have you ever watched Silence of the Lambs yeah I saw that what did you think of that film not much a justice department investigator calls it terrifying an epidemic they're known as serial killers there are at least 35 of them roaming the country now all serial killers born or made There is almost always a pattern to the killings these people normally don't stop 20 killings eight murders 15 human bodies including three heads preserved in a refrigerator these men brought unspeakable horror into the lives of Americans in the 1970s their names still haunt America today serial
killer Jeffrey D Son of Sam John Wayne gayy Ted Bundy diabolical genius deceptive manipulative many have been EX uted but one of them is still alive he had the darkest eyes I have ever seen he can put on the mask of Bernard Eugene Giles but when you take off the mask he's the monster I want to know how these men think and why they killed and now finally a serial killer willing to confess all are you proud of the label serial killer [Music] one summer in the early 1970s a young couple moved into this trailer
park on the east coast of Florida Bernard Giles was just 20 his wife was 18 and they had a new born daughter neither his family or his new neighbors had any reason to suspect that Giles was harboring a deep compulsion to kill see the trailer with the carport structure that's where his trailer was Sunday afternoon was my laundry day and it just seemed like I ran into him so much in there oh it's it's I it's the same I can't believe that he would be sitting up here just I usually get those down there he
never said a word he no never and he'd be sitting here and just dangling his legs and just looking wonder why he would sit in here I don't know cuz I don't think he ever had any laundry Bernard Giles has been in prison for 45 years after a long period of contact he's finally agreed to meet [Music] me Mr Charles good to see you morning sir thank you come and sit down Berner thank you for giving us the time today yes sir you're serving five life sentences for killing five young women so my first question
is did you kill those women yes sir I did let's go back to your early life with most people that commit heinous crimes yes you can normally point to something that doesn't justify but might go some way to explaining it the Curious Thing about your early life is there doesn't seem to be anything there there was no appalling upbringing you were one of four kids yeah you were well taken care care of my brothers and sisters have done well you were loved as a child yes and was the driving force for that compulsion was it
violence was it sexual it was all sexual it was all sexual and that's the thing it's like um people who they become imprinted before they're five or six I knew the roots of mine I knew where it came from where did it come from you the initial sexual imprinting was an act of violence against a girl you were 6 years old and you were playing just a game of of Witch Hunt where a girl would pretend to be a witch and you would all chase after she was a a neighbor of yours right was in
in a a back bedroom and uh the part that I remember was straddling her and strangling her right playing and uh that was my initial sexual imprint from that point on as a child growing up I became obsessed with this the term itself serial killer was uh not well known back in the 1970s however later we started seeing these terms come up in the detective magazines and other kinds of TV shows but mostly we believe that the serial killers happened somewhere else Berard Giles was one of Florida's first serial killers he terrorized an entire community
in just 12 weeks he murdered five women two of the bodies were found just yards from his trailer where he lived with with his wife and child Bob teler was a young State's Attorney at the time he discovered their remains it stayed with him ever since so Bob when you found these two bodies within two days it must have sent a shudder through everybody well back then and of course it was a different time and a different place and girls were hitchhiking it was a common occurrence to see that up and down the road uh
particularly in a small Community like this all that stopped overnight uh there was a shutter that went through the community there was publicity about this the hitchhiking stopped and people started looking over their shoulder what this man did Bernard Giles to these young women was just appalling it it was and you know it's every parents nightmare to realized that the last few moments of her life were Terror filled with a psychopath and she was going to die at a young age just makes it even worse throughout his childhood there were no outward signs that Berard
Giles was deeply troubled but into his teens he was failing at school and dropped out and then one day his obsession took over when he was 16 there was a young woman walking in front of you and you suddenly felt an urge to kill her tell me about that was like an an opportunity that had presented itself to me and this woman was getting in with VW and I had a knife and I went past the car and fortunately I kept going I just kept going what were you feeling in that moment extraordinarily hyped and
what were you thinking you may do to that woman well if if it had gone the other way I'd have murdered her at the age of 16 yes sir I it's a chilling thing to hear this is not I'm sure you recognize this this is not a normal oh I understand that none of this feels normal sir you're 16 years old and you have just this extraordinary compulsion to kill this woman yes sir but it passed you moved on yes sir it was it just wasn't overwhelming it didn't you know it was just and I
