Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - "The Other Baton Rouge Killer" Sean Vincent Gillis, Pt. 2

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

As he got older, Sean Vincent Gillis's impulses got darker. He committed murder, necrophilic rape, and even cannibalism. After eight victims, he finally made a mistake at one of the crime scenes. It was all the police needed to track down the killer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode contains discussion of domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, as well as disturbing discussions of necrophilia, cannibalism, and murder. Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13. It was very late on November 12, 1999, when Sean Vincent Gillis returned home. He laid the naked body of Joyce Williams on his kitchen floor. Then he stopped and stood over it. It had been a long night of hard work.

Now it was time to play. Sean savored the moment. For most of his life, he'd been the outcast. He'd made few friends, and most people avoided him, especially women. Never in his life had he dreamt he would have such a perfect opportunity to explore a woman's body, not that he needed a dream anymore. Sean pulled a knife from the drawer. He admired Joyce's legs, so he'd be able to join.

cut one off. He held it, stroked it. He did the same with one of her arms. Then he decapitated her head and had sex with it. It was the greatest night of Sean's life, the culmination of decades of pain, suffering, and hard work. It was finally all worth it. In his mind, Sean Vincent Gillis had just become a god. Hi, I'm Greg Paulson. This is serious. A Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we're finishing the story of Sean Vincent Gillis, otherwise known as the other Baton Rouge killer.

I'm here with my co-host Vanessa Richardson. Hi everyone, you can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. Last time, we enravelled Sean's childhood relationship struggles and its transition into a lonely man. But as an adult, As an adult, lingering frustration led him to overpowering thoughts of necrophilia, and in 1994, he killed his first victim, Anne Bryan.

Today, we'll follow Sean as his impulses pull him towards more murder, rape, and even cannibalism. We'll see him take pride in his crimes and in his ability to evade police. Finally, we'll see the simple mistake that brings the authorities to his door. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper, the Golden State Killer, the unit bomber, it's tedious work to find what you're looking for. So, if you're hiring, I've got news for you.

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That's ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the Lonely Hearts Killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner

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Try Activia today. Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. On March 20, 1994, 31-year-old Sean Vincent Gillis broke into 81-year-old Anne Bryan's assisted living, facility apartment and stabbed her to death. The next morning, a staff member found Anne's body.

She was on the floor face up, but with her legs on the bed. Her nightgown was cut open, purposefully revealing a buffet of stab wounds. Police were shocked and dumbfounded. Based on the crime scene, neither the killer nor their intent were clear. They found bloody footprints and some fingerprints, but all of it led nowhere. In the aftermath, police pursued a few possible suspects. but eventually eliminated all of them. They had no idea that only a mile away from where Anne was killed,

the murderer was at home on the couch. Of course, on paper, Sean Gillis had no discernible connection to Anne Bryan, nor to her murder. He was a quiet, slight, bespectacled computer nerd. The police didn't even know who Sean was, let alone consider him a suspect in the gruesome murder. So Sean went on with his life as if nothing had happened. He just began dating a woman named Terry.

someone who loved Star Trek as much as he did. And after the murder, their relationship blossomed. In 1995, about a year after they met, Terry moved into Sean's house. It was a big step for a man who'd spent the better part of his life frustrated at not having a girlfriend. Despite the enormity of this step in their relationship, nothing much changed in Sean's life. At least, he didn't tell Terry about his dark impulses and the bloody murder. He was just as secretive as ever. Sean had only ever had one other woman in his life, his mother, and he'd kept lots of secrets from her.

As far as we know, Sean never told his mother about his necrophilia, and he had never been violent with her. Initially, he treated Terry the same. Vanessa is going to take over in the psychology here and throughout the episode. As a note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Sean was likely separating his feelings of necroposures. necrophilia from his feelings about Terry through a tool called compartmentalization. As defined by the American Psychological Association,

compartmentalization is a defense mechanism in which conflicting thoughts and feelings are isolated from each other in separate mental compartments. Sean was not only hiding his necrophilia from Terry, he was likely going one step further, training himself not to even feel those urges around her. And he fought with any tools at his disposal. Perhaps he repressed them with a cocktail of alcohol, cannabis, and internet pornography. And it seemed to work. From 1995 to 1999, he didn't commit any crimes at all.

