The Hunt for the Chameleon Killer (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

[tense music]
- We have a body
that is decapitated.
Hands are cut off.
So anything that would help
with identification,
it would be difficult.
- This would be
a relatively rare case.
You'd probably see
one in your career.
- A person that would do that
has got to be cold,
calculating, determined person.
- I knew she had
a tattoo on her leg.
And that was Bev.
- Why would such a
careful and cunning killer
leave a tattoo that
could be traced?
- In the days
after Bev's murder,
her credit card is being used
to make purchases in London.
- Every USA-bound
aircraft was boarded.
And every passenger
was looked at.
- They were dealing
with someone
a whole stage beyond your
garden variety criminal.
- Florida police
discover the body
of a young woman who'd been
decapitated and left to rot.
- Her hands amputated
above her wrists.
- The crime scene that
shows dismemberment
is extremely rare.
- This still disturbs me,
how somebody can do that.
- The killer is a woman
of a thousand names.
- This is a woman who
moved vampirically
from victim to victim.
Once you're armed with
someone's passport,
you can take over their life.
- She's reeling her mark in.
It's seductive.
- At every stage,
when they think
they have a lead, they
follow it only to find,
they are too late.
[dramatic music]
-Feels like falling down
- A middle-aged woman
has been arrested
sleeping in a stolen car
with stolen plates,
with two dogs,
in a Miami parking lot.
[inaudible police chatter]
This woman has three
identities on her,
and documents confirming
those three identities.
She is Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson,
a British national;
Elaine Antoinette Parent,
an American national living
in Miami; and
Charlotte Rae Cowan,
from a little town
up past Orlando.
The vehicle was a rental, which
had been hired at Los Angeles
Airport six-- approximately
six months earlier,
in the name of
Charlotte Rae Cowan.
[sirens]
[police radio chatter]
[dogs barking]
- My name is Charlotte Cowan,
but I generally go by Charlie.
I got a summons to
go to court in Miami,
and when I went to court,
the officers that arrested
her said that I wasn't the
one that they arrested.
The woman they arrested
had a pair of dogs
that she brought from England.
And I think it was an
expired tag on the car.
After I got out of court,
I found the officers,
and I asked them, did
she have red hair?
And they said, yes.
Then, I knew it was her.
['80s dance music]
I had a little bar I liked
to go to called Faces.
So when I wanted to go out,
I'd haul butt over there.
I was kind of well-known there.
I mean, it was
like my-- my bar.
It's a small little bar.
It's a woman's bar.
And the biggest reason I would
go is because I had friends,
and I was comfortable there.
I went out one
night after work.
I went to the bar,
and I got there.
I ordered a beer, and I
was just sitting by myself.
And it us kind of
busy, but not really.
A woman came in.
And she came and sat down,
and she ordered a beer,
and then she got to talking.
She had makeup, beautiful.
She had very interesting eyes.
Reddish-- real dark,
auburn red hair.
She was dressed in
white, pretty much.
I mean, nice white
jacket and slacks.
She looked really nice.
I was intrigued why she
was getting next to me,
so to speak.
I asked her that.
She just laughed.
[laughs]
She was really nice.
British accent.
Kind of low, husky,
really nice voice.
I thought so, anyway.
She introduced herself
to me as Angela.
We just started
jibber jabbering.
And she said she'd came up
from Miami with her brother.
He was next door
at the men's bar.
And she was just sitting
there, waiting on him.
Then she bought me a beer
and brought up numerology.
That's how we got to talking.
She asked me about my birthday.
So I told her, and then
she asked me other numbers.
I believe one of them was
my driver's license number.
I guess we talked probably for
about a half an hour or so.
And she was intrigued
about my chart.
She wanted my phone number.
So I gave her my phone number.
And next thing I know,
she looked up and saw
a guy walk in and said
that was her brother,
so she was gonna have to leave.
So I asked her for
her phone number also.
I tried to call, and it
was like an answering
service in Miami.
So I said, fine.
I didn't hear from her
until the next day.
So we went to lunch.
She bought lunch.
