"Every Day May Be the Day": Bernard Giles Talks to Piers Morgan, 2019

Name: "Every Day May Be the Day": Bernard Giles Talks to Piers Morgan, 2019
Uploaded: 2026-06-09
Duration: 44 min 47 s
Description: About forty-five years after his arrest, Bernard Giles told Piers Morgan that he killed five girls and young women in 1973, described his first murder, and struggled to say he was sorry.

About forty-five years after his arrest, Bernard Giles told Piers Morgan that he killed five girls and young women in 1973, described his first murder, and struggled to say he was sorry.

Subject: Bernard Eugene Giles
Recorded: February 7, 2019
Runtime: 44:47

Content warning: Giles describes the murder of a young woman and his urge to kill women; the programme concerns the murders of five girls and young women, two of them aged 14, and an attempted attack on two underage girls.

The Interview

In a Florida prison, about 45 years after his arrest, Bernard Giles sat down with the British broadcaster Piers Morgan for an episode of "Confessions of a Serial Killer with Piers Morgan", first shown on ITV on February 7, 2019. Asked at the outset whether he killed the five women for whom he is serving life sentences, he answers, "Yes, sir, I did." Over the interview he describes what he calls a sexual compulsion going back to the age of six, an urge to kill a stranger at 16, and the murder of his first victim, Nancy Gerry.

Historical Context

Giles was 20, married, with a baby daughter, and living in a trailer park in Brevard County, Florida, when he began killing in the autumn of 1973. Between late September and mid-November 1973 five girls and young women who disappeared in the Titusville area were killed: Nancy Gerry, 18; Sharon Wimer, 14; Krista Melton, 14; Carolyn Bennett, 17; and Paula Hamric, 22. Most were hitchhikers. On December 10, 1973, he picked up two underage hitchhikers and drove them to woods outside Titusville; when his gun misfired they escaped and gave police his name, which they had seen in a book in his car. He was arrested the next day, and ballistics linked his revolver to Nancy Gerry's murder.

Circumstances of the Interview

Giles avoided a possible death sentence by a plea bargain and was sentenced on August 13, 1974, to multiple life terms. In October 1979 he escaped from Florida State Prison and was recaptured about 26 hours later, receiving an additional 15 years. The programme combines Morgan's interview with his narration, archive news clips, and interviews with a former state's attorney who worked on the case, one or more crime experts, former neighbours from the trailer park, a school friend, a son of Paula Hamric, and other Titusville residents. Morgan shows Giles photographs of his victims, drawings Giles made at the time of the murders, and a photograph of his daughter.

What the Interview Covers

Giles says he chose victims by "access", that he saw the women "as objects", and that he cannot now remember most of their names or faces. He describes picking up Nancy Gerry in Titusville and shooting her in a wooded area, says that he took two victims to within a few hundred yards of his home because he "wasn't doing my best thinking", and gives his account of the failed attack on the two girls and his arrest. He talks about his marriage, saying he lied to his wife when she first asked whether it was true, and says he has never heard from his daughter. Pressed to say something to the victims' families, he says he does not feel he has the right to write to them, before saying, "Of course I'm sorry."

What Makes the Recording Significant

Unlike several subjects of the series, Giles admits his guilt on camera. The interview is a rare record of a man convicted in an early-1970s Florida case speaking about it in his own words decades later. A crime expert in the programme notes how unusual it was that he killed five people within about three months, with almost no interval between the killings.

Archival Importance

The programme preserves the recollections of people who lived through the case in Titusville, including the former state's attorney who helped identify one of the victims, alongside the account of the man who committed the crimes.

Important Caveats

Everything Giles says about his motives, his memories and his marriage is his own account. The programme's statements that he was "one of Florida's first serial killers" and was serving "five life sentences" are its own; sources describe several or multiple life terms. The uploader's title "Confesses Everything" overstates the content, and its spelling "Sharon Wymer" is wrong (Wimer). The two girls who escaped in December 1973 are not named, and should not be. Names of some contributors ("Bob Telfer", "Inspector DeWitt") are as heard and not verified. The interview was broadcast in February 2019 and was probably recorded in 2018.

Piers Morgan: Have you ever watched Silence of the Lambs?

Bernard Giles: Yeah, I saw that.

Piers Morgan: What did you think of that film?

Bernard Giles: Not much.

Archive News Clips: A Justice Department investigator calls it terrifying, an epidemic. They're known as serial killers. There are at least 35 of them roaming the country now.

