
To justify sentencing David Wood to death, prosecutors argued that he was a convicted rapist turned serial killer. And yet, Wood has insisted all along that isn’t true. We head to death row to hear him tell us why. But not before a victim of his earlier crimes has her say about the kind of person she believes he is.
Loading summary
Maurice Shama
Hey, I just Venmo'd you for rent.
Venmo Advertiser
Nice. Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using a Venmo debit card.
Christy
Say more.
Venmo Advertiser
More. Exactly. Because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get. Like earning up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on a bundle of brands.
Christy
So order more pizza.
Venmo Advertiser
The math demands it.
Maurice Shama
Get the Venmo debit card.
Venmo Advertiser
Venmo stash bundle. Terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo Me Stashterm. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A.
Maurice Shama
most prisoners on death row are not pursuing innocence claims. David Wood is rare in that sense. His lawyers aren't arguing about whether he should die for his crimes, but about whether he committed them at all. An argument that big, that fundamental, tends to lock people into their corners. He's either a serial killer or an innocent man. It makes it tougher to honestly assess some of the more basic questions I have about David Wood. What kind of person is he? And more to the point, what exactly is he capable of? The last time anyone seriously took up those questions was 33 years ago at his capital murder trial, during what's called the penalty phase. After a jury found David Wood guilty, they had to come back to court to decide his punishment. In Texas, juries have to consider whether or not the defendant poses a future threat to society. In this phase of the trial, the jury isn't just judging the crime anymore. They're judging the person. And in David's case, they had to do a risk assessment. Back then, life in prison without parole wasn't an option in Texas. So if the jury thought David Wood might kill again, the only surefire way to prevent it was to execute him. Prosecutors made the argument for the death penalty by bringing up David Wood's past crimes. They had a lot to work with. Before the desert murders, he had three rape convictions, another conviction of indecency with a 12 year old girl, and then on top of that, three more women and girls had made accusations against him, too, ranging from attempted kidnapping to rape. The story the prosecution told the jury was clear. David Wood escalated his crimes. He went from being a serial rapist to a serial killer. Is there any reason to think he'd stop? It was a convincing argument, one that's held for more than three decades. And yet David Wood has insisted all along that it isn't true. We're going to death row to hear him tell us why. But before we head there, we're going to talk to somebody with a very different feeling about the kind of person. David Wood is one of the victims who testified against him. From Serial Productions, the Marshall Project, and the New York Times, this is the last 12 weeks. I'm Maurice Shama.
Venmo Advertiser
Foreign.
Paul Tanorio
I'm Paul Tanorio. I cover soccer for the Athletic.
Amy Lawrence
And I'm Amy Lawrence. I cover football for the Athletic.
Paul Tanorio
Whatever you call it. The biggest competition in the sport is happening right now and the Athletics World cup coverage has everything you need to follow the tournament.
Amy Lawrence
There's 48 countries taking part from the tiny island of Curacao to the five time champions, Brazil. Even if you don't know your offside from your onside, if you're eager to know more about the teams, the matches, all the stories on and off the pitch, we've got you sorted.
Paul Tanorio
Maybe you're the kind of person who's already up early every weekend waking the neighbors when your favorite club scores. We'll make sure you get equipped with more information, more insight than anyone you know.
Amy Lawrence
We've got more than 70 obsessive reporters on the ground covering the ins and outs from every game.
Paul Tanorio
I almost forgot to mention the best part, Amy. Free access to the Athletics World cup coverage in our app.
Amy Lawrence
Download the Athletic app and see you there.
Maurice Shama
You want to introduce yourself and how we should identify you?
Christy
What I told him is I just want to use my first name. I don't want to use Christy at 13. That's how I want you to identify me.
Maurice Shama
Christy was 13 when David Wood raped her. She's in her late 50s now and says very few people in her life know the story. She's about to tell us about her connection to El Paso's most notorious serial killer case. When Kristi was in middle school, she was hanging out at her friend's house one night and realized she had to get home to make curfew. Her house was in walking distance and she figured she could shave a few minutes off by cutting through a park. But it was getting dark out, so she called her boyfriend Henry and asked him to meet her along the way. As she made her way into the park, she felt footsteps behind her. At first she figured it was Henry trying to catch up. But Henry wasn't saying anything, which she thought was odd.
