True Crime Campfire - Eye of the Beholder: Serial Killer Charles Albright, Pt. 1

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

In the early 90s, the city of Dallas was thrown into a nightmare. Women started turning up murdered, with a bizarre signature facial mutilation unlike anything detectives had ever seen before. As fear grew in the streets, the killer moved confidently among his pool of potential victims—savvy but vulnerable women who had turned to sex work to survive. No one could have predicted that the predator they were hunting was anything but the typical profile of a killer. A Renaissance man, a brilliant pianist and painter with a reputation as an old-school gentleman…and an astute student of human anatomy. This is the story of one of the most unexpected monsters in U.S. history. Sources:Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/see-no-evil-3/Mara Bovson, Daily News: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/dallas-eyeball-killer-murdered-women-removed-eyes-article-1.3769218https://murderpedia.org/male.A/a/albright-charles.htmhttps://www.oxygen.com/mark-of-a-killer/charles-albright-eyeball-killer-serial-killer-sex-workersdallas-texas-90sBritish true crime show "Born to Kill," episode "Charles Albright"Oxygen's "Mark of a Killer," episode "An Eye for Murder"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_AlbrightFollow 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/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

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. In the early 90s, the city of Dallas was thrown into a nightmare. Women started turning up murdered with a... a bizarre signature facial mutilation, unlike anything detectives had ever seen before. As fear grew in the streets, the killer moved confidently among his pool of potential victims,

savvy but vulnerable women who had turned to sex work to survive. No one could have predicted that the predator they were hunting was anything but the typical profile of a killer. A Renaissance man, a brilliant pianist and painter, with a reputation as an old-school gentleman, and an astute student of human anatomy. This is the story of one of the most unexpected monsters in U.S. history. I of the Beholder, serial killer Charles Albright. So, campers, for this one, we're in Dallas, Texas, December 13, 1990.

The body of a young woman was found in a grassy, vacant, lot. She'd been badly beaten, then shot in the back of the head. She was mostly naked and her body seemed to have been posed, legs spread in a conspicuously sexual way. The neighborhood resident who found her body had been so upset seeing her degraded like that that he'd run back to his house for a sheet and covered her body from the waist down, which is very kind and very human and I absolutely get it, but also, oh my God, please don't do that. No, no, no. Because you can ruin a crime scene that way and you can ruin it to a point where the killer can walk because of it. So don't do that.

The patrol officers who first responded to the scene quickly realized they knew this young woman. And seeing her like this hit them like a punch in the gut. She was Mary Lou Pratt, a 33-year-old mom and sex worker who was, in the words of Officer Regina Smith, just the sweetest thing. One of her friends told the British true crime show

Born to Kill that Mary was one of the kindest people she ever knew. She said she just had so much love She was still living with her parents In the room she grew up in The night before her murder Officer Smith and her partner John Matthews had run into her on the street Officer Smith you're going to be so proud of me she'd said I'm getting married I'm getting out of the life

She'd seemed so happy Now someone had decided to rob her of that chance It was just unfair As investigators worked the scene Mary Lou's body was transported to the medical examiner's office for autopsy. Emmy Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, whose name makes her sound like the medical examiner in a Patricia Cornwell novel, had done more autopsies at this point than she could count, which in Dallas, sadly, included plenty of murder victims. She'd seen beatings, she'd seen gunshot

wounds, but when she gently pushed open Mary Pratt's eyelids to examine her eyes, a routine part of any autopsy, Dr. Peacock got the shock of her life. The eyes were gone, both of them, leaving only the dark, empty sockets. And whoever had removed them had skill. Eyes are fragile, and so is the skin around them, but this killer had removed Mary Prats with the care and precision of a skilled eye surgeon. With the eyelids closed, you couldn't tell anything was amiss. It was a breathtaking moment, the last thing she'd expected to see, and it meant that whoever had murdered this woman was far from a typical killer. Dallas was about to be drawn into a murder mystery, unlike any it had ever seen, as one woman after another began turning up murdered, left in sexualized poses and

