Dark Intentions

Transcript

Speaker 1 It's time for Black Friday, Dell Technologies' biggest sale of the year.

Speaker 1 Enjoy huge savings on select PCs like the Dell 16 Plus, featuring Intel Core ultra-processors, and with built-in advanced features. It's the PC that helps you do more faster.

Speaker 1 Plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free shipping, price match guarantee, and expert support.

Speaker 1 They also have huge deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC and make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com/slash deals.

Speaker 2 If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key and that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger.

Speaker 2 Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust, from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 2 Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 3 Tonight on dateline.

Speaker 4 He said that the devil keeps making him do it.

Speaker 5 Oh wow.

Speaker 4 And I said, oh my gosh, you've done this before.

Speaker 4 I'm like, what is going on?

Speaker 2 She just blurted it out.

Speaker 6 Lenny was killed.

Speaker 6 She was face down in the water.

Speaker 7 He called me very frantic. He was telling me my sister was murdered.

Speaker 2 Two murderers in the same apartment complex. I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 8 This is someone that's here.

Speaker 10 They're connected here, living, working.

Speaker 11 We got to start looking at every male in this complex.

Speaker 12 He is going to strike again.

Speaker 4 I had a strong feeling that I was next.

Speaker 13 I saw a man in a mask.

Speaker 4 He asked me, do I feel the gun in my back? And I said yes.

Speaker 7 It took a part of me.

Speaker 13 It felt like a death.

Speaker 16 I promise that I'll never quit unless God takes my breath.

Speaker 17 We got to get this guy.

Speaker 18 He was known as the bathtub killer. Then he went up against detectives determined to stop him, come hell or high water.

Speaker 10 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dayline.

Speaker 18 Here's Andrea Canning with dark intentions.

Speaker 2 He attacked in the dead of night.

Speaker 4 I hear breathing and

Speaker 4 this sound.

Speaker 13 I just felt darkness or like evil. I felt something not

Speaker 13 right.

Speaker 2 An intruder with dark intentions.

Speaker 4 And he jumps up on my bed. And I can feel the coldness of the gun in my back.

Speaker 13 He said, don't scream and I won't kill you.

Speaker 2 This is every woman's worst nightmare, right?

Speaker 2 His rampage would nearly paralyze a city. I was so scared that I couldn't be in the dark.

Speaker 6 I didn't think I would make it past 30.

Speaker 2 Young women everywhere were scared, absolutely.

Speaker 13 You just think evil like that will never touch you.

Speaker 2 It's the call everyone dreads. The one in the middle of the night.
For Hip Vu, it came in mid-September. He had just returned home from a business trip when his phone rang.

Speaker 7 He was very frantic. You know, it was kind of hard to understand what he was talking about.

Speaker 2 The man on the other end was his sister Christine's boyfriend, Tang Koo. What was he saying?

Speaker 7 Basically, she's gone, she's gone. You know, someone killed her, someone killed her.

Speaker 2 it was very frightening christine was an elementary school teacher in arlington texas outside of dallas hip couldn't imagine her being a murder victim we grew up in a relatively small town you only hear stories about this you'd you never experience it yourself

Speaker 2 tang said he found his girlfriend in her bathtub at the pear tree apartments

Speaker 2 arlington homicide detective tommy lenore caught the case You tried to resuscitate her and could not do it.

Speaker 22 Panicked, ran outside the apartment, called for for help.

Speaker 2 Crime scene investigator Joel Stevenson was one of the first on the scene.

Speaker 11 Boyfriend apparently had lifted her out of the tub and placed her on the floor outside the bathroom.

Speaker 2 He noted that the 25-year-old was still warm to the touch. She hadn't been dead for long.

Speaker 11 We do not know how she's been killed. Her wrists had been duct taped.
behind her back. She had duct tape around her neck.
Ankles were duct taped.

Speaker 11 She's face up on the floor of the hallway to the bedroom, nude.

Speaker 2 What does that say to you? The way she's found the duct tape, the bathtub.

Speaker 14 Your immediate first impression is she was sexually assaulted.

Speaker 20 It's just a horrific scene.

Speaker 21 There's absolutely nothing that indicated this death was anything other than someone who brutally murdered her.

Speaker 2 Investigators took a look around the apartment and saw no signs of forced entry.

Speaker 10 All the windows were locked, secured.

Speaker 11 That patio door was locked, secured.

Speaker 3 There was only one way the assailant made it inside that apartment, and that was through the front door.

Speaker 2 There was no indication of a struggle either. To detectives, that meant Christine might have known her killer.
They spoke to her boyfriend Tang, who was still at the scene.

Speaker 2 What's Tang's behavior like outside of the apartment?

Speaker 11 He was upset, smoking cigarettes. So upset, nervous, scared.

Speaker 2 Tang told detectives Christine usually got home from school around 4.30 and that he arrived sometime after 5.

Speaker 19 He unlocked the door, but he couldn't open it.

Speaker 2 He said the inside deadbolt was locked.

Speaker 27 So he knocked on the door thinking that, well, maybe she's in the shower, maybe she doesn't hear me.

Speaker 2 No response. Tang said he couldn't hear anything inside, not even Christine's dog barking.

Speaker 20 He goes out to his truck, smokes a cigarette, gives it a few minutes, walks back to the door, tries to get in once again.

Speaker 21 Still deadbolted from inside.

Speaker 14 Knocks again, no response.

Speaker 24 So he goes back to his car again, and he gets a quarter.

Speaker 2 According to Tang, he walked to the pool area and called Christine on the apartment pay phone, but she didn't pick up.

Speaker 12 He walks back to the apartment, puts his key in, and this time the door opens.

Speaker 2 Tang said that's when he found Christine face down in the tub.

Speaker 11 According to his story, that meant the suspect was inside the apartment killing her.

Speaker 11 while he was sitting there smoking a cigarette and waited for him to had to wait for him to leave and was able to exit and blend into the community with him being in that close proximity.

Speaker 11 No one was ever seen coming or leaving the apartment.

Speaker 2 That's quite the story.

Speaker 2 If Tang's story was true, the crime scene investigators hoped the Deadbolt could provide a clue. They dusted it for prints.

Speaker 2 You found a print

Speaker 2 on the door latch?

Speaker 11 On the front door, interior-only Deadbolt latch.

Speaker 2 What condition was the print in?

Speaker 11 It was a high-quality latent print. Once we lifted it and put it on a card and looked at it, there was a noticeable scar in the finger.

Speaker 2 Investigators had their first solid piece of evidence, but would it lead them to the boyfriend or someone else?

Speaker 20 He had some scratches on his wrist, his neck, and then he had some marks on his back.

Speaker 2 That could be consistent with someone fighting back.

Speaker 31 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 The race to find Christine's killer was on, but not before investigators made another horrible discovery. Carbon copy murder.

Speaker 11 It is carbon copy deja vu.

Speaker 2 They would eventually encounter several more victims.

Speaker 13 I am fearful, absolutely, but I'm also thinking, how do I get out of this?

Speaker 4 He said, if you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you.

Speaker 2 And detectives would need to unravel a double life.

Speaker 2 As they confronted a killer beyond compare. This man has to be stopped.

Speaker 10 Yes, he's evil.

Speaker 12 He has got to strike again.

Speaker 2 Christine Vu had been found strangled to death in her bathtub in Arlington, Texas.

Speaker 2 Detectives were canvassing the Pear Tree apartment complex, hoping a neighbor had seen or heard something. Just knocking on door after door.

Speaker 25 Knocking on doors.

Speaker 2 Are they getting anywhere?

Speaker 22 No one heard anything.

Speaker 21 The only thing anyone actually heard was when Tang Ku came out yelling and screaming.

Speaker 2 Based on Tang's account, investigators believed Christine was murdered soon after arriving home from work. The attacker is taking a chance, though.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is brazen committing a crime like that at that hour of the day.

Speaker 24 It's remarkably risky.

Speaker 8 This is such a bold and brazen act.

Speaker 23 Would a perpetrator actually do this?

Speaker 19 Or would someone who would not worry about anyone seeing him come and go, who would not bring out any suspicion coming and go, do this and then stage the crime scene?

Speaker 2 Christine's brother remembers how hard her murder was on the family.

Speaker 7 It was very devastating, extremely devastating.

Speaker 7 She really was the glue for our entire family. She had a good relationship with everybody, all the siblings, you know, every sibling she loved equally.

Speaker 2 Christine was the second of five kids. She was born in Vietnam, but her family fled to the U.S.
at the end of the war. Your parents were doing what was best for

Speaker 2 their family.

Speaker 10 Exactly.

Speaker 7 It was a lot of unknowns, and there was a lot of fear, and just hadn't the opportunity to exit the country, you know, for a better life.

Speaker 2 The family settled in Amarillo, Texas. Christine was quiet, studious, and helped look after her younger siblings.
On Saturdays, she played teacher. Her brother and sisters were the students.

Speaker 2 What kind of teacher was she with all of you? Was she demanding or did she make it fun?

Speaker 32 She was very stern.

Speaker 7 She was very stern. And so once we got too old, we weren't going to play with her anymore in terms of her students.

Speaker 2 Christine got a degree in education and her first teaching job in Lubbock, where she and her brother shared an apartment. Hip says she was an introvert, but was passionate about travel and cooking.

Speaker 7 Nowadays, we're, you know, you call them foodies, right? But she was probably a foodie back then. She definitely loved to experience new cuisines, new areas, new restaurants, and stuff.

Speaker 7 She loved to travel. She loved to experience new things.