Christy
And so I turned around, but it was dark. And back then you didn't have street lights because it was on a park. So I was like straining. I remember straining my eyes, like, you know, doesn't really look like Henry. And when I realized it wasn't Henry, he jolted forward and took his arm and, like, wrapped it around my neck.
Maurice Shama
Christy says they started scuffling, and she fell to the ground. She kept fighting, kicking up at him.
Christy
I was a gymnast. I was kind of jockey, you know what I'm saying? So I threw my feet up into his chest. And then he said, knock it off. Stop. You know, quit doing it. And I said, what are you doing? What are you doing? You know, get away. And I remember looking over at the
Maurice Shama
house, like, to Kristi, David woods seemed upset. As she remembers it, he claimed she'd thrown a rock at his truck and hit the windshield. And now he was going to walk her home to explain this to her parents. Christy had no idea what he was talking about with the windshield, but he was insistent. She figured maybe this was just a misunderstanding.
Christy
And I really. I stupidly probably believed the windshield story at that point. It was like, you know, you're gonna go to my house, and my dad's gonna tell you you're full of shit, and we're gonna be fine, or Henry's gonna catch up and you're gonna get your butt kicked. I was in that mindset at that point in time.
Maurice Shama
But Henry never showed up. And David Wood didn't take her to her house. Instead, Kristi says he led her to a drainage ditch and raped her. After it was over, Christy says he disappeared. She walked home and, still in a daze, took a bath to clean off the blood and gravel. She eventually reported the rape to the police. An officer asked her to identify the man and set her up at a table with pictures. Each one had a part of a face, a kind of DIY forensic art puzzle.
Christy
Like, you were piecing the face together. So you did. Hairline, forehead, eyeset, nose, lips, mouth, chin.
Maurice Shama
Christy spent several days with these puzzle pieces. She talked to detectives repeatedly, rehashing what happened to her over and over again. When Christy says one of the detectives suddenly had an epiphany as to who her attacker might be.
Christy
He said, son of a bitch. And he slammed the desk. And he walked out, and he came back in, and he had about 10 pictures, and he laid them out, and he said, does anybody look familiar? And I picked him out.
Maurice Shama
And you? And it was David Wood.
Christy
I picked him out.
Maurice Shama
David Wood, it turned out, had just been accused of another rape less than two weeks earlier. The rest happened pretty quickly. He pled guilty to both rapes and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. But in the end, he only served Seven. A few years later, he went on trial for the desert murders and was found guilty. At that point, prosecutors went back to Kristi for help. They wanted her to testify about her rape to help ensure David Wood got the death penalty. Kristi was reluctant. She was newly married, had a job and a new baby. She didn't want to have to fly to Dallas for the trial.
Christy
I remember being very mad that they were going to subpoena me and sequester me in Dallas because I had my daughter and my daughter was like six months old. And nobody in my immediate existence had any idea that I had any connection to this person. And it was honestly, I was angry. I was really angry that you're going to come disrupt my adult life.
Maurice Shama
But Kristi also saw this as an opportunity. For the first time in years, she'd be face to face with David Wood. And this time, she wouldn't be a scared 13 year old.
Christy
I stared him down the entire time I testified, and he didn't look up at me. I think he looked up at me once. But I would not take my gaze off of him because I wanted him to know that I was in control. It was very much about me having the power back.
Maurice Shama
Power, control, safety. This is what Christy says David Wood took from her. When I first arrived at Christy's house, I noticed a sort of decoy entrance, a front door that leads to a long courtyard before the real front door. Christy designed this setup herself so that she can suss out any visitors before they get too close. She has two daughters now, and she acknowledges that her parenting style when they were small was a little less than relaxed.
Christy
I don't let them walk across the street. I don't let them walk to school. I don't let them walk home from school. I never let my kids ride a bike. I never let my kids leave my side at any store. With both of my daughters, when they turned 13, I told them what happened, and it connected the dots of why I was such an overbearing mother growing up.
