Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: The guys came in here and are instantly hostile. Wise,
I don't know, guys.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is my life here, this is my life
is it's on the line here right now. I didn't
do anything to hurt anybody else's life, And yes, I
have a reason to feel the way I feel.
Speaker 1: Austin, Texas is known for its music, its culture, and
it's easy charm. But on the gray November morning of
two thousand and one that Tarum didn't reach the Travis
County Sheriff's office. In a small interview room, detective sat
across from a middle aged woman and told or something
that she could have never imagined.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's talk a.
Speaker 2: Little bit about where we're going with this.
Speaker 3: If you notice the signs on the door when we.
Speaker 5: Came, I figured it was startin on homicide.
Speaker 3: And we're investigating a murder.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out why your van would be
an Austin. We have several witnesses that haven't described a
man driving this van.
Speaker 1: The detectives told the woman that they suspected her van
driving husband was a murderer. She claimed this news frightened her,
yet her demeanor remained unnervingly calm, cold and composed.
Speaker 6: It's like I'm living in a dream right now, because
it's up until I'm mad him. I just I didn't
have any contact with the law other than I guess.
I don't want to believe this, that it's even happening,
but I am very scared.
Speaker 1: This interview was just one piece of a much larger
investigation when that centered on a forty three year old
woman named Diane Hollick.
Speaker 7: Let's talk a little bit about Diane's work. She works
for IBM and she doesn't. Does she work out of
an office or does she work out.
Speaker 5: Of her home?
Speaker 3: She worked out of her home.
Speaker 8: Okay?
Speaker 5: And how long has Diane worked for.
Speaker 9: I mean God, twenty four years?
Speaker 5: What does she do exactly for Yman?
Speaker 9: She IBM is very specialized. They have managers for people
going to the bathroom. Yeah, she managed people that were
reaching their second year in IBM, and she was developing
programs for them to procur development.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and one, Diane had spent many years
working as a supervisor IBM, helping God new employees through
their training. She took pride in her job, but her
greatest joy came from something outside of the office or
two dogs.
Speaker 3: Diane and those.
Speaker 7: Dogs were That's when I heard that they were her life.
Speaker 1: Diane lived alone with her two dogs, but she wasn't
without company. She'd never lacked attention from men. She was attractive,
full of life, and she had the kind of personality
that drew people in. She'd been married twice and divorced
twice as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I saw some wedding pictures.
Speaker 9: She was married twice before, once for I think four years,
again only for like four months to some sure, I
guess that, you know, just totally took advantage generally.
Speaker 1: After her second divorce, Diane signed up for a dating service,
the kind where you filled out forms, not a profile.
It was the early two thousands. It was a different time.
There's no tender and Facebook didn't exist yet. The service
eventually matched Diane with a forty five year old man
who worked in the computer industry, a Houston business owner
named Dennis Conley.
Speaker 5: How long have you known Diane? How did you guys.
Speaker 9: Meet me through the dating service? It's just lunch about
thirteen months ago.
Speaker 5: That's the name of the days.
Speaker 3: It's just lunch.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you have to pay to join, and it's like,
you know, I mean, they just they don't it's not
a computer thing or anything like that.
Speaker 10: They try to match you.
Speaker 5: Up and I take you gets hit it up pretty good, Yeah,
we did immediately.
Speaker 1: Diane and Dennis's relationship was a classic fools rush in scenario.
Things got serious fast, too fast, and before long they
were already talking about moving in together and getting married.
Speaker 9: We met each other on the fifth of October last year.
We both agreed that we would move to Houston because.
Speaker 3: We got engaged, I believe.
Speaker 9: Around but like the middle of December, you know, we
both knew it was kind of crazy, but I was
just totally happy.
Speaker 1: Within two months of meeting, Diane and Dennis were engaged
and planning a fresh start, which included a new home
in Houston and a new life together. But it didn't
take long for the cracks to show. Like many whirlwind romances,
the couple started to realize they might not be as
compatible as they first thought.
Speaker 9: Like March, everything was going pretty good and then we
ran into some rough spots. We were going to build
a house in Houston, and I decided that, you know,
given the fact that we weren't getting along together very well.
Speaker 10: I mean there was no fight.
Speaker 3: I mean, we don't fight.
Speaker 9: It's just, you know, everybody carries baggage into your relationlationships
at this age, and our baggage was clashing and we
were working on it, but we decided not to be
engaged anymore, but steadily. I mean, We've been to therapy together,
and I mean we were really really making breakthroughs, you know,
and in fact, you know, I was going to ask
her to marry me again.
Speaker 3: And all the Thanksgiving while we.
Speaker 1: Were up with my parents, they kept trying to make
it work, and eventually Diane decided she would still move
to Houston and live with Dennis.
Speaker 5: And she when did she decide to sell her at
her home.
Speaker 9: When she started looking at places in Houston about I'm
going to say a month ago. But the plan was
is you know, she was going to sell that and move.
Speaker 8: In with me.
Speaker 1: As Diane prepared to move, she put her house up
on the market, but the news of her move didn't
sit well with another man in her life, someone who
didn't want to see her go.
Speaker 3: As anybody got in the hold of Ray.
Speaker 5: They're trying to figure out who Ray is. We've heard
about Ray.
Speaker 9: He's like thirty something. He just got out of the
army couple. He's very, very, very smart. He's probably one
of the smartest programmers that IBM has. He's very very smart.
Speaker 3: But he's he's out there, he's on the edge.
Speaker 1: Thirty year old Ray Clancy worked with Diane at IBM.
In fact, she had hired him, and over time they
had become very close friends.
Speaker 5: So people said, you guys are pretty close.
Speaker 3: You're very close.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I know, Dian pod betted than most people in
the town. What's your house for the last couple of
years of dogs? I think she's got guard the openers.
Of course it doesn't work right now.
Speaker 9: They have known each other since I think Diane's been here.
He's from Louisiana.
Speaker 5: What was her relationship?
Speaker 8: Did they date it?
Speaker 10: They all know it was a very odd relationship.
Speaker 5: Because what does that to explain that to me? What
that means like in.
Speaker 9: Other words, the way Diane described to me, he seemed
to worship the ground.
Speaker 10: She walks on.
Speaker 1: Ray like Diane a lot, and well, Diane didn't feel
the same way. She valued his friendship. Ray often offered
to help her with things around the house, sir to
watch her dogs when she was away. It wasn't romantic,
but everyone who knew about their relationship thought it was
a little unusual.
Speaker 11: I was I'll fix everything in her house that was broken.
I'm an fix up man too. You can do a
buddy thing in the house. So anytimes she had her
repair in the house, I did it for her after
her own almost everything. He locks on the doors and
all that kind of gustaff because the house came with me.
Speaker 3: I weren't dating because she didn't want to date it
over ago. She didn't wan because almost six kids. She
doesn't want kid.
Speaker 5: Oh my lord, okay, six kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: He watches the dogs, so it's great to have somebody
to watch the dogs.
Speaker 10: And and he did.
Speaker 9: The dogs were crazy about him, and he did take
good care of him.
Speaker 10: And he did lots of stuff around the house for her.
Speaker 3: You know, he kicked her.
