The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo
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Tonight on Dateline. What I had in my mind was, he's done this before. He's hunting women. That young woman up there on the hillside could have been you. Yeah, that was his plan. Your 21-year-old daughter is just suddenly banished. It's devastating. This beautiful young lady disappeared after going to meet a photographer. My heart dropped.

What if it is the same guy? Were there other women who came forward? Several other women. He said, we're casting for the new James Bond movie. You're perfect. He told me there was a photo shoot happening. It was up in the Hollywood Hills. He said, well, you need this certain outfit. High heels, but not too high. A shorter skirt, but not too short. He grabbed me.

Pulled me by my hair, dragged me back to the bed. I said, this guy has done this before. He'll do it again, and he will kill someone. A new turn in the mystery from our hit podcast, Murder in the Hollywood Hills. You wonder, how has he not been stopped? I wanted to get all these women together. I wanted to bring him out of the shadows.

Young women with big dreams stalked by a predator. But in a Hollywood twist, could they turn the tables on him? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo. This is where she came. The young woman drove in her little car up the winding confusion of narrow roads.

among houses perched like spectators, peering out at the show down below. Hollywood and the vast city beyond. Her name was Christy Johnson. She was 21, not quite 22. And then, as evening fell over the steep canyons, she simply vanished like the sun. Where is she that she doesn't have communication to me that she's not calling?

This is the story of what happened to Christie. It's about a smooth-talking Hollywood predator. I really knew this guy was up to something bad. And it's about a sisterhood of women who banded together after the legal system failed to protect them. What we have as victims inherently is a powerful voice. We come together and use our voices, we win. It's powerful.

Our story begins in 2003. Christy Johnson was just starting out, finally on her own, here in the city of a million dreams. Or close to it, a shared apartment in Santa Monica. And with dreams of her own, said her dad Kirk. But...

Not the starry-eyed kind. Christie's were more grounded. She wanted to be a makeup person. She talked about working behind the scenes. That's correct. Producing or directing, possibly. Something in that industry. She felt like she was on her way, you know, when this happened. When this happened? Seems like another age now. More than 20 years have passed since the events I'll describe here.

All before the iPhone or Facebook or the widespread use of high-def TV. But I'm telling you now because it's a tale that did not die. Even now remains a wound that hasn't quite healed. I met Christy's mom, Terry Hall, back toward the beginning. She had no idea what was to come. How could she?

Christy and I spoke on the phone every day. You know, we enjoyed being with each other and doing things together and had a very close relationship. It was the day after Valentine's Day, February 15th. That Saturday morning, like every morning, Christy called her mother at home up in Northern California. She told Terry she was headed to the Century City Mall.

to do some shopping. And I said, okay, great, you know, don't buy anything. Pick something out and it'll be your Valentine's present. By Sunday, Christy should have called her mother again. She did not. I thought, now that's strange. Kind of a low-grade anxiety. Right, like, gee, I wonder what's happening here, you know, that I can't get a hold of her. Again she called, and again. Two days went by. No answer, no call.

When I couldn't get a hold of her on her cell phone again, I called her on her direct line at work. And when I got her answering message on her work phone is when I became very alarmed. That was Monday. Christy, ever conscientious, wouldn't miss work. Terry called a co-worker of Christy's who was also worried. And so far away and beyond anxious, Terry phoned the Santa Monica police.

They suggested that I call all the local hospitals, which I did. But she wasn't at any of them. Mind you, not so uncommon for a young woman to just take off for a while.

Maybe that's what happened? Just the same? The officer took a report. Tall, attractive young woman, blonde hair, hibiscus flower tattoo on the small of her back. The officer was getting a bad feeling about this one. And so he walked down the hall to talk to the on-duty detective, Virginia Obenshain, who got that very same feeling. So you really were taking this seriously from the get-go? Oh, from the moment we found out about it.

