00:00:05
- MALE NARRATOR: On the 24th
of February 1986, police in Talladega, Alabama
forced entry into the home
00:00:12
of 24-year-old, Sherri Weathers. The profoundly deaf mother
of two had not turned up
00:00:19
for school for nearly a week,
and the reason, soon became clear. Sherri and her two
young children
00:00:26
had been strangled to death
and piled on top of each other in the shape of cross.
00:00:33
- GEOFFREY: The utter
callousness of it, of not only killing them,
strangling them,
00:00:38
but then posing them
to be discovered, it's, uh, an act of vile human being. - NARRATOR: The horrific scene
will forever be etched
00:00:47
in the minds
of the two detectives who worked on the case. - When you see something
like that you can't help
00:00:54
but--but think about
your own child. This could happen
to my child, too. - DENNIS: And so now
you know you got to do
00:01:01
everything you can possibly do
to bring this person to justice. - NARRATOR: The killer
was a 31-year-old artist
00:01:08
named Daniel Siebert,
and his macabre masterpiece was far from complete. Two more bodies
would soon be discovered,
00:01:17
but the police had no idea
where to find him. - ROBERT: He was in the wind, we didn't know where he was,
but we knew that somebody's
00:01:25
gon' die until he was caught. - NARRATOR: Daniel Siebert
had made his mark as one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:01:34
- ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: When 33-year-old,
Daniel Siebert was sentenced to death for the murder
of Linda Jarman
00:02:01
on the 17th of April 1987, it signaled the end of
the killer's coldblooded career.
00:02:09
On the 19th
of August, he received a second death sentence
for the murders of Sherri Weathers
and her two children.
00:02:17
Officially found guilty
of five murders, authorities believe that Siebert
was responsible for many
00:02:23
other deaths across
the U.S. in the mid-1980s. Homicide detective,
Eugene Jacks was part
00:02:31
of the policing team who hunted
the killer for over six months before his dramatic arrest
in September 1986.
00:02:41
- EUGENE: He killed
Sherri because she was deaf, and she would never amount to
anything because she was deaf.
00:02:50
He killed
those two little boys because their mother was dead
and they would never
00:02:54
amount to anything because
they wouldn't have a mother. He killed Linda Jarman
to get her car.
00:03:01
He says he killed Linda Odom
because she was a racist. I think he killed because
he liked to kill people.
00:03:08
- NARRATOR: In a series
of interviews with the killer, Eugene learned a lot
about just how callous
00:03:14
Daniel Siebert could be. - If you didn't know what kind
of monster he really was,
00:03:19
you could actually like him. But he had no compassion
for anyone, no feelings for anyone.
00:03:25
These people didn't matter
to him, not at all. He didn't hate 'em,
he just didn't have any feelings
00:03:32
for 'em, none whatsoever. - NARRATOR: This killer's story
begins in Mattoon, Illinois,
00:03:39
a small city
in America's Midwest. - Siebert was born in 1954, so these were the post war years
in the U.S.
00:03:48
The economy
was starting to boom. We have the idea
of the American dream, but I think when we look
behind closed doors
00:03:54
at his family life,
it was anything but that. There were reports of abuse
from his father
00:03:59
towards his mother
and towards him. - EUGENE: Father was an
aggressive man, he, uh,
00:04:06
mistreated both Danny
and his mother. - DR. YARDLEY: He was, uh,
a man who was violent
00:04:11
and abusive and controlling,
and this is the role model of masculinity that Siebert
grows up with,
00:04:18
so I think that there
is a real sense of shame that Siebert maintains
throughout his life
00:04:25
and having been victimized,
I think that Siebert was always trying to--to turn the tables
and be the aggressor.
00:04:33
- NARRATOR: Siebert's parents
divorced in 1968, just a month
before this 14th birthday.
00:04:40
The young man's life
began to spiral out of control. - GEOFFREY: He became
addicted to drugs.
00:04:47
He had, uh,
got into prostitution himself acting
as a male prostitute. - DR. YARDLEY: I think
there were several warning signs
00:04:56
in Siebert's childhood
and adolescence that point towards
a very troubled individual.
00:05:02
He's somebody that could not
make relationships work with other people. He didn't relate to his peers
particularly well,
00:05:09
there was a feeling of rejection
from the family environment, and it's this sense of isolation
and later the choice
00:05:15
to be isolated
which is something that's very concerning for me. - GEOFFREY: There was nothing
about him that could be
00:05:22
described as ordered. He was like a Catherine wheel
going round and round in every single direction,
a firework.
00:05:31
- NARRATOR: Aged 18 and looking
for some stability in his life, Siebert enrolled
in the military in 1972.
00:05:40
- DR. YARDLEY: Siebert's
decision to try and join the Marines is a really,
really interesting part
00:05:45
of this case 'cuz it's what
that decision symbolizes. The Marines symbolize
this alpha male,
00:05:51
this toughness, this kind of
real American hero type persona, and I think Siebert wanted
to try and live up to that.
