Rotten Mango - #149: The Baton Rouge Cannibal (Serial Killer Sean Gillis)

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

Sean hopped into his car to pick up his girlfriend. He was always so happy to see her. He couldn’t get enough of her. “Honey bunny” I’m over here! Sean’s girlfriend slid into the passenger s...ide and he leaned in for a kiss. He couldn’t help but pull back with a giant grin. He wondered if she could taste it. He could… The taste of human flesh always lingered in his mouth. Book Rec: “Dismembered” - by Susan D Mustafa & Sue Israel (The best deep dive on this case I could find! Truly amazing work) Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:32 Welcome to this week's main episode of Rotten Mango. I'm your host Stephanie Sue. Let's talk about Sean. Sean hopped into his car to go pick up his girlfriend. This is like the happiest time of the day. He was always so happy when he was gonna go see her. Even though they lived together, they cuddled together, they cooked dinners together. He just could not get enough of his girlfriend. Oh, there she is.
Starting point is 00:00:57 He rolled down his window, oh hey, honey buddy, hop in, baby, miss you, how is work? She's like good, good. He leans in for a kiss, and he couldn't help but pull away with this big old grin on his face. He's thinking to himself, I wonder if she knows. I wonder if she can taste it. I can.
Starting point is 00:01:16 I can still taste the human flesh lingering in my mouth. As always, full show notes are available at rottingmingopodcast.com but have you gone and picked up a copy of the book called dismembered? Okay, I highly recommend it. It sounds sick and twisted and it is but it is a really well written book on this case. The authors did extensive research. They spent a lot of time not just putting the book together but also on the victim's lives and trying to showcase who they were as people. It's written by the two authors Susan D. Mustafa, who also happens to have a really good book on the zodiac killer, by the way, and Sue Israel. I don't know how they did it. I don't know how they went through all the court documents, all the interviews, the transcripts
Starting point is 00:02:00 because this case is so gruesomeome and this book is super detailed. So if you're interested in this case at all, I highly, highly recommend this book. So let's get into the story. Yvonne was a very religious girl. Her brother was a priest and her sister was a nun. So she's like, okay, I'm probably going to end up going down this path too, but somehow she ends up in Louisiana State University instead. She wasn't mad about it though, especially when a nice-looking college boy named Norman took her on a date.
Starting point is 00:02:32 On the very first date ever, he said to- Mmm, you know what I'm saying. I will be marrying you one day. Now this way it sends some girls out there running for the hills, ripping their hair out. I mean, it's a little much for the first date, no? But for someone like Yvonne, she was immediately smitten. She knew Norman wasn't in love with her. I mean, this is their first date for crying out loud. But the fact that he even said that, the fact that he even stated that, felt like he was
Starting point is 00:03:00 a man of action. His intentions were pure. He knew what he wanted and he was gonna go after it. It didn't hurt that he was also super witty, super funny, and hot. Okay, and treated her like a princess at the end of the day. Almost a year into their first date. Like, oh wait, it's like a year long first date. Almost a year after their first date, Norman kept his word and married Yavon. So during their whole wedding, she's described to have been starry-eyed. Oh, she was happy. This was her fairy tale, and she was just living in it.
Starting point is 00:03:32 We're all just living in Yavon's story. But was Norman Prince charming? Well, let's investigate. Norman had grown up in New Orleans, and his parents were divorced when he was just four years old. His dad was a bit of an alcoholic, I'm gonna be honest with you. And his mom, well, she just was not a pleasant person to be around. I don't know how else to put it, it's not like, you know, she didn't beat him, she didn't hurt him, but... Wow, she was just a very negative Nancy.
Starting point is 00:03:57 Norman really did not like his mom. The rest of his childhood seemed relatively normal. That is to be graduated high school. He graduates high school and he enlistes in the army. Now listen, this guy is obsessed with drinking from the get-go. He would sneak out of the army base, get drunk, wander around the streets of Honolulu, drunk a naked. He was held at two different mental institutions to be analyzed
Starting point is 00:04:18 because they're like, this is not normal behavior. It was after the second time that the army was like, maybe we shouldn't be putting you in a tank with weapons Maybe Maybe not that's that seems like a weird idea. So let's just discharge you So he gets out of the army and now he is like, what do I do with my life? He joins Louisiana State University and his grades were horrendous. I don't even know to say it was bad I think his GPA was like a negative.
Starting point is 00:04:45 Is that even possible, but he made it happen. But his social life, prosperous, thriving, this guy was making a ton of friends, and that's how he met Yvonne. And immediately he's like, this is the one for me. Not because she was beautiful, which he was, you know, not because of all of these things, but this was the, you know,
Starting point is 00:05:03 no one was trying to be practical at this point. He had just almost ruined his life. He wanted a chance at stability. This was his chance. Yvonne was the epitome of stable. She comes from a religious background. Very traditional, really conservative, just a family woman.
Starting point is 00:05:19 Like, she's the type of girl that has been waiting since day one to be a wife. And he's like, this is perfect. And he's not gonna risk it all by telling you on the truth. You know, what's he gonna say? Hey, I love you. I know we just met like two freaking minutes ago, but I've got problems with drinking.
Starting point is 00:05:32 I'm pretty mentally unstable. I have problems with coping during hard situations. I'll probably resort to violent strokes or alcohol. And I also really struggle with my identity. And I just don't know where I stand. And I generally have some serious issues. Disclaimer. The questioning is sexuality and individuality and identity part, that's not a mental
Starting point is 00:05:51 problem, but other than that I do want to say that this guy was very, very unstable, like really unhinged. Now he's not a bad guy though. He's not horrible. He really did love Yvonne or at least he tried to. He wanted her to be happy too. He hated hurting her, upsetting her. I mean, I think that's why he kept so many secrets from her.
Starting point is 00:06:11 They end up buying this house together and they start working. Now, Yvonne being super religious. She felt like Norman was not settling into the role of the husband. She expected him to be the one bringing in the dough. She would be at home, you know, being cute, being a housewife, and the more frustrated she got with his performance, the more he started acting out. He started drinking late, sometimes he'd just stop coming back home in general. Yvonne really started to question her life choices.
Starting point is 00:06:38 Like, oh my god, did I pick the wrong guy? I mean, I'm Catholic, I can't even get a divorce now. It's too late. He just isn't the same anymore. Whenever I'm Catholic, I can't even get a divorce now. It's too late. He just isn't the same anymore. Whenever he's drunk, he doesn't even laugh. He doesn't even try to have fun with me, which is the whole reason that I fell in love with this guy to begin with.
Starting point is 00:06:54 He's just so mean, he's so demanding. And then Yvonne felt pregnant. With their first born child, Sean Vincent Gillis. This is the guy that we're gonna be talking about today. Listen, Norman only got worse with the birth of his son. The pressure was just too much. Like he said, the house, the kid, the paying, the bills, the mortgage, the diapers, the food,
Starting point is 00:07:16 the diaper changes. I mean, Yvonne always wanted to do everything as a family unit. Just everything together. I never had time to myself ever. It was just all too much. So he lost his job and he resorted to becoming a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.
Starting point is 00:07:32 Which, quick question, this is so off topic, but is not why there's so many fricking encyclopedias at the thrift store? Because people were going around forcing them down home on our stores. I feel like that's gotta be why. I mean, who owns that many encyclopedias? I need to know. So anyway, he's not bringing in a lot of money. The demand for encyclopedias was down. The market was at a decline. He wasn't bringing enough money
Starting point is 00:07:53 for the family. Yvonne was struggling. She was working, taking care of the kid, but she stuck it out. She prayed. She prayed on it. She said, my husband's gonna change. I know that he just has to remember the good old days. I think that it's me too, you know, we're all part of the reason. He's drinking because he's not happy. So I just need to make him happy and then the problem will go away. Then in all wet towel, when Sean was about one years old, Norman comes home with a gun. And he walks up to Sean with a gun in his
Starting point is 00:08:25 shaky hand and he points it and he says I'll shoot him and I'll kill you too Yvonne. I'm serious Yvonne I'll kill him I'll kill our son and Yvonne standing there seeing this unfold and she just felt her mother instinct flaring she screamed oh hell no you won't she jumped ran up to Norman tackled him to the ground wrestled the gun out from him, fought with all her strengths, he was not going to kill her baby, not on her watch. She wrestled the gun away from his hands, she runs into the bathroom, finds the window, hurls herself out of it like face first, runs to the neighbor's house to get help, and once Norman was dragged out of the house, by his
Starting point is 00:09:05 dad, which like, I know, oddly she didn't call the police, she just called Norman's senior to come get his son. She was like, you need to get your sonny's unhinged. She rushed back into the house, held onto her baby Sean and she rocked him. She looked at him with like tears streaming down her face and she said, I promise, I promise I will never ever let anything bad happen to you ever again. Norman was taken to a psychiatric ward and when he was finally released, he called Yvonne. Yvonne.