Piers Morgan: Are serial killers born or made?

Archive News Clips: There is almost always a pattern to the killings. These people normally don't stop. Twenty killings. Eight murders. Fifteen human bodies, including three heads preserved in a refrigerator.

Piers Morgan: These men brought unspeakable horror into the lives of Americans in the 1970s. Their names still haunt America today.

Archive News Clips: Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The Son of Sam. John Wayne Gacy. Ted Bundy. [unclear: "Diabolical genius" / "A genius"], deceptive, manipulative.

Piers Morgan: Many have been executed, but one of them is still alive.

Contributor: He had the darkest eyes I have ever seen.

Contributor: He can put on the mask of Bernard Eugene Giles, but when you take off the mask, he's the monster.

Piers Morgan: I want to know how these men think and why they kill. And now, finally, a serial killer willing to confess all.

Piers Morgan: Are you proud of the label serial killer? [no answer is heard in either machine text; music to 01:45] ### The trailer park

Piers Morgan: One summer in the early 1970s, a young couple moved into this trailer park on the east coast of Florida. Bernard Giles was just 20. His wife was 18, and they had a newborn daughter. Neither his family or his new neighbors had any reason to suspect that Giles was harboring a deep compulsion to kill.

Former Neighbours: See the trailer with the carport structure? That's where his trailer was. Sunday afternoon was my laundry day, and it just seemed like I ran into him so much in there. Oh, it's, it's the same. I can't believe that. He would be sitting up here, just, I usually get those down there. He never said a word. No, never. And he'd be sitting here and just dangling his legs and just looking. Wonder why he would sit in here? I don't know, 'cause I don't think he ever had any laundry.

Piers Morgan: Bernard Giles has been in prison for 45 years. After a long period of contact, he's finally agreed to meet me.

Piers Morgan: [unclear: "Mr. Giles" / "It's Giles" / "It's Charles"], good to see you.

Bernard Giles: Good morning, sir.

Piers Morgan: Thank you. Come and sit down. Bernard, thank you for giving us the time today.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: You're serving five life sentences for killing five young women. So my first question is, did you kill those women?

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir, I did. ### Childhood

Piers Morgan: Let's go back to your early life. With most people that commit heinous crimes, you can normally point to something that doesn't justify, but might go some way to explaining it. The curious thing about your early life is there doesn't seem to be anything there. There was no appalling upbringing. You were one of four kids.

Bernard Giles: Yeah.

Piers Morgan: You were well taken care of.

Bernard Giles: My brothers and sisters have done well.

Piers Morgan: You were loved as a child?

Bernard Giles: Yes.

Piers Morgan: And what was the driving force for that compulsion? Was it violence? Was it...

Bernard Giles: Sexual. It was all sexual.

Piers Morgan: All sexual.

Bernard Giles: You know, that's the thing. It's like people who, they become imprinted before they're five or six. I knew the roots of mine. I knew where it came from.

Piers Morgan: Where did it come from?

Bernard Giles: The initial sexual imprinting was an act of violence against a girl.

Piers Morgan: You were six years old, and you were playing just a game of witch hunt, where a girl would pretend to be a witch and you would all chase after her. She was a neighbor of yours.

Bernard Giles: Right. It was in a back bedroom. And, uh, the part that I remember was straddling her and strangling her, right, playing. And that was my initial sexual imprint. From that point on, as a child growing up, I became obsessed with this.

Contributor: The term itself, serial killer, was, uh, not well known back in, uh, the 1970s. However, later, we started seeing these terms come up in the detective magazines and other kinds of TV shows. But mostly, we believed that the serial killers happened somewhere else.

Piers Morgan: Bernard Giles was one of Florida's first serial killers. He terrorized an entire community. In just 12 weeks, he murdered five women. Two of the bodies were found just yards from his trailer, where he lived with his wife and child. Bob Telfer was a young state's attorney at the time. He discovered their remains. It stayed with him ever since.

Piers Morgan: So Bob, when you found these two bodies within two days, it must have sent a shudder through everybody.

Bob Telfer: Well, back then, and of course it was a different time and a different place, and girls were hitchhiking. It was a common occurrence to see that up and down the road, uh, particularly in a small community like this. All that stopped overnight. Uh, there was a shudder that went through the community. There was publicity about this. The hitchhiking stopped, and people started looking over their shoulder.

Piers Morgan: What this man did, Bernard Giles, to these young women was just appalling.

