[suspenseful music]
[radio chatter]
- It was evening shift.
The watch commander said,
look, we got this tip
from "America's Most Wanted."
Take a couple guys with you.
See if it's legit.
[radio chatter]
- They didn't tell us
she was the chameleon.
I knocked on the door.
[knocking]
She had been asleep.
[distant sirens]
When I asked for her ID,
we didn't think it was her.
As soon as that door locked,
it was a different ball game.
She refused to come out,
making us really nervous.
So that's when we said,
if you don't come out,
we're going to come
in and get you.
[music building]
[woman humming]
- Florida police
discovered the body
of a young woman who'd been
decapitated and left to rot--
- Her hands amputated
above her wrists.
- The crime scene that
shows dismemberment
is extremely rare.
- It still disturbs me
how somebody can do that.
- The k*ller is a woman
of thousand names.
[dramatic music]
- This is a woman who
moved vampirically
from victim to victim.
Once you're armed with
someone's passport,
you can take over their life.
- She's reeling her mark in.
It's seductive.
- At every stage when they
think they have a lead,
they follow it, only to
find they are too late.
[knocking]
- Feels like falling down
[suspenseful music]
- St. Lucie County is
probably about an hour
north of West Palm Beach on
the East Coast of Florida.
I was a reporter with
the Port St. Lucie News
for about 2 and 1/2 years.
This job was my first daily
newspaper job, my first time
ever living in Florida.
And I began being a
reporter there in 1989.
I covered city government
for a long time,
which was back then,
that's kind of what
everybody had to do, you know.
[radio chatter]
Then I became a
police reporter.
I would spend my mornings
talking to the local police,
and they would leave out
copies of the police reports
from the day before,
which was great.
I mean, it was
great for stories
because you could get
all kinds of details.
At times, we would have
some violent crime.
But more often than not, it was
just sort of small-time crimes.
Back then, we didn't
have cell phones.
I had a police scanner,
and I would take it
with me when I was in my car.
[radio chatter]
You just never knew
what was gonna happen.
[foreboding music]
It was summer.
It was getting toward
the end of the day.
And I was tired and
wanted to go home.
[radio chatter]
And I heard on the
scanner they found a body.
The body was found
by a fisherman.
He was out net casting, I
believe, with his niece.
And he noticed that
there was something
on the banks of this canal
where they were fishing.
[frog ribbiting]
Maybe he thought it was a
pile of rags or something.
And then, upon
closer inspection,
he saw that it was a human
body and that the head
and hands had been cut off.
- When you leave
Port St. Lucie,
very quickly, you're
out of the city,
and you're into
truly rural Florida.
The roads go
straight as an arrow
and radiating off from them a
network of irrigation canals.
[dramatic sting]
Whoever k*lled
this young woman
had attempted to throw her
down the bank into this canal,
but it had been caught
in the weeds
and the rushes and the brush.
- It's extraordinary that
this fisherman found the body.
I'm sure whoever left the body
there was hoping this person
would have been
eaten by alligators
because the alligators
also hung out there.
It was just kind of a
wild and swampy place.
- It must have been a
horrible thing to find
that, a mutilated body.
And he reported it, and the
Sheriff's Department responded.
[radio chatter]
- It was probably one of
the most gruesome homicides
that our agency has
investigated in recent years.
[helicopter humming]
- We have a body
that is decapitated.
The hands are cut off.
So anything that would help
with identification
would be--it would
be difficult.
- We assumed that whoever
committed the m*rder
was trying to conceal
her identity.
- A person that
would do that
has got to be a sick person,
a cold, calculating,
determined person.
It's not easy to do
those things to a body.
- It tends to be very rare,
that level of mutilation.
You probably see
one in your career.
My name is Dr. Marie Hansen.
I'm an associate
medical examiner.
That is a forensic pathologist.
Basically, we like to
get our bodies intact.
And so, to have one without the
head and hands, things that you
use for identification
or how people look,
a photograph of their
head, fingerprints,
it suggests they
either knew somewhat
of what they were
doing, or they
had watched enough
forensic shows on TV
that they knew how
people got identified.
