01
Speaker 1: became well acquainted with the family.
8:04
Speaker 5: During the course of my time knowing the Mansfield I
8:09
Speaker 5: prosecuted the dead and Billy and his brother Gary, and
8:12
Speaker 5: his brother Robbie and his brother Terry, Billy's family and
8:16
Speaker 5: another local family here come. We referred to them as
8:19
Speaker 5: the Hernando Cutty version of the Hatfields and the McCoys.
8:23
Speaker 5: They had an animusterity toward each other, and they feuded.
8:26
Speaker 5: They got at the fights. They beat each other up
8:28
Speaker 5: listed all things from each other.
8:30
Speaker 8: I think it would be fair to describe the household
8:35
Speaker 8: the family as utterly lawless. There's no doubt that that
8:41
Speaker 8: lawless atmosphere that they were living in would have shaped
8:46
Speaker 8: their relationship with the legal system on the outside of
8:51
Speaker 8: that house.
8:54
Speaker 1: Far from starting afresh in Florida, the Mansfield family continued
8:59
Speaker 1: their criminal suits. In fact, Billy Mansfield Junior was about
9:05
Speaker 1: to escalate with catastrophic consequences for any young woman who
9:12
Speaker 1: crossed his path. By nineteen seventy five, the entire Mansfield
9:19
Speaker 1: clan had settled on the sprawling plot of land, including
9:23
Speaker 1: Billy Mansfield Junior and his wife and children. That winter,
9:28
Speaker 1: at a campsite thirteen miles away in Brooksville, teenager Elaine
9:33
Speaker 1: Ziegler went missing.
9:38
Speaker 6: Elaine Ziegler was a fifteen year old girl on holiday
9:41
Speaker 6: with her mother and stepfather. They came from Ohio.
9:46
Speaker 5: Her family had been down here in nineteen seventy five
9:50
Speaker 5: for Christmas, staying at the Kiowa campground.
9:54
Speaker 1: Elaine had been looking forward to seeing in the new year,
9:58
Speaker 1: but around ten thirty that e evening, she was seen
10:01
Speaker 1: talking to a darkhaired man in his twenties with a
10:04
Speaker 1: beard and piercing eyes.
10:07
Speaker 5: She was seen getting into a blue light blue Ford
10:11
Speaker 5: Fairlane with him at Florida Plates and that was the
10:14
Speaker 5: last that she was seen.
10:18
Speaker 3: On New Year's Day in nineteen seventy six, her parents
10:21
Speaker 3: made a frantic phone call to the police telling them
10:25
Speaker 3: that Elaine is missing. The police respond I reaching out
10:31
Speaker 3: to the community and giving descriptions. There's a reward of
10:34
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars place for information leading to her recovery.
10:38
Speaker 5: I remember going missing. We did an extensive search, and
10:43
Speaker 5: we were concerned from the beginning that she had met
10:46
Speaker 5: with foul play.
10:50
Speaker 1: Jimmy Brown was at this time the deputy State attorney
10:54
Speaker 1: serving aer Nandoux County.
10:56
Speaker 5: The only thing that we had was a statement. He
10:59
Speaker 5: had very strike and they were described as mesmerizing, and
11:04
Speaker 5: so he was very striking appearance.
11:07
Speaker 1: Police officers canvassing members of the public for information, had
11:11
Speaker 1: come across a young man who matched the description in
11:14
Speaker 1: the vicinity of the campground.
11:16
Speaker 5: Showed him a picture and he said, oh, yeah, I
11:18
Speaker 5: talked to that girl. She's from Ohio and I saw
11:21
Speaker 5: her New Year's Eve and she was said she was
11:25
Speaker 5: leaving and heading back home to Ohile because she had
11:28
Speaker 5: people she needed to see and thinks she needed to do.
11:33
Speaker 5: Her parents swore she would not have left. She was happy,
11:38
Speaker 5: She wasn't having problems. She wasn't the type of person
11:43
Speaker 5: who would run away. They stuck around for I think
11:48
Speaker 5: it was like six weeks before they finally went home.
11:52
Speaker 5: They stuck around for a long time.
11:54
Speaker 1: Elaine Ziegler's disappearance remained unsolved. In early nineteen seventy six,
12:05
Speaker 1: Billy Mansfield Junior moved with his family back to Michigan,
12:09
Speaker 1: where he spent the next four years in and out
12:13
Speaker 1: of prison.