Maurice Shama
It's almost like he robbed you of a lot of things, including the ability to, like, have some chill. Some chill with your kids.
Christy
100%.
Maurice Shama
Christy says her daughters, who are both grown and out of the house now, cautioned her against doing this interview at all. They didn't see the point of stirring up old trauma. But Kristi has a mission here. She's eager to talk with us, she says, mostly because she wants to get to you.
Christy
My purpose is so there's not a doubt in the listener's Mind. And I'm going to take away that doubt from your mind.
Maurice Shama
Any doubt that David Wood really is the desert killer.
Christy
That's my purpose of all this and
Maurice Shama
to make us really understand. She says we need to see where it all went down in her old neighborhood in El Paso.
Christy
So we'll trace my tracks, and then I'll tell you where the other tracks were. And then we'll go to where the bodies were found. And then you can just kind of see how everything's so interconnected.
Maurice Shama
The tour itself is a tight little loop, much shorter than I was expecting. In about 10 minutes, we see Christy's childhood home, the park where David Wood raped her. And very close by the middle school that some of the missing girls went to.
Christy
This is where the bodies were found.
Maurice Shama
Oh, wow.
David Wood
Right here.
Maurice Shama
Much closer.
Christy
Yes.
Maurice Shama
So the bodies, it's compelling. Being driven around like this, seeing landmarks of a case pass by the car window in rapid succession.
Christy
So do you see how close?
Paul Tanorio
Yeah, very close.
Christy
Everything is. And his house is down one of these side streets.
David Wood
Yep. Okay.
Maurice Shama
Christie's argument is an argument about geography, about proximity. A serial rapist gets out of prison, hangs around the neighborhood where he once raped her, and then girls start disappearing. How many explanations could there be? How could it be anyone else? After the tour, Alvin and I do offer up a few of the problems the defense lawyers have identified, including the lack of DNA testing. But Christy bats it all away.
Christy
I know the neighborhood, I know the area, and I know where the abductions took place. And all of that fits his mantra. So I call bs. At what point do we start saying that the justice system served their duty? And why does he still have a voice when the victims don't? There's no ounce of me that feels he's innocent by 100% convinced that it's him.
David Wood
People gonna hear about me. They're gonna hate me. I get it. I'm just a convict in prison saying I'm innocent. And they're going, yeah, right, you lying piece of crap.
Maurice Shama
After the break, David,
Venmo Advertiser
I gave my
Maurice Shama
brother a New York Times subscription. She sent me a year long subscription, so I have access to all the games. We'll do Wordle Mini spelling bee. It has given us a personal connection. We exchange articles. And so having read the same article, we can discuss it. The coverage, the options. It's not just news.
Christy
Such a diversified disc.
Maurice Shama
I was really excited to give him a New York Times cooking subscription so that we could share recipes. And we even just shared a recipe the other day. The New York Times contributes to our quality time together.
Paul Tanorio
You have all of that information at your fingertips.
Maurice Shama
It enriches our relationship, broadening our horizons.
Paul Tanorio
It was such a cool and thoughtful gift.
Maurice Shama
We're reading the same stuff, we're making the same food. We're on the same page. Connect even more with someone you care about.
Christy
Learn more about giving a New York Times subscription as a gift@nytimes.com gift.
Maurice Shama
All the men on death row in Texas are housed at the Allen B. Polonsky Unit, named after a guy who was on a prison oversight board, but also happens to be, of all things, a real estate attorney in San Antonio. He actually inherited the honor from an insurance executive in Dallas who asked to have his name taken off the unit. He told a newspaper that it upset his mother. On the day Alvin and I arrive, There are nearly 3,000 men held inside the prison. 171 of them are on death row. We walk through a metal detector and a series of heavy gates and into the interview room. There's a row of tiny booths with phone receivers wired into them. We're separated from David Wood by plexiglass. He's on the other end of our booth in a little cell. We pass a microphone over and watch for a second as he struggles to set it up.
David Wood
Modern tech. I've been locked up so long, I don't even know what modern technology is.
