00:00:03
[music playing] NARRATOR: In December
1990, 33-year-old sex worker Mary Pratt was discovered
murdered in Dallas, Texas.
00:00:13
Homicide was rife in
the city at the time. But there was one thing
about Mary's murder
00:00:18
that stood out from the rest. The eyes had been
removed, and not just removed, not
just gouged out
00:00:26
in like, some violent attack. The eyes had been
surgically removed. NARRATOR: Two more
victims followed.
00:00:33
Both Susan Peterson and
Shirley Williams also had their eyeballs removed. It was becoming more and
more likely that a man was
00:00:42
hunting sex workers,
killing them and eerily collecting their eyes. After Shirley
Williams was killed,
00:00:49
Dallas knew that they had a
serial killer on their hands. NARRATOR: Evidence
would lead detectives
00:00:54
to the door of
57-year-old career criminal Charles Albright, a
man with a talent for taxidermy.
00:01:03
So he had those skills. And in fact, the
medical examiner said he's getting better
every time he does.
00:01:09
NARRATOR: Charles
Albright had been exposed as one of the
world's most evil killers.
00:01:14
[dramatic music] In December 1990, the
body of a sex worker was found mutilated on
the streets of Dallas.
00:01:43
Not only had her
eyes been removed, they were never found,
leaving investigators
00:01:49
to wonder if the killer had
kept them as a sadistic trophy. The Eyeball Killer was
only just getting started.
00:01:56
And over the next three
months, two more victims were found in similar circumstances.
00:02:03
Women from the
sex-working community feared for their
lives, wondering if they might be next.
00:02:10
Police officer John Matthews
worked the beat that included Dallas's red light district.
00:02:16
JOHN MATTHEWS: One of the
things in law enforcement is, you get to know
everyone on your beat--
00:02:21
the good people
and the criminals. And we figured we probably
had a serial killer,
00:02:27
and if we didn't catch him, more
bodies were going to turn up. It changed the entire
mood on the street.
00:02:34
The girls now became terrified. They now knew that
they were the prey, that a hunter was out
there looking for them,
00:02:45
wanting to kill them. And they were terrified at
not only being murdered, but it losing their eyes.
00:02:55
NARRATOR: Prosecutor Toby
Shook had the difficult task of trying to convict Albright.
00:03:02
Albright is an
intriguing individual. But when you think about
his crime it's, you know,
00:03:07
very frightening that someone
could, in a cold-blooded way, pick out their victims
up, murder them,
00:03:12
and then mutilate the
bodies in that way. JOHN MATTHEWS: I'm in my 38th
year of law enforcement now.
00:03:18
And I've seen just about
everything that you can see. But that case, the-- how terrible it was,
how horrific it was,
00:03:28
how high profile it
was, really is probably, the biggest case of my
career, and one that I'm
00:03:35
never, ever going to forget. NARRATOR: This killer's story
begins in Amarillo, Texas.
00:03:42
Charles Albright was born
on the 10th of August 1933, and was almost immediately
given up for adoption
00:03:50
by his birth parents. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Albright was adopted when he was just a few weeks old.
00:03:56
And this was during the
1930s, so the period of the Great Depression. So him being adopted
by a relatively nice,
00:04:04
middle-class family
was something that would have been seen
as quite fortunate for him.
00:04:09
He's now given an opportunity
in life that he perhaps, wouldn't have had otherwise.
00:04:15
GEOFFREY WANSELL: The
couple that adopted him were Dell and Fred Albright. No children of their own.
00:04:23
We don't know his birth
mother's name, indeed, we know very little about her. But what we do know is that
Dell was an exceptionally
00:04:35
overprotective mother. She spoiled, fussed over,
mollycoddled her adopted son from a very, very early age.
00:04:49
NARRATOR: Growing
up in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Texas,
Charles excelled at school.
00:04:55
And his mother soon found an
interesting hobby for her son. TOBY SHOOK: So one of the
things she got him involved
00:05:02
in at an early
age was taxidermy, and had him enter some courses. And he learned how to
take small animals,
00:05:12
like birds and
squirrels and raccoons, and actually mount them. BRANDON BIRMINGHAM: They would
go to the taxidermy store
00:05:20
there in Oak Cliff. And the one thing
that Albright's mother never bought for him though were
these beautiful marble eyes.
00:05:27
They were just too expensive. So if you were to go to
Charlie Albright's house when he was growing
up, you would
00:05:33
see different animals that
he had mounted and stuffed. But instead of marble eyes, he
would have these Black buttons
00:05:38
sewn on them. NARRATOR: During
his teenage years, Albright was a popular
classmate who would often
00:05:45
play tricks on his teachers. But there was a darker
side to some of his antics. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
As a youngster,
00:05:54
Albright was a bit mischievous. He was a prankster at school. So he was always
pushing the boundaries.
