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Maury Travis - The Videotape Killer · Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Between the year two thousand and two thousand and two,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: women began turning up dead across Missouri and Illinois. Many
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: of them were strangled and discarded along roadsides and in
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: isolated stretches all surrounding Saint Louis. Investigators slowly began to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: suspect that the murders were connected, but even with DNA
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: left behind, the man responsible remained unidentified as the cases
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: piled up and eventually began to go cold. Then, when
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: a local newspaper received a letter from someone claiming seventeen
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: victims along with the roadmap, it would lead police towards
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: another body. But what the killer didn't know was he
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: overlooked one crucial piece of evidence, and this map also
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: led investigators write to his front door. This is the
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: story of Maury Travis, the man known as the videotape killer.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicken
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: and Grim, a true crime podcast.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: The following material more audience listener dis question.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: It's quite interesting, how I would say, fifty percent of
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: the time when we sit down to record a podcast,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: we bitch at each other.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Before we weren't bitching at each other.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: You're a bitching about who has more shit in this.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Tiny Okay, Yeah, I forgot that we were bitching about that.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I think it's because it's a moment where we're both
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: just sitting down facing each other, about to start something,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: but then we have other things to get off our
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: chest before we have to start said something.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're about to start something, so we're like, let's
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: fucking start thing.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Go.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I think, honestly, I think you're onto something. I think
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the fact that we're like putting our phones down, we're
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: not working, we're sitting down interacting. Right before we start,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: we do mic checks, get audio going, so we get chatting,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: and yeah, it's.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Just the opportunity, bitch, I have something to discuss with you.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, by the fucking way, remember yesterday that sort of stuff.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we were trying to decide who had more storage
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: in a tiny home. And I think it's been but
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: he seems to think it's me.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: No, few hands down, it's you.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I have a lot of stuff.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: You have a lot of stuff, and you just think
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: it's me. You do have a lot of stuff so
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: much it's absurd. Anyways, I don't anyway down.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: This route, Okay, in the intro, did you say that
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: he that the person responsible for this handed a map.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: To the police? Correct?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Holy okay, I did hear that right?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: You did hear that right.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: It's freaking wild.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea of handing a map directly to police
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: is insane. But we'll get into the details. Yeah, but
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: it's almost like us handing a map to you on
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: how you can sign up over on Patreon, except you
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: won't get convicted, but you will get behind the scenes access,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: exclusive content and all that really cool things that come
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: along with it. Just like Koey Marrin, did ash cr
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and Kimberly Baal, they all signed up on Patreon and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: they're getting that good, good, behind the scenes awesome.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: And yeah, it's almost the end of the month. Are
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: you aware?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I am very aware, though I have not been researching
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: or anything yet, it's on my radar. I'm probably going
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: to start that this evening. Awesome, I know.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we maybe should pick a case that is recommended.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's a good idea. We'll we'll head over onto
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Patreon today and see what comes up. Maybe they can
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: do a little pole on between because we have like
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: a request chat. We'll pull a couple from that and
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: put up a pole and see what people want to hear.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that'd be a great idea.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: It's a good, good idea. I'm going to put you
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: in charge of that. Figure out my next case for me,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: so I don't have to do it.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Oh my word, as he's flex and like, yeah, I'm
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: going to just tell you to do that.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Flex. I was stretching. Whatever you want to see me flex.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: You should know when I'm flexing.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I can do that. But I think we should
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: get into this case because I'm kind of intrigued.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: You don't want to see more pipes, more flexing of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the pipes. Sure, I'll just be over here flexing the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: entire time I'm reading this, and Nicole will be gawking
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: at me. We'll save that for later. That's in the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: after show or whatever was after. That's the after show,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the behind the scenes. We're about to promote our OnlyFans,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: just kidding, just this was a joke that was well, yeah, anyways,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: let's get on with the case. On July thirty first,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: in the year two thousand, the body of sixty one
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: year old Mary Shields was found in East Saint Louis, Illinois.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: She had been strangled to death and left in tall
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: weeds near the end of Pinot Avenue, close to twentieth Street. Now, Unfortunately,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: like far too many victims, Mary Shields was simply another
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: woman found dead in an area already struggling with violent
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: crime and life on the edges of society. Some accounts
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: described her as homeless at times and dealing with heavy
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: alcohol use, but she was not known to be involved
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: in sex work. Then, on March twenty fourth, two thousand
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: and one, two hundred and thirty six days later, another
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: young woman was found dead in southern Illinois. Cassandra Walker
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: was just nineteen years old. Her uncle described her as
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: a good kid who'd briefly fallen into the wrong path,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: but there is relatively little in available about her life
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: before she passed away. Cassandra's body was found near Nashville,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: roughly fifty miles southeast of East Saint Louis. The location
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: placed her away from Saint Louis and the communities immediately
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: across the Mississippi River, giving investigators little reason at the
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: time to know that her death might belong to something larger. Now,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Cassandra had been strangled and investigators determined that her body
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: had been taken to the area and then left there
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: after her death. Then after her there was a third victim,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Alicia Greenwad. Alicia was thirty four years old and a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: mother of two. She had struggled with cocaine addiction and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: had been involved in sex work around North Broadway in
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Saint Louis and the area that was commonly known as
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the Stroll. After spending some time in jail, Alisia had
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: found support through Reverend Anuka Mongoozie, who worked with women
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: dealing with substance use problems and gave Alicia a place
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to stay. Alicia reportedly became close to Mongoozie and sometimes
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: called her mom. Even Mongoozie described her as someone who
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: knew the life she was living was actually hurting her,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: but she didn't know how to escape it. Then, on
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the night of March thirty first, two thousand and one,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Alicia called Mongoozie from the home of a man that
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: she had just met. She told the reverend that she
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: intended to stay there overnight, and even handed the telephone
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: to the man to speak for a moment. Mongozie told
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: him that people cared very much so about Alicia and
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: they would come looking for if she didn't return. The
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: man reassured her that Alicia was safe. Then, about nine
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: hours later, on April first, Alicia Greenwad's partially clothed body
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: was found in Washington Park, Illinois, just north of East
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Saint Louis. Investigators determined that she had been killed somewhere
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: else and brought to the location afterwards. Her cause of
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: death was strangulation. There were figature marks around her wrists
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and ankles suggesting that she had been restrained, and cocaine
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and alcohol were detected in her system. There were also
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: tire impressions that were found near her body too. Investigators
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: examined the tracks closely and were able to identify the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: tread as coming from a bridge Stone Potenza, a performance
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: tire more commonly associated with sports cars and regular ordinary
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: passenger vehicles. It was a useful piece of physical evidence,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: but without a vehicle to compare it against, it was
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: only a clue at the time. But like the murders
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: before Alisha's murder, well, it looked like a largely isolated case,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: so it wasn't linked to any sort of emerging pattern,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: at least not yet.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, so this what was her name, Mongoozi.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Reverend Mongoozi.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: So she that's so interesting that she said something to
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: the man. It's like, did she almost have a gut
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: feeling or something that this wasn't good or this may
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: not end well for Alicia potentially.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, she did like have this kind of house
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: that she was looking after with women who were, you.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Know, in need, kind of at risk.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so she's kind of helping look after these people
