"Does That Make Me a Murderer?": Alex Henriquez Talks to Piers Morgan, 2018

Name: "Does That Make Me a Murderer?": Alex Henriquez Talks to Piers Morgan, 2018
Uploaded: 2024-04-06
Duration: 44 min 46 s
Description: After almost 30 years of refusing interviews, Alex Henriquez told Piers Morgan he did not kill the three Bronx girls and young women he was convicted of murdering, and was pressed on the evidence.

After almost 30 years of refusing interviews, Alex Henriquez told Piers Morgan he did not kill the three Bronx girls and young women he was convicted of murdering, and was pressed on the evidence.

Subject: Alejandro Henriquez
Recorded: about September 13, 2018
Runtime: 44:46

Content warning: The programme concerns the murders of three girls and young women, aged 10, 14 and 21, in the Bronx; it discusses the condition of a child's body, her underwear, and police questions about sexual abuse of a child, and the scalding of a young boy.

The Interview

In a New York State prison, Alex Henriquez sat down with the British broadcaster Piers Morgan for the third episode of "Serial Killer with Piers Morgan", first shown on ITV on September 13, 2018. The programme says he had refused interviews for almost 30 years. From the outset he insists he is innocent: "I have not killed anybody in my life." Morgan puts the prosecution's evidence to him point by point, and the interview ends in an argument, with Henriquez complaining that he was not allowed to explain.

Historical Context

Henriquez was a married father who ran a cab company in the Bronx. On October 10, 1990, 10-year-old Jessica Guzman disappeared near the Castle Hill Houses; her body was found a week later beside the Bronx River Parkway. Henriquez, who knew her, was the last person seen with her. Investigators linked him to the deaths of Shamira Bello, 14, and Lisa Ann Rodriguez, 21, and in 1992 he was convicted of all three murders and sentenced to three consecutive terms (reported as three consecutive 25-year terms). Press reports have also named other young people from the area whose deaths remain unsolved; Henriquez was never charged with them.

Circumstances of the Interview

The episode combines Morgan's interview with his narration, archive news reports from 1990 and the trial, courtroom footage of Henriquez protesting his innocence and of the sentence being imposed, and interviews with detectives, the former FBI profiler James Fitzgerald, Lisa Rodriguez's parents, a relative of Jessica Guzman, and people who knew Henriquez. Morgan shows Henriquez photographs of the three victims.

What the Interview Covers

Henriquez describes himself as a father and husband with "a lot of girlfriends", says he was never abused as a child, and speaks about his late mother. He repeats his claim that he had a sexual relationship with Lisa Rodriguez and says he gave her a pair of sweatpants from a drawer, which he assumes were his wife's; she was found dead wearing his wife's pink sweatpants. Her parents tell Morgan they do not believe it. Pressed on the police account that he described a floral pattern on Jessica Guzman's underwear before detectives knew of it, he says the detail came from the police, and gives his account of how he was questioned. He disputes a witness who placed him near where her body was found, raises the unrelated "Baby Hope" case, and contests the description of an earlier conviction for the scalding of his wife's young son, saying he pleaded guilty to a lesser assault charge.

What Makes the Recording Significant

ITV and press coverage at the time described this as the first time Henriquez had spoken publicly about the case. It is a sustained, on-camera confrontation in which a man serving a sentence for three murders answers the main points of the evidence against him in his own words.

Archival Importance

Alongside the interview, the programme preserves accounts from investigators, from the parents of Lisa Rodriguez, who kept her room as she left it, and from members of the Bronx community where the three victims lived, together with archive news and courtroom footage from 1990 to 1992.

Important Caveats

Henriquez's claims of innocence, his account of a relationship with Lisa Rodriguez, and his claim that police fed him the detail about the underwear are his own; police and her parents deny them, and a jury convicted him. The programme's description of him as "one of America's most notorious serial killers" is its own. The uploader's title ("Sickened", "Pyschopath", "Full Interview") is the uploader's; "Full Interview" is the whole broadcast episode, not raw footage. The details of the earlier scalding case come only from the programme and Henriquez's answers and have not been verified. The investigator Morgan calls "Owen" is not otherwise identified.

Alex Henriquez: Your Honor, the first thing I'd like to say is that I am innocent of these killings. I did not commit any of these murders that I was found guilty of. I feel that nothing here has been proven. There's been a lot of lies, a lot of deceptions, deceiving the people of the Bronx. I'm innocent of these crimes. Thank you, Your Honor.

Piers Morgan: How do you do? Good to see you.

Alex Henriquez: Good to see you.

Piers Morgan: [unclear: "Come on, sit down." (captions) / not in small.en] Uh, if you'd just sit here to start with, please. Thank you.

Unidentified Voices: Look at the camera, or? / Yes, please.

