Death Row's Worst Killers In Their Own Words | Christopher Berry-Dee | Modern Wisdom Podcast 190

Christopher Berry-Dee is a criminologist and a writer. Christopher has spent a career interviewing some of history’s most notorious killers including Peter Sutcliffe, Ted Bundy, Aileen Wuornos, Dennis Nilsen and more. This is his first ever podcast. Expect to learn what it feels like to look pure evil in the eye, what makes psychopaths tick, why victims fall for these killers' deadly tricks and much more. Sponsor: Check out everything I use from The Protein Works at https://www.theproteinworks.com/modernwisdom/ (35% off everything with the code MODERN35) Extra Stuff: Buy Dead Men Talking - https://amzn.to/3ex6l0R Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ #serialkiller #tedbundy #psychopaths - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Chris Williamson?

  Chris, we have wrangled technology and we've managed to make it work. We finally got ourselves down, sat opposite each other.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah. As I said earlier, I'm a Skype virgin.

• 0:19Chris Williamson?

  There's a first time for everything, so this is going to be this evening. So my first question for you, you've interviewed some of history's most notorious killers, people like Peter Sutcliffe and Ted Bundy, Eileen Wuornos and Dennis Nelson and Joanne Dennehy and stuff like that. If you're out for dinner with someone new and they say, "So Chris, what do you do for work?" How do you describe your job?

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's actually a bit of a... It's great at parties or barbecues because most barbecues that I've attended in the past are sort of state agents and lawyers, golf club types. And then when they ask you with their nose up in the air, "What do you do for a job?" I say, "I interview serial killers." And that instantly attracts a massive crowd. And I got a lot of fun of looking at these accountants and their jaws drop on the floor. It's different, isn't it?

• 1:28Chris Williamson?

  It's definitely different, yeah. I mean, it must be, you're right, at a barbecue, it must be a very shocking thing to hear, especially just from, you know, I was prepared. I'm prepared to speak to you, having done some research on your background, when you were just expecting you to say, "Oh, well, actually, I'm the area manager for this accounting firm", or "I do, yeah, I'm in law" or whatever it might be, and I just speak to serial killers.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  But just to clear one thing up, I don't normally go to do's where people don't know me. Most of the people I dine with when I get a chance and I can afford it is people that do know me. I mean, in the Philippines, where I live most, a lot of the year, I mean, I dine with police officers and people like that, and they're homicide cops.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  America, the same, I do. But occasionally, somebody says, I think I saw you on the TV, you know, you the criminologist or something. But to me, it's just another job, Chris. I mean, it's just another job.

• 2:30Chris Williamson?

  I suppose it is. It's the same for everyone, right? It's just par for the course. And so the first question, the burning question I've got for you is, what is it like to sit down and interview these people, even having had this huge, long, illustrious career that you have with a lot of experience? Is there still, is it still quite an odd experience to go in? And also, do you get scared?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  To answer the last question first, I never get scared.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  If I got scared, they'd smell it.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  They, they can sense it. They're like a beast in a cage. And if you get scared, you lose the battle with them instantly because they're control freaks, they're psychopaths. And the minute you do that, you've got to come down to their level straight away. It can be fascinating. It really is fascinating. And they're all different, being up very close and personal, touching, some are chained up, some aren't.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Death can be a heartbeat away for you. They can lose the plot. But it's knowing their back history before you go there, normally having corresponded with them sometime for years. So you, there is this interpersonal relationship. You know how far you can push them. You know what pushes their buttons.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  You know what annoys them.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  And it's about manipulation and mind control. So I never get scared. I, I'm in control. They think they're in control, but I'm in control.

• 4:05Chris Williamson?

  You, you had a good example of that, the first character in your new Talking With Serial Killers book, Dead Men Talking, John Robinson. I think that was probably a pretty good example of someone who thought he was in control and then you've turned the tables on him, right?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I get it. Homicidal del boy. Yeah.

• 4:28Chris Williamson?

  That's how you described him.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  I said that actually on a TV series, I think it was called Born to Kill or something. And they had the crew on the floor in stitches. And I said, you're gonna leave that in? And they said, yeah, we'll leave it in. That's great. But that's what he was. I mean, you did look at him, he was, he was, he was just full of bullshit. I mean, you know, he, he's a cartoon character, really. If you, if you take away all the horror of his crimes and his manipulations, there is black humour there.

• 4:57Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  You know?

• 4:59Chris Williamson?

  So why did these serial killers open up to you at all? Why, why you?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Well, interesting question. Um, I think if we come away from serial killers, we go to John Canaan, who murdered Shirley Banks in Bristol. Definitely Susie Lamplu, um, and certainly Sandra Court in Bournemouth. Uh, to give you an idea, um, when his case, when he was finally locked up for life. Um, I, I wrote to him to say that I wanted to write a book about him. Um, and he came back very cocky and said, um, oh, well, no, I've got, I've got dozens of authors and publishers want my exclusive story. So then I got John Blake, my publisher, to sort of send me some pictures of my book covers. And I sent him those with a letter saying, well, thanks very much.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  I really wanted your assistance. I think you've been stitched up by the police, John. I'll write the story without your cooperation. Thanks a lot. So I put it between a rock and a hard place. And I tried to use the same fishing techniques with women and male serial killers. It's finding out what their wants and their needs are. It's like beach fishing. You, you know where the fish swim, like Robinson, you know what he wants. But it's a case of casting the right bait to catch him. Uh, with Melanie McGuire, who's in that book, the Ice Queen. She was in New Jersey, upscale woman.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Good lifestyle. Chopped up a husband and threw him in bits and pieces in the Chesapeake Bay.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  But but but she had hundreds of letters and publishers wanting her. So I wrote on conqueror cream conqueror paper like this, this laid laid stuff, this cream stuff with an envelope. And then I put my family crest wax seal on it and I sprayed it with Chanel Ego East. So when she opened the letter, she's got an air mouse stamp from England, which makes it different. It's classy stationery. She opens it and there's this sense, this smell that she remembers. Ego East, oh yeah. And it's something she'll come back to. Because

• 7:29Speaker 01

  this it's a sensory thing. So I use that bait with her.

