The Voices of Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  Backtracking as carefully as he could, Moses then spotted hundreds of lights along the rim of the ravine. Dozens of headlight beams illuminated the area. Then there was a loud explosion followed by gunfire. This was the flash-bang thrown at his truck. Then even more shots riddled the vehicle.

  Taking off in another direction, he stumbled along the riverbed in almost complete darkness. He found a clearing, pulled a cigarette from its pack, lit a smoke, and sat down to consider his options, which were fast running out. In the distance he could see lights. Maybe the lights of a ranch. It was about a quarter of a mile away, and he could hear people talking:I couldn’t hear what was being said, and had hoped they hadn’t heard me crunching across the riverbed. I prayed to God. If he would let me phone my family, I told him I would throw away my guns. Anyway, what could I do next . . . steal another vehicle . . . hold someone hostage . . . what am I gonna tie ’em up with . . . am I gonna have to kill them? All this shit and more kept racing through my mind.

  Then the people I had heard talking got into vehicles and drove off so I quietly as possible made my way toward the light at the ranch.

  As I approached, all kinds of thoughts were running wild in my mind. How was I going to handle these people . . . go in shooting . . . sneak in . . . or should I pass them by and keep going? I had to find transportation soon, but I knew that all roads were blocked by now. A perimeter set-up for a good ways . . . too far to make it on foot in the shape I was in. The sky was clear, the moon shone brightly, stars were dancing in the heavens, the air was chilly. It was just too bad my body had become fucked. I was soaking wet. I had been walking and stumbling for miles, hiding out for hours, running for days while bleeding profusely, although it had stopped for now. I had plugged the wound as best as I could after the fall. Hypothermia was setting in . . . no food other than a thin piece of beef jerky. I am down to a couple rounds for the rifle and a box and two speed-loaders for the .375 Magnum.

  After seeing and hearing all those gunshots earlier, I knew this was a different game now, so I had to come up with a different plan. I walked up the steep hill, quiet as a church mouse, and up to a fence. I crawled through, into an area fenced off to bales of hay.

  I looked around and lit up a smoke, then I nuzzled down in between a couple of bales, had a good, long smoke. I did some praying. I did a weapons check. All was good. Then I did some recon from my position.

  For a short while, Moses crept around the outbuildings and a number of old vehicles parked nearby. In the ranch house, dogs were barking. In front of a barn was a green Explorer. There were no keys in the ignition. Then Moses took the bull by the horns, walked up to the front door and knocked.

  “Is anyone at home?” he asked.

  There was no answer, so he tried the doorknob. It was locked.

  “I didn’t dare break in,” says Moses, “but I needed refuge and supplies if I was to continue on foot . . . then two vehicles came down a track towards me. I had no option but to run into the barn.”

  8.30 p.m., Tuesday, February 15, 2000, near Lusk, Wyoming: Rancher Jim Kramers and his son Justin returned to their ranch in different vehicles, then went inside. Justin, heard their dogs barking at something behind their house, so he grabbed his rifle. Both men went outside, and from their porch they could see a man who they thought was Charles Moses—the fugitive that had to be stopped—skulking in the darkness.

  Jim whispered to his son to sneak around back and quietly draw a bead on Moses, telling him to do what he had to do—shoot to kill if necessary. Jim then found himself in a standoff with a desperately cold and hungry man who had committed cold-blooded murder, But the rancher had a plan he hoped would work. “I was totally unarmed,” Jim later told police, adding, “Moses had a rifle and a pistol in his hands, and that pistol was pointing straight at me.”

  With remarkable presence of mind, Jim Kramers quietly offered Moses a deal. He knew that the fugitive had been exposed to the day’s pouring rain and freezing cold. If Moses would drop his guns and come inside the warm ranch, Kramers would give him a hot meal and throw his soaking clothes in the dryer.

  At first, Charles Moses refused the offer, but Kramers told him that this was the only way they could work together. The plan, if it worked, was then to secretly call the police.

