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Murder Sheet
A Conversation with William Noguera on Joseph Naso and Profiling Serial Killers on Death Row
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A
Discussion of violence, murder and rape. We also want to note that the episode is an interview with a man convicted of murder.
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B
We've all heard of profilers and forensic psychologists heading into prisons in order to interview serial killers about their dark, twisted crimes. But what if we told you that one such self taught profiler didn't have to travel far? What if we told you that a convicted murderer on death row managed to get infamous serial killers talking in order to learn their secrets?
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A
Sounds like something out of a fictional story, but it's not. We recently interviewed William or Bill Naguera. He spent years on death row with serial killers like Joseph Naso. Naso is a serial killer and rapist on death row for murdering four women. He has six confirmed victims murdered from 1977 to 1994 in California. Roxine Ragash Ashby, Carmen Lorraine Colon, Sharia Leia Patton, Sarah Dillon, Pamela Ruth Parsons and Tracy Lynn Tafoya. He was convicted of murdering four of them in 2013 by a jury in California's Marin county and was subsequently sentenced to death.
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B
Over time, Noguera began to gain Nassau's trust. In their conversations behind bars, Nassau gave crucial clues about his views on women, his modus operandi, and even possible additional victims.
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A
William Nogueira himself is a convicted murderer. In the spring of 1983, he was an angry young man who had just turned 18. He was a fighter trained in martial arts. Pressured by his father, he had been abusing steroids for years. He was a burgeoning criminal running a gang of young car thieves. That night, he went to his 16 year old girlfriend's home in La Habra, California.
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B
He and his girlfriend had been having problems with her mother, Javita V. Navarro. Javita told friends that she felt Naguera was such a bad influence on her daughter that she wanted to hire a hitman to kill him. Meanwhile, Noguera said he was told that Jovita had learned his girlfriend was expecting his child and that she had forced her daughter to get an abortion. He said that his girlfriend said she was stuck in an abusive household.
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A
On April 24, 1983, Noguero went to the Navarro home. He murdered Javita. There, he beat her with a heavy object and he strangled her. She died of asphyxiation. Noguera and his girlfriend claimed they had nothing to do with what happened. Noguera testified to that at his murder trial. But then a key witness flipped, testifying that she only went along with an alibi because she felt threatened by Nagueuera's criminal associates. A jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to death. He became the youngest inmate on death row in California.
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B
Naguera is now free. Years into his incarceration, higher courts took a look at his case. The court knocked down the idea that he was primarily motivated by insurance money. They noted that the witness who said that is mentally disturbed and not credible. In 2024, he was resentenced to 25 years to life. Having served 40 years, he became eligible for parole. The board unanimously granted him parole on his first appearance before them, feeling he was rehabilitated and the Governor of California did not prevent it from going through.
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A
During his years spent in prison, Noguera started to try to work towards rehabilitation. For him, that meant coming to terms with what he had done. Today, he very much readily admits what he did to Javita. He says he did it. He does not make excuses for it. He says his reasons at the time don't matter. Kevin and I pride ourselves on running what we hope is a victim centric show. So it was very important to us that this accountability was present when we were considering whether or not to talk to Bill Naguera. Him taking accountability, taking responsibility and admitting what he did is very much why we have this conversation. We do believe in rehabilitation and we do think that that should be the goal of our penal system. Unfortunately, that's not always the reality, but when it comes to us doing interviews, that was very important to us. He told us that for him, investigating serial killers is an attempt to make amends for taking a life.
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He started his own podcast, Death Row Diaries, that has since resulted in a new show on Oxygen, Death Row, Secrets of a Serial Killer, which comes out on Saturday, September 13th at 9pm Eastern. Then two additional episodes will be released on Saturday, September 20th at the same time. They feature investigator Ken Mains, who worked with Noguera on this case, and Vandy Fair writer Rachel Dodes.
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A
William Nogueira was willing to speak with us about all of this. We talked to him recently for a conversation that gets into his grappling with his own crime, his life on death row, his work with Naso and his views on serial killers in general. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.
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B
And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.
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A
And this is the Murder Sheet.
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We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases where the Murder Sheet and.
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A
This is a conversation with William Nagueira on Joseph Naso and profiling serial killers on death Row. Bill, first of all, I just want to say thank you so much for joining us here on the Murder Sheet today.
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B
Appreciate it.
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C
Oh, my pleasure. Totally.
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A
Just tell us a little bit about yourself and about your experience to start with.
