KAREN: Honey, what's my oxygen on?
Okay.
I have lung cancer.
Never smoked,
and ended up with lung cancer.
My memory isn't really great right now.
I want to tell the story while I'm still able.
I think I always knew my brother was mean.
I don't blame my parents.
I wish they could have been more aware.
He made it ugly.
He made it unsafe.
He changed everyone in that family,
not in a good way.
That's what he did to our family.
[sniffles]
[sobs]
You know, I don't think I've come across anybody in my years
that actually enjoyed the torment as much as he did.
That's true.
The older you get, the more you
find out that the perfect families weren't perfect,
and we looked like a perfect family.
If I could think of one word that just kind of puts it all
in a bow, it would be secrets.
The secrets that Billy
made us keep,
they made it so we could never be sisters
the way normal sisters are.
KAREN: Whether or not
we have kept secrets is not even up
for debate -- it was nothing but secrets in our house.
Then, when you finally want to tell,
it's much more difficult to tell.
Karen has never gotten to tell her story to anybody.
She lived in silence.
[voice breaking] This could be the last time I see you.
When I walk out after this,
it will be the last time I see you.
Probably.
The whole thing is pretty tragic.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
[knock at door] [creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[water dripping]
[banging on door] [creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
SUSAN: I always thought it was strange that, since growing up,
Billy wasn't part of my nuclear family.
Like, he never lived there with me until I was in first grade.
One day, I woke up, and, um, my mom was making breakfast,
and I'm over looking out
the back door, and I see my brother, like, wrestling in
the backyard with, like, a guy twice the size.
What's going on outside?
And I said, "Mom, who's -- who's fighting with -- who is..."
"That's your brother, Bill."
When I first saw Billy, my dad
and mom told me he was in a hospital.
He's 19 years older than me.
I knew he had been in Vietnam.
So when he got out of the hospital,
I'm assuming he was hurt in Vietnam,
but that wasn't the truth.
No one ever said why he was in that hospital.
That wasn't something that was talked about.
I had no idea what he had done.
And when he showed up, everybody's changed.
Everybody changed.
And as a kid, I noticed that -- it's kind of odd, because there
was a lot of things they didn't tell me about Billy,
and they thought it was best that they just didn't tell me.
In my family,
we just didn't talk about certain things.
She was six years younger than me,
and I never told her he had done something awful.
She had no idea, and I thought he was ready
to leave the hospital, he must be better,
and that there really wasn't anything to worry about.
I do feel tremendous guilt about if, in retrospect,
had I done something, could have saved her from Billy.
As a kid, Billy got in trouble at school,
got in trouble at home.
WOMAN: Billy, I don't understand why you keep doing this.
And he got beatings
as a repercussion from his behavior.
There was a belt involved, but Billy didn't want anyone to
tell him what to do -- after being told not to do something,
he would
go back and do exactly what they said not to do.
He was just obstinate.
My mom would be so distressed that he just
wouldn't do the right thing and would "invite"
the punishment.
WOMAN: I want this to be the last time.
Do you understand?
She didn't understand why he would keep just making
the choices he made, knowing that he'd be in trouble.
-[whipping noises] -[grunting]
She said it was like
he just was trying to throw it in their face
and get in trouble to show that he couldn't be tamed.
Billy always wanted to be in control.
In retrospect,
I think she wondered,
if that was like a huge signal for how he turned out.
He loved to have power over animals and me.
When I was a little girl, and still today,
I loved cats, always had a cat as a pet,
and hurting them came naturally to him.
He would come into a room, and if the cat was eating
or doing something,
he would stomp in and scare 'em
until they would just run off.
I asked him not to do that.
AS KAREN: What is wrong with you?
Billy hated to be challenged about anything,
and when I challenged him,
he got upset with me and cussed at me.
Shut your mouth!
And he would tell me stories about hurting my pets.
He said, "You know what I like to do to cats?
"Put them in a bag and hang them
from the overpass so semis can hit them."
Why would you say that? That's horrible.
When I reacted, crying, he laughed at that.
He thought that was just great.
[laughing]
He had just a almost maniacal kind of laugh.
[laughing]
He thought that was hilarious.
[laughing]
So I tried to minimize the contact that he had with
my animals.
I did do the best I could to keep my distance.
I just tried to forget about how awful he was.
[laughing]
An older brother should watch out
to make sure things
go right, protect you.