12:15
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy six, Mansfield Junior is arrested for being
12:18
Speaker 3: drunken disorderly and he's put in jail. Upon being released
12:22
Speaker 3: from the drunken disorderly arrest in October of nineteen seventy six,
12:27
Speaker 3: he's immediately re arrested for the rape of a sixteen
12:31
Speaker 3: year old Michigan girl. He pled guilty to a lesser charge,
12:34
Speaker 3: and he went back to jail. In nineteen seventy eight,
12:38
Speaker 3: Mansfield Junior is accused of sexual assault and the attempted
12:43
Speaker 3: rape of two other women.
12:47
Speaker 5: Was sentenced to one year because he flipped on his
12:50
Speaker 5: cellmate who had committed murder, and at.
12:53
Speaker 3: This point his wife uses the opportunity to file for
12:55
Speaker 3: divorce while he's away from her so so she can
12:58
Speaker 3: start the proceedings.
13:00
Speaker 5: He got out of nineteen eighty and came back down
13:04
Speaker 5: to Florida. He and his dad and his brother Gary
13:08
Speaker 5: were working doing refrigeration repair work and installation work heating
13:13
Speaker 5: in her conditioning things.
13:16
Speaker 1: Now a single man, in March nineteen eighty, twenty four
13:20
Speaker 1: year old Billy Mansfield Junior was back in the bosom
13:23
Speaker 1: of his dysfunctional family. Just a month later, a twenty
13:29
Speaker 1: one year old Temple woman went missing.
13:32
Speaker 3: Sandy Graham was out drinking and playing pool at a
13:36
Speaker 3: local establishment that she frequented.
13:40
Speaker 4: She was known to be this very outgoing, recently divorced
13:44
Speaker 4: young adult who Billy was comfortable speaking to different people.
13:49
Speaker 3: She started playing pool with a guy who was not
13:51
Speaker 3: a regular at the bar. She took a break and
13:53
Speaker 3: started talking to another guy at the bar, at which
13:56
Speaker 3: time the guy she was playing pool with, who people
13:59
Speaker 3: didn't seem to know at the bar.
14:00
Speaker 7: I'm very upset.
14:03
Speaker 4: Observers described the man's eyes as being very scary looking
14:07
Speaker 4: and piercing.
14:09
Speaker 6: The stranger through her car. Keys in the trash, but soundly. Nevertheless,
14:16
Speaker 6: was seen leaving the bar with this stranger. Well, her
14:20
Speaker 6: friends who'd been there with her absolutely expected to return
14:24
Speaker 6: because everything was there, her glasses were there, everything. So
14:29
Speaker 6: what happened, Well, the answer was no one knew. She
14:32
Speaker 6: literally disappeared into thin air.
14:35
Speaker 1: A month later, a sixteen year old girl called Teresa
14:38
Speaker 1: Fillingham moved to Temper.
14:41
Speaker 4: She had gone off the rail and her teens, had
14:43
Speaker 4: some difficult and complicated family relationships, but appeared to be
14:47
Speaker 4: starting over, trying to start fresh and clean sleep.
14:51
Speaker 1: In May nineteen eighty, Theresa left her foster home in
14:54
Speaker 1: Washington State to move in with her older sister Margaret.
14:59
Speaker 2: Somehow she can vinced me to take her to Florida
15:03
Speaker 2: with me, and so I brought her back with me
15:06
Speaker 2: and we rented a place. It was going to be
15:09
Speaker 2: a temporary place for a while, and she was going
15:12
Speaker 2: to get her a ged and get a job.
15:15
Speaker 1: Theresa had only been in Tampa for a few days
15:19
Speaker 1: when she vanished.
15:20
Speaker 2: She told me that evening that she had a job
15:23
Speaker 2: interview at University Mall in Tampa. This girlfriend hers was
15:29
Speaker 2: going to go after a job too, and they were
15:30
Speaker 2: going to go together. I said, okay, So I went
15:34
Speaker 2: to work that night. I got home probably about ten o'clock,
15:41
Speaker 2: and she still wasn't home, and she had never showed
15:45
Speaker 2: for the job interview.
15:46
Speaker 5: She didn't show up.
15:51
Speaker 4: And when Margaret told the law enforcement about it, because
15:54
Speaker 4: she had a history of running away, they thought maybe
15:56
Speaker 4: she was just running away again.
15:57
Speaker 2: In the course of things. Over the next few months,
16:00
Speaker 2: she still didn't turn up. All of her belongings were
16:03
Speaker 2: left behind intact, her suitcase, her clothing, any jewelry that
16:10
Speaker 2: she had.