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C
Yeah, my journey starts very early in life. Abusive household, a lot of domestic violence in that household. And I from a very early age began to really my first subject matter was my father. So and that's important in the story because, you know, as a profiler, as a person who studies human behavior at a very early age, six, seven years old, I had to already be intimate with my father's habits. You know, if he got home at 5:15 in the afternoon, everything was going to be fine. If he got home at 5:30, I knew he had stopped and bought alcohol and I knew things would go bad from there. So I would go on this hypersensitive mode where I would try to please him and everything. You know, I dad, I cleaned the dogs. Dad, I cut the grass. So it's something a child does and it becomes what people talk about being a trauma, an early trauma in their childhood, or a causative factor. And it developed character defects. Now we always look at character defects as being something really bad, but I look at them as tools to get what I wanted. And those character defects for me was powerlessness. I had no power. So throughout my life I began seeking power. And that's how my, my career basically started. My father was what you would call toxic male toxicity, if you want to call it, you know, he got me in the martial arts at age four. By age eight, I was competing in tournaments. By age 10, I had titles already, junior titles. At age 16, I became the Hapkido middleweight champions. I won the Four Seasons Open, the Hapkido Middleweight Champion, the Taekwondo Open, the San Diego Open and the Las Vegas open all in five months as a 16 year old boy. But it's that that my training began. I tracked animals. My father taught me how to, how to track predators. And with that combined with martial arts training, the abusive childhood, and then in essence seeking power, becoming the, the leader of a car theft ring. So I had to study my marks there. All of these things accumulated. And of course there was then the situation where I took a human life. There is no justification. I committed a crime and whether I believed at time I was justified doesn't matter. I took a life and I ended up getting a sentence that I became the youngest person in California to be sentenced to death at that time. And being so young in that environment, I had to learn very quickly, extremely quickly, how to read gang members, how to read people, how to read a criminal, and how to protect myself from that environment. And because of my background, I don't know if it became easier, but my observational skills were unmatched.
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B
Can you tell us a little bit about what happened that situation where you did take a life?
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C
Sure. You know, in 1983, at the time I was 17, just turning 18, my then 16 year old girlfriend and I became pregnant. And while she was pregnant, she was forced into a later term abortion, which I did not respond well to. And during an argument with her mother, I ended up taking her life.
- [11:52]
A
So you are the youngest person now on death row and you're having to learn and acclimate to this new environment. You know, I imagine most of our listeners don't necessarily even have experience in prison, let alone death row. Can you tell us a little bit about what that environment was like?
- [12:09]
C
Oh, very scary. I mean, I used to always say this, and I never admitted this before. I don't think I had the ability to admit this, but, you know, I've been scared since I was a child. Being afraid got me to notice things. First in the county jail, which, that was an experience in itself. But prison even more so because your life depends on it every day. You know, there's a lot of people that have PhDs and degrees in psychology, but they go home every day if they oversee whatever you're going through. And they say, well, look, we want you to do X, Y and Z, but you ended up killing somebody or you kill yourself. They go home to their wives and there's no problem. If I make a mistake, I die. The stakes are a lot higher. So I began to learn the habits of other men on death row. For example, Johnny goes outside every day and he does a routine of 45 burpees and his partner does this. And then I began to expand that to involve gang members in full gang units. So I knew I was intimate with everybody's program. So if someone deviated from it, I knew there was a change. And that coupled with maybe tension on the yard because, you know, for the last couple of centuries, humans have been in these societies where we don't have to really fear a saber toothed tiger or a lion coming after us in prison. It's very much alive, I can tell you that. I can smell adrenaline, I can smell and feel tension and fear. So if I go out to a yard and that tension's there, I go through this multifaceted technique of mine of looking through everybody's, what they're doing. And for example, I'll look and say, okay, is everybody doing they're supposed to. Yes, okay. I started looking at gangs, okay, the southern Mexican car, they're acting different. They're not wearing their normal tennis shoes, they're wearing boots. And then I look, okay, wow, they're not making coffee. That's a huge size. It's such a little thing. But if they don't make coffee, that's because there's about something's going to happen. Then I look to other groups. Is it another group they're going to get or is it an individual or is it an individual in their own group? Knowing this allows me to get away from that area, subtly get away from it so I'm not in the middle where I can get shot by a gunner or being in the middle of an altercation where I can be stabbed or it may be me thereafter. These are all of these facets that go on on death row. Death row, you have at one point, 758 guys, all killers, all in the same yard at one point in C section. And it was violent every day. There was somebody stabbed, there was beatings, extortion, gambling, drug use, murder. It all happens there. And I'm the youngest kid and I am. This isn't something that I'm proud of, but I had to. In prison, there's only one thing that's respected. And the most highly sought after commodity in prison is respect. And how you get respect in prison at level four, like death row, which is the highest security prison in California at that time, is your ability to portray or at least give the impression that you have the highest capacity for that ultimate goal. And that is to kill somebody else. The most respected men in prison are those who kill other convicts. And if you have that potential or you've demonstrated that you should not be messed with in any way, shape or form, they respect that. So it's. Believe me when I tell you, my first month on death row, I saw 16 staddies and they happen 2ft from me, 3ft, 5ft from me.
