Sympathy for the Devil

In 1981, Margy Palm was forced into her car at gunpoint by a serial killer suspected of more than 30 murders. What happened between them over the next eight hours-and later while he awaited execution-was so unlikely that journalists and filmmakers have tried for decades to get palm to tell the whole story. Now, in a series of in-depth interviews with Julie Miller, a survivor breaks her silence

- By Julie Miller

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST– Margy Palm's high school year book photo from 1969.

“Do you have any music?”

It was nearing eight o’clock in the evening on December 11, 1981, and the serial killer Stephen Morin was driving the SUV of his latest captive, Margy Palm, north out of San Antonio. Helicopters circled the city and police combed the streets, warning people to stay inside and lock the doors. Morin’s reign of terror was sputtering to a clumsy close after a rare mistake earlier that day. He was suspected of the murder, torture, and in some cases rape of more than 30 women in 9 or 10 states— and most of San Antonio now knew that he was on the loose in its manicured, country-club midst.

Morin’s concern at the moment, though, wasn’t escaping so much as finding an appropriate soundtrack for his kidnapping of Palm, the 30-year-old Texan in the passenger seat. Morin, also 30, had pulled a .38 revolver on her six hours earlier as she reached her Chevy Suburban in the parking lot of a Kmart after Christmas shopping, then shoved her inside the car. Palm looked like many of his other victims—pretty, fit, and blond—and tells me that she didn’t try to fight or flee for the same reason that some of the others hadn’t: “I’ve never felt that kind of fear.”