George Emil Banks: The Family Killer (Killing Spree) | Our Life

[Music] in 1982 40 year old george emile banks embarked on a ruthless rampage that would shock america to the core something in him just snapped when he pulled the gun up and aimed it at me i knew he was gonna pull trigger as the clock ticked the body count rose right about in here is where the two victims were laying right on the street and with it the question why had the ex-prison guard from pennsylvania brutally murdered his own flesh and blood there was a lady holding a baby he shot her and the baby and committed a brutal killing spree that would ultimately claim 13 lives in a matter of hours part of the rifle was coming through the window and george starts screaming at us and going kill everybody [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] wilkes-barre pennsylvania during the 1950s and 60s this once prosperous city in the northeast of the united states suffered a collapse of a booming coal mining industry making life tough going for its residents the city's economy partially recovered during the 1970s but this decade of growth also experienced a huge setback in the form of a colossal tropical storm wilkes-barre endured almost 1 billion worth of damage but one of the worst moments in the city's turbulent history would undoubtedly be remembered for the actions of just one man during one unforgettable night [Music] on an early september morning in 1982 the residents of wilkes-barre woke to the horrifying news that one of america's worst ever mass murders had just been committed on their very doorstep and the man responsible had still not been caught it was horrific it's something that you would only see in a movie hundreds of police officers along with countless journalists and onlookers had surrounded a non-descript two-story house on monroe street detective jim zardecki was one of the first on the scene all of a sudden we heard the smashing of the glass and i looked up there at that window and the butt of the rifle was coming through the window inside one man was engaged in a standoff i heard policemen yell we have them in our sights and i'm thinking are they going to kill him the man sheltered behind the second floor window was george emile banks who in a matter of hours had embarked on a killing spree that had left 13 people dead seven of the victims were children but what had driven this 40 year old wilkes-barre resident to embark on such a violent killing spree and why had he ended up barricaded into an empty building on monroe street just hours later 2 30 a.m the 25th of september 1982 wilkes-barre pennsylvania just 10 hours before the siege on monroe street several miles away a 22 year old james olson had been attending a house party [Music] it was a pre-halloween party all of our friends got together and some were dressed up somewhere we were in the house partying everybody's having drinks having fun it was actually a good party i went outside to get another bottle of booze out of my trunk and my car and this is when we heard the noises so this is why somebody's throwing firecrackers we couldn't figure out what it was so then we just see this gentleman walk out the house with the camel he had a camel hat on my buddy ray hall says hey i know you and point it to him and he turned the gun he had the gun at the side like this picked the gun up and shot him i thought they were pulling the gag on me it wasn't a guy far from it especially when he turned a gun to me and said you're not going to live long enough to tell nobody about this all i can remember is the eyes he just had that look about him like this is it i knew he was going to pull the trigger that's something that's in my head will be there probably for the rest of my life across the other side of town jim zardecki was at home when his night's sleep was cut short i got a call from our chief deputy coroner telling me that there was a homicide in wilkes-barre whilst zardeki raced across the city local police were arriving on the scene at schoolhouse lane there they found james olson and ray hall critically wounded when i got shot the bullet when it went through it just like pulled the life out of me like jesus christ himself reached down and like like pulled my insides out like it was just a really empty feeling leaving two men for dead the gunman was immediately on the move he walked down the street backwards holding the rifle like this walk down the street and from what my friends tell me of course because i was already shot at the time he had put the gun to someone's head at the end of the street and stole their car local tow truck driver bobby kadlowski was working the area when he came across the unfolding events the night of the shooting this was the scene where was lined with police ambulances and all type of uh rescue units and stuff and right in this general area right here probably right about right about in here is where the two victims were laying right on the street police frantically tried to save ray hall's life the officer actually had had a rag trying to stop the blood flow and i i just knew in my heart that this guy wasn't gonna make it ray hall died at the scene whilst james olson was rushed to hospital with serious gunshot wounds police began to piece together the chain of events witnesses reported that the man suspected of the shooting had exited a building just meters away the same building from which james and ray had heard strange noises emanating only moments earlier what police discovered inside turned an apparent shooting of two into a fully fledged killing spree when we came in and walked into the