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"Do you wanna know what they did to me? What I will do to all the sons and daughters of man"
―Errol Childress to Rustin Cohle[src]

Errol Childress is a serial killer and a follower of the twisted and brutal Tuttle cult, operating in Lousiana. Childress is the primary antagonist of the first season of True Detective.

History[]

General[]

Errol William Childress (Erath, Louisiana) is an enigmatic and deranged serial killer: he is likely self-educated (as suggested by the piles of books and other textual material in his house) and he clearly has a significant knowledge of literature – specifically Robert Chambers’ The King in Yellow but likely Ambrose Bierce as well, a fiction writer and documenter of the Civil War (who also happened to coin the name “Carcosa”). Furthermore, his dialogue makes it clear that his education extends beyond merely fiction. Errol doesn’t just imitate the dialogue he hears in a film, but adopts the entire dialect of British culture, down to its colloquialisms. In multiple cases, Errol appears to know more than he lets on, fluctuating so as to adapt to the situation and professing his own intentions in impressively nuanced language. Childress is also a massive man, and extremely strong. As seen in the last episode of season one, he lifts Cohle with ease and after being shot twice, appears unaffected by the wounds as he attacks Martin Hart.

Errol was born to William Lee Childress, son of Sam Tuttle from an extramarital affair. As a child, Errol's father abused him in some way that resulted in his lower face being covered in scars. As he grew up he partook in the Tuttle Cult and began to hang out with drug manufacturers Reggie and Dewalt Ledoux, at one point went on a hunting trip with them and their little cousin Jimmy Ledoux. Errol took a job as a greenskeeper and general maintenance man for Childress and Sons who worked parish contracts for schools and churches. He lived in a sexual relationship with his mentally handicapped half-sister.

Errol was one of the few unmasked men who molested and took pictures of sleeping children at Shepard's Flock elementary school. He likely had a direct or indirect involvement in the disappearance and murder of Marie Fontenot. At some point he was hired to paint a local family's house a shade of green which dripped on his ears. He then chased a girl through the woods, who with his scarred face, caused her to identify him as a green-eared spaghetti monster.

Later that winter Errol met Dora Lang through the traveling revival church tent. He began drugging, torturing and sexually abusing her, eventually killing her and posing her in a cane field with the help of Reggie Ledoux. Errol would also abuse the captive children at the Ledoux meth lab compound. After Reggie was caught it was assumed that Dora Lang's killer was successfully caught.

In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, Errol successfully kidnapped and murdered many people in the wake of the chaos. His murder spree was not registered as connected until 2012 when he killed a woman and posed her at Lake Charles in a similar way to Dora Lang.

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