Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - "The Railroad Killer" Ángel Maturino Reséndiz Pt. 1

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

After years of incarceration, rejection, and failure, Ángel Maturino Reséndiz's most violent impulses began to surface. Between 1986 and 1999, he traveled the U.S. by freight train, murdering “sinners” in a so-called mission from God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, sexual assault, rape, and child abuse that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. On March 23, 1997, 16-year-old Wendy Bonnheuben was trying not to panic as she hid inside a stopped freight train. minutes earlier her fiancé Jesse had hopped off the train with their new friend Raphael. Before he left, Jesse promised, I'll be right back. Ever since they'd run away together a month ago, Jesse hadn't left Wendy's side, but now Jesse was gone and Wendy had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Still, Raphael seemed friendly and had promised to help Wendy and Jesse find work. They'd followed him willingly onto the train. train, desperate to make money and avoid going home. When the train stopped in Bellevue, Florida, Jesse and Raphael got off the train together for a bathroom break. But they've been gone for a long time. With a jolt of horror, Wendy heard the train's engine juttering back to life around her and felt it grind slowly into motion.

She was frozen. Just as she was contemplating whether to jump off the moving train and look for the others. Rafael reappeared. But Wendy's relief was short-lived. Raphael was alone. The older man looked different, meaner. The kindness in his eyes was gone, and suddenly she found she didn't want to ask where Jesse was. She was scared of the answer, and she was right to be afraid. I'm Greg Poulson. This is serial killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're delving into the saga of the railroad killer, Angel Matarino Resendez.

Between 1986 and 1999, Resendez murdered at least 15 people across the U.S., hopping across state lines by traveling in secret on freight trains. 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 or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today, we'll look at Resendez's violent childhood in Mexico, the double life he led as a drifter, and how his life in the U.S. drove him to murder.

Next time, we'll cover Resendez's multi-state murder spree in the late 90s, and how his family helped finally bring him to justice. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. 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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celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. There are few ideas more tantalizing than the American dream. The belief that anybody, regardless of their background, birthplace, or class, can achieve success in the United States. All it takes is pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. In other words, hard work, sacrifice, and strategic risk-taking. Throughout history, countless individuals from around the world have left their home countries behind to come to the United States. They built new lives, found new opportunities for themselves and their children, and thrived.

But like all fantasies, the American dream has a dark side. In the wrong hands, under the wrong circumstances, it can become a nightmare. All his life, Angel Matarino Resendez, found a way to be in America. No matter how many times he was made to leave, he always returned. He was a man on a mission. but the mission was not to build a new, better life for himself. His mission was death. And that's hardly surprising, given that Resendez's earliest experience of the world was traumatic.

He was born in 1959 in Asucard de Matamoros, a city in the Mexican state of Puebla. Within moments of his birth, he was dropped on his head and knocked unconscious. His childhood did not get much easier from there. Resendez was a timid child, physically small for his age, and described by relatives as a loner. His father, Juan, never married his mother, Virginia, and doesn't seem to have been a part of his son's life at all. When he was just three years old, Resentis fell off a building and suffered serious injuries. It's not clear exactly how the fall happened or what a three-year-old was doing on top of a building in the first place, but it set the tone for a childhood marked by physical peril.

When Rescendes was six, his mother married a military man. For reasons that aren't clear, she sent her son to live with her brother, Rafael Resendez Ramirez. It's possible that Virginia's new husband wanted her to himself, or perhaps Virginia simply felt unable to take care of her son. Either way, Resendez settled into his uncle's house. According to his aunt, he was the center of attention in his new home and was spoiled because the couple didn't have any children of their own. But that's not the version of the story everybody tells. According to some relatives, Resendez was sexually abused by his uncle Raphael.

Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. If these accounts of sexual abuse are true, it's likely that it had a profound psychological impact on Rescendes. A 2020 study out of Brazil, published in the peer-reviewed journal Heelian, noted that one of the most damaging aspects of child sexual abuse is that it transforms the home into a dangerous place.

