Speaker 1: Hey, listener, I just wanted to give you a heads
Speaker 1: up that in this episode we tell quite a lot
Speaker 1: of stories about rape and sexual assault. If you're affected
Speaker 1: by anything that you hear, there are some resources you
Speaker 1: can access for support in the show notes, but also
Speaker 1: no pressure to listen if you do want to, though
Speaker 1: there's lots of really.
Speaker 2: Inspiring stuff in there.
Speaker 1: You're going to hear one detective's dogged quest to bring
Speaker 1: perpetrators to justice.
Speaker 2: It's a great listen, all right, take care.
Speaker 1: The story starts on a Friday night back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, and it starts, as it will go on,
Speaker 1: with a mind blowing coincidence.
Speaker 3: Oh it was like a scene in the movie How
Speaker 3: It Happened. I was going to a barescuit bing girl,
Speaker 3: and I invaded a couple of my best friends.
Speaker 1: Rose Brady is a police sergeant and after years of
Speaker 1: working in homicide, she's just been put in charge of
Speaker 1: Baltimore County's SVU, the team investigating cases of sexual violence.
Speaker 2: It's a frustrating job.
Speaker 1: The crimes she's investigating are just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: Her department is sitting on thousands of unsolved cases dating
Speaker 1: back decades. So that Friday night, Rose wants to blow
Speaker 1: off some steam in the most wholesome way imaginable by
Speaker 1: playing basket bingo, which, as far as I understand, it
Speaker 1: is the same as regular bingo, only you play it
Speaker 1: for longer burger baskets. I've looked into it and it's
Speaker 1: a brand of these old timey looking woven baskets.
Speaker 3: Longen Burger biskets are a big thing, or they were
Speaker 3: back then two thousand and four. I mean, women will
Speaker 3: die for these baskets. Well, if you win the bingo,
Speaker 3: your prize is a Longenburger basket in they fill it
Speaker 3: with all kinds of goodies.
Speaker 1: Rose is heading to this basket extravaganza with one of
Speaker 1: her best friends, Mary, who happens to work at a
Speaker 1: local hospital.
Speaker 3: She worked in forensics, and she worked for a doctor
Speaker 3: Braknegger who I didn't know who. That was driving her
Speaker 3: van and I'm sitting in the front on the passenger's side,
Speaker 3: and she said to me, well, when are you going
Speaker 3: to come and get doctor B's slides? And I'm like,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? I don't even know what
Speaker 3: are you talking about.
Speaker 1: This is when Rose discovers that Mary's boss, the forensic
Speaker 1: pathologist Dr. Rudy Breitnecker, had in storage all the biological
Speaker 1: evidence from every rape exam he had ever performed at
Speaker 1: the hospital. Alarm bells went off for Rose. It's like
Speaker 1: she'd hit on a solution to a problem she hadn't
Speaker 1: even realized could be solved.
Speaker 3: When she said that, I said, going back to what date?
Speaker 3: Because in nineteen seventy seven a friend of mine had
Speaker 3: been sexually assaulted by a stranger and had never been cleared.
Speaker 3: So I asked her how far back did these slides
Speaker 3: go and she said to nineteen seventy seven. I was like,
Speaker 3: you have got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: Those slides could contain the DNA of the man who
Speaker 1: attacked Rose's friend, which now in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: could be used to solve her friend's case, but not
Speaker 1: only that.
Speaker 3: And I said, how many do you have? And she said,
Speaker 3: we have like probably hundreds and hundred.
Speaker 1: Rose has stumbled upon the key to more than one
Speaker 1: thousand cold cases of rape.
Speaker 3: I knew, and I think I told her this that
Speaker 3: there's a gold mine there.
Speaker 1: On this week's episode of The Girlfriend's Spotlight, the story
Speaker 1: of what happened once Rose and her team set their
Speaker 1: sights on doctor Brightnecker's database.
Speaker 3: Our game plan was that we were going to get hit,
Speaker 3: so we were going to like people up.
Speaker 1: They came up with a way to go back in
Speaker 1: time and close cases that had lain dormant for decades.
Speaker 3: I've never had this feeling before in my life. They
Speaker 3: here on the back of my neck is starting to
Speaker 3: see up. I mean, it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: In the end, Rose's mission was simple to give justice
Speaker 1: to women across Baltimore who thought that they would never
Speaker 1: see the day. I'm Annasinfield and from the teams at
Speaker 1: Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend's Spotlight, where
Speaker 1: we tell stories of women winning today rosels at least
Speaker 1: eighty six cold cases. These days, Rose Brady is retired.
Speaker 1: Her life is a million miles away from the one
Speaker 1: she led as a police officer. She actually lives on
Speaker 1: a mule farm now out in the Marria Land countryside,
Speaker 1: and she rides motorbikes. She doesn't even own a trivial
Speaker 1: thing like a computer anymore. She says she's given up
Speaker 1: on all that stuff. But back in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: she was on the rise in Baltimore.
Speaker 2: County PD.
Speaker 1: Before taking over the Special Victims Unit, she led the
Speaker 1: homicide team for nine years, and homicide detectives they're kind
Speaker 1: of like the jocks of the police department.
