01x03 - Episode 3

[bunniefuu]

- We have a body

that is decapitated.

The hands are cut off.

So anything that would

help with identification,

it would be difficult.

- This would be a

relatively rare case.

You probably see

one in your career.

- A person that would do that

has got to be cold,

calculating,

determined person.

- I knew she had a

tattoo on her leg.

And that was Bev.

- Why would such a

careful and cunning k*ller

leave a tattoo that

could be traced?

Was it a tiny little clue

that was left

by the dismemberer,

almost as a calling card?

- In the days

after Bev's m*rder,

her credit card is being used

to make purchases in London.

- Every USA-bound aircraft

was boarded

and every passenger

was looked at.

- They were dealing

with someone

a whole stage up beyond your

garden variety criminal.

We know to an

absolute certainty

that she stole at

least 20 identities.

- She kind of enjoyed

taunting the police.

- 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.

- Where is she, this woman,

the chameleon

who can adopt

different disguises

and change her appearance?

At some point, someone

presses the right button.

- A very strange postcard

was sent to the St. Louis

County Sheriff's Department.

- There is no way to trace it.

While all of this is going on,

where's Elaine Parent?

Is she in the States?

Is she in Britain?

Is she in Europe?

Is she in South Africa?

[music playing]

- Florida police

discover the body

of a young woman who'd been

decapitated and left to rot.

- Her hands amputated

above her wrist.

- 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.

- 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.

- [singing]

Feels like falling down.

- My name is Tim Tate.

I'm an investigative

journalist,

documentary

filmmaker, and author.

I first stumbled across

the Elaine Parent story

when there was a

little rash of articles

in the press stemming from

the St. Lucie County

Sheriff's Department.

This tiny little

sheriff's department

in the middle of nowhere,

Florida,

was mounting a worldwide

search for, as they put it,

the world's

most wanted woman--

Elaine Antoinette Parent.

- Welcome to

"Britain's Most Wanted."

Last week, we asked,

is America's Most Wanted

woman on the run in Britain?

- A woman who

moved vampirically

from victim to victim,

who stole 20-plus identities.

The chameleon who can

adopt different disguises

and change her appearance

and slip through the net.

She is the prime suspect

in the brutal m*rder

of a young bank clerk,

Beverly Ann McGowan.

- Florida police discovered

the body of a young woman

who'd been decapitated.

- And her hands amputated

above her wrists.

- It struck me straight away

that this is a story that

cries out for a documentary.

And I picked up the telephone

and I rang

St. Lucie County

Sheriff's Department.

At that point,

there are stories

which float into the

Sheriff's Department

from across the globe

of Elaine Parent

at work in other countries.

And it's this extraordinary

trail of con tricks

and one very bloody m*rder.

She's been seen here.

We know she's been in Paris.

We know she's been

in South Africa.

We know she's

been in Australia.

We know she's been in London.

But where is she?

The answer, as it turns out,

is that she's

in probably one of the

least remarkable cities

on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

- My name is Larry Lock.

I am from Boing Green,

Kentucky.

In 1998, I worked with the

Panama City Police department.

I did approximately

a year on patrol,

and then

I worked narcotics and

as a detective in the Criminal

Investigation Division

for several years after that.

In Panama City,

if you're on the beach,

you're in a tourist area.

It's very transient, as far

as people coming and going.

You go to the other side of

the bridge in Panama City

and it's very different.

In certain areas, we have

million dollar homes.

And then three blocks away,

there's a trailer park.

This area has a lot

of drug activity.

And that produces, in

itself, a lot of crime.

- Our next fugitive is a

woman of thousand names.

- More than five

years had elapsed

since Beverly's

headless body was found

on the canal bank in Florida.

- We know her as Elaine

Parent, but others know

her as any number of people.

Well, here's one thing

we know for sure.

She's a slippery chameleon who

changes identities like most

of us change clothes.

Cops believe she's

also a k*ller.

A body was found in a canal

in St. Lucie County, Florida,

about 100 miles--

- Elaine Parent is

now in Panama City,

and she's now calling

herself Darlene Higgins.

- The k*ller had attempted

to conceal her identity.

- She's living a very quiet

and seemingly

unremarkable life.

She's in her 50s at this point.

She isn't as stunning

as she was when she was

starting her cons in her 30s.

I think she realized at that

point, I've got to calm down.

So she starts

to change her MO.

She no longer presents herself

romantically or sexually

in a loving, g*y relationship.

