Making a Serial Killer - Season 1, Episode 4 - Donna Perry and the Killer Within - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[DRAMATIC MUSIC] BRIAN HARRIS: All three victims are found in the open. They're displayed for the world to see,
their breasts and genitals left there for anybody walking by to see. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
NARRATOR: Between 1990 and 1997, Spokane, Washington saw two serial killers at large.
The first claimed three victims whose murders went unsolved for decades, in part, because detectives
were looking for a man. JIM HANSON: My name is Jim Hanson. I'm retired detective from Spokane
County Sheriff's Department. In 1990, I was one of the detectives involved in the investigation of three prostitutes that were killed
in Spokane County and city. JIM DRESBACK: I am Jim Dresback. In 2004, I took over cases for another retired detective.
And one of those cases was the Kathy Brisbois case. Kathy Brisbois was a case that was associated with two
other murders of women. They were all left by the river, they had all been shot.
They'd all been shot with what appeared to be the same caliber of bullet. So they thought maybe this was a serial case.
JIM HANSON: This was typically the area that they would be strolling and working in.
I think they realized the type of life they had and the dangers involved in it. I think that's the addiction to drugs just overcame all that.
The prostitute is still a person, they've got family, and in many cases they have children.
It makes them no different than another victim. JIM DRESBACK: They were prostitutes,
they had drug habits. Therefore they had drug dealers, they had pimps, they had people that are known to,
in general, not be nice to you if you didn't behave correctly. But there were many, many, many, many suspects.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Yolanda Sapp was 26. She was the mother of two small children.
But she also had a drug problem. And it had led her out to the streets. Yolanda had been shot three times in the chest.
Her body was found nude and sprawled over an embankment just for the whole world to see.
The bracelets and the necklace that she was known to have worn were gone. Her clothes were gone.
They were never found. And a little denim purse that she was known to carry was gone.
Her body was found under the green Street Bridge. She was partially nude. She died of a single gunshot wound to the chest.
Kathy was found in Spokane Valley on the West side of the Spokane River. She had been shot three times, once in the chest, once
in the head, once in the arm. But she had not gone down without a fight. This was a brutal scene.
JIM DRESBACK: We're at Trent Pines, right along the banks of the Spokane River. And this is where Kathy Brisbois body was eventually recovered.
They came here to do the sex act. And that either before, during, or after she must have had some sort of event that
caused her enough concern that she probably tried to get away from it. So she ended up losing a coat.
She lost her shoes over there. She probably outran him down to there because when we get down to the bottom of that hill,
he's probably chasing her. And then we start seeing blood drops. So he may have injured her up here.
But we wouldn't see the blood until she gets down there on the path. And along with that trail of occasional blood drops
where some little clumps of hair. And right down here on that bush here, was a sundress, right in this general area.
And there wasn't quite as much foliage as there is now. But in this general area her body
was about halfway down that embankment. JIM HANSON: She put up a fight. She had a fractured skull.
Her hair was pulled out. She was dragged for a distance. She was bleeding. So she was telling us that, I put up a fight here.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: The fact that she scratched and fought to save her life, may have
saved the lives of other women. BRIAN HARRIS: As a detective looking at three prostitutes
all killed in the same general area, posed in the same way. There are too many coincidences all killed by firearms.
I would definitely be thinking, there's a link, there's a connection. We have a serial killer amongst our midst.
JIM HANSON: Every serial killer has a signature. In this particular case, we were looking for a small caliber
weapon at 22. Pieces of bullet fragments had been found in two of the victims. And so we were confident in that particular fact.
NARRATOR: The red light area of Spokane became a dangerous place for sex workers.
The deaths of three women kick-started a 20 year hunt for an elusive serial killer.
JIM HANSON: Well, this case became cold probably in '91, '92. You know, there's other cases out there, other homicides
that you're working. Other long involved investigations. So it goes cold, but it's not forgotten.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Meanwhile over the years, more and more women in Spokane are winding up dead.
JIM HANSON: This was a series of prostitute homicides in the Spokane area. As part of the investigation, you always
go back and look at old cases. And these three cases surfaced in that investigation.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Their deaths are eventually linked to the same man, serial killer, Robert Yates.
