I was just 24 years old – not one month into the F.B.I. – when my partner and I discovered the man who would become the most prolific serial killer in history.
This was back in 2013, when the Dark Web, and its market for drugs, weapons, and child exploitation were on the rise. The F.B.I. was just beginning to make arrests for crimes via the Dark Web. Me, my partner, and a few cops were sent to a location in Nowthen, Minnesota, when they’d traced the IP address of some creep buying child exploitation material online.
It was a grey, drizzling Saturday evening, when we pulled up to the suspect’s residence. It was a run-down, one-story house, with an overgrown lawn and dirty walls. My partner, Agent Creighton, banged on the door, announcing, “This is the FBI. We need to talk, Mr. Sully… We have a warrant, and will enter forcibly.”
I thought I could just make out the sound of rapid, heavy footsteps from within the home.
Creighton rolled his eyes; his greying mustache twitched, and he said to me, “Hey, Liu, you mind running around back real quick?”
“Uh, okay.”
I ran around the house, my hand on my holstered weapon. In the back, I found a scrawny, balding man in a tank-top crawling out a window. “Back here!” I roared. I sprinted towards him, and tackled him before he could start running.
…
An hour later, we were in the Minneapolis F.B.I. headquarters. The perv was sitting alone in a cell, and I was in a darkened computer lab, sifting through his confiscated computer.
Creighton came in, and handed me a mug of coffee.
“Anything on his monitor?”
“No. Looks like he managed to wipe his history. Doesn’t really matter. We traced the purchases to this device’s IP address, and that’s enough.”
Creighton nodded. “That’s good. But take a look at this,” he said, handing me a flash-drive. It was bent and cracked, but it looked like it would still function. “The perp had it in his pocket as he was making a break for it. He was thumping his ass around on the seat of the car. At first I thought he was high; then I realized he was trying to destroy something in his pocket.”
I plugged the drive in, and, after screening it for viruses, started looking through the files it stored. Most of them were ‘adult content’ – artwork, photos, videos. Some of it was legal. Some was definitely illegal. Creighton crossed himself a couple times as we slogged through the filth.
“I’ll never understand,” he murmured, shaking his head, “how someone can get this sick.”
At the end of the flash-drive’s contents was a file folder, simply titled, ‘High Score.’
“I… what the hell does that mean, ‘High Score’?” I asked.
“I suppose we’d better find out. Someone’s gotta testify.”
I clicked on the folder.
It opened to a list of MP4 files, each labeled “Episode 13,” “Episode 17,” “Episode 18,” and so on. The numbers were almost continuous, but jumped occasionally.
“Watch it just be pirated ‘Glee’ episodes,” I muttered, and clicked on the first one.
The screen showed a first-person video of someone with black sleeves and gloves revving up a chainsaw. Then, AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” started blaring.
The video went through a montage of images as the hard rock song played. Night-vision footage of walking through the woods. The black-clad hands loading shells into a long-barreled shotgun; twirling a Balisong knife; knocking an arrow to a plastic composite bow. The shadow of a man, running through a dimly lit sewer tunnel. Footage of the games “Pac Man,” “Doom,” “Call of Duty,” and one other I didn’t recognize.
Words appeared over the images: “John Doe presents:”
A shot of a lightning bolt over windswept trees.
Then a black screen and a title card: HIGH SCORE, in dripping red letters, just as the AC/DC song dropped its dramatic refrain. The whole sequence was obviously homemade, but rather well-done.
“This should be interesting,” Creighton muttered.
The screen and song faded to a video of a man, dressed completely in black. Black trousers, black hoody, black boots and gloves. Only his skull mask was a dull grey. One side of the mask had a video camera built into it, with the camera’s lens set over the mask’s left eye.
“Hey everyone. Before we get to the action, I just want to thank y’all from the bottom of my heart,” said the man. His voice had a metallic, resonating echo – he was clearly using a voice changer. Despite that, there was a clear, Southern twang to his voice.
“I couldn’t do what I do without your support. If I had a day job, I couldn’t travel, I couldn’t practice my art as much as I get too, and I couldn’t bring you these videos. Ya’ll know my dream. To be the very best at what I do. And I can pursue that dream thanks to you guys. I just want y’all to know, you’re all the best, and if you have a dream, you should do whatever you can to make it a reality.”