missing both of their eyes. But let's put a pin in that for a while and talk about how all this got started. The story begins in suburban Dallas in 1933 when a three-week-old baby boy was adopted by Fred and Del Albright. They brought him home to their neighborhood of Oak Cliff, which at the time was a really lovely place, and they named him Charles, Charlie. Fred Albrecht. He brought Bright was a grocer, and like most women were at the time, middle-class women anyway, Del was a stay-at-home mom. And according to Skip Hollinsworth, whose fantastic article See No Evil is one of our sources for this case, from the moment she saw him, Del pretty much worshipped the ground Charlie walked on. She was determined to keep him safe and healthy. She hovered over him,

looked after him as though he were some kind of little prince. She thought goat's milk was better for kids than cow's milk, so she got some goats, just so her Charlie could have the finest possible dairy experience. I would get goats, but for me it would be just so I could put them in pajamas. Oh my God, goats and pajamas. That's just adorable. And she didn't let her little lad

get too dirty. She changed his clothes several times a day to keep him looking snappy, which our parent campers will know is a Herculian task. She was so determined to protect him from polio, which was still ravaging kids at the time, that she took him down to the local hospital and showed him the kids in the iron lungs. This is what can happen to you if you accidentally get dog mess on your hands, she told him.

There can be dog feces in the dirt, and you might not even know it. God, way to give the kid germophobia, mom. No kidding, right? But you can bet it made an impression on little Charlie. He was careful not to get too dirty and to wash his hands just like mother taught him. When he was old enough, Del told him a little bit about his birth parents. His biological mother was a brilliant young woman, Del said, so much so that she started law school at only 16. It was there where she met Charlie's birth father, another law student.

They got married in secret to try and escape the disapproval of the young girl's father, and she got pregnant. When her dad found out he was furious, and he gave her an ultimatum, annul the marriage, give the baby up for adoption, or be completely cut off from the family. It was a terrible choice, but she finally ended up giving in to her father's demands. Later in life, Charlie came to doubt that his birth mother was really a gifted young law student. Over the years in the darkest corners of his mind, that seed of doubt would grow into a vicious, twisted, poisonous vine. Many believe it would play a part in the horror that Charles' life would become, help him justify the sick fantasies that obsessed him, and bring a

nightmare down on the city of Dallas. Dell always made sure to tell Charlie how much she loved him and that she would always, always be there to keep him safe. But there was an edge to her motherly love. She was so determined that Charlie get enough sleep, so important for a growing boy, you know, that she'd tie him to his bed with ropes if he wouldn't settle down for a nap. If he refused to drink his milk, milk built. strong bones and teeth, you know.

She'd spank him, and not gently. Once, she locked him in a dark closet for hours, because she found him gnawing on one of her tape measures. And sometimes, we're not sure why it wasn't clear in the sources we looked at. Sometimes, she put Charlie in a dress and gave him dolls to hold.

Now, our personal opinion on clothes is that there shouldn't really be girl clothes or boy clothes. clothes. We should all be able to wear whatever makes us feel comfortable in our own skin and not worry about it. And we should all try and learn how to give each other space to do that and not be judgy pricks. Yeah, it's 2021, you know, live and let live. But this was the 1930s, for one thing, he was probably under plenty of pressure to be masculine. And for another, we have no indication that Charlie ever wanted to dress like this. This was what Del wanted, not what he wanted.

I imagine it was confusing for him and probably pretty upsetting too. Yeah, there was a lot of that in Charlie's childhood, Del imposing her will on him. He had to go to church with her every Sunday. He had to go to bed at 8 o'clock, whether he was tired or not, even in high school, for God's sake, which is just absurd. He had to eat her gross cooking. Del was a notorious cheeskate, despite the fact that Fred made good money and she bought the cheapest stuff she could buy. Like, she would literally go to the butcher and tell the butcher, give me the bones you were going to give to. to your dog. Oh, my God. Give me, give me. He was like, are you sure you want? These are great.

And she's like, yeah, give them. That's the kind of stuff she would cook. When he started complaining about headaches, which were probably due to the stress of trying to keep up with all mother's expectations, Del decided he needed glasses. And even the optician couldn't convince her she was wrong. Dude had perfect vision and she made him wear glasses, which I'm sure really helped with the headaches. Thanks, Mom. And this next example might be the cherry on top of the Smother Mother Sunday that was Del Albright. When he got old enough to learn about sex, Del gave him the talk, which for her consisted of a lecture about how much of a handsy purve his dad was, how Fred was always pawing at

or like a pesty cat whenever she was trying to get dressed or undressed, and how Charlie must never behave like that with the girl ever, ever. Thanks, yeah, good talk, mom, good intel. How he ever looked his dad in the face again after that, I can't imagine. Your dad is a touchy sex pest, and I hate physical intimacy with him so much. I'm going to tell my son about it is one way to ensure that your kid will never have a healthy relationship with sex ever.

