the smoking gun of true crime culture
FALLING FOR A KILLER A LOOK INTO JOE EXOTIC’S LIFE: A MAN GONE WILD
the story behind America’s most prolific serial killer
new info that the Netflix documentary missed
Q&A W/ ‘MAKING A MURDERER’ LAWYER KATHLEEN ZELLNER
ISSUE 1 | MAY 2020
CONTENTS
MAY 2020 ISSUE 1
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TRUE CRIM E TRENDS There are so many true crime podcasts, documentaries, books, movies and series out right now. Feed your true crime addiction and cure your quarantine blues with our top 10 picks for May.
12 CRIMINAL PROFILES
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Check out the stories behind three very different criminals: The Zodiac Killer, the unidentif ied serial killer of the 60s and 70s; Elizabeth Holmes, former Theranos CEO out for blood; and Michael Peterson, American novelist convicted of killing his second wife after she was found lifeless at the bottom of their staircase.
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FEATURE: A MAN GONE WILD He called himself the Tiger King and plastered his face on highway billboards in Texas and Oklahoma. He bred big cats, bears, baboons, and more. He lived, with a parade of partners, on the grounds of his private zoo. He threatened a rival with murder —repeatedly, on YouTube—and tried to hire a hit man to do the deed.
FEATURE: FALLING FOR A KILLER Ted Bundy is one of the most prolif ic serial killers in American history. But, there were two women that were closest to him when he committed unspeakable crimes: Elizabeth Kendall and her daughter Molly. This is their story.
15 Q&A W/ KATHLEEN ZELLNER The 61-year-old Chicago-based lawyer specializes in wrongful conviction cases. She’s had 19 convictions overturned and is determined to add Avery to the list. Her impatience for what she views as ineptitude, her fervor to re-create events to f ind holes in the prosecution’s theories and, well, her fashion sense have made her a standout of the series.
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letter from the editor
THE INITIAL VISIONS
LETTER FROM THE E DITOR - M AY 2020
W
Wow. I cannot believe I have finally made it to the end of this magazine! As I have been putting the finishing touches on each spread, I can’t help but think about and reflect on this semester. I am so proud of myself for venturing out of my typical “design comfort zone” with the three mood boards (left) and the final design of this magazine. This whole design process has been an incredible learning experience despite the challenges and frustrations that this semester has brought. The past two months have been extremely challenging, disappointing but also incredibly rewarding due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The Spring 2020 semester on Ball State University’s campus was abruptly ended and we all had to find our new virtual normal. I had many days where I came to a seemingly impossible design block or had thoughts about not being able to finish this magazine. However, with the support of my professor and peers I am proud to share the first issue of my very own true crime magazine, “Luminol.” Luminol, deriving from the word illuminated, is used by forensic investigators to detect trace amounts of blood at crime scenes, as it reacts with a blue glow to the iron in hemoglobin. I wanted my magazine to illuminate and feature real true crime stories in a modern, respectful way. Thank you for taking the time to look at my magazine and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed designing it.
MORGAN C. DEAN, PUBLISHER/EDITOR IN CHIEF This magazine was developed and designed for educational purposes. I do not own the rights to the stories or photographs used.
GET SOCIAL luminolmag.com @luminolmag @luminolmag /LuminolMagazine
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2020 CASE UPDATES ROBERT DUR ST
On March 15, 2020 a LA judge p ost the murder poned trial of the multimillio naire real estate heir Robert Du rst for three w eeks, over fears of the tran smission o f the coronaviru s. Superior co urt judge Mark E. W indham announce d that the trial, which had been under way for six day s and is exp ected to ta ke five month s, will stan d adjourned until 6 Apri l. Durst is on trial for the killing of his frien d Susan Ber man in her home in D ecember 20 00. Prosecuto rs argued in opening st atements that Durst shot Berm an because sh e knew Du rst had killed his wife, w ho disappeare d in 1982. D urst has denied having an y role in either d eath.
CYNTOIA BROWN Cyntoia Brown was released from prison early morning on August 7, 2019 after being granted clemency in January by then-Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections. Initially sentenced to life in prison for killing a man who bought her for sex when she was 16, Brown was released to parole supervision after spending more than a decade jailed. “I look forward to using my experiences to help other women and girls suffering abuse and exploitation,” Brown said in a statement following her release.
JOE EXOTIC The “Tiger King” wants to be freed from his cage Joe “Exotic” MaldonadoPassage has filed a jailhouse lawsuit against the feds and is asking President Trump to pardon his conviction for orchestrating a murderfor-hire plot on a rival and violating the Endangered Species Act. His federal lawsuit is seeking nearly $94 million in damages, claiming among other things that he was convicted based on false and perjured testimony. Read more about Joe Exotic on pg. 25
ADNAN SYED The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not consider an appeal filed by convicted killer Adnan Syed, the main subject of the first season of the podcast Serial, leaving in place a state appeals court decision keeping him in prison for life. Syed is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted him in 2000 of strangling his former girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, whose body was found in Baltimore. ”Two courts have said he deserves a new trial, and then Maryland’s highest court reversed that. We think it’s appalling,” Justin Brown, Syed’s lawyer, told NPR. “We think this is a grave injustice. The way this has played out is sickening.”
true crime trends
S D N E R T E M I R C E U TR
1
YOU SEASON 2 original series
Netflix f inally conf irmed that the tenepisode sophomore run premieres on December 26. A quick scroll through the account will reveal that the cast and crew were obviously in production earlier this year. Ahead of the premiere, we highly recommend revisiting all 10 episodes of season 1 on Netflix. The second book is set in Los Angeles, so you can expect the second season to follow suit. You can also bet your favorite brooding pseudo-intellectual will have much to say—or rather internalize— about the locale’s vibrant inhabitants. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Sera Gamble said, “Joe Goldberg comes to L.A. and he is a die-hard New Yorker, so I can’t say that he comes to L.A. and he instantly falls in love with the place. At least at f irst glance, this is not Joe’s kind of town, which is delightful. Starting to talk about what Joe would think of Angelenos has been so much fun in the room.” Victoria Pedretti, of The Haunting of Hill House fame, will play Love Quinn, an aspiring chef who works in a gourmet grocery store and is grieving some sort of a loss. No doubt Joe will be using Love’s state of grief as a portal for his affections as she, unlike Beck, will not be offering any points of entry via social media. According to Variety, she’s not into digitized self-promotion. And according to the off icial season 2 description, “the last thing [Joe] expects is to meet an incredible new woman but he’s falling in love again.”
WHO? PENN BADGLEY, VICTORIA PEDRETTI, JENNA ORTEGA, AMBYR CHILDERS WHERE? NETFLIX WHEN? DEC. 26
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movies and series out right now. ks, boo ies, ntar ume doc ts, cas pod e crim true y There are so man rantine blues with our top 10 picks for May. Feed your true crime addiction and cure your qua
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SHARP OBJECTS BY GILLIAN FLYNN
2
DR. DEATH podcast
We’re at our most vulnerable when we go to our doctors. We trust the person at the other end of that scalpel. We trust the hospital. We trust the system. Dr. Christopher Duntsch was a neurosurgeon who radiated conf idence. He claimed he was the best in Dallas. If you had back pain, and had tried everything else, Dr. Duntsch could give you the spine surgery that would take your pain away. But soon his patients started to experience complications. And all they had to protect them was a system ill equipped to stop the madness.
book
Fresh f rom a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the halfsister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-yearold with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille f inds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.
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“Darkly original . . . [a] riveting tale.” —People
THE CASE AGAINST ADNAN SYED
Amy Adams stars as Camille Preaker in the eight episode series Sharp Objects premiering on HBO July 8
E DI T OR’S PI C K
documentary
WHERE? APPLE PODCASTS AND SPOTIFY
The 1999 murder of 18-year-old Baltimore County high school student Hae Min Lee, and the subsequent conviction of her ex-boyf riend, Adnan Syed, were brought to global attention in 2014 by the hugely popular “Serial” podcast. But there is more to the story. The Case Against Adnan Syed reinvestigates the case behind the podcast, f rom the genesis of their high school relationship to the original police investigation and trial, and moves into the current day. The absorbing four-part documentary series is directed by Amy Berg.
WHEN? NOW STREAMING!
WHERE? HBO
WHEN? MARCH 10
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true crime trends
WHEN THEY SEE US original series
When They See Us is based on events of the April 19, 1989, Central Park jogger case and explores the lives of the f ive suspects who were prosecuted on charges related to the sexual assault of a female victim, and of their families. The f ive juvenile males of color, the protagonists of the series: Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, and Raymond Santana, were divided by the prosecutor into two groups for trial. Each youth was convicted by juries of various charges related to the assault; four were convicted of rape. They were sentenced to maximum terms for juveniles except for Korey Wise, who was 16 at the time of the crime and treated as an adult by the legal system. He had been held in adult facilities and served his time in adult prison. They f iled a suit against the city in 2003 for wrongful conviction and were awarded a settlement in 2014.
