Latest / The Mind of a Man / How Every Serial Killer Was Caught

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How Every Serial Killer Was Caught · The Mind of a Man

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: John Wayne Gacy's reputation as a respected member of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: community and part-time clown was about to crumble and lead
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: to one of the darkest discoveries in American history. In
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: December 1978, Elizabeth Piest immediately knew something was wrong. Her
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: 15-year-old son, Robert, had gone out to talk to a
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: local businessman about a summer job. Robert never came home.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: The businessman's name was John Wayne Gacy. The police tracked
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: down Gacy quickly, and investigators started digging and discovered he'd
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: served time in Iowa for attacking a teenage boy. They
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  Speaker 1: also learned that several missing young men in the area
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  Speaker 1: had last been seen heading toward Gacy or working for him.
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  Speaker 1: So a judge approved a search warrant for Gacy's home. Inside,
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  Speaker 1: detectives found clothing that didn't belong to him, identification belonging
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  Speaker 1: to other young men, and a strange smell seeping from
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  Speaker 1: the crawlspace. That wasn't enough for an arrest, so they
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  Speaker 1: put him under 24-hour surveillance, while they built their case
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and got another warrant. This time what they found was
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: horror beyond imagination. Following the smell, they looked more closely
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: into that crawlspace. There, they discovered human remains. Then more remains,
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  Speaker 1: and more after that. Eventually, they would recover 29 bodies
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  Speaker 1: from the home. Gacy was arrested on December 22, 1978.
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  Speaker 1: He eventually confessed, though he tried to claim an alter
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: ego named Jack had committed the crimes. He also later
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  Speaker 1: drew maps of where bodies were buried in his crawlspace,
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  Speaker 1: numbering them like a grotesque inventory. The trial was a
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  Speaker 1: media circus, perfect for a clown like Gacy. He was
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  Speaker 1: found guilty and sentenced to the ultimate punishment. Jeffrey Dahmer's
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  Speaker 1: reign of terror ended not through brilliant detective work, but
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: because one man refused to have his life taken. On
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: July 22, 1991, around midnight in Milwaukee, two police officers
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  Speaker 1: spotted a man running down the street with handcuffs dangling
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  Speaker 1: from his wrist. Tracy Edwards was frantic, terrified, and begging
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  Speaker 1: for help. He said a freak had tried to restrain
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  Speaker 1: him in a nearby apartment. Edwards led the officers to
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  Speaker 1: the location. Apartment 213. A calm, polite, blonde man answered
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  Speaker 1: the door. Jeffrey Dahmer. He tried to explain the situation
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: away as a misunderstanding between drinking buddies. Okay, fine, but
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  Speaker 1: the officers needed that key to the handcuffs, so they
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  Speaker 1: stepped inside. As one officer walked toward the bedroom, he
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  Speaker 1: noticed a number of Polaroid photographs scattered in an open drawer.
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  Speaker 1: The photos showed Dahmer's victims in various stages of his crimes.
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  Speaker 1: The officer froze, then said to his partner, These are
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  Speaker 1: for real. Dahmer realized it was over. He tried to
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  Speaker 1: fight the officers, but wasn't used to attacking sober victims,
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  Speaker 1: so they handily pinned him down. This time, Dahmer was
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  Speaker 1: the one in handcuffs. What they found next was beyond comprehension.
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  Speaker 1: A victim's head in the refrigerator. Three more in the freezer.