Maurice Shama
David wears an all white jumpsuit. He's got long white hair and lots of tattoos. Looks a little like a roadie for a metal band or the biker at the end of the bar. I was aware going into this interview how fraught it was with expectations, mine and his. My aim was to get to know David beyond the facts of the case, who he is as a person. Was he contrite? Did he have regrets? But I got a heads up from his lead lawyer, Greg, that David mainly wanted to talk about the case. He saw this as his one chance to set the record straight three weeks out from his execution. So we both had some ambitious goals for this conversation. And yet one thing that wasn't going to help either of us was the prison's extremely strict time limit for this interview. So, yeah, since we only have an hour, that's.
David Wood
It is an hour.
Maurice Shama
Yeah, it's. It's all.
David Wood
That's going to go extremely fast.
Maurice Shama
It's going to go fast. Let's run through the basics. David Wood was born in 1957 in San Angelo, Texas. He was one of four kids and his background is familiar for death row in so much as it Was pretty grim. His mom was institutionalized for mental illness when he was little. His dad would deny him dinner if he misbehaved. He struggled at school. Hyperactive, couldn't concentrate as a first grader. One time he just stood up in the middle of class and started walking home. By his teens, he was getting into all kinds of trouble.
David Wood
I can tell you some stories. Usually it was bad when I would drink, I would get drunk. You just absolutely could not tell me what I could and could not do.
Maurice Shama
You really can't go much further in David's life story without getting into his time in prison. And I mean that in a literal sense. He's been incarcerated for the overwhelming majority of his adult life. By my count, he spent a total of three years in the free world since he turned 18. He's now 68 years old.
David Wood
As soon as I got to prison, violence started. I mean, it was violent from the time I got there. It was violent the whole time I was there. Anytime I came out of prison, I came out worse than I went in. I came out very hostile.
Maurice Shama
We didn't get very far in our conversation before I could feel David's frustration. He wanted to talk about all the problems Greg has identified in his death penalty case. But I kept asking him about his prior crimes, the three sexual assault cases he did plead guilty to. I wanted to see how David's versions of events lined up with what I'd read in court documents. I figured it'd help me suss out his reliability as a narrator. But David didn't like that line of questioning. He was eager to speedrun through all of his priors. For example, here he is talking about a rape conviction where the victim was 19.
David Wood
It's a long story, and I'll make it short. I really didn't. I didn't do that case.
Maurice Shama
And here he is on another conviction, this one for indecency with a minor. The victim was 12.
David Wood
There was no scratches, no bruises, no injuries, nothing. An incident happened. It probably scared the crud out of someone. So really nothing happened, but that's pretty much it.
Venmo Advertiser
Yeah.
Maurice Shama
Okay. I mean, so I don't even really
David Wood
like talking about that. This is the type of stuff I didn't want to talk about.
Maurice Shama
Although David did plead guilty to these crimes, his versions of events were wildly different from what I'd read in court records. He downplayed what he did in one assault, and the other assault he tried to deny entirely. I wasn't able to talk to those women. But Christie's story was fresh in My mind. I asked him to take me back to that night and describe what happened. At first, his account roughly lined up with Christie's.
David Wood
Met her at a park. I was drinking with a friend of mine. She was there. Started walking back towards her house.
Maurice Shama
But then it veered sharply.
David Wood
We started making out by a bridge, by a ditch. By then I was kind of loaded and we were making out kind of heavy. Things just got out of hand.
Maurice Shama
I mean, she described it later at the trial as like a kind of a nightmare for her. Do you have a. Yeah, I mean, do you have sort of. How do you feel about.
David Wood
It was a bad thing. I mean, I did a bad thing. And what can I say? It was a bad thing. I was under the influence. Now the law enforcement will tell you that we can't use alcohol or drugs as an excuse. And everybody who has goes, are you crazy? Are we really in our right minds when we are drunk or high?