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WHERE? NETFLIX
IN COLD BLOOD BY TRUMAN CAPOTE book
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts f rom a shotgun held a few inches f rom their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, y i e l d i n g p o i g n a n t insights into the nature of American violence.
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MY FAVORITE MURDER podcast
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My Favorite Murder is the hit true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Since its inception in early 2016, the show has broken download records and sparked an enthusiastic, interactive “Murderino” fan base who come out in droves for their sold-out shows worldwide. A top 10 regular on iTunes’ comedy podcast chart, My Favorite Murder has been featured in Entertainment Weekly, The Atlantic, Nylon and Rolling Stone magazine. Aside f rom being avid true crime enthusiasts, Karen Kilgariff is a stand-up comedian and television writer and Georgia Hardstark is a writer and host for the Cooking Channel. WHERE? APPLE PODCASTS WHEN? NEW FULL AND MINI EPISODES EVERY THURSDAY
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KILLING THEODORE documentary
Celene Beth Calderon’s Ted Bundy documentary series “Theodore” has a new title: “Killing Theodore.” The name change, which was proposed by producer Timothy John Psarras, symbolizes the killing the myth and the legend behind one of the United States’ most notorious serial killers, and is countering the “Bundy Mania” that has grown over the past couple of years, according to Calderon. “Because of other documentaries and a feature f ilm that starred Zach Ef ron, Ted Bundy is now a sex symbol and icon, and that’s what has been perpetuated over the past couple of years,” the f ilmmaker said. “So in addition to changing our title, we feel it’s our time to take some steps and look at how we can shape this narrative and give it back to modern day society and the victims.” The project is undergoing a slight shift during the COVID-19 pandemic, Calderon said. “While we’re stuck at home, we’re revamping every episode to how we really want them to be,” she said. “So when we can go out, we plan to do some follow ups with prior interviewees.”
BIG LITTLE LIES SEASON 2 tv series
Based on Liane Moriarty’s bestselling book, this subversive, darkly comedic drama series tells the tale of three mothers of f irst-graders whose seemingly perfect lives unravel to the point of murder. The stellar cast includes Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Alexander Skarsgard, Laura Dern, Adam Scott, Zoe Kravitz, James Tupper and Jeff rey Nordling. Creator David E. Kelley said at a TCA panel for the series that season 2 will “drill down” on the women’s lie and explore “how will that lie permeate” the community of Monterey. WHO? S2 FT. MERYL STREEP WHERE? HBO WHEN? NOW STREAMING!
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THE JINX: THE LIFE AND DEATHS OF ROBERT DURST documentary
WHERE? HBO WHEN? NOW STREAMING!
A groundbreaking six-part documentary directed and produced by Andrew Jarecki and produced and shot by Marc Smerling (the Oscar nominees behind `Capturing the Friedmans’). The story delves into the strange history of real estate heir Robert Durst, long suspected in the still-unsolved 1982 disappearance of his wife as well as the subsequent murders of family f riend Susan Berman and neighbor Morris Black. It features an extended, revealing interview with Durst himself, with whom Jarecki developed a unique relationship following the release of `All Good Things’,’ Jarecki’s 2010 feature about Durst’s life starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst. `The Jinx’ results f rom nearly a decade of research by the f ilmmakers, who expose police f iles, key witnesses, never-before-seen footage, private prison recordings, and thousands of pages of formerly hidden documents.
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criminal profiles
CRIMINAL PROFILES Check out the stories behind three very different criminals: The Zodiac Killer, the unidentif ied serial killer of the 60s and 70s; Elizabeth Holmes, former Theranos CEO out for blood; and Michael Peterson, American novelist convicted of killing his second wife after she was found lifeless at the bottom of their staircase.
THE ZODIAC KILLER Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentif ied American serial killer who operated in Northern California f rom at least the late 1960s to the early 1970s. The Zodiac murdered victims between December 1968 and October 1969. The killer targeted four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29, with two of the men surviving attempted murder. The Zodiac himself claimed to have killed up to 37 victims. Suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators, but no conclusive evidence has surfaced.
THE CRYPT GRAMS
The killer originated the name “Zodiac� in a series of taunting letters and cards sent to the local Bay Area press. The letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been def initively solved.
criminal profiles
ELIZABETH HOLMES Elizabeth Anne Holmes, born February 3, 1984, is an American businesswoman who founded and was the CEO of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company. By 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America, on the basis of a $9 billion valuation of her company. In the following year, following revelations of potential f raud about its claims, Forbes had revised its published estimate of her net worth to zero, and Fortune had named Holmes one of the “World’s Most Disappointing Leaders”. Holmes’s career, the rise and dissolution of her company, and the subsequent fallout are the subject of a book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by the Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, and an HBO documentary feature f ilm, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. Carreyrou initiated a secret, monthslong investigation of Theranos after he received a tip f rom a medical expert who thought the blood testing device seemed suspicious.
miniLAB In 2016, Theranos and Holmes introduced a new robotic, capillary blood testing unit named “miniLab.” The testing unit is composed of parts that collect small samples of blood and urine to automatically process and upload to a centralized system. It doesn’t process hundreds of lab tests on a single drop of blood, as promised.
Theranos soared in valuation after Holmes and others claimed the company had revolutionized blood testing by developing testing methods that could use surprisingly small volumes of blood, such as f rom a f ingerprick, and also claimed these tests could be performed very rapidly using small automated devices the company had developed.
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THE RISE & FALL OF ELIZABETH HOLMES 2003
Theranos is founded
2007
Company value reaches almost $200 million
2013
Theranos goes public & announces partnership with Walgreens
2015
Theranos test approved by the FDA
2016
Theranos lab in CA is found to be a threat to patient health
MARCH 2018
Theranos is charged with massive fraud
JUNE 2018
Holmes indicted on 11 counts of fraud & conspiracy
MICHAEL PETERSON Michael Peterson is an American novelist who was convicted in 2003 of murdering his second wife, Kathleen Peterson. On December 9, 2001 Peterson called an emergency line to report that he had just found Kathleen unconscious in their Forest Hills mansion and suspected she had fallen down “15, 20, I don’t know” stairs. He later claimed that he had been outside by the pool and had come in at 2:40 a.m. to f ind Kathleen at the foot of the stairs. He said she must have fallen down the stairs after consuming alcohol and Valium. After eight years, Peterson was granted a new trial after the judge ruled a critical prosecution witness gave misleading testimony. On February 24, 2017, Peterson submitted an Alford plea to the reduced charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to time already served and f reed. Peterson’s case is the subject of the documentary miniseries The Staircase, which started f ilming soon after his arrest in 2001 and followed events until his eventual Alford plea in 2017. In 2019, he released his own account of his life since his wife Kathleen’s death in an independently published memoir, Behind the Staircase.
what is an alford plea?
THE OWL THEORY In late 2009, a new theory of Kathleen Peterson’s death was raised: that she had been attacked by an owl outside, fallen after rushing inside, and been knocked unconscious after
An Alford Plea (also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, an Alford guilty plea and the Alford doctrine) is a guilty plea of a defendant who proclaims he/she is innocent of the crime, and admits that the prosecution has enough evidence to prove that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is entered when an accused, together with his attorney, has made the calculated decision to plead guilty because the evidence against him is so strong that it will likely lead to conviction. Typically, it results in a guilty plea of a lesser crime (i.e. second degree murder
hitting her head on the f irst tread of the stairs. The owl theory was raised by Durham attorney T. Lawrence Pollard, a neighbor of the Petersons who was not involved in the case but had been following the public details. He approached the police suggesting an owl
might have been responsible after reading the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation evidence list and f inding a “feather” listed. Peterson’s attorneys had determined that the SBI crime lab report listed a microscopic owl feather and a wooden sliver f rom
rather than f irst). Some states see the Alford Plea invoked f requently, such as Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Ohio—however, the United States Military, along with Indiana and New Jersey forbid its use entirely. For purposes of sentencing, the Alford Plea is a guilty plea. For future crimes, the guilty plea may or may not be used against the defendant, depending on the court that presides over the future crime. When applying for a job, the defendant is obligated to disclose that he/she has “plead guilty” to a crime.
a tree limb entangled in a clump of hair that had been pulled out by the roots found clutched in Kathleen’s left hand.[16][17] A re-examination of the hair in September 2008 had found two more microscopic owl feathers.
