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Season Six: Another Plus
239 Plays12 days ago
Today’s episode is about a serial killer who could be more prolific than we realize.
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Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Content Warning and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:01:00
Speaker
i had ah I guess I sort of threatened to do one of those true crime roundup episodes where we just talk about like different true crime news that's going
Maura Murray Case and Criticism
00:01:09
Speaker
on. I've been collecting different true crime things that are happening in the world. and It's interesting because I heard the episode go into the feed.
00:01:19
Speaker
i think it was this past week. and like Suddenly we're talking about I should agree. And
00:01:28
Speaker
and it was weird because it timed with like hearing us talk about the fact that like we were not going to really go deep into that because there's more going on. and I had like multiple press releases and news articles about her again because they were starting to search properties. And I guess a lot of like the true crime podcast and YouTubers and stuff, I guess, I guess a lot of um true crime podcast content creators, they had covered her a little bit, but like,
00:02:00
Speaker
i I didn't go back to it yet because i felt like there was things going on that we couldn't see. Anytime you get start to see search warrant returns and stuff. And i'm I'm kind of glad we haven't yet because of the fact that they're still continuing to search places related to her.
00:02:18
Speaker
So I get a lot of flack from people who who email in on this, which is fine. i get it. like ah this There's this other thing that I'm into, which is Maura Murray, and people kind of roll their eyes at me. And I've reached out to different people over the years that have turned that into this whole crazy conspiracy thing.
00:02:39
Speaker
i will say, there is one piece of news that I found really interesting. and So today's case is a serial killer. It's not this person.
00:02:50
Speaker
um This person is kind of the intro lead up to it. I'm only really mentioning him because like something interesting happened. And I know that like some of the content creators have been, have been talking about this gentleman and and you know, that that's always a little fascinating for me and particularly If there were going to be leads in Maura Murray's case that say she's not just sitting in the woods, like having wandered off, which I think that's your
Stephen Baldwin and Criminal Activities
00:03:21
Speaker
stance. It's definitely been my stance. I think she's somewhere close and just hasn't ever been found.
00:03:26
Speaker
But this one... is is interesting So the Columbus Dispatch ran this article. bunch of content creators have been kind of hyping it up. I think it first pops out March 19th, 2025.
00:03:39
Speaker
I know what I polled like to read was from Maria DeVito. And I did do a little deeper dive into what's happening here. But I wanted to talk about that because it it it was just that time of year where it's another anniversary in Maura Murray's case.
00:03:55
Speaker
ah But this article is from the local news up there, and it says, Who is Stephen Baldwin? Maura and the animal advocate sent to prison for cruelty to dogs. Have you heard of this guy, Stephen Baldwin?
00:04:07
Speaker
Only as it relates to what's just happened. Okay. So Stephen Baldwin is described as a former Union County Humane Society leader and a humane agent.
00:04:18
Speaker
He ends up being sentenced this year to more than 15 years in prison for cruelty to companion animals, grand theft, bribery, telecommunications fraud, tampering with evidence, and impersonating a peace officer.
00:04:32
Speaker
He has been in this newspaper, from what I can tell, more than 200 times. Most of those are related to him being animal advocate worker and leader.
00:04:47
Speaker
But more recently, he's been connected to Mara Murray. ah Related to what he did up in central Ohio, Maria's story says he served as the executive director for the Union County Humane Society.
00:04:59
Speaker
In April 2013, PETA included the Union County Humane Society in a controversial video that blasted no-kill animal shelters for what PETA said were inhumane policies. PETA is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
00:05:17
Speaker
They showed a six-second clip where a volunteer said the shelter would not take a cat because it was overcapacity. There was a local social media campaign launched by Stephen Baldwin urging PETA to help the Humane Society $30,000 shortfall on a recent animals.
00:05:34
Speaker
three hundred and sixty thousand dollars expansion project to serve more animals So when when he did this, Peter removes the clip of the volunteer saying, like, you know, we can't do anything right now.
00:05:46
Speaker
So he leaves that organization in December 2013, and he starts his own animal cruelty task force, which was this private nonprofit organization.
00:05:59
Speaker
Now, to be clear, none of these animal cruelty things happening up in ah Ohio happened while he was there. He had then taken this new ACT Ohio and contracted with rural county humane societies to act as a humane agent.
Baldwin's Connection to Maura Murray
00:06:21
Speaker
And according to what the dispatch reports and according to what shows up in court documents, he was helping police officers better deal with aggressive dogs.
00:06:34
Speaker
Now,
00:06:37
Speaker
sometimes...
00:06:40
Speaker
Pit bulls make the news as like having escaped and officers having to take them and they end up being taken from their owners. They're marked as aggressive dogs. And when that happens, what this animal cruelty task force did allegedly was take them and rehabilitate them for a fee, right?
00:07:01
Speaker
And then to essentially rehome them with people who could take care of them or sanctuary them, put them somewhere that they were you know able to live their life out.
00:07:14
Speaker
I find that interesting. i I have for many, many, many, many years owned dogs that are considered dangerous breeds. At one point in time, I had a smaller pit bull,
00:07:31
Speaker
And he lived with me off often and on different places that I lived. And he ultimately went to my parents. And so this dog was, he was pretty awesome, but also had like serious behavioral issues.
00:07:48
Speaker
But my dad and this dog bonded. And my mom would later say that like, she loved having this dog around, even though he was essentially crated like a large portion of his day.
00:08:00
Speaker
And the vet had walked me through steps with him that he could be crated and it was okay as long as he was getting exercise. And my dad loved walking this dog. So ah in addition to that, i for the last 15, 16 years, I've owned Rottweilers, which Rottweilers are often seen as a dangerous breed.
00:08:22
Speaker
And I don't have any, I've never had any any trouble with them. I had one older Rottweiler who who definitely, Appeared very frightening at times, but it was mainly for show.
00:08:35
Speaker
They're very loyal critters, and and they do like to take care of their humans in their home place. What this guy was allegedly doing was taking these dogs and the ones that he could not rehabilitate, he was taking a fee like he was rehabilitating them and then euthanizing them.
00:08:52
Speaker
So Stefan Baldwin, he's 44 now. He ends up being sentenced at 15 and a half years for all those charges, 32 counts in total. He had a bench trial in January of 2024. The specific statement of facts there includes that ah Baldwin was accepting dogs from pet owners and rescue groups under the pretext of rebi rehabilitating them for a fee, but he would keep the proceeds for personal use and then euthanize the animals without permission.
00:09:21
Speaker
According to the attorney and the documents that were filed up in that area, uh, ACT Ohio or the animal mal cruelty, ah task force has ceased all operations.
00:09:34
Speaker
Um, what does that have to do with Maura Murray? Okay. According to something that James Renner put out and that the dispatch has gone wide with, uh, I think he still has a podcast out there that you can listen to called true crime weekly or something like that.
00:09:50
Speaker
um, There's a link here. So Mara Murray goes missing February 2004. So that's 21 years ago. She had had a crash up in New Hampshire. We've talked about her at length.
00:10:03
Speaker
She's in one of Renner's books. She's in multiple other podcasts. According to James Renner, Stefan Baldwin and Mara Murray...
00:10:14
Speaker
were at West Point at the same time in the early 2000s. But Stefan Baldwin was going by his birth name, which was Stefan Finkelstein. He chose Baldwin? He chose Baldwin.