Maurice Shama
I want to dwell for one more beat on how far apart these accounts are. Christie described David's attack as intentional predatory. David denies the whole rock thrown at the windshield story and says what happened was basically a drunken mistake that got out of hand. I find his way of talking about it off putting, to put it mildly. And it doesn't do wonders for his overall reliability. But I also see where it kind of cross purposes. David has 22 days before the state is scheduled to execute him for murders he's adamant he didn't commit. And here I am with all these questions about crimes he already served his time for. His frustration, while unpleasant and self serving, was not totally surprising given the time crunch. We move on to what he really wants to talk about. The crux of why he's sitting here on death row. The way he tells it, it started when he got on the wrong side of some detectives in El Paso. After David got out of prison for Christie's rape in 1987, he was on parole. In his telling, it was a more stable time for him, relatively speaking. He got a job, moved in with a girlfriend.
David Wood
Everything was pretty good, except every time I had a run in with police, it didn't go well. It didn't go well.
Maurice Shama
Women and girls in El Paso started disappearing just weeks after he got out of prison. And as their bodies started surfacing in the desert, David became one of the main suspects. He says the detectives working these murders were constantly harassing him, showing up at random moments to question him, and he didn't take it very well.
David Wood
Every encounter I had with the detectives became extremely hostile. Very Much so. I was very disrespectful, very confrontational.
Maurice Shama
David says over the long course of this case, these interactions got worse and worse. He tells a story about detectives trying to question him about one of the girls disappearances early on. And he responded by telling them to kiss his ass and peeling off on his Harley. By the time he was arrested, he said he was shouting at a detective about all the terrible things he'd do to his family if he ever got out. David believes all this personal stuff combined with his record is a big part of why the Desert murders got laid at his feet.
David Wood
I'm the moron that turned out to be the scapegoat.
Maurice Shama
I see you're like a patsy.
David Wood
Well, look, first of all, before you start getting the wrong impression, I fully, fully admit of putting myself in the position to be a target of these people. I see it was me. I accept all responsibility for bringing their ill feelings towards me. Not because of the case, but because it became personal.
Maurice Shama
So this is David's explanation that the might of the El Paso law enforcement apparatus converged to make him a patsy for six murders, largely because they didn't like him. Maybe that sounds plausible to you, or maybe the whole thing feels a little far fetched. It certainly did to Detective Johnny Guerrero, who denies that the El Paso PD targeted David in any way. But there is one story from this era that makes it a little harder to write David off completely. In January of 1987, two weeks after David gets out of prison for his rape convictions, a teenager is walking through a park. We're just using her first initial, Bea. She was a minor when this all happened and she asked not to be named. But we've corroborated the story with police reports and court records. In any case, Bea is walking through the park, actually the same park where David grabbed Kristi. A man grabs Bea, hits her in the face and walks her to a ditch where he rapes her. Bea reports it right away. So the police collect a rape kit. Bea tells the police she didn't get a good look at the man's face, but she remembers his voice. They set her up with an audio lineup, which is what it sounds like. She listens to a series of recordings of suspects voices. And she picks one. It's David Wood's voice. He becomes the lead suspect in her rape. Over the next few months, David Wood becomes the prime suspect for the Desert murders. The police get frustrated given all the suspicion floating around the sky and the lack of smoking guns. So they look back at the Case of Bea, case where there's both positive identification and biological evidence they can test. They figure if they can make a connection between David Wood and Bea's rape, they can start proving a pattern that'll help to put him away for the desert murders. So they get a warrant to collect David Wood's blood, and they test it against the semen in Bea's rape kit. And the test excludes David Wood as the rapist. Prosecutors have to drop the case. To David, the story is a key exhibit for his argument that he was railroaded. It shows the police were willing to blame him for every bad thing that happened in El Paso. And if he didn't have biological evidence on his side, maybe he'd have gone to prison for bees rape too. In David's mind, this is all prologue to the Desert murder case. It shows just how easy it was for him to become a target, just how easy it was for him to lose the benefit of the doubt. If David's lawyers can't stop the execution, then David will die in 22 days. Specifically, he'll receive a lethal dose of pentobarbital, which will stop his breathing and eventually his heart. That might sound clinical, but past executions have been pretty grisly. There are times when the drugs don't work or don't work quickly enough and you have men groaning in pain and reportedly feeling like they're drowning, suffocating, or burning. David's heard the stories. During his time on death row, more than 400 people have been executed, some of them his best friends in the world. So all things considered, David is clear eyed about this and knows the odds are against him. At the same time, he feels some amount of hope, and that's mainly because of his lawyer, Greg. When David was first scheduled to be executed in 2009, he was full of hate and anger. He felt totally alone, like his death was inevitable. So he says he gave up completely. He gave away his possessions, his typewriter, even his shoes. But then Greg won him a stay of execution. Other guys on the road told David he was lucky to get such a good lawyer. David says Greg reminded him of Mr. Rogers, someone decent and kind who he could actually open up to. So now, even though David is facing execution again, he doesn't feel like he's fighting it alone. What do you expect to happen in the next few weeks?
