I’m Going To Get You

Speaker 1 Trust.

Speaker 2 It's not just given.

Speaker 1 It's earned. Earned in the early mornings, in the late nights.

Speaker 3 Earned by generations of real California dairy families who care.

Speaker 1 And carried on by even the littlest ones. Care for their cows, for their land, for their community, and care for you.

Speaker 3 Because when 99% of our dairy farms are family-owned, you're getting generations of tradition you can trust.

Speaker 1 Real California milk.

Speaker 3 Look for the seal.

Speaker 1 It was just like any other day.

Speaker 1 I was working doing ice cream and it was on the same street I lived on so it was a bike ride away.

Speaker 1 I was about three blocks away from my house

Speaker 1 and I saw a gentleman pull out in front of me.

Speaker 1 He grabbed my handlebars and had a gun. He told me to get off my bike and get on my knees.
He told me if I didn't, he would kill me.

Speaker 1 And he sexually assaulted me.

Speaker 1 It's the first thing that goes through your head. It's why?

Speaker 7 Why me?

Speaker 1 Why didn't he murder me?

Speaker 1 She had her whole life ahead of her,

Speaker 1 and I was the one that survived.

Speaker 1 I had to relive it every day,

Speaker 1 25 years.

Speaker 1 And he did the same thing,

Speaker 1 even worse to her.

Speaker 9 In August of 1996, Debbie Dorian had recently graduated from California State University of Fresno.

Speaker 12 There's Debo picking up the heavy stuff.

Speaker 13 All right, don't drop it, don't drop it.

Speaker 6 She lived in the North Creek apartment complex, which is just four or five miles just north of campus.

Speaker 16 We had just finished our briefing that we usually have in the morning. I was told that there was a female that was found in her apartment.

Speaker 18 Peter Dorian, Debbie's father, and Debbie had made plans that Debbie was to drive to Peter, her father's house, Thursday, August the 22nd.

Speaker 15 She had planned to arrive around 7 a.m.

Speaker 21 She didn't show up. So after a brief amount of time, he went to her apartment.

Speaker 10 Knocked on the door, rang the doorbell, and received no answer.

Speaker 9 He then turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, and it opened, which it shouldn't have because his daughter, Debbie, was very security conscious, would never leave her door unlocked.

Speaker 16 He went into the apartment, didn't see her in the living room or dining area or kitchen, and then went towards the back part of the apartment.

Speaker 26 The TV was on,

Speaker 8 so he began to call for her and received no answer.

Speaker 19 He then began to look throughout the apartment and he found the most horrific sight that any parent could encounter and that was his daughter Debbie Doran lying in the middle of her bedroom floor on the carpet

Speaker 18 on her side

Speaker 9 she was naked from the waist down her shirt was pulled up her ankles were duct taped her hands were duct taped behind her back and she had duct tape completely covering from the top of her head down to her jaw.

Speaker 16 We couldn't see her face.

Speaker 1 Obviously, she wouldn't have been able to breathe at all.

Speaker 8 Peter Dorian did what any parent would do.

Speaker 20 He thought if he tried to take off the duct tape, she would be able to breathe, which was impossible.

Speaker 27 He immediately went to her phone in her apartment. He found that the phone was unplugged, tried to plug it in, didn't seem to be working.
He was very frantic.

Speaker 12 Peter Dorian is in such a state of shock. He actually calls his wife, Debbie's stepmother, first.
She's the one who calls 911.

Speaker 4 Go ahead, ma'am.

Speaker 25 My husband just called and went to his daughter's apartment. She didn't show and he found her dead in her apartment.
Okay, tell me what you guys name this. Her name is Deborah Dorian.

Speaker 12 And then Peter makes another devastating phone call to his ex, Debbie's mom, Sarah Loven.

Speaker 30 Well, he was just, you know, straight on with, Deborah's been killed. I ran screaming through the house.
No, no, no, no, no, no,

Speaker 6 no.

Speaker 30 And that's all I could say was, no, no, no.

Speaker 30 It just feels like somebody took a great big spoon and carved out your heart.

Speaker 21 Debbie was working towards her degree in economics, but she was also thinking about going to graduate school.

Speaker 16 When I spoke to Peter, he said that they were going to go to some other colleges to look at audiology programs because Debbie was looking at following in her dad's footsteps as being an ideologist.

Speaker 8 That particular apartment complex was inhabited with numerous college students. It's an area where that type of crime does not occur.

Speaker 12 Vince Savala spent 18 years with Fresno Police and had just joined the California Bureau of Investigation before getting the call about Debbie Dorian's murder. This is where Debbie lived.

Speaker 12 It must have been crawling with investigators.

Speaker 6 Crawling with investigators, crawling with people who were worried.

Speaker 12 You had crowds gathering.

Speaker 18 There were crowds, yes.

Speaker 12 According to police, Debbie's dad found her body in her bedroom early this morning.

Speaker 16 There was no forced entry that we could see.

Speaker 1 I didn't see major disturbance in the living room or kitchen area.

Speaker 29 August 1996, my title was a scene criminalist, and I remember going to the scene. It looked like she had just made a sandwich.
So the sandwich was there with some Doritos.

Speaker 29 I also remember going into the kitchen, there was a bag of fruit loop cereal that had been open, like had been, it was ripped open.

Speaker 15 A couple of things are possibilities.

Speaker 8 One, she knew this individual and let him in. Two, he displayed some kind of a weapon immediately, and she complied with his commands to allow him into her residence.

Speaker 16 Obviously, one of the things that does come to mind is whether or not it's a cereal type of thing,

Speaker 16 mostly because of the sophistication of how she was taped.

Speaker 14 The coroner determined Debbie's cause of death was due to suffocation because the duct tape had covered her entire head.

Speaker 16 In situations like this, the pathologist that did the examination, he knew right off the bat that he was going to do a sexual assault kit just because of the way she was found.

Speaker 29 There was semen found on the victim and then there was saliva sample that was found and they came from the same source. They were the same individual.

Speaker 28 This profile was as soon as possible uploaded into the National DNA Database.

Speaker 15 There was no hit.

Speaker 32 In 1996, I was a lieutenant in the Fresno Police Department, assigned as the public information officer.

Speaker 33 It was frustrating that we had DNA evidence, but we had no one to tie it to

Speaker 34 I knew it was a tough one, and so I immediately volunteered anything I could do to help them with that case before I took it over.

Speaker 12 What made you think, oh, this is tough?

Speaker 17 Because they were hitting brick walls left and right.

Speaker 24 It was a whodunit, and those are the most difficult homicides to solve.

Speaker 12 But an eyewitness is about to offer a major clue.

Speaker 27 He had seen an individual approach Debbie's store.

Speaker 8 A short conversation to the effect, oh, hi, how are you?

Speaker 35 There is some very evil, demented predator out there.

Speaker 12 You're thinking, we have a murderer on the loose.

Speaker 17 You didn't know if, when, and where he was going to strike again.

Speaker 20 Strike it rich, advertise in the Fresno Bee classified.

Speaker 12 8.7 KRZR, Hanford Fresno, and Dave Vontozy. It's the tragic story of a young woman's life that ended too early.

Speaker 10 Debbie's murder was immediately covered by every television station, every radio station in this area.

Speaker 6 Front page news.

Speaker 21 The Debbie Dorian case definitely stayed with me. The horrific way that she was killed and then the terrible impact on her family and especially her father.

Speaker 12 Debbie's dad found her body in her bedroom early this morning.

Speaker 21 Just the thought of him finding her like that, it's just really unimaginable.

Speaker 12 And bad news, as they say, spreads like wildfire. Just as the whole town is hit by the news of Debbie Dorian's murder, her childhood friends, Katina and Heather, are learning about it too.

Speaker 30 I heard it on the news.

Speaker 12 It showed her apartment and they gave her name. Family members and neighbors say Debbie Dorian, a Fresno State student, worked hard and had plans to specialize in audiology.

Speaker 40 And I couldn't believe it, so I immediately called Katina.

Speaker 12 And she goes, something's happened to Debbie. And I said, Debbie, who? Because it wasn't registering with me.
And she goes, Debbie, you're Debbie.

Speaker 12 And she said, Debbie's been murdered. And I slammed the phone down and I lost control.

Speaker 12 The fear triggered by Debbie Dorian's murder was felt throughout the entire city of Fresno.

Speaker 12 But the hardest hit right here in and around the campus of Fresno State, where her fellow students were left not just grieving her loss but grappling with their own fears for their safety.

Speaker 12 There was a bubble around Fresno State you know and a hush and people were whispering and there was a lot of fear.