Starting point is 00:09:33 I'm leaving. I just don't want to hurt you or Sean and I think it's just best if I go. And she agreed. I mean, she was heartbroken. She was like the type of person that believed marriage meant forever, through good and bad, thick and thin, right. But now it's really over. How the heck is she going to raise this baby as a single mom? She already promised this baby that she would do everything to protect him.
Starting point is 00:09:54 So that's what she's going to have to do. For 17 years, Yvonne never heard from Norman again, or got any sort of support from him. So Yvonne starts raising Sean by herself. And she was a really good mom. Okay, she was a really good mom in the sense that she was too good of a mom, which couldn't mean that she's not a good mom at all. You know when you're so good of a parent that you don't want your kid to have any hardship or really face any problems on their own, and technically that'd be a really good parent but you're essentially
Starting point is 00:10:25 making your kid incompetent. Right, so it's not good. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. It was like a... Exactly. She raised Sean by herself and she called him her blue-eyed little boy, her sweet little angel, no matter how tired Yvonne was. She read him every single night.
Starting point is 00:10:44 Sometimes she read him children's books like you normally would. But a lot of the times, she thought advanced books would make Sean smarter. So she started reading him the likes of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe to this little boy. And she's so happy. She genuinely thought that he was a genius. Her dreams were crushed one day, when the teachers at the school sat her down and said, Oh!
Starting point is 00:11:09 You think your son's a genius? Oh, okay. He's definitely not a genius. We would say he's average at best. So that's great. You know average is great. He's right in the middle of the spectrum. Perfect.
Starting point is 00:11:23 Yvonne, unfortunately, was one of those moms that still believed that he was smarter than the rest. She would say, you know, he's smart in a way that schools just... they don't measure. The teachers, they just don't realize how smart he is, but I do. And that's all that matters. Says every month. Exactly. Like, my niece will sit down without hurting herself, and my sister's like, Did you guys see that? She's so smart. I'm like, okay, on to where we go in.
Starting point is 00:11:48 So Sean grew up without a dad, but he had a Norman senior in his life so he had his grandpa from his dad's side. Yvonne never cut him off from his dad's side of the family, which they really respected her for that. So even though she worked all the time, Sean never lacked attention. She even scraped together enough money
Starting point is 00:12:04 for a down payment on a house, a three bedroom two bathroom house with a big backyard. And it was beautiful. Sean was 10 at this point, which is saying a lot because his neighbors were terrified of him. Yeah, a ten-year-old boy, they said the little ten-year-old boy gave them the heebie-g-ebies. What does that mean? Oh, like a oof, like a creepy, like the heebie-jeebies. Like you're giving me the, like the shivers because you're so creepy and weird. Yeah, this tenured gave full grown adults the heebie-jeebies. They whispered about him. You know, it's just, hmm, I can't be the only one, but there's something strange about
Starting point is 00:12:42 that kid, right? I don't know how to put my finger on it, but my son was playing Dungeon the Dragons with him, and I just, every time I look into his eyes, I get the chills. He's a creepy kid. Oh my god. I know exactly what you're talking about. My daughter, for some reason, with no, she couldn't even tell me why. She's terrified of him. Just, he throws me off. Yvonne would never understand though. She thought her son was perfectly normal. She would say things like, well, he likes Star Trek
Starting point is 00:13:10 and snakes, just like every other boy. So, snakes? Snakes, yeah. And he loves to read. He's normal and he's a genius, all in one. As a teenager, Sean wanted to maintain this image that he had in his sweet mother's eyes. So he hid everything from her. and he was good at it.
Starting point is 00:13:26 He even starts dabbling and smoking weed, going to like these devil worship spots to investigate devil worshipers, which he really never found any devil worshipers. They just like random people getting together in the field. And he was like devil worshipers. The neighbor saw a side of Sean that Yvonne never saw and I don't know why maybe she was working at night but they said one of them said I knew something was wrong with him one night about three in the morning I wake up to this loud noise coming from the yard it's like a boom boom and I'm like what is that so I look at the window and Sean is there in the front yard
Starting point is 00:14:03 So I look at the window and Sean is there in the front yard beating Beaning on some garbage cans like a wild maniac I've never seen anything like it before you would think that he's in a bar fight with the garbage can't Kicking it banging it throwing it in the air slamming it onto the ground roundhouse kicking it grabbing num checks Just oh it was he was filming a whole Marvel fight sequence with an inanimate object as a teenager. So another neighbor came out and said, hey, what's the matter, are you okay?
Starting point is 00:14:35 You and the trash got beef, what's going on? I'm just so frustrated. I'm freaking frustrated. I just don't know why. I don't have a girlfriend. It just doesn't make sense and I don't get it. The neighbors were so freaked out. Yeah, I'm gonna move. Yeah, I could not.
Starting point is 00:14:55 Can you imagine? They just slowly hitherto back into their little houses, closed the blinds, locked the doors, got some security cameras installed because they were terrified. What kind of teenager does this? And when Sean was 17, Norman Senior died. So his grandpa died. And this would be the first time that Yvonne would reach out to Norman Junior to let him know. Like she was the one that let him know, hey, your dad is dead. So this is the first time in 17 years that Norman finally gets to meet his son and it's at his own father's funeral.
Starting point is 00:15:27 And Norman was heartbroken. He felt the guilt of abandoning his child. He just wanted to mend his relationship with Sean. He starts taking Sean to go horseback riding to amusement parks, whatever he wanted. He did it with Sean. They somewhat were forming this relationship and it was nice. But of course, Norman forked it up. He got drunk and he started hallucinating.
Starting point is 00:15:48 He was immediately placed back into a mental institution for intensive care and from there he called his son. Sean, could you go to the hotel room that I was renting? Get my stuff. I just don't want to get it stolen while I'm in here and can you keep it safe for me? Oh and I have a rental car there that needs to be returned. Can you promise you'll do this? Sean's like, sure. He decides to make a little trip out of it and he takes his two friends down to the French quarter of New Orleans.
Starting point is 00:16:14 And they start walking through the hotel. In the room, they start packing up Norman's things and one of the boys goes, oh my god, what is that? And he points at the nightstand. Sean walks closer and it's pictures. Pictures of men in various sexual positions. Now, the kids were raging home with folks, by the way. They all said they felt repulsed and revolted.
Starting point is 00:16:35 And they just couldn't believe it. It was disgusting for them, I guess. Sean tried to play it cool and shook it off, but everybody knew that it was super upset. On the way home, he wouldn't even talk to his friends. He didn't know what he was more mortified at. The fact that his friends had seen those pictures, or the fact that his dad was gay, that's what he said.
Starting point is 00:16:54 He didn't know. Now, eventually, Norman got out of the hospital and he tried to call his family, but they did not want anything to do with him after this. And that was the end of any father-son relationship. So Sean was essentially a mom's boy through and through. Not that he listened to his mom, but he loved mooching off of his mom. He loved being that perfect little angel for his mom
Starting point is 00:17:15 and made sure that he never disappointed her, even though he was like living a completely different life behind her back, you know. During college days, he stayed with her. Never got a job, relied solely on her income. I days, he stayed with her. Never got a job. Relide solely on her income. I mean, some people do that. That's fine. He's focused on studying. I guess if she can make it work, whatever. The fact is, he did that for the next 10 years. He just never left. Never got a job. He would just sit at home on his computer all day. He had
Starting point is 00:17:42 no drive and Yvonne had no guts to kick him out. That is until she was offered the broadcast manager position on her job, but the only caveat is that she would have to relocate to Atlanta Georgia. I mean, she had to take the job. This was the next step in her career. This this is what she wanted. And Sean, I mean, he's a full grown boy now. So she asks him, do you want to come to Atlanta Georgia with me? And he's like, no, no, no, I don't really want to go. Which is kind of crazy because he's not paying rent or utilities or anything like you live off your mom. So what I'm implying here is, do you really even have a choice?
