00:00:05
- MALE NARRATOR: In
December 1998, a man slipped undetected into the home
of 39-year-old Claudia Benton.
00:00:14
By the time he fled the scene,
the mother of two had been brutally beaten,
sexually assaulted,
00:00:20
and fatally stabbed. - ♪ - KEN: He seemed
to be almost ghost-like, the way he could get into houses
without being heard,
00:00:29
and you know,
ghosts scare people. - NARRATOR: The killer
was a man named Ángel Reséndiz,
00:00:35
who'd been illegally boarding
trains across the U.S. border from Mexico for over 20 years.
00:00:42
He would go on
to kill at least nine people, but the authorities
couldn't find him anywhere.
00:00:48
- BOBBIE:
There's 140,000 miles of track in North America, so how do
you get your head around that?
00:00:54
How do you find someone
that's riding the rail? - NARRATOR: Capturing
the phantom killer would prove
00:01:00
to be one of the FBI's
toughest cases to crack. No one was safe. - DR. YARDLEY:
You never really knew who
00:01:07
was going to be the next victim. It was whoever had something
that he wanted, and that could be anybody.
00:01:15
- NARRATOR: Hidden away
for so long, Ángel Reséndiz had emerged as one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:01:22
- ♪ ♪♪ - NARRATOR: When Ángel Reséndiz
handed himself in to U.S. authorities
in July 1999,
00:01:50
it signaled the end
of his reign of terror. The 38-year-old Mexican
walked across the border
00:01:57
and was never free again. For over 20 years,
Reséndiz had been illegally crossing into the U.S.,
not by foot,
00:02:07
but via the vast rail network. He'd murdered at least nine
people from Texas to Illinois.
00:02:14
The media had dubbed him
"The Railroad Killer." Detective Ken Macha helped
crack the case
00:02:22
that finally brought
the elusive killer to justice. - KEN: He turned out to be
very mobile, extremely mobile.
00:02:31
He was in one part
of the country, then a few months later,
he's in another part
00:02:35
of the country. - NARRATOR: Ken has his own
theory behind Reséndiz's spate of murders.
00:02:42
- KEN: In Mexico,
he had a wife and a kid, and he's stealing jewelry
from these women,
00:02:47
and then taking it to Mexico
to sell it 'cuz it was a business,
pure and simple.
00:02:51
This killing and the raping
of the women, before and after death
was just sidekick, just for fun.
00:03:01
- NARRATOR:
This killer's story begins on the 1st of August, 1960. Ángel Reséndiz was born
in the state of Puebla
00:03:09
in the east of Mexico. Little is known
about his childhood, but during his eventual trial,
Reséndiz spoke
00:03:18
to forensic psychologist
Ramon Laval about his early years
south of the border. - RAMON: Ángel Reséndiz grew up
in a dysfunctional family.
00:03:30
He didn't have alot
of connections with his family, siblings, or, for that matter,
his parents.
00:03:38
Little or no contact
with his biological father. He told me that he had grown up
with his mother and father,
00:03:48
in fact, upon further
questioning, I realized he was talking about
his maternal uncle,
00:03:55
his mother's brother. - DR. YARDLEY: He felt rejected
by his mother; he felt rejected by
his peers at school
00:04:02
because he was
quite awkward-looking. He had protruding teeth,
he wasn't one of the cool kids,
00:04:07
and I think those--
those feelings stayed with him and they really did
go on to shape who he became.
00:04:15
- GEOFFREY: Now, I'm not
saying that unsettled childhood equals inevitably some kind
of person who's gonna turn
00:04:20
to murder and serial killing,
but I am saying, in this particular case,
that childhood gave Ángel
00:04:27
the sense that there was no one
to depend on. He was the only person
he could depend on.
00:04:33
- NARRATOR: Violence was a
fixture in the young boy's life. - RAMON: His uncle,
whom he considered his father,
00:04:40
was reported to have been
physically abusive with Ángel, and around 12, he quit school
and he actually left
00:04:49
his uncle's home;
started living on the streets, just fending for himself. He was sexually
molested by a local pedophile.
00:05:03
- DR. YARDLEY: Like any
violent offenders, Reséndiz was a victim
before he was a criminal,
00:05:09
and this is a line that we don't
like to talk about very much. We like to compartmentalize
victims and offenders
00:05:15
very clearly, but often that
line is a very blurred one. - NARRATOR: Barely a teenager,
Reséndiz found himself
00:05:22
with no family and no home. He had to learn how to survive. - GEOFFREY: It must have been
a significant moment,
00:05:31
it's on that cusp
of adolescence and puberty, it's that moment
when a young man,
00:05:36
especially a young man
from such a troubled background, struggles out of the cocoon
and tries to find himself.
00:05:45
- NARRATOR: Reséndiz took to
illegally riding the far-reaching network
of North American railroads.