00:06:00
But as he gets older,
he starts to engage in criminal behavior--
there's burglaries,
00:06:05
there's thefts,
that kind of thing. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
At the age of 17, he had his first real
brush with the law.
00:06:13
It was a series of robberies. He was sentenced to two years
in jail, but only served one.
00:06:20
But if anything, that encouraged
him rather than discouraged him from petty crime.
00:06:27
NARRATOR: After his
release in 1952, the 18-year-old
enrolled at Arkansas State Teacher's College.
00:06:35
Albright remained a
prankster, however, and some of his practical jokes
took a more sinister turn.
00:06:43
TOBY SHOOK: So when he-- he was at school in
college in Arkansas, his roommate was dating
a beautiful girl.
00:06:51
And she broke up with him. And apparently, she
had very pretty eyes. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Now, this
friend gets the new girlfriend,
00:07:00
and what Albright does next
is particularly strange. He cuts out the eyes from the
picture of the old girlfriend
00:07:07
and puts them on the picture
of the new girlfriend. So this is a very specific, very
detailed thing for him to do.
00:07:14
And it really is quite chilling. NARRATOR: By 1969, Albright had
been married, had a daughter,
00:07:24
but was separated from his wife. He'd dropped out of college
after getting caught stealing.
00:07:31
But that didn't
stop the 36-year-old from forging a
diploma and finding a job as a biology teacher in
the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
00:07:41
GEOFFREY WANSELL: That
is Albright all over. I don't have to bother
to actually do it.
00:07:46
I don't have to
actually take the exams. I don't have to graduate. No, I'm going to fake
it because I can,
00:07:51
because I can get away with it. And indeed he does. And he gets a job. NARRATOR: After being
found to be a fraud,
00:07:59
Albright lost his
teaching role and was given a year's probation. He bounced around
from job to job,
00:08:06
but crime was still his
major source of income. After spending six months
in prison for theft in 1980,
00:08:15
his personal life would
change dramatically. GEOFFREY WANSELL: In
1981, his mother, Dell,
00:08:21
dies suddenly of cancer,
and everything changes. She was cooking supper and
fell unconscious and died.
00:08:37
It was, in many ways, probably
the most traumatic moment in Charles Albright's life.
00:08:44
If there was a watershed in
Albright's story, that was it-- Dell's sudden death.
00:08:51
NARRATOR: Albright had lost
the one constant in his life. He moved back into the
family home with his father,
00:08:59
and appeared to be a pillar
of the Oak Cliff community. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He went--
attended church regularly,
00:09:05
and he was incredibly
popular in the neighborhood. The neighbors would ask
him to babysit for them.
00:09:10
He was everybody's best friend. I think they used to call
him "good old Charlie."
00:09:16
He was that reliable. You would have described
him as the perfect neighbor if you'd happen to be
living next door to him.
00:09:23
NARRATOR: But
Charles Albright was far from the ideal neighbor. By 1985, an historic
crime, which
00:09:31
didn't fit in with his
usual type of offenses, finally caught up with the
51-year-old churchgoer.
00:09:39
ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
The first sex crime that we know of occurred
in February 1981,
00:09:44
where Albright sexually
assaulted a nine-year-old girl. And this was a girl
who was known to him.
00:09:50
He had gotten to know this
girl through her family through the church. And they trusted him.
00:09:55
The whole community
trusted him because he'd done such a convincing
job of playing
00:10:00
this role as the regular guy. NARRATOR: In March 1985, four
years after the shocking crime,
00:10:07
Albright pleaded
guilty to molesting the nine-year-old girl. Astonishingly, he was given just
10 years probation and ordered
00:10:16
to attend counseling. He served no time behind bars. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So this is
a relatively lenient sentence.
00:10:24
And I think this sends
a message to him. It says that violence
against girls and women
00:10:29
is something that's not
taken particularly seriously. You can do this thing. You can get caught.
00:10:35
You can plead guilty, and
you can get away with it. NARRATOR: By October 1990,
57-year-old Charles Albright
00:10:44
was living in the
home he'd inherited from his adopted parents in El
Dorado Avenue in Dallas, Texas.
00:10:55
He'd found work delivering
newspapers for the "Dallas Times-Herald," which
would have been full
00:11:01
of stories about the
ever-increasing local crime rate. JOHN MATTHEWS: Early '90s,
the late '80s in Dallas
00:11:08
was a very violent period. The crack cocaine
epidemic was going on. We had gang warfare
throughout the city.
00:11:16
Every day, we had car
thefts, burglaries. We had armed robberies
on the beat constantly.
00:11:23
And we had murder. NARRATOR: One of
those murders occurred on the 13th of December 1990,
when 33-year-old sex worker
00:11:33
Mary Pratt was found dead. TOBY SHOOK: Mary Pratt's body
was found in the early morning
00:11:40
down in the Cotton Valley area. She was just displayed on
her back with her arms out,
00:11:46
her shirt pulled up,
and no other clothes on, and had been shot in the head. It didn't appear that the
murder had happened there.