Starting point is 00:18:14 But he's sitting there like, no, I think I'm just going to stay here. Yvonne's like, well, I guess that's fine. Um, okay, sweetie, how about I pay the mortgage on the house and you just cover the utilities every month, yeah? Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it, mom. And you know where this story goes. Sean was alone alone for the first time ever and he had no foundation of work
Starting point is 00:18:31 at the discipline, self-control, nothing. So all he did all day every day was to discover the most versatile corner of the internet, the endless corner of the internet. No, it's not the podcast. No, it's not my YouTube videos. It's porn. Just so
Starting point is 00:18:45 many porn videos out there. And he was watching every single one of them. He wanted to literally consume every bit of porn and pictures that was available. It was really bad. So that year, a massive hurricane had swept through the area of Baton Rouge, which led to flooding in a lot of people's homes, including Sean's house. And he just got super lucky that there were only a few inches of water in his house. Some people had their houses completely destroyed. So he's lucky, right? But he's too busy masturbating to do anything about it. Like he just put down some newspaper on the ground to soak up the water, and that was it.
Starting point is 00:19:20 He let his mom stuff, including her books, just slowly start floating around the house. And he kept thinking to himself, you know what I'll do later. But he never did. Because he was too busy ruining every pair of good socks he owns. Yeah, he was a sock person and a shirt person. Why? Why not a tissue person? Yeah, he would use his own shirts and socks.
Starting point is 00:19:43 When his friends came over, he would just smile and say, Oh, excuse the mess. And they would all sit around and get high. I guess none of them minded the moldy smell. None of them. You've one would have been terrified if she had found the truth. But good thing she had no idea. Sean would call her and say, Oh my god, mom,
Starting point is 00:19:59 I'm doing great, actually beyond great. I'm really making a man out of myself, you know? His neighbors didn't think so. They said that he only got creepier after his mom left. He started peeping into neighbors' windows, which got him arrested for all of a few hours. That's it, like they put him in jail for a few hours
Starting point is 00:20:16 and they were like, okay, well, don't do it again. Get out of here, skidattle. One neighbor reported that he would just howl at the moon and curse his mother for leaving. Listen, I don't know if this is sort of weird vampires what bad stuff that's going on or by howling the neighbor met he was just screaming in the house but what I can what I can get from this is that he definitely was doing the most like I can assure you that much I mean sounds like he could be a guy who
Starting point is 00:20:39 house exactly yeah just like holding his sock by the entryway and just slinging it around. It's disgusting. Inside his house it eventually got so messy that he only had this tiny little pathway that he could use to walk to the kitchen and the rest of the house. There was clutter everywhere. Just shirts with seamen everywhere. And Sean had this rage burning inside of him. A rage so strong that he couldn't even pick up a broom to clean. He felt like he deserved a girlfriend, you know? And he didn't know why he didn't have one. Sure, he owns no good socks and he smells perpetually of mold, but why would a woman want to find specimen like him?
Starting point is 00:21:18 So he starts walking around, talking to his fellow female friends, and he's like, come on, please just set me up. Like, you gotta know somebody, please, just come out for me. One of his friends named Sharon said, okay, fine. A friend of mine, her name is Terry. She works at the convenience store in, um, intent. The circle cat, yeah. She works her late night shifts. Maybe we can, maybe we can go visit her if you really want.
Starting point is 00:21:42 She's really pretty, she's got this long blonde hair. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in there. Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this? No, who's gonna catch us? What a police. It was the height of the crack era, and instead of locking up drug dealers,
Starting point is 00:22:04 some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're going to rob some drug dealers, and I know how to do it really well. This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100%. I saved my soul, just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series, available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a big guy, man, but I love being that 30 motherf***er.
Starting point is 00:22:45 Terry was really pretty. Just by looking at her, you would never really know guy, man, but I love being that dirty mother f***er. Terry was really pretty. Just by looking at her, you would never really know that she killed a man once. What? What? When Terry was younger, she was working at a place called the key club. And this is, we're getting to that part, right?
Starting point is 00:22:59 Which is a bar that's known for its sex workers and super easy access to drugs. Like, it's the type of place where you walk into the bathroom and someone has a gram of cocaine just ready for you, ready to go on a silver platter. That's it. It obviously wasn't the safest place for a young woman to be working, but when Terry started working there, she liked it.
Starting point is 00:23:16 She liked the atmosphere. I mean, it's hard work, it's rough, but most of the guys are polite. Yeah, I mean, you get the occasional horrible client here and there but overall great people She's pretty good at telling which ones are gonna give her a hard time So she felt like you know she's getting the hang you know getting the ropes of her job So when Norby D's walks in she knew he's gonna be rough on them He literally walked into the place and started arguing with one of the dancers right off the bat Like what the heck sir sit down and as he the dancers right off the bat, like what the heck, sir, sit down.
Starting point is 00:23:46 And as he's yelling, he's getting closer and closer to the dancer, and he finally just slaps the girl across the face. Terry's not having it. She's witnessing this. She's like, mm, that's my coworker. So she jumps in between them and she tells the dancer, runs to the dressing room, I'll take care of this guy. And Terry, this little girl, she looks straight into this guy's eyes and says, does that make you feel
Starting point is 00:24:07 like a big tough man? And she scoffs. Does a 180, probably slapping him with her long blonde hair and starts walking away. Now, Norby is not going to be having this. He grabs a pool cue stick, swings it, and boom! It breaks on Terry's back. Now, how would most people react? Listen, I'd go running for the hills! It breaks on Terry's back.
Starting point is 00:24:25 Now how would most people react? Listen, I'd go running for the hills, I wouldn't even look back. Terry froze, and then it registered in her head that he had just broken a pool stick on her back. That's really strong force. Yeah. So she slowly turns around, looks him in the face, and starts yelling. Have you lost your fucking mind?
Starting point is 00:24:49 She bent over, picked up the broken cue stick and in a rage jumped on top of Norby D's, started hitting him over and over and over again. The jagged end, the broken part of the stick was literally stabbing him. He was bleeding from his head to his chest, but Terry couldn't stop. She wouldn't stop. Even when a crowd around them formed, she couldn't stop. She hit him again and again.
Starting point is 00:25:11 Nobody attempted to pull her off of him. They just stood watching and horror. Some people were watching and awe. The dancer that Terry was protecting felt a twinge of like, oh, shoot, I gotta back my girl up. So she ran to get a knife and proceeded to start stabbing the crap out of Norby. The two of them went at him and eventually someone called the police, but only after Norby was dead. The girls were arrested.
Starting point is 00:25:37 One of the officers said to the girls, thank you, he was a pain in the ass. Norby was one of those biker gang dudes and he was always in trouble with the law. A total pain in the ass to the police. So they thanked the girls for killing him. They spent the night in prison and they were released on, you know, they just wrote a report of self-defense. What? Yeah. That's pretty wild.
Starting point is 00:25:59 Terry had gotten a picture of Norby D's bleeding on the floor of the nightclub. I don't know how. Either somebody took the picture while it was happening. Maybe it was from the police report, but Terry had it and she kept it in her wallet. She carried it with her for the next 20 years. The picture of the man that she killed bleeding out on the floor in her wallet. The sentiment for her was that it was her reminder that she could never let another man mistreat her.
Starting point is 00:26:24 So Terry leaves the club. You know, it's kinda hard to go back to the same workplace after you murdered someone in front of your bosses and your co-workers. So she ends up leaving. She gets married, has a couple kids, gets a divorce, then she moves on to another man, a Middle Eastern man, and she said her whole life changed. She was introduced to a whole new culture. She even moved to Kuwait for a while.
Starting point is 00:26:46 And at this point, she was so deeply immersed in her husband's culture. She was even the president of the local American Palestinian Arab Corporation. A pack. And everyone really admired the couple. I mean, it's really cute. Terry is embracing his way of life, his religion, and everything. But in private, they weren't getting along well. According to Terry, her husband got violent on a few occasions and one night she was fed up. Terry seems kind of scary to me if I'm gonna be honest with you, but like this part I agree better than the killing the man, right?
Starting point is 00:27:16 So he comes into the kitchen one night and he put his fist up threatening to punch her and she calmly looks at him and says, to stop threatening to punch her and she calmly looks at him and says, hmm, don't do it. And he doesn't listen. So he hits her. Terry was in the kitchen so she grabs the meat cleaver and slices her husband's arm open from the top to the bottom. He was so shocked. The man was too stunned to speak.
