Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Philadelphia's Son of Sam - Juan Covington

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Philadelphia's Son of Sam - Juan Covington · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If you take yourself back to the year 1682, you
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: find William Penn standing right on the edge of the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: American wilderness.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: And he's designing a city based on this wildly radical
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: philosophical concept. Like, he didn't just want a trading post.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: He wanted a literal utopia.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: A total blank slate.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So he laid out this grid of wide
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: streets and public squares, and he named it using the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: ancient Greek words for brotherly love, you know, Philadelphia.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Right, which is beautiful in theory.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It is. Yeah. Penn's vision was this place where people
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of all backgrounds, all religious beliefs, could live together in
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: completely nonviolent, tolerant harmony. He literally built a community on
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the foundational assumption that your neighbor is inherently your brother.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: It is a stunningly optimistic blueprint for society. I mean, truly.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: And for centuries, that ethos of brotherly love has been
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: the defining cultural slogan of the city.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as in all the tourist pamphlets.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But there's a really dangerous flip side to that
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: kind of foundational optimism. Well, when you build a community
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: on implicit trust, when the baseline assumption is that the
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: people walking your streets mean you no harm, you create
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: a massive structural blind spot.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, because you aren't looking for the wolf in sheep's clothing.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Precisely. You just assume everyone is a sheep. So today
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: we are taking a deep dive into a collection of
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: documentary sources covering a man named Juan Covington. who eventually
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: became known as Philadelphia's Son of Sam.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And to be clear with you listening, our goal today
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: is not to just, like, morbidly recount a true crime timeline.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: We are unpacking a massive, complex web of failures. This
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: is really a case study on the catastrophic consequences of
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: untreated mental illness colliding with systemic blind spots in law enforcement.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it forces us to look at the deeply
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: unsettling reality of how society prioritizes human life based entirely on, well, geography,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: race and socioeconomic status. Right.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: So I want to start with the environment, because to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: understand how a predator can operate in broad daylight, totally
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: unchecked for years, we can't just look at his brain
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: in a vacuum.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: No, you have to look at the ecosystem that insulated him.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The macro environment and the micro tragedies.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: So the ecosystem in this case is the Logan neighborhood
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: in North Philadelphia.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the scene there.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: If you look at Logan in the 1960s, it is
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: a neighborhood undergoing profound stress and transition. It was originally
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: developed in the early 1900s, mostly populated by Jewish and
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Irish Catholic families.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: But then demographics shift. Right.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: By the time the 1960s roll around, you have this
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: massive demographic shift. African-American families are migrating from the South,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: moving into Logan, looking for stability and, you know, a
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: piece of the American dream.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: But they are walking into a trap, economically speaking, right?
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Because this is the exact moment the bottom falls out
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: of the urban manufacturing sector.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: The Rust Belt effect. It is devastating. The factories and
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: industrial jobs that built the middle class in Philadelphia were
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: vanishing overseas or out into the distant suburbs.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: So they arrive and the jobs are just gone.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Yes. So you have these new families arriving with high hopes,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: immediately slamming into rising unemployment, the intense violent struggles of
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: the civil rights movement and.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And the Cold War.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The overarching apocalyptic dread of the Cold War in Vietnam.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: It is just a pressure cooker of anxiety and economic decline.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And right in the middle of this pressure cooker, Juan
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Covington is born. The source has mentioned he was born
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: just six months before the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Talk about bad timing for global anxiety. Right.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: You literally have the entire country holding its breath, waiting
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: for a nuclear holocaust.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: But despite that intense backdrop, his actual childhood reads as
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: incredibly mundane.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: It was very standard. His family lived in the right
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: side of a duplex near the corner of 11th and
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Rescombe streets, deep in the Logan neighborhood.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Just a normal kid. Yeah.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: He grew up inseparable from his older brother, James. He
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: played basketball, went to a local Roman Catholic high school.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Briefly tried college. And then in May of 1983, he
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: lands what was considered a highly coveted stable job.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Driving a bus, right?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He becomes a bus driver for SEPTA, the Southeastern
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. He had a girlfriend. They had a
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: child in 1986. He was a functioning, contributing member of society.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: So we have a guy with a steady union job
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: and a young family. What happens? Because the sources point
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: to 1989 as the moment the foundation cracks.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: 1989 is the turning point, yes.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: His father dies, and suddenly he's not just grieving, he's
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: fundamentally altering. Right.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: The death of his father appears to have been the
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: primary stressor that triggered a severe manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: And it happened fast.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: The behavioral changes were alarming. Relatives noted he developed severe
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: forgetfulness and a bizarre compulsion to repeat sentences endlessly.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Like an echo. Yes.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: But the most terrifying shift was the onset of visual
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: hallucinations and delusions. There is an anecdote in the files where,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: during a family Christmas, Covington stood entirely paralyzed, staring at
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: the Christmas tree.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Because he thought it was moving.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Right, he was absolutely convinced the tree was moving under
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: its own power.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to pause here. Because we throw the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: word delusion around a lot in pop culture to mean
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: someone is just, like, mistaken or stubborn.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Right, like they're just being silly.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But clinically... What is actually happening in a schizophrenic
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: brain when a person looks at an inanimate pine tree
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and perceives a conscious threat?