Yeah. And of course, when Charlie started dating, Del was right there hovering over the proceedings like a watchful mother hen. She insisted on chaperoning, even when Charlie was well into his teens. She'd glare at him in his date in the rearview mirror

making sure he didn't try to do anything crazy like, you know, hold her hand. And she'd always reassure the girl's mother that she didn't need to worry, her son wouldn't try anything because she'd be there every second, right? Jesus, Murphy, Del. I really feel like we're getting a nice primer here on how to create a serial killer, don't you? Yeah, if serial killer was a recipe, we'd be to the step where you let the young man rest for a few hours to really ensure that the antisocial tendencies really marinate. Oh my God, it's true. But let's go back a little ways. We're not getting

into the teen years quite yet. It wasn't all strictness and dark closets with Del. I mean, she did love Charlie in her weird, smothery way, and he loved her. And when Charlie turned 11, they discovered a mutual interest. Taxidermy. Yeah, because he needed one more thing to ensure the total inevitability of his slide into serial murder. Let's learn how to kill animals and stuff them so they look alive again, sort of. Wee!

Yeah. So this was Charles's first taste of killing, using a rifle to shoot birds and squirrels for his taxidermy projects. He and Elle would also go gather up roadkill, which, hello, Jeffrey Dahmer, right? Literally nothing good has happened while letting a child play with roadkill. Not one good thing. Like, sometimes it's a blood-borne pathogen, and sometimes you get a Jeffrey Dahmer, and just take them hunting.

That's fine. That's like a normal hobby. But something about roadkill just gets their... little gears turn in towards murder. Yeah, it just comes up all the time. Just don't let your children play with dead animals. You wouldn't think you'd have to say it, really. It just should be obvious.

Yeah. But it seems to come up a lot. I don't know what it is because, like, you don't see that with hunting. Like, hunting's like a typical thing that families do together. Yeah. But they just play with a roadkill. I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Dell and Charlie were both super into their macabre little hobby, and as he did with just about everything he tried, Charlie got really good at it. One of the trickier parts was removing the eyes, and Charlie learned to do it perfectly, without damaging the skin or fur or feathers or anything around the socket. He and Del amassed a huge collection of stuffed creatures, which they showed off in display cases around the house, which must have been charming.

But there was one thing that always frustrated Charlie. At the taxidermy shop, they had hundreds of perfect little glass eyes for sale. They were beautiful, like smooth gemstones, and Charlie loved to look at them and run his hands through the boxes of loose ones, watching them sparkle and shine. But they were expensive, and Del never liked to spend a dollar if she didn't think she had to, so she always refused to buy the perfect little eyes. Instead, she'd go through her boxes of sewing stuff and find little black buttons. You see, they're just as good, she'd tell Charlie. So when you came to the Albright house to admire the stuffed creatures, you'd notice, if you looked closely enough, that where the eyes should have been, there were buttons instead. Hundreds of beautiful little birds with dull button eyes.

Move over Coraline, right? Ah, it's so creepy. Anyway, she fretted over his education, too. Had him practiced the piano every morning before school and gave him extra lessons at home on top of his school work. He got so far ahead of the other kids at school because of this that he ended up skipping two grades. But it didn't seem to slow him down socially like it might for some kids. Charlie was one of the most popular guys at school. He was a sparkly kid, a natural leader, adventurer, entertainer.

He knew interesting stuff about astronomy and snakes and animals and music, and he attracted other kids like a lamp attracts moths. One childhood friend described him to true crime writer, Hollinsworth as the Pied Piper and so much damn fun. If you hung around Charlie, something interesting was bound to happen. A talent like that is pure gold for a kid. I mean, I guess it would be for an adult too. But for kids, cool is the most important currency you can have.

Absolutely. He was always getting into some kind of mischief, and he never seemed to be scared of consequences. He used to break into the teacher's offices to steal test dancers so he could share them around with all his friends. He liked throwing spitballs in class, shooting rubber bands at the teacher, skipping out on classes. Roggish stuff. Nothing really bad exactly. Like the cool kid in a 1980s comedy film coming of age. Right. But there were a couple things that could have, if anybody had been looking, been faint, worn. signs.

