World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 17 - Daniel Siebert - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- MALE NARRATOR: On the 24th of February 1986, police in Talladega, Alabama forced entry into the home
of 24-year-old, Sherri Weathers. The profoundly deaf mother of two had not turned up
for school for nearly a week, and the reason, soon became clear. Sherri and her two young children
had been strangled to death and piled on top of each other in the shape of cross.
- GEOFFREY: The utter callousness of it, of not only killing them, strangling them,
but then posing them to be discovered, it's, uh, an act of vile human being. - NARRATOR: The horrific scene will forever be etched
in the minds of the two detectives who worked on the case. - When you see something like that you can't help
but--but think about your own child. This could happen to my child, too. - DENNIS: And so now you know you got to do
everything you can possibly do to bring this person to justice. - NARRATOR: The killer was a 31-year-old artist
named Daniel Siebert, and his macabre masterpiece was far from complete. Two more bodies would soon be discovered,
but the police had no idea where to find him. - ROBERT: He was in the wind, we didn't know where he was, but we knew that somebody's
gon' die until he was caught. - NARRATOR: Daniel Siebert had made his mark as one of the world's most evil killers.
- ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: When 33-year-old, Daniel Siebert was sentenced to death for the murder of Linda Jarman
on the 17th of April 1987, it signaled the end of the killer's coldblooded career.
On the 19th of August, he received a second death sentence for the murders of Sherri Weathers and her two children.
Officially found guilty of five murders, authorities believe that Siebert was responsible for many
other deaths across the U.S. in the mid-1980s. Homicide detective, Eugene Jacks was part
of the policing team who hunted the killer for over six months before his dramatic arrest in September 1986.
- EUGENE: He killed Sherri because she was deaf, and she would never amount to anything because she was deaf.
He killed those two little boys because their mother was dead and they would never
amount to anything because they wouldn't have a mother. He killed Linda Jarman to get her car.
He says he killed Linda Odom because she was a racist. I think he killed because he liked to kill people.
- NARRATOR: In a series of interviews with the killer, Eugene learned a lot about just how callous
Daniel Siebert could be. - If you didn't know what kind of monster he really was,
you could actually like him. But he had no compassion for anyone, no feelings for anyone.
These people didn't matter to him, not at all. He didn't hate 'em, he just didn't have any feelings
for 'em, none whatsoever. - NARRATOR: This killer's story begins in Mattoon, Illinois,
a small city in America's Midwest. - Siebert was born in 1954, so these were the post war years in the U.S.
The economy was starting to boom. We have the idea of the American dream, but I think when we look behind closed doors
at his family life, it was anything but that. There were reports of abuse from his father
towards his mother and towards him. - EUGENE: Father was an aggressive man, he, uh,
mistreated both Danny and his mother. - DR. YARDLEY: He was, uh, a man who was violent
and abusive and controlling, and this is the role model of masculinity that Siebert grows up with,
so I think that there is a real sense of shame that Siebert maintains throughout his life
and having been victimized, I think that Siebert was always trying to--to turn the tables and be the aggressor.
- NARRATOR: Siebert's parents divorced in 1968, just a month before this 14th birthday.
The young man's life began to spiral out of control. - GEOFFREY: He became addicted to drugs.
He had, uh, got into prostitution himself acting as a male prostitute. - DR. YARDLEY: I think there were several warning signs
in Siebert's childhood and adolescence that point towards a very troubled individual.
He's somebody that could not make relationships work with other people. He didn't relate to his peers particularly well,
there was a feeling of rejection from the family environment, and it's this sense of isolation and later the choice
to be isolated which is something that's very concerning for me. - GEOFFREY: There was nothing about him that could be
described as ordered. He was like a Catherine wheel going round and round in every single direction, a firework.
- NARRATOR: Aged 18 and looking for some stability in his life, Siebert enrolled in the military in 1972.
- DR. YARDLEY: Siebert's decision to try and join the Marines is a really, really interesting part
of this case 'cuz it's what that decision symbolizes. The Marines symbolize this alpha male,
this toughness, this kind of real American hero type persona, and I think Siebert wanted to try and live up to that.