The video switched to first-person footage of someone thumping through the woods at night. A set of digital numbers marked the date, ‘August 25, 2009.’ Occasionally the camera panned down to the cameraman’s arm, carrying a large duffle bag.
The cameraman arrived at the edge of a clearing. There was a quaint farmhouse in the middle of the field. Light came from just one window on the second story.
“Today we’re working from Missouri. I spent a couple days scouting this home. It belongs to an old couple named John and Alice Walker. They don’t interact with the locals often. I learned a bit about them by watching them last night, and some by just asking the locals.”
The video flashed to another first-person image. It’s in a bar, in front of a pool table. Two middle-aged men, stand on the other side of the table.
“Looks like he’s using a button cam,” Creighton whispered.
A voice, probably the same as the narrator, said, “Hey, as I was driving, I saw this really nice light green house in a clearing, a few miles north o’ here. Don’t suppose it’s for sale?” The audio was someone distorted.
“Naw,” said one of the bearded men as he aimed a pool cue. “Belongs to some old couple. I think the man was a lawyer. They’re retired now. Far as I know they’re sort of shut-ins. Never see ‘em in church or town halls.”
Then the video flashed back to the woods and farmhouse at night. The narrator said, “When you’re gathering information about a target, it’s important to be subtle. Try to mask your interest in your target, like how I pretended to be interested in the house, and don’t pursue the subject too far. You don’t want people remembering how you were asking all about the target the day before they turned up dead.”
My eyes widened, and I turned from the video to my partner. “Creighton… are we watching a murder?”
The cameraman jogged from the edge of the clearing towards the farmhouse. He circled around to an egress window. Then he pulled a glasscutter out of his bag. He silently cut a semicircle in the window, and then climbed into the house’s basement, pulling his duffel bag in after him.
“After starting the gas, I wait for 30 minutes in the basement, but I’ll skip that part for you guys,” said the voiceover.
The video flashed, and then the cameraman returned to the kitchen, and pulled out a small device, that looked like a lighter. He held it up for the camera.
“This little beauty,” the voice said. “I rigged up in my shop, just for this kill. I press a button in a remote control I have in my bag, and this wire here will yank the switch and turn the lighter on. Usually useless… but if you light it inside a house where the stove’s been on too long… well, then things get interesting.”
He placed it on the kitchen counter, then snuck back downstairs, leaving the basement door open. He went to the window, and started punching the glass.
“There’s gonna be an explosion. Kitchen windows will break. I broke the glass here to make it look like the explosion blew the basement glass from the inside,” explained the narrator.
Then, the cameraman climbed out, ran a dozen meters away from the house, turned around, pulled a remote controller out of his bag, popped open a cap, and pressed a button.
There was an explosion.
The house’s windows lit up red. The kitchen windows indeed shattered, and a roaring inferno streamed out of them.
The cameraman watched as the house burned.
Over the roar of the flames, you could just make out the screams.
After about a minute, the cameraman turned and ran into the woods. You could just hear sirens, blaring in the distance.
“And that, my friends, makes Kill Number 18 and 19. I just beat Jeffery Dahmer’s record!”
As he said it, red digital numbers imposed themselves over the footage, saying, “High Scores: Luis Garavito: 199. Ted Bundy: 20. Jeffery Dahmer: 17. John Doe: 19.”
The video switched to a title card – “HIGH SCORE,” and then ended.
Creighton and I shared a horrified look.
“How many episodes are there?” he whispered.
I exited the video and scrolled down the file. “Goes to 92.”
Over the next few hours, Creighton and I watched every single one of those videos.
Not all the episodes were on the drive; there we only got a total of 52 episodes. In every one, this John Doe killed at least one person, sometimes two, three, or more. Sometimes, he made it look like an accident. Fire, gas leaks, falling, hit and runs. He also liked to drug people, and then make it look like they shot or hung themselves. He was always scrupulous to record his own handiwork, but disguise it to any investigators.
Other times, he would stab, snipe, or even shoot his victims with a bow and arrow. Bow-hunting was his favorite. He would proudly record himself burying or hiding the bodies. And he was good at that part too. He regularly talked about forensics and police procedures, and how to hide from them. His favorite trick was to buy a dog from a shelter and kill it. Then he would bury the human body in a deep grave, cover it up partly, and bury the dog over it. Thus, if police dogs ever found the dig-site, they would find the dead dog, assume that was all there was, and move on.
