Born to Kill - Timothy Spencer (HD)

in the late 1980s the US state of Virginia was struck by a cruel killer he was so prolific so horrible so extreme we're not dealing with no ordinary kill his violent campaign spreading terror if you're not feeling safe where you are then just know your window shut this place was like scared to death the murders were slow and sadistic the strangulation tightening it releasing it reviving or doing it again and again and again but what drove these heinous crimes what is sadistically important is that he is in total control over the victim he was a bad guy was the twisted perpetrator born to kill [Applause] [Music] Richmond is is sort of a compact city there's a healthy mix of the people who are well-off and people who are not in the mid-1980s the affluent areas of Virginia's capital were far removed from its more troubled neighborhoods Richmond was sort of a sleepy southern town any crime you heard of was gang crime tucked away someplace in the city that you know you just didn't think anybody but the bad guys went to one seemingly safe haven was the peaceful district of South Side the homes are old they're large made out of brick you know and so it's it's it's a nice place but during September 1987 Richmond detective ray Williams received a call that would shatter this suburban serenity ten o'clock at morning on Saturday you got a DOA unusual do a strangulation if it's a strangulation there's probably somebody she knew because you know I proposed impersonal like that I'm thinking first place outlook is associates war friends the detectives initial suspicions proved to be wide of the mark as he entered the first-floor apartment first thing I said is oh I've never seen entire anything like this I knew that we we have special case here there were certain things that stood out which suggested to us that something ritual was going on has that look in she's lying face down on the bed upper torso was hanging off the bed she had one hand tied behind the other with shoelaces and they tied him to a point to where they were if you pull one you tighten the ligature he then had two socks wrapped around her neck and a 16-year second clean extension twisted in the ligature the victim although she was sexually assaulted was redressed after the crime there was a large deposit of pure uncontaminated seminal fluid which could have only come from masturbation the victim of the horrific attack was 35 year-old magazine accounts Clark Debbie Davis Debbie was my bookkeeper she lived alone she'd been married briefly and divorced warm smile very engaging very friendly Rae Williams and Glenn Williams came to my door they were here to tell me that she'd been murdered the night before it I think I just nearly fainted I'd never could imagine anything that could happen to a friend of mine this sweet woman didn't have an enemy in the world faced with a seemingly motiveless murder investigators attempted to piece together the killer's movements of course we do they walk around we check behind the bushes we check all under here the intruders entry point soon became apparent then we noticed the kitchen window and a rocking chair below it now you balance that rocking chair right here cut that cut the screen and crawl right in Edwin it told me one thing and told me it would be somebody very agile something very strong you can see you know I'm standing here in the rocking chairs probably the seat of the rocking chair is no higher than where that vinius so look at hi he's got it he's got to be strong enough to lift himself up and then get in that window and I'm saying he's got have got to be Helen athlete be able but strong enough to do that and we feel like we gain entry he was there waiting for her to come home the perpetrator would use his time to prepare for the attack he used materials that were on the scene he didn't bring things with him and the killers use of the homemade torniquet was chinning the sadistic and he raped her and choked her and then she would come to and he would choke her again and he repeated this process a number of times it was particularly brutal as the details became known when we found out exactly how he did kill her it was really awful it was really it was really sad terrible he did awful things he tortured her he strangled her and tortured her and watched her die like squeezing a little baby bird somebody 10 as detectives investigated the macabre crime scene they soon realized they were dealing with a meticulous adversary when I get my reports back from forensics there's no hair no fibers no physical evidence no nothing no witnesses nobody talking about it the police didn't have any immediate idea how the killer might be related to the victim usually they can figure that out fairly quickly in this case they clearly didn't you know this guy's awfully bold to hone in and do the things he did to her with people in the apartments next door he had nobody heard anything the south side residence was shocked by the brutal slaying but the silent killer was already planning to terrorize their neighborhood again in September 1987 the Southside district of Richmond Virginia suffered a horrific murder at the hands of a sadistic killer 35 year-old Debbie Davis was strangled in her own home in a prolonged twisted attack police struggled to find a lead and two weeks