00:06:00
- GEOFFREY: Unfortunately,
he couldn't deal with the order the Marines brought him.
00:06:07
And quickly, well,
within a year, uh, went absent with leave. - NARRATOR: After being
dishonorable discharged
00:06:15
from the Marines, Siebert
was once again at a loose end. But the troubled
young man had a hidden talent
00:06:23
that soon began to flourish. - GEOFFREY: One thing
that Siebert excelled at was as an artist.
00:06:31
It was the only
thing he was good at. - EUGENE: You can tell
by looking at some of his drawings, it was just-
I--I think he was expressing
00:06:37
his fantasies in his drawings,
that's how he got started with that. He was quite a person,
I mean, he--he had
00:06:45
an engaging personality;
enjoyable to talk with really. If you didn't know what kind
of person he was down deep,
00:06:51
you would actually enjoy
sitting down talking with him. - NARRATOR: But life
for the charming young artist
00:06:56
remained difficult. - Between 1972 and 1978, he was principally based
in Los Angeles,
00:07:03
and there were
a series of offenses, drug offenses, some violence,
charges of battery,
00:07:09
it was a life lived on the edge,
uh, on the fringes of society, and on the fringes of the law.
00:07:17
- NARRATOR: By January 1979,
24-year-old Siebert was living in Las Vegas. He was in a relationship
with a male partner.
00:07:25
It was reportedly an abusive one
that ended with him fatally stabbing his lover.
00:07:32
- This homicide
was a particularly vicious one 'cuz Siebert stabbed
his partner 29 times.
00:07:38
Now for me, that means
that he has made that decision twenty-nine times
to put the knife in again.
00:07:44
This was somebody who
knew what they were doing. They knew what they were doing
was wrong
00:07:48
and they chose to do it anyway. - NARRATOR: Despite
the viciousness of the slaying,
00:07:54
at his subsequent trial,
Siebert was charged with manslaughter, not murder. - Siebert insisted that it was
a matter of self-defense.
00:08:04
How it can be to stab someone
that many times, is slightly beyond me,
but it did seek to throw
00:08:11
into doubt whether it was
a premeditated murder, and therefore, added strength
to the argument that it was
00:08:17
a crime of passion. - I think because this was a homosexual relationship,
there was a tendency,
00:08:23
for the court,
to just want to accept that narrative
and put this case to bed because it was still stigma
around homosexuality
00:08:29
in the U.S. at this time,
and I think that was perhaps what drove this offense
in the first place
00:08:35
because a lot of violence
has its roots in shame. I think Siebert
was fundamentally ashamed
00:08:40
of who he was. He never accepted who he was. He never felt that society
would accept him
00:08:47
for--for his true identity,
so I think this early offense is so important and the criminal
justice system's reaction to it
00:08:55
was just not good enough. - NARRATOR: Siebert
was sentenced to 10 years in prison,
but after serving just two,
00:09:03
he escaped while on work detail
in December 1981. - Now, we really do
have a lethal weapon
00:09:12
waiting to go off. While he's on the run,
he kidnaps a woman at gun point in San Francisco
and she only escapes
00:09:22
by jumping out of the moving car
on the Gold Gate Bridge. It is a remarkable,
remarkable escape because,
00:09:30
in my own mind,
I'm not the slightest doubt that he intended to kill her. - NARRATOR: Siebert
was recaptured the following day
00:09:37
in nearby Oakland
and returned to prison. An extra year was added
to his sentence, but in 1985,
00:09:45
he was freed on parole
on the proviso that he would return to court to face charges
of the abduction and assault
00:09:53
he'd committed
during his brief escape. Due to attend court
in San Francisco, in December 1985,
Siebert didn't turn up.
00:10:05
His next known whereabouts were
over 800 miles away in Tucson, Arizona where
he was found hitchhiking
00:10:13
and heading east. - GEOFFREY: But now,
Daniel Siebert is not calling himself Daniel Siebert,
he's calling himself
00:10:19
Daniel Spence. He's given a lift
by a man called Donald Hendren, who is on his way to Alabama.
00:10:27
Before the journey
comes to an end, Donald has offered Spence
a post as a volunteer
00:10:35
at the Alabama Institute
for the Deaf and Blind, in which Hendren works. - EUGENE: Alabama Institute
for the Deaf and Blind
00:10:42
is a big part
of the Talladega community. It's actually a community
of its own or a family
00:10:46
of its own, you might say. - GEOFFREY: And he has,
superficially at least, the perfect cover,
artistic young man,
00:10:56
happy to volunteer
at an institute for those with deafness,
blindness. - NARRATOR: Leaving his troubles
in California far behind him,
00:11:05
Siebert settled down
in Talladega, Alabama in January 1986. Working at the AIDB,
he had a new identity
00:11:16
and a new community of friends. - EUGENE: After he arrived here,
people realized that he was
00:11:22
an accomplished artist
and he was asked to do a mural at AIDB, which he did,
uh, and that's one
00:11:30
of the reasons
he stayed here for a while, was doing that mural. - Once again,
he hid in plain sight.