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and you know, trying to get them back into a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: more steady life and not fall back into these ways. Okay,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: So she's up, She's got her guard up for almost
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: anyone immediately. She's protective of them for sure. Not to
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: say she might not have had a gut feeling, but
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: she's already protective. That's a very good way of putting it.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Huh. And so I'm assuming this the person she spoke
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: to is probably the one that killed her, which is Alicia,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: which is terrible and like imagined having spoke to that person, Yeah,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: and then finding out the next day that she's no
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: longer with you.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Now. Three days after Alicia was found, on April fourth,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: another woman was found in East Saint Louis, but this
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: time she was still alive. Now, Unfortunately the woman is unidentified.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: She was an unidentified forty four year old and had
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: been attacked and beaten so severely that she was found
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: near death. Now she did survive, but the injuries left
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: her with permanent brain damage, preventing her from identifying her
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: attacker or providing investigators with any of the information they
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: needed to determine what had happened to her. Now, I'm
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: not too sure about all the details of surrounding her
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: attack because relatively little about it has become public information.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Her identity has been protected, but I did read some
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: articles claiming that she actually needed permanent and long term
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: care because of her brain damage.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Even dang, that's really terrible.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, the case still did not provide investigators with
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: a name, but another woman had been found bound and
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: attacked in the same general region only days after Alicia's death.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Now the geography was making the investigation rather complicated. Saint
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Louis sits on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Directly across the water is East Saint Louis, Illinois, with
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: communities as Washington Park nearby, and a person could be
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: actually going between two states very quickly, so the crimes
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: could fall under different police departments, counties, and even state agencies,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: making it extremely convoluted. The women themselves also moved through
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: both sides of those boundaries. North Broadway in Saint Louis
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: had become a familiar area for street level sex work
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: and drug activity. The stroll, as I mentioned earlier, ran
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: through a part of the city where men could drive
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: through looking for women, with many of the women working
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: there who are also dealing with addiction issues, and they
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: were also dealing with unstable housing or maybe even both.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Now this made reconstructing victim's final hours extremely difficult. A
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: woman might leave with someone in Missouri and turn up
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: in Illinois with neither jurisdiction, initially knowing that the other
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: had a related part to this case. For investigators, the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: first months of two thousand and one still amounted to
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: scattered pieces in these stories. Mary Shields had been found
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: months earlier, Cassandra Walker had been found farthest east in Illinois.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Alicia Greenwad had been strangled and restrained before them being
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: dumped in Washington Park, and on April fourth, another woman
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: had survived a violent attack, but could not identify her attacker.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: These all seemed like individual situations.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: At this point because they weren't being killed the same
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: or really the same age or anything.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Hey, not really the same age, but it is targeting
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: these women who are I'm not saying they're all sex workers,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: but you have people who are sex workers on the street,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: substance issues, maybe homelessness, So you have those people living
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: in those fringes of society if you will, Yeah, unhoused individuals,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: all those sort of things. And then some of the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: things are linking together, but they're not being seen yet
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: because of the jurisdiction issues, because of the state line issues.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: So you have people being bound or at least signs
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: of being bound, strangled and being dumped. Now it's not
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: consistent through them all, but they all show signs linking
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: to each other at least a bit.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Then about six weeks later, on the morning of May fifteenth,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: two thousand and one, a maintenance worker was moin grass
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: near Highway sixty seven outside West Alton, Missouri, when he
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: noticed something lying in the grass. As he moved closer,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: he realized it was the body of a woman, another victim.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: The remains were badly decomposed, but investigators were able to
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: identify her using dental and fingerprint records as thirty six
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: year old Teresa Wilson, and police quickly determined that the
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: rowside was not where she initially died. She had been
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: strangled to death somewhere else, and her body had been
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: brought to the spot and then dumped afterwards. Teresa had
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: grown up in Saint Louis, and she became a mother
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: at the age of only seventeen. She also left school
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: to support her child. As an adult, she worked downtown
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: before developing a serious cocaine addiction. By the nineteen nineties,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: she had become involved in sex work and regularly found
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: customers along Broadway. Now in the winter of the year
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: two thousand, she actually entered rehabilitation trying to turn her
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: life around, but after completing the program, she unfortunately relapsed
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and returned to the streets. Her death suddenly gave investigators
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: on the Missouri side of the river reason to look
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: more closely at what police in Illinois had already begun
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: to see, and as they were doing so, another woman
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: was found. On May twenty third, the body of forty
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: three year old Betty James was discovered in an alley
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: behind the fifty seven hundred block of Curly Avenue in
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Saint Louis. Betty had been bound with duct tape and
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: strangled to death. Cocaine was found in her system, and
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: investigators even found a tire impression across for one leg. Now,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the tire mark was especially interesting because investigators were already
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: holding on to that bridgestone potenza impression recovered from Alicia
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Greenwad's incident weeks earlier. Now, this is kind of when
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: they started to piece things together. There must be connections
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: between these and they looked side by side at these
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: tire impressions and unfortunately they did not match. The mark
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: in this case appeared to have come from a different tire,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: but still it did not rule out a connection. One
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: person could use a different car, or different tires, or
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: whatever the case. It just meant the tread evidence alone
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: could not tie the cases together. But by now the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: similarities between the cases were starting to come to light
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and they were very difficult to dismiss. Alicia, Teresa, and
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Betty had all been found within a relatively short period,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: all had connections to the same general street environment, and
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: strangulation appeared repeatedly This guy.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Is a frickin monster, especially to how quick the span
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: between each murder.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah is so short.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: He ramped up fast, and the investigators like the amount
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: of pressure they must feel.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: No kidding, right, Oh yeah, Well he wasn't done because
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: then West Alton produced another body. On June twenty ninth,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: two thousand and one, thirty six year old Verona Rooney
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Thompson was found dead only about sixteen away from where
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Teresa Wilson had actually been discovered. Verona had been seen
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: six days earlier after leaving a party in Washington Park, Illinois,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: and that's the last time she was seen. She was
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: believed to have been involved in sex work, and drugs
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: were found in her system were badly decomposed, making it
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: difficult to determine exactly how she died. But investigators could
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: not ignore where she had been left, as it was
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the same region that was now appearing again and again
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and again now. During the summer, law enforcement agencies from
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Missouri and Illinois began coordinating their investigations with assistance from
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: the FBI. The task force worked largely out of public view,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: comparing victims and crime scenes, while detectives canvassed areas frequented
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: by sex workers looking for witnesses for any information. Many
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: of the women they approached were reluctant to speak with police,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and the investigation continued without a suspect. Then, on August
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: twenty fifth, another body was found in the weeds in
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: East Saint Louis. Yvonne Cruz was fifty years old and
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: had been seen leaving her mother's home in Saint Louis
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the previous day. When she was found, investigators found that
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: she had been strangled to death, and they saw evidence
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: that she had been restrained, including Marx around her wrists.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Cocaine was also present in her system. But this time
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: investigators recovered something they had desperately needed, and that was
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: biological evidence. Testing in Yvonne's remains produced the DNA profile
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: of an unknown male. Now, investigators could not automatically assume
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: that the DNA belonged to whoever had murdered her, though
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: it could have been from her partner or a safe
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: and consensual encounter, or perhaps through sex work if that's