It was later that day when Kirk, divorced from Christy's mom and far away in Michigan, got the phone call that Christy was missing. It's devastating. You know, there's not a word to describe that other than the fact that you just, you don't have any answers. What is this? Maybe she got on a sailboat and went to Mexico. Maybe she went to a concert. You better hope so. Yeah. You're hoping that that's the case. And immediately, I made travel arrangements to fly to Los Angeles. ♪

Detective Obenshain told the family that investigators had spoken to Christy's roommate, a woman named Carrie. Carrie gave the police an important lead that Christy had indeed gone to the mall, bursting into their apartment with big news. She was all excited because she was going to do an audition that was going to bring in some big dollars.

This is the police recording of a detective's interview with Christy's roommate. She says, I'm so excited. She goes, I met this guy. And she's, I mean, she was like really excited.

Christy told Carrie some of the things that the man at the mall said, something about an incredible opportunity, a very special audition to, perhaps, appear in a Bond movie. They're looking for a fresh face. They're looking for someone like in a James Bond movie. Christy also told Carrie she was to wear a very specific outfit to the audition.

a man's white dress shirt, a super short miniskirt, sheer pantyhose, and a pair of sky-high stiletto heels. She had to be real sultry and sexy. That's what they were looking for, and they were going to give her a necktie to wear. So what did you do after getting word about the roommate and the fact that she'd been shopping? We went to the Century City Mall and looked at the videotapes to see if we can see Christy.

And there she was on the grainy security camera. We saw a picture of her in one of the stores buying the skirt. But that was it. Though they canvassed every camera in the mall, there was no video of her with a man. Nothing.

You've checked all the hospitals, you've checked the tapes at the mall, you've checked with a roommate, you've checked with a phone, and, no, Christy, what do you do? Well, we decided to go to the media and ask for the public's help. The family and the police department are very concerned because it's very uncharacteristic of her behavior to not show up to work yesterday and today. And no one has seen her since Saturday afternoon.

And calls started coming in. One of them from a young woman named Susan Murphy. What was it like to get that call from Susan Murphy? That opened up the whole case. It was unbelievable. The case of the slippery predator. He was in a place where he wasn't supposed to be. The man who attacked women and manipulated the law.

I said it then to everyone involved in the case. This guy has done this before. He'll do it again. And he will kill someone because he almost killed me. Terror is what it was. Christy Johnson's mother rushed to L.A., frantic, eager to do something to find her. Unable to do much beyond hold it together or try to and spread the word.

Her father, Kirk, flew in, went to Christy's apartment in Santa Monica. Did all he could think of just then. When I got there, here are these two local TV vans. Someone said, who are you? Well, I'm Christy's father. How long has she lived with this unit? Do you know offhand? Since November. And I had made a poster with a picture of Christy. And I wrote a note. I said, Christy, please come home. Love, Dad.

the strength of the family. Kirk told everyone who'd listen about Christy. Born in California, moved with her family to Saugatuck, Michigan, where she played high school basketball and sailed out on the lake. She was a great sailor. She was very skillful at that. She had a very close group of friends. She had a high school class of 60, so everybody knew everybody.

But after a year of college, Christy decided she really wanted to be out West. She told me how beautiful it was and how much she was enjoying being in California. Terri followed her daughter West, explored California with her. And now, now she was beside herself.

Well, I can't imagine how that must feel. You just, you move into action, you know. I was almost void of having feelings. I was just on the phone the whole time.

Kirk was surprised Christy would even think of showing up for a so-called audition. Does it sound like Christy? Not really, because Christy was very, I would say, street smart. Yeah, that's what others have said about her. That she would have some doubt, you know, but, you know, she knows, don't speak with strangers, you know, you don't know who they are. Christy had told her roommate that her meeting with the industry guy was at 5.30 p.m. But where? Where?

Phone technology was not quite so revealing back then, but cell phone records might tell them something. So Detective Obenshain got Christie's and discovered that her cell phone last dialed out at 5.32 p.m., but not from Beverly Hills, which is where she told her roommate she was going. Instead, the call was placed from Laurel Canyon up in the Hollywood Hills.

