NARRATOR: In September 2003
on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, Richard Paul White
was arrested on suspicion of killing his closest friend. MITCH MORISSEY: That was
a cold blooded murder, bloody shooting. NARRATOR: Detectives
who questioned White quickly realized
he'd more than just one crime to get off his chest. Richard Paul White was happy
to describe his brutal murders in graphic detail. KEN KIMSEY: I think he
enjoyed what he was doing. The more that he could
do it, the less he would have feelings about it. NARRATOR: White blamed his
violence on his childhood, on God, and on the innocent
women he abducted and attacked. JOEL HUMPHREY: He had a real
issue with women who didn't walk the straight and narrow. NARRATOR: With four confirmed
murders and many more traumatized survivors,
Richard Paul White had confessed to being one of
the world's most evil killers. [music playing] In September 2003 When
Richard Paul White made his detailed and disturbing
confession to Colorado detectives, it sparked a
statewide search for the people he claimed to have killed. JOEL HUMPHREY: He gave us
a very detailed description of what had occurred. GEOFFREY WANSEL: He goes
into detail about two bodies and wanted to
dispose of a third. He also maintains another
two bodies have been dumped in a canal in La Junta. KEN KIMSEY: We had these
bloodhounds from Douglas County come down and sniff. MITCH MORISSEY: I can't tell you
if there were two other women that he killed or if this was
just something that he made up. NARRATOR: Some of White's
stories checked out, others may have been
nothing more than fantasy. Joel Humphrey was
one of the Denver detectives tasked with
separating truth from fiction. JOEL HUMPHREY:
There was no record that we could find
of anyone being dragged to death behind a car. And, of course, that
is such a horrific act that would certainly be
investigative records about it. NARRATOR: Investigators
soon realized that both the crimes
White committed and the ones he imagined were
the product of an incredibly dark and twisted mind. This killer's story begins
on the 29 of October, 1972 in Denver, Colorado. Richard Paul White and
his two younger sisters had a miserable childhood. Their mother and father's
volatile marriage broke down when the
children were still small. MITCH MORISSEY: His
parents got divorced, and then his mother took up
with a drunken abusive man who abused everybody,
beat up his mother. Kids would see the beatings, and
then he would force her to have sex, those kinds of things. NARRATOR: Along with
violence and neglect, White and his sisters
suffered psychological torture at the hands of
their stepfather. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH:
He would engrave the initials of the
children onto bullets and then hold a
gun to their head. That's sadistic, controlling,
abusive behavior. MITCH MORISSEY: White's
role with his sisters was he was kind
of the protector. And he would do anything
to protect those two girls as they were growing up. NARRATOR: White and his
sisters did not enjoy a settled stable childhood. GEOFFREY WANSEL: He
moved around a lot. And I think he attended
23 elementary schools. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH: And that
would have created an awful lot of instability and
inability to make friends at school, to
build relationships with the teachers. NARRATOR: In his teens,
Richard Paul White lived with his father
in the isolated town of Mesita in Costilla
County, about five hours drive from Denver. The house there was
poor with dirt floors. As White entered
adolescence, those around him noticed signs that all was not
well with his mental state. GEOFFREY WANSEL: White got
his sister's pet parakeet, and twisted its head off
and threw it on the ground so the cat could eat it. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH: Cruelty
to animals in children is just one of those
flags that says there's something wrong here. GEOFFREY WANSEL: White was
later to claim to the police that he committed his first rape
when he was a young teenager in eighth grade. NARRATOR: If this was true,
it was just one indicator of the unhealthy
attitude White was developing towards women perhaps
as a result of his experiences at home. MITCH MORISSEY: Watching
his mother be abused, staying in the
relationship she was in. The stepfather would beat her
and then he would rape her, and the next day they'd
go drinking again. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH: Makes
it look like violence can be a normal part of relationships. NARRATOR: In 1998,
at the age of 26, Richard White met 22-year-old
Hazel at a bar in South Denver. And he wasted no
time in demonstrating to her his twisted