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: what she was doing. But for the first time, they
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: had a genetic profile that could potentially be compared against
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: a future suspect, and that was huge.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: That is huge.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Then six weeks later, on October eighth, thirty three year
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: old Brenda Beasley was found dead in East Saint Louis,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: approximately two miles from where Yvonne had been discovered. It
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: was clear that Brenda had been bound with tape before
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: her death and ultimately died from strangulation. Police initially grouped
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: her in with the women involved in street level sex work,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: which seems to happen far too often in this case,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and honestly, far too often in the world we even
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: live in today still but thankfully, her family challenged that idea.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: They said Brenda worked full time at a Hearty's restaurant
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: near Broadway and lived with her boyfriend. She was a
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: mother of four and her children were staying with her
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: mother in Ferguson Now. Reportedly, on October seventh, Brenda was
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: walking home late that night. She did not own a
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: car and so she regularly traveled on foot. Her family
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: said that she needed money from work, particularly because it
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: was her one daughter's birthday. She was turning ten and
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: she needed money for a birthday present. However, she never
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: made it home. Now investigators collected biological evidence from Brenda too,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: and when they compared the DNA profile to the sample
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: recovered from Yvonne's investigation. The profile's match. Now, for the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: first time throughout this case, investigators had physical evidence proving
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: that at least two of these deaths involved the same
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: male suspect. This was proof they were linked.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm kind of surprised too that he's leaving DNA behind.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it's still early in DNA profiling
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. We are talking like early two
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: thousands here, like two thousand and one, I guess. But
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: so maybe it wasn't quite on his mind. Maybe he
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: was just confident, in cocky.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I kind of will from hearing about
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: like the map, I feel like he is an over
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: confident individual that shouldn't be.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Well, don't don't jump to conclusions just yet regarding the map,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: because we haven't dove into that yet. Okay, you only
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: know of the map from me, I.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Know, but still, I guess just someone who does something
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: like that, you would kind of think maybe they are
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: a little bit over confident for sure.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: For sure. Now, the one known profile was soon entered
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: into COTIS. They took that DNA and entered it into COTIS.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Which is the national DNA database used by law enforcement
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: to compare crime scene evidence with existing offender profiles, and
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: when they did so, unfortunately there was no match. By
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: this point, investigators were dealing with a total of six
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: women whose cases were now appearing increasingly connected. Alicia Greenwad,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Teresa Wilson, Betty James, Verona Thompson, Yvonne Cruz, and Brenda Beasley.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Mary Shields remained a possible early case, though investigators were
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: less certain about how she fit into the puzzle. Though,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and then suddenly, the steady sequence of discoveries seemed to
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: stop abruptly. Through the end of two thousand and one,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: no new victim matching the pattern appeared. Investigators considered several possibilities.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Perhaps the killer had been arrested on an unrelated charge,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Perhaps they left the area. Even and honestly, it's a
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: fact we have to consider that with September eleventh and
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the attacks on the Twin Towers occurring only weeks before
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the final known victim was found, well, maybe investigators thought
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the man might have been connected to the military called away.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: They had theories, they had DNA, but that was about it. Now,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: as two thousand and one came to an end, investigators
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: were left in a very uncomfortable position. They had spent
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: months comparing cases across Missouri and Illinois, interviewing people, canvassing areas,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and trying to connect women in unidentified individuals to this
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: man with this mysterious DNA, but there was no obvious
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: explanation at this point. If one man was responsible for
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the murders, detectives could not know whether he had stopped,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: moved on elsewhere, been incarcerated already, or simply changed how
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: he operated. The task force at this point had been
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: working across multiple jurisdictions, but progressed very slowly. The six
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: murders remained unsolved, and eventually the investigation began losing momentum.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Progress slowed, but this didn't exactly mean that women had
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: in fact stopped being found dead in the region, though,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: as two thousand and one began, additional remains were in
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: fact discovered in Illinois. At the time, though investigators did
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: not know that these deaths belonged to the same series
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: they had spent the previous year trying to solve. It
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: was on January thirtieth, two thousand and two, when skeletal
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: remains belonging to an unidentified woman were found near Moscota, Illinois,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: and on March eleventh, another unidentified women's skeletal remains were
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: discovered near Highland. Then on March twenty eighth, a third
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: set was found near Columbia, Illinois. But before detectives could
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: determine whether these women fit into any existing investigation, they
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: had to first determine who each of them were, how
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: they had died, and how long they'd been laying there undiscovered. Meanwhile,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the women who were already connected to the investigation were
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: becoming known publicly, largely through the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Newspaper reports repeatedly described prostitution, cocaine use in the places
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: where these bodies were being dumped, and that bothered someone
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: someone named Bill Smith See Bill worked at the Saint
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Louis Post Dispatch, where he often wrote human interest stories
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: about people who lived outside the parts of society that
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: usually attracted much of the regular attention. By the spring
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: of two thousand and two, the killings had been unsolved
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: for more than a year, and Bill began to look
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: at them a little differently than most. To quote him,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: quote these women, I felt had stories and had lives
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: end quote. So rather than writing another article about a
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: collection of unsolved murders, Bill wanted to narrow the focus
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and write about one of the women. He chose, Teresa Wilson.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: There was much more to Teresa's life than the final
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: years that had placed her along Broadway. She had grown
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: up in Saint Louis, and she'd done well in school,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and at the age of seventeen, that's when she became
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: pregnant and made the decision to leave school so she
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: could work and support her child. She later held a
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: job in downtown Saint Louis, and her problems with cocaine
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: came a bit later. By her late twenties, addiction had
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: begun reshaping her life. There were arrests for shoplifting and theft,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: followed by offenses connected to sex. Work and Broadway became
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: part of her routine, and the addiction that kept pulling
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: her back there became increasingly difficult to escape, but Teresa
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: did try. At thirty six years old, she entered a
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: rehabilitation program. She completed it, but within weeks she relapsed.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Then by May two thousand and one, she was dead.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: A year after her body was discovered in the grass
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: near Highway sixty seven. When Bill began researching the person
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: who had existed before that final scene, he spoke with
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: people who knew Teresa and built his article around her
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: life rather than reducing her to the way she died.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: It was exactly the kind of attention the investigation itself
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: had struggled to generate, and on Sunday, May nineteenth, two
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: thousand and two, the Saint Louis Post Dispatch published his profile.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Then five days later, a letter addressed directly to Bill
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Smith arrived at the Saint Louis Post Dispatch. It was
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: on May twenty fourth, two thousand and two, and it
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: immediately stood out as different than a regular piece of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: mail from a reader. It was addressed to Bill and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: postmarked three days earlier, on May twenty first. The stamp
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: had been placed upside down, and instead of a normal
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: return address, the center had written quote I thralldom, which
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: apparently is a reference to an online bondage site. Then
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: inside was a message printed in red ink and a
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: computer generated map.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, so here's the map.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Here's the map.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: But I just have to touch on Bill. What an
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: incredible human, I agree. My goodness, gracious, I wish there
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: was more shit like that out there where someone stood back. Whoa,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Like there's more to this person than like ridiculous headlines
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: that are just trying to grab your attention. Like this
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: was a human being that had a life, and you
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: know what, maybe at times it wasn't great, but at
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: times it probably was great.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's not all about sensationalism and reducing them to
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: their their weakest moments. So the final moments, it's about
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: who are they? Who were what did they do?
