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[audio logo] narrator: On June
27, 1996, police in Pinellas County,
Florida, had
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to undertake one
of the largest manhunts in the county's history. - There were
helicopters everywhere.
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There were people on my roof. The media was out front. narrator: Investigators
were on the hunt
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for a man they suspected was
responsible for the murders of four women. [tense music]
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Geoffrey Wansell:
They were all women on the fringes of society. All four had been beaten
and strangled, all
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within a very small radius. narrator: After weeks
of surveillance, investigators were
stunned to find
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out that their prime suspect
was already a wanted fugitive-- 41-year-old convicted sex
offender James Randall.
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Craig Pittman: He had been
imprisoned up in Massachusetts. And when he got out,
he failed to report
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to his probation officer
and instead fled the state. Tamara Garcia: I
couldn't believe it.
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My brother-in-law. There was two people
living in there, the James Michael
Randall that we knew
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and the James Michael Randall
that turned into a monster. narrator: With a trail
of brutal, sadistic attacks
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on innocent women Behind
him, James Randall had been revealed as one of
the world's most evil killers.
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[theme music] ♪ ♪ [intriguing music] On March the 4, 1997,
residents of Pinellas County,
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Florida, woke up to the news
that ex-con James Randall had been found
guilty of strangling
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two women to death
on the outskirts of Clearwater. Craig Pittman: It's a very
intimate way to kill someone.
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I mean, you're not 5
feet away firing a gun. You're right there.
And you can see their face.
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And you can see their eyes. You can see the look of fear as
they're losing consciousness.
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That was the big
turn-on for Randall. narrator: Randall's
sentencing became a subject
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of widespread controversy,
following the decision to overturn his death penalty
and, instead, sentence
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him to life imprisonment. Randall's defense
team had argued the deaths were,
in fact, accidental
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and a result of his fetish
for sexual strangulation. ♪ ♪ Jane Monckton-Smith: What
stands out most for me
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in this case is
the injustice that he was able to say that he killed
those women by accident,
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and it was believed, and he
manipulated the entire system. narrator: Randall's
ex-fiancée, Terry Jo Howard,
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was amongst the many
affected and had her world turned upside down in the wake
of the heartbreaking
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revelations. Terry Jo Howard: When
Jimmy had the need to be violent with
someone, he almost
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became a different person. Jimmy was a very
cold, calculating man when he became that predator.
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He was evil. narrator: This killer's
story begins on August the 28, 1954, in Kentucky.
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[tense music] James Michael Randall lived
with his parents and sister. His father, eager for him
to follow in his footsteps,
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was determined
to see Randall join the high school football team. - Randall appeared
to be brought
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up in a household that was
dominated by coercive control. Craig Pittman: He
hated his father.
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He was held back
a couple of years in order to be dominant
on the football field.
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And so that hurt his schooling
and hurt his education, all for the point of him being
a star on the football field.
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And he resented that terribly. narrator: But it wasn't
just Randall that his father
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would attempt to control. Craig Pittman: One
of the stranger and more frightening
aspects of his life
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was, when he was
young, he had actually seen his father rape and--
and choke his mother,
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and apparently
that excited him. ♪ ♪ Jane Monckton-Smith:
The fact that he had witnessed his mother
being strangled by his father
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will be significant
because, if you've got a fetish for something,
you have to be introduced
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to that fetish first. You're not born with it. So undoubtedly,
witnessing those attacks
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started to shape
who Randall was. And Randall had a fetish
for strangulation, which started very young.
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[ominous music] ♪ ♪ [intriguing music] narrator:
By the mid-seventies, Randall
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had left Kentucky
to start his adult life in Gardner, Massachusetts
where he found a job
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as a construction worker. One evening in 1978,
the 24-year-old crossed paths with two young
women at his local bar.
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Geoffrey Wansell: He meets
two girls, one called Linda, another one called
Holly and he gets
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on incredibly well
with them both, but specifically with Linda. And within a year
they're married.
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They become
a proper family, and they go on to have two
children, a boy and a girl.
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♪ ♪ narrator: Nearly five years
later, on March 4, 1984, Linda heard the news
that her best
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friend, Holly, never made
it home after a night out with friends. Craig Pittman: Linda's
best friend, Holly Cote,
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worked at a bar. And on the night she vanished,
she finished up her shift and then went to another
bar, Mr. D's lounge,
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for a celebration. And she was supposed to meet
some people for a nightcap afterwards but never showed up.
