April 18, 2026

S11, Chapter 6: Finale

S11, Chapter 6: Finale
Tapes from the Darkside
S11, Chapter 6: Finale

This is the final episode in the Toolbox Killers series. Thanks for your patience.

A new series is coming soon.

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For those curious, explanation of where I've been:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/155116830

 

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WEBVTT

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It was October nineteen seventy nine. Roy Norris had a

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secret five of them, actually, and he couldn't stop talking.

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By the time Halloween came and went, Norris had already

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told his friend Jimmy Dalton things that no person should

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ever have to hear. He'd described the screaming, the mountains,

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the van, the tools. He described what they'd done to

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five teenage girls between June and October of that year,

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girls whose names were Cindy, Andrea, Jackie Lea and Shirley.

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Dalton didn't believe him. He thought it was talk prison bravado,

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the kind of dark fantasy men like Norris used to

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puff themselves up to seem dangerous, to seem powerful. He

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thought it was just talk. And then Shirley Ledford's body

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turned up on a front lawn in Sunland and Jimmy

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Dalton picked up the phone.

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I think everyone has a bit of a fascination with

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the dark side. I myself, WI always love the dark

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side as well. I think it's something that everyone secretly

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longs for in moves.

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I just picture those girls and how long they were

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when they died.

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I'm sorry, the dark side, the dark side, the dark side.

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This is the final episode on our series on Lawrence

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Bittaker and Roy Norris, the man that law enforcement and

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the rest of society would come to know as the

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Toolbox Killers. Now, I'm not going to get too deep

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into it, but i do want to apologize for this

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final episode being so late. I had a little bit

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of a mental health crisis. But I'm back now, and

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if you want to hear a little more of the

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update regarding that, I'm going to be putting it on Patreon. Also,

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if you are a Patreon member and you want the

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last month or two refunded, I'm completely happy to do that.

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But now let's get back into the story. Over the

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last four episodes, we've traced how two men met inside

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the walls of the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo,

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how they built a plan so deliberate and so cold

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that they called it a game, and how they spent

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the summer and fall of nineteen seventy nine hunting teenagers

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along the southern California coast. And today we cover the end,

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the arrest, the confession, the tape, and the trial, and

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the one question that hangs over every case like this one,

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how does the justice system prosecute evil when the only

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person who can help you do it is evil itself?

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Part one The weak Link. The Imrosa Beach Police Department,

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by November of nineteen seventy nine, had a body but

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no suspects. Shirley Lynette Ledford, sixteen years old, had been

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found on the lawn of a suburban neighborhood in Sunland

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in the early hours of November. First Halloween night had

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barely ended, a resident discovered her body. She had been

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strangled with a coat hanger, the wire tightened with pliers.

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The case had been assigned to Detective Paul Byam. He

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was experienced, methodical, and he had almost nothing to work with.

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No forensic evidence, no witnesses, no murder weapon. The killer

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or killers had left behind only a body and the

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evidence of what they had done to her. What Detective

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Bynum did have was a detail, a small one, a

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silver van. Several months earlier, a young woman named Shirley Sanders,

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sometimes identified in court documents as Robin Roebeck, had filed

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a police report. She'd been abducted, dragged into a silver

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GMC cargo van by two men in their mid thirties,

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driven to a remote location and raped. She had survived.

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She had reported it, and the report had, as so

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often happens, disappeared into the bureaucracy, but Detective Bynum remembered it. Meanwhile,

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across Los Angeles, Roy Norris was talking. Norris and Lawrence

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Bittaker had known a man named Jimmy Dalton from their

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time at the California Men's Colony. In October of nineteen

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seventy nine, while the murderers were still ongoing, Roy had

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reconnected with Dalton, and Roy, who had never been good

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at keeping quiet, had started to brag. He told Dalton

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about the van, about the mountains, about the girls. He

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described the murder of Shirley Ladford in specific graphic detail,

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including the fact that she was the only victim whose

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body had been found. He also told Dalton something investigators

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had not yet made public, that there had been other incidents.

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Three additional women had been attacked, but then had been

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released or had escaped. Norris seemed almost proud of the

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breadth of what he and Lawrence Bittaker had done. Dalton,

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by his own account, thought it was all fantasy, the

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kind of dark story of man like Norris might tell.