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  Speaker 1: Various other body parts stored in a filing cabinet. Photographs
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  Speaker 1: documented everything. Dahmer initially denied it all, but began confessing
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: after several hours of interrogation once detectives confronted him with
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the mountain of evidence. For someone so obsessed with preserving things,
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  Speaker 1: he never expected the chilling truth would thaw that day.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: In the summer of 1985, the Night Stalker was breaking
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  Speaker 1: into homes in the dead of night, attacking people in
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  Speaker 1: their beds with brutal, random violence. The attacks had no pattern,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: different neighborhoods, different types of victims, different methods. The randomness
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: made him nearly impossible for police and the public to predict. Then,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: detectives caught a break. They spotted the same shoe print
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  Speaker 1: at multiple crime scenes. This confirmed they were after one attacker.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Then they caught another break, this time bigger. At one
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  Speaker 1: crime scene, investigators found a single fingerprint on a car
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  Speaker 1: that the perpetrator had stolen. That print was matched to
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  Speaker 1: Richard Ramirez, a 25-year-old drifter with a record. For the
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  Speaker 1: first time, investigators had a face and a name. Police
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  Speaker 1: released Ramirez's mugshot to the media on August 30th. His
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  Speaker 1: photo was plastered on the front of every newspaper in California.
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  Speaker 1: That same morning, Ramirez was in Arizona, completely unaware he'd
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  Speaker 1: been identified back in Cali. When he took a Greyhound
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  Speaker 1: bus back home and got off in East LA, he
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  Speaker 1: saw his own face staring back at him from a
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  Speaker 1: newspaper rack. El Matón, the Spanish-language newspaper read, The Killer.
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  Speaker 1: Ramirez panicked and ran. Ramirez jumped a fence into someone's
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  Speaker 1: backyard and then tried to drag a woman out of
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  Speaker 1: her car. Her husband didn't approve and went after Ramirez
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  Speaker 1: with a metal bar. He ran again. He tried to
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  Speaker 1: steal another car, but the owner grabbed him and they fought.
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  Speaker 1: Ramirez broke free and ran into a nearby neighborhood. Now
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  Speaker 1: people were shouting, pointing, and chasing. El Matón ran again.
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  Speaker 1: More neighbors joined in the chase. One man grabbed Ramirez
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  Speaker 1: and held him. Others piled on, hitting him with pipes, fists,
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  Speaker 1: whatever they had. By the time police arrived just minutes later,
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  Speaker 1: an angry mob had the Night Stalker pinned to the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Deputies had to protect Ramirez from being torn apart. Save me,
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  Speaker 1: save me! The Night Stalker was screaming as police dragged
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  Speaker 1: him away and put him in jail for the rest
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  Speaker 1: of his life. His nights of stalking had come to
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  Speaker 1: an end. For years, Eileen Wuornos trusted no one, until
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: she trusted the wrong person. And that mistake was what
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  Speaker 1: finally brought her down. In 1990, bodies kept appearing along
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  Speaker 1: Florida highways. Six middle-aged men, all taken out with a. 22,
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  Speaker 1: all found in the woods. Their cars, gone. Their wallets, empty. Then,
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  Speaker 1: investigators got the break they needed. Police found the car
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  Speaker 1: of one of the victims wrecked and abandoned, with a
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  Speaker 1: fingerprint on the wheel and a palm print inside. The
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  Speaker 1: prints led them to Eileen Wuornos, a 34-year-old pleasure worker,
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  Speaker 1: and her trusted friend, Tyria Moore. Then came another break.
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  Speaker 1: Detectives noticed something odd when looking into pawn shop records.
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  Speaker 1: Florida law required thumbprints for every transaction. The items belonging
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  Speaker 1: to victims kept showing up. pawned by two women using
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  Speaker 1: fake names. But the thumbprints required for pawn shop transactions?
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  Speaker 1: Those were real. The prints led them to Eileen Wuornos. Moore,
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  Speaker 1: terrified she'd go to prison for something she didn't do,
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  Speaker 1: and overwhelmed by the whole situation, eventually agreed to cooperate
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  Speaker 1: with the police. She called Eileen repeatedly, asking her to
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  Speaker 1: come clean. Each call was recorded. Then, finally, on January 9, 1991,
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  Speaker 1: after days of emotional pressure, Wuornos broke. She told Moore
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  Speaker 1: she would confess so Moore wouldn't be blamed. Hours later,
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  Speaker 1: police arrested Wuornos at the Last Resort Bar in Volusia County.