00:11:55
There was no struggle. There was no blood. It looked like the
body had been dumped.
00:11:59
GEOFFREY WANSELL:
Mary Lou Pratt was a very likeable young woman. In fact, I think the
day she was killed
00:12:06
she was returning home to go
to a funeral with her parents. She was well liked. NARRATOR: Mary had been shot
with a 44-caliber revolver.
00:12:13
But when her body was found,
there was seemingly nothing remarkable about her murder.
00:12:19
There were over 400
homicides in Dallas in 1990. And beat cop John Matthews
had seen it all before.
00:12:27
JOHN MATTHEWS: Mary Pratt
worked out of the Star Motel. She worked the Jefferson
Boulevard area.
00:12:33
We had seen her on
multiple occasions. She was quiet. She was shy. She got into drugs at a
young age during high school,
00:12:41
and then turned to prostitution,
like many of the girls did, to pay for her drug habit.
00:12:53
Prostitutes being
murdered is not uncommon. Prostitutes disappearing
is not uncommon.
00:12:59
They have a very
vagrant lifestyle. And so one disappearing,
or one being found dead,
00:13:06
really wasn't a very
uncommon occurrence. It wasn't unusual at all. NARRATOR: But there was one
thing considerably different
00:13:15
about the murder of Mary Pratt. TOBY SHOOK: The medical examiner
began her autopsy examination.
00:13:21
JOHN MATTHEWS: And one of
the things you have to do is open the eyes to check them.
00:13:25
And it was at that time that
the diener was working on her, which is the assistant
to the medical examiner,
00:13:32
that she noticed
something very odd and called the medical
examiner over and said,
00:13:38
she doesn't have any eyes. And the medical examiner
said, no, no, no. She probably does.
00:13:45
But many times when there's
blunt trauma to the head, the eyes fall back and you
kind of just don't see them.
00:13:51
But when they opened
up the sockets and did a further
examination, they found something that
absolutely horrified them,
00:13:59
something they had
never, ever seen before, that the eyes had been removed. And not just removed,
not just gouged out
00:14:08
in like, some violent
attack, that the eyes had been surgically removed. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
So this would have
00:14:18
taken quite a period
of time to do, and skill and expertise to do. But also, somebody who does
this, isn't disgusted at having
00:14:27
to deal with a
corpse, is perfectly OK in terms of spending
time with that corpse
00:14:32
and mutilating it. So this shows somebody that
really is incredibly cold, incredibly detached,
and completely
00:14:38
lacks empathy for the victim. NARRATOR: Although the
murder of Mary Pratt stood out from many others,
the police had no leads.
00:14:47
JOHN MATTHEWS:
After Mary's murder, you really didn't know
who the killer was. We had very little
details, very little clues.
00:14:54
And again, the biggest
thing that struck everybody were the eyes being removed. Who could have the
knowledge to do that?
00:15:03
NARRATOR: Around the same
time as Mary's murder, another sex worker
named Veronica
00:15:09
was attacked in Dallas. The 26-year-old lived to
tell her story to John. JOHN MATTHEWS: She was known
as Flaco on the street,
00:15:18
which is "skinny" in Spanish. And she was a very, very
skinny, small, Hispanic female.
00:15:25
And Veronica came
running up to me and started just, very
animated and very excited
00:15:31
telling me about this
horrific night of hers and this horrific experience. And she told us--
00:15:38
and she was covered
with mud, and her hair was dirty and muddy-- and she said that
someone attacked
00:15:44
her, that someone tried to kill
her, that she barely got away. TOBY SHOOK: And she related this
strange tale of being picked up
00:15:51
by this white guy and taking-- tied up and taken to
this location down south. And what she described was
the Cotton Valley area.
00:16:00
That he drugged her, had
her over his shoulder. JOHN MATTHEWS: She
wasn't sure where it was.
00:16:05
But there were lots of open
fields and lots of trees and that her attacker
had chased her,
00:16:11
said he was gonna kill her,
had fired a gun into the air. But it was dark. It was in the
middle of the night.
00:16:17
She was absolutely terrified. She thought she was
going to die that night. NARRATOR: Veronica
told John that she
00:16:24
was rescued by one
of her regulars, a man named Axton Schindler. By chance, a few days
later, John was on patrol
00:16:33
and happened to pull Axton over. Veronica was with him. JOHN MATTHEWS: I
got his driver's
00:16:39
license, got him
out of the truck, found out who he was, ID'd him. But Veronica again, kept
telling this detail.
00:16:45
And she said, he's the
one that helped me escape, and that he's the one
that brought me back here.
