1841
About 600 families originally settled in what was known as Peter's Colony, between 1841 and 1844.
about 0:06:15The story
Lancaster, Texas, is a suburb of Dallas in Dallas County, about 25 minutes from the city. It grew from Peter's Colony, settled by around 600 families between 1841 and 1844, and was laid out as a town in 1852 by a man named Bledsoe, who bought 430 acres from Roderick Rollins's widow and copied his Kentucky hometown. Bonnie and Clyde robbed the local bank there on February 27th, 1934, taking over $6,000. By the 1980s Lancaster was still a small town of perhaps eight to ten thousand people, though it has since grown to more than 41,000. The episode's story begins elsewhere, with a man born into chaos.
Both his parents were drug addicts and alcoholics. He had at least two older brothers and an older sister, and the family had no stability. By twelve he was an alcoholic, killed small animals and strangled a fellow student unconscious, believing he had killed him. He was diagnosed with toxic psychosis superimposed on residual schizophrenia, and later with catatonic schizophrenia. He also became addicted to methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin, drifting between Texas and California and committing petty crimes.
Rogers was passed out drunk in a chair. He took a few hundred dollars from Rogers's billfold but left $20 so it would not look like a robbery, then went to a drug house and shot heroin.
On September 2nd, 1986, Donna Sue Jester, 37, picked him up. Donna had worked 17 years for Southwestern Bell and retired in March 1986, and she spent her time helping people down on their luck. She took in stray dogs and hitchhikers, and her Lancaster house already held her adoptive mother, Dalpha Lorine Jester, 64, who was blind and bedridden, and Laura Lee Owens, a 20-year-old runaway from Florida who worked at a fast food restaurant and was searching for her natural mother. He slept in her car at first, then moved inside and began a relationship with Laura.
He became convinced that the house smelled of rotting flesh and that Donna was killing hitchhikers and burying them in the backyard. He also resented the women's complaints about his drinking and his relationship with Laura. On Saturday, September 27th, 1986, between 6 and 10 p.m., he attacked them. Donna was struck 14 times, Dalpha five times and Laura 21 times, with a steak knife and a three-inch camping hatchet. Laura had been at work and came home to find the others dead; she was caught on the back porch.
He was driving Donna's stolen wood-panelled station wagon the wrong way up a southbound lane of I-45, running cars off the road. He ranted about God and Jesus and banged his head against the police car until he cut himself. The bodies had not yet been found, and nobody knew the car was stolen. He cashed it in and hitchhiked away.
On Monday, September 29th, Donna's employer found the front door open and called police. A sergeant found what he took for a bundle of clothing and then realised it was a body. Donna and Dalpha were in the back bedroom and Laura on the back porch. Police also looked at a man named Thomas, Donna's former common-law husband, but he was on a military base in Georgia with a solid alibi.
A sighting in Houston was found to be mistaken, and by October 5th the search was scaled down. He gave the name Aaron Sanders and produced a birth certificate to prove it. He complained of a sore ankle, so police took him to Breckenridge Hospital and left instructions that he was free to go after treatment.
He said he was a cold-hearted son of a bitch, that killing felt like watching a movie, and that he had five more people he wanted to kill. He was held without bond. The court decided he would be shackled throughout, over defence objection.
On December 6th he was found unresponsive after taking a stored overdose of antipsychotic medication and was rushed to a hospital in Galveston. He was on life support, and on December 8th the Supreme Court refused a final delay. His last statement began, "Sorry, y'all", and said the California Youth Authority had created monsters.
He and Billy escaped the fire, but the women died.