Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 506 - The Charmer: Serial Killer George Russell

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Big episode today! There were just too many interesting details out there about George Russell to cut out. Such a strange, unique, and ultimately terrible human being who is alive and in prison right now for some brutal murderers he committed in the summer of 1990 in Bellevue, Washington. Also, if you're a fan of Black Angus steakhouses, you will never think of them the same way after this week.  Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com  Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :) For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast. Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It seemed like George Russell could charm anybody he met. He was outgoing, could hold an engaging conversation that put a smile on everyone's faces. He was a good dancer, a flirt without being a creep, and always down for a good time. But if you paid really close attention, you could probably tell that there was something off about him, that he was a little too nice, that he tried a little too hard to get people to like him. And when George drank too much or got angry, that charming mask sometimes slipped off, revealing the monster behind it. George Russell is the lesser-known serial killer who brutally killed his victims in 1990. He found his victims in the bars and nightclubs in the bougie Seattle suburb of Bellevue.

After killing them, Russell would mutilate their bodies and commit acts of necrophilia, then shockingly posed the victims in bizarre positions to taunt investigators. The degradation and viciousness of his attacks suggested a deep hatred of women, which was accurate. As we'll see, Russell loved being around women until he felt that they had wronged him. or disrespected him in some way. Then they became the target of his rage. As investigators found body after body,

George continued going out to his favorite nightclubs, frequently portraying himself as an undercover police officer. He enjoyed talking about the murders and pointing out that the police were blind to the fact that the same man was involved in all three cases. And despite his obsession with these killings, only a few people, those who had seen the dark side of George Russell, had any suspicion that he, in fact, was the murderer.

labeled as the East Side Killer, the Bellevue Killer, and The Charmer. Another true crime, serial killing, Scum of the Earth edition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to Time Suck. Well, happy Monday. Welcome or welcome back to the cult of the curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the master's sucker, elite Japanese translator, ancient Lemurian, modern Atlantean, and you are listening to TimeSuck. Rod, Hail Lucifina, praise B to Good Boy Bojangles and Glory B to Triple M. A big show today.

No introduction is needed before diving into the life in crimes of George Waterfield, Russell. And this week's big old timeline will cover his early life, his lengthy criminal career that escalated from prowling to burglarizing homes, to rape and murder, and learn how investigators slowly but surely put the pieces together that pointed to him as being the charmer. This episode is longer than a lot of our true crime episodes. Thanks to a lot of strong source material, we're always at the mercy of how much investigative journalism has been done on any particular subject. And in this case, a lot of really good stuff was done. Excellent stuff.

Hope you find this case as engrossing as I did, we get to learn a lot about this guy. Here we go. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-suck timeline. A quick note before we begin, Jack Olson, author of the definitive source on this guy, 1994s, The Charmer, a ladiesman and his victims, changed the following names for privacy reasons. Boris Brockett, Tom Hager, Laura Green, Tom Jones, Lynn Brown, Tammy Grace, and Susan Jetley. I just say that because these names will appear frequently throughout the timeline. The rest of the names seem to be the actual people's names.

George Waterfield Russell was born on April 2nd, 1958 to parents Joyce Mobley and George Waterfield Russell Sr. According to George, his mother went into labor on April 1st but held off delivery until midnight so he would not be teased for being an April Fool's baby. Interestingly, I think my father also named Dan Cum is a different middle name, so I am not a junior. also born on April 2nd, could have been an April Fool's baby as well, born in 1954, according to him. Interesting. What was he born on April 2nd? Or is he leaving a breadcrumb pointing to him being the real killer in today's murders? You can decide for yourself.

Several of Georgia's family members would speak with the Staddle Post-Intelligencer after his arrest, providing key details about his early life. According to articles, they quote, painted a picture of a dysfunctional family upbringing, saying he was troubled by the absence of his mother, a college humanities professor who wasn't around much when he was younger. George Sr. worked as a funeral home employee in West Palm Beach, Florida. In his interview, he recounted how he met Joyce Mobley one summer. We had an affair. She went back to school, and then she wrote saying she was pregnant. I told her to stay there as long as she could, and then I'd send for her. That's what happened. We were married, and she had the baby.

then one day I came home and she was gone, gone back to school. She'd left the kid with her mother. He was maybe six months old then, and I haven't seen either one of them since. As mentioned, Joyce gave George to her mother when he was about six months old so she could attend college. She later went on to become a college professor at various institutions. A bunch of them, actually. For the first two years of his life, George was raised by his grandmother and four aunts in West Palm Beach. In an interview, George recalled pleasant memories from the first.

his childhood, and denied feeling misogyny towards women or resentment towards his mother. He said, we're all from Florida. My mother was born Joyce, Dolores Boone, the oldest of five girls. I never knew my real father. He drove a Hearst in West Palm Beach when I was born. I'm told he was half or one-fourth British, a Caribbean type. My mother was 18. They got married after my mom got pregnant. Says right on my birth certificate that I was born in West Palm Beach to Mr. and Mrs. George Waterfield Russell. That certainly proves I'm legitimate, doesn't it? When I was a few months old, my mother had an opportunity to go away to Florida A&M,

and she took it, and thank God she did. A woman does that today, and it's looked at as, ooh, that's her right as a woman. That's her career move, and it's fine. Back then, people thought it was strange for her mother to leave her baby to go to college. Well, she didn't leave me alone. She left me with family. I live with my grandmother, Ernestine Boone, and her daughters, Linda, Pat, Jackie, and Susan. There was a brother, too, my uncle Carl, but he wasn't around.

My grandmother was a poet, a writer, an English teacher, and everything. We had a genius cousin and other high IQ on my maternal side. My grandfather lived up the road, except for him, there were hardly any men around. I went to first grade in the integrated school where my grandmother taught the sixth, and she helped improve my reading. It wasn't too long before I was reading just about anything. We moved two or three times during my first six years. For a while, we lived in Fernandez.

Beach up the coast near the Georgia border. I was a rather rambunctious child. There were big fields separating the houses, and I'd go out in the woods or walk the pipeline and play army or fort. According to George, they went to church on Sundays, came home for dinner, and Joyce wrote often on his fifth birthday. She sent him a record player with slides that told stories about different animals. George insisted, believe me, I was never abused, never deprived. He continued in his account of his childhood. I have close relationships with women nowadays because of my four aunts. They taught me to like women and respect them. I was raised totally by females from birth to six years old. We had a relationship where we could sit and play games, no spanking, no abuse. One aunt tried to

trick me one day for a candy bar, but that's about the heaviest thing that happened. Well, he says all this, but as you'll see as we go forward here in the timeline, George, not good at being candid about his upbringing. he told a lot of lies specifically about his relationship with his mother, how close they were when they weren't. I do not believe him here at all. I think it's sad that even after he was finally arrested, after he and his mom had not spoken for many, many, many years, he just couldn't admit that. Couldn't admit that their relationship was non-existent, that she might have been a terrible

mother who, in fact abandoned him similar to how his dad did, not totally like his dad did, but was not present for much of his childhood. And my guess going forward is that, yeah, as you'll see going forward, rather, is that he hates his mother tremendously. And that was the motivation for his killings. When George was six years old, his mother married Wanzell Mobley, a future dentist. Joyce had just finished her master's degree at UCLA. Joyce and Wanzell arrived in Florida, picked George up. Oh, and I should say about her degrees and stuff, she would work in the English department and, like, the drama department.

Very successful academic career she will have. Joyce and Juan Zell arrived in Florida, picked George up, headed out west for Wanzell to finish his obligation with the military at Fort Lewis near Tacoma. Joyce got a job teaching at Olympic College in Bremerton. So now, Mom is in his life full-time. Again, Dad will never be. George recalled being shocked by seeing his first snowfall in the Cascade Mountains that winter. After leaving the military, Wanzel got a job as a biologist working on Lake Washington.

Very cool. a step-in-stone while he saved up for dental school, and the family lived there in apartment, a nice one in Seattle. When Wanzell was accepted into Howard University's dental school, the family packed up, headed across the country to Washington, D.C. He was just surrounded by academics and, you know, high-end professionals. They lived there for about two years.

Wanzell attended school, worked nights at the local post office. George recalled about their time in D.C. I was already an underachiever in grammar school. They tested me in D.C. and found I had a high IQ, but a lot of school stuff seemed dry and boring. I don't do well in math. Grammar was a bore. I liked reading.

My mom influenced me to read from six on. After witnessing some riots in the city, the family moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. Joyce was pregnant with her daughter, Erica, George's half-sister. They wanted a safer environment for the kids. But then, after Wanzell finished the dental program,

they decided to head back west to Washington State. After Georgia's sixth grade year, the family moved to Mercer Island, Washington, in the late 60s. A beautiful place. Mercer Island located on Lake Washington is part of the Seattle metropolitan area, connected to the mainland with Seattle to the west, Belview to the east. Population sits around 25,000 today back in 1970. Around the time Georgia's family move there is closer to 19,000. They were doing very well to be living there. Mercer Island is bougie as fuck.

currently one of the 100 richest zip codes in the entire U.S. And while George and his fam moved there before all of the Microsoft millionaires, it was still part of the upper crust back then. A 1961 Kande Nast study described Mercer Island as, quote, upper-level suburbia. Juan Zell practiced dentistry in Seattle,

Joyce taught at the University of Washington now, also active in Black Arts West, a prominent local theater group. They were one of only six to eight black families on the island at that time, and George was one of about ten black children in the school. Teachers at North Mercer Island Junior High quickly took notice of George's high IQ. He told a school newspaper in the seventh grade that he wanted to be a pilot when he grew up. Pretty common ambition for kids on Mercer Island at that time

because of all the Boeing and Northwest Airlines personnel that lived there. Despite his potential, Georgia's grades were poor. he struggled with putting his thoughts down on paper, didn't show improvement as the semester went on, and George was often truant using the excuse that he had to babysit his little sister Erica. An eighth-grade teacher described George as, quote, bright but immature, small for his age, antsy, hyper all over the place, he couldn't get mad at him, he wasn't the least bit malicious, he kept us all laughing, but he just wasn't interested in schoolwork. He wanted to play. As long as I knew him, he was a playful little boy.

many others will describe him similarly. And he seemed kind of like Peter Pan in the ways he gets older where he just didn't want to grow up in certain ways. Boris Brockett, a childhood friend of George's, recalled he was short like me. He had a big round, bubbly face, big eyes, loud, infectious laugh. He's your best friend in a second. He emphasized that his name was George Russell, Jr.

I asked if he was related to Bill Russell, who was a really famous basketball player, already retired, I think, by this time. Well, definitely retired now. maybe he is, anyway, really famous basketball player. And he said he thought so. I got the idea he didn't want to get personal. And that'll be a big recurring theme.

My mother took one look and said, watch out for that boy, he's trouble. But after she got to know, George, she was totally charmed. He was polite, respectful. Even as a little kid, he had this uncanny ability to make you like him. After school, the boys always played at Boris's house, never George's. One day, however, George finally invited Boris over, and Boris recalled that George's house was a little small.

compared to his, didn't have a big yard, but George and Erica each had their own rooms, and there was a wreck room with a pool table. During Boris's second visit, he met George's mother Joyce and described her as ominous. That's interesting. He said she was small like George, slender, short black hair, a nice face. She had a thin voice, not threatening or overbearing, sounded a little British. George said she taught school, English, drama, black history, stuff like that. Tell you one thing, she didn't make you feel overly welcome. Her look kept you quiet. George was kind of subdued around her, and so was I.

She scared me. But don't forget, we were trying to slam dunk our socks in her living room. That's a funny note there at the end, but also interesting, you know, observance. Yeah, Joyce in no descriptions of her seems to come across his warm and comforting or warm and friendly. When Boris asked George why his last name was Russell and his mother's was Mobley, He explained that his biological father lived on the East Coast, Boris tried to ask more questions, and George would not answer them. Then after that, George never invited Boris over again.

However, the boys would remain friends throughout their school years. George once confided in Boris, quote, I only pay attention in classes I like. I don't need those goofy little art classes. I always feel like, let's speed this up. Despite his poor grades, George was a voracious reader. He enjoyed sport and adventure books, comic books, and novels like Huckleberry Finn. If he wasn't reading or playing with his friends, he was often seen walking around the neighborhood with his beloved St. Bernard named Max.

Soon, George will become a known figure to the local police, but not for crime. Not quite yet. A road called Mercer Way went past the Mobley household. It was a speeding hot spot, was regularly patrolled by the local police. Some officers noticed that George would watch them from some Blackberry bushes at night, sometimes with his dog, other times alone. One rainy fall evening, George was walking along. alone when an officer pulled up, struck up a conversation with him, and then the next night, that same cop gave George a ride home. And George loved it. He seemed very drawn to the officers

on the Mercer Island Police Force. Sergeant Glendon Booth later recalled, the first time I saw Georgie, he was in trouble for some petty thing, maybe truancy. And the Youth Bureau had given him some work around the station. He was 13 or 14, a little bitty kid, well-dressed, frail, innocent, very likable. He could charm your socks off. He was. He was a little bit of a little bit of. He was the last kid on Mercer Island you'd expect to turn into our biggest nightmare. George, where Georgie, as the officers called him, became a fixture at the police station. He visited a couple times a week, straightened up the station, wiped the blackboard, sharpened the pencils, took out the trash, whatever they needed doing.

Actually, pretty adorable. The officers thought that given George some responsibility could help him out, be good for his self-esteem, which seemed low. Booth said it was the first time we ever took to a kid like that. but there was just something different about him. Before long, George changed his career ambition to police officer. He loved the officers at that station, and they seemed to love him. Eventually, he was taught how to file papers, how to roll fingerprints,

also learn how to purge reports to keep the media from getting confidential information like names and addresses. After a few months, he became a confidant of the officers. Patrolman Mani Rucker later recalled, he listened to your troubles like you were the most important person in the world. you'd have to keep reminding yourself you were talking to a kid. But when the police officer tried to ask George questions about his life, he routinely dodged them and seemed uncomfortable.

It was very clear he did not want to talk about his home life. And they eventually stopped asking. Little man had a lot of shame inside, so easy for shame to turn into bitterness, self-pity, and rage if you don't deal with it. Despite his friendship with the local police, George and his friends got into some trouble as kids. George and two other seventh graders, snuck into a waterfront home on the island.

They made themselves some toast, then left without taking anything else. I'm sure the thrill of just getting in was all they were looking for. Soon afterwards, George's friend Boris and two other students stole some guitars from a store, hid them in Georgia's fort out in the woods, which you share with Boris. Oh man, the days of kids just left and right having forts in the woods.

I had a friend with a fort. I had a couple friends with forts. I had a tree fort. Fort. Oh, man. Got have a fort. According to author, Jack Olson, The kids at Mercer Island built forts out in the woods or an abandoned old logger shacks all the time.

George's fort was in the woods above the Islander Tavern, hidden by some blackberry bushes, some vine maples and other vegetation, and I bet a house worth north of $5 million. Probably sitting where that fort is now. George was apparently not impressed by Boris's guitar hall. Boris quickly realized that stolen instruments would not be easy to get rid of. Then that evening, two juvenile officers came to Boris's house with the warrant for his arrest. he was given a stern lecture that scared him straight. Now, who had narked on him?

George, of course. George had betrayed his best friend by reporting him to his buddies at the police force. And officers there were impressed by George's help with solving the theft and less than 24 hours. A few days later, George shared some info about some stolen bikes. And now he's becoming a reliable informant. Although George could charm anyone he talked to, he was drawn to younger kids. People started to notice around this time, and that's going to be a problem. One patrol officer theorized why that was when he was younger saying he was always skinny,

didn't reach five foot till high school, and I think he sort of felt intimidated by people his own age. He could be a big shot with the littler kids. He craved that attention, people looking up to him. It was something he didn't seem to be getting anywhere else. And this will be a character trait that will stay with him. Dude, love to be the center of attention, the big man, buying drinks, that sort of thing, bragging about some made-up career. Love the attention that came with that.

Very important to him. By his mid-teens, George had established himself as a popular student with dozens of friends, but those friendships were shallow, a lot of them were with younger kids, and almost no one of any age was ever invited over to his house. Every now and then, there'd be signs of trouble at home, but George insisted consistently that he was happy. He said he loved babysitting Erica, his little sister, half-sister technically, loved playing board games with his family and walking his dog Max. Meanwhile, George and his friends continued to cause him a bit of mischief on and off the island. The problem, they say, was that there wasn't much to do on Mercer Island to keep kids out of trouble. There were a few fast food restaurants, convenience store, video arcade, bowling alley, shopping area, but all of those things closed early. Most of the teens hung out in the woods at night.

Classmate Michael A. O'Hara recalled most Mercer kids were bored shitless. At night, our parents warned, don't go off the island. We felt trapped. There was a whole different world across the bridges, west to Seattle, east to Bellevue, but we had to stay on an insulated island six miles long. We ended up making Mercer Island mischief. Dope was big, so was vandalism. For kicks, we'd drop a cherry bomb in the park toilet, or egg houses, or deface lawns.

We used to pull up the junior high principal's primroses and dump them at the school. We siphon gas so we could drag. Anything that wasn't bolted down was a target. We had cagers in the woods, crazy drunken kids, whooping and holler until the cops broke it up. Sounds pretty fucking awesome, actually. In May of 1973, shortly after George turned 15, he and two classmates disappeared from school,

and they were soon arrested in a little less than 2,000-person town at the time of Clee-Elem, still a pretty small town, not much bigger than that, about 50 miles east. One of the Mercer Island officers who picked them up recalled, they told the local deputy they were on a ski trip from North Mercer Jr. High, said they didn't know how to ski, so they wandered into Cleellum to look around. It was a good story. The deputy asked for their phone numbers, and George and one kid gave their right numbers because they knew nobody was home.

George had prepped the third kid with the number of a phone booth, but the kid panicked and gave his home number instead, so they got caught. But it was all planned out like the Brinks robbery, and most of the thinking was done by George. George was asked why he wanted to run away, and if he was mistreated at home, he replied that he had wonderful parents. When pushed for answers, he said, We heard you guys were trying to frame us for a burglary.

Random. Officers were puzzled, but would later realize this was a start of a pattern. George would never accept responsibility for his actions. Even if he was caught doing something minor, like truancy, his first instinct was always to lie. A few months later, George planned another adventure, as recounted by one of his friends who was involved,

who was not named in Olson's book, me and George and another guy liked guns, so we all got scrubbed up and took a bus to the gun exchange in Seattle. Then he led us to a porno movie house called The Green Parrot. There they climbed up an alley fire escape, snuck into the ceiling that led to the men's bathroom. Boys watched a pornographic movie featuring a hillbilly family and some short porn about pizza delivery, of course, which they found hilarious. They laughed so hard, they got caught and had to run.

But then George returned a couple days later with another kid from Mercer Island. And of course he did. Free porn? Back before the internet, about 90% of other junior high boys. We probably do the same thing. Once again, they snuck to the roof. There was a man standing in one of the stalls. They waited for him to leave.

But then another dude came in, and they started to fuck. Everybody then fled when George's friend's hair comb fell out and alerted the two guys to their presence. George never explained how he found out about the green parrot. I'm guessing he just heard some kid at school talking about it. George entered high school in September of 1973. He was one of the smallest boys in the class in the entire school. Because of his size, and also, I guess, because of his agility, he was nicknamed the fly. Not the ideal nickname you hope for as a freshman boy.

He was also called Chicken George and The Mouth, also not great, because he talked a lot and claimed too many fouls when playing sports, I guess. Some new friends also noticed that he never seemed to admire any black athletes, just white ones. and if anyone referred to his race, he immediately got angry. Sergeant Glendon Booth recalled as a kid George never wanted to be referred to as black. You could get him hackled up real quick. Interesting, right? Some self-hate, maybe. Did he wish he were white?

Why did he hate himself if he did? Why did he hate being black if he did? What's he internalizing there? George enjoyed chess, backgammon, checkers, and poker, but complained he had to play beneath his skill level because no one could match him. Get the fuck out of here. That's a cringy thing to say. That's not a likeable thing to say, or probably true.

He traded cards, stamps, coins, often getting the worst end of the deal, he said, so he could ingratiate himself with his peers. George also had a bunch of crushes, but was often rejected. He made literal lists of girls he was attracted to, but was too scared to approach. His close friend Tom Hager recalled about George at this time. He was so bright, so entertaining. He had an incredible memory. He wanted to be a writer and kept an ongoing list of our dead schoolmates.

He'd sit in his room and write out their stories. Good stuff, publishable. He had stacks of yachting magazines. How to find the right sailboat. How to make your own. How to rig for storms and hurricanes. He had stuff on motorcycles and guns. We read spy magazines, went to spy movies.

Kind of glossed over the dead classmates part there. That's a little morbid. Although George was popular, many of the white students still excluded him from certain things. So maybe this racism he is encountering made him sensitive about his own race. According to Tom Hager, they pretended to accept him as a friend because they knew they'd never have to take him seriously. I always felt this helped to cause the rage that came out later because he was tight with lots of girls and they tempted him like they tempted the rest of us, but they never let it go anywhere. George was permanently excluded and knew it. George just kept suffering.

Never complained. That would have been uncool. But we all felt that pain, not just George, racing hormones. He rarely confided about girls. It was another subject he wasn't open about. He told me he wanted love, not sex. He was always looking for the ideal woman to put up on a pedestal, but the ideal woman was not looking for him.

George also had trouble sticking with his commitments, such as extra PE classes and a newspaper route, and he also had started to steal shit. He shared marijuana and pills. He stole from his stepfather's dental supplies. Classmate soon suspected George of stealing from them as well, from school lockers. He was once caught with a penny valued 30 bucks from a friend's rare coin collection.

