Serial Killer Documentary - A House of Horrors： Stewart Weldon

0:00I did what I did. Nobody guilty for me, you know what I'm saying. She were here now, I would start by telling her that I'm sorry. And then I love her. I would tell her to be my big sister back. He showed me. I would tell her to be my big sister back. He shows a certain category of victims who he believed he could victimize without repercussions. This is a person who was on a path at an early age and just progressed. It became somebody who was in danger to everybody around him. I can only imagine the fear that is felt at this time. I would characterize it as evil, I would characterize it as subhuman.

1:00I think he's a monster. Every day I am haunted by memories and images. I will never be whole again. I will never be whole again. Stuart Weldon was born in 1977. He grew up in Jamaica, Queens, New York, which was an area that was known for having a lot of drug activity.

2:00His father died when he was teenager. There was indications that he was sexually assaulted, that he was experimenting with drugs, and was introduced to a pornography at an early age. In 1990, just after his father's death, Stuart Weldon's mom moves them out of the city to Montclair, New Jersey. A safer neighborhood with a lower crime rate. No mother wants to see their child involved in criminal activity. So what is often done is let us move to a more suburban life and we can start all over. That was probably the intent of this caring mother trying to move her son to a different way of life. But Stuart Weldon's difficult start to life continues when he reaches high school. He seemed to have some pretty significant learning problems. He was diagnosed with severe ADHD.

3:00He apparently had dyslexia. I think when a child has some learning challenges, how that child does depends on a couple of different things. Not just the severity of their disabilities, which is important to know, but also how the school handles those. So are they getting diagnosed early? Are they getting appropriate treatment? And it sounds like that he ended up having a pretty limited education. In 1996, Stuart Weldon is at a mall. And he and his buddy basically pick up three girls or going to go out and party. They end up taking two of them home. But the third one, they end up kidnapping and sexually assaulting. At the age of 19 when he was in New Jersey, he was charged with sexual offenses as well as weapons charge. He was picking up women that might have been drug-involved, mental health issues involved in prostitution.

4:05We often see a progressive nature of criminal offenses for those who commit very serious crimes. The issues of violence often have their foundation in control. Then if I'm able to violently get you to do what I want, I have control over you. He's not starting out painting graffiti or even loitering in places where he's not supposed to be or being on top of the school when he's not supposed to be on there. Or things that we might think juveniles are exhibiting poor judgment. And they're going to grow out of it. This kind of crime is not like that. Another step up, the ladder of engaging in criminal activity, engaging in violence. Especially when you see sexually related or sexually involved offenses, you know, typically that's a red flag. Sometimes those behaviors are innate and they repeat. Sometimes they get progressively worse.

5:11It suggests premeditation. It suggests violent behavior. It suggests predatory behavior. And those are things that are oftentimes predictors of future violence and future sexual offenses. When we look at serial killers, we often do expect them to come from the most horrendous backgrounds. It had parents who don't love them, don't care about them, abuse them, take advantage of them. And then you find parents who, for whatever reason, indulged their children or permissive and basically permit that child from developing a sense of right and wrong that's internal. Stuart Walden's criminality reaches a new level. Now 28 years old, he commits assault with a deadly weapon and receives a three-year prison sentence.

6:18When he's released, he moves with his mother again. This time to Springfield in Western Massachusetts. They live in a property made of two separate apartments. It would hide some chilling secrets. Springfield is the largest city in Western Massachusetts in the largest city in Hampton County. There's a lot of poverty here, a lot of crime, a lot of drugs. Essentially it's an old industrial town that has been kind of overshade by crime and drugs. It's essentially like a distribution center of heroin between Boston and New York. This kind of underbelly of criminal activity is something that is appealing to him. He kind of gravitates to it and I think he feels like he fits in and he understands it. The narcotics detective once told me the only reason we don't have methamphetamine moving into the Springfield area is because heroin is so cheap here.