Speaker 2 Christine was ready for a bigger city and accepted a job teaching third grade in Arlington, where she started dating Tang Koo.

Speaker 7 Christine and Tang had some common ground, right? They both lived in Arlington. They both had connections to Amarillo.

Speaker 2 And they both emigrated from Vietnam. The two had been dating for a couple of years.
Tang was quiet like Christine. He worked for his parents' small business and was good with computers.

Speaker 2 Was he at all a bit of a nerdy type?

Speaker 7 Definitely.

Speaker 2 Introvert as well? Definitely an introvert.

Speaker 7 You know, he seemed to spend a lot of time together, you know, as evident by some of the trips they've taken, photos and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 To Hip, his sister's life seemed to be right on track.

Speaker 7 You know, it's the American dream, right? You do well in school, you go to college, you know, after college, you set your path to get a job. It was kind of like how it was supposedly scripted.

Speaker 2 And then this happens.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is not the America that you ran to.

Speaker 7 No, no, exactly not.

Speaker 2 Now, Christine's family had a lot of questions. They started to notice minor variations in Tang Ku's account of the murder.

Speaker 7 The story changed a couple times, and so that was where the question mark started to pop up. It should be cemented in your brain.
the exact events that unfolded prior to and after the discovery.

Speaker 7 It just seemed like the story changed every time he regurgitated.

Speaker 2 Are you getting suspicious of Tang Ku?

Speaker 11 Oh, very suspicious. Absolutely.

Speaker 7 It's like, why would the story change?

Speaker 2 Did you question him on that and say, why are you changing?

Speaker 7 Absolutely not. I mean, it wasn't our

Speaker 7 place,

Speaker 7 number one, number two.

Speaker 7 Part of it was a little bit of fear, right? You're fearful.

Speaker 2 Investigators had questions too and had been grilling Tang at the police station. What's his demeanor like when he's sitting there? You're looking at him as a potential suspect.

Speaker 10 Tang is quiet-natured.

Speaker 8 He's still upset.

Speaker 20 He's still obviously insistent that he had nothing to do with it, voicing what can I do to help y'all catch this person. We're certainly listening to that.

Speaker 24 But of course, guilty people do the same thing.

Speaker 28 They want to redirect you.

Speaker 2 Tang provided his fingerprints and consented to giving his DNA. He also let police do a physical examination.
Did Tang have any injuries on him, scratches?

Speaker 20 He had a few on his wrist. his neck, and then he had some marks on his back.

Speaker 2 That could be consistent with someone fighting back. Absolutely.
Did he say where he got the scratches?

Speaker 22 He talked about how the scratches came from playing with the dog.

Speaker 2 Did you buy that?

Speaker 3 Frankly, no.

Speaker 2 So the investigators gave Tang a polygraph. How did he do?

Speaker 14 He failed two major questions.

Speaker 2 What were the questions?

Speaker 29 Did you injure Christine and did you

Speaker 31 place duct tape on her?

Speaker 6 Those are big questions. Those are huge

Speaker 6 questions.

Speaker 2 What was his response?

Speaker 16 His response is:

Speaker 10 I'm not lying.

Speaker 2 Detectives weren't so sure, but without solid evidence, they had to let him go.

Speaker 16 Tang is still at the forefront.

Speaker 14 He is still one of the primary suspects.

Speaker 2 Investigators were eager to compare Tang's fingerprint to the print lifted from Christine's door latch. They were expecting a match, but when the results came back,

Speaker 34 Tang was excluded from those prints.

Speaker 2 So, this is one reason why you can't be putting all your eggs in one basket with Tang.

Speaker 20 Someone other than Christine and Tang's prints are on that latch.

Speaker 17 If Tang is not your killer, those are the prints of our killer.

Speaker 2 A fingerprint wasn't all police had. They'd confirmed Christine had been sexually assaulted and there was DNA.

Speaker 19 They found male DNA from two separate males. And one of the profiles came back to Tang.

Speaker 2 Which was no surprise to the detective since Tang was Christine's boyfriend. The other DNA profile, however, belonged to an unknown male.
Could he be the killer?

Speaker 8 That in itself.

Speaker 2 When you hear two?

Speaker 2 It's a shocker, but one could be the assailant, one could be the boyfriend.

Speaker 9 One could be consensual, one can be the product of a sexual assault.

Speaker 2 But that didn't mean Tang was off the hook. Perhaps Christine was seeing someone else and her boyfriend found out about it.

Speaker 22 Did he find out?

Speaker 21 Did he kill her and sexually assault her?

Speaker 2 It was a puzzling case and it was about to get much harder.

Speaker 2 Just three months after Christine Vu's murder, detectives would be back at the Pear Tree apartments facing another grieving family and an eerily identical crime scene.

Speaker 6 She was face down in the water

Speaker 6 and she had duct tape on her legs.

Speaker 30 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 30 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 30 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 30 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 35 A Mochi moment from Tara, who writes, For years, all my doctor said was eat less and move more, which never worked.

Speaker 36 But you know what does?

Speaker 39 The simple eating tips from my nutritionist at Mochi.

Speaker 40 And after losing over 30 pounds, I can say you're not just another GLP1 source.

Speaker 41 You're a life source.

Speaker 37 Thanks, Tara.

Speaker 39 I'm Myra Amit, founder of Mochi Health.

Speaker 36 To find your Mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 42 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories.

Speaker 43 Results may vary.

Speaker 2 A BetterHelp ad.

Speaker 2 This November, BetterHelp is encouraging people to reach out, grab lunch with an old friend, call your parents, or even find support in therapy.

Speaker 2 BetterHelp makes it easy with its therapist match commitment and over 12 years of online therapy experience, matching members with qualified professionals.

Speaker 2 And just like that lunch with an old friend, once you do reach out, you'll wonder, why didn't I do this sooner? Start now at betterhelp.com for 10% off your first month.

Speaker 2 With no news of an arrest for the murder of Christine Vu, women living in the Pear Tree apartments were on edge.

Speaker 2 22-year-old Wendy Prescott was one of them. She lived in apartment 1126, just a few hundred feet from Christine's place.

Speaker 6 We were freaking out.

Speaker 2 Skyla Taylor is Wendy's big sister.

Speaker 6 She says, I can't wait till I move out of the apartments. And we had discussed moving in together when her lease was up.

Speaker 2 You'd always been the protective sister.

Speaker 6 I was very worried. I would call her every day.

Speaker 2 Skyla couldn't help but look out for Wendy after a tragedy they'd experienced as little girls. Their mother was murdered on her way home from work.
The killer never found.

Speaker 2 How did that affect both of you and change the course of your lives?

Speaker 6 We got more close. We were more close.
I was like, I'm going to protect my sister because this is all we have. It was me, my sister, and my brother.

Speaker 6 That

Speaker 6 was devastating.

Speaker 2 Their aunt Brenda and Uncle Norman took them in and Wendy flourished.

Speaker 6 She was just so full of life, just vivacious, just

Speaker 6 she would come in the room and just be so happy and make us all laugh.

Speaker 2 It was just wonderful. Tasha Fry still remembers meeting her best friend Wendy on the playground during recess.

Speaker 2 How old were you?

Speaker 10 I was like nine or ten.

Speaker 44 Third grade.

Speaker 2 She was in second grade. And

Speaker 2 we hit it off ever since. So this friendship really endured between you two from the playground all the way into adulthood.
All the way up until adulthood.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm going off to college, full life ahead of me, not married, and end up getting pregnant at 20. And it was Wendy.
She was like, Tasha, we can do this. Everyone needs friends like Wendy.

Speaker 2 And Wendy relished time with her friends and family. Cooking, shopping, and especially dressing up for a night out.

Speaker 2 She turned heads?

Speaker 5 Yeah, always.

Speaker 2 The boys liked Wendy, and the women wanted to be Wendy.

Speaker 2 That is a good spot to be in.

Speaker 6 Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 Wendy brought her fun and nurturing spirit to her job as a teaching assistant. And she wanted to be a teacher? Yes.
So that was going to be the next step. That was the next step.

Speaker 2 In December 1996, Wendy was looking forward to spending the holidays with her family. On Christmas Eve, Skyla was at home waiting for her to arrive so they could go do some last-minute shopping.

Speaker 6 It got kind of late, so I was like, huh, Wendy hasn't called yet. I wonder what's going on.

Speaker 2 She thought maybe Wendy lost track of time. She tried calling her.
No answer. She checked with Aunt Brenda, who couldn't reach Wendy either.

Speaker 6 She's like, I'm going to come over there and we're going to go, you know, to her apartment.

Speaker 2 They knocked on Wendy's door. No response.
Skyla had an extra key.

Speaker 6 Her uncle grabbed it.

Speaker 2 When he pushed, put it in the door, I guess he shoved it in and the door just opened

Speaker 6 so it was like dark i was standing behind my uncle and my friend was standing behind me she was holding me and i was holding my uncle

Speaker 6 we go in and the apartment was nice normal

Speaker 6 nothing seemed out of place until they reached the bedroom it looked like you know just like somebody got out of bed and she didn't make her bed which she normally always makes her bed then her uncle looked in the bathroom.

Speaker 6 I remember him turning the light on. He didn't see anything when he first went in.
And then all of a sudden, I heard my uncle say,

Speaker 6 and then me and my friend ran back, and

Speaker 2 she was in the water.

Speaker 6 It looked like

Speaker 6 maybe three or four inches of water.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 she was face down in the water. Her legs were crossed

Speaker 6 and she had duct tape

Speaker 6 on her legs

Speaker 6 and her arms were crossed

Speaker 6 on her back

Speaker 6 and it had duct tape

Speaker 6 in her mouth.