16:11
Speaker 5: She never came back for it.
16:14
Speaker 2: The Tampa Police Department had me come out and identify
16:17
Speaker 2: some Jane does trying to go down and none of
16:20
Speaker 2: them were her. And then the case just got colder
16:24
Speaker 2: and colder and colder and colder, and she never came back.
16:36
Speaker 1: In June nineteen eighty, forty miles north of Tampa in
16:40
Speaker 1: Hernando County, William Mansfield Senior fell foul of the law
16:44
Speaker 1: once again, and this time on even more serious charges.
16:49
Speaker 3: By Mansfield Junior's father was charged with over forty counts
16:53
Speaker 3: of sexual abuse of children.
16:55
Speaker 5: We sent him away for fifty six years from sexually
16:59
Speaker 5: molesting children from age three to age fifteen multiple times.
17:05
Speaker 8: Billy's father was a serious and prolific sexual offender of
17:13
Speaker 8: the worst kind. He was a very manipulative individual as well,
17:19
Speaker 8: and he would manipulate women as some sex offenders do,
17:25
Speaker 8: to facilitate access to children. This is a lawless man
17:31
Speaker 8: with not a moral molecule in his body.
17:36
Speaker 1: Five days after William Mansfield Senior's arrest, a young woman
17:41
Speaker 1: was attacked in Brooksville, not far from the camping ground
17:45
Speaker 1: where Elaine Ziegler had gone missing five years before.
17:49
Speaker 3: Eighteen year old Pemoa Cheryl was walking home along a
17:52
Speaker 3: road in Brooksville, Florida, when a man pulled up next
17:55
Speaker 3: to her in a car, dragged her into the car,
17:57
Speaker 3: drove her to a nearby mobile home.
18:00
Speaker 4: Tried to four sex on her, and when she refused,
18:02
Speaker 4: he dragged her around the trailer by her hair, and she.
18:07
Speaker 6: Fought back in the most remarkable way. She attacked him
18:10
Speaker 6: a knife from the kitchen, and as she left the
18:15
Speaker 6: mobile home, she threw the knife at him.
18:18
Speaker 5: She ran immediately to the Sheriff's department, called in, reported
18:24
Speaker 5: what had happened, and gave an absolutely perfect description.
18:28
Speaker 1: The local law enforcement officers immediately recognized Pamda's description of
18:33
Speaker 1: a man they'd had plenty of dealings with before, and
18:36
Speaker 1: a warrant was issued for Billy Mansfield Junior's arrest.
18:41
Speaker 5: He found out that the warrant was in existence, and
18:44
Speaker 5: he and his brother Gary took off in a van
18:47
Speaker 5: hid the north, went on toward Ohio, through Illinois, down
18:50
Speaker 5: through Texas and Nevada, and wound up in Santa Cruz, California.
18:56
Speaker 7: Appears that he was trying to start a new life
18:58
Speaker 7: to try.
18:58
Speaker 4: To invade the police, was using a new alias, was
19:01
Speaker 4: trying to make himself look different and try to leave
19:04
Speaker 4: no trace of his crimes behind.
19:08
Speaker 3: The Mansfield family members settled at a campground in the Watsonville,
19:11
Speaker 3: California area, where Mansfield Junior got a job as a
19:16
Speaker 3: maintenance mayor at a local mushroom farm. He took the
19:19
Speaker 3: persona of a man named Tar. The local people there
19:22
Speaker 3: described him as creepy.
19:25
Speaker 1: Despite using an alias. The local sheriff's department got wind
19:29
Speaker 1: of Mansfield Junior and discovered the Hernando County arrest warrants
19:34
Speaker 1: on him.
19:35
Speaker 6: And yes, again that charm comes into play. He's arrested
19:41
Speaker 6: formally charged with the attack on Pamela but he gets bail.
19:48
Speaker 1: In November nineteen eighty, Billy Mansfield Junior was released and
19:53
Speaker 1: continued living at the campground in Watsonville along with his
19:56
Speaker 1: younger brother Gary. Two weeks later, another woman, Renee Sailing,
20:02
Speaker 1: had the grave misfortune to cross puths with the Mansfields.
20:07
Speaker 3: On the sixth of December nineteen eighty, Renee showed up
20:10
Speaker 3: at a bar in Watsonville, California, looking for her husband.
20:14
Speaker 4: Billy and his brother Gary happened to be there at
20:17
Speaker 4: the time. It was observed that Mansfield Junior came on
20:22
Speaker 4: very very strongly to another woman that was at the
20:24
Speaker 4: bar and work.