Bob Telfer: It was, and, you know, it's every parent's nightmare to realize that the last few moments of her life were terror-filled with a psychopath. And she was going to die at a young age just makes it even worse. ### The first urge

Piers Morgan: Throughout his childhood, there were no outward signs that Bernard Giles was deeply troubled. But into his teens, he was failing at school and dropped out. And then, one day, his obsession took over.

Piers Morgan: When you were 16, there was a young woman walking in front of you, and you suddenly felt an urge to kill her. Tell me about that.

Bernard Giles: It was like an opportunity that had [unclear: "presented itself" / "it itself"] to me. And this woman was getting into a VW, and I had a knife. And I went past the car, and fortunately, I kept going. I just kept going.

Piers Morgan: What were you feeling in that moment?

Bernard Giles: Extraordinarily hyped.

Piers Morgan: And what were you thinking you may do to that woman?

Bernard Giles: Well, if it had gone the other way, I'd have murdered her.

Piers Morgan: At the age of 16?

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: I mean, it's a chilling thing to hear. This is not, I'm sure you recognize this, this is not a normal conversation.

Bernard Giles: Oh, I understand that.

Piers Morgan: None of this feels normal.

Bernard Giles: Sir.

Piers Morgan: You're 16 years old, and you have just this extraordinary compulsion to kill this woman.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: But it passed. You moved on.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir. It just wasn't overwhelming. It didn't, you know, it was just, and I didn't. I just kept moving.

Piers Morgan: And if you hadn't kept moving, that woman...

Bernard Giles: [unclear: "Wouldn't have been murdered" / "Would've been murdered"; see Variant readings]

Piers Morgan: And she would have no idea to this day, I imagine.

Bernard Giles: No, she didn't even, she never even glanced back at me.

Piers Morgan: You wished you had killed her?

Bernard Giles: No, I don't. I'm glad that I didn't. I wish I hadn't killed any of my victims, you know.

Piers Morgan: Were you in any doubt at that stage that one day it would happen?

Bernard Giles: No, no doubt at all.

Piers Morgan: You knew this was something you had to do?

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir. It was, for me, this was my life's passion, up to that point.

Piers Morgan: To do what?

Bernard Giles: To murder. To murder women.

Piers Morgan: I mean, there'll be viewers watching this going, "This guy was apparently normal, late teenage guy. He's got married. He's got a little baby girl. Life seems fine. And yet, ticking away is this horrific time bomb."

Crime Expert: And that's very frequently been the case, that you have people that they present as perfectly normal. You know, you're looking for these sort of trigger points. Where is that trigger? What happens? And it may very well have been the stresses he felt in being married, being a, you know, a 19, 20-year-old guy with a child. And really, you can see him here, he's not really equipped to be dealing with marriage, let alone a baby. This probably caused a tremendous amount of stress for him, and I'm not surprised that these killings started really within a month or two after the birth of his child. ### The first murder

Piers Morgan: In October 1973, Bernard Giles drove out of this trailer park onto this highway, his intention to hunt down and kill his first victim. He was looking for hitchhikers, unsuspecting girls who, back then, never imagined accepting a lift from a stranger would get them killed.

Piers Morgan: That day that you went out, when you did kill for the first time, was that a morning when you woke up and you were with your wife and daughter and something hit you and you went...

Bernard Giles: No.

Piers Morgan: "Today may be the day"?

Bernard Giles: Every day may be the day.

Piers Morgan: Every day?

Bernard Giles: Every day may be the day.

Piers Morgan: Do you know the name of your first victim?

Bernard Giles: No, sir. Not now. [Pause.] Gerry. Nancy Gerry.

Piers Morgan: Do you know anything about her life?

Bernard Giles: I found out later she was a singer in a bar. That was it.

Piers Morgan: Tell me what happened.

Bernard Giles: Picked her up in Titusville. There's a wooded area [unclear: "behind" / "bin"]; I pulled off the road.

Piers Morgan: What did she look like?

Bernard Giles: Um, a little shorter than me. Um, fairly well built. Pretty, but not particularly pretty. Brown hair. That's about it.

Piers Morgan: And at what point did she realize that you were going to harm her?

Bernard Giles: Well, not necessarily that I was going to harm her. 'Cause, you know, most of them don't assume you're actually going to kill them. Most of them assume it's a rape or something like that, or a robbery or whatever, you know. And, uh...