Speaker 3: And homicide you get whatever you need because you've got
Speaker 3: a murderer out there. That was a no brainer. I
Speaker 3: got whatever I needed. My detectives got whatever they needed,
Speaker 3: whether it was equipment, if I needed bodies to work
Speaker 3: on the cases that they needed help with anything, we
Speaker 3: got it.
Speaker 1: When Rose took charge of the SVU, she instantly felt
Speaker 1: a stark contrast.
Speaker 3: I go over to sex crimes is what it was
Speaker 3: called at the time till we change the name, and
Speaker 3: my guys didn't even have the latest equipment. So I
Speaker 3: always called this like the red headed stepchild or something.
Speaker 1: Rose says she also experienced judges being lenient with sentencing
Speaker 1: for perpetrators of sex crimes, and then there were the
Speaker 1: general attitudes around sexual violence, which would even seep into
Speaker 1: the verdicts juries would deliver.
Speaker 3: One of our cases was a prostitute. She was working,
Speaker 3: as you know, in a hotel room, but the guy
Speaker 3: came in with a gun and not only did he
Speaker 3: robb her, but he raped her. And you know what,
Speaker 3: I don't care if you're a prosty or not. You
Speaker 3: can still be raped. And we've always had that attitude.
Speaker 3: But anyway, this woman was brutally raped by gunpoint and
Speaker 3: it was a jury trial. So this jury, we're having
Speaker 3: problems that a prostitute can't be raped. He should have
Speaker 3: gotten like, I don't know, fifty sixty years. And then
Speaker 3: we had a charge that was I think he stole
Speaker 3: cell phones and stuff like that. The jury comes back
Speaker 3: and finds him not guilty of the first degree rape
Speaker 3: of the assault. The only thing they would find him
Speaker 3: guilty of was the theft of her cell phone, and
Speaker 3: the judge did the only thing he could do. He
Speaker 3: gave him the maximum sentence for the theft. So you
Speaker 3: even had, you know, people on a jury thinking, our
Speaker 3: prostitut can't be raped? Are you kidding me? So frustrating
Speaker 3: You got me riled up there.
Speaker 1: I can understand that you're riled up about that. That's
Speaker 1: infuriating and it makes you feel like there isn't really
Speaker 1: you know, the system we have in place isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: built to.
Speaker 3: Serve you just had to educate people.
Speaker 1: Another crucial difference between Rose's experience of the two departments
Speaker 1: was what would happen to evidence when cases went cold.
Speaker 1: In murder investigations, physical evidence would never be destroyed even
Speaker 1: decades later, but things were very different in the Special
Speaker 1: Victims Unit.
Speaker 3: I didn't find out until I went into sex crimes,
Speaker 3: but departments all over the country for years had destroyed
Speaker 3: evidence because basically, you only have enough room in evidence rooms,
Speaker 3: so then they would start getting rid of evidence because
Speaker 3: you had new evidents coming in and people didn't know
Speaker 3: about DNA. No one ever even knew that there would
Speaker 3: be such a thing as the evidence they took from
Speaker 3: that victim would actually point to a suspect. So a
Speaker 3: lot of the cases were destroyed.
Speaker 1: But Dr Brightnecker, the forensic pathologist at Greater Baltimore Medical Center,
Speaker 1: was kind of a visionary. Starting in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: he catch all the forensic evidence from every rape exam
Speaker 1: he ever did, and he did it all off his
Speaker 1: own back.
Speaker 3: As a scientist, he was way way ahead of you know,
Speaker 3: everyone else, and he always felt that the evidence that
Speaker 3: he took from the rape exams would someday lead to
Speaker 3: a suspect, and that once he retired his you know,
Speaker 3: the friend of mine, who ran the forensic unit in
Speaker 3: the hospital. She had literally was going to start destroying
Speaker 3: the slides because they didn't need them. They just kept
Speaker 3: them because doctor Breitnecker asked them when he retired, he
Speaker 3: wanted her to keep it. She didn't know this was
Speaker 3: going to happen.
Speaker 1: So tell me about these slides, this kind of database,
Speaker 1: What does it actually mean?
Speaker 2: What do they look like.
Speaker 3: It's just like you see on the old TV shows.
Speaker 3: So they're a little glass slide and they would do
Speaker 3: smears from the evidence from rape. And what you're looking
Speaker 3: for on these slides is sperm.
Speaker 1: So after Rose found out about the slides, just weeks
Speaker 1: into her new job leading the SVU, she decided on
Speaker 1: a plan of action. She knew she couldn't solve all
Speaker 1: of the cold cases at once. There are actually over
Speaker 1: a thousand of them, and her relatively small team still
Speaker 1: had new crimes coming in all the time, so she
Speaker 1: told them to look for a very specific kind of
Speaker 1: unsolved rape case.
Speaker 3: I had my corporal go literally through our log box
Speaker 3: and starting at nineteen seventy seven and poor on every
Speaker 3: open case that we had, and of course the open
Speaker 3: cases were the ones that were stranger cases which were
Speaker 3: the ones you wanted to fine.
Speaker 1: What Rose calls a stranger case means the victim was
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted by someone they didn't know, often didn't even see,
Speaker 1: and so they couldn't identify their attacker.
