The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo

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Speaker 5 Tonight on dateline.

Speaker 13 What I had in my mind was, he's done this before. Well, he's hunting women.

Speaker 14 That young woman up there on the hillside could have been you.

Speaker 13 Yeah, that was his plan.

Speaker 17 Your 21-year-old daughter has just suddenly vanished.

Speaker 2 It's devastating.

Speaker 18 This beautiful young lady disappeared after going to meet a photographer.

Speaker 19 My heart dropped.

Speaker 18 What if it is the same guy?

Speaker 20 Were there other women who came forward?

Speaker 22 Several other women, he said.

Speaker 18 We're casting for the new James Bond movie. You're perfect.

Speaker 13 He told me there was a photo shoot happening. It was up in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 21 He said, well, you need this certain outfit. High heels, but not too high.
A shorter skirt, but not too short.

Speaker 24 He grabbed me, pulled me by my hair, dragged me back to the bed. I said, this guy has done this before.
He'll do it again. And he will kill someone.

Speaker 25 A new turn in the mystery from our hit podcast, Murder in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 13 You wonder, how has he not been stopped?

Speaker 13 I wanted to get all these women together. i wanted to bring him out of the shadows

Speaker 25 young women with big dreams stalked by a predator but in a hollywood twist could they turn the tables on him i'm lester holt and this is dateline

Speaker 28 here's keith morrison with the girl with the hibiscus tattoo

Speaker 3 This is where she came.

Speaker 31 The young woman drove in her little car up the winding confusion of narrow roads

Speaker 34 among houses perched like spectators, peering out at the show down below.

Speaker 35 Hollywood and the vast city beyond.

Speaker 37 Her name was Christy Johnson.

Speaker 33 She was 21, not quite 22.

Speaker 41 And then, as evening fell over the steep canyons, she simply vanished like the sun.

Speaker 19 Where is she that she doesn't have communication to me that she's not calling?

Speaker 42 This is the story of what happened to Christy.

Speaker 43 It's about a smooth-talking Hollywood predator.

Speaker 13 I really knew this guy was up to something bad.

Speaker 45 And it's about a sisterhood of women who banded together after the legal system failed to protect them.

Speaker 13 What we have as victims inherently is a powerful voice. We come together and use our voices.
We win. It's powerful.

Speaker 43 Her story begins in 2003.

Speaker 1 Christy Johnson was just starting out, finally on her own.

Speaker 5 Here in the city of a million dreams, or close to it, a shared apartment in Santa Monica.

Speaker 53 And with dreams of her own, said her dad, Kirk.

Speaker 43 But not the starry-eyed kind.

Speaker 37 Christie's were more grounded.

Speaker 11 She wanted to be a makeup person.

Speaker 17 She talked about working behind the scenes,

Speaker 17 producing or directing, possibly.

Speaker 57 Something in that industry. She felt like she was on her way, you know, when this happened.

Speaker 58 When this happened?

Speaker 53 Seems like another age now.

Speaker 59 More than 20 years have passed since the events I'll describe here.

Speaker 51 All before the iPhone or Facebook or the widespread use of high-def TV.

Speaker 39 But I'm telling you now because it's a tale that did not die.

Speaker 62 Even now, remains a wound that hasn't quite healed.

Speaker 39 I met Christy's mom, Terry Hall, back toward the beginning.

Speaker 63 She had no idea what was to come.

Speaker 64 How could she?

Speaker 19 Christy and I spoke on the phone every day. You know, we enjoyed being with each other and doing things together and had a very close relationship.

Speaker 67 It was the day after Valentine's Day, February 15th.

Speaker 53 That Saturday morning, like every morning, Christy called her mother at home up in Northern California.

Speaker 4 She told Terry she was headed to the Century City Mall.

Speaker 32 to do some shopping.

Speaker 19 And I said, okay, great. You know, don't buy, you know, anything.
Pick something out and it'll be your Valentine's present.

Speaker 37 By Sunday, Christy should have called her mother again.

Speaker 68 She did not.

Speaker 19 I thought, no, that's strange.

Speaker 17 Kind of a low-grade anxiety.

Speaker 19 Right, like, gee, I wonder what's happening here, you know, that I can't get a hold of her.

Speaker 8 Again, she called, and again.

Speaker 32 Two days went by.

Speaker 60 No answer, no call.

Speaker 19 When I couldn't get a hold of her on her cell phone again, I called her on her direct line at work.

Speaker 19 And when I got her answering message on her work phone is when I became very alarmed.

Speaker 1 That was Monday.

Speaker 14 Christie, ever conscientious, wouldn't miss work.

Speaker 73 Terry called a co-worker of Christie's, who was also worried.

Speaker 64 And so far away and beyond anxious, Terry phoned the Santa Monica police.

Speaker 19 They suggested that I call all the local hospitals, which I did.

Speaker 11 But she wasn't at any of them.

Speaker 77 Mind you, not so uncommon for a young woman to just take off for a while.

Speaker 65 Maybe that's what happened.

Speaker 71 Just the same, the officer took a report.

Speaker 40 Tall, attractive young woman, blonde hair, hibiscus flower tattoo on the small of her back.

Speaker 14 The officer was getting a bad feeling about this one.

Speaker 77 And so we walked down the hall to talk to the on-duty detective, Virginia Obenshane, who got that very same feeling.

Speaker 73 So you really were taking this seriously from the get-go.

Speaker 22 Oh, from the moment we found out about it.

Speaker 1 It was later that day when Kirk, divorced from Christie's mom and far away in Michigan, got the phone call that Christie was missing.

Speaker 72 That's devastating.

Speaker 57 You know, there's not a word that describes it other than the fact that you're just, you don't have any answers. What is this? Maybe she got on a sailboat and went to Mexico.

Speaker 57 Maybe she went to a concert.

Speaker 30 Maybe you better hope so.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 57 You're hoping that that's the case. And immediately, I made travel arrangements to fly to Los Angeles.

Speaker 14 Detective Obenchain told the family that investigators had spoken to Christie's roommate, a woman named Carrie.

Speaker 9 Carrie gave the police an important lead, that Christie had indeed gone to the mall, bursting into their apartment with big news.

Speaker 22 She was all excited because she was going to do an audition that was going to bring in some big dollars.

Speaker 6 This is the police recording of a detective's interview with Christy's roommate.

Speaker 80 She says, I'm so excited. She goes, I met this guy, guy, and she's, I mean, she was like really excited.

Speaker 67 Christy told Carrie some of the things that the man at the mall said.

Speaker 14 Something about an incredible opportunity, a very special audition to perhaps appear in a Bond movie.

Speaker 80 They're looking for a fresh face. They're looking for someone like in a James Bond movie.

Speaker 40 Christy also told Carrie she was to wear a very specific outfit to the audition.

Speaker 8 A man's white dress shirt, a super short mini skirt, sheer patty hose, and a pair of sky-high stiletto heels.

Speaker 80 She had to be real sultry and sexy. That's what they were looking for.
And they were going to give her a necktie to wear.

Speaker 70 So what did you do after getting word about the roommate and the fact that she'd been shopping?

Speaker 22 We went to the Century City Mall and looked at the videotapes to see if we can see Christy.

Speaker 67 And there she was on the grainy security camera.

Speaker 22 Well, we saw a picture of her in one of the stores buying the skirt.

Speaker 47 But that was it.

Speaker 53 Though they canvassed every camera in the mall, there was no video of her with a man.

Speaker 16 Nothing.

Speaker 17 You've checked all the hospitals, you've checked the tapes at the mall, you've checked with the roommate, you've checked for the phone, and no Christy, what do you do?

Speaker 22 Well, we decided to go to the media and ask for the public's help.

Speaker 83 The family and the police department are very concerned because it's very uncharacteristic of her behavior to not show up to work yesterday and today.

Speaker 83 And no one has seen her since Saturday afternoon.

Speaker 7 New calls started coming in.

Speaker 61 One of them from a young woman named Susan Murphy.

Speaker 52 What was it like to get that call from Susan Murphy?

Speaker 22 That opened up the whole case. It was unbelievable.

Speaker 71 The case of the slippery predator.

Speaker 22 He was in a place where he wasn't supposed to be.

Speaker 77 The man who attacked women and manipulated the law.

Speaker 24 I said it then to everyone involved in the case. This guy's done this before, he'll do it again, and he will kill someone because he almost killed me.

Speaker 35 Terror is what it was. The Johnson family.

Speaker 42 Christy Johnson's mother rushed to L.A., frantic, eager to do something

Speaker 7 to find her.

Speaker 19 The recovery center has been.

Speaker 72 Unable to do much beyond hold it together, or try to, and spread the word.

Speaker 61 Her father, Kirk, flew in, went to Christy's apartment in Santa Monica, did all he could think of just then.

Speaker 29 When I got there, here are these two local TV vans.

Speaker 57 Yeah.

Speaker 57 Someone said, who are you?

Speaker 57 I'm Christie's father.

Speaker 85 How long has she lived with the shadows? You know of him?

Speaker 17 Since November.

Speaker 57 And I had made a poster with a picture of Christie.

Speaker 57 And I wrote a note.

