For years, a phantom moved unseen across America, riding the shadows of its fast railroad system and leaving a trail of brutal murder in its wake. He struck without warning, beating, raping, and killing his victims in their own homes before vanishing into the night like a ghost. This is the story of Angel Maturino Riscindez, the man who became known as the Railroad Killer.
My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked Ingrim, a true crime podcast.
The following podcast material intended for a mature audience listener discretion. He advised, I feel like we've been starting way too many episodes like this recently, But I hope our voices don't sound too bad.
I think we should be.
Okay, you think so.
Yeah, But it is funny because when people listen to someone really regularly, you notice like instantly. I remember as a kid watching like soaps with my mom. Oh yeah, and like those come out freaking daily, right Monday to Friday. And so if one of the actors was sick, you could I would always be able to tell, like right away.
So our regulars can probably tell. But if you're just joining us. Hey, we probably sound not too bad to you, but we we didn't come out with last week's Friday episode because we didn't have voices, and then I was crashed out in the couch for like twenty four hours. After that. I thought I was fine until then the evening hit and then I was just screwed. But we're doing okay now, mm.
Hmm, yeah, yeah on the men, right, yeah, on.
The men, and right at the perfect time, because it's getting really hot and b it's getting really humid up here right now where we live and I'm dying in a different, different aspect.
Now. Oh man, it's not that bad. You are a true Northern.
Europe sweating a little bit right now, just sitting here.
Seriously. Yeah, I could almost put a sweater on right now.
Are you serious?
Yes?
Maybe it's the hot coffee I'm drinking.
That's not I'm t get something hot too. I think you just like, I don't know, you could never live in Mexico or something.
Could You probably not, But you're also a lizard.
I could live in Mexico. I don't thrive.
I don't think you could ever have it hot enough. So maybe we just need to try and find a balance in between. And that's the perfect person who can take the exact temperature.
I don't know, yeah, who knows?
Who knows? But we have an interesting case today, this one I've had sitting here research written in Ready to Go. It was supposed to come out on a Friday.
Oh yeah, yep.
And so I might be a little rusty on this because I already researched it and I haven't looked at it for a few days. So I'm sorry if I am a little rusty on it and I'm stumbling a little bit. But I think I got this. I think I still remember everything. Are you ready for it?
Well? I think we have some patrons to thank, do we not?
Oh that's right? How can I forget about the amazing people over on Patreon?
That sounded so scripted, but you legitimately like, actually.
Forgot No, that was totally scripted. What are you talking about?
Well, I'm okay, carry on out us here. I'm just like that sounded almost too scripted that I was like, I can't not say something about that.
We just played it off really well. Come on, pat us in the back sometimes, so shout out to Laura Quello, Jack Sophie Catherwood, Michelle Kresner, Danny Carlton, Josh Roth, and Elizabeth Lassek right on, right on. They get all that extra good stuff, and of course they get that exclusive episode that comes out of the end of every month that does not get released a public It only stays on Patreon.
Yeah, and so news we have a little bit of fun with those episodes.
So we do. So. Yeah, that episode's actually coming out pretty quick because hey, it is June twenty fourth. Yeah.
Crazy.
I said last week that it was like times flying, summer's going by. I mean it is officially summer now.
So yeah. Well, and my wedding season is starting on the thirtieth. So ding dang, ding dang.
Well let's get into this case, shall we.
Yeah, let's do it.
Okay. Well, it is called the Railroad Killer, and it is called that for a good reason. It was a warm evening in August nineteen ninety seven, and Holly Dunn, a twenty year old student at the University of Kentucky, was walking along the train tracks in Lexington with her boyfriend, Christopher Mayer. The two had left a party and hadn't lived up to the expectations. You know. The party, you know, wasn't quite going exactly how they figured it would, so
they decided to go for a quiet stroll instead. For a while, everything felt normal, peaceful, even then, out of nowhere, as they were walking, a man appeared from behind an electrical box. He had a weapon in his hand too, now a Holly, It looked like he was either an ice pick or a screwdriver. The first instinct was that this was a robbery, so they offered money, credit cards, and even the keys to a car. But this wasn't
about money. It never was. The man tied up Christopher's hands behind his back using a shoelace, and did the same to Holly with her belt. Then he marched them off the train, off the trail, and down into a ditch by the railroad. Holly, kneeling beside her boyfriend, stared at the attacker there at the tracks. She took everything in his accent, a tattoo his face. She was already thinking about survival. Quote, if I live through this, I will find you. Oh that's the sort of attitude that she had.
