The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 4

Summary

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.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Binary of Innocence and Culpability (00:33-04:07)

• Host Maurice Shama sets the stage: Most death row inmates aren’t contesting guilt, but Wood and his lawyers assert his innocence entirely. The episode aims to dig into the question: "What kind of person is David Wood? What is he really capable of?"
• Texas's death penalty law required juries to weigh future dangerousness—if Wood was considered likely to kill again, execution would follow.

2. Christy's Story: The Survivor's Perspective (04:07-12:36)

• Introduction to Christy: Raped by Wood at age 13, now in her late 50s. Shares specifics of the attack, its aftermath, the legal process, and testifying at Wood's death penalty trial.
  • "I stared him down the entire time I testified, and he didn't look up at me...it was very much about me having the power back." – Christy (08:38)
• Impact on Life: Christy describes lasting trauma, hypervigilance, and how her experience shaped her parenting.
  • "With both of my daughters, when they turned 13, I told them what happened...why I was such an overbearing mother growing up." – Christy (09:22)
• Motivation for Testifying & Doing the Interview: Christy wants to dispel any doubt about Wood's guilt.
  • "My purpose is so there's not a doubt in the listener's mind..." – Christy (10:21)
• Geography of Crime: Christy walks Maurice through the neighborhood, tracing the proximity of her rape, Wood’s house, the victims’ homes, and the desert where bodies were found.
  • "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?" – Maurice (11:29)
• Skepticism toward Defense Arguments: Christy dismisses doubts about DNA evidence.
  • "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." – Christy (11:56)

3. Face-to-Face: Interview with David Wood on Death Row (13:57-19:09)

• Prison Setting & Wood's Background (13:57-16:53):
  • All Texas death row inmates housed at Allen B. Polonsky Unit.
  • Wood grew up in poverty and dysfunction, with only three adult years outside of prison.
  • Early criminal behavior and trauma; prison time described as making him more hostile.
    • "Anytime I came out of prison, I came out worse than I went in. I came out very hostile." – David Wood (16:39)
• Hostile Interview Tone & David’s Reluctance (16:53-19:09):
  • Wood grows frustrated by questions about his sexual assault history.
  • Downplays or denies prior convictions.
    • "I really didn't...I didn't do that case." – David Wood, on another rape conviction (17:26)
    • “An incident happened, it probably scared the crud out of someone. So really nothing happened...that’s pretty much it.” – David Wood, on indecency with a minor (17:36)
  • On Christy’s case, Wood admits to wrongdoing but reframes the assault as a “drunken mistake.”
    • "We were making out...things just got out of hand." – David Wood (18:26)
    • "It was a bad thing. I mean, I did a bad thing. I was under the influence." – David Wood (18:44)
  • Maurice calls attention to the stark difference between Christy's account (predatory, intentional) and David's (mutual, out-of-control).

4. Wood’s Version: The Pattern and the Police (19:09-21:50)

• Hostility with Detectives & Police Focusing on Him:
  • Claims he became a scapegoat because of his record and combative attitude.
    • "I'm the moron that turned out to be the scapegoat." – David Wood (21:22)
  • Admits he made himself a target: "Not because of the case, but because it became personal." – David Wood (21:27)
• Alternate Suspect Story: The "Bea" Case (21:50-23:52)
  • Details a 1987 rape accusation against Wood (same park as Christy’s rape). Positive voice lineup but DNA evidence excluded him, case dropped.
  • Wood uses this to argue police are quick to blame him for "every bad thing" in El Paso.

5. Facing Death, Faith, and Final Reflections (23:53-30:20)

• Wood's Feelings about Execution & Faith:
  • Execution scheduled in 22 days. Has witnessed over 400 executions while on death row. Finds some hope in his attorney and faith.
    • "When Greg told me, no, they're going to try to get you, people as new as a person...I didn't really know this was...I wouldn't have too much sympathy for him." – David Wood (27:09)
  • Maurice notes the challenge of reconciling “religious” Wood with the more evasive, unsympathetic side seen earlier.
  • At the very end, Wood gives an emotional denial regarding the murders.
    • "I could never kill a child. I could never. That's just never, never. It's just impossible...All the crazy stuff I've done, murder's never come part of my life." – David Wood (29:19)

6. The Broader Question: Sympathy, Justice, and Character (hyperlinks to multiple moments)

• Maurice's Reflection: The episode draws a line between the criminal acts Wood admits to, the murders he denies, and the judicial and social tendency to collapse those distinctions. The jury saw irredeemability; Maurice suggests listeners make their own judgment.
  • "I wanted this interview to kind of approximate that experience so that you could decide what sympathy you might hold for him, if any." – Maurice (26:19)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Christy’s Stand:

  • "I stared him down the entire time I testified, and he didn't look up at me...it was very much about me having the power back." (08:38)
  • "There's no ounce of me that feels he's innocent by 100% convinced that it's him." (12:27)

• David Wood’s Evasion:

  • "I really didn't...I didn't do that case." (17:26)
  • "We were making out...things just got out of hand." (18:26)
  • "I could never kill a child. I could never. That's just never, never. It's just impossible." (29:19)

• Host’s Summation:

  • "Possibly innocent of the murders, but certainly not sympathetic." (25:50)
  • "Let the case speak for itself, regardless of my past." – Wood, cited by Maurice (27:43)

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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 |

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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.

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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.

Transcript

[Maurice Shama]

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[Christy]

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[Christy]

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[Maurice Shama]

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[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.

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[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,

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[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]

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[Maurice Shama]

It enriches our relationship, broadening our horizons.

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[Maurice Shama]

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[Christy]

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[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.

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[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.