I am a Killer (2018) s03e04 Episode Script

1
[somber music playing]
[man] When I look back at the life
that I've lived
it wasn't a life at all.
I've never been a bad person.
I've always been misunderstood,
because I didn't understand myself.
[somber music continues]
[man] I've hurt people.
I've hurt people real bad.
But I've never killed anyone, before.
That's something that
I have to live with every day.
It took me a few years in prison
to accept the fact
that I had killed somebody.
[theme music playing]
[slow rhythmic percussion playing]
[inhales]
Even though I'm being punished right now,
I continue to punish myself for it.
The individual that is sitting
in front of you right now
would not take responsibility
for anything,
back then.
I didn't care about responsibility.
Only thing I cared about was
eat, sleep, and getting high.
[percussion fades]
I was born in 1963 in Rochester, New York.
[soft piano chords playing]
It was very urban and challenging.
During those times, it was really rough
on single parents, and kids in general.
Me and my brothers and sisters,
we were all close.
If one of us was missing,
it was like a missing part of the puzzle
and things just wasn't right.
And, particularly, that part of the puzzle
that was missing most of the time was me.
[ominous music playing]
[ominous music fades]
[soft piano chords resume]
When I was enrolled in school,
they were always saying that
I was aggressive,
or I had a learning disability.
I had no problem learning.
I did have a disability though.
When I was six years old,
they put me on medication
'cause I had an incident
where a teacher had took my pants down
in front of the whole class
and hit me with a ruler.
This ruler had a brass plate.
I'm a I'm a child. I'm crying, whatever.
And, uh, after she hit me a few times
with the ruler,
she sent me back to my desk.
She turned around,
I picked up a chair and I threw it at her.
And then I ran out of the class.
And that was the actual first recording
of my blackouts.
'Cause when my mother
asked me about it, I didn't remember it.
When I was off medication
is when I was going through the blackouts.
They would last anywhere
from two hours to three weeks.
I wouldn't know what I was doing.
But everybody else would think
that I was acting normal.
And I would be very destructive.
I would be very violent.
Very defensive.
[gentle music playing]
[James] I would say
the majority of my life
I spent on the streets.
I got into a lot of trouble,
breaking into buildings,
doing what I had to do to survive.
Every time you're under arrest
or taken into custody,
you're taken to a juvenile facility.
I think I went to about ten of them.
These were places
that were supposed to help me,
but they did more harm than they did good.
And this progressed into being a prisoner.
[ominous music playing]
Between 20 and 30,
I spent seven and a half years in jail.
Most of the time it was real petty stuff.
My habit was somewhere very high.
I was trying to control my blackouts
with alcohol and drugs.
One minute you think you're in control,
the next thing they're in control of you.
I was scared of myself,
'cause I felt myself getting worse.
The blackouts were lasting
longer and longer.
And I just had no control.
[ominous music continues]
[James] I was 37 years old
at the time the crime happened.
I had just got done smoking crack.
I really don't know what I'm doing,
where I'm going.
I'm in the bookstore now.
[unsettling music playing]
[James] They told me
that I had killed somebody.
They say I gave them a statement.
True enough. Yeah, I did kill him.
I don't remember none of that.
[unsettling music continues]
[music fades]
[horn sounds]
[poignant music playing]
[woman] The fact
that he could take a life,
I couldn't understand it.
It hurt me because that's my brother.
It was real devastating.
My name is Toni Walker-Coleman,
and I am James's sister.
[locks clicking]
[tut-tuts]
This is the only family family picture
we have with James in it.
We don't have too many pictures
of James.
He was our little
chubby teddy bear brother.
You know, he liked to laugh
and everything.
My mother made the best
out of what she had.
Good days were excellent,
but then there were dark days.
She used to drink a lot.
Sometimes we just never knew
what person was coming home.
He was the one
that would get the worst of it all.
You know, she would get
the extension cord at him,
or whatever was in front of her.
You know, but
When she was under the influence, so
And then he would run away.
Sometimes he would run away
for a week or two.
Sometimes during that time,
he would get in trouble.
He went to boys' homes, stuff like that,
until he graduated to jail.
He just always was locked up.
I can't remember a time
when he stayed home a full year
without going back.
I think they call that institutionalized.
[birdsong]
[music fades]
[James, on recording] As a kid, every time
you're under arrest or taken into custody,
you're taken to a juvenile facility,
where in the '70s, early '80s,
these facilities were ran
by ex-convicts and child molesters.
You're supposed to be safe,
but you feel like you're being farmed out
to different families to abuse you.
