Speaker 1: Buffalo, New York, known affectionately as the City of Trees,
Speaker 1: with miles of lush green parks, sports fields, and bike paths.
Speaker 1: It's an urban haven for local residents. That is, until
Speaker 1: one man's thirst for violence and his need for absolute
Speaker 1: control transforms the nation's friendliest city into a deadly hunting ground.
Speaker 2: People were afraid, what's going on? How could this happen here?
Speaker 3: The panic is up.
Speaker 4: He's looking for joggers, he's looking for women, a relentless.
Speaker 3: Search for an unstoppable predator. A man hunts. Spanning more
Speaker 3: than twenty.
Speaker 5: Years, we were living this case and we didn't sleep.
Speaker 5: It became your life.
Speaker 6: We all have that crime, ye, one crime that just
Speaker 6: sticks in your heart.
Speaker 1: Until a revolution in DNA technology finally places the killer
Speaker 1: squarely in police crosshairs, with one last chance to stop
Speaker 1: the hunter in his tracks. Amherst, New York, a large
Speaker 1: suburb just outside Buffalo, is a vibrant university town. Each fall,
Speaker 1: returning students look forward to making the most of the
Speaker 1: lush city.
Speaker 3: Parks that border the campus.
Speaker 1: But all that changes on September twenty ninth, nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: when a student goes missing from a local bike path.
Speaker 7: Linda Yellen was a twenty two year old, so she
Speaker 7: went to the University of Buffalo. She left her dorm
Speaker 7: room on that Saturday practicing for America. Later that afternoon,
Speaker 7: one of her roommates realized she had never returned.
Speaker 8: Okay, we're gonna make a sweep through these woods.
Speaker 5: They don't want everybody's stay close.
Speaker 1: Detective Lieutenant Joe Leccord of the Amherst Police Department leads
Speaker 1: the search.
Speaker 7: We immediately had patrols and detectives out searching. They searched
Speaker 7: late into the evening hours, but they didn't find anything.
Speaker 7: Very next day, they went out early again and that's
Speaker 7: when she was found.
Speaker 9: The body of twenty two year old Linda Yalam of
Speaker 9: California was found only fifty feet from the past she
Speaker 9: was running on near the UB campus. Police says she
Speaker 9: there's a new student who have been on campus for
Speaker 9: three weeks. She was training for a marathon, went for
Speaker 9: her daily run and never came back.
Speaker 8: Get these people.
Speaker 5: Back, please.
Speaker 1: Captain Michael Melton and his forensic team joined Lecourt at
Speaker 1: the scene.
Speaker 10: On Sunday. I was called in from home on a
Speaker 10: major case. We respond with our evidence team. Her body
Speaker 10: had been moved through the wooded area because there's a
Speaker 10: briar patch in there, and I could see the scrapes
Speaker 10: on her skin.
Speaker 1: From that, the physical evidence suggests Yalen was dragged from
Speaker 1: the bike path into the woods where she was raped
Speaker 1: and murdered.
Speaker 7: In looking at the scene, I have to say probably
Speaker 7: the most telling thing was the way he left her.
Speaker 7: The duct tape across her, her nose and her mouth.
Speaker 7: It's a picture you'll never forget. When you see it,
Speaker 7: You'll never lose the image.
Speaker 10: The march on the neck of the victim were very significant.
Speaker 7: You could see the double ligature around her neck, so
Speaker 7: you could see how the attack was actually propetreated.
Speaker 1: It's not the first time that Amherst investigators have come
Speaker 1: across the haunting markings.
Speaker 7: We immediately knew there was a connection. We had two
Speaker 7: prior attacks on the bike gas similar circumstances at the
Speaker 7: same time of day.
Speaker 1: Two women were raped in the same area, one in
Speaker 1: March of nineteen ninety and one in the fall of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, but unlike the latest victim, both survived
Speaker 1: their ordeal, carrying on their necks the same unmistakable markings
Speaker 1: now found on Linda yale. Lecourt digs into the case
Speaker 1: files of the first two race victims and is reminded
Speaker 1: that male DNA was recovered from one of the victims.
Speaker 1: An examination of Linda Yalem's body confirms that she was
Speaker 1: also raped her attacker, leaving behind a crucial piece of evidence.
Speaker 10: DNA was in fact recovered from her body. During the autopsy.
Speaker 1: Doctor John Simmach compares the two DNA samples and firmly
Speaker 1: cements a connection between the earlier rape and the recent murder.
Speaker 7: We knew that the DNA from Linda matched our first victim.
Speaker 7: We didn't have DNA from our second, but them was
Speaker 7: close enough. Now we had at least two DNA hits.
Speaker 7: We had evidence.
Speaker 8: We needed a name.
Speaker 1: Investigators searched the National Criminal database looking for a match,
Speaker 1: but the killer's DNA isn't in the system.
Speaker 10: It's very frustrating when you have something you know because
Speaker 10: you can use to identify a person, yet you don't
Speaker 10: have that person to identify too.
Speaker 8: We had nothing to compare it to.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the town of Amherst demands answers. Twenty two year
Speaker 1: old Linda Yalem left her University of Buffalo dorm room
Speaker 1: to go running here along the Ellica Creek bike path
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon. She never came back. Her body was found yesterday.