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Like that honestly gives me goosebumps. Like good for Bill.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Bill, Bill's amazing.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Huh.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I like Bill, we all need to be more like Bill.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Let's be a Bill.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Let's be a Bill. Sounds well. The writer of this letter, though,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: went straight to Bill's article about Teresa Wilson. Quote, Dear Bill,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: nice sob story about Teresa Wilson. Write one about Greenwad.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Write a good one, and I'll tell you where many
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: others are. To prove I'm real, here's directions to number seventeen.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Search in a fifty yard radius of the X. Put
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the story in the Sunday Paper. Like the last end quote, Okay.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: That Okay, I freaking hate that because that is like
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: two ends of the spectrum here, where like Bill's so
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: freaking amazing, and then you have this dirt bag. Yeah,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: like holy shit, that just like makes your skin roll.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Fuck. I'm sorry, I'll laughed there. But and then there's
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: this dirt bag. You're right, I just it caught me
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: off guard for a moment.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just so it's just two ends, and it
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: caught me off guard too, because it's like, oh, I
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: love Bill, and then you got this bastard.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this dirt bag bastard. There you go. Well, it
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: seemed that the writer was rather amused by this piece
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and now wanted a similar article to be written about
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Alicia Greenwad, whose body had been found in Washington Park
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: the previous April. And if Bill wrote what he considered
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: to be a good story, the sender claimed he would
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: reveal the locations of more women, and to prove that
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: he was in fact telling the truth, he included a
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: map referencing a person marked as quote number seventeen. I
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: hate that. The map showed an area around West Alton, Missouri,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and had an X that had been placed over a
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: very specific location with instructions telling searchers to look within
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: a fifty yard radius of that X mark. Now, the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: significance of the location immediately made investigator's stomach sink. Teresa
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Wilson and Verona Thompson had both been found near West Alton.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Our bodies were only feet apart near here, so whoever
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: had mailed this envelope was now citing direct knowledge of
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: a body that had not even been discovered in a
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: similar area. Investigators quickly went out and searched the area
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: indicated on the map. The location was isolated and overgrown,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: similar to places where the other women had been left.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Searchers moved through the grass and wooded ground around that X,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: and there they found human remains. Most of the skeleton
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: was located farther back in the wooded area. The skull
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: was found separately in a more open field where it
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: would have been easier to notice if someone happened to
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: be walking through, but it was not a place that
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: received a lot of foot traffic. The remains belonged to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: a woman, and her identity was unknown. The writer had
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: just demonstrated knowledge of the location of human remains before
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: police even knew they were there. Now, this claim of
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: quote number seventeen could not be very but investigators could
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: no longer dismiss the letter as the work of someone
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: pretending to be involved, or a hoax or anything like that.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: This was clearly someone who had in fact been involved.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: They showed police where a body was. Now the envelope
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: and its contents were officially evidence. At that point, forensic
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: technicians examine the material for fingerprints and biological evidence that
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: could maybe provide DNA, but it failed to produce the
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: breakthrough they needed. Now, the wording of the letter did
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: offer some clues about the writer's attitude at the very least,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: but maybe not his identity. He knew Bill by name,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: he had clearly read the May nineteenth article. He knew
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Teresa Wilson and Alicia Greenwad by name, and he knew
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: where another woman's remains were left. Now, the return address
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: was another possibility. I thralldoom he printed, and this pointed
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: towards a bondage website, but it did not identify the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: person who sent the letter. Still, it could have been
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: included by because the writer used the site because he
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: wanted investigators to believe he did, or maybe he wanted
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: that phrase to be attached to the message for some
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: unknown reason, could have been a red herring. They don't know.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Police couldn't assume anything now that left the map. It
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: had clearly been generated on a computer. Someone had removed
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: portions of the border before mailing it, but the underlying
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: image still contained the roads, laying out the format of
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: the online mapping service, showing that X on the spot
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: where the body was. At first, detectives didn't know which
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: online mapping service could have produced this map. In two
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: thousand and two, online mapping was still relatively young, and
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: tracing a printed map back to a computer that generated
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: it was far from an obvious investigative step. But whoever
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: write this letter had not handwritten directions or photocopied the
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: road atlas. No, he had gone on line. He selected
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: a specific location, adjusted and zoomed in the map until
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: it showed the area exactly as he wanted, and then
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: printed it. So police thought somewhere there might be a
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: record of that. The Illinois State Police cyber Crimes Unit
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: was brought in to examine the map. Investigator Mark mctamish
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: studied its appearance and recognized the format. He knew it
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: came from expedia dot com. This gave investigators somewhere to start.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Expedia was contacted and asked whether it kept records showing
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: which computers had requested particular maps, and the answer was
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: they do.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Oh this is smart.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Its logs recorded Internet protocol addresses or IP addresses, which
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: are numerical identifiers associated with individual computers. But investigators still
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: had to determine which request had produced the exact map
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: that was sitting in front of them. Now, Bill's article
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: about Teresa had appeared on May nineteenth, and the anonymous letter, well,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: it had been postmarked May twenty first, so whoever created
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: the map had done it in that short period between
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the article appearing and the letter being mailed. The writer
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: had apparently believed that printing the map from the Internet
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: would keep his identity hidden, but instead he'd given investigator
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: something the bodies, the DNA, anything else they had had
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: not yet provided, and it was a literal road map
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: to find him.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Dang, that's wild, though, So.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: When he delivered a map to a body, he literally
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: delivered them a map to himself.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Huh. I kind of love that though.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Now Expedia's records showed that the underlying mapping service was
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: provided by Microsoft. On May thirtieth, Expedia directed investigators there,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: and Microsoft began examining its logs for requests involving the
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: West Alton location around the dates in question, and what
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: they found was unusually specific. On the evening of May twentieth,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: one computer had repeatedly requested maps of the area. The