Speaker 29 I said, Christy, please come home.

Speaker 57 Love dad.

Speaker 86 You know, the strength of the family.

Speaker 79 Kirk told everyone who'd listened about Christie.

Speaker 38 Born in California, moved with her family to Saugatuck, Michigan, where she played high school basketball and sailed out on the lake.

Speaker 57 She was a great sailor. She was very skillful at that.

Speaker 30 She had a very close group of friends.

Speaker 57 She had a high school class of 60, so everybody knew everybody.

Speaker 66 But after a year of college, Christy decided she really wanted to be out west.

Speaker 19 She told me how beautiful it was and how much she was enjoying being in California.

Speaker 60 Terry followed her daughter West, explored California with her, and now

Speaker 39 she was beside herself.

Speaker 17 Boy, I can't imagine how that must feel.

Speaker 19 You move into action.

Speaker 19 I was almost void of having feelings. I was just on the phone the whole time.

Speaker 72 Kirk was surprised Christy would even think of showing up for a so-called audition.

Speaker 39 Does it sound like Christy?

Speaker 57 Not really, because Christie was very, I would say, street smart.

Speaker 88 Yeah, that's what others have said about her.

Speaker 57 That she would have some doubt, you know, but, you know, she knows, don't speak with strangers, you know, you don't know who they are.

Speaker 53 Christie had told her roommate that her meeting with the industry guy was at 5.30 p.m.

Speaker 84 But where?

Speaker 14 Phone technology was not quite so revealing back then, but cell phone records might tell them something, so Detective Obenchain got Christie's and discovered that her cell phone last dialed out at 5.32 p.m., but not from Beverly Hills, which is where she told her roommate she was going.

Speaker 84 Instead, the call was placed from Laurel Canyon up in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 17 So you must have been wondering what the heck is she doing up there?

Speaker 90 Yes.

Speaker 68 And then after that last ping, nothing?

Speaker 13 Nothing.

Speaker 91 And then five days after Christy vanished, a woman named Susan Murphy saw a a tiny article in the Los Angeles Times about Christy and how family and police were trying desperately to find her.

Speaker 18 This is an article I read and it mentions this beautiful young lady who disappeared after going to meet a photographer and

Speaker 18 that's all it says.

Speaker 17 What was your reaction when you read this?

Speaker 18 Call it women's intuition. I just knew.
My heart dropped.

Speaker 6 And just like that, Susan Murphy picked up the phone and called the police.

Speaker 18 I just started my story and they said, can you hold on? And they immediately put me in touch with the lead detective on the case, Detective Obenshane.

Speaker 14 Susan told Detective Obenshane that she too had been approached by a man at the Century City Mall just a few weeks before Christie went missing.

Speaker 67 He told her he was in the business and he gave a name, Victor Thomas, which gave police something to work with, at least.

Speaker 14 Except there seemed to be no such person, at least no Victor Thomas who fits Susan's description.

Speaker 71 But when they pulled security video from the mall, sure enough, there was a guy.

Speaker 94 First, he seemed to be following Susan around Macy's, and then he approached her.

Speaker 18 He just said, I think you're very attractive. He said, I'm a director of photography, and we're casting casting for the new James Bond movie.

Speaker 18 And he said, We went casting all day, and you're the look we want. You're perfect.
And I had enough experience to kind of know that this was a come-on, a pickup. And I knew that, and

Speaker 18 I was very intrigued.

Speaker 21 If it's true, hey, cool, that'd be great.

Speaker 18 How fun would that be to be a Bond girl?

Speaker 67 The man invited her to come to an audition, said he'd set it up for the following day,

Speaker 30 gave her an address in West Hollywood.

Speaker 41 And she went.

Speaker 35 But

Speaker 66 she brought her boyfriend along

Speaker 51 just in case.

Speaker 18 And I noticed that it was an abandoned building, it looked like to me, so I thought, okay. I said, well, first of all, I'm not going anywhere with you.
I said, I need some identification.

Speaker 18 And he said, oh,

Speaker 18 I don't have any identification.

Speaker 18 I said, you don't. I go, where is it? He goes, I left it on the set.

Speaker 21 I go, you did

Speaker 18 it on the set.

Speaker 7 Susan knew then the guy was trying to scam her.

Speaker 18 I started like motioning to Mark to get out of the car.

Speaker 71 You realized you were with somebody?

Speaker 18 It's like, no, you're not for the part and you're not right for the part anyway. He's like, just forget it.

Speaker 28 And at that, the guy, whoever he actually was, took off, ran away.

Speaker 71 But there were crucial extra details Susan had to offer to Detective Obenshane.

Speaker 53 Details police had not made public.

Speaker 2 And very similar to what Christy had told her roommate.

Speaker 18 He said, it's very, very important that I wear stilettos,

Speaker 18 black stilettos as high as possible.

Speaker 18 And then he said a black mini skirt, preferably,

Speaker 18 but any mini skirt would be great.

Speaker 18 Panty hose,

Speaker 18 a white man's shirt, hair slick back, really tight in a ponytail, and a man's tie.

Speaker 18 He said he would provide the tie.

Speaker 38 Detective Openjain asked Susan to sit with a sketch artist.

Speaker 63 And then the Santa Monica PD got the drawing to the media.

Speaker 10 And one morning soon after, an actress named Kathy DeBono happened to be watching TV.

Speaker 13 And I recognized him instantly.

Speaker 73 So right away, she called the police.

Speaker 13 I told them that I saw the news and that I'd met this man at the Century City Mall several years prior.

Speaker 70 Oh, yes, the guy at the mall. But Kathy wasn't going to be the prey.

Speaker 1 She would become the hunter.

Speaker 13 He seemed really good at what he was doing, and so I wanted to see if I could understand

Speaker 13 what he was about.

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Speaker 72 When police investigating the disappearance of Christy Johnson appealed to the public for help, Christie's grateful family could only hope it would make some sort of difference.

Speaker 57 Somebody will know something.

Speaker 5 And sure enough, somebody did.

Speaker 36 Lots of somebody.

Speaker 77 Beginning with Susan Murphy's story of her frightening encounter with the man who said his name was Victor Thomas.

Speaker 109 The subject approached her and insisted in a very aggressive manner that she come with him immediately.

Speaker 51 Susan's story and her composite sketch of a possible suspect set off a chain reaction.

Speaker 27 What kind of response did you get?

Speaker 22 Well, we set up a tip line. We got, oh, probably a thousand calls on the tip line.

Speaker 69 One of them?

Speaker 37 From a woman who just happened to catch the story on the morning TV news.

Speaker 66 This woman, Kathy De Bono,

Speaker 1 the guy in the mall?

Speaker 63 She knew about him all right.

Speaker 1 There was no doubt in your mind.

Speaker 13 Not for a second. No doubt whatsoever.
I called the police.

Speaker 92 When Kathy heard how Christie disappeared and then saw that picture of a possible abductor, it instantly brought her back to an experience she had at that very same Century City Mall, late 98 or early 99.

Speaker 53 She was 28 at the time, unusually tall and very fit and already in the business of Hollywood.

Speaker 54 Blood pressure 110 over 80 calls is ready with, among other things, Chicago Hope and a recurring role on Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

Speaker 1 She was just minding her own business when a well-dressed man approached her.

Speaker 13 And he said to me, excuse me, are you an actress or a model? And I just stopped and said, yeah. And he said, I really like your legs.
You look perfect for something we're casting right now.

Speaker 13 Can we talk about it for a little while?

Speaker 30 There were two ways of saying that.

Speaker 81 How did he say it? His tone.

Speaker 17 His weird level was, his creep level was.

Speaker 13 At this point in the conversation, his creep level didn't exist.

Speaker 55 Thing was, Kathy was used to auditions, was used to hearing professionals discuss her look and whether it would work for some TV or movie role.

Speaker 10 But this guy seemed just a little off.

Speaker 52 Like when he tried to lure her to a photo shoot and told her to bring the very same provocative wardrobe that Christie's roommate and Susan Murphy had described to police.

Speaker 13 A white man's button-down shirt and shiny stockings. He said the stockings were important because it was all about the legs.

Speaker 13 And a black mini skirt as short as it could be, as tight as it could be, and black stiletto heels.

Speaker 17 And he would bring the necktie.

Speaker 13 And he would bring the necktie. I knew it was

Speaker 13 BS.

Speaker 1 And warning bells started to go off.

Speaker 13 He wanted me to go to an audition. And anytime anyone wanted to set up an audition, I would have them go through my agent.
That was just sort of the run of things. That's how you did it.

Speaker 13 And he didn't want to do that.

Speaker 47 But Kathy kept listening.

Speaker 58 You know, a lot of people would just got up and walked away.

Speaker 52 Said, forget it, Creek, and you're gone.

Speaker 15 Why didn't you do that?

Speaker 13 I suppose they would have.

Speaker 13 I think the only way I can answer that is my own natural curiosity.

Speaker 39 Natural curiosity she picked up from her father.

Speaker 87 a detective in New York.

Speaker 76 Anyway, the guy at the mall.

Speaker 13 He seemed really good at what he was doing. So I stayed and continued to talk to him and asked him questions.