Piers Morgan: Had you been talking normally to her?

Bernard Giles: Yeah, but there wasn't much to the conversation. The weapon speaks for itself.

Piers Morgan: And what did you then do?

Bernard Giles: Told her to get out of the car, and that's when she became afraid. You know, up to that point, I assumed that she thought it was just going to be a rape. I walked her over [unclear: "next to the, in front of" / "in front of"] a tree, and then I shot her.

Piers Morgan: Just like that?

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: And what were you feeling as you did that?

Bernard Giles: Very stimulated, very provoked, very... I mean, the thing is, is, you know, what is your passion in your life? You know, what is the thing that you like to do more than anything else? And you're doing it. You are so there that, it's like you can see the atoms vibrating. I mean, it's... it's difficult to describe.

Crime Expert: Giles is relatively unusual in that he started, his age of onset for the serial killing was age 20. He's unusual because he did a spate of five killings within three months, with almost no cooling-off period. That's highly unusual. Usually mid-twenties is the advent of the first acting out on the fantasy. There's a long cooling-off period of at least a month before the second one. He was acting almost in a frenzy. He was too young and too immature to put enough thought into his crimes to get away with them. There was no way it was sustainable. So it was almost like a childish urge to get as much fun crammed into a short space of time as possible before he got caught, because inside he knew he would eventually get caught. ### Fear in Titusville

Piers Morgan: Once Bernard Giles started killing, he made little attempt to hide the bodies of his victims. Their discovery was now making daily news headlines. Titusville, a city where a million visitors had come just four years before to watch Neil Armstrong blast off to the moon, was now the focus of a desperate manhunt to find the killer.

Piers Morgan: Ladies, you were all young women. You were all in your early twenties at the time that this all happened. Take me back to life in the area at the time.

Former Neighbours: Well, this was a sleepy little town right across from the Space Center. Exactly. And it was, everyone wanted to come here because of the Space Center, the launches and everything. But where we lived, in Mobile Manor, it was a really nice area.

Piers Morgan: The moment you realized that Bernard Giles, he was this guy that lived in that trailer opposite you, what impact did that have on you guys?

Former Neighbours: [unclear: "Devastated me" / "That's a state of me"]. I was stunned. I was like, whoa, look how close this guy was to me. I could have been one of his victims.

Piers Morgan: What was your criteria for a victim?

Bernard Giles: Access.

Piers Morgan: To any woman?

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: Did it matter how old they were, or what they looked like, or...?

Bernard Giles: Generally speaking, no.

Piers Morgan: It could literally have been any woman that happened to stray into your orbit.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: When you were cruising in your car, and they were thumbing a lift.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: I mean, that made you, at the time, an unbelievably dangerous man for any young woman.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir. See, I'm not defending the position. I'm describing the position. It was what I was, and where I was at.

Piers Morgan: Were you aware that there was now a hunt for what police began to realize was a serial killer?

Bernard Giles: Not really, until, you know, I had known that they had found a body.

Piers Morgan: And that was Paula's body?

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir. Probably, I guess.

Piers Morgan: Paula Hamric was a single mother of two, heading to work one day when Bernard Giles stopped to offer her a lift. Her body was found here. She was his oldest victim, at just 22. Her two boys, Stephen and Billy, were just toddlers at the time.

Son Of Paula Hamric: He knew she had kids, but I'm sure she pleaded for her life and told him that she had two babies. And like I said, that answered the question. He obviously didn't care, 'cause he killed her anyways. I think, uh, it was about 12 years old when [unclear: "I went" / "he went"] to, uh, my mother's, uh, gravesite.

Piers Morgan: Oh. ### The victims

Piers Morgan: The first victim, you remember the name. But do you remember the names of any of the victims?

Bernard Giles: No, sir.

Piers Morgan: None at all?

Bernard Giles: No.

Piers Morgan: They meant nothing to you?

Bernard Giles: Why would I do that? Why would someone embrace the names of their, excuse me, of their victims? I saw these women as objects.

Piers Morgan: This woman, Paula Hamric, who was a mum of two young kids who've never known their mother. You know, if she'd thought to humanize herself to you, she might still be alive. But she didn't, so you killed her.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: This is Carolyn. Very young.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: Do you remember these faces as I show you them?

Bernard Giles: No, sir. Truthfully, I don't.

Piers Morgan: 14, this girl. As well this one, 14. Do you remember?

Bernard Giles: No, sir.