That's what a brother should do.
But Billy was not protective or caring.
I remember the sexual abuse starting when I was, like,
four or five,
but it wasn't until years later
that I really
even realized some of that abuse was abuse.
I just thought of what happened to me
as something
mean brothers did to sisters.
It is hard to talk about what he did to me, because
there's still the shame attached even though I know it
wasn't my fault.
Since I didn't understand what was happening,
it didn't seem
abnormal to me.
But I can remember saying I wanted
to tell my mom something that happened.
And I remember him saying,
"Oh no, no, no -- you can't do that."
And I said, "Why not?"
And he said, "She won't understand."
If I would have reported my own abuse
and kept reporting until it stopped,
maybe he wouldn't have hurt so many people.
My abuse was the beginning of keeping secrets,
and secrets are a dangerous thing.
SUSAN: Karen is six years older than me, and I was just a baby.
But, years later, same thing was done to me.
When I went to school, we had the stranger danger talks.
Nobody ever said the stranger was gonna be your brother.
He would come in my room or when I was taking a shower.
I remember, it was Christmas,
and we had, um, Christmas lights in all of our windows.
I just stared at that blue and green Christmas lights.
To this day,
I can't look at blue and green Christmas lights,
just that color together, because that's what I --
that's what I fixated on.
I didn't tell anybody, because he said he would --
he would hurt us.
And I always thought that it was just me.
But I wasn't Billy's only victim.
Neither one of us told.
Billy had a way of keeping us quiet.
It really contributed to the fact that Karen and I
never were able to form any kind of sister bond.
Billy encouraged us not to talk or be together.
It kind of kept us apart.
KAREN: At the time, I didn't know it was happening to her.
I'm surprised I didn't know more,
considering it had been done to me -- with it comes
the guilt of not reporting him for what he did to me.
That could have maybe saved her.
SUSAN: Both of us felt guilty.
As an adult, when I told Karen,
it definitely brought us together
in an odd kind of way,
because only she could understand
what I had gone through.
Do you remember sitting in mom's rec room,
and you had just learned that
he had done that to me. -But I didn't know
the extent to which
it was happening.
Plus I couldn't stop it for me.
How could I stop it for her?
I don't think mom and dad had
a clue that those things could happen, to be honest.
You know, we're talking about how -- how we didn't speak out.
He would have hurt you. He would have hurt me.
Maybe we were children for believing the threats,
but I wouldn't put it past him.
He was brazen.
That's a very good word for him, brazen.
But he was also
a fabulous liar.
To think back on the kind of abuse
Billy did,
the type of trauma we experienced,
it seeps into every part of your being.
It's horrible,
and that's
just the tip of the iceberg.
KAREN: Billy was a fire bug.
He loved watching things burn -- the house fire we had
was that our home in Maryland -- my sister wasn't yet born.
I can remember clearly, my mom
shook me awake and took me out of the house.
She was panicked.
I can remember standing out in the yard in
the middle of the night, looking back at the house,
watching the flames burn the house
and waiting for the fire trucks
and just being very scared.
Billy was standing next to me,
just staring at the flames.
He was very interested in the fire, watching the fire.
It was determined that the cause of the fire
was electrical.
But later on, my mom would say
she suspected that Billy started that fire.
We never had any proof, but she just had a feeling.
And there were other fires that kind of surrounded Billy.
SUSAN: Years later, there was another fire in
our neighborhood that was a vacant house.
The police went and talked to my dad.
Billy denied it up and down,
but my dad knew right away he was lying.
I know it really bothered my dad that he could
just look him in the eye and not even flinch and lie.
And mom said that she kind of always thought Billy did it,
but he didn't get in trouble.
Billy got away with so much.
KAREN: Billy dropped out of school in 10th grade,
joined the marines, and was shipped off to Vietnam.
When he came home, he brought gifts for everyone.
My gift was these little silky pajama top and pants.
You want to see what Vietnam was like?
Sure.
And then he had photo albums,
um, from his time over there.
There was a picture of a cute little girl wearing
a similar type of outfit as to what he had brought me.
You see her?
KAREN: It was almost as if he really wanted me to notice
that little girl, kind of connect to her,
because she was about my age.
I can remember saying, "Oh ,she's so cute."
She was nice.
And he said, "Yeah,
but we had to kill her."
I kind of shrunk back.
I remember him smiling.
He enjoyed telling me that,
because it shocked me so much.