00:16:53
And when we questioned
him about it, he wouldn't give us any details. He wouldn't give
us any information.
00:16:58
I don't know what
she's talking about. But I believed her story and
that over the next week's
00:17:05
and months, she would repeat
that story over and over again with the same precise details.
00:17:14
NARRATOR: Schindler's driving
license listed his address as El Dorado Avenue. But he was no
longer living there.
00:17:21
He was, in fact, renting
a different property from the home owner,
Charles Albright.
00:17:27
Albright was living
in the house on El Dorado Avenue, with his
long-term girlfriend, Dixie.
00:17:34
And behind the
scenes, he appeared to be the perfect partner. TOBY SHOOK: She was a very
sweet lady, but very naive.
00:17:41
People that knew her-- she
thought Charlie was nice, and he would drop her off
to work in the mornings
00:17:47
and pick her up at night. And then, she just
thought he stayed at home. While he was this loving,
sweet man to her that
00:17:55
gave her little gifts
and surprised her at work with little acts of kindness,
while she was working
00:18:01
or asleep, he was
out doing something he shouldn't have been doing. NARRATOR: Albright's job
of delivering newspapers
00:18:07
in the early hours of
the morning allowed him to partake in his latest hobby. By this point, Albright
is indulging his appetite
00:18:16
for sex workers in Dallas,
while at the same time professing his delight
in the company of Dixie.
00:18:26
On the surface, a man
you can absolutely trust, and yet in reality,
you can't trust at all.
00:18:37
NARRATOR: In February 1991,
another sex worker was found dead on the streets of Dallas.
00:18:44
27-year-old Susan Peterson
had been shot three times with a 32-caliber gun
and left on the same road
00:18:52
where Mary Pratt's body had been
discovered two months earlier. JOHN MATTHEWS: She
again, disappeared
00:18:59
just like Mary had disappeared. And like Mary, Susan was
found about 20 minutes away
00:19:05
at the very Southern
edge of Dallas. She, too, was found by
a citizen in the street.
00:19:11
She was also posed,
her arms raised above her head, left for
anyone passing by to see her.
00:19:19
NARRATOR: And there
was another chilling similarity between
the murders of Susan
00:19:23
Peterson and Mary Pratt. BRANDON BIRMINGHAM:
Once the body was taken to the medical
examiner's office,
00:19:29
they did their autopsy
again, starting with the external examination. And then they looked
again, at the eyes,
00:19:34
as they do in all autopsies. And they noticed this
was the second time the eyes had been removed
from this victim as well.
00:19:43
JOHN MATTHEWS: Whoever
the killer was not only knew what they were doing and
how to remove the eyes post
00:19:49
mortem, but then they
took them with them, possibly as souvenirs. So there were all
kinds of theories.
00:19:57
Was it a doctor? Was it somebody with
a medical background that would have the knowledge
to not only kill the prostitute,
00:20:05
but to surgically
remove her eyes and then take them as a prize? NARRATOR: Despite the eerie
connection between the two
00:20:12
murders, homicide detectives
were still no nearer to finding Mary and Susan's killer.
00:20:19
TOBY SHOOK: The
police had no leads. You know, they collected
the physical evidence,
00:20:22
but no one had seen these
two victims with anybody at the time, which is not
unusual for a prostitute.
00:20:29
They-- they walk the streets and
have these quick interactions and get in cars
with men, usually.
00:20:34
But they had no
leads to deal with. After they found Susan Peterson,
since they had a second victim,
00:20:41
start talking and warning
the prostitutes about, hey, you need to be careful. There's someone out
there after you.
00:20:49
NARRATOR: As fear
amongst the sex workers on the streets of
Dallas grew, the police
00:20:54
were faced with the realization
that they were likely dealing with a serial killer.
00:21:00
JOHN MATTHEWS: Once Susan
was discovered murdered, the entire
investigation changed.
00:21:06
This wasn't a one-off
prostitute that was killed maybe by
an irate trick, right,
00:21:12
or somebody that just got mad. All of a sudden, we
knew two women that worked the same area of
North Oak Cliff on my beat
00:21:21
were picked up, were taken
to a remote location. They were shot. They were killed.
00:21:28
They were posed on the street. And their eyes were
surgically removed. It tied the two cases together.
00:21:35
We had somebody that was now
working the streets, a hunter that was hunting
down these women,
00:21:43
killing them, and then torturing
them and removing their eyes. NARRATOR: An active
serial killer
00:21:51
was on the loose and prowling
the red light district of Dallas. But investigators were no
nearer to catching him.
00:21:59
Any woman working the
streets could be next. Dallas police officer John
Matthews was working the beat,
00:22:07
trying to crack the case before
another woman was killed. JOHN MATTHEWS: I had
a little notebook
00:22:14
that I carried with me. And I made meticulous notes,
just writing down any piece
00:22:19
of information that I could. And many times, I
didn't even know if it was pertinent at the time.
