True Crime with Kimbyr - His MOM Made Him Into a MONSTER?! The Strange Case of CRAZY DAVE

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Are we predestined to be who we are OR are we MADE that way by those around us? This story really begs that question. 🐜 SKIP AHEAD TO AVOID INSECT INFO: 39:22 💌 Thank you Captain Borax for allowing me to use your interview clips https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9YfPChqu5nz8eBJBknFAzA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unlike other serial killers, this one was referred to as an anomaly. Serio killer that didn't fit the typical profile of being evil, but instead, a person with genuine remorse and a desire to remain locked up forever, so we couldn't hurt anyone. He wanted help, but help never came. David Edward Moused was born April 5, 1954, in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, to George and Eva Moused. Both of them were described as coming from a dysfunctional background, but I couldn't find a lot of details on this.

So I'm pretty much left to speculate about what this could mean. But there is information about David's father. His father was given up for adoption when he was 12 years old. That's right. And that confuses me. Because you have a 12-year-old boy. This isn't a baby. This is a child that for whatever reason was abandoned.

And perhaps that plays into things that happened to David later on. but I can only speculate why this happened. I have no proof. I don't know if it was just parents that did neglect him. It could have been that his parents died. There could be a number of reasons why this happened, but it happened. And sadly, he grew up in foster homes. David's parents ended up having four children, David, Jeffrey, and two daughters, which I couldn't find too much information about. In 1963, David's parents ended up getting a divorce when he was only seven years old. His mother was said to be needy, narcissistic, and disturbed. And this was the way a social worker actually described her in reports later on. Within just a year following the divorce, David's dad left his mother

to basically fend for herself and her four children with no help, which could have possibly led to why people described her as psychotic and mentally ill, because something similar occurred when she was hospitalized in an asylum for a month after a nervous breakdown following the birth of David's brother Jeffrey. Because perhaps she was experiencing postpartum depression and they didn't identify it at the time because maybe it wasn't as prevalent. The reason I say this is because what happened with David next. His mother claimed that by the time he was only eight years old, David had already tried to kill his brother Jeff two times. She said that he pushed him into a lagoon and a neighbor witnessed this and said that Jeff tried to pull himself out of the water, but that the neighbor saw David step on his fingers so that he couldn't get out. His mother also said that she had continuously checked his pockets because a lot of times they were filled with things he had stolen from other people.

And he would even steal her jewelry and sell it. But I'm sitting here questioning all of this happening before he turned nine years old. And I'm assuming that because when he was only nine years old, Eva, claiming that he was a troubled and difficult child, she could no longer deal with him. There aren't a lot of details about what exactly she meant by this other than what we've heard, but she said there was a pattern of behavior that she couldn't control. And she needed the state to step in because she said he had mental illness. A part of me thinks that this again might have had to do with her being left alone with these children. not everyone has the same coping skills. I have a nine-year-old daughter.

I'm not saying that I can compare her to David at nine years old. But if Eva was actually suffering from postpartum depression and she was raising these kids by herself, she could have merely not had the mental capacity to parent them correctly. So she went to court and had David committed to a Cook County institution. These types of institutions were actually for individuals that struggled with developmental disabilities, schizophrenia, violent offenders, and oddly, they had a bunch of different criminals living and sleeping together in the same areas. Upon arrival at the institution, the staff reported that they could not see any evidence of the behaviors that Eva had mentioned, and they concluded

that she must have just dumped him off. At this point, David was very sad, and he also became very angry and confused, and he felt as though he had nowhere to go and that he was trapped and left behind abandoned by his mother and his father. And actually, the doctors at the institution said that David was really smart. He was very articulate and they even thought that he had savant like talents because he could remember a bunch of sports statistics by listening to the radio while he was there. And David's defense attorney also described him as being able to recall certain facts in very vivid detail. As a matter of fact, I stumbled upon a channel called Captain Borax. He has excerpts that we can listen to from phone interviews with David's defense attorney.