Speaker 3: The reason why I wanted to pursue them is because
Speaker 3: if they reaped this girl and there's a stranger reap,
Speaker 3: then they're still out there. So we still wanted to
Speaker 3: pursue it because we still had to find whoever did
Speaker 3: it and get them in jail, because they were still
Speaker 3: probably raping and they.
Speaker 1: Were Rose's idea was to find old unsolved cases like
Speaker 1: this and see which of the victims were originally examined
Speaker 1: by doctor Brightnecker. Then she'd request the DNA evidence from
Speaker 1: the hospital and run it through this still fledgling national
Speaker 1: database of criminals. But it was slow and expensive to
Speaker 1: get this process up and running. It could be months
Speaker 1: before her team would be able to crack one of
Speaker 1: the cold cases. Only once again, an incredible coincidence happened.
Speaker 2: After the break.
Speaker 1: How a stroke of luck put Rose's team on the
Speaker 1: trail of a rape who had been evading detection since
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: I had only been in the Union as a sergeant
Speaker 3: for I went in September of two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: so it was Christmas time and I'm actually off. I'm
Speaker 3: the sergeant, so usually I can take off, lucky you,
Speaker 3: and my corporal was in charge. So I'm home and
Speaker 3: we hadn't even started picking up the slides yet. I mean,
Speaker 3: this was only four months into it and we still
Speaker 3: had to figure out how to get them and do
Speaker 3: the subpoenas and stuff. So I wasn't even thinking about
Speaker 3: getting call like this. And my corporal called me and
Speaker 3: he said, Sorrd, we actually got a code has hit
Speaker 3: on one of our cases. And I'm thinking, well, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, we haven't even got and picked up the
Speaker 3: slide jet. How is this possible.
Speaker 1: CODIS is that national DNA database, And this match was
Speaker 1: possible because someone in another department had the idea of
Speaker 1: running surviving DNA evidence from rape cases through CODIS. It
Speaker 1: was a separate effort to use DNA to close unsolved cases.
Speaker 1: And what Roses corporal was about to tell her Shot Rose.
Speaker 3: He said, in your names in the report. And I
Speaker 3: said what And he said, your names in the report?
Speaker 3: Let me read this. It's like apparently you were a decoy,
Speaker 3: and I said, you have got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: The name that matched on the DNA database was Thaddius Clemmens,
Speaker 1: and it took Rose right back to the start of
Speaker 1: her career.
Speaker 3: How I remembered that name from the eighties, eighty six
Speaker 3: or whatever it was to two thousand and four, but
Speaker 3: it always stuck in my mind. When I got permoted
Speaker 3: to corporal, I went to Wilkins Precinct and there was
Speaker 3: another corporal there and he had told me about this
Speaker 3: rapist that they had, like I don't know how many
Speaker 3: cases now, it was like five. He had a whole
Speaker 3: booklet on like five or six rapes.
Speaker 1: All these rapes were by the same perpetrator using the
Speaker 1: same emo.
Speaker 3: He would grab the women and they were really from
Speaker 3: teens to like twenty one. They would always get off
Speaker 3: a bus in a certain area at nighttime, and when
Speaker 3: they got off the bus, he would grab them from
Speaker 3: behind with a gun and he would put what we
Speaker 3: call welder's glasses on them. And the welders glasses are
Speaker 3: glasses that go in front and on the sides, so
Speaker 3: literally they couldn't It's like a blindfold, honestly, So they
Speaker 3: never saw him, and he would take him to a
Speaker 3: vehicle and they couldn't get out because he had it
Speaker 3: fixed so that they couldn't open the door and jump out.
Speaker 3: And then he would take these to me young women.
Speaker 3: He would drive them to all they could describe was
Speaker 3: it seemed like it was a ball field from a school.
Speaker 3: Then he would sectually assault them.
Speaker 1: The police weren't able to catch the guy because none
Speaker 1: of the women ever saw him, and he always drove
Speaker 1: a different car. Back in the mid eighties, when this
Speaker 1: corporal told young Rose about the attacker, she could tell
Speaker 1: he was really concerned.
Speaker 3: Sid was really worried that he's going to kill somebody
Speaker 3: because he always had a gun and the one of
Speaker 3: the victims started to fight him, then he was going
Speaker 3: to kill them. So between the two of us we
Speaker 3: came up with. I said to him, well, you know what,
Speaker 3: I was around the same age. I was in my
Speaker 3: twenties at that time, and I said, well, let's do
Speaker 3: a decoy operation.
Speaker 2: Why would you do that?
Speaker 3: Okay? So then I mean, I've seen that on TV.
Speaker 3: I said, I know they do this on TV. Then
Speaker 3: he said okay.
Speaker 1: So one night Rose found herself undercover trying to lure
Speaker 1: the attacker in out on the street where he stalked
Speaker 1: his victims.
Speaker 3: I had officers in the in the trees. I mean
Speaker 3: I had so much covered. They were everywhere. And I
Speaker 3: was walking up and down the sidewalk right around the
Speaker 3: same time and one of the bus routes that he had,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, I hear all these police sirens.