The authors wrote, The family environment, which should be a safe haven, becomes a threatening environment, triggering in the victim a sense of helplessness, fear, and abandonment. This feeling of helplessness would have been pronounced for Resindez, who had already been abandoned by his father, rejected by his mother, and suffered multiple incidents of severe physical trauma. But despite the challenges of his childhood, young Rescindis was hardworking and polite, rarely getting into any trouble. But that changed in his adolescence. In 1970, when he was 11, Resendez ran away from home,

perhaps fleeing his uncle's abuse. He lived on the street for some time where he took up sniffing glue, and during this period, misfortune struck again. Because of his small size, Resendez was a prime target for bullies, and being on the streets only made him more vulnerable.

One day, a group of older boys attacked him with a brick. The details of the attack are sketchy, but it reportedly left Rescendez bleeding from his nose and ears. This is significant. According to the Brain Injury Resource Center, bleeding from both these areas may indicate a fractured skull. This is at least the third known instance of head trauma that Resendez suffered during his childhood.

Many researchers have noted a correlation between head trauma and criminal or sociopathic behavior. In 1985, Neuropsychologist Paul J. Eslinger and Antonio R. Demosio coined the term acquired sociopathy to describe a man whose personality changes after a brain injury. Before the injury, the patient was deemed clinically normal. Afterward, he met the DSM-5 criteria for antisocial personality disorder. In other words, he had become a sociopath.

Given that Resendez suffered three separate instances of severe head trauma during his formative years, it's very possible that this impacted his personality, and there was more trauma yet to come. In 1971, when Resentis was 12, he moved back in with his mother to attend high school in the city of Atlechko. One afternoon, when Resentis was swimming in a river near his home, he was sexually assaulted by a group of older boys. Having already suffered so much physical violence, this incident was likely the last straw for Rescindis. After that, he was determined to get out. We don't know exactly when or why Resendez came to America, but it's possible that he was in search of the American dream.

The United States was a promised land, a place where prosperity, freedom, and limitless opportunity could be had. After everything Resendez had been through, that dream would have been intoxicating. He spent his days imagining escape. At Lechko was a long way from the U.S. border, Some 600 miles south, but that didn't put Resentes off. If he could just get to America, he knew his life would finally start to make sense.

And so, about a year after moving in with his mother, Resendez ran away from home once again. He made his first trip to the U.S. border and entered Texas. As he walked along a dusty rural Texan road, Resendez felt elated. After a disjointed, traumatic start to life, He was in a brand new country where nobody knew his name. True freedom seemed within his grasp. From here on out, details about Rescendes are sparse, so much of the story will be based on his own version of events.

For that reason, a lot of this has to be taken with a grain of salt, but we'll do our best to fill in the gaps and walk you through the facts as we understand them. We don't know how long Resendez was in the U.S. in 1973, but he spent his time there getting the lay of the land. He discovered there was decent money to be made as a migrant worker on farms, ranches, and tobacco fields, and that these employers were happy to hire undocumented workers and minors. After that initial trip, Resendiz began going back and forth

between Mexico and the U.S. regularly. At the age of 16, he caught the attention of U.S. immigration authorities for the first time, when he was apprehended trying to cross-executive. the border into Brownsville, Texas. He was deported two months later in August of 1976. Far from putting Resendez off, being ejected from the U.S. only made him hungrier to return. He returned to the states two more times before the end of 1976 and was apprehended in Michigan and Texas. Both times he returned to Mexico

voluntarily. At this stage, Resendez was still figuring out ways to get around the the system. He began using aliases and changing his appearance regularly to make it harder for the authorities to track him. The alias he used most often was Rafael Resendez Ramirez, his uncle's name. Resentis also found a way to roam freely around the U.S. Once across the border, he slipped onto a freight train and stowed away inside one of the boxcars. Then he just hopped off whenever it reached a destination that seemed appealing. He traveled all around the south this way, taking agricultural work wherever he could find it. Given the upbringing he had, nobody could blame Rescindez for craving a fresh start, but it soon became clear that the darkness of his youth had followed him into

adulthood. The timid, abused boy had grown up into a man with no regard for the law. In 1977, when he was 18, Resendez was convicted. of destroying private property and leaving the scene of a crime in Mississippi. After spending two weeks in prison, he was released and voluntarily returned to Mexico in October. Back home, Resindez wasn't himself. His relatives noticed a change in him. Whenever he returned home, he delivered rambling religious speeches that disturbed them. We don't know a lot about Rescindis' religious beliefs or how devout he and his family were, But the region of Mexico where Resendez grew up is heavily Catholic, so it's likely he had at least some involvement with church growing up.