So I want to go ahead and play one of those for you now. It almost called D. He's telling this in like 2004 to us. Wow. Yeah, I mean. The doctor started to believe what I suspected when I was trying to put all these pieces together. And that was the suspicion that it was actually David's mother that was suffering with mental illness. And they were waiting for her to get better so they could send David back home. But any time they tried to facilitate his return home, his mother rejected him.

David ended up telling his attorney that him and the other children thought that maybe their parents just needed a vacation from them and that they weren't really being abandoned. But in David's case, that did not seem like the truth. Well, I'm hated, am I? And the conclusion at the end of David's Day at Cook County Sanitarium was when he was 13, and it was reported by doctors that he was in fact not mentally ill. He didn't have anywhere to go at this point, so he was transferred to a children's home, and sadly, this children's home was only a few blocks away from where his family was living.

And that must have been really hard on him knowing that they were right down the street, and they didn't want anything to do with him. So I can't know for sure whether the following things actually happened or if they were exaggerated by his mother and his brother. It's been said that David was verbally and physically abusive to his own siblings and that he would do very drastic things like hold their head underwater. Maybe that was the lagoon situation. And then he would actually attempt to burn his baby brother, Jeff,

by setting fire to his crib while he was sleeping. They also said that he liked to kill birds. with rocks and that he had beaten a squirrel to death with a baseball bat because he thought it was fun. Since Jeffrey would have been a baby at the time, I don't think he can really recount an incident in his crib. So it had to be David's mother that supposedly witnessed these things. And actually, there was an episode on Montel Williams. I don't know if you remember that show. It was from a while ago, but it was really popular. And it was where Montel was actually interviewing both Jeffrey and David's mother. And this episode featured animal cruelty. This is way after everything concluded with

David's case. But the reason that I'm bringing up right now is because of what was said. The show was called Point of View, and I believe from what I gathered online, that what Montel would do was he would ask the audience their point of view about a certain topic or his guests. And in this episode, like I said, he was covering animal cruelty and asking both just Jeffrey and Eva, what it was like to live with someone and be related to someone who was cruel to animals. So that is where those stories came from. However, there have been numerous reports, especially from his defense attorney, that his brother

and his mother actually just sought fame and that his brother even wanted to write a book. So some of the things that were mentioned could actually be half-truths and they're not completely accurate and maybe they were just playing things up to get more attention. And I'm going to play another clip talking about this. Jeffrey Mousstermed really enough. In this episode, Jeffrey even explained that he thought, if authorities had taken some of David's teenage behaviors more seriously, then what ended up happening would be prevented.

And I'm going to tell you exactly what happened, because I truly believe the system really did fail him, the legal system and the mental health system. Now, what I'm going to explain next is, is not thoughts and opinions that I have. It's what I read online, and I am in no way judging David at all. So I want to clear that up before I make some of these statements. David has been referred to as a homosexual serial killer by many news reports and articles that I've read. And this was a result of his sexual relations with other boys. You see, when he was at these children's homes and in

the institutions, he was housed with other boys his own age. And a lot of them at this point were going through puberty. And since they didn't have an outlet for their sexual desires, many of the boys were hooking up with each other, including David. And it's been said that David was actually seduced by a boy, which led to his first sexual encounter, but that he didn't actually want to do it and that he just went through with it. A lot of people had questioned whether or not David was gay, or whether, like many men that are in prison, he turned to what was available at the time. The sexual desires of young men going through puberty can be really strong. However, he said that when he was involved in the situation, he felt really angry and empty inside and that it gave him really confused

emotions within himself. But then he goes on to admit he did actually start having homosexual desires before he was 13. So possibly back when he was in the first institution. And if you remember back, he was in a population with older men. So we don't know what, circumstances he was put in, but this is where his worldview and his personality was being shaped at a young age. Nevertheless, David began to have rage inside of him. By the time he was 15, he had had his first documented violent encounter, and this was with a boy named Eddie. They were just playing together at the children's home, and for whatever reason, he decided to choke him. And this boy almost died. But while this was occurring, David stopped.