Piers Morgan: So you don't really remember any of these girls by face?

Bernard Giles: No, sir. Some women actually saved their lives by engaging me in conversations.

Piers Morgan: How many?

Bernard Giles: Three I can think of right off. I actually went to the home of one. The, uh, I got in a conversation about, uh, smoking, uh, marijuana. She rolled up a few joints. We drove around the neighborhood and smoked one, and I let her off at her house.

Piers Morgan: And what were you thinking you might do to that woman?

Bernard Giles: Well, if it had gone the other way, I'd have murdered her. [This question and answer are word for word the same as at 08:00 in both machine texts; the programme may reuse the clip.]

Crime Expert: For a guy like this, really what's important for him is what he wants. And what he wants, he's going to get. "I want to kill these women, and I want to have sex with them. And when I'm done, I'm just going to leave them right there in the dirt, because I don't really care about them. And then I'm going to go back to my wife, and they won't know any difference. I won't have any change in emotion." ### Husband and father

Piers Morgan: What I struggle with with you: you killed five women, but all the time you're going back to your marital home.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: With Leslie, your wife, and your daughter, Heather.

Bernard Giles: Sure.

Piers Morgan: How are you functioning in normal married life in this extraordinary 12, 13-week period?

Bernard Giles: Badly.

Piers Morgan: What do you mean?

Bernard Giles: I don't know. It was just, as this thing's taking me over, I'm kind of disintegrating as a person. The, um, me and my wife are fighting all the... I'm out. It's, obsessions take you over.

Piers Morgan: Did you get any urge to kill your wife?

Bernard Giles: No.

Piers Morgan: Never?

Bernard Giles: No.

Piers Morgan: Why not? She was there, she was a woman.

Bernard Giles: I knew her. You know, I've never killed anybody I knew. It's that thing about objectification of the victim. For me, that was an important element.

Piers Morgan: Do you remember doing that?

Bernard Giles: No, sir.

Piers Morgan: It was 45 years since you have probably seen that.

Bernard Giles: [unclear: "Yes, yes. Just a moment" / "May I see you, sir, just a moment"]. This is a little strange for me, because I recognize elements of my own style, and yet I can't remember doing these, honestly.

Piers Morgan: You definitely did them.

Bernard Giles: That is strange. For real.

Piers Morgan: I mean, that one there, for example. When you look at it, notwithstanding the fact you can't remember it very well, but it's a very macabre image.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir. [unclear: "I did" / not in small.en].

Piers Morgan: A young woman, you have a sort of devil-like figure at the top there, a skeleton.

Bernard Giles: That's not a woman.

Piers Morgan: It's not? Or is that you?

Bernard Giles: I don't know.

Piers Morgan: You had long hair at the time, right?

Bernard Giles: I had long hair at the time.

Piers Morgan: So that could have been you, in fact.

Bernard Giles: It could have been me.

Piers Morgan: It's got needles, it's got snakes, it's got skeletons. It's, you know, it's a very macabre...

Bernard Giles: Not a happy scene.

Piers Morgan: Right, right.

Bernard Giles: Mm-hm.

Piers Morgan: Giles drew these pictures at the time of the murders. But had there been any early warning signs that might have alerted people to what was coming?

Piers Morgan: You were at school with him, you hung out with him every day. You saw this guy.

School Friend: In junior high school, '65, '66, nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.

Piers Morgan: I mean, we hear this a lot, don't we, with people that do heinous crimes. Often, friends will come out and say, "Oh, he was such a nice guy." But you mean it. I mean, you...

School Friend: I mean it sincerely. He was just a sweet, young, artistic, gifted, nice guy.

Piers Morgan: When did you last see him?

School Friend: It was probably, and I believe that he might have already been killing people then. Uh, it was on the river.

Piers Morgan: Did he seem different to you?

School Friend: Yes.

Piers Morgan: In what way?

School Friend: He was, uh, very intensely, uh, working on a drawing, and it was pretty dark. I'd looked over, and I saw a tree and some roots, but in the roots of the tree was a female body being engulfed in the tree.

Piers Morgan: Wow.

Crime Expert: In any of the psych reports, all of them describe him as sane. All of them describe him as in charge of his faculties. He's not psychotic, and he's not mentally ill. He's in touch with reality. He clearly understands this concept of right and wrong. And we know he understands it because he made a conscious effort to take these women to a remote location where he wouldn't be discovered and kill them. If he didn't understand the concept, he probably would have just picked them up and then killed them right on the street in front of everybody. He chooses to do wrong because that's what he wants to do. ### The marriage

Piers Morgan: It seems that Giles was able to hide his true nature from everyone that knew him, including his new wife, Leslie. They'd been married for barely a year when the killings began.