7:21It's likely that his mom thought she was moving him to a better place. What she doesn't realize is she's basically moved him from the frying pan into the fire. There's a road in Springfield that is essentially known for sex workers to hang out, for people to be looking for, to make money and exchange for drugs, and for Stuart Walden, who is very involved in criminal activity. This would be like a candy store. He could just drive down and pick and choose whatever he wants. Welden became very well known in circles involving women who were prostituting themselves. He became very well known in certain criminal circles in particular an area of high in school street in the city of Springfield. He became sort of embedded in a particular criminal aspect here in the city of Springfield.

8:29When you have kind of a subculture of criminal behavior in a community, it is easier. It is easier to get away with things because people kind of look out for each other in a way and you don't stand out. Stuart Walden's respect for the law deteriorates further. He breaks into someone's home and when apprehended, he violently attacks a police officer. He receives a two-year prison sentence. This is somebody that really strikes me as he doesn't care about anything. He doesn't care about himself that much. He puts himself in all kinds of rounds. He pulls a knife on a police officer. I mean, he could have been shot by police for legitimate reasons on many different occasions. So he's somebody who doesn't care about anybody or himself. And I think that is scary. That is something you don't often see.

9:34Stuart Walden was very involved in the drug world and he was dealing drugs which made it very, very easy for him to encourage and entice women who were struggling with addiction into his car. Walden used that. As a way to lure them to his house. A lot of the times he would get women into a car with an offer of, hey, I've got some drugs. Let's go do them. And then as they got closer, maybe a negotiation took place about a sex act that ended up going too far. But in a lot of cases, women went to his apartment thinking they were going to hang out. And then when they got there, they would find out it was far more involved than just smoking drugs together.

10:35There was more about physical controls, slaps, punches, ordering them around, forcing acts on them that they did not agree to. He was kind of pushing the boundaries to see what he could get away with. He subjected the victims of his crimes to experiences that could only be termed as near-death experiences. The Stuart Walden, now aged 40, already has a criminal history spanning kidnap, burglary, sexual offenses, and assault with a deadly weapon. He served two prison sentences. He's now luring vulnerable women to his basement, where he's torturing them, almost to the point of death.

11:35Despite this increasingly alarming behavior, he isn't drawing police attention. These women are vulnerable on a lot of different levels, not only in terms of getting into a car, with somebody they don't know. Not only death, perhaps, in terms of looking for drugs to kind of feed an addiction, but also their relationship with the police is going to be very difficult. And so, you know, Stuart Walden knows this. He knows that most often, when a sex worker is raped or beaten up, either she's not going to go to the police, because she's afraid she's going to be arrested for what she's been doing, or that she's not going to be believed. And all too often, that's exactly what happens. These are women who sometimes fall out of touch with their families for periods of time, and live very transient lifestyle. So sometimes not being around wouldn't be noticed. It was actually the women who hung out in high school street, who were the first ones to realize we haven't seen this person for a while.

12:43But even they said that's not a common. Sometimes people go to rehab, they get clean, or they try to move on, or simply find another area, move in with a man, things like that. So these are people whose disappearances might not go noticed right away. It is almost a matter of you haven't punished me, so why should I stop committing the crimes, or maybe even escalating those crimes? I think we see the latter in this case. You haven't punished me severely. I am going to continue doing these crimes, and since the system is not stopping me or deterring me, these crimes will continue. He does not have some of the normal restraints that most people have, and that makes people afraid of him.

13:43They're aware that he'll do whatever. He's intimidating, he'll fight cops, he'll run from cops, he'll fight anybody. I mean, this is somebody who truly seems to have no restraint when it comes to getting what he wants, or doing what he wants to do. A lot of these women described feeling like their life was draining away, they were losing vision, and unable to speak, having that complete nutter control over someone's life, essentially having the power over. Whether or not they live or die, and being able to see their face react to the situation that they're in. It's just astonishing to see the fact that he's doing all these things, not hiding them, not seeming to care about the consequences. America Liden is a 33-year-old mother who's just completed a drug rehabilitation program.

