Kller Teen Stalks Texas Town | The Friday the 13th m*rders
I’ve been doing this police work for 42 years. These things don’t happen in Panama, Texas. I’ve been slashed at with a knife a couple of times. I’ve been shot at a couple of times. But Friday, July the 13th, 1990, I will never forget that night. The teenager had stabbed Jimmy Britain. This was a totally unprovoked attack on an innocent guy and we’re looking for the suspect.
It was scary that we had no way of letting people in pain know what was happening. They’re completely unaware that there’s a k!ller out there. It’s the middle of the night. People in Panel are asleep home in bed. Don’t have a clue what’s going on. Their doors are unlocked. Their windows may be open. And they have no idea that there might be danger.
When the officers arrived, they found Jimmy Britain was bleeding. He had multiple slash wounds across his torso. Even though he was terribly wounded, he was conscious. Jimmy Britain told him he recognized his attacker. It was his stepdaughter’s exboyfriend. His name was Kenneth Glenn Milner, but he was commonly called Glenn.
Jimmy thought Glenn Milner was bad news. He didn’t really want him around his stepdaughter. Jimmy prevented them from having a relationship because Glenn had several interactions with law enforcement in panhandle. He was a person that the school and law enforcement were concerned about hurting people or k!lling people.
A couple of years ago, he climbed up on the water tower at our city park and was threatening to jump off because his girlfriend had broken up with him. And police officers were able to persuade him to come down. Not long after the water tower incident, he drove to Palader Canyon and proceeded to drive off a cliff in another attempt to commit suicide.
There’s a 600 ft drop at probably a 10 to 20% grade and he survived that. Following that, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and he was there for a while and he learned to play the roles I think that the doctors wanted him to play. But once he got out and then, you know, here we go to July the 13th, he attacked Jimmy Britain.
You know, we got to stop this guy before he hurt somebody else. or maybe even k!ll somebody. We knew where he lived and so we went to his house looking for him. Parents didn’t know where he was. You have to be concerned that they might not have been truthful. So, it’s very possible that he could have been hiding in there. Everybody had their pistols out!!!
[part 2]
Most police officers are very brave and valor means a lot, but that don’t mean they’re not scared. We entered his room. If a mouse had ran across the floor, I’d have probably shot that sucker six times. The room was painted black and the walls. You’d expect to see things like a Rockstar poster or a Playboy Bunny poster.
And he had slasher movie posters on the wall. Just grotesque, bloody, deadly things. Plus, there was a bunch of grotesque masks. I’m not talking two or three. I’m talking 12 or 15. One mask was modified to show that part of the facial features had been blown away. [Applause] to look down and see what looked like a corpse laying on the floor.
There was a fake corpse in that room. It’s just a shock to the senses. To me, it tells me he’s creepy and that his intentions are not healthy and that he has a warped sense of reality. We found something even more disturbing. a handwritten hit list of people that he planned to k!ll. That hit list had high school students.
They had adults. He wasn’t just after Jimmy Britain. That was just his starting place. We need to catch him before he marks any more names off that list. Frankie Garcia was just 17, was about to start his senior year. He was very sweet. That night, Frankie rode to an old barn out in the country that we called the haunted house.
It was an eerie place. It was just abandoned, empty. It had no electricity. Frankie had to walk up to the barn without knowing what was about to happen. that he was with a k!ller. The one thing that I do have is a desire to k!ll. I know it’s wrong. I have no problem distinguishing between right and wrong.
It’s just that I don’t care. After Jimmy Britain got hurt, we were hoping that things were settling down, but in reality, things were just beginning. This vengeance, this coldblooded m*rder going out with intention of hurting multiple people. Glenn’s parents told the officers that Glenn Milner and Craig Shackleford were close friends.
When the officers got to Craig Shackleford’s house, they could tell that he was on edge. He was nervous. He said something about Glenn was not the same the last time he talked to him. this voice even sounded different and that he acted like something snapped. So Craig tells officers, “I’ve got something you need to see.
” And he goes to a side table and pulls out a handwritten note to Craig from Glenn Milner. The note said, “Don’t ask questions. Just do as instructed.” cryptic instructions to go to places in the country and look under railroad trestles and there’s a box. Open the box and follow the instructions. This kid was playing some sick games.
