Zoo Man Murders
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash forensic tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In late 1992, police caught their man, a man they believed responsible for the murders of four women. The murderer gagged, raped, and strangled his victims.

The police sat the killer down in the interrogation room. Despite the overwhelming evidence, the killer denied all charges. He said, "'It's not me, Thomas. But I know exactly who committed these atrocious crimes.'" "'Okay, so who is it?' the police demanded. The murderer gave a psychotic smile, rapidly blinked his eyes, and said, "'It's me, Kyle.'"

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 89, The Zoo Man Murders. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

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Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review or telling friends and family who love true crime about us. Now, let's jump right into this week's case. On October 20th, 1992, a hunter walking along Cahaba Lane in Knoxville, Tennessee, made a shocking discovery.

This part of Knoxville is a remote spot just off Interstate 40 that you can only get to by traveling down back roads. It's an isolated and wooded area only frequented by those who even know that it's there. The hunter stumbled upon a young woman's decomposing body. Knoxville police identified the victim as a local woman named Patricia Rose Anderson.

Patricia Anderson was a woman known to the police because she had been reported missing about one week earlier. Her body was discovered underneath a mattress, which indicated to the police that whoever killed her did a sloppy job of covering up her body. She'd been strangled to death with her legs and hands bound together.

But the most disturbing part of her murder wasn't the fact she was strangled or bound. It was the fact that at the time Patricia Anderson was murdered, she was pregnant. About one week after the hunters' discovery of Patricia Anderson, two more decomposing bodies popped up in the same area of Cahaba Lane. Both victims were female, and just like with Patricia Anderson, they were bound and dumped in the woods.

Based on the forensic pathologist's findings, it appeared that one of the victims had recently been killed while the other victim seemed to have been in the woods for a while. That's because some of the woman's body parts were missing. On October 27th, a fourth body was discovered. This time, however, only partial human remains were left. The three victims were identified as Darlene Smith, Patricia Ann Johnson, and Susan East.

These discoveries suggested to the police that this part of Cahaba Lane had been a dumping ground for a serial killer. All four victims were in different stages of decomposition, suggesting that they were killed and dumped at different times. Some were recent. At the same time, others were dead for weeks, maybe months.

Although the investigators couldn't pinpoint an exact date for when the bodies were dumped, they were sure of one thing. The perpetrator killed all four women. The location of the bodies is significant to the investigators because it means that the killer is familiar with these woods. It's a location where he feels comfortable committing his crimes and dumping the bodies in a way he feels confident that he'll get away with it.

It's also a spot located not too far from the Knoxville Zoo. After the four female victims were identified, the Knoxville police made an important connection in the case. They learned that all but one of the women had ties to sex work. The only one not believed to have worked as a sex worker was Susan East.

However, Patricia Anderson, Patricia Johnson, and Darlene Smith were known to the police as sex workers in the area. Now, we've seen so many cases over the years involving sex workers and violence. It's not at all uncommon for sex workers to become victims of violent crime.

I don't think it will come as a surprise that most studies suggest that women working as sex workers experience much higher violence levels than women working in any other field. This type of violence comes in the way of physical abuse, psychological abuse, and sexual assault. And studies even suggest that female sex workers are killed at a much higher rate than non-sex workers.

And, unfortunately, female sex workers become targets to male serial killers. Over the years, we've seen a half-dozen male serial killers target female sex workers as their victims. In the late 70s into the early 1980s, there was Peter Sutcliffe, a.k.a. the Yorkshire Ripper. He was responsible for murdering 13 women, many of whom were sex workers in Northern England.

Then there was Gary Ridgway, a.k.a. the Green River Killer. We covered the Green River Killer in an earlier episode of the show, and we know that he confessed to killing over 40 sex workers between 1982 and 1998, making him one of the most prolific serial killers we've ever seen in the U.S.,

There was also Robert Hansen. Robert Hansen murdered 15 to up to 21 sex workers in Anchorage, Alaska during the 1980s. And then the list goes on and on.

So when the Knoxville police learned that Patricia Anderson and the other victims had ties to sex work, the first thing they needed to look at was the men in the area who the police knew to engage with prostitutes. And if they could get their hand on this type of list, the men who were known to frequent sex workers, then they could start narrowing down a list of possible suspects from that list.