Speaker 9: Garage door like in Newmobile times. And my whole thing was, Hey,
he seems like a nice guy, Diane. Jeez, he's watching
your dogs and he's fixing your stuff. He seems pretty harmless,
So why don't you just lighten up on him, and
for a long time, up until that last falling out,
that appeared to be the case.
Speaker 1: For all his effort, Diane had firmly planted Ray in
the friend zone, and everyone seemed to know it except him. Eventually,
he and Diane had a falling out. He stopped returning
her calls as quickly and became less eager to help
with the little things. Then a few weeks later, Diane
missed an important employee meeting at IBM.
Speaker 7: Diane had not made an appointment or done whatever business
she was supposed to do on Friday. That's when she
became concerned, and that's what she called the police department.
Speaker 1: After Diane missed this meeting, one of her coworkers requested
a police welfare check. When officers arrived at her home,
no one answered the door. They went inside and eventually
found Diane's lifeless body.
Speaker 3: Did they didn't know what they found her bedroom.
Speaker 5: She was in the upstairs bedroom with a where.
Speaker 3: The shes upstairs.
Speaker 1: Ever, Diane was found on the floor of the upstairs bedroom.
She was fully clothed and had been brutally strangled to death.
There were no signs of what led up to it,
no argument, no fourst entry, no warning at all, and
no sign of how the killer had managed to disappear
without a trace.
Speaker 7: I can't tell you that it was ruled a homicide
by a strangulation, okay, and I won't give you any
of the other details.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 8: Scant imagine he would do that.
Speaker 1: Dennis claimed that he couldn't understand why anyone would want
to hurt Diane, but detectives weren't so sure he was
being honest, not just about Diane's murder, but about their
relationship in general. Much of what he'd told them about
how they got along screamed of minimization. At the same time,
detectives were equally puzzled by Diane's friend, Ray Clancy, a
man who seemed to orbit her life long after she'd
made it clear she wasn't interested. His behavior, his access
to her home, and his attitude after her death all
raised red flax between the two of them. Detectives couldn't
shake the feeling that one was hiding something. The challenge
was figuring out where the truth stopped and where the
lie started. On November fifteenth, two thousand and one, forty
three year old Diane Hollick was at her Northwest Austin home,
preparing for a move that would mark the next chapter
of her life, but by the following morning, she was dead,
found strangled in an upstairs bedroom of her home. In
the days that followed, detectives started piecing together the timeline
of her final hours. They processed her house and collected evidence.
Speaker 7: We have the house sealed for right now, and we're
going to keep it that way until we, you know,
gather a lot more information, trying to focus in on
the things that are important. Obviously, we've done a lot
of the forensic most of the forensic stuff.
Speaker 1: The crime scene was strange and ominous, not because of
what was found, but because of what wasn't. Diane was
discovered face down on the floor of an upstairs bedroom.
She was fully dressed, with marks on her wrists consistent
with being bound, and deep ligature marks around her neck.
There were no signs of forced entry, no struggle, and
nothing to suggest sexual assault. The scene was eerily clean,
so clean, in fact, that even Diane's own fingerprints were
missing from places police expected to find them.
Speaker 7: U she ramed doesn't appear, so we won't know, obviously,
until all the test results come back, but doesn't appear
she was fully clothed.
Speaker 1: As for suspects, detectives quickly focused on two men. Her fiance,
Dennis Conley, had a coworker who, by all accounts, wished
he was Diane's fiance. His name was Ray Clancy. One question,
both men offered nearly identical statements about Diane and her background.
They told police that Diane had no enemies, that everyone
who knew her loved her.
Speaker 12: Can you think of anybody that would want to hurt Diane?
Speaker 3: Everybody loved her, everybody that matter.
Speaker 11: Had enemies, and nobody that didn't like her. Louisbod who
didn't like Diane's If the personality was fantastic, it was
a gorgeous few persons.
Speaker 1: Initially, investigators turned their attention to Dennis, but he looked clean,
at least on paper. He had no criminal record and
no history of violence.
Speaker 13: This is the first time I've ever been in a
police station so other than when I was a legal
officer in the Marine Corps and I took people theref According.
Speaker 1: To Dennis, his last contact with Diane was on the
afternoon of her death. They exchanged messages online during the
workday and Diane mentioned she may have found someone interested
in buying her house.
Speaker 9: Yeah, she said, somebody was really super interested in her
house Thursday afternoon online she goes keep her finger crossed,
fingers crossed, and she doesn't usually say that unless somebody's
really interested. So well, one of the questions that I
have for you, and you don't have to answer this,
but I think may fit into this as well, is
you know, did.
Speaker 10: She still have her engagement ring on?
Speaker 9: Because if she didn't, then that's that's what I think
might have happened.
Speaker 3: Is somebody came in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we need to talk about all her jewelry.
Speaker 3: I mean there's things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's why I needed you really come down here.
And I don't want to have to ask I understand that.
Speaker 1: One thing that stood out about Diane's interview was how
eager he seemed to offer up theories, any theory about
what might have happened to Diane. Maybe it was genuine speculation,
or maybe it was a way to steer attention away
from himself. One theory he floated was that Diane could
have been showing her home to a potential buyer who
noticed her engagement ring and decided to rob her. Maybe
she fought back and things turned violent. Maybe this murder
was a robbery gone wrong, or maybe Dennis just wanted
to make it look that way.
Speaker 5: Do you have a photograph of the ring or any
information on that ring?
Speaker 3: I can get it, Okay.
Speaker 7: I'm probably gonna need it because we can't find the ring.
My understanding was from missus Brown was that she always
wore that ring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she did.
Speaker 9: And I told her, you know, I told her, I said,
you know, when you go down to the park or whatever.
Speaker 10: Da YadA not, you know, be flashing.
Speaker 3: That thing around.
Speaker 9: It's a diamonite, a twenty thousand dollars, you know, I mean,
it was a beautiful ring.
Speaker 5: Did you buy it for her?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 10: She's so goddamn stubborn.
Speaker 9: Know, if they were king of trying to take the ring,
I'll bet she fought tooth and nail for that, you.
Speaker 5: Know, And certainly robbery is a motive.
Speaker 8: There's no doubt.
Speaker 10: I will tell you she would have had that.
Speaker 5: Ring on, There's no doubt in my mind. Well it's
missing right now.
Speaker 1: Like Dennis, Ray also confirmed that Diane always wore her
engagement ring. The obvious assumption was that whoever committed the murder,
had taken it the ring.
Speaker 3: Treat care it or something like that.
Speaker 11: It's a big one. I've never seen it without wearing it.
And I always been to ask her if you were
breaking up, mind you buried ring, but I never would.
Speaker 3: That's kind of insulting.
Speaker 11: I'm never seen him take it off before, even whenever
they were split apart in fighting, she never took it off.
Speaker 1: As for Dennis, if he was the killer, investigators had
to consider possible motives. He admitted that his relationship with
Diane wasn't perfect, but the problems he described seemed pretty mild,
especially for a couple that had recently called off their engagement.
Perhaps things with Dennis and Diane were much worse than
he was letting on.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we had her ups and downs, no question, but
they weren't you know.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like it was physicified.
