Serial killers that raped and tortured their victims (1 Viewer)

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ElizabethBathory

Hilf Siegen
  • SEXUAL PREDATORS
  • Serial Killer Andrew Urdiales

    The First Known Victim

    At approximately 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 18, 1986, a security guard making rounds at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif., spotted a figure lying on one of the student parking lots along the campus's western perimeter, according to the Orange County Weekly. It was dark, and at first he thought perhaps it was a mannequin that a student may have left there as a prank—the poorly-lit parking lot made it difficult to tell for sure. At first he simply drove past, but moments later, having second thoughts, he turned around and headed back to the nearly-deserted area where the whitish figure lay.
    Getting out of his car, the security guard noticed that the figure was lying on the pavement next to a Chevrolet Citation. As he approached it, however, he saw that it was lying in a pool of blood and suddenly realized that it wasn't a mannequin at all. It was the dead body of a young woman.

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    Robbin Brandley
    Two students on the way to their cars saw the grisly scene as well. They recognized the young woman as that of Robbin Brandley, 23, a communications major who had left a party in the fine-arts building just minutes earlier. There had been a music recital at which Brandley had volunteered as an usher, and the party had immediately followed the recital. Brandley had been wearing a long print dress with flower designs, but it had been pulled up above her stomach, revealing bikini underwear and knee-high stockings. A purse, later determined to be Brandley's, lay on the pavement nearby. The asphalt around her body was wet with her blood.

    Detective Michael Stephany of the Orange County Sheriff's Department was among the first law enforcement officials to arrive at the scene. Stephany observed immediately that Brandley had been stabbed numerous times, mostly in her neck, chest and back. He also noted that she had sustained cuts to her hands, which he theorized were defensive wounds. Other than Brandley's body and her blood, there was little evidence: no other DNA, fingerprints, hair, or clothing fibers were found at the crime scene for Stephany and his colleagues to work with. An autopsy would show that Brandley had been stabbed 41 times, but the brutal murder would remain a mystery for the next 11 year
  • July 1988 - April 1999



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    Julie McGhee
    On July 17, 1988, Julie McGhee, 29 and a prostitute, disappeared after being picked up by an unknown male in the Cathedral City area of Riverside County. Her remains, stripped of identification, were later found in a remote desert area. Identifying her body was made more difficult by the mutilation of her body by coyotes and possibly other animals. Cartridge cases for a .45-caliber handgun were found near McGhee's body. McGhee's slaying was initially investigated as a single, isolated homicide.

    Two months later, on September 25, 1988, another prostitute, Mary Ann Wells, 31, was picked up by someone in nearby San Diego County and driven to a deserted industrial complex within the City of San Diego. Her body was found later, shot once in the head. As in McGhee's death, a cartridge case was left behind at the scene of Wells' murder. A condom found at the scene had the Wells' DNA on it, as well as DNA from another person—believed to be the killer's—but the stranger's DNA did not immediately lead anywhere.

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    Mary Ann Wells
    By the time of the next slaying some seven months later, again in Riverside County, investigators began to see the links between the deaths. On April 16, 1989, another prostitute, Tammie Erwin, 20, was picked up and driven to a remote area near Palm Springs where she was shot three times and her body dumped. Again investigators found cartridge cases near the body.

    Investigators from Riverside and San Diego counties began comparing notes. They realized that they had a serial killer on their hands: ballistics tests showed that the cartridge cases from the McGhee, Wells, and Erwin murders scenes all matched. Each of the women had been killed with the same gun, but they lacked, at this point, both the weapon and a suspect to whom they could link it.

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    Tammie Erwin
    But there was no link between the prostitute shootings and the murder of Robbin Brandley. The victim contrasts were too great: Brandley wasn't a prostitute; she was a college student. Brandley also had not been shot; she had been repeatedly stabbed. For the next three and a half years there were no additional murders that police could attribute to the same killer
    *A Victim Who Survived



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    Jennifer Asbenson
    Jennifer Asbenson, 19, a nursing assistant in Palm Springs, worked the night shift at a home for disabled children. On September 27, 1992, according to Asbenson and CBS News, she went to a bus stop to catch the bus that would drop her near the children's home. She first went to a store to make a purchase, but when she returned she saw the last bus for the night leave without her. In a panic, she knew that she did not have a way to get to work. Moments later a man pulled up in a car and asked Asbenson if he could give her a ride. He did not seem threatening and, in fact, seemed like a Good Samaritan, so she accepted the ride. She said that she "didn't feel any sense of fear," and thought that he "was so nice and so charming." Although he made a few advances toward her, he dropped her off for work in time for her shift, which ran from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m.

    The man was waiting outside the children's home the next morning when Asbenson got off work. She told police, as well as reporters, that she was not frightened by the man, who said: "Let me give you a ride home." Her thoughts were that the man was not dangerous, and that if he had wanted to do something to her he could have done it the evening before. As a result, she accepted the ride—again.
    Once inside the car, however, things were much different this time. He put a knife to her throat, tied her hands behind her back and then drove her into the desert. When they arrived at the remote location, Asbenson's nightmare intensified. He cut off her shorts and bra, and shoved her underwear into her mouth. Afterward he forced her to perform sexual acts, and tried to rape her. He then strangled her until she passed out. When she regained consciousness he opened the car door and told her to get out, but held her back by yanking on her hair. He then forced her into the car's trunk and drove off.
    Convinced that she was going to die, Asbenson desperately searched for the trunk's release mechanism. When she found it, she waited for what seemed the right moment and jumped out onto the road. After several cars would not stop for her, she stood in the road in front of a Marine truck and forced it to stop. When her abductor saw the two Marines helping her, he fled, she said. The Marines drove her to safety and she reported her terrifying ordeal to the police.


    To Kill and Kill Again


    Two and a half years later, on March 11, 1995, again in the Palm Springs area, the elusive and as yet unidentified serial killer claimed yet another victim. Denise Maney, 32, a Riverside County prostitute, was picked up from a street and driven to a remote desert area. According to police and court records, Maney disrobed, after which the killer tied her hands behind her back. After sexually assaulting Maney, the killer placed a .45-caliber gun in her mouth and "blew the back of her head off." Following his modus operandi, the killer took her clothes with him and left her body in the desert.

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    Denise Maney (left) and Laura Uylaki




    On April 14, 1996, halfway across the nation, a Cook County, Ill., prostitute was picked up off a street and driven to the Wolf Lake area straddling the Hammond, Ind., and Chicago border. Sometime during the ordeal Laura Uylaki was shot twice in the head with a .38-caliber revolver, and afterward her killer threw her nude body into Wolf Lake where it was later found on the Chicago side of the lake. Police theorized that the killer had taken the victim's clothing and other items to hamper their efforts in identifying her. However, police in Illinois did not connect the murder with those in California.
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    Cassandra Corum (left) and Lynn Huber

    Three months later, the killer struck again, also in Illinois. On July 14, 1996, the nude body of Cassandra "Cassie" Corum, 21, another prostitute, was found floating in the Vermillion River in Livingston County, Ill., near the town of Pontiac. Duct tape had been placed over her mouth, and she had shot been once in the head. An autopsy later showed that she had also been stabbed seven times in the chest and head. Her wrists had been handcuffed, and duct tape had also been used to bind her ankles. Corum had disappeared from a bar in Hammond, Ind., after conversing with a man, and had left with him after getting into his pickup truck.
    The following month, on August 2, 1996, the nude body of Lynn Huber, 22, of Chicago, was found floating in Wolf Lake, only a few yards from where Laura Uylaki's body had been found in the spring. Like most of the other victims, Huber had been a prostitute, and the killer had left none of the victim's clothing or identification near the murder scene.


    A Lucky Break


    On November 14, 1996, Hammond, Indiana patrol officer Warren Fryer stopped a man driving a pickup truck after observing that the driver was parked outside a suspected crack house on the 800 block of Becker Street with a prostitute known to the police. As a precaution, Fryer called for backup and waited for additional police to arrive before moving on the suspicious person. When officers approached the pickup, according to Fryer, the driver, Andrew Urdiales, 31, was "cooperative." As Fryer spoke with him and Urdiales explained that he had served in the Marines, he noticed a revolver inside the pickup and loudly yelled, "Gun!" to his fellow officers.

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    Andrew Urdiales
    The revolver, retrieved by another officer, was a snub-nosed, chrome-plated .38 special, and the officer noted that it was fully loaded with six bullets. Since Urdiales did not have a permit for the gun, he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and the revolver was confiscated.

    As the pickup was being prepared to be towed, Fryer and the other officers noticed that the vehicle, inside and out, was "spotlessly clean." Fryer also noted that the truck bed and the cab "were as clean as you would wash the outside of your car...as if they had come out of the showroom." Rolls of duct tape were also found inside the vehicle.
    Urdiales was soon released on the concealed weapon charge, but was later convicted of a misdemeanor for the unauthorized possession of a handgun.

    April 1, 1997—Another Lucky Break


    On April 1, 1997, Officer Fryer received a call about a man and a woman fighting at a motel, then known as the American Inn, at 4000 Calumet Avenue in Hammond. According to police, Urdiales told an officer that the woman, a prostitute, had stolen something from him. The prostitute, however, also known to the police, told Fryer that Urdiales was "kind of kinky" and that the altercation arose because Urdiales had wanted to take the woman to Wolf Lake, handcuff her in the back of his pickup and have sex with her. Fryer told the prostitute, "Geez...don't do that. We're finding girls up there dead."

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    Fryer wrote a police report about the incident and filed it, but did not arrest Urdiales or the woman. Instead, he later ran a computer check on Urdiales that encompassed known infractions involving him in Hammond, including the November 1996 incident involving the unauthorized possession of a handgun. Fryer then wrote a supplemental report that included all of the information he knew about Urdiales to date, and forwarded it to the detective division. Because Fryer had made the Wolf Lake connection to the murdered prostitutes, copies of the reports were in turn forwarded to homicide detectives with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) with the hope that the information might be useful to them. Following their review of the documents, CPD Detective Don McGrath asked Hammond police for Urdiales' confiscated revolver.
    Upon receipt of the weapon, McGrath took it to a gun expert. After a thorough examination, the ballistics test results showed that it was the same gun that had been used to kill Laura Uylaki, Cassandra Corum, and Lynn Huber. McGrath now knew for certain that he had a serial killer on his hands.

    Stakeout and Arrest


    On the morning of April 22, 1997, a Tuesday, McGrath and his partner, Detective Raymond Krakausky, began a stakeout in an alley near Urdiales' parents' home, where Urdiales had resided following his discharge from the Marine Corps years earlier. It was a working-class neighborhood where unassuming bungalows and duplexes line the streets, and where the murder suspect's parents had lived for more than 10 years. As luck would have it, McGrath and Krakausky did not have to wait very long. Urdiales came out at approximately 9 a.m., leaving for his job as a security guard at a downtown Chicago Eddie Bauer store. The two detectives walked up to Urdiales and told him that they needed to speak with him about the incident in November 1996 in which his gun had been confiscated. Urdiales politely told them that the case had been resolved, but the detectives insisted there was unfinished business regarding the .38-caliber revolver. After minimal hesitation, he agreed to accompany the two detectives to their offices.

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    Similar .38 Special
    At one point McGrath asked Urdiales where he had obtained the gun, and he told him that he had purchased it about five years earlier in Calumet City for $300. When asked if it had ever been out of his possession, he said that it had not and stated that it had been under his exclusive control until it had been confiscated by Hammond police officers. At another point during the questioning, McGrath indicated that he and his partner were investigating some unsolved crimes, shooting deaths to be precise, involving a .38-caliber gun, and showed him photos of Uylaki, Corum and Huber. At first Urdiales said that he did not recognize the three women, but when McGrath told him that the bullets used in their murders matched his gun, he paused for a moment and then responded that he guessed he would not be going to work that day. He took off his security badge, loosened his tie, and began untying his shoe laces. He then provided the detectives with details of his murders of Uylaki, Corum, and Huber. Without any additional prompting from the police, Urdiales also said that there were "some matters" that police in California "might be interested in." Up until that point, police in neither state had connected the earlier murders in California to those in Illinois.
    Laura Uylaki



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    Laura Uylaki
    Urdiales explained to McGrath and Krakausky that he had met Laura Uylaki sometime during the winter of 1996, and that they had gone out on dates a few times. He said that they'd had sex on two occasions at Wolf Lake, using a sleeping bag Urdiales said he kept in the in the back of the truck, according to court records. It had been in April 1996, he said, that he picked up Uylaki and they again went to Wolf Lake. Along the way, an argument broke out between them. When they arrived at Wolf Lake, Urdiales took his .38-caliber revolver, which was loaded, from beneath the driver's seat and was "showing it to Laura" when it went off and shot a hole in the roof of his pickup.

    "Laura got mad and all hell broke loose," Urdiales told the cops.
    Urdiales said that Uylaki had attempted to grab his gun, and had broken his left index finger during the struggle. Unable to gain control of the situation, Uylaki had jumped out of the truck and had tried to run away. Following her, Urdiales said, he had fired a couple of rounds in Uylaki's direction as he had chased her. After she fell to the ground, Urdiales had gone over to her and determined that she was dead. It had been then, he said, that he had made the decision to toss her body into the lake. Before throwing her body in the lake, Urdiales said, he had undressed her and taken her clothes with him. On the drive back to Chicago, he said, he had thrown the clothes out of the truck from the passenger side.

