[music] [Robin] Well, in the eyes of the law, Knoxville's first known serial killer got away with murder. It was 18 years ago this week that a jury deadlocked in the trial of Tommy Lee Huskey. [Aaron] Tonight in Appalachian Unsolved, 10News reporter Leslie Ackerson takes us
back to the horrific crimes of the Zoo Man and even as he sits in jail, why his case will never be closed. [Randy] Stand up, foreman. [Leslie] There was evidence, even a confession... [Randy] Stand up and look at him and say, "You are guilty of every charge!" [Leslie] but Knoxville's first serial killer
case will always be unsolved. [John] Well, it's an unfinished case. It's an unresolved question. [Leslie] It was October 1992,
the week before Halloween when these woods off Cahaba Lane turned into a crime scene. [David] It's like you go over here and here's a body. Then you look over here and you say, "Oh my God, there's another body." And then you go back over here
and you find skeletal remains. [Leslie] Investigators later identified
the victims as four women, Patricia Rose Anderson, Patricia Johnson, Darlene Smith, and Susan Stone. They'd been raped, bound, and strangled. Some had a history of prostitution. That would help lead investigators
to a man named Tom Huskey, known to local prostitutes as the Zoo Man. [David] He worked with his father at the Knoxville zoo, and his job was cleaning up after the elephants. [Leslie] At his home, authorities found key evidence. [David] He took mementos, earrings, rings, money. [Leslie] Chief David Davenport then worked with TBI and would later sit down with Huskey
making a shocking discovery. [David] First time I talked to him, he was Tom. Then we left the room to get some paperwork and we come back and he was Kyle. And from Kyle, he progressed to Philip Dax, who was an aristocrat. He had the voice down pretty good. He could have been an actor. [Leslie] One of Huskey's personalities,
Kyle, confessed to the murders. [David] I thought it was all an act. I think the whole system got debunked. [Randy] I never had any doubt. [Leslie] Former District Attorney
General Randy Nichols got the case. [Randy] It was the first time, of course,
that I had been called upon to decide whether or not we were going to try to kill somebody. [Leslie] Nichols prosecuted Huskey for rapes and kidnappings he committed before the killings, securing convictions in 1996 sending Huskey to prison. But the murder trial would be tougher to prosecute. [Randy] I misjudged it tremendously. [John] It was Thomas D. Huskey's eyes
the rape victim never could forget. Set so close together under those long eyebrows, they were chilling and yet revealing. [Leslie] As a crime reporter for the
Knoxville News-Sentinel at the time, John North had a front-row
seat to the heated court battle. [John] I'd covered a lot of crime
before I came to Knoxville, but I had never covered anything like Huskey. [Leslie] Opposite Nichols in the courtroom were defense attorneys Herb Moncier and Greg Isaacs who were asked to take the case by the state. [Herb] And I remember Tom having
a picture of himself and his father with an elephant that he shared with us. It was very moving. [Leslie] The defense argued insanity. And in his closing arguments, Moncier even channeled one of
the personalities to prove a point. [Herb] I walked over and got on
the witness stand and I said, "My name's Kyle! I hate Tommy!" "I wanna get rid of Tommy! I'll do anything to get..." "I hate him!" Like that, then I got up off the witness stand and said, "Now that's your witness." "You believe that?" [Leslie] Nichols believed it was a cunning act. [Randy] I'll go to my grave believing that the last victim he had, literally, driven from Cahaba Lane to the mobile home where he lived and I don't believe that she had been dead an hour. [Leslie] Unable to come up with a decision, the jury hung. The deadlock meant a mistrial. Then, in a twist, courts ruled the search warrant improper and credibility of evidence flawed, meaning a retrial would be unlikely. [Randy] I would have made some
different decisions, some other strategies. I've lived it a lot. [Leslie] Today, the Zoo Man remains
in a Tennessee prison for rape, but he will never serve a day in his life for murder. [Randy] In my view, he should never
be put back into a free society. I believe him to be a very dangerous man. [Leslie] As for the four women killed, no one was ever convicted for their murders. [music fades] [Aaron] That was Leslie Ackerson reporting. Tommy D. Huskey is serving what
amounts to a 64-year sentence. That's set to end in November of
2056, if he's not paroled beforehand.