20:26
Speaker 1: Finding no success with a woman he'd been harassing, Mansfield
20:30
Speaker 1: Junior turned his attentions to twenty nine year old mother
20:33
Speaker 1: of three Renee.
20:35
Speaker 4: Eventually, Renee was seen walking towards the parking lot with
20:41
Speaker 4: Mansfield Junior.
20:45
Speaker 3: A short time later, Mansfield Junior comes back in the
20:48
Speaker 3: bar and talks to one of his associates, asks him
20:51
Speaker 3: if he wants to meet the chick. He gives him
20:53
Speaker 3: the keys to his car and tells him she's out
20:56
Speaker 3: in the car, at which point he tells him don't
20:58
Speaker 3: let her go, keep her locked up.
21:02
Speaker 4: This acquaintance did go to the car and look in,
21:05
Speaker 4: but because he couldn't understand Renee and she was intoxicated,
21:10
Speaker 4: he then left.
21:11
Speaker 3: Just hours later, on the seventh of December nineteen eighty,
21:14
Speaker 3: she was found dead.
21:18
Speaker 1: Renee Sailing was found face down in a drainage ditch
21:21
Speaker 1: at the side of Buena Vista Drive, a road that
21:24
Speaker 1: ran from the bar in Watsonville to the campground where
21:28
Speaker 1: Mansfield had been staying.
21:30
Speaker 5: Her pass had been pulled down to round her egg holds,
21:34
Speaker 5: her shirt was up over the top of her head.
21:37
Speaker 3: When a member of the public found her, they noticed
21:40
Speaker 3: a black corn wrapped so tightly around her neck that
21:42
Speaker 3: it was embedded in her flesh.
21:44
Speaker 7: She had obviously been strangled.
21:47
Speaker 1: There were many features of the crime scene that police
21:50
Speaker 1: would see repeated again and again, not least the cause
21:54
Speaker 1: of death.
21:55
Speaker 4: Manswell Junior's preferred method of killing was strangulation, and involves
22:01
Speaker 4: the person being very up close to you, your victim
22:03
Speaker 4: basically having their last breath being choked out of them
22:07
Speaker 4: by your bare hands. And individuals who kill in this
22:10
Speaker 4: way there's a sense of wanting to overpower their victims
22:14
Speaker 4: and maybe deriving some sense of pleasure from that and
22:18
Speaker 4: feeling more powerful than ever that you're taking a human life.
22:22
Speaker 1: A number of witnesses identified Billy Mansfield Junior as being
22:27
Speaker 1: the man Rene Sailing had left the bar with, but
22:30
Speaker 1: when police arrived to arrest the twenty four year old
22:33
Speaker 1: Mansfield was long gone.
22:36
Speaker 4: Mansfield Junior and his brother Gary, they fled the campsite
22:39
Speaker 4: that they were at, and they eventually found their way
22:41
Speaker 4: to Las Vegas to try to evade charges.
22:46
Speaker 5: I think it was four days later. He got caught
22:48
Speaker 5: in a place called one Amuccavea, when Omacca is not
22:52
Speaker 5: a very large place, and Billy and Gary were distinctive.
22:58
Speaker 5: Billy had a beard, Gary had a beard and long hair.
23:01
Speaker 5: Billy's was parted in the middle, and the police in
23:05
Speaker 5: Winnemaca got lucky and Solomon. Billy was charged with the
23:11
Speaker 5: murder in the first degree and Gary was charged with
23:14
Speaker 5: inaccessory to the murder.
23:16
Speaker 8: It appears that he did nothing really to hide his
23:22
Speaker 8: crimes or protect himself from being called. I'm not sure
23:28
Speaker 8: that he was taught that you tried to get away
23:30
Speaker 8: with your crimes, you just do them.
23:33
Speaker 1: Extradited back to California, the brothers were sent to jail
23:37
Speaker 1: in Santa Cruz to await trial for the murder of
23:40
Speaker 1: Renee Sailing. Then Mansfield Junior's former wife, Phillis, told Hernando
23:46
Speaker 1: County law enforcement an extraordinary story, one that had nothing
23:50
Speaker 1: to do with Renee.
23:54
Speaker 5: Once Billy was safely behind bars, Phillis came forward and
23:58
Speaker 5: contacted us here with information that she thought could be relevant.
