True Crime All The Time - Larry Eyler

Episode Date: July 10, 2017

Based on Eyler’s own confessions, authorities believe he may have killed as many as 23 young men in the early 1980s throughout the Midwest. The problem with Larry’s confessions is that he either didn’t know or couldn’t remember names.Eyler targeted homosexual men and would cruise around in his truck looking for male hitchhikers or would frequent gay bars in different cities looking for targets.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the facts surrounding these murders committed by Larry Eyler. Did he act alone or did he have an accomplice or two as he would later claim? Did the police give these murders the top priority that they deserved?Visit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact and merchandise information.You can help support the show financially by visiting patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

episode 35 of the true crime all the time podcast. My name is Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my co-host Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you today? And I'm doing good. Well, that's good. That's better than last week. That's right. Last week was bad. Last week was shitty. This week's good. Yeah. So moving up, man. Gibby's back to good status. All right, Gibbs, we got a number of Patreon supporters to get through and we have some PayPal supporters too. Awesome. So we'll start with Patreon. We have Jessica, Chris Norman, Sherry Escobar, Carol Warren. And Carol somehow is supporting us above our highest level, which I didn't even think was possible.

But we appreciate that Carol so much. We have Paula Lima. And we love Paula. Yeah, we talk to Paula quite a bit. Yeah, we interact with her a lot on social media. We have Crystal, Wendy Sanders. and then we have Andy Barker for the second week in a row. And if you remember last week, Andy contributed on PayPal.

Brexit. Brexit. And then he did a Brexit. And then he turned right around and supported us on Patreon. Yeah, love it. Yeah. So thank you so much, Andy. Andy's from the UK.

That's why Gibby's going Brexit route there. And then if we go to PayPal supporters, we have Michelle Herbert, who actually has given us our biggest, financial donation that T-Cats ever received. Awesome. So thank you so much, Michelle, for that. It's much appreciated. And then Chris Knapp gave a very sizable donation through PayPal as well.

Well, thanks to everybody. So we say it all time. We love the new support. We love the old support. There's so many people that have been with us from the very beginning. Yeah, day one. It's still contributing. And they keep contributing and supporting us monthly.

after month and you know, Gibby was talking about it the other day saying how good it makes him feel that people are basically saying, hey, we appreciate what you're doing. Yeah. And I think Gibbs, you likened it to, you know, like paying for Hulu or going to see a movie. Yeah. Or something like that. I mean, they're getting value out of it, which makes me feel good.

It's like Hulu or Netflix or Netflix or Netflix. Either one. Either whatever. They're both good. They're both. I subscribe to both of them. You probably do. I think I like Netflix, just a little bit better than Netflix.

Yeah. But. It's up and coming. Yeah. They have different things on them. Yeah. So make sure you check out this Sunday's episode of True Crime All the Time Unsolved. Gibby, we're doing an episode on Melinda McGee, disappeared from her home in 2003,

and has never been seen again. Never. And sad story. left behind a family, husband, kids. Yeah. But the tie-ins to this story go to some

well-known serial killers and actually one that we've profiled on this very show. Exactly. So you got to tune in, check that out. So Gibbs,

the voicemails keep coming in. Love the voicemails. I know. Want more voicemails. You ask for voicemails. We got voicemails. Hi, Mike. Hi, Gibby.

This is Mawks. calling from Portland, Oregon. Just wanted to let you know that I love the show. And we have to talk about the fact that CrimeCon is so far away from Portland next year. And my coworker, Amber, and I really wish it was closer so we could have come and met you. But keep up the good work and keep your own time ticking. Bye. Always love it when they use the tagline.

Yeah. Masa. I like that. Yeah. Thank you so much, Masa. we wish we could meet you and your friend at CrimeCon. But now it's a long ways away. So circumstances could change.

You might change your mind and come hang out with us. Yeah, I'm still stuck on her name, Masa. I'm thinking of Lion King and Kuma Matata. I think it's Hakuna Matata. You say that, I say this. We're relieved at that. Hello, this Randy's had a calling. I'm, I came from the long side of this practice.

And so it's very interesting to me to see how normal people view these, you know, crimes. And I'm a normal person now, hopefully. But I really appreciate listening to you, you know, your take on the murders. And I'm a big fan and keep up to good work. All right, Randy. Thank you so much for the voicemail and thanks for listening. Yeah, and I'm glad you're on the right side of the track now. I know. Randy's on the right side of the track.

Yeah. He's doing good. Hi, guys. It's Lauren. I'm calling from Perth in Western Australia. Just wanted to say how much I love your podcast. And I look forward to it every week when it comes out. If I was richer, then I would be a donor as well. But at the moment, I'm just a listener.

But, yeah, keep up the good work. And, yeah, let us know if you're coming down under us so that we can always have a may shop down here somewhere. Okay, bye. All right, Gibbs. I've got to have her voice as my new Ways app voice. That's my mission in life. That'd be perfect.

Got to have it. Yeah. And the second thing is we've got to get down under. Absolutely. For a meetup. I'm game. All right, put that on the list. It's on the list.

All right. As always, we appreciate all the voicemails. We appreciate the support. But Gibbs, we've got to. to get into this story. We're talking about Larry Eiler and like a lot of episodes we do, much of the facts around what Larry Eiler is going to do come from later confessions. So based on his own confessions, authorities believe that he murdered at least 23 young men in the early 1980s. And we're talking about bodies turning up in,

in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio. I mean, this guy, you know, not only prolific, but cut a little swath here in the Midwest. Now, one of the problems, and we're going to talk a lot about the confessions, but one of the problems with Larry's confessions is that he either didn't know some of, or couldn't remember some of the victim's names. So that's where you get into people not being 100% sure about which victim is that. You know, he might have said in this town and they were able to kind of piece it together from that because he knew the cases and he knew the details, but I don't think he knew all the names.

That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, is a serial killer, a random serial killer going to know every one of their victim's names? that doesn't surprise me at all. No, I'm not shocked at all. No, me neither. Eiler did target homosexual men and he would cruise around in his truck

looking for male hitchhikers or he would frequent the gay bars in a lot of the different cities that he was in looking for targets. This is starting to sound kind of familiar. Well, it does sound a lot like Her Baummeister from that aspect. And then when you get into, I already mentioned, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio.