Conversations about religion wouldn't be out of place in this region, so it's significant that Resendez's speeches raised eyebrows. We don't know what he said, but one relative described his diatribes as unintelligible apocalyptic discourses. These strange outbursts were the first hint of the delusional state that had begun to grip Rescindis. It didn't have a firm shape yet, but he felt increasingly sure that he was special. More than that, he felt that the Lord needed him in America. It's unclear what happened over the next two years. The next concrete information we have on Resendez's whereabouts is in 1979, when he was charged with Grand Theft Auto in Tampa Flo.

in Florida. Soon after, he was arrested for a much more serious crime. In June of that year, Resendez broke into a home in Miami. It seems likely that his plan was simply to rob the place, but the 88-year-old owner confronted him. Resendez beat the man until he was unconscious and then stole his car. As far as we know, Resendez had no history of violence up to this point. To go from zero to 100 in this way, beating an elderly man almost to death, indicates a vast well of anger and darkness with unknown depth, and this emerging violent streak cost him dearly.

In April of 1980, Resendez was convicted of burglary, aggravated battery, and grand theft auto, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. As the prison cell door slammed shut behind him, Rescindis' American dream seemed truly dead, but he wasn't about to give up so easily. Up next, rescindes his rage propels him into his first murder. Listeners, looking for something a little spooky to dig into? Then check out the Spotify Original from Parkast, Superstitions. Every Wednesday, explore the varying beliefs people around the world fear and follow in this eerie news series.

Each week, step inside stories that illustrate the horror, weirdness, and truth behind humanity's strangest codes of conduct. Why do black cats represent witchcraft? What's the point of carrying a rabbit's foot around with you? And how come certain films seem cursed and others don't? Each new episode of superstitions presents a story that unlocks the mysteries of unorthodox traditions and surreal phenomena. They may seem mystical or illogical or completely insane, but then again, do they?

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Call 1-800-545-99-9 or visit Zepbounds.lily.com. Now back to the story. In August of 1985, Angel Matarino Resendez had a lot to celebrate. Weeks after his 26th birthday, he was released on parole after serving just five years of a 20-year sentence for burglary, grand theft auto, and aggravated assault. But after being deported back to his hometown in Mexico, Rescendez didn't feel much like celebrating. Five years in prison had done nothing to dampen Resendez's appetite for a life in America, and yet he also held a new rage towards the country that he felt had dealt him blow after blow after blow. Resendez had met a lot of very, very bad men in prison, men guilty of crimes more horrific than assault.

and yet those men after their release were allowed to remain in the country. They were given another shot at the American dream that kept being snatched away from Resentis. South of the border, it seems he struggled to find work. It didn't matter. Resentis didn't plan to stay long. By 1986, he was back in Texas. Desperate to escape his unhappy upbringing in Puebla, he did whatever it took to get back to the U.S. But now, 13 years after that fateful first visit, perhaps his view of the country had darkened. Resendez's attempts to stay in the country were continually thwarted by immigration authorities or the law.

And all around him, he saw people who were handed countless opportunities only to squander them. People born in the U.S. with citizenship and privilege who still ended up on the streets. Rescindez met many such people at the homeless shelter in Bayer County, the Texan County that includes the city of San Antonio. Perhaps over the course of his time there, his resentment grew, looking around at people who, to his mind, had thrown away their chance at the dream he longed for. One night, with his inhibitions lowered, Resendez met his first victim. A note before we get into this story, the victim has never been identified. by name, and the details of the crime come only from Mercendez's confession, not from any corroborating evidence. For the purposes of this retelling, we're going to call her Carla.

Resendez met Carla at the homeless shelter and invited her to come on a motorcycle ride with him. It's not clear where he got a motorcycle, but based on his history, it seems likely he stole it. The pair brought a gun along on their trip, intending to use it for target practice. after they stopped at an abandoned farmhouse and started shooting, things went south. They began discussing their lives, their plans, their hopes for the future. Perhaps they talked about love. Perhaps Resendez tried to make a move. Whatever happened, Carlos said or did something that upset Resentis.