14:5247-year-old Ernestine Ryan's has lived her whole life in Springfield. She is a mother and soon-to-be-grandmother. Kayla Escalante, a 26-year-old mom from neighboring Lutlough, struggles with drug addiction and has lost touch with her family. Police have no idea where these three vulnerable women are, or even if they're alive. It's not until five months after America Liden is reported missing, the authorities suspect Weldon has involved. The first time I learned about Stuart Weldon, he was pulled over for a routine traffic stop, essentially, by some detectives. The car took off, and Mr. Weldon had just taken off in the middle of the stop, which obviously the officers gave chase to him.

15:55The traffic stop allows for the police officer with probable cause, with probable cause, to do a certain amount of work. To do a search of the vehicle. To check out the welfare of the individuals inside the vehicle, and perhaps to ask questions if there is any speculation of criminal activity taking place. This isn't somebody who's sophisticated and trying to hide his criminal activities. He's doing whatever he wants to do right then. A chase occurs, and at the end of the chase, the police officer is fine, that there is a woman tied bound in the backseat of the car. It's really the case about standing police work, police officers being observant, aware of their surroundings and people of interest in the area.

16:59But it probably saved the life, and it probably saved more than one life. The woman who was in the front passenger seat began screaming, and it became very obvious at that point she was significantly injured. She immediately tells them she has been held captive for one month, that she has been unsafe and well, that she's been kidnapped and taken by Weldon. The police officers see some odd and very serious injuries. She complains to them about pain. The victim then communicates with police officers about how Mr. Weldon had been abusing her and striking her with an object, and she had injuries on her body very consistent with this sort of abuse. She was giving this information in a very hysterical way that was sometimes difficult to follow, a little rambling, she was an obvious trauma and distress. Essentially saying that he'd been holding her against her will in his house for the past 30 days.

18:02He had been beating her, tying her up things like that. She claimed that he had been beating her with a hammer in the leg, and the injuries to her leg were obvious. It was very clear that she'd been receiving abuse on that leg for quite some time, and she had to be rushed to the hospital where she was actually almost in danger of losing that leg. Weldon is charged with kidnapping, threatening to commit a crime, carrying a dangerous weapon, and resisting arrest. Despite the claims of his victim, police don't have enough evidence to search his house. Mr. Weldon was brought to court, and the next day, and I handled the arraignment on that case, he was charged with kidnapping in a variety of other assaultive charges. I believe at that time we requested a high cash bail, and he was held on a million dollars cash bail for giving the kidnapping in the serious allegations, which we later came to find out was only the tip of the iceberg. We didn't have probable cause, at least in my opinion, that time to go and search his home. That came a few days later on.

19:12Springfield police received a call from his adoptive mother, who was complaining about a smell in the basement. The way she described it to police officers on that call was she was worried about potentially there being a dead animal in the basement, and she was afraid to go and check it out. A number of uniformed Springfield police officers entered the home, and immediately were struck with a very strong, in-vile odor that they were familiar with as either decomposing human remains or animal remains. For those of us who have been involved in investigation, there is a distinct smell you do not forget. At this point, it was dark out, it was 830 or so.

20:15I recall getting onto the driveway of the home. I remember smelling an odor that I was somewhat familiar with at the time, even a great distance from the home, probably 50 feet at the end of the driveway. I went accompanied by police officers into the home and down the stairs. I remember at that point the smell was very, very strong. And then I was taken into a bathroom area, and I witnessed a body there that was at that point pretty severely decomposed. When you find that it is a human being, there is a drop in your heart and your stomach because that was someone's mom, dad, brother, sister, family member. And when you find that the death has occurred, that's an awful lot to take.