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: user had started with a wider view and then continued
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: zooming in closer and closer into that location where the
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: unidentified woman's remains would be found. Investigators compared the resulting
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: map from that search with the one mailed directly to Bill.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: It was an exact match.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, this, Like I hate saying this because this guy
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: is well, it's good that he's getting caught, but I
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: just like love this. This the smartness and like the
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: tools they used and stuff to go.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: About catching him, for sure, and this is like groundbreaking techniques.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, time, So it's awesome that he's getting caught, but
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: it's like it sucks that he he's already taken this
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: many lives, but like, well done.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: No kidding now. The records also contained the IP address
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: used during the searches, and on June third, Microsoft provided
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: that address to investigators. Now An IP address, however, is
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: not the same as a person's name. Investigators still had
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: to determine who had been using that computer. On May twentieth,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: For that search, the IP address belonged to you net
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: you u net is how you spell it like literally
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: the letter you you know okay yeah, which is an
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Internet service provider, and the connection had been dynamically assigned.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: That meant investigators needed the provider's records for that specific
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: date and time when the map was generated, and on
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: June fourth, those records produced a subscriber and a name,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: and that name was Mary Troy Travis and the address
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: associated with the account was a home at one zero
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: one Ford Drive in Ferguson, Missouri. For the first time,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: investigators had a person that they could investigate. Investigators soon
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: did a background check on their new suspect, and it
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: immediately made Maury more interesting. He was thirty six years
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: old and had a felony record dating back to nineteen
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: eighty eight. There were also drug offenses and parole violations
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: as well. Now these stood out, especially with the dates
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: because Mari had returned to prison on November twenty ninth
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: in the year two thousand and remained there until March nineteenth,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: two thousand and one. Investigators had already wondered whether incarceration
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: could explain one of the breaks they were seeing in
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: the case. Now, the man whose Internet connection had apparently
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: generated the map had himself spent months behind bars during
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: a part of the period they were examining when there
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: were no killings happening. That did not prove he had
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: killed anyone, though neither did the map search by itself
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: establish that Maury had been the person sitting at the computer.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Other people could potentially have used the connection. Investigators needed
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: evidence that belonged to him. Surveillance began around his Ferguson home,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and rather than confront Maury immediately, investigators watched the property
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and collected garbage that had been put out for disposal.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Inside the household trash, they found a used plastic spoon.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: The spoon was sent for testing, and technicians were able
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: to recover a DNA profile from it. They already had
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a profile waiting for comparison that was recovered during the
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: investigation into the deaths of Yvonne Cruz and Brenda Beasley
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: that had produced a same DNA between the two. Right. Yeah,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: and so now the laboratory compared this new DNA from
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the spoon with the ones recovered from their incidents, and
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: it matched.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: And it was a match.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Still, there is an important limitation though many people could
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: have access to his house or his garbage and use
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: this and used that spoon to throw it out, and
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: that could be the one that was found. Still does
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: not definitively prove that it was him. But investigators definitely
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: did have enough reason to move directly on the house,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: and on the morning of Friday, June seventh, two thousand
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: and two, federal, state, and local authorities were ready. At
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: approximately seven am, they arrived at the ranch style home
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: in Ferguson. Maury had apparently been sleeping when they knocked
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: on his door, but he came to answer, and he
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: was confronted by a group of investigators who wanted to
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: speak with them and have a search warrant to search
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the property. According to later accounts of the encounter, Maury
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: looked at them and seemed to understand immediately what this
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: was about and that it was not a routine parole
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: issue that he was used to. In fact, he asked
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: whether they were here about the women.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, Now, Maury Troy Travis was born on October twenty fifth,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, in Saint Louis, Missouri, to Sandra Travis
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: and Michael Travis. During his early childhood, the family lived
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: in Carr Square Village, a public housing complex just northwest
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: of downtown Saint Louis in the United States of America. There,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Maury attended Saint Louis Public schools from nineteen seventy one
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy five, and in April of nineteen seventy six,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: when he was just ten years old, his family bought
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: a ranch style house in Ferguson, Missouri. It was supposed
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: to be a brand new beginning for the family, but unfortunately,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: only two short years later, in June of nineteen seventy eight,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: his parents divorced. It was tough, but outside of that,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: there was very little about Maury as a child that
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: seemed particularly remarkable to the people around him. One Ferguson
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: neighbor knew him by the nickname Toby and remembered a quiet,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: respectful boy who would sometimes mill her lawn without even
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: being asked. On another occasion, he even showed her how
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: to use an electric hedge trimmer. She remembered him as pleasant,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: soft hearted, but at the same time other longtime neighbors
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: barely remembered him at all, which highlights his unremarkable type
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: of presence. And that's not a negative thing, don't get
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: me wrong. He was just a normal kid, and so
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: he blinded in Now. That same pattern followed him into
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: high school. In May of nineteen eighty one, Maury enrolled
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: in ninth grade and was a student at Ferguson Junior
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: High and the following year he attended McClure High School.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Several former students later said they couldn't recall him. Retired
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: English teacher Sue Hannon, on the other hand, did remember
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Maury and described him as quote very quiet and withdrawn,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: even unusually so for a teenager. Maury eventually graduated from
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: McClure in nineteen eighty five, and after high school, he
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: spent two years in the Army Reserve, where he worked
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: as a medical and dental assistant. He also held jobs
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: with trucking companies and volunteered at a local nursing home.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty seven, at twenty two years old, he
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: had moved to Atlanta and enrolled at Morris Brown College,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: a private, historically black college. It was during this period
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: that Maury encountered and became addicted to cocaine. The addiction,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: of course, became very expensive, and Maury began spending around
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: three hundred US dollars a day on cocaine, which is
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: about the equivalent of nine hundred US dollars today.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: Jeez, how would you even be able to afford that?