- GEOFFREY: Unfortunately, he couldn't deal with the order the Marines brought him.
And quickly, well, within a year, uh, went absent with leave. - NARRATOR: After being dishonorable discharged
from the Marines, Siebert was once again at a loose end. But the troubled young man had a hidden talent
that soon began to flourish. - GEOFFREY: One thing that Siebert excelled at was as an artist.
It was the only thing he was good at. - EUGENE: You can tell by looking at some of his drawings, it was just- I--I think he was expressing
his fantasies in his drawings, that's how he got started with that. He was quite a person, I mean, he--he had
an engaging personality; enjoyable to talk with really. If you didn't know what kind of person he was down deep,
you would actually enjoy sitting down talking with him. - NARRATOR: But life for the charming young artist
remained difficult. - Between 1972 and 1978, he was principally based in Los Angeles,
and there were a series of offenses, drug offenses, some violence, charges of battery,
it was a life lived on the edge, uh, on the fringes of society, and on the fringes of the law.
- NARRATOR: By January 1979, 24-year-old Siebert was living in Las Vegas. He was in a relationship with a male partner.
It was reportedly an abusive one that ended with him fatally stabbing his lover.
- This homicide was a particularly vicious one 'cuz Siebert stabbed his partner 29 times.
Now for me, that means that he has made that decision twenty-nine times to put the knife in again.
This was somebody who knew what they were doing. They knew what they were doing was wrong
and they chose to do it anyway. - NARRATOR: Despite the viciousness of the slaying,
at his subsequent trial, Siebert was charged with manslaughter, not murder. - Siebert insisted that it was a matter of self-defense.
How it can be to stab someone that many times, is slightly beyond me, but it did seek to throw
into doubt whether it was a premeditated murder, and therefore, added strength to the argument that it was
a crime of passion. - I think because this was a homosexual relationship, there was a tendency,
for the court, to just want to accept that narrative and put this case to bed because it was still stigma around homosexuality
in the U.S. at this time, and I think that was perhaps what drove this offense in the first place
because a lot of violence has its roots in shame. I think Siebert was fundamentally ashamed
of who he was. He never accepted who he was. He never felt that society would accept him
for--for his true identity, so I think this early offense is so important and the criminal justice system's reaction to it
was just not good enough. - NARRATOR: Siebert was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but after serving just two,
he escaped while on work detail in December 1981. - Now, we really do have a lethal weapon
waiting to go off. While he's on the run, he kidnaps a woman at gun point in San Francisco and she only escapes
by jumping out of the moving car on the Gold Gate Bridge. It is a remarkable, remarkable escape because,
in my own mind, I'm not the slightest doubt that he intended to kill her. - NARRATOR: Siebert was recaptured the following day
in nearby Oakland and returned to prison. An extra year was added to his sentence, but in 1985,
he was freed on parole on the proviso that he would return to court to face charges of the abduction and assault
he'd committed during his brief escape. Due to attend court in San Francisco, in December 1985, Siebert didn't turn up.
His next known whereabouts were over 800 miles away in Tucson, Arizona where he was found hitchhiking
and heading east. - GEOFFREY: But now, Daniel Siebert is not calling himself Daniel Siebert, he's calling himself
Daniel Spence. He's given a lift by a man called Donald Hendren, who is on his way to Alabama.
Before the journey comes to an end, Donald has offered Spence a post as a volunteer
at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, in which Hendren works. - EUGENE: Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind
is a big part of the Talladega community. It's actually a community of its own or a family
of its own, you might say. - GEOFFREY: And he has, superficially at least, the perfect cover, artistic young man,
happy to volunteer at an institute for those with deafness, blindness. - NARRATOR: Leaving his troubles in California far behind him,
Siebert settled down in Talladega, Alabama in January 1986. Working at the AIDB, he had a new identity
and a new community of friends. - EUGENE: After he arrived here, people realized that he was
an accomplished artist and he was asked to do a mural at AIDB, which he did, uh, and that's one
of the reasons he stayed here for a while, was doing that mural. - Once again, he hid in plain sight.
