Making a Serial Killer - Season 1, Episode 9 - Anthony Shore, The Tourniquet Killer - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): Shore was a telephone lineman. He had access to every neighborhood in Houston.
He had a reason to be there. He had a marked vehicle. It made it totally easy for him to just look for victims.
Anthony Shore is the worst of the worst, serial murderer, torturer, enjoyer of other people's pain
and suffering, murderer of little children and women, the kinda guy who we can never be safe enough from.
[THEME MUSIC] NARRATOR: The strange behavior exhibited by Anthony Shore began early.
BRIAN FREDERICK (VOICEOVER): A few things stand out for me about Shore's early life.
He was very precocious. Four to five years old, he's-- he's already sort of making, you know, for a five-year-old, what
could be construed as, you know, sexual advances towards these little girls. Laurie was walking to school, doing
what thousands and millions of youngsters do every day. And here comes this predator.
ANDY KAHAN (VOICEOVER): 14 years old, Lori is 14 years old. I mean-- I mean, think about-- you know,
think about your children, who are 14 years old. I mean, just-- it's unfathomable what happened to her.
If he starts actually now talking to this girl and confiding in her, it's probably
because he knows that older women would think I'm strange. Younger girl is going to listen, especially
if he's got stuff to give Anthony Shore, from my perspective, after being in the criminal justice system for over 30
years, is probably one of the nation's most cold-blooded, diabolical, notorious serial killers
in this country's history. KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): And as a young line prosecutor, I worked in the Special Crimes Division
of the Harris County District Attorney's Office, which I now lead. When I worked on those cases as a young prosecutor,
looking for a serial murder was like looking for a needle in a haystack. If a child is cruel to animals, something is going on.
One of the biggest red flags for an eventual antisocial personality disorder or what people colloquially
know as psychopaths is that they torture animals at a young age. And it's just the visual of it, that an innocent little child
might torture an innocent, cute, cuddly little animal. And yet this is exactly what Anthony does.
It shows a level of lack of empathy, lack of emotionality, and just something that can't simply
be learned from your social environment, typically. You know, nobody at the age of four or five
typically has that many other friends who are doing the same thing, torturing animals and killing them.
And so it shows that there might be a genetic predisposition here towards doing evil acts.
NARRATOR: There was worse to come when he went on to be a serial groper of girls and attacking
one of his sisters. JUDY HO (VOICEOVER): By the time he was a elementary school kid
and he was trying to drive a screwdriver through his sister's head, I think, sadly, he was kind of
marked for evil, in many ways. Because at that young age, you just don't see that kind
of behavior very often. I think when somebody shows the propensity to do something so violent to a family member
that early, I think that shows that we're dealing with somebody very different here than just
the typical person who grew up in an abusive environment and learned bad behaviors.
This is not just learned. This is something that is built in. BRIAN FREDERICK (VOICEOVER): Shore used his sister
to lure girls in the neighborhood back to, you know, his house or to grope them, to kiss them.
This suggests some sort of-- especially when you're working in tandem with somebody, right, when you're conspiring,
it suggests a level of organization, at an early age, but organization that's not necessarily healthy.
BRIAN HARRIS (VOICEOVER): He was a groper. Sometimes it could start off as simple as somebody
in an elevator and they liked the fact that they can bump up against a stranger and get away with it.
Anthony was that kind of person. He would bump up against people. He would grope people and see how he could get away with it.
And then, he would graduate, because that no longer was satisfying to him. A typical criminal, they'll start out.
Once they're successful, the very first time that they're successful, they will continue
to do the crime the same way. NARRATOR: Driven by sexual desire, Shore was likely to kill again.
The only question was when. In 1992, Shore was married. And soon after, his wife had two daughters.
Many believe he was building a cover story to hide his sexual assaults. I do have to wonder about the true nature
of that relationship. Did he really get married because he had genuine affection for this person?
Or was she basically used as a pawn in his game? The fact that he had a wife and children
would make it easier for him to commit crimes and escape unnoticed. KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): Shore was a telephone lineman.
He had access to every neighborhood in Houston. He had a reason to be there. He had a marked vehicle.