Speaker 1: She was strangled to death and sexually attacked, not far
Speaker 1: from where a woman was attacked here May thirty first,
Speaker 1: and another teenager raped here last year, attacks in which
Speaker 1: no one was ever arrested.
Speaker 4: The Linda Yalem attack was nerve wrecking for college students.
Speaker 4: In particular, a young girl just snatched up great and killed.
Speaker 4: It was very disturbing.
Speaker 1: With two proven rapes and a murder, police strongly suspect
Speaker 1: they are dealing with a serial rapist. Their first priority
Speaker 1: now is to protect the women of Amherst.
Speaker 7: We have not only a murder striking in the heart
Speaker 7: of town. We have a murder and a rapist. We're
Speaker 7: just about begging women not to walk along in the path.
Speaker 1: Investigators turn their attention to the killer's mo They look
Speaker 1: to his choice of victim, the attack locations, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: his trademark signature, the double legature marks.
Speaker 10: When we looked at the injury patterns from all of
Speaker 10: our victims, when we were at the autopsies, we look
Speaker 10: for fibers, any pattern of what could cause this.
Speaker 1: Captain Milton analyzes the ligature marks and concludes they were
Speaker 1: made with the crudest of weapons, a.
Speaker 3: Deceptively simple homemade garrot.
Speaker 10: The garrat is nothing more than a piece of cordage
Speaker 10: or wire. It may have handles of fixed to either end,
Speaker 10: it may not. It's simply a device that could be
Speaker 10: wrapped around the neck and pulled.
Speaker 7: Tight with the hands to be able to use the
Speaker 7: garat as quickly in the fashion that he did and take.
Speaker 8: Control so quickly. The feeling was.
Speaker 7: There was some specialist training with our suspect.
Speaker 8: So we knew he was comfortable with life.
Speaker 7: There was a sense of that he wouldn't stop his
Speaker 7: attacks because he was getting away with it.
Speaker 3: But narrowing in on a suspect is a nearly.
Speaker 1: Impossible task until one surviving victim steps forward with a
Speaker 1: startling piece of new evidence. In nineteen ninety, a peaceful
Speaker 1: suburb of Amherst, New York, is rocked when police discover
Speaker 1: the body of a college student brutally raped and murdered
Speaker 1: in one of the city's parks. Realizing the killer'smo matches
Speaker 1: that of two earlier rapes, police fear they are chasing
Speaker 1: a serial rapist who has.
Speaker 3: Now graduated to murder. On high alert, investigators.
Speaker 1: Cast a wide net every effort to catching the notorious
Speaker 1: bike path rapist. They start by contacting neighboring police divisions
Speaker 1: looking for reported attacks that bear the killer's signature m
Speaker 1: ON and get an immediate response in nearby Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 7: Now we're starting to work with the city of Buffalo.
Speaker 7: Now we're into a position where everybody's starting to look
Speaker 7: at the crimes to see if what the connections are,
Speaker 7: if there are.
Speaker 1: Any pulling out unsolved rape reports. The Buffalo PD uncovers
Speaker 1: three cases that bear strong similarities to the Amherst attacks.
Speaker 7: The areas where there were done was similar to the
Speaker 7: area in our time. They had to double garat they
Speaker 7: had duct taped.
Speaker 3: From the files.
Speaker 1: They also discovered that physical evidence was recovered from each
Speaker 1: of the Buffalo rape victims.
Speaker 10: They had developed DNA and we asked that DNA be
Speaker 10: sent to Google ad for comparison to our cases.
Speaker 1: In comparing the Buffalo DNA samples with those recovered from
Speaker 1: the Amherst victims, police strike goal.
Speaker 7: They had DNA that now they've matched the herse so
Speaker 7: we knew that we had the same guy.
Speaker 1: We knew the cases were liked, and I noticed a
Speaker 1: man seeking more information on their rapist. Police reinterview Buffalo victims,
Speaker 1: focusing on the various details of their attacks.
Speaker 2: They would go by him on a blanke pad. Sometimes
Speaker 2: he would let them go by and then if you
Speaker 2: would turn around and commit the attack.
Speaker 1: The rapist revealing a brazen show of aggression.
Speaker 5: Some of them described looking into his eyes.
Speaker 10: She had been attacked with a garage and the medical
Speaker 10: information that we had as she was suffering from oxygen deprivation.
Speaker 1: The woman described slipping in and out of consciousness during
Speaker 1: the attack, making it.
Speaker 3: Impossible for her to fight off her attacker.
Speaker 10: A garat can work in a couple of different manners,
Speaker 10: but basically what it'll do is shut off the blood
Speaker 10: flow through the garrotid arteries. It cuts it right off,
Speaker 10: and it takes the person unconscious and anywhere. It's from
Speaker 10: five to fifteen seconds. If it's pulled tightly, you can
Speaker 10: cause more damage. You can render a person unconscious, or
Speaker 10: you can kill.
Speaker 8: A person.
Speaker 1: Deliberately choking his victims and forcing them in and out
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Investigators suspect the satist is using the attacks
Speaker 1: to act out his most perverse fantasies.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what the garat as we're doing the investigation.