So you must have been wondering, what the heck is she doing up there? Yes. And then after that last pain, nothing? Nothing. And then five days after Christy vanished, a woman named Susan Murphy saw a tiny article in the Los Angeles Times about Christy and how family and police were trying desperately to find her.

This is an article I read, and it mentions this beautiful young lady who disappeared after going to meet a photographer. And that's all it says. What was your reaction when you read this? Call it women's intuition. I just knew. My heart dropped. And just like that, Susan Murphy picked up the phone and called the police. I just started my story, and they said, can you hold on?

And they immediately put me in touch with the lead detective on the case, Detective Obenshain. Susan told Detective Obenshain that she too had been approached by a man at the Century City Mall just a few weeks before Christy went missing. He told her he was in the business and he gave a name, Victor Thomas, which gave police something to work with, at least.

Except there seemed to be no such person. At least, no Victor Thomas who fits Susan's description. But when they pulled security video from the mall, sure enough... there was... a guy. First he seemed to be following Susan around Macy's, and then he approached her.

He just said, "I think you're very attractive." He said, "I'm a director of photography and we're casting for the new James Bond movie." And he said, "We've been casting all day and you're the look we want. You're perfect." And I had enough experience to kind of know that this was a come on, a pick up. And I knew that and I was very intrigued. If it's true, hey cool, that'd be great. How fun would that be to be a Bond girl?

The man invited her to come to an audition, said he'd set it up for the following day, gave her an address in West Hollywood, and she went. But she brought her boyfriend along, just in case. I noticed that it was an abandoned building, it looked like to me, so I thought, okay. I said, well, first of all, I'm not going anywhere with you. I said, I need some identification. And he said, oh, I don't have any identification. I said, you don't? I go, where is it? He goes, I left it on the set.

I go, you did. On the set? On the set. Susan knew then the guy was trying to scam her. I started, like, motioning to Mark to get out of the car. You realized you were with somebody? I realized I was with somebody. It's like, you know, you're not right for the part anyway. He's like, just forget it. And at that, the guy, whoever he actually was, took off, ran away. But there were crucial extra details Susan had to offer to Detective Obenshain, details police had not made public.

and very similar to what Christy had told her roommate. He said, "It's very important that I wear stilettos, black stilettos as high as possible." And then he said, "A black miniskirt preferably, but any miniskirt would be great. Pantyhose, a white man's shirt, hair slicked back really tight in a ponytail, and a man's tie."

He said he would provide the tie. Detective Obenshain asked Susan to sit with a sketch artist. And then the Santa Monica PD got the drawing to the media. And one morning soon after, an actress named Kathy DeBono happened to be watching TV. And I recognized him instantly.

So right away, she called the police. I told them that I saw the news and that I'd met this man at the Century City Mall several years prior. Oh yes, the guy at the mall. But Kathy wasn't going to be the prey. She would become the hunter. He seemed really good at what he was doing, and so I wanted to see if I could understand what he was about.

When police investigating the disappearance of Christy Johnson appealed to the public for help, Christy's grateful family could only hope it would make some sort of difference. Somebody will know something. And sure enough, somebody did. Lots of somebodies, beginning with Susan Murphy's story of her frightening encounter with the man who said his name was Victor Thomas. The subject approached her and insisted in a very aggressive manner that she come with him immediately.

Susan's story and her composite sketch of a possible suspect set off a chain reaction. What kind of response did you get? Well, we set up a tip line. We got, oh, probably a thousand calls on the tip line. One of them from a woman who just happened to catch the story on the morning TV news. This woman, Kathy Debono, the guy in the mall? She knew about him, all right.

There was no doubt in your mind? Not for a second. No doubt whatsoever. I called the police. When Kathy heard how Christy disappeared and then saw that picture of a possible abductor, it instantly brought her back to an experience she had at that very same Century City Mall, late '98 or early '99.

