The Face of Evil

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Speaker 5 I told myself the worst part about dying is being afraid of dying.

Speaker 5 If I'm not afraid,

Speaker 6 it won't be so bad.

Speaker 5 I just couldn't believe this was the way it was going to happen.

Speaker 4 She was a college student found on a lonely road in Texas.

Speaker 8 We figured that she had been sexually assaulted and dumped here.

Speaker 4 Tough questions for her boyfriend.

Speaker 9 Where was I the night before? What had I been doing? When had I last seen her?

Speaker 10 I really thought he could be our killer.

Speaker 4 But while police try to prove it, another attack.

Speaker 5 He's got me by the throat and he's shaking me and he's yelling at me, telling me not to say a word.

Speaker 11 You're a prisoner in this apartment now. Yes.

Speaker 4 A college campus gripped by fear. A growing list of suspects.
A growing list of victims, too.

Speaker 12 Her body had kind of been propped up onto the bed.

Speaker 13 Even law enforcement, they thought, what do we have on our hands here?

Speaker 4 There's growing danger because police are looking in the the wrong place.

Speaker 5 I lived to tell and nobody believed me.

Speaker 9 This monster is walking free while they're wasting their time on me.

Speaker 4 Can the killer be caught before he kills again?

Speaker 5 It makes you realize how fragile your life is and that anybody can take it.

Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with the face of evil.

Speaker 11 Looking back now, this woman almost didn't make it.

Speaker 5 I said, if you keep doing this, you're going to kill me. And he just said, do you think I actually care about that?

Speaker 11 Is that when you feel like you're looking in the face of evil?

Speaker 5 I knew then completely in that moment that he intended on killing me.

Speaker 11 Little did she know that in this college town, she wasn't the only one.

Speaker 14 He said that he would go to jail for murder before he'd ever go to jail for rape.

Speaker 11 What is going through your mind?

Speaker 5 I wish I had told all the people that I loved, you know, that I loved them.

Speaker 11 But was their private horror connected to a very public mystery?

Speaker 13 Everyone's like, what is going on in this community? It just had people asking, what's going to happen next.

Speaker 11 More women connected by tragedy and by questions. Could a killer have been stopped sooner?

Speaker 5 I was so angry that two people had to die in order for someone to believe me.

Speaker 11 The story begins in a small Texas town, but it's not just any town. This is College Station, home to Texas A ⁇ M.

Speaker 11 And in 1999, home to 21-year-old student Jamie Hart.

Speaker 9 I was immediately struck with her beauty.

Speaker 11 Chuck Cruz was her boyfriend at the time. He says Jamie was the light of his life.
He remembers when he first laid eyes on her.

Speaker 9 I could barely speak when I saw her. She was so pretty.
It was like... When the color came on in the Wizard of Oz.
I had been living in a dark world and she showed me a world world full of color.

Speaker 11 And she was a loyal friend, funny, outspoken.

Speaker 9 She would tell you exactly what was on her mind at all times.

Speaker 11 It was early one morning in May. Jamie's roommates couldn't find her.
They called Chuck.

Speaker 9 I got a call up asking me if I knew where she was and I said, no, she didn't come over here last night. I don't know where she is.
I hadn't talked to her the night before and I went to work.

Speaker 11 That same morning, Detective Kenny Elliott of the Brazos County Sheriff's Office was summoned to the scene of a disturbing discovery.

Speaker 10 There was a young female, appeared to be in her early 20s. She was nude.
She had extensive road rash on her entire body, and she was obviously deceased.

Speaker 11 A jogger spotted the victim in a ditch nine feet from the side of the road.

Speaker 8 When I arrived, there was probably half a dozen officers here, and they had taped off the area, blocked traffic. At that point, we started conducting a search of the area.

Speaker 1 We

Speaker 8 figured that she had been sexually assaulted and dumped here.

Speaker 11 Less than a mile away, deputies discovered what was presumed to be the woman's clothing strewn across the entrance to an oil field.

Speaker 11 Another nine miles from there, an abandoned vehicle, its engines still running.

Speaker 10 There was blood on a car and that raised suspicion. We sent a team over there to process the car.

Speaker 11 And inside the car, a driver's license that belonged to Jamie Hart.

Speaker 11 When detectives showed up at Chuck's workplace that afternoon, he says his heart sank.

Speaker 9 There was this building sense that something was wrong, and the appearance of police officers is never a good sign.

Speaker 9 And when they told me

Speaker 9 that she had been found dead,

Speaker 9 It felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

Speaker 11 Kristen Lancaster was a a 19-year-old freshman.

Speaker 5 My brother actually worked with Jamie at the time. And I'll never forget him coming home devastated.