• 7:34Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting that you managed to get yourself through the door using by finding out what these people want, what it is that they want, and then dangling that. But how about when you actually sit down with them? Have you got a process? Obviously, you tend to spend a lot of time corresponding back and forth. But when you eventually do get face to face with them, what you know, what is it that you're doing? What is it that you're saying or the way that you're acting, which is encouraging them to give away more than they usually should?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Well, one of the tricks of the trade, if you like, is one thing that law enforcement, my friends in the FBI would tell you and the British police, you can't, police can't use entrapment. They can't use, they can't entrap a person. So but I can. And and it's really about making them feel comfortable with you and you letting them know that although that you're on their side, but you know, you're not on their side and you are.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  You're chatting really, and now there could be an endgame to it for me like with Arthur Shawcross, I wanted him to confess to a murder of a little schoolboy called Jack Blake. And he told me, I use the language now, but he was inches away from me and the guard said, if he loses the plot, he could tear your head off Christopher, and we won't be in the room. Now with Shawcross, he literally boiled over, he went white, his face went white, sweat pouring down his face when I mentioned Jack Blake, he told me not ever mention it, otherwise he'd kill me. And he was, well, I leant forward and touched his knee, and I said to him, well, your girlfriend Clara's waiting outside and she's asked me to be the best man at your wedding, Arthur, and she's gonna go ape if you don't tell me

• 9:28Speaker 01

  the whole truth. And then his face, there's a TV interview, or you can see it online on the programme, and he cracked, and the fury went, and he confessed. And it's a case of sometimes they'll eyeball you, and they will say something bragging about, like Michael Ross did, the strangulation marks, multiple marks around his victim's necks, he got a kick out of that, he giggled. And then I looked at him straight in the face and said to him, Mike, you know, you're not a big serial killer really, are you? I'm in seven or eight, you're not Ted Bundy, give me a break, come on, boy. And he just looked stunned, and then he went on to try to describe more about what he'd done.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  You know, and I got two cold cases I cleared up with him, which were Zoonoc 2 at Cornell University, and a little girl called Kimberly, Kimberly Logan in Crystal Run. So it depends how you play it. I mean, sometimes it's a serious matter because you're there to try to, try to bring closure to the next of kin, and you're the only one who's gonna talk to him.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  So there is a heavy side of it.

• 10:41Chris Williamson?

  It seemed, I mean, the fact that you've said that you don't get scared and yet there is a guy that says, "I'll fucking kill you." You know that the police or the guards are far enough away for him to be able to do some serious damage before they could get in. Like, that takes, that takes some balls.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Well, with Kenneth Bianchi, the notorious hillside stranger, I interviewed him at the Washington State Penitentiary in a small room. And there was only a wooden table between us, a small table. And he's got the eyes of a great white shark, they're black, and they don't blink. And you're looking into the face of evil, you can smell it. And he's a big guy. He's strong, they do weights every day at yard time, you know, they're a load of fucking idiots. So anyway, he's sitting across this table and he's eyeballing me.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  And I just kept looking at him. And I got up and I walked around to his side of the table, I put my arm around him and I whispered in his ear and I said, "Listen, you fucking miserable motherfucker." I said, "Give me a smile, come on." And he cracked. And that was it. Well, all right. And as he left the room after the hour, he turned around as the guards let him out, because I was the only one in the room with him. He turned around and said, "If you ever come near me again, I'll kill you."

• 11:59Chris Williamson?

  Do you think he meant?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Well, I saw him. Yeah. But I saw him twice after that. I saw him one on exercise yard when it was snowing. And he walked, he walked past in a sort of blue jacket with a baseball, with a woolly hat on, a long, long row of cons. And I literally was within feet of him. And he just looked down, he wouldn't do, he wouldn't look at me. Then I saw him again up on the special housing unit. And he told me that he had a special house, which he calls his cell. It was the best cell in the whole prison, in the penitentiary. Because he was a top man.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  But really, and I wanted to see his house. So I had the run of the prison, even death row. I mean, I could go when I wanted to. And I walked up and the guard said, Christopher, do not step over that yellow line because they throw feces and pee at you. And I walked down the tier and I walked back and then I crossed the line. I walked up to Bianchi's tiny cell. And he was asleep on his bunk with headphones on. And I said to him, Kenny, Kenny, it's your friend Chris. I've come to see you in your house.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  He went ape.

• 13:12Chris Williamson?

  You are a very ballsy man, an incredibly ballsy man.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I've unlocked, I've had unlocked because I had the run of the place. About seven inmates, six inmates on death row in the, in the Washington state penitentiary. And I sat around with them in a semicircle on the floor. Got some, got some Coca Cola, got some candy and I sat down. I'd spoke to the shop caller, who, who the number one con on the back wing. And I said to him, is it okay if I unlock and we can chat? And we sat down for nearly, what, three quarters of an hour maybe? Didn't discuss their crimes, just discuss life and everything. No threat at all, no threat at all. Because you've got to remember, and your listeners, your viewers have got to remember.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  These people, most of these men will kill innocent women and children. They will not front up to a man.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  They're all mouth and trousers, they're cowards. Any man that kills young children or elderly people or vulnerable gays is nothing more than a coward, a gutless coward.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  So that's the way it works.

• 14:27Chris Williamson?

  And that's why, that's why it's important for what you said at the beginning, for you to go in, to not show fear, to have this image, because that weakness is what they're looking for.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  That's how they screw up psychiatrists' brains and minds because they know they can run rings around psychiatrists, they know a lot of the time they can run rings around the cops. But what they can't do is they get stuck in a corner with me when they think, oh, Christopher's going to write a book all about me, he's going to make a TV programme, I'm going to be famous. The stuff before they start, that's the point. I can tell the next one, I've been on a podcast with you and we're famous, they'll love it.

• 15:13Chris Williamson?

  That's it man, I mean, probably, probably keep me anonymous, if it's, if it's okay, keep my, keep my name anonymous, but I guess they're behind bars, what they're going to do. So your new book, Dead Men Talking, looks at killers that are on death row. Is there anything different about the dynamic with these people in that they're on death row rather than just potentially serving life in prison?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  What they call many agree mild, remember the film Stephen King, The Green Mile, of course, they're not green at all, they're pastel shades sometimes.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  They are not, no longer like we, we see in The Green Mile, they're not so antiquated. San Quentin, the condemned row at San Quentin State Prison is pretty grim, but there is a certain amount of, they are dead men walking and, and they are, they come to the end of the line.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Their only hope is that the Lord will save them and get them a reduced sentence or off the hook before they're given the goodnight juice. So there is that certain quietness, now if you come down a level or up a level from death row, you get the special housing units where they're completely bonkers.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  And it's like being at London Zoo on a crazy day, they're screeching and throwing shit at each other and howling and spitting, it's like a madhouse.

• 16:42Chris Williamson?

  Is, is that with the ones with psychiatry, psychiatric problems?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  No, not all of them, they're just like, but the, the death row inmates are like, let's just say, they're more, they've got more respect.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  They've done the ultimate crime.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Now, they may be a child killer, then they're going to be sort of put to one side. But the point is, there is that sort of a hierarchy in the prison system where a death row inmate is. When I go to interview a death row inmate, they lock down the prison. If I want him out of his cell, there's a complete lockdown of the whole facility.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  That nothing moves. And then they bring the inmate shackled with guards, macquely dressed guards either side of them. And he's shackled up and they're bringing to you and it will be up to me whether I decide whether I want them comfortable or unshackled. Or I want to get them a bar of candy or Coca Cola. And quite often I'll tell the guards, get him this or get him that. And the inmate likes that because the guards are telling the inmate what to do every day. And here am I telling them what to do, but it's all prearranged. It's all like a soap opera, really.

• 17:58Chris Williamson?