00:10:28
Speaker
Whatever. So James Turner reports that the two of them were in a relationship for some time. And that Stefan Baldwin was Murray's chosen student representative ah in front of a judicial review board for a disciplinary case.
00:10:45
Speaker
And if I understand this all correctly, she had taken some things when she was at West Point. it was makeup. It was stupid. Yeah, it was like little things. It was makeup. yeah And so the finkelstein Finkelstein was her representative when she had to go before basically the honor board.
00:11:06
Speaker
But after police arrested Stephen Baldwin in August of 2020, his fingerprints went into APHIS. And shortly after the fingerprints went into APHIS, the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit contacted the Ohio police and they informed them that Stephen Baldwin's prints were on evidence in the Maura Murray case.
00:11:33
Speaker
According to Renner, Baldwin was told in spring 2024 that his fingerprints had been found on either a CD or a CD case in Maura Murray's car.
00:11:48
Speaker
What was it? What do you mean? well Whose music was it? We don't know. They haven't released other information. But according to Stephen Baldwin, he had nothing to do with her disappearance.
00:11:59
Speaker
Well, it sounds like only James Renner knows this, maybe. Well, I haven't... I don't know how he would know it at this point. It's in the papers, though. I mean, right?
00:12:11
Speaker
yeah know yeah Yeah. To talk about a possible connection. i would say that the reason I ask who's... You know, what was the CD is because, like, you know... You could time it I'm out.
00:12:22
Speaker
Yeah, you could time it. Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day. So I have... i was just thinking back to college times. And i remember... a specific person. and And I think of it this way because like, like how, how could his fingerprints be on something she has now? And like, no one know anything about it, but CDs were kind of different back then. Do you remember? Well, right. And I feel like, i mean, I, James Renner seems like he's like even older than we are maybe, but, um, I, it seems like newer, ah true crime,
00:13:03
Speaker
ah absorbers They may not understand it completely. Yeah. So this is why it's interesting to me and also possibly like a non thing for me too, at the same time.
00:13:16
Speaker
My kid moved out last year and took a bunch of music. Now, most music is streaming, but and this day and age, I have kept kind of lots of different media. I still have tapes and I still have records.
00:13:30
Speaker
One of the things my kids wanted to take was a massive CD case. And it was like one of those big padded cases. You open it and you flip out many, many CDs. Like, I think the case holds like 100, right?
00:13:44
Speaker
Right, and I don't think people even have any idea. i mean, young people. Yeah, I don't i think that would escape a lot of people. I've even seen something recently on Quora or Reddit or something where someone was asking, like, what did we do before? How did we take music on the ago And this was a case I kept in my car.
00:14:01
Speaker
What's interesting about it is... I had an opportunity to be like, hey, what's in my um CD case like in the back area where nobody really goes? And i say I say that because the last 10 CDs or so were mixed CDs that people bought me. and um and I say bought me, but that's not even really. They burned them for you. Yeah, they would burn them from MP3s and they would they would make them. The oldest one that was in there for me um Because we found my kid was able to find a couple of CDs that would have been from college friends, but like right after college for me.
00:14:41
Speaker
But the oldest one that was in there, I remember when I got it. I got it in the summer of 1996.
00:14:50
Speaker
And i was thinking about it. ah There are two different people's fingerprints who could have been on that CD that like if if something happened to me and that CD case was found and for some reason they dusted it for fingerprints, those two people, the last time they saw me would have been 1997 1998. But
00:15:12
Speaker
but if they were found today, it's potentially ah possible ah that their fingerprints could be on the CDs in the case.
00:15:22
Speaker
they They would definitely be on like the jewel cases, which were these little crystal plastic cases that, you know, you get the CDN. um But those are in my house somewhere in a box.
00:15:34
Speaker
And I don't think that anybody would have any reason to go hunting to find that box. I don't even know if I could, I know they're here. i just don't know that I could find them. Yeah. Right, and um so... Where am I headed with all this? Is that what you're about to Yeah. Well, depending on what songs are on the disc, you could age the CD.
00:15:55
Speaker
Oh, right, just like who, yeah. And if it's somebody's CD, it came out at some point. Correct. And she bought it at some point. But I just realized that actually Renner is the source on that article. Right.
00:16:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah, i think I believe that he is. I think that he... And so, you know, this is a guy who, he's done a lot of work on the case. At some point, he made a fictional assertion that really irritated me, and I lost all respect for him.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, i i don't know that I ever had tons of respect for him beyond him being true crime-related. i i I wouldn't say that I had a ton of respect.
James Renner's Theories and Criticism
00:16:36
Speaker
It was very neutral, right? Like, okay, whatever. He's like this, you know, self-proclaimed expert on her.
00:16:44
Speaker
But he started talking just—he was just making things up. And it was completely inappropriate. And it really irritated me. And so i don't know if this is true or not. I can't really remember— remember um
00:17:02
Speaker
Like, how how did they dust all her CDs? I imagine she had a CD, like, book like you were talking about. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. did they dust all those and put all those into APHIS? I mean, that'd be crazy, right?
00:17:14
Speaker
Well, she had also packed up a bunch of stuff, like, right before she left. and And that's, you know, that's sort of a time. I do remember a time, like, kind of between places. And I'm not saying that's when she disappeared because she kind of disappears after the semester has started.
00:17:31
Speaker
but But for me, I remember a time where you would pack up for winter break. At least this is how it was in the 90s. And when i packed up for when I would pack up for winter break, um i would like i definitely would two.
00:17:52
Speaker
find things that i hadn't seen in a year or two And like some of those things ended up on my car seat where I would like, look particularly when it was like music related tapes and CDs and things, ah depending on which year and which car I would have a CD player or I would have a tape player in the car.
00:18:11
Speaker
And like, I would move that to like the front seat or backseat of my car where I could access it if I was going on a road trip to have music I hadn't heard in a minute. Right, which is exactly what I picture happening there, right?
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, so depending on if it's like a burnt CD or a... Like if they if they came forward and they were like, hey, it's this release from 2003 and he's saying he hasn't seen her from 2000 or 2001 or whatever and it you know it's his fingerprint is on a CD that's released after that or has music on it where it's released after that, that would be interesting to me. Yeah.
00:18:49
Speaker
um So, we know that there are witnesses to the last moment she was known to be driving the car and have the wreck, right? Yep. We know there was no guy there.
00:19:01
Speaker
Correct. Okay. And so, what? He was the only person that could find her after she went missing? I'm just saying, like... This is such a strange, strange thing.
00:19:14
Speaker
Right. And ah it honestly, i feel like it's completely irrelevant. um i don't I'm not saying that it's not factual. I just, I don't trust James Renner.
00:19:25
Speaker
And it seems like that's an odd thing for them. i mean, maybe it was the you know only fingerprints they could find or whatever. Yeah. But that just seems like a really odd thing. ah i wonder if it was in the CD player.
00:19:43
Speaker
i don't even know if her car had a CD player. that Saturn, I probably did have a CD player. I mean, I don't know. it that That's a transitional time, really, right? Depending on what year your car was and...
00:19:57
Speaker
you know Some people had aftermarket things put in. and It doesn't really matter. But, I mean, is the theory that like he CD'd her to death? because they're just They're just trying to put somebody that's had contact with her in line about it that has other charges. because they're like So the stuff against this guy is serious. Which is completely... But not murder.