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: It comes down to how the brain processes pattern recognition
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: and something called salience.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Salience, okay.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: In a healthy brain, your salience network acts like a filter.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: It tells you what stimuli in your environment matter and
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: what you can ignore.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Like background noise.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You see a shadow in the woods. Your salience
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: network heightens your attention. You realize it's just a branch.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: The network dials back down.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: But in paranoid schizophrenia, the dopamine pathways regulating this network
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: misfire catastrophically. The brain begins assigning intense life or death
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: meaning to entirely random meaningless stimuli.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: So to his brain, the tree isn't just a tree.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: His biological alarm system is screaming at him that the
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: tree is an active predator.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. His brain is receiving a chemical signal of absolute terror.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And his conscious mind has to invent a narrative to
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: explain why he feels so terrified. Oh. That narrative becomes
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the delusion.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Now, this is the part that completely baffles me. His
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: family didn't just ignore him staring at the tree. They
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: did exactly what you were supposed to do.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: They tried, yes.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: In the early 90s, they actively urged him into treatment.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: He saw a psychiatrist. He saw a psychologist. If he
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: was in the system, how on earth did he slip
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: through the cracks?
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Because of the insidious nature of the disease itself. By 1993,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: he abruptly stopped all of his psychiatric treatment.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Just quit cold turkey.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And why?
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Because his broken salience network incorporated the treatment into the delusion.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: He developed a deep, unshakable belief that the medication the
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: doctors were giving him was physically turning him into the devil.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: But doesn't a doctor or a family member have the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: power to step in at that point? I mean, if
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: someone literally thinks their medicine is demonic, they clearly lack
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the capacity to make medical decisions.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: You would think so, but the legal threshold for involuntary
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: commitment in the United States is incredibly high, and purposefully
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: so to protect civil liberties.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Right. You can't just lock people up for being weird.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Unless a doctor can prove in a court that
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: a patient is an immediate, verifiable, and physical threat to
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: themselves or others, an adult has the absolute right to
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: refuse medical treatment.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: That is so frustrating.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: It is. Thinking your pills are demonic is bizarre, but
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: it is not illegal, and it doesn't meet the standard
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: for involuntary confinement.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: It's like having a slow leak in the foundation of
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: your house. From the street, the neighbors just see the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: same siding, the same roof. They might notice some peeling paint.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: But underneath?
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Underground, the water is silently rotting the concrete. The
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: family is inside the house, watching the basement flood, screaming
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: for a plumber, but the city won't send anyone out
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: until the house actually collapses into the street.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what happened. His internal structure completely collapsed.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: He refused to care for his diabetic mother. His girlfriend
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: took their child and fled.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: He was completely isolated.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: By 1997, after his mother passed away, he was living
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: alone in the duplex, and his behavior became wildly erratic.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: He gave away almost all his possessions, telling neighbors to
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: just come into his house and take whatever they wanted.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: That is a huge red flag. Huge.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: He started dressing in full military fatigues, Marching up and
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: down his street on patrol, he told his brother he
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: had been cursed by unseen forces, claiming the curse paralyzed
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: his arm for three months.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And what was the neighborhood's reaction to this? A guy
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: marching around in combat gear talking about curses.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: In the mid-90s in North Philadelphia, he was just categorized
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: as the neighborhood eccentric.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: The strange character.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Just the guy you avoid eye contact with.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Society's default mechanism is to look the other way
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: as long as the bizarre behavior stays on the porch.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: We tolerate it because legally there is nothing else we
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: can do.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: But a delusion that powerful can't stand the porch forever.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: The pressure has to release. And the sources show that
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the first time this internal paranoia spilled over into the
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: real world, it targeted the people in his immediate orbit.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: The first shadows. Right.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to a 24-year-old woman named Brynwanda Smith.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Brynwanda Smith was a colleague of Covington at SEPTA. She
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: was a hold-down operator, essentially a substitute driver who covered
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: open routes.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: A really hard worker.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Incredibly hard worker, putting in exhausting hours to save up
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: for her own apartment, which she had finally just secured.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: So tragic.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. On February 18, 1997, her shift ended early in
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: the afternoon at the Luzerne SEPTA Depot, which is about
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: a mile south of Covington's neighborhood.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: But she doesn't go home. The timeline says coworkers saw
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: her still hanging around the depot at 7 0 p.m.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: They offer her a ride, and she says, no, she
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: already has one coming.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And that is the last confirmed sighting of her alive.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: She just vanishes.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: She vanished completely. Her family organized massive searches, offered rewards,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: but nothing turned up. Now, what is critical here is
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: that during the initial missing persons investigation, nobody at SEPTA
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: mentioned Juan Covington to the police.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? Nobody brought him up?
