Dot Your Eyes

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We're going somewhere dark, somewhere dangerous. Most people would never dare enter the place we are going. There's no telling what horrors we'll find, what terrors we'll uncover. Don't say I didn't warn you. We might discover terrible monsters lurking there. Be careful, they could follow you out. Or maybe they're already inside you. Are you afraid? Good. Now you are ready to enter the warning woods.

It's been almost 98 years since they put out the first home televisions. 98 years. Some people look at these 4K TVs that take up a whole basement wall and say, can you believe it took less than a hundred years to go from a black and white fuzzbox to this? As somebody who saw more of those ninety-eight years than he missed, I find it even more shocking.

The young people who say things like that don't yet know how short a time that really is, or how quickly seismic changes, for better or worse, can happen. I, Freddie Westover, was born in 1975. Since this country had just about used up its seismic shift quota for the century, my childhood felt pretty calm, pretty quiet. The 70s were full of backyards and swimming pools, and that rich green that for some reason always looks so ominous on tape.

I remember it was about the 80s I grew into the stress the grown-ups felt. Tension at home, tension at school, tension in town, tension around the world. I didn't always understand it, but I felt it. I could be wrong, but I think around then is when T V stations started figuring out how to keep people glued to the screen with bad news, scandals, and horror. I remember hearing this new phrase get tossed around at school all the time. A phrase we all learned from the news Serial killer.

We didn't have any technical definition for it. To me and my other seventh-grade friends biking around all over the place, serial killer was just a term for a monster lurking behind human teeth. Your neighbor could have been one, your pastor, your babysitter, that family friend your parents had known since they were kids. Anyone could have been unmasked at any time, revealed to be a murderous beast.

My only comfort was nobody turning up dead or going missing in Ankony, Iowa, where I lived at the time. Little did I know, somebody was about to steal that comfort from me, along with everyone else in the state.

January fifteenth, nineteen eighty seven. That was a Thursday. I remember school had just restarted after the holiday break, My dad worked at a bank in Des Moines and my mom nannied two brats down the road. My parents usually didn't come home until after 5 30, so I had a couple hours each afternoon to watch TV if my friends didn't come bug me. And January 15th, 1987, was too cold for bugging anybody. I popped on our big ugly TV and plopped myself on the couch with a bowl of frosted flakes.

The reporter, a woman with red hair, even redder lipstick, and a blue blazer, spoke grimly to me while standing in front of a white two-story farmhouse-style home surrounded by police tape. She told me the sergeants were a friendly local family, well known and well liked by their community. I read the Chiron to learn why we were discussing this sergeant family.

It read, Scranton family slain overnight, killer at large. Below the Chiron, a tip line scrolled by with a message encouraging anyone with information about the case to call. Scranton is a teeny tiny town about seventy miles from Ankeny. I don't think it's any bigger now than it was back then. It's the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, so of course, everybody knew the sergeants.

I watched the reporter interview neighbors and friends, all who shed tears as they described the types of good, honest people Red, Marie, Lily, and Garrett Sargent were. Lily and Garrett's ages, eight and five, respectively, got mentioned at least a dozen times as the hour dragged on. The news really drove the senselessness and brutality of their deaths home.

I had to wait until the six o'clock broadcast began to get a clear picture of what actually happened to the sergeant family, at least as much as could be gleaned from the crime scene. That morning, january fifteenth, the kids hadn't shown up at school Now Scranton was, probably still is, the sort of place where something like that got noticed right away. The principal called the house and got no answer, so he called the metal shop where Red Sergeant worked.

Whoever he talked to there said Red never showed up either. The sergeants had perfect class attendance, and Red was reportedly a hard worker who rarely showed up late, let alone skipped out on work entirely. The principal drove over to their house on the outer edge of the town and knocked on the door. Red Sergeant's car was still parked in the driveway, he said, and all the curtains were still drawn over the windows, even though it was around ten o'clock in the morning.

The principal went around back and found the kitchen door unlocked. Not that uncommon back then in a quiet town like Scranton. I know that's impossible to imagine unless you grew up in a time and a place like that, but it's true. Fearing for the family's safety, he went inside. He's the one who found them. You could see in his face that he'd never be the same again. I found the broadcast from that day on YouTube in a compilation of news clips about the murders.