00:05:52
It was a transient lifestyle
that would come to define him. - Reséndiz managed
to travel quite far and wide
00:05:59
within the United States
by jumping on trains, jumping on an empty freight
train and holing up
00:06:05
in one of the carriages,
and that would take him to a--a range of cities
all over the place.
00:06:10
- Because you could leap on it, it was the stuff
of movies, isn't it? Slow-moving railroad car and
the hobo standing by the track,
00:06:20
and he grabs it and lifts
himself up into an empty car. - RAMON: It is thought that he
first entered the United States
00:06:28
when he was maybe 13 years old,
and that's what he told me, that he was back and forth
between Mexico
00:06:35
and the United States,
but in fact, the first record, formal record is from when
he was 16 years old
00:06:44
when he had entered
and then deported. - NARRATOR: After serving
five years of a 20-year sentence
00:06:52
in a U.S. prison for burglary,
aggravated battery, and grand theft auto in 1980,
00:06:59
Reséndiz continued
to ride the rails. In fact, by August 1996, the 36-year-old
had been arrested 12 times
00:07:09
and sent back to Mexico on
no fewer than seven occasions. But nothing
deterred him, and his crimes
00:07:17
would soon turn deadly. - One of the most
complicated questions about Reséndiz,
in the first instance,
00:07:26
is why he started killing. He was getting by,
things were not easy, and he was being deported
back and forth across
00:07:34
the Mexican/U.S. border
on a regular basis, but that was no real reason,
in itself, to kill,
00:07:42
and one of the most fascinating
aspects of Reséndiz's character is where that initial spark
came from.
00:07:52
- NARRATOR: After illegally
heading back north of the border on a train in the summer
of 1997, Reséndiz carried out
00:08:00
his first known murder
in Lexington, Kentucky. - DR. YARDLEY: In August 1997,
there was an attack
00:08:07
on Christopher Maier
and Holly Dunn, who were a young couple. So, he'd spotted this couple
after he jumped off
00:08:14
one of the freight trains
that he'd ridden on, and I think his intention
from the outset was
00:08:20
to get to Holly Dunn and to--
to sexually assault her, and in order to do that,
he needed to get Christopher
00:08:26
out of the way and he
killed him relatively quickly with a 50-pound rock,
which must have been
00:08:33
the most horrendous thing
for Holly to witness and for Christopher
to experience.
00:08:38
- NARRATOR: With her boyfriend
taken care of, Reséndiz turned his attention
to 20-year-old Holly Dunn.
00:08:46
- She is terrified,
her hands are bound, she pleads with Reséndiz
for her life. He sits down beside her
and shows her an ice pick,
00:08:56
and says, "Look how easily
I could kill you." But in the end, he doesn't
kill her with an ice pick,
00:09:00
in the end, he rapes her. It's impossible to imagine
the terror she must have felt
00:09:07
because now, Reséndiz goes away
again and finds a wooden board and beats her
mercilessly with it;
00:09:14
terrible injuries to her head,
to her back. An attack so dramatic,
that he thought he'd killed her.
00:09:21
- NARRATOR: But miraculously,
Holly Dunn had survived the brutal assault. - GEOFFREY: Holly Dunn,
to her eternal credit,
00:09:29
manages to struggle to her feet and literally walks away
from the scene of the attack.
00:09:38
She makes her way to some
nearby houses where, thankfully, they called an ambulance
and the police.
00:09:44
- NARRATOR: Reséndiz had
got away with it for now and remained unknown
to the authorities,
00:09:50
but it was a mistake
that would later come back to haunt the killer. By December 1998,
the 38-year-old was regularly
00:09:59
crossing the border
into the USA. Border patrol authorities
had apprehended Reséndiz
00:10:06
for illegal entry
into the country seven times in 1998 alone, unaware that he'd killed
21-year-old Christopher Maier
00:10:15
the previous year. But now the killer
was back on U.S. soil in Houston, Texas,
and had murder on his mind.
00:10:25
- That day in particular
was a Thursday, December 17th, a day like most any other day,
the afternoon was uneventful,
00:10:35
I left from work around 3:30
and picked my son up at the sitter,
it was his ninth birthday,
00:10:42
and picked him up
and on the way home, I got a call from the dispatcher at West University Police
saying,
00:10:50
"We've got a body, a dead body",
and I had chills and goosebumps, thinking, "It just can't be.
It's gotta be something else,
00:10:58
it just gotta be
something else." But she assured me that, yes,
there was indeed patrol officers
00:11:05
that had discovered
a deceased female. - NARRATOR: The murdered woman
was 39-year-old
00:11:12
research physician
Dr. Claudia Benton. She'd been home alone. Ken walked into
a horrific scene.
