Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

Hence, the Cathy McDonald debacle, which, as I say, none of the authorities will cop to.

But D.A. Zellerbach did recently admit to me that Bill Suff surprisingly did not fit the profile he and the task force had been working from. Nonetheless, Zellerbach tried to get that profile admitted at trial, and back then he was prepared to say that it fit Bill to a T.

According to Zellerbach today, where the profile went wrong was in describing the killer as a man certain to be overtly aggressive and threatening, particularly when cornered. He should have been a dominating presence, something more on the order of John Wayne Gacy, or that Glen Edward Rogers character, the accused but as yet untried cross-country serial killer, whom I find scary to look at even in pictures. A blue collar Mr, Hyde.

The profilers were basing this conclusion on the mutilations, the rage, the clear and deep hatred of women which was being expressed. This had to be a man who had to grit his teeth in order to pretend to be calm between kills. This guy had to work out on the heavy bag, mountain bike, raise barns, or do something strenuous to blow off steam each and every day.

But Bill Suff was a weenie. A wimp, a whiner. When Zellerbach first saw him in custody, he almost thought they had the wrong man, “He was just such a crybaby,” says Zellerbach, “He was not what we expected,”

Zellerbach and the profilers had expected a man. What they got was a child.

The profile said that the killer did not know his victims prior to killing them. He would pull up, strike his deal, drive away with the girl, and kill her. She was an object, her killing was impersonal, when he was mangling her he was seeing someone else in his mind’s eye.

Wrong.

In fact, Bill killed prostitutes that he had “dated”. He regularly slept with the same girls. And, in the case of Kimberly Lyttle, he fell for her and decided he could rescue her and her child from a life of drugs and sex-for-hire. He told himself that he loved her. He offered her money not to have sex for money, not to have sex with him or with other men. And then, on her birthday in June of 1989, he made the grandest gesture: Bill asked Kim to move in with him.

Her response was rather less than he’d expected. Kim rejected Bill’s offer, preferring to live on her own, wanting to keep her relationship with him “at arm’s length”, business and nothing more.

So that’s when she had to die.

It’s pretty damn insulting when you can’t even pay a woman to quit being a hooker, when you want nothing from her but to allow you to help her. That’s the very definition of rejection.

It’s also the definition of control. What he was really trying to do was to control her, to own her, and she was too strong a person to go along with that. So she died.

To be noted is that she was the first of the series for which he has been convicted. There are other bodies that predate Kim, but not enough evidence against Bill, even though the police closed the cases upon his death sentence. Granting Bill his overdue presumption of innocence on those cases, we can say that Kim’s rejection of him was the final straw. If he couldn’t control this hooker, then he could hardly be expected to control himself—he became a killing machine. I know that some of the women in Bill’s life—from first wife Teryl to Riverside girlfriend Bonnie—all want to believe that their rejection is what pushed Bill over the edge, but if anyone is entitled to take that dubious bow, it’s Kim.

Love—or seeming love—becomes murder.

That’s the equation that, at a gut level, we all “get”, even though none of us—average Jills and Joes, profilers, psychologists, and cops alike—none of us can never quite really understand it. We know it can happen, but we just wouldn’t do it. We know that men have a natural tendency toward wanting to take care of and control women, but how really does that simple, endearing insecurity turn into madness, obsession, and murder?

Early on, I went out to interview hookers for this book. Insight into their minds might give insight into their relationships might make sense of the death equation. Plus, I wanted to hang with hookers. My ostensible purpose was to ask these women how come hookers kept getting into a van with a serial killer. The question turned out to answer itself: because what hookers do for a living is get into vans with guys. If you work at the post office, you go to the post office. If a serial killer turns out to be driving the van, you lose. And if the letter carrier is pissed because he didn’t get credit for all his overtime, then you lose there, too. You can get yourself killed anywhere. Probably will.

Anyway, when I was making the rounds of the hookers, I came across a guy I remembered as a crew person at MTM Studios back when I was writing for Remington Steele .

The guy is now a pornographer and a pimp. And he’s loaded with money. He lives in a strange substrata world where he is at once overt and yet unknown. His Hollywood Hills house appears normal from the outside, but inside it’s a dungeon. Pillories and whips and chains and enema bags, and all that stuff. A beautiful, raven haired UCLA medical student works for him, available at an hourly rate for customers who want their scrotums professionally slashed with razor blades. Of course, you first have to sign a release and waiver drawn up by the pimp’s high priced Westside lawyer.

If big toys are your thing, the pimp’s got a yacht which you can hire, and he’ll stock it with anything you want, living or dead, chemically active or inert, just so long as it all takes place in international waters. No questions are asked upon your return to the dock, and the cleanup crew is exceedingly thorough.

Into music or movies? The pimp’s also got a state-of-the-art, high-tech, art deco, audio/video recording/editing studio. It’s behind a buzzer-locked iron door in a seemingly abandoned tenement motel in the worst part of town. You have to know it’s there to know it’s there. And you have to know the password to get in. Then you get offered beer and quiche by a girl who’s wearing gold mules. Gold mules. That’s all she’s wearing. They’re great looking mules.

Meanwhile, the pimp’s latest deal is recruiting beautiful young girls in Latvia and the other former Soviet republics. He meets them in dance clubs and signs them to “services contracts”, also drawn up by his Westside lawyer. The girls are brought over here, billed as “Swedish”, told to say that they are in college and studying economics and international relations, and then, having learned to say that, they are rented out to men to whom they can say it. The girls are told that their earnings will be split fifty-fifty with the pimp, but then he later mentions that he forgot to mention that the costs he advanced to fly them over and house them have to be deducted. Oh, and he should hold on to the rest of their money since they don’t have bank accounts yet and the green cards he’s promised them have been delayed.

The girls pretty quickly get the picture, but they would still rather be here than there, so they put up with it. Besides, the men are rich and showy, and these girls get shown. Shown and traded around. And they don’t realize that the pimp is so clever he knows that, sooner or later, these poor creatures will spill their guts to their Johns. And then the John will rise up to protect the girl, to defend her and get her out of this mess. The John will fall “in love”, and he’ll go to the pimp to save the day. And the pimp will be waiting. No problem, the girl can be let out of her contract. For a price. Believe it or not, in case after case, the John then buys the girl and marries her.

However, the most amazing aspect is the warranty: If you get tired of a girl you’ve purchased, you can trade her back in and upgrade. Again, at a price.