I’m thinking, what in the world’s going to happen next? The bridge where Glenn told Craig the box was is on a dirt county road about four miles northwest of panhel out in the sticks. A road block on 221 in the middle of the night when you didn’t know what you’d run into. It could be a pretty scary place.
We’re looking around under the road tucked away. We found a green ammunition box. It’s risky opening that box. It was scary. This thing going to blow up when I open the lid. Is it a booby trap? You don’t really have time to have a bomb squad to look it over. So, you just man up and do what you got to do. Open the thing.
and we were scared to death. [Applause] It wasn’t booby trap. And inside the box, we found three handwritten notes in a tape. The tone of the letters was that Glenn didn’t expect to survive the night and that he was somehow trying to convey them goodbye. Jimmy Britain’s in the hospital and that Glenn Milner put him there and I think they’re just thinking what in the world’s going to happen next.
The letters were addressed to specific people. Craig Milner’s parents and Kenja who was an intern at an Amarella TV station. This is a picture of me on the night I graduated high school in 1988. And it was during the time that I dated Glenn Milner. We dated from around May through probably the end of July. We spent lots of time at the park talking about our futures and what we wanted to do.
He was funny and fun and kind. He always called me princess, but he ended up kissing another girl and I wasn’t okay with that. By 1990, I was really busy with college. I wanted to be a news reporter at one of the affiliates in New York or Washington. That was kind of my dream. We talked on the phone probably weekly and then eventually that kind of became monthly and then you know every couple of months.
The police told me that there was a note Glenn had written to me along with a tape. The note said, you know, I’m really sorry that I’ve done this, but on the upside, hey, here’s the story of the decade for you, princess. Mother, daddy, I’m sorry that I’d end up like this. It’s not your fault. There’s nothing.
It’s It’s tear tier. Psychological interior. I always want to be better at something than to somebody else and this is my chance. Kenneth Glenn Milner was a student in my high school. He made good grades. He dressed nice. He carried himself well. Everything about Glenn, you thought that he was going to be successful.
We had a few classes together. My freshman, sophomore, which was his junior senior years. Glenn could be charming. He wasn’t unattractive. He had good hair. And in the 80s, we parted it in the middle and feathered it back. And he certainly did that. That’s that’s really really not the whole the whole me.
And this home show everybody my dark side. In theater arts using a styrofoam bust. He made the Hellraiser character with the pins in his heads. He was very talented in the makeup and mask and the behind the scenes stuff for movie making. Glenn definitely had an affinity for horror movies. That delicious tingle of being, you know, scared.
He idolized Ted Bundy, Manson, Jack the Ripper. what I’m going to do. It’ll be very brutal and just very sadistic, bloody, but it’ll get people’s attention. I don’t want to hang around this this life anymore. I’m ready to go into the next room. I’m ready to cross and go beyond the door. You know, there’s there’s nothing here for me that I want.
I feel sorry for the victims I’m taking. a few except for you know a few which I’m sure people will know which ones I mean I will take great pleasure in totally destroying office space this earth we’re very Christian conservative community and in the 80s there was a big satanic panic it became very well known that he was into satanic activities and beliefs he was reading the book of Necronomicon and it gives you ritual things you can do to get closer to Satan.
I heard that he was also drinking cat’s blood. He really believed that he could be the son of Satan and be closer to him by having the name Damian. I chose it. It’s synonymous with destruction, death, doom. It fits me more than anything with the dark side in me that a lot of people haven’t seen. I know that he used to call himself Damian, but he never showed that part of himself with me.
And so I wasn’t afraid, but yeah, I probably should have been. Glenn had scripted himself a horror movie where he’s the star and bore the ponds. It was apparent that Milner had nothing to lose, that he felt like he was not going to survive the night, and that he was not afraid to die, and he was going to do everything he could to hurt the people on that list.
We felt like time was running out. Happy Friday 13th. Glenn Milner expected Friday, July 13th, 1990 to be his last day on Earth and that he really wanted to go out hurting people or k!lling people. Then that’s what he was going to try to do. We did a welfare check on everybody on the hit list. But because everybody didn’t have a cell phone in their pocket, you had to go knock on doors and talk to people face to face.
