Tigger?
Do you want to come in or not?
And he had an extremely dark side.
That's when this monster came out.
We thought maybe somebody had something against our family.
Whoever had done this...
Is that what I think it is?
Apparently had some kind of fetish
about having sex with a dead woman.
- It's okay. - What are you doing here?
We felt like we were really looking for a sexual deviant.
Wells: evil is all around us.
At some point, we're gonna be confronted with evil.
Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com.
Captions paid for by discovery communications
Wells: well, good morning, everybody.
- Good morning. - Good morning, pastor.
Narrator: in a fort Smith, Arkansas, church,
a Sunday Bible study group meets,
just like they do every week.
Lots to talk about. Why don't we open up with a prayer?
Could we wait? Juanita's not here.
But on this Sunday,
one of the faithful, juanita wofford, is missing.
No one's seen her?
I mean, every day that the church would open,
if the doors were open, she was there.
She grew up, you know, in a Christian family.
And that was always part of their life.
Why don't we go ahead and pray? I'm sure she'll be here shortly.
She never misses, right?
So let's go ahead and get started.
Heavenly father, we thank you for this day.
Narrator: but the Bible-study meeting finishes.
And there's still no sign of juanita.
Two or three of the ladies in the Sunday school,
especially the class that she was part of,
they said, "juanita's not here."
Could we go and check on her?
One of them even suggested,
"we need to send somebody over there"
and see if she needs some help,
"you know, that she needs something."
Rider: they were concerned enough.
That they sent three of the members by
to check on her, check her welfare.
Juanita?
Juanita, are you home?
My thought was, maybe she needs a ride.
Maybe her car didn't start. Something of that nature.
And it didn't even enter into my mind
that something physically had happened to her.
Juanita?
Hey, guys. Watch the blood right there.
Boyd: there was pools of blood on the floor.
There were drag marks on the floor.
You can see plainly wounds on her neck and on her face.
You could see that there's blood pooling on the bed.
It was a very gruesome scene, just really horrific.
She had been attacked so viciously.
As you can see, she's got a laceration to her right chest.
She had so many stab wounds
and bruises and abrasions all over her body...
Her face, her head, neck.
She had stab wounds, broken fingernails,
and her arms, hands.
She fought hard for her life,
and the suspect, obviously, won.
But she fought him.
In all the homicides and death-scene investigations
that we worked up until that time,
this one stood out because this was something
that was out of the ordinary.
- Any witnesses? - Still checking.
It appeared the suspect had overpowered juanita,
drug her back to the bedroom, raped her.
Once he had done what he was doing, he left,
but he jumped over the blood pool in the hallway.
What do you make of that?
Man: I'm not sure.
Looks like some form of liquid.
Yeah, we need to take it with us.
Yes, sir.
We did take the paneling off the walls,
and that was sent to the crime lab.
Quite a struggle right here,
if you notice the blood stains on the cushion.
The suspect exited the house in such a hurry
that they jumped up and run across the couch...
And had actually jumped from the couch
on out the front door.
We didn't know if he'd went there
for the purpose of a robbery
and it had turned bad, turned into a murder and a rape,
or vice versa, whichever...
If he went there for a rape and it turned into a murder.
Can we get this hat bagged?
Risley: it hadn't been there for a long time,
so it looked like it had been recently dropped.
So if you were trying to leave a crime scene in a hurry,
you'd think that you might drop your hat
and let it go, that kind of thing.
Carson: she was alone.
She backed up on the tracks, the railroad tracks,
which gave an easy walkway to the backyard.
So she did make a good victim, if there's such a thing.
It was disbelief. I just couldn't believe
anybody would do anything like that to her.
It just was like being run over by a truck.
She wanted to be with us, you know, the kids, playing.
She was never married, and she always just wanted to be
her own person, you know, and live by herself.
I think that juanita was happier
just knowing that she could go do things on her own.
She could do things without somebody else telling her.
Bobby: she never met a stranger.
She would take anybody in
to help 'em, you know, that she could.
And she made you feel welcome.
She was just that kind of person.
She's with god now, and that whatever suffering
she went through was ended,
you know, when she drew her last breath.
Well, of course, we wanted to get the crime scene
processed completely
and start trying to do a neighborhood check...
Knocking on doors, trying to talk to people,
trying to run down any kind of leads.
Excuse me.
In this case, we did have next-door neighbors
who were moving out.
They were moving out that very weekend.
So, obviously, that was a good place to go to.
Charles vines. What can I do for you fellas?