Speaker 11 A killer in a college town is terrifying.

Speaker 5 Very much so, yes.

Speaker 13 This is something that happens in Chicago. It's something that happens in Houston.
It's not something that happens in Bryan College Station in Aggie Land.

Speaker 11 Kelly Brown was the editor of The Eagle, the local newspaper.

Speaker 13 I think at the time, People were hoping this is a drifter that just kept on going because the location of her body.

Speaker 11 Sheriff's deputies canvassed the crime scene, searched Jamie's car, and looked for eyewitnesses.

Speaker 10 Talked to several hundred people and

Speaker 10 no one seen anything.

Speaker 11 Turns out there were no fingerprints inside the car. But during an autopsy, the medical examiner did recover DNA from Jamie's body.
DNA which likely came from her rapist and killer.

Speaker 11 Did you put the DNA into a database?

Speaker 10 We put it in CODIS.

Speaker 11 Any hits? None.

Speaker 11 No eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, no DNA matches. The investigation wasn't off to a good start.

Speaker 10 That's when we started contacting people at her place of employment, friends, roommates.

Speaker 11 Did she have any enemies?

Speaker 10 Everybody seemed to love her.

Speaker 11 Detective Elliott began to retrace Jamie's steps on the night of the murder. Jamie was taking time off from her studies at Texas A ⁇ M and was working at a pizza parlor.

Speaker 11 Her shift had ended around midnight.

Speaker 10 We contacted everybody on her that she delivered pizzas to, and nothing out of the ordinary.

Speaker 11 After work, she'd headed over to a friend's house.

Speaker 10 He said that they were there watching movies, and she left his house around 4:30 in the morning.

Speaker 11 And what time did you think that she was killed?

Speaker 10 We got the call, I think, at 7.15 a.m. So

Speaker 10 between 4.30 a.m. and 7.

Speaker 11 The male friend, a college student, was the last known person to see Jamie alive. The detective paid him a visit.

Speaker 10 He was upset, obviously. They were friends and had been for some time.

Speaker 11 The friend's grief seemed genuine, but something was peculiar. When investigators asked for a DNA sample, he said no.

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 10 Of course, we wanted to know why. Was he the killer or was he not?

Speaker 11 The detective was determined to answer that question, so he put the young man under surveillance, followed him to a local restaurant. And are you hidden somewhere in the restaurant?

Speaker 10 I'm kind of back in a corner, Yeah.

Speaker 11 He watched the student have a few drinks and when he left the detective snagged the dirty beer mugs and sent them out for DNA testing.

Speaker 11 The results would take weeks leaving a town full of young people on edge.

Speaker 13 Dads and moms were telling their college-age kids, be alert everywhere you go.

Speaker 11 Go with people when you go out.

Speaker 13 Don't be alone. And that's a frightening order to give anybody.

Speaker 11 Frightening but sound advice, because in this case, connecting the dots wouldn't be so easy.

Speaker 4 Detectives have a second possible suspect in their sights. Jamie's boyfriend is invited to sit down for a polygraph test when we return.

Speaker 11 Failed the test. That's a bad sign for you, right?

Speaker 10 Bad sign for him.

Speaker 11 21-year-old Jamie Hart had been sexually assaulted and left to die on the side of a busy roadway.

Speaker 9 I could barely function.

Speaker 9 All I could think about was loss, that she's gone from my life forever.

Speaker 11 Jamie's boyfriend, Chuck Cruz, then 24, says right after the murder, he took off to Baytown, Texas, Jamie's hometown.

Speaker 9 About the only thing that I remember her father asking me is, when are you coming down?

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 I

Speaker 9 got some stuff together and drove down as soon as I could. And I spent most of the next week with them,

Speaker 9 mourning with the family, and then

Speaker 9 acting as a pallbearer for her funeral.

Speaker 11 Back in College Station, Detective Kenny Elliott was working the case.

Speaker 10 Well, anytime you have a killer out on the run, it's frustrating you want to catch the person responsible.

Speaker 11 One possible suspect, that male friend Jamie visited the night of her murder, he'd refused to give police a DNA sample for testing. That's kind of odd if he had nothing to hide.

Speaker 10 A lot of people will not give up DNA too much TV.

Speaker 11 But the detective had snagged a sample from a beer mug, and when the DNA finally came back, he was not a match. You felt confident that you could rule him out based on the DNA not matching.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 11 But even before the DNA test cleared Jamie's friend, the detective was already looking for other suspects, and his attention quickly landed on someone very close to the victim, her boyfriend.

Speaker 9 The questions that they asked focused on where was I the night before? What had I been doing?

Speaker 11 Looking at you as a possible suspect?

