Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Hollywood TV Honcho Found Dead

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

Hollywood director, Barry Crane, who directed hit shows “The Incredible Hulk,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “The Six Million Dollar Man,” was found dead in the garage of his luxury Hollywood home in 1985. Investigators say they found his killer across the country in North Carolina, more than 30 years later.ANDNicholas Gibson, who has been in and out of prison since the age of 13, is arrested for the murder of 77-year-old Eric Stocker in Florida. Now police need to find out if they have a serial killer in custody.Nancy' Expert Panel Weighs In:Sheryl McCollum:  Director, Cold Case Research InstituteWendy Patrick:    Trial AttorneyDr. Michelle Dupree:     Medical ExaminerCaryn Stark:    PsychologistJudge Ashley Wilcott:   Judge & Trial AttorneyDr. Jolie Silva:     Clinical and forensic psychologistJoseph Scott Morgan:   Forensics expertEllen Killoran:  Crime online investigative ReporterJohn Lemley:   Crimeoneline.com investigative reporter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This guy with the long gray beard has just been charged with the murder of a top Hollywood TV director, a cold case that has baffled cops for 35 years. Could you have done this murder, though? It's possible. Anything's possible. The murder victim, Barry Crane, directed some of television's most iconic shows in the 1970s and 80s. Dallas. Hawaii Five-0.

Mission Impossible. Wonder Woman, and many of his other shows are still in reruns to this day. The 57-year-old director was found by a housekeeper dead in his garage in his Studio City townhouse north of Los Angeles. He was naked and wrapped in blankets. He'd been bludgeoned by a large ceramic statue and been strangled with a telephone cord. And there was evidence inside that a struggle had taken place. Man, what a way to go. This iconic director. Did you hear those theme songs?

Wonder Woman. All the great hits of that era. He was the director. And he's found strangled, dead, naked, and wrapped up in a rug. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. What happened to Barry Crane and has the case been cracked after all these years? I mean, you'd think in a town like Hollywood, with all the gossip going on,

this case could have been solved a long time ago, but not necessarily. Straight out to John Limley, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Tell me about the murder. A housekeeper actually found the body of a 57-year-old man dead in his garage in his Studio City townhouse. This was July 5, 1985. The man was completely naked and had been wrapped in bed sheets. It was later determined that he had been beaten with a large ceramic statue and strangled with a telephone cord. Investigators also soon came to the realization that he was not murdered in the

garage, but that his body had been moved from his townhouse. Hold that thought. Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor. This is in your backyard, Wendy Patrick, author of Red Flags. You can find it on Amazon. Lemmy just said several things that caught my attention. I've only got a couple of sentences out of him so far. But the victim, Barry Crane, number one, very, very popular, high paid, you know that, rolling in money from directing all those TV hits. But listen to this, killed in one spot, then dragged to the garage. Now, right there, that tells me this is not random, Wendy, because if somebody breaks in, let's just say, to steal your money and your TV or whatever they can get their mitts on, they don't take the time

to roll you up in a rug and hide your body. They get the hay out of there, Wendy. So already I've got an idea of where this is headed. Yeah, Nancy, you know, and especially when you talk about cold cases, when we try to warm them up, it is details like John Lindley just so eloquently described that make a big difference is why do you have a murder in one area and then a movement to another? And although you and I and your listeners probably know you don't need to prove motive, motive matters to a jury. They want to know why would somebody do this, especially given the beloved status of this man. Apparently he was just involved in so many interesting, not only productions, but also his personal life was interesting as well. Did he make some enemies along the way?