00:11:22
- There was a bloody
butcher knife on a pillow next to her head;
blood all over the carpet,
00:11:31
blood on the bed,
blood in the hallway leading just out the threshold
of the bedroom door.
00:11:39
Overall, it appeared every room
in the house had been rummaged, ransacked, drawers open,
everything appeared to be
00:11:48
touched and looked through. - NARRATOR: Dr. Benton
had been stabbed to death with a knife
from her own kitchen.
00:11:55
There were three fatal wounds
on her body. - KEN: In addition to that,
she had 19 skull fractures
00:12:02
from being beat upon the head. I can only surmise
that some of them may have been
00:12:07
from the bronze figurine. It was probably maybe about
a foot in length that had been
00:12:15
on the mantelpiece; quite heavy,
part of it was broken off during the beating. - NARRATOR: It was a savage
and brutal murder of a wife
00:12:26
and mother of twin girls. - I think there is an inherent
misogyny to Reséndiz. There is an inherent hatred
of women, which I think
00:12:35
goes back to-to his rather
dysfunctional relationship with his mother, so he thinks
that women are there to provide
00:12:43
something for him,
to give something to him. He feels entitled to take that. - NARRATOR: Further
investigation at the home
00:12:51
suggested that Dr. Benton
had been literally fighting for her life. - KEN: Dr. Benton had
a complete fracture to her ulna
00:13:01
and dislocated, uh,
elbow as well, and so she put up a very,
very fierce fight. From the blood in the hallway,
it looks like she was
00:13:11
very, very close to trying
to escape from the bedroom and get away from him, but being hit so many times
in the head already,
00:13:19
he was just able to physically
overpower her and subdue her. - NARRATOR: After analyzing
the bloody crime scene,
00:13:27
Ken had to make one of the most
difficult phone calls of his professional career,
to Dr. Benton's husband, George.
00:13:36
- Very, very difficult talking
to the man because here I am, I'm having to explain to him
that there's a dead body
00:13:42
in his house and he's telling me
the only person that should be
in there was his wife,
00:13:46
and I felt sick, felt really,
really sick inside 'cuz I'm thinking to myself,
I mean, "What if that was me?"
00:13:54
So I tried to be
as gentle as possible. I tried to give him
every avenue out. Could it have been a nanny,
could it have been a maid?
00:14:01
Anybody else and he just kept
telling me, "No, it's just-- the--my wife's the only one
that would be in there."
00:14:08
- NARRATOR: While Ken took
Dr. Benton's devastated husband on a somber tour
of the crime scene,
00:14:14
he helped to point out anything
that was out of the ordinary around the house. - KEN: It was actually
George Benton that noticed
00:14:23
the steering column housing
in the garage. He looked at it and said,
"That's gotta be from the Jeep."
00:14:29
- NARRATOR: The killer had made
his getaway in Dr. Benton's vehicle,
but he'd failed to find the keys
00:14:35
that were hanging up
in a kitchen cupboard. - KEN: The next best thing
he had to do was to try
00:14:39
to hotwire the car. He knew he had to pop
the steering column off, and so he did that.
00:14:46
In doing so,
he stuck his fingers in there to pry it out, and then he just
set that into the garage.
00:14:53
That was some of the best
evidence that we had right there, were his four
fingerprints on the underside
00:14:58
of that piece of plastic. - NARRATOR: This would become
a crucial piece of evidence
00:15:04
in the future trial
of Ángel Reséndiz. Lyn McClellan was an assistant
district attorney
00:15:10
who would eventually
help to bring charges against the killer. - The car's recovered
in San Antonio.
00:15:18
His fingerprints were found
on the car. The car belongs
to Claudia Benton. That kinda ties everything back.
00:15:26
What's her car doing
in San Antonio with Reséndiz's prints on it,
and she's, uh, found dead
00:15:31
back in Houston, so,
put two and two together, you say, "He's probably
the one that killed her."
00:15:38
- NARRATOR: A week after
the murder of Claudia Benton, Ken had a major breakthrough.
00:15:44
For the first time, Ángel
Reséndiz would become known to the homicide detective,
albeit under a different name.
00:15:52
- KEN: It was the day
after Christmas, I'd received a call from
a sergeant with the Houston P.D.
00:15:57
He had received information
from their fingerprint division, we had an identification
of the perpetrator.
