See No Evil
How does a perfect gentleman become a vicious murderer? For Charles Albright, it all began with an obsession with eyes.
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“Well, that’s a touchy subject with me,” Albright replied. “My mother was a prostitute.”
He was not talking about Delle, he said, he was talking about his birth mother. The other men were speechless. Was this just one of Albright’s tall tales? In the months to come, a number of people tried to verify the story, including an FBI agent and a private investigator working for Albright’s defense attorney. They learned that while his biological father could not be traced, his biological mother was a nurse who had lived and died in Wichita Falls. Perhaps she never was the brilliant law student whom Delle Albright had described to her son. But there was no way they could determine if she had ever been a prostitute. Albright’s relatives, in fact, insisted that after a lengthy search through court records, Albright had been thrilled to find his biological mother. As an adult, he had visited her several times in Wichita Falls and had brought her gifts. He had even introduced her to Fred Albright and to his own daughter.
Yet somewhere in Albright’s mind, the connection between prostitution and motherhood had been made. It is possible that Charles Albright was wrestling with a very twisted version of the Madonna-whore complex, unconsciously seeking revenge on the mother figures who disappointed him by associating with prostitutes – the worst possible women he could find. On one hand he seemingly cared for prostitutes like Susan Peterson and Mary Pratt. He helped them financially, bought them dinner, and gave them presents. On the other hand, he wanted to punish them. Perhaps he hated what they had become. Perhaps he hated what he had become in their presence.
Whatever the reason, if Albright had truly decided the time had come to kill, he had put himself in a perfect position to do it. His paper route gave him an excuse to be out at night. He had prostitutes who trusted him enough to let him take them on a little trip. He had his parents’ old property just a ten-minute drive south of the Star, where, unseen, he could carry out the murders and mutilations. And because the property was in his father’s name, nothing could be traced back to him.
There was only one flaw in the plan – one Albright didn’t even know about. Charlie’s truck-driving tenant, Axton Schindler, had decided a few years back not to list his south Dallas address on his driver’s license. As he liked to say, he preferred to keep his privacy; he wanted the government to stay out of his business. Instead, he put down 1035 Eldorado, the address for Charles Albright.
“The police told me you had a number of true-crime books in your house,” I said.
“Oh, hell, there were other books – books of poetry, several Bibles, cookbooks, all kinds of books on art, watercolors, oils, and some books on science. It was as well—rounded a library as you wanted to find.”
“But in any of those murder books you read, did you learn why a serial killer acts the way he does?”
“Well, just for the sheer pleasure of killing a girl, I would imagine.”
“A serial killer,” I said, “would not have –“
“Would not have dumped them on the street where they would be easily found,” he quickly said. “Look, if I made up my mind I wanted to be one, I wouldn’t have been caught on the third killing. If I had decided to be a serial killer, I sure would have been a good one. You can ask anybody about anything I have ever done. I tried to be the best at what I did.”
March 22, 1991: Caught
Once word of Shirley Williams’ killing spread, the Star Motel turned into a ghost town. Some prostitutes, black and white, told officers John Matthews and Regina Smith that they were leaving Dallas. Others said they were getting out of the business. A few women, so desperate for drug money that they couldn’t leave, moved together to a street corner next to the home of a man who promised to serve as their lookout and bodyguard.
Cruising the area, Matthews and Smith spied a black prostitute, Brenda White, a seventeen-year veteran of the neighborhood. White tended to work alone on a street corner in front of a church, away from the other prostitutes. The officers decided to stop and make sure she knew about the murders. “Girl,” Smith said, “don’t you know there’s a killer loose? He’s now killing the black girls too.” “Well, I’m going to get my black ass out of here,” White replied. “I just had to mace a man who jumped bad on me the other night.”
White told the officers that a few days before, a trick in a dark station wagon had pulled up alongside her and that she had gotten inside the car. He was a husky-looking white man with salt-and-pepper hair, cowboy boots, and blue jeans. “Let’s go to a motel,” she told him. “No,” he said. “I’ve got a spot we can use.” As a way to protect herself, White never allowed a new trick to take her anywhere but a whore motel, so she told him to drop her off immediately. Suddenly, “a change came over his face,” she recalled. “It was like anger, rage. He said, ‘I hate whores! I’m going to kill all of you motherf—ing whores!’” Before he had a chance to grab her, White shot a stream of Mace into his face, threw open the door, and jumped out, breaking the heel of one of her favorite red leather pumps.
For the rest of the day, Matthews and Smith could not shake White’s story from their minds. They flipped through their notebooks. They thought about everything the whores had told them since the killings began. Always, they returned to Veronica Rodriguez’s rambling talk about being raped.
The next morning, as they were checking in for work at their police substation, Smith said, “We need to run a computer check on that Axton Schindler.” Because county government computers contain more information about citizens than city computers, she and Matthews drove to the Dallas County constable’s office near Jefferson Boulevard. There, a deputy constable on duty, Walter Cook, agreed to help them. Seated around the terminal, the officers asked Cook to type in Schindler’s address: 1035 Eldorado. The name Fred Albright popped up as the owner of the property.
Fred Albright? Where was Axton Schindler?
Cook punched in another code. It turned out that this Fred Albright also owned property on a street called Cotton Valley. Wasn’t Cotton Valley in the very neighborhood in south Dallas where the first two prostitutes were found? Cook kept typing. Fred Albright, the computer reported, was dead.
Matthews and Smith stared at the screen: The only clue in the case led them to a dead man. Then, after a pause, Cook said softly, “Maybe this has something to do with a man named Charles Albright.”
Several weeks before, Cook explained he had come to the office early one morning and had answered a call from a woman who would not identify herself. The woman had been friends with Mary Pratt, she said, and through Pratt had met a man whom she briefly dated. He was a very nice man, she said, but he had an odd love for eyes. She also happened to mention that he kept X-Acto blades in his attic. Cook asked for the man’s name. “Charles Albright,” she said.
If any other constable’s deputy had been helping Matthews and Smith that day, the link to Albright might never have been made. But good fortune prevailed. Cook typed in another code, and personal information for Charles Albright popped up on the screen: “Born – August 10, 1933. Address – 1035 Eldorado.”
Somehow, they said, Schindler and Albright were connected. Perhaps Albright was Schindler’s “friend,” the one who had tried to kill Veronica Rodriguez. Their hearts racing, Matthews and Smith rushed to the county’s identification division and asked to see Albright’s criminal record. The officers discovered a string of thefts, burglaries, and forgeries and the charge of sexual intercourse with a child. The clerk then pulled out a mug shot of Albright, a photo of a rather handsome well-built man with grayish hair, angular features, and deep-set dark eyes – just like the man Brenda White had described. In the picture, Albright was frowning, his face perplexed, as if he was surprised he had been caught.
The clerk wondered why Smith was so excited. “Honey,” Smith said, “I think we’ve got the killer.”
On their way to the homicide department, Matthews and Smith rehearsed everything they wanted to say. They could not seem unprepared, Matthews insisted; it was nervy enough for two raw patrol officers to visit the legendary Westphalen and tell him they believed they had found the killer – although they had no solid evidence to prove it.
Westphalen greeted them politely. Matthews started, then Smith interrupted, and soon they were both talking at once. Westphalen sighed. “Calm down,” he said. “Let’s take it slow.” A few minutes later, after they had finished their presentation, Westphalen decided they were on to something. He put together a photo lineup of six mug shots and told Matthews and Smith to show it to Brenda White.
My Library
