By Kristy Stevens
The passage below is written in the killer's voice and is invented. It is not a quotation. See the editor's note at the end of this article.
I removed the eyes of all three of my victims, they were all prostitutes. I was, as they say, a kind of Renaissance man, I was fluent in French and Spanish, a masterful painter, and I was able to woo women by playing Chopin preludes on the piano and by reciting poetry written by Keats. I was every girl’s dream, and it made murdering them so easy…
Charles Albright was born on August 10, 1933 and was adopted after being discovered in an orphanage by Fred and Delle Albright. Delle was known to be a strict, but overprotective parent, and as a schoolteacher, her diligent work with Albright led him to skip two grades in school. Once he became a teenager, he would begin displaying the first warning sign of becoming a murderer. He began shooting small animals with a gun and took up an interest in taxidermy. His mother encouraged his hobby by helping him stuff the animals he killed, but by the time he was thirteen, he had been arrested for aggravated assault and became known for petty theft. However, with his accelerated education he received at home, Albright finished school at the age of fifteen and was accepted into a university. He had plans of becoming a doctor, but never finished his pre-med studies.
Albright was arrested again at the age of sixteen and was given a year in prison for theft. Upon his release, he was enrolled in a teacher’s college for pre-med studies but was expelled from the college after stolen property was recovered from his possession. This would be the true beginning of his downfall that would ultimately lead to murder.
At this point in time, Albright decided to try his hand at a career in forgery. He falsified documents stating he had completed bachelors and masters degrees in college and forged the signatures on his paperwork. It was during this time that Albright married his college girlfriend, and they welcomed a daughter together. Albright continued his forging duties while working as a high school teacher, and it was here that his forgery scams were discovered. After being found out, he was put on probation, but he didn’t stop there.
Sometime in 1974, Albright and his wife got divorced. During this time, he was caught stealing merchandise from a hardware store that was valued at hundreds of dollars. He was again sent to prison, this time for two years, however, he was released after serving only six months. But here is where things start to take a turn for the worse, and the strange.
After being released from prison, Albright began to socialize himself with his neighbors, and eventually became the neighborhood’s most trusted babysitter. Ironic right? Well, while visiting a friend’s home in 1981, Albright was discovered molesting his friend’s nine-year-old daughter. During his court trial, he managed to plea guilty and walk away with only probation. He later claimed that he wasn’t actually guilty of committing this crime but agreed to plead guilty to avoid hassles and make things easier on himself. You’d think the cops would’ve learned their lessons by now right? Nope. But wait, there’s more.
It is reported that at some point in 1985, Albright met a woman by the name of Dixie, while he was living in Arkansas. They quickly moved in together, and it wasn’t long after, Dixie became the sole means of Albright’s survival. She supported him completed and paid all the bills. However, Albright was still a busy boy. He delivered newspapers in the early hours of the morning and used this as an alibi to visit prostitutes, prostitutes who would later give their lives to him. It is reported that Dixie knew nothing of his nightly prostitution sessions, and this is where Charles Albright finally snapped, and went on a three-person murder spree.
December 13, 1990. That was the day Mary Lou Pratt’s body was discovered in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. She was the unfortunate first victim of Albright, and it was determined her cause of death was a bullet wound to the back of her head from a .44 caliber gun. Upon examining the crime scene, Mary Lou wore only a t-shirt and bra, with her breasts fully exposed, her body was covered in bruises, and her eyes were closed. However, it was later discovered by the medical examiner that both of her eyes had been removed.
Two months later, almost to the day, on February 13, 1991, the body of Susan Peterson was discovered, and she too, was almost completely naked. She was found with multiple gunshot wounds with one going through the top of her head, another in the back of her head, and a third wound to her left breast. Her body was recovered on the outskirts of Southern Dallas and she was also missing both of her eyes.
Shirley Williams was the final victim found on March 10, 1991. She had two gunshot wounds, one to the top of her head, and the other through her face. She was brutally beaten, with numerous bruising to her face, along with a broken nose. As with the previous victims, she too was missing her eyes. This led to Albright becoming known by nicknames such as the Dallas Ripper, the Dallas Slasher, and the Eyeball Killer.
On March 22, 1991, Albright was arrested and charged with the murders of all three woman. The trial on December 13, 1991, however, at first it seemed that Albright would get away with it all because most of the evidence against him was merely circumstantial. The prosecution got lucky when they were able to gain strong forensic evidence using hairs found at the scene of Shirley Williams’s murder. The hairs matched that of none other than Charles Albright. On December 18, 1991, the jury began their deliberations and quickly returned their verdict. However, because the evidence against him was only circumstantial in the other murders, the jury was only able to return a guilty verdict for the murder of Shirley Williams. But, as a result of the conviction, Albright was given a life sentencing without the possibility of parole, and was doomed to spend the rest of his natural born life behind bars.
Editor's note: this piece is one of five in the Murder and Madness series, which ran in Serial Killer Magazine. Each article opens with a passage written in the killer's own voice. Those passages are invented. They are the author's dramatisation, not a quotation, not a confession and not drawn from any letter, interview or statement, and nothing in them should be read as something the man actually said.
That matters more here than anywhere else in the series, because the invented passage at the top of this article has Charles Albright confessing to all three murders in the first person, and Albright was convicted of one and denied it to the end.
What the record holds: he was tried only for the murder of Shirley Williams and convicted on December 18, 1991. The killings of Mary Lou Pratt and Susan Peterson were never prosecuted. He was charged with a fourth murder, that of Rhonda Bowie, and the charges in every case except Shirley Williams were dropped for insufficient evidence. This roster carries three victims against his name and describes him as a possible serial killer, which is a fair way to hold one conviction and two attributions.
The forensic evidence needs the same care. The article says hairs found at the Williams scene matched Albright. The conviction rested substantially on fibre comparison, fibres from his house and his vehicle said to match fibres on the victim, alongside circumstantial evidence of his association with the women. No eyes were ever recovered. The ballistic evidence did not tie him to a weapon. Comparative fibre and hair analysis has been heavily reassessed by American courts since 1991, and the evidence in this case has been criticised as part of that reassessment. He maintained his innocence throughout and never stopped maintaining it.
Two smaller things. The sentence is recorded here as life without the possibility of parole; the roster has five years to life, imposed on December 18, 1991. And the article leaves him alive. Charles Albright died in custody at the West Texas Regional Medical Facility in Lubbock on August 22, 2020, aged eighty-seven.