21:18The victim in the bathroom, we believe, was the most recent victim when missing some time April or May of that year. A distinctive ankle tattoo and fingerprints allow police to identify the first victim as missing 27-year-old Kayla Escalante. Her body was bound and gacked. The first body was just in a basement bathroom that anyone could have really walked down to. I then walked outside and I was brought down to the garage area down at the end of the driveway by police officers. Again, the smell was very strong, even being in the open air. I walked into the garage just a few steps and could see at that point a severely decomposed body. The smell was very strong and the black flies present. We believe the victim found in the garage was abducted sometime in April. The second victim is confirmed as missing 47-year-old soon to be grandmother Ernestine Ryan's.

22:23Her body was dumped and loosely covered with cardboard. I knew that we had a very serious situation on our hands. I made some phone calls to members of my staff, called Assistant District Attorney Max Bennett and asked him to respond to the scene. At that point, it looked like we had two bodies that had just been kind of left. The following day after detectives had noticed, disturbed dirt underneath the wooden shed in the backyard and a state police cadaver dog had alerted on the area. Detectives began digging there where we unearthed the body of the third victim, bound with internet cords, computer cables, and almost completely decomposed in a skeletal fashion with very little tissue left.

23:24Based on our investigation, we piece together. We believe she went missing sometime in September. Investigators need to use dental records to identify 34-year-old America Liden. It certainly presents in my experience now as a very unique crime scene. And a very unique set of circumstances that at the time we're startling, we're scary, we're horrifying. And now stand out as some of the more heinous crimes and really egregious scenery that I've seen in my years in law enforcement. Women that were in the home while his mother was around or present in the home, they walked out alive when his mother would leave the house or be gone for long periods of time. That's when we believe the murders occurred.

24:27We do believe that Mr. Weldon has been living up until the time of his arrest at this address. This is a largely residential area with sort of middle-class families who take pride in their homes and who go to work every day. Children lived in that neighborhood. So there was a lot of shock, especially from that area of the city of Springfield, that this kind of behavior that became national and international news was happening just yards away from their homes. Weldon is now charged with the murders of America Liden, Ernestine Ryan's and Kayla Escalante. Along with the previous charges related to the kidnap and attempted murder of the victim found in his car.

25:27With Weldon off the streets, other victims now feel able to report what he's done to them. So here you have Weldon in police custody and police work now shows that a series of rapes that had been ongoing in that same city also stopped. Police work then puts two and two together to look at Weldon perhaps being the suspect for those rapes. He was incredibly brutal in his rapes. And I think that he didn't really care if they lived or not. I can certainly see that once somebody died in his care, how that would become an additional fun thing for him. And then it would continue. Even if something was reported to police, you know, prosecuting a case involving a person with serious mental health issues and serious addiction issues whose homeless and transient really presents very difficult circumstances.

26:40Like 27 days of home connected to the mine somewhere in Jakarta. In his life, he found himself aچha and children pretending that he was all dressed up for the time and, following up with W Northern people on a dozen clothing gloves. Switching up on men said he wasкую and he knew that they were殺 white men throughout. He's looking for people who are less likely to go to the police. He made several statements to some of them. Go tell someone, no one's going to believe you. And quite frankly, that's the exact mentality of the women that he was seeking out, people who didn't think they'd be believed, who didn't think it was worth coming forward, and would just be happy to move on with their lives after the fact having escaped. His objectives with these women, his propensity to rape and commit acts of violence, are things that have no place in our society. Those rapes we believe became more and more violent, involved strangulation, involved the use of various sort of tools or machinery to carry out these rapes

27:46and to carry out the violence that was a part of this experience for Mr. Weldon. Some cases murder becomes a product of one's desire not to be apprehended. But we believe in Mr. Weldon's case it was truly a sexual murder in which the murder became a part of his fantasy and carrying out his desires. Stuart Weldon was a sexual sadist in many respects, so it wasn't just the murder. This isn't somebody who's raping women and then killing them to avoid capture. This is somebody that I think given the level of torture that he inflicted on his victims, who got sexual satisfaction from that torture, from hurting them, from seeing them cry or beg or plead. Eight cases of rape are added to Weldon's charges, thanks to the testimony of survivors who are granted anonymity.

