The Hunt for the Chameleon Killer (2024) s01e03 Episode Script
Episode 3
- We have a body
that is decapitated.
The hands are cut off.
So anything that would
help with identification,
it would be difficult.
- This would be a
relatively rare case.
You 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?
Was it a tiny little clue
that was left
by the dismemberer,
almost as a calling card?
- 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 up beyond your
garden variety criminal.
We know to an
absolute certainty
that she stole at
least 20 identities.
- She kind of enjoyed
taunting the police.
- 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.
- Where is she, this woman,
the chameleon
who can adopt
different disguises
and change her appearance?
At some point, someone
presses the right button.
- A very strange postcard
was sent to the St. Louis
County Sheriff's Department.
- 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?
[music playing]
- Florida police
discover the body
of a young woman who'd been
decapitated and left to rot.
- Her hands amputated
above her wrist.
- The crime scene that
shows dismemberment
is extremely rare.
- It still disturbs me,
how somebody can do that.
- The killer is a woman
of 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.
- [singing]
Feels like falling down.
- My name is Tim Tate.
I'm an investigative
journalist,
documentary
filmmaker, and author.
I first stumbled across
the Elaine Parent story
when there was a
little rash of articles
in the press stemming from
the St. Lucie County
Sheriff's Department.
This tiny little
sheriff's department
in the middle of nowhere,
Florida,
was mounting a worldwide
search for, as they put it,
the world's
most wanted woman--
Elaine Antoinette Parent.
- Welcome to
"Britain's Most Wanted."
Last week, we asked,
is America's Most Wanted
woman on the run in Britain?
- A woman who
moved vampirically
from victim to victim,
who stole 20-plus identities.
The chameleon who can
adopt different disguises
and change her appearance
and slip through the net.
She is the prime suspect
in the brutal murder
of a young bank clerk,
Beverly Ann McGowan.
- Florida police discovered
the body of a young woman
who'd been decapitated.
- And her hands amputated
above her wrists.
- It struck me straight away
that this is a story that
cries out for a documentary.
And I picked up the telephone
and I rang
St. Lucie County
Sheriff's Department.
At that point,
there are stories
which float into the
Sheriff's Department
from across the globe
of Elaine Parent
at work in other countries.
And it's this extraordinary
trail of con tricks
and one very bloody murder.
She's been seen here.
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.
But where is she?
The answer, as it turns out,
is that she's
in probably one of the
least remarkable cities
on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
- My name is Larry Lock.
I am from Boing Green,
Kentucky.
In 1998, I worked with the
Panama City Police department.
I did approximately
a year on patrol,
and then
I worked narcotics and
as a detective in the Criminal
Investigation Division
for several years after that.
In Panama City,
if you're on the beach,
you're in a tourist area.
It's very transient, as far
as people coming and going.
You go to the other side of
the bridge in Panama City
and it's very different.
In certain areas, we have
million dollar homes.
And then three blocks away,
there's a trailer park.
This area has a lot
of drug activity.
And that produces, in
itself, a lot of crime.
- Our next fugitive is a
woman of thousand names.
- More than five
years had elapsed
since Beverly's
headless body was found
on the canal bank in Florida.
- We know her as Elaine
Parent, but others know
her as any number of people.
Well, here's one thing
we know for sure.
She's a slippery chameleon who
changes identities like most
of us change clothes.
Cops believe she's
also a killer.
A body was found in a canal
in St. Lucie County, Florida,
about 100 miles--
- Elaine Parent is
now in Panama City,
and she's now calling
herself Darlene Higgins.
- The killer had attempted
to conceal her identity.
- She's living a very quiet
and seemingly
unremarkable life.
She's in her 50s at this point.
She isn't as stunning
as she was when she was
starting her cons in her 30s.
I think she realized at that
point, I've got to calm down.
So she starts
to change her MO.
She no longer presents herself
romantically or sexually
in a loving, gay relationship.
She no longer presents
herself as down and out
and pitiful in a shelter.
She now presents herself as
capable, caring, helpful.
Suddenly settling down to be
almost like a suburban matron.
- She was given a job selling
advertising space for an outfit
called Veterans Spotlight.
And this is where
she happens to bump
into the mark who
will keep her in money
for the next five years.
Paul B. Cantrell
was a war hero.
He'd flown bombers
in World War II
and had been married
with children,
but by 1997 was widowed and
living in a little suburb
of Panama City.
- I personally knew Paul
and been to his house
several times.
He was a super,
super nice guy.
He had this lady that spent
a lot of time with him.
I never met her.
He always told me about her.
She would go over to his house
and cook, clean, help him out.
And she was a good cook.
His house was
always immaculate.
- She does shopping for him.
She accompanies him, arm in
arm, to local restaurants.
- Paul Cantrell is in
his 80s at this point.
He provides her with money.
He gives her
expensive jewelry.
He gives her a
room in his house.
What Paul Cantrell
doesn't know is
that Darlene Higgins
is Elaine Parent,
that she was a con artist.
And that she's
wanted in connection
with the brutal
murder of Bev McGowan.
[radio chatter]
- I was dispatched to the
Golden Corral on 23rd Street
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.
So the caller indicated the
description of the person
was a white female with
short, blonde hair.
She was with an older
gentleman, very well dressed.
I was not given a photograph
of either one of them.