The principal is swaying and bouncing on his toes next to the crime scene tape as he says. Uh, so inside I started calling out, you know, saying their names, calling for'em. Um, but what I noticed first right away was this uh metallic smell. I didn't know what it was. I kept on looking and uh well, that smell I guess was blood. That particular clip ends there, but there's another stitched to it in the compilation.

It shows the principal standing outside the school instead of at the murder house. He seems much calmer, but that ghostly, vacant look still haunts his features. He explains to a different reporter. I checked behind the first door I got to, which turned out to be Lily's room. God, such a sweet little kid. Eight years old. He crosses himself. She uh it was obvious she was dead, so I moved on to the next room. What told you she was dead? asked the reporter.

The principal looks at him like he's told an inappropriate joke. His face gets mean and he leans in close to say Besides all the blood all over her and her pillows and her carpet? She had big bloody X's where her eyes should have been. Come on, man, you know that. Unfazed, the reporter, maybe trying to make a name for himself, maybe wondering if the principal could be a suspect, asks, Why didn't you just call the police at that point?

Cause I thought I hoped I might find at least one of'em still alive, the principal says, making it sound more like a question. The reporter stays silent but must give some nonverbal indication off camera for the principal to continue. Next room belonged to the parents. He says. He looks down. It was dark, you know, on account of all the curtains all being shut. So I flipped on the light. His eyes visibly redden as tears form in the corners.

His mouth hangs partway open and twitches in the corners as he blinks the tears away. He says, Whole rest of the family was in there. Master bedroom. Little Garrett must have had a nightmare or something that had him sleeping with his parents that night. Same Ah. He has to stop to wipe tears away. Same wounds on all of'em. The eyes just like somebody. He shrugs. Nothing left. The clip ends there.

You can imagine how that affected me, having just learned so recently of the existence of serial killers, of men who live ordinary lives by day and take innocent lives for fun at night. My family, my friends, everyone I knew was waiting with bated breath for the next strike. Every time we turned on the TV, we expected to see another house, photos of the next murdered family. At night, we all listened extra carefully to the sounds our houses made.

Sure the murders happened seventy miles away. That's nothing but a casual cruise.

I don't remember how long it took for those fears to subside, but I know it was less than a year. I had all but forgotten about the sergeant murders by january fifteenth, nineteen eighty eight, when the next family of four failed to open their curtains in the morning. The Sheppard family lived in a white farmhouse just outside of Humboldt, which is roughly sixty five miles from Scranton.

No civilians entered the shepherd home that morning. We didn't get quite as much detail about their deaths from the sheriffs who discovered them while performing a welfare check. But we all imagined what they might have seen as we watched the news reports that morning. I still remember that sinking dread coming back to me, double as the news cameras panned the isolated house and surrounding Acreage.

The kids' toys lay in the driveway. I could picture the children abandoning them when their mother called them in for dinner the previous evening, when she called them inside for the very last time. One of the camera operators kept zooming in on the windows, each covered by a white curtain inside.

I shudder even now thinking about what happened behind those curtains in the middle of the night. The terror, the confusion. I hope those poor kids just thought they were having a nightmare if they woke up at all. Like I said, we didn't get all the details about how the shepherds were killed right away. My parents said the police probably didn't want people thinking the murders connected to the previous years, but no one could deny the coincidences, the date, the family, the house.

And perhaps the most troubling similarity. Once again, the police could not trace a single suspect. We didn't learn that the shepherd's eyes had been eviscerated like the sergeant's until the next year, when the powers that be decided it was in the public interest to tell us. You can maybe guess why. On January 15, 1980.

In 1989, we all waited to see if there would be another slaughter. Everyone I talked to at school wondered if the killer would strike again. A few days passed, though, and we all started believing the second killing might have been a coincidence or a copycase. Cat. Someone, I can't remember who, suggested the killer got locked up or killed sometime during the year without anyone knowing he'd been responsible for the Sergeant and Shepard murders.

