Errol Childress
The groundskeeper Cohle and Hart finally identify as the killer.
Errol Childress, played by Glenn Fleshler, is the killer at the centre of the first season of True Detective. He works as a groundskeeper at one of Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle's academies and is the son of Billy Lee Childress, a relative of the late Sheriff Ted Childress who had ordered the original investigation halted.
Quick Facts
- Season
- 1
Lore & Background
Cohle and Hart learn that the Tuttle and Childress families, to which Reggie and Dewall Ledoux also belong, are related and have long histories of child abuse and murder. At the Childress house they find the remains of Errol's father tied up in a shed and meet Betty Childress, Errol's half-sister, with whom he is in an incestuous relationship.
Reader's Guide
Cohle pursues Childress into the catacombs behind the house, which Childress calls "Carcosa", and finds an idol draped in yellow and covered in skulls, the "Yellow King". Childress stabs Cohle in the abdomen and then attacks Hart with an axe; Cohle kills him with a shot to the head. Numerous bodies and other evidence linked to missing persons, including Dora Lange's, are later found on the Childress property.
More in Characters & Detectives
Elsewhere in True Detective
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