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Tonight on Dateline. He said that the devil keeps making him do it. Oh, wow. And I said, oh my God, you've done this before. What is going on? And she just blurted it out. Wendy was killed. She was face down in the water. He called me very frantic. He was telling me my sister was murdered. Two murders in the same apartment complex. I just couldn't believe it.
This is someone that's here. They're connected here, living, working. We got to start looking at every male in this complex. He is going to strike again. I had a strong feeling that I was next. I saw a man in a mask. He asked me, "Do I feel the gun in my back?" And I say, "Yes." It took a part of me. It felt like a death.
I promise that I'll never quit unless God takes my breath. We got to get this guy. He was known as the bathtub killer. Then he went up against detectives determined to stop him come hell or high water. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with Dark Intentions.
He attacked in the dead of night. I hear breathing and this sound. I just felt darkness or like evil. I felt something not right. An intruder with dark intentions. And he jumps up on my bed and I can feel the coldness of the gun in my back. He said, don't scream and I won't kill you. This is every woman's worst nightmare. Right.
His rampage would nearly paralyze a city. I was so scared that I couldn't be in the dark. I didn't think I would make it past 30. Young women everywhere were scared. Absolutely. You just think evil like that will never touch you. It's the call everyone dreads. The one in the middle of the night. For Hip Vu, it came in mid-September.
He had just returned home from a business trip when his phone rang. He was very frantic. You know, it was kind of hard to understand what he was talking about. The man on the other end was his sister Christine's boyfriend, Tang Ku. What was he saying? Basically, she's gone, she's gone. You know, someone killed her, someone killed her. It was very frightening.
Christine was an elementary school teacher in Arlington, Texas, outside of Dallas. Hip couldn't imagine her being a murder victim. We grew up in a relatively small town. You only hear stories about this. You never experience it yourself. Tang said he found his girlfriend in her bathtub at the Pear Tree Apartments.
Arlington homicide detective Tommy Lenore caught the case. He tried to resuscitate her and could not do it. Panicked, ran outside the apartment, called for help. Crime scene investigator Joel Stevenson was one of the first on the scene. Boyfriend apparently had lifted her out of the tub and placed her on the floor outside the bathroom.
He noted that the 25-year-old was still warm to the touch. She hadn't been dead for long. We do not know how she's been killed. Her wrists had been duct-taped behind her back. She had duct-taped around her neck. Ankles were duct-taped.
She's face up on the floor of the hallway to the bedroom, nude. What does that say to you? The way she's found, the duct tape, the bathtub? Your immediate first impression is she was sexually assaulted. It's just a horrific scene. There was absolutely nothing that indicated this death was anything other than someone who brutally murdered her. Investigators took a look around the apartment and saw no signs of forced entry.
There was no indication of a struggle either. To detectives, that meant Christine might have known her killer. They spoke to her boyfriend, Tang, who was still at the scene.
What's Tang's behavior like outside of the apartment? He was upset, smoking cigarettes. So upset, nervous, scared. Tang told detectives Christine usually got home from school around 4.30 and that he arrived sometime after 5. He unlocked the door, but he couldn't open it.
He said the inside deadbolt was locked. So he knocked on the door, thinking that, well, maybe she's in the shower, maybe she doesn't hear me. No response. Tang said he couldn't hear anything inside, not even Christine's dog barking. He goes out to his truck, smokes a cigarette, gives it a few minutes, walks back to the door, tries to get in once again, still deadbolted from inside, knocks again, no response. So he goes back to his car again.
and he gets a quarter. According to Tang, he walked to the pool area and called Christine on the apartment payphone, but she didn't pick up. He walks back to the apartment, puts his key in, and this time the door opens. Tang said that's when he found Christine face down in the tub. According to his story...
That meant the suspect was inside the apartment killing her while he was sitting there smoking a cigarette and waited for him to, had to wait for him to leave and was able to exit and blend into the community and
with him being in that close proximity. No one was ever seen coming or leaving the apartment. That's quite the story. If Tang's story was true, the crime scene investigators hoped the deadbolt could provide a clue. They dusted it for prints. You found a print? Yes. On the door latch? On the front door, interior only deadbolt latch. What condition was the print in? It was a high quality latent print.
Once we lifted it and put it on a card and looked at it, there was a noticeable scar in the finger. Investigators had their first solid piece of evidence. But would it lead them to the boyfriend or someone else? He had some scratches on his wrist, his neck, and then he had some marks on his back. That could be consistent with someone fighting back. Absolutely. Absolutely.
The race to find Christine's killer was on, but not before investigators made another horrible discovery. Carbon copy murder. It is carbon copy deja vu. They would eventually encounter several more victims. I am fearful, absolutely, but I'm also thinking, how do I get out of this? He said, if you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you. And detectives would need to unravel a double life.
as they confronted a killer beyond compare. This man has to be stopped. Yes, he's evil. He is going to strike again. Christine Vu had been found strangled to death in her bathtub in Arlington, Texas. Detectives were canvassing the Pear Tree apartment complex, hoping a neighbor had seen or heard something. Just knocking on door after door. Knocking on doors. Are they getting anywhere? No one heard anything.
The only thing anyone actually heard was when Tang Ku came out yelling and screaming. Based on Tang's account, investigators believed Christine was murdered soon after arriving home from work. The attacker is taking a chance, though. I mean, this is brazen, committing a crime like that at that hour of the day. It's remarkably risky.
Christine's brother remembers how hard her murder was on the family.
It was very devastating, extremely devastating. She really was the glue for our entire family. She had a good relationship with everybody, all the siblings, you know, every sibling she loved equally.
Christine was the second of five kids. She was born in Vietnam, but her family fled to the U.S. at the end of the war. Your parents were doing what was best for their family. Exactly. It was a lot of unknowns, and there was a lot of fear, and just hadn't the opportunity to exit the country, you know, for a better life. ♪
The family settled in Amarillo, Texas. Christine was quiet, studious, and helped look after her younger siblings. On Saturdays, she played teacher. Her brother and sisters were the students. What kind of teacher was she with all of you? Was she demanding or did she make it fun? She was very stern. She was very stern. And so once we got too old where we weren't going to play with her anymore in terms of her students...
Christine got a degree in education and her first teaching job in Lubbock, where she and her brother shared an apartment. Hip says she was an introvert, but was passionate about travel and cooking. Nowadays, we're, you know, you call them foodies, right? But she was probably a foodie back then. She definitely loved to experience new cuisines, new areas, new restaurants and stuff. She loved to travel. She loved to experience new things.
Christine was ready for a bigger city and accepted a job teaching third grade in Arlington, where she started dating Tang Ku. Christina and Tang had some common ground, right? They both lived in Arlington. They both had connections to Amarillo.
and they both emigrated from Vietnam. The two had been dating for a couple of years. Tang was quiet like Christine. He worked for his parents' small business and was good with computers. Was he at all a bit of a nerdy type? Definitely. Introvert as well? Definitely an introvert. You know, he seemed to spend a lot of time together, you know, as evident by some of the trips they've taken, photos and stuff like that. Too hip? Yeah.
