Albright was born on August 10, 1933 and was raised in Dallas by an adoptive mother who taught him taxidermy as a child. He was intelligent, had forged academic credentials, had worked as a teacher on a fake degree, and had convictions for theft and for indecency with a child. The Dallas press called him the Dallas Ripper.
Between December 1990 and March 1991 three women working as prostitutes in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas were shot dead: Mary Lou Pratt, Susan Peterson and Shirley Williams. In each case the killer had removed the victim's eyes, cutting them out with precision. The press called him the Eyeball Killer.
He was arrested on March 22, 1991. He was tried only for the murder of Shirley Williams, and convicted on December 18, 1991, receiving life imprisonment. The other two killings were never prosecuted.
The conviction rested substantially on fibre comparison, fibres from his house and vehicle said to match those on the victim, together with circumstantial evidence of his association with the women. No eyes were ever recovered, and the ballistic evidence did not tie him to the weapon. The fibre evidence has been criticised since, in line with the broader reassessment of comparative fibre and hair analysis in American courts, and he maintained his innocence throughout.
This roster gives three victims and describes him as a possible serial killer, which is a fair way to carry it: one conviction, two attributions, and a body of evidence of a kind that has not aged well. He was charged with four murders in all, the fourth being Rhonda Bowie, and the charges in the cases other than Shirley Williams were dropped for insufficient evidence. He maintained his innocence to the end and died in custody at the West Texas Regional Medical Facility in Lubbock on August 22, 2020, aged eighty-seven.