Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

Of course, I wasn’t surprised. Once I got to know Bill, he ceased to be surprising. As with my wives, my initial fantasy of what they had to be was more electric, exciting, unpredictable than their grounded, repetitive reality. I knew that Bill saw himself as eternal—alive, but already dead—a ghost who was not about to give up his playful haunts, determined to have the last laugh and maintain control of his victims from beyond their graves as well as his own. Bequeathing his organs was just another way of asserting that control—it was to be expected.

But, on the day of sentencing, everyone in the courtroom was plenty surprised. Surprised, stunned, and then incensed, in an instant. The words were barely out of Bill’s mouth before members of the victims’ families were hurling themselves forward to lynch him. One furiously apoplectic man had to be restrained and then ushered out by the bailiffs, while others screamed obscenities or burst into tears. The judge pounded his gavel and demanded order, and couldn’t wait to ad lib that Bill was “evil incarnate” when he pronounced sentence. Yeah, Bill surprised all of them all right—he sat there and acted surprised at their surprise, the perfect picture of magnanimous menace, all calm and innocent, the eye of his own firestorm. It was wonderfully cruel and diabolical, and Bill laughed about it later when we met in private: “I guess they got a little upset,” he said to me, “I guess they were pretty surprised.”

“The one who’s going to be surprised is you, Bill,” I said, “because they really are going to execute you if you keep up like this.”

He looked at me curiously, brow furrowed but eyes wide. He just didn’t get it. I got the distinct impression that I was looking at a child who thought he could suddenly say “All right, game’s over, let’s all go wash up for dinner”, and all those dead girls would rise, laughing, ready to play Bill Suff’s game again the next day.

Your Honor, I’d like to start out on a personal note to a relative of one of the girls, a girl I greatly cared for: Mr. Lyttle, I cared about your daughter, Kimberly, a great deal. Several times I gave her money for food and rent. Sex was often not involved. One Christmas, I even bought Kim and Sara presents to put under their tree. Four times I asked Kim to move into my two-bedroom apartment. There would always be food on the table, she wouldn’t have to worry about rent, she could quit being a prostitute and, if she wanted, I’d use my county contacts to get her into a drug rehabilitation program. I’d even list her and Sara on my medical and dental insurance plans. Kim and Sara would never want for anything. Talk to Janice Farmer, Jan was at Kim’s apartment the first time I invited her to move in with me.

The last time I saw Kim and Sara was in April ’89 at her apartment when I again asked them to move in with me. She said she would think about it. The next time I heard about Kim was in January ’90. I ran into Jan at a store in Elsinore and asked if she knew where Kim and Sara had moved to. Jan told me that Kim had been killed. Mr. Lyttle, I couldn’t have killed Kimberly, I cared for her too much. I only wish that Kim was still alive to let you know what kind of person I am. Ever since her death, I’ve prayed that GOD is now caring for her. And I will continue to pray for Kim, and also that her true killer is found. I hope that one day you will come to realize that I did not harm Kim in any way and that I am not the person the news media and the prosecutor has portrayed me to be.

Your Honor, prosecutor Zellerbach and the news media have all painted a grotesque picture of me as a cold-blooded, heartless monster. They couldn’t have been more wrong about me! I am a caring, loving and helpful person. Ask anyone who was close to me. I’m also a hopeless romantic. I fall in love easily and it’s nearly impossible for me to fall out of love.

When I was in the Air Force, I was a medical corpsman working in a hospital pediatrics ward. Later, I became an ambulance attendant. While in prison I first worked in the prison infirmary and finally got into the computer industry as a keypunch operator. And during this total of 15 years, I saw so much pain, loss of hope, despair and death that my goal became one of helping people any way I could, no matter how far out of the way it took me. I gave people I barely knew money, food and even a place to live when they had no other place to go. I opened my home and myself to them, never asking or expecting anything in return. THAT is the kind of person I am, NOT what prosecutor Zellerbach made up about me!

Now, I don’t blame the jurors for finding me guilty, nor assessing a death penalty on me. Given these circumstances, conditions and arguments, whoever was on trial would have been found guilty, not just me! The law says that the prosecution must prove, beyond a doubt, that the defendant is guilty. It’s a good law, in theory. But, I offer this as a more practical truth: “A pros-ecutor need not prove anything. He only needs to make the pub-lic and the jury think he’s proven it!” And prosecutor Zellerbach had lots of outside help on this case. Long before a jury was impanelled, I was tried and convicted by the news media. And they decreed a death sentence on me, though not in so many words. The people who read and listened to the news media immediately believed the worst. Three days after I was jailed, I began to receive death threats. If I had been acquitted, or if all charges had been dropped; someone, either related to one of these girls or not, would have killed me. Even if an appeal frees me, I don’t stand a chance of returning to any semblance of my previous life. And any hope of romance is out of the question. No woman I might meet and begin to care for will make any kind of commitment to me. She would be wondering if anything reported by the news media was true.

During the Voir Dire, several people expressed their belief that I had to be guilty, because the prostitute killings stopped after my arrest. Sorry, but that’s just not true. The prostitute killers were active here before I came home to California. Since my arrest, several more prostitutes have been killed, and as everyone has conveniently forgotten, I was originally charged with an additional killing, only to be absolutely excluded by DNA evidence. With all of the sorrow that’s been brought on by these deaths, it’s a shame that there is still more sorrow to come because the responsible parties are still out there killing! So, prosecutor Zellerbach, what’s the whole truth with respect to the prostitute killings in Riverside County? The public does have a right to know the whole story!

As for me, a couple of people said that I seemed emotionless and unremorseful during my trial, never making eye contact with any of the family members who testified. Well, my response is, how can you look into the eyes of someone who is wrongly convinced that you killed their daughter, mother or sister? It was tearing me up inside, but I was forced to learn long ago that to show my feelings was a weakness and left me open to be hurt by others. I felt sadness, pain and empathy for what happened to these women, as well as sympathy for their relatives. Granted, this isn’t feeling remorseful. But then, how can you show remorse for something you didn’t do?

Prosecutor Zellerbach made a big show about certain items found in places associated with me. A summons issued to Ms. Hammond. Purses and a t-shirt belonging to Ms. Zamora. A map with locations of where Ms. Hammond and Ms. Zamora were found, marked by ink-dots. Well, none of those items were found on the first search or a second search. It wasn’t until a third or later search that those items suddenly, and mysteriously, showed up in an obvious location where it would have been impossible to miss them in the first place! And, it was testified that a vehicle different from mine was seen and heard in the alley where Ms. Hammond was found. At a time when I was just leaving for work more than 50 miles away. To me, the only thing any of this supposed evidence proves is that the evidence was planted by someone. Planted to link me with those two ladies. Planted because the police were under pressure to find someone, anyone guilty!