Each time Phil Redstone agrees to participate in these made-for-TV programs that attempt to delve into the psyches of serial killers, the memories rush back into his mind.
The images, the conversations – and especially the emotions.
“I remember most of the details, but we’re going back 30 years, so I’ve got to go back through the case files and do some research, just to make sure of the timeline,” the Town of Orchid police chief said. “If you’re going to do these things, you want to be properly prepared.
“But every time I do it – because of the brutality of the crimes, the pain endured by the families and the frustration of how long it took for the whole thing to play out – it dredges up a lot of feelings that I’ve tried to suppress.”
So it was no surprise that Redstone “got a little choked up” last month, when he was interviewed by a two-man crew from an independent, British-based television production company that is filming a series of documentaries on serial killers for the BBC.
He was the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office’s lead investigator when David Alan Gore raped, tortured and murdered Vero Beach teenager Lynn Elliott in July 1983 and later confessed to killing five other women in Indian River County during the previous two years.
In fact, Redstone accompanied Gore when the killer led detectives to local citrus groves in search of shallow graves where he said he and his cousin, Fred Waterfield, who is serving life in prison, had buried other victims.
Gore, a former citrus grove caretaker and fired auxiliary deputy, was convicted of first-degree murder in the Elliott case and, in 1984, was sentenced to death. After spending 28 years on Death Row at the Florida State Prison at Starke, where he exhausted countless appeals, he was finally executed on April 12, 2012.
At the time of his death, Gore was serving five consecutive life prison terms for the other killings.
“People seem to have a lot of interest in crime shows, even the ones you see on the major networks,” Redstone said. “And the documentaries about serial killers seem to be very popular, probably because people want to know what makes them tick.”
Adding to the allure of the Gore case was the fact that his killing spree had occurred in and around Vero Beach, a small, quaint, seaside community thought to be immune from such evil. Then there was the Gore-Waterfield family tie, which prompted headline writers to dub them, “Killing Cousins.”
And as the story spread across America, Redstone’s involvement led to appearances in documentaries on Court TV, History Channel and A&E.
“I still run into people who say, ‘I saw you on TV last night,’ ” said Redstone, who grew up in Vero Beach and spent 25 years with the Sheriff’s Office, eight as a detective, before retiring and becoming the Town of Orchid police chief in 2005. “I guess they’re still showing the repeats on TV.”
Though Redstone had turned down offers from other groups he didn’t find credible enough, he said he liked the recent pitch from TwoFour, a global company that is producing a series tentatively titled, “Born to Kill?”
“They had seen one of the other shows I did and sent me an email,” Redstone said. “So I checked out their website, looked at a link of a previous show and it was very well done.”
The TwoFour crew spent five days in Indian River County, interviewing Redstone, former State Attorney Bob Stone, members of Waterfield’s family and others involved in the Gore case. The crew also visited locales connected to the murders.
“As you can imagine,” Redstone said, “a lot of the landscape has changed.”
The documentaries, which could be televised as early as this fall in Europe, will explore the long-unanswered question about serial killers: Are they a product of nature or nurture?
“That’s the crazy thing about it,” Redstone said. “As much as I was around him and talked to him – the interviews, going out to the citrus groves with him, all his statements – I never had a clue as to why he did it.”
Nor does Redstone know if there are still bodies buried in other shallow graves around Florida.
“How many others are out there that we don’t know about?” Redstone asked rhetorically. “Based on things he said, there could be several unsolved cases. But we don’t know. We only know about the ones he talked about.”
And that bothers him.
Still.
Yet, when the right opportunities come along, Redstone continues to go back to the case files, do the necessary research and recall the images, conversations and emotions connected to his role in our community’s most-storied murder case.
He doesn’t get paid. He doesn’t get any meaningful notoriety. He’ll probably never get the answers he wants.
But this isn’t about him.
“I don’t do these things for me,” Redstone said. “I do it because there’s a lot of bad guys and crime out there, and I want to educate people and make them aware, so maybe we can prevent some things.”
And that’s worth dredging up a few unpleasant memories.
