World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 11 - Angel Resendiz - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- MALE NARRATOR: In December 1998, a man slipped undetected into the home of 39-year-old Claudia Benton.
By the time he fled the scene, the mother of two had been brutally beaten, sexually assaulted,
and fatally stabbed. - ♪ - KEN: He seemed to be almost ghost-like, the way he could get into houses without being heard,
and you know, ghosts scare people. - NARRATOR: The killer was a man named Ángel Reséndiz,
who'd been illegally boarding trains across the U.S. border from Mexico for over 20 years.
He would go on to kill at least nine people, but the authorities couldn't find him anywhere.
- BOBBIE: There's 140,000 miles of track in North America, so how do you get your head around that?
How do you find someone that's riding the rail? - NARRATOR: Capturing the phantom killer would prove
to be one of the FBI's toughest cases to crack. No one was safe. - DR. YARDLEY: You never really knew who
was going to be the next victim. It was whoever had something that he wanted, and that could be anybody.
- NARRATOR: Hidden away for so long, Ángel Reséndiz had emerged as one of the world's most evil killers.
- ♪ ♪♪ - NARRATOR: When Ángel Reséndiz handed himself in to U.S. authorities in July 1999,
it signaled the end of his reign of terror. The 38-year-old Mexican walked across the border
and was never free again. For over 20 years, Reséndiz had been illegally crossing into the U.S., not by foot,
but via the vast rail network. He'd murdered at least nine people from Texas to Illinois.
The media had dubbed him "The Railroad Killer." Detective Ken Macha helped crack the case
that finally brought the elusive killer to justice. - KEN: He turned out to be very mobile, extremely mobile.
He was in one part of the country, then a few months later, he's in another part
of the country. - NARRATOR: Ken has his own theory behind Reséndiz's spate of murders.
- KEN: In Mexico, he had a wife and a kid, and he's stealing jewelry from these women,
and then taking it to Mexico to sell it 'cuz it was a business, pure and simple.
This killing and the raping of the women, before and after death was just sidekick, just for fun.
- NARRATOR: This killer's story begins on the 1st of August, 1960. Ángel Reséndiz was born in the state of Puebla
in the east of Mexico. Little is known about his childhood, but during his eventual trial, Reséndiz spoke
to forensic psychologist Ramon Laval about his early years south of the border. - RAMON: Ángel Reséndiz grew up in a dysfunctional family.
He didn't have alot of connections with his family, siblings, or, for that matter, his parents.
Little or no contact with his biological father. He told me that he had grown up with his mother and father,
in fact, upon further questioning, I realized he was talking about his maternal uncle,
his mother's brother. - DR. YARDLEY: He felt rejected by his mother; he felt rejected by his peers at school
because he was quite awkward-looking. He had protruding teeth, he wasn't one of the cool kids,
and I think those-- those feelings stayed with him and they really did go on to shape who he became.
- GEOFFREY: Now, I'm not saying that unsettled childhood equals inevitably some kind of person who's gonna turn
to murder and serial killing, but I am saying, in this particular case, that childhood gave Ángel
the sense that there was no one to depend on. He was the only person he could depend on.
- NARRATOR: Violence was a fixture in the young boy's life. - RAMON: His uncle, whom he considered his father,
was reported to have been physically abusive with Ángel, and around 12, he quit school and he actually left
his uncle's home; started living on the streets, just fending for himself. He was sexually molested by a local pedophile.
- DR. YARDLEY: Like any violent offenders, Reséndiz was a victim before he was a criminal,
and this is a line that we don't like to talk about very much. We like to compartmentalize victims and offenders
very clearly, but often that line is a very blurred one. - NARRATOR: Barely a teenager, Reséndiz found himself
with no family and no home. He had to learn how to survive. - GEOFFREY: It must have been a significant moment,
it's on that cusp of adolescence and puberty, it's that moment when a young man,
especially a young man from such a troubled background, struggles out of the cocoon and tries to find himself.
- NARRATOR: Reséndiz took to illegally riding the far-reaching network of North American railroads.