The body was estimated to be
between 25 and 35 years of age
with an ante mortem
estimated height
of 5 feet, 5 inches,
and about 150 pounds.
There's no evidence
of strangulation.
There's no g*nsh*t wounds.
And they thought
the cause of death
was cutting and stabbing
injury to the neck.
There was considerable
bloody staining
on the ground where
the body was found,
suggesting that it
probably was the site
of at least the mutilation,
if not the death.
[eerie music, water running]
There were a couple cuts
on the upper left abdomen.
Appeared to be an ellipse,
like a football shape.
He was able to detect
some blue and red tattoo
pigment on the outside edge.
So the fact that they took
out a big piece of skin
suggests that they
attempted to remove
a tattoo, so something that
you could identify someone by.
And the only other real
significant descriptive
feature was a tattoo on the
lateral right ankle,
a yellow rose with
blue or green leaves.
- Why would such a
careful and cunning k*ller
leave a tattoo that
could be traced?
Was the tattoo just missed?
Was it symbolic in some way?
Or was it a tiny,
little clue that
was left by the dismemberer,
almost as a calling card?
[dramatic sting]
- With that information,
the Sheriff's Department
were able to put out
a description of the body
with the tattoo of a yellow
rose and asked people,
via TV, newspapers,
radio, if they knew
who fitted that description.
[birds calling]
- Saturday, 6 o'clock
at night, I'm flipping
through news channels.
[static]
And the news comes on,
and there's the story--
- Tonight, a spokesperson
for the Sheriff's Office
says he cannot confirm
who the body is.
We did ask--
- Of a body that had
been found in Port St. Lucie.
And it described it as
a 5'10" woman with brown hair.
I knew she had a
tattoo on her leg.
And that was Bev.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
[seagulls calling]
Bev McGowan was a
coworker of mine.
We worked together at a bank
in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
I actually trained her for her
position in customer service.
She sat right in front of me.
She was one of those people
that would be very quiet
and just diligently work away.
And then you wouldn't
even realize she was
listening to a conversation.
And she'd come up with a
zinger in the middle of it.
And, just, everybody
would burst out laughing.
We all got along really well.
And it was actually a very
nice environment to work in.
We joked.
We laughed.
We made stories up.
[laughs] We had a good
time working together.
We did. We had a good group.
At that time, she had just
moved into this condo.
She was very excited about
it, very proud of herself
for being able to
do that on her own
with nobody else's help.
I went over there on
a Saturday afternoon,
and she showed me around.
It was a nice-sized,
two-bedroom condo.
She was on the second floor.
[train clanking]
But it was right next
to the railroad tracks.
That's what I remember
the most about it,
that it was not going to
be comfortable for anyone
because it was so
close to the tracks.
[distant sirens]
- At 10 o'clock on the
morning of the 18th of July,
someone claiming to be
Beverly McGowan
rang the bank
where she worked.
"It's Bev, and I'm not well.
I can't come in to work today."
The call that was made
wasn't to Bev's line manager.
It was actually put through
to the head of security.
And that in itself was odd.
[line ringing]
[foreboding music]
- She didn't show up to work.
We called her house,
and all we got
was the answering machine.
We left one or two messages,
telling her that we were
worried, please call us.
Thursday, once again, no Bev.
She's not calling in.
She's not answering her phone.
This time, when we called,
there was no
answering machine.
There was a message
that said the phone
had been disconnected.
[line beeping]
We knew something was wrong
because Bev
was always on time.
She was never late.
If she was going to be
sick, she called in.
So we knew something was wrong.
I went out to her
house to check on her.
The place was locked up tight.
The blinds were closed.
You couldn't see anything.
There was no sign of the cats.
She had two cats.
Those were missing.
And her car was not there.
Left a note on
her door to call.
Please let us know you're okay.
- Later on, that day,
her brother and sister
received letters from
her that seemed odd,
saying that she was just
checking out, leaving.
"I've got to make some
major changes in life.
"I quit my job, sold the
condo and furniture,
"and I'm leaving for a while.
"I need to travel to get
away from my life as it is.
