True Crime Campfire - After Dark: The Route 40 Killer

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Every night in the city, there are people out looking for something. Usually it’s just fun and excitement, but there are also those who go out looking to fulfill darker desires, who view the night city as a hunting ground where they will get what they want, no matter what. And sometimes, what they want is a nightmare of pain and suffering that shocks the conscience. Note: This episode is about a serial killer, and the descriptions of his crimes are more graphic than most. Listener discretion is advised. Join us for Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 2026 in September! Visit badmagicproductions.com for tickets and more info. Registration is now open for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027. Sources: Delaware Online: https://www.delawareonline.com/in-depth/news/2020/12/14/delaware-murder-serial-killer-shirley-tinker-ellis-catherine-dimauro-steven-brian-pennell/5804258002/ https://www.delawareonline.com/in-depth/news/2020/12/15/after-2-murders-detective-knew-we-have-serial-killer-steven-pennell-route-40-killer/5857068002/ https://www.delawareonline.com/in-depth/news/2020/12/16/delaware-rookie-cop-working-undercover-comes-face-face-evil-steven-pennell-route-40-killer/5937449002/ https://www.delawareonline.com/in-depth/news/2020/12/17/suspect-discovers-listening-device-his-van-steven-pennell-route-40-killer/3667098001/ https://www.delawareonline.com/in-depth/news/2020/12/18/serial-killer-takes-his-secrets-grave-steven-pennell-route-40-killer/5793180002/ Delaware Today: https://delawaretoday.com/life-style/route-40-delaware-serial-killer/ NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/15/us/delaware-carries-out-first-execution-since-46.html Court papers: https://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/supreme-court/1992/604-a-2d-1368-5.html Follow us, campers! Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfire https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/ Facebook: True Crime Campfire Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=en Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire Email: [e-mail] MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Every night in the city, there are people out looking for something. Usually it's just fun and excitement, but there are also those who go out looking to fulfill darker desires, who view the night city as a hunting ground, where they will get what they want, no matter what. And sometimes what they want is a nightmare of pain and suffering that shocks the conscience.

This is After Dark, the Route 40 killer. So, campers, for this one, were in the town of Newark, Delaware, November 29, 1987. It was a wet and windy night, and a young couple decided to round off the Thanksgiving weekend in style by driving to the industrial park on Old Baltimore Pike, a place where they could make out where there wasn't much chance of being a interrupted. Under the yellow sodium glare of the industrial park's lights, they first thought it was a mannequin they saw lying by the side of the road. As they drove closer, it was clear that wasn't the case. They discovered the body of a young woman, partially naked, her legs spread wide open and very clearly dead. Detective Joseph Swisky of the Delaware State Police responded to the scene with his partner at

about 9.30 p.m. They found the victim lying on her back about three feet from the curb. Her pants had been pulled down to her knees and her shirt opened, exposing her breasts. Her legs had been pushed wide open. There was a piece of duct tape stuck in her hair, and it looked like it was a scrap of a larger piece that had been used to cover her mouth and then ripped off. There were cuts on her stomach, and both breasts and nipples had been mutilated by what later examination would show to be a pair of heavy pliers. Abrasions on her wrists and ankles indicated she'd been bound, and marks on her hands suggested she'd fought her attacker. There were ligature marks around her neck and three severe head injuries. The medical examiner

would determine that her cause of death was a combination of strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head, most likely from a hammer. Despite the obviously sexualized nature of the scene, there was no indication of sexual activity at all. There was long grass by the side of the road, turned brown by the approaching winter, and it hadn't been disturbed around the body. It looked like she'd been killed elsewhere and then dumped here. It didn't take the investigators long to identify the victim. She was familiar to the local police. Shirley Ellis was 23 years old and had previously been arrested for prostitution at a time when she'd been in the grip of substance abuse.