Was this somebody that wanted to make it look like something else happened? So absolutely, details like this matter. That's why we say the devils are in the detail. And this is how this case is being put together. You know, you said something earlier, John Lindley, that he was beaten with a ceramic statute and strangled with a telephone cord. Bobby Chacon, that tells me also, Bobby Chacon with me, FBI special agent, that while it was someone that took the time to stage the scene, it was also someone that used what was available to them in the home. In other words, they didn't come in with a gun. They didn't come in with a knife. They didn't come in with a murder weapon. They used what was there. So it sounds like a crime

of opportunity or anger, but someone that knew him because they staged the scene after. Can you verbalize where I'm headed on this, Bobby Chacon? Absolutely, Nancy. I think you're exactly right. I think that the indications are, to me, based on the crime scene, that there was a relationship between these two, some type of relationship. They knew each other. You know, it wasn't a premeditated robbery. It wasn't. And because if you go into someone's house to rob them, you don't wrap them up in a carpet. I believe he was naked. So, you know, there seemed to be some kind of either personal or friend relationship between these two. Well, that's

some kind of friend. If he's naked, I don't know what kind of friend you're referring to, but I'd say it was more than just a friend, but go ahead. Well, yeah, we don't know why the clothes were removed. It could have been a forensic countermeasure. You just don't know at this point. But it was clear that they may have been trying to get rid of the body. There may have been a plan to take the body out of that home. Maybe that plan was interrupted. Why wrap a body in a rug or carpet and then leave it at the scene of the crime?

Back to John Lindley, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Okay, I believe you left off where he had been murdered in one part of the home and dragged to the garage, I think is what you said. You told me he was bludgeoned with a ceramic statute, but strangled dead. Strangulation by ligature was the COD cause of death with a phone cord. What was very interesting to investigators were what was missing from the home and the garage where his body was found. His brand new Cadillac was gone and his wallet. There were no other signs of additional burglary, though,

or even forced entry into that Studio City home. No forced entry, no burglary, although going in and leaving with a wallet would qualify as burglary, wouldn't it, Wendy Patrick? Yeah, you know, that's one of the things you look at is what's missing, what was the intent going in. Obviously, we have several different felonies here that would make the case for burglary. But there's just some of the other facts. And John Lindley points out one of them, no forced entry. The big suspects are going to be his circle of friends, his circle of acquaintances, those whom he may have invited over or whom he

may not have felt uncomfortable welcoming into his home. And you also have to wonder how many people knew where he lived, were welcome as house guests. So they're narrowing in on those that were closest to him, which of course is where we always start when we have a murder. But it's just interesting when you do have the movement, why and how does that play into what the motive ultimately will be? Those will be the facts that we're going to be looking at next. You know, it was not a garage apartment, as I said earlier. Lindley's right. It was a townhouse with a garage attached to it. And it's in Studio City, which is a really expensive area. I recall doing it when we were on Dancing with the Stars, that neck of the woods.

Studio City, not too far from that. And that's where a lot of stars and Hollywood executives live because it's so close to all the studios. Isn't that right, Wendy? Well, yeah. And that's one of the other things that you look at is geography always matters. And when you look at these types of things and try to figure out who would have had access, who would have known where he lived and all the rest of it, these are the kind of things that make these cases so interesting to put together, as you and I know, Nancy, but also so important when you point this chronology and timeline out for a jury. This is going to not only help prove motive, but also help prove the case crime stories with nancy grace a cold case that has baffled cops for 35 years

the murder victim barry crane directed some of television's most iconic shows in the 1970s and 80s Dallas Hawaii Five-0 Mission Impossible Wonder Woman and many of his other shows are still in reruns to this day. The 57-year-old director was found by a housekeeper dead in his garage in his Studio City townhouse north of Los Angeles. He was naked and wrapped in blankets. He'd been bludgeoned by a large ceramic statue and been strangled with a telephone cord. And there was evidence inside that a

struggle had taken place. 30 years later, how do they think they've matched up? A guy 18 at the time of this iconic director's murder? Take a listen to our frenzy at KABC-TV. Everybody knew Barry and all of a sudden his mate finds him wrapped up in a sheet bloody in his garage. So it was a terrible story. The FBI says they were able to match Hyatt's DNA on cigarette butts in North Carolina with DNA on cigarettes found in Barry Crane's stolen car back in 1985. Do you not remember what happened in 1985? I have not a really good memory. It's bits and pieces that were brought back to me just by suggestion. Would you have done this murder in 1985?