00:16:04
Fingerprints came back
to an individual named Carlos Cluthier Rodriguez,
one of his numerous aliases
00:16:13
that he was arrested under,
so his prints were in the automated fingerprint
identification system
00:16:19
in Texas under that name. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz had used
many different aliases, which made it difficult
for the authorities to link him
00:16:28
to his numerous misdemeanors
through the years. - KEN:
Every time he was arrested,
00:16:33
he seemed to give
a different name. I mean, Reséndiz is what we
finally kinda settled on,
00:16:39
in terms of a name,
but he had used so many names in the past, so we knew we had
fingerprint identification
00:16:45
at that time. We knew who he was,
we had pictures, and so we were slowly able
to get these pictures out, uh,
00:16:54
into the media, and try to
generate some tips and leads and so forth. - NARRATOR: The hunt
for Reséndiz continued for over
00:17:04
three months,
but the killer remained elusive. By the spring of 1999,
he was back in Texas,
00:17:12
this time in the small city
of Weimar. On the night of April the 30th,
he entered the home
00:17:18
of Norman and Karen Sirnic. - KEN: The Sirnics were both
asleep in their bed. From the evidence
that was found,
00:17:27
Mr. Sirnic was laying
on his left side and the blow to the head
with the sledgehammer
00:17:33
woke up Mrs. Sirnic. She sits up in bed
and Reséndiz takes the sledgehammer, left-handed,
like a baseball bat,
00:17:44
and strikes her square
in the forehead, killing her instantly. He then goes back and hits
Mr. Sirnic one more time
00:17:53
with the sledgehammer
for good measure. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz had
bludgeoned the church pastor
00:17:58
and his wife to death. It was a vicious double murder
by this seemingly opportunistic killer.
00:18:06
- Reséndiz was not
an offender who would take weapons along with him
to the crime scene.
00:18:10
He would use whatever
he could find that was there. He would decide to kill when he
saw the opportunity to do so.
00:18:18
There is an advantage to this
as an offender because if you're not carrying
weapons around with you,
00:18:24
then you're not carrying
evidence around with you. - KEN: The escalation
in Dr. Benton's case,
00:18:30
he hit her with a smaller
figurine, and she fought back. This case with the Sirnics
in Weimar,
00:18:38
there was no fighting back. He made sure with that
first blow, but he didn't wanna fight,
00:18:45
he had enough
fighting the last time. - NARRATOR: Evidence at the
crime scene linked
00:18:49
the Sirnic murders to the
killing of Dr. Claudia Benton. - KEN: They collected of course
very good DNA evidence from
00:18:56
the Weimar case that was sent
to Department of Public Safety Laboratories, and DNA testing
was done and it was
00:19:05
an exact match
to our perpetrator in our case. - NARRATOR: With at least three
confirmed murders
00:19:12
on his macabre resume,
the FBI entered the search for the man who would later
be given the moniker,
00:19:18
"The Railroad Killer." Ángel Reséndiz, however, continued to use various
aliases,
00:19:25
so tracking him down
wasn't going to be straightforward. Special agent
Bobbie Knox Echard
00:19:31
was part of the team
assigned to the case. - BOBBIE: There is 140,000
miles of track in North America,
00:19:39
so how do you get
your head around that? How do you find someone
that's riding the rail?
00:19:43
So what you do is, you go in
and you meet with the seven major railroad
companies.
00:19:48
They all have agents
that work for them, they have railroad police,
so they started pulling
00:19:53
all of his records,
and he had dozens of trespass records on the
railroad. - The crimes
that Reséndiz committed
00:20:01
had a significant impact,
especially on those living by railway tracks because there
wasn't a specific victim type.
00:20:10
You never really knew who was
going to be the next victim. It was whoever had something
that he wanted
00:20:17
and that could be anybody,
so the level of fear, the level of anxiety
that his crimes generated
00:20:23
was horrendous. - NARRATOR: Not long after the
FBI's involvement in the case,
00:20:29
they were able to link
the unsolved murder of Christopher Maier almost
two years earlier to Reséndiz.
00:20:36
- BOBBIE: We received a hit
from 1997, where a couple was brutalized. The male was killed,
the female was the only survivor
00:20:45
of Reséndiz, and that was in
Kentucky near railroad tracks. Through DNA,
through eyewitness testimony
00:20:52
of the survivor,
and through a sketch that she was able to give
to the officers there,
00:20:58
we were pretty sure it was
the same person. Once the DNA came back,
it was a positive hit.
00:21:04
So, now we had him responsible
for at least four homicides. - KEN: At that point,
we knew we had a serious,
00:21:12
serious killer on the loose. - NARRATOR: But Ángel Reséndiz
was only just getting started,
00:21:20
and there would soon be
even more victims. By late May 1999,
authorities across the U.S.
00:21:27
were desperately searching
for a man they now knew was a serial killer. The 38-year-old
Mexican had been linked
00:21:35
to at least four murders,
three of them in Texas in the previous five months. The so-called "Railroad Killer"
was headline news
00:21:44
across the Lone Star State. - GEOFFREY:
Reséndiz is attracting growing notoriety in Texas.