Holy yeah, I kind of liked that, but I do not like what's going on here.
Yeah, then it happened, though without warning, the attacker picked up a fifty pound rock and brought it crashing down on Christopher's head. Yeah, Chris oh Peffer did not survive. It crushed his head.
Holy shit.
Holly was now left alone. She was bound terrified, and from there she was beaten, raped, and bludgeoned with a wooden board until she stopped moving. Afterwards, her attacker then left the scene and left her for dead.
Oh my gosh. And here they were just like going for a little stroll.
Yeah.
Oh, and if only the party was better.
Right like that, if only one person at that party could carry a conversation.
I hate scenarios like that, but I mean it's often like that, because like your day is just you know, made up and full of choices. Right yeah, so U. But they were very clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time, exactly.
Now Here's the thing. Though, against all odds, Holly survived okay, So, with her jaw broken, her face bruised and bleeding, and her head split wide open, she managed to walk to a nearby house and call for help. DNA was then collected from Holly's rape kit and entered into Cotis. The FBI's national DNA database, but it came back with no match. A composite sketch was then drawn from Holly's memory and everything that she made a point of remembering, right, but
it didn't lead anywhere. The man who attacked them had left the scene like a ghost, vanishing back into the world of the real railway yards in box cars, and Holly, the only known survivor, was left with the memory in a face that she'd.
Never forget, oh man, and like yeah, just like complete trauma exactly now.
It wasn't until December seventeenth, nineteen ninety eight, more than a year after the attack in Kentucky, that a man by the name of Angel Riscendez even entered the conversation, and by then he'd unfortunately already struck again. So that day in December, doctor Claudia Benson, thirty nine year old pediatric neurologist and mother of twin girls, had returned home from work and was supposed to be enjoying a quiet evening at her home in West University Place in Houston, Texas.
Her husband, George Benton, and their children happened to be out of town in this night, which made her especially vulnerable as she sat alone in her quiet, upscale neighborhood, which sat near the train tracks. At some point during the night, someone broke into her home. Investigators believed they gained entry by prying open a window or a back door, and once inside, they waited. Doctor Benton was then attacked
in the middle of the night while she slept. The intruder beat her over the head with a bronze statue nineteen times, causing multiple skull fractures. But he didn't stop there. He then stabbed her three times in the back with a large butcher knife and sexually assaulted her either before or after she died.
Oh, she did die.
Her body was found in her bedroom after a welfare check when she did not show up to work and didn't answer her phone.
Brutal. You almost wonder if he was watching her then, to know that she was like alone.
He most likely was. He waited till she was asleep, right, she probably would have woke up and heard someone breaking in, so he entered, waited till she went to sleep, and then struck.
Oh my gosh, that's brutal.
When police arrived, the inside of the apartment was torn apart, drawers rifled through furniture, overturned, and there was blood everywhere. Claudia laid motionless in a pool of her own blood. It was pure savagery. But amidst the horror, police found a lead. In the garage, investigators discovered a piece of the jeep steering column lying on the floor. The attacker had tried to hat wire doctor Benton's car after failing to find the keys, and when he pried off the
plastic panel and left behind four fingerprints. It was the first major mistake.
Yeah, that's major for sure.
The prince came back to an alias Carlos Leon, but law enforcement quickly pieced together like that this was a fake name used by a man with a long history of petty crimes and illegal crossings into the US. The real identity behind this Carlos was Angel Matarino Rissendez, a Mexican national with over a dozen prior arrests and at least seven deportations. Now they had a name, they had prints, and they also had DNA, and they were beginning to see a pattern, a lethal one. Each murder seemed to
share something in common. Proximity to train tracks, and Gal wasn't arriving in town by cars or bus. He was riding the rails, literally, hopping freight trains crisscrossing the country and the shadows of America's rail network. It was a tactic that he gave, you know, it gave him nearly endless mobility, honestly, and until now it kept him one step ahead in every jurisdiction that he entered.
That sounds so old school, though, hey.
Very much so. But they weren't the only ones with questions because as words spread through law enforcement circles, other investigators started to take notice and to connect cases of their own and the commonalities they had.
Okay, I'm wondering because at one point you were like murders. Yeah, I was like, we only know of one at this point.
Well, the first major breakthrough came from Kentucky when Houston detectives shared Angel's fingerprint and DNA profile with a broader network and they got a match with an unsolved case from August of nineteen ninety seven, a year and a half earlier, the case of Holly Dunn and her boyfriend Christopher Mayer, who were the ones going.
For the walk right, Yeah, oh I get okay, sorry, we did know of two murders because I forgot about the boyfriend there.
