September 16, 2025 • 53 mins
'THE CRACK CITY STRANGLER: The Homicides Of Benjamin Atkins' offers a chilling, in-depth account of the horrifying crimes committed by one of America's most notorious serial killers.
In this interview, award-winning journalist B.R. Bates delves into the twisted life of Benjamin "Tony" Atkins, whose reign of terror in Detroit spanned less than a year in the early 1990s. Known for targeting vulnerable women in Detroit's most dangerous neighborhoods, Atkins attacked at least 12 women along a mile-and-a-half stretch of Woodward Avenue, one of the city's most iconic streets.
Known as "the nation's fastest serial killer," Atkins' crimes were brutal and relentless, leaving victims abandoned in the dark corners of the Cass Corridor and Highland Park. Only when the lone survivor of his horrific spree came forward did law enforcement begin to connect the dots and ultimately capture the monster behind the killings.
You can pick up the book here.... https://www.amazon.com/Murders-in-the...
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mysterious-circumstances--5479817/support.
In this interview, award-winning journalist B.R. Bates delves into the twisted life of Benjamin "Tony" Atkins, whose reign of terror in Detroit spanned less than a year in the early 1990s. Known for targeting vulnerable women in Detroit's most dangerous neighborhoods, Atkins attacked at least 12 women along a mile-and-a-half stretch of Woodward Avenue, one of the city's most iconic streets.
Known as "the nation's fastest serial killer," Atkins' crimes were brutal and relentless, leaving victims abandoned in the dark corners of the Cass Corridor and Highland Park. Only when the lone survivor of his horrific spree came forward did law enforcement begin to connect the dots and ultimately capture the monster behind the killings.
You can pick up the book here.... https://www.amazon.com/Murders-in-the...
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mysterious-circumstances--5479817/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This podcast contains adult content.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Some of the themes or topics may.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Include information on murder, kidnapping, torture, dismemberment, maybe some demonic content.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
With information on positions and paranormal activity.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
This podcast will also include explicit.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Horrible, and foul, socially unacceptable, totally uninhibited.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Adult themes language.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So if you're easily offended, if you're easily triggered, then
I highly suggest you turn this off now on.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
If not, just keep.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
In mind parental discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances podcast. I am your host, Justin
and I am joined by b. R. Bates, who wrote
a fantastic book and we are going to talk about
that today. It is called The Crack City Strangler and
it's the homicides of serial killer Benjamin Adkins. And I
was just telling BR here that I, being so close
(01:14):
to Detroit, I've never really heard of this before. And
there were twelve victims and one survivor. If I'm not
mistaken and super intrigued and br Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Thank you good to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So tell us how you got started in the genre
and what pulled you to this case in particular.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Well, I didn't start out writing crime, definitely not, and
I really didn't even have an interest in it until
I would say the last ten fifteen years. I started
watching the TV shows and the many many TV shows
that are out there in true crime, like all this
stuff on the Oxygen network these days. I remember when
Oxygen used to be like just women's programming, when.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It wasn's completely true crimes.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
But yeah, I started watching all of those shows, and
I really found myself very intrigued by these cases, especially
like with Dateline, because a lot of the Dateline episodes
that I watched, it would start out with a crime,
but they wouldn't tell you who did it, and they
would unfold everything gradually and they would do interviews with
people who were involved and you kind of had to
(02:18):
guess a lot of the time, Okay, who actually committed
the crime.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I loved that stuff.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
So with the interest in true crime more recently, I
had a mutual friend who with a cop who worked
the case of a serial killer in Detroit back in
the late nineteen nineties early two thousands, doctor Jerald Cliff.
He worked a case of John Eric Armstrong with the
Violent Crime Task force for Detroit Police, and so we
(02:44):
had a mutual friend introduced us because Jerry always had
this case that he worked on that he thought would
make a good book project. And my mutual friend asked me, well,
are you interested in writing something like that? Because I
had written lots of books over the years, but just
completely different stuff. I tend to write in more of
(03:04):
a features department area. I write about classic TV shows
that I love. I write novels and stuff like that,
and I've done that for quite a while. But I
thought about it, and I heard more about the case,
and I became really interested in it and decided to
take on that project. So I worked with Jerry on
that he collaborated with me, and that was the first book,
(03:26):
and the Murders and the Motor City series that was
about the Baby Bow serial killer. And then I wanted
to follow it up with something because I had sudden
time doing this research. Believe it or not, I mean,
we're talking about a serial killer here, but I was
so fascinated by it from a psychological perspective that I thought,
I want to do something else. I don't want to
just end it.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
With this book.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
And I would say the other pretty prominent serial killer
in Detroit is Benjamin Atkins. Even though on a national basis,
or maybe on a global basis, he's a little less known,
his name does come up in conversations times, like if
you look at a conversation on Reddit about serial killers,
somebody will mention Tony Atkins sometimes. So he's out there,
(04:08):
but he's just not as well known as a lot
of these serials.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
So you said you got into the psychological aspect of it.
What drew you into that just the victim the victimology
or was it more about his you know, just his life,
his surroundings. Would you think he's more of a I
don't want to say, just somebody taking advantage of the
social situation that he was surrounded in. Or did he
(04:35):
have like a deep seated type of hatred or something.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Yeah, there was definitely a deep seated hatred there. And
as far as the psychology of his killer, oh my goodness,
he's really complicated and he is definitely a puzzle to
try to solve. But yes, I was also interested in
the victims in both of these cases that I researched. Ironically,
(04:59):
you know, they had Kin's case took place in nineteen
ninety one and nineteen ninety two. The Armstrong case took
place in nineteen ninety nine and two thousand and so
there's almost a decade difference in the timeframe. But yet
the gals.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
That were involved the victims.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
In both cases. I am a similar age to victims
in both cases, and so they really struck a chord
with me. They're my generation, and I wanted to learn
more about them. I wanted to know what things were
like for them in their lives, how they grew up,
what they liked to do. You know, what their favorite
color was, or what sports they might have played, or whatever,
(05:37):
what they liked in school. I wanted to learn as
much about them as I could because I really related
to them because I'm of the same generation, and so
definitely that aspect of researching the case was so fascinating
for me. But yeah, the purp when you're talking about
a serial killer, the million dollar question, I think is
(05:57):
always why did they take human life? And I think
all of us were curious about these killers. When you
have a book or a case about a single killer,
I think even instinctually, maybe even subconsciously, or wondering how
is he different from me? How is he or she
different from me? Why did this person choose to take
(06:18):
human life when I would never do that? So what's
the difference, what's the difference in their childhood? What's the
difference in how they look at the world?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So, yeah, from us.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Exactly, that is always what it comes down to, and
I'm always torn on it, and both of these cases,
I was torn on it, and I think I have
to give a cop out response of it's a mix.
It's a mix both nature and nurture, because yeah, it's
just not clear. And with Atkins much more than are strong.
(06:49):
He is so complicated and he has so many unusual
aspects of his background that really just make you wonder, Okay,
was it about that?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
You know, he had a lot of things happened to
him that a lot of people who live what we
call a normal life would not have happened to them.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
So, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
That was going to be My next question is when
you start to get more in depth with him, what
stood out about his childhood and what made you think
it's like, you know what, maybe that was one of
those triggers that led him down that path? Did it
was his childhood, real, real rough.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
It was very rough. It's definitely a childhood of neglect
in different ways. For one thing, he did not have
a father in the picture. His father left his mom
when Ben was two years old, and so absent father
and really absent mother too. His mother was pretty honest
(07:49):
in her later years that she was working prostitution, she
was addicted to heroin. She was here, there, and everywhere,
but she wasn't there and present for her son, Ben
and Ben's older brother. Ben had a brother who was
a year older than him, and they were always together
all through their childhood and most of their adulthood too,
So these two boys had to deal with their mom
(08:12):
just not being there, and they were put into the
foster system. They went from home to home. They got
into a lot of trouble. They were skipping school, they
were breaking into buildings, they had a juvie record together,
and finally they got placed in a home for boys,
which was really rough on Ben. He had some things
(08:33):
happened to him there and he did some things that
you know, added to his childhood drama too. So just
a very unstable childhood and then being discharged from the
home for boys after two years, back into their mom's care.
What Ben's brother told his defense attorney later. Ben's defense
(08:54):
attorney later was that, yeah, we were just left her
own devices. Once we got out of the home for
boys and we were back with our mother, she still
wasn't there. And so Ben started hustling on the street,
and so he actually got into some abusive situations. He
started working prostitution, he started doing drugs of different kinds,
(09:19):
and that was his teenage years on up to early adulthood.
He was only twenty three when he was arrested, So
he had a pretty young life and really on the
street most of the time. A lot of the time
on the street and with risky behaviors and a lot
of trouble.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Got Chat.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
So his brother, them being so close in age and
having the same style of upbringing, what became of his brother?
Because I'm super curious about, you know, because we were
talking nature verse, nurture.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
I wanted to talk to his brother so badly. I
tried to contact him. I did not hear back. I
think I found a through Facebook. I'm not one hundred
percent sure, but I'm pretty sure I found him and
did not get a response. That's what you find everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
In these cases.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
I will tell you that Facebook is unfortunately the number
one tool for finding people, and there's yuh oh totally.
People just give up all their information on Facebook. That
should serve as a warning for people out there, do
not tell everybody everything on Facebook. So I think I
found him. I did not hear back. He is around.