So while investigators looked into local johns in the area, forensic anthropologist Bill Bass was assigned to the case. Bill Bass was the founder of the Anthropology Research Facility, also known as the Body Farm. His job was to figure out how these women were murdered, how they were connected, if they were connected at all, and why their bodies were so badly decomposed and mangled.

One of the reasons the police called in Bill Bass was that most of the victims had been badly mangled. Some of them even had missing body parts, limbs, hands, feet. So they needed to find out if this was something that the killer did to these women post-mortem or if there was some other explanation.

During his investigation, he concluded that the killer had strangled all four victims based on marks found on their necks. And the bizarre mutilation of their bodies could only be explained by animals in the area. The missing body parts weren't a result of their killer. Now, because wild animals attacked the bodies, the police couldn't get any DNA evidence from the bodies.

This is really unfortunate because all four victims had been sexually assaulted before their murders. And anytime you're dealing with a case of sexual assault, the likelihood of the offender leaving behind DNA or any other trace evidence is, well, highly likely. But because the bodies had been exposed to the elements, they had been exposed to the animals in the area, the police couldn't collect any DNA or forensic evidence from their bodies.

But this didn't stop investigators. Even without DNA evidence, they still identified a suspect. His name is Thomas Husky. Knoxville police turned up Husky's name after looking into men who were known to frequent sex workers. And, well, he was a guy with a not-so-great reputation in Knoxville, especially among local sex workers.

Thomas Husky was known to many local sex workers as Zoo Man. Sex workers gave him this nickname because he told them that he worked at the Knoxville Zoo when he met these women. He said that he worked with his father and that he was the guy responsible for taking care of the zoo's elephants.

He also got this nickname because his favorite spot to take these sex workers was a spot in the wooded area right behind the Knoxville Zoo and right near where the four bodies were discovered. Husky first popped up on the Knoxville Police Department's radar back in February 1992, about eight months before Patricia Anderson's body was discovered.

In February 1992, a woman called into the Knoxville Police Department. She told the police that a man robbed her and sexually assaulted her near the Knoxville Zoo in the wooded area. The police agreed to go with the woman out to the spot where she said she was assaulted. The idea was that the police were headed out to the woods to collect evidence supporting the woman's claims that she had been sexually assaulted.

But by sheer coincidence, when the woman and the police get out to the woods, there's Thomas Husky in the middle of the woods behind the zoo engaging with a sex worker. The police arrested Husky, who was 31 years old at the time, right there in the woods.

Not only was he arrested for sexually assaulting the one who initially came forward, but the police also had earlier reports that Thomas Husky was involved in other cases involving sex workers. However, shortly after he was arrested by Knoxville police, he was released. He was released because not a single woman would cooperate with the police.

And without any witnesses willing to cooperate, the police had no other choice but to let Husky go on all sexual assault charges. Even though I think the police officers knew that Thomas Husky was a dangerous sexual predator, a predator who was likely to strike again.

In the case of the four homicide victims, Knoxville police wanted to question Husky and either place him under arrest for the murders or be able to rule him out completely and continue searching for the real suspect. So investigators obtained a search warrant to search his mobile home in Sevier County, a place he lived with his parents.

And when they got there, they went inside of his bedroom. Inside of the bedroom, the police found several items linking him to the murders. They found a rope that had a very similar texture and makeup that was used in the murders.

Then, even more damning than the rope, the police also found women's jewelry that matched one of the victims. As we know, many serial killers love to keep behind trophies or souvenirs belonging to their victims. So based on the evidence obtained in the search warrant, what they found inside of the mobile home, the Knoxville police arrested Thomas Husky in connection to the murders and reported

Like protocol, they took him into police custody. At this point in the investigation and in the case, it seemed like this was going to be an open and shut case. You've got four dead sex workers, a suspect who is known to pay for sex. He has a history of abusing several of these women, although he couldn't be charged with anything.

And now, well, now you have physical evidence tying him to the murders. Case closed, right? After Husky was in police custody, the police interviewed him for the first time.