later detective ray Williams was called to peaceful Southside once more quiet neighborhood look here the birds it's middle class nice homes very low and crime including burglaries very seldom you get Street robbery the first impression of dr. Susan Helms house told nothing of what lay inside no evidence of forced entry in the front walk in go back to the kitchen didn't see anything disturb police were acting on a gruesome discovery made by the doctor's husband on his return home after a late night at work went upstairs the bed was messed up the sheets wall been disarray and I could see the louvered doors on the closet and we're hoping and as I look over I could see her hip and legs are tied to closet dr. Susan Helms a neurosurgeon at the Medical College of Virginia was found she was in addition to sexually assaulted identical to Debbie Davis she was savagely beaten we're not dealing with the ordinary killer so we're dealing with a very unique personality it was clear that whoever had killed her had surprised her somehow had gotten into the into the home through an open window the perpetrator had demonstrated exceptional agility he gained entry he climbed up a fence when his second-floor and cut the screen and climbed in there I think he's probably hiding in the closet when she gets off he let you take your hair rings off let me take a watch off lays it on the table and I think it's from the attacker one of the most brutal words I've ever seen as with the killing of Debbie Davis two weeks earlier the intruder had meticulously covered his tracks nothing was left not a fingerprint nothing not a hair nothing that could be used to identify the perpetrator or the crimes the only thing that was left were seminal secretions investigators were also horrified to discover the sadistic use of a homemade torniquet the florid petechiae in her eye caused the medical examiner to suggest that the strangulation of her might have taken up to 20 minutes or more it was a situation of tightening it to cause her to suffocate releasing it reviving or doing it again and again and again what is sadistically important is that he is in total control over the victim and having her die slowly and having her suffer and having her know that he is in complete control of her life is arousing to him and so he's gonna try to prolong her agony as much as he possibly can in order to satisfy himself the unique sadistic traits displayed in both the Southside killings brought police to a chilling conclusion we knew at that point in time that something was going on the the the rituals the alteration the crime scene were identical in both scenes so we knew we were looking for one person I said it's the same son of a bitch kill Debbie Davis killed her and I mean this city went into a panic once this was identified as a serial killing everything in which be changed immediately you could walk through Forest Hill happening every light over that was lit every lock they bolt locked and every hardware store sold out we had somebody come in and say two women in particular if you're not feeling safe where you are then just know your window shut and this place was like scared to death as the pressure mounted police would turn to the FBI for a profile of the killer now dubbed the Southside strangler we tended to think quite candidly that we were looking for a white guy probably about 30 years old somewhere in that neighborhood intelligence he'd be a loner he wouldn't talk about his crimes he drove at night the previous history of this we didn't know whether it was in Virginia or somewhere else in the United States but that this wasn't a beginner this guy this was an experienced individual who had done this as the police investigation progressed the clue came to light the victims were unwittingly connected Debbie Davis worked as a bookseller in a bookstore and a mall and we went back through all the records and found out that in fact dr. Susan Helms had actually purchased books in that store and had written a check to debbie Davis for a purchase of books in that store the two victims had frequented the cloverleaf mall in nearby Chesterfield County this entire area here was stores and stuff people drove up into and you can walk into the mall they were different stores inside the popular hangout was often bustling with shoppers but amongst the crowds a solitary figure would go unnoticed 25 year-old Timothy Spencer wasn't known to many of the locals he was over a hundred miles away from his home town of Arlington Virginia a quiet suburb of Washington DC [Music] Arlington is a pretty much they called it a bedroom community it's more residential than anything it has it's areas that that are more dangerous than others obviously it's typical of any posts in suburban area of a major metropolitan city born in 1962 Timothy Spencer was raised in the green valley district of town there's little small dead-end cul-de-sacs that run up all down through here I would describe it as a lower-income neighborhood however it has areas where there's very hard-working people lived here for years and years his mother and his father were both had some college they had jobs they were divorced at some point Spencer's mother juggled a busy life bringing up her children as a single parent my mom is the best mom in the world she provided everything she spent