Piers Morgan: This man is one of America's most notorious serial killers. He was convicted of three murders and suspected of more, but he proclaims he's innocent.

Contributor: Alex Henriquez grew up like hundreds of thousands of other people did in the Bronx, but they didn't turn into serial killers.

James Fitzgerald: He is a psychopath first, before he's anything else.

Piers Morgan: Henriquez admits he did know all the victims. One was just 10 years old.

Contributor: All I know is that I just wish my friend was here.

Alex Henriquez: I have not killed anybody in my life, and I don't think I ever will.

Local Mother: But there was no hard evidence. I thought maybe they had the wrong person, because the person to do this type of crimes really didn't fit the person that was sitting there.

Archive News Clips: Alejandro Henriquez, a serial killer. Alex Henriquez. Alejandro Henriquez.

Contributor: I remember feeling that I wanted to spit on him, that I wanted to attack him. My heart bled black.

Piers Morgan: Having refused interviews for almost 30 years, Alex Henriquez is now ready to tell his side of the story.

Detective: He comes at you from every angle, and you must take your time, and you must let him talk, because the more he talks, the more mistakes he may make. ### Jessica Guzman

Piers Morgan: Jessica Guzman was just 10 years old when one afternoon in October 1990 she headed down to her local supermarket and never came home. Jessica was the youngest of three girls murdered in a tight-knit community in the Bronx. Suspicion fell on Alex Henriquez, the last person to have seen Jessica alive.

Alex Henriquez: The last time I seen her, she was headed in that direction. [unclear: "May she rest in peace" (probable) / "May I also rest in peace" / "Man, so rest in peace"]

Archive News Clips: [unclear: "The most highly publicized case" (captions) / "The case" (small.en)] involving little Jessica. Disappeared near her home and was found a week later by the side of the Bronx River Parkway, suffocated. Two thousand mourners turned out for services in the Bronx, including Mayor Dinkins and other top officials.

Piers Morgan: It was the death of this 10-year-old girl that captured the nation's attention. Her coffin was covered in a flag sent by the president. A serial killer had terrorized his neighborhood for two years, and now the police were under huge pressure to catch him.

Piers Morgan: So what do we know about Jessica?

Detective: She's a normal, regular little girl, 10-year-old girl. When she wasn't found in a few days, we knew we were defeated before we even got started, because she was already not with us any longer. But at the very least, her death stopped this maniac from killing more. Her death caused a big, huge investigation to be pursued, and in so doing, other, other homicide victims came into play, and then it turned out that Alex was the common denominator of all these unfortunate homicides. When you have a conscience, and you, it's tough to live, if you have a conscience. He, he's lived a long time without a conscience. Hopefully he'll never dare, or never be able to get out and do this to anybody else.

Unidentified Voices: Nearly there. Sorry for the delay. [unclear: "Takes a little time in the world" / "Takes a world of time in the world"]. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. ### The interview

Piers Morgan: All I've been able to find out about Henriquez is that no one in his community ever thought he could be a serial killer. He grew up in the Bronx, was married, had children, and ran a cab company. Since his time in prison, he's married again.

Piers Morgan: Alex, you've been incarcerated for 28 years for crimes that you adamantly insist you did not commit. What kind of person were you before you were convicted?

Alex Henriquez: Well, I was a father, I was a son, I was a brother, and I was a husband. Was I perfect? Far from it. Was I an angel? Far from it.

Piers Morgan: What were your imperfections?

Alex Henriquez: It's sad and embarrassing to say. Um, I was married and I had a lot of girlfriends. That was my, my biggest, I guess, problem. But it was just that, I guess, as a man, I did things I wasn't supposed to do. I was with this girl, that girl, that girl. And you lived, the lifestyle I lived, you know, you have a nice car, you dress nice clothing. Women attract to that; it's, it's like a magnet. And I don't like guys, I like women. So it was, you know, it went with the...

Piers Morgan: The women found you magnetic?

Alex Henriquez: Um, I guess so, if I had them. I, I didn't, you know, pay anybody or force anybody, so I guess they must have liked me.

Piers Morgan: Most people who are convicted of killing children get targeted in prison. Have you had that?

Alex Henriquez: Um, no. You hear comments. [unclear: "You said" / "He that"] there's a lot of worse crimes in here.

Piers Morgan: Well, Alex, I mean, you, you were convicted of killing three very young people. One was 10, one was 14, one was 21. What could be, what could be worse?

Alex Henriquez: To me, there's nothing worse than taking a child's life, an innocent child's life. When I see something on TV that something happened to a child, I always sort of like get emotional, my eyes get watery, because I say, wow, that's what they're accusing me of. So it's, um, it's not a nice thing.

