Charles Albright
15 min read
I first learned about the Texas Eyeball Killer when I was gifted the Big Book of Serial Killers by Jack Rosewood and Rebecca Lo for my 24th birthday. I had just moved to Dallas that summer and Charles Albright was the 3rd serial killer documented in the encyclopedia. This case is as monstrous as it sounds.
Introduction
On December 13, 1990, Dallas Police responded to a gruesome scene in far south Dallas. A caucasian woman was found lying face-up, nearly nude. She was wearing only a t-shirt with her bra pushed up above her chest to expose her breasts, and her upper and lower limbs were vulgarly outstretched. Police quickly recognized her as a local sex worker at the Star Motel in Oak Cliff named Mary Pratt. She was shot a single time in the brain at very close range with a .44-caliber bullet. Her eyes were shut, and her chest and face were severely bruised.
Pratt's case was handed to John Westphalen, the Dallas Police Department detective. Westphalen knew this was a case of a dumped body judging by the crime scene. But, unfortunately, discarded body cases are one of the most challenging murders to solve, and there is often little forensics evidence left at the scene.
During the autopsy of Mary Pratt, Dr. Elizabeth Peacock was performing her routine examination to ascertain the cause of death. First, she opened Pratt's right eyelid and then opened the left. Westphalen and his partner Stan McNear stood close by. "My God!" she exclaimed. "They're gone!"
There were no eyeballs, no tissue. The eyes had been cut out and extracted so carefully that there were no incisions. Mary Pratt's upper and lower eyelids were left entirely undisturbed. Dr. Peacock immediately knew whoever removed her eyes had skilled surgeon-like precision. He had to understand how to slip a knife around the eyes, making sure not to injure the adjoining skin and then cut the six major muscles holding each eye in the socket, as well as the tough optical nerve.
Westphalen contacted the FBI's Violent Crime Apprehension Program unit to see if there was any other record of this MO, given the bizarre nature of the crime. But there were no listings of any attacks of this character in the FBI's database. "What kind of person," Westphalen asked McNear, "would want a girl's eyeballs?"
Credit: Oxygen
(Dallas District Attorney)
Childhood
On August 10, 1933, Charles Albright was born in Amarillo, Texas. His biological mother put him up for adoption, and at three weeks old, Fredrick and Delle Albright took him home from the orphanage. Fred was a Dallas grocer, and Delle was a school teacher. Delle wanted to be a good mother to Charles and make sure he knew she would never abandon him. She kept goats in the backyard for Charles to drink, claiming goat's milk was better for her boy than cow's milk, spanking him if he wouldn't drink it. Delle would change his clothes multiple times a day to keep the dirt and germs off of him. When he was less than a year old, she put him in a dark room alone for chewing on her measuring tape. She would sometimes put him in dresses and force him to hold dolls. When he was a small child, she was afraid he might touch dog feces and get polio. So, Delle took her son to Parkland Hospital to see the polio patients with iron lungs. She would tie him to the bed if he didn't take his naps. You could undoubtedly say that Charles Albright had an overbearing mother.
When he was eleven, he was given a gun and began killing small animals in the backyard. Delle promptly enrolled him in a mail-order taxidermy course. She assisted him in understanding how to utilize all the tools: the knife used to cut the skull, the spoon used to scoop the brains, the scalpel required to cut away the eyes from the sockets, the forceps that pulled out the eyes. Charles enjoyed this new hobby. However, when he finished stuffing the birds and was ready to put the final touch on - the eyes, his mother claimed the fake glass eyes sold at the taxidermy shop were too expensive and made him use buttons instead. As he grew older, his mother would drive Charles around on all his dates and lecture him about how "greedy" his father Fred was with sex, claiming he grabs her in the bedroom when she is wearing her bra and panties. Delle was not going to have her son be disrespectful to women.