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& QA with ‘Making a Murderer’ lawyer
Kathleen Zellner
The 61-year-old Chicago-based lawyer specializes in wrongful conviction cases. She’s had 19 convictions overturned and is determined to add Avery to the list. Her impatience for what she views as ineptitude, her fervor to re-create events to f ind holes in the prosecution’s theories and, well, her fashion sense have made her a standout of the series. 15
Q:Why Why did did you want toa lawyer? be a lawyer? Q: you want to be A: When I started out in the very beginning, I was going to be a journalist, and that’s how I ended up at the University of Missouri [she would go on to graduate f rom Canada’s Concordia University and get her law degree at Northern Illinois University]. I felt an interest in history, thought I would be a history professor. I guess I was always interested in the psychology of criminal cases. What motivated or made people do what they did. But I saw myself more as being a prosecutor or somebody who would go after the bad guy. Then I had the experience of getting appointed on somebody who turned out to be a serial killer [Larry Eyler]. [Since] then, I really did not want to be involved in anything like that.
Q: Did the popularity of ‘Making a Murderer’ hurt or help Avery’s case? A: I don’t know. The way I see it is, I do think educating the public about the way the conviction process and what happens — and with the second [part], the post-conviction process — shows how important the trial is. I mean, there should have been experts. The state had 14 experts. The defense had one, who wasn’t very good. Once you’re convicted, the odds are just so stacked against you. The f irst series, if anything, I think Wisconsin really dug in, that they weren’t going to give up their conviction.
Q: Why and how do you use T witter as a tool in Avery’s case? A: I’d never done that before in a case, but I didn’t want to do interviews. So when I got the case in January of 2016, I was flooded with interview requests, and reporters, people were flying in f rom New York and just showing up in our reception area to interview me, and I decided I wasn’t gonna do any interviews. And then I thought, because I love jury trials and I’ve done a lot of civil cases, that Twitter would be like a mock trial experiment for me. So I would put something up about the bullet, or I’d put something up about the blood or the incredibly damaging press conference that the prosecutor did. Twitter was my way of not doing interviews and just seeing what the public thought. And even now, in this last week, I have 150,000 new followers, but they’re sending me all their ideas. Some of them are really good.
Kathleen Zellner and Steven Avery’s mother filming Season 2 of ‘Making a Murderer’
Q:What Whatisis your experiment process? Q: your experiment process? A: I try to take each piece of the state’s case, and I deconstruct it. The main thing I’m trying to do is: Can I re-create what the state said happened? So, can I get blood and get in the car and just drip in six places and not leave any f ingerprints? How does that work? And so I’m trying to duplicate what they said happened, and I’m also trying to f igure out what happened. And we’ve got even more information than what was in the series, because they stopped in July and I’ve just kept working on it.
Q: What is the current status of Avery’s post-conviction process? A: We’re in the process of appealing it to the appellate court. We f ile our brief on Dec. 20. And I would say 98% of all exonerations are achieved at the appellate level. We’re about 10 years behind where Brendan Dassey is because Steven didn’t have an attorney for years. The longest I’ve been in one of these is four years. So I’m at the twoand-a-half-year mark right now with Steven. I’m hoping that we can get the appellate court to overturn it. At least send it back for an evidentiary hearing. If I get a new trial, he will not be convicted. I still am very hopeful about this. But we’re in the early stage of the whole thing.
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Ted Bundy is one of the most prolific seri were two women closest to him when
This is the
By: Lauren Effron, Gwe
ial killers in American history. But, there n he committed unspeakable crimes.
eir story.
en Gowen and Ed Lopez
falling for a killer
Elizabeth, Molly and Ted riding horses in a previously unreleased photograph.
Elizabeth Kendall said it feels “strange”
to flip back through old photos of her former boyf riend, to see him smiling at the camera next to a younger version of herself, to see him playing with her daughter who was a child at the time, to see him being silly. It’s because that man was Ted Bundy, one of the most prolif ic serial killers in American history. “I sometimes can’t believe this has really been my life,” Kendall told “20/20.” “I kept those photos of us when we were happier, before we knew what he was capable of.” Speaking out for the f irst time in 40 years, Elizabeth Kendall and her daughter Molly Kendall sat down exclusively for Amazon Original’s f ive-part docuseries, “Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer,” which will be available Friday on Amazon Prime Video. They then also sat down with ABC News’ Amy Robach for a two-hour “20/20” report on ABC. Elizabeth Kendall (left) and her daughter Molly Kendall (right) are seen here during an interview with “20/20.”ABC News “I really felt we needed to hear their stories so we could ref rame this f inally once and for all f rom the perspective of the women,” Trish Wood, the director and producer of the series, told “20/20.” “And that was important to me also because I think we need to call this what it is. It’s misogyny, it’s hatred of women. We don’t need... to f igure out what the diagnosis was for Ted Bundy. Simply, he killed women because he hated them. He obliterated them. So I thought it was important to ref rame it.”
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“The Phantom Prince” is Elizabeth Kendall’s 1981 memoir detailing her six-year relationship with Ted Bundy.
Even after all these years later, Elizabeth Kendall has kept photos f rom her and her daughter’s life together with Bundy. There’s one showing him holding Molly as she rode his bike and another showing him laughing in the grass. These photos are published in an updated and expanded edition of her book, “The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy,” published by Abrams Press. “That’s my childhood,” Molly Kendall said. “Unfortunately, the memories that are attached to those pictures have lost their original emotional content and become something different.” Bundy mercilessly and viciously kidnapped, raped and killed dozens of innocent women across the United States in the 1970s in a trail of terror that took him f rom the Pacif ic Northwest to Florida. Days before his 1989 death by electrocution, Bundy confessed to killing 30 women in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Florida between 1973 and 1978, but authorities believe it’s possible that there were many more. “I still have a sense of disbelief that this man that I loved and that seemed to be a great guy could go out and do such horrif ic things,” Elizabeth Kendall said. “It’s just so hard to accept.” Elizabeth Kendall said she and Bundy dated for about f ive years, f rom 1969 to 1974, which overlapped with some of his gruesome crimes. She and her daughter said that at the time, they had no idea the man they spent so much time with was a serial killer. “I always felt loved,” Elizabeth Kendall said of the man she once planned to marry. “But with Ted, it’s impossible to tell. It could’ve been love, it could’ve been just another manipulation.” She once thought Bundy was the man she was going to marry, she said, and she has wondered why he spared her and Molly. “I hate to even say this because it makes him sound normal, but I do think he loved us,” Elizabeth Kendall said. “I heard a story told by one of his attorneys he had. He said Ted told him that he would play games with these animals, I don’t remember if they were mice or something else,” her daughter Molly Kendall added. “And he would let some of them live and some of them die, and to me, that’s us, we’re just these mice that were allowed to live.” Elizabeth Kendall said she met Bundy in at a bar in Seattle. A single mother who had just moved to town f rom Utah at the time, Kendall said she was “pretty smitten” when she saw Bundy, who had grown up in Tacoma, Washington. “I saw him sitting at a table. I went over and talked to him because I told him he
“Guilt about...
causing this in my daughter’s life, guilt about what he had done, guilt that I had loved this man that was so gruesome.” -Elizabeth Kendall
looked lonely,” she said. When they were dating, Bundy was earning a degree in psychology at the University of Washington. He drove a Volkswagen Beetle, worked on political campaigns and had aspirations of going to law school. To Kendall, he appeared to be a smart and doting boyf riend. “[He] put a lot of energy into making us happy, doing fun things… he always seemed to embrace us as a family unit,” Elizabeth Kendall said. “I loved going to places with him. He was never at a loss for words, whereas I was on the shy side.” While they were together, Kendall recalled some oddities about Bundy’s behavior. She said one day he showed up at her apartment with a pair of ski boots he had stolen f rom the university’s student union. “And he said, ‘If I hadn’t stolen them, somebody else would’ve, so I just took them,’” Kendall said. Authorities later learned that Bundy’s crimes had started with animal mutilation and petty theft, then evolved into peering into people’s windows and then brutal killings. By the summer of 1974, Elizabeth Kendall said her relationship with Bundy had started to sour. “He would start walking home late at night, rather than spending the night at my house. Just subtle changes where I felt like maybe I was losing him or maybe he was seeing somebody else,” she said. “Never in my dreams did I think he was out stalking women and then eventually … abducting and murdering women. There was no context for that,” she added. Years later when he was on death row in Florida, Bundy confessed to FBI Special Agent Bill Hagmaier that by the summer of 1974, he had been abducting and killing women for months. “When he was with Liz, he said he really enjoyed being a family man,” Hagmaier told “20/20” in a previous interview. “I mean, he said the things that I would expect my brother to say about his family.”