Detective: Two kids went missing in the Bronx, and that's when I first heard the name Alejandro Henriquez, because he was the last person seen with them. Shortly after that, there was another missing person; this was Jessica Guzman. When she went missing, we said, well, who was with the... One of the housing detectives says, yeah, there was a guy, Alejandro Henriquez.

Piers Morgan: Despite his declaration of innocence, suspicion has swirled around Alex Henriquez for some time, but until now, not enough evidence.

Piers Morgan: There seems to be the impression, at least, that people who know you, especially if they're young, don't live long.

Alex Henriquez: Well, um, you say that, but I must be a magician then. I can't be in two places at one time.

Local Mother: When he was arrested, I was very scared that we're blaming the wrong guy. Everything I was hearing of what he did to each girl, to me, it, it was just, had to be a monster, and this is not what I was seeing. I remember meeting him. I dropped off Jesse to her friend's house. He was cleaning the car in front of the house, and Jesse told me, "Mom, this is [unclear: "Christina's dad" (small.en) / "Christin is there" (captions)]."

Piers Morgan: Are you capable of hurting a child?

Alex Henriquez: Am I capable of hurting a child? Uh, no. Why would I want to hurt a child? Because I have children.

Piers Morgan: And how many do you have?

Alex Henriquez: I have two girls. Ironically, my second daughter is called Jessica. It's the same exact name as the girl, one of the girls they accused me of killing. And, um... I really can't express the pain I feel when I hear that.

Piers Morgan: Let me just get some pictures of the... so that our viewers know what we're talking about here. These are the, the three girls. So Shamira was the first to die, then Lisa, and then Jessica. Did you kill these people?

Alex Henriquez: No, I didn't. I never... Listen to me carefully. I've never taken anyone's life. Not even an animal. Never. Never.

Piers Morgan: What the police told me about this interview, because I said, you know, "What do you think will, will happen? How will it play out?", because I don't know you. And they said, "He will have an answer for everything. He will bamboozle you with all sorts of information. He'll try and manipulate you. He'll lie to you. He'll play you. He'll try and play you. He'll try and outwit you. He's a smart guy."

Alex Henriquez: That's their job.

Piers Morgan: Right.

Alex Henriquez: Their job is to make you believe that I am the killer.

James Fitzgerald: Most psychopaths have very positive self-images. They look at their reflection, and in the mirror, in the, in a sheet of glass, and they really like what they see. And they're convinced that their stuff doesn't stink. And they'll go out and tell anybody what they want to hear, as long as, in the long run, it benefits the person, him or herself.

Piers Morgan: Henriquez says the police, facing a public outcry, desperately needed a scapegoat. And he was it.

Piers Morgan: Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez.

Alex Henriquez: I have no anger for the families for what they're saying or what they think of me, because they have been misled and they have been deceived. I could never understand why they've come here, lied against [unclear: "a lie" / "me"]. [unclear: "She's lied. She's lied. Everybody lies with you. I'm laughing. Everybody's been stoned." (small.en) / "She's lied. Everybody lies with you, right? Everybody with you." (captions)] I'm innocent of these murders. I have no anger for the family.

Piers Morgan: There have been suggestions, and you can perhaps clarify this, that you may have suffered some form of abuse, sexual abuse or otherwise, when you were younger. Is that true?

Alex Henriquez: No. Nothing like that. Never. My parents took care of me. I went to the best schools. I had everything.

Piers Morgan: Neither of your parents are alive, is that right?

Alex Henriquez: They passed away, yes.

Piers Morgan: While you were in prison?

Alex Henriquez: My dad passed away first, and my dear mother passed away March 11th, 2017.

Piers Morgan: What was your relationship like with your mother?

Alex Henriquez: Beautiful.

Piers Morgan: Did she ever ask you if you did the killings?

Alex Henriquez: Um, no, she never asked me.

Piers Morgan: Did she believe in you to the end?

Alex Henriquez: Oh, yes. Yeah.

Piers Morgan: Do you accept that whoever killed these, these girls is a despicable human being?

Alex Henriquez: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: Somebody who would take three young lives and snuff them out?

Alex Henriquez: Without, without a question.

Piers Morgan: Ruin every dream for them, for their families?

Alex Henriquez: Of course.

Piers Morgan: Lisa's case, her parents have never altered the room that she was last in, 30 years ago. They go and sleep in there sometimes for comfort. Their lives are ruined too. How can you ever recover from a tragedy like that?

Alex Henriquez: An ugly tragedy. There's no recovery.

Lisa Rodriguez'S Mother: This is Lisa's room. Almost exactly the way she left it. Gives me a lot of comfort to, to just be in her room and sleep in her room. I feel like I have her still in my heart, and that she's with us here. And I could just hear her now saying, "Mama, I love you," you know.