I mean, that was her, her Baumeister's territory as well. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, because he frequent Illinois and. And Illinois. And that too. He was in both. That's amazing. Sometimes at the same time.

Same time. But Baumeister, he operated and did his killing in the 1980s, just like Eiler. but Herb was towards a later half of that decade. So they really didn't overlap at all. It was almost like Herb started his right after Isler was done. But still very interesting to have two people that, now Herb, if you remember that episode, he was a strangler. Larry's going to do a little bit of strangling, but he's more of a stabber, but still the Similarities are eerie because targeting homosexual men, luring them, getting gratification,

sexual gratification from the kill. We've talked about that. All in the same swath. You're like, you're just using my word right back at me, swath. So some of the other names that Larry Eiler would become known as, you've got the highway killer, the interstate killer, the highway murderer. I mean, Gibbs, there's a lot of highway killers and murderers. Yeah.

Because, you know, he's, again, we're talking a lot about I-70, that corridor. There's so many different interstates where it's easy to get on and off of so people do a lot of killing or, you know, that's how they get from one place from the kill zone to the dump zone. There's a lot of that. But I did want to throw it out there so that people. have some of his nicknames. I hate to use that word because to me a nickname is cool, something you get as kind of a badge of honor. This is more of a...

Like Gibby? Yeah, like Gibby. That's a badge of honor. It is. I mean, these are things that we give to people who are pieces of shit. So I almost hate to call him a nickname. I bet you're throwing killer at the end of it. Well, that's true. Or murderer.

All right, Gibbs. So like we always like to do, let's talk about early life. So Larry Eiler was born December 21st, 1952 in Crawfordsville, Indiana, the youngest of four children. Now, his parents divorced when he was only two years old. And his mother would later remarry several times. And what this is going to mean for Larry is that he's going to end up with several different stepfathers. And this is going to be an issue.

issue for him that we're going to have to talk about throughout his childhood. He attended Catholic schools, had a lot of difficulty in school. These are, you know, things we talk about a lot. No big shockers really here. At the age of 10, he was sent to a clinic at the Indiana University Medical Center. And this is when he would have some of his first psychological tests. And what these kind of showed was that Larry had normal intelligence, but he had extreme insecurities. And he had a lot of fear of separation and abandonment. Well, I'm not surprised by that. If he's got all these men coming in and out of his life and his young, I mean, that seems to be.

Yeah, a divorce at two years old. His mom remarries a bunch. He's got all these new guys coming in. It's hard to trust anybody if you got that coming, the revolving door. Well, and, you know, I don't want to give it away, but these guys were not going to be nice to Larry. Yeah. And that's going to cause a lot of some of these things that we're talking about. So even at 10, you know, the psychologist could tell through their talks with Larry that he didn't feel loved, he didn't feel secure in any of his relationships.

and they could also pretty easily tell that he didn't have a good home life, right? It wasn't stable. And it was at this point that they recommended that he go somewhere else to live. And his mom actually sends him for a time to a Catholic boy's home. So what's that telling you? Yeah. And I'm thinking this is around that time that some Catholic churches and homes had some issues with the priest and boys.

Well, it definitely could have been. I didn't uncover any research about that specifically. That's good. But there was some of that stuff going on. Absolutely. We know that. Now, much later on, after kind of the whole story is over for Larry, he's going to have some more psychiatrists and psychologist evaluations,

and there's going to be a whole bunch more that comes out. And you kind of touched on it, It was about, you know, being shifted around between different relatives and just having all these people that he didn't know, you know, that he had to meet, that he had to live with. You know, it seemed to be a really big deal for him. But the biggest thing that would come out was the trauma that was caused in his life by all these men that his mom dated. and then a bunch of them that she ended up marrying. Right. So how many did she date before she would marry?

She married three more times. Like a revolving door, man. So the initial divorce from Larry's father, he was two years old. She remarries when he's four. She gets divorced again the very next year when he's five. She gets married again when he's seven. divorces that man when he's 11, marries again when Larry is 12,

and then divorces that guy when Larry's a teenager. That's a lot. So there's a shocker, man. I mean, is anybody surprised that he has these issues? I'm not. Well, we haven't even got to probably what caused most of the issues. But just based on that information alone,

the kid's going to have some type of issue. Yeah, just based on that. Yeah. But it's really what comes out from Larry being the victim of physical and mental abuse at the hands of these guys. Right. So I guess his mom wasn't a great picker. His natural father was abusive. And then each of the subsequent three stepfathers were said to have also been abusive. There was one psychiatrist who would come out and say, that as far as he was concerned, it was one of the worst cases he'd ever seen in all of his years of practicing. So I won't get into all of it, Gibbs, but I did want to tell one story. And that was something that Larry would say later on that one of his stepfathers had a way of

punishing him by holding his head under scalding hot water and just not letting him up. and it would just continue to burn and burn and burn. I mean, that's serious physical abuse. Yeah, that's a real shithead. Yeah, that's an asshole. I would never dream of doing something like that to my kids or even somebody else's kids. I wouldn't even do that to you, man. Well, if you got mouthy or something like that, but you know what I'm saying.

I don't think you could hold my head down. No, I couldn't. But I definitely wouldn't do that to a child. I mean, that is horrible. and you and I talk about it all the time. We're not psychologists. We're not psychiatrists. All you can do is sitting and kind of wonder,

what does this do to a young person's psyche, their mental stability? It can't be good for it. Jack them up, man. Right. Now, should it lead to murder? No. But it has to do something,

and that's something is not going to be good. So if you have something, somebody that has any type of inclination or anything else, and then you throw all this, all this other stimuli on top of it, that's going to be a bad recipe. So Iler, even with his normal intelligence, he never graduates from high school. But he does at some point get a GED. He would spend a lot of his early 20s in and out of college without ever actually earning a college degree and he really just goes on to begin this life of low paying jobs. You know, it was said Gibbs that he was a house painter. He worked at a liquor store.

You know, he just kind of went from job to job. But none of them paid a lot of money. So we fast forward up to August of 1978. Larry Eiler's 26 years old at this point in time. and he moves to Tara Hote, Indiana. Tara Hote. Terra Hote. Just a cool way. I was saying something. Terra Hote.

Saying anything or just the town name? No, that town name. You just walk around and calling anything. Tara Hote. And it's not very long after he moves to Tara Hote that he has his first real contact with police. On August 3rd of 1978, a man shows up. at a home, naked, scared to death, and he's banging on the door.