- You live here? - No.
Just helping with the move.
We're here making the rounds about what happened to Ms. wofford right here.
Rider: the community, especially in that area, was terrified.
All homicides are violent,
but this one was just so violent in nature,
it had the whole community shook up.
Carson: when something like this.
Happens to a woman who's defenseless, basically,
um, you do change your behaviors.
You look twice when you walk out to your car in the evening
or when you come in from a late night at work.
If you hear of anything, just give me a call.
I'll keep my ears open.
Narrator: as word of juanita's violent attack.
Spreads throughout fort Smith,
everyone is wondering what sort of evil is lurking.
Sherrill: you're wondering who could do that.
And then you're wondering who in this small town
that we know could do that?
You won't believe this. Look at page 3.
Rider: the medical examiner said.
That she was dead at the time she was raped.
I've not ever seen anything like that before.
Narrator: the report also shows.
The killer left his DNA on juanita's nightgown.
Rider: it was such a key piece of evidence.
We knew at some point, you know,
if we ever did get the right guy, we had him.
Narrator: and there's another set of lab results...
The paneling from juanita's house,
which was covered with those mysterious stains.
Rider: the wall's been urinated on.
The bedsheets have been urinated on.
It was determined whoever had done this
apparently had some kind of fetish.
It's just something that was really beyond
anything I had run across before... or since.
Narrator: more and more,
police are starting to realize the complexity of this case.
Rider: we had turned to the FBI, you know,
for maybe a profile of what we were looking for.
Typical range of white male
in his late twenties to early thirties.
Just really a generic profile is all we had.
Go ahead.
Narrator: desperate for any information.
That can lead to juanita's killer,
fort Smith police call for reinforcements.
Good afternoon, ma'am.
We actually had state police to do road blocks out there,
trying to see if anybody had seen anything
during the time period,
you know, between when she was last seen
and when her body was discovered.
We've been asking the whole neighborhood,
has anybody heard anything.
We were also hoping to maybe get, you know, maybe a...
A familiar face out of this crowd, too,
as we were doing the road blocks.
- No, nothing. - Okay.
And that all came up negative.
We didn't glean anything from the road blocks.
Carson: I lived around the corner from her home.
My children went to a school
just up the road from where she went.
So it struck us as neighbors.
When you think about somebody's grandmother,
you know, or an elderly person,
it kind of makes you sick that somebody could do that.
May I help you?
I'm looking for a captain rider.
You found him. How may I help you?
I think I know who killed Ms. wofford.
Narrator: two months into the case,
fort Smith detectives are about to get their first lead
in the murder of juanita wofford.
I think I know who did it.
My brother...
Danny Bennett.
Danny Bennett was a completely new name.
So why do you think it was your brother?
They said that he was a window peeper...
That he liked to go in to people's house
that weren't locked,
that he had several items that he had shown them
that he had stolen from different houses
where he had actually went in
where he'd find people's front doors
unlocked at night.
Plus, he...
Always carries a knife with him.
And that was one thing the medical examiner said.
It was a double-edged knife, like a dagger,
and that's what they described Danny as carrying all the time.
And the family said that he had
a tremendous grudge against women.
They were terrified of him.
Any other distinguishing features?
I mean scars, tattoos,
clothing items?
Yeah, he... He always wears a hat...
The same baseball hat all the time.
A hat?
Rider: the ball cap kind of jumped out at us.
Because we didn't release that to the news media.
They also said that he was wearing a different ball cap
a couple of days after the murder had happened.
By chance, is that your brother's hat?
I mean, all the evidence seemed to match up.
We knew we had the right guy here.
Danny is the one that killed juanita.
Police!
Danny?
Hey, Levi?
You're not gonna believe this.
Is that what I think it is?
We go in, we find all these different jars full of urine
in the refrigerator he was keeping cold.
Narrator: when they find the jars,
investigators immediately remember the urine stains
on juanita wofford's walls.
We found out that Danny Bennett had some mental issues,
had been interned in a mental institution for a while.
He had tremendous problems getting along with his family
and other people.
He was a loner.
Was basically unable to hold a job.
Had some very strange habits that the police felt like fit
the profile of a person who would commit
these types of very terrible crimes.
Apparently, he had molested both of his younger sisters,
also,
back when they were quite young.
We were really looking for a sexual deviant...
Somebody that was way off the charts,
and Danny Bennett fit that profile.
Narrator: but where is Danny Bennett now?
Get your hands up... now!
Danny, we're gonna have to clear some things up.
Recognize this?