It was nice.
And she said she
had to get back.
So she left.
And then somehow she
called me at my job.
She called me there
a couple times.
And then things got
kind of strange.
[phone ringing]
Said her brother had
put her in a hospital.
She couldn't get out.
The nurse had let her
use the phone to call me.
I went out one
night and got home.
I was asleep.
I get a knock on my door.
And it's her.
She's got on a really
nasty, fake-looking wig
and a fake mustache.
And she's real upset and
said she had to get away.
She had to get an ID.
And she wanted my
birth certificate.
And I said no.
She was getting hysterical.
It was really bizarre.
So I finally gave in.
And I told her, do not do
anything but get an ID.
Do not get in trouble.
And she said, okay.
I gave her the
birth certificate.
She hugged me and
kissed me goodbye.
And then she left.
I didn't hear from her
for a long, long time.
- It is certainly possible
that she would try
to revisit her,
but I don't think
it's probable because
she's on to the next mark.
There's no point in going back.
- I got a letter in the mail.
She wrote me, thanking me.
My birth certificate
was in there.
And she'd kissed it.
There was a lip print on
the bottom of the letter.
[eerie music]
[FOREBODING MUSIC, BIRDS
CALLING]
- More than five
years had elapsed
since Beverly's headless
body, handless body,
was found on a canal bank
in Florida back in 1990.
And despite their best
efforts and a task force
and some really dogged
work by the investigators
from St. Lucie County,
frankly, the cops
were no further forward.
All the cops know is
their chief suspect
is known as Alice.
- The investigators
were sort of stumped.
They didn't know who Alice was.
They didn't have a last name.
They didn't-- all
they knew was that
she had this British accent.
- She claimed to
be a relatively
high-powered business
executive from England,
that she worked for IBM.
The cops in St. Lucie County
know that their chief suspect
left Miami and went
to London in the days
after Beverly McGowan's murder.
The lead investigator
on the case
decided to track down
all the names
of all the passengers
on all the flights
from Miami to London
on the day when the
suspect, the chief suspect,
was known to have left Florida.
It is the most extraordinary,
voluminous piece of work.
The cops are going
through, saying,
we need information
on this person.
We need information
on that person.
This person came from there.
That person came from there.
Which department
can we talk to?
And they're doing this on
scores and scores of names.
And they finally flag
up one name for which
there is no explanation.
And the name is
Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson.
Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson
got a flight
from Miami to London, sitting
in row 18 in business class.
And at some point, someone
presses the right button.
And the State
Department computers
revealed that a woman calling
herself Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson
was arrested in the parking
lot in North Miami in 1991.
Inquiries by the
Metropolitan Police
revealed that the real
Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson
was a vulnerable British
woman who had never applied
for a passport, and the two
other identities, both of whom
are American citizens, Elaine
Parent and Charlotte Rae Cowan.
Charlotte would be summoned to
a secret grand jury in Miami
to give evidence about the
woman who stole her identity
and is now a prime suspect in
the Beverly Ann McGowan murder.
- I testified
before the grand jury
over the passport fraud.
The statute of limitations
was just about to run out.
I testified the
day before it did.
I got the biggest
shock of my life.
The mugshots didn't
look anything
like the person I'd met.
They explained all that to me.
The woman I'd met, Anne
Tremont, was Elaine Parent.
- Anne Tremont
was just another
in a long line of aliases.
- I learned a lot about
what was going on.
And then I heard
about Beverly McGowan.
And that really freaked
me out, big time.
I was afraid myself.
I could have been
a potential victim.
- Charlie is frightened
when she finds out
that this little flirtation
was actually a flirtation
with possible death.
- The task force
in St. Lucie County
believe that the name of
the person they're looking
for as the prime suspect in
the murder of Beverly McGowan
is Elaine Antoinette Parent.
The problem with
that is that there
is no way to trace this woman.
She isn't just
stealing identities
and applying for passports
in other people's names.
Elaine Parent has
two names officially.
She is both Elaine
Antoinette Parent
and Elaine Victoria Parent on
the same government databases.