She was 28 at the time, unusually tall and very fit and already in the business of Hollywood. With, among other things, Chicago Hope and a recurring role on Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

She was just minding her own business when a well-dressed man approached her. And he said to me, "Excuse me, are you an actress or a model?" And I just stopped and said, "Um, yeah." And he said, "I really like your legs. You look perfect for something we're casting right now. Can we talk about it for a little while?" There are two ways of saying that. How did he say it? His tone. His weird level was? His creep level was? At this point in the conversation, his creep level didn't exist.

Thing was, Kathy was used to auditions, was used to hearing professionals discuss her look and whether it would work for some TV or movie role. But this guy seemed just a little off. Like when he tried to lure her to a photo shoot and told her to bring the very same provocative wardrobe that Christie's roommate and Susan Murphy had described to police.

A white man's button-down shirt and shiny stockings. He said the stockings were important because it was all about the legs. And a black miniskirt, as short as it could be, as tight as it could be. And black stiletto heels. And he would bring the necktie. And he would bring the necktie. I knew it was...

Yes. And warning bells started to go off. He wanted me to go to an audition. And anytime anyone wanted to set up an audition, I would have them go through my agent. That was just sort of the run of things. That's how you did it. And he didn't want to do that. But Kathy kept listening. You know, a lot of people would just got up and walked away. Said, forget it, Creek. You're gone. Why didn't you do that? I suppose they would have. I think the only way I can answer that is...

my own natural curiosity. Natural curiosity she picked up from her father, a detective in New York. Anyway, the guy at the mall. He seemed really good at what he was doing. So I stayed and continued to talk to him and asked him questions. And he told me there was a photo shoot happening right now, that it was up in the Hollywood Hills, not far away from the Century City Mall.

The Hollywood Hills, as police now knew, is the area where Christie's cell phone last pinged. He suggested that I leave the mall with him. Right then and there, he would drive me to the audition and bring me back to my car later. Well, I certainly was never going to do that. But still hoping to see what was up with this guy, Kathy did drive to the address he gave her, but she took a little insurance with her. A friend and professional stuntman named Chester Chester.

So she got to the house, but the guy did not come out to meet her. So he would have looked out the window, saw Chester in the car, and just didn't do it. That's my assumption. He saw Chester and aborted his mission. Yeah. I was disappointed because I wanted to learn more. And now the opportunity to learn more was done. I would just have to move on and hope that no one fell for his ruse. So that was that.

Except, of course, it wasn't. That strange man was going to change the course of her life. Hers. And a few more, that is. You were his target that day. I think I was the target for a month. Almost a month. What happened to Christy Johnson up here in the Hollywood Hills? No signal from her phone. No sign anywhere of her white Miata.

Though the Santa Monica police had already issued a BOLO, be on the lookout for the car. We're going to go up the hill. Groups of people who didn't even know Christy gathered to see if they could help. If I didn't help, I would have felt worse. All the work people were doing to find her daughter kept Terry going. I was always hopeful that she was somewhere alive.

Christy was a very strong woman, and I knew that if she was in a circumstance that she could survive, that she would. Waiting and praying, Terri pushed to keep her daughter's disappearance front and center in Los Angeles. Bring Christy back to us. I talked to the media. It was a big media blitz of just trying to get the message out there of Christy's missing. That media blitz helped.

Women who heard about the case were on edge. My mom said, you know, there's this girl missing, and they said something about someone posing as a photographer. And I said, oh, okay, Mom, thanks. I'll keep my eyes open for that. Like Christy Johnson, Alice Walker was just getting started in Los Angeles. She'd brought her skills with her. She was an actress, dancer, and writer.

None of them paying very much yet, so to make ends meet, she got a job as a server at a popular restaurant in the Century City Mall. This is how she remembers it two decades later. This man sat down at my table. He said that he had written a book about a man who is being framed for making money

Snuff films. And I didn't know what snuff films were, so he had to tell me what they were. They're films where someone gets killed. Yeah. And really gets killed. Did he say what his name was? He said his name was Victor. Victor.