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- The interesting thing
was that Holly's car was still in the car
park where she'd left it.
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She has simply disappeared. narrator: Holly Cote's
family put up a $6,000 reward
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for information
surrounding their beloved daughter's disappearance. And her distraught
husband even took a month
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off work to look for her. But their searches
turned up empty. [thunder rumbling]
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- Two months later,
the Memorial Day weekend in May, there had been a lot
of rain in Massachusetts
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at this point. A local lake, Birch Hill Dam,
had grown, and a lot of things started to come to the surface.
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narrator: A couple of canoeists
use the rising water levels to explore areas around
the dam that were
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usually inaccessible by water. But nothing could
have prepared them for what they would uncover.
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Geoffrey Wansell: They
discovered a body. It was a naked
woman with her hands or arms tied in a purple sock.
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Can you imagine
the horror of that? [suspenseful music] narrator: A few
days later, the body
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was identified as that of
missing 28-year-old Holly Cote. It appeared that she'd
been strangled to death.
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But finding her killer
wasn't going to be easy. - The tragedy was there
were no forensic details,
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really, on Holly's body. It had been in the water
for a very long time. Craig Pittman: Because of the
deterioration of the body,
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it was difficult to pinpoint
exactly how she had been killed or how long she'd
been dumped there
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or find any evidence tying her
to who might have killed her. [intriguing music] narrator: Police revisited
Holly's last known movements.
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They looked into who
she was with at the bar before she went missing
nearly three months earlier.
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Her best friend's
husband, James Randall. Geoffrey Wansell: There's
no question that Holly
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knew Linda and Randall well. I mean, they babysat
her daughter. They were close friends.
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Craig Pittman: Randall
was the last person to be seen with her. ♪ ♪ There had been
a party at a bar,
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and they had left together,
and then she disappeared. [tense music] ♪ ♪ narrator: The tragic
death of Holly Cote
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was the beginning
of the end of Randall and Linda's relationship. With the 29-year-old becoming
a prime suspect in the murder
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of his wife's best
friend, tensions between the couple began to rise. And James Randall would
soon show his true colors.
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[TENSE STING] ♪ ♪ [TENSE MUSIC] narrator: In May 1984,
29-year-old construction worker
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James Randall was questioned
by investigators after a pair of canoeists discovered
the body of 28-year-old
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Holly Cote
in an overflowing dam near to a popular fishing area. ♪ ♪ Geoffrey Wansell:
Two things made
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Randall a suspect
in Holly's murder, one, that he'd been with her the
evening she disappeared and,
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two, that where
the body was discovered, was one of Randall's
favorite fishing spots.
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[ominous music] The police interviewed him
as a person of interest. He didn't confess,
and there was no reason
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or evidence to charge him. narrator: The impact
Holly's death had on her best friend Linda
and Randall soon became clear.
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Their relationship
began to sour as Randall started
demanding more sex and was more aggressive
towards his wife.
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Jane Monckton-Smith: His view
of relationships with women was definitely
skewed by what he
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witnessed when he was younger. He was taught that women were
objects rather than people.
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So when he goes
into a relationship, he's bringing all
that baggage with him. And he is going
to treat his partner
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in the way he thinks
they should be treated, which is abuse and control. Geoffrey Wansell: He
certainly tried to strangle
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her on a number of occasions. He got pleasure
out of strangling women in the act of sex.
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Linda's response was
inevitably, I can't stand this. I'm taking the children
and going, which,
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of course, infuriated Randall. narrator: Two years
later, in July 1986, the scorned Randall tracked
Linda down and attacked her.
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Craig Pittman: He actually
pulled her out of the car and tied her up to a tree
and beat and raped her
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and, uh, made it clear
that he was in charge, and he was her master. Then he could do what
he wanted to with her.
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And that was the point
at which she knew that she had to get away from him for good.
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[dramatic music] narrator: In 1987, after
the brutal assault on Linda, Randall was sentenced to up to
seven years for her kidnap and
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sexual battery. Whilst he was locked
away, Linda was able to finally divorce him.
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Craig Pittman: He
served five years in prison in Massachusetts. When he got out, he was
supposed to be on probation.
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But he failed to report
to his probation officer and, instead, fled the state. Geoffrey Wansell:
He goes to Florida.
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A new life, a new start. Now, in Florida,
at that point in 1992, there had been
a nasty hurricane.
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And a lot of rebuilding
was going to be necessary. So he moved to Tampa Bay
Area to reconstruct houses.