I parked my car
in this vicinity
right here so I could
see the front door.
After a few minutes
sitting here,
I observed a white female with
short, blonde hair, accompanied
by a slightly older gentleman,
come out of the front door
and start to walk
down the sidewalk here
in front of the restaurant.
That's when I exited my
vehicle and met them somewhere
on the sidewalk, right here
in front of the right side
of the building.
As I approached him,
I introduced myself,
asked if I could speak
to him for a few minutes.
The gentleman didn't
appear in distress
or in fear of anything.
I asked if I could
know who they were.
He gave me his
Florida driver's license,
which came back valid.
She did provide me with a
name and a date of birth
and told me that she
had a Florida driver's
license, just not on her.
I ran that information,
came back "Record not found."
And that was suspicious,
a definite indicator
that she wasn't being
truthful about her identity.
She told me there was
nothing in her purse
that had her name on it.
Again, which was
highly suspicious.
- At this point, I feel that
she is completely Darlene.
She has broken with
Elaine and Sandra
and any of the other people
that she was in the past.
She's been living
in a relationship
that isn't romantic.
So when this officer approaches
her, she has nothing to hide.
She can be cool
because she is Darlene.
She believes that
at that point.
That is the dissociative
identity disorder.
She is not the person who
killed Beverly McGowan,
the person who was in
love with Miss X. She is
none of those people anymore.
She is Darlene.
- I obtained her local address.
I spoke with her about how
long she had lived here.
We spoke in front
of Golden Corral
for probably 10 minutes.
During that 10 minutes, an
investigative supervisor
arrived as backup
and he had a picture
that he had received from
America's Most Wanted that
was supposedly the individual
that had been featured
on the previous episode.
That picture was
not the individual
we were speaking with.
I had no probable
cause to detain her.
And then, at the urging of
the investigative supervisor,
we cleared the call
and departed the area.
[radio chatter]
I felt like there
was something wrong.
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.
And I traveled to that
residence, to that address,
and I made contact
with the landlord.
She gave me a little
brief information
of how long she had been there
and what she knew about her.
And I gave her a card
and a phone number
and asked her to call me
immediately upon her tenant's
arrival home.
Her tenant never came home.
She ended up putting all of her
belongings into a storage shed.
Several days after
this encounter,
I was able to obtain a
photograph of Elaine Parent.
I would have absolutely
recognized her
from this picture,
if this would
have been the picture that
I would have seen that day.
I should have been
more vocal to the--
at the urging of the
supervisor to clear the call.
I wished I would have done
what I thought was best
and not what he told me to do.
That is the gentleman that
she was with that day.
I've seen it in my
memory many times,
but this is the first time
I've seen a photograph of him.
But that is exactly
how I remember him.
I feel like we let
him down that day.
- She's a mistress of disguise
who steals identities.
- She could be anywhere.
She could be your
next door neighbor.
- Over the next
few years,
Darlene Higgins,
aka Elaine Parent,
disappears from the face
of the Earth.
The trail goes cold.
It's as if Parent could
slip through any police net
at any time-- and did.
- It was an evening shift.
The watch commander
just said, look,
we got this tip from
America's Most Wanted.
Take a couple of guys
with you.
Go down to this address
in South MacArthur.
See if it's legit, if it's not,
you know, let us know.
[police radio chatter]
- They said she had a
mole under her eye, a scar
on one of her
thumbs, and she may
or may not speak with
a British accent,
which is 100% of humanity.
We had to go to the station,
find a picture of her.
This is before smartphones.
We went to their website and
it was the size of a thumbnail
and I believe it
was black and white.
- It was black and white.
- It was very--
- It's not a very good picture.
- We had no information
to go on, really.
- It appeared to me that
whoever was giving us the tip
assumed that we had
watched the show.
They didn't tell us
she was the Chameleon.
- So we get
a little game plan.
Say, let's go to the house
down on South MacArthur.
- Go forth and find.
- Yeah, pretty much.
- When the call came out, I was
on my way home for the evening.
I had just recently
been assigned
to the intelligence
unit, and it was
my first night back on call.
Sergeant Nolan and
I were out back.
I jokingly said to him,
I said, whatever you do,
don't shoot her.
[music playing]
- We pull up here to
449 South MacArthur.
It was late, probably
about midnight.
All the lights were shut off.
Everything was dark.
We walked up toward the door.
And an elderly lady comes
and she answers the door.
And we identified ourselves
as officers with the Panama
City Police department.
And then we explained to
her why we were there.
And she said she was the owner.
- And so she invited us inside.
We all three come
inside and we ask
if there's anybody else in the
house that we could check on.
She said yes, she
had a roommate that
lived all the way in the back.
We start trying to figure
out if this is Elaine Parent.
Looked at her eye,
there was no mole.
And there was no
scar on her thumb
and she had no British accent.
We were essentially
convinced it wasn't her.
So I decided to just come clean
and let them know, like, hey,
your neighbor
called because she
thinks one of you guys is some
killer named Elaine Parent.
And when I said that,
she said, that's mad.
That's kind of a
British thing to say.
We say crazy.
We don't say mad.
We asked for ID, she goes,
it's in her bedroom.
I followed her in the bedroom.
She reaches up in her closet
and quickly hands me her ID.
It startles me a little bit.
[radio chatter]
I walk out and then she
has to get some clothes on
to get dressed.