But during these five years, America experienced a cultural shift that may have affected Sean's feelings about his necrophilia. The country's collective consciousness became obsessed with the internet. Popular culture was taken over not by attractive and charismatic actors, but by computer nerds. Once outcasts, they became cool. In 1997, Apple launched a famous TV commercial that urged people to think different. They had said, here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers. They're not fond of rules and they change things. It's not hard to imagine Sean watching this ad, absorbing its message that truly

capital G great Americans don't follow the rules. They don't let other people people make them feel ashamed of what they want or of any weirdness. They go out and achieve anyway. When Sean committed his first murder in 1994, he was terrified. To him, the murder was a violent expression of strange feelings he wished would go away. But by the end of 1998, Sean was ready to think differently, even if those thoughts were violent. As 1998 turned to 1999, Terry continued to work the only overnight shift at the Circle K convenience store, leaving Sean at home alone every night. While she was gone, he would drive around the north side of Baton Rouge, where sex workers

wandered the streets. He leered at them, inspected their bodies, imagining which one would be fun to explore. He wanted someone small, someone he could easily overpower. However, he didn't know how he would do that. He had killed Anne Bryan in her bed with a knife, but that had been messy and terrifying, he needed an easier method. Inspiration struck when Sean took a job as a technician servicing copy machines, working with thick plastic zip ties for bundling cables. Immediately, he understood how useful these ties could be. They were light, strong, and fast. Throw one over a bundle of cables and zip. Those cables weren't going anywhere. He imagined what a zip tie like that could do to a woman's

neck. Soon, Sean practiced using the zip ties on a kitchen chair. He'd throw one after another over a wooden knob and pull them tight. It was perfect. He started calling the zip tie the objectifier. He also called it his, quote, implement of destruction. He practiced until he felt ready. Then, on the night of January 4, 1999, while Terry was at work, he grabbed his zip ties on a knife and got in the car. As he rolled down North Street, he was looking at the night. He was looking at the night. He was for someone small, someone desperate, someone too weak to put up a fight. He knew he needed a woman who would willingly get in his car and let him drive her away. When he spotted 29-year-old Catherine Hall, she looked perfect. Sean's pulse quickened. He was nervous, but he'd been waiting

for this. So he rolled down his window letting in the cold night air. Then he held out a $20 bill. When Catherine saw Sean holding money out of his car, she likely didn't hesitate. She struggled with a drug addiction, and money meant she could get her next fix. She just had to trade sex to get it. With years of experience, Catherine probably thought she knew which cars to get into and which to avoid. The small man with his glasses and a sheepish grin didn't seem dangerous. So she opened the passenger door and got in. As Sean drove Catherine to an empty field, he was affable.

chatty. He played music on the radio. When they arrived, he told her he would pay for oral sex. She agreed to the deal and got to work. After Catherine was done, Sean made his move. He pulled out a zip tie, slipped it over her neck, and pulled it tight. But the tool didn't work quite as planned. Catherine didn't immediately suffocate. Instead, she grabbed the door handle, fought her way out of the car, and ran screaming across the empty field. Panicked Sean Chase her down. He tackled her to the ground, then beat and stabbed her. He finally killed her by slitting her throat, as he had done to Anne Bryan. The whole night had been a mess, but Sean had done just enough right to get away with it. It was dark and there was no one around, so no one had heard

Catherine scream. That meant Sean could enjoy himself. He mutilated Catherine's body, paying special attention to her breasts, her abdomen, and her genitals. After Sean finished his mutilation, he placed Catherine's body in the passenger seat of his car, but he couldn't pick Terry up from work with a body in the car and blood all over the seat. So first, he drove to an all-night car wash. He needed to scrub out the car's interior before the blood dried, but Catherine's body was in the way, so he pulled her out of the car and left it on the ground while he took care of the stains. When he was finished, he put her body back. Then he drove around, looking for somewhere to leave her.