Speaker 9: It's nothing never never, never even angry or loud words.
Speaker 5: What were your big issues?
Speaker 12: Money, no other people in relationship.
Speaker 3: It was just it's stupid, you know.
Speaker 9: That's one of the things I think I'll learn out
of this steal is the little things starn't really that important.
Speaker 3: That's where I was getting to too.
Speaker 1: But according to Dennis, a major point of tension in
their relationship was what he saw as Diane's obsession with
their dogs. It wasn't thrilled about the idea of buying
a new house together only to have the two large
dogs tear it up. But for Diane, her dogs were
her family, further them as her kids, and they weren't negotiable.
Speaker 11: Mostly it was a dogs either or not he hates
I would say he hates those, but you didn't a
doggy person, and she, in her mind, it was important
for him to like the dogs. If he didn't like him,
that was too good in bed and he didn't get
to buy somebody else.
Speaker 1: Dennis told detectives that he did eventually come around. He
realized that his issue with the dogs wasn't worth losing Diane.
Speaker 9: The thing that got me back and really really cemented it,
was that you know, she's I remember her saying, you
know that she would she loved me, and that she
would jump the chance to be in a relationship.
Speaker 10: And marry me, and you know, no matter how long
it took, And that really just settled in my heart,
and I just.
Speaker 13: Said, you know, I'm not going to ever find anybody
that loves me as much as she does.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Dennis's version of the relationship was that he and Diane
had worked through their rough patches. The engagement might have
been called off, but he said things were improving and
that he planned to propose to her again.
Speaker 5: Did you get had you guys said a wedding date?
Speaker 10: No, but we talked about it last last weekend.
Speaker 3: We were together here.
Speaker 9: We had a great weekend, no issues.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 10: She goes, so, when do we getting married?
Speaker 9: And I said, I'm thinking, you know, October, but you know,
next year, but we might move that on, you know,
how things go.
Speaker 10: Okay, So yeah, I mean we had not set a date.
Speaker 9: But then again, I had officially asked her to marry
me again, and I was going to say that for
you know, around the same time.
Speaker 10: That I asked her last year, just kind of as
a special thing.
Speaker 1: While keeping a close eye on Dennis, investigators also focused
their attention on another man in Diane's life, her friend
and coworker and someone who clearly had feelings for her,
Ray Clancy and Ray.
Speaker 9: That's the deal with Ray, Okay, so is a very
dysfunctional person from my standpoint, in the fact that he
seems to be attracted to women that are not attracted
to him.
Speaker 14: Right.
Speaker 1: I freely admitted that he had romantic feelings for Diane,
but he denied that his willingness to help her watching
her dogs, fixing things around her house had anything to
do with that. He said he was simply trying to
repay her for bending a few rules at IBM to
help get him hired.
Speaker 5: Had a little crush on her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I always had a question, Diana say, I remember.
Speaker 11: When harmony I'd had behind the GPA, and they refused
the harmony in IBM.
Speaker 3: So she boked the rules and she harmed me. You
know I'm in all.
Speaker 11: Over the world, twenty countries. I mean a lot of
money IBM. They were all kind of stuff. I can
do anything with the computer because she broked the.
Speaker 8: Rules for me.
Speaker 3: So I had a occasion.
Speaker 11: If you have all the rules is ubligations of people
that we like our family and have fuss and so
I always has to mubligation to take care of her
and watch the house and take care of her kids.
She just meant that nobody else would ever do.
Speaker 1: There was no secret that Ray had a thing for Diane,
and it was also no secret that she just didn't
feel the same way about him. Even Ray admitted as much,
insisting that he just accepted it and.
Speaker 5: Diane didn't reciprocate your feelings. She just friends, Okay, I
don't know.
Speaker 3: Just never was never had any plea or whatever.
Speaker 8: They understand, you just have just friends.
Speaker 5: Always had cause problems between No.
Speaker 3: Never in the beginning of argument.
Speaker 11: No, in the beginning, I always wanted to always pampered her,
and she took care of her and butter flowers, all
that kind of good stuff. He used to make a
nervous uncomfortable because she'd like guy's pamper your relationship. No
one ever did, never, even him, never even want to, always.
Speaker 3: Wanted to it. Never did.
Speaker 1: Naturally, the investigators had to consider the possibility that Ray
hadn't accepted being just die An's friend. Maybe he was
tired of helping her and getting nothing in return. Maybe
he just felt like she owed him. Maybe he tried
to make a move and when she turned him down,
things got violent.
Speaker 10: Well, one thing that you said, and then you kind
of took it back.
Speaker 3: You thought she's good looking. I did get that body,
she did.
Speaker 15: He said, you didn't want to have sex with her,
and then you said earlier on you said, yeah you did,
but it just never.
Speaker 8: Did you or not?
Speaker 3: It was full of it was full of friendship. If
we did it was full of friendship. If we did
something like that, both of it was new, just something
we understood.
Speaker 11: Anytime you see it with the lady, it's it's changed everything.
You get your feeling from the lady that you.
Speaker 3: Might have past at her, and she said, no, no,
I didn't make a don't make passes in it. He
didn't know.
Speaker 14: I don't.
Speaker 5: I didn't know you you.
Speaker 11: Don't make a past at her because it's kind of insulty.
Because she said no, then you can know friendship anymore.
Oh yeah, no you don't, because Dane's really sensitive to
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: You don't. I didn't want to spoil the friendship with her,
so I didn't.
Speaker 11: I didn't push it. I didn't make HI pass at her
all that kind of stuff. Just still I didn't really
do the deliver I guess like a friend.
Speaker 3: I never tell anybody you love her?
Speaker 14: Well?
Speaker 3: I love how like I love dogs. I love dogs too.
Did you tell anybody you love her? I don't think
I would have said that.
Speaker 1: Now the bizarre thing about Ray was that he came
off as a genuinely nice guy. Yeah, if he had
killed Diane, it wouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.
Speaker 5: So you think he pretty much is obsessed with her.
Speaker 10: I wouldn't even I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't want to go there.
Speaker 10: I just want to say that.
Speaker 5: What was there falling out about? Let me ask you that,
you know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's raised presses.
Speaker 10: He presses like, you know, he's always wanting uh validation.
Speaker 6: And.
Speaker 10: Honestly, if if I was, if I was a woman, he.
Speaker 3: Would give me the creeps.
Speaker 9: Oh really yeah, And again it seems like the worst
women treat him, you know, the more he uh, he
gravitates towards. It's a very unhealthy situation.
Speaker 1: For many of Diane's friends, there was something unsettling about Ray,
something they couldn't quite put their finger on. Yet, somehow
he mostly came across his friendly and harmless. So the
big question just loomed. Was Ray just a hopeless romantic
with an unreturned crush, let's say, or was he something darker?
Was he a man willing to take what he wanted
by force, by violence, by murder? Was Ray a monster.
Speaker 5: Did she ever tell you about anything inappropriate that he did?
It made her field off?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 10: Yes, then this.
Speaker 3: Was before we started dating.
Speaker 9: You would press her on, uh, just like things that
were not appropriate for friends to press on.
