This episode includes discussions of violence and murder.

Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen.

In 2011, investigative reporter Lisa Olson receives a handwritten letter in the mail.

There, at the top of the page is her name, scribbled out in mostly capital letters.

But it's not from an old friend or a member of her family.

It's been sent to her by a convicted murderer named Edward Harold Bell.

And in it, on lined notebook paper, he includes a poem he wrote.

And what of the innocent ones who fell, by the way, will the henchmen of Uncle Sam ever pay

all of those who fell were as brave as brave can be.

The only coward who was there was me.

When he sends this letter to Lisa, Bell is already in prison for murdering a man in broad daylight

in front of the man's family.

Now, he's claiming responsibility for more murders.

The victims, all teenage girls who disappeared from in and around Houston and Galveston, Texas

throughout the 70s.

They later turned up dead, but their killer or killers were never caught.

Bell lists some of these girls in his letter.

He names three of them.

Others he only refers to by their initials or hair color.

Sometimes he includes years or locations that are meaningful to their cases.

He calls his poem about his alleged victims,

The Eleven Who Went to Heaven.

...