Credit: Texas Monthly “See No Evil”
Criminal Record
Charles was a brilliant child growing up and moved up two grades in elementary school. He was mischievous, however. For example, Charles "accidentally" set his chemistry teacher's dress on fire. He would shoot rubber bands and crawl out of study hall. Charles broke into a church and broke into a store to steal a watch another time. He graduated high school and enrolled in North Texas State College in Denton at age fifteen. By his freshman year, police caught him with petty cash stolen from a cash register, two handguns, and a rifle. Charles Albright was arrested for being the leader of a student burglary ring that broke into three stores and stole several hundred dollars worth of inventory. After hearing the news, Delle went to the store owners and attempted to reimburse them for what her son had stolen. She tried to persuade the judge to let her act as Charles's lawyer, and she even tried to take his place in prison for him. But, the boy spent a year in jail, and Delle worked to keep the matter quiet around the neighborhood.
When Albright was released, he transferred to Arkansas State Teacher's College. Charles was very popular: president of the French club, business manager of the yearbook, member of the school choir, a halfback on the football team. He started dating an English major, Bettye Hester and planned to marry her. Charles even talked about going to medical school and becoming a surgeon. Everyone thought he was going to exceed far in life. But his antics hadn't stopped. On one occasion, his football teammate had broken up with a pretty girl with almond-shaped eyes. He began dating someone else and had tossed out all the photos he had of his ex-girlfriend. One night, as Charles's teammate was looking at a picture of his new girlfriend, he noticed something odd. The woman's eyes had been cut out and replaced with the almond-shaped eyes of his ex-girlfriend. Albright had pasted the eyes in other places, too, such as the ceiling and above the men's urinal. Despite his popularity and promising hopes of becoming a productive citizen, he was found again with stolen items. He was expelled but not prosecuted, as Arkansas State Teacher's College didn't want to cause embarrassment for either him or the college. That didn't phase Charles; he forged signatures and certificates to give himself a bachelor's and master's degree.
When Charles Albright was 36, he conned his way into teaching high school science in Crandall. According to his college records, Albright had a master's in biology from East Texas State University and was working on another degree in counseling and guidance with plans to enter ESTU's Ph.D. program in biology. Students found him fascinating and brilliant, with his masculine looks and pied-piper-like charm. By this time, he was married to Bettye, and they had one daughter together, leading a seemingly everyday life. Eventually, an ETSU official told the principal at Crandall that Albright had never graduated from the college. His degrees and teacher's diploma were forged. The school thought it would reflect poorly on them if word got around they hired a teacher with fake credentials. They decided to keep the scandal out of the newspapers, and Albright pleaded guilty to a fraud charge and received a year's probation.
Charles failed to hold a job for long and used his charm and falsehoods to entice people into giving him a chance. In 1965 his is marriage with Bettye fell apart, and they separated, divorcing finally in 1974. His second arrest came when he was caught stealing hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise from a hardware store. Albright received a two-year prison sentence and served less than six months before being released. He continued on this way, committing a series of crimes and getting away with probations here and there.
Charles Albright was a dedicated member of the St. Bernard's Catholic Church in East Dallas, where he sang in the choir. In 1981, his mother Delle had died, Charles was 48. While visiting with friends who were church members, he sexually molested their young daughter. The family reported him, and Charles pled guilty to "knowingly and intentionally engaging in deviate sexual intercourse." receiving a sentence of ten years probation and no jail time. Albright claimed later that he was innocent of the accusation but pled guilty to avoid a hassle.
In 1985, Charles Albright met Dixie Austin. He invited her to live with him in the home he had inherited from his father Fred when he passed. Charles received at least $96,000 and his parents' homes in Oak Cliff and Cotton Valley. Charles left the houses in his father's name, Fredrick Albright, for sentimental reasons. He rented out the home in Cotton Valley to a fast-talking truck driver named Axton Schindler, while Charles and Dixie moved into the old family home in Oak Cliff. Unbeknownst to him, Axton, who didn't want the government in his business, had listed Charles home as his address on his driver's license: 1035 Eldorado Ave, Dallas, TX 75208.