So he's getting sneaky. Interesting moral line to cross growing up. A lot of us have stolen growing up. I certainly did. Not that this makes me better than him in this sense, but it's like for me, stealing from a friend was like an extra level of debauchery than stealing from like a store, like a random corporation. Not that it makes fucking stealing shit from a store okay. But it felt more gross to try. trying take something from a friend.

When George got into trouble for trespassing in the park, curfew violations, shoplifting, drinking, etc. He was often in the company of younger children still, spending less and less time now with kids' his own age. Also, he's continuing to still do odd jobs at the police station, but is drawn to the streets at night, kind of a double life there, you know, Mr. Straight and Arrow in front of the officers and then a little miscreant at night. One of George's friends detected a hint attention during a rare visit to the Mobley

house around this time. Joyce and Wanzel did not appear to be speaking, and also Erica was the clear favorite child, and George's presence, according to this friend, was just merely tolerated. And then it soon came out that Joyce planned to accept a teaching position at the University of Maryland in 1974. One close friend admitted they both wanted out. Wanzel was seen a white businesswoman, and Joyce hated the idea of being in the same town with the two of them, maybe running into them socially. Yeah, fair.

She needed to get as far away from a situation as possible. she and Wanzel finally agreed that Erica would move to the east with Joyce but spend summers and vacations on Mercer Island. When it came to George, it was like, you take him, no, you take him, no, you take him. What the fuck? Why did neither parent want him? Were they both just shitty parents, or was he exceptionally difficult in some way? Not that that's a good excuse.

Wanzel ended up keeping custody of 16-year-old George, his stepson, on a later interview with the Seattle Post-intelligence her, Dr. Mowley said, she, meaning Joyce, just picked up and left us. George didn't want to be disrupted from school, so she said, okay, I'm leaving anyway and did. She took Erica, our daughter, who was then six, and just left, never choosing to come back and pick George up. So interesting about Mom, we're going to learn a little about her in this timeline. I wish we could learn more because I just don't know what her fucking deal is with George. Court records showed that Juan Zell and Joyce have been having some financial problems before she bounced. after separating Joyce spent years fighting Wanzel over some property rights to their home.

The court records also indicated that Wanzell had never married Joyce. He was instead still legally married to Quintland M. Mobley, the mother of his three children in Florida. Later in 1979, with Wanzell a year behind in child support payments, his dentistry license was suspended on a charge of Medicare fraud. Three years later, 1982, he'd agreed to surrender his license voluntarily for three years after a similar problem. Sounds like Dr. Mowgli had some secrets. Backing up, Joyce and Erica made the big move shortly before Christmas 1974. Settling in College Park, Maryland, friends noticed that George seemed a little down now that they're gone, right? He's really close with Erica.

He told a few people that his mom wanted him to go with her, but he just couldn't leave Mercer Island behind. But that doesn't seem to be true. Dude was covering for his mom, who just maybe legitimately did not want him. However, despite the distance, George and Erica would remain close. They would write each other letters, talk on the phone, spend time together whenever she, visited Washington. Wanzel's new wife, he gets married again real quick, is a woman named Chris. George's friend Tom Hager recalled, Chris was nice to us. Prim, proper, respectable, and gorgeous. When she arrived, all us adolescent boys went, I love this. All us adolescent boys went,

ooh-l-la. I'm sure she tried to play down her looks, but she was 12 years younger than Wanzel and still a knockout. She really had our motors running. Man, hot mom alert. I remember that being such a thing when I was in junior high and high school. I'm pretty sure I was friends with this kid named Travis Holland for a while, mostly because his stepmom was a smoke show. Chris tried to be a good influence for George, helped Juan Zelle get more involved in the community by arranging cookouts and get-togethers. Around the time, Chris moved in, some information from confidential police files

began to circulate around the high school. Parents started calling to complain that their kids' reputations are being tarnished by the leaking of these confidential juvenile files. police department quickly realized who the leaker was, George, although they had no proof, but they knew it was him. And he was told he could not come around the station anymore, but was not told why. And the rejection, of course, stung.

Now, before we move on, this feels like a good spot for today's first two, mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, please sign up to be a space littered on Patreon. Help us make monthly charitable contributions, get the catalog, ad-free, get episodes three days early and more. Thanks for listening to our sponsors. And now let's reconnect with George Russell Jr. and high school.

During his junior year of high school, George was still skipping classes, stealing, using pills, smoke of weed. I made several appearances in juvenile court who managed to talk his way out of any serious trouble. Meanwhile, Dr. Mobley eventually grew tired of George's antics and sent him off island to live with Dr. Michael Washington, an old classmate of his from Howard University. George would spend his senior year, most of it, at Inglemore High School, and Kenmore. a northern Seattle suburb along the north shore of Lake Washington. Juan Zell thought Dr. Washington would be a good influence on George. He was gentle but firm, a good example of a self-made man. Dr. Washington thought George had too much free time, too little discipline, so he wanted to keep him busy.

Told George, there was nothing he could not accomplish if he was willing to work hard enough, right, diligently. I mean, there is a lot to that. After about five months, George was back on Mercer Island, patrol officer, asked him how he was doing. George raved about his good times at Engelmore High, how Dr. Washington had said him in a new direction, but he told his friend Tom Hager a very different story. According to Tom, George could hardly discuss it without shaking. Dr. Washington had warned him that a black person had to work harder and longer and faster. That formula was going to save George's ass. Dr. Washington did not understand that George's only ambition was to get by without working, and they were bound to clash. And it's interesting

again here that he just not could handle fucking being honest about like the people around him his life. During his first morning, Dr. Washington's house, George was apparently woken up at 4.45 a.m. Instructed to clean the dog kennels, bathe and feed the animals. He woke up at dawn every day, but on days they went hunting, you know, woke up on dawn, woke up at dawn most days. Days that would go hunting, he'd be up by 2 a.m. That's fucking insane. They would spend hours in the frigid weather, duck hunting. If Dr. Washington managed to shoot something, George would have to clean it. Tom Hager said, Dr. Washington kept thinking that George would adjust, finish high school. a hitch in the service. Followed by college at government expense and a high-paying profession,

they thought George would slide right into the program. He was an enigma to all of them, to Wanzell, to Joyce, to Dr. Washington, all these black overachievers who pulled themselves up by their own intelligence and hard work. George could not relate to them any more than he could relate to a wombat. Too bad. Might have saved his life and a few others. George's return to Mercer Island coincided with his classmates leaving for college, which left him all alone, as far as kids don't age. He regrouped with his younger friends and just used them blatantly for cars and cash. One juvenile officer said he developed a bunch of wannabe George Russell's.

They met in video stores, Denny's, the 7-Eleven, there'd be 100 kids milling around that storage. King George would go inside and buy beer for them and stash it in the woods. He also supplied weed and discipline. He never liked to fight, but he kept those kids cow. It was almost impossible to prosecute him because the kids were too scared to snitch. If they got out of line, he'd flash his knife. He'd take one of the rich kids aside and say, lend me your car.

I'll be right back. I got to pick up a friend. The kids were too afraid to complain when he kept it a day or two. That became a habit. He was borrowing cars the same way 10 years later. Yeah, dude was developing some fucked up habits, right? He's very manipulative, very controlling, bullying, charming, you know, these younger kids.

One day, George was spotted putting a stranglehold on a young boy. The kid's parents declined to press charges. Also beat up a nine-year-old. for putting a slug in a video machine. Fucking nine-year-old as an adult? That's wild. George's morals are eroding very quickly. One day, Sergeant Glendon Booth and his partner set up shop by the 7-Eleven

and watched George disappear into the woods with several six-packs of beer, also witnessed a drug exchange. And when they moved in and George was patted down, they found a kitchen knife up each of his shirt sleeves. Scary. And several baggies of weed. Not scary. Crazy selling weed is still illegal in so many states today, by the way.

What a joke. Isn't it better to be able to go into a nice, clean, safe store and buy it, get quality shit, as opposed to having to get it from some asshole who might have a fucking knife up each sleeve? George was given probation, but he was soon charged with criminal trespass, possession of marijuana, second-degree burglary, possession of stolen property, and nuisance noise. So, you know, disturbing the piece. George recently turned 18, so this time he was sent to district court, and he was sentenced to three days in the King County Jail. He then quickly reoffended, served four days, then reoffended a third time and served 32 days. His days of aspiring to be a police officer are over, I'm guessing. Kind of, but he will lie about that a lot.

George was working odd jobs, but he'd only stay for a month or two at any one of them. In between these jobs, he's committing petty crimes against his old friends and neighbors. One of the victims was his buddy Tom Hager and Tom's family. Tom recalled George lived at night. He would hide in the bushes. That's fucking creepy. He would hide in the bushes and learn your habits. He was patient.

He'd watch a house for a week, if that's what it took. He could slip through any opening. He got into one house through the dog port. He knew that our doors were always unlocked, and the keys were always in our jag. So when I was away at college, he started borrowing it after midnight. When he finally got caught, he told the cops he had permission.

This was just too much. And our family decided we had to do something. We put together a complete dossier, arrest, convictions, plus everything he had gotten away with since junior high, and presented to the judge. George ended up serving 35 days, his longest stretch, and everybody hoped it would straighten him out.

When he was released, did he stay away from our house? Not George. He made it a regular target. Yeah, George would enter the house through a sliding glass door, take a few silver dollars at a time or other small, non-valuble items, then sneak out. Around this time, the Mercer Island PD started receiving persistent complaints of a prowler at all kinds of houses who matched George's description.

When Sergeant Glendon Booth talked to Dr. Wanzell Mowbly, he learned that George had stolen liquor, money, and clothing from him recently, and had been kicked out of his house. And what a fucked up way to live, right? How is causing all of that turmoil better than just getting a regular fucking job and having a steady paycheck? I guess he just liked the thrill. Cops also came across an interesting rumor that was George had been kicked out of his stepdad's house because he'd made sexual advances unwanted towards Wanzel's wife, Chris. towards his stepmom. Dude, stepmom. That's only supposed to happen

in role-playing pornoes, not real life. George briefly stayed with a friend who eventually kicked him out for, can you guess? Yep, stealing. Then there were reports that George was sleeping in abandoned houses

under neighbor's homes, laying on the grass in yards, or in his old fort out in the woods. Also allegedly slept in people's homes while they were off island. George was charged after being caught in one of these homes

but was acquitted of criminal trespass. Sergeant Glendon Booth was one of the first to realize the full extent of George's nighttime activities and what they might mean for his future and he said George would try every car door he passed looking for change, cigarettes,

cassette tapes, small stuff then he'd sell or trade it. He'd go to parties, he'd leave with the ring or a watch. Mostly he operated in the north end of the island where he was raised. I bet he stole a hundred bikes on Mercer Island. Mostly from boys that thought he was their friend. At heart he was still a kid looking for excitement.

Folks would go on vacation. He'd open up their garage. roll out their BMW and ride around. Then he moved up to gutsier stuff. He'd lift somebody's wallet. And if he got caught, he'd smile and say, I was just teaching him a lesson. Everything was a game.

He'd meet some rich family and cultivate them till he learned where they hid their keys. Then they get burgled. Or then they got burgled. Long after they knew he was stealing them blind, some of his neighbors couldn't bring themselves to turn him in. How could you hold a grudge against good old George?

Wow, dude, just teaching himself to become a better and better manipulator. just destroying his character, just whittling away his conscience in the process. George got a hold of a police scanner, which helped him avoid the cops. They usually were only able to arrest him for criminal trespass. The apartment would get reports from people saying, I had $40 in my wallet when I went to bed. I heard a noise in the middle of the night.

Now I got 20. My front door is open. I'm sure I left it closed. The police knew it was George, who was known to take just small items and leave valuables behind, but they had a hell of a time catching him. Soon, Sergeant Booth began to suspect there was a sexual aspect to his nighttime intrusions that breaking into a home where there were people sleeping inside, sleeping women, women he could take a peek at, or steal, or at least touch some of their intimate items, thrilled the hell out of him.

George also still enjoyed presenting himself as a detective. He had a Seattle police officer cap and a school patrol badge. And one day he assisted with arresting a dude who had been masturbating in a car on the lakefront. Okay? One night he What the fuck? I'm sure there's more to this That's all I know about this

Just a dude jerking off And a car on the lakefront But my mind for some reason Just went to this visual of It's like a fucking nice sunset And he's just looking out at the water Like not even looking at another human being Just like jerking off to a nice sunset

I have no idea why that went in my head One night he flashed his badge A bartender told her He was a special agent with the police department He was going to infiltrate Some Coke dealing at the bar At the same time, he's doing more short stretches in jail. Like he did when he was young, he ingratiated himself with prison guards by listening to their personal problems, laughing at their bad jokes.

George also had conflicts with some of the other black prisoners who had insulted him. Once again, he does not seem to care for other black people. Projecting a lot of self-hate, I'm guessing. Maybe hatred to some family members like his mom, onto others. In between stints in jail, George had trouble getting a job. Didn't seem that interested in steady work. He would spend a few days on a construction crew. worked maybe one shift at a fish processing plant,

worked for a couple weeks as a clerk in a hardware store, worked for a hot tub company for a few days, clerk in a video game shop for a couple days. Things seemed to be looking up for George when a friend hired him as an assistant manager of a team disco on Mercer Island called Tonight's Tonight. But wouldn't last that long, but it wouldn't last a lot longer than his other jobs.

He was known to play favorites there, to send his friends to the front of the line. Again, he's playing the big man. When a teen question is authority, he would get angry, you know, threatened to kick him out in his two years at tonight's the night, the longest stretch he would hold a job. George went from stealing change to stealing about $100 bucks a night, usually by reselling entry tickets or pocketing receipts at the concession stands.

And I'm sure that's why he stayed there because he was doing that. He was able to purchase a BMW 320I with his stolen funds, but then wrecked the car three weeks later. Also told a friend's car on a drive up from California fractured his femur in the accident. Police suspected he fell asleep with the wheel, but he blamed the accident on a tire blowout. Later, George crashed his Honda Civic into a tree, claimed the car had been stolen, and he just happened to be driving by, found the wreckage. When he was arrested, he allegedly threatened an officer, said, you're lucky, if I had a gun, you'd be dead, and then spent a jail, spent a jail, spent a day in jail,

for not having a valid license and using stolen plates. Sounds like he got it pretty easy there. Another night, George was biking, failed to notice a car turning into his path, went over the car, broke the windshield, suffered a right knee injury, spinal column fractures and facial lacerations. At the time, he was due in court for misdemeanors. The day after the accident, a note arrived in court informing authorities of the accident in his recovery time.

And the note was signed by Dr. W.M. M. Mobley. A few weeks later, Chris Mobley. Stepmom went to court with George, explained to the judge that George was a well-behaved boy or had been until his mom had moved away. She asked the judge to give him another chance. George did not like this approach, but stayed quiet in court, and the approach worked.

no jail time and also another indicator that despite what he has said over the years he, you know, harbored a lot of anger. A lot of, a lot of emotion,

a lot of negative emotion around his mother. George was eventually fired from tonight's the night, not long after this, and he then plotted his revenge against manager David Israel. How dare David fire him

for constantly stealing from them on a fucking daily basis? What a piece of shit. George knew that David deposited the weekend receipts on Sundays. He planned to jam the night depository, so David would drive home and leave the money in his car, which George would then break into and steal.

George enacted his plan a month after he was fired, but then his old manager did not act according to plan and took the money into his apartment. At 5 a.m., a neighbor spotted a dude trying to break into David's car in the parking lot, and George was arrested by patrolman Tom Kettles. Kettles recalled that George was trying to walk his, excuse me, talk his way out of it. But Kettles told him that this time he was facing a felony charge. According to Kettles, quote, I put him in a holding room and the next thing I hear is glass breaking.

George was halfway out the window. He'd reached under the toggles and removed the heavy wire mesh and broke the plate glass with a phone book. I just missed grabbing his foot. The hole he went through was barely big enough for a rabbit. We followed the blood to the apartment house next door, then up the stairs, then back down, then we lost him in the weeds. Dogs were no help. George was gone. Informants reported that George was hiding in a boat under someone's house or in a cave.

The police knew he couldn't have gone far because of his injuries from the car accident. still George managed to evade a foot chase twice and disappeared into the woods with a helicopter circling overhead and a canine unit lost him three separate times. Damn! By the time the $500 reward was posted, pretty much the entire island was looking for George. He was on the run for two weeks before police received a tip

that he was hiding with the friend to the north end of the island, and Officer Kettles started watching that address every night. He finally caught George walking behind some bushes and West Mercer managed to catch him unaware and arrest him before he was. ran off. And then George was charged with escape, his first felony conviction, and he would serve 10 months in county jail. The fuck was he thinking not leaving the island during this manhunt. Wasn't as smart as he thought he was. By his mid-20s, Georgia is still living on Mercer Island, bouncing from place to place, avoiding steady work, causing problems with his family when he

sees them. He kept his friend group separate, so only the police knew the full extent of his record. One old friend said, George didn't confide. He only seemed to. There were people he would steal from, and some he wouldn't go near. There were girls he wouldn't try to put his arm around, others he tried to screw. He was a street psychologist. He knew who he could push and who not. George would convince his step-parents to let him back into the house at some point, only to get kicked out again for either stealing or making inappropriate remarks

towards his step-mom, Chris. By this time, Chris and Wanzell had a son named Diron, who was gifted and athletic. Despite having no blood relation, George and Diron would develop a brotherly bond. around this time George lost his beloved St. Bernard Max. Max had knocked a young boy off his bike and bit him in the face. Then, after an insurance settlement, he disappeared. George claimed he had bone cancer and had been euthanized.

Eh, or they just fucking put him down for biting that kid. Meanwhile, the local police were still watching George like a hawk, but they could only catch him for minor charges like selling beer to minors. When he's arrested for smoking a joint, his old officer friend J.C. Goodman told him he could work it off. If he gave him something bigger, they could recommend that the prosecutor drop the charges entirely. And George seized that opportunity immediately. He soon was involved in sting operations, helping set up drug dealers and buyers. Dude had loyalty to no one but himself, very quick to NARC.

One sergeant recalled he became a professional information peddler. He'd phone in tips to Crime Watch. He did it for return favors, for money, for fun. He seemed to enjoy rolling over on his buddies. right what a fucked up personality type you know to their faces all buddy buddy and charming and then would snitch on them without a second thought this eventually did cause george to lose the last of a childhood friends and now he spent even more time hanging out with underage people you know fucking children and soon is showing sexual interest in underage girls here we go his descent into immorality continues one of these girls sometime around nineteen eighty six or nineteen eighty seven when george was 28 or 29 years old was 14-year-old Laura Green. Dude's damn near 30 chasing a 14-year-old. Fucking drown him.

Laura was a hardworking girl who was babysitting and saving her money for college. She did an in-depth interview with author Jack Olson about how her relationship with George started. Laura said, I still don't know how it happened. I didn't have an erotic need for an older man. I wasn't a victim of an unhappy childhood or bad parenting.

When I was little, I dreamed I'd be a teacher. I'd grow up and marry a gorgeous guy and live in a houseboat in Florida. That's a, I love that. That's a very specific dream. All right. I get older. I'm going to marry a gorgeous guy.

And we're going to have a houseboat that we're going to live on in Florida. She said, or I'd own a store or a restaurant, you know, normal dreams. Laura considers herself a normal teenager with average experiences. She had tried smoking pot twice but didn't like it. She had tried heavy petting, but not sex. A few months after she turned 14 in the summer between ninth and 10th grade, she was hanging out with her best friend V smoking behind a dumpster. When a man walked past and stopped.

He talked to V. Didn't even look at Laura. Laura recalled he was good looking, slender, not tall, talked fast, laughed a lot, looked like he was about 20. Yeah, George did look very young for his age. I thought that he was probably, oh, excuse me, his nails were real long. I thought that was probably for cocaine, I figured. That's his business. Laura spent a week at a Christian camp that summer.

When she returned, she continued hanging out with her friends. She still smoked but didn't drink or, quote, fool around. One night after camp, Laura and some other friends were head. hanging out of V's house. V's parents were not strict, so it was the perfect place for the girls to hang out, and George showed up with some beer. Why the fuck are V's parents letting George even get in the house? What the fuck? Almost 30-year-old dude shows up to a party with 14-year-olds. I would love to live in a world where every version of that guy is consistently drowned in toilet. Laura said, as the night went on, you could see that we were giving him something he needed,

made him feel good, laughed at his jokes, hung on his words. We thought it was cool. He seemed totally comfortable in the company of four girls. That's fucking not a good thing. Talking about ourselves and our friends. He gave the impression that he totally cared. He'd asked questions to draw you out. I thought he was just about the most interesting man I'd ever met. I never stopped to think, why is this guy hanging around kids?

Yeah, exactly. But, you know, as a kid, you don't always think of that stuff. The girls started seeing George a lot around the island. He always had money. He'd buy him treats like donuts. George often paid with a $100 bill. Leading Laura to suspect he was a drug dealer. George could tell them.

The girls were nervous and told him not to jump to conclusions. He claimed he had the money saved up from his former job at Tonight's the Night. When Laura was at V's house for a sleepover, it was normal for George to show up around midnight. What the fuck? Again, why is he being let in this house? I hate these people. One night, Laura was laying on V's bed smoking. George told her he would never go out with the girl who smoked.