More than that, it offended him. He felt that she disrespected him in a way he couldn't forgive. Resendez shot her four times, killing her, and left her body in the abandoned farmhouse. A short time after, we don't know exactly how long, he killed Carla's boyfriend, who we're going to call Jeff. Jeff's body has never been found, but according to Resentis, he ditched it in a creek somewhere between the cities of San Antonio and Yuvaldi. On the surface, you might assume that Resendez murdered Jeff out of jealousy, or to cover his tracks. But he offered a startlingly different motive. Resendez claimed that he killed Jeff because he was involved in black magic.

Resendiz was fixated on the moral character of those around him and believed it was his right to kill people who didn't live up to his standards. He'd long felt that he was special, chosen by God for a purpose that seemed elusive until now. He came to believe that he was half man, half angel, and had been said, sent to Earth on a mission from God to execute sinners. According to Resentis, he particularly wanted to kill those who practiced witchcraft, performed abortions, or who he suspected to be gay. There's a lot of conflicting evidence about Resendez's mental state,

and in particular whether he suffered from schizophrenia. But this idea that he's half angel is a textbook example of a grandiose delusion, a common psychotic symptom of schizophrenia. The DSM-5 defines grandiose delusions as, when an individual believes that he or she has exceptional abilities, wealth or fame. Rescendez's belief that he was chosen by God and that he was only half human certainly qualifies. This type of belief isn't unusual. In a 2014 study, researchers found that about a fifth of people who experienced delusions in their large sample have religious delusions. But in Rescendas, this grandiose idea blended in a catastrophic way with his deep-seated anger at the world.

Soon after killing Carla and Jeff, Resendez jumped on a freight train. Hunkering down inside the boxcar, he felt a great sense of peace wash over him. After so many years of drifting, he had a purpose. This mission from God was his life's work. But he was no angel in the eyes of the authorities, although no one knew. Risenes was a murderer, in fact, no one even knew Carla and Jeff were dead. He was soon arrested for a different crime. He was caught falsely representing himself as an American citizen and sentenced to prison in Texas for 18 months. In August of 1987, after serving a year or so of his sentence,

Resendez was once again sent back to Mexico. This is another era where the details get fuzzy. We don't know exactly what Rescindiz did after returning to Mexico or how long he stayed there, but we do know that he was back in the U.S. by 1988, when he was first in New Orleans and then settled for a while in St. Louis, Missouri. After years of being a drifter, picking up seasonal work wherever he could, perhaps he was ready to put down roots. Records show that Resendez registered with a temp agency in Missouri, found work at a manufacturing company, and even voted in two elections under an assumed name.

But trying to put down roots cost Resendez his freedom. He applied for a social security card using false documents in November of 1988 and was jailed again. After serving 30 months, he was deported. Now 31, Resendez was likely depressed. His attempt to settle down and build a stable, documented life. for himself in the U.S. had ended in disaster. His American dream snatched from him once again. He stayed south of the border for about two months, and when he returned, it was with a vengeance. The details of exactly what happened on July 19, 1991, are unclear, but at some point that day,

rescinders crossed paths with 33-year-old Michael White in San Antonio. It's possible that the two men men men. at a homeless shelter, like the one where Resendez found his first victims. Perhaps it was at a bar or a church. All we know for sure is that they ended up in an abandoned house together. Things went south, and Resendez struck. He shot White dead and left his body outside the empty house. No further details about this murder have ever been released, except for one thing.

According to Resendez, he killed White because he was killed White. gay. Being anti-gay and against abortion were central to rescind his belief that he was on a mission from God to rid the world of sinners. But this explanation also brings to mind the LGBTQ plus panic legal defense. As the National LGBT Bar Association and Foundation explains, this defense is a legal strategy that asks a jury to find that a victim's sexual orientation or gender identity and expression is to blame for a defendant's violent reaction, including murder. This is a legal strategy that's been used on several notable occasions by heterosexual defendants to try and excuse violence against members of the LGBTQ Plus community. Through legislation,

it's been banned in 11 states, and such bans have been introduced in eight other states. In her 2016 essay, Sex, Gender, Sexuality, and Victimals, criminal justice researcher Jane von Deldin writes about this panic defense as part of broader sex and sexuality-based violence. She explains, The defendant's attempt to characterize the victim as deviant, an attempt to elicit notions of empathy or sympathy at having been subjected to the deviance. The defendants attempt to blame the victim for the violence in an appeal to socialized or institutionalized biases, condoning their conduct.