His sister's life seemed to be right on track. You know, it's the American dream, right? You do well in school, you go to college, you know, after college, you set your path to get a job. It was kind of like how it was supposedly scripted. And then this happens. Yeah. This is not the America that you ran to. No, exactly not.
Now, Christine's family had a lot of questions. They started to notice minor variations in Tang Ku's account of the murder. The story changed a couple times. And so that was where the question mark started to pop up. It should be cemented in your brain.
the exact events that unfolded prior to and after the discovery. It just seemed like the story changed every time he regurgitated. Are you getting suspicious of Tate? Oh, very suspicious. Absolutely. It's like, why would the story change, you know? Did you question him on that and say, why are you changing? Absolutely not. I mean, it wasn't our place, number one, number two. Part of it was a little bit of fear, right? You're fearful.
Investigators had questions, too, and had been grilling Tang at the police station. What's his demeanor like when he's sitting there? You're looking at him as a potential suspect. Tang is quiet-natured. He's still upset. He's still obviously insistent that he had nothing to do with it. Voicing, what can I do to help y'all catch this person? We're certainly listening to that. But, of course, guilty people do the same thing. They want to redirect you.
Tang provided his fingerprints and consented to giving his DNA. He also let police do a physical examination. Did Tang have any injuries on him, scratches? He had a few on his wrist, his neck, and then he had some marks on his back. That could be consistent with someone fighting back. Absolutely. Did he say where he got the scratches? He talked about how the scratches came from playing with the dog. Did you buy that? Frankly, no.
So the investigators gave Tang a polygraph. How did he do? He failed two major questions. What were the questions? Did you injure Christine and did you place duct tape on her? Those are big questions to fail. Those are huge questions. What was his response? His response is, I'm not lying. Detectives weren't so sure, but without solid evidence, they had to let him go. Tang is still at the forefront. He is still one of the primary suspects.
Investigators were eager to compare Tang's fingerprint to the print lifted from Christine's door latch. They were expecting a match. But when the results came back... Tang was excluded from those prints. So this is one reason why you can't be putting all your eggs in one basket with Tang. Absolutely. Someone other than Christine and Tang's prints are on that latch. If Tang is not your killer, those are the prints of our killer.
A fingerprint wasn't all police had. They'd confirmed Christine had been sexually assaulted, and there was DNA. They found male DNA from two separate males, and one of the profiles came back to tank.
which was no surprise to the detective since Tang was Christine's boyfriend. The other DNA profile, however, belonged to an unknown male. Could he be the killer? That in itself is frightening. Was that a shocker when you hear two? It's a shocker. So one could be the assailant, one could be the boyfriend. One could be consensual, one can be the product of a sexual assault.
But that didn't mean Tang was off the hook. Perhaps Christine was seeing someone else, and her boyfriend found out about it. Did he find out? Did he kill her and sexually assault her? It was a puzzling case, and it was about to get much harder. Just three months after Christine Vu's murder, detectives would be back at the Pear Tree Apartments, facing another grieving family and an eerily identical crime scene. She was face down in the water.
And she had duct tape on her legs. Never miss a moment of the 2024 Olympic Games from Paris. For in-depth coverage of the athletes, events, and medal counts, download the NBC News app. With no news of an arrest for the murder of Christine Vu, women living in the Pear Tree apartments were on edge.
22-year-old Wendy Prescott was one of them. She lived in apartment 1126, just a few hundred feet from Christine's place. We were freaking out. Skyla Taylor is Wendy's big sister. She says, I can't wait till I move out of the apartments. And we had discussed moving in together when her lease was up. You'd always been the protective sister. I was very worried. I would call her every day.
Skyla couldn't help but look out for Wendy after a tragedy they'd experienced as little girls. Their mother was murdered on her way home from work. The killer never found. How did that affect both of you and change the course of your lives? We got more close. We were more close. I was like, I'm going to protect my sister because this is all we have. It was me, my sister, and my brother. That was devastating.
Their Aunt Brenda and Uncle Norman took them in and Wendy flourished. She was just so full of life, just vivacious, just she would come in the room and just be so happy and make us all laugh. It was just wonderful. Tasha Fry still remembers meeting her best friend Wendy on the playground during recess.
How old were you? I was like 9 or 10. Third grade. She was in second grade.
And we hit it off ever since. So this friendship really endured between you two, from the playground all the way into adulthood. All the way up until adulthood. You know, I'm going off to college, full life ahead of me, not married, and end up getting pregnant at 20. And it was Wendy. She was like, Tasha, we can do this. Everyone needs friends like Wendy. Absolutely.
And Wendy relished time with her friends and family. Cooking, shopping, and especially dressing up for a night out. She turned heads? Yeah, always. The boys liked Wendy and the women wanted to be Wendy. That is a good spot to be in. Yes, yes. Wendy brought her fun and nurturing spirit to her job as a teaching assistant.
And she wanted to be a teacher? Yes. So that was going to be the next step? That was the next step. In December 1996, Wendy was looking forward to spending the holidays with her family. On Christmas Eve, Skyla was at home waiting for her to arrive so they could go do some last-minute shopping. It got kind of late, so I was like, huh, Wendy hasn't called yet. I wonder what's going on. She thought maybe Wendy lost track of time. She tried calling her. No answer.
She checked with Aunt Brenda, who couldn't reach Wendy either. She's like, I'm going to come over there, and we're going to go, you know, to her apartment. They knocked on Wendy's door. No response. Skyla had an extra key. Her uncle grabbed it. When he put it in the door, I guess he shoved it in, and the door just opened.
So it was like dark. I was standing behind my uncle and my friend was standing behind me. She was holding me and I was holding my uncle. We go in and the apartment was nice, normal. Nothing seemed out of place until they reached the bedroom. It looked like, you know, just like somebody got out of bed and she didn't make her bed, which she normally always makes her bed.
Then her uncle looked in the bathroom. I remember him turning the light on. He didn't see anything when he first went in. And then all of a sudden I heard my uncle say, f*** it. And then me and my friend ran back and she was in the water. It looked like maybe three or four inches of water. And she was face down in the water. Her legs were crossed and she had duct tape.
on her legs and her arms were crossed on her back and it had duct tape in her mouth. Uncle grabbed and he was trying to help her out the water and I just started screaming and yelling and my friend ran out the door, I ran out and just rolled down the stairs and all these people come out of the apartment, "What is wrong?"
Call 911. Somebody call 911. Another young woman killed in the same complex as Christine Vu. Detective Lenore was about to learn this was no coincidence. This is horrifying because now I'm going, my Lord, I've got an individual responsible for two murders. And he was running against the clock. So it's more than catching a killer. You're trying to prevent additional victims. ♪♪
It was Christmas Eve, 1996. Detective Tommy Lenore was stealthily assembling the last of the holiday gifts for his daughter. A silent night, or so he hoped. I'm at home putting a Barbie house together, playing Santa Claus. And I get the call.