She also has a succession
of passports and driver's
licenses, in her own name, with
false and conflicting details.
None of the official
documentation,
the documentation
which should enable
law enforcement to pinpoint a
suspect, worked in this case.
So the detectives
began examining Beverly
McGowan's last few weeks.
And that's where they
found the next foundation
stone in the mystery.
Remember, Bev had written
letters to her family, saying,
goodbye.
I'm going away.
What the cops did was apply
what's called an ESDA test.
And that means
looking for writing
on the pad underneath
where these letters have
been written.
And sure enough, that test
revealed other letters.
And those other letters pointed
back to an address in London.
At that point, St. Lucie
County's task force
has to ring the
Metropolitan Police again--
[phone ringing]
--and say, we need
your help again.
Will you go and
talk to this woman
who appears to know Elaine
Parent, our chief suspect?
The request gets passed to
John Cornish, the copper who's
done all the legwork, trying to
pursue the chief suspect back
in 1990.
- Law enforcement
had identified
Elaine Parent's ex-lover
in the United Kingdom.
I was asked to go
and speak to her.
My Detective Inspector didn't
want me to even deal with it.
So I actually dealt
with it on a day off.
I spoke to Ms. X
on an agreement
that I would never,
ever name her.
Ms. X was absolutely
terrified of Elaine Parent.
And I believe she actually
ran away from her own home
to hide from her.
- I was distraught.
I mean, I was not
even able to continue
working, worrying that
something might happen to me.
- Elaine Parent, she was
quite willing to murder
for an identity.
So, to a certain extent,
Ms. X was very, very lucky.
Very, very lucky to be alive.
[gulls cawing]
- Ms. X was, in
the early 1980s,
a young woman who'd gone
from London to Miami
and was studying at University
in Florida, and she graduates.
She sets up a business
in Florida in 1984,
and she gets married.
It's a marriage of convenience
because he's American,
and that will give her
access to a green card.
In 1985,
she's introduced to a woman,
a woman who will become
her romantic and sexual partner
for the next five,
six years, and whom she knows
very quickly to be a criminal.
That woman was Elaine Parent.
- She was great,
incredibly bright,
and always seemed to have
access to quite a lot of cash.
She bought me a tremendous
amount of gifts.
- Parent worked as
a real estate agent.
And she was bringing money
into their home in Florida.
And Parent told
Ms. X at some point
that she was getting this
money from conning people.
She said, as a
realtor, she would
take deposits for
non-existent house sales
and keep the
deposits, and it was
a scam which paid very nicely.
Thank you, indeed.
- We were having a great
time.
There were lots of
long, heavy nights.
I didn't have much
of a view other
than to have a great
time in Florida.
And that's what we did.
- In December, 1985,
by her own account,
Ms. X decided to leave Miami.
- I'll be frank.
I had to get away from
cocaine-laden Florida.
I had to rebuild my life.
I was planning to leave
to go back to the UK.
- But she didn't leave alone.
She left with Elaine Parent.
[suspenseful music]
Ms. X and Elaine Parent
get to London
and they live together.
- So we went to the UK.
And I realized this
was time to pull
myself up by my bootstraps.
And that's exactly what I did.
I started working for a large
electronics conglomerate
and moved up quite
well as a result of it.
But that was quite difficult
because then we started
to be very different people.
- In the years that follow,
the behavior of Parent
begins to alarm Ms. X.
She says her lover is volatile.
Parent begins hanging
out in graveyards.
- She would say to me, I'm
going to go to a graveyard.
Okay, what are you going
to do in a graveyard?
And she said, oh, I'm just
going to look for names.
I didn't ask too much.
- Within that
period, Elaine Parent
is not faithful
to Ms. X. Parent
is posing as other women
on Lonely Hearts sites
and applying for passports
in other people's names.
- She became known
to everyone in the UK
as Brett Tremont.
But calls started coming in
for a Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson
and a number of other names.
- Then Parent
threatens to out her.
She says, I will tell your
employers that you're gay.
It's not the enlightened
era that we know today.