It made it totally easy for him to just look for victims. BRIAN HARRIS (VOICEOVER): He knew how
to blend into neighborhoods. It would not be uncommon to see a telephone truck or a blue collar-type worker
in many of the neighborhoods and communities where he would select his victims from.
ANDY KAHAN (VOICEOVER): That's how serial killers operate. They blend in, so they remain anonymous.
BRIAN FREDERICK (VOICEOVER): Shore was married. And it's not uncommon for serial killers to be married.
And he had children, also not uncommon. In addition to Shore working at a-- you know,
a regular job during the day, I mean, in the evening, he-- it's my understanding that he performed.
He was a, at least a self-described, you know, child prodigy of-- of the arts and particularly
the piano itself. BRIAN HARRIS (VOICEOVER): Serial killers tend to be very smart, almost sociopathic.
Sociopaths can also be very charming. And when somebody is charming, people like them.
They have relationships. They build families and friends. And so therefore, people aren't gonna question them.
That's part of the facade that they try to maintain. That's kind of like their double--
their Jekyll and Hyde ego that they like to have, is there's some sort of normalcy where no one suspects anything.
It's very interesting when we see psychopaths have these pro-socially encouraged relationships, such as marriage
and having a family. In many ways, it's a cover for all of the other bad things that they're going to do.
Because maybe you wouldn't suspect a family man that seemed happy in his marriage
and in his family life. Serial killers have a desire to kill. They have a thirst to kill.
And so the average serial killer could be your postman, could be your doctor, could be your--
in this case, the telephone man. NARRATOR: Unsuspected of the murder of Laurie Tremblay, Shore was ready to sharpen
his predatory instincts. When he had killed before, Shore suffered an injury to his hand.
So he adapted. BRIAN HARRIS (VOICEOVER): He realized that when he was trying to strangle her,
his finger got hurt. And so it was a learned behavior. He said, you know what? Next time, I'm not gonna have my finger in that position
where it can hurt. It can leave too much evidence. I could bleed. That could possibly lead to me being caught.
So what does he do? He gets a tourniquet. Here she was again, vulnerable, by herself, no one else around.
And here comes Anthony Shore, again, seizing that opportunity. When he picked his victims, you will notice that they were
all of the same kind of size, all looked relatively young, all with the dark hair, primarily that-- that
very Hispanic look to them. I believe that, in his own mind, Anthony Shore, for whatever reason, really had an affinity for Carmen.
And if you look at some of the serial killers that are out there, there always tends
to be one victim that they can associate with, that they believe is theirs and that
can understand them the most. So perhaps Carmen was his pet, Carmen was his prize.
And he liked Carmen. The most personal way to kill somebody is to strangle them.
And in Anthony's case, not only did he choose strangulation, but he has this tourniquet that can give life or take life.
And it was personal and close. And so he was able to watch and literally watch the breath of life come out of that person.
KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): The tourniquet is a signature for Anthony Shore. And it, to me, distinguished him from other individuals who kill
people with their bare hands. The tourniquet takes your fingers off the pulse, literally, but it gave Shore the ability
to turn life on and off, by controlling the air flow of the victim. And it heightens the anxiety and pain and fear
of the suffering victim. I think in Anthony Shore's mind, he was probably thinking,
what can I do to achieve that level of notoriety? What will separate me from these other serial killers
that no one else has done? Aha. I can strangle my victims to death with a handmade tourniquet.
He seemed to take a-- take pride, a sick kind of pride, in his killing and in his
technique with the tourniquet. It worked for him. It was his signature. BRIAN FREDERICK (VOICEOVER): With his second victim,
there's a cord in the backseat. Strangulation is probably the ultimate in power.
You are literally taking someone's life with your own bare hands. Listening to Shore, I don't hear self-absorbed narcissist.
I hear someone telling a story, very matter of factly. It lacks empathy, right? But it's not-- it's not embellished.
It doesn't se-- he doesn't seem to be excusing his behaviors, nor is he making her out to be this vamp, if you will.
He's telling a story. Unfortunately, the story ends badly. But to someone who can't empathize, to someone who
doesn't realize that hearing a story like that might evoke emotions in us, they'll tell it as if they
were telling any other story. BRIAN HARRIS (VOICEOVER): He got the thrill from watching his victims die.