00:21:52
Inevitably, it feeds the vanity
that has been growing inside him. He knows people are beginning
to look for him, and yet,
00:22:02
he still feels
he can get away with it, in fact, he was to kill again. - NARRATOR: On June the 3rd,
Reséndiz was back in Houston,
00:22:10
and his blood lust
had become insatiable. Under the veil of night,
he entered the home
00:22:15
of 26-year-old Noemi Dominguez. - GEOFFREY: Noemi is an
elementary school teacher,
00:22:21
she is at home and he breaks in. Picks up a pickaxe-like tool
and attacks her. By now, Reséndiz is quite
clearly out of control,
00:22:33
any sense of order,
of civilization, of propriety is gone. He is now, literally,
like an animal,
00:22:45
lusting for blood,
with blood dripping from him. Again, she's sexually assaulted,
and again, he kills her.
00:22:53
- KEN: She lived near
railroad tracks, her body was covered up,
almost looked very similar
00:22:59
to the way Dr. Benton
was covered up. The legs sticking out
from underneath the covers,
00:23:03
she was face down, and she
had been beaten to death. - DR. YARDLEY: Reséndiz decided
to cover some of his victims
00:23:11
with blankets because this
essentially dehumanizes them. It depersonalizes them, but also
it's about looking,
00:23:19
it's about seeing
and being seen, so he's covering his victims because he doesn't want to
look at them,
00:23:26
but he also doesn't want them
to look at him, so it's this constant theme
of shame that comes up
00:23:32
time and time again. - NARRATOR: As the killer
grew more experienced, he became more
brazen in his actions.
00:23:40
Reséndiz had started leaving
calling cards at the scene of his murders. - RAMON: When he murdered
the victims, he would find
00:23:50
their ID, driver's license
or some other type of ID, and would display them
in such fashion
00:23:59
that whoever entered the home
later would find out who they were,
how they looked like.
00:24:05
In my mind, he wanted to see
how they looked like before he bludgeoned them to death,
before he raped them,
00:24:13
and see what it would have been;
almost as if had already developed a relationship
with the victim.
00:24:22
- NARRATOR: After killing
Noemi Dominguez, Reséndiz wasn't finished. Just as he'd done
after murdering Claudia Benton,
00:24:30
he stole the schoolteacher's
car and headed 100 miles west. - KEN: It was a white Honda
and it was taken and driven
00:24:40
to Fayette County
near Schulenburg, small community of Dubina,
where he then murdered
00:24:46
Josephine Konvicka. He toyed with law
enforcement at that scene by displaying a toy train,
displaying newspaper articles
00:24:59
about the cases, the murders. - RAMON: This is like
reading an article that says,
00:25:05
"I am the Railroad Killer,
and I'm leaving this here "for you to know and make sure
that you know it is me,
00:25:15
nobody else,
I am the Railroad Killer." He was proud of that. - GEOFFREY: It is yet further
proof, if anyone needed,
00:25:24
that he is now utterly
out of control, and glorying in every moment
of his celebrity.
00:25:29
It is one of the most troubling
of moments when a killer starts to live up
to his own hype,
00:25:37
who becomes obsessed
with his own fame. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz had killed
73-year-old Josephine Konvicka
00:25:46
with the same pickaxe he'd used
just hours before when murdering Noemi Dominguez.
00:25:52
- When he left the premises,
he'd actually left the pickaxe in Josephine's head
and he tucked her up in bed,
00:26:00
which was quite a bizarre
kind of behavior, but he'd left behind a really
important piece of evidence
00:26:06
because on that pickaxe
was some of Noemi Dominguez's blood, so those two murders
were connected.
00:26:14
- NARRATOR: Less than two weeks
later, Reséndiz had traveled far from Texas, over
800 miles north to Illinois.
00:26:22
On June the 15th, 1999, he
committed another double murder. The victims were 79-year-old
George Morner
00:26:31
and his 51-year-old daughter,
Carolyn Fredrick. George's home
in the quiet village of Gorham
00:26:39
was less than 100 yards
from the railroad. - KEN: In Illinois,
he found a shotgun.
00:26:46
The elderly gentleman
was in his easy chair reading his newspaper. Reséndiz is able to gain entry
into the house,
00:26:55
ties him up with telephone cord,
ties him to his easy chair, gets behind him
with the 12-gauge shotgun
00:27:03
and shoots him
in the back of the head through the back seat
of the recliner. Little while later,
his daughter comes in,
00:27:13
and she is immediately
beat to death with the 12-gauge shotgun. - NARRATOR: The slain father
and daughter took the tally
00:27:23
of known victims to eight. Authorities were becoming
desperate to capture the elusive Railroad Killer.