On a dark, quiet road, he saw just the place. A big sign read, dead end. Amused by the irony, Sean left Catherine in front of the sign, naked, base down, and in the middle of the street. Then he left to meet Terry. A hunter found Catherine's body the next morning and sounded the alarm. As they had been with Anne Bryan's murder, police were stumped. This time it was clear the killer had committed the murder elsewhere,

then moved the body. As officers would later tell Susan Mustafa and Sue Israel for their book, dismembered, it was also clear that discarding the body in front of a dead-end sign was their idea of a joke. Unfortunately, the police were unable to develop any meaningful leads, and the investigation went cold. The murder faded from public memory. And just as he had after murdering Anne, Sean went back to his life as if nothing had happened. Only now, he was no longer fighting his violent.

impulses, he was embracing them. He'd waited five years before his second murder, but he had no intention of waiting that long again. Coming up, Sean Wetsis' appetite for murder. Right. Let me paint a picture for you, Ian. Yeah? I'm going to set the scene. This is the bit that I like. Right. Okay, go for it. It's a beautiful Saturday in early July 2001. Do you remember back about 21 years ago? I remember 2004 2001 fondly. Okay, well, imagine that time, but we're in Germany. So, gooden tag. Gooden togg!

There's this university in the city of Witten. It's high summer, it's really incredibly hot. The students, the locals, they're out, they're enjoying the sun, they're getting their tan on. But behind the door of a small one-bedroom apartment, things couldn't be more different. Darkness. Death. Oh.

And destruction lurk inside. and unaware of what they are about to walk into, the local Witten Police Squad are trying to get in. Bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang. What are you doing? I'm doing like the sound effects, that's the police coming into the...

You know, this is like a big podcast. We can actually like get proper sound effects in. Right, okay. Let's just do that then. There's no answer. And as the officers force their way indoors... That's not a force sound. That's a squeaky door.

That's you taking a shit sound. It sounds like a tricky poo, doesn't it? That's not what I don't sound like that when I do a tricky poo. It's to be very clear. So they break down the door. Badoosh! They're greeted with a scene straight out of a gothic horror novel. Here we go.

The apartment is almost pitch black. The officers have to squint as they make their way down the corridor, reluctantly groping the walls to keep from tripping over. They inch their way towards a door at the end of the corridor, not knowing what they are about to be greeted with. They creep towards the bedroom It's as dark as the corridor An officer pulls back one of the blackout cradines

And the first thing to catch their eye Is a full-size coffin laying on the floor A coffin? Yeah, a coffin The entire apartment is painted black And in the living room Cemetery lights illuminate an altar

fashioned from fake human skulls So this is the bit When it gets really messed up In the middle of all of it there's a body. No way. So the body, the victim, has been stabbed 66 times. And a pentagram has been cut into the stomach.

There's a message smeared in blood on the window when Satan lives. This is seriously dark stuff. Totally. And it's about to get a whole lot darker. That was the last sound effect. From Spotify, I'm Lorre Whitmore. And I'm Ian Sterling. This is Partners in Crime

Every week we rifled through the case files of some of the most infamous, fascinating and bizarre crimes in history So if like us, your perfect date night involves turning down the lights real low cozing up on the sofa and delving into the braved minds of some seriously messed up criminals

You're very much in the right place Welcome to episode one, the vampire killers Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound to Zezzi Zephetide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zep bound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection.

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Call 1-800-545-99 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. Now back to the story. After Sean murdered his second victim, Catherine Hall, in January 1999, he returned to life with his girlfriend as if nothing had happened. After years of feeling alone and rejected, having a girlfriend made Sean incredibly happy. He knew Terry loved him, even though he wasn't a perfect boyfriend. He drank a lot, he smoked pot, he didn't work much because his mom paid his mortgage. And he had no interest in sex. The problem wasn't that Sean didn't want to have sex with Terry.

The problem was that he didn't want to have sex with any woman, at least not any living woman. Sean couldn't tell her that, of course, so he came up with a different excuse. When Terry tried to have sex with Sean, he said he just didn't like it and didn't want to do it. And Terry seemed to accept that answer. She was aware of his internet pornography habit, so she likely assumed that's where his sexual energy was going. But Sean wasn't just looking at pornography. He was looking at necrophilic pornography, fetishized images of dead. dead women's bodies.

From what we know, Terry wasn't particularly happy about his porn habits, the fact that he sometimes shared it with her, or that they never had sex anymore. But she seemed to accept it as part of who Sean was. Sean letting his partner see that side of him suggests two things. First, his efforts to compartmentalize Terry and porn were failing. He was clearly signaling his sexual attraction to other bodies. Second, that Terry was not alarmed suggests that she was likely also compartmentalizing. She didn't want to think about what Sean's lack of interest in sex meant, especially when he was so into porn.