Speaker 3: I thought, what the heck is going on? And one
Speaker 3: of the guys pulled up next to me and said,
Speaker 3: you're not gonna believe this, but he just grabbed a
Speaker 3: woman three streets down. I said, you have got to
Speaker 3: be kidding me, and she actually got away from him
Speaker 3: and gave a description of a vehicle. They pulled it over,
Speaker 3: and they pulled a guy out of the truck and
Speaker 3: she couldn't ide him. Now remember this was in the eighties,
Speaker 3: so there was no such thing as DNA, So if
Speaker 3: you couldn't id a victim of a sexual assault, couldn't
Speaker 3: pick him out. They were going to walk but anyway,
Speaker 3: they had to let him go. And his name was
Speaker 3: Thaddius Clements.
Speaker 1: Twenty years later, as she sat on the phone to
Speaker 1: her corporal in the s FORU, Rose remembered Clemens case.
Speaker 1: The corporal told her how they finally connected him to
Speaker 1: DNA that was still sitting in the evidence room. Thattius
Speaker 1: Clemens was arrested for the sexual assault of a little
Speaker 1: girl who was a relative of his.
Speaker 3: He was arrested for it, he was convicted of it,
Speaker 3: and that's what put his DNA into the CODIS database.
Speaker 3: That's how we got him.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, Thaddeus Clemens was convicted of
Speaker 1: five rapes he committed between nineteen eighty five and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight. It seems to me that the case, while
Speaker 1: not the result of doctor Brightnecker's database, was a sort
Speaker 1: of call to arms to Rose and her team. It
Speaker 1: showed that they could use old DNA evidence to close
Speaker 1: rape cases that had been open for decades, and there
Speaker 1: were thousands of those. It was time to start solving
Speaker 1: them using doctor Brightnecker's slides. So once the funding was
Speaker 1: in place, they began to extract the DNA and run
Speaker 1: it through the database. Soon matches started coming through.
Speaker 3: Every time we got a CODIS hit, well, I mean
Speaker 3: we were a boom. We were out there looking for
Speaker 3: the guy and locking them up. And that was a
Speaker 3: good thing. The way they had to handle the cases though,
Speaker 3: was totally different from a current case. Totally different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure, because yeah, you're not dealing with an
Speaker 1: immediate crime scene or immediate report.
Speaker 3: No, you literally had to go back twenty and thirty
Speaker 3: years and you need to locate the victim. Sometimes they
Speaker 3: had to really do some great digging. But my guys
Speaker 3: were great with the computers, and so they would locate
Speaker 3: the victim.
Speaker 1: And it must be really shocking for the victims to
Speaker 1: suddenly get a phone call about a case that they
Speaker 1: would have moved on from.
Speaker 3: Well, and I didn't want phone calls. I wanted my
Speaker 3: detectives to see them in person because exactly that. And
Speaker 3: most of these people their names have changed, the women,
Speaker 3: they've gotten married, and in many cases, their families didn't
Speaker 3: even know this had ever happened to them. Wow, you
Speaker 3: could be walking in and there could be kids there
Speaker 3: and teenagers and they never even knew it happened because
Speaker 3: it's so horrific for them and they just wanted to
Speaker 3: put it behind them, so they didn't even tell their
Speaker 3: immediate family. And I had told my detectives when they
Speaker 3: first went there, just to make sure you tell these
Speaker 3: women that we've never forgotten you. And the case has
Speaker 3: never been closed. It was an open case, so we
Speaker 3: never forgotten you.
Speaker 1: And were these victims grateful for you guys coming in
Speaker 1: and still investigating.
Speaker 2: Were they angry?
Speaker 3: They were, but they were in shock, like it just
Speaker 3: brought it back. You never forget it. And so we
Speaker 3: felt bad about We felt like we were re victimizing them.
Speaker 3: But then again the comments that we got from them
Speaker 3: once they were convicted, found guilty, it relieved them. And
Speaker 3: as one of the victims told me a very first
Speaker 3: case in two thousand and four, was that her entire
Speaker 3: last twenty years, she was looking over her shoulder because
Speaker 3: she never knew if the guy that walked by her
Speaker 3: was the one that raped her. Yeah, it is the
Speaker 3: only way to give a victim of a sexual assault
Speaker 3: that's a stranger closure is if you find them and
Speaker 3: you arrest them, because they never know, they'll never know
Speaker 3: who did this to them.
Speaker 1: Once a hit in the CODIS database came through on
Speaker 1: a case, Rose and her team devised a plan. They
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure none of the perpetrators could talk
Speaker 1: their way out of the.
Speaker 3: When we made an arrest, they wouldn't tell them what
Speaker 3: they were arrested for. They were just saying, we've got
Speaker 3: to take it back to headquarters. So think about twenty
Speaker 3: years later. These guys are no way thinking they're getting
Speaker 3: locked up for a rape they did twenty and thirty
Speaker 3: years ago. They think they're getting locked up for something current.
Speaker 3: So when my detectives go in there, the first thing
Speaker 3: they ask them and they'll show them a picture do
Speaker 3: you know this person? And they'll look at it and
Speaker 3: they'll say no. So they'll be adam and saying I've
Speaker 3: never seen her before. So and they'll say a nine,
Speaker 3: you know this name first before they show the picture. No,
Speaker 3: I've never heard that name, never seen her in my life.
