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Chapter 1: What crimes did David Wood commit that led to his death sentence?
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Most prisoners on death row are not pursuing innocence claims. David Wood is rare in that sense. His lawyers aren't arguing about whether he should die for his crimes, but about whether he committed them at all. An argument that big, that fundamental, tends to lock people into their corners. He's either a serial killer or an innocent man.
It makes it tougher to honestly assess some of the more basic questions I have about David Wood. What kind of person is he? And more to the point, what exactly is he capable of? The last time anyone seriously took up those questions was 33 years ago at his capital murder trial during what's called the penalty phase.
After a jury found David Wood guilty, they had to come back to court to decide his punishment. In Texas, juries have to consider whether or not the defendant poses a future threat to society. In this phase of the trial, the jury isn't just judging the crime anymore. They're judging the person. And in David's case, they had to do a risk assessment.
Back then, life in prison without parole wasn't an option in Texas. So if the jury thought David Wood might kill again, the only surefire way to prevent it was to execute him. Prosecutors made the argument for the death penalty by bringing up David Wood's past crimes. They had a lot to work with.
Before the desert murders, he had three rape convictions, another conviction of indecency with a 12-year-old girl, and then, on top of that, three more women and girls had made accusations against him too, ranging from attempted kidnapping to rape. The story the prosecution told the jury was clear. David Wood escalated his crimes. He went from being a serial rapist to a serial killer.
Is there any reason to think he'd stop? It was a convincing argument, one that's held for more than three decades. And yet, David Wood has insisted all along that it isn't true. We're going to death row to hear him tell us why. But before we head there, we're going to talk to somebody with a very different feeling about the kind of person David Wood is.
One of the victims who testified against him. From Serial Productions, The Marshall Project, and The New York Times, this is The Last 12 Weeks. I'm Maurice Chamas.
I'm opening up crossplay. I've been playing against Dan, my colleague at the New York Times. I'm going to play stupe, S-T-U-P-E, across the triple word multiplier square. Kat's played another move. Ugh, and she did have an S. She played stupe for 36 points. I've got a Z, which is 10 points. If I can put my X over there, I can make box.
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Chapter 2: What evidence was presented against David Wood during his trial?
David Wood, it turned out, had just been accused of another rape less than two weeks earlier. The rest happened pretty quickly. He played guilty to both rapes and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. But in the end, he only served seven. A few years later, he went on trial for the desert murders and was found guilty. At that point, prosecutors went back to Christy for help.
They wanted her to testify about her rape to help ensure David Wood got the death penalty. Christy was reluctant. She was newly married, had a job, and a new baby. She didn't want to have to fly to Dallas for the trial.
I remember being very mad that they were going to subpoena me and sequester me in Dallas because I had my daughter, and my daughter was like six months old. And nobody in my immediate existence had any idea that I had any connection to this person. And it was, honestly, I was angry. I was really angry that you're going to come disrupt my adult life.
But Christy also saw this as an opportunity. For the first time in years, she'd be face-to-face with David Wood. And this time, she wouldn't be a scared 13-year-old.
I stared him down the entire time I testified. And he didn't look up at me. I think he looked up at me once. But I would not take my gaze off of him because I wanted him to know that I was in control. It was very much about me having the power back.
Power. Control. Safety. This is what Christy says David Wood took from her. When I first arrived at Christy's house, I noticed a sort of decoy entrance, a front door that leads to a long courtyard before the real front door. Christy designed this setup herself so that she can suss out any visitors before they get too close.
She has two daughters now, and she acknowledges that her parenting style when they were small was a little less than relaxed.
I don't let them walk across the street. I don't let them walk to school. I don't let them walk home from school. I never let my kids ride a bike. I never let my kids leave my side at any store. With both of my daughters, when they turned 13, I told them what happened. And it connected the dots of why I was such an overbearing mother growing up.
It's almost like he robbed you of a lot of things, including the ability to like have some chill, some chill with your kids.
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Chapter 3: What is the perspective of a victim who testified against David Wood?
But Christy has a mission here. She's eager to talk with us, she says, mostly because she wants to get to you.
My purpose is so there's not a doubt in the listener's mind. And I'm going to take away that doubt from your mind.
Any doubt that David Wood really is the desert killer.
That's my purpose of all this.
And to make us really understand, she says we need to see where it all went down in her old neighborhood in El Paso.
So we'll trace my tracks, and then I'll tell you where the other tracks were. And then we'll go to where the bodies were found. And then you can just kind of see how everything's so interconnected.
The tour itself is a tight little loop, much shorter than I was expecting. In about 10 minutes, we see Christy's childhood home, the park where David Wood raped her, and very close by, the middle school that some of the missing girls went to.
This is where the bodies were found.
Oh, wow. Right here. That's much closer.
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Chapter 4: What was Christy's experience during her attack by David Wood?
But David didn't like that line of questioning. He was eager to speedrun through all of his priors. For example, here he is talking about a rape conviction where the victim was 19.
It's a long story, and I'll make it short. I really didn't do that case.
And here he is on another conviction, this one for indecency with a minor. The victim was 12.
There was no scratches, no bruises, no injuries, nothing. An incident happened, probably scared the crud out of someone. So really, nothing happened, but that's pretty much it. Yeah, okay. I mean, so... I don't even really like talking about that. This is the type of stuff I didn't want to talk about.
Although David did plead guilty to these crimes, his versions of events were wildly different from what I'd read in court records. He downplayed what he did in one assault and the other assault he tried to deny entirely. I wasn't able to talk to those women, but Christy's story was fresh in my mind. I asked him to take me back to that night and describe what happened.
At first, his account roughly lined up with Christy's. Met her at a park. I was drinking with a friend of mine. She was there.
Started walking back towards her house. But then it veered, sharply. We started making out by a bridge, by a ditch. By then I was kind of loaded. And we were making out kind of heavy. Things just got out of hand.
I mean, she described it later at the trial as like a kind of a nightmare for her. Do you have a... Yeah, I mean, do you have sort of... How do you feel about... It was a bad thing.
I mean, I did a bad thing. And what can I say? It was a bad thing. I was under the influence. Now, the law enforcement will tell you that we can't use alcohol or drugs as an excuse. And everybody who has goes, are you crazy? Are we really in our right minds when we are drunk or high?
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Chapter 5: How does David Wood describe his past and his claims of innocence?
Special thanks to Kyle Grandillo, David Dow, Ebony Reed, and Samantha Winter. The Last 12 Weeks is a production of Ciro Productions, The Marshall Project, and The New York Times.