Credit: Texas Monthly “See No Evil”
Victims
After discovering 33-year-old Mary Lou Pratt, police and detectives working the case were still scratching their heads regarding what would motivate an individual to kill a woman and take her eyes. Nearly two months later, on February 10, 1991, police responded to a scene just eight blocks away from where Pratt's body had been left. Another white woman was found vulgarly displayed, mostly nude, with her breasts exposed and shot in the head and chest. She was identified as 27-year-old Susanne Peterson, another sex worker at the Star Motel. When the medical examiner began the autopsy, they discovered the eyes were expertly removed. Eerily similar to the case of Mary Pratt, police knew they were dealing with a repeat killer.
Police deputies John Matthews and Regina Smith, who patrolled the Oak Cliff neighborhood, recalled an incident just one day after Pratt's body was found in December 1990. Matthew's spotted Veronica Rodriguez, a sex worker at the Star. She was filthy; a gash was across her forehead, and what looked like a knife cut across the front of her neck. When officers asked her what had happened, Rodriguez said she was almost killed the previous night by a white man while doing a double with Mary Pratt in a field in south Dallas. Rodriguez said she managed to escape and ran to a nearby house where a man she just happened to know lived. Veronica Rodriguez was known around Oak Cliff as a habitual liar and thought brain-fried from drug use. The police found her two days later sitting in the cab of an 18-wheeler with a balding white man. Officer Smith asked the man to show his driver's license: His name was Axton Schindler, of 1035 Eldorado. Rodriguez shouted at the officers, "Don't arrest him! That's the man who saved me from the killer!" However, Schindler's driver's license address was just a five-minute drive from the Star Motel. Not out in south Dallas, where Rodriguez's attack allegedly took place. When police questioned Axton Schindler about Veronica's claim, he said he had no idea what she was talking about and was only giving her a ride. They assumed it must be another one of Rodriguez's pity stories she often told to gain sympathy and dismissed the story.
On March 10, 1991, Shirley Williams was found dead crumpled against a curb half a block from an elementary school. She was an African-American sex worker who worked on a corner just a few miles from the Star. Like the previous two victims, she was naked, suffered severe facial bruising, and was shot in the head. Detective Westphalen asked the medical examiner's field agent on the scene to check her eyes. The field agent flipped open both eyes and confirmed they were missing. Westphalen turned to his partner, Stan McNear. "We've got number three," he said. The autopsy on Williams' body revealed that the surgery had been rushed. The broken tip of an X-Acto blade was found embedded in the skin near her right eye. She had hairs not matching her own in her hand, which indicated she grabbed her attacker's head and put up a fight before being shot. But, again, there were no fingerprints, no semen, and no murder weapon found nearby. According to another sex worker, Shirley had been last seen wearing jeans and a yellow raincoat; and she had gotten into a car after getting high on drugs.
Once word of Shirley Williams' killing had spread, the Star Motel became a ghost town. Many sex workers fled Dallas, afraid of the man media had dubbed the Dallas Ripper and The Eyeball Killer. Patrolling the area, officers Matthews and Smith spied a black sex worker named Brenda White. Smith approached the girl and suggested that she leave town, as there was a murderer on the loose. White told officers, "Well, I'm going to get my black ass out of here. I just had to Mace a man who jumped bad on me the other night." A few days before, she said a trick pulled alongside her, and she got into his dark station wagon. He was a husky white man with salt-and-pepper hair, cowboy boots, and blue jeans. "Let's go to a motel," Brenda told him. "No," he said. "I've got a spot we can use." To protect herself, Brenda never allowed for tricks to take her anywhere but a motel room, and she demanded he drop her off immediately. "A change came over his face," she recalled. "It was like anger, rage. He said, 'I hate whores! I'm going to kill all of you motherfucking whores!'" Before he could grab her, White shot a stream of Mace into his face, threw open the door, and jumped out while the car was still in motion. The officer’s could not shake White's story from their minds, and they thought back to Veronica Rodriguez's rambling talk about being attacked in south Dallas.