Speaker 13 And he told me there was a photo shoot happening right now, that it was up in the Hollywood Hills, not far away from the Century City Mall.

Speaker 51 The Hollywood Hills, as police now knew, is the area where Christie's cell phone last pinged.

Speaker 13 He suggested that I leave the mall with him right then and there. He would drive me to the audition and bring me back to my car later.
Well, I certainly was never going to do that.

Speaker 67 But still hoping to see what was up with this guy, Kathy did drive to the address he gave her, but she took a little insurance with her, a friend and professional stuntman named Chester.

Speaker 66 So she got to the house, but the guy did not come out to meet her.

Speaker 14 So he would have looked out the window, saw Chester in the car.

Speaker 48 and just didn't do it.

Speaker 13 That's my assumption. He saw Chester and aborted his mission.
Yeah. I was disappointed because I wanted to learn more.
And now the opportunity to learn more was done.

Speaker 13 I would just have to move on and hope that no one fell for his ruse.

Speaker 10 So that was that.

Speaker 31 Except, of course, it wasn't.

Speaker 2 That strange man was going to change the course of her life.

Speaker 60 Hers,

Speaker 84 and a few more, that is.

Speaker 17 You were his target that day.

Speaker 21 I think I was the target for a month, almost a month.

Speaker 89 What happened to Christy Johnson up here in the Hollywood Hills?

Speaker 27 No signal from her phone.

Speaker 4 No sign anywhere of her white Miata.

Speaker 56 Though the Southern Monica police had already issued a bolo, be on the lookout for the car.

Speaker 109 We're going to go up the hill.

Speaker 94 Groups of people who didn't even know Christie gathered to see if they could help.

Speaker 19 If I didn't help, I would have felt worse than that.

Speaker 1 All the work people were doing to find her daughter kept Terry going.

Speaker 19 I was always hopeful that she was somewhere alive.

Speaker 19 Christie was a very strong woman, and

Speaker 19 I knew that if she was in a circumstance that she could survive, that she would.

Speaker 74 Waiting and praying, Terry pushed to keep her daughter's disappearance front and center in Los Angeles.

Speaker 19 Bring Christy back to us. I talked to the media.
It was a big media blitz of just trying to get the message out there of Christy's missing.

Speaker 60 She's searching for that media blitz helped.

Speaker 60 Women who heard about the case were on edge.

Speaker 21 My mom said, you know, there's this girl missing, and they said something about someone posing as a photographer.

Speaker 21 And I said, oh, okay, mom, thanks. I'll keep my

Speaker 21 eyes open for that.

Speaker 64 Like Christy Johnson, Alice Walker was just getting started in Los Angeles. She'd brought her skills with her.

Speaker 51 She was an actress, dancer, and writer.

Speaker 49 None of them paying very much yet.

Speaker 66 So to make ends meet, she got a job as a server at a popular restaurant in the Century City Mall.

Speaker 2 This is how she remembers it two decades later.

Speaker 21 This man sat down at my table. He said that he had written a book about a man who is

Speaker 21 being framed for

Speaker 21 making

Speaker 21 snuff films. And I didn't know what snuff films were, so

Speaker 21 he had to tell me

Speaker 21 what they were. They're films where someone gets killed and really gets killed.

Speaker 15 Did he say what his name was?

Speaker 21 He said his name was Victor.

Speaker 67 Victor.

Speaker 2 Mind you, said Alice, he didn't seem scary or creepy, as he proposed the most amazing possibility, to try out for a role in a Bond movie.

Speaker 77 He invited her to an audition, she said.

Speaker 2 It would be here in this building in West Hollywood.

Speaker 68 Same place Susan Murphy had gone for her bogus audition.

Speaker 66 But it sounded real, said Alice.

Speaker 64 Victor told her the movie's director would be there to watch her audition.

Speaker 53 Oh, and also Victor told her she'd have to wear a black mini skirt, pantyhose, stilettos,

Speaker 1 and a man's white dress shirt.

Speaker 58 And she went.

Speaker 89 But the director wasn't there.

Speaker 52 Still, Victor suggested, why not practice a few moves?

Speaker 60 Okay, she said.

Speaker 112 I did this walk in circles.

Speaker 21 And then he showed me, you know, kind of one other thing. I had to cross my legs and then put hook one ankle over the other ankle.

Speaker 111 Okay.

Speaker 21 And it was just very important that my ankles were really, really tight.

Speaker 17 That's strange.

Speaker 21 Very strange.

Speaker 64 But not frightening yet.

Speaker 59 Then Victor told her she'd have to come back again when the director was available.

Speaker 73 And so a few days later, she did.

Speaker 5 But still,

Speaker 37 no director.

Speaker 6 And this time it got a little weird when he told her to try on the necktie he'd brought with him.

Speaker 21 So what I did is he put the necktie on and I put my thumb in front of the

Speaker 21 knot so that he couldn't tie a necktie on me for real. And I just kept my finger there, kind of just ready to.

Speaker 58 You redid that?

Speaker 21 Yeah, I took the necktie

Speaker 21 I went to leave he said well

Speaker 21 let's try again in a day or two I'll see what the schedule is

Speaker 37 and then Christie vanished Alice was watching TV and saw the sketch of the person of interest

Speaker 21 and I thought

Speaker 21 wow if someone had to draw Victor that would be him and then I just I didn't take it in that they could be the same person.

Speaker 48 Really?

Speaker 21 Somewhere inside, I just wasn't ready for that.

Speaker 48 Yep.

Speaker 21 You know, just total denial, I guess.

Speaker 39 But deep inside, Alice was freaked out.

Speaker 66 And then a co-worker from the restaurant phoned her.

Speaker 21 And she said, you know, the police came here. Somebody said something about James Bond, and it made me think of you and that person you were meeting with.
And then it just kind of all came together.

Speaker 21 So went to the police and...

Speaker 21 Brought the outfit.

Speaker 22 He had told her that he was producing the next Bond movie and he wanted her to be a Bond girl.

Speaker 2 Didn't change the script at all. It was just the same all the time.

Speaker 68 Yes.

Speaker 2 In the same pickup place.

Speaker 22 And the same clothing and the same pickup line.

Speaker 27 When did the man who called himself Victor first approach Alice?

Speaker 52 Just hours after he ran away from Susan Murphy and her boyfriend.

Speaker 15 Same guy, same M.O.

Speaker 55 Alice told the police that the last time she heard from him was February 15th,

Speaker 6 the very day Christie went missing.

Speaker 21 He left a message. You know, I remember in the message he said something like, you know, I really, I really need to get a hold of you.
I'm trying to get a hold of you.

Speaker 21 He just sounded strangely frantic.

Speaker 43 Had the man grabbed Christie because he couldn't reach Alice?

Speaker 64 And just who was he?

Speaker 67 That's about when Detective Obenchain got yet another phone call.

Speaker 39 Something about that composite sketch, said the caller.

Speaker 22 And that was from a parole agent who said, that looks like my parolee.

Speaker 10 Detective Obenchain and the Santa Monica Police got hundreds of tips about a possible suspect and the disappearance of Christy Johnson.

Speaker 67 The most urgent of those tips was attached to a name, Victor, a smooth operator who'd apparently been approaching young women for years, inviting them to audition for a role in a Bond movie, just like the guy Christie had rushed off to see.

Speaker 35 But

Speaker 84 what happened to her?

Speaker 92 L.A. is a vast expanse of places to hide.

Speaker 52 A living person or a body?

Speaker 17 What did you suspect at that point?

Speaker 22 We didn't know where she was. We didn't know if she was still alive.
We were hoping she was still alive. We never gave up hope.

Speaker 17 Any leads at all?

Speaker 48 Nothing.

Speaker 22 There was no bank activity. There was no phone activity.
Nothing.

Speaker 87 And though police heard stories about this Victor character, he seemed elusive, too.

Speaker 22 Everybody was doing everything that they could. I mean, we had overtime people manning the tip lines.
We had... all six of us in robbery homicide working the case.

Speaker 22 We had other detectives helping us pass out flyers at the Century City Mall, do other computer work that we were looking for. And we were working pretty much 20-hour days without a day off.

Speaker 22 We were exhausting every lead possible,

Speaker 22 everything that we could think of.

Speaker 48 Until

Speaker 50 Detective Obenchain picked up the phone and found herself talking to yet another woman who'd encountered Victor,

Speaker 87 his parole officer.

Speaker 22 She said that he had just gotten out of prison. That he was her parolee.
She'd give us his full name, his birth date, everything.

Speaker 52 What was his full name?

Speaker 22 Victor Palaeologus.

Speaker 6 And just like that, here he was.

Speaker 42 Here finally was the victor who targeted Alice Walker and Susan Murphy and Kathy DeBono.

Speaker 64 Had to be the very same victor who lured Christie to some phony audition in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 11 The parole officer told Detective Obenchain that Victor Palaeologus had not been checking in after he was released from prison on January 20th, less than a month before Christie went

Speaker 52 And he just got out of prison for what?

Speaker 22 A sexual assault.

Speaker 17 What was that like to hear?

Speaker 22 That did not sound good. I was very, very concerned for Christie.