midway through because he was seeing that Eddie was struggling and he stopped and then he apologized. We can't actually truly know whether this was genuine remorse or not. It's questionable because he didn't want to get in trouble. So he would try to control himself and we know because he ended up writing this in an 87 page diary that he made in jail. And though he said he was remorseful, he was also dealing with all of that rage and anxiety. And if he was, he was, actually remorseful, then he wouldn't have continued doing this in my opinion. You have to remember, he was in this home at the time, and he had nowhere else to go. So he kind of had no choice but to behave and restrain himself. But that restraint did not last long because he went on to choke another

boy named Daniel. He took a rope and he put it around Daniel's neck while they were watching TV. And this again happened while he was in the children's home. He somehow decided to stop. he realized that Daniel hadn't done anything to him. So he did have reasoning. He was thinking about whether something was right and wrong. And Daniel ended up living, but at this point, David started to feel like he didn't have any control over his own actions or his thoughts, which probably would have been very scary for a teenager who didn't have a loving parental role model in their life. Thomas Vance was quoted saying that David was indeed a serial killer, but that he was not born a serial killer. And Vance truly believed that if someone was looking for a recipe for making a

cereal color, then his childhood was the way that you would do it. It seemed like things might have had a chance of getting better for David when he was 17. Even though he actually escaped from the children's home, he was out and he decided to run a few blocks away to his mom's house. But to his disappointment, she was remarried, And once again, you could have guessed, she rejected him. It was sad because his mother told people that she was embarrassed, that he was an embarrassment to her family, and she resented ever having to give birth to him.

She actually pretended like he wasn't even born. But then later in life, she tells people that she actually did love him. So maybe that statement about her loving him was to make herself feel less guilty for what she did. At this point in time, she did what a lot of parents do, and it probably wasn't the worst decision, but she convinced him to go see an army recruiter so that he could do something with his life and have a place to stay, and maybe he would learn some skills that would stop him from having these destructive tendencies. David did get accepted into the U.S. Army, and he was sent off to Frankfurt, Germany. You have to remember he was still a teenager at this time.

He was serving as a cook on a military base, but this military base was also shared by civilians who were not in the military, and he ended up meeting a 13-year-old boy named James McClister, who was called Jimmy, and Jimmy's parents were engineers on the military base. David and Jimmy met at a bowling alley where David was competing in Army League competitions. He was really good at bowling. He had scores as high as 299. and he ended up winning a lot of awards and money. And sometimes I see this in a lot of cases actually where the individuals who end up committing

these heinous crimes have some kind of talents. I always think to myself, I wish they would have used their talents for good and put all of their energy there instead of hurting people. David and Jimmy became really close friends until one night, David woke up to Jimmy in his bed naked. And of course, David said this made him really angry. And a part of me wonders if, again, he was afraid to get in trouble because just like when he was in the children's home, he didn't want to have nowhere to go. And at that day and age, he were not allowed to engage in homosexuality in the army.

It just wasn't accepted. Because I can never really juggle his thoughts that he says he's thinking about these situations and why he keeps getting himself in these situations. And a part of me thinks he didn't want to maybe admit what he was feeling to himself and step into that part of his personality because he didn't want it. Like he wished he could think differently. Just like he couldn't control his desires to hurt people. Maybe he couldn't control his sexual desires either. And not everyone is 100% comfortable being out of the closet. So I think that could have been a struggle he was having.