00:20:20
Speaker
It is serious, but... It's also just what we're, like, we don't know what really happened, right, in the case, in his case. But we know he was convicted or plead or plead or whatever.
00:20:32
Speaker
And it was it was really, it was kind of one of those, like, you're an awful human being things because he was taking people's dogs, promising, oh, they're going to have a good life and I'm going to rehabilitate them. But he was just taking money and then killing them.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. That's terrible, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it, uh, I'm not really sure what drives one to do something like that. It sounds like a not so well thought out plan considering the, that like what ended up happening, right? Yeah.
00:21:06
Speaker
Because you killed a bunch of dogs and now you're going to jail. So how was that worth the money you were getting? i just don't see it. But so we don't know anything about him really. and I would say that touching somebody who went missing CD at some point in time is is not really something to get really excited about. Yeah.
00:21:30
Speaker
I imagine that ah they if they dusted for fingerprints like that on that level, his fingerprint can't possibly be the only one they found.
00:21:41
Speaker
And he may be the only one in APHIS, But I don't know that I would find it very strange if they dusted a whole lot of stuff in Mara Murray's car after she ran away from a car accident.
00:22:01
Speaker
That would be really weird. You think they're digging to to find things that like from what they had left? do you think Do you think this is made up? Honestly, I do, yeah.
00:22:13
Speaker
Oh, wow. that's i hadn't thought of that. like so and the way that this fall and And so i' prefaced my whole conversation with, I don't i don't have any respect for James Renner.
00:22:26
Speaker
Okay, so... is why Which is why I said that, because I don't... You know, he made up a whole thing about, like, Mara Murray got pregnant, and, like, she ran away, and blah, blah, blah. And I was so ticked off at that, because that was so just misogynistic and presumptuous.
00:22:46
Speaker
none of his business, right? Well, i I spun back around to this one because this ancient website that I'm on I was following a thread about Maura Murray, and I got an update to an old email address. and So I'm on a website called mydeathspace.com, where it's a bunch of threads where they talk about like the more popular true crime cases. and So I did not hear about this from the Columbus Dispatch. I went and found that. I was trying to legitimize it.
00:23:19
Speaker
But what I found was a this update came to me. And when when I got the update in my email, I was checking the email for a completely different purpose. And it said, you know, update a Maura Murray case, thread, blah, blah, blah.
00:23:33
Speaker
So it took me forever to log in. I logged in. And it's so funny that you say it the way that you're saying it because the people in that thread, they don't call team or James Renner, James Renner.
00:23:45
Speaker
They call him Jeremy Renner because they can't remember who he is. And Jeremy Renner is like the actor from Hawkeye and so many other things, The Hurt Locker. and And like, so, you know, and and they have a negative opinion of the whole concept of writing books and talking about Laura Murray. So they...
00:24:04
Speaker
Just to be clear, the the thing i don't the thing that caused him to be like not even close to crossing my mind was that specific situation and how bad it was, right? Yeah.
00:24:19
Speaker
So it's not I'm not trying to disparage him. Except, like, what he did was, it was not good. it was a really terrible move on his part. I feel like over the years, I think maybe you, I think we read some of his books and stuff.
00:24:35
Speaker
ah One of them, yeah. He's, you know, no question, he is obsessed with Maura Murray, right? Oh, absolutely. And then when he started just writing fiction about her life and what happened to her, it just irritated me because it wasn't his place to do that. Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
And it was very just, it was wrong. And it was none of his business. And if you want to talk about Maura Murray in context,
True Crime Creators' Responsibility
00:25:05
Speaker
that's fine. But he has no evidence of any of the stuff that he put forth.
00:25:10
Speaker
Right. Right. And, you know, so how is anything he says credible? Now, so who gave him who gave him the tip? Because he is the source on this article. So he's the only one, right? Have you seen anybody else say it?
00:25:24
Speaker
um No. I mean, I've seen people report what he's reporting. i've you know I've always had questions about him. I think the book that we read was about, it was the True Crime Addict book, right?
00:25:37
Speaker
it was a about Moore Murray. He's interesting. He works quite a bit in fiction, and he works in true crime. He falls into this very small list of true crime content creators that I'm fascinated by because he's I genuinely think that like things that go on in their personal lives kind of spill over into their content reporting.
00:26:03
Speaker
Well, it's you know we skip around a lot of cases. we we go ah Sometimes we go deeper into stuff, but i mean can you imagine however many years he's been obsessed with this case?
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's been a really long time. And I realized at a certain point, like, I mean, he was just la, la, la, like, I mean, just yeah making things up. Now, if I find a different source, fine. If somebody can confirm that, I know that James Renner doesn't just have random access to APHIS, okay? Yeah.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, actually, I would probably have better access to Aethys than he does. And, like, I've never thought to look up something like that. I wouldn't it. wouldn't. Like, well, i you know, I don't, the two worlds don't collide for me. They're not allowed to.
00:26:52
Speaker
Well, I know. That's what I'm saying. But so why is he getting it, right? Yeah, I mean, he's developed some interesting sources over the years. It could be something like that. i don't I don't know is the answer. I just thought this was like a kind of a controversial piece of true crime news, and I wanted to hear your take on it and What I find interesting is that you kind of immediately dismiss it, which I didn't i didn't really think to do that, but like I immediately was like, that can't be something real, can it? I was considering whether like it would be anything worthwhile.
00:27:23
Speaker
Right. Well, all I'm saying, I mean, it could be, it could be real. It could be that, uh, Stefan Baldwin's fingerprint is on a CD that was in Mara Murray's car when she went missing is my understanding of what's being said there. Right. Yeah.
00:27:40
Speaker
Um, and that after his arrest, because his fingerprints were put into APHIS, they there was a match made and that James Renner somehow found out and he has put it out and he has said, he has given a recap of what has happened to Stephen Baldwin ah criminally, right?
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah. To two obviously suggest well you know he was there and euthanized her or something i'm not really sure what he's suggesting but there's got to be a correlation right he's a bad person right the problem is there are witnesses multiple witnesses who but had nothing no skin in the game right yeah who said there was nobody with her Right. And so it's irrelevant, which is also why it's weird. Like, why do they have all this DNA? Like what?
00:28:43
Speaker
DNA. Fingerprints. It's fingerprints, right? Yeah, it's fingerprints. Okay. ahead. Well, at one point i had read, and i I don't know where I got this from. so The source is dubious. I tried to find it before we recorded today in order to mention it.
00:28:57
Speaker
But... What i remember hearing was, or reading, was that there was a CD or something that she could listen to music on, and that the song that would have been, i think, playing on this, and and i want to say that it was like a Discman with a plug, maybe.
00:29:22
Speaker
they Do you remember those? Like you, you had plug it in a different way to like, you sometimes you had you said tape yeah sometimes you could put a tape in there. So I don't know if that's what I read. or if it was actually there was a CD player in the car.
00:29:34
Speaker
But I want to say that the last song quote she would have been listening to driving was ah either a single or the album, and somehow they were able to look at the playlist or whatever, the track list. Maybe it's what maybe when they were're able to if they were able to crank the car, maybe that's what made them say it.
