Horrific true story behind Regina Smith movie & taxidermist serial killer Charles Albright who cut out his victims’ eyes

A DISTURBED serial killer whose crimes are at the center of a new movie murdered a woman and cut out her eyes with taxidermist skills he learned as a child.

Charles Albright earned the sick title Eyeball Killer after he allegedly targeted four sex workers from 1988 to 1991 before he was caught by rookie police officer Regina Smith.

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His harrowing story is being retold in the new Lifetime movie Searching for a Serial Killer: The Regina Smith Story, which premieres Saturday at 8 pm ET.

Texas native Albright is suspected of going on a sick crime spree where he targeted sex workers, shot them to death, and then dug out their eyes with surgical precision.

Prosecutors were only able to link him to the 1991 murder of Shirley Williams, a Black woman and sex worker, but two other women had been found in similar conditions around the Dallas area in the years prior.

Albright was born in Amarillo, a north Texas town about four hours west of Oklahoma City, in 1933, and was taken to an orphanage as a baby.

He was adopted by Fred and Delle Albright, who were overprotective and strict parents who encouraged the future killer to succeed in school.

His adoptive mom, Delle, introduced him to taxidermy as a child and taught him how to hunt and skin small animals like rabbits.

When he was just 11 years old, a young Albright enrolled in a taxidermy course and learned how to “pop an eye out of its socket without damaging the surrounding tissue,” journalist Skip Hollandsworth wrote for Texas Monthly in 1993.

The reporter said that, at the time, Albright “wished he could collect them the way other boys collected marbles.”

Albright was a very smart kid who skipped two grades and headed to college at 15.

He enrolled at North Texas University, hoping to be a surgeon, but flunked out of his studies.

When he was 16, he got caught stealing guns and spent a year behind bars.

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SEE NO EVIL

Albright had a troubled young adulthood, as he forged two college degrees and lived a lie while he was married to his college girlfriend.

The pair had a daughter before they divorced in 1974.

The serial killer went on to serve time for more theft and molesting a 14-year-old girl before his desires turned murderous.

In October 1988, Albright stabbed Dallas sex worker Rhonda K Bowie more than 20 times and killed her, detectives believe.

He went on to murder another Dallas sex worker, Mary Lou Pratt, by beating her and shooting her in the back of the head.

This is the first woman who was known to have her eyes removed after she was shot.

Susan Peterson, another sex worker in the area, was murdered on the same street as Pratt, and her body was found nude with gunshot wounds on her head and breast.

When detectives found her eyes were removed as well, they realized the same killer was targeting the woman.

Rookie police officer Regina Smith had just joined the force when Pratt was found dead and helped to investigate the case.

She helped to convict him after his last known victim, Shirley Williams, was found bruised and shot to death.

In an interview with A&E, Smith, who is now a retired lieutenant, described what stuck with her most decades after working the case.

“I wanted to give the families closure,” she said.

“Their daughters were killed in such a vicious manner.

“I tried my best throughout my career to find the evidence […] to find the eyeballs.

“After I retired, I tried to reach Albright to see if he would reveal [where the eyeballs were].

“By that time, he was already in the hospice part of the prison. Although he had agreed to see me, people could not visit him in the prison’s hospital.

“I wanted to ask him, ‘Why did you do it? What did you do with those girls’ eyes?’

“We will never know because he took that secret to his grave.”

Albright and Smith’s story will be showcased on the Lifetime channel this Saturday,

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