An urgent phone call from his sergeant. 22-year-old Wendy Prescott had been murdered at the Pear Tree Apartments in Arlington, Texas. Christmas presents would have to wait. Lenore was the first homicide detective at the scene. What are you told? As he said, Detective Lenore, this looks a whole lot alike with Christine. And I said, I got to get in there. So we walked in. And when I saw Lenore,
That crime scene, it was identical to a murder that I've been working for three months that is unsolved, only 200 feet away. And at that point in time, I knew, number one, this was not an isolated incident. And more importantly, I came to the reality that this crime is a continuance of three months ago. Does that send a chill down your spine? It sends a chill down your spine, but it is a gut-wrenching.
And one of the thoughts that go to my mind is, this is number two, my God, when am I going to see number three? I don't want to see number three. Just like Christine, Wendy had been strangled and likely sexually assaulted. Once again, no evidence of forced entry. Everything is secure. Were the windows locked? Windows were locked. He either came through the front door or he broke in and locked things behind him. Whatever the case, it was unlikely he was let in.
Wendy kept a baseball bat by her door. And I'll tell you what that tells me. She's not going to open the door for somebody unless she knows them. Crime scene investigator Joel Stevenson was also at the scene and also stunned by the similarities to Christine's murder. It's eerie, all right. It's almost more than that. It's just, I mean... Carbon copy murder. It is. Carbon copy, deja vu. One difference. Stevenson noticed that Wendy's clothes seemed to have been carefully placed on a chair in the bedroom.
As we started looking, examining that clothing, it was similar to what we were told she was last seen wearing, stacked from the way you would take it off. Her purse and two green pillow shams were placed on top. So these clothes being stacked as they were told us that she disrobed with no fear, calmly. There's no fight at this point. Yeah, she has no idea that anything's going on.
It looked to Stevenson like the killer had been lying in wait. We think he's in the closet. That's what the evidence is kind of suggesting. And this time, some belongings appear to have been stolen, including a VCR, telephone, and answering machine. If this was the same perpetrator, he seemed to be skilled at breaking and entering. You don't become that criminally sophisticated overnight.
You don't just wake up and have the ability to get inside of a woman's apartment and three months later get inside of another woman's apartment. But even the most sophisticated criminal makes mistakes. While swiping that VCR, the killer appeared to have left behind a thumbprint, a particular kind of print. And it's very important to know about dust prints. They're remarkably vulnerable.
Because the slightest, and I mean the slightest, breeze or motion will distort that thumbprint. But it was so pristine and so defined. You're guarding that thing with your life.
You better believe it. It's a miracle that Dustprint survived. This was multiple hours into the investigation, and nobody had laid a clipboard, notebook, sat on, leaned on that area. Oh, my gosh. That's so scary to think that that easily could have happened. ♪
The print was photographed with the hope that there would be a match in the FBI's fingerprint identification system. Now police had a thumbprint from Wendy's apartment and an index fingerprint with a scar from Christine's. They were different fingers and couldn't be compared to each other. But there was something they could compare. A crime analyst for the medical examiner's office recovered DNA from Wendy's body.
So now you have prints and you have DNA. Yes. It's a good start. It's a very good start. We just got to find somebody that both of those match. A match that could also tell them with certainty if one person was responsible for these crimes. You could have a copycat killer. You just don't know. But those results would take a while. And there was a possible serial killer on the loose. Now you have mass panic.
You don't have fear. You don't have concern. You've got absolute panic. The Pear Tree apartment complex was suddenly the best known address in Arlington, Texas for all the wrong reasons.
Who killed 22-year-old Wendy Prescott? It's the second murder investigation here in three months. Once Wendy was killed, it didn't even take a press conference from the police department. You look up and you see crime scene tape 200 feet away from what just happened, and word spreads like wildfire. It gets out, and now, now you have mass panic. You don't have fear. You don't have concern. You've got absolute panic.
Residents began packing up and leaving in droves. You never know who it could be, you know. It's part of the reason why most people are getting out and don't know who it could be next. This entire area, especially where we're standing, all of these apartments were vacated. So moving trucks just pulling up one after the next. U-Hauls, moving trucks. Out of here.
People that are coming in from out of town to get their friends, their daughters. It was just incredible. I would do that. If I was a young woman living here, I would get the heck out of here. While investigators waited for the results of the comparison of the DNA samples taken from the bodies of both victims and for word of any matches to the fingerprints from the crime scenes, they were trying to figure out if Christine and Wendy knew someone in common. Turned out they might have.
We found a neighbor who actually worked for the school district in another city, which is interesting because he lived across from Wendy Prescott. But at the time of Christine Vu's murder, he lived by her. Oh, so he moved within the complex. And he had an educational background. And he has an educational background. Just like Wendy and Christine, who both worked at elementary schools.
Detective Lenore interviewed the neighbor and collected blood, saliva, and print samples. The neighbor said he'd moved apartments so he could live next door to his sister, who happened to live right by Wendy. He was concerned about his sister's safety after Christine's murder. And he just didn't want her to be put in jeopardy. If, in fact, he is excluded, it's just a coincidence. In the meantime, they learned more about Wendy.
Wendy's 22 years of age. She's young. But Wendy is a very outgoing young lady with lots of friends and lots of socialization. Wendy's cousin, Nika, she was the people person. Yes, we just kept thinking, like, who or why? You know, just why would someone even do that? Wendy also had lots of love interests. There was one boyfriend in particular that concerned Wendy's friend, Tasha Fry. She went to the police about him after the murder.
Wendy was in a relationship that had some issues. Yes. We didn't like him. He was verbally abusive. He was emotionally abusive. It was like he would try to break her down. This ex-boyfriend wouldn't have any connection to Christine Vu, but yet you can't just...
that she had issues with her ex-boyfriend. Well, not only did she have issues with him, she filed a harassment complaint against him. He was an ex-boyfriend who didn't really want to break up. So I definitely had to find this guy, bring him in, interview him, and knowing that what evidence we have, I want to collect his fingerprints, I want to collect his saliva and blood for DNA. Was he cooperative? What was he like when you interviewed him? He was actually very cooperative with me, but he was emphatic.
I didn't kill anyone. My concern is, if that's not you, give me your saliva, give me your blood, give us your fingerprints, and let's exclude you. Police again had to wait for those results to come back. Meanwhile, they expanded their search and began the painstaking process of looking at any men who had spent time at the apartment complex over the past few months. Current and former residents, locksmiths, maintenance workers.
There were a lot. It was almost overwhelming. Yeah, it was absolutely overwhelming. We had close to 500 leads, but that is misleading in itself because there were several leads that had multiple suspects. And these were the license plates that were recorded in the apartment complex when Wendy Prescott was killed. So you just, you went around the apartment complex. We had all the license plates. And just started writing them down. Yes, we had. And then, yeah, got to look into everyone. Just the license plate in itself.
can identify many suspects. And we would sit in that complex and it would be so frustrating just to sit there watching people leave knowing, my God, is that my suspect? Is that somebody that knows my suspect? It's like finding a needle in a complex. That's a pretty good cliche.