That's a hole that can be hard for a young person to escape, but Shirley had dug herself out. She was living with her mom now and about to start nursing school. In 1987, both sex work and drug use included a new danger, and one of Shirley's friends was an AIDS patient in Wilmington Hospital, about 17 miles from her mom's house. On the evening of November 29th, Shirley had left home with a platter of Thanksgiving food for her husband,

friend. Her step-sister had just gotten her driver's license and was too nervous to drive on the busy Route 40 on wet roads, but she offered to drop Shirley off on the corner so she could hitchhike, something Shirley was very comfortable doing. Her sister watched her start walking towards Wilmington, then headed home. Somewhere, on the way to the hospital, Shirley vanished. This would be a very different case today. Shirley would have a cell phone, the industrial park would have cameras. Forensic science would have a vast array of advanced techniques to get evidence, but in 1987, there were no witnesses and no physical evidence. Everyone in the investigation was shaken up by this murder, which was more brutal than anything they'd ever seen before,

but there just wasn't enough for the case to get any traction. They had no suspects. Seven months passed. On the morning of June 29, 1988, Detective Sergeant, James Hedrick got a call. A body had been found on a construction site for a new apartment complex out in Fox Run, just south of Route 40. It was still early in the construction, with the earth scraped down to bare dirt over acres of land, and on this harsh ground lay the naked body of a woman. She had ligature injuries on her wrists, ankles, and neck, as well as serious head injuries and mutilations to her breasts. There was no disturbance on the dirt around. her, suggesting she'd been killed elsewhere.

The construction site was less than three miles from where Shirley Ellis's body had been found seven months ago. Every cop in the area had heard about her death, and this murder was eerily similar. So Hedrick called Detective Swisky of the state police and asked him to come to the crime scene and see how it compared to the one from the Ellis case. Swisky was immediately sure that this was the work of the same killer. The only difference of any significance was that the victim was naked. On her bare skin, they found fine blue fibers, carpet fibers. And the dirt nearby were tire tracks, which they photographed and took plaster prints of. As with Shirley, there were scraps of duct tape in her hair from where the gag had been torn off.

They identified the second victim from dental records. Catherine DeMorrow was 31, a divorced mom of two who struggled constantly to provide for her kids. She had several previous arrests for prostitution and had been last seen long. walking along Route 40, which in the late 80s was kind of a local hot spot for sex work. Before this case, the state of Delaware had never had to deal with a known serial killer, and at the time of recording, they haven't had one since. But even though the investigators didn't have personal experience with this type of killer, they knew what they were dealing with.

Two almost identical sadistic killings in the same area, with significant crossover in victimology. That's not a coincidence. Detective Hedrick happened to have a buddy, Jim Zop, who was an agent with the FBI's behavioral science unit. When Hedrick told him he was worried that Delaware had a serial killer on its hands, Zop drove up and listened carefully as Hedrick and Swisky shared their evidence. Zop heard enough to convince him to call his boss, John Douglas. Yay, Papa Douglas!

In case you don't know, John Douglas was one of the original founders of criminal profiling. He's the one, the main character in that TV. show Mind Hunter was based on, and he's written all kinds of amazing books where you can learn so much about criminal profiling. So, yeah, always fun to see his name. Hedrick Swisky and prosecutor Kathy Jennings were invited down to Quantico to meet with the behavioral science team and hear the profile they developed. The profile indicated a white male, 25 to 35, who either lived or worked within five miles where the bodies had been dumped. He drove a truck or van big enough to kill in, the tools he used to attack and kill his victims,

the pliers and the hammer, would be things he was comfortable with and used frequently. There was a good chance he worked in construction or something similar. The killer would seem like a normal guy, not someone people thought of as strange. But if he had a romantic partner, he would be abusive. He would care a lot about projecting a macho image and would likely collect S&M pornography. The second kill was more confident than the first. He had zero remorse. for his actions and would absolutely kill again. This stuff is so fascinating to me.

So let's see if we can figure out how they got to some of this stuff. So the age, I think, is just straight up based on stats. That's the most common age range for an active serial killer. Living or working within five miles of the dump sites, most likely because killers tend to dump bodies in places they know and what you might think of as their comfort zone. White male, most likely because the two victims were white, And at least at the time, the prevailing thought was that killers tend to pick victims within their own racial group.