    Lynn Huber



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    Lynn Huber
    Urdiales then told the detectives about the murder of Lynn Huber, his seventh murder victim, whom he had met during the summer of 1996. Huber, he said, had been working as a prostitute in Chicago. As with Uylaki, Urdiales said that he and Huber had had sex on two occasions. On an evening in late July or early August 1996, Urdiales said that he had seen Huber carrying a large garbage bag, and that he had stopped and offered her a ride, and she had accepted. The detectives recalled that Huber's body had been found on August 2, 1996. As Urdiales continued with his account, he said that he had driven into an alley where he and Huber could have sex. He claimed she had begun arguing with him and started "acting kind of ditzy" before trying to get out of the truck. Urdiales said that he had grabbed her and had shot her in the head with the gun he kept under the driver's seat.

    After he'd killed her, Urdiales said, he had placed her body in the bed of the truck, and driven it to Wolf Lake. As he had removed Huber's clothing, he said, he had pricked his finger with a needle. He said that pricking his finger had made him angry, prompting him to take a knife and stab the body. He said that he had stabbed Huber "a lot of times" in the back, and afterward had shot her again. He then had taken her nude body and thrown it in the lake, and left with the garbage bag that Huber had been carrying. After he had examined its contents and discovered that it contained clothing, Urdiales had taken the clothes that Huber had been wearing, along with the clothing in the plastic bag, and given them all to the Salvation Army because Huber "won't need them anymore."
  • Cassandra Corum


    In describing what McGrath and Krakausky would conclude was their serial killer's eighth and final victim, Urdiales said that he had known Cassandra Corum for about two years before killing her on the night of July 13, 1996. After meeting each other at a bar in Hammond, Ind., the couple had driven to Wolf Lake to have sex. Her body had been found the next day floating in the lake.

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    Cassandra Corum
    At one point that evening, Urdiales said, Corum had said something that angered him—he couldn't remember what—resulting in him striking Corum in the face several times with his hand and fist. Urdiales' anger, the cops noted, seemed to be a recurring theme. Frightened by his violence, Corum panicked and had begun to fight back, which is what had prompted him to handcuff her hands behind her back. Urdiales had then removed her clothing, and described Corum as seeming "numb with anxiety and fear" and "passive and submissive." He had then bound her feet with duct tape and placed duct tape over her mouth. He said that he had been "still pissed off" about whatever Corum had said that had angered him as he was driving south on Interstate 55, with a terrified, bound and gagged naked woman lying on the front seat who was about to be killed.

    After driving for about two hours, Urdiales recalled, he had begun to get tired and decided to exit the interstate. He had continued driving, however, and eventually crossed a bridge that led to a small park where he had stopped and shut off the truck's engine. He said that he and Corum had gotten out of the truck and that he had grabbed his gun from beneath the seat on the way out. After walking to the back of the truck Corum, still naked, had turned to face Urdiales, as if she had planned to say something, when Urdiales shot her, according to court documents. After she had fallen to the ground, Urdiales said, he, still angry with Corum for the earlier altercation, had taken out his knife and stabbed her "a few times." Afterward, he had dropped her body into the river from the nearby bridge, and threw her clothing out of the window as he had driven toward home. As he explained, he had been "trained to kill in the Marine Corps," he claimed that he had not felt any sympathy for Cassie.
    "She was just a whore," he said.

    Loner


    Andrew Urdiales was described as a loner, and as someone who had difficulty engaging in small talk. He graduated from Thornbridge High School in Doloton, Ill., in 1982, and was given the graduating senior label of "social outcast." He had few friends, and joined the U.S. Marine Corps a short time after completing high school, and was stationed at Camp Pendleton and other locales in southern California over the next eight years.

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    Andrew Urdiales
    Urdiales also claimed to have fallen in love with a 15-year-old girl whom he had gotten pregnant. He said that marriage had been out of the question because he had been fearful of the girl's parents and what the Marine Corps might have done to him, in a judicial or disciplinary sense because of the girl's age. As a result, they had both agreed that the girl would get an abortion.

    "I loved her and still love her," Urdiales later told a psychiatry professor at Yale University. "But the law and the state of California and the righteous and the Marine Corps might not see it that way."
    Background information and testimony at trial later on showed significant evidence of mental illness on both sides of Urdiales' family, that he had been sexually abused by relatives, and that he had been physically and emotionally abused by his parents, according to court records.
    During his military service, Urdiales received several promotions but was later demoted when those under his leadership refused to obey his orders. Killing four women during his Southern California military service, he received an honorable discharge in 1991 and returned to Chicago to live with his parents. Urdiales returned to California in September 1992 for a short visit in which he attacked Jennifer Asbenson, but returned to Chicago again. In March 1995, while vacationing in Palm Springs, he took the life of Denise Maney, his fifth known California murder victim.

    Robbin Brandley



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    Robbin Brandley
    When Urdiales made his confession to the detectives, and led them through significant details of each of the killings, he claimed that college student Robbin Brandley was his first murder victim, according to court documents. Stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, Urdiales recounted, he had become upset regarding relationships with some of the people on the base and decided that he wanted to rob someone. He had armed himself with a "big old hunting knife," about 11 inches long, and driven to Saddleback College where he had waited in a darkened parking lot for a victim. He explained that the victim "could have been anybody," and that the victim he had chosen had been "just a random female." The victim had turned out to be Robbin Brandley.

    After he had seen her, he had crept up behind her and placed his hand over her mouth, demanding her purse. After she had given it to him, he had begun stabbing her in the back, he said. When she had fallen to the pavement, Urdiales began stabbing her in the chest. At one point the knife had become stuck in her ribs, and, in order for him to remove it, he had had to place his foot on her body to brace it while he struggled to extract the knife. When he had finished, Urdiales said, he had left the young woman there to die.
    With blood on his hands, jacket and jeans, Urdiales said, he had known he had to get back on the base undetected. He subsequently rubbed grease from his car's engine on his hands and clothes to conceal the blood, and told military police at the guard station at the base's entrance that his car had broken down and that he'd had to make repairs.
    Urdiales told the detectives that he had later picked up a prostitute in Hollywood, with whom he'd had sex, and that he was carrying the same knife that he'd used to kill Brandley. That prostitute, he said, "was lucky."

    Julie McGhee, Mary Ann Wells, and Tammie Erwin


    According to court records that detailed his confession to the two detectives, Urdiales said that he had killed Julie McGhee, 29, on July 17, 1988 in Cathedral City, Calif., near Palm Springs, and that she had been his second murder victim. He described how he had picked up McGhee in an area frequented by prostitutes, and had driven her to a remote construction site, out in the desert, where they had had sex. A short time later he had told McGhee to get out of his car, after which he had shot her in the head, he said. He claimed that he had not felt anything after committing the murder, and commented about how "quiet and peaceful" it had been in the desert where he had shot McGhee. Afterward, he said, he had driven to a bar where he had drunk "some beers and watched the girls dance."
    Two months later, on September 25, 1988, Urdiales said, he had picked up Mary Ann Wells and had driven her to an industrial area in San Diego where they had had sex. Afterward, he said, he had shot her in the head and taken back the $40 he had paid her, and had dumped her body in an alley where it was later found, along with the condom he had left behind.
    The following spring, on April 16, 1989, Urdiales said, he had picked up prostitute Tammie Erwin, with whom he'd had sex on at least one prior occasion, and had driven her to a vacant lot near Palm Springs where she performed oral sex on him. Urdiales said that he did not recall having argued with Erwin as he had argued with some of his other victims, but he did remember shooting her as she had stood outside his truck as he prepared to leave. He had been inside the pickup when he shot her, and, as she had stood there holding her head, he shot her a second time, which brought her to the ground. Before he had driven off, he said, he had shot her a third time

    The One Who Got Away


    In one part of his confession, Urdiales described for the detectives the ordeal through which he had put Jennifer Asbenson before deciding that he would attempt to kill her. He said that after having offered Asbenson a ride to work that fateful September evening in 1992, he had asked her for her telephone number, and she had given him one. Problem was, he said, it had been a "bum" number that wasn't hers: he had tried calling her after dropping her off at work. He had stewed about it during the night, and, while waiting for her to get off work so he could offer to take her to breakfast and give her a ride home, he said, he had begun "feeling upset about the number or something...something was just kind of building up, you know. Tension." He had remained, nonetheless, and made his offer, which she accepted,

    At one point while they were driving, Urdiales said, he had reached over and grabbed Asbenson by her hair and showed her a gun, after which she had become "pretty much submissive from that part forward." He forced her to turn around, called her a lot of unpleasant names, and tied her hands behind her back.

    "I think," he said, "before we started moving after I tied her hands up, I reached over and I kissed her. I just put my lips on her mouth and then I just started, you know, I was trying to make out with her."
    Urdiales, at another point, forced Asbenson to perform oral sex on him, according to court documents that depict many of Urdiales' statements to the police. However, Urdiales failed to attain an erection, both when he forced Asbenson—who feared for her life—to perform oral sex and when he attempted to rape her after cutting off her clothes and undergarments. Livid, Urdiales began to choke Asbenson.
    "She kept kicking and...her saliva was coming out of her mouth...her face was turning blue and then red," Urdiales said. "It was just a battle for awhile."
    After his hand had become tired from choking her, Urdiales said, he had forced Asbenson out of the car and threatened her so that she would make another oral sex attempt. Failing again in that regard, he said, he had forced Asbenson into the trunk of his car and had driven off. When Asbenson had escaped, he said, his first thought had been to shoot her, but he had driven away instead because of the presence of too many other vehicles on the roadway.
    "So that was the last time I saw her," Urdiales told the detectives. "I don't know if somebody else picked her up and finished [what] I started."
    However, in contrast to Urdiales' version of events, Asbenson testified in court that Urdiales had been successful in his attempt to rape her after cutting off her clotheS.

    Denise Maney


    Three years after the kidnapping, rape and attempted murder of Jennifer Asbenson, Urdiales returned to Palm Springs for a vacation in March 1995 and picked up prostitute Denise Maney in the same area where he had previously picked up McGhee and Erwin, according to court documents. Urdiales described how he had driven Maney into the desert, eventually turning off onto a deserted side road where he had stopped and ordered her to take off her clothes and perform oral sex on him. After getting "tired" of the oral sex, he said, he had grabbed Maney by her hair and forced her to go to the front of his car and lie face down on the ground. After tying her hands behind her back, he had forced her to perform fellatio again. Because he "wasn't really feeling satisfied," he had forced her onto her knees and abused her anally with his fingers, causing her to scream from the pain.

    "And that went on for awhile," he said. "I just kept doing that to her."

    Tiring of abusing Maney, Urdiales said, he had forced her to walk toward the desert. At one point they stopped, she turned around, and he forced the gun into her mouth.
    "And then it went off," he related. He said it blew off the back of Maney's head. "Then she fell and she was still...gurgling...making a lot of noises."
    Urdiales said he had gotten back in his car and started to drive away, but stopped and returned to where Maney lay dying.
    "I didn't really think," he said. "I just kind of like wiped clean my hand...and I stopped, turned around and I went back to her."
    By this time, he said, he had become "angry" and "very upset," and took out his knife. When he described his next actions, he began using both the singular pronoun "I" and the plural pronoun "we," prompting some people, including Robbin Brandley's relatives, to later question whether he may have been assisted by another person in carrying out his gruesome crimes.
    "We took the knife out and we went back toward...to where she was lying...we just started stabbing for some reason," he told the cops, according to court records. "Just on the body several times, in the chest maybe, stomach...I remember I made a slashing motion by the throat...then we went back to the car. And I—we—we picked up her clothes. Then we were driving, we just started driving."
    Wrap-up



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    Former Illinois Governor George Ryan
    Urdiales went to trial in Cook County, Ill., in 2002 for the murders of Laura Uylaki and Lynn Huber and was convicted of first-degree murder in both cases. He was sentenced to death. However, Governor George Ryan commuted all Illinois death sentences prior to leaving office in 2003, resulting in Urdiales being resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    In 2004, Urdiales was convicted of first-degree murder in the slaying of Cassandra Corum, and again received a death sentence. He is currently on death row in Illinois, but has appealed his death sentence. He will eventually be extradited to California to face charges in the murders of Robbin Brandley, Julie McGhee, Mary Ann Wells, Tammie Erwin, and Denise Maney after the evidentiary segment of his appeal in Illinois has concluded.
    In July 2009, under a state law that allows for multiple murders connected to one another to be prosecuted together, prosecutors in California agreed to consolidate the five California murder cases into one, with Senior Deputy District Attorney Howard Gundy of the Orange County District Attorney's Office prosecuting the case.
    Detective Don McGrath, testifying at Urdiales' sentencing for the murder of Corum, recalled that Urdiales had told him as he escorted Urdiales back to lock-up on one occasion that he was happy that he had been caught.
    "'Well, you know, I'm kind of glad in a way that you caught me,'" McGrath quoted Urdiales. "'I was starting to get the urge again.'"
 