house i was able to see the bodies just screwed all over the living room at that point in time i looked around i saw bodies covered up a lot on the walls i just turned around and went back out i didn't want to see any more the house belonged to 40 year old ex-prison guard george emile banks inside eight members of his family lay dead and banks was nowhere to be found [Music] [Music] in the early hours of the 25th of september 1982 wilkes-barre police reported to a house party where two people had been shot one fatally as they investigated further the apparent shooting of two turned out to be far worse in a house just meters away they discovered the bodies of three women and five children the hunt was on to catch a spree killer and ex-prison guard george emile banks was identified as the prime suspect george banks was born to mixed-race parents on the 22nd of june 1942. his mother was white his father was black and in his early days um growing up in wilkesboro pennsylvania where you had a african-american population of far less than one percent and coming from a bi-racial family for george banks that was extremely difficult during the early 1940s parts of america were still struggling with segregation at that time period when george was growing up there was still some racial tensions you know between african-americans and white so it wasn't the exactly the best time period to grow up in but uh you know his family tried to make the best of it banksy's parents never married and the family's racial mix seemed to torment him throughout his life psychiatrists would say of course that the experiences george went through could lead to him hating himself and disliking his own black identity the fact that he was mixed race made him feel he wasn't accepted by either black people or white people in the community george continued to struggle with this perceived racial prejudice throughout his late teens prompting him to enlist into the military as a means of escaping his troubled youth [Music] so after high school george enrolled in the military but the problem was george wasn't the type of person who liked to take orders he always liked to be in control of his own life he liked to be in control of others around him so he couldn't take orders well from superiors and that ultimately resulted in him getting an early discharge from this point on banks's life continued on a downward spiral until at the age of 19 he found himself in serious trouble with the law one night he and some accomplices tried to break into a local bar the bar owner was there and banks shot him in the chest at point-blank range it was like a botched armed robbery they ended up getting caught i believe the sentence was five to seven years he had received however uh while he was serving his time he actually escaped during a work detail he was caught within five hours and uh they added another one to seven years to his sentence after spending seven and a half years behind bars banks was finally released from prison and straight back into the community he had so despised as a youth [Music] the 25th of september 1982 3 am 13 years after banks's release from prison police had been called to schoolhouse lane in wilkes-barre to investigate the shooting of two men but on their arrival they uncovered another bloody scene that was even harder to comprehend the killing spree had actually started in a nearby property the home of george banks the policemen that were at the scene who the first responders had identified the culprit as being george banks when i walked in there were multiple bodies in the house and you start looking around and see that you know this was far more than just a normal homicide it appeared to be a targeted murder at that time banks had woken hours earlier having partially slept off a cocktail of drink and drugs his killing spree was spontaneous he actually may have snapped and he may have suffered from some profound psychological disorder it was at that moment he decided to act he picked up his ar-15 assault rifle he put a 30 round clip in the gun his first victim was fellow resident regina clemons banks then made his way through the house shooting as he went there were shell casings uh bodies everywhere it was just a horrific scene within just a few moments all of the occupants downstairs were dead banks then turned his attention to the second floor he ruthlessly killed everyone in his path even targeting defenseless children i can remember being absolutely shocked walking in there i had been in the da's office since 1972 i had seen literally i thought everything that there was to see when there becomes children involved it really becomes much more of an emotional piece of the of of the whole picture and as you think about that and seeing young kids it does have an impact of sadness and anger at the same time i didn't think that there was anything that i could have seen that would have affected me more than that until i walked into the scene at schoolhouse lane in total five children and three women lay dead dorothy lyons along with sisters regina clemens and susan yuhus had been current girlfriends of banks living together as part of his harim four of their children had been fathered by him [Music] these were typically women who he had found on the street who might have been homeless who came from bad home lives and george offered them hope you know that that's how it started out anyway the vulnerable women were all at least 10 years younger than banks they tragically felt that a shared life with him would offer a more secure future [Music] while his harem was developing and flourishing it