David Wood
I don't know. God's will. That's all I know. Yeah, so, yeah, it's kind of affecting me now. But if it happens and I believe in my faith, that's God's will.
Maurice Shama
Men on death row talk about their faith a lot, as you might imagine. And I do think David is sincere here. He was baptized a few years ago and meets regularly with a spiritual advisor. He spends hours reading the Bible and watching faith based movies on a prison issued tablet. There is ultimately only so much you can get to know a person in an hour. But this version of David, the religious one, was hard to square with the more callous version from earlier in our interview. I went in looking for signs of remorse, some help. Thinking about the binary innocent man or serial killer. By that standard, I wasn't sure what to make of David. For me, he landed somewhere more complicated. Possibly innocent of the murders, but certainly not sympathetic. When the jury was deciding David Wood's punishment, they had to decide what they made of him as a person, how much sympathy they could muster for someone like him. I wanted this interview to kind of approximate that experience so that you could decide what sympathy you might hold for him, if any. I suspect that for many of you it might not be much. With just a few minutes left in our hour together, I ran this idea past him directly. You can imagine somebody listening to all this and saying, well, you know, I'm not sympathetic to this guy. What would you say to someone like that?
David Wood
I don't really know what to say because we don't have time. Our time is already running out. But the first thing I would do is I would not like the character like me. I wouldn't have too much sympathy for him Again, from the beginning, I didn't really know this was. I thought this was going to be about the case. But when Greg told me, no, they're going to try to get you people as new as a person like, who cares what I think people think of me? I didn't do this case. Regardless of my past, let the case speak for itself,
Maurice Shama
regardless of my past, meaning regardless of being a convicted rapist. But actually, for David Wood's lawyers, his past is very much part of the story here. As counterintuitive as it may sound, they say David Wood's prior crimes strengthen the case for his innocence. The defense team's theory goes something like the police and prosecutors began their investigation by looking at the least sympathetic characters in El Paso. And that's how they came to focus on David Wood, a rapist just out of prison with a tendency to mouth off. There was hardly any physical evidence tying him to the murders, this theory goes. So instead, prosecutors highlighted questionable witnesses and ignored evidence that pointed in other directions. David's lawyers think none of this would have worked if he was an upstanding citizen. So, yes, they say David Wood is a rapist, but he's not a serial killer. It was the El Paso police and prosecutors who turned him into one. 33 years ago, a jury decided David Wood was guilty, but also that he was irredeemable, that he would, if given the chance, kill again. David's whole case disputes the very premise of that judgment. He's saying it's not about remorse or about what he is or isn't capable of. He's saying, look at the facts, the DNA, the fibers, the timeline, and let that be enough. But just as we get the signal to wrap up and we start saying our goodbyes, David seems to reconsider, to think more about how he's coming across. He gives it one last shot, for whatever it's worth.
David Wood
Just. Just so everybody knows. I feel, whatever happened to them people, it was bad. It was horrible. My deepest hurt that I have and I try to deal with is I'm accused of sexually assaulting and killing a 15 year old girl. Now my past is one thing I put. I could never kill a child. I could never. That's just never, never. It's just impossible. And I'm just telling y' all to for yourselves. I don't care if anybody else hears it. It's bothered me all the time to think, man, I am accused of killing a young girl. All the crazy stuff I've done, murder's never come part of my life. Y' all take care. I appreciate y' all seeing me. God bless.
