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A Texas Ranger got a prolific serial killer to talk

83 points by mighty-fine 7y ago

dunkmaster 7y ago
He only talked cause he had nothing to lose. The ranger didn't really have much to do with it
- mikhailt 7y ago
  If that's true, he would've talked a long time ago. He refused to talk to many investigators from various states who also could've gotten the same letter not seeking the death penalty (presuming the guy was already convicted for life), only Holland got him to talk. So, yes Holland is partly if not entirely responsible for getting him to talk.
  - ianai 7y ago
    I read the article, Holland definitely got the guy to talk through unconventional means. He has killers draw their victims. He seems unaffected by the flat way the killer describes his victims. It’s almost like becoming the killers “advocate” (lack of a better word) instead of prosecutor.
    - Eloso 7y ago
      I’m not claiming you’re wrong; I’m just curious—are his methods actually unconventional? Once a person is serving a life sentence (nothing to lose), and there’s nothing his cooperation can do to get him out of prison (nothing to gain), it seems pretty obvious to me that anyone wanting to work with him would need to try something like what Holland has done.
chiph 7y ago
I once got a chance to chat with a psychologist who worked for the Rangers. I ran into him at the Schlitterbahn water park south of Austin, and talked while we waited for family members to finish their rides. He was involved with tracking down members of MS-13, the Latino gang. They're known for being particularly violent, so he was pretty eager to find them and get them prosecuted. One piece of Ranger history I didn't know was that their badges are made from Mexican 5-Peso silver coins. https://www.americancowboy.com/people/history-texas-ranger-badge-26798 https://www.americancowboy.com/people/history-texas-ranger-b...
e40 7y ago
Pressed about his life story, Little traced the urge to kill to his youth. He said he got his first erection in kindergarten when he watched his teacher touch her neck. Later in grade school, he dreamed of killing a girl who stroked her neck while teasing him. He said it, but I have trouble believing that. There had to be something before that, perhaps something too far back to remember?
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  It shouldn't be that hard to believe. The reality is some people are born with biologically or structurally dysfunctional brains. Is it hard for you to believe that someone could be born with schizophrenia? What about autism? What about poor impulse control? When you think about the complicated interplay of social interaction in HEALTHY humans, which includes their innate capacity for violence (We definitely are part hunters with a propensity for war), and you compare the things we know that can go wrong and produce mental deficits of one form or another, it really shouldn't be that surprising that some people in the population would also be born with distinctly anti-social tendencies of one form or another. Brains are complicated... there's all kinds of interesting things that happen too that may be related. For example, the disgust response of humans is typically lessened or even reversed during sexual arousal. So you can have almost a complete flip in behavior depending on context! The regions of the brain responsible for aggression and sexual arousal are also really close together and related. So is this really that much of a stretch?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnisgood 7y ago
    You are not "born" with any of these. You are born with a genetic predisposition, for example with genetic variants that increase the risk of schizophrenia, but there are no certainties. It is an interplay between genetics and the environment, both genetic and environmental factors play a role in the development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_schizophrenia#Schizophrenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_schizophrenia#S... [...]
archeantus 7y ago
Kind of sickening how he builds up his ego and tells him he loves him. Seems like that kind of treatment could potentially skew the accuracy of the confession. “Hmm, I like being loved and praised and fed milkshakes here in prison, I’m going to keep talking, even if it isn’t true!”
- maxerickson 7y ago
  So do you think the 53 cases they have linked to his confessions are all wrong then? Bringing closure to the people involved in those deaths is worth being nice to a serial killer.
- S_A_P 7y ago
  You are dealing with the darkest depths of humanity to get these confessions. Sure as hell beats using torture and duress to extract this info. I’m not sure how someone would be able to convincingly lie about multiple murders if they were lying. Most details aren’t public. I have not had any close family become victims of a violent crime so I don’t know how important the confession is to these families, but it seems to mean a lot to many of them.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  I agree that it could, but I feel like this might be one of those situations where you just have to choose between very imperfect alternatives. If you use techniques like this, you might get wrong information. If you don't, you might get no information at all. Maybe sometimes it's better to get very unreliable information and try to confirm it independently, the classic example being if they say something only the killer would know like where the body is buried.