He had the control. He was, in his mind, God-like. He could grant life or grant death.
KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): The Dairy Queen where Carmen's body was found was our Dairy
Queen in the neighborhood. And so when that case came across my desk, I couldn't help but notice that.
I can't imagine this being spontaneous. I mean, to me, this is so methodically calculated,
on his part, as to how he picked his victims and then, of course, what he did to his victims afterward.
This was not some spontaneous, spur of the moment. This was somebody who was so devious and so cunning
in nature that his thought process started from how to abduct, how to sexually torture, how to kill,
how to dispose. Less than a year and a half after his murder of Maria del Carmen Estrada, he attacks Selma Janske, age 14,
but he flees the scene. NARRATOR: Claiming to be determined not to kill the victim, Shore takes a different approach
to his method of attack. He considered it an accomplishment to be able to rape women without murdering them.
JUDY HO (VOICEOVER): I think that there was a couple of components to this. One is very poor impulse control.
So he just did whatever he felt like. But the other piece of it is that he probably
derived some kind of sick joy from dominating people who were vulnerable. KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): These were people's children, daughters.
They're real people. His crimes were calculated. He planned and premeditated all of them.
It was just a question of who was going to be his next victim. I felt like it was only a matter of time
before the next body would show up. NARRATOR: Anthony Shore had tortured animals, sexually
abused his sisters and their friends. By his thirties, he had raped three times and killed two young women.
Within months of his latest attack on Selma Janske, serial killer Anthony Shore was on the hunt for new prey.
Anthony Shore picked his victims, because they were vulnerable. It just made them such easy prey for a guy like Shore,
whose heart was set on evil and whose pleasure was derived from other people's pain.
Cause he's not picking on people who are his own size. And so, he's always looking for victims that he would
clearly be declared the winner. It was rigged from the start. These young women and little girls were totally vulnerable.
They were young. They were female. And they were forcibly kidnapped. They were raped.
They were tortured to death. Less than a year later, he sexually assaulted, beaten, and then strangled a nine-year-old, Diana Rebollar.
The unique thing about the city of Houston is there's a lot of small towns inside the big city.
And this particular neighborhood is just that. It's a small town. The mom sends her to the store.
It's just down the block. It's not very far. And lo and behold, there's a predator in the midst,
being Anthony Shore. When you talk about a nine-year-old girl, it's always the children that haunt you the most.
She was sexually tortured and dumped, like the rest of them. That's his personal touch.
You gotta-- you know, if you go back and look at serial killers, everybody has a catchy nickname,
a phrase that we give them. And it becomes his signature card, his calling card.
And he gets good at it. He just did whatever he felt like, but the other piece of it
is that he probably derived some kind of sick joy from dominating people who were vulnerable.
Notice that he doesn't necessarily dominate people who were his size. BRIAN FREDERICK (VOICEOVER): She's
nine years old, for God's sake. I mean, it's just unconscionable that someone can do this to a nine-year-old, in the middle of the day.
We're not talking about someone walking, you know, in the dark, after hours. We're talking about the middle of the day in a neighborhood.
That's pretty brazen. Even the worst, the-- the dregs of society, the worst criminals out there
that there is no mercy for somebody who could take the life of a child for their own sexual pleasure,
for their own pleasure. Perhaps this is one of those cases that even the devil himself wouldn't want Anthony Shore.
NARRATOR: Still, the killing continued. Shore's fourth victim, in July 1995, was 16-year-old Dana Sanchez.
She fitted his preferred profile, Hispanic-looking, from a less affluent part of town,
a single girl, vulnerable on the streets. KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): The neighborhoods
in Houston were changing in the late '80s and '90s. And part of it was we had an immigrant population, very low
on the socioeconomic scale, many of them not citizens of the country. And so that created an opportunity for a serial killer
who was looking for people who he could grab, rape, kill, and who might not be missed.
What we do know is that a victim profile, for sure, has emerged. OK? In hindsight, we see that he's attacking
younger Hispanic women, young-- young girls. Again, 16-year-old teenager, middle of the day,
minding their own business, not doing anything wrong, not doing anything illegal, just doing what teenage girls do.
Dana goes to make a phone call, in the days of telephone booths. She's just gonna make a phone call.