Not surprisingly, he wasn't too excited about talking to the police. And when they questioned him about the four murders, he denied it. He said that he didn't do it and that he didn't know anything about the murders. At one point, he even said that he had never met any of the women.

But Husky's lack of cooperation and communication with the police didn't seem to bother the investigators. That's because they felt like they had more than enough evidence to charge him with four counts of first-degree murder, even without his cooperation. So after this first interview with the police, Husky was then put back in handcuffs and was booked into the Knoxville jail.

But within a couple of days of being in jail, he passed a message to investigators that he wanted to talk to them a little bit more. He wanted to speak to them about the murders. But according to Thomas Husky, it wasn't Thomas who wanted to speak to the police. It was a guy named Kyle.

Thomas Husky was escorted back into a room for questioning with the police. And when he sat down, he told investigators, quote, Give me a cigarette and I'll tell you everything you want to know. I'm Kyle. I hate Tommy. End quote. During the interview, Kyle confessed to everything.

He told the police all about how he raped, tortured, and killed the four women. He even referred to the women as his experiments. And when the police asked him why he did it, he simply said he did it because he wanted to hurt Thomas Husky.

Okay, so this is a little confusing, right? You've got a guy, Thomas Husky, the original suspect, back in the police interview room claiming to be a guy named Kyle. Well, it turns out Kyle is one of Husky's alter egos.

And according to this alter ego, it wasn't Thomas Husky who was the serial killer targeting sex workers. It was Kyle. The police questioned and continue to question Husky for hours that day. And during the interview, they learn all about who Thomas is and who Kyle is. Thomas is a nice, well-mannered person. Kyle is rude and aggressive.

Thomas is left-handed and Kyle is right-handed. Husky even had different accents for when he was talking as Thomas and then when he was talking as his counterpart, Kyle. And at one point during the police interview, other personalities emerged. One had a British accent and called himself Philip Daxx.

Dax claimed that he was there to protect Thomas from Kyle, that he was some sort of middleman in the whole situation. Then there was Timothy, other Alto Egros who had no connection or relationship with either Kyle, Philip Dax, or Thomas.

So by the end of the interview, investigators were completely confused. Even though only one man was sitting in front of them, over several hours, many personalities emerged. They all had their own accents. They all had their tone of voices. And they all had their own characters.

But when it came down to who Husky was confessing to the murders, he kept saying that it wasn't Thomas. Thomas was not responsible for the murders. It was Kyle. During Husky's first court appearance, his defense attorney entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The defense planned to argue that Husky was legally insane when he committed the murders.

There wasn't really a question as to whether Thomas Husky was innocent or not. He clearly was the person responsible. It was more of a question about whether his personality disorder was enough to make him legally insane and therefore cannot be held criminally responsible for his actions. Because according to Husky, it wasn't Thomas who was the serial killer in all of this. It was Kyle.

The investigators and the prosecutors believed they caught their serial killer, and they thought Husky was trying to fake his way out of everything. They weren't buying into this whole multiple personality thing or this alter ego thing he was claiming. The prosecutors in the case even pointed to the fact that one of Husky's personalities, the British accent Philip Dax, said,

was something that Husky came up with after watching a television show while he was in the Knoxville jail. What was even more interesting to the prosecution was that many of the names Husky used for his alter egos came from streets in his neighborhood, like Kyle.

So before Husky was put on trial for the four murders, the prosecution decided to charge him with three sexual assaults and kidnappings he allegedly committed before these four murders even happened. This move would give the prosecution some additional time to build the murder case against him.

So in 1996, Husky was convicted on three separate rape convictions and was sentenced to 44 years in prison. This conviction was significant by the prosecution because regardless of the outcome of the murder trial, with all of this talk of the forensic psychology behind this multiple personality issue that they were going to deal with,

at least while they built a case against him. And regardless, again, of the outcome of that trial, he would still be in prison. He was sentenced to 44 years for these three sexual assaults.

Now, I want to point out here, because this part I believe is significant to this whole story, was that during this first trial with the three sexual assaults and kidnappings, there was no mention by Husky or his defense attorneys about any of his alter egos during this first trial.