attitude towards women. HAZEL: He was just
charming and nice to me, and asked me out on a date a
couple of times before I went. The first date that
we had, we went out to drinking at the bars
and we came back to his house. And he was violent that
first night by like smacking something out of my hand. Got really angry with me. But then the next morning
he was, like, drew me a bath and got me flowers, which is I
guess kind of a typical thing for abusers to do but I
didn't know that at the time because I'd never been in
an abusive relationship. So I forgave him and
we kept on dating. NARRATOR: Hazel moved in with
White whom she called RP. HAZEL: When I moved in
there is when it got-- the abuse got worse
and the control. MITCH MORISSEY: And it was
a very abusive relationship. He would beat her. HAZEL: I thought
that it would-- like, it was just like
a one-off thing. Maybe he's just got angry
and it won't happen again. But it continued to happen and
escalated until the point where he would-- if I left him, he was
threatening to kill my family or do something to
my dad or my sister. I was scared to leave. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH: He
probably would have absolutely meant that, but it tells us what
a controlling individual he is. He sees relationships as
something he is an owner of. NARRATOR: Control
and violence became part of Hazel's daily life. HAZEL: It was pretty much an
everyday thing that he beat me. At first it was maybe
in the face and places where people could
see, and then he got better at hiding the bruises. Like punch me on my
legs or my back or he'd point guns at me all the time. He'd make me give
him sexual favors with a gun pointed at me. He raped me over and over too. NARRATOR: In 2002, the couple
moved into Hazel's father's vacant house in North Denver. Four years into the
unhappy relationship, Hazel was doing what
she could to cope. HAZEL: I was smoking
pot so that I could block out what was going
on in my life, and drinking. He drank a lot. Usually he was a little
happier when he was drinking, but sometimes it would escalate. At that point I was working
from like 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM and then going to
college until 11:00 PM just so I could be away from
the house as much as possible. NARRATOR: Hazel's
fear of her boyfriend was made worse by his
obvious fascination with violence and murder. RP used to read a lot of
books about serial killers, that was kind of a hobby of his. He'd like to learn about
the specifics about how they got away with it. When he would read them
or tell me about them he always had this look in
his eye that was really scary. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH:
He was obsessed with one particular awful film
that had been banned, in fact. And he used to make
Hazel watch this film. HAZEL: It was awful. I hate watching that. Made me think about what
kind of person he was or what kind of
person would listen or watch those kind of things. NARRATOR: White also
revealed to Hazel that he'd given
more than a passing consideration to
the practicalities of getting away with murder. HAZEL: He would tell me about
how he thought it would be so easy to pick up people who-- like prostitutes who didn't
have family members looking for them or no one
would miss them, and he could do
whatever with them. He would kind of have
this excitement about him when he talked about it. NARRATOR: Though Hazel
was terrified of White, she never suspected
that his fantasies might become a reality. In January that year, a young
woman whom we're calling Tracy went missing from
East Colfax Avenue, less than three miles away. MITCH MORISSEY: She was
the mother of two children. She lived with her grandmother. And she was last seen at
a bus station on Colfax. NARRATOR: The disappearance
of 25-year-old Tracy, who was blind in one eye, left
a hole in her family's life, especially her young children. MITCH MORISSEY: We had a
little girl that wanted to know what happened to her mother. She thought she'd been
abandoned by her mother, that her mother
had just left town. Didn't care about her
birthdays, didn't care about ever seeing her again. NARRATOR: In the late
summer of that year, another woman went missing from
the same stretch of highway. KEN KIMSEY: Victoria Turpin
was a girl that lived in Denver on East Colfax with her sister. JOEL HUMPHREY: East
Colfax is the longest street in the United States. The portion that
goes through Denver has deteriorated, and has
deteriorated to the point that it really-- that it is a place you
would not want to go. It is prostitutes,
people purchasing drugs, and people selling drugs. Victoria Turpin was