Speaker 44 But Victor Palaeologus was not so hard to track down after all.

Speaker 7 He hadn't taken off somewhere, though he may have wanted to.

Speaker 28 No, Victor had made a big mistake.

Speaker 22 Turns out when we were looking for Victor, he was in custody by Beverly Hills Police Department for auto theft.

Speaker 81 Auto theft? What did he try to do?

Speaker 22 He went on a test drive with the salesman and of the vehicle. They got back to the dealership and he said, I'm going to take the car.

Speaker 22 They had some conversation and he walked by where the keys to the car were, picked up the keys and took the car.

Speaker 78 Beverly Hills Police videotaped their pursuit of the stolen BMW as it raced into the parking lot of another Los Angeles mall.

Speaker 27 How long did it take to catch him?

Speaker 22 Beverly Hills was right on the money.

Speaker 48 They don't like car theft, they're not.

Speaker 22 They don't like car theft, so they had him in custody within an hour.

Speaker 82 And being a parolee, he'd be back inside the slammer in no time.

Speaker 22 Yes, and then he went to county jail.

Speaker 67 So Detective Obenchain's colleagues headed to the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles.

Speaker 27 But when they got there to pick up Paleologas,

Speaker 68 they couldn't find him.

Speaker 22 He was in a place where he wasn't supposed to be.

Speaker 43 The Men's Central is a truly massive place.

Speaker 32 Thousands of men are housed here at any given time.

Speaker 66 And somehow, Victor must have learned that police were on their way and had gone into hiding.

Speaker 60 But how is that possible in a jail?

Speaker 11 He had to be in here somewhere.

Speaker 62 Guards were sent off to find him.

Speaker 22 And apparently, he was down in the laundry room, and there were three other inmates there, and he was offering to give one of the inmates $5,000 to switch wristbands with him because it was a matter of life or death.

Speaker 22 Well, we all know you don't get the death penalty for car theft.

Speaker 17 No, but you do for a few other things, don't you? Yes, you do.

Speaker 17 With somebody who looked like he did, or that they could be confused?

Speaker 48 No.

Speaker 22 These were three male Hispanics, and he's Greek.

Speaker 53 Eventually, they brought Victor into an interview room and tried to pin him down.

Speaker 64 Where was Christy?

Speaker 28 What had he done to her?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 14 it was like trying to eat soup with a fork.

Speaker 22 I knew he was lying through his teeth, and that he was not being honest with us.

Speaker 115 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 116 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 120 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 122 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 23 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 118 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 116 Yay! Woo!

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Speaker 4 By the time a handcuffed Victor Palaeologus was ushered into the Santa Monica police headquarters, Detective Virginia Obenchain had a pretty good idea of the person she was dealing with.

Speaker 67 That is, the guy who liked to control and manipulate women.

Speaker 4 So, Detective Obenchain made a decision.

Speaker 127 Did you do the interview with Victor Palaeologus?

Speaker 22 I did not. I let my partners do it because I didn't want Victor to try and manipulate things, and we wanted to get answers quickly.

Speaker 52 Answers that would be crucial if they had any hope of finding Christy Johnson alive or dead.

Speaker 1 But when the subject of that young woman was brought up, Paleologus clammed up.

Speaker 22 He said nothing about Christy. Every time we asked about Christie, he changed the subject and said, I don't know anything.
He told us that he stole the car because he wanted to go to Mexico.

Speaker 15 Now, why would he want to go to Mexico?

Speaker 16 Exactly.

Speaker 87 Who was this guy?

Speaker 27 Obenchain learned Palaeologus grew up in a suburban town near Philadelphia.

Speaker 77 He had moved to L.A.

Speaker 67 in his 20s.

Speaker 53 He was divorced.

Speaker 65 He had owned three different failed restaurants.

Speaker 66 The last one right here in the same building where Alice and Susan went to meet him.

Speaker 10 He was 40 years old as he sat in the police interview room, dodging questions about Christy Johnson.

Speaker 6 Christie's parents, unaware of all that, clung to their thin string of hope, held their vigils.

Speaker 52 By February 27th, her 22nd birthday, Christie had been missing nearly two weeks.

Speaker 96 That morning, her father appeared on the Today Show, doing the only thing he could do, plead for his daughter's return.

Speaker 66 He was praying she was locked up somewhere alive.

Speaker 86 It's Christie's birthday, and she deserves a lot more than where she's at now and I just pray that this individual can watch this show and I have one thing to say to them.

Speaker 28 Let her go.

Speaker 63 They held on to anything they could, even as police told them about their prime suspect,

Speaker 32 Christie's mom, Terry Hall.

Speaker 19 And my first question

Speaker 19 was,

Speaker 19 has this person who you've arrested, has he ever been arrested for murder before?

Speaker 19 And they said no. So then of course as a parent, I'm very hopeful.
I'm thinking, okay, maybe this is somebody who's abducted my daughter, but he hasn't murdered her.

Speaker 88 And then another tip from a real estate agent named Paul Cady, who told police he'd encountered the very man they had just arrested.

Speaker 55 And right around the time, Christie vanished.

Speaker 4 That is, a man named Victor, who seemed very interested in properties in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 22 So Paul had shown him several houses, and at one of the houses, Victor had Paul go into another room, close the door, and screamed, and then asked Paul, can you hear that?

Speaker 22 Which kind of struck me as odd.

Speaker 1 Odd, yes, more than odd, disturbing.

Speaker 55 So Obenchain got the list of the properties Katie showed Victor.

Speaker 27 Many were near Laurel Canyon, where Christy made her last phone call.

Speaker 22 All the houses that the real estate agent had shown Victor, we wrote search warrants on to see if there was any evidence in there and to see if she was in there.

Speaker 66 But they didn't find her or anything else that would help their case.

Speaker 39 Down the hill in Century City, though, something had turned up.

Speaker 53 But was it good news?

Speaker 67 No, it was not.

Speaker 85 Kristen Johnson's car was found parked right here at the St. Regis Hotel Valet parking area.

Speaker 2 The St. Regis was right beside the Century City Mall.

Speaker 44 So, of course, police went over every inch of the Miata, swabbed it for DNA, dusted for fingerprints on every surface, and there weren't any.

Speaker 43 Aside from one print from Christie, the car was perfectly clean.

Speaker 59 But here was a useful bit.

Speaker 28 The valet attendant told detectives that a man dropped off the car before dawn, the morning morning after Christie disappeared.

Speaker 22 Drove the Miata into the valet area and

Speaker 22 he just left and he said, and the valet said, no, no,

Speaker 22 I've got to park the car and he just took off.

Speaker 58 Was that man Victor Palaeologus?

Speaker 66 The detective arranged for a lineup.

Speaker 22 It's where they put the suspect with five other

Speaker 22 similar looking people and see if the witnesses can pick the right person out.

Speaker 43 She brought brought in Susan Murphy, too, and her boyfriend, along with the parking valet.

Speaker 22 Susan and her boyfriend both picked Victor out.

Speaker 48 Right away? And the valet. Like that? Right away.

Speaker 22 And the valet could not identify him.

Speaker 17 Interesting.

Speaker 48 Did that worry you?

Speaker 22 Yes and no. The valet only saw him for a brief second and really didn't have that much to look at other than a quick glimpse.
and then the back of his head.

Speaker 61 Lineup over, the detective and her witnesses emerged into the L.A.

Speaker 7 sunshine.

Speaker 48 And then what happened?

Speaker 22 Then we get out of the lineup and the phones were ringing incessantly.

Speaker 63 Something happening in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 22 I got lowered into the ravine.

Speaker 28 Got lowered?

Speaker 16 Lowered.

Speaker 48 By

Speaker 22 the fire department.

Speaker 39 Was Christy down there?

Speaker 72 What had Victor Paleologas done?

Speaker 77 The very question another detective would soon contemplate about another young woman all the way across the country.

Speaker 128 I started looking into unsolved cases that we had, and one of the ones I found was a Jane Doe that had been discovered in January of 1988.

Speaker 42 Maybe answers would come with a kiss in a prison yard.

Speaker 13 He didn't know that I was coming on that day. I surprised him.
I wanted him to be a little off guard.

Speaker 2 21-year-old Christy Johnson was just hitting her stride, working, going to college part-time, pursuing work behind the scenes in the film industry.

Speaker 65 And now she was missing.

Speaker 81 So she vanished off the face of the earth.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 67 They say it never rains in Southern California.

Speaker 37 But in mid-February of 2003, it poured.

Speaker 61 Torrents came roaring down the gloomy hills around Hollywood.

Speaker 73 Rain

Speaker 48 and mud.

Speaker 53 And then one day, the sun finally emerged, and a few locals set out on a hike in the hills.

Speaker 81 And they saw a body,

Speaker 73 or what looked like a body, down a steep hillside and called 911.

Speaker 78 Detective Virginia Openshane had just walked out of the county jail after that lineup with her person of interest, Victor Palaeologus, when her phone blew up.

Speaker 17 So he must have scooted up to the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 95 Yes.

Speaker 27 The spot on the hill wasn't very far from a house the real estate agent had shown Victor.

Speaker 30 In fact, police had already searched the house.