Speaker 9 It didn't really occur to me that that was what they were doing. I just just thought they were asking for information.

Speaker 11 Chuck told the detective that before Jamie was killed, he hadn't seen her for two days. On the night of the murder, he said he was at home.

Speaker 9 I was playing computer games like a good nerd.

Speaker 11 Did you have anyone there to corroborate your alibi?

Speaker 9 I think my roommates were there, but they were both asleep. I had nobody right there sitting there with me.

Speaker 11 So the boyfriend's alibi wasn't solid. And as they spoke, the detective was looking carefully for signs he might be hiding something.

Speaker 10 He was cooperative, apprehensive. He said everything was fine in their relationship.

Speaker 11 The detective asked Chuck for DNA, and he said yes. And when they asked him for a polygraph, he agreed to that too.
But here's the thing with that last part, the polygraph.

Speaker 10 Failed the test.

Speaker 11 That's a bad sign for you, right?

Speaker 10 That's a bad sign for him. Yes.
It doesn't tell you that he's guilty, but

Speaker 10 he was a very strong person of interest.

Speaker 11 And what's more, the detective had been speaking with Jamie's friends who said the relationship wasn't fine.

Speaker 11 In fact, the couple had a fight and were on the verge of a breakup, all of which just led to more questions.

Speaker 10 Basically, he went over every aspect of the relationship, just questioned him on his whereabouts,

Speaker 10 tried to get him to confess.

Speaker 11 And if a failed polygraph wasn't suspicious enough, then listen to what the detective says Chuck told him next.

Speaker 10 He said he had done some bad things and

Speaker 10 wouldn't tell us what.

Speaker 11 Did you look him in the eyes and say it's one of those bad things killing Jamie Hart? I did.

Speaker 10 He denied it. At that point in time, I really thought he could be our killer.

Speaker 11 And the more you started to think that he was the killer, how does he react to that?

Speaker 10 He's very nervous. He just

Speaker 10 acted as if he was guilty.

Speaker 11 Chuck was free to go, but as authorities waited for his DNA to be processed, the detective developed a theory of the crime that made sense to him.

Speaker 10 He was in love with her. He didn't want to lose her, and they were having some issues in their relationship.

Speaker 11 So the boyfriend, a likely suspect, was in the crosshairs. But when the DNA results came back...

Speaker 10 The DNA was not a match.

Speaker 11 So were you able to rule out Chuck Cruz then once you got that DNA checked?

Speaker 10 I didn't rule him out completely, no.

Speaker 11 That was enough for you with the friend who she was with the the night before. You ruled him out after you got the DNA, correct?

Speaker 10 I did. The other guy wasn't her boyfriend.
He hadn't flunked Polly Graus. He wasn't in a bad relationship with her.

Speaker 10 Chuck was.

Speaker 11 But they didn't arrest Chuck. Months went by, and the detective kept investigating him.
Authorities seized his computer, searched his car.

Speaker 11 All the while, Chuck was saying they were looking at the wrong guy.

Speaker 10 There's a lot of people that won't confess to a murder for obvious reasons.

Speaker 10 At that point, he was a person of strong person of interest, but I still didn't know if he was my killer, so we continued the search.

Speaker 11 The investigation dragged on. Life for the students on campus began to go back to normal.
Parties every weekend.

Speaker 11 But when police were called at the scene of one house party, it wasn't because of noise or underage drinking. Another woman was in a fight for her life.

Speaker 4 Coming up, a student at a party ends up a prisoner in a stranger's apartment.

Speaker 5 I scream as long as I can. And then immediately he grabs me and starts choking me again.

Speaker 4 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 11 When Chuck Cruz's girlfriend was murdered, he was immediately considered a person of interest.

Speaker 11 They said that you were acting nervous, that you were acting like you had something to hide.

Speaker 9 They interpreted all these things as

Speaker 9 signs of my guilt rather than a distraught boyfriend. At the time, I had long hair and this was a cowboy town that was considered to be weird and unusual.

Speaker 11 As for those bad things he told the detective he'd done, he explained to us he was referring to a petty argument they'd had just days before Jamie's murder and the the guilt he felt from not being with her the night she died.

Speaker 11 Do you remember what you were arguing about?

Speaker 9 A loaf of bread. The grocery sacker had put a cantaloupe on a loaf of bread.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 she was upset that the sacker had squished the bread and

Speaker 9 I told her it wasn't that big of a deal and we had picked our sides and we argued about something as stupid as a loaf of bread.

Speaker 11 And now he says he could hardly grieve with police breathing down his neck. What's it like waking up every morning and knowing that you're under a cloud of suspicion?

Speaker 9 Incredibly depressing.