Yeah, well we do know of one attached to his name. Now we officially know of too. It is officially connected. But at the time no one had any idea who had done it. There was no suspect nor arrest. Haully's detailed account right, including this, the sketch and all that sort of stuff, it led nowhere. But officially this it kind of linked because the DNA left behind it matched
the DNA found in Claudia Benson's home as well. It was clear that the Kentucky and Texas murders, though one thousand miles apart, were committed by the same individual, and now thanks to those fingerprints in Houston, they finally had that name to tie them both together too. So Angel Risendez had officially become a multi state serial killer at this point. From there, the pieces began falling into place quickly,
but it wasn't the end of the story. In April of nineteen ninety nine, a married couple, Norman and Karen Cernik, were found murdered in their bedroom in Wheremar, Texas, a small town halfway between Houston and San Antonio. The crime was vicious and efficient Norman, who was a pastor, had been struck in the head with a sledgehammer while sleeping. Karen then woke up, only to be killed the exact same way. She was also sexually assaulted the house again right by the train tracks.
Oh gosh, okay, I mean I don't like so far. I mean, the two I guess are kind of similar, but they don't seem like, you know, right away, you'd be like, that's the same guy, like that did this, you know.
Yeah, it's not necessarily like the same sort of like crime scene. I guess the last two they are. You have an individual who were killed, sleeping, bludgened over the head, sexually assaulted, and it's by the train tracks. The first one little bit different, but there is now this pattern beginning to emerge because the one thing that does connect them all is the train track.
Yeah. True.
Also the sexual assault. I guess that connects too.
Yeah. But you just think of like some of these high and serial killers, right and they like they have little little things that they do, and it's very obvious that it's them, you know, or little trademarks or whatever they freaking do, which is pinpoints to them exactly.
I think in those cases. Those are more people who kill for the sake of killing, people who are serial killers, who are psychopath and are obsessed with the kill. They have their calling card, they have things that they specifically do, and Gel I don't think fits that profiling.
Oh okay, okay, so we'll talk about it a.
Little bit though. Don't you worry Now? DNA from that scene matched what had been found in Houston and in Kentucky. The fingerprint evidence, the brutality, the signature, it all pointed to Angell than that signature, of course, being the railroad track. By the end of April, authorities from multiple states were meeting regularly, building a task force and sharing case files.
What they saw horrified them. A pattern wasn't just real, it was now accelerating, and there was something else, like many serial offenders, and Gal didn't seem to be targeting specific types of victims, just kind of like what I was saying, right, men, women, young, old, He didn't really discriminate. What mattered was the opportunity. If you live close to the tracks and your home was easy to get into,
you were at risk. With at least four murders now linked to him, law enforcement across the country was a high alert, but they had no idea where Angel would strike next. By May nineteen ninety nine, the scope of Bengel Riscendez and his crimes had moved from a terrifying situation to just a surreal one. He was no longer killing occasionally. He was on a spree, crisscrossing the country by freight train, appearing without warning and vanishing just as fast.
Each time. The brutality seemed to escalate.
Body, Oh, I was just going to say, that's terrifying, because it's that's such like a vast area you have just literally no idea exactly, like, that's that is scary. And how the hell to even go about trying to solve that?
How do you even try and go about controlling it or mitigating it? Yeah you can't.
Okay.
How can you say someone over in Texas dies and you're like one thousand miles away. Okay? How can you go about say, oh, well that killer is in Texas, I'm safe. Yeah you can't. And how can authorities in Texas portray the threat being real to someone a thousand miles away?
Yeah, that's almost just like impossible.
Hey, yeah, exactly, that's the situation they're faced with now. On June fourth, just over a month later, and Gales struck again twice in one day. In fact, in Houston, twenty six year old Noemi Dominguez, a well liked school teacher, was found dead in her apartment. She'd been beaten to death with a pickaxe like object, most likely a metal rod. Her car, a Honda Civic, was missing from the scene.
And later that same day, one hundred and thirty miles away in Fayette County, Texas, Josephine on Vika, a seventy three year old widow, was killed in her farmhouse near a rural rail line. She had been bludgeoned with the same kind of weapon.
Oh my gosh, two in one day like that, and then also just completely different victims.
Yeah, Now, her jewelry was taken, but her car wasn't and Gal was still using the Honda Civic he took from Nuemi Dominiinguez. Now at this point the panic was setting in. Police now had forensic evidence linking all of these scenes, whether it was DNA fingerprints, stolen items, There was a consistent m as well homes near the train tracks, night attacks, brutal beating, sexual assault and stolen vehicles that would later be found abandoned near railway lines or railway hubs.