He's pleading for help from this homeowner. And he's clutching at his chest because he's got a knife wound in his chest. He's been stabbed. Do you open the door? Oh, man, that's a great question. I'd like to think I do because I'm a good Samaritan. Yeah. But I think I have a little backup behind me when I do.

Right. I think I'd do that. Hold my little finger up and say, hold on one minute, buddy. And then do what after that? Get my smartphone out and make a phone call. They're on their way. If someone was coming up behind them, then that changes everything.

I don't know if I'd let them in. Didn't mean to get sidetracked there, but I was just thinking. Well, I think we'd like to all think that we would help somebody in that situation. Yeah. But again, you don't know the circumstance. Maybe he's sliced himself and he's trying to get in your house. You don't know in this day and time. Yeah.

Bottom line, you call the police. So either way, he's going to get help. So what would come out is that Larry Eiler stabbed this man in the chest. And we're not talking about just a knife, Gibby. We're talking about an eight-inch butcher knife. That's like almost as good as my K-bar. That's a big-ass knife. Yeah.

Just jam into somebody's chest. Wow. That leave us, car. There's no doubt about it. So Larry had picked this man up hitchhiking. At some point, he pulled off the road, drove into the forest. He handcuffed this guy, binding his hands. He bound his ankles.

He stripped him of his pants. And he sexually assaulted him. This was all before the stabbing. And then Eiler stabs him in the chest. So the man ultimately survives, takes 30 to 40 stitches to close this huge wound in his chest. Ooh, that is a big scar. Yeah, that's not going to look good during summer lake season. No.

But here's what Larry Eiler does. He turns himself in when the police. He doesn't even try to get away. He just turns himself in. That's good. Well, yeah, but you're going to be pissed here in a minute because I know how you are. Oh, great. They find a whole bunch of incriminating things in Larry's truck,

but the man never ends up testifying against Larry Eiler. And what he says later on is that he was paid $2,500 in return for signing a release so that Larry Eiler would not be prosecuted. What the? I know. That's why I said. You're going to be pissed. $2,500 to not testify.

To not testify. For somebody that almost murdered him. So Larry Eiler walks away from this whole episode, and all he got was a little bitty, aggravated battery charge and a very small fine. And I think we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of like $43 here. You got to be kidding me. And I know you love this part. So we have to talk about it. How in the hell do you sexually assault a man jam an eight.

inch butcher knife right into his chest and walk away with no jail time, a little bitty aggravated battery charge and a $43 fine. I don't know. This guy that signed this waiver, man, I want to feel bad for him, but now I can't because I'm like, why did you do that? Why did you sign a waiver for $2,500? When you and I always talk about it, right? We're very, we try very hard. not to do any type of victim blaming. And I'm not going to do it here. I'm just going to point out or ask the question, if this guy had prosecuted, what would have happened?

Now, Larry Eiler still would have got out probably. He still would have went on to do some bad things. But you don't know. Yeah, you just don't ever know. But if someone did that to me, I sure in hell what more than $2,500. bucks. You don't have a problem with not testifying. You just want more than $25,500.

Yeah. But I know that that always gets you because these guys get away with a lot of stuff early on. And then you find out that ultimately they're going to murder 20, 23, 25, 30 people. And there's going to be, and this is not it, Gibbs. You're going to be pissed two or three more times because. This thing, these things seem to, to happen in a lot of these serial killer situations. I mean, these relaxed laws are, or, or not even, they're not relaxed laws, or just relaxed prosecutors, too, they're too lenient. Yeah. In some situations, I don't think there's any doubt

that you and I have seen our share of situations where we thought, man, somebody should get a heck of a lot of time for something. And either they've gotten. probation or essentially walked away with hardly anything. I mean, he walked away with hardly anything. This is where I love to have a prosecutor, previous prosecutor, something come on, talk to us and help me understand why. I get the crowded prisons and I get the, it's better to settle this way because we couldn't really get the case of stick,

so we wanted to get something on his record versus nothing. But some of these are, they're solid cases. Well, but my feeling is the one victim is not going to get on the stand and say what happened. What are you going to do? Yeah. Sheriff Jim Jenkins remembers the case well. He and another deputy were called to Spring Hill and Canal Roads in response to a stabbing. Once there, they found a man in his underwear bound at the wrists and ankles, a stab wound in his chest.

Larry Eiler showed up at the scene moments later. Iler explained that he and the man were playing out one of Iler's sexual fantasies. Eiler was armed with a 10-inch buoy knife during the encounter. I believe his words were that he forgot he had a knife in his hand and he pushed this boy. And when he pushed him, he stabbed him. The man never pressed charges against Eiler. Jenkins says he was too embarrassed. Jenkins says he didn't believe the stabbing was an accident 16 years ago.

He's still convinced today. A reasonable person, logical person, would just not believe that you forgot you had a 10-inch bladed knife in your hand. I think his scene got out of hand is what I think. Jenkins meantime wonders if it all could have been avoided. If Biler had only sought help 16 years ago or if his victim had only pressed charges. If, if, you know, maybe lots of murders could have been prevented. I don't know. it's uh it's just very it's very tragic story uh all the way around so i think they're saying

some of the same things we're saying obviously that is a clip from much later in time he also said it was a 10 inch knife yeah i mean how does he know how does he not realize he's got 10 inches in his hand i wouldn't know but you're right so you've got this big knife in your hand and you're playing a game and and you're going to push somebody and you don't realize you're holding a knife. And who the hell pushes somebody like with the knife blade sticking out, right? You push palms out. Yeah, because they could see you through the podcast how you were demonstrating that right now.

I was doing it. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. I mean, if you're, if you're making that stabbing motion with a knife. That's not how you would push somebody. No, you wouldn't push somebody with a close fist with a blade handle in your fist. Well, I think you could hear the sheriff if he thought it was.