Anything's possible back then. But you have no memory of it? No, I was big into drugs. L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced murder charges today in Hyatt and Alouette's extradition back to L.A. Wow. How do they go about matching up cigarette butts in North Carolina to a 30-year-old cold case in L.A.? How do they do it, John Limley?

As you well know, Nancy, more and more cases these days are being solved by DNA. And the guys, the investigators back in 1985 had the sense of mind to, among the things they gathered evidence-wise, pick up some cigarette butts that were lying in that stolen Cadillac from Barry Crane's garage. And then through more detective work now in 2018 and 2019, they were able to take some discarded cigarette butts that this man, Mr. Hyatt, threw away. And lo and behold, a DNA match. But wait a minute, Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor, author of Red Flags, you have to have a reason. Yes, you may have the cigarette butts in the Cadillac. You may have fibers or fingerprints or DNA inside the bedsheets in which the victim was wrapped. But how do you know to match it up to a guy smoking a cigarette in North Carolina?

Yeah, that's a result of tenacious investigation. That was the one thing that struck me about this story is how would you know of the millions of people that you could suspect that this would be somebody that you'd want to pursue a match? It has gotten increasingly easy over the years. And you never want to say it's completely easy, but we've become much better at DNA and forensics, but that's still the old-fashioned police work is how do you choose your potential suspect? And that's where good old-fashioned investigation still saves the day as apparently it did here. There's more to the story than just matching up DNA off a cigarette butt, which is really your saliva on the tip of the cigarette. And then you throw away the butt and cops can get that and match DNA. But you've got to have something to match it to. Let's just say that Bobby Chacon's FBI special agent is with me, and Karen Stark, sorry, Karen Stark, psychologist out of Manhattan, gets murdered. Chacon's fingerprint is found at the scene. Well, I may find a fingerprint,

but that means nothing to me unless I can match it to something. Well, in this case, the case goes cold, but there had been a fingerprint, a fingerprint from Crane's stolen car. Suddenly, you get a match on APHIS, the fingerprint databank. So John Limley, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, that fingerprint matches back to this then 18-year-old person, Edwin Hyatt, now a grown man living in North Carolina. And he was familiar to LA police back in the 80s. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's what I was just about to ask you. And so they follow to Edwin Hyatt in North Carolina. And then they see what he's doing. They get discarded cigarette butts and a coffee cup from the parking lot of an auto repair shop where Hyatt works. They watch him. They see him

discard a coffee cup like I throw out a McDonald's coffee cup. You better believe it's not Starbucks, $5 a cup. Anyway, they get the coffee cup and they match the saliva on the coffee cup to the saliva on that cigarette butt. That's how they did it. But I'm missing a link, John Limley. How they have Edwin Hyatt's fingerprint to go on a wild goose chase to North Carolina. Tell me. He had been arrested a couple of times in the 1980s, early 1980s, on some drug charges and some other minor charges. But that's how it was in these fingerprints were in the system. Well, I don't get it. Why did it take so long to match up the fingerprints if they were in the system in the 80s? What do you think to Wendy Patrick? Why did it take so long?

Well, one of the things that we know about warming up cold cases is as the years go by, sometimes there are tips, there are loose ends, there are better forensic techniques, there you do get new leads through new techniques, we are able then to develop suspect profiles that we couldn't have developed 30 years ago. So when you have cases like this that are warmed up so far after the fact, you wonder whether behind the scenes, and I'm sure we'll learn more about this

as the case progresses, that actually we're able to break it open so prosecutors could have a shot at actually solving it. Bobby Chacon, weigh in. From my experience, Nancy, what it looks like in this case is they may have gotten a partial print from the car, the vehicle that was discarded. And so therefore, over the years, they didn't have enough. And they were contacted by a fingerprint examiner in 2018 that took a second look at it.

