Journey into Darkness

by John Douglas

  Had Alley not been apprehended as he had been and had this case come to us as an UNSUB crime, we still would have come up with a profile very similar to the actual killer—a white, blue-collar male in his late twenties to early thirties, without close friends or regular employment, financially dependent on another person, with a history of marital problems and domestic violence, et cetera, et cetera. We would have described the type of pre-offense behavior we expected, as well as post-offense hostility to those close to him, weight loss, substance abuse, absence from work, and preoccupation with the case. He would not feel guilty or contrite that he had taken an innocent life, but would be very much concerned with getting caught. He might have made an excuse for taking a trip out of town. We would have known he was familiar with the base and the surrounding area, which meant he was a local, probably living right on base. Since I would expect him to have no military service himself or a dishonorable discharge, he would likely be a dependent of base personnel. With all of this, I think we would have gotten him before too long.

  And it would be a good thing, too. Because while Sedley Alley wasn’t the standard variety of serial killer, he had no remorse and, in my view, unquestionably would kill again given the right stressors. This was a crime of power and rage and anger and I don’t know any cure for those in their most extreme form.

  If he had been an UNSUB and we found him and searched his residence, I would have expected to find pornography and possibly drugs. In fact, when Naval Investigative personnel conducted their authorized search of Alley’s home, they found, among other items, drug paraphernalia and a series of photos of Lynne Alley in pornographic poses with another man. In the storage room under the stairs they also found a twenty-inch-long stick wrapped with tape and bearing an unidentified stain.

  In those days, we were not yet able to testify on behavioral subjects; the courts had not yet accepted this. So I sat behind the prosecutors, took notes, and discussed the case with them at the end of every trial day.

  Just in case the motive was still obscure to any of the jurors, Williams and Carter buttressed their contention that he was rational with the evidence that air conditioning gauges left at the commanding officer’s house while Alley and others were there in the afternoon to test the compressor over a period of hours were found in Alley’s car. This suggested that perhaps he had killed Suzanne because she had seen him steal them since the house was in the vicinity of the abduction scene. The Collinses actually clung to this explanation for a while since it at least gave them a concrete and easier-to-grasp reason why their daughter had been killed. But frankly, I thought this was a long shot; it didn’t account for the specifics of the crime, and it was never Williams’s main argument. If Alley was simply pissed off that he had been caught in the act and felt he needed to silence his witness, he wouldn’t have punished her as he did. The testimony to this point was harrowing.

  On the second day of the trial, Virginia Taylor stated that while she and some friends were at Edmund Orgill Park late on July 11, 1985, they heard what she characterized as a “death scream,” which seemed to be coming from an area where earlier she had seen an old station wagon headed.

  Alley’s tape-recorded statement the afternoon following the murder, in which he asserted that Suzanne’s death was an accident, was played in court. Jurors got to hear him insist, “I did not have sex with her at any time. I want to make that clear right now.” The jurors heard for themselves that he made no mention, nor was there any suggestion, of either Billie or Death.

  What struck me as extraordinary about Alley’s confession when I heard it and then read the transcript was the way it all just sort of “happened” in his version. Driving his car in an inebriated state, he just happened to bump into this woman who was jogging. Later, when he had her in his control, he just happened to swing his arm in panic, not even realizing he was holding a screwdriver, which just happened to hit her in the head, penetrate her skull and kill her. (And let’s remember that with all the wounds the medical examiner found on Suzanne’s body, he did not find one consistent with a screwdriver puncture or impact with an automobile.) After Alley says she was dead, he just happened to reach up and touch a tree limb, which gave him the idea to stage the crime to look like a sexual assault by breaking off the limb and shoving it into her vagina. The “death scream” Virginia Taylor heard must have just been the wind or some animal, because according to Alley’s version, Suzanne was already dead at this point. At any rate, the whole thing just sort of magically happens, essentially without Alley’s active participation. It is as if he and Suzanne are just two pawns who happen to be in the same place at the same time when these bad things occur.

  Of course, that wasn’t the last word, because Alley also offered his insanity defense, with Battle and Marshall testifying. When you offer an insanity defense, you open up a lot of avenues for the prosecution to dispute the claim. Williams read letters Alley had written to various relatives in which he very rationally discussed his intention to plead that he was temporarily insane and how that would provide a better outcome for him.

  In his own mind, Williams classified the Alley treatment team and other mental health evaluators into the “dreamers” and the “realists.” Leading the realists, he thought, was Deborah Richardson, a psychiatric social worker who was mental health program director at MTMHI. She observed Alley closely for several months and testified that his claims of hallucinations and multiple personalities were inconsistent with what an individual actually suffering these symptoms would experience. More specifically, she noted that his conduct during interviews and evaluations was unrelated to his behavior at other times when he didn’t have to “perform.” According to her testimony, Billie alternated between male and female. She said that Alley, who she stated had an obsession with violent sex, made a habit of associating with the psychotic patients at the hospital to learn how to mimic their behavior. And she also revealed that Alley told staff members of the hospital that he had lied during the confession so his lawyers would be able to show inconsistencies in his story and “get him off.”

