Our dive into Mindhunter season 2 and the real stories behind them continues in the third episode of the Netflix original series. In this episode, we head to Atlanta as Holden is set to interview William Pierce, Jr. and William Henry Hance.
Tench, of course, had to stay back after the body was found in his wife’s rental property. This episode also gets us started down the road of learning of the Atlanta child murders which we were told would be the emphasis of this season.
There was a lot happening in Atlanta and a lot to discuss.
We first met Jim Barney (Albert Jones) in season 1, episode 8 when the team was looking to expand. As you may recall, Tench wanted to hire him, but Dr. Carr mentioned that most of their subjects were racist and his presence alone could throw off interviews. He ends up back at the Atlanta field office and Tench had planned to meet him at the airport. With Tench now off the case, Holden meets with him instead and brings him along for the interview.
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Is Jim Barney based on a real person?
He is. Barney is based on a member of the BSU named Judson Ray. While his story in the show does not follow the same path as his real-life story, the character is based on the real agent. As noted in the trivia page on IMDB. The story that Barney tells in his interview about putting his arm around a defendant’s girlfriend while he was on the stand was a true story.
Additional Facts:
By now, we know that the murderers interviewed are real. When it comes to Pierce, the most interesting things about him are the fact that he says he didn’t commit most of the nine murders he was convicted of and that he was a candy addict.
Did Pierce really deny committing some of the crimes?
According to many reports, which are contained in his Murderpedia page, Pierce was as much a serial confessor as he was a serial killer. He mentions during the show that his confessions were coerced and information came out recently that he was telling the truth in at least the Cullino case. Pierce is currently still in prison. Don’t feel too sorry for him though as there are murders he definitely committed.
Was he really a candy addict?
The picture of Pierce in his jail cell surrounded by candy was an altered version of a real picture. It’s safe to say he at least had a sweet tooth.
Did he really like to pretend to be smarter than he was?
Also contained within the murderpedia page are notes that his IQ was barely about 70, but he liked to try to outsmart the police. He considered himself good at this, but as shown through Ford’s responses to him, he was not.
William Henry Hance is the first black serial killer that the team has interviewed. Ford was completely unimpressed with the low intelligence level of his subjects in this episode after becoming infatuated with Kemper. Hance’s situation was particularly bad because of the elaborate stories he came up with in an effort to throw suspicion off himself which had the opposite effect.
Did Hance really make up the “Forces of Evil?”
Yes, he did. As depicted in the show, the police were sure that the “Stocking Strangler” was a black man. In an effort to throw the police off his trail, Hance confessed to his crimes but said that he was a seven-member group of white men called the “Forces of Evil.” Of course, the letter simply brought more attention to the case and eventually led to his capture.
Additional Facts
We also meet Willie Mae Mathis, Venus Taylor, and Camille Bell. According to Bustle, these were the real names of the women who founded The Committee to Stop Children’s Murders and the mothers of three of the early victims. I can’t find any information to confirm the clandestine meeting the women had with an FBI agent in the show so that is likely fiction.
The fact that the murders were not being linked publicly is true, however. In the show, we learn that the expansion of the airport and the fear of white flight is the culprit. In print, the closest I could find to this being confirmed is a mention that people were afraid of rising racial tension affecting convention business, according to Refinery29.
At the end of the third episode, a lot happens. We find out that the body found in Mrs. Tench’s rental property was a child and that the child was crucified. We’ll touch more on this in a later edition.
Our Mindhunter deep-dives will continue as we move to the fourth episode of the new season.
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