Detective: We had just got a new medical examiner. He came up with something that we had never used before as a cause of death: homicidal asphyxia. We'd use strangulation or suffocation or things like that. But it appears that he held them so tight that they couldn't breathe. That's a slow way to go. ### Lisa Rodriguez

Piers Morgan: Lisa was 21 and the oldest of the three girls Alex Henriquez was convicted of killing. But the police had little to link him to the murder: a pair of his wife's pink sweatpants recovered at the crime scene, and, crucially, a witness who could place Alex and Lisa together.

Former Neighbour: At the time, he was living here with his wife. One day, Alex and Lisa were standing out front. They were basically sitting, like, or leaning against a car; I guess it was his car. And he introduced Lisa as his niece. And we, we talked for a bit, and he said he called her a cab, and I found that kind of ironic, because he is a cab driver. But anyhow, he waited, and they were waiting for a very long time, and the cab never came. She wanted to go home, obviously, but he wasn't taking her. She looked very young. I had no reason to believe that that wasn't his niece.

Piers Morgan: In Lisa's case, you say that you had a sexual relationship with her.

Alex Henriquez: Yes, I did. Please understand, I don't want to offend the victims' families, and that's the key, because they've been hurt enough. Um, we would just go out. She'll call me, I'll call her, and we'll go out. She wasn't per se my girlfriend, because she had a boyfriend.

Piers Morgan: How many times did you have sex with her, do you think?

Alex Henriquez: I don't remember. I wasn't... To be exact, I, I couldn't tell you. I wasn't keeping notes of this.

Piers Morgan: One of the key pieces of evidence in that, in that instance, was that she was found wearing your wife's pink sweatpants. How do you explain that?

Alex Henriquez: Well, I remember when we came from the beach, that she was, uh, her clothes were, had sand and oil, and she said, "Do I have anything to wear?" I said, "I don't have anything that'll fit you." And then I gave her a pair of sweatpants that were, I found in a drawer.

Piers Morgan: Your wife's?

Alex Henriquez: I, this is the, the [unclear: "crate" (both texts)]. I'm assuming they're hers.

Piers Morgan: She was found dead in those pants.

Alex Henriquez: I gave her a pair of pants. Were those, those pants...

Piers Morgan: Alex, she was found dead wearing those pants.

Alex Henriquez: That's why... I understand what you're saying. I heard you.

Piers Morgan: So if you now concede you gave them to her, and she's found dead in them, quite obviously people are going to think, well, what happened?

Alex Henriquez: Okay. I said, let's say I gave her the pants. Let's say she was found dead in the pants. Why would that say that I killed her? Did someone see me kill her? Did they find physical evidence to say that, you know, I perpetrated the crime of murder? No. It was a witch hunt. It was, okay, we have this here, and we have this here, and we have this here; we put it all together, we make him look like the murderer.

Piers Morgan: The defense tried to build a picture of this man having some kind of relationship with Lisa. Did you believe any of that?

Lisa Rodriguez'S Mother: No. Not, not that he had, he was, you know, that they were having, having any kind of relationship, no. You know, she would have told us, she would have, you know, mentioned him, which she never did.

Piers Morgan: And, uh, were you aware of him at all?

Lisa Rodriguez'S Parent: No, no. Maybe what happened was that she called him because he was a cab service. She knew him, but only as, as a cab service, and it's not like they were dating or anything like that.

Piers Morgan: But the fact that he appears to have given Lisa some sweatpants which came from his own wife seems such a strange detail in this. Have you ever been able to think about how that could have happened?

Lisa Rodriguez'S Parent: The only thing we can figure out is that he killed her at that moment, and he undressed her, and, and that's how she ended up with his clothes. But otherwise, no. The truth is, we don't know what to believe with this guy. No. No. No.

Piers Morgan: And Chiqui, what are your feelings towards Alex Henriquez?

Lisa Rodriguez'S Parent: I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate [unclear: "that" / "him"]. He took our daughter from us.

Piers Morgan: I understand. I understand. It's heartbreaking to talk to you and to see the pictures, and to have to relive this with you. I'm so sorry for what you both have had to go through.

Piers Morgan: Lisa, like all the murder victims, lived within two miles of Henriquez's home. His cab service operated right in the heart of the neighbourhood.

Detective: It was a common occurrence for those kids to be walking on the street, and the parents said, yeah, sometimes, uh, he takes them home if he's driving past in the car or something. They didn't have any suspicion about him at all.

Piers Morgan: Police believed he killed more than three girls but couldn't prove it.

Archive News Clips: The community has lost six young people during the past four years, and many believe a single killer is to blame.

Local Residents: Children are disappearing from all over the place. [unclear: "Ni" / "We"] still got to find the person that did this. If we don't find him, they're going to do it again and again and again. Bodies are being dumped in our neighborhood, and it doesn't seem like City Hall is getting off their rear ends. They say no more.

Archive News Clips: All the victims had a link to a man who has lived and operated right in the middle of the area where the bodies have been found.

