Lisa Olson
Appearances
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
I moved to Texas from Seattle, which was the hunting ground of the Green River Killer. And he got away with his crimes for much longer because some of his victims weren't identified. So I became really interested in this whole world of America's silent mass disaster, the 40,000 unidentified victims of murder, suicide, and accidents that are all over our country.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
So when I came to Texas, I met Dr. Derrick, who was already diving into this serial killing case.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
Absolutely. In the 2000s, she discovered that, in fact, a third of Coral's victims had never been identified, even though many of them were from the same neighborhood. Her first time into the morgue, she goes in to the cold storage unit and she is assigned as a forensic anthropologist to these unidentified cases. And she finds these boxes of bones and she's very galvanized by that.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And she's able to use, you know, all the tools that we read about in CSI, of course, you know, DNA. DNA comparisons to siblings and parents and her new technology to find clues that lead her to the siblings and the parents who were still looking for them all these years later.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
She had parents who met in the neighborhood. She had cousins who grew up in this neighborhood. So she really took this personally. She felt these were crimes that once they were discovered really affected a whole generation of people.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And she knew there would be people out there still looking, people whose grief was what they say are frozen, you know, people who weren't able to mourn their lost loved relatives because they didn't know for sure what had happened to them. When you look back at the cases, it's really heartbreaking how many times the parents tried to get the police to do something.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And at the time, the attitude was, no, they ran away. And actually, even after the crimes were found, the police chief at the time blamed the parents for not being more sort of attentive. He refused to believe that his officers should have noticed that there was a serial killer at work. And so Dr. Derrick became very personally and professionally engaged in this case.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
She took the police report home. She read it late at night, and she noticed names of kids who had been forgotten, like Randy Harvey is one of the names. His sister had called multiple times saying, my brother would never leave and not tell my mom and I where he went. So she's trying to find the family's To link them to the bodies.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And the first one she does find is Randy Harvey, who had been riding his bike to work on the day he disappeared. And he had gone off with his bell-bottom pants, with his shirt with the peace sign on it. So she describes Lenore Harvey, Randy's little sister, as being sort of almost giddy seeing his clothing change. Because she could never resolve in her heart for sure that he had died.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And so when she gets the proof and she realizes that she's been right all along, she has a huge sense of relief. She's able to have a memorial service for her brother.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
It was originally thought to be 27, and it's definitely 30. It could be as many as 40. And she goes on to be able to provide those answers to family after family.
Dateline NBC
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
Did her demeanor change at all when she's telling you that she was there and knew he was dead?
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
I moved to Texas from Seattle, which was the hunting ground of the Green River Killer. And he got away with his crimes for much longer because some of his victims weren't identified. So I became really interested in this whole world of America's silent mass disaster, the 40,000 unidentified victims of murder, suicide, and accidents that are all over our country.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
So when I came to Texas, I met Dr. Derrick, who was already diving into this serial killing case.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
Absolutely. In the 2000s, she discovered that, in fact, a third of Coral's victims had never been identified, even though many of them were from the same neighborhood. Her first time into the morgue, she goes in to the cold storage unit and she is assigned as a forensic anthropologist to these unidentified cases. And she finds these boxes of bones and she's very galvanized by that.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And she's able to use, you know, all the tools that we read about in CSI, of course, you know, DNA. DNA comparisons to siblings and parents and her new technology to find clues that lead her to the siblings and the parents who were still looking for them all these years later.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
She had parents who met in the neighborhood. She had cousins who grew up in this neighborhood. So she really took this personally. She felt these were crimes that once they were discovered really affected a whole generation of people.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And she knew there would be people out there still looking, people whose grief was what they say are frozen, you know, people who weren't able to mourn their lost loved relatives because they didn't know for sure what had happened to them. When you look back at the cases, it's really heartbreaking how many times the parents tried to get the police to do something.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And at the time, the attitude was, no, they ran away. And actually, even after the crimes were found, the police chief at the time blamed the parents for not being more sort of attentive. He refused to believe that his officers should have noticed that there was a serial killer at work. And so Dr. Derrick became very personally and professionally engaged in this case.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
She took the police report home. She read it late at night, and she noticed names of kids who had been forgotten, like Randy Harvey is one of the names. His sister had called multiple times saying, my brother would never leave and not tell my mom and I where he went. So she's trying to find the family's To link them to the bodies.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And the first one she does find is Randy Harvey, who had been riding his bike to work on the day he disappeared. And he had gone off with his bell-bottom pants, with his shirt with the peace sign on it. So she describes Lenore Harvey, Randy's little sister, as being sort of almost giddy seeing his clothing change. Because she could never resolve in her heart for sure that he had died.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
And so when she gets the proof and she realizes that she's been right all along, she has a huge sense of relief. She's able to have a memorial service for her brother.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
It was originally thought to be 27, and it's definitely 30. It could be as many as 40. And she goes on to be able to provide those answers to family after family.
Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".
Did her demeanor change at all when she's telling you that she was there and knew he was dead?