For example, once he set fire to a teacher's dress. Now, this happened in chemistry class and he claimed it was an accident, just a hazard of the experiment they were doing that day. But some people weren't so sure. Seemed to them that he'd done it very much on perps. Not great. Charlie seemed prone to boredom, which incidentally is a person. pretty common hallmark of psychopathy, he was always getting interested in something, then

dropping it and flitting over to something else. So it's not too surprising that despite his intelligence, he didn't always do great in school. But it didn't bother Charlie. Whatever he failed to class, he'd just skulk into the records room, find his report card, change all the grades to A's, use his considerable artistic talent to forge the principal's signature, and that was that? I mean, Del couldn't know he'd fail the class, obviously. Of course not. What was he going to do? Try harder?

Work at it? Nah. Yeah. Yeah, he was very comfortable with lying and really good at it. Smooth as silk. A juvenile counselor once told the press that he'd never met a teenager so good at convincing himself of his own bullshit. What was it, George Costanza said that time on Seinfeld? It's not a lie if you believe it.

As he got into his teen years, Charlie also developed a taste for shoplifting. Former FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood thinks maybe it was a way for him to rebel against his mom's stinginess. I think it was probably a combination of that, plus the rush he got from swiping something and getting away with it. Because Dell's obsessive tutoring had allowed him to skip so far ahead, Charlie graduated from high school when he was only 15. And despite his young age, he went right to take. college. Probably excited to finally get the hell away from his mom. And you might expect him to do well at college, right? Smart guy, like him. But only a year into his time at North Texas State, Charlie managed

to get himself arrested. Little 16-year-old Charles had joined up with a few other students to break into stores and steal stuff. Hundreds of dollars worth of stuff, including, by the way, guns. When police found a shit ton of stolen merchandise in Charlie's dorm room, it didn't seem to phase him. He didn't I'd everything. Said some friends of his. It just asked him to hold on to that stuff for him. He didn't know it was stolen. Parish the thought. Uh-huh. Sure, bud. The Denton, Texas police didn't buy it, and they put the habeas gravis on our boy and tossed him in the clink. Dell was beside herself when she found out, and she immediately went into overdrive to try and help her Charlie worm his way out of the whole thing.

She went around to all the stores that he and his buddies had burglarized and offered to pay restitution, right then and there. in exchange, of course, for dropping the charges against her poor misunderstood boy. Yeah, it didn't work. So her next bright idea was to try and talk the judge into letting her be Charlie's attorney, which has got to be one of the weirdest things I have ever heard of in the entire annals of true crime. Just, huh? It's also one of the most outrageous examples of that annoying mama bear bullshit I've ever seen. And I used to know a lady who still trimmed her adult son's toenails.

I shit you not. And she had four sons. Yeah, I know. Just, I'm sorry I pass the burden of that knowledge on to you, but it is 100% true. I know. It's horrible. No. What?

What? Okay. I have so many questions and I don't want to know the answer to any of them. Neither do I. And I know them already. so this bizarre request to be Charlie's lawyer obviously was a hard no as well so then last but not least when Charlie was finally convicted and sentenced to a year in prison Dell begged the judge to let her go instead again huh okay somebody just please

explain to Mrs. Albright how the criminal justice system works would you because this is just pure banana oil so Charlie went off to prison for a year and Del got busy making sure nobody in Oak Cliff knew shit about it. Bish lied through her teeth. Anytime anybody asked how Charlie was doing, oh, you know, just enjoying the college life. Only ever calls when he needs something. You know how boys are.

And she managed to keep it on the QT, like nobody in her circle ever found out that Charlie Albright had done time for felony theft. So she did a good job of pushing it up. When he got out of prison, Charlie decided he wanted to shift gears. He signed up for classes at Arkansas State Teachers College and started tossing around the idea of medical school. He showed real talent and science. Didn't even have to study to ACE's exams.

One of those annoying people, right? He was especially good at human anatomy. Started talking about being a surgeon. Charlie was popular at Arkansas State, just like he was everywhere else. He was a rock star on the football field, and for another thing, he pulled some legendary capers. There was this one physics class that everybody struggled with, and it was part of the school folklore that although many had tried, no student had ever managed to steal the the test answers for this final exam. Everybody called it the unstealable test. And for somebody like Charlie Albright, that shit's just as good as a double-dog dare.