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not cheap. And in March of nineteen eighty eight,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: while back in Ferguson during spring break, he began robbing
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: shoe stores to afford it.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, there you go.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Over the course of just eight days, five stores in
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: north and west Saint Louis County were robbed. Now Saint
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Louis County Detective Joe Spies soon tracked down and arrested
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Maury after police connected him to a description of a
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: vehicle involved with the robberies. And I just want to
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: take a moment to note that Detective Joe Spies is
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: probably the best name for detective ever.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: Oh no, kidding, Actually that's perfect.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Just saying. But even in that setting, Detective Spies remembered
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Maury as quiet and reserved rather than confrontational. Then on
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: January nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine, Maury pleaded guilty to the robberies.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: In court, he told the judge that the weapon he
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: had used was a plastic toy gun, and that his
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: drug use had become so severe he could barely remember
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: even committing the crimes. When sentencing approached, Maury told Judge
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Goldman that he had completed drug rehabilitation and was now clean,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: and Maury also had considerable support behind him. Saint Louis
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: County Circuit Judge Stephen Goldman noted that the letters submitted
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: on Maury's behalf portrayed the robberies as an unusual break
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: from his previous character, caused largely by his newfound cocaine addiction,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: and among those letters was one from US Representative William L. Clay.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: In a letter written on congressional stationery, Clay said he
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: had known Maury and his family for years and believe
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: he deserved special consideration for leniency, and so he asked
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: that Maury received probation paired with volunteer service, rather than
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: a lengthy prison term. However, years later, Clay would actually
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: say he did not remember Maury or the family at all,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: and explained that he had sent thousands of similar letters
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: during his career to which is one of the most
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: appalling things I've ever fucking heard. Yeah, because he's just
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: out here trying to sway judge's opinions and affecting court
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: outcomes while apparently flat out lying. Also he could do
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: what get more votes or political poll Holy.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: That's terrible, was the point of that.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: He's a douche canoe in his own fucking right. Yes,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: either he's lying now that oh I don't remember them
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: and I didn't vouch for a piece of ship, or
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: he's lying in the letter to the fucking judge in court. Yeah.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Well, either way, he's terrible.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Thankfully, in this case, the letters did not work.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: They did not keep Mari aut of prison, and on
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: July fifth, nineteen eighty nine, Judge Goldman sentenced him to
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: fifteen years behind bars for the robberies. Two months into
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: a sentence at Farrington Correctional Center, Maury wrote to Judge
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Goldman himself. The three page letter, carefully written by hand
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: on yellow legal paper, described prison as miserable and frightening.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: He complained about cramped conditions, poor food, drugs being readily available,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and sexual violence among prisoners, although he did not claim
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: that he was personally being assaulted. Maury then asked Judge
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Goldman to reconsider the fifteen year sentence and replace it
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: with a much shorter period of incarceration, and he ended
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: the letter by pleading for another chance since his society.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: But still, though that letter did not change his sentence,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Maury ultimately remained incarcerated for a little more than five years.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, I just have to say, if I was a judge,
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: that would make me be like, fuck you, I'm giving
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: you more time.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Right, It's almost laughable and.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: All really, like who do you think that you are
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: that you're able to write this letter and plead for that, Like, no, you're.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Just bigger than the system, Like yeah, off, no. Well,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: while he was incarcerated, Marie worked in janitorial and food
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: service positions while at Farmington and accumulated thirteen conduct violations.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: The way Missouri Department of Correction spokesman later said none
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: were particularly serious, and eventually, on June fourteenth, nineteen ninety four,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: mari was paroled. He soon moved into a duplex on
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Lucas and Hunt Road. His neighbor, Reverend Linda Harrison remembered
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: having virtually no problem with him while he was there.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Once Mariy accidentally startled her while he was doing laundry
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: their shared basement. He apologized, and from then on, whenever
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: he came downstairs he would hum or sing so Linda
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: could actually hear him coming down and approaching her. Son.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Zabray sometimes sat outside and drank beer, having a can
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: or to a beer with them, and likewise remembered nothing
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: particularly troubling about him. However, Mary's problems with drugs had
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: in fact not ended. In February of nineteen ninety eight,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: he returned to prison after violating parole through drug possession,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: and remained there until January of nineteen ninety nine. He
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: later found work in several restaurants, including as a waiter
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: at the Mayfair Hotel in downtown Saint Louis during the
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: summer of two thousand and co workers actually remember Mary
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: warning other people about the dangers of drugs, despite his
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: own history with addiction, but perhaps it was coming from experience. Then.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: On November twenty ninth, two thousand, Maury returned to prison
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: for another parole violation, which involved drug possession, and only
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: a few months before he was sent back behind bars.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: On July thirty one, two thousand. That's when the body
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: of sixty one year old Mary Shields was found in
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: East Saint Louis, Illinois. She was the first victim we discussed.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, I have a problem here though, because this guy
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: then he's only served five years, just just over when
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: he was supposed to when he got sentenced to fifteen yeap.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: So he should have technically have been in prison for
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: all of those murders. Technically, what the shit?
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Now, that's what parole is, right, you get out early.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know it was paroled. That's messed up.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: I feel you, trust me, I feel you you. But
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: here we are now at around seven am on Friday,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: June seventh, two thousand and two, and investigators are knocking
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: on the door of the address of one zero one
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: four Drive in Ferguson. Maury answered, officers explained why they
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: wanted to talk to him, while a forensic team executed
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: a search warrant on the property. At first, inside the house,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: it did not look very remarkable. The main floor was
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: clean and orderly. In fact, it was even described by
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: investigators as immaculate. It was the same ranch style home
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Maury's family had purchased in nineteen seventy six, sitting in
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: an ordinary residential neighborhood where he had lived for much
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: of his life. But downstairs, well, downstairs was different. The
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: basement was finished and divided into several rooms along a hallway.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: At the end was a room containing a bed and
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Maury's computer. Down there, investigators began noticing stains on the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: floor and walls, stains that appeared to be blood. As
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: the search expanded, evidence accumulated quickly. Police found restraints, including
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: items that appeared to be stained with blood. There were ropes, handcuffs,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: duct tape, along with a stun gun and other equipment
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: that could be used to restrain or hurt an individual.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: Women's belongings were also recovered, including items such as wigs, shoes,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and even jewelry. Investigators found newspaper clippings dealing with the
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: murders that they had been trying to solve. Too. There
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: was also evidence that Mary had considered changing the basement
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: even further to suit his potential needs. They found a
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: crude diagram drawn, and it was shown with plans of
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: an extension containing two small cells where say women could
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: be held in chains.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: Geez.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: The plans included ventilation and a list addressing the practical
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: problems of keeping individuals captive in a room without things
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: like bathroom facilities. The design suggested the cells were intended
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: for prolonged confinement. And then investigators reached the computer, the
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: same machine that had become the most important part of
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: all of this because of the Expedia records, and it
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: was found that it was in fact the same machine
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: that had search those things searched for the map zoomed in,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: it was the same one. They even found drafts of
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: the anonymous letter that was sent to Bill.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: I am like just so disgusted and so pissed off
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: at the same time. Here rightfully so my gosh.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Now, while the house was being processed, Maury was being
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: questioned by investigators. He was taken back to the station,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: and one of the principal interviewers was Saint Louis Police
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: detectives Tim Satchus. Now, Maury, of course, initially denied any involvement.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: When investigators showed him photographs of the women connected to
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the cases, he said he just didn't know them. But
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: things became interesting rather quickly. According to police, Maury asked
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: to see the photographs again of the quote dead women,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: But investigators never said they were dead. They just showed
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: him photos of women seeing if he recognized them, so
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: he on his own just described them as dead without
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: being prompted. Wow. He also intensely was interested in how
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: police had reached his house. He was very intrigued how
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: they managed to track him down, and eventually investigators told
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: him about the Internet map, and that explanation appeared to
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: hit him hard. At different points during the questioning, Maury
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: even dropped his head and repeated quote, I'm toast. Police
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: also told him that they knew what had been found
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: inside his basement, but Maury replied he knew they'd find it.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: He knew they'd find it all they're searching. He knows
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: what's down there. They know what's down there. As the
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: interview continued, Captain Harry Hager spoke with Maury several times
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: and offered him something to eat or drink. Maury asked
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: for a diet coke. But here's the thing. He didn't
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: offer him a drink or bite to eat to be nice,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: because when Maury was finished, they took the discarded can
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: and collected his DNA for analysis, okay.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: Because at first I was like, the fuck you're offering
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: him a snack?