Local Man: Everybody that comes here, that knows, [unclear: "he did it, he did it" (small.en) / "and because he did it, he did" (captions)], everybody, all the drivers that know, because that guy's, uh, he's sick. ### The evidence

Piers Morgan: The police say there were no similar deaths once you had been imprisoned, in that area of the Bronx.

Alex Henriquez: That's what they say.

Piers Morgan: There were no more girls snatched off the street.

Alex Henriquez: I have [unclear: "evidence" (small.en) / "8" (captions)] otherwise. No, okay, you remember, I don't know if, probably you don't remember, there was a girl they called Baby Hope.

Piers Morgan: Mm-hmm. I know that story.

Alex Henriquez: Very similar.

Piers Morgan: Um, police say [unclear: "bore" / "boo"] no relation to the deaths here. I know it. Very different modus operandi.

Alex Henriquez: But what I'm saying...

Piers Morgan: There's a particular modus operandi for all these deaths.

Alex Henriquez: Like which one? Can you explain?

Piers Morgan: All three of them were taken off these particular streets in a two-mile radius and killed in the same manner.

Alex Henriquez: And how did, um, Baby Hope die?

Piers Morgan: The police say it was different circumstances.

Alex Henriquez: No, it was asphyxiation, like they were killed, according to what the police said. So, in the side of the road...

Piers Morgan: Let me ask you this, Alex. Even if you had killed them, you wouldn't tell me, would you?

Alex Henriquez: If I would have killed them, I would have pled guilty from day one.

Piers Morgan: Would you?

Alex Henriquez: Yes.

Piers Morgan: You'd have admitted to being a, a triple child killer?

Alex Henriquez: Obviously, there would be something wrong with me. I needed help.

Piers Morgan: Do you think there is something wrong with you?

Alex Henriquez: Uh, yeah, I'm innocent. I've been innocent from day one.

Alex Henriquez: Listen, I'm here because, first of all, you're not paying me for [unclear: "it" / "right any"], in the interview. I'm not here because I want to meet you. I'm here because I need to present the evidence. Um, because, again, let's go back to the fact that I'm a con, liar, cheat, whatever you want to call me. Fine. That has nothing to do with taking, taking three innocent lives.

Piers Morgan: It's, here's what it does. Here's the problem for you: it makes it very hard to believe you about anything. But I need you to, a, body language to me. I'm not an expert, but every time you've got overly defensive, your arms go like this.

Alex Henriquez: And it's, no, that's, that's another thing. I'm relaxed like this. I'm relaxed. I get tired of keeping my hands, so I put them here.

Piers Morgan: It's a very defensive thing to do.

Alex Henriquez: Is it? I don't know nothing about body language.

Piers Morgan: I would say it is. I've only noticed it in the time I've been with you.

Alex Henriquez: Okay.

Piers Morgan: Well, let's take it another step. We just, I think we've got a slight tape... Sorry, just running out of battery. Okay, Alex, just give us one moment. Thank you very much.

Piers Morgan: For the last two hours, I've been struggling to get under the skin of Alex Henriquez.

Alex Henriquez: Oh, I have my hands crossed. He's not here.

Piers Morgan: I want to know what lurks beneath his cool, calm exterior.

Detective: One of the first days that I, I met him, my partner made a remark to him, and out of a clear blue sky, he, Alex got so insulted, he lost his cool, and he jumped at my partner, and he said, "You're a liar." And at that point, I saw with Alex, like, you pressed the button and he went off.

Piers Morgan: We showed my interview to James Fitzgerald, an FBI legend. He caught the infamous Unabomber, ending a 20-year manhunt. [unclear: "Ted Kaczynski" (probable) / "said Kaczynski"] injured 24 people and killed three others. For decades, he was one of the most wanted criminals in the US.

Piers Morgan And Alex Henriquez: Are you capable of hurting a child? / Am I capable of hurting a child? Uh, no. Why would I want to [unclear: "hurt a child" (as at 09:16) / "a good job" / "P job"]...

James Fitzgerald: Most people would say, "No, of course not." He hesitated for actually a few seconds, and his first reply was, "Am I capable of hurting a child?" He puts the question back to Piers, in so many words, and then, of course, he sort of denies it and plays off that whole scenario from there. But why not just come out and say, "No, I would never do that"? Even with a psychopath, the lying syntaxes have to get aligned with one another to make sure that the proper lie comes out at the proper time. Psychopaths like control. They don't want to be controlled; they want to control others. To them, it just makes sense, because it's what got them this far in life, in sort of a successful method of surviving.

Alex Henriquez: Please, Mr. Morgan, I allow you to ask me any questions you want, because I have nothing to hide. But it's very important that you let me explain why I'm innocent.