It was a transient lifestyle that would come to define him. - Reséndiz managed to travel quite far and wide
within the United States by jumping on trains, jumping on an empty freight train and holing up
in one of the carriages, and that would take him to a--a range of cities all over the place.
- Because you could leap on it, it was the stuff of movies, isn't it? Slow-moving railroad car and the hobo standing by the track,
and he grabs it and lifts himself up into an empty car. - RAMON: It is thought that he first entered the United States
when he was maybe 13 years old, and that's what he told me, that he was back and forth between Mexico
and the United States, but in fact, the first record, formal record is from when he was 16 years old
when he had entered and then deported. - NARRATOR: After serving five years of a 20-year sentence
in a U.S. prison for burglary, aggravated battery, and grand theft auto in 1980,
Reséndiz continued to ride the rails. In fact, by August 1996, the 36-year-old had been arrested 12 times
and sent back to Mexico on no fewer than seven occasions. But nothing deterred him, and his crimes
would soon turn deadly. - One of the most complicated questions about Reséndiz, in the first instance,
is why he started killing. He was getting by, things were not easy, and he was being deported back and forth across
the Mexican/U.S. border on a regular basis, but that was no real reason, in itself, to kill,
and one of the most fascinating aspects of Reséndiz's character is where that initial spark came from.
- NARRATOR: After illegally heading back north of the border on a train in the summer of 1997, Reséndiz carried out
his first known murder in Lexington, Kentucky. - DR. YARDLEY: In August 1997, there was an attack
on Christopher Maier and Holly Dunn, who were a young couple. So, he'd spotted this couple after he jumped off
one of the freight trains that he'd ridden on, and I think his intention from the outset was
to get to Holly Dunn and to-- to sexually assault her, and in order to do that, he needed to get Christopher
out of the way and he killed him relatively quickly with a 50-pound rock, which must have been
the most horrendous thing for Holly to witness and for Christopher to experience.
- NARRATOR: With her boyfriend taken care of, Reséndiz turned his attention to 20-year-old Holly Dunn.
- She is terrified, her hands are bound, she pleads with Reséndiz for her life. He sits down beside her and shows her an ice pick,
and says, "Look how easily I could kill you." But in the end, he doesn't kill her with an ice pick,
in the end, he rapes her. It's impossible to imagine the terror she must have felt
because now, Reséndiz goes away again and finds a wooden board and beats her mercilessly with it;
terrible injuries to her head, to her back. An attack so dramatic, that he thought he'd killed her.
- NARRATOR: But miraculously, Holly Dunn had survived the brutal assault. - GEOFFREY: Holly Dunn, to her eternal credit,
manages to struggle to her feet and literally walks away from the scene of the attack.
She makes her way to some nearby houses where, thankfully, they called an ambulance and the police.
- NARRATOR: Reséndiz had got away with it for now and remained unknown to the authorities,
but it was a mistake that would later come back to haunt the killer. By December 1998, the 38-year-old was regularly
crossing the border into the USA. Border patrol authorities had apprehended Reséndiz
for illegal entry into the country seven times in 1998 alone, unaware that he'd killed 21-year-old Christopher Maier
the previous year. But now the killer was back on U.S. soil in Houston, Texas, and had murder on his mind.
- That day in particular was a Thursday, December 17th, a day like most any other day, the afternoon was uneventful,
I left from work around 3:30 and picked my son up at the sitter, it was his ninth birthday,
and picked him up and on the way home, I got a call from the dispatcher at West University Police saying,
"We've got a body, a dead body", and I had chills and goosebumps, thinking, "It just can't be. It's gotta be something else,
it just gotta be something else." But she assured me that, yes, there was indeed patrol officers
that had discovered a deceased female. - NARRATOR: The murdered woman was 39-year-old
research physician Dr. Claudia Benton. She'd been home alone. Ken walked into a horrific scene.
- There was a bloody butcher knife on a pillow next to her head; blood all over the carpet,
blood on the bed, blood in the hallway leading just out the threshold of the bedroom door.