- [16:08]
A
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C
Yeah, absolutely. But in prison you have to. If you're Hispanic like I am, you are naturally already part of a, of a group because you're Hispanic or Latino or Mexican. Now there are subdivisions like Southern Mexican, Northern Mexicans. Those are gang members. So for full disclosure here, because I was asked this during my parole hearing, they said, well, Mr. Nogueira, we don't see that you're in a gang. Why is that? And I smiled. I said, the truth is that my character defect is powerlessness. So I seek power. I didn't join a gang because I formed my own gang. I needed to be the leader of that gang so I could take over everything because I wanted to exploit other criminals. And I know that sounds almost morbid or I was in a Never in a, in a kind of gang that hangs on a corner. I was a car thief, a high end car thief when I was a kid. And I formed a group that stole. All of our cars in the car club were all stolen. And I was his number one. I was the notorious Bill Noguera. I even broke into the police department and took one of my cars out just to add to my reputation. So going to prison, I didn't feel the need to join a gang. However, when people looked at me, they saw because you have to be in an iron pile, for example. And I ran the iron pile. I was the guy out there that people asked permission to work out in my area. And it happened to be part of the Hispanic Mexican car. So I was always associated with them because I am Hispanic and you cannot. And let me say this, no one goes to a general population gang affiliated yard because those are the yards that are considered good yards. And what that means is that you are considered a convict. Upstanding guy is not going to tell on you or something. Those are all gang affiliated yards. You can't go out there and not be associated because if there's a racial riot, you're a target. The other race knowing that you're not part of this, they're going to come after you immediately. Me, not so much. I ran who I ran with. I did whatever I wanted. I never had any alliance or allegiance to anyone but myself.
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B
Can you tell us about Joe Naso?
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C
Yeah, very interesting situation there. So in 2012, the warden of San Quentin was trying to initiate a program that had never been initiated on death row. And it was so critical because the population on death row was aging. There's a lot of guys over 65. So he asked me, he trusted me, if I would be willing to become the IDAPT worker. It's an inmate disability assistant program worker. And that's a kind of an interesting situation because on death row, serial killers are hunted. So let me say this clearly. Serial killers to a convict or a real criminal is considered a vermin. Because they have a sexual appetite. They do things for gratification. The, the convict way of thinking is that if you have a sexual case, you're a predator, a sexual predator, you're a deviant, you're, you're just a pervert, you're not a convict. And if you're doing a, a robbery and your partner says, hold my gun, I'm going to sexually assault this woman, you're supposed to kill him on the spot. So on death row it translates to if you see a serial killer, you kill a serial killer. So they had a special yard for serial killers, and they were all aging. The warden asked if I would be willing to go out there and perform the service of caretaker for them, which I accepted. That's where I met Joseph Naso. He was the oldest man, and kind of curious. I was the youngest man sentenced to death one time. He was the oldest man at age 79 to be convicted and sentenced to death. He wasn't the oldest man on death row. That distinction belongs to David the Trailside killer carpenter. He's 97 now. So Joe Naso and I met on that yard, and everybody knew who I was while I was there. I had a reputation as not only a convict and a guy that you should fear, but also a guy who had a reputation as an artist. I was represented by galleries around the world, a lot of newspaper articles written about my work in Forbes, the Los Angeles Times, etc. And he learned about this extremely quickly because he fancied himself a photo, a professional photographer. He was looking for someone that he could talk about, or talk about, too, about art, someone who was recognized and respected. There is a hierarchy in prison, a pecking order, a food chain, as you say. I was on top of that food chain. He was at the bottom. So we began to talk, and right away he told me, oh, yeah, I know who you are. You're famous. There's stuff written about you. I'd like you to look at my. And that's how the relationship started, me looking at his artwork.
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A
So he was. He put a lot of trust in you just from the jump, because he. You had that connection to the artistic world.