Speaker 3: Now this is recorded because by the time we get
Speaker 3: to court, their defense attorneys trying to say that they
Speaker 3: were girlfriend, boyfriend, or they you know he was, she
Speaker 3: was a prostitute, horrible stuff. And then in front of
Speaker 3: a jury, we'd play the taped video and here he is,
Speaker 3: you know, looking at this saying I've never seen her
Speaker 3: in my life. So that was so important because it
Speaker 3: also helped the victim if we had such a good case,
Speaker 3: which DNA to me, is awesome. If the victim didn't
Speaker 3: have to testify that was a good thing. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: most of our cases they end up pleading, and they
Speaker 3: end up pleading till like they would get thirty forty
Speaker 3: to fifty years.
Speaker 1: Roses detectives would repeat this process over and over again
Speaker 1: across the years.
Speaker 3: Every time we got another hit, I couldn't wait to
Speaker 3: tell them, and they were just so excited, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: put your case together, let's go get them. And we
Speaker 3: didn't wait. I mean, as soon as we got the hit,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm thinking, I'm not waiting. I mean, these
Speaker 3: guys they're still out there raping. We have to get them.
Speaker 3: I was not going to have another rape on my watch.
Speaker 3: When we knew that this guy was a rapist, we
Speaker 3: got hits on him.
Speaker 1: So that's okay, ass And tell me how the first
Speaker 1: signs of the next huge serial rapist case started appearing.
Speaker 3: When we started submitting the slides. I started getting hits,
Speaker 3: like I the first one I had. I had two
Speaker 3: hits from like two different case, two different victims in
Speaker 3: the suspect Unknow.
Speaker 1: The DNA didn't trace back to a specific name. Instead,
Speaker 1: it came back as a match to another one of
Speaker 1: the slides in doctor B's database.
Speaker 3: So the same suspect raped these two women, and then
Speaker 3: we got another hit and it was the same guy,
Speaker 3: and it was all we called the lock raven corridors
Speaker 3: on the same area. And when I was up to
Speaker 3: the fourth hit, I was beside myself.
Speaker 1: Rose could tell that these four DNA matches, which showed
Speaker 1: that four seemingly unconnected rapes were committed by the same man,
Speaker 1: could turn into a huge case, and.
Speaker 3: So I went to my major. I pretty much wore
Speaker 3: out the carpet from my office to his, and I said,
Speaker 3: I need help. I need somebody. My detectives don't have
Speaker 3: time to do this. I need a help to start
Speaker 3: going through all their cases, because after I had four,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, if there's four, there's got to be more.
Speaker 1: These four cases spanned from the nineteen seventies all the
Speaker 1: way to the early two thousands. Tell me about your
Speaker 1: personal connection to this case.
Speaker 3: When I first came on, a friend of mine was
Speaker 3: sexually assaulted in it was never cleared.
Speaker 1: This friend, an old colleague of Roses, was the one
Speaker 1: she instantly thought of that night she heard about Dr
Speaker 1: B's database, and Rose thought of her friend again when
Speaker 1: this unknown attacker's DNA got connected to several different cases,
Speaker 1: all in the same area. It was exactly the same
Speaker 1: place where Rose's friend had been raped back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. When Rose ran her friend's slide, it came
Speaker 1: back as a match to the unknown serial rapist DNA.
Speaker 1: Now the investigation was personal.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 1: The matches keep mounting, but then a long forgotten TV
Speaker 1: interview gives Rose's team their big break.
Speaker 4: Glad you, How glad you?
Speaker 3: Glad you?
Speaker 4: How glad you.
Speaker 1: One day in the late seventies, Rose's friend, a fellow
Speaker 1: police officer, had returned home to her apartment. There was
Speaker 1: a stranger, a man hiding out in the bushes near
Speaker 1: the entrance. When Rose's friend opened her door, the man
Speaker 1: forced his way in and sexually assaulted her. Over the
Speaker 1: span of two months, in nineteen seventy eight, two other
Speaker 1: women in the same apartment building were attacked and raped
Speaker 1: by a stranger. And now in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: Rose had discovered that her friend's case was connected via
Speaker 1: DNA location and m O to what appeared to be
Speaker 1: the same serial rapist who had also attacked many other
Speaker 1: women in the same area. Over nearly thirty years. This
Speaker 1: was already a huge case, but now it was personal
Speaker 1: for Rose.
Speaker 2: Two.
Speaker 1: If she was going to find the rapist and get
Speaker 1: justice for her friend, she needed more people on her team.
Speaker 1: So Rose marched into her boss's office to make her demand.
Speaker 3: So he actually gave me a detective who was on
Speaker 3: light duty because she was pregnant Eve, and she loved
Speaker 3: it because I think she was stuck like answering phones
Speaker 3: or something. And I had got a civilian. I gave
Speaker 3: him the four cases we had, and I said, Okay,
Speaker 3: go back from this time, all the way up till current,
Speaker 3: this area in this mo and pull every case that
Speaker 3: you can find that's similar to this. Well turned out,
Speaker 3: we ended up with I think eleven or twelve cases
Speaker 3: that we had slides.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: And then I'd get another hit in another hit, and
Speaker 3: I was beside myself because we're spanning nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 3: to two thousand, so you know he's still out there somewhere.
Speaker 3: So I think she pulled twenty some cases. Her and
Speaker 3: the civilian pulled twenty some cases that could be this guy.