00:29:50
Speaker
But i heard that it was the New Radicals. I think it was the single, You Get What You Give, which would have been a 1998 song. So if it was on something like that, i don't even know how this comes into being a conversation.
00:30:05
Speaker
Well, the fact that anybody knows all that information is astounding to me. Yeah. And, like, want to say, don't know where I got that piece of information from. I remember putting it with this story. There was a lot. I This is one of the, like, you know, the first big internet mysteries where by the time people really knew about this case, there there was certainly a significant amount of information ah coverage and digging and a lot of different things going on.
00:30:36
Speaker
I'm not trying to be negative. I'm not trying to say like, oh, he's lying. i I just, I would need to see more information. And I feel like the reason, like, when we get stuff from kind of, you know, it's not law enforcement, it's not official paperwork or whatever. yeah It's because it doesn't matter, right? Yeah.
00:30:54
Speaker
That case has multiple problematic true crime creators attached to it over the years. Like people on my list of, yeah, probably not going to do anything with those guys. Unfortunately, James Renner falls into that ah with along with the other people because so many weird things have been done. and I mean, it's just, it they're just, they may be perfectly fine. It's just ah given what my experience is, court documents and even law enforcement sometimes are a little bit and And dubious, I mean, they're not doing it on purpose, but like they don't have a bigger conceptual understanding and they may say the wrong thing that causes a big problem or whatever. Right. Yeah.
00:31:35
Speaker
Anyway, i but I do think that it is a little, it seems to me that that type of headline and everything involved in that is a little bit of a reach.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah. And, It also seems to me like, you know, tell me that it's his fingerprint was found in Maura's blood.
00:32:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah. That's where, that's where we, and yeah, you're right. Because without more information, the fact that, you know, law enforcement hasn't said anything,
00:32:19
Speaker
it just It just seems like a—now, don't get me wrong. I feel like it's not completely Renner's fault that he—because, I mean, he legitimately had an interest in it, got obsessed with it, and then I feel like that can do a lot of things to your brain, Right.
Unsolved Cases and DNA Technology
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah, you have to have a hard line. And like we've we've learned in the years creating different types of content. I think we actually learned this before we ever started creating content. You have to be able to go, okay um that's too far.
00:32:55
Speaker
and and and now i'm going to come back and I'm going to let that case go for a while. Right. And in my opinion, this was too far and weird. And unfortunately, i'm seeing more and more you mentioned, um, Asia degree.
00:33:12
Speaker
I'm seeing more and more of that these cases coming back around are not, i mean, they're tragic, but they're not as interesting as the appeal of them not being solved. ah but It seemed to be right. Yeah.
00:33:31
Speaker
And so, you know, unfortunately, ah It won't matter that his fingerprint was on the CD. Yeah, i have a feeling that might turn out to be what we get here. um i i don't know. I mean, i i know people are like not wanting banter in podcasts or whatever.
00:33:54
Speaker
Look, this is not banter. We're bantering about true crime. I brought up a piece of true crime news. I thought it was interesting. It is the time of year that like if you're going to talk about Warren Murray, the springtime is the time to do that.
00:34:06
Speaker
Go ahead. It would be nice for her case to be solved. Yeah, if someone found her and like it like could start piecing the time, her and um I should agree, like both of them, that would be interesting to me to have those cases wrapped up. and you know it's I think we're coming into a time where we have less mysteries, so I think those older mysteries stay in the headlines because of us having less mysteries today, but I think i think there are still mysteries that other people could latch on to.
00:34:39
Speaker
Keep in mind, it takes time for cases to really get that um mysterious tag, right? Yeah. Yeah. um Part of the thing is, you know, with Asia degree, it's been 24 25 years It's been 21 years.
00:34:56
Speaker
And yeah, ma murray it's been twenty one years and So it does take some time to sort of age the case.
00:35:07
Speaker
And the cases that end up like that, they're not really that many of them. And the reason is because most of the time, the case gets resolved one way or the other, right?
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah. And when you're getting into, you know, i wouldn't go so far as to say that, like, ah I feel like if it's not solved and it does end up into that mystery...
00:35:33
Speaker
ah case pile where it's just like 20 years or more have gone by it's not there's not a huge chance it's going to be solved right dna sort of skewed that curve a little bit but i mean like dna genetic genealogy dna into solving it but when it ends up being solved it's a big deal even if it is just you know the typical ah crime crime or accident or whatever happened right yeah Yeah, we've got ah we've had a lot of those recently being found in water. I think I sent you three or four in a row. And I just love it.
00:36:09
Speaker
mean, obviously, that is common sense, right? Yeah. But it you have to think about it and articulate it, right? yep And over time, I realized, like, oh, all these people who are in vehicles, like, they're in water somewhere because you it's really hard to get rid of a vehicle, right? Yeah.
00:36:26
Speaker
And I'm so glad I said it out loud. And then, like, of course, other people were thinking it, too. And, you know, there's people who expend lots of time, effort, energy, and resources. Volunteers a lot of times are going and actually finding these people, right? Yeah.
00:36:43
Speaker
which is, it's awesome. I'm so glad, ah you know, I, for a while during our show, i would actually pick out the most likely body of water they were in. Yeah. We, yeah, we did that quite a bit when we were doing more. But I'm not a diver, right? I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do that. It would actually probably, i don't know what I would do. I would probably freak out.
00:37:10
Speaker
Like, to be in that position to have to go find the vehicle, right? Yeah. I've had one that I've looked for recently. Like there's one, um there's one kid down here. I'm pretty sure have like a rough idea of where he went. And I, every once in a while I'll go down there and drive him around. We talked about him on the show.
00:37:29
Speaker
um But I go down there and drive around because I'm curious. everybody made such a big deal after he went missing and his car was gone and it was like definitely a murder. And I, I happen to not think that's the case. And at some point we'll go back and and talk about some of the things I've done there too.
00:37:46
Speaker
Um, but we do have a serial killer for the next couple of episodes. Um, and, and, you know we'll probably do a little talking at the beginning of them, but I'll try and keep the the episodes proper, like together. um I had,
00:37:59
Speaker
I had been pitching a television show about serial killers who killed themselves or like didn't reveal their secrets. And that sort of fizzled out with some of the things that happened with the the particular network I was i was pitching to you. Because I had a lot of um early stuff from Israel Key's FOIA files that nobody had thought to redact.
00:38:19
Speaker
And like I had photos and things that like if you were to get the FOIA files later, they would not have those photos and videos in them. And i had wanted to use some of those and and use him for season one on, you know, serial killers who hadn't revealed their secrets.
00:38:36
Speaker
um And, ah you know, I had to take a lesson from what kind of what you were just talking about, which is like, I don't care to do tons of keys work anymore um because like there's, I have like 10 or 12 things that I think I've come to the conclusion on and until those things are wrapped up, there's nothing left to do.
00:38:58
Speaker
And I have like a list and like, I think you disagree with some of my list and like, we've talked about different couples and pairs over the years, but ultimately like, um, like I still have an interest in serial
Serial Killer Israel Keyes
00:39:10
Speaker
killers. So I've been trying to apply it to some lesser known killers. Uh, they're going to start working their way into true crime excess.
00:39:18
Speaker
That's funny because um with Keys, he's always the first. I check his timeline with every single person. and that like yeah there's There's a period of time from like 97 or 98 to about late 2011, early 2012 that I like i look.