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C
Yes, but also he wanted validation. He wanted to be recognized. He didn't get that kind of recognition when he was out. And he's a very curious little man. He is egotistical, narcissistic, and he needed to hear me tell him he was an artist and his work was phenomenal. So what I did was I knew who he was because he had been all over the news in Marin county, in San Quentin, is in Moraine County. And prior to that, I had already been studying serial killers. I studied Randy Kraft, the Scorecard Killer, Rodney Akala, the Dating Game Killer, Richard Ramirez, and 30 plus serial killers. I had been studying them since 1987. I had notes, I had a thesis written on the serial killer logic, their ability to draw gratification from control, to draw that from the act of murder itself. The rush that they chase as they speed up. You know, I Always talk about being the Jane Goodall of serial killer. I lived with them. Most serial killer experts tell you, well, I've read 400 books on serial killers. You know, hindsight is 20 20. So these guys, after the cases are done, they read the transcripts and they come with all these logical reasons why they think serial killers do what they do. And the biggest mistake is they say, well, serial killers are made. That is absolutely untrue. They're not made. Serial killers are born this way. And I've asked serial killers this question, over 30 of them. There's nobody in history has talked to as many serial killers as I have. And if they were made, we would have. In LA county alone, there are over a million cases of child abuse, horrific child abuse every year. If serial killers were made because of abuse, you'd have millions of them running around. You wouldn't have 40 to 50 a year killing. Another thing is you'll see a family of mother, father, and say three boys. One's a doctor, one's a cop, one's a serial killer. Same household, same. The one was wired different. From the beginning, he knew he doesn't know what he is. And that's why you see them begin to light fires. They begin to torture animals. And if they are that way, they will escalate because they're feeling around the dark to understand who and what they are. Once they realize what they are, they start chasing that gratification. Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal, did it at 16, at what, 4 years old, 5 years old, he was already dissecting skeletons. And then at age 16, he was already stalking. At age 18, he was killing already. He started off very early, but now it is true that they can change their signature, may be influenced by their environment. Joseph Naso is a very good example of a person who was tweaked a little bit by his environment. His mother was domineering. His mother caught him wearing women's clothing and she beat him for it. She saw that he had became aroused by it and she started calling on her Mrs. Josie, her daughter. This enraged him. And then on top of that, he catches his mother with her neighbor in a, in a, in a, a terrible affair where he distinctly hears her tell the man, choke me. Now he discloses this to me. And what, how, does, how does he kill? He strangles. It is almost a surrogate mother that he's killing. But that isn't the abuse. That is that he was already wired to kill. But the abuse or the, the mother, the influence Tweaked him a little bit. It made him kill women with red shoes rather than, you know, women with whatever. It's just. That's a very small tweak. But he was born to kill, and he will tell you. He told me numbers of times that it would call him, killing, called him, and he answered it readily. So we began to talk, and that's how began this whole thing began to develop.
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A
How quickly were you able to kind of formulate sort of the idea of I could use this opportunity, these conversations, to really get some actionable and important information from this serial killer? Was that something that you were hoping from. From the jump, or are you having these conversations and thinking, wait a minute, I'm just curious about how that all unfolded.
- [29:36]
C
Well, it happened with other serial killers. I had been gaining information and gaining their trust. But with Naso, he was one of the first that really just jumped at the opportunity. And I could isolate him very quickly. And I used old psychological mannerisms or techniques in order to isolate him. He already isolated himself by talking down to people. So I isolated him even more by becoming his only friend, and he would want to talk to me. He also. Well, he got himself in a bit of trouble, and he asked for my protection. And I got it. I put him into a situation where him and the other guy were almost in a confrontation, and I had to step in without using physical violence. I did not want to have to leave the yard because if I got in a physical altercation, it wouldn't work to my benefit. I had to be able to intimidate this person so much that he would back down. And Naso would grant me that trust because he came to me and said, this guy basically choked me out of the yard, and I'm afraid of him. And I told him, well, Joe, this guy whose name is Rockhead, he's going to take something every day from you. He goes, what do you mean? I said, well, he just choked you out. So he's proven that you are basically, excuse my vocabulary. This is what I told him. He's already basically proved you're a Joe, you got to do something. I can't. What can I do? Can I pay him off? I'm like, if you pay him off, you're going to confirm everything he already believes. He goes, well, we're friends, aren't we? I said, yeah, you got to help me. And I said, joe, I mean, unless I physically restrain this guy, there's not a whole lot I can do. And Joe, the next thing he takes, he's going to take your manhood. He's going to rape you. That set him off. Oh, my God. For a guy who rapes and kills, that was like the most craziest thing. And his question was, is he a homosexual? I said, no, he wants to take what's yours. It's like a male lion mounting another lion to show him he's boss. You don't get it, Joe. This is primal. This isn't the streets. Well, I worked it so I was able to protect him. And from that moment on, he followed me around like a puppy. And he wanted to talk to me. He wanted my opinion. And there came a point where he came outside and he gave me what I was looking for, which was his logic why he does what he does. And he brought me a photograph. And he told me, what do you see? I said, a woman. Entirely too much makeup on the phone. Okay, now what you see? Show me another photograph. What do you see? I said, well, the same woman, but now she's closed her eyes because. No, no, no, no, no, you don't get it. I said, explain it to me. He said, here, look. He shows me the photograph of the woman, the phone. He goes, here she's being manipulative. Here she's deceptive. Here she's what I know women are, which are deceptive. Whores. I said, okay, so what's the other picture? He smiles. The