didn't I just kept moving and if you hadn't kept moving that woman would have been murdered and she would have no idea to this day I imagine no she didn't even she never even glanced back at me you wished you had killed her no I don't I'm glad that I didn't I wish I hadn't killed any of my victims you know were you in any doubt at that stage that one day it would happen no no doubt at all you knew this was something you had to do yes sir it was for me this was
my life's passion up to that point to do what to murder to murder women [Music] I mean there'll be viewers watching this going this guy was apparently normal late teenage guy he's got married he's got a little baby girl life seems fine and yet ticking away is this this horrific time bomb and that's very frequently been the case that you have people that they present as perfectly normal you know you're looking for these sort of trigger points where is that trigger that what happens and it may very well have been the stresses he felt in
being married being you know a 19 20y old guy with a child and and really you can see him here this he's not really equipped to be dealing with marriage let alone a baby this probably caused a tremendous amount of stress for him and I'm not surprised that these killings started really within a month or two after the birth of his child in October 1973 Bernard Giles drove out of this trailer park onto this highway his intention to hunt down and kill his first victim he was looking for hitchhikers unsuspecting girls who back then never
imagined accepting a lift from a stranger would get them killed that day that you went out when you did Kill for the first time was that the morning when you woke up and you were with your wife and daughter and you just something hit you and you went no today may be the day every day may be the day every day every day may be the day do you know the name of your first victim no sir not now I Jerry Nancy Jerry did you know anything about her life I found out later she was
a singer in a uh in a bar that was it tell me what happened picked her up and tight his there's a wooded area and I pulled off the road what does she look like um little shorter than me um fairly wellb built pretty but not particularly pretty brown hair it's about it and at what point did she realize that you were kind of har her well did not necessarily I was going to harm her cuz you know most most of them don't assume you're you're actually going to to kill them most of them assume
it's a rape or something like that or a robbery or whatever you know and uh had you been talking normally to her yeah but there wasn't much to the conversation the the weapon speaks for itself and what did you then do told her to get out of the car and that's when she became afraid you uh up to that point I assumed that she thought it was just going to be a rape I walked her over next in front of a tree and I shot her just like that yes sir and what were you feeling
as you did that very stim ated very provoked very I mean the thing is is you know what is your passion in your life you know what is the thing that you like to do more than anything else and you're doing it you are so there that it you can almost it's like you can see the atoms vibrating I mean it's just just it's difficult to describe jazz is relatively unusual in that he started his age of onset for the serial killing was age 20 he's unusual because he did a spade of five killings within
3 months with almost no cooling off period That's highly unusual usually mid-20s is the Advent of the first acting out on the fantasy there's a long cooling off period of at least a month before the second one he was acting almost in a frenzy he was too young and too immature to put enough thought into his crimes to get away with him there was no way it was sustainable so it was almost like a childish urge to get as much fun crammed into a short space of time as possible before he got caught because inside
he knew he would eventually get caught once Bernard Giles started killing he made little attempt to hide the bodies of his victims their Discovery was now making Daily News Headlines Titusville a city where a million visitors had come just four years before to watch Neil Armstrong blast off to the moon was now the focus of a desperate manh hunt to find the killer ladies you were all young women you were all in your early 20s at the time that this all happened take me back to life in the area at the time well this was
a sleepy little town right across from the Space Center exactly and it was uh everyone wanted to come here because of the Space Center the launches and everything but when where we lived in Mobile Manor it was a really nice area the moment you realize that Bernard Giles he was this guy that lived in that trailer opposite you what impact did that have on you guys devastated me I was stunned I was like whoa look how close this guy was to me I could have been one of his victims what was your criteria for for
a victim access to any woman yes sir did it matter how old they were or what they looked like M go generally speaking no I could literally have been any woman that happened to stray into your orbit yes sir when you were cruising in your car and they were thumbing a lift yes sir I mean that made you at the time an unbelievably dangerous man for any young woman yes sir see I'm not I'm not defending the position I'm describing the position decision it was what I was and where I was at were you aware
that there was now a hunt for what police began to realize was a serial killer not not really until you know I I had known that they had found a body that was Paula's body yes sir probably I guess Paula Hamrick was a single mother of two heading to work one day when Berard Gil stopped to offer her a lift a body was found here she was his oldest victim at just 22 her two boys Steven and Billy were just toddlers at the time he knew she had kids but I'm sure she pleaded for her