And that's why he would get angry because it's like your body's telling you yes, your mind is telling you no. hate to quote Christina Aguilera, but I think you know what I mean. All of this is written in David's diary. So these are his words and his thoughts according to him. He said that he eventually coerced Jimmy to come with him on a moped ride. He started driving for miles. I guess Jimmy really trusted him, if only he knew what David was thinking. And this is a quote from David's diary. And I want you to pay attention to this. Leave it in the comments what you personally think of this. I'll give you some of my thoughts, but here's the quote. I thought to myself at that moment that when Jimmy gets long hair, I'm going to kill him. When I killed him on that day, Jimmy had long hair. I was trying to

psychoanalyze what this could mean. The first thought I had was, okay, this naked boy's in his bed. He doesn't want it, he does want it, we're not sure. But was Jimmy's hair short? And then if he grew it long, he would look more feminine, and then he would kill him because he wanted to restrain his desire. I could be totally wrong. I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. But tell me your thoughts. Why did long hair have to do with anything? I don't understand that part. But these were thoughts and things that David said were going on in his head. So maybe you can figure out the reasoning here. So that day after their moped ride, they got to an area where there was a World War II bomb crater. David tied Jimmy to a tree. And then he continued to beat him with a board that he found nearby. And then he knew. just left his lifeless body there. And after this, he just returned to the military base and pretended like nothing happened. And Jimmy's body wasn't found until a month later. Now, here's the

first instance in which I get confused about how the system was working at the time. But David was court-martialed in the case of Jimmy's death, but they only sentenced him to three years in federal prison. He somehow convinced the court that this was a moped accident and that he didn't know what to do, so he just concealed Jimmy's body. David was released in 1977 when he was 23 years old. What's interesting at this point is while he was incarcerated, he had a lot of time to think about what he had done and he realized that if they let him out, he was definitely going to kill someone again. He actually felt sick by the way that he had acted and he wished he could stop his feelings and his thoughts and his actions because they absolutely disgusted him. He hated himself at this point.

Very odd. Two years after his release, he was living in Chicago and an unnamed teenage male friend, I couldn't find his name anywhere, came over all the time and hung out with him. They would drink and smoke pot, and sometimes his friend used to spend the night, especially after a night of drinking. And during these times, in the middle of the night, David would get these urges to stab him. Oh, my God. Can you imagine you're asleep and you have no idea that someone,

someone you think is your friend is standing over you imagining themselves doing this to you. You probably could have guessed. It ended up happening. After a night that they had been drinking, the friend fell asleep on the couch and David ended up stabbing him in the stomach and warning, this is gross. So trigger warning here, he almost disemboweled this boy. But somehow he survived. So David was on trial for this attempted murder and aggravated battery and armed violence So tell me how this man gets away with this. But that's exactly what happened. He lied when he was on the stand and he was found not guilty. How do you lie about disemboweling someone? How do you lie about that? At this point, it's 1981 when David's 27 years old and another friend that he used to go hunting with. They were together on a hunting trip and they ended up having sex. Afterward, David once again, felt angry and disgusted and he had this rage and anger inside of him that he couldn't control. He might have been trying to excuse what he was doing and what was happening to him.

And what came up in his head was that experience he had. Back when that boy in the children's home tried to hook up with him and it was his first sexual encounter. So he wanted to find that boy, well, now a man, and kill him. So he actually went out looking for him. He believed that the homosexual act was the reason and the cause of his continued bad behavior. So he went out on a hunt to take his rage out on this man. And he thought that if he did this, these behaviors would stop.

But once he arrived where he thought this guy might be, they told him that he was in jail. So David wasn't the only one coming from this children's home that was getting into trouble later on in life. In order to satisfy his urges in that moment, he had to take his rage out on the child. someone and he saw a boy walking next to his car, 15-year-old named Donald Jones, completely innocent. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He convinced Donald to get inside his vehicle and he drove him to a very remote area in Chicago where there were these quarries. He then proceeded to stab him again in the stomach just like he had done with his other victim and he took him to a portion of the quarry that had water and he drowned him and left his body there. At the

this point he had to find somewhere to go. He knew his uncle that lived in Galveston, Texas. So his uncle took him in and he had David working for him in construction. But he could not get his life back on track. And once again, he found himself in jail. He went on to lure another boy into his motel room by offering him drugs and alcohol and ended up beating him. So after that incident, investigators started to connect him to Donald. But again, I'm sitting here wondering why he only gets five years in jail. This is a repeat offender. Is it because he committed these crimes in different states? I'm wondering about that. Once again, he admits in his diary that he kept having thoughts about the fact that if he got out again, he would repeat this behavior. He never wanted