Speaker 5: We tried it with a rope. You're totally helpless. There's
Speaker 5: nothing you can do.
Speaker 2: So once it was around in and act pursuits totally
Speaker 2: under his control.
Speaker 1: The interviews provide police with chilling insight into the mindset
Speaker 1: of their killer, an unearth aor breakthrough in the case.
Speaker 1: All three Buffalo rape victims stared directly into the eyes
Speaker 1: of their attacker.
Speaker 2: There were a number of victims that actually got a
Speaker 2: good look at them.
Speaker 5: They gave a great description of them.
Speaker 7: They put their suspect at somewhere between and five eleven.
Speaker 7: That he was shorter in stature, stocky build. Everyone gave
Speaker 7: us full head of wavy here. Matter of fact, we
Speaker 7: were then able to compile some composites that were put
Speaker 7: out to the public.
Speaker 1: The composite is broadcast on Western New York stations. Tip
Speaker 1: lines are flooded, and the publicity surrounding the case starts
Speaker 1: to pay off.
Speaker 2: One woman that came forward actually was a prostitute the
Speaker 2: city of Buffalo.
Speaker 1: The woman recounts how she was recently picked up by
Speaker 1: a John and suddenly attacked inside his car.
Speaker 2: She had to gront around her neck and she was
Speaker 2: actually held out on the passenger side floor as he
Speaker 2: drove out of the city into one of the local
Speaker 2: suburban areas. Net Hamburg took her into remote field area
Speaker 2: with a creek and actually attacked her there, left her unconscious,
Speaker 2: and I think he believed she was dead.
Speaker 1: The prostitute leads police to the clearing where she was raped.
Speaker 1: She then discloses another horrific detail about the rapists' m O.
Speaker 2: It was so staged that not only did he already
Speaker 2: have the area planned out, he already had ripped the
Speaker 2: ductate hung it nearby. That there was a lot of
Speaker 2: pre planning. He was well prepared.
Speaker 7: We could surmise that he was studying his locales. You
Speaker 7: could tell that he wasn't just out there for a
Speaker 7: few minutes.
Speaker 5: I think he sat and he waited.
Speaker 2: Now when the time was right and there was a victim,
Speaker 2: he felt comfortable that they were alone, that was a
Speaker 2: victim that he attacked him.
Speaker 1: Lacourt notes another similarity across each attack. They all took
Speaker 1: place in the morning between seven thirty am and noone.
Speaker 7: We were under assumption based on the time end of
Speaker 7: the day that our perpetrator either worked in the midnight
Speaker 7: shift or the afternoon shift, so he was just available
Speaker 7: during the day.
Speaker 1: Spurred on by this new piece of information, police ramp
Speaker 1: up their message to women using the bike path.
Speaker 4: The biggest warning that came out was don't do it alone.
Speaker 7: If you have a.
Speaker 4: Partner, you're safe, but if you're alone, you're at risk.
Speaker 4: There's somebody out there and you didn't know who it was.
Speaker 4: Women were nervous. They were very, very concerned.
Speaker 3: And with good reason.
Speaker 1: Despite their intense investigation, Buffalo Area police are still no
Speaker 1: closer to nabbing.
Speaker 3: The bike path rapist.
Speaker 1: What starts as a simple murder case in Amherst, New York,
Speaker 1: explodes into a complex investigation involving seven rape victims across
Speaker 1: three jurisdictions. Up against a brazen offender who strikes in
Speaker 1: broad daylight, police decides to zero in on his attack sites.
Speaker 7: We knew that our perpetrator now came back to our
Speaker 7: location three different times, so we knew he was.
Speaker 8: Comfortable with it. He knew he was getting away with it.
Speaker 7: There was a sense of that he wouldn't stop his
Speaker 7: attacks because he was getting away with it.
Speaker 1: Police know that if they want to catch their killer,
Speaker 1: they have to lure him out of hiding. They start
Speaker 1: by planning undercover female officers along the bike path.
Speaker 10: We had officers in the woods watching our decoys taking photographs.
Speaker 10: Hundreds and hundreds of photographs are taken of possible suspects, but.
Speaker 3: The killer doesn't take the bait.
Speaker 1: Good morning investigators are forced to turn to the public
Speaker 1: for help.
Speaker 7: Or looking for any witnesses or begging the public for
Speaker 7: anything they may have seen.
Speaker 1: Police blanket the area with photos of the composite driving,
Speaker 1: hoping someone will recognize the killer.
Speaker 7: We always felt that based on who this man was
Speaker 7: and his mo of being available in the morning, and
Speaker 7: his description that someone out there knew someone lived with him,
Speaker 7: we were reaching for a sense of you know, something's
Speaker 7: not right.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna call him, give his.
Speaker 3: Name, and the names start pouring in.
Speaker 7: Abundance of tips all over the country, from ex husbands
Speaker 7: to present husbands, to ex rapists to people that were
Speaker 7: well known rapists in communities. We probably got close to
Speaker 7: two thousand tips.
Speaker 1: Investigators follow up on the leads, questioning hundreds of men,
Speaker 1: but after countless interviews, there's still no further ahead. Steady
Speaker 1: media attention pays off when a Buffalo dry cleaner notes
Speaker 1: a striking resemblance between the sketch of the rapist.