time with us we had meals at the table so we were pretty much a structured family as the older sibling Timothy would naturally look out for his younger brother it was Christmas and I got an orange bike with the training wheels on it so we go out on the street and he was like hey first thing we got to do we got to take these training wheels off and for about five hours we just rode around and he was behind me with his hand on the seat just you know just guide me and it's funny because I ran right into a car boom and he said you can't be looking back at me you got to keep your eyes on the road and you know just a whole spiel so he was definitely you know a loving brother although quiet Spencer stood out in the neighborhood it was gorgeous man my brother was was dynamite gorgeous I used to be with him and people scream because he looked so good hazel eyes that's what made him unique they changed like the weather he was always quiet around everybody but when it when when he and I were together it was we were talk like brothers and laugh and you know tell each other things and that's my big brother man a person who becomes singled out because of their very attractive or their very unique in a way that people respond to and treat as if they're quite special especially if they're already narcissistic they will believe that then should be accorded certain treatment and when they don't get it they could get angry Spencer increasingly struggled to conform his behavior drastically deteriorated during his school years he was a poor student he was difficult he may have been intelligent enough but did very little as in school at some point when he was I think about 12 years of age he was urinating he was defecating in the public area in the school [Music] the Timothy's rebellious actions were not confined to childish pranks he also had history as an arsonist it kinda is up above where the cul-de-sacs are that's where he had a burnin tarp fire setting gives an individual a sense of control a sense of power a sense of domination because with the match you could burn down a building you could put a car on fire and this type of powerful control is stimulating for some of these individuals 13 years later Richmond's Southside was reeling from two sadistic strangulation murders and now just outside the city limits the killer would strike again Diane show how she was a young girl 15 as I recall and she lived in Chesterfield County the teenager was a diligent student with her sights set on medical school [Music] on November the 21st she had ended the day at her computer studying in her bedroom that one Saturday I believe when I get a call from Jeff spheal I said ray we got a 15 year old kid strangled and tied just like your victims were on arrival of the chose apartment the Richmond detective would be shocked by the perpetrators audacity her brother was in the next bedroom her parents were there when he came in so he comes in duct tapes her ties are risking everything she was actually raped and strangled in her bedroom the agile killer had struck in the dead of night the entry point through a window was consistent with his prior murders and he spent you know quite a bit of time in there with her and apparently he never made enough noise to wake up her parents who were in this house she was covered with a sheet draped across her mid their private areas anyone who's posing victims in a specific way is trying to extend the crime scene they wanted something to radiate out from their crimes in a way that will make them feel powerful again just thinking about it [Music] previous cases had led FBI profilers to suggest that the perpetrator was statistically more likely to be white but a discovery of the crime scene suggested otherwise he left one hair in said roll up and bitchy but as detectives set to work on this long-awaited lead they were unaware that the killer was about to strike again during the autumn of 1987 the prosperous city of Richmond Virginia was struck by a serial killer the Southside strangler had thrown the state capital into turmoil with the sadistic killing of three women little evidence other than seminal fluids have been left at the crime scenes although investigators would establish a link between the victims all had frequented the popular cloverleaf mall st. Joe lives less than a mile from here Deborah Davis worked here at a bookstore and Susan Helms shopped here often and the cloverleaf mall was still a popular hangout for 25 year-old Timothy Spencer the pensive loner had plenty to reflect on as he seemingly watched the world go by he had been in trouble of various kind since he was about nine years of age he got into crime early and and stayed in it Travis Spencer recalls how his older brother's behavior deteriorated on the streets of his hometown of Arlington it was several guys that pretty much terrorized the neighborhood he just happened to be one of them now if thievin was a sport he would have been number one if you told me he stole your hubcaps I would believe that if you would have told me he stole your eyebrows I would believe that my only previous experience with them was the burglary from when he was a juvenile all I remember is I had to get his mother's permission to get his fingerprints because I thought that I had to do that as well to be accepted I had a friend of