And Ms. X is
genuinely, I think,
concerned to keep her
sexuality a secret.
At some point, Parent actually
makes good on those threats.
She sends, to Ms.
X's employers,
threatening and
abusive letters.
And these are
threatening and abusive
letters in the classic
Hollywood melodramatic style.
They're cut from
individual newspaper
headlines, little
black and white letters
threatening to expose Ms. X.
[pensive music]
She was fearful for
her physical safety.
And this was over
an extended period.
- She was getting
increasingly, I guess,
sort of demented.
She'd sweep her arm along
the mantelpiece and break
whatever was on there.
- Coercive control comes
about in toxic relationships,
particularly in relationships
with narcissists.
When we first bait the hook,
and we love bomb,
and we make them feel special,
and we bring them gifts,
and we give them attention
and admiration,
then, when we really have
them hooked, it clamps down.
We start to demand that they
cater to the narcissist's needs
more.
We start to have scenes.
We start to have rages.
And then the person
is really trapped.
And they're so fearful of
these narcissistic rages.
So they're psychologically
vulnerable at that point.
And they'll do anything
to calm this person down,
not to have these scenes.
- The tipping point
comes in May 1990.
Ms. X is warned by
a London solicitor
that Parent is involved
in credit card fraud.
Shortly after that,
Parent leaves the home she
shared with Ms. X in London.
And at that point, Parent stole
Ms. X's credit card to book
herself an open-ended
transatlantic
flight from London to Miami.
And the return part of
that will be the ticket
that Parent uses to escape
from Florida in the days
after Beverly McGowan's murder.
[suspenseful music]
- I believe that
Beverly McGowan's
death was collateral damage.
It was the coda to the
narcissistic wound that came
when Ms. X threw Elaine out.
And Elaine had all this
roiling toxic cocktail
of rage and pain
and abandonment and hurt.
And she was able
to discharge this
in one murderous rage
against Beverly,
who just happened to be there.
She is in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
After Elaine has
murdered Beverly McGowan,
she hops across the pond
again to her former lover
and shows up on her doorstep.
And I think she believes
that she'll go back
to the person who
truly loves her,
and they'll make a new start.
And it'll go forward.
- On July the 23rd--
so five days after
Beverly McGowan's murder--
Parent returned to London.
- It's like that was
then, this is now.
I'm back.
Let's do it all over again.
- Ms. X and Elaine
Parent resume,
with varying degrees of
unhappiness and violence,
their life together.
And that life will continue for
the next three or four months.
[distant sirens]
According to Ms. X, for
the next couple of months,
Parent's behavior becomes
even more erratic.
- She told me she met a
woman who had some money,
and she thought of killing her.
And I said, what on
Earth is wrong with you
to think of killing people?
And she said, well,
that's a joke.
And then she said, you'd
never believe how much
blood there is in a person.
- I think she started to tell
these stories to kind of scare
Ms. X and to get her
back under her thumb,
you know, like, with
the subtext being,
look, this is what
I'm capable of.
So treat me nice.
- And in October 1990,
Ms. X has had enough
and kicks her out,
this time for good.
Elaine Parent
stole Ms. X's dogs
and then used her credit
card to book herself
another transatlantic flight.
This time, she
flies from London
to Los Angeles, which is where
she picks up the rental car
in the name of Charlotte
Rae Cowan, in which she
will eventually
be found with two
dogs in a Miami parking lot.
- In 1992, Elaine Parent,
going by the new identity
of Sandra Little,
presents herself at
a charity women's shelter for
destitute and battered women.
And she fits the bill.
She states that she's indigent.
She's homeless.
She appears disheveled.
In no way does she match the
description of what we know
of the previous Elaine Parent.
- A very kind-hearted woman
called Patricia Nevins is
introduced to Sandra Little
and is convinced by this
woman's tale of awful
hard luck and says,
come and live with me.
- I knew her with
very blonde hair,
but dressing the same way.
- And for the best
part of a year,
Patricia Nevins shares
her home with the woman
she knows as Sandra Little.