Credit: Texas Monthly “See No Evil”
Capture
The morning after Brenda White told officers about her escape; Smith told her partner they needed to run a computer check on Axton Schindler at the Dallas County constable's office near Jefferson Boulevard. Seated around the terminal, they ran a search on the address listed on Schindler's driver's license: 1035 Eldorado. A deceased man, known as Fred Albright, popped up as the owner. In another investigation, they found that Fred Albright had also owned property on the street named Cotton Valley. The very neighborhood where the first two bodies were disposed. After a long pause, the deputy constable on duty, Walter Cook, said softly, "Maybe this has something to do with a man named Charles Albright."
Several weeks before, Cook explained he had come to the office and answered a call from a woman who would not identify herself. She said she had been friends with Mary Pratt and through Pratt had met a man she briefly dated. The woman said he was a lovely man, but he had an odd love for eyes. She also mentioned that he kept X-Acto blades in his attic. Cook asked for the man's name. "Charles Albright," she said.
Officers hurried to the county's identification division and asked for Albright's criminal record. They uncovered a string of thefts, burglaries, forgeries, and a charge of sexual intercourse with a child. Records showed Albright lived in the home on 1035 Eldorado. The clerk pulled a mug shot of Charles, a photo showing a well-built white male with salt-and-pepper hair just like the man White had described as her attacker. Detective Westphalen advised Matthews and Smith to show Brenda White a lineup of six mug shots, with Albright included in the mix. Without hesitation, White pointed to Charles's picture and said that it was the man who had attacker her. The next step was to contact Veronica Rodriguez and show her the same lineup. According to officer Matthews, she started shaking when she got to the third picture, Albright's—suddenly scared and refusing to identify anyone. Westphalen knew his only chance of going after Albright was up to Veronica. Suppose she could positively identify him as the attacker. In that case, the Dallas police could file charges for attempted murder, get a search warrant, and look through his property for evidence that might connect him to the three murders. Smith and Matthews brought Veronica Rodriguez downtown into a small interrogation room, and she began to shake with tears pooling in her eyes. Westphalen said to Rodriguez, trying to control his anger, "This is so easy. Pick out the picture of the guy who assaulted you, and we will get him and put him in jail, where he can't hurt you." She looked over the mug shots, reached for Albright's photo, turned it over, and signed her name.
On March 22, 1991, a team of tactical officers burst through the front door of Charles Albright's home on 1035 Eldorado in Oak Cliff, a dark station wagon in his driveway. Albright was handcuffed and led away; he never said a word. Police searched his residence six times, uncovering an alarming amount of woodworking and X-Acto blades throughout the home. Dozens of true crime books, a copy of Grey's Anatomy, hundreds of photos of women's eyes taken at a close-up range, dolls, mannequins, and face masks. Newspaper clippings of the three murders of the eyeless sex workers and a hidden compartment behind the fireplace mantel filled with rifles and pistols. However, none were the murder weapon used in the killings. Officers had also found jars of animal parts and dozens of taxidermy animals in a rented storage unit. No human eyeballs were ever found. While the circumstantial evidence against Albright kept building, they had little to connect him to the murders.
But Toby Shook, a prosecutor working for the Dallas County DA's office, held a trump card. For the first time in its history, the DA was going for a murder conviction based only on hair and fiber evidence. It was a landmark case for Texas; as evidence goes, hairs are not as conclusive as fingerprints. Several days after Albright's arrest, the forensic lab reported that hairs found on the bodies of the dead sex workers matched hair samples taken from Charles's head and pubic area. Lab technicians also discovered that fibers found on the bodies of Mary Pratt and Susan Peterson matched the fibers of a blanket found in the back of Albright's truck. Eight hairs found in Albright's vacuum cleaner bag matched the hair from the third woman killed, Shirley Williams. In additional evidence, Matthews and Smith located Tina Connolly, who claimed that Albright was one of her regular customers. She led officers to a secluded field near Fort Worth Boulevard, where Charles used to take her for sex. In the brushes they spotted a yellow raincoat, just like the one Williams was last seen wearing, covered in blood and a blue blanket. Six hairs on the blanket matched Williams', three pubic hairs on the blanket and a head hair on the raincoat matched Albright's.