JIM HANSON: In the Robert Yates investigation, they had a lot of DNA evidence, they
had a number of specific leads they were following. And the Mo in the 1990 cases just did not fit
that Mo of the Yates killings. CAROLYN CANVILLE: It was clear this was someone else
and that someone else is still out there. JIM HANSON: I retired from the Sheriff's Office in 1996.
And it was still unsolved at that point. JIM DRESBACK: In approximately 2005, our then Sergeant of the unit told us
that he wanted us to start going through our cold cases looking at some of the trace evidence and evidence items
that we had in the case. Because improvements have been made in DNA processing and it had become so much more sensitive
that there may be some items that now, could be tested for DNA and get results where 10 years prior,
there was no way that they would have been submitted. JIM HANSON: We did not have DNA in 1990.
So you preserve the evidence the best way that you know how. And among the evidence that's resubmitted for testing
are fingernail clippings from Kathy Brisbois. JIM DRESBACK: It's entered in a combined DNA indexing system
and then it's routinely run every time somebody's DNA is entered. The city detectives took a dozen reference samples
from possible suspects that had been suspects for a long time, couldn't really be eliminated but wasn't enough to include
them as suspects either. So they just kind of sat there. So they went around and took 12 samples,
sent them out to the lab to be compared to this unknown male DNA under the fingernail,
and they were all eliminated. [DRAMATIC MUSIC] CAROLYN CANVILLE: And among the evidence that's resubmitted
for testing to that lab in Marysville Washington are fingernail clippings from Kathy Brisbois.
And almost in no time, the lead detective in the Brisbane murder case, Spokane Sheriff's deputy, Jim Dresback,
gets a call. JIM DRESBACK: Six months after the case was sent to the Marysville lab, I got a call from one
of the scientists that said-- asked me to sit down, which I always love when you get a call
that says are you sitting down. Because it never seems to mean bad news. So I said, oh, yeah.
She said, she'd developed a full male nuclear profile from under the left middle finger of Kathy Brisbois.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Whoever that DNA profile belongs to is almost certainly Kathy's killer.
And almost certainly the killer as well of Yolanda and Nickie This is a huge breakthrough.
JIM HANSON: You do your job, you do it the way you're taught to do it. And hopefully, somewhere down the line,
something's going to happen to help solve that case. NARRATOR: But the case wasn't yet solved.
Detectives may have had a full DNA profile of their serial killer. But without a match on their database,
they still had no idea who could be the killer. [DRAMATIC MUSIC] March 2012, Spokane Valley.
Police officers pick up a 60-year-old woman known as a loner and a lady who loves cats.
Her name is Donna Perry. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Donna Perry is spotted at a white elephant
store, is buying ammunition and a pistol magazine, a clip, for a gun. And the retired detective sees her
and knows that this is a felon. And is not allowed to legally own firearms. So Donna Perry is arrested.
And this arrest will change everything. BRIAN HARRIS: There's a federal requirement, as of
well as many states that once you're incarcerated, you have to provide a sample of your DNA.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: That's when it happened. A crime lab technician in a Washington state lab
gets a hit. Donna Perry's DNA is a direct match to the DNA found under the fingernail of Kathy Brisbois.
They have a match. JIM HANSON: Donna Perry was not even known to us at that time.
Did not come up in any of our investigations. So that particular person was not even looked
at during our investigation. JIM DRESBACK: Perry looks like a meek, mild, doddering old woman.
But has potential that's far beyond what they look like. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Just who is Donna Perry?
What kind of secrets has she been hiding? Clearly, she's not just some crazy cat lady
who happen to like guns a lot. MAN: Doug Perry as a child, was living in Omak Washington,
which is kind of this North central part of the state of Washington. It's a rural, predominantly farming, ranching communities.
And his family had an Orchard. BRIAN FREDERICK: So young Douglas was raised in an environment that was hyper masculine.
We're talking about the Northwest of the United States, where guns are sort of the daily norm.
Huntsmen, you find militias up in that part of the country. CAROLYN CANVILLE: It was far from a storybook childhood.
