The Taco Bell Strangler

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Hello, Welcome to ten Minute Murder, Brief and binge Able true Crime.

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After being sentenced to death nine times, over one death sentence for each of

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his nine confirmed victims, Henry Lewis
Wallace addressed the families of his victims in

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a statement. He told them,
quote, none of these women, none

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of your daughters, mothers, sisters, or family members, in any way

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deserved what they got. They did
nothing to me that warranted their death.

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In one short statement, Henry did
what so many killers failed to do over

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the course of their entire lives,
acknowledging that each of his victims had been

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a human with a complex life of
their own, and that none of them

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had deserved to be hurt by him. As a statement, it would have

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been powerful except for that Henry had
not only deliberately hurt these women, but

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brutally assaulted and murdered them. But
that statement wasn't the only way in which

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Henry did not fit the media image
of a serial killer. According to FBI

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profilers, most serial killers are a
white men who don't know their victims.

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Henry was a black man, and
he had a personal connection to each and

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every single person he killed. With
a clear link between Henry and his victims,

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it seems that the breadcrumbs would lead
directly back to him. So how

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did he avoid capture long enough to
murder so many people and why did he

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do it? On surface level,
it seems as if the motive was money.

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Each of Henry's victims was robbed after
their death, and he used that

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money to fuel one of his greatest
vices, his addiction to crack. However,

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the motive ran much deeper than that. In reality, Henry attacked his

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victims because of his sexual desires,
his need to have control, and the

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ability to inflict fear. This characteristic
is very similar to fellow serial killers like

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Ted Bundy. Getting money to fuel
his addiction was a bonus, but it

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wasn't why he killed. Born in
South Carolina, Henry had been well liked

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and popular in high school, popular
to the point where nobody laughed when a

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six foot tall teenager signed up to
be the only guy on the school's cheerleading

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squad. It's more common now,
but in the early nineteen eighties, that's

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basically social suicide. College wasn't for
him. He ended up working at a

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local radio station, calling himself the
night Rider, earning himself praise for his

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smooth voice and relaxed manner. Henry
liked working in radio and he could have

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been happy there, but one day
he was caught stealing a bunch of CDs

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and was immediately fired. With no
job and no plans, Henry joined the

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Navy in nineteen eighty five. While
he was there, he got married,

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made friends, and started to work
his way up through the ranks. His

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performance as a sailor was almost flawless, but the end of his career was

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undignified. He was caught attempting to
commit burglary close to the naval base and

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then discharged from service. It was
only because of his immaculate performance during his

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time as a sailor that he avoided
being stamped as a dishonorable discharge. After

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eight years, Henry was trying to
hold down a steady job with little success,

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and also making an attempt to remember
how to be a civilian. But

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he was struggling with these things,
and his wife told him that she wanted

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to leave him. With no money
and few options, Henry moved back home

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to Charlotte, North Carolina, where
his family lived. It felt like he

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was right back where he started,
just a teenage boy who had thrown away

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his job working in late night radio. Although Henry had certainly dabbled in drugs

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before his true addiction to substances began. Around this time, his life was

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unstable and his future was uncertain,
but when he was using crack cocaine,

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he felt good. Krack became an
expensive emotional crutch for Henry, and to

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support it, he got a job
as a manager at a taco bell restaurant.

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He also attempted to move on from
his ex wife, finding love again,

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and he met a lady named Sadie
mcnight, who quickly became his girlfriend.

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The killings began in June nineteen ninety
two, when a young black woman,

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Caroline Love, vanished seemingly into thin
air. Caroline was labeled as a

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missing person until two years later when
her remains were found her roommates Sadie mcnight,

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the same Sadie who had recently begun
dating Henry and had given him a

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key to the apartment that she shared
with. Caroline had no idea what happened

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to her friend. With nobody else
to share her apartment with, Sadie moved

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in with Henry, taking their relationship
to the next level. In February nineteen

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ninety three, Shauna Hawke answered a
knock on the door and found that the

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manager of the Taco Bell restaurant where
she worked was standing in her doorstep.