No.
Do you know where we found your hat?
Ms. wofford's house.
We've got your hat, Danny.
We know your history with women.
And those bottles inside your fridge,
we found the same stuff all over the walls
at Ms. wofford's house.
He didn't look you in the eye, which is always a suspicion
on a lot of people's part.
You killed Ms. juanita wofford, didn't you?
Nope.
He shifted a lot in his seat when he talked.
He couldn't keep still.
Rider: we did obtain a blood sample from him.
It wasn't just the cotton swab at that time.
So we got the blood drawn, which was sent off to the FBI.
Danny, if your DNA is a match,
it's gonna be hard to explain,
so I want you to think about that.
Think about whether there's anything you want to tell us.
I do need to tell you something.
I did it.
He admitted that he had killed the wofford woman
and then sexually abused her.
I just started stabbing her.
Rider: and he admitted to urinating on the walls.
He said he had realized what he had done,
and he ran out of there in a panic.
And he said that he lost his hat that night, also.
And he admitted to running across the couch
on leaving out of there.
Fields: that footprint became very significant.
Because it was not released to the public,
and were using that so that we would know
that if we did get a confession,
we could tell that that was a true confession
based upon the person, you know,
telling us about the bloody footprint.
Stand up, Danny.
Turn around.
And put your hands behind your back.
Danny Bennett, you have the right to remain silent.
You have the right to an attorney.
He described the crime scene in juanita's house to a "t."
Everything fit.
You couldn't have asked for a better suspect.
Narrator: with the confession in hand,
police have everything they need to put Danny Bennett away
for juanita wofford's murder.
It was a relief to the whole family,
knowing that they had caught the person that did this.
Hello?
Narrator: another woman has been murdered in her own home.
In fort Smith, Arkansas,
and, again, Jay rider gets the call.
This house looked real familiar... real familiar.
There's this lady, Ruth Henderson,
and it's almost identical to looking at juanita,
the condition this lady was in.
She had been stabbed multiple times in the head...
And the torso.
She had a lot of defense wounds on her arms,
hands all tore up,
and had just been beaten brutally.
We found out at a later point in time that Ms. Henderson,
like juanita,
had been sexually assaulted postmortem.
She was raped after she had died.
Ruth Henderson, she lived by herself.
She didn't socialize a bunch.
She was completely functional on her own...
Cooked her own meals.
The same kind of thing with the other victim, juanita...
Elderly, people liked her, no enemies.
They had routines like church, things like that.
The suspect was targeting victims
that were easily overpowered
and lived alone, and knew that they lived alone.
People could not connect why this was happening
to grandmotherly types.
I mean, it was disturbing.
Man: it's okay.
Go ahead.
Risley: if you have the same circumstances.
Of something so unusual,
it's probably the same person.
Narrator: the problem is, police have already arrested.
Someone for juanita's murder.
I told Ron, "i think we've got the wrong guy in jail."
And he said, "that's what i think, too."
I told him, "check and make sure Danny Bennett is in the jail",
and I want somebody to personally
wake him up and talk to him,
not just look in the cell with a flashlight and say,
"'yeah, there's somebody under a cover.'"
Bennett.
You need to understand that the mere fact
that someone is in jail at a particular moment
doesn't necessarily mean that they're in jail
the next moment.
Bennett, wake up.
What? what do you want?
If Danny Bennett was absolutely positively in jail...
Yeah, he's here. I'm looking at him right now.
Then we really have a problem
because this is a mirror-image crime scene,
and we may have the wrong person in jail for the wofford case.
We were trying to put the puzzle together.
It's just the pieces weren't fitting.
The one piece that really didn't fit
was Danny Bennett in any of it.
Narrator: not only that, DNA results from the blood.
Found at juanita's crime scene come back and exclude Bennett.
It comes back, and it's no match with him.
I became convinced that we needed to drop charges
against Danny Bennett.
Narrator: and the DNA found at both the wofford and Henderson.
Crime scenes came from the same person.
So we know that we had the same guy committing these crimes,
it just wasn't Danny Bennett.
It made you stop and think, "what's going on here?"
Narrator: two brutal murders with an obscene motive,
and both the victims are elderly women.
When you talk about elderly people,
you're talking about vulnerable people.
That goes beyond just your regular homicide.
Rider: something that has kept me awake many a night.
Over all these years
is why Danny Bennett would confess to that.
How did he know those details?
I need to tell you something.
I did it.
I feel relatively certain he was in that house
after the crime happened
or either he was peeping in the window
whenever he seen the killer go in.