In fact, it seemed like she didn't really care. For Terry, the only thing that mattered was that Sean was never violent with her, and she had good reason to think that way. Terry had a history of traumatic encounters with violent men. Once she intervened in a bar fight to protect a woman from a biker. The confrontation quickly escalated into a fight for her life. Terry and the other woman prevailed, killing the biker. Law enforcement deemed the killing an act of self-defense, and Terry was never prosecuted. But in her wallet, she kept a photo of the biker's dead body lying on the barroom floor.

She even showed it to Sean. Terry had also been married to a physically abusive man before she met Sean. The marriage ended when he tried to hit her, and she cut his arm open with a meat cleaver. So at some point when Terry and Sean's relationship started to get serious, she'd wanted to know if he would ever physically abuse her. She decided to test him. Terry started an argument with Sean and then slapped him in the face. Then she waited to see what he would do. The slap brought tears to Sean's eyes. He stomped his foot like a child and shouted at her,

Girls don't hit boys and boys don't hit girls. After that, he stormed off, but he didn't hit her, which was the important thing to Terry, and perhaps the incident even blinded her to any clues about his criminality. While Sean may not have been violent towards Terry, his final final. towards other women was accelerating. He'd murdered Catherine Hall in January of 1999. By May of that year, he was ready for his next victim. His problem was that he had no idea who it should be.

Until early one morning, he was driving through a wealthy neighborhood in Baton Rouge when he spotted 52-year-old Hardy Mosley Schmidt on her morning jog. For whatever reason, he was immediately drawn to this woman, and he decided that one day soon, he would kill her. In the coming weeks, Sean returned to the spot where he'd seen Hardy, hoping to catch her on her run again. And then one morning, there she was. Sean didn't hesitate.

He drove up behind her and struck her with his car. Before she could recover her senses, he hopped out, put a zip tie around her neck, and pulled it tight. The moment she was dead, Sean put her body in the car, looked around to make sure there were no witnesses, then hopped behind the wheel and took off. Sean drove Hardy's body to a park. It was 5.30 a.m. on a Sunday, and there was no one around, so he took his time. He laid her on the ground, carefully stripped off her clothes, and sexually assaulted her dead body. This was Sean's first act of necrophilic rape with one of his victims.

It was clear that he was starting to embrace his darkest impulses. A little later, Sean picked Terry up from work and drove her home with Hardy's body in the trunk. She had no idea that anything out of the ordinary had happened. And things stayed on that even keel for months after. Later that year, on November 12th, Sean picked up sex worker Joyce Williams in much the same way he'd targeted Catherine Hall. He found Joyce walking on the road in an industrial part of town and offered her $10 for oral sex. She agreed and got in his car. Sean tuned the radio to an oldie station and the pair sang along, feeling relaxed and comfortable.

Sean drove Joyce to a remote location and strangled her to death with a zip tie. Then he brought her body back to his house and laid it on his kitchen floor, where he spent hours mutilating her. Things reached a perverse new level when he had sex with her decapitated head and ate her nipples. Joyce Williams' murder was the first time Sean practiced cannibalism, and while the practice has a history dating back thousands of years, modern cannibals are often also serial killers. There's only a small number of them, but according to a recent study in the Journal of Forensic Science, contemporary cannibals consume human flesh for a variety of reasons. They may want to show dominance or absolute possession of a victim,

or they may feel that by eating certain parts of another person's body, like the heart or brain, they gain that person's strength and power. It's unclear exactly why Sean engaged in cannibalism. Perhaps it was an act of sexual self-gratification. Maybe it gave him a sense of dominance and possession over his victim. For Sean's part, the only explanation he ever offered for his cannibalism was, quote, I was curious. Whatever his reasons for his post-murder acts,

Sean felt killing gave him a feeling of immense power, and keeping it all from his partner probably contributed to that sense of incredible control. Later that night, when Sean brought Terry home from work, he had already cleaned everything up. She didn't suspect a thing. just as he wanted. Looking back on that time in his life, Sean said, it's my universe and I'm God there.

I am God. With newfound confidence, Sean committed two more murders over the next year. He killed Lillian Robinson in January 2000 and Marilyn Nevels in October 2000. Both were walking the streets when he picked them up. And when Sean was done mutilating their bodies, he left their remains in remote locations. Sean began to think of himself as the chestmaster, a nickname that Captain Kirk used for Mr. Spock on Star Trek.