In other words, his defense didn't bring up this side of his forensic psychology at all. It was not a part of his defense. This is something that the defense only brought up during the four counts of first-degree murder. So now let's talk about that. Three years later, in early 1999, Thomas Husky was brought back to court to face those four counts of murder.

Because the case had received a lot of media attention over the years, a jury was selected from the neighboring county of Davidson County. This decision was made to make sure that Husky would get his best chance at a fair trial. But anytime there's a case involving local sex workers and local serial killers, getting a fair trial and avoiding media attention is going to be next to impossible.

because within days, the trial became a media sensation. The media broadcast the Zoo Man's trial every single day on court TV, and hundreds of people gathered outside the Davidson County Courthouse every day. People were fascinated by this story of a local man accused of killing sex workers because he liked having sex with them behind the Knoxville Zoo.

Husky's defense claimed that he suffered from dissociative or multiple personality disorder and that his alter ego, Kyle, committed the murders. But according to the prosecution, Husky is faking his psychological condition and that many of the names of his alter egos came from the show like Days of Our Lives. It was also about to become a criminal trial with conflicting forensic experts.

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SmileBrilliant.com, promo code TAILS to get 30% off. Dr. Jeffrey Erickson was the first forensic expert called to the stand to testify on behalf of the defense. According to Dr. Erickson, Thomas Husky suffered from a brain disorder when he was examined back in 1977.

Dr. Erickson first met Husky when he was only 16 years old after he broke into a house and stole money near the Knoxville Zoo. After examining Husky, Dr. Erickson concluded that from a very young age, Husky suffered from a serious brain disorder that could lead to a dissociative personality disorder as an adult.

Other forensic experts hired by the defense argued that they met Kyle before. They testified to the jury that his multiple personality disorder came from a trauma he suffered as a young boy, including a specific time when he was sexually assaulted by a woman named Connie.

Defense psychologist Diana McCoy testified that she interviewed Zoo Man 27 times over three years in jail. And according to McCoy, she met these alter egos several times during their interviews. In fact, these alter egos made regular appearances. Kyle, Timmy, Larry, she knew all about them.

And during these 27 separate meetings, she concluded that he was absolutely insane at the time of the murders. She said that several factors contributed to his mental illness, including being raised at a zoo. Physical and sexual abuse by some of his teachers in school were also noted in the reports, and his alleged involvement in a prostitution ring as a young teenager.

and an alleged gang rape that he was involved in. So McCoy concluded that his multiple personality disorder allowed him to cope with all of these traumatic experiences that he witnessed and that he experienced while growing up. But experts for the prosecution presented a much different story. They argued that Husky didn't meet all the requirements for an insanity defense.

And some experts even argued that Husky was making everything up and that he didn't suffer from any sort of mental or brain disorder. And he was simply making it up in order to get out of going to prison for four counts of murder.

The prosecution even called one of Husky's former cellmates to testify. This cellmate, William Fletcher, testified that he told him all about his plan to fake a mental illness to get out of prison and, of course, to avoid the death penalty.

According to William Fletcher, the cellmate, Husky knew exactly what he was doing when he killed these women, and he did it before, and he didn't want any other women coming forward to the police about his crimes. After a week of expert forensic testimony presented by both sides, the jury began deliberating on Zuman's case on February 8, 1999.

The jury deliberated for almost four days, which came as a shock to many people who followed the case. Many people expected this to be an open and shut case, and many expected that the jury would come back with a guilty verdict within a couple of hours. But when the hours turned into days and the jury still didn't reach a verdict, the jury

Many questioned whether the jury believed in his defense, that Thomas Husky didn't commit the murders, his alter ego did. After four days of deliberating the facts of the case, the jury was deadlocked. They couldn't come to a unanimous decision regarding Zuman's guilt or his level of insanity.

And because they were deadlocked, the judge had no choice but declare a mistrial on February 13th, 1999. When it comes to a jury deciding on an insanity defense, they're presented with jury instructions that explain the standard or the test that should be used to determine insanity. Now, there are scientific standards that have proven results.

But even though jurors are presented with jury instructions that outline the specific insanity test or measures that should be used under the law, many jurors simply rely on common sense. They use their common sense to determine whether or not someone should be deemed legally insane or not.