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He didn't believe it, and then he found out about

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Ledford's body, and that's when Dalton called his lawyer. The

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lawyer called the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD listened

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to what Dalton had to say and then passed him

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to detectives in her Mosa Beach, where Ledfort's body had

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been found, and that call would unravel everything Part two

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building the case. When Jimmy Dalton sat down with Detective

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Buying Them and his team, he gave them a thread,

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a silver van, two men, a confession about murders, murders

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that matched the details of the missing girls who had

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been in the news for months. Bynum took the thread

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and pulled. He knew about the September thirtieth ray report.

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He dispatched an officer to Oregon, where Shirley Sanders was

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now living, and had to review a collection of mugshots.

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She went through them carefully, without hesitation. She picked out

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two photographs none other than Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris.

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That identification gave Detective Bynum what he needed probable cause,

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But here he did something notable. Rather than move immediately,

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Bynum consulted with Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, the same

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prosecutor who had previously put Roy Norris away for rape

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and da Stephen Kay counseled patients. He told Biynum that

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a quick arrest would stop the murders, but it might

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lose the case. They needed to build something air tight.

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The men were intelligent. Lawrence Bittaker, in particular, with his

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IQ of one p thirty eight, had spent years learning

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how the system worked. If they moved too soon and

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the case fell apart, these men could walk. So police

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mounted surveillance and Roy nor Tris, as he so often did,

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gave them exactly what they needed. He was spotted on

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the street dealing marijuana, a parole violation, a clean and

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simple charge that would put him in custody without tipping

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their hand on the murder investigation. Police made their move

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on November twentieth, nineteen seventy nine, two days before Thanksgiving.

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The arrests happened simultaneously. Roy Norris was taken by the

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Hermosa Beach Police on the marijuana and parole violation charges.

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Across town in Burbank, officers went to the motel where

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Lawrence Bittaker was living, the Scott Motel and arrested him

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on suspicion of the rape of Shirley Sanders, two different charges,

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two different agencies, but one coordinated operation. When the cell

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doors closed, the men were separated and the investigators began

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to wait part three three hours. What happened next is

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in many ways the center of this entire story will

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be right back after this quick break. On November thirtieth,

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nineteen seventy nine, Roy Norris attended a preliminary hearing related

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to the September rape charge. By this point, he was

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already showing signs of strain. People who observed him that

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day noted that he seemed visibly stressed, not the composed,

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calculated man who had spent months committing crimes without detection.

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He looked like a man who was beginning to understand

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that the walls were closing in. At the hearing, something

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unexpected happened. Roy Norris waved his Miranda rights, and he

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waved them voluntarily. Detective Baynam and Prosecutor Stephen Kay began

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questioning him. They started with the rape of Shirley Sanders,

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then methodically they moved on and confronted him with what

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Jimmy Dalton had told police. They showed him evidence recovered

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from his apartment and from Laurence Bittaker's motel room, and

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within three hours, Roy Norris had confessed to all five murders.

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Three hours, five murders spanning five months, five victims. Roy

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described each killing in detail, provided information that only the

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perpetrators could have known. Details were later verified and used

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to corroborate his account. He knew, for example, that their

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first victim, Cindy Schaeffer, had been coming from a meeting

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at Presbyterian Church before she was abducted, and he knew

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that she had lost one shoe as she was dragged

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into the van. He knew partial details about Shirley Ladford's

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background that had not been made public, and then he

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agreed to testify against his partner in crime, Lawrence Bittaker.

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Roy Norris accepted a plea bargain. He would plead guilty

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to five counts of murder and receive a sentence of

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forty five years to life, avoiding the death penalty. In exchange,

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he would cooperate fully with the investigation and take the

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witness stand against his partner. Prosecutor Stephen Kay later recalled

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being struck by Roy Norris's demeanor during those early interviews, Roy,

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he said, seemed afraid of him, aware that the da

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KAY had prosecuted him before, and he was very concerned

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about the possibility of facing him again. That fear became

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the lever that opened the case.

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Part four.

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What they found. With Norris's cooperation, investigators executed search warrants

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on both men's residences. What they found at Biker's motel

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room was deeply disturbing, even by the standards of this investigation.

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Polaroid photographs, hundreds of them, photographs of young women and

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teenage girls, mostly taken at Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach,

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most taken without the subject's knowledge. Among them were photographs

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of two of the victims, Andrea Hall and Jackie Gilliam.

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Those photographs confirmed the identities of girls who had been

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reported missing for months. Investigators also found seven bottles of

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various acidic materials in Bittaker's room. Later it would emerge

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that these had been intended for a future victim. The

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murderers had not been meant to stop. At Roy Norris's apartment,

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police found a bracelet it had belonged to Shirley Ladford.