  So it gives gives that impression that you're on their side. Look, this is us working together. I'm one of you, et cetera, et cetera. So do you tend to prefer to have the inmates without restraints to make them feel more comfortable? When you can?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think one of the only, I mean, sometimes they're behind a screen like Kenneth Macduff. Death row Ellis unit before he was executed in Texas. He was behind, some are behind screens, which is great. Douglas Clark, the Sunset Slayer in San Quentin prison, he was heavily shackled, but he he was going ape. I mean, he was really in a foul mood. It took me ages to calm him down before we got the cameras rolling. But with Dougie, it was a matter of him attacking the guards, not attacking me. So that's the difference. With Michael Ross and some of the other killers like Shawcross and some of the others,

• 18:58Speaker 01

  I will say, look, if you're going to behave yourself, I'll get the shackles taken off and we'll get some coke and we'll get some candy down here and we're going to have a nice, comfortable chat. But don't mess me about because you'll go back down the hole. And then that's it.

• 19:14Chris Williamson?

  I get it. Okay, so we've got a good understanding there of the process of how you're speaking to them, how you build rapport, stuff like that. I want to get into the actual pathology, the way that these guys and these women think. First question is, is there a common theme among serial killers? Upon reading this most recent book of yours, they come from all IQ points, there's different backgrounds, there's different approaches. You've got one person, one killer who's putting people into barrels to leave them to liquidate in their own fluids. You've got another that's eating the ears of the victims that he kills. You know, it seems to be all over the place.

• 19:57Chris Williamson?

  So what are the commonalities or are there any?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a question? We're social distancing at the moment, aren't we?

• 20:04Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Presently now.

• 20:05Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Can I smoke because I like a cigarette?

• 20:07Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. That's absolutely fine by me.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  I don't like the smoke traps, do you?

• 20:14Chris Williamson?

  No, not at all. I can't, I can't smell it through the, through the microphone anyway.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  All right. Okay. They're different psychopathologies. Okay. None of them are the same. They're all totally different.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  They are. Every single one of them, you try to look for something common amongst them and you can't find it.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  What they will tell you is that they were abused as a child or had a bad upbringing or they were badly potty trained or they were only allowed to drink green top milk, but they wanted blue top milk. There's all sorts of bullshit excuses for why they do what they do. You've got Peter Sutcliffe saying it was the word of God when he was digging a grave that killed prostitutes. But then he didn't just kill working girls, did he? He killed innocent, ordinary girls, classy girls. And the same with Harvey the Hammer, the Hammer Carrigan in the Minnesota correctional facility. Fifty victims. When he went to trial, he said that God told him to kill these women.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  And he wore a white robe and some leather thrown sandals. And when he got sentenced to life in prison, his lawyers had to go for another trial and his lawyer turned around to him and said, look, Harvey, said, God didn't help you last time. I don't think he's going to help me next time. But, I mean, I am. I mean, I know it's black humour, but I mean, it's a serious subject, but, you know, when you're there, when they're exhuming a body that you've helped get out of the ground, like in Waco, the cops are actually very, very loving and careful with the corpse and everything else. But there is a little bit of black humour going around. It has to, because it releases the pressure. Because they're all black people as well. So the answers are quite short, aren't they?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  They're all different.

• 22:08Chris Williamson?

  That's an interesting one. What I found to be interesting was that some of the murderers are so brutal toward their victims, and yet they have families, they have children that they care about, or that at least they don't mistreat. For instance, John Robinson, who is, there's a full eighty pages dedicated to him, and he's got a wife of like twenty years, five children, and yet alongside that was committing all of these atrocious crimes.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but no, I think that's an easy one to answer, and I think your viewers are going to love this bit. They don't love them. How can you love a woman and commit adultery for fifteen years and going around raping and killing women that he's lured into his web of deceit? How can any man love a woman or love their children if they're doing that?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  BTK, another one, the Green River Killer. They've all got families. I've just written a book coming out soon called Sleeping With Serial Killers. It's about women who live with these men all the time. Because the thing about Sonia Sutcliffe, God bless her, I mean, I know she's caused a lot of problems, but she never knew that Peter was a serial killer until the police knocked on, you know, arrested him. How can you love, how can you love a woman, or a woman love a man?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  And then commit those terrible crimes? It does, I'll tell you what it is, Chris, it's a matter of wearing a mask of normality. It's presenting yourself to your neighbours and your business colleagues. I'm married and I've got kids. Look, we've got a nice house, we can mow the yard every Sunday, we go barbecues, we go church. But it's all bullshit. Because it's hiding the monster living within. It's the mask of evil.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  It's their camouflage. It's their social camouflage. It's like the ghillie suits that a gamekeeper will use when he's shooting to hide himself. I was in, I was in, I've got really, this is really quite a lovely little thing. I was in Manila and I went to this big massive aquarium, it's one of the best in the world. And I was looking at all these little glass cases in the creepy crawly section. And as you notice, I've got glasses on, my eyesight's not the best. And I was peering through this glass, trying to see something in it. And it was like sand and there was like twigs.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  And I couldn't see anything. I kept looking to see if the exhibit closed or something. But there tucked away little two black eyes peering out of the sand, waiting for another creepy crawly to come along and kill it. Or a little twig thing that moved.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  And that's what serial killers are like. They're camouflaged. Nobody sees them, nobody knows they're there, nobody knows they're coming, and then they strike.

• 25:22Chris Williamson?

  It seems unbelievable that you could be the partner of a murderer, an abuser, someone who has this crazy other side to their world and not know. But as you've identified, there are examples where the partner...

• 25:41Speaker 01

  There's a lot, Tommy.

• 25:42Chris Williamson?

  So how, how, how can you not, you know, to me, I just think, why didn't, why wouldn't someone have thought?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Well, the thing is, in a lot of cases, in a lot of cases, the red flags pop up. A lot of cases, the woman will know, hang on, he's doing something strange today, or he's not acting right, or there's money missing out of the bank, I wonder what he's doing. There are red flags. Unfortunately, a lot of women don't spot those red flags. That's what this book about Sleeping With Killers is about. It's looking at the red flags. Michael Sam's who killed the young prostitute in the Midlands, up in Yorkshire Way. There were so many red flags with Tina Sam's who I interviewed, I met Michael Sam's in Full Sutton Prison. There were so many red flags there, she just ignored him. He

• 26:31Speaker 01

  trod all over her. He conged and lied and everything else. He didn't love her. But the minute he got locked up in prison, out come all the love letters, I miss you, blah, blah. But can you send me some money, Tina?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  I want these railway magazines. At the same time, in the Sunday newspaper, there's a picture of a woman called Vicky Vincelli who had bust about a 44, parading herself outside the prison gates of visits. And it's Michael Sam's piece of stuff.

• 27:05Chris Williamson?

  I, I'm blown away by this. I, since reading the book, I've been thinking a lot about our modern day obsession with serial killers, with true crime, the popularity of series on podcasts like Serial and Up and Vanished. It's huge. There is this resurgence or a resurgence in popularity in this. And I put a tweet out about it and got sent. And literally just before we came live, I got sent a photo of a T-shirt that a girl said to me, this is exactly what you were talking about. And it's a girl's T-shirt that says, probably eating or thinking about serial killers.

• 27:45Chris Williamson?