Maurice Shama
For the next three weeks, David will be on death watch, an area reserved for men with upcoming execution dates. On the day of his execution, March 13, 2025, he'll be woken up early and driven in a prison van about an hour west to the state's execution chamber in Huntsville. He'll spend the day saying his goodbyes to his family and his lawyers. All the while, he'll be waiting to hear from the courts to hear if they'll grant him another last minute stay or if he'll die from lethal injection. They have until six o'. Clock. That's next time on the final episode of the last 12 weeks. The last 12 weeks is written and reported by me, Maurice Shama and Alvin Melith. Alvin produced the series. Jen Guerra edited the series along with Anita Batijo. Julie Snyder is the executive editor for Serial Productions. Additional editing from Akiba Solomon. Fact checking and research by Ben Phelan. Music supervision by Jen Guerra. And Phoebe Wang, with mixing by Phoebe Wang. Additional mixing by Katherine Anderson. Tracking direction from Sean Cole. Our associate producer is Mac Miller. Additional production by Anita Badajo. Additional reporting by Valerie Boy Ramsey. There's a lot about the death penalty that we couldn't fit into this show. Stories from Capitol defense lawyers. A fascinating look at the data behind executions. You can find all of that in our newsletter. Sign up for it at nytimes.com serialnewsletter. Original music for this series by Adam Dorn, aka Motion Worker, Matthias Basse and John Evans of Stellwagen Symfinet. Additional music by Dan Palace, Marian Lozano. Adam Dorn, AKA Motion Worker, composed our theme song. Video production by Sean Devaney. Our standards editor is Susan Wessling. Legal review from Alamin Sumar and Jackson Bush. The art for our show comes from Pablo Delkan. Sam Dolnick is deputy managing editor of the New York Times. Special thanks to Kyle Grandillo, David Dow, Ebony Reed and Samantha winter. The last 12 weeks is a production of Serial Productions, the Marshall Project and the New York Times.
Serial – The Last 12 Weeks, Episode 4: Detailed Summary
Main Theme & Purpose
This episode of Serial's "The Last 12 Weeks" examines the complex and deeply fraught final days before the scheduled execution of David Wood, an El Paso man convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of six women and girls. The episode explores the difficult line between assessing Wood’s personal culpability, his past criminal behavior, and the fundamental question of whether he actually committed the murders. The story is told through the voices of survivor Christy, Wood himself, and the host's own investigative lens, focusing on the human details beneath the legal case.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
Christy’s Stand:
David Wood’s Evasion:
Host’s Summation:
Timestamps for Key Segments
| Timestamp | Segment Description | |--------------|----------------------------------------------------| | 00:33-04:07 | Setting up the core dilemma of innocence vs. guilt | | 04:07-12:36 | In-depth account of Christy's experience & aftermath| | 13:57-16:53 | Arrival at death row, Wood’s childhood and criminal history | | 16:53-19:09 | Wood’s evasive responses to his prior crimes | | 19:10-21:22 | Wood's narrative of police scapegoating | | 21:50-23:52 | The "Bea" DNA exclusion and alternate suspect angle | | 23:53-25:50 | Death watch and Wood’s perspective on facing execution | | 26:19-27:43 | The host’s and legal team's perspectives on Wood’s character | | 29:19-30:20 | Wood’s last emotional denial and sign-off |
Episode Structure & Language
The episode preserves the signature Serial tone—intimate, meticulously reported, and unflinching in both witness testimony and suspect interview. The structure alternates between survivor narrative (Christy), the condemned man's own words (Wood), and the host’s critical engagement, allowing listeners to weigh evidence and emotional impact for themselves.
Summary Takeaway
This episode challenges the audience to wrestle with the complexity of guilt, the purpose of punishment, and the weight of personal narrative versus physical evidence. While Christy’s account is certain, visceral, and damning, Wood’s evasions and the other case involving exculpatory DNA complicate any easy conclusions. Ultimately, the episode holds space for doubt while foregrounding the voices most directly affected by violence and incarceration.