The detective does not need to win every argument.
Sometimes the suspect's desire to explain himself is more valuable than confrontation.
Mitchell continued.
Detectives began asking how he selected houses.
Was there a particular part of Everett he preferred?
Did he target places he knew?
Was there some pattern?
Mitchell said no.
He described himself as disorganized.
He would simply drive around.
Walk through neighborhoods.
He described the 1984 attack on the teenage sisters as essentially spontaneous.
According to him, he did not know them.
One of the girls had reportedly once entered the flower shop where he worked, a detail that had attracted attention during the original investigation.
Mitchell denied knowing that.
He claimed he had never seen her.
He did not know where the family lived.
He was simply walking.
Then one house caught his attention.
It was dark.
A television was on.
Something about the house drew him toward it.
Even decades later, Mitchell said he could not explain exactly what.
The details were chilling precisely because they were so ordinary.
No elaborate stalking.
No personal grudge.
No carefully selected enemy.
A television glowing behind a window.
A house on a residential street.
Opportunity.
That was enough.
Detectives then shifted toward another assault Mitchell had previously discussed.
A woman inside another residence.
Mitchell described walking through what he remembered as an alley or gravel area.
He saw a man and a woman inside.
He returned to his vehicle.
He retrieved a gun.
A knife.
Other items.
Then he went back.
Why?
Mitchell could not explain.
Maybe there was no sophisticated reason.
The door was unlocked.
He walked in.
Again, opportunity.
Detectives asked what the woman looked like.
Mitchell struggled to remember.
Then he said something that revealed perhaps more about his crimes than any description of physical appearance could have.
At that time in his life, he explained, people were not really people to him.
They were objects.
If he allowed himself to recognize their humanity, committing the crimes would have been harder.
He had never attacked people he actually knew, he said, because once he knew someone, that person became real.
A human being.
A person with identity.
Strangers were different.
He could dehumanize them.
That process allowed him to do things to strangers he believed he could not do to someone personally familiar.
It is one of the most chilling statements in the entire interview.
Mitchell was describing the mental mechanism that allowed violence.
Not rage at one particular victim.
Not revenge.
Erasure.
The victim had to stop being a person in his mind.
She became an object.
And once she became an object, the moral barrier became easier to cross.
Mitchell admitted it took time to reach that psychological state.
But he said he got there.
Detectives kept listening.
The behavior he described contained similarities to the unsolved murders.
Entering homes.
Selecting strangers.
Using items found inside.
Binding victims.
Weapons.
A willingness to move through residential neighborhoods looking for opportunity.
These similarities had long made investigators suspicious.
But similarity still was not enough.
DNA changed that.
The detectives slowly began talking about how evidence had changed since the 1980s.
They mentioned DNA casually.
Almost academically.
Did Mitchell know much about it?
He said he knew it existed.
Back in 1984, almost nobody thought about DNA the way people do now.
The detectives agreed.
Evidence science had changed dramatically.
They reminded Mitchell that because of his previous convictions, his DNA had eventually entered CODIS.
Sometimes, they explained, old evidence is tested years later.
Sometimes a DNA profile is uploaded.
Sometimes the system returns a match.
Then the detectives moved closer.
There had been an incident in Everett.
Old evidence had produced a CODIS hit.
The hit was Mitchell.
What did he think that might be?
Did he have any idea why his DNA would appear in an old case?
Mitchell said he did not know.
The detectives showed him information.
A photograph of a house.
Would that bring anything back?
Mitchell remained uncertain.
They did not immediately accuse him of murder.
They wanted him to walk toward the conclusion himself.
Mitchell began acknowledging that he had always known some old disclosure or incident might eventually return.
He had apparently considered the possibility that something he admitted during treatment could one day create another legal problem.
Still, he resisted the idea that he had killed anyone.
His self-image remained important.
He told detectives that hurting someone seriously was not who he believed he was.
He described another incident near a park or tennis area where he had touched a woman without permission.
According to him, she swung a tennis racket at him.
He stopped it.
He threatened her.
Then he backed away.
The way Mitchell told these stories often seemed to contain a repeated theme.
He admitted disturbing conduct.
Then created a boundary just before the worst possible conclusion.
Yes, I entered.
Yes, I threatened.
Yes, I tied someone.
Yes, I assaulted.
But murder?
No.
That was not him.
At least, that was the distinction he wanted detectives to accept.
Then investigators told him more.
The DNA had come from something used to bind a woman's wrist.
A ligature.
Mitchell reacted.
He still said he did not understand how his DNA could be there.
The detectives continued.
There were additional items from the crime scene.
His DNA had appeared there too.
The room was becoming smaller around him.
For forty years, uncertainty had protected whoever killed Judy.
Now Mitchell was sitting across from detectives hearing that microscopic biological evidence placed him inside the case.
He could no longer simply claim there was no connection.
He needed another explanation.
Then he made a statement that instantly told detectives they were extremely close.
"Nobody died."
The problem was that the woman they were discussing had died.
Mitchell insisted that when he left, she had been alive.
He said he had done nothing that should have killed her.
He had tied her up.
That was all, according to him.
She was fine.
Think about the contradiction.
Moments earlier, Mitchell claimed he did not really know which incident detectives were talking about.
He claimed uncertainty.
He questioned why his DNA was present.
Now he was confidently stating the condition the woman had been in when he left.
She was alive.