BS. Iler tried to talk it out, talk himself out of it. But at the end of the day, the guy doesn't want to press charges. And at some point, he may even corroborate the story and say we were just playing around. That kind of answers our question maybe of why a prosecutor can't move forward. Yeah, unfortunately. All right, Gibbs. So that was Eiler's first brush with the law. He gets off with nothing, like we said. Now we've got to get into the actual murders. This is where the police not being able to do anything to him, it becomes sad because of all these murders we're going to talk about. And I think what everybody's going to see is how many murders that we're talking here in a very short amount of time. Now, when I say short, I'm talking about like a year, but still for the

number, this guy was very active. Yes, very active in his swath. In his swath. I'm going to give you a swath. So everything seems to start in late 1982. Iler would have been around 30 years old at this time. And we're going to, I'm going to go through these Gibbs like you and I sometimes do like to do. We're going to go through the murders in the order that they were found. And so if you do some other research on some sites, the order of these will be different for sure. But we start October 2nd, 1982,

a 14-year-old African-American male named Del Void Baker is found dead on the side of a road near Indianapolis. He had been strangled to death. And so we know that Eiler was operating at this. time. We know he was around this area. And there's a lot of people that believe this is his first victim. But if it wasn't Del Void Baker, then Eiler's first victim would have been Stephen Crockett, who was 19 years old, white male. And I do want to, I will say as we go through the victims, I like to say the ages and I like to say, you know, the races, because,

I think it's interesting to see the pattern. Sure, you can see a trend. That's the only way to see kind of the killer's pattern or what type of people that they may be targeting. And for the most part, we're going to see younger white males. So Stephen Crockett's body is found on October 23rd, 1982. He was stabbed Gibbs 32 times. And you and I talk about overkill, 32 times. That should do it.

Is a lot. And four of those were major wounds to his head. Larry Eiler ends up dumping Stephen's body just outside of Lull, Indiana. And that's the other thing to pay attention to are these dump sites. They come up again and again. He operated in pretty specific areas. So just a couple weeks later, Gibbs, November 4th of 82, Eiler's going to have his next brush with the law because he ends up drugging and beating a 21-year-old man

near Lowell, Indiana, where he had just dumped Stephen Crockett's body a couple weeks earlier, but this man gets away from him and he ends up making it to the hospital. And the detectives come, they're there to question this man who had escaped from Eiler, but the man ends up leaving the hospital. So here again, this is another chance where possibly the police could have prevented Eiler from going on to kill so many more people that we're going to talk about. And you just have to wonder, Gibbs, what would make the victim? Because this guy's a victim, flee the hospital. Was it because of the lifestyle that he led?

Sure. Around that time frame, that could have been an issue. So maybe he wanted to protect his, you know, whatever lifestyle. how he was having. And maybe he was because of that fearful of talking to the police. I mean, we are talking the early 80s. And I'm not going to, I don't know which ones, but there are some of these victims that were said to have possibly have been sex workers, male sex workers. Yeah. And that's how Larry Eiler was able to target them. So if that was the case, maybe that is one of the reasons why this guy didn't want to talk to the police. But either way, he, he,

bolts and leaves the hospital. And so they have nothing to go on. But he is going to come up later in this story. Now on that very same day, November 4th, a white male named Robert Foley is found dead out in a field near Juliet, Illinois. So again, we're talking about the dates when these people were found, right? So Larry Eiler's all over the place, Indiana, Illinois. He likes to go into Chicago.

he likes to go into Indianapolis. On Christmas Day, the body of John Johnson, a 25-year-old white male, he's found in a field near Belshaw, Indiana. And that's the other thing. You're going to hear a lot. Larry Eiler liked to find an isolated field to use as his dumping ground. So John Johnson had vanished from Chicago a couple of months before this. And like I said, Gives, this is one of the things that we have to talk about. Larry Eiler was known to have made many trips into Chicago. Three days later on December 28th. Now, are you keeping up with me on this?

Yeah. Because we're talking October, late October, early November. He's busy. He's busy guy. I mean, he is, he's really operating at a very rapid pace. And that's scary. because on this December 28th day, they're going to find two men. That's how busy Larry Eiler is.

So they find John Roach, he's a 21-year-old white male from Indianapolis, and they find Stephen Agan, 23-year-old white male from Terre Haute, Indiana. Both found on the same day, but in different areas about 30, 40 miles apart. but found in a very similar way, right? Almost connected in that way. Both men were found bound and mutilated. Stephen Agin, his throat was slashed, and Larry Eiler had cut his stomach so bad and so deep

that his organs were hanging out. That's bad, man. I mean, this is, it's vicious, vicious stuff. I mean, the gut somebody. And this is not the last, right? You and I talk about this. Serial killers, they have a type, and a lot of times they have a way that they like to kill.

And in the case of Larry Eiler, there are going to be a lot of similarities in some of these. Maybe that you could make the case that police could have put it together earlier than they actually do. So Stephen Agan's body is found near Newport, Indiana, John Roach is found near Belleville, Indiana. And again, multiple stab wounds, a brutal killing. So Larry Eiler is for the most part a stabber.

So we know he has, he's sexually assaulted people and he will do so again. So he's deriving some kind of sexual pleasure from that act. But then as you and I know, some of these bastards, they have another sexual high or a sexual component from the actual stabbing itself. Yeah, they get off on that thrusting. So I got a clip Gibbs from Stephen Agan's mom

that I want to play. I think Steve just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. I think he knew him just well enough to say, hey, do you want to ride? After a day or so, I knew that there was really something wrong. I went back to the funeral home and I wanted to see him, but they wouldn't let me see because he was in too bad of shape. Yeah, he said it was worse than any car wreck victim that they'd

ever had because they actually just split him open. I'm kind of lost words actually. Well, it's heartbreaking. Yeah. To hear a mom talk about the fact that she can't even view her. her son because he was killed in such a way where a coroner or a funeral home director, you know, these guys see a lot of deaths. Right. For them to say that it was worse than the worst car accident they've ever seen. That's bad, man. It's hard to imagine.

So Gibbs, one of the things I want to talk about a little bit is what these murders did to the gay community, particularly. in places like Chicago and Indianapolis. You and I talked about this in the Herb Baumaster episode a little bit. But I actually went online and I was able to find some newspaper headlines from back during this time. And these were from some of the publications that are put out or were put out back in the day specifically for the gay community.

And reading these headlines, they are warning. gay men that a serial killer is out there hunting them. I mean, they even had hotlines set up so that people could call into the paper to report tips that would then be passed on to the police. That's good. I mean, they're being proactive and having an awareness. It's almost like, because there is no task force yet, so it's almost like the gay community has figured it out

much quicker than the police. Well, and I know we've covered previous cases like this, and some of the conclusion, well, not a conclusion, but some of the speculation from those within the community was that the authorities, eh, didn't really, wasn't on top of their list, right?