Speaker 6 Uncle grabbed and He was trying to help her out the water.

Speaker 6 And I just started screaming and yelling. And

Speaker 26 my friend ran out the door.

Speaker 6 I ran out and just rolled down the stairs. And all these people come out of the apartment.
What is wrong? I was like, call 911. Somebody called 911.

Speaker 2 Another young woman killed in the same complex as Christine Vu.

Speaker 2 Detective Lenore was about to learn this was no coincidence.

Speaker 2 This is horrifying because now I'm going my lord i've got an individual responsible for two murders and he was running against the clock so it's more than catching a killer you're trying to prevent additional victims

Speaker 2 It was Christmas Eve, 1996. Detective Tommy Lenore was stealthily assembling assembling the last of the holiday gifts for his daughter.
A silent night, or so he hoped.

Speaker 19 I am at home putting a Barbie house together, playing Santa Claus.

Speaker 31 And I get the call.

Speaker 2 An urgent phone call from his sergeant. 22-year-old Wendy Prescott had been murdered at the Pear Tree Apartments in Arlington, Texas.
Christmas presents would have to wait.

Speaker 2 Lenore was the first homicide detective at the scene. What are you told?

Speaker 28 As I said, Detective Lenore,

Speaker 31 this looks a whole lot alike with Christine.

Speaker 20 And I said, I got to get in there.

Speaker 3 So we walked in.

Speaker 34 And when I saw

Speaker 19 that crime scene, it was identical to a murder that I've been working for three months that is unsolved,

Speaker 12 only 200 feet away.

Speaker 19 And at that point in time,

Speaker 22 I knew, number one, this was not an isolated incident.

Speaker 20 And more importantly, I came to the reality that this crime is a continuance of three months ago.

Speaker 2 Does that send a chill down your spine?

Speaker 16 It sends a chill down your spine, but it is a gut-wrenched fear.

Speaker 22 And one of the thoughts goes to my mind is: this is number two.

Speaker 28 My God, when am I going to see number three?

Speaker 20 I don't want to see number three.

Speaker 2 Just like Christine, Wendy had been strangled and likely sexually assaulted.

Speaker 19 Once again, no evidence of forced entry.

Speaker 17 Everything is secure.

Speaker 2 Were the windows locked? The windows were locked.

Speaker 9 He either came through the front door or he broke in, then locked things behind him.

Speaker 2 Whatever the case, it was unlikely he was let in.

Speaker 2 Wendy kept a baseball bat by her door.

Speaker 8 And I'll tell you what that tells me.

Speaker 24 She's not going to open the door for somebody unless she knows them.

Speaker 2 Crime scene investigator Joel Stevenson was also at the scene and also stunned by the similarities to Christine's murder.

Speaker 11 It's eerie, all right. It's almost more than that.

Speaker 2 It is just, I mean, carbon copy murder. It is.

Speaker 11 Carbon copy deja vu.

Speaker 2 One difference, Stevenson noticed that Wendy's clothes seemed to have been carefully placed on a chair in the bedroom.

Speaker 11 As we started looking, examining that clothing, it was similar to what we were told she was last seen wearing, stacked from the way you would take it off.

Speaker 2 Her purse and two green pillow shams were placed on top.

Speaker 11 So these clothes being stacked as they were told us that she disrobed with no fear, calmly.

Speaker 14 There's no fight at this point.

Speaker 11 Yeah, she has no idea that no idea that anything's going on.

Speaker 2 It looked to Stevenson like the killer had been lying in wait.

Speaker 11 We think he's in the closet. That's what the evidence is kind of suggesting.

Speaker 2 And this time, some belongings appeared to have been stolen, including a VCR, telephone, and answering machine. If this was the same perpetrator, he seemed to be skilled at breaking and entering.

Speaker 20 You don't become that criminally sophisticated overnight.

Speaker 20 You don't just wake up and have the ability to get inside of a woman's apartment and three months later get inside of another woman's apartment.

Speaker 2 But even the most sophisticated criminal makes mistakes. While swiping that VCR, the killer appeared to have left behind a thumbprint, a particular kind of print.

Speaker 9 And it's very important to know about dust prints.

Speaker 31 They're remarkably vulnerable because the slightest, and I mean the slightest breeze or motion will distort that thumbprint.

Speaker 8 But it was so pristine and

Speaker 20 so defined.

Speaker 2 You're guarding that thing with your life.

Speaker 29 You better believe it.

Speaker 11 It's a miracle that Dustprint survived. This was multiple hours into the investigation, and nobody had laid a clipboard, notebook, sat on, leaned on that area of...

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh,

Speaker 2 that's so scary to think that that easily could have happened.

Speaker 2 The print was photographed with the hope that there would be a match in the FBI's fingerprint identification system.

Speaker 2 Now, police had a thumbprint from Wendy's apartment and an index fingerprint with a scar from Christine's.

Speaker 2 They were different fingers and couldn't be compared to each other, but there was something they could compare.

Speaker 2 A crime analyst for the medical examiner's office recovered DNA from Wendy's body. So now you have prints and you have DNA.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 It's a good start.

Speaker 11 It's a very good start. We just got to find somebody that both of those match.

Speaker 2 A match that could also tell them with certainty if one person was responsible for these crimes.

Speaker 31 You could have a copycat killer.

Speaker 19 You just don't know.

Speaker 2 But those results would take a while, and there was a possible serial killer on the loose.

Speaker 19 Now you have mass panic.

Speaker 28 You don't have fear.

Speaker 12 You don't have concern. You've got absolute panic.

Speaker 2 The Pear Tree apartment complex was suddenly the best-known address in Arlington, Texas, for all the wrong reasons.

Speaker 46 Who killed 22-year-old Wendy Prescott? It's the second murder investigation here in three months.

Speaker 16 Once Wendy was killed, it didn't even take a press conference from the police department.

Speaker 12 You look up and you see crime scene tape 200 feet away from what just happened and word spreads like wildfire.

Speaker 8 It gets out and now,

Speaker 22 now you have mass panic.

Speaker 28 You don't have fear.

Speaker 12 You don't have concern. You've got absolute panic.

Speaker 2 Residents began packing up and leaving in droves.

Speaker 48 You never know who it could be, you know.

Speaker 48 It's part of the reason why most people are getting out and don't know who it could be next.

Speaker 48 Correct.

Speaker 15 This entire area, especially where we're standing, all of these apartments were vacating.

Speaker 2 So, moving trucks just pulling up one after the next moving trucks out of here.

Speaker 15 People that are coming in from out of town to get their friends, their daughters,

Speaker 15 it was just incredible.

Speaker 2 I would do that. If I was a young woman living here.

Speaker 6 Oh, I would do that too.

Speaker 2 Get the heck out of here.

Speaker 2 While investigators waited for the results of the comparison of the DNA samples taken from the bodies of both victims and for word of any matches to the fingerprints from the crime scenes, they were trying to figure out if Christine and Wendy knew someone in common.

Speaker 2 Turned out they might have.

Speaker 20 We found a neighbor who actually worked for the school district in another city, which is interesting because he lived across from Wendy Prescott.

Speaker 22 But at the time

Speaker 20 of Christine Fu's murder, he lived by her.

Speaker 2 Oh, so he moved within the complex. And he had an educational background.

Speaker 20 And he has an educational background.

Speaker 2 Just like Wendy and Christine, who both worked at elementary schools. Detective Lenore interviewed the neighbor and collected blood, saliva, and print samples.

Speaker 2 The neighbor said he'd moved apartments so he could live next door to his sister, who happened to live right by Wendy. He was concerned about his sister's safety after Christine's murder.

Speaker 34 And he just didn't want her to be put in jeopardy.

Speaker 8 If in fact he is excluded, it's just a coincidence.

Speaker 2 In the meantime, they learned more about Wendy.

Speaker 27 Wendy's 22 years of age.

Speaker 9 She's young, but Wendy is a very outgoing young lady with lots of friends and lots of socialization.

Speaker 2 Wendy's cousin, Nika, she was the people person. Yes, we just kept thinking, like, who or why? You know, just why would someone even do that? Wendy also had lots of love interests.

Speaker 2 There was one boyfriend in particular that concerned Wendy's friend, Tasha Fry. She went to the police about about him after the murder.
Wendy was in a relationship that had some issues.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 2 We didn't like him. He was verbally abusive.
He was emotionally abusive. It was like he would try to break her down.

Speaker 2 This ex-boyfriend wouldn't have any connection to Christine Vu, but yet you can't just ignore that she had issues with her ex-boyfriend.

Speaker 19 Well, not only did she have issues with him, she filed a harassment complaint against him.

Speaker 14 He was an

Speaker 26 who didn't really want to break up.

Speaker 12 So I definitely had to find this guy, bring him in, interview him, and knowing that what evidence we have, I want to collect his fingerprints.

Speaker 28 I want to collect his saliva and blood for DNA.

Speaker 2 Was he cooperative? What was he like when you interviewed him?

Speaker 31 He was actually very cooperative with me, but he was emphatic.

Speaker 20 I didn't kill anyone. My concern is, if that's not you, give me your saliva, give me your blood, give us your fingerprints, and let's exclude you.

Speaker 2 Police again had to wait for those results to come back.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, they expanded their search and began the painstaking process of looking at any men who had spent time at the apartment complex over the past few months.

Speaker 2 Current and former residents, locksmiths, maintenance workers.

Speaker 2 There were a lot. It was almost overwhelming.

Speaker 21 Yeah, it was absolutely overwhelming.