worked very well for banks he was able to control the women he was able to control the children and he was indeed the man of the house of the kingdom almost 10 years life at schoolhouse lane had worked well for banks but in early september 1982 after losing his job the pressure of supporting such a growing family began to take its toll the 25th of september 1982 3 30 a.m heather highland trailer park having fled the first horrific scene banks high on drink and drugs had made a 10-minute drive to the home of his ex-girlfriend and mother to another of his children sharon mazzillo so when george pulls up he goes up to the door sharon knows it's him outside you know it's really early in the morning so she goes to open the door and find out you know what the heck are you doing here earlier in the year sharon had won a custody battle for their five-year-old son enraging banks as she opens the door she notices george is holding the assault rifle at that point he shot her at point-blank range in the chest she died almost instantly pushing his way past the now fatally wounded sharon he continued on inside the trailer george banks got in there he shot his son he shot his girlfriend he shot his girlfriend's mother who he absolutely hated he shot one child who was not his child but who we later learned had made fun of his child for being half african-american with his savage spree escalating to new heights banks exited the horrific scene you know at this point as far as george is concerned he's killed everybody in the home he even says something to that effect out loud as he's leaving the house i you know i've taken care of everyone here or something along those lines but unbeknownst to george there was still two more people in the house the two boys thirteen-year-old keith mozillo and eleven-year-old angelo mozillo had been hiding out in a cupboard and under a bed both were able to sort of peek and see what happened so they actually saw some of the killings as police descended on the scene the two boys confirmed they had just witnessed banks kill their family in cold blood they went inside they saw all these bodies laying around all this blood everywhere seeing a child dead on the floor it's overwhelming i've seen you know hundreds of dead bodies over the period of time i've gone to autopsies but that whole thing really the massiveness of it is is just something that makes it stand out above the rest most spree killers are selective and methodical they target particular individuals whom they believe are conspiring against them to make their lives miserable and they want to get even with them they they want sweet revenge a spree killer remains in a state of frenzy probably because of his mental illness that makes him hyper and agitated and depressed all at the same time having shot a further four dead banks left the trailer park physically and mentally exhausted banks took himself to near by park and fell asleep partially some of this will be because of the cocktail of alcohol and pills that he'd taken but also part of it will be an adrenaline come down obviously in killing his partners and children it would have been a highly stressful situation he had been full of adrenaline serotonin-free histamine when that subsided you will feel drained and fatigued and you will needed to have to have literally collapsed and rested just over an hour into his killing spree and banks had so far brutally wiped out the lives of 13 people and committed what is known as a family annihilation family annihilator is an individual usually a male who believes that death is better than life for his family if a relationship breakdown is imminent access to the children are a problem we tend to find in family annihilators that they will murder the mother and children sometimes family pets and then sometimes obliterate the family home or in some cases it's broadened out to extended family members in other residences nearby at around 5 30 a.m banks eventually woke in the east of the city still armed and dazed from the night before the killer headed back into town daylight's breaking over the city you have all these law enforcement officers searching for george everywhere we had no idea where the suspect was at that point in time and if there was anybody else on his target list to go after so that really put a lot of panic in a lot of people you know who's next what's next we've got to find this guy this time banks traveled straight to his mother's house [Music] the 25th of september 1982 5 30 a.m wilkes-barre pennsylvania just three hours after 40 year old george emil banks embarked on what became known as one of america's worst ever spree killings the body count stood at 13 dead including five of his own children and the wilkes-barre police were nowhere near to catching him as they struggled to find a motive for the attacks [Music] thirteen years before his spree in march 1969 after spending seven and a half years behind bars for his part in a botched armed robbery twenty-seven-year-old george banks had been released back into the community to start a new life on the straight and narrow slowly after several years hard work banks began to get his life back on track with a growing family including several girlfriends and a property of his own in schoolhouse lane despite his previous felony banks had managed to get a job as a watchtower guard at the state correctional institution in camp hill pennsylvania for him to you know be convicted and then become a prison guard and have tower duty i mean that's that's that's pretty good as a prison guard his duties were in the tower he was the guy who held the gun