Because of the... Because of the lifestyle... Lifestyle choice. That these individuals were leading. Right. You know, again, it's the early 80s. Were police... saying that these people were not as important as other members of the society.

I don't know if they were saying that, but we know from researching other cases that the people in this community, they felt that way. Sure. In a lot of instances, they felt like the police didn't care about them as they would a heterosexual white male in an upper crust subdivision. I don't think there's any doubt about that. Now, whether it's true or not, that's what I don't know. But I know for sure that the community in a lot of these instances, they felt that way.

And there may be some truth to it. So Larry Eiler takes a little bit of a break. And when I say a break, I mean about three months. This guy doesn't do a lot of breaking. and March 4th, 1983, Edgar Undercalfler, 27-year-old white male, his body is found dumped near Danville, Illinois. Eiler had stabbed him to death. Just 17 days later, a man named Jay Reynolds, a 31-year-old white male, his body's found down near Lexington, Kentucky. and it would come out that Eiler had murdered Reynolds by stabbing him multiple times.

So again, we're talking about Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky. We're going to get into some other states. This guy moved around a lot. Within his swath. Within his swath, no doubt. So April 8th, again, I can't impress enough. We're talking less than about two weeks apart on these murders. Like boom, boom, boom.

every two weeks here for a while. So you have Gustavo Herrera. Now, this is the only Hispanic male victim of Larry Eiler. And Gustavo was 28 years old. His body is found near Lake Forest, Illinois. And Lake Forest, Illinois is going to come up a lot. It was definitely a favorite dumping ground for Larry Eiler. Now, one interesting fact.

about Gustavo Herrera was that he was a Mexican immigrant and he had only been in the United States for a very short period of time. So he'd come over to live the American dream and he ends up being killed

by Larry Eiler. Just a week after Gustavo is found, Irvin Gibson, no relation, 16 year old white male, his body's found also around the Lake Forest, Illinois area.

So this Lake Forest area Gibbs, I don't think it's that far away from Chicago. So I think that, you know, Larry is trolling a lot in Chicago. We talked about Indianapolis. He's picking up these men. He's killing them in remote areas and dumping their bodies there.

And you're not going to dump somebody in front of Wrigley Field in downtown Chicago. I mean, you could. You could advise against it. I'd advise against it. It makes much more sense. Drive over to Chinatown and drop them there. To drive out to a remote area and drop them off there.

Plus, that gives him more privacy to do some of these things that he's doing. You know, because he is sexually assaulting some of these men. And you do need some privacy to be able to pull some of that off and then commit some of these murders. Now, May 9th, and we're still in 1983, this is a day, again, where two men are found on the same day. So the first is Jimmy Roberts. He's an 18-year-old black male, found in Cook County, Illinois, fairly close to Chicago. Now, Jimmy Roberts is found with his pants partially removed, which says to me Gibbs some type of sexual assault most likely occurred. I would think so.

And this is on top of what we talked about with the sexual aspect that Eiler got from the actual killings themselves. The second victim found was Daniel McNevy. And McNevy was a 21-year-old white male. He was from Indianapolis, Indiana. and his body would end up being found near a place called Belleville, Indiana. And Daniel's murder was very, very similar to that of Stephen Agan because he had been stabbed many times and his midsection had been cut open exposing some of his organs.

So again, that's very similar. Yeah. Very easy to start to put some of these things together. I'm trying for out the obsession with slicing somebody open like that. I don't know. I don't know if it's control, domination. Man, that's a lot of force. Fascination of the anatomical workings of the body.

I really don't know. I think that would take a lot of force to go through those layers of skin and muscle and stuff to get that. I'm sure Carolyn will tell us, but I just think you'd have to really apply some force. Well, I think a lot of it depends on how sharp your knife is. Yeah. Yeah. I know I keep mine sharp. We know you do.

So Larry Eiler's been busy, right? He's had some clusters where he's going a week, two weeks killing. Now, these are when the bodies are found. So we don't know exactly when each person died, but... But you're not hearing, you know, that how badly decomposed they are. Yes. So we know they're, I don't want to say fresh, but they're... certainly not still. Yeah, I mean, there were a couple of them that I think were not found for a couple of

months, but I think most of them were, the bodies were found relatively quickly. Larry Eiler ends up moving to Indianapolis in the summer of 83. And in Indianapolis, he starts to frequent a lot of the gay clubs in Indy. And it's in August of 1983 that the body of Ralph Kaleigh, A 20-year-old white male is discovered in a field, again, near Lake Forest, Illinois. Eiler had stabbed Calice 17 times. When they found the body, the pants were pulled down all the way to his ankles. Again, Gibbs, no doubt there was some type of sexual component here, like some of the other ones. But it's a month later in September that an Indiana Highway Patrol officer

sees Eiler's pickup truck. And he also sees two men walking towards the woods. And one of the men appears to be bound. So as a highway patrol officer, you have to think, okay, that's pretty strange. I should stop and check that out. Absolutely. He does, thankfully.

Okay. He does. And this is when the young man that's with Larry Eiler, accuses him of making homosexual advances and tying him up. At this point, the police officer searches Eiler's truck and he finds a knife, two pairs of handcuffs, and he finds some boots that have bloodstains on it. All of this is in the truck scattered among Eiler's possessions. So they bag all of this up and they send it to the FBI lab,

for testing. So this is looking good, Gibbs, right? Yeah. They've got some good evidence. Got a witness, I mean, not a witness, but a victim. Potential victim. Yeah, witness that could have been a potential victim. Larry Eiler, that Tara Houtman, called by some police a suspect in a string of homosexual murders, is making another court move against police. He's already filed this civil rights complaint, seeking a quarter million dollars from several Indiana and Illinois police officers on grounds that they violated his rights by arresting him, searching his truck.

in this house on Keene Lane and Terre Haute where he'd stayed, all without cause. Tonight, Eiler's attorney tells us he's filing a new motion of the case, asking the police be made to turn over their notes and any lab tests they may have on him, that they'd be made to give back address books he says they took from him and be made to stop contacting people listed in those books. Police tonight say they're looking for a man from Chicago, believed to be in Kentucky who they say might help identify the killer. So while this is all going on, more bodies are found.

early October, Derek Hansen, an 18-year-old white male, he's found dismembered near Kenosha, Wisconsin. And it was determined that he had been sexually assaulted as well. And then on October 19th, Gibbs, they actually find four bodies at the same time. And these bodies are decomposed because they're skeletons at this point. only two of the boys or the men have been identified. One, Michael Bauer, 22, John Bartlett, 18. And then there were two bodies that they weren't able to identify. They're all found near Newton County.