But on January 18th, I turned on the news to see another white farmhouse with its curtains drawn in the middle of the day, surrounded by yellow tape. Located in the center of Ackley, Iowa, the house belonged to the Beerman family. Jim and Mallory Beerman ran a small thrift store downtown on top of homeschooling their two children, ages 8 and 10. Tim and Rachel.

January 14th was a Saturday that year, and all the businesses downtown stayed closed on Sundays. When the Beerman's little store didn't open Monday morning, some people the TV crews interviewed said nobody really noticed. Ackley is tiny. There's a chance not one person even tried going to the thrift store that day.

I guess a few people noticed when the store didn't open on Tuesday, though, and when it still remained closed on Wednesday, a neighbor tried calling the beerman's house. Nobody answered, so they walked over and knocked on the door. That YouTube compilation I told you about earlier included a clip from that neighbor, Beth Greene, that I vividly remember watching on the living room TV while eating a lemon poppy seed bagel.

I only remember that detail because of how hard the interview hit me. It felt something like being stabbed myself. In the clip, Miss Greenie, a grouchy looking woman whose age had been severely distorted by drug use, is asked by a reporter, What did you do after no one answered the door? Beth says, You gotta understand, honey, this is a tight-knit community here. I knew that family, and I know that house, so I knew when I was standing outside the door that something inside was very, very wrong.

How? Intuition? asks the reporter. Beth says, I just told you I know that house. I just got a feelin' in my heart, you know. We gonna pretend none of us were thinking about those killings from the last couple years? Families with two kids both times? Well, those sure was top of my mind when they didn't come to the door. But you went in anyway? The reporter asked. Beth squints as she says. You know that already.

Are you comfortable sharing what you saw? asks the reporter. Comfortable? Beth laughs. Comfortable? No. But folks gotta know. Somebody's doing this every year, and they're doing it the same way every time. Right when I walked in, I smelled hm. She stops and shakes her head. That smell took me upstairs. I already knew what I was gonna find. Still went up though. I must be some kind of She laughs. You're gonna have to bleep that, ain't ya?

The reporter says. Yes, but we're actually live if you could not Sure, honey. Sure. My apologies to the viewers at home. Uh hey, if a little B word bugs you, you'd better close your ears for what I'm about to say, though. Anyway, all the doors was wide open, but it was still pretty dark seeing how all the curtains was shut. I went to the very back room upstairs. That's where the parents slept. That's where I found all of them.

Some of the gleaming confidence this neighbor displays in her fifteen minutes of fame fades. She licks her lips, swallows, and continues in a lower tone as if she's scared of being overheard, which is funny, considering she was talking into a TV broadcast microphone. The mother was I'm not sure if I should say their names. You may, says the reporter. Okay. Mallory. She had both kids tucked underneath her in the bed, protecting'em, you know. Beth sniffles.

She was a big lady, so um her back was all cut up, had all these bloody wounds all over it where you could see the guy just went to town and the kids were just sort of trapped under her after she She uh well, I don't know if she died right away, but the kids must have been trapped, because both of them were still underneath her, and their eyes they had their eyes. I'm sorry. It's okay. The reporter says, withdraw.

Drawing the microphone until Beth collects herself. She nods and the microphone swings back into frame. Sorry, it's just I knew them kids well. I'd let'em play in my yard, you know, capture the flag or whatnot. Anyway, um Um I wasn't even thinking about Jim, their dad. Wasn't thinking much at all, really. But I turn around and see there he is, kinda shoved into the corner behind the door. Looked like he'd probably been holding it shut.

Whoever did this must have been pretty strong to get past him.

That's where the clip ends. The detail about the victim's eyes being stabbed in the third killing prompted the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigations to reveal the Shepherd family shared the same wounds. firmly establishing the modus operandi of this annual killer. They also told us the Beermans appeared to be the first family who fought back, albeit futile. I didn't know which sounded scarier, being killed in your sleep. Or fighting for your life.

Sometime after this third massacre is when the killer received his official moniker, the Dot Your Eyes Killer. Some also referred to him as DYE. I've had a hard time tracing the origin of the name. It seems like everyone on TV, radio, and the newspapers started using it simultaneously. Dot your eyes is obviously a reference to the way he finished off his victims. The methodical way he went about slaying entire families without leaving a trace.