She no longer presents

herself as down and out

and pitiful in a shelter.

She now presents herself as

capable, caring, helpful.

Suddenly settling down to be

almost like a suburban matron.

- She was given a job selling

advertising space for an outfit

called Veterans Spotlight.

And this is where

she happens to bump

into the mark who

will keep her in money

for the next five years.

Paul B. Cantrell

was a w*r hero.

He'd flown bombers

in World w*r II

and had been married

with children,

but by 1997 was widowed and

living in a little suburb

of Panama City.

- I personally knew Paul

and been to his house

several times.

He was a super,

super nice guy.

He had this lady that spent

a lot of time with him.

I never met her.

He always told me about her.

She would go over to his house

and cook, clean, help him out.

And she was a good cook.

His house was

always immaculate.

- She does shopping for him.

She accompanies him, arm in

arm, to local restaurants.

- Paul Cantrell is in

his 80s at this point.

He provides her with money.

He gives her

expensive jewelry.

He gives her a

room in his house.

What Paul Cantrell

doesn't know is

that Darlene Higgins

is Elaine Parent,

that she was a con artist.

And that she's

wanted in connection

with the brutal

m*rder of Bev McGowan.

[radio chatter]

- I was dispatched to the

Golden Corral on 23rd Street

in reference to an individual

who had observed somebody

in the restaurant

that they believed

had been featured on America's

Most Wanted the previous week.

So the caller indicated the

description of the person

was a white female with

short, blonde hair.

She was with an older

gentleman, very well dressed.

I was not given a photograph

of either one of them.

I parked my car

in this vicinity

right here so I could

see the front door.

After a few minutes

sitting here,

I observed a white female with

short, blonde hair, accompanied

by a slightly older gentleman,

come out of the front door

and start to walk

down the sidewalk here

in front of the restaurant.

That's when I exited my

vehicle and met them somewhere

on the sidewalk, right here

in front of the right side

of the building.

As I approached him,

I introduced myself,

asked if I could speak

to him for a few minutes.

The gentleman didn't

appear in distress

or in fear of anything.

I asked if I could

know who they were.

He gave me his

Florida driver's license,

which came back valid.

She did provide me with a

name and a date of birth

and told me that she

had a Florida driver's

license, just not on her.

I ran that information,

came back "Record not found."

And that was suspicious,

a definite indicator

that she wasn't being

truthful about her identity.

She told me there was

nothing in her purse

that had her name on it.

Again, which was

highly suspicious.

- At this point, I feel that

she is completely Darlene.

She has broken with

Elaine and Sandra

and any of the other people

that she was in the past.

She's been living

in a relationship

that isn't romantic.

So when this officer approaches

her, she has nothing to hide.

She can be cool

because she is Darlene.

She believes that

at that point.

That is the dissociative

identity disorder.

She is not the person who

k*lled Beverly McGowan,

the person who was in

love with Miss X. She is

none of those people anymore.

She is Darlene.

- I obtained her local address.

I spoke with her about how

long she had lived here.

We spoke in front

of Golden Corral

for probably 10 minutes.

During that 10 minutes, an

investigative supervisor

arrived as backup

and he had a picture

that he had received from

America's Most Wanted that

was supposedly the individual

that had been featured

on the previous episode.

That picture was

not the individual

we were speaking with.

I had no probable

cause to detain her.

And then, at the urging of

the investigative supervisor,

we cleared the call

and departed the area.

[radio chatter]

I felt like there

was something wrong.

Once I believe somebody

is not being truthful,

like a dog after a bone,

you want to find out why

that person is lying to you.

And I traveled to that

residence, to that address,

and I made contact

with the landlord.

She gave me a little

brief information

of how long she had been there

and what she knew about her.

And I gave her a card

and a phone number

and asked her to call me

immediately upon her tenant's

arrival home.

Her tenant never came home.

She ended up putting all of her

belongings into a storage shed.

Several days after

this encounter,

I was able to obtain a

photograph of Elaine Parent.

I would have absolutely

recognized her

from this picture,

if this would

have been the picture that

I would have seen that day.

I should have been

more vocal to the--

at the urging of the

supervisor to clear the call.

I wished I would have done

what I thought was best

and not what he told me to do.

That is the gentleman that

she was with that day.

I've seen it in my

memory many times,

but this is the first time

I've seen a photograph of him.

But that is exactly

how I remember him.

I feel like we let

him down that day.

- She's a mistress of disguise

who steals identities.