Speaker 11 He left college station, moved home to be with his family near Dallas, who spent money to hire a defense attorney.

Speaker 9 The biggest thing that was going through my mind the whole time was that

Speaker 9 I didn't do it.

Speaker 9 They don't know who did it. And the guy who did it is out walking around and likely to prey on more victims.
This monster is walking free while they're wasting their time on me.

Speaker 11 Kelly Brown of the Eagle newspaper was writing front page stories about the unsolved crime in the college town.

Speaker 13 And it really shook the community because this is an area that isn't used to seeing this type of crime.

Speaker 11 And Kelly was hearing talk that the police had a suspect.

Speaker 13 But there was no arrest. And that's what kept everybody saying, well then, okay, was it the boyfriend? Was it,

Speaker 13 you know, someone that's still out there? Is he going to strike again?

Speaker 11 It was scary, of course, and students like Kristen Lancaster followed the investigation. Did people change their behavior patterns because of this crime?

Speaker 5 To a certain degree, but I think it was short-lived. I mean, people went back to their classes and their business.
Yeah. You start rationalizing that maybe, you know, she trusts the wrong person.

Speaker 11 This doesn't happen to you.

Speaker 5 Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And then it was late October, half a year since the murder of Jamie Hart. Kristen didn't know it yet, but she was about to become part of a chain of events that only deepened the mystery.

Speaker 5 I think maybe I went to classes that day. I'm not exactly sure.
I know that the evening time rolled around. I think was it a Friday?

Speaker 11 A friend invited Kristen to a party.

Speaker 5 And she said, you know, well, you know, I'm having a little get-together at my house. Why don't you come by?

Speaker 11 Kristen drove over to the apartment complex in Bryan, Texas. That's the town next to College Station.

Speaker 5 The door is open and there's a few people inside. There's some music playing, people having some drinks.

Speaker 11 She struck up a conversation with her friend's upstairs neighbor. He was 24, hadn't been to college, but mixed in easily with the students.
Was he kind of a likable guy?

Speaker 5 He seemed, yeah, very likable. Yeah, he was very personal, seemed very nice.

Speaker 11 In fact, he had no problem sharing intimate details with Kristen about his personal life.

Speaker 5 He had been married and somehow the conversation, you know, goes into him telling me how he'd had found God and I made a lot of mistakes. I wasn't a great husband.

Speaker 11 Not long after the party started, it abruptly ended. Kristen's friend hosting the party got into a fight with her boyfriend.

Speaker 5 They know there was alcohol involved, so I was worried that it would get out of hand.

Speaker 11 Everyone left, but not Kristen. She was concerned about her friend and stuck around talking to the upstairs neighbor.
So you were feeling protective. Yeah.

Speaker 5 He actually said to me, he said, you know, are you, you know, you're worried about your friend? I said, yes, I am.

Speaker 5 And he said, we can go to my apartment and that way you can be close to phone to call.

Speaker 11 She and the neighbor walked up the staircase to his apartment.

Speaker 5 It's directly above her apartment. And he opens the door and I was barely a step into the door and he just sort of kind of pushes me in, slams the door shut.

Speaker 5 He locks the door and immediately grabs a remote that was right there and turns the stereo up to this deafening volume, just deafening.

Speaker 11 Kristen reached for the door to leave.

Speaker 5 And he pushes me back and

Speaker 5 that's when he starts making some demands. All of a sudden it's very serious and aggressive.
And

Speaker 5 I almost to the point where I thought he was joking.

Speaker 11 But he was serious, demanded she undress.

Speaker 5 And I kept arguing with him, I'm not going to do that. I kept saying, I'm not going to do that.
He's like, you're going to do it. And that's when he runs over and he grabs me by the throat.

Speaker 5 He's choking me and choking me. And then the second he lets up, I scream.
as loud as I can. And then immediately he grabs me and starts choking me again.

Speaker 5 And this time he picks me up almost by the throat and sort of like pulls me back back into the bedroom. It's in the back.

Speaker 11 You're a prisoner in this apartment now. Yes.

Speaker 5 And he puts me down the mattress and this is the first time I black out. I wondered if this, for a second, this was it.

Speaker 7 I could die? Yeah.

Speaker 5 He's like, has his hand still in my throat and he starts shaking me.

Speaker 11 Kristen couldn't fight him off physically so she tried to talk her way out of a sexual assault.

Speaker 5 I said, you don't want to do this. And he stops and he looks at me and he says, why don't I want to do this? And I say, well, because I have HIV.