00:11:40
The affable art volunteer,
friend of Donald, welcomed in the institute
and then--
00:11:47
and it's almost heartbreaking--
he meets Sherri Ann Weathers, a 24-year-old deaf mother
of two small boys,
00:11:56
and they form a relationship. - NARRATOR: A new circle
of friends had welcomed 31-year-old Daniel Siebert
into their lives
00:12:05
with open arms,
but they had no idea they'd allowed a brutal killer
into their close knit community.
00:12:13
Siebert spent much of his time at the apartment
of his new girlfriend, 24-year-old, Sherri Weathers.
00:12:21
By the 24th
of February, Sherri, a single mother of two,
hadn't turned up at the school for almost a week.
00:12:29
Her concerned friends contacted
the authorities. - In February 1986,
uh, the police department
00:12:37
received a call
for a welfare check at Sunrise apartments
in Talladega. Police was dispatched,
Officer Tom Bryon
00:12:45
was the first on the scene. When he entered
Sherri Weather's apartment, he discovered the bodies
of Sherri Weathers
00:12:51
and her two boys. He immediately backed out,
locked the door, and called for investigation.
00:12:58
- NARRATOR: Eugene was joined
on the case by an investigator from the district attorney's
office, Dennis Surrett.
00:13:06
- DENNIS: We arrived
at the apartment and the police department
had already had the scene
00:13:10
roped off, and we met
the other investigators, went into the apartment and as you walk into the room,
there's a bedroom
00:13:18
then there's a living room
and there's a kitchen, and right in the center
of the living room
00:13:22
and the kitchen,
you see three bodies. - EUGENE: It's quite horrible;
I haven't forgotten it,
00:13:30
after all these years. One of the next door
neighbors had heard the two little boys playing
in the tub,
00:13:36
he got 'em out of the bed. He strangled
the two little boys. - DR. YARDLEY: He actually woke
them up
00:13:42
because they were in bed asleep. He wanted them to know
that they were being killed.
00:13:47
He wanted them
to feel that fear. - EUGENE: And he stacked their
bodies on top of the mother.
00:13:54
- It looked like
it formed a cross, that was my first impression. - NARRATOR: Sherri Weathers
and her two sons,
00:14:01
five-year-old Chad
and four-year-old Joseph had been strangled to death
five days earlier,
00:14:07
on the 19th of February. It was a sickening scene,
even for seasoned detectives,
00:14:14
but the team knew they needed
to stay professional and not let their emotions
get in the way
00:14:20
of their police work. - You know the minute
you walk into that scene, you know this is
a death penalty case,
00:14:28
and you know things
have to be done differently, everything has to be perfect,
everything has to be exact,
00:14:33
everything has to be documented,
I's dotted, T's crossed, 'cuz you know where
this is headed to,
00:14:39
'cuz you know a murder
of two or more is a-- it's gon' be
a death penalty case. And then the emotional part
hits you, you know,
00:14:45
this is a young mother,
this is two young children, had their lives ahead of 'em,
what kind of person
00:14:51
would do this? I mean, emotionally hits you,
that's the second thing after--after reality is what
you got then emotionally,
00:15:00
you're hit, you know,
especially if you have children. - When you see
something like that,
00:15:05
you can't help but think
about your own child. This could happen
to my child, too.
00:15:10
It's something that you don't,
you just don't forget about it. - NARRATOR: Just as the two
investigators were getting
00:15:16
to grips with their
hallowing day, some more worrying news came in. - DENNIS: We're in the middle
of processing that scene
00:15:24
and we'd been there probably
two or three hours processing the scene
for evidence,
00:15:28
and then we're notified
that Linda Jarman, who was a friend
of Sherri Weathers, she did not show up
for classes that day.
00:15:36
- EUGENE: She lived in an
adjoining apartment, not to this building,
but to the next building,
00:15:41
so Dennis and I went
to her apartment and, uh, we discovered her on the bed
in the bedroom
00:15:48
and she'd been strangled. - NARRATOR: 33-year-old,
Linda Jarman, a deaf teacher
at the same institute
00:15:55
where Sherri was a student, had been murdered
in cold blood. - He used a sock
and just strangled her
00:16:02
in her own bed. Of course,
most people don't know what a VCR is
these day and times,
00:16:07
but back in those days,
VCR was worth some money, so he stole her VCR in order
to get money to travel further.