- She could be anywhere.

She could be your

next door neighbor.

- Over the next

few years,

Darlene Higgins,

aka Elaine Parent,

disappears from the face

of the Earth.

The trail goes cold.

It's as if Parent could

slip through any police net

at any time-- and did.

- It was an evening shift.

The watch commander

just said, look,

we got this tip from

America's Most Wanted.

Take a couple of guys

with you.

Go down to this address

in South MacArthur.

See if it's legit, if it's not,

you know, let us know.

[police radio chatter]

- They said she had a

mole under her eye, a scar

on one of her

thumbs, and she may

or may not speak with

a British accent,

which is 100% of humanity.

We had to go to the station,

find a picture of her.

This is before smartphones.

We went to their website and

it was the size of a thumbnail

and I believe it

was black and white.

- It was black and white.

- It was very--

- It's not a very good picture.

- We had no information

to go on, really.

- It appeared to me that

whoever was giving us the tip

assumed that we had

watched the show.

They didn't tell us

she was the Chameleon.

- So we get

a little game plan.

Say, let's go to the house

down on South MacArthur.

- Go forth and find.

- Yeah, pretty much.

- When the call came out, I was

on my way home for the evening.

I had just recently

been assigned

to the intelligence

unit, and it was

my first night back on call.

Sergeant Nolan and

I were out back.

I jokingly said to him,

I said, whatever you do,

don't sh**t her.

[music playing]

- We pull up here to

449 South MacArthur.

It was late, probably

about midnight.

All the lights were shut off.

Everything was dark.

We walked up toward the door.

And an elderly lady comes

and she answers the door.

And we identified ourselves

as officers with the Panama

City Police department.

And then we explained to

her why we were there.

And she said she was the owner.

- And so she invited us inside.

We all three come

inside and we ask

if there's anybody else in the

house that we could check on.

She said yes, she

had a roommate that

lived all the way in the back.

We start trying to figure

out if this is Elaine Parent.

Looked at her eye,

there was no mole.

And there was no

scar on her thumb

and she had no British accent.

We were essentially

convinced it wasn't her.

So I decided to just come clean

and let them know, like, hey,

your neighbor

called because she

thinks one of you guys is some

k*ller named Elaine Parent.

And when I said that,

she said, that's mad.

That's kind of a

British thing to say.

We say crazy.

We don't say mad.

We asked for ID, she goes,

it's in her bedroom.

I followed her in the bedroom.

She reaches up in her closet

and quickly hands me her ID.

It startles me a little bit.

[radio chatter]

I walk out and then she

has to get some clothes on

to get dressed.

Because she was scantily clad.

She had been asleep.

She shuts the door

immediately behind me.

As soon as that door locked,

it was a different ball game.

I look at the ID.

It was a military

dependent ID.

- Rank was off,

typeset was wrong.

Nothing about it was

legitimate at all.

- Okay, now this is a problem.

I'm thinking this

probably is her.

- Michael knocked on the

door a couple of times,

waiting for a response.

- It was taking too long

for someone to get dressed.

She was clearly stalling,

making us really nervous.

That's what made me

knock again and asked

her if she could hurry.

She said, I'm changing clothes!

- I slipped out and

went to the side

where her bedroom window was.

And that's when I saw her

looking out the window.

And that's when I told you

guys, hey, she's-- she looks

like she's wanting to bolt.

- At that point, I

think we were looking

at sheer animal terror.

She was cornered.

There was nowhere

to go at this point.

- Now things are starting

to escalate fairly quickly.

I knock kind of

aggressive again

and say, if you

don't come out, we're

going to come in and get you.

And then--

[g*nsh*t]

- I had already gone

home for the evening

and they called me up.

They said they had

shots fired and need

you to get down there now.

[police siren]

I asked him, I said,

well, did they sh**t her?

As I was driving,

I was thinking

they probably shot her.

- I went in first,

Mike was behind me.

Sarge is in the back.

I remember seeing g*n

smoke in the room.

To my right, as you

go in, is the closet.

And her legs were

sticking out.

She was on her back.

And I remember seeing a

.357 revolver on the ground

by the bedpost.

I could see the

hole in the wall.

She had shot herself

in the chest.

She was doing, like, a death

gurgle, like she was dying.

So I was in complete shock.

- We're checking for

a pulse, you know,

and there was really not

a whole lot we could do.

- The homeowner was--

- She was terrible.

- She was hysterical.

I mean, rightfully so.