And it's also common for jurors to come in with some sort of bias surrounding the insanity defense that may influence their decision-making process. We know that, of course, you know, the prosecution and defense attorney do their best to weed these people out with biases. Some jurors still make their way through the system and they end up serving.

Now, what's interesting about Zuman's case is that the jury couldn't agree on the insanity defense. They were completely deadlocked. Six voted for insanity. Six voted against it. So at least six jurors believed that this evil alter ego, Kyle, was the one responsible for the murders.

In most cases, at least historically, the defense isn't able to prove insanity. It's actually one of the highest legal standards that we have. So it's really, really interesting that in this case, in Zuman's case, the defense of multiple personality disorder seemed to be a winning strategy.

So after the mistrial, Knoxville prosecutors vowed to retry Husky for the murders. They weren't going to let a serial killer, at least in their eyes, get away with this. But before the second trial could get underway, the defense and prosecution were battling it out in court.

But now, the defense wasn't arguing insanity. They were arguing that the police violated Husky's constitutional rights way back when, when he was first arrested. The police said that the Knoxville police executed an illegal search warrant when they searched his mobile home and found that evidence linking him to the murders.

They also said that while in police custody, his confession had been coerced. Now, if the police illegally obtained this search warrant as well, any evidence collected would be deemed inadmissible. It's the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine. So in 2002, a Tennessee appellate court agreed with Husky's defense team.

The court found that the Knoxville police did in fact execute an illegal search warrant on his home and therefore all of the evidence seized in the search was not admissible in court. They also agreed that the police illegally coerced his confession while in custody.

Because Husky didn't have an attorney present while he was supposedly admitting to the murders as Kyle, the court found that his confession was deemed inadmissible. And if prosecutors decided that they were going to retry him for a second time, they weren't allowed to use either the evidence obtained in the search warrant or the taped confession.

After this devastating ruling, prosecutors were left asking themselves, do they have enough evidence to retry him? They can't use his taped confession where he admits to murdering all four women. They can't use the jewelry found in his parents' trailer home. Without these two key pieces of evidence, the prosecution doesn't have anything.

During the initial investigation, they never found any physical or forensic evidence linking him to the murders. No DNA on the bodies, no trace evidence. Nothing was ever found at the crime scene behind the zoo. Sure, there's circumstantial evidence that links him to sex workers and a history of abusing them,

But prosecutors worried that circumstantial evidence alone wasn't going to be enough to secure a conviction. So prosecutors spent the next three years deciding whether or not they were going to try him again. Keep in mind, though, Thomas Husky is still in prison during all of this. He's not just out walking the streets anymore.

That's because he had already been sentenced to 44 years in prison for those three earlier rape charges. So this would explain why Knoxville prosecutors were taking their time in deciding whether or not they really had enough evidence when it came to the murders.

Without the jewelry evidence and the teep confession, prosecutors had little left to prosecute the Zoo Man. And in October 2005, the murder charges were officially dismissed. The Zoo Man murders took a toll on the Knoxville community, the four victims and their families. But the case also took a toll on the city financially. The case had become one of the state's longest cases.

starting in 1992 and officially coming to a close in 2005. It also became the most expensive. In total, at the end, the state spent over $200,000 on the case just for the murder charges to be ultimately dismissed in the end. Today, Zoo Man, aka Thomas Husky, is held at a privately run medium security prison in Texas.

Since he's been incarcerated, he's become a grandfather. He's currently serving his prison sentence for the rape and kidnapping convictions. He's scheduled to be released from prison in November 2056, assuming he's on his best behavior while incarcerated. However, given the state of our country's prison system, he may be eligible for supervised release before his sentence expires.

Most investigators from the Knoxville Police Department who worked on Zuman's case have since retired. Even the head DA is retired from the county's district attorney's office. But even though many have retired or simply have moved on from the case, the people of Tennessee still haven't forgotten about this one.

The story of the Zoo Man murders will go down in history as being a story about a serial killer who got away with not just one murder, not two, not three, but at least four murders. And that's just what we know about. To share your thoughts on the Zoo Man murders, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales.

Do you think someone with multiple personality disorder should be held criminally reliable for their crimes? Or do you think that the criminal justice system got this one right? To check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday.

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