He picked his targets by how easily he could kill them and hide his tracks. Most of his victims were lonely old couples, homeless folks, hunters, and campers. But he had no preference for age, sex, race, or religion. “You’re not racist if you hate everybody equally!” he laughed in Episode 37, where he killed a gay black couple by shooting through the bedroom window of their lakeside cabin with a suppressed sniper rifle.
He traveled around the country, literally throwing darts at a paper map to pick which county he would hit. He lived in a small RV camper, which occasionally appeared in his videos, but the license plate was always blurred out.
He always put dates on his episodes. The earliest was August 25th, 2009; the most recent was September 18th, 2013. They were almost always between 6 and 30 minutes long. There was always footage of a murder. But, sometimes, before or after the killing, he would film himself – always in his skull-mask – and make an announcement about the channel, or opine on his favorite guns, video games, and serial killers throughout history.
With the collection of episodes in the flash-drive, we had evidence for 59 kills, but by Episode 92, he claimed to have 111 kills.
In that episode, he simply walks around Central Park of New York City one night, jabbing a concealed hunting knife into the temples of three separate junkies as they slept on park benches. At the end, the video flashed over to him, still with his black hoody and video-camera-skull mask, sitting at a table inside his RV.
“Guys! Last night, I beat Pedro López’s record. Pedro López, the ‘Monster of the Andes!’ He had 110 kills; I have 111. This makes me… guys, this makes me the second greatest serial killer who ever lived! I want to thank all of you for being with me along the way. As far as we know, the pigs are still clueless; they have no idea what we’ve been doing.
“And we’ve done is truly special. I’m so proud of myself, and I’m so proud of y’all too. But we’ve still got a ways to go if I’m gonna make it to the very top. Luis Garavito, ‘La Bestia,’ had 193 confirmed kills. Which means I have 83 to go if I want to top that. The fun is nowhere near finished.
“And, uh… before I sign out, I just wanna say… I used I didn’t use to believe in God, or faith. Or if there was a God, he didn’t care about me. But now… well… I think that if you have a dream, that’s a gift. That’s a gift from God, and if you work hard at achieving it… if you prove yourself worthy, He *will* reward you. So I’ll just say this; God bless each and every one of you. I love y’all. And, uh… good night.”
The last video on the flash drive ended.
Creighton and I shared a wide-eyed look.
“What was the date on that last one?” he asked me.
“September 18th. Five days ago,” I whispered.
“I think we better make some calls.”
…
Nine hours later, in the early hours of the morning, Creighton and I were on a video conference call with Director of the F.B.I. in Washington D.C. and five other senior agents. Both of us had bags under our eyes and stubble on our cheeks; we hadn’t slept for over a day. I was drinking so much coffee I might as well have put in an IV and pumped it into my veins.
“At this point, we’re about certain every one of the videos is authentic. I had every expert I could reach working overnight to be verify them. This is real,” said one of the leaders.
“I’ve got people IDing the victims,” said another. “So far each of them matches up with a disappearance or death somewhere in the continental U.S.”
“We can scout him out, right? On the Dark Web? Track him down by his IP?” asked the Director.
I spoke up to that. “Maybe. But it’s possible to mask your IP address. Or change it, if you know you’ve been pinged. And for all we know, he could be posting his videos from a different computer every time. Maybe the local library of whatever town he passes through.”
“Well, if that fails, finding this guy isn’t gonna be easy,” said a criminal profiler. “Most serial killers have a target demographic, a favorite method of killing, and a lot of them stay in one place. You can infer things about the killer from those details. But not this guy. He goes around the country randomly, killing whenever he can get away with it.”
“What about his vehicle?” asked the Director. “I saw his RV in a couple videos.”
“The license plate is always blurred out,” I answered. “And he either switches the vehicle or gets it repainted every now and then.”
“In one of his videos, he says he always travels 80 miles from a kill,” Creighton said, “before he posts an episode. It’s… kind of impressive, how much he knows about police procedures. This guy’s basically a killing machine.”