00:16:14
- NARRATOR: Linda Jarman's
cream colored car was also missing. The team would report
their findings
00:16:21
to former Talladega county
district attorney, Robert Rumsey. - ROBERT: The evidence
would show
00:16:29
that after he strangled Sherri
and Chad and Joey, that he went
to Linda Jarman's apartment,
00:16:37
telling her
that he'd had a fight with Sherri and could he
sleep on her couch. When she went back to bed
and went to sleep,
00:16:45
then he went in
and he strangled her to get her car to leave. - NARRATOR: After speaking
to acquaintances and colleagues
00:16:53
of Sherri and Linda,
the detectives soon had a number one suspect
who they discovered
00:16:58
had been using
a different alias. - DENNIS: At that point,
we learned the name Daniel Spence from people
at the school,
00:17:06
and we start running him
in the computer, see if we find out
a Daniel Spence, who is he, where is he,
everything we could find out.
00:17:13
And it's determined
that his name is actually Daniel Lee Siebert. - Once we developed
him as a suspect
00:17:20
and--and got his true identity,
we put a nationwide pickup out for Daniel Siebert
and Linda Jarman's car.
00:17:27
He quickly became
the prime suspect because Daniel Spence
wasn't here and Linda Jarman's car was gone.
00:17:36
- NARRATOR: As the duo headed
to Siebert's apartment building, they soon discovered there
was another potential victim.
00:17:44
- DENNIS: So, we go knocking
on the door, and there's no answer
at the door. A neighbor comes out, and says,
"Why are you here?"
00:17:53
Said, "We're looking
to see Mr. Siebert," he says, "Well, he's not here,"
but he said, "I gotta tell ya,
00:17:58
my girlfriend's missing." "Well, who's your girlfriend?"
"It's Linda Odom." "Well, how long
she been missing?"
00:18:04
"Uh, two days, I hadn't see her,
she hadn't been home." "Well, do you know
if she's ever connected
00:18:09
with this guy here,
Mr. Siebert?" "Yeah, they're kinda friends." "Well, You need to go
to the police department
00:18:14
and file a report." - NARRATOR: In the space
of 24 hours, four people had been found dead
and another was missing.
00:18:23
The investigators
needed to find Daniel Siebert fast, and they soon had word
from authorities
00:18:31
over 350 miles north
of Talladega. - EUGENE: We received
information from Elizabethtown, Kentucky
00:18:39
that they had located
Linda Jarman's car right off the interstate
in Elizabethtown.
00:18:45
That's when Dennis and I
left here to go there to process the car
for fingerprints
00:18:49
and physical evidence. - DENNIS: And so that takes us
to the scene and we go up an embankment
from where the car was,
00:18:56
and we find a campsite,
we uncover a campsite, and Eugene and I, we find
identification to the boys,
00:19:02
we find information
on Sherri Weathers and Linda Jarman
all at that campsite, so we're fairly certain
at this time
00:19:08
we're on the right trail. - NARRATOR: It was a huge
breakthrough that confirmed Daniel Siebert was their man.
00:19:17
- EUGENE: We got
Daniel Siebert's fingerprints out of the car,
plus other evidence
00:19:21
we knew that tied to him. The type of cigarettes he smoked
and the type of chewing gum
00:19:25
that he chewed. We recovered photographs
of women and children, women's cosmetics.
00:19:33
- DR. YARDLEY: There were also
some quite chilling items at this campsite. There were photos
of the Weathers family,
00:19:39
there were drawings
of the Weathers family, and I think this emphasis
on those victims
00:19:45
is so significant in this case. This young mother
and her two children seemed to have quite a lot
of importance to Siebert
00:19:53
because I think that he didn't
feel they deserved to be alive. These boys were happy,
they were loved
00:19:59
and cared for by their mother. I think he felt a real sense
of envy and resentment
00:20:03
towards them. It was something that he wanted
to relive and I think those three murders
of Sherri Weathers
00:20:09
and her two children,
were the murders he was most proud of. - NARRATOR: Despite being sure
Siebert was responsible
00:20:17
for at least four murders,
the dangerous killer remained undetected. - Dennis and Eugene,
uh, both of 'em
00:20:25
are excellent processors,
they go and they're in Kentucky for quite a while,
so they were up there
00:20:33
several days,
and he's in the wind, we didn't know where he was,
but we knew that somebody
00:20:40
was gon' die
until he was caught. - NARRATOR: In Linda's car,
Eugene and Dennis had recovered
00:20:46
an address book belonging
to 31-year-old Siebert, which would eventually
prove to be an important find.
00:20:55
- EUGENE: I had
one investigator, her main job, I'd say,
in--in this investigation
00:21:01
was to stay in contact with
known associates of Siebert. And she had built
a rapport with the girlfriend
00:21:08
of Siebert out there,
and she had promised that if she'd heard from him,
she would call.