life and told him that she had two babies and like I said that answered my question he obviously didn't care cuz he killed her anyways I think uh it was about 12 years old when he went to my mother's uh grave site the first victim you remember the name but do you remember the names of any of the victims no sir none at all no they meant nothing to you why would I do that why would someone embrace the names of the excuse me of their victims I saw these women as objects this woman Paula
Hamrick who was a a mom of two young kids who've never known their mother you know she'd thought to humanize herself to you she might still be alive but she didn't say you killed her yes sir this Carolyn very young yes sir do you remember these faces as I show you them no sir I true I don't 14 this girl as was this one 14 do you remember no sir you don't really remember any of these girls by face no sir some women actually Sav their lives by engaging me in conversations how many three I
can think of right off I actually went to the home of one the uh I got in a conversation about uh smoking uh marijuana she rolled up a few joints we drove around the neighborhood and smoked one and I let her off at her house and what were you thinking you may do to that woman well if if it had gone the other way I'd have murdered her for a guy like this really what's important for him is what he wants and what he wants he's going to get I want to kill these women and
I want to have sex with them and when I'm done I'm just going to leave them right there in the dirt because I don't really care about them and then I'm going to go back to my wife and there they won't know any difference I won't have any change in in Emotion what what I struggle with with you you kill five women but all the time you're going back to your marital home yes sir with Leslie your wife and your daughter Heather sir how are you functioning in normal married life in this extraordinary 12 13
week period badly what do you mean I don't know it was just as this thing's taking me over I'm I'm kind of disintegrating as a person the um um me and my wife are fighting all the time I'm out it's it's obsessions take you over did you get any urge to kill your wife no never no why not she was there she was a woman I knew her you know I I've never killed anybody I knew it's that thing about objectification of the the victim for me that was an important element do you remember doing
that no sir was 45 years since you have probably seen that just moment this is a little strange for me because I recognize elements of my own style and yet I I can't remember doing these honestly you definitely didn't know that's strange for real I mean that that one there for example yes when you look at it not withstanding the fact you you can't remember it very well but it's a very maab image yes ad a young woman you have a sort of devil likee figure at the top there skeleton that's not a woman that's
not no or is that you I don't know you had long hair at the time I had long hair at the time so that could have been you in fact it could have been me it's got needles it's got snakes it's got skeletons you know it's a very maab not a happy scene right right Giles Drew these pictures at the time of the murders but had there been any early warning signs that might have alerted people to what was coming you were at school with him you hung out with him every day you saw this
guy in junior high school 6566 nicest guy you'd ever want to meet I mean we hear this a lot don't we with people that do heinous crimes often friends will come out and say oh he was such a nice guy but you mean it I mean you I mean it sincerely it was just a sweet young artistic gifted nice guy when did you last see him it was probably and I believe that he might have already been killing people then uh it was on the river did he seem different to you yes in what way
he was uh very intensely uh working on a drawing and it was pretty dark I looked over and I saw a tree and some Roots but in the roots of the tree was a female body being engulfed in the tree [Music] wow in any of the psych reports all of them describe him as sane all of them describe him as in charge of his faculties he's he not psychotic and he's not mentally ill he's in touch with reality he clearly understands this concept of right and wrong and we know he understands it because he made
a conscious effort to take these women to a remote location where he wouldn't be discovered and kill them if he didn't understand the concept he probably would have just picked them up and then killed him right on the street in front of everybody he chooses to do wrong because that's what he wants to do it seems that Giles was able to hide his true nature from everyone that knew him including his new wife Leslie they'd been married for barely a year when the killings began let me just take you back to just before you first
killed you meet a woman you fall in love you get married her name is Leslie yes tell me about her good good woman good woman first time I ever saw my wife she was a friend of my sisters she just made friends with my sister and um they passed through the living room I was sitting there watching television and when I saw Leslie I knew I was going to marry her you know there have been numerous instances in my life where I it's just I know something I just remember that you know that's the one