00:27:31
- KEN: He seemed to be
almost ghost-like, the way he could get
into houses without being heard,
00:27:38
without disturbing the occupants and that was one of
the strangest things. I still don't know how he got
into Dr. Benton's house,
00:27:47
and all the other houses,
and that was the scary part, and ghosts scare people,
it's just a natural reaction
00:27:53
to something that can't
be explained, and the way he was able
to enter people's homes
00:27:59
couldn't be explained. - NARRATOR: The killings
were becoming more frequent and the hunting ground
had become wider spread.
00:28:07
The FBI immediately took action. - BOBBIE: On June 21st of 1999,
working with our
00:28:15
FBI headquarters,
we were able to add Reséndiz to our Top Ten
Most Wanted Fugitives.
00:28:22
When anyone is made
a top ten, both the media and the public are made aware
of how important this case was.
00:28:30
The media helped us
immensely in this case. Everybody in the United States
and in Mexico,
00:28:37
to a certain extent,
wanted this guy captured. He had turned
from a serial killer,
00:28:42
now he was a spree killer,
and I think everybody in the world
wanted him caught.
00:28:49
- NARRATOR: The addition of
Reséndiz to the Most Wanted list brought nationwide TV exposure.
00:28:55
- KEN: So that's when the tips
were coming in and as the tips came in, anything that was
really, really helpful,
00:29:03
that sounded legitimate,
was funneled to the task force, and it was just a huge
coordinated effort
00:29:10
in trying to find this guy. - BOBBIE: I don't know
if it was the media or the FBI,
00:29:16
but he was given the name,
the Railroad Killer, and in every media blitz
you would see
00:29:21
"The Railroad Killer's
on the run again, he's been here, he's been there,
he's committed this crime."
00:29:27
- NARRATOR: The national
exposure put pressure on the family and friends
of Ángel Reséndiz
00:29:33
across the Mexican border. - BOBBIE: This was the most
complex case most of us had ever worked because
the jurisdiction was huge,
00:29:41
it was all the way
in North America, you know, you just didn't know
where he was gonna be.
00:29:46
Once we identified he had
a wife or a common-law wife in Mexico was the pivotal
point for me.
00:29:54
- NARRATOR: Reséndiz's wife
was brought across the border to be questioned by the FBI.
00:29:59
Bobbie led the interview. - BOBBIE: She was brought
up here. She brought her daughter,
who was approximately
00:30:05
three or four months old,
and we conducted the interview over a two-day period. There in that interview,
I was able to provide her
00:30:14
with enough information
that she came to believe that he had committed
the homicides.
00:30:22
We showed her the DNA,
we showed her fingerprints. We asked her if she
ever received anything
00:30:29
from his trips into the U.S. After her visit here, the
U.S. Marshals, the Texas Rangers
00:30:36
went back down into her village
and she provided everything that he had ever given her
that she still had
00:30:42
in her possessions,
and they were in fact stolen at the crime scenes. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz
remained in hiding,
00:30:50
but the authorities were doing
all they could to flush him out. - BOBBIE: Once you take away
all their comfort zones,
00:30:56
they have nowhere to go
and they generally make mistakes and you'll be able to
apprehend them that way.
00:31:02
- NARRATOR: The tactics worked,
with nowhere to run to, a sister of Ángel Reséndiz
convinced the killer
00:31:09
to turn himself over
to the U.S. investigators. - BOBBIE: We had one sister
who lived in New Mexico
00:31:16
that would prove to be
the person that negotiated his surrender, that a
Texas Ranger developed trust
00:31:23
with this individual,
and through that development, she end up contacting him
and arranged a surrender.
00:31:30
- RAMON: And then it was
his brother who accompanied him when he turned himself
to the Texas Ranger in El Paso,
00:31:39
the crossing between Mexico
and the United States by the Rio Grande. - DR. YARDLEY: Now,
this is something straight out
00:31:47
of a movie, it really does
have a lot of dramatic effects, and I think that is very
revealing about Reséndiz.
00:31:54
He's the director
in his own drama. He is calling the shots,
he's in control.
00:32:01
- NARRATOR: After hunting
the Railroad Killer for nearly seven months,
Detective Ken Macha was stunned
00:32:07
when Reséndiz gave up the ghost. - KEN: I'm amazed
that he did it. All he had to do
was stay in Mexico
00:32:14
and then come across on a train
or come across the border whenever he wanted to,
and commit more murders,
00:32:22
and keep up his little
side business of selling jewelry in Mexico and live happily ever
with his wife and kid.
00:32:29
I'm grateful that he turned
himself in. To this day, I still will never
know the real motive.
00:32:37
I think he was maybe
a bit concerned about his wife and daughter in Mexico
being harmed
00:32:43
if there were some
bounties on his head. - NARRATOR: Soon after
the capture of Reséndiz,
00:32:49
Ken found himself face to face
with the serial murderer. After speaking to so many
potential suspects
00:32:56
over the previous few months,
there was one thing in particular that Ken
was looking for
00:33:01
to make sure they
definitely got their man. - KEN: There were many times
that my partner, Joey Sanders,
00:33:08
and I would just get
a frantic call from-- at the police department,
sometimes transferred
00:33:14
from Houston P.D. saying that
the people swear they've seen Reséndiz in some part
of Houston.
