DEADLIER Than Bundy - Then He Grabbed the Wrong Woman

Are you ready to dive into the unknown? Join me, Peyton Moreland, on Into the Dark, the true crime podcast from Ono Media with a hint of horror and mystery. Each week, I dive into a different case, breaking down the facts, and pondering the age-old question, "Why do people do what they do?" Now sometimes the answer isn't so clear, and that's why I'll also explore conspiracy theories, hauntings, and all things spooky. From the Green River killer to the Mothman incident, we will unravel all of the questions that keep us up at night. So don't miss out, subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform, new episodes drop every Wednesday. Into The Dark, where true crime meets the eerie unknown. Full-foot trackers, monster hunters, time travelers, and more. The handler one day told her this whole thing about how they've been terraforming on Mars, and they're building a colony and they're recruiting specific people, a specific blood lines and specific talents and skill sets to go on to the planet. On Richard Serrett's Strange Planet, we're redefining reality. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Every town has a dark side. Can a killer ever really change? We're talking a man accused of murdering more than thirty women, more than Ted Bundy ever was. I mean, could he possibly be saved? A most of us would say no, there's not a chance. Monster like that is a monster for life, then again, most of us. But we've never been locked in a car with one for hours on end. But nothing but our own two hands and whatever words we can find to keep the situation level and stay alive. A one woman was though, and what she chose to do in that car is something people still have very mixed feelings about to this very day. Hey guys, it's Andrew and welcome to every town. Tonight, we're climbing into the passenger seat of one of the strangest and most unlikely hostage stories you'll ever hear. So, let's head on down to San Anton, Texas now. Meet the mom who wouldn't quit. This is the abduction of Margie Palm. It was the evening of Friday, December 11, 1981, and San Antonio is just about two weeks out from Christmas. The whole city was lit up and humming with that particular feel in that stretch of December, where everybody's in holiday mode and moving with purpose. Margie was 30 years old, married to property developer Bart Palm. And the two of them were raising a pair of little kids who write about now, were counting down the days. With the holiday closing in fast, Margie did what half the city was doing that evening. She pulled on into a K-Mart to knock out a few more gifts off the list. That's the whole reason she was there. That's the last minute errand. On an ordinary winter night, errands you run a hundred times and never want to remember running. Only Margie would remember this one for the rest of her life. Because this was the night everything changed for her, for her husband, and for those two kids waiting at home. She came out of the store with her arms full of bags, walked across the law to her suburban and popped the back to start loading everything in. It was fully dark by now. The law had gone kind of quiet and half empty because it was dinner time. And Margie, she was just focused on the task in front of her. Bags in the back get home to the fan, which is why she never even heard him coming. Well, I was walking to my car and when I got to the car, I felt something in my back. And I thought, what is that? And I turned around and there was this man standing there. He was shaking and crying and he had dressed in block. He had a gun. And by the time Margie sensed he was there, it was already too late. He was he pulled out a revolver, forced her into the passengers seat of her own car and climbed in behind the wheel himself. Just like that, the suburban rolled out of that lot and off into the night. Margie inside it, shaking. Her kid's Christmas presents still sitting in the back. This guy you grabbed her was a wiry son of a gun and he was pissed off and probably on drugs. He was agitated and unhinged. He shouted at her and threatened her. No one points started talking about going out in a blaze of glory about dying in some final shootout with the cops. Margie had no idea who he was or what he was going to do but he seemed like a man without a plan and nothing left to lose. And he was sitting two feet away from her and he was in control of the driver's seat literally. And the other thing was I hadn't read the paper so I didn't know that this man had done this, but it was headlines of our papers, newspapers and friends of mine told me they were helicopter circling San Antonio looking for this man. Margie had no way of knowing at the time but earlier that same morning, two women had been gunned down outside a place called Maggie's Restaurant on the other side of San Antonio. 21-year-old Kerry Scott had walked out and caught that same man in the middle of stealing her car. When she confronted him over it, he just shot her. Her friend Drew Valdez came running to help him. He shot her too. It all happened very fast and Kerry didn't make it. Drew though luckily survived. Now witness saw enough to send police straight to a place called the San's Motel. Only when officers rolled up on that motel the suspect clocked them before they could get through the door. And he squeezed himself out of a tiny bathroom window and vanished back into the city. And what police found waiting inside that room told them exactly who they were now dealing with. There was a young woman named Pamela Jackson who had been holding captive for about 11 days and another woman, Sarah Clark, who had been traveling right alongside him. Once he was loose again, his face had hit the airwaves. Police now had a name to go with it