"I know when I come back,
life will be different.
"For the first time, I will
be able to do what I want,
buy what I want, without
worrying about every penny."
- It just--it was
not in her plans.
I mean, she was--she had
just bought that condo.
She was so proud of it.
She--she had a
career in the bank.
She felt she was going places.
She was independent and
happy and doing the thing
that she wanted to do.
So, getting a
letter, I don't care
how much it looked like her
writing, it was not her.
That was just not
the Bev we knew.
- Something bothered me because
that's not the type of person
that Bev was.
She was not the kind of person,
after spending all her money
to try to get that condo and
try to land a job at the bank,
which she seemed
to be happy with,
it was not her nature to just
give up, give up on everything,
and just walk away from it.
- At the same
time, other letters
purporting to come from Bev
are sent to her mortgage
company,
saying, please sell the condo.
Here are the keys, and
deal with the profits.
Bev's brother, Steve,
went to Bev's condo.
And what they found was the
condo in its usual state.
It was neat.
It was tidy.
It didn't look like
it had been ransacked.
But there were some
telling items missing.
The answering machine,
that had gone.
Her car, that was
nowhere to be seen.
Her handgun was also missing.
- I was able to find a
copy of the big article
that I wrote on the cover
of the Port St. Lucie News.
The headline of the story says
"Bizarre m*rder
Baffles Detectives."
"She was found in July,
halfway down a canal bank,
"three counties
away from home.
"She wore a maroon
flowered shirt,
"Levi's, and a white canvas
shoe on one of her feet.
"Her head and hands were cut
off, concealing her identity.
"Her throat was slit and
her stomach cut open.
"Had it not been for the small
yellow rose tattoo on her
"right ankle, investigators
might never
"have identified the
remains of 34-year-old
Beverly Ann McGowan."
[melancholy violin]
- When I saw the story of
a body that had been found
in Port St. Lucie,
I wasn't sure if I'd
actually heard it right.
And I didn't quite know
how to proceed from there.
Eventually, I ended up calling
the Port St. Lucie
Sheriff's Department.
The detective told me
what they had found.
It took a while to get up
the gumption that I was
going to make a phone
call to Bev's brother
and tell him that I--
I thought his sister was dead.
- She said they found a body
in the St. Lucie County canal.
And it has a yellow tattoo
of a rose on its ankle.
And my first reaction was,
of course, that was Bev.
I didn't even--
[groans] it didn't even enter
my thought that it wasn't.
It was just like,
you know, your worst--
your worst nightmare.
It was just your
worst nightmare.
It was just, ugh, how do
you deal with this now?
- Why did this happen to this
vibrant woman, this woman who
had plans for the future, who
had goals and things
she wanted to do,
that she was gone
and in such a horrible way
and for no reason.
[suspenseful music]
- The mystery surrounding
Beverly McGowan's death
reverberates
with a single word--why?
Why did they go to
such lengths to conceal
the victim's identity?
And why did they
choose Beverly McGowan?
[dramatic music]
- Once the detectives know
this victim
was Beverly McGowan,
the next question
is why and how.
Who could have k*lled her?
The detectives began examining
Bev's last few weeks.
They reconstruct a timeline.
- The last person
in Beverly's life
seemed to be her
new roommate, Alice.
[suspenseful music]
[train clanking]
- When Bev moved
into this condo,
the mortgage was more than
she could pay on her salary.
So in order to help pay her
rent, she worked two jobs.
And she also needed a roommate
to help with her expenses.
Her search for roommates
eventually led
to newspaper ads
asking for a roommate.
It was the '90s.
We didn't have the internet.
When she said she was
putting an ad in the paper,
we were like, you can't.
That is so dangerous.
Please find another way.
And she was like, what do I do?
I've looked around,
I've asked around,
and you guys don't know anyone.
I don't have any other
choice but to do this.
But I'll be careful.
[suspenseful music]
[buttons beeping]
[line ringing]
- The advert was answered by
a woman calling herself Alice.
- Hello? This is Bev.