Piers Morgan: See, I have to decide, Alex: are you, are you just a guy in prison now as an innocent man, or am I looking at somebody who did do that, in which case you're one of the worst people I've ever met in my life?

Alex Henriquez: Okay. And I can understand that, because anyone who would commit them atrocious crimes would have to be the worst person you can ever meet.

Piers Morgan: Owen, do you think that Alex Henriquez planned these killings meticulously, or were they spontaneous acts?

Owen: I'd say it could be a little of both, some of both. And the reason I say it is because, um, [unclear: "there may be much more to Alex" (captions) / "we may be much more the average" (small.en)] than I ever knew about or thought about. I may have thought about it, but I couldn't put it together. He seemed to deal with people that he knew were sort of beneath him, or he could charm, or he could [unclear: "con" / "calm"].

Relative Of Jessica Guzman: [unclear: "Come on." / "conal"] Alejandro was the guy that killed her. He was telling her stories that he had a horse in one of the horse stables in the Bronx, and that's how he coerced her to, you know, be interested in hanging out. You know, we teach our kids that you don't take things from strangers, but he wasn't really a stranger to them, because he saw them in the neighborhood. He was friendly, give them candy, you know, and little by little, he gained their trust. They said she was decomposed. Found in a black, in a black garbage bag, decomposed, leaning on a tree. [unclear: "11 year" / "11"] We buried [her] on her 11th birthday, October 20th, 1990.

Piers Morgan: Police had no hard evidence to connect Henriquez to Jessica's murder. But during interrogation, they say he made a vital mistake. He told them a detail only the killer could have known.

Piers Morgan: With, with Jessica, with the evidence you gave about the particular floral design on her...

Alex Henriquez: The what?

Piers Morgan: The flower design on her underwear. The police didn't know that, because they hadn't cleaned her underwear. After you said that, they went and cleaned the heavily decomposed and filthy, dirty garment, and they found that, yes, it was floral. They didn't know that. You had told them that.

Alex Henriquez: Um, I don't know if that's true.

Piers Morgan: That is true.

Alex Henriquez: Oh, that's what they said to you?

Piers Morgan: That's the truth.

Alex Henriquez: So then how did they, how do I know certain things? And this is one of the reasons that...

Piers Morgan: Well, Alex, it's obvious why...

Alex Henriquez: I, I only know the pictures.

Piers Morgan: Alex, it's obvious why you would know.

Alex Henriquez: How?

Piers Morgan: If you killed her, you'd know.

Alex Henriquez: Okay. If they showed me the pictures...

Piers Morgan: Pictures? The undergarment hadn't been cleaned.

Alex Henriquez: They didn't show me pictures of the undergarment. They told me.

Piers Morgan: You just said they showed you pictures.

Alex Henriquez: They showed me pictures.

Piers Morgan: Alex, they either showed you pictures or they didn't.

Alex Henriquez: No, no, they showed me...

Piers Morgan: Did they show you pictures or not?

Alex Henriquez: They showed me pictures of the crime scene, the bodies.

Piers Morgan: You gave them a particular piece of information.

Alex Henriquez: Because they told me.

Piers Morgan: But they did not know. How could they tell you something they didn't know?

Alex Henriquez: That's what they tell...

Piers Morgan: They [unclear: "had" (both texts) / "hadn't" (sense)] cleaned the garment.

Alex Henriquez: So they're lying, too? [unclear: expletive in small.en only] Do you really think they said the truth? I'll tell you a little bit of what the police told me in the interrogation room: "You're an animal. Look what you did. What, did you have sex with this little baby girl, with little flower panties and training bra? What, you ripped it off? Did you cut it off? What'd you do it with, a knife? What knife did you use? Did you use scissors?" They'll say anything to try to break you down. And because I didn't do anything, they couldn't break me.

Detective: Well, all I can recall in that is that when the panties were re-examined, that's when it was noted, the color and the description, uh, because at the time of the, uh, when the body was found, uh, there was a lot of discoloration from the elements, etc. Only a person involved could know such detail.

Contributor: I never wanted the wrong person in jail. I never wanted to bring a case into court that would crumble.

James Fitzgerald: The fact that he kept going after these young girls is a clue that maybe his peer relationships, his sexual activity with women around his own age, weren't going quite the way he would have liked. He quite frankly may not have been able to perform at times with them, so what he would wind up doing is regressing, in his own psychosexual way, to these younger women, these children in a sense, and, uh, that's somehow how he would gain control over them and satisfy those needs of his.

Detective: This guy got in touch with us. He said, "Hey, I was driving up the Bronx River Parkway that night. I saw a car," he says, "and there was a guy standing by the trunk. I pulled over and I yelled to him in Spanish, 'Hey, do you need help?'" He says the guy was very rude. He yelled, "Get out of here. I don't need any help." He says, "Oh, okay," you know. By this time, we had a photo array up, and we showed it to, uh, the guy, and he picked Alex right out of the photo array. He says that was the guy that was parked, and he was parked 10 feet from where the body was discovered, maybe.