Speaker 4 What the hikers had seen was about 80 feet down the steep incline, a body partially hidden by a sleeping bag, caught up in some brush.

Speaker 72 Obenshay needed to get down there.

Speaker 22 I got lowered into the ravine.

Speaker 48 Got lowered?

Speaker 16 Lowered. By

Speaker 22 the fire department.

Speaker 43 She had been told that Christie had a flower tattooed on the small of her back.

Speaker 81 Did you see this hibiscus tattooed?

Speaker 22 I did.

Speaker 47 It was her, no question.

Speaker 52 She'd been tied up.

Speaker 66 Her hands and feet were still bound.

Speaker 77 It had been 16 days since Christie told her roommate she was rushing off to to an audition for a part in a new Bond movie. And instead, it appeared she had run into a trap set by a predator.

Speaker 52 The chief of police called to let Christie's parents know.

Speaker 57 And he said,

Speaker 57 we found Christie, but she's no longer with us. That's what he said.

Speaker 57 And I told him, I said, just treat her with dignity, please.

Speaker 79 The coroner determined the cause of death.

Speaker 22 She was strangled and that she had a radiating fracture of the skull.

Speaker 10 There were no signs of sexual assault, though.

Speaker 110 Obenchain was already beginning to form a theory of the crime.

Speaker 17 It's about the manipulation and domination.

Speaker 113 Correct.

Speaker 17 He tried something and she said no, and his reaction was to strangle her until she was dead.

Speaker 30 Or until he thought she was dead.

Speaker 22 That's our speculation.

Speaker 10 And then, said Detective Obenchain, the killer tossed Christy Johnson over the edge and down that steep hill.

Speaker 22 That was perimortem when she was pushed down the side of the mountain.

Speaker 30 So she wasn't dead yet?

Speaker 22 Not quite.

Speaker 52 With Christy there on the hillside, those stilettos and the hose she'd been told were so important to bring, Christie's mother had held on to hope for as long as she could.

Speaker 66 Now she could not help but imagine things no mother should ever have to imagine.

Speaker 19 Those horrific last moments,

Speaker 19 we will never know exactly what happened.

Speaker 17 You find yourself wondering and imagining.

Speaker 19 Oh, of course, of course.

Speaker 19 And, you know, there are the nightmares that accompany that.

Speaker 19 The only way that I can actually deal with that is to constantly remind myself when those thoughts come into my mind that Christy is not there anymore. She's not at that spot.

Speaker 55 At the Santa Monica PD, Detective Obanche knew she needed to find some tangible evidence to connect Christie to her person of interest, Victor Palaeologus.

Speaker 60 She had her eyewitnesses to his behaviors, Susan Murphy and her boyfriend, who'd easily ID'd him in the lineup.

Speaker 18 I knew who it was immediately.

Speaker 93 But Obenchey needed DNA, fingerprints, something to hang a case on.

Speaker 28 They had her Miata,

Speaker 74 but except for one of Christie's prints on the doorjam, it had been wiped clean.

Speaker 53 Whatever forensic evidence detectives hoped to find with Christy on the side of the hill had been washed away in the rain or was never there in the first place.

Speaker 129 And there isn't always DNA. There isn't always trace evidence.
There isn't always a fingerprint left.

Speaker 17 And there wasn't a lot of stuff in this case.

Speaker 21 There was nothing.

Speaker 28 Nothing but an ever-growing chorus of women.

Speaker 40 who said Victor Palaeologus targeted them too.

Speaker 66 Women like Alice Walker and Kathy DeBono and Susan Murphy.

Speaker 20 Were there other women who came forward to tell you their stories?

Speaker 48 There were.

Speaker 22 There were several other women that came forward.

Speaker 71 Like this woman, who said she had to fight for her life.

Speaker 24 I'm now screaming help, help, rape, help, and he's yelling profanities at me right and left.

Speaker 63 No certainty their stories would even be allowed at trial, let alone believed.

Speaker 59 But Detective Obenchain hoped so,

Speaker 62 because it was all she had.

Speaker 114 Hey, weirdos!

Speaker 115 I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 116 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 120 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 122 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 23 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 118 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 116 Yay! Woo! Aye!

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Speaker 51 Detective Virginia Obenchain could not help but see the pattern.

Speaker 50 The killing of Christy Johnson was the final link in a chain.

Speaker 55 It started with Susan Murphy's recollection of the mystery man at the mall.

Speaker 18 He said, I'm a director of photography, and we're casting for the new James Bond movie.

Speaker 28 Alice Walker echoed that.

Speaker 21 He said, well, you need this certain outfit, a men's dress shirt. and that he would provide a necktie.

Speaker 79 Kathy De Bono got to come on, too.

Speaker 13 He said the stockings were important because it was all about the legs.

Speaker 39 But to establish a pattern of behavior that would be admissible in court, Oben Chain needed more.

Speaker 52 So she dove into Victor's past, his rap sheet.

Speaker 22 I read through some cases and I read through a lot of reports and I was finding more and more victims. I didn't realize that he was that prolific.

Speaker 1 Oh, but he was.

Speaker 51 Burglaries, identity thefts, frauds were listed.

Speaker 76 But it was the many terrible things Victor Palaeologus had perpetrated on women that caught Obenchain's attention.

Speaker 44 Starting all the way back in 1989, when Christine Klujian met Victor Palaeologos, she was 21 at the time.

Speaker 40 She told us the story nearly 20 years ago.

Speaker 24 He looked good. He had a nice suit on, and he was very well groomed.

Speaker 69 He told her his name was John Marino, and he worked in the music business.

Speaker 51 And when he asked her out, she said, great.

Speaker 24 He said, I'll pick you up in a limousine. We'll have dinner and there's a big industry party.

Speaker 14 You'd meet some famous people.

Speaker 24 He mentioned Madonna. He mentioned a couple of other people.

Speaker 24 So,

Speaker 24 well, that's fun.

Speaker 77 He took her to dinner and after to a downtown hotel for that big industry party.

Speaker 7 But something didn't seem quite right.

Speaker 24 We went up to 20 some odd floor of Bonaventure Hotel. And at this point, I didn't hear noise.
I didn't see security for a party. Then he had a key card and I thought,

Speaker 24 this guy is definitely conning me right now.

Speaker 41 But in an instant, they were in the room. And what followed?

Speaker 33 was a kind of nightmare.

Speaker 24 He was trying to kiss me and I pushed him away and then he

Speaker 24 just attacked me. He grabbed me.
He threw me on the bed. He tried to rip my clothes off and in that moment he pulled ropes from behind the headboard.

Speaker 39 He would have had to arrange those. Exactly.

Speaker 43 She tried some self-defense moves she had learned.

Speaker 32 You were actually fighting with the man.

Speaker 24 I was fighting with him, pushing him off.

Speaker 61 It went on, said Christine, for more than an hour.

Speaker 41 In one moment, he seemed contrite.

Speaker 24 I'm so sorry, this is terrible. I know this is not the way to get a woman.

Speaker 24 It's just things are going so badly at Columbia Records, and my brother has just died, and, you know, I'm just really, really stressed right now, and I'm really sorry this is not.

Speaker 116 And then he would come and attack me.

Speaker 56 She tried to unlock the hotel room door.

Speaker 24 In that moment, he knew, aha, she was leaving.

Speaker 17 She's leaving.

Speaker 24 She's leaving. He grabbed me.

Speaker 24 Pulled me by my hair, dragged me back to the bed. We rolled over the bed.
He grabbed my neck with his arm and started to choke me.

Speaker 30 Christine wriggled away somehow.

Speaker 91 And then...

Speaker 24 Then I bit him on his crotch.

Speaker 24 Which was he was fully clothed.

Speaker 7 You bit him on his crotch.

Speaker 24 I bit him on his crotch as hard as I possibly could. It works.
He rolled over.

Speaker 24 He rolled over. He fell over.
He's yelping and screaming.

Speaker 3 Then Christine started screaming too.

Speaker 24 I'm now screaming, help, help, rape, help.

Speaker 24 And he's yelling profanities at me right and left. And he grabbed his jacket and he ran out the door.

Speaker 15 He ran out the door.

Speaker 24 He ran out the door.

Speaker 44 Hotel security came to help her.

Speaker 64 Her wrists were lacerated, she was bruised, she was traumatized.

Speaker 44 And Victor was arrested, charged with attempted rape, assault, and false imprisonment.

Speaker 30 There was a trial, but the jury believed him.

Speaker 17 Our producer called, and the jury foreman said he didn't look like a rapist.

Speaker 24 Now I'm getting angry.

Speaker 24 What does a rapist look like?

Speaker 24 He didn't look like a rapist.

Speaker 48 Well,

Speaker 24 what does a rapist look like?

Speaker 71 For the one charge the jury hung on, false imprisonment, Victor Palaeologus pleaded guilty.

Speaker 47 His sentence was probation.

Speaker 51 Did that stop him?

Speaker 35 No.

Speaker 77 Two years later, in 1991, he met a young actress named Elizabeth Davis and told her he worked for Disney.

Speaker 71 Took her to a bar supposedly to talk about her career.