00:33:20
And one of the first things
we'd do was grab his right hand, look at the ring finger,
and if it didn't have a scar,
00:33:27
even though it looked like him,
we knew it wasn't him 'cuz it showed upon every
fingerprint card that he had
00:33:33
was an extremely noticeable scar
just straight through the pad of his ring finger,
and sure enough
00:33:38
when we caught him,
it's one of the first things I was able to do, I think,
and sure enough it was there,
00:33:42
and it was true to life. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz may have
surrendered himself to the police,
but there was no way
00:33:48
this was going to be an open
and shut case for prosecutors. With a trial looming,
defense attorneys
00:33:55
were going to tell the judge
that the killer was insane. By now, investigators were aware
that he'd killed eight people,
00:34:03
and was still looking into
whether there may be even more. The unsolved murder
of an 87-year-old woman
00:34:10
named Leafie Mason
in Hughes Springs, Texas, was high on their list
of potential victims.
00:34:19
- KEN: At one of the task force
meetings we had, police officer from
Hughes Springs,
00:34:25
where Leafie Mason was murdered,
they took out the complete window frame where the suspect,
in their case, made entry,
00:34:35
and they preserved it
as evidence, and sure enough, they matched up
his fingerprints.
00:34:39
Reséndiz, there he was,
we had a good match to that case as well. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz had
bludgeoned the 87-year-old woman
00:34:48
to death with a flat iron
in October 1998, two months before the killing
of Dr. Claudia Benton.
00:34:56
Leafie Mason
became the ninth known victim of Ángel Reséndiz, but it's believed the total
number of people
00:35:04
who died at the hands
of the Railroad Killer is even higher. - BOBBIE: He confessed
to 12 or 13 crimes
00:35:11
and they were able to confirm
through DNA evidence that he had in fact
committed those crimes.
00:35:17
- NARRATOR: The killer talked
about his many possible victims with forensic psychologist
Ramon Laval.
00:35:25
- RAMON: We didn't discuss
the full chronology and what came first and second,
third, fourth,
00:35:31
but I have an idea that
he--it--it started, as far as we know, in '86. - NARRATOR: Ramon had been
asked to evaluate
00:35:39
the mental state
of Ángel Reséndiz after a judge informed
the defense attorneys that the killer would be
prevented from pleading
00:35:47
not guilty by reason of insanity unless he was assessed
by an independent psychologist.
00:35:54
- RAMON: He was not only
willing to admit culpability, he talked about them,
he said yeah, he was the actor,
00:36:02
he was the one who
perpetrated them, and he would not be willing
to give anybody else credit.
00:36:08
He was very narcissistic,
very self-absorbed. His manner of communication
about the crimes was very calm,
00:36:16
emotionally collected. He did not display any extreme
emotional feelings about them,
00:36:24
no sorrow, no regret. - NARRATOR: Despite admitting
to many murders, the prosecution only needed
Reséndiz to be found guilty
00:36:33
of one, so they had to find
the most airtight case against him, the murder
of Dr. Claudia Benton.
00:36:42
- KEN: We had the strongest
case by far. I think some of the other
counties might've wanted
00:36:47
to have had their own trial
and convict him, but once he's convicted
of capital murder in--in Texas,
00:36:56
there's not much need
to do it again. - NARRATOR: Assistant district
attorney Lyn McClellan
00:37:02
was part
of the prosecution team. - LYN: In every criminal case,
you have to prove the case
00:37:08
beyond a reasonable doubt,
so it's really just proving the elements of that crime.
00:37:13
The evidence that who did it
came from his fingerprints and on Claudia Benton's case
and fingerprints
00:37:21
in the apartment,
fingerprints on the car that was recovered
in San Antonio afterwards,
00:37:27
so that's really not
a real difficult case to prove because all the evidence
is there.
00:37:34
Fingerprints and DNA
are much better than eyewitness because eyewitnesses
can make mistakes,
00:37:41
and fingerprints
and DNA are not. - NARRATOR: The trial began
on May the 8th, 2000
00:37:47
in Houston, Texas. Ken Macha was in the courtroom. - KEN: One thing that stuck out
immensely was the amount
00:37:56
of weight that Reséndiz gained. He looked like
a completely different person. He must have put on
40 to 50 pounds,
00:38:07
maybe even more. He was quiet, didn't say a word. I don't believe
he said one single word
00:38:13
throughout the trial unless
he was conversing, uh, with his attorneys. - NARRATOR: As expected,
the defense attorneys claimed
00:38:21
the 39-year-old Reséndiz
was not guilty by reason of insanity. - LYN: They say
he's schizophrenic.