I internalized a lot of it,
'cause at first I thought it was my fault.
Thought they were doing this because of
whatever bad reasons, whatever I'd done.
And, uh, first I implode,
then I explode.
And the rest I just forget.
That's where the blackouts come in at.
It seems like
that's pretty much the pattern for that.
If I didn't succeed
in hurting myself enough,
then I would hurt somebody else.
That was powerful.
That was powerful.
And, uh, I heard some things
I never heard before.
And there was a lot of realization.
I know he's been through a lot.
So that was just more added on.
He was wrong for what he did.
But who are these responsible individuals
that did not do their job?
Nobody stepped in.
Instead, they just let it
just build up and build up inside him,
and just waited for him
to create his next episode in life,
that led him to where he is right now.
And I don't think a lot of people
take notice of that.
They see a criminal.
And we see
a person that grew up in hard times
and needed a lot of love
[voice breaks]and attention.
That's what we see.
[sobs]
[gentle melodic music playing]
[man] My name is Joe Dominick.
I've been involved in
between 200 and 250 homicide cases
over the course of my career.
This case makes my top ten.
It's not just the violence
that was used in the case,
it's kind of the totality
of the circumstances
that were involved, so
What I can tell you
about the victim in the case, uh
Mr. Curry was
There wasn't a lot of information on him.
Uh, I would describe him as a loner.
We actually couldn't reach out
to any family members.
His last moments
were probably horrendous for him.
Somebody came up behind him
and took a box cutter,
and cut him from ear to ear.
At some point he bleeds out and he dies.
I can't think of, probably,
a worse death than that, honestly.
[unsettling violins playing]
James Walker's demeanor
when we brought him in for the interview
was That was the eerie part
of the case for me.
Because he was so, like, calm and casual
about this, like, violent crime
that he had committed,
and it was just
It was just an unusual confession.
[somber music playing]
[Joe] You know, he asked
for a pack of cigarettes,
and we gave him some cigarettes
and he kinda just opened up
and started telling us how it came to be
that he had killed, uh, Mr. Curry.
While I'm sitting there talking to him,
I'm like, "This guy is pleasant enough."
But it's like I'm looking at pure evil.
You know, this guy is pure evil.
Just to sit there
and to tell you the details
about how he killed this victim.
It's just, I don't know.
It was just something
that always stuck with me
because it was just so bizarre.
As far as James Walker saying that he was
emotionally disturbed during the crime,
is is not something that I buy.
I didn't buy it then. I don't buy it now.
[somber music continues]
All right, so this video is from the CCTV
that we retrieved from the store.
And what it's gonna show is James Walker
getting his courage up to do this robbery.
[clicks]
Uh, this is the victim, James Curry.
He's standing behind the counter,
and this person over here
is James Douglas Walker.
[indistinct voices on tape]
So they're just shooting the breeze,
nothing happening.
[James, on tape]
Well, tomorrow, I don't have to work.
And he's there
for a good part of three hours.
I think he's kinda biding his time
until the right moment.
I'm gonna fast-forward a little bit here.
And you'll see
James Curry is going to leave the booth.
And here he goes.
This is Curry leaving the booth,
and then that's when
the murder's gonna occur.
[unsettling music builds]
[Joe] This thing happens real quick,
blink of an eye.
In fact, it's happening right now.
[rattling on tape]
[Joe] James Curry's life
just got taken away from him.
Here comes Walker.
He gets into the booth,
and now he's going to go through
the cash register.
So, there must be something
with this cash register,
where there's another drawer
that he can't get in,
because he opens the top drawer.
- And there's nothing in there.
- [rattling on tape]
[register beeps]
[James] How you open it?
[Joe] Now he yells to James Curry,
"How you open it?"
which I think James Curry
was probably already dead at that point.
He's wiping down the cash register,
and eventually he leaves.
So to say that, you know, he was deranged
and didn't know what he was doing
at the time that he commits this robbery
is basically BS, right?
It wasn't about anything else
other than committing this robbery.
That's it. Plain and simple.
This particular crime wasn't
a one-time thing for James Walker.
He's cut people in the past
and that's kind of his MO.
[unsettling music fades]
[seagulls calling faintly]
[ominous music playing]
[labored breathing]
[man] It was traumatic. It was horrific.
It's something that never leaves you.
[labored breathing]
I learned to deal with it,
but that doesn't mean I'm going to forgive
what happened and how it changed me
and what it took from me.
It was around 7:30, 7:40 in the morning,
and that's when everything happened.