One of the bodies was said to have been decapitated and all four had their pants pulled down. It's hard to think that the four weren't connected, especially since, You know, they talk about all, they had pants that were pulled down. It just kind of goes together. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's pretty much the same as all these other men that they're finding. They have to be putting this together. Now, in late October, after they find these four skeletons, Larry Eiler is arrested for the murder of Ralph Kalees.

And I think at this point, they are trying to connect him to a bunch of murders. maybe 19 or 20. The body of Eiler's alleged victim was found in a shallow grave in this field in Lake County, Illinois. Like the victims in a string of murders from central Indiana to northern Illinois, 28-year-old Ralph Calise was stabbed repeatedly and found with his pants around his ankles. There is a strong possibility the investigation may total 19 or more victims. In the opinion of the investigative authorities, 13 of the victims were directly connected. with homosexual activities.

This type of sordid crime can be compared with the sadistic gratification that John Wayne Gacy must have enjoyed in his vicious crimes, which I believe are unsurpassed in the annals of recorded sexual murders and degradation. Eiler was considered a suspect in the murder of two Indianapolis men, 21-year-old John Roach and 22-year-old Daniel McNevy. Police say he's also a suspect in the death of a third central Indiana man, Steve Egan of Tara Hote. So interesting to hear like an actual newscast, right, from back during that time.

That guy's comparing him to John Wayne Gacy. That's a pretty strong comparison. But there are a lot of similarities, right? Gacy targeted young men much in the same fashion. So Gibbs, I want to take you back to the man that we talked about earlier that got away from Larry Eiler and was in the hospital. but slipped out before police could question him. They track him down. And he is able to pick Larry Eiler out of a lineup.

So while this is all going on in early December of 83, two more bodies are found near Indianapolis. One of the man's name was Richard Wayne. And then the other has never been identified. So we got a couple of unidentified bodies in this case. And that is kind of sad in and of it. itself. And then things start to get really weird. So this is where you're going to get upset, Gibbs, because Larry Eiler does not get convicted of the murder of Ralph Calice. The case gets thrown

out by a judge in early 1984 because it's ruled that the police obtain the evidence from his truck illegally. So Larry Eiler ends up walking again. But they're pretty damn sure that he did it. But because of this technicality, they can't prosecute him. Three months after Eiler is released, the body of David Block, 22 years old, white male, he's found dead near Lake Forest, Illinois, again, Lake Forest. He dumped a lot of bodies in this area. He sure did. But we're not going to have to wait a long time for Larry Eiler to get justice.

because on August 21st, 1984, a building janitor is starting work around 6 a.m. And he's taking out some garbage for it to be picked up. As he gets close to the dumpsters, he sees six big hefty bags in the dumpsters. So you use one of those quality brands. What he did, and this is how the janer knew that this was not. not garbage thrown away by his tenants because he knew his tenants all used a bunch of cheap garbage bag. Oh, so he saw the difference and said something was wrong here.

Right. Yeah. This is not one of our tenants. This is somebody, a stranger that is thrown trash into our dumpster. So what the Jander ends up doing is he calls the police and the police open up the bags and they find the remains of 15-year-old Danny Bridges from Chicago. Now, it will come out as police are interviewing people that there were some janitors from some of the other buildings.

They had seen a man throw the bags into the dumpster and one of them was able to lead police to the apartment of Larry Eiler. At this point, Eiler's 31 years old. He's been working as a house painter. So they interview Eiler and I think pretty quickly Gibbs. they know they got their guy. They get a search warrant for his apartment, and they get in there.

They find a receipt for some hacksaw blades. They find blood. They plunge some stuff out of the kitchen sink that doesn't look too good, like body-ish-type material. Body-ish-type material. I didn't know how to say that. Yeah, there you go.

And they find some other evidence. And this is, the other thing that they find out is that Eiler had mopped all the floors and he had even repainted the walls. The dismembered body of a man, police believed to be in his 20s, was found in garbage bags behind an apartment

on the north side of Chicago, just a few doors away from where Larry Eiler lives. Neighbors in the area say they saw Eiler recently carrying bags to the dumpster. Chicago police tell me they are still in the process of searching the area for evidence and they are questioning Eiler in connection with this murder.

The 30-year-old man was taken into custody this morning after a janitor discovered the cut-up body in the trash. Well, I'm a janitor in that building. I have to carry out the garbage, and I need some room for that garbage. So therefore, you know, I find that ugly things, you know, in the bag. So I opened it up one of one, and I saw the lake. You're on leg, you could tell, you know. So that's right it. The body totally, totally cut up, unfortunately.

No, the body was just, the arm was all. the neck was off, the leg was off, and he's got a step wound, I don't know, about seven, eight step wound. Eiler has been a suspect in as many as 19 other homosexual slings and has been out of jail on a $10,000 bond on a murder charge. So, Gibby, can you imagine opening up these bags you find an arm, a head, a leg? That'd be bizarre, man. I don't know how to handle that.

I'd get sick. I couldn't handle it. I mean, this guy calls the police right away, but I have to imagine that's something that's going to stick with you for a little while. You're not going to get over that right away. You know, dinners might be a little tough coming up. You might have some nightmares about some weird things that you've seen. I wouldn't want to see it.

So Gibbs, we've got to get to the trial. At the trial, the prosecution calls as their first witness, a man named Dr. Robert Little. And Little had been a lover of Larry Eiler. And he talks about on that weekend that the murder occurred, he had been in Eiler's apartment. He had slept in the bedroom while Eiler slept on the couch. And they had basically spent Friday and Saturday night together. They went and saw a movie. They had dinner. But Little claims that he left the apartment Sunday night at about 10, 15 p.m. drove back to his house in Tara Hote, got there about 2.30 a.m. He was also able to produce a receipt for some property taxes that he paid on his condo

that was stamped Monday, August 20th. So they knew he was back in Tara Hote on Monday. Now, some of the other testimony from other witnesses would indicate that Danny Bridges, the victim, had left his sister's house something. time between 1030 and 11 on that Sunday night. So what that does is it puts Eiler alone in the apartment around the time that Danny Bridges disappeared because nobody sees Eiler until that next Monday when one of the Jander sees him carrying two hefty backs, right?