Speaker 62 And when she noticed a white powder had appeared in her drink, he ran away.

Speaker 52 Police came, took Elizabeth's statement, but Victor was not charged.

Speaker 44 In 1996, a woman he dated briefly said he broke into her house and chased her with a ligature.

Speaker 82 To avoid arrest, Victor barricaded himself in a mobile home in Malibu.

Speaker 24 He's coming out.

Speaker 30 When they finally arrested him, Victor refused to walk.

Speaker 85 So they carried him to the waiting patrol car and his journey to jail.

Speaker 94 He faced multiple charges, but pleaded them down to simple burglary.

Speaker 5 His sentence, again, probation.

Speaker 2 Two years later, in 1998, he lured a young woman named Heather Maher to his vacant restaurant for a fake Bond movie audition.

Speaker 33 There, he bound her ankles, climbed on top of her, and tried to strangle her before she somehow found the strength to escape.

Speaker 44 He did time for that one, not quite four years, after he managed to deal away the most serious charges, attempted rape and false imprisonment.

Speaker 33 He pleaded no contest, only to assault.

Speaker 47 Then, January 20th, 2003, he was released into an unsuspecting world.

Speaker 91 and went hunting.

Speaker 58 26 days later, he found Christy Johnson at the mall.

Speaker 71 He'd been assaulting women for years and making sweet deals with the law, even though way back in 1989, Christine Klujian tried to tell them.

Speaker 24 I said it then to everyone involved in the case. The DA, the detectives, the police.
I said, this guy's done this before. He'll do it again.
And he will kill someone.

Speaker 24 Because he almost killed me.

Speaker 48 This time, Detective Obenchain wanted to put him away for good.

Speaker 81 So how did you persuade a prosecutor that they should go ahead with charges?

Speaker 17 And this is a very serious charging of this guy, right?

Speaker 48 Death penalty, possibly.

Speaker 22 It was a death penalty case.

Speaker 22 We had enough of the women that came forward with the exact same story, with the exact

Speaker 22 same clothing that he wanted them to wear. It's prior acts.

Speaker 71 On May 12th, three months after Christie died, Victor Palaeologus was charged with her murder.

Speaker 66 But Palaeologus' attorney, Andrew Flyer,

Speaker 4 said it was all outrageous.

Speaker 68 His client was innocent.

Speaker 113 His past was brought up, and they just assumed that because he has a past, he must have done the present.

Speaker 37 Flyer was so confident he agreed to allow Victor to speak to me.

Speaker 67 Well in jail,

Speaker 48 awaiting trial.

Speaker 72 I had few expectations.

Speaker 3 Just as well.

Speaker 17 Did you, for example, ever portray yourself to a woman as being in the entertainment industry?

Speaker 44 The women who survived their encounters with Victor Palaeologus described a man who, at first, was a gentleman.

Speaker 88 apparently successful, professional, disarming.

Speaker 48 But for our interview,

Speaker 73 Victor played a different role.

Speaker 52 With his lawyer beside him, the Victor I met in early 2005 portrayed himself as the ultimate downtrodden man whose mantra seemed to be,

Speaker 11 woe is me.

Speaker 102 This is actually a hard time for me right now.

Speaker 130 My mother just passed away. I just learned about it.
And

Speaker 130 so I'm very emotional about all of this.

Speaker 38 He told me he was a religious man,

Speaker 71 a Catholic.

Speaker 130 I can't imagine going through this without the

Speaker 130 love of God being with me.

Speaker 3 He said jail is a scary place.

Speaker 7 Perhaps the truest thing he said.

Speaker 69 Truth was not really on offer here.

Speaker 67 Victor did admit to some fraud and ID theft, but when it came to the women he had preyed on,

Speaker 3 it was all stories, he said, stories they made up about him.

Speaker 17 You've got a list of women who are telling pretty similar stories. Did you, for example, ever portray yourself to a woman as being in the entertainment industry?

Speaker 68 No.

Speaker 68 Never once? No.

Speaker 17 And yet, women look at your picture and say, yeah, he's the guy.

Speaker 40 He said he was a producer.

Speaker 17 They're making a James Bond film. Come and try out for it at this hotel room or someplace.

Speaker 130 That's a lie.

Speaker 103 They all lied?

Speaker 48 Yes.

Speaker 27 I asked him about Christine Klujan, the woman who said he tried to rape her at a downtown hotel.

Speaker 17 How do you explain that?

Speaker 130 I explain it for what it was. It was

Speaker 130 I had met this young lady at a bar in Manhattan Beach.

Speaker 130 We had a relationship.

Speaker 130 We went out on a date. We ended up at a club in the West End Bonaventure.
While we were there in the club, you know, dancing, we decided that we were going to get a room.

Speaker 2 Did you tie her up?

Speaker 130 No, nobody got tied up.

Speaker 48 There was no attack whatsoever.

Speaker 59 As for the bruising and the lacerations on her wrists.

Speaker 132 She had a string purse on her.

Speaker 102 I picked up her purse and grabbed it.

Speaker 132 She wrapped it around the wrist. She was pulling back.

Speaker 30 We got into this tug-of-war type of issue.

Speaker 132 Her strap broke and she went flying back over to Credenza.

Speaker 2 Then he said she threw an ashtray at him.

Speaker 69 And he stormed out.

Speaker 130 All this other baloney that never happened. Okay, it was a lie.
It never happened.

Speaker 52 Odd, then, that he pleaded guilty to false imprisonment for what he did to Christine.

Speaker 14 I asked him about Heather Maher, the woman he attacked at the vacant restaurant, the case that sent him to prison for four years.

Speaker 94 He said he met her at a bar and bragged he knew a famous director who was making a James Bond kind of movie.

Speaker 130 When we got to her car where she was parked in the street, she said, well, I'll tell you what, why don't we have a meeting?

Speaker 72 she says why don't we get together tomorrow it was all heather's idea said victor paleologist and her story about what happened was just what a lie

Speaker 66 yeah it was a lie paleologus did admit to some things more benign things

Speaker 130 all right alice walker and susan murphy i have no problem with uh saying that I did meet them, okay?

Speaker 110 You did meet them.

Speaker 130 I did meet them, okay?

Speaker 110 I never did say that you were in the movie business.

Speaker 130 Absolutely not.

Speaker 14 He denied telling them what to wear or that he could get them an audition for a movie.

Speaker 4 The reality, said Victor, was he was the victim here.

Speaker 28 All the women, he said, were using him.

Speaker 130 I think that the incredible coverage of this whole case has drawn a lot of attention to people who have their own motives in mind for their, you know, to get themselves noticed in some way or fashion, to get themselves

Speaker 132 out of the drudgery of the no-name.

Speaker 2 They want to be actresses.

Speaker 87 Right.

Speaker 130 You're talking about some women who had some hidden agendas.

Speaker 17 You didn't have an agenda that day that involved going to the mall where you'd been before, where you'd talked to women before, where you'd been seen approaching women before.

Speaker 17 You didn't approach Christy Johnson there. That's what the world thinks happened.
And that you suggested that she could be in a Bond film. And she,

Speaker 17 in her tremendous enthusiasm for some sort of career, drove up there in her Miata and

Speaker 48 you tied her up and

Speaker 17 killed her and put her in a sleeping bag and dumped her off the ravine?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 48 That never happened.

Speaker 48 None of it happened, said Victor.

Speaker 130 I've never gone after anyone

Speaker 130 in any shape, where, or form to hurt them.

Speaker 48 Period.

Speaker 15 Come trial.

Speaker 61 Woman after woman would disagree.

Speaker 34 But remember, the trial was about Christy, not about those other women.

Speaker 73 Victor's attorney Andrew Flyer told us that with paltry evidence, the prosecution didn't stand a chance.

Speaker 113 This is a perfect textbook example of how somebody who's innocent, I don't care what about his past, can be railroaded based on prior prejudice. It is suspicious and it is coincidental.

Speaker 113 That does not equate to beyond a reasonable doubt.

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Speaker 94 Many homicide cases are circumstantial.

Speaker 63 No video.

Speaker 71 No witnesses to the actual crime.

Speaker 59 But in the murder of Christy Johnson, the prosecution had an even bigger hurdle.

Speaker 134 The fact that there was no forensic type evidence certainly was a challenge.

Speaker 1 A challenge prosecutor David Walgren hoped would be overcome by the testimony of woman after woman, each of whom had a story to tell about Victor Palaeologus.

Speaker 134 They were everything to the case, and without them, we most likely would not have had a case.

Speaker 59 More than three years after Christie's death, on July 13th, 2006, the trial began.

Speaker 27 The prosecutor told the jury about Christie's outing to a mall where she met a man who told her he could get her apart in a Bond movie.

Speaker 52 If she came to an audition that very evening wearing a very specific outfit, a man's white dress shirt, a super short miniskirt, sheer pantyhose, and a pair of sky-high stiletto heels.

Speaker 77 But to prove that man was Victor Palaeologus, the prosecutor brought in not fingerprints or DNA, but a parade of women who would tell their own stories of what happened when they encountered Victor, starting with Susan Murphy.

Speaker 18 When that moment came, it was.

Speaker 18 I don't think that words can even describe the fear that I had.