Speaker 39 That's about that time blue light started going up.

Speaker 12 I mean just the awareness started going up about not walking to your car by yourself.

Speaker 39 You know just all the things that we tell people today just started being said right about that time.

Speaker 12 It struck fear into Fresno.

Speaker 39 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Our parents were worried and everything.

Speaker 12 Fresno's a sleepy little farm town.

Speaker 28 Fresno is located in the heart of California.

Speaker 32 We like to say that we have, we're a big city, but we have a small town feel.

Speaker 38 Not only is the temperature nice and warm in the summers, but people are wonderful here. And we have a sort of a farming, you know, mentality.
And if you're not in Ag, you know somebody that's in Ag.

Speaker 32 We produce more agriculture in in Fresno County than anyone else in the world but we also pride ourselves on just that community feel.

Speaker 38 We really have such a sense of family that we feel that you know Debbie was not only the Dorian's child but she was Fresno's child too.

Speaker 38 It was frightening to think that this could happen to Debbie because if it could happen to Debbie Dorian, it could have happened to any of us.

Speaker 38 All right, you're cured by

Speaker 30 She's the daughter that so many people have that you were afraid to let go to college because you didn't want anything bad to happen to her.

Speaker 12 She had a really bubbly personality.

Speaker 12 Always ready for a joke and a laugh.

Speaker 12 Yeah, she was a big people person.

Speaker 12 We hung out at each other's houses a lot.

Speaker 6 A lot. A lot of girl talk.

Speaker 21 We go to the movies.

Speaker 1 We would cruise.

Speaker 12 We'd drive. Waste gas.
What was on the radio?

Speaker 12 I think it was CNC Music Factory.

Speaker 12 Maybe. Pearl Jam.

Speaker 12 Pearl Jam, Motley Crew.

Speaker 19 Guns n' Roses.

Speaker 12 Guns N' Roses.

Speaker 12 103.7 KRZR. Dave Rogers here.
Time for your concert update brought to you by Budweiser.

Speaker 30 She went to Fresno State and she studied economics. She was president of the Econ Club.

Speaker 12 She sounds like the golden girl.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 12 There literally is not a day that goes by that I don't think about her.

Speaker 16 We tried to determine basically what her lifestyle was like, whether or not she hung around with people who might cause or have some kind of dealings that would cause this to happen.

Speaker 10 We formed a timeline of Debbie's actions prior to her murder.

Speaker 8 Debbie was killed between roughly 12 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon on August the 20th, 1996.

Speaker 27 One of Debbie's neighbors did report that he had seen an individual approach Debbie's door, and he noticed the individual because he didn't recognize him.

Speaker 27 He wasn't somebody that was normally in the area.

Speaker 8 There appeared to be a short conversation, something to the effect, oh, hi, how are you?

Speaker 22 And that's all he saw.

Speaker 16 But nobody knew who it was. They only had a description of it being a white male, a certain age and height.

Speaker 12 With no obvious signs of forced entry, detectives quickly turn their attention to any white males that Debbie knows, including her boyfriend, John Thomas.

Speaker 30 They knew he would be a suspect. I mean, it's obvious the first people they look at are people that they care about and that they're close to.

Speaker 28 There's always that side of you that says, well, if he wasn't involved, he's going through some traumatic experiences right now.

Speaker 22 But as your job is, you have to interview him.

Speaker 2 My name is John Thomas.

Speaker 41 As of August 1996, we've been dating approximately two and a half years.

Speaker 2 Debbie was very outgoing, very extroverted, fun to be around. I was doing contract work for the U.S.
Forest Service northeast of Fresno.

Speaker 1 I left town approximately a week before she was murdered.

Speaker 8 Since a sexual assault was involved in this murder, we had to ask John Thomas some tough sexually related questions.

Speaker 2 You actually get angry because, and I know why they're asking the questions, but it's almost like a character assassination.

Speaker 41 It's hard to hear things said about this person that you love that has been murdered.

Speaker 8 We were able to determine that John Thomas, at the time of Debbie's murder, was assigned to fighting a fire in Northern California.

Speaker 8 I asked for a DNA sample from John Thomas and he voluntarily provided one.

Speaker 9 He was eliminated as being a donor of of the DNA.

Speaker 30 The last time I saw her was 10 days before she was killed.

Speaker 30 It was John's graduation. She'd had her hair done in a new outfit, and she was beautiful.

Speaker 1 That would be the last videotape of her, and

Speaker 41 they'd be some of the last pictures taken of her.

Speaker 33 It's hard to look at him today, still.

Speaker 12 John Thomas is fully cooperating and able to offer investigators critical information about Debbie in the weeks leading up to her murder. Turns out, Debbie had been looking for a roommate.

Speaker 16 That sent up a really big red flag.

Speaker 1 She put ads and flyers up, which was pretty typical. I think a couple of people had fallen through, so I know that that could be stressful.

Speaker 30 I think she was getting desperate. She needed to get some finances so that she could pay her bills.
She needed somebody soon.

Speaker 15 Could it be that someone who had come to visit her apartment did this? That became something that concerned us.

Speaker 16 She had some papers on her dining room table with names on it.

Speaker 12 A list of prospective roommates becomes a list of people of interest.

Speaker 41 She opened the door for somebody.

Speaker 12 So who was on the other side of that door?

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Speaker 25 A police spokesman says the department has two detectives working full-time on the Debbie Dorian murder case.

Speaker 30 They had a tremendous amount of pressure because the police had very little to go on. It's not usually a one-time thing.
Somebody doesn't commit a one-time horrendous crime.

Speaker 30 They commit it again.

Speaker 12 And one lead jumps right to the top of the pile. Her search for a roommate.

Speaker 27 She had put ads in the paper, she had posted flyers at Fresno State, and she

Speaker 27 had a list of people's names on her table.

Speaker 32 Anytime you have a list list of people that you believe have had recent contact with the victim, those people are going to be persons of interest.

Speaker 27 A few of the names I remember specifically, one was Alvin, one was Laura, and one was Nick or Rick.

Speaker 16 There was a person named Alvin

Speaker 16 who had actually made contact with her in person.

Speaker 27 Alvin called the police department after he heard the news and said, hey, you know, I was supposed to rent a room from the girl that was murdered. I was at the apartment.

Speaker 27 He had provided a deposit and signed an agreement with Debbie to take the room, but he hadn't received a key yet.

Speaker 12 Alvin doesn't fit the neighbor's description of the white man he saw outside Debbie's apartment. Alvin is black in his early 20s and over six feet tall.

Speaker 47 Detective Marcia has the interview with Alvin. What did you do when you went there? I knocked on the door.

Speaker 47 She invited me in. What time was it that you got there?

Speaker 47 267.

Speaker 16 We thought it was a little unusual that she would have a male roommate.

Speaker 30 It was strange because she didn't rent to men, but I know how desperate she was to get a roommate.

Speaker 47 Did you think about living with someone who's got a boyfriend?

Speaker 47 Actually, I thought it was kind of really weird. But on the other hand, I felt like, you know, it was a problem.

Speaker 48 That's her problem, not mine.

Speaker 9 A background was conducted, and it was determined that he was a sex registrant in the state of California.

Speaker 27 That definitely sent some alarm bells going off in investigators' heads because of the circumstances around Debbie's death.

Speaker 12 That must have made you think, oh boy.

Speaker 6 Absolutely.

Speaker 12 And then he tells you something odd about going back to the apartment.

Speaker 15 He went back because he was concerned, since... Debbie didn't answer the door that maybe she was taking his money.

Speaker 47 He told me something about the door, not remembering what that was, But on Wednesday night, I knocked the door.

Speaker 47 Nobody answered. The blinds were open.
DV was on.

Speaker 47 What I could see on the wall. And then when I knocked on the door, nobody answered.
I tried to do it. I liked both the times.
He opened the knock.

Speaker 12 Of course, this raises big questions. He admits turning the door handle and finding it unlocked, but he says he doesn't enter.

Speaker 12 That statement must have struck you as odd.

Speaker 18 Absolutely.

Speaker 12 So you're questioning Alvin about his alibi, and he gives you another name. Yes.
And that is... Maurice.

Speaker 16 Alvin and Maurice Dixon worked at the same place, a business called Grocery Outlet. They were friends at that time.

Speaker 21 Dixon, at that time, was 28 years old. He was an Army veteran.
He didn't have any criminal record.

Speaker 28 He transported Alvin to Debbie Dorian's apartment on several occasions. And on some of those occasions, he accompanied Alvin to the front door of Debbie Dorian's apartment.

Speaker 19 However, he never entered.