to be let out again. And in 1982, he was extradited to Chicago for the murder of Donald Jones and was originally found unfit to stand trial. So he was once again held in a facility and after three hospitalizations and a decade of awaiting trial, David pleaded guilty in 1994. And here's why I think mental health system also failed him because after three hospitalizations and being in another mental facility, wouldn't somebody recognize he wanted help and get him help? And he was released on parole in 1999. So there's this dangerous man walking free once again. There was actually a report that was sent to the Illinois Department of Corrections by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office after his conviction. And it said, quote,

this inmate is most likely the most dangerous inmate you will house. He was even described by a sheriff as a bad guy similar to John Wayne Gacy. And yet he's walking free. You would think that he would get some help when he was admitted to the Illinois Department of Corrections. He wrote them a letter that he couldn't control himself and he wanted to stay and he didn't want to be released, but authorities completely ignored it. Illinois would have allowed him. No one ever came back. And no one followed up. My guess is.

So they ended up letting him out. After being released, David moved to another part of Illinois called Oak Park. He thought he would have a new place to live and he would have new beginnings. but that ended up not being true. Just one year later in 2001, David assaulted his friend Anthony by hitting him in the back of the head with a metal pipe. And again, you would think at this point, authorities would make the determination that he definitely needed to be put away forever, but he was not prosecuted because Anthony was a former gang member and he dropped the charges. There were later some speculations that David had killed people when he was living in Oak Park

and he had hid them underground in his apartment because he was working as a caretaker there, but nothing was ever proven. In 2002, after his parole ended, David decided to pick up once again and move, and this time he moved to Hammond, Indiana. He found a job at a business called Trophies Are Us. Some people actually questioned whether or not he took this job because it was convenient and close by his home because he would ride his bike to and from work, or if he actually went out of his way,

to research a business that he knew teenagers would be frequenting and possibly working at. In this year, businesses would have had the ability to do a complete background check on someone like this. And yet, this business just let him work there with this criminal background. And I've mentioned this in other videos, and some of you have wanted me to go into more depth about my father.

I'm not ready to yet. But my father couldn't find a job anywhere as an ex-convict. And yet David, who did worse things than my dad, I'll just tell you that, is able to get a job. Now, this information that I've gathered about this time in Indiana can't actually completely be confirmed, but it said that he was scoping out playgrounds in public places where younger boys would hang out. And eventually, he started to spend time at a public pool. We know this part for sure because of the things I'm about to tell you.

About a year later on May 2, 2003, a 19-year-old boy named Nick James had disappeared. But he actually wasn't reported missing until several months later, but he happened to work at the trophy shop with David. So just remember that fact. And this only came to authority's attention because they were already looking for two other teenagers who had gone missing. And they connected David to their disappearance. The two teenagers were Michael Dennis. He was only 13. And I hope I'm going to say this last name right. Forgive me if I don't. James Raganji could also be Ragani. He was 26. And they were reported being last seen on September 10, 2003. David had met the boys earlier that summer at a public pool and he established a friendship by inviting them over to his house.

he also would promise them money he would give them gifts and he said if they ran some drugs for him he would pay them these teens were also apparently labeled as rebellious and authorities thought they might have just ran away so not too much attention was being paid to these two boys but nicholas james on the other hand wasn't that type of boy and his family kept pressing authorities to look into this case further we're going to hear from thomas vance once again talking about this. Some of the kids were at one of the three. After making all the connections,

investigators decided to search David's home. And I found this interview with Commander Dale Bach of the Hammond, Indiana Police Department, canine unit. So take a listen to what it was like when he was in the basement with his cadaver dog. I was working a giant schnauzer by the name of an assman of this house and conduct a search for him.