who watched over the yard he watched for escapees you know he really thrived in that job it was a job he enjoyed doing and it was a job he was good at regardless of his seemingly stable existence in the summer of 1982 at the age of 40 banks's life began to unravel george started acting very strange he went and got himself ordained he started keeping a journal about his life apparently while he was up in the tower down at camp hill he was talking about you know wanting to shoot everybody down in the yard so obviously things were really beginning to unravel during that period of time this didn't go unnoticed by the prison he started making comments like you know sometimes i think about shooting myself in the head while i'm up in my prison tower so they put george on sick leave to seek psychiatric help the truth behind banksy's fragile state of mind was actually far worse than authorities had suspected so at the same time george is dealing with these things at work he's also preparing in the back of his mind he's thinking there's going to be a race war that this is something he has to prepare for what he experienced as a child growing up and the racial prejudice that he experienced is something that became part of him and something that he could not shed and as a result of that as life went on his views became very distorted so he begins hoarding ammunition he starts reading soldier of fortune magazines and you know doing different things like that to prep himself for this war that uh for some reason he thinks is going to come the 25th of september 1982 5 30 a.m metcalfe street just three hours after the killing spree had begun having woken in a field in the east of the city a heavily armed of dazed george emil banks arrived at his mother's house so when george gets to his mother's house he goes inside she can tell there's something not right and he just begins blabbering about everything he says i killed my family i killed everyone and you know his mom's listening to him but at the same time she knows all these weird uh things how george acts it's nothing that's escaped her so she decides to call schoolhouse lane and try to speak to one of his girlfriends telephone rang and i answered the phone and it was george banks's mother on the phone and she started talking and saying that george had told her that something terrible had happened at schoolhouse site george grabs the phone away from her the officer tries to tell george well you know the kids are alive you didn't kill them they're still alive i came to the thought of just saying well yes we're trying to take care of the children we're trying to get them to the hospital and he said i know i killed them george said he didn't believe it it was a lie and he slammed on the phone we didn't know if he would kill his mother or kill himself or what would happen nobody or anybody else was in his target zone the police frantically established his mother's address and raised three miles across town to her house on metcalfe street let's go let's get there and let's apprehend him but whilst on route detective zardeki learned that banks was again on the move we immediately regrouped to go to house on monroe street which we were understanding to be the place where george was held up with the police now closing in banks had fled his mother's house managing to escape only a few miles away to the vacated property of a friend so once he's at a monroe street uh george knows that the police are gonna come for him sooner or later he gets prepared he barricades all the doors and in an unusual move he places all these mirrors around the house he he puts them where you know some people say oh he wanted to see if you know law enforcement was sneaking up on him other people suspect he did it so his image would be cast there to draw away snipers he was prepared as he would say to die he was gonna die there he had his gun he had extra ammo he had this fortified home he had put together and he was ready to die inside of it we had no idea what to expect on monroe street we didn't know if he'd be locked in a house if he was gone in to kill himself if he had hostages there was just no idea what to expect detective zardeki remembers arriving at the scene and being faced with an unpredictable situation as a standoff commenced potential was huge at that time didn't know when he came out firing would he shoot himself all of a sudden we heard the smashing of the glass and i looked up there at that window and the butt of the rifle was coming through the window and we heard this ranting and raving and screaming and george started screaming at us and going kill everybody we dove underneath the car and just tried to talk back to calm down talk to him we want to talk to you george why did it come down he would go on about his kids if you didn't want his kids to grow up in this white racist world and much of his conversations and ranting were in that in that mindset of about the racist world the white race world didn't want his kids grow up we kept trying to convince him his kids were alive at that point in time thanks question to the police are the children still alive indicates to me that he had very mixed feelings about having taken their lives finally detective zardeki and his team had an idea for the motive behind the spree [Music] by killing his children banks thought he could spare them the torment of the inevitable race war a perceived battle that he had supposedly endured throughout his own life his attitude about race overwhelmed his thought process [Music] he perceived that his children may be generals in the racial war he had planned escape