from Salt Lake City. She had a criminal history. She was working as a sex worker. MITCH MORISSEY: She went out. Told her sister she was
gone out for cigarettes, but she decided then that
she had the opportunity to make some money. NARRATOR: As the mother of two
approached a potential client, a woman she knew-- a fellow sex worker-- warned her not to go. She advised Victoria Turpin
that the individual that was picking her up had a
reputation among the sex workers for being violent. She was willing
to take that risk in order to get the quick
money so she could buy drugs. MITCH MORISSEY: She
never came back. GEOFFREY WANSEL:
Victoria was last seen on the 29 of August, 2002. She failed to turn up
to her 33rd birthday party in September. NARRATOR: Victoria's sister
reported her missing. But in reality, it was
not unusual for Victoria to disappear from time to time. JOEL HUMPHREY: The
sex workers in Denver would frequently go missing
or do frequently go missing, and it attracts no attention. It is part of their
lifestyle that they may disappear for a while, they
may find another area to work. They may find an
individual to live with. They may be arrested
and incarcerated. The other people
that they work with are not particularly concerned
about this because it is such a regular fact of life. NARRATOR: Less than a month
after Victoria Turpin got into a client's
car and vanished, another woman disappeared
in similar circumstances. JOEL HUMPHREY:
Annaletia Gonzales was picked up at Colfax and Pearl. She was 26 years old. She had had a very
troubled life. She was certainly
loved by her family. She met people that
introduced her to drugs. She became a drug addict. And then she turned
to prostitution to find a means of
getting the money for drugs on a regular basis. NARRATOR: After a
short stint in prison and a month in rehab,
in the summer of 2002, Annaletia moved in with her
mother and tried to stay clean. JOEL HUMPHREY: But then in
August, she told her mother she was going to go out and party. NARRATOR: Just weeks after
returning to a life of drugs and sex work, Annaletia
Gonzales seemingly vanished into thin air. JOEL HUMPHREY: Her
sister became concerned after she spoke to her on
September the 9 and then never heard from her again. MITCH MORISSEY: There
were things like birthdays and things like that that
her mother would not have thought she would have missed. And her mother was
concerned she was missing. NARRATOR: While the families
of the missing women hoped for their safe return,
in the autumn of 2002 in a house just
a few miles away, 26-year-old Hazel
was in the process of breaking away from her
abusive boyfriend, Richard Paul White. HAZEL: Finally I got the courage
to talk to people about it, start talking to
people about his abuse. I called the safe
house here in Denver, and then I told my dad about it. And I told RP that I
had told these people. I think he was
worried of being found out that he was an abuser. And, finally, he said that one
night I could-- if I didn't want to be with him, it was OK. That he would leave. NARRATOR: It was
not a clean break. For months White refused to
leave the home they shared, a house which belonged
to Hazel's father. HAZEL: He didn't
have a place to go. He didn't have a
whole lot of friends, and he didn't have a job
at that time anymore. And when he left,
he kept calling me. He was calling me at
work, he was calling me on my cell phone at home. I had to get a restraining
order against him. NARRATOR: But by May 2003,
Hazel's ordeal at White's hands appeared to be over. He stopped calling and
stopped making threats. While Hazel attempted to
move on with her life, White's appeared
to have stalled. I think RP was staying with
his sister some of the time and also was just homeless. Might have been
staying in his car. He didn't really call me. NARRATOR: Hazel heard
nothing of her ex-boyfriend for four months. Then one evening
in September 2003, she learned that one of White's
only friends, Jason Reichardt, had died unexpectedly. Jason Reichardt worked
at a printing company with Richard White at one time. Their friendship began there. NARRATOR: White met
Jason in the late 1990s at a print shop in Denver. He introduced his
friend and co-worker to his then girlfriend Hazel. HAZEL: We hung out with him. We'd go over to his house
and hang out and drink and, you know, we'll have
barbecues and stuff like that. Jason was a really
sweet and giving man. He was fun to be around. He was always nice to everyone. I've never seen him in a bad
mood or be rude to anyone. I know Jason was
close to his family. He owned his own house
and he had a nice truck. And he was friends
with his neighbors. He had a good job. NARRATOR: When Richard White