Speaker 10 Never met Debbie Dorian, never been inside her apartment, and as I recall, never really had a conversation with her.

Speaker 25 So you've never seen this girl, don't know what she looks like, you never talked to her.

Speaker 48 No, not from

Speaker 49 all that started happening at first. You know, I never seen her, I just heard her voice on the phone.
And then recently, like when we were talking, I've seen a picture on the news or something.

Speaker 16 During the interview, he stuck to the story that he'd never met Debbie. We started getting into some of his sexual background.

Speaker 47 Like, you know, go over to her house and check your things.

Speaker 50 Said, okay,

Speaker 50 I think I have a receipt for it in which I

Speaker 50 bought two things of a duct tape to tie up the ends of that little rope.

Speaker 16 He said that the only duct tape he ever had was for a punching bag that he had at his home. That was a little suspicious to us that he would volunteer that kind of information.

Speaker 16 He wasn't told we were looking specifically at duct tape, that we were only looking at bondage type of things.

Speaker 12 Dixon says he had been asked specifically about duct tape in an interview with another detective, which is why he brought it up.

Speaker 49 What made you mention that?

Speaker 25 Somebody mentioned

Speaker 4 duct tape or something like that.

Speaker 4 Do you have any duct tape or do you know anything about duct tape or something like that?

Speaker 4 When was it?

Speaker 15 That was when I first came to the question.

Speaker 12 But investigators' eyebrows are officially raised.

Speaker 16 We're able to get consent to search his home, found the punching bag that he used.

Speaker 51 It had duct tape around it.

Speaker 27 It didn't match up with the duct tape that was used on Debbie's body or that was located on Debbie's body.

Speaker 27 The DNA from Debbie's body was compared to Alvin and he was excluded as being the contributor to that DNA.

Speaker 29 Alvin was eliminated.

Speaker 29 Maury's Dixon sample was also submitted to see if we could exclude, and he could not be excluded.

Speaker 21 It didn't add up because he said he'd never been in her apartment.

Speaker 21 So the fact that he said that and that the DNA at least had a preliminary match, I think everyone thought he wasn't telling the truth.

Speaker 4 Our investigation is that you were the one that did this. No, I am not the one who did this.
I have nothing to do with this at all.

Speaker 4 How many times I have to keep telling them, I did not go inside this apartment.

Speaker 49 I do not know this person. I never met her.

Speaker 10 As a result of that test, Maurice Dixon was arrested and charged with the murder of Debbie Dorian.

Speaker 52 When Dixon arrived home from work, undercover officers swooped in and he was arrested with his hands up right in the middle of the street.

Speaker 21 He pleaded not guilty. His bail was set at over a million dollars.
I think the feeling was that the case had been solved. Most people thought it was over.
I think it's great.

Speaker 12 I mean, hopefully it's the right person. But this case is far from over.
As investigators keep digging, they're about to get a big surprise.

Speaker 21 It was a surprise to the police, to the media, to everyone you could think of.

Speaker 49 Maurice, you have to understand something.

Speaker 48 Okay, you're under arrest for murder.

Speaker 4 An arrest was made in the death of Deborah Dorian.

Speaker 21 Police out of nowhere, you know, they made this arrest of a man named Maurice Dixon, who had gone to the apartment with his friend, who was responding to Debbie and her advertising for a roommate.

Speaker 52 Residents were shocked that he is charged with Dorian's murder.

Speaker 53 Yeah, very surprised. Yeah, this is quite neighborhood.

Speaker 34 You don't expect something like that. And like I said,

Speaker 34 especially coming from him.

Speaker 12 Now, Dixon's arrest comes just one year after the O.J. Simpson verdict, the so-called trial of the century.

Speaker 6 It was a vote of not guilty for O.J. Simpson and a vote of no confidence in the LAPD.
LAPD guilty!

Speaker 12 At the time, the general public, especially in California, was more aware of DNA, but there was also more scrutiny of police investigations.

Speaker 54 Well, actually, I don't want to go into

Speaker 54 race.

Speaker 54 But just knowing the background of a black man in society being arrested and the scared feeling that our family had with Maurice actually being in the system,

Speaker 54 I mean, really brought a lot of anguish to our family.

Speaker 12 There was a lot of racialized tensions in the air at that time. O.J.
Simpson's verdict had just come in. That came on the heels of Rodney King.

Speaker 12 Hey, are we live?

Speaker 44 But to the people of south central LA, that 30-hour rampage was more revolt than riot.

Speaker 12 There was a lot of pointing fingers, but the police had reason to be looking at Maurice.

Speaker 38 Oh, I definitely think there was a reason to look at him.

Speaker 38 He had been there in a very close proximity to the time that she was last heard from, and so, you know, he was definitely somebody that was on the list.

Speaker 55 Maurice Dixon walked into court shackled at the hands and feet.

Speaker 21 After Maurice Dixon was arraigned, police continued to investigate.

Speaker 21 So one of the things they did

Speaker 21 was conduct a more sophisticated DNA test.

Speaker 12 You have to remember at that time DNA technology was changing rapidly.

Speaker 12 Investigators initially relied on one test that compared six markers but were about to start using a more precise test looking at 13 markers similar to what labs use today.

Speaker 29 It was a matter of weeks between the first test and the second DNA test, the more discriminating one.

Speaker 12 That second, more powerful test reveals the DNA from the Debbie Dorian crime scene does not match Maurice Dixon. He is cleared and all charges are dropped.

Speaker 55 Maurice Dixon had been in custody for a little more than two weeks. Tonight, he is free.
And the investigation into the Debbie Dorian murder case returns to square one.

Speaker 21 The fact that that DNA did not match, I think it was a surprise to the police, to Debbie's family, to the community, to everyone you could think of, except except for Maurice Dixon, because he knew he didn't do it.

Speaker 57 Right now, we don't want to comment anything at this time. We're just happy that he's being released.

Speaker 21 So after Maurice Dixon was released from jail, I interviewed him. He told us that he was living with the shadow over his life.

Speaker 21 that there was this air of suspicion around him. He was intentionally facing the death penalty for a crime he didn't commit.

Speaker 58 People you know, stare at me of like, you know, accusing me, but not knowing, you know, the full details of what happened.

Speaker 16 I totally understand his feelings. I understand the family's feelings,

Speaker 16 but it was all part of my investigation.

Speaker 59 We know that there are someone out there that have committed this crime, and basically the city is afraid again.

Speaker 59 We know it's hard on her family also because they have to go through it again, waiting to see who they may arrest next.

Speaker 30 I just thought, okay, we're back to square one. We need to rethink this.
I worked with children and I didn't want to be emotionally upset when I'm working with children.

Speaker 30 So for my lunch breaks, I go and cry for 20 minutes and then I'd come back and we're okay for a while. You know, I just had to keep going.
Yeah.

Speaker 30 Our future has been taken away. We will not see a wedding.
We will not see grandchildren. She will not get to have a life.

Speaker 30 The one thing we can do and the one thing we strive to do, is to get the person who did this.

Speaker 35 Every time something like this happens, it's like pulling the scab off a wound.

Speaker 21 Peter Dorian, her father, was very committed to keeping the case in the mind of the community,

Speaker 21 in the mind of media.

Speaker 35 I would hope that a person would have the morality to come forward if they know something just because they want to help or they feel maybe a little guilt about something.

Speaker 30 We put flyers everywhere. We put them all around Fresno State.
We put them in all the businesses. The governor's reward was $50,000.

Speaker 30 Then our family reward was $10,000. So it's quite a big reward.

Speaker 35 I can't live with myself unless we've done everything we can do to help solve the crime.

Speaker 30 He was very active at first. I think it became so overwhelming that it just hurt too much to keep going.

Speaker 30 And so he decided he would retreat.

Speaker 22 I remember receiving a telephone call from Peter and he told me, he says, Vince, he says, I can't do it anymore.

Speaker 8 She'll forever be in my heart, but I cannot hold out hope any longer.

Speaker 12 But Debbie's mom, Sarah, pushes forward, holding investigator Vince Zavala to a promise.

Speaker 22 I made a commitment to her.

Speaker 8 I would never quit and she asked me, well, what about when you retire?

Speaker 23 I says, well, I won't retire. I won't retire until I solve it.

Speaker 23 I've been a law enforcement officer for a little over 40 years and I farmed all those 40 years in addition to working.

Speaker 14 With a cold case, you pour your heart and your soul into it and all the time you have, and hopefully you solve the case.

Speaker 23 It entails a lot of patience, just like farming.

Speaker 9 No matter what you're doing, you have to continue to farm or all the time will be for nothing.