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  Speaker 1: She didn't resist or try to run. She simply said
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  Speaker 1: she was ready to talk. And she did, describing what
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  Speaker 1: happened during each encounter in startling detail. talking herself right
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  Speaker 1: into a jail cell. Bodies started appearing in 1982 along
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  Speaker 1: the Green River near Seattle. By 1984, the count was
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  Speaker 1: over a dozen and climbing. Police knew they had a
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  Speaker 1: serial offender and interviewed hundreds of men, but no solid leads,
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  Speaker 1: no witnesses, nothing. But one name kept coming back, Gary Ridgway.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Ridgway seemed ordinary, quiet, married, the kind of man neighbors
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  Speaker 1: waved to without thinking twice. When investigators first spoke with
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: him in 1983, he played the part perfectly. Polite, calm,
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  Speaker 1: even helpful. He even agreed to take a polygraph, passed it,
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  Speaker 1: and walked away. But the Green River Task Force didn't
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  Speaker 1: forget him. Years passed. Then, in the early 2000s, technology
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  Speaker 1: finally caught up. DNA profiling advanced enough for cold cases
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  Speaker 1: to be retested, so the Washington State Crime Lab took
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  Speaker 1: evidence from several Green River victims and ran it through
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  Speaker 1: new DNA analysis. The results pointed straight to one man,
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  Speaker 1: Gary Ridgway. On November 30, 2001, detectives pulled Ridgway over
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  Speaker 1: outside the truck plant where he worked. He didn't run, fight,
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  Speaker 1: or even look surprised. When asked if he knew why
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  Speaker 1: he was being arrested, Ridgway simply said, you got me
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: for the girls. Forensic DNA linked him to four victims immediately.
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  Speaker 1: Fibers from his workplace connected him to others. Everything investigators
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  Speaker 1: spent decades chasing finally locked into place. Ridgway confessed to
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  Speaker 1: taking dozens of lives, but really his DNA had already
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: done most of the talking. In the summer of 1977,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: New York was living in fear. A man calling himself
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  Speaker 1: the Son of Sam was moving through quiet boroughs at night,
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  Speaker 1: targeting couples in parked cars and leaving taunting notes for police.
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  Speaker 1: Detectives had almost nothing, no reliable identification and no forensic
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  Speaker 1: evidence solid enough to point to. a suspect. But then
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a parking ticket changed everything. On July 31st, the son
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  Speaker 1: of Sam struck again, this time in Brooklyn. A witness
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  Speaker 1: had seen a creepy guy angrily ripping a parking ticket
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  Speaker 1: off his car just blocks from the crime days earlier.
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  Speaker 1: and when she heard bang-bangs on the 31st, she realized
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  Speaker 1: the locations matched. Her statement sent detectives searching traffic records
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  Speaker 1: for every parking ticket issued near that time and place,
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  Speaker 1: and they found a name, David Berkowitz. Officers quietly waited
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  Speaker 1: outside his apartment. When Berkowitz walked out of his building
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  Speaker 1: on August 10, 1977, detectives approached with their weapons drawn.
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  Speaker 1: Berkowitz smirked, almost like he had been expecting it, and said, Well,
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  Speaker 1: you got me. What took you so long? Inside his car,
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  Speaker 1: police found a duffel bag containing a weapon, maps, and
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  Speaker 1: letters written in the same style as the Son of
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  Speaker 1: Sam notes. At the station, Berkowitz confessed almost immediately. He
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  Speaker 1: claimed he was being pressured by a supernatural presence, and
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  Speaker 1: a voice coming from his neighbor's dog was giving him
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  Speaker 1: sinister commands from the demon world. Sounds pretty crazy, huh? Well,
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  Speaker 1: Berkowitz did later admit to making it all up to
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  Speaker 1: appear mentally unstable. Woof. The first time Ed Kemper confessed,
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  Speaker 1: nobody believed him. For months in 1972 and 73, young
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  Speaker 1: women kept disappearing around Santa Cruz, California. Hitchhiking college students
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  Speaker 1: were vanishing without a trace. Despite multiple bodies being found,
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  Speaker 1: detectives had no suspect, no surviving victims, and no idea
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  Speaker 1: who the co-ed killer was. The case was going cold
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  Speaker 1: and investigators were grasping for leads. Then, everything changed on
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  Speaker 1: April 23, 1973. In a way no one expected. The
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  Speaker 1: police received a call from a man claiming he wanted
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  Speaker 1: to turn himself in. The voice on the line said,
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  Speaker 1: I'm Ed Kemper. I've done some terrible things. The officer
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  Speaker 1: on the phone thought it was a prank. Kemper was
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  Speaker 1: friendly with local cops. He'd hung out at a police
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  Speaker 1: bar and talked shop with them about ongoing cases. They
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  Speaker 1: knew him as a big, gentle guy interested in law enforcement.