It also served as a warning for everyone not to leave any doors or windows unlocked before they went to bed on January 14th.

The memories of the dot your eyes killer's fourth victims became the first victims of his notoriety. What I mean is On January 15, 1990, the news talked more about the killer than the killed. Even people outside of the state from coast to coast started asking who is the Dai Rise killer? The news, as it still does, catered to the masses.

Their names were Winston, Jessa, Wayne, and Joey Holt, and they lived in a trailer home on the south side of Ames, which kept the killings in that 70 mile radius. I still remember the Holt murders because they'd brought DYE the closest to my family. Family yet. Although if you measured from Humboldt to Ames, it expanded the range to about 85 miles, which made families of four all over the state a little more worried.

The other reason the Holt killings were noteworthy was their home. It wasn't a two-story white farmhouse this time. At a press conference, I watched through heavy static. The police chief called this divergence significant enough to suggest the possibility of Of a copycat. For weeks, people asked if my family had checked up on all our relatives. Many believed that somewhere out there, a family of four lay rotting behind the closed curtains of an isolated farmhouse. but they were never found.

This started the annual tradition of everyone calling their relatives and friends on the morning of January 15th each year. In nineteen ninety one, the news reported record high requests for welfare checks across the state, but almost everyone reported was found to be all right. Police did find an elderly woman named Naomi Reichart, who broke her neck in the shower, and, of course, the Perry family.

I'd be lying if I said I remember all their names, and I could look them up, but we've still got quite a few years to cover. I can't pause to memorialize each and every victim, as right and just as that would be. All I'll say is their house also failed the previously established pattern. The same copycat concerns didn't rise to any level I ever heard of. I share the belief of one news anchor who suggested DYE realized he could cause more terror by mixing things up.

Two of the next four years, ninety-three and ninety-four, did have a copycat. Thankfully, the second year the new killer struck, someone shot him before he hurt anybody. He survived and is still serving time for the family he killed the previous year, the D'Amikos in Sharon, Pennsylvania. He confessed to wanting to start a national trend to make January 14th a night of terror across the entire country.

The example the justice system made out of him seemed to keep that from happening, but it didn't stop the real dot your eyes killer from quietly carrying out his annual attacks, for which investigators still could not determine any motive. Dye remained a faceless, soulless creature in the minds of many, myself included.

The copycat killer had a personal effect on me as well. I went out and bought a gun. That was in'95. At the age of twenty, I'd just gotten married, and my wife was already pregnant with twins.

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During a sensational murder trial, the legend of H.H. Holmes grew from sleazy con man to one of America's most notorious and prolific killers. But how much was true? The story of H. H. Holmes is happening now on the infamous America podcast.

In 1996, we all thought it was over. For three days, the news periodically injected statements that no victims had yet been discovered before mentions of the.yuri's killer trailed off. No one outright claimed the killings had ended, but the hopeful believed. I counted myself among them, until learning about the discovery a little boy made outside of Parkersburg, Iowa, on january nineteenth.

While snowmobiling in a private field owned by a family friend, the nine-year-old boy told his father he needed to take a leak. His dad drove him to the edge of the property, marked by a few rows of evergreen trees. He told his son to pick a tree, do his business, and come right back. A few trees deep, the curious boy noticed a ditch on the other side of the trees, half filled by a frozen stream.

A few feet up the stream, toward the road, he saw an odd, snow covered shape protruding from the bank. He shouted to his dad, but his dad couldn't hear him over the rumble of the idling snowmobile, so the boy just decided to run down there and check it out real quick. He trudged down the embankment toward what he quickly realized was a buried vehicle. A white 93 Buick Lasabre. Just the right sized car for a family of four.

When he brushed the snow off the rear passenger side window, his scream brought his dad running. He saw two girls, just about his own age, bound with strips from their seatbelts in the back seat, and their eye sockets protruding. bulging with frozen gore. Police pulled all four members of the Dalby family from Natla Saber a few hours later. Here's a clip from a news report. Each member of the family had their seatbelt cut, then wrapped around them to bind their arms.