For a moment, the Director sat in silence, thinking. Then he spoke. “For now, we use the leads we have, and see where it takes us. Creighton, Liu, I want you to talk to the man with the flash-drive. Make whatever threat or promise you need to get him to tell us what he knows.”
…
“Alright, you play good cop,” Creighton said.
“Oh, come on,” I protested. “You’re old and grandfatherly… you have a mustache! You should play good cop.”
“I’m 44,” Creighton said, frowning. “And my mustache is very authoritative. You’re young and handsome, and, well…” he stopped.
“What?!”
“And you’re 5’6”. Taller men are generally more threatening.”
“Screw you, I’m 5’8”,” I laughed, hiding my pain behind a grin. “Fine, I’ll be good cop.”
We burst into the interrogation room, Creighton swaggering in first. He slapped a folder on the metal desk. On the other side was the bald, scrawny man we had arrested. He smelled of sweat and grime; his tank top had several stains.
“Wilson Sully,” Creighton rumbled. “If it was just child exploitation and WAY too much hentai we found on you flash-drive, you’d probably go away for just a year or two. But that show, ‘High Score?’ Mate, paying to watch that shit makes you an accomplice to murder! 59 murders on that flash drive! You could go to prison for decades!”
The pervert’s eyes widened. He started fidgeting with the links of his handcuffs.
Creighton got up and started pacing around the room. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about prisons. Every prison is its own society, you know, made up of thieves, gangsters, murderers… there’s ALMOST nothing you could do that’s so bad even prison would hate you. Almost.”
Creighton leaned in, right behind Sully, and hissed, “You know the one type of person who’s an outcast even in prison? Pedophiles.” I watched silently, forced to admit that Creighton actually made a half-decent bad cop. Then I remembered I had a role too.
“Creighton, come on, stop trying to scare him,” I said.
Creighton went back to his seat, but leaned forward, his fierce glare boring into Sully’s skull like a drill.
“Do you know what prison does to its outcasts, Mr. Sully?” Creighton whispered. “They… well, let’s just say they make the pornos you have on that flash-drive look like Saturday-morning cartoons. Imagine that being your life, Sully. Imagine that, every night, year after year after year…”
The perp shrunk into his seat, his eyes so ridiculously wide I had to suppress a giggle.
“Creighton, for crying out loud,” I said, then turned back to Sully. “Look, that’s not… okay, that doesn’t *always* happen,” I said, pretending to reassure him. “It’s not… I mean, *maybe* we could keep you separate from the general population…”
I made a show of pausing to think. Sully looked at me desperately, like he was drowning and I was just standing still with a lifebuoy in hand.
“Look, if you help us, I think I can help you,” I said.
“How?” he demanded. He had a high, gravelly voice.
“You have to tell us *everything* you know about ‘High Score.’ ”
Sully’s face fell.
“What?” Creighton asked.
“They know where I live. Who I am. The moderators… when it comes to hacking, they’re on another level. They probably know I’ve been caught already. And they’d find me, wherever I went.”
“We can protect you, Sully. We protect witnesses.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Do you really think they’re more powerful than the federal government?”
Sully sighed. He turned and looked behind, at the camera in the ceiling corner. Then he spoke.
“ ‘High Score’ started in 2012. That’s when John released his first few videos. They were pay-per-view, but I recorded some of them so I could re-watch them.”
“What do you know about the killer?” Creighton asked.
“No one on the Darknet’s ever seen his face. He talks about himself a little, but he never gives away anything that could identify him. They think he’s from the south. He hates his dad, who was a cop or something. He also has an official chatroom, that you can pay to join.”
“Ever been on the chatroom?” I asked.
He nodded furtively. “Sometimes there’s a vote. On which method he’ll use for his next kill. The more you donate, the more your vote counts.”
“Very democratic. You ever voted?” Creighton asked. Sully shook his head vigorously.
“How many people do you think are on the chatroom?” I asked.
“There are 413 members. Probably more people only watch his videos.”
“Why do you think he does it?” Creighton asked.
“He’s wants to become the most prolific serial killer in history. No one knows exactly why. Just that he’ll probably succeed.”
Creighton and I left the cell to plan. We made a few calls, and then a plan.
Then, we returned to Sully’s cell.
“Mr. Sully, I’d like to offer you a deal.” I said…