right there do you remember how you proposed to her over the phone that was it yeah not very romantic you're young young man but you marrying this beautiful young woman family there it all seems normal yeah did it feel normal to you that day when you got married yes sir but you would have sex with your wife you had a normal married life in that respect yes sir and did you feel like you loved her yes but truthfully I didn't you know I did love her but you know I was completely obsessed with this other
thing and I didn't really realize how much I did love my wife until the like the last time I ever saw her through you know half inch bulletproof glass you know during the killings his wife was at home caring for that baby daughter water Giles would leave the trailer each day to train as an electrician but in the afternoons he would Cruise the highways looking for hitchhikers the police still had no suspects and no leads there was a Fear Factor and as a result uh people were locking their doors and people were uh trying to
gather more information from the newspapers and uh from television which carried very little uh but uh they were following it very closely but they were still afraid what's even more scary is uh it wasn't somebody traveling through because victims were localized there had to be someone responsible from within so who could it be and normally when we'd have any kind of a murder or something within 24 hours they had a suspect they knew who they were going after and pretty much were right and I remember a lot of times during that period it got to
where I was working like 7 days a week and it was driving them crazy that it was taking so long to figure this one out when I would be on my lunch break or go home from work I would see some young girls hitchhiking knowing there's already been two or three murdered I would just pull over roll down my window and say hey don't you girls know what's going going on the killings have begun in October of 1973 by December three bodies had been found and then the police discovered the remains of Sharon weymer she
was just 14 years old but what is baffling about this murder is where he killed her well what strikes me about this location is we're so near to the trailer park where Bernard Giles lived with his own young family and the body was so easily discoverable this is a very Brazen serial killer he's almost like crying out to be caught in in a way yes but in another way you get Hunters back in here and everything too so that the sound of a gunshot wouldn't necessarily tell everybody around that something unusual like that is going
on what we discovered was that there was jewelry there a necklace and maybe a bracelet and quite identifiable jewelry we strongly suspected the police did that this was Sharon lmer and uh we left and at the residence were siblings plus her mother and uh we showed them the jewelry and very very sad I mean the kids are crying mom's on the couch in denial no it can't be that it can't be that and the kids are saying no Mom it is it is and that's we got the identification that kind of stuff sticks with you
through the [Music] years but two of your victims you took back to within a few hundred yards of where you lived what was your thinking in doing that I wasn't thinking there's no logical reason for having done that it's quite a high risk thing to do I guess yeah but I wasn't doing my best thinking at that point in time you didn't really care well they have an expression you're basically off the chain I was uh like I said I'm not I wasn't doing my best I game after each killing that need to feel that
again is there and it's urgent but it's even bigger we see this with so many serial killers with each one they have to come up with some new angle to make it more violent more horrific um more Hands-On more personal make the victim younger make the victim big they have to try some new angle to keep that thrill alive but of course this isn't sustainable at some point or another they either get caught or they become so frenetic that they have no choice but to screw up and police find them and that is exactly what
happened with burnard Giles 12 weeks after the murders began he made a crucial mistake along this isolated Road when you were finally caught you tried to pick up two girls at the same time yes sir but it feels like it was an escalation and that's exactly it I was getting worse that's where you made your big mistake because they got away how did they get away I mean you had a gun the gun misfired I had hit one of them with the gun and it discharged it jammed inside the gun and that's when they ran
off that's when they ran off they got away having seen a form in your car which had your name on a book they saw a book that had a name in it and the name was Bernard Giles I checked files and uh it gave his address inspector D come in and he says you got to listen to me listen to me good keep your doors locked do not answer it he says we're going to make an arrest and these murders I said here he said yes I was shaking we could have been the next victim
and did you panic basically yeah I didn't know that they had actually had my name so about the time that I get home the police are setting up you know and that they got me I wasn't the only one who peaked out our door to see him when they brought him in to the area and he was evil he was Satan personified when you were caught was it a relief no no it wasn't a relief were you angry because it meant you probably wouldn't be able to kill again no I wasn't angry life got very
complicated how did your wife react to you being arrested well at first uh she she wanted to to to stay with me but you know I basically understood that you know I was I was over I was done with but did she ask you if it was true uh yes sir and the first time she asked me I lied to her she knew I had problems but not this kind of a lot you know she just didn't know how deep it was you know I'm I'm sure she must have suspected I mean not that I