(10:29):
He is in Michigan. I think he's around Detroit, at
least he was for a while. He may be up
north of Detroit elsewhere in the state according to the
Facebook profiles on multiple profiles that I found. But he
he as far as I know, did not really have
any trouble with the law at the time that Ben
(10:50):
was committing his crimes in Detroit and Highland Park, his
brother he would sometimes stay with this brother, and his
brother had a girlfriend sometimes called a wife, and they
were together for a long time, and Ben would stay
with them, and he actually even felt close to his
brother's girlfriend. But then sometimes he would be living homeless,
(11:13):
sleeping in abandoned buildings at Detroit too, and his brother
said that he did have to kick out Ben at
Christmas time. I think it was Christmas nineteen ninety if
I remember correctly. Because the drug thing, his brother had
also struggled with drugs and he didn't want to be
dragged back into that. And Ben was just really thick
into the drugs and so he felt they had to
(11:34):
boot him out because of that, because it was just
going to drag him right back into that culture.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
And so I think.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
He's lived a pretty stable life from what I can gather,
But I wish I could talk to him and find
out because there's so much I want to ask him.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Oh, that poor guy, man, he's probably been through it
and know is everybody it's yeah, I can see that
for sure. What was the time frame because I noticed
that they were quick, Like, what was the time frame
from victim one to victim the last victim?
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Okay, so when things really sped up when he actually
started killing people, because he had attacked other people leading
up to his first rder and those were spaced out
a little bit. As far as we know that, where
there was an attack in December nineteen ninety, there was
the next known survivor, the gal from December nineteen ninety survived.
I interviewed her for the book. The next attack that
(12:31):
we know of was Fall nineteen ninety one, so almost
a year later and Darlene was her name, and she survived,
although she has since passed on, but she remembered it
as school was in sessions, so it was September, but
she was really thinking it was October, so we think
that that attack was on October. The first time he
killed someone was either November or December, and that was
(12:55):
Patricia mcannon George, and we know that she was heard
from a real Thanksgiving so it was late November or
early December when she was killed. Okay, so that's probably
our beginning point. We know the last murder was the
end of May nineteen ninety two, the last day of May,
because this was C. C. Weimer and Ben got injured
(13:18):
during their scuffle. He had to go to the hospital
to get stitches, and so the hospital records were in
the early morning hours of June first, nineteen ninety two,
So we've got that pegged for sure. We're not so
sure on the beginning point, but it could have been
anywhere from six to seven or eight months span of
(13:38):
killing eleven women. So that's why he got the moniker
at the time of his rest and the investigation and
all of that of being the country's fastest serial killer
and I think he might still hold that on official title.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I would think so. Usually, yeah, usually it's spaced out
quite a bit. Most serial killers that i've you know,
researched and stuff like that, it's always spaced.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Out, and they have cooling off periods.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
You know, that's pretty well known.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
He did have a cooling off period after C. C.
Weimer at the end of May, and he claimed to
police after his arrest that he had gotten off the
drugs and so he was trying to straighten things out,
but that had happened before he did go like this
a little bit. But he did have smaller cooling off
periods in between, because some of these girls it was
(14:28):
like boom, boom, boom, maybe three in the span of
a week or two. So sometimes it was very very
quick and then maybe two or three weeks with nothing
and then you know, another murders.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
So yeah, and what was was his reasoning being on
the drugs? Were those quick ones and was that drug related.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Or I think it was almost always drug related. From
the sounds of his confessions, every single one of those
eleven murders, he had done some crack. He had just
smoked crack, and that's how things typically went, is that
he would he had the cycle of behavior. He was
(15:08):
working prostitution himself, as I said, he was making money
on the street, prostituting himself with men so that he
could get money to buy drugs.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So there was that.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And then he also claimed another very interesting aspect of
this case. After his arrest and in the investigation or
in his analysis by some psychiatric professionals in the time
between his arrest and his trial, he did claim to
hear voices. He claimed to hear like these sort of
(15:39):
alternate personalities in his head, one of which was named Tony,
who was telling him to commit these crimes. And I
bring up Tony there because talking about the cycle of
his behavior on a daily basis, after he had prostituted him,
made some money, bought drugs, this Tony personality or voice
would be the rat him, you know, like why were
(16:02):
you with a man? He was very Atkins was very
reflicted about a sexuality, and so this Tony character was
berating him, making them feel terrible and egging him on
to go find a female, to go be with a female.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
And to Benjamin, he was.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Looking for I think he was also looking for companionship
to a certain degree, he was looking for his mother
over and over because every one of these eleven, twelve,
thirteen women fit the demographic exactly of his mother, and
so there was a lot of bad in there. But
it was also a cycle he kept repeating. So he
(16:43):
would find a female on Woodward Avenue in Detroit or
Highland Park and he'd be like, hey, I got some drugs,
let's go, let's go smoke, And it was really just
a friendly, casual thing. It was not about engaging this
sex worker in sex, although that's what ended up happening.
That was not the expectation that the gal had when
(17:07):
when he approached her and said, I got something, you know,
let's go somewhere, you know, and it's on me or whatever.
It was all about going somewhere to do drugs and
so and I think I think these girls they had
seen him around Woodward Avenue. I think he was a
very familiar person on Woodward and they probably realized that
(17:28):
he was working prostitution himself, what his deal was, and
so they didn't feel threatened by him, and they didn't
see him as a client in any way. They just
saw him as this guy that they saw around. So
that's what would happen is that he would engage this
female and they would go off to a dark corner
and they I think in every one of those cases
(17:51):
with the eleven women, like I said, they actually smoked,
they did drugs and got high, and sometimes she would
get high as well, and things would get a little
crazy and she'd be flirting or whatever as he described it.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
I'm getting this only from him, but.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
It was said by his survivors and other people who
knew them, who had not been assaulted by him, that
when he smoked crack, he became someone different. He became
a different person, almost demonic, So that played into it too.
You know, asking about Okay is with the idea that
is were the drugs a factor? I think they were
(18:30):
every incident. I think they were, And he probably engaged
females in conversation or hung out with females plenty of
times when it didn't go sideways and somebody didn't end
up dead. So I really do feel like, in looking
at the facts of the case, that the drugs were
a very important element in the murders.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
And I'm glad you brought up the mental illness aspect.
Was he ever officially diagnosed after he got caught with.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Anything, he was diagnosed, Okay. There were four different psychiatrists
or psychologists who evaluated him after his arrest before his trial,
at about a year and a half of time. The
first one was a staff psychologist for the Detroit Recorders Court,
the Inner City Court, really just determining competency to stand trial,
(19:22):
so that guy didn't really dig into a whole lot
of stuff. Then the next couple people were essentially for
the prosecution, doing an analysis of Atkins, and they started
to hear what he was saying about hearing voices, what
he claimed about the alternative personalities and that sort of thing,
(19:42):
and they largely felt he was what they call malingering.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
He felt like they were faking it.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
They did give him tests. There's like the MMPI tests,
I think the Minnesota multi Phasic. I couldn't even tell
you what the acronym stands were, but it's a very
well known, a largely done test, common test, I would say.
And so they did a lot of testing on him,
psychological testing, and they really felt like the voices thing,
(20:09):
it was malingerate. So then the fourth person to evaluate
him was for the defense. So we're coming at it
from a different perspective, and his lawyer, when you have
a client who's confessed to all these crimes and also
has DNA evidence against him and has a survivor who
has id'd him, well what do you do but an
(20:31):
insanity defense? And so he was going to go for that,
and he hired a doctor out of Oakland County, doctor Abramski,
and he evaluated him. And here's where we get to
a sort of a diagnosis. Bramski would not go so
far as to say that Atkins was insane, but he
believed that there was some stuff going on here. He
(20:53):
believed he had a borderline personality disorder. He said he
can did not have personality so much as he had
what doctor Abramsky termed splitting, which is a borderline personality disorder,
in which was at Kids just having a hard time
reconciling some of the trauma he had been through and
(21:16):
it manifesting itself. And I'm not a psychologist, although I'm
always interested.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
In it, but I'm probably not going to even explain this.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
As well as doctor Abramsky would. He had a lot
of trouble Atkins did reconciling everything that had happened, and
it was sort of a way to deal with some
of his childhood trauma that he could not really face.
He even said that he would hear about the crimes
on the news. He didn't read the newspaper, but he
(21:43):
caught the TV news now and then, and he would
hear that a body was found here or this woman
was murdered there, and it really wouldn't phase him that
he had actually done that. It was almost like it
was compartmentalized somewhere else in his brain. And that's sort
of what doctor Ramsky was getting at with that, and
that he couldn't deal with it, he couldn't really face it.
(22:05):
And that's where an alternate personality thing kind of comes in, like, well,
Tony made me do it. Tony egged me on. Tony
told me to pick up that female and take her
over to the Howard Johnson, you know, restaurant and try
to kill her.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
It's not my fault, that's Tony's fault.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Yes, yes, it was a way to take the blame
away from himself. And he really didn't even realize too
that as many cops who worked the case said he
was killing his mother over and over and over because
these women were all drug addicted sex workers like his mom,
of the same color as his mom. So there were
(22:45):
a lot of things that he just couldn't deal with.
He just couldn't couldn't deal And even when he was
being questioned by police after his arrest, he told the
one officer, Ron Sanders, he said, don't tell my mom
about this. Okay, you know they do stay. John Douglas,
who is the well known FBI profiler, has said, and
at least one of his books, a book that I read,
(23:06):
that a lot of these serial killers have mommy issues.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Even if they.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Aren't killing their mom over and over or pretending to
be their mom like Norman Bates, they do have some
issues with their mom, their female parent. So what is
that about? That is like a whole other discussion.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
I guess it totally is. It's interesting to say the least.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Now, you said before the.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Murder started, there were attacks before that. Does it seem
like he was building up to that murder and the
severity of the tax yep?
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Was he trying to find like an MO? Did he
stick with the same mo and everything like that?
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Yes, he was very methodical. The first attack that we
know of and this is a gal who really had
never told her story before. She kept it secret all
these years. And this is the December nineteen ninety attack.
But I also can go back to the home for
Boys where he attacked another boy at the home too,
and there's there's like some stuff there too, But as
(24:06):
far as adulthood as an adult male wandering the streets.