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a plan behind it.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: Right away I was like, okay, okay, Even before you said,
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: my brain shifted to that. It wasn't a nice thing, yeap.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: The saliva left on the can gave the laboratory something
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: the plastic spoon from the household garbage couldn't do, and
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: that was a DNA sample that was taken directly from
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Maury Travis. Technicians compared the profile with the DNA from
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: the spoon and the unknown male DNA associated with Yvonne
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Cruz and Brenda Beasley, and it was a match. Meanwhile,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: forensic technicians continued working through his home at one zero
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: one four Drive, and apparent blood evidence in the basement
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: was extensive enough that the house would require a much
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: more detailed processing. In fact, samples were soon taken from
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: different areas, as well as items from later analysis. But
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: among everything investigators recovered were stacks of videotapes. There were
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: numerous recordings. Now, some showed Mari with women smoking crack cocaine,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: gaging in consensual sexual activity, but some didn't, and one
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: tape one specific tape was different. It was labeled ordinary
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: enough though to sound almost harmless, as it read quote
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: your wedding day, end quote. It showed women inside Maury's home,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: including in his bedroom in the basement. On the recordings,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: women were restrained with rope and handcuffs and duct tape.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Some even had the duct tape covering their eyes. There
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: were videos where Maury made these women perform strange rituals,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: including dancing while dressed in white or wearing sunglasses with
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: those lens completely blacked out they couldn't see. The recordings
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: also showed physical abuse, prolonged psychological abuse, sexual assault, and
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: rape of those who he was holding. Mari could be
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: heard questioning an insult women, controlling what they said and did,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: and forcing at least one woman to repeat the phrase
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: quote you are the master. It pleases me to serve
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: you end quote. And when she said it and it
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: dissatisfied him with the way she said it, he ordered
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: her to repeat it more clearly and loudly. In another recording,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: a woman was questioned directly about her children, while Maury
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: criticized her drug use and told her she wasn't going
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: to be going home. The recordings also showed that some
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: women were taken into the basement and secured to a
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: wooden post. Investigators described the abuse captured on these tapes
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: as both physical and psychological, and police later said that
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: the material was so disturbing that Chief Joe Maqua arranged
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: psychological counseling for the officers who had to view it.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that would not be easy even listening to this,
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: and we're getting like the Colesnal version even less and
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: it's difficult.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Now. Most importantly, investigators weren't simply looking at recordings of abuse.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: At least one tape documented a murder, when Maury used
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: a belt to tie around a woman's neck before eventually
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: she became unresponsive. Jeez, he strangled her to death on camera.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: This guy is just the worst of the worst.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: Maury also spoke about his victims on camera. On one recording,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: he referred to a nineteen year old as quote his
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: first kill, and he said he didn't even know her name,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: but later investigators connected Cassandra Walker, who was nineteen, to
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: the material recovered from Maury's home. Other recordings contained women
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: investigators identified as Teresa Wilson and Betty James, which meant
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: police had images and video placing these women from their
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: investigation directly inside his house, enduring these things before their
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: bodies were discovered elsewhere. The physical processing of the basement
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: continued alongside the review of the tapes. Investigators collected a
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: huge number of suspected blood samples from the walls, floors, equipment,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: and other areas of the basement. Later accounts put the
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: numbers at more than one thousand different samples, with testing
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: reportedly showing blood from at least six different women connected
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: to the investigation. Other individual pieces of evidence also began
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: to take on new significance too. If you remember, Betty
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: James had been found on May twenty third, two thousand
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: and one, with a tire impression across her leg, and
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: investigators now had access to Mary's vehicle to compare the impressions,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: and they matched. The sheer scale of what investigators were
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: seeing made Maury's anonymous claim in his letter increasingly difficult
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: to dismiss. He had written to Bill marked an X
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: on the map that belonged to quote number seventeen. Now,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: despite all of this evidence, there was also obvious gaps
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the videotapes could tell investigators about women who had appeared
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: on them, and the blood evidence could potentially identify others,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: But neither could automatically explain every set of remains found
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: across Missouri and Illinois, nor could police know how many
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: women had entered the house and survived, how many had
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: been killed there, or whether every victim had been recovered
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: or even recorded on the tapes. Mari was the only
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: person who could answer any of those questions, and during
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: the hours after his arrest, it seemed like he was
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: actually willing to provide at least one answer. In fact,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: while being questioned, Mary told investigators that he could take
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: them to another body, and the police took this offer seriously.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: They put Marie in a vehicle and drove away with them.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: The trip led them towards the Mississippi River and the
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: Polar Street Bridge, which connects Saint Louis to Illinois. However,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: near the bridge, Maury changed his mind. He refused to
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: show them where the body was, an investigators were forced
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: to turn around. By the end of Friday, June seventh,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: two thousand and two, Maury Travis was in federal custody
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: and the legal case against Maury was only beginning. Federal
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: authorities charged him with two counts of kidnapping resulting in
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: death involving Alicia Greenwald and Betty James. Because the alleged
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: kidnappings crossed state lines and resulted in deaths, the charges
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: carried the possibility of the federal death penalty. However, there
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: would never be a trial. Marie was taken to Saint
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Louis County Justice Center in Clayton, where he was being
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: held for the U. S. Marshal Service. Authorities knew there
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: was reason to watch him closely. According to accounts of
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: his incarceration, Marie was placed under suicide precautions, requiring officers
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: to check on him every fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, investigators were
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: just beginning to dig deeper into his house and began
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: to review these found videotapes. And then on Monday, June tenth,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: two thousand and two, Marie had been in custody for
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: only three days, and on that Monday, Marie hung himself
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: in his cell using his betting. He died at thirty
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: six years old. Later investigations into his death found that
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: two consecutive scheduled suicide prevention checks had been missed, giving
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Mariy a much longer period of time, without observation, rather
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: than every fifteen minute intervals, which were required under the
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: precautions that were put in place now. Maury also left
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: a note addressed to his mother. In it, he wrote
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: about having problems in his mind dating back to early
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: teenage years, and he indicated that he did not intend
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: to spend the rest of his life incarcerated or face execution,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: which just tells me he's a coward. Whatever explanations Maury
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: might have eventually offer about the women, his motives, or
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the full extent of his crimes unfortunately died with him.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: For investigators. That created a problem that evidence alone could