And by this point, Laura was developing a crush on George, so she put out her cigarette to impress him. George seemed pleased. Of course, he is. He's fucking controlling her. He seemed pleased when she told him that she quit smoking the next time she saw him. A few nights after that, the girls asked George if he did drugs.

He told him that one night he was high on Coke and he broke a mirror and saw the devil's leg and the reflection behind him. After that, he said he dumped all his drugs. Man, if that's true, he must have been doing a lot of cocaine fucking frequently.

It's not a lot more cocaine than I ever have. I've never seen shit on Coke, let alone fucking the devil's leg. During another sleepover, V started asking questions about sex. George answered, nature turns me on. When you fucking read that in a romance novel? He seemed uncomfortable when Laura started asking questions, which made him more endearing to her, like asking questions about sex. Uh-huh, he's grooming her. One morning after a sleepover, George took the girls to Pike Place Market in Seattle. I fucking love Pike Place Market. Laura became jealous when her friend V started flirt with George, and she eventually told him how she felt.

A couple nights later, after V fell asleep, George talked to Laura about God and how he thought it was great that she didn't drink or use drugs and quit smoking for him. They hugged and they kissed and then George showed her where he wanted her hand. She didn't exactly say where that was, but I think we all know, right, deep inside his butthole to the wrist, third base, right? That's normal. That's what third base is, right? Up the butthole to the wrist.

Isn't it? Someone agree with me. She didn't think this was against her religious values because George was also religious. George eventually took Sorry, I'm a fucking idiot They started making that up And I'm like, imagine if you did think that I don't even know if people talk about bases anymore

They did when I was a kid, they probably don't know I think what was it was like first base was kissing Second base was boobs Second base was like boobs Third base was like You know It's such a creepy term But like fingering, right?

Putting your hand on the vagina And then fourth Like home run with sex Maybe third place Third base was a blowjap Now I can't remember the bases. But I just love the idea of thinking that third base is, well, you know, it's first basis kissing and second place, second basis, boobs. And third bases, you know, they'd fucking jam their hand up your ass to the wrist.

I'll stop. George eventually took Laura into the laundry room of the house and asked if he could, quote, go down on her. And then they had sex for the first time at a party shortly after that. The next night, George came over to Laura's house after her parents fell asleep. they developed a system where she would hang a blouse in the window to signal him to stay away. If all was clear, George would tap on the window, shine his penlight into her room. A week after they had sex, George asked to perform oral sex on Laura again, and now shit changed. And he forced her to perform oral sex on him.

She recalled about the assault, I mean, I didn't have any choice. He acted kind of loving about it till I resisted, then he turned a little mean. After that, he made me do it every time. It didn't seem like he really cared how I felt. He'd go down on me till it hurt, like it was for his pleasure, not. mine. I'd yell stop. He'd pull away and he'd drag me back. He was rough, but not really abusive. I loved him. But if he had been cruel, I would have stopped then and there. Sounds like he was cruel, but she's just very young. Laura's older sister knew what was going on between them, but Laura made her

promise not to tell their parents. Sometimes George would not show up for a week when he would return. He would tell Laura he was working as a narcotics officer. He was always secretive about his family, wouldn't even tell her his middle name. Eventually, she admitted it was Waterfield. also told Laura that his birthday was April 2nd but wouldn't tell her what year he was born, claimed he knew nothing about his biological father and that Dr. Mobley was the only father he had ever known. His mysteriousness only made him more interesting and alluring to Laura. One day at a concert in Seattle or his friends informed her that George was a burglar and was 28 years old. She was shocked because she said she did not know that side of him.

When Laura confronted George about the accusations, she joked, I'm thousands of years old. I'm an angel of God. and then said he was younger than 28. Okay. Shortly before school started, Laura's parents caught her in a lie about where she was spent in the night, her mother, and then enrolled her in a private school.

Now George disappeared for a little bit. But then, one day George called Laura from the King County Jail. He explained that he'd been charged with stealing the TV and some lottery tickets. Oh, and selling beer to minors. But he had an explanation for every charge. Somebody else stole the TV. He just got caught with it.

He took the tickets by mistake, and he returned them all. And he always bought beer. here for kids because he was their buddy. Not creepy at all. He asked Laura to put up $200 of his $300 bail, and she did, and then he did pay her back in a week. Two months after she started school, George wrote to her saying he was spending 30 days in jail on some fake charges, then wrote that he might not have to spend longer than 30 days, you know, because this is some bullshit. A few months later, Laura missed her period, had a positive pregnancy test. She and George agreed, you know, he's back out, it was totally ridiculous to have the child. Laura was

unsure what to do. She was too young to drive, didn't want her parents to find out. She had her best friend drive her to plan parenthood. Counsel told her she had to tell her mom before she could have an abortion. Laura said she didn't want to do that. They refused to provide, oh, and refused to provide her father's name. The counselor did not push further, but said she was required to ask. Four days before she turned 15, Laura's older sister and her boyfriend picked her up at school, drove her to a different abortion clinic outside Seattle. Laura lied there, said she was 16, so she would not need parental consent. The procedure was painful, she said,

but she was relieved when it was over. George was supportive on the phone, but avoided talking about the pregnancy and letters, as if he didn't want written admission that he was the father, which would also be admitting to statutory rape. He wrote about it in-depth for the first and only time three months later, writing,

The mistake I apologize for the most was my inability to provide the proper safeguards that would have prevented the situation that occurred a couple of months ago. I am very, very sorry to have put you through that. And without me being by your side, no less. I pray you will forgive me. That was my fault. Oh, he's going to pray. That's nice. He also paid Laura back for the cost of the abortion. Laura saved George's letters, even though he asked her to throw them away. She thought they were like

Romeo and Juliet, of course. Ah, to be a teenager. She believed he loved her. George once wrote, I think, I love that he's writing like a fucking teenager now. He's almost 30. And he writes this fucking dribble. I think fate, luck, destiny, and God for you. Also, your parents without whom you would not have been born. Okay. Eventually, George

hinted over the phone that he wanted to exchange sexual letters, of course. Laura was uncomfortable, but George was insistent. George sent her a seven-page letter, which I had an excerpt from it, full of explicit sexual fantasies. He really pivoted quick from, I thank God for you, to like,

I want you to fucking lick the paint off my dick. I don't know why my brain went to paint. But you know what I mean? Like, crazy stuff. After five months, his letters then took on a more formal tone. He told her, I wouldn't be in here now if I had been keeping my eyes and heart on Jesus. Okay, so he's going back and forth. He's thinking God.

He's like, I don't want to fuck the shit out of you. And then he's like, but Jesus. He gave Laura advice, suggested she should start seeing other guys, still reassured her. They would get married when she turned 18, while also reminding her always. always have it in the back of your mind that the reality of breaking up can occur. All right? While George is away, Laura's friend continued to tell her that he's a piece of shit. And she comes to the same conclusion eventually, you know, because if multiple people are saying this,

there must be something to it. And she questions, what kind of future she can have with a guy who keeps ending up in jail? Oh, and also a guy who's a pedophile. Don't overlook that part, Laura. That's a pretty big part. She and George have been apart for about six months now, and Laura felt like she was missing out on having a normal life, and she said, I finally realized it's not going to work. This guy's too old.

He's a major loser. Bingo. I mean, the letters were great. But all of a sudden, I wasn't in love. But when George got out of jail in May of 1987, he came straight to Laura's house, much to her surprise. They talked for a few hours before he left, and then he came over a few more times after that. They never had a formal breakup conversation, but it was clear the relationship was over. Now, after seven months in prison, his longest sentence, he had George returned once again to the Mowbly home. He was soon back to his old habits, buying beer for minors, of course, supplying him with drugs, fucking loser. The once sweet little Georgie is dead and gone. Just weeks after he was released, he was caught squatting in the Puget Sound Bank on Mercer Island. He admitted to staying in the bank's maintenance room regularly, even showed the cops how he broke in. He pled guilty to criminal trespass and possession of a dangerous weapon and a sentence to just five days in jail and ordered to undergo counseling. He actually would undergo that counseling, and in his first session, he is given the Minnesota multifazed personality inventory. After a second session, the therapist produced a report for the judge.

judge. The following info comes from that report. Mr. Russell is a piece of shit. Uh, no, Mr. Russell wants to fuck kids. No, Mr. Russell presented himself initially as a fairly relaxed, confident, friendly, and outgoing individual. Although he acknowledged having made some errors of judgment, he mostly presented himself as the victim of a legal system that was overreacting to his transgressions. He displayed little insight into the underlying attitudes or thought processes, processes that are associated with illegal behavior. How many times have we come across this attitude when examining, you know, predators, serial killers?

Almost every time. The old, oh, it's everybody else's fault always, right? Schick. An attitude that removes any and all impetus for change, right? If it's never your fault, you don't have anything to fucking work on. The report continued with psychological testing with the MMPI, however, presents a view of Mr. Russell, which is much deeper than the rather likable superficial image he presents to people initially.

people who respond to the test as he did are usually seen as rather self-centered, limited in their capacity to form deep interpersonal relationships, quite impulsive, demonstrate poor judgment and have little patience or frustration tolerance. Become bored easily, seek excitement, often taking risk without considering consequences, are often rebellious toward authority figures, and may have trouble incorporating the traditional standards and values of society. All this makes me wonder if you ever had like a head injury. that left him with some serious frontal lobe damage or some shit.

After a few more treatment sessions, the psychologist wrote that George is fucking wrecked. Quote, fuck this guy. He's never going to fucking amount to shit. If it was me, I'd fucking stick a, you know,

stick a dynamite up his ass and fucking light it, you know? No, he said, appears to be making progress. He has been working regularly, continuing to reside with his parents, no indications of alcohol or drug abuse. Was he making progress?

Or just being manipulative? Seems a latter. Because there was a crime spree on murder, or island where a woman was tied up in her bathroom shortly after this. Another woman was assaulted a few days later. George was accused to being the perpetrator because he closely resembled the composite sketch. Neither victim, excuse me, could positively ID him, though, but most local cops believe he was a suspect. After a third attack, though, the victim insisted it wasn't George because she knew him, and George was quietly exonerated, but the damage was done. His old

friends, what few he had left now avoided him, and he was finally pretty much ostracized from island's society. And now before we move on, time for today's second and two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors. Hope you heard some deals that you like. Hope you use our landing pages and codes to get those deals so they know we sent you. And now if we turn to Mercer Island in the early 1988. Despite losing all his old social connections, George still lived on Mercer Island.

And in early 1988, George got a job as a clerk at a Nintendo arcade there. over the eight months he would work there, he would steal roughly $23,000 and then get fired. Even when he has a job, he just fucking is constantly just doing shit, constantly working some angle. By the age of 30, George was unwelcome at home,

constantly followed by the cops, which made it difficult to live on the island, tried to make some money by offering to be an informant for the Seattle Police Department, but then failed to follow through and was taken off that list. Most nights, he was sleeping in parked cars or even in dumpsters.

He was drifting between friends' homes before he would get kicked out for stealing. Around this time, he would meet Tammy Grace, the daughter of a Mercer Island physician. Tammy was dated dude named Mike Weisenberg, who went by the nickname of Georgia Mike, because he came from Georgia. Adds up.

One night, Mike introduced Tammy to George. Tammy thought he seemed like a nice guy, and eventually George started coming to some of the parties Tammy hosted with a roommate. On her 21st birthday, of course, they're a lot younger than him. On September 6, 1989, George took Tammy out dancing at a Bellevue Club

called the Black Angus. Not sure if fucking Georgia Mike knew about that or not. That night, Georgia told her that he was an undercover detective. Which, of course, he isn't. A couple weeks later, Georgia called her from the King County Jail asking for help. A cop would be calling and asking questions, he said. And he wanted Tammy to tell him that they lived together and that he had a steady job. He claimed he was all part of a sting operation.

He was involved in. Sure enough, Tammy received the call and gave all the right answers. A few months later, George asked her for the same favor. Tammy thought it was exciting, and they became good friends and regularly went out dancing at the Black Angus. And now George started spending most of his time in the east side of King County, specifically Bellevue. He became a regular in the city's nightclubs, most often frequenting the Black Angus. That is fucking hilarious, known as a place where black and white patrons could comfortably dance and flirt. And it's funny to me about the Black Angus because it's a West Coast Steakhouse chain.

This fucking nightclub was essentially the bar at like a TGI Fridays or Chili's. It cracks me up. That was a legit hot spot. Yeah, the steakhouse had an adjoining lounge called Square Cow Fun Bar, where all the hot nightclub action was. Just to give you a picture of how this place is not exactly a typical nightclub, let me play you a Black Angus commercial from 1987. Right around the time, George is starting to hang out there. Yeah, again, just to paint the picture of what the vibe is at this kind of place. Going out of steak.

Fire a sirloin up for me Because I don't care much for sushi And I starve on French cuisine I'm thinking of a top sirloin dinner at Black Angus With homemade soup or fresh salad And a baked potato all under seven bucks I don't count parsley as a side dish Give me all not out of card

You got a date with a full steak dinner And Black Angus is where I'll start Black Angus is where I'll start I don't eat nothing. I'll eat nothing like to dance my little booty off with the Black Angus Nightclub. That's fucking, that's a fucking lame-ass nightclub. It's like a fucking Texas Roadhouse.

Like just if they had like a little bit of room for you to dance. Okay. So George, he enjoyed flirting, buying women drinks to show off his money at Black Angus, which also allowed him to make vague comments about being an undercover cop because he's keeping up without weird shit. In the summer of 1989, George met a woman named Mindy Charlie, Black Angus. Everybody fucking meets everybody at Black Angus. Mindy was a kind and hardworking woman who always seemed unlucky in love.

At the age of 17, she'd married her high school sweetheart. They'd started a house cleaning business together. It was hard work, but Mindy was happy. She ended up taking sign language classes at Bellevue Community College, prepared to enroll at the University of Washington's speech pathology program. Very cool. But then her husband moved away without warning. Mindy had been divorced for about a year

when she started seeing an army vet named Chris Chris. Chris struggled with alcoholism was extremely jealous and possessive. Always needed to borrow money, which set Mindy back financially. On Christmas Eve, 1988, this pathetic stereotype of a dude came home drunk, got into an argument with Mindy, the quickly escalated into a fight,

and then he punched her in the head and kicked the fucking Christmas tree across the room, right? Merry Christmas! Then after that, Mindy gave him enough of her money to get a bus ticket to Hollywood where he hoped to pursue acting. And he took off. Her relationship with Chris left her $5,000 in debt.

But hey, you know what? I guess it was all worth it because now Chris Pratt is a big star. Oh, how nice for Chris Pratt. Sorry, I dad it was Chris Pratt. He was nine years old in 1988. So, I mean, she was probably talking about Christopher fucking walking, that piece of shit.

Hey, I'm Christopher walking. I like to punch women in the head and kick the Christmas treats and take the bus money to Hollywood from them. Actually, walking was already star. At this time, the deer hunter had come out like a decade earlier. He'd started, starred in the Dead Zone, a bunch of other movies. It must have been Chris Catan from Saturday Live.

Fucking that tiny little corky Romano piece of shit. He was 19 then. Unfucking real. There's no more press about this out there. And by more, I mean any at all. Anyway, after the breakup, probably was Chris Catan, but I can't prove it. Mindy focused on paying off the debt and rebuilding her life. Eight months later, in June of 1989,

many decided she deserved a night out. She and a friend went to, where else? The Black Anga Steakhouse. The coolest fucking chain steakhouse in club and town. And there he spotted a man reading a newspaper. And there, sorry, she spotted a man reading a newspaper at the club at night, like a douchebag, which she thought was highly unusual because it is. a guy who reads the newspaper

or like fucking Shakespeare some classic literature at a club he's not mysterious or cool he's a fucking dork he's a fucking pretender read that shit at home over breakfast or at a diner if you have to read it out somewhere

like a normal person you fucking weirdo she kept an eye on this guy was impressed when he got up to dance for a few minutes he's a good dancer if he decided to approach him right he can read

and he can dance well fucking what's not to like and the conversation flowed easily he introduced himself as George Russell invited Mindy and her friend to his table where they talked about deep subjects like politics, religion, race. They spent the entire night together

then went to breakfast at the nearby Denny's. Oh, I do love a late night fucking Denny's breakfast. Mindy did not go home until 4.30. And then they exchanged numbers before parting ways. Mindy called him later that morning. George mentioned that he was renting an apartment in Kirkland and that he was looking out the window for the cops because they came by a few days earlier and took his nobooks.

She asked why. George told her that he wrote down things in code so the cops would never understand. stand his notes, he hinted he was part of an important ongoing investigation. Yes, he's very important, Mindy. Come on. He's an important guy. He has to fucking catch up on the news at Black Angus at night. Mindy thought this was odd. It did set off some alarm bells, but she ignored them and they scheduled a date for the movies the next day. But before then, they snuck in another date. Mindy picked George up, took him to an abandoned golf course. That was her secret haven, which actually is very sweet. George was wearing a Seattle PD cap had his police scanner with him when she asked about the police

manner, he said he couldn't tell her why he had it. It was part of some undercover work. After their movie date, the following evening, they went back to the Black Angus, of course. And then George spent the night in Mindy's bed, but was a perfect gentleman, did not try to have sex with her. Mindy had to work the next morning. Then to her shock, when she came home from work,

George sitting in her living room with her ex, Chris. Fucking Chris Catan, that parasite. He's back. I, of course, have no idea who this Chris is. This Chris had returned from Hollywood. to try to get her back, so clearly the acting didn't work out. But although he was a jealous man, he was laughing with George like they were old buddies. And now Chris does not get her back, but George becomes Mindy's new roommate.

He moved in with his sparse belongings and his calico cat named Sasha. Mindy was fine with his arrangement, but she did think his hours were unusual. When she got home from work in the afternoon, George was often sleeping or reading. Then he left the apartment every night around 11 p.m. returned between 4.30 and 5 a.m. to cook breakfast. He was a pretty dreamy roommate at first. He cooked. He paid his share of the rent and some of the bills. He even sometimes left a couple hundred bucks for Mindy to spend how she liked.

And Mindy quickly fell in love with him. She wanted to know more about George, but he would always brush off her questions whenever she asked. He did tell her, though, that his real father had left before he was a year old. And that he moved back and forth between his grandma and his aunt's homes in Florida after his mom went to college. That his mom didn't send for him until she got married when he was six. He also boasted about his mom, about her various professor positions. eventually George took Mindy to meet his family, Dr. Mobley and Chris. They seem warm.

George spoke warmly of his little sister, Erica, who was now attending Yale. Whenever Erica came over to visit, George would borrow Mindy's car to take his little sister out. So sad, right? He's the underachiever in the family. But he didn't need to be. Truly seems like he just didn't want to work for anything, other than fucking crime. Had the aptitude, not the desire. In the evenings, George also often borrowed Mindy's car to do, quote, police work,

always making sure to fill up her gas tank before he brought it back. One night, Mindy asked why he didn't own a car himself and he claimed, quote, I'm dealing with a bunch of drug dealers. If I had a car, I couldn't relate to different aspects of society. It would blow what they believe me to be.

That is fucking poor shit. That makes literally no sense. But it made sense to Mindy at the time, right? He's a very charismatic motherfucker. And she never doubted that he was an undercover cop. However, some of George's suspicious behavior did bother her. example, when they went to the black Angus, of course, always the black Angus.

George insisted that they could not leave or arrive together. She had to drop him off at the bus stop because that was his favorite way to travel. He never explained why they couldn't be seen on a date. Right. And this is so absurd. That alone, literally just that. Truly reason to break it off of somebody immediately. Fuck that.

Somebody can't show up to a place with you. Fuck them. Right? You don't have to tolerate unexplained behavior like that. George would also leave in one set of clothes but come home in another. then things drastically changed after less than two months together. George just suddenly stopped cooking,

stopped cleaning, became cold and aloof. Also, weird shit started to appear in the apartment without explanation like a turquoise bracelet, a ring, bullets, more jewelry. George claimed it was all police evidence. Uh-huh, totally. Because, you know, they don't bag in inventory that stuff. You know, they just let officers bring it home.

According to Mindy, pretty soon our main contact was the cold little instructions I would find when I got to go to work. Mindy, will you fix this shirt? wake me up at 5 p.m. If I'm not up. He never signed his notes, love. He seldom said, please.

Whenever I wrote a response, she said, I went out of my way to say I love you. He didn't reciprocate. Somehow I had gone from lover to housekeeper. George would also give Mindy the silent treatment when he was angry with her, which deeply hurt her, right? This sometimes lasted for days.

He's fucking punishing Mindy instead of his mom. It gets too close to somebody. He's got to like push him away before they fucking leave him, I guess, in his mind or something. Whenever Mindy would get fed up, start spending more time with their friends, then he'd be back to his old charming self. You know, he didn't want to be with Mindy,

but he also, you know, wanted Mindy to want him and didn't want her to be with anybody else. They stopped going out together, except for the Black Angus. Can't stop going to the Black Angus. When they were there, George didn't interact with her, though, besides having a drink at her table or ask and use her car. Mindy knew it was an unhealthy relationship,

but she was still in love with him. When George had to spend 10 days in jail in September of 1989, he claimed it was because something had gone wrong with one of his sting operations. Now for the first time, Mindy's starting to doubt these stories. On Mindy's 23rd birthday, two days after George was released, she insisted that they go out together. When she got home from work, right when he came home,

George was in a bad mood. Mindy sat in her bedroom until 9.30. Then he came out to confront him asking him why they could not do anything together. George told her that he was going to take her out to dinner, but now she could forget it because she's being too pushy. Mindy decided the only thing she could do at this point was treat him like a roommate. Then, at the end of the month, George told her he didn't have money for rent and instructed her to sell the diamond ring he had given her before. She did.