Doug's dad was a military weapons expert though and he would take Doug out target shooting.
BRIAN FREDERICK: So young Douglas Perry between the ages of four and seven was raped and beaten by his own father.
JIM DRESBACK: He seemed to be closest maybe to his mom. But even that wasn't a real genuine loving
kind of relationship. CAROLYN CANVILLE: She had some problems of her own. She wound up institutionalized for severe schizophrenia.
So Douglas was pretty much on his own from a young age. He is arrested on a series of assault
charges and weapons violations. And in his mid-thirties in 1988, he gets his first felony
weapons charges. Police find a huge stash of weapons. 50 guns both handguns and rifles.
And 20,000 rounds of ammunition. And even a pipe bomb. JIM DRESBACK: He really seemed to have an affinity to guns,
he loved them a lot. Because every time he was arrested, and a search warrant was done in his house there were dozens
of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition that were recovered every single time.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: In 1994, he's arrested again with an even larger stash of weapons.
Crossbows, hunting bows, assault rifles and AK 47. BRIAN HARRIS: He refers to weapons
almost as you would a child, very affectionate, and passionate when talking about weapons.
Not just about the parts, but almost as if it's a lover. When he describes a firearm, it's
almost as if it's taken on a human characteristics and he's in love with the actual weapon itself.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: But now from this point on, Doug is no longer allowed to legally own
guns, which is a big problem for someone whose gun obsessed as Doug is. NARRATOR: Following the murders of the three women,
Perry was jailed for illegal firearm possession. Inside, many learn of his other obsession.
BRIAN HARRIS: Inside the prison walls there are mental health workers who are screaming
trying to let people know, there's something wrong with this man. Something that sets him apart from other prisoners.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: He seems fixated on prostitutes. He stalks them, he'd befriend them.
He makes use of their services. He's known to have actually prostituted himself to pay for his weapons.
Clearly Doug is obsessed with prostitutes, but he has a complicated relationship with them.
BRIAN HARRIS: He didn't like women. He found them disgusting and vile, at least the women that were involved in the sex
trade, that were prostitutes. He viewed them as pond scum. He looked at them as a person might look as a cockroach,
as totally worthless. No use for them. JIM DRESBACK: What he said is he hated the prostitutes
and he hated them because they could reproduce, and they were wasting it. BRIAN HARRIS: He looked at them with disgust
because he couldn't reproduce, but it was because of biological reasons. He looked at them, there was no Excuse for them.
But they chose to give away and throw away what was given to them, this beautiful way
of creating life. CAROLYN CANVILLE: During his stay, he reportedly tells a fellow inmate
that he has killed around nine prostitutes because he hated them. BRIAN HARRIS: He went on to describe in detail that he
murdered, and posed, and placed these women naked in the very locations where their bodies were found.
He confessed, he confessed to his cellmates of his murders. NARRATOR: Nobody believed him.
A year after his release, Harry was back in the red light district of Spokane picking up sex workers.
He took one of them back to his house. CAROLYN CANVILLE: And there she sees a collection of weapons.
She sees knives. She sees guns. She sees crossbows. JIM DRESBACK: And she was really creeped out about the weapons,
all the weapons around. And how he was saying he wasn't going to hurt her because he liked her.
When he took her back downtown to the street corner, she flagged down the first cop she said, and said,
I want to tell you about this weird date that I just had, oh, and there he goes.
And so the police went and stopped him and identified him. BRIAN FREDERICK: The notes of a mental health practitioner
were found in Perry's car. The document came as having gender psychosis disorder.
Not only that, but Perry was described as having an intense hatred of women. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Douglas Perry flies to Bangkok, Thailand
and has gender reassignment surgery. And returns to Spokane as Donna Perry. NARRATOR: 12 years later, Donna Perry
is arrested by police for yet another federal firearms violation. Donna Perry, the cat lady in custody
had a history of violence under another name. Suddenly, police have a new line of inquiry.
JIM DRESBACK: Who is Doug Perry? Where did Doug Perry come from? Where did Doug Perry live?
Who were the neighbors? Who were the friends? Who were-- you know, what was his family like?