There's something really sick about that.
I think he took pleasure in being cruel to anyone.
One night, I think I was, like, eight.
He was 15 years older than me.
I remember Billy was all dressed up in a nice shirt
and pants, and...
he came downstairs.
He said, "How do I look, mom?"
And,
you know, she said, "Great," and he went out that night,
and then the next thing I remember is
a man sitting at our kitchen table with my dad,
and he was a sheriff.
And he had come for my brother.
I was kind of out in the hallway outside the kitchen,
kind of peeking in, and I can remember my dad sitting at
the kitchen table, just desperation,
and putting his head down onto his fists,
and my mom just standing off
outside the kitchen, crying.
I didn't know what had happened.
I just knew it was something bad.
Later on, I found out that my father had called the sheriff
to come over, because evidently, my brother had confessed to
my dad that he had killed a girl.
My dad called the sheriff, and they came,
and they took my brother away.
I remember them putting handcuffs on Billy.
I can remember them putting him in the car.
I always knew my brother was mean,
but, at this point,
I was realizing how evil he probably was.
He had raped and murdered the woman.
But he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
I remember hearing someone say because she probably
had her hair up like a Vietnam girl,
and he probably had a flashback.
He was sentenced to go to a mental institution
in Maryland, where he remained for four years.
Not long after that, our family decided to move away.
The years that Billy was gone,
it was definitely better without him.
Did you know about what happened back east,
before we moved out here?
That's why we moved out here.
But did you know that that happened,
and the whole time I was growing up,
you never told me?
Um, I knew about it, but I was told
he -- he was sick.
Why do you go to a hospital?
-You're sick, -Right.
and you need to get well,
and they certainly wouldn't let you out if you weren't well.
That was my thinking.
Hm.
I just thought he was in the hospital from Vietnam.
I had no idea.
Their point of not telling me was to protect me.
Whether that was a good thing to do
or was it a bad thing to do, I don't know.
But I felt betrayed.
By not telling me,
they were keeping me in danger.
KAREN: I was a little bit nervous about having him
come home.
I thought they'd fixed him.
I thought it was over.
But it wasn't.
Later that very night, he assaulted me.
I thought I should tell my parents,
but everybody was so happy to have him home that I didn't
want to step on anyone's happiness.
So I didn't tell.
When Billy was out,
he's constantly looking for prey.
That's all he would be doing.
He was prowler. He prowled.
And in the '70s, there were quite a few hitchhikers,
And most of the hitchhikers that we would see were women.
On any given day, I could be playing Barbies.
Bill just shows up, middle of the day.
Um, "Hey mom, yeah, I'm gonna take Susie.
We're gonna go get some ice cream."
I would look at my mom like -- like,
"I don't want to go," and she would say, "Just go.
Don't get him upset."
But instead of going to get ice cream,
we just got in the truck, and the first hitchhiker we'd see,
he'd slow down and ask if they wanted to get in.
When a hitchhiker would see us,
they didn't have to think twice about getting in the truck.
Where you headed?
SUSAN: You know, you're gonna get in a car
if you've got a little first grader with pigtails sitting
next to a pretty handsome-looking guy, you know?
I was the bait.
Having his little sister in the car
was just his way of saying, "Trust me."
But as soon as they got in, he pulled me out,
and I'm in the back of the truck,
with the SnugTop on.
It has a little latch, and you can't get out.
And then we would drive a little bit, and I'm locked in there,
and then we'd stop.
He'd turned the music up.
I couldn't hear what was going on.
But anything could have happened.
Many hitchhikers disappeared during that time.
From when Billy got in trouble as
a little kid, fire seemed to play a role,
and he learned quickly that fire covers up a lot of things.
One time, we were eating dinner,
and Bill came in,
and he said, "My car caught on fire."
My dad was really upset.
I think this was the second truck that burned.
He had two trucks burn.
Had my car just gone up in flames,
I don't think the first thing I would
have done is run to my parents' house.
I think the first thing I would have done
is call the police, and that was never done.
He said it was an electrical problem, and it just burned up.
It's difficult to believe that a brand-new truck
could suddenly be engulfed in flames.
It didn't just spontaneously combust.
I didn't know this at the time, but I found out later,
Katherine Devine was 14.
She was from the Queen Anne area in Seattle.
She was an average kid.
I mean, she wasn't a runaway, she wasn't a prostitute.