And sometimes they can rehabilitate a partial print. They can build it better and give you a pool of suspects. then you can go out in this case they went out and got the DNA they surveilled him because he may have been in a pool of these people that fit this partial print and then they get the DNA they matched the DNA because they didn't run out on the print they ran out on the DNA they collected his DNA they matched the DNA to the DNA found on the cigarette butts inside the vehicle. And that's when they went and actually started to interrogate him. This is what we know about Edwin Hyatt's past.

His criminal history dates back to 85, caught in Utah with a stolen car that was not Crane's. So there you've got a similar transaction regarding stolen cars. His most notable charge was in 97, a domestic violence charge. In that case, a witness reported Hyatt choked and beat his now ex-wife to the point she vomited. He also allegedly threatened to burn the house down. There were drug offenses, other minor charges, but it all culminates when an FBI surveillance team conducts an operation, locates Hyatt working at an auto repair shop, and there is where they see him drink from a disposable coffee cup and throw away cigarette butts out into the parking lot.

That coffee cup, the lid, the cigarette butts were obtained from public areas without Hyatt's knowledge. Is that okay, Wendy Patrick? I mean, when you abandon something in plain view, a cop has the right to pick it up, doesn't he? Yes, and we actually see lots of cases that are solved that way. If somebody's followed around, they discard a cup or a cigarette butt or the rest of it, and it's easy to get DNA off of that and then do a match. You know there's a big difference between what police and law enforcement are allowed to do when you're in the comfort of your own home versus what they can observe, what they can obtain, and what they can then recover about what you do in public. And thankfully there are so many cases that are solved every day just like this one because of discarded items that they are then

able to examine forensically and link up. Police collected discarded cigarette butts outside Hyatt's auto repair shop. There was a DNA match, police said. I'm doing the best I can, guys, just to get through this. I just don't want to remember the past because God's taken it from me.

Everything that I'm at today is a totally different lifestyle from where I was before. Would you have done this murder? I don't. I you have done this murder? I don't have any kind of memory at all, guys. Hyatt appeared in court today in a wheelchair. Hard to believe that despite his appearance, he is just 52 years old. He would have been 18 at the time of the murder. I don't remember the guy until they told me his name.

And then I didn't remember his picture. Anne from WTVD. A Hollywood murder mystery appears to be solved. Authorities arresting this Burke County man in connection with the death of a TV producer named Barry Crane. The FBI says they linked Ed Hyatt to the crime using DNA evidence gathered from Crane's Cadillac. Crane was murdered back in 1985 in Los Angeles. His body found naked and wrapped in sheets in his garage. Crane produced shows like The Six Million Dollar Man,

Dallas, and Mission Impossible. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. He was arrested on the New York City subway after authorities say he escaped from florida detectives down in miami beach said gibson killed a 77 year old man and then wrote an unnerving message in the victim's blood reading rome must fall did you kill that guy in florida he mouthed the words with my bare hands wow oh that's chilling all right so do investigators believe him well they are certainly looking into him. Obviously, it does sound fantastical, right? A serial killer starting when he's so young, it's not unheard of. And you throw in the fact that he was only 13 when he was first convicted of rape, how young he was with his other gruesome crimes. It's certainly worth looking into. And multiple agencies tell me they're doing that right now.

All right. So let's bring it home. What are the ties to Cobb County? How did he even get here? You know, that's kind of the million-dollar question at this point in time. Investigators believe he was essentially a vagrant traveling, crisscrossing the country, even as a child. Aside from his time in prison, we actually cannot find any records of him in Cobb County. I'm not sure why they think it's fantastical for there to be a serial killer, especially when you take into account he's leaving no traces of where he has been, seemingly traveling from state to state without any record of him being there. And in bragging, I killed him with my bare hands. I'm talking about 32-year-old Nicholas Gibson and his latest victim, now dead, Eric Stocker. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. You were just hearing our friends at 11 Alive,