Piers Morgan: Let me just take you back to just before you first killed. You meet a woman, you fall in love, you get married. Her name is Leslie?

Bernard Giles: Yes.

Piers Morgan: Tell me about her.

Bernard Giles: Good woman. Good woman. First time I ever saw my wife, she was a friend of my sister's. She'd just made friends with my sister. And [unclear: "they passed" / "I passed"] through the living room. I was sitting there watching television. And when I saw Leslie, I knew I was going to marry her. You know, there have been numerous instances in my life where I, it's just, I know something. I just remember that, you know, that's the one right there.

Piers Morgan: Do you remember how you proposed to her?

Bernard Giles: Over the phone.

Piers Morgan: That was it?

Bernard Giles: Yeah, not very romantic.

Piers Morgan: You're a young man, you're marrying this beautiful young woman. Family there, it all seems...

Bernard Giles: Normal.

Piers Morgan: Yeah. Did it feel normal to you that day when you got married?

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: But you would have sex with your wife?

Bernard Giles: Yes.

Piers Morgan: You had a normal married life in that respect?

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: And did you feel like you loved her?

Bernard Giles: Yes. But, truthfully, I didn't, you know, I did love her. But I, you know, I was completely obsessed with this other thing. And I didn't really realize how much I did love my wife until, like, the last time I ever saw her, through, you know, half-inch bulletproof glass, you know.

Piers Morgan: During the killings, his wife was at home caring for their baby daughter. Giles would leave the trailer each day to train as an electrician. But in the afternoons, he would cruise the highways looking for hitchhikers. The police still had no suspects and no leads.

Contributor: There was a fear factor, and as a result, uh, people [unclear: "were" / "weren't"] locking their doors, and people were, uh, trying to gather more information from the newspapers and, uh, from television, which carried very little. Uh, but they were following it very closely, but they were still afraid. What's even more scary is, uh, it wasn't somebody traveling through, because victims were localized. There had to be someone responsible from within. So who could it be?

Contributor: And normally, when we'd have any kind of a murder or something, within 24 hours they had a suspect. They knew who they were going after, and pretty much were right. And I remember a lot of times during that period, it got to where I was working like seven days a week, and it was driving them crazy that it was taking so long to figure this one out. When I would be on my lunch break or go home from work, I would see some young girls hitchhiking, knowing there's already been two or three murdered. I would just pull over, roll down my window and say, "Hey, don't you girls know what's going on?" ### Sharon Wimer

Piers Morgan: The killings had begun in October of 1973. By December, three bodies had been found. And then the police discovered the remains of Sharon Wimer. She was just 14 years old. But what is baffling about this murder is where he killed her.

Piers Morgan: Bob, what strikes me about this location is we're so near to the trailer park where Bernard Giles lived with his own young family, and the body was so easily discoverable. This is a very brazen serial killer. He's almost like crying out to be caught.

Bob Telfer: In a way, yes, but in another way, you get hunters back in here and everything too, so that the sound of a gunshot wouldn't necessarily tell everybody around that something unusual like that is going on. What we discovered was that there was jewelry there, a necklace and maybe a bracelet.

Piers Morgan: Identifiable jewelry.

Bob Telfer: We strongly suspected, the police did, that this was Sharon Wimer. And we left, and at the residence were siblings plus her mother. And we showed them the jewelry, and very, very sad. I mean, the kids are crying. Mom's on the couch in denial: "No, it can't be that. It can't be that." And the kids are saying, "No, Mom, it is, it is." And that's how we got the identification. And that kind of stuff sticks with you through the years.

Piers Morgan: But two of your victims you took back to within a few hundred yards of where you lived. What was your thinking in doing that?

Bernard Giles: I wasn't thinking. There is no logical reason for having done that.

Piers Morgan: It's quite a high-risk thing to do, I guess.

Bernard Giles: Yeah, but I wasn't doing my best thinking at that point in time.

Piers Morgan: You didn't really care?

Bernard Giles: Well, they have an expression here, basically: off the chain. I was, uh, like I said, I wasn't doing my best thinking.