00:39:36
Speaker
Every single like person who shows up that are missing. and like I always look at the timeline to see if he was in the the you know lower whatever they call it um after he moved to alaska or whatever so i don't think about him very often but in certain circumstances i do because i will be forever trying to uh putting in a pile anybody that could possibly be his victim yeah i think i think that's one of my issues with his kind of mystery that he has surrounding him you know i and i do like i
00:40:15
Speaker
i confess within the last week i think i sent you one that like for a long time i like i never talked about him on on the show but i added this missing person and i was like you know this is such a weird missing persons case like uh i didn't say that to you when i sent it to you and you didn't say anything back about it but like oh i looked at the timeline on that though um it looked like he was in alaska yeah you But see, that that's why I brought it up because I figured that's what you had done. yeah I have the timeline on my phone. I'm not even kidding. Like, I can look at it in, like, seconds.
00:40:49
Speaker
I mean, i have, so I have a lot of photos from Samantha Koenig and from the Vermont searches that, like, weren't released afterwards. And I have a video of that. And, like, every once in a while i'll go back digging through, see if there's anything there. Like, I have i have um the complete search photos unredacted from Keyes' house.
00:41:06
Speaker
And, like, I don't know why, but like I got a warning I needed to destroy them at one point. Um, and that they needed to send me ah an update and like I had to pay for it. Um, but so that was not part of a FOIA request. One of the things I did a long time ago back in 2014, um, was I was learning how to do public records requests, which is where you and I got some of the material that like the other content creators and podcasters did not have.
00:41:34
Speaker
Um, cause I had read a book, um, I think it probably J.T. Hunter. I had read a book about him, and I knew a lot about him before like i was ever podcasting or doing anything related to podcasts.
00:41:45
Speaker
And I had gotten some local records that they didn't know it was going to be such a big thing by the time. like I still don't think he's really all that big of a thing. Yeah, that's that's one of the things I keep running into with him too.
00:41:58
Speaker
And that was ultimately the problem that we had doing a whole season on like the unsolved stuff related to him was like you know how do you do you want to link all these people to him that like I have this list of?
00:42:10
Speaker
And really I was thinking you know highlight those crimes to try and get them solved. Rule them out for me. Help me rule them out. like Once those are ruled out, I feel better about them. But that neither here nor there now.
00:42:21
Speaker
um But the serial killer that I picked out for us to kind of move forward on in a couple episodes is another one of those with a huge number next to him. And i ultimately think this guy, like he has some really interesting stuff going on.
00:42:39
Speaker
um i'm not going to bury the lead because we already talked for like an hour about all this other stuff. But um this is Carl Watts. Have you ever heard of Carl Watts?
00:42:53
Speaker
um I believe it's pronounced Coral. That's his nickname that he gets. yeah so You know why they say that, right? ah The Coral? Because he's Southern? No, it's because that's how Southern people say it. Oh, okay.
00:43:07
Speaker
That's how they say Coral. Coral. Well, I remember the memes from The Walking Dead.
Carl Watts: Early Life and Psychological Issues
00:43:12
Speaker
Where people are always talking about Carl. Carl. So i wanted to I wanted to cover him because he is one of those ah killers that's really interesting to me. And like he's not one, ah because of the things that have sort of happened over the years with him, I think I sent you an article related to him that was like not even two years old. um and I'm not going to spoil his story, but I did want to talk about him. I want to talk about his early days and try to get into like the
00:43:41
Speaker
Kind of what we know about him today. um and he is one of those that like I have a profile. I have a lot of articles about him. um He is a very interesting man. Did you see on his profile that it says Coral Eugene Watts?
00:43:58
Speaker
Yeah, yep. And I don't think that's inaccurate because, like, we're going to find out, like, in the first, like, few paragraphs of of what we're going to talk about. Like, we're going to find out that was a thing. Don't you wonder, like, um okay, so what other details might be off?
00:44:13
Speaker
But no, it's fine. I always wonder. like especially Like, especially when it's law enforcement forces. Now, I will say...
00:44:23
Speaker
i I have some issues with law enforcement that'll come up at some point on on the show. I'll say it that way. So Carl Eugene Watts, he's born down in ah place called Kylene, Texas, which we've talked about at length on here before.
00:44:36
Speaker
His parents are Richard Eugene Watts and Dorothy Mae Young. His birthday is November 7th, 1953. At the time, his father was a private first class in the army.
00:44:49
Speaker
And his mother was an art teacher for kindergartners.
00:44:55
Speaker
According to what I've read, they were married up in a place called Colwood, West Virginia. um Now, since Richard was only a private, he was transferred around.
00:45:09
Speaker
The area that he's transferred to initially is what's known as the Texas Bermuda Triangle. He was selected to be part of a team that was being put together, and Kylene was selected to be the location for that team.
00:45:24
Speaker
But he was part of the Tank Destroyer destroyer Tactical and Firing Center team. team So that's how they end up down in Texas. And it had been chosen as like the site for what was essentially a pretty big deal. It's been moved around a little bit.
00:45:44
Speaker
um but shortly after Carl's birth. And when I say shortly, I mean, Carl pops out three days later, they moved back to West Virginia. The reason they moved back to West Virginia is to have better support systems in place for raising Carl.
00:46:01
Speaker
And about a year later 1954, and nineteen fifty four ah Sharon, so Carl's little sister, is their second child is born. Now, Carl's parents, Richard and Dorothy, they're not getting along.
00:46:17
Speaker
And they get divorced before 1956 rolls around. So for the the early parts of Carl Watt's life, he is raised...
00:46:33
Speaker
By mom and mom's family. And in 1962, Dorothy or Dorothy May, she marries a man named Norman Caesar, who's a mechanic.
00:46:45
Speaker
And they're going to have two more kids. going have two little girls. So Carl is going to be the only boy for a time with three sisters. And when Dorothy May and Norman Caesar get married, they're going to move away from West Virginia.
00:47:04
Speaker
So when Richard leaves, it's in 1955. So this is his dad. They, we he literally goes out for a pack of cigarettes.
00:47:18
Speaker
Dorothy works as an art teacher. um They end up moving to a place called inkt Inkster, I-N-K-S-T-E-R, Michigan.
00:47:29
Speaker
and they kind of go back and forth between here and Colwood, West Virginia, because in Colwood, West Virginia, Dorothy's mother, Lula Mae Young lives.
00:47:41
Speaker
So Carl was attached to his grandmother and he would acquire the coral nickname because, ah his cousins had a distinct accent and they would draw out the letters in Carl's name until it sounded like coral. Um,
00:48:02
Speaker
Carl liked being called Coral and he would imitate his cousin's accents and he started talking like that. According to some of the things I've read, Carl asked his mother to change his name to Coral.
00:48:20
Speaker
And the the definition that's included in the profile and kind of some of the things that have been said were that it was because a coral reef is a beautiful thing that is dangerous to touch.
00:48:35
Speaker
By all accounts, he liked going hunting for jackrabbits with his grandfather. um And while he was in Inkster, Michigan, he tried very hard with his homework, and it would get him good grades, but Carl had a lot of struggles in school.
