A reminder, as I told you before the break, the next story is absolutely fascinating, but terrifying and very disturbing. So we want you to be aware of that. We want to make the decision whether you want to stay with us or maybe opt out for the next 10 minutes or so.
So just giving you that I’m looking at a photograph of a 12-year-old American high school student, a lad named Craig Chandler Price, 12 years old. Within a year, that young man had brutally and pointlessly knifed to death a female neighbour and got away with it. Two years later, however, aged 15,
Price became the USA’s youngest ever serial killer when he slaughtered a 39-year-old mother, her 10-year-old daughter, who witnessed that murder, after which he crushed the skull of the woman’s seven-year-old daughter, who’d seen the first two murders. He also inflicted 30 stab wounds on the It’s a must-read. Good morning, Leigh.
We spoke relatively recently about a previous book of yours, I Don’t Write Mondays, about Brenda Spencer, the spree killer, the teenage spree killer. This is a very different story involving a much younger person, somebody who at, what, 13 years old claimed his first victim. What was he going through in his own life, then, that may possibly have pointed him towards this?
Well, morning to you. It’s great to chat to you again. I think it’s difficult to understand why a 13-year-old does anything. But of course, why they would sneak into the neighbor’s house and, you know, stab to death someone essentially asleep. It’s a shocking story. The book titled Boy Next Door. It’s exactly what it was.
I mean, I know that those words conjure up somebody who’s handsome and, you know, that boy next door is the one you always want to be with. But this is quite a different story. And the reason why I titled it Boy Next Door is because he one day will get out of prison.
This kid who was 13. Kills one neighbor, takes a two year hiatus, and then slashes to death a family. Both these properties that he entered as a teenager are about 100 yards as the crow flies from his house. So this is literally within the circumference of his small, tiny neighborhood.
He scared the bejesus out of everybody in his little town, and nobody knew it was him for two years. It’s a remarkable story.
Now, I think, as you point out in the book, the services of profilers were calling the question on the murders. And they thought they were looking for somebody completely different, did they not?
Well, we go back in time. I’m a harsh critic of the FBI forensic analysis and all that stuff, profiling. And we now know, 50 years after them doing it, a lot of it is hocus pocus. They were playing the odds. So it was assumed that because this was an all white neighborhood and because the crimes are so grisly, it must have been somebody who was white, who lived fairly nearby or traveled into the area. And it was most likely somebody who, you know, traveled on the weekends because this is when the crimes happened. And so I think they just jumped at what was probably the most obvious, not really following the trail. Two doors down from the first victim was, you know, somebody well known to the police. He doing a lot of breaking enterings. But it’s just the fact that he’s 13. It was just inconceivable. The 13-year-old could commit so many crimes.
So he went unnoticed by not just the police, but also by the FBI.
Now, before the break, we played some of the interview carried out with him when he was 15 and when the police had tracked down this young man. His mother was in the room for that. You’ve got some audio for us as well from when he was a much older person, because he’s still in prison at the moment, as you say, incarcerated. May will be released one day. And in this, I think he’s talking about that first murder and how he felt when he was just very close to his victim. Can you tell us about what we’re going to hear next, Leigh, please?
Yeah, you know, I built this curious relationship with this gentleman now. He’s in his 50s, Craig Price, and he is engaging, he is funny, and he is also very, very well liked by his old friends. They’ve all accepted that he is a serial killer and that he’s human, but humans also do very, very bad things.
And this is one of these dilemmas. I think we saw it as well with with Ted Bundy, where people said they actually liked Ted Bundy, even though they knew what a horror he was. This clip is me chatting to him. And I asked him, I said, look, Craig, I’m going to record you.
And I’d like you just to explain to me, you’re a 13 year old. And you’ve gone into this house. Tell me what was going through your head as you entered this home. And this is what he said.
I recall one particular moment while I was sitting about 10 feet away from the person I was about to kill. And the next room, just like literally 10 feet away, it was the living room area, small little walk-in kitchen, and a place where there was like a back door and a garage area. And I was sitting there.
And it wasn’t just about contemplating murder. It was more so how it was going to be accomplished.
I mean, that is so coldly self-appraising. It makes me think that he’s not somebody who has no empathy. Is he somebody you think without the capacity for human warmth or compassion?
You know, all of the above. He claims he was 13 and that he was acting out. And, you know, he entered some context. He entered through what was essentially an unlocked back door. And he slipped into the lounge area where Becky Spencer, a single mom who’s preparing to move the following day.
So the house is all packed up for her to leave. Her children were at her ex-husband’s house spending the night. She was alone and she was sleeping in the lounge because she’d already packed the bed away. So this woman was sleeping alone in the lounge to the glow of the television.
And he came and sat in the chair next to her. And when she awoke, he stabbed her to death. It’s gruesome. It is a gruesome story. And he was 13 when he did this. And it’s unbelievable.
Was there any sexual element to the first attack?
Neither of the attacks had a sexual element. And the police searched quite heavily for it. I think this was the part that threw them off the scent of Craig and everyone else. Because I think it was assumed that when someone so horrible I mean I’ll say it bluntly.