JIM HANSON: You've got to be able to put the suspect back in Spokane at the time of the homicides.
You've got to run down vehicles that the suspect may have had, residences. There's just a lot of things to go.
And you're-- then you've got to be able to tie each homicide to the suspect. JIM DRESBACK: We searched the house
that Perry was living in when she was last arrested for the firearms violations, in case there were things that she
took with her like trophies. Things that you keep. When we talk to the alcohol, tobacco and firearms they said,
you know there was one weird thing when we did the search warrant on that house.
We didn't pay much attention at the time, but you might want to consider this, is that there was
one door that was sealed shut. It was like a closet door in the bedroom and it was sealed shut.
And we pried it open. And it had a bunch of boxes of stuff, and there were some women's underwear.
Yolanda Sapp's body was found with no clothing at all. There was a couple of blankets deposited
with her, where her body was. But she had no clothes at all. Kathy Brisbois body was completely naked,
there were some clothes scattered about the scene, as if she'd thrown them off, or as they were battling.
So we thought, well, maybe there was underwear that were kept and we're interested in these documents.
BRIAN FREDERICK: So in the serial killer literature, we often hear the word totem come up,
which is derived from an Algonquin word that means, an object or an animal that has some sort
of spiritual significance. I prefer the word trophy. So in Perry's case, his totem, his trophy,
his talisman was a victim's clothing. NARRATOR: More than 20 years on from the Spokane sex workers
murders, police were convinced that Donna was their mystery serial killer. BRIAN HARRIS: Perry wasn't trying to hide the victims
and get away with murder, she was trying to send a message. She's displaying them as if they were trophies.
JIM HANSON: I think we probably had 600 to 700 tips that were generated in this case.
And that not one of those ever identified her as even a suspect. BRIAN HARRIS: For Perry, this was a way of putting up caution
signs, stay away from this kind of activity, this is what will happen to you. JIM HANSON: There was DNA of Perry's on the blanket
that was found with Sapp. So that ties those two together. Then you've got DNA from the items found in the dumpster
that tie him to Nickie Lowe. Then you've got the fingernail clippings of Brisbois.
What we did back in 1990, the investigations, the collection of evidence, and everything was sufficient enough to help
somebody catch this killer. NARRATOR: Perry was in the frame for the murders of Yolanda Sapp, Nickie Lowe, and Kathy Brisbois.
But she was throwing a complicated defense at investigators. BRIAN HARRIS: Can somebody who identified themselves
at one point in their life as a man, now identify themselves as a woman and say, I'm changed.
I haven't done those activities and that's not me. Douglas Perry is dead, I am Donna Perry.
JIM HANSON: Doug is going to say, Doug did it. And Doug's going to say Donna did
it and we're going to get in a big brouhaha in court as to-- I mean, they're going to fight back and forth.
And it's not really going to get-- go anywhere. DONNA PERRY: Douglas didn't stop, Donna stopped it.
The gender change operation, I I'm not Doug. I'm convinced of it. NARRATOR: Detectives have Donna Perry in custody.
But she claims her former identity was solely responsible for the deaths of the three women.
Would Donna Perry confess? JIM DRESBACK: I spoke to a guy who was in this type of work for the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.
He said that he was unaware of any other serial killer that had ever had a gender reassignment surgery.
This is the first one of these that he'd run into. Therefore he didn't have a lot to give
me as far as what I could-- could say or do in an interview. But just that it would be very important for me
to use the correct pronoun. Don't call her a he, because after all of that to be called
a man might be a shut down moment for this person, that may just lock them up. NARRATOR: Donna's gender was irrelevant to the crimes
the detectives were investigating. JIM DRESBACK: That doesn't matter to me. Because you know, women can kill people, men can kill people.
It doesn't matter to me whether it's a man or woman. In this case, I just want to make sure
that I didn't step in something that was going to cause this whole thing to stop.
We just got her from the jail, brought her down to an interview room. And went in and talked to her.