routes from wilkes-barre where he was going to store food that at night he would go out in wilkes-barre dressed in black with a rifle and pretend he was part of this racial war george was preparing for the standoff because as he would later say he wanted to die you know he had killed all his children he had killed his family he had you know as he would say saved some of them from this race war and now he himself was preparing for death he had it in his head these law enforcement officers that they were out to get him at 7 20 a.m with banks cornered police attempted to contain the situation they knew george was armed they knew he had a lot of ammunition and they had to deal with the situation and tried to do so without anyone getting hurt george banks that night was wearing a t-shirt that said kill them all and let god sort it out we came all the way over to this area and at that point in time we moved up into here and i remember i had detective mitchell detective de soy were on the corner of this porch and i was laying on the ground at that point in time as police began positioning themselves around the siege building more and more bystanders descended on the chaotic scene we started having people all back in this area cars were coming through all on the other side back in that area we had people coming through new structure coming down here there are people and news media all over the creation at times it was really almost a circus atmosphere you have approximately 150 law enforcement officers were on the scene you had state police you had local police you had law enforcement officers from all over the county responding to the scene one hour in and an end to the siege seemed no closer banks remained in a position of control over the officers below we had people literally who were in harm's way that had no body armor that had merely rifles or handguns that could have been picked off very easily he was a trained sniper he could easily take people out and he would later say you know he had more than one officer within his sights by 8 15 am zardeki and his team knew they had to somehow open up a line of communication if they were going to end the standoff we were here for several hours during the whole siege and we went through a series of events so they tried to speak with them over the bullhorn you know he wasn't responsive sometimes he would yell different things out the window at him but he didn't really respond as far as yes i'm going to come out at one point in time i went to a side phone to a side house over here and made a phone call to try and talk see if i get george on the phone to try and talk with him at that point in time or weren't able to do anything with that at 9am banks's mother was brought to monroe street then we had his mother from back into the crowd up over into this area to be able to get in a way that she could talk to george not even his own mother talking over the bull horn could get him to come out of the house almost two hours into the siege and the police were beginning to run out of ideas for how to get banks out alive many spree killers take their own lives first they get even and then they commit suicide but george banks standoff with law enforcement may have been intended to give him what he couldn't do himself he wouldn't drop his weapon he'd go out in a blaze of glory he'd let the police do what he couldn't do and that is to take his life he kept threatening to kill himself because of killing his kids and we kept trying to convince him that they were alive and to keep him talking in a desperate attempt to end the situation it was decided to once again play up to banksy's apparent concern and confusion over the well-being of the children he'd just shot pat ward a young presenter for local radio wilk remembers receiving a call during his daily broadcast then the telephone rang at our reporter in the field bob lighting asked me to do something on behalf of the luzern county district attorney robert gillespie he asked me if we would modify our broadcast to indicate that george banks in fact had killed no one we came up with the idea of trying to say well let's do a radio broadcast let's see if we can get somebody to do it and bob gillespie who is district attorney arranged to have the broadcast done and actually do an interview my first reaction was is he crazy my second reaction is we've got to do this there are lives at stake here while bob was setting up in the interview i had a big boon box at that point in time and i would be within distance that george could hear the interview and hear this live interview that his children were at area hospitals that they were being taken care of they didn't know the condition of them but they were live and in hospitals at 9 58 a.m the fake news interview was broadcast live across the county [Music] the children are alive they are hospitalized and george banks was listening [Music] [Music] the 25th of september 1982 wilkes-barre pennsylvania having shot 13 people dead in a ruthless spree ex-prison guard george emile banks had barricaded himself into the upstairs of a two-story house on monroe street below a circus-like crowd of press and public watched on as police tried everything in their power to draw him out safely at 9 58 am in a last-ditch attempt a fake radio news broadcast was played out over a speaker stating that the children banks had just shot were in fact alive and needed his help [Music] the children are alive they are hospitalized but to their dismay banks remained defiant although he listened we didn't know what was really going through his head we could only hope to surmise or