MAN: The thing inside of me, it's like...
the appetite.
It's like a wolf that's...
feeling...the hunger.
Everyone is wondering what's happened.
Of course, it's a small town, and, you know,
you just don't think things like this are gonna happen here,
and everyone's just concerned,
and our hearts go out for the families.
MAN: Family members mill about as sheriff's deputies,
the Division of Criminal Investigation,
and Altoona Rescue crew,
and then Des Moines Crime Scene Mobile Command
descend on the farmstead -- tonight,
hope for a break in the case.
Investigators want to find a red 1995 Chevy Tahoe.
The sheriff's office believes a man
named Russell Overlin is driving this truck.
The big question tonight -- could Russell Overlin explain
what led investigators to spend
much of the night digging in the elderly
couple's backyard.
Overlin's history is consistent with
somebody who is displaying a parasitic lifestyle.
He hasn't been able to hold down jobs consistently.
He has not only employment instability because of
his work performance, but because interpersonally,
he doesn't seem mature enough to realize
how you handle interactions with bosses.
He's in his fifties, living on his parents' property,
in a trailer that they own.
[Overlin sighs]
The reaction of, "Really?" is not a normal
reaction to finding out your parents are dead.
Even if he maintained he didn't kill them
or tried to pretend that he didn't,
that reaction is just -- it's incredibly telling.
The detective knows what's going on, just from that.
MORGAN: He's sitting back in his chair, almost twiddling his thumbs.
Then he asks the question,
"So you found them," or "You found the bodies."
So then he turns around to poking to see
how much do they know -- someone with psychopathy,
they like to control the situation.
They want to slowly dispense the information they have,
because it will all be about them.
He's gonna make them work.
There's no remorse in what he describes.
It's -- it's as if he's just giving
the facts of it happened this way,
almost if you were narrating what was on a video.
It's sort of this commentary on his own actions
that's really indifferent and detached.
Overlin's description of a fairly gruesome crime
and the amount of effort
that it took for him to kill his stepmother
and his father is, again, just very matter-of-fact.
He's not fazed by the fact that he was violently involved
in any kind of interaction with them.
But the fact that he returned to his stepmother
and then beat her the number of times
that he did suggests that, in that moment,
he lost control, and the only emotions he was in touch
with were his anger and rage towards her.
I think a lot of his odd attempts
at humor are much more for his own enjoyment,
kind of in-jokes with himself and less for the detectives.
His "ladies first" with a little bit
of emotion, kind of a chuckle almost.
That's -- that's concerning -- it's --
it's callous -- when we see emotion, it's dark.
The statement that his stepmother wrote like
a serial killer is another demonstration
of a really glib attitude -- on the one hand,
glorifying his actions, and on the other hand, he's really
reducing his stepmother's reputation and her existence
down to something that justifies his behavior.
He's complaining that she's saying that it's
making the place smell like an outhouse,
or the simple fact to ask him
to take shoes off coming into the house.
This is enraging to him.
We think that those kinds of things reflect a very,
very fragile ego on the person's part.
They feel insulted very easily, because he thinks
what he's doing is just fine.
He owns the phrase, "I'm a bum."
There's some kind of self-loathing there,
that he's in the circumstances he's in.
I'm wondering how much that financial reality is
what kind of catalyzed it happening when it happened,
because suddenly, he couldn't just cruise
maybe the way he had.
SAHNI: Overlin's planning is somewhat half-baked.
He doesn't really think through the logistics of
how he's going to live on the run.
He spends four years lying in wait
in his head, trying to plot out the perfect way to get
rid of them, but even there, you hear this lack of effort.
He didn't want to have to struggle to do it.
And then ultimately, he decides on a Sunday, while they're
at church, that that's the day he's going to do it.
And he lays in wait for them to
come home, and then bludgeons them both to death.
SAHNI: Lizzie Borden is a well-known case of a woman
who, in the 1890s, killed her own father and stepmother
and stood trial for that.
And the fact that Overlin chooses to draw that parallel,
I think, speaks to his own ego.
He's proud of what he's done.
This is somewhat self aggrandizing.
He's making himself important.
He's making himself elevated in terms of his status.
The idea of being thrown into a well
while you're still alive,
you know, horror movies are made on the topic.
It's something that most people have
a very strong emotional reaction to.
He's talking about how much joy he took from it.
That's -- that's some impressive sadism.
When he's talking about suicide,
um, I don't think he's describing so much depression,
but he's describing feeling rejected from the entire world
and not having a place in it.
He's probably spent a lot of his life feeling horrible, um,
horrible and judged and not appreciated and entitled
and not getting attention or acknowledgement.
Him telling police that they look sadder than he does
I think actually shows some insight.
It shows a little bit of awareness and willingness
to say, "Yeah, I'm not motivated
"by the same things most people are.
"I thought I'd be dead by now.
I'm still here," and he doesn't really
want to continue to live.
He doesn't get anything out of this life -- instead of getting
busy living, he's waiting to die.
He is the center of attention, and for him,
that's got to be satisfying, because this might be the most
notoriety and meaning and attention
he's gotten from other people.
When we say that psychopaths are narcissistic and that
everything has to be about them, what they're doing
and focusing on is trying to prove to themselves
and other people that they matter,
that they're powerful, that they're important.