Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

“I was tried and convicted in the press at the time I was arrested,” Bill said, “and no one points out that since I’ve been in jail the prostitute killings have continued.”

In fact, the prostitute killings had not continued, but in an honest relationship, you take a person at his word and you simultaneously demand that he take you at yours, even if you’re contradicting him. That is to say, you don’t argue; instead you try to find an explanation by which both of you can be right. I did an end around in response to Bill’s statement.

“Didn’t your defense lawyers try to bring that out at trial?” I asked.

“No one wants to hear it. No one wants to admit they got the wrong man. It wasn’t that they conspired against me out of some personal dislike for me in particular. It’s just that there came a time when they had to ease the public’s mind by telling them that the killings were over and they could relax because they’d arrested the guilty party. So, of course, then they’re not going to let on that the killings keep happening.”

“Bill, unfortunately, prostitutes get killed all the time. In every city in every country. And it’s always going to be hard to trace the killer,” I said, “because something like ninety percent of the murders in the world are committed by people who are close to the victims— husbands, wives, friends, business partners—while hookers get killed by people just passing through who have no motive personal to the victim and therefore leave no evidentiary trail that makes sense. That’s the statistic that keeps getting twisted around in the O.J. trial—while it’s true that most abusive husbands don’t actually kill their wives, it’s about a hundred percent certain that when you find a murdered wife who’s been previously and recently abused, her husband did the murder.”

The O.J. defense was at the time presenting its case, and it seemed to me that their arguments were a virtual denial that Nicole had been killed at all. In the face of overwhelming evidence as to O.J.’s guilt and no straw man they could offer up as an alternative killer, the defense was attacking the LAPD for sloppy workmanship even though the results themselves were unassailable. “Garbage in, garbage out” only makes sense when you get inconclusive or contradictory results. However, when every result shouts “O.J.”, then clearly there was no “garbage in”—the work had not been so sloppy as to have impacted the integrity of the evidence. And, as to the theory that the LAPD planted evidence according to some sort of ad hoc conspiracy that rivaled D day in its complexity and timing, how could such a “sloppy” police force have possibly pulled it off?

I ran through this analysis with Bill, thinking that he would be more forthcoming about someone else’s crimes, but that anything he said would give insight into his own. As it turned out, he was disinterested in anyone else’s crimes—he quickly brought the spotlight back on him.

“I had O.J.’s expert witnesses, you know,” said Bill Suff. “Dr. Gerdes, the DNA man, he said I couldn’t have done it, that one out of every five people in the world had the same characteristics.”

There was virtually no biological evidence in Bill’s case. Semen in a condom found in trash “near” a body by a dumpster. Mixed semen from multiple “donors” found in another victim. A hair here and there, but no such evidence anywhere in most of the cases. Results that were at best “maybes” and at worst could have fingered any number of alternative suspects. Bill was right—you couldn’t convict anybody on that evidence. But, then again, he’d been convicted twelve times over. Somehow Dr. Gerdes and the other “experts” who were so incredibly credible for O.J. in Los Angeles lost all their persuasiveness after a two-hour drive down the freeway to Riverside. And, heck, there would have been a thirteenth conviction pinned on Bill Suff in Riverside were it not for one momentarily abashed and rational juror who hung that one last case at eleven to one for conviction—seems that while the cops watched, automatic sprinklers went off at the body dumpsite and every bit of evidence was washed away. No evidence , and still eleven jurors voted to convict .

“Bill, let’s be fair here—forget the biological evidence—if you were on the jury and heard all the other evidence against you, wouldn’t you vote to convict on at least a couple of the counts?”

He stopped to give this some thought, and then came back calmly and rationally: “Yes, I’d have to say that I would.”

“Okay, having said that, let’s look at the evidence that’s most damning.”

“Zellerbach said the last murder took place around noon—and I have an alibi for that time: my wife Cheryl testified that I was home in bed with her all morning until about one-thirty in the afternoon.”

“But Bill, you and I both know that that murder took place the night before, and you admitted you were at the scene.”

“But the jury didn’t hear any of that. All they heard was Zeller-bach saying the murder was at noon while Cheryl said I was home with her. So the jury believed Zellerbach rather than Cheryl. That’s what I’m trying to tell you—the jury already believed I was guilty—it didn’t matter what my defense was—the media had already tried and convicted me.”

“Bill, the jury didn’t believe Cheryl and your alibi because your tire tracks were all over the murder scene. The jury knew you were there—whatever time it happened—and trying to alibi it away only made you and your defense unbelievable.”

Suddenly, the lawyer in me began to get fired up. With all due respect to Bill’s lawyers, Peasley should never have proffered the alibi. The tire evidence was the strongest evidence in the case. It went like this: (1) For many of the murders, Bill drove his van. (2) Bill drove off-road a lot. Why? Because by day he’d hunt for potential body dumpsites that suited his fancy and fantasies, and then by night he’d go dump the bodies there. (3) Driving off-road caused Bill to blow tires fairly frequently. (4) Whenever Bill went to replace a tire, he’d go for the best deal, ultimately leading to four mismatched tires being on the van as of the time of the last murder. (5) Zellerbach adroitly produced tire tracks and Bill’s tire purchase receipts so that with each progressive murder you could find the exact combination of tracks from old and new tires which matched what would have then been on the van, differing from previous tracks by the addition of whichever new tire had been purchased since the previous murder.

By the time of the last murder, Bill might as well have signed his name in those damn tire tracks.

Admittedly, this is “only” circumstantial evidence, but circumstances have to be pretty queer for a guy’s van to keep showing up without him at scene after scene of sexual murder.

And then there were also shoe prints which came from shoes like the ones Bill owned—two different pairs of them—along with fibers from a sleeping bag like the torn one in Bill’s van.

A bloody knife in the van, and ID and personal possessions of the victims found in Bill’s apartment, workplace, and van, rounded out the physical evidence.

Of course, all this was nothing compared to what they had on O.J., and he’s phoning for tomorrow’s tee time right about now, while Bill’s sitting on Death Row, insisting that the knife and the victims’ possessions were planted by police determined to cement their case.

In fact, Bill’s quite right in pointing out that the blood on the knife proved nothing, and much of the other evidence didn’t “turn up” until second or third searches of places previously searched by police. It would have been easy for a “determined” cop to dip into the victims’ effects, taking items from the victims’ homes, only to then “find” them at Bill’s; and I would be remiss were I not to mention that the lead cop on the case—the cop who arrested Bill and interrogated Bill in violation of his rights, denying him legal counsel even when he demanded it—Detective Keers was not long thereafter fired from the police force and charged with receiving stolen property in another matter.