PEEPERS
CREEPER
,..·:IoI...lIas was held to ransom by a murderer who stole his victims'
...... police arrested Charles Albright, the case was far from over...
n 13 December 1990, a police patrol had been slit, and the muscles holding the eyeballs
was driving around the rough Oak in place carefully cut. Very little damage had been
Cliff area of Dallas when some children caused to Mary's face.
flagged them down. They'd found Frustratingly, the police had no leads, and the case
a body in the bushes. Mary Lou Pratt, a prostitute, went cold. Then, on 10 February 1991, 27-year-old
was d wearing only a T-shirt. She'd been badly Susan Peterson, also an Oak Cliff prostitute, was
beate then shot in the back of the head. The two found dead. She'd been shot and dumped on the
offic anged for the body to be taken away outskirts of the city, and her eyeballs had been
for an psy and continued with their night's removed with the same precision as Mary Pratt's.
wor murder of a prostitute was not an The police now believed they had a serial killer
u n event in Oak Cliff. on their hands. Not only that, but he was a 'trophy
topsy was conducted by Dr Elizabeth killer', driven to collect body parts to remind himself
d as she cut and sliced she found nothing of the event. The FBI's psychologh:al profiling unit
ordinary; Mary's body was wracked with was called in and, in the hope of providing some
of cocaine addiction and syphilis, the leads, the police released details to the local media.
er profession. But as Dr Peacock opened The papers leapt on the story. Dallas was in the grip
's eyelids. she found nothing. Literally. of a violent crimewave - there would be 500 murders
tared back at her but a bare socket. She in 1991, the highest in recorded history - and the
:opened the other eyelid. Again, nothing. press portrayed these latest killings as evidence of
Wl~_ had killed Mary Lou Pratt had then a city at the mercy of criminals. One newspaper
both her eyes and taken them away, yet dubbed the supposed serial killer 'The Dallas Ripper'.
't been ripped out in a frenzy: they'd been Yet the killings failed to grip the public
with almost surgical precision, the eyelids imagination. As Bruce Tomaso, a reporter on ~
PEEPERS
CREEPER
~ bee in bed with heron.al1 the night the killings By L8 II appeared Albright had pulled himself Dallas prostitute Edna Russell testified she'd
had taken place. However, she was forced to admit together, graduating from high school, ,md the once been involved in a sex session with Albright
Albright left the house early every morning to next year he went to Arkansas State Teachers' and another woman. She told the court he had
deliver newspapers, before returning to bed. College. By 20 he had married, but never settled a liking for violent sex and took turns handcuffing
The wheels of justice were set in motion and into a career and took on a variety of jobs, including and beating both women; "I was to go first," she
Albright was remanded in custody, with bail set at b lfighter and barber. said. "He started to whip me with a belt, all over
$3-3million. He was charged with the three murders, Over the years he collected many more convictions, my back and shoulder. It left welts and a permanent
and h is tria I began on 18 April 1991. and in 1985 was charged with sexually molesting scar on my shoulder."
But was he the right man? Or was he simply the a nine-year-old girl, the daughter of friends he was The case hung on a knife-edge. The prosecution
first suspect found by police under pressure to get visiting. He pleaded guilty to performing oral sex on the could prove Albright had criminal convictions and
a result? Defence attorney Brad Lollar believes the girl and was fined and put on probation for 10 years. had associated with prostitutes. But could they prove
very nature of the murders made the job of defending Around the time of the murders, the court heard his this apparently model neighbour had slaughtered
Albright a difficult one. "We knew going into the behaviour had become increasingly erratic. including three women and extracted their eyeballs 7 There
trial that the biggest obstacle we faced was that a an instance of mO\ving the lawn in his underwear. were no witnesses to the murders, and the only
jury composed of normal, everyday people would be Crucially, he'd also begun to draw pictures of eyes and witnesses they had to Albright's alleged violence
shown horrific pictures of dead women who'd had collect serial-killer books. One of the houses he rented towards women were prostitutes, who were never
their eyes cut out," he told Bizarre. "'Whomever the out was raided and was found to contain equipment for likely to be given much credibility by a jury.
State decided to put in the defendant's chair would auto-asphyxiation and a stash of hardcore pornography. However, there was forensic evidence - hairs
found on Shirley Williams' body had been matched to
Albright, and fibres from a blanket in his truck were
Albright caug t pubic lice rom a the same as those found on the bodies of Pratt and
Williams. But even this evidence wasn't conclusive
rostltute w en only 5 years old - the hairs had not been DNA-tested, and hairs, unlike
fingerprints, cannot be exactly matched to an individual.
obviously be viewed as a maniac, a demon; severely However, the case against Albright was far from "All we've got is hairs and whores," is how one of the
and permanently twisted." wa tertight. The search of his house found no blood prosecution team glumly summed up the case.
Indeed, despite the evidence against him, on any of his clothes, and the .44 Magnum proved Brad Lollar believes the prosecution case was
Charles Albright just didn't seem to fit the bill of not to be the gun that had killed the victims. There flawed: "There were no eyewitnesses to the offences...
psychopathic murderer. Friends and neighbours was no trace of the clothes or jewellery taken from if you looked solely at the evidence presented in the
spoke extremely highly of him. He was a skilled the women's bodies, and no eyes were found. Dr case, and are able to set aside the 'prejud,ice' of the
linguist with a Masters degree, and had worked Harvey Schlossberg, a criminal psychologist, had crimes themselves, the prosecution evidence was
for many years as a teacher. He was also a popular already told the court that whoever committed the lacking that 'quality of assuredness' that is supposed
member of a softball team and helped out with murders was a trophy killer who'd have saved to accompany guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
a local Cub Scout pack. some memento of his deed. "Somewhere he's got In the end only one offence was put to the jury,
However, when prosecutors dug deeper into a souvenir, a reminder, a trophy," he said. "It's got to the murder of Shirley Williams, and if that failed, the
Albright's character, a different man emerged. Born be out there. Psychopathic killers keep these things." judge ruled, Albright cou.ld not be tried for the others.
in the early 1930S in Amarillo, Texas, he was adopted Albright's defence pointed out that all his !fhe was not convicted on this one charge, Charles
by Fred and Delle Albright. They were doting parents criminal activity, apart from the conviction for child was a free man. According to Chief Prosecutor Toby
but fiercely protective of their son. and Delle would abuse, was non-violent. He vehemently denied that Shook, Albright was confident: "He believed he'd
often dress him up as a little girl when he was young. charge and explained it away by claiming the girl be found not guilty. He though t he was smarter than
He appeared to have had a fairly unremarkable had made it up. adding he'd accepted the probation anyone else and that no jury would ever believe the
childhood, but by the age of 13 he was in trouble sentence as a means to avoid going to trial. testimony of prostitutes."
with the police and was convicted of aggravated And people were queueing up to deliver positive Albright was wrong. After a day's deliberation
assault. He had sex with a local prostitute when he character references. One neighbour described the jury found him guiIty of murder and handed
was rs, who gave him pubic lice, and at 16 was him as the "gentlest man I've ever known", and down a sentence oflife imprisonment, much to the
in trouble with the law a female friend said she wouldn't think twice about shock of Brad Lollar, who insisted an innocent man
again when he leaving her three-year-old granddaughter in his care. had been convicted (to this day, several websites give
stole money But other witnesses painted a less glowing evidence to suggest Albright didn't kill anyone).
from a picture of Albright's Albright was sent immediately to the Texas
shop. character. Department of Corrections in Amarillo, where
he resides to this day. According to
sources in the prison, he spends his
time sketching pictures of eyes. •