Speaker 5 And you can tell he's thinking about it for a second and he says to me he says well guess what so do I the lie didn't work she tried something else I was like well what about you know finding God and like trying to work on yourself and I actually was able to stall him for quite some time I must have gotten off the bed and we were standing talking and I remember that's when I started to stomp my foot like and I was sort of like trying to make it look like I was making a point and stomping my foot and then he grew angry again he threw her back on the bed, his grip on her neck tighter as he sexually assaulted her.

Speaker 5 He's squeezing so hard at this point in time that it felt like the bones in my throat were cracking. And I said, if you keep doing this, you're going to kill me.

Speaker 5 And he sort of looked at me and it was this half-smile. And he looked at me for a second, and he just said, Do you think I actually care about that?

Speaker 11 Is that when you feel like you're looking in the face of evil?

Speaker 5 I mean, he, I knew then completely in that moment that he intended on killing me.

Speaker 4 Coming up, a knock at the door.

Speaker 5 This is like a miracle.

Speaker 4 And doubt.

Speaker 5 I just couldn't believe, like, nobody believed me.

Speaker 11 19-year-old Kristen Lancaster was preparing to die.

Speaker 11 When you're possibly in the last moments of your life, when you think that someone is going to kill you, what is going through your mind?

Speaker 5 I had a moment where I thought about, I wish I had told all the people that I loved, you know, that I loved them.

Speaker 11 She was in a stranger's apartment being sexually assaulted, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Speaker 5 I black out, but then I start to come to again. And it's...

Speaker 5 You know, the scenes in the movies where the bombs explode and everything's really fuzzy. You can't hear.
Like everything's like coming through this fog.

Speaker 5 suddenly the man stood up and left the room ordered her to remain quiet and i scream as loud as i can call the police call the police turns out the brian police were at the door so my friend had heard me screaming and stopping and i called the police this is like

Speaker 5 a miracle it was that yeah in the neck of time the police show up that that only happens on tv i know blame i know they ran in I was just curled in a fetal position on the floor, just shaking, shaking uncontrollably.

Speaker 5 And then I remember them asking me what happened, and I just, the words were just coming out so fast.

Speaker 11 The cops took the man away in handcuffs, and Kristen slept on her friend's couch that night. The friend called the police to see what would happen next.

Speaker 5 Did she find out that they didn't book him for sexual assault charges?

Speaker 11 In fact, Kristen's attacker, the man she said almost killed her, had been released. That must have been a tough pill to swallow.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it was terrifying. I just, I thought he was going to come and find me and kill me.

Speaker 11 Down at the police station, the man had given a wildly different version of events. Eric Buskie wasn't with the Bryan Police Department back then, but later became its chief before retiring in 2024.

Speaker 11 He says the suspect told police that he and Kristen had a fight over drugs.

Speaker 16 She got angry when he substituted aspirin for cocaine and she went off in a rage when that occurred.

Speaker 5 I think he had told them some story about how it had been a drug deal that had gone bad and so then I was crying rape.

Speaker 11 After the attack, police charged him with unlawful restraint, a misdemeanor.

Speaker 11 The next day, Kristen and her dad went to the Bryan Police Department to find out why her attacker wasn't charged with something more serious.

Speaker 5 I was furious because I had thought in this moment that I survived. I survived.
Like, this is it. This guy is going down.

Speaker 11 She met with a detective who asked her questions, lots of them.

Speaker 5 I had bruises all up and down my throat. I couldn't swallow.
And then at one point in time the detective asked me to place my hands on my own throat.

Speaker 5 And I mean, which even then, like psychologically, like that was just even traumatizing.

Speaker 11 Why would he want you to do that?

Speaker 5 Because they did that. And then he looks at me and he says, well, those could have been self-inflicted.

Speaker 11 What did you say to the detective who's coming up with these theories?

Speaker 5 I mean, I was hysterically crying and telling him, like, this is, this man tried to kill me, you know? And he would just say, well, that's not what he says. Like, of course it's not what he says.

Speaker 11 Kristen says that despite her bruises, police treated it like a he said, she said story. How angry were you getting?

Speaker 5 I was furious. I just couldn't believe, like, nobody believed me.

Speaker 11 Chief Buskie maintained the detective was just doing a thorough investigation.

Speaker 16 Everything I've read indicated the detectives did believe her.

Speaker 16 You know, sometimes when you're conducting an investigation, your job is to get to the truth as a detective, and you have to ask some hard questions.

Speaker 11 They interviewed her attacker again, and a few months later did charge him with sexual assault.

Speaker 16 The unlawful restraint was still in place and then we booked him on first-degree sexual assault.

Speaker 11 The case went to a grand jury, but it decided not to indict him.

Speaker 5 So the sexual assault charges were dropped because they felt that there was insufficient evidence.

Speaker 11 That must have been tough to hear that.

Speaker 5 It was very tough to hear that.