Somehow, he knew those details.
People sometimes like just the notoriety.
They like to project an aura of toughness.
You know, "i killed John Doe," or something like that.
And it basically fills a void in their life
that they'd never really been a factor in anything.
You're free to go.
He was exonerated.
There's got to be somebody else out there.
Miss Henderson's situation brought to the foreground
the unspeakable... that we had someone among us
that was responsible for some pretty heinous crimes.
When you find out that they've got a guy
that they're pretty sure that did it,
and then he gets to walk out of jail,
you know, it's just like starting all over again.
Sherrill: no one could figure it out.
Who had they made angry enough to do this?
Because the crime scenes were very brutal.
Lots of blood,
and it was very disturbing,
'cause you think about maybe your mom or your grandmother
when you walk into something like that.
Narrator: with their only suspect off the hook,
police are back to square one.
We did follow up on every lead that come in, but they all...
Led to dead ends.
Nothing was panning out.
Narrator: until the killer is caught,
the families won't know a moment of peace.
There's another person out there, and that,
I think, kind of strikes fear in everybody's heart.
People start to think that there's a really,
really bad person around.
It's kind of hard to take, but this person that killed
juanita is still out there killing other people.
Man: psalm 121... A psalm of degrees.
My health cometh from...
Woman: who's there?
He will not suffer thy feet to be moved.
He that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall not slumber...
I'm calling the police!
The lord shall preserve thee from all evil.
The lord shall preserve thy going out.
And thy coming in.
Narrator: in fort Smith, Arkansas,
homicide detectives have just been called
to an eerily familiar scene.
Lilli mainly stayed alone.
She lived by herself.
She was an elderly lady in her 80s.
Took it right off the hinges.
Lilli was legally blind, but she was really lucid
and knew what she was doing.
She had been attacked in her front room.
The violence and the attack took place right there.
He subdued his victim there,
and then drug her back to the back bedroom.
Fields: it was clearly sexual in nature.
This person went in there strictly for the reason
of sexually assaulting and then left.
Rider: she was beaten down,
and she was actually left for dead...
After she was raped.
Narrator: the nature of the assault points.
To the same attacker
who killed juanita wofford and Ruth Henderson.
Luckily, lilli Jones survives.
She was able to give us a little information
from what she recalled,
but the blitz that she received from the guy
that broke in that front door left her
with very little stuff to tell us about.
I know this is gonna be hard, but did you know him?
I'm not sure.
I heard him outside, i tried to keep him out.
I pretended to be dead.
And then he left.
She can make out shapes, but that was it.
She couldn't see who her attacker was.
Narrator: but there is one detail lilli can give.
His hair was...
Bristly, like a buzz cut.
Rider: she's being attacked, beaten down,
and he's on top of her at that point
and just beating her unmercifully.
And the only thing that she can think of
was the texture of the hair.
This is gonna sound strange, but...
There was something familiar about him.
She felt like she knew who the suspect was.
She just couldn't put a name on it.
Narrator: lilli Jones is the third elderly woman.
Attacked in her own home in the fort Smith area.
Investigators look for anything besides their ages,
and the fact that they live alone that links the victims.
Maybe they have some type of mutual acquaintance.
Were they in the same clubs, do they go to the same locations,
do they have mutual relatives in any way?
But none of that panned out.
It was really a monster that we're looking for.
The ultimate perpetrator of all these crimes was out there.
And we were still on the edge, I think,
of trying to find who did these things.
We put a lot of trust in our detectives in this area
and the police department.
And we were really hoping, you know,
that something would come of it.
But then, you know, after two or three years,
you know, you kind of wonder if...
If they're ever gonna catch the person that did it.
Police department.
What are you doing out here, son?
Nothing.
We had a couple of detectives to go out undercover.
Turn around, put your hands behind your back.
Fields: we started looking in the area.
For suspicious people.
If a person was out late at night
in a place that looked strange,
the police would just simply stop 'em,
ask them to identify themselves.
Narrator: one of these suspicious people.
Is Anthony Garcia.
Rider: Anthony was a cross-dresser.
He was wearing lipstick, Rouge, earrings, dresses,
go into some of our redneck bars
and get into fights.
And, invariably, each time that he would be arrested,
he had a knife.
Narrator: Garcia is charged with trespassing.
The next day, investigators question him about the murders
and the sexual assaults.
Anthony, I want to get a sample of your blood.
Why?
'Cause I want to clear you of something.
You want to rule me out of something?
