Part Four
PART
FOUR
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Criminal Confessions, Season 7: The Carnival Killer
EPISODE 4—UNEDITED INTERVIEW WITH SAMUEL FIGG
Location: Washington State Men’s Penitentiary, Walla Walla, WA
JANA JONES [PRODUCER, OFF CAMERA]: You look pale. Do you need to take a break? Maybe some food?
SAMUEL FIGG: An egg salad sandwich would be nice.
JONES: Egg salad?
FIGG: They make ’em pretty good here. My appetite ain’t much these days. Ask Barry, the CO out there. He knows who to talk to in the kitchen. [laughs] People here are a lot nicer to you when you’re dying.
JONES: [muffled conversation] Okay, the sandwich is coming. Can you continue?
FIGG: You know what’s funny? I used to say, “I got nothin’ but time.” But that’s not true anymore. Time is the one thing I don’t have.
JONES: Can you continue?
FIGG: Anything for you, pretty lady.
JONES: You were arrested in Seattle for Gina DiMaggio’s murder. They were then able to tie you to Evelyn Duncan from San Diego, Crystal Fankowski from San Francisco, and Karla Twain from Beaverton, Oregon. You said you were making your way up the coast that summer.
FIGG: That’s right.
JONES: You only passed through Seaside that one day. I’m just trying to understand why you would confess to Lorelei Glass’s murder if you didn’t do it.
FIGG: In Seattle, they interrogated me for two days. Hardly any food. Minimal water. By the end of it, I would have said anything.
JONES: Forty-eight hours with no food or water? That’s a huge violation of your rights. It’s hard to believe that the Seattle Police Department would do that.
FIGG: Who said it was Seattle PD? Nah, it was Seaside PD. I guess the
Seattle cops called the Seaside cops after they searched my car and found that picture of me and Lorelei.
Their deputy chief himself drove up to question me about her.
Let me tell you, small-town cops are way meaner than big-city cops.
Small-town cops have all the time in the world, and they take it real personal when you do anything to fuck with their town or their people.
JONES: So you’re accusing Seaside PD of forcing a confession out of you? Where was your lawyer?
FIGG: Didn’t have one yet. And you gotta stop putting words in my mouth. I’m not accusing anyone. I’m just telling you what happened.
JONES: Let’s talk about the confession.
FIGG: It went so long because I wouldn’t confess to Lorelei.
The other four, they had me cold there. But I didn’t do Lorelei, and I wasn’t gonna say I did.
Eventually someone else came into the interrogation room.
Some prosecutor, forget her name now. Eager to make a name for herself.
Turned out she knew the deputy chief from Seaside.
JONES: [consults notes] The prosecutor was Leslie Swan. She grew up in Seaside, then became an assistant district attorney in Seattle. She passed away two years ago.
FIGG: Swan, that’s it. She and the deputy were whispering in the corner for a bit. Then he left the room, and that’s when she made me the offer. By then, I was delirious.
JONES: And what was the offer?
FIGG: She said if I confessed to all five, they’d take the death penalty off the table.
So I thought, four life sentences, five life sentences, what difference did it make?
No matter what, I’m in here for life. It seemed like a reasonable deal.
[laughs] But now that I got cancer, turns out the joke’s on them.
No matter what comes of this, I’ll be dead soon.
JONES: I’ll ask you again. If you didn’t kill Lorelei, then who did?
FIGG: There was a guy hovering around that night. Watching us. Making our business his business. I didn’t like that. Hey, what did that Swan lady die of? The prosecutor?
JONES: Cancer.
FIGG: You see? It don’t matter what side you’re on. Cancer don’t discriminate, and death comes for us all.
JONES: The man hovering around. Do you know his name?
FIGG: Don’t remember. But when I see him in hell, I’ll be sure to ask him.