The affable art volunteer, friend of Donald, welcomed in the institute and then--
and it's almost heartbreaking-- he meets Sherri Ann Weathers, a 24-year-old deaf mother of two small boys,
and they form a relationship. - NARRATOR: A new circle of friends had welcomed 31-year-old Daniel Siebert into their lives
with open arms, but they had no idea they'd allowed a brutal killer into their close knit community.
Siebert spent much of his time at the apartment of his new girlfriend, 24-year-old, Sherri Weathers.
By the 24th of February, Sherri, a single mother of two, hadn't turned up at the school for almost a week.
Her concerned friends contacted the authorities. - In February 1986, uh, the police department
received a call for a welfare check at Sunrise apartments in Talladega. Police was dispatched, Officer Tom Bryon
was the first on the scene. When he entered Sherri Weather's apartment, he discovered the bodies of Sherri Weathers
and her two boys. He immediately backed out, locked the door, and called for investigation.
- NARRATOR: Eugene was joined on the case by an investigator from the district attorney's office, Dennis Surrett.
- DENNIS: We arrived at the apartment and the police department had already had the scene
roped off, and we met the other investigators, went into the apartment and as you walk into the room, there's a bedroom
then there's a living room and there's a kitchen, and right in the center of the living room
and the kitchen, you see three bodies. - EUGENE: It's quite horrible; I haven't forgotten it,
after all these years. One of the next door neighbors had heard the two little boys playing in the tub,
he got 'em out of the bed. He strangled the two little boys. - DR. YARDLEY: He actually woke them up
because they were in bed asleep. He wanted them to know that they were being killed.
He wanted them to feel that fear. - EUGENE: And he stacked their bodies on top of the mother.
- It looked like it formed a cross, that was my first impression. - NARRATOR: Sherri Weathers and her two sons,
five-year-old Chad and four-year-old Joseph had been strangled to death five days earlier,
on the 19th of February. It was a sickening scene, even for seasoned detectives,
but the team knew they needed to stay professional and not let their emotions get in the way
of their police work. - You know the minute you walk into that scene, you know this is a death penalty case,
and you know things have to be done differently, everything has to be perfect, everything has to be exact,
everything has to be documented, I's dotted, T's crossed, 'cuz you know where this is headed to,
'cuz you know a murder of two or more is a-- it's gon' be a death penalty case. And then the emotional part hits you, you know,
this is a young mother, this is two young children, had their lives ahead of 'em, what kind of person
would do this? I mean, emotionally hits you, that's the second thing after--after reality is what you got then emotionally,
you're hit, you know, especially if you have children. - When you see something like that,
you can't help but think about your own child. This could happen to my child, too.
It's something that you don't, you just don't forget about it. - NARRATOR: Just as the two investigators were getting
to grips with their hallowing day, some more worrying news came in. - DENNIS: We're in the middle of processing that scene
and we'd been there probably two or three hours processing the scene for evidence,
and then we're notified that Linda Jarman, who was a friend of Sherri Weathers, she did not show up for classes that day.
- EUGENE: She lived in an adjoining apartment, not to this building, but to the next building,
so Dennis and I went to her apartment and, uh, we discovered her on the bed in the bedroom
and she'd been strangled. - NARRATOR: 33-year-old, Linda Jarman, a deaf teacher at the same institute
where Sherri was a student, had been murdered in cold blood. - He used a sock and just strangled her
in her own bed. Of course, most people don't know what a VCR is these day and times,
but back in those days, VCR was worth some money, so he stole her VCR in order to get money to travel further.
- NARRATOR: Linda Jarman's cream colored car was also missing. The team would report their findings
to former Talladega county district attorney, Robert Rumsey. - ROBERT: The evidence would show
that after he strangled Sherri and Chad and Joey, that he went to Linda Jarman's apartment,
telling her that he'd had a fight with Sherri and could he sleep on her couch. When she went back to bed and went to sleep,
then he went in and he strangled her to get her car to leave. - NARRATOR: After speaking to acquaintances and colleagues
of Sherri and Linda, the detectives soon had a number one suspect who they discovered
had been using a different alias. - DENNIS: At that point, we learned the name Daniel Spence from people at the school,
and we start running him in the computer, see if we find out a Daniel Spence, who is he, where is he, everything we could find out.
