Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

The returned girls then seem to vanish off to other venues, or maybe they just vanish altogether. Names and IDs come and go and get duplicated between girls. I met and got to know a girl named “Coco”. When she went away, another “Coco” took her place and used exactly the same fake ID. I never slept with “Coco”, but I was told that I could buy her for the special price of $20,000.

I declined.

But nonetheless I felt the tremendous urge to help this girl out. I actually referred her to friends in the entertainment business who could help her get work as an actress—anything so she could buy herself away from the pimp.

She declined.

It never occurred to me to murder and mutilate her. When she spurned my help, I wrote her off. Whatever she gets she deserves, I told myself; she’d made a choice. Right. Like she had a choice. But I had no choice either: Although all us males want to be saviors, we can’t be. It’s a delusion. It’s just that it’s so damn hard to sit back and be loved or rejected for who we are rather than what we can provide.

Bill Suff, wimpy though he is in captivity, is apparently one man who just can’t sit back and let himself be judged by these women. He’s determined to make them love him, determined to make them see the goodness and value in him, even if he has to kill them to open their eyes.

This is another reason I have a problem with Rhonda Jetmore’s testimony. Remember, she’s the one who lived. And she said that Bill was supposed to give her twenty dollars, but then he suddenly refused, telling her she’d only get a dollar, and before she could respond, his hands were around her throat.

That story just fits too well with the profile, but not with the reality. Bill was always willing to pay for sex, love, attention. You pissed him off by telling him that that wasn’t enough, you wanted something more, something he didn’t have to offer, that other things were more important to you than him and his money.

Kelly Whitecloud hopped into Bill’s van one night in August of l991. She quoted him a price of twenty dollars, but then she told him she wanted to stop for some fast-food first. You get the munchies when you’ve just shot up with heroin, and Kelly needed to munch. It’s a sad commentary when you crave McDonald’s as much as you crave drugs.

At the drive-up window, Kelly got Bill to order her a Big Mac and a caramel sundae with the nuts on the bottom. Got that? Nuts on the bottom. Kelly leaned across Bill and hollered at the microphone/speaker to make sure the burger boy inside understood.

But, of course, when Bill and Kelly were pulling out of the parking lot, Kelly looked at her sundae and discovered that the nuts were on top.

I’m not making this up.

Moments later, Bill and Kelly were storming into McDonald’s on foot, the accursed sundae held aloft like it was on fire. Like it was manure on fire. Like this was a HAZMAT matter. Bill demanded to see the store manager, and, without further ado, the sundae was replaced. Nuts on the bottom, you can be sure.

Back in Bill’s van, Kelly powered through the food—they were barely out of the parking lot when she got down to the nuts. Sated by drugs and food, Kelly was no longer in the mood for a date, and she didn’t need the money until she would need her next fix. She realized she could be quite content having scammed this joker for the food and leave it like that. She was in the mood to kick back and feel all the shit oozing through her veins. Drugs, sugar, and cholesterol—nothing like it.

So, Kelly Whitecloud suddenly turned on Bill Suff and told him angrily that the food was in addition to the twenty bucks he had to pay her for the date. She figured he’d balk and that would give her an excuse to back out of the deal. After all, when you work the streets you can’t let yourself get the reputation of being a scam-mer; you had to stage things so it looked like you were honest and forthright at all times.

But Bill didn’t balk. He wasn’t happy about the added expenditure, but he’d just made a very public display of being with this woman, of defending her and getting her nuts right, and now he wanted to get his nuts right. He wanted to get laid. He deserved to get laid. If it cost him more, well, that was all right. Tonight he needed attention. He wanted to be allowed to suckle. He wasn’t planning on killing anybody tonight, and he wasn’t wearing the killing clothes. In fact, he was wearing his big BILL belt buckle. It was okay for people to see him and remember him, because this hooker was going to come back alive, and then no one would think of him as the Riverside Prostitute Killer. Kelly Whitecloud was going to be his alibi.

Unfortunately, she didn’t see it that way. When Bill shrugged okay to the notion of paying the full freight plus the food bill, she’d had enough. She threw a tantrum, pretended he was giving her a hard time, and jumped out of the van just as he was pulling into traffic. Then she yelled at him as he drove away, just to make a show in case any of her peers were watching. Gotta make it look like she wasn’t the one reneging on her deal.

In the van, Bill was devastated, humiliated, rejected. He’d done everything expected of him, everything a man could do, and now he was alone. And, in the rearview mirror, that crazy bitch was waving and hollering at him.

You know, in the seven years I was married to the second ex-Mrs. Lane, she told me continuously that she was unhappy. She never sought a divorce; she just kept beating me up emotionally by telling me how unhappy she was and how it was all my fault. Whenever I’d pin her down on what I could do to make her happy, she’d tell me something that was impossible to deliver. For the first few years, she told me that the only way she could be happy would be if I hadn’t ever been married to my first wife. Yeah, it’s pretty impossible to make your mate happy when happiness is predicated on changing the past.

It took me until just recently to realize that it wasn’t my job to make her happy, nor was it within my power. When I realized that, I filed for divorce. You have to eliminate unhappiness from your life.

But you don’t have to kill it.

After Bill drove away from Kelly Whitecloud, the bad thoughts welled up in his brain. A cacophony of anger and pain, pain and anger. He knew the tune.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t wearing the killing clothes.

He picked up another hooker, Kelly Hammond, a few blocks later. She never came back. She was found posed in a particularly demeaning manner with her head dipped forward into a trench, her arms twisted and splayed at her sides, her butt up in the air, and her legs folded under her.

Some detailed aspects of the pose mimicked Bill’s own “pose” when he was left KO’d on the roadside after his 1988 motorcycle accident.

Profile? What profile? The profilers always hedge their bets with the simple statement that the killer’s pattern can be altered by an external stressor, by circumstances. When that happens, it’s easier to predict a tornado than predict the moves of a serial killer.

Darla Jane Ferguson was another victim who didn’t fit the profile but did fit the reality. Bills mom, Ann, baby-sat for Darla’s daughter, and the little girl actually lived with Ann for several months in l987. Remember that Ann had a child care license and was quite active in that business up until Bill was arrested and Ann’s license was revoked. Back when Ann was taking care of Darla’s daughter, Bill happened to show up at a birthday party that Ann was having for the girl. There’s no evidence that Bill had any direct contact with Darla, other than when he killed her in January of 1990, but there can also be no doubt that he had to have recognized her when he pulled up and said “Hop in!”