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[intriguing music] narrator: Two years into his
new life in Dunedin, Florida, 39-year-old Randall
moved on from Linda and
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started roaming
the streets of Clearwater in the Tampa Bay Area. It was on one of these
streets that he met
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36-year-old Terry Jo Howard. ♪ ♪ Terry Jo Howard: I
ran away from home when I was 14 years old.
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I ended up with
some Italians out of New York in Cali, Colombia. And we were bringing drugs in.
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Then I became
addicted to the drugs. And things got
progressively worse, resulting in me ending
up on the street
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getting money from men. [somber music] It's something I'm
deeply ashamed of. But men were
always pursuing me.
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Everything about the life,
making money, even before I became a prostitute. Making-- making
money was all about
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drugs, especially
here in South Florida. narrator: One evening
in February 1994,
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Terry Jo crossed paths with
39-year-old James Randall. Terry Jo Howard: I was
walking down the street.
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And he turned the corner and
was like, come on, hurry up. We take off. And he wants to pay me
extra to come to his house
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in Dunedin, which is
about 20 miles away. Once the deed was
done, he takes me back.
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The whole way back, all I
talked about was getting clean, how sick I was of this life.
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A couple of days
later, Jimmy came back. He said, are you serious
about getting clean?
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I said, yeah, I am. I grabbed a couple
of clothes, put them in a bag, and off we went
to Dunedin, Florida.
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I squirmed around on his
very uncomfortable couch for three or four days. And then, I got up, and I
started feeling better.
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He was kind to me, and he
gave me room and space to-- to grow and to experiment
with who I wanted to be
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and who I was inside. narrator: It didn't
take long for the couple to make it official.
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After a month
of dating, Terry Jo brought Randall
to meet the family, including her sister, a serving
police officer, Tamara Garcia.
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[intriguing music] Tamara Garcia: She had told
mom that she had met somebody and wanted to come
introduce him to us.
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It was the first
time she had ever brought somebody to meet us. ♪ ♪ I found Jimmy to be
articulate, intelligent,
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interesting, and interested. I was very
surprised, but happy. I was happy that she
had found somebody.
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narrator: And it wasn't just
Terry Jo's mother and sister who were fond of Randall.
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Tamara Garcia:
My mom had a pug. Her name was Princess
Penny Pickles. When my mother got sick
and moved in with us,
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Terry and Jimmy took Penny. Terry Jo Howard:
Jimmy loved the dog, and the dog loved Jimmy.
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We spoiled that dog. narrator: Randall, Terry
Jo, and their beloved pug, Princess Penny Pickles,
moved to an apartment
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just Northeast
of Clearwater in 1994. Craig Pittman: Clearwater was
sort of an old Florida sailing
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town, but had been lately
rocked by a lot of growth as a result of suburban sprawl.
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Crack cocaine was big. There were a lot of addicts
who were willing to do anything
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to get their hands on the drug,
including debasing themselves through prostitution.
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[tense music] narrator: In July 1994,
Pinellas County Police were called to the discovery
of a body on a vacant lot
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in downtown Clearwater. Fingerprint records
reveal the body to be that
of 35-year-old waitress
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and dancer La Donna Stella. Geoffrey Wansell:
La Donna Stella was working as a sex worker,
partly to sustain a drug habit.
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She liked disco dancing. She was a mother of three. ♪ ♪ The police were
not in any doubt
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that she died from
strangulation. Craig Pittman:
Police were trying to work the case as just
a regular murder,
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but they couldn't even
find what had become of her clothes and her purse. And eventually, it
faded from view as they
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went on to other cases. [suspenseful music] narrator: On October 20, 1995,
a year after the death of La
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Donna Stella, Pinellas
County Police found the body of 42-year-old Wendy Evans.
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Craig Pittman:
She was last seen hitchhiking along North
Fort Harrison Avenue in downtown Clearwater.
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She had had some drug problems. She was trying to get clean. Geoffrey Wansell:
The body had been dumped
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like garbage by the roadside. She'd been strangled
and beaten to death. narrator: In addition
to the La Donna Stella case,
00:18:15
Pinellas County
Police also started investigating Wendy's murder. And it would be just weeks
before a third body was
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discovered in the same county. Geoffrey Wansell: Peggy
Darnell was a woman in her 40s.
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She was working
as a sex worker. She, too, suffered
at the hands of someone who seemed to be targeting
women in the Tampa Bay Area.