Starting point is 00:27:42 He was bleeding all over the floor. I mean, how could his wife do such a thing to him? Terry looked at him and said, well, I told you not to do it. So this one, okay, like the murder one, I can't really justify all the way, legally speaking, like the grounds for self-defense were pretty shaky. But was the guy a horrible person? Absolutely. Did he deserve to get beat?
Starting point is 00:28:00 Absolutely, right? But I just don't want to be, I don't want to be sexist. I feel like maybe if the roles were switched, would I have a different opinion I just don't want to be, I don't want to be sexist. I feel like maybe if the roles were switched, would I have a different opinion? I don't know. There's a lot of nuance to that story. However, this one, I'm like, you go girl, good on you, get that meat cleaver. Like, that was bad. So anyways, Terry files for divorce, and she's over it. She's really over-man at this point, like, she just wanted to be by herself with her cats.
Starting point is 00:28:25 It's a comfortable life. So when her friend walks in to the circle K, with a man in tow, Ugh! Terry is rolling her eyes. Sean, this is Terry. Terry, this is Sean. You guys will have to get to know each other. I'm gonna leave because you guys have so much in common, I think you'll hit it off.
Starting point is 00:28:43 Terry leans over the count.rin. Get him out of here. Sharon leans in. No, and she leaves. Leaving Sean behind. I mean, it's clear that Terry's uncomfortable, but at least the guy's not bad looking. Sure, he's only 5'7", but hi, it is just a number to Terry. So they start talking and talking. And he stayed there for four hours, just talking to her. They they start talking and talking and he stayed there for hours just talking to her. They only stopped when the occasional customer walked in. They really did have a lot of comment. They like the same movies, the same music. They both knew every single episode of Star Trek that had ever aired. And when Sean Astro out Terry said yes, I mean how could she not? Besides,
Starting point is 00:29:21 he was different from the other guy she had met. He seemed like the type that they'd be friends first and then dating second. It's like when you marry your best friend, you know? So they start dating and very early on, they get into this huge fight. And they're screaming, they're hollering, maybe Sean's howling, I don't know. Terry reaches over and slaps him hard across the face. And she's waiting. Okay, she's bracing for impact. And Sean looks at her.
Starting point is 00:29:49 And he's stunned. He clenches his face. Stairs straight into her eyes. And then he stomped his feet. And now there's tear streaming down his cheeks. And he says, girls don't hit boys and boys don't hit girls. Star how it works. And he storms out of there.
Starting point is 00:30:07 I mean Terry was shocked. Yeah, she was definitely shocked because like nobody, obviously he shouldn't hit her, but it was a very, it was almost like a resorting back to like childhood type situation. It wasn't a very like, why did you hit me? That is not okay. Don't ever do that again.
Starting point is 00:30:24 It was a very like, that's not how he's supposed to be. So he storms out of there. But it was, I mean Terry was happy, it was a test, he passed. She felt like okay, for sure, now this guy, I can trust him, he's never going to hurt me, he's never gonna lay a finger on me. So she runs after him, apologizes, apologizes, and promises I'll never do it again. In the two of them, they fell madly in love. Sean invited her over to his place, sir. Should I say his mummy's place?
Starting point is 00:30:52 And Terry was so stunned. She was a pretty neat person and seeing this guy's room, I mean, it's clear that he did not know the definition of cleaning. There were moldy newspapers from that hurricane years ago. There were moldy books. Terry was so disgusted she started cleaning up the space. And Sean got so mad like, no, no, no, for God's sake, don't get rid of those books, those are my mom's books.
Starting point is 00:31:12 So she tried to clean the books of mold and return them to the shelves. She couldn't help but wonder. Am I dating a mama's boy? I mean, it sounds like Sean, this full grown man, is scared of his own mother. She later found out that maybe it's because his mom literally spoils him, gave him everything he wanted.
Starting point is 00:31:28 They didn't talk much, but she would always send him money, and it started to bother Terry. She hated seeing Sean being able-bodied, sitting in front of a computer all day, like wasting his life away. He was lazy, and he drank a lot, like a lot. But at least when he drank he was affectionate and kind, unlike the other guys that she had dated, he wasn't violent and he always called her honey bunny. I mean the bar is set pretty low, it's so low in fact that Satan himself
Starting point is 00:31:54 could use it to play limbo. But here we are. Terry loves Sean, she cooks for him, they watched movies together, she even got him a job at the Circle K convenience store. But the thing is, their sex life was literally non-existent. Sean never initiated anything. One night Terry decides it's time. It's time to get them juices flowing, the blood pumping, so she starts foreplay in the kitchen. She cooks up his favorite meal of lasagna, and then after dinner she held his hand, guided him into the bedroom, and she said it was a little strange.
Starting point is 00:32:29 You know, he was nervous. It's like he wasn't sure if he knew what to do. I thought he was a merchant, but I later found out that he wasn't. I think it's actually like one girl before me. So Terry starts showing him what to do, but he's still super nervous about the whole thing, and it was just so awkward.
Starting point is 00:32:44 I mean, most couples in relationships like this, they would still try, right? Try to make it better, maybe have an open line of communication. But not them. They would only have sex two to three times, not a week, not a month, not a year, but in their entire 10-year relationship. What? Yeah, 10 years of full decade. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with asexuality. It's just the fact that this wasn't that. Like, it really bothered Terry too. That Sean wasn't sexually interested in her. There was just no open dialogue about it.
Starting point is 00:33:17 Whenever she questioned him, he would just say, I'm just not that interested in sex. But is this something wrong with me? No, no, it's not you. Like, am I too fat or something? No, I just don't really like it. So after a while, you know, she was confused, but I mean it can't be the worst thing in the world, right? Sean still affectionate.
Starting point is 00:33:36 He would still hug her while she did the dishes. He always told her that he loved her. I mean, that's enough, right? That's love. It wasn't until she moved in with him that she found the truth. He wasn't having sex with her because he was addicted to porn. Heavily, she would find bald-up shirts in the corner of the bed to find out that he was masturbating while she was at work.
Starting point is 00:33:54 Sometimes Terry would find a, quote, stained shirt. She would sneak up on him while he was on the computer and just throw it over his head. He would duck and grin, knowing that he'd been caught red handed and Terry would rub the shirt over his head before throwing it into the laundry machine. What's interesting is that he tried his best to hide the porn addiction from Terry. So he worked from like 3 p.m. to like 7 a.m. or 7 p.m. Terry worked the night shift from like 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. So during the night when she was at work that's when he would indulge in his little porn addiction, right? But when he was caught, he wasn't particularly embarrassed.
Starting point is 00:34:29 He didn't really seem to care. Terry did not think it was cute or funny though. She asked her mom for advice. Mom, is this not normal? I mean, Terry, I don't know. What gets him off is what gets him off. It's got nothing to do with you, right? Just, just bothers me. I feel like there's, I feel like there must have been something in his childhood that made him this way, right? Like that doesn't make any sense. I mean, I, I did notice that he just hates anybody who's gay. Like he just has this huge homophobia and he goes above and beyond to let everybody know that he's straight and you don't think that's weird, mom? I even asked him to do something happen to you to make you not like woman. And he said, no, no, I like women. Why would he even say that? Eventually, Terry gave up and sex just became a non-issue in their relationship. He only went to work because it's something that Terry made him do.
Starting point is 00:35:21 He said he was out of respect for her, that he went to work, and during her night shifts, like I said, he would engage in his porn addictions. At some point, he runs out of stimulating videos. So he's searching around looking for new ones, and it comes across a website. With pictures of women posed in various positions, typically naked, and he was intrigued. It was in a video, but he was really into it. He was into these photos. He loved that in every single picture, all the women, they were dead. He was so excited that when Terry got home, he showed her the pictures, expecting a reaction, and she said, oh, that's so gross. Where did you even find those? And Sean Giggled, and he continued to look at these freaking pictures.
Starting point is 00:36:07 She was nervous about this, but she's still stuck by him. She said, you know, Sean is sweet. He even cares for my kids and he tries to spend the holidays with him. I mean, everybody has their quirks, right? Sean is just quirky. He likes weird things on the internet. But if I find a new man, he's gonna have quirks too. And those quirks are probably gonna be a lot more violent. So I'm gonna stick with Shawn. Terry had no idea that all of this went far, far beyond porn.