Speaker 15 We had close to 500 leads, but that is misleading in itself because there were several leads that had multiple suspects.

Speaker 15 And these were the license plates that were recorded in the apartment complex when Wendy Prescott was killed.

Speaker 2 So you just went around the apartment complex and all the license plates. And just started writing them down.

Speaker 27 Yes, we had.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I got to look into everyone.

Speaker 15 Just a license plate in itself

Speaker 15 can identify many suspects. And we would sit in that complex, and it would be so frustrating just to sit there watching people leave, knowing, my God, is that my suspect?

Speaker 15 Is that somebody that knows my suspect?

Speaker 2 It's like finding a needle in a complex.

Speaker 29 That's a pretty good cliché.

Speaker 2 They checked alibis and collected fingerprints and DNA from dozens of men with connections to the complex. The long list of leads was daunting.
But then a call came in.

Speaker 2 The results from the DNA samples taken from Christine and Wendy were back.

Speaker 19 They were identical.

Speaker 23 They were carbon copies.

Speaker 2 There's one killer out there that you need to find.

Speaker 3 There's one killer.

Speaker 20 We just don't know who that killer is.

Speaker 2 They did know who he wasn't. The DNA results cleared the neighbor who'd who'd lived near both women, Wendy's ex and Christine's boyfriend Tang.

Speaker 12 I know it's a male that I can match DNA to if I ever find him.

Speaker 19 And I know it's a male that I very likely have prints I can match to.

Speaker 34 Problem is, that male is a ghost.

Speaker 24 It's nothing but air.

Speaker 2 Tommy Lenore was stumped, and it wouldn't be long before the ghost he was hunting struck again.

Speaker 2 But this time, there was a survivor, a woman whose story would change the course of the entire investigation.

Speaker 13 He said, don't scream and I won't kill you.

Speaker 32 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 32 Zin is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.
There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 32 Check out Zen.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 32 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 35 A Mochi Moment from Tara, who writes, For years, all my doctor said was eat less and move more, which never worked.

Speaker 41 And after losing over 30 pounds, I can say you're not just another GLP1 source, you're a life source.

Speaker 39 I'm Myra Ammet, founder of Mochi Health.

Speaker 2 By 1999, Detective Tommy Lenore was growing impatient. Over two years had passed since the murders of Christine Vu and Wendy Prescott.

Speaker 2 He was still conducting countless interviews and collecting new DNA samples for testing. It's just taking a lot longer than you thought.

Speaker 22 It takes a long time.

Speaker 19 If I were in a perfect world, it would have been solved a lot quicker. Unfortunately, the world that I live in and what we deal with, it's not a perfect world.

Speaker 2 Shima Benson, a recent transfer student at the University of Texas at Arlington, was unaware of the fear that had gripped the area.

Speaker 2 Just a few months away from graduating with a degree in public relations, she'd finally gotten serious about her studies.

Speaker 13 My freshman year, I went to a different school, so I would have rather been there, but I was actually, my parents made me go to UTA.

Speaker 13 And so, well, come back to Texas to finish up because I was having way too much fun, and my grades weren't so good.

Speaker 2 But Shima still managed to keep a busy social life at UTA. She joined Alpha Kappa Alpha and moved into the sorority house near campus.

Speaker 2 Shima's bubbly personality helped her fit right in, and she balanced her studies with her social schedule.

Speaker 13 I was active in my sorority, so we had step shows and community service, things of that nature.

Speaker 2 That must have brought even more happiness to this, the college experience, having all these new friends.

Speaker 13 Yes, yes, we had a great time.

Speaker 2 But everything changed one February night. Shima chatted with a friend on the phone before bed.

Speaker 13 We were on the phone for a long time.

Speaker 13 When we started talking about just guys in general, I was saying that I don't like a particular guy from the South because of the way that they tend to approach me.

Speaker 2 And not all southern guys, just no, there was a particular type.

Speaker 13 Because I had a date with a southern gentleman in a few days.

Speaker 5 So.

Speaker 2 So just girl talk. Yeah.

Speaker 2 After she said goodnight to her friend, she heard a strange rustling on the roof. She didn't make much of it, thought maybe it was an animal outside.
She began to drift off to sleep.

Speaker 2 But then

Speaker 13 I just felt darkness or like evil. I felt something

Speaker 13 not

Speaker 13 right.

Speaker 13 It's hard to explain it, but it was just like it was like an evil presence had entered my space and it woke me up and I was disoriented. And then I made sense of what I was seeing.

Speaker 13 Then I realized, oh my god, it's a person.

Speaker 2 The story you're about to hear is disturbing.

Speaker 13 I saw a man

Speaker 13 in

Speaker 13 a mask.

Speaker 13 It was dark.

Speaker 13 He had a gun and

Speaker 13 he said to not scream. Don't scream and I won't kill you.

Speaker 2 This is every woman's worst nightmare.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 13 I wasn't thinking he was going to kill me. I was thinking he's going to rape me.
I didn't even think about being killed. I was thinking about being raped and how much I did not want that to happen.

Speaker 2 Does fear just take over your whole body? Are you just frozen?

Speaker 13 I am fearful, absolutely, but I'm also thinking, how do I get out of this? How do I get out of this?

Speaker 2 Was there anything around you that you could fight back with?

Speaker 13 My keys. My keys were on the nightstand and then just threw them at him.
And then I had my phone as well, the handset that I threw at him as well.

Speaker 2 Like an old phone, a landline.

Speaker 13 Old landline, right.

Speaker 2 Shima doesn't remember saying anything to the man, but he made this chilling comment.

Speaker 13 So he said to me, so you don't like guys like me from the south. Like he was offended by me having said what I said earlier on the phone.

Speaker 2 So he was listening to your phone conversation.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it did kind of click for me there, like, oh, wow, he heard what I said. He's been out there this whole time.

Speaker 2 Things escalated quickly from there. Shima did what she could to try to protect herself.

Speaker 13 And so I bit him.

Speaker 2 The man reeled from the bite to his genitals. That must have really angered him.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 13 And so then he started hitting me and hitting me and hitting me in my face.

Speaker 2 That's when the beating turned to sexual assault.

Speaker 13 My brain was in overdrive. How did he get there? Who is this person?

Speaker 2 He's beating you and raping you.

Speaker 13 Yes,

Speaker 13 and gets my clothes off. And I don't really know how that happened, but I know I was fighting back.

Speaker 2 Shima says the attack seemed to go on for hours, then suddenly stopped.

Speaker 13 I heard the front door close.

Speaker 13 And once I registered that the front door closed and it didn't sound like He was coming back, I got up and got into the mode of getting literally everything I've I've been saying the whole time is how do I get out of here now I can get out of here were you able to call 911 no because I wasn't able to call 911 that was my intention I went to find the handset I threw at him I could not find it so I went across the hall to my roommate's room picked up her phone and there was no dial tone do you think he had cut the phone lines I do think he cut the phone lines yeah so I ran over across the street to the fraternity house to get help.

Speaker 2 What's that moment like when you finally reach a person that can help you?

Speaker 13 I was just crying.

Speaker 2 Can you call the police?

Speaker 13 I was drenched in blood. I can only imagine what they thought opening the door, seeing me like that, you know.
And then I'm crying and asking for them to help me.

Speaker 2 A fraternity brother called 911 as Shima tried to reckon with her injuries.

Speaker 13 I didn't realize what my face looked like, but it was

Speaker 13 swollen, extremely swollen on the left side.

Speaker 2 Help was on the way, but Shima's life was changed forever. Tasha Fry's was about to change too.
I'm thinking, was he after me?

Speaker 2 Did I put her in a situation? Was I the reason that she was attacked? While a rapist and killer was still free to stock more prey.

Speaker 4 And he asked me, do I feel the gun in my back? And I say yes. And he said, if you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you.

Speaker 2 Leaving investigators desperate, but determined to find answers for the victims' families.

Speaker 20 They don't want false promises.

Speaker 22 They don't want false hope.

Speaker 31 They want to know that we care, which we do, and that we are not going to stop fighting.

Speaker 26 And we're not.

Speaker 2 Shema Benson lay in a hospital bed, almost unrecognizable.

Speaker 13 The pain started setting in while I was at the hospital, the pain in my face.

Speaker 2 Her injuries were so severe, she needed surgery.

Speaker 13 The bone holding my eye, my left eye up, was broken, so they had to go in through the eyeball to fix it.

Speaker 2 It shows you he had a lot of strength, too.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 13 And I'm pretty small. I was smaller then.
I didn't even weigh 100 pounds.

Speaker 2 Could you believe that you had endured it, you made it through, that you're alive?

Speaker 13 You know, I didn't have that

Speaker 13 realization right away.

Speaker 6 I don't want to cry, but

Speaker 13 it took a lot. I think, honestly, it took a lot for me to get to the point where I was also grateful that I'm still here.

Speaker 13 I wasn't murdered,

Speaker 13 but it still took

Speaker 6 a part of me.

Speaker 13 It still felt like a death, in a sense.

Speaker 13 So I wasn't like super grateful to be alive at the time, to be honest.

Speaker 13 And I did hear a lot of, oh, thank God he didn't kill you.

Speaker 13 And I was like, yeah, I guess.

Speaker 2 You went through something

Speaker 2 just

Speaker 2 extremely traumatizing. Yeah.
You know, and this is something that every woman fears will happen to her at some point. And it happened to you.
And.

Speaker 13 Yeah, this is true. You just think evil like that will never touch you.

Speaker 2 News of Shima's attack spread quickly across campus, scaring students like Wendy Prescott's best friend, Tasha Fry.

