[Becker] Thank you for joining us. I'm John Becker. A modern-day signature series here
at WBIR is Appalachian Unsolved. We look at old murders, cold cases, where investigators need help delivering
justice to victims and their families. During the next half hour, we revisit several of those stories. Investigators hope something you see could help them solve these mysterious murders. We begin with a story of a murder for
specifically, officially unsolved reasons some 30 years after it happened. October 20 1992, a wooded area of Knoxville turned
into an unusual crime scene. It was a case many investigators thought would lead to a clear and final conclusion. Leslie Ackerson explains why, to this day, it remains unsolved. [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. [North] 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. 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. And 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. [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... 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 made a mistrial. Then, in a twist, courts rolled
the search for an 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] [Becker] Online right now, all of
our Appalachian Unsolved cases and how you can help authorities
bring closure for their families. One of those stories is Michelle Anderson. In January of 1987, that Fulton High School junior, who
was 15 at the time, disappeared. Her remains were found two years later. Anderson had attended a party invited
by a man named Larry Lee Smith. Investigators say he gave the
teens, including Michelle, alcohol and pot and supposedly
gave Michelle a ride home. She was never seen alive again. Larry Lee Smith is a convicted
sex offender in many states, currently serving a sentence in Tennessee. He will never get out of prison. Authorities say he preyed on women for 40 years. He is behind bars for aggravated
kidnapping and aggravated rape. In 2021, he challenged his guilty verdicts, but a judge said no. He has never been charged with
the death of Michelle Anderson. One of Knoxville's oldest unsolved murder cases happened in the 1960s to a Knoxville
housewife named Rose Busch. The 68-year-old was baking a cake
inside her Sequoyah Hills home when someone stabbed and beat
her to death November 19, 1968. Those familiar with the case
do say the killer, or killers, dressed as police officers to get inside that home. Although the next murder case
actually happened in Maryland, the case moved to our area because
of the Smoky Mountains. From the outside, it looked like
William Bradford Bishop had it all. He was a Yale graduate, fluent in five languages
with a beautiful family. But in reality, there were cracks in
the facade of that perfect family. In March of 1976, Bishop brutally murdered his family in Maryland, dumping their bodies in the North Carolina woods and abandoning his car at the Elkmont Campground and has never been seen since. Again, that was in 1975. And an artist created a model of what
she believed Bishop would look like today. He hasn't been seen in almost 45 years. In November of 2021, we shared an update about this case with the story of Kathy Gillcrist. Through a DNA test, she found out that she is
the illegitimate daughter. The FBI finally did its own DNA testing and confirmed there was a new lead in the case. [Kathy] She told me that she
was absolutely shocked, but yes, the evidence showed that
I was, indeed, matched to Brad. It was kind of creepy when
I found out it was for real. It did make me pause for a minute and say, "Wait a minute, this is scary." It started on Mother's Day. I started getting these phone calls. [Phone ringing] [Man] I'm 99.9% sure I know who he is. [Kathy] He swore that Brad
Bishop lived very reclusively in a little shack of some
kind in upstate Wisconsin. A message from an EMT,
who formerly lived in California, and he said, "I've been trying to reach you" "because I know I treated
Brad Bishop two years ago." [Silence] [Becker] Kathy says she thinks Bishop is still alive, and if she did meet him,
she would turn him in. You can watch all of our Appalachian
Unsolved cases through the WBIR app. For the United States' most prolific serial killer, murder was an obsession. Samuel Little admitted to killing 93 women in a 35-year killing spree across America. His victims included at least
two women in East Tennessee, but he never was charged with their crimes. Little was a cruel man who thought of nothing of
humiliating Knoxville women, including one woman who lay dying. We take a closer look at what you want to see, but first, a warning, this story
is graphic and disturbing. [David] Everybody described him as really a nice, gentle person when you first met him, slick. I mean, a good talker, able to talk
his way out of, out of, into things. [Becker] Sometime around Christmas 1974, a killer came to town. By the time he left, he'd notched another victim. A drifter, a thief, Ohio native Samuel Little murdered Knoxvillian Martha Cunningham, likely on New Year's Eve night 1974. Little preyed on prostitutes, addicts. Cunningham was no prostitute, but she was vulnerable. A woman of God cursed to
cross paths with a serial killer. Family members had last heard
from her that New Year's Eve night. The 34-year-old was supposed to
be at church on Parkview Avenue. [David] From what he told us was that he had seen her
on more than one occasion. And then on New Year's Eve, he'd brought her out to the woods,