Ryan Krueger. Who is this guy? I killed him with my bare hands, and I've watched him over and over make that statement. The chilling moment a self-professed serial killer admits to murdering a victim and cutting up the victim's body with a sword. Now claiming he has murdered 32 people. Joining me right now, Ellen Kalorin, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, where you can find this and all other breaking crime and justice news. Ellen, who is this guy? Well, like you said, Nancy, this guy, Nicholas Gibson, he has a long, long criminal history. He's been in prison more often than he's been out since the year 2000. And he has flown under the radar of law enforcement, living in multiple states, claiming to be from New Zealand, claiming to

have a fine arts degree from a school in Illinois. And now, just last month, he is accused and confessed to murdering a man in their very nice Miami Beach condominium apartment building with a gate in front. And he supposedly was living with this man as a home health aide, but he did anything but help him. Take a listen to our friend Jesse Palmer at Daily Mail TV. Nicholas Gibson is a convicted sex offender who claims to have left a trail of bodies across the U.S. since he was just 12 years old. His shocking admission comes after his arrest for hacking a 77-year-old man to death,

allegedly with a samurai sword, in Florida. A gruesome, awful, hideous scene. A neighbor's description of the horrific scene inside the apartment complex where 77-year-old Eric Stocker's body was found in April, 10 days after he was allegedly murdered by his apparent health care aide and companion, identified as 32-year-old Nicholas Gibson. According to investigators, Gibson allegedly butchered his victim with a samurai sword, stole his credit card, and fled to New York. Two weeks ago, authorities tracked down and arrested Nicholas Gibson on a subway platform. It was after that arrest that authorities stitched together a pattern

that unraveled a tapestry of terror, the capture of a possible serial killer. Straight out to Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon. Joe Scott, do you believe this guy, 32-year-old Nicholas Gibson, meets the profile of a serial killer. Yeah, quite possibly, Nancy. This guy has drifted all over the country. Look, it's documented that he started out as an offender early on in his life, and I mean early. We're talking 13 years old, and they're having trouble tracing back his origins prior to that. And some of the most successful, I hate to use that word, efficient serial killers in our country's history have been those that have drifted about. We can

name them one after one from state to state. And one of the reasons it's so easy to slip under the radar is because you just vanish after you have done what you were doing in that particular location. To Ashley Wilcott, juvenile judge, lawyer, anchor, you can find her at ashleywilcott.com. Ashley, what about it? Does this guy, 32-year-old Nicholas Gibson, fit the profile of a serial killer? He does to me, but let's back it up, Nancy. You heard it. 13 is accused of raping someone.

Let me tell you right now, if I have a juvenile, 13, 12, come in front of me accused of raping someone, game off. That is not a typical crime I see of a juvenile that age at all. He should have had all kinds of testing and rehab and honestly looked at as a potential threat moving forward into adulthood because that is a huge red flag he's got an issue. So let's follow up on that. Ellen Kaloran, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. What do we know about his record? Nancy, we know that he has an extremely long criminal record dating back to when he was a child. He served as a juvenile eight years for a rape, and then he was convicted of rape again later. And he served only half the time that he did in his original sentence.

And he did not disclose that he was a sex offender on multiple occasions, numerous arrests for charges related to concealing that. And he had just gotten out of jail again in November of 2018, just months before he killed Eric Stocker. So to Dr. Jolie Silva, clinical and forensic psychologist, does he meet the profile of a serial killer? So from what we know, you know, based on his admission of this one murder in Miami, all of the other factors that we know about him, that he's traveled around the country, that he has a vagrant lifestyle, that he has a history of rape, which is a violent offense dating back to when he's 13 years old. It's quite possible that he is a serial killer,

given those factors, because those are a number of risk factors that would indicate he could do something like that. I agree with you, Dr. Silva. Jump in. Yeah, this is Ashley. I'm so sorry to do this to you, but I just have to add this. Keep in mind, especially as a juvenile, one of the things I can order are psychological evaluations, and the benefit of that is to see what their predisposition is.