00:38:29
They say he's any kind
of a mental disease. Did that cause him to do it? Did he know right from wrong?
00:38:38
Obviously he knew
right from wrong because he was trying
to get away, and he got away.
00:38:45
I mean, there's lots of people
that have mental diseases, they don't all go around
killing people.
00:38:51
- NARRATOR: Before the trial,
Reséndiz had been quoted in the media,
calling himself an angel of God.
00:38:58
But Ramon Laval didn't agree
with the killer's theory. - RAMON: My main concern was
if he was insane
00:39:06
at the time of the offense, and if he was doing
the will of God, where did the rape come from?
00:39:16
He could not quite explain that. He was like, "Huh, I wonder why
you're asking me that question.
00:39:21
You know, I hadn't
quite thought about that." - LYN: So, basically
it's almost a confession
00:39:25
that, "I did this,
but when I did this, "I didn't know right from wrong.
00:39:32
"I didn't know what I was doing
and thus I can't be held "legally responsible.
00:39:36
"I get a get-out-of-jail-free
card 'cuz I didn't know right from wrong."
00:39:41
- NARRATOR: Ramon's testimony
put the idea that Reséndiz was insane firmly to bed.
00:39:48
- RAMON: My conclusions
at the end were, despite his expression of delusions, statements that had a very
delusional flavor,
00:39:58
I came to believe that he was
not insane and that he was
just smart and manipulative,
00:40:05
and knew how to use information. - NARRATOR: As a final nail
in the coffin, prosecutors called
Holly Dunn to the stand.
00:40:14
The testimony of the girl
who cheated death at the hands of Reséndiz in
Kentucky three years previously
00:40:22
left the jury in no doubt. On May the 18th, 2000
Ángel Reséndiz was found guilty
00:40:30
of the murder
of Dr. Claudia Benton. Four days later,
he was sentenced to death.
00:40:37
- KEN: I knew that the verdict
was gonna be guilty. There was really
no defense put up.
00:40:43
When he was sentenced
to death, I was happy. To me, it was
the appropriate punishment.
00:40:48
Not to get into any
of the debates about death penalty right or wrong,
in Texas,
00:40:54
that was the punishment,
and that's what he got. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz was on
death row for six years
00:41:00
before his stay
of execution came to an end. On June the 27th, 2006,
FBI special agent
00:41:09
Bobbie Knox Echard
went to Huntsville, Texas to witness the death of the
Railroad Killer firsthand.
00:41:17
- BOBBIE: He's brought in,
he jumped up on the table, they prepare him and, um,
they allow him
00:41:23
to make a statement. In this case,
he apologized to the victims, but he then kinda claimed
that the devil made him do it.
00:41:31
He said,
"It was my fault because I let the devil into my life,
but the devil was responsible,"
00:41:37
and the drugs were administered
at that point, and the very last thing, he was asking in Spanish
for forgiveness from God,
00:41:45
and then he died very
peacefully. I felt no joy in the fact
that he had been executed,
00:41:53
I felt nothing towards him
other than anger for what he had done
to the victims and what he left the victims'
families to deal with
00:42:01
for the rest of their lives. He was gone,
but they still are here having to deal with his crimes.
00:42:09
- LYN: What Claudia Benton's
husband said probably sums it up. "He was evil contained
in human form."
00:42:17
A creature without a soul. No conscience,
no sense of remorse. No regard
for the sanctity of life
00:42:25
'cuz with Reséndiz,
it's all about him. He's the one in charge, he's
the one he's trying to satisfy.
00:42:32
He went through his whole life,
you know, thinking he had the right to do all these
things,
00:42:36
and whatever he wanted to do,
he did it, because
he was the one in charge. - NARRATOR: After taking
the lives of so many others,
00:42:44
45-year-old Ángel Reséndiz had
himself been put to death. He is no longer
a danger to innocent people.
00:42:53
- BOBBIE: He was probably
the most evil person that I ever was involved
in the investigation
00:42:58
and I've investigated
lots of murderers, child molesters, kidnappers,
but I think this guy
00:43:06
was inherently evil. - KEN: He's just a savage
animal, absolute savage animal.
00:43:12
The way he dealt
with his victims was just completely savage. - NARRATOR: Ángel Reséndiz
spent his entire life
00:43:20
in the shadows of society. Holed up in freight train
carriages across America, he was able to carry out his
crimes completely undetected.
00:43:31
Why he started raping
and killing the victims of his burglaries,
we shall never know,
00:43:37
but the amount of people
he slayed suggest that he enjoyed
the act of murder, and proves that Ángel Reséndiz
00:43:45
is one of the world's
most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - [swooshing sound]