24:05
Speaker 3: So in early nineteen seventy six, while they were back
24:08
Speaker 3: in Michigan for a short time, Mansfield Junior told his
24:11
Speaker 3: wife that he had killed a woman. Now the wife
24:16
Speaker 3: actually didn't believe this. She took it as a threat
24:18
Speaker 3: to her that he could be a killer if she
24:20
Speaker 3: ever left him.
24:23
Speaker 5: Then Doust some corroborating information found out that Billy frequent
24:26
Speaker 5: of the Kawa campground. Here, he partied quite a bit,
24:30
Speaker 5: and he liked the younger women.
24:34
Speaker 1: The campsite in Brooksville, Florida was the very place that
24:38
Speaker 1: fifteen year old Elaine Ziegler had vanished from on New
24:42
Speaker 1: Year's Eve nineteen seventy five. There was hope, at last
24:47
Speaker 1: that the mystery of the teenager's disappearance might be solved.
24:52
Speaker 1: In March nineteen eighty one, investigators finally had the go
24:56
Speaker 1: ahead to Act on the information Mansfield Junior's ex wife
25:00
Speaker 1: had given them.
25:02
Speaker 5: Our sixteenth of nineteen eighty one, got the search warrant
25:06
Speaker 5: somewhat different from an ordinary search warrant because of the
25:08
Speaker 5: nature of the property with the abandoned cars and the
25:12
Speaker 5: refrigerator parts and the air conditioning parts and all the
25:15
Speaker 5: junk that was there and just general trash. It was
25:19
Speaker 5: a lot of the ground was covered and there was
25:21
Speaker 5: a lot of vegetation on it too, So we commenteered
25:25
Speaker 5: units from the City of Brooksville Public Works Department, the
25:28
Speaker 5: Ernando County Public Worse Department. We had bulldozers, we had baccos.
25:34
Speaker 1: Excavating the five acre site looks set to be a
25:38
Speaker 1: daunting task, but within twenty four hours the first grizzly
25:43
Speaker 1: discovery was made.
25:46
Speaker 5: On March seventeenth, found the first bones. As they found
25:54
Speaker 5: the bones that we had a team forensic archaeology team
25:57
Speaker 5: from the University of South Florida that came and helped
26:01
Speaker 5: with the excavation. She had multiple blood force trauma to
26:06
Speaker 5: the head. There was also a wire electrical wire which
26:10
Speaker 5: was found in the vicinity of her neck and also
26:13
Speaker 5: her hands. She was found in a field position and
26:17
Speaker 5: the cause of death was strangulation and the immediate cause
26:22
Speaker 5: of death the blood force multiple blood force trauma.
26:26
Speaker 1: The discovery of a female body was not a surprise
26:30
Speaker 1: to the search team, but the forensic archaeologists soon realized
26:35
Speaker 1: this was not fifteen year old Elaine Ziegler.
26:39
Speaker 5: Ultimately, they recovered the skeleton full skeleton of a twenty
26:44
Speaker 5: two year old estimate twenty two year old white female.
26:49
Speaker 1: Detectives got to work and identifying the remains of the
26:52
Speaker 1: body uncovered at Billy Mansfield Junior's Florida home, while the
26:57
Speaker 1: twenty four year old remained in custody two thousand, eight
27:01
Speaker 1: hundred miles away in California for the murder of Rene Sailing.
27:06
Speaker 5: We had a facial reconstruction expert take the skull. Ultimately,
27:10
Speaker 5: they had to rebuild a face and then published the
27:13
Speaker 5: face throughout the country while.
27:15
Speaker 1: They waited to find out if a match would come
27:18
Speaker 1: back for their Jane Doe. Detectives trying to find out
27:21
Speaker 1: where else their suspected serial killer may have struck.
27:27
Speaker 6: The investigators in Florida circulate a picture of Billy Mansfield
27:32
Speaker 6: Junior to other police forces, and the police in Tampa
27:41
Speaker 6: recognized the picture and suggests that he looks very like
27:45
Speaker 6: the man they're searching for in the disappearance of Sandy.
27:49
Speaker 1: Gram Mansfield Junior was officially named as the main suspect
27:54
Speaker 1: in Sandy's disappearance, but the body found at his property
27:58
Speaker 1: on March the seventeenth was not hers, and investigators were
28:03
Speaker 1: only beginning to scratch the surface of Billy Mansfield Junior's
28:07
Speaker 1: career of murder. Nine days into their search, detectives made
28:12
Speaker 1: another discovery.