Crime Expert: After each killing, that need to feel that again is there, and it's urgent, but it's even bigger. We see this with so many serial killers. With each one, they have to come up with some new angle to make it more violent, more horrific, um, more hands-on, more personal, make the victim younger, make the victim beg. They have to try some new angle to keep that thrill alive. But of course, this isn't sustainable. At some point or another, they either get caught, or they become so frenetic that they have no choice but to screw up, and police find them. ### The arrest

Piers Morgan: And that is exactly what happened with Bernard Giles. Twelve weeks after the murders began, he made a crucial mistake along this isolated road.

Piers Morgan: When you were finally caught, you tried to pick up two girls at the same time.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir.

Piers Morgan: But it feels like it was an escalation.

Bernard Giles: Yeah, that's exactly it. I was getting worse.

Piers Morgan: That's where you made your big mistake, because they got away. How did they get away? I mean, you had a gun.

Bernard Giles: The gun misfired. I had hit one of them with a gun, and it discharged. It jammed inside the gun.

Piers Morgan: And that's when they ran off.

Bernard Giles: That's when they ran off.

Piers Morgan: They got away, having seen a form in your car which had your name on.

Bernard Giles: A book.

Contributor: They saw a book that had a name in it, and the name was Bernard Giles. I checked files, and it gave his address.

Former Neighbour: Inspector DeWitt come in, and he says, "You got to listen to me. Listen to me good. Keep your doors locked. Do not answer it." He says, "We're going to make an arrest in these murders." I said, "Here?" He said, "Yes." I was shaking. We could have been the next victim.

Piers Morgan: And did you panic?

Bernard Giles: Basically, yeah. I didn't know that they had, they actually had my name. So about the time that I get home, the police are setting up, you know, and they got me.

Former Neighbour: I wasn't the only one who peeked out our door to see him when they brought him into the area. And he was evil. He was Satan personified.

Piers Morgan: When you were caught, was it a relief?

Bernard Giles: No. No, it wasn't a relief.

Piers Morgan: Were you angry, because it meant you probably wouldn't be able to kill again?

Bernard Giles: No, I wasn't angry. Life got very complicated.

Piers Morgan: How did your wife react to you being arrested?

Bernard Giles: Well, at first, she wanted to stay with me. But, you know, I basically understood that, you know, I was over. I was done with.

Piers Morgan: But did she ask if it was true?

Bernard Giles: Uh, yes, sir. And the first time she asked me, I lied to her. She knew I had problems.

Piers Morgan: But not this kind of...

Bernard Giles: Psychological, you know. She just didn't know how deep it was. You know, I'm sure she must have suspected. I mean, not that I had done that, but after I'd gotten arrested, that, yeah, okay, that's him. ### His daughter

Piers Morgan: We've been talking now for over an hour, but I was yet to see any real sign of emotion from Bernard Giles. So I wonder, how will he react when I show him a picture of the daughter he hasn't seen in 45 years?

Piers Morgan: You seem, when it comes to real emotions...

Bernard Giles: Yeah.

Piers Morgan: ...pretty cold. I mean...

Bernard Giles: Yeah, I get that a lot.

Piers Morgan: When was the last time you cried about anything?

Bernard Giles: Braveheart. I saw the movie Braveheart.

Piers Morgan: When?

Bernard Giles: 1998, '99, somewhere along in there.

Piers Morgan: So 20 years ago.

Bernard Giles: Been a while.

Piers Morgan: And why did that make you cry?

Bernard Giles: Hollywood presents this, you know, really pristine picture of a human being, what you sort of wish you could be. You know, there's this perfect human being. And I was basically crying because I was mourning my life.

Piers Morgan: Bernard Giles was just 20 when he was caught. He avoided the death penalty by agreeing to confess to all five murders. But he will die in prison. Soon after the killings, his wife and daughter left the trailer park and moved out of the state. He would never see them again.

Piers Morgan: You lost a wife, you lost your daughter.

Bernard Giles: I lost everything.

Piers Morgan: You lost everything, yeah. Was it worth it, this? I mean...

Bernard Giles: No, of course not.

Piers Morgan: And do you know what happened to your daughter? Have you ever heard from her?

Bernard Giles: No, no, sir.

Piers Morgan: How does that make you feel?

Bernard Giles: What can you do with that? [inaudible]

Piers Morgan: We had a picture there.

Bernard Giles: [unclear: "Yeah" / "You"]?

Piers Morgan: What do you feel when you see your daughter?

Bernard Giles: I don't know exactly.

