investigation is a dark heart and the iron hand of justice. >> i was on my way home. she was walking alongside the road. i just stopped the car, got out of the car and went and raped her and killed her. >> we hear the confessions of a madman. >> there's nothing they could have said or done. it was me. it wasn't them.

they were dead as soon as i saw them, i think. >> how does a mind become this twisted? >> killing was built into his upbringing. 5-year-old, 6-year-old kid, that was his job. >> seems to be a combination of both -- of something biologically wrong with my head and being the way i was raised. >> are there lessons to be learned from this serial killer? >> there are other michael rosses out there. and i think we've got to try to prevent that. >> we'll take you inside the cell, inside the mind of this death row inmate on this "dark heart, iron hand: eight times a killer." what you're about to hear is both rare and astonishing. a prison interview with a condemned killer. from inside the prison where michael ross lived on death row for about 18 years, this serial killer detailed for us how and why he murdered eight women. it's disturbing to watch this ivy league educated man talk matter of factly about his

crimes. did he commit such crimes because of the way he was raised or it is something biological? and by listening carefully to what he has to say, can we prevent future tragedies? >> well, i'm a serial killer. i've killed eight women, six in this state and two in new york. >> this is michael ross, a serial killer interviewed in connecticut's summers prison for a british documentary 11 years after his capture. >> i'm on death row for four of those women. >> he may look and sound like the guy next door, but between 1982 and 1984, ross stunned rural connecticut where he raped at least five out of the six women he killed, strangling them with his bare hands and discarding their bodies in cornfields and wooded areas near major roadways. >> after they were dead, i remember the very first feeling i had was my heart was really pounding.

i mean it was really pounding. the second feeling i had was that my hands hurt from where i had strangled them. i always manually strangled them. and then the third feeling i had was fear. >> he talks about murder as if he were describing a day at the office. this ivy league graduate of cornell university, an affable life insurance salesman, came off cool, calm and collected enabling him to move undetected through an unsuspecting society. >> for some reason with me sexuality and violence have fused together. >> but his dark core would remain hidden and unexplained until after his capture. his two-year connecticut rampage started in january of 1982 driving along busy route 6 in danielson, connecticut. ross spotted a 17-year-old teenage girl walking to her boyfriend's house. michael malchik was a homicide

detective with the connecticut state police. >> tammy williams was the first connecticut victim. >> i saw her walking along the side of the road. i followed her. i grabbed her and dragged her to the side of the pond. i raped her, and then i strangled her and put her -- threw her into the pond when i was done. >> debra taylor, his second victim, met her demise in the danielson town green. >> around midnight, debbie taylor had had a fight with her husband concerning a broken down vehicle they were in. and she was sitting here in the park, and michael was driving around, and he saw her apparently distraught, and he offered her a ride home. instead of giving her a ride home, instead he drove her to a cornfield in canterbury where he sexually assaulted her, murdered her and threw her in a river bed and left her. >> remarkably, ross continued hiding behind a mask of normality. underneath it all, he is in some

ways still a mystery to himself, unable to truly understand why he did what he did. it seems he killed as easily as he talks about it. >> he was polite. he was affable. he was not argumentative. >> psychiatrist fred berlin met and evaluated ross before his trial. he says michael ross is a sexual sadist. >> sexual sadism is like alcoholism, a craving disorder that people are having intense cravings and feeling very tempted to give in to those cravings. >> i used them. i degraded them for my own personal pleasure. had to end. >> but it didn't. after tammy williams and debra taylor, ross continued his silent connecticut killing spree, murdering four more including 19-year-old state javelin champion robin stavinsky and teenage friends april brunais and leslie shelley.