Police doubt the killer held them captive for long, this according to the Butler County Sheriff's Department, because the family easily could have escaped these improvised restraints given enough time. Here, a photo I distinctly remember of the buried whiteless saber, with all its doors left open after the victims had been removed, its bumper dipping toward the frozen stream, and snow falling all around it. is shown as the anchor continues.

Due to the Dolby family being murdered in their car rather than their home, police are still working to find anything that links this crime to the string of murders widely known as the Dot Your Eyes killings. It's true. The location of the bodies kept people wondering if another family might turn up in a house somewhere. I'm among those who believed the Dalbies were murdered at the hand of another copycat.

But, as time would tell, fingerprints found in the Dolby's car and the homes of previous victims matched. Unfortunately, they still didn't match anyone in any criminal database. Why the.your eyes killer committed the ninety-six murders that way is still unknown. Maybe he wanted to try something new. Maybe the opportunity just presented itself and he took advantage.

The Lasabre was found to have a flat tire, the front passenger side tire. In a press conference, the head of the DCI said they couldn't determine whether the tire was punctured before or after the car was rolled away from the road and into the The ditch.

I'm in the camp who believes the ninety six murders were a crime of opportunity, perhaps performed on the way to commit the intended murders. I bet that shook the people who lived around there. A different family of four might have been the original target. and they escaped their fate purely by chance.

So where are we now? Ninety seven? Well, back in October of ninety six, I bought a house for my family. My wife and twin boys, who would have been around one and a half by January of nineteen ninety seven. The night of the fourteenth, I stayed up until around three in the morning, when I finally passed out on the couch with my gun tucked between the cushions.

On the fifteenth, Ida County deputies performed welfare check in Ida Grove, a tiny town not unlike Scranton, at a white farmhouse not unlike the sergeants, back in 87. For the 10-year anniversary of his first attributed murder, the dot your eyes killer returned to his root. Deputies found the Pendergrass family in nearly identical positions as the Sgt. family, and, of course, with their eyes eviscerated in their sockets. In the words of one TV anchor.

The posing, him displaying the corpses this way, proves he is thoughtful, methodical, and likely well aware of his own notoriety. He's breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, letting us all know he knows we're watching. Everyone wanted to know why the dot your eyes killer did what he did. Why January fourteenth? Why families of four? Why, at least most commonly, two-story white farmhouses?

The media did their best to satisfy viewers asking these questions. After each killing, the news cycle always included interviews and panels with criminologists, victimologists, psychologists, and even the occasional psychic. Speculations about the killer losing his own family of Ford tragedy that january fourteenth could be the anniversary of some horrific event in his own life dominated the public discourse. Criminal profilers diagnosed him as organized, highly intelligent, and confident.

One expert from the FBI stoked even greater fear after a dateline NBC interview with Tom Brokaw, in which the expert alluded to other crimes the dot your eyes killer might be committing the rest of the year. Peace. too practised for this to be something he only does once a year, the expert claims in the interview.

It's uploaded on YouTube. He says, and I remember this moment from watching it live on TV. I'd urge people to stay alert when approaching January 14th, because I see a real possibility this guy studying even entering the victim's home. Holmes before the actual murders. You mean he's breaking in more than once? Tom Brokaw asks. The expert rests his hands in his lap, his fingers gripping each other tightly, as he says.

He's too precise for me to believe he's only doing it once a year. Maybe he started that way, but I bet he rehearses now. The murders are too uh forgive this term perfect. Rarely do any of the victims show signs they woke up before he attacked them. Personally, I believe he studies the families he chooses for a long time. And no, I wouldn't be surprised if that includes prior break-ins, Tom. This guy's spending time in these houses without leaving a trace until january fourteenth.

That expert's assertion was the only evidence D. YE committed other crimes, but everyone suspected the expert's claims were at least partially true. We all thought the guy must have been lurking around small towns in search of households meeting his criteria. Then he watched them. From afar, from up close, who could possibly know?