other one, she's clean now. No deception. I said, are you telling me she's dead? She said, that's exactly what I'm telling. I clean women. I take them back to the state of mind before they were influenced by all these things. Things that made them money hungry women that deceive men. And that is his thing. He. He believes that he cleans them by killing them. Once that happened, I was in. He brought me photographs, he signed them to me. He. And ultimately it led to him telling me that he. He was afraid of being there. He did not want. And remember, this is 10 years. This is a decade of work. I need help getting out of here. I don't want to be here. And he had brought a small piece of paper that talked about commutations by the governor. And I am. I had already been writing probably 200 pages of notes of what he had been giving me. And I said, joe, it all came to my mind very quickly. This is something I was doing very quickly. And I said, joe, you want to talk to the governor? He's like, yeah, he can probably give me a commutation. Lower my sin, get me to life so I can go someplace where I can see my children. And that's when it clicked in my head. I said, joe, I know a guy who plays golf with the governor every first Saturday. And I use that story because Joe Naso had told me that he was a caddy as a child and that all the big deals are made on the golf course. So I used a bit of truth that he told me, and I used it to my advantage. And I told him, my friend who writes for Forbes magazine or for Forbes is Walt Pablo. He's the one. So of course I knew he would look him up. I knew this. The story had to be based on truth. And when I told him, he said, what can you do? I said, joe, the governor's not going to talk to you unless you give him something in good faith. If you give him something in good faith and get his attention and it proves to be true, I'm sure we can get you a deal. He was in. And that's how I got the first written confession from him. And he says it in his letter because I have all the notes that he wrote me as he was preparing to write the confession. And he says, girl from Berkeley, number six on my list of ten. I'm going to give you this one item in good faith, and in exchange, you will give it to Walt, Walt will give it to the governor, and the governor will come see me after that, and then we'll make a deal. That's how I got the story, and that's how the floodgates opened. Wow.
- [35:37]
B
So what made you decide to share that information with Ken Mains?
- [35:42]
C
My entire focal point was from the very beginning, and this is something that Ken and I share is victims, families. We want. I want to bring finalization closure. I read decades ago a mother in a newspaper saying, someone please tell me what happened to my child. I can't tell you why that made me so emotional. It made me so determined to do this. And when I found Ken Mains, because I had gone to other investigators by 2022, I had all the information, I had all the notes. Everything was ready. I tried to go to law enforcement. They wouldn't listen. I went to other investigators. They wanted $10,000 cash. I couldn't afford that. I couldn't do that. So I found Ken Mains. I watched the program and he was there. I asked my co host of Death Row Diaries because I was doing a true crime podcast, which I still do, is called Death Row Diaries. And I asked Matt Ralston to contact him by Email. And Ken got back to us within eight hours. And I said, would you sign an NDA? The reason I asked for that wasn't because of any other reason, but protection. Had it gotten out that I was doing this while I was on death row, they would have tried to kill me immediately. My life was in danger. It was in danger from the very beginning, but I was willing to take that chance. And within 72 hours of me giving Ken the story of the girl from Berkeley, he had the girl, the girl's name, everything that Nasal told me matched everything. And he and I talked about everything was mirrored cop and convict. It doesn't matter. It was always integrity when it came to Tim. He's always been, he's treating me like an equal. He's treating me like a person of respect. And I gave him the same respect. And now he and I are partners and we're going to be doing a lot more things together. And that's why this particular program, Death Row Confidential on, on the network Oxygen, True Crime, it's with Peacock, is so important because it does something that no one's ever done is active solving cases. As the episodes go on, you know, you have all these other cases. Oh wait, the truth about Jack the Ripper. At the end you're still saying, well, who did he. Who's Jack the Ripper? In this case, we know who the killer is. We will, we will make known who the victims were, but more so the story of how it happened, where he picked them up, what he did with them, because it comes directly from the killer. The. When he thought he was talking to someone that's like minded. Because let me be honest with you, I can't tell you how many times I wanted to strangle this guy when he told me what he did to these, these girls. Because some of them were kids and you know, an 18 year old girl to me is a child. And really I had to sometimes leave his presence. I had to go away for a week and not talk to him because I was so angry what he said he did. And he would sit there and laugh about it and joke about it. And there is no rehabilitation in Joe Naso. There is no redemptive quality. This man, let me tell you that he would giggle and laugh when he would tell me these stories and he would fake because I asked him, why did you lay this particular girl and you cross her arms across the chest? It's a pose. And he said, well, you know, you, you know what vampires do, right? I said, yeah, suck your blood. He goes and he started giggling. He said, well, she was like a vampire. She, you know, she was. She sucked me. And that's how. So I laid her down with her arms cross her chest because, well, she was like a vampire. Get it? And he would close his eyes and pose like that. He'd open one eye and start giggling. This guy has no redemptive quality. He's a monster. And that's why I decided to risk everything, because those families need to know the truth. And some of them were upset because they had been given a different story. Law enforcement told them, well, look, Rodney Acala was the perpetrator of this crime. It was an ongoing joke on death row. Renaissance was laughing. They caught him from one of mine. That's how we found who Pam Lamson was, because he was joking. That. And Akala did something he had never done before. Because I talked to him all the time. He says, I didn't do that one. He had told me about the other ones. Oh, yeah, I did them. But this one, he wrote the DA's off. He wrote the cause. I didn't do this. And here is the big one. When Ms. Lampson, her brother, was concerned that she would be meeting someone at Fisherman's Wharf, she told him, you have nothing to worry about. This guy could be my father. That doesn't sound like Rodney Alcala.