Because she was scantily clad.
She had been asleep.
She shuts the door
immediately behind me.
As soon as that door locked,
it was a different ball game.
I look at the ID.
It was a military
dependent ID.
- Rank was off,
typeset was wrong.
Nothing about it was
legitimate at all.
- Okay, now this is a problem.
I'm thinking this
probably is her.
- Michael knocked on the
door a couple of times,
waiting for a response.
- It was taking too long
for someone to get dressed.
She was clearly stalling,
making us really nervous.
That's what made me
knock again and asked
her if she could hurry.
She said, I'm changing clothes!
- I slipped out and
went to the side
where her bedroom window was.
And that's when I saw her
looking out the window.
And that's when I told you
guys, hey, she's-- she looks
like she's wanting to bolt.
- At that point, I
think we were looking
at sheer animal terror.
She was cornered.
There was nowhere
to go at this point.
- Now things are starting
to escalate fairly quickly.
I knock kind of
aggressive again
and say, if you
don't come out, we're
going to come in and get you.
And then--
[gunshot]
- I had already gone
home for the evening
and they called me up.
They said they had
shots fired and need
you to get down there now.
[police siren]
I asked him, I said,
well, did they shoot her?
As I was driving,
I was thinking
they probably shot her.
- I went in first,
Mike was behind me.
Sarge is in the back.
I remember seeing gun
smoke in the room.
To my right, as you
go in, is the closet.
And her legs were
sticking out.
She was on her back.
And I remember seeing a
.357 revolver on the ground
by the bedpost.
I could see the
hole in the wall.
She had shot herself
in the chest.
She was doing, like, a death
gurgle, like she was dying.
So I was in complete shock.
- We're checking for
a pulse, you know,
and there was really not
a whole lot we could do.
- The homeowner was--
- She was terrible.
- She was hysterical.
I mean, rightfully so.
She had no idea
what was going on.
- She just could not
believe that this
had happened in her home.
[sirens]
- The next step was
to secure the scene.
Don't let anybody in or
out until Investigations
gets there.
- When I got to the scene,
that's when I discovered
that she had shot herself.
So we did a search
of the house.
- I got a call to go to
do a scene examination.
It was a nice kept home.
There was a bedroom with
a narrow walk-in closet,
and a revolver was partially
under the end of the bed.
And there were blood
spatter inside the door.
She was in the closet.
The right leg was straight out
and she had her left leg bent,
and she had a gunshot wound
to the middle of her chest.
Basically, she put
a gun to her chest
and blew a hole in her heart.
I would expect you
to be instantly
unconscious and dead
within a matter of minutes,
maybe even faster.
She had a very powerful
handgun, a .357 Magnum.
Did she know people
were on her trail?
Did she have, in the
back of her mind,
that she was going to have some
kind of a Wild West shootout?
The fact that she
didn't open her mouth
and blow her brains out, she
shot herself in the heart--
so, so dramatic.
So poignant.
Kind of the last con.
She literally died
in a blaze of glory.
She controlled it.
The thought of her being
taken out in handcuffs,
brought down to
a police station,
thrown into
custody, impossible.
That's not the way
this mini-series
was going to end for her.
To the last, she
outsmarted everybody.
She had it her way.
- In the days after
her death, the link
was made between Darlene
Higgins and Elaine Parent,
the woman who is the prime
suspect in the Beverly
Ann McGowan murder.
- From discussions with the
lady she was living with,
she had befriended an elderly
gentleman in our community
and she hadn't heard from that
individual in quite a while.
Based on her previous criminal
history-- killing Beverly
McGowan and then
assuming her identity--
made us think that she
was probably going to do
the same to this gentleman.
She might have been
planning to kill this man.
We had found in
her room documents
that led to his house.
And we served a search
warrant on that address.
When we got to his
house, his car was there
and we knocked on the door.
5, 10 minutes went
away and we're like,
should we get a locksmith?
Because at that point, we were
thinking he might be dead.
It started raining, so we
went under the carport.
And while we were
talking, all of a sudden,
he comes around the corner.
Scared the hell out of us.
Eventually, I told
him why we were there
and that she had been
wanted for murder.
And, of course,
that surprised him.
I don't think he had an
inkling that she had been
involved in criminal activity.
- The cops from St. Lucie
County turn up in Panama City
and begin to start to put
the pieces together
of Parents's life
in Panama City.
- And, of course,
we shared with them
everything we had found.
In the closet, we
found a suitcase.
And in it were makeup kit that
was specifically for making
someone look like an old man.
And she had documentation
and paperwork
to where she looked like she
was starting to make a fake ID.
There was a notebook
there that had
all the date and times
of the trash pickups
within the Panama City.
When this occurred,
one of the ways
you steal someone's
identity is you
can go through their garbage.
In your garbage,
you can get account numbers,
phone numbers,
dates of births,
almost anything and
everything about someone.
It is one of the ways
you steal their identity.
- Paul Cantrell was, in
the police estimation,
days away from being Elaine
Parent's next murder victim.
- Elaine Parent, anatomically,
was a very healthy person.
In examining Elaine's
genitourinary system,
I find that she had a little
scar above her pubic bone
from a hysterectomy.
Uterus and fallopian tubes
were surgically absent,
so they had been taken out.