Speaker 5: And it wasn't sexual.
Speaker 10: It was just a lot of a lot of neediness.
Speaker 9: And apparently that I do remember now that that's what
the last conversation was about. I guess he was pressing
on something and either either she hung out with him
or he hung on her.
Speaker 3: She just had no patience with that.
Speaker 5: Do you think he's capable of doing something bad? Have
you ever seen him lose his temper? Has told you
about anything specifically?
Speaker 10: Ever remember anything like that?
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 1: With both Dennis and Ray looking like plausible suspects, investigators
turned their focus to the evidence. Maybe the crime scene
could point to which man had killed Diane. There were
no signs of fourth century meaning. Whoever did it was
either invited inside or they had a key.
Speaker 5: To your knowledge, who has a key to that house?
Speaker 9: I may have, there was one in my car that
I I do not have a key on my key chain.
Speaker 3: That I I mean because I never had the need to.
Speaker 5: Okay, do you know if Ray has a key he.
Speaker 11: Used to our house too. If you need copy them
for you, you can make Prinzon or if you need
herse No.
Speaker 5: I'm going to take those keys. She was deceased and
there's really no need for you to be in the
house anymore.
Speaker 1: Both Dennis and Ray had keys to Diane's house. That detail, unfortunately,
didn't help narrow things down, so investigators shifted their focus
to each man's alibi and when they each last saw
or spoke with Diane.
Speaker 5: When's the last time you saw Saturday?
Speaker 3: Two weeks ago, Saturday Night of Dallas night. Though she
was a young lady. I don't really know her.
Speaker 11: Being, but I haven't hear from assistant, no word, no fun, contact,
nothing for about two weeks.
Speaker 1: Ray said that the last time he saw Diane was
weeks before the murder. Dennis told police that his last
contact with her was through an online chat well he
was at work when investigators checked on this. Both stories
appeared to hold up, which raised a new question. Were
they looking at the wrong men altogether? Maybe Dennis and
Ray were both innocent.
Speaker 3: What do you think happened from what she told me?
Speaker 11: Since she never went upstairs and her house is well
in the market, and she said she was training hold
of what time?
Speaker 3: He said, what time? Oh, I guess she was showing
somebody to the house.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, when Ray was asked what he thought might have
happened to Diane, his answer was almost identical to the
answer that Dennis had given. Both men suggested that Diane
could have been showing the house to a potential buyer
and then things turned violent. With no sign of forced entry,
they reasoned that Diane must have let someone inside and
maybe that someone killed her. Investigators soon discovered that this
theory wasn't far fetched at all. While canvassing Diane's neighborhood,
they learned that several residents had been approached by a
strange man, someone going door to door claiming to be
a rancher and asking about homes for sale. Not only that,
but they later confirmed that Diane herself had been approached
by this man in the afternoon on the same day
that she was killed.
Speaker 7: This man comes and claims that he's a rancher and
claims that he's going that he can pay cash for
the house, but he needs to get with his wife,
and that he was going to come back.
Speaker 5: The following day with his wife to see the house.
We don't know if he has anything to do with it.
I don't know. It's we're looking into it. It's it
seemed suspicious.
Speaker 7: We're going to try to get a composite an older man.
Apparently he went to an older man's house Thursday, probably
around noon.
Speaker 10: Yeah, because that's what Diane said that she thought she had.
Speaker 8: Sold the house.
Speaker 9: That was like about three o'clock in the afternoon on Thursday.
Speaker 7: And I guess she had talked to her friend Tina,
that this guy had come to the house, but he
didn't have a real estate agent with him. He came
by himself, and you know, she she I think she
thought it was odd.
Speaker 12: But apparently she led him into the house, but he left.
Speaker 1: For several days, investigators tried to untangle the stories of
two men, a fiance who might have been angry about
it failed engagement, and a coworker who might have been
angry that Diane didn't love him back. But as the
investigation moved forward, something much darker started to surface, something
beyond jealousy or heartbreak. In a disturbing twist, the evidence
pointed to a different kind of motive altogether, one rooted
not in love, but in perversion, and it suggested that
whoever killed Diane Hollick hadn't come to win her heart,
he'd come to feed a fetish. In the days after
Diane Hollick's murder, investigators pulled at every threat, jealousy, rejection, heartbreak,
trying to figure out who could have killed her and why,
but none of it fit. When they circled back to
the most obvious suspect, her Beyonce Dennis, he gave them
an alibi that couldn't be broken.
Speaker 7: Okay, so the last time you actually spent time with
Diane was last week in Okay, and you go back
to Houston and did you work all week?
Speaker 9: Yeah, like a friend's stand with me.
Speaker 3: You can vouch for me if.
Speaker 5: Now I just you know, we gotta do it, understand.
Speaker 3: I understand.
Speaker 1: Investors eventually confirmed that when Diane was killed, her fiance Dennis,
was two hundred miles away in Houston working at his office.
He was eliminated as a suspect. Likewise, Diane's coworker, Ray Clancy,
was also at work at the time of her death,
and in fact hadn't spoken to Diane in about two weeks.
Speaker 11: The night of the storm that he went home last night.
The tenthred that night because Chilthy was horrible. They got
home and that's the latt of state home and didn't
go anywhere in the sleep. I'm gonna look time to
see or little closed. Back to work next morning about
got to work against eight o'clock.
Speaker 3: Eight o'clock or so.
Speaker 1: With both Ray and Dennis ruled out, investigators turned their
attention to a new lead. During an interview with Diane's
friend Tina, they learned that a strange man had recently
come to Diane's house, claiming to be interested in buying it.
Speaker 7: And she had said that a man had come over
that was very nicely dressed, probably in his mid thirties,
had come over and told her that he was interested
in her house and that he didn't have a real
estate agent, that he was a rancher, and that's I mean.
She had that conversation with Tina. But she also made
a comment to Tina that the man kind of gave
her the creeps. And we don't know if this guy
came back, but clearly he used the same ruse so
to speak with an older man that lived down the
street prior to going to Diane's house.
Speaker 1: On the surface, one of this seemed unusual. After all,
Diane was trying to sell her home and there was
a big first sale sign out front. That wouldn't be
at all strange for someone to stop by unannounced and
ask about the property. But what caught investigator's attention was
that this same man had been supposedly house shopping all
over Austin for weeks, and nearly everyone who'd encountered him
described him the same way, creepy and strange and just
a little bit threatening.
Speaker 7: Probably by Monday, we'll be putting out that on the
news that we are trying to speak with that man.
Speaker 3: Hopefully somebody do call in.
Speaker 1: What a composite sketch was released to the media, It
didn't take long for investigators to track down the strange
home shopping man. One woman who'd encountered him had been
so unnerved by his behavior that she actually wrote down
his license plate number. That plate number led investigators to
a van registered to a Patrick Anthony Russo.
Speaker 5: Patrick Russo Right.
Speaker 3: Holder, thirty eight eight.
Speaker 1: Thirty eight year old Patrick, who sometimes went by his
middle name Tony, lived in Elgin, Texas, about twenty five
miles east of Austin. Patrick was born again Christian who
worked part time at his local church.