too. Stephen Maureen and it went up on every television broadcast in the city right alongside a warning. Helicopters carved circles over the rooftops. Officers fanned out across the roads and the bus terminals, telling people to stay inside and lock their doors. Because somewhere out there was an armed fugitive who had already proven just that morning and he'd kill without a second thought to get his hands on another car. In Margie meanwhile, she had missed all of it. She walked right past the danger the whole city was looking for, caught up in the busy day to day. And now she was riding straight through the middle of the search with a killer on the run. For hours, they just drove. There was no destination or plan. Just the two of them basically circling through San Antonio as the night wore on. Somewhere in all that aimless driving, Stephen reached back and started going through the bags in the back seat. All those gifts Margie had bought for her husband and her two kids. And you can see with those presence word to a man like Maureen, proof of a life he'd never had, a warm house, loving family. Everything he'd been shot out of sitting right there and shopping bags behind him. Well, it's set something off in him. He got angry and started accusing Margie of having it all, of being handed the exact life he'd been denied. Margie she didn't argue, instead she apologized. Apologized for her life she had every right to and for things she had done nothing wrong to earn. He was in that car keeping him talking felt a whole lot safer than letting the anger fester more than it already had. Unsure of what to do, Margie closed her eyes and she started to pray. This wasn't some clever play by her. Margie's faith was real and this was something she did every single day long before she ever climbed into that suburban. She even carried a little black notebook everywhere she went. Fill with Bible passages she'd copied out by hand. I sat back down and I sat put my hands back under myself and I kind of went like this and the next thing he said was oh my gosh I'm in a car with a religious freak. So sitting there in the dark with a revolver close enough to reach out in touch. Prayer was simply the one familiar thing she had left. So she prayed out loud for the man who was threatening to kill her. I saw a picture of myself take my hands out from under myself and put them on his head and command this demonic experience to come out of him. And moreon, he mocked her for it. But Margie, she kept going anyway, speaking to him as though the violence and the man carrying it out were two separate things, as though somewhere underneath all of it there was still a person in there worth reaching. I didn't work the way it does in movies, and moreon didn't break down and cry or pull over and let her walk away. I as mood kept swinging the whole time, rage and suspicion and something almost like ordinary conversation and then back around again. But still, somewhere in there against all odds, well he actually started to listen. And the other thing I was realizing was that the fear and terror that was in the car had left. After I prayed, all of a sudden this peace came in the car. And this is the strangest stretch of the whole ordeal. Because while every cop in San Antonio was tearing the city apart looking for this man, well he and Margie were just rolling through regular Friday night traffic right out there in the open. At a drive-through he called Margie his girlfriend and said it's so easy and natural. It was like the two had bonded. He grabbed some beer and then he complained about the religious cassette tape she had in the car. He eventually landed on a Christopher Cross song he liked and played it again and again, singing along behind the wheel like he didn't have a care in the world. To every single person they passed that night, well there were nothing more than a couple outrunning errands in a suburban. Only Margie knew the truth, but the man beside her was armed and that one wrong word would be the last thing she ever said. Several hours into this ride from Heck, Maureen pulled into a 7/11 and he sent Margie inside alone. In the second she stepped in, she saw Maureen's face staring back at her from the front page of the newspaper. That's when it finally hit her all at once, just exactly how much danger she was really in. So I went into the 7/11 and nobody was in there except me and it would have been very easy for me to escape. But again the Lord told me that I had told me stay in this thing. She thought about warning the cashier but Maureen was also staring at her through the window. She made some sort of progress with them and maybe it wasn't the right move at the time. That store was quiet and she feared that if he caught her signaling for help, he'd come through the door shooting so she said nothing. She just walked back to the car with the newspaper in her hands and Maureen's face staring up from the front page. He read the story and whatever control he thought he still had was slipping fast. I mean now he knew police and the public knew his face and we're on the lookout. He needed a way out of the city and to do that he needed some cash. Outside the story forced Margie into a phone booth and held the gun on her while she called Bart. She told her husband she decided to keep shopping and asked him to feed the kids, bathe them and put them to bed. It was strange for him to hear Margie was always home for that but nothing in her voice let Bart hear what was really going on. So Maureen bought a little more time with that and once back on the road he started talking about a son he had abandoned. He said he loved the boy and Margie hours deep into talking with him about forgiveness at this point turned it around on him. If his own child did something terrible she asked could he