Speaker 2 Turned out she was also Shima's sorority sister. To know he did that to Shima, that was my line, sister.
That wasn't just a sorority sister. We pledged together.

Speaker 2 It was hard for Tasha to fathom that yet another friend had been targeted. This time, the attack hit much closer to home.
Shima was brutally raped in the room that I moved out of.

Speaker 13 I immediately...

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh, Tasha, how do you

Speaker 6 even?

Speaker 2 I have no words. Yeah, me either.

Speaker 2 Me either.

Speaker 44 Complete shock.

Speaker 2 Tasha had only been in her new apartment for a month, but she would still visit the sorority house for meetings. I'm thinking, was he after me?

Speaker 2 Did I put her in a situation?

Speaker 2 Was I the reason that she was attacked? All the fear and anxiety she felt after Wendy's murder came rushing back. I was a mess.
Mentally, I don't even know how I was

Speaker 5 functioning.

Speaker 2 Lightning doesn't strike twice.

Speaker 2 it did for you in the worst possible way. In the worst possible way.
It was like reliving a horror all over again.

Speaker 2 Wendy's killer was still at large. Now, so was Shima's rapist.
But this time, Tasha's friend survived. What do you say to someone after something like that? What did she say to you? What do you say?

Speaker 2 First off, it was shocking because he broke her face.

Speaker 2 He broke her face, this monster.

Speaker 2 Tasha was racked with guilt. She thought she might know the rapist's identity.
A man she says had been stalking her for months. You were being stalked?

Speaker 6 By who?

Speaker 2 This guy that we had all met together at a first Friday party that was prevalent back in the day. We had dated for a little while.
He got really weird.

Speaker 2 So I ended things and he wasn't taking no for an answer.

Speaker 44 So what was he doing?

Speaker 2 Just coming by, calling, making accusations about we are needing to still be together like you did this to me you did that to me like it was just weird stuff

Speaker 2 Tasha moved out of the sorority house but she was told her ex kept showing up there he'd even come by hours before Shima's attack now I'm scared for my life because I'm like

Speaker 31 is he after me

Speaker 2 After Shima's rape, Tasha went to campus police about her ex. They'd taken the lead on Shima's investigation.
I thought that they needed to know that this guy has been coming around.

Speaker 2 Maybe he was coming there for me,

Speaker 2 but wanted to just share all the information that I had because my goal is I want to help. I need this person caught.

Speaker 2 Tasha's ex quickly became the lead suspect and campus investigators set out to bring him in for questioning.

Speaker 2 She had mentioned her friendship with Wendy to them, but didn't think Wendy's murder had any connection to Shima. Totally different circumstances.

Speaker 6 Rape in a murder,

Speaker 2 rape and a beating. In a sorority house.

Speaker 5 In a sorority house.

Speaker 2 No bathtub, no strangling, no any of that.

Speaker 2 Tasha had also complained about her ex to the Arlington police. She told the detective that her ex knew Wendy, too.

Speaker 45 A detective with our department brought this stalking report to my attention.

Speaker 20 And the reason being is because it mentioned Wendy Prescott.

Speaker 2 As soon as he read it, Detective Lenore realized Tasha was the common denominator between the two cases, Wendy's and Sheema's.

Speaker 26 I knew that name because I'd been dealing with her back when Wendy was killed.

Speaker 2 It all seemed too much of a coincidence, Tasha knowing two rape victims.

Speaker 2 Lenore needed to know more about her stalker, so he gave Tasha a call and discovered a startling connection between Shima and Wendy.

Speaker 8 I find out that her and Wendy both knew him and met him back before her murder.

Speaker 2 Which is like makes the hair on the back of your neck stand.

Speaker 20 Now I am going to insert myself into this investigation.

Speaker 2 He immediately got on the phone with one of the campus police officers.

Speaker 17 And I just told him, look, we need to look at this gentleman for a couple of reasons.

Speaker 23 Number one, yeah, he may be your sexual assault suspect, but

Speaker 10 he very well could be my killer because I have a connection with this guy.

Speaker 12 and with Wendy Prescott back at the time of her murder.

Speaker 2 There was only one way to know if Tasha's ex ex was responsible for the murders at the Pear Tree apartments and Shima's rape. A DNA match.
Is there DNA with Shima?

Speaker 34 There is DNA.

Speaker 29 So we sent that to the lab.

Speaker 2 If the DNA in Shima matches Christine and Wendy.

Speaker 12 If it matches Christine and Wendy, we know for a fact that that's our killer.

Speaker 29 We just don't know that's this individual being named.

Speaker 28 It was imperative that we got his prints and we got his blood sample.

Speaker 2 But that turned out to be much harder than detectives anticipated. Tasha's ex refused to provide a sample.

Speaker 21 Not only was he not cooperative, he was confrontational.

Speaker 20 He let myself and the detective from UTA know right up front: I'm not giving you anything.

Speaker 2 This is highly suspicious.

Speaker 25 Oh, it's beyond that.

Speaker 2 Detectives had to wonder: did his lack of cooperation mean he was hiding something? They'd have to jump through legal hoops to find out.

Speaker 2 But when they did, Tasha might just lead you to your killer, or at least the beginning of finding your killer. Absolutely.

Speaker 32 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zin offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 32 Check out Zen.com/slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com slash podcast.

Speaker 35 A Mochi Moment from Tara, who writes, For years, all my doctor said was eat less and move more, which never worked.

Speaker 40 And after losing over 30 pounds, I can say you're not just another GLP1 source.

Speaker 41 You're a life source.

Speaker 39 I'm Myra Amet, founder of Mochi Health.

Speaker 2 Detective Lenore felt confident he was on to the man who killed two women in Arlington, Texas. The same man he believed raped UTA student Shima Benson, Tasha's ex-boyfriend.

Speaker 2 Tasha had reported to police that her ex had been stalking her. He'd even shown up at the sorority house looking for her hours before Shima was attacked.

Speaker 2 Tasha might just lead you to your killer, or at least the beginning of finding your killer.

Speaker 2 When Tasha's ex refused to cooperate with police, Detective Lenore went to the grand jury to compel him to provide a DNA sample.

Speaker 2 The next day, the ex voluntarily agreed, and when the results came back, he was excluded from the DNA.

Speaker 2 His DNA didn't match the DNA found on Shima. But Lenore had requested a separate DNA test comparing Shima's case with the bathtub murders.
Those results confirmed his suspicions.

Speaker 31 I get a report.

Speaker 12 The person that raped Shima is your killer.

Speaker 2 Oh, so you got a match.

Speaker 18 I got a match.

Speaker 8 We are connected.

Speaker 2 The rapist from Shima's case was the bathtub killer. How do you process news like that? He's accused of killing two women.

Speaker 13 So I think it really drove home that, oh my God,

Speaker 13 I could have very well been another

Speaker 13 one of the victims.

Speaker 2 Detective Lenore wanted to meet with Shima, so he traveled to San Diego where she'd moved to be with family. She was concerned the attacker mentioned her phone call about southern men.

Speaker 2 and believed he'd overheard her talking on the phone to her friend. She told Lenore she was also worried about another conversation, a chat with the friend at the mall before she was raped.

Speaker 20 She told me of an individual she was concerned about that may have overheard her.

Speaker 29 She was saying some pretty negative things about southern men.

Speaker 33 And this individual overheard her.

Speaker 29 And so her thought was, you don't think he came after me because of this?

Speaker 47 It was her fear.

Speaker 8 And I said, well, if you've got a fear, then I'm going to address it.

Speaker 20 I'm going to listen to what you tell me, and we're going to find this person.

Speaker 12 And we found him.

Speaker 2 Who is this guy?

Speaker 20 He was a friend that knew Tasha.

Speaker 10 He was in that circle.

Speaker 2 Lenore discovered an even more ominous detail about this man. Just two months before Christine was killed, he'd moved into the same apartment complex.
Did he have a criminal record?

Speaker 2 Was there anything to be concerned about with this man?

Speaker 19 This person had no criminal record. That doesn't really mean anything, but he had no criminal record.

Speaker 2 The man voluntarily spoke with Lenore and provided a DNA sample. And when the results came back, he was excluded.
Ah, so another frustrating

Speaker 2 dead end. Correct.

Speaker 2 Shema did give Lenore something important, something his investigation never had before. A description of the bathtub killer.

Speaker 34 She didn't seem well enough to be able to.

Speaker 29 to give us a good physical description of the face, but she was absolutely certain he was an African-American male.

Speaker 8 What that does immediately is I go back to this case book with probably 2,000 suspects and I exclude 70% of them, just like that.

Speaker 9 I go to our apartment list, which is a separate list, and we've got probably another 150 people on that list, and I cut that out, and now it's down to about 40.

Speaker 20 I felt more optimistic about capturing this individual than I ever had in this investigation.

Speaker 8 For the first time, there was just, we are going to get this guy.

Speaker 29 But of course, with that energy and with that optimism, also came this gigantic boulder of fear going, oh my god, he's still doing this.

Speaker 24 So are there other victims out there that we don't know about?

Speaker 2 Detective Lenore widened his net and put out feelers to surrounding law enforcement agencies, including the Grand Prairie Police Department. Grand Prairie is near Arlington.

Speaker 10 Grand Prairie.

Speaker 2 So you're thinking, why not?

Speaker 8 It's not only near.

Speaker 20 Arlington, it's on the east side, which is not far from Pear Tree.

Speaker 19 And I went and met a detective in Grand Prairie that I knew and worked with.

Speaker 20 And I just said, do me a favor, I said, I need you to do something for me.