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Not initially. It wasn't until years later that co-workers remembered
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: he had been intensely pursuing her, repeatedly asking her out. Oh, wow.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Even more disturbing, witnesses eventually recalled seeing Covington and Brenwanda
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: having a heated argument in the depot parking lot on
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the exact day she disappeared.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: I want to be very careful here and clarify for
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: you listening that Juan Covington has never confessed to anything
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: regarding Brenda Smith, and she has never been found.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: That's an important distinction.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: But it puts him in terrifying proximity to a disappearance.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: And it foreshadows what happens in August of 1998, when
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: we know for a fact that the violence turned inward
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: onto his own family.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Yes. We are talking about the murder of his cousin,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Reverend Thomas Lee Devlin. And this crime perfectly illustrates the
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: horrifying twisted logic of an untreated schizophrenic mind.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Tell me about the Reverend.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Reverend Devlin was a deeply respected man. 49 years old,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a Coast Guard veteran of the Vietnam era, a black
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: belt in karate, and a Baptist minister who ran a
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: small congregation out of a basement on Old York Road.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: So it's a Wednesday night. Devlin is leading a small
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: prayer service. About 15 people, mostly family, are sitting in
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: this intimate basement setting.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Suddenly, the side door bursts open. A man walks in
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: carrying a duffel bag, wearing a ski mask. He pulls
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a Sig Sauer pistol, walks right up to the Reverend,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: and fires 13 rounds.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: It was incredibly violent.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: He hits him three times in the head, turns around,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: and walks out without touching anyone else.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: It was a clinical execution-style assassination in the middle of
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: a church. The police were completely baffled.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: They must have been looking for gang ties or something.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Actually, they began investigating Devlin's ex-girlfriend because there had been
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: a bitter custody dispute and a restraining order. The police
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: were looking for a rational motive. Jealousy, anger, money.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Right, because police are trained to track human logic. But
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: there is no human logic here. When the motive was
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: finally revealed, it was so bizarre I had to read
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the source material three times.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: It defies belief.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: It started over a $ 2, 000 loan, right? Yes.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Devlin borrowed $ 2, 000 from Covington for car repairs. When Covington
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: demanded the money back, Devlin's mother told him they needed
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: a little time to gather the cash.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Which happens all the time.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: To a healthy mind, that is a frustrating financial annoyance.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: To Covington's broken salience network, it was a supernatural declaration
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: of war.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: How does an unpaid car loan morph into supernatural war?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Covington's paranoia catastrophized the delay. He developed a hyper-specific delusion
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: that Devlin wasn't just avoiding the debt. He thought Devlin
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: was actively using black magic to destroy Covington.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Black magic? You mean he literally thought his cousin was
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: casting spells?
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: He genuinely believed his cousin was a warlock who was
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: casting hexes that caused Covington's gums to swell and thick
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: pus to leak from his forehead. He believed Devlin had
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: the supernatural power to wipe him from existence.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: So in Covington's reality, he isn't walking into a church
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: to commit murder. He is launching a preemptive military strike
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: to save his own life.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And that brings us to the ski mask.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, this part is wild.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Traditionally, a criminal wears a ski mask to conceal their
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: identity from witnesses, you know, to evade capture.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, standard robbery gear.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: But Covington later admitted to psychiatrists that he didn't care
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: about hiding his face. He wore the thick ski mask
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: because he believed the fabric would act as a literal
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: shield against Devlin's witchcraft.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Wait, he wore a mask as a shield?
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: He thought he needed spiritual armor to survive the assassination.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: I am stuck on the logistics of how law enforcement
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: is supposed to handle that. If a detective is looking
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: for financial ledgers or angry ex-lovers, how do they ever
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: catch a killer whose motive is based on invisible curses?