the two girls both 14 were thought to have run away. ross apparently spotted the two girls hitchhiking along the border of rhode island and connecticut. >> i picked them up. they wanted me to drop them off at a gas station. i drove right by the gas station. one of them pulled a knife on me, like a kitchen knife type thing. and i almost drove off the road, i was so surprised. and i don't know what i said, but i said something and she gave the knife to me. obviously scared her. anyway, took them to a place, tied them up with some cloth that i had in the back seat. >> and he admitted that while he was sexually assaulting the first one, they were talking to each other. and all he said was that they were -- one was telling the other to cooperate and hopefully he'll let us go. >> i put the younger girl leslie shelley into the trunk of the car, and i took the other girl, april brunais out and i raped her and killed her and i put her

in the front seat. >> then he went to the car and he took out leslie shelley who was 14 years old i believe at the time. a very tiny girl. and he said to me that he was already in so far he didn't know what to do. he didn't want it then. made some comment like that. apologized to leslie shelley that he was going to have to kill her, and he said he was sorry, put her on her stomach and strangled her to death. >> well, the smallest one, leslie shelley has always bothered me more than the others. and i think it was because she was so small and she was so cooperative and i think it was because of the way she was killed was so close to the fantasies. that was the one that was -- it was like it was fantasy. >> how can michael ross kill so easily? and how can he speak so matter of factly when recounting it all?

the answer can be found at the center of his twisted fantasies, and it would take years for police and psychiatrists to unravel it all. but in 1983, police only knew about the deaths of debra taylor and robin stavinsky. the bodies of his other victims had yet to be found. they didn't suspect a serial killer until they found the body of ross' last victim, wendy baribeault. when we come back -- >> he thought he was going to get caught. he told me he was thinking of turning himself in. >> i was dressed in a three-piece suit like it was in broad daylight. there were about a dozen people who saw me well enough, cars driving by to draw a composite drawing.

michael ross easily blended into society as a likable,

friendly life insurance salesman, but in discovering the body of wendy baribeault, his sixth connecticut victim, police found important clues that would help them catch this unlikely killer. >> she had been missing for approximately two days, and we launched a search that involved a number of policemen and local firemen, which is a common occurrence for us. her unclothed body was found approximately a quarter of a mile from her home on a busy highway known as route 12 in the town of lisbon. >> i was on my way home. she was walking alongside the road. >> as gruesome as it was, wendy baribeault's murder gave detectives their first big break. >> michael ross grabbed wendy baribeault and pulled her across the stone wall adjacent to this highway. pulled her along this other stone wall through the woods and dragged her up across this stone wall where he assaulted her,

strangled her to death and then rolled her body into a stone wall and covered it with stones. >> because the killer took his time to hide the body, malchik developed a theory. >> it's been my experience that somebody that's committed a homicide, all they want to do is flee the area. and this person who had committed this homicide took the extra time to put wendy baribeault inside the stone wall, the stones rearranged to make it look like the original stone wall and left in that condition. we developed this profile in which we thought the person had some connection locally. >> because of the victims' similarities, young and petite, malchik thought the murders were related and that connecticut had its first serial killer, but at the time, his theory was unpopular. >> there was resistance, and i was just told there wasn't enough information to indicate that there was, and we didn't want to alarm the public.

>> but hoping to learn more about the killer, police began to publicize some of the information they had. >> there was a husband and wife who said that they saw a small blue car and a second witness who was riding a motorcycle who said that he saw a blue car, fairly new, small, parked right off the side of the road right where wendy baribeault was seen and eventually we narrowed it down to the fact that it was a

like it said, it was in broad

detectives at their and i looked at him, and i said,

because the prosecutor, i knew,

relationship, especially when it

was an ivy league student and

>> according to borden, the real

carolina to visit me, and i had

♪ some neighbors are energy saving superstars. how do you become a superstar? with pg&e's free online home energy checkup. in just under 5 minutes you can see how you use energy and get quick and easy tips on how to keep your monthly bill down and your energy savings up. don't let your neighbor enjoy all the savings. take the free home energy checkup. honey, we need a new refrigerator. visit pge.com/checkup and get started today.

where other michael rosses are

>> if i started murdering people, there would be none of you left. >> in 1987, the "today" show went to san quentin state prison and interviewed the infamous charles manson. he was unshackled and unapologetic. >> you know, if i wanted to kill somebody, i'd take this book and beat you to death with it. and i wouldn't feel a thing. >> the interview sparked controversy within nbc. >> we here on the "today" show staff debated among ourselves whether to air his answers. half of our staff said, absolutely not.