00:22:24
I was trying to figure out who
could the killer be, someone that knew the area extremely
well, that had access
00:22:31
to the backstreets
and the side alleys, that could maneuver in
and out of the prostitutes
00:22:38
and the pimps. That had to be someone that
really knew the streets well, someone that lived there,
someone that grew up there,
00:22:45
someone that worked in the area. And all of this information was
going into our-- a notebook.
00:22:52
BRANDON BIRMINGHAM: Every
location of every murder will tell you something
about who did it.
00:22:56
It's most likely
that a person who was going to kill
and dispose of a body is going to do that in an area
that they're familiar with.
00:23:04
That's their comfort zone. It's very unlikely
that a person is going to travel from a great distance
away to a place they're totally
00:23:12
unfamiliar with in order
to dispose of a body, because there's a great chance
that they might get caught.
00:23:17
And if you're trying to
get away with murder, the quickest way to go to
prison for a really long time
00:23:22
is to get caught with the body. NARRATOR: The killer
soon struck again. On the 19th of March 1991, the
body of 37-year-old Shirley
00:23:34
Williams was found on a
residential street in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas. Like Mary and Susan,
Shirley had been shot,
00:23:43
and her eyes had been removed. JOHN MATTHEWS: The
attack on Shirley was totally different than the
attack on Mary and on Susan.
00:23:52
Shirley was beaten
very, very badly. She was stabbed multiple times. He had actually broken
off an X-Acto knife
00:24:02
that we feel that he
used to remove the girl's eyes in her cheekbone. And when we found
her, the broken piece
00:24:10
of the X-Acto knife was still
protruding from her cheek. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: The
removal of Shirley's eyes
00:24:16
is something that-- that wasn't
done as meticulously as he'd done in the previous cases.
00:24:22
So this is perhaps,
a bit rushed. This is perhaps a
little bit frantic. And I think there's a
sense in which Shirley
00:24:29
has rattled him a little bit. There's something that's
happened within the course
00:24:33
of this murder that he
wasn't anticipating, you know, perhaps she's fought
back with some real ferocity.
00:24:39
And it has really unsettled him. And we see that come
out in the behavior. JOHN MATTHEWS: He
then took Shirley.
00:24:48
He stripped her down. He drove her to a street in
the middle of the Oak Cliff right down from an
elementary school.
00:24:55
And he literally dumped her
body in the middle of the street in-- in-- in just
this horrific manner,
00:25:03
this naked female beaten,
tortured, gunshot, left in the middle of the street
so that the moms and kids
00:25:10
walking to the elementary school
would find this horrific scene. NARRATOR: Shirley had become
the third tragic victim of
00:25:19
the mysterious Eyeball Killer. TOBY SHOOK: She'd
been a mom, but had fallen into the drug lifestyle.
00:25:28
She was last seen alive
in the early morning hours of March 19. She was working outside
the Avalon Hotel, which
00:25:36
was off Fort Worth Avenue. A friend of hers named Tina
had seen her out working the Avalon with her.
00:25:42
And they had been talking. And the last she saw
her, she was wearing a-- a yellow raincoat that
she had given her.
00:25:52
NARRATOR: When Shirley's
body was found, there was no yellow
raincoat in sight. It was a glimmer of
hope for investigators--
00:26:00
find the raincoat, and
they may find the killer. But they knew they
had to work fast.
00:26:08
JOHN MATTHEWS: The time frame in
between murders was decreasing. That meant that he
was probably spinning
00:26:15
out of control, that
he was evolving, or maybe even devolving. And so for investigators,
for the officers,
00:26:23
for us on the street, not only
did we know that the girls were being hunted, but they were
being hunted at a greater
00:26:30
frequency than before. And we really didn't
know when the next body was gonna turn up.
00:26:38
BRANDON BIRMINGHAM:
Dallas knew that they had a serial killer on their hands. They didn't have the-- sort of
the tools that we have today.
00:26:46
So they had to go
do what they call good old-fashioned police work. NARRATOR: Sensing sex
workers were growing
00:26:52
fearful for their lives,
officer John Matthews spoke to many women on his beat. And one of them,
37-year-old Brenda,
00:27:01
told him that she had a
terrifying altercation with a man just days before
the murder of Shirley Williams.
00:27:09
JOHN MATTHEWS: She was
another long-term prostitute. I had known her for a very
long time at this point.
00:27:16
Brenda was very open in
exchanging information with us. She wanted to keep
plying her trade.
00:27:22
She wanted her girls to
keep plying her trade. And it was impacting
them economically.
00:27:27
She told us a story
about how someone had picked her up, someone
in a station wagon,
00:27:33
an older, white male. TOBY SHOOK: She said that he
pulled up and-- and wanted a date of prostitution.
