WHAT DROVE BRIGHT TO KILL?

How much Larry Bright lurks inside all of us?

We'd like to think none. We'd like to believe we harbor none of the
twisted wiring or bloodlust that drove the Peoria County man to wring
the life out of eight women.

Yet, according to Bright, he didn't feel a murderous spark until he
killed his first two victims by happenstance: When they tried to
steal from him, he lashed out violently and they ended up dead.

Bright liked the way killing made him feel. So he went on a
self-described "hunt" and slew six more women.

Granted, most of us don't put ourselves in the position of accidental
murder. Still, upright lives can and do unravel in ways people never
expect. Wall Street wizards end up on Skid Row. Suburban housewives
land on death row.

Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons - who struck a deal that
sends Bright to prison until he draws his last breath - thinks
Bright's lethal impulses long had lain dormant under the surface,
then burst forward upon the first exciting jolts from the thrill of the kill.

"It's almost frightening, because no one ever thinks, 'There's a
killer inside me,'" Lyons says. "But if you did (commit murder),
you'd like to think you'd feel complete remorse. Or, would you think,
'I like that' ?"

When bodies of black women began turning up in Peoria and Tazewell
counties in 2003 and 2004, authorities wondered if they were looking
for a killer who had an ax to grind either against African-Americans
or (according to some of the victims' lifestyles) prostitutes. So
police turned to the streets, giving notebooks to streetwalkers and
urging them to jot down notes about suspicious johns.

The tactic worked, as one prostitute's tips eventually led
investigators to take a hard look at Bright, leading to his arrest.
But police found no apparent hints of racism. Rather, during his more
peaceful years, Bright had dated black women. Moreover,

his taste in pornographic movies - which apparently began at the same
time of his 15-month killing spree, tended almost exclusively toward
African-American actresses.

Relatives pointed to prison for a possible motive. At age 19, after
his only other arrest, he did a two-year stint for residential and
vehicular burglary. When he got out, kin say, he seemed changed, with
a rougher edge that soon included a taste for hard drugs like cocaine.

Could a prison assault have prompted Bright to seek revenge after his
release? Police doubt so, considering almost two decades passed
between Bright's prison sentence and murder spree.

In extensive interviews last year with police, Bright sometimes would
blame the murders on his drug habit. He first learned to smoke pot at
a young age with his now-dead father. Several years ago, a
construction-job back injury led to his dependence on prescription
painkillers. By the time of the slayings he'd become addicted to crack.

Other times during interrogations, Bright hinted at psychological
trauma. He'd make vague references like, "I heard voices."

However, authorities dismissed the drug and voices claims as motives.
It seemed Bright was either weaving tales to solicit police
interviews to get him out of his lonely protective cell at the
Tazewell County Jail, or he was laying the groundwork to engender
sympathy in court.

"He was kind of giving a shotgun approach to find what works," says
Tazewell County Sheriff Bob Huston.

Authorities might never fully understand what turned Bright into a
repeat murderer. They've had to almost entirely rely on Bright for
insight into his head, and a serial killer hardly rates as a
foolproof resource.

Still, authorities say his accounts of the first murders sound truthful.

In July 2003, he picked up Sabrina Payne, 36, on the South Side. They
made a deal: In exchange for sex, he would provide crack cocaine.

In his pickup he drove to the 500 block of West McClure Avenue, where
he shared a small house owned by his mother. After they conducted
their deal, Bright said, he caught Payne taking money from his trousers.

"What the hell are you doing?" he exclaimed before punching her in the throat.

As she went limp, he pummeled her further. Soon, he determined she was dead.

He dumped that body in Tazewell County. Soon thereafter, Bright's
mother sold the McClure Avenue home and moved to West Starr Court,
just outside of Peoria's western city limits. There, Bright lived in
a tiny guest house while his mother resided in the main ranch home.

The next victim, Barbara Williams, 36, died almost identically to the
first: sex-for-drugs deal, theft attempt, throat punch, dumped body.

Despite the stories' similarities, police have few doubts as to their
veracity, especially the attempted thefts that prompted the deadly
attacks. As a matter of course, prostitutes often try to rip off
their customers.

Regardless, after the second murder, something evil clicked inside
Bright's head. He'd developed a taste for slaying.

"It stimulated him," says prosecutor Lyons.

Lyons says two forces might have kindled Bright's fondness for
killing. As with rapists or arsonists, Bright might have become
consumed with the excitement and power of the dead. And like an
otherwise straight arrow who gets addicted to drugs after the first
time, Bright became hooked on murder.

As he later told police, "I knew then I would kill the others that I
would pick up. I went out hunting."

Six more would die: Brenda Erving, Linda Neal, Shaconda Thomas, Laura
Lollar, Shirley Ann Trapp and Tamara Walls.

Two corpses he dumped in fields; the others he burned beyond
recognition in a pit outside his home.

After his arrest in early 2005, police asked Bright if he'd intended
further slayings.

"I don't know," he replied. "Of course, I knew the police were looking for me."

But Lyons has no doubts that more women would've ended up dead, had
not police tracked down Bright: "My opinion is, he wouldn't have
stopped, just because that's not how serial killers are."

Lyons recounted that Arlie Ray Davis and Joe Miller - Peoria's other
two serials of recent past - also ended their sprees only upon arrest.

Moreover, Lyons noted a common thread between all three killers: a
"very strong and peculiar attachment to their mom - a
far-greater-than-conventional attention to their mom."

Lyons doesn't know how to interpret that commonality. Did that
exceptional closeness somehow contribute to the killers' psyches? Or
did their inner problems prompt them to cling to their mothers?

Moreover, all three had particular fetishes and practices. Though
each was different, they shared a trait of repetition, rarely
straying from their likes and methods.

Bright, of course, focused on black women, mostly prostitutes, whose
bodies he'd either discard in rural areas or burn outside his house.

Miller was a sadist who tied or cuffed his victims (again, mostly
streetwalkers) , then beat them with rods - the kind used to open and
close mini-blinds. After his murders, he'd typically roll a body into
an area rug, drag it to his car and dump it in a field.

Davis liked to trap his victims - usually either prostitutes or bar
flies - in the back of his car, from which he had removed the inside
door handles. He'd choke them to the point of asphyxiation, sometimes
going past the point of death. However, he never consummated any sex
act, possibly because he had tiny, deformed genitalia.

Miller remains in prison. Davis died behind bars. Neither divulged the motives.

So it might go with Bright. Local police tried one last time
Thursday, when Peoria County deputies escorted Bright to Joliet for
intake into the Illinois Department of Corrections.

A deputy simply asked Bright why he killed those eight women.
Bright's only reply:

"I don't know."