Speaker 11 She did talk about the case later with reporter Kelly Brown.

Speaker 13 It bothered me at the time because I wondered why didn't the grand jury indict him for

Speaker 13 at least attempted sexual assault. But it did, it seemed a little troubling to me that what were we missing? What part of the story did we not have?

Speaker 13 Did the detective say something that made them think

Speaker 13 maybe it was consensual?

Speaker 11 He was still facing the misdemeanor charge of unlawful restraint scheduled to go to court down the road. In the meantime, he was a free man.
He's out walking around.

Speaker 5 He's out walking around.

Speaker 11 In the next town over, detectives at the Brazos County Sheriff's Office were still working the Jamie Hart murder case.

Speaker 11 In addition to keeping an eye on Jamie's boyfriend, Chuck, they say they followed up on hundreds of other leads and tips.

Speaker 11 But no one in that department looked at Kristen's case for a possible connection. You were sexually assaulted.
Jamie Hart was sexually assaulted. Did you start to think that these could be connected?

Speaker 5 I didn't think they were connected. And that was primarily because with Jamie was that there was a boyfriend that may have been involved and that it was a romantic relationship that went wrong.

Speaker 5 It wasn't some random occurrence by a stranger.

Speaker 11 Kristen was now living with overwhelming anxiety and dread, which she says manifested into dangerous behavior.

Speaker 5 Instead of being afraid of everything, I became afraid of nothing. I...

Speaker 5 You know, I just became completely risk-seeking.

Speaker 11 What kind of things would you do?

Speaker 5 I think I started drinking heavily

Speaker 7 for for a while after that.

Speaker 5 You know, I'd hop on the back of a stranger's motorcycle after he'd had three beers. And it took a long time to really get out of that hole.

Speaker 11 Just as Kristen was starting to turn a corner, her attacker was due in court on that misdemeanor charge. But nothing came of it.
He didn't even show up.

Speaker 5 I had done what I needed to do, and part of me just wanted to forget it ever happened.

Speaker 11 But she couldn't. Kristen was about to walk right into another crime scene in College Station.

Speaker 3 Coming up.

Speaker 13 Even law enforcement, they thought, what do we have on our hands here?

Speaker 4 A shockingly brutal murder, and a suspect makes a big mistake.

Speaker 12 The clothing that he was actually wearing was different than what he had just told us.

Speaker 4 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 11 It was May of 2000, six months since Kristen had been assaulted. Her attacker had failed to show up in court and seemed to have just disappeared.

Speaker 5 Didn't show up. Didn't show up.

Speaker 11 In the next town over, Detective Kenny Elliott continued to work the Jamie Hart murder case. He'd spent the last year casting a wide net for possible suspects.
You took DNA from 70 people?

Speaker 10 We took DNA from everybody that would give it practically.

Speaker 11 But he also had never taken his eye off her boyfriend, Chuck Cruz. There was just something that was bothering you about Chuck Cruz.

Speaker 10 There was a lot bothering me about Chuck Cruz.

Speaker 11 So the Brazos County Sheriff's Office kept investigating Chuck, even communicated with the DA about possibly convening a grand jury.

Speaker 11 Chuck and his lawyer spoke to the detective on many occasions, and the detective continued to think Chuck's behavior was suspicious and that he still seemed nervous.

Speaker 11 You guys were coming down pretty hard on him, and he's lost his girlfriend. I mean,

Speaker 11 is there a way to act?

Speaker 10 I don't know, but

Speaker 10 he had several things going against him, and we just couldn't walk away from him. We either had to prove that he did it or prove that he didn't do it.

Speaker 11 But Chuck says he should have been cleared almost right away. So even though the DNA didn't match.

Speaker 9 There was no match that they insisted on

Speaker 9 targeting me as the prime suspect. They were trying to

Speaker 9 build a case that wasn't there.

Speaker 11 While Chuck's life had been on hold for a year, Kristen was starting to feel like her old self again.

Speaker 11 In the six months since her attack, she'd taken up running, had a new boyfriend, and though Kristen hoped the pain of that horrible night was behind her for good, it wasn't.

Speaker 5 There's police tape everywhere.

Speaker 11 May 28th, 2000. Kristen had just arrived to visit friends at an apartment complex.
There was no reason, not then anyway, to think her case was connected to the scene unfolding there.

Speaker 5 Police cars and amulances and all kinds of vehicles, like emergency response vehicles everywhere.

Speaker 11 And now, the sight of police tape sent memories rushing back.

Speaker 5 It was just, you know, fear.

Speaker 11 Firefighter Leon Moore had arrived at the apartment complex early that morning after a neighbor reported smoke in one of the units.

