I dated the Taco Bell Strangler who butchered 11 younger girls. He was so charming I fell asleep on his lap… however I can not consider I neglected these indicators

When Pam Knight dozed off in the lap of her date as he finished his DJ set, she had no idea the grave danger she was in.

Henry Lewis Wallace was ‘charming,’ ‘really handsome’ and immediately made 18-year-old Knight feel ‘comfortable’ when she met him on a blind date in 1983.

And there were no obvious warning signs that he was a serial killer in-the-making, on the prowl for his first victim.

Wallace offered to take her to the radio station where he worked part time as a DJ – a proposal that thrilled Knight who had dreams of becoming a singer.

She felt so at ease in his presence that she drifted off to sleep in his lap for hours as he worked late into the night.

Why he let her live, she’ll never know. 

A decade later, Wallace was unmasked as a cold-blooded predator who brutally strangled, raped and murdered 11 young women across the Carolinas, earning him the nickname ‘The Taco Bell Strangler’ – a nod to a later job where he met many of his victims. 

‘I dodged a bullet,’ Knight told the Daily Mail, recalling details from the night they met.

‘You don’t think about who an axe murderer or a serial killer could be, you don’t think about that,’ she continued. ‘You’re just thinking about having a good time.’ 

Only one thing that haunts her when she looks back for ‘hints’ that Wallace was a killer: the way ‘he stared… a lot.’

She also described him as being ‘dead behind the eyes,’ with a vacant stare that she noticed but didn’t think much of at the time.

‘He was charming,’ she said.

Now, she realizes: ‘If you look in people’s eyes and you don’t see anything, then they’re liars. Like, if you don’t see that spark, or you don’t see something in their eye.’

Knight was a fresh-faced teenager at the time, away from home for Thanksgiving, staying with her college roommate in Orangeburg, South Carolina, for the holidays. 

She described herself as a naive kid from Philadelphia who was a little out of her depth and trying to fit in.

‘I was the city girl in the country,’ she said, accompanied by a shudder, ‘fresh meat.’

The blind date had been innocently arranged by Knight’s roommate at the time who had told Knight they would make a ‘great couple.’ In fact, Wallace was ‘someone the family had known and been close to for years.’

‘They trusted him so I trusted him,’ Knight said.

When he arrived for the date, Wallace looked like any other teenager: dark-wash jeans, a logoed khaki shirt, a low haircut.

She described Wallace as ‘handsome, well put-together and having ‘southern charm’ – he was someone she felt ‘comfortable’ around. So free from inhibitions, Knight slept cradled in his arms.

‘In hindsight it terrifies me,’ she said. ‘Now, I’m like oh my god your neck was fully exposed. This guy is now strangling people.’

Wallace would go on to become known for targeting that exact location and strangulation became his signature method of killing. Though, at the time, Knight had no reason to suspect anything sinister.

‘And maybe that was the thing about him,’ Knight said. ‘That he was just… too neat, like, too… sweet. This guy was weird as f***.’

That, Knight divulged, is what still chills her most: how easily he camouflaged his true self.

‘That’s probably how he could fool a bunch of women, you know,’ she said. 

Knight never went on another date with Wallace, saying he ‘just wasn’t my type,’ and she barely thought about that night again.

That is, until more than ten years later, when she heard his name and her blood ran cold.

In 1994, Wallace was exposed as a serial killer who targeted young black women between 1990 and 1994 with chilling, methodical violence –  leaving seven children motherless. He also choked one victim’s ten-month-old baby, who survived.

Following an honorable discharge from the Navy in 1992, Wallace moved to Charlotte, North Carolina.

He became a manager at Taco Bell, where he met three of his victims, including Michelle Stinson, 20, who was raped, strangled and stabbed in front of her infant son in 1993. Other victims also included Taco Bell employees Shawna Hawk, 20, and Audrey Spain, 24. 

He met the remainder of his victims through social networks: Caroline Love, 20, was the roommate of his then-girlfriend. Valencia Jumper, 21, was friends with his sister. Valencia Mack, 25, was the sister of Wallace’s Taco Bell co-worker. Betty Baucom, 24, worked with his girlfriend. Brandi Henderson was the girlfriend of one of Wallace’s best friends.

For nearly two years, the killer remained at large, baffling police until a crucial break: one victim’s car was found abandoned across town, and fingerprints recovered from it matched Wallace’s on file.

He was arrested in 1994. 

The same day, another body was discovered in Charlotte: Debra Slaughter, 35, his final victim.

She had been raped, beaten, stabbed and choked – with a strip of white linen forced down her windpipe – and she, too, knew Wallace. 

After his arrest, Wallace confessed to 11 murders, including the 1990 rape and strangulation of his first victim: 18-year-old Tashanda Bethea in Barnwell, South Carolina.

Wallace was charged with nine counts of first-degree murder, eight counts of first-degree rape, among other crimes.

The 1992 murder of Sharon Nance, 33, did not go before a jury, and Wallace was charged but not prosecuted for Bethea’s killing.

In 1997, Wallace was convicted of nine murders and was given nine death sentences. He is currently on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Detectives said his pattern was chillingly consistent: Wallace used familiarity as an entry point. In some cases, he even attended victims’ wakes.

Former detective Garry McFadden, who worked the case described Wallace as ‘the perfect human predator.’ 

He told ABC News: ‘He walked into their life, knowing that at some point he’s gonna take their lives.’

Knight remembered him as the ‘goody two shoes, saying, ‘All of us were shocked.’ ‘At first my friends didn’t believe it, the whole community didn’t believe it.’

According to the crime podcast, A&E First Blood, Wallace told police he began having violent fantasies after witnessing a gang rape at age eight. At 16, he attempted to rape a friend’s younger sister.

In other words: by the time Knight met him at 18, the ‘nice regular guy’ may have already had a private life that no one else could see.

And that’s what she wants people to understand. ‘You think you know them,’ she said. ‘And you don’t.’