We have no idea whether white made any kind of advance on Rescindis, but the idea that white sexuality, his quote-unquote deviance, made him deserving of death, fits right in with what we know about Resentis' bigoted views. To Rescindis, abortion, witchcraft, and being gay were crimes worthy of execution. Yet murder, assault, and stealing, his own pastimes of choice, were apparently just fine by God. The double standard makes no sense to any rational mind, but as far as Resendez was concerned, he was fulfilling his life's purpose. Coming up, Resendez's killing spree escalates.

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Now back to the story. In 1991, Angel Matarino Resendez had just committed his third murder. He'd spent his entire adult life in a state of constant motion, going back and forth across the border between Mexico, his home, and the United States, his place. playground. Stowing away on freight trains, Rescindez traveled secretly across America's vast railroad system, jumping off whenever he felt the urge. He explored new neighborhoods across Texas, California, New Mexico, and beyond, and he took whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it,

from cars to property, to human lives. Between 1991 and 1997, details on Resendez's movements are scarce. He was arrested and convicted of various petty crimes in the U.S. during this period and served prison sentences before being deported back to Mexico each time. Back in Mexico, Resent is relocated from his home state Puebla to Rodeo, a small town about 400 miles from the Texas border. We don't know when or why he made this move, but there are a couple of likely explanations. Puebla is a long way from the border, around 20 hours by car, which didn't work for Resendez's itinerant lifestyle, and having developed a reputation as a rambling religious fanatic in his hometown, perhaps he also wanted to go

somewhere he could reinvent himself. Rodeo fit the bill. The town is infamous for its black market center, where cannabis and stolen cars are sold. Residents of Rodeo know better than to ask too many questions or to prying to stranger's business. In other words, it was the perfect place for Resendez to lay low in between his stateside stints. Resendez became known in Rodeo as an eccentric but mild-mannered loner. Elvira Marufo, a local shopkeeper, later recalled, he was quiet and polite. He sometimes talked about right-wing politics or about Christianity, but he kept his voice sweet and soft.

His pleasant demeanor aside, Resendez had something else going for him. He'd become fluent in English during his time of the States. Thanks to this, he found a part-time gig, teaching English at the local convent school. Even more surprisingly, for a man always in motion, he settled into a stable relationship. In the early 1990s, Resendez met Julietta Dominguez-Reyes, a young woman who worked as a lab technician in a public health clinic. By 1994, the couple were living together. Resendez was a perfect gentleman, courteous and chivalrous, always opening the door for Julietta,

and he was honest with her about his time in the U.S., or at least so she thought. He told her that he'd been going north illegally since he was 16, hopping trains to find agricultural work wherever it was available. Though Julietta missed him when he was gone, she saw the upside. Working in the U.S., Resendez could send home around $140 a month, far more than the wages he made from his local teaching job. And so the couples settled into a routine. They lived together for a month or two at a time in Rodeo, and then Resendez headed north for a few months. He'd find work picking oranges in California,

harvesting asparagus in Washington, or occasionally at gas stations when the agricultural work dried up. It's unclear how much Julietta knew about Resendez's criminal record, but she did have at least one reason to be concerned. He told her about a group he had joined in the U.S., a group he called religious, but from everything he was saying about how the group opposed abortion and men and women who were gay, Julietta thought that it sounded more like a hate group. Information about this group is scarce. We only know about it from an interview with Julietta.

It's also hard to imagine how a drifter like Resentez would be able to regularly attend any kind of group meetings. Still, the ideology of this supposed group lines up with Resendez's own well-established beliefs, and it disturbed Julietta. The group seemed to have no principles besides hate. She tried to put it out of her mind, tried to change the subject whenever it came up, but she couldn't quite shake the feeling that Resentis was in the grips of something. And he was.

We have no way of knowing whether this group ever existed. Rescendiz clearly lied to Julietta about a lot of things. Maybe the group was a cover story to explain gaps in his U.S. employment. But if the hate group was real, it's easy to imagine why it would appeal to Rescindiz. While bigotry was at the center of his motives for killing, his first victim, Carla, was a homeless woman who disrespected him. His second, Jeff, a homeless man who supposedly practiced black magic, and his third, Michael White, was gay. To recend to his mind, all three of these people had wasted their lives in America and didn't deserve to live.