Speaker 47 Go through all of your sexual assaults.

Speaker 12 If any of your suspects after February of 1999, if you have any, and they're African-American male and they committed,

Speaker 24 if they meet this physical or if they have some type of severe injury, some type of bite injury, I said, let me know.

Speaker 2 Two months after that conversation, Lenore's phone rang. It was the detective at the Grand Prairie Police Department.
The moment Lenore had been waiting years for had finally arrived.

Speaker 8 He says, I may have

Speaker 3 your guy.

Speaker 2 The bathtub killer had eluded police for three years, but women around Arlington hadn't forgotten him or what he was capable of.

Speaker 4 Everything inside of me knew that I was going to be a part of that story.

Speaker 2 It was a premonition 22-year-old Adrienne Fields carried for years.

Speaker 2 She had lived near the Pear Tree apartment complex, but left after the murders. And even though she moved away, she couldn't shake the feeling she would be the bathtub killer's next victim.

Speaker 4 I started feeling like someone was following me. Coming from work, it started seeming like someone's exiting everywhere I exit.
I'm at the grocery stores and I'm noticing someone's following me.

Speaker 4 I'm like, I'm super, I'm tripping.

Speaker 2 Her uneasy feeling only grew. Adrienne was terrified to be alone, to sleep by herself.

Speaker 2 But in October 1999, she decided to reclaim her life.

Speaker 4 I wrote a letter to myself and I was like, you are 22 years old. And today is going to be the first day of the rest of your life.
And you are going to sleep with the lights off.

Speaker 4 And you are going to listen to jazz you're not going to have a tv light you know you're going to not have anybody spend the night with you you're going to be a big girl

Speaker 2 she taped the letter to her fridge and followed the plan lights off jazz on from bed she called her mother and sister to say goodnight while she was on the phone she heard something pop pop is what it sounds like My sister says, I'm coming over.

Speaker 4 And I said, no, don't come over. I told you, I'm a big girl tonight.

Speaker 2 You've prepared yourself for this tonight,

Speaker 13 right?

Speaker 4 And so she says, well, are you sure? Are you sure you don't want me to come over? And I'm like, I'm positive. Can y'all just stay on the phone with me until I fall asleep?

Speaker 2 Adrienne drifted off. But an hour later, something woke her.

Speaker 4 I hear breathing and

Speaker 4 this sound. And I'm praying, Lord, please, please, Lord, please, please, please, Jesus.
Like at this point, I'm begging God not to let anybody be there as I turn over.

Speaker 4 And as I turn over, and it's like I connect to him in the dark.

Speaker 2 An intruder wearing a stocking over his face was in her bedroom.

Speaker 4 And he sees me turn over, and he takes off running towards me, like

Speaker 4 really fast. And he jumps up on my bed, and he puts...
the gun in my back and I can feel the coldness of the gun in my back. And then I'm screaming.

Speaker 2 Does he say anything to you?

Speaker 4 He says, Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet. Like that.
And he puts his hand over my mouth and he asked me, Do I feel the gun in my back? And I say, Yes.

Speaker 4 And he said, If you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you. I'm not going to hurt you.
He said, Stop screaming. Stop screaming.
I won't hurt you if you don't scream.

Speaker 4 But if you scream, I'm going to hurt you.

Speaker 2 Did you think you were going to die? Did. I did.

Speaker 2 Then the man began to rape her.

Speaker 2 All of your your worst fears are coming true

Speaker 2 in this moment.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 2 What does he do next?

Speaker 4 He tells me to get on the floor, just directing me of what he wants. He's telling me

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 he wants me to act like there's no tomorrow. I ask him, is there a tomorrow? And he says, of course there is.

Speaker 4 And I say, but is there for me?

Speaker 4 And he just stops and he's just standing there and he's looking at me. I'm looking at him.
And he says, yes.

Speaker 2 Adrian didn't believe him.

Speaker 4 I'm crying. He's asking me, why am I crying? And I say, because I'm scared.

Speaker 2 You're having a conversation with this man.

Speaker 4 The entire time.

Speaker 4 He started to ask me, what is your name? And I wouldn't tell him my name.

Speaker 5 And so he was like, well, how about I call you Adrian?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 oh my gosh, Adrian.

Speaker 4 It was real.

Speaker 2 That is so scary.

Speaker 2 So right then, you knew that those times you felt like you'd been followed. That changes everything.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 4 It changed everything for me. It was so personal.

Speaker 2 What was inside of you that instead of, you know, just going into a shell and just wanting it to be over, you're engaging with him.

Speaker 4 I think it was just instincts, just survival instincts. And I think that it just made me human for him.
I asked him, why was he doing it? And he said that the devil keeps making him do it.

Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 And I said, oh, my God, you've done this before.

Speaker 2 Adrian says the intruder continued his assault on her for two hours before leaving her broken, alone. but alive.

Speaker 4 When I went to the hospital, they took pictures, did all of this stuff, raped kid. Then the the next day, I went back to my parents' home, slept with my mom for probably six months.

Speaker 2 As is true for every survivor, the agony was hardly over.

Speaker 4 Every time I closed my eyes, it was real again. It was the traumatic experience over and over and over again.

Speaker 2 Adrienne had reported her assault to the Grand Prairie Police and described what she could make out of her attacker through the stocking he wore over his face.

Speaker 2 A diligent detective there remembered Tommy Lenore looking for a suspect suspect who matched that same description. He called Lenore.

Speaker 20 The description Adrian gave was very similar to what Shima gave.

Speaker 29 African-American male in his 20s, stocky but not muscular.

Speaker 2 Adrian also reported her rapist had a scar. It was in the very same spot where Shima Benson said she bit her attacker.

Speaker 2 And sure enough, when investigators compared the male DNA found on Adrian to that found on Shima, Christine Vu, and Wendy Prescott, They all matched.

Speaker 20 So now I have the killer identified, two sexual assault victims and two murder victims.

Speaker 2 Unbelievable. Right.

Speaker 2 That connection raised a perplexing question for Detective Lenore. Why had the killer he'd been chasing for years changed his M.O.

Speaker 8 The big mystery to all of this is the de-escalation.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because murder and sexual assault, two sexual assaults.

Speaker 10 Sexual assault, I mean, they're equally horrible.

Speaker 47 I mean, in a lot of ways, with a sexual assault, these ladies have to live with this the rest of their lives.

Speaker 17 But he's de-escalating.

Speaker 47 Well, I think when it went public to the media with the bathtub killer, I believe he thought, well, I better quit doing this part of it.

Speaker 2 Victim by victim, investigators were connecting the dots and they were about to crack the case wide open with the most important detail of all.

Speaker 2 Your ghost now has a name.

Speaker 45 Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 2 You're coming for him.

Speaker 45 Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 32 Zin is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 32 Check out Zen.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 35 A Mochi moment from Tara, who writes, For years, all my doctor said was eat less and move more, which never worked.

Speaker 41 And after losing over 30 pounds, I can say you're not just another GLP1 source, you're a life source.

Speaker 39 I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health.

Speaker 2 Talk to the families of murder victims and they'll tell you. Almost as agonizing as the loss is the waiting that follows.
The loved ones of Wendy Prescott and Christine Vu know that all too well.

Speaker 2 How does that weigh on your family?

Speaker 7 You try to move on, but you know in the back of your mind mind there's somebody out there free that has committed a crime, killed your sister, killed your daughter, killed your niece, and he committed the same crime to somebody else's daughter, sister, niece, right?

Speaker 7 And so it was chilling.

Speaker 2 Your mom's case was never solved, and now here Wendy's case is not being solved. That must weigh heavily on you.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 6 It did.

Speaker 2 Did you start to think this person might get away with it or these people whoever did this?

Speaker 6 Yes, we did.

Speaker 2 That same fear practically paralyzed Adrienne Fields. For months after her rape, she could barely eat, speak.
She even wrote a letter to her parents.

Speaker 4 I wrote them a letter and asked, please don't touch me because I couldn't stand to be touched.

Speaker 2 Shima was struggling too.

Speaker 13 My mom, she tried her best, but how do you really comfort someone in that situation? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Detective Lenore felt the pressure of knowing four families were counting on him.

Speaker 22 They don't want false promises. They don't want false hope.

Speaker 31 They want to know that we care, which we do, and that we are not going to stop fighting.

Speaker 26 And we're not.

Speaker 2 Unearthing the killer's name was key, but there were roadblocks.

Speaker 2 While it was clear all four cases were connected by the same male DNA, CODIS, the national DNA database, was relatively new and didn't contain enough DNA profiles to be useful to Lenore's investigation.

Speaker 2 As for the fingerprints found in Christine's and Wendy's apartments, he knew if he could find a match, he could identify the killer, but so far, nothing. Then, a possible breakthrough.

Speaker 2 Crime scene investigator Joel Stevenson heard about an advance in the FBI's fingerprint identification system.

Speaker 11 The FBI upgraded the algorithms. They upgraded the search parameters.

Speaker 2 So we gave it another shot and sent the print from Wendy's crime scene back to the FBI.

Speaker 11 We submit the print and we get the answer back early September of 2000 that

Speaker 11 we have a potential ID.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 2 Turned out a man had been arrested for a 1999 burglary just outside of Dallas. His print was a match.
And when Stevenson compared the print from Christine's case to the burglars, it was a match too.

Speaker 2 So these two prints that started out this whole investigation

Speaker 2 could now be the key to finally solving this.

Speaker 11 They broke the case open, gave us a name and a person to put with the prints. And that name was number 17 on our list, original list of people.

Speaker 11 The chameleon was not a chameleon anymore.

