Ep 1: The Southside Strangler

Detective Society

Episode 1 explores the serial killer known as The Southside Strangler, his victims, and David Vasquez who was falsely imprisoned for a murder he did not commit.

Show Intro:

Carolyn Jean Hamm was a Duke graduate and Lawyer in 1980s Washington DC. She was intelligent, reliable, and strong. If you look up pictures of her online, she really was just gorgeous. She has this thick brown hair and a really beautiful smile. Clearly a BOSS. On the morning of Tuesday, January 24th 1984, Carolyn failed to show up for work, after a call from her secretary, her body was discovered nude and facedown in her basement.

Carolyn had been murdered in an absolutely horrific way. She had been raped, strangled, and her hands had been bound behind her with a venetian blind cord. She had been hanged. Later that week, police received a promising lead when Muriel Ranser called them to report seeing a man named David Vasquez leering at Hamm the day of her murder. According to Ranser, Vasquez was a total creep. She had seen him peeping at Carolyn as she sunbathed in her yard. A neighbor named Michael Ansari seemed to back up Ranser's account. Telling the police that he had seen Vasquez behaving strangely in the area, the day after Hamm's body had been found.

The police investigation moved quickly. Not only did they find pubic hair at the scene that could have matched vasquez, but when they brought Vasquez in for questioning, he confessed not once, but 3 times. Jack pot. Vasquez was arrested and charged for the murder of Carolyn Jean Hamm. The next year he would be convicted. Justice had been served...

Except here's the thing, guys. Vasquez hadn't even touched Carolyn Hamm. Vasquez, a 36 year old man with an IQ of less than 70, still lived with his mother in Manassas, 30 miles away from Carolyn Hamm's home in Arlington, VA. Neither Vasquez nor his mother drove, which meant that an unnamed accomplice would have had to help him. The semen found at the scene did not match Vasquez's blood type. The sightings by Ranser and Ansari would never be corroborated. And he had only confessed after being heavily pressured and fed details by police.

It would take five long years for Vasquez to be exonerated and for the real killer to be identified as Timothy Wilson Spencer. Spencer would go on to take the lives of at least 4 more women, and forever change the way crime is investigated in the United States.

This is the story of the Southside Strangler.