Serial Killer Targets Young Girls to Disfigure Them in Unspeakable Ways

Rita Marie Gojanola was born on February 14th, 1947 in Myrtle Creek, Oregon to parents Paulino and Francis. When Rita was 3 years old, her family moved to Enyat, Washington. Her first jobs were in local apple picking sheds. She then moved on to working at a car dealership and was the first woman to sell cars in that part of Washington.

Rita married Dennis Brown in 1964, but the marriage didn’t last. On February 14th, 1979, she married a man named Jim Huffman, but that marriage was also short-lived. With Jim, Rita had two daughters, Angie and Amanda. Rita spoke with Angie regularly, usually by phone. That was their routine and if Angie couldn’t reach her mother, she knew something was wrong.

Amanda Marie Huffman, also known as Mandy, was born on December 4th, 1979 in Wenatchee, Washington. Mandy was a freshman at Eastmont Junior High School, where she was an honor student and a member of the Puente Club. She received various awards, especially for her writing, and she had been recently named student of the month.

Mandy loved sports, including softball, soccer, hockey, and karate. That year, she earned a spot in the junior varsity softball team. Penny Lynn Davis was born on May 26th, 1985 in Tacoma, Washington. Her mother, Dana, was a single parent raising four children on her own. Her father lived in Texas and both parents hadn’t been in contact in some time.

In July of 1993, Dana moved her family from Tacoma to Eneas Valley in Okanogan County, where she had purchased 20 acres of land. The home was rustic and completely off the grid. The family relied on welfare benefits and were scraping by. >> Jack Owen Spillman III was born on August 30th, 1969 in Spokane, Washington.

 He was originally named Roy Wilson, but was later renamed after being adopted by one of his mother’s various husbands. His sisters all called him Roy. His mother had four husbands and four children. According to the siblings, they never knew which husband had fathered which child. The family moved to Tonasket in northern Okanogan County, where Jack grew up with his sisters.

 According to his sisters, he would bring home and show off dead rabbits and animals that he had strangled with his bare hands. When they told their mother, she simply dismissed it as a phase, but this wasn’t a phase that he was ever going to grow out of. Some sources claim he was committing burglaries as early as age 13, was later caught exposing himself in public multiple times.

Jack was a high school dropout. He quit when he was a freshman and never went back. He moved around a lot as an adult. Several years he lived in a trailer in Spokane Valley. Worked as a roofer sometimes, but he was regularly unemployed. There his criminal behavior quickly escalated. In 1985, when Jack was 16 years old, he was convicted of indecent liberties with a minor child.

 The details of that case were not made public, assumedly because Jack himself was a minor at the time. Two years later, in July of 1987, he was released from a juvenile facility in Centralia, Washington. He was 18 years old when he got out. Just 5 months after his release, Okanogan County Sheriff’s deputies arrested him on numerous charges, including burglary, theft, and vehicle prowling, all of which were in the second degree.

He pled guilty to theft and burglary and was sentenced to 25 months in prison. He only served 21 months, however, and was released in September of 1989, when he was 20 years old. This is when a community corrections officer wrote this about him. It appears Mr. Spillman reads, writes, and comprehends at a fourth grade level.

He doesn’t have any job skills and little if any community support. Based on his behavior at work release and his 1985 conviction for indecent liberties, I believe he is a sexual deviant. It is my opinion that he will be a threat to the community upon release. In April of 1990, Jack was sentenced to 33 months in Yakima County for second degree burglary.

While he was still supposed to be serving his sentence, he was arrested for second degree escape in October of 1991 after he had walked away from a work release program at a minimum security facility. For this, he was sentenced to 17 months, but ended up serving 26 months likely because of disciplinary reasons.

 He was released in February of 1993. Seven months after his release, Jack and a 26-year-old male roommate met a woman at a downtown Spokane bar. It was late and the bar was closing. The woman had been drinking was tired, so when the men offered her a ride home, she accepted, but they didn’t take her home. They took her to a trailer where the roommate essayed her while Jack held her down and kissed her.

The woman fought back and managed to essay her as well before Jack could essay her as well. She reported it to the police and both men were arrested, but their charges were later pled down. Jack was sentenced to a year in the Spokane County jail for fourth degree assault, but only ended up serving 124 days. It should be noted that from July of 1993 to February of 1994, Jack’s cellmate was a man named Mark Miller.

According to Mark, Jack spent his time reading books about serial killers. He told them that he wanted to be and I quote the world’s greatest serial killer. He said that he identified as a werewolf. Talked about stalking his prey and cutting victims’ hearts out so he could eat them and about keeping victims alive in caves so he could torture them for longer before he murdered them.

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 So, what are you waiting for? Go to drinkag1.com/themiserymachine or scan the QR code to save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 next gen or AG1 pro. Thanks to AG1 for sponsoring today’s video. Now, back to the episode. >> In April of 1994, a man walked into a Nutrisystem storefront in Kent during normal business hours and SA’d a young woman using the barrel of his gun.