try to hope that he had some belief in what was happening he kept saying i know i killed them but at the same time i think a part of him wanted to believe that the children were alive the radio broadcast appeared to have failed and police knew they needed to end the standoff before more innocent lives were lost remember george yelled out it's a good day to die i heard policemen yell we have them in our sights and i'm thinking are they going to kill him but the police were not about to oblige this killer with a quick exit instructions were do not kill this person let justice let the justice system do its job the police feared that they had run out of options to end the standoff peacefully until to their surprise a former prison work colleague of banks pushed forward from the crowd his name was robert brunson and he knew george well from the prison and he volunteered to talk with george and he said george you know he said you need to come out i won't let them hurt you i'll put myself as a shield between you and the law enforcement officers but you need to come out for whatever reason uh none of the other tactics worked but this one did george agreed to give up and he was going to come down to stepson out of the back of the house and meet brunson at that point in time and hand his gun to the people outside of the house at 11 17 am four hours after the standoff had begun george emil banks finally gave himself up at the time he was coming out he didn't have any expression there was no sign of any expression to anything he just looked straight forward said nothing and just got him cuffed got him to the car and got him out of here almost 10 hours after beginning his merciless killing spree george banks was in custody as we went upstairs to the detective room we sat george on a chair and i remember handcuffing him to the chair and i walked out in the hallway and i started to quiver the adrenaline had gone i became extremely emotional and i just thought wow the 6th of june 1983 luzerne county courthouse wilkes-barre pennsylvania banks stood trial for the murder of 13 people the youngest was just under two years old i can tell you the first time i met him was at the county prison and he was in the library he was not shackled there was no guards and it was just me and him he could have came across that table on a moment's notice and killed me if he wanted to he didn't do that he was very respectful he was thankful i can tell you from the first day i saw him to the last day i saw him he was always alert calm very considerate he sat he looked he listened and when he wanted he spoke at some points as george is talking about the crimes at some points he would cry at other points he would become a solemn it was just this mixture of emotions that he would display he believed that his children were going to die from some type of a racial onslaught and he killed them to protect them from that onslaught the turning point in the trial came when banks took to the stand against all advice he revealed shocking images to the jury from each of the crime scenes [Music] before the trial began i told the commonwealth of pennsylvania that i would not allow them to admit any of the pictures because i felt that they were so inflammatory that they might be held against mr banks [Music] um those photographs were overwhelming um anybody looking at those photographs i mean you would want to kill the person immediately who did that [Music] the jurors i think were just aghast some of them you could see they were starting to cry [Music] when george put those pictures into evidence that pretty much sealed his own fate [Music] on banksy's 41st birthday and only 16 days after the trial had begun the jury unanimously agreed to a verdict he was given the death penalty on 12 first-degree murder convictions he was found guilty and he was sentenced for third degree murder he was found guilty and he was sentenced for i think it might have been attempted murder aggravated assault theft and robbery i remember i was sitting there in the courtroom crying and he got off the stand and you know he just walked over to me and just put his hand on my shoulder and then just sat down as wilkes-barre struggled to recover from the devastating spree one question remained what could have driven a man to commit such chilling crimes when an individual such as banks who is paranoid and that chronic behavior of alcohol and drug misuse can bring out the darker side of an individual in his case it made him quite unpredictable and prone to rages and i think it unleashed the acknowledgement within him that his family were now a burden and he couldn't find another way out [Music] the thing that stands out to me more than anything is how fragile the human brain is in the different homicides of the many i've seen over the years what what sets off people i just couldn't imagine how anyone could do that and and going in and looking at my children sleeping peacefully and and to this day it bothers me i do not believe that wilkes-barre will ever forget that day more importantly i don't believe that wilkes-barre should ever forget what happened that day [Music] i'm not the same as i was 30 years ago that's for sure but it changed my life there's not a doubt it definitely changed my life what i wanted to accomplish in the sentence i think i've accomplished george banks is going to die in jail of natural causes where he's going to die in the being executed and he'll never never walk the street again as a free man [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 45min 1sec (2701 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 27 2022