ElizabethBathory

Hilf Siegen
  • Angel Maturino Resendiz: The Railroad Killer

    Terror Near Tracks

    One of the more romantic elements of American folklore has been the crisscrossing rail system of this country — steel rails carrying Americans to new territories across desert and mountain, through wheat fields and over great rivers. Carl Sandburg has flavored the mighty steam engine in elegant prose and Arlo Guthrie has made the roundhouse a sturdy emblem of America's commerce.
    But, even the most colorful dreams have their dark sides.
    For nearly two years, a killer literally followed Wheatfield America's railroad tracks to slay unsuspecting victims before disappearing back into the pre-lit dawn. His modus operandi was always the same — he struck near the rail lines he illegally rode, then stowed away on the next freight train to come his way. Always ahead of the law.
    Angel Maturino Resendiz, 39 years old, was apprehended early this month (July, 1999) after eluding state police for two years and slipping through a two-month FBI net until, after nine alleged murders, he was finally traced and captured by a determined Texas Ranger.
    Known, for apparent reasons, as "The Railroad Killer," Angel Resendiz (who was known throughout much of the manhunt by the alias Rafael Resendez-Ramirez) has been called "a man with a grudge," "confused," hostile" and "angry" by the police, the news media and psychiatrists. He is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who crossed the international border at will. Most of his crimes took place in central Texas, but he is suspected of having killed as far north as Kentucky and Illinois.

    1a.jpg

    Mugshot of Angel
    Resendez

    While he fits the mold of serial killers such as David Berkowitz and the Boston Strangler, Resendiz killed more meditatively for something he needed: alcohol, drugs, a place to hide out, though usually money. He raped, but "sex seemed almost secondary," according to former FBI profiler John Douglas. Douglas calls Resendiz "just a bungling crook ...very disorganized," but one whose own disorganization worked well for him. Because his trail was haphazard, because he himself didn't know where he was heading next, this directionless, drifting form of operation kept Resendiz inadvertently ever-the-more elusive. FBI special agent Don K. Clark says that the manhunt was complicated by the fact that Resendiz had "no permanent address" while continuing to travel unchecked "throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada."
    While his travels might best be described as spontaneous, and his slayings as combustive, that is not to say that the Railroad Killer didn't have his own particular signature. He pretty much followed a routine. For one, the murders all occurred "in close proximity to train track locations," to quote Clark.
    Late last month, in the heat of the intensive manhunt for the murderer, John Douglas described what appeared to be the killer's simple but deadly agenda:
    "When he hitches a ride on the freight train, he doesn't necessarily know where the train is going. But when he gets off, having background as a burglar, he's able to scope out the area, do a little surveillance, make sure he breaks into the right house where there won't be anyone to give him a run for his money. He can enter a home complete with cutting glass and reaching in and undoing the locks.
    "He'll look through the windows and see who's occupying it. The guy's only 5 foot-7, very small. In fact...the early weapons were primarily blunt-force trauma weapons, weapons of opportunity found at the scenes. He has to case them out, make sure he can put himself in a win-win situation."
    Where he came from, what spurred his crime spree, what kind of man was Resendiz —these will be examined in the succeeding chapters. For now, let's pause to examine his list of victims.
    The Killings
    Following is a list of the nine serial murders attributed to Resendiz:

    1b.jpg

    Christopher Maier
    • Victim 1: August 29, 1997/Lexington. Ky.: Christopher Maier, 21, a University of Kentucky student, and his girlfriend are attacked while walking along the tracks near the college. Maier is bludgeoned to death and she is raped and beaten, almost to the point of death. She miraculously survives.
    • Victim 2: October 4, 1998/Hughes Spring, Texas: On this cool Fall evening, 87-year-old Leafie Mason is hammered to death by a tire iron by someone who enters her home through a window. Her front door faces the Kansas City-Southern Rail Line tracks only 50 yards away.

    1c.jpg

    Dr. Claudia Benton
    • Victim 3: December 17, 1998/Houston, Texas: An invader breaks into the home of Dr. Claudia Benton, 39, of the Baylor College of Medicine, when she arrives home, the intruder rapes, stabs and bludgeons her repeatedly with a blunt instrument. Her home is near the rail lines that run through suburban West University Place. When the police recover her stolen Jeep Cherokee in San Antonio. TX, they find fingerprints on the steering column that match those of drifter Resendiz, a known illegal alien. Three weeks later, a county judge signs a warrant for Resendiz' arrest for burglary — but, strangely enough, not for murder. There is not enough evidence, says he!

    1d.jpg

    Rev. Norman Sirnic and wife Karen
    • Victims 4 & 5: May 2, 1999 Weimar, Texas: Late at night, the Reverend Norman J. "Skip" Sirnic, 46, and wife Karen, 47, are struck to death by a sledgehammer in the parsonage of the United Church of Christ — located adjacent to the town's railroad. The couple's red Mazda is found in San Antonio three weeks later. Forensic evidence matches the killing of Dr. Benton in Houston

    1e.jpg

    Noemi Dominguez
    • Victim 6: June 4, 1999: Houston, Texas: Schoolteacher Noemi Dominguez, 26, is clubbed to death in her apartment, located near rail tracks. Seven days later, troopers find Dominguez' 1993 white Honda Civic abandoned at the international bridge at Del Rio, Texas.

    1f.jpg

    Josephine Konvicka
    • Victim 7: June 4, 1999/Fayette County, Texas: Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Konvicka is killed in bed by a blow of a pointed garden tool to the head. She lived in a frame farmhouse not far from Weimar, where a month prior Rev. and Mrs. Simic were killed, and within shadows of a rail yard. Her car has been tampered with, but the killer is unable to find the keys.

    1g.jpg

    George Morber
    • Victims 8 & 9: June 15, 1999/Gorham, Ill.: An intruder breaks into a mobile home to kill its two occupants, After shooting George Morber, Sr.,80, in the head with a shotgun, he then clubs to death Morber's daughter, Carolyn Frederick, 52. Their house sits only 100 yards from the a railroad track. The next day, a passerby spots Fredericks' red pickup truck in Cairo, IL, sixty miles south of Gorham, being driven by a man matching Resendiz' description.

    1h.jpg

    Carolyn Frederick

    Most of Resendiz' victims were found covered with a blanket; none were of a tall or burly stature, for the killer himself is of a diminutive size and stature. But, he might well have been a giant for the terror he struck in the hearts of otherwise-relaxed communities. Citizens' emotions ran high in the towns where he killed; in the smaller ones, especially, people who had never locked their doors and windows at night were now bolting them. Children were ushered off the dusky streets by nervous parents, shops closed early, and moonlit strolls ended.
    Sentiments throughout pretty much echoed the words of Mayor Bernie Kosler of Weimar, the little Texas burgh where the Simics and Mrs. Konvicka were slain. "The stores around here," he said, "have sold out of pistols."

    Manhunt

    State and city law enforcement agencies did what little they could to find the will-o'-the-wisp maniac. Freight yard security was steeped up and hobos by the boxcar loads were hauled into local jails for positive identification and questioning. Sometimes freight trains were paused — to hell with time schedules! — and searched engine to caboose. Hispanics, even those who worked in the yards, complained to their bosses about the dirty looks they got from townspeople and what they felt was harassment from the police.
    Hangouts for transients became targets for raids; policemen marched through homeless shelters, blood centers and soup kitchens where men earning money as migrant workers were known to frequent. Loiterers about town were hustled into police stations for questioning, but quickly released when it was proven they were not Angel Resendiz.
    In June of 1999, the Federal Bureau of Investigation placed the Railroad Killer on its Top Ten Most Wanted list. The Bureau's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) compared the elements of the alleged Resendiz killings to come up with matches linking the same man to all of them. The FBI's initial reward of $50,000 for information leading to Resendiz' capture escalated within days to $125,000 as affected municipalities anted up.
    Wanted posters described Resendiz as 5'7" tall, weighing 140-150 pounds; black hair, brown eyes and dark complexion; scars on right ring finger, left arm and forehead; a snake tattoo on his left forearm and a flower tattoo on his left wrist; has been known to employ any one of dozens of aliases, social security numbers and birth dates (although the certified date seemed to be August 1, 1960); has worked as a day laborer, migrant worker or auto mechanic.
    In the meantime, Jackson County, IL officially charged Resendiz with the murder of the Gorham killings after his fingerprints are documented. Officials in Louisville, KY did likewise. Angry authorities in the latter city, where Christopher Maier became the first of the Railroad Killer's nine known victims, disseminated wallet-size photos of the murderer, urging citizens to notify the police immediately if they even think they have spotted him.
    On July 1, authorities in Fayette County, TX, identified DNA from Noemi Dominguez in Josephine Konvicka's home, indicating that after Resendiz killed the younger woman, he drove her car to other woman's home for more bloodletting.
    Don K. Clark, special agent in charge of the FBI's Houston office, coordinating the nationwide manhunt, called Resendiz "a very dangerous and violent person," explaining why the Mexican national and border jumper was placed on the infamous Top Ten list. "He's demonstrated he can use almost any kind of object to take a human life in a very violent manner and we've got to try to catch him." Two hundred agents, he said, were assigned round-the-clock assignments in locations where Resendiz was known to have struck and where he might strike next. Of course, areas of concentration included freight yards and rail depots. "We have the train tracks," Clark summarized.
    Agents soon received more than 1,000 phone tips from people who claimed they had either seen the fugitive, who knew the victims, or thought they might have something new or novel to add to the strategy of the manhunt or psychology of the fugitive. Most of the leads were blind, but some of them proved solid, as was the call that came in from vacationing acquaintances of Resendiz who spotted him in Louisville. This occurred about the same time that John Matilda, director of the Wayside Christian Mission in that city, advised the police that he, too, had seen the runaway.
    On July 7, the FBI felt they had made a good move in recruiting the help of Resendiz' common-law wife, Julietta Reyes, whom they brought into Houston from her hometown of Rodeo, Mexico, 250 miles below the border. "She would like to do everything she can to get (her husband) to turn himself in to the appropriate authorities," reported Clark.

    2a.jpg

    Julietta Reyes & daughter

    Surprisingly, Julietta turned over to the FBI 93 pieces of jewelry that she had been mailed to her from her husband abroad. She was sure they belonged to his victims. And she was on target. Relatives of Noemi Dominguez quickly identified thirteen of the pieces. As well, George Benton, husband of the murdered Claudia Benton, claimed several other pieces as her property.
    A Fatal Slip-Up
    For all the spent efficiency, Angel Resendiz continued to elude the law at every turn. John Douglas, who had been with the FBI for 25 years, rued the fact that, "the manhunt for the accused killer (had) been hampered by the lack of a coordinated computer system that would allow law enforcement officials to compare notes instantly and determine patterns."
    The lack of such a system proved to be more injurious to the manhunt than Douglas could have predicted at the time.
    On June 2, the Border Patrol apprehended Angel Resendiz near El Paso as he was attempting to cross the border illegally. While he was in its custody, the United States Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) performed a computer search on him, checking his fingerprints and photo against a possible fugitives list. Because the system failed to identify him as a wanted man, the INS deported him to Mexico.
    The slip-up proved to be much more than an embarrassment — it wound up to be a crucial blunder. After his release, Resendiz immediately found his way back into the States where, within 48 hours, he killed both Dominguez and Konvicka near Houston, then Morber and his daughter in Illinois. Four innocent people murdered over a computer glitch.
    "Our computers told us that he was nothing of lookout material," explained C.G. Almengor, a supervisor at the border. His words were too anti-climactic. "We really wish he had been in the system so we could have caught him."
    But, the error could not be totally blamed on modern technology. On July 1, a month after the mistake, a Justice Department representative admitted that the West University Place Police Department had notified the INS about Resendiz back in December right after the death of Dr. Benton, INS Commissioner Doris Meissner announced an internal investigation into the matter.

    Suspicious Angel

    The manhunt for Resendiz involved more than the physical knocking on locked doors and pacing through dusty freight yards. As with any manhunt the FBI conducts, a lot of time is spent getting to know the type of man or woman for whom it is searching. This includes studying the culprit's criminal background, social history and psychoses.
    Resendiz had a long record of criminal enterprises before the series of known murders began in 1997 "He probably started killing somewhere in his late 20s," remarks John Douglas, who as a former FBI agent, spent many hours pursuing other Resendezes (Resendiz was listed as Resendez-Ramirez on the wanted poster). "He may have killed people like himself initially — males, transients." Continuously being sent back to Mexico by U.S. deportation officers who found him in this country illegally, he "became angry at the population at large. What America represents here is this wealthy country where he keeps getting kicked out...(he) just can't make ends meet. Coupled with these feelings, these inadequacies, fueled by the fact that he's known to take alcohol, take drugs, lowers his inhibitions now to go out and kill."