- [40:31]
A
No.
- [40:32]
C
Yeah, so it was nasal. That killed her. And he posed her because, in his own words, she couldn't stop talking about being an entertainer. She was dating one of the A's baseball players. So I posed her because she always was bugging me about being an entertainer. So I took her photographs and I posed her. Now she's entertaining the world. That was his logic.
- [40:55]
A
God, I. I do want to ask you, like, you know, you. You went from a situation where you, you know, that you commit a murder, you land on death row, but then you're doing all this work to try to gain answers for these families and try to figure out what's going on here. And I just want to add, for anyone listening, I will note, like, that wasn't something that came up in your parole board hearings, right? That wasn't like you were saying, hey, I'm looking at the serial killers guys. That. That was just. That's come out afterwards, right?
- [41:23]
C
Absolutely not. And let me give you my logic. Had I done that for a reason, to gain something? It completely discredits what I'm doing. Exactly. So I'm doing this for victims. It's my living amends. I made a decision as an 18 year old boy that cost someone their lives. I own that. I apologize for that. There's nothing I can do to change the past, but I can change the future. I can help a victim's family. So during my life, I was sentenced to a lesser sentence. They dropped the special circumstances, giving me 25 years. And immediately I became eligible parole. Not once during my sentencing or the judge considering did any of this come up. Because I felt. I told my attorneys, do not bring this up. I don't. If I get out because of my merit, that's one thing. And then I received a. A parole board hearing. I went before the parole board. First time in history that a man coming off death row goes to his parole hearing and gets found suitable his first time up. Not once during that hearing did I mention any of this. Because again, I'm. Do I. Look, I practice what I preach. I'm just one of those guys. Some people don't like me, some people do like me. But one thing I want people to know is I always tell the truth. My integrity is more important to me than anything else. And if people on death row tell you, if I give you my word, whatever I said, I'll do it. And I told myself I'll never use it for my benefit, and I never have. I got out of prison because of my own merits. I'm sitting here now in Corona, California, speaking to you because I got. Now, of course, now I'm sharing it, but it has nothing to do with Pearl. I'm a. I'm a free man. I have nothing to gain from it.
- [43:15]
A
Yeah, I think. I mean, I think that's awesome. And that's one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you. And, and also, you're not one of these guys that's running around, oh, I didn't do it. I was framed. You know, it's like you're just owning what happened and then moving forward. But I wanted to ask you about that because, you know, unfortunately we know, and, and you experience this firsthand. You know, prison doesn't, you know, it's not really built for rehabilitation in many ways, in our view, it's not. You know, if you have a situation where you kind of have to join a gang and maybe you get involved in more violence, that's not something where it's conducive to rehabilitation. But how were you able to pursue that? How were you able to pursue that accountability and owning up to it and kind of dealing with what you'd done when you were 18 and kind of getting to that point where you're seeking amends, how. How are you able to accomplish that?