- daveFNbuck 7y ago
  There's nothing you can do that won't potentially skew what a person says. They've managed to verify at least 57 confessions so far, so that seems like a pretty good result even if the other 57 are fabricated. Personally, I'm not bothered by building up the serial killer's ego. The important thing about imprisonment is that he's prevented from killing more people.
- 7y ago
bdittmer 7y ago
Totally unrelated to the article (which I enjoyed), but the LA Times website continuously jumped up and down on my iPad. I suspect ads reloading above or below the fold. Incredibly annoying!
- LilBytes 7y ago
  I found the same problem on Android
- MaintenanceMode 7y ago
  On iOS and the reader mode makes long articles like this much easier to read. I don’t use it enough myself but it’s quite handy.
- p1esk 7y ago
  Yes. I just updated my iphone to iOS 13 and thought maybe it’s a bug. No idea why you’re being downvoted.
stebann 7y ago
It's amazing how can a professional solve this cases where others couldn't. Why there is so much hate towards women in US? I mean, particularly, these serial killers. Cases like this are rarely seen in South America, where violence has other drives (many times much less psychological).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- santiagogo 7y ago
  Unfortunately (I am South American) I think you are wrong. Some of the most prolific serial killers have been South Smerican, but serial killers are not such a popular topic on the news here so it's not as widely known. I would think it's also logical that serial killers tend to focus on women and children because they are generally easier to overpower than another male. There is probably also a sexual component to killing and I would guess that most serial killers tend to be heterosexual, hence why they mostly target women. For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_number_of_victims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_numb...
  - js2 7y ago
    Macabre and strange list. It's missing anyone who murdered 6-9 people. For example this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Rolling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Rolling
  - stebann 7y ago
    Yes. Prolific, but I wasn't talking about the number of victims but the number of produced serial killers. I know that there were (and are!) many serial killers in other countries, but what I am asking is how and why did USA produce more serial killers as a cultural and sociological phenomenon. You could say "Ok, but you don't know that and your observation can be explained, because in US they caught more of these guys while in other countries they remain unidentified". That is really hard to believe because many LE and their corresponding Investigation Divisions in the world have the same level and resources that in USA and it is really hard to loose tracks of many linked murder cases, even when they seem unrelated at first. Given enough time, data, and evidence, someone will relate those cases if they were committed by a mostly psychological-driven serial killer. I also know that they look for the easy prey (as you said, it's logical), but there's something that seems out of that dimension in this issue. I also find really hard to miss that mass-shootings in USA are something far from logical (I'm not talking about accessibility to guns, or laws and policies about guns). I apologize if I offended someone.
aaron695 7y ago
Pretty sure he made all of them up. I can't find any confirmation he didn't. He certainly made most up. It would be seriously easy to match someone you actually murdered to the real incident if you wanted. Even 20 would still impossible without solid matches by now. Given the number, he will eventually match in an unknown case reasonably well, so I'd like to know more about the one 'match' Life isn't a movie. The fact they think he has a photo graphic memory only goes to show they are easy to fool.
tempguy9999 7y ago
There was recently an article about the alien-ness of octopi, but to read about a guy doing this, he seems more unhuman than even those. Someone who can find life that disposable just for a bit of fun, will always be utterly beyond me. Just a note, I understand that serial killers almost exclusively stick with their own ethnic group. If you watch the (short) video, that becomes very apparent here. The photos in the article don't show that so well, the video does. "were almost all prostitutes, drug addicts or those he didn’t think would be missed." Christ, the ultimate throwaway culture. Well done James Holland, you did a job I could not face.