    3a.jpg

    Angel Resendiz (aka
    Rafael Resendez-
    Ramirez)

    In the FBI's possession is a birth certificate listing Resendiz as having been born on August 1, 1960 in Izucar de Matomoros in the state of Puebla, Mexico. His mother, Virginia de Maturino, claims the real spelling of his surname is Recendis, not Resendiz, which he uses. She admits that her son spent his formative years not with her, but with another family that seemed to lack proper guidance. And homosexuals in Puebla may have sexually abused him, she says.
    Virtually an orphan, Resendiz roamed the streets as a child, without a real family role model. The FBI has identified a sister in Albuquerque, New Mexico and other relatives both south and north of the border. Relatives in the U.S. have migrated as far north as the Great Lakes and as far east as Vermont.
    Angel Resendiz first came to the attention of the U.S. Justice Department at age 16 when he was caught in Brownsville, TX, trying to cross the border from Mexico in 1976. "He was deported two months later," says the Dallas/Forth Worth Internet Service, "the first of...numerous run-ins with U.S. authorities." In 1988, he briefly lived in St. Louis where "he registered with a temporary agency and worked a half-day at a manufacturing company (and) voted in two elections under an assumed name".
    Resendiz' criminal life in the United States, as well as his ability to escape long-term punishment here, reads like a bad novel. After his first deportation in August 1976, he returned to the U.S. a month later where INS agents located him in Sterling Heights, MI., and yet again in October, this time in McAllen, Texas. Then he quieted for a spell.
    No one knows when he slipped back into this country, but in September of 1979, he was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for auto theft and assault in Miami, Florida. Luck on his side, he was paroled within six years and released onto Mexican soil.
    But, the drifter drifted quite actively. Over the next decade, Resendiz was
    • apprehended and tried in Texas for falsely claiming citizenship, for which he did an 18-month prison stint (1986);
    • was arrested for possessing a concealed weapon in New Orleans, receiving an 18-month sentence, but paroled after a year (1988);
    • earned a 30-month sentence for attempting to defraud Social Security in St. Louis (1988);
    • pleaded guilty to burglary charges in New Mexico, a crime that gained him an 18-month prison term, though again he was paroled after a year (1992); and
    • was apprehended in a Santa Fe rail yard for trespassing and carrying a firearm (1995).
    For the last infraction he was again deported. In fact, after every incarceration — and in between them — he was dumped across the border so many times that he resembled a boomerang.
    Two years after the last recorded deportation, he materialized in Kentucky to kill Christopher Maier.

    Surrender

    Sometime in early June, a young Texas Ranger by the name of Drew Carter conceived the notion that perhaps Resendiz' sister, Manuela, whom Resendiz is said to idolize, might be instrumental in affecting her brother's surrender. He contacted Manuela, who lived in Albuquerque, to assess the practicality of his plan. The woman, who feared that her brother might eventually be killed by the FBI, or might kill again in the meantime, promised Carter that she would do everything humanly possible to help.

    4a.jpg

    Drew Carter

    The FBI had traced Resendiz' whereabouts to Mexico where he had absconded not long after the double murder in Illinois. He was believed to be, at that point, hiding near the town of Ciudad Juarez.
    In his easy-going, unforced rapport with Manuela, Sgt. Carter explained that he was working with the FBI and legal prosecutors in Harris County (TX) to offer the fairest deal he could to her brother, the Railroad Killer, under the circumstances. If he surrendered himself, Carter told her, Resendiz would be assured of three things: 1) his personal safety while in jail; 2) regular visiting rights so that his wife, sister and others could visit him; and 3) a psychological evaluation. In effect, Carter's weeks-long relationship-building effort created solid steps toward working a miracle — that is, getting a serial killer to turn himself in."
    Carter, who had been a Texas Ranger less than a year, believed in being straightforward. Says he, "Honesty's never hard. Sincerity is something people sense. That's what I did. I was honest with the family."
    On Monday, July12, Manuela received a fax from the district attorney's office in Harris County, putting into writing the agreement that Carter had stated. The offer was then passed on to another relative who acted as emissary between his sister in Albuquerque and brother Angel in Mexico. That evening, word came from Ciudad Juarez that the Railroad Killer would, based on the Carter's word, surrender. The long-awaited moment was scheduled for 9 A.M. the following morning.
    Tuesday, July 13. Carter was there ahead of time, accompanied by Manuela and her pastor to act as spiritual guide. They met on a bridge connecting Zaragosa, Mexico, with El Paso.
    "When I saw that face there was a little bit of excitement there because I finally said, 'This is going to happen,'" Carter recalls. He watched Resendiz alight from the truck in dirty jeans and muddy boots. As he neared him, "He stuck out his hand, I stuck out my hand, and we shook hands."
    With the timidity of a true hero, Carter, who pulled off one of the greatest arrests in Texas Ranger history, refuses to take full credit for his coup; he cited the support of the FBI and other law enforcement and county representatives who helped establish the terms of agreement that convinced the dreaded Railroad Killer to cross that bridge.
    Whoever gets the credit, the event pleased many and brought relief, especially to the victims' families and friends. The Dallas/Fort Worth Internet Service reports, "Several hundred people in Weimar attended a ceremony to pray and give thanks for the suspect's capture. As the sun set and a train whistle blew in the background, residents of the South Texas town hugged and cried."
    But, sometimes anger dies hard. "I wish (Resendiz) the worst," says murder victim Josephine Konvicka's daughter. "He's destroyed so much of our lives."

    Incarceration

    Law enforcement officials remain perplexed as to why the Railroad Killer surrendered so freely to a state that has executed more people than any other. Surely, Resendiz must know that, if convicted of any of the murders in Texas, which seems very likely, he will face the death penalty. More so, prosecutors in Harris County — where on Thursday, July 22, he was indicted for the murder of Dr. Benton — hold the national record for sending murderers to the electric chair.
    Texas Ranger Carter's surrender agreement was very concise in detail. In no way was the verbiage misleading as to confuse Resendiz into believing he would be spared due punishment. One possible speculation for Resendiz' easy surrender was that he feared bounty hunters who, it was known, had gathered in Mexico to collect the reward.
    An editorial in The Dallas Morning News reads thus: "Mr. Resendiz faces a long legal process. Some questions surrounding the surrender itself need to be answered — why did he not merely 'lose himself' in Mexico? Or, given Mexico's policy against extraditing alleged murderers to the United States because of the death penalty here, why did he not simply surrender to Mexican authorities? Once those questions are answered, (his) surrender may turn out to be as interesting as the manhunt itself."
    In the meantime, his world of endless railroad tracks has constricted to a 60-square-foot cell at the maximum-security Harris County Jail. A cot, a toilet and a wash basin are his life's accessories. "Because of the high profile of the case, he's under administrative segregation...A deputy has constant visual observation of him," explains facility spokesperson Celeste Spaugh. Four murder charges are filed against him and he faces other possible charges in Kentucky and Illinois. Maybe, Florida, too. That state is in the process of comparing blood samplesfound in a 1997 Marion County murder — a body found beside rail tracks.
    Mexico Has Questions
    There may be a good reason why Angel Resendiz chose not to surrender to Mexican authorities. Perhaps, our neighbors south of the border want to talk to him, also, about some killings in Ciudad Juarez.
    "We are looking at the homicides we haven't cleared that appear to fit his method," states Steve Slater, an advisor to the Chihuahua State Public Safety Department...He has family in Juarez, including his mother. He's been through here a lot. We certainly have railroad tracks and bodies found by railroad tracks, and most are women."
    Before this case rounds out, Angel Maturino Resendiz may be shown to have taken part in any one of another 200 cases the FBI says fit his modus operandi. He may turn out to be one of the greatest — or perhaps a better word is infamous — serial killers of all time.
    In any event, the Railroad Killer will no longer be riding any box cars, so Arlo Guthrie may return to glorifying the wheat fields of America and the clack-clack-clack of the train riding mighty iron rails of folklore.

    Sentenced to Death

    Angel Maturino Resendiz has been found guilty of capital murder and today sits on death row in Livingston, Texas. All he has to look forward to is a lethal injection that will send him to God's judgment.
    Jury selection for what would eventually lead to the eight-day trial of the Railroad Killer began late March 1999, in Houston, Harris County. The latest chapter of the Resendiz drama began tumultuously with his refusal to play ball even with his own lawyers. First, he refused to be tested by a court-appointed psychiatrist (although he eventually conceded), and then he chose not to accept a change of venue despite his attorneys' claims that he might not get a fair trial in Houston.
    Even though Resendiz has been formally charged with the murders of seven people in total, he has only been tried and convicted of one of those killings, that of Dr. Claudia Benton, whom he slew in her home in 1998. Her body had been found a couple of weeks before Christmas, battered and broken. Several items stolen from Benton's home — including fragments of a steering column from Benton's Jeep — were later recovered by police in the house of Resendiz's girlfriend. As well, Resendiz's fingerprints were found in that same automobile
    Presiding over the trial was District Judge William Harmon; chief prosecutor for the state was County District Attorney John Holmes, Jr., assisted by Devon Anderson. Court-appointed defense lawyers Allen Tanner and Rudy Duarte, aware that the state's case against their client was air tight, fought to have Resendiz committed on insanity.
    The trial faced several postponements. One was caused by a delay in procuring the findings of several psychiatrists, to whose examinations Resendiz at first would not submit. Another was generated by the defense council's action to move the trial from Harris County to a place where, they felt, sentiment was less harsh against the headline-making serial killer.
    A segment of the motion read, "Publicity (here) has been inflammatory and unfair and has created such hostility towards the defendant, and prejudiced the opinions of members of the community to such a degree, that it is unlikely that a verdict can be solely reached on the evidence presented at the trial."
    That the court might have decided in favor of the motion was thwarted when the defendant himself refused to abide with the request. Opposed to a local trial in the outset, he changed his mind afterwards stating that he believed that no matter where he went the public mindset was already poisoned against him. Despite his attorneys' pleas, Resendiz would not consent.
    After the pre-trial upsets were finally settled, the session commenced to a packed courtroom on May 8, 1999. Judge Harmon issued a gag order that muzzled lawyers from talking freely to the press, but the explosion of emotions behind the courtroom doors was pyrotechnical. Over the next week, a jury equally divided by male and female members heard a series of witnesses from both sides.
    The thrust of the trial seemed to center on whether or not Resendiz was sane or insane when he committed his crimes, particularly the murder of Dr. Benton. The defense brought forth forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Cohen who diagnosed the defendant as schizophrenic. Cohen claimed that "(Resendiz) did not know his conduct was wrong." Because of a mental delusion that had him believing his victims were evil, said Cohen, "(the defendant) thought he was justified in his behaviors."
    However, a psychiatrist testifying in behalf of the prosecution presented an altogether different summary. Dr. Ramon Laval, while agreeing that Resendiz did have unhealthy views of women and of mankind in general, and suffered from misguided fixations, attested that Resendiz "knew what he was doing" when he murdered Dr. Benton and the others. With that, Prosecutor Holmes again reminded the jurors of the Railroad Killer's savagery unleashed upon his victims — and, before detailing Dr. Benton's murder, warned the court that it is "one of the most horrible that you will ever have the misfortune to hear."
    Of the twenty-plus witnesses for the prosecution, the last and most impacting was the 23-year-old girlfriend of victim Christopher Maier. Maier and she were attacked while strolling home from a function at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Raped, bludgeoned and left for dead, she recovered to identify Resendiz as the Railroad Killer. In court, she detailed the bloody assault, which took place on August 27, 1997, near local railway tracks.
    According to the witness, after Resendiz killed Maier and before he pummeled her, he sardonically told her, "You don't have to worry about him anymore."
    In closing arguments, the prosecution pointed to the heinous nature of Resendiz's crimes, the premeditative nature of each, the heartlessness displayed and, especially, to the inescapable evidence of his guilt: fingerprints, palm prints and, most damaging, DNA evidence collected from the scenes of the crime.
    With little weight in their favor, the defense team merely begged for the mercy of the jurors to spare the life of the murderer. Meekly, almost pathetically, attorney Rudy Duarte recalled to the jury, "(Our client) recognized he had a problem, and he turned himself in. That is something."
    The jurors felt no sympathy. On May 17, 1999, after 10 hours of deliberation, the panel pronounced Angel Maturino Resendiz guilty of first-degree, premeditated murder. Despite his lawyers' pleas, the Railroad Killer was sentenced to death.
    A half-hearted appeals process awash, Resendiz now awaits his fate in silence.
    George Benton cannot easily forgive his wife Claudia's murderer. "It's been hard," he confesses, and remembers the day he had to tell his daughters that their mother was killed in fury.
    One victim's mother summed up her life since the murder of her kin, including the terrible memories disinterred at the trial: "It was like watching a horror movie."
    Angel Maturino Resendiz was executed in Huntsville, Texas, on June 27, 2006, by lethal injection.