28:14
Speaker 5: Fairly close to the location of the first body and
28:18
Speaker 5: also shallow, and she was white female, age fifteen.
28:26
Speaker 3: This one is naked with a cord wrapped tightly around
28:30
Speaker 3: its neck in the fetal position.
28:32
Speaker 5: She had multiple plant force trauma to the head and
28:35
Speaker 5: had electrical wire near her head and her neck and
28:41
Speaker 5: her hands. She was ultimately identified by dental charts and
28:47
Speaker 5: by the jewelry that she was wearing. She was identified
28:51
Speaker 5: as the land Ziegler.
28:53
Speaker 1: The fifteen year old Ohian girl had been missing from
28:56
Speaker 1: the nearby campground for over five years.
29:00
Speaker 8: Her parents were told, and they had waited six years
29:04
Speaker 8: to find out what had happened to their daughter. And
29:09
Speaker 8: I think the really sad thing is that when they
29:11
Speaker 8: found out what did happen to her? It was that
29:13
Speaker 8: worst case scenario. It was the thing of their nightmares.
29:28
Speaker 5: The third victim we found was shortly after that. It
29:32
Speaker 5: was April third, as our car. She was about seventy
29:36
Speaker 5: five feet from the back door of the Mansfield house.
29:43
Speaker 1: The body looked to me that of a white female
29:46
Speaker 1: in her late teens.
29:48
Speaker 5: She had multiple blood forest trauma to the head and
29:52
Speaker 5: also had electrical heavy electrical wire around her neck and
29:56
Speaker 5: around her One of her wrists did a facial construction
30:00
Speaker 5: on her and published her paper newspaper and photograph them.
30:06
Speaker 5: No one came forward.
30:10
Speaker 1: The bodies of three young women had now been found
30:14
Speaker 1: on Billy Mansfield Junior's property. All had suffered violent deaths.
30:19
Speaker 1: While Mansfield Junior remained in jail thousands of miles away
30:23
Speaker 1: in California. The search continued, and on April the seventh,
30:28
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, a fourth and final set of remains
30:32
Speaker 1: was recovered from the Mansfield's Florida property.
30:37
Speaker 5: She likewise, was found strangled with wire and with a cord.
30:43
Speaker 5: She had her past full down to around the ankle
30:46
Speaker 5: area and her shirt pulled up over it.
30:50
Speaker 1: The woman had dark hair and was still wearing jewelry
30:54
Speaker 1: similar to that of missing twenty one year old Sandy Graham.
30:59
Speaker 6: The conective from Tampa goes to look at the remains
31:04
Speaker 6: and notices, for example, that Sandy Graham was wearing a
31:09
Speaker 6: very distinctive serpent bracelet. But he also notices that the
31:15
Speaker 6: remains that teeth are perfect, and Sandy Graham's teeth were perfect.
31:22
Speaker 5: She had last been seen at a bar down in
31:24
Speaker 5: Tampa with someone matching Billy's description, just like Rene's sailing
31:30
Speaker 5: was lessing alive, leaving a bar and set a cruiz
31:33
Speaker 5: with someone matching Billy's description.
31:40
Speaker 1: The search of the property concluded on April or seventeenth,
31:44
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, and investigators were able to tell two
31:48
Speaker 1: families what had happened to their loved ones.
31:52
Speaker 5: I've always felt that the worst thing in the world
31:55
Speaker 5: is not knowing. It is at the same time horrific experience,
32:01
Speaker 5: because you're telling someone that someone that was their family,
32:06
Speaker 5: someone they loved and has spent their lives with, has
32:10
Speaker 5: been murdered. But it does give a chance for closure.
32:15
Speaker 1: Two of the bodies found at the Mansfield family property
32:19
Speaker 1: remained unidentified. In July nineteen eighty one, twenty five year
32:25
Speaker 1: old Billy Mansfield Junior stood trial in Santa Cruz, California
32:30
Speaker 1: for the murder of Renee Sailing, but.
32:35
Speaker 3: That trial ended with jurors not being able to determine
32:38
Speaker 3: whether he was guilty or not because there was not
32:40
Speaker 3: enough evidence. But later that year, Mansfield Junior's brother, who
32:47
Speaker 3: is also facing charges in the murder as a necessary
32:49
Speaker 3: after the fact, agreed to testify against his brother in
32:52
Speaker 3: the murder.
32:54
Speaker 5: So we cut to stay deal with Gary that he
32:58
Speaker 5: would cooperate both in California and in Florida against his brother.