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narrator: Peggy was last
seen on the same street as La Donna Stella
and Wendy Evans.
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She was also a drug user, and
her body was found in almost identical circumstances.
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Craig Pittman:
Her body had been lying in this industrial
area for so long that some decomposition
had occurred.
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So it was difficult to tell
much about how she had died. She had apparently been
beaten and strangled.
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But it was difficult
to tell much of anything else about her. [somber music] narrator: Determining
when Peggy died
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required an entomologist. Judging by the development
of insect activity, they concluded she was
killed between October 30 and
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November 4, 1995. Given the similarities
between the three murders, sex workers
in the Clearwater area
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were concerned that
they might be next. Craig Pittman: After
Peggy's body turned up,
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there was a shock that ran
through the rest of the sex workers, who were
usually working
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the North Fort
Harrison Avenue area, and they actually
stopped working. They abandoned that strip
of pavement out of fear
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because they figured, you know,
this is a bad sign for anybody. [tense music] narrator: Detectives were
becoming increasingly concerned
00:20:01
that an active serial
killer was stalking the streets of Clearwater. Investigators had little
evidence to work with,
00:20:09
but they knew that somehow
they needed to stop the killer before he struck again.
00:20:16
[tense sting] ♪ ♪ [tense music] narrator: By January 1996,
Pinellas County Police
00:20:29
were inundated with information
about three murdered women whose bodies
had been found in and
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around Clearwater in Florida. ♪ ♪ News of the murders
quickly spread throughout
00:20:43
the community, reaching the
newly engaged Terry Jo Howard and her partner,
41-year-old, construction
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worker James Randall. [emotional music] Terry Jo Howard: It
was in the newspaper.
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Jimmy would read the articles
to me every time one came out, and I'm like, Jimmy,
I feel sorry for them.
00:21:05
They're still somebody's child. And there's still
possibility that they could get clean and do great things.
00:21:12
narrator: On January
1996, three weeks after Peggy Darnell's
body was uncovered,
00:21:20
Pinellas County Police received
some more heartbreaking news, the body of a fourth
woman had been found.
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Craig Pittman:
Her nude body was found behind a store
in Palm Harbor, which is well north of Clearwater.
00:21:35
But she had died in a similar
fashion to the previous victim. She was strangled to death.
00:21:42
narrator: The woman
was identified as 27-year-old Cynthia Pugh. Geoffrey Wansell: Cynthia Pugh
was another sex worker, but
00:21:52
slightly different from the
other sex workers in that, yes, she was funding
a drug habit, but she
00:21:59
was living with her parents. When Cynthia disappeared, the
parents reported that night,
00:22:08
which was very significant. narrator: Police knew Cynthia
from previous encounters
00:22:14
and were swiftly
able to link her body to the missing persons report. There were striking
similarities in the lifestyles
00:22:23
and deposition sites
of Cynthia Pugh, La Donna Stella, Wendy
Evans, and Peggy Darnell.
00:22:30
[suspenseful music] Geoffrey Wansell: They
were all white women. All four had been beaten
and strangled, all
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within a very small radius. They were all
on the fringes of society. narrator: Pinellas
County Police
00:22:46
suspected they were
no longer working on four separate homicides,
but rather dealing
00:22:52
with an active serial killer. The cases were combined
into one investigation. - Serial killers very often
target sex workers because they
00:23:05
can get easy access to them. It's really, really
difficult to abduct a woman from the street without
drawing attention to yourself.
00:23:12
The safest, safest
person to kill is going to be
a sex worker who's going to go to an isolated
area with you on their own,
00:23:22
with you. narrator: The case
finally started to gain traction
when investigators
00:23:30
got a crucial lead
on some physical evidence they'd found at the crime scene
of Wendy Evans back in October.
00:23:39
Craig Pittman: There were pink
carpet fibers and dog hair, but there had been
a rain, and the rain
00:23:45
turned the area into mud. And in the mud they
found a tire track. narrator: It would
be months later
00:23:52
before police were able
to identify the unique imprint on the tire track. Geoffrey Wansell:
The very distinctive set
00:23:59
of tire tracks
belonging to a very particular kind of tire, which
had only recently been on sale.
00:24:06
narrator: Investigators
discovered that only one set
of these specific tires had been sold
in the Pinellas County area.
00:24:15
Craig Pittman: They
were able to track down the owner of the vehicle,
the one vehicle in the area who
00:24:21
had gotten that set
of tires on them, and that turned out
to be Terry Jo Howard.