So, putting his burglary skills to good use, he broke into the professor's private office, found the test, made copies for all his friends, and then returned the test to its hiding place. And the professor never had any idea. I mean, he must have wondered why so many people aced that final exam that year, but he couldn't prove anything. That stunt alone was enough to earn Charlie a star on the walk of fame at that school. Everybody thought he was a trip. He was a huge practical joke or two, and one joke in particular stood out in everybody's memory for years to come.

Charlie's best friend at the college was a guy named Andrew. Andrew was dating this really gorgeous girl, prettiest girl on campus kind of thing, and after a while she dumped him. And the poor guy was just completely gutted. It just ripped his heart out by the roots. You know how it is when you're young, right? He was so distraught that he took every single picture he had of this girl and tossed him all in the trash. Out of sight, out of mind.

If I can't see her, maybe I can get over her faster. Andrew, obviously, not the kind of guy to grab a fifth of whiskey, put on Patsy Klein album, and cry over his scrapbook, I guess. Right. This gave Charlie a bright idea. He fished all the pictures of his buddy's ex out of the garbage and carefully, painstakingly, cut out the eyes. And while his buddy was in class, he pasted the eyes all over his bedroom, ceiling and walls and the stall doors of the bathroom Andrew used.

So this poor, poor bastard, who's barely functional after this girl dumping him for another guy, gets back from class to find her eyes staring at him from every corner of the room. The creepiest part was he'd taken a picture of another girl Andrew was interested in and carefully, carefully pasted the X's eyes over her. hers. So when he looked at the picture, there was just kind of something off about it. He couldn't put his finger on one at first, and then it hit him. Like, oh my God, what the hell, Charlie?

Charlie, for his part, thought it was hilarious. Yeah, hilarious. Yes. Charlie met a girl too, Betty Hester, smart, beautiful, and a major of English literature. Good in my book. They were talking about getting married after graduation. Charlie put all the lessons mother taught him to good use to woo Betty. Where some guys were handsy and rude, Charlie recited romantic poems by Keats and brought her little gifts and chocolates. And he knew how to dance. He charmed her. Charlie was doing great at the teacher's college, but he never graduated. Why not?

Well, because the man couldn't stop stealing. Eventually, he got caught red-handed with a huge pile of stuff he'd nicked from the school and from his football coach, stole the guy's own personal golf clubs. Yeah, it takes a pair of brass ones, damn. So, Charlie got kicked out of college, obviously. Betty didn't seem to mind, though, because she married him anyway. And over the next decade or so, they had a daughter together, and Betty found a job as a high school English teacher. Charlie bounced around from job to job, and then, in 1969, he decided he wanted to be a teacher too. Kind of hard to do without a college degree, but that kind of minor detail never stopped Charlie.

He just doctored up some fake transcripts and a fake teaching class. certificate, and in no time at all, he found himself a primo gig as head of biology at a high school east of Dallas. Now, obviously, if you're going to fake credentials, you're going to fake impressive ones. His transcript said he had a master's degree in biology, and he was about to finish another one in guidance counseling. Not only that, but he'd just been accepted into a Ph.D. program in bio. Wow. It was all bullshit, of course.

But it was very convincing bullshit and the school didn't suspect a thing. They hired him on the spot. Charlie was a rock star at the high school, as he always was everywhere. The girls had crushes on him. The boys imitated him.

His colleagues thought he was fantastic. He coached the football team, did fun experiments for the kids in his biology classes. Everybody was impressed with his knowledge of anatomy, insects, and plants, and his enthusiasm for teaching science. Kids went to him for counseling. And then, of course, it all went to shit

when a perceptive administrator found out about the fraud and fired him. He admitted to it when they called him out and laughed about it. Said, yeah, sorry about that. I just, you know, never got around to finish my degree. The school decided not to prosecute him because they didn't want the bad press. And it's just so funny to me because this guy was a monster, obviously, as you will soon see,

but he was legitimately smart and talented, too. I mean, he played piano beautifully, he was a skilled artist, and he really did know a lot about anatomy and biology. If he had just expended this energy on actually pursuing some of that stuff the right way, like if he'd finish his college degree, gotten a real teaching certificate, whatever, I think he'd have actually been really successful,

but he just didn't have it in him for some reason. The need to put one over on the system was just woven into his DNA, just as much as the color of his eyes or his salt and pepper hair. It's like he was allergic to doing things the way he was supposed to. And some people are just like that. If they can't be grifton, they're just miserable and bored. And Charlie, for whatever reason, was definitely one of those.

