A Brief Look Behind the Scenes of THE WOODSMAN Episode

M. William Phelps is the national bestselling author/investigative journalist of over 20 nonfiction books, five of which focus on serial murderers, and star of "Dark Minds." His latest book is NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN.

The thing about Main South in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the working girls are no strangers to the idea that a sadistic serial killer lurks in the deepest, darkest shadows, is that to walk the block and look around, you'd think you're in any other major city's down and out, poorer and depressed section. They all look the same, whether Detroit, Hartford, Rochester, or, in this case, Worcester: abandoned buildings, homeless hangin' out in the parks, grimy streets strewn with garbage, gang graffiti on underpasses and the sides of buildings, check cashing stores and head shops, dudes hangin' on the corner giving you that "I-got-some-Dr. Feel Good-medicine" eye as you drive by. And the thing is, it always seems to be raining, or at least overcast.

Main South is an urban jungle. For years it has been a notorious trolling ground for out-of-towners cruising in their big middle-class suburban vehicles, wearing their posh clothes, looking to by some sex and exploit the local women walking the streets. Worcester itself has been called the Northeast's prostitution capital. Men drive the Main South strip looking for those down-and-out girls trying to feed habits anyway they can. It's a disgusting dynamic played out all across this country — filthy men (many of whom are married with children, have good jobs and cut their grass on Saturday mornings) using and abusing women for whatever they can get out of them. It drives me crazy and tears my heart apart that we allow thius type of sexual enslavement to continue the way we do, and do very little to stop it, but that is a discussion for another day. Hell, most of the time, we even have the nerve to blame the women.

John Kelly and his S.T.A.L.K. team members came up with"The Woodsman" name for the serial killer preying on these helpless, hopeless women, many of whom had one or two bad stumbles in life and wound up caught out. The Woodsman episode will go into much greater detail about why we believe our killer is a woodsman and why we think he has chosen the Main South area of Worcester specifically to hunt, but let me say this for right now: The Woodsman guy can be caught with the courageous, tenacious and direct help of Dark Minds viewers (which makes a series like Dark Minds so powerful and important for me to be a part of). As you'll see in the episode, one of the victims' sisters says,"There's a lot of people" — down on the ground of Main South — "who know a lot." The problem is, they're afraid to come forward. That means witnesses are out there. It only takes one tip to throw the case into a whirlwind and solve it!

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