I didn't take the warrant with me and I did that intentionally. And so then I just waited for a little bit
then I went back in with this. And I read it to her. And when I read that the charge was murder,
she said murder, murder. I am there to find out what happened, to see if I can find out the truth about what happened.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] So I got old photographs of these women who are all hookers, knowing that Perry associated
with them back in 1990. The purpose was quite simple really when it came right down
to it, was to show him these photographs, her, these photographs one at a time. And have her declare do you know this person, have you ever seen
her? Every single one she said, nope, never seen him. Nope, never seen him. Including the victims that were randomly spread out,
I just put them up there. Ever seen this person, nope, never seen them, never seen them, never seen them.
Until I showed them Yolanda Sapp and then he said, no, she's Black, I would never have anything
to do with a Black person. At that point, all we got was distraction, deflection.
Well, I was abused as a kid and it just made no sense. Changing the subject, not addressing
the question directly. Mark Burbridge came up with the singular brilliant question
in this interview, which was, we know that when people kill more than one person
it tends to continue on and it goes on and on and on. What made this stop? Why did these stop?
That's as close to saying I did it as anything I've ever seen in an interview room.
It was an admission that was couched in an excuse as to why it wasn't her, when in fact it's saying,
it was her. And there you have a look into the mind of Donna Perry. It's just an exercise in contradictions.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: The cops ask her if Doug killed the women, she says she has no idea that was 20 years ago.
JIM DRESBACK: So I'm trying to continue to get her to admit, but she wouldn't make a traditional admission.
She believed that her gender reassignment surgery drew a curtain and nothing before that occasion,
she wasn't responsible, that was somebody else's doing. NARRATOR: Would Donna be able to argue
her way out of responsibility as the Spokane serial killer? Perry's claims aside, what were her motives?
For criminologist Brian Frederick, a troubled childhood and misogyny drove Perry to kill.
BRIAN FREDERICK: This is the extreme manifestation of all those issues. In Perry's mind, Perry was killing the thing that he hated
and then trying to become the perfection of it. [DRAMATIC MUSIC] JIM DRESBACK: When Donna was Douglas,
Donna had the singular girlfriend, Claire Ann, who was a prostitute and hooked on cocaine.
And Doug was trying to get her out of that life. Then these other three women who were
associates of hers in the prostitution trade, were maybe seen as rivals. BRIAN FREDERICK: I can imagine that there was
also a little bit of jealousy. He picked some attractive victims, perhaps more attractive than he could ever plan to be as Donna.
And he felt that they were squandering this beauty by giving sex to other men, who didn't necessarily
have the purpose that he had. He was mission oriented, he had a mission. He was on a mission and he was aiming to fulfill that mission.
JIM DRESBACK: It was interesting that Claire Ann was booked into jail on the nights that two of these people
were killed. Now, she's back in jail again. And that makes Doug Perry mad. And then he finds somebody to take it out on.
And the first person, people is going to look at are the people that maybe he thinks are standing in the way.
Claire Ann was a drug user. And his whole goal was to get her out of that life. So he-- they could have a white picket fence,
ride off into the sunset. He and his wife, the only girl that he ever loved. If he could get her away from this.
NARRATOR: Criminologist Brian Frederick has another theory about the way the Spoken killer
murdered their victims. BRIAN FREDERICK: What's interesting about Perry is, despite having this arsenal of weapons,
we can imagine some pretty big guns and pretty big shotguns, his weapon of choice with his victims
is a much smaller feminine James Bond type pistol. He shot them, he didn't strangle them, he didn't beat them,
he didn't need marks on the body. This is his way of showing some sort, however slight,
some sort of reverence for what he considered to be his future temple. In Perry's mind, by exposing their breasts
and their genitals, this is the only indication in his mind of their womanhood. And he wanted people to see that he
had murdered a woman who wasn't deserving of that status. NARRATOR: As detectives probed for the motives
and methods of Donna Perry, she continued to openly deny the murders. JIM HANSON: The fact that he wanted to become a woman,
was that his whole life? Did he always want that? Or did that come about because he killed three women?
CAROLYN CANVILLE: One of the prosecutors said, she gelded herself like you would a farm animal.