00:21:14
- NARRATOR: With everyday
that passed, the investigators knew
Siebert could strike again
00:21:19
at any moment. - EUGENE: Each day
when you went to work, the first thing you did
was start checking tips
00:21:25
and leads on the possibility
of where Siebert was. There wasn't a day that went by
that you didn't do
00:21:30
something on the Siebert case. - DENNIS: I don't know
how many miles we put on cars
00:21:37
going from here to there
to check out leads or information on Siebert
or some of his friends or this,
00:21:42
that and the other, I mean,
Lord, there's no telling. - NARRATOR: As days
turned into weeks,
00:21:48
and weeks into months, Siebert's
location remained a mystery. The investigators desperately
searched in vain,
00:21:56
but in reality,
he was over 900 miles from Talladega, Alabama,
in New Jersey and was about to claim
another victim,
00:22:06
57-year-old, tour guide,
Beatrice McDougall. - Daniel Siebert
was in Atlantic City,
00:22:15
staying in a hotel. On March 8th of 1986,
walks by a room of a Mrs. McDougall
that was a tour guide.
00:22:27
She was fixing up
for a reception for a hospitality room. - He would have deduced fairly
quickly that she's a tour guide,
00:22:34
so she's likely to have
some cash on her. - NARRATOR: Siebert was
determined to get his hands
00:22:40
on Beatrice's money
by any means necessary. - ROBERT: And he goes in there
and kills her.
00:22:48
We don't know
at that point that it's Siebert but he's off and in the wind
and we ain't got a clue
00:22:54
where he is after that. He just drops off the radar. - NARRATOR: Siebert had stabbed
Beatrice twice in the stomach
00:23:02
and strangled her to death
in an opportunistic tack. - DR. YARDLEY: I think
that there is just no regard
00:23:10
for the--the rights
or the feelings of other people. It's all about him,
he needs money
00:23:15
at this point in time
because he's on the run, um, he also wants to kill
any potential witness
00:23:21
to this crime,
this crime of theft, so her life was just
not considered valuable by him.
00:23:27
- NARRATOR: As Siebert remains
undetected, the bad news continued for investigators
in Alabama.
00:23:34
On the 30th of March 1986,
another victim of the 31-year-old artist
would be discovered.
00:23:43
- We're all actually
at the DA's office working on another case
and we're called
00:23:47
that we got a body,
and just outside of Talladega, there's a little cemetery
on the left hand side
00:23:53
of Alabama on highway 21, and there we find
a skeletonized body, no question it'd been there
for a long time,
00:24:01
decomposition has already
come and gone, and we sift through everything. She's not buried or anything,
she's been laid
00:24:06
on top the ground. We know it's female
and that's all we know, and we sift through the pine
and straw and everything
00:24:12
looking for all the bones,
the teeth and this, that, and the other
that we can find to identify,
00:24:17
and ultimately,
she's identified as Linda Odom, the girl that was missing from the next-door
neighbor of Siebert.
00:24:24
- NARRATOR: The timeline
suggested that 32-year-old cocktail waitress, Linda Odom,
was Siebert's first victim.
00:24:32
Siebert strangled Linda
on the 19th of February in 1986, meaning he'd killed
five people on that one day.
00:24:42
- DR. YARDLEY: Linda's body
was taken to Siebert's apartment and he disposes of the body
by lowering it in sheets
00:24:49
out of the window
and then taking it to, uh, a nearby cemetery
to dispose of it.
00:24:55
And interestingly, Siebert said
that--that when he was disposing of Linda's body,
he started punching her,
00:25:02
I mean, she was obviously dead
at this point in time, but I think that was something
that enhanced his feelings
00:25:07
of control over this victim,
and I think that-- that--that sense of rage,
as well, that he expresses
00:25:13
at this point in time, the way that he's seeing
this community, this community who
are so welcoming,
00:25:18
who are so inclusive,
who are loving towards one another,
this is something that he feels
00:25:23
he was entitled to
when he was younger, something that he never had,
these people don't deserve it,
00:25:28
according to him,
so I think that's what's underline all this behavior. - This a young girl, uh,
she didn't deserve
00:25:36
what happened to her,
but she was just dumped in a cemetery. That kind of hurts
your heart that somebody
00:25:43
is so cruel to do
something like that. - NARRATOR: What the detectives
in Alabama didn't know
00:25:49
is that by now, Siebert
was in prison in New Jersey serving 61 days
for assaulting a woman.
00:25:56
When he was arrested
for the altercation, he used the stolen
social security card
00:26:02
of murdered five-year-old,
Chad Weathers as identification. This meant that no one
had made the link
00:26:09
between Siebert
and any of the murders. - So during the time that
Siebert was on the run,
00:26:15
he actually used the identities of Sherri Weathers' two boys,
um, to--to gain new identification
and at this point in time,
00:26:24
it was relatively easy
to do that, to use a child's identity
to get a social security number,
00:26:30
but I think
that the significance of this is more than
just a practicality, I think there is--is something
much more meaningful
00:26:37
going on here by possessing
these children's names. By presenting yourself as them,
you are owning them,
00:26:45
you are possessing them,
they are yours and it's that extension
of control over your victims.