left the printing company, the friends stayed in touch. In August 2003, White turned up
on Jason's doorstep in Aurora, a city just outside Denver. He was now single and jobless. MITCH MORISSEY: And he kind
of was living in his truck. And I think that Mr
Reichardt took pity on him, took him in, gave
him a place to stay. And then he also got him
a job at the printing place where he was working. NARRATOR: This happy
domestic arrangement lasted just a few weeks. On Monday the 8 of September,
2003, 27-year-old Jason failed to turn up for work. MITCH MORISSEY: He was
one of those employees who never missed. And when he was
late, didn't show up, his boss got concerned. GEOFFREY WANSEL: He tries
to call him, can't find him. And eventually
contacts the police. MITCH MORISSEY: They did a
welfare check at his house. And upstairs in a bedroom
they found Jason's body. GEOFFREY WANSEL: They find
Jason Reichardt dead in a pool of blood in his bedroom. NARRATOR: The sudden death of
good samaritan Jason Reichardt was a shock to those
who knew and loved him. Investigating officers
worked quickly to make sense of the scene. MITCH MORISSEY: He was shot in
the forehead, one shot right in the middle of his forehead. He was shot with a pistol. The pistol was there
still at the crime scene. And at one point there was a
question, was this a suicide or was this a homicide? GEOFFREY WANSEL: But
there was no suicide note, no shell casing, nothing. There's also a significant, is
that his car, his Dodge car, is missing. MITCH MORISSEY: Things like
credit cards, ATM cards, those kind of things were gone. Things had been wiped down. There had been an
attempt to hide things like fingerprints on the
door knobs, that type of thing. So there was some indication
that it was possibly a robbery. NARRATOR: There was no sign
of Jason's temporary housemate 30-year-old Richard Paul White. The following day, local
media reported Jason's death as a potential suicide. Hours later, however,
White's sister contacted the Aurora
Police Department with a different story. MITCH MORISSEY: White's sister
knew it wasn't a suicide. White had told her it was
an accidental shooting. That he had killed Jason while
they were inspecting the gun. And so she took him to a
place in the pine forest, he told her he was
going camping there. But he was really hiding out,
trying to avoid being arrested. It didn't take him that long. I think it was a few hours
before they captured Mr White. NARRATOR: Back at the
Aurora Police Headquarters, Richard Paul White
stuck to his story that Jason Reichardt's death had
been an unfortunate accident. JOEL HUMPHREY: He
initially stated that they were cleaning
pistols and that it was an accidental discharge. NARRATOR: White insisted
he had no reason to want his friend dead. JOEL HUMPHREY: The question
in that investigation is whether that gunshot
was fired by accident or whether it was
fired deliberately. There were a number
of inconsistencies. He initially stated it
happened in one room, he later changed that
to stating that it happened in another room. NARRATOR: Homicide detectives
interviewing White did not believe his story of the
gun going off accidentally, especially when he told them
what he'd done immediately after Jason's death. White had used Jason's money to
cruise the red light district of East Colfax, picking
up three different women before he called his
sister and went on the run. MITCH MORISSEY:
This was a robbery. He was taking advantage
of somebody who had helped him out, and he killed him. And then he took his
belongings, he took his money, he took his truck. Clearly it was not an accident. NARRATOR: As Aurora detectives
probed Richard White's story to get to the truth,
they had difficulty keeping him on the topic
of Jason Reichardt. JOEL HUMPHREY: On
several occasions he interrupted them and
said, I've done this before. Don't you want to talk to
me about the other ones? I could give you the world. I could make your day. And finally they
told him, OK, we'll talk about the other ones. NARRATOR: When the police
officers finally allowed White to expand on his claims,
nothing could have prepared them for what he had to say. GEOFFREY WANSEL: He
tells the police he's killed at least three times. He also admits to abducting,
torturing, and hurting other women as well. NARRATOR: Richard Paul
White told the police that he'd been abducting sex
workers from Denver's East Colfax Avenue. In horrifying detail, White
outlined his murderous routine. JOEL HUMPHREY: He
said in each case he picked up his
victims off the street. Once they arrived
at his house, he would punch them and knock
them down, at which point he would begin sexually
assaulting them. NARRATOR: White