He gave him this command a search. He went to the corner of the basement. but all an aggressive response, which is to scratch. He didn't have stood there and barked. So I pulled him back out and I redirected him again to do it and did nothing but bark. Hamer detective, he's not trained to do that. He's trained to give an aggressive response. However, prudence would dictate, we better bust up some concrete here and take a look

because there's a reason why the dog won't leave this spot. So I cleared the area. And about a week later, I was contacted by the Hammond police to come back again, went back to the exact same residence. And what they had done is they had taken a drill and tried to drill through the concrete. And they discovered that they went down about 10 inches. They had a statement and 8 inches and dog again.

So I did. To the hole, you do it again. And I said, sure. So I got the dog back. You get the videotape up. I sent the dog. And the dog, instead of going back to that hole, went to the other hole,

which would have been about halfway along the West Wall and started scratching there. So they got that on videotape. So after that, I told them that they have to break up the concrete now. You know, that we've got an... So I cleared a few days later, four days later, they contacted me again and sent me back to the same house. This time when I got there, they had a concrete expert

who had determined that this guy had, whoever the guy was who put this concrete in the basement had used bags and this was David Moss. Used he, phenomenal amount. Now, you just heard about the dog giving the aggressive responses to certain areas of David's basement. Obviously, they could tell that David had poured tons of concrete into his basement. And they pretty much suspected that the only reason he would do this was to cover something up, presumably, the bodies. Here's something else that I found to be extremely important and interesting. And it's because of the fact that I'm in school right now for medical legal death investigation.

We're learning a lot about time of death and whether there's a presence of a body in a certain location. And one of the ways in which medical examiners and investigators pinpoint these things are looking at bugs. Trigger warning. I'm going to be discussing bugs in this next section. If you don't want to hear that or see that, please skip ahead to the timestamp located in the description box. I'll give you a few seconds for you to do that. Are you a fan of bugs? Well, you should be,

especially if you want to solve cases. Bugs are the first responders, really. And I don't mean to make light of the situation or be funny, but they truly are the first to the scene of these crimes. The study of insects surrounding a crime scene is referred to as forensic entomology. And as disgusting as it might sound, the age and the development of certain insects can be used to determine how long a body has been dead.

I learned in one of my classes on determining the time of death that the body goes through physical, chemical, and biological changes right away after your heart stops. Like when you die, you start the decomposition process, and different stages of the decomposition process attract different species of insects. So we're about to hear about those from the canine handler, Detective Bach. They also brought in a forensic entomologist who found evidence of coffin flies and the spider whips and the bait of a rotting chicken, pig. And by the way, if you like hearing more educational stuff that I'm learning, let me know

and I'll include some of it in my videos. So the presence of these kind of coffin flies made the area even more suspicious. And that is what led them to do further investigation. So thank you, bugs and spiders for capturing them. This is so sad. but at least the bodies were found so that the families could have closure and so that David could be put away once and for all. It was finally determined that David choked both James and Michael in his apartment and then went on to bury these bodies underneath the basement along with Nick. David's brother was quoted saying, I was scared of him. I would be terrified of him now.

It's crazy that anyone would let him out of prison. He should have been put to death. It doesn't hurt me to say that. I believe my brother did more damage to other people's lives and he should be put to an end. Finally, in November 2005, David pleaded guilty to all three murders and was sentenced to three life terms. In January 2006, David took his own life with a bed sheet tied to the bars of his cell and he died a day later at St. Anthony's Medical Center in Crown Point. He was 51 years old. Authorities did find a suicide note in the cell, in which David admitted to five killings, including the three in Hammond. In this note, he also apologized to the families of his victims,

and he takes all the blame for everything. He apologizes for all the damage he had done, and he also mentions that he loved his family, but that his family never loved him back. David said, there's a long line of people who would like to see me die, but the families have a right to be first in line. then my mother and then the taxpayer. Dying is not my first choice, but it is the right thing to do. And that was the end for Crazy Dave. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you have any suggestions, please leave them below. I also really appreciate your feedback, even if it's constructive criticism. So don't forget to let me know. And I'll try to answer as many comments as possible.

Thank you so much for subscribing and watching my videos. I will see you in my next one.