  By now, Justin had the fugitive in his sights, and Moses looked like he was going for the plan, but it could go either way. For his part, Jim hoped that his son would not be drawn into violence. “I was concerned throughout the ordeal that my son would not have to shoot someone. Justly or unjustly, I did not want him to go through life knowing that he had killed a person,” Jim later told reporters. Today, Justin Kramers recalls: “One of the fears I had was if I had to shoot at him and I would miss. I only had one shot, and he had a six-shot pistol.”

  After weeks on a methamphetamine-fueled rampage, Moses had finally slowed down. With a sideways glance, he could make out the muzzle of Justin’s hunting rifle aimed at his head. “I knew he had zeroed in on me,” recalled Moses. And, although the young rancher was scared he might miss, his aim was as steady as a rock. The fugitive dropped his weapons, and after a two-hour standoff he walked into the house.

  Once inside the warm property and out of his wet clothes, Moses concentrated on his first hot meal in days while Justin slipped out through the front door and ran to his brother’s place a short distance away. He placed a call to the sheriff, and when he returned, Moses hadn’t even realized he’d been gone.

  A Lusk police officer and a Wyoming game warden arrived within minutes. Because of Jim Kramers’s plan, the wild fugitive was without his guns. After a staggering chase across hundreds of miles, after burglaries, car-jackings, gunfights and murder, Charles Lannis Moses was hogtied, cuffed, and dragged into the snow, finally in custody.

  Charlie Moses said that he would have given anything to to shake the rancher’s hand properly, for he believes that the man saved his life. He is convinced that if the game warden hadn’t taken charge of his arrest, he would have been shot dead by the cops or the FBI, who he believed had orders to shoot to to kill on sight.

  As law enforcement had suspected, Moses had been wounded. At the Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, he was treated for a bullet wound to his shoulder, a fragment of lead in his thumb, dehydration, and exhaustion. The police chase had run him into the ground.

  Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ’Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.

  —CLINT EASTWOOD THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES

  Back in Nebraska, Moses initially fought the charges against him, but when confronted with the overwhelming evidence, he accepted a plea bargain. He pleaded “no contest” to second-degree murder and two counts of assault on police officers. He was sentenced to 190 years in prison and is currently incarcerated at the Tecumseh Correctional Institution.

  The police officers whom Moses shot eventually returned to full duty.

  Methamphetamine is still the biggest drug problem in the Midwest, and law enforcement officers are determined to fight it, whatever the cost.

  Tecumseh Correctional Institution, P.O. Box 900, Tecumseh, Johnson County, Nebraska: Today, Moses attempts to deny killing the farmer:The police killed the farmer [Robert Sedlacek] and framed me for it. Interesting? By the first police report I read, I had shot a cop in Texas, shot a cop in Lincoln, Nebraska, a bank teller, and an innocent bystander, shot a sheriff, a highway patrolman, and a farmer.

  So I do want to tell the world what I believed happened with the farmer. The cops had a BOLO21 on me as being armed and dangerous . . . do not approach . . . if possible shoot on sight if spotted.

  Now, I know that when I left Sedlacek’s farm, I saw no man. Yes, I stole a truck. I busted his window with the rifle butt, got in, and drove off. Then I passed by a cop heading for the farm. That cop pulled up, and when the farmer walked out of
his place he was gunned down by mistake.

  Indeed, Charles Moses has a lot more to say about his innocence in this murder, but it was proven to the satisfaction of the court that he had murdered the farmer in cold blood.

  As a footnote to this chapter, the author submitted a draft to Chuck Moses and received a very strong letter from his mother, by way of a reply, for she is completely convinced that her son is a totally innocent man. Indeed, the lady is furious with me, for she argues that the cops framed Chuck.

  For reasons of her copyright law, I am unable to include her letter of complaint in this chapter, but I can publish my reply to her. I think my reply deals with everything and I have not heard a peep from Chuck, or his mother, since I sent this letter:Dear XXXXXX

  Your letter dated 29 January 2010 arrived today. I am sure that you have the year wrong but I have copied your front page and have attached it to this letter.