She had a boyfriend fight with her mom
like everybody has a boyfriend fight
with their mom, and she wanted to go down to see
her cousin, and her cousin lived in Oregon.
Back then, they hitchhiked, and that's where she met Bill.
My family had a truck stop, and he worked at the truck stop.
That next day, someone at the truck stop looked in
the back of his truck,
and he saw a sleeping bag that was covered in blood,
and Billy saw him looking in the back of his truck.
In hindsight,
when I looked back at his truck burning down --
he did it just to get rid of evidence.
It's burning, and it's gone.
One afternoon,
when I got home from school,
I ran to get the paper, and on the front page
was this huge headline -- "Body Found on Capitol Peak."
Mom, you're not going to believe this.
What is it, honey?
My mom was cooking dinner, and I said, "Mom, listen to this."
A girl my age dead up on Capitol Peak.
KAREN: I had just been to that very area where
she was discovered with my 9th grade science class.
And I started reading the gruesome details.
"There they found the partially nude body of a young girl."
KAREN: Her body had just been left out in the open.
There was this picture of her clothing.
And more descriptions about her.
Billy was there, and his body language
showed that he was bothered.
"They're still looking for her left shoe,
"her purse, and her wallet.
The victim was wearing blue jeans."
And my brother said, "Would you just stop that?
Just stop." -That's enough!
AS KAREN: What is your problem?
KAREN: And I was like, okay.
I said, "I'm just reading the paper."
He said, "Yeah, I've heard enough."
I can remember the look on his face as he
sat there, kind of like this, and he put his head
in his hand, and it was like, "Stop it."
Stop!
KAREN: He said, "I don't wanna hear that."
But I didn't think too much about the case
for years, because they didn't bring anybody up on charges.
SUSAN: Even though they had suspicion of Bill,
they never had enough to arrest him.
They never really knew who killed her.
And, at the time, we had Ted Bundy, and she was
listed as a possible Bundy murder, because she fit
the description.
We thought Bundy killed this girl.
It was around Thanksgiving, and we were eating dinner.
It was snowing -- snow is not really common where we live,
and if you have a big truck,
you're gonna go out and help people.
And right after dinner, he just left and said
he was gonna go help pull people out of the ditch.
But he's not going out there to help women.
He was going out to find prey.
The next morning,
Billy was arrested.
The day after Thanksgiving, I walked into the kitchen,
saw my mom crying.
He had actually raped a woman while
he was supposedly out doing his charitable service.
For some reason, he let her live.
SUSAN: He was convicted of kidnapping
and of rape
and was sentenced to 48 years.
The entire family was upset, but not me.
I was thrilled.
It was 11 years after my abuse had stopped.
In 1986, I was finishing my student teaching
and living at my mom's house,
and I was going through papers,
and there was, like, a discharge plan.
I heard that he got 48 years for rape,
but he was eligible for parole after three.
If Billy were to get out,
he was gonna have a job at the truck stop, and he was gonna
live at my mom's house, and I read that,
and I just freaked out.
All I thought about were all the kids he could live around.
Here he was in the system, but nobody knew
what a pervert he was.
I wanted it in his record that
he was to be nowhere near children.
That's when I went to Thurston County Sheriffs,
and I said I need to talk to somebody about my brother.
I went in to tell them about my abuse,
but pretty quickly, we weren't talking about my abuse anymore.
DETECTIVE: Have a seat, please.
SUSAN: A detective came out and said,
"Let me tell you why I'm interested in your brother."
He had an 8 x 10 picture of Katherine Devine on his desk.
And he said, "She's my very first victim,
"and I think your brother did this.
Is there anything that you can share with me?"
Anything at all that can help me close this case.
He still had that picture, 28 years later on his desk.
He wasn't gonna retire,
he said, until he found out who did that.
They always knew that the body was found this day.
His truck burned this day, and right before that, we have
a witness that sees blood
and a sleeping bag and one boot in the back of his truck,
just blows up down the road.
There is one thing that comes to mind.
When I was younger, he would bring me along.
They were very interested when I told him that he
would use me as bait to pick up women hitchhikers.
What I told the police was enough for them to get
a warrant the next day and get that DNA from Billy.
When he called, I answered the phone, and he was mad.
[angrily] "Let me talk to mom."
I mean, that's how he said it, [angrily] "Let me talk to mom."
[normally] And I'm like, "Well, what happened?"