00:27:41
So she got in the car. And she told him to go around
the corner to a hotel she used.
00:27:48
And he said, no, I've got
a place I'd like to go to. And she said, well, if you
want to go to your place,
00:27:54
just turn around the corner and
drop my tail off right here. He became very, very angry
and started yelling at her
00:28:04
and said, "I hate you, whores." I want to kill all you whores." And she knew she was
in trouble and then.
00:28:13
JOHN MATTHEWS: He
attacked her in the car. Brenda, being very
street smart, pulled
00:28:19
out Mace that she had inside her
clothing, maced her attacker. So Brenda again, had a very
dramatic story about being
00:28:28
attacked by this person. NARRATOR: Brenda's story
reminded John of one he'd heard a few months
previously, an attack
00:28:38
on 26-year-old Veronica. JOHN MATTHEWS: So now,
we have Veronica's story and Brenda's story.
00:28:45
And that all ties in with that
huge notebook of information that I was keeping
to try to figure out,
00:28:52
who is this guy that is out
on my beat, plying his trade and attacking these women?
00:29:00
NARRATOR: John
revisited his notes on Axton Schindler,
the man who Veronica claimed had saved her life.
00:29:08
Schindler wasn't living
at his listed address, El Dorado Avenue. The registered
homeowner was in fact,
00:29:16
a man named Charles Albright. BRANDON BIRMINGHAM: They
did a little background, an investigation into
Charles Albright.
00:29:22
Who was he? Where did he come from? Well, he had been
arrested before, and that meant that
police officers now had
00:29:28
mug shots of Charles Albright. NARRATOR: John Matthews
presented Brenda with six
00:29:34
mug shots of different men. She immediately picked out
57-year-old convicted child
00:29:41
molester Charles
Albright as her attacker. Meanwhile, another investigator
arranged to meet with Veronica.
00:29:50
TOBY SHOOK: And when she
saw Albright's photo, she freaked out completely,
got very scared,
00:29:54
said I won't look at these. And he could tell by her
reaction she recognized him.
00:30:01
And said, it's fine. And she said, no, he'll kill me. He'll kill me if I pick him.
00:30:05
And he said, no, no. Just turn the photo over. And she did, but she was
terribly frightened by it all.
00:30:14
JOHN MATTHEWS: Then I
thought, this is it. What are the chances that
somebody owns property down
00:30:20
in the country where Veronica
was attacked, where two bodies were found, property
close to where
00:30:26
the girls were being picked up? And I just knew I'd
found the murderer. NARRATOR: Convinced
he'd cracked the case
00:30:33
of the mysterious Eyeball
Killer, John decided to present his evidence to detectives.
00:30:40
JOHN MATTHEWS: I
was a street cop. And very rarely in
the history of serial killers in the
United States is it
00:30:47
a street cop who investigates
and finds a serial killer. So homicide was
not very receptive.
00:30:54
They listened to me. I laid out the case and
everything and said, listen, this is who it is.
00:31:01
And if we don't do
something right now, there could be another
killing tonight. They finally went
to their chief.
00:31:10
The chief came out and
said, we'll look into it. I said, no. We need to get a warrant.
00:31:15
We need to do it now. I mean, I'm 100% into this,
and I will take the blame if it's the wrong person.
00:31:24
NARRATOR: At 2:30 AM on
the 22nd of March 1991, a swarm of officers descended
upon El Dorado Avenue.
00:31:35
JOHN MATTHEWS: We
assembled a tactical team, went out there, and raided
his house, used stun grenades
00:31:41
and literally blew him and
his common-law wife out of their bed, and made
the arrest of Dallas's
00:31:48
first serial killer. NARRATOR: Charles Albright
was finally in custody. The killer who was
so obsessed with eyes
00:31:57
gave nothing away in his own. JOHN MATTHEWS: Once we arrested
him and placed him in the car,
00:32:03
I mean, he was totally stoic. He was absolutely emotionless. You'd think somebody
would be upset.
00:32:09
You know, we're arresting
you for multiple murders. We're arresting you for torture
and mutilation and killing
00:32:17
women and taking their eyeballs. And he was absolutely stone
cold quiet, stoic, calm.
00:32:26
It was really, really unnerving. TOBY SHOOK: And his
only response was, "I really fucked up this time."
00:32:34
And they took him off
to jail after that. NARRATOR: Investigators
knew Albright was the man responsible for the
attacks on Veronica and Brenda.
00:32:45
But if they were going to
charge him with murder, they needed to
gather the evidence
00:32:50
that proved he was the serial
killer they'd been looking for. On the 22nd of March
1991, Charles Albright
00:33:02
had been arrested on
suspicion of three murders. The 57-year-old denied
that he was a killer.
00:33:09
And if investigators were
going to charge Albright, they needed to gather
the evidence to prove it.