  Having read through your letter, I apologise if Chuck’s chapter does not suit you. Nevertheless, I double-checked with most of the other parties involved in the programme and I have no doubt that they were all completely truthful.

  Thereafter, I wrote to Chuck and asked him for his version of the events that led to his final arrest. I then inserted his comments into the body text of the chapter.

  I can, if you allow me, put some of your letter into the chapter, especially Chuck’s problems up until he was bailed.

  When I get a sniff that a convicted man may be innocent, I ask that inmate to send me any court documents, witness statements, forensic reports, etc., so that I may investigate further. Quite often, I receive hundreds of documents, as was the case of Fred Waterfield; serving life for serial murder—murders for which he is entirely innocent. I did exactly the same thing with Douglas Clark, aka “The Sunset Slayer.”

  If an inmate, at his or her expense, is able to provide me with the material I ask for, I can then take the case apart piece-by-piece.

  Chuck was unable to send me the papers concerning his case, so I have to go with what I have at hand.

  I hear what you have to say concerning your own private beliefs, but while I can incorporate your thoughts into Chuck’s chapter, you will understand that unfortunately it will be deemed as hearsay.

  Officers Nelms and McKnight.

  The facts are that discharging a firearm at police officers with intent to kill carries a maximum tariff of life imprisonment in Nebraska. Therefore, notwithstanding the Robert Sedlacek incident, Chuck would have received a life sentence in any event. Had one of the officers died, in all likelihood Chuck could be now be awaiting execution.

  However, what is crystal clear is that Chuck was prepared to shoot to kill in his attempts to avoid arrest, and he admits this himself.

  Robert Sedlacek.

  Eunice, Chuck signed a plea bargain agreement to avoid the death penalty and pled “no contest” for the second-degree murder of Mr Sedlacek. That, today, Chuck says he is entirely innocent of killing Mr Sedlacek does not change his “no contest” plea at all.

  As far as the forensics evidence is concerned, one has to look at probabilities here and the law concerning “circumstantial evidence.”

  It is the cumulative effect, the “arithmetic of circumstantial evidence,” which causes so many juries to say that even though the evidence before them is entirely indirect they are “satisfied beyond any reasonable doubt,” of the safety of convicting.

  I am fully familiar with the subject of gunshot residue (GSR), also the use of “field test kits,” and of paraffin testing of an alleged shooter’s hands, arms, and sometimes the face, in ballistic science.

  You quote from the coroner with regard to GSR, saying that if Mr Sedlacek had merely handled a firearm that morning, GSR would be confined to the inside of the hands. Unfortunately, you, or the coroner, are erroneous here. I think that you are referring to paraffin testing, not a test for gunshot residue, which are entirely different tests.

  You have also been misled when you state that if Mr Sedlacek had fired his gun, then gunshot residue would have been confined to his thumb and forefinger, when, in fact, GSR would have been present all over his shooting hand, perhaps even on the sleeve of his clothing.

  That these ballistic tests were not carried out on the deceased person does not surprise me at all. There is no doubt that Mr Sedlacek, a completely honest and hardworking man came onto his own property and surprised Chuck, who was carrying a firearm.

  You will recall the previous shooting at two law enforcement officers, and you will remember how Chuck threatened rancher Jim Kramers with a gun. So, why should Mr. Sedlacek have been treated otherwise?

  Further to all of this, you will recall that Chuck did steal Mr Sedlacek’s truck. That Chuck drove the vehicle to the home of an elderly lady in Nebraska, where he admits entering the property with intent to rob.

  Police found tire tracks that matched Sedlacek’s truck outside of the woman’s home, and forensic testing using Refractive Indexing and Emission Spectrometry proved, beyond any doubt, that shards of glass found on the ground matched, in every respect, the glass from the shattered driver’s side window of that truck, and on the dead man’s clothing.

  And, you will also know that forensic ballistic examination of the driver’s-side window proved that the window had been closed prior to the shooting—with a bullet entering through the closed window (which imploded) before killing Mr Sedlacek, all of which confirms that the farmer did not fire a weapon at all.