described putting his victims through a
prolonged sadistic ordeal. MITCH MORISSEY:
These women weren't just strangled to death. They were tortured for
hours, 24 hours sometimes. They were handcuffed, they
were forced to pray with him. He would go through
these states of rage where he would
beat them, where he would strangle them
almost to death and he'd let them come back. The whole time raping them. JOEL HUMPHREY: At
some point then he would strangle each
of them, and then he would dispose of
them in a manner that he thought they
wouldn't be found. MITCH MORISSEY: During
that conversation, that initial conversation, the
number of three became five. He didn't know
any of his victims and they didn't know him. NARRATOR: The officers were
shocked at the possibility that a serial killer could
have snatched multiple victims without anyone noticing. Denver detectives,
including Joel Humphrey, took over the investigation
to find out if White's confession held water. JOEL HUMPHREY: He advised
us that the first individual that he killed was
blind in one eye, had a scar on her left arm. He stated that he had abducted
her, taken her to his house. Originally his only
intention was to rape her. He stated that first it was
desire, then it was power. And then after he had raped
her, he became concerned that she would inform
the police about that and out of fear he killed her. NARRATOR: White told detectives
he'd committed his first murder in January 2002. He said he'd then driven the
young woman's body 280 miles to Costilla County where he'd
once lived with his father. He left her body in a shallow
grave in the remote desert. He did that with the
intention of her body being eaten by animals. MITCH MORISSEY: Southern
Colorado in that location is not a lot of people. Nobody's going to go hiking over
her body or that kind of thing. NARRATOR: White
claimed he'd made the five hour drive to check
on the body a number of times. Richard White stated
that the last time he viewed her body, the only
thing that was left of her body was her pelvis. NARRATOR: Four days
after White's confession, Detective Joel Humphrey
went to Mesita to search for the woman's remains. They found only animal bones. Still having no idea if Richard
Paul White was a serial killer or a fantasist, investigators
set out to verify another of his claims. GEOFFREY WANSEL:
He says two bodies are buried in the back yard of a
house that he and Hazel shared. JOEL HUMPHREY: Richard
White had told them that he had buried the victims
in the flowerbed that ran along the north wall of the house. Consequently, the
homicide unit went out and excavated that area. NARRATOR: In September, 2003,
Mitch Morrissey was Denver's Chief Deputy District Attorney. He attended the dig
at the house where Richard Paul White once lived
with his former girlfriend Hazel. White had since moved out. So I walked up to the
men as they were working in the trench, digging,
and they said they already had one body out of the ground. And right next to me
was a wheelbarrow. And in the wheelbarrow was a
half opened suitcase, a bag. There was clearly
a body in the bag but it was packed in really
tightly, and it was discolored. I've been to hundreds
of crime scenes and I've never seen
anything like this. NARRATOR: The female
body was exactly who homicide officers
had expected to find, 26-year-old Annaletia Gonzales. JOEL HUMPHREY: She
was immediately identified because Richard
White had kept property of hers. And he had remembered
the name, and he gave the name to the police
when he made his confession. NARRATOR: White had
explained to police what he'd done after murdering
Annaletia in September 2002. JOEL HUMPHREY: She
was bleeding, and he put a plastic bag over her face
to try to contain the blood. Tied her up so he could
put her in a suitcase. He then buried her in the
flowerbed that ran along the north wall of the house. There was still some
remnants of that on her body. When they did the autopsy, there
was still ropes and things that tied her feet to her hands. NARRATOR: Richard Paul
White's graphic confession was being proven to be true. And the grisly discoveries
at his former home did not stop there. MITCH MORISSEY:
They had a map that had been drawn by Mr White. And they were told there were
two, so they are, obviously, looking for the second victim. She was in the ground with
concrete on top of her. NARRATOR: With some
difficulty, the second woman in the yard of Richard
Paul White's former home was disinterred. While efforts began
to identify her, her body was taken
for an autopsy. And it became clear
that she and Annaletia had met a similar end. MITCH MORISSEY: The question
was, how did these women die? And that was pretty clear. The cartilages in their
