Woman Realizes She Filmed A Serial Killer On The Metro

1. The Man on the Train

Pay attention to the footage.

It was recorded on a cell phone by a woman who didn’t know she was documenting evil. The video is only forty seconds long, shaky, badly framed, the kind of forgettable clip people accidentally capture on public transportation every day.

And yet, it would change everything.

The camera pans across a crowded Seattle Metro car on a Thursday night in September. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. Strangers sway with the movement of the train, eyes glued to their phones, bodies pressed close but worlds apart.

Then the lens settles—briefly—on a man sitting three rows back.

He’s wearing a dark, tattered coat and a grotesque latex mask: exaggerated grin, frozen laughter, gold-plated teeth glinting unnaturally under the lights. He isn’t moving much. He isn’t speaking. He’s just staring—directly into the camera—with eyes so flat they seem almost absent.

In his lap, he’s holding something.

Whatever it is, he strokes it gently, reverently, the way someone might caress a beloved pet.

Behind him, chains hang along the wall of the train car, part of an old safety feature no one ever thinks about—until suddenly they look like stage props.

This isn’t Halloween.
This isn’t a performance.
This is Marcus Bain, forty-three years old, riding public transportation minutes after committing his fourth murder.

The woman filming him had no idea she was sitting three feet away from one of the most depraved serial killers Seattle had seen in decades.

By the time the city understood what that footage really showed, it was already too late for seven women.

2. Jessica Chen’s Routine

Jessica Chen loved routines.

They made life feel safe. Predictable. Manageable.

At twenty-nine, she had built a life she was proud of—marketing coordinator at a fast-growing tech startup, recently engaged to her college sweetheart David, living in a small but charming apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Every Thursday evening followed the same pattern.

Work until five. Yoga class at Green Lake Community Center at six-thirty. Then the Metro home. She liked the quiet of the train after a long day, the brief anonymity, the feeling of sliding back into her own life.

She texted David when she got on the train. Sometimes she sent pictures—strangers with weird haircuts, street performers, people doing absurd things that made her smile. She found humor everywhere.

September 13th, 2018, was no different.

Jessica left yoga at 7:47 p.m., rolled up her mat, slung the pink-and-red bag over her shoulder, and walked toward the station. Cameras caught her swiping her transit card at 7:52.

She glanced at her phone and smiled.

That was the last confirmed image of Jessica Chen alive.

3. The Man Who Loved Happiness

Marcus Bain also loved routines.

But where Jessica’s routines grounded her in life, Marcus’s fed something far darker.

For nearly twenty years, he had been part of Seattle’s entertainment scene. Parents knew him as Mr. Giggles, the balloon artist with endless patience and an uncanny ability to make children laugh. Corporate clients hired him for parties, bar mitzvahs, holiday events.

He was good at his job. Too good.

Because Marcus didn’t just perform happiness—he studied it.

He believed happiness was fragile. Temporary. Something stolen by illness, by accidents, by time itself. His mother’s smile had faded as cancer hollowed her body. His father’s laughter had ended abruptly when a stage rigging collapsed during a theater performance.

To Marcus, joy was something the world destroyed.

Unless it could be preserved.

He didn’t see himself as a killer.
He saw himself as an artist.

And women like Jessica Chen—open, kind, smiling easily—were his raw materials.

4. When Someone Doesn’t Come Home

David Chen woke up at 6:30 a.m. the next morning and reached for Jessica.

The bed was cold.

At first, he told himself it was nothing. Maybe she’d gone for a run. Maybe she’d stayed with a friend. But her running shoes were still by the door. Her wallet sat untouched on the kitchen counter.

Her phone went straight to voicemail.

Jessica always texted.
Always.

By 9:00 a.m., panic set in. By 10:00, David was sitting in a sterile interview room at the Seattle Police Department, hands shaking as he filed a missing person’s report.

Detective Sarah Mitchell took the case.

She had twenty-two years on the force and a rule she never ignored: when her instincts tightened like a knot in her stomach, she listened.

Jessica’s case did that immediately.

5. The First Body

Two days later, the call came.

A storage facility employee in Beacon Hill had reported a smell coming from Unit 247. Management opened it with a master key.

What they found made seasoned officers step back.

Jessica Chen sat upright against the wall, posed like a doll. Her face had been painted white, lips stretched into an exaggerated red grin, black diamonds drawn around her eyes. The makeup was precise. Careful. Artistic.

In her lap lay a handwritten note on expensive card stock:

ACT ONE COMPLETE.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON.

Beside it sat a single human tooth, filed to a sharp point and plated in gold.

This wasn’t rage.
This was ritual.

And whoever had done this had practiced before.

6. Patterns in the Dark

As Sarah Mitchell worked through the case, the medical examiner’s report confirmed her worst fears. Jessica had been kept alive for more than a day. The makeup had been applied while she was conscious.

A forensic psychologist, Dr. Linda Hayes, studied the scene photos and said one sentence that shifted the investigation forever:

“He’s not killing for control. He’s killing to perform.”

Cold cases began to surface.

Rebecca Walsh. Amanda Foster. Christine Delgado.

Different cities. Same staging. Same theatrical notes.

The killer was escalating.
And he was getting faster.

7. The Video That Changed Everything

The breakthrough came from a woman named Monica Patterson.

She walked into the precinct with a cell phone and shaking hands.

“I didn’t realize what I had,” she said. “I just… filmed something that felt off.”

The video timestamp read 8:03 p.m., September 13th—the same night Jessica vanished.

Detectives watched in silence.

There he was.

The man in the coat.
The dead eyes.
The mask.

And then someone noticed the reflection in the train window.

Enhanced frame by frame, it revealed what he was holding.

Jessica’s yoga mat bag.

8. Unmasking Marcus Bain

Tips flooded in. Most were useless.

But one came from an entertainment company owner who recognized the ring on the man’s hand—a silver band engraved with comedy and tragedy masks.

That ring belonged to a solo performer registered under a name that made Sarah Mitchell’s blood run cold:

Eternal Smiles Party Services.

Owner: Marcus Bain.

His driver’s license photo matched the man on the train.

He had been hiding in plain sight.

9. The Final Performance

When police raided Marcus Bain’s apartment, they found walls covered in missing persons articles. Maps pinned with future targets. Masks embedded with real human teeth.

But Marcus wasn’t there.

He was at his storage unit in Ballard.

Waiting.

When officers breached the door, they found him seated under bright lights, fully masked, surrounded by props.

A camera on a tripod streamed live to the internet.

He had an audience.

“You can arrest the artist,” he said calmly, “but you can’t arrest the art.”

They shut down the stream.
They cuffed him.
They removed the mask.

Underneath, Marcus Bain was smiling.