However you put it, the message was becoming clear. Wherever the tracks went, he could go too. Just eleven days later and Gal was over a thousand north in Gorham, Illinois, and on June fifteenth, he broke into a mobile home shared by George Moeber, who was eighty years old and his daughter, Carolyn Frederick, who was fifty two. George was shot in the head with a shotgun from inside the home. Carolyn was then beaten to death with the same weapon.
There is no time for neighbors to react. It was fast, brutal, and untraceable until a witness spotted Carolyn's red pickup truck being driven by a man matching Engel's description just miles from the scene. At this point, nine murders across five different states were linked to Engel, and the law enforcement were losing ground. By the end of June, the FBI added Engal to its ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Posters with his face went up around train stations, gas stations, schools,
and even post offices. He was now the most hunted man in America.
Well, yeah, he is going on a freaking rampage here.
This is is a literal spree. Yeah, and it's one that I don't see how authorities could honestly stop. And I say that knowing the end result in this case too, I don't understand how police could have stopped him. Just put it there. But let's continue now to put it in perspective to just how elusive he was. He didn't use credit cards, he didn't stand motels, he rarely interacted
with people. He slipped in and out of towns at dark, living in railyards, sleeping in empty cars, unseen by the everyday world, and still even with half the country looking for him, no one could find them. It was impossible. That's because and Gil had something most fugitives didn't, a
near invisible mode of transportation. The rail system, with its over one hundred and forty thousand miles of tracks and thousands of daily freight movements, made for a massive It's just this whole unregulated highway basically, and even if you try and police it, you can't. It's too vast. Box Cars don't have passenger manifests, Conductors don't check for stowaways. And even if they do, there's too many places to check. They can't check for every everywhere anything. They can only
check a fraction of the line. If you knew how to ride the rails, you could vanish for days, weeks, months, and and Gail had been doing this for years. He was a master at it. Law enforcement ramped up fast. The FBI, Texas Rangers, Border patrol, and local police from every affected state joined forces in a nationwide search. Officers patrolled rail yards on horsebacks, helicopters scandal lines from above. Freight trains were even stopped mid route when possible sightings
were called, in which of course would be massive. I mean, you're talking about stopping an entire train line, who has a destination shipping all this shit. Imagine the effect on the economy with that sort of stuff.
No kidding, Yeah, this is a big deal. Well, and then also to someone could just you know, see someone like walking it innocently, but then everyone's so on edge that they're like, oh my gosh, that's that's him exactly.
So now, one thing I also want to put into perspective. I kind of mentioned it earlier, but I haven't talked a whole lot about it and Gil he's Mexican, right, He's crossing the border constantly, so they don't even know if he's in the States or if he's in Mexico. Right, so when he wants, if he's super wanted in the in the States, and he can just be like, oh, I'm going to disappear for months in Mexico.
Yeah, holy shit. This seems just like freaking impossible exactly. Oh but then literally everyone is kind of like at risk too, exactly, just has like this vast I don't know netlass potential really, so.
How do you take care of this? Like we're panicking, Like residents near the tracks, like their houses there, they're living in fear. Police were, of course panicking. Many ev gel's victims had been murdered in their own homes while they slept, right, and randomness made people like paranoid if there was a rail line, rail line you know, near your home, your your neighborhood, even in your town, like you're no longer.
Safe, no, no, how would you even like really sleep if say, if the rail line like backed up, was that the in your backyard basically, right, Like, how would you even rest?
You can't? Yeah, So this is like he's a living cryptid at this point, because humans shouldn't be able to evade police like this, Humans shouldn't be able to get in and out of homes like this, disappear like this, travel this far like this. It's it. Everything about this says it's impossible. But he's doing it.
Yeah, he's doing it.
Now. Hotlines lit up with over a thousand tips a day, but most were falling alarms. He was being seen everywhere and nowhere, all at once at one point, and Gel was actually picked up by border patrol though near El Paso, Texas, trying to re enter the country. But incredibly, the system didn't flag him as a wanted man when they had him in custody.
What the shit?
How come despite being the prime suspect in multiple homicides and a known fugitive, the database failed. Agents had his fingerprints, his photograph, and they still let him go.
Oh okay, how does that happen? Are the systems not like linked?
I guess I don't know. I mean, honestly, like you're looking at like nineteen ninety nine at this point, I don't know how much of it is digital. But they just they're like, Okay, we got this dude who's entering in the country illegally and they just shipped him back. Basically that would be out cross checking.