necks were broken. And they had clearly been
strangled to death not manually, but with a ligature. What the autopsies
could not show was how both the women had
suffered at White's hands. Their bodies were
too decomposed. But the killer was more than
happy to supply the details. JOEL HUMPHREY: He would talk
to them about their lives. He would describe
his life to them. And it basically would
be an ongoing process of sexual assault, casual
conversation, sexual assault, more casual conversation
and praying, sexual assault, more casual
conversation and praying. NARRATOR: Detectives couldn't
believe what they were hearing. An interview that had
begun with White confessing to accidentally killing
his friend Jason Reichardt had turned into an horrific
tale of a serial killer and the demise of at
least two victims. White's former partner Hazel
was confronted with the fact not only that her
ex-boyfriend was a murderer, but also that he'd taken his
victims' lives in the home that she and Richard
Paul White had shared. I was freaking out. I was scared. I didn't have any-- I was just freaking out,
like, how could that happen? How could that happen
without me knowing as well? I suppose. How could he do that
in my own house? NARRATOR: At least
one of the victims had been held in the house
when Hazel was at home. He tied her up and placed
her underneath the stairs in a storage area that
they had that was walled off underneath the stairs. Kept her there all night. HAZEL: I knew he
was capable of that. And if he had said that
he had done those things to other women, I knew that that
was very possible to be true because he did-- you know,
he did pretty horrible things to me and I was
pretty close to death in a lot of the situations. And maybe because he had
some kind of feelings for me, that I was spared. I was very lucky to be spared. NARRATOR: On the
12 of September, the search moved three
hours South of Denver to La Junta in Otero County. Local Undersheriff Ken
Kimsey found himself drawn into White's story. KEN KIMSEY: Two of them he
allegedly brought down to Otero County and dumped them. We found out that his
grandmother lived in La Junta. From visiting there,
his grandmother there, he knew some of
the places to go. And ended up going to that
canal and dumping them. This canal, it's one
of the bigger canals that runs in Otero County. And it's 114 miles long. Runs towards the Kansas. So we brought some dogs
out of Douglas County. And they were dogs that
would sniff for bodies. NARRATOR: Over a year had
passed since White had allegedly thrown his
victims off a bridge to dispose of their bodies. KEN KIMSEY: We weren't
really able to find anything because of the time
span, but I truly believe he did dump them there. Why would he lie about that now? NARRATOR: On the
17 of September, while Ken and his team continued
to search in Otero County, White was formally charged
in Aurora with his friend Jason Reichardt's death. He'd not yet been charged
in relation to the women found buried in his backyard. MITCH MORISSEY: He was in
the Arapahoe County Jail, and he was going to be
there until he got convicted or acquitted in a trial. So we had some time to
put together our case. Once it broke in the
media and once there were pictures of Mr White
in the newspaper, on TV, women that had gotten away from
him started to come forward. And they had been raped by him. They had been tied up by him. Some of them had been taken
back to the same house where we found the other
victims but had escaped him. JOEL HUMPHREY: During the
initial interview of Richard White, Richard
White stated that he had abducted one woman, sexually
assaulted her multiple times. And that when he was
taking her out of the house he had her handcuffed,
and she ran from him. He initially thought
about shooting her then thought better of that
and she ran off and got away. We were eventually
able to identify her and we interviewed her. NARRATOR: Three women would
eventually come forward to tell police they had
been abducted and violently attacked by Richard Paul White. One was able to successfully
identify him from a lineup. Another led officers
to the house where she'd been kept
prisoner for almost 24 hours. JOEL HUMPHREY: She attempted
to appease him and make it appear as if she really had
emotional feelings towards him. She also talked
to him about music and how she liked hard rock
and he liked hard rock. After multiple sexual assaults
concluded, he drove her back and dropped her off
and she survived. NARRATOR: In White's
interview with police, he said that God
would often determine the outcome for the victims. In December 2003,
investigators were able to identify the second