Speaker 3: Which was the name of the church, New Life in Christ.
Speaker 5: New Life in Christ, Yes, ma'am, and what do you
do for them?
Speaker 3: I'm the music minister, there you said.
Speaker 5: And you're married in your wife's name Janet Jane in
the two boys or years.
Speaker 1: Yes, Patrick lived with his second wife, Janet. They had
two children from a previous marriage, though they didn't live
with them. On the morning of November twenty one, two
thousand and one, Texas deputies arrived at Patrick's home and
asked both him and Janet to come down to the
station for interviews. They agreed, you're not under arrest, okay.
Speaker 16: I am curious so us someone be knocking on my
door this early in the morning.
Speaker 15: This has to do with an incident that happened here
in Austin, in northwest Austin.
Speaker 3: Some things are missing.
Speaker 17: I brought a calendar of November if you can tell us,
if you could start maybe the twelfth, and go through
and tell us what you remember, where you were and
what you did.
Speaker 1: Before revealing why they brought him to the station for questioning.
Investigators asked Patrick about his whereabouts. During the week of
Diane's murder, they quickly focused on the actual day she
was killed, which was a Thursday. That day a massive
thunderstorm that swept through Austin.
Speaker 16: That was that big storm day, Wasn't it? Okay, there's
not a problem.
Speaker 3: Thursday, I spent some time at the church again.
Speaker 16: I went to go to can Elle here in Austin.
Speaker 7: About what time was that?
Speaker 16: I think it was about I said, talk to my wife.
I was pulling in the parking lot, so that would
have been about four o'clock.
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 1: Patrick told investigators that on the day Diane was killed,
he'd driven into Austin to visit a local radio station.
He said he was supposed to meet someone there who
was helping him set up a website for his Christian
rock band.
Speaker 16: We have a website that we've been trying to get
up for about four months, and I have spent so
much time with him trying to get it up. So
I went out there to try to see about getting
that up. Since we got all the information that they needed,
and when no one came to the door, I went
ahead and left.
Speaker 8: Who did you talk to you over at can Hellen?
Speaker 16: Actually I didn't talk to anybody because nobody answered the door.
Speaker 17: So you made the trip up there for nothing.
Speaker 3: This pretty much, I mean you didn't.
Speaker 8: You didn't call ahead and say you were coming.
Speaker 1: And Patrick told investigators that his trip to the radio
station had been spontaneous. He hadn't made an appointment or
even called a head. When he arrived, no one was
there to meet him, and no one at the radio
station remembered ever seeing him, which meant Patrick had no alibi.
After leaving the station, the storm rolled in. The heavy
rain and low visibility caused Patrick to get lost, at
least that's what he said had happened.
Speaker 16: Made a right hand turn and made an illegal you
turn there was the only way you could get around everybody.
And then I went back out and gone the highway,
going back towards Fast drib. Probably took me about another
fifteen minutes to get home normally, normally was a little
bit quicker than that.
Speaker 5: Sometimes you get home.
Speaker 16: Five point thirty, I guess, or six somewhere. I'm not
really sure exactly the time frame.
Speaker 1: Patrick told investigators he got home around six o'clock in
the evening, but his wife Janet gave a different time
well we.
Speaker 6: Got to the station, there was anybody there that was
doing the website, So he was coming home. I know
we were on the phone an hour because he was
coming through all that storm.
Speaker 12: So we were on the phone probably from.
Speaker 5: Six to seven.
Speaker 3: What time did you get home?
Speaker 18: Should have been.
Speaker 19: Shortly after seven, probly between seven and fifteen.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking because the couple's timelines were off by an hour.
In a lot of cases, that kind of discrepancy might
not mean much, but in a murder investigation, one hour
can change everything. It can be the difference between being
miles away from a crime scene or standing inside it.
Speaker 3: Did you ever.
Speaker 8: Stop to get out to talk to anybody?
Speaker 16: I believe i'd I knocked on someone's door asking for directions.
Speaker 15: And when you say someone's door was at a residential door,
was that a business door?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 3: It was it was a residential door.
Speaker 8: Do you remember what that person looked like?
Speaker 20: No?
Speaker 3: I have no clue.
Speaker 1: Imagine this just a few days ago. You're driving home
when a brutal thunderstorm rolls in Lorrain's coming down in sheets,
visibility's gone, and you take a wrong turn into a
neighborhood you've never seen before. You're so disoriented that you
stop at a random house, knock on the door and
ask a stranger for directions, wouldn't you I don't know,
remember that, wasn't that whole encounter kind of Oh, I
don't know, stick in your mind a little bit, don't
you think? Apparently? For Patrick Nay, I.
Speaker 8: Want to ask you a little bit more about Thursday.
Speaker 15: And he was talking about going to kN Elie and
no one was there to tell us that you were there, okay,
And then.
Speaker 8: You talked about driving around and getting back on one
A three.
Speaker 15: And now you're telling us about maybe stopping at a
residential area and talking to a gray haired man. Is
there any other places that you stopped while you were
in his neighborhood?
Speaker 8: You didn't stop to talk to anybody else.
Speaker 3: I'm not lying to you.
Speaker 16: If that's what you're asking, and that's what I'm asking,
I'm It's simple.
Speaker 8: You only stopped at one house.
Speaker 15: You talked to one man, an older man, and the
gest of the conversation was you needed directions to get back.
Speaker 3: To one any correct.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, investigators didn't buy Patrick's story. They were
convinced that the house he stopped at wasn't random and
that the person who answered the door was their murder victim,
Diane Hollick.
Speaker 15: So you're saying you've never seen this woman, never been
to her house, never been to her doorstep, never been
inside her house, never been invited to look around, and
there would be no reason for anything to come back
to say.
Speaker 8: That you were in her house.
Speaker 16: No, sir, If she's saying that I've stole something from her,
then I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, when investigator showed Patrick a photo of Diane, he
not only denied ever being in her house, but also
spoke about her as if she were still alive. You
seem to believe or wanted detectives to think he believed
that this was all about a simple burglary or breaking
and not a homicide investigation. Of course, investigators weren't fooled
by this performance, and they had more than a few
reasons to suspect that Patrick was their man. This wasn't
his first brush with the law. Patrick was on parole
at the time and had already spent eight nights in
prison for kidnapping a woman and tying her up.
Speaker 16: I had a nervous breakdown while on the job I
was trying to seek out a new life which wasn't
really going all that great, and ended up where I
had nervous breakdown, and I ended up holding the receptionist
against her will.
Speaker 3: And basically I broke down, crying and just telling her
all my problems, and then I left.
Speaker 8: How did you hold her? How did you?
Speaker 3: I tied her up?
Speaker 16: I needed I just needed someone to talk to it
and feel like anybody, and I forced her to. I
forced her to listen to my problems. And you'll see
what it says in the case it'll take her. I
believe that anybody that ties anybody up does some damage,
physical damage. No, I didn't hurt her emotionally, I probably
ruined her.
Speaker 1: Patrick claimed that prison had changed him. He said that
after his conviction, he found God, embraced faith, and left
his old criminal life behind. He supposedly transformed himself into
a humble Christian man.