Speaker 1: Rose's team had uncovered a rapist who, from what they
Speaker 1: could estimate, was even more prolific than Thaddeus Clemens. Now,
Speaker 1: something you need to know about eve the pregnant detective
Speaker 1: on light duty who was helping out with the case,
Speaker 1: is that she also happened to be a trained forensic
Speaker 1: sketch artist.
Speaker 3: One day, she had gone through the files and she
Speaker 3: came into my office because I had her work in
Speaker 3: next door, and she said, Sorge, I've actually got a
Speaker 3: composit in one of these folders from a victim.
Speaker 1: I said, really, a composite, meaning a sketch of the
Speaker 1: attacker from the recollection of one of the victims. This
Speaker 1: surprise Rose. She didn't think any of the victims had
Speaker 1: seen the guy.
Speaker 3: The ones I had been reading. They didn't wake up
Speaker 3: until he was already on top of them. And you know,
Speaker 3: if it was inside, he covered him with a blanket
Speaker 3: outside it was nighttime. She said, yeah, it was one
Speaker 3: of the really old cases.
Speaker 1: Evelyn told Rose that she wanted to try and age
Speaker 1: the original sketch to see what the guy might look like.
Speaker 2: Now, twenty years later.
Speaker 3: She was doing it at home and she had a
Speaker 3: big table, you know, her dining room table, and she
Speaker 3: would have you do it in stages. You know, you
Speaker 3: do eyes a whole nine arch. You do different parts
Speaker 3: of it, so she'd had them spread all over her table.
Speaker 1: This is the point where I have to issue another
Speaker 1: cosmic coincidence of that.
Speaker 3: And this is like another story out of a movie.
Speaker 3: But I'm not kidding. Everything was meant to be, is
Speaker 3: what I'm going to say. Yeah, her husband, who I
Speaker 3: happen to know, was a Baltimer City detective. So he's
Speaker 3: looking at these drawings that his wife's doing, and then
Speaker 3: he ends up having to go to something that we
Speaker 3: all have to go once a year. Police officers have
Speaker 3: to go to what's called in service training to do
Speaker 3: with policing, obviously current law, case law. Then you might
Speaker 3: do physical stuff, how to defend yourself, stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And I find this out on Monday. They come walking
Speaker 3: into my office, he and his wife. He had a
Speaker 3: VHS tape. Okay, so those two thousand and six and
Speaker 3: he has it in his hand. They're both looking at
Speaker 3: me and they say, I had to go to this
Speaker 3: in service training in an instructor did not show up.
Speaker 3: I'm not kidding you on this. An instructor did not
Speaker 3: show up. So they put this tape in on a
Speaker 3: forty eight hours interview.
Speaker 1: Wow Like the Substitute Teachers in forty eight Hours is
Speaker 1: a true crime news documentary program on CBS. The story
Speaker 1: that was played in Eve's husband's training was about a
Speaker 1: cold rape case from Baltimore in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking, where are we going with this? So
Speaker 3: then they said he's watching this video and when it
Speaker 3: was over, he goes up to instructor and say, can
Speaker 3: I get a copy of that? My WAFE sergeant needs
Speaker 3: to see this.
Speaker 1: The victim in the case was Laura Newman. When she
Speaker 1: was eighteen, she was raped by a stranger. She got
Speaker 1: home late at night after working her shift as a
Speaker 1: waitress in a Mexican restaurant. At around two am, she
Speaker 1: was lying in bed when she heard the clatter of
Speaker 1: someone breaking in through a window. She disregarded it, thinking
Speaker 1: she was maybe dreaming, which is when she was startled
Speaker 1: by a pillow pressed onto her face. The case wasn't
Speaker 1: solved at the time. Laura never saw her attacker, and
Speaker 1: the fingerprints lifted off her windowsill didn't match anyone, but
Speaker 1: she never let her case go. She kept calling the
Speaker 1: police department, asking them to look at it again. So
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands. A couple of detectives reran
Speaker 1: the perpetrator's prints through the system.
Speaker 3: Well, the fingerprints hit on this guy, Alfonso Hill. They
Speaker 3: arrest him for a second degree rape, and he confesses.
Speaker 1: It was such a remarkable story that forty eight Hours
Speaker 1: wanted to interview everyone involved, even Hill, who, despite his
Speaker 1: lawyer's probably very salient advice, agreed to go on TV.
Speaker 3: They're telling me, Sergi, it looks just like everyone's composite,
Speaker 3: that she's aged. And that's like, there's no way, I said, So,
Speaker 3: you're telling me he's incarcerated right now, and he's been
Speaker 3: incarcerated for a couple of years. Yes, I said, well
Speaker 3: he should have.
Speaker 1: Hit because Hill was in prison. His DNA should have
Speaker 1: already been in the CODIS database. All of these rape
Speaker 1: cases should have gotten a match to Hill right away.
Speaker 3: I said, it can't be him. Well, I'm just telling you, Sarge,
Speaker 3: it looks just like him. So I said, all right,
Speaker 3: I'll look at it. I put this VHS tape in
Speaker 3: the office. When my detectives found one or player, we
Speaker 3: put it in and we've got the composite next to us.