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: They often don't, unless the physical evidence leads them there.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: And in this case, Covington left no physical evidence.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Nothing at all.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Nothing. To make it worse, he actually attended Devlin's funeral.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: He stood there weeping with the family. Relatives later said
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: he put on an Academy Award winning performance of grief.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: He was the mourning cousin standing shoulder to shoulder with
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: the family of the man he just slaughtered.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So he crosses the ultimate psychological boundary. He murders a
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: family member and he gets away with it seamlessly. He
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: has to feel completely invincible.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Absolutely untouchable.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: But while he is evading the police, his actual life
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: is disintegrating.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Rapidly. His connection to reality is fraying on all sides.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: In 2001, SEPTA finally fires him after he falls asleep
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: at the wheel of a bus with passengers on board.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: That could have been a disaster.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Then he gets a retail job at Home Depot, which
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: ends almost immediately when he punches a customer in the
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: face for no apparent reason.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Just punches a random customer.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Eventually, he secures employment at a company called Stericycle,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: which handles medical waste disposal. We need to remember this
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: job because it gives him routine, authorized access to the
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: inner workings of several Philadelphia hospitals.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, pinning that for later. But the real breaking point
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: seems to be his brother, James, the brother he was
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: completely inseparable from as a kid.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: In 2003, James takes Juan to court. Juan's behavior had
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: become so dangerously volatile that he was pointing firearms at
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: his own teenage son.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: It's escalating.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: James successfully petitions for legal custody of his nephew. The
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: court rules that Juan is forbidden from seeing his son
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: unless he agrees to undergo intensive professional counseling.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Which we know he will never do because the counseling
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: is the devil.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: So the court effectively severs his last remaining tether to humanity.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: His son is gone. His brother is estranged. What happens
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: to a predator when you remove the last psychological guardrails?
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: The violence stops being targeted at perceived personal enemies and
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: it turns outward into the neighborhood. He begins hunting the
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: people who simply wander into his geographical comfort zone.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Just random targets.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: On May 20, 2003, a 43-year-old man named David Stewart
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: is walking to his factory job. It's a route he
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: has taken every day for eight years, right past Covington
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Sheriff's Duplex at the corner of 11th Street.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Broad daylight, right?
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Broad daylight. A man on a bicycle pulls up, wearing
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: a heavy winter hat despite the weather. The man lifts
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: his shirt to show a gun tucked into his waistband.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So terrifying.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: David naturally assumes he is being mugged, so he throws
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: his hands up in surrender. But the man on the
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: bike doesn't ask for a wallet. He doesn't say a
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: single word. He just draws the gun and opens fire.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: He just shoots him.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: He shoots David in the arm, leg, foot, abdomen, back,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: and face. Eight times in total. David survives, but is
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: left needing permanent leg braces.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Wait, if this happens right outside Covington's house, does David
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: know him? Did they have a dispute?
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: That is the terrifying part. David Stewart was close friends
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: with Covington's next-door neighbor. He spent time on the porch
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: literally feet away from Covington's door, but he had no
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: idea who Covington was because Covington was a total recluse.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: David couldn't identify his shooter. He was just a guy
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: walking to work.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: And the police hit a dead end again.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Completely. And then, a year later, in May 2004, it
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: happens again on the exact same block. William Bryant, 33
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: years old, is walking down the street at 948 in
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: the morning.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Broad daylight again.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: A man walks up behind him and shoots him seven
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: times in the back. As Bryant collapses, the shooter stands
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: over him and fires two more rounds. Bryant survives, but
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: is left paralyzed in a wheelchair with severe difficulty speaking.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Okay. Two men ambushed, shot multiple times, broad daylight, same
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: exact block. The police have to realize they have a
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: serial shooter living in that neighborhood, right? They didn't. Seriously.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: In fact, their desperate attempt to solve the William Bryant
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: shooting led to one of the most catastrophic forensic and
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: legal failures of the entire saga. They arrested an innocent
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: man named Clyde A. Johnson.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Stop. How do they arrest someone else? Where did they
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: even get his name?
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: The police zeroed in on Johnson because he was a
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: vague acquaintance of the victim, William Bryant. They take a
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: photo array, like a lineup of mugshots, to the hospital.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Bryant is lying in a hospital bed, traumatized, heavily medicated,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: unable to speak due to his massive injuries.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, no.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: The detectives hold up the photo of Clyde Johnson, and
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Bryant nods his head.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: A nod. Based on a photo shown to a man
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: who just took nine bullets. But memory isn't a tape recorder.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: In trauma... Eyewitness identification is notoriously awful. Didn't Johnson have
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: an alibi?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: He had a titanium clad alibi. Clyde Johnson was the
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: director of an AIDS counseling center in Kensington, which is
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: a completely different neighborhood. His own boss, the head of
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: the clinic, gave a sworn statement to the police that
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Clyde was physically sitting in the office working all day
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: when the shooting happened.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I am struggling to understand the legal mechanics of this.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: You have the victim's boss swearing he is at work.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: How does the district attorney authorize criminal charges based on
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: a medically incapacitated man's nod?