Speaker 3: And one of his customers.
Speaker 1: Following up on the tip, investigators bring them in in
Speaker 1: for questioning and learn that the suspect has a record
Speaker 1: a mile long.
Speaker 3: They place him in a lineup.
Speaker 1: Hoping Buffalo rape victims can identify their attacker.
Speaker 6: Number three.
Speaker 7: Match the description, height, weight, He looked like the composite
Speaker 7: and actually had a record.
Speaker 8: He matched what we would be looking for in a suspect.
Speaker 7: Two of the victims in Buffalo were able to pick
Speaker 7: out the same suspect as their attacker.
Speaker 1: Now all they need is the physical evidence to tie
Speaker 1: him to the crimes.
Speaker 7: And he gave us his blood and he got his DNA.
Speaker 1: The suspects DNA is then compared to the seamen samples
Speaker 1: taken from Linda Jalem's body and the other victims.
Speaker 3: The results are shocking.
Speaker 10: The DNA is saying no, and that's what you have
Speaker 10: to go with, and you have to move that person aside.
Speaker 10: They're no longer a suspect.
Speaker 1: After months of searching for their killer, investigators are once
Speaker 1: again left grasping at straws.
Speaker 7: So at that point, again we were going through one
Speaker 7: of our highs and lows. We thought we had our guy,
Speaker 7: and then found out we did.
Speaker 1: Despite a composite sketch, thousands of tips, and hundreds of
Speaker 1: hours on the case, police are no closer to finding
Speaker 1: the brazen attacker, a killer capable of hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 8: He was real good at blending in, so no one came.
Speaker 7: Forward and said we saw a suspicious looking guy or
Speaker 7: someone to look like he didn't belong on the bid.
Speaker 7: We were looking for someone we felt was connected to
Speaker 7: every area, because he was so familiar with shortcuts in
Speaker 7: areas that not everybody would know him.
Speaker 1: Investigators are convinced the killer is living among them.
Speaker 4: You just didn't think that somebody, a Buffalonian, someone living
Speaker 4: and working in this community, that someone you would see
Speaker 4: in the grocery store, could be responsible for something so
Speaker 4: heinous in his own community.
Speaker 1: No one wanted to believe that. And while police pour
Speaker 1: every resource into patrolling the bicycle paths looking for a
Speaker 1: good turn, the killer is about to cast a wider net,
Speaker 1: ready to tighten the noose around.
Speaker 5: His next victim.
Speaker 1: For two years, Buffalo police have been searching for an
Speaker 1: elusive serial rapist, patrolling city parks in an effort to
Speaker 1: prevent another brutal attack, and their hard work seems to
Speaker 1: be paying off until the fall of nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: when an investigator makes a gruesome discovery.
Speaker 2: There was a body that was found that belonged to
Speaker 2: a woman who was known to be a prostitute in
Speaker 2: the city of Buffalo.
Speaker 1: The woman is identified as thirty two year old May
Speaker 1: Jane Maser, yet another victim branded by the serial rapists'
Speaker 1: double ligature.
Speaker 8: Marks I think our guy's back.
Speaker 3: The coroner reports that, like the earlier victims, May Jane
Speaker 3: was raped.
Speaker 5: The DNA actually came back to the playpath rapist.
Speaker 7: Looking at Jane Maser, what immediately stood out was that.
Speaker 1: She was a non prostitute, the second prostitute to be
Speaker 1: attacked in the Buffalo area. Investigators question mcjane's boyfriend, hoping
Speaker 1: to piece together her final hours. The boyfriend tells patronic
Speaker 1: Thatmjane was last seen disappearing into a customer's car right
Speaker 1: over there.
Speaker 5: At the time that she was picked up.
Speaker 2: Her living boyfriend looked out the window and he actually
Speaker 2: gave close enough a description that he said the hand
Speaker 2: that reached over to unlock the door when she was
Speaker 2: getting in the car was that of a white male.
Speaker 2: He described the car as a Pinac Sunbird that was
Speaker 2: a four door vehicle.
Speaker 8: Don't you guys picked her up right?
Speaker 1: Police follow up on the make of the car, but
Speaker 1: without a plate number.
Speaker 3: The lead goes nowhere was the car.
Speaker 1: Customer driving the Pontiac Sunbird a regular john. Police officers
Speaker 1: scour the city, canvassing Buffalo prostitutes, hoping someone will recognize
Speaker 1: the composite sketch of the killer.
Speaker 2: And we weren't coming up with anything as far as
Speaker 2: you know, interviewing prostitutes.
Speaker 1: Bringing investigators right back to where they start. The elusive
Speaker 1: bike path rapists continuing to operate under the police radar.
Speaker 11: We were looking for every man and it truly what
Speaker 11: he was. He blended in the fact that he went
Speaker 11: this long without being caught showed you that he was
Speaker 11: someone who could blend in. He was nondescript.
Speaker 1: Desperately, Lecourt decides to broaden his search for suspects by
Speaker 1: looking outside the Buffalo area.
Speaker 3: He begins to develop.
Speaker 1: A suspect pool, turning his focus to convicted rapists recently
Speaker 1: released from New York State Prisons.