- The story that Alice told Bev
was that she was a relatively
high-powered business
executive from England,
that she worked for IBM,
and that IBM had seconded her
to its operation
in Florida, and she
needed a place to
stay, pending IBM
sorting out her own apartment.
So, a short-term arrangement.
- Bev told us that
she was British.
She described her
as very high-end.
I think the British accent gave
the impression that, you know,
she was an elite or whatever,
well-schooled, well-educated,
came from money.
- Studies show Americans
perceive anyone who speaks
with a British accent as being
upper class, well-educated,
very intelligent.
So, right away,
she disarmed Beverly.
- She was very excited.
She really liked this woman.
She made a strong,
strong impression on her.
They seemed to have
a lot in common.
She smiled a lot when
she talk about Alice.
- Alice asked, have you
ever heard of numerology,
numerology being the
science, so-called,
of predicting the future
from a series of otherwise
random-looking numbers.
Alice said, I'm an
expert in numerology.
Would you like me to
work up your charts?
I need your Social
Security number.
I need your birth certificate.
I need your passport number.
[foreboding music]
And with all of those numbers,
I can work up a chart which
will predict your future.
- Today, you would
probably go, what? [laughs]
But she was just
so charmed by this woman
that she happily turned
over all of this information
to her because Alice
wanted to know,
even before looking
at the apartment,
whether or not they
would be compatible.
- It's seductive.
At first, an individual,
a young woman like Beverly,
may say, well, this is a lark.
But like the person
at the carnival who
can read your fortune and
knows everything about you,
she's reeling her mark in.
She's telling her
stuff about her future.
That's sucking her
in more and more.
- You would never think that
someone who is as reserved
as Bev would give out that
type of personal information
on a first or second meeting.
It all happened very quickly.
[line ringing]
The topic of Alice came
up maybe on Monday.
And then she, like,
met her on Tuesday.
And then she was giving out
her private information.
- What we see about
the traits that
are in a susceptible victim is
that they are agreeable people.
They're not people who
are going to be skeptical.
And so when she met
Alice, a very imposing,
authoritative-looking older
woman, who not only spoke
with this fascinating,
exotic British accent,
but also had this
arcane body of knowledge
that she could do numerology,
it was a done deal.
[tense music]
- What was curious about this
was that the investigators
were sort of stumped.
They didn't know
who Alice was.
They didn't have a last name.
There was really not
much else to go on.
- Trying to track down a
person just known as "Alice,"
it was very difficult.
- Then the detectives
began examining Bev's
trail of credit card usage.
The timeline
they reconstructed
was that Bev had been k*lled
and disposed of at some
point during the night
of the 17th to 18th of July.
They found that in the
days after Bev's m*rder,
her credit card is
going for a walk
and is being used to
make purchases in Miami.
- One was used at a Publix ATM.
$300 was withdrawn from
Beverly's savings account.
There was some shopping done
with Beverly's credit card
at JCPenney's, a store called
Pizazz, and Foot Locker.
- The woman who
used the credit card
to buy clothes
was described as 5'8"
with a British accent,
attractive, blondish hair,
large breasts.
[birds calling]
At 10:18 that
morning, the first
of two transatlantic calls
were made from Bev's condo.
The first was to a hotel
at Heathrow Airport.
The second was
to Avis Rent a Car,
also at Heathrow Airport.
Then the credit card is
used at a travel agency.
This person was described
by the travel agency staff
as a man dressed
as a woman wearing
a cheap Cleopatra-type wig.
[distant sirens]
Around three or
four days after,
Bev's car was found in the car
park for the Days Inn motel
at Miami International
Airport.
When the cops examined it,
they found some hairs.
They looked like they
matched the description
of the cheap Cleopatra
wig that somebody had
worn to use Bev's credit card.
[suspenseful music]
At 10 o'clock on the
morning of July 23rd,
a person presented
themselves at the Avis Rental
desk at Heathrow Airport.
That person handed
over a credit card
to secure the fuel
deposit on a rental,
which had already been booked.
And that credit card was in
the name of Beverly McGowan.
As it happened,
Beverly's family
had canceled her
credit cards,
so the credit card was
rejected.