If they have any diagnoses, any things that may indicate, yes, something, some switches off in the brain that could be resulting in them being a serial killer. Yeah, I mean, from what I know of serial killers to Joseph Scott Morgan, they, one of the classic signs, just start with that, one of the classic signs of a serial killer, a textbook indicator, is that they begin offending at a very young age, killing pets, killing neighborhood animals, torturing even insects and taking great joy in it. Then they seem to graduate to humans. Right now, we know investigators in three states are currently searching through cold cases and missing persons reports

to determine whether this guy, Nicholas Gibson's crimes, are real, or are they nothing more than meaning to waste police time and make him famous, or should I say infamous. We know that Gibson has admitted to killing Eric Stalker, at first with his bare hands, as he likes to brag, and then with, quote, a big sword. Now, what do these claims reveal about the mindset of Nicholas Gibson, Joe Scott? Well, I think that any of these claims that he has made could have been something that just you know that he read in the newspaper at some point in time you have to factor that in i was peripherally involved uh with the henry lee lucas uh serial killings uh he came to visit us in louisiana at the early part of my career and claimed that he had killed people all over the place him and his partner had wandered around the

country and some of those claims didn't pan out. He was just lying about what he did to attract attention and also to get a break from prison. And that might be the case with this guy. But he does have specific knowledge about some things at this point, at least. It's going to be up to the police to marry up the timeline, the events, and also one major factor here, Nancy, is going to be the methodology that he employed. And that's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. I don't know what you mean, methodology he employed. Well, what we're talking about is how did he actually go about killing these people?

This one gentleman down in Florida that he admits to have taken his life, at first he says, I killed him with my bare hands. Well, what does that mean? Did you beat him to death or did you strangle him? And then this thing he applies, I used a big sword to take apart the body. You know, that's a lot of work. Does he work with weapons that he shows up with or does he use what are referred to as weapons of convenience? And so that's going to be something.

It all goes to this picture that is painted about these individuals. And that's one of the ways that investigators can kind of profile this individual and see if he applies the same methodologies in each one of these cases. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. 32-year-old Nicholas Gibson. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Who is this guy? A self-professed serial killer admits to murdering a victim and cutting up the victim's body with a sword. Now claiming he has murdered 32 people. For one thing, we're trying to determine whether he's telling the truth. There's a mystery death.

Essie Pahuka, 27 years old, a gorgeous Finnish woman, was found drowned in Biscayne Bay in Florida. An autopsy was inconclusive. But this guy, 32-year-old Nicholas Gibson, tells cops he killed her. What about that, Ellen Killoran? That's right, Nancy. He has indicated that he is responsible for that unsolved death. However, authorities believe at a time that S.E. died, he was still in jail. So we're not sure if that claim can be trusted or anything that he's saying can be trusted. Well, yeah, I agree.

You know, you can't, prison records don't lie, E.K. He also tells detectives that after his release from jail, he killed a Russian man in Tampa Bay before slicing the throat of an African-American man he smoked pot with in Compton, California. That's quite a bit of zigzagging across the country. He claims he used the same knife as in the Compton killing to murder a homeless man in Key West, his alleged fifth victim. He says he murdered his, as he describes, penultimate victim, a female tourist, by drowning her in Biscayne Bay, the one we just referred to, Essie. Now, one of these investigators from the Miami Beach Police Department remembered a similar

case that same year, where they found a victim along a seawall. His criminal history suggests he's been behind bars when that body was found, but we don't know how long the body had been there. For instance, in Stalker's case, the man he was living with, the decomposing body was found after neighbors reported the odor. We don't know how long he had been dead inside that home. We also know he's a tattoo artist. Sources say he was living with Stalker and mutilated him. Mutilated him. What does that mean to you, Joe Scott Morgan?

He didn't just kill him. He mutilated him. Yeah, he did. And so I'm wondering what's the driver behind this guy. And all these other cases that he's allegedly involved in. Is this something that he's done with these other bodies as well? Let's take a look at this instrument that he used. He's talking about using, Nancy, a samurai sword. All the cases that we've covered involving dismemberment. I don't ever recall someone using a sword in order to facilitate this this takes a lot of rage a lot of anger it takes it takes specific time because look i don't want to be too graphic but it comes down to having to hack this body into pieces this isn't like sawing a body up so this is a protracted period of time when the reporter mentioned that this looked like something out of miami csi or whatever

that program is called what she's talking talking about is that more than likely, this scene was just covered and bathed in blood. To Ashley Wolcott, we also know this. We know that his mental health spiraled after he split up with a longtime girlfriend named Stephanie, with whom he has a daughter. She, Stephanie, the girlfriend, died in 2017. Now, many people believe that drugs were involved, but I would not preclude him murdering her as well.