According to former FBI profiler John Douglas, what America represents here is this wealthy country where he keeps getting kicked out. He just can't make ends meet. Coupled with these feelings, these inadequacies, lower his inhibitions now to go out and kill. On March 21st, 1997, recend his inhibitions were at a deadly low. He was spending the night at a railway yard in Baldwin, Florida, waiting to jump on a freight train headed south. There he set his sights on a young couple,

Jesse Howell and Wendy von Hubin. Jesse was 19 and Wendy 16. They were runaways, newly engaged, and they stood out at the rail yard, which was mostly a hangout for drifters and homeless people. But it wasn't the couple's youth that bothered Resendez. It was the book they were carrying. Apparently, it was a book about the occult. As soon as he saw it, Resendez knew that he had found his next victims.

He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the teens must be into witchcraft, that they therefore weren't Christians, and that they had to be killed. He took his time, striking up a conversation with the couple. Jesse and Wendy were clearly scared. They'd run away from their hometown of Woodstock, Illinois, a month ago. After running out of money, they'd been sleeping under bridges or out on the street. Earlier that month, Wendy had finally broken down and called her parents that morning, begging them to send her money to take a bus back to Illinois.

But neither of the teens really wanted to go home. They reportedly told Resendiz that they've been trying to find work that didn't require identification. As runaways, they wanted to fly under the radar. Resendiz told them that he was going south to work the Orange Fields and offered to bring them with him. They agreed, jumping on a freight train with him the following day. On March 23rd, when the train stopped in Bellevue, Resendez hopped off and Jesse followed him. It's not clear what the stop was for. maybe a bathroom break, but Wendy stayed on the train.

Outside on the tracks, when Jesse's back was turned, Resendez seized his moment. This time he didn't have a gun, but that didn't stop him. Resendez picked up a piece of rubber hosing lined with heavy metal, the kind that's used to hold train cars together. He hit Jesse hard over the head, and Jesse crumpled to the ground, dead. Rescendes dragged Jesse's body away from the tracks, not wanting the corpse to raise any alarms. He left him there and got back onto the train. Wendy was still on board, and it's not clear what Resendez told her about Jesse's absence.

It seems likely she was afraid. Maybe she suspected that something terrible had happened. It's possible Resendez played dumb and claimed that Jesse simply disappeared. All we know for sure is that Wendy was devastated. No matter whether she thought something had happened to Jesse or she just believed he had left her behind, she would have been overwhelmed in that moment. After traveling south for another 15 miles,

the train stopped again in Oxford, where Resendez and Wendy got off together. We don't know if she went with him willingly or if he threatened her. Outside the train, Resendez tied Wendy up. raped her and strangled her to death. Then he covered her body with a jacket and a blanket and left her there beside the tracks. Up to this point, it's been unclear whether there was a sexual motive for Resendez's murders. The details are so sketchy on his first three victims that it's impossible to say for sure. But he raped Wendy before killing her, a horrific detail

which makes his supposed religious motives even harder to understand. Was Resendez deluded enough to believe that he was on a mission from God to murder and rape innocent people? Or was the religious angle just a ruse? We only have Resendez's word to go on, and we have to take that with a large grain of salt. Still, whether it's a ruse or a real delusion, it tells us something about the twisted logic that drove Rissendez to kill. He cast himself as judge, jury, and executioner, measuring the morose. of people that he crossed paths with, and smiting those who fell short of his standards. In other words, he was playing God.

But even in the most extreme Old Testament interpretation of God, murder and rape clearly do not qualify as justice. What really drove Resendiz was a deep craving for vengeance, a desperate desire to set right the wrongs that were done to him as a child. After leaving Wendy beside the railroad tracks, Resendez jumped back on board a freight train and settled into his usual hiding place. He closed his eyes, smiling to himself, leaning into the soothing rhythm of the rocking train. Life was good.

After years of incarceration, rejection, and failure, Resendiz was finally living his own, twisted American dream. And he was only just getting started. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with Part 2, where we'll explore Resentis' escalating murder spree through the sunbelt and the desperate hunt to bring him to justice. You can find all 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 Cuddler, sound design by Anthony Valsick, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Bruce Kitovich. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Emma Dibdin,

with writing assistance by Joel Callan, fact-checking by Adriana Romero, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial Killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richard. Bad omens, good fortune, pure luck. Take a closer look at what you believe in and follow the Spotify original from Parcast, Superstitions.

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