When he attacked Margie in December nineteen ninety, the two
of them started smoking and she said he turned demonic,
he turned into somebody else once that crack hit him,
and they were talking and all of a sudden, she said,
he went for her throat and so he was going
(24:29):
to try to do like a strangulation thing. She started
talking and she's like, hey, I got family, I get
and she's like trying to talk her way out of it,
and finally she offered him money and that was what
got her out of it and she was able to
run off.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, that sort of subdued him.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
That is surprising, Yeah, isn't that.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah? I figured money was not even a factor.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
You would think, but this is early on.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
And then so the next attack with Darlene, he took
her into the Howard Johnson restaurant that I mentioned, and
he started attacking her. He actually raped her first, and
she's like, you know, don't you don't You don't have
to force me like this. You know, she knew him,
(25:16):
She knew him for years on the street. She knew
him by the name Tony, the name that he went
by on the street. But then after raping her, he
was trying to drag her down to the basement of
that building, and she knew, okay, this is something else entirely,
and so she was able to kick them, fight them,
break free. She was a little bit bigger than some
of the other females that he chose after that, So
(25:38):
that maybe helps to answer your question too as far
as his technique or his mo is that he did
ten at least, police said that he tended to choose
smaller females after that. He was trying to perfect a
little bit. And they say that about serial killers, that
when they first start out, they're not quite as good
(26:00):
at it, so to speak, and so they falter a
little bit in their first couple encounters, their first couple
of assaults.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
They're just not as smooth.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
As they can eventually become. If they're I guess successful unfortunately,
so she was able to fight them off and she survived.
She ran out of the building, someone else arrived, she survived,
but after that he was able to successfully kill. And
it was always strangulation, so the same m all. And
(26:29):
I think with Darlene, I think it was was he
actually trying to strangle her. Well, he had raped her
and he was trying to drag her away, So I
don't know that it actually got to the point of
actually grabbing her neck and trying to.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
But it may have.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
But yeah, every time he was methodical and he would
strangle the other victims. He would make sure that they
were dead. And this was something he told police he
read in a book. He actually read in a book
about this. So I mean, how can you be too insane?
Lawyers argue, if you're that premeditated, you're studying it.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I'm yeah, because there's there's something of it. And again
I'm not I'm not a.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Lawyer or psychologist, but there's something about the insanity defense.
And as far as you know, if you can prove
that they had planning and motive and you know, repetition
and they're they're trying not to be caught, and all
of that it doesn't do very well for the insanity
defense does not. So he had read in a book
(27:32):
that after strangling them, if they appear to be dead,
to make sure, you know, to push on their chest,
to push share out, to listen for breathing, to feel
for a paulse All of that he had read in
a book, and that's what he told police later during
his confessions, is I practiced all.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Of these things.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
I put my He would put both hands around their
throat and push on the front here, and then when
it was all seeming to be said and done, then
he would follow those other steps just to make sure
that that person was dead before he left her. And
then he tried to hide her so that she would
not be discovered. He really didn't want to be caught
(28:11):
in that way because he was making a lot of
effort to hide her after the fact, and a lot
of these women were not discovered for weeks or months
after they were killed.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
So he was half ass successful and making sure things
got hidden and all that stuff. Was there any records
of sexual assault or rape on any of the how
many of the victims any of them?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Eleven of them. Of the eleven women, that were killed.
I believe every time he told police that he actually
raped her, and I think that the police found the
crime scene investors evidence tax found evidence of rape every
time too, and he raped them multiple ways also, which
is you know, just so so disturbing.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
So yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
It was a sexual assault every time, even though he
had claimed to police that he was gay. And of
course we know that rape is not really about sex
so much as that it is about power, you know,
the sexual assault in that way is about power over
your victim. But yeah, he was very conflicted in that way.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Did his brother or you know, his brother's wife girlfriend,
did anybody around him have any any kind of thought
that maybe, you know, it was it was him doing this.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
I don't think they had any in claim. His brother
and his brother's girlfriend saw him now and then, and
there were even like after Atkins was arrested, there were
people interviewed in the media after he was identified and
it broke the news who he was. Then the media
swarmed over his brother and everybody who lived in the building,
(29:54):
and they talked to the lady upstairs or the lady
downstairs or whatever. And yeah, I used to bake the
brownie sometime and they got they got that kind of thing,
like he was so nice, he would run to the
store for me, and and he did have a nice
thing about him.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
He did.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Actually, one of the cops who worked the case nicknamed
him gentle Ben because he said he was never threatened
by him. He would just average build There was nothing
menacing about him. The defense attorney told me the same thing.
He could be sitting there talking to you, you would
never know anything was going on with him.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
It was terrifying.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Yes, yes, it was very shocking to people who knew him.
And I have a feeling I don't know for sure,
but I have a feeling his brother and his brother's
girlfriend who his brother's girlfriend is gone. She's no, she
had died a few years ago. I have a feeling
they did not know. Like even as these murders are
(30:49):
making the news, and it's very very clear, it's very
obvious to everyone that police are hunting a serial killer
in Highland Park in Detroit, I don't think I would.
I would hazard a guess that his brother would not
have suspected him being this killer. I was.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
I'm glad you pointed on the actual the Highland Park
in all of that area where he would hang out.
Did he ever mention anything about, you know, after the
first few killings, like the ladies out there, kind of
maybe partnering up with other girls for protection or anything
like that.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
He said one thing to police. He one thing that
was chilling, and I think it was when he was
arrested for loitering, okay, before his arrest in August nineteen
ninety two, after he was identified by Darlene as her
attacker with police, and then he was arrested, and then
the whole thing, the whole house of cards fell before that,
(31:49):
in January of nineteen ninety two, they had found one
of the victims, I think it was Vicky Truelove in January,
and that was in Detroit. Eight of these murders were
in Highland Park, three were in Detroit, and so Detroit.
In January, they had found at least two or three
women at that point, and they decided to do a
(32:11):
sweep of abandoned buildings and maybe that was Island Park two,
come to think of it. But they went, they did
a sweep through abandoned buildings and they found this guy
sleeping on a couch where he shouldn't be in an
abandoned building. So they said, hey, you know you're you're
not supposed to be here.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
We're going to take you downtown.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
We're gonna ask you a few questions because we're looking
for a killer.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Turns out it was the killer.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
They had no idea, and so they brought him downtown.
They gave him some questions, and I think that was
when although he had also been detained in Highland Park
that October November before, same thing, just being in a
building when he shouldn't be in a building. I think
actually he was breaking into that building when he was
(32:56):
detained and he was brought up on charges. But this
January thing, he was just like been on a couch,
and so they just asked him some questions. They asked him,
have you seen anything funny? Have you seen anybody acting
strange around town? They were kind of acted him like,
you know, just try to gather information from him, and
he said, well, you know, some of the girls out
there are kind of scared. And one a friend of mine,
(33:17):
She told me, Hey, when I'm out here, would you
kind of watch out for me? Would you kind of
keep an eye on me? Make sure you know somebody's
not creeping up on me or something like that.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Isn't that crazy? Again?
Speaker 4 (33:29):
He was so disarming that these women had no idea.
This was just Tony that they saw around.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, it seems like when he got caught he was
extremely forthcoming with information.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (33:44):
He was at first he was denying everything. When the
first Detroit police officer came to the room to interrogate him,
it was about a day and a half after his
arrest in August, and he sat down to chat with him.
Maybe there was another officer there and there was a
closed circuit TV situation going on. Was not being recorded,
(34:06):
but there was a closed circuit TV set up so
that in another room a couple more officers could watch.
And so there were maybe three or four officers who
were watching things, but one was tasked with asking the questions.
And it was really a small talk situation, you know,
this and that and the other thing, and not really
(34:29):
around to the murders. And so the FBI agent who
had been assigned case from the Detroit office of the FBI,
because this was by that point it had become an
inner agency task for so there was an FBI, there
was Michigan State Policeman's there was Wayne County sheriff Department
people helping out with it.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
So it all kinds of agencies. And the FBI person disappolled.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
Somebody knew a good interrogator and that was Ron Sanders.
And Ron Sanders was on his way to going on vacation,
taking a trip to Chicago, and he was interrupted and said,
we got expect in the Woodward at killing, so we
kind of needed to come in and talk to the
I work nowhere, and so he can, and he turned
(35:16):
the small.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Talk into real talk right away.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
He got into the room and he's like, he's looking
at Atkins and he he said, he looked at him,
looked at his arms. Where'd you get those scratches? Ken said,
my boyfriend did that.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
I have a boyfriend.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
So he was claiming to be gay and telling police
that he had no interest in women, and Sanders said, no,
your boyfriend didn't do that. The women did that.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Because you killed them.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Now, he was just very aggressive and went right at it,
and it didn't take too long for him to get
Atkins to confess. And once he started confessing, he had
confessed to all eleven women he had killed, plus the
attack on Darlene before the murders started.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
How did the trial go and how long did that last?
Speaker 4 (36:04):
The trial was unusual because you had these three cases
in Detroit and eight cases in Highland Park. They actually
did something unusual that I've never heard happening in any
other criminal case.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
They had two juries. They had a jury for Wayne.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
County listening to the eight Highland Park cases. They had
the Recorder's Court jury listening to the Detroit cases. So
Recorder's Court doesn't exist anymore, but it was an inner
city Detroit court to address Detroit crimes, and since it's
been phased out, But so you had two juries in
(36:43):
the same court room listening to essentially the same case.