Speaker 7: Going back over bull tips, reading the file over and
Speaker 7: over again, we were able to develop the name of gentleman, who,
Speaker 7: as it turned out, was a convicted rapist who looked
Speaker 7: exactly like our composite. He lived in every one of
Speaker 7: the locations where we had at tax so we were
Speaker 7: tasked with finding him and we located them in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Lacourt wastes no time in chasing their new suspect. He
Speaker 1: checks in on his last known address, but learns from
Speaker 1: the landlord that the man has.
Speaker 3: Since moved on. While canvassing the area with his photo.
Speaker 1: Of the convicted rapist, you have a second, Lacourt finally
Speaker 1: catches a break when a local cocktail waitress recognizes the
Speaker 1: man as a regular patron.
Speaker 3: She's even able to supply an.
Speaker 7: Address, Thank you very much, Thanks you can, But.
Speaker 1: The convicted rapist has no interest in talking to police,
Speaker 1: only backing the court suspicions that the man from North
Speaker 1: Carolina is there long sought after bike path rapist.
Speaker 8: He was doing almost one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 7: We're trying to keep up with them. We have three
Speaker 7: officers and three separate cars chasing this guy at one
Speaker 7: hundred thousan an hour.
Speaker 10: Old about.
Speaker 1: Investigators immediately collect a sample of the suspects DNA. The
Speaker 1: court stands by, ready to throw the rapist back in jail.
Speaker 7: It was one of those times that we allowed ourselves
Speaker 7: to get real high because we never had a guy
Speaker 7: before who matched the description, was connected to every area,
Speaker 7: and prior rapes looked like our guy was the same
Speaker 7: size as our guy, looked like the gentleman that the
Speaker 7: two prior victims picked out of the lineup.
Speaker 8: It doesn't get any better than that.
Speaker 1: Doctor Simmage compares the suspect sample to the bike Path
Speaker 1: rapists DNA.
Speaker 7: And we were so sure we were just waiting the results.
Speaker 7: We were ready to go slap the cuffs down.
Speaker 1: But once again, the DNA doesn't match the killer's sample,
Speaker 1: and the convicted rapist is suddenly off the hook.
Speaker 7: What do you mean, it's not our guy has to
Speaker 7: be our guy. We just didn't want to believe it,
Speaker 7: so we literally went and had.
Speaker 8: A visit with doctor Simmons.
Speaker 7: Doctor, you're sure something can't be wrong. I mean, now
Speaker 7: it's like this, everything's right, not your guy. And he
Speaker 7: kind of hesitated, and he says, but I have to
Speaker 7: tell you that he has wanted for another rape that
Speaker 7: occurred in the village of Hamburg. The brutal rape of
Speaker 7: a young girl behind a mom does man steadity. So
Speaker 7: we were happy, now we've got a rapist, but kind
Speaker 7: of said, it's not our rapist.
Speaker 1: With the suspect behind bars, investigators are back to square one,
Speaker 1: left to wonder when and where the bike path killer
Speaker 1: will strike next.
Speaker 3: That is until eerie police.
Speaker 1: Receive a frantic nine to one one call and learn
Speaker 1: that a young woman was violently attacked on a bike
Speaker 1: trail in the small Buffalo suburb of Clarence.
Speaker 8: New York. Better call an ambulance.
Speaker 7: A fourteen year old girl who was on her way
Speaker 7: to school walking along the bike get holmes. There's a
Speaker 7: shortcut from our house and bars Ramnan from her highnd.
Speaker 7: She was dragged over a fence and then she was raped.
Speaker 1: A DNA sample taken from the young woman perfectly matches
Speaker 1: that of the bike path rapist, bringing the offenders violent
Speaker 1: tally to nine innocent victims. The man's impulsive behavior continues
Speaker 1: to baffle police.
Speaker 11: He murdered, he murdered, he rapes. The only thing that
Speaker 11: we thought is she didn't fight. She gave a control
Speaker 11: to him. He got what he wanted control, He acted
Speaker 11: out his sexual fantasy.
Speaker 8: He had his control.
Speaker 1: With that insatiable need for control, the killer increasingly shows
Speaker 1: that when it comes to women, everyone is fair game.
Speaker 1: The rape of a fourteen year old girl has only
Speaker 1: served to light a blazing fire under police. But with
Speaker 1: the offender attacking right under their noses and brazenly leaving
Speaker 1: his DNA at every scene, why can't investigators find him?
Speaker 1: Can police unmasked the deadly bike path rapists before he
Speaker 1: strikes again. For the last five years, Buffalo police have
Speaker 1: trailed a serial rapist with a vicious taste for murder.
Speaker 3: Following the recent rape of a local high school student.
Speaker 1: Investigators dedicate every police resource available to finding their killer,
Speaker 1: but the offender doesn't resurface, and more than twelve years
Speaker 1: passed without further incident. Although a top priority for police,
Speaker 1: the case grows cold and the elusive bike path rapist
Speaker 1: appears to have vanished.
Speaker 8: Was he in jail, was he dead?
Speaker 7: Nobody knew or nobody know if he just had an
Speaker 7: an abundance of self control where he was just waiting
Speaker 7: for the right opportunity to do to you.