I heard his voice behind me
and it felt like a punch,
like a, you know, light tap or something.
I thought he was joking around
until I looked down and saw
there was a pretty good size
puddle of blood there.
He looked at me
and said he was gonna kill me.
It was just pure coldness and no heart.
No anything, just,
"I'm going to kill you."
I felt like this was it,
and I just
I told him that I have a daughter
that's going to be born in October
[sniffs]
and I said,
"All I want is to see my daughter."
"Take whatever you want out of the store,
out of the register."
"I don't care.
I just want to see my daughter."
And suddenly, very surprisingly,
and to this day, I still
It still baffles me,
he just suddenly stopped,
and told me
to just wait there ten minutes.
Then he just left.
[music continues]
The police told me they caught him
about 15 minutes later,
walking down the street
with a big bag of loose quarters
that was taken from the store.
[sniffs]
[seagulls squawking]
[David] I went to the bathroom
to check the wounds,
and I pulled a rather large piece of glass
out of my throat
from the broken beer bottle.
[clears throat]
I have a very large scar
here on the throat.
I also have another scar on the chest
where the skin was just ripped off.
Uh, all said, about 13 different wounds.
[melancholic music playing]
I just I couldn't understand it.
No one could explain it to me,
why he was prosecuted that way.
I got no answers on it
when I questioned it.
I can't help but think that maybe
if he would have been in jail longer,
the guy he killed would have
been alive still, with his family.
[music fades]
[gentle piano chords playing]
[woman] I had a message for Mr. Walker
the first time I met him,
and that's that I was
going to give him every opportunity
to change the path of his life.
But it was still his choice.
My main concern in supervising Mr. Walker
was his substance abuse.
Because that is directly related
to his propensity for violence,
and deeply enrooted
in his criminal conduct.
About a month and a half
into his parole supervision,
he reported to me like he was supposed to,
a routine office report,
and he did disclose to me
that he had relapsed over the weekend.
I told him, "Go right over
to your drug treatment counselor,
come up with a plan,
intensive plan, and call me from there."
And he did it.
He did exactly what I asked him to do.
He went directly to his treatment provider
and they did. They came up
with an intensive treatment plan
to deal with his re relapse.
And then I never heard from him again.
The next time I saw James Walker
was when he was in custody.
James came across very,
uh, defeated, extremely quiet.
Uh, even his his body language
was that of just sadness.
Almost as if he had realized
he just destroyed his life.
But again, focused on the fact
that he destroyed his life,
not the life he took.
I can't say that I regret helping him.
I hope I never do.
I hope I never regret
trying to help people.
But he chose
not to accept the help that he was given.
So, that's on him.
I think his blackouts, if they're real,
um, are because he chooses.
He chooses not to address
his mental health,
he chooses not to address
his substance abuse,
and then uses that
as an excuse to, basically,
slash and kill people
and do violent things.
So I don't buy that this is not his fault.
It's completely his fault
and completely up to him.
[music fades]
[somber music playing]
[man] James Walker never had a chance.
Someone who's endured
a childhood full of trauma
and untreated mental illness
and escalating substance abuse,
it affects how they handle stress.
It makes them
susceptible to falling into urges
and committing awful, horrible crimes.
[gentle guitar instrumental playing]
[Bill] I'm Bill Easton.
I'm a lawyer here in Rochester,
and I represented James Walker.
I am definitely a bleeding heart.
Uh, proud of it.
When I met James
and began to represent him,
we immediately, uh,
went out to get as many records
and to dig into his background
as deeply as we could.
And within six weeks,
we had come across just an overabundance
of records showing a childhood
that was just traumatic.
James was one of seven children,
uh, born to his mother
from seven different fathers.
His childhood was marked
by abuse, neglect,
uh, an utter lack of parental guidance.
The details here are frightening.
"When he was 16 months old,
an unidentified adult
placed James on a burning stove."
"James was admitted to the emergency room
with second and third degree burns
branded on his buttocks
in the shape of a grill mark."
And there was just a history of violence
in his family of people being killed.
James's father was
an intimidating, violent man
and was, uh, shot and killed
when James was, uh, 15 years old.
So he grew up in a family that was shaped
and misshaped by violence.
He had what we call mitigation.
It's not a defense
or an excuse to the crime,
but it puts the crime in context.
We set forth why the death penalty
would be inappropriate punishment
for James Walker.
[music turns somber]
You know, there are many people
that are afflicted
with alcoholism or drug addiction,
and many children are the
product of a broken home.
Others are raised by alcoholic parents.