 

social outcast

karma can be expected
  • Angel Maturino Resendiz: The Railroad Killer

    Terror Near Tracks

    One of the more romantic elements of American folklore has been the crisscrossing rail system of this country — steel rails carrying Americans to new territories across desert and mountain, through wheat fields and over great rivers. Carl Sandburg has flavored the mighty steam engine in elegant prose and Arlo Guthrie has made the roundhouse a sturdy emblem of America's commerce.
    But, even the most colorful dreams have their dark sides.
    For nearly two years, a killer literally followed Wheatfield America's railroad tracks to slay unsuspecting victims before disappearing back into the pre-lit dawn. His modus operandi was always the same — he struck near the rail lines he illegally rode, then stowed away on the next freight train to come his way. Always ahead of the law.
    Angel Maturino Resendiz, 39 years old, was apprehended early this month (July, 1999) after eluding state police for two years and slipping through a two-month FBI net until, after nine alleged murders, he was finally traced and captured by a determined Texas Ranger.
    Known, for apparent reasons, as "The Railroad Killer," Angel Resendiz (who was known throughout much of the manhunt by the alias Rafael Resendez-Ramirez) has been called "a man with a grudge," "confused," hostile" and "angry" by the police, the news media and psychiatrists. He is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who crossed the international border at will. Most of his crimes took place in central Texas, but he is suspected of having killed as far north as Kentucky and Illinois.

    1a.jpg

    Mugshot of Angel
    Resendez

    While he fits the mold of serial killers such as David Berkowitz and the Boston Strangler, Resendiz killed more meditatively for something he needed: alcohol, drugs, a place to hide out, though usually money. He raped, but "sex seemed almost secondary," according to former FBI profiler John Douglas. Douglas calls Resendiz "just a bungling crook ...very disorganized," but one whose own disorganization worked well for him. Because his trail was haphazard, because he himself didn't know where he was heading next, this directionless, drifting form of operation kept Resendiz inadvertently ever-the-more elusive. FBI special agent Don K. Clark says that the manhunt was complicated by the fact that Resendiz had "no permanent address" while continuing to travel unchecked "throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada."
    While his travels might best be described as spontaneous, and his slayings as combustive, that is not to say that the Railroad Killer didn't have his own particular signature. He pretty much followed a routine. For one, the murders all occurred "in close proximity to train track locations," to quote Clark.
    Late last month, in the heat of the intensive manhunt for the murderer, John Douglas described what appeared to be the killer's simple but deadly agenda:
    "When he hitches a ride on the freight train, he doesn't necessarily know where the train is going. But when he gets off, having background as a burglar, he's able to scope out the area, do a little surveillance, make sure he breaks into the right house where there won't be anyone to give him a run for his money. He can enter a home complete with cutting glass and reaching in and undoing the locks.
    "He'll look through the windows and see who's occupying it. The guy's only 5 foot-7, very small. In fact...the early weapons were primarily blunt-force trauma weapons, weapons of opportunity found at the scenes. He has to case them out, make sure he can put himself in a win-win situation."
    Where he came from, what spurred his crime spree, what kind of man was Resendiz —these will be examined in the succeeding chapters. For now, let's pause to examine his list of victims.
    The Killings
    Following is a list of the nine serial murders attributed to Resendiz:

    1b.jpg

    Christopher Maier
    • Victim 1: August 29, 1997/Lexington. Ky.: Christopher Maier, 21, a University of Kentucky student, and his girlfriend are attacked while walking along the tracks near the college. Maier is bludgeoned to death and she is raped and beaten, almost to the point of death. She miraculously survives.
    • Victim 2: October 4, 1998/Hughes Spring, Texas: On this cool Fall evening, 87-year-old Leafie Mason is hammered to death by a tire iron by someone who enters her home through a window. Her front door faces the Kansas City-Southern Rail Line tracks only 50 yards away.

    1c.jpg

    Dr. Claudia Benton
    • Victim 3: December 17, 1998/Houston, Texas: An invader breaks into the home of Dr. Claudia Benton, 39, of the Baylor College of Medicine, when she arrives home, the intruder rapes, stabs and bludgeons her repeatedly with a blunt instrument. Her home is near the rail lines that run through suburban West University Place. When the police recover her stolen Jeep Cherokee in San Antonio. TX, they find fingerprints on the steering column that match those of drifter Resendiz, a known illegal alien. Three weeks later, a county judge signs a warrant for Resendiz' arrest for burglary — but, strangely enough, not for murder. There is not enough evidence, says he!

    1d.jpg

    Rev. Norman Sirnic and wife Karen
    • Victims 4 & 5: May 2, 1999 Weimar, Texas: Late at night, the Reverend Norman J. "Skip" Sirnic, 46, and wife Karen, 47, are struck to death by a sledgehammer in the parsonage of the United Church of Christ — located adjacent to the town's railroad. The couple's red Mazda is found in San Antonio three weeks later. Forensic evidence matches the killing of Dr. Benton in Houston

    1e.jpg

    Noemi Dominguez
    • Victim 6: June 4, 1999: Houston, Texas: Schoolteacher Noemi Dominguez, 26, is clubbed to death in her apartment, located near rail tracks. Seven days later, troopers find Dominguez' 1993 white Honda Civic abandoned at the international bridge at Del Rio, Texas.

    1f.jpg

    Josephine Konvicka
    • Victim 7: June 4, 1999/Fayette County, Texas: Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Konvicka is killed in bed by a blow of a pointed garden tool to the head. She lived in a frame farmhouse not far from Weimar, where a month prior Rev. and Mrs. Simic were killed, and within shadows of a rail yard. Her car has been tampered with, but the killer is unable to find the keys.

    1g.jpg

    George Morber
    • Victims 8 & 9: June 15, 1999/Gorham, Ill.: An intruder breaks into a mobile home to kill its two occupants, After shooting George Morber, Sr.,80, in the head with a shotgun, he then clubs to death Morber's daughter, Carolyn Frederick, 52. Their house sits only 100 yards from the a railroad track. The next day, a passerby spots Fredericks' red pickup truck in Cairo, IL, sixty miles south of Gorham, being driven by a man matching Resendiz' description.

    1h.jpg

    Carolyn Frederick

    Most of Resendiz' victims were found covered with a blanket; none were of a tall or burly stature, for the killer himself is of a diminutive size and stature. But, he might well have been a giant for the terror he struck in the hearts of otherwise-relaxed communities. Citizens' emotions ran high in the towns where he killed; in the smaller ones, especially, people who had never locked their doors and windows at night were now bolting them. Children were ushered off the dusky streets by nervous parents, shops closed early, and moonlit strolls ended.
    Sentiments throughout pretty much echoed the words of Mayor Bernie Kosler of Weimar, the little Texas burgh where the Simics and Mrs. Konvicka were slain. "The stores around here," he said, "have sold out of pistols."

    Manhunt

    State and city law enforcement agencies did what little they could to find the will-o'-the-wisp maniac. Freight yard security was steeped up and hobos by the boxcar loads were hauled into local jails for positive identification and questioning. Sometimes freight trains were paused — to hell with time schedules! — and searched engine to caboose. Hispanics, even those who worked in the yards, complained to their bosses about the dirty looks they got from townspeople and what they felt was harassment from the police.
    Hangouts for transients became targets for raids; policemen marched through homeless shelters, blood centers and soup kitchens where men earning money as migrant workers were known to frequent. Loiterers about town were hustled into police stations for questioning, but quickly released when it was proven they were not Angel Resendiz.
    In June of 1999, the Federal Bureau of Investigation placed the Railroad Killer on its Top Ten Most Wanted list. The Bureau's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) compared the elements of the alleged Resendiz killings to come up with matches linking the same man to all of them. The FBI's initial reward of $50,000 for information leading to Resendiz' capture escalated within days to $125,000 as affected municipalities anted up.
    Wanted posters described Resendiz as 5'7" tall, weighing 140-150 pounds; black hair, brown eyes and dark complexion; scars on right ring finger, left arm and forehead; a snake tattoo on his left forearm and a flower tattoo on his left wrist; has been known to employ any one of dozens of aliases, social security numbers and birth dates (although the certified date seemed to be August 1, 1960); has worked as a day laborer, migrant worker or auto mechanic.
    In the meantime, Jackson County, IL officially charged Resendiz with the murder of the Gorham killings after his fingerprints are documented. Officials in Louisville, KY did likewise. Angry authorities in the latter city, where Christopher Maier became the first of the Railroad Killer's nine known victims, disseminated wallet-size photos of the murderer, urging citizens to notify the police immediately if they even think they have spotted him.
    On July 1, authorities in Fayette County, TX, identified DNA from Noemi Dominguez in Josephine Konvicka's home, indicating that after Resendiz killed the younger woman, he drove her car to other woman's home for more bloodletting.
    Don K. Clark, special agent in charge of the FBI's Houston office, coordinating the nationwide manhunt, called Resendiz "a very dangerous and violent person," explaining why the Mexican national and border jumper was placed on the infamous Top Ten list. "He's demonstrated he can use almost any kind of object to take a human life in a very violent manner and we've got to try to catch him." Two hundred agents, he said, were assigned round-the-clock assignments in locations where Resendiz was known to have struck and where he might strike next. Of course, areas of concentration included freight yards and rail depots. "We have the train tracks," Clark summarized.
    Agents soon received more than 1,000 phone tips from people who claimed they had either seen the fugitive, who knew the victims, or thought they might have something new or novel to add to the strategy of the manhunt or psychology of the fugitive. Most of the leads were blind, but some of them proved solid, as was the call that came in from vacationing acquaintances of Resendiz who spotted him in Louisville. This occurred about the same time that John Matilda, director of the Wayside Christian Mission in that city, advised the police that he, too, had seen the runaway.
    On July 7, the FBI felt they had made a good move in recruiting the help of Resendiz' common-law wife, Julietta Reyes, whom they brought into Houston from her hometown of Rodeo, Mexico, 250 miles below the border. "She would like to do everything she can to get (her husband) to turn himself in to the appropriate authorities," reported Clark.

    2a.jpg

    Julietta Reyes & daughter

    Surprisingly, Julietta turned over to the FBI 93 pieces of jewelry that she had been mailed to her from her husband abroad. She was sure they belonged to his victims. And she was on target. Relatives of Noemi Dominguez quickly identified thirteen of the pieces. As well, George Benton, husband of the murdered Claudia Benton, claimed several other pieces as her property.
    A Fatal Slip-Up
    For all the spent efficiency, Angel Resendiz continued to elude the law at every turn. John Douglas, who had been with the FBI for 25 years, rued the fact that, "the manhunt for the accused killer (had) been hampered by the lack of a coordinated computer system that would allow law enforcement officials to compare notes instantly and determine patterns."
    The lack of such a system proved to be more injurious to the manhunt than Douglas could have predicted at the time.
    On June 2, the Border Patrol apprehended Angel Resendiz near El Paso as he was attempting to cross the border illegally. While he was in its custody, the United States Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) performed a computer search on him, checking his fingerprints and photo against a possible fugitives list. Because the system failed to identify him as a wanted man, the INS deported him to Mexico.
    The slip-up proved to be much more than an embarrassment — it wound up to be a crucial blunder. After his release, Resendiz immediately found his way back into the States where, within 48 hours, he killed both Dominguez and Konvicka near Houston, then Morber and his daughter in Illinois. Four innocent people murdered over a computer glitch.
    "Our computers told us that he was nothing of lookout material," explained C.G. Almengor, a supervisor at the border. His words were too anti-climactic. "We really wish he had been in the system so we could have caught him."
    But, the error could not be totally blamed on modern technology. On July 1, a month after the mistake, a Justice Department representative admitted that the West University Place Police Department had notified the INS about Resendiz back in December right after the death of Dr. Benton, INS Commissioner Doris Meissner announced an internal investigation into the matter.

    Suspicious Angel

    The manhunt for Resendiz involved more than the physical knocking on locked doors and pacing through dusty freight yards. As with any manhunt the FBI conducts, a lot of time is spent getting to know the type of man or woman for whom it is searching. This includes studying the culprit's criminal background, social history and psychoses.
    Resendiz had a long record of criminal enterprises before the series of known murders began in 1997 "He probably started killing somewhere in his late 20s," remarks John Douglas, who as a former FBI agent, spent many hours pursuing other Resendezes (Resendiz was listed as Resendez-Ramirez on the wanted poster). "He may have killed people like himself initially — males, transients." Continuously being sent back to Mexico by U.S. deportation officers who found him in this country illegally, he "became angry at the population at large. What America represents here is this wealthy country where he keeps getting kicked out...(he) just can't make ends meet. Coupled with these feelings, these inadequacies, fueled by the fact that he's known to take alcohol, take drugs, lowers his inhibitions now to go out and kill."