But sometimes if there was evidence or discussion introduce that
was only pertaining to Highland Park, then the Detroit jury
would be excused and vice versa. So the two juries
wouldn't hear absolutely everything, but they would he or what
was pertaining to their cases. And so they rendered separate
(37:04):
verdicts at separate times and had separate deliberations, and it.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Took the case.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
The trial began in January nineteen ninety four, and the
verdicts were both reached a couple days apart in April
nineteen ninety four, So that's how long it took to
convict him in both cases.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
That is pretty wild, having two juries at the same
time listening to the same case. I don't I can't
recall the time I've heard of that happening before.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yep, it's really wild.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
So what ended up happening to Tony as I guess
we should say Tony.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
Yes, he was incarcerated in Michigan in nineteen ninety four,
and he only served three years because he died in
nineteen ninety seven September nineteen ninety seven with HIVS slash
AIDS couplications of some according to the news reports.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Well, I mean that is some crazy shit. I'm telling
you right now. What was one thing during your research though,
that I mean his childhood aside? I guess was there
something in your research that made you hold that sympathy
card a little bit? You know, just getting to know
who he was, his upbringing, his childhood. Was there a
(38:25):
little bit of a I shouldn't say sympathy, but a
little bit of an empathy factor.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
I think definitely he's the kind of killer who evooks
that kind of response a conflicted response. Like I always
tell people, if you go, there's been a few podcasts
about the case over the years, and they really just
draw from the newspaper reports at the time and maybe
give an opinion, maybe give a perspective.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
On, oh, this case is such and such.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
If you go and you look on YouTube, you search
on Benjamin Atkins, not for the newer stuff that like
where I've been interviewed the past few weeks, but the
other podcasts that have been past five years or so.
When people have done a podcast about the case, if
you look at the comments of those on YouTube, you'll
see an array of different reactions, and a lot of
(39:11):
people will come in and comment that he should have
gotten help, that society failed him. And one of the
jurors at the time there was a holdout for a
minute in the deliberations for one of the juries, and
she later told the media she said, you know, I'm
not saying that he's in a center or anything, but
he should have gotten help.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
She was really torn about that, and a lot of
people do express that. So it is that kind of
case that evopes that response, and for me, I just
I do feel badly about his youngest years. I feel
badly about a kid left on his own without a
(39:54):
mom or a dad. I almost wish that, you know,
I could have been a foster who would have helped
in some way, you know, who would have been at
one of those foster homes and would have been some
kind of good direction, you know, some kind of good
And I'm not saying that the foster homes failed or anything,
but I don't know. He he was a troubled kid,
(40:16):
and you do have to wonder, okay, was he in
a nurturing foster home that could have turned things around
for him and he was with his brother?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Was he in a loving home and he.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Was just wired to misbehave? There was one of the people,
one of the females who was at one of those
foster homes, who is reflected in his records with the
Home for Boys like his previous foster home history. She
actually said that he was setting fires.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
And so that's one of the one of.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Our markers, surreal tailors, the McDonald tryat. So you do
have to wonder, okay, was he in in okay situation?
Wish and it's possible and he just was it? Maybe
it was wiring, Maybe it was brain chemistry. Maybe he
just was not going to behave he was acting out
and like I said, skipping school and breaking into buildings
(41:12):
with his brother and all of that, and so I
do feel bad for those kind of things happening to him.
And I mean, every human being is valuable in a way.
The eleven twelve thirteen women were definitely very valuable and
they did not deserve to be killed. But a little
boy who is growing up in such a situation, it's
(41:37):
just no unfortunate and he was valuable too. And I
don't know, I mean, I'm torn because I feel like
maybe there could have been some things done, and it's
just a shame that he has so many circumstances going
against him.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
I guess I could totally understand that to a certain
extent when people are like, well, society failed, and it's like, well,
he had a brother, and there's ten thousand other people
in the same society that didn't do that, you know
what I mean. And that's that's kind of I mean,
I'm not trying to be brash or just write it off.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Or anything like that, because there is always.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
You know, that line where it's you know, sometimes society
does failure and sometimes there's circumstances.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
You know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
But at the same time, nobody, nobody forced him to
kill anybody, and his brother who was right there with him,
like he didn't he didn't do that stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
It's so I mean, I get you, like I'm torn too.
To an extent, it's like, damn man, Like.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
That's really sad and bad childhood.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
But on the on the flip side of it, it's like, well,
his brother had that same childhood and he didn't do.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Any of that shit.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
So it's like, I don't know, I'm always torn about that,
and it still I don't know. It goes back to
that name traverse nurture, and sometimes it's sometimes it's both,
you know, you just never know.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
Yeah, And I think if you're torn by it, and
if you do feel some empathy or sympathy, you're a
compassionate human being, and that's what we are all called
to be, you know. You know, there's so much hate
in the world, so I mean, to show compassion and
even for a killer, I think is it can be
(43:25):
a good thing. I feel like I'm gonna be hated
for saying that.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
But I don't know. We hate the crime, but we
still try to love.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
The person absolutely, because I mean, every you know, everybody's human,
and you know, sometimes you get so deep, you know,
your actions do define your character unfortunately, but you know
that's a that's a whole nother philosophical rabbit hole to
get down, right. Yep, If you could tell my listeners
(43:52):
one thing about your book that you are extremely proud
of that you know we'll get them inside that book
and captivated by it, what would that be?
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (44:03):
Goodness, Both of these books I set out to be
as victim's trick as I could, and so that's why
the beginning of both books has a chapter on each
female who lost her life, and that, to me is
the most important thing. Is that absolutely I hope that
(44:25):
the reader, and I feel that the reader does meet
each female because I set out with a very lofty
goal of trying to get somebody to speak for each
one of these eleven gals, and also Darlene too. I
was able to speak to Darlene's son Rashad, and I
was so helpful. I was able to speak to Valo
Chalk's son Andre.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
That was really helpful.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
I was able to speak to a few family members,
but a lot of time has passed since the case happened,
and I think from their perspective, I was able to
find somebody for every one of the females, but I
didn't always hear back. And again, it's it's hard if
I were in those shoes, what I want to talk
to some writer I've never met before about my deceased
(45:12):
family member who was unfortunately killed by serial killer. Maybe
not so I totally understand that. So it was difficult,
but I did piece together all the information I could
from the files on each one of these and there
is information on each one of the gals in there
(45:34):
that I think the reader will meet them and they
will see that they had a lot of normal aspects
of their lives. A lot of them grew up in
very good families, nuclear families, and had a good start
in life and had a wrong turn somewhere that put
them out on the street. And it really was about
drug addiction, and so that is that is a key
(45:56):
part of this book too, in this case, in any
you know case like this, where prostitutes are targeted frankly
because they tend to be out on a street because
of a drug addiction, so addiction is a big part
of this story. So yeah, I would hope that the
part of the book that really stands out would be
the victimology, the meeting of all of these women.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
And that's what I appreciate, is the fact that you're
not just telling the story, you're providing insight, which is
what I always like, I said, just appreciate, because anybody
can go up there and tell a story, but having
to go in and contact family members and do that
extra amount of research to add that insight and add
(46:44):
that context to the situations, I think that's really important.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
So I'm glad you did that.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
You are very welcome.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
And br Bates, thank you so much for joining me
on this podcast. And for my listeners, well.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Thank you for my job.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
I appre Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
This casual I always tell people, you know, it's like
there's no bullet points.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
It's like, let's just start. I'll just see where it
takes us.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
And you know, we're trying to trying to get readers.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
You know, we're trying to see what's in this book.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
And yeah, and for all my listeners, I will provide
links in the episode description for this book and her
other ones as well, so you can just go through
the episode description. Just click the link and it'll take
your right to it. And yeah, again, thank you so
much for joining me. And I'm sorry I was late.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
Oh no problem, Thank you again for the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
I had listened to a couple of your other episodes
on the Alcatraz when.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
You said that.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
When you said that, I was like, oh, here we go. Oh,
because you never know, you know, it's like, which one
did you listen to?
Speaker 4 (47:55):
I see, Alcatraz has been on my bucket list, so
that was interested. And then I listened to the most
recent one, The Mafia Guy. And then I think I
listened to one, oh, the Zodiac one.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (48:09):
Yeah, because an unsolved case is always so interesting.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
So yeah, that one.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
I think that writer, the journalist made a very good
case for this post guy being the Zodiac.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
He gets beat up so bad.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
And I'm personally involved with the case breakers and I
don't one remembers, so I know, I know Dale and
Jim Boo Colts and Jim gets beat up just for
you know, showing.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
Up, because they're case that they make.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
I know it's it's if people actually sat and listened
and read his book. It is like, I'm sorry, but
there are some things that you cannot ignore. But with
the Zodiac case, you have all these experts, it's like,
that's not him, and it's like, did you read the book.
I don't need to read the book. I know it's
(49:03):
not him. And it's like, well, and I always tell
people the same thing. Hey, unless you solve the case
yesterday and I didn't hear about it on the news,
that means it's still.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
An open case.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
So that means we need to entertain theories.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
We need to entertain, we need to entertain everything around
us til it's actually solved. But some people are just
so dead set on their suspect or their person of
interest that they just they're just not hearing anything. It's like, dude, Dale,
I mean, he spent years and years and years and
it was just by dumb luck that he had met
(49:36):
that guy. And it's just it's insane. And unfortunately we're
still waiting on Riverside Police Department and the FBI because
we got the ballistics, we did all the work through.
Speaker 4 (49:49):
The family willing to cooperate. That's kind of crazy. But
I would think with all of these genetic databases going on,
you could find some cousin or something that who's doing
it on filed and.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
We have we have Gary Post DNA, and then they
have the DNA of Sherry Joe Bates's killer.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Okay, so all we asked.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Is hey, sit down with these two pieces of paper
and take two minutes to look at him. I mean,
I personally, me and Jen personally don't care who the
zodiac is. We're just interested in solving the unsolved homicides.
So it's like, if we have a chance to actually
solve Scherry Joe Bates's murder, whether it's Gary Francis Post
(50:32):
or not, whether he's a zodiac or not, it doesn't matter.
We can eliminate him as her killer. That's all we're
trying to do. And a Riverside PD is just like Nope,
not gonna do it. It's like, you're not gonna take
two minutes to just look at these two pieces of paper,
and they just ignore us.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
They won't do it. That is just it's insane. It's
pretty horrible.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
Yeah, ego impeding progress pretty much.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Yeah, it's h it's frustrating and I mean, I haven't
really gotten too many updates and probably the last year
or so. And to be honest, with with as much
abuse as we take online, and as soon as something
comes up about the zodiac, here come all the ten
million internet experts. You know, some guy in his mom's
(51:20):
basement who researched it for six months and he saw
the movie, so he.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Knows what us.