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: It is a textbook case of confirmation bias in law enforcement.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Once detectives lock onto a narrative like this acquaintance did it,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: they subconsciously filter out any contradictory evidence.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So they just ignored the boss.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: The alibi is dismissed as a friend covering for a friend.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: They found another eyewitness on the street who picked Johnson's photo,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: largely because Johnson intervened. Covington shared a similar physical build
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: and skin tone. That was enough for the DA.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: It's like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle. And you
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: find a piece that looks like it has the right color,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: so you just smash it in the hole with a hammer,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: destroying the picture just so you can say you finished
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the puzzle.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: That is an excellent way to phrase it. And the
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: consequence of smashing that piece was that Clyde Johnson's bail
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: was set at $ 500, 000. Half a million dollars. Because he
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: was a counselor at an AIDS clinic and didn't have
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: half a million dollars, he sat in a jail cell
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: for a full year for a crime he physically could
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: not have committed.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: A year of an innocent man's life stolen. And while
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Clyde Johnson is sitting in a cage, Juan Covington is
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: sitting in his house on 11th Street watching the police
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: arrest the wrong guy for his crime. Exactly.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: If you want to know what emboldens a predator, it
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: is the realization that the system is actively covering his
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: tracks for him. His geographical comfort zone is now totally
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: insulated by police error. And so the violence escalates and
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: it becomes fatal again.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: This brings us to May of 2004, just days after
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the Bryant shooting. We have the murder of Ann Uckel.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Ann Ockel was 25 years old. She was a mother
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: to five young children, and she worked as a patient
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: care assistant at Temple University's Children's Medical Center about two
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: miles south of Logan.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Working constantly, right.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: She was exhausting herself, working constant overtime shifts just to
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: keep her family afloat financially.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: And the sources detail how her death ultimately hinged on
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: incredibly cruel economic margins.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: It did. Temple's official hospital parking garage charged $ 7 a day.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: If you are a young mother supporting five kids on
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: an assistant salary, $ 7 a day is a grocery bill.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: You can't afford it.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: If it adds up so fast.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: So to save money, Ann parked her car in an
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: unsecured private lot a few blocks away that only charged $ 1. 50
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: a day. That $ 5. 50 difference placed her in a dark,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: empty lot late at night.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: She calls her family just before midnight to say she
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: is clocking out and walking to her car. And then
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: she disappears into the night.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: The next morning, a worker finds her body in an
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: empty field next to some elevated train tracks miles away.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: She had been inducted at gunpoint from that cheap parking lot,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: sexually assaulted, and shot twice in the head with a.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: 25 caliber handgun.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: The physical evidence showed the killer actually pressed the gun
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: directly to her temple for a third shot to the brain,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: but the bullet grazed her skull. She died lying in
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: the dirt, still tightly gripping her hospital ID card in
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: her hand. Her car was later found abandoned.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And as tragic as that is, the part of the
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: file that made my stomach drop is how close the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: police were to stopping him that very night.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate sliding doors moment of the entire case.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: At 3.01 a.m., roughly three hours after Ann was abducted,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: two Philadelphia police officers were stopped at a red light.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Directly in front of them was a 2001 Ford Focus.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: The officers absentmindedly rammed the license plate through their computer.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: It was Ann's car.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: It was Ann's car. The killer was sitting in the
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: driver's seat directly in front of the police cruiser.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: And they did nothing.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Because Anne's family didn't know she was missing yet, the
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: car hadn't been reported stolen, the plate came back clean
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: on the computer screen, the light turned green, the police
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: didn't initiate a stop, and the killer drove away.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: It is devastating. The mundanity of a green light and
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: a computer screen standing between life and death. And less
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: than a year later, in March 2005, the collateral damage
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: hits again.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Otis Bossett. a 36-year-old Marine Corps veteran, father of four,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: and a property landlord in the Logan neighborhood. He was
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: running late to pick his daughter up from daycare on
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: a Monday afternoon. At 2 p.m., he is walking down
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: the steps of the Logan subway station on the Broad
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Street line.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Right in the neighborhood.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: This is right in the heart of the neighborhood, a
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: quarter mile from Covington's house, right when the local schools
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: are letting out.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: And as he reaches the bottom of the steps, someone
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: just opens fire. Three shots. He is struck in the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: head on the side. And dies instantly.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: And despite this happening in a busy transit hub in
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: the middle of the afternoon, the police claim they couldn't
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: find a single reliable witness. But following their previous playbook,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: they did manage to find a convenient suspect to arrest.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Yes. Another false arrest. Yes.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: They arrested a 37-year-old black man named Morris Wells. Wells