33:03
Speaker 5: An exchange for immunity from prosecution in Florida and an
33:07
Speaker 5: exchange for a charge speaks best in Santa Cruz.
33:13
Speaker 4: This is a family that would bond together when it
33:16
Speaker 4: was convenient, but when it came time for self preservation,
33:18
Speaker 4: they also did not have any reluctance in abandoning.
33:23
Speaker 7: One another just so that they could save themselves.
33:26
Speaker 1: In February nineteen eighty two, Billy Mansfield Junior was back
33:31
Speaker 1: in front of judge and jury, this time in Marin County, California.
33:37
Speaker 3: The retrial takes place, and this time it only takes
33:39
Speaker 3: two weeks.
33:41
Speaker 4: Mansfield Junior was sentenced to twenty five years to life
33:45
Speaker 4: for the murder of Renee Sailing.
33:48
Speaker 1: In May nineteen eighty two, Jimmy Brown brought Mansfield Junior
33:52
Speaker 1: back to Florida to face charges there. The six hour
33:56
Speaker 1: flight was the first time the prosecutor had properly to
34:00
Speaker 1: the convicted killer.
34:03
Speaker 5: He came across as friendly. He was able to strike
34:06
Speaker 5: up conversations with people. It just struck me that he'd
34:10
Speaker 5: already been sentenced to life in prison for murder on
34:13
Speaker 5: Renee Sailing. He was indicted for four murders here in
34:18
Speaker 5: Hernando County, and it was like none of it was real,
34:22
Speaker 5: None of it bothered him at all.
34:25
Speaker 1: Through the summer of nineteen eighty two, prosecutors in Hernando
34:30
Speaker 1: County prepared to put Billy Mansfield Junior on trial for
34:34
Speaker 1: the murders of Elane Ziegler, Sandy Graham, and the two
34:38
Speaker 1: unidentified women whose remains had been found on his property.
34:43
Speaker 1: The killer faced the stiffest of penalties if found guilty.
34:49
Speaker 5: Florida's statute for first three murder provided for two penalties,
34:53
Speaker 5: either death by electrocution or life in prison, but eligible
34:57
Speaker 5: for parole after serving twenty five years of the sentence.
35:01
Speaker 5: My feeling was if at one in time, with everything
35:04
Speaker 5: we knew about Billy, that he should never be in
35:07
Speaker 5: a position where he could be released ever. And Billy
35:12
Speaker 5: was still quite young at the time, twenty six. I
35:16
Speaker 5: think Billy getting out of prison and being able to
35:26
Speaker 5: go back and hurt other people was just something I
35:29
Speaker 5: could not bear thought of.
35:35
Speaker 3: In August nineteen eighty two, on the eve of trial,
35:38
Speaker 3: Mansfield Junior, in order to avoid the death penalty in Florida,
35:41
Speaker 3: decided to plead guilty to the murder of the four
35:44
Speaker 3: victims found on the Mansfield property.
35:48
Speaker 1: Mansfield also pleaded guilty to snatching and attacking Pamelaed Cheryl,
35:53
Speaker 1: the teen he'd taken to his mobile home near Brooksville
35:56
Speaker 1: in nineteen.
35:57
Speaker 3: Eighty Based on his plea, Mansfield was sentenced to four
36:01
Speaker 3: life sentences plus five years for the kidnap and attempted
36:05
Speaker 3: rape of Pamela Cherro. Mansfield Junior was then returned to
36:09
Speaker 3: California to serve out his remaining sentence in the murder
36:13
Speaker 3: of Renee. Billy.
36:17
Speaker 1: Mansfield Junior remains incarcerated at the California Healthcare Facility in Stockton.
36:24
Speaker 1: He became eligible for parole there in nineteen ninety seven,
36:28
Speaker 1: but has not yet met the conditions that would allow
36:31
Speaker 1: him to be released, and is perhaps unlikely ever to
36:36
Speaker 1: do so.
36:38
Speaker 4: This is somebody who you can't say is likely to
36:42
Speaker 4: be rehabilitated, because it doesn't really seem like he even
36:45
Speaker 4: cares that he took the lives of these people.
36:49
Speaker 8: He was cold and relentless and could have at any
36:55
Speaker 8: minute committed another murder.
36:58
Speaker 1: It is believed that man Field's killing spree did not
37:02
Speaker 1: begin or end with the five women whose murders he'd
37:05
Speaker 1: been convicted of. After his sentencing in nineteen eighty two,
37:10
Speaker 1: Mansfield Junior approached prosecutors with a deal.