I don't know, the most frustrating shit that you you ever like encountered if you were, you know, actively like part of this investigation and the search and shit, Holy brig I couldn't even imagine.
Yeah, so he was basically just sent back to Mexico and deportated again. Deportated, deported, deportorted, deportated is that even a word?
I don't know.
Deported He was deported again. There we go. But yeah, just like that, he vanished into Mexico just again gone just.
To probably be back soon enough doing it.
And again, well here's the thing. For weeks there was silence, There was no sightings, no murders, and investigators feared he'd actually disappeared for good this time. I mean, like, honestly, there's good in that. But what they feared was like, he's either dead hiding in Mexico and he's gonna get away with it, right, yeah, maybe riding the rails. Who knows, Maybe he's planning his next attack. And that's the scary part. And then came a surprising call Juliette Riscendez, claiming to
be Angel's common law wife, reached out from Mexico. She been receiving jewelry in the mail sent by Engel himself, items that were later confirmed to have belonged to several of the murdered victims. What the law enforcement now had physical evidence linking him directly to his victims via the belongings.
Okay, he had a freaking wife.
Yeah, and he was sending them murdered victims jewelry.
Oh my, okay, this just get this just keeps turning and turning and turning, Like what is even this case is bizarre?
Well, then there was another twist because, in a move no one expected, authorities reached out to someone else, manuela Angel's older sister who lived in New Mexico. It was a gamble. Could a sister convince like her brother, now the most wanted man in America to potentially surrender.
Huh? I mean if he's this kind of person, then yes, But also like yeah, the bond of siblings is and like immediate family, So you think.
That she's going to be able to convince him to surrender.
Oh I thought they were Okay, I get it. I thought they were going to set him up or something like he comes to see his sister, okay, but she's supposed to like convince him. Oh no, yeah.
No, because he's transient, like he's not staying anywhere. Yeah, he's just going wherever the wind takes him, wherever he feels like.
Well then no, probably not, Like it doesn't sound like this guy gives a fuck.
No, I mean he really doesn't. But there was a Texas ranger, Drew Carter, who thought it was worth a shot to try and get his sister to convince him to surrender. So he spoke directly with Manuela and made her three promises that her brother would be kept safe in custody, that he would be allowed to visit have visits sorry from his family, and he would be given a full psychiatric evaluation. Manuela hesitated from like like this offer.
If you want to say, it's that she feared the FBI would kill her brother the moment they saw him, but they convinced her otherwise and she agreed to try. What followed was a series of secret messages, back channel negotiations, and handwritten notes passed between family members across the border. After weeks of coordination. It happened on July thirteenth, nineteen ninety nine, just after nine am, A dusty blue pickup truck pulled up to the Zaragoza International Bridge connecting Ciudad Jurez,
Mexico to El Paso, Texas. Inside was a gaunt man in dirty jeans, muddy boots and a hollow stare. It was and gel Matta Reino Riscindez. He stepped out, nodded to authorities and quietly gave himself up.
This it's so interesting to me that they just they knew who they're like searching for right this whole time basically, and that it was this hard and had they actually had to get him to freaking surrender to catch him.
Yeah, that's why I was saying earlier. I researched this, I know how it ends, and I still think it would have been impossible for police to catch him, huh, because he just turned himself in.
Wow.
If he didn't turn himself in, I don't think he ever would have been caught.
Like why did he? I wonder just done with this or why?
I have no idea, no clue.
Because I'm sorry, but like if someone doing these type of horrific acts and crimes like why would you exactly you know your fate?
Yeah, Now, the manhunt was over and authorities were relieved but not satisfied. His surrender had ended a wave of terror, but what followed would be a battle of accountability, motive, and mental stability. By the time the trial began in May of two thousand, prosecutors had formerly linked and Gale to at least nine murders spanning from Florida to Illinois, though he claimed in interviews that he'd killed as many as forty people.
Seriously or perhaps even more, what the heck is wrong with this guy? Like what is he doing?
Yeah? Now, the state of Texas made a strategic decision rather than charge him for every murder across multiple jurisdictions, they would focus solely on one case, one brutal air type case, one that they knew they would get a conviction on for sure. The case was the murder of doctor Claudia Benton.
Okay, that makes sense, but they also got to make sure that it's like full conviction and like life and stuff. Oh, you know, like he's not getting out for sure.
Now, the evidence against him in Claudia's killings was overwhelming, the DNA fingerprints, eyewitness accounts of him driving her stolen car, the stolen jewelry sent to his common law wife. Prosecutors saw this as inn like the cleanest path to securing what they were after, which was the death penalty.