Speaker 1: With the sudden lung, headlines of rape and murder fade
Speaker 1: from the front pages and calm is once again restored
Speaker 1: to Buffalo Parks.
Speaker 4: People who are just wondering, did he die, did he
Speaker 4: go away?
Speaker 3: Is he in jail?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 4: That was a big concern or big thought that you know, well,
Speaker 4: there haven't been any rapes in a long time until
Speaker 4: two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: When a woman from Clarence, New York, a small town
Speaker 1: northeast of Buffalo, is reported missing.
Speaker 2: Her husband reported that she didn't pick their child up
Speaker 2: from nursery school and that was out of the norm
Speaker 2: for her.
Speaker 1: When Buffalo investigators learned that Joan Diver, a mother of four,
Speaker 1: was running on the local bike path when she disappeared,
Speaker 1: they are struck with a morbid sense of deja voo.
Speaker 2: We actually called in helicopters for an aerial search.
Speaker 5: We had dogs from.
Speaker 2: Neighboring jurisdictions doing searches, and by the end of the
Speaker 2: search we still haven't found anything.
Speaker 1: But two days later, while scouring the thick brush off
Speaker 1: the main path, officers finally discover her butt.
Speaker 2: She was found about twenty to thirty feet in in
Speaker 2: the brush and it looked like that she was dragged
Speaker 2: head first. The thing that stuck out to us was
Speaker 2: the ligature marks on her neck.
Speaker 7: And one thing I knew for sure was that the
Speaker 7: i'm all was similar and the date was the that
Speaker 7: Linda Yalen was raped and murder.
Speaker 1: Twenty two year old Linda Yaleen was killed on a
Speaker 1: bike path in Amherst, New York on September twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety sixteen years ago to the day.
Speaker 2: And that's when I first hit in my head, like
Speaker 2: this eerie feeling that this individual may be back.
Speaker 8: What was that you wanted to show me?
Speaker 1: But investigators are puzzled by Joan divers autopsy results.
Speaker 5: There was no sign of any sexual.
Speaker 3: Assault and no DNA left at the scene.
Speaker 2: The big question was is he back or is this
Speaker 2: someone else that's trying to copy what he did.
Speaker 1: Investigators interviewed Joan Diver's husband and learned that she drove
Speaker 1: to the park that morning, likely parking her SUV in
Speaker 1: the lot near the running path, but police can't locate
Speaker 1: the vehicle anywhere on the ground.
Speaker 2: Her vehicle being moved to something that we never experienced,
Speaker 2: that he would actually take something belonging to the victim.
Speaker 3: Searching the area, they discover the missing.
Speaker 2: We found it part about three miles away. What I
Speaker 2: believe happened was that he used the vehicle as a
Speaker 2: mechanism to get away from the scene, you know, quickly
Speaker 2: and part too closer to where his vehicle was, so
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have had to spend five miles either running
Speaker 2: or biking down the bike path to get away from
Speaker 2: the scene.
Speaker 1: The question is if the killer drove the car, did
Speaker 1: he leave any clues inside the vehicle To find out,
Speaker 1: the suv undergoes extensive forensic examination.
Speaker 2: The swabs that were coming back either negative or they
Speaker 2: were coming back with someone from the divers family DNA.
Speaker 3: But investigators refuse to give up.
Speaker 11: If you're going to move the car, or do you
Speaker 11: have to touch someone's got to touch that key and
Speaker 11: turn the key.
Speaker 1: On the ignition, a seasoned Erie County deputy recovers a
Speaker 1: single beat of sweat and a familiar DNA signature.
Speaker 2: One of the swabs that came back and the match
Speaker 2: was the bike path rapist. Kavy Goosebump said, now you
Speaker 2: know for a fact that this person's back after twelve years.
Speaker 6: My initial reaction was my heart beat went up extremely high.
Speaker 6: I muttered a few words that I can't repeat. We
Speaker 6: have the same guy, bike path rapists, same profile.
Speaker 1: Investigators focus on their DNA evidence looking for answers. In
Speaker 1: recent advancements made in forensic science.
Speaker 6: A new technology was developed that was capable of determining
Speaker 6: the biogeographical origin of an individual.
Speaker 1: The biogeographical technology studies one hundred and sixty genetic markers
Speaker 1: or DNA sequences, each marker corresponding to a population that
Speaker 1: lives in a specific.
Speaker 3: Geographical region or country.
Speaker 1: Using the new test, Doctor Simmich examines the bike path
Speaker 1: rapists DNA and based on the markers, is able to
Speaker 1: determine a percentage breakdown of the killer's geographical ancestry, and.
Speaker 6: It was dead on for a Hispanic individual. I then
Speaker 6: requested to meet with the task force.
Speaker 11: When we talked to doctor John Simmas, he told us
Speaker 11: as probably some of Latino descent.
Speaker 1: Knowing their Latino killer frequented prostitutes. Investigators revisit old leads.
Speaker 11: We looked at everybody who's ever arrested for patronizing and
Speaker 11: prostitute in a ten year period in Erie, County. We
Speaker 11: took all the Latino surnames and pulled them off that list.
Speaker 8: We had a book with hundreds of names.