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  Speaker 1: They had no idea that Big Ed was the co-ed killer.
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  Speaker 1: Kemper had to call back multiple times, insisting, practically begging
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  Speaker 1: them to arrest him. Finally, detectives realized the truth. Kemper
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  Speaker 1: wasn't joking. When they finally confronted him in person, Kemper
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  Speaker 1: didn't resist. He didn't demand a lawyer and didn't try
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  Speaker 1: to negotiate. He simply described everything, step by step, as
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  Speaker 1: if he'd been waiting for someone to listen. And now,
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  Speaker 1: they were all ears. Dennis Rader got away with his
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  Speaker 1: crimes for 31 years. Then his ego wrote a check
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  Speaker 1: his technology skills couldn't cash. Between 1974 and 1991, someone
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  Speaker 1: was terrorizing Wichita, Kansas. Ten people were gone, including four
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  Speaker 1: members of one family. The assailant sent taunting letters to
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  Speaker 1: police and newspapers describing his crimes in detail, calling himself BTK.
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  Speaker 1: Then in 1991, he just stopped, went silent. The case
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  Speaker 1: went cold. Then suddenly in 2004, after over a decade
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  Speaker 1: of silence, Rader made a mistake that destroyed everything for him.
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  Speaker 1: It began when a local newspaper ran a story questioning
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: whether BTK was even still alive. Rader couldn't resist the attention.
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  Speaker 1: He took it personally, almost like a challenge. So he
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  Speaker 1: wrote back. He began sending packages again. Letters, puzzles, maps, souvenirs.
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  Speaker 1: Police couldn't track him. He was careful, cautious, and old school.
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  Speaker 1: He left no fingerprints, no DNA, nothing traceable. Investigators feared
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  Speaker 1: Wichita's most notorious predator was about to start again. Then
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Rader asked the question that brought him down. In one letter,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: he asked detectives, can a floppy disk be traced? Be honest. Police,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: desperate to keep him talking, lied and said, no, it
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  Speaker 1: would be safe. It wasn't. Not sure why he would
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: ask the people trying to put him in jail for
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the past three decades. Anyway, on February 16th, 2005. BTK
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  Speaker 1: sent a purple Memorex floppy disk to a local TV station.
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  Speaker 1: The cybercrime's unit cracked it within hours. Hidden in the
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  Speaker 1: disk's metadata was a name, Dennis, and a location, Christ
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  Speaker 1: Lutheran Church, Park City, Kansas. A quick search told investigators
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: everything they needed to know. The church council president was
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: a man named Dennis Rader. Married, two kids, a Boy
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Scout leader. Completely ordinary. Police quietly began surveillance. His daughter
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: had years earlier submitted a medical DNA sample, and investigators
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: were able to obtain a comparison from the lab. It
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: matched biological evidence from old BTK cases. That was it.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: BTK wasn't a ghost. He was the church guy down
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the street, and he had turned himself in with a
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: floppy disk. On February 25, 2005, police pulled Rader over
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: while he was heading home for lunch. When detectives arrested
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: him for BTK, Rader sighed, paused, and said, Samuel Little
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: was the most prolific serial killer in American history, and
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: he almost got away with it. Almost. For decades, Samuel
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Little drifted across the country like a ghost. state to state,
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  Speaker 1: town to town, never staying long enough for police to
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  Speaker 1: connect the dots. He targeted people who lived on society's margins,
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  Speaker 1: and he counted on the fact that no one would
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: link his crimes together. For nearly 40 years, that strategy worked.