Twice. Twice I've been reported to the police for confronting strangers parked outside my house in the evening. One was delivering food to my neighbor, and the other told me he'd pulled over to check his directions to a friend's house. The second guy, a tall, broad shouldered man in a flannel and snow pants, gave me a horrible feeling, even though he acted friendly while explaining his situation.

Maybe it was because he was driving a tan Buickless saber, similar to the one the Dalby family was murdered in. Whatever the reason, I told him I had a gun and would shoot him if I saw him again.

Little did I know, my next door neighbor, a mousy old man who I don't think cared much for me already, had just stepped out with his poodly little dog. He scooped the dog up and ran inside. I waited on my porch for The police, who inevitably arrived ten minutes later, well after the Tanlessaber was gone. making threats, particularly with a firearm. I explained why I'd done it, and they asked if I had good reason to think he was casing my house, but I said no.

They told me if the guy pressed charges, they'd have to come back and arrest me. And I told them okay, if that's what they had to do. I got an apologetic attaboy from one of those cops on January 14th, though. Oh boy. I guess it's time to tell this story. Corners of our Comes a game show. Ridiculous than terrifying. Welcome to Tickled to Death. I'm your host, Roz Hernandez, and I'll be guiding guests.

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As had become my tradition, I made myself a big cup of black coffee at nine PM on january fourteenth. This was in nineteen ninety eight. I turned on all the lights downstairs after my wife took the twins up for bed and flipped on the TV. I turned on a muted news channel, I can't remember which, in case the killer got apprehended somewhere. I kept the sound off so I could listen though. I interrogated every noise I heard.

I read until my wife came down and played a few rounds of Scrabble with me. She asked if I was really going to stay up all night, and I told her I was. She asked if I really expected to catch the dot your eyes killer, and I told her no. By staying up and keeping the lights on, I was making sure he'd stay far away from our house, from our children, from her. She teased me, but I felt her gratitude when she hugged me before shuffling up to bed.

After she'd gone, I made myself a bagel with cream cheese before returning to the living room. There was some rerun report about the stock market on. I paced the living room while I ate, attempting to wake my body up a bit. It was just after eleven, so I had less than an hour to go if the killer planned to drop in on the fourteenth.

No one really knew for sure whether he actually killed before midnight. The time of death estimates for his victims, I'll put them right around then, but who knows, I thought. Maybe he would lurk outside, waiting me out. That's why I planned to stay up until the sun rose to replace me. I peered through the curtains with a couple bites of my bagel left.

Behind one of the houses across the street, I noticed the front bumper of a car parked in the rear alley that wasn't usually there. It probably won't surprise you to learn I had a pair of binoculars within reach. They helped me see the Buick hood ornament mounted to the tan hood. My mouth became too dry to chew, and the rest of the bagel fell out of my cold, stiff hand. I felt so much pressure in my neck I almost screamed to relieve it, but put all my focus on swallowing the bagel instead.

An adrenaline rush, panic, whatever it was, blinded and paralyzed me for a few seconds before I hurried into action. I retrieved my pistol from between the couch cushions, slipped on my coat, and snuck outside, careful to lock the front door behind me. With the gun hidden in my coat pocket, I snuck between the houses and approached the parked car. License plate, Q E C zero eight zero.

I got it that time. The Lasaper was empty. There wasn't even a gum wrapper inside it. It looked how you'd imagine a meticulously organized psycho would keep his vehicle. Spotless. If that car belonged to the dot your eyes killer, as I suspected it did, that meant he was lurking around or inside someone's house at that very moment. It crossed my mind I could have already been too late to stop him, but I didn't dwell on that. Besides my own family, I knew of only one on the street: the Corobants.

Who had two children. They lived in the two story eggshell colored house three down from where the La Sabre was parked.

Knowing I could potentially have seconds to spare, I ran down the alley and into the Corriban's backyard. There, I wasn't sure what to do. Ring the doorbell? I couldn't peer in because all the curtains were drawn shut. Of course it was the middle of the night and almost every window on the street was covered. Still, it gave me a sinking feeling. I decided to do the Corobans a favor and make sure all their doors were locked and no windows were left open.