One of his victims that summer was 18-year-old Georgeann Hawkins, who Bundy strangled to death in June 1974. On July 14, 1974, Bundy abducted and killed both Janice Anne Ott, 23, and Denise Naslund, 19, at the popular Lake Sammamish State Park. Kendall said she had seen Bundy that July morning, and he had asked her what she was going to do that day. “I said I was going to go to a park and lay in the sun. Molly was in Utah. And he asked me which park,” Kendall said. “And I think he was just wanting to know, if [I was] going to Lake Sammamish, then he
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falling for a killer
newspaper article that had a composite drawing of the suspect because that person thought it looked “similar” to Bundy. She said police had identif ied the suspect’s car as a Volkswagen Beetle but the color they noted didn’t quite match Bundy’s car. Even a report about the Lake Sammamish disappearances that noted witnesses told police the suspect was a handsome young man who called himself “Ted” struck her as odd, Kendall said, but she still tried to talk herself out of believing this could be the Ted she knew. “It wasn’t something that I looked at and thought, ‘Oh my God.’ It was like, ’Oh, that’s weird,’” she said. “Even the idea that this man went up and introduced himself by ‘Ted,’ I think, ‘Oh, you know, if you’re going to abduct somebody, you’d never say your real name.’” One month before the Lake Sammamish abductions, Georgann Hawkins, a University of Washington student, had gone missing. Kendall said she had read that witnesses reported seeing a man on crutches near the sorority house where Hawkins had been heading. When she spotted a pair of crutches in Bundy’s room, she asked him about it. “He said that his landlord had hurt himself and was on crutches, but he was going to take the crutches back to the rental place. So that made sense to me,” she said. Elizabeth Kendall said she even read some of these newspaper reports out loud to Bundy while they were together, but he brushed them off. Listening to these conversations, Molly Kendall said at one point she had teased Bundy about the similarities between him and the man police were looking for. “When they had a prof ile of him, I
brought up the similarities to him,” Molly Kendall said. “I said, ‘This guy’s name’s Ted. Your name’s Ted. This guy has a Volkswagen. You drive a Volkswagen. You know it’s you,’ and he just laughed. [He said], ‘No, Monkey, of course, I would never do anything like that.’”
In September 1974, a grouse hunter discovered the remains of Ott, Naslund and Hawkins one mile east of an old railroad trestle outside of Issaquah, Washington. “Once I started to worry, like, ‘Could this be true?’ I didn’t feel safe bringing it up,” Elizabeth Kendall added. “I didn’t want him to know what I was thinking.” By the fall of 1974, she said Bundy was attending law school in Utah and called her regularly. “I loved talking with him or being with him because he was just Ted. He was just the Ted I knew. Nothing was amiss,” Kendall said. “And then I’d hang up and think, ‘What was I thinking that this could possibly be true?’” Eventually, Elizabeth Kendall said she began talking with authorities. All the while, Bundy was continuing his vicious spree of abducting, raping and murdering young women. In a matter of weeks, Bundy had murdered four women in Utah that fall. In November 1974, at a mall in Murray, Utah, Bundy approached 18-year-old Carol DaRonch and identif ied himself as a police off icer. He said someone had tried to break into her car and he wanted her to come down to the police station. Once DaRonch was in Bundy’s car, he attempted to attack her, but DaRonch managed to get out of the car and run for help. It was the f irst and only known
ABOUT THE MOVIE Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Vile, directed by Joe Berlinger with a screenplay f rom Michael Werwie, is based on Bundy’s former girlf riend Elizabeth Kendall’s memoir, The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy. Bundy. The f ilm stars Zac Ef ron as Bundy, Lily Collins as Kendall, Kaya Scodelario as Bundy’s wife Carole Ann Boone, and John Malkovich as Edward Cowart, the presiding judge at Bundy’s trial. The title of the f ilm is a reference to Cowart’s remarks on Bundy’s murders while
sentencing him to death. The f ilm had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2019, and was released in the United States on May 3, 2019, by Netflix. The f ilm received mixed reviews f rom critics, though Ef ron’s performance was praised. “Zac Ef ron might be the best thing about Joe Berlinger’s strange biopic of the serial killer Ted Bundy. Which is a sentence I never imagined myself writing.” -Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times
instance of someone’s escaping a Bundy abduction, and she later became a key witness for the prosecution’s case against Bundy. His killing spree continued the following year, when he kidnapped and killed 23-year-old Caryn Campbell in Colorado and several others. Then by chance, on Aug. 16, 1975, Bundy was arrested in Granger, Utah, after he was spotted parked outside a house where two young women lived. A Utah Highway Patrol off icer came across Bundy in his Volkswagen Beetle loitering outside the house that morning at 3 a.m. When the off icer approached, Bundy drove off. After a brief chase, the off icer stopped and then searched Bundy’s car and found a ski mask, pantyhose with eyes cut out, gloves, rope, a crowbar and handcuffs. He was arrested under suspicion of evading a police off icer but was released the next day on bail. By then, Elizabeth Kendall’s relationship with Bundy had ended, but she said they kept in touch. She said she found out about the car search incident f rom Bundy’s Washington state landlord,
who told her detectives had been by his apartment there. “It was just very f rightening to see it all laid out together, and I was devastated,” Kendall said. “Eventually, I ask him about it after I told him that I’d gone to the police, and he tried to just brush it off. ‘Oh, for God sakes, Liz,’ he said … ‘I need the crowbar for if I get in a wreck and need to pry cars apart. I need the ski mask for when I’m shoveling snow. Sometimes I wear a pantyhose mask under that just for warmth.’” After Bundy’s 1975 arrest, police linked him to the attempted abduction of Carol DaRonch, who had identif ied him in a lineup. Bundy went on trial for aggravated kidnapping and was convicted in March 1976. He was sentenced to a minimum of one to a maximum of 15 years in a Utah state prison. He was later extradited to Colorado where he was charged with Campbell’s murder. But in 1977, he escaped f rom police custody in Colorado twice, then made his way to Florida, where he continued his murderous spree. On Jan. 15, 1978, Bundy brutally attacked four young women at the Chi Omega sorority house near Florida State University. Two women, Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, died of their severe injuries. That same night, Bundy also brutally attacked Cheryl Thomas, whose house was just blocks away f rom the sorority house. She survived. About three weeks later, on Feb. 9, 1978, Bundy kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. She was one of Bundy’s youngest victims and his last murder.
Bundy was arrested again on Feb. 15, 1978, after a police off icer saw him driving very slowly in the early hours of the morning. Running his car’s license plate, the off icer realized the car had been reported stolen. Bundy refused to give his real name at f irst, but then told police he would identify himself if they let him make a phone call, which police granted. The person Bundy called was Elizabeth Kendall, who had already seen news reports about the Florida murders when the phone rang. “He said, ‘I’ve been arrested,’ and I said, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘Florida,’” Kendall said. “Oh, my heart just dropped. And I said, ‘Oh, I was af raid that you were going to be in Florida.’” On a later jailhouse phone call, Kendall said Bundy conf ided in her that he felt he was “sick.” “It took him telling me himself that he had something wrong with him,” Kendall said. “It was awful, and yet it took me so long to really fully accept that he did those things. Even after he told me that, I still was spending endless hours trying to f igure out how this could be, how this man that I thought I knew could do these things. It was really a struggle.”
In 1979, Bundy was found guilty of murdering Levy and Bowman and the attempted murder of three other women. The following year, he was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Kimberly Leach. He was sentenced to death for the murder convictions. Molly Kendall was particularly shaken by the Leach case. They both would have been the same age if Leach were alive today. “It’s hard to f ind words for how devastating it is, the loss of this girl, and the things that he did to her,” Molly Kendall said. “It’s been a lifelong source of agony, thinking about her parents, her f riends, and… just the loss of personal relationship that we thought we had to this person.” Looking back on her relationship with Bundy, Elizabeth Kendall said she still carries a lot of guilt with her. “Guilt about … causing this in my daughter’s life, guilt about what he had done, guilt that I had loved this man that was so gruesome.” She said she worked hard to rebuild her and her daughter’s lives, and she hopes that sharing their story now will serve as an inspiration for others trying to overcome hardships. “I hope [others] will see that it’s possible to have terrible, traumatic experiences and it’s possible to rebuild your life,” Elizabeth Kendall said. Totae. Vellendunto de et quam, quo etur aut magnien emoloritae eum is cuptatur atus prae quo mos conetur ionsent hiliquam fuga. Evelest labori rerovitibust apiducium, unt explitatis derios estiant, cus. Ostem qui ommolupti a nimusa nonem. Ut quatiisci quosanihilis elia volupta ecestis magnatur, a quaspere delia et omniminti illupta tessum recus volentium iusapis auda nones esto ommod qui ipic tem fugia pro volescias nimolenis cus minus exerupt ionestibus earum explictemqui rerchil et enihiliquis exerro et ma idem volorrum susanis si teniet la invent acerferiore erationet dolor sit estio. Et exercia non ex est reriam, susa consendis rereptatur senimillabo. Nem expe prem volendaesto ipitatem sandit fuga. Itatque que platemp orerit imintotatum unt opta qui nimilia tquiaspiciat volorestem. Nequi ullo eos dolut aut acea parunt est, cum coressimi, explitatae et illes ex ea doluptatia cuscimus quatus natis audam velignam, eaquam, que periae pro magnima iossent latume lique pre quiam id que mo temolent lament labores rehentu ribusandae susanis cus, sum consequi volorrumque adipsap erspere scitae sequidel magnaturior accae poreicium quam, nonsequ iatectia quo maximil lautem dolor autem nobit, sam exero off iciatecto cores evellab idis se voluptium fuga. At quam velendi off icius repeligenis ilicipsam audicaepe molore, solendus pra nist, coris sitatur? Agnimusda quundi bearchitene et dolupta nonsequatio molo duciene et optae peliciendae ni dolorporeces
Bundy was on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitive List during the 1970s. He was first arrested August 16 of 1975.