mine we go in the store we had stolen some candy that guy jumps around the corner says stop thieves so the police came the officer put us in the back we get to my house my mom came to the door and saw was me and her whole face change like no and when my brother got home I'm like yeah this is our bonding moment and he looked at me with the seriousness in his eyes and said you know don't ever steal you know don't be like me be better than me as Timothy Spencer approached his twenties his escalating career of crime would lead to severe consequences the eventual burglary that he went to prison for was not too far from here were in the South Arlington the border with city of Alexandria I break into a house any cops caught him inside that's why he got his time he was serving time for being in the jail partner that right there that was the part me growing up I used to cry all the time when I used to go see him because you know I couldn't understand why he was behind there and as I got older I understood frightful wrong and if you do wrong that's where you go once you go to prison it's only two things that can happen either you're gonna do better are you gonna turn to the dark side Spencer would be released in September 1987 having served three years in prison he was placed in a halfway house 100 miles away from Arlington in the South Side district of Richmond his apartment was one upstairs on the left-hand side it's a transitional house for nonviolent offenders if they're now nonviolent they bring him murdered after serving a certain amount of time to acclimate them back in society as Spencer settled into his new surroundings he would keep the staff and residents firmly at arm's length he was a loner he didn't talk to anybody didn't have any friends but when he ate he ate me at the end of the table wasn't that engaging conversation they watch TV sitting outside the room however Spencer did cultivate a relationship with a female member of staff servicing her car opened up opportunities for the reclusive resident the only person he talked to was a woman whose car he's to work on so he could drive Spencer would cruise the local neighborhood and visit the cloverleaf mall in nearby Chesterfield County supposedly returning in daylight hours normally on a halfway house you let go to go out and work and you have to come back in at night you're not allowed to go out overnight but Spencer wasn't playing by the rules they're supposed to be supervised check the end check dirt but it was not run well at all Timothy Spencer continued to roam the streets at will [Applause] [Music] as the residents of Richmond continue to be plagued by the Southside strangler a hundred miles to the north the city of Arlington appeared to be far removed from the killer's grip we're in a section of South Arlington in very nice quiet community it's very close to Washington I believe actually that Richard Nixon lived there at one time before he became president very very pleasant and very convenient place to live and very little cry as the end of November approached the local community was preparing for Thanksgiving weekend one such resident was publications editor Susan Tucker Susan was a young professional kind of slight of build that was a little quiet and pretty much kept to herself and didn't have a bad bone in her to bear any ill-will towards anybody she was home alone because her husband was on a business trip as Thanksgiving weekend drew to a close Arlington detectives were called to Susan's address in the failing tyndall my partner Joe Gorga's and I we were both off-duty when we got the call on the outside it was pointed out to me where they were suspected the point of entry which was a buck a basement window underneath these metal balconies there'd be a small window that's used to ventilate a laundry room or a basement area things were ransacked you come up the steps right at the bottom of the steps was a purse that was scattered the contents of it were strewn around as the detectives headed to the first floor they were faced with a scene they would never forget Susan Tucker was flying nude on the bed with a with her hands tied behind her back and there was a rope one from her hands and feet to her neck she died from strangulation by ligature miss Tucker's body was not found for a number of days so obviously that's going to add to the unpleasantness of the of the scene terrible terrible scene what I remember as much as anything was the horrible smell in the house the sordid scene would reveal another twisted element to the attack [Music] there was an unusually large amount of semen outside on this blanket or whatever it was the thought was that as he was killing her he was probably masturbating the gruesome murder bore no witnesses but the sadistic nature of the strangulation prompted investigators to look to the Past because there were so few homicides in Arlington and very very few of that type as soon as they saw the way the body was with the ropes they immediately thought of a homicide that had taken place three years earlier of Caroline Hamm a local man was serving time for Caroline's murder but with the similarities between the attacks difficult to ignore detectives were now beginning to question whether the right man had been convicted carolyn ham was found with a rope gone from her neck up over a pipe