  I was like, that's it right there. Like that. I know so many girls that love true crime that adore it. What do you think it is?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Extreme, the extreme of that. I mean, everybody's entitled to that. But what are called murder groupies? So you've got hundreds of women are writing and men are writing to women killers as well. Like the retired major from Beverly Saltston, he's writing to some hooker in prison, serving life. He's seen a beautiful, she's sent him beautiful pictures, which are really fake, the ones of a girl in a Russian model. He thinks he's falling in love, he's sending her money. You've got the murder groupies, you've got the murder groupies that marry these people in prison. They want the killer's babies for God's sake.

• 28:30Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  But they don't, well, because they're just possessed, they're just possessed. I mean, Keith Hunter Jesperson, the happy face killer, another one of my guys. He has hundreds of girls, he's six foot seven, I think, the truck interstate trucker. He sent me files of love letters and photographs of the girls boasting about, oh, look, another one wants me. Another one's coming to visit next week. And one of them, and this is quite disgusting, was what I thought was a lipstick imprint on the note paper. In fact, I've written about this in a book. And I, I thought, oh, somebody's given a kiss with lipstick on.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  And he wrote underneath, when I first saw it, he said that, oh, that's not lipstick, that's menstrual blood.

• 29:28Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's two firsts that we can chalk up this evening, Christopher. Your first podcast and the first time in about 200 episodes that the term menstrual blood has ever been used. So, I mean, what is going on? What is the obsession here? Is it that the the women find this level of dominance and aggression and undiluted masculinity attractive? Is that what it is?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  You know, you asked me a question. I haven't got the answer because I can't get inside. I mean, I don't understand women at the best of times.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  What a line somebody that writes to some cannibal who's been with a diner or some woman. I mean, that was Arthur Shawcross. I mean, the girl wanted to marry him. But the thing is, they don't seem to get it. They don't think, oh, I better go and look at the scenes of crime photographs and see if I can get those through the Freedom of Migration Act in America, or I'll go online and see what what he did to these people. That's stupid.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  That's it. Thick. Stupid.

• 30:39Chris Williamson?

  It's dangerous, man. It really is, I suppose.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Eighty year old women are writing to some, what they big black hunk in Florida, who calls himself Florida's finest chocolate. And she's in love with him. And he's he's she's sending him money every week. But he's got a dozen or so women like sending him money.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  And as a lunacy here, they ought to be locked up. They ought to sit in an electric chair for 10 minutes and see what it feels like.

• 31:10Chris Williamson?

  I'm doing something wrong here because I'm 32 and single and these guys have just got harems of women chasing after them, giving them money, real chocolate or whatever he's called over in Florida, having a whale of a time.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  There's a big difference. You're imprisoned in your own home like I am right now. They're going to sit in an electric chair.

• 31:31Chris Williamson?

  That is true. So.

• 31:35Chris Williamson?

  We understand that there aren't necessarily any commonalities between the killers. The way that they, the reasons that they kill, their justification for it, both publicly and privately, are all different. What about commonalities between the victims that they go for? You mentioned that they tend to be weaker people, like women, children?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, women, children and the elderly, the vulnerable in society. Most serial killers have what they call their own victimology, their own preferred victim type. Now, your viewers can go online and they can look up Ted Bundy's victims and you'll see they almost look, all of them, like sisters, sorority sisters. In fact, they were, most of them were sorority sisters. You couldn't, you line them up, they all look the same, long hair, same looks, same ages, that sort of thing. That's what turned Bundy on, that sort. You've got Henry Lucas and Otis Tool. Now, I interviewed Henry, one old dear old Henry down in Texas while he was on the row.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  He was subsequently given a life sentence, then he died of natural causes. Other than President, the governor then was Bush, I think it was. But they went for everything. I mean, they raped and murdered chickens and dogs and cats and young girls and children and old men and old ladies. I mean, they, they went through the whole shebang. They did everything. I mean, there's a lot of frightened chickens in Texas, I can tell you.

• 33:05Chris Williamson?

  That's, that is that dark humour that we were talking about again, isn't it? Why is there often an element of sex involved in the crimes? And is there, is it almost always that there's some sort of sexual gratification going on?

• 33:23Speaker 01

  With serial killers, certainly. The, I think the only serial killer I've ever interviewed that wasn't sexually motivated was John Scripps from the Island of White. He was 34 years old. I watched him being hanged in Changi Prison years ago. It was on my birthday, 18th of April, funny enough.

• 33:43Chris Williamson?

  Happy birthday.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  The police, the police gave me a presentation mug when I left the country with a picture of a man hanging from a tree. But, but John, he, he killed for money. He, he, he, he'd gone to Cancun and he murdered a, a young uni guy called Timothy McDowell, got him to give him his PIN numbers and then he chopped and fed him to the alligators. Then later on in his, he went to prison then years later for drug smuggling. Um, he's got fifteen years, but he walked out of a prison, an open prison about two years later. After telling everybody he was going to escape, he just walked out of the gate, nobody was going to know.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Um, and he was taught butchery skills on the Isle of Wight by a prison officer called Quigley. And he learnt how to dismember carcasses while in prison. So the prison taught him how to dismember victims. So he then went to Singapore where he met a South African businessman called Gerard George Low, who was in Singapore buying electrical stuff because it was cheaper back in those days. It's not anymore, it's more expensive, but then it was. And, and they shared the same hotel room and then John hit him with a camping hammer and then got his PIN number, extracted his PIN number out of him and then he took, dragged him into the bathroom and then he stuck a knife in his neck and bled him to death.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Chopped him up, put him in suitcases and dumped him into the, into the Singapore Bay. Then he went straight to, did a bit more shopping, went to the opera on his business card. He went to Thailand, he went to Phuket, he met Sheila and her son Darren Demood, who was on a gap leave because he'd broken his leg. I stayed at Millies Inn, Millies Marina Inn in Phuket on the beach there. Uh, he killed them both, he stunned them with a stun gun, dismembered them, put their bodies down a mineshaft. But like an idiot, he went back to Singapore. And by then the body, the body parts of Gerard Low had popped up in the Singapore harbour.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Gerard Lim, Detective Superintendent Gerard Lim, who I know very well. He put out a hotel call for anybody not paying their bills, the name of Low. And he trapped, they caught John and then they hanged him. And I, I interviewed John, um, on the Monday before his execution. And I said to him, John, why didn't you appeal? He said, they won't hang me, Chris, I'm British. On Friday, they tore his head off.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Well, they hung him between two Thai bandits. He refused to be weighed for the drop. He did put up a spirited fight. They broke his nose and his jaw.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  They stripped him naked and then he put him on the drop between two Thai bandits.

• 36:36Chris Williamson?

  What's a Thai bandit, sorry?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Thai, Thai, Thai, Thai, there were ties.

• 36:41Chris Williamson?

  Oh, Thai bandits, sorry.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Yes, not the ones you get from a shop like Tukal's Thai shop. And then, and then what happened was they, I was doing some stuff with AP TV at the time and I was, I covered the execution. And then I went to the cremation and interviewed the Thai ambassador. And then they had to bring his ashes back to England. So we, we had a little drawer who was going to keep the ashes in their bedroom, but I rigged it. I didn't want them. But they, they hanged on, yeah, because he refused to be weighed. His head was nearly at the top.