This case remained unsolved for a year until Jack’s photograph began circulating due to the crimes that we’ll get to later that led to his arrest. In the summer of 1994, Jack was living in the Eneas Valley. He was dating a woman whose mother lived there, and he sometimes stayed at her home. Other times, he stayed with the Davis family who we mentioned at the beginning of our story.

This family that showed Jack kindness and often took him in when he was down on his luck, was who he was looking at in finding his next victim. >> On the early evening of September 17th, 1994, Penny Davis was playing outside with her 7-year-old brother near their home. The brother came back inside and told their mother that Penny had walked off.

Dana wasn’t immediately worried because Penny was 9 years old and knew the area. A few hours later, when she didn’t appear, her mother went outside to look for her. She spent hours searching the area on horseback, but Penny was nowhere to be found. Since the home had no telephone, she had to drive the 16 miles into Tonasket to report Penny missing.

By the time she got back, it was already dark outside. Sheriff’s deputies initially treated the report as a missing person’s case and considered the possibility that maybe Penny had run away from home. When they still couldn’t find her, they treated it as a kidnapping case, and as it turned out, that’s exactly what had happened.

When deputies first arrived at the Davis home that evening, they passed a man driving along Patterson Creek Road. He stopped when he saw the patrol cars and introduced himself as Jack Spillman. He said he had heard that Penny was missing and that he wanted to help look for her. Deputies took his name down and moved on.

They returned at about 1:00 a.m. to interview him more thoroughly. At the time, he was staying at his girlfriend’s mother’s house in the valley, not far from the Davis home. Jack claimed that he had been at a party earlier that evening. He said he left around 5:00 p.m. and drove to his girlfriend’s mother’s house to take a nap.

 Thing is, no one saw him at the house. Months passed and the investigation into Penny’s disappearance went cold. However, on March 28th, 1995, hikers walking McLaughlin Canyon, about 5 mi south of Tonasket, found a piece of human jawbone on the ground. Sheriff’s deputies later discovered a shallow grave nearby where Penny’s partially decomposed body was found.

She was only 9 years old time of her death. At autopsy, Penny’s cause of death could not be determined. But when forensic entomologists were brought in, they analyzed the insects found on Penny’s body and determined that she had been buried somewhere else for at least 2 weeks before being moved to McLaughlin Canyon.

Her jawbone had apparently fallen away during the transfer and that’s why the hikers found it separately from the rest of her body. Her original burial site was never found. >> By the spring of 1995, Jack already had another indecent exposure charge under his belt. Unbeknownst to the police, he was also the man responsible for a string of unsolved indecent exposure and stalking incidents.

He also attacked a girl outside of her home and ran away, but [music] was never identified until much later. Jack had moved to East Wenatchee, the same town where the Huffman family lived. He was sharing an apartment just a few blocks away from a VFW hall and the only possession he had was a dark-colored short-bed Chevy truck with a chrome roll bar and oversized tires.

At around 11:00 p.m. on April 12th, 1995, Jack told his roommate that he was going out for a drive. 30 minutes later, a neighbor saw his truck in a school parking lot behind the Huffman home. Inside, Rita Huffman was in the living room. The rear of the house had a sliding glass door which led into the backyard.

There, Jack entered and stabbed Rita 31 times in the back, neck, arms, chest, and her left leg. Defensive wounds showed that she fought back. She was just 48 years old. Investigators were later able to determine the time of the stabbing as her wristwatch had shattered during the attack and stopped at 11:30.

 15-year-old Mandy was in the master bedroom when Jack attacked her. He crushed the left side of her skull with a blunt object and stabbed her 16 times in the neck. Much like her mother, she had defensive wounds on her hands and her forearms. But killing Rita and Mandy wasn’t enough for him. I don’t normally believe in content warnings in true crime, but just know this next bit of information is a lot.

After Mandy was dead, Jack mutilated her body. He removed the skin from her privates and placed them over her face. He then forced a baseball bat inside of her and posed her nude body on the bed. He also cut off Rita’s breasts and placed them near Mandy’s body. He carved out her privates and stuffed them inside of her mouth.

He then posed her body on the sofa. Dr. Gerald Rapp, who carried out the autopsies, later confirmed that most of the extreme mutilations happened after both Rita and Mandy were already dead. >> Around 1:30 a.m. on April 13th, Officer Dan Rearson was on patrol. He was driving through the area near the VFW when he noticed a black pickup truck parked alone in the parking lot.

As he approached, the man in the truck immediately got out with his hands up as if he was being arrested. Officer Rearson asked the man his name. He told the officer that his name was Jack Spillman and that he was just cooling off. Officer Rearson made a note of the encounter and left. Around 8:00 a.m.

 that same morning, Angie called her mom, but there was no response. She called her sister Mandy as well. There was nothing. Since it something was wrong, she drove to her mom’s house on the 600 block of North Jerome Street. She discovered what had been done to her mother and her sister. She ran in a panic to her neighbor’s house, pounded on the door, and managed to tell them, “Call the police.