    3a.jpg

    Angel Resendiz (aka
    Rafael Resendez-
    Ramirez)

    In the FBI's possession is a birth certificate listing Resendiz as having been born on August 1, 1960 in Izucar de Matomoros in the state of Puebla, Mexico. His mother, Virginia de Maturino, claims the real spelling of his surname is Recendis, not Resendiz, which he uses. She admits that her son spent his formative years not with her, but with another family that seemed to lack proper guidance. And homosexuals in Puebla may have sexually abused him, she says.
    Virtually an orphan, Resendiz roamed the streets as a child, without a real family role model. The FBI has identified a sister in Albuquerque, New Mexico and other relatives both south and north of the border. Relatives in the U.S. have migrated as far north as the Great Lakes and as far east as Vermont.
    Angel Resendiz first came to the attention of the U.S. Justice Department at age 16 when he was caught in Brownsville, TX, trying to cross the border from Mexico in 1976. "He was deported two months later," says the Dallas/Forth Worth Internet Service, "the first of...numerous run-ins with U.S. authorities." In 1988, he briefly lived in St. Louis where "he registered with a temporary agency and worked a half-day at a manufacturing company (and) voted in two elections under an assumed name".
    Resendiz' criminal life in the United States, as well as his ability to escape long-term punishment here, reads like a bad novel. After his first deportation in August 1976, he returned to the U.S. a month later where INS agents located him in Sterling Heights, MI., and yet again in October, this time in McAllen, Texas. Then he quieted for a spell.
    No one knows when he slipped back into this country, but in September of 1979, he was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for auto theft and assault in Miami, Florida. Luck on his side, he was paroled within six years and released onto Mexican soil.
    But, the drifter drifted quite actively. Over the next decade, Resendiz was
    • apprehended and tried in Texas for falsely claiming citizenship, for which he did an 18-month prison stint (1986);
    • was arrested for possessing a concealed weapon in New Orleans, receiving an 18-month sentence, but paroled after a year (1988);
    • earned a 30-month sentence for attempting to defraud Social Security in St. Louis (1988);
    • pleaded guilty to burglary charges in New Mexico, a crime that gained him an 18-month prison term, though again he was paroled after a year (1992); and
    • was apprehended in a Santa Fe rail yard for trespassing and carrying a firearm (1995).
    For the last infraction he was again deported. In fact, after every incarceration — and in between them — he was dumped across the border so many times that he resembled a boomerang.
    Two years after the last recorded deportation, he materialized in Kentucky to kill Christopher Maier.

    Surrender

    Sometime in early June, a young Texas Ranger by the name of Drew Carter conceived the notion that perhaps Resendiz' sister, Manuela, whom Resendiz is said to idolize, might be instrumental in affecting her brother's surrender. He contacted Manuela, who lived in Albuquerque, to assess the practicality of his plan. The woman, who feared that her brother might eventually be killed by the FBI, or might kill again in the meantime, promised Carter that she would do everything humanly possible to help.

    4a.jpg

    Drew Carter

    The FBI had traced Resendiz' whereabouts to Mexico where he had absconded not long after the double murder in Illinois. He was believed to be, at that point, hiding near the town of Ciudad Juarez.
    In his easy-going, unforced rapport with Manuela, Sgt. Carter explained that he was working with the FBI and legal prosecutors in Harris County (TX) to offer the fairest deal he could to her brother, the Railroad Killer, under the circumstances. If he surrendered himself, Carter told her, Resendiz would be assured of three things: 1) his personal safety while in jail; 2) regular visiting rights so that his wife, sister and others could visit him; and 3) a psychological evaluation. In effect, Carter's weeks-long relationship-building effort created solid steps toward working a miracle — that is, getting a serial killer to turn himself in."
    Carter, who had been a Texas Ranger less than a year, believed in being straightforward. Says he, "Honesty's never hard. Sincerity is something people sense. That's what I did. I was honest with the family."
    On Monday, July12, Manuela received a fax from the district attorney's office in Harris County, putting into writing the agreement that Carter had stated. The offer was then passed on to another relative who acted as emissary between his sister in Albuquerque and brother Angel in Mexico. That evening, word came from Ciudad Juarez that the Railroad Killer would, based on the Carter's word, surrender. The long-awaited moment was scheduled for 9 A.M. the following morning.
    Tuesday, July 13. Carter was there ahead of time, accompanied by Manuela and her pastor to act as spiritual guide. They met on a bridge connecting Zaragosa, Mexico, with El Paso.
    "When I saw that face there was a little bit of excitement there because I finally said, 'This is going to happen,'" Carter recalls. He watched Resendiz alight from the truck in dirty jeans and muddy boots. As he neared him, "He stuck out his hand, I stuck out my hand, and we shook hands."
    With the timidity of a true hero, Carter, who pulled off one of the greatest arrests in Texas Ranger history, refuses to take full credit for his coup; he cited the support of the FBI and other law enforcement and county representatives who helped establish the terms of agreement that convinced the dreaded Railroad Killer to cross that bridge.
    Whoever gets the credit, the event pleased many and brought relief, especially to the victims' families and friends. The Dallas/Fort Worth Internet Service reports, "Several hundred people in Weimar attended a ceremony to pray and give thanks for the suspect's capture. As the sun set and a train whistle blew in the background, residents of the South Texas town hugged and cried."
    But, sometimes anger dies hard. "I wish (Resendiz) the worst," says murder victim Josephine Konvicka's daughter. "He's destroyed so much of our lives."

    Incarceration

    Law enforcement officials remain perplexed as to why the Railroad Killer surrendered so freely to a state that has executed more people than any other. Surely, Resendiz must know that, if convicted of any of the murders in Texas, which seems very likely, he will face the death penalty. More so, prosecutors in Harris County — where on Thursday, July 22, he was indicted for the murder of Dr. Benton — hold the national record for sending murderers to the electric chair.
    Texas Ranger Carter's surrender agreement was very concise in detail. In no way was the verbiage misleading as to confuse Resendiz into believing he would be spared due punishment. One possible speculation for Resendiz' easy surrender was that he feared bounty hunters who, it was known, had gathered in Mexico to collect the reward.
    An editorial in The Dallas Morning News reads thus: "Mr. Resendiz faces a long legal process. Some questions surrounding the surrender itself need to be answered — why did he not merely 'lose himself' in Mexico? Or, given Mexico's policy against extraditing alleged murderers to the United States because of the death penalty here, why did he not simply surrender to Mexican authorities? Once those questions are answered, (his) surrender may turn out to be as interesting as the manhunt itself."
    In the meantime, his world of endless railroad tracks has constricted to a 60-square-foot cell at the maximum-security Harris County Jail. A cot, a toilet and a wash basin are his life's accessories. "Because of the high profile of the case, he's under administrative segregation...A deputy has constant visual observation of him," explains facility spokesperson Celeste Spaugh. Four murder charges are filed against him and he faces other possible charges in Kentucky and Illinois. Maybe, Florida, too. That state is in the process of comparing blood samplesfound in a 1997 Marion County murder — a body found beside rail tracks.
    Mexico Has Questions
    There may be a good reason why Angel Resendiz chose not to surrender to Mexican authorities. Perhaps, our neighbors south of the border want to talk to him, also, about some killings in Ciudad Juarez.
    "We are looking at the homicides we haven't cleared that appear to fit his method," states Steve Slater, an advisor to the Chihuahua State Public Safety Department...He has family in Juarez, including his mother. He's been through here a lot. We certainly have railroad tracks and bodies found by railroad tracks, and most are women."
    Before this case rounds out, Angel Maturino Resendiz may be shown to have taken part in any one of another 200 cases the FBI says fit his modus operandi. He may turn out to be one of the greatest — or perhaps a better word is infamous — serial killers of all time.
    In any event, the Railroad Killer will no longer be riding any box cars, so Arlo Guthrie may return to glorifying the wheat fields of America and the clack-clack-clack of the train riding mighty iron rails of folklore.

    Sentenced to Death

    Angel Maturino Resendiz has been found guilty of capital murder and today sits on death row in Livingston, Texas. All he has to look forward to is a lethal injection that will send him to God's judgment.
    Jury selection for what would eventually lead to the eight-day trial of the Railroad Killer began late March 1999, in Houston, Harris County. The latest chapter of the Resendiz drama began tumultuously with his refusal to play ball even with his own lawyers. First, he refused to be tested by a court-appointed psychiatrist (although he eventually conceded), and then he chose not to accept a change of venue despite his attorneys' claims that he might not get a fair trial in Houston.
    Even though Resendiz has been formally charged with the murders of seven people in total, he has only been tried and convicted of one of those killings, that of Dr. Claudia Benton, whom he slew in her home in 1998. Her body had been found a couple of weeks before Christmas, battered and broken. Several items stolen from Benton's home — including fragments of a steering column from Benton's Jeep — were later recovered by police in the house of Resendiz's girlfriend. As well, Resendiz's fingerprints were found in that same automobile
    Presiding over the trial was District Judge William Harmon; chief prosecutor for the state was County District Attorney John Holmes, Jr., assisted by Devon Anderson. Court-appointed defense lawyers Allen Tanner and Rudy Duarte, aware that the state's case against their client was air tight, fought to have Resendiz committed on insanity.
    The trial faced several postponements. One was caused by a delay in procuring the findings of several psychiatrists, to whose examinations Resendiz at first would not submit. Another was generated by the defense council's action to move the trial from Harris County to a place where, they felt, sentiment was less harsh against the headline-making serial killer.
    A segment of the motion read, "Publicity (here) has been inflammatory and unfair and has created such hostility towards the defendant, and prejudiced the opinions of members of the community to such a degree, that it is unlikely that a verdict can be solely reached on the evidence presented at the trial."
    That the court might have decided in favor of the motion was thwarted when the defendant himself refused to abide with the request. Opposed to a local trial in the outset, he changed his mind afterwards stating that he believed that no matter where he went the public mindset was already poisoned against him. Despite his attorneys' pleas, Resendiz would not consent.
    After the pre-trial upsets were finally settled, the session commenced to a packed courtroom on May 8, 1999. Judge Harmon issued a gag order that muzzled lawyers from talking freely to the press, but the explosion of emotions behind the courtroom doors was pyrotechnical. Over the next week, a jury equally divided by male and female members heard a series of witnesses from both sides.
    The thrust of the trial seemed to center on whether or not Resendiz was sane or insane when he committed his crimes, particularly the murder of Dr. Benton. The defense brought forth forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Cohen who diagnosed the defendant as schizophrenic. Cohen claimed that "(Resendiz) did not know his conduct was wrong." Because of a mental delusion that had him believing his victims were evil, said Cohen, "(the defendant) thought he was justified in his behaviors."
    However, a psychiatrist testifying in behalf of the prosecution presented an altogether different summary. Dr. Ramon Laval, while agreeing that Resendiz did have unhealthy views of women and of mankind in general, and suffered from misguided fixations, attested that Resendiz "knew what he was doing" when he murdered Dr. Benton and the others. With that, Prosecutor Holmes again reminded the jurors of the Railroad Killer's savagery unleashed upon his victims — and, before detailing Dr. Benton's murder, warned the court that it is "one of the most horrible that you will ever have the misfortune to hear."
    Of the twenty-plus witnesses for the prosecution, the last and most impacting was the 23-year-old girlfriend of victim Christopher Maier. Maier and she were attacked while strolling home from a function at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Raped, bludgeoned and left for dead, she recovered to identify Resendiz as the Railroad Killer. In court, she detailed the bloody assault, which took place on August 27, 1997, near local railway tracks.
    According to the witness, after Resendiz killed Maier and before he pummeled her, he sardonically told her, "You don't have to worry about him anymore."
    In closing arguments, the prosecution pointed to the heinous nature of Resendiz's crimes, the premeditative nature of each, the heartlessness displayed and, especially, to the inescapable evidence of his guilt: fingerprints, palm prints and, most damaging, DNA evidence collected from the scenes of the crime.
    With little weight in their favor, the defense team merely begged for the mercy of the jurors to spare the life of the murderer. Meekly, almost pathetically, attorney Rudy Duarte recalled to the jury, "(Our client) recognized he had a problem, and he turned himself in. That is something."
    The jurors felt no sympathy. On May 17, 1999, after 10 hours of deliberation, the panel pronounced Angel Maturino Resendiz guilty of first-degree, premeditated murder. Despite his lawyers' pleas, the Railroad Killer was sentenced to death.
    A half-hearted appeals process awash, Resendiz now awaits his fate in silence.
    George Benton cannot easily forgive his wife Claudia's murderer. "It's been hard," he confesses, and remembers the day he had to tell his daughters that their mother was killed in fury.
    One victim's mother summed up her life since the murder of her kin, including the terrible memories disinterred at the trial: "It was like watching a horror movie."
    Angel Maturino Resendiz was executed in Huntsville, Texas, on June 27, 2006, by lethal injection.




I love happy endings.
Some of them looked like they needed killin'! Good post!
hey there, pops, you're wife doesn't read your posts on here, does she? you'd get slapped silly for making a remark like that IRL..amirite?
 

Victim13

victim13
Great post. The article is thorough although a little light-hearted considering the murderous little bastard's career they're describing. I never had looked at him closely before, though, so thanks.
 