They checked alibis and collected fingerprints and DNA from dozens of men with connections to the complex. The long list of leads was daunting. But then, a call came in. The results from the DNA samples taken from Christine and Wendy were back. They were identical. They were carbon copies. There's one killer out there that you need to find. There's one killer.
We just don't know who that killer is. They did know who he wasn't. The DNA results cleared the neighbor who'd lived near both women, Wendy's ex and Christine's boyfriend Tang. I know it's a male that I can match DNA to if I ever find him. And I know it's a male that I very likely have prints I can match to. Problem is, that male is a ghost. It's nothing but air. Tommy Lenore was stumped, and it wouldn't be long before the ghost he was hunting struck again.
But this time, there was a survivor. A woman whose story would change the course of the entire investigation. He said, don't scream and I won't kill you. They are the families of the missing in America. And they're desperately searching for answers. Somebody knows something. I'm Josh Bankowitz. Join me for season three of Missing in America. Listen carefully.
Because just one small detail might allow you to solve a mystery. We have seen miracles happen. Dateline. Missing in America. All episodes available now, wherever you get your podcasts.
For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline. Have you ever seen such a thing before? For podcast fans, nothing is more chilling than listening. What goes through your mind when you make a discovery like that? And when you subscribe to Dateline Premium, it gets even better.
Excuse me if I sound a little skeptical. Every episode is ad-free. Ooh, wow. So this could be your ace in the hole. And not just ad-free, you also get early access to new intriguing mysteries and exclusive bonus content. So what were you afraid of? Dateline Premium. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or datelinepremium.com. You ready for what's coming? ♪
By 1999, Detective Tommy Lenore was growing impatient. Over two years had passed since the murders of Christine Vu and Wendy Prescott. He was still conducting countless interviews and collecting new DNA samples for testing. It's just taking a lot longer than you thought. It takes a long time. If I were in a perfect world, it would have been solved a lot quicker. Unfortunately, the world that I live in and what we deal with, it's not a perfect world.
Shima Benson, a recent transfer student at the University of Texas at Arlington, was unaware of the fear that had gripped the area. Just a few months away from graduating with a degree in public relations, she'd finally gotten serious about her studies. My freshman year, I went to a different school, so I would have rather been there, but I was actually, my parents made me go to UTA. And so we'll come back to Texas to finish up because I was having way too much fun. And my grades, uh,
weren't so good. But Shima still managed to keep a busy social life at UTA. She joined Alpha Kappa Alpha and moved into the sorority house near campus. Shima's bubbly personality helped her fit right in, and she balanced her studies with her social schedule. I was active in my sorority, so we had step shows and community service, things of that nature. That must have brought even more happiness to this, the college experience, having all these new friends. Yes, yes. We had a great time.
But everything changed one February night. Shima chatted with a friend on the phone before bed. We were on the phone for a long time. When we started talking about just guys in general, I was saying that I don't like a particular guy from the South because of the way that they tend to approach me. And not all Southern guys, just a certain type? No, there was a particular type. Because I had a date with a Southern gentleman in a few days. So just girl talk? Yeah.
After she said goodnight to her friend, she heard a strange rustling on the roof. She didn't make much of it, thought maybe it was an animal outside. She began to drift off to sleep. But then... I just felt darkness or like evil. I felt something not right. It's hard to explain it, but it was just like, it was like an evil presence had entered my space and it woke me up and I was disoriented. And then I made...
sense of what I was seeing. Then I realized, oh my God, it's a person. The story you're about to hear is disturbing. I saw a man in a mask. It was dark. He had a gun and he said to not scream. Don't scream and I won't kill you. This is every woman's worst nightmare. Right. Yeah. I wasn't thinking he was going to kill me. I was thinking he's going to rape me.
I didn't even think about being killed. I was thinking about being raped and how much I did not want that to happen. Does fear just take over your whole body? Are you just frozen? I am fearful, absolutely, but I'm also thinking, how do I get out of this? How do I get out of this? Was there anything around you that you could fight back with? My keys. My keys were on the nightstand and then just threw them at him.
And then I had my phone as well, the handset that I threw at him as well. Like an old phone, a landline. An old landline, right.
Shima doesn't remember saying anything to the man, but he made this chilling comment. So he said to me, so you don't like guys like me from the South? Like he was offended by me having said what I said earlier on the phone. So he was listening to your phone conversation? Yeah, it did kind of click for me there, like, oh, wow, he heard what I said. He's been out there this whole time.
Things escalated quickly from there. Shima did what she could to try to protect herself. The man reeled from the bite to his genitals.
That's when the beating turned to sexual assault. My brain was in overdrive. How did he get there? Who is this person? He's beating you and raping you. Yes, and gets my clothes off. And I don't really know how that happened, but I know I was fighting back. Shima says the attack seemed to go on for hours, then suddenly stopped. I heard the front door close. And once I registered that the front door closed and it didn't sound like...
He was coming back. I got up and got into the mode of getting literally everything I've been saying the whole time is how do I get out of here? Now I can get out of here. Were you able to call 911? No, because I wasn't able to call 911. That was my intention. I went to find the hand set I threw at him. I could not find it. So I went across the hall to my roommate's room, picked up her phone, and there was no dial tone.
Do you think he had cut the phone line? I do think he cut the phone lines, yeah. So I ran over across the street to the fraternity house to get help. What's that moment like when you finally reach a person that can help you? I was just crying. Can you call the police? Yeah.
A fraternity brother called 911 as Shima tried to reckon with her injuries. Help was on the way, but Shima's life was changed forever.
Tasha Fries was about to change, too. I'm thinking, was he after me? Did I put her in a situation? Was I the reason that she was attacked?
while a rapist and killer was still free to stalk more prey. And he asked me, do I feel the gun in my back? And I say yes. And he said, if you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you. Leaving investigators desperate, but determined to find answers for the victims' families. They don't want false promises. They don't want false hope. They want to know that we care, which we do, and that we are not going to stop fighting. And we're not.
Shima Benson lay in a hospital bed, almost unrecognizable. The pain started setting in while I was at the hospital, the pain in my face. Her injuries were so severe she needed surgery. The bone holding my eye, my left eye up, was broken. So they had to go in through the eyeball.
to fix it. It shows you he had a lot of strength too. Oh yeah. And I'm pretty small. I was smaller then. I didn't even weigh 100 pounds. Could you believe that you had endured it? You made it through. That you're alive. You know, I didn't have that realization right away. I don't want to cry, but it took a lot. I think, honestly, it took a lot for me to get to the point where I was also grateful that I'm still here.
I wasn't murdered, but it still took a part of me. It still felt like a death in a sense. So I wasn't like super grateful to be alive at the time, to be honest. And I did hear a lot of, oh, thank God he didn't kill you. And I was like, yeah, I guess. You went through something just extremely traumatizing. Yeah. And this is something that every woman fears sometimes.
will happen to her at some point, and it happened to you, and... Yeah, this is true. You just think evil like that will never touch you. News of Shima's attack spread quickly across campus, scaring students like Wendy Prescott's best friend, Tasha Fry. Turned out she was also Shima's sorority sister. To know he did that to Shima, that was my line sister. That wasn't just a sorority sister. We pledged together.