Overall, it appeared every room in the house had been rummaged, ransacked, drawers open, everything appeared to be
touched and looked through. - NARRATOR: Dr. Benton had been stabbed to death with a knife from her own kitchen.
There were three fatal wounds on her body. - KEN: In addition to that, she had 19 skull fractures
from being beat upon the head. I can only surmise that some of them may have been
from the bronze figurine. It was probably maybe about a foot in length that had been
on the mantelpiece; quite heavy, part of it was broken off during the beating. - NARRATOR: It was a savage and brutal murder of a wife
and mother of twin girls. - I think there is an inherent misogyny to Reséndiz. There is an inherent hatred of women, which I think
goes back to-to his rather dysfunctional relationship with his mother, so he thinks that women are there to provide
something for him, to give something to him. He feels entitled to take that. - NARRATOR: Further investigation at the home
suggested that Dr. Benton had been literally fighting for her life. - KEN: Dr. Benton had a complete fracture to her ulna
and dislocated, uh, elbow as well, and so she put up a very, very fierce fight. From the blood in the hallway, it looks like she was
very, very close to trying to escape from the bedroom and get away from him, but being hit so many times in the head already,
he was just able to physically overpower her and subdue her. - NARRATOR: After analyzing the bloody crime scene,
Ken had to make one of the most difficult phone calls of his professional career, to Dr. Benton's husband, George.
- Very, very difficult talking to the man because here I am, I'm having to explain to him that there's a dead body
in his house and he's telling me the only person that should be in there was his wife,
and I felt sick, felt really, really sick inside 'cuz I'm thinking to myself, I mean, "What if that was me?"
So I tried to be as gentle as possible. I tried to give him every avenue out. Could it have been a nanny, could it have been a maid?
Anybody else and he just kept telling me, "No, it's just-- the--my wife's the only one that would be in there."
- NARRATOR: While Ken took Dr. Benton's devastated husband on a somber tour of the crime scene,
he helped to point out anything that was out of the ordinary around the house. - KEN: It was actually George Benton that noticed
the steering column housing in the garage. He looked at it and said, "That's gotta be from the Jeep."
- NARRATOR: The killer had made his getaway in Dr. Benton's vehicle, but he'd failed to find the keys
that were hanging up in a kitchen cupboard. - KEN: The next best thing he had to do was to try
to hotwire the car. He knew he had to pop the steering column off, and so he did that.
In doing so, he stuck his fingers in there to pry it out, and then he just set that into the garage.
That was some of the best evidence that we had right there, were his four fingerprints on the underside
of that piece of plastic. - NARRATOR: This would become a crucial piece of evidence
in the future trial of Ángel Reséndiz. Lyn McClellan was an assistant district attorney
who would eventually help to bring charges against the killer. - The car's recovered in San Antonio.
His fingerprints were found on the car. The car belongs to Claudia Benton. That kinda ties everything back.
What's her car doing in San Antonio with Reséndiz's prints on it, and she's, uh, found dead
back in Houston, so, put two and two together, you say, "He's probably the one that killed her."
- NARRATOR: A week after the murder of Claudia Benton, Ken had a major breakthrough.
For the first time, Ángel Reséndiz would become known to the homicide detective, albeit under a different name.
- KEN: It was the day after Christmas, I'd received a call from a sergeant with the Houston P.D.
He had received information from their fingerprint division, we had an identification of the perpetrator.
Fingerprints came back to an individual named Carlos Cluthier Rodriguez, one of his numerous aliases
that he was arrested under, so his prints were in the automated fingerprint identification system
in Texas under that name. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz had used many different aliases, which made it difficult for the authorities to link him
to his numerous misdemeanors through the years. - KEN: Every time he was arrested,
he seemed to give a different name. I mean, Reséndiz is what we finally kinda settled on,
in terms of a name, but he had used so many names in the past, so we knew we had fingerprint identification
at that time. We knew who he was, we had pictures, and so we were slowly able to get these pictures out, uh,
into the media, and try to generate some tips and leads and so forth. - NARRATOR: The hunt for Reséndiz continued for over
three months, but the killer remained elusive. By the spring of 1999, he was back in Texas,
this time in the small city of Weimar. On the night of April the 30th, he entered the home
of Norman and Karen Sirnic. - KEN: The Sirnics were both asleep in their bed. From the evidence that was found,
Mr. Sirnic was laying on his left side and the blow to the head with the sledgehammer
woke up Mrs. Sirnic. She sits up in bed and Reséndiz takes the sledgehammer, left-handed, like a baseball bat,
and strikes her square in the forehead, killing her instantly. He then goes back and hits Mr. Sirnic one more time
with the sledgehammer for good measure. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz had bludgeoned the church pastor
and his wife to death. It was a vicious double murder by this seemingly opportunistic killer.