Credit: Mark of a Killer: An Eye for Murder
(Season 1, Episode 3)
Trial
On December 13, 1991, Charles Albright's trial began. His defense attorney, Brad Lollar, tried to convince the jury that the case against Albright was based only on the weakest circumstantial evidence. The killer, Lollar said, was probably Axton Schindler, who conveniently skipped town the week of the trial. While there were many unanswered questions regarding Schindler's involvement in connection to Albright, there was nothing to tie him to the case except an empty .44-caliber bullet box behind his house in Cotton Valley, which Albright could have dropped himself. Moreover, when police showed Schindler's and Albright's photos to dozens of sex workers, none recognized Schindler, but many recognized Albright. No hairs were found on the sex workers that could be linked back to Axton Schindler, and most importantly, no one who had met him could imagine he had even the slightest skill required to remove a set of eyes perfectly. Charles Albright never testified. He sat quietly in his chair, shoulders slumped.
On December 19, 1991, the jury returned with their verdict. Albright was found guilty and received a life sentence. Lollar was stunned; he thought he would get his client acquitted. But, instead, he strode tight-lipped out of the courtroom. "It's always a miscarriage of justice," he told the press, "when an innocent man is convicted."
Where is he now?
Albright's prison sentence was carried out at the Clements Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections in Amarillo. He spent his time reading two books a week on the Civil War, taking notes for a book he wanted to write on the wives of Civil War generals. In addition, he kept busy working as a carpenter in the prison woodworking shop, coaching the prison softball team, and writing letters to Dixie. He also had a peculiar fascination with drawing eyeballs and decorating his prison cell with them. Charles Albright died while incarcerated on August 22, 2020, aged 87, at the West Texas Regional Medical Facility in Lubbock. He maintained his innocents until the day he died, never revealing what he did with the six pairs of eyes missing from the women's bodies.
Credit: Texas Monthly “See No Evil”
There are numerous crime scene photos of Albright's victims available online. I left the images out of this blog at the risk of making any of you nauseous. However, if you are morbidly curious like me, take a look yourself, and you'll see just how deviant this handsome, charming, popular neighbor was under his facade.
In downtown Dallas, at 1601 Main St, a 30-foot tall bloodshot blue eyeball is plopped down in the middle of the grass. The eye is the work of Chicago artist Tony Tasset. He created the fiberglass sculpture back in 2007. The eyeball spent a few years in storage, made a brief appearance in St. Louis, and was brought to Texas in 2013. The Joule hotel purchased it as part of their expansive art collection. While this iconic Dallas art attraction holds no symbolism to Charles Albright, I find it coincidentally ominous. After reading this case, I bet you will also view the giant blue eye downtown through a different lens.
Credit: Carol M. Highsmith
(Library of Congress/LC-DIG-HIGHSM-28401)(Public Domain)
Sources
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/see-no-evil-3/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120301093708/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/charles_albright/index.html
https://medium.com/crimebeat/the-texas-eyeball-killer-perfect-gentleman-or-psychotic-murderer-ba2d9e43c653
"HBO | Autopsy 5: Dead Men Do Tell Tales"
"Oxygen | Mark of a Killer: An Eye for Murder (Season 1, Episode 3)”
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/eye-sculpture
https://artandseek.org/2021/03/18/why-is-there-a-giant-eyeball-in-downtown-dallas-we-take-a-look/#:~:text=The%20Eye%20is%20the%20work,Nasher%20Sculpture%20Center%20in%202014.&text=The%20piece%20is%20modeled%20after%20his%20own%20eyeball.