• 37:17Chris Williamson?

  Broken nose, broken jaw, naked, hung.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Crapping himself.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  The other two guys were standing there as good as gold. He put up a fight. The priest at the time had been there for years and years and years and he came outside and he wept and he said to me, Chris, Chris, he said, I'm never going to go to an execution again. That was terrible.

• 37:40Chris Williamson?

  The struggle and the, the, the fact that it didn't go down smoothly, is that what disturbed the priest?

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was awful. I, I, I've seen a few executions in my time shootings. I mean, I was in the Marines for years. I've seen a lot of executions and terrible things, but that was an execution that, you know, you look back at it and you think, oh, I. The reason he was naked was because they, they, they told him to get out of his prison shorts. They had flip flops and prison shorts because

• 38:12Speaker 01

  if you went to the gallows with those, you soiled the shorts.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  And then they got to wash them.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  So they told him to put his civilian clothes on and he said, no.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  And with that, they just dragged him out of his cell, a whole load of them, beat the hell out of them.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  He didn't, he put up a fight.

• 38:34Chris Williamson?

  Whether capital punishment is justified or not is a sort of a much longer question for a different time, but that does seem a little barbaric to have someone naked in the 21st century being hanged.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, Jesse DeFiero in America, he went up in flames because the electric chair was all, it was like Edward Dwellacore in the Green Mile, it was exactly the same scenario, the bloke caught fire screaming.

• 39:04Chris Williamson?

  Wasn't properly calibrated, wasn't wet and.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  No, no, they just, it was a boxed up old electric chair, they tried to fix it, but they wouldn't repair it properly, and they fried him to death. I've seen, I mean, that happens, but, but the point is, on the matter of capital punishment, I'm quite often asked that question, and I always say, look, it's none of our damn business if the people in Texas are sick and tired of having their little babies and their mothers and their wives, our elderly people, killed for a pocketful of change by scum. And these people know, like John Scripps did when he went to Singapore, there are signs everywhere, you, you, you break our law, you drug smuggling or murder, we will hang you no matter what. Now, these

• 39:52Speaker 01

  people aren't insane when they commit these crimes, Chris, they know what they're doing is wrong. All the, all, and, and why should I legislate for people in Texas? That's up for them to decide, just like we wouldn't expect people to tell us to bring back hanging here. It's none, it's, it's, it's courses, but these people, I mean, Henley and Brady should have been hung. No doubt about it.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  What horrific crimes they carried out. They should have been hung.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  But there are people out there saying, oh, no, no, God wouldn't like that. You know, we're all equal in the eyes of God. Well, you tell that to the parents of those murdered children, see what they say.

• 40:41Chris Williamson?

  I think the the most, the only compelling argument that I think I've heard against capital punishment is to do with the retribution versus rehabilitation argument. That on one side it is a, it's the law enacting revenge on behalf of the public as opposed to it being an opportunity to try and rehabilitate people. But as you've mentioned there, there are crimes that are so heinous and people who are so far gone that you think, well, what salvage, what is left to salvage of this person?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  The first thing that your viewers must understand is you cannot reform or rehabilitate a psychopath. Isn't it possible? That's a fact of life.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  The second thing you should realise is that when these people commit these crimes, they know exactly what the punishment could be.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Whether it acts as a deterrent or not, that in that knowledge is another matter. It didn't act as a deterrent for John Scripps. So the offender makes the decision.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Judge Stuart Nam in Long Island one day, and he's a hard-nosed judge. He's, no, it was Judge, Judge Stark. He told me, he said to me, Chris, society makes the laws. We have to live by these laws, otherwise it's anarchy. If an offender commits a heinous crime and knows that the death penalty is applicable,

• 42:13Speaker 01

  then we really, we merely provide the rope. He's made the decision and it's up to him. A simple analogy would be if you parked your car on a double yellow line and get a ticket, don't complain about it. You knew what you were doing was wrong. That's a simple analogy.

• 42:32Chris Williamson?

  You're right. You are right. I want to ask, across your very long career, kind of hitting the big, the big players in the world of murder and depravity, who are some of the ones that disturbed you the most or that played on your mind the most?

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Get your head around that.

• 44:57Chris Williamson?

  So this is this, the multifaceted life that serial killers seem to lead. Ted Bundy, self representing, you know, saying, oh, I'm going to put my own case forward. I'd like to do my own, getting rid of his representation at the time and then deciding that he was going to step up and, you know, someone that becomes ordained and then passes the bar, like the, there's obviously a lot of momentum behind these individuals. They have capacity to do things. It's just that it's directed into such a heinous, destructive path.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Coming back to Bundy, he was too clever for his own good. When he eventually faced trial, when he eventually was arrested down in Florida and I went to, I've been to the Chi Amiga house where he killed Lisa Levy and Bowman and attempted to kill another one. And I interviewed the cops there as well, quite interesting thing. But I met his lawyer, I thought it was the prosecutor or the lawyer. And he said, oh, Chris, here's something you might be interested in. He said, this is what, what got Bundy the electric chair. And I thought, what's this then? And he held out a pair of white dentures, casts, white casts.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  He said, yeah, no, I said, who's are these then? Some teeth.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Said, that's Ted Bundy's original dentures that were taken after he was arrested. And I said to the lawyer, I said, well, he didn't have to give those to you, did he? You know, he said, we conned him. He said, we told him because he was famous and the press are being in front of him, in front of the cameras all the time, he should look his best and his teeth really needed some work. So they took, and he agreed because he was vain and he was a narcissistic little pig. And so they took these dentures, but then he compared those dentures with the bite marks on Lisa Levy's buttocks. And that was the death sentence. Too clever for his own good.

• 47:04Chris Williamson?

  I remember, I remember watching that in the documentary and.

• 47:09Chris Williamson?

  Hearing you speak about these individuals and the way that you write as well in the book, it's very evocative. You put your own opinion into the way that you describe them as well. And I don't know whether it's simply because it's not my profession and I've never been exposed to them, but I just can't get over how ballsy it is. To me, it just, it seems like such a brave thing to do to speak. And I know it's stupid, like Ted Bundy's gone, I can say whatever I want about him. But there's part of me that fears, still fears even the essence of them. Does that make sense? It's part of me that wants to almost distance myself from, from saying anything for

• 47:50Chris Williamson?

  fear that this creature in the night's going to somehow come and enact retribution.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  No, but if you're a God, I'm a pretty God fearing person, believe it or not. I mean, I have, I have got a nicked copy of Gideon's Bible which I carry.

• 48:06Chris Williamson?

  You're not supposed to nick it, Christopher, come on.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Well, no, I beg your pardon. No, it found its way into my suitcase.

• 48:16Chris Williamson?