28:47A rape by its very definition is a vial act, one of the most heinous crimes that we know in our criminal justice system. But certainly Stuart Weldon's behaviors as we came to know them were particularly dark and focused, where he brought them to a level of violence where they were strangled, where they were beaten, and so on and so forth, in very, very severe ways. This guy is the most powerful and most powerful person in the world. He's the most powerful and most powerful person in the world. This guy is not just a menace to sex workers. This guy is a loose cannon to everybody in his life. This is somebody who's been known to threaten to shoot up a bar because he's angry, to assault a woman on the street. And yet this is somebody who's engaging in all of these activities in any other neighborhood.

29:50This guy would be in jail and then prison for any one of these. And yet he seems to be operating with few consequences, if any. Weldon pleads not guilty to all charges. As prosecutors prepare for trial, they fear the nature of the crime scene and the accounts of some survivors. They may allow Weldon to plead insanity. So at that point, it was my concern that this is going to bode poorly for us trying to prove that he was able to conform his conduct. The fact he would leave rotting bodies out like this. There was a description by one victim of him essentially putting candles on the floor in a pentagram. Another one indicated that he had motion to an area underneath the basement stairs and said that a demon lived there and he threw salt there.

30:50Other times he would just maybe ramble about something satanic in a way that the victims couldn't really tell us exactly what he was saying, just that he was rambling on about satanic things. One of the things that I do wonder about Stuart Weldon is whether he had some kind of brain impairment or brain damage that in some respects affected his impulsivity. That's a problem for us because one of the things we're going to have to prove in this case is that he was sane and that he appreciated the wrongfulness of his actions and that he had the ability to conduct himself in a lawful manner. When you hear things like that or the fact that he was obsessed with a ghost detecting website, those are things you're going to need to explain. Stuart Weldon is in custody, pleading not guilty to three counts of first degree murder and 49 other charges relating to a total of 11 victims.

31:54Prosecutors are working to prove he was criminally responsible for his actions. As they fear Weldon's defense, Mayclaim Weldon was insane or under the effects of a mental disorder at the time of the offenses. He's due to face trial in April 2020. We had to show that there was going to be some kind of organization to what's happening here, some kind of pattern rather than just random chaotic violence. I tell this a lot to new prosecutors, the most important witness and the most consistent witness in any murder prosecution is going to be your scene. We had to ask for an extension here because crime scene detectives spent days digging in that yard and then going through that house and being very careful to procure DNA evidence, swapping everything, looking for fingerprints, things like that. They were very careful in making sure that they're preserving evidence. This is preserving your crime scene. Are you keeping as many people out of the crime scene as possible?

32:55Are you thinking in the future? Is there something that could change my crime scene? Whether, for example. We had to take a lot of small disparate pieces of evidence, link them together to build a pattern that we can extrapolate. We found two bleach bottles there which kind of indicated some kind of cleanup had happened. The ground was sticky, also indicating some kind of cleanup had occurred under there at some point. This is the case with the police. Yo, it's me, Jersey. I pause, I survive a day by over and say, I was going to get rid of all my life for them, saying, but I'm tired of living there. The video isn't a confession, but evidence of welding trying to cover his actions would help prove he was acting with intent.

33:55There were inconsistencies in his story, too. It became kind of known to me that he might be saying that victims were only bound after they were killed so that they'd be easier to move. We had to look at the exact circumstances we found him at that point. The first victim in discussions with the medical examiner, we were able to determine that she was bound in duct tape. Due to some of the levity and the blanching of the skin, that medical examiner was going to be able to give us testimony saying that blood was still flowing at the time that those bonds were applied to the victim. We found out that she was alive when that happened. There was a broken highway bone in the neck, and we knew that to me that some force had been applied manually to the neck, most likely with hands. We got very lucky with a DNA hit from our second victim on one of the backs of the post there, which let us know her body had some point bent underneath those basement steps, and then we found her in the garage. That was very helpful because it brought back our theory, essentially, that the bad things were happening to these women in the basement, and then the bodies were brought out, which showed an organized pattern.