Piers Morgan: When you look at your own daughter at that age, smiling, innocent, happy, what do you feel about the young women you killed?

Bernard Giles: I don't put those together.

Piers Morgan: I mean, what would you feel about a man who snatched your daughter and terrorized and raped and killed her?

Bernard Giles: I [unclear: "certainly" / "totally"] wouldn't appreciate it.

Piers Morgan: But that's it? That's how you'd feel?

Bernard Giles: Like I said, I certainly wouldn't appreciate it. ### An apology

Piers Morgan: You've never apologized.

Bernard Giles: To who?

Piers Morgan: Who do you think you should apologize to?

Bernard Giles: Let me ask you a question. I assume that, to the families of the victims?

Piers Morgan: I think, I mean, it should be incumbent on you, as the perpetrator of the crime, to work out who you think you maybe should apologize to. I mean, you killed, by your own admission, these five young women. Who do you think you owe an apology to?

Bernard Giles: If I were going to apologize to anybody, it would be the families.

Piers Morgan: Have you ever done that?

Bernard Giles: I don't feel I have the right. How do I, how do you, you know, where do you get a letter in the mail from the person who killed your daughter, right? "Hey, I'm sorry"?

Piers Morgan: They may well be watching this, those families. I mean, if you look at that camera, if they are watching, what would you say to them?

Bernard Giles: I really don't know what to say, truthfully.

Piers Morgan: Well, don't say it to me. Say it to them.

Bernard Giles: What do you say to somebody that you murdered a member of their family?

Piers Morgan: Right.

Bernard Giles: I don't know.

Piers Morgan: Isn't the very least you could say...

Bernard Giles: Is "I'm sorry"?

Piers Morgan: Isn't that the very least you could do, is just to actually...

Bernard Giles: Of course I'm sorry. The fact that we're having this conversation in this way, yes, I'm sorry.

Crime Expert: "Here's an opportunity for you to speak to the families of these victims. What would you say? What's your response?" He doesn't say anything. He just says, "What can I say? I, you know, I could say I'm sorry," which isn't even saying I'm sorry. He's basically saying that's what I could say, but what does it mean? The question is, what can you say to the victims' families? In other words, make a connection here. Give us a small piece of your soul to the victims' families. He couldn't do it, because I don't think that he even has that capacity. ### Titusville

Local Resident: Titusville lost its innocence through the acts of, we called him Bernard Eugene Giles. We always used the three names. We started looking at everyone in a suspicious manner, and we started locking our doors. This guy lived in our area, had been schooled in our area, and he did such a horrible thing, not once, but many times. [unclear: "From then on" / "And then, oh"], yes, I knew what a serial killer was.

School Friend: I'd probably like to sit down and talk to him, you know, and say, where'd you go? Why'd you do this?

Piers Morgan: He says it was just a compulsion that he had to kill.

School Friend: Yeah. Wow. ### Closing

Piers Morgan: When you finish here with me, you know, I'll go back to my normal life. And I'll, you know, when I go back to my hotel room this afternoon, I'll feel quite unsettled by this encounter. When you go back to your cell later, having talked about all this today with me, will you have any feelings about it, really?

Bernard Giles: Probably.

Piers Morgan: And what are they likely to be?

Bernard Giles: I, truthfully, have a great deal of respect for you. And it unsettles me just a little bit that you have such a monstrous view of me.

Piers Morgan: I have a complicated view, because to me now, I didn't know what you'd done, and we had a regular conversation about stuff going on in the news, I would imagine we'd have a perfectly normal, rational...

Bernard Giles: Of course.

Piers Morgan: ...and probably quite interesting conversation. But it's very, very hard to get past what I know that you did to these girls.

Bernard Giles: I understand.

Piers Morgan: It's very hard not to feel that sense of just utter revulsion.

Bernard Giles: Yes, sir. And I understand that. I understand all of that.

Piers Morgan: Well, thank you for the interview.

Bernard Giles: Thank you, sir.

Piers Morgan: Well, that was one of the most extraordinary encounters I've probably ever had with anybody, because on one level, he's obviously self-aware about what he did, because he's just [unclear: "bad to" / "been able to"] admit it, I think. What he can't do is what I suspect the families of these victims really want him to do, and that's explain it in a way that could bring any kind of closure to them. I just feel in the end that their loved ones, these poor girls, were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and met an unbelievably dangerous person. And it's as simple as that, and as heartbreaking as that.