Speaker 4 (51:25):
Yeah, it's like, come on, man, Oh that's a shame.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
But it is.
Speaker 3 (51:32):
But again, thank you so much for giving me an
hour of your time, and I just I appreciate it immensely.
Speaker 4 (51:39):
Well, thank you again for the opportunities. So I'll look
for it on your channels and I'll amplify it on
social media.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
So I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (51:48):
Yeah, all right, well you have a good evening. I
hope it's technology error free.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
I hope so too. I'm like, I'm aboutrageous. Unplugged the
Wi Fi and watch the antenna. At this point, that's
I'm just like, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Man.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
All right, Well you take care and I'll be Celine.
Speaker 3 (52:08):
All right, I'll see you later, okay, go bye bye,
This podcast contains adult content.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Some of the themes or topics may.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Include information on murder, kidnapping, torture, dismemberment, maybe some demonic content.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
With information on positions and paranormal activity.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
This podcast will also include explicit.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Horrible, and foul, socially unacceptable, totally uninhibited.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Adult themes language.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So if you're easily offended, if you're easily triggered, then
I highly suggest you turn this off now on.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
If not, just keep.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
In mind parental discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances podcast. I am your host, Justin
and I am joined by b. R. Bates, who wrote
a fantastic book and we are going to talk about
that today. It is called The Crack City Strangler and
it's the homicides of serial killer Benjamin Adkins. And I
was just telling BR here that I, being so close
(01:14):
to Detroit, I've never really heard of this before. And
there were twelve victims and one survivor. If I'm not
mistaken and super intrigued and br Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Thank you good to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So tell us how you got started in the genre
and what pulled you to this case in particular.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Well, I didn't start out writing crime, definitely not, and
I really didn't even have an interest in it until
I would say the last ten fifteen years. I started
watching the TV shows and the many many TV shows
that are out there in true crime, like all this
stuff on the Oxygen network these days. I remember when
Oxygen used to be like just women's programming, when.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It wasn's completely true crimes.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
But yeah, I started watching all of those shows, and
I really found myself very intrigued by these cases, especially
like with Dateline, because a lot of the Dateline episodes
that I watched, it would start out with a crime,
but they wouldn't tell you who did it, and they
would unfold everything gradually and they would do interviews with
people who were involved and you kind of had to
(02:18):
guess a lot of the time, Okay, who actually committed
the crime.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I loved that stuff.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
So with the interest in true crime more recently, I
had a mutual friend who with a cop who worked
the case of a serial killer in Detroit back in
the late nineteen nineties early two thousands, doctor Jerald Cliff.
He worked a case of John Eric Armstrong with the
Violent Crime Task force for Detroit Police, and so we
(02:44):
had a mutual friend introduced us because Jerry always had
this case that he worked on that he thought would
make a good book project. And my mutual friend asked me, well,
are you interested in writing something like that? Because I
had written lots of books over the years, but just
completely different stuff. I tend to write in more of
(03:04):
a features department area. I write about classic TV shows
that I love. I write novels and stuff like that,
and I've done that for quite a while. But I
thought about it, and I heard more about the case,
and I became really interested in it and decided to
take on that project. So I worked with Jerry on
that he collaborated with me, and that was the first book,
(03:26):
and the Murders and the Motor City series that was
about the Baby Bow serial killer. And then I wanted
to follow it up with something because I had sudden
time doing this research. Believe it or not, I mean,
we're talking about a serial killer here, but I was
so fascinated by it from a psychological perspective that I thought,
I want to do something else. I don't want to
just end it.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
With this book.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
And I would say the other pretty prominent serial killer
in Detroit is Benjamin Atkins. Even though on a national basis,
or maybe on a global basis, he's a little less known,
his name does come up in conversations times, like if
you look at a conversation on Reddit about serial killers,
somebody will mention Tony Atkins sometimes. So he's out there,
(04:08):
but he's just not as well known as a lot
of these serials.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
So you said you got into the psychological aspect of it.
What drew you into that just the victim the victimology
or was it more about his you know, just his life,
his surroundings. Would you think he's more of a I
don't want to say, just somebody taking advantage of the
social situation that he was surrounded in. Or did he
(04:35):
have like a deep seated type of hatred or something.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Yeah, there was definitely a deep seated hatred there. And
as far as the psychology of his killer, oh my goodness,
he's really complicated and he is definitely a puzzle to
try to solve. But yes, I was also interested in
the victims in both of these cases that I researched. Ironically,
(04:59):
you know, they had Kin's case took place in nineteen
ninety one and nineteen ninety two. The Armstrong case took
place in nineteen ninety nine and two thousand and so
there's almost a decade difference in the timeframe. But yet
the gals.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
That were involved the victims.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
In both cases. I am a similar age to victims
in both cases, and so they really struck a chord
with me. They're my generation, and I wanted to learn
more about them. I wanted to know what things were
like for them in their lives, how they grew up,
what they liked to do. You know, what their favorite
color was, or what sports they might have played, or whatever,
(05:37):
what they liked in school. I wanted to learn as
much about them as I could because I really related
to them because I'm of the same generation, and so
definitely that aspect of researching the case was so fascinating
for me. But yeah, the purp when you're talking about
a serial killer, the million dollar question, I think is
(05:57):
always why did they take human life? And I think
all of us were curious about these killers. When you
have a book or a case about a single killer,
I think even instinctually, maybe even subconsciously, or wondering how
is he different from me? How is he or she
different from me? Why did this person choose to take
(06:18):
human life when I would never do that? So what's
the difference, what's the difference in their childhood? What's the
difference in how they look at the world?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So, yeah, from us.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Exactly, that is always what it comes down to, and
I'm always torn on it, and both of these cases,
I was torn on it, and I think I have
to give a cop out response of it's a mix.
It's a mix both nature and nurture, because yeah, it's
just not clear. And with Atkins much more than are strong.
(06:49):
He is so complicated and he has so many unusual
aspects of his background that really just make you wonder, Okay,
was it about that?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
You know, he had a lot of things happened to
him that a lot of people who live what we
call a normal life would not have happened to them.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
So, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
That was going to be My next question is when
you start to get more in depth with him, what
stood out about his childhood and what made you think
it's like, you know what, maybe that was one of
those triggers that led him down that path? Did it
was his childhood, real, real rough.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
It was very rough. It's definitely a childhood of neglect
in different ways. For one thing, he did not have
a father in the picture. His father left his mom
when Ben was two years old, and so absent father
and really absent mother too. His mother was pretty honest
(07:49):
in her later years that she was working prostitution, she
was addicted to heroin. She was here, there, and everywhere,
but she wasn't there and present for her son, Ben
and Ben's older brother. Ben had a brother who was
a year older than him, and they were always together
all through their childhood and most of their adulthood too,
So these two boys had to deal with their mom
(08:12):
just not being there, and they were put into the
foster system. They went from home to home. They got
into a lot of trouble. They were skipping school, they
were breaking into buildings, they had a juvie record together,
and finally they got placed in a home for boys,
which was really rough on Ben. He had some things
(08:33):
happened to him there and he did some things that
you know, added to his childhood drama too. So just
a very unstable childhood and then being discharged from the
home for boys after two years, back into their mom's care.
What Ben's brother told his defense attorney later. Ben's defense
(08:54):
attorney later was that, yeah, we were just left her
own devices. Once we got out of the home for
boys and we were back with our mother, she still
wasn't there. And so Ben started hustling on the street,
and so he actually got into some abusive situations. He
started working prostitution, he started doing drugs of different kinds,
(09:19):
and that was his teenage years on up to early adulthood.
He was only twenty three when he was arrested, So
he had a pretty young life and really on the
street most of the time. A lot of the time
on the street and with risky behaviors and a lot
of trouble.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Got Chat.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
So his brother, them being so close in age and
having the same style of upbringing, what became of his brother?
Because I'm super curious about, you know, because we were
talking nature verse, nurture.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
I wanted to talk to his brother so badly. I
tried to contact him. I did not hear back. I
think I found a through Facebook. I'm not one hundred
percent sure, but I'm pretty sure I found him and
did not get a response. That's what you find everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
In these cases.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
I will tell you that Facebook is unfortunately the number
one tool for finding people, and there's yuh oh totally.
People just give up all their information on Facebook. That
should serve as a warning for people out there, do
not tell everybody everything on Facebook. So I think I
found him. I did not hear back. He is around.
(10:29):
He is in Michigan. I think he's around Detroit, at
least he was for a while. He may be up
north of Detroit elsewhere in the state according to the
Facebook profiles on multiple profiles that I found. But he
he as far as I know, did not really have
any trouble with the law at the time that Ben
(10:50):
was committing his crimes in Detroit and Highland Park, his
brother he would sometimes stay with this brother, and his
brother had a girlfriend sometimes called a wife, and they
were together for a long time, and Ben would stay
with them, and he actually even felt close to his
brother's girlfriend. But then sometimes he would be living homeless,
(11:13):
sleeping in abandoned buildings at Detroit too, and his brother
said that he did have to kick out Ben at
Christmas time. I think it was Christmas nineteen ninety if
I remember correctly. Because the drug thing, his brother had
also struggled with drugs and he didn't want to be
dragged back into that. And Ben was just really thick
into the drugs and so he felt they had to
(11:34):
boot him out because of that, because it was just
going to drag him right back into that culture.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
And so I think.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
He's lived a pretty stable life from what I can gather,
But I wish I could talk to him and find
out because there's so much I want to ask him.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Oh, that poor guy, man, he's probably been through it
and know is everybody it's yeah, I can see that
for sure. What was the time frame because I noticed
that they were quick, Like, what was the time frame
from victim one to victim the last victim?