To Sean, he and the police were playing a game. He was trying to outsmart them and they were trying to catch him. And he was winning. But when Sean turned on the news in 2001, everyone was talking about a different serial killer. Someone other than Sean was raping and murdering young women in Baton Rouge at a terrifying rate. The city was in a panic and the nation. nation was watching. Sean was fascinated. He kept a folder on his computer with a collection of news stories about the case, and a part of him was almost jealous of the spotlight. At first

glance, it seems strange that Sean would want the police to pay attention to him. He'd committed six brutal murders. The last thing he should have wanted was police attention. So it begs the question of whether, on some level, Sean wanted to be caught. But psychologists who study them generally agree that serial killers almost never want to be found. According to a report from the FBI behavioral analysis unit, it is not that serial killers want to get caught, it's that they feel that they can't get caught. When serial killers like Sean engage with police, it's usually because they consider it fun or exciting. Sean likely fit this pattern. He wanted to play cat and mouse with the police. And when Sean killed again, he wanted the police to give him their undivided attention. So,

for the next few years, he took a hiatus. Finally, in May of 2003, police arrested Derek Todd Lee, the serial killer who had terrorized Baton Rouge for the past five years. The women of Baton Rouge felt safe. Unfortunately for them, Sean Benson Gillis was ready to change all that. Coming up, the police hunt for Baton Rouge's second killer. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session.

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With Derek Todd Lee in custody, Sean Vincent Gillis decided it was time to make his presence felt. The 41-year-old hadn't killed anyone or played with a dead body in three years, but on October 9, 2003, he was ready to go again. As he had so many times before, Sean got in his car and drove to North Baton Rouge. There, he encountered someone unexpected. A friend, walking down the sidewalk was Johnny May Williams. Over the year, Sean had hired Johnny. May a few times to clean his house. He knew her kids. He'd even spent Thanksgiving with her family once.

Everyone who knew Johnny May knew that she'd struggled with crack cocaine dependency for years. She'd fought hard and had periods when she was clean, happy, healthy. But as Sean pulled up next to Johnny May, it was clear that the struggle was getting the best of her. To Sean, she looked withered and close to dead. That's just what he wanted. Sean invited Johnny May into the car. She was malnourished and exhausted, so perhaps she was relieved to see a familiar face and gladly got in. Sean drove her down a gravel road to a small grassy area surrounded by trees. By now, he wasn't the nervous, bumbling amateur he had been a decade earlier. He was steady, seasoned, and brutal.

So he quickly dragged his friend from the car and slammed her down on her back in the grass. Then he beat her to death. Once she was dead, Sean slashed over the backs of Johnny Mae's legs and cut off her hands. Finally, he put her back in his car, drove deep into the woods, and left her there. He posed her completely nude, took photos of her body with a digital camera, and then headed for home. It was about a week before her body was found by a young boy looking for his missing dog. After Johnny May's body was found, Sean followed the news with excitement and anticipation. He scoured the internet for details, and eventually came across a crime scene photo of her body in the woods.

He was so excited that he showed the photo to Terry, further evidence of his deteriorating ability to compartmentalize. Meanwhile, the police had no leads and no suspects. As the weeks and months passed, it was clear that Sean had beaten them again. The chessmaster was back in the game, and just a few months later, he was ready to make his next move. Sean went out again in the pre-dawn hours of February 26, 2004. He lured Donna Bennett Johnston into his car after propositioning her for oral sex, then drove her to a secluded area. There he strangled her with a zip tie and mutilated her body.

As he had with Joyce Williams, he cut off and ate Donna's nipples. When he was finished, he took dozens of pictures with his digital camera, then left her body in an abandoned area near a canal. For Baton Rouge police, the experience of chasing and catching Derek Tottenly had been traumatic, but it had also been instructive. Where they found Donna's mutilated body, they immediately feared they might be looking at the work of yet another serial killer. With that thought in mind, they formed a task force to re-examine cold murder cases

and soon had DNA evidence that the same person was responsible for the deaths of Donna, Johnny May Williams, and Catherine Hall. They still didn't know who the killer was, but the killer had left a clue behind this time. On the night Sean killed Donna, the ground had been soft from heavy rain a couple of days before, so when he drove into the woods, he left distinctive tire tracks in the dirt. It was investigators' first solid lead. They analyzed the track and determined that only about 60 vehicles in Baton Rouge had those same tires.