Oh okay, so they think this is basically a slam dunk conry.
Yeah, but Angel was an entering court quietly. His attorneys mounted an insanity defense, claiming their client was mentally ill and legally incompetent at the time of the murder. They argued that he was schizophrenic, had suffered from head trauma as a child, and was incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. In the courtroom, and Gal leaned into that image as well. He rambled about being half man, half angel, about God telling him to kill sinners, about his body being a
shell for another entity. He claimed the murders weren't really his doing, they were divine punishment carried out through him. Psychiatrists hired by the defense described him as paranoid, delusional, and suffering from hallucinations. They said he believed he could cause earthquakes, floods, and plagues, and that his victims were all evil but prosecutors, they pushed back hard. They focus not just on the brutality of Angal's crime, but the
planning behind them. He didn't wander into these homes. He watched his victims. He waited for them while they're sleeping, and he used cover from the passing trains to conceal his entries. He took cash, jewelry, cars, He removed light bulbs from car domes to avoid detection when driving. They weren't the actions of someone lost in psychosis. They were deliberate, methodical, and self serving actions. A fellow inmate from a Florida prison also testified that Angel had spent significant time in
the law library researching the insanity defense. He even helped other inmates build similar strategies. It painted a chilling picture not of a man gripped by madness, but of someone playing the system.
No kidding like this is not okay.
But the most emotional moment came when Hally Dunne, the lone survivor from nineteen ninety seven in her attack in Kentucky. When she took the stand, facing her attacker for the first time since that night, Holly Dunn described in detail how Angel had tied her up, had raped her, and left her for dead beside her murdered boyfriend on the tracks.
She told the jury about her injuries, the broken jaw, the cut staple shut, the trauma she carried, and then when asked to identify her attacker, she looked directly at him and said, he's wearing a white buttoned down shirt. It was the first and only time she made eye contact with that man who tried to kill her.
Oh that would like that is some strength, really, hey, to be able to go and do that.
She is our badass of the day, just saying so. Hitting now May twenty second, two thousand. The jury took seven hours to reach a verdict guilty of capital murder. Next came sentencing. Prosecutors pushed for the death penalty, arguing that Ungel's crimes were not only premeditated, but part of a passat of thrill seeking brutality, and the jury agreed. Angell Mattino Risendez was sentenced to death by lethal injection.
But the story wasn't over. Not yet. After his conviction, Angel was transferred to death row in the Terial Unit in Livingston, Texas, a maximum security facility housing some of the most dangerous criminals in the state. He would spend his next six years there, appealing his sentence and altering between long stretches of silence and bizarre outbursts. At times, he spoke of God and redemption. Other times he insisted that the murders had not been committed by him, but
by a spiritual force that used his body. He said that he was an angel sent by God, not a man. Angell's legal team filed appeals based on the mental state, arguing he was not competent to be executed. His mother testified that he had suffered multiple head injuries as a
child and long exhibited signs of schizophrenia. His lawyers pointed out his delusions, including the belief he would rise from the dead three days after his execution, as proof he was not sane enough to face that death sentence, but the courts didn't agree. On June twenty one, two thousand and six, a judge in Houston ruled that Angel was
legally competent. Court appointed psychiatrists acknowledged that while he experienced delusions, he understood the nature of his crimes, the punishment he faced, and the finality of execution. That was enough to meet the legal standard. His final appeals were denied. The state of Texas set an execution date July twenty seventh, two
thousand and six. As a day approached, there was no sign of remorse, and in an interview before his execution, and Gell reportedly said he felt no emotion towards his victims, that they were sinners.
Quote unquote, that is just so disturbing.
And that they deserve to die.
Wow.
He maintained that he was an agent of God and that his life was temporary and his spirit would live on. And when the day finally came, it was at eight five pm when Angal Metavino Riscendez was pronounced dead by lethal injection. He left behind no final writings, no public confession to the many other murders he hinted at, just silence. But the questions didn't die with them. Was he truly insane or was it part of a performance. How many
people did he actually kill? And how many more might be out there, buried, nameless and forgotten near the same railroads that he rode like a phantom. Those answers may never come. Trying to understand and Gal Riscendez is like trying to look into a cracked mirror. Everything about him seems real until you try to make sense of it, and it just becomes distorted and a mess. To some, he was a man gripped by madness, and to others he was a cold, cunning predator who used the illusion
of insanity to justify unimaginable cruelty. Psychiatrists who interviewed him found evidence of delusions, particularly around religion. He believed that people he killed were evil and spoke about visions causing earthquakes, floods, all these sort of things. He said his victims would thank him in the afterlife. But dig deeper and a different picture starts to emerge. And Gell was an erratic in the same way many psychotic offenders are. He didn't
lash out in public, he didn't spiral into incoherence. Instead, he waited, he planned, and he chose his moments carefully. His crimes followed a method. Stake out a home near railroad tracks, wait until late at night, break in quietly, and kill with whatever was on hand a hammer, a statue of pickaxe. Then he'd clean up just enough to get away and vanish into the night on another freight train.