  I promise, Your Honor, I promise.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  No, when the maid came and cleared up the room and she was asking me, I said, oh, you know, I said, I'm a God fearing person. And I think she probably thought it was, it was my Bible and she was very kind to put it in there. And as I was on a flight back to the UK from the Philippines, I, I thought, well, I better, better keep it. And I do, I do pray every night. I mean, I do, I do pray. I mean, I, I was on a particularly horrible homicide in Manila, um, this year, late last year, yeah, Halloween last year. Um, a friend of mine, I won't say who he is, works at the American Embassy, asked me, um, could I go and visit head of homicide in McCarthy

• 48:59Speaker 01

  in Manila? Um, there's a working girl that'd been axed, tortured. Um, we did some crime, I did a bit of crime profiling. I've got some photographs of me with a major. They treated me like gold. I mean, he's got some of my books now. But, but we caught the guy, it was a German guy. It was, it wasn't hard. But they're not particularly crime profile oriented out there in the Philippines. What they do is they catch somebody, then they shoot them dead. They don't worry, you know. And, but this was a particularly, I mean, I saw the, I,

• 49:35Speaker 01

  The girl died, she was beautiful, she was a working girl, she was only thirty-two, she had two kiddies, she had to go on the streets to earn money, she was absolutely stunningly beautiful in life. And they tied her up, tortured her, and the last thing that she did was one eye open and a tear ran down her cheek, and then she died. And when we got the guy within three days, I mean, it wasn't difficult to profile him because her body ended up a long way from where she was last seen in a nightclub. So that stands that the person must have had his own car. And then with, we got the CCTV and there were other witnesses, and there was a tall guy, they thought he was German with a tattoo on his shoulder, and me and the guy from the

• 50:20Speaker 01

  embassy, the American embassy, sat down with these girls because they were reluctant to talk to the police. And one of them happened to mention in passing, "Oh, his friend's on Facebook." God, what a crack. So we went through the Facebook, and there's a list of contacts, and this girl said, "That's him." Now, the thing was, I was flying back on the Sunday, on the seventh, I think it was, a business class flight to Dubai and then back to London with the Emirates. And that morning, the police were going to raid, they were going to catch him that morning. They said, "We're going to get him, Chris." And they said, "We're going to smash it." They've got SWAT teams out there, they go for it.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  And the major said, "Look, Chris," he said, "you can have my gun," he said, "and you can shoot him if you like." I mean it. Don't mess about out there.

• 51:12Chris Williamson?

  They are not messing about at all.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  No, I'm telling you, this is God's truth. Later, I learned, I said, "Well, he'll get a life sentence." He said, "Oh, well, not really." And what they do is they take them to court in like a pickup, a truck with just a tarpaulin on the top and wooden benches and the sides are up because it's hot. And two motorcyclists with a pillion passenger drew up alongside with crash helmets on and shot his, blew his head off. That was it. Please. Why bother with the trial?

• 51:48Chris Williamson?

  It's a lot, a lot quicker and simpler to just kill them on the way there.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's it. Saves all the problem with the embassies and all this sort of stuff and that was all done and dusted.

• 51:57Chris Williamson?

  That is insane. And so tell us about the, the German fellow that you mentioned, the one that you said was pretty disturbing.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Peter Curtin.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  If you look up evil and depraved in a Rosetta's the Thoros for depravity and then look at all the synonyms that go all the way down that list, he's one of them. In fact, if you look up depraved in the dictionary, Peter Curtin's face will be looking back at you.

• 52:25Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 52:28Speaker 01

  He was, I can tell you because I'm just starting the chaps running. I'm put, how can one possibly sum up sad or sexual serial killer Peter Curtin? In an effort to answer this question, one might require Rosetta's the Thoros and look up depraved, sense to the synonyms running along these lines. Sexual pervert, beastly and evil, genius, vile, base, corrupt, contemptible, murderous, et cetera, et cetera. A putrid, nauseous, loathsome, diabolic example of the devil's spawn might be our starting point.

• 53:00Chris Williamson?

  Fairly big headline, fairly big headline.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  A very nasty little man.

• 53:06Chris Williamson?

  What did he do?

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Well, he raped little babies and kids and he'd go around the village lake and chop the head off a swan and drink the blood. I mean, he was a vampire. He was a, he was into digging up bodies and he'd in lots of bodies after he'd murdered them. I mean, this guy was really, and he lived with, his woman, he lived with his wife for years. He never suspected a thing.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  He set, he set, he raped babies and set them on fire and let them squirm to death. I mean, that's not good, is it?

• 53:38Speaker 01

  But they did chop his head off.

• 53:40Chris Williamson?

  Chopped his head off in Germany?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, they guillotined him, yeah.

• 53:44Chris Williamson?

  Is that still going in Germany?

• 53:46Speaker 01

  His psychiatrist, Dr Carl, yeah, excellent, Dr Carl Burr called him the king, and this is his doctor called him the king of sexual perverts. That's his doctor. You don't hear that every day from your local GP, do you?

• 53:59Chris Williamson?

  I should hope not. That is incredible. So that's, that, I mean, that seems like it's really, you know, even Ted Bundy wasn't cutting the head off swans and drinking their blood and setting babies on fire after raping them.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Oh. So we automatically, people automatically, when you ask anybody, and I get hundreds of

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Messenger, I always answer Messenger, I always write back to my readers. I mean, it can be quite a long time, but my readers are my customers and I value them very much. In fact, without us publishers, we would not be in business without readers. So I got, and your viewers are the same, you know, we would not be in business if it wasn't for your people. So we value them 100%. But,

• 54:45Speaker 01

  you know,

• 54:48Speaker 01

  we, we got to learn about these people. It's no good shutting the door pretending they're not there.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  But what is bad, and I will say this now, there was a man called Colin Pitchfork who murdered two schoolgirls up in the Midlands years ago.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  He raped them and killed them. He got an actual life sentence. He's now walking around amongst us under an assumed name.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  The guy that killed, one of the guys that killed that little boy, that shopping mall years ago,

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Bridgewater, Carl Bridgewater. He's, he's out and about in society. He lives not far from me.

• 55:32Chris Williamson?

  Well, you mentioned earlier on, you said psychopaths are essentially irredeemable.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:38Chris Williamson?

  There's nothing, and I think it was...

• 55:44Chris Williamson?

  I want to say Arthur Shawcross, but it might not be someone that was part of one of the series that you were involved in, I was watching earlier on. And they were let out after serving 18 months of good behaviour. And upon that happening, then re-entered into society.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Shawcross did 15 years of a 23 year sentence. And the psychiatrist said the parole board, oh, he's fit to be released. And they went on and killed about 12 prostitutes.

• 56:12Chris Williamson?

  Very well may have been that. So I mean, what like, what does this mean for the, how are we supposed to litigate against this? You know, what do we do?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Well, the problem is what you've got to remember. And I've say this in my books, and I'll say it to you now, and I'll tell all the readers, and I say it on TV as well. Half the time, these psychiatrists that let these people out haven't got a clue. They live on another planet. They live in a world where lead balls bounce, fairies reign supreme, and elephants fly. They're fools. In fact, in some of the cases, the psychiatrists are more mad than the people they're representing or analyzing. And that's a fact.

• 56:45Chris Williamson?