There was a number of high school students that Glenn didn’t consider his friends or that he felt might have wronged him in some way. It’s after midnight by this time and the investigators learned that there had been a party at Lake Mlelen. Glenn had showed up at that party. It’s frightening to imagine most kids are probably bunched up, drinking a little beer, having a good time around a campfire.
They’re completely unaware that there’s a k!ller out there looking for their next victim. They’d have been easy targets. The students said they saw Milner at Lake Mlullen, but he kind of walked around by himself with his hands in his pocket. He didn’t say much to anybody. Somebody saw him take some pills. Glenn was kind of quiet, observing everyone, kind of looking around.
He had a few drinks. And then he proceeded to get sick, was grabbing his stomach. And the next thing they knew, he just left. Well, first thought is some sort of relief. He could have done a lot of damage. And then we’re thinking, hey, this ain’t over with yet. This kid that’s hellbent on k!lling people is on the loose.
Friday the 13th was a normal day. You know, I worked, we had dinner with the kids, and I think we had hot dogs. I remember putting my son to bed that night in his Ninja Turtle sheets and uh we went to bed. Life was good. We were laying in bed asleep and all of a sudden the doorbell rang. I looked at the clock.
It was at 2:45 and I thought, my goodness, who ring the doorbell at this time. When I went to the door, I looked through that little peepphole. All I saw was yellow eyes. And it just floored me. I thought, “My brain’s doing a trickle in my mind. It can’t be yellow eyes out there. I kind of blinked my eyes and that’s when I saw Glenn standing there.
It just felt like there’s something back here telling me this is not good. So don’t let him in. He looked at me and he said, “I really need to come in and talk to you.” And I said, “Glenn, you’re not coming in my house.” I mean, I could see it in his eyes. He wasn’t the Glenn Miller I knew. That night when I looked at him, I knew he was possessed.
I couldn’t see his hands. I said, “Glenn, what do you got in your hand down there?” The first bullet felt like somebody hit me with a baseball bat in the gut. And I thought, “What was that? What hit me?” The second shot blew my leg out from underneath me. I just thought to myself, “This can’t be happening.
” And then my mind changed drastically. And I was worried about Patty and my kids. He was going to k!ll us all. He already had put his finger in the bullet wound. So, his hand was falling. So, I just grabbed his hand and put my fingers in there with him, try to plug the hole. And I told her, I said, “Honey, I love you and I want you to know.
I want you to go on. I’m not going to live.” I found the police station phone number and called them and told them. And the whole time he was telling me, “Tell them Glenn Milner.” The scariest part, you’re laying there waiting on the ambulance and you’re not real sure where he is. Maybe Milner was still outside. Maybe he was coming back.
That call came across the radio. I heard from the dispatcher in a loud voice, “Oh my god, he just did another one.” I thought he’d taken another person off the list. We didn’t know where he was. We didn’t know where he’s going next. And if that won’t scare the be Jesus out of you, I don’t know what will. [Applause] At this point, the search was a bunch of police cars driving back and forth on every street in town looking for him, spotlighting down alleys, looking at the park.
And then I heard on the radio that Glenn Milner had been spotted parked in front of the Panama Police Department and Milner’s car was parked facing the curb. Glenn Milner was sitting in the car. I didn’t notice the pistol at first. I should have when I got out of the car. I remember Trooper Davis saying, “Watch out. He might shoot your ass.
” Our fingers were on the triggers, but we were ready. Glenn, he was sitting in the car, planted himself in the driver’s seat with the barrel of the gun under his chin, not moving. So Milner had planted himself right in front of the Panama Police Department and he was prepared to k!ll himself and go out in a blaze of glory.
We were saying, “Glenn, put the gun down. Glenn, put the gun down. Put the gun down.” And for some unknown reason, here I am and you’ve got me. He was not defiant. He was just kind of blank. He wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t kicking. He wasn’t bragging about what he’d done. Glenn told officers the reason he didn’t k!ll himself in front of city hall was that he forgot the words to the incantation that he was required to say before he k!lled himself by his satanic beliefs.
And he was afraid to k!ll himself without saying those words first.