She got $330 bucks for it. Then Mindy's phone was disconnected after George racked up a $100 bill from a long-distance call, which they could not pay. He's another Chris, another fucking mooch, taking advantage of a kind person's generosity. In October, George brought home his former girlfriend, a 16-year-old dancer named Lynn Brown. What the fuck? Again, this alone should have been a reason for. for kicking him out, never speaking him again, and fucking maybe can talk to the cops.

But this time, Mindy is positive, George's line. Hiding things from her. One day she decides to open up George's duffel bag, which he always kept locked up, was very protective about. Inside was a T-shirt, shoes, scraps of paper with license plate numbers, phone numbers, names, and addresses, very suspicious.

Then in November, after another fight, George demanded that she returned an antique Ruby Ring he'd given her. Later that night, he came home drunk with a friend. They tried to leave soon after they got there. Mindy wanted to know where George was going, tried to hang on to his arm to stop him so they could talk, and he shoved her and started to fucking strangle her, only stopped him when his friend intervened.

Mindy was left with black and blue bruises on her neck. Week or so later, they're arguing again. Mindy finally told George that they could not repair the relationship. George then tried to run to the bathroom to avoid talking to her. She stuck her foot in the door to try and stop him. He slammed the door, tried to slam the door, excuse me, on her foot. George then threw the door open and punched her in the head, just like Chris, this motherfucker.

That same month, George was driving Mindy home from the Black Angus, fucking always the Black Angus, after she had too much to drink. She asked him why he wouldn't just leave. When he gave her the silent treatment once again, she became so angry she demanded to get out of the car, half a block from the apartment.

She left her purse in the car and was locked out until the manager of the complex could let her in the next morning. She demanded to know why George wouldn't just let her in, and he responded, what was the point? Next evening, Mindy caught George having sex with another woman in their apartment. Mindy told him again, get out.

and now George demanded $3,000. Refused to leave until she paid him for his rent. What the fuck? But George's companion reassured Mindy that he would be gone the next morning. But then neither of them made a move to leave her apartment. Instead, George threatened Mindy, pay back my goddamn money or I'll have you hurt. Mindy now reached out to her ex, Chris, that piece of shit, and slept in his living room that night, leaving one piece of shit to stay with another.

Then in the morning, she called the Mercer Island Police and asked for Officer Kettles, one of the names she remembered from her conversations with George. The dispatcher said he wasn't available. Mindy explained that she was having problems with George Russell, wanted to talk to somebody, and the dispatcher said, oh, everyone's had problems with George. He's harmless.

No, he's not. Mindy returned to the apartment. George apologized, said it was a drunken mistake. They agreed they would no longer have a romantic relationship and would just be roommates. Fuck that he fucking punched you. Mindy said she felt she had no choice financially, but to let him stay.

Next morning, George served her breakfast in bed. Right? It's always the same with these motherfuckers. You know, they just fucking do something terrible. And they're like, oh, no, I'm nice. I'm a nice guy. No, you're fucking not. You're a piece of shit.

Next morning, he started with breakfast in bed, leading Mindy to think that they were back to being in a relationship. I wish she could go back in time and help Mindy get into therapy. So she could feel like she mattered enough, not to put up with these fucking losers, right? So she could know she deserve more. But then when George returned from a four-day cruise with a female friend in mid-December, Mandy found a pair of this woman's underwear in the laundry.

George insisted it didn't mean anything. She still stays with him. Mind decided she wanted to decorate the apartment then for Christmas. She knew George hated holidays, but Christmas was a special time of year for her, and she still wanted to celebrate, even though she had no money for gifts, and her relationship was beyond Rocky. George, not pleased when he came home and saw the decor. Mindy tried to be understanding because she knew Christmas can be hard for some people. She tried to comfort him.

He turned his back on her, and they got into another fight. Mindy eventually shouted, either pay attention to me or get out. George then picked up her Christmas tree and threw it at her. All the ornaments shattered. Mindy is devastated and cried for an hour in her room. What the fuck? First, Chris ruins Christmas. Now George does.

Both those motherfuckers attacked the tree. I hope Mindy can still enjoy Christmas today. When she finally came out of her bedroom to clean, she found George crying on the floor covered in charge of glass. Oh, man, if only one of those had cut his throat. The next day, George gave her a drawing made by a child of Denny's and a gold band. Oh, nice. She asked him why he was doing this and he responded

Well, I'm not proposing or anything, Min, but this is as close as I'll ever get. Oh, wow, what a romantic. But then the ring was gone a few days later. Around this time, George's friend Tammy Grace spent a week at Mindy's apartment because she was having problems with her boyfriend, Georgia Mike, needed a place to stay. Tammy recalled that George was much nicer to me than he was to Mindy. She was baffled by how cold he was to her.

Tammy also observed that George slept all day when out late at night. Towards the end of her week, Mindy confided in Tammy about catching George in bed with another woman and finding a pair of some other woman's underwear. Tammy insisted they were not hers. Mindy revealed that she suspected George was using cocaine. Tammy recalled seeing a glass vial that resembled a Coke container. Also throughout George and Mindy's relationship, there had been an increase in burglaries in her neighborhood.

Mindy told Tammy it's all coming back together. I've talked to the cops. He's not a narc. He's a crook. Week later, Tammy and Georgia Mike hosted a dinner party to celebrate their reconciliation. That's a weird thing. to, people do that. If I can break up, then we get back together.

Like, let's have our friends over. Celebrate this with us. We're back. Anyway, the party was hosted at Tammy's apartment in Bellevue, which she shared with another young woman. Later on in the evening, Tammy was showing one of her female guests, the set of photos where she was posing a nightgown. George peaked over their shoulders, asked for the photo. Tammy declined, like, uh, no creep.

Put the photo back in her dress or drawer. A few nights later, Tammy, her roommate heard scratchy noises at their window. Please came to check it out, but found no signs of attempted entry. When the women came home from work to next day, though, they noticed that their answer machine had been turned off. Several days later, one of their decorations was moved from a wall to a table. One of their door handles fell off at midnight. Very strange. They suspected their apartment was haunted.

Police officer advised them to check for missing items. Everything was accounted for, except for one of Tammy's nightgowns. Huh. Same one from the photo shoot. Then one of Tammy's acquaintances from the Black Angus happened to mention that George had been showing off photos of half-dressed women and one of them looked familiar. Based on the description, Tammy thought it was her picture, which she now realized was missing.

That fucking creep. Tammy was still considering all this when Mindy Charlie called her asking for a place to stay one night. George had attacked her again. A few hours later, George called, said he was at the police station. Said they were going to escort him back to Mindy's to get his things and move him to fuck out. He asked her to stay out of the conflict. Wasn't how Mindy expected it to end with George, but thank God that fucker is gone. Mindy is relieved when her boyfriend, excuse me, Mindy is relieved.

leave when her friend Terry Taylor moved into the spare bedroom. Terry would help lighten the financial load on Mindy. Terry is in a female, Terry. They're not dating. They're just friends. This is a much better situation. Terry disliked George from the moment she'd met him. She told Mindy she should stand up herself, encouraged her to start dating again. Mindy still owed back rent because George kept coming up short. In the second week of February, they were served eviction papers, Mindy and Terry. Theny just got in a new job with a respectable starting salary, was still working two other part-time jobs to get out of the fucking debt. It was largely the fault of George. She and Terry had just 80 cents between them after paying what they could. Oh my God. Mindy had been trying to get into

contact with George since she was served the notice. He promised to give her some money and demanded she meet him at the Black Angus. Mindy went there. She waited for him, but he never showed up. George called her the next day, claiming he waited for her and she wasn't there. He said he'd be at the apartment that evening when she got home from work. By this point, Mindy's desperate. If she doesn't get the money, she's going to be evicted. Mindy called Chris Mobley because, you know, George's stepmom, because she didn't know how to handle George. And Chris told her to throw out all of George's things, change her locks, and never look back, right? Stepmom's done with this motherfucker.

Good for her. Mindy told her she couldn't do that because George would just break down the door. Chris then became furious, told her she had to stand up for herself and free herself from George. Mindy recalled, quote, it was like the poor woman had just been waiting to unload. She said George made their lives hell. Juan Zell had tried everything. The cops and the courts had tried. right. Nothing worked. Nothing would ever work and so on. Fair. During her conversation with Chris,

Mindy said she could not understand how George was so close with his mother and so cruel towards other women. Chris cut her off and revealed George didn't even speak to his mom. Everything he had told Mindy about his fond relationship with Mama was a lie. Right? Fascinating. George showed up at 6.30 that evening with his friend Brian. Mindy confronted about the rent money. She knew right away she made a mistake. George hated being embarrassed in front of his friends. George was angry, said he and Brian were going to go back out. He tried to walk away, insisted he would be back later. On his way out, Mindy grabbed his duffel bag, threw it out of the apartment. When she did a pair of sneakers fell out. Mindy's ex-boyfriend Chris had been missing that pair of sneakers. George had sworn he had never seen

the shoes, and she confronted him about this, and George lost his fucking mind. He raced back into the apartment and Mindy described what happened next. Quote, his face was a blank. It was like he was on autopilot. He began throwing my things against the walls. Our cat, Sasha, right, which was his cat at one point, ran behind my wicker hutch. He methodically destroyed three shelves of dishes and stuff, every picture on the wall, every video cassette and music tape, everything in my cabinets. I grabbed at his arms, clawed at him trying to protect my possessions. It had no effect. There was no comprehension in his eyes, only animal anger, no control at all. The only sound was me screaming for him to stop and him grunting as he tore things up. I tried to jump on his back and he dragged me from room to room.

George ripped out the phone through Mindy's mattress across the room when she ran at him he slammed her against the wall hard enough to knock her out. When she came to, he was pulling her clothes out of the closet and throwing them on the floor. My God. Mindy went outside, called for help. George's friend Brian just stood

there watching this chaos. Mindy then ran to another apartment. A good dude there pulled her inside, shut the door, called 911. The police arrived 15 minutes later. Everything in her apartment had been destroyed. The floor was littered with broken glass. The police advised Mindy to get away for the night in case George came back, and she went to Tammy Grace's home.

On February 12, 1990, George was arrested at his family's home on Mercer Island, right? His dad and stepmom, or stepdad and stepmom, actually, both fucking hate him, and is charged with domestic assault. Mindy had been diagnosed with multiple contusions and a hairline fractured vertebrae in her neck. Later that morning, Mindy's roommate Terry called her and told her that George had returned to the apartment at 2 a.m. Terry told him to leave. He reminded her that her name wasn't on the lease. She asked him why he had done what he had done to their place and to Mindy, and George said, Mindy did that to herself, hon.

So he's a real cool guy. The Monday after the attack, Mindy found one of her tires punctured. Following the morning, she found a note written on a McDonald's napkin in her car. It said, please take care of Sasha, right? Which was George's cat. I know she loves you. George also apologized for that night. He wrote that he still loved Mindy.

But he guessed their relationship was probably over. He said he wouldn't have lost control if she hadn't have just thrown his back. This guy's so fucked. He needed to be institutionalized, probably for life, right? Either get his mommy issues fixed up or be labeled unfixable. You just can't fucking save everybody. This guy seemed like a total loss. He said he had visited the abandoned golf course where they had gone to the start of the relationship

and it made him want to start over. He wrote, you can't take the memories of the good times from me. But sadly, I can't forget the bad times either. It hurts me. I can't turn you off like a light switch, nor do I wish to. George asked many to contact a mutual friend so they can meet and talk. Mindy believed he was just trying to get her to soften her testimony for the trial. But she agreed to the meeting, also told George they were over and not to contact her in any way ever again.

One of the friends present at the meeting asked George why he'd hurt Mindy and trashed her place. And George tried to pass it off as a harmless prank. Oh, it's a prank now. He said, I took some pictures off the wall, sat him on the floor. That's about it. Motherfucker. When Mindy challenged him with the truth, he said it was, quote, no biggie. That's fucking crazy.

He's a psychopath. Jesus Christ. Can you imagine just fucking trashing somebody? Just like trashing someone's house, beating somebody, you know, just fucking attacking somebody.

And they're like, man, why'd you do that? You fucking hurt me. And they're like, come on, no biggie. Nah, come on. No biggie. What are you doing?

Mindy walked out of the meeting when he said, no biggie. March 1990, George is now banned. He's banned from the Black Angus. After a confrontation with the Black Angus Bar

bartender, G.B. Coffin. And it really was a fucking steakhouse. I'm not just like doing that because they had that name. I fucking asked, searched all over the internet. I'm like, are you sure this place was a nightclub? Yep. And it was featured in a little crime dock on this guy. One of G.B.'s customers. I told her that she needed to be careful because there was a cop present. She asked if he was talking about George. And when this person nodded, G.B said, he's not a cop. He's a burglar. Later that night, George told her to stand of his business. They got into a verbal altercation, and he threatened to report her to the manager for what, for telling the truth? She tried to ignore him, but he followed her around as she moved

throughout the bar. As two doormmen were trying to get him out, he then warned, I'll be back for you. It took five minutes for the doorman to get him out the door. On his way out, he shouted, you've had it, bitch. I'm coming back. I'm going to kill you. Holy shit. When G.B. came to work the next night, she learned that George met with the manager and was told he was banned for two weeks. That manager was a fucking moron. Two weeks. That manager was a fucking moron. Two weeks, you threaten somebody's life at their place of work. You should immediately be banned for life from that place. No second chances, no appeals. Go fuck yourself. When the manager found out what George did to Mindy Charlie, he was permanently banned from the Black Angus. So while I do still

think he was a fucking idiot, this manager, I guess he wasn't a total idiot. March 21st, 1990, George is arraigned for criminal trespass, obstruction of justice, and outstanding war. What does he care? He's banned for life from that Black Angus. His life is over. Sergeant Glendon Booth had walked into work at the Mercer Island station, found George in a cell. He reviewed the arrest report. A couple had woken up early in the morning saw a dark shadow in their bedroom. Creepy, terrifying escalation. Hour later, a citizen saw him trying to get into cars. Booth sat George down for a talk, told him he was going to end up killing somebody. He said, you go into these houses, George, laying next to these women, what you're doing?

What are you doing? Jacking off on the floor? And George told him, you don't have shit on me. You're trying to dump on me. Well, I talked to my lawyer, and there isn't a damn thing you can do. In court, the judge did throw out the obstruction charge on a technicality. Sergeant Booth implored the judge to consider George's criminal history and the fact that they had caught him with butcher knives hidden in his shirt sleeves on at least two occasions now. Ultimately, the judge did not see George as a threat to the community fucking soft. That's so weak. He served just four days in jail. I fucking hate judges like this, truly, who are soft on career criminals.

When these criminals have shit like domestic violence on long records. This isn't somebody with a bunch of drugs. drunk in public charges. Somebody caught with weed a bunch of times, malicious mischief. This is a fucking creep. When George got out, he met up with Mike Weisenberg, aka Georgia Mike at the Mercer Island Denny's.

Needed a place to stay. Mike was living on the island with his friends Robert Zurich and Jeff Anderson. George of Mike was foolish enough to agree. And two weeks later, George is still crashing at their place. At first it seemed like a good arrangement. George bought the guy's food, beverages, escorted Mike's underage friends in the clubs.

of course he's helping underage people. George was always given the young men creepy advice about sex, though. He described a time when he and a woman cut each other's necks with razor blades, sucked on each other's blood, which disturbed Mike. Still, during one of their drinking sessions, Mike introduced George to 24-year-old

Andrea Randy Levine. At the end of the night, Mike and George dropped Randy off at her apartment in Kirkland and drove back home together. The following night, a furious Randy called Mike and told him that George had showed up at her place and asked for a ride to Mercer Island. She managed to get rid of him but felt unsettled.

Mike reassured her, he's just that type of person, Randy. If he meets you, he thinks you're his best friend. I really wouldn't worry about it. But Randy was worried because she's not an idiot. She lived alone. There had been an increase in burglaries recently in her neighborhood. When Mike brought it up to George, he said he didn't realize it was such a big deal, and he seemed annoyed.

He was also quickly becoming a fucking nuisance. For example, George once asked to borrow Mike's car, said he needed it for a quick run to the local 7-Eleven. Then he didn't return the car until dawn. and acting like that was no big deal. No biggie. Come on, man, no biggie. A week later, he did it again.

George claimed the car wouldn't start, and that was why he was late getting it back. Mike worried he was using the car for nefarious activities, because I'm sure he was. When Mike stopped lending him his car, George then started borrowing his roommate Robbie Zerzik's Chevy Station wagon.

That was just a fucking nuisance to everyone he became friends with. May 10th, 1990, Seattle Patrolman, Steve Picarillo, Jeffrey, or, excuse me, Jerry Holly, were rounding the corner of First and Pike when they saw a black man patting down a Hispanic man against the side of a tan station wagon.

Black man claimed he observed the other man shoving something into his pocket was just checking him out. They asked for ID, but before they could look at it, they had to leave to respond to a burglary call. The patrolman warned him that there would be problems if he was still there when they returned. Picarillo thought he had seen this guy before

and soon figured out how he knew him. It was a decade earlier at the Denny's on Mercer Island. Piccarilla was a college student at the time, watched this dude visit different tables in the restaurant, just couldn't remember his name. The patrolman put out a notice that a black man in a tan station wagon was acting strangely in the area and might be worth an interview. Three hours later, Officer Cecilia Doucet was sitting in her cruiser at Second and Pike

when an old Chevy station wagon passed by, accelerating and braking suspiciously so she pulled the driver over. And she recalled, right from the start, the guy was so accommodating, syrupy sweet, talk, talk, talk. Didn't have his license, and the car which registered to Robert Zer. He handed her a business card, identified himself as George Russell, claimed he was an agent who worked with the Seattle PD. Ducet explained to author Jack Olson years later when an unregistered guy claims he's an agent or an informer, that usually means he's into a power thing. I'm important. I'm a powerful dude.

I know people. More likely he's a 220, which is our Seattle PD shorthand for Psycho. Bingo! Yes. This guy's 100% of fucking psycho. She wanted to search Georgia's car, but she lacked probable cause. All she could do was ride him a ticket for driving without a license. Week and a half later, Sergeant Doug van der Geisen was cruising around Seattle.

He passed, excuse me, Pike Street, saw Chevy Malibu, Mike Weisenberg's car, parked near first. A group of people were gathered around it. Van der Geisen turned west on Pike, so they would see his car and disperse. The Malibu started to pull off. Van der Geeson stopped the car. Driver said that the people in the street were harassing this passenger. Driver indicated there was no problem and he was going to leave.

Sergeant Van der Geisen approached the group on the street, told them to leave. They asked that the man in the car was really a cop because he said he was. They claimed he got out of his car, pulled a gun on him, then hit somebody in the head with the gun, like pistol whipped him. Sure enough, one of the group had a bleeding head wound. Now Van der Geese made a U-turn, tried to catch up with the Malibu. As he's pursuing the vehicle, it made a sharp ride across a sidewalk into a construction fence. Then the driver got out, put his hands in the air. He identified himself as George Russell, of course, had no weapon on him now, but did have an empty holster.

Inside the car was a police scanner with a wallet that had IDs for Mike Weisenberg and Robert Zurich in it, and there was a knife under the seat. Behind the left front tire was a model 659 with a live round in the chamber and a full clip. Damn. Man in the passenger seat identified himself as Mitchell said he was in a fight on Pike and George had rescued him, but then ordered him into the car. He said he saw George slide the gun under the tire. At the station, George was written up for misdemeanor, reckless driving.

How was that it? Van der Geisen asked why he identified himself as a police officer. George said he did it to break up the fight, claimed he got the gun from a man on the street a month earlier for personal protection. Van der Geisen later recalled, the more time I spent with this Russell, the more I began to realize something was seriously wrong. Some of the other officers agreed.

No normal person could be this cool, sitting there surrounded by cops, chatting away like I'm Oprah, and he's the star guest. He reminded me of Ted Bundy. No emotions, no guilt. I said to myself, this guy's got to have his fingers in something else. He's got to be wanted somewhere. I like Sergeant Van der Geeson a lot.

Van der Geeson did a search and George had no record in Seattle except the traffic ticket from the week before. The Mercer Island stuff didn't show up. Different town, different jurisdiction. Other towns, records didn't show up. The gun had been reported stolen, though. So he was able to also charge George with possession of stolen property. Because he knew George was likely to be released on bail, Van der Geeseen sent the following memo to the special investigations unit. Please find and close a copy of a report of an incident that occurred on Monday morning 521.90 in the area of First and Pike.

Information from other D-sector third watch officers reveals this subject has been hanging around in the area for some time now and has been stopped other times for being involved in suspicious circumstances, particularly circumstances that appeared to be related to represented himself as a police officer. The subject is cool with reasonable explanations for everything suspicious. He deserves some additional investigation, thanks. George then called Mike Weisenberg from the King County Jail and told him that he'd been stopped because he gave two guys who had felony warrants a ride. And Mike's car had been impounded. Mike was able to get his car back luckily.

Mike asked the detective who gave him his wallet back what he knew about George. And the detective showed him a computer printout of George's Mercer Island record, noted he also had a record in Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, and King County. As Mike drove home, he knew they had to get rid of George. When George arrived, Mike told him, you got to leave. and George packed up and left without protests, departing with a friendly, bye. Meanwhile, Seattle Detective Rick Buckland, this guy's awesome, saw Sergeant Van der Geeson's memo. Buckland had just returned from two years on assignment with the DEA. He was part of Seattle's elite intelligence units and picked his own assignments.