Speaker 22 So if I had to come out at night and work on the case during the day, I'd come out at night.

Speaker 30 Vince Savala is the man you want on your side. And when he gets a hold of something, he doesn't let it go.

Speaker 8 Sarah often said that solving Debbie's murder was like a million-piece puzzle.

Speaker 9 If you keep putting one piece together, together, two pieces together, three pieces, you're eventually going to get a picture of who murdered her daughter.

Speaker 12 And some of those pieces are about to fall into place.

Speaker 52 Fresno police are looking for a Caucasian male in his late 20s, early 30s.

Speaker 12 Thanks to a string of terrifying attacks just an hour from Fresno.

Speaker 53 We feel he's a predator. He could strike at any time.

Speaker 38 This was a person who was repeating.

Speaker 12 And then the break investigators have been waiting for.

Speaker 18 This guy is still around.

Speaker 9 We've got a shot at getting this guy done.

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Speaker 27 So this case became personal to Vince Savala.

Speaker 27 He was determined to find Debbie's killer.

Speaker 12 Some of the investigators on this case continued doggedly to work on it.

Speaker 38 That's Fresno. You know that the Fresno PD never gave up.
You know how frustrating it must be for them to just wake up every day and not know who did it, why did they do it, how did they do it.

Speaker 12 Were there moments where you lost hope of solving the crime?

Speaker 24 I never lost hope. I always had faith, but there were many, many times I was frustrated.

Speaker 32 It stayed with the department, stayed with me, even to this day. There was this desire to solve the case.

Speaker 16 But we needed evidence.

Speaker 9 Our investigation of the murder of Debbie Dorian focused basically on the Fresno area.

Speaker 14 Then I received a telephone call from our Fresno Regional Laboratory and was told that there was a DNA case-to-case hit.

Speaker 12 Remember, the DNA from Debbie's case is already in that national DNA database, CODIS. And now finally, after six years, another case is a match.

Speaker 27 There was a lead where the DNA in Debbie's case matched suspect DNA in a sexual assault in Visalia.

Speaker 27 Visalia is about an hour away from Fresno to the south.

Speaker 7 So in July 1999, there was a sexual assault occurred on the south side of Bycelia.

Speaker 7 Over the period of the next three years, several other similar crimes occurred in Bycelia.

Speaker 7 And I believe these crimes were committed by the same suspect.

Speaker 56 In each of those cases, the suspect was described as a white male adult in his 30s, generally, from 5'6 to maybe close to about 6 foot, medium-sized build.

Speaker 7 So his MO would be that he'd find a young woman, late teens, early 20s. He'd find her alone.
He produced the gun and told them that he'd shoot them if they didn't do what he said.

Speaker 56 He was described as either wearing a bandana over his face or he was wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled up over his face.

Speaker 56 The victims described him as wearing black pants and black shoes, which eventually lead us to think that maybe he was involved in the restaurant business.

Speaker 12 Police aren't able to collect physical evidence from every assault, but in one case, they get lucky, collecting DNA from the suspect that will become the critical puzzle piece linking these assaults to Debbie Dorian's murder.

Speaker 27 Jane Doe number one was riding her bike home from work.

Speaker 27 A man approached her with a gun.

Speaker 7 Tells her to get on her knees, fondles her under her clothing.

Speaker 27 She was able to show investigators where the sexual assault took place, so they were able to collect DNA from that area.

Speaker 12 And now they know that whoever left that DNA is also the person who murdered Debbie Dorian. They just don't know who it is.

Speaker 7 It brought it to a whole new level because now we got a guy that is running around in the Bisali area that has killed before. It gets everybody's attention.

Speaker 8 Once I heard of the case-to-case hit, I was so excited I jumped in my car and immediately went to Bisillium.

Speaker 9 This guy is still around. We've got a shot at getting this guy now.

Speaker 12 Working together the team in Fresno and Visalia conduct background checks, interviews. They collect and test well over a hundred DNA samples, but they just can't seem to hit their mark.

Speaker 12 They were chasing what seemed like a ghost and the clock was ticking.

Speaker 9 Once we had exhausted our leads in Visalia, we were desperate.

Speaker 53 You never know when he's going to get the urge to hit again. You never know if he's going to escalate or he's going to go back to something else.
He could strike at any time.

Speaker 7 There were times I couldn't sleep at night because what can we do? So as the years go by, I said, you know what, we have to preserve the cases that we have.

Speaker 56 You know, statute of limitations on sex right was 10 years in California, and we were approaching the 10-year mark.

Speaker 12 So the clock is running out. The prosecutors decide, well, we have the DNA.

Speaker 38 We have a commonality. We can identify this DNA profile.

Speaker 12 We just don't have a name.

Speaker 38 We just don't have a name.

Speaker 56 Lieutenant Peter wrote a John Doe warrant for the DNA profile and that was very instrumental because what it did was preserve the statute of limitations.

Speaker 12 The warrant officially stops the clock on the statute of limitations. It's the first of its kind in the county, say authorities, buying the team more time to find their John Doe.

Speaker 30 We knew that if we could find this person, that we really had had him, which, you know, is a big part of the puzzle.

Speaker 12 A puzzle that's about to get some help from an unlikely source, a serial killer.

Speaker 21 I'm sure the detectives back then couldn't imagine this. It's crazy.

Speaker 17 I really felt this was going to crack the case.

Speaker 12 A killer with decades-old secrets is in their sights.

Speaker 63 Sorry, but we got to check all the boxes off.

Speaker 12 And the victim, the survivor who promised to take her attacker down.

Speaker 1 All I remember saying is, I'm going to get you. You're not going to get away with it.

Speaker 12 What went through your head when you realized the man who assaulted you is also charged with murdering somebody?

Speaker 1 Why didn't he murder me?

Speaker 12 Debbie's dad found her body in her bedroom early this morning.

Speaker 38 If it could happen to Debbie Dorian, it could have happened to any of us.

Speaker 12 This case is often referred to as a million-piece puzzle. This is just a sample, right?

Speaker 31 This is a fraction of what was collected. Trace evidence, fibers, fingerprints.

Speaker 35 We have to find this monster out there.

Speaker 63 Have you ever seen that girl?

Speaker 9 Nope. Nope.
You don't know her?

Speaker 40 On the surface, he did seem like, you know, your next door neighbor.

Speaker 12 His alter ego, Nick Steele, online, more of a fantasy.

Speaker 5 You talked about his bedroom looking similar to 50 Shades of Gray.

Speaker 27 It was crazy. It was crazy.

Speaker 64 Her Her name was Debbie Dorian.

Speaker 15 You didn't kill her, did you kill?

Speaker 12 Here's this boogeyman of your nightmares. And yet, everyone described him as the guy who could be your neighbor.

Speaker 1 Who was her neighbor?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I hope you're fine.

Speaker 8 I hope we do catch the guy.

Speaker 12 Here in this quiet city of Visalia, nestled in the Sierra Nevadas, the same man who brutally murdered 22-year-old Debbie Dorian

Speaker 12 begins a brazen string of sexual assaults against other women. One of them is attacked riding her bike home from work.

Speaker 12 One tries to escape the predator by cutting through a field.

Speaker 12 And another, just a high school student at the time, attacked as she was walking home from school. Another is assaulted here while waiting for a bus.

Speaker 12 All of these women's identities have been shielded from the public by law enforcement, each of them referred to simply as Jane Doe.

Speaker 12 But tonight, for the first time, one of these brave survivors is stepping out of the shadows.

Speaker 1 We're rolling.

Speaker 12 You were Jane Doe number one for many years. Yeah.

Speaker 12 But you're comfortable now with saying at least your first name.

Speaker 1 At least my first name, yeah.

Speaker 12 And you're comfortable going on camera.

Speaker 1 I wasn't for a long time.

Speaker 12 And when we sat down for her first interview, she told us she was ready to reclaim her voice, taking back what she says was stolen from her at just 19 years old when she moved to the Central Valley of California.

Speaker 12 It was your love of horses that drew you here.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 12 You kind of had your future mapped out in your head.

Speaker 1 I wanted to be a horse trainer.

Speaker 12 And you were an independent young woman.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Or I thought.

Speaker 12 And then you're riding your bike home from work one day.

Speaker 1 I was about three blocks away from my house and I saw a gentleman pull out of a street. It was 10.30 at night.
There was nobody on the road.

Speaker 1 He grabbed my handlebars and had a gun.

Speaker 12 And you saw the gun? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Told me to get off my bike and get on my knees. He told me if I didn't, he would kill me.
And I believed him. I was 19.