Mind you, said Alice, he didn't seem scary or creepy, as he proposed the most amazing possibility, to try out for a role in a Bond movie. He invited her to an audition, she said. It would be here in this building in West Hollywood, same place Susan Murphy had gone for her bogus audition. But it sounded real, said Alice.

Victor told her the movie's director would be there to watch her audition. Oh, and also, Victor told her she'd have to wear a black miniskirt, pantyhose, stilettos, and a man's white dress shirt. And she went. But the director wasn't there. Still, Victor suggested, why not practice a few moves? Okay, she said. I did this walk in circles.

And then he showed me, you know, kind of one other thing. I had to cross my legs and then hook one ankle over the other ankle. Okay. And it was very important that my ankles were really, really tight. That's strange. Very strange. But not frightening... yet. Then Victor told her she'd have to come back again when the director was available. And so, a few days later, she did. But still, no director.

And this time it got a little weird when he told her to try on the necktie he'd brought with him. So what I did is he put the necktie on and I put my thumb in front of the knot so that he couldn't tie a necktie on me for real. And I just kept my finger there, kind of just ready to... You really did that? Yeah, I took the necktie off.

I went to leave. He said, well, let's try again in a day or two. I'll see what the schedule is. And then Christy vanished. Alice was watching TV and saw the sketch of the person of interest. And I thought, wow, if someone had to draw Victor, that would be him. And then I just, I didn't take it in.

that they could be the same person. Somewhere inside, I just wasn't ready for that. Yep. You know, just total denial, I guess. But deep inside, Alice was freaked out. And then a co-worker from the restaurant phoned her. And she said, you know, the police came here. Somebody said something about James Bond, and it made me think of you and that person you were meeting with. And then it just kind of all came together. So I went to the police, and...

Brought the outfit. He had told her that he was producing the next Bond movie and he wanted her to be a Bond girl. Didn't change the script at all. It was just the same all the time. Yes. And the same pickup place. And the same clothing. And the same pickup line. When did the man who called himself Victor first approach Alice? Just hours after he ran away from Susan Murphy and her boyfriend. Same guy. Same M.O.

Alice told the police that the last time she heard from him was February 15th, the very day Christy went missing. He left a message. I remember in the message he said something like, I really need to get a hold of you. I'm trying to get a hold of you. He just sounded strangely frantic. Had the man grabbed Christy because he couldn't reach Alice? And just who was he? That's about when Detective Obenshain got yet another phone call.

Something about that composite sketch, said the caller. And that was from a parole agent who said, that looks like my parolee. Detective Obenshain and the Santa Monica police got hundreds of tips about a possible suspect in the disappearance of Christy Johnson. The most urgent of those tips was attached to a name, Victor Obenshain.

A smooth operator who'd apparently been approaching young women for years, inviting them to audition for a role in a Bond movie. Just like the guy Christie had rushed off to see. But what happened to her? L.A. is a vast expanse of places to hide. A living person or a body?

And though police heard stories about this Victor character, he seemed elusive too.

Everybody was doing everything that they could. I mean, we had overtime people manning the tip lines. We had all six of us in robbery homicide working the case. We had other detectives helping us pass out flyers at the Century City Mall, do other computer work that we were looking for. And we were working pretty much 20-hour days without a day off. We were exhausting every lead possible, everything that we could think of. Until...

Detective Obenshain picked up the phone and found herself talking to yet another woman who'd encountered Victor, his parole officer. She said that he had just gotten out of prison.

That he was her parolee. She gave us his full name, his birthdate, everything. What was his full name? Victor Palaeologus. And just like that, here he was. Here finally was the Victor who targeted Alice Walker and Susan Murphy and Kathy DeBono. Had to be the very same Victor who lured Christy to some phony audition in the Hollywood Hills.

