William Lee Neal

William Lee Neal
Born	William Lee Neal (1955-10-07) October 7, 1955 Fort Belvoir, Virginia
Other names	Wild Bill Cody
Occupation	Retired military soldier
Years active	1998
Spouse	4
Children	2
Relatives	2 brothers 2 sisters
Motive	Confidence tricks Rape
Criminal charge	3 counts murder 3 counts sexual assault 1 count kidnapping 1 count menacing
Penalty	Death
Details
Victims	3 killed 1 raped
Date	June-July 1998
Country	United States
State(s)	Colorado
Weapons	Splitting maul
Date apprehended	July 1998

William Lee "Cody" Neal (born October 7, 1955, Fort Belvoir, Virginia) is an American convicted serial killer, rapist, and con artist. Neal was sentenced to death for the murders of Rebecca Holberton, Candace Walters, Angela Fife, and the rape of a fourth woman Neal held against her will, all in 1998.

Early Life and Crimes

Neal was born the second of three sons and also had two sisters. He was named after a family pastor, William Lee, and one of his uncles was a minister. His father was an Air Force chief warrant officer who retired when Neal was nine. His mother, who died from cancer in 1995, was regarded as his family member he loved most and the one who kept his father in check, his father devoting to her in turn. Neal considered work in the FBI or as a minister, crediting his father taking him to museums in D.C. and his devotion to Christ through his uncle. He joined the army when he was seventeen.

Neal remembered his father as being disciplinarian, not above corporal punishment, and went through all sorts of basic virtues with his kids. Neal remembered his father's descent into alcoholism when Neal was twelve, constantly beating Neal with a belt and insulting him in front of bar patrons before blackouts. Neal also said his sisters inflicted injuries on themselves to make false allegations against Neal for beating and choking them, which incited his father to beat him more while the girls reportedly laughed. They only admitted they lied when their mother was dying. Neal was also raped as a child by a woman wanting payback for her husband's affair, which ended after six months. This, he says, drove him to sexually abuse a younger girl in turn. The woman found him again after he was discharged from the army and wanted to marry him, but after some time with her, Neal left her. Neal has also named a church official and army sergeant as other child molesters having preyed on him.

Neal's first arrest was auto theft with a friend when he was ten, where he was terrified about his father finding out once he and the friend were arrested. He was let go with a warning. He's also confessed to killing numerous animals when he was mad at them, arguing they would usually bite or scratch him. Neal lived his entire free life constantly conning numerous people with various lies, asking for loans without paying back, seducing women to control, and furiously demanding deals of free or reduced services when he was unsatisfied. He was married four times, all of them ending in divorces, each woman reporting manipulation, domestic abuse, and being terrified of Neal and finding his crimes unsurprising. His first marriage has been reported on very little, but Neal has lied it was over his ex having an affair.

Neal's second ex-wife, Karen, born in New York and with a history of backpacking and competitive rowing, first met Neal at her Hudson Bay Outfitters job in D.C., where she was assistant manager. After talking with him for an hour about the equipment he was looking for to go on the Appalachian Trail, she met him at her competitor's store. The next day, Neal cleaned up his appearance, convinced Karen's boss to extend her lunch break, and treated her to a picnic at a private estate, where he gifted her a custom necklace pendant. Karen's family liked him for convincing her to dump her abusive ex at the time, encouraging her sobriety, and treating the family when they were on outings.

However, Neal would disappear for months at a time, to run his cons and take funds he wanted, as well as told Karen lies about his background and experiences. He made Karen lease an apartment in her name and rushed her to get a job when they moved to Houston, Texas. She more and more witnessed Neal's hatred of women by vulgarly insulting women in public for only Karen to hear. He also tried to revert her to her addictions and planned to prostitute her, but she refused, Neal lying he was only "testing" their relationship. After Neal swiftly married the two of them, he choked Karen when he found out she once had an affair, then made her admit it to the man's wife over the phone. Neal continued to attack her as such when interrogating her about her personal history, as well as stalked her activities and harassed her when it even seemed like she caught men's attention, becoming more furious and violent at her over his paranoia of her being unfaithful and even once order her to be re-baptized. In contract, Neal constantly cheated on her, which Karen found out when a woman sent him panties and photo of herself in the mail, and sexually abused her by forcing her into various degrading, painful exchanges. Karen's parents knew he was dangerous cut him out of their will. Neal abandoned Karen in Tennessee for more cons, had neighbors watch her every move and report to him, sold her belongings and reduced her to van life, and eventually divorced her once they were in Colorado. Even after Karen happily married another man and had a daughter, Neal continued to stalk her, trying to manipulate her back into his orbit, asking for money, and slurring her out when she refused. Karen was later called by a detective when Neal married and conned another woman named Karen.