37:14
Speaker 5: He didn't like the idea that his father was in
37:17
Speaker 5: prison for fifty six years, and he offered that if
37:20
Speaker 5: we would let his dad out of prison, and if
37:23
Speaker 5: we would give him immunity in each of the states involved,
37:27
Speaker 5: that he would provide details so the families of about
37:31
Speaker 5: eighty victims would have closure, which of course we couldn't do,
37:38
Speaker 5: so we still don't know. We do know that they
37:41
Speaker 5: stopped in Kawi Campgrounds all the way from here to
37:45
Speaker 5: Santa Cruz, and Kwi Campgrounds were Billy's favorite hunting ground.
37:52
Speaker 5: If you will for victims.
38:02
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, thirty eight years after Mansfield's Florida convictions,
38:07
Speaker 1: there was a major breakthrough in identifying one of the
38:11
Speaker 1: two unnamed bodies found buried on the Mansfield property.
38:16
Speaker 6: Advances of DNA technology meant that they could extract DNA
38:19
Speaker 6: from the remains they discovered, and then they gave that
38:23
Speaker 6: DNA to a forensic genealogists who constructed a family tree.
38:29
Speaker 1: The forensic genealogist found someone on an online database whose
38:34
Speaker 1: DNA profile suggested they were related to the unnamed teenager.
38:39
Speaker 1: The expert then used this to start building the family
38:43
Speaker 1: tree of this individual, which led to the realization there
38:47
Speaker 1: was a young woman in the family whose birth was registered,
38:51
Speaker 1: but no further records existed for her. The information was
38:56
Speaker 1: handed to a cold case detective in Hernando County, Florida,
39:00
Speaker 1: who called Margaret John's with a question.
39:04
Speaker 2: Do you have a sister that I'm missing in nineteen eighty?
39:07
Speaker 3: And I.
39:08
Speaker 2: Was speechless. I couldn't I could hardly answer him.
39:12
Speaker 3: I said.
39:13
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, I think that we have identified your
39:17
Speaker 2: sister who went missing in Tampa in nineteen eighty.
39:23
Speaker 1: Margaret gave a DNA sample and six weeks later, the
39:27
Speaker 1: remains were positively identified as belonging to her younger sister,
39:32
Speaker 1: Teresa filling In. Sixteen year old Teresa had disappeared in
39:36
Speaker 1: Tampa some forty one years earlier, just after moving in
39:41
Speaker 1: with Margaret.
39:43
Speaker 5: I felt guilty.
39:44
Speaker 2: I took her away from where she was safe and
39:46
Speaker 2: sound in Florida with me. I failed to protect her
39:52
Speaker 2: or take care of her or watch over her, and
39:54
Speaker 2: so over the years I just blamed myself and nothing
40:03
Speaker 2: ever happened until the day I got the phone call
40:07
Speaker 2: saying that they may have identified her.
40:13
Speaker 5: So it took a year just to get the.
40:17
Speaker 2: Once the positive identification happened, just to get her remains back,
40:23
Speaker 2: and that was it.
40:25
Speaker 5: That's the end of it.
40:27
Speaker 2: So now I have it.
40:34
Speaker 8: Knowing is something you can then process and deal with.
40:39
Speaker 8: Not Knowing is an emptiness, a chasm, a black hole
40:45
Speaker 8: inside you, of just worrying about all of the different scenarios.
40:50
Speaker 8: Not knowing, I think for people is much worse than
40:54
Speaker 8: anything they might come to know.
40:59
Speaker 1: The identification of Teresa Fillingim offers hope the remains of
41:04
Speaker 1: Billy Mansfield Junior's final unidentified victim may one day be
41:09
Speaker 1: returned to her family.
41:11
Speaker 2: My message to people who do have loved ones still missing,
41:15
Speaker 2: maybe as don't give up.
41:18
Speaker 5: Anything's possible.
41:23
Speaker 1: As with so many serial killers, the question of whether
41:26
Speaker 1: Billy Mansfield Junior was born evil or was the product
41:30
Speaker 1: of his violent, dysfunctional upbringing may never be fully answered,
41:35
Speaker 1: but few would disagree with investigators who described him as
41:39
Speaker 1: a man without a soul, a remorseless, calculating killer who
41:44
Speaker 1: placed no value on the lives he took, and as
41:48
Speaker 1: revelations about his crimes continue to this day, Mansfield will
41:53
Speaker 1: forever be remembered as one of the world's most evil killers.