And Make Them Cry: The Crimes of Lust Killers David Alan Gore and Fred Waterfield
Unnatural Desire
Ever since he was a teenager, David Alan Gore had been someone women would cross the street to avoid. While his off-putting appearance and menacing demeanor were partially responsible for their apprehension, it was his eyes, which have been described as more goat-like than human, that had warned them to stay away if they knew what was good for them.
Although they wanted nothing to do with the odd duck, Gore’s compulsion to have and control women was all-consuming. By the time he reached adulthood, he had made up his mind that he would have the objects of his desire, whether they liked it or not.
In his late teens, Gore had worked briefly as a gas station attendant in his home state of Florida. Shortly after he was hired, it was discovered that someone had fashioned a hole in the ladies’ room wall in order to observe the occupants without their knowledge. Convinced that the new hire was responsible, the manager had fired him on the spot. While the incident had caused him some temporary embarrassment, it had done nothing to curb Gore’s obsession with the fairer sex.
Despite his perverse leanings, he managed to secure a position as a part-time reservist at the local sheriff’s department. As a representative of law enforcement, he was given a badge and the power to detain suspects at will. These perks, which had been bestowed upon him with the best of intentions, proved invaluable for the serial killer in the making.
The Lady Killers
Feeling empowered like never before, in 1981, at the age of twenty-eight, Gore decided that the time was right to put a plan that had been brewing for as long as he could remember into action. The only thing he needed to turn his fantasies into reality was a helper who wouldn’t question his authority. He found what he was looking for in his cousin, twenty-nine-year-old Fred Waterfield.
Unlike Gore, Waterfield was able to conceal his dark side behind a wall of passable looks and manufactured charm. With his boyish smile and aw-shucks attitude, he seemed perfectly harmless — at least on the surface. Underneath the facade, however, lurked a merciless killer waiting to be unleashed.
With the worst of intentions in mind, Gore offered to pay his cousin to assist in procuring women and girls for purposes of rape and murder. As an added bonus, he would be allowed to use the victims for his own sexual gratification before they were dispatched. Lacking any sense of morality, which some would say was a family trait, Waterfield had unhesitatingly taken him up on the offer. Once the agreement was solidified, they set out looking for prey.
Show No Mercy
On February 19, 1981, while trolling for victims, the unscrupulous pair had spotted seventeen-year-old Ying Hua Ling as she was walking along a deserted street. After flashing his badge and threatening her with arrest, Gore had forced her into the car. Seated next to Waterfield, the frightened girl had directed the phony police officers to her home. When they arrived and found her forty-eight-year-old mother Hsiang inside, they had abducted her as well.
Knowing that what they had in store for their victims would require privacy, the pair had driven them to the citrus grove where Gore was employed. Secluded and virtually untraveled, the area would become the cousins’ murder site of choice.
After placing a rope around Hsiang’s neck and tying her to a tree, the cousins took turns raping Ying while her mother slowly strangled to death. When her assailants were sated, they killed the teenager before finishing off her mother. To conceal evidence of their wrongdoing, they dismembered the bodies and divided the pieces into oil drums, which were then buried on the property. Exhilarated by the experience, the murderous duo knew that they had found their calling.
The Thrill of the Hunt
On July 15, 1981, a thirty-five-year-old tourist from California named Judith Kay Daley was enjoying a day at the beach. As she relaxed on a blanket, soaking in the sun, she was unaware that she had caught the attention of a paunchy psychopath and his equally dangerous lackey.
Since visitors were sparse that afternoon, Gore had located Judith’s car by process of elimination. After disconnecting the coil wire, the cousins had loitered nearby, waiting for their quarry to pack it in for the day.
When dinnertime rolled around, Judith decided to gather her things and head back to her hotel. After loading up her belongings, she had climbed behind the wheel of her car and turned the ignition key. When nothing happened, she was hit with the realization that she was stranded. Just as she started to panic, a rather strange-looking Good Samaritan appeared from out of nowhere and offered his assistance.
When the man suggested that she let him drive her to a payphone to call a tow truck, the normally safety-conscious Judith had reluctantly accepted. Once he had her in the car, instead of staying on the main thoroughfare, he had turned onto a dirt road that was miles away from civilization.
When the vehicle came to a stop in a wooded area, Fred Waterfield was waiting to greet them. Hours of rape and torture followed, culminating in Judith’s being strangled and shot. After making sure that she was dead, her killers had disposed of her body in an alligator-infested swamp.
A week later, an eagle-eyed beat cop happened to spot a half-naked man crouched down in the back seat of a woman’s car. When he stopped to investigate, the patrolman discovered that the trespasser had a gun in his possession, along with a police scanner and a pair of handcuffs. The man, who was clearly up to no good, was none other than David Alan Gore.