Speaker 3: And I'm telling you, I've never had this feeling before
Speaker 3: in my life. The hair on the back of my
Speaker 3: neck was starting to stand up because this was the guy. Wow,
Speaker 3: I mean, it was unbelievable. But I'm still thinking it's
Speaker 3: not possible. So I call Maryland State Police because they
Speaker 3: run the actual code is database, and I was in
Speaker 3: first name basis with the woman Michelle that was running
Speaker 3: it by then, and I'd say, Michelle, are you sure
Speaker 3: you don't have this guy in the database, Serge, I
Speaker 3: don't have them.
Speaker 1: Rose hung up, but she couldn't shake the similarity between
Speaker 1: Hill and their suspect, so she dunald Michelle's number again.
Speaker 3: So then this time I gave her a name. Like
Speaker 3: an hour later, she calls me.
Speaker 1: She told Rose that Alfonso Hills DNA hadn't been put
Speaker 1: into the national database yet because Maryland State Police were
Speaker 1: extremely backed up with all the DNA that was now
Speaker 1: being uploaded.
Speaker 2: She suggested that.
Speaker 1: Her team should go to the prison, get their own
Speaker 1: swap of Hills DNA and run it against the serial
Speaker 1: rapists themselves.
Speaker 3: Not a problem. Click. I go right into the office
Speaker 3: where my detectives were working that case. I said, get
Speaker 3: a search warrant, let's go. We're going to go up
Speaker 3: to I think he was in Hagerstown. It's like, we're
Speaker 3: getting his swabs. Even when I was in homicide, I
Speaker 3: don't think I ever got results back this fest. I'm
Speaker 3: sitting in my office a week later, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, I hear all these people walking and all
Speaker 3: this commotion, and all of a sudden, all these my detectives,
Speaker 3: the biologists are all standing in my doorway, and I'm
Speaker 3: looking at him and I said, please tell me that
Speaker 3: Alfonso Hill, that it's him, And they said it's him.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Bill was still serving time in prison for the rape
Speaker 1: of Laura Newman, but Rose's team had DNA evidence that
Speaker 1: he'd committed many more. When they confronted him with it,
Speaker 1: he seems to realize that there was no point in
Speaker 1: denying it. Once he was charged with these rapes, he
Speaker 1: pleaded guilty to them. After decades of assaulting women in Baltimore.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, Alfonso Hill was finally held
Speaker 1: responsible for his crimes. He had been applying for parole,
Speaker 1: and now he would likely never be free again. All
Speaker 1: but one of the survivors came to his court hearings.
Speaker 1: It was an opportunity for them to finally stare him down.
Speaker 3: Every single one of them except for one, wanted to
Speaker 3: be there. It was just something you just don't see.
Speaker 3: We take him to the courtroom and they're all sitting together,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, the door opens, and I'm
Speaker 3: looking at my survivors and it's like like laser. I mean,
Speaker 3: as soon as that door open, he started walking horns
Speaker 3: and is like laser, because remember, all but one of
Speaker 3: them have never saw his face. The state's attorney reads
Speaker 3: every single one of these horrific cases, and the judge,
Speaker 3: who'd been around a long time, he was speechless. And
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, after they read the last one,
Speaker 3: and before the victims could even go up there and
Speaker 3: do their impact, he said, you know, that's a shame
Speaker 3: doctor Britnecker's not here, because what he's done and what
Speaker 3: he thought before anyone else did, is why we're here.
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out that Rose was way ahead of
Speaker 1: the judge. She also wanted doctor b who is now
Speaker 1: in his seventies, to be there for this moment, so
Speaker 1: she asked her colleague Linda to bring him to the courtroom.
Speaker 3: So Linda and has to make he such a humble
Speaker 3: man and had to make him stand up. Let me
Speaker 3: tell you, everybody in that courtroom collapsed. I mean he
Speaker 3: got to see what he did.
Speaker 1: That's so beautiful. How did he react to that moment?
Speaker 3: He just he just looked at everybody and you know,
Speaker 3: did the hand like okay, you know, thank you, you're well.
Speaker 3: You know, he's just very he's a big man and
Speaker 3: he's Austrian, so he's got a very heavy Austrian accent,
Speaker 3: and he was embarrassed. I guess that. You know, we
Speaker 3: made him stand up, but in everybody clapping, even the
Speaker 3: even the deputies, I mean everybody.
Speaker 2: Well he deserved it.
Speaker 3: So I mean he's passed away. I went to the funeral.
Speaker 3: He passed away a couple of years ago. This would
Speaker 3: have never happened for all these women without him.
Speaker 2: One an amazing guy.
Speaker 1: It does seem like so much of your work here
Speaker 1: has just You've had a lot of coincidences.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, do we call it fate? I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Meant to be, I mean God's will, it was time
Speaker 3: to get these cases cleared. I don't know, because it
Speaker 3: just seemed to fall these cases like this crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in these incredible ways. Obviously your amazing worked.
Speaker 3: Well, it's my detectives, they did the investigations.
Speaker 1: How many of these cold cases did you close in
Speaker 1: total in your whole time at the SPU.
Speaker 3: From what I remember, it was eighty.
Speaker 1: Six eighty six. You must be so proud of that number.