It was hard for Tasha to fathom that yet another friend had been targeted. This time, the attack hit much closer to home. Shima was brutally raped in the room that I'd moved out of. Oh my gosh, Tasha. How do you even... Shock. I have no words. Yeah, me either. Me either. Complete shock.
Tasha had only been in her new apartment for a month, but she would still visit the sorority house for meetings. I'm thinking, was he after me? Did I put her in a situation? Was I the reason that she was attacked? All the fear and anxiety she felt after Wendy's murder came rushing back. I was a mess mentally. I don't even know how I was functioning.
Lightning doesn't strike twice. Right. It did for you. Yeah. In the worst possible way. In the worst possible way. It was like reliving a horror all over again. Wendy's killer was still at large. Now, so was Shima's rapist. But this time, Tasha's friend survived. What do you say to someone after something like that? What did she say to you? What do you say? First off, it was shocking because he broke her face. He broke her face. This monster...
Tasha was wracked with guilt. She thought she might know the rapist's identity, a man she says had been stalking her for months. You were being stalked? By who? This guy that we had all met together at a first Friday party that was prevalent back in the day. We had dated for a little while. He got really weird. So I ended things and he wasn't taking no.
So what was he doing? Tasha moved out of the sorority house, but she was told her ex kept showing up there. He'd even come by hours before Shima's attack. Now I'm scared for my life because I'm like, is he after me?
After Shima's rape, Tasha went to campus police about her ex. They'd taken the lead on Shima's investigation. I thought that they needed to know that this guy has been coming around. Maybe he was coming there for me, but wanted to just share all the information that I had because my goal is I want to help. I need this person caught.
Tasha's ex quickly became the lead suspect, and campus investigators set out to bring him in for questioning. She had mentioned her friendship with Wendy to them, but didn't think Wendy's murder had any connection to Shima. Totally different circumstances. Rape and a murder, rape and a beating. In a sorority house? In a sorority house. No bathtub, no strangling, no any of that.
Tasha had also complained about her ex to the Arlington police. She told the detective that her ex knew Wendy, too. A detective with our department brought this stalking report to my attention. And the reason being is because it mentioned Wendy Prescott. As soon as he read it, Detective Lenore realized Tasha was the common denominator between the two cases, Wendy's and Shima's. I knew that name because I'd been dealing with her back when Wendy was killed.
It all seemed too much of a coincidence, Tasha knowing two rape victims. Lenore needed to know more about her stalker, so he gave Tasha a call and discovered a startling connection between Shima and Wendy. I find out that her and Wendy both knew him and met him back before her murder. Which is like, makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. So now, now I am going to insert myself into this investigation.
He immediately got on the phone with one of the campus police officers. And I just told him, look, we need to look at this gentleman for a couple of reasons. Number one, yeah, he may be your sexual assault suspect, but he very well could be my killer because I have a connection with this guy and with Wendy Prescott back at the time of her murder. There was only one way to know if Tasha's ex was responsible for the murders at the Pear Tree Apartments and Shima's rape, a DNA match.
Is there DNA with Shima? There is DNA. So we sent that to the lab. If the DNA in Shima matches Christine and Wendy? If it matches Christine and Wendy, we know for a fact that that's our killer. We just don't know that's this individual being named. It was imperative that we got his prints and we got his blood sample. But that turned out to be much harder than detectives anticipated. Tosh's ex refused to provide a sample. Not only was he not identified,
He was confrontational. He let myself and the detective from UTA know right up front, I'm not giving you anything. This is highly suspicious. Oh, it's beyond that. Detectives had to wonder, did his lack of cooperation mean he was hiding something? They'd have to jump through legal hoops to find out. But when they did... Tasha might just lead you to your killer, or at least the beginning of finding your killer. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Never miss a moment of the 2024 Olympic Games from Paris. For in-depth coverage of the athletes, events, and medal counts, download the NBC News app. Detective Lenore felt confident he was on to the man who killed two women in Arlington, Texas. The same man he believed raped UTA student Shima Benson, Tasha's ex-boyfriend.
Tasha had reported to police that her ex had been stalking her. He'd even shown up at the sorority house looking for her hours before Shima was attacked. Tasha might just lead you to your killer, or at least the beginning of finding your killer. Absolutely. When Tasha's ex refused to cooperate with police, Detective Lenore went to the grand jury to compel him to provide a DNA sample.
The next day, the ex voluntarily agreed. And when the results came back? He was excluded from the DNA. His DNA didn't match the DNA found on Shima. But Lenore had requested a separate DNA test, comparing Shima's case with the bathtub murders. Those results confirmed his suspicions. I get a report. The person that raped Shima is your killer. Oh, so you got a match. I got a match. We are connected. ♪
The rapist from Shima's case was the bathtub killer. How do you process news like that? He's accused of killing two women. So I think it really drove home that, oh my God, I could have very well been another victim.
one of the victims. Detective Lenore wanted to meet with Shima, so he traveled to San Diego where she'd moved to be with family. She was concerned the attacker mentioned her phone call about Southern men and believed he'd overheard her talking on the phone to her friend. She told Lenore she was also worried about another conversation, a chat with a friend at the mall before she was raped. She told me of an individual she was concerned about that may have overheard her
She was saying some pretty negative things about Southern men. And this individual overheard her. And so her thought was, you don't think he came after me because of this? It was her fear.
And I said, well, if you've got a fear, then I'm going to address it. I'm going to listen to what you tell me, and we're going to find this person. And we found him. Who is this guy? He was a friend that knew Tasha. He was in that circle. Lenore discovered an even more ominous detail about this man. Just two months before Christine was killed, he'd moved into the same apartment complex. Did he have a criminal record? Was there anything to be concerned about with this man? This person had no criminal record. That doesn't really mean anything, but he had no criminal record.
The man voluntarily spoke with Lenore and provided a DNA sample. And when the results came back... He was excluded. Oh, so another frustrating dead end. Correct. Shima did give Lenore something important, something his investigation never had before, a description of the bathtub killer.
She didn't seem well enough to be able to give us a good physical description of the face, but she was absolutely certain he was an African-American male. What that does immediately is I go back to this casebook with probably 2,000 suspects, and I exclude 70% of them just like that.
I go to our apartment list, which is a separate list, and we've got probably another 150 people on that list. And I cut that out. And now it's down to about 40. I felt more optimistic about capturing this individual than I ever had in this investigation. For the first time, there was just, we are going to get this guy. But of course, with that energy and with that optimism also came this gigantic opportunity
boulder of fear going, oh my God, he's still doing this.