Speaker 1 You have a gun to your head, you do what you're told. And the whole time, all I remember saying is, I'm going to get you.
You're not going to get away with it.

Speaker 12 That's feisty.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 12 With a gun pointed at you.

Speaker 1 I don't know what else to do.

Speaker 12 Beth says the man concealed his face. She could only see his eyes in the dark.
She was sexually assaulted. And then she says the man fled.

Speaker 1 He told me

Speaker 1 to stay where I am, count to 10, and turn around and and go home.

Speaker 1 If I turned around or tried to come and find him, he knew where I lived and he would kill me.

Speaker 12 He told you he knew where you lived. That is so frightening.

Speaker 1 By the time I got to my apartment, I threw my bike on the grass, called my sister.

Speaker 1 About a minute later, four detectives and police and everybody was in my apartment.

Speaker 5 Jane Doe had the presence of mind to quickly report.

Speaker 5 Reporting, patrol officers were able to quickly locate the crime scene and collect the DNA evidence.

Speaker 56 And then over the course of the next three years, we had another three different crimes, all of similar MO.

Speaker 56 And really, it wasn't until maybe the third or the fourth crime that we realized we had the same suspect and we had a pattern.

Speaker 12 The DNA collected in Beth's case is compared to other crimes in the National Criminal Database called CODIS. And that's when things take an unexpected turn.
That case-to-case hit.

Speaker 14 Whoever left the DNA at Debbie Dorian's crime scene committed that sexual assault. Knowing he was in the Visalia area was the first big boost we had since the murder of Debbie Dorian.

Speaker 12 What went through your head when you realized the man who assaulted you is also charged with murdering somebody?

Speaker 1 Why didn't he murder me?

Speaker 1 That's the the first thing that came into my head. Because I asked when the murder was.

Speaker 1 It was 96. And mine was 99.

Speaker 12 Why do you think you survived?

Speaker 1 God only knows. I don't know.

Speaker 12 And as the years clicked by.

Speaker 1 I would get a phone call every five years or so saying my case is still open and they're like, oh, okay, well, thanks for his call. And

Speaker 21 that was it.

Speaker 7 The thought that we would never catch this guy was not something I wanted to live with, you know. For the victims in Visalia, and then for the Dorian family, it's something that

Speaker 7 I wanted to do everything in my power to find this guy.

Speaker 7 Sorry, I'm getting emotional.

Speaker 12 The string of attacks on women seems to suddenly end. But even though the perpetrator appears to have stopped, Vince Savallo won't.

Speaker 14 In the Debidorian case,

Speaker 14 we had over 286 pieces of evidence submitted for analyzation.

Speaker 9 Delia moved up the ranks and eventually became the director for the entire Fresno Regional Laboratory.

Speaker 11 Whenever I needed help pushing evidence through, I would call Delia.

Speaker 29 He was very persistent. He would bring additional references, maybe registered sex offender cases that sort of look similar.

Speaker 9 We collected DNA from over 146 individuals and compared to evidence left at Debbie Dorian's crime scene.

Speaker 12 146 DNA tests. And that's on top of the mountain of evidence Vince has collected throughout the years and shared with new detectives who would join the case.

Speaker 12 This is just a sample, right?

Speaker 31 This is a fraction of what was collected at the evidence warehouse. It's just shelf upon shelf of of evidence.

Speaker 12 In 2018, after nearly two decades of investigating, this now very cold case is about to heat up thanks to the arrest of another serial predator.

Speaker 56 We have identified Joseph James D'Angelo as the sole suspect in the Visilia Ransacker crime series.

Speaker 56 The Visilia Ransacker case was really kind of criminal lore throughout Bisalia, throughout my entire career. Ultimately, that entire case would become the Golden State killer.

Speaker 33 We begin with that bombshell arrest.

Speaker 62 They say cutting-edge DNA testing allowed them to make a match.

Speaker 8 I heard, like everyone else, and then a thought came to my mind.

Speaker 20 Why couldn't we use the same DNA technology used to capture the Golden State killer on Debbie Dorian's homicide case?

Speaker 9 Visalia Police Department worked on that task force, and I knew a lot of those detectives, and that started the ball roll.

Speaker 38 A very dear friend of mine who's the retired Sacramento County DA, Anne-Marie Schubert, who was just an essential part of solving the Golden State killer case.

Speaker 12 We found the needle in the haystack and it was right here in Sacramento.

Speaker 38 She called me and said, Hey, we need to come down to Fresno because this technology is amazing. I'll bring my staff.
And so then we started to work together with them.

Speaker 5 Sacramento County, their DA's office, gave us a blueprint how to move forward with this new investigative technique.

Speaker 27 They are able to come up with family members who are likely to be related to this suspect.

Speaker 56 You can build out essentially a family tree and then start investigating backwards to see who are the relatives that could potentially be a suspect.

Speaker 31 Within maybe a week, we got a lead.

Speaker 12 And bells start to go off.

Speaker 28 Exactly.

Speaker 31 A witness had seen a suspicious male outside of Debbie's apartment on the day in question. And as I read that description and I'm looking at the photograph of the suspect, I'm like, this is our guy.

Speaker 28 This really is.

Speaker 15 The picture matched up to the descriptions.

Speaker 24 I'm like, Mark, it was like, this is him.

Speaker 65 F-557 to the arrest team. Standby.

Speaker 12 Hey, welcome into Walgreens.

Speaker 1 Hi there.

Speaker 12 All right, hon, I'll grab the gift wrap, cards, and oh, those stuffed animals the girls want.

Speaker 35 Great, and I'll grab the string lights and some.

Speaker 3 How about I grab some cough drops?

Speaker 24 This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

Speaker 12 I'm fine, honey.

Speaker 35 Well, just in case. You know what they say.
Tis the season.

Speaker 37 This is help staying healthy through the holidays.

Speaker 2 Walgreens.

Speaker 5 Every story you love,

Speaker 1 every invention that moves you,

Speaker 5 every idea you wished was yours, all began as nothing.

Speaker 32 Just a blank page with a blinking cursor

Speaker 49 asking a simple question:

Speaker 3 What do you see?

Speaker 3 Great ideas start on Mac.

Speaker 1 Find out more on apple.com/slash Mac.

Speaker 22 This is a pomegranate orchard.

Speaker 14 This is what I farm.

Speaker 9 I've been farming probably a good majority of my life.

Speaker 9 Farming is much like investigating cold cases because there's a lot of unknown,

Speaker 23 there's a lot of hard work, and you don't know what you're going to end up with.

Speaker 17 You got to be very patient, watch it grow, and hopefully you get fruit.

Speaker 12 After nearly 40 years of being a detective and a farmer, the time finally comes for Vince Savala to retire from his day job. But there is one unsolved case he can't let go of.

Speaker 12 It was tearing at your heart.

Speaker 24 Absolutely, but I'd made a promise to Sarah.

Speaker 17 When I retired, I talked to Chief Dyer Dyer because we were friends.

Speaker 32 I realized as a police chief, there's more that I can do, and it's bring Vince back.

Speaker 17 He allowed me to come back as a reserve police officer, which gave me police officer powers when I was on duty, and that was important.

Speaker 12 But no police officer pay.

Speaker 8 I told him I didn't want to be paid.

Speaker 12 With that genetic genealogy DNA match in hand, Vince was more hopeful than ever that his years of investigative work were about to bear fruit.

Speaker 9 Probably the best lead we've had in over 23 years. This could very well be our guy.

Speaker 27 They are able to take this genealogical DNA and ultimately they came up with a name, Nikki Duane Stain.

Speaker 23 He married, had a couple of kids.

Speaker 9 His work history was very solid, no criminal past that we could see.

Speaker 20 This is a normal guy, but then you think, well, a normal guy could have committed this.

Speaker 8 That's why we haven't been able to find him.

Speaker 8 He was living in Visalia, in the city.

Speaker 40 He raised his kids, was at the PTA. His focus was the family, and he did work for charity organizations.

Speaker 12 Now that detectives have a name, they want to talk to this guy. They discover that he's been divorced and working at a food court in the local mall.

Speaker 12 Turns out that early hunch that their suspect may work in the restaurant business was spot on.

Speaker 19 We were all hands on deck.

Speaker 9 Let's do what we got to do.

Speaker 14 Let's get a DNA sample from him. Our primary mission was to look for anything that he would publicly discard that we could obtain a DNA profile from.

Speaker 5 So we thought a trash run might be the best opportunity.

Speaker 5 My partner and I dressed down in plain clothes, put on a vest as if we were part of solid waste.

Speaker 5 We removed the trash cans from the street and replaced them with the empty trash cans.