Alex Henriquez: Let's go back to the evidence. What does the evidence say? [small.en adds: "You have to be careful. What does the evidence say?"] You have a guy who said he seen me and spoke to me at the crime scene.

Piers Morgan: Well, let's come to that.

Alex Henriquez: I never spoke to this guy.

Piers Morgan: This man says he saw you there in the early hours after the death of Jessica. Says he saw you there.

Alex Henriquez: Do you believe that? Have you seen...

Piers Morgan: You tell me, were you there?

Alex Henriquez: No, I wasn't there. Mr. Morgan, if I was a murderer, a killer who killed three innocent...

Piers Morgan: A serial killer is what you're...

Alex Henriquez: Serial killer, whatever you want to call it. And a man pulls up to me, and I just finished killing somebody. Don't you think he would have been my next victim? I want you to think about that for a second. He can put me at the crime scene. He can pinpoint me that I was there. Mr. Morgan, I'm not trying to con you or anyone. I understand that your job is to try to discredit me as much as you can.

Piers Morgan: No, no, no.

Alex Henriquez: Let me finish, let me finish.

Piers Morgan: I don't have, my only job is to interview you...

Alex Henriquez: Please.

Piers Morgan: ...and to try and ascertain in my mind whether I think you killed these girls or not.

Alex Henriquez: Well, how could you ascertain that if you don't let me explain?

Piers Morgan: Because I find that the way that you have tried to deflect on every aspect of what links you to these killings, I mean, it's been masterful deflection, but that's what it's been: deflection.

Alex Henriquez: So I'm masterful now?

Piers Morgan: I think you're a masterful liar, yeah.

Alex Henriquez: Okay, well...

Piers Morgan: You were, by your own [unclear: "admission" (probable) / "imagination" (small.en) / nothing further (captions)]...

Alex Henriquez: I'm, I'm a liar. Does that make me a murderer? ### The earlier conviction

Piers Morgan: Not only does Henriquez admit to being a liar, but he's also been convicted before of another crime. How will he react when I question him about this shocking incident that landed him in prison?

Piers Morgan: Some people, Alex, when they've been in prison for a very long time, they think so much about, think so much about why they're here... Did they start to believe their own story?

Alex Henriquez: No, I believed it from day one. If you see the, uh, the Court TV thing, I was very adamant that I didn't do anything.

Piers Morgan: You were very plausible.

Alex Henriquez: I didn't do anything.

Piers Morgan: I watched it. I've watched that video.

Alex Henriquez: And I didn't do anything now. And there's nothing anyone can tell me.

Piers Morgan: What do you say to the families suffering so much from the deaths of their loved ones?

Alex Henriquez: What do I say? Um, look for the truth.

Piers Morgan: At trial, the defense argued all the evidence was circumstantial.

Archive News Clips: He is an accused serial killer, but Alejandro Henriquez remains composed as his murder trial enters its third week. They only had one thing in common: they all knew Alejandro Henriquez. His attorney says the DA has a weak case, based on circumstantial evidence.

Defence Attorney: People were so mad and so angry, and the police had to do something. The evidence in this case is weak and unreliable circumstantial evidence.

Alex Henriquez: I did not commit any of these murders that I was found guilty of. I feel that nothing here has been proven. There's been a lot of lies, a lot of deceptions.

James Fitzgerald: I found it, uh, interesting that Henriquez, at one of the most critical points in his life, being convicted of three separate homicides, he has his moment to shine. The, the acting skills this person possessed would be, you know, worthy of an Academy Award. He knew how to frame these storylines together to show a little bit of pity towards the family, but he didn't mean that at all. It was all about preserving himself and to save his own butt.

Alex Henriquez: I have no anger for the families for what they're saying or what they think of me, because they have been misled and they have been deceived.

James Fitzgerald: And now he's on the stage for the first time in years, exhibiting his best psychopathic skill sets.

Detective: I keep calling him a gentleman. I don't know why, but that's the way I was brought up. But this piece of garbage, he's always there. He's always around where things happened. You know, you say coincidence; coincidence happens every once in a while. Everybody in that jury room knows that he did it, and he knows that he did it. There was no other person that could have done it but him.

Piers Morgan: Owen, do you have any doubt that Alex Henriquez is guilty of the crimes he committed?

Owen: No doubt. [unclear: "One" / "One but when"] I say they convicted him, and I'm satisfied with that. If they hadn't convicted him, that case still would have been in my craw.

Piers Morgan: When you see video footage of Henriquez from that courtroom, he doesn't look like a serial killer capable of choking the life out of three young girls who knew him and trusted him. But there is one shocking incident that happened before the murders that shows beyond doubt he is capable of cruelty to children.