I figured after that, I'd go back home, call the police about the suspicious vehicle, and let them handle the rest while I stood guard over my own family. Right away I made a discovery that altered my plan though. A metal Jimmy protruded from the Coravant's backdoor lockset, allowing the door to swing open freely.

You might think I should have gone straight home to call the police, but I didn't know whether any of the Corbants might still be alive, and I had my pistol. I thought I could save their lives and end DYE's reign of terror all at once. After I snuck in and found myself in the Coravant's kitchen, the reality of the situation I'd created set in. I didn't know this house. I didn't know the rooms or the closets or any of the other places someone could hide.

I'd entered unknown territory with a man who could famously take out entire families without raising an alarm. My only advantage, I hoped, I prayed, was that he didn't know I was there yet. I heard a thump upstairs. Someone was walking up there. If it wasn't the killer, that meant at least one member of the family was still alive. That meant I needed to intervene quickly.

Their phone was mounted to the kitchen wall, so on my way to the stairs, I took it off the hook, dialed 911, and left it ringing on the counter, hoping the cops could trace the landline and send someone over to check things out. This was my insurance plan, in case things went silent. went sideways. What I didn't consider was my actual insurance plan, or lack thereof. If I hadn't made it out of there, my wife and boys would have been left without any safety net besides our meager savings.

It was a very stupid thing that I did, even to potentially save lives. But I did it. I crept up the stairs, not knowing if any step might be the one to give me away. I listened for the sounds I had imagined as an 11-year-old picturing the sergeant murders. The sandy scrape of a knife contacting bone and the wet. Squelching of flesh and whatever eyes are made of. Those sounds over and over. I imagined their muffled shouts beneath the killer's other hand. But I heard none of that. The house was so

Still, so quiet. I felt if I listened hard enough I should be able to hear someone breathing. I held my own breath to try to listen at the top of the stairs. That's when he pounced. I only caught the flash of his eyes and his blood-stained knife before he slammed into me, almost throwing me down the stairs. I caught hold of his shirt and spun myself a few degrees away from the staircase.

His knife arced toward my hand. My other hand acted of its own will, bringing my gun up and firing once in a single motion. The boom in that narrow hallway hit my chest so hard I wasn't sure I hadn't hit myself at first. I heard the dot your eyes killer grunt.

Front. He stumbled halfway down the stairs before catching himself on the rail. His knife clattered the whole way down. Freeze! I shouted, aiming down at him. He was indeed the same man who'd been parked outside my house. Was my family his original target? I'll never know. He touched his thigh and his hand came away bloody. I'd only grazed him, but unarmed and at gunpoint, it didn't matter. I had him, and the cops I prayed were on their way.

Dad? A small voice behind me asked. It obviously belonged to a child, but my whole body turned automatically as if facing a threat. At that moment, with my back turned to him, D.Y.E. scurried down the stairs. I shot at him again, but missed entirely. He scooped up his knife and ran out of sight toward the kitchen, toward the back door.

Sorry, I'm not your dad, but I'm here to help, I told the little girl who'd wandered into the hallway, bewildered. Mom, Dad! she screamed. I told her, Hey, hold on, my name's Freddy, what's yours? She kept screaming. I eyed the two closed bedroom doors between me and her. If those gunshots hadn't woken the rest of her family, nothing ever would again. I couldn't let her see them. I said, listen, I live just up the street. I have two little boys, two little twins. You know them?

The little girl stopped screaming and hiccuped tearfully as she nodded. I said, Can we go downstairs, please? I need to make sure that bad man is gone. No, the little girl sobbed. I said, Please, it's really important. She cried. No, I want my mom and dad. A race I stood no chance of winning kicked off right then. She dove toward the door to the left, her right. She'd opened it and put her hand on the light switch before I could finish shouting, Don't go in there! And click. The lights came on.

A shiver that nearly folded me in two went down my back. I'd seen blurry crime scene photos of the Dot Your Eyes Killer's work before, but there it lay before me, in the tattered flesh. Of those X'd out eyes failed to estimate the amount of their eyeballs that remained intact, bulging outward, distorted by quartering and blood. The little girl made a sputtering sound and collapsed. I caught her under the arms. She didn't quite faint, but close to it.