83 points by mighty-fine 7y ago

dunkmaster 7y ago

He only talked cause he had nothing to lose. The ranger didn't really have much to do with it

mikhailt 7y ago
If that's true, he would've talked a long time ago. He refused to talk to many investigators from various states who also could've gotten the same letter not seeking the death penalty (presuming the guy was already convicted for life), only Holland got him to talk. So, yes Holland is partly if not entirely responsible for getting him to talk.
- ianai 7y ago
  I read the article, Holland definitely got the guy to talk through unconventional means. He has killers draw their victims. He seems unaffected by the flat way the killer describes his victims. It’s almost like becoming the killers “advocate” (lack of a better word) instead of prosecutor.
  - Eloso 7y ago
    I’m not claiming you’re wrong; I’m just curious—are his methods actually unconventional? Once a person is serving a life sentence (nothing to lose), and there’s nothing his cooperation can do to get him out of prison (nothing to gain), it seems pretty obvious to me that anyone wanting to work with him would need to try something like what Holland has done.

chiph 7y ago

I once got a chance to chat with a psychologist who worked for the Rangers. I ran into him at the Schlitterbahn water park south of Austin, and talked while we waited for family members to finish their rides. He was involved with tracking down members of MS-13, the Latino gang. They're known for being particularly violent, so he was pretty eager to find them and get them prosecuted. One piece of Ranger history I didn't know was that their badges are made from Mexican 5-Peso silver coins. https://www.americancowboy.com/people/history-texas-ranger-badge-26798 https://www.americancowboy.com/people/history-texas-ranger-b...

e40 7y ago

Pressed about his life story, Little traced the urge to kill to his youth. He said he got his first erection in kindergarten when he watched his teacher touch her neck. Later in grade school, he dreamed of killing a girl who stroked her neck while teasing him. He said it, but I have trouble believing that. There had to be something before that, perhaps something too far back to remember?

Enginerrrd 7y ago
It shouldn't be that hard to believe. The reality is some people are born with biologically or structurally dysfunctional brains. Is it hard for you to believe that someone could be born with schizophrenia? What about autism? What about poor impulse control? When you think about the complicated interplay of social interaction in HEALTHY humans, which includes their innate capacity for violence (We definitely are part hunters with a propensity for war), and you compare the things we know that can go wrong and produce mental deficits of one form or another, it really shouldn't be that surprising that some people in the population would also be born with distinctly anti-social tendencies of one form or another. Brains are complicated... there's all kinds of interesting things that happen too that may be related. For example, the disgust response of humans is typically lessened or even reversed during sexual arousal. So you can have almost a complete flip in behavior depending on context! The regions of the brain responsible for aggression and sexual arousal are also really close together and related. So is this really that much of a stretch?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- johnisgood 7y ago
  You are not "born" with any of these. You are born with a genetic predisposition, for example with genetic variants that increase the risk of schizophrenia, but there are no certainties. It is an interplay between genetics and the environment, both genetic and environmental factors play a role in the development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_schizophrenia#Schizophrenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_schizophrenia#S... [...]

archeantus 7y ago

Kind of sickening how he builds up his ego and tells him he loves him. Seems like that kind of treatment could potentially skew the accuracy of the confession. “Hmm, I like being loved and praised and fed milkshakes here in prison, I’m going to keep talking, even if it isn’t true!”