Speaker 19 The bedroom door was open and we could see some flames that were on the carpet.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 19 we had a water extinguisher that we used and put the small fire out.

Speaker 11 There on the floor, a body.

Speaker 19 We backed out and made sure that we preserved as much evidence as we could.

Speaker 11 He sensed foul play, not just a fire, and called for Detective Jeff Capps of the College Station Police Department.

Speaker 12 It looked like her body had kind of been propped up onto the bed. She was nude from the waist down.

Speaker 11 This is really disturbing.

Speaker 7 It was.

Speaker 11 The victim was 21-year-old Carolyn Casey, a daycare worker. Her parents, Anita and Larry, so proud of their eldest daughter.
She was wonderful with kids.

Speaker 20 All the kids loved her.

Speaker 9 Everyone loved her.

Speaker 11 Never could they have prepared themselves for the dreadful phone call they received.

Speaker 20 Is your daughter Carolyn Casey? I said, yes. I think he said, well, there's been an accident and your daughter's dead.

Speaker 8 A fire.

Speaker 11 When Carolyn's younger sister, Amanda, learned the news, she collapsed with grief.

Speaker 20 I just

Speaker 20 screamed really loud.

Speaker 20 Made my ears ring from my screaming.

Speaker 11 They've got this wrong?

Speaker 20 Yeah, something's wrong. She didn't, she didn't die.
I said, no, she's not dead. What was the turning point?

Speaker 5 I called her apartment.

Speaker 20 She didn't answer. Detective Cabs did say it was homicide.

Speaker 12 I think we had a strong feeling that possibly there was some type of sexual assault that occurred and that somebody was trying to cover up some evidence.

Speaker 11 Kelly Brown of the Eagle newspaper had another story to write.

Speaker 13 This is a community that's not used to

Speaker 13 a lot of murders. It's not used to violent crimes like this.
And it certainly wasn't used to having a murder victim be set on fire.

Speaker 11 On the night of Carolyn's murder, there had been a small party in one of the apartments, and now the detective was canvassing the complex, looking for leads. So you're literally knocking on doors?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 11 In one unit, two men answered. One of them had been to the party.
His name was Yenobi Matthews.

Speaker 12 He mentioned that he did attend this party. She was there.

Speaker 11 Like many people who'd attended, Yanobi agreed to an interview, his, down at the police department. He was friendly and cooperative, said Carolyn had left the party before he had.

Speaker 12 He later left the party,

Speaker 12 went with another female that was at the party over to a convenience store that was close by, bought some cigarettes.

Speaker 11 Yanobi gave the detective a DNA sample and supplied the clothes he'd been wearing. To verify his alibi, the detective pulled surveillance video from the convenience store and noticed something.

Speaker 12 The clothing that he was actually wearing was different than what he had just told us, and why is he not telling us the truth?

Speaker 11 Yenobi claimed he'd simply forgotten and then handed the detective the proper clothing. No forensic evidence found on the clothes connected him to the crime scene.
So this wasn't your big moment.

Speaker 9 No, it wasn't.

Speaker 11 The big moment did come though, just a few nights later when the pieces of this puzzle finally came together.

Speaker 4 Coming up, an arrest of a familiar suspect.

Speaker 5 I was certain that he had done this before, but at the same time, I didn't think he would do it again.

Speaker 11 It was two nights after the murder and fire. Detective Capps made a discovery, one that would finally connect the dots in the series of crimes that had terrorized this college town.

Speaker 12 I spent that evening evening basically reading through all these reports.

Speaker 11 The detective had ordered background checks on some of the people who attended the party in Carolyn's apartment complex, including Yanobi Matthews.

Speaker 11 It turns out there were several police reports in the file accusing Yanobi of a number of crimes.

Speaker 12 Mr. Matthews had a tendency to

Speaker 12 try to sexually assault females and in the process of that he would choke them if they were not willing to have sex with him.

Speaker 20 How did Caroline die?

Speaker 12 Her death was ruled a strangulation. So things started kind of mashing up.

Speaker 11 Yanobi had never been convicted of sexual assault, but in the files, the detective read the account of one particularly brutal attack.

Speaker 11 The case ended up being charged as a misdemeanor, unlawful restraint. It was Kristen's.
Yanobi was the man she says almost killed her.

Speaker 5 I was certain that he had done this before, but at the same time, I didn't think he he would do it again.

Speaker 11 The detective called Yenobi Matthews back down to the station for another interview and decided to pull a fast one with his suspect, telling him he was about to get DNA results from the crime scene.

Speaker 11 Were you really about to get it that quickly?

Speaker 12 We weren't going to get it that quickly that day, but trying to get him to believe that we had that information, that we had everything that we needed.