- Sandra often sat
here, and she'd watch
the news, the World News.
And on Wednesday evening,
she enjoyed watching
"America's Most Wanted."
[ominous music]
- Nevins helps her get jobs.
But when you look at the
records, the documentation
that Sandra Little supplied
to support those jobs
applications, they're bogus.
It's a bogus college education.
It's a bogus degree.
It's a-- everything but
the address that she gives,
which is Nevins'
address, is false.
She even has the chutzpah
to sue the state of Florida
for compensation, for
workers' compensation,
having suffered, allegedly, a
slip and fall in a restaurant.
When Sandra Little
is ready to move on,
Patricia Nevins helps her find
somebody else to room with.
And so, Sandra Little,
having exploited that,
moves on to her next host.
[suspenseful music]
- My name is Reba Cochrane, and
I'm from Manchester, Tennessee.
- My name is Kim
Pecorino, and I am also
from Manchester, Tennessee.
- It had to be
about early '90s.
The company that we were
working for actually
closed down.
So Sandra didn't have a
place to live because she
couldn't afford an apartment.
So she actually
started living with me.
She told us she was
born in South Africa.
She did know quite a few
things about South Africa.
She could tell you streets.
She could tell you restaurants,
all kinds of things.
- But she did have
an accent, though.
- Yeah, she had an accent.
She was the type of person
that when she would get up
in the morning,
she would come out
of her bedroom looking
like she'd just
stepped out of a magazine.
She always came out with
makeup on, fully dressed.
So I never actually saw
her other than that way,
but just little things
that she did like that that
got you kind of
thinking or wondering
what's going on with her.
[dramatic music]
I decided I'm gonna
move back to Tennessee
because my mom and
dad are getting old,
and I need to be close to them.
So then she said, oh,
that's great, because I
want to move to Nashville.
Do you mind if I
ride up with you?
And I said, no, not a problem.
So my son, Randy, came down.
We rented a U-Haul,
packed up my furniture.
And during the however
long it took us--
I would say 10 or so hours--
to drive, we probably didn't
say 15 words the whole trip.
We went to my son's house
and spent two or three nights
there, while we were
looking for a place to live,
and all the time,
me thinking Sandra's
gonna to move to Nashville.
Well, she didn't
move to Nashville.
We rented an apartment
over close to the college
in Murfreesboro.
I didn't spend a lot of time
in the apartment with Sandra
because I just didn't
really feel comfortable.
I would go home and I would
put something in the trash,
and my mail would
be torn in shreds.
That made me feel a
little bit afraid.
Then I took my driver's
license, my Social Security
number, and birth certificate.
They were all locked in my car.
If I opened my closet,
I could definitely
tell that she had
worn my clothes
because her perfume
was very strong,
and she would hang
them back in my closet.
- I'm pretty sure
that's Mom's coat
that she has on in this pic.
I could be wrong, but
if it's not Mom's, she
has one just like Mom's.
- Reba's presentation and
style of dressing basically
had nothing to do
with how Elaine,
in all the previous
years, presented herself.
Reba's wardrobe was a
solid, middle class,
mature housewife's
wardrobe, none of which
applied to Elaine in
any of her identities.
And one begins to wonder if she
was trying out a new identity.
So to suddenly decide, like a
child would when a child plays
dress-up, I'll
put on the clothes
of this nice, solid
maternal woman,
and maybe I'll try
out that personality.
And maybe that'll stabilize
me, or maybe that'll
set me up for another con.
- When I'd go to
bed at night, I
would put a piece of furniture
in front of my bedroom door
to keep her from coming in.
One day, I went back
to my apartment,
and Sandra was sitting in
the dining room at the table,
just sitting there
with her head down.
And I said, Sandra,
what's wrong?
And she said, well,
today is my birthday.
And that always upsets me.
It hadn't been but a
couple of months ago
that she had a birthday,
or so she said.
So I got really suspicious
at that point of her.
- Con artists have many, many
tricks in their conning bag.
They can dazzle with
their excellence,
their attractiveness, their
fraudulent accomplishments.