He recalled what stood out to him regarding George's file. Two things caught my eye. One, it bothers me when anyone impersonates a police officer. Two, why did he put that guy in his car and drive him away? maybe it's nothing. But isn't that going a little far and playing a detective? He put the kid in his car

under color of law. What was he going to do with him? King County confirmed that the gun had been stolen in Kirkland on the night of April 22nd a month earlier along with a mug full of change, two gold chains, three sterling silver rings,

and two watches. The burglar entered through an unlocked door and the couple didn't know they were there, or they were hit till they woke up. Intrusions like that always send up a red flag. It takes balls to sneak into somebody's home while they're there or some kind of weird need. And again, I like Detective Buckland.

Right. This is good. The right people are getting rightfully worried about this creep. Detective Buckland called the Mercer Island Police. Learned George with a serial burglar who was notoriously difficult to catch. They'd had 40 contacts with him since 1985. And there had been many more in other jurisdictions. Buckland wanted to get George for burglary of the gun and more, but George maintained that he bought the gun from a guy in the street. Also didn't qualify for a felon possession charge because his felony escaped conviction did not qualify under that statute. Buckland did see that there was a restraining order against him, though, for assaulting Mindy Charlie. Her address was a few blocks from where the gun had been stolen as well.

And as mentioned, there have been a surge in nighttime burglaries in her neighborhood. Buckland located Mindy and she talked about her history with George, confirmed he always carried a penlight, which was consistent with the description of the burglary suspect. Buckland believed George would reoffend and that there was a good chance he would soon escalate to rape and murder. Buckland knew his shit. George was released on June 7th after serving 18 days in county jail. Detective Buckland kept George's file on his desk waiting for something else to happen. By the summer of 1990, Mindy Charlie learned that George, who's now 32 years old,

had been banned from the Black Angus, as we learned. Before she'd been afraid to go out, but now that she knew that he had been permanently banned, she felt safe to go there again. Fucking Black Angus. I had no idea would be so prominent in this story. The old Bellevue location. No longer there, by the way. Clearly the most pop and chain steakhouse bar ever.

Here's another commercial from the same time as all this is going on, from the summer of 1990. You know, when it comes to money, I'm a shrewd, son of a gun. I never pass up a bona fide deal. Every week, I put something away in a safe place. Hell you. Excuse me. Black Angus introduces one very special prime rib dinner,

a complete prime rib dinner. dinner and an unbelievable deal only 795. Wow. Hey, fella! It crops something. A complete prime rib dinner only 795 at Black Angus. When it comes to money, nothing gets by me. What a fucking vibe.

What a great place to spend a Saturday night. Mindy, meanwhile, slowly getting her life back together. She even started dating again, a DJ named Mark McCamond, who I'm hoping paid his own bills, never hit her, and did never fuck up a Christmas tree. In mid-June, she saw her friend Sean Trumbull at the Black Angus, and he told her she couldn't come around without Mark because George had been prowling around the parking lot and asking about her. For fuck's sake. On June 20th, George appeared in court for the domestic violence charge.

Mindy was confused to see him in prison clothes, but learned he'd recently returned to jail for reckless driving. Always something. He was found guilty, received a suspended 90-day sentence on the condition that he paid the $500, or the $540 for the property he had destroyed fucking weak-ass judge again. Come on. It's fucking pathetic. George was soon back on the streets. Now that he had been banned from the...

Now that he'd been banned from the Black Angus, he had to pick a new nighttime spot. He chose Papa Gaios Cantina. A new club on the east side. A shady new club that would close down for legal pressure for doing shit like featuring fully new dancers without having a license to do that, by the way.

George became a well-known regular at Papa Gios. Hell yeah. He was treated like a VIP given free admission and a reserve table, often generously picked up other patrons bar tabs with a stolen money. The dude with the fragilest of egos must have loved feeling like a big man again.

Detective Michael Bechtolt of the Bellevue PD worked part-time of Papagaios. I love these names. And he befriended George, who made his job a little easier by keeping an eye on the club. Making sure no one's fucking stealing nachos. No one's handing out free enchiladas at Papa Gios.

June 22nd, 1990, 26-year-old construction worker, Smith Everett McLean, is on his way to pick up George for a night out to celebrate another release from jail. And they plan to start the evening at Papa Gaios, the fucking poor man's black Angus. Smitty was driving his beloved 1989 Toyota pickup.

He was looking forward to an evening out. His fiance had recently ended up, ended things because of his alcohol abuse. Smitty enjoyed his evenings with George because he never had to wait in line or pay a cover charge. Nah, not a Papa Gaios. Now with fucking the man, George.

When they arrived at Papa Gios, they saw that George's underage friend, and Lynn Brown, of course, underage, had somehow reserved a table in an area off limits for minors. Shortly after 9 p.m., George and Lynn went out on the dance floor, but then she was carded and asked leave. She promised to meet the guys at the Denny's cross the parking lot after Papa Guy was closed. Smitty and George decided to move to George's favorite table by the DJ booth. But first, George asked Smitty for his truck keys, claimed he needed to get his collared shirt out of his duffel bag to follow the club's dress coat. Smitty didn't want to give him the keys,

but he also didn't want to alienate George either. In the end, he handed him over, and please don't drive anywhere. But this is fucking, come on, it's George Russell. You know, you hand him keys. It's going to be a long time before you see him again. Hours passed. George did not reappear. Of course.

Smitty wondered if he was wandering around the tables chatting like he usually did, but someone told him George was outside. Smitty then walked out, but saw his truck was gone. Detective Mike Beckdolt, right, who's working there, then found Smitty sit on the curb with his head in his hands. Furious. Smitty told him George had borrowed his truck and hadn't returned it. Becht had spoken to George earlier that night, said he was going to drive a girl over to her place to pick something up.

Bechtol didn't get a good look at the woman, but she was about five foot six with dark brown hair wearing a jacket. She was stumbling. George caught her, held her arm. He did not see them get into a car. Uh-oh. Beckdolt recalled, I didn't pay much attention, multiplied this incident by a hundred, and you had a typical night at Papagaios. Bechtolt reassured Smitty that George wouldn't do something like that, but he was too upset to have a conversation with the detective. Meanwhile, at the illustrious Black Angus,

Tammy Grace, her boyfriend Mike, his roommates and a few other friends gathered at one of the tables. They had invited Mindy Charlie to join them, planning to spend the evening commiserating over their troubles with that fucking piece of shit, George, but she hadn't shown up. At 11.30 p.m., an employee left to Black Angus

and walked to his car. He was parked at the rear of the club near the dumpster and the industrial compactor that served the McDonald's next door. Even better! This club is next to store to McDonald's.

It's a fucking hopping club sandwich in between a fucking steak, dinner place, and a McDonald's. Just before he got to his car,

the man saw white male sent at the opening to the corral that surrounded the trash compactor, heard what sounded like an argument,

didn't see anyone as he backed out of his parking spot. Half hour later, a loud fight developed in the black angus parking lot several neighbors

in a nearby apartment complex called 911. One caller reported hearing a female scream, stop it. Another caller, heard a male

yelling, you fucking bitch, don't fuck with me. One caller heard a high-pitched scream It was blood-curdling. A Black Angus host went outside Because of the noise He saw a shirtless young man in the trash area

Who claimed he was beaten for no reason By a man with long blonde hair. A lot of shit going on at Black Angus. The host recognized him as a regular Who'd been banned earlier. Uh-oh. The man ran away when he heard police sirens. Police checked the trash corral left when they found nothing.

At 2 a.m., a resident of the nearby apartment complex heard a woman yell, somebody help me. You're hurting me. Stop it, stop it, stop it. You'll kill me. Angry male voice shouted. Were you fucking him? were you fucking him?

The resident heard a car engine and tires squealing before it went silent. Ten minutes later, a couple in a different apartment complex heard a cloppy noise outside that sounded like a horse's hoofs. They concluded it was someone

running in hard shoes. At 3.15 a.m., an off-duty Papa Gayo's bartender drove through a parking lot or through the parking lot to see if his waitress girlfriend was still there, did not notice anything unusual

in the trash area. Around that time, Smitty McLean, was at Denny's waiting, still no sign of George or his car, despite the fact that George had promised to meet them there. They waited for three hours. Smitty asked Hans Johnson,

the boyfriend of George's Lynn Brown, if George had ever done anything like this before, George's friend, Lynn Brown. Han said that, yes, he had. George had a habit of borrowing cars for too long, but always returned them in good condition. As the sun rose, Smitty accepted a ride home to Mercer Island now. As he walked in his place,

he encountered his sister, Sean, and her friend Jill Leslie, sleeping on bunk beds in the garage. They have been preparing for a summer yard sale all night. 4.30 a.m. Jill had just gone inside to shower when George Russell called the house. He wanted to know if Smitty was home and complained he'd been looking for him all night. Uh-huh. That grift again. 6 a.m., the women were outside, setting up for the yard sale when George arrived in Smitty's Toyota.

Smitty approached, asked what the fuck is going on. George claimed, or excuse me, Sean approached. Ask what the fuck's going on. George claimed he had drove someone home, then lost track of Smitty. Sean then noticed a red stain on the front seat. About six inches wide, looked like it could be blood. George claimed his passenger had thrown up after eating some clam chowder. He parked the truck, helped the women move a few heavy items, then declined Sean's offer for a ride home.

Instead, he picked up his duffel bag and walked away. Shortly after 7 a.m., a maintenance man for the McDonald's restaurant near the Black Angus stepped outside to sweep up. He cleaned the parking lot, decided to see if any trash from McDonald's had blown into the Black Angus parking lot overnight, something caught his eye inside the opening to the dumpster, a woman's dead body. The victim's left foot was crossed over. her right ankle. Her hands were crossed on her stomach and a fur cone have been tucked under

each of her hands. A white plastic lid from a Frito-laid dip container covered her right eye. Her body had clearly been staged. She was nude except for a gold choker with the crescent white pendant and a gold watch. Next to her body was a small pile of debris. She's about 5'8, white, curly reddish-brown hair, and she had on pink nail polish. There was blood on her face and abrasions on her right arm and breast and her hips, knees, and feet. She had scratches on her neck possibly from her own nails as she was being strangled and trying to get the attacker's hands off of her. Also had blood coming from a head wound. No ID was found nearby. Discerbantly, police thought the killer had posed the victim to look as if she was lying inside a coffin. The medical

examiner placed the time of death at between 220 and 5.20 a.m. 20 fibers were found in the victim's body, and there were two small stains on her thigh that appeared to be semen. The victim's autopsy report indicated signs of strangulation, a lacerated nose, facial contusions, deep fractures of the skull, a split liver, contusions and abrasions on both breasts, tears in the anus caused by a foreign object, and indications of rough penetration of the vagina. Holy fuck.

Sperm was found in the vagina, and the victim's blood alcohol content was, or BAC was 0.14. Investigators concluded that the victim was repeatedly punched in the face, beaten on the head, raped and kicked so hard her liver split against her spinal column. Killer may have also spent as many as four hours with the body.

Finally, all the sexual penetration had taken place after death. The killer was classified as a sadistic necrophile. Detective Dale Foote was in charge of collecting evidence outside the Black Angus. After the body was removed, investigators saw a dark red stain at the opening to the trash compactor. A preemptive test for blood was positive, suggesting the killer had tried to shove the body inside. Detective Foote questioned why the body was dumped at the McDonald's slash Black Angus. There was much safer places to dispose of a body, like nearby Forest or the Puget Sound. They determined this woman had not been killed at this location.

So that argument we heard earlier, probably not her. As he vacuumed for evidence around the compactor, he noticed pink flex, which appeared to be from the victim's fingernail polish. Later that morning, Smitty McLean woke up, saw his truck his back, noticed a floor mat had been removed thrown in the back. When he opened the vehicle up, he smelled a foul odor. He later recalled, when I had been hunting before, you can remember vividly when you cut open an animal what it smells like, beyond vomit.

smell-wise, it was the most violent vomit I had ever smelled. It was beyond awful. It was all over the interior of the truck, all over. I also smelled a faint smell of like a lemon-scented lysol as if someone had tried to clean it up or cover up the smell. There was a reddish-white residue all over the cab and a large red stain on the driver's seat. Can you imagine letting somebody borrow your ride

and then when you get it back, it's covered in blood stains? I don't know about you, but I am driving that shit to a police station, having them test the blood to see if it belongs to a human being. When George called at 11 a.m., Smitty questioned him. George said he had the hots for a blonde who agreed to go for a drive with him. He took her out in the truck, but he got nervous, drank too much, threw up his clam chowder. He missed Smitty at Papagayo's then, and Denny's spent the rest of the night looking for him. Smitty decided to detail his truck now to get rid of the smell, shampooed the inside, vacuum the floors,

washed and wax the exterior, got into all the cracks and crevices. but nothing he did could get rid of the stain on the seat, and it still smelled like shit. He eventually got the truck professionally detailed, and I'm guessing paid for all that himself. Late that afternoon, Mindy Charlie learned there had been a murder outside the Black Angus, and she immediately told her fiancé, Mark McAmond, it's George.

She insisted, I know it is. He hates women. He hates the Angus. He knew we were getting together here last night with Tammy and Mike and Robbie and Bob and the others. The Black Angus victim remained unidentified for several days. Let's meet her. On the night of June 24th, 1990, Teresa Viery had returned to her apartment after a weekend camping trip. She heard a clock alarm going off despite the fact it was 9 p.m.

Clothes were scattered across her roommate Mary Ann Polarike's bed and Teresa's cats were crying for food. Marianne wasn't too fond of Teresa's cats, but she had previously always made sure to feed them when she was away. Teresa wondered where Marianne was now. She liked going out to nightclubs, but she usually wasn't gone for an entire weekend. Mary Ann was a responsible 27-year-old woman. She was preparing to take a community college class and computer science, paid her bills on time, had several thousand dollars saved up. She was between regular jobs, but had a temp job as a telemarketer. Teresa recalled that Marianne had talked about going to Papa Gaios canteena, one of her regular spots.

Marianne went out three to four nights a week to dance, rarely had to buy a drink because she was an attractive young woman. It was possible, but unlikely that she was spending the weekend with some guy she had met. Marianne claimed that she hadn't had a one-night stand since New Year's Eve, 1989. When Teresa left the apartment two days earlier on the morning of June 22nd to go to work, Marianne had been asleep and her car had been parked outside. Tracy didn't get home from work until midnight, and Marianne and her car were gone. Teresa assumed she was still at Papa Gaios. Early on Saturday the 23rd, Teresa got up to go camping with her fiancé.

Now it was Sunday night and Marianne was still gone. On Monday the 25th, Teresa, wasn't sure what to do, didn't want to embarrass Marianne by calling her friends and family. Her parents were very religious, did not know she smoked or drank. When Tuesday the 26th rolled around with no word for Marianne, Teresa knew she couldn't wait any longer. She knew that on Sundays, Marianne liked to drive to her hometown of Ravensdale in South King County to attend church with her family. Teresa called, learned Marianne had not come to church, and her mom was about to report her was missing. Tresa checked with Marianne's temporary employer found that she hadn't called in, even though she was supposed to work a few hours on Sunday.

Teresa then reached out to a mutual friend, heard that a body had been found behind the black angus on Saturday morning, scented dread came over her. She drove to Papagaios, found Marianne's vehicle in the parking lot. When she didn't find her inside the bar, she called the police. That evening, Teresa looked at photos of a necklace and a watch and identified them as hers, explaining Mary Ann sometimes borrowed her jewelry. Detective Marvin Skeen asked questions about Mary's life, trying to get a sense of potential suspects. Teresa mentioned a young man named Damon, whom they had met at Parker's nightclub. at North Seattle. Marianne spent a few nights

at his place, had gone out with him at Papa Gaios, but lately Marianne complained that Damon had been acting weird, had accused her of, quote, wanting his body. Teresa thought they had ended things.

And before going forward, I got to address that. I've broken up with quite a few people over the course of my life and been dumped a bunch of times as well. I've never had a relationship end because I was upset over someone wanting my body

or because I wanted their body. Aren't you supposed to kind of want the body of the person? you're romantically involved with. I mean, Lindsay thinks I have a good body. I should talk to her about it, right? Maybe that's not, maybe that's fucked up. Maybe that's not good.

Enough. No more kind words about my body. Don't ever say anything nice about my dick again. Not so piece of meat. But I am. But we all are. Walking, talking, sacks of meat. Anyway, over the weekend,

detectives had knocked on the doors of every apartment in condo within view of the black angus. The canvas turned up a list of suspicious characters. Detective Skeen also talked to fellow Bellevue detective, Mike Bechtolt advised that he advised excuse me, that Skeen should talk to Brad the

doorman and Todd at the parking lot valet and then added, if you want to find out everything about Papagaios, talk to George Russell. Other detectives were seeking out the mysterious Damon. Teresa helped create a composite sketch that was distributed different nightclubs in the area. You know, fucking T.I. Fridays,

Olive Garden, all the hotspots. Detectives confirmed Marianne was a regular at Papa Gios. Descriptions ever differed. Some male regulars thought she was a tease because she liked to draw attention to herself when she drank. An ex-boyfriend said Marianne would go home with strangers, sometimes sleep in their beds, but would refuse to have sex with them. Those who knew Marianne outside of the nightclubs described her as a talented, dependable worker, a high-achieving student, willing to talk to most people, always friendly.

But lately, she's been drinking more heavily than usual, admitted to a friend that she had passed out in a nightclub parking lot and then woken up in a man's bed, hoped that nothing had happened. On the night of June 22nd, Marianne went out to pop a guys with two male friends. They left her after about an hour. Marianne spent a long time talking to two businessmen named Terry and Mark, who she had met at the club earlier in the week. Marianne tried to make an advance towards Mark, but he was not interested. She was then seen at the DJ booth talking to a man who was described as clean-shaven, six feet tall, large bill, dark straight hair, expensively dressed, possibly Hispanic or Mediterranean. He did not seem interested in Marianne, and when she lost her balance and drunkenly fell, he walked away. Late in the evening, Marianne gave one customer the impression she was looking for a ride home,

bartender served her a glass of water because she was drunk. He then got busy and when he looked up again, she was gone. On June 30th, 1990, a week after the murder, Mike Bechdel was back working security at Papa Gaios when George showed up. George expressed his regrets about recent events, said they hoped they caught the killer. Inside the club, the night, that night, several planes closed officers. We're trying to blend it with other patrons.

One of them was Detective Jeff Gomez, who observed George walking around like he owned the place. George approached him, offered some gossip. At first, Gomez thought he was being helpful, but after a while he started thinking George was deliberately feeding them contradictory information, and he grew suspicious as to why. Gomez's partner, Earl Barnes, recognized George from Mercer Island. George remembered him too.

They showed him photos of the victim. At first, George claimed he did not recognize her, but then said, maybe she came over to his table that night. He kept asking questions like how close they were to make an arrest or what evidence they were holding back. Detective John Hanson and Marv Skeen were also casing Papagaios. George approached Skeen, told him that a young woman who accompanied him to Papa Gio's the previous Friday night might have talked briefly to Marianne Polrike. Her name was Lynn Brown.

Skeen tried to call Lynn Brown, but the number George gave him was bad. Skeen didn't think much of it at the time. In the second week of the investigation, Bellevue Detective John Gerber was asked to follow up on Mike Beckdolt suggesting to talk to Papa Gio's ballet Todd identified as Todd Arvizo. Fucking Todd. According to his field interview report, Todd said that George was a regular of Papa Gio's and was there on June 22nd, that George borrowed someone's toy to mid-evening, took a girl away before returning later,

the owner of the truck was upset that he was away for so long. Todd worked until 2.15 a.m. did not recall Marianne Polaright being there that night, and unfortunately said she wasn't the female George had left with. Fucking Todd! You and your shitty Todd memory! Detective Marv Skeen viewed this report, but had not connected George and the report to the George he made at Papa Gaios.

Both Georgia seemed irrelevant to the investigation because a profiler suggested the killer was a single white male. Skeen later admitted that he should have picked up the lead. After the murder, George found some new roommates to take advantage of because, of course he did. That's classic George. Barbara Bobby de Groot was looking forward to spending the summer after high school graduation with her girlfriend Jennifer Graves, Sarah Amundsen, and Susie Jelly. The girls rented a condo at the Villa 156 complex in Bellevue.

They planned to spend their summer working to pay for classes in the fall in an interview with author or Jack Olson, Bobby recounted how they first met George. Late one night, she and Jenny drove to Denny's to get some coffee. As they were going to their seats, a guy named George started talking to them like he'd known him forever. He sat at their table, introduced them to some of his friends who were really drunk, even paid their bill. After that, it seemed like they ran into him every night.

Jenny eventually gave George the phone number. Then they started to hang out regularly. Cool. She was fucking George and a bunch of 18-year-olds. The girls had invited George and Smitty to visit the condo any time they wanted. Their apartment had turned into a party location that summer. and during one party, someone mentioned the murder at the Black Angus. Smitty theorized it was probably someone's angry boyfriend from Eastern Washington.

Not sure why the ex would need to be from Eastern Washington, but okay. George said, no, it's probably a guy from around here. After the party, George brought his duffel bag over, put it in Bobby's room, slept on their sofa for a few days, which made her worried that George was moving in. They had not had that discussion. Bobby's boyfriend Tim was spending the summer in Europe. He's probably just fresh out of high school, too. She didn't think you'd appreciate a man

live with her. Of course not. After George had been there for a week, just fucking stay in there, not invited. The girls discussed what they should do. Jenny didn't think there was anything wrong. She thought George should stay. Jenny, I don't like your judgment. Bobby reminded her, Jenny, that's just it.