So he must have carried him two at a time. So you had a couple of other important witnesses. He had another former lover of Larry Eiler by the name of John. And John would say that, you know, he was still talking to Larry Eiler a lot on the phone. And he happened to see Eiler driving his pickup truck just after 1130 that Sunday night. That was backed up by a gas station attendant that testified that Eiler had. had filled his tank up sometime between 1145 and 1 a.m. So Gibbs, you have the prosecution's theory.

Dr. Little leaves at 10.15. Larry Eiler picks up Danny Bridges sometime after that, you know, let's say between 11 and 2, 3 in the morning. It's kind of a big window, but sometime in that window. he had killed him by 4 a.m. because John also testifies that he actually meets up with Larry Eiler at 4. So they're kind of bookending the time frames here. Another piece of the testimony was that John said that Larry Eiler asked him to borrow some goggles because he was going to do some painting. The prosecution is using that saying, you know, you're going to. cut somebody up, you're going to need the right equipment. And you're going to wear and wear goggles while you do that. Now, Larry Eiler's attorney didn't put him on the stand. And that's not unusual.

We don't, we don't see that a lot. He doesn't want to open up Larry Eiler to cross-examination. Yeah, that wouldn't be good. That would not be good for his client. Because the other thing that that would do is it would allow the prosecution to ask about any of the other murders that Eiler was. suspected of, right? And especially Ralph Calice. They had a lot on Eiler for Ralph Calice. I think he would have been convicted had that technicality not blown up on him. So really all that Eiler's attorney could do was try to undermine the testimony of Dr. Little and of the other guy John. But he went a little bit further than that on Dr. Little. And Dr. Little is going to come into this in a big way. He doesn't come out and say it,

but in a roundabout way, he does to the jury raise suspicion that it was Dr. Little that had committed the murder and not his client, Larry Eiler. And one of the things that he said was, you know, it was little that was sleeping in the bedroom. And that's where a lot of the blood was found when they, when they searched the apartment. But again, Gibbs, if little is gone, then that makes no difference. Right. But what he's saying is little wasn't gone. He was still there. He committed the murders in the bedroom. That's why all the blood is in there. And then he tried to nail little on the payment of this tax bill as just a convenient way to build an alibi. So all the testimony is over.

The jury very, very quickly, they find Larry Eiler guilty. They're not buying. any of the defense tactics, he ends up getting the death penalty for the murder of Danny Bridges. And normally our story would end there, Gibbs, but there's a lot more to this after Eiler is convicted because he starts doing a lot of wheeling and dealing and he's trying to rat out other people to lighten his sentence. And he gets a new attorney in 1990, and this is Kathleen Zellner and Kathleen Zellner is very famous. She took on the case of Stephen Avery from making a murderer fame. She got Ryan Ferguson off and that was a huge case, right? Ryan Ferguson had been wrongfully convicted and she was able to get his conviction overturned. So Zellner takes up

the case of Larry Eiler. What Larry Eiler wants to do is get out of the death sentence. That he was given and switch that for life in prison. And to do that through his attorney, he says that he's willing to provide information that would solve more than 20 different murders in nine different counties. Now, there's a whole bunch of jurisdictions involved here, Gibbs. And most of them are all in on this.

They want this to happen so that they can solve the cases that they have in their county. And that makes sense. It does make a lot of sense. Yeah. But what is tough is because the Danny Bridges murder was committed in Cook County, it's really Cook County that has to make the decision, right? Do they take away the death penalty for Larry Eiler in exchange for this information that's going to help out all these other counties? And eventually they say no.

Wow. They're not going to do it. They think it was correct that he got the death penalty and they don't want to let him out of it. So as part of this, all of this wrangling that Larry Eiler's trying to do, he's meeting with his attorney on a regular basis. She ends up getting Larry Eiler to confess to the Stephen Agan murder. That was a horrific one. Yeah, okay. He was disembowled.

Yes. It was a very, very brutal. The one we heard from the mom? Yes. Yes. That's the one where we heard the clip from the mom. And so he ends up writing out a 17 page confession. But he just doesn't confess.

He implicates Dr. Little, Dr. Robert, this is where Little comes back in. So what Larry Eiler ends up doing is he pleads guilty to the murder of Stephen Agan. He gets a 60-year sentence for that. which, you know, who gives a shit, right? He's already got a death sentence. What does he care about getting another 60-year sentence? Now, when I say who gives a shit, I don't, I mean about him, not about the victim or the victim's families. I'm sure they were happy to get that and get a little bit of closure.

And in return for getting this 60-year sentence, he's going to testify against his former lover, Dr. Little. And I mean, it's not even a week after he makes this confession. We've got to talk about this little guy because he's a college professor, like we said, with a doctor title. And within a week, they charge him with the murder of Stephen Agan based on this confession from Larry Eiler. Now, Little was from Wisconsin. And he was a faculty member at Indiana State University and had been since 1971. And Larry Eiler was a student at Indiana State University in 1975. So this is how they met.

Ultimately later on, they end up living together in Terre Haute, Indiana up until the time that Eiler moves to Chicago in 82. And as we've said, they were lovers. I don't think anybody disputed that point. So Eiler does some interviews with authorities. And he starts saying some fantastical things to support his claim that Robert Little was part of not only the Stephen Agan murder. He starts throwing him into a bunch of them because he, you know, what Eiler claims is that Little paid his rent on his Chicago apartment. And in exchange for paying that rent, Larry Eiler.

was to obtain victims for Robert Little. Really? Yes. This is the story he's going with. So Eiler's account of the Egan murder is that they were driving around looking for a victim. They picked up Stephen Egan, tied him up, and murdered him. So Little's brought to trial in April of 1991. And this happens in Indiana because that's where Stephen Agan was killed.

the prosecution goes after him pretty hard. They established that Little had an attraction to young men. They had a witness that said at an age under 18, he had posed for some nude photographs for Little. And at that photo shoot, there was some sexual activity that took place. They had another man that pretty much told the same story about a photography session where nude photos were taken. taken and they found some of these nude photos Gibbs.