So they made a list of all the owners, knocked on their doors, and asked them for DNA samples. Sean Vincent Gillis was number 26 on the list. About two months after he killed Donna, two detectives knocked on Sean's door. They told him they were investigating a recent murder and had some questions for him. Sean chatted amicably with the detectives and let them swab his mouth for a DNA sample. He admitted that he knew Johnny Mae Williams, and he admitted that he'd recently driven on Ben Hur Road, where police had found Donna's body. At that stage, the detectives knew they were on to.

something, but they also knew they didn't have the whole story. Not yet. So they asked Sean to accompany them to their police station for questioning. Sean didn't really resist. In fact, he seemed to resign to it, which surprised the detectives, but made them even more sure this was their guy. Now they just had to prove it. At the station, the detectives asked Sean if there was any reason they might find blood in his car. Sean thought about that. He told them that Terry had once menstruated, on the front passenger seat. He said that she left so much blood that it looked like, in his words, a massacre. The police were used to suspects offering up odd excuses that sounded like lies, but this was certainly one of the strangest. The detectives then asked Sean if there was any reason

why his car might have blood in the back seat. Sean thought about that too. He told them that when Terry had been menstruating in the front seat, the window had been open. So the wind might have blown some of Terry's blood from the front seat to the back. If the detectives found Sean's answers strange before, now they were downright nonsensical. It reinforced their suspicion that Sean was the killer. But it would be a few hours before they had the DNA test results, so the detectives released Sean and let him go home. They would wait for the labs before making any arrest. For the next several hours, they set up surveillance around his house. If he tried to go anywhere,

they wanted to know. But Sean wasn't leaving. When he got home, he told Terry everything was fine, that the police had simply questioned him and let him go. It was nothing to worry about. After that, the pair had dinner, got in bed at the same time, a rare occurrence,

and fell asleep in each other's arms. A little after 1 a.m., Sean and Terry were awakened by a colossal boom. It was a SWAT team kicking in the front door. Seconds later, SWAT officers Yankees the couple from their bed and handcuffed Sean. Confused and terrified, Terry demanded to know what was going on. One of the officers asked her, don't you know, you're living with a serial killer? At first, Terry laughed in his face. Certainly they had the wrong house. But when a detective assured her

that they didn't, her stomach dropped. She looked at Sean. He met her gaze with a sheepish half-grin and told her it was true. With that simple admission, The barrier between the two sides of Sean's mind was finally gone for good. In his youth, he'd hidden his anger, drug use, and necrophilia from his mom. As an adult, he'd spent years hiding his murderous impulses from Terry. But in the moment of this confession, there was no separation between Sean the slightly awkward nerd and Sean the murderer. There was just... After his arrest, Sean found lawyers to represent him.

They figured their best defense was to argue that Sean wasn't guilty because he was insane at the time of his crimes. To help prove his case, Sean's brain was thoroughly examined with PET scans and MRIs. These examinations revealed that Sean had a severely deformed amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped region of the brain that's associated with processing emotion. People with an abnormal amygdala have trouble experiencing emotions and recognizing emotions in others, especially fear. A psychiatrist to examine Sean testified at his trial that the brain damage could have been caused by head trauma that he suffered as a toddler. Sean told the psychiatrist before the trial that he had suffered several head injuries as a child, but no one could verify any of his claims. The prosecution pushed back against Sean's defense, refuting the claims of insanity and his attempts to shirk responsibility for his crimes.

Still, it seems that Sean had lived with significant physical brain damage, perhaps since his youth. though what caused it is less certain. In the end, however, his past didn't mitigate the horrors of Sean's crimes. He'd killed and mutilated eight women, and the jury wasn't going to let him get away with it. They found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. After that, the chess master had no moves left to play. Unlike the characters in his beloved Star Trek,

Sean Vincent Gillis wasn't the hero, even of his own story. He was the villain. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back soon with another episode. For more information on Sean Gillis, amongst the many sources we used, we found dismembered by Susan D. Mustafa and Sue Israel, extremely helpful to our research.

You can find more episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast, Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Alex Button, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro,

Nick Johnson, Trent Williamson, and Carly Madden. This episode of Serial Killers was written by K. Adam Bloom, edited by Stacey Nemick and Joel Callan, fact-checked by Lori Siegel, researched by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood, and produced by Joshua Kern. Serial Killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. What was your college soundtrack?

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