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He kept it as a souvenir. But the most significant

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piece of evidence was not found at either residence. It

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was a piece of evidence we've discussed before, and it

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was found in the van in Murdermack. Inside the silver

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nineteen seventy seven GMC van doorra, the van Bittaker had

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purchased in February of nineteen seventy nine, the van they

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had nicknamed Murdermac, investigators discovered a seventeen minute audio recording.

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The tape had been made on October thirty first, nineteen

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seventy nine, folloween night. It was recording of the torture

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and murder of Shirley Lynnette Ladford. We did hear just

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a brief couple of seconds of the screaming that occurred

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on that recording previous episode, and I'm not going to

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again get into the contents of the torture. I will

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say this, the tape was played during the investigation, during

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court hearings, and ultimately during Bittaker's trial. As we've discussed before,

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the people who heard it, seasoned law enforcement officers, prosecutors,

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investigators with years of expperiance and violent crime, were shaken

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by it. Accounts from the courtroom describe people crying, people vomiting,

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people leaving the room. FBI special agent John Douglass, who

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would later serve as the basis for a character in

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the television series mind Hunter, described Lawrence Bittaker as the

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most disturbing individual for whom he ever had to create

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a criminal profile. This tape so traumatic that it became

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a tool used to train FBI agents in victimology and

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the psychology of sadistic killers, not because of any instructive

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value about the perpetrators, but to confront agents with the

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human cost of what they were working to prevent. Shirley

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Ladford's mother was asked to listen to the recording. She

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identified her daughter's voice. There was additional evidence found in

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the van, a sledgehammer, plastic bag filled with lead weights,

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a book on how to locate police radio frequencies Bittaker

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had always been paranoid about monitoring law enforcement, a jar

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of vassilene, and two necklaces later confirmed to belong to

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two of the victims. The van had been customized soundproofed,

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outfitted with a bed on a raised frame with space

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underneath to conceal a body, equipped with locks that could

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be disabled from the inside and fitted with blackout windows.

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It had been built for this from the very beginning.

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Part five aftermath. After Bittaker's arrest, he was placed in

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County jail awaiting trial, and he did not go quietly.

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A fellow inmate named David Lambert was asked by Roy

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Bittaker to draw a picture of a girl on the

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cell wall. When Lambert finished, Roy said it looked like Cindy,

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a reference to his first victim, Lucinda Schaeffer. He asked

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Lambert to add coat hangers and pliers to the drawing.

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Bittaker then signed the drawing, and he signed it Plier's

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a Bittaker. That was the jail nickname he had acquired

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after telling the other inmate stories about what he had done.

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He signed autographs for other prisoners using that name. One

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autograph red Hitchhiker's Welcome Females Especially, another red simply Norris

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did it. He told another jail cellmate, Lloyd Carlos Douglas,

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about the abduction of Gillium and Lamp in detail. Douglas

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later testified at trial the man was incarcerated, facing the

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death penalty, and he was still performing, still bragging. And

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then there's this detail from the trial, something that appears

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in the California Supreme Court's later opinion on Bittaker's appeal.

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Another witness, a seventeen year old neighbor of Bittakers named

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Christina Dreil, testified about events that had occurred before the arrest.

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She told the court that Bittaker had once shown her

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a polaroid picture of one of his victims, and he said,

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to her, quote the girls I get won't talk anymore.

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He had also, on a separate occasion, played a cassette

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tape for Christina. On it, she heard two girls screaming,

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and she heard Bittaker laughing. He played it for a

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teenager as entertainment. And then there's the matter of the

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dead bodies. They couldn't find. Of the five victims, only

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three bodies were recovered. Cindy Schaeffer and Andrea Hall were

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never found, despite Roy's cooperation in his detailed account of

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the murders, despite the searches of the San Gabriel Mountains,

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despite Bittaker later providing coordinates to criminologist Laura Brand, who

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heard from in previous episodes, the remains of both women

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have never been located. Families have been waiting for over

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forty years. Laurence Bittaker's trial began in nineteen eighty one.

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Prosecutor Stephen Kay stood before the jury and he told

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them what they were about to hear. Quote for those

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of you who do not know what hell is like,

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you will find out. The tape was played, people fled

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the courtroom when it came time to address the fact

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that his key witness was a confessed murderer. The only

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person who could put Bittaker at the scene of every

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killing was a man who had committed those same killings.