- The fact that
the autopsy showed
that Elaine Parent had had
a complete hysterectomy
is a tantalizing detail.
Did it leave her
with a trauma?
Did it leave her with a
sense of being empty and not
being whole as a woman?
Was this in her mind when she
sought out women as victims?
Was this going through her head
when she dismembered Beverly
McGowan's corpse, and she took
extraordinary care to excise
the tattoo in the abdominal
area to the point of
almost disemboweling?
Was there something symbolic?
Was there a jealousy?
Was there a hatred
towards women?
Was there a rage towards
what had happened to her?
- The death of
Elaine Parent left
a lot of unanswered questions
that a lot of police
officers had.
They wanted to ask her.
- Who really was
Elaine Parent?
Elaine Parent was born in
the New York area in 1942.
She went to school
in New York.
She moved to
Illinois in her teens
and was issued with a
Social Security number.
She ended up in Florida, in
the Miami area, as a real
estate agent in the 1970s.
We know this because
we have some press
cuttings about Elaine
Parent, the realtor.
She was either gay or
bisexual, probably gay.
Though she may or may
not have been married,
may or may not
have had children,
may or may not have
had male relationships.
And we have traces, glimpses
of her criminal career
on official paperwork.
We know that she
was a con artist.
We know to an
absolute certainty
that she stole at
least 20 identities.
And it's likely to be much,
much higher than that.
If you look at this now, you
say, how is that possible?
The answer is this all
happened in a different era.
This is in the '80s, the '90s.
And what defines the
difference between that era
and where we are today is
that she was able to doctor
passports, make use of
bogus identity documents
far more easily.
It's a different world.
I was literally days
away from finishing
my film on Elaine Parent.
And the film was going to end
on where is Elaine Parent now?
If you know, please call in.
When I got a phone call,
and the phone call said
Elaine Parent has
shot herself,
I had no way of knowing
that 24 years later,
I would still be
working on this story.
- It was a nice day and
I came in for something.
And there was a recording
on the answering
machine from America's Most
Wanted looking for Mom.
So Mom came in
and called them.
And that's when they had
told-- they told her the story
of what actually happened.
- I was glad they
caught her, but I wasn't
glad that it ended that way.
I was just relieved that
they had caught her.
I think about her even still.
I think about it quite a bit.
This is a gift
that Elaine Parent
brought me from the gift
shop she was working in
in Saint Pete Beach.
She always talked
about being broke
and she had never had
money to buy anything with.
30 years ago, $38 was
quite a bit of money.
- To think that we actually
were in contact with somebody
that were capable of doing such
horrendous things is very odd.
It's an odd--
it's an odd feeling.
It's very disturbing.
Isn't it?
- It still does.
It still disturbs me how
somebody can do that.
- I think Elaine Parent shows
a borderline personality
disorder.
And involved in that is
narcissistic personality
and psychopathic or antisocial
personality disorder
and a little bit of histrionic
personality disorder.
Main ingredient that allows
them to relate to each other
is lack of empathy,
lack of ability
to see the other person.
Lack of ability to
control their impulses.
I really believe
that she never set
out to kill Beverly McGowan.
I believe that Beverly
listened to some of her friends
or noticed some kinds of really
disturbing behavior in Elaine
and had told her
to leave, to get
out of the house, that
the relationship was over.
And that was the fatal
mistake because Elaine
was a malignant narcissist.
And that is the most
treacherous trigger
to pull on a narcissist.
They lose all control
and they are fighting
for their psychological life.
And I think at that
point it escalated,
and that's when the
murder took place.
- It was a couple of
months after the death
of Elaine Parent that
I found out that--
that she had killed herself.
And that was-- that
was a bad feeling.
Because now we'll
never know why.
Every now and again,
when I think back
at life at the
bank, friends that
were in my life at that time--
--how it was working
with her, she was--
she was fun,
she was unique.
A waste.
Wasted life.
Someone took it from her.
- Beverly McGowan was
a totally innocent
person just leading a normal
life, doing the best she can.
And you have family
members that really
need to know what happened.
Is Elaine Parent the
only one responsible?
Or are there others out
there that are responsible?
[moody music]
- I talked to three
police officers who dealt
with Beverly McGowan's body.
All of those professionals
said the same thing.
We believe there
was more than one
person involved in the murder
of Beverly Ann McGowan.
It's not easy to transport
a body on your own
and to get it out of
a vehicle and to toss
it down a canal
bank and to carve
off the head and the hands.
What the cops and the
medical examiner believed
is that one person-- and
probably not one woman--
could do all of that.
They were of the opinion
then, and to the best
of my knowledge, are
of the opinion now
that the woman they
were looking for--
Alice then, we know her
to be Elaine Parent now--
had at least one accomplice.
And that that
accomplice was a man.
Whoever helped Parent in
the murder of McGowan,
and in the days and weeks
surrounding that murder,
have never been caught.
And the cops are still pursuing
those lines of inquiry.
They are closer,
they say, than ever
before, to making an arrest.
And somewhere, if the
detectives in St. Lucie County
are to be believed, there
is at least one accomplice--
--who should have and
may still have his collar
felt for what happened
to Beverly McGowan.
Who really was Elaine
Parent, the Chameleon Killer,
the world's most wanted woman?
The cheap answer is that
only Elaine Parent knew that.
