they got the drop on him with machine guns and basically said, halt or die. and he stopped. he gave himself up. reporter: the end of the line. that was the first time he had ever had handcuffs on in his life. reporter: it was also the first time anyone on the island heard wild bill s real name my name is william dathan holbert. reporter: fun-loving bocas del toro bartender wild bill cortez was in fact, william dathan holbert, a 30-year-old who d been on the run from american authorities since 2006. as the islanders absorbed the headlines of a killer among them, they discovered that wild bill had a long and notorious past that stretched nearly 2,000 miles, from the white sand beaches of bocas del toro all the way to the blue ridge mountains of north carolina. that s where he grew up, going by his middle name, dathan. he played high school football. married his sweetheart, had three kids, and worked as a landscaper. his old boss at a gym, kevin
and the things i ve done in my life haunt my nightmares like you wouldn t believe, and i m left here to die in a panamanian jail. you have to understand that the victims of these crimes, their families are incensed. their families say that you had parties at their homes. how can you defend that action? defend it? i m not trying to defend my actions. i m a criminal. i m a bad guy. i m your worst nightmare. what i m also saying is i didn t wake up one morning and decide to kill my neighbors. shortly after our call, a very different looking bill holbert gave a tv interview from his jail cell. his wild hair replaced by a buzz cut. i did it, i m guilty of it, i m going to be punished for it. reporter: he in cold detail he explains how he murdered the brown family. this is gruesome, and i continued s very you re asking me, and i ll answer your question, sir. i separated them i asked mike brown to show me a well he just
hoover, liked dathan, until dathan had an affair with one of his employees and hoover says, embezzled $25,000 from the gym s accounts. he had told me he had thought that was part of his his pay, his package. and i said, no, dathan. it s not part of your package. reporter: and that was just the beginning. dathan left the job and his wife. he ran off with laura michele reese, who d later be known as jane cortez in bocas. in 2005, police say dathan started in on his real estate scams. he sold a home that wasn t his for $200,000. police charged him with obtaining property under false pretenses. by the time the owner realized what had happened, dathan was on the run. that landed him on the television program america s most wanted. somewhere along the line, police say dathan sold a stolen car in montana. and when cops pulled him over for speeding in wyoming, he took off. stop, right now.
reporter: leading them on a high-speed chase before escaping. it seems it was only after he moved to panama that dathan s scams took a sinister turn. the change was he killed people to get the documentation in order to take over the property. and not only did he steal the property, he would steal everything in their house. cars, boats. and not only was he stealing their property, he would steal everything in the house. right down to the toothbrush and the underwear and their dogs. he took on their entire lives? yeah, right down to the change in their pocket. reporter: four years after fleeing from the states, wild bill was finally in police custody, charged with heinous crimes, the murders of bo icelar and cher hughes. there are dozens, if not a hundred people in this town, in bocas, that all knew cher, that all knew bo, and they re all thinking, wow, man, this guy fooled us all. he fooled everybody. reporter: he got away with murder. he got away with murder. for a whil
if i could give my life to make her free, i would. that s it. and the man he said he killed six people had time to sit in a cell and think about his own death. william and his wife laura apparently received threats in prison. there s a guard in this jail that brings me a cell phone and gives me death threats from these people and threats on my life. i m a dead man. i don t even care. that s not important. but my wife don t deserve this. you talked to your wife about this? what are the option that s they have? options? what options? excuse me. just give me a second to compose myself. this is a really, really bad guy. i mean, doesn t get any worse than this kind of guy. he s the worst of the worst. do you think the trail of bodies is longer than we know? i have no doubt. exactly how many people did this guy kill? nobody knows.