00:26:51
- NARRATOR: After serving
his time for the assault, Siebert was in police custody
again in June 1986,
00:26:58
this time in Virginia. - This young officer
stops Siebert and in the car, he finds ropes and knives,
ladies' belongings, photographs,
00:27:10
just all types of things
that just made him very suspicious of this man. - They checked the car
and it was stolen,
00:27:18
so he was arrested
for, uh, car theft, being in--being in possession
of--of the stolen car.
00:27:25
He was using the identity
of Joey Weathers, using the social security
card as identification.
00:27:33
He made bond and he was gone. - Siebert
was incredibly cunning, incredibly manipulative.
00:27:40
I think he was well aware
of the fact that law enforcement wasn't particularly
well joined up
00:27:46
in terms of interstate
communication and sharing of information
at this time, and I think he--he truly
did take advantage of that.
00:27:54
- NARRATOR: In August,
Siebert was yet again in another state, Maryland. He assaulted a woman
in Baltimore,
00:28:02
but wasn't captured
by the police. He then headed back
west towards Nashville, Tennessee.
00:28:09
The investigators in Alabama
still had no idea where he was, but a breakthrough
was on the horizon.
00:28:16
Detectives
who'd reached out to people listed in Siebert's address book
had been contacted
00:28:22
by one of his ex-girlfriends
in Nevada. She had news that would
finally crack the case.
00:28:30
- This lady calls
from out there and says that she had just spoken
with Danny Siebert on the phone,
00:28:35
and he told her what time it was
where he was at, and she could hear thunder,
it was raining,
00:28:42
so the investigator came
and told the rest of us about the call, and that it was
raining at that particular time.
00:28:49
- NARRATOR: With very
little information, the investigators tried to trace
the source of Siebert's call.
00:28:57
- See, it wasn't
that easy to trace telephone calls,
but they told us if we had any idea where he was,
it would make it a lot easier,
00:29:03
otherwise, it could take
three weeks to a month to trace it. I told the investigator "Go call
the national weather service,
00:29:10
find out where it's raining
in that time zone." It was raining in Tennessee,
that was it, in that time zone.
00:29:16
We were able to use
that information and trace the telephone call
to Hurricane Mills in Tennessee,
00:29:23
uh, to a little convenience
store, restaurant there. - NARRATOR: It was
a stunning revelation.
00:29:30
Detectives could now pinpoint
Siebert to the small community of Hurricane Mills, Tennessee,
seventy miles west of Nashville.
00:29:40
- DENNIS: So I called
the district attorney, told him we--we going
to Tennessee, he said,
00:29:45
"Okay, I'm coming with you." - ROBERT: And no question
we were keyed up because we'd spent six months
and no telling how many trips,
00:29:52
not me, but how many trips
with the investigators and stuff had gone running down there
with every little lead
00:30:00
that they could come up with,
which really had proved fruitless, it--
but this was a live hit now.
00:30:07
- DENNIS: So we all loaded up
in cars heading to the city. I called TBI, which is
Tennessee Bureau
00:30:12
of Investigation,
"This is what we got going on. "We got him traced
to this location
00:30:18
and we're headed that way." - NARRATOR: After six
and a half months of searching
00:30:23
for Siebert, the anticipation
of his arrest was at the forefront
of the detectives' minds.
00:30:30
- EUGENE: The journey up there
was, it's almost like waiting for your birthday party,
we were all extremely excited.
00:30:37
- Well, by time we got there,
it was late night and we decided not to do anything,
but send one investigator
00:30:44
in there to see if they
could see anything, to just search first 'cuz
you had this service station
00:30:49
where the call was from,
and then you had a restaurant up here, and then you had
another filling station
00:30:55
and restaurant up here,
so one investigator went in, kinda knew the owner. And said,
"Yeah, he's been painting
00:31:02
some signs for me,
and he'll be in here in the morning
to collect his check." - NARRATOR: It would be
a sleepless night
00:31:09
for the arresting officers. - DENNIS: Everybody's upbeat,
everybody's tired, but everybody's upbeat,
and I don't think
00:31:16
a single one of us
took a nap that night, out there on the road
'cuz we were just
00:31:21
on a roadway, uh,
waiting for morning. - NARRATOR: The following
morning, the 5th of September 1986,
00:31:30
the team
were ready to pounce as dawn broke
over Hurricane Mills. - It's hard to describe
what it was like sitting there
00:31:37
waiting for him--him
to come around the building, but I'd always wondered
if I'd recognize him
00:31:42
when I saw him. When he rounded
the corner of that building, there was no doubt in my mind,
that's him.