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
It was an accomplishment that he was excited to talk about. At that point, Ed Bell was not someone who had been interviewed. Ed Bell's murder of Larry Dickens had been an infamous murder at the time. But Ed Bell had, by the time I met him, he had been in prison for almost 20 years. He'd been in prison from the 90s to 2011, hadn't had too many people to talk to.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
So he was at that point excited about someone visiting him. And so that's, I think, why he ended up writing me and in fact, sending me down what was then a multi-year effort to try to figure out if Bell really was a serial killer as he said he was, or if he was just a big liar.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
We started with the ones that he most solidly identified, the ones where he gave names or where he gave the dates. He talked about Colette Anise Wilson. He used her middle name for some reason in Alvin in 1971, which actually that predated the other murders. So if that was true, That would have been his first murder.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
Her family and even police had developed another theory about a different killer. And there was a man prosecuted for Colette Wilson's murder. Now, did Ed really kill her? It could be.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
We knew that at the same time Colette and Ace Wilson's body was found, that another girl named Gloria Gonzalez, who was kidnapped in Houston, her bones were found mixed with Colette Wilson's. So if he was telling the truth about Colette Wilson... he most likely killed Gloria Gonzalez, whose bones were found there.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
There's not much evidence in that case, except for the chilling story that I've since heard from many people who've reached out to me, They were followed by a man that looked like Ed Bell on I-45 or on the service roads when they were kids because people during that era in the 70s were walking along I-45 because it wasn't as big of a busy road. They were going to the mall.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
And one of the people who says she was followed along that road and at the entrance of her neighborhood was one of Kim Pitchford's best friends.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
We know he was lurking outside that place both during and after he was in treatment. He had ability to go and come from there. He had access to a vehicle and that he took her in a vehicle to a remote area And that she believed she was able to survive just because she kept him talking about himself and told him she would never tell anyone. And she was brought back to the hospital.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
At the time, Ed was running a series of crew boats out of Galveston that were being used to send supplies to offshore rigs. He still ran his dive business, but he had these crew boats. But anyway, at the time, his main crewman for those boats, who he was giving rides to and from the pier, lived within a block of Susie Bauer's grandparents' house. And he was there all the time.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
The striking thing about these two girls was not necessarily what Ed had said about them. But the fact that first their abduction site was near where he was known to go, he had, according to police records, tried to abduct two other girls who lived very close to these two girls that same year.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
And what of the innocent ones who fell by the way? Will the henchmen of Uncle Sam ever pay?
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
I was working on a story for the Houston Chronicle about the unidentified dead, which is something that's kind of obsessed me for a long time.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
I was interested in the case specifically of a torso of a teenager in a purple surf shirt. that was found floating in a bayou near Houston in the 70s. And I was looking for cases where there was enough identifying information linked to the body that I thought maybe I could write about it and help solve a case.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
He said, you know, in fact, I think that is a teenage girl's body, and I think I know who killed her. And he was the first person who told me about Ed Bell.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
And what of the innocent ones who fell by the way? Will the henchmen of Uncle Sam ever pay? All of those who fell were as brave as brave can be. The only coward who was there was me.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
And if you kind of think about this, you know, Texas prisons don't have a lot of Internet access. He had details in that letter that had a lot of information about a crime that had been committed in 1971, and he was writing it more than 20 years later.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
The first thing I asked Fred is, have you ever talked to Ed Bell? Ed Bell is in prison. I knew he was in prison from what Fred told me for another murder, an entirely unrelated murder of a young man. So he was available to talk. He had a long time in prison to kill time.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson. They were surfer girls. They were friends. Debbie Ackerman was a really good water skier. She had competed in water ski contests.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
The general public didn't realize that, in fact, four girls were likely abducted and then killed from Galveston Island from points that were very close to each other.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
The thing was that because Rhonda Renee Johnson and Sharon Shaw's bodies were dumped in a lake, Their remains were actually found after the two other girls, which is maybe a little bit why in 1971 there wasn't a panic right away, because those four cases, which obviously Fred found so similar later, weren't associated in time as closely at the moment that they happened.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
Media interviews in prison are limited to an hour. So I had an hour to try to talk to this guy and convince him to tell me whatever he would tell me about these murders.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
What was the problem was to get him to talk about what I wanted him to talk about. And, um, Ed spent a lot of time talking about his life, about, you know, growing up. He was a proud Aggie. He had gone to Texas A&M, been in the marching band. He was all excited to talk about that.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
Um, and then he would talk about how women wanted him, you know, sexually, um, which is kind of a weird thing for me as a woman interviewing him. But, um, You know, you just sort of listen. You try not to react. So eventually I get to his ears in Galveston. I ask him about running a dive shop in Galveston, which I knew he ran.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
So that would have been a place where he really very likely would have met these girls.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
I had about, say, five minutes left when he started to tell me that, yes, he had killed a bunch of girls in Galveston and that he thought there were 10 or 11 when he was living in Galveston and in the Dickinson area. But he said, I don't want to tell you in prison because they're always listening and watching me. I think I'll send you a letter with their names.
Serial Killers
The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 1
So in the prison interview, I said, well, do you know their names? And he said, yes, I know most of their names. And I said, well, you know, can you give me at least their initials? And so in the first interview, he gave me a couple of initials of girls, and he said 10 or 11. And then he said, I will write you with more details later. And I thought, well, he may or may not, right?