00:48:56
Speaker
He also had trouble with his stepfather. ah The reason that you know we're up in Michigan with this family is Dorothy May was able to work as a high school art teacher and make a little bit of money up there.
00:49:12
Speaker
The problems with Norman Caesar made it very difficult for Carl to adapt to how his new family was set up. And Norman...
00:49:22
Speaker
norman and others allegedly referred to him as a mama's boy. And they would say that he would worry about losing his mother's attention to his sisters.
00:49:36
Speaker
So Carl really enjoyed it when he was able to go back and see grandma and grandpa. And grandpa taught him how to not just hunt rabbits, but to skin rabbits.
00:49:47
Speaker
And it is referenced as one of those sort of sensational things later that they thought it was unusual that this young boy likes to skin rabbits.
00:50:01
Speaker
um Carl and his sister, when he's eight years old, 1961, contract meningitis. they contract meningitis
00:50:13
Speaker
The and meningitis is really serious for those of you who don't know much about it. It's its own rabbit hole if you want to go down and see some disturbing stories. ah It nearly killed Coral.
00:50:25
Speaker
And it caused him to be held back a full year in school. And the way that he was treated was they took him into Herman Kiefer Hospital, which is up in Detroit. it's ah It's like a city-owned hospital.
00:50:37
Speaker
He had to be kept ah in solitary isolation away from other patients, and he had to undergo spinal taps. According to some accounts that you can read over the years about Carl Watts that are all kind of working in hindsight, Carl Watts' body temperature got so high that the doctors at the time were worried that it might have caused him some brain damage.
00:51:03
Speaker
And according to family members who've been quoted over the years, including in court documents, ah they noticed that when he was eight years old versus after getting out of this hospital, his personality had changed.
00:51:18
Speaker
And they described him as being very, very quiet, shy, bashful was used, and introverted. They said that his attention span had ah severely suffered from whatever had gone on there, and it affected his memory. So i had a very poor memory.
00:51:35
Speaker
When he gets back to school after being held back a grade, he struggles to keep up with the other kids. And he would be up all night. He struggled with insomnia as a result of having had meningitis.
00:51:50
Speaker
According to his accounts later on, he, he began to have violent dreams about battling, ah witches and this interrupted his sleep cycle.
00:52:02
Speaker
When he's later questioned, he comments on this. Now, uh, Detroit hospital takes good care of him. They do get him back into school.
00:52:14
Speaker
And this is when, like when he's released from the hospital, this is when Dorothy actually gets remarried to Norman Caesar. ah one account that I read said that there were six children from the Caesar family that were became a part of Carl's family at this point.
00:52:34
Speaker
So they have two more kids. She already had to, there's 10 children at this point. So that whole mama's boy thing might not be as, um,
00:52:48
Speaker
irrelevant as we think it is because i don't know about you but i grew up in a house with three siblings and and attention could be difficult to get but can you imagine growing up with 10 uh kids in the house no i can't and also there's already issues there as far as you know he didn't like his stepfather or whatever right i know there can i don't it we don't have a whole lot of details of on that and we don't know how old they were or anything like that. But depending on that, um because we know that he you know he had a sister and then his two half sisters who are the later children.
00:53:32
Speaker
So I could see where that could cause, um it could cause a lot of things, honestly. I mean, there's really no way ah around it, but Growing up with siblings is hard. I think that ah growing up with step-siblings can be just as hard, harder.
00:53:52
Speaker
i think i think it's the ones that, like, I think what can cause the most interesting dynamic to develop is when your parents have a new children with a new partner that then are your half siblings.
00:54:08
Speaker
um I do think this the i think that the other six kids is probably a weird situation for someone who was used to a certain amount of attention from mom. Right. And so I don't even know that his attention seeking even changed, right? Yeah.
00:54:25
Speaker
And especially since he was her first child. ah it and so you know, that's a perception thing, right? It really is. So the way that Carl's sort of early years go from after this meningitis thing is, so he's missed the third grade.
00:54:45
Speaker
He has to repeat the third grade. And by all accounts, by 1968, it's going to be reported that he is still only reading at a fourth grade level, even though he's going to be 15 years old at that time.
00:54:59
Speaker
Now, by all accounts and and recounting, um whatever was going on with Carl, he keeps it inside.
00:55:10
Speaker
He would get upset at times, but he wasn't violent or abusive towards any of his siblings, He was never abused by his parents, except I think I'm going to phrase this.
00:55:23
Speaker
I'm going to frame this, that the way it's all phrased in the court documents, I think they're specifically referencing physical and sexual abuse does not occur.
00:55:34
Speaker
i don't know whether or not the same would be true for just out and out psychological or um emotional abuse. or belittling. Does that make sense? Verbal. Yeah. verbal Um, yeah, it makes sense.
00:55:51
Speaker
So Carl turns out to be really good at sports and he burns out a lot of his frustrations and a lot of his energy being an excellent, by all accounts, baseball, football player, and track star.
00:56:05
Speaker
He actually ends up, uh, Winning a Golden Globes boxing title and he pursues this for a bit with the middleweight division But the first time that he gets knocked out by an opponent he gives up That's a little later in life so after this spill the spell with meningitis um some different problems come to be by the time he's 12 years old and He is starting to talk about these fantasies he has ah from these nightmares.
00:56:46
Speaker
And the way that, like, he sort of takes control in his, like, what might be a lucid dreaming is he begins to kill the women in his nightmares. And that's not to say, like, he's, like, literally killing them. I'm saying he is...
00:57:06
Speaker
somehow having fantasies whether they're daydreams or they're strictly nightmares that the people that are hurting him or or torturing him in whatever manner in his dreams carl in his dreams is killing them so We have some interesting things happen here. 1969, when he's 15 years old, he has his first run in with police.
00:57:38
Speaker
He was a paper delivery boy. He's living, you know, just outside of Detroit, Michigan. He attacks a 26 year old woman for seemingly no reason.
00:57:51
Speaker
He punched her in the face until she screamed, and then he left. And then he just continued on like everything was totally normal on his paper delivery route, and he went home.
00:58:02
Speaker
Four days later, he's arrested, and his only comment that we have a record of is that he said, i don't know, I just felt like beating someone up. Okay, and Sergio Mee, that's pretty much, there's no question that happened. he did that.
00:58:20
Speaker
et cetera. Yeah. So September 2nd, 1969, after having this run-in, which i I believe the run-in is listed as June 25th, 1969. So that's when he punches this woman and assaults her.
00:58:35
Speaker
So September 2nd, he has taken the Lafayette mental clinic. ah This is going to be a forensic psychiatry center in Detroit, Michigan. They're going to start evaluating him.
00:58:50
Speaker
And it's found out at this time that Carl's been having sex and that it doesn't seem to be a thing that like he cares much for the way that this is dealt with either in the family or through this clinic. I don't have a reference for this, but they tell him that sex is wicked.
00:59:09
Speaker
So being evaluated in this clinic, he said that he's been having these dreams of beating up and killing women. um When he wakes up after having one of these dreams, he feels better.
00:59:22
Speaker
And that's how he explains it. Two words, feel better. So after this, um the the doctors are attempting to determine through these forensic exams, which if you've never had one, forensic exams are very interesting,
00:59:39
Speaker
um Even and for a teenager back then, it would have been um a lot of information would have been gathered. um But Carl doesn't have any remorse for the assault that he had committed just three months earlier.