Knight Mare

Rookie
  • SEXUAL PREDATORS
  • Serial Killer Andrew Urdiales

    The First Known Victim

    At approximately 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 18, 1986, a security guard making rounds at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif., spotted a figure lying on one of the student parking lots along the campus's western perimeter, according to the Orange County Weekly. It was dark, and at first he thought perhaps it was a mannequin that a student may have left there as a prank—the poorly-lit parking lot made it difficult to tell for sure. At first he simply drove past, but moments later, having second thoughts, he turned around and headed back to the nearly-deserted area where the whitish figure lay.
    Getting out of his car, the security guard noticed that the figure was lying on the pavement next to a Chevrolet Citation. As he approached it, however, he saw that it was lying in a pool of blood and suddenly realized that it wasn't a mannequin at all. It was the dead body of a young woman.

    robbin-brandley-vic.jpg

    Robbin Brandley
    Two students on the way to their cars saw the grisly scene as well. They recognized the young woman as that of Robbin Brandley, 23, a communications major who had left a party in the fine-arts building just minutes earlier. There had been a music recital at which Brandley had volunteered as an usher, and the party had immediately followed the recital. Brandley had been wearing a long print dress with flower designs, but it had been pulled up above her stomach, revealing bikini underwear and knee-high stockings. A purse, later determined to be Brandley's, lay on the pavement nearby. The asphalt around her body was wet with her blood.

    Detective Michael Stephany of the Orange County Sheriff's Department was among the first law enforcement officials to arrive at the scene. Stephany observed immediately that Brandley had been stabbed numerous times, mostly in her neck, chest and back. He also noted that she had sustained cuts to her hands, which he theorized were defensive wounds. Other than Brandley's body and her blood, there was little evidence: no other DNA, fingerprints, hair, or clothing fibers were found at the crime scene for Stephany and his colleagues to work with. An autopsy would show that Brandley had been stabbed 41 times, but the brutal murder would remain a mystery for the next 11 year
  • July 1988 - April 1999



    julie-mcghee.jpg

    Julie McGhee
    On July 17, 1988, Julie McGhee, 29 and a prostitute, disappeared after being picked up by an unknown male in the Cathedral City area of Riverside County. Her remains, stripped of identification, were later found in a remote desert area. Identifying her body was made more difficult by the mutilation of her body by coyotes and possibly other animals. Cartridge cases for a .45-caliber handgun were found near McGhee's body. McGhee's slaying was initially investigated as a single, isolated homicide.

    Two months later, on September 25, 1988, another prostitute, Mary Ann Wells, 31, was picked up by someone in nearby San Diego County and driven to a deserted industrial complex within the City of San Diego. Her body was found later, shot once in the head. As in McGhee's death, a cartridge case was left behind at the scene of Wells' murder. A condom found at the scene had the Wells' DNA on it, as well as DNA from another person—believed to be the killer's—but the stranger's DNA did not immediately lead anywhere.

    mary-ann-wells.jpg

    Mary Ann Wells
    By the time of the next slaying some seven months later, again in Riverside County, investigators began to see the links between the deaths. On April 16, 1989, another prostitute, Tammie Erwin, 20, was picked up and driven to a remote area near Palm Springs where she was shot three times and her body dumped. Again investigators found cartridge cases near the body.

    Investigators from Riverside and San Diego counties began comparing notes. They realized that they had a serial killer on their hands: ballistics tests showed that the cartridge cases from the McGhee, Wells, and Erwin murders scenes all matched. Each of the women had been killed with the same gun, but they lacked, at this point, both the weapon and a suspect to whom they could link it.

    tammy-erwin.jpg

    Tammie Erwin
    But there was no link between the prostitute shootings and the murder of Robbin Brandley. The victim contrasts were too great: Brandley wasn't a prostitute; she was a college student. Brandley also had not been shot; she had been repeatedly stabbed. For the next three and a half years there were no additional murders that police could attribute to the same killer
    *A Victim Who Survived



    jennifer-asbenson-vic.jpg

    Jennifer Asbenson
    Jennifer Asbenson, 19, a nursing assistant in Palm Springs, worked the night shift at a home for disabled children. On September 27, 1992, according to Asbenson and CBS News, she went to a bus stop to catch the bus that would drop her near the children's home. She first went to a store to make a purchase, but when she returned she saw the last bus for the night leave without her. In a panic, she knew that she did not have a way to get to work. Moments later a man pulled up in a car and asked Asbenson if he could give her a ride. He did not seem threatening and, in fact, seemed like a Good Samaritan, so she accepted the ride. She said that she "didn't feel any sense of fear," and thought that he "was so nice and so charming." Although he made a few advances toward her, he dropped her off for work in time for her shift, which ran from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m.

    The man was waiting outside the children's home the next morning when Asbenson got off work. She told police, as well as reporters, that she was not frightened by the man, who said: "Let me give you a ride home." Her thoughts were that the man was not dangerous, and that if he had wanted to do something to her he could have done it the evening before. As a result, she accepted the ride—again.
    Once inside the car, however, things were much different this time. He put a knife to her throat, tied her hands behind her back and then drove her into the desert. When they arrived at the remote location, Asbenson's nightmare intensified. He cut off her shorts and bra, and shoved her underwear into her mouth. Afterward he forced her to perform sexual acts, and tried to rape her. He then strangled her until she passed out. When she regained consciousness he opened the car door and told her to get out, but held her back by yanking on her hair. He then forced her into the car's trunk and drove off.
    Convinced that she was going to die, Asbenson desperately searched for the trunk's release mechanism. When she found it, she waited for what seemed the right moment and jumped out onto the road. After several cars would not stop for her, she stood in the road in front of a Marine truck and forced it to stop. When her abductor saw the two Marines helping her, he fled, she said. The Marines drove her to safety and she reported her terrifying ordeal to the police.


    To Kill and Kill Again


    Two and a half years later, on March 11, 1995, again in the Palm Springs area, the elusive and as yet unidentified serial killer claimed yet another victim. Denise Maney, 32, a Riverside County prostitute, was picked up from a street and driven to a remote desert area. According to police and court records, Maney disrobed, after which the killer tied her hands behind her back. After sexually assaulting Maney, the killer placed a .45-caliber gun in her mouth and "blew the back of her head off." Following his modus operandi, the killer took her clothes with him and left her body in the desert.

    maney(l)-uylaki(r)-.jpg

    Denise Maney (left) and Laura Uylaki




    On April 14, 1996, halfway across the nation, a Cook County, Ill., prostitute was picked up off a street and driven to the Wolf Lake area straddling the Hammond, Ind., and Chicago border. Sometime during the ordeal Laura Uylaki was shot twice in the head with a .38-caliber revolver, and afterward her killer threw her nude body into Wolf Lake where it was later found on the Chicago side of the lake. Police theorized that the killer had taken the victim's clothing and other items to hamper their efforts in identifying her. However, police in Illinois did not connect the murder with those in California.
    corum(l)-huber(r)-.jpg

    Cassandra Corum (left) and Lynn Huber

    Three months later, the killer struck again, also in Illinois. On July 14, 1996, the nude body of Cassandra "Cassie" Corum, 21, another prostitute, was found floating in the Vermillion River in Livingston County, Ill., near the town of Pontiac. Duct tape had been placed over her mouth, and she had shot been once in the head. An autopsy later showed that she had also been stabbed seven times in the chest and head. Her wrists had been handcuffed, and duct tape had also been used to bind her ankles. Corum had disappeared from a bar in Hammond, Ind., after conversing with a man, and had left with him after getting into his pickup truck.
    The following month, on August 2, 1996, the nude body of Lynn Huber, 22, of Chicago, was found floating in Wolf Lake, only a few yards from where Laura Uylaki's body had been found in the spring. Like most of the other victims, Huber had been a prostitute, and the killer had left none of the victim's clothing or identification near the murder scene.


    A Lucky Break


    On November 14, 1996, Hammond, Indiana patrol officer Warren Fryer stopped a man driving a pickup truck after observing that the driver was parked outside a suspected crack house on the 800 block of Becker Street with a prostitute known to the police. As a precaution, Fryer called for backup and waited for additional police to arrive before moving on the suspicious person. When officers approached the pickup, according to Fryer, the driver, Andrew Urdiales, 31, was "cooperative." As Fryer spoke with him and Urdiales explained that he had served in the Marines, he noticed a revolver inside the pickup and loudly yelled, "Gun!" to his fellow officers.

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    Andrew Urdiales
    The revolver, retrieved by another officer, was a snub-nosed, chrome-plated .38 special, and the officer noted that it was fully loaded with six bullets. Since Urdiales did not have a permit for the gun, he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and the revolver was confiscated.

    As the pickup was being prepared to be towed, Fryer and the other officers noticed that the vehicle, inside and out, was "spotlessly clean." Fryer also noted that the truck bed and the cab "were as clean as you would wash the outside of your car...as if they had come out of the showroom." Rolls of duct tape were also found inside the vehicle.
    Urdiales was soon released on the concealed weapon charge, but was later convicted of a misdemeanor for the unauthorized possession of a handgun.

    April 1, 1997—Another Lucky Break


    On April 1, 1997, Officer Fryer received a call about a man and a woman fighting at a motel, then known as the American Inn, at 4000 Calumet Avenue in Hammond. According to police, Urdiales told an officer that the woman, a prostitute, had stolen something from him. The prostitute, however, also known to the police, told Fryer that Urdiales was "kind of kinky" and that the altercation arose because Urdiales had wanted to take the woman to Wolf Lake, handcuff her in the back of his pickup and have sex with her. Fryer told the prostitute, "Geez...don't do that. We're finding girls up there dead."

    map-w-wolf-lake.jpg


    Fryer wrote a police report about the incident and filed it, but did not arrest Urdiales or the woman. Instead, he later ran a computer check on Urdiales that encompassed known infractions involving him in Hammond, including the November 1996 incident involving the unauthorized possession of a handgun. Fryer then wrote a supplemental report that included all of the information he knew about Urdiales to date, and forwarded it to the detective division. Because Fryer had made the Wolf Lake connection to the murdered prostitutes, copies of the reports were in turn forwarded to homicide detectives with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) with the hope that the information might be useful to them. Following their review of the documents, CPD Detective Don McGrath asked Hammond police for Urdiales' confiscated revolver.
    Upon receipt of the weapon, McGrath took it to a gun expert. After a thorough examination, the ballistics test results showed that it was the same gun that had been used to kill Laura Uylaki, Cassandra Corum, and Lynn Huber. McGrath now knew for certain that he had a serial killer on his hands.

    Stakeout and Arrest


    On the morning of April 22, 1997, a Tuesday, McGrath and his partner, Detective Raymond Krakausky, began a stakeout in an alley near Urdiales' parents' home, where Urdiales had resided following his discharge from the Marine Corps years earlier. It was a working-class neighborhood where unassuming bungalows and duplexes line the streets, and where the murder suspect's parents had lived for more than 10 years. As luck would have it, McGrath and Krakausky did not have to wait very long. Urdiales came out at approximately 9 a.m., leaving for his job as a security guard at a downtown Chicago Eddie Bauer store. The two detectives walked up to Urdiales and told him that they needed to speak with him about the incident in November 1996 in which his gun had been confiscated. Urdiales politely told them that the case had been resolved, but the detectives insisted there was unfinished business regarding the .38-caliber revolver. After minimal hesitation, he agreed to accompany the two detectives to their offices.

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    Similar .38 Special
    At one point McGrath asked Urdiales where he had obtained the gun, and he told him that he had purchased it about five years earlier in Calumet City for $300. When asked if it had ever been out of his possession, he said that it had not and stated that it had been under his exclusive control until it had been confiscated by Hammond police officers. At another point during the questioning, McGrath indicated that he and his partner were investigating some unsolved crimes, shooting deaths to be precise, involving a .38-caliber gun, and showed him photos of Uylaki, Corum and Huber. At first Urdiales said that he did not recognize the three women, but when McGrath told him that the bullets used in their murders matched his gun, he paused for a moment and then responded that he guessed he would not be going to work that day. He took off his security badge, loosened his tie, and began untying his shoe laces. He then provided the detectives with details of his murders of Uylaki, Corum, and Huber. Without any additional prompting from the police, Urdiales also said that there were "some matters" that police in California "might be interested in." Up until that point, police in neither state had connected the earlier murders in California to those in Illinois.
    Laura Uylaki



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    Laura Uylaki
    Urdiales explained to McGrath and Krakausky that he had met Laura Uylaki sometime during the winter of 1996, and that they had gone out on dates a few times. He said that they'd had sex on two occasions at Wolf Lake, using a sleeping bag Urdiales said he kept in the in the back of the truck, according to court records. It had been in April 1996, he said, that he picked up Uylaki and they again went to Wolf Lake. Along the way, an argument broke out between them. When they arrived at Wolf Lake, Urdiales took his .38-caliber revolver, which was loaded, from beneath the driver's seat and was "showing it to Laura" when it went off and shot a hole in the roof of his pickup.

    "Laura got mad and all hell broke loose," Urdiales told the cops.
    Urdiales said that Uylaki had attempted to grab his gun, and had broken his left index finger during the struggle. Unable to gain control of the situation, Uylaki had jumped out of the truck and had tried to run away. Following her, Urdiales said, he had fired a couple of rounds in Uylaki's direction as he had chased her. After she fell to the ground, Urdiales had gone over to her and determined that she was dead. It had been then, he said, that he had made the decision to toss her body into the lake. Before throwing her body in the lake, Urdiales said, he had undressed her and taken her clothes with him. On the drive back to Chicago, he said, he had thrown the clothes out of the truck from the passenger side.