I think that's a little bit less the case now, but that was sort of an ironclad rule back then. Let's talk about the van. We know the bodies were dumped. The victims weren't left where they were killed. So that means we've got another location somewhere. And the victims were sex workers. And those ladies are less likely to want to go home with a guy, right? So it makes sense that the murder scene might be a vehicle of some kind.

A van would provide a lot more security and privacy than like a car. Yeah, and the construction thing makes total sense, just given the tools that the killer used. So why do we think the profile included that line about seeming like a normal guy, not obviously a weirdo? I suspect it comes down to victimology again. Sex workers are probably one of the most streetwise and savvy groups in the world. Yeah. They know what they're doing is dangerous. So my guess is they'd feel a lot more comfortable getting in a van and driving off with somebody who didn't settle.

off any obvious alarm bells. Absolutely. And the S&M porn thing, and we're talking violent porn, like, just to be clear, as awful as it is to talk about it, these victims were tortured and tortured in a sexualized way. So this would be a sexual sadist, which, thank God, is the rarest type of offender, you know, the rarest type of serial killer or whatever. But he'd be a guy who got off on that shit. And when you get off on something, you tend to be drawn to porn about it. And he He obviously liked inflicting pain and fear, so it makes sense that he'd be an abusive partner to anybody he dates. The FBI had some advice on how to catch the killer. He was targeting young sex workers in the area around a particular stretch of Route 40.

A female officer in disguise could act as bait with Hedric or Swisky in a car nearby, listening in through a hidden microphone. If they heard anything weird, you know, weirder than normal for a conversation between a John and the lady he's trying to. to hire, they'd investigate that guy further. This was potentially very dangerous work, and not every officer could convincingly pull off the role, which they might have to do for weeks or months, several nights a week. The first officer's Hedrick and Swisky approach just straight up refused, and I do not blame them. And when they did pick somebody and put them out, they ended up pulling her after a couple of weeks. She just wasn't comfortable out in the streets, and she got really nervous talking to the Johns, which is completely, again, understandable. But if this operation was

going to have a prayer of succeeding, then the investigation needed a new decoy. Hadrick had somebody in mind, 23-year-old Renee Lano. Renee had been an officer with the county police for all of five months, but she'd worked for three years as a dispatcher before then, so a lot of the cops knew her pretty well. She was sharp and quick-witted and not easily spooked. She was sharp. She was, was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed to be the bait. She'd become a cop wanting to handle homicide cases, something five-month rookies hardly ever get a chance to do. So she got excited for the challenge. What absolute badass this woman is. My God, like I genuinely don't know if I could do this. I want to think I would and that I could, but can you imagine how scary? Like, you know

what this guy does to women. You know what he does to his victims. I just can't even imagine. It'd just be terrifying. So both victims, Shirley and Catherine, had had shoulder-length brown hair, and they'd been wearing jeans and sneakers when they were taken. So Renee got a wig to cover her blonde hair and dressed similarly. In addition to the concealed microphone, she had a purse over her shoulder that had a special pocket inside so that when Renee talked to someone in his car, she could keep her hand in there, holding a hidden gun pointed right at the person she was talking to. When she went out on the street, Hendrick and Swisky would be parked nearby in an unmarked car, listening in, drinking coffee, and smoking endless cigarettes.

They've got the easy part of the job. Although I'm sure it was incredibly stressful for them, too. Mm-hmm. Officers in other unmarked cars would drive back and forth past her. There were always several pairs of eyes on her. Not that that would make me feel much better, to be honest. Not at all. Her job was to chat up anyone who stopped.

make them feel comfortable and keep them talking. She'd chosen the alias Jackie and would act, as she put it, dumb and stoned. Rule number one was never, ever get in the vehicle. Over the course of a couple months, she spoke with hundreds of guys. As soon as it became clear that police were looking for a Delaware serial killer, the story became big news. Someone who was real interested in the reporting was the killer himself, who avidly watched every news broadcast and collected newspaper articles about the case.

With all the attention, he decided to change his routine just a little and started cruising Route 13 instead of 40. It was close by, but it wasn't where the police decoy scheme was operating. And that's why modern profilers say don't name a killer because it could narrow your net. Like, the Green River Killer stopped killing and dumping bodies around the Green River. And he went undetected for a while after that. And this is one of the many reasons why, you know, people always get so frustrated when the investigators are not releasing details. This is why they don't do that, okay?

