Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

Which they did.

The taping of the original show—”My Son”—was delayed for a half hour when Ann broke down and cried in the “green room”. Leeza Gibbons tried to comfort her, and she too was reduced to tears. Ann was lamenting the loss of her son, the loss of her grandchildren, and the loss of all those poor dead girls. She was very sincere, however disloyal to Billy. Then again, she had cooperated with Zellerbach and the cops when Billy was first arrested. She’d even knit them a toy yarn octopus. She’d also turned over to them Cathy McDonald’s library card and another victim’s ring and necklace which she’d found in Billy’s apartment after the first police search.

I like Ann, even though nobody else seems to. After she testified at the death penalty phase that Bill was a good kid who never hurt anybody or anything, the jury decided that she was “cold as a glacier”. After listening to her, they said they could understand how Bill turned out as he had.

In any event, Ann went on television and spoke about Billy as if it were fact that he was a serial killer. Then Donny chimed in. He said he did not want to believe that Billy could have done these things, but, based on the evidence at trial, he had to accept that it was true.

Then Leeza asked him if he forgave his brother for his crimes.

“How can you forgive somebody who won’t even admit to himself what he’s done?” asked Don in perhaps the only rhetorical question he’s ever posed.

“Can you believe he said that?!” Bill snarled angrily at me. “Even the guards at the jail couldn’t believe it when they heard!” To Bill, his prison guards are the ultimate authorities—whatever they think is gospel, particularly when they’re on his side. I wonder if they know quite how much he quotes them.

The bottom line is that Bill has not and will not ever forgive Don for Leeza . Ann he will not condemn—in fact he makes sure that she is taken care of financially and otherwise—but Don betrayed him in some profound way. I’m not exactly sure why what Don did was so bad in Bill’s eyes—didn’t Bill admit to me that even he would have voted to convict had he objectively viewed the evidence as presented?—but I do know that, prior to Don’s appearance on Leeza , Bill had been exhorting him to stand up and make his brother’s case for the defense, miniscule evidentiary point by miniscule evidentiary point.

Now that I think it through, perhaps the answer is that Bill knows the evidentiary points do not work in his favor, and all he could ask for are people to stand up and swear to him and his character, for people to say “I don’t care what the evidence is, the Bill Suff I know would not have done these things!”

And maybe Donny should have said that.

I would have said it for my brother, God rest his soul.

Then again, my brother was not a serial killer, and no one’s invited me to appear on Leeza .

Funny how Ted Kaczynski’s weirdo snitch brother is now a hero, while Don Suff is a pariah.

“I find it hard to think Donny did these killings, Bill,” I said, “and I’d bet he has alibis for at least some of them.”

Once again, that was the issue: no matter who you are and how hard you are to keep track of, you ought to be able to alibi yourself at least once out of more than a dozen crimes. Plus, Donny was out on the streets all this time, and Riverside prostitutes were no longer getting murdered and mutilated and posed. Circumstantially, only Bill fit the bill. And Donny has a naiveté about him that, while not innocent, nonetheless augurs for spontaneous rather than premeditated guilt. He says he didn’t rape that Vegas hooker, he just didn’t pay her, and then they got into a tussle and she called the police.

I almost believe it.

In fact, Donny made a big confession of it to me when we first met in person in Riverside. He told me he wanted me to hear it from him first, since I was bound to hear it from others. There were a few other things I would hear about him also. Let’s just say that the Suff boys all got into trouble in various ways, and women were pretty much a common denominator.

Considering my failed marriages, I am not one to comment any further on this.

So, when Donny fessed up to me, I told him it was irrelevant to this book. I was then on my way to visit Bill, and that was the story.

“Need a microcassette recorder to take with you?” Don offered,

“Thanks, but I’ve got a tape recorder,” I said, “and anyway I don’t think I’m allowed to take it into the jail.”

“The one I’ve got is Bill’s,” Don said.

“Really,” I said, this being my favorite response.

“The police missed it the first time they searched his apartment while Mom and I were there. So I took it, along with a bunch of tapes.”

“Anything interesting on the tapes?”

“I’ve only listened to one or two, but there’s nothing important on ’em.”

“Like what?”

“Like Bill driving around in his van talking to Cheryl. And another where you hear a bunch of guys cheering as they watch a football game on TV.”

“Huh?” This was my second favorite response.

“It’s just like Bill had the tape recorder on, recording, while he did other stuff.”

It was, as they say, déjà vu all over again. Like when Don had told me about Billy bringing used clothes and jewelry to Don’s wife.

“I’ve kind of taped over some of the stuff,” said Don sheepishly.

“Don’t tape over any more, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You know what I’m thinking?”

“Yeah. I know.”

I was thinking that if Bill drove around in his van with a tape recorder going, then it was because he was taping his trysts and his murders. Listening to them later would definitely be arousing for him.

Donny brought me the tape recorder and the tapes—I listened to them all.

Sure enough, one was a tape of a bunch of men sitting on metal chairs in a hollow sounding room watching Super Bowl XVI— Cincinnati and San Francisco—on the TV in 1982. None of the men said anything to the recorder, they just cheered and reacted to the game—they had no idea they were being taped. There was less conversation than one would expect among friends watching a football game together. Since Bill was in prison in Texas at that time, I assumed that was where he recorded this.

But, when I asked him about it, he got nervous. He denied making the tape and he denied watching the game. And his denials started to get long and complicated and explanatory. It’s not just that he didn’t make the tape, he couldn’t have made the tape, and here’s why—blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

I didn’t bother to listen to his explanation—it was obvious he was lying. The truth was that he had broken the convicts’ code by secretly recording his fellows, even though nothing incriminating was going on. He’d also broken prison rules by having the tape recorder outside of his workstation—in Texas he’d been a computer operator, much privileged after being a model prisoner for so many years.

But why on earth would he care now about transgressions of prison ethics more than a decade ago? Because once a con, always a con. You know you could go back, you know you probably will go back. Somewhere sometime you will encounter your fellow cons again, and time doesn’t pass for these guys. If you owe them, you will pay. Time served might pay your debt to society, but cons trade in different specie. Ditto, if you’ve made a fool of a guard. The cons and the guards are all waiting for you, and they will always remem-ber not to forget.

“What was it like in Texas, in prison?” I asked.

“Oh, it was fine,” said Bill.

“You know that if your California convictions get thrown out and you don’t get retried, Texas will haul your ass back and make you serve the rest of your seventy-year sentence, right?”