- Reséndiz was not an offender who would take weapons along with him to the crime scene.
He would use whatever he could find that was there. He would decide to kill when he saw the opportunity to do so.
There is an advantage to this as an offender because if you're not carrying weapons around with you,
then you're not carrying evidence around with you. - KEN: The escalation in Dr. Benton's case,
he hit her with a smaller figurine, and she fought back. This case with the Sirnics in Weimar,
there was no fighting back. He made sure with that first blow, but he didn't wanna fight,
he had enough fighting the last time. - NARRATOR: Evidence at the crime scene linked
the Sirnic murders to the killing of Dr. Claudia Benton. - KEN: They collected of course very good DNA evidence from
the Weimar case that was sent to Department of Public Safety Laboratories, and DNA testing was done and it was
an exact match to our perpetrator in our case. - NARRATOR: With at least three confirmed murders
on his macabre resume, the FBI entered the search for the man who would later be given the moniker,
"The Railroad Killer." Ángel Reséndiz, however, continued to use various aliases,
so tracking him down wasn't going to be straightforward. Special agent Bobbie Knox Echard
was part of the team assigned to the case. - BOBBIE: There is 140,000 miles of track in North America,
so how do you get your head around that? How do you find someone that's riding the rail?
So what you do is, you go in and you meet with the seven major railroad companies.
They all have agents that work for them, they have railroad police, so they started pulling
all of his records, and he had dozens of trespass records on the railroad. - The crimes that Reséndiz committed
had a significant impact, especially on those living by railway tracks because there wasn't a specific victim type.
You never really knew who was going to be the next victim. It was whoever had something that he wanted
and that could be anybody, so the level of fear, the level of anxiety that his crimes generated
was horrendous. - NARRATOR: Not long after the FBI's involvement in the case, they were able to link the unsolved murder
of Christopher Maier almost two years earlier to Reséndiz. - BOBBIE: We received a hit from 1997,
where a couple was brutalized. The male was killed, the female was the only survivor
of Reséndiz, and that was in Kentucky near railroad tracks. Through DNA, through eyewitness testimony
of the survivor, and through a sketch that she was able to give to the officers there,
we were pretty sure it was the same person. Once the DNA came back, it was a positive hit.
So, now we had him responsible for at least four homicides. - KEN: At that point, we knew we had a serious,
serious killer on the loose. - NARRATOR: But Ángel Reséndiz was only just getting started,
and there would soon be even more victims. By late May 1999, authorities across the U.S.
were desperately searching for a man they now knew was a serial killer. The 38-year-old Mexican had been linked
to at least four murders, three of them in Texas in the previous five months. The so-called "Railroad Killer" was headline news
across the Lone Star State. - GEOFFREY: Reséndiz is attracting growing notoriety in Texas.
Inevitably, it feeds the vanity that has been growing inside him. He knows people are beginning to look for him, and yet,
he still feels he can get away with it, in fact, he was to kill again. - NARRATOR: On June the 3rd, Reséndiz was back in Houston,
and his blood lust had become insatiable. Under the veil of night, he entered the home
of 26-year-old Noemi Dominguez. - GEOFFREY: Noemi is an elementary school teacher,
she is at home and he breaks in. Picks up a pickaxe-like tool and attacks her. By now, Reséndiz is quite clearly out of control,
any sense of order, of civilization, of propriety is gone. He is now, literally, like an animal,
lusting for blood, with blood dripping from him. Again, she's sexually assaulted, and again, he kills her.