  Williams brought in Dr. Zillur Athar, a psychiatrist of Asian origin whose intelligence and critical sophistication shone through his sometimes halting English. Athar felt that since Alley wasn’t being very forthcoming with any of his examiners, they were getting frustrated and started leading him in their questioning. Being smart enough to pick up on what was important and what the “right” answers were, Alley started giving them back to them. To test his premise, Athar started baiting Alley himself, asking him, for example, if he ever woke up around, say, 3:00 A.M. with scary or murderous images. Alley would then tell a subsequent interviewer that he woke up at 2:50 in the morning with terrifying images.

  Dr. Samuel Craddock, another member of the treatment team who was a psychologist at MTMHI, had remained on the fence for a long time about the multiple personality diagnosis. But when he got up on the stand, he testified that “at no time in my presence did Mr. Alley show any compassion for the victim.” He thought this didn’t quite square, since Alley had claimed to him that Death was the personality that had killed Suzanne Collins and that Alley himself was “the good guy.”

  And when pressed in court, Dr. Battle could not say which of the personalities had been in control during the murder. Since his theories were perhaps the linchpin of the insanity defense, it began unraveling quickly. Even if Alley were a multiple personality—and again, I stress there was nothing to support that he was—there was no evidence that any personality other than plain old Sedley was in control during the crime and the interrogation. That was the personality that committed the crime, gave the confession, and was standing trial for murder. It seemed pretty clear-cut to me.

  Alley’s mother, Jane, tried to bolster the mental health argument, testifying in her son’s behalf, tearfully telling the court that “there’s always been something wrong with him.” After Debra Alley’s death, she and her husband had been granted custody of Debra a
nd Sedley’s two children. Lynne Alley had left him by the time of the trial. In fact, she’d left town and did not testify.

  No one else was able to provide any testimony establishing believable evidence of multiple personalities in Alley prior to his arrest for the murder of Suzanne Collins. As Williams recalled, “No one could come up with anything worth a flip to support him having MPD as a child. What kept coming out instead were examples of his antisocial personality.”

  In the end, Alley chose not to testify. If he had, there is little doubt in my mind that we could have systematically taken him apart, showing him up for what he really was—a mean and sadistic sociopath who was willing and able to take another human life simply because he was frustrated and felt like it.

  By the time of the trial, Alley had slimmed down and cleaned himself up. I’ve found this to be very common. In fact, I often joked that by the time the case gets to court and you look over at the defense table, it’s often difficult to tell which one is the accused killer and which one is the attorney. It’s very important for the defense to get across the nonverbal message “Now this doesn’t look like a vicious killer, does it?”

  Though Alley never spoke before the jury, throughout the trial he sat with his elbows on the arms of his chair, paying close attention and passing notes to his lawyers. He seemed neither cocky and self-confident nor pathetic and ineffectual. He seemed to be a guy unhappy about being on trial for his life.

  During closing arguments, Bobby Carter said to the jury, “You’ve observed him for two weeks now, and he’s been able to control his behavior.”

  He concluded, “The time has come for the excuses to end and for him to pay for his behavior.”

  For his part, Robert Jones tried to convince the jury that this must surely be the “act of a maniac.” The crime was so horrible that it had to be “an act of a person who’s clearly deranged.”

  While I’d be willing to admit that Alley certainly fits the nonlegal definition of a “sicko,” the systematic overpowering and disabling of a physically fit female Marine, transporting her to a more secure location, torturing her, then staging the crime was the act of a brutal and self-centered sociopath, not someone who is deranged. From the testimony of the guard at the base gate, it was clear that after Alley rendered Suzanne unconscious, he sat her in the front seat next to him and rested her head on his shoulder as they drove out to make it seem that they were lovers.

  Throughout the trial, my heart went out to Jack and Trudy Collins. They looked devastated, exhausted, lost, dazed, and empty. I knew they’d viewed the crime scene photos and I could hardly imagine parents being able to get through them. I’d heard Jack’s testimony and thought it heroic.

  When it became certain Alley wasn’t going to testify, I prepared to leave Memphis and go back to Quantico. The next morning I took the Collinses to breakfast and we talked a long time. In spite of the testimony and their extensive conversations with Hank Williams and Bobby Carter, they still couldn’t grasp the motivation—why would someone do this to their daughter? I tried to explain to them what I thought had happened, just as I’d explained it to Williams’s team.

  Before I left Quantico to come to the trial, I’d stopped by to see Jim Horn, one of the early members of the Investigative Support Unit who had since, along with Jim Reese, become one of the two top law-enforcement-related stress experts in the Bureau. I asked him what I could do to help the family if the occasion presented itself. Horn is a very sensitive, empathetic guy and he told me the main thing I could do was listen and be sympathetic, something Hank Williams was already doing very well on his own. Jim also suggested I have them get in touch with the Parents of Murdered Children organization and several other support groups and I passed this information along to them. I liked the Collinses right away, but had no way of knowing at the time how pivotal and valuable they themselves would soon become in helping and counseling others who experienced similar tragedy. These were my real soul mates. They were the reason I did the work I did.