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Okay, so when things really sped up when he actually
started killing people, because he had attacked other people leading
up to his first rder and those were spaced out
a little bit. As far as we know that, where
there was an attack in December nineteen ninety, there was
the next known survivor, the gal from December nineteen ninety survived.
I interviewed her for the book. The next attack that
(12:31):
we know of was Fall nineteen ninety one, so almost
a year later and Darlene was her name, and she survived,
although she has since passed on, but she remembered it
as school was in sessions, so it was September, but
she was really thinking it was October, so we think
that that attack was on October. The first time he
killed someone was either November or December, and that was
(12:55):
Patricia mcannon George, and we know that she was heard
from a real Thanksgiving so it was late November or
early December when she was killed. Okay, so that's probably
our beginning point. We know the last murder was the
end of May nineteen ninety two, the last day of May,
because this was C. C. Weimer and Ben got injured
(13:18):
during their scuffle. He had to go to the hospital
to get stitches, and so the hospital records were in
the early morning hours of June first, nineteen ninety two,
So we've got that pegged for sure. We're not so
sure on the beginning point, but it could have been
anywhere from six to seven or eight months span of
(13:38):
killing eleven women. So that's why he got the moniker
at the time of his rest and the investigation and
all of that of being the country's fastest serial killer
and I think he might still hold that on official title.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I would think so. Usually, yeah, usually it's spaced out
quite a bit. Most serial killers that i've you know,
researched and stuff like that, it's always spaced.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Out, and they have cooling off periods.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
You know, that's pretty well known.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
He did have a cooling off period after C. C.
Weimer at the end of May, and he claimed to
police after his arrest that he had gotten off the
drugs and so he was trying to straighten things out,
but that had happened before he did go like this
a little bit. But he did have smaller cooling off
periods in between, because some of these girls it was
(14:28):
like boom, boom, boom, maybe three in the span of
a week or two. So sometimes it was very very
quick and then maybe two or three weeks with nothing
and then you know, another murders.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
So yeah, and what was was his reasoning being on
the drugs? Were those quick ones and was that drug related.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Or I think it was almost always drug related. From
the sounds of his confessions, every single one of those
eleven murders, he had done some crack. He had just
smoked crack, and that's how things typically went, is that
he would he had the cycle of behavior. He was
(15:08):
working prostitution himself, as I said, he was making money
on the street, prostituting himself with men so that he
could get money to buy drugs.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So there was that.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And then he also claimed another very interesting aspect of
this case. After his arrest and in the investigation or
in his analysis by some psychiatric professionals in the time
between his arrest and his trial, he did claim to
hear voices. He claimed to hear like these sort of
(15:39):
alternate personalities in his head, one of which was named Tony,
who was telling him to commit these crimes. And I
bring up Tony there because talking about the cycle of
his behavior on a daily basis, after he had prostituted him,
made some money, bought drugs, this Tony personality or voice
would be the rat him, you know, like why were
(16:02):
you with a man? He was very Atkins was very
reflicted about a sexuality, and so this Tony character was
berating him, making them feel terrible and egging him on
to go find a female, to go be with a female.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
And to Benjamin, he was.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Looking for I think he was also looking for companionship
to a certain degree, he was looking for his mother
over and over because every one of these eleven, twelve,
thirteen women fit the demographic exactly of his mother, and
so there was a lot of bad in there. But
it was also a cycle he kept repeating. So he
(16:43):
would find a female on Woodward Avenue in Detroit or
Highland Park and he'd be like, hey, I got some drugs,
let's go, let's go smoke, And it was really just
a friendly, casual thing. It was not about engaging this
sex worker in sex, although that's what ended up happening.
That was not the expectation that the gal had when
(17:07):
when he approached her and said, I got something, you know,
let's go somewhere, you know, and it's on me or whatever.
It was all about going somewhere to do drugs and
so and I think I think these girls they had
seen him around Woodward Avenue. I think he was a
very familiar person on Woodward and they probably realized that
(17:28):
he was working prostitution himself, what his deal was, and
so they didn't feel threatened by him, and they didn't
see him as a client in any way. They just
saw him as this guy that they saw around. So
that's what would happen is that he would engage this
female and they would go off to a dark corner
and they I think in every one of those cases
(17:51):
with the eleven women, like I said, they actually smoked,
they did drugs and got high, and sometimes she would
get high as well, and things would get a little
crazy and she'd be flirting or whatever as he described it.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
I'm getting this only from him, but.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
It was said by his survivors and other people who
knew them, who had not been assaulted by him, that
when he smoked crack, he became someone different. He became
a different person, almost demonic, So that played into it too.
You know, asking about Okay is with the idea that
is were the drugs a factor? I think they were
(18:30):
every incident. I think they were, And he probably engaged
females in conversation or hung out with females plenty of
times when it didn't go sideways and somebody didn't end
up dead. So I really do feel like, in looking
at the facts of the case, that the drugs were
a very important element in the murders.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
And I'm glad you brought up the mental illness aspect.
Was he ever officially diagnosed after he got caught with.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Anything, he was diagnosed, Okay. There were four different psychiatrists
or psychologists who evaluated him after his arrest before his trial,
at about a year and a half of time. The
first one was a staff psychologist for the Detroit Recorders Court,
the Inner City Court, really just determining competency to stand trial,
(19:22):
so that guy didn't really dig into a whole lot
of stuff. Then the next couple people were essentially for
the prosecution, doing an analysis of Atkins, and they started
to hear what he was saying about hearing voices, what
he claimed about the alternative personalities and that sort of thing,
(19:42):
and they largely felt he was what they call malingering.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
He felt like they were faking it.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
They did give him tests. There's like the MMPI tests,
I think the Minnesota multi Phasic. I couldn't even tell
you what the acronym stands were, but it's a very
well known, a largely done test, common test, I would say.
And so they did a lot of testing on him,
psychological testing, and they really felt like the voices thing,
(20:09):
it was malingerate. So then the fourth person to evaluate
him was for the defense. So we're coming at it
from a different perspective, and his lawyer, when you have
a client who's confessed to all these crimes and also
has DNA evidence against him and has a survivor who
has id'd him, well what do you do but an
(20:31):
insanity defense? And so he was going to go for that,
and he hired a doctor out of Oakland County, doctor Abramski,
and he evaluated him. And here's where we get to
a sort of a diagnosis. Bramski would not go so
far as to say that Atkins was insane, but he
believed that there was some stuff going on here. He
(20:53):
believed he had a borderline personality disorder. He said he
can did not have personality so much as he had
what doctor Abramsky termed splitting, which is a borderline personality disorder,
in which was at Kids just having a hard time
reconciling some of the trauma he had been through and
(21:16):
it manifesting itself. And I'm not a psychologist, although I'm
always interested.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
In it, but I'm probably not going to even explain this.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
As well as doctor Abramsky would. He had a lot
of trouble Atkins did reconciling everything that had happened, and
it was sort of a way to deal with some
of his childhood trauma that he could not really face.
He even said that he would hear about the crimes
on the news. He didn't read the newspaper, but he
(21:43):
caught the TV news now and then, and he would
hear that a body was found here or this woman
was murdered there, and it really wouldn't phase him that
he had actually done that. It was almost like it
was compartmentalized somewhere else in his brain. And that's sort
of what doctor Ramsky was getting at with that, and
that he couldn't deal with it, he couldn't really face it.
(22:05):
And that's where an alternate personality thing kind of comes in, like, well,
Tony made me do it. Tony egged me on. Tony
told me to pick up that female and take her
over to the Howard Johnson, you know, restaurant and try
to kill her.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
It's not my fault, that's Tony's fault.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Yes, yes, it was a way to take the blame
away from himself. And he really didn't even realize too
that as many cops who worked the case said he
was killing his mother over and over and over because
these women were all drug addicted sex workers like his mom,
of the same color as his mom. So there were
(22:45):
a lot of things that he just couldn't deal with.
He just couldn't couldn't deal And even when he was
being questioned by police after his arrest, he told the
one officer, Ron Sanders, he said, don't tell my mom
about this. Okay, you know they do stay. John Douglas,
who is the well known FBI profiler, has said, and
at least one of his books, a book that I read,
(23:06):
that a lot of these serial killers have mommy issues.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Even if they.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Aren't killing their mom over and over or pretending to
be their mom like Norman Bates, they do have some
issues with their mom, their female parent. So what is
that about? That is like a whole other discussion.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
I guess it totally is. It's interesting to say the least.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Now, you said before the.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Murder started, there were attacks before that. Does it seem
like he was building up to that murder and the
severity of the tax yep?
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Was he trying to find like an MO? Did he
stick with the same mo and everything like that?
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Yes, he was very methodical. The first attack that we
know of and this is a gal who really had
never told her story before. She kept it secret all
these years. And this is the December nineteen ninety attack.
But I also can go back to the home for
Boys where he attacked another boy at the home too,
and there's there's like some stuff there too, But as
(24:06):
far as adulthood as an adult male wandering the streets.
When he attacked Margie in December nineteen ninety, the two
of them started smoking and she said he turned demonic,
he turned into somebody else once that crack hit him,
and they were talking and all of a sudden, she said,
he went for her throat and so he was going
(24:29):
to try to do like a strangulation thing. She started
talking and she's like, hey, I got family, I get
and she's like trying to talk her way out of it,
and finally she offered him money and that was what
got her out of it and she was able to
run off.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, that sort of subdued him.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
That is surprising, Yeah, isn't that.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah? I figured money was not even a factor.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
You would think, but this is early on.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
And then so the next attack with Darlene, he took
her into the Howard Johnson restaurant that I mentioned, and
he started attacking her. He actually raped her first, and
she's like, you know, don't you don't You don't have
to force me like this. You know, she knew him,
(25:16):
She knew him for years on the street. She knew
him by the name Tony, the name that he went
by on the street. But then after raping her, he
was trying to drag her down to the basement of
that building, and she knew, okay, this is something else entirely,
and so she was able to kick them, fight them,
break free. She was a little bit bigger than some
of the other females that he chose after that, So
(25:38):
that maybe helps to answer your question too as far
as his technique or his mo is that he did
ten at least, police said that he tended to choose
smaller females after that. He was trying to perfect a
little bit. And they say that about serial killers, that
when they first start out, they're not quite as good
(26:00):
at it, so to speak, and so they falter a
little bit in their first couple encounters, their first couple
of assaults.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
They're just not as smooth.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
As they can eventually become. If they're I guess successful unfortunately,
so she was able to fight them off and she survived.