They catch a woman who’s alone, and they are a narcissist like the murderer. I think they believe there will always be a sexual element to it, or they knew her somehow, or there was some sexual relationship of some kind. In this case, there wasn’t, and they searched a boyfriend, the ex-husband.
They went through everybody who was in the neighborhood as well who could be a suspect and nothing. Two years went, and this crime was never solved.
And why do we think he stopped, you know, he kills this young woman. He gets away with it. He then stops for two years. What was going on in his life then, Leigh?
Well, I’ve asked him and he said that, you know, there was an element of fear and he was scared. And in the end, he explained it to me. And I’ve heard many stories, as you do from killers. He just said I was busy being a teenager. I had my own stuff going on.
And that seems like a very remarkable thing to say from someone who was murdered at 13. But on the other hand, teenagers do very bizarre things. And he just said that I was busy being a teenager. I didn’t realize that I hadn’t killed in two years.
And then he goes and makes up for it in the most horrendous of ways. He takes care of the entire Heaton family, you know, the two summers later. It’s incredible. Still just 15.
I don’t understand how he went on with his normal life while hiding that secret.
At such a tender age. There’s photographs that Leigh’s found at the back of the book of him on stage doing the Super Bowl shuffle as part of a school concert. He’s living a normal teenage life.
No suspicions whatsoever at all in the neighborhood at all?
Well, none. None whatsoever because of his age. And let me just, we talk about the Super Bowl shuffle, I mean, you know, this is sort of Sunday night, everyone’s watching the NFL, but he, as kind of the only black family in this all-white neighborhood,
He is quick to say that he was pointed out as playing this character in the Super Bowl Shuffle. You say he was the Fridge. So as all the kids were playing the different characters in this role, he was playing the Fridge. I mean, all Americans know who that is.
And so he was kind of put into this typecast role of the sort of the sort of Fat Albert, the jolly black kid. And I think that added to the fact that, you know, it couldn’t be him. Plus he was 13. He lived next door to this lady. It just wasn’t, it just didn’t seem conceivable.
Even if the evidence led to him, I don’t think anybody would have looked at it. I really don’t.
And then the nightmare descends again, terrifyingly, with Joan Heaton, 39 years old, whom he stabbed 57 times. And I think I mean, it seems fairly certain from your book that the daughters saw that attack because she’s calling to one to try and get the phone. He then kills the two daughters in the most appalling way.
There’s no words to describe this. There’s no way I can sort of describe it to you in real time without you having a visualization of what this would look like. Craig enters. He’s six foot. He’s about 18 stone. He grabs the mother with one hand. He grabs the older daughter with the other,
while the third child or sorry, the second child, the seven year old, stands literally frozen in place. And as he dispatches the mother, he then goes for the middle daughter. The younger starts to scream. He then finishes off the mum and goes into the kitchen to take care of the seven-year-old.
And he does this all within two minutes. And he describes it to me in a certain way. He talks about going back to the kitchen to get a bigger knife. And I’ve got another clip of his words, and this is him in his 50s, re-talking about that time. And this is chilling.
But then there was this big butcher knife, you know?
I remember like, you know, I can still feel the weight of it in my hands. And I’m looking at this now as an older person and I’m really focusing on really what was in my mind at the time.
I mean, those two little girls would be, one would be, what, 50 now, one would be 47, they’d have had lives, they’d have had families, and that was crushed, completely destroyed on that night. And because of his age, there seemed a chance, in the way the law was that it’s on Rhode Island, it’s happened, that he could have been out by the age of, what, 21? Is that right, Leigh?
Yeah, exactly right. And Rhode Island is one of the original 13 colonies. So it’s the smallest state in the Union. It’s that tiny little dot that’s above New York, way in the top right-hand corner of America. Most people have heard about it, don’t really know where it is. It’s not that far from Boston.
It’s kind of just down the road. It’s a beautiful state. It’s a lovely place to holiday if you can afford to go. Let’s put it like that. But it also has some of the oldest laws. And one of them at that time in the 80s was that anybody who commits a crime before they’re 16 They can only be held in prison until they’re 21, regardless of what they do. So Craig Price, America’s youngest convicted serial killer, is arrested one month before his 16th birthday. So the moment that he confesses and the police are high-fiving, they’ve got the guy, some great groundwork by the local cops, all hats off to them. They did something the FBI couldn’t do. Then suddenly it was bittersweet because they realized that They’ve got five years and the clock’s ticking. It won’t be long before this kid’s out.
And that provokes a huge outcry, understandably, not just locally, it seems, from your book, Leigh. Do we know N Leigh Hunt, author of The Boy Next Door, the shocking true story behind America’s youngest ever serial killer, published by Mirror Books, that provokes an absolute furor and uproar, Leigh.
Well, what would you what would you notice? Let’s let’s troubleshoot this. What would you do? I mean, in this in this country, we’ve had a number of cases this year where the sentences have been too lenient and we pushed back with the Home Secretary to get something changed. This is the change of state legislature.