What a perfect victim for Anthony Shore. He's the phone man. She's seen, certainly, repair man.
This guy doesn't look like much of a threat. I mean, my goodness he must be at work.
So she's very trusting. And that's one thing Anthony Shore made note of, that all
the victims were very trusting. And she-- Dana trusted him for a ride. NARRATOR: For some reason, Dana was
cautious, lied about her name. Shore reverted to his usual methods. There's a phone call, a tip.
NARRATOR: Incredibly, Shore had called the media with a tip-off, about himself. He certainly wanted credit, wanted to be known.
So he has the audacity to contact a local news station and tip them off as to where the body could be found, just so he
can make sure that he got credit for the latest murder, in his own mind. NARRATOR: After 15 years, police had
failed to capture the man known as "The Tourniquet Killer." Still, there wasn't anything to link him with the murders.
NARRATOR: Then, Anthony Shore sexually abused his own daughters. Three years after Dana Sanchez's murder,
he is convicted, in 1998, of molesting his two daughters. Sadly, it's no surprise that he would definitely abuse
his own family members as well. BRIAN FREDERICK (VOICEOVER): And this is the turning point in the case.
Because now, he's required to submit a DNA sample. What Anthony Shore did to his family
was, even in some ways, more despicable, because you're doing it to your family members.
What he did to his wife and, of course, what he did to his two daughters. NARRATOR: Believing the molestation
to be his first offense, the judge dealt leniently with him. He was released on probation.
But there was a catch. Anthony Shore was a sex offender. And because he was a sex offender,
he had to give the state a sample of his DNA. NARRATOR: Something that had been impossible
at the time of the murders. KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): There was no general testing of DNA.
Pre-DNA, 1992 through 1994, when it was very uncommon for it to be tested-- it was possible, but only at Quantico.
BRIAN HARRIS (VOICEOVER): So in 1986, nobody knew of DNA. We started videotaping crime scenes
and we knew how to lift fingerprints. And lifting fingerprints went back decades.
But there was no new law enforcement technology. Yet these detectives had the foresight to collect
and preserve that evidence. They were able to extract DNA from Maria Estrada's fingernails.
Anthony Shore's own DNA finally caught up to him. And in almost a strange cathartic way,
his daughters ends up solving the murders of the four young girls. Because if he hadn't've committed those atrocities,
the abuses on his daughter, who knows if it would ever have been solved? BRIAN HARRIS (VOICEOVER): It's not
an interrogation that you hear. It's a conversation. It's a conversation of Anthony Shore sharing,
with the detective, the horrible evil that he has done. If you're not gonna give the death penalty in this case,
you're not-- there's no reason to have a death penalty. When I became the Harris County District Attorney
and it became my duty to schedule executions of people who had already received the death penalty,
Shore's name was on the list. He wasn't gonna get any attention if he didn't get the death penalty.
If he got life-- and we didn't have life without parole back then-- again, I don't think he would've achieved
that level of notoriety that he so desperately wanted. He had to have the death penalty to feed his own ego.
NARRATOR: Held for 13 years, when the date finally arrived, he had one last cruel blow to inflict
on his victims' families. Even on death row, Shore was still playing games. Only when it became a reality, when an execution date that
looked pretty much set in stone was gonna happen, all of a sudden, again, the floodgates
open up by Anthony Allen Shore. But again, self-serving, strictly to save his own neck.
You know, we were-- we were expecting him to confess to other murders of other young girls, probably from Alaska
to Maine, any unsol-- he was gonna confess to. We were expecting that. NARRATOR: The execution was stayed while the authorities
investigated. When the government exercises the greatest power it has, which is to kill a citizen, it always has
to be taken with great care. It's the most serious act our government commits. And he got a 90-day reprieve, in order to look at all
the, quote, "offenses" he was claiming credit to, just to make sure and determine that he indeed didn't commit
any further murders and rapes. And so all of a sudden, everything-- everything stops for families who had
prepped for years for this day. Shore is not the typical low-functioning one bad crime defendant.
He was a calculated, thinking, predatory killer. Whether he was showboating at the time of his execution,
I can't say. I don't know what his motive was. But he acted as though he wanted to clear his conscience.
It was so calculated to me, again, by his narcissistic ego, on how he continued to seek attention.