She ran out of the building, someone else arrived, she survived,
but after that he was able to successfully kill. And
it was always strangulation, so the same m all. And
(26:29):
I think with Darlene, I think it was was he
actually trying to strangle her. Well, he had raped her
and he was trying to drag her away, So I
don't know that it actually got to the point of
actually grabbing her neck and trying to.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
But it may have.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
But yeah, every time he was methodical and he would
strangle the other victims. He would make sure that they
were dead. And this was something he told police he
read in a book. He actually read in a book
about this. So I mean, how can you be too insane?
Lawyers argue, if you're that premeditated, you're studying it.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I'm yeah, because there's there's something of it. And again
I'm not I'm not a.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Lawyer or psychologist, but there's something about the insanity defense.
And as far as you know, if you can prove
that they had planning and motive and you know, repetition
and they're they're trying not to be caught, and all
of that it doesn't do very well for the insanity
defense does not. So he had read in a book
(27:32):
that after strangling them, if they appear to be dead,
to make sure, you know, to push on their chest,
to push share out, to listen for breathing, to feel
for a paulse All of that he had read in
a book, and that's what he told police later during
his confessions, is I practiced all.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Of these things.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
I put my He would put both hands around their
throat and push on the front here, and then when
it was all seeming to be said and done, then
he would follow those other steps just to make sure
that that person was dead before he left her. And
then he tried to hide her so that she would
not be discovered. He really didn't want to be caught
(28:11):
in that way because he was making a lot of
effort to hide her after the fact, and a lot
of these women were not discovered for weeks or months
after they were killed.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
So he was half ass successful and making sure things
got hidden and all that stuff. Was there any records
of sexual assault or rape on any of the how
many of the victims any of them?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Eleven of them. Of the eleven women, that were killed.
I believe every time he told police that he actually
raped her, and I think that the police found the
crime scene investors evidence tax found evidence of rape every
time too, and he raped them multiple ways also, which
is you know, just so so disturbing.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
So yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
It was a sexual assault every time, even though he
had claimed to police that he was gay. And of
course we know that rape is not really about sex
so much as that it is about power, you know,
the sexual assault in that way is about power over
your victim. But yeah, he was very conflicted in that way.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Did his brother or you know, his brother's wife girlfriend,
did anybody around him have any any kind of thought
that maybe, you know, it was it was him doing this.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
I don't think they had any in claim. His brother
and his brother's girlfriend saw him now and then, and
there were even like after Atkins was arrested, there were
people interviewed in the media after he was identified and
it broke the news who he was. Then the media
swarmed over his brother and everybody who lived in the building,
(29:54):
and they talked to the lady upstairs or the lady
downstairs or whatever. And yeah, I used to bake the
brownie sometime and they got they got that kind of thing,
like he was so nice, he would run to the
store for me, and and he did have a nice
thing about him.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
He did.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Actually, one of the cops who worked the case nicknamed
him gentle Ben because he said he was never threatened
by him. He would just average build There was nothing
menacing about him. The defense attorney told me the same thing.
He could be sitting there talking to you, you would
never know anything was going on with him.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
It was terrifying.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Yes, yes, it was very shocking to people who knew him.
And I have a feeling I don't know for sure,
but I have a feeling his brother and his brother's
girlfriend who his brother's girlfriend is gone. She's no, she
had died a few years ago. I have a feeling
they did not know. Like even as these murders are
(30:49):
making the news, and it's very very clear, it's very
obvious to everyone that police are hunting a serial killer
in Highland Park in Detroit, I don't think I would.
I would hazard a guess that his brother would not
have suspected him being this killer. I was.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
I'm glad you pointed on the actual the Highland Park
in all of that area where he would hang out.
Did he ever mention anything about, you know, after the
first few killings, like the ladies out there, kind of
maybe partnering up with other girls for protection or anything
like that.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
He said one thing to police. He one thing that
was chilling, and I think it was when he was
arrested for loitering, okay, before his arrest in August nineteen
ninety two, after he was identified by Darlene as her
attacker with police, and then he was arrested, and then
the whole thing, the whole house of cards fell before that,
(31:49):
in January of nineteen ninety two, they had found one
of the victims, I think it was Vicky Truelove in January,
and that was in Detroit. Eight of these murders were
in Highland Park, three were in Detroit, and so Detroit.
In January, they had found at least two or three
women at that point, and they decided to do a
(32:11):
sweep of abandoned buildings and maybe that was Island Park two,
come to think of it. But they went, they did
a sweep through abandoned buildings and they found this guy
sleeping on a couch where he shouldn't be in an
abandoned building. So they said, hey, you know you're you're
not supposed to be here.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
We're going to take you downtown.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
We're gonna ask you a few questions because we're looking
for a killer.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Turns out it was the killer.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
They had no idea, and so they brought him downtown.
They gave him some questions, and I think that was
when although he had also been detained in Highland Park
that October November before, same thing, just being in a
building when he shouldn't be in a building. I think
actually he was breaking into that building when he was
(32:56):
detained and he was brought up on charges. But this
January thing, he was just like been on a couch,
and so they just asked him some questions. They asked him,
have you seen anything funny? Have you seen anybody acting
strange around town? They were kind of acted him like,
you know, just try to gather information from him, and
he said, well, you know, some of the girls out
there are kind of scared. And one a friend of mine,
(33:17):
She told me, Hey, when I'm out here, would you
kind of watch out for me? Would you kind of
keep an eye on me? Make sure you know somebody's
not creeping up on me or something like that.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Isn't that crazy? Again?
Speaker 4 (33:29):
He was so disarming that these women had no idea.
This was just Tony that they saw around.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, it seems like when he got caught he was
extremely forthcoming with information.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (33:44):
He was at first he was denying everything. When the
first Detroit police officer came to the room to interrogate him,
it was about a day and a half after his
arrest in August, and he sat down to chat with him.
Maybe there was another officer there and there was a
closed circuit TV situation going on. Was not being recorded,
(34:06):
but there was a closed circuit TV set up so
that in another room a couple more officers could watch.
And so there were maybe three or four officers who
were watching things, but one was tasked with asking the questions.
And it was really a small talk situation, you know,
this and that and the other thing, and not really
(34:29):
around to the murders. And so the FBI agent who
had been assigned case from the Detroit office of the FBI,
because this was by that point it had become an
inner agency task for so there was an FBI, there
was Michigan State Policeman's there was Wayne County sheriff Department
people helping out with it.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
So it all kinds of agencies. And the FBI person disappolled.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
Somebody knew a good interrogator and that was Ron Sanders.
And Ron Sanders was on his way to going on vacation,
taking a trip to Chicago, and he was interrupted and said,
we got expect in the Woodward at killing, so we
kind of needed to come in and talk to the
I work nowhere, and so he can, and he turned
(35:16):
the small.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Talk into real talk right away.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
He got into the room and he's like, he's looking
at Atkins and he he said, he looked at him,
looked at his arms. Where'd you get those scratches? Ken said,
my boyfriend did that.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
I have a boyfriend.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
So he was claiming to be gay and telling police
that he had no interest in women, and Sanders said, no,
your boyfriend didn't do that. The women did that.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Because you killed them.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Now, he was just very aggressive and went right at it,
and it didn't take too long for him to get
Atkins to confess. And once he started confessing, he had
confessed to all eleven women he had killed, plus the
attack on Darlene before the murders started.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
How did the trial go and how long did that last?
Speaker 4 (36:04):
The trial was unusual because you had these three cases
in Detroit and eight cases in Highland Park. They actually
did something unusual that I've never heard happening in any
other criminal case.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
They had two juries. They had a jury for Wayne.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
County listening to the eight Highland Park cases. They had
the Recorder's Court jury listening to the Detroit cases. So
Recorder's Court doesn't exist anymore, but it was an inner
city Detroit court to address Detroit crimes, and since it's
been phased out, But so you had two juries in
(36:43):
the same court room listening to essentially the same case.
But sometimes if there was evidence or discussion introduce that
was only pertaining to Highland Park, then the Detroit jury
would be excused and vice versa. So the two juries
wouldn't hear absolutely everything, but they would he or what
was pertaining to their cases. And so they rendered separate
(37:04):
verdicts at separate times and had separate deliberations, and it.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Took the case.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
The trial began in January nineteen ninety four, and the
verdicts were both reached a couple days apart in April
nineteen ninety four, So that's how long it took to
convict him in both cases.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
That is pretty wild, having two juries at the same
time listening to the same case. I don't I can't
recall the time I've heard of that happening before.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yep, it's really wild.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
So what ended up happening to Tony as I guess
we should say Tony.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
Yes, he was incarcerated in Michigan in nineteen ninety four,
and he only served three years because he died in
nineteen ninety seven September nineteen ninety seven with HIVS slash
AIDS couplications of some according to the news reports.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Well, I mean that is some crazy shit. I'm telling
you right now. What was one thing during your research though,
that I mean his childhood aside? I guess was there
something in your research that made you hold that sympathy
card a little bit? You know, just getting to know
who he was, his upbringing, his childhood. Was there a
(38:25):
little bit of a I shouldn't say sympathy, but a
little bit of an empathy factor.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
I think definitely he's the kind of killer who evooks
that kind of response a conflicted response. Like I always
tell people, if you go, there's been a few podcasts
about the case over the years, and they really just
draw from the newspaper reports at the time and maybe
give an opinion, maybe give a perspective.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
On, oh, this case is such and such.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
If you go and you look on YouTube, you search
on Benjamin Atkins, not for the newer stuff that like
where I've been interviewed the past few weeks, but the
other podcasts that have been past five years or so.