had done that but after I'd gotten arrested that yeah okay that's that's him we've been talking now for over an hour but I was yet to see any real sign of emotion from burnard Giles so I wonder how will he react when I show him a picture of the daughter he hasn't seen in 45 [Music] years you seem when it comes to real emotions yeah pretty cold I mean yeah I get that a lot when was the last time you cried about anything Braveheart I saw the movie Braveheart when 1998 99 some place long in
there there 20 years ago been a while and why did that make you cry Hollywood presents this you know really pristine picture of a human being what you you sort of wish you could be you know this this this perfect human being and I was basically crying because I was mourning my life [Music] Berard Giles was just 20 when he was caught he avoided the death penalty by agreeing to confess to all five murders but he will die in prison soon after the killings his wife and daughter left the trailer park and moved out of
the state he would never see them again you lost a wife you lost your daughter I lost everything you lost everything yeah was it worth it this no of course not and do you know what happened to your daughter did you ever heard from her no no sir how does that make you feel what can you do with that we had a we had a picture the the you what do you feel when you see your daughter I don't know exactly when you look at your own daughter that age smiling innocent happy what do you
feel about the the young woman you killed I I don't put those together I mean what would you feel about a man who snatched your daughter and terrorized and raped and killed her I certainly wouldn't appreciate it that that's it that's how you'd feel like I said I certainly wouldn't appreciate it you've never apologized to who who do you think you should apologize to let me ask you a question I assume that to the the families of the victims I think I mean it should be incumbent on you as the perpetrator of the crime to
work out who you think you maybe should apologize to I mean you killed by your own admission these five young women who do you think you owe an apology to if I were going to apologize to anybody it would be the families have you ever done that I don't feel I have the right how do how do you you know you you get a me a letter in the mail from the person who killed your daughter right hey I'm sorry they may well be watching this those families I mean if you look at that camera
if they are watching what what would you say to them I really don't know what to say truthfully I mean don't say it to me say say it to them what do you what do you say to somebody that you've murdered a member of the family right what I don't know isn't the very least you could say is I'm sorry isn't that the very least you could do is just to actually of course of course I'm sorry the fact we're having this conversation in this way yes I'm sorry here's an opportunity for you to speak
to the families of these victims what would you say wh what's your response he doesn't say anything he just says what can I say uh you know I could say I'm sorry which isn't even saying I'm sorry he's basically saying that's what I could say but what does it mean the question is what can you say to the victim's families in other words make a connection here give us a small piece of your soul to the victim's family he couldn't do it because I don't think that he even has that capacity tville lost its innocence
through the acts of we called him Bernard Eugene Giles we always used the three names we started looking at everyone in a suspicious Manner and we started locking our doors this guy lived in our area had been schooled in our area and he did such a horrible thing not once but many times from then on yes I knew what a serial killer was I'd probably like to sit down and talk to him you know and say where'd You Go why'd you do this he says it was just a compulsion that he had to kill yeah
wow when you finish here with me you know I'll go back to my normal life and I'll you know I'll when I go back to my my hotel room this afternoon I I'll feel quite unsettled by this encounter when you go back to your cell later having talked about all this today with me will you have any feelings about it really probably and what are they likely to be I truthfully I have a great deal of respect for you and um it unsettles me just a little bit that you have such a monstrous view of
me I have a complicated view of you because to me now if I didn't know what you'd done and we had a regular conversation about stuff going on in the news I would imagine we'd have a perfectly normal rational of course and probably quite interesting conversation but it's very very hard to get past what I know that you did to these girls I understand it's very hard I understand not to feel that sense of just utter revulsion yes sir and I understand that I understand all of that well thank you for the interview thank you
[Music] sir well that was one of the most extraordinary encounters I probably ever had with anybody because on one level he's obviously self aware about what he did because he's just prepared to admit everything what he can't do is what I suspect the families of these victims really want him to do and let's explain it in a way that could bring any kind of closure to them I just feel in the end that that their loved ones these poor girls were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and met an unbeliev would be
dangerous person and it's as simple as that and as heartbreaking as [Music] that [Music]