The suspect was subsequently tried and convicted of armed trespassing, which carried a five-year prison term. Unfortunately for the women of the Vero Beach area of sunny Florida, Gore served less than two years before being released back onto the streets. Eager to pick up where he left off, he had wasted no time resuming his criminal activities.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
In May of 1983, Barbara Byer and Angelica LaVallee, both fourteen, were hitchhiking south after running away from home in Orlando when they accepted a lift from Gore and Waterfield. After suffering any number of indignities, the girls were shot point blank in the head. Their remains were later scattered around Vero Beach.
Two months later, on July 26th, Lynn Elliott, seventeen, and her friend fourteen-year-old Regan Martin were abducted as they hitchhiked to Wabasso Beach. As the group were making the twenty-minute drive to Vero, Fred Waterfield’s sister had passed them on the road. Overcome with paranoia at having been seen with the girls, he had asked to be let out of the car. For the first time since the killings began, Gore would be on his own.
Knowing that he would have a hard time keeping them contained in the grove without Waterfield, Gore abandoned his usual routine and drove the girls to his parents’ house, which was unoccupied at the time. After binding their hands and feet and depositing them in separate bedrooms, he had spent the afternoon raping them, one after the other.
At one point, while he was assaulting Regan, Lynn had managed to free her ankles and make a run for it. As she stumbled out of the house, completely naked and screaming for help, Gore — who was also naked — bolted out the door and threw her to the pavement. In a fit of blind rage, he had then pulled out a pistol and shot her twice in the head.
As he was dragging Lynn’s lifeless body up the driveway, Gore realized that he was being watched by a boy who had been riding his bicycle past the house. Well-aware of what the man was capable of, the stunned witness had pedaled home like his life depended on it. When his mother learned what had happened, she immediately phoned police. Within minutes, her son was leading authorities to the location where the killing had taken place.
To no one’s surprise, Gore had refused to go easy. Instead of coming out with his hands up, as he had been instructed, he had barricaded himself inside. His cowardly actions led to an hours-long standoff that ultimately ended with his surrender. During his interrogation, he had voluntarily named Waterfield as his accomplice.
After gaining access to the residence, officers conducted a thorough search and found a visibly distraught Regan Martin bound and gagged in the attic. Lynn’s body was recovered from the trunk of a car Gore had borrowed from his unsuspecting mother. Though she hadn’t survived the ordeal, the teenager’s break for freedom had not only saved her friend’s life, but also stopped a pair of vicious killers who were only getting started.
The Tables Turn
A look into Gore’s past revealed that he and Waterfield had been accused of raping a twenty-year-old woman named Angela Hommell Austin in 1976. When the outraged cousins argued that the sex had been consensual, authorities believed them. As a result, no charges had been filed in the case.
On August 10th, 1983, Gore was indicted on two counts of murder in the first degree, kidnapping and sexual battery. Armed with an eyewitness to Lynn’s slaying and a treasure trove of circumstantial evidence, prosecutors geared up for their day in court.
As the trial date grew near, the seemingly contrite defendant had broken down and confessed to killing at least five women and young girls, which had all but ensured a win for the state. Four months later, he led investigators to the burial sites of Hsiang Huang Ling, her daughter Ying, and Barbara Byer.
In March of 1984, Gore was found guilty on all counts. While he received life sentences for the kidnappings and rapes, the penalty for the cold- blooded killing of Lynn Elliott was set at death.
On January 21, 1985, Fred Waterfield was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of Barbara Byer and Angelica LaVallee. Today, he sits in a prison cell in central Florida, where he will remain for the rest of his life.
After unsuccessfully working his way through the appeals process, Gore was finally executed by lethal injection on April 12, 2012, at the age of fifty-nine. When asked if he had any last words, he had taken the opportunity to apologize to the victims’ families. In the next breath, he had declared himself a changed man. Like many who had come before him, he claimed to have found redemption as he whiled away the hours on death row.
In spite of his assertion that he wasn’t the man he used to be, Gore’s letters to his numerous pen pals indicated otherwise. In one correspondence after another, he had written of his crimes in gut-churning detail. Following his death, the recipients spoke publicly of the sickening way he had recounted every horrifying moment of the rapes and murders as if he were experiencing them all over again.
He also shared that he had always been aroused at the thought of killing women. The floodgates of his disturbed mind open for all to see, he admitted that, although raping and murdering his victims had given him a thrill, the sensation was nothing compared to the adrenaline rush he had received from dissecting their bodies after death.
It was obvious to anyone who read his ramblings that Gore was, up till his last breath, a cold-hearted killer who had felt nothing for the women and young girls whose lives he had taken. Detectives who had spent years working the case agreed. Although he had paid for his misdeeds with his life, they couldn’t help but think that there were other bodies out there somewhere waiting to be found.
Whether they were buried somewhere in the citrus grove or discarded in one of Florida’s countless swamps, is something only the killers would know. With Gore long gone and Waterfield refusing to give up his secrets, there’s no telling how many women crossed paths with the murderous cousins and didn’t live to tell the tale.
Resources:
·veronews.com
·Tampa Bay Times
·murderpedia.org
·reuters.com
·dailymail.co.uk
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