Neal's fourth wife, Jennifer, met Neal when he was a popular customer at the gentleman's club where she worked as a stripper. Neal asked her out with a $1,000 fee upfront in $1 bills. He asked her about her life like many of her colleagues, and she told him about being abandoned by her father and her mother spending years with dangerous men until she remarried. Neal used her hatred of the strip club and desire to marry and settle down to get her to move in with him, seducing her similarly to how he seduced Karen, his second ex-wife. Neal constantly threw his money around, while also insisting in his small apartment, she never go into a bedroom he kept locked. He similarly lied about and embellished his history and marriages to Jennifer, while also being candid about being a mama's boy. Neal similarly possessed Jennifer and got her pregnant in spite of them both using protection. When she went out with a gay friend of hers, he threatened to kick her out unless she told him about her entire sexual history. Neal threw away all her yearbooks and diaries, groped women in front of her while she was still carrying her baby, and sexually abused her similarly to Karen, making her watch porn to learn how he wanted to exploit her. He would send Jennifer to live with her mother when she protested his affairs, and even in spite of all that, they still married and Neal pulled Jennifer out of the club. He was domineering enough he made Jennifer live under a financial allowance, made her go out of the apartment always with him or one of his sisters, and never ask about his activities. Neal even abandoned Jennifer to give birth to her daughter without him, Jennifer being taken to the hospital by her mother and sister; Neal threatened primary custody over the baby if Jennifer refused his demands. Neal had the same paranoia over Jennifer that he didn't want her cheating on him; but when Neal once took her to a swingers' motel, he set her up to be raped by one of the attendees. Jennifer started suspected Neal of sexually abusing her daughter, and with him abandoning the two of them without basic necessities, she called him, only to hear he was sleeping with another women. Jennifer called the police and moved out of the house, needing to take a cab because Neal cut her off from using the car. Neal nevertheless suckered Jennifer into his family's home by the time she met Neal's mother, his sister telling Jennifer what he wanted out of a wife. Neal then abandoned Jennifer and her daughter again to their family, stalking their activities even when he wasn't there. After moving them all to another apartment, Jennifer saw Neal's locked room had bags filled with messages from various women. When one woman came to the apartment looking for Neal, Jennifer left him for good. Neal filed for divorce and sent child support money, barely maintaining contact otherwise; but when Jennifer saw Neal at a bar entertaining numerous other patrons, he lied he and Jennifer were still married. Jennifer is now married to another man, she and her husband having three children between them. Jennifer is significantly cautious about the safety of her children and supervised them often when they were kids.

Murders and Arrest

Neal's sister told Jennifer Neal was questioned by the FBI for the abduction, rape, and murder of a girl at a New York gas station in the 1980s, before being ultimately cleared as a suspect. No further specific details of the case have been publicly revealed.

Neal failed to maintain his cons when several women he manipulated wanted their money back. Rebecca Holberton wanted $70 thousand, Candace Walters wanting six thousand dollars. They were all threatening to go to the police, so at the end of June 1998, Neal bought nylon rope, duct tape, and his murder weapon of choice, a splitting maul. First killing Rebecca in June 30, then Candace on July 2, Neal lured them both with the promises of repaying his debts and promising business deals. He wanted to cover them both with blankets, which only Rebecca consented to, and then he killed them by smashing the maul into their heads, draining their back accounts after they were dead.

Neal had seduced two roommates, "Suzanne" and "Beth" (their real names were never publicly released), after meeting him at a bar. He was also seeing Angela Fife and went into business with her. Neal asked Suzanne to accompany him allegedly to meet with lawyers for his work, around the same time he proposed to Beth and threw a lavish celebration. On the night of July 5, Neal abducted Suzanne, blindfolded and gagged her, and tied her to a mattress. He cut off her clothes, made her feel a piece of one woman's skull, and even kicked her body to show she was dead. After molesting Suzanne, Neal left and threatened her into not saying or doing anything. He then abducted and killed Angela in front of Suzanne, then untied Suzanne and orally raped her at gunpoint. Neal then took Suzanne to Beth, placed a gun and tape recorder on a table, and ran the recorder to confess to his crimes for two hours. Neal ordered Suzanne, Beth, and a friend of theirs to delay calling the police, but Suzanne called them anyway.

Neal, while at large, responded to calls from law and justice and refused to surrender without consulting an attorney. With the risk of Neal posing a danger to more people, Deputy District Attorney Mark Pautler called Neal and lied he was a defense attorney to get Neal's surrender. Neal also provided confessions to his crimes over the phone, which were sealed under attorney-client privilege. Neal eventually agreed to a surrender and was arrested, but Pautler faced a disciplinary hearing for his actions. Pautler was ruled to have beyond boundaries of conduct, having provided Neal false information and not informed him of his rights, and sentenced to a three-month suspension of his license.

Trial and Sentences

Neal was represented by Jim Aber, until Neal fired Aber and represented himself pro se. The courtroom was packed with the families of the murdered women, Neal's supporters, and the press. Neal couldn't keep track of his varied, questionable confessions to a thousand trysts and rapes and a hundred murders. During Neal's incarceration, his calls meant to be for trial were to his family, girlfriend, the press, and lawyers he consulted, running up his bills. Neal later married his girlfriend, a business heir from Phoenix, Arizona who paid for his fees.

Neal pled guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, three counts first-degree sexual assault, and seven other charges, ranging from kidnapping to menacing. His hours-long confession was played to demonstrate his personality in the sentencing phase. He appealed against the chance of him being sentenced to death, but he got the capital sentence in September 1999. It was commuted to life in prison in 2003.

The families of the murdered women maintain support for each other, and Neal's ex-wives keep in steady communication with each other.

In Popular Culture

In the Law & Order episode "DR 1-102", a story inspired by Neal's communications with Mark Pautler involved one of the prosecutors, Serena Southerlyn (portrayed by Elisabeth Rohm), convincing a murderer to release a hostage when he was cornered by police, presenting her legal credentials and inadvertently convincing him she was his attorney. Southerlyn later faced the loss of her license at a disciplinary hearing, at which Jack McCoy defended her and successfully protected her career.

See Also

• List of serial killers in the United States