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: never completely solve, because Maury had claimed seventeen victims in
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: his letter to Bill Smith, and police eventually linked him
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: to at least twelve, and even considered the possibility that
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: the actual number of murders could be as high as twenty.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Who the remaining victims are, or if they exist, we will,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: unfortunately never know, because there is no confession laying out
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: seventeen murders one by one, there was no trial in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: which the evidence could be tested publicly, and there were
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: even still women without names. Among the bodies associated with
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: the wider investigation were unidentified remains found in Illinois in
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: two thousand and two. For more than two decades, some
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: of those women could be discussed only by the locations
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: and dates where they were discovered, but thankfully that changed
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: years later. In twenty twenty five, three women whose remains
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: had remained unidentified were publicly named following renewed investigation efforts
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: using forensic genealogy. They were Crystal Lay, Kelly Johnson, and
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Carol Henhil. Their identifications gave investigators and family something Maury's
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: death had prevented in two thousand and two, the ability
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: to put names and histories back onto women who had
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: spent decades represented by case files and unidentified remains. Now
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Sandra Travis retained ownership of the Ferguson property on Ford
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Drive after her son killed himself. More than a decade later.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: In March of twenty fourteen, Katrina McGaw started renting that
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: house without realizing what investigators found in there in two
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: thousand and two. She learned its history only after a
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: friend recognized the house while watching a TV program of
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: serial killers, and Katrina immediately wanted out of the lease.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Sandra Travis initially disputed the claim that the history had
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: never been disclosed, and declined to release her, and Missouri
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: law did not require a landlord even to disclose that
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: deaths or crimes had occurred on the property. But after
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: the Saint Louis Housing Authority became involved, Sandra agreed to
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: rescind the lease. It's an interesting little piece to the story,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: but ultimately a lease dispute or even the killer's name
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: and suicide or not the center of this tale. What
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: matters more are the women whose deaths created it, women
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: including Mary Shields, Cassandra Walker, Alicia Greenwad, Teresa Wilson, Betty James,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Verona Thompson, Yvonne Cruz, Brenda Beasley, and the other Jane
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Doe women who remained unidentified long after the investigation ended.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: I just hope that one day they all have their
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: identity returned to them, just like Kelly Johnson, Crystal Leah,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: and Carol Hemphill had. Some of these victims lived with addiction,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: some were involved in sex work. They were mothers, daughters, relatives,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: and people with lives that extended far beyond the circumstances
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: in which the police found them. Bill Smith had understood
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: that far before Maury Travis ever wrote him that letter,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: And for that reason, I want to name Bill the
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: badass of the day today, because it's far too easy
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: to get get wrapped up in the killer, the motive, tactics,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: the investigation. Bill knew to look past all of that
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: and remember that people. They're the heart of the story.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: He embodies what we want to try and do here
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: in Wickeding Grim. We may crack jokes, you know, break
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: some tension a little bit that way. We may even
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: get angry at a plea deal, or want to call
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: a killer a fucking douche canoe or something, But it's
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: about the victims. That's the point. Even if a story
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: is named after the killer, it's about those victims. And
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: that's the story of Maury Travis, the videotape killer.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: How do I even follow that up? That was? That
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: was good the ending there?
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Shit, thank you? But yeah, Bill is definitely the last
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: of the day today. So good job, Bill, you are
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: You're a gem in the true crime community for sure.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think it's really interesting that he
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: if he didn't send that letter to Bill, he probably
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: who knows when he would have gotten caught.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there is a potential nowadays because they
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: had his DNA genetic genealogy, right, Yeah, so it could
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: have been up to this point, you know, in twenty
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: twenty five or twenty twenty six, who knows, but maybe
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: if he kept killing got sloppy. He definitely had an
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: air of arrogance about him sending that letter, you know,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: things in that videotape, a lot of the things that
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: he was doing. He had this false confidence this what's
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: the word I'm looking for, Like he almost thinks he's
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: like untouchable, you know.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well then the plans he actually had, like plans
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: for the house. Yeah, I think that's really quite gross
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: that the the mom like rented that out and didn't disclose.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: I know, I don't know, that's yucky. Yeah, And I
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: think it also really bothers me, Like, obviously we know
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: he's a terrible person, but then to not go about
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: facing the consequences of being a said terrible person, right,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know for eck.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just I'm not going to face face you know,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: the jury, the jury, the execution, the jail, none of it.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: I just yeah, fucked, that's like you little bitch.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a terrible case, really yeah, like very sad.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that I didn't want to mention.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: It is often mentioned in this story and it is
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: important to mention, but I also because it's not like
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: it's who these people are, but it's not a defining factor,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Mari was an African American
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: and so we're all all the victims. Now, many of
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: the people are saying, you know, like in the the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: highlighted titles and all this sort of stuff is like, oh, man,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: like targets these African American women, and that's like that
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: comes before their names, you know what I mean.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, so I.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Wanted their names and who they are to come first
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: and foremost before I say, hey, you know what, all
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: his victims were of the same you know, skin color.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Sort of right.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it is important to say, but their names
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: are more important. That's why I chose to not disclose
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: until now totally.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that would have been difficult to research. Job.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: It was a tough one.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that weighs on the heart.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you for being here. I do want to
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: say if you hear a little bit of background noise
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: on this episode today, there it is raining really hard
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: in our tiny home, boring like never rains as heart.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: So this has thrown us for a bit of a
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: loop on our recordings. I'm going to do my best
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: for post processing to try and get rid of it
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: in the background noise and that sort of stuff, so
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: you may or may not hear it, but regardless of
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: noise or not, we appreciate you. We get to do
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: the show because you support us an independent show, and
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: if you want to do things like check out our
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: Instagram or sign up for our Patreon or give us
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: a review, all those things help immensely. You can check
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: out the description, follow the links and do all the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: stuff that you want to do. And if you don't
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: want to do those things, we appreciate you just the same.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: You're here and that means the world to us. So
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: thank you, and of course until next time, stay wicked.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: Big b oh No