- KEN: She lived near railroad tracks, her body was covered up, almost looked very similar
to the way Dr. Benton was covered up. The legs sticking out from underneath the covers,
she was face down, and she had been beaten to death. - DR. YARDLEY: Reséndiz decided to cover some of his victims
with blankets because this essentially dehumanizes them. It depersonalizes them, but also it's about looking,
it's about seeing and being seen, so he's covering his victims because he doesn't want to look at them,
but he also doesn't want them to look at him, so it's this constant theme of shame that comes up
time and time again. - NARRATOR: As the killer grew more experienced, he became more brazen in his actions.
Reséndiz had started leaving calling cards at the scene of his murders. - RAMON: When he murdered the victims, he would find
their ID, driver's license or some other type of ID, and would display them in such fashion
that whoever entered the home later would find out who they were, how they looked like.
In my mind, he wanted to see how they looked like before he bludgeoned them to death, before he raped them,
and see what it would have been; almost as if had already developed a relationship with the victim.
- NARRATOR: After killing Noemi Dominguez, Reséndiz wasn't finished. Just as he'd done after murdering Claudia Benton,
he stole the schoolteacher's car and headed 100 miles west. - KEN: It was a white Honda and it was taken and driven
to Fayette County near Schulenburg, small community of Dubina, where he then murdered
Josephine Konvicka. He toyed with law enforcement at that scene by displaying a toy train, displaying newspaper articles
about the cases, the murders. - RAMON: This is like reading an article that says,
"I am the Railroad Killer, and I'm leaving this here "for you to know and make sure that you know it is me,
nobody else, I am the Railroad Killer." He was proud of that. - GEOFFREY: It is yet further proof, if anyone needed,
that he is now utterly out of control, and glorying in every moment of his celebrity.
It is one of the most troubling of moments when a killer starts to live up to his own hype,
who becomes obsessed with his own fame. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz had killed 73-year-old Josephine Konvicka
with the same pickaxe he'd used just hours before when murdering Noemi Dominguez.
- When he left the premises, he'd actually left the pickaxe in Josephine's head and he tucked her up in bed,
which was quite a bizarre kind of behavior, but he'd left behind a really important piece of evidence
because on that pickaxe was some of Noemi Dominguez's blood, so those two murders were connected.
- NARRATOR: Less than two weeks later, Reséndiz had traveled far from Texas, over 800 miles north to Illinois.
On June the 15th, 1999, he committed another double murder. The victims were 79-year-old George Morner
and his 51-year-old daughter, Carolyn Fredrick. George's home in the quiet village of Gorham
was less than 100 yards from the railroad. - KEN: In Illinois, he found a shotgun.
The elderly gentleman was in his easy chair reading his newspaper. Reséndiz is able to gain entry into the house,
ties him up with telephone cord, ties him to his easy chair, gets behind him with the 12-gauge shotgun
and shoots him in the back of the head through the back seat of the recliner. Little while later, his daughter comes in,
and she is immediately beat to death with the 12-gauge shotgun. - NARRATOR: The slain father and daughter took the tally
of known victims to eight. Authorities were becoming desperate to capture the elusive Railroad Killer.
- KEN: He seemed to be almost ghost-like, the way he could get into houses without being heard,
without disturbing the occupants and that was one of the strangest things. I still don't know how he got into Dr. Benton's house,
and all the other houses, and that was the scary part, and ghosts scare people, it's just a natural reaction
to something that can't be explained, and the way he was able to enter people's homes
couldn't be explained. - NARRATOR: The killings were becoming more frequent and the hunting ground had become wider spread.
The FBI immediately took action. - BOBBIE: On June 21st of 1999, working with our
FBI headquarters, we were able to add Reséndiz to our Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
When anyone is made a top ten, both the media and the public are made aware of how important this case was.
The media helped us immensely in this case. Everybody in the United States and in Mexico,
to a certain extent, wanted this guy captured. He had turned from a serial killer,
now he was a spree killer, and I think everybody in the world wanted him caught.