He was just always in and out of trouble, though,
from armed robberies
to fights to assaulting people with knives.
He was just a bad guy.
Well, I didn't do anything.
If you didn't do anything, why not a sample of your blood?
I want a lawyer.
I ain't saying another word.
Well, these quirks that we were seeing, the weirdness...
It just made him a good suspect to look at.
Narrator: but just when detectives think.
They've cornered the man who's been terrorizing
fort Smith, Arkansas...
What are you doing here?
The call that changed everything came in.
Rider: the call was initially made by the victim,
and she's screaming that she's being raped, stabbed,
thinks she's dying.
Man: son of a bitch, I'm gonna kill you!
- Don't shoot! - Shut up!
I don't want to hear it! I'm sorry! No!
- Shut up! - Don't shoot!
Put it down! Put the gun down!
Look at me! Look at me!
Put the gun down!
No, please don't shoot!
Just put your hands on top of your head for me.
He tried to kill my daughter!
So I was gonna shoot him.
Well, the police officer pulled a gun on me.
So I really didn't have much choice but to put the gun down.
Turn and face away from him.
Narrator: when detectives finally see the perp's face,
a light bulb goes off.
The suspect is Charles ray vines.
Narrator: Charles ray vines...
The same man investigators had questioned
as a witness when juanita wofford was murdered.
If you hear of anything, just give me a call.
I'll keep my ears open.
Have you ever seen him before?
Seen him? I know him.
Charlie was a good guy. Everybody liked him.
He would do anything in the world for you.
Qualls: and that afternoon, we came in,
and saw Charlie's truck in the front yard.
We didn't think much about it.
Hell, he's been in my house a thousand times,
so it didn't bother me any.
And we went in the house, and there he was.
He was on top of her, raping and stabbing her.
I pulled him off around the neck, drug him down,
flipped him on the floor,
crawled on his back, and went to beating him.
I don't know how he survived it.
But he did.
God was watching out for her, I guess,
'cause she did real good, considering what happened.
He seemed to be a pretty good guy.
I mean, he helped everybody around
the neighborhood up there.
Somebody needed help, he'd help 'em.
No one had ever seemed to have any problems with him.
That's why this all just didn't seem right.
You know, we were looking for this person that was...
That was mean, that would, you know, beat up on people.
But that wasn't Charlie.
He was a concealed monster.
James, we believe he's involved with a lot more than just this.
Narrator: police arrest Charles vines and charge him.
With the rape and attempted murder
of James' step-daughter, Jennifer Ross.
While he's in custody, they get a DNA sample from vines
and compare it to the DNA found at the wofford, Henderson,
and lilli Jones crime scenes.
It only take a few days before the sample came back,
and it was positive.
It was a match.
Narrator: prosecutors work out a deal with vines.
In exchange for his confession,
they agree not to ask for the death penalty.
Rider: I talked to him for about 40 hours.
It was every day, starting on a Monday
all the way up through the following Friday.
And it was really hard to keep your composure, but...
You know, that's a part of the job.
Narrator: vines tells police he had come in contact.
With each of his victims through his work,
his friends, or through family connections.
Lilli Jones was a long-time family friend.
Rider: he actually called lilli his aunt lilli.
His mother and father would take him to church,
and they would go by and actually pick lilli up
and take her to church with them.
That's how he knew her.
Why did you assault Ruth and juanita
after they were dead?
Rider: I would say,
in all the years of working homicides,
that he is probably one of the most,
if not the most evil person i ever did come across.
It all started back...
When I was just a kid.
Rider: he was raised in a funeral home.
His father was a mortician, and he was also the county coroner.
Go ahead.
So he grew up around dead people.
He was constantly exposed to dead people,
but something went wrong there someplace.
You don't instantly start kicking in doors of old ladies
and brutally, you know, murdering them and raping them.
It's just not something that you just one day decide,
"hey, I think this is what I'm gonna do."
It's normally a progression.
Rider: he developed this fantasy,
this necrophilia from growing up around dead people.
It triggered something in him.
And made that...
It made him want to have sex with a dead person.
I know that it's wrong.
But I can't stop myself.
Qualls: three life sentences.
So now we take care of him for the rest of his life.
Wish I'd take matters and hang him by a tree somewhere,
leave him.
That's what needs to be done.
It's just... it's hard to believe that there's people
out there like that.
There's probably people every bit as bad as what...
Charles ray is, but they couldn't be much worse
than what he is.
That's...
Certainly one of the worst people I've ever met in my life.