Some experience incarceration of a parent
or violence in their family.
A few lose parents to violence.
But what's extraordinary about this case
is not one single factor,
but James had all of these.
This is a man whose life
was horribly warped,
and he succumbed to factors
that we all would have succumbed to
if we were in his position.
[music intensifies, fades]
[poignant music playing]
[man] I was very disappointed in James
when I found out what he had done.
You don't have the right to take life.
That belongs to God.
I'm Theodore Walker,
and I'm the firstborn of seven siblings.
I was about 22
when I finally gave my life to the Lord.
We didn't have what some folk considered
the best of life.
I mean, we had to make do.
We would put sugar on bread, and, uh,
you know, just to make a meal.
It was a tough bringing-up.
You know, I I hustled and I sold weed
and cocaine, things like that.
But I think he took it
a little more extreme than me,
far as the robbin' and things like that.
My brother James
always had a physical presence about him.
If he got upset, that young man
was somethin' to deal with.
I would say from the age of eight
is when it really started manifestin'
where couldn't nobody do nothin'
with him when he got angry.
He became a different person,
and he really acted out of control.
Like, you're not stopping him.
He's not hearing you. He's gone.
In the back of my mind, I always felt
James was gonna go too far,
to no return.
I never brought it up front
'cause I didn't want to believe that,
but the signs pointed to it.
[soft footstep]
[click]
[James, on recording] My blackouts was me
and my mother's best kept secret.
She didn't want the other kids to know
that I had these type of problems.
And she didn't want me to think
I'd be treated like I was different.
I always had a home,
but when I'm sliding in my blackouts,
and sliding out of them,
I would occasionally
wake up in places
where I didn't know where I was.
I'm a kid. I'm supposed to be home
with my brothers and sisters.
And I'm waking up behind a building.
And I can't even go home
'cause I don't know where I'm at.
I was afraid. I never knew what was going
to happen or when it would happen.
It took place because somebody
yelled at me, or somebody abused me.
I wouldn't remember anything
'cause I didn't want to remember.
[poignant music continues]
Absolutely phenomenal, what I heard.
He opened up his heart.
That helped me understand now
what I've experienced with him
when he had his blackouts,
you know, because I thought he was just
That's just James, you know,
'cause he was always a tough character.
But now we know
that he was actually not remembering
what he had just did.
He never shared a lot
a lot of his personal stuff.
He bottled it in,
but this James here,
that's talking on here now,
he's a changed James.
Yeah. It's a little emotional for me
to be honest with you.
[sighs]
[James] I'm a better person now
than I was before.
From the day of arrest,
I have been on medication.
I have not committed
a violent act against myself,
or anyone else
in over 20 years.
I'm gonna need medication and maybe
a therapist for the rest of my life,
and it's not because of the crime
that was committed.
I needed this
before the crime was committed.
[gentle piano music playing]
[Cynthia] He chooses
not to address his mental health,
he chooses not to address
his substance abuse,
and then uses that as an excuse
to, basically, slash and kill people
and do violent things.
The fact of the matter is
when I needed help,
I asked for it.
I'd tell the counselor and the therapist,
"This is what I'm going through,
and I don't have my medication."
"Okay, uh, come back next week."
So it's not like
I turned completely to drugs.
Being off my medication,
I just lost all touch with reality.
But I'm sitting here in front of you now.
I'm not that person.
I will never be that person again.
And I'm no longer ashamed to say,
"Hey, I need some help."
[interviewer] Why do you think
you committed
two near-identical attacks
on men who worked in adult bookstores?
Well, to be totally honest,
because when I was a child
growing up in the streets,
those those people in those places
were the ones that hurt me the most.
Simple as that.
If you was downtown,
you could find something to eat,
you could find clothes,
you could do whatever.
But it was these people
that use those things as a carrot
to harm children,
and I was one of those children
that they harmed.
Mentally, I see the people that hurt me,
and I did what I did.
[interviewer] Hmm.
[Theodore, on recording] He never shared
a lot of his personal stuff.
He bottled it in.
But this James here,
that's talking on here now,
he's a changed James.
That's progress, and I got
to take every little bit I can get
when it come to my brother.
And I want to give him all of the
positive reinforcement that I can give him
to keep on doin'
what he doin', you know. Don't change.
Well, that was very difficult
to listen to.
That Just hearing his voice
made 20 years
of struggle and change worth it.
For me to be the person that I am now,
that was like my reward.
You know, I feared myself
for a very long time,
because I didn't know myself.
But now that I do,
there's nothing to fear.
[music continues]