Because you let too much out, and then the killer is watching and listening and can change behavior. And that can make it a lot harder to catch him. Yep. That's why when people say, there's something off about this case. I'm like, well, yes, it's a murder. Because you don't have all the information. Yeah. Yeah.

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When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion. Inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. On August 22nd, two months after Catherine DeMorrow's murder, Margaret Lynn Finner was standing outside the General Wayne Hotel. Margaret Lynn was 27 years old, a petite brunette with two young children she adored, and to whom she was nothing but a bright and joyful presence.

She was a recovering addict who had made money as a sex worker in the past, and when she fell behind on bills, she started working again. On that hot August evening, she kissed her kids good night, told them she loved them, and went out into the streets. A friend down the street saw her get into a blue Ford van with round headlights, but he didn't get a good look at the driver. Margaret Lynn was reported missing after 48 hours, and investigators immediately thought, oh no, not again. Yeah. They all had a gut feeling that this was the same killer, striking again, so they potentially had one thing to look out for now, a blue Ford van. In the 80s, that didn't necessarily narrowed things down as much as it might today. SUVs hadn't taken off yet, and there were a lot of vans on the road.

Yeah, we had a blue Ford van when I was a kid. Like, I mean, yeah. No one would know what happened to Margaret Lynn until 11 weeks later. In November, when a hunter found her badly decomposed body in the reeds on the banks of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Officer Renee Lano apparently looked good in jeans and sneakers. The parking lot of one particular diner was a popular spot with sex workers, and one night the owner came out and asked Renee to move along because so many cars were stopping for her that it was interfering with his business. There was a line of six guys in cars waiting to talk to her. She was doing such a good job. Too good a job.

She flirted and smiled and kept them talking, listening for anything weird. And one night, a blue van pulled up beside her. Everybody in the decoy operation was instantly on high alert. Renee walked over to the window and started chatting at the driver. He seemed unusually wary. At one point, he said, are you a cop? Renee laughed and said, no, why are you? He started insisting she'd get in the van, pushing harder than John's usually did.

Renee, of course, refused, and eventually he got frustrated and drove off, having quite thoroughly made himself a person of interest. When the cops ran the van's plates, they found out it was owned by a guy named Richard, a married elementary school teacher who lived in apparently normal suburban life. This slotted into some, but not all of the FBI's profile. The investigators determined he regularly cruised for sex workers in his van and convinced a judge to grant a search warrant, visiting Richard's house while his wife was home. In the attic, they found a loose panel. Inside they found a ton of porn, sex toys, dirty Polaroids like the goody stash.

They had found blue carpet fibers on Catherine DeMorrow's body and searched everywhere in Richard's home and van for a match. But they found nothing. They practically tore the van down to the frame looking for any shred of evidence. They found nothing. There was nothing connecting Richard to the murders. It looked like he wasn't their guy and the investigators left, presumably leaving Richard to have an interesting conversation with his lady because I'm guessing you don't hide your naughty box in the attic if your wife knows about it.

Like, oh no, honey, no big deal. They just thought I was a serial killer. God, that poor woman. On September 10th, Catherine Meyer got into an argument with her boyfriend in the house they shared. He started hitting her, bloodying her nose, and Catherine ran out of the house. Shaken, she started walking out toward Route 40, most likely to find a phone and call her parents. She was 26 years old, and like every victim in this case, had shoulder-length brown hair. A blue van pulled up beside her.

Catherine talked with the driver for a little while and got in. I'm guessing he offered her a ride to somewhere she could call from. We know this is what happened, because an off-duty police officer happened to see her get in the van, and because of Catherine's bloody nose, the cop thought the situation was weird and took note of the license plate number. But they were apparently out of the loop on the serial killer investigation, because they didn't share that plate number with anyone until much later on when it was too late to matter. And, you know, in almost every serial killer case I've ever studied there are moments like this. Missed opportunities that could have stopped the murders right then and there.