strangled her, and killed her. [Becker] Veteran lawman David Davenport suspects Little drove her from the Magnolia area heading east about 15 minutes toward
remote woods off Oglesby Road, a spot where no one could hear her
above the drone of nearby Interstate 40. He left her body splayed on the ground. Little treated her like so many of his victims, robbing her of any dignity, leaving her slip and dress up over her chest and her stockings and panties
pulled down to her thighs. No respect, no regard. Hunters found her body
more than three weeks later. Fate would deal Martha Cunningham another in dignity. Records show authorities didn't
investigate her death as a homicide. Despite the circumstances, out by herself in a remote
location in a disheveled state, investigators found no signs of foul play. The autopsy's conclusion, "No
obvious cause of death was noted." Decades passed, eventually only family and
friends remembered Martha Cunningham. And then, in 2018, Little decided
it was time to confess. Once prosecutors promised Little
they wouldn't seek the death penalty, he started talking about all
the horrors he had inflicted. Not one, not 10, not 20 killings. No, he confessed to murdering 93 women starting in 1970 when he was 30 years old. He drew pictures of many of their faces, claiming he had a photographic memory. [Becker] To the surprise of Knox County investigators, his confessions included Cunningham who he remembered as Martha. The FBI alerted the sheriff's office. Working cold cases for the county, Davenport checked out Little's story. [David] He'd give us so many things about her that made us believe that he was telling the truth. [Becker] The old convict claimed
he'd also killed a Black prostitute in Knoxville around the same time. [David] And from what he described, he dumped her body somewhere
in the city limits of Knoxville, but we never could find anything
that fit that description. [Becker] That woman's body has never been found. Samuel Little died in a Texas prison
at the age of 80 back in 2020. Investigative journalist and my colleague John North has worked many of these
Appalachian Unsolved cases. And John, let's talk about this case in particular, mishandled from the get-go. [North] It's kind of extraordinary and a
travesty to be honest with you, John. I mean, if you come upon
a victim who is lying there, been dead several weeks, their genitals are exposed, their clothing clearly has been pulled down, you don't think it's a natural. [Becker] You don't. Let's talk about other things that stood
out to you in this case in particular. [North] Well, one thing that strikes me is well, first of all, we didn't even
know that it was a homicide. We had completely forgotten, the
investigators had, about this case until Samuel Little himself came
forward and said, essentially, "Oh, by the way, I killed a woman
in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1975." That's just amazing. And it was the cold case investigator in 2018 then had to go back and try to assemble
what Samuel Little had been telling him. [Becker] John, we're going to get to it in a second, but technology is helping
solve more of these cases. [North] Yeah, it's incredible. Almost every day now, we are seeing breaks locally, statewide, nationally in cases simply because DNA profiling has
become so much more sophisticated. [Becker] Investigative journalist John North, you can read more of his reporting
online at WBIR.com right now and other Appalachian Unsolved cases. Finally, today, modern technology
is offering new clues into mysterious deaths,
ones that are decades old, including a 1985 case where the remains of a teenager were found in a remote area of Campbell
County, miles from the interstate. For years, they were referred to as "baby girl." But just a few months ago,
a break came in that case, and we now know her
name, Tracy Sue Walker. Here is more from Leslie Ackerson. [Bill] You normally don't find young females just lying around dead in the woods, you know? [Projector slides clicking] [Leslie] Leading the forensic team was
renowned anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass. [Bill] That tells me she's a teenager, right there, that she is not over 16. [Leslie] Bass believes the key
lies in her forgotten smile. [Bill] That is dental work,
and it is good dental work. So she grew up in a family that valued dental care. We wrote about 60 to 80 dentists in the
Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina area. We didn't hear from any of them. If a dentist could see that
dental work, I think they would know whether
it was their work or not. [Leslie] Nature tells Bass the remains had been there before their first discovery. [Bill] I think she's been
dead at least two years, could be more. [Silence] [Becker] Investigators want you to
take a look at Tracy Sue Walker. This was one of 156... She was 15 or 16 when she went missing in 1978. That was from Indiana. Again, this case is unsolved. Authorities say if you can help,
they want to hear from you. It's one case that that legendary
forensic specialist, Dr. Bill Bass, has remembered all these years later
and how the technology could help. [Bill] DNA has probably been the
biggest thing that has occurred. See, 20 years ago, we really didn't have DNA. I mean, we thought about it and tinkered with it and see if we could make it work. But now, we know what it is, how to do it, and... you're gonna see more human identifications in the next few years because of the use of DNA in it.