Speaker 27 It's called a surreptitious trash dump because once he throws it away outside on the street, it's free game.

Speaker 5 We found male razor blades that appeared used and were discarded and so we sent that up to be tested to see if it had any DNA on it.

Speaker 9 I was excited, but I'd been excited before, so that kept me from totally jumping in.

Speaker 12 But two weeks later, his phone rings.

Speaker 14 I was at home, it was the middle of the day.

Speaker 37 I put it on speakerphone.

Speaker 29 I said, Hey, Vince, you got to sit down because I have news.

Speaker 21 We got the guy. It's him.

Speaker 8 My wife was close to me.

Speaker 17 Once she heard it, she cried.

Speaker 23 So did I.

Speaker 67 As I've gotten older, I've gotten more emotional.

Speaker 6 I'm pretty old now.

Speaker 6 I was happy.

Speaker 29 It was good.

Speaker 29 It was a lot of years of work.

Speaker 9 Nikki Stain was our 147th individuals who we obtained a DNA sample from for comparison.

Speaker 23 And he was the match.

Speaker 6 Okay, you're good.

Speaker 63 We're out of the car.

Speaker 12 Their next stop is that shopping mall in Visalia to surprise Nikki Stain with a visit.

Speaker 47 There's a couple of customers, Chris.

Speaker 33 You don't feel comfortable with the

Speaker 8 we'll just wait, hang back. Yeah.

Speaker 63 I don't see how we're going to be able to talk to Morgan County.

Speaker 9 We went to his workplace asking for him.

Speaker 63 Hi, is Mr. Stain in?

Speaker 4 Mr. Stain in? Yeah.

Speaker 63 Hi. Hi, Mr.
Stain.

Speaker 63 My name is Vince Sabala.

Speaker 63 This is Bob Sotis.

Speaker 63 Hi, Bob. We're doing some grunt work here.

Speaker 8 We're looking into a matter that happened a while ago.

Speaker 63 Take five minutes.

Speaker 51 Okay.

Speaker 9 That's fine.

Speaker 8 We begin to ask them some questions.

Speaker 63 Have you ever seen that girl?

Speaker 64 No, you've never committed any violence against her.

Speaker 51 No, I haven't been anything.

Speaker 51 I don't know her, so I wouldn't know how to. Yeah.

Speaker 64 So have you never committed violence against anybody?

Speaker 51 No, no violence against anybody.

Speaker 12 But Vince hasn't waited this long and come this far to take no for an answer.

Speaker 63 Her name was Debbie Dorian. She was found murdered.

Speaker 64 You didn't kill her, did you?

Speaker 4 No, no.

Speaker 48 No.

Speaker 27 Nikki Stain denied knowing Debbie.

Speaker 63 During our conversation with Nikki Stain, I told him, I says, look, we've been asking everybody we talked to if they would voluntarily give us an oral swab to compare to evidence.

Speaker 63 That's at this scene.

Speaker 64 But if you haven't been there, I mean,

Speaker 63 you know, it's just kind of a mundane thing.

Speaker 51 Yeah, it sounds like, I don't know, that sounds like,

Speaker 51 I don't know if I want to do that.

Speaker 12 Stain refuses to turn over his DNA, and the interview seems to come to an end.

Speaker 37 We thanked him for his time.

Speaker 8 As we were walking, Nikki Stain stops. He looks me in the eye, and he says, Yeah, I hope you're fine.

Speaker 63 I hope we do catch the guy. Thank you.
Have a good day.

Speaker 5 We had an arrest team standing by the exterior door.

Speaker 65 257 to the arrest team standby.

Speaker 5 Where he was going to have to re-enter the mall back to his place of work.

Speaker 26 Nikki Stain. Bye.

Speaker 33 Press your hands by your back. Turn around.

Speaker 43 Five seconds later, he's arrested.

Speaker 27 He was ultimately arrested at that time on the sexual assaults from the Visalia cases.

Speaker 48 Nothing on that person.

Speaker 19 Shortly after Nikki Stain was handcuffed, I made a telephone call to Sarah.

Speaker 30 He called me and he says, we actually have him. We have him in custody.
And I said, really?

Speaker 30 Really? This is really something. Yeah, called all my friends, called everybody.
Guess what? Guess what? Guess what? Yeah, it's really happening.

Speaker 12 As police begin talking to Nikki Stain, they're about to discover that he is anything but the guy next door.

Speaker 68 If you have my phone, you'll be able to see that because it has like 400 videos on it.

Speaker 12 After Nikki Stain is arrested for the sexual assaults in Visalia, he's brought into the police department to be questioned.

Speaker 12 And to the surprise of detectives, he seems to have a lot to say. Nick, do you know why you're here today?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I do know why I'm here.

Speaker 5 From the beginning of the interview, he knew why he was there for the Visalia cases, and we just let him talk.

Speaker 68 I know I've done a couple things that here in Visalia that I shouldn't have done.

Speaker 69 So when you say a couple things in Visalia,

Speaker 47 what are the couple things that you're talking about?

Speaker 68 Oh, there's a couple times that I approach women out on the street that they know and stuff and coerce them into having some final oral. And so

Speaker 68 those are things I shouldn't have done. Against their will?

Speaker 68 Yes.

Speaker 12 Detectives then walk Nikki Stain through each of the sexual assaults he's accused of.

Speaker 69 Suspect pulled Sweatshirt over his face and then placed a handgun in her side.

Speaker 69 He escorted the victim and concealed their location behind some bushes. Requested the victim unbutton her shirt.

Speaker 69 That might happen. I think that might happen.

Speaker 69 She was standing alone waiting to catch a bus. Suspect approached the victim.

Speaker 69 Suspect told the victim not to run or he would kill her.

Speaker 68 I say that sounds like me, but

Speaker 68 I don't think that was me.

Speaker 40 The worst thing that any defense attorney can hear is when you're questioned about a crime, it's like, well, I don't know, but it sounds like me.

Speaker 69 Do you recall what you wore during those?

Speaker 68 I recall wearing a hoodie. This was on my accent.

Speaker 5 With my demeanor, I think really brought some comfort to him to really open up about our sexual assault cases.

Speaker 68 So, you know, I kind of like had some bad things that go on in my life, and I could say that I've had a problem with,

Speaker 68 I guess,

Speaker 68 sex or sex addition. If you have my phone, you'll be able to see that because it has like 400 videos on it of probably 100 different women.

Speaker 5 During my interview, he did mention that he began sleeping with prostitutes starting in high school all the way up until his arrest.

Speaker 68 But had so many

Speaker 68 encounters with women. You know, I'm talking about

Speaker 68 like paid-for encounters or this or that or like start chatting with them and then all the next thing we know we're we're doing something

Speaker 68 he did brag seemed proud about his sexual promiscuity with with prostitutes i'm a single guy for the last two years and it seems like the really the only women that pay me any attention are the younger ones he was happy to talk about himself and all the sexual things that he had done in his past.

Speaker 27 It was crazy. It was crazy.

Speaker 68 I'll tell you the truth, I don't really think that hiring an escort or having a sugar babe or anything like that,

Speaker 68 I personally don't think that that's a wrong thing.

Speaker 5 He talked about his bedroom looking similar to 50 Shades of Gray.

Speaker 5 I had saw pictures of those types of rooms, arc rooms, on the internet. I said, I wanted to paint it that way.
Now that everybody who sees it says yeah, it's great.

Speaker 27 When they did the search, and he had these silk robes in his closet and sex toys.

Speaker 5 During our investigation, we learned that Nikki Stain was operating an Airbnb operation out of his home. He would also rent rooms out to younger females.

Speaker 5 He talked about providing for these young females.

Speaker 12 Investigators also find what appears to be a fake Facebook profile where Nikki Stain calls himself Nick Steele and claims to be chairman of a Fortune 500 company. His alter ego, Nick Steele,

Speaker 12 online, pointed in a different direction.

Speaker 40 Yes. I think more of a fantasy.

Speaker 12 He also posted videos of himself on that Facebook page, going out to party.

Speaker 2 Okay, I'm going out tonight.

Speaker 12 Was he sort of baiting baiting women online?

Speaker 1 Oh, I don't believe so.

Speaker 40 I think it was more about, this is me. I'm capable of this.
I'm so attractive. I'm so, you know,

Speaker 40 my proudness is such that, you know, these things happen in my life.

Speaker 5 During our search warrant at his residence, we located that he had a wall-plug camera in one of the roommates' bathrooms that was associated to a younger female.

Speaker 12 There were also allegations of peeping Tom.

Speaker 40 It's kind of a voyeurism,

Speaker 40 obviously, and then it steps into inappropriate actions.