And I said, "I went to the police,
and I told him what you did to me,"
and he was saying, "You know what they do to people in here
if you do stuff like that?"
He said, "They kill guys in here for that."
I'm like, too bad.
You know, and I said, "I'm gonna make sure
you don't get out."
He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
He looked right at me when he was
found guilty, and I just flipped him the bird.
It was the best feeling in the world.
It felt great.
In the end,
I really loved knowing that it
was his little sister that got him.
I don't like to call myself a victim,
because I've learned to say I'm a survivor.
My other brother called me.
AS SUSAN: Hey, what's up?
SUSAN: And I remember, I was in my house.
I was walking up the stairs, and he said, "Susie!
Susie! Bill died."
And I said, "Well, did he die like mom and dad?
Like, was it peaceful? Was he asleep?"
And he said, "He had a heart attack. He just died."
Okay. So he was aware he was dying.
And I was so happy, meaning that in the end,
when he was breathing his last breath, he knew...
he knew that nobody cared anymore.
He was awake. He didn't die in his sleep.
That makes me feel better,
knowing that he had some terror.
SUSAN: Telling my secret saved lives.
I know that for a fact,
but our family was still fractured, because...
they weren't real happy
I went to the police in the beginning.
KAREN: I know a lot of the family just
did not want her to bring anything up.
I wish I had been more supportive,
but at the time, he was in prison.
I didn't know exactly what she was reporting on.
I was kind of like, what's the point?
The only outcome
is going to be more publicity.
SUSAN: Karen and I cut all ties.
We didn't talk until last year, and then I learned
she was sick.
Meeting for this brought us together.
It made us talk about things
that we probably should have talked about years ago.
I wasn't -- I want to be clear.
I wasn't upset he was turned in,
just kind of the way it was done.
It was pretty emotional at the time,
and it was just like... -Yeah.
I would have liked to have known in advance.
But I knew going in,
I wasn't gonna have any support.
I knew they were gonna be mad.
Mom was furious.
Yes, but that's not how I would have reacted.
I wouldn't have tried to talk you out of it.
I would not have.
We've gone many years without speaking.
And secrets are a dangerous thing.
Deciding to do this interview
opened up communication between us that wasn't there.
SUSAN: I think he knew he was gonna get away with things.
Look at it.
He killed someone in Maryland,
and he didn't go to jail.
-He went to a hospital. -Yeah.
So I think he certainly thought
the consequences
didn't apply to him the same as other people.
As an adult,
I became a teacher of young children,
and I made it a point
that
children knew they were in charge of their own body.
When something happens,
you say, "Don't do that."
That makes me feel very proud
that a lot of kids were
helped by that.
SUSAN: All the DNA cases that are popping up,
would it surprise me if another DNA match came up from
some cold case? Not at all. -Not at all.
-Not at all, -I agree.
because hitchhikers, they were everywhere,
especially outside the truck stop.
Yeah.
SUSAN: I hope Karen is proud of me.
I think she is.
And I've learned things about her and how
she felt about things that I didn't know.
KAREN: Well, I think Billy did
a lot of damage in our family.
I think we're all victims of Billy in so many ways.
We're just kind of the...
[sniffles]
the casualties that he left in his wake,
-Yeah. -and many people want to forget
what he did, and it does need to be mentioned.
But I think I'm about all talked out on Billy.
I would like to put him to rest for
the rest of my life, to be honest.
I'd like to end everything on a good note.
I am glad to be here with you.
I'm glad we're connecting back together.
I think it was important that we reconnected when we did.
I was nervous about being here together and being sick.
This process takes a lot out of me,
and I had to weigh
whether it was worth the exertion, but...
I believe in doing the right thing,
and I think this was the right thing.
The overall thing that I got
ahead of this was
just the unconditional love that we have for each other,
which I never thought was possible,
to be honest.
I got my sister back.
It's pretty amazing,
two sisters that were always at odds,
in the very end, had a common purpose,
and it's been months now, and every day,
something new comes in my head about what I learned about her.
I know she was glad she did this.
Just the smile on her face afterwards.
She just felt listened to.
She kind of always wanted to
have the last word,
and she just tied up all those loose ends,
told her story, and then let go.
Looking back, I know that she felt that it was a good --
it was a good way to end.
If you have the opportunity to tell a story that can make
a difference, you tell it.
She couldn't have done it without me, and I couldn't have
done it without her.