down to the bumper of a car she was tied with her hands behind her back investigators also recalled a string of unsolved sexual attacks that have featured similar sadistic traits displayed in the murders of Caroline Han and Susan Tucker I knew that there was a rapist who was working the area breaking into apartments they called him the black masked rapist he was so prolific he was in a home with his ropes waiting for a woman to come home had to be one of the scariest things that imaginable I called the FBI profile unit they agreed that the odds are that this black rapist is my murderer and they gave me some vital information that when the first girl was raped the perpetrator took her from one area and took her to another area there's a real good chance that the suspect lived in that area because he would have taken her to someone somewhere where he was comfortable the reason they're within a comfort zone is because they're trying to do this in a way that they won't get caught they know the streets they know you know the patrol cars they know various things about the buildings that they might be entering and the and the person they've been following or the person who seems to be vulnerable so there there'll be kind of a buffer area around their immediate home or business as Arlington detectives focused their efforts potential suspects were whittled down there was someone that had been bothering me five or six years earlier who was doing burglaries all of a sudden I remembered Timmy Timmy and then Timmy Spencer came the 25-year old career criminal had been brought up in the green valley area of Arlington his family home was located just a short distance from the site of the first rape in 1983 detectives also established that the 25 year old Arlington man had recently been released from prison so we called up the parole office and that's where we found out that he was actually in a halfway house in Richmond and then of course we became involved with Arlington and we started to piece all this together we met with detective ray Williams it would soon become apparent that Spencer could have been responsible for far more than the succession of rapes and murder of Carolyn ham Arlington and Richmond detectives discovered shocking similarities between the more recent murders in the two districts the movements of Timothy Spencer were also impossible to ignore get the standard sheets from every house every time he was signed out coordinated with every murder not only did he sign out for every one of the murders down in Richmond but he requested and received a furlough or whatever it is to come to Arlington for Thanksgiving the weekend that Susan Tucker was killed as detectives delved into Spencer's history they would discover a disturbing pattern of behavior the big circumstance that came to mind during the FBI's profile was the arson every indicator shows that he went through a transition of escalation he started as breaking into homes and they would break in and he would defecate and so forth and so on he gradually grew there were many where he broke into one house and then took things and went next door and waited for a woman to come home often somebody who becomes a sexual offender starts with sexual burglary because it's a second experiment to see if they can you know what they can get away with if they enjoy that they will now progress to trespassing against the person which usually is some kind of molesting or rape and then that can lead to torture sex torture or murder having established a clear a picture of their suspect police made the decision to take Spencer in we were on the street outside the halfway house when he came we walked in cuff him take him to headquarters anything for 12 hours he never been in anything I don't know what she's done Bert he spoke well he didn't use a lot of street slang there were times when I would thought you know do we really have the right guy but I think for the most part we were pretty confident we did however the horrific crimes had been perpetrated by a careful and calculating killer with limited circumstantial evidence to call on there was a danger that Spencer might yet walk free following a series of sadistic sexual murders in Virginia Arlington and Richmond police had combined forces to arrest Timothy Spencer at a halfway house the detectives case was based on circumstantial evidence but recent advances in forensic science would offer them an unprecedented opportunity as far as I can tell it goes down in US history we were the first dn8 murder case although police were dealing with a meticulous adversary they were hoping to match Spencer's blood sample with deposits of semen found at the crime scenes we immediately arrested him we got his DNA we checked it and of course everybody was holding their breath until oh well it's the sample gonna come back back then it took several weeks you know we would sit around and wait if it wasn't a match then it wasn't Timothy Spencer and to be honest we were all gonna have egg on our faces but it matched it matched to the crime in Arlington it matched two of the three crimes in Richmond so we had three cases with DNA evidence forget about who it was we knew who it was it was then how do we convince a jury police continued to build their case they had observed Spencer's movements at the cloverleaf mall