He's too perfect. Something's wrong. He's not perfect. He's 32 years old. And he started sleeping on your couch without asking. Best case scenario, he's a social boundary crossing mooch whose life is in shambles.

Susie agreed that she got the same vibes from George. Jenny said that they would have to ask him to leave if they wanted them gone. But then Bobby changed her mind. After going for a walk to the nearby 7-11 with George. Oh, likable George. She was nervous to be alone with him at first. But when he didn't hit on her, it was anything inappropriate, she started to trust him. For fuck's sake.

That's still not a good reason. Let him just keep crashing your place. George bought groceries for the girls, supplied them with alcohol, acted like their older brother, gave him advice, also showed him a portfolio of photos of women in nightgowns and claimed he was working with them to make sure they felt more comfortable about their bodies. What? That's fucking crazy. Some guy shows you photos of half-naked women, just candid photos.

Claims he has them because he's running a, I don't know, sort of fucking female empowerment, body confidence program. You fucking run. That guy's full of shit. He's nuts. George also protected Sarah from a pushy guy who tried to sneak into bed with her, and he looked out for them when they went out to nightclubs. What's going on at these girls' apartment?

How did the guy try and sneak into bed with her? I have a lot of questions, a lot of concerns. Normally, George did not comment about the tight tops and short skirts. The girls wore when they went out. But one night, Sarah put on a tight black tank, and George asked her not to wear that, because it would send the wrong signals. When she hesitated, he told her, don't you know Mary Ann Polreich was dressed like that? Oh, my God, get him out of there.

The longer he lived with him, the more the girls wanted to get to know George, but per usual, he would not reveal much about himself. He did drop hints. He was an undercover cop, working secret jobs, you know, breaking into houses, getting evidence. Totally. That's how that's how works. Yeah, undercover cops, they, you know, they work as burglars oftentimes. Not that that couldn't happen, but come on. At the time, Bobby thought, we already had a prowler and a killer was loose, and we could use a cop under our roof. George claimed he was working the Polarike murder and brought home an information poster about

Marianne. Occasion, the girls also hung out with a young man named Damon, or excuse me, Damien Middleton, whom they'd gone to school with, right? Another recent high school grad, Damien was good at reading people, and he told these girls, after meeting George just one time that he fucking hated him, he said, quote, when I look at him, I get the deepest, darkest, most evil feeling I've ever gotten from a person. Yes, Damien. I'm a big Damian fan. Sadly, the girls did not listen to him, though. One night, Bobby and George were walking back from the supermarket when George pointed out an unmarked police vehicle outside their condo and said it was Earl and Jeff.

Bobby ran ahead of him to warn their friends. friends to hide the marijuana. George then brought the detectives inside. He really did know them. Introduced him as Detective Barnes and Gomez from the Bellevue PD. One of the detectives reassured the girls. They were not there for the weed. They just wanted to know about their friend Damien. Where did he live? What did he drive, etc. It was only later that Bobby learned that the police were looking for a man named Damon or Damien in connection with the murder of Marianne Polarike because George had told them to look into Damian Middleton, that motherfucker. Right? Damien had his number, didn't like him, so he pointed to the cops at Damien for a murder he had committed.

After a few weeks, George still living with the girls. Now started taking naps in Bobby's bed. And then sometimes they would kiss and cuddle, but he would walk away if things got too heated, you know, because he's a gentleman. Bobby knew that Tim, her boyfriend in Europe, would be angry. Yeah. Angry at her if he found out what was happening. She didn't know how to feel. She liked him. She loved him. But she was attracted to George. Bobby sat George down, told him that she had a boyfriend. and tended to be with him when he came back, and that George could not be there when Tim returned and George agreed. Unlike Bobby, Jenny and Sarah, their friend Susan Jetley,

never liked George. She told Jack Olson, the author later, nobody agreed with me. But it didn't take long to realize that George had not encountered Bobby and Jenny by accident. In the first days after we moved in, we'd had a midnight prowler, and Jenny and Bobby had told everybody at Denny's about it. We were really worried for a while. That's one reason we accepted George.

He said he was an undercover cop and he'd protect us. Jenny said he was sent from God. Later, I realized George had been our prowler. George engineered the whole thing. That's pretty fucking crazy. You break into somebody's house, then you intentionally like run into them in a public place like Denny's, and then you introduce yourself as a cop and start hanging around there and knowing that they want a cop around because someone you had broken into their house. When Susan saw that George had a gun, she freaked out, insisted to get it out of the condo.

George explained he was armed because he was working the Polaright case, gather an info for the police. Susan was outvoted, so George and his gun got to stay. When George invited the girls to the Mowgli House for a barbecue, Susan noticed that he was warm and affectionate with his sister Erica, but there was a lot of tension between him and Chris Mowgli and his step-dead Wanzel. By now, a month had passed since Mary Ann Polarike was murdered.

And the police had no leads. The media called the suspect the Crossroads Killer and the East Side Bundy. He would later be called the Charmer. The lines shrank at popular club. clubs like Papa Gaios and Black Angus now. In response, Black Angus launched a new ad campaign, directly addressing the fear in an attempt to turn things around. Here is a commercial from August of 1990.

No one looking for a fun night out of the town wants to get murdered, do they? You want to feel safe? Enjoy a nice steak. We're a loaded baked potato for this 899. Then cut loose with a cocktail. Listen to good music. laugh with great friends, and maybe meet an attractive and mysterious stranger to dance with or even go home with it.

But you don't want that stranger to kill you, do you? So come to Black Angus, where no one has been murdered, and where no one's a stranger, everyone's a friend. Yes, a body was found at our Bellevue location, but they weren't killed at that location. And that's the detail that matters. They were probably killed at Papa Gaios, if I had to guess. So stay away from that place. Come over here, where the crowd is always safe.

And the only thing getting killed is cows. Huh. All right. Okay, well, you know, good for them. You know, doing their best to try and get ahead of that. Bobby's boyfriend, Tim Ogle, came home from Europe on August 7, 1990. Bobby reminded George of his promise to move out, and he offered to move into Jenny's bedroom instead. Get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, I'll move out. I'll leave. I'll go to this next bedroom. I'll go down the hole. Totally good on the hole. Bobby said that was not good enough. Fucking George, true parasite, just attached himself to a new host and refuses to leave. I like this guy for a while when he's a kid. But I've hated this motherfucker for so long now in this timeline. Take away the murder. He's still just a piece of shit. Bobby was going to tell Tim everything. But a friend had already told him another guy was sleeping in Bobby's bed. Tim was furious, of course. But Bobby tried to explain that George was nothing more than a big brother. Hmm, no, Tim. Tim should have dumped Bobby. Now let's reconnect with someone else. In the early morning hours of August 8th, 1990, Tammy Grace, her roommate and several others went to Denny's in Bellevue to get a coffee after a night out at the Black Angus. Tammy was George Mike's girlfriend, right? Met her about two years earlier in the timeline George had. Tammy spotted George with several teens. Of course, it's not like he's 32 years old or anything. Tammy tried talking to George, but he snubbed her, saying she had mouthed off to his girlfriend. So now he couldn't trust her. About an hour later, on the morning of August 8th, three boys in East Bellevue were backyard camping, heard what sounded like a cat in pain, came from the direction of 35-year-old Carol Marie Beath's home, where she lived with her two young daughters. A handful of hours later

at 8.30 a.m., Carol's 13-year-old daughter, Kelly woke up, found the door to her mother's bedroom closed and locked, which surprised her. She went outside to the sliding glass door that led to the bedroom, saw that it was open, looked inside, saw her mother's lifeless body on the bed. That's a fucking horrific core memory. Kelly immediately called her father Paul, Carol's ex-husband. Paul arrived 10 minutes later, took a quick look, called the police to report a suicide, assuming Carol had killed herself. At 10 a.m., Detective Dale Foote received a call to report to the scene of a suicide.

Detective Foote recalled the following about the crime scene years later. There was blood on the floor, a naked body lay diagonally on a king-sized bed. I took a closer to look and went numb. No way in this world I expected to walk in on something like that now or ever. There's a million ways to kill somebody, but to do to a body what he had done, I couldn't make sense of it. I almost went into shock. The woman's crotch faced the bedroom door.

Her legs were spread and bent at the knees, almost touching at the heels. I thought no way this positioning is accidental. The killer wanted you to walk in and be hit with that sight. A shotgun barrel was inserted into her body. I'm looking for her insides everywhere, but then I'm thinking, hey, there's just a few blood smears on the walls and ceiling, so I realized the gun had not been fired. It was a prop.

Carol was wearing nothing but red high heels. A nightgown was laid out as if the killer intended to put her in it but change his mind. Her head was covered by a blue pillow. Holy shit. And her daughter was the one who saw her first. I hope she didn't see much of that. Paul B. told the police that he spoke to Carol on the phone the night before.

Didn't sound depressed or upset. Carol had a good job, was not behind on bills. Had a three-week trip to the Caribbean plan with her boyfriend, Tom Jones to look forward to. Carol's younger daughter, Jamie, was distraught, unable to talk. but Kelly, the 13-year-old who found Carol first, was calm and controlled, maybe in shock. In her interview, Kelly reported seeing something suspicious during the night. One of her friends had visited her at her bedroom window until 4.15 a.m. About 15 minutes later, Kelly was still awake in her bedroom when she heard someone walking down the hallway.

She raised up on one elbow, looked out the door from her top bunk, saw a man's silhouette holding a small flashlight. I thought it was her mom's boyfriend, a man named Tom Jones. Kelly knew Carol was also dating a guy named Dave, but Tom was the only one who entered the house late at night. The man shined the light into her sister's bedroom, then her bedroom as well. Kelly looked out the window for Tom's corvette but didn't see it. Kelly called out, Mom, but no one answered.

Kelly was exhausted from staying up late. She fell asleep, did not get up until just before she found her mother's body. Police believe the killer entered through the sliding glass door, left the same way after taking time to explore the house. Investigators believed Carol was asleep when she was attacked. She was struck repeatedly on the left side of the head with some type of weapon, some type of object. It had left 13 Y shapes on her body, about two inches long. Carol also had defensive wounds.

One blow had almost severed her little finger. God damn. All this was going on while her daughters were asleep in the same house. She had a large bruise on her left bicep. It looked like a bite. Two of her ribs were broken, shoved into her chest cavity. There were brutes on her right side indicating she had been kicked. There were blood smears all over her body on her bed, the floor, blood splatter on the ceiling and wall.

a vicious attack. The weapon that had been shoved inside, Carol's vagina, was a 20-gauge shotgun. Actually, Carol's shotgun. As investigators searched to find the killer, they came to learn that Carol Carol was an intelligent and likable woman who wanted companionship. She was spirited, outgoing, flirtatious, and happy. But lately, she had been grieving her sister who had recently died of cancer. She also had a difficult childhood.

Allegations of child molestation had divided her family. At the age of 20, she had married Paul Beath, a construction worker from Montana, they moved to Bellevue in 1977, divorced a decade later, and 87 after a long separation, but remained close. She worked as a bartender at Kachina Kachina, popular spot in Bellevue. A good mother frequently complained about not having the time she wanted for her daughters. Also enjoyed going out to clubs like Papa Gaios, where she never drank much, apparently. Neighbors reported that Carol kept up to $700 cash in Crown Royal Draw String bags, but a complaint that small amounts had been disappearing lately.

Yep, fucking George had been in there. There have been a surge in cat burglaries in the neighborhood before the murder. Detectives determined that five or six of the bags appeared to be missing from the open drawers of Carol's dresser. She was said to be extremely generous, maybe to a fault. She had allowed a few close friends to borrow her credit card to make big purchases. They were paying her back, monthly, interest-free, also loaned cash to those who needed it. She was skilled at her job. She knew how to calmly handle abusive customers and was apparently a crowd favorite.

Saddle Times reporter Nancy Montgomery wrote about her, Carol Marie Beath lived the same way as thousands of Bellevue women. She was divorced, worked hard to support herself, and had two daughters, and struggled with romantic relationships. Detectives were able to piece together her final evening. She got home from work around 7 p.m., made dinner for her daughters. Then she studied a book on scuba diving for her upcoming trip. At 9 p.m., she called her mom in Montana, and received two incoming calls during her

conversation with her mom. Second interruption was lengthy. Carol told her mom she'd call her back. 30 minutes after midnight, while her daughters were asleep, She drove to the south end of the city to pay a visit to a guy she was seen who was also, who was a bartender, drink soda with him until the restaurant closed at 2.15 a.m. Half hour later, one of the boys camping in her neighborhood,

a boy from the group of kids, one of whom visited her daughter that night. He said he saw her pull into her driveway as if she were in a hurry and slammed the car door. Light went on in her bedroom, and then she was not seen alive again. Detective Dale Foote initially believed that Tom Jones was her killer. again this is an alias Not the Welsh singer What's new pussycat? No, Tom Jones, a businessman

was Carol's steadiest boyfriend but they also each dated other people. Tom had been pressuring Carol recently to remortgage her house so he could invest the money for her in the stock market. There was tension between them and between Tom and Carol's ex-husband

Paul Beath who didn't care for him. Close friend reported that Carol sometimes disparaged Tom and his sexuality. Tom was also said to be very sensitive about the size of his penis. What is big deal? So I have a tiny shame, cock.

It's harmless. It bothered no one. Deserve no mockery. A former girlfriend had also offered the opinion that she considered him a potential killer. I mean, you know why that makes sense? I mean, does dick what small? I read a study recently.

98% of serial killers do have below average penis sizes. And average is said to be eight inches. Flacid. Eight inches flaccid. So if your man has a limp dick, less than eight inches long, well, you're fucking lucky to be alive right now and you need to run.

No, I made that up, of course. Tom had also recently received a bouquet of black roses from Carol and another woman. After they both learned, he was sleeping with the two of them. A bouquet came with a card that showed several bare backsides in the message, You're the biggest asshole of all. Wow. One of the women had also written Make Me Bigger Baby, which was apparently Tom's favorite line of bed.

I don't like Tom. That's a fucking cringy thing to say. That's not fun sex talk, is it? Make me bigger, baby. I don't know. You know, if you like it, I shouldn't shame you. but it creeps me out. Detective Foote also learned that Tom would show up drunk at Carol's house in early morning hours,

start arguments, also had previous arrests for DUI and domestic assault. Yeah, I don't care for Tom. Domestic assault. Tom drove a dark blue corvette. Of course he did. And on the night of the murder, a similar car was seen in the neighborhood by the boys who were backyard camping. Tom was supposed to meet Carol at 6.05 a.m. for a tanning session, didn't show up, suggesting to some that he knew she was dead.

He was also the only one of her known boyfriends who had not rushed to the crime scene. He was unaccounted for on the day her body was found until midnight. When he did show up, he said he went to Papa Gaios. God damn it, why? Is everyone fucking going to Papa Gaios? And Black Angus. He had gone there with another girlfriend and only just learned Carol was dead. He seemed drunk when he was taken in for a three-hour interrogation.

He was crying, hyperventilating, insisted he couldn't have done it. However, he had no clear-cut alibi, refused to take a polygraph or provide bite impressions. One point he claimed he might have had a blackout or spaced out, but that was not. enough for an arrest. Tom's a fucking mess. Please search Tom's car and house but found nothing incriminating. Detects his foot, skiing, and Hanson were convinced Tom was Carol's killer. I don't blame him. And then another man must have killed Mary Ann Polrike. Most members in their division agreed with them, but they were ordered by the superiors to keep open minds and continue looking for any and all new leads.

Meanwhile, back at Villa 156, Bobby DeGroot, recent high school grad, had successfully kicked George out. No easy feat with that leech. Later when she ran into him in town, he looked sad. Aw. Someone told the girls that a week after the Carol Beath murder, George had gotten drunk at Denny's, had started to bang his head against the wall, then freaked out, even further,

slapped a girl, and the cops were called. Bobby told George she missed having him around. Fuck, God damn it, Bobby. No. Then a few nights later, Jenny brought George to the condo for a drink. Fucking Jenny. He stayed until after midnight. And when Bobby woke up that night, George was asleep in her bed.

Oh, great. Now he's back. One evening that summer, he's not really back. George asked Bobby to drive him to Mercer Island for a treasure hunt. She didn't want to drive that far, but George said it was important because people owed him money and he had it hidden in the woods. Normal.

He claimed he needed the money to go visit his mom, who was a university dean in San Francisco now, who was going to meet him in San Diego. Bobby brought some friends, and they all headed out, excuse me, to a wooded area on Mercer Island. He gave her very specific directions as to where to drive, and then George came out of the woods with a damp sack.

Inside, totally normal. was 108 silver dollars and some smaller change and he had a roll of hundreds. This guy is so fucking weird. Just burying silver dollars and a $100 bills out of the woods like he's a fucking pirate

or old outlaw or something. After this, Jenny took Bobby aside, told her the trip to San Diego was a cover. The truth was George was involved in a bad drug bust and he had to go to jail now to cover the cop's asses because that makes sense. Sometimes when you work undercover,

you have to go inside to cover other cops' mistakes. his lawyer deferred a sentence until December 4th. George intended to report to jail September 14th and claimed he had, and would claim he would, you know, he had misread the papers. As George was preparing dinner that night, Bobby took notice of a poster of Marianne Polaright, taped to the wall,

and newspaper articles about Carol Beath on the counter and fridge. Bobby said she wished the police would catch the killer, and George said he couldn't believe how stupid the cops were so far. Quote, it's basic crime detection. Did you read this, hon? Look at the similarities between the two women. same hairstyle same length in color same age more or less same backgrounds they both hang around bars picked up men couldn't the cop see the connection uh bobby's boyfriend tim arrived that evening not happy george is still at the apartment uh yeah i bet tim had some low self-esteem he's been putting

up with a lot of bullshit with bobby he did call bobby the next day broke up with her there you go tim uh bobby didn't take the breakup well she started screaming throwing things swearing jenny sarah and susy came into a room to console her george stuck his head and i guess he is fucking kind of living there now. Susie told him to get out because it was none of his business. When Bobby got to work that morning, she called George, told him that she did want him out again.

And when Bobby got home that evening, he was gone again. Now back to the investigation. Detective Marvin's scene. Got a break scheme. In the Marianne Pullwright case, when a friend of Damon's daughter in Redmond, California,

recognized him from a composite picture in a newspaper. 22-year-old Damon, the guy who Marianne stopped seen after he complained that she wanted his body, was brought in for an interview and commented that the photo did look like him. He told Skeen he had met Marianne at Parker's Nightclub in Seattle,

later ran into her at Papagayo's and another club on nights when her favorite local band was playing, but they'd never gone on an official date. He claimed Marianne pestered him with her phone calls. He was not into her, so he was not concerned

when she stopped talking to him. He was shocked when he heard she was murdered. Damon provided samples of his hair and saliva and was ultimately ruled out as a suspect and now let's check back in with George. Oh, Georgie, August 30th, 1990. He gathered a group of friends at the Motel 6 in the Totem Lake neighborhood of Kirkland, where he'd been living since getting kicked out of Villa 156 again.

The group planned to go to Vancouver the next morning for Labor Day weekend, and George always desperate to be the big man, was paying for the whole thing. He said he wanted to have a good time with some friends before he had to take a new job in San Diego. He invited the estranged condo girls and two other women he had met at Denny's. It's fucking Papagayo's Black Angus and Denny's. A few minutes after 10 p.m., George left the motel, returned with wine coolers, and snacks from nearby market. The group drank, talked, and watched TV until after midnight, August 31st. At that time, George and Bobby began to hug and kiss, but then George said he had to go meet someone.

He left at 3.30 a.m. wearing dark clothing in a baseball cap with his signature pocket flashlight. Dude had murder on his mind again. Lieutenant Bob Hayes, a public information officer for the Bellevue Fire Department, woke up about 90 minutes later, shortly after 5 a.m. for a little drive with his wife, Patricia. First, he led out their dog. She was immediately on high alert and barking, focused on the backyard. It was dark except for a dim glow from the street. Hayes looked down the hill, saw the silhouette of a man holding something look like a shirt,

a bag or a pillowcase. He yelled, the man took off. By the time Hayes reached the bottom of his deck steps, he didn't see anything, and then he headed to where the man had been. As he sprinted across his backyard, Hayes thought he heard something thud against the back fence. It turned out the prowler had used a truck tire. to jump onto a neighbor's, into the neighbor's property. Hayes then heard a rustling sound, saw a dark shadow that faded into the darkness.

Hayes ran back inside, called 911. A patrol officer arrived at 543 a.m. She searched the backyard and left at 601. Hayes felt relieved that his basement tenant Andrea Randy Levine was undisturbed by all the noise. Perhaps she was sleeping in or perhaps was away for the long weekend. Her car was still parked in front of the house, but he thought that maybe someone picked her up.

Later that morning, Hayes knocked on her door to tell her about the prowler. Randy didn't answer. So he let himself into the apartment. He checked the purse on the kitchen counter, saw that her keys were gone. But he wasn't worried. This incident was the latest in a series of incidents in the Kingsgate neighborhood, less than a mile through the woods from the Totem Lake Motel 6, important detail. Randy had been scared by the burglaries and reports of prowling.

She had been sleeping with the baseball bat, complained that someone was sneaking in stealing her money and personal mementos. A few days before the August 31st incident, Randy had called Bob and asked if he was outside her bedroom window. He told her, yes, he had been, but it wasn't a big deal. He'd just been looking in and kind of casually jerking off, as was his right, legally, as a landlord. No, that's absurd. He said it wasn't him.