And it's determined that his name is actually Daniel Lee Siebert. - Once we developed him as a suspect
and--and got his true identity, we put a nationwide pickup out for Daniel Siebert and Linda Jarman's car.
He quickly became the prime suspect because Daniel Spence wasn't here and Linda Jarman's car was gone.
- NARRATOR: As the duo headed to Siebert's apartment building, they soon discovered there was another potential victim.
- DENNIS: So, we go knocking on the door, and there's no answer at the door. A neighbor comes out, and says, "Why are you here?"
Said, "We're looking to see Mr. Siebert," he says, "Well, he's not here," but he said, "I gotta tell ya,
my girlfriend's missing." "Well, who's your girlfriend?" "It's Linda Odom." "Well, how long she been missing?"
"Uh, two days, I hadn't see her, she hadn't been home." "Well, do you know if she's ever connected
with this guy here, Mr. Siebert?" "Yeah, they're kinda friends." "Well, You need to go to the police department
and file a report." - NARRATOR: In the space of 24 hours, four people had been found dead and another was missing.
The investigators needed to find Daniel Siebert fast, and they soon had word from authorities
over 350 miles north of Talladega. - EUGENE: We received information from Elizabethtown, Kentucky
that they had located Linda Jarman's car right off the interstate in Elizabethtown.
That's when Dennis and I left here to go there to process the car for fingerprints
and physical evidence. - DENNIS: And so that takes us to the scene and we go up an embankment from where the car was,
and we find a campsite, we uncover a campsite, and Eugene and I, we find identification to the boys,
we find information on Sherri Weathers and Linda Jarman all at that campsite, so we're fairly certain at this time
we're on the right trail. - NARRATOR: It was a huge breakthrough that confirmed Daniel Siebert was their man.
- EUGENE: We got Daniel Siebert's fingerprints out of the car, plus other evidence
we knew that tied to him. The type of cigarettes he smoked and the type of chewing gum
that he chewed. We recovered photographs of women and children, women's cosmetics.
- DR. YARDLEY: There were also some quite chilling items at this campsite. There were photos of the Weathers family,
there were drawings of the Weathers family, and I think this emphasis on those victims
is so significant in this case. This young mother and her two children seemed to have quite a lot of importance to Siebert
because I think that he didn't feel they deserved to be alive. These boys were happy, they were loved
and cared for by their mother. I think he felt a real sense of envy and resentment
towards them. It was something that he wanted to relive and I think those three murders of Sherri Weathers
and her two children, were the murders he was most proud of. - NARRATOR: Despite being sure Siebert was responsible
for at least four murders, the dangerous killer remained undetected. - Dennis and Eugene, uh, both of 'em
are excellent processors, they go and they're in Kentucky for quite a while, so they were up there
several days, and he's in the wind, we didn't know where he was, but we knew that somebody
was gon' die until he was caught. - NARRATOR: In Linda's car, Eugene and Dennis had recovered
an address book belonging to 31-year-old Siebert, which would eventually prove to be an important find.
- EUGENE: I had one investigator, her main job, I'd say, in--in this investigation
was to stay in contact with known associates of Siebert. And she had built a rapport with the girlfriend
of Siebert out there, and she had promised that if she'd heard from him, she would call.
- NARRATOR: With everyday that passed, the investigators knew Siebert could strike again
at any moment. - EUGENE: Each day when you went to work, the first thing you did was start checking tips
and leads on the possibility of where Siebert was. There wasn't a day that went by that you didn't do
something on the Siebert case. - DENNIS: I don't know how many miles we put on cars
going from here to there to check out leads or information on Siebert or some of his friends or this,
that and the other, I mean, Lord, there's no telling. - NARRATOR: As days turned into weeks,
and weeks into months, Siebert's location remained a mystery. The investigators desperately searched in vain,
but in reality, he was over 900 miles from Talladega, Alabama, in New Jersey and was about to claim another victim,
57-year-old, tour guide, Beatrice McDougall. - Daniel Siebert was in Atlantic City,
staying in a hotel. On March 8th of 1986, walks by a room of a Mrs. McDougall that was a tour guide.