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you what I've done to get
my life in order. Okay.
Speaker 16: I spent my entire eight years in prison doing nothing
but engulfing myself in a better life. I got my
ged I went to college. I studied for theology to
become a minister. I took every kind of anger management
program because that was my big problem back then was
I went through the drug rehabs because.
Speaker 3: I had an old drug habit that really took a
toll on me.
Speaker 1: After his release from prison, Patrick wrote a book, joined
a ministry, and even started a Christian rock band. All
of this, he claimed it was part of his mission
to help others find faith.
Speaker 16: When I got out, I've done everything from put a
book out to try to help inmates and other people
get their life in order through christ. I have been
a music minister. I have a ministry that I go
into prisons with.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for Patrick, the investigators weren't convinced by his supposed
moral awakening. To them, this new Patrick looked a lot
like the old one, a man with a history of
violence and a record that included not just kidnapping but
also burglary. And of course Patrick had an excuse for
that as well.
Speaker 5: What about the burglaries?
Speaker 3: All my offenses have to do with with just anger?
Speaker 5: Was there somebody in the house when you did the burglary?
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I didn't burglarize the house. I assaulted someone
through their doorway, and so I got a burglary of
a habitation with the attempt to commit bodily harm when
the burglary had nothing to do with it because it
wasn't a burglary.
Speaker 16: I was actually looking for a friend of mine. I
was looking for a drug fix.
Speaker 1: What investigators pressed Patrick about his criminal past, he grew uneasy,
but detectives didn't let up. They hadn't brought him in
to rehash his old crimes. Their focus was on the
murder of Diane Hollock.
Speaker 16: I'm trying to stay, you know, relaxed about this whole thing,
but y'all are starting to grow me pretty hard for stuff.
Speaker 3: And I don't even have the slightest clue what's going on.
Speaker 16: But I do know that, you know, I'm trying to
be as honest as I can with you.
Speaker 5: You guys, are you, I mean, are you really?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 5: Are you in the market to buy a house?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: Is there any reason why you'd be in a neighborhood
looking for a house?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 7: Do you think it's a little coincidental that several people
said that they saw you in a neighborhood.
Speaker 16: I think it's well, it has to be coincidental because
I hadn't been in any neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Patrick consisted that everything leading police to his doorstep was
just one big coincidence. The witnesses who'd seen him and
his van cruising through their neighborhood asking about homes for sale,
they were all mistaken. It was just a case of
bad luck and bad timing, good luck convincing the investigators
or a jury for that matter, of any of that.
Speaker 3: Tony, what's happened?
Speaker 15: Okay, Thursday, more than three different people identified you as
coming to their place.
Speaker 8: Inquiring about purchasing a residence.
Speaker 3: Well, they're mistaken. Let me tell you how serious this is.
Speaker 16: I would appreciate it because I feel like I'm getting
pretty banged here and I don't even.
Speaker 3: Know what's for.
Speaker 8: She's dead. I don't know if you notice when you
walked in here, this is a homicide.
Speaker 16: Un well, okay, wow, I'm sitting there thinking we're talking
about burglary and we're talking about a murderer. As badly
as I feel for this woman here, I'm sorry, but
you guys are barking up the wrong tree, and I
don't care how hard you dig, you're not going to
find me committing any crime like that.
Speaker 1: His lies, his evasions, the statements, and the evidence, all
of it made one thing clear. They were sitting across
from a man who had strangled a woman to death.
Speaker 15: We can sit here and say, well, it might be
somebody that resembles you or looks at it.
Speaker 3: They picked you out, not.
Speaker 15: A friend, not somebody that looks like they picked you out.
They had a conversation with you. A lady took your
license plate number down after you came and started asking.
Speaker 14: Some really.
Speaker 8: She what did she call it?
Speaker 15: Some unsettling conversation that she had with you, And she
said she would never forget your face again.
Speaker 7: And she didn't five different people who live in five
different areas, who all.
Speaker 3: I'm not just pick you out. You know you're being there.
Speaker 5: Your van got your license plate. I mean that.
Speaker 3: I'm not disputing whether someone thinks they've seen me, Okay,
but I'm telling.
Speaker 8: You what about your van?
Speaker 3: Well, I can't explain that. I can't explain it.
Speaker 16: You know, that may be coincidental, but there's a whole
lot of coincidences in life.
Speaker 3: I can't do nothing about that.
Speaker 5: But I don't think that's a coincidence.
Speaker 7: Okay, I mean, I just don't you know, too many people.
You know, if it was one person, maybe, but.
Speaker 3: Three four five, well, not just this.
Speaker 5: Particular day, but another day that was a month ago.
Speaker 1: For weeks, sir, probably much longer. Patrick had been cruising
the streets of Austin in his van, playing the part
of the classic predator. He wasn't looking for a house
to buy. It was hunting for a victim, and tragically
he found one in Diane Hullick.
Speaker 3: I don't know what all you have that you're dealing with.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm dealing with a woman that's dead, and I'm
dealing with a neighborhood that's in a panic because a
man came to several of their houses that same day.
Some people spent quite a bit of time with that man.
Speaker 16: What am I supposed to say? You all want me
to say that I did something I didn't do, That's.
Speaker 8: What I know.
Speaker 7: I just want you to tell the.
Speaker 3: Truth, that's all. Well, I'm trying to, but you guys
don't want to hear the truth. Do you want me
to hear me say that?
Speaker 7: I would else would have had your van on Thursday
up in that neighborhood that you've already put yourself in.
Speaker 3: Well, in a rainstorm, who has your van? Nobody has
my van except.
Speaker 5: Me, So I mean, how do you explain that?
Speaker 3: Well, I can't explain it.
Speaker 7: In the same neighborhood that you were seeing by several
other people. That's suspicious. We'd be remiss if we weren't
looking into that.
Speaker 16: Well, and I'm not knocking you guys for that, Okay,
I'm not knocking you, But if you.
Speaker 3: Want me to say something that isn't true.
Speaker 1: Investigators pressed harder, confronting Patrick with all kinds of evidence,
but no matter how much they threw at them, it
wouldn't buch. He doubled down, denying, deflecting, and then deny
all over again.
Speaker 16: Well, I can assure you this one thing. I haven't
murdered anybody, haven't robbed anybody. I haven't burglarized any houses.
And no matter I don't care how bad it looks
on me, I haven't done anything to anybody. And you
can search my house what you've done. I haven't done anything.
That's what I'm telling you.
Speaker 3: Were you in this neighborhood, No, you weren't talking to
any of these people. No, I wasn't.
Speaker 1: Eventually this interview ran its course, and to Patrick's surprise,
the detectives didn't arrest them. Instead, they placed him and
his wife, Janet, in the same room. The moment she
walked in, Patrick broke down, sabbing and pleading with her
to believe he was innocent.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry you're going through this. I promise you
I never did anything to anybody, and I can't explain it.
Speaker 8: I can't that.
Speaker 3: I can promise you all my heart they're wrong.
Speaker 18: But I can promise you to just listen. I promise
you it doesn't matter what anybody says or does do
is I'm telling you chan't it, no matter what anything
looks like. I'm not little to anything.