Like that famous moment in the Dahmer case, for example, where the police basically caught him with a victim and let him go. So incredibly frustrating. It makes me wonder how often my license plate is, like, jotted down by a cop. Yeah. But I suppose, like, serial killers are out acting more suspicious than you're at. average Joe, so police are more likely to notice them. I just, you know, I'm always curious, like, what am I doing that makes a cop go, hmm, what's she up to? You should start trying to do it just so you can see if you can get pulled over. Yeah, that's, that sounds like a fun time to me.

Yeah. What do we, what do we always say, like, don't commit more than one crime at a time? Yes. You could just tell them, like, hey, I'm, this is an experiment. I'm a true crime podcaster. I'm sure they'd just let you go immediately. They'd love that. The next day, Catherine's boyfriend reported her missing. No one ever saw her again, and her body was never found. She vanished 19 days after Margaret Lynn Finner was abducted. There'd been seven months between the first two known murders,

two months between the second and third, and now the gap was down to 19 days. Now, detectives call the time between a serial's murders, the cooling off period. murder temporarily calms that homicidal urge for the killer and they can hold it together for a while before that desire starts to rise up again. And when the cooling off period starts to get shorter and shorter, that's a real bad sign. Like in the end, Bundy was just, he was just nonstop. Like there was no cooling off period at all. And that was when he was really like, you know, flipping out.

And that's when the Chi Omega House happened and everything. So, you know, it tends to escalate. And this killer's behavior was escalating rapidly. And the investigators knew he was very likely to strike again soon. Yeah. And killers also have to start upping the ante and taking bigger and bigger risks to get the same satisfaction that they got from the first kill. It's like chasing the dragon. Like the kills have less and less payoff.

And so they become more violent or try to get their kicks in other ways. Like you mentioned with Bundy and his spree killing towards the end of his reign. Yeah. And that was also when he killed. a child for the first time, or at least the first time that we know of, which was not usual to him. And so, you know, just out of control.

Just four days later, Detective Hedrick's dropped Renee Lano off at the white-clays strip mall, close to where Catherine had vanished from, and parked behind the stores as Renee waited for men to stop and talk to her. A couple did, but neither seemed suspicious. Then a dark blue Ford van

drove slowly past her. A couple minutes later, it drove past her again, just as slow, going the other way. Over the next 20 minutes, the van drove by her seven times, more than any prospective client had ever done before. God, it's so creepy, it's gliding by like a shark, just over and over again. Renee was a little freaked out. She said into her concealed microphone, honk the horn if you can hear me,

and immediately heard a honk from behind the stores. Over the microphone, Renee described the driver, as a white fat guy with a beard. She read the license plate to Hedrick, who called in and asked someone to run it. Sky is weird, Renee said. Weird and careful. The blue van drove off.

Hedrick figured the road by the strip mall was maybe too brightly lit for this guy's taste. He drove Renee to a lonelier stretch of Route 40 and let her out to walk alone along the shoulder of the dark highway between widely spaced streetlights. And again, let's just take a moment to digest the bravery of this woman. Can you imagine, like just get a mental picture, this dark road where you

know these crimes have happened and you're standing out there as bait for this monster. It's just unbelievable. Get chills. Yeah. The van passed her again, driving slowly in the opposite direction. He'd liked the look of Renee before, and now here she was, alone in the shadows by the side of the road. He made a U-turn, then came back, and stopped just in front of Renee. Renee was scared. She'd spoken to hundreds of guys this way by now, but this one immediately felt different. The driver rolled down the passenger window and waved her in closer. Renee, in her Jackie persona, giggled and said,

So what's your name? Jim, the driver said. So what's up? Renee said. You've been partying or what? No, I just had another fight with the old lady again. This conversation felt off. Renee had developed a flirty, happy character for this operation, kind of a manic pixie dream ho.

And most guys she'd spoken to responded in kind, smiling and chatting her up. From this guy, she got nothing. He seemed outright sullen, didn't say much, and stared right through Renee as if she wasn't there. She had trouble keeping the conversation going, and eventually he just ordered her. Get in.

She ignored that. Your van is really cool, she said. Can you turn on the light so I can see better? He did. It's really pretty, Renee said. It wasn't pretty. But the driver was proud of his van's interior. The walls in the back had been painted in stripes of red, white, and blue, and blue carpeting covered the bed.