He just couldn't seem to hold on to a job for longer than six months or so. He just gets sick of whatever he was doing and walk away. He was known in the neighborhood as a sort of jack-of-all trades. After his ill-fated career as a science teacher, he went down to the same. to Mexico for a while and became a bullfighter. I shit you not, it's true. Senor Albright from Dallas, they called him. Holy shit. He worked as an artist model. He toyed with the idea of starting his own vineyard for a while. For a while he did carpentry. He made baseball bats by hand and sold him. He didn't really have to hold down a steady job,

partly because Betty had one and partly because his parents had given him a bunch of their real estate to manage. So he had income from tenants in a couple different Dallas neighborhoods coming in. At one point, he got his beautician's license, just completely on a whim, just because, like, he met somebody who worked as a beautician. He was like, that sounds interesting. So he went and got his beautician's license and worked as a stylist at a hair salon. Apparently, he was really good at it, like really attentive, and he would take his time with the clients, called himself Mr. Charlie. And while he was there, one of his co-workers at the salon got wind of his artistic talents.

Now, he'd won a contest at the Texas State Fair for this gorgeous portrait he'd painted of a female friend and the guy was like, hey man, would you do a painting of my wife? I'll give you $250 bucks. Be an amazing gift for her and Charlie's like, yeah, sure. So a few weeks went by and nothing was happening and eventually the husband said, well, when is my wife's portrait going to be finished? And Charlie said, I'm almost done. I just have one more little thing to finish. And he brought the guy around to his house to see the painting later that day. And it was a stunningly beautiful rendering of his wife, just perfect, but there was one eerie detail. everything was finished

but the eyes oh my god the eyes were just blank Charlie said I have to get them just right I can't finish them until I get them just right

and the way he said it was almost like he was waiting for the inspiration to come to him waiting for the eyes to tell him just how they wanted to be drawn yeah and when he did finally finish them they were perfect

like unearthly perfect they almost seemed to move and sparkle and follow you around the room. You know how really well-painted eyes look? Ficking creepy. Charlie was still a magnetic presence, drawing people to him with his talent and his stories and his quick-witted, intelligent conversation,

but there was more going on below the surface as there always is with these guys. He'd never stopped Grifton. One of his favorite pastimes was forging checks, and he always returned to his first love, shoplifting. He'd be on and off probation for one thing or another for years. And it could be that these repeated deaths

finally got to his wife, Betty. Charlie would later refer to their marriage as loveless. They divorced in 1974. Betty took their daughter and moved out. A few years later, in 1980, Charlie's luck finally ran out, and he served six months actual jail time for one of his shoplifting excursions,

the theft of a saw from a hardware store. Mama Dell, bless her heart, told her friends he'd moved down to Florida to start a plum new job. job as a nuclear power engineer. Oh, Del, you scamp. Dell died not long after he got out of prison.

In her later years, she relied on Charlie a lot to help her around the house, and their relationship had turned kind of prickly. But he picked out her dress for the funeral and cried, just like any good son would. It was right around this time, divorced, fresh off a six-month stint in jail for stealing, possibly looking for a new lady friend that Charlie joined St. Bernard's Catholic Church. He joined the choir, sang the occasional solo in his pleasant tenor voice, and he quickly made himself indispensable. Before long, he was standing at the front of the church in robes,

helping the priest hand out wine and wafers. He got a reputation as a bit of a small-time philanthropist, giving out money or groceries to people who had fallen on hard times, dressing up like Santa for the kids at Christmas. He got a bit of a rep as a ladies man too, but like in a very courtly, old-fashioned way, he wasn't a playboy. He was an old school suitor

who read his lady friend's poetry and brought them flowers and never put a hand on them until they were good and ready. He gave them romantic presents, stuff like music boxes and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. Everybody loved the guy, like everybody always did. And the church community was there for him when, a few years after Del's death, Fred