She was fixing up for a reception for a hospitality room. - He would have deduced fairly quickly that she's a tour guide,
so she's likely to have some cash on her. - NARRATOR: Siebert was determined to get his hands
on Beatrice's money by any means necessary. - ROBERT: And he goes in there and kills her.
We don't know at that point that it's Siebert but he's off and in the wind and we ain't got a clue
where he is after that. He just drops off the radar. - NARRATOR: Siebert had stabbed Beatrice twice in the stomach
and strangled her to death in an opportunistic tack. - DR. YARDLEY: I think that there is just no regard
for the--the rights or the feelings of other people. It's all about him, he needs money
at this point in time because he's on the run, um, he also wants to kill any potential witness
to this crime, this crime of theft, so her life was just not considered valuable by him.
- NARRATOR: As Siebert remains undetected, the bad news continued for investigators in Alabama.
On the 30th of March 1986, another victim of the 31-year-old artist would be discovered.
- We're all actually at the DA's office working on another case and we're called
that we got a body, and just outside of Talladega, there's a little cemetery on the left hand side
of Alabama on highway 21, and there we find a skeletonized body, no question it'd been there for a long time,
decomposition has already come and gone, and we sift through everything. She's not buried or anything, she's been laid
on top the ground. We know it's female and that's all we know, and we sift through the pine and straw and everything
looking for all the bones, the teeth and this, that, and the other that we can find to identify,
and ultimately, she's identified as Linda Odom, the girl that was missing from the next-door neighbor of Siebert.
- NARRATOR: The timeline suggested that 32-year-old cocktail waitress, Linda Odom, was Siebert's first victim.
Siebert strangled Linda on the 19th of February in 1986, meaning he'd killed five people on that one day.
- DR. YARDLEY: Linda's body was taken to Siebert's apartment and he disposes of the body by lowering it in sheets
out of the window and then taking it to, uh, a nearby cemetery to dispose of it.
And interestingly, Siebert said that--that when he was disposing of Linda's body, he started punching her,
I mean, she was obviously dead at this point in time, but I think that was something that enhanced his feelings
of control over this victim, and I think that-- that--that sense of rage, as well, that he expresses
at this point in time, the way that he's seeing this community, this community who are so welcoming,
who are so inclusive, who are loving towards one another, this is something that he feels
he was entitled to when he was younger, something that he never had, these people don't deserve it,
according to him, so I think that's what's underline all this behavior. - This a young girl, uh, she didn't deserve
what happened to her, but she was just dumped in a cemetery. That kind of hurts your heart that somebody
is so cruel to do something like that. - NARRATOR: What the detectives in Alabama didn't know
is that by now, Siebert was in prison in New Jersey serving 61 days for assaulting a woman.
When he was arrested for the altercation, he used the stolen social security card
of murdered five-year-old, Chad Weathers as identification. This meant that no one had made the link
between Siebert and any of the murders. - So during the time that Siebert was on the run,
he actually used the identities of Sherri Weathers' two boys, um, to--to gain new identification and at this point in time,
it was relatively easy to do that, to use a child's identity to get a social security number,
but I think that the significance of this is more than just a practicality, I think there is--is something much more meaningful
going on here by possessing these children's names. By presenting yourself as them, you are owning them,
you are possessing them, they are yours and it's that extension of control over your victims.
- NARRATOR: After serving his time for the assault, Siebert was in police custody again in June 1986,
this time in Virginia. - This young officer stops Siebert and in the car, he finds ropes and knives, ladies' belongings, photographs,
just all types of things that just made him very suspicious of this man. - They checked the car and it was stolen,
so he was arrested for, uh, car theft, being in--being in possession of--of the stolen car.
He was using the identity of Joey Weathers, using the social security card as identification.
He made bond and he was gone. - Siebert was incredibly cunning, incredibly manipulative.
I think he was well aware of the fact that law enforcement wasn't particularly well joined up
in terms of interstate communication and sharing of information at this time, and I think he--he truly did take advantage of that.
- NARRATOR: In August, Siebert was yet again in another state, Maryland. He assaulted a woman in Baltimore,
but wasn't captured by the police. He then headed back west towards Nashville, Tennessee.