Speaker 12 Inappropriate actions that land Nikki Stain with a misdemeanor peeping charge. Stain pleads not guilty to the charge, which is eventually dropped.

Speaker 27 He definitely had some sexual deviances.

Speaker 12 But as Nikki Stain's defense attorney points out, sexual deviance doesn't necessarily equate to murder.

Speaker 40 It was separate and apart. Usually people move forward as far as the seriousness of their crimes.
And so it was odd that there was this homicide,

Speaker 40 but then later there's peeping tom activity and assaults.

Speaker 12 The violence seemed to de-escalate.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 12 And back in that interrogation room, when the conversation turns to Debbie Dorian's murder, Nikki Stain's not done talking yet.

Speaker 68 The detectives there today before you guys arrested me. He brought up an interesting case.

Speaker 8 One that, you know, it does shock me.

Speaker 12 When detectives show up at the mall to confront Nikki Stain at his workplace, they ask him about Debbie Dorian. He claims he's never seen her before.

Speaker 63 Have you ever seen that girl?

Speaker 4 Nope.

Speaker 63 Nope.

Speaker 63 You don't know her? No kids.

Speaker 12 But when they get him into the interrogation room, he has a different story.

Speaker 68 The detectives there today before you guys arrested me, he brought up an interesting case. I was with that girl, you know, several times and stuff like that.
You were? Yes, I was. So,

Speaker 68 you know, to be honest with you, she was a, I picked her up on

Speaker 68 in President there on the street there at one time. You know, after I dropped her off, I thought that was going to be the last time I've seen of her, okay? And then

Speaker 68 she, you know, found her way to my workplace, you know, you know, on other occasions and

Speaker 68 asked me if I, you know, we want to again.

Speaker 5 He acknowledged that he did know Debbie and that he had been to her apartment multiple times for sex.

Speaker 12 The stunning allegation that Stain and Debbie had met for consensual sex is something prosecutors dispute, but his new defense team will now try to prove.

Speaker 12 Brian Pinto is the defense's lead investigator.

Speaker 70 I spent a lot of hours in the jail with Nikki Stain.

Speaker 70 He's probably one of the most intelligent clients I've ever had, but he's also one of the most complicated

Speaker 70 and

Speaker 21 mysterious.

Speaker 12 Brian attempted to track down co-workers and acquaintances from Stain's past to back up his story. Did you have any verifiable evidence that they had met before or that this was consensual in any way?

Speaker 70 A lot of people that he gave me that would potentially back that story up were people that he worked with that he only remembered first names.

Speaker 40 There was some evidence that she may have gone into his place of work

Speaker 40 but you know we weren't able to really

Speaker 40 chase those folks down because it was so long ago.

Speaker 27 There was nothing to support that she had come into contact with him in any other way. It was completely concocted.

Speaker 12 After his police interview, Nikki Stain is booked, fingerprinted, and now that he's under arrest, has no choice but to turn over his DNA.

Speaker 12 The authorities reach out to Beth, who spent years as Jane Doe number one, with the news she never expected to get.

Speaker 1 They told me that they got him. Say that again.
It took me a couple times for them to tell me that they got him

Speaker 1 and that there was going to be a press conference the next day.

Speaker 32 It was the last press conference that I held as a police chief, so it meant

Speaker 16 it meant a lot to me.

Speaker 36 Nikki Duane Stain

Speaker 10 is the primary suspect in the rape and murder of Debbie Dorian.

Speaker 1 I locked myself in my room and I watched it

Speaker 1 and I bawled my eyes out and all those emotions that came back hard.

Speaker 12 Nikki Stain is every woman's nightmare. And what did you mean by that?

Speaker 38 Nikki Stain looks like an average guy. He looks like a normal person.

Speaker 12 He blends into the background.

Speaker 38 Yeah, he blends in.

Speaker 30 Almost 12,000 days of waiting, searching, hoping, disappointments, and frustrations.

Speaker 30 What this arrest has finished is the struggle to always be searching.

Speaker 12 Nikki Stain is charged with four counts of sexual assault in the Visalia attacks and for the murder of Debbie Dorian. In 2020, the Fresno DA's office takes the lead on prosecuting the cases.

Speaker 12 Stain pleads not guilty to all the charges.

Speaker 46 I'm the City Hall and Courts reporter at ABC 30 Action News here in Fresno. It was definitely a big story to walk into as a 22-year-old just a few months out of college.

Speaker 46 Live at five, clear to proceed, Nikki Stain could face the contrast between the two sides of this courtroom really could not have been any different.

Speaker 46 On the right side of this courtroom, you had Deborah Miller and Caitlin Drake, two very straight-to-the-point senior deputy district attorneys.

Speaker 46 And on the other side, you had Jane Bulger, somebody who really believes believes in defending her client and protecting the process that everybody in this country is entitled to.

Speaker 46 Jane was the defense attorney of the very first court case I ever covered. And at one point, Jane had asked me how old I was.
And when I told her, she said, Gabe, I have pants older than you.

Speaker 46 It was the fall of 2023 when this preliminary hearing started, but in so many ways that courtroom went back to 1996.

Speaker 12 The judge orders that no civilian witnesses can be shown on camera.

Speaker 27 I put on the neighbor of

Speaker 27 who had seen the white male at Debbie's doorstep on that Tuesday.

Speaker 67 He basically knocked on the door and it wasn't a confrontational kind of encounter, but

Speaker 1 she

Speaker 67 let him in.

Speaker 21 Nikki Stain matches the description, but makes you wonder whether or not the person that was seen in her apartment was Nikki Stain.

Speaker 27 One of the items of evidence that I presented was the list that was located at Debbie's apartment on her kitchen table, which appeared to be a list of potential roommates.

Speaker 12 And what does it say by number six?

Speaker 20 By number six, it has the name Nick and then scratched out or Rick.

Speaker 67 You know, it says we'll call Tuesday to 12 o'clock.

Speaker 12 We'll call Tuesday 12 o'clock? Yeah.

Speaker 27 What I believe happened is that Nikki Stain called Debbie on Tuesday, said, I would like to come by and look at the apartment.

Speaker 27 She said, sure, gave him the address, and he showed up on her doorstep and she let him in. I put Peter Dorian on the stand.

Speaker 12 After years of not speaking publicly about his daughter's case, Peter Dorian has to recount those horrible moments when he finds her in her apartment.

Speaker 67 What did you see when you entered Debbie's bedroom?

Speaker 21 She was lying on the floor.

Speaker 67 Was she moving?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 67 Is there anything else about Debbie that you noticed that morning?

Speaker 67 Well, she was lying face up.

Speaker 67 Her mouth and nose had been taped shut with some gray colored tape so that prevented her from breathing.

Speaker 27 We had two of the sexual assault victims from Visalia testify at the preliminary hearing.

Speaker 12 When you saw him in the courtroom, did anything register?

Speaker 1 The eyes and the voice. The eyes and the voice.

Speaker 1 You're always gonna remember that voice.

Speaker 12 What went through your mind when you heard it?

Speaker 16 That's it.

Speaker 1 Holy crap, that's it.

Speaker 27 She was able to describe what happened to her in the courtroom in front of Nikki Stain. It was something to watch.

Speaker 1 How dare you be able to go on living knowing what you did, that you have destroyed who knows how many people's lives and you can

Speaker 1 continue your life like nothing happened?

Speaker 1 How dare you?

Speaker 46 When prosecutors and the defense said that she was free to go, she just sat there and she wept. You could tell that she has never walked away from this, that it has been with her every single day.

Speaker 12 And prosecutors have one more piece of evidence up their sleeve.

Speaker 71 Hello, this call is from a correction facility.

Speaker 12 Recordings of Nikki Stain's phone calls from jail.

Speaker 1 Hello?

Speaker 72 Hello, mom.

Speaker 12 And Nikki Stain just keeps talking.

Speaker 71 This call is from a correction facility and is subject to monitoring and recording. Can you hear me, Nick?

Speaker 12 During the preliminary hearing, prosecutors introduced calls that Nikki Stain made to family members while he was being held in the Tulare County Jail. And on those calls, he doesn't hold back.

Speaker 72 Yeah, I can hear you.

Speaker 4 You know what?

Speaker 72 Those hurting people and things like that that was in my past. I know I need to be punished for it.
I just know that I'll be here the rest of my life.

Speaker 5 One could say that the jailhouse phone calls were a sense of admission because there was no denials.

Speaker 73 But you're innocent until you're proven guilty, my book. You know what you did, we don't.
We're going to say that you're innocent until until

Speaker 73 they proved otherwise, my opinion. It's the way America works.