- NARRATOR: The addition of Reséndiz to the Most Wanted list brought nationwide TV exposure.
- KEN: So that's when the tips were coming in and as the tips came in, anything that was really, really helpful,
that sounded legitimate, was funneled to the task force, and it was just a huge coordinated effort
in trying to find this guy. - BOBBIE: I don't know if it was the media or the FBI,
but he was given the name, the Railroad Killer, and in every media blitz you would see
"The Railroad Killer's on the run again, he's been here, he's been there, he's committed this crime."
- NARRATOR: The national exposure put pressure on the family and friends of Ángel Reséndiz
across the Mexican border. - BOBBIE: This was the most complex case most of us had ever worked because the jurisdiction was huge,
it was all the way in North America, you know, you just didn't know where he was gonna be.
Once we identified he had a wife or a common-law wife in Mexico was the pivotal point for me.
- NARRATOR: Reséndiz's wife was brought across the border to be questioned by the FBI.
Bobbie led the interview. - BOBBIE: She was brought up here. She brought her daughter, who was approximately
three or four months old, and we conducted the interview over a two-day period. There in that interview, I was able to provide her
with enough information that she came to believe that he had committed the homicides.
We showed her the DNA, we showed her fingerprints. We asked her if she ever received anything
from his trips into the U.S. After her visit here, the U.S. Marshals, the Texas Rangers
went back down into her village and she provided everything that he had ever given her that she still had
in her possessions, and they were in fact stolen at the crime scenes. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz remained in hiding,
but the authorities were doing all they could to flush him out. - BOBBIE: Once you take away all their comfort zones,
they have nowhere to go and they generally make mistakes and you'll be able to apprehend them that way.
- NARRATOR: The tactics worked, with nowhere to run to, a sister of Ángel Reséndiz convinced the killer
to turn himself over to the U.S. investigators. - BOBBIE: We had one sister who lived in New Mexico
that would prove to be the person that negotiated his surrender, that a Texas Ranger developed trust
with this individual, and through that development, she end up contacting him and arranged a surrender.
- RAMON: And then it was his brother who accompanied him when he turned himself to the Texas Ranger in El Paso,
the crossing between Mexico and the United States by the Rio Grande. - DR. YARDLEY: Now, this is something straight out
of a movie, it really does have a lot of dramatic effects, and I think that is very revealing about Reséndiz.
He's the director in his own drama. He is calling the shots, he's in control. - NARRATOR: After hunting the Railroad Killer
for nearly seven months, Detective Ken Macha was stunned when Reséndiz gave up the ghost.
- KEN: I'm amazed that he did it. All he had to do was stay in Mexico and then come across on a train or come across the border
whenever he wanted to, and commit more murders, and keep up his little side business of selling jewelry
in Mexico and live happily ever with his wife and kid. I'm grateful that he turned himself in.
To this day, I still will never know the real motive. I think he was maybe a bit concerned about
his wife and daughter in Mexico being harmed if there were some bounties on his head.
- NARRATOR: Soon after the capture of Reséndiz, Ken found himself face to face with the serial murderer.
After speaking to so many potential suspects over the previous few months, there was one thing
in particular that Ken was looking for to make sure they definitely got their man.
- KEN: There were many times that my partner, Joey Sanders, and I would just get a frantic call from--
at the police department, sometimes transferred from Houston P.D. saying that the people swear they've seen
Reséndiz in some part of Houston. And one of the first things we'd do was grab his right hand,
look at the ring finger, and if it didn't have a scar, even though it looked like him, we knew it wasn't him
'cuz it showed upon every fingerprint card that he had was an extremely noticeable scar just straight through the pad
of his ring finger, and sure enough when we caught him, it's one of the first things
I was able to do, I think, and sure enough it was there, and it was true to life.
- NARRATOR: Reséndiz may have surrendered himself to the police, but there was no way
this was going to be an open and shut case for prosecutors. With a trial looming, defense attorneys
were going to tell the judge that the killer was insane. By now, investigators were aware that he'd killed eight people,
and was still looking into whether there may be even more. The unsolved murder of an 87-year-old woman
named Leafie Mason in Hughes Springs, Texas, was high on their list of potential victims.