She insisted someone was there and that his dog was barking at the prowler. She was too afraid to get out of her bed and called the police. He got up, looked around, but there was no one outside. Right? Same fucking thing again. He scopes these places out. A neighbor later reported. She heard two men talking outside of Randy sliding.

door, Hayes discussed it with Randy, promised he and Patricia would keep their door unlocked at night in case Randy needed to run upstairs for help. Randy had always been nervous about the basement unit because Bob's mother had died in there. When the hazes were away on vacation, she sometimes called neighbors and reported hearing strange noises in the night. She thought the place was haunted. Again, that comes up, that detailed, a haunted thing. Other than her nervousness, the Hayes thought Randy was a normal, hardworking, responsible young woman, but her picker seemed to be broken with men. She didn't often date men with the best character. She recently had told Patricia Hayes

She was trying to be less involved with men in general And it had been several months Since they had seen a man enter or leave her apartment. The same night the Bob saw someone in their yard George Russell had returned to his motel room Three hours after he had left At approximately 6.30 a.m. on August 31st With breakfast for everybody.

He then checked that. That's so fucked up. He just fucking brutally murdered somebody And then just like, I'm just go grab breakfast for everybody. Be all cheery. He then checked out at 10. 30, the motel, the group piled into Damien Middleton station wagon to head to Vancouver. The weekend passed, and a blur of fun and revelry. George stalked the hotel room in Vancouver with alcohol before he went out and met with two sex workers.

Okay. Group returned to Bellevue. September 2nd, 1990. Group was dropped off at the condo at Villa 156. Jenny and Bobby welcomed him back. Susie gently avoided him. Lately, he'd been bothering her more than usual because he kept bringing up the murders, as if he had inside info. He kept insisting one man had killed both women.

He was also dropping hints that he thought their friend Damian Middleton was involved. Uh-huh. Yeah, I was surprised that fucking Damian went with this motherfucker to Vancouver. Like, why, if this guy's the most evil guy you've ever seen, why are you hanging out with him more? It bothered Susie tremendously, as it should have, that he also called the victim's sluts who used men and said he had no sympathy for them because, quote, they dumped men and deserved what they got. Jesus. Baby boy's mommy issues running deep. On the morning of September 3rd, three days after seeing the man in his yard, the night George snuck off from the motel 6,

Lieutenant Bob Hayes called 911 to report that he'd found his tenant's dead body in the basement. He spent the weekend installing motion detector lights and peeked into Randy's apartment a few different times. Nothing was disturbed. But on Monday, September 3rd, his wife Patricia noticed that one of Randy's cats was acting hungry and that she couldn't find the other one. She was surprised no food or water had been left out for him, and she also smelled an odor that led her to suspect that the missing cat had died. She entered Randy's bedroom to check, saw that the bedding was disheveled, there was a bloody pillow on the floor, she pulled the sheet back a couple inches, saw Randy's long hair and bare shoulder, screamed and ran outside. Detective Larry Peterson of the King County PD responded to the report. He noted that Randy's body had been posed, with her legs spread diagonally across the bed.

One arm rested on a blue pillow. Part of her brain had seeped out of her skull. The killer had also placed a white plastic vibrator inside of her mouth. under her left arm was a copy of the book More Joy of Sex, a Lovemaking Companion to the Joy of Sex. Randy's body was covered in small stab wounds, some no deeper than a nick.

They appeared to have been made after death. The Salon also post-mortem, drew a game of tick-tac toe in a right breast. Some of the wounds were in straight lines or patterns. A hand was outlined on her thigh. There were no knives at all in Randy's apartment, meaning the killer had taken what he had used, so they couldn't be identified.

Randy's cause of death was identified as blunt impact injuries to the head and fractures of vault and base of skull. Damn, she had three long scratches on her back, made by a knife or a fingernail. There were three significant stab wounds in her anal area and a total of 231 small wounds on her body. Motherfucker.

When detectives looked into her background, Randy's friends described her as a class act. She enjoyed the outdoors, going to parties, the Seattle Mariners. She was a quiet person, sometimes a little unsure of herself, but became confident and flirtatious after a few drinks.

She had recently told her friends about the prowler in her neighborhood. The night before she died, she met her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brent Carlson at a restaurant, and they discussed going camping in the San Juan Islands over the weekend,

but they put off that decision until the next day. Randy drove home alone just after 10 p.m. was not seen alive again. Randy's close friend, Kathleen Delmar, was asked to walk through her apartment

and see if anything was missing. She noted that Randy's favorite amethyst ring was unaccounted for. The coroner said it was not on Randy's finger. Kathleen insisted that Randy would have never taken it off willingly. Someone had taken a trophy. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, September 5th, George's friend Tammy Grace was out at a baby shower. When George showed up at her apartment while her two roommates were home,

Tammy and her roommates had been living at Villa 156 since April. There were just a few units from Bobby de Groot and her friends had no idea George had moved in with the girls. Tammy's roommate, Nicole, saw George look into the windows. He banged on the front door, on the back, tried to open three windows. Nicole and her roommate Lori called 911, but George was gone when the cop showed up. Tammy remembered how George had violently assaulted Mindy Charlie, decided to call the Bellevue PD now. She spoke to a detective, mentioned that George claimed he was an undercover narcotics detective. The detective called confirmed George did not work for Bellevue. I called her back, detective. Later Tammy spoke to Mindy Charlie at the Black

Angus, right? Back at the Black Angus. She had a copy of the newspaper with a story about the Randy Levine murder. Tammy told her that George tried to break into her house, and Mindy replied, I wouldn't doubt that George is the killer. Tammy mentioned that she had heard that George once tried to barge into Randy's house. Mindy said, oh my God, you don't suppose he's killing women he had a problem with, do you? Later that night,

21-year-old Dacia Jubanville went into the Denny's, hoping to run into her new friend, George Russell. Dacia was irritated that George had stood her up over the Labor Day weekend. When he arrived to Denny's, he said he had to go to Canada, and he gave her an amethyst ring as an apology. Claimed he got it on his trip. Meanwhile, detectives Dale Foot and Marvin Skeen

had been looking at Lieutenant Bob Hayes with suspicion. Why had he checked on Randy's apartment so many times over the weekend? Did he make up the story about the prowler as a cover? Then Skeen got a call from Seattle Detective Rick Buckland who said, hey, Marv, I might have something for you to look at. A guy named George Russell Jr. was posing as a cop over here. He had a gun that was stolen 10 blocks from Andrea Levine's apartment. We think he was doing cat burglaries in her neighborhood,

used to live nearby with a girl named Mindy. I talked to her. he beat her up and acted squirley. Skeen usually discounted these kind of tips, but he respected Detective Buckland. However, he was still focused on suspect Tom Jones. Skeen suggested that Buckland contact Detective Larry Peterson about the Levine case and come to their strategy meeting

at the Maple Valley Precinct. On September 6, 1990, 20 investigators from eight jurisdictions, including the State Attorney General's office, met at the Maple Valley substation. They were there to discuss the three Eastside murders and whether or not they were connected. Rick Buckland suspected that, George Russell was the common threat. Buckland later recalled that he stood up and asked if there had been

any car prowls in the murder neighborhoods by a suspected black male or any reports of nighttime burglaries while people were in the house. A few people looked at him like he was crazy until someone said there had been a ton of car prowls in recent weeks. Someone else said that around the time of the Carol Beath's murder, an older couple woke up to a black male inside their home and that he had a flashlight. Buckland knew that was George's signature. After the meeting, Buckland spoke with a few other investigators. He insisted that the killer had to be a nut, somebody like Russell. He brought up Georgia's habits, living with teenagers, hiding things in the woods, creeping around at night, beaten women. Also argued that the three murders were connected even if they couldn't yet tell the press. He said,

quote, look at the similarities, the posing, the time spent with the bodies, trying to hide the faces, degradation, the age and type of victims, the type of places where they hung out, the method of killing. Think of this mathematically. If you don't have a serial murderer, then you've got two or three different psychopaths working the same area at the same time. How many times do you see cases like this in 10 years, let alone, three of them in a few months? Shortly after this meeting, Detective Mike Bechtold of Bellevue, quote, finally woke up from my sleep in his words. He recalled that 11 weeks earlier he had watched George escort a drunk woman out of Papa Gaios.

He hadn't thought much of it at the time, nor had he given it much thought to the angry man Smitty who was looking for his truck. When Detective Marv Skeen told him they were looking at his, his friend George Russell, his quote, whole brain lit up. Beck Dold informs skiing that George left Papagayo that very night with the woman in someone else's truck. He didn't know the name of the truck owner, but he promised to look into it. Slowly, the pieces are coming together. All of them are pointed to George Russell. On September 10th, 1990, Detective Rick Buckland called Tammy Grace now, who told him George regularly hung out of Papa Gaios and Denny's and had been

permanently banned from Black Angus. And as he was taken note, she mentioned that George was always giving rings and bracelets to his friends and that he still hung out with teenage girls even though he was 32 years old. Also mentioned that she had heard he was moving to California soon. Following day, Tammy's boyfriend, Mike Weisenberg, made his decision to call the police. He and his roommates had begun to suspect that George was involved in Randy Levine's murder. Remember, they were friends with Randy, had introduced Randy to George. Mike felt sure that George was the killer. Mike called him, was connected to Wayne Slater now. He said he knew who killed Randy. He mentioned that Randy had suspected George of stealing money from her purse before she had died.

The detectives then asked Mike if he knew someone called George and Mike, which was his own nickname. Mike said he knew the guy pretty well, could put him in touch. He ended up telling the detective everything he knew about George. At almost the same time, Tammy Grace was being interviewed by Detective Dennis Dingfield in Bellevue. That's a pretty funny name. Detective Dingfield. Better than dingling. Anyway, Detective Dingfield and Bellevue, who was assigned to locate George for questioning. Dingfield gave Tammy his number, so hard not to say dingling, told her to contact him directly

if George ever tried anything. On September 12th, George and Bobby were together again now, hugging and kissing, as usual. For fuck's sake, Bobby, snap out of it. Oh, to be 18. Bobby got frustrated with him when George pulled away again. Dude won't or can't have sex with a young woman who actually cares about him, I guess. He's too fucked up inside. Also present in the home were George's friend Cheryl Lynn Barthow, Jenny, and Wendtow.

one of her boyfriends. When Bobby pushed George for answers as to why he always shut down when things got hot and heavy, he became frustrated and left with Cheryl. Around 11 that night, in her nearby unit, Tammy Grace was alone in her apartment when somebody knocked on her bed to window. She crawled into a corner, called 911. Two officers checked out her condo, discovered that the screen on her sliding glass door was off its channel.

As Tammy was telling the officers about the prior break-in, her roommates came home and said George was out front with a girl in the car. In a car. Tammy identified George as the person who had tried to break in. one of the officers now ran out the front door. Tammy was terrified. He was convinced George was going to talk his way out of it and then he would then come back and kill her. Smooth talking, George, of course, had an excuse. Said he lived in the complex, was going out with a friend for coffee, said his roommates could vouch for him. Tammy was afraid and frustrated, but fortunately

George had outstanding warrants. So despite his excuse, he was still arrested on two Seattle warrants from his time prowling around Pike Place Market and two no-bail commitment orders for criminal trespass on Mercer Island. Detective Foote arrived at the police station at 3 a.m. to question George about the Carol Beath murder. And Foot later recalled, George was very collected. You could see this was old stuff to him. He seemed concerned about projecting the right image. He's cool, your uncool. He was respectful within that need. I was glad that he agreed to talk, but I didn't get much out of him. George confirmed he had been kicked out of the Black Angus, that he was acquaintances with Randy Levine and Mary Ann Polarike,

but he said he had never met Carol Beath or visited her workplace, Cochina-Cachina. Detective Marvin skiing and Detective Larry Peterson also had a turn with George a couple hours later. According to skiing, quote, he tried to give the impression that he was having an easy time, but his body language told us different. He's sitting in his chair, feet firmly planted, body rigid. He said that he helped Randy Levine when her truck broke down, and he saw her at a party at Papa Gaios. When he stopped at her house one night, she invited him to go out to dinner, but he declined. He learned about her murder from the paper. George mentioned that one night Randy got drunk at a bar. There was an argument about her between Robert Zurich and Mike Weisenberg. Scheen knew he was

intentionally trying to establish other suspects now. George also claimed he met Marianne Polrike at Papagaios, but she wasn't his type. On the night she disappeared, he said he was with friends, Alan Israel, and Smitty. He told him he had borrowed Smitty's truck before the club closed to get a beer at 7-11, then visited a female friend, but she didn't hear him knocking. He was gone 45 minutes, misconnections with Smitty when he tried to bring them back the truck, provided Smitty's full name, Smith Maclean, and his address and phone number. When George was asked to give samples of his blood, saliva, and hair, though, according to Skeen, quote, bang.

His whole attitude changed. He jumped up like he was ejected, crossed his arms over his chest and said, shouldn't there be somebody else in this room? George said he now wanted an attorney, and the interview was over. After the interview, the three lead detectives sat down with other investigators to discuss the commonalities in the murders. all the victim's faces were covered. All were abused by a foreign object. All were killed by blunt force trauma.

All were nude and posed on their backs. All had been in a bar not long before their death. All were regulars at the nearby crossroads mall. All were sexually active Caucasians. Clothes were completely or partly missing with all of them. And rings had been taken from at least two. The detectives talked to Dr. John Liebert, an expert on sex crimes. And Liebert strongly believed that one killer was behind all three murders.

The killer was a spree killer, a necrophiliac, and sociopathic. He lacked a sense of empathy and sought out sexual satisfaction by abusing women dead or alive. In these cases, he said the victims were not the primary targets. The killer who hated women was symbolically destroying someone else when he killed them, of course. Mama. Same morning, the girls at Villa 156 were getting ready to go to their respective jobs when George called and warned them. The cops were about to show up to search the place. He wanted Jenny to take his belongings and bring her to their own.

bring them to her parents' house for safekeeping. He told Bobby that detectives were suspicious because he had known two of the victims personally, but they realized he was innocent after questioned him, and they were just going to the motions to exclude him as a suspect. Shortly after 2 p.m. on September 13, detective's foot, skiing, and Peterson approached Susan Jetley at her workplace. She didn't have much to tell him, but they didn't tell her why they were asking so many questions about George. When Susie was at her second job that night, she decided she wanted to help however she could, and she wanted it for roommates had already gotten rid of all the evidence. So she called a friend for help. They waited until Sarah, Jenny,

and Bobby were gone, and then they found Jenny's room littered with papers and other personal items. They put all of George's stuff in a duffel bag and handed it over to the Bellevue PD. Well done, Susie. Shortly before 11 a.m. on September 14th, the group of investigators returned to Velaide 156 to search for more evidence. The condo girls showed them around, discussed living with George, pointed out some of his personal items that Susie hadn't already taken. Footon Peterson drove over to Mercer Island to speak to Juan Zell and Chris Mowbly then. And Chris explained how George put up a wall when anyone asked about his childhood or his feelings in general, that George was raised by his grandmother and his aunts when his mother decided she could not care for him,

that he had always felt like a fifth wheel and believed his grandmother only took him out of obligation, that he had felt deserted and unwanted and harbored resentment towards not only his mother but women in general. Please talk to all the characters we've met throughout this timeline, Mindy Charlie, Tammy Grace, Mike Weisenberg, etc. etc. They talked to employees of the Black Angus, Papagallos, Mercer Island police officers, briefs the detectives, about Georgia's record on the island when he was a kid. Police and former roommates handed over some of George's literature. Stuff like Ted Bundy, conversations with the killer. Bundy, the deliberate stranger, two of a kind, the hillside stranglers, various spy thrillers, detective novels, pornot tapes, and more. Despite the extensive dossier on George, despite how much he looked like he was 100% their guy, they had no hard evidence of his guilt. He had a firm connection to Randy Levine, a weak connection to Mary Polrike, no link to Carol Beath.

There was a receipt showing George bought a new pair of pants and a shirt on the morning of Marianne's murder, but that was all the investigators had at the time. But then, September 17th, Detective Skeen and Dingfield, fucking dingling. Come on, dingling. Finally find Smith McLean at an apartment building in Kirkland, old Smitty. He'd been difficult to reach because he didn't live at home, and his mom was hard of hearing, didn't use the phone. George likely had that in mind when he gave police Smithy's name. name. Smitty wanted to help the police. He didn't remember the exact date George borrowed his truck, but he knew it was the night before his sister had a yard sale, so they put it together. He recalled the disgusting stain on the seat, the smell when he got the truck back. He still had

detailed, uh, excuse me, he had detailed the truck four times since the incident. The car was pristine, and the detectives agreed that no evidence could possibly be left behind, but they wanted to search it just to be safe. Smitty brought his truck in on October 11th. Despite being instructed not to, he had just washed it again because it was, quote, his baby. took four hours of searching to find anything. Detective Skeeing and mechanic Kim Svidron peeled apart the layers of upholstery on the pristine seats. A faint brown spot was found on the gauze backing on the driver's side

with a matching stain on the foam underneath and it looked like blood. The stains were taken to the state crime lab for advanced testing to see if the blood matched Marianne Polreich. Towards the end of 1990 now, while George is still in jail, test results start coming in. The semen found in Marianne Polarike's body matched George's blood type. But the sample could have been contaminated. A hair found on Randy Levine's body belonged to an African-American person, as did hairs found in pubic comings from Marianne Polrike.

It was possible three hairs found on Carol Beesbed came from an African-American person as well. The information was promising, but inconclusive, not nearly enough. The Washington State Crime Lab did a few more test determined that the hair found on Randy Levine's body was a, quote, buckled body hair, which exhibits many of the same microscopic characteristics as the control pubic hair samples from George Russell. Mr. Russell cannot be excluded as a source of this hair. But, you know, it's not definitely him. Investigator still searching for Carol B's missing diamond ring. Her ex-husband was able to provide pictures of the rings, which were then distributed. Finding Randy's missing amethyst's ring was also proving to be difficult. Detective Foote was finally able to link George

to Carol B's after speaking to G.B. Coffin, that former Black Angus bartender, who had had George permanently banned. She revealed that George hated her after she had had him banned, and she believed he dumped Marianne's body to, quote, get even. She believed he killed Carol because she was one of her best friends, and he had seen them together. He gave them a dirty look when he saw them talking about him shortly before Marianne was killed. Then around Christmas time, Laura Green, George's former underage girlfriend, received a long letter from the King County Jail. The letter fondly recalled a good time she and George had a Mercer Island, alluded to serious conditions, suggested she contact his friend Lynn Brown. A few days later, Laura read the paper, saw that George was a suspect in the East Side murders, and she knew manipulative old George was trying to revive old feelings so she'd stand up for him in court. And then more results continue to come in. A private lab performed DNA testing concluded that the blood found in Smith-McLean's truck, old Smitty, was a DQ alpha subtype found in only 6% of the white population, including Mary Ann Polrike. The sperm found in Mary Ann's body was found in just 8% of the black population, including George Russell.

They're getting closer, but it's still not enough. January 4th, 1991 now. Detective Marvin Skeen presented his findings to the King County prosecutor. He believed the Marianne Polarike murder was unplanned, but the others were premeditated. According to Skein's theory of the crime, George convinces Marianne to join him in Smitty's truck for a drink. He wants sex, and we know from her personality she would resist. He loses his temper and kills her. Now he has a big problem, a dead body in the truck.

George is a thinker, and he still remembers being 86th by a G. coffin, so he offloads the body behind the black Angus and makes sure it gets maximum media attention by posing her as though she's in her coffin. The whole east side starts buzzing about the killing, just the kind of attention George wanted. But before he can get to his real target, which is G.B., she skips town. She actually moved to Hawaii. He starts thinking, well, what about a substitute? What about a friend? That's when he murders Carol Beath in her sleep. He's already been burglarizing her place at night. Then he sets up an alibi with five or six kids in his motel room, sneaks out and blitzes Randy Levine the same way, asleep and helpless.

She had rebuffed him twice, and he had some kind of goofy idea that she was cheating on one of his friends. That was more than enough to set him off. The prosecutor attorney agreed on January 10, 1990, the day before George would have been released from jail, despite a lack of hard evidence, he's charged with the first-degree murder of Marianne Polarike. This gave the police more time to investigate. The prosecutor warned that the forensic findings in Marianne's case still fell short of beyond

a reasonable doubt, and George would probably walk if nothing else served. There was not yet enough evidence in the Levine and Beath cases. Many of the people, Detective Dennis Dingfield, oh, fucking dinghling, tried to call, had not answered. He was surprised when George's fling, Dacia Jubanville, called him back. She described the amethyst ring George gave her as an apology gift. Fuck yeah. But she said she gave the ring away to a friend named David Weiss because she was afraid of George after he'd been arrested. And she thought David had left town.

Damn it. David's mom then revealed that he was on a hitchhiking vacation with a girlfriend and could not be reached, they were heading to the Florida Keys to swim with dolphins at the Dolphin Reach Institute and Marathon Shores. It took several days, but finally on February 21st, Detective Larry Peterson spoke to David Weiss on the phone. He confirmed that Dacia Juvenville introduced him to George Russell, but that they weren't close. Dacia had given him a ring with a purple stone a few months ago. When they finally got to Florida, they were out of money, so he sold his guitar and the ring in Key West at a pawn shop called Uncle Sam's. Jesus Christ. These poor detectives, nothing's

fucking easy when it comes to getting evidence in this case. Peterson got in contact with Lieutenant Frank Sowers of the QSPD, who knew the owner of Uncle Sam's pawn shop, a dude named Robert Bedakian. He was an honest guy, by some miracle Bodakian found the fucking ring. And the transaction slip. Now all Peterson needed to do was prove it was Randy's ring. Luckily, Randy's sister-in-law, Rhonda Levine, lived in Orlando.