- [44:05]
C
Well, I took responsibility first and foremost. Yeah, that was the. That was the biggest step. And, you know, I had to really come to grips with. We make mistakes. It isn't what we do while we're on the ground. It's what we do when we stand up. And you're right. At San Quentin or the California Department of Correction at the time, it was all. If you got in a fight, they'd say, man, good luck with that. Or you say, hey, I can't go to the yard because they're going to kill me. Well, yeah, you should have thought that before you came to prison. For the first 35 years of me being or 30 years in prison, there was no rehabilitative programs. I chose to educate myself. I chose to become a better person. I chose that. The path of being responsible, but then also doing something about it. So very early on, I began to preach on the yard, first and foremost, to other inmates about rehabilitation. I started speaking about getting away from gangs, and I was doing this on an active gang yard, so. And what I said was that I practice what I preach, and you don't have to be part of a gang to do these things. But it was a process, and it came in a very interesting situation. And it happened about 11 years ago, 10 years ago, actually happened before that. We're in 2025. I forgot how time flies, but we're on the yard, and a guy came out and. And I knew it was going to be bad. The guy came out, pulled a knife out, and he started stabbing somebody. It was a person in a different race. And, of course, Hispanics see this one Hispanic guy fighting against two other guys. They didn't stop to see that he was the one with the knife, and they jumped in, too. At that moment, a bunch of other Hispanics start running towards me to get. And they're firing gunshots into the yard and everything else. And I tell the two guys, stop. It's not what it looks like. Get down. And I lay down. The floor is tear gas. It's complete chaos. And then they bring us in the following week on a Monday. One of the guys named Gil, he came on. He says, hey, can I talk to you? I said, yeah. He says, I want to. I want to thank you. Had I not been stopped from doing that, I would have been in the hole again. My mother's been coming to see me for 32 years, and every time she comes, she finds me in chains in the Hole. This time I was able to hug my mother. He goes, that's because of you. And it wasn't what you said, it was who was talking. The respect that you garner on these yards is why I listened to you. And that gave me an idea. I figured that I had been faking prior that. Not so much faking, but I was creating art. I was giving to charity. But that was easy. It's like a father who is rich and gives his son a car and says, here's a check, and doesn't really care for his son. So what I did was I then began to give of myself. That was the most important thing to me. Not just give money, but to actually lead by example. And because of the kind of respect I had, I thought that it can make a real difference. So I began to hold classes on the yard for rehabilitative purposes. And that's how it started. That cemented in me more than ever that I would write these notes, give them to the right authorities, to give these families the kind of finalization they want. And now it's become, of course, the television series Death Row Confidential and the book through the Lens of a Monster, which will be out on September 16, which really is a memoir of how I was able to get the stories. But every detail that I think true crime should be about, it feels like.
- [47:47]
A
And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it feels like the act of really investigating these serial killers from behind bars is part of this redemptive arc or seeking redemption over time. Is that. Is that fair to say for you as.
- [48:00]
C
That's absolutely fair. I can't change the past, and I wish I could. I can't. If I could change one day, it would be April 24, 1983. I would not go there that night. That's. It's that simple. I can't do that. So I'm not sure that if redeeming myself is the right word, because that's almost a selfish act. I am giving what I can of myself in every shape, form that I can to give these families what they seek. And that's it. I mean, I'm not always going to be successful, but I'm always going to have the intention of doing good. I think that is what rehabilitation is about. It's about not just saying, a good guy. I'm not committing crimes, but, hey, you know what? I'm learning from my lessons, and I'm going to do something to help my community, to help society. That is what a real citizen is about. It's about helping others. If you see someone fall in the street, you run, you pick them up and you say, can I help you? You don't just get out your phone and start filming and say, huh, I can get all these likes on TikTok, and that's basically what I'm doing. Yeah.
- [49:08]
B
Can you tell us a little bit more about the show and about your new book?
- [49:12]
C
Yeah. The show is, of course, Death Row Confidential, Secrets of a Serial Killer. It comes out September 13th on the Oxygen Network's True Crime Channel. It's incredible. I can tell you that the people that produced it are Fireside Pictures, Jason and Patrick. Ken Mains is involved. Of course, I make a number of appearances. Even when I come out. It is by definition what true crime is truly about. It gives you every detail of how we discovered it. It's emotional. You have the victims families there. You have law enforcement, you have Vanity Fair, the investigative reporter. You have Dan Noyes of ABC News, who really interviewed Naso back when he was first arrested. And he's on there talking about what was done. It is an incredible show. Look, I'm here tooting my own horn or the network's horn, but they should watch this show if you care about true crime, if you want to know really what a serial killer thinks and does and how he performs his mo, his signature, not speculation. This is facts. You have to watch this show. It is incredible. And of course, then there's the book that I wrote through a Lens of a monster, out September 16th. It is. I mean, I read it and it sends chills up my. Because of what the content. And I will advise that if you're don't want to hear the nitty gritty, you don't want to hear, you shouldn't buy this book. This book is going to give you everything the serial killer did, how he stalked a person, what he did that he wore, women's clothing. I have pictures in the book, notes from him that has never been seen before. People. The reader will get an experience like no other.
- [51:08]
A
And I want to ask you, you know, looking forward, you're. You're free now and is there. Do you have plans to kind of continue looking into different murders going forward?
- [51:18]
C
Absolutely. Ken and I, cop and convict, are working together on active cases as well as cold cases. This is what I'm dedicating my life to. I want to continue helping, even if it's just to answer the question, what happened to my child? So it's what moves me. It's what I'm going to do from now on, you know, I hope to come back and show you what we're doing because I can't talk about it at the moment because there's Law enforcement is already involved in it. But there are other serial killers that have committed crimes and no one has attributed the crimes to them. They don't know where the bodies are.