[somber music]
- Her brother thought he
was doing the right thing,
canceling the credit cards
when, in fact, it would have
been better had he not, because
they could have followed
where she used them.
But at the time,
you think, well,
if I cancel her
credit card, she'll
have to get in touch with me.
- I was just--at the time,
I just wanted Bev to call me.
I just wanted her to call
me and say, you know,
what's wrong with you?
Why did you cancel
my credit cards?
- At Avis Rent a Car,
the person
handed over a cash deposit,
took the rental car, a little
beige car, and disappeared.
[suspenseful music]
[distant sirens]
- My name is John Cornish.
I am a retired
Detective Constable
from the Metropolitan Police.
It was international
crime that we dealt with.
We had a map over the
door of the CID office.
It was a map of the world.
And everybody had
a flag because we
had officers all over the world
on inquiries at any given time.
I was at home, getting
ready for work,
and the Detective Chief
Inspector rang me and said,
you know, I need you to get
into work as soon as you can.
I've got a job for you.
So I drove to Heathrow,
where I was introduced
to a deputy sheriff from
St. Lucie County, who told us
the story about this
headless body that was found
in an irrigation
canal in Florida
And that her credit
card and driving license
had been used to
obtain a hire car at Heathrow.
So we had a
registration number,
and we had a very rough
description of the person
who had hired the car--
a jet-black wig,
Cleopatra-style.
That was our
"get up and go" start.
Had this been today,
we would have had
the number plate
recognition cameras.
We didn't have
that at that time.
It was immediately flagged
up on the national police
computers, so any officer
that did a car check
on that registration number
would know that the driver was
suspected of being a m*rder*r.
[phone ringing]
- And then the phone goes
at Avis head office.
And it's the person who's
rented this vehicle, saying,
yeah, I need to
extend the rental.
Can I do that?
Alarm bells go off.
On the instruction of
the Metropolitan Police
who have now been brought
in to this person hunt,
the caller is told,
yes, that's fine.
That'll be no problem.
But you need to
bring the vehicle
into your nearest
Avis office so we
can sort out the paperwork.
The renter of this
vehicle who's phoned up
is heard on the call
to turn to somebody,
or apparently, somebody,
with her and say,
where are we, Sam?
[dramatic music]
The answer appears to be
Mousehole in Cornwall.
[birds calling]
[suspenseful music]
- We spoke to the Devon and
Cornwall Regional Crime Squad,
and they agreed to cover
surveillance on the car hire.
- There is no sign
of the renter.
[honking]
- So the next move
forward was when the car
was due back at Heathrow.
We had the whole of
the Heathrow Crime Squad
staking out Avis at Heathrow
right through to midnight.
- Nothing happens, no show,
no sign of the renter.
A day or so later, the rental
car is found abandoned.
And it's not in Cornwall.
It's on the side of the road
in Barnes, South West London.
And the mileometer
shows that it hasn't
been anywhere near Cornwall.
- The next logical step
was going back to Heathrow.
So we got as many officers
as we could spare,
both uniform and CID.
Every USA-bound
aircraft was boarded,
and every passenger
was looked at.
[suspenseful music]
- Again, it's a no-show.
At every stage, when they
think they have a lead,
they follow it only to find
they're too late.
[sirens wailing]
- The car was taken to the
forensic science laboratory
and was literally taken
apart for anything that
we could get evidential wise.
Fingerprints would have
been an absolute result.
- The specialists go over
it with a tooth comb.
There are no fingerprints
anywhere in that car.
- It had been wiped.
It had been
basically sterilized.
So there was not going
to be anything in there
for us to find.
The only fingerprints
we found were
the fingerprints from the Avis
staff, the car hire people.
[water running]
- You don't do that
that thoroughly
and that professionally, unless
you know what you're doing,
unless you've done it before.
What that told the cops and
what that made them believe
was they were
dealing with someone
a whole stage up beyond your
garden variety criminal.
She was playing with him.
She was toying with him.
It was a cat and mouse game.
And she seemed to be deriving
some kind of satisfaction
or thrill from doing this.
