Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

When he thought about it later, he knew what had happened: It was the uniform. The uniform made him bold. And it made people do what he asked.

So, from that night on, for the rest of his life, Bill was never out of uniform. Prior to that he’d worn his high school band uniform, extending the costumed hours before and after performances, but the night at the Rose Bowl proved that even “civilian” clothes could have the urgency and authority of a uniform. From high school to the local fire/forestry department to the Air Force and the Medical Corps, to prison in Texas, then to Riverside, county service and the prostitute killings, and back to prison—Bill’s uniform of each period defined him, empowered him. Clothes didn’t make the man; they spoke for him, they were him.

When he met Cheryl Lewis in 1990 in Lake Elsinore—she was then only seventeen, working at night in a Circle K minimart— Bill had scouted her, decided to move on her, and showed up in an “unmarked” security guard’s uniform—sheriff’s shirt without the patches, pressed khakis.

“Don’t pay me any attention,” he whispered to her, “just go on about your business. The store management has hired me to keep watch on you and make sure you’re all right here working so late at night.”

And she believed him. After all, he was more than twice her age, just barely younger than her parents, and he hung around for endless hours all night long—no one would do that if it wasn’t his job, right? Or, more importantly, he really did make her feel safe even though before he first showed up she couldn’t actually say that she really felt unsafe. She sort of felt unsafe in retrospect, after he’d made her realize what a fool she’d been to have been unwary. It’s a dangerous world out there. And she was important enough to deserve protection.

When Bill was arrested in Riverside in January 1992, much was made of the sheriff’s shirts hanging in his closet; when he was tried, much was made of his personalized belts and tourist T-shirts and caps. The prosecutors tried to identify him through his clothes and the recollections of witnesses, but they missed out on the real point: his uniforms predict his conduct . Put him in prison garb, and he’s harmless. Put him in a guard’s clothes or firefighter’s clothes, and he’s helpful.

Then again, when he pulls on his killer’s clothes, look out.

Contrary to any profiles or prosecution theories, there’s no evidence that Bill wore crypto-cop clothes when he killed. I think the hookers would have been wary of it, and I think Bill had a different mind-set in such clothes. I even think there was a different “uniform” for the nights he simply dated hookers, as opposed to the nights he killed them. No biological or trace evidence turned up on any of Bill’s clothes, yet there’s no way he could have cleaned everything up so thoroughly. I think that somewhere out there he hid a bag of killing clothes, as well as the clothes he sometimes redressed his victims in.

What then were his killing clothes?

I suspect there were two stages of dress for the nights of the killings.

First, the clothes Bill wore when he stopped for the girls and enticed them into his van. These would be a slightly understated version of his dating clothes—long-sleeved shirt, plaid or dark; trousers, dark denim or maybe khaki; boots or maybe sneakers if his bum leg was bothering him, the one hurt in the motorcycle accident; and a big belt, but not the “BILL” one or any other so memorable.

Second, the actual clothes that Bill had to be wearing in order to commit “the sacrifice”. These would be clothes that were at once practical, erotic, and priestly. Think “wizard”, “hangman”, Bob Guccione, and Velcro… and there’s only one outfit that comes to mind: a jumpsuit. Bill wore them in the Air Force Medical Corps. He wore them in prison in Texas. The Air Force jumpsuits had been sent home and were waiting for him in Elsinore when he got out of jail for killing his baby. They already had blood on them from those ambulance calls in the Corps. Now no one much looked for those jumpsuits after he was arrested for the Riverside Prostitute Killings, but then again no one ever found them, either; and between the cops and Bill’s family, his stuff was scavenged through and picked at like chicken pox. Of course, he might have ditched the old jumpsuits years ago and replaced them with brand-new or even government surplus clothes made out of parachute material that doesn’t shed trace evidence. No matter where he got the damn jumpsuits, the fact is he had ’em, and once he had his victims in tow he’d dress up in the jumpsuits, and then he was able to kill. Practically speaking, jumpsuits are easy to get in and out of, even in the dark. They also cover you from neck to ankle, catching your loose hairs, sloughed skin, and all other biological evidence. If you’re wearing clothes underneath, the jumpsuit protects them from arterial spray, spitting, or any other messy act by your victim.

Erotically, jumpsuits zip or Velcro-rip open all the way down the front, allowing you to be fully dressed yet fully exposed, ready to “perform”, and the fully encasing, unbreathing nylon feels really slicky and sweaty and second skinny should you be buck naked inside.

Meanwhile, the look of a jumpsuit is decidedly mystical, authoritative, and reverential. If you’re medieval, it’s a robe and hood; but modern means jumpsuit. It’s what all the high priests wear.

But why is this relevant?

You will recall I previously knocked Bill’s Dungeons and Drag-ons stories, but now you should take a look at the unfinished “A Whisper From the Dark”, which follows shortly. The death-dealing villain is Zernebock, defined as evil incarnate—the same description the judge used on Bill when sentencing him to death. Zernebock is timeless… and be-robed. If you’re going to be Death, you have to dress the part.

See, Bill lived in the environs of Elsinore, but it was really his self-made Pern. It took me a while to convince myself of this, because his fantasy writing seemed so obviously contrived to make that very point. I kept thinking this was all misdirection—a sensible fiction to mask the true delusion. I kept thinking that Bill would be cleverer and less open, that he came up with Dungeons and Dragons because that’s what he knew people would expect to hear, much as he knew the cookbook would play into the Lecter stereotype.

Indeed, similarly, when Bill and I contemplated an insanity defense should his convictions be overturned and his case retried, I pressed him for any possible abuse or death-traumas he might have suffered as a youth. He said there was nothing, but then proceeded to write me a letter that contained, among other tales, a dream he had in which he was accusing his parents of abuse. He then wondered aloud whether the dream was some repressed memory fighting its way into his consciousness.

I read all this as fraud. I assumed he was just inventing what I needed in order to defend him.

However, I changed my mind about all this after he made a very real Freudian slip in discussing the last murder.

Bill was still in jail in Riverside, and his death sentence was due to be pronounced in a matter of days. He would then be taken immediately to a “safe cell” where he would be under suicide watch. Some night thereafter—it could be days or even weeks later—he would be spirited out without warning, tossed into a secure police vehicle, and transported to San Quentin. His days of high living in Riverside would be over, and the days of his life would be numbered.

Accordingly, he was at his lowest ebb emotionally, and I had just gotten a court order in order to see him alone without a guard looking in. I had to sign on as his civil attorney in order to get the order.