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: was a former tenant of Otis Bossett's, and he had
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: a prior criminal record for burglary.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: So they just pinned it on him.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: He fit a comfortable, rational narrative, a disgruntled tenant with
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: a rap sheet, so they locked him up.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: It is absolutely infuriating. It's like the police department is
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: trying to put out a massive forest fire by walking
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: around stepping on individual embers, but they completely refuse to
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: look up and see the arsonist standing right in front
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: of them with a gas can. Multiple shootings, execution-style murders,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: all clustered within blocks of each other in North Philadelphia.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: And nobody says the words serial killer.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Because treating it as a serial killer requires admitting that
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: the normal localized violence you have come to accept is
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: actually an anomaly. The system treated these murders as background noise,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: just another tragic statistic in a struggling zip code.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Which is just awful.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: It is. The hyper localized terror might have continued indefinitely
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: if the violence had stayed in Logan. But in May 2005,
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Juan Covington brought his delusions out of the margins. and
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: he walked them into the most visible, highly protected environment
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: in Philadelphia.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Center City.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Center City, the downtown core. We are talking about a
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: geographical area that is fundamentally different from Logan. Center City
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: is the hub of wealth, tourism, historic landmarks, and federal
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: government buildings. It is heavily policed and heavily surveilled.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: And this is where Patricia McDermott enters the story. She
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: is 48 years old, a mother of two, living out
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: in the suburbs of Elkins Park. She works as a
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: radiology technician at Pennsylvania Hospital, which is located in Center City.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: A very steady routine.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Her morning routine is completely standardized. She takes a shuttle
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: in from the suburbs, catches a city bus at 15th
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and Market, rides it to 9th and Market, and walks
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the half mile to the hospital doors.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: On the morning of May 17, 2005, Patricia gets off
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: the bus at 9th and Market. But she only makes
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: it about 450 feet down the sidewalk. She's found dead
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: outside the Nix federal building, having been shot a single
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: time in the back of the head.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Why her? If Covington's previous victims were in his neighborhood,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: why does he travel miles downtown to assassinate a suburban mother?
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: To understand the motive, we have to look back at
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Covington's job at Stericycle. As a medical waste driver, he
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: had authorized access to Pennsylvania Hospital. Covington had crossed paths
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: with Patricia in the hallways.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: And what did his broken salience network do with that interaction?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: According to Covington, Patricia had accidentally bumped into him with
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: a portable medical machine at some point. To a healthy mind,
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: someone apologizes and you move on. To Covington, it was
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: a lethal conspiracy.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Of course it was.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: Because she worked in radiology, his paranoia latched onto the technology.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Delusions often incorporate the high-tech anxieties of their era, microwaves,
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: CIA bugs, radiation. Covington constructed an elaborate reality where Patricia
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: McDermott was an assassin actively using radiation machines and psychotropics
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: to secretly poison his blood.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: So to him, a middle-aged mom commuting with a coffee
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: is actually a radioactive threat that must be neutralized. The
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: terrifying intersection here is the sheer randomness for the victim
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: colliding with a hyper-targeted specificity for the killer. To Patricia,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: he was literally just a guy behind her on the sidewalk.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: But to Covington... She was the final boss of his
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: paranoid reality.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: And because she was murdered in front of a federal
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: building and a United States Postal Service annex, the area
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: was blanketed in security cameras. Within hours, police pulled the
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: CCTV tape and what they saw was immediately broadcast on
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: every news channel in the region.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: The footage is chilling. You see Patricia step off the
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: front doors of the bus. A few seconds later, a
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: man wearing a dark baseball cap steps off the rear doors.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: He walks quickly. closing the distance between them as she
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: rounds the corner.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Just stalking her.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: There was no argument, no robbery. He just walks up
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: behind her, raises a gun to the back of her head,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: fires once, and then casually jogs across the street into
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: a parking lot like he was trying to catch a
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: crosswalk light.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: The societal reaction was instantaneous and massive. And we have
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: to pause and look at the glaring disparity here. When
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: black men were being gunned down in broad daylight on
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: the streets of Logan, there were no press conferences. There
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: was no citywide panic.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: None at all.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: But the execution of a white suburban professional woman in
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: the heart of the commercial district, it triggered an earthquake.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: The police department mobilized a massive dragnet.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: They realized immediately that if a guy will casually execute
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a stranger in front of a federal building at rush hour,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: he will absolutely do it again.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: The urgency was palpable. They initially looked at Patricia's ex-husband,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: but cleared him almost instantly, partially because he was recovering
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: from surgery and on crutches, meaning he He physically couldn't
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: move like the man on the tape.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: So with no suspects, they turned to the cameras. Detectives