The real answer is
no one knew that,
least of all Elaine Parent.
[music playing]
♪
that is decapitated.
The hands are cut off.
So anything that would
help with identification,
it would be difficult.
- This would be a
relatively rare case.
You 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?
Was it a tiny little clue
that was left
by the dismemberer,
almost as a calling card?
- 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 up beyond your
garden variety criminal.
We know to an
absolute certainty
that she stole at
least 20 identities.
- She kind of enjoyed
taunting the police.
- 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.
- Where is she, this woman,
the chameleon
who can adopt
different disguises
and change her appearance?
At some point, someone
presses the right button.
- A very strange postcard
was sent to the St. Louis
County Sheriff's Department.
- 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?
[music playing]
- Florida police
discover the body
of a young woman who'd been
decapitated and left to rot.
- Her hands amputated
above her wrist.
- The crime scene that
shows dismemberment
is extremely rare.
- It still disturbs me,
how somebody can do that.
- The killer is a woman
of 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.
- [singing]
Feels like falling down.
- My name is Tim Tate.
I'm an investigative
journalist,
documentary
filmmaker, and author.
I first stumbled across
the Elaine Parent story
when there was a
little rash of articles
in the press stemming from
the St. Lucie County
Sheriff's Department.
This tiny little
sheriff's department
in the middle of nowhere,
Florida,
was mounting a worldwide
search for, as they put it,
the world's
most wanted woman--
Elaine Antoinette Parent.
- Welcome to
"Britain's Most Wanted."
Last week, we asked,
is America's Most Wanted
woman on the run in Britain?
- A woman who
moved vampirically
from victim to victim,
who stole 20-plus identities.
The chameleon who can
adopt different disguises
and change her appearance
and slip through the net.
She is the prime suspect
in the brutal murder
of a young bank clerk,
Beverly Ann McGowan.
- Florida police discovered
the body of a young woman
who'd been decapitated.
- And her hands amputated
above her wrists.
- It struck me straight away
that this is a story that
cries out for a documentary.
And I picked up the telephone
and I rang
St. Lucie County
Sheriff's Department.
At that point,
there are stories
which float into the
Sheriff's Department
from across the globe
of Elaine Parent
at work in other countries.
And it's this extraordinary
trail of con tricks
and one very bloody murder.
She's been seen here.
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.
But where is she?
The answer, as it turns out,
is that she's
in probably one of the
least remarkable cities
on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
- My name is Larry Lock.
I am from Boing Green,
Kentucky.
In 1998, I worked with the
Panama City Police department.
I did approximately
a year on patrol,
and then
I worked narcotics and
as a detective in the Criminal
Investigation Division
for several years after that.
In Panama City,
if you're on the beach,
you're in a tourist area.
It's very transient, as far
as people coming and going.
You go to the other side of
the bridge in Panama City
and it's very different.
In certain areas, we have
million dollar homes.
And then three blocks away,
there's a trailer park.
This area has a lot
of drug activity.
And that produces, in
itself, a lot of crime.
- Our next fugitive is a
woman of thousand names.
- More than five
years had elapsed
since Beverly's
headless body was found
on the canal bank in Florida.
- We know her as Elaine
Parent, but others know
her as any number of people.
Well, here's one thing
we know for sure.
She's a slippery chameleon who
changes identities like most
of us change clothes.
Cops believe she's
also a killer.
A body was found in a canal
in St. Lucie County, Florida,
about 100 miles--
- Elaine Parent is
now in Panama City,
and she's now calling
herself Darlene Higgins.
- The killer had attempted
to conceal her identity.
- She's living a very quiet
and seemingly
unremarkable life.
She's in her 50s at this point.
She isn't as stunning
as she was when she was
starting her cons in her 30s.
I think she realized at that
point, I've got to calm down.
So she starts
to change her MO.
She no longer presents herself
romantically or sexually
in a loving, gay relationship.
She no longer presents
herself as down and out
and pitiful in a shelter.
She now presents herself as
capable, caring, helpful.
Suddenly settling down to be
almost like a suburban matron.
- She was given a job selling
advertising space for an outfit
called Veterans Spotlight.
And this is where
she happens to bump
into the mark who
will keep her in money
for the next five years.
Paul B. Cantrell
was a war hero.
He'd flown bombers
in World War II
and had been married
with children,
but by 1997 was widowed and
living in a little suburb
of Panama City.
- I personally knew Paul
and been to his house
several times.
He was a super,
super nice guy.
He had this lady that spent
a lot of time with him.
I never met her.
He always told me about her.
She would go over to his house
and cook, clean, help him out.
And she was a good cook.
His house was
always immaculate.
- She does shopping for him.
She accompanies him, arm in
arm, to local restaurants.
- Paul Cantrell is in
his 80s at this point.
He provides her with money.
He gives her
expensive jewelry.
He gives her a
room in his house.
What Paul Cantrell
doesn't know is
that Darlene Higgins
is Elaine Parent,
that she was a con artist.
And that she's
wanted in connection
with the brutal
murder of Bev McGowan.
[radio chatter]
- I was dispatched to the
Golden Corral on 23rd Street
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.
So the caller indicated the
description of the person
was a white female with
short, blonde hair.
She was with an older
gentleman, very well dressed.
I was not given a photograph
of either one of them.
I parked my car
in this vicinity
right here so I could
see the front door.