Speaker 1: Mcgrelli pulls every Latino name from a long list of
Speaker 1: men arrested for soliciting prostitutes between nineteen eighty nine and
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. Host He crossed references the two documents,
Speaker 1: zeroing in on names appearing on both lists.
Speaker 11: Two names came up. One was a gentleman who was
Speaker 11: in jail, and the other one is the Altemio Sanchez.
Speaker 1: Investigators learned that Altemio Sanchez, a local Buffalo man, was
Speaker 1: arrested twice for patronizing prostitutes, first in nineteen ninety one
Speaker 1: and then again in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: The police also interviewed.
Speaker 1: Sanchez in nineteen ninety after a witness reported seeing him
Speaker 1: on the bike path the day Linda Yaleen was murdered.
Speaker 1: But the nineteen ninety interview reports indicate that Sanchez was
Speaker 1: highly cooperative with police and bore no resemblance to the rapist,
Speaker 1: the attacker, described as a man with a full head
Speaker 1: of wavy, dark hair. Reluctant to let Sanchez off the hook,
Speaker 1: the team digs into his background. Searching financial and employment records,
Speaker 1: they discovered that twenty years ago, in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: he co signed a loan for his uncle, a man
Speaker 1: named Wilfredo Carabello and a prime suspected an unsolved Buffalo
Speaker 1: rape case dating back to nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: A Buffalo State College student was cutting through Dela repart
Speaker 2: to go home. She was raped very close to the
Speaker 2: area a lot of.
Speaker 5: These other bike cath rapist attacks occurred. Three days later,
Speaker 5: she was at a molinarry of the Boulevard mom and.
Speaker 2: She saw her attacker. She reports that to her sister.
Speaker 2: The sister follows the attacker out of the mall to
Speaker 2: get the license plate. They call the police.
Speaker 1: From the nineteen eighty one case file, Patronic learns that
Speaker 1: the vehicle spotted at the mall was registered to Wilfredo Carabello.
Speaker 1: Carabella was questioned at the time, but denied any wrong
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 3: He was finally.
Speaker 1: Dismissed as a suspect when the victim failed to identify
Speaker 1: him as her attacker. No, but why was Carabello's name
Speaker 1: resurfacing twenty five years later and in connection with recent rapes?
Speaker 3: Police bring him in for questionation.
Speaker 2: What we wanted was to swab him as a potential suspect,
Speaker 2: to clear him or possibly identify him as a bike
Speaker 2: path rapist.
Speaker 1: The swab is sent to the lab for immediate DNA analysis.
Speaker 2: Doctor Simmach called us and said that swab you handed
Speaker 2: in has very close familial ties with the bike path rapist.
Speaker 9: Sir.
Speaker 1: The test results clear Carabello as a suspect, but police
Speaker 1: still want to know why the rape victim recognized his
Speaker 1: vehicle at a Buffalo mall back in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: My nephew, he said, well, there's something I didn't tell
Speaker 2: the police back on. My nephew, Altimil Sanchez was driving
Speaker 2: the vehicle.
Speaker 1: Carabello confesses he loaned his car to his nephew the
Speaker 1: day the college student was raped in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: and then again three days later when it was spotted
Speaker 1: at the mall, holding back the information all these years
Speaker 1: to protect his nephew.
Speaker 2: We immediately that day turned around and started focusing. Basically,
Speaker 2: we shut down everything we were doing and we focused
Speaker 2: on a Teamial Sanchez.
Speaker 1: The pieces of the puzzle suddenly start to fall into place.
Speaker 2: He actually had a pine afford or Sumburg registered in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: The same make of car that Majeane Maser was seen
Speaker 1: getting into the day she was murdered. Sanchez is placed
Speaker 1: under twenty four hour surveillance, where investigators discover that the
Speaker 1: man they've been hunting for sixteen years is a respected
Speaker 1: family man, a very unlikely candidate for a serial rapist
Speaker 1: and killer.
Speaker 2: He worked at a local company, had a great work record,
Speaker 2: mary two children, realactive with his church.
Speaker 1: With a prime suspect finally in their sights, do police
Speaker 1: have enough concrete evidence to prove that Altemio Sanchez, a
Speaker 1: pillar of his community, is the cold blooded serial killer
Speaker 1: they've been searching for all along.
Speaker 3: Buffalo Area police.
Speaker 1: Are convinced that the bike path raquist responsible for terrorizing
Speaker 1: eleven innocent women across the States for more than two
Speaker 1: decades is a local, hardworking family man. But the suspect,
Speaker 1: Altemio Sanchez, denies accusations of rape and murder and refuses
Speaker 1: to cooperate with police.
Speaker 7: Now we have to figure out why to find out
Speaker 7: whether he truly is our guy. Now it has to
Speaker 7: be determined how to get his day name.
Speaker 2: We started surveillance on him twenty four to seven. We
Speaker 2: attempted a couple of different things.
Speaker 1: Digging deeper into his background, investigators learned that Sanchez is
Speaker 1: illegally in possession of a gun.
Speaker 2: He actually had outstanding permit that was suspended because of
Speaker 2: one is his prostitution arrestling. We went over to his
Speaker 2: house on a ruse to pick up the weapon, hoping
Speaker 2: we'd have DNA on the weapon. We were posing this
Speaker 2: two detectives from pistol permits. We needed to pick up
Speaker 2: this weapon.