Or, if that fails, they can
try the pity party approach.
- After maybe two
or three months
or so, I decided I just don't
want to do this anymore.
And I went down to the
office to tell the lady
that I was going to move.
And I said, what should
I do about the lease?
And she said, do you not know
what your sister's gonna do?
And I said, my sister?
And she said, oh, is
Sandra not your sister?
And I said, no, she's not.
And she said, well, she
put that on the application
that she was your sister.
And I said, well,
I didn't know that.
[suspenseful music]
Then, when I decided that
I'm coming back to Manchester
and I told her,
it made her mad,
but she didn't really say much.
So my son, again, came down.
We rented a U-Haul,
loaded up my furniture,
put it in storage again.
When we went back to get my
car, I had two tires on my car
that had been slashed.
You could tell they'd
been cut with a knife.
So my son, Randy, says, I'm
going in to talk to her.
And I said, Randy,
please don't do that.
So he probably spent 35,
40 minutes or so in there
talking to her.
And when he came back
out, I said, Randy,
please, what did she say?
What'd you say to her?
And he said, all
I can say, Mom, is
she'll never bother you again.
That's the last time
I heard from her.
[birds chirping]
- Reba's son, a young, robust
male who meant business,
was the perfect antidote
to Sandra's con.
Elaine had always been
able to con her victims
psychologically, but here was a
direct threat that she was not
going to be able to control.
It made her feel vulnerable
because there was no way she
was going to fight
physical force
and decided this
is not worth it.
I'm out of here.
- Looking back
on things now, we
feel like that Mom and Sandra
had a resemblance to each other
that would have been
very easy for her to take
over being Reba Cochrane.
And I think after she
figured that, you know,
Mom would be somebody that
wouldn't just go away,
and people would, you know,
wonder what happened-- we
would be right on where's Mom.
And so I think,
you know, that may
have helped Mom a little, too.
[pensive music]
- As this investigation
grew longer, more difficult,
investigators looked to see
what they could use to try
to track Elaine Parent down.
[faint sirens]
So I believe it was similar
to our "America's Most Wanted"
that was run in
England and Scotland.
It didn't get much leads.
- Welcome to "Britain's
Most Wanted."
Last week, we asked, is
America's most wanted woman
on the run in Britain?
- These stories are reproduced
in newspapers
and magazines
across the globe.
This woman, the chameleon who
can adopt different disguises
and change her appearance
and slip through the net,
it's tailor made for tabloid.
- In the meantime, a
French magazine did
turn up a lead, a postcard.
A very strange
postcard was sent
to the St. Louis County
Sheriff's Department,
signed, "Your Chameleon.
Best wishes."
- The only clues for
tracing this back
are the name, apparently, of
the artist, Piper, and the fact
that the envelope
was posted in London.
There's no Piper as an
artist who matches anything
like this type of artwork.
There is no way to trace it.
While all of this is going
on, where's Elaine Parent?
Is she in the States?
Is she in Britain?
Is she in Europe?
Is she in South Africa?
There are stories, which
will eventually float in
to the Sheriff's Department
in St. Lucie County, saying,
we know she's been in Paris.
We know she's been
in South Africa.
We know she's
been in Australia.
We know she's been in London.
She's been cited in
all of these places.
But where is she?
[dramatic music]
- She's a mistress of disguise
who steals identities.
But thanks to your
calls, is the chameleon
now about to be unmasked?
- She's now calling
herself Darlene Higgins.
- So she starts
to change her MO.
- I was dispatched in reference
to an individual
who had
observed somebody in the
restaurant that they believed
had been featured on "America's
Most Wanted" the previous week.
- When this officer
approaches her,
she has nothing to hide.
She can be cool
because she is Darlene.
- Once I believe somebody
is not being truthful,
like a dog after a bone,
you want to find out why
that person is lying to you.
- At that point, I
think we were looking
at sheer animal terror.
- Now things are starting
to escalate fairly quickly.
- I jokingly said to him.
I said, whatever you do,
don't shoot her.
[dramatic music]
♪