Starting point is 00:36:35 Shawn would drive through the streets of Baton Rouge at night while she was at work looking for sex workers. He liked them small, the ones that could be easily overpowered, which means that they'd have to be very, very, very, very petite. Because Sean never worked out, really ever had any muscles. He truly hated any form of labor, especially manual labor. So his vision was to not just get a petite girl, but to do whatever he wanted to them sexually and pose them like the dead girls he saw online. And the only way to do that
Starting point is 00:37:05 he felt in a way that made sense, in a way that was very, very authentic to what he saw, was to make sure that they were dead. That's what he was aiming to do. And when he found her, he would kill her. And this wouldn't be his first time. He'd killed a woman before he met Terry. And he thought that he was over it. Terry was making him so happy that for the next five years his life was so good he didn't kill and don't get him wrong though. It's like he needed that to rel again. So January 4th he spots his second victim, Catherine Hall. She was a cocaine addict who had resorted to sex work to support her addiction and she was only 30 years old. She was really petite. She started the day like any other, just walking up and down the streets in the area.
Starting point is 00:37:48 Which by the way, she knew the area really well, she also knew how to spot a creep, she wanted to keep herself safe, she was one of those girls who was on top of it. So when she sees this guy literally hanging out of his window, flashing a $20 bill at her, she took one look at him and deemed him safe. He just had this like nice guy overly goofy grin. He looked overly harmless. He almost looked like this was his first time doing it. Nervous, like that nervous innocent but trying to play a cool type of energy. She gets into the car and he's really nice. He turns on the radio and he asks, well, can I get oral sex? Sure.
Starting point is 00:38:27 So he picks a little spot in a deserted field and they get straight to business. Catherine thought that this would be a very quick and easy job. She leaned down. As she's going down, she had pulled out a zip tie. But it was too late. Before she could even run out of the car, he had it wrapped around her neck.
Starting point is 00:38:44 He pulled it tight. And Catherine starts fighting for her life. I mean, she's desperate. She's reaching for the door handle. And when she got it to open, she used her whole body weight. She used all of her might and leveraged herself and flung her body out of the car. She's screaming as she's running down the deserted field just hoping, praying that somebody's gonna hear her and somebody's gonna help her. But nobody did. Sean catches up to her and he throws her onto the ground and he starts punching her, stabbing her, and he was just so angry. Catherine kept fighting as hard as she could and he just wanted to overpower her. He grabbed his knife and caught her 16 times. The knife even cut
Starting point is 00:39:25 through her left eye, through her breast, her stomach, her genitals, and he made one final slash across her throat to ensure that she was dead. So now that he's satisfied, he wipes his face of sweat. He tears off her clothes and slowly in this deserted field. He felt like he didn't have to worry about anybody coming to see him. It was dark. He felt like he was alone, so he took his time. He started carving her up. So he dug the blade of the knife into her arm near her shoulder and pulled it really hard to her wrist. So with this one motion, he had sliced her entire arm down to her hand. He slashed a circle around her right breast, but not enough to detach it. And then around the left, he stabbed her genitals eight times and her stomach.
Starting point is 00:40:09 He cut off one of her very thin eyelids, and then it was time to flip her over. He started digging into her butt cheek with the knife, tearing up all the skin all the way down to the knees. He had split her calf open, and once he felt satisfied with his work, and only when he felt satisfied with his work, only when he felt satisfied with his work, he carried her mutilated body back to his car. What why did he do this? That's what he got off on.
Starting point is 00:40:32 He loved seeing pictures of mutilated bodies severed arms. He loved seeing women who were laying there with cuts all over them. He had found these online on the internet and he just wanted to recreate it for himself. He places Catherine's body in the front seat, puts the seat belt on over her. And now I don't know how isolated this area is, but it must have been really, really empty, because what he does next is really bossy. I mean, I hate saying that word because it sounds like a compliment, and when I mean it, that's not what I mean.
Starting point is 00:40:59 I'm not in any way complimenting this guy. This guy is evil. But he ends up driving to a car wash and he starts washing off the blood on the sheets. And when it got to the passenger side, where Catherine's sitting, he took her out of the car, slumped her body next to the car in the open in the middle of this car wash. And he scrubbed the passenger side. He said he did feel a little bit of anxiety and stress. Of course he did, he's human, right? No, he said the feeling of regret and stress was because
Starting point is 00:41:31 he should have let her finish the blowjob before he killed her. That's what he is thinking about as he washed his car and then put her body back, drove her to the outskirts of town and disposed of her body in a field. Maybe he even reminisced about the first time he did this five years ago. When he had murdered a woman by the name of Anne Bryan, so this is Sean's first victim. Now Anne was one of those people that never gave up.
Starting point is 00:41:57 She was born without a right hand. She still graduated high school early, second in her entire class at only 16 years old. At the young age of 16 she went to LSU where she experienced being homesick for the first time ever and it was traumatizing. She hated it. She was crying out on the sidewalk one day and the dean happened to pass. He said, what's wrong? You just, I just want to go home and I miss my family.
Starting point is 00:42:22 So the dean looked around and he spotted another student, hey, can you come over here? What's your name, son? William? All right, well, young man, why don't you walk and home and try to cheer her up, okay? I don't know, I think that's how Dean's talk. Um, sure. William starts walking her back to the dorms
Starting point is 00:42:38 and the whole time he's trying to crack jokes, trying to get her to smile. And when Anne went back to her dorm room, she cried for the second time that night because she she really liked William, and she felt there's no way, no way that she would ever have a shot with someone like him. Who would like a girl with just one hand? And of course, she was wrong. The next morning, William was waiting for her to walk her to her classes, and again, and
Starting point is 00:43:02 again, and they finally asked each other out. They went on a couple dates and they got married. They had a few kids together. Both of them got really good jobs. I mean their life was as perfect as it gets. So in the sick way the life works, William had suffered a stroke. This is 10 years into their perfect life together. And after this stroke, he was incapable of caring for himself. So for the next 13 years, Anne would give up everything to take care of her husband, to comfort the man that she loved. She kept up the household, she struggling to pay the bills, she did it all. But at the end of those 13 years, it didn't matter how hard she tried, because William passed away. So she tries to live her life to the fullest for the rest of her kids. They encouraged her to have fun, you know,
Starting point is 00:43:45 and when Anne was struggling to like even open something, her kids would look at her and giggle because she was always the one that taught them, never let your shortcomings get to you. And they would giggle and they would say, Mom, what's wrong with you? You act like you only have one hand or something. And they would all burst out laughing and one of the kids would walk over, help their mom. I mean, they had such a good relationship, which is why by the time that Ann was 77, she had a really full life. She didn't act her age, she was independent,
Starting point is 00:44:12 she acted youthful. And all of that was shattered when she broke her left shoulder. This rendered her left arm completely useless, including her left hand, and it was devastating. This is the arm that she relied on for everything. This meant that she couldn't even take care of herself. This was her worst nightmare.
Starting point is 00:44:29 So her kids, they tried to check her into the best of the best care place. It was called St. James Place, and it was this luxurious senior home like it had manicured lawns, attractive apartments. So think of it as like a massive apartment complex, but everyone in there is a senior, and it's filled with nurses and staff.
Starting point is 00:44:47 So Anne goes there and for five years, she tries to make the best of it. But then she breaks her rib cage. It was a car accident. So when she gets back to her room after the hospital, she's thinking, okay, well, I'm going to leave my door open tonight, like unlocked, because I mean, it's one of those apartments where yeah, it's like an apartment an apartment but not really because you know everybody here You guys do group activities together all the seniors were leaving their apartment doors open I mean the exterior doors were always locked and you needed key passes and the nurses and they would knock on the door
Starting point is 00:45:15 The housekeepers would knock on the door and then imagine you're 80 with broken ribs like you really want to get up out of bed Like how long is that gonna take that's gonna take forever and Especially she had just gotten out of the hospital, the staff were gonna be checking up on her all night. So she left the door unlocked and went to sleep. And at 3am she wakes up to a noise. Probably a nurse coming to check up in on her and she laid there and waiting. And laid there some more and then she opened her eyes. She sees a man looming over her just standing, staring at her. It just felt so wrong. Like, it's if it wasn't a male nurse that was new, it wasn't
Starting point is 00:45:50 a male staffer. She knew it. Like, something was wrong. This man did not belong in this bedroom. It just his whole presence felt wrong. And then he touched her and she screamed. She screamed louder when he jumped on her and tore off her clothes, but nobody could hear her. He had closed the door and the walls between the apartment units were really thick. So she screamed again and again and her hands and her feet were trying to fight back, but she just had, she saw the steel blade of the knife and then she felt it. He was stepping her. I mean, she was completely defenseless. He got angrier and angrier and stabbed her harder and harder, and then he sliced her throat with so much force that he almost decapitated her.