When people have done a podcast about the case, if
you look at the comments of those on YouTube, you'll
see an array of different reactions, and a lot of
(39:11):
people will come in and comment that he should have
gotten help, that society failed him. And one of the
jurors at the time there was a holdout for a
minute in the deliberations for one of the juries, and
she later told the media she said, you know, I'm
not saying that he's in a center or anything, but
he should have gotten help.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
She was really torn about that, and a lot of
people do express that. So it is that kind of
case that evopes that response, and for me, I just
I do feel badly about his youngest years. I feel
badly about a kid left on his own without a
(39:54):
mom or a dad. I almost wish that, you know,
I could have been a foster who would have helped
in some way, you know, who would have been at
one of those foster homes and would have been some
kind of good direction, you know, some kind of good
And I'm not saying that the foster homes failed or anything,
but I don't know. He he was a troubled kid,
(40:16):
and you do have to wonder, okay, was he in
a nurturing foster home that could have turned things around
for him and he was with his brother?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Was he in a loving home and he.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Was just wired to misbehave? There was one of the people,
one of the females who was at one of those
foster homes, who is reflected in his records with the
Home for Boys like his previous foster home history. She
actually said that he was setting fires.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
And so that's one of the one of.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Our markers, surreal tailors, the McDonald tryat. So you do
have to wonder, okay, was he in in okay situation?
Wish and it's possible and he just was it? Maybe
it was wiring, Maybe it was brain chemistry. Maybe he
just was not going to behave he was acting out
and like I said, skipping school and breaking into buildings
(41:12):
with his brother and all of that, and so I
do feel bad for those kind of things happening to him.
And I mean, every human being is valuable in a way.
The eleven twelve thirteen women were definitely very valuable and
they did not deserve to be killed. But a little
boy who is growing up in such a situation, it's
(41:37):
just no unfortunate and he was valuable too. And I
don't know, I mean, I'm torn because I feel like
maybe there could have been some things done, and it's
just a shame that he has so many circumstances going
against him.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
I guess I could totally understand that to a certain
extent when people are like, well, society failed, and it's like, well,
he had a brother, and there's ten thousand other people
in the same society that didn't do that, you know
what I mean. And that's that's kind of I mean,
I'm not trying to be brash or just write it off.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Or anything like that, because there is always.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
You know, that line where it's you know, sometimes society
does failure and sometimes there's circumstances.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
You know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
But at the same time, nobody, nobody forced him to
kill anybody, and his brother who was right there with him,
like he didn't he didn't do that stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
It's so I mean, I get you, like I'm torn too.
To an extent, it's like, damn man, Like.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
That's really sad and bad childhood.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
But on the on the flip side of it, it's like, well,
his brother had that same childhood and he didn't do.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Any of that shit.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
So it's like, I don't know, I'm always torn about that,
and it still I don't know. It goes back to
that name traverse nurture, and sometimes it's sometimes it's both,
you know, you just never know.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
Yeah, And I think if you're torn by it, and
if you do feel some empathy or sympathy, you're a
compassionate human being, and that's what we are all called
to be, you know. You know, there's so much hate
in the world, so I mean, to show compassion and
even for a killer, I think is it can be
(43:25):
a good thing. I feel like I'm gonna be hated
for saying that.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
But I don't know. We hate the crime, but we
still try to love.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
The person absolutely, because I mean, every you know, everybody's human,
and you know, sometimes you get so deep, you know,
your actions do define your character unfortunately, but you know
that's a that's a whole nother philosophical rabbit hole to
get down, right. Yep, If you could tell my listeners
(43:52):
one thing about your book that you are extremely proud
of that you know we'll get them inside that book
and captivated by it, what would that be?
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (44:03):
Goodness, Both of these books I set out to be
as victim's trick as I could, and so that's why
the beginning of both books has a chapter on each
female who lost her life, and that, to me is
the most important thing. Is that absolutely I hope that
(44:25):
the reader, and I feel that the reader does meet
each female because I set out with a very lofty
goal of trying to get somebody to speak for each
one of these eleven gals, and also Darlene too. I
was able to speak to Darlene's son Rashad, and I
was so helpful. I was able to speak to Valo
Chalk's son Andre.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
That was really helpful.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
I was able to speak to a few family members,
but a lot of time has passed since the case happened,
and I think from their perspective, I was able to
find somebody for every one of the females, but I
didn't always hear back. And again, it's it's hard if
I were in those shoes, what I want to talk
to some writer I've never met before about my deceased
(45:12):
family member who was unfortunately killed by serial killer. Maybe
not so I totally understand that. So it was difficult,
but I did piece together all the information I could
from the files on each one of these and there
is information on each one of the gals in there
(45:34):
that I think the reader will meet them and they
will see that they had a lot of normal aspects
of their lives. A lot of them grew up in
very good families, nuclear families, and had a good start
in life and had a wrong turn somewhere that put
them out on the street. And it really was about
drug addiction, and so that is that is a key
(45:56):
part of this book too, in this case, in any
you know case like this, where prostitutes are targeted frankly
because they tend to be out on a street because
of a drug addiction, so addiction is a big part
of this story. So yeah, I would hope that the
part of the book that really stands out would be
the victimology, the meeting of all of these women.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
And that's what I appreciate, is the fact that you're
not just telling the story, you're providing insight, which is
what I always like, I said, just appreciate, because anybody
can go up there and tell a story, but having
to go in and contact family members and do that
extra amount of research to add that insight and add
(46:44):
that context to the situations, I think that's really important.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
So I'm glad you did that.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
You are very welcome.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
And br Bates, thank you so much for joining me
on this podcast. And for my listeners, well.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Thank you for my job.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
I appre Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
This casual I always tell people, you know, it's like
there's no bullet points.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
It's like, let's just start. I'll just see where it
takes us.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
And you know, we're trying to trying to get readers.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
You know, we're trying to see what's in this book.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
And yeah, and for all my listeners, I will provide
links in the episode description for this book and her
other ones as well, so you can just go through
the episode description. Just click the link and it'll take
your right to it. And yeah, again, thank you so
much for joining me. And I'm sorry I was late.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
Oh no problem, Thank you again for the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
I had listened to a couple of your other episodes
on the Alcatraz when.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
You said that.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
When you said that, I was like, oh, here we go. Oh,
because you never know, you know, it's like, which one
did you listen to?
Speaker 4 (47:55):
I see, Alcatraz has been on my bucket list, so
that was interested. And then I listened to the most
recent one, The Mafia Guy. And then I think I
listened to one, oh, the Zodiac one.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (48:09):
Yeah, because an unsolved case is always so interesting.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
So yeah, that one.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
I think that writer, the journalist made a very good
case for this post guy being the Zodiac.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
He gets beat up so bad.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
And I'm personally involved with the case breakers and I
don't one remembers, so I know, I know Dale and
Jim Boo Colts and Jim gets beat up just for
you know, showing.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
Up, because they're case that they make.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
I know it's it's if people actually sat and listened
and read his book. It is like, I'm sorry, but
there are some things that you cannot ignore. But with
the Zodiac case, you have all these experts, it's like,
that's not him, and it's like, did you read the book.
I don't need to read the book. I know it's
(49:03):
not him. And it's like, well, and I always tell
people the same thing. Hey, unless you solve the case
yesterday and I didn't hear about it on the news,
that means it's still.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
An open case.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
So that means we need to entertain theories.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
We need to entertain, we need to entertain everything around
us til it's actually solved. But some people are just
so dead set on their suspect or their person of
interest that they just they're just not hearing anything. It's like, dude, Dale,
I mean, he spent years and years and years and
it was just by dumb luck that he had met
(49:36):
that guy. And it's just it's insane. And unfortunately we're
still waiting on Riverside Police Department and the FBI because
we got the ballistics, we did all the work through.
Speaker 4 (49:49):
The family willing to cooperate. That's kind of crazy. But
I would think with all of these genetic databases going on,
you could find some cousin or something that who's doing
it on filed and.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
We have we have Gary Post DNA, and then they
have the DNA of Sherry Joe Bates's killer.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Okay, so all we asked.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Is hey, sit down with these two pieces of paper
and take two minutes to look at him. I mean,
I personally, me and Jen personally don't care who the
zodiac is. We're just interested in solving the unsolved homicides.
So it's like, if we have a chance to actually
solve Scherry Joe Bates's murder, whether it's Gary Francis Post
(50:32):
or not, whether he's a zodiac or not, it doesn't matter.
We can eliminate him as her killer. That's all we're
trying to do. And a Riverside PD is just like Nope,
not gonna do it. It's like, you're not gonna take
two minutes to just look at these two pieces of paper,
and they just ignore us.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
They won't do it. That is just it's insane. It's
pretty horrible.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
Yeah, ego impeding progress pretty much.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Yeah, it's h it's frustrating and I mean, I haven't
really gotten too many updates and probably the last year
or so. And to be honest, with with as much
abuse as we take online, and as soon as something
comes up about the zodiac, here come all the ten
million internet experts. You know, some guy in his mom's
(51:20):
basement who researched it for six months and he saw
the movie, so he.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Knows what us.
Speaker 4 (51:25):
Yeah, it's like, come on, man, Oh that's a shame.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
But it is.
Speaker 3 (51:32):
But again, thank you so much for giving me an
hour of your time, and I just I appreciate it immensely.
Speaker 4 (51:39):
Well, thank you again for the opportunities. So I'll look
for it on your channels and I'll amplify it on
social media.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
So I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (51:48):
Yeah, all right, well you have a good evening. I
hope it's technology error free.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
I hope so too. I'm like, I'm aboutrageous. Unplugged the
Wi Fi and watch the antenna. At this point, that's
I'm just like, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Man.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
All right, Well you take care and I'll be Celine.
Speaker 3 (52:08):
All right, I'll see you later, okay, go bye bye,
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