- KEN: At one of the task force meetings we had, police officer from Hughes Springs,
where Leafie Mason was murdered, they took out the complete window frame where the suspect, in their case, made entry,
and they preserved it as evidence, and sure enough, they matched up his fingerprints.
Reséndiz, there he was, we had a good match to that case as well. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz had bludgeoned the 87-year-old woman
to death with a flat iron in October 1998, two months before the killing of Dr. Claudia Benton.
Leafie Mason became the ninth known victim of Ángel Reséndiz, but it's believed the total number of people
who died at the hands of the Railroad Killer is even higher. - BOBBIE: He confessed to 12 or 13 crimes
and they were able to confirm through DNA evidence that he had in fact committed those crimes.
- NARRATOR: The killer talked about his many possible victims with forensic psychologist Ramon Laval.
- RAMON: We didn't discuss the full chronology and what came first and second, third, fourth,
but I have an idea that he--it--it started, as far as we know, in '86. - NARRATOR: Ramon had been asked to evaluate
the mental state of Ángel Reséndiz after a judge informed the defense attorneys that the killer would be prevented from pleading
not guilty by reason of insanity unless he was assessed by an independent psychologist.
- RAMON: He was not only willing to admit culpability, he talked about them, he said yeah, he was the actor,
he was the one who perpetrated them, and he would not be willing to give anybody else credit.
He was very narcissistic, very self-absorbed. His manner of communication about the crimes was very calm,
emotionally collected. He did not display any extreme emotional feelings about them,
no sorrow, no regret. - NARRATOR: Despite admitting to many murders, the prosecution only needed Reséndiz to be found guilty
of one, so they had to find the most airtight case against him, the murder of Dr. Claudia Benton.
- KEN: We had the strongest case by far. I think some of the other counties might've wanted
to have had their own trial and convict him, but once he's convicted of capital murder in--in Texas,
there's not much need to do it again. - NARRATOR: Assistant district attorney Lyn McClellan
was part of the prosecution team. - LYN: In every criminal case, you have to prove the case
beyond a reasonable doubt, so it's really just proving the elements of that crime.
The evidence that who did it came from his fingerprints and on Claudia Benton's case and fingerprints
in the apartment, fingerprints on the car that was recovered in San Antonio afterwards,
so that's really not a real difficult case to prove because all the evidence is there.
Fingerprints and DNA are much better than eyewitness because eyewitnesses can make mistakes,
and fingerprints and DNA are not. - NARRATOR: The trial began on May the 8th, 2000
in Houston, Texas. Ken Macha was in the courtroom. - KEN: One thing that stuck out immensely was the amount
of weight that Reséndiz gained. He looked like a completely different person. He must have put on 40 to 50 pounds,
maybe even more. He was quiet, didn't say a word. I don't believe he said one single word
throughout the trial unless he was conversing, uh, with his attorneys. - NARRATOR: As expected, the defense attorneys claimed
the 39-year-old Reséndiz was not guilty by reason of insanity. - LYN: They say he's schizophrenic.
They say he's any kind of a mental disease. Did that cause him to do it? Did he know right from wrong?
Obviously he knew right from wrong because he was trying to get away, and he got away.
I mean, there's lots of people that have mental diseases, they don't all go around killing people.
- NARRATOR: Before the trial, Reséndiz had been quoted in the media, calling himself an angel of God.
But Ramon Laval didn't agree with the killer's theory. - RAMON: My main concern was if he was insane
at the time of the offense, and if he was doing the will of God, where did the rape come from?
He could not quite explain that. He was like, "Huh, I wonder why you're asking me that question.
You know, I hadn't quite thought about that." - LYN: So, basically it's almost a confession
that, "I did this, but when I did this, "I didn't know right from wrong. "I didn't know what I was doing and thus I can't be held
"legally responsible. "I get a get-out-of-jail-free card 'cuz I didn't know right from wrong."