Her mother's legs were caught in the sheets, but her upper half was hanging off the bed, facing the door, and still pouring blood onto the carpet. Her husband lay across her middle, arms around her. His head faced us too, his final despairing shout still molding his mouth. Part of his left eye dangled out of its mutilated socket. I dragged the Corobant's daughter out of their room. She suddenly stiffened and jerked away from me, then lunged for the other door.

No, I told her as I caught her around the waist and drew her back. I said, you don't want to see in there. My sister, she whined. I said, I know you don't want to see. She might not be dead, the girl shouted, and I had to acknowledge the logic. Okay, I said, but you don't look. I don't want you to see. But she might not be dead, the girl repeated. I turned to the doorknob and whispered, just hold on.

I peered in. I wish I could have seen enough to know without turning on the lights, but I had to. I couldn't make out the figure on the bed well enough to know if she was dead or sleeping. He'd spent more time with her, the older sister. He'd placed her exactly how he wanted her to be found, seated upright at the head of her bed, arms folded over each other, and head tilted toward one shoulder.

Blood from her exed out eyes soaked her pajamas. Her mouth hung open, but not as purposefully as her father's. It looked more like it had fallen open as a knife went through the part of her. brain that controlled it. I shut the door. Come on, I said to the younger Corobant girl. The police will be here soon.

I did not kill the Dot Your Eyes killer that night, at least I don't think so. But I might have retired him. I have a theory I'll come back around to after I've explained the rest of what happened that night. I picked the Corriban's phone off the counter and started telling the dispatcher why I'd placed the call. She said an officer was already close.

I told her to get everybody out looking for a tan Buickless Saber, license plate QEC zero eight zero. I told her the dot your eyes killer was probably on his way out of town in that car. The rest is pretty much history. You may have heard it already. Someone abandoned that tanless saber with a matching license plate, which turned out to be stolen off a Ford Taurus on the side of Highway 30, near Tama.

Some witnesses identified the man who left it there, and his fingerprints matched those lifted from the steering wheel. When he realized he was a suspect in the Dot Your Eyes murders, he readily confessed to having stolen the car from a Walmart parking lot in Marshalltown. Someone had left the keys in the ignition, he said. It was like they wanted someone to steal it. No one else's fingerprints or DNA were found in the La Sabre. Dy E scrubbed it clean before he ditched it.

Investigators found a report from Ogden about a stolen vehicle with a matching bin. Apparently that FBI expert was right about DYE committing other crimes after all. I wish it felt good what I did that night, since it did seem to put an end to things. A lot of people believe DYE is dead.

Others wonder if he's incarcerated for another crime, but I think by now his fingerprints or DNA would have been connected to the DYE murders. I think the dot your eyes killer, even if he's still alive, succeeded in becoming a ghost. So, my theory about why this guy did what he did and how he did it?

It's pure speculation, but you've stuck around this long, so here it is. I think I broke his pattern, which in a way sort of broke him. I think the sergeant murders were originally meant as a one off. Then the anniversary came around, and I think DYE wanted to spend it doing as close as he could to the original thing. And once he killed that way two years in a row, well, what was he going to do the third year? Just quit? Not a chance.

So it became his tradition. Some years he couldn't quite find the perfect location. Some years necessitated slight variations, but the end. was always the same. Four dead members of an innocent family. Why the eyes? Just his signature, I guess. And how did he do it without everybody waking up? You might be surprised how many killers have been able to pull that off. I think a lot of us sleep deeper than we'd like to know. Or, you know earlier I said he's managed to become a ghost?

Maybe a ghost is what he's always been. That's what he is in my head, haunting me no matter how many years he lets pass without killing. I know he wasn't a ghost back then, because I made him bleed. For a long time I wondered if I'd put a target on myself by doing that. But that's why I think I did something to him by stopping him from killing that Korriban girl. I'm pretty sure when I broke the pattern, that freed him from the compulsion to continue it. I hope so, at least.

I'll let you go in a second, but first I need to mention one more thing. If I'm right about this guy being liberated from his pattern, that could mean he's found a new one. If that's the case, stay vigilant. He was undeniably good at what he did. Good enough to never be caught. And he might still be.

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