Suspect’s Confession Described as Chilling

In 28 years as a police officer, Lt. Ray Griffith had never heard a confession as chilling as Andrew Urdiales’.

Not only did he describe how he killed eight women, Urdiales also offered a level of detail that left Griffith and a roomful of colleagues incredulous as they listened to the taped confession that he had made to Chicago police.

“It gave me cold chills,” said Griffith, who has investigated hundreds of murders for the Cathedral City Police Department near Palm Springs. “He was very methodical, very calm. I can’t remember what I wore last Friday--I can’t remember the details of my mother’s death--but this guy remembered everything. He sounded like a novelist. It was like the details, as much as his victims, were the trophies.”

Urdiales, 32, was indicted Tuesday on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated kidnapping. He is being held without bail in Cook County Jail in Illinois and is scheduled to enter a plea June 3.

Regardless of what happens in Chicago, Urdiales may stand trial in Orange County, where he allegedly says he killed disc jockey Robbin Brandley, 23, in a dark parking lot in Mission Viejo in 1986, marking the beginning of a nine-year string of killings in three states.

He claims to have killed three women near Chicago and five in California: three near Palm Springs, one in San Diego, and Brandley at Saddleback College, stabbing her more than 40 times in the back, chest, neck and hands.

Law enforcement officials in Illinois, Indiana and California say they have never met a suspect who documented his killings so thoroughly.

Urdiales’ attorneys, from the public defender’s office, declined interview requests.

Back home in Chicago, in the Slag Valley neighborhood on the city’s South Side, locals are processing the news that one of their own may be less the war hero his parents think of him as than a serial killer who, in a single conversation, may have solved eight homicides.

His confession was so detailed, Griffith said, that he could link Urdiales to 11 pieces of evidence to corroborate the ex-Marine’s version of killing Julie Ann McGhee, whose body was discovered by a jogger in a remote area of the Coachella Valley.

“If he didn’t do it,” Griffith said, “he at least had to be there. He knew how she was dressed, down to the brand of her shoes. He knew where and how he shot her, the ammunition he used, how much he used, the tattoos she wore.”

In November, a Hammond, Ind., police officer pulled him over for a routine traffic stop. Asked if he had a gun, Urdiales, without hesitation, answered yes, Miller said. He then handed over a silver revolver that would later prove crucial in putting him behind bars.

Hammond Officer Warren Fryer cited Urdiales for carrying a handgun without a permit. He let Urdiales go but kept the gun.

Nearly five months later, on the evening of April 1, Fryer was sent to the American Inn Hotel in Hammond, where Urdiales, of all people, had phoned police.

He was arguing with a prostitute, accusing her of taking personal papers, said Officer Brian Miller, a spokesman for the Hammond Police Department.

Fryer recognized him from their meeting in November, Miller said.

The prostitute told Fryer that Urdiales had taken her to nearby Wolf Lake, on the Illinois-Indiana border. He wanted to handcuff her and bind her with duct tape before having sex with her, Miller said. She refused and asked him to return her to Hammond, which he did, according to Fryer’s report.

“Fryer looked at this and thought, ‘This doesn’t sound right,’ ” Miller said, remembering two unsolved murders of prostitutes whose bodies were found in Wolf Lake.

On April 23, after test results connected Urdiales’ revolver to the weapon used in the Wolf Lake homicides, Chicago police arrested him at his home. Several hours later, he confessed--eagerly, Miller said, and with details that surprised those in Chicago as much as they would Lt. Griffith in Cathedral City.

James Alan Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston and the author of “Overkill: Mass Murder and Serial Killing Exposed,” said such detail is not uncommon among serial killers, who revel in their crimes and prize the memories of their atrocities as much as athletes recall feats on the playing field.

“Those who kill prostitutes have often convinced themselves that they’re doing something good for society,” Fox said, “and very often, they’re the serial killers who confess as soon as they’re arrested. They feel they’re cleaning up the streets, that their victims are hopeless sex machines, marginal people. . . . But when they’re confronted with the reality of what they’ve done, a wave of remorse washes over them, and they confess.”

Urdiales served in the Marine Corps from 1984 to 1991 as a field radio operator. He received a Good Conduct Medal, a Combat Action Ribbon and a National Defense Service Medal for his service during the Persian Gulf War.

He was stationed at Camp Pendleton from November 1984 to March 1986. Brandley was killed Jan. 18, 1986.

From May until mid-June of 1987, he was in Quantico, Va., and by July 1, was dispatched to Twentynine Palms, where he was stationed until June, 1989.

Except for the Brandley slaying, the modus operandi was almost always the same. He told police that his victims were women with whom he had sex, often handcuffing them and binding them with duct tape, then arguing with them and beating them up.

He then took them to deserted areas, where he shot or stabbed them--sometimes both--and left their bodies, according to police accounts of his confession.

In Slag Valley, Gary Zabala, 36, who grew up with Urdiales, remembers the “quiet, sullen kid” for an odd trait: He liked to jump out from behind the bushes and scare other kids in a wooded area near an old steel mill called “the pony.”

“He did it so often, but every time,” Zabala said, “it scared us half to death. That’s the part he enjoyed--scaring us.”