 Call the police now. Something’s happened to my mom and sister.” Neighbor called 911, and deputies arrived within minutes and secured the scene. Following day, a 12-in knife was found in a garbage can outside the VFW hall. The blade appeared to have dried blood on it and match one missing from a three-piece set inside the Huffman home.

With that, clues started pointing directly at Jack. They didn’t have enough to arrest him just yet, so they started watching his every move. During the surveillance, Jack left his apartment, walked to a dumpster, and threw something away. When the detectives retrieved it, they found that it was a ski mask covered in dried blood.

April 19th, nearly a week after the murders, it was determined that the blood on the knife found in the VFW garbage can matched the victim’s blood. Blood on the ski mask was a match as well, and Jack’s DNA was found around the mouth opening. After obtaining a warrant, the officers searched his apartment and his pickup truck and found more blood evidence.

Jack Spillman was arrested without incident at his rented apartment a few blocks away from the crime scene. >> On April 20th, Jack appeared to be a CCTV for a 15-minute bail hearing before Douglas County District Court Judge Judith McCallie. He was held without bail while he waited for his formal arraignment.

Jack was formally charged with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder for the Huffman homicides. In Washington state, aggravated first-degree murder carries two possible sentences: life in prison without the possibility of parole or death. He was also charged with SA, burglary, and robbery, all in the first degree.

Jack also faced outstanding charges in King County for the essay of the Neutra system clerk in April of 1994. He also faced a burglary charge in Spokane County. Prosecutors publicly stated that they would seek the death penalty and his trial was set for August of 1996 in Douglas County Superior Court with Steve Klem set to lead the prosecution.

One year and 10 days after his arrest, a plea agreement was reached on April 29th, 1996. In exchange for pleading guilty to first-degree murder, the state would not pursue capital punishment. Instead, Jack would get life in prison. He entered his guilty plea the following day and then also confessed to the murder of Penny Lynn Davis.

The confession shocked authorities. They suspected him, but they didn’t have enough evidence to prove it in court until he confessed. Jack told investigators what he had done to Penny. He had been watching the Davis home from a distance even after he moved out of the area. He said he was originally interested in Penny’s older sister who was 10 years old at the time, but on September 17th, 1994, only Penny was outside.

He carried Penny on his shoulders to his vehicle. He drove around for a while, took her to an undisclosed location and tortured her for 2 hours. Then he essayed her and killed her by slitting her throat and [music] placed her body in the water around the riverbank. Then he returned the next day and buried her in a hand-dug grave.

 He claimed that the last thing Penny said was that she forgave him, but we only have Jack’s account to go by and this isn’t an uncommon thing that killers claim their victims’ last words were. Over the next 2 weeks, he came back several more times. Each time he exhumed her body, he used it for what he called sexual purposes before reburying her.

After about 2 weeks, he dug her up final time and moved her to McLaughlin Canyon where he reburied her in a shallow grave. That’s where the hikers found her 6 months later. >> Judge Carol Wardell of Douglas County Superior Court handed down the sentence on May 1st, 1996. Life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Rita Huffman, 70 years for the murder of Mandy Huffman, and 45 and 1/2 years for the murder of Penny Davis to run consecutively.

Douglas County Prosecutor Steve Klem spoke to reporters after the sentencing saying, “For the law enforcement officers, for the families, for the prosecutors, we all feel good about it.” Okanogan County Prosecutor Rick Weber also spoke to reporters. He said, “I believe we are satisfied with the outcome. Mr.

 Spillman will never be on the streets again. We’re guaranteed that.” And as of the date of this recording, Jack is now 56 years old and has been in the Washington State prison system for almost 30 years. He will thankfully never be released. Forensic psychiatrist Michael Stone developed something called the Gradations of Evil Scale, which he laid out in his book The Anatomy of Evil.

 The scale ranges from category one, which he dubs people who kill in self-defense, to category 22, which would be your serial torturer murderers. Michael Stone ranked Jack Spillman at category 22, the worst of the worst. >> Rita Marie Gojionala Huffman and Amanda Marie Huffman are both buried at Enyart Cemetery.

Rita’s simple headstone is flanked on both sides by bundles of wheat, which generally symbolizes a long fruitful life that has reached a full harvest. Mandy’s stone is etched with images of things she enjoyed in life. Books, a softball mitt, a soccer ball, a quill for writing, and a flying dove, which can symbolize the soul ascending to heaven or freedom from earthly struggles.

Penny Lynn Davis is buried at Tonasket Cemetery. The epitaph on her grave reads, “It’s not goodbye, it’s see you later.” Along with images of lilies and hummingbirds and a picture of Penny smiling. In April of 2005, a decade after Penny’s death, the Wenatchee World interviewed her mother. The reporter asked Dana whether she could forgive Jack Spillman for what he did to her daughter.

 Dana said, “It’s not for me to forgive. He’s going to have to deal with God, and the Bible is very clear on that issue.” When the reporter asked about the lasting grief, Dana said, “It’s very life-altering when your child never grows up. You never get beyond it.”