Speaker 12 I had contacted my supervisor earlier and I told him if he would page me, just say,

Speaker 12 type in the words that says DNA matches.

Speaker 11 And right on cue, the detective's pager went off.

Speaker 12 And I showed it to Mr. Matthews and asked him to read it.
It said DNA matches.

Speaker 11 So what's his face like when he looks at that match?

Speaker 12 He became pretty emotional and he said

Speaker 12 it was an accident, but he had killed her.

Speaker 11 The detective called Carolyn's parents and gave them the news of the confession.

Speaker 9 They said, I think we got him. I said, well, how sure?

Speaker 16 He said, I'll bet the farm on it.

Speaker 11 It was the next morning when Kristen Lancaster opened up the newspaper and learned her attacker had been charged with murder.

Speaker 5 That I felt overwhelming guilt. Just overwhelming guilt knowing that he'd killed someone and that, you know, perhaps I hadn't tried hard enough to make people believe me.

Speaker 11 Did you feel like a life could have been saved if you had it been taken more seriously?

Speaker 5 Oh, yes. Carolyn would still be here.

Speaker 5 I mean, there's no doubt.

Speaker 11 And what about the woman at the start of our story? Jamie Hart's case had been handled by the Brazos County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 11 But after Yanobi was arrested, it didn't take long for the College Station Police Department and the Sheriff's Office to compare the DNA. What they found,

Speaker 11 Yanobi was also Jamie's killer. What's that moment like?

Speaker 9 I remember the feeling of

Speaker 9 wanting to feel relieved, but all I could

Speaker 9 think was,

Speaker 9 this is exactly what I knew was going to happen. He struck again.

Speaker 9 Another girl is dead, and another family has lost their precious daughter.

Speaker 11 Chuck says to this day he misses Jamie and has never gotten over being viewed as a suspect.

Speaker 9 Having to spend such a long time

Speaker 9 under investigation for the death of a loved one. It hurts.
It hurts a lot.

Speaker 5 It's like a scar.

Speaker 9 Very much so.

Speaker 9 Very much so.

Speaker 5 Do you feel bad about that at all?

Speaker 11 That he was put through that?

Speaker 10 I'm sorry that he had to go through that, yes. But if I had to do the investigation over, I wouldn't change anything.
I'm sorry he lost the love of his life.

Speaker 10 But we had a job to do, and we had to either arrest him for murder or clear him. We cleared him.

Speaker 11 But before Jamie, before Kristen, before Carolyn, there was another victim who soon learned she was also connected to this horrifying series of events. Her name is Misty Johnson.

Speaker 14 If I didn't let him rape me, he would have killed me.

Speaker 11 Like Kristen, Misty reported her attack to the Bryan Police Department. But Yenobi denied it, claiming it was consensual, and Misty was too traumatized to help police in the investigation.

Speaker 14 Probably within a week I quit my job and left town. I was scared.

Speaker 11 She now regrets that decision. Her attack happened first, months before Jamie was murdered.

Speaker 14 I feel like if I would have stayed and fought him

Speaker 14 through the police department, that possibly he wouldn't have been able to go on to hurt anyone else.

Speaker 11 And Kristen is left with the memory of an assault that, according to the law, never really happened.

Speaker 5 I was so angry that two people had to die in order for someone to believe me.

Speaker 11 Did the system fail? It failed me.

Speaker 5 It failed Carolyn. It failed Jamie.

Speaker 11 You think about them a lot. They were total strangers to you.

Speaker 5 But they're my alternative future. I mean, they're what could have happened to me.

Speaker 5 I mean, they're what could have happened to any of us.

Speaker 11 A jury convicted Yanobi Matthews of Carolyn's murder and sentenced him to death. He also pleaded guilty to Jamie's murder.
Kristen faced him in court during the penalty phase.

Speaker 5 It was terrifying, and I had to testify. I met Carolyn's family and

Speaker 5 Jamie's family. They all came out afterwards and gave me a hug.
It helped me realize that their families didn't hold any grudge against me.

Speaker 20 It's not her fault that my sister died, and Kristen should have no guilt over that.

Speaker 11 With the Casey family as witnesses, Yenobi Matthews was executed three years later.

Speaker 11 If there is a lesson to take from this story, it is one that comes directly from a survivor herself. Someone who has learned the hard way to cherish life's moments, each and every one.

Speaker 5 It makes you realize how fragile your life is, you know, and that anybody can take it, you know, in a moment's notice. The story, you know, for them, that's it.
That's their life story.

Speaker 5 The final chapter has been written. But for me, I get to keep going on.

Speaker 11 What would you call yourself?

Speaker 5 I mean, people have called me a survivor. I would call myself lucky.

Speaker 4 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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