Starting point is 00:46:30 Thankfully, we do know that Anne probably died very early on during this attack, but Sean wasn't done. He kept going and he stabbed her over and over and over again, enjoying the experience. It was like he's relishing in it. He knew that she was dead, but he didn't care. He caught her stomach till her intestines spilled out. He slashed her right breast till he was attached only by a few shreds of skin. He slashed her genitals, her face, her breast, he tore open her pink night
Starting point is 00:46:55 gown, and then he left. The horrified staff members would find Anne's body the next morning and for 10 years. Nobody would have any answers. Do I, anybody would want to do this to someone in a senior care facility, especially if someone is sweet as Anne? Those were his first and second victims, and John would only get worse in his brutality. He just had these sick fantasies that he wanted to live out. So, Hardy Schmidt was 54, but she looked a lot younger.
Starting point is 00:47:21 Hardy had lived a pretty privileged life. She came from a well-to-do family in Baton Rouge. She had married an attorney, had three kids. She was a stay-at-home mom, and the one thing that she really attributed to keeping her sane were her morning runs. Without it, life would have been, wow, she would have aided it. She loved running. She was good at it too.
Starting point is 00:47:40 She was in the Boston Marathon. Did amazing. The feeling of being out there before people were starting to wake up, running just helped her maintain this healthier mind, healthier body. She loved every part of it. If you saw Hardy running down from a distance, you'd probably assume that she's in her young 20s. That's how fit she was.
Starting point is 00:47:58 And for that reason, and for the fact that predators exist, Hardy was super careful when she was out and running. Sure, she only ran in daylight, you know, or like right before a daylight. She also knew the schedule. She ran and well traveled upper class areas, never isolated paths, residential streets. She knew the safest time was when people started
Starting point is 00:48:17 getting out of beds, opening their shades, getting ready to go to work, putting the coffee in the pot. It's just a lot of action. Cars are gonna be pulling out of the driveway. School buses are going to be around, kids are going to be awake. She would run at that time. And her neighborhood was like I said, a nice upper middle class area. She knew exactly what not to wear. She never wore ear buds while she was running. She did everything right. And she knew that all these extra safety precautions were great, but probably useless because her neighbors were pretty nosy, and they all looked out for one another.
Starting point is 00:48:48 She would be safe. I don't think she or anybody else would have ever predicted that one day, she'd be hit by a Ford. You see, Sean had been watching Hardy, and he had seen her a while back, and he'd been driving around the area just helping to get another glimpse of her. She was beautiful. That's what he thought to himself, and the only way to do it was now, and he had to hit her with his Ford. This one was a little bit different. He couldn't. There was no way that she would stop and talk to him, even if he rolled his window down. He would have to do it with force.
Starting point is 00:49:16 He hit her with his car and sent her flying into a nearby ditch. He jumped out the driver's side, ran up to her, pulled his zip tie around her neck, until she passed out. She didn't even have the chance to scream. And when she stopped moving, he picked up her limp body and put her inside the car. Nobody saw a single thing. He drove to an empty field, around 5.30 a.m., he, being a scental of sever, placed her body down and started taking her clothes off.
Starting point is 00:49:42 This is how he said it, he was being gentle. He rubbed himself on all parts of her and participated in necrophilia. When he was done, he threw her naked body into the trunk of his car and he's thinking, fuck, I gotta hurry it. I gotta pick up Terry from work. Terry gets into the car. Oh god, it's that smell. Oh, I ran it was squall yesterday. It's probably stuck to the tire or something. I'll go get a car wash. I'll drop you off and go get a car wash and get rid of it. Oh yeah, you better.
Starting point is 00:50:09 It stinks a lot in here. It's gonna get worse. Don't worry, honey, but I'll take care of it. He dropped her off and instead of going to a car wash, he drove down the highway to New Orleans, drove into a rural area and dumped her body near the swamps. When he finally got home after the very long day, he just couldn't help himself.
Starting point is 00:50:26 He got in front of his little computer, turned on a video, and masturbated. At that point, Sean's fantasies were only getting darker and darker. He couldn't stop thinking about dismemberment. It was the only thing on his mind. Just the thought of a woman's severed leg or an arm was enough to get him excited.
Starting point is 00:50:42 His urges were consuming him day in and day out. He salivated about his fantasies. Whatever Terry was at work, he would drive around looking for another perfect victim. He typically chose a small community outside of Baton Rouge that had a mainly black population because it felt like it was easier to get away with crime over there. And probably if his victims were black, because likely, there would be less police efforts in finding them. Sometimes it wasn't even just about the kill, he would taunt victims. He would talk to random sex workers, chat them up, feeling like he's holding their life
Starting point is 00:51:15 in his hands. Does he kill her? Is it this one or is it the next one? She'll never know. She has no idea that her life is in my hands right now. He typically wanted girls to be his age. So in their late 30s, sometimes older, he wanted someone who was someone
Starting point is 00:51:31 that he would genuinely be attracted to, someone that he would genuinely want to date, someone who is petite, he didn't like to fight, he was a very sensitive guy, you know? But he did have a weak spot for nice legs. That was his kryptonite. That's what he liked most about Joyce. And that's why he stopped his car to ask if he could buy her services. So they agree on $10 for a blowjob, and when she
Starting point is 00:51:53 gets into the car he hands her the money. Now, Sean was not as eager as he was the first time. He felt like he could, you know, take a time with it. Besides if it were up to him, he wanted to know a lot about his victims. That was his thing. He liked to know about his victims before he killed them. He would ask about what she liked to do, what's her free time hobby, does she have kids, what's her dream in life. Sean listened and soaked it all in all the while driving her straight into the rural areas filled with sugar canes, which you can imagine is terrifying.
Starting point is 00:52:23 I mean, I think it's almost as terrifying as like corn farms. These sugar canes can grow to be 10 to 24 feet tall. You cannot see through it. Nobody can see you. It's a horror movie, really. So Joyce gets out to use the restroom in the middle of a sugar cane field, and it was the perfect time for Sean. He comes up behind her, wraps a zip tie around her neck and Joyce immediately starts kicking and fighting and he says, shh, be still, be still. And after a few minutes, she was dead and secured in the passenger seat. And he started driving back home. Now they start driving back to Sean's house.
Starting point is 00:52:59 And yeah, he was taking Joyce's body back to his house now, the one that he shared with Terry. And as he's driving, Joyce's body slumped over, and her head fell into his lap, and he said that he couldn't help but smile. He was just in a good mood. He had some time and he was really happy about it. He even later wrote a letter from prison about what he had done with Joyce's body, and this is what it said.
Starting point is 00:53:21 I later down in the kitchen by the bar in the sink, and I stroked her body. The usual sick playing with her. She had beautiful legs, I wanted to keep those legs. I used a sharp knife to cut through the muscle of the leg, but it took a while to get through it. I think I cut too low. I finally got it off with a hacksaw, and I went for the next leg. The blade snapped on me when I was about halfway through the femur. I remember trying to get her arm off next, but there was a lot of blood. I had to stop it up with paper towels, packing paper, which is very absorbent, and water. I used one of Terry's knives, a filet knife, that's razor sharp. You got to be careful with handling it, but I tried to get the arm at the elbow. Then the wrist. Things were popping out of the joints, but I couldn't get it off.
Starting point is 00:54:08 Even though I twisted it real good, it would not come off. At that point, I pretty much went in for the head. The knife went through just like that. It was like cutting butter. With Mrs. Brian, I couldn't get through. When they're alive, the muscles on the neck, they make it harder. There was a lot of blood, though, don't get me wrong. So I washed her head in the sink, and I inserted my penis into her throat.
Starting point is 00:54:30 So not the mouth, but the decapitated head part. And he said, I don't know if it was her spinal cord or something, but it pricked my scrotum, and it was just really uncomfortable. So I guess I got what I deserved. It wasn't even a sex thing, it was more of a mind thing. It was more just to see what it was like. I didn't get off on it. Then I put my penis in her mouth. And after that I picked up her leg, holding it with the foot close to my face, severed and down, and she just had lovely legs, just like Terry. Now this is the part that I just...