Speaker 1: After his emotional display, Patrick was allowed to leave the station,
but his freedom didn't last long. The very next day,
detectives arrested him and brought him back in. Up to
that point, Patrick had flatly denied ever cruising through Austin
or asking about homes for sale, But now he had
a problem. At one of those houses where witnesses had
identified him, investigators had found his fingerprints.
Speaker 21: When police released a picture of Russou, another woman called
saying Russo had said the same thing to her. Police
say fingerprints left in her home matched Russeau's.
Speaker 1: Even with this evidence, the police didn't charge Patrick with
Diane's murder, at least not yet. Instead, they booked him
on a parole violation, which was clearly a strategic move
to keep a suspected killer behind bars while they built
a stronger case against them. Part of that effort included
executing a search warrant on Patrick's home, but when they did,
Diane's engagement ring was nowhere to be found. To this day,
it has never been recovered. Nonetheless, Patrick's arrest gave investigators
a chance to interrogate him again and maybe this time
get a confession.
Speaker 16: Surely I don't have the only Pewter four minivan in
this entire town.
Speaker 22: You have the only Pewter four mini men in this
entire town, or in the entire Stata taxas that has.
Speaker 3: That laughing played on them.
Speaker 16: That's true, That is true. I'm just saying, if someone
wrote that number on my license plate down and they're mistaken,
because it's not me, coincidences happened. If they didn't, they
wouldn't be called coincidences. I'm sure of one thing that
I didn't murder anybody.
Speaker 1: Despite the arrest and despite all of the evidence. Patrick
continued to play his tired old game.
Speaker 22: I'm a little, frankly, a little fit up with all
this coincidence. It's not and you know it done that,
and we know it done that, and we looked good.
Speaker 3: But I'm telling you I didn't murder him.
Speaker 7: Ok And you say you didn't murder somebody, Maybe you didn't, Okay,
But you were in that neighborhood, Tony, and you talked
to several people in that neighborhood.
Speaker 5: They said that you were there at their home.
Speaker 7: And it wasn't at four o'clock in the afternoon, it
was earlier than that.
Speaker 22: And you've been in other places in Austin doing similar stuff, sir,
with your van and your fingerprint being written down.
Speaker 7: The license plate of that band was written down at
another time, not just this past time, but another time.
Speaker 5: And you told me.
Speaker 12: Yesterday that nobody else drives your van except for you.
Speaker 1: In the short time between Patrick's first interview in his arrest,
investigators uncovered a few new details about him, details that
were deeply unsettling. It turned out that the Diane Hall
case wasn't the only active investigation where the name Patrick
Russo had come up.
Speaker 12: You know, what let me ask you something.
Speaker 7: We called like Jackson yesterday and we talked to several detectives.
Speaker 3: Who knew Patrick Russo really, really well.
Speaker 7: We had some very interesting conversations about some cases that
you were involved in that you were never filed on for.
And you know those cases involved Those cases involve you
choking women. You tying women up and choking them. I
find that very interesting.
Speaker 3: Another one of those coincidences.
Speaker 5: I suppose that's a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Naturally, Patrick had even more denials and excuses about all
of these other eerily similar investigations.
Speaker 7: They have multiple women over there that were choked by
Patrick Russo, and.
Speaker 12: They all picked you out.
Speaker 7: You admitted to the one that you knew you were
busted on because you were picked out of that lineup.
Speaker 3: I'm in it too. Every single thing that I've been
in trouble with.
Speaker 7: You never said anything about choking any of those other women,
tying them up.
Speaker 3: I tied up one person when I have my nervous breakdown.
Speaker 12: I'm talking about the ones that you didn't talk about.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the women that you.
Speaker 12: Did tie up and choke that she didn't talk about.
Speaker 16: I have not tied up anybody and choked anybody.
Speaker 3: Really, I have assaulted a couple of people that I
have tied up.
Speaker 12: Women are men, there were women, That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: They have at least five cases.
Speaker 22: They got a stack of women who said, yeah, that's
the guy that choked me.
Speaker 7: You only told us that one because that's the one
you got convicted on.
Speaker 12: There's multiple cases that they could have filed on you.
Speaker 5: And why they didn't, I don't know. And you know
what they were like, I can't believe.
Speaker 12: He's out of jail.
Speaker 5: There's several women that said.
Speaker 12: You tied him up, You tied their hands up.
Speaker 7: How about the one who came out of her bedroom
and the other one was tied up and then he
had to tie her up too.
Speaker 3: You guys are twisting things up because they told them.
You need to read the police report.
Speaker 16: Don't listen to overtalk from ten years ago, because it's
really easy to.
Speaker 3: Start confusing things.
Speaker 16: You read my files and see what was said and
written in those things, and then come talk to me
about them.
Speaker 1: As the investigation into Patrick deepened, a disturbing pattern became
very clear when that pointed to a twisted fascination with
choking women. That dark obsession was also confirmed by statements
from his own wife.
Speaker 19: He has always been fast. I will say this, He's
always been fascinated with my neck. I guess the glass
is a skinny little neck. I mean, I will say
that he does tend to put his hand on my neck.
But if I say let go or I can't.
Speaker 6: Airways getting restricted, you know, then and he's he always
lets go.
Speaker 8: I mean, he realizes, you know.
Speaker 7: And what would you say if I told you that
your wife told Detective Gilchrist that you choke her during sex?
Speaker 5: What would you say to that?
Speaker 16: I would say that what I do in my sex
life is nobody's business.
Speaker 7: It may not be, but I think it's very pertinent
in this case. And what's happened here and what's happened
in your past.
Speaker 5: You like to choke women, that's obvious. Why would you
choke your wife during sex?
Speaker 16: You guys after my phone call came in here and
are instantly hostile.
Speaker 7: Why?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, this is my life here, this is my
life is it's on the line.
Speaker 3: Here right now.
Speaker 4: I didn't do anything to hurt anybody else's wife. And yes,
I have a reason to feel the way I feel.
Speaker 1: Patrick kept up his act, the cooperative, rightfully accused man,
just trying to clear his name, but it never worked.
The web of so called coincidences and mounting evidence have
become far too much for him to overcome.
Speaker 3: I've tried to cooperate with you, guys. You know what.
You're not trying to cooperate. You're trying to snow us.
Speaker 22: You're trying to get over on this so they will
think that you're this.
Speaker 23: High and mighty religious whatever, that is so much better
than your past, that you've done, all that, you're through
with all that and nothing happened.
Speaker 3: You're innocent.
Speaker 22: You couldn't have been anywhere that we said you were when.
Speaker 24: The facts, indisputable, concrete facts say different. Quit all this
crap about coincidences and no I wasn't here, No I
wasn't there, And get right, it meant to what you did,
and maybe we can get to the forgiveness part, because
this is just crap.
Speaker 3: It's just bullshit, and you know it.
Speaker 1: Like his first interview, this interrogation eventually ran its course.
Patrick held firm to his story. He clung on to
his lies and refused to confess.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what I am.
Speaker 16: I'm in a real big days here because I can't
believe this has happening in my life.
Speaker 3: Well you better believe it.