- NARRATOR: Ramon's testimony put the idea that Reséndiz was insane firmly to bed.
- RAMON: My conclusions at the end were, despite his expression of delusions, statements that had a very delusional flavor,
I came to believe that he was not insane and that he was just smart and manipulative,
and knew how to use information. - NARRATOR: As a final nail in the coffin, prosecutors called Holly Dunn to the stand.
The testimony of the girl who cheated death at the hands of Reséndiz in Kentucky three years previously
left the jury in no doubt. On May the 18th, 2000 Ángel Reséndiz was found guilty
of the murder of Dr. Claudia Benton. Four days later, he was sentenced to death.
- KEN: I knew that the verdict was gonna be guilty. There was really no defense put up.
When he was sentenced to death, I was happy. To me, it was the appropriate punishment.
Not to get into any of the debates about death penalty right or wrong, in Texas,
that was the punishment, and that's what he got. - NARRATOR: Reséndiz was on death row for six years
before his stay of execution came to an end. On June the 27th, 2006, FBI special agent
Bobbie Knox Echard went to Huntsville, Texas to witness the death of the Railroad Killer firsthand.
- BOBBIE: He's brought in, he jumped up on the table, they prepare him and, um, they allow him
to make a statement. In this case, he apologized to the victims, but he then kinda claimed that the devil made him do it.
He said, "It was my fault because I let the devil into my life, but the devil was responsible,"
and the drugs were administered at that point, and the very last thing, he was asking in Spanish for forgiveness from God,
and then he died very peacefully. I felt no joy in the fact that he had been executed,
I felt nothing towards him other than anger for what he had done to the victims and what he left the victims' families to deal with
for the rest of their lives. He was gone, but they still are here having to deal with his crimes.
- LYN: What Claudia Benton's husband said probably sums it up. "He was evil contained in human form."
A creature without a soul. No conscience, no sense of remorse. No regard for the sanctity of life
'cuz with Reséndiz, it's all about him. He's the one in charge, he's the one he's trying to satisfy.
He went through his whole life, you know, thinking he had the right to do all these things,
and whatever he wanted to do, he did it, because he was the one in charge. - NARRATOR: After taking the lives of so many others,
45-year-old Ángel Reséndiz had himself been put to death. He is no longer a danger to innocent people.
- BOBBIE: He was probably the most evil person that I ever was involved in the investigation
and I've investigated lots of murderers, child molesters, kidnappers, but I think this guy
was inherently evil. - KEN: He's just a savage animal, absolute savage animal. The way he dealt with his victims
was just completely savage. - NARRATOR: Ángel Reséndiz spent his entire life in the shadows of society.
Holed up in freight train carriages across America, he was able to carry out his crimes completely undetected.
Why he started raping and killing the victims of his burglaries, we shall never know,
but the amount of people he slayed suggest that he enjoyed the act of murder, and proves that Ángel Reséndiz
is one of the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - [swooshing sound]

In December 1998, Angel Resendiz brutally beat Dr. Claudia Benton to death in her own home. He’s suspected of murdering at least nine more people and evaded authorities by using multiple aliases.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Ángel Reséndiz, the Railroad Killer, murdered at least nine people before being captured and executed in 2006.

Key points

The Phantom Killer. Ángel Reséndiz, known as 'The Railroad Killer,' evades authorities while committing brutal murders.
The First Known Murder. Reséndiz's first known murder occurred in Lexington, Kentucky, where he brutally attacked a couple.
The Murder of Claudia Benton. Dr. Claudia Benton was found murdered in her home, a victim of a brutal attack.
A Mother's Fight. Dr. Claudia Benton fought fiercely for her life against her attacker.
The Sirnic Murders. Reséndiz bludgeoned a couple to death in their home, showcasing his escalating violence.
The Railroad Killer's Taunting. Ramon reveals how Reséndiz left clues at crime scenes, showcasing his pride in his actions.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was a savage and brutal murder of a wife and mother of twin girls.

Narrator describes the horrific nature of Dr. Claudia Benton's murder.

12:19WatchAug 17, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.