William Joseph Pierce Jr Wiki

Has an amazing ability of taking real-life tales of some of history's most notorious serial killers and weaving them into intense fictional storylines to make them feel totally new. Season two of the series features some big names in the serial killer world, like Charles Manson and the Son of Sam, but it also showcases some lesser-known murderers like William Junior Pierce.

, Pierce (who is played by Michael Filipowich) appears here and there to lighten the mood a bit. He claims he’s really smart—speaking seven languages, including English—and is eventually bribed into talking with Mallomar cookies. At one point, FBI agent Jim Barney (played by Albert Jones) tells Holden Ford that he specifically brought the treats to try to bribe Pierce after seeing a picture of Pierce’s jail cell with a bunch of sweets in it.

Who

If you've never heard of Junior Pierce before seeing him on the receiving side of Holden's investigation, here's everything you need to know about the lesser-known killer's true story. Here’s his full rap sheet:

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Pierce was caught carrying out a bunch of crimes between 1960 and 1964, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections website. That includes burglary, theft, and arson. He was especially busy in March of 1963—committing four different crimes that month.

After Pierce was convicted of one burglary, he was paroled in 1970. However, a prison psychologist said at the time that he may be dangerous to himself and others, per

Pierce’s rap sheet takes a while to scroll through, but his murders, which were committed over the course of two months in the early '70s, are his most recent crimes.

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Reports that he was formally charged with murdering a service station operator and a 20-year-old housekeeper. Old court documents from the Supreme Court of South Carolina also detail how he lured a 13-year-old girl from a hamburger stand and killed her.

Like his fictional counterpart, who joked about his having no chance at parole (which, it's pretty easy to see why), Pierce first went to jail in 1971 and has been there ever since. According to his rap sheet, there's no possible release date set for him.

, his blurry prison photo on the Georgia Department of Corrections site shows a man who looks like he could be your grandpa.

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He’s also listed as having salt & pepper hair in the website's physical description, which also points out that he was born in 1931. So, he's spent more than half his life in jail to date.

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In the show, Pierce, portrayed by Michael Filipowich, is played for dark laughs. Jonathan Groff’s Agent Holden Ford and Albert Jones’ Agent Jim Barney visit the killer at a Georgia jail in the third episode of season two. Despite insisting upon his intelligence and boasting that he speaks seven languages, including “Libyan” (most Libyan people speak Arabic), his speech is littered with malapropisms, and it becomes quickly clear that he lacks the analytic insight into his criminality that Ford is looking for. But the scene helps demonstrate Barney's investigative and interrogative skills—after Ford’s questioning leads nowhere, the Atlanta agent is able to make Pierce open up by bribing him with Mallomar cookies. Later, Barney tells Ford that he came prepared with treats after a photograph of Pierce’s candy-strewn jail cell suggested the killer might have a sweet tooth.

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Doesn’t particularly detail Pierce’s life or crimes, and there’s little to be found online about the convicted killer. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections website, Pierce had a long rap sheet before he was convicted of murder. Between 1960 and 1964, he was convicted of a series of burglaries, thefts, and an instance of first-degree arson. But, according to a short article in The New York Times from June 1971, he was paroled in 1970 despite a psychologist’s report finding that Pierce may be dangerous to himself and others. He was free for less than a year, but police connected him to nine killings within that short time.

According to an appeal rejected by the South Carolina Supreme Court in 1974, one of the murders Pierce was convicted for was that of 13-year-old Peg Cuttino. In this confession [Pierce] said he drove over to Sumter from Swainsboro, Georgia, on Friday, December 18, and picked Peg up at a hamburger stand, reads the court documents. Defendant said he then drove Peg out to Manchester Forest where he killed her.

Didn’t invest a lot of time in covering Pierce or his crimes, the show did include one very accurate detail. The picture that Agent Barney produces of the killer in his cell is very real, but was edited in the show to feature actor Filipowich’s face instead of Pierce's. The real photo was taking in May 1971, by which time Pierce had already been connected to six slayings and was awaiting his first trial. Today, Pierce is still imprisoned in Georgia.

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Not too much is known about Junior, but we did some creepy homework so you don’t have to. ’Cause what is sleep?

According to Murderpedia, a website that is exactly what it sounds like, Junior was, er, criminally active in the ’70s. In 1970, he was serving time in Georgia for burglary and released on parole after just seven months—even though, according to a 1971

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In an article for Lawyers Mutual, Inc., attorney Jay Reeves remembers attending Junior’s trial as a child: “[Peg’s] alleged killer was a drifter with an IQ of 70 who was already behind bars in Georgia on nine separate murder charges, ” he said. “The trial had been moved from Sumter County because of the press buildup.”

According to AJC, Junior “ultimately confessed to three murders in Georgia but was also implicated in the murders of victims in South Carolina and North Carolina, ” including a 51-year-old county store owner, a 60-year-old storekeeper, a 17-year-old waitress, a 50-year-old gas station attendant, a 60-year-old gas station operator, a 20-year-old housekeeper, a 32-year-old storekeeper, and an 18-year-old college student. Truly abhorrent.

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Junior confessed to his crimes, but a 1977 article in the Sumter Daily Item reported that he repeatedly tried to claim he wasn’t read his Miranda rights and therefore, his confession shouldn’t count.

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Junior was sentenced to life in prison in 1971 and is still there today, although he’s living completely under the radar. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, he’s 88 years old and incarcerated in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison.

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