After a few minutes
sitting here,
I observed a white female with
short, blonde hair, accompanied
by a slightly older gentleman,
come out of the front door
and start to walk
down the sidewalk here
in front of the restaurant.
That's when I exited my
vehicle and met them somewhere
on the sidewalk, right here
in front of the right side
of the building.
As I approached him,
I introduced myself,
asked if I could speak
to him for a few minutes.
The gentleman didn't
appear in distress
or in fear of anything.
I asked if I could
know who they were.
He gave me his
Florida driver's license,
which came back valid.
She did provide me with a
name and a date of birth
and told me that she
had a Florida driver's
license, just not on her.
I ran that information,
came back "Record not found."
And that was suspicious,
a definite indicator
that she wasn't being
truthful about her identity.
She told me there was
nothing in her purse
that had her name on it.
Again, which was
highly suspicious.
- At this point, I feel that
she is completely Darlene.
She has broken with
Elaine and Sandra
and any of the other people
that she was in the past.
She's been living
in a relationship
that isn't romantic.
So when this officer approaches
her, she has nothing to hide.
She can be cool
because she is Darlene.
She believes that
at that point.
That is the dissociative
identity disorder.
She is not the person who
killed Beverly McGowan,
the person who was in
love with Miss X. She is
none of those people anymore.
She is Darlene.
- I obtained her local address.
I spoke with her about how
long she had lived here.
We spoke in front
of Golden Corral
for probably 10 minutes.
During that 10 minutes, an
investigative supervisor
arrived as backup
and he had a picture
that he had received from
America's Most Wanted that
was supposedly the individual
that had been featured
on the previous episode.
That picture was
not the individual
we were speaking with.
I had no probable
cause to detain her.
And then, at the urging of
the investigative supervisor,
we cleared the call
and departed the area.
[radio chatter]
I felt like there
was something wrong.
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.
And I traveled to that
residence, to that address,
and I made contact
with the landlord.
She gave me a little
brief information
of how long she had been there
and what she knew about her.
And I gave her a card
and a phone number
and asked her to call me
immediately upon her tenant's
arrival home.
Her tenant never came home.
She ended up putting all of her
belongings into a storage shed.
Several days after
this encounter,
I was able to obtain a
photograph of Elaine Parent.
I would have absolutely
recognized her
from this picture,
if this would
have been the picture that
I would have seen that day.
I should have been
more vocal to the--
at the urging of the
supervisor to clear the call.
I wished I would have done
what I thought was best
and not what he told me to do.
That is the gentleman that
she was with that day.
I've seen it in my
memory many times,
but this is the first time
I've seen a photograph of him.
But that is exactly
how I remember him.
I feel like we let
him down that day.
- She's a mistress of disguise
who steals identities.
- She could be anywhere.
She could be your
next door neighbor.
- Over the next
few years,
Darlene Higgins,
aka Elaine Parent,
disappears from the face
of the Earth.
The trail goes cold.
It's as if Parent could
slip through any police net
at any time-- and did.
- It was an evening shift.
The watch commander
just said, look,
we got this tip from
America's Most Wanted.
Take a couple of guys
with you.
Go down to this address
in South MacArthur.
See if it's legit, if it's not,
you know, let us know.
[police radio chatter]
- They said she had a
mole under her eye, a scar
on one of her
thumbs, and she may
or may not speak with
a British accent,
which is 100% of humanity.
We had to go to the station,
find a picture of her.
This is before smartphones.
We went to their website and
it was the size of a thumbnail
and I believe it
was black and white.
- It was black and white.
- It was very--
- It's not a very good picture.
- We had no information
to go on, really.
- It appeared to me that
whoever was giving us the tip
assumed that we had
watched the show.
They didn't tell us
she was the Chameleon.
- So we get
a little game plan.
Say, let's go to the house
down on South MacArthur.
- Go forth and find.
- Yeah, pretty much.
- When the call came out, I was
on my way home for the evening.
I had just recently
been assigned
to the intelligence
unit, and it was
my first night back on call.
Sergeant Nolan and
I were out back.
I jokingly said to him,
I said, whatever you do,
don't shoot her.
[music playing]
- We pull up here to
449 South MacArthur.
It was late, probably
about midnight.
All the lights were shut off.
Everything was dark.
We walked up toward the door.
And an elderly lady comes
and she answers the door.
And we identified ourselves
as officers with the Panama
City Police department.
And then we explained to
her why we were there.
And she said she was the owner.
- And so she invited us inside.
We all three come
inside and we ask
if there's anybody else in the
house that we could check on.
She said yes, she
had a roommate that
lived all the way in the back.
We start trying to figure
out if this is Elaine Parent.
Looked at her eye,
there was no mole.
And there was no
scar on her thumb
and she had no British accent.
We were essentially
convinced it wasn't her.
So I decided to just come clean
and let them know, like, hey,
your neighbor
called because she
thinks one of you guys is some
killer named Elaine Parent.
And when I said that,
she said, that's mad.
That's kind of a
British thing to say.
We say crazy.
We don't say mad.
We asked for ID, she goes,
it's in her bedroom.
I followed her in the bedroom.
She reaches up in her closet
and quickly hands me her ID.
It startles me a little bit.
[radio chatter]
I walk out and then she
has to get some clothes on
to get dressed.
Because she was scantily clad.