Renee knew that blue carpet fibers had been found on Catherine DeMorrow's body. She asked if she could take a closer look. and the driver opened the door. Renee saw that same blue carpeting was on the inside of the door. Oh, my God, that gives me chills. I love this, she said stroking the carpet. This is a neat idea. As subtly as she could, she tugged a few of the fibers free,

and without the driver noticing, put them in her purse. They haggled over the price of oral sex for a minute, then Renee said she was too high to do anything and walked away. She was terrified he might try and grab her, but the guy in the van just drove off. When she got into Hedrick's car a minute later, she said, that's him. Yeah. So they tailed the van for the rest of the night as he drove up and down Roots 40 and 13 for hours,

but apparently nobody else caught his eye. Headquarters called back with the info from the van's plates. It was registered to Stephen Brian Pinell and his wife Kathy, who lived in the Glasgow Pines trailer park within walking distance of where Catherine DeMorrow's body had been found. Stephen Pinell was 30 years old and an electrician, meaning he already ticked off several boxes on the FBI's profile, and the investigators now considered him a person of interest.

It's hard to get a handle on Stephen Brian Pinell. He stood 6'3 and weighed close to 300 pounds, a big dude, but friends described him as a gentle teddy bear. People in the trailer park let him babysit their kids or drive them to school. There's no indication of, any childhood trauma or of the famous McDonald triad that's sometimes used as a red flag for antisocial or psychopathic behavior. No fire starting, bedwetting, cruelty to animals. In fact, people noticed how squeamish he was about causing animals pain. One friend said he went

duck hunting one time and he couldn't even pull the trigger on a friggin' duck. At school, he'd been a big, shy, helpful kid. Penel had wanted to be a cop since he was a woman. little, but had failed the physical. He got a job as a stockboy at a department store where his future wife Kathy also worked. He became a licensed electrician, but never kept a job for very long. He kept all his tools arranged neatly in his van. To try and snatch back a small piece of the macho authority he'd missed out on by not becoming a cop, he briefly worked as a bouncer for a Wilmington nightclub, but he was terrible at it. It seems kind of bizarre considering what he actually was, but despite his size, people just weren't intimidated by him. Until the murder started,

the only time he'd show his temper was at home, where neighbors in the trailer park often heard him screaming at Kathy and their three kids. He was physically abusive to his wife, frequently hitting her, one time even breaking her arm. He was physically abusive to his wife, frequently hitting her, one time even breaking her arm. By 1987, after he fought with Kathy, he was, he'd often go out and drive around alone in his van for hours. Eventually, he started picking up sex workers. And eventually, he started torturing and murdering them. Hi, I'm pianist maniacs.

On my new podcast's classical music happy hour, my guests and I talk about life and music, and we also like to play games. Is it a composer, or is it cheese? Oh, I know this game. Knowing Mozart, it's probably all of the above. It's all of the above. Is this a fake or was this a flop?

Flop. That's more mistakes than I made in my last recital. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. The fibers Renee Lano had grabbed from Pinell's van were sent to the FBI lab in Quantico for comparison with those retrieved from Catherine DeMorrow's body, but the analysis would take over a week. In the meantime, the police put Pinell under partial surveillance, which meant they watched him from the time he left his trailer to when he went to bed and turned out the lights. This turned out to be a tragic error because Stephen Pennell often woke up after going to bed and would go out driving again in the middle of the night.

He did this on September 18th, four days after his encounter with Officer Renee. Thinking he was in for the night, the police surveillance detail had already left. It would be another heartbreaking missed opportunity. It's such a weird choice too because it's like they were expecting him to keep normal people hours. Like, no, he's keeping serial killer hours, which is a 24-7 job. Yeah, and I wonder if that would be different today because this was still kind of early in our understanding of serial murder and serial murderers.

And a lot of people, I suspect cops didn't have the training yet, you know, from the behavioral science guys that they would have later. So maybe it just, yeah, but it's heart-wrenching. because Michelle Gordon was 22 years old, and after dropping out of school in the 10th grade, she'd been arrested several times on drug charges. Her attorney described her as a suburban kid who'd gotten involved with drugs. Her younger brother described her as a wild child who could be kind of oblivious about other people's intentions. She trusted too many people, he said.