still forgive him? According to Margie well that question reached him in a way none of her preaching had. Maureen at this point actually pulled over and he began to pray. I was at the walls closing in or did Margie actually reach him or was it a true religious epiphany but we don't know. He stopped my car on the side of the road after looking all over the place and then his hands went up in the air like this and he said Jesus I'm sorry for everything I've ever done please forgive me I want to go to heaven. A little later at a rest stop he opened his revolver and dropped the bullets into Margie's purse and he promised her he would never kill again it appeared like she was making some progress but Margie she still wasn't free not even close because Maureen still had spare rounds in his pocket he had drugs on him and his mood had already flipped out warning half a dozen times that day an empty gun that can be reloaded and a promise from a man like this should be taken with a grain of salt. Margie didn't need to know whether the prayer was real but she just needed to keep this calmer moron behind the wheel as long as she possibly could. As they rolled on he said he wanted to get to Fort Worth meet televangelist Kenneth Copeland and and over his weapon. Margie pointed him toward the bus station in Kerville about 60 miles out. So I bought one ticket for him and I walked out you know holding it like that he was laughing and I opened the door and he said don't tell me it's going to Austin like he said yeah that's where it's going. At the station Maureen asked her to come with him as she reminded him her children were waiting at home. Before he left she handed in that little black notebook the one full of her handwritten Bible verses Maureen gave her a hug, kissed her on the cheek and walked toward the bus. Margie got in the car locked the doors and only then did she finally break down. Alone in her car driving herself home with Maureen's bullets still sitting in her purse. At home police were already arriving in response to Bart's missing persons call. Maureen showed them the ammo but she was still spooked by the whole thing and just wanted it all to go away. In order to do that she initially lied about where she had left Maureen. After everything he had said she already might escape and return to San Antonio and punish her family for betraying him. Later on inside the house though she told Bart the truth and his reply cut straight through the fear. And if this guy killed somebody else now while they knew exactly where he was headed all Bart said they'd have to live with that for the rest of their lives. So he called the police back and the FBI and word went out to officers down the line. I had a Maureen's bus as it rolled toward Austin. And by the time it arrived they were there waiting. A playing clothes police woman walked up to on right there in the terminal. Maureen had Margie's black notebook in his hands and in the early hours of December 12 he gave himself up without a fight. What did he say to the police officer that arrested him? Well he said if I had seen you earlier this morning there would have been a shootout and I would have killed myself but I met this lady today and she changed my life and I'll never be the same again. And so after eight hours this whole thing was finally over. And once he was in custody police sat Margie down with a stack of photos taken over the years and she could barely believe that they were the same man. Bearded in one clean shaven in the next the hair different the face different the whole expression different. At first she thought she was looking at 15 maybe 20 different men but every one of them was Stephen Maureen. And that was his real name Stephen Peter Maureen Born in Providence, Rhode Island who spent part of his teens down in Florida which was right about where his record starts. By 14 he was stealing cars and slipping out of custody. Needed on prison time before he was even out of his teens. Maureen would later describe those places as brutal and claim he had been abused inside them. On one of them the Florida school for boys that would eventually become infamous for exactly that. Decades of violence and unexplained deaths. It was a stretch of his life he came back to again and again. As an adult, he turned all of it into a method. And he drifted between cities, changed his look, in fact, police fake names. And it worked over and over. In 1981 alone, he was picked up under aliases in both California and Buffalo. In both times, they let him walk before anyone realized the man in front of them was wanted across the entire country. One of the earliest attacks tied to mourn goes back to San Francisco, September 26th, 1976. And the victim was just 14 years old, friend of his own sister. More and told the girl his sister needed her help and he got her to come back with them to his apartment in the Marina District. I once he had her inside, he gagged her and tied her up. And according to a San Francisco Examiner report, he strung her up from a hook in the ceiling with a television blaring to cover the noise. And then, for the next six hours, he subjected that child to the kind of torture that's too brutal to even detail. At one point, the girl looked up on a second floor window and started wondering if she could get enough momentum to throw herself through it. Nearly 50 years later, she'd explain it, saying that she figured a fall from that window would be a less painful way to die than staying in that room. I went more and finally took the gag off, she talked to 'em, and told 'em he was hurt and then he needed somebody to care about him. And she later believed that compassion. It was part of why he let her live at all. He eventually dunked her at a shopping center and Marin County bruised head to toe. Margie couldn't miss the parallel when she heard this. Another captive had reached the part of him that could still listen and she also walked away alive. Of course, this was years before, whenever the girl got through to, hadn't stopped a single thing that came after. (gentle music) The full scope of Moron's violence, well that's never actually been nailed down. As he moved across the country most his life, police looked at disappearances, assaults, and murders in state after state. Reports at the time, but the suspected victims, North of 30, later accounts pushed it past 40. Almost none of it though, was ever proven. Among the deaths investigators tied to him, were two young women who vanished from Las Vegas months apart. 