She had no idea

what was going on.

- She just could not

believe that this

had happened in her home.

[sirens]

- The next step was

to secure the scene.

Don't let anybody in or

out until Investigations

gets there.

- When I got to the scene,

that's when I discovered

that she had shot herself.

So we did a search

of the house.

- I got a call to go to

do a scene examination.

It was a nice kept home.

There was a bedroom with

a narrow walk-in closet,

and a revolver was partially

under the end of the bed.

And there were blood

spatter inside the door.

She was in the closet.

The right leg was straight out

and she had her left leg bent,

and she had a g*nsh*t wound

to the middle of her chest.

Basically, she put

a g*n to her chest

and blew a hole in her heart.

I would expect you

to be instantly

unconscious and dead

within a matter of minutes,

maybe even faster.

She had a very powerful

handgun, a .357 Magnum.

Did she know people

were on her trail?

Did she have, in the

back of her mind,

that she was going to have some

kind of a Wild West shootout?

The fact that she

didn't open her mouth

and blow her brains out, she

shot herself in the heart--

so, so dramatic.

So poignant.

Kind of the last con.

She literally died

in a blaze of glory.

She controlled it.

The thought of her being

taken out in handcuffs,

brought down to

a police station,

thrown into

custody, impossible.

That's not the way

this mini-series

was going to end for her.

To the last, she

outsmarted everybody.

She had it her way.

- In the days after

her death, the link

was made between Darlene

Higgins and Elaine Parent,

the woman who is the prime

suspect in the Beverly

Ann McGowan m*rder.

- From discussions with the

lady she was living with,

she had befriended an elderly

gentleman in our community

and she hadn't heard from that

individual in quite a while.

Based on her previous criminal

history-- k*lling Beverly

McGowan and then

assuming her identity--

made us think that she

was probably going to do

the same to this gentleman.

She might have been

planning to k*ll this man.

We had found in

her room documents

that led to his house.

And we served a search

warrant on that address.

When we got to his

house, his car was there

and we knocked on the door.

5, 10 minutes went

away and we're like,

should we get a locksmith?

Because at that point, we were

thinking he might be dead.

It started raining, so we

went under the carport.

And while we were

talking, all of a sudden,

he comes around the corner.

Scared the hell out of us.

Eventually, I told

him why we were there

and that she had been

wanted for m*rder.

And, of course,

that surprised him.

I don't think he had an

inkling that she had been

involved in criminal activity.

- The cops from St. Lucie

County turn up in Panama City

and begin to start to put

the pieces together

of Parents's life

in Panama City.

- And, of course,

we shared with them

everything we had found.

In the closet, we

found a suitcase.

And in it were makeup kit that

was specifically for making

someone look like an old man.

And she had documentation

and paperwork

to where she looked like she

was starting to make a fake ID.

There was a notebook

there that had

all the date and times

of the trash pickups

within the Panama City.

When this occurred,

one of the ways

you steal someone's

identity is you

can go through their garbage.

In your garbage,

you can get account numbers,

phone numbers,

dates of births,

almost anything and

everything about someone.

It is one of the ways

you steal their identity.

- Paul Cantrell was, in

the police estimation,

days away from being Elaine

Parent's next m*rder victim.

- Elaine Parent, anatomically,

was a very healthy person.

In examining Elaine's

genitourinary system,

I find that she had a little

scar above her pubic bone

from a hysterectomy.

Uterus and fallopian tubes

were surgically absent,

so they had been taken out.

- The fact that

the autopsy showed

that Elaine Parent had had

a complete hysterectomy

is a tantalizing detail.

Did it leave her

with a trauma?

Did it leave her with a

sense of being empty and not

being whole as a woman?

Was this in her mind when she

sought out women as victims?

Was this going through her head

when she dismembered Beverly

McGowan's corpse, and she took

extraordinary care to excise

the tattoo in the abdominal

area to the point of

almost disemboweling?

Was there something symbolic?

Was there a jealousy?

Was there a hatred

towards women?

Was there a rage towards

what had happened to her?

- The death of

Elaine Parent left

a lot of unanswered questions

that a lot of police

officers had.

They wanted to ask her.

- Who really was

Elaine Parent?

Elaine Parent was born in

the New York area in 1942.

She went to school

in New York.

She moved to

Illinois in her teens

and was issued with a

Social Security number.

She ended up in Florida, in

the Miami area, as a real

estate agent in the 1970s.

We know this because

we have some press

cuttings about Elaine

Parent, the realtor.