So are there other victims out there that we don't know about? Detective Lenore widened his net and put out feelers to surrounding law enforcement agencies, including the Grand Prairie Police Department. Grand Prairie is near Arlington, so you're thinking, why not? It's not only near Arlington, it's on the east side, which is not far from Pear Tree. And I went and met a detective in Grand Prairie that I knew and worked with. And I just said, do me a favor. I said, I need you to do something for me. Go through...
all of your sexual assaults, if any of your suspects after February of 1999, if you have any, and they're African-American male and they committed, if they meet this physical or if they have some type of severe injury, some type of bite injury, I said, let me know.
Two months after that conversation, Lenore's phone rang. It was the detective at the Grand Prairie Police Department. The moment Lenore had been waiting years for had finally arrived. He says, I may have your guy.
The bathtub killer had eluded police for three years. But women around Arlington hadn't forgotten him or what he was capable of. Everything inside of me knew that I was going to be a part of that story. It was a premonition 22-year-old Adrian Fields carried for years.
She had lived near the Pear Tree apartment complex but left after the murders. And even though she moved away, she couldn't shake the feeling she would be the bathtub killer's next victim. I started feeling like someone was following me. Coming from work, it started seeming like someone's exiting everywhere I exit. I'm at the grocery stores and I'm noticing someone's following me. I'm like, I'm super, I'm tripping.
Her uneasy feeling only grew. Adrian was terrified to be alone, to sleep by herself.
But in October 1999, she decided to reclaim her life. I wrote a letter to myself, and I was like, you are 22 years old, and today is going to be the first day of the rest of your life, and you are going to sleep with the lights off, and you are going to listen to jazz. You're not going to have a TV light. You're going to not have anybody spend the night with you. You're going to be a big girl. She taped the letter to her fridge and followed the plan.
Lights off, jazz on. From bed, she called her mother and sister to say goodnight. While she was on the phone, she heard something.
Adrian drifted off, but an hour later, something woke her. I hear breathing and shh, shh.
this sound. And I'm praying, Lord, please, please, Lord, please, please, please, Jesus. Like at this point, I'm begging God not to let anybody be there as I turn over. And as I turn over and it's like I connect to him in the dark. An intruder wearing a stocking over his face was in her bedroom. And he sees me turn over and he takes off running towards me like,
really fast and he jumps up on my bed and he puts the gun in my back and I can feel the coldness of the gun in my back. And then I'm screaming. Does he say anything to you? He says, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, like that. And he puts his hand over my mouth and he asked me, do I feel the gun in my back? And I say, yes. And he said, if you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you. I'm not going to hurt you. He said, stop screaming, stop screaming.
I won't hurt you if you don't scream. But if you scream, I'm going to hurt you. Did you think you were going to die? Did. I did. Then the man began to rape her. All of your worst fears are coming true. Mm-hmm. In this moment. Yes. What does he do next? He tells me to get on the floor, just directing me of what he wants. He's telling me that he wants me to act like there's no tomorrow.
I asked him, is there a tomorrow? And he says, of course there is. And I said, but is there for me? And he just stops, and he's just standing there, and he's looking at me, I'm looking at him, and he says, yes. Adrian didn't believe him. I'm crying. He's asking me, why am I crying? And I said, because I'm scared. You're having a conversation with this man? The entire time.
He started to ask me, what is your name? And I wouldn't tell him my name. And so he was like, well, how about I call you Adrian? So he knew my name. Oh, my gosh. Adrian. It was real. That is so scary. So right then, you knew that those times you felt like you'd been followed, that changes everything. Right. Right.
It changed everything for me. It was so personal. What was inside of you that instead of, you know, just going into a shell and just wanting it to be over, you're engaging with him? I think it was just instincts, just survival instincts. And I think that it just made me human for him. I asked him why was he doing it, and he said that the devil keeps making him do it. Oh, wow. And I said, oh, my God, you've done this before. Mm-hmm.
Adrian says the intruder continued his assault on her for two hours before leaving her broken, alone, but alive. When I went to the hospital, they took pictures, did all of this stuff, raped kid. Then the next day, I went back to my parents' home. Slept with my mom for probably six months.
As is true for every survivor, the agony was hardly over. Every time I closed my eyes, it was real again. It was the traumatic experience over and over and over again. Adrienne had reported her assault to the Grand Prairie police and described what she could make out of her attacker through the stocking he wore over his face. A diligent detective there remembered Tommy Lenore looking for a suspect who matched that same description. He called Lenore.
The description Adrian gave was very similar to what Shima gave. African-American male in his 20s, stocky but not muscular. Adrian also reported her rapist had a scar. It was in the very same spot where Shima Benson said she bit her attacker. And sure enough, when investigators compared the male DNA found on Adrian to that found on Shima, Christine Vu and Wendy Prescott, they all matched.
So now I have the killer identified, two sexual assault victims and two murder victims. Unbelievable. Right. That connection raised a perplexing question for Detective Lenore. Why had the killer he'd been chasing for years changed his M.O.? The big mystery to all of this is the de-escalation. Yeah, because murder and sexual assault, two sexual assaults. Two sexual assaults. I mean, they're equally horrible.
I mean, in a lot of ways with a sexual assault, these ladies have to live with this the rest of their lives. But he's de-escalating. I think when it went public to the media with the bathtub killer, I believe he thought, well, I better quit doing this part of it. Victim by victim, investigators were connecting the dots. And they were about to crack the case wide open with the most important detail of all. Your ghost now has a name. Yes, ma'am. You're coming for him. Yes, ma'am.
Talk to the families of murder victims and they'll tell you almost as agonizing as the loss is the waiting that follows.
The loved ones of Wendy Prescott and Christine Vu know that all too well. How does that weigh on your family? You try to move on, but you know in the back of your mind there's somebody out there, free, that has committed a crime, killed your sister, killed your daughter, killed your niece, and he committed the same crime to somebody else's daughter, sister, niece, right?
And so it was chilling. Your mom's case was never solved, and now here Wendy's case is not being solved. That must weigh heavily on you. Yes, it did. Did you start to think this person might get away with it, or these people who ever did this? Yes, we did.
That same fear practically paralyzed Adrienne Fields. For months after her rape, she could barely eat, speak. She even wrote a letter to her parents. I wrote them a letter and asked, please don't touch me because I couldn't stand to be touched. Shima was struggling too. My mom, she tried her best. But how do you really comfort someone in that situation? I don't know.
Detective Lenore felt the pressure of knowing four families were counting on him. They don't want false promises. They don't want false hope. They want to know that we care, which we do, and that we are not going to stop fighting. And we're not. Unearthing the killer's name was key, but there were roadblocks. While it was clear all four cases were connected by the same male DNA, CODIS, the National DNA Database, was relatively new and didn't contain enough DNA profiles to be useful to Lenore's investigation.
As for the fingerprints found in Christine's and Wendy's apartments, he knew if he could find a match, he could identify the killer. But so far, nothing. Then, a possible breakthrough. Crime scene investigator Joel Stevenson heard about an advance in the FBI's fingerprint identification system. The FBI upgraded the algorithms. They upgraded the search parameters.