She was the one who gave Randy the ring, would know whether or not it was hers. Randy's father, Les Levine, also lived near Orlando, immediately left to Key West to see the ring, bringing Rhonda with him. Next afternoon, they called and confirmed, yes, this was Randy's ring. Now, finally, there's a concrete link between George and Randy Levine. Prosecutors Rebecca Rowe and Jeffrey Baird still thought the cases looked weak, though. They knew the defense was going to poke holes in their evidence, so they decided to put all three cases together for the strongest chance at a conviction.

One confidential report noted that three cases had to be tried together because they could not stand alone. The Carol Beath case gained strength when Susan Jetley and a woman named Shea Wilson informed police that George had mentioned. committed to encountering Carol at her workplace, refuting his earlier claims that he had never met her. Technicians then confirmed that the hairs found in Carol's bed were African American, as suspected earlier. Behind the scenes, detectives still trying to find George's associate Steve Crandall for a routine interview. Crandall, one of the many people on their list, and would prove to be a key witness. Detective Dale Foote, able to catch Steve at his workplace. Among the questions he asked was, have you ever seen George with any jewelry?

Steve said, yep. During the summer, George had tried to sell him a diamond ring for $30. Steve did not end up buying it, but was able to draw a picture. Footnew right away. The picture was a picture of Carol Beath's ring. With this web of evidence, George was formally charged with the murders of Carol Beath and Randy Levine on March 4th, 1991. Bellevue and King County authorities officially announced that the three murders with the work of one serial killer. At the time, George was the only serial killer ever charged in Washington State. The Green River Killer, Gary Clean Ween Ridgeway, still a decade away from being arrested.

Ted Bundy, of course, had not been arrested for the final time, or had been arrested, excuse me, for the final time, not in Washington but in Florida. East Side Week newspaper secured the first interview with George. Reporter Julie Garner tried to get info about his childhood. He didn't give much. George was able to assert his innocence, claiming he was an agent for the East Side Narcotics Task Force. He just won't quit with that bullshit, and then he had an alibi for the murders. On March 5th, the Seattle Post Intelligencer published the most in-depth article on George's background. featuring interviews from various family members that we covered at the beginning of the timeline.

It was reported that George's mother was now married to Dr. Robert Corrigan, former chancellor of the University of Massachusetts in Boston, current president of San Francisco State University. The two had married in 1975. They would actually stay married until his death in 2024, and he would be president of San Francisco State University from 1988 all the way to 2012. Crazy that she was living the life of a heralded academic in San Francisco, undoubtedly a multi-millionaire before he'd been president, Bob had been

Chancellor again at UMass in Boston for a decade while her son, who she straight up abandoned, was bouncing from couch to couch, arrest to arrest, then murder to murder up in Seattle. In Bob's obituary for the San Francisco Chronicle, he was spoken of as a man who arguably did more for higher education in the Bay Area than anyone else in recent

memory. His wife, Joyce, was listed as an arts patron. The obituary also referenced that she had served on the boards of both the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera. These were fucking big-time players in the Bay Area and was still living in the couple's fabulous home in the neighborhood of Forest Hill,

one of the most affluent neighborhoods in one of the most expensive cities in America. George's sister, Erica, was quoted in the obituary. George was not, not even mentioned at all, like he does not exist. Joyce could not be reached for comment after George's arrest. What a fucking crazy skeleton in her closet. God, I wish I knew more about the true relationship

between her and her son. Despite all her accomplishments and the life she had built for herself, it sure seems like, Where George was concerned, she just couldn't be fucking bothered. George's trial started September 13, 1991, lasted five weeks. Court reporter William Kramer called it the most gruesome trial I've seen in 21 years. Deputy King County prosecutor Jeff Baird pointed out that George was acquainted with each victim that he had told friends the victims were sluts who used men.

The defense attack police procedures questioned the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses. Public defender Brad Hampton told the jury that if George were in a serial killer, there would have been more victims. Hanson also claimed that Carol B.'s' boyfriend, who left his fingerprint on a soda can in her house, was the one who killed her. However, famed FBI profiler, John Douglas, we've mentioned him in many episodes, testified that there was a single killer bringing the FBI's credibility to the prosecution's case. The jury heard that material from semen found on Mary Ann Polrike matched George and 8% of the

population. The genetic material from a bloodstain left in the truck, George borrowed, and the night Mary Ann was killed matched her in 7% of the people. of the population. Fibers matching the carpets in the truck, George borrowed, also found around her body. Witnesses testified that Marianne and George knew each other were both at Papagayo's, the night of the murder. The condo girls, they were divided in their testimony. Jenny Graves testified that she and George were good friends, but she did acknowledge that he went out late at night and dark clothes often, that he claimed to be an undercover cop, which he was not, also had money, he had crowned royal

bags, and was preoccupied with murder. She also testified that George did not speak about Randy Levine in a positive light. Bobby DeGroote testified they were friends, maybe more, but George never tried anything inappropriate with her. Susan gently testified that George was a fucking piece of shit. No. She said George was an acquaintance of Carol Beath. Also testified that Randy Levine dated one of his friends, and he said cruel things about her

calling her a whore who used men, despite no real smoking gun, evidence-wise. On October 25, 1991, George was found guilty of first-degree murder. in the Marianne-Polwright case, an aggravated first-degree murder in the cases of Randy Levine and Carol Beath. The jury deliberated for 22 hours over four days, and Black Angus had a new commercial out within days of the verdict. Howdy, everybody.

Did you hear the good news? George, the Charmer, the Eastside Killer Russell, has been convicted. He's guilty of three murders, two of whom were regular customers of ours, and we're guilty, too. of offering the lowest steak prices west of the Cascades. For the rest of the year, you can get a steak for as little as $5.99 and a loaded baked potato for just $0.99.

In our nightclub, the square cow fun bar, safer than ever. Can we say the same for Papa Gaios? No, we cannot. If there's a new serial killer in town, he's probably sitting at the bar there now, drinking an overpriced watered-down cocktail, and he definitely ain't enjoying no steak. Black Angus, where the only thing getting killed is the cows. God, good for them. You know what? They make good commercials. They make some good commercials. They make some good commercials. Not a bad one. November 27, 1991, George is sentenced to life without parole plus 29 years. He declined to speak at a sentencing hearing.

In one of several interviews after the sentencing, George suggested to K-O-M-T-V that the serial murders were not a big deal. Oh, fucking, no biggie. No biggie. That's like his. his fucking slogan. It's no biggie. He said not to be desensitized or anything, but this area for years since Bundy had and everything, has had astronomical amounts of bodies being found in the woods or in clumps or whatever. It's something that's in the paper every day. It's almost common. That's a crazy rationalization. Calm that, everybody. Come on. Yeah. Okay. I serial killed. Fucking so what. Happens all the time around here. No biggie. George remains incarcerated to this day in Washington State at the Clallum Bay Correction Center

under the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula. He's 68 years old. I'm sure he's fucking dying to hang out teenagers. He once described prison as a college dorm, saying, I just put on my headphone, get a book, and I'm back in school. I play a lot of basketball. I coach our Christian basketball team.

It's weird. Oh, yeah, it's probably a big Christian now. It's weird with my broken femur and snapped tendons and all my injuries. I probably jump only two inches less than I did 10 years ago. Fuck, fuck off. Cool story, bro.

Cool story. Dude still thinks he's hot shit. I wish somebody would kill him. I bet he constantly holds court. with a bunch of much younger inmates, right? Just charming them into thinking he's fucking king shit, just like he was, but not really back in high school. Let's get out of this timeline.

Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. The east side killer, the charmer, George Russell. I hate that he killed through him, of course, but glad that his murder spree lasted less than one summer. Killed all his victims between late June and late August 1990. Had he not gotten caught?

I mean, he almost certainly would have killed a lot more people. He was just killing a rapid rate. Why did he do it? Mostly, it seems, because he was filled with rage over his mom, right? That he refused to ever just talk about or deal with. He's never, to my knowledge, spoken terribly about her. Never truly acknowledged how much it hurt him as a kid for her to not want him. You know, I shit on deadbeat dads a lot for not sticking around.

And, you know, George had a deadbeat dad as well. Who's never around. But obviously, you can have a deadbeat mom, too. Even a super successful one. You know, they can also bounce. I wish I knew more about Joyce. She came from very little. She built quite a life for herself.

But the way she built it, it seems like Georgie was collateral damage. Was it just a lot easier to keep climbing if she didn't have to raise George? What's the real story there? I mean, she did take care of Erica. Why her or not him? We'll probably never know. Good reminder, though, just to love your kids, even the difficult ones, make them feel special, build them up, be there for them. Because nothing to seem can fuck up a person more than giving them strong mommy or daddy issues.

Or both. maybe George still would have ended up becoming a monster, had both his parents stayed in his life, but I highly doubt it. Time for the takeaways. Time suck. Top five takeaways. Number one, George Russell grew up feeling unwanted.

His dad was never in the picture. Mom essentially abandoned him a few times, left him in the care of his grandma when he was a infant. Several years later, she retrieved him to go live with her new husband. The family moved to Mercer Island, Washington eventually, but then George's mother left him again, moved across the country with his half-sister. It was clear that George's stepdad didn't really want him around either or his stepmom.

He was kicked out of the house multiple times for stealing and behaving inappropriately towards his stepfather's new wife. Did no one want to be around George from an early age because he was a problem or did he become a problem? Largely because no one wanted him around at a young age. Number two, like many serial killers, George's crimes escalated over a long period of time. He started off with cat burglaries, breaking into people's home. and stealing, and sometimes watching women as they slept, spent most of his nights prowling around Mercer Island, like a lot of nights. Many who grew up with George thought he was odd, but generally harmless. There were only a few who suspected there was a sexual motive to his crimes, or that he would escalate to rape and murder.

Number three, were enough for Seattle Detective Rick Buckland. George might have gotten away with murder for a lot longer than he did. While other investigators discounted leads that focused on George, Buckland remained confident that George was the fucking guy. He encouraged other investigators to look at him as a serious suspect, and they found circumstantial evidence pointing to George as a killer long before the forensic results confirmed their suspicions. Number four, George targeted the victims because he believed they had wronged him in some way. Marianne Polarike likely rejected his advances. Carol Beath was close friends with the bartender who got George permanently banned from his favorite nightclub to Black Angus, and Randy Levine had also rebuffed him. One expert also theorized that George's attacks were symbolic, represented his hatred, of other women in his life, probably his mom. And number five, new info, a possible loan survivor.

There is one unconfirmed attack linked to George Russell, perhaps the only person who survived an attack by him. At 2 a.m., September 9th, 1990s, just a few days before he was arrested, 16-year-old Nicole DeVita dropped in on her friends to landmark apartments less than a mile from Villa 156. Recently, there have been reports of a half-dozen burglaries, numerous prowling reports in the area. after spending an hour and a half with her friends, she walked back to her family's unit in the same complex, but was locked out. Tried to wake up her brother Tony by loudly whispering outside his window,

threw some pebbles, sticks, and rocks at her brother's window, but he did not respond. She gave up after about an hour, walked towards the back of the apartment to wake up her parents. Then a strange man emerged from the shadows and asked, oh, Tony's your brother? Nicole told him she was trying to get into her apartment. He then checked the front windows in front of her,

confirmed they were locked. She then walked around the side, started climbing the private, privacy fence to get into the patio and was suddenly thrown to the ground. She saw a man lifting a rock, a blow to the head knocked her down. He hit her several more times, dragged her across the lawn, barely conscious. She managed to scream and then lights turned on in her apartment. She lost consciousness, woke up in the hospital, was diagnosed with a depressed skull fracture, concussion, deep scratched on her scalp, neck and hands. Her father and a friend chased her attacker away. She described the man as black late 20s, around 5'9, scrawny, with baggy,

dark clothing. George Russell was never charged with the attack, but given the distance to Villa 156, his prowling tendencies, and the description, he sure makes a strong suspect. Time suck. Top five takeaways. The charmer. Serial killer George Russell has been sucked. What a fucking weirdo. What a unique and terrible individual. Thanks to the Bad Magic Productions team for all their help in making time suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Thanks to Logan Keith, helping to publish this episode, designing merch for the store at bad magic productions.com.

Thank you to Olivia Lee for her awesome research. Also, thanks to the all seen eyes, moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad for making sure Discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the Times 6th subreddit and Bad Magic Subredit. And before we head over to this week's Times Square updates, I just have to get this on my head.

I cannot stop thinking about no biggie. Just you do something really fucked up to somebody. Like just, maybe somebody should try this. Obviously, don't kill people. don't kill people but just like i don't know just like throw away somebody's food in front of them do something just like weirdly fucked up just completely unnecessary and then gaslight them when they get mad and you just like whoa Jesus okay yeah your food got thrown away no biggie what are you doing why are you so mad no biggie you know borrow their car without asking when they get mad about it whoa

hey man no one's dead no biggie what are you doing okay now that i have that out of my system now we can head over to this week's time sucker updates Time Sucker updates. A couple quicker ones today, because I've been talking for a long time. The first ended to Bojangles at Timesuckpodcast.com by a long time sucker, choosing to remain anonymous, was sent it with a subject line of Turtle Boy the Terrible. They wrote, long time listener, first time caller. Use a fake name, I guess.

Call me Hang Dang. Not hang dang. I'd like to keep my name private only because you'll understand after reading this. I'm a Massachusetts native from birth to now. Turtle Boy is a blogger who was a high school history teacher. For years, his identity was kept a secret for good reason. Whilst he was uncovering corruption, he would also target genuine people he perceived as corrupt or untrustworthy, usually including incessant name-calling and very horrible accusations of their corruption.

Anytime he featured someone, it created so much discourse in their everyday lives, often being harassed by his turtle writers, his dedicated fan base, to the point that some people I actually know have become reclusive and have contemplated things. things that would be very final. Oh man, that's so fucking sad. He has done some good, but mostly he is a terrible man. Sorry for the length, not the girth. Three out of five stars. Love you. Hang Dang. Oh man. Well, thank you, hang dang. Yes, yes. The Karen Reid episode was a complicated episode, you know, in terms of just how many people were involved, many of them related, few of them with the same fucking name. So I didn't focus too much on Turtle Boy, but I did see a lot

of others online, not other people online whose sentiments echoed your own there. Basically that, yeah, that he helped Karen's case a lot, was right about a lot of stuff regarding that case, but also is a self-righteous fucking asshole who goes way too hard on people, way too quick, even if there's no evidence to do so, and it has caused a lot of good people, a lot of problems. So thank you for sharing that from a local's perspective. Next, another anonymous sucker, a fucking stupid sack, JK, sending a message with the subject line of Cumminslot. It got me, they wrote. damn it finally got me. And I think this might be a new one. Yes, it is. My job is essentially

sitting in front of a computer, clicking buttons for eight hours a day. During that time, I'm on a heavy podcast rotation. I'm not keen on wearing headphones all day, so I'm usually blasting your podcast out of one of my computer speakers. I work alone, but my office is public if somebody wants to walk in. I know where your head might be going already, but I am very careful. If I get up to use the bathroom, I pause the podcast. My mute trigger finger is fast. All that being said, I do architectural renderings, which include video walkthroughs. Those walkthroughs are usually accompanied by my sensual mush-mouth narrating providing questions and concerns.

Well, this particular day, the client specifically asked me to keep my voice out of it. Just a video. No sound. So what did I do? I loaded up the model, activated the screen recorder, muted the microphone, and got after it. About three minutes in total. It's a massive storage unit project. Not sexy by architectural standards, but big budget and important clients.

I uploaded the video to unlisted YouTube, sent over the link. Fast forward to the next morning. Hey, blank. Video looks great. I'm going to need you to remove the vulgar audio, though. My heart sinks. I pull up the YouTube link, hit play, and here, I forgot about that slang term for breasts.

What a weird one. Why cans? I guess firm breasts, maybe? That looked like a set of cans? Jesus Christ, Dan. I thought it could never be me. Three out of five cans. Wouldn't change a thing.

Anonymous for obvious reasons. That's so great. Sorry you went through that bullshit. Truly hope you didn't lose that client. But fuck is that funny. Just no context for why I'm talking about a serial killer, Eddie Cole, and his thoughts on breasts, just while someone's trying to watch a storage unit rendering. They're like, why the fuck did he add this audio?

Oh, I'm sure they have a lot of questions about you that they probably won't ask because they are afraid of the answer. And now one more, another anonymous one from a fellow content Creighton sack, who wants to share a really, really cool message. And they're just a really, really cool person, but they do want to remain anonymous, which I respect. They send in a message with the subject line of Dr. David Horton was my, running professor. Hello, illustrious overlord. I've been catching up on time-sec episodes going back to November of 2025. I'm a huge fan of all your work. I listen to scare to death every single week. I'm a space as their butt. I just got overwhelmed and stepped back from time suck for a while.

For work, I constantly take in so much information, much of it related to the news cycle, and I felt like my brain just couldn't handle it. Fair. This last week, I've circled back, started catching up. I started with the Phantom Killer because I had begun that episode a while back. When you read the story about Dr. Horton, I jumped out of my seat. I was a student of Dr. Horton in the Kinesiology Department. He was my favorite professor ever. After losing 90 pounds, I also became a runner and was one of the students in his running class. To be clear, he did, in fact, make me run around a single bush.

He would also ambush other students, and soon they'd be surrounded by a swarm of sweaty runners with no idea what was going on. He was the quirkiest, most inspiring adult I've ever met. He was so funny and so fully alive, and even after seven, way heart bypass surgery. He was back on a bike once he recovered. Dr. Horton inspired my love for running. He coached me, built my confidence, even trained me for my first marathon, but more important than that, he said something to me that has stayed with me my entire adulthood. I'd stop by his office to ask some questions, and once we finished talking, I walked down the hallway to leave,

I heard him shout after me, I believe in you, girl. I grew up in a tough family, lots of abuse, very, and a very religious high control group. No adult had ever told me that they believed in me. I'm crying now thinking about it. I firmly believe that one comment, or that, I firmly believe that that one comment was part of the domino effect that changed my life two years later, leading me to a creative career I could have never dreamed possible at the time.

As much as I love the sweet sounds of your mush mouth, I'm so glad I took that break, because I needed to hear that story and remember Dr. Horton right now. My career is booming, but I'm burnout and anxious. My mental health has been really struggling. I'm closing on a house in a week and I'm scared shitless because I'm betting on myself and scared I'm going to fail. And now, because you are cutting onions in here,

I have tears in my eyes hearing, I believe in you, girl, in the back of my head. Thank you for all you do. I can't express enough how you and Lindsay keep me afloat and inspired. If you do share this, please keep my name anonymous. You can just say M if you like, but please shout out Dr. Horton. And professors like him who believe in their students enough

to teach us how to fly. I hope everyone who listens knows just how life-changing a comment like, that can be sincerely M. P.S. There's a documentary about Dr. Horton called The Runner, and it's well worth the watch. Oh, and I'm excited to talk to you personally down the road. Truly, but for right now, after checking out a lot of your content, I believe in you too, girl. Seriously, you have fucking got this. You're so fucking smart. You're so talented. Keep going. Take care of yourself. Eat well, good sleep whenever you can. Keep being you because that's why it's working. Pay more attention to the good comments and the bad ones, find little moments to reflect and feel proud of

yourself for what you've already done, which is so much, remind yourself from time to time that you believe in you because that's the most important thing. If you didn't, you would have never made it this far. So you've certainly earned the justification for that belief. And your message is so important. We all need someone to believe in us. My Papa Ward, maybe even more, his wife, my grandma Betty, they always believed in me. My grandma Betty still believes me so much since I was little. That belief has got me through so much bullshit without it. I would not be who I am. So anyone listening, make sure you tell people who you do believe in that you do believe in. Right? Say it out loud to them. Let them know you could literally change their life.

Hail Nimrod, you beautiful bastards. I'm suckers. I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to this marathon bad magic productions podcast. Be sure. It was just so interesting to me. There were so many details from like, I don't want to cut it. be sure and rate and review time suck if you haven't already careful at Black Angus this week careful who you go home with maybe enjoy a tasty steak

load a baked potato maybe skip the nightclub go home where you can safely keep on sucking at Magic Productions at Black Angus right now get a thick juicy tender for Les Mignon for this 3999

and a loaded baked potato for under five bucks Now, is that a lot more expensive than it used to be? It sure is. Times have changed. Money don't spend like it used to. But I'll tell you what hasn't changed in all these years. Good customers getting murdered by sadistic necrophiliac serial killers who frequent our establishments. That doesn't happen.

Not on our properties, at least. You can still enjoy a steak, a nice cocktail. Or a dance in one of our many lounges. Well, some of our loungers, not too many. They're mostly just places where people watch football games now, but that's not a lot. The point is Black Angus. It's safe, God damn it. Now, is Papa Gaios safe? I don't know. I don't even know if they're still around. They're probably not.

But if they are still around, steer clear, friend, unless you want to get killed. No, you come on over to the Black Angus instead. We're probably outside a mall near you right now. Come to the Black Angus where the dancing's light, but where we have quite a few chairs. And not decent speakers. where the crowd is safe and the only thing getting killed

is still the cows. Oh, it's a nice, tasty lick. Mm-hmm, black angers!