She was either g*y or

bisexual, probably g*y.

Though she may or may

not have been married,

may or may not

have had children,

may or may not have

had male relationships.

And we have traces, glimpses

of her criminal career

on official paperwork.

We know that she

was a con artist.

We know to an

absolute certainty

that she stole at

least 20 identities.

And it's likely to be much,

much higher than that.

If you look at this now, you

say, how is that possible?

The answer is this all

happened in a different era.

This is in the '80s, the '90s.

And what defines the

difference between that era

and where we are today is

that she was able to doctor

passports, make use of

bogus identity documents

far more easily.

It's a different world.

I was literally days

away from finishing

my film on Elaine Parent.

And the film was going to end

on where is Elaine Parent now?

If you know, please call in.

When I got a phone call,

and the phone call said

Elaine Parent has

shot herself,

I had no way of knowing

that 24 years later,

I would still be

working on this story.

- It was a nice day and

I came in for something.

And there was a recording

on the answering

machine from America's Most

Wanted looking for Mom.

So Mom came in

and called them.

And that's when they had

told-- they told her the story

of what actually happened.

- I was glad they

caught her, but I wasn't

glad that it ended that way.

I was just relieved that

they had caught her.

I think about her even still.

I think about it quite a bit.

This is a gift

that Elaine Parent

brought me from the gift

shop she was working in

in Saint Pete Beach.

She always talked

about being broke

and she had never had

money to buy anything with.

30 years ago, $38 was

quite a bit of money.

- To think that we actually

were in contact with somebody

that were capable of doing such

horrendous things is very odd.

It's an odd--

it's an odd feeling.

It's very disturbing.

Isn't it?

- It still does.

It still disturbs me how

somebody can do that.

- I think Elaine Parent shows

a borderline personality

disorder.

And involved in that is

narcissistic personality

and psychopathic or antisocial

personality disorder

and a little bit of histrionic

personality disorder.

Main ingredient that allows

them to relate to each other

is lack of empathy,

lack of ability

to see the other person.

Lack of ability to

control their impulses.

I really believe

that she never set

out to k*ll Beverly McGowan.

I believe that Beverly

listened to some of her friends

or noticed some kinds of really

disturbing behavior in Elaine

and had told her

to leave, to get

out of the house, that

the relationship was over.

And that was the fatal

mistake because Elaine

was a malignant narcissist.

And that is the most

treacherous trigger

to pull on a narcissist.

They lose all control

and they are fighting

for their psychological life.

And I think at that

point it escalated,

and that's when the

m*rder took place.

- It was a couple of

months after the death

of Elaine Parent that

I found out that--

that she had k*lled herself.

And that was-- that

was a bad feeling.

Because now we'll

never know why.

Every now and again,

when I think back

at life at the

bank, friends that

were in my life at that time--

--how it was working

with her, she was--

she was fun,

she was unique.

A waste.

Wasted life.

Someone took it from her.

- Beverly McGowan was

a totally innocent

person just leading a normal

life, doing the best she can.

And you have family

members that really

need to know what happened.

Is Elaine Parent the

only one responsible?

Or are there others out

there that are responsible?

[moody music]

- I talked to three

police officers who dealt

with Beverly McGowan's body.

All of those professionals

said the same thing.

We believe there

was more than one

person involved in the m*rder

of Beverly Ann McGowan.

It's not easy to transport

a body on your own

and to get it out of

a vehicle and to toss

it down a canal

bank and to carve

off the head and the hands.

What the cops and the

medical examiner believed

is that one person-- and

probably not one woman--

could do all of that.

They were of the opinion

then, and to the best

of my knowledge, are

of the opinion now

that the woman they

were looking for--

Alice then, we know her

to be Elaine Parent now--

had at least one accomplice.

And that that

accomplice was a man.

Whoever helped Parent in

the m*rder of McGowan,

and in the days and weeks

surrounding that m*rder,

have never been caught.

And the cops are still pursuing

those lines of inquiry.

They are closer,

they say, than ever

before, to making an arrest.

And somewhere, if the

detectives in St. Lucie County

are to be believed, there

is at least one accomplice--

--who should have and

may still have his collar

felt for what happened

to Beverly McGowan.

Who really was Elaine

Parent, the Chameleon k*ller,

the world's most wanted woman?

The cheap answer is that

only Elaine Parent knew that.

The real answer is

no one knew that,

least of all Elaine Parent.

[music playing]

♪