She was really trustworthy herself, but she trusted too many other people. That quote, by the way, comes from the five-part series on this case in the Delaware News Journal by Patricia Telerico and Esteban Parra, which was our main source for this story, and is very good. Michelle was slightly built and had shoulder-length brown hair. She looked younger than her age. She often lived on the streets and turned to sex work to cover both her drug habit and occasional motel rooms to stay in. On September 18th, she left a bar after the tender refused to serve her without ID and started walking down. Route 40, either hitchhiking or working, and a friend saw her get into a blue van. Two days later, police recalled the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal where Michelle's naked body had washed up on the rocky shore. Her wrists and ankles had the same ligature marks found on

the first two victims, but unlike them, there was no indication of head trauma or strangulation. There had been similar torture to her breasts and nipples, and her buttocks were bruised black after being beaten with a hammer. The medical examiner found cocaine in Michelle's system and said he believed that this had made her heart less able to withstand shocks and that she died of a heart attack while being tortured. Jesus. After she was dead, Stephen Pinell had cut off one of her nipples

and slashed deep cuts into the back of both of her legs. Michelle's death was a gut punch to the police. They'd failed and they knew it. They still didn't know for sure that Stephen Pinell was their guy, but they maintained their surveillance. The same day Michelle's body was found, they trailed him to a pet boy's tire store where he bought new tires for his van.

After he'd left, the cops got a warrant to seize the used tires from the store and sent them down to Quantico, where FBI technicians already had the plaster cast tire prints they'd taken from Catherine DeMorrow's crime scene. Four days later, the results came in. Two of the tires were of similar design to those from the crime scene,

but it was impossible to make an exact match. But the big news was the carpet fibers. The ones Renee Lano had grabbed from Pinell's van were a match to those found on Catherine's body. Prosecutors were not quite ready to pull the trigger on the arrest yet. In October, they raided Pinell's trailer home as well as the van and two sheds on his property. They got samples of his blood and hair. In one of the sheds, they found a TV and VCR and a stack of S&M porn tapes. The tape in the machine was queued up on a scene where a man,

forcefully pierces a woman's nipple with a safety pin. Oh, my God. Ouch. From the van, they seized tools, zip ties, and stained padding from under the blue carpet. Those stains would ultimately match Kathleen Meyer's blood based on analysis of blood taken from her parents. A roll of duct tape seized from the van matched scraps found in Shirley's and Catherine's hair. After that, the surveillance was no longer covert. Everywhere Stephen Pennell went, the police were there too.

Yeah, at this point, I'm sure they wanted him to know they were breathing down his neck, so he wouldn't try it again. Mm-hmm. On November 12th, Margaret Lynn Finner's body was found in the canal, decomposed almost to a skeleton. Police hypothesized that Kathleen Meyer's body had also been dumped in the canal, but that tidal currents had washed her remains out into Delaware Bay. On November 29, 1988, exactly one year after Shirley Ellis's murder, police swarmed Stephen Pinell's trailer and charged him with the first degree murder of Catherine Demorro. He didn't seem in the least surprised or upset. I guess it's time, he said to the officer who cuffed him. Within days, he was also charged with the murders of Shirley Ellis and Michelle Gordon. Of the other two women, Kathleen Meyer's body was missing, and Margaret Lynn Finner's

was too badly deteriorated to provide any evidence. Those cases would have to wait, but the investigators had no doubt they were also victims of Stephen Pinell, and the FBI's John Douglas. And the FBI's John Douglas, would later testify at his trial that all five women were victims of the same killer. The state decided to seek the death penalty. Stephen Pennell kept his mouth shut. He didn't speak to the police and he refused to be interviewed by the behavioral science unit. And that I think is why we know so little about him. You know, when they say there was no abuse in his childhood, no McDonald triad.