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
Speaker 3: So I think it was around eighty six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, amazing, but that works still being done as
Speaker 1: we speak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have actually the department actually has a cold
Speaker 3: case unit now. Incredible think out when after I retired
Speaker 3: they finally put one together.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's great. So look, I've got one final question.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a bit of a reflective one. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering kind of what your message would be to survivors
Speaker 1: of sexual violence who are listening to this podcast, because
Speaker 1: I know already that there are many and a lot
Speaker 1: of those people will have cases that are cold and
Speaker 1: haven't been solved.
Speaker 3: Well, look at wherever department that handled your case whenever
Speaker 3: it was, call them, because most apartments across the country
Speaker 3: have called key sexual assault teams now and if you're
Speaker 3: a survivor, there's some place you can go to for help.
Speaker 3: There's plenty of victim agencies that will help you get
Speaker 3: through the emotional part of it, because don't live with
Speaker 3: it without telling people. There's so much help out there,
Speaker 3: but you have to ask for it. But it is
Speaker 3: out there. I guarantee you it's out there. And don't
Speaker 3: walk alone.
Speaker 2: No, don't walk on.
Speaker 1: I mean that feels very inclusive of the kind of
Speaker 1: girlfriend's mantra.
Speaker 2: If we're all in it together on this podcast.
Speaker 1: I know that sexual violence cases are a particularly tough
Speaker 1: listen for women. It's not exactly something that we need
Speaker 1: to be curious about, because it's something we all have
Speaker 1: to be sadly attuned to. One out of six women
Speaker 1: in the United States have experienced sexual violence, and research
Speaker 1: from the Rape, Abuse and Incess Network suggests that for
Speaker 1: every one thousand and rapes that happen in the United States,
Speaker 1: only three hundred and eighty four are reported to the
Speaker 1: police and only seven end in a felony conviction. It's
Speaker 1: depressing data, and for a series that claims it tells
Speaker 1: the stories of women winning, this episode is full of
Speaker 1: far too many women losing out in the worst possible way.
Speaker 1: But what dodr B and Rose have done is a
Speaker 1: real win to me. Their dogged determination has brought convictions
Speaker 1: into a woefully unprosecuted space and proven that solving cold
Speaker 1: cases doesn't just bring about historic justice, but it can
Speaker 1: protect people today. Next time the Girlfriend's spotlight, Madison and
Speaker 1: Christine become digital detectives.
Speaker 5: So we just started adding new folders of this victim,
Speaker 5: this victim, this victim, And let's be honest, like, I
Speaker 5: was very motivated to help you, but it's nothing's more
Speaker 5: motivating than your own boobs being on the internet.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Anna, you've reached the girlfriend's hotline. Leave your
Speaker 1: story after the tone.
Speaker 3: Okay, I gotta go love you.
Speaker 4: When I was skiing in Colorado, I fell and broke
Speaker 4: my arm, and I was in a lot of pain,
Speaker 4: but I was mainly just very sad and very low
Speaker 4: because I had a lot of plans are up in
Speaker 4: the air and the healing time is really long.
Speaker 6: When I texted my closest group of girlfriends from home
Speaker 6: to tell them i'd broken my arm, I sent them
Speaker 6: a mirror selfie in the hospital room with my swing,
Speaker 6: and most of their first responses we're just commenting on
Speaker 6: how great may hair looked, which made me laugh.
Speaker 1: If you have your own story like the one you
Speaker 1: just heard, and you'd like the whole Girlfriend's Gang to
Speaker 1: hear it, then please send it to us. You can
Speaker 1: record it as a voice memo under ninety seconds please
Speaker 1: and email it straight to the Girlfriends at novel dot Audio.
Speaker 1: Please don't include your name, we're keeping things a little anon.
Speaker 1: We want stories like say that one time you faked
Speaker 1: an emergency on an awful date and your bestie bailed
Speaker 1: you out with a phone call we love her. Or
Speaker 1: that time when all of your girls showed up on
Speaker 1: your doorstep with five pizzas, two tups of ice cream,
Speaker 1: and three bottles of seven you're blanc because the man
Speaker 1: of your dreams just dumped you. I want stories that
Speaker 1: are meaningful or silly. I want big, I want small.
Speaker 1: I'm desperate to hear them, so send them over. This season,
Speaker 1: The Girlfriend's Spotlight is supporting the charity Womankind Worldwide. They
Speaker 1: do amazing work to help women's rights organizations and movements
Speaker 1: to strengthen and grow. If you'd like to find out
Speaker 1: more or donate to help them secure equal rights for
Speaker 1: women and girls across the globe, you can go to
Speaker 1: Womankind dot org dot UK. The Girlfriend's Spotlight is produced
Speaker 1: by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit
Speaker 1: novel dot audio. The show is hosted by me Anna Sinfield.
Speaker 1: This episode was written and produced by Jake o'taibitch. Our
Speaker 1: assistant producer is Lucy Carr. Our researcher is Zayana Yusuf.
Speaker 1: The editor is Hannah Marshall. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan
Speaker 1: are our executive producers. Production management from Joe Savage, Srie
Speaker 1: Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by
Speaker 1: Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Jacob Tivich,
Speaker 1: Nicholas Alexander and Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa
Speaker 1: Gerstein and Jemma Freeman. The series artwork was designed by
Speaker 1: Christina Lemkool. Willard Foxton is creative director of Development and
Speaker 1: Special Thanks to Katrina Norvelle, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson
Speaker 1: at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carl Frankel and the
Speaker 1: whole team at WM