Albright died too. Charlie had never really been close with his dad. Del hadn't left them any room to be. But after she died, Charlie and his old man had bonded. His death seemed to hit Charlie hard. Okay, Camper's content warning on this next part for a brief discussion of child sex abuse. No details, but if you want to skip ahead a minute or so, that should be enough. There was one family in the church who'd gotten especially close to Charlie. She gave

them expensive gifts, had dinner in their home, told their kids the Latin names of the flowers, his usual schick. And one day, in the early 80s, we're not sure of the exact year, the 14-year-old daughter of the family told her parents that Charlie had sexually abused her. Charlie denied it categorically. No way would he do such a thing. thing. The family didn't want to put their daughter through any more trauma, but they were determined to stand up for her no matter how many times he denied it. And he was desperate to keep the whole thing quiet so he wouldn't damage his rep as the golden boy of East Dallas. In the end, 51-year-old Charles Albright pled guilty to quote, deviate sexual intercourse with a child under the age of

14. And infuriatingly, the judge sentenced him to 10 years probation, no jail time whatsoever. Yeah, take a breath. I know it's fucking awful. My therapist knows about this case solely because of this part. I ranted for like 15 minutes about it this week. Yeah, it's horrible. Because, as he had so many times before, Charlie managed to skate his way past real trouble. Of course, the people at St. Bernard's had his number now, but the story stayed pretty much contained in that group. There was no trial, no press, no nothing.

because why would a man like Charles Albright need to suffer consequences for his actions? That would be hard. It would be pretty hard. Yeah. So obviously there was big trouble brewing underneath Charlie's gentlemanly mask. And with both his parents' dead and a nearly $100,000 inheritance on top of the rental properties they'd already given him, he was able to indulge himself in all sorts of little hobbies. He was into herpetology, salamanders especially.

He was hoping to find a new species and have a time. named after him. He'd go out into the boonies and spend hours looking for him. He applied to be a Boy Scout leader, too, but they turned him down, I assume, because it was felonies. Thank God for small fucking miracles. With their track record, you can never be sure. Yeah, that's probably true. So, there was a salamanders, for one thing, and then there was this. By the mid-1980s, Charlie had become a regular client of about half the sex workers in Dallas. These were mostly women who had turned to sex work to try and manage drug add to their income from other jobs to help support their families. It was a tough life and a vulnerable population.

Some of the sex workers knew him as Mr. Albright. Some knew him as pappy or old man because of his salt and pepper hair. He could be kind sometimes. He'd bring them burgers and fries or give them money without expecting any sex in return. Sometimes he'd buy them drugs, saying you didn't want him to have to go out in the street to get them. But other times, with some of the women, he changed. He wanted to tie them to the bed, beat them roughly with whips or ropes. He'd say, scream, bitch, you know you love it.

And this wasn't just run-of-the-mill bondage stuff. This had an edge of real hostility to it. He wanted it to hurt. It was scary. One woman said she'd worked as a psych nurse for a few years before she turned to sex work, and she said she knew something was wrong with Charlie the minute she met him, she just couldn't put her finger on what but he gave her the creeps and she tried

to avoid him as much as she could we've said it before haven't we campers some people just have good radar but a lot of the sex workers came to think of Charlie as a safe place he'd take them to one or another of his vacant rental properties he'd never stiff them on the bill he'd feed them give them advice

one or two even had him listed as their emergency contact in case they got into an accident or something like that so even with these women Charlie mostly kept his mask in place, and it was firmly in place the rest of the time. These trips to the red light parts of town were his secret life. He never spoke about him, ever. In fact, he always denied having ever patronized sex workers in his life. But there are things that suggest he had a grudge against that profession and suggest a reason why.

For example, Charlie played on a softball team for a while, with, incidentally, the head of forensic sciences at the Dallas PD, who thought he was a great guy, and was impressed with his knowledge of anatomy Anywho, one day after a game Some of the guys were hanging around And a car drove by it kind of slowly With these two young, hot women inside And the women were kind of making eyes

At the softball players and flirting a little And somebody made a joke That they must be sex workers And that Charlie should go over and negotiate a rate And Charlie, who had always been Nothing but a barrel of fun Who was the first to back away From any kind of physical confrontation

If a game ever got heated just scowled and said I hate horrors. I'd kill every one of them if I could. Everybody was like shit. He said the quiet part out loud.