Starting point is 00:55:07 I don't even know what to say. So Sean said he was caught up in the moment and he had to reach for his knife. And he performed what he later called a nipple lectomy. On Joyce. First he slifed soft one nipple, then the other. And he held the severed nipple in his hand studying it. He had spent years researching dead bodies, sadistic acts,
Starting point is 00:55:27 euroculars, everything you could imagine. But this moment, this moment was beyond anything he had ever read about. And he just felt like he had to seize the moment. He put the nipples in his mouth, and he ate them. And now he was done. He put Joyce's body in the large garbage bag, and put the severed leg in another bag, and he had a forester into this big packing box, and he started scrubbing the floors, and that's the only time that Sean ever cleaned his house, was to erase the evidence of a gruesome murder.
Starting point is 00:55:54 Sean carried the box, placed it into the back of his car, like the back seat, not even the trunk, the back seat. And at this point, body parts were sticking out of the box. He had shoved other boxes and bags around to hide the sticking parts out. And then he picked up Terry, just like that, with a body in the backseat, with body parts sticking out. And he said he was an anxious at all. He said he was giddy, filled with excitement. Who else could say that they picked up the love of their life with body parts right in the backseat? That feeling, that feeling of pure power he loved every single second of it.
Starting point is 00:56:30 He even kissed her. Hey honey buddy, how's work? He smiled after he kissed her because he knew that he could still taste a bit of Joyce's flesh in his mouth. Meanwhile Terry smiled because she thought, Sean is just always so sweet. But honey, I have to drop you off at home first and run to Marin's. while Terry smiled because she thought, Sean is just always so sweet. But honey, I have to drop you off at home first and run to Marin's. So Terry's like, okay, she knocks out after her night shift and Sean drove around searching
Starting point is 00:56:52 for the perfect place to dump Joyce's body. He settled on near local river. He threw her over the embankment and he said, and I quote, I got the box out of the back and slung her leg down first. Then I slung her head down. It went bloomp bloomp bloomp all the way down. The torso was lost because that, well that was harder. So without the box, see through her and toward River. Joyce's body was found two months later and the police decided to print flyers with her face all over it to get any information to catch her killer. Ironically
Starting point is 00:57:24 enough, the Louisiana State Attorney General's Office, they were having problems with their copy machine. And they called in a maintenance company called Shamrock Office Supply, to get someone out to fix their copy machine. And they sent Sean Gillis. Yeah, that's where he was working now. It didn't take Sean long to fix this copy machine. I mean, it was a pretty easy fix,
Starting point is 00:57:45 but he needed to do a test run. So he starts looking around for some random pieces of paper to copy, and it caught his eye, the poster of Joyce Williams. So he takes it. And like you're thinking, oh, is he nervous? No, he wasn't nervous. Even though he's in the attorney general's office, in fact, he was filled with glee.
Starting point is 00:58:05 With every new copy that was spit out by the copy machine, he felt like he was reliving his entire day of pleasure with her. It was- He's printing the missing person's report. Yes. Oh my gosh. He wanted to close his eyes and think about that day. No one in the office thought it was odd that Sean was using the poster of a murder victim
Starting point is 00:58:22 to test the machine, or that he made more than 200 copies at this point to quote, test the machine. No one even noticed as he lovingly ran his fingers over the picture of Joyce. The police were too busy, with all the false leads that they were getting. I mean, it felt like their investigation was going in circles and in circles. After only two months since Joyce, his cool-off period was getting shorter and shorter, Shawn wanted to feel the thrill again. This time he chose 52-year-old Lillian Robinson. He chose her because she looked different. Her face was soft and her eyes were gentle, it didn't look like she was made for the harsh life of being a sex worker. Lillian gets into his car, and within minutes she had his zip tie around her neck. It's like he
Starting point is 00:59:04 had this routine now. He drove back to his house, stripped her naked, and he looked at the clock and he didn't have enough time to do the same thing to Lilian as he did with Joyce. He had to pick up Terry, so he had to be a quicker process. He's been the next hour just playing with Lilian's corpse, squeezing her breasts, rubbing her legs, just neck or filia. All the while just wishing he had more time, he wanted to cut her out, he wanted to make incisions, it was just all over too soon.
Starting point is 00:59:29 So he put her body into his car, drove to the largest swamp in the US. I mean, the water was pretty much black at this point due to the lack of aeration and it was the perfect place to hide a body. It was infested with alligators too. He threw a lilyon into the swamps And then he moved on to his next victim. He was driving to a town nearby when he spotted 38-year-old Marilyn Neville's, walking down the street. He wasn't planning on killing anyone that day, but as he passed Marilyn, they had made eye contact and there was just like this,
Starting point is 00:59:57 this fire inside of him now. He stopped at the light, rolled down the window and smiled at her. The two of them agreed on $10 for a blow-draubing. He drove to the semtifield nearby and he handed her the money. And this time he let her finish before he brought out the zip tie. Marilyn fought and fought. She ended up kicking the windshield, breaking it on one side. This caused enough distraction for her to open the car door and run as fast as she could, which Shawn was right behind her with a metal bar.
Starting point is 01:00:24 And he hit her on the back of the head over and over until she died. He dragged her body back to his car, and he said, oh shit, I almost forgot. And he reached into her pocket and took out the $10 paid her earlier. And he even later told the police, it wasn't a particularly bad blowjob. He stopped at a car wash just as he did with Catherine Hall and he left Maryland's corpse on the ground in plain sight as he rinsed off his floorboards. He later told the police, really cold. I just used as many quarters as it took to get the red out of my car.
Starting point is 01:00:57 He put it in the trunk and he stopped at a gas station. And when he went inside the gas station looked at him and the attendant was like, whoa, what happened to you? You got into a fight? Did you at least get the upper hand, man? The cashier was joking and Sean looked at him and said, You should see the other guy. So Sean drives back home and he's just too excited.
Starting point is 01:01:15 He carries out work in a few hours left to spend with his latest victim and he could have wait. He puts Marilyn's body on the kitchen floor and he starts taking off her clothes. He tries to shower with her, but she was, I mean, she's very petite, but she was dead. So the weight was very heavy. Like, I'm not trying to say she was heavy. You get what I'm saying. And he gave up and he was so annoyed
Starting point is 01:01:35 that he couldn't proper up in the shower and he had wasted all this time. And it was already time to pick up Terry. So he's frustrated. He had to hurry you back and he rushed up, put her body in a Z-Rock's paper box, and put her into the car. He drove to the local river, and just left her body at the top of the embankment. He didn't dump her?
Starting point is 01:01:55 No, he couldn't get through to the river this time. He said there was too much like brush. So he just left her up there. This was not far from where Joyce Williams was dumped like 10 months prior. Sean was proud. I mean, he had picked the perfect victim. Even when Marilyn was found, nobody had filed a missing person's report on her. This is what he had to say about how he chose his victims. I act like I'm literally trying to pick them up on a real date.
Starting point is 01:02:16 The sex workers they loved me, I treated them like women, like ladies. Do you understand? That was the smoothness. I guess to where some of them, you know, they couldn't wait to get in my car. And the money, I mean, although the, that was probably the immediate motivating factor for them being in my car was the money, but they were willing to ride with me, to be with me. So this guy thinks he's like, he's something. Now let's talk about the Baton Rouge Zero Killer.
Starting point is 01:02:40 No, not Sean. During this period, there was another Zero Killer active in Baton Rouge. He was known as the Baton Rouge Killer. Sean, the one that we're talking about, technically, he was later known as the other Baton Rouge Killer. Which I really, like, I'd like to name more than the creepy names, like the Nightstalker, because it just, like, throws it in his face. You're not special, Sean, which is exactly what he wants, because he's a power-tripping ego-maniac. But it's part of the reason that the police took so long to catch Sean.
Starting point is 01:03:05 I mean, at first they took too long to even connect all the murders together. Then, they thought that they... Because they thought each murder was an isolated incident. Then when they finally tied it all together, they had a hard time realizing that there was more than one active serial killer operating in the area. So all of this led Sean claim many more victims. Johnny May was one of them. She was a 45 year old mom of three
Starting point is 01:03:26 and she was really trying. She had just, she was dealing with a lot of depression, anxiety, she had kids and she was trying her best, looking for jobs and she had heard from a friend that a man named Sean Gillis was looking for someone to clean his home. So she meets up with him and instantly they hit it off. Johnny May did clean his house a few times
Starting point is 01:03:43 but they were more like friends. They actually maintained a really good relationship for 10 years. Before Sean killed her. So Sean was out searching for another victim one night and he couldn't find the perfect one. So that's when he spots his good friend, Johnny May, who had also been working as a sex worker on the side, and he said, Hop in Johnny, how are you? Good, but Sean knew she wasn't good. She was missing most of her teeth at this Good, but Sean knew she wasn't good.