  Chuck’s Injured Hand.

  You bring up the matter of Chuck’s injured hand—that using just the one good hand, he would have been unable to cover the top of the stolen vehicle taken from a Dickens’ farm with a tarpaulin and brush, least of all drag a heavy-built deceased man from his truck.

  By his own admission, Chuck says that he was high on methamphetamine at the time. It is a universally recognised fact that people high on this drug are capable of enormous strength and have an unusually high tolerance to pain. On this subject I will say no more.

  In Summary.

  You state that the whole story has not been told, while indeed it has been from the moment from which Chuck entered his plea bargain deal to avoid the death penalty, and Chuck would not be the first convicted man to change his story to something different afterwards, and to nitpick at issues in a case which would not change the result at all.

  But you have to understand that even without the killing of Mr Sedlacek, Chuck would be serving a life sentence for shooting at police, anyway. I do not wish to sound impertinent, but it is a no-brainer to think otherwise.

  Of course, perhaps a judge should have ordered Chuck into drug rehab. He didn’t, but it would be quite wrong for one to blame the judge for the tragic events that followed.

  I would add that not all police officers are perfect, and law enforcement accepts this. However, it is a somewhat derogatory remark to label two of these officers as “rookies” when they have chosen a profession which concerns itself with protecting people like you and me.

  I also think that one has to realise that Chuck chose to do drugs which ultimately led to his downfall. He made this decision, Eunice; nobody else made it for him and for this he has to, like a man, shoulder full responsibility.

  It was Chuck who fired at police; with Officer McKnight, there was a clear and brutal intention to kill.

  It was Chuck who stole other peoples’ vehicles, unlawfully trespassed on their property, and invaded the home of an elderly lady which terrified her witless.

  And it was Chuck who shot and killed Mr Sedlacek in cold blood, then stole the man’s truck to flee the scene, leaving behind a grieving widow and loving family.

  I get on well with Chuck. He is paying the price for his crimes and, really, if there is no solid evidence to say otherwise, then the chapter stands as is written.

  I hope you are keeping well. Please pass on my regards to Chuck, too.

  Kind regards and best wishes,

  Christopher

/>   CHAPTER 7

  MICHAEL TYRONE “BIG MIKE” CRUMP—ORAL FOR $20, THEN INSTANT DEATH

  Mike was a slow learner at school. He was kind and considerate, thoughtful and playful, friendly and outgoing, and helped anyone who needed help.

  —MITTIE RENDER, CRUMP’S MOTHER

  THE DRAMATIC THEATER FOR MURDER MOST FOUL seems always set in steamy swamps, and the killers are human bottom-feeders who trawl the murky depths. Center stage: a dark, damp graveyard in the dead of night. In the wings are trees, black, bereft of leaves, their spindly branches pointing accusingly like a dead crone’s fingers at the waning moon spotlighting the still-warm body that has been hastily interred in a hole in the ground, with the sides slowly falling in.

  In Tampa, Florida, black women became a sadistic killer’s prey, and cemeteries, his personal dumping ground. And as the body count rose, homicide detectives Bob Parrish and Gerry Onheiser confronted a serial murderer, using forensic science as their only weapon.

  Areba Smith

  A gray damp start to the day, it was just 7 a.m. in the homicide office at downtown Tampa Police Headquarters, and a red-eyed Detective Robert “Bob” Parrish was gazing out the window while sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. The weather was typical for Tampa on Friday, October 10, 1986. The average temperature would work out to 77.2°F, the wind a steady 3.9 miles per hour. Fog blanketed most of the city, light drizzle and thunder were in the air.

  Parrish’s longtime partner, Detective Gerald “Gerry” Onheiser, was hunting and pecking at “Clyde,” his ancient typewriter, with the portable radio on his desk squawking: “Detective Onheiser, the press are here . . . Come to the sergeant’s office, please.” Ignoring the female dispatcher, he grumbled silently before ripping a report sheet out of the machine, crushing it into a ball and throwing in the general direction of an already overflowing trash bin.