Yeah, exactly. And Charlie just kind of stormed off. The next time they saw him, he apologized for talking like that. He said it was just kind of a sore subject with him because quote, my birth mother was a prostitute. Now, was this true? We know he'd always had doubts about his mom's story about his birth mom being a brilliant young law student, but we don't know for sure.

The FBI looked into it later and found evidence that Charles's bio-mom was a nurse for a while. I don't think they ever found anything to suggest that she was actually a sex worker, and we're not entirely sure why Charlie believed that, but he obviously did, and it had obviously given him a serious complex. Now, legendary true crime writer Skip Hollinsworth thinks it's the old Madonna whore thing, like an attitude that says women are either saints or sluts and the sluts are worthless trash. Men who think like this are scary and should be avoided. Anybody who thinks like that should be avoided. Yeah, amen. So in the midst of all this, in 1985, Charlie took a trip to Arkansas.

And while he was there, he met a woman named Dixie Austin. They fell ass over tea kettle for each other. And Charlie turned the charm all the way up to 11. Candlelight dinners, flowers, candy, salamander hunting excursions, the whole ball of wax. I'm not going to lie, I love a man who'll take me salamander hunting. That's just romantic as hell. Get you a man that can take you to dinner and go hunting for amphibians. He brought Dixie back to Dallas with him, and she moved in.

Later, she'd share with law enforcement that she never would have dreamed that he was anything but a kind-hearted, man. That was the only side of him she ever saw, including in the bedroom where he was a perfect gentleman. She never suspected a thing about his other life in the red light districts. By 1990, Charlie's main sources of income were the revenue from the rental houses he'd inherited from his parents and Dixie's job at a gift shop. So he took a job delivering newspapers. Dixie was annoyed when he told her. She was like, Charlie, why would you want to get up in the middle of the night and deliver papers. I won't be able to sleep with you gone. But Charlie insisted. He needed some extra spending money, he said, and he hated that she was paying for so many of their bills

by herself. It wasn't fair to her. Of course. Coincidentally, I'm sure, the job gave him a perfect excuse to slip away in the wee hours and be gone for a good long while without Dixie getting suspicious. Charlie started that job in October. On December 13th, police responded to the scene of Mary Lou Pratt's brutal murder. A sweet young woman, a mother, robbed of her life and of her lovely brown eyes. And as horrible as Mary Pratt's murder was, she was only the beginning.

A storm was coming to Dallas. You could feel it in the air in those East Dallas neighborhoods, where women slipped into cars and drove away, then stepped back on to the corner a little while later to do it all over again. And if you looked closely enough, you could see it in Charlie's eyes. We're going to leave it there for part one,

campers don't be mad you all know the serial killers are too much to fit into one episode but don't worry we're going to have part two for you next week and before we go campers a couple of you have noticed commented on the fact bless you that i've been talking more than katie in some of our recent episodes and you're right i have and to try and counter the suggestion that i'm some sort of show stealing jerkface please allow miss katie to explain why that is i'm not being held at gunpoint right now just so you guys know. I'm undermining Whitney. I'm sorry. It's genuinely, it's because I've been dealing with some health issues for the past few months,

like basically the majority of this year. And I just don't have as much stamina as I usually do. So I asked Whitney if she could cut down my talk time. And on days when I'm feeling better, I let her know and she gives me a little bit more. But just know from now on that if Whitney's talking more than I am, I'm. It's because I asked her to, not because she's trying to steal my thunder. And she is a literal God send angel saint, and I love her for it. So, yeah. Oh, bless. And also, like, she'd tell, believe me, like, this girl's not a push over. She'd let me know. If I was, like, hog in the show,

she'd be like, bitch. So don't worry about that. So, like we said, we will have part two for you next week. but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe, until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Priscilla, Tia, Daniel, Anastasia, Katrina, Christine, and Sharon. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free at least a day early, sometimes two, plus an

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We will get to you, we promise. We've not forgotten you. We just, you know, I think it's because we want it to be like a special thing. We don't want to like have like a wall of names. We just list a few every episode. Yeah. We don't want to read 50 names at a go. Yeah. So we're, nobody's going to listen to all that. Yeah, we promise. We're getting to you. And we don't want you to think we've forgotten you. We haven't. We love you so much. Absolutely not. We love you all.