00:31:48
As soon as he went in the door,
Dennis and I were out the door. We went in behind him,
uh, he wasn't there;
00:31:56
scared us to death. We just looked at the clerk,
"Where is he?" and she pointed to the restroom
and we went in and TBI
00:32:03
and, uh, the captain went in
and arrested him in the men's room. And, uh,
his only question to us was,
00:32:11
uh, "How'd y'all find me?" - I mean, he's got
about six weapons just aimed at him,
and he's caught
00:32:16
[unintelligible] basically. Uh, we seize his backpack,
we found where he'd been staying in a car,
a wrecked out car
00:32:24
behind the station,
and he is immediately taken to the court in Tennessee,
and we contacted our governor
00:32:31
and asked her for her plane
to fly him back. - NARRATOR: Finally,
Daniel Siebert
00:32:36
was in police custody,
he would never be free again. - And I mean, man alive,
you can't imagine the relief
00:32:43
you feel,
we've got him. He's not gon' hurt anybody else,
and there again, you're thinking of Sherri
and you're thinking
00:32:50
of the babies, and Linda
and Linda Odom, you're thinking about them,
"Okay, we can put everybody
00:32:55
to rest now," and it's--it's
the best feeling in the world. - NARRATOR: The police
had their man,
00:33:00
but the job was far from done. Detectives were certain
he was responsible for the murders of five people
in the small community.
00:33:10
Linda Odom,
Linda Jarman, Sherri Weathers and her two sons, Chad and Joey. Investigators
had stacks of evidence
00:33:19
against Siebert,
but they were hoping an interview
with the 32-year-old would uncover even more secrets.
00:33:27
- EUGENE: It was tense for me
and I'm sure it was for the captain because we were
wanting to get a confession.
00:33:35
This was an end
of a long hard battle for us and we wanted him to admit
what he'd done.
00:33:43
- NARRATOR: Siebert told Eugene
about the five murders he'd committed on the 19th
of February 1986,
00:33:49
and also confessed
to the killing of Beatrice McDougall
in Atlantic City on the 8th of March.
00:33:56
He showed no remorse
for any of the murders. - He wasn't concerned
at all, um, showed no emotion whatsoever.
00:34:06
Never shed a tear,
you could tell there was no concern in him
about what he had done,
00:34:10
and if we had released him
right there, he'd have done it again
in a few days. 'Cuz he had no remorse
whatsoever for what he'd done.
00:34:18
I told, people want to know
how he felt about his victims; he didn't feel
about his victims.
00:34:24
He had no feelings for 'em
one way or the other. He had no feelings for anyone. I don't know if he really felt
anything about himself,
00:34:31
to be honest with you, he just--
he had no feelings. - GEOFFREY: I think
he was a psychopath.
00:34:37
I think he demonstrated
every normal, what you can use the word normal
when applied to a psychopath,
00:34:42
every possible
psychopathic tendency, at a lack of remorse
and at a lack of conscience
00:34:48
and at a lack of empathy
with other people, they were simply objects. - NARRATOR: Siebert
also confessed to another murder
00:34:57
that predated
any of the other six. Whilst he was lunching
with Donald Hendren in Alabama.
00:35:04
- GEOFFREY: It's early
February 1986, Donald Hendren's asleep
and Siebert gets out of bed
00:35:11
and borrows Donald's car,
and picks up a girl called, Cheryl Evans. She's working as a prostitute
in Birmingham, Alabama.
00:35:21
- EUGENE: He kidnapped her,
robbed her and killed her, and, uh, carried her body
to Ohatchee, and dumped it
00:35:29
in a roadside garbage dump,
and then just returned the car like nothing had happened.
00:35:35
- NARRATOR: That brought
the tally of victims to seven, but Eugene was certain
there was still more.
00:35:41
He had uncovered
a telling piece of evidence when searching Siebert's home
back in February.
00:35:48
- EUGENE: In his apartment,
I'd found a road atlas. I'd gone through the road atlas
and out on the west coast,
00:35:53
he had Xs with zeroes, Xs
and zeroess and he just had Xs. I asked him about those
00:36:01
and he said every place
that there was an 'X' with a circle around it,
it's where he had killed someone
00:36:06
and just the Xs
were just robberies. I contacted each
of these jurisdictions and sure enough, each place
that there was an 'X'
00:36:13
with a circle,
they had recovered a body. - DR. YARDLEY: This is basically
Siebert's commemoration
00:36:20
of the murders
that he's committed. I think every time
he looked at that map, he would have felt powerful,
he would have felt superior,
00:36:27
um, we--we do often see this
in cases of serial killers. - NARRATOR: Siebert confessed
to killing three sex workers
00:36:34
in Nevada and California
in late 1985. - DR. YARDLEY: The fact
that he's targeted sex workers
00:36:41
is really significant for me
because he's preying upon these women's
vulnerabilities.
00:36:46
He's well aware that society
does not value these individuals as much as it values others,
and therefore,
00:36:53
he has access to them, he has
the opportunity to harm them. - NARRATOR: He was also indicted
for the murder
00:36:59
of Beatrice McDougall, but
never went to trial for this. Despite admitting to
as many as 13 murders,
00:37:07
detectives could only link
ten victims to the 32-year-old, but for his impending trials,
Siebert would only be indicted
00:37:16
for the murders of the five
that had been thoroughly investigated in Alabama. - There was five homicides.