They created a bill and literally called it the Craig Price bill that didn’t go far enough. So they created a second one, which they gave a just as tremendous name, the Craig Price two bill, the sequel, and both were passed in the state legislature, which exists today. But didn’t change the law for Craig Price.
So he was virtually, virtually one week away from coming out of prison. The parents had made his bedroom. They’d moved to a different town. They made his bedroom up. They had bought him clothes to wear when he came out of prison. Everybody in sort of North Rhode Island and South Massachusetts were preparing for Craig Price to come out of prison. And lo and behold, he revealed himself. And this is where I think The argument goes, is it okay to stretch the law to protect your community? And that’s sort of the second half of the book, and it’s amazing what Rhode Island does to protect their community.
Well, I don’t want to give too much away about that, but what do you make of the changes in this man in prison? He’s now a very devout Christian, apparently. You’ve spoken to him many times. I mean, is he somebody that could ever be Quite apart from the fact that these crimes would follow him through his life and the impact I want to talk about in a moment, but is he somebody you believe could ever be assimilated back into our society safely?
In all honesty, no, no. I think Craig, he’s an incredibly engaging He’s intelligent. He’s fun. And actually, when he calls, we sometimes have lovely chat, but I’m never far away from him describing the butcher knife or describing sitting in the chair before he attacks somebody. He has a dark rage inside him that comes out when he’s provoked.
And I think in prison, they know that they can just poke him. And he will go off and he will attack. In 2017, it’s exactly what happened. He attacked a cellmate and stabbed him a number of times, almost killing him, and is now serving 25 to life for attempted murder.
He has served his time for the serial killings and is now serving time for infractions whilst in prison. And whether or not I think he can simulate to real life outside of prison, I don’t think he’ll ever get that opportunity. I’m just not sure. That the powers that be and who he is and how he guards himself, I think the moment that he is ever close to getting free from prison, something else will happen. I’m just certain that his destiny is to forever be a convict and a convict that’s been created over time. I just don’t know how to say it other than I don’t feel he has the ability. And when he mentions it to you on the phone, is it in almost a proud, boastful way? Or is it almost a therapy talking to you?
It’s not boastful at all. I mean, again, if we think back to that recording you just played, I mean, there is a hint of remorse in this. I don’t think he’s without remorse of what he’s done. He’s very aware of the pain that he’s caused an awful lot of people.
But he’s also very true to himself in saying that I couldn’t resist. So I think he’s with his own conflict, and I think that’s the mind of a serial killer. I think is that even when they say, I know I can do that, eventually they reveal themselves next time to just be as gruesome as they were.
But there is remorse, and it is something remorse is taught in the American penal institution like this in this country. They’re taught what to say. But I do note some remorse with what he says. I just don’t think he can control himself.
It’s an incredibly moving book. I think it’s a very important book. It’s called The Boy Next Door, the shocking true story behind America’s youngest ever serial killer, written by our friend N Leigh Hunt, published by Mirror Books out now. And it’s far more than just a true crime book because it shows absolute compassion for the victims as well. And when I started the book, I read the dedication is to a woman called Kim. And I wasn’t sure if there’s somebody in your own life, you know, or whatever. It says, this book is dedicated to Kim. Forever the sister, mother and protector. Peace be with you. But this is a woman.
Who’s in the life of the killer, is she not so, Leigh?
She’s his older sister. And, you know, I start the book, The Dedication, and I think the last sentence of the book is to Kim. She was his older sister. She was incredibly popular. She had a lot of friends in town. She strayed A’s through school. She was a good egg, a real good egg.
And her parents were hardworking, living the American dream, and they had moved up from the south. They’d moved to this all-white neighborhood in Rhode Island, one of the nicest states in the Union. And they worked two jobs. Dad sometimes worked so much overtime, he was up till 2 in the morning at the Pepsi factory.
And their son did something that was so atrocious that the family just Hung their head in shame and disappeared into the middle of nowhere. And Kim has been the one who has never forgiven her brother, but she has helped him in prison. She’s made sure he’s had money to buy deodorant and shaving cream and things he needs in prison, even when her own life wasn’t so financially secure. I just think she’s a really good, decent person. And serial killers, they leave a lot of shrapnel. They hurt an awful lot of people with the actual victims. They destroy people’s lives. They destroy communities. But actually, They destroy their own family, and I just wanted to make it very clear that Kim is loved even though her brother loved no one, if that makes sense, that she’s a good person, and that it’s the small thing that I could do. When you write a book about serial killers who do so many horrible things, it’s hard to – when you write the truth, it’s hard to look out for the victim. But I wanted to make sure that Kim wasn’t forgotten, so that’s why I dedicate to Kim, and Kim Price is just a good person.
That’s a remarkable read, it’s called The Boy Next Door, published by Mirror Books, out now by our friend N Leigh Hunt. He’s been talking to me, Paul and Kane, readers on talk Sport and on talk, but we are live till five.