00:24:28
narrator: Although this
was a significant lead, police still needed
concrete evidence
00:24:34
that it was the tires
on Terry Jo's truck that made the prints
at Wendy Evans' crime scene.
00:24:41
[intriguing music] On May 6, 1996,
detectives set up a sting. They asked the manager of the
tire dealer to call Terry Jo
00:24:51
and claim there was something
wrong with her tires. Terry Jo Howard: The manager
calls me and says,
00:24:56
I sold you recalls. If I don't get those tires
back in here tomorrow, I'm going to lose my job.
00:25:03
I said, oh, no, buddy,
I'll be in there. Craig Pittman: When she
brought the truck in,
00:25:07
they were able to grab
the tires off the truck without her knowing
it and match them to the tire print that was
left where the body was found.
00:25:16
narrator: With a possible
link between Terry Jo and the murder
victim, Wendy Evans,
00:25:22
detectives began
conducting surveillance at her apartment
to keep a better eye on their new suspect.
00:25:29
Craig Pittman: As they set
up surveillance on Terry Jo, they discovered that she was
actually living with a man.
00:25:35
And the man was the one
driving the truck. And as they plumbed
his background, they discovered it
was Jimmy Randall.
00:25:44
narrator: With confirmation
that the truck had been in downtown Clearwater
when Wendy was murdered,
00:25:51
police started taking
witness statements from sex workers in the area. Craig Pittman: They took
a picture of the car
00:25:59
and showed that
to a number of sex workers. And they recognized
the car, and they remembered that
the guy driving it,
00:26:06
that there had
been a warning that had gone around
to the various women to say, don't mess with this guy.
00:26:12
He's a bad ride, meaning,
he will hurt you. And so they knew to avoid
that particular truck
00:26:18
when they saw it coming. narrator: As detectives began
plotting their next move,
00:26:23
they took a closer
look at some evidence they'd unearthed
at Cynthia Pugh's crime
00:26:28
scene back in January. Craig Pittman: There were
bits of forensic evidence present on her nude body.
00:26:35
There were pink carpet
fibers, dog hair, and a little tiny piece of paper. Although, at the time,
the evidence techs
00:26:43
didn't know quite
what to make of it. narrator: Investigators sent
the carpet fibers and the dog
00:26:49
hair to a specialist laboratory
at the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC
for examination.
00:26:56
Assigned to the case was
supervisory special agent Christopher Hopkins. Christopher Hopkins:
In this investigation,
00:27:05
Pinellas County submitted
evidence to the FBI laboratory. In the submission
were envelopes
00:27:15
that contained trace evidence,
hairs and some fibers. And then I examined them
with a comparison microscope.
00:27:23
narrator:
Christopher's findings gave the detectives
a very precise list of what to look out for.
00:27:30
Christopher Hopkins: After
examining the trace evidence, I reported
to the detectives that, when
00:27:37
you're standing
on a pink carpet and there's a little dog
running around barking at you,
00:27:42
you'll know you're
in the right spot. narrator: With this in mind,
the undercover detectives
00:27:48
patrolling outside Terry
Jo and Randall's home devised a rather unorthodox
method of obtaining
00:27:55
comparison samples. Craig Pittman: Two female
detectives went and knocked on the door and met
Terry Jo and told her,
00:28:05
we're running a dog
washing service. And in order to promote the
idea so that people will start
00:28:12
coming to us, we're giving
away a free dog grooming to people we meet today. narrator: When
the detectives walked in and
00:28:21
saw a small dog
and a pink carpet, Christopher's analysis
was ringing in their ears.
00:28:28
Terry Jo Howard: We want to
practice washing on your dog. Can we give your dog a bath?
00:28:32
I'm, like, oh, yeah, let's go. The one girl takes Penny
Pickles into the tub and starts washing her.
00:28:40
And the other girl, I think
she has a nervous tic. She's going like
this to the carpet.
00:28:46
And then I hear the dog yelp. So I'm, like, what's going on? Did you hurt my baby?
00:28:51
Oh, no, no.
We're all done. We're all done. And they got out
of there rather quickly.
00:28:57
Later on, I find out
those were two detectives. She was pulling
the hair out of the dog.
00:29:05
The other one with
the nervous tic, was gathering carpet fibers. narrator: The comparison
samples were
00:29:12
sent to the FBI laboratory. Christopher Hopkins:
The conclusion I can reach-- I can say, the dog hairs
are consistent with coming
00:29:21
from that dog. And those carpet fibers
are consistent with coming from that carpet.