00:33:19
JOHN MATTHEWS: After
the arrest, there was still a tremendous
amount of police work
00:33:22
that had to be done. And one of the most
satisfying parts of the case was working with Toby Shook, the
main prosecutor at the district
00:33:30
attorney's office. TOBY SHOOK: We felt
that there had to be a lot more evidence out there.
00:33:36
And so it's obviously Albright,
if he's killing prostitutes, he's going to be in
contact with prostitutes.
00:33:43
JOHN MATTHEWS: And
together, we worked for months putting the
case together, getting
00:33:48
testimony from the girls. And again, the prostitutes,
because of the relationship
00:33:53
that we had built with them, the
information that we gathered, they were very
forthcoming, telling us
00:33:59
about how Albright was
a regular of theirs, many, many of the girls. We think that he was with a
prostitute three, five times
00:34:08
a week, maybe
more, that he often loved to hear them scream. He would pay them
more to torture them.
00:34:15
He would pay them more to turn
tricks if it was two or more of the girls. And so all of this
information came out
00:34:22
in this post-arrest
investigation, this very sordid and
lurid story of this killer
00:34:29
who spent night after
night with prostitutes, and during the day, was a con man.
00:34:34
NARRATOR: Background checks
revealed that Albright wasn't just a suspected killer.
00:34:39
He'd also continued the
lifestyle of theft that had defined him for decades. JOHN MATTHEWS: During the
post-arrest investigation,
00:34:48
you know, lots of key
pieces of evidence came out. We were really able to
put the puzzle together
00:34:53
of where he got his money. We had figured out that
he had assumed his dad's identity, that he was
cashing his pension
00:35:02
checks and Social Security. So now we knew where the
cash was coming from. NARRATOR: Investigators
searched Albright's home
00:35:10
in El Dorado Avenue,
for any clues to link him to the murders. They were looking for weapons.
00:35:19
They found a bunch
of long rifles inside a hiding place
inside his fireplace. But none of them wound up
to be related to the crime.
00:35:27
He had lots of vehicles,
about four or five, six different cars on the property.
00:35:32
They took blankets
out of those vehicles. NARRATOR: As the man
who'd helped uncover
00:35:36
the main suspect, John Matthews
was tasked with going out on the beat and trying
to find more women who'd
00:35:43
encountered Charles Albright. He spoke with Tina,
who'd given Shirley Williams her yellow raincoat on
the night that she was killed.
00:35:53
Albright had been one
of Tina's regulars. JOHN MATTHEWS: Tina,
one of the prostitutes
00:35:58
that we fully believe
he was hunting the night of the third
killing, told us that she
00:36:04
had been working with Shirley. Shirley was wearing
the yellow raincoat. Where they were working
on Fort Worth Avenue.
00:36:11
And really led us to the site
where the raincoat was found out there on Fort Worth Avenue.
00:36:17
The raincoat that eventually
had some of the hair evidence that we used to convict the
killer, hair evidence that was
00:36:25
found on the raincoat
and in the vacuum cleaner bag in the living room
of Charles Albright's house.
00:36:35
TOBY SHOOK: And that became a
significant part of our case, a lot of it was hair evidence.
00:36:39
Now, hair is not like DNA. The analysts will look, and he
can look at the suspect's hair
00:36:46
and the hair recovered
from the crime scene and see if it's the same type of
hair, the same characteristics.
00:36:52
He can eliminate people, and
he can say, no, this person, or he can say this person has
the same exact characteristics.
00:37:00
He can't say, like
DNA, it's that person. But what we had is
multiple matches in this case with different
pieces of evidence.
00:37:09
And the more matches we
had made a stronger case. NARRATOR: It was the
evidence that detectives
00:37:15
had been so desperate to find. They could now
directly link Charles Albright to Shirley Williams.
00:37:23
TOBY SHOOK: He'd been
indicted on three murders. But we were just trying him
on Shirley Williams murder.
00:37:28
That was our strongest case. But the judge had
ruled that we could get into the other
two murders of Mary
00:37:34
Pratt and Susan Peterson. We linked him to
those murders as well. And also, there was
hair found on blankets
00:37:41
in his cars had the
same characteristics of those two victims. So he was charged with murder.
00:37:48
And in Albright pled not guilty. NARRATOR: The trial began
on the 13th of December 1991
00:37:56
in Dallas. Proving that Albright
had killed Shirley Williams would be a tough task
for prosecutor Toby Shook.