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: manually tracked the killer's escape route by pulling tapes from
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: toll booths, parking garages, and office lobbies.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: They pieced together footage from over 50 different cameras, tracking
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: him for a half mile until he just vanishes into
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the crowd near 6th and Spruce Streets.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: But there was a major technological hurdle. This is 2005.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: The camera resolution was terrible. They had a pixelated blob
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: of a man in a hat, but they couldn't generate
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: a clear facial profile. So the Philadelphia police did something
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: incredibly unconventional. They took the raw tapes to the National
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Football League headquarters in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Wait, the Football League? Which sounds insane. You don't equate
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: NFL referees with homicide frauds.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: But the NFL had state-of-the-art video enhancement and interpolation labs
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: used for reviewing highly complex, high-speed plays on the field.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: The police asked the NFL technicians to clean up the
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: murder tape.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: It's like having a window covered in an inch of mud,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and you know there was a license plate parked outside.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: You can't read it. The NFL essentially took a pressure
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: washer to the window. They couldn't magically generate a high-definition face,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: but they clarified the pixels enough to reveal a microscopic
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: piece of physical evidence.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When the NFL techs stabilized the footage of the gunshot,
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: they could actually see the exact trajectory of a tiny,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: pixelated shell casing ejecting from the pistol. They tracked its
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: arc on the screen and saw it fall into a deep,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: heavy metal drainage grate surrounding the federal building.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: That is unbelievable forensic work.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Police immediately went back to the crime scene, removed the
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: heavy grate, climbed down into the drain, and recovered a.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: 380 caliber shell casing. It gave them the precise weapon profile.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: But even with the NFL's technology, they still didn't have
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: a name. They were hunting a ghost.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Until the most advanced technology in the world was beaten
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: by the oldest investigative tool we have. A gut feeling.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: The driver of the bus that Patricia and Covington had
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: taken that morning was out of the country on vacation
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: when the murder occurred. When he returned to Philadelphia a
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: few weeks later, he saw the grainy footage and the
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: composite sketches playing on the local news. He drove straight
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: to the police precinct and told detectives, I know exactly
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: who that is. That is Juan Covington.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: But how did he know? It's a busy city route.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Because Covington was a regular on his route and the
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: driver had a deeply unsettling history with him, Covington would
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: frequently try to board the bus using an expired SEPTA
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: employee pass to ride for free. According to transit protocol,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: The driver was supposed to deny him entry or demand payment.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: But the driver told police that he never once challenged Covington.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: He just let him ride for free. Why?
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Because his amygdala, his biological threat detection system, was screaming
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: at him. The driver said he could sense a dark, explosive,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: violent anger radiating from Covington. He was literally terrified of
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: the man. He chose to look the other way on
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: a $ 2 bus fare because his primal survival instinct told
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: him that challenging this man would result in extreme violence.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I really want you to think about that. We are
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: socially conditioned to ignore those alarm bells. We are taught
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: to be polite, to follow the rules, to enforce the protocol.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: This driver essentially said, to hell with the rules, this
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: guy feels evil. He trusted his gut, it probably saved
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: his life, and it broke open a serial killer case.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Armed with a definitive name, the police cross-referenced Covington's employment
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: at Stericycle, realized he had access to Patricia's hospital, and
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: moved in. On July 12, 2005, Eight weeks after Patricia's murder,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: police set up a stakeout at his duplex in Logan.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: When he walked out the door, they arrested him.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Did he have a gun on him?
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: He was carrying a 9mm pistol tucked into his waistband,
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: and the serial numbers had been meticulously filed off. They
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: bring him into the interrogation room, but his paranoia takes over.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: He refuses to answer questions, just repeating his own name
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: over and over in a monotone voice.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: But they didn't really need a confession at that point
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: because the physical evidence was an avalanche.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: It was undeniable. They confiscated his stair cycle employee badge
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: and pulled the electronic swipe records from Pennsylvania Hospital. They
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: matched those times with the hospital's internal security cameras. The
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: footage showed Juan Covington entering the employee entrance of the
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: hospital just 20 minutes after Patricia was murdered on the street.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: And he was still wearing the exact same dark clothes
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: from the murder tape.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: So the physical link is cemented and then the ballistics
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: from the crime lab come back. And the scope of
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the horror finally comes into focus.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: The 9mm pistol Covington was carrying when he was arrested
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: didn't match the. 380 casing from Patricia's murder. Covington later
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: admitted he had thrown the. 380 into a dumpster. But
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: the crime lab ran the 9mm through their database, and
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: it matched the bullets pulled from Reverend Devlin, David Stewart,
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: William Bryant, and Otis Bossett.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: That is the moment the detectives in that room realize
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: they haven't just solved a high-profile downtown assassination. They have
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: captured a ghost who has been terrorizing North Philadelphia for