The investigators in Alabama still had no idea where he was, but a breakthrough was on the horizon.
Detectives who'd reached out to people listed in Siebert's address book had been contacted
by one of his ex-girlfriends in Nevada. She had news that would finally crack the case.
- This lady calls from out there and says that she had just spoken with Danny Siebert on the phone,
and he told her what time it was where he was at, and she could hear thunder, it was raining,
so the investigator came and told the rest of us about the call, and that it was raining at that particular time.
- NARRATOR: With very little information, the investigators tried to trace the source of Siebert's call.
- See, it wasn't that easy to trace telephone calls, but they told us if we had any idea where he was, it would make it a lot easier,
otherwise, it could take three weeks to a month to trace it. I told the investigator "Go call the national weather service,
find out where it's raining in that time zone." It was raining in Tennessee, that was it, in that time zone.
We were able to use that information and trace the telephone call to Hurricane Mills in Tennessee,
uh, to a little convenience store, restaurant there. - NARRATOR: It was a stunning revelation.
Detectives could now pinpoint Siebert to the small community of Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, seventy miles west of Nashville.
- DENNIS: So I called the district attorney, told him we--we going to Tennessee, he said,
"Okay, I'm coming with you." - ROBERT: And no question we were keyed up because we'd spent six months and no telling how many trips,
not me, but how many trips with the investigators and stuff had gone running down there with every little lead
that they could come up with, which really had proved fruitless, it-- but this was a live hit now.
- DENNIS: So we all loaded up in cars heading to the city. I called TBI, which is Tennessee Bureau
of Investigation, "This is what we got going on. "We got him traced to this location
and we're headed that way." - NARRATOR: After six and a half months of searching
for Siebert, the anticipation of his arrest was at the forefront of the detectives' minds.
- EUGENE: The journey up there was, it's almost like waiting for your birthday party, we were all extremely excited.
- Well, by time we got there, it was late night and we decided not to do anything, but send one investigator
in there to see if they could see anything, to just search first 'cuz you had this service station
where the call was from, and then you had a restaurant up here, and then you had another filling station
and restaurant up here, so one investigator went in, kinda knew the owner. And said, "Yeah, he's been painting
some signs for me, and he'll be in here in the morning to collect his check." - NARRATOR: It would be a sleepless night
for the arresting officers. - DENNIS: Everybody's upbeat, everybody's tired, but everybody's upbeat, and I don't think
a single one of us took a nap that night, out there on the road 'cuz we were just
on a roadway, uh, waiting for morning. - NARRATOR: The following morning, the 5th of September 1986,
the team were ready to pounce as dawn broke over Hurricane Mills. - It's hard to describe what it was like sitting there
waiting for him--him to come around the building, but I'd always wondered if I'd recognize him
when I saw him. When he rounded the corner of that building, there was no doubt in my mind, that's him.
As soon as he went in the door, Dennis and I were out the door. We went in behind him, uh, he wasn't there;
scared us to death. We just looked at the clerk, "Where is he?" and she pointed to the restroom and we went in and TBI
and, uh, the captain went in and arrested him in the men's room. And, uh, his only question to us was,
uh, "How'd y'all find me?" - I mean, he's got about six weapons just aimed at him, and he's caught
[unintelligible] basically. Uh, we seize his backpack, we found where he'd been staying in a car, a wrecked out car
behind the station, and he is immediately taken to the court in Tennessee, and we contacted our governor
and asked her for her plane to fly him back. - NARRATOR: Finally, Daniel Siebert
was in police custody, he would never be free again. - And I mean, man alive, you can't imagine the relief
you feel, we've got him. He's not gon' hurt anybody else, and there again, you're thinking of Sherri and you're thinking
of the babies, and Linda and Linda Odom, you're thinking about them, "Okay, we can put everybody
to rest now," and it's--it's the best feeling in the world. - NARRATOR: The police had their man,
but the job was far from done. Detectives were certain he was responsible for the murders of five people in the small community.
Linda Odom, Linda Jarman, Sherri Weathers and her two sons, Chad and Joey. Investigators had stacks of evidence
against Siebert, but they were hoping an interview with the 32-year-old would uncover even more secrets.