00:38:06
So the case was presented as
a circumstantial evidence case. Told the jury, it's like a
jigsaw puzzle, not one piece
00:38:14
of evidence alone is going
to convince you of his guilt. You have to put them all
together then stand back
00:38:19
and look at the whole picture. Yeah, one hair would be nothing,
but the fact that there's
00:38:23
five found on Shirley
Williams' body, the fact that they're found
in his vacuum cleaner,
00:38:27
that they're found
on a raincoat, that they're found on a blanket
all adds up that the two
00:38:33
other prostitute's hairs
were found on blankets in his vehicles, that
the earrings were
00:38:38
found in the vacuum cleaner-- all that adds up. NARRATOR: The prosecution's
main witnesses
00:38:43
were the Dallas sex
workers who'd encountered and survived Charles Albright. TOBY SHOOK: The defense tried
to say they're not credible.
00:38:51
They're drug addicts. They're prostitutes. And we worried about that. But in this case,
they all came across
00:38:58
as very credible
witnesses because they were talking about their life. They were talking
about what they knew,
00:39:03
and they were talking
about their friends. And it was obviously
they weren't lying.
00:39:08
JOHN MATTHEWS: They went up
there and they took the stand. And they were very
open and honest.
00:39:12
And they say, I may
be a prostitute, and I may have stolen, and
I may be a convicted felon.
00:39:19
But the one thing
that I can tell you is, I don't deserve to die. NARRATOR: Toby and
his team also needed
00:39:28
to prove that Albright
was capable of removing the eyeballs of another human
being with clinical precision.
00:39:36
TOBY SHOOK: The way
these eyes were removed was very significant. We called a Special
Agent from the FBI.
00:39:41
And he told the jury that
they'd check their database at the time these
killings occurred,
00:39:46
and there was no
mutilation like this. There was no eyeballs
that had ever been removed in the years
they'd been keeping track of it.
00:39:53
NARRATOR: Prosecutors had
learned about Albright's past and his taxidermy experience.
00:39:59
As a child, he'd
never been allowed the expensive marble
eyeballs, and had to make do with buttons.
00:40:07
TOBY SHOOK: So he
had those skills. And we had a physician
from the eye bank come in
00:40:11
and testify how you
remove the eyes. He said, if you were being
careful, or removal medically,
00:40:16
it takes 15 minutes, but
you can get it done at 10. In fact, the medical
examiner said he's getting
00:40:21
better every time he does it. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: The
removal of The eyes is the signature in this case.
00:40:27
This is what distinguishes
him from other serial killers. The eyes are symbolic in
so many different ways.
00:40:33
So they are the windows
to somebody's soul. They're part of their
identity. they're
00:40:37
part of their personality. And by taking that
away from a victim, you are dehumanizing them.
00:40:41
You are devaluing them. There's also the fact that
the eyes that he has kept and that he has taken
out are the eyes that
00:40:50
have seen the real Albright. They've witnessed the
man behind the veneer. They've seen the real monster.
00:40:56
So the fact that he
wants to obtain these, he wants to hide them
from other people,
00:41:00
I think that does speak
to that undercurrent of shame that runs within him. NARRATOR: On the 18th
of December 1991,
00:41:08
Charles Albright was
found guilty of the murder of Shirley Williams. He was sentenced
to life in prison.
00:41:16
JOHN MATTHEWS: I can remember
after the conviction, going home and being kind
of exhilarated, right?
00:41:22
We got the killer. And not only do we have
him, we convicted him. You know, he's going to jail
for the rest of his life.
00:41:28
And I was really happy about it. And my son came up to me. And he was about six
years old at the time.
00:41:34
And he said, Daddy,
why are you so happy? And I said, well, we
convicted the bad man
00:41:38
that killed those girls. And he said, oh,
that's really good. Were you able to
bring the girls back?
00:41:47
Even though I was excited
about getting a killer off the street, you know, my
son really put it in perspective
00:41:53
because I wasn't able
to bring the girls back and still had to live with that. NARRATOR: Charles
Albright never confessed
00:42:06
to the murders of
Shirley Williams, Mary Pratt, or Susan Peterson. In a May 1993
interview, he claimed,
00:42:16
"If I had decided to
be a serial killer, I sure would have
been a good one. You can ask anybody about
anything I've ever done.
00:42:24
I tried to be the
best at what I did." He died in August
2020 at the age of 87. JOHN MATTHEWS: The best
way that I could describe
00:42:36
Charles Albright is pure evil. He had no empathy
for those women. It was a game to him.
00:42:46
It was him, his power,
and his control over them. And to kill another person
is absolutely terrible.
00:42:56
But to kill them,
to mutilate them, to surgically remove their
eyes, and to keep the eyes
00:43:03
is your own personal prize-- I can't think of anything
more horrific or more evil
00:43:10
than that type of killer. NARRATOR: Charles
Albright's entire life revolved around crime.
00:43:18
He graduated from being
a small time crook into a child molester, and then
evolved into a serial killer.
00:43:26
Not only did he take the
innocent lives of his victims, but he surgically removed their
eyeballs, a horrific defilement
00:43:34
that undoubtedly makes
Albright one of the world's most evil killers. [music playing]