  Getting it wrong, the price of getting this sort of an assessment wrong, or being outwitted by a serial killer is 15 lives, as you just identified with Arthur Shawcross.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Shawcross wheeled his way into the prison psychiatric unit, and he learned the psychobabble speak. And he was counselling other inmates. This is a fact. And so when it came up for parole, oh, he's reformed, he spun a yarn to them. Next minute, he's killing prostitutes by the handful. Chewing their vaginas, spitting the bones out, and going eating Dunkin' Donuts with the cops and listening to who they're trying to catch.

• 57:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that was it. So there was this story about one of the cops that was part of the investigation, came and sat next to him on the stoop, right? And he had shiny shoes on. Arthur had shiny shoes and like, he looked quite smart. And because this investigation was so wide ranging, the cop came and sat next to him and started sort of telling him about all of the different things that were going on. They said, oh, we're looking for him because he just presumed he's got shiny shoes on. He must be a policeman.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  I mean, it just, I mean, I interviewed Paul Beecham at Broadmoor Hospital years ago. I interviewed Ronnie Cray as well, funny enough. But he was a mass murderer, Paul. He was a great artist. He loved painting. We struck up a good relationship and then he met a woman called, I think, Paula Riddlesworth. It was a social worker, went to the, went to the hospital. And then he was released. But, um, I, I, you know, and, and this is a true story. And he came to stay with me at my cottage in, um, in Kerdridge in Hampshire. And we talked about painting. We took my two gun dogs. I had guns, funny enough. I kept them in the garage when he visited, but I went, and we went along the river at Winchester and we talked about stuff. And then that night I went to bed and in the morning I woke up

• 58:44Speaker 01

  and the kitchen was spotless and there was a note saying, Christopher, I'll never be as good artist as you. He said, I've got to go now. I'm, I, I've got to go. Enough is enough. A week later, he, he bludgeoned his wife to death and buried her under the patio. Then he took the shotgun and blew his head off. Now, what I couldn't understand was, when I was visiting with Paul in the autumn, we were walking around the grounds of Broadmoor and there was a guy raking up leaves. And Paul said to me, that man's a psychiatrist. I said, no, he's not Paul. He's one of your mates in there, locked up. He said, Chris, he's a psychiatrist. He said, he turns into a fly at night and watches me.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  He picked up, he walks over to this guy, took the rake off and smacked him around the head with a rake. And he said, he won't come into my cell tonight and buzz around. And they get him out of Broadmoor. They let him out.

• 59:42Chris Williamson?

  But then you let him, you let him into your house?

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, because there was something about Paul that I felt very, very safe with. Um, he was very funny. He had a very boyish laugh about him, but he was fascinated with oil paintings. And he produced some of the most beautiful copy oil paintings. And I, I had one for years, actually, the green lady. Um, and I am quite a well-known oil painter as well. And, um, we both hit it off. I mean, I hit it off with Peter Sutcliffe because Peter Sutcliffe was doing water, uh, watercolours at the time in Broadmoor. So we had that.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Thing about painting. So you don't always go in like a bull in a china shop. Sometimes it's finding out, like I said, what bait to use.

• 1:00:34Chris Williamson?

  I get that, but letting someone into your house that you know is capable of this. And by definition, the fact that within a week or a couple of weeks later, he then went, committed a crime, committed suicide, like it's, it's obvious that it wasn't, he hadn't rid himself of this. I've just, again, I keep coming back to the fact that I can't, it's a big pair of brass balls that you've got on you.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Well, all I can say is I was in the Marines for 11 years and I don't give a rat's about anything. I was a Green Berry. But the thing is, your viewers can look up Paul Beecham, B E E C H A M, Paul Beecham on Google. Um, he, while he was, when he came out, he was on, he was heavily sedated when he was released under supervision. He married this woman, by the way. Um, and then he started, when we were walking along the river, he said, Chris, they're watching me all the time. He said, in my, he had a sign writing business. And he said, Chris, they're watching me all the time. They talk about him in the local pubs, mate. He said, my, my wife, she's, she's gossiping behind my back. And, um, she had

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  two sons, funny enough. And they, she said, well, I think you ought to sit down with my boys and tell them what your history, because I know. And he did. He sat down to these two sons and told them that he's a masked killer. And he'd come out of Boar Boar and they accepted him. He was a good dad. He turned into a good dad, but he was just schizophrenic. And when the medication wore off and he refused to take more medication, he became more schizophrenic, more paranoid. I met him in that period where he was, and what I, we were doing, we were a form of escapism with the paintings. We talked about canvases, pigments, brushes, sables, bristle brushes, palettes. We talked about it. You know, and he loved dogs. So

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  that was it. But, so there we are. But the fact that he cleaned up the kitchen tidy and he left a note meant a lot to me.

• 1:02:36Chris Williamson?

  I think the crazy thing to take away, or at least one of the things I'm taking away is that these people are so multifaceted. You look at, you look at someone like that gentleman, or Ted Bundy, or this John Robinson, or whoever it might be. And I think it, it seems safer to presume that they are across the board crazy, that you would be able to pick them out a mile off because they'd be walking down the street, pulling their heads off birds and wearing a big yellow t-shirt, dancing upside down. But I think the fact that someone who's capable of that sort

• 1:03:18Chris Williamson?

  of atrocity is also capable of doing good watercolour and will clean your kitchen and leave you a note saying thank you in the morning. The fact that you have that juxtaposition between the incredibly normal and the incredibly abnormal, I think that's what, that's what's really disturbing me.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  The thing with Paul, he was generally mentally ill. Peter Sutcliffe conned himself into Bournemouth. He wasn't mentally ill. He conned the psychiatrist there for years before they moved into a secure prison because he was too mouthy. He wasn't mentally ill. But, but Paul Beecham was mentally ill. There's no doubt about that at all. He was a sick man. And you know, I have to have some compassion for somebody that is mentally ill because it is not their problem.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  He's not, he wasn't a psychopath. He wasn't evil in the sense that we, that he went out to rape and kill and torture people. He just felt the worms inside his head, eating inside his head. That is a sad situation to be in. And I've got every sympathy for somebody like that. So I felt safe with him. I knew where we were together. You know, but, but the scum that I work with generally and research and write about are...

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Just pure evil.

• 1:04:35Chris Williamson?

  They're in control of their faculties. They know what they're doing. They know why they're doing it.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, hundred percent, hundred percent. And, you know,

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  you could be sitting, a woman can be sitting on a bus and a man could be watching her from a seat back. Next day, you might, she might see him again in the supermarket. Say, I saw him on the bus. That guy could be a stalker.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  I've just written a book about homicidal stalking, comes out next year.

• 1:05:04Chris Williamson?

  You are on fire at the moment.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Well, I've got another four, five books to write. I mean, I'm a brand with W H Smith Travel now. I'm in the, I just can't believe it. I mean, I'd never written a book for money. I wrote my first book about Craig and Bentley years ago called Dad Help Me Please. Robin O'Dell, the criminal, the great writer, um, went as a lead title, like you're teaching me the ropes, but I was the lead author. That book got Derek Bentley apostle's pardon. It made the film Let It Have It starring Christopher Epstein. And the following year was the Reader's Digest non-fiction hardback number one title. And I said, after the stress of that, I thought I never write a book again, about thirty eight books later.

• 1:05:57Chris Williamson?