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She was surprised to see him,
but she liked Henry and didn't feel uncomfortable

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around him. She invited him in
without hesitation, and the two of them

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chatted for nearly an hour. Eight
months after Caroline's disappearance, Shauna was found

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dead in her own house. Her
boyfriend found her in a bathtub full of

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water, naked, beaten, and
bruised around her head, but the autopsy

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determined that despite being beaten and submerged
in water, Shauna's cause of death was

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strangulation. She had also been sexually
assaulted and money had been taken from her

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wallet. When another young woman,
Audrey Spain, was found naked and strangled

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to death in East Charlotte, the
media began referring to the killer as the

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Charlotte Strangler. Apart more bodies were
found, there were common threads. All

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the murders were within the same general
radius of East Charlotte, all the victims

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were black, and every one of
them had been strangled. Even for victims

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like Michelle Stinson, where Henry stabbed
her to death and then strangled her after

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the fact. Still Henry was evading
suspicion and capture. It was mid March

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of nineteen ninety four when Henry's carefully
constructed plan to avoid capture began to fall

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apart. He was out of control. He couldn't stop. If a screw

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had been loose in his head,
it had somehow fallen out of whatever it

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was holding together. He needed the
robberies to fund his drug habit, and

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he needed the sexual assault and violence
to scratch the itch and side of him.

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Up until this point, he'd been
cautious at every scene, cleaning away

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fingerprints and DNA evidence, and making
sure that he waited until things quieted down

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to kill again. Now he was
in a state of gluttony riding the constant

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high of murder, began to get
sloppy. For want of a better term,

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he went on a killing binge.
Between the ninth and the eleventh of

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March, Henry committed three separate murders, one per day. It was a

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massive change from the several month long
gaps he'd been deliberately leaving in the past.

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The public terrified, police investigators frustrated. Suddenly there was a light bulb

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moment in the room. They had
cross referenced the names of the acquaintances with

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the names of the victims and noticed
that even though the victims weren't acquainted with

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each other at all, there was
one name that kept popping up, a

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man that they knew in some way. Henry Lewis Wallace. Valencia Jumper had

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been friends with Henry's sister, and
Betty Balcom had been friends with his girlfriend,

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Sadie. Caroline Love had been actually
Sadie's roommate at the time of her

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disappearance, and Henry managed the Taco
Bell restaurant where the two victims, Audrey

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and Shawn worked over and over.
Henry Wallace, Henry Wallace, Henry Wallace.

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How had they missed this? The
police department was left desperately trying to

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justify why it had taken them so
long to figure out the link between all

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of these missing women. They faced
a serious accusation from the public that they

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had neglected the case because of Henry's
victims they were black. The argument that

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they gave was they had no experience
with serial killers, and prior to Henry's

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last killing spree, the FBI had
refused to help them investigate due to the

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belief that the killings were not related. During his interview, Henry was forthcoming

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with information, readily walking them through
each of the murders he committed. He

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forced them to step into his shoes, reliving from his perspective the crime and

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grotesque detail. The investigators were shocked
by the contrast between his demeanor and what

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he was telling them, and at
one point, one of the investigators asked

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Henry if he believed he could have
schizophrenia because he didn't seem to be a

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bad guy. Henry was quick to
reply, no, there's only one Henry,

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a bad Henry. When you find
out that a loved one is a

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killer, you remember every detail of
your relationship with them in a new light.

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For Henry's girlfriend, Sadie, this
new lens led to a grim realization.

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Throughout their entire relationship, he'd been
giving her constant gifts of jewelry,

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but she had no idea where he
got it from. Now she knew,

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but she wished that she didn't.
This whole time, Sadie had been wearing

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the jewelry of at least nine murdered
women,