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: seven years.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: They executed a search warrant on his house in Logan
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: and found an arsenal. Multiple firearms, ammunition, military gear. The
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: sheer volume of violence he was prepared to inflict was staggering.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: The aftermath of his arrest required the city to reckon
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: with a monster, but also with itself.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Court-appointed psychiatrists evaluated Covington and formally diagnosed him with severe
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: paranoid schizophrenia. They noted in the files that the depth
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: of his detachment from reality rivaled killers like Jeffrey Dahmer
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: or David Berkowitz. He genuinely lived in an alternate universe
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: of warlocks and radiation assassins.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Because of his profound mental illness, prosecutors and defense attorneys
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: brokered a deal to avoid a protracted death penalty trial.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: On March 6, 2006, which happened to be his 44th birthday,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Juan Covington pleaded guilty. He officially confessed to the murders
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: of Patricia McDermott, Otis Bossett, and Reverend Thomas Lee Devlin,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: as well as the attempted murders of David Stewart and
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: William Bryant.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: He received three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I do want to point out that to this day,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: he flatly denies having any involvement in the disappearance of
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Brenda Wanda Smith or the murder of Ann Oakley, though
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the police still consider him the prime and only suspect
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: in both cases.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: While Covington was locked away in a psychiatric prison, the
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: survivors were left to carry the permanent physical weight of
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: his delusions. David Stewart and William Bryant spent the rest
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: of their lives navigating severe physical disabilities, leg braces, and
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: a wheelchair. Patricia McDermott's family channeled their unimaginable grief into advocacy,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: launching an annual 5K race called Legs Against Arms, which
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: raises funds to support programs designed to get illegal weapons
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: off the streets of Philadelphia.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: But as the families tried to heal, the city of
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia had to face a very ugly, undeniable truth about itself.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: This case stripped the paint off the systemic biases that
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: dictate how justice operates. It did.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: The glaring geographical and racial disparity in this case is
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: impossible to ignore. You have a man who shot four
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: black men, murdering two of them, on the streets of
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: a working-class minority neighborhood. It didn't happen in the dead
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: of night. It happened on subway steps at 2 p.m.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: and on sidewalks at 9 a.m. Yet it generated almost
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: zero media coverage. It did not mobilize the National Football
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: League's technology. It resulted in the devastating false arrests of
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: innocent black men because the police were rushing to close
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: cases they viewed as standard neighborhood violence.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until the violence crossed an invisible boundary line,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: until a white professional woman was murdered in a wealthy
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: commercial district, that the system decided it was time to
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: deploy every resource at its disposal. And that sits incredibly
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: heavy with me. The tragedy isn't just that Covington pulled
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the trigger. It's how long society permitted him to pull
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: the trigger, simply because the early victims were subconsciously deemed
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: less important by the system.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: It forces us to acknowledge that our institutions, law enforcement,
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: the media, the justice system are not objective algorithms. They
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: are built by humans and they enforce human biases. When
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: violence occurs in a zip code where society expects and
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: accepts violence, it is marginalized. The eccentric man in military
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: fatigues is allowed to escalate into a serial killer solely
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: because the community he is terrorizing is already disenfranchised.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Synthesizing everything we've unpacked today, we are looking at a
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: massive structural collapse. We have the heartbreaking reality of untreated
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: mental illness, a man whose brain betrayed him, turning a
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Christmas tree into a monster and his own cousin into
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: a warlock. We have the failure of a medical and
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: legal framework that couldn't force intervention when a man believed
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: his pills were demonic. We have the terrifying confirmation bias
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: of a justice system that ignored an airtight alibi to
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: lock up an innocent man. And we have a society
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: that only sounds the alarm when the fire burns the
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: wealthy side of town.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: And if we look closely at all those failures, it
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: brings us to a deeply unsettling realization about how we
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: live our lives today. We spend an enormous amount of time, money,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: and political energy obsessing over the hypothetical stranger in the
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: dark alley. We buy security cameras. We build gated communities.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: We structure our entire concept of safety around keeping unknown
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: external threats out. But one Covington story subverts that completely.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: What if the structures we rely on to protect us,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: the mental health interventions, the promise of equitable policing, the
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: idea of community oversight, what if they are actually incredibly fragile?
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: What if a wolf can comfortably live right next door,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: hiding in plain sight, entirely insulated by society's willingness to
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: just look the other way when violence happens to the
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: wrong people in the wrong neighborhood?
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: It challenges the very foundation of William Penn's city of
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: brotherly love. Are our safe spaces really secure because of
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: the strong systems we've built? Or are we just relying
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: on the blind statistical hope that the wolf decides to
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: stay on his own porch?
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: It makes you wonder. The muddy waters of the human
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: mind are dangerous enough. But when society actively chooses to
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: wear a blindfold, the wolf doesn't even need a disguise.