So he gave it another shot and sent the print from Wendy's crime scene back to the FBI. We submit the print and we get the answer back early September of 2000 that they have a potential ID. Wow. Turned out a man had been arrested for a 1999 burglary just outside of Dallas. His print was a match. And when Stevenson compared the print from Christine's case to the burglar's, it was a match too.
So these two prints that started out this whole investigation could now be the key to finally solving this. They broke the case open, gave us a name and a person to put with the prints. That name was number 17 on our list, original list of people. The chameleon was not a chameleon anymore. What was the name? Dale Chenette.
Dale Chenette. Detective Lenore's ears perked up. I go, I know that name. Really? I know that name because I know every name in these books. So who is Dale Chenette? Dale Chenette was one of the males that was connected to the Peretry Apartments by lease as a cosigner for a young woman who was his girlfriend. Eventually he married her.
Chenette wasn't high on Detective Lenore's list because he'd never been arrested until that burglary in 1999, two and a half years after the murders. I'll use a cliche under the radar. He was eventually going to be interviewed, but he was so low on that list. That is the moment in this investigation. Oh. This is it. Absolutely. You finally have a name. I've got a name.
Your ghost is now alive. My ghost is a human being, and he's an evil human being, and we are going to arrest him.
Detective Lenore worked on getting an arrest warrant while another team went to Shannette's house. We had a team that was set up surveillance on the house. During this time, once I got the warrant, once it was signed, he actually came out of the house, got in his vehicle and left. The team followed him? They followed him and arrested him. Where did they pull him over? Pulled him over on this road that we're on right now, coming up the street. And what was his reaction? What word did you get back? He basically cooperated, didn't say anything. But what's interesting is he also didn't question why he was being arrested.
They brought Shannette to the station. He agreed to talk to me. He was actually soft-spoken, polite, and sat down and we had a conversation. I asked him, I said, "You understand why you're here? You know why you're here. You're here because your print was matched inside an apartment, the Pear Tree Plum Tree apartment."
Dale Chenette denied ever being in the victim's apartments. Lenore knew he was lying. How on earth would his fingerprint be on Wendy's TV stand? And on the interior of Christine's door? So I said, listen, well, if it's not you, let's exclude you. I can do it through your print. I can do it through your DNA. He says, I'm not going to give that to you. And he's not getting upset. We've made it. Of course, I had nothing to do with that. As an innocent person would be in shock. But as we're talking, he says...
"You need to understand about my past." He said, "I was abused." "What do you mean you were abused?" And he said, "I was sexually abused when I was a kid." Then, Shannette said something surprising. And so we're talking, and he says, "Well, do you care about my life?" Which kind of called me off a little bit, and I was like, "Well, I gave him the general answer. Yeah, I care about everybody's life." And he says, "Then don't let me get the death penalty." That was a curious request.
He's been denying all of this. You're denying, but yet you're saying, please don't let me get the death penalty. Yeah. You believe you're looking at a guilty man. If I were in Vegas, I'd put all the chips on the table. He goes, I will tell you everything I know you want to know and more. And more. And what's the more? Are you thinking more victims? Oh, good Lord, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Lenore told Shannette he didn't have the authority to make the call about the death penalty. That was the end of the conversation.
His response was, if you can't do it, I want a lawyer. And when you say that, it's over. I've had some times getting up and walking out of a room that were hard. That was one of the hardest. But Lenore still had some cards to play. He got a search warrant to physically examine Shannette. That injury, exactly where Shema described, was still there. The warrant also allowed the detective to collect Dale Shannette's DNA. As he waited for the results, he dove deeper into his suspect's life.
and discovered he was in a relationship with a woman who, as it turned out, had a lot to share with police and us. Well, he just preferred that I took baths. I did that instead of the showers. The twisted truth was coming to light. There were more victims and buried secrets Shannette was keeping. It was the news Christine Vu's family had waited years to hear. The search for her killer appeared to be over.
The Arlington Police Department reached out to us as a family and told us that they have somebody in custody. What's that emotion like for you when you get that news? It was fantastic because leading up to that point, we felt this was a cold case. Nothing's going to get done. No one's going to get caught. Wendy Prescott's family felt the same. And they also had questions. Did you know the name Dale Chenette? Had you ever heard of this person? No. No.
And then you find out the connection, that he was the boyfriend of a woman living in the complex. I mean, I would have never imagined that he was living there, you know, that it was a resident. Detectives learned Shanette hadn't lived in the Pear Tree apartments for long. In fact, he moved out before Wendy was murdered. He seemed to live a quiet life. He and his girlfriend married, had a child, and eventually divorced.
At the time of his arrest, he was living with a new girlfriend we'll call Kay. I would not think that he was capable of hurting a woman. She asked us not to show her full face. Do you worry what people will think of you? I'd just rather keep my peace and serenity away from everything. Kay says her world was turned upside down the day Dale Chenette was arrested. Police surrounded the home she shared with him, then came inside to search.
What is your reaction to the police when they tell you this news? Shock and also disbelief. Kay remembered the bathtub murders. For years, she says she lived in terror of being the next victim.
She even shared her fears with Shanette. I told him that I never thought I would live in Arlington because, you know, they never found the guy who killed those women. How did he make you feel when you expressed your concerns? Well, he just kind of dismissed it. And I said, that's why I always chose to move on the second or third floor. And he said, well, that just isn't safe either because people can get in on the second or third floor as well.
Kay couldn't believe the man suspected of rape and murder was the same man she'd once considered her protector. What was it about Dale that made you feel safe? Well, he was a big guy. He was muscular and always had a gun, a pistol. You just knew that he was going to be there for you if something bad happened? Yes, I did. He had proven it before. If I needed him, he was always there. Kay says she met Shanette at a local club where he worked behind the bar. They dated for about eight months.
Detectives later learned that Adrian also frequented that club. How do you two start talking? Well, he noticed me and he approached me and asked me if he could give me his number. A month later, Kay called him and the two started dating. She says at first, everything seemed great. He was really nice. He just gave me a lot of attention, compliments and stuff. But thinking back, red flags popped up.
She also brushed off an incident at her old place before she moved in with Dale.
Kay had gone on vacation with a girlfriend, and when she returned, she says her neighbor told her someone had been in her apartment. He could hear the footsteps from the downstairs apartment. And then when I got home, I couldn't unlock my door, and I had to get the police to come and open the door for me. And they told me that it was locked from the inside, so whoever was in there, they exited through the balcony. Kay suspected it was Dale, but decided to let it go.
Now that I think about it, retrospect, I had fears. What were they? He just gave you the demeanor like you just don't want to push him too far. Was Dale ever violent towards you? He wasn't violent for the most part. But one time I decided I was going to leave because we were getting along bad. And he did a restraining move on me and held me and wouldn't let me get up. Did it scare you?
And there was one more thing, a request Chanette made that at the time Kay thought was harmless. And so...
I did that instead of the showers. I mean, was this something that he wanted to see you taking a bath or he just wanted to know that you were taking a bath? He just wanted to know that I was taking a bath. Did you find that odd? No, I just thought it was a preference, you know? Clearly he had, there was something about bathtubs. You know, the fact that he wanted you to take baths.