They found them in Little's house and produced them as evidence in the trial. Wow. But what they didn't find was any photos of Stephen Agan or anything related to the Agan murder. So in the trial, Larry Eiler takes a stand, talks about his confession, talks about, you know, how the murder took place and Little's part in that murder. but there was no physical evidence linking Little to this murder. So really all they had was the word of Larry Eiler, a confessed killer.

And Little's attorneys tore him up. One of their main things was that Little had testified against Eiler. So this was just a case of him getting back at the professor. Some retaliation. Yeah, retaliation for Little test. Now, what they were also able to do is because he was on the stand, they were able to ask him about all these different murders. And Eiler took the fifth every time. He wouldn't answer any questions about any of the other murders that he had been linked to.

They asked him about the dismemberment of Danny Bridges, which he'd already been convicted of. The professor did not take the stand, which you and I talk about a lot. lot. Most people don't. Yeah, normally not a good thing. It's not, normally it's not a good thing. But what they did have was a videotaped testimony from Little's mother. And in this testimony, she basically gives him an alibi because she says that on the day that Stephen Agan was murdered, he couldn't have done it because he was in Florida visiting her on this day. He had some other family members that testified that he always went to Florida right before Christmas to visit his mother. But again, a lot of these people couldn't remember the exact dates. And because you're

talking about a number of years later, right, eight, nine years after the fact. Yeah. And I never understood that because I don't know how anybody, unless they have a day planner with specific information in there. Who the hell keeps a day planner anymore? Well, back then, I mean. Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah. Okay. I was like, you got a damn iPhone. What do you need a day planner for?

Now I got to make sure you never see my day planner I have either. But you know what I'm saying. I mean, unless you've jotting this information down, who's going to recall that? Right, you're right. Unless somebody,

and back then you would have had a day planner. I can't even remember what I ate for dinner the other night. No, I'm with you. My memory is horrible. But there was some conflicting testimony as well because there was a person from a local garage in Indiana that testified he had been working on the doctor's transam.

And this testimony kind of put Little in Indiana at the time of the murder. So there was a lot of back and forth in this one. The jury gets the case. They seem to be able to sort it out pretty well because they deliberated for seven hours and they found him not guilty. So want to just reiterate that, they found Dr. Robert Little not guilty of the. murder of Stephen Agin.

All right, Gibbs. So we got to wrap this up by talking about the death of Larry Eiler. So Larry Eiler had contracted AIDS at some point in his life. And he ends up dying in prison in 1994 from some type of complication related to the AIDS that he had. But what comes out after Eiler's death is that he had given his attorney. permission to release the names of 17 men that he had killed. And he also named four other individuals that he says were killed by an unnamed accomplice.

So he's saying I killed 17. And here's four others that were killed by somebody else. But I'm not going to tell you who. With him or just by themselves? I'm going to say with him because it says accomplice. And apparently he had been putting this list together for the last three or four years. Because if you go back to 1990, that's four years before his death. That's the point where he's trying to make the deal.

It just makes natural sense that he's been putting this list together because he was going to use the list to get out of his death sentence, which it wouldn't have mattered because he died four years later. Now, of course, he didn't know he was going to die. I'm sorry that the Agin family had to be put through this awful ordeal. Did Eiler leave police with clues on Little or others? Cops wish they could have talked to him first. Most people are just happy he's gone. He was a real serial killer.

Is he the worst serial killer? I would say yes. So what you hear first there Gibbs, that's Dr. Little from a press conference, basically saying, you know, sorry to the Stephen. Agan family. This is after he's been acquitted. Okay. And then the other woman that you hear is Jerylind Klerick. And she's kind of an expert on Larry Eiler. She wrote a book called Freed to Kill back in the early 90s. And she did a lot of interviews about Eiler. Kind of knows the case inside and out. But you hear her say, she thinks he's

one of the worst serial killers. Now, that could be because she spent so much time studying him. Sure. And she knows every intimate detail and nasty thing that he's ever done. But I don't think there's any doubt that this guy was a monster of a pretty high order. Oh, I agree. So before we go, Gibbs, one of the things I want to talk about, and we touched on it a little bit about some of these bodies are still unidentified. And what I read is that, so I found some statistics that indicate that there are more than 10,000 bodies right now in the United States that are unidentified.

That's amazing, man. That number to me sounds staggering. So 10,000 John and Jane Does across the country that they cannot figure out who these people are. And then the FBI has some estimates out there that indicate that there are over 80,000 people that are still reported as missing. So that's 80,000 where they haven't even found the bodies. Yeah. Well, we know where 10,000 are. No, you're right.

So some or some percentage, some number of the 10,000 could be part of the 80. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's an alarming. amount. It's a big number. I mean, I guess if you look at the U.S. population. Yeah, you're right. If you're talking 330, what do we got? 340 million people. I don't know what it is today. I haven't counted a while, but yeah. 80,000 percentage wise is, I guess is not a huge percentage, but when you say 80,000, that's a big number. I mean, that's like a football stadium. Yeah, I mean, one person is too many. It's too many. You're right about that. But when you think about

a whole football stadium being missing. That's a man. Wow. Put it that way. It's kind of a. Yeah. It's kind of a staggering thought. So the other thing is,

and we talk, you and I talk about databases a lot. We don't always get them right. You know, we talk about Codus and Aphus. Well, I found another one called, and I'm going to pronounce it,

Namus. It's N-A-M-U-S. and this is a database for the national missing and unidentified. And apparently it's housed in this center for human identification in Fort Worth, Texas. So I just thought that was very interesting because we talk a lot about databases and how they're used to solve crimes and how they'll be used to solve crimes in the future. And this one I had never heard of, and it's a database. database for missing and unidentified people.

And I'm sure it will be beneficial. Anytime you got data mining going on, eventually it'll help somehow. Oh, yeah. Anytime, you have it in a system where it can be shared or accessed by different agencies. So if a county has a missing person and there's some information in a system that they kind of matches up to what they're,

what they have or what they're looking for, all of these all of this technology can only help us in starting to solve some of these older cases and that's a good thing absolutely man all right so that's uh the case of larry eyler bad guy no doubt about that and another case of uh true crime all the time so for mike and gibby stay safe and keep your own time ticking