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Stephen Kay didn't flinch. He said what needed to be said. Quote,

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You're not going to like him, but he's going to

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tell you the truth. You have to remember that when

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a murder is committed in hell, you don't have angels

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for witnesses. It has thus become one of the most

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quoted lines in California prosecutorial history, and it worked. Lawrence

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Bittaker faced twenty six charges, five counts of murder, five

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counts of kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, rape, oral copulation, sodomy, and

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being an ex felon in pss ession of a firearm,

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and he was convicted on all accounts. On March twenty second,

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nineteen eighty one, Lauren Siegmund Bittaker was sentenced to death.

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The jury found thirty eight special circumstances, including twenty multiple

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murder circumstances, five felony murder circumstances based on kidnapping, and

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five based on rape. The evidence of torture was found

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to be proven as to four of the five victims.

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The jury found that Layah Lamp, the youngest victim, thirteen

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years old, had been killed specifically to prevent her from testifying.

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A thirteen year old murdered because she might have talked.

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Roy Norris in accordance with his plea agreement, was sentenced

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in May of nineteen eighty to forty five years to life.

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He testified against Bittaker spent decades in prison attempting to

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reframe his role, claiming at various points that he had

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been blacked out on drugs during the murders, that he

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had been a passive participant, that Bittaker had been the

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dominant force, but the tape made those claims impossible to sustain.

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Part six the Ends. Lawrence Bittaker spent nearly four decades

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on death row at San Quentin prison, he mounted appeal

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after appeal more than two dozen by some counts, he

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showed no contrition and a recorded phone conversation with criminologist

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Laura Brand, who spent years interviewing him in an effort

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to locate the missing bodies, Lawrence Bittaker reflected on his

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own declining health after a series of heart attacks near

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the end of his life. He said, quote, it's kind

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of a taste of maybe what my victims were going through.

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Larry died on December thirteenth, twenty and nineteen. He was

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seventy nine years old natural causes. Roy Norris, on the

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other hand, was denied parole in two thousand and nine.

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He didn't even attend the hearing, automatically deferring for another decade.

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He was denied again in twenty and nineteen, and he

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died on February twenty fourth, twenty twenty, at the California

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Medical Facility in Vacaville. He was seventy two years old.

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They died within two months of each other. Laura Brand,

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who has spoken about both men extensively in their final years,

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noted the strained symmetry of it. Quote so many people

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call them soulmates, and you've got to wonder they died

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like an old married couple, like they couldn't live without

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each other. Detective Paul Binham, the man who took Jimmy

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Dalton's tip and turned it into the case that sent

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both men to prison, did not live to see the

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conclusion of the appeals process. He died by suicide in

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nineteen eighty seven. His colleague said that the case had

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never left him, that the things that he had seen

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and heard in the course of that investigation, the photographs,

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the tape, the details that Norris provided in his confession

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had stayed with him in ways that were impossible to

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put down. He was one of the best detectives, or

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most of Beach had ever had, and the Toolbox Killer's

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case cost him everything.

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Epilogue.

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What remains two bodies have never been found, somewhere in

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the San Gabriel Mountains or perhaps elsewhere. The remains of

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Lucinda Cindy Schaeffer and Andrea Joy Hall are still waiting.

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Their families have been waiting longer. The Leadford tapes still exists.

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It has never been made public. It is used sparingly

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and with enormous care in law enforcement training. Every person

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who hears it is changed by it. And that is

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not an exaggeration. That is the documented account of everyone

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from FBI profilers to prosecutors to journalists who have been

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present when it was played. It is, by any measure,

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one of the most disturbing pieces of evidence ever produced

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in American criminal case. It was made deliberately, with planning,

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with equipment, with the intent to relive it. That is

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the final thing to understand about Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris.

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They were not men who lost control. They were not impulsive.

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They were not the product of a single night's rage

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or a moment's broken judgment. They planned this, they rehearsed it,

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they documented it, they kept their trophies, they bragged about it,

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and they intended to keep going. They were only stopped

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because Roy Norris could not keep his mouth shut, because

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something in him needed an audience, needed credit, needed someone

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to know what he had done. And because one man,

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Jimmy Dalton, a convicted criminal, sitting across from a friend

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he'd known in prison, heard those stories and decided some

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things are too terrible to be kept secret. He called

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his lawyer, As lawyer called the police and five teenage

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girls murdered over the course of one California summer finally

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got something like justice. Their names were Lucinda lenn Schaeffer

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she was sixteen, Andrea Joy Hall she was eighteen, Jacqueline

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Doris Gilliam she was fifteen, Jacqueline Leah Lamp she was thirteen,

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and Shirley Lynnette Ledford she was sixteen. Thank you for

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listening to tapes from the dark Side. This concludes our

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series on the Toolbox Killers.

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No batoquatly b