  While the jury was out deliberating, Jane Alley saw Trudy and came over to her. “I’m so sorry about what happened to your daughter,” she said. She didn’t go so far as to acknowledge her son had done it, but it was something.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Trudy replied. “I feel sorry for you as a mother and for me as a mother. Your son has caused two mothers untold grief.”

  After six hours of deliberation, the jury of ten women and two men found Sedley Alley guilty of murder in the first degree, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated rape. After two additional hours of deliberation on sentencing, jurors recommended death by electrocution. Judge Axley set execution for September 11.

  Jack and Trudy think the world of Hank Williams, as do I. He is one of the true heroes of our legal system. He has equal praise for them.

  “They were more involved than any family I have ever dealt with in a case of violence. And they kept up that involvement, becoming leaders in the victims’ rights movement.”

  What none of them knew at the time was that rather than ending and bringing closure with the jury’s verdict, the ordeal had only just begun.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Passion of Jack and Trudy Collins

  In October of 1988, Jack was having a problem with a tooth. He went to his dentist, who examined him and said he needed a root canal.

  “Okay, fine,” Jack replied, “let’s do it,” and the procedure was done.

  Before he left the office, the dentist said, “You’re going to be having some pain from this, so I’m going to give you some medication to take when the novocaine wears off.”

  Within a few hours, the novocaine had fully worn off and the pain was becoming intense. “Pretty serious, front-line pain,” Jack recalled.

  Trudy saw how much distress he was in and reminded him that he had the pills the dentist had given him.

  “I’m not going to take them,” Jack told her. “I want to fully suffer this pain and then offer up the pain for Suzanne.”

  Trudy asked, “What do you mean?”

  Jack explained his reasoning. “As bad as this pain may be—and I hope it gets much worse than this—I’m going to ask God to add it all up and then go back to that night when Suzanne was being beaten and tortured and murdered, and to subtract an equal amount of pain from her so that her suffering will become a little bit less.”

  “Jack, you can’t go back in time,” Trudy said.

  “Well, yes you can,” Jack replied. “God doesn’t work in time, he works in eternity.”

  Trudy had never been as sure of this as Jack, but this practice has become a constant act of devotion for him. “Now, ever since Suzanne died, every distress I experience—pain, tension, frustration, anxiety, loss, whatever—all of those things I offer up for her sake. I ask God to apply their merits back to Suzanne at the time of her final agony and terror so that her pain can be lessened by that same amount.”

  I asked Jack what, if anything, he felt Suzanne’s horrible suffering at the hands of Sedley Alley accomplished.

  “In and of itself, it accomplished nothing,” he said, and there were tears in his eyes. Eleven years later, this is no easier to talk about. “An innocent girl died because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a monster needed to vent his rage. But on another level, it accomplished a tremendous amount. It caused us to become much better people, more caring and compassionate. It also inspired us to become active in a civic and political way—fighting for justice for crime victims and their families. It made us reach out to help others whom we might never have helped before.”

  I commented that it seemed to me as though they must have been pretty good people to begin with.

  “We worked at it, but one can always do better. Now, every time we hear about somebody or something that we can help with, we try to help. Steve had asked me once, ‘How could God let something so terrible happen to Suzanne?’ and Trudy answered him by saying, ‘There’s evil in the world. Som
e people try to deny it, but evil walks in this world and we have to address it. We have to counter it every chance we get.”’

  “I really feel strongly about that,” Trudy added. “If we let evil prevail, even incrementally, it saps us all. Pretty soon it’s up to your nose level, then your eye level, and then you get so used to it you don’t even realize it’s prevailing.”

  As Stephen has said, “You’ll never find a closer couple than my parents.” And the one thing they were determined to do was hang together as a family.

  “If we fell apart,” Trudy said, “then Sedley Alley’s victory would have been more complete. We did not want to let evil win. I didn’t know if we were going to win or lose, but I knew we were going to be in that battle all the way.”

  Like most people who have suffered terrible loss, Jack and Trudy came to grips with Suzanne’s death in stages.

  Trudy explains, “The first reaction I had was, ‘Okay, God. I prayed to you to take care of her. How come you let us down?’ But then you get realistic: You know, God didn’t do this.

  “Other people will tell you, ‘Oh, this is terrible; there must have been a reason.’ I say, ‘No. There’s no reason. There was an evil person who wanted to do an evil deed.’”

  Her next reaction was one of acute vulnerability. She felt anxious and nervous all the time. She privately committed her thoughts to paper several times in a spiral stenographer’s notebook:

  What if Steve is hurt, taken from us, what if Jack gets sick, what if I’m sick—fatally—who will cope? Why has this been visited upon us? Did we care too little, do too little—overlook needs? Or are we the “chosen” to share with Jesus his Cross, and endure regardless? Shame on me for questioning. After all, until now, it was grand, wasn’t it?