Speaker 72 I'm guilty. I'm guilty.

Speaker 72 You know, I did some bad things.

Speaker 72 I'm not trying to kind of like hide them. You know, I mean, I'm ashamed of them, but,

Speaker 72 you know, they're there now, so it's just like, you know, quit running from it and just take it.

Speaker 71 Are you innocent of any of those crimes?

Speaker 71 No, not really, Mom.

Speaker 73 I was kind of like involved in all of them.

Speaker 27 To us, that's an admission that he committed all of these crimes, including Debbie Dorian.

Speaker 46 Those revealing phone calls could be key evidence if the case proceeds to trial.

Speaker 12 But the defense insists that Nikki Stain never admitted to killing Debbie Dorian, including in that police interrogation.

Speaker 68 I did wrong, okay? And even the things that I did back, you know, in here in Visalia, that

Speaker 68 those things were haunting me forever. But the thing in Fresno, there,

Speaker 68 I didn't know that that went down.

Speaker 68 I didn't know that happened. I didn't feel remorse for that or anything like that or anything because I didn't know that it happened.

Speaker 27 During the preliminary hearing, the defense was

Speaker 27 trying to attack the investigation, specifically with the arrest of Maurice Dixon initially and the DNA testing originally.

Speaker 40 So that's a mistake.

Speaker 16 I'm not going to say it's a mistake.

Speaker 67 No.

Speaker 67 You refuse to say that

Speaker 40 arresting the wrong man on faulty

Speaker 67 lab work

Speaker 40 is a mistake?

Speaker 16 Did you get the wrong guy? He was eventually cleared.

Speaker 40 Yeah, so he was the wrong guy.

Speaker 12 But prosecutors maintain that the DNA evidence in this case tells the whole story.

Speaker 27 There was no other foreign DNA on Debbie's body. The only DNA located was Debbie Dorian's DNA and Nikki Duane Stain's DNA.

Speaker 12 When the preliminary hearing wraps up, the judge decides there is enough evidence for the case to proceed to trial.

Speaker 67 The defendant is held to answer on all counts and charges.

Speaker 12 Prosecutors announced they're going to seek the death penalty. But ultimately, Nikki Stain is ready to make a deal.

Speaker 33 Nikki Stain's case was heading toward a jury trial early next year, but now a possible deal with prosecutors.

Speaker 46 Just five weeks after the judge had set a trial date, we got word that Nikki Stain would be entering a change of plea.

Speaker 12 Stain's defense team had asked prosecutors if they would allow him to plead guilty to just the murder charge and dismiss the sexual assault charges.

Speaker 27 I contacted the parents. Peter was on board because Nikki Stain would receive life without the possibility of parole, and he did not want to have to testify at jury trial.

Speaker 27 Sarah Lovin had a different opinion and she wanted him to admit and plead guilty to everything that he did.

Speaker 12 And she wasn't the only one who felt that way. Why did you feel so strongly that you wanted those sexual assaults?

Speaker 38 Because those victims deserved to have him say, I did this and I'm going to get sentenced for it.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be punished for it. That's right.

Speaker 38 And I am going to serve not just time for Debbie Dorian's murder, but for the crimes I committed against you.

Speaker 27 Ultimately, Nikki Stain was willing to do that. He didn't want to go forward to trial.

Speaker 12 The district attorney's office also agrees to forego the death penalty.

Speaker 27 He would serve life without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 67 We will find lawfully Anglus Valison Fortbottle committed murder against Deborah, Sarah, and Dorian. Mr.
Stain, how do you plead

Speaker 67 guilty?

Speaker 12 Why plead guilty?

Speaker 40 To save his life.

Speaker 1 To save his life.

Speaker 40 I believe if we had gone to trial, it would easily have been a death penalty verdict. I just knew that because we're emotion-driven, it's almost impossible to be unbiased.

Speaker 1 We all have our biases.

Speaker 40 She was an attractive young woman. She was doing positive things in her life, going to school.
I mean, her life was just beginning. She had, you know, parents that loved and adored her.
And I just

Speaker 40 was fairly certain that he would end up with a death sentence.

Speaker 27 The courtroom was full for Nikki Duenstein's sentencing.

Speaker 12 Court Department 6 is now session.

Speaker 67 The Honorable Judge Hurrell presiding.

Speaker 12 Jane Doe, number one, steps up to the podium and delivers her impact statement with cameras carefully trained on her hands.

Speaker 67 My life changed forever that day. I tried moving on.

Speaker 67 I have tried to forget. To meet every man with him.

Speaker 67 I was always scared. I wish I was dead.

Speaker 67 I wish he did kill me. It would have been a lot better

Speaker 67 than having these thoughts in my head and flashbacks. The night playing over and over again in my head.

Speaker 1 Your statement was incredibly powerful. Hopefully, it got through to him that I wish he would suffer just as much as all of us did.

Speaker 1 I hope that he knows that I got him.

Speaker 67 That's it.

Speaker 41 Thank you, Jacob.

Speaker 12 And you also said you wanted to speak on behalf of other survivors.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 12 And give voice to them.

Speaker 1 If anything comes of this, I would just hope that people come forward and people will get the help that they need. Because it took me a long time.

Speaker 12 But the final words spoken in that courtroom would stun everyone.

Speaker 46 It was a raw moment.

Speaker 67 I screamed and screamed. Everything went dark.
I knew my life was over.

Speaker 66 I wanted people to know that Deb was a real person.

Speaker 66 She was a beautiful baby, a darling little girl.

Speaker 30 She went through all the things that children go through.

Speaker 66 These are her ballet slippers when she was five.

Speaker 66 These are her riding gloves.

Speaker 66 I just want people to know she had these little hands.

Speaker 30 They felt things and they were sweet.

Speaker 67 We have waited and searched for this murderer for 28 years and 10 months. 29 Christmases.
and almost 29 birthdays.

Speaker 12 Sarah Loven was the last to deliver an impact statement. She shared what she thought Debbie would have wanted to say, speaking in her daughter's voice.

Speaker 67 Adrenaline flooded my body. I screamed and screamed, but he didn't stop.

Speaker 67 He wrapped my head in duct tape covering my mouth. I couldn't breathe.
Everything went dark.

Speaker 67 I would never take a hike with John, the love of my life.

Speaker 67 Spend time with my mom.

Speaker 67 I wouldn't have a wedding. I wouldn't be a beautiful bride.
My dad wouldn't walk me down the aisle.

Speaker 67 I knew my death would break my mom's heart and change my dad forever. The pain that they suffer is deeper than anyone can know.

Speaker 67 Though he took my precious deb, he did not take my soul.

Speaker 67 I am wiser and stronger than ever from having to go through this ordeal.

Speaker 67 He has the rest of his life to pay for what he did, and he will pay for his evil actions.

Speaker 27 It was a powerful statement.

Speaker 1 It was a powerful and emotional moment for everyone in the courtroom.

Speaker 67 At this point, sir,

Speaker 67 you are a man in the custody of Franklin County Sheriff and again serving your time.

Speaker 30 He no longer has the power. Whatever he wants for power, it's behind bars.

Speaker 30 To my dear Vince, you know how much this case has meant to us. You know how many years it has taken.
And you've carried us all through this. And I love you.

Speaker 12 You're about to harvest pomegranates. What's that moment like? How fulfilling it must be.

Speaker 20 It's exciting to see all the hard work come to fruition.

Speaker 15 You saw a dry, leafless bush get leaves and now they're big, red, and beautiful.

Speaker 8 It's like a cold case again.

Speaker 15 Put all that work into it, and we'll see if there's a rainbow at the end of it.

Speaker 12 Finally, having him behind bars must have been a real capstone to your career.

Speaker 15 There were many capstones, but this is the one at the top.

Speaker 30 She was a precious person,

Speaker 30 sweet, and loving, and smart,

Speaker 30 and a wonderful young lady.

Speaker 33 A mother's never-ending love, Debbie's mother, Sarah, did get to meet and hug that brave survivor, Beth, in court.

Speaker 12 As for Nikki Stain, David, his plea agreement included a provision that he forfeits his right to appeal his conviction.

Speaker 40 That's our program for tonight.

Speaker 12 Thanks for watching. I'm Deborah Roberts.

Speaker 33 And I'm David Muir from All of Us here at 2020 and ABC News.

Speaker 23 Good night.

Speaker 36 The future doesn't need bystanders. It needs self-starters with limitless ambition, eager to look at our challenges and step up.
At UMass, be the future you want to see.

Speaker 46 Be revolutionary.

Speaker 36 Learn more at UMass.edu.