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volentium iusapis auda nones esto ommod qui ipic tem fugia pro volescias nimolenis cus minus exerupt ionestibus earum explictemqui rerchil et enihiliquis exerro et ma idem volorrum susanis si teniet la invent acerferiore erationet dolor sit estio. Et exercia non ex est reriam, susa consendis rereptatur senimillabo. Nem expe prem volendaesto ipitatem sandit fuga. Itatque que platemp orerit imintotatum unt opta qui nimilia tquiaspiciat volorestem. Nequi ullo eos dolut aut acea parunt est, cum coressimi, explitatae et illes ex ea doluptatia cuscimus quatus natis audam velignam, eaquam, que periae pro magnima iossent latume lique pre quiam id que mo temolent lament labores rehentu ribusandae susanis cus, sum consequi volorrumque adipsap erspere scitae sequidel magnaturior accae poreicium quam, nonsequ iatectia quo maximil lautem dolor autem nobit, sam exero off iciatecto cores evellab idis se voluptium fuga. At quam velendi off icius repeligenis ilicipsam audicaepe molore, solendus pra nist, coris sitatur? Agnimusda quundi bearchitene et dolupta nonsequatio molo duciene et optae peliciendae ni dolorporeces rem eturitium quatatiorit quamus el molupta quodiam quas es accum et aut voloris necae
volentium iusapis auda nones esto ommod qui ipic tem fugia pro volescias nimolenis cus minus exerupt ionestibus earum explictemqui rerchil et enihiliquis exerro et ma idem volorrum susanis si teniet la invent acerferiore erationet dolor sit estio. Et exercia non ex est reriam, susa consendis rereptatur senimillabo. Nem expe prem volendaesto ipitatem sandit fuga. Itatque que platemp orerit imintotatum unt opta qui nimilia tquiaspiciat volorestem. Nequi ullo eos dolut aut acea parunt est, cum coressimi, explitatae et illes ex ea doluptatia cuscimus quatus natis audam velignam, eaquam, que periae pro magnima iossent latume lique pre quiam id que mo temolent lament labores rehentu ribusandae susanis cus, sum consequi volorrumque adipsap erspere scitae sequidel magnaturior accae poreicium quam, nonsequ iatectia quo maximil lautem dolor autem nobit, sam exero off iciatecto cores
consenectem estem in re vitatia volor rese veniati off ici dem a is moluptatur, veles dis sit am, sumquassitem reperia della suntium nimpor sim qui re conecepere am, voluptat odis cum sedi optatia consenis sit aceseque eate magnimus nus doluptam ex estotatectis ut volesci liatis debit, unt res voluptatur apit, occusci debitatius il ipsunt hitat ut verum veror sus everovitas aut utaqui velent ra velit, aut est, quatiis dolupta de pre, teseque volendi blatur, invendae as atempor aerferi busandi reptibeati se pos volestem fugit, vendis inum enimpore magnatur? Xerendit ut labore, sim nest min plabo. Nequi rem iumquas earibus sed electectiae. Nam dellab ipsunto ipis vere eario con corectur, tem. Ita il is quae voluptas ma volese nisciendit ellitat iundio volori omnis ut optaturem.
Elizabeth Kendall and her daughter Molly in 1970 during her relationship with Bundy.
Elizabeth Kendall and her daughter Molly in 2019.
23
JOE EXOTIC:
A MAN GONE WILD BY: LEIF REIGSTAD
a man gone wild
He called himself the Tiger King and plastered his face on highway billboards in Texas and Oklahoma. He bred big cats, bears, baboons, and more. He lived, with a parade of partners, on the grounds of his private zoo. He threatened a rival with murder —repeatedly, on YouTube—and tried to hire a hit man to do the deed.
J
oe Exotic was done. For the previous two decades, 55-yearold Joe had been the heart, soul, and ubiquitous public face of a massive private zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, an hour north of the Texas line. He had boasted of owning the largest tiger collection in America. His sixteen-acre park was lined with metal cages, each f illed with majestic tigers, lions, bears, alligators, and even tiger-lion hybrids called tiligers. His sun-leathered visage, horseshoe mustache, and blond mullet adorned signs all over the zoo and all along I-35 between Dallas and Oklahoma City. His image covered the side of a tour bus as well as packages of condoms for sale in the zoo’s eclectic gift shop. His face had been on CNN, BBC, and CBS This Morning, and he had drawn millions of views on his YouTube channels and website, which hosted his shows, Joe Exotic TV and Joe Gone Wild. Most of Joe’s life—many of his best moments and many of his worst—could be traced back to that zoo. He had for years both worked and lived on the property. But by August 2018, his kingdom had all but turned to dust. The zoo’s new owner, a flashy exotic animal breeder named Jeff Lowe, had squeezed Joe out of the business two months earlier and was in the process of dismantling much of the zoo, piece by piece, before taking its animals to another facility. Joe had his issues with Lowe, but he blamed his troubles mostly on someone else: Carole Baskin, the owner of a big-cat sanctuary in Tampa, Florida. To those outside the exotic animal industry, Baskin and Joe appeared to operate similar facilities. But their philosophies diverged sharply on nearly every animal rights issue, notably the ethics of breeding big cats and allowing visitors to pet cubs, both of which had been fundamental parts of Joe’s business. Today there are more tigers in captivity than in the wild, and breeding remains a major point of contention between conservationists and private zoo owners like Joe. Baskin was Joe’s most vocal and effective critic, and in 2013 she had won a $1 million civil suit against him. He became consumed with revenge and repeatedly vowed to bring Baskin down. But he had failed to do so, after years of trying, and lost everything in the process. Now all he wanted was to shed his identity and leave behind the swollen persona that had become
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the most recognizable—and controversial—the exotic animal industry had ever seen. So, along with his then 22-year-old husband and four dogs, he had split for Florida. They ended up at a Motel 6 in Pensacola, and soon discovered a bedroom community named Gulf Breeze. The sand was white, the water clear. He found work washing dishes at Peg Leg Pete’s, a pirate-themed seafood joint, and bartending for a catering company at night. He had found his new home. On the morning of September 7, 2018, 81 days after Joe had left the zoo, he went to a local hospital to apply for a third job. It was a sunny Florida day—there was dew on the grass; the temperature was just right. Joe parked near the hospital and stepped down f rom his blue Ford F-150 with his résumé in hand. Suddenly, four unmarked cars skidded to a stop around him. In a
Joe posing with one of his tigers at his animal sanctuary, the Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Foundation Memorial Park.
born to work as farmhands. It was not an affectionate household. Joe’s parents rarely, if ever, told him they loved him. His father, a Korean War vet, moved the family f rom Kansas when Joe was fourteen. First they went to Wyoming, where the property they owned seemed to Joe like an entire mountainside. Then they moved to Pilot Point, Texas, north of Dallas, where they lived in an eightbedroom house on a large ranch. Joe was not close with his siblings, except for his older brother, Garold. Joe and Garold shared a deep love of animals. Joe participated in Future Farmers of America and often brought home raccoons, ferrets, and other creatures to care for. He and Garold liked to watch nature shows on TV, and Garold conf ided in Joe that he hoped one day to live in the wild in Af rica so he could see the beautiful beasts there running f ree. When Joe graduated f rom high school, in 1982, he became a police off icer in nearby Eastvale. At age nineteen, he was promoted to chief of police. It was a small department. Only a few off icers worked under him, and serious crimes were rare. Joe felt accepted by his colleagues, but he was only beginning to come to terms with his sexuality. Joe hadn’t yet told his parents that he was gay when one of his siblings outed him to his father, who made Joe shake his hand and promise not to attend his funeral. Joe
flash he was surrounded by plainclothes law enforcement off icers. Joe watched as they pointed their weapons at him and shouted, “Get on the ground! Get on the ground!” He dropped and felt a knee drive into his back. He was cuffed and taken to the federal courthouse for an arraignment hearing. Joe learned that he was being accused of attempting to hire two hit men to kill Carole Baskin. Suddenly he was famous again, his mulleted mug all over the national news. The story of how it had come to this would strain even the darkest imagination.