His victims were found in the bathtub. Yeah, I think that was something, maybe it was some type of cleaning ritual or something. I don't know. Despite all the disturbing realizations, Kay kept in contact with Shanette, even visited him in jail. Did you ask him in that moment, did you kill these women and sexually assault these women? No, because I knew that that's something that he was not willing to talk about. Could you think of a reason why?
Why he would do it. Was there something in his past or something that he told you that might shed some light on why? He did have mommy issues. He said that his sisters were treated better than him growing up. And he also felt rejected from his wife. Sounds like he maybe has issues with women or how he's been treated by women in the past.
Yes, it could have been some rejection. Why didn't you just cut him off now that he's in jail? Because part of me was still not believing that he actually did it. Maybe he didn't do it, you know, and that what if he didn't do it and everybody's abandoning him? Even though Shanette was behind bars, Detective Lenore still needed the lab results.
Then, while he waited, he got a call that suggested this case was far from over. From the moment Detective Lenore heard about Christine Vu's murder at the Pear Tree Apartments, he'd been on the hunt for a killer.
Years later, in March 1999, he felt he'd finally found him. He was just waiting for a DNA match to confirm it. Then, two weeks after Dale Chenette's arrest, the moment the investigator had been waiting for arrived. The DNA matched all four victims. Christine, Wendy, Shima, and Adrian. We have a DNA match to all four victims. You got your guy?
Oh, he's definitely our guy. There's no ifs, ands, and buts about it. But Detective Lenore believed there were other victims. Eight months before Shannette's arrest, he'd put out a bulletin to neighboring police departments asking if any of their unsolved crimes seemed similar to these four cases. Investigators from Lancaster, Texas, got that note and believed three of their cases were possibly connected.
Turned out, Lenore's hunch was right. There were more victims. At that time, we connected his DNA to three sexual assaults that occurred in 1998 between September and December. One of the victims was a Dallas police officer. He threatened to kill her family, even cited their address to her, saying, I know where your family lives. Oh, my goodness. Vicious. In one case, he sexually assaulted a woman in front of her child.
The Tarrant County District Attorney pursued the maximum penalty. Dale Chenette was indicted on capital murder charges. If found guilty, he would face the death penalty. Chenette's biggest fear was now a real possibility. But there was a potential snag with the prosecution's case. Assistant DA Greg Miller. Under Texas law, we wouldn't be able to try him at the same time for both murders.
So they chose Wendy Prescott's murder, which meant the jury would not hear anything about Christine Vu or the sexual assault victims. Why try Wendy's case first if she was second in the murders? The only issue that we had a little bit of a concern about in Christine's cases was Christine had a boyfriend.
Although Christine's boyfriend, Tang Ku, had long ago been cleared by police, prosecutors worried his presence at the crime scene, so close to the time of her murder, might confuse the jury. When you're the prosecutor, you're trying to convince all 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt. And all the defense is trying to do is, you know, find one or two people that, for whatever reason, don't believe that she ended up, you know, killed Christine Vu, too.
Christine's family understood. Once we got to that point, it didn't matter. We felt comfortable that there was enough linkage between the two cases that they were done by the same person. You just wanted him to go away. We just wanted him to go away, exactly. The trial began in January 2003 in Fort Worth. Christine's and Wendy's families attended. It was a top priority for us to attend and see this through because that's the least we can do for Christine in her memory.
Wendy's cousin hoped the presence of both families sent a strong message to Shanette. To make sure that he knew that he took away someone very special to us and to make sure that he was going to get his punishment.
The prosecution's case focused on the forensic evidence, starting with that thumbprint. What we referred to as a dust print from the TV stand of Wendy's apartment, which is probably the best dust print I've ever seen. Yeah, it was very clear. Very clear. And this was Dale Chenette's print. And then we had a sperm sample from the autopsy procedure from Wendy. Also Dale Chenette's. That also came back to Dale Chenette's.
To quash any doubt about the results, an expert explained how unlikely it was that the sample could be anyone else's. The DNA probability, you call it, was really important? Yes, the DNA probability that it was someone else other than Dale Chionet was like one in 763 million people. The prosecution rested its case.
In fact, the defense didn't even give an opening statement, didn't call any witnesses.
You had such powerful evidence. How does the defense combat that? They couldn't. The forensic evidence was so strong. They were trying to poke holes in the way it was collected. Or what did you do with it? Where did you store it? And we just had documentation on all of that. In reality, they just kind of had to sit there and take it. Just witness after witness after witness. There really wasn't much they could do.
The case went to the jurors, and after just two hours of deliberation, they had a verdict. Guilty to capital murder. Just as you predicted. As I hoped, yes. When they said the guilty verdict, you know, it was just like a relief, like something had lifted. Now the real task in this case began, and that was to lay out the evidence that would convince a jury that he deserved a death sentence.
This time, prosecutors were allowed to introduce all of Dale Chenette's crimes. We get to tell the jury the rest of the story, so to speak. And that's what we did. That included the details of Christine Vu's case and all five sexual assaults. One by one, the victims took the stand to unburden themselves of the pain they'd suffered for years.
I was married at this time. I was pregnant, about seven months pregnant. It was the first time Adrian had come face to face with Shanette since that awful night.
And so I'm telling my testimony and he's looking at me like with those piercing evil eyes. He's just looking like hard, like I should have killed you. Like, you know, I shouldn't have let you live. You know, did you feel so empowered? I did. I did. I cried all the way through, but I felt so strong and so empowered, even in just like when I walked out, it was like, I'm leaving this behind me. I'm walking out this door and this is it.
Shima felt something different. I remember being really angry at him. Like he didn't care of the pain that he inflicted on the families, the victims, the survivors. But the jury recognized all their pain and once again decided in favor of the prosecution. Dale Shinnette was sentenced to death. Six years later, on February 10, 2009, he died by lethal injection.
The families of Wendy and Christine were there in the viewing room to watch his execution. There were tears that were shed. Really? In the room, yeah. You know, it's not so much the tears for the murderer. It's the tears for the victims that we shed. Thankfully, it was the closure that we were looking for. Since that day, Shima has also found a way to move forward as a wife and a mother.
You've overcome so much. Adrienne credits her daughter for her positive outlook.
Starting to notice that my fears are taking over her. And so I begin to think if I'm the woman that she will become, then I've got to work on the woman that I am. I'm going to live differently. She's now an author and a motivational speaker. I'm proof that you can get past rape. My experience is not everyone else's experience, but I can tell you from my experience that you can live through it and that you can breathe again.
Adrian wanted to help others through their darkest moments and started a nonprofit called Rip the Bandage.
I call it my safe place. We do a lot of great things. So we go out to the streets, we feed the homeless, we provide daily sustenance like toiletries and clothes and shoes and snacks. And I am encouraging people all day long. You can make it. You're such an inspiration. Thank you. Living proof that you can do it. This happened in your life, but it didn't happen to knock you out the game. It came to give you strength. ♪
That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast. Andrea Canning and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 10, 9 Central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.