His methodical approach led many forensic psychologists to label him as disorganized serial killer with organized traits, someone whose crimes showed a chaotic violence but were executed with intention and awareness. He didn't have a single victim type. His killings were opportunistic, but often driven by the chance to rob or the ease of access, But he was undeniably fueled by rage and dominance. One unsettling detail repeated across multiple crime scenes.
After murdering his victims, many of whom were elderly or female, he often covered the bodies with blankets. Now, this small act, seen in serial killer profiling, is sometimes interpreted as a twisted form of remorse or control, an attempt to symbolically hide the crime after committing it. His specific reasoning, who knows now. In the end, the psychiatric community remained divided. Was Engal Resendez mentally ill? Most certainly, was he legally insane,
incapable of understanding right from wrong? Well, the jury didn't think so. Was he dangerous? Unquestionably? When Engellmentarito Resendez died by lethal injection on July twenty seventh, two thousand and six, it marked the end of a terrifying chapter in American criminal history. His crimes cut across at least six US states, from Florida to Illinois to Texas, and possibly into Mexico
as well. Angell himself claimed to have killed more than forty people, though only a total of fifteen murders were formally linked to him.
That is still a shit ton, yeap.
Some investigators privately suspected the real.
Number was much higher then fifteen, or then forty.
I mean fifteen, Okay, yeah, forty. That's a claim coming directly from him. It's possible, definitely possible, and it's possible it is higher than that. But connecting anything is another thing.
Yep.
So, because he moved primarily by freight train, slipping from town to town undetected, we may never know the true scope of his violence. Holly Dunn, the only known survivor and Gel's attacks, became a voice for the voiceless, and the years after her recovery, she launched Holly's House, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping victims of violent crimes. Her advocacy turned pain into purpose, and her testimony in court helped put Angel away. Just more reasons why Holly's are
badass of the Day yeah, totally. Now, for all the lessons, all the details, all the facts and everything from this case, the railroad killer story, it still rings with a sense of unease. He didn't fit neatly into any mold, not anything that we can generally think of, like I was saying earlier, stereotypical serial killers who are out for something. Yeah, you know, he wasn't a product of a single trauma or alone, you know, a psychological disorder, or even a
classical criminal profile. He was invisible, drifting between towns, identities, and realities. And for years he lived, jumping borders, evading detection, and killing without pattern in a way and gel Risceendez. And his greatest weapon wasn't a hammer, wasn't a knife or any other blunt object he found. It wasn't a train. It was movement. He moved faster than systems. He moved past people's assumptions. He moved in and out of nightmares, and often no one knew he had ever been there
until it was far too late. Now, decades later, the rails he used, they're still running, trains still whistle through the small towns at night. But the fear he once carried with him that at least it has passed. What remains is the memory of the lives he ended and the justice that finally caught up with him. In the end, on Gal Risendez met the fate he gave so many others, but it still wasn't enough. He handed himself over. He never felt the fear he forced on his victims. He
never cared. It was all always on his own terms. He had the power until the very end. Maybe that's what makes his case so undeniably haunting. And that's a story of a Gale ris Endez, the railroad killer.
I don't like that he has the power until the very end.
I think he did. He did. I hate it, but I think he did just.
To note something you had said, just to make sure I didn't hear this wrong. That he was like, how do I word this? Educating people about how to get away with pleading insanity or whatever.
Yeah, so there was someone a cellmate who said that Angel was researching like insanity please while in prison and you know, before his trial, and yeah, he was helping others do the same thing.
WHOA Okay, because that that right there doesn't necessarily seem like like that you would that you actually are you.
Know, yeah, well, exactly what the prosecutors were pointing out. How can this be an insane man? Yeah, and he's literally researching it educa to do. Yeah, that's not insanity. No, that's very clearly a sane person.
Yeah. Well, and I find it very frustrating too that he had so many victims, so many families that he impacted, and they're not necessarily getting the closure of him being charged with like, you know, the crimes he did to them, Oh for sure.
I mean they chose to only charge him for the one because they knew it was full proof, right.