Speaker 48 Fear, what up?

Speaker 18 Just facing this person again. He's going to remember looking at me three and a half years ago and remember the things that he wanted to do to me.

Speaker 18 That was scary.

Speaker 2 Susan identified herself on the video at Macy's and ID'd the man following her in the baseball cap as the defendant.

Speaker 52 As her voice quavered, she told the jury about meeting Palaeologus at the Century City Mall, about the Bond film audition, and the outfit he told her to wear.

Speaker 16 All of it, word for word.

Speaker 8 what Christy had told her roommate before she left and never came home.

Speaker 61 Kathy De Bono told nearly the same story to the jury.

Speaker 13 You told me that it was an opportunity to be a poster girl for the James Bond films.

Speaker 46 Then it was Alice Walker's turn.

Speaker 17 Did you worry about the no DNA proof as the trial approached and you knew it was kind of going to be on you to tell a story? They might believe you, they might not believe you?

Speaker 21 Well,

Speaker 21 I didn't even think that they couldn't believe me. There's no other person that could have done this.

Speaker 7 And she told the jury about that last message Victor left her.

Speaker 21 I'm trying to get a hold of you. He just sounded strangely frantic.

Speaker 10 That was February 15th, the day he turned his attention to Christy Johnson.

Speaker 53 Alice never called him back.

Speaker 48 But if she had.

Speaker 21 I hate thinking about that possible fate.

Speaker 74 The jury never heard from Christine Klujian.

Speaker 71 The defense argued to keep her out of the trial, and the judge agreed.

Speaker 87 But Elizabeth Davis testified she was the woman whose drink was spiked.

Speaker 2 Though no charges were filed, Santa Monica PD had stored that drink for more than a decade.

Speaker 67 And when it was finally tested after Christie died, it was found to contain a knockout cocktail.

Speaker 47 And Heather Maher spoke too.

Speaker 52 Victor's attack on Heather cost him four years in prison.

Speaker 14 To show premeditation, the prosecutor called real estate agent Paul Cady, who told of showing Victor houses in the Hollywood Hills and his unusual request.

Speaker 134 At times, he had the realtor step out of the room he was in or step out of the house because he said he wanted to check the sound quality, the sound insulation of the home.

Speaker 31 Only possible conclusion, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 134 He was looking for a place to commit this murder.

Speaker 53 When it was Victor's turn, his attorney, Andrew Flyer, began telling the jury that no evidence, none, tied Palaeologus to the murder of Christy Johnson.

Speaker 44 He pointed out that the only real witness in this case was the parking lot attendant at the hotel where Christie's Miata was left.

Speaker 96 The man driving the car, the killer most likely, tossed the keys to the attendant, who did not pick Victor Palaeologus in a lineup.

Speaker 73 And as for that past behavior the women alleged occurred, wasn't relevant, said the defense attorney.

Speaker 32 Certainly wasn't proof.

Speaker 40 And then, quite suddenly, it all screeched to a halt.

Speaker 134 We had been in trial for, I believe, almost two, two and a half weeks. I had called almost 40 witnesses to the stand, so certainly I was surprised

Speaker 134 that they approached us.

Speaker 46 They, the defense, said Victor had decided he wanted to make a deal.

Speaker 39 a plea agreement, just as he had done so many times before.

Speaker 37 And as so many times before, the prosecution was not opposed because

Speaker 22 we knew that we didn't have the forensic evidence, and all it took was one juror.

Speaker 22 And we either have to retry the case or the case goes away.

Speaker 14 So the two sides negotiated the terms.

Speaker 71 Victor refused to reveal exactly what he did to Christie.

Speaker 10 He would only admit he was responsible for her death.

Speaker 61 It wasn't a full confession,

Speaker 51 but that was as far as he would go.

Speaker 127 And the judge, the prosecutor, and Christie's family accepted the deal.

Speaker 73 Victor would plead guilty.

Speaker 30 The jury was dismissed.

Speaker 51 It was all settled.

Speaker 48 Or maybe not.

Speaker 135 The court this morning received a letter, it's very lengthy, from the defendant.

Speaker 1 The man who had wriggled out of trouble so many times before had another card to play, a wrench to slide into the big wheel of justice.

Speaker 130 It's part of the big cogwheel that just keeps on turning.

Speaker 81 That's the way it works.

Speaker 86 I'm sorry to tell you, but that's the way it works.

Speaker 52 September 15, 2006.

Speaker 51 Everyone assembled in the downtown courtroom for the sentencing of Victor Palaeologus.

Speaker 48 But.

Speaker 135 The court this morning received a letter. It's very lengthy from the defendant.

Speaker 135 It's 11 pages.

Speaker 37 Victor claimed he'd been sleep deprived and pressured by his lawyer to agree to plead guilty.

Speaker 51 His lawyer, by the way, said that wasn't true.

Speaker 49 Just the same, said Victor, he wanted out of the deal.

Speaker 52 Now is claiming he did not kill Christie, and so wanted the trial to continue.

Speaker 34 Was he serious?

Speaker 2 Or was Victor playing for a better deal?

Speaker 135 Counsel, have you had a chance now to look at the letter?

Speaker 103 Yes.

Speaker 113 Yes.

Speaker 8 Whatever it was, the judge wasn't having it.

Speaker 135 I'm going to deny the motion, Mr. Paley Logos.

Speaker 106 The law

Speaker 135 states very clearly a plea may not be withdrawn simply because the defendant has changed his mind.

Speaker 10 Then Christie's family was given the chance to speak.

Speaker 73 Christie's father, Kirk.

Speaker 86 And Christie is my guardian angel.

Speaker 103 She is the girl that I look up to.

Speaker 37 She's the one that provides me with strength.

Speaker 102 And I go back to the last Father's Day card that Christie sent me.

Speaker 59 It's a beautiful card.

Speaker 127 I cherish it.

Speaker 15 Her mother, Terry.

Speaker 19 Victor Pelyogas has been allowed the freedom to let the evil in his life escalate, resulting in the heinous murder of Christy, my beloved young daughter, a beautiful young woman on the threshold of her life.

Speaker 10 Then the judge sentenced Victor to the term already agreed upon, 25 to life, with the possibility of parole.

Speaker 53 Three days after that, I returned to the LA Men's Central Jail, hoping, at least, that he might finally admit to his crimes.

Speaker 55 A long shot, of course, and I knew it.

Speaker 53 And sure enough, I encountered one very slippery man.

Speaker 81 You took responsibility for Christie's death.

Speaker 15 I had to.

Speaker 131 I had to in order to get the plea.

Speaker 89 And that's what you did. It was a solemn oath.
That's what you want to withdraw?

Speaker 34 Absolutely.

Speaker 81 Absolutely.

Speaker 132 That is what I wanted to withdraw. Because I'm not responsible for her death.

Speaker 1 Victor and I went round and round.

Speaker 94 You don't take a plea saying you killed a young woman if you didn't kill the young woman.

Speaker 131 You do when you're facing the death penalty. There's no solemn bow and taking pleas are done all the time every day.

Speaker 81 That's the way it works.

Speaker 39 Was he feeling especially clever that day?

Speaker 35 He and I both knew he bargained down his punishment from death penalty past life without parole to the possibility of parole after 25 years.

Speaker 55 He also knew that because of California's three strikes law, his theft of that BMW would have put him behind bars for the very same term, even if he had never touched a hair on Christie's head.

Speaker 53 It was all so wrong, thought Kathy DeMono.

Speaker 55 Victor Palaeologus had gotten away with too much, gamed the system, never fully admitted to killing Christie.

Speaker 33 She began to believe years ago that Christie may not have been the only woman Victor killed.

Speaker 13 Because what stood out to me in 1999 was how smooth he was at what he was doing.

Speaker 71 When Christie was murdered, Kathy was already studying psychology.

Speaker 59 But with the crimes of Victor in mind, she immersed herself in the study of criminal psychopathy.

Speaker 71 And Victor, she came to believe, fit that label psychopath to a T.

Speaker 13 And after I started to really research Victor and consult with FBI profilers and different forensic psychologists, and really started to understand this is what we were dealing with here.

Speaker 13 This wasn't a guy who is rehabilitatable.

Speaker 28 But after all, he was in prison for life, wasn't he?

Speaker 71 His chance of parole, the prosecutor had told us, virtually nil.

Speaker 16 Still, Kathy felt the need to tell the world, warn the world, about Victor and what he'd done.

Speaker 4 She decided to make a documentary and in 2016 gathered together the women and those close to them to meet.

Speaker 93 As Kathy's cameras rolled, Christie's mother Terry gave Christine Klugian a hug.

Speaker 2 Here, a kind of sisterhood now.

Speaker 63 They finally shared their stories and their anger at how they believed Palaeologus repeatedly gamed the system.

Speaker 10 And then, Kathy wrote to Paleologus himself to ask for an interview.

Speaker 13 I just decided to write him and tell him exactly who I was, that I'd testified against him, that he'd never actually harmed me, and I was doing this documentary, and would he be interested?

Speaker 13 And then so the pen palship began.

Speaker 45 Their correspondence lasted for years and told Kathy a lot.