a location that had been frequented by three of the victims said in the middle of the mall for hours watching the women just look at it well just sit there and watch watch him all by never bought a thing like a chameleon and just blend it in didn't cause any problems he obviously was very meticulous in picking out his targets once he picked one he would walk behind in what stores she rented we were able to produce some evidence that showed that this may be the location where he would pick these individuals out between July 1988 and June 1989 Spencer would face charges for the rapes and murders of four women in Arlington and Richmond although implicated in the murder of Carradine ham and the series of arlington rapes prosecutors decided to try him on only the most recent murders I never saw any any indication that he was at all troubled by what he was hearing in court he just sat there disturbingly the defendant would come to life as prosecutors distributed images from the horrific crime scenes he warned to see those pictures I mean he was actually since tables here in the jury boxes here he's actually leaning over looking at every picture Timothy Spencer was so bad there was no way in the world that even as opposed to the death penalty as I was I was going to take a chance on him ever getting out on the street again he was a bad guy Spencer was found guilty of the murders of Richmond residents Debbie Davis Susan Helens and Diane Cho and of Arlington residents Susan Tucker the man previously convicted of Caroline hams murder would be pardoned and released as Spencer was placed on death row the question remained how have this serial burglar and rapist ended up as the most sadistic of killers that was the hardest part of the whole situation like I said you told me something about some stealing but murder I never could see my brother actually murdering somebody he was a very angry person a controlling person he wanted to control people he obviously hated women for some reason it's not the sexual part of the crime that's it that doesn't give them the satisfaction for some reason they've they've harbored this inner anger towards women he's escalated to his torturing people the torture part is part of the anger in releasing that anger towards your victim the second experiment to see if they can you know what they can get away with once they have someone and they've subdued them and they know that that person is not going to escape they want to prolong that feeling of power over this person but what was the root of this twisted fury was Timothy Spencer a born killer things something wasn't really right in the in the mind if somebody's ill best treatment that needs to be with medication some some doctrine means growing up in our household he was definitely ill we don't see any genetic thing that make turns a person into a sex murderer but if he's also a predatory psychopath we certainly are finding that there are brain factors in terms of areas of the brain that don't inhibit aggression and areas of the brain where moral decision-making is made that that are atrophied so you get his sex killer who's also a psychopath it's more likely that person will become an aggressive offender I wouldn't say he's a born killer but that deviant sexual arousal pattern is certainly hardwired and with other events and individuals development and childhood could set the stage for somebody to act out Timothy Spencer was executed at the Greensville Correctional Center on April the 27th 1994 they called me they said you're coming down and said no I deal in death every day and it's just a legal way for the state you still kill him somebody I mean I'm not saying he didn't deserve to die because he'll never kills anybody else but I still have mixed emotions about death penalty that day yeah I was there I was there the last day on this earth when they told us we had two minutes left to talk to him you know for you to be sitting there with a person perfectly healthy they damn near had the priors apart I do remember the day that he was to be executed was a very unusual day for me and I remember not being able to speak to people all day long and just carry it around with me remembering my friend for many the actions of this sadistic killer are simply a terrible chapter from the past but for some the pain lives on I think that to be able to do what he did and to murder my friend in the method that he did he was an absolute monster he was the personification of evil most evil person he was certainly the worst person that I encountered in the 25 years or so that I was in that kind of environment you have those nights where you dream of them and you wish you could just hold them and hug them and they just not there they're just not there wake up out your dream crying 9 times out of 10 he did what he did no doubt about that we can't erase it we all love crime victims life still goes on and you know it's still a constant struggle and I'm sure the victims families you know they're struggling as well you know nobody's a winner in this situation [Music] [Music] you

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Views: 35,111

Rating: 4.8766518 out of 5

Keywords: Born to Kill, Timothy Wilson Spencer, serial killer

Id: ugMXR8b8TTM

Length: 44min 11sec (2651 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020