00:29:27
That was exceptionally
important because those dog hairs
and those carpet fibers
00:29:33
are evidence of recent
contact, meaning those victims had recent
contact in his residence.
00:29:43
narrator: Armed
with this evidence, detectives were finally ready
to make their next move.
00:29:50
On June 27, 1996,
they questioned Randall at the home he
shared with Terry Jo while she was out
of town, but he denied
00:30:00
any knowledge of the murders. Craig Pittman: The reason
they didn't arrest him at that moment when they
met him at the apartment,
00:30:08
as they wanted the truck,
they wanted an excuse to take the truck
into custody and search
00:30:13
it for further evidence. narrator: Detectives
needed to arrest Randall while he was driving
the truck in order
00:30:20
to conduct a warrantless
search of the vehicle. As they got back to their car,
they saw Randall drive off.
00:30:28
They knew Randall already had
a warrant out for his arrest for violating his
parole in Massachusetts
00:30:34
back in 1992 after
serving five years for an attack on his ex-wife. Police had been waiting
for the opportune moment
00:30:42
to apprehend him. Now was that time. [siren wailing] Geoffrey Wansell:
Randall sees blue lights
00:30:49
in his rear view
mirror and decides that he's got to take off. narrator: Randall led police
on a reckless high-speed chase,
00:30:58
until a wrong turn
into a cul-de-sac brought it all
to a screeching halt. Craig Pittman: He bailed out of
the truck and took off on foot.
00:31:07
And that's what led
to the largest manhunt in Pinellas County history. narrator: After scaling
a 10-foot fence and running
00:31:16
into the cover
of woodland, potential serial killer James Randall
had evaded police capture.
00:31:23
Over 100 officers
were brought in to try and locate
the man suspected of killing four women, and they
needed to find him fast.
00:31:34
[dramatic sting] ♪ ♪ [suspenseful music] narrator: On June 27, 1996,
Pinellas County Police were
00:31:48
on the hunt for 41-year-old
construction worker James Randall. He'd gone on the run
after police suspected
00:31:54
he was responsible
for the murders of four women in Clearwater. Craig Pittman: He'd stolen
a pair of screens off windows
00:32:03
and fashioned a form
of camouflage out of that using the bushes around
him in order to stay
00:32:08
screened from all the airplanes
and helicopters that were flying around looking for him.
00:32:14
He would sleep during the day
and only move around at night. And that made him very elusive.
00:32:21
narrator: Whilst
officers were scouring acres of woodland
for their prime suspect,
00:32:26
detectives began
questioning Randall's fiancée, Terry Jo Howard. Terry Jo Howard: I'm
sitting at the table.
00:32:33
The detectives are
asking me questions. I'm literally
in physical shock. Everything sounds kind of like
it's outside of a bubble.
00:32:43
[intriguing music] I'm just lost
in my own thoughts, trying to answer the questions.
00:32:50
Scared to death. Never been scared
of anything, until then. The cops had moved
into my house.
00:32:57
They told me I couldn't use the
phone, couldn't go anywhere. ♪ ♪ There were helicopters
everywhere.
00:33:05
There were people on my roof. The media was out front. About the third
night, I think it
00:33:12
was just starting to get dark. I started to go to sleep. And all of a sudden, every
hair on my arm stood up.
00:33:23
I had goosebumps. I had a fear in the pit of my
stomach that was so intense. And I knew Jimmy was here.
00:33:33
♪ ♪ I told the cops
to turn the lights off. They told me I was
out of my mind. They said, you're just scared.
00:33:42
It's just catching up with you. I said, no, he's here. narrator: Terry Jo's
instincts were correct.
00:33:51
With nowhere left
to go and famished after four days
in the woods, Randall had returned to the apartment
in search of food.
00:34:01
Craig Pittman: He went
back to his apartment and knocked on the door. When a police
detective answered,
00:34:05
he actually hit her
in the head with a stick and tried to run again. Terry Jo Howard: All
of a sudden, everybody bolts.
00:34:12
Helicopters are flying, sirens
are going, and I'm there alone. They left me there.
00:34:22
Do they have him? Don't they have him? Craig Pittman: Police
dog grabbed him and brought him down.