Speaker 13 I finally said to him in one letter, Victor, you've been a perfect gentleman up until now. Why don't you write your next letter and write to me about what you really want to talk about?

Speaker 13 And he just kicked that open door right in. And the next letter I got from him, I got within a week.
It came really fast.

Speaker 13 And it was basically a hardcore sexual fantasy.

Speaker 11 Finally, said Kathy.

Speaker 8 He had begun to reveal himself.

Speaker 13 And I'm safe to say, He is absolutely still marrying sex with violence.

Speaker 51 Remember, said Kathy, Victor fit the sexual psychopath profile, and sexual psychopaths often start acting out in their teens.

Speaker 14 So Kathy went looking in Victor's past.

Speaker 71 She learned he grew up on the East Coast, near Philadelphia.

Speaker 13 I was like, let me just have a look at these public databases and see if any of these cold cases stand out as possibly matching his M.O.

Speaker 13 The one that stood out the most was a Jane Doe in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 74 Kathy called Ben Salem PD and found cold case detective Chris McMullen in 2014.

Speaker 128 And she had told me that she was doing research on a person named Victor Palaeologus,

Speaker 128 who I did not know of.

Speaker 71 Then Kathy laid out who Victor was and his M.O. and told Detective McMullen why she thought he could be a suspect in this young woman's murder.

Speaker 13 She's found in this bunker hole. With her in this hole is a second outfit, a shirt, stockings, fishnet stockings, and high-heel shoes, pumps.

Speaker 53 She had been killed around the time Paleologus was nearby, attending a brother's wedding.

Speaker 32 And one more thing, Jane Doe had been pregnant.

Speaker 27 Intrigued, Chris McMullen and Kathy wondered if there could possibly be a Paleologus connection.

Speaker 52 Maybe he was the father of the unborn fetus.

Speaker 128 I always had the theory that whoever the father of Jane Doe's unborn child was, it was very possible that whoever the father was was responsible for her death.

Speaker 2 They knew it was a long shot.

Speaker 62 They'd need hard evidence.

Speaker 27 And the authorities in California would not just give a detective across the country with a hunch, a paleologous DNA sample, too much of a fishing expedition, they said.

Speaker 93 So Kathy decided she would get that sample herself.

Speaker 89 But that means you're going to have to go and touch him somehow and get really close to him.

Speaker 13 Well, yeah, but we shake hands with strangers all the time, right? It can't be that hard.

Speaker 51 Kathy had a surprise in store for Victor, and then it would be Victor's turn to surprise everyone.

Speaker 39 Victor, sooner than anybody thought, was about to get a chance at parole.

Speaker 48 She walked into the Chino State prison alone and watched him walk toward her.

Speaker 14 The man who'd once tried to entrap her.

Speaker 45 The man she believed to be an unrepentant killer, an incurable psychopath.

Speaker 17 You nervous?

Speaker 13 I wasn't nervous.

Speaker 63 More like ready.

Speaker 110 Kathy De Bono had a plan.

Speaker 13 I had two goals that day. One of them was to come out with his DNA, if possible, and the other one was to get him to talk to me personally about what he did to Christy Johnson.

Speaker 43 And so what did Kathy do?

Speaker 13 The first thing I did was shake his hand and then pull him in for a kiss on the cheek.

Speaker 61 Victor couldn't have known the kiss was for DNA collection.

Speaker 13 I made a mental note. of where he landed the kiss.
Wasn't that strange? It was strange, I suppose, but at the end of the day, it was just a kiss on the cheek.

Speaker 52 And to be absolutely 100% sure she got his DNA.

Speaker 13 I put a band-aid on my finger. You know, those fabric kind.

Speaker 13 When he sat down on the table across from me and put his arms down, I could see that he shaved his arms.

Speaker 13 That seemed like a good opportunity or a good reason to rub that band-aid on his arm. And, oh, you shave your arms.

Speaker 51 She got his DNA, but she kept him talking.

Speaker 65 because there was that second goal.

Speaker 13 I said, Victor, what happened with Christie?

Speaker 61 He hesitated, then made her promise not to tell a soul.

Speaker 60 And she said,

Speaker 13 of course not, Victor.

Speaker 13 So he tells me this story, that he did meet her at the Century City Mall, and he did invite her up to that house, and that they smoked some weed, and that they had consensual sex, and that he asked her if she wanted to try erotic asphyxiation, and she said yes.

Speaker 39 Kathy pretended to believe him.

Speaker 13 He said it went too far. He tried to wake her up, Christy, Christy.
He said when she wouldn't wake up, he panicked. He didn't know what to do.
So he just wrapped her up in this sleeping bag and

Speaker 13 rolled her down the hill and ran.

Speaker 13 Now, obviously, this is a lie.

Speaker 92 A particularly ugly lie.

Speaker 69 Like he was killing that poor young woman all over again.

Speaker 89 It had to be disappointing.

Speaker 13 It was disappointing. I can't say it was surprising.

Speaker 10 But buried in that nasty fiction was also finally a nugget of truth.

Speaker 13 He admitted it. He admitted it that he killed her.

Speaker 71 You fooled the fooler. Yeah.

Speaker 33 Victor's DNA, it turned out, did not match the unborn child of that Jane Doe back in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 27 Though both Kathy and cold case detective Chris McMullen still believe that Victor may have killed the young mother-to-be.

Speaker 128 In my opinion, he's still a viable candidate, but he's not the only one.

Speaker 27 Anyway, thought Kathy DeBono, it wasn't like Victor was going anywhere.

Speaker 71 He had negotiated his plea deal with a chance of parole, yes, but the idea he'd ever actually be released seemed impossible.

Speaker 74 The prosecutor himself told us that after the trial.

Speaker 49 Being convicted of murder,

Speaker 134 first-degree murder, he will, I'm comfortable saying he will not ever be paroled.

Speaker 37 He couldn't have known then that California's approach to incarceration would change.

Speaker 47 New rules.

Speaker 94 As of 2022, prisoners over 50 with more than 20 years on the inside get a hearing.

Speaker 27 An overcrowded system wanted them out.

Speaker 54 So the idea that Victor's crime was so bad he'd never be paroled didn't necessarily apply anymore.

Speaker 71 And in 2023, a parole board hearing was scheduled for Victor Palaeologus five years earlier than his original sentence.

Speaker 58 No one told Christie's family or the other women.

Speaker 60 Kathy was stunned when she found out.

Speaker 13 I just went to that website to check his status and there it was, eligible for parole, November 2023.

Speaker 39 That's how you found out?

Speaker 79 That's how I found out.

Speaker 82 You didn't get a phone call or a letter or a warning of any kind.

Speaker 111 No.

Speaker 13 Nothing. Nothing.

Speaker 93 But all the work she had done prepared her for this moment.

Speaker 14 Though she has yet to finish her documentary, she has saved saved everything.

Speaker 52 Transcripts, probation reports, and of course the disturbing letters Victor sent her, proof that he has not changed.

Speaker 4 And she got right back in touch with that sisterhood she'd brought together to film in 2016, as well as Christie's mother, Terry, and many others who loved and still miss Christie.

Speaker 51 She enlisted Virginia Obenshane, now retired.

Speaker 22 I wrote a letter to the parole board that I did not want him paroled, that he would be a repeat offender. He is a repeat offender, and he'll continue offending.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 And you really think if he got out of prison, he'd go and do it again?

Speaker 48 I think so.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 73 Together, they put up a website.

Speaker 56 They got in the news.

Speaker 76 And maybe Victor got wind of it all.

Speaker 64 He decided to postpone his hearing.

Speaker 88 It's now scheduled for November 2025.

Speaker 59 Still too soon, said Kathy DeBono.

Speaker 13 And at this point, it's not because we hate the guy. It's not because we want revenge on the guy.
It's we experienced him, we know who he is, we know what he is.

Speaker 13 It's like letting a shark back out into the swimming pool. You can't do it.
He will eat some kids in the swimming pool.

Speaker 35 And leave others scarred for life.

Speaker 96 How often have you thought about that over the years?

Speaker 21 It's sort of always in the back of my mind. It's a sad truth about human beings

Speaker 21 that I,

Speaker 21 at the young age of 22,

Speaker 21 just

Speaker 21 didn't know.

Speaker 21 I just didn't know that I just didn't know.

Speaker 24 And

Speaker 21 I grapple with it all the time.

Speaker 21 I grapple with that it could have and should have been me.

Speaker 66 Before he ever met Christy Johnson,

Speaker 47 Victor Palaeologus had been looking with the realtor at empty houses on lonely roads in the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 10 He was planning then to do something bad to someone.

Speaker 46 He picked Christy.

Speaker 40 The day after he discarded her in that rain-soaked ravine, He called the realtor again,

Speaker 41 went out looking again,

Speaker 41 looking at empty houses where no one can hear you scream.

Speaker 25 That's all for this edition of Dateline. Be sure to listen to Keith's original podcast on this story, Murder in the Hollywood Hills, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 25 And go behind the scenes of the making of tonight's episode in our Talking Dateline podcast, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed. We'll see you again next Friday at 9-8 Central.

Speaker 25 I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 48 Good night.

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