BRIAN HARRIS: She felt that if she had her genitals taken away as a man and got rid of that portion of her life, then
she wouldn't be as violent. She wouldn't have that desire anymore to kill. She's trying to use the same idea when people talk
about castrating rapists and people who commit sexual assault. But what Donna doesn't realize is that this
had nothing to do with sexual assault. This had everything to do with what was going
on up here, not down there. JIM HANSON: Donna versus Doug, Donna didn't do it. But Douglas did.
And so you can't convict me because I'm Donna, Douglas did it. I was concerned it was going to be an issue in court.
And I was afraid that this transgender operation was going to somehow derail the court case.
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Is it right to lock up Donna Perry when it was Douglas Perry who committed the murders?
Was the surgery an elaborate way to avoid being charged with murder? Or did it have little or nothing to do with gender identity?
BRIAN FREDERICK: Knowing full well that he wouldn't be approved, knowing that he would have
to go out of the country to get that surgery, probably bolstered his hatred towards women.
Because they were born with this. They didn't have to go through the work that he had to go through.
They weren't denied their sexuality. What he was in essence doing was denying them their sexuality
and then going on to become. BRIAN HARRIS: When you come down to the law, did Donna Perry, at the time that she was Douglas Perry,
did she know that taking of life was wrong? Was against the law? And clearly, it would be yes.
Resoundingly, it would be yes. NARRATOR: And the Washington jury agreed. Donna Perry was found guilty of the murders
of Yolanda Sapp, Nickie Lowe, and the fighter Kathy Brisbois. JIM DRESBACK: All of them had family, and all of them
do have family. And they're human beings and they're valuable human beings, regardless of what they do.
And regardless of what a person thinks, morally what they do. It was her fighting instincts that collected the evidence
that put Perry in prison. She collected DNA by scratching, fighting, kicking, whatever.
She got his DNA embedded under her fingernails enough that it was viable 28, 29 years later
that they could still get a sample from that. Nickie Lowe had her-- Perry's fingerprint on one of the items that belonged to her.
It was in a dumpster, I don't know, a mile, two miles away from where her body was recovered.
So when the DNA is developed to the point where it's as sensitive as it is, then we have a suspect
that we would not have found. Never would have found him without it. JIM HANSON: The transgender operation
was part of the investigation. But had nothing to do with the killings. BRIAN FREDERICK: There's been speculation
that Douglas Perry decided to become Donna Perry in order to escape conviction. I'm not convinced by that.
I think that was the end game the entire time. His procuring of sex workers, his having sex with them,
him discarding of the bodies. This reverent, irreverence he had towards them was all part of the master plan.
He needed to perfect, he needed to become, he needed to get away from the little boy that was raped
by his father, and become a woman who could actually provide sex to another man.
That was the game plan. BRIAN HARRIS: In the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter what the genitalia says.
What matters in this case is what the DNA says. Donna Perry, Douglas Perry, they're one and the same.
They are the killers. Donna Perry is not a sex offender, Donna Perry is a serial killer.
[SOMBRE MUSIC]

For decades, detectives in Washington search for the perpetrator behind three unsolved murder cases. Finally, they can match DNA to a suspect. But “he” doesn’t exist anymore.

A true crime series that focuses on what makes killers do what they do, taking insights from scientific experts, detectives and survivors.

Brief Summary

The episode reveals Donna Perry as the Spokane serial killer of three prostitutes, detailing the investigation and her eventual conviction.

Key points

The Spokane Murders. Between 1990 and 1997, Spokane faced a series of unsolved murders of sex workers.
DNA Breakthrough. A DNA match links Donna Perry to the murders, revealing a shocking connection.
The Transformation of Doug to Donna. Doug Perry undergoes gender reassignment surgery, complicating the investigation.
The Distraction of Denial. Donna Perry deflects questions about her past and the murders, revealing deep-seated issues.
The Singular Brilliant Question. Mark Burbridge asks a pivotal question about the killings that hints at Perry's guilt.
The Master Plan Revealed. Criminologist Brian Frederick discusses Perry's motives and the psychological complexities behind the murders.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The prostitute is still a person, they've got family.

Jim Hanson reflects on the victims' humanity.

2:57WatchJul 29, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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