00:34:28
And at that point,
he made his one and only statement to the cops. Geoffrey Wansell: Randall
simply says to the police,
00:34:35
oh, I've been bitten
by mosquitoes. I wish you'd caught me earlier. No remorse or sympathy
for anyone except himself.
00:34:44
narrator: Investigators were
certain they had their man. But before they could
interview Randall,
00:34:50
they needed to remand
him in custody. In order to keep
him off the streets, they initially charged Randall
for fleeing authorities,
00:34:59
aggravated battery on a law
enforcement officer, and the Massachusetts
probation violation warrant.
00:35:06
Randall's fiancee, Terry Jo,
was given further details about his alleged crimes.
00:35:14
Terry Jo Howard: Police
got me in the office. They're slapping pictures
of dead women in front of me
00:35:19
with bruised throats. Everything's rushing
through my head. And I'm just kind of backing
up, screaming, going,
00:35:27
no, no, no, no. It's true. It's true. And I knew then that the life
I was working so hard to build
00:35:44
had just come crumbling down. [somber music] narrator: Whilst
Randall was in custody
00:35:52
at the Pinellas County
jail, police encouraged Terry Jo to speak with him. Terry Jo Howard: They
wanted me to visit him,
00:36:00
to convince him I
was on his side. One day I asked him. I said, hey, Jimmy, I know
you killed those women.
00:36:10
I know you killed those women. So why didn't you kill me? Why not me, huh? Why not me?
00:36:18
And he looked at me. It looked like
he wanted to cry. But I could tell his little
mind was thinking and
00:36:24
manipulating the whole time. The only way to communicate
with somebody on the other pod
00:36:30
is to write backwards
on the glass so that they could read it. Jimmy then wrote backwards
on the glass, "I hurt others
00:36:39
so I would not hurt you." [ominous music] He barely got the last out
and I was up and cussing.
00:36:46
And you are never going
to blame this on me. You did not do
this because of me. narrator: Randall denied any
involvement in the murders
00:36:57
to detectives. On September 17, 1996, nearly
80 days after the arrest, police had enough
evidence to indict
00:37:07
42-year-old Randall
for the murders of Wendy Evans and Cynthia Pugh. Despite original suspicions,
there was insufficient evidence
00:37:17
to charge him with the murders
of La Donna Stella and Peggy Darnell. La Donna and Peggy's
murders remain unsolved.
00:37:26
No other suspects
have ever been named in relation to their deaths. Craig Pittman: They charged
him with not four murders.
00:37:35
They charged him with just two. And I believe he
said something like. Is that all you're
charging me with?
00:37:41
And that was the last
thing he said to the cops. narrator: With a trial
on the horizon,
00:37:46
the search
for evidence continued. And the forensic team
made a breakthrough. They'd been trying to identify
the mysterious piece of paper
00:37:55
that was found
at the deposition site of Cynthia Pugh, who was
murdered back in January 1996.
00:38:04
Craig Pittman: They were
puzzled about what it was. It was a little fleck
of cigarette paper.
00:38:08
And Terry Jo was a smoker. [intriguing music] Eventually, detectives were
able to collect a DNA sample
00:38:15
from Terry Jo Howard
and matched it to the saliva in the piece of paper. narrator: With one
suspect in custody,
00:38:23
detectives needed
to determine if Terry Jo was also involved in the murders. Tamara Garcia: After
Jimmy was arrested,
00:38:32
Terry was being processed. Meaning, they had
to take her DNA. So they needed to get
samples of her pubic hair,
00:38:40
of her saliva, of her facial
hair, of her hair of her head, of her fingernails. And they needed that to rule
out the fact that she
00:38:50
was involved in any way. narrator: Thankfully, Tamara
was also a serving police
00:38:56
officer, and her
meticulous detective skills meant Terry Jo was
able to be eliminated
00:39:03
from the police inquiries. Terry Jo Howard: Thank God
my sister kept records. Being a police officer, she's
used to writing everything that
00:39:11
happens to her down every day. Well, that came in handy
because, every time I was out
00:39:17
of town was when they found
another murdered body. narrator: And it wasn't
just Terry Jo's DNA
00:39:25
they found on the paper
from the cigarette butt. Terry Jo Howard: One detective
looks at me and says,
00:39:32
we found your DNA
on a cigarette butt, but we found something
else, and it's not human.