- What we do know about
K*llers is that they kind of
enjoy taunting the
police, especially
this kind of con artist.
And they have a very
sick sense of humor.
- In this vehicle,
this rental vehicle,
which had been wiped clean,
there were two dog hairs,
two hairs from a white dog.
[distant sirens]
[thunder rumbling]
Fast forward now
to May the 20th, 1991,
to 11:00 PM, the parking lot
of a shopping mall in Miami.
[radio chatter]
[dog barking]
A uniformed beat cop
from North Miami PD
sees a suspicious car,
a red Toyota Corolla
in the parking lot,
and decides
he's going to run the plates.
And he runs the plates.
And what he finds is
those plates aren't
for a red Toyota Corolla.
In fact, those plates
had been stolen
a few days earlier
from somewhere else
and have been
mounted on that car.
So he goes across
to the vehicle.
[knocking]
[suspenseful music]
[radio chatter]
And in it, he finds a
woman asleep with two dogs.
He asks for identity.
She presents a British
passport in the name
of Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson.
[radio chatter]
He then checks the vehicle
against the records,
and he discovers that the
vehicle is marked as stolen.
[radio chatter]
It was a rental which had
been hired at LAX,
Los Angeles Airport,
approximately six months
earlier
and never returned.
So now he's got a middle-aged
woman, apparently British,
sleeping in a stolen car
with stolen plates
with two dogs
in a Miami parking lot.
Unsurprisingly,
he arrested her.
This woman has three
identities on her
and documents confirming
those three identities.
She is Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson,
a British national,
Elaine Parent,
an American national,
and Charlotte Rae Cowan,
from a little town
up past Orlando.
Three identities, three names--
Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson, Elaine
Parent, Charlotte Rae Cowan.
Bizarrely, they decide that
she doesn't need to be held.
She is allowed
to leave custody
to return to face grand theft
auto charges at a later date.
She doesn't even
need to post a bond.
Instead, a summons is sent
to Charlotte Rae Cowan.
[birds chirping]
- My name is Charlotte Cowan,
but I generally go by Charlie.
I was at home, I got the mail,
and there it was,
a subpoena to go to court.
I was pissed.
And then I got really
worried because I didn't
know what was going
to happen, but I
knew I had to go to court.
There was no doubt about that.
I was asked to give a
set of my fingerprints
at the police station.
- Charlie Cowan is
summoned to court to answer
charges of grand theft auto.
- When my case came up,
I believe the judge asked
the officers if I was the one.
- The cop who arrested the
woman sleeping in the car
is called to give evidence.
And he said, well, this woman,
Charlotte Rae Cowan,
that's not the woman
I arrested.
- I wasn't the
one they arrested.
And I was free to go.
I've never had a passport.
[laughs] I don't know if
I'd have trouble getting
a passport if I needed one.
After I got out of court,
I found the officers,
and I asked them,
did she have red hair?
And they said yes.
[dramatic music]
I knew it was her.
[chuckles] That was it.
I knew it was her.
[dramatic music]
- More than five years had
elapsed since Beverly's body
was found on the canal
bank, and frankly,
the cops were no
further forward.
There was no way to
trace this woman.
- I went out one
night, and I got home.
I was asleep.
I get a knock on my door.
And it's her.
- Chameleon
[dramatic sting]
- When I'd go to
bed at night, I
would put a piece of furniture
in front of my bedroom door
to keep her from coming in.
- She actually ran away from
her own home to hide from her.
- This woman, a chameleon who
can adopt different disguises
and change her appearance
and slip through the net.
She's been seen
across the globe.
But where is she?
- As this investigation grew,
one of our investigators
looked to see what they could
use to come up with the answer
to what happened to Beverly.
- And at some point, someone
presses the right button.
[thud]
[line ringing]
[sirens wailing]
[water running]
[radio chatter]
- It still disturbs me,
how somebody can do that.
[dramatic music]
♪
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01x01 - Episode 1
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Exploring the life and crimes of Elaine Parent, the woman dubbed The Chameleon k*ller.
Exploring the life and crimes of Elaine Parent, the woman dubbed The Chameleon k*ller.