  You're a glutton, you're a glutton for punishment, Christopher. I have to say, you know, you're right, walking through W H Smith's, especially because of the way that your covers are designed. I think the Talking with Serial Killers stuff particularly really stands out. I don't know what it is about. It's very grabbing.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  That's a brand years ago, nineteen, two thousand and one, two thousand and three, I'd done all these serial killer interviews and I approached a number of publishers, one was Virgin, who I'd been published with before, to say that I've got, I'm going to use all the killer's own words in this lot. And in those days, I mean, the serial killer series we made, eleven, twelve part series, eleven, well, made with Fraser Ashford, they'd never, ever been imprisoned before you, we broke the mould, we were ones that sitting there with the killers face to face, and it'd never been done before. That was a groundbreaker. And then I wrote this book, and of course, Virgin turned around and said to me over the phone, well, Chris, I'm sorry, but it's not for us, it's

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  not the sort of book that might upset our ladies with grey rinses. And then ten minutes later, John Blake phoned me. He said, I'll have it. He took a brave move because the first time a book ever been published in criminal history that contained a killer's own terrible words. Then an hour later, Virgin rang back and said, we've reconsidered, we'll have that book. I said, sorry, I've sold it. That was John, it was John Blake who, who came up with Talking with the Talking with Serial Killers brand, if you like. And now it's, that's what it is.

• 1:07:32Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely fine. I am, the mad thing is, the serial killer true crime obsession appears to skew quite heavily female, in my knowledge, in any case. So Virgin, perhaps letting that one slide, perhaps that was exactly the sort of thing they needed to just reignite their ladies with the grey rinses and get them back into the bookmine fold.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  The one thing I'm always keen to stress in all my books is empathy and sadness and for the grieving next of kin. I think you can never, ever make these people, there was a movie called Bundy, Ted Bundy, the American icon. Icon, they don't, what does icon mean? He's not, he's not iconic, he's just a scumbag. But the thing is, I've always got this thing, because when I interviewed Arthur Shawcross about Jack Blake, I've been to see his sister and his, her family, and they lived in a little, little place, it was a bit of a tip. And

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  They went out and they got some British tea. Had a camera crew with me. And his sister and his family were there and she'd gone out and had her hair done, Chris. Especially. And she said to me, could you please try to get, she said, no, Arthur hasn't killed Jack. She said, because every day we we look out the window and we're going to see Jack walk down the road one day.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Well, that's why I got that confession out of Jack Shawcross for Jack's life. And I went back. Uh, to his sister. And her family and they were shaking. And I said to the camera crew outside.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  And I sat down with her and she burst into tears.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  When I did one, a girl called Lisa Moore down in Texas with Arthur Shawcross. I interviewed the mother, the body hadn't been recovered. It was Kent Macduff. A little girl. And I sat with her and her husband in a motel with a crew. And she told me that she'd been walking around the dirt roads of Texas every night with a spade. Looking for a child. She was a wreck. I got her to look at the camera and plead with Macduff. Please give me my daughter back as your mother would want your body back after you've gone.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  And I went to, I got a confession, this is one of my books, I wheeled a confession out of him and we found the body trussed up in a drain hole. Within a hundred yards of a freeway where if she screamed, nobody would have heard her, this poor little kid trussed up.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  I went back to her mum and I said, we found your daughter. And her mother burst into tears and I went outside and I smoked and I must have had like twenty cigarettes in ten minutes.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  And I started to cry because I've got daughters and I've got a little boy. And her husband put his arm around my shoulders and he said. God bless you, he said, you've just done, you've done it all for us, thank you. Now, if if all of that, all my writing career.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Just brings one result like that, I'm happy. Period.

• 1:11:11Chris Williamson?

  It's a noble cause. Honestly, that closure bringing some end, you know, to the torture of not knowing for families like that.

• 1:11:22Chris Williamson?

  It's worth the time. It's definitely worth all of the time and the effort and the day. Well, the danger that you put yourself in still blows me away. Absolutely blows me away.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Last point, I never wrote a book for money. I wrote that first book because I wanted to. I wrote my second book, The Long Drop, because my grandfather was one of the lawyers in the in the Murder of PC Gynecology in Essex in 1927. I wrote it because it fascinated me. I wrote it because I was an intelligence officer in the Marines and I knew how to interrogate. I knew to get inside people's heads. I knew about certain amount about torture and, and I knew it and I thought to myself, this is so fascinating, but I never ever.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  You can't write like this and research like this and do these things unless you, you want to, because the money you never get, you wouldn't get it back.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  By the grace of God, I've had some bestsellers. That's all it is. And that's because my publishers and their lawyers and their promotion people, I'm just there, one of, I just push the pen around. I tell Toby Buck and my executive editor. And he, he's Lord Buckner tweets me. His grandfather was Sir John Buckner, wrote 39 steps. We've been together on about four or five books now. I'm just part of a team. That's all it is.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  And the most important part of the team, the people that watch your podcast and the people that buy our books. They are the most important and we must never forget that.

• 1:12:54Chris Williamson?

  What a lovely way to end, Christopher. Thank you so much. I think it's a really nice way to put it across as well, like the fact that, as you say, pursuing something which is difficult and challenging and worthwhile and has this higher calling and you haven't, you're adept at it and it, it brings across more, you know, how much value, millions and millions and millions of pounds, billions of pounds for that one woman to have that closure. There is no price that you could put on being able to bring that to someone and there is no amount of books that you could have sold. That would have matched the amount of satisfaction and pleasure and sense of purpose that you derive from being able to give that to someone.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Well, I want to leave you on a humorous note. When I was being interviewed by an Australian firm recently, I get a TV company come over to interview me and it's the same stuck question. Christopher, does this ever affect you?

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  And I say, no. And they said, why not? I say, I come from Portsmouth.

• 1:13:56Chris Williamson?

  Well, I, I, I don't know. I don't know what to say. Portsmouth, I've been to Portsmouth once, but yeah, well, I probably wouldn't mess about too much down there. Look, Christopher, it's been awesome. Your new book, Talking with Serial Killers, Dead Men Talking, Death Rose Worse Killers in Their Own Words, will be linked in the show notes below. Pick it up on Amazon. Is there audible versions and stuff like that as well?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, we've got some audible versions out. Talking books are out, but I don't think it's that title.

• 1:14:26Chris Williamson?

  Got you. Okay.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  There are two, there are two by, hang on, there were two by the actor, um, these ones, um, Colin Mace.

• 1:14:41Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  He, he's done these talking books and I'll tell you what, he's got me to tea.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Brilliant, brilliant guy.

• 1:14:51Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Look, Christopher, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. First podcast. You've done fantastically well. I absolutely love the book. Everyone that's listening, you need to go and check it out. It's fascinating. Um, I really like the, uh, the idea of you serving a higher cause as well with this, Christopher, I think putting your talents to use in.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Thanks, Chris. I've loved every second of this and all I want to say to you is sweet dreams and no nightmares, please.

• 1:15:17Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna try. Thank you so much for your time, man. I'll catch you later on.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  God bless. Bye.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

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• 1:15:40Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

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• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:16:01Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.