00:39:37
Tamara Garcia:
When Terry smoked, Princess Penny Pickles would
get her cigarette butts
00:39:43
and chew on them. Craig Pittman: That was
the one piece of evidence absolutely proving
that Cynthia had
00:39:51
been in Randall's apartment. [somber music] narrator: Five months later,
in February 1997, Randall
00:40:00
was put on trial at the
Pinellas County Courthouse for the murders of Wendy
Evans and Cynthia Pugh.
00:40:08
As Randall continued
to plead his innocence, prosecutors were
keen to establish
00:40:13
the extent of Randall's
violence in past relationships. Amongst those to testify
were his ex-wife Linda
00:40:21
and now ex-fiancée, Terry Jo. Terry Jo Howard:
The day I testified was the day I got free of any
feelings, of any emotions,
00:40:34
of any guilt. narrator: Terry Jo
recounted a past incident to the court which took
place in October 1995,
00:40:43
the same month Wendy
Evans was murdered. Terry Jo Howard:
One day, at work, my boss comes up behind
me and starts grinding me.
00:40:56
I told Jimmy what happened. And he picked me
up by the throat and pinned me against the wall
and started screaming at me.
00:41:05
Don't you ever, ever, ever let
anybody take advantage of you like that again. [ominous music]
00:41:13
That's all I remember. When I woke up, he was
having sex with what I think he thought was my dead body.
00:41:24
When I opened my eyes,
Jimmy was shocked. narrator: When Randall's
ex-wife, Linda, testified and
00:41:35
recalled strikingly similar
scenarios from her relationship with him, it became
clear to the jury
00:41:42
that Randall had
a deep-rooted desire for sexual strangulation. Jane Monckton-Smith:
Manual strangulation
00:41:50
was the part of the assault
that he seemed to be most interested in. It was the one that gave
him the most pleasure.
00:41:57
He would get a high from that,
from watching somebody struggle to breathe, watch
them face to face,
00:42:04
watch the life go out of them. It's a very, very personal
thing to strangle somebody.
00:42:12
narrator: FBI agent Christopher
Hopkins also testified about his findings in court.
00:42:19
Christopher Hopkins: I
testified to the work that I'd done
and the reports that I
00:42:23
had written about
matching the dog hairs recovered from
the victims, matching the known dog hair samples
collected from his dog.
00:42:34
Without the trace
evidence, it would have been very difficult to tie
the victims into that residence
00:42:44
and to the defendant. Craig Pittman:
In a way, you argue that Princess Penny
Pickles is the one
00:42:51
who nailed Jimmy Randall. [ominous music] ♪ ♪ narrator: On March 3, 1997, the
jury found 42-year-old James
00:43:03
Randall guilty on two
counts of first-degree murder for the killings of
Wendy Evans and Cynthia Pugh.
00:43:11
On April 4, he was back
in court to be sentenced. Craig Pittman: Judge
Shaffer, an expert
00:43:17
on the death penalty-- her
position was, this is the law. I've sworn to carry
out the law.
00:43:22
Therefore, if that's what's
called for in this case, I'm going to sentence
this guy to die.
00:43:27
narrator: However, Randall
appealed this decision, and in April 2000, the Florida
Supreme Court overturned
00:43:34
his original convictions. The defense claimed that,
due to his established fetish
00:43:40
for strangling
women during sex, there was not enough
evidence that he intended to kill his victims.
00:43:48
Randall's convictions
were reduced to two counts
of second-degree murder and a life sentence
behind bars.
00:43:57
The decision wasn't welcomed
by those who knew him best. Tamara Garcia: It takes
incredible credible strength
00:44:05
to choke somebody to the point
where they pass out, let alone to kill them. He intentionally kept his
upper body super strong to be
00:44:16
able to do these things. This is not accidental. I do believe this
was premeditated.
00:44:26
Terry Jo Howard: I came
home from work that day. And my tape recorder
was full of messages
00:44:32
from the state attorney's
office, from detectives. They said Jimmy's
coming off of death row.
00:44:40
What does that mean? Does that mean he's going
to be in a regular prison where he can escape?
00:44:47
He did not kill those
women by accident. You might kill one in that
way by accident but not two.
00:44:57
I felt like Jimmy deserved
the death penalty. narrator: It took
the ingenious genius actions
00:45:03
of Pinellas County
detectives to put an end to Randall's reign
of terror across Clearwater.
00:45:10
He was a dangerous man
who would stop at nothing to fulfill his sexual
yearning for strangulation,
00:45:17
claiming the lives of at least
two innocent women. This undoubtedly makes James
Randall one of the world's
00:45:25
most evil killers. [theme music] ♪ ♪