And again, it's all about him. Always has been, always will be. It's hard to know what to believe from a serial killer.
But it's easy to imagine other victims, because Shore was prolific, but he was calculated.
ANDY KAHAN (VOICEOVER): Anthony Shore is-- is about as smart as a serial killer as I've seen in 30 plus years of criminal justice.
You hate to say he is-- he is diabolically brilliant. He played his hand like an ace poker player.
And he waited right until that exact moment when he knew he could throw those cards in and cash in.
And he did it. Basically, Shore bought himself 90 day's worth of life. It's hard to imagine somebody who tortured these women
and sexually exploited and enjoyed their pain and suffering, to his benefit, to know what to believe.
ANDY KAHAN (VOICEOVER): Nothing's been factually proven on any claim he has made since he has been on death row.
I'm not gonna even give him the satisfaction of even, you know, pretending that he actually committed
any more sexual assaults. I don't think we're ever gonna know what was going through Anthony Shore's mind at the time of his death,
but I don't see how it couldn't have been the faces of his victims. ANDY KAHAN (VOICEOVER): You have to look at his victims.
These were four young girls from the ages of 9 to 21, not doing anything wrong. The one is buying groceries for her mother, just walking home.
And then, the way he would kill his victims, that has to-- you know, using a tourniquet, it--
it's so personal and such a slow, agonizing form of death. It's just unimaginable and unspeakable what
these young women had to undergo before they were finally killed by Shore. The people whose children and family members were murdered
are broken from the crimes of Anthony Shore. And there's really nothing that we in the system
can do to fix what happened to them. But I do believe that, by finishing the case,
and asking that the sentence be carried out, that at least they can move on. NARRATOR: It was justice of a kind for the victims'
still grieving families. ANDY KAHAN (VOICEOVER): There-- there are certain cases
that haunt me, to this day. And I vividly will never forget Anthony Allen Shore.
Anthony Shore is the worst of the worst, serial murderer, torturer, enjoyer more of other people's pain
and suffering, murderer of little children and women, the kinda guy who we can never be safe enough from.
I think unless he had multiple positive influences throughout his life there to catch him at his every evil act
to turn him around right then and there and to continue to be incessant in their quest to try to change
the behaviors of this young man, I don't think that there was gonna be a-- a path off of this.
KIM OGG (VOICEOVER): I don't think he was a redeemable person. I thought that we would always be
in danger from Anthony Shore. And taking a look at his victims' families in the waiting room with them, before the execution,
these were broken people. And I think the future dangerousness is that every breath that man took
caused those families pain, including his own family, who testified and told the media they wanted him dead.
I think that, by the time he was a elementary school kid and he was trying to drive a screwdriver
through his sister's head, I think, sadly, he was kind of marked for evil, in many ways.
Because at that young age, you just don't see that kind of behavior very often. And unless he was in therapy throughout his entire life
and he had only positive role models, I think there might've been a small chance.
But who's gonna be there in all the moments of his life? And there may be so many other evil and bad things
that he did that nobody will ever know about. And I think that's the problem. And sometimes we do see, on very rare occasions,
somebody who truly feels like they are born evil. And I believe that that's Anthony.
[THEME MUSIC]

Detectives in Houston, Texas search for a killer with an everyday job and a signature method. Though he evades capture for years, it’s an in-the-family atrocity that brings him to justice.

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

Brief Summary

Anthony Shore's life of violence culminated in serial murders, revealing his calculated methods and eventual capture through DNA evidence.

Key points

The Tourniquet Killer. Anthony Shore, a telephone lineman, used his job to gain access to victims.
A Calculated Predator. Shore's early behavior hinted at a dark future, marked by cruelty and violence.
The Signature Kill. Shore's use of a tourniquet became his signature method of killing.
The Turning Point. Shore's conviction for molesting his daughters led to DNA testing that linked him to murders.
The Execution Delay. As his execution date approached, Shore attempted to confess to other murders.
The Calculated Killer. Anthony Shore was a predatory killer, calculated and seeking attention even at his execution.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He had the control. He was, in his mind, God-like.

Describing Shore's mindset during his crimes.

17:23WatchJul 29, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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