Piers Morgan: How do you explain the time that you were charged with these offences? You were convicted of scalding a young boy, who was the son of your wife...

Alex Henriquez: [unclear: "I wasn't" (small.en) / "I" (captions)]...

Piers Morgan: ...severely scalding him, so much you ended up with a quite lengthy prison sentence.

Alex Henriquez: When you say that I scalded, and that I was convicted, um, those are key words, and...

Piers Morgan: But they're facts, aren't they?

Alex Henriquez: No, they're not. [unclear: "You weren't" (both texts) / "I wasn't"] convicted. I pled guilty to leaving him alone in the bathroom, and to a lesser charge, because...

Piers Morgan: What was the lesser charge?

Alex Henriquez: [unclear: "E felony" (both texts)], um, assault. I don't want to just say something that's not true. I didn't think he was going to get burnt, though. I wouldn't have left him in there. I was preparing him to take him to his father. You think I would intentionally scald him, put his clothes on, and take him to his father? That doesn't make too much sense.

Piers Morgan: Yeah, but Alex, at the very best, it's appalling negligence by you, because you were the adult in charge of him.

Alex Henriquez: Exactly.

Piers Morgan: That's at the very best. But that's not what you pleaded guilty to. You didn't plead guilty to negligence; you pleaded guilty to assault.

Alex Henriquez: Their, their whole thing was this: they needed to make me look bad to the public as much as they could.

Piers Morgan: But when, when a boy of that age gets that badly scalded, that's bad. [unclear: "You don't need to make it look bad" (probable) / "He ain't gonna make it look bad" / "going to make it look bad"]. It's bad.

Alex Henriquez: Mr. Morgan, this interview is not about me lying, me cheating, me, uh, fornicating. It has nothing to do with it.

Alex Henriquez: This is about whether you [unclear: "killed" / "say I killed"] these three women. So let's stick to the evidence of these three women. I'm asking you, please. This is what we're here for. If you want to, you called me a liar. You say you think I'm guilty.

Piers Morgan: I know you're a liar.

Alex Henriquez: [unclear: "I want you to know" / "I want you, you know you're a liar"]... But I'm not a murderer. Because I lie doesn't...

Piers Morgan: [unclear: "I'm going to believe you, and I don't believe you" (small.en) / "I've going to believe you and I don't believe you" (captions)]. Because why should anyone believe you?

Alex Henriquez: To satisfy if you're right or wrong. I mean, I don't know if you do care. Get the crime scene video.

Piers Morgan: I care about these girls.

Alex Henriquez: Get the crime scene video, [unclear: "and the lies they never had" (small.en) / "I'm the lives I never had" (captions)], and look at the picture.

Piers Morgan: And the families whose lives have been destroyed. That's what I care about.

Alex Henriquez: My life has been destroyed. My family's life's been destroyed. But yet I'm innocent, and I'm in here. It's 28 years. And it's, we tend to overlook the evidence.

Piers Morgan: Alex, we're going around in houses. The viewers can make their own minds up whether they believe you or not. We have to leave it there.

Alex Henriquez: Okay.

Piers Morgan: You've had a chance to put your say.

Alex Henriquez: No, I didn't have a chance. You, you spoke, and when I tried to give you the evidence to show you otherwise, you interrupted me, and now we have to go. Okay.

Piers Morgan: Thank you for your time.

Unidentified Voices: We're good. All right. [unclear: "Well, my job" / "Well, what up"]. All right. ### Closing

James Fitzgerald: It can be frustrating talking to anyone who is just locked into their lie, locked into their story. You'd be the rare guy that broke a psychopath after 28 to 30 years. But Piers held his own, stuck to his guns, and that's what you got to do with these guys. Henriquez is the poster boy for a lying psychopath who lacks remorse and empathy.

Contributor: I'm enjoying the fact to know that, I'm hoping you live to 99, 'cause he was a player, multiple personalities. To this day, I meet somebody that knows him, you know, that knew him. He was only 29 years old, right, something around there. Young guy, drove a Mercedes, always suited up.

James Fitzgerald: He needs the reaction from other people in order to, to feel successful, to feel complete.

Contributor: So for him to be in a box by himself, it makes me feel better.

Local Mother: For a while, I just thought I was a very bad judge of character. But what I realized is that I was just fooled. You know, I just didn't see the real person.

Piers Morgan: Thank you. Very good. Thank you.

Contributor: When they read the verdict, I just looked over at Jessica's mother, and I was like, I gave you what you needed. I gave her what she needed to hear.

Judge: The court imposes an indeterminate sentence, the maximum of which shall be for the term of your natural life, and the court imposes...

Unidentified: [unclear: "Good. Thank you."] *[44:05 to end: music and credits; no speech.]* ---