Speaker 2 What was the name?

Speaker 11 Dale Chenette.

Speaker 2 Dale Cheanette. Detective Lenore's ears perked up.

Speaker 12 I go, I know that name.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 34 I know that name because I know every name in this, in these books.

Speaker 2 So who is Dale Chenette?

Speaker 20 Dale Chanette was one of the males that was connected to the Paritree apartments by lease as a co-signer for a young woman who was his girlfriend. Eventually he married her.

Speaker 2 Chenette wasn't high on Detective Lenore's list because he'd never been arrested until that burglary in 1999, two and a half years after the murders.

Speaker 47 I'll use a cliche under the radar.

Speaker 34 He was eventually going to be interviewed, but he was so low on that list.

Speaker 2 That is the moment in this investigation.

Speaker 24 Oh, this is it. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 You finally have a name.

Speaker 19 I've got a name.

Speaker 2 Your ghost is now alive.

Speaker 34 My ghost is a human being and he's an evil human being and we are going to arrest him.

Speaker 2 Detective Lenore worked on getting an arrest warrant while another team went to Cheanette's house.

Speaker 15 We had a team that was set up surveillance on the house. During this this time, once I got the warrant, once it was signed, he actually came out of the house, got in his vehicle, and left.

Speaker 2 The team followed him? They followed him.

Speaker 10 Where did they pull him over?

Speaker 23 Pulled him over on this road that we're on right now, coming up the street.

Speaker 2 And what was his reaction? What word did you get back?

Speaker 15 He basically cooperated, didn't say anything, but what's interesting is he also didn't question why he was being arrested.

Speaker 2 They brought Cheanette to the station.

Speaker 31 He agreed to talk to me.

Speaker 10 He was actually

Speaker 10 soft-spoken, polite, sat down and we had a conversation.

Speaker 28 I asked him, I said, you understand why you're here.

Speaker 3 You know why you're here.

Speaker 20 You're here because your print was matched inside an apartment at the Pear Tree Plum Tree Apartments.

Speaker 2 Dale Chenette denied ever being in the victim's apartments. Lenore knew he was lying.
How on earth would his fingerprint be on Wendy's TV stand and on the interior of Christine's door?

Speaker 20 I said, listen, well, if it's not you, let's exclude you. I can do it through your print.
I can do it through your DNA.

Speaker 28 He says, I'm not going to give that to you.

Speaker 2 And he's not getting upset. We've made it.
Of course, I had nothing to do with that. As an innocent person would be in shock.

Speaker 28 But as we're talking, he says, you need to understand about my past.

Speaker 17 He said,

Speaker 17 I was abused.

Speaker 29 What do you mean you were abused?

Speaker 24 And he said, I was sexually abused when I was a kid.

Speaker 2 Then Jeanette said something surprising.

Speaker 10 And so we're talking, and he says, well, do you care about my life?

Speaker 19 Which kind of caught me off a little bit.

Speaker 8 And I was like, well, I gave him the general answer.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I care about everybody's life.

Speaker 20 And he says, then don't let me get the death penalty.

Speaker 2 That was a curious request.

Speaker 2 He's been denying all of this.

Speaker 47 You're denying, but yet you're saying, please don't let me get the death penalty.

Speaker 2 Yeah. If you believe you're looking at a guilty man.

Speaker 19 If I were in Vegas, I'd put all the chips on the table.

Speaker 12 He goes, I will tell you everything I know you want to know and more.

Speaker 2 And more. And what's the more? Are you you thinking more victims?

Speaker 31 Oh, good lord, yes.

Speaker 2 Lenore told Cheanette he didn't have the authority to make the call about the death penalty. That was the end of the conversation.

Speaker 24 His response was, if you can't do it, I want a lawyer.

Speaker 20 And when you say that, it's over.

Speaker 19 I've had some times getting up and walking out of a room that were hard.

Speaker 14 That was one of the hardest.

Speaker 2 But Lenore still had some cards to play. He got a search warrant to physically examine Cheanette.

Speaker 20 That injury, exactly where Shima described,

Speaker 33 was still there.

Speaker 2 The warrant also allowed the detective to collect Dale Cheanette's DNA.

Speaker 2 As he waited for the results, he dove deeper into his suspect's life and discovered he was in a relationship with a woman who, as it turned out, had a lot to share with police and us.

Speaker 5 Well, he just preferred that I took baths. I did that instead of the showers.

Speaker 2 The twisted truth was coming to light. There were more victims and buried secrets Jeanette was keeping.

Speaker 2 It was the news Christine Vu's family had waited years to hear. The search for her killer appeared to be over.

Speaker 7 The Arlington Police Department reached reached out to us as a family and told us that they have somebody in custody.

Speaker 2 What's that emotion like for you when you get that news?

Speaker 7 It was fantastic because leading up to that point, we felt this was a cold case. Nothing's going to get done.
No one's going to get caught.

Speaker 2 Wendy Prescott's family felt the same. And they also had questions.
Did you know the name Dale Cheanette? Had you ever heard of this person?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 6 Never heard of him.

Speaker 2 And then you find out the connection that he was the boyfriend of a woman living in the complex.

Speaker 6 Yep.

Speaker 2 I mean, I wouldn't have never imagined that he was living there, you know, that it was a resident.

Speaker 2 Detectives learned Seanette hadn't lived in the Pear Tree apartments for long. In fact, he moved out before Wendy was murdered.
He seemed to live a quiet life.

Speaker 2 He and his girlfriend married, had a child, and eventually divorced. At the time of his arrest, he was living with a new girlfriend we'll call Kay.

Speaker 5 I would not think that he was capable of hurting a woman.

Speaker 2 She asked us not to show her full face. Do you worry what people will think of you?

Speaker 5 I'd just rather keep my peace and serenity away from everything.

Speaker 2 Kay says her world was turned upside down the day Dale Cheanette was arrested. Police surrounded the home she shared with him, then came inside to search.

Speaker 5 They took me to the police station. They wouldn't tell me anything until I actually got into the police station.
And that's when they dropped the bomb on you. They told me that I had been in danger.

Speaker 5 And they said, do you know what he's been held for? And I said, no.

Speaker 2 What is your reaction to the police when they tell you this news?

Speaker 5 Just shock.

Speaker 2 Shock and also disbelief. Kay remembered the bathtub murders.
For years, she says she lived in terror of being the next victim. She even shared her fears with Cheanette.

Speaker 5 I told him that I never thought I would live in Arlington because, you know, they never found the guy who killed those women.

Speaker 2 How did he make you feel when you expressed your concerns?

Speaker 5 Well he just kind of dismissed it and I said that's why I always chose to move on the second or third floor and he said well that just isn't safe either because people can get in on the second and third floor as well.

Speaker 2 Kay couldn't believe the man suspected of rape and murder was the same man she'd once considered her protector. What was it about Dale that made you feel safe?

Speaker 5 Well, he was a big guy. He was muscular and always had a gun, a pistol.

Speaker 2 You just knew that he was going to be there for you if something bad happened?

Speaker 5 Yes, I did.

Speaker 41 He had proven it before.

Speaker 2 If I needed him, he was always there. Kay says she met Jeanette at a local club where he worked behind the bar.
They dated for about eight months.

Speaker 2 Detectives later learned that Adrian also frequented that club. How do you two start talking?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 he noticed me and he approached me and asked me if he could give me his number.

Speaker 2 A month later, Kay called him and the two started dating. She says at first, everything seemed great.

Speaker 5 He was really nice. He just gave me a lot of attention, compliments and stuff.

Speaker 2 But thinking back, red flags popped up.

Speaker 6 He had a recorder tucked away under a couch.

Speaker 5 And I thought that was quite odd.

Speaker 2 You found the recorder?

Speaker 5 Yeah, he was recording my conversations with my mom and family members.

Speaker 2 Did you confront him about it?

Speaker 5 I did. I asked him about it, but we, you know, he dismissed it and we really didn't talk anymore about it.

Speaker 2 She also brushed off an incident at her old place before she moved in with Dale.

Speaker 2 Kay had gone on vacation with a girlfriend, and when she returned, she says her neighbor told her someone had been in her apartment.

Speaker 5 He could hear the footsteps from the downstairs apartment. And then when I got home, I couldn't unlock my door.
And I had to get the police to come and open the door for me.

Speaker 5 And they told me that it was locked from the inside. So whoever was in there, they exited through the balcony.

Speaker 2 Kay suspected it was Dale, but decided to let it go.

Speaker 5 Now that I think about it, retrospect, I had fears.

Speaker 6 What were they?

Speaker 5 He just gave you the demeanor like you just don't want to push him too far.

Speaker 2 Was Dale ever violent toward you?

Speaker 5 He wasn't violent for the most part.

Speaker 5 But one time, I decided I was going to leave because we were getting along bad and he did a restraining move on me and held me and wouldn't wouldn't let me get up did it scare you it did because it seemed like his expression changed and I didn't know him for a sign for a second like someone you hadn't seen before yes yes

Speaker 2 and there was one more thing a request Jeanette made that at the time Kay thought was harmless.

Speaker 5 He preferred that I took baths and so

Speaker 5 I did that that instead of the showers.

Speaker 2 I mean, was this something that he wanted to see you taking a bath, or he just wanted to know that you were taking a bath?

Speaker 5 He just wanted to know that I was taking a bath.

Speaker 2 Did you find that odd?

Speaker 5 No, I just thought it was a preference, you know.

Speaker 2 Clearly, he had, there was something about bathtubs. You know, the fact that he wanted you to take baths.
His victims were found in the bathtub.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think that was something, maybe some type of cleaning ritual or something.