BEFORE HE WAS JOE EXOTIC, he was Joe Schreibvogel, born on a farm in rural Kansas. Though his parents had come f rom wealthy farming families, they did not pamper their children, and Joe always felt that he and his four siblings were
was devastated. One day not long after, he was approaching a bridge in his police cruiser and decided he wanted to die. He veered into a concrete barrier, nearly plummeting over the edge of the bridge. He survived, but he was severely injured. He moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, and underwent months of diff icult physical therapy. There, he lived with a boyf riend and got a job working at a pet store. His neighbor worked at an exotic animal park nearby and would often come home with baby lions and monkeys that he’d let Joe bottle-feed. Joe was hooked. He moved back to Texas and began his career in the exotic animal industry. In 1986 Joe, Garold, and Joe’s f irst husband—Brian Rhyne, whom he’d met at a bar in Dallas and married in an unoff icial ceremony—bought a pet store together in Arlington. For the f irst few years they sold reptiles, birds, and small f ish. Joe and Garold were both clever about f inding ways to make money. Garold would dumpster dive behind furniture and carpet stores and turn the trash into cat playgrounds and doghouses, which he would sell. They used the money to expand their store, buying bigger cages for small exotic pets, like three-banded armadillos and four-eyed opossums. It was a nice little business that suited the brothers’ passions. But then, in October 1997, disaster struck. Garold was hit by
BIG CATS IN CAPTIVITY TODAY Big cats are at risk for abuse and often live in terrible conditions: in private hands, menageries masquerading as rescue sanctuaries, and at unqualified roadside zoos operating with little oversight or accountability. Then, when big cats are surrendered or confiscated, rescue operations kick into gear to transfer the cats to qualified sanctuaries. But for too long, many sanctuaries had to turn cats away.
Between 5,000-7,000 tigers are kept as pets. Tiger population in the wild is 3,200 - an all time low. In the U.S. there are as many as
10,000 big cats in captivity.
a man gone wild
a drunk driver outside Dallas. He died within a week. Two of the darkest moments in Joe’s life—his attempted suicide and the death of his brother—had happened in Texas. Joe needed a change. The pet store was not the same without Garold, so Joe decided to sell it. He never forgot his brother’s love of wild animals, though, and with the help of $140,000 his family had won in a lawsuit related to Garold’s death, he bought sixteen acres of land about an hour south of Oklahoma City. Joe poured cement for sidewalks and built a row of nine cages. The Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Memorial Park opened two years to the day after Garold’s death. Word spread quickly that Joe had opened an animal sanctuary, and people began dropping off exotic animals that they no longer wanted. Two of Garold’s pets, a deer and a buffalo, were the zoo’s f irst inhabitants. Then came a mountain lion. Then a bear. In 2000 Joe got a call f rom a game warden telling him that someone had abandoned two tigers in a backyard near Ardmore. Joe brought them back to the animal park. They were his very f irst tigers. He named them Tess and Tickles. They bred, and Joe raised their cubs. The beautiful beasts were hardly running f ree, but here they were up close. Garold would have loved it, Joe thought.
TROUBLE STARTED EARLY. In 1999, when the park was still under construction, Joe agreed to transport a flock of emaciated emus that had been rescued f rom a large pen in Red Oak, just south of Dallas. Some of the emus escaped while he was loading them up and headed for the f reeway. Joe shot at least six of them, and they flailed around like chickens that had just been beheaded before they died. Local law enforcement and the SPCA blasted Joe for his recklessness, but a grand jury declined to indict him on animal cruelty charges. Tragedy struck again in December 2001, when Rhyne passed away f rom a deadly infection. His funeral was held at the zoo. Within a year, Joe had a new lover and life partner, a 24-year-old named
J. C. Hartpence. Aided by Hartpence’s experience as an event producer, Joe developed a traveling animal and magic show where kids could pet tiger cubs while learning about conservation. He used stage names like “Aarron Alex,” “Cody Ryan,” and “Joe Exotic,” performing in malls and at fairs across Texas and Oklahoma and as far north as Green Bay, Wisconsin, where a newspaper ad described him as “Master Illusionist Joe Exotic.” Soon Joe needed more employees to help run the zoo and the road show. In the summer of 2003, he hired a nineteenyear-old named John Finlay. He moved in with Joe, and within a month they were in a relationship. By this point, Joe’s relationship with Hartpence was already breaking apart. Hartpence was addicted to drugs and alcohol and had become disillusioned with Joe’s intentions for the zoo. Hartpence wanted to see it become a rehab-and-release sanctuary, with large enclosures where the animals had room to roam. Joe, on the other hand, was increasingly buying new animals f rom breeders and breeding animals of his own for prof it. In mid-2003, Hartpence walked into the off ice and found a piece of paper on his desk. It was a printed color photograph of the zoo’s largest tiger, Goliath, menacingly baring his teeth over a big slab of meat. “J. C.’s remains” was typed in white letters over the picture. Attached was a Post-it note that read: “If you don’t get your shit together, this is gonna be your reality.” Hartpence recognized the handwriting as Joe’s. One night, Hartpence waited until Joe fell asleep, then pointed a loaded .45 and a .357 Magnum at his partner’s head. Joe woke up to the click of the guns cocking. “I want out,” Hartpence told him. “Are we clear?” Joe talked Hartpence into putting down his guns, then he called the police. Hartpence was arrested at the zoo and never returned. As Joe’s zoo grew and his traveling show booked more events, he began to attract more scrutiny f rom animal rights groups and federal regulators. In July 2004, the Oklahoman published an article about a crippled lion cub named Angel that had been born at the zoo, a possible result of inbreeding. “No
Carole Baskins with a lion at her animal sanctuary, Big Cat Rescue.
2000
2011
2014
Joe Exotic opens his animal sanctuary, the Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Foundation Memorial Park.
Carole Baskin sues Joe for trademark infringement.
Joe loses the trademark infringement lawsuit, files for bankruptcy. He forms a new entity, the G. W. Interactive Zoological Foundation.
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2006 The U. S. Department of Agriculture suspends Joe’s license.
2013 Joe marries Travis Maldonado and John Finlay.
Mar. 2015 Joe’s alligator compound and TV stuido at the zoo explodes in fire.
legitimate animal sanctuary would allow that to happen,” said one activist quoted in the piece. It was Carole Baskin. In 2006 the U. S. Department of Agriculture suspended Joe’s license for two weeks and f ined him $25,000 for a long list of violations, including failing to provide adequate veterinary care and failing to remove feces f rom animal enclosures. Later that year, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals published a video showing what they alleged was mistreatment of the animals at Joe’s zoo and the animals that he used in the road show. PETA’s footage showed employees discussing irregular feeding schedules, swatting animals, and, in one case, striking a tiger with the butt of a rifle. The organization criticized the zoo for allegedly “churning out litters of tigers, lions, bears, and other exotic animals,” claiming that “some are deformed, likely because of inbreeding or inadequate nutrition for the mother during pregnancy.” Local and federal investigators arrived at the zoo to investigate the allegations, but ultimately no charges were f iled. By then the little 16-acre zoo had ballooned to hold more than one thousand animals (for comparison, the Dallas Zoo sits on 106 acres). There were more than a hundred tigers, plus lions, chimpanzees, leopards, baboons, alligators, and smaller reptiles. In 2001 the zoo reported total revenue of $117,022. By 2006 that number had grown to $539,320, the vast majority f rom donations. Alongside the growth of his nonprof it zoo, Joe expanded his for-prof it ventures. In the zoo’s gift shop, he sold Joe Exotic–branded skin care products, alcohol, and condoms. Later, he opened a bar two miles down the road f rom the zoo called Safari Bar and then a pizza joint named Zooters. He was building a brand.