00:37:25
Linda Jarman was a capital case
because it was murder during the commission
of a robbery or a theft
00:37:31
of getting a car. Sherri Weathers, Chad and Joey
was a capital case because it was murder
to two or more people
00:37:39
pursuant to a common
planned scheme or design. Linda Odom was not
a capital case,
00:37:45
he plead guilty to Linda Odom,
after all of this, was a life sentence. - NARRATOR: During three trials
over the course of five months
00:37:54
between March and August 1987,
Siebert was found guilty of all five murders
and sentenced to death twice.
00:38:03
- ROBERT: I probably tried 30
death penalty cases or more, but this one
is just the magnitude of it,
00:38:11
and what makes another human
being go do something like this? I mean, you got a woman
that's deaf
00:38:19
that he's intimate with, a four and five-year-old who he wakes up
from their sleep to strangle,
00:38:27
goes to another deaf woman
and kills her just to get her car
just to get out of there,
00:38:33
I mean, just thinking about it,
it'll be there on my deathbed. - DR. YARDLEY: I think
the sentences that he received
00:38:42
were appropriate. I think he--he committed
the most serious of crimes, so that deserves
the most serious of sentence,
00:38:50
but I think if--if we were
to ask his victims' families, um, they're--they're not going
to have their loved ones
00:38:56
brought back, um, I think they--
they have achieved some sense of justice,
but at the same time,
00:39:01
I think they were asking a lot
of questions as to how this man had slipped off the radar
of the authorities?
00:39:07
This man had committed
a homicide in 1979 and he went on to commit more,
so could more have been done
00:39:14
to prevent that? - I think one of the things that
always moves me most about this story is that, um,
00:39:20
when he was asked
about the killing of Sherri and the boys, he said,
"Sherri didn't have
00:39:24
"anything to say, "Joey didn't have
anything to say, "Chad didn't have anything
to say,
00:39:29
and I don't
have anything to say." If there's anything
that could be more heartless,
00:39:34
more utterly revolting,
more depraved then that remark, I have yet to hear it,
and this is a man
00:39:42
who snuffed out the life
of a deaf 24-year-old mother and her two children,
aged five and four.
00:39:48
It is...is...utterly monstrous. - NARRATOR: In August 1987,
Daniel Siebert began
00:39:56
his death row sentence. For 18 months,
the case had consumed the investigators
who had worked on it.
00:40:05
Now they could
breathe a sigh of relief. - I still think about
those two little boys.
00:40:14
Uh, and I always will,
I'm sure. I'm sure Dennis
and other investigators do too 'cuz they all had children too.
00:40:24
- ROBERT: I don't know
what it is, but I know he's a psychotic killer,
and had he not been taken
00:40:29
in Tennessee--
that's what's so outstanding about the police work,
had he not been taken
00:40:36
in Tennessee, I don't know
whether it would've been Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nevada,
Utah or California,
00:40:44
but somebody else would've died,
and he wasn't through. - NARRATOR: After numerous
unsuccessful appeals
00:40:52
throughout the years,
53-year-old Siebert remained on death row
for almost 21 years.
00:40:59
- On April 22nd, 2008,
Daniel Siebert died, but not from lethal injection,
from pancreatic cancer,
00:41:08
natural causes. In the end,
he escaped the death penalty. - DENNIS: I mean, this was
a personal type of crime.
00:41:15
This is not something
that you're standing thirty feet away
and shoot somebody, this is somebody that you put
your hands around their neck
00:41:20
and choke the life out of 'em. That's bad, think about that. 'Cuz it takes you anywhere
from two to four minutes
00:41:27
to do that to someone,
and you're sitting there and you've got your hands
around their neck
00:41:31
and you're taking
the life from 'em. You've got to be enjoying that;
otherwise, you wouldn't do it
that way,
00:41:37
and if you're enjoying
something like that, man, you are bad, and I just wish
we had got to execute him,
00:41:44
and I think we felt
were cheated for that. - NARRATOR: Daniel Siebert
was linked
00:41:49
to at least 10 murders
and was convicted of five, but he never tried to justify
his reason for killing people.
00:41:58
- DR. YARDLEY: For me,
what makes Siebert one of the world's
most evil killers is the degree
of manipulativeness
00:42:03
that he was able
to--to exercise. He was able to come across
as an individual with feelings,
00:42:09
as an individual
who cared about others, but those feelings
were not genuine at all,
00:42:14
they were simply a performance. - EUGENE: He was
an absolute monster. He was a horrible person,
he--he really was, uh,
00:42:24
and that's what comes to mind
anytime anyone mentions his name, is he's a monster.
00:42:31
- NARRATOR: Daniel Siebert
was a callous killer who felt no remorse. To choke the life out
of two children,
00:42:38
simply because he felt they
would never amount to much is a cold blooded act
that cannot be forgiven.
00:42:45
We may never know exactly
how many lives he took, but Siebert's death means
he can no longer harm anyone,
00:42:52
and will forever be remembered
as one of the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - [swishing sound]