Yeah.
But yeah, that's that's another way of looking at it. You're totally right, is that's taking away the closure from the other families. Yeah.
I mean I get why they did it and stuff, but then also I just feel that would be hard, I guess in your healing journey a little bit, you know, and you know, like I said, find the closure.
So yeah, but it's still it's not full closure. I mean, sure, maybe he got charged from it from every single one of them. Say there is over forty that he did did kill, and say he got charged for every single one of them. It's just hypothetical situation here, he's still at the end. He didn't care. Yeah, he had no remorse. He's like, I don't care, wasn't me? They're the sinners. I'm good and I'm I don't care that I'm dying
because I'm going to live on anyways. That's why he had the power to the very end.
This is unbelievable, and I don't find that, you know, that forty number far fetched.
I don't either, I really don't, which is really.
Disturbing because there's so many just like unsolved things right in the world, and it's because freaking assholes like this are doing it.
Yeah. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not like comparing cases here. We've covered some gruesome cases, some very horrifying cases, some very terrifying individuals, But I think Angel is one of the most terrifying individuals that we have covered on this show because of what he was capable of and because.
Unstoppable basical basically he was.
He was unfucking stoppable, and he chose to let the cops take him in.
Yeah, and didn't give a shit. Yeah, he easily could just carry on doing that for the rest of his life. Probably killing people has no remorse, doesn't give a shit.
Yeah, that's it, and that's that's what's terrifying. That's it. He doesn't care. He just sure like it probably didn't really take that much to convince him, Oh you should turn yourself in. H sure, I guess why not? Like fuck all right?
And that's where though, I'm like, they have to be insane to be able to just take that many people's life lives and just ruin you know, other people's lives that you know are their loved ones and just not give a flying shit.
Yeah he's so fucking scary. Oh yeah, So anyways, if you live by a railroad track, make sure you lock your door at night.
Anyone, just lock your Oh yeah really.
I feel like every time we cover a story, it's just a new reason to lock your door, uh huh, and not trust people.
Yeah. I just have to say one more thing, because he almost seemed like he was just he didn't have like any physical needs himself, right, Like he was easily able to just be transient, like you said, sleep in these railcars. When he turned himself in, he was like, I don't think super taking care of himself.
No, he wasn't.
So it was just like he was just almost like this like robotic machine that just like I don't know, I don't know. Well, this one's fucking with me a little bit because he just like goes and does these murders and then moves on to the next one, and it seems almost kind of like robotic ish.
Well, I mean, you have to think of it in the way of like a transient individual, like someone who is unfortunately unhomed. They have to live by, you know, day to day situations. He was living by a day to day situation. He was going where he needed to go, going where he wanted to go, doing what he needed to do. However, most people in that situation do that for survival. He wasn't doing it for survival. What he
was doing it for who fucking knows. Who knows what his motive was, what his drive was to go to the next town, what his drive was to break into a place? Was he breaking into a place to kill someone? Was he breaking into a place to sexually assault someone? Was he breaking into a place for food? Was he breaking into a place to steal jewelry and send to his family in Mexico so they could have better money and live better. We don't know why huh, what's his reason?
Most people do it for survival, for food. He had many reasons, but he was we still don't know, because he was just doing all this shit.
Huh. Yeah. I mean maybe that's why. It's also a bit terrifying too, because a lot of the other ones, you know, they had this need. They were serial killer, psychopaths or whatever, and they're fulfilling a need. But it's harder to understand I guess his need. I don't think he had a need necessarily.
And don't get me wrong, I don't think any of these serial killers have a need. It's a desire.
A desire. Okay, poor choice of words, but do you know what I mean?
What you mean? Yeah, no, but he didn't have I don't think he had a desire. I don't think he had a drive. I think he was just.
I don't know.
I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it.
Is this a well known one.
And it's relatively well known? Yeah, okay, I mean it's not like a huge it's it's a huge case, but it's not like it's not an a list.
On Netflix stock on it yet.
Actually, I don't know if there is.
It didn't look out, just look up to see if there was Okay, there should be.
There should be. But anyways, thanks for being here. Hopefully you guys can stay safe out there, and if you do lock your doors, you'll just be a little bit more safe, you know, try and do those things to keep people like this out of your home because that's terrifying. Anyways, thank you for being here. There's stuff in the description. Go check it out. We're an indie podcast. It's just us. My voice is fading. I don't know if you can tell. Yes, I almost cough there, which is why I was positive
like three times. But anyways, thank you for being here. We appreciate you, and until next time, stay wicked.