“If you think for one minute I was nuts before,
I AM THE MOST DANGEROUS EXOTIC ANIMAL OWNER on this planet right now.” -Joe Exotic, 2012
MORE THAN A THOUSAND MILES f rom Joe’s zoo, in Tampa, Florida, animal rights activist Carole Baskin was increasingly paying attention to Joe’s exploits. Baskin was born at Lackland Air Force Base, in San Antonio. Raised in Florida, she had hoped to be a veterinarian someday. In 1991 she married Don Lewis, a wealthy real estate
investor. The next year, Lewis bought her a bobcat named Windsong. Baskin and her husband had saved it f rom an animal auction, where one bidder told Baskin he planned to club the cat over the head and stuff it. Baskin and her husband quickly realized Windsong needed a playmate or else she would tear apart their home. They found a man in Minnesota who agreed to sell them a second bobcat. Baskin was horrif ied when they arrived and discovered a metal shed full of bobcats being bred and slaughtered for their fur. She and Lewis bought every cat they could take back with them, 56 in all. Baskin and Lewis continued to buy exotic cats that were destined for death at the hands of fur traders—28 more in 1994, 22 in 1995. They acquired forty acres of land and built Big Cat Rescue, a sanctuary that, much like Joe’s zoo, continued to grow as people who owned big cats became disenchanted with the animals they had bought. As Baskin’s reputation grew, she became inundated with calls and emails f rom people asking if certain sanctuaries were legitimate or not and wondering where they should donate their animals. She eventually started a website where she compiled detailed reports on private zoos and sanctuaries. She called it 911AnimalAbuse. com. Its tagline: “Find out who the bad guys really are.” Baskin had a controversial background of her own. Lewis, her husband, disappeared in 1997 and was never found. Baskin was not a suspect in Lewis’s disappearance, but she was accused in the media by Lewis’s children, amid a dispute over his estate. An article in People suggested she might have fed Lewis’s remains to the tigers—an unfounded theory that would repeatedly be propagated by Baskin’s growing list of enemies. Many exotic animal owners and private zoo operators despised Baskin for tracking their USDA violations and alleged mistreatment of animals. She f requently faced retaliation. She once opened her mailbox to f ind it teeming with snakes. On another occasion, after a tense Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission hearing about feral cats, she was physically attacked in the parking lot.
June 2015
Oct. 2017
2018
Joe Meets Jeff Lowe. Lowe offers to put the zoo in his name to ensure it never goes to Baskin.
Maldonado commits suicide at Joe’s zoo. Joe begins to lose his drive to run the zoo.
Joe is arrested in Gulf Breeze.
Feb. 2017 An employee at Joe’s zoo overhears him talking about hiring a hitman to kill Baskin.
Oct. 2017
2020
Joe selects five aging tigers and kills them with a shotgun in order to make cage space for incoming animals.
Joe is convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison.
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THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT (ESA) Established in 1973, this act was put into place by Nixon to protect and recover imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which they depend. It recognized that our rich natural heritage is of “esthetic, ecological, educational, recreational, and scientific value to our Nation and its people.”
The ESA protects both:
&animals
plants
1438
endangered species in the U.S.
Aquatic Life 7%
Mam mals 5%
Birds 19%
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Insects 3%
Plants 65%
Nevertheless, she regularly searched for online news articles about traveling exotic animal acts and private roadside zoos like Joe’s and would write in the comment sections about why she believed what they were doing—breeding animals so that people could pay to pet the cubs—was wrong. In 2010 she realized she was often reading about the same traveling act— Joe Exotic’s, under his various stage names. She mobilized her growing list of followers to email the malls Joe had booked, to warn them about what she believed was his unethical behavior. Then she began to receive concerning phone calls and emails. People were asking her why her sanctuary was sponsoring traveling road shows that allowed cub petting—something it didn’t do. Baskin soon realized what was happening: Joe had begun using the Big Cat Rescue name and logo to advertise his shows. In January 2011 she sued him in federal court for trademark inf ringement. As the court battle dragged on that year, Joe—who had begun to refer to himself as the Tiger King—started posting f requent tirades about Baskin online. Joe had built a television studio at his zoo and had been regularly broadcasting episodes of Joe Exotic TV on a website he created. On Christmas Day in 2011, Joe left a comment beneath an article about the zoo by a local news station in Oklahoma: “Dear Carole Baskin,” he began, “You should watch my show this tuesday as it is going to be about your back yard zoo, [and] why you have not found your husbands body . . . The next time you step foot in my business, you better run and hide real far and fast, and this is a promise to you for Christmas. You want to take this BS to the next level, lets play. See if your up to it . . . You dont know just how crazy I can be.”
TRAVIS MALDONADO ARRIVED at Joe’s zoo in December 2013. He had struggled with meth addiction back home in California, and one of Joe’s employees suggested he take Maldonado in, thinking that working around animals would help him recover. Joe took a liking to Maldonado right away, and less than a month later, he, Maldonado, and Finlay were wedded in a three-way ceremony in a dance hall across the street f rom the zoo. The ceremony was zoo-themed. The cake was orange with black tiger stripes, decorated with miniature chocolate cowboy boots and crocodiles made out of butterscotch. Some of the “flower girls” were monkeys. The ring bearer was a Celebes crested macaque. The three men wore pink button-down shirts and black pants. A candle near the altar was lit in memory of Garold. The wedding was a high point in what otherwise turned out to be a tough year for Joe. For one thing, his relationship with Finlay soon began to fall apart. Finlay felt that Joe had become manipulative and controlling. And the park dominated their lives; they rarely left it for anything that wasn’t work-related. Joe had also become obsessed with his web TV episodes gaining more views, and he relied on increasingly wild stunts to drum up excitement. Finlay had seen enough and was ready to leave. It was a messy breakup. On August 18, 2014, Finlay attacked Joe in the back parking lot. He was arrested and charged with assault and battery. Worse than losing another lover, Joe had lost the copyright inf ringement lawsuit f iled by Baskin, and as a result he owed her $1 million. He f iled for bankruptcy, dissolved the Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Foundation Memorial Park, which was registered under his name, and had his associates form a new entity, called the G. W. Interactive Zoological Foundation, which temporarily kept the park safe f rom Baskin’s collection efforts. Meanwhile, Joe had become increasingly paranoid that animal rights groups were sending spies to the zoo. He repeatedly posted social media photos and videos of himself f iring weapons and toying with explosives, warning animal rights activists, “Don’t fuck with me.” He also f requently addressed Baskin f rom his TV studio at the zoo. “For Carole and all of her f riends that are watching out there, if you think for one minute I was nuts before, I am the most dangerous exotic animal owner on this planet right now,” Joe had said in 2012. “And before you bring me down, it
is my belief that you will stop breathing. Got that?” During another episode, in February 2014, Joe brought out a blow-up doll with a blond wig, apparently a crude rendering of Baskin. “You wanna know why Carole Baskin better never, ever, ever see me face-to-face ever, ever, ever again?” Joe asked, before suddenly raising a pistol to the doll’s head and pulling the trigger. There was a loud bang, and the doll keeled over. “That is how sick and tired of this shit I am,” Joe said. “Have a great night, ladies and gentlemen, and I will see you tomorrow night.”
ON MARCH 26, 2015, the alligator compound at the zoo exploded in f ire. All of the alligators but one were boiled alive. Also lost in the blaze, according to Joe, was his TV studio. Local investigators speculated that the f ire was the result of arson. No one was ever arrested, but Joe claimed animal rights activists “targeted the studio to shut me up.” By then, Joe had been moving toward a settlement that would have ended Baskin’s continuing litigation to collect the $1 million judgment. After a ten-hourlong mediation hearing in downtown Oklahoma City, the parties reached an agreement: Joe would pay modest monthly payments toward the $1 million judgment. He would keep the zoo but could no longer offer cub petting and would stop breeding big cats. Baskin’s lawyers sent a draft of the agreement to Joe’s attorneys, thinking their legal saga was nearly over. Days went by, and they
heard no response f rom Joe or his attorneys. The mediator set up a conference call with Joe and his legal team on November 12, 2015, to see what was holding things up. An unfamiliar voice came over the line: “There is no deal. We’re not doing this deal.” Someone asked who was speaking. “Jeff Lowe,” the voice said. Joe f irst met Lowe around June 2015, when Lowe stopped by the zoo to buy a baby tiliger cub. Joe had marveled as Lowe pulled up in a Hummer towing a trailer that had once been owned by Evel Knievel; Lowe had once managed Evel’s son Robbie. He paid $7,500 cash for the tiliger and told Joe that he planned to open a sanctuary in Colorado. Lowe invited Joe and Maldonado to his house there in September of that year. (The law had changed and they’d legally wed; the trip was their honeymoon.) They went skydiving and hung around the pool. Joe was having health problems, and he had become increasingly worried about what would happen to the zoo if he died or could no longer manage it. According to Joe, Lowe offered to put the zoo in his name, to ensure it never went to Baskin. Joe agreed, believing he had found a wealthy benefactor. Lowe had his own shady history, though. In 2007 he was sued by the musician Prince for allegedly selling clothes with Prince’s trademarked symbol on them. The next year, Lowe pleaded guilty to federal mailf raud charges after he posed as an employee of a charity for domestic abuse victims to obtain $1 million worth of
Jef f Lowe and one of his white tigers. Lowe put the G. W. Interactive Zoological Foundation in his name during June of 2015.