It's like, I'm not convinced of that. Although not all the serial killers were abused as kids. That's definitely true. We have had those who were not. But usually something went wrong. Like, Dumber was not abused, but he was emotionally neglected. You could say the same about Bundy. You know, very, his, you know, parents were very remote. And he had kind of a dysfunctional childhood that way. So I just wonder, and I think a lot of times, especially a sexual sadist, because their whole deal is wanting to take power and control. They want to put pain on. somebody else. And, you know, I think the prevailing theory is that that's because they experienced themselves at one point. It felt powerless. And so to them, it's satisfying to take that pain and put it on somebody else. So I have a hard time with, you know, this idea that nothing in his childhood precluded this stuff. It could be. But I'd be interested to hear what you all think about this, like in the comments when we post this episode, because I just have suspicions. I think

there were things he did not want to tell. For sure. Maybe because he was ashamed of them or, you know. He didn't even open up to his attorney, Gene Moorer. Mooreer said of his client, he always tried to present himself as a sort of virtuous person, but there was a certain sadness

to him and a certain resignation to him. He really kept to himself. The only real confidant he had were those stupid porno movies that he used to watch. That was the only thing that got it the kind of person that he was. Stephen Pennell took the stand in his own defense during trial, which went about as well as it usually does.

He argued that, yeah, he picked up the victims for sex, but he dropped him off afterward and had nothing to do with their deaths. Right, you're just the unluckiest guy on the planet. All the women you pick up end up tortured and deadless. It's just bad luck, really. Come on, man. He came across as cold and weird and even joked about Catherine DeMorrow giving him a tentative. dollar refund after oral sex. It just, the jury was just disgusted. Prosecutor Kathy Jennings took advice from the FBI profilers to needle Pinell every chance she got because he'd probably show his ass if a woman humiliated him and heated, glaring at Jennings with clear hatred.

I love that. I love it when female prosecutors go after these guys. It's just delightful because you know they just hate it so much. When she showed the awful crime scene photos of the victims, the jurors gasped and people looked away, but Penel leaned forward for a closer look. He kept his eyes locked on the projector screen for as long as the images were up there, and the jurors noticed. On November 23, 1989, the jury found him guilty of killing Shirley Ellis and Catherine DeMorrow, but they deadlocked on Michelle Gordon, and a mistrial was declared in that case. They also deadlocked on the death penalty, and Stephen Pinell was given two consecutive life sentences. In 1991, the state indicted Penel again for Gordon's murder, and also for the death of Kathleen Meyer, after new DNA techniques identified her as the source of the blood in Penel's van. In the first hearing, Penel told the judge that he'd plead no contest to the charges as long as he could be executed within the next 48 hours.

He said, if the court feels I am guilty of these hideous crimes, then let's go ahead with the execution. Oh, Lord, climb down off the cross, honey. He still said he was innocent, but claimed he wanted to spare his family the distress of another trial. Yeah, I don't think he gave two shits about his family. He was just suicidal and was watched too closely in jail to manage it himself. The judge, of course, could not kill Stephen Pennell within 48 hours. that's not how that works, but Penel waived his right for a jury to decide his penalty. And on March 14, 1992, the state of Delaware gave him what he wanted and executed him by lethal injection,

the first execution in the state since 1946. And get this, he had tried to get the judge to order prosecutor Kathy Jennings to come and witness his death, which I think tells you how much she got under his skin at the trial, right? the judge refused obviously if it was me I would have showed up with popcorn party hat on hi but like us I really am she was firmly opposed to the death penalty

I'm just saying I'm not shedding any tears over this dude but I would have rather him sat in prison forever until he brought it in there so for sure so she was very opposed to death penalty so it probably would have been awful for her and I'm glad of course she didn't have to do it Stephen Pennell died and Kathy Jennings is now Attorney General of Delaware. He never confessed and never showed the slightest remorse for his crimes.

I don't think for one second that he viewed the woman he tortured and killed as real people, and so had no conception of what a monster he was. He wasn't the only one. His wife Kathy stuck by him all the way up to the execution, and years later called Joseph Swisky, Do you still have Steve's van? She said. One of her kids was getting a driver's license

and she wanted to give them the van in which her husband had tortured and murdered five women. It was legally hers and she took it. Just... Now, before we go, don't forget about our two amazing

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