Spokane Police Dept.
Serial Crime Task Force
Interview Transcript
Paul Verloc
Tape Three
Date: 15 August, 1000 hours
SPIVEY: Want some more coffee?
PAUL VERLOC: Sure. Creamer? Thanks.
SPIVEY: Okay, we got the tape changed…We all ready? Okay, go ahead.
PAUL VERLOC: Well, like I was saying, at first I was just chasing girlies off the boats. Especially when it was cold outside, they used the boats. It really bugged Kevin that we couldn’t keep the girlies away. He was afraid of losing the contract with Landers. Before that I used to bring girlies home to him sometimes. I know that sounds terrible, but because of the shooting, sometimes he had, what do you call it, dysfunction? You know, when you can’t…
MCDANIEL:…achieve orgasm?
PAUL VERLOC: Right. Well, around February, he came back from a meeting and said there was a bonus structure set up now.
MCDANIEL: Bonuses for driving the prostitutes away? PAUL VERLOC: Yeah. He told me to call him the next time I found someone, you know, having sex in the boats. So I found this one girl and chased off her john. I called Kevin and he came out and took her for a drive.
MCDANIEL: This was Shelly Nordling.
PAUL VERLOC: I guess. I found the next one sleeping in one of the boats. He took her for a drive too. But this time he came back after thirty minutes and said he needed my help. He brought me to the truck and…he said she’d tried to attack him and he choked her. But I knew he was lying. See, he’s got this problem with dysfunction.
SPIVEY: Yeah, you said.
PAUL VERLOC: Not that it’s any excuse but I know he gets…frustrated. So we drove her body to the house and Kevin started showing me in all of these books, how if we did certain things, people would assume it was someone else, like in the books.
MCDANIEL: Curtis Blanton’s books.
PAUL VERLOC: Oh, he had all kinds of books. He said you guys would make all these assumptions if we did it right and that if they thought there was a serial killer, it might frighten the girlies away. And he was right. So that’s why we did a lot of the weird stuff, like shooting them in the head afterwards. He said them books called it…oh, what’s it called. When you do too much of something?
MCDANIEL: Overkill.
PAUL VERLOC: Yeah. Right. And that you guys would think it was a real psycho who hated women. And he did other stuff, like tearing off their fingernails and moving the bodies. You’ll have to ask him, I didn’t understand it all.
MCDANIEL: How did you get the bodies down to the river?
PAUL VERLOC: We had a plastic sled and it just pulled over the grass and dirt without leaving a mark. Then he worked on the shallow graves, you know, putting the sticks a certain way. After the second one, he promised he wouldn’t do it no more, so I thought it was over. But he watched you guys find that body by the river with his binoculars, and he kind of liked that and he thought it would really be something if we put another body down there, and it just got so…
SPIVEY: But you never tried to stop him?
PAUL VERLOC: Even before they found the bodies, the girlies stopped coming around and we got our bonus…I guess I thought he would quit once we got the money. And maybe I knew how much trouble I was in. Since my wife died, Kevin is all I have and after the shooting, he had a hard time. You’re probably thinking the apple don’t fall far from the tree, huh?
MCDANIEL: You’re saying he did all of this…for a few thousand bucks?
PAUL VERLOC: At first, I think so. But just between you and me? After a while, I think Kevin kind of got a taste for it.
Spokane Police Dept.
Serial Crime Task Force
Interview Transcript
John Landers
Tape Two
Date: 16 August, 900 hours
LAIRD: We’re going in circles here. No one is suggesting that you told Verloc to kill anyone. All we want to know is the general context of your conversations with him.
DARREN MOORE: I told you, my client feels it is not in his best interest at this time to discuss the nature of his discussions with Mr. Verloc, other than to state emphatically that he had no knowledge of any of the crimes Mr. Verloc is alleged to have committed.
LAIRD: So it didn’t strike you as strange that when you started paying this guy to clean up the neighborhood, hookers started getting killed?
DARREN MOORE: Look, my client has been through a terrible ordeal. Now he has agreed to cooperate, but I’m not about to let him incriminate himself in some sort of witch hunt!
MCDANIEL: Okay, let’s back up, then. The first time you mentioned the bonus situation to him, do you recall what his reaction might have been?
DARREN MOORE: No. I’m not going to let him answer that. I am not about to let my client say anything that might be misconstrued in some misguided attempt to prosecute him until I have a piece of paper from the district attorney that gives my client unlimited immunity from any prosecution in this matter or subsequent prosecution.
SPIVEY: Here you go. Here’s your coffee.
Spokane Police Dept.
Serial Crime Task Force
Interview Transcript
Kevin Verloc
Tape Thirteen
Date: 17 August, 1900 hours
KEVIN VERLOC: Yeah. The fingernails were textbook, too obvious, probably. I was conscious of you realizing the killer was a cop because of that, but I just couldn’t think of any way around it. I didn’t want to leave any skin behind. But replacing the bodies, changing the dump sites to indicate a change in the killer’s MO, I got a lot of that straight from Mr. Blanton’s descriptions of the guy in Texas. Oh, and the Pacific Coast Highway guy. That was really the model, I suppose. And the killer’s overall preparation of the bodies for discovery? Some of that I got from the job, of course, but the fingernails…I’m thinking it was the Pacific Coast Highway guy. Is Mr. Blanton coming back? I’d really like to clear some of this up with him.
SPIVEY: No. Mr. Blanton has…decided not to work on this case anymore.
KEVIN VERLOC: Oh. That’s too bad. I suppose he’ll see this transcript? Because I thought he’d be interested in the forty bucks. That was my own idea, my signature. You don’t know anyone else who ever did that, do you? ’Cause I don’t think I read it anywhere, I think it was all mine.
MCDANIEL: No. I’d never seen that before. In fact we were wondering why you kept receipts for the money. Why you billed Landers for it.
KEVIN VERLOC: As a rule I keep exceptional records, Mr. McDaniel. Always have. And I’m not a thief. I paid these women and I knew that detail might become important some day.
MCDANIEL: I don’t understand.
KEVIN VERLOC: Well, think about it. If you kill someone to cover up another crime, let’s say felony robbery, that’s aggravated murder. A capital crime. But if the killer doesn’t steal the money back, if he leaves it on the victim—
MCDANIEL: My God.
KEVIN VERLOC: No robbery. No aggravating circumstances. No death penalty. It’s just plain murder. And I knew you would find psychological underpinnings for the money. That’s why I put the money in the girl’s mouth. Did you get that?
SPIVEY: Jeff? You okay?
KEVIN VERLOC: By the way, do you know what Mr. Blanton thought of the name? I just thought they could have come up with a much better name than Southbank Strangler, especially with the fingernails and the money and the moving of bodies…I just wished Mr. Blanton had been able to name me. He’s really good at that, don’t you think?