Speaker 1: The gun undergoes immediate forensic examination.
Speaker 2: And we were hoping that he was going to leave
Speaker 2: some DNA on the weapon, and you know Murphy's law.
Speaker 2: When it came back there wasn't. We weren't successful with
Speaker 2: the DNA match.
Speaker 1: Surveillance teams continue to watch Sanchez, looking for any opportunity
Speaker 1: to collect his discard at DNA.
Speaker 11: We're on twenty four seven, but.
Speaker 1: Sanchez gives police a little to work with, never playing
Speaker 1: into their hands.
Speaker 2: We're frustrated, but we knew we're just going to stay
Speaker 2: on this guy until we get it.
Speaker 1: For ten whole days, investigators remain in a standoff until
Speaker 1: Sanchez takes his wife to a local restaurant where police
Speaker 1: wait for him to make a mistake.
Speaker 11: How team and his wife kind of got dressed up,
Speaker 11: and he went to kind of a nice urban, oh
Speaker 11: chic restaurant, and our investigators went in there and he
Speaker 11: said at.
Speaker 5: The bar and watched him.
Speaker 11: As soon as he's down on his meal, you're able
Speaker 11: to collect his napkin and utensils, drinking glass.
Speaker 1: Once again, Doctor Simmitch wastes no time and tests the
Speaker 1: evidence looking for traces of Sanchez's DNA.
Speaker 6: I was working almost around the clock just because of
Speaker 6: the the feeling that this was the person, and I
Speaker 6: really wanted to see if this was going to be
Speaker 6: the end of it.
Speaker 2: As we were waiting for doctor Simmits to call us
Speaker 2: on the DNA and we all grouped together that evening
Speaker 2: and we're in the task force. And when the phone rang,
Speaker 2: I asked doctor Simmis to hold on and put him
Speaker 2: on speaker phone, and everybody was huddled around the telephone
Speaker 2: and the first words.
Speaker 5: Out of doctor Simmitsch's mouth was you got him.
Speaker 2: And everybody was so excited that we finally identified this
Speaker 2: person that's been evading us for decades.
Speaker 8: Scott Patrona called me up and said, Steve it's him.
Speaker 8: It's him.
Speaker 11: I'm a car driving out of New York State Thruway,
Speaker 11: screaming my.
Speaker 8: Wife that looks at me. She goes, are you crazy?
Speaker 5: I go, we got him.
Speaker 11: She's like no, I said, we got him.
Speaker 1: We got him or Police tracked down Sanchez on his
Speaker 1: way home from working the night shift at a local factor.
Speaker 11: As soon as he left work, we were on him.
Speaker 11: No matter what.
Speaker 8: He wasn't going home.
Speaker 1: What's that? After eluding the law for more than two decades,
Speaker 1: the notorious bike path rapist is finally a police custody.
Speaker 9: He's often been called a monster, also known through the
Speaker 9: years as the bike path Rapist. Twenty one years after
Speaker 9: the first case, link by forensics authorities now have arrested
Speaker 9: Altemio Sanchez, saying they have a one DNA match.
Speaker 2: The community where Altimo Sanchez lived was very upset by this.
Speaker 5: You know, they didn't believe it.
Speaker 2: I even't received calls from some of the neighbors that
Speaker 2: you know, you guys have the wrong guy.
Speaker 5: We just have to let you know this is not
Speaker 5: the guy.
Speaker 2: But the thing that we had in our corner on
Speaker 2: this case was the DNA.
Speaker 1: And in the face of irrefutable forensic evidence.
Speaker 3: On May sixteenth, two.
Speaker 1: Thousand and seven, Altemio Sanchez pleads guilty to three counts
Speaker 1: of murder. Three months later, he is sentenced to seventy
Speaker 1: five years.
Speaker 3: In prison with no chance of parole. Because in New.
Speaker 1: York State, rapes are subject to a five year statute
Speaker 1: of limitations, Sanchez is only prosecuted for a portion of
Speaker 1: the rapes he committed. Authorities believe he is responsible for
Speaker 1: twenty five more, dating back as far as nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4: He was just an average guy, an average working guy
Speaker 4: in Buffalow, held a blue collar job, family man, everyone said.
Speaker 4: He loved his wife. He would open up his home
Speaker 4: in the summer, having the neighbors over. If the neighbors
Speaker 4: needed anything, he was there to assist them. Did things
Speaker 4: at the church, work bingo. It's the guy, you would
Speaker 4: say at the corner store.
Speaker 2: He had the capability to turn the switch on one
Speaker 2: minute and be this horrific monster and turn it off
Speaker 2: and be the good family man the next.
Speaker 7: I think all cops wanted to just go out knowing
Speaker 7: that someone didn't get away, someone didn't beat him, and
Speaker 7: very honestly, he beat us for a long time.
Speaker 1: Every year, Greater Buffalo honors victims of the bike Path
Speaker 1: terrorist with a focus on preventing any such tragedies from
Speaker 1: ever happening again. The annual Linda Yalem's Safety Rock is
Speaker 1: held at the University at Buffalo to remember the victims
Speaker 1: and to promote personal safety.
Speaker 4: STA