- EUGENE: It was tense for me and I'm sure it was for the captain because we were wanting to get a confession.
This was an end of a long hard battle for us and we wanted him to admit what he'd done.
- NARRATOR: Siebert told Eugene about the five murders he'd committed on the 19th of February 1986,
and also confessed to the killing of Beatrice McDougall in Atlantic City on the 8th of March.
He showed no remorse for any of the murders. - He wasn't concerned at all, um, showed no emotion whatsoever.
Never shed a tear, you could tell there was no concern in him about what he had done,
and if we had released him right there, he'd have done it again in a few days. 'Cuz he had no remorse whatsoever for what he'd done.
I told, people want to know how he felt about his victims; he didn't feel about his victims.
He had no feelings for 'em one way or the other. He had no feelings for anyone. I don't know if he really felt anything about himself,
to be honest with you, he just-- he had no feelings. - GEOFFREY: I think he was a psychopath.
I think he demonstrated every normal, what you can use the word normal when applied to a psychopath,
every possible psychopathic tendency, at a lack of remorse and at a lack of conscience
and at a lack of empathy with other people, they were simply objects. - NARRATOR: Siebert also confessed to another murder
that predated any of the other six. Whilst he was lunching with Donald Hendren in Alabama.
- GEOFFREY: It's early February 1986, Donald Hendren's asleep and Siebert gets out of bed
and borrows Donald's car, and picks up a girl called, Cheryl Evans. She's working as a prostitute in Birmingham, Alabama.
- EUGENE: He kidnapped her, robbed her and killed her, and, uh, carried her body to Ohatchee, and dumped it
in a roadside garbage dump, and then just returned the car like nothing had happened.
- NARRATOR: That brought the tally of victims to seven, but Eugene was certain there was still more.
He had uncovered a telling piece of evidence when searching Siebert's home back in February.
- EUGENE: In his apartment, I'd found a road atlas. I'd gone through the road atlas and out on the west coast,
he had Xs with zeroes, Xs and zeroess and he just had Xs. I asked him about those
and he said every place that there was an 'X' with a circle around it, it's where he had killed someone
and just the Xs were just robberies. I contacted each of these jurisdictions and sure enough, each place that there was an 'X'
with a circle, they had recovered a body. - DR. YARDLEY: This is basically Siebert's commemoration
of the murders that he's committed. I think every time he looked at that map, he would have felt powerful, he would have felt superior,
um, we--we do often see this in cases of serial killers. - NARRATOR: Siebert confessed to killing three sex workers
in Nevada and California in late 1985. - DR. YARDLEY: The fact that he's targeted sex workers
is really significant for me because he's preying upon these women's vulnerabilities.
He's well aware that society does not value these individuals as much as it values others, and therefore,
he has access to them, he has the opportunity to harm them. - NARRATOR: He was also indicted for the murder
of Beatrice McDougall, but never went to trial for this. Despite admitting to as many as 13 murders,
detectives could only link ten victims to the 32-year-old, but for his impending trials, Siebert would only be indicted
for the murders of the five that had been thoroughly investigated in Alabama. - There was five homicides.
Linda Jarman was a capital case because it was murder during the commission of a robbery or a theft
of getting a car. Sherri Weathers, Chad and Joey was a capital case because it was murder to two or more people
pursuant to a common planned scheme or design. Linda Odom was not a capital case,
he plead guilty to Linda Odom, after all of this, was a life sentence. - NARRATOR: During three trials over the course of five months
between March and August 1987, Siebert was found guilty of all five murders and sentenced to death twice.
- ROBERT: I probably tried 30 death penalty cases or more, but this one is just the magnitude of it,
and what makes another human being go do something like this? I mean, you got a woman that's deaf
that he's intimate with, a four and five-year-old who he wakes up from their sleep to strangle,
goes to another deaf woman and kills her just to get her car just to get out of there,
I mean, just thinking about it, it'll be there on my deathbed. - DR. YARDLEY: I think the sentences that he received
were appropriate. I think he--he committed the most serious of crimes, so that deserves the most serious of sentence,
but I think if--if we were to ask his victims' families, um, they're--they're not going to have their loved ones
brought back, um, I think they-- they have achieved some sense of justice, but at the same time,
I think they were asking a lot of questions as to how this man had slipped off the radar of the authorities?