- [51:54]
A
I. We kind of breeze through all of our questions. Bill, is there anything that we did not ask you about that you think it's really important for people to understand your story, what you uncovered about Naso and other killers or just anything we talked about?
- [52:08]
C
Well, that they should very. Take, take with a grain of salt every. Everything they listen to on true crime. You want facts, you want evidence that's solid. You don't want opinions. And it's out there. You look at every channel. Everybody's a true crime specialist, a serial killer expert. Just look. It's very important that we play to our instincts. And I would say this because in my shows I always say, be safe, be aware of your surroundings. Your life can depend on it. I can't tell you how true that is. If you go out into a parking lot, women, men, and you feel this tingling, stop, don't tell yourself, oh, you know what, I'm a woman, hear me roar, or I'm a tough guy, I'm going out there anyways. Because that's what the predator wants. He wants you to override all your instincts and go out there because it makes his day. Go back in. Ask somebody, could you help me walk to my car? Tell them, hey, I'm afraid I don't want to go out there. That's going to save your life. I can't tell you how important that is. In 1982, I was actually teaching a woman's class against rape. There was a serial killer by name of Stevie Fields. And I actually met him on death row later. And I was teaching in self defense class and I told the people at the university, I can't teach these women in two weeks how to defend themselves against a man. It's impossible. I can't teach them to pay attention to their instincts because it could save your life. And that's my biggest advice. Be aware of your surroundings. Most serial killers stalk. They're organized killers. They stalk, they watch you. They may not do nothing, but they watch lions do the same thing. Humans are animals. The only difference is we have the ability to reason. How that doesn't play for serial killers because they're working on their instincts. They're not Letting logic override or reasoning. They're allowing their instincts to play. So you want to find lions, Go to a watering hole where the gazelles are at. You want to find a killer, you want to find a predator, Go where his victims would normally. Arcades for children, schoolyards. They're all over the place. Women. It would be a gym. It could be anywhere. Just pay attention to your surroundings, because sometimes you may look and you might catch a guy allowing the mask to slip and he's locked on you like a predator. That should tell you a lot, at least to say, I got to get away from this guy. You know the woman that saw that picked Rodney Akala for the Dating Game. She met him and all her instincts told her, this guy is creepy. She didn't go on a date with him. You know what? It saved her life. She paid attention to her instincts. Other women may have said, oh, he's good looking, he's charming, and went out with them. You know what? That would have had happened. There'd be a gravestone now with her name on it. Or maybe not, because he killed many women and no one knew about them. So that's my best advice, please. If I can toot my. My Instagram and my TikTok, which is. Is Dead Body Society. Also my. My YouTube channel is also Dead Body Society. I have a newsletter. It's free, you know, you don't have to pay anything. It's called the True Crime Insider. You can subscribe on my website, williamnoguera.com or go to my Instagram page with a different one. It's William Noguera Art. And you can click onto the link tree and just sign up there. I apologize, I have not put it on Instagram dead body style yet. Because honestly, I'm not really that good at social media yet. So give me a chance. I'll get it up there. But go to the website. It talks about what I do, why I do it, my reasoning, and it shows really what we're doing. Both Ken and I are transparent. We want to help victims families. And I'm very appreciative to you, to Oxygen, to Peacock, for giving me the opportunity to really put out there what I believe everybody should know about. And especially to give those victims families that finalization that they sought out for decades because Naso has been raping and killing. He started killing in 1965.
- [56:33]
A
I just want to say we are so grateful to you to kind of come on the show, take this time and share your insights and experiences with us. It really means a lot. Thank you so much and we just want to thank you.
- [56:42]
C
Oh it's my pleasure. I really want to help in any way I can. So if you need anything, call me, whatever. I'm willing to help.
- [56:50]
A
Thanks to William for talking to us about his own case and his investigation into serial killer Joseph Naso. Check out his story in even more depth on Death Row Confidential on Oxygen that's coming out on Saturday, September 13th at 9pm Eastern Time and Pacific Time, as well as September 20th at the same time.
- [57:08]
B
And we will be including links where you can follow William Nogueira on the Internet in our show notes as well as a link to his book. Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [57:36]
A
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.
- [58:00]
B
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com if you're looking to talk with.
- [58:11]
A
Other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet Discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.
- [58:34]
C
What do you think makes the perfect snack? Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
- [58:39]
A
Could you be more specific when it's cravinient.
- [58:42]
C
Okay, like a fresh baked cookie made with real butter available right down the street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM. I'm seeing a pattern here. Well yeah, we're talking about what I crave, which is anything from AM pm. What more could you want? Stop by AM PM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience am PM too much Good stuff.