She had been asleep.
She shuts the door
immediately behind me.
As soon as that door locked,
it was a different ball game.
I look at the ID.
It was a military
dependent ID.
- Rank was off,
typeset was wrong.
Nothing about it was
legitimate at all.
- Okay, now this is a problem.
I'm thinking this
probably is her.
- Michael knocked on the
door a couple of times,
waiting for a response.
- It was taking too long
for someone to get dressed.
She was clearly stalling,
making us really nervous.
That's what made me
knock again and asked
her if she could hurry.
She said, I'm changing clothes!
- I slipped out and
went to the side
where her bedroom window was.
And that's when I saw her
looking out the window.
And that's when I told you
guys, hey, she's-- she looks
like she's wanting to bolt.
- At that point, I
think we were looking
at sheer animal terror.
She was cornered.
There was nowhere
to go at this point.
- Now things are starting
to escalate fairly quickly.
I knock kind of
aggressive again
and say, if you
don't come out, we're
going to come in and get you.
And then--
[gunshot]
- I had already gone
home for the evening
and they called me up.
They said they had
shots fired and need
you to get down there now.
[police siren]
I asked him, I said,
well, did they shoot her?
As I was driving,
I was thinking
they probably shot her.
- I went in first,
Mike was behind me.
Sarge is in the back.
I remember seeing gun
smoke in the room.
To my right, as you
go in, is the closet.
And her legs were
sticking out.
She was on her back.
And I remember seeing a
.357 revolver on the ground
by the bedpost.
I could see the
hole in the wall.
She had shot herself
in the chest.
She was doing, like, a death
gurgle, like she was dying.
So I was in complete shock.
- We're checking for
a pulse, you know,
and there was really not
a whole lot we could do.
- The homeowner was--
- She was terrible.
- She was hysterical.
I mean, rightfully so.
She had no idea
what was going on.
- She just could not
believe that this
had happened in her home.
[sirens]
- The next step was
to secure the scene.
Don't let anybody in or
out until Investigations
gets there.
- When I got to the scene,
that's when I discovered
that she had shot herself.
So we did a search
of the house.
- I got a call to go to
do a scene examination.
It was a nice kept home.
There was a bedroom with
a narrow walk-in closet,
and a revolver was partially
under the end of the bed.
And there were blood
spatter inside the door.
She was in the closet.
The right leg was straight out
and she had her left leg bent,
and she had a gunshot wound
to the middle of her chest.
Basically, she put
a gun to her chest
and blew a hole in her heart.
I would expect you
to be instantly
unconscious and dead
within a matter of minutes,
maybe even faster.
She had a very powerful
handgun, a .357 Magnum.
Did she know people
were on her trail?
Did she have, in the
back of her mind,
that she was going to have some
kind of a Wild West shootout?
The fact that she
didn't open her mouth
and blow her brains out, she
shot herself in the heart--
so, so dramatic.
So poignant.
Kind of the last con.
She literally died
in a blaze of glory.
She controlled it.
The thought of her being
taken out in handcuffs,
brought down to
a police station,
thrown into
custody, impossible.
That's not the way
this mini-series
was going to end for her.
To the last, she
outsmarted everybody.
She had it her way.
- In the days after
her death, the link
was made between Darlene
Higgins and Elaine Parent,
the woman who is the prime
suspect in the Beverly
Ann McGowan murder.
- From discussions with the
lady she was living with,
she had befriended an elderly
gentleman in our community
and she hadn't heard from that
individual in quite a while.
Based on her previous criminal
history-- killing Beverly
McGowan and then
assuming her identity--
made us think that she
was probably going to do
the same to this gentleman.
She might have been
planning to kill this man.
We had found in
her room documents
that led to his house.
And we served a search
warrant on that address.
When we got to his
house, his car was there
and we knocked on the door.
5, 10 minutes went
away and we're like,
should we get a locksmith?
Because at that point, we were
thinking he might be dead.
It started raining, so we
went under the carport.
And while we were
talking, all of a sudden,
he comes around the corner.
Scared the hell out of us.
Eventually, I told
him why we were there
and that she had been
wanted for murder.
And, of course,
that surprised him.
I don't think he had an
inkling that she had been
involved in criminal activity.
- The cops from St. Lucie
County turn up in Panama City
and begin to start to put
the pieces together
of Parents's life
in Panama City.
- And, of course,
we shared with them
everything we had found.
In the closet, we
found a suitcase.
And in it were makeup kit that
was specifically for making
someone look like an old man.
And she had documentation
and paperwork
to where she looked like she
was starting to make a fake ID.
There was a notebook
there that had
all the date and times
of the trash pickups
within the Panama City.
When this occurred,
one of the ways
you steal someone's
identity is you
can go through their garbage.
In your garbage,
you can get account numbers,
phone numbers,
dates of births,
almost anything and
everything about someone.
It is one of the ways
you steal their identity.
- Paul Cantrell was, in
the police estimation,
days away from being Elaine
Parent's next murder victim.
- Elaine Parent, anatomically,
was a very healthy person.
In examining Elaine's
genitourinary system,
I find that she had a little
scar above her pubic bone
from a hysterectomy.
Uterus and fallopian tubes
were surgically absent,
so they had been taken out.
- The fact that
the autopsy showed
that Elaine Parent had had
a complete hysterectomy
is a tantalizing detail.