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  Speaker 1: Everything changed in 2012, when Little was arrested on a
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: warrant for illegal substances. Nothing about his arrest seemed too unusual,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: but when authorities ran his DNA through the system, it
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: hit on three unsolved cases from Los Angeles in the 1980s.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Detectives interrogated him, but he denied everything. Still, the DNA
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: was undeniable. And while awaiting trial in California, investigators around
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the country began re-examining cold cases. His travel history matched
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: dozens of unexplained disappearances. Old police sketches, witness notes, and
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: morgue photographs began lining up with his movements. The pattern
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: was unmistakable. Eventually, Little began to confess, not to three cases,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: not to ten, but dozens, describing victims, locations, cars, clothing, weather,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: even the angle of streetlights decades earlier. His memory was
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: disturbingly precise. Over months of interviews, he admitted to taking
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: more than 90 lives. In the end, it turned out
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: that Little was the biggest killer in U.S. history. Ted
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Bundy thought he was untouchable. He was wrong. It all
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: started to fall apart for him on an August night
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: in 1975, when a Utah Highway Patrol officer pulled over
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: a tan VW Beetle with its lights off, driving suspiciously
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: through a residential area. Inside was a clean-cut, charming man
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: named Ted Bundy, along with what looked like a crime kit, handcuffs, rope, crowbar,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: ice pick, and ski mask. Bundy tried to play it cool,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: but was still taken in for possession of burglary tools.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: It was then that investigators became concerned with something much
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: more chilling than those initial charges. Bundy's tan VW Beetle
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: matched witness descriptions from multiple missing women cases across multiple states.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Then came a huge breakthrough. Enter Carol Duranche. The year before,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: a man claiming to be a cop tried to take
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: her against her will from a shopping mall parking lot.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: She fought like hell and escaped. When police brought her
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: in for a live lineup, she pointed straight at Bundy.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: He was convicted of that crime in 1976 and sentenced
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to prison. Now the word was out on Bundy. He
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: could now be tied to a much more serious case
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: in Colorado through a combination of witness sightings, timeline evidence,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: and his travel pattern. So he was extradited to Colorado.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And here's where things get really wild. While acting as
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: his own lawyer, he literally jumped out of a courthouse
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  Speaker 1: window and escaped. He was free for six days before
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: being recaptured. Six months later, he did it again. Better
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: this time. Bundy crawled through a light fixture in his
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: cell ceiling and walked out the front door of the jail.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: He made it all the way to Florida. And Florida
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: is where everything unraveled. Bundy just couldn't help himself. He
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: attacked a sorority house in Tallahassee, but he was losing control,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: getting sloppy. A few weeks later, a Pensacola cop spotted
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a suspicious VW Bug, this time orange. Man, Bundy really
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: liked those Volkswagens, didn't he? When the police pulled over
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the car, Bundy fought, kicking, punching, trying to run, but
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: this time his escape was less successful. He gave a
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: fake name, but his fingerprints told the truth, and the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: FBI's most wanted was finally in handcuffs, again. Bundy defended
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: himself at trial like it was a performance. The jury
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't impressed. Ted Bundy's final escape was on January 24, 1989,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: when he met Old Sparky at Florida State Prison. So
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: which of these do you think wanted to get caught?
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Ed Kemper, clearly. But do you think there was a
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: part of the others that wanted to get caught to
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: stop them and face justice for their crimes? Or were
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: they all just evil to the core? Tell us what
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: you think in the comments, and if you're still around,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: give us a like, and subscribe to the channel to
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: get notified about more videos like this in the future.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Thanks for watching. See you next time.