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Despite all the disturbing realizations, Kay kept in contact with Jeanette, even visited him in jail. Did you ask him in that moment, did you kill these women and sexually assault these women?

Speaker 5 No, because I knew that that's something that he was not willing to talk about.

Speaker 2 Could you think of a reason? Why he would do it? Was there something in his past or something that he told you that might shed some light on why?

Speaker 5 He did have mommy issues. He said that his sisters were treated better than him growing up and he was also felt rejected from his wife.

Speaker 2 Sounds like he maybe has issues with women or how he's been treated by women in the past.

Speaker 5 Yes, it could have been some rejection.

Speaker 2 Why didn't you just cut him off now that he's in jail?

Speaker 5 Because there was part of me was still not believing that he actually did it. Maybe he didn't do it.
You know, and that what if he didn't do it and everybody's abandoning him?

Speaker 2 Even though Chanette was behind bars, Detective Lenore still needed the lab results.

Speaker 2 And so now you have his DNA?

Speaker 28 I have his DNA.

Speaker 2 Is there a rush on comparing this DNA?

Speaker 2 Then, while he waited, he got a call that suggested this case was far from over.

Speaker 47 There were three more.

Speaker 2 More attacks.

Speaker 24 Three attacks.

Speaker 2 From the moment Detective Lenore heard about Christine Vu's murder at the Pear Tree apartments, he'd been on the hunt for a killer. Years later, in March 1999, he felt he'd finally found him.

Speaker 2 He was just waiting for a DNA match to confirm it. Then, two weeks after Dale Cheanette's arrest, the moment the investigator had been waiting for arrived.
The DNA matched all four victims.

Speaker 2 Christine, Wendy, Shima, and Adrian.

Speaker 47 We have a DNA match to all four victims.

Speaker 2 You got your guy?

Speaker 29 Oh, he's definitely our guy.

Speaker 33 There's no if-ands, and buts about it.

Speaker 2 But Detective Lenore believed there were other victims.

Speaker 2 Eight months before Chenette's arrest, he'd put out a bulletin to neighboring police departments asking if any of their unsolved crimes seemed similar to these four cases.

Speaker 2 Investigators from Lancaster, Texas got that note and believed three of their cases were possibly connected. Turned out, Lenore's hunch was right.
There were more victims.

Speaker 20 At that time, we connected his DNA to three sexual assaults that occurred in 1998 between September and December.

Speaker 2 One of the victims was a Dallas police officer.

Speaker 20 He threatened to kill her family and even cited their address to her, saying, I know where your family lives.

Speaker 6 Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 20 Vicious. In one case, he sexually assaulted a woman in front of her child.

Speaker 2 The Tarrant County District Attorney pursued the maximum penalty. Dale Chenette was indicted on capital murder charges.
If found guilty, he would face the death penalty.

Speaker 2 Chenette's biggest fear was now a real possibility. But there was a potential snag with the prosecution's case.
Assistant DA Greg Miller.

Speaker 49 Under Texas law, we wouldn't be able to try him at the same time for both murders.

Speaker 2 So they chose Wendy Prescott's murder, which meant the jury would not hear anything about Christine Vu or the sexual assault victims. Why try Wendy's case first if she was second

Speaker 2 in the murders?

Speaker 49 The only issue that we had a little bit of a concern about in Christine's cases was Christine had a boyfriend.

Speaker 2 Although Christine's boyfriend, Tang Koo, had long ago been cleared by police, prosecutors worried his presence at the crime scene, so close to the time of her murder, might confuse the jury.

Speaker 49 When you're the prosecutor, you're trying to convince all 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 49 And all the defense is trying to do is, you know, find one or two people that, for whatever reason, don't believe that she ended up, you know, killed Christine Vu, too.

Speaker 2 Christine's family understood.

Speaker 7 Once we got to that point, it didn't matter. We felt comfortable that there was enough linkage between the two cases that they were done by the same person.

Speaker 2 You just wanted him to go away.

Speaker 7 I just wanted him to go away. Exactly.

Speaker 2 The trial began in January 2003 in Fort Worth. Christine's and Wendy's families attended.

Speaker 7 It was a top priority for us to attend and see this through because that's the least we can do for Christine in her memory.

Speaker 2 Wendy's cousin hoped the presence of both families sent a strong message to Cheanette.

Speaker 2 To make sure that he knew that he took away someone very special to us and to make sure that he was going to get his punishment.

Speaker 2 The prosecution's case focused on the forensic evidence, starting with that thumbprint.

Speaker 49 What we refer to as a dust print from the TV stand of Wendy's apartment, which is probably the best dust print I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was very clear.

Speaker 44 Very clear.

Speaker 2 And this was Dale Cheanette's print.

Speaker 49 And then we had a sperm sample from the autopsy procedure.

Speaker 2 from Wendy. Also, Dale's tenet.

Speaker 49 This also came back to Dale Chanette.

Speaker 2 To quash any doubt about the results, an expert explained how unlikely it was that the sample could be anyone else's. The DNA probability, you call it, was really important.

Speaker 49 Yes, the DNA probability that it was someone else other than Dale Cheonette was like one in 763 million people.

Speaker 2 The prosecution rested its case.

Speaker 7 We were glad it was relatively open and shut. Really, the defense had not much to say other than I didn't do it.

Speaker 2 In fact, the defense didn't even give an opening statement, didn't call any witnesses. You had such powerful evidence.
How does the defense combat that?

Speaker 11 They couldn't. The forensic evidence was so strong.
They were trying to poke holes in the way it was collected, or what did you do with it? Where did you store it?

Speaker 11 And we just had documentation on all of that.

Speaker 49 In reality, they just kind of had to sit there and take it, just witness after witness after witness. There really wasn't much they could do.

Speaker 2 The case went to the jurors, and after just two hours of deliberation, they had a verdict.

Speaker 49 Guilty to capital murder.

Speaker 2 Just as you predicted.

Speaker 49 As I hoped, yes.

Speaker 2 When they said the guilty verdict, you know, it was just like a relief, like something had lifted.

Speaker 49 Now the real task in this case began and that was to lay out the evidence that would convince a jury that he deserved a death sentence.

Speaker 2 This time, prosecutors were allowed to introduce all of Dale Chenette's crimes.

Speaker 49 We get to tell the jury the rest of the story, so to speak. And that's what we did.

Speaker 2 That included the details of Christine Boo's case and all five sexual assaults. One by one, the victims took the stand to unburden themselves of the pain they'd suffered for years.

Speaker 4 I was married at this time. I was pregnant, about seven months pregnant.

Speaker 2 It was the first time Adrian had come face to face with Cheanette since that awful night.

Speaker 4 And so I'm telling my testimony, and he's looking at me like with those piercing evil eyes. He's just looking like hard like, I should have killed you.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, I shouldn't have let you live, you know.

Speaker 2 Did you feel so empowered? I did.

Speaker 6 I did.

Speaker 4 I cried all the way through, but I felt so strong and so empowered. Even in just like when I walked out, it was like, I'm leaving this behind me.
I'm walking out this door and this is it.

Speaker 2 Shima felt something different.

Speaker 13 I remember being really angry at him. Like he didn't care of the pain that he inflicted on the families, the victims, the survivors.

Speaker 2 But the jury recognized all their pain and once again decided in favor of the prosecution. Dale Cheanette was sentenced to death.
Six years later, on February 10th, 2009, he died by lethal injection.

Speaker 2 The families of Wendy and Christine were there in the viewing room to watch his execution.

Speaker 7 There were tears that were shed. Really?

Speaker 6 In the room. Yeah.

Speaker 7 You know, it's not so much the tears for the murderer, it's the tears for the victims that we shed. Thankfully, it was the closure that we were looking for.

Speaker 2 Since that day, Shima has also found a way to move forward as a wife and a mother.

Speaker 13 I live in a beautiful place with my lovely family, and so I'm just grateful to be here. and to experience that.

Speaker 2 You've overcome so much. Yes.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 13 it's a journey still, you know, but I think I'm doing well.

Speaker 2 Adrienne credits her daughter for her positive outlook.

Speaker 4 Starting to notice that my fears are taking over her. And so I begin to think if I'm the woman that she will become, then I've got to work on the woman that I am.
I'm going to live differently.

Speaker 2 She's now an author and a motivational speaker.

Speaker 4 I'm proof that you can get pass rate.

Speaker 4 My experience is not everyone else's experience, but I can tell you from my experience that you can live through it and that you can breathe again.

Speaker 2 Adrian wanted to help others through their darkest moments and started a non-profit called Rip the Bandage.

Speaker 4 I call it my safe place. We do a lot of great things.
So we go out to the streets, we feed the homeless, we provide daily sustenance like toiletries and clothes and shoes and snacks.

Speaker 4 And I am encouraging people all day long. You can make it.

Speaker 2 You're such an inspiration.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 18 Living proof that you can do it.

Speaker 4 This happened in your life, but it didn't happen to knock you out the game. It came to give you strength.

Speaker 18 That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast.
Andrea Canning and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Speaker 18 Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 10 9 Central.
I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 24 Good night.

Speaker 30 Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.

Speaker 30 With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.

Speaker 30 Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place.

Speaker 30 Sign up for Greenlight today at greenlight.com/slash podcast.

Dark Intentions

Press play and read along

Transcript

More episodes from Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: Raising the Dead

Introducing: Something About Cari

Raising the Dead

An accused killer pleads guilty, but not to murder. The next chapter in the Dulos case. Plus, a NXIVM story.

Talking Dateline: Running Man