This man had committed a homicide in 1979 and he went on to commit more, so could more have been done
to prevent that? - I think one of the things that always moves me most about this story is that, um,
when he was asked about the killing of Sherri and the boys, he said, "Sherri didn't have
"anything to say, "Joey didn't have anything to say, "Chad didn't have anything to say,
and I don't have anything to say." If there's anything that could be more heartless,
more utterly revolting, more depraved then that remark, I have yet to hear it, and this is a man
who snuffed out the life of a deaf 24-year-old mother and her two children, aged five and four.
It is...is...utterly monstrous. - NARRATOR: In August 1987, Daniel Siebert began
his death row sentence. For 18 months, the case had consumed the investigators who had worked on it.
Now they could breathe a sigh of relief. - I still think about those two little boys.
Uh, and I always will, I'm sure. I'm sure Dennis and other investigators do too 'cuz they all had children too.
- ROBERT: I don't know what it is, but I know he's a psychotic killer, and had he not been taken
in Tennessee-- that's what's so outstanding about the police work, had he not been taken
in Tennessee, I don't know whether it would've been Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nevada, Utah or California,
but somebody else would've died, and he wasn't through. - NARRATOR: After numerous unsuccessful appeals
throughout the years, 53-year-old Siebert remained on death row for almost 21 years.
- On April 22nd, 2008, Daniel Siebert died, but not from lethal injection, from pancreatic cancer,
natural causes. In the end, he escaped the death penalty. - DENNIS: I mean, this was a personal type of crime.
This is not something that you're standing thirty feet away and shoot somebody, this is somebody that you put your hands around their neck
and choke the life out of 'em. That's bad, think about that. 'Cuz it takes you anywhere from two to four minutes
to do that to someone, and you're sitting there and you've got your hands around their neck
and you're taking the life from 'em. You've got to be enjoying that; otherwise, you wouldn't do it that way,
and if you're enjoying something like that, man, you are bad, and I just wish we had got to execute him,
and I think we felt were cheated for that. - NARRATOR: Daniel Siebert was linked
to at least 10 murders and was convicted of five, but he never tried to justify his reason for killing people.
- DR. YARDLEY: For me, what makes Siebert one of the world's most evil killers is the degree of manipulativeness
that he was able to--to exercise. He was able to come across as an individual with feelings,
as an individual who cared about others, but those feelings were not genuine at all,
they were simply a performance. - EUGENE: He was an absolute monster. He was a horrible person, he--he really was, uh,
and that's what comes to mind anytime anyone mentions his name, is he's a monster.
- NARRATOR: Daniel Siebert was a callous killer who felt no remorse. To choke the life out of two children,
simply because he felt they would never amount to much is a cold blooded act that cannot be forgiven.
We may never know exactly how many lives he took, but Siebert's death means he can no longer harm anyone,
and will forever be remembered as one of the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - [swishing sound]

Daniel Siebert was an American serial killer who confessed to killing ten people in the 80s. At the height of his killing spree, he murdered five people, including two children and his girlfriend.

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

Daniel Siebert's gruesome murders of Sherri Weathers and her children highlight a chilling investigation into a callous killer's background and capture.

Key points

The Horrific Discovery. Police find the bodies of Sherri Weathers and her two children, stacked in a cross.
The Killer's Identity Revealed. Daniel Siebert, a 31-year-old artist, is identified as the murderer behind the gruesome acts.
Siebert's Dark Past. Siebert's troubled childhood and violent tendencies are explored, revealing a pattern of abuse.
A New Victim. Siebert claims another victim, Beatrice McDougall, while on the run in New Jersey.
Siebert's Capture. After months of searching, detectives finally pinpoint Siebert's location in Tennessee.
Siebert's Confession. Siebert confessed to multiple murders, showing no remorse for his actions.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He killed those two little boys because their mother was dead.

Eugene Jacks explains Siebert's motives.

2:52WatchAug 17, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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