Starting point is 01:04:05 She was missing most of her teeth at this point. She looked like she was wasting away. You're back on drugs, aren't you? Johnny nodded. They drove around and Sean was watching her closely and he didn't know at first if he was gonna do something to her, but the more that he looked at her, she looked kind of tired to the point where he said,
Starting point is 01:04:20 she looked dead, and that just lit a fire. It didn't matter that they had been friends for over 10 years. He drove her behind a building surrounded by trees, pulled her out of the car and started beating her. He didn't stop until he knew that she was dead. He took all of her clothes and then he reached for his nights. He started a wound in her leg, sliced all the way down. He loved the slight resistance as it sliced through the muscle. That's what he said. He pulled down till the leg ripped open. He cut her butt area, the back of the right leg. He cut her over and over feeling nothing but pure pleasure. He wanted to see all the muscles and the
Starting point is 01:04:56 veins and the tissues that were in the legs. He felt like he was in some anatomy class. He started slicing through her wrists till he held her detached hand in his, and he loved the sound of the bone snapping. So now with both of Johnny May's detached hands, he put some in a Ziploc bag, and put her back into his car where he abandoned her at an embankment. He took out his camera and started taking pictures of his friend's mutilated body. So he leaves her body, and back in the car car he used her detached hands to touch himself. So not too long after, Sean felt the itch again and he went searching for his next victim.
Starting point is 01:05:32 Donna Bennett Johnston. She was also a mom and I think life just really got her. Her relationships weren't going well. She started relying on crack cocaine. And by 2004 when Sean found her, she was in bad shape. Sean pulled up and gave his signature good guy, Gran. Donna got into the car with him and this time he wasn't in the mood for talking. But he was pleased. He could smell alcohol on her and he knew that this was going to be easy. So he drove to a secluded area near a chemical plant, parked the car, killed her, started taking pictures of her, and then he put his hand into our mouth and pulled out her entire dental plate.
Starting point is 01:06:09 So not even like her teeth, but imagine, you know, when you wear dentures, like think of it like that. And he noticed a tattoo on her right thigh. He grabbed his knife and cut the tattoo off her leg. He was gonna be taking the tattoo as a trophy. He sawed her arm off completely. He cut off her nipples, sliced off her breasts,
Starting point is 01:06:31 and he said in that moment, he felt the joy and possession of ownership, of these intimate and feminine body parts. He couldn't stop himself from eating the body parts. He just simply had to taste them inside of himself. In that moment, the victim would become part of him. No one could ever take them away from him. He put the nipples in his mouth and ate them. He didn't particularly like the taste, but he wanted to save her the moment. When he was done, he took 45 more photos of Donna's mutilated body, disposed
Starting point is 01:06:59 of her body, and he tried to pose his victims with all of their butts positioned in the air. And in a final vicious act, he stomped on her back, leaving a bloody shoe print left on her back. He drove home to shower and clean up, and now, the discovery of Donna's body, the police were like, whoa, it's a little bit too similar to the murders of Johnny May Williams and Catherine Hall guys! We might be looking at a different serial killer, a different Baton Rouge killer. Three bodies have been cut up,
Starting point is 01:07:27 left in remote areas, some dismembered, all three of them lived similar lifestyles. They had ligature marks around their necks. I mean, we might be onto something guys. The police ran the DNA that were found at three crime scenes. Yeah, there was DNA. And they were all the same.
Starting point is 01:07:43 So they're like, oh, it's the same guy. The police were able to get tire marks from where Donna's body was left and they were able to deduce the exact brand model and type of the tire that left those marks. Now they only had 16 names of people who would own a car like that. And number 26 on the list was Sean Gillis. An agent knocked on his door asked for a DNA swabbing and they they asked, have you been up Ben-Herr Road recently? Yeah, I grew up around that area. I'm often over there.
Starting point is 01:08:09 Why? Do you know Donna Bennett Johnston? Uh-huh. Uh-no. What about a Catherine Hall? Do you know her? No, I don't know her. What about Johnny May Williams?
Starting point is 01:08:19 Did you know her? Oh yeah, she's a friend of mine. She sometimes cleaned my house. So the agent's took his DNA swap. He consented to it. And they noticed that Sean was really comfortable answering these questions, but he had placed himself at the scene of a murder and admitted to knowing another victim. So they asked him to come down to the police station, and that's when his whole demeanor changed. He was no longer in a good mood. He was suddenly reserved. He was like, let's get the shit over with But they didn't get a confession and the DNA results would take a while
Starting point is 01:08:47 So they sent him home and for the first night ever instead of watching porn He snuggled up with Terry. She was shocked. He never did this and while they slept in each other's arms The results came back Sean Gillis was a match You know one a.m. The police burst through the door and they filled the room They arrested both of them and Terry was confused like what are you guys doing this way? was a match. You know, one a.m. the police burst through the door and they filled the room. They arrested both of them and Terry was confused like, what are you guys doing this? What's going on?
Starting point is 01:09:10 We're arresting him for murder. And Terry said in that moment she felt calm because she knew that they had the wrong person. I mean, you got the wrong guy. You guys are so bad at your job. Sean is a chicken. He's the one who runs away from conflict and trouble. Are you kidding me?
Starting point is 01:09:23 So when they get to the station, Sean tries to ask her an attorney and they try to convince him not to. They said, come on, we just want to talk about your accomplishments. How long have you known that this day was inevitable, right? You want to talk about it, don't you? Sean's ego won his common sense, and he spilled his guts for four days. For forty hours, the agents listened to every little detail. There was no embarrassment, no remorse, he joked, he laughed. He laughed that Catherine's
Starting point is 01:09:50 body was left next to a dead end sign. He explained how much easier it is to cut dead flesh since the muscles aren't working. He was proud of everything he had done. So he was thrown in prison for trial. And when they searched his house, they found, I mean, weapons, knives, hawksaw, hacksaw, condoms, pictures, zip ties, books on the hillside strangler, silence of the lamb, son of Sam articles, his computer showed that he had an obsession with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. He also had favorite porn stars and categorized hundreds, if not thousands of porn videos, into folders, divided by race race and other categories included
Starting point is 01:10:26 old fox kinky dead webs fake dead beheadings and hangings various dead best of snuff and then one titled extra dead. So Sean pled guilty to the murder of Joyce Williams and in return he got a life sentence. Then he was tried for the murder of Donna. Doctors came forward and said that he had schizoaffective disorder which meant that Sean was flat. He was not happy nor was he depressed. The doctor, whether this is true or he just wants to punch Sean in his ego, he said, you know, you're more depressed when you're more intelligent with this type of disorder. And Sean is not depressed. So they're like, he's just flat. They suspected that Sean had an abnormal brain to begin with. And it probably only got worse
Starting point is 01:11:09 with some sort of childhood brain injury. They said, we've talked to Sean, and Sean believes his brain is like a library operating system. He believes a worm has infiltrated it or a virus has infiltrated it. And he has ants in his brain. And he said the government has found a way
Starting point is 01:11:22 to teleport people to other geographic locations. Terry called Bullsh- she even laughed at it. She said Sean is messing with these guys. So what is Terry's reaction? She's still like talked to him, she's still sent him letters but she moved on with another guy. I mean, I don't get it. So with that, he was found guilty and sentenced to life, which shocked everybody because they were hoping for the death penalty. He pled guilty to the murder of Marilyn Neville's next year, and he was never tried or pled guilty for the murders of Anne Bryan, Hardy Mosley Schmidt, Lillian Robinson, Catherine Hall, and
Starting point is 01:11:58 Johnny May Williams. They didn't want to spend more tax dollars onto the case. So now, Sean is 60, thriving in prison. He claims he found God and he had this to say, pray for peace, pray that we may stop killing our brothers and sisters here and around the world. And that is the story of the Baton Rouge Cannibal. What are your thoughts on this case? Let me know. Terrifying. And the way that... Listen, I got too many thoughts and you don't want to hear it because you didn't come here for my thoughts, but it's just so sick and he really does look... I wouldn't say nice, but normal.
Starting point is 01:12:33 He just looks so normal. So stay safe and I will see you guys on Sunday for the mini-sode. Bye!

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