Watts' Adolescence and Criminal Escalation
00:59:56
Speaker
So a doctor ends up saying that there's no evidence of psychosis here. He's a little paranoid and impulsive. His approach to life is passive-aggressive.
01:00:08
Speaker
And that he, in 1969, when he's 15 years old, is struggling to maintain control over his homicidal impulses. The doctor recommends that he be released soon and have outpatient treatment.
01:00:25
Speaker
So one of the other things that comes out during this time is that he's been stalking teenage girls and He's not been doing well in school leading up to this.
01:00:41
Speaker
He's only able to read at at what we described as a fourth grade level. He was being bullied. This assault... While it's never 100% confirmed it's him, he never denies it. He says he felt better afterwards. The police don't look for anyone else, and they close this assault out.
01:01:02
Speaker
One of the comments made much, much later by doctors at the time is they believe by the time they got him, he had already killed someone.
01:01:13
Speaker
I don't know how true that is. we're We do get a like a ah few pieces of information out of this time. There was a psychiatric assessment done where Carl Watts was revealed to have had a mild intellectual disability.
01:01:28
Speaker
And ah you and I have recently talked about IQ. We don't put a lot of stock in IQ for developing minds, I don't think.
01:01:40
Speaker
But his IQ was registered at 75. And how old was you? He would have been 15. 15. Okay. um Just for a second, what do you think about the um the doctor at Lafayette Medical Clinic, this forensic psychiatrist, I guess, said that there was no evidence of psychosis?
01:02:06
Speaker
Well, it's contradicted a little bit because... Well, the dreams and like beating somebody up, making him feel better? Yeah. um To me, that's that's losing touch with reality, is it not? Yeah, they split a lot of hairs there.
01:02:23
Speaker
And one of the things I noticed is much later um when they bring these medical records up, because it's going to be about 15 years later when they start talking about the medical records... They say in the same sentence as they say he's not psychotic and there's no evidence of psychosis.
01:02:40
Speaker
They say he has a delusional thought process. And I wondered what that meant.
01:02:46
Speaker
Well, and they also say, so it was said by a doctor that he was impulsive and had a passive aggressive orientation to life and no evidence of psychosis. He's a paranoid man who is struggling for control over homicidal impulses. Yes. Yes.
01:03:02
Speaker
And the doctor recommends outpatient treatment. Now, how is it that anybody struggling for control over homicidal impulses should have outpatient treatment?
01:03:15
Speaker
I do not believe that that is ah the way to go. Okay. and so It's kind of a failure to treat. Okay. Well, right. and And you're struggling to control your homicidal impulses. Well, first of all, if you're having homicidal impulses, that's the first problem.
01:03:35
Speaker
I would say that struggling to control them would make you dangerous. Yeah. And not only that, like, I want to clarify this word because I read it two different places and I was like, let me go back and find the source for this.
01:03:48
Speaker
it It doesn't sound like much, but they say he was struggling for control over strong homicidal impulses. Well, that just makes it even more so, right? Right, right.
01:04:01
Speaker
So, and like for people who don't know exactly what the clinical term is for delusional, I'm going to throw this out there. So... a delusion that you have is when you have a belief that is a core belief or a fixed belief that is not amenable to change when presented with conflicting evidence.
01:04:23
Speaker
So a delusion is not that you're being told you're delusional. Like if you say, the sun is purple and the doctor walks you outside and says, look in the direction of the sun. What color do you see?
01:04:39
Speaker
And you insist that it's purple and there's nothing wrong with your eyesight and there's nothing, you're not colorblind. You just insist that that is purple. That would be a delusion. And I'm using a very lightweight one at that.
01:04:53
Speaker
um So they acknowledge that he has a Delusional thought process. And I think that's a huge deal for someone this young.
01:05:08
Speaker
um Watts psychiatrist at that time, the one who said he had strong homicidal impulses, he thought that Watts posed a threat to society at large.
01:05:23
Speaker
I think that's a big deal. But he recommended outpatient treatment? He recommended outpatient treatment. Okay, those two things don't go together. Well, November 7th, 1969, Carl turned 16, and guess what happens?
01:05:35
Speaker
They let him out of the mental clinic.
01:05:40
Speaker
Do you think it was because he was so young? Yeah, i think it was I think it was his age. and I'm going to throw this out there, um and like we haven't said this yet.
01:05:50
Speaker
Carl is African American. So the way that he is treated at the time... you You have to consider that civil rights during this time are a huge deal.
01:06:06
Speaker
Do you think that it correlated with his perhaps not being kept? I think if you go back over the years, and this is just me being speculative, if you go back over the years and you look at Carl Watt's life, he happens to be growing up where Martin Luther King,
01:06:33
Speaker
a year before this happened, would have been assassinated. So you've got the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
01:06:47
Speaker
Martin Luther King has been a force to be reckoned with and then is killed. And I think that a doctor in Detroit who is you know looking at this 15, 16-year-old African-American kid is probably wanting to give him the best life possible.
01:07:12
Speaker
Okay, that's what I was wondering, if like if you meant good or bad. But you're saying like to put the least amount of restraint while still helping him on, right? Yeah.
01:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, so like at the same time that this stuff is being said, here's what you have going on in Detroit. One of the police officers who interrogates Carl after this assault, he writes it up saying, this kid is really, really smart.
01:07:41
Speaker
He's shy, but he has an excellent memory. He remembers things. And that's not how it's presented from the psychiatrist's standpoint. And so I don't know what they're doing. I don't know if the kid just presents really well. I've seen that before.
01:07:57
Speaker
um and like he he knows something that's going on on the inside and he doesn't want to be punished for it. That's a possibility. Yeah, he was very candid unless he was just lying about his dreams and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's trying to tell him what's going on. i don't think those are lies.
01:08:15
Speaker
I can't find any good reason that they would be. um But I can tell you that What happens after 16th birthday, and really for the next five years, from the time 16, like literally turning 16 to almost his 22nd birthday, he is going to be in and out of Lafayette Mental Clinical 10 times.
01:08:41
Speaker
And he is he's going to have this outpatient treatment going on. He's a great baseball player, a basketball player, and then suddenly he withdraws from his friends. He gets mixed up with drugs.
01:08:54
Speaker
He gets in trouble at school because of how he's treating girls. The words that are used are that he is stalking these girls, and his social interactions with them are considered highly inappropriate.
01:09:09
Speaker
But he's going to tell these people at Lafayette Mental Clinic that he has to play football and he has to box, which he is going to excel at both of these things to a degree.
01:09:20
Speaker
And he's doing that because he's dealing with abusive parents at home. Although every interview they have with his parents indicates that, like, there's not really anything physically or sexually abusive going on.
01:09:34
Speaker
And we could be splitting hairs there. Um, we know there's some things said to him that I think you use the word verbal, like a verbal abuse might be going on. Right. I also think that, um, I think that he genuinely believed he was being abused, yeah but it may not have actually been abuse.
01:09:54
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, it's a perception thing again, where he had expectations that weren't met and, ah it went uncorroborated because everybody in the house is like, well, this is just how it is here. Right. Yeah.
01:10:13
Speaker
and But he had higher expectations. I also feel like, uh, so it was determined that, uh, we already said it, but in 1968 when he was 15, he was reading at a fourth grade level. Right. So, you know, the reading hallmarks, uh, your overall intelligent, but intelligence, because, you know, you have to be able to read to learn. Right.