    Lynn Huber



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    Lynn Huber
    Urdiales then told the detectives about the murder of Lynn Huber, his seventh murder victim, whom he had met during the summer of 1996. Huber, he said, had been working as a prostitute in Chicago. As with Uylaki, Urdiales said that he and Huber had had sex on two occasions. On an evening in late July or early August 1996, Urdiales said that he had seen Huber carrying a large garbage bag, and that he had stopped and offered her a ride, and she had accepted. The detectives recalled that Huber's body had been found on August 2, 1996. As Urdiales continued with his account, he said that he had driven into an alley where he and Huber could have sex. He claimed she had begun arguing with him and started "acting kind of ditzy" before trying to get out of the truck. Urdiales said that he had grabbed her and had shot her in the head with the gun he kept under the driver's seat.

    After he'd killed her, Urdiales said, he had placed her body in the bed of the truck, and driven it to Wolf Lake. As he had removed Huber's clothing, he said, he had pricked his finger with a needle. He said that pricking his finger had made him angry, prompting him to take a knife and stab the body. He said that he had stabbed Huber "a lot of times" in the back, and afterward had shot her again. He then had taken her nude body and thrown it in the lake, and left with the garbage bag that Huber had been carrying. After he had examined its contents and discovered that it contained clothing, Urdiales had taken the clothes that Huber had been wearing, along with the clothing in the plastic bag, and given them all to the Salvation Army because Huber "won't need them anymore."
  • Cassandra Corum


    In describing what McGrath and Krakausky would conclude was their serial killer's eighth and final victim, Urdiales said that he had known Cassandra Corum for about two years before killing her on the night of July 13, 1996. After meeting each other at a bar in Hammond, Ind., the couple had driven to Wolf Lake to have sex. Her body had been found the next day floating in the lake.

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    Cassandra Corum
    At one point that evening, Urdiales said, Corum had said something that angered him—he couldn't remember what—resulting in him striking Corum in the face several times with his hand and fist. Urdiales' anger, the cops noted, seemed to be a recurring theme. Frightened by his violence, Corum panicked and had begun to fight back, which is what had prompted him to handcuff her hands behind her back. Urdiales had then removed her clothing, and described Corum as seeming "numb with anxiety and fear" and "passive and submissive." He had then bound her feet with duct tape and placed duct tape over her mouth. He said that he had been "still pissed off" about whatever Corum had said that had angered him as he was driving south on Interstate 55, with a terrified, bound and gagged naked woman lying on the front seat who was about to be killed.

    After driving for about two hours, Urdiales recalled, he had begun to get tired and decided to exit the interstate. He had continued driving, however, and eventually crossed a bridge that led to a small park where he had stopped and shut off the truck's engine. He said that he and Corum had gotten out of the truck and that he had grabbed his gun from beneath the seat on the way out. After walking to the back of the truck Corum, still naked, had turned to face Urdiales, as if she had planned to say something, when Urdiales shot her, according to court documents. After she had fallen to the ground, Urdiales said, he, still angry with Corum for the earlier altercation, had taken out his knife and stabbed her "a few times." Afterward, he had dropped her body into the river from the nearby bridge, and threw her clothing out of the window as he had driven toward home. As he explained, he had been "trained to kill in the Marine Corps," he claimed that he had not felt any sympathy for Cassie.
    "She was just a whore," he said.

    Loner


    Andrew Urdiales was described as a loner, and as someone who had difficulty engaging in small talk. He graduated from Thornbridge High School in Doloton, Ill., in 1982, and was given the graduating senior label of "social outcast." He had few friends, and joined the U.S. Marine Corps a short time after completing high school, and was stationed at Camp Pendleton and other locales in southern California over the next eight years.

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    Andrew Urdiales
    Urdiales also claimed to have fallen in love with a 15-year-old girl whom he had gotten pregnant. He said that marriage had been out of the question because he had been fearful of the girl's parents and what the Marine Corps might have done to him, in a judicial or disciplinary sense because of the girl's age. As a result, they had both agreed that the girl would get an abortion.

    "I loved her and still love her," Urdiales later told a psychiatry professor at Yale University. "But the law and the state of California and the righteous and the Marine Corps might not see it that way."
    Background information and testimony at trial later on showed significant evidence of mental illness on both sides of Urdiales' family, that he had been sexually abused by relatives, and that he had been physically and emotionally abused by his parents, according to court records.
    During his military service, Urdiales received several promotions but was later demoted when those under his leadership refused to obey his orders. Killing four women during his Southern California military service, he received an honorable discharge in 1991 and returned to Chicago to live with his parents. Urdiales returned to California in September 1992 for a short visit in which he attacked Jennifer Asbenson, but returned to Chicago again. In March 1995, while vacationing in Palm Springs, he took the life of Denise Maney, his fifth known California murder victim.

    Robbin Brandley



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    Robbin Brandley
    When Urdiales made his confession to the detectives, and led them through significant details of each of the killings, he claimed that college student Robbin Brandley was his first murder victim, according to court documents. Stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, Urdiales recounted, he had become upset regarding relationships with some of the people on the base and decided that he wanted to rob someone. He had armed himself with a "big old hunting knife," about 11 inches long, and driven to Saddleback College where he had waited in a darkened parking lot for a victim. He explained that the victim "could have been anybody," and that the victim he had chosen had been "just a random female." The victim had turned out to be Robbin Brandley.

    After he had seen her, he had crept up behind her and placed his hand over her mouth, demanding her purse. After she had given it to him, he had begun stabbing her in the back, he said. When she had fallen to the pavement, Urdiales began stabbing her in the chest. At one point the knife had become stuck in her ribs, and, in order for him to remove it, he had had to place his foot on her body to brace it while he struggled to extract the knife. When he had finished, Urdiales said, he had left the young woman there to die.
    With blood on his hands, jacket and jeans, Urdiales said, he had known he had to get back on the base undetected. He subsequently rubbed grease from his car's engine on his hands and clothes to conceal the blood, and told military police at the guard station at the base's entrance that his car had broken down and that he'd had to make repairs.
    Urdiales told the detectives that he had later picked up a prostitute in Hollywood, with whom he'd had sex, and that he was carrying the same knife that he'd used to kill Brandley. That prostitute, he said, "was lucky."

    Julie McGhee, Mary Ann Wells, and Tammie Erwin


    According to court records that detailed his confession to the two detectives, Urdiales said that he had killed Julie McGhee, 29, on July 17, 1988 in Cathedral City, Calif., near Palm Springs, and that she had been his second murder victim. He described how he had picked up McGhee in an area frequented by prostitutes, and had driven her to a remote construction site, out in the desert, where they had had sex. A short time later he had told McGhee to get out of his car, after which he had shot her in the head, he said. He claimed that he had not felt anything after committing the murder, and commented about how "quiet and peaceful" it had been in the desert where he had shot McGhee. Afterward, he said, he had driven to a bar where he had drunk "some beers and watched the girls dance."
    Two months later, on September 25, 1988, Urdiales said, he had picked up Mary Ann Wells and had driven her to an industrial area in San Diego where they had had sex. Afterward, he said, he had shot her in the head and taken back the $40 he had paid her, and had dumped her body in an alley where it was later found, along with the condom he had left behind.
    The following spring, on April 16, 1989, Urdiales said, he had picked up prostitute Tammie Erwin, with whom he'd had sex on at least one prior occasion, and had driven her to a vacant lot near Palm Springs where she performed oral sex on him. Urdiales said that he did not recall having argued with Erwin as he had argued with some of his other victims, but he did remember shooting her as she had stood outside his truck as he prepared to leave. He had been inside the pickup when he shot her, and, as she had stood there holding her head, he shot her a second time, which brought her to the ground. Before he had driven off, he said, he had shot her a third time

    The One Who Got Away


    In one part of his confession, Urdiales described for the detectives the ordeal through which he had put Jennifer Asbenson before deciding that he would attempt to kill her. He said that after having offered Asbenson a ride to work that fateful September evening in 1992, he had asked her for her telephone number, and she had given him one. Problem was, he said, it had been a "bum" number that wasn't hers: he had tried calling her after dropping her off at work. He had stewed about it during the night, and, while waiting for her to get off work so he could offer to take her to breakfast and give her a ride home, he said, he had begun "feeling upset about the number or something...something was just kind of building up, you know. Tension." He had remained, nonetheless, and made his offer, which she accepted,

    At one point while they were driving, Urdiales said, he had reached over and grabbed Asbenson by her hair and showed her a gun, after which she had become "pretty much submissive from that part forward." He forced her to turn around, called her a lot of unpleasant names, and tied her hands behind her back.

    "I think," he said, "before we started moving after I tied her hands up, I reached over and I kissed her. I just put my lips on her mouth and then I just started, you know, I was trying to make out with her."
    Urdiales, at another point, forced Asbenson to perform oral sex on him, according to court documents that depict many of Urdiales' statements to the police. However, Urdiales failed to attain an erection, both when he forced Asbenson—who feared for her life—to perform oral sex and when he attempted to rape her after cutting off her clothes and undergarments. Livid, Urdiales began to choke Asbenson.
    "She kept kicking and...her saliva was coming out of her mouth...her face was turning blue and then red," Urdiales said. "It was just a battle for awhile."
    After his hand had become tired from choking her, Urdiales said, he had forced Asbenson out of the car and threatened her so that she would make another oral sex attempt. Failing again in that regard, he said, he had forced Asbenson into the trunk of his car and had driven off. When Asbenson had escaped, he said, his first thought had been to shoot her, but he had driven away instead because of the presence of too many other vehicles on the roadway.
    "So that was the last time I saw her," Urdiales told the detectives. "I don't know if somebody else picked her up and finished [what] I started."
    However, in contrast to Urdiales' version of events, Asbenson testified in court that Urdiales had been successful in his attempt to rape her after cutting off her clotheS.

    Denise Maney


    Three years after the kidnapping, rape and attempted murder of Jennifer Asbenson, Urdiales returned to Palm Springs for a vacation in March 1995 and picked up prostitute Denise Maney in the same area where he had previously picked up McGhee and Erwin, according to court documents. Urdiales described how he had driven Maney into the desert, eventually turning off onto a deserted side road where he had stopped and ordered her to take off her clothes and perform oral sex on him. After getting "tired" of the oral sex, he said, he had grabbed Maney by her hair and forced her to go to the front of his car and lie face down on the ground. After tying her hands behind her back, he had forced her to perform fellatio again. Because he "wasn't really feeling satisfied," he had forced her onto her knees and abused her anally with his fingers, causing her to scream from the pain.

    "And that went on for awhile," he said. "I just kept doing that to her."

    Tiring of abusing Maney, Urdiales said, he had forced her to walk toward the desert. At one point they stopped, she turned around, and he forced the gun into her mouth.
    "And then it went off," he related. He said it blew off the back of Maney's head. "Then she fell and she was still...gurgling...making a lot of noises."
    Urdiales said he had gotten back in his car and started to drive away, but stopped and returned to where Maney lay dying.
    "I didn't really think," he said. "I just kind of like wiped clean my hand...and I stopped, turned around and I went back to her."
    By this time, he said, he had become "angry" and "very upset," and took out his knife. When he described his next actions, he began using both the singular pronoun "I" and the plural pronoun "we," prompting some people, including Robbin Brandley's relatives, to later question whether he may have been assisted by another person in carrying out his gruesome crimes.
    "We took the knife out and we went back toward...to where she was lying...we just started stabbing for some reason," he told the cops, according to court records. "Just on the body several times, in the chest maybe, stomach...I remember I made a slashing motion by the throat...then we went back to the car. And I—we—we picked up her clothes. Then we were driving, we just started driving."
    Wrap-up



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    Former Illinois Governor George Ryan
    Urdiales went to trial in Cook County, Ill., in 2002 for the murders of Laura Uylaki and Lynn Huber and was convicted of first-degree murder in both cases. He was sentenced to death. However, Governor George Ryan commuted all Illinois death sentences prior to leaving office in 2003, resulting in Urdiales being resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    In 2004, Urdiales was convicted of first-degree murder in the slaying of Cassandra Corum, and again received a death sentence. He is currently on death row in Illinois, but has appealed his death sentence. He will eventually be extradited to California to face charges in the murders of Robbin Brandley, Julie McGhee, Mary Ann Wells, Tammie Erwin, and Denise Maney after the evidentiary segment of his appeal in Illinois has concluded.
    In July 2009, under a state law that allows for multiple murders connected to one another to be prosecuted together, prosecutors in California agreed to consolidate the five California murder cases into one, with Senior Deputy District Attorney Howard Gundy of the Orange County District Attorney's Office prosecuting the case.
    Detective Don McGrath, testifying at Urdiales' sentencing for the murder of Corum, recalled that Urdiales had told him as he escorted Urdiales back to lock-up on one occasion that he was happy that he had been caught.
    "'Well, you know, I'm kind of glad in a way that you caught me,'" McGrath quoted Urdiales. "'I was starting to get the urge again.'"
NOW I'm not trying to start anything,...But dose not the pic of Andrew Urdiales Look suspiciously like the new Avatar of a one MEAT PIE,...LOL
 
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