woman found in White's former garden in North Denver. JOEL HUMPHREY: Her
picture was released, and her sister came
forward and advised us that her sister Victoria
Turpin had been missing. NARRATOR: A DNA match between
a family member and the remains confirmed the victim was
32-year-old mother of two Victoria Turpin who
disappeared in August 2002 after going out
to buy cigarettes. In May 2004, Richard Paul White
was charged with 53 offenses, including the kidnap,
sexual assault, and murder of Annaletia Gonzales
and Victoria Turpin, as well as the sexual
assault, kidnap, and attempted murder of the three survivors. MITCH MORISSEY:
When it came down to settling this case
either through a trial, seeking the death penalty,
any of those kind of things, there was a plea
bargain that was made. NARRATOR: The deal related
to locating the remains in Costilla County of the
woman White had admitted killing in January 2002. GEOFFREY WANSEL: The DA
suggested that if he shows them where the first body was buried,
they won't proceed with a claim for the death penalty. NARRATOR: White's cooperation
would also mean he would not be charged with a woman's murder. MITCH MORISSEY:
He eventually took them to where the body was. What I remember is basically
a section of her pelvis and part of her backbone,
and that was about it. And, obviously, there
was nothing to indicate whose body this was. NARRATOR: The remains that
were found in September 2004 matched White's
description of what was left of the victim's body. That same month
Richard Paul White pleaded guilty to the murders
of Jason Reichardt and Annaletia Gonzales and Victoria Turpin. GEOFFREY WANSEL: On the
29 of November, 2004, White is indeed sentenced
to two life terms without parole and 144 years
for the attacks on the women who were lucky enough
to survive him. In early December
2004, he's given life without parole for the
murder of Jason Reichardt. NARRATOR: Richard Paul White
will spend the rest of his days at the Supermax Centennial
Correctional Facility in Fremont County, Colorado. HAZEL: It was just
a sense of relief, I guess, knowing for a fact
that he would never be out. He did write me a
letter and almost-- in a almost a mocking-- mockingly told me that-- I don't even like
saying the word but he said I'm sorry I killed
those hookers in your house and buried them in your yard. He might have written
the words down but I know that wasn't-- he wasn't sorry. NARRATOR: After his sentencing,
White sat down with a police artist to describe the
victim whose partial remains he'd led police to in Mesita. White remembered clearly
the facial disfigurement of the woman he'd
murdered in January 2002. When the drawing was
finished, a local detective recognized her immediately. MITCH MORISSEY: He looked at
the composite and he goes, I know who this woman is. This woman was a eye
witness to a homicide that I had about six years ago. He figured out her name. They were able to go
back to her family and contact her children,
contact her grandmother. And she had been missing
for all that time. NARRATOR: The body was
confirmed as Tracy, the mother of two who
disappeared from East Colfax early in 2002. With this final
identification, there was some closure for the women's
families as well as for Hazel who had to process what
her sadistic ex-boyfriend had done right under her nose. HAZEL: I just felt horrible for
those women and their families. And remembered how he said
that no one would ever miss them or know that they were
gone, but, obviously, people do and their families did. We contacted the
families later on and did like a
candlelight vigil. And the families came
over to the house, and they were able
to light a candles for them, which was good. NARRATOR: While White's
surviving victims continue to try and make sense of
his devastating crimes, the killer himself has
expressed ambivalence. Saying that while he feels
anger towards sex workers, he also feels sorry for them. JOEL HUMPHREY: He
expressed remorse. He described himself
as an evil person. And he stated that
God was telling him to commit these crimes. NARRATOR: Serial killer Richard
Paul White's worldview was dominated by ideas
of good and evil, people who were worthy of
respect and good treatment, and people whose lifestyle
meant they were deserving of brutality and pain. This belief along with
his own sexual deviancy, led to White
torturing and killing at least three innocent
women and likely even more. White has never explained why
he shot dead his friend Jason. But with four confirmed murders
and many survivors who suffered at his hands, there is no
doubt that Richard Paul White is one of the
world's most evil killers. [music playing]