01:10:35
Speaker
It doesn't really have anything to do with like your IQ though. I mean, maybe a little bit, but, um, and so then this, so we've got this low reading level and then we've got, uh, time where he, you know, he, he missed school, which I is, I'm sure what led to him being behind.
01:10:57
Speaker
Um, then he's got the one attack and, It looks like, you know, everybody's trying to help him as much as possible.
01:11:08
Speaker
And then he's stalking these girls and it sounds almost more like awkwardness and not reading social cues. Yeah. yeah Then criminal behavior to me. I mean, not the beating part. That's clearly, you know, that's criminal, clearly.
01:11:27
Speaker
But the whole following and all that seems to be maybe coming from a different place. that And then it ends up being, oh, you know, you're a stalker whatever. And that doesn't help the situation, right?
01:11:38
Speaker
It doesn't. we We end up with these sort of weird things occurring in his, kind of in his orbit, like a roundhouse.
01:11:50
Speaker
Now, these institutional visits that he has, um they result in him being diagnosed as a potential antisocial personality disorder. And I say it that way because there's a couple of things that aren't clear in the records that are brought up.
01:12:06
Speaker
and And those records really come up 20 years later, not 15. They come up in a way that it looks like when they say outpatient therapy, what really happens is he's briefly checked into a hospital, and then he has a period of time where he's working with like a counselor.
01:12:27
Speaker
I can't tell if there's medication involved. If that were taking place today, there it would be like you had a medication management person, a caseworker, and a counselor that you saw. um And that's what I picture. So I don't know if it would have been different in the time period that we're talking about.
01:12:42
Speaker
um But he is diagnosed as being antisocial personality disorder. They don't fully label you with that as a young person. They just, they basically say, that's what it's looking like.
01:12:55
Speaker
You will end up getting that diagnosis later because it's another thing that has, that's another thing that has a pretty yeah ah hefty ah effect. um So he is going to graduate high school.
01:13:09
Speaker
ah He's 19 years old when he finally graduates in 1973, and he gets a football scholarship down to Lane College in Jackson, and of Tennessee. Now, Jackson, Tennessee is ah obviously quite a ways from Michigan.
01:13:25
Speaker
ah Despite his grades and his sporadic ah drug use, he's allowed to get there ah to this predominantly black school because his mom had helped him.
01:13:36
Speaker
He does get a full scholarship. He's a running back and he, by all accounts, enjoys the exercise. um The football player side of him seems like he's going to be a big deal.
01:13:55
Speaker
And he is still, you know, going through all the exercise training that's going to allow him to become a Golden Gloves fighter. But three months into the semester,
01:14:06
Speaker
he ends up being dismissed from Lane College. Now, depending on when you ask him and how you ask him, i it is he describes having a severe knee injury.
01:14:21
Speaker
There are accounts that this was a much more minor injury. Now, one of the things that is referenced during this time is that he is
01:14:37
Speaker
charged with stalking and similar assaults to the punch that he had given to the young lady back when he was a paper delivery boy.
01:14:53
Speaker
This is the first time he actually becomes a suspect in a killing.
01:15:00
Speaker
um And that is linked to him basically being asked to leave Doesn't want to leave, but he's expelled.
01:15:12
Speaker
According to all accounts, he briefly goes to Houston, Texas. But then he moves back in with his stepfather and his mother in Detroit.
01:15:26
Speaker
And he stays there for about six months. I'm not 100% sure about like what goes on in Houston at the time. um But he becomes a mechanic during this time for E&L.
01:15:37
Speaker
transport
01:15:40
Speaker
He also becomes a suspect in a murder that took place a couple of years earlier. And that is going to be ah ah the change in things, I believe.
01:15:56
Speaker
We have this um potential Tennessee homicide. We have this homicide that they start to look back on.
01:16:07
Speaker
Now, because we're going to be spending a little bit of time on him, we're going to talk about how these these murders come to be. and We're going to start off by just talking about the first two.
01:16:20
Speaker
So, the first murder is September 6, 1972. By all accounts, Carl is still a high school student.
01:16:32
Speaker
Now, this is the first official confirmed murder.
01:16:37
Speaker
Rumors have circulated about him being involved in this as to whether it's actually his first murder is a subject of the debate. There is one prior murder that he may or may not have been involved with.
01:16:51
Speaker
But on September 6th of 1972, a 20-year-old named Zaneda Chomes is discovered in a field in Taylor, Michigan, which would be off of North Line Road adjacent to an area called Lane Close.
01:17:10
Speaker
She had 45 stab wounds.
01:17:15
Speaker
Rumors have circulated about this potentially having something to do with Watts. Watts definitely lived here at the time. She had been taken from Detroit and murdered somewhere else.
01:17:29
Speaker
Watts questioned about it at some point. But they don't consider him to be this us the main suspect there.
01:17:41
Speaker
We also have the August 16th, 1974 disappearance of a 16-year-old named Nadine Jean Odell. Now, she had literally been in Inkster, Michigan.
01:17:54
Speaker
She was on her way to babysit her boyfriend's siblings. She was last seen walking down John Daly Street. And she's never been seen again.
01:18:06
Speaker
At 10.45 a.m. m on October 25th of 1974, Carl Watts knocked on 23-year-old Lenore Nizaki's apartment door, and Watts told her he was looking for Charles.
01:18:23
Speaker
She unlocked the door while it was still chained, and when she responded, no, Charles lived there, she asked if he wanted to leave a note. She undid the chain lock and went to get a piece of paper,
01:18:35
Speaker
And Carl Watts attacked Lenore. He choked her into unconsciousness. Lenore called the police. And the police came, but they were unable to find who had attacked her.
01:18:50
Speaker
And I actually think that's like kind of a good place to leave off with him, with just those two. i have a question. Yeah. He went to the door. yep He wanted Charles. Yep.
01:19:02
Speaker
Charles doesn't live there. yep So she's going to give a note to whom? Look, I can only give you the information that's been supplied here.
01:19:13
Speaker
I understand that, but does that make sense to you? No, no a lot doesn't. You want to leave a note for the person who doesn't live here? i'm with you. um um Yeah, no. It was weird. Unlocking the door was a really weird thing there.
01:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes, and this was, you know, a long time ago, but sometimes you want to be polite to strangers, right? Yeah. Especially people who are having, you know, a problem, clearly. i don't know why that would have made sense to anybody, but maybe in context it did.
01:19:48
Speaker
Well, I don't know. Well, we're going to spend some time talking about him over the next couple of episodes here. I just thought we'd start here and kind of leave off with like murders occurring this early in his life. In the next episode, we'll pick up with with him kind of geographically. We'll go through more of the profile and we'll talk about how many murders we think he's committed versus how many murders he potentially could have committed.
01:20:19
Speaker
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01:20:33
Speaker
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01:20:44
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
01:20:53
Speaker
No scars We're in trouble We took it too far
01:21:03
Speaker
want to go, but it's cause I'll disappoint ya. It's all I've ever dreamed of, something I cannot let go of.
01:21:14
Speaker
I hate the competition, this culture's like a Jimin. I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations.
01:21:25
Speaker
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01:21:43
Speaker
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