merchandise that he later resold. Lowe moved to the zoo in Oklahoma and lived with Joe in the main house while waiting for his own residence to be built on the property. Within a few months, however, the relationship between the two men soured. Both men had strong personalities, and tensions were high now that they shared the same space and essentially co-owned the zoo. Meanwhile, Baskin’s continued attempts to collect on the $1 million judgment only agitated Joe more. Around the same time, a former Dallas strip club owner named James Garretson started spending time around the zoo. He had decided he wanted to open an exotic animal–themed bed-andbreakfast, so he purchased several tigers. According to Garretson, Joe asked him if he knew any hit men. (Garretson f igured Joe thought he was connected to the crime world because he sometimes brought around people with lots of tattoos.) Joe told him he wanted to have Baskin killed and said he could offer $10,000 for the job. Garretson dismissively told Joe that he’d look around, but he never did.
Joe Exotic’s mugshot taken after he was arrested in 2018.
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TRUE CRIM E TER MINOLOGY True crime intersects with different fields like law, medicine, and forensics — all of which have their own vocabularies that can be hard for people on the outside to decode. Before binging The Staircase or Making a Murderer, brush up on these important terms every true crime fan should be familiar with.
manslaughter man slaugh ter | noun definition:
A forensic ballistic expert examining and analyzing a bullet for striations.
ballistics
Manslaughter is the crime of killing a person without the intent, forethought, or reckless disregard for life that def ines murder. Manslaughter is a serious crime, though the punishment is typically less serve than that for murder. The specif ic circumstances considered to be manslaughter may vary by state.American law designates two types of manslaughter: voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary manslaughter is a criminal act that occurs when a person kills without premeditation, and after serious provocation. The act takes place when there has been adequate action that causes an ordinarily reasonable person to lose control and commit the crime in passion. It can also occur when a person kills another without malice, which means he did not have a prior intent to harm the victim, or to cause his death. The exact def inition of voluntary manslaughter varies by state, but in any jurisdiction, it is a very serious criminal offense. Involuntary manslaughter occurs when the perpetrator unintentionally kills another person when committing another crime, or when engaging in reckless behavior, with an indifference to human life, that caused the person’s death. In involuntary manslaughter, there is no intent to kill, no malice, even at the time the killing occurs. U.S. law also distinguishes between types of murder. First degree murder is def ined by the planning (premeditation) of the act, whereas second degree is considered a “crime of passion,” the accused killing out of emotional strain or impulse.
ba lli stics | noun definition: Forensic ballistics is the examination of evidence relating to f irearms at a crime scene, including the effects and behavior of projectiles and explosive devices. A forensic ballistics expert matches bullets, f ragments, and other evidence with the weapons of alleged suspects or others involved in a case. By examining unique striations, scratches left behind on the bullet and weapon, individual f ired rounds can be, but not always are, linked back to a specif ic weapon. Any f irearm collected during the course of an investigation could yield viable evidence if examined. In forensic f irearm examination specif ic evidence that can be recovered include weapon serial numbers and potentially f ingerprints left on the weapon’s surface. Experts may be asked to explain their f indings to a jury during criminal or civil trials.
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graphology graph ol o gy | noun definition: Graphology is the analysis of the physical characteristics and patterns of handwriting claiming to be able to identify the writer, indicating the psychological state at the time of writing, or evaluating personality characteristics. It is generally considered a pseudoscience. The term is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to forensic document examination, due to the fact that aspects of the latter dealing with the examination of handwritten documents are occasionally referred to as graphanalysis. Writing consists of three things: movement, spacing and form. A graphologist studies these variations as they occur in each of these aspects of writing, and attaches psychological interpretations to them. Expert graphologists can achieve a very high degree of accuracy.
lu minol lu mi nol | noun definition: Luminol is a chemical that exhibits chemiluminescence, with a blue glow, when mixed with an appropriate oxidizing agent. Luminol is a whiteto-pale-yellow crystalline solid that is soluble in most polar organic solvents, but insoluble in water. Crime scene investigators use luminol to f ind traces of blood, even if someone has cleaned or removed it. The investigator sprays a solution of luminol and the oxidant. The iron in blood catalyses the luminescence. The amount of catalyst necessary to cause the reaction is very small relative to the amount of luminol, allowing detection of even trace amounts of blood. The blue glow lasts for about 30 seconds per application. Detecting the glow requires a fairly dark room. Any glow detected may be documented by a long-exposure photograph.
O
HOW DOES IT WORK? When luminol is sprayed evenly across an area, trace amounts of an activating oxidant make the luminol emit a blue glow that can be seen in a darkened room. The glow only lasts about 30 seconds, but investigators can document the effect with a long-exposure photograph. Crime scene investigators must apply it evenly to avoid misleading results, as blood traces appear more concentrated in areas that receive more spray. The intensity of the glow does not indicate the amount of blood or other activator present, but only shows the distribution of trace amounts in the area.
CRIME SCENE CHEMISTRY
NH NH
NH 2
O
Luminol is synthesized in a two-step process, beginning with 3-nitrophthalic acid. First, hydrazine (N2H4) is heated with the 3-nitrophthalic acid in a high-boiling solvent such as triethylene glycol and glycerol. An acyl substitution condensation reaction occurs, with loss of water, forming 3-nitrophthalhydrazide. Reduction of the nitro group to an amino group with sodium dithionite (Na2S2O4), via a transient hydroxylamine intermediate, produces luminol. But 3-nitrophthalhydrazide itself has the glow.
brain fingerprinting brain fin ger print ing | noun definition: Brain f ingerprinting is relatively new (you might recognize it if you’ve watched Season 2 of Making a Murderer). The practice encompasses hooking a suspect up to a helmet that senses brain activity, then giving them details about the alleged crime that only the guilty party would know. The sensors are supposed to be able to tell whether they recognize what’s being described. Some research suggests the results may be more reliable even than a polygraph test. It’s not entirely clear, though, whether this method can be trusted.
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THE FINAL VERDICT: what could have happened in the Casey Anthony trial?i
On July 15, 2008, Caylee Anthony was reported missing by her grandmother. Caylee’s mother, Casey Anthony, lied to detectives, telling them Caylee had been kidnapped by a nanny on June 9 and that she had been trying to f ind her, too f rightened to alert the authorities. Casey was charged with f irst-degree murder in Oct. 2008 and pleaded not guilty. In Dec. of 2008, Caylee’s decomposed remains were found in a wooded area not far f rom the Anthony home. Casey went on trial f rom May to July of 2011. Here are all of the possible trial outcomes that Casey faced:
POSSIBLE VERDICTS • Caylee is dead.
• Caylee is dead.
• Caylee is dead.
• Jury believes Casey killed Caylee on purpose (using duct tape or chloroform).
• Jury believes Casey killed Caylee (using duct tape or chloroform).
• Jury believes Caylee died due to duct tape or chloroform, but Casey did not intend for the death to occur.
• Jury believes Casey premeditated the murder.
• No premeditation. Casey acted with imminent disregard for human life.
• Jury believes Caylee died due to Casey’s negligent act.
All three proven
Premeditation not proven
All three proven
Jury believes Casey killed her by accident
Jury believes using duct tape or chloroform caused Casey’s death
Jury is not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt duct tape or chloroform was cause of death
GUILTY
NOT GUILTY
GUILTY
NOT GUILTY
GUILTY
NOT GUILTY
FIRST DEGREE MURDER
SECOND DEGREE MURDER
death by legal injection or life sentence
maximum life in prison
MANSLAUGHTER
NOT GUILTY
maximum 15 years in prison
state did not prove that beyond a reasonable doubt that Casey caused Caylee’s death
Additional charges regardless of outcome of trial
Aggravated Manslaughter of a Child
GUILTY
NOT GUILTY
Additional prison sentence up to 30 years per count
Aggravated Child Abuse
GUILTY
NOT GUILTY
Additional prison sentence up to 15 years per count
False Information to Law Enforcement Regarding Missing Person
GUILTY
NOT GUILTY
Additional prison sentence up to 4 years per count
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED? On July 5, 2011, the jury found Casey Anthony not guilty of f irst-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter of a child, but guilty of four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to a law enforcement off icer. With credit for time served, she was released on July 17, 2011.