Did it leave her
with a trauma?
Did it leave her with a
sense of being empty and not
being whole as a woman?
Was this in her mind when she
sought out women as victims?
Was this going through her head
when she dismembered Beverly
McGowan's corpse, and she took
extraordinary care to excise
the tattoo in the abdominal
area to the point of
almost disemboweling?
Was there something symbolic?
Was there a jealousy?
Was there a hatred
towards women?
Was there a rage towards
what had happened to her?
- The death of
Elaine Parent left
a lot of unanswered questions
that a lot of police
officers had.
They wanted to ask her.
- Who really was
Elaine Parent?
Elaine Parent was born in
the New York area in 1942.
She went to school
in New York.
She moved to
Illinois in her teens
and was issued with a
Social Security number.
She ended up in Florida, in
the Miami area, as a real
estate agent in the 1970s.
We know this because
we have some press
cuttings about Elaine
Parent, the realtor.
She was either gay or
bisexual, probably gay.
Though she may or may
not have been married,
may or may not
have had children,
may or may not have
had male relationships.
And we have traces, glimpses
of her criminal career
on official paperwork.
We know that she
was a con artist.
We know to an
absolute certainty
that she stole at
least 20 identities.
And it's likely to be much,
much higher than that.
If you look at this now, you
say, how is that possible?
The answer is this all
happened in a different era.
This is in the '80s, the '90s.
And what defines the
difference between that era
and where we are today is
that she was able to doctor
passports, make use of
bogus identity documents
far more easily.
It's a different world.
I was literally days
away from finishing
my film on Elaine Parent.
And the film was going to end
on where is Elaine Parent now?
If you know, please call in.
When I got a phone call,
and the phone call said
Elaine Parent has
shot herself,
I had no way of knowing
that 24 years later,
I would still be
working on this story.
- It was a nice day and
I came in for something.
And there was a recording
on the answering
machine from America's Most
Wanted looking for Mom.
So Mom came in
and called them.
And that's when they had
told-- they told her the story
of what actually happened.
- I was glad they
caught her, but I wasn't
glad that it ended that way.
I was just relieved that
they had caught her.
I think about her even still.
I think about it quite a bit.
This is a gift
that Elaine Parent
brought me from the gift
shop she was working in
in Saint Pete Beach.
She always talked
about being broke
and she had never had
money to buy anything with.
30 years ago, $38 was
quite a bit of money.
- To think that we actually
were in contact with somebody
that were capable of doing such
horrendous things is very odd.
It's an odd--
it's an odd feeling.
It's very disturbing.
Isn't it?
- It still does.
It still disturbs me how
somebody can do that.
- I think Elaine Parent shows
a borderline personality
disorder.
And involved in that is
narcissistic personality
and psychopathic or antisocial
personality disorder
and a little bit of histrionic
personality disorder.
Main ingredient that allows
them to relate to each other
is lack of empathy,
lack of ability
to see the other person.
Lack of ability to
control their impulses.
I really believe
that she never set
out to kill Beverly McGowan.
I believe that Beverly
listened to some of her friends
or noticed some kinds of really
disturbing behavior in Elaine
and had told her
to leave, to get
out of the house, that
the relationship was over.
And that was the fatal
mistake because Elaine
was a malignant narcissist.
And that is the most
treacherous trigger
to pull on a narcissist.
They lose all control
and they are fighting
for their psychological life.
And I think at that
point it escalated,
and that's when the
murder took place.
- It was a couple of
months after the death
of Elaine Parent that
I found out that--
that she had killed herself.
And that was-- that
was a bad feeling.
Because now we'll
never know why.
Every now and again,
when I think back
at life at the
bank, friends that
were in my life at that time--
--how it was working
with her, she was--
she was fun,
she was unique.
A waste.
Wasted life.
Someone took it from her.
- Beverly McGowan was
a totally innocent
person just leading a normal
life, doing the best she can.
And you have family
members that really
need to know what happened.
Is Elaine Parent the
only one responsible?
Or are there others out
there that are responsible?
[moody music]
- I talked to three
police officers who dealt
with Beverly McGowan's body.
All of those professionals
said the same thing.
We believe there
was more than one
person involved in the murder
of Beverly Ann McGowan.
It's not easy to transport
a body on your own
and to get it out of
a vehicle and to toss
it down a canal
bank and to carve
off the head and the hands.
What the cops and the
medical examiner believed
is that one person-- and
probably not one woman--
could do all of that.
They were of the opinion
then, and to the best
of my knowledge, are
of the opinion now
that the woman they
were looking for--
Alice then, we know her
to be Elaine Parent now--
had at least one accomplice.
And that that
accomplice was a man.
Whoever helped Parent in
the murder of McGowan,
and in the days and weeks
surrounding that murder,
have never been caught.
And the cops are still pursuing
those lines of inquiry.
They are closer,
they say, than ever
before, to making an arrest.
And somewhere, if the
detectives in St. Lucie County
are to be believed, there
is at least one accomplice--
--who should have and
may still have his collar
felt for what happened
to Beverly McGowan.
Who really was Elaine
Parent, the Chameleon Killer,
the world's most wanted woman?
The cheap answer is that
only Elaine Parent knew that.
The real answer is
no one knew that,
least of all Elaine Parent.
[music playing]
♪