Although Ashley, even Ted Bundy, had a girlfriend that he did not harm, but he killed other people, Ashley. That's right. This could be just killing strangers versus someone he cares about or allegedly cares about. Two things that I would point out. One is I would absolutely look into her death to ensure that it was not a murder. Number one. Number two, you know, the concern I have, a distinction now is, did he actually commit these crimes? Is there forensic evidence to link him to these crimes? Or is this all fanciful stories that he's come up with and

made up? Because every killing is very different, which causes me a little bit of thought about, did he really do it? You know, I'm curious. It fits in perfectly to Joe Scott Morgan, the moving from state to state. He also goes under the name Brent Savage. We have people in multiple states now looking for him because of his drifting past, repeatedly reoffending and failing to alert authorities as to where he's living. What do you make of it? Is he the real deal?

Is he a serial killer, Joe Scott? You know, it's hard to say at this particular time, but here's a curious thing, Nancy, about this guy. When you're talking about serial killers, generally they're going to kill within a specific grouping. It'll be an age group. It'll be a racial group. It'll be a gender group. You know, are they attacking strictly males or, you know, sometimes serial killers will encounter members of an opposite gender from what they normally hunt. But that's, you know, that's just happenstance many times. So if he's killing both women and men, there are documented cases where you have

this commingling, but it's rare. And also the ages of these individuals. You know, is he killing a group that say over 50, over 60, or is he killing people that are young teens? It's really hard to say. I think that what he has said thus far, the police are absolutely positively compelled to examine every jot and tittle that this guy is putting forward. But I would do it, you know, I would be dubious about a lot of the statements that he's making. Take a listen to our friend Ryan Kruger at 11 Alive. Nicholas Gibson claims he killed a homeless man in Cobb County back in 1999. He's confessed to six other killings. Ryan Kruger joins us now.

Ryan, are authorities here looking into these confessions now? Yeah, they certainly are. Right now there are multiple law enforcement agencies looking into these confessions now. Yeah, they certainly are right now. There are multiple law enforcement agencies looking into their old files to see if they have any cases that match the story that Nicholas Gibson is telling. Listen as the reporter asked Gibson about his first murder.

Now we can confirm Gibson has told investigators that first killing happened right here in the Metro. He claims he hit a homeless man in the head with a brick and left his body in the woods of Cobb County. In the 20 years since, Gibson has been in and out of jail, including two prison stints in Georgia for failing to register as a sex offender. At age 13, he was convicted of rape in Illinois, spent seven years in juvie.

To Joe Scott, do you believe there will be other bodies and other murder charges? Well, what I do believe is that this guy will continue to throw up names. One of the things, did you notice what he said? This guy spent a lot of time in prison. And the thing about it is when you're in prison and you have a lot of time on your hands, you have a lot of time to read. There's no telling what are the cases this guy has filed away in his mind. Now, whether or not he was involved in them, I don't know. But before they can charge this guy, they're going to have to show connectivity, first, geographically, and second, chronologically. Can they put him in these locations with these bodies, and was he a free person at that particular time? To Dr. Michelle Dupree, medical examiner, author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide,

since his body has been mutilated, will we really be able to determine the COD cause of death on Eric Stalker? Of course, it depends on the amount of degradation of the body. It also depends on the injury. Certainly, if a samurai sword was used, yes, we can tell that there was a sharp force injury. If there was strangulation, that may be more difficult. We wait as the investigation goes on. If you have information, please call Miami Beach PD, 305-673-7900, 305-673-7900. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off.

Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.