35:04And that allowed us to start bringing in the stories of the survivors from his basement, and we were able to start applying what happened to them to what happened to the bodies that we found. Essentially, through all these pieces of evidence, it became very clear that Mr. Weldon knew who was a suitable victim for what he wanted to do. He knew where to procure them from and how to procure them without any resistance. There weren't reports coming in of him dragging women into his cars. He knew how to charm them in, and then he knew how far he could go with these women. And if there's someone in the house, he knew he had to let them go. If he knew he had the house completely unfettered for a long period of time, that's when we believe these killings were happening.

36:07When you have bodies buried in your basement, one of the only options left is to plead insanity, and the fact that he didn't plead insanity, likely means he was evaluated and was told, as interteriors were told, that he doesn't meet the insanity defense. He wasn't legally insane at the time he committed these crimes. This was definitely premeditated and well thought out by him. People evaluate him and said, bad news, you're not insane. To discover that a human being was capable of really torturing victims systematically in that home, and the deaths that those three women experienced, and what Mr. Weldon did in frankly, he had a ham-handed attempt to cover up his crimes. It's very unique. It's something that I have not seen otherwise, and I hope to never see again.

37:40The only good thing that comes from this case, your honor, now they know that that's not true. When America, Ernestine and Kailor were in his house, he knew he had that house to himself for an extended period of time. He knew he would not be interrupted, or disturbed, and he would have time to do what he needed. He tailored his lies in the cover-up about this case, depending on who he was talking to, he would explain the smell in a way that was designed to cause the least amount of alarm to his audience. He tailored these lies about the smell while searching the internet on how to remove the smell of dead animal carcasses. Always careful to never search them as dead bodies. The intent for what he did here is all over this case. Kailor was a daughter, a sister and a mother. She could light up a room with her smile, fill it with her laughter.

38:53I love her friends and her family never dwindled, but instead it grew every day. She could love with the power of a thousand hearts. She never gave up on the things in it, those two. There were no words to describe the pain in my heart. I started the day I found out my mom was one of the defendant's victims. The feelings of her sadness, confusion, loneliness, regret and most of all anger, are just filled with my daily emotions now. I wake up every day, hoping that this was all about you and your living room when I realized it was real. They say time heals all wounds, but you're under I don't feel like this is a wound that will ever heal. I miss my mom. For three months, I wandered every single day where she was, and she was looking, having hoped we would see her again. The day I gave birth, I still didn't know where she was.

40:04I was playing along in a dirty dark ride. My life crumbled and stopped. The minute the detectives came to my door, I'll never forget those moments. Every day I am haunted by memories and images. I will never behold again. The defendant took away my daughter by sweet little angel, Kaelin G. Kaelin, let's restore all of it in consideration of this offense. Court orders that you begin fine at MCIC Interjunction for the turn of your natural life. To give voice to people who are downtrodden, to give a sense of respect to people who have really been at the lowest rungs of society for a very long time,

41:06to give a sense of purpose and meaning to people who are suffering from addiction and are suffering from mental health issues, to give them worth through this process is really very special work. I want to give credit to our team and in particular Assistant District Attorney, Max Bennett, who pieced together a case and worked with great compassion and great fortitude. To give the murder victims' families and living victims a sense of dignity, a sense of closure, a sense of justice around the horrible things that happen to them or happen to their loved ones. There's nothing I could say that he's the pain of the families of the victims in this case. Stuart Wildens victims were at a very desperate one in their lives and they were all battling addiction and trying to beat it.

42:10And it's can be easy to forget that these were women who had children often. There were sisters, they were daughters, they had interest, they loved their families and they really were much more. Then that snapshot of what they were struggling with when they died.