maxerickson 7y ago
So do you think the 53 cases they have linked to his confessions are all wrong then? Bringing closure to the people involved in those deaths is worth being nice to a serial killer.
S_A_P 7y ago
You are dealing with the darkest depths of humanity to get these confessions. Sure as hell beats using torture and duress to extract this info. I’m not sure how someone would be able to convincingly lie about multiple murders if they were lying. Most details aren’t public. I have not had any close family become victims of a violent crime so I don’t know how important the confession is to these families, but it seems to mean a lot to many of them.
adrianmonk 7y ago
I agree that it could, but I feel like this might be one of those situations where you just have to choose between very imperfect alternatives. If you use techniques like this, you might get wrong information. If you don't, you might get no information at all. Maybe sometimes it's better to get very unreliable information and try to confirm it independently, the classic example being if they say something only the killer would know like where the body is buried.
daveFNbuck 7y ago
There's nothing you can do that won't potentially skew what a person says. They've managed to verify at least 57 confessions so far, so that seems like a pretty good result even if the other 57 are fabricated. Personally, I'm not bothered by building up the serial killer's ego. The important thing about imprisonment is that he's prevented from killing more people.
7y ago

bdittmer 7y ago

Totally unrelated to the article (which I enjoyed), but the LA Times website continuously jumped up and down on my iPad. I suspect ads reloading above or below the fold. Incredibly annoying!

LilBytes 7y ago
I found the same problem on Android
MaintenanceMode 7y ago
On iOS and the reader mode makes long articles like this much easier to read. I don’t use it enough myself but it’s quite handy.
p1esk 7y ago
Yes. I just updated my iphone to iOS 13 and thought maybe it’s a bug. No idea why you’re being downvoted.

stebann 7y ago

It's amazing how can a professional solve this cases where others couldn't. Why there is so much hate towards women in US? I mean, particularly, these serial killers. Cases like this are rarely seen in South America, where violence has other drives (many times much less psychological).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
santiagogo 7y ago
Unfortunately (I am South American) I think you are wrong. Some of the most prolific serial killers have been South Smerican, but serial killers are not such a popular topic on the news here so it's not as widely known. I would think it's also logical that serial killers tend to focus on women and children because they are generally easier to overpower than another male. There is probably also a sexual component to killing and I would guess that most serial killers tend to be heterosexual, hence why they mostly target women. For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_number_of_victims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_numb...
- js2 7y ago
  Macabre and strange list. It's missing anyone who murdered 6-9 people. For example this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Rolling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Rolling
- stebann 7y ago
  Yes. Prolific, but I wasn't talking about the number of victims but the number of produced serial killers. I know that there were (and are!) many serial killers in other countries, but what I am asking is how and why did USA produce more serial killers as a cultural and sociological phenomenon. You could say "Ok, but you don't know that and your observation can be explained, because in US they caught more of these guys while in other countries they remain unidentified". That is really hard to believe because many LE and their corresponding Investigation Divisions in the world have the same level and resources that in USA and it is really hard to loose tracks of many linked murder cases, even when they seem unrelated at first. Given enough time, data, and evidence, someone will relate those cases if they were committed by a mostly psychological-driven serial killer. I also know that they look for the easy prey (as you said, it's logical), but there's something that seems out of that dimension in this issue. I also find really hard to miss that mass-shootings in USA are something far from logical (I'm not talking about accessibility to guns, or laws and policies about guns). I apologize if I offended someone.

aaron695 7y ago

Pretty sure he made all of them up. I can't find any confirmation he didn't. He certainly made most up. It would be seriously easy to match someone you actually murdered to the real incident if you wanted. Even 20 would still impossible without solid matches by now. Given the number, he will eventually match in an unknown case reasonably well, so I'd like to know more about the one 'match' Life isn't a movie. The fact they think he has a photo graphic memory only goes to show they are easy to fool.

tempguy9999 7y ago

There was recently an article about the alien-ness of octopi, but to read about a guy doing this, he seems more unhuman than even those. Someone who can find life that disposable just for a bit of fun, will always be utterly beyond me. Just a note, I understand that serial killers almost exclusively stick with their own ethnic group. If you watch the (short) video, that becomes very apparent here. The photos in the article don't show that so well, the video does. "were almost all prostitutes, drug addicts or those he didn’t think would be missed." Christ, the ultimate throwaway culture. Well done James Holland, you did a job I could not face.