Speaker 5: And you knew it yesterday. You knew it yesterday. You
know exactly what's going on.
Speaker 3: Patrick, I know what's going on. You can't help it
if I can't believe what's happening.
Speaker 7: The well, you know what, We're going to prove that
you did it and it isn't going to be that
hard because you're there.
Speaker 5: Everybody saw you there.
Speaker 12: You're just making it worse for yourself.
Speaker 3: I did not kill anybody.
Speaker 5: You're just making it worse for yourself.
Speaker 1: But Patrick sat in jail on his parole violation, Investigators
kept working the case, and before long they had enough
to move forward. Formal murder charges were filed against him.
Speaker 21: In May, Russo was indicted for the November two thousand
and one murder of Diane Hollick. Hollick's Northwest Austin home
was up for sale. Police think Russo posed as an
interested buyer and arrest. Warren explains, November fifteenth, Hollock told
a friend a man was going to sell his ranch
and buy her home.
Speaker 14: The next day, police found her strangled body.
Speaker 1: As expected, Patrick pleaded not guilty, and what followed were
months of motions, hearings, and seemingly endless days.
Speaker 21: This is supposed to be a hearing where Patrick Russo's
defense finds out what evidence of prosecution has against it,
but the judge decides to focus on other capital murder.
Speaker 14: Cases first and postpones the hearing.
Speaker 16: I'm absolutely you know, saying, I don't think this are
having here for two years my life.
Speaker 14: It's a setback for Russo and his family.
Speaker 25: One of the things that I think has just really
been frustrating is the fact that with all the postponements,
it doesn't seem to be a system that brings about
justice the way that maybe we thought it would.
Speaker 21: Russo's family members don't want to talk about details, afraid
it might hurt the case, but say they know Russo's
innoc and just want the chance to tell his side
and get him home.
Speaker 25: Basically, our lives are on hold right now until this
situation gets resolved.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and three, Patrick's case finally went to trial,
nearly two years after Diane Hollick's murder. Prosecutors laid out
a chilling case They told jurors that Patrick Russo had
spent months cruising neighborhoods around Austin posing as a cash
buyer interested in homes for sale. Nearly every person he
approached was a woman. He'd introduced himself with different names,
spends stories about selling a ranch, and insist on meeting alone.
They presented witnesses, realtors, and homeowners who identified Patrick as
the man who'd made them uncomfortable with his behavior. Then
came the forensic evidence DNA from Diane's left hand that
matched Patrick and Hare's found on a towel inside her
home that could exclude him as the source. But what
truly unsettled the courtroom was testimony from Patrick's first wife.
She told jurors that during their marriage, Patrick had a
disturbing sexual affixation that he could only climax while joking her.
In part, that testimony helped prosecutors expose what they believed
to be Patrick's motive on his home computer. Investigators had
also uncovered over a thousand images from an exphyxiation themed
porn site called necrobabes dot com. You're welcome, Weirdo. To
the prosecution, this wasn't just pornography. It was Patrick's violent
fantasy brought to life in the murder of Diane Hollick.
Speaker 3: Well, why would y'all even think that I would do
something like that? What motive I would have had to
do something like that?
Speaker 5: I have no idea.
Speaker 3: Was it burglary, was it a robbery?
Speaker 5: Was it rape? I don't know. I mean that woman
never did anything to hurt anybody.
Speaker 3: Everybody loved that woman.
Speaker 7: I mean, I haven't heard one person say a bad
thing about this person.
Speaker 5: I mean, it had no enemies. There's no reason for it,
none whatsoever.
Speaker 1: After learning that Diane had been murdered, her family, friends,
and investigators all struggled to understand why that would someone
tie her up and strangle her for no apparent reason.
In the end, the answer wasn't complicated, just horrifying. Patrick
Russo had a fantasy, an overwhelming compulsion to choke women,
one that overpowered reason, empathy, and even his own fear
of losing his freedom. What he did wasn't driven by rage.
That was driven by a perverse need for power and control. Deliberate, predatory,
and obsessive. This reality paints a chilling picture of Diane's
final moments we know that Patrick went to her home,
tied her up, and strangled her to death, before maliciously
cleaning the scene and fleeing, but Patrick never confessed. The
most haunting details remain unknown. How did he gain control
of Diane? How long did he keep her restrained before
deciding to kill her? What did he say to her?
What did she say to him? Did she beg for
her life? Did Diane know she was going to die?
All these questions and so many others will likely never
be answered.
Speaker 3: Try to live my life and do what's right.
Speaker 7: And you say that, but would you really admit to
it if he did? If I didn't do the Christian thing,
I mean, I will tell you you wouldn't hide behind
this whole Christian cloak thing.
Speaker 16: It's not a cloak thing, it's a for real thing,
And as a Christian, I wouldn't do.
Speaker 3: Something like that.
Speaker 1: Patrick could spent years constructing a mask to the world.
He was a man of faith, a Christian, a music minister,
a husband, a family man. But behind the facade was
something else. He was a predator, prowling for women and
attempting to perfect his routine over and over until the
day he finally struck.
Speaker 7: It's disgusting to sit here and listen to you talk
about being such a devout Christian and forgiveness and how
much you've turned.
Speaker 20: Your life around, when this one coincidence after another, this
whole thing goes back to similarity that I'm sure a
coincidence so back in nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety nine too, you.
Speaker 5: Know, But you're this reborn Christian.
Speaker 12: And you're gonna sit here and lie about it.
Speaker 1: The split between the life Patrick performed and the darkness
he concealed is ultimately what defines him, and it's what
stripped away any doubt about who he truly was. Not
a man of God, not a misunderstood soul, but a
monster hiding in plain sight. Tragically, the person who paid
the ultimate price for this monster's desires was an ordinary woman,
someone simply trying to sell her home and start a
new life with her fiance.
Speaker 5: I mean, tell me what her daily routine is, do
you know?
Speaker 9: Gets up about a fifteen, it's right over to the computer,
it's see make sure the dogs are fine, and she
just starts cranking away till you know, like noon. And
I think she usually takes a shower and gets dressed
from his errands or whatever, and then cranks till whenever
she needs to crank till she'll go workout or announce
it sound like.
Speaker 11: She'd liked to go out to have sue. She once
in a while, she wasn't a big as a lad.
In the next couple of years big going out in person,
whils she's staying at home. She did a lot of
eating at home. Her kids were alife, adults. Dog was
going over kids is what I go into. They were
very important to her, so she as took care of them.
She leaned by themselves, so she was That was her
her family.
Speaker 3: I gives.
Speaker 1: On May ninth, two thousand and three, the Texas jury
returned a guilty verdict for Patrick Russo, but because they
couldn't reach a unanimous decision on the sentencing, the judge
imposed an automatic sentence of life in prison without the
possibility of parole, sparing him the death penalty. Her investigators,
this conviction was the end of a long and difficult
case for Diane's friends and family. It was the end
of something far greater, a life that never should have
been taken. As for Patrick, he will spend the rest
of his life behind bars, remembered not for his music
or his faith, but for the false life he built
in the violence that exposed it. If you like that,
and if you like things like that, head on over
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Speaker 6: Of to.
Speaker 9: A to A