18-year-old Susan Balotti left home to go shopping on January 16th, 1980 and never came back. Her body turned up that May near Bloomington, Utah, with a large stone laid over it. As she was too decomposed for the medical examiner to say for certain how she died though, damaged around her neck, pointed a strangulation. Five months later, 20-year-old Cheryl Daniel disappeared from Las Vegas supermarket lot. As she'd known Moron under one of his fake names, by the time her body was found, shot in the head out in the Utah desert. Well, he was long gone. Utah would charge him with both her murder and Susan's. He was still a fugitive then. By the time he was finally caught, Texas already had him headed for death row. He'd never stand trial for either woman. Three of his killings did stick though. Margi already knew about Kerry Scott, who was gunned down outside Maggie's the morning of the abduction, but never too more. Sheila Whalum, a 23-year-old former teacher, was strangled in a Colorado motel room. In 21-year-old Jenna Bruce, she was killed in Texas just days before Kerry. More and murdered her took her car and drove it towards Antonio. That was the car he was in with Sarah Clark and Pamela Jackson when the morning of December 11 finally arrived. So the chain of events that ended and Margi suburban let it all started well before she ever pulled into that K-Mart lot. Margi said that police later showed her the crime scene photos. It was women who had been bound assaulted and murdered. Until that moment, she hadn't really grasped what this man was capable of. Those pictures made her sick and forced her to reflect on just how close she'd actually come to being one of them. Four months after the bus station, more in a peered in court for the capital murder of Kerry Scott and Margi, she was sitting right there through the proceedings. In the courtroom, the man in front of her looked calmer than what she witnessed from him. In the end, more and was found guilty which left the jury to decide his punishment. Before they did though, Margi spoke in front of all of them and she described the hours in the suburban and the moment he removed those bullets. A lot of nash jurors to decide whether his prayer was sincere. They had to decide whether Moran was likely to commit further acts of violence. And based on what you've heard, they felt the same way and the answer was definitely yes. Moran was sentenced to death for Kerry's murder and Texas imposed another death sentence for Jenna Bruce's murder and Colorado convicted Moran of killing Sheila Whalen and imposed a third. Investigators tried and hoped he might identify other victims and resolve cases connected to his travel through the years but he never gave them the full account they were looking for. Moran wrote to Margi from prison, still a change man who was finding his real self. He called her and eventually spoke with her mother and her sister. And Margi even visited him around 15 times, usually to talk about religion and she also kept all his letters. That contact was pretty difficult for Bart. Let me Moran had abducted his wife, held a gun against her and now his calls were entering their home. That 14-year-old girl from California, the one who survived his early attack. So she believed fully that Steven's whole religious persona was just another alias he was using, adopted when he couldn't run away anymore. A Bart likely questioned the sincerity of it too, but Margi, she chose to believe him. And I don't think you can really blame her for that. I mean during the abduction her faith gave her something to say when fear might otherwise have taken over. And afterwards, it helped her live without allowing her hatred for Moran, the consumer. So they eventually caught him and he was executed. But there is a big prison ministry now as a result of his life. Moran asked Margi to attend his execution. She declined though, chose to spend that day with Bart. On March 12, 1985, however, she traveled to the Ellis unit in your Huntsville for one final visit. They sat there with a glass between them. Margi showed him photographs over children. They talked and they prayed. Moran said he regretted what his life had become. Though much of what he said still centered on what meeting Margi had given him. Shortly after midnight on March 13, Texas executed Steven Moran by lethal injection. He was 34 years old. His final statement was a prayer asking for forgiveness and committing his soul fully to Jesus. Now, whether he really believed all that, well, nobody's ever gonna know. Did he deserve what he got? Well, I'll leave that up to you to decide. So that's gonna do it for this episode of Every Town. Hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, well great, you've come to the right place for all the true crime stories you can handle. To go have a look around, 'cause we have a lot of episodes to dig into, little something for everyone. Remember to come back here next week for another episode filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because you never know. Maybe your town will be next. (gentle music)