The parole officer told Detective Obenshain that Victor Palaeologos had not been checking in after he was released from prison on January 20th, less than a month before Christy went missing. And he just got out of prison for what? A sexual assault. What was that like to hear? It did not sound good. I was very, very concerned for Christy. But Victor Palaeologos was not so hard to track down after all. He hadn't taken off somewhere, though he may have wanted to.

No, Victor had made a big mistake. Turns out when we were looking for Victor, he was in custody by Beverly Hills Police Department for auto theft. Auto theft? What did he try to do? He went on a test drive with the salesman and the vehicle. They got back to the dealership.

And he said, I'm going to take the car. They had some conversation and he walked by where the keys to the car were, picked up the keys and took the car. Beverly Hills Police videotaped their pursuit of the stolen BMW as it raced into the parking lot of another Los Angeles mall.

How long did it take to catch him? Beverly Hills was right on the money. They don't like car theft there. They don't like car theft, so they had him in custody within an hour. And being a parolee, he'd be back inside the slammer in no time. Yes, and then he went to county jail. So Detective Obenshain's colleagues headed to the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. But when they got there to pick up Paleologus...

They couldn't find him. He was in a place where he wasn't supposed to be. The Men's Central is a truly massive place. Thousands of men are housed here at any given time. And somehow Victor must have learned that police were on their way and had gone into hiding. But how is that possible in a jail? He had to be in here somewhere. Guards were sent off to find him.

And apparently he was down in the laundry room and there were three other inmates there and he was offering to give one of the inmates $5,000 to switch wristbands with him because it was a matter of life or death. Well, we all know you don't get the death penalty for car theft. No, but you do for a few other things, don't you? Yes, you do. At least one. Was somebody who looked like he did or that they could be confused? No. These were three male Hispanics and he's Greek.

Eventually, they brought Victor into an interview room and tried to pin him down. Where was Christy? What had he done to her? And it was like trying to eat soup with a fork. I knew he was lying through his teeth and that he was not being honest with us.

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.

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By the time a handcuffed Victor Peleologos was ushered into the Santa Monica police headquarters, Detective Virginia Obenshain had a pretty good idea of the person she was dealing with. That is, a guy who liked to control and manipulate women. So Detective Obenshain made a decision. Did you do the interview with Victor Peleologos? I did not. I let my partners do it because I didn't want Victor to try and manipulate things, and we wanted to get answers quickly.

Answers that would be crucial if they had any hope of finding Christy Johnson alive or dead. But when the subject of that young woman was brought up, Paleologus clammed up. He said nothing about Christy. Every time we asked about Christy, he changed the subject and said, I don't know anything. He told us that he stole the car because he wanted to go to Mexico. Now, why would he want to go to Mexico? Exactly. Who was this guy?

Obenshain learned Palaeologus grew up in a suburban town near Philadelphia. He had moved to LA in his 20s. He was divorced. He had owned three different failed restaurants. The last one right here in the same building where Alice and Susan went to meet him. He was 40 years old as he sat in the police interview room dodging questions about Christy Johnson. Christy's parents, unaware of all that, clung to their thin string of hope.

held their vigils. By February 27th, her 22nd birthday, Christy had been missing nearly two weeks. That morning, her father appeared on the Today Show, doing the only thing he could do, plead for his daughter's return. He was praying she was locked up somewhere, alive.

It's Christy's birthday, and she deserves a lot more than where she's at now. And I just pray that this individual can watch this show, and I have one thing to say to him, let her go. They held on to anything they could, even as police told them about their prime suspect, Christy's mom, Terry Hall. And my first question was, has this person who you've arrested been

"Has he ever been arrested for murder before?" And they said no. So then, of course, as a parent, I'm very hopeful. I'm thinking, "Okay, maybe this is somebody who's abducted my daughter, but he hasn't murdered her." And then, another tip from a real estate agent named Paul Cady, who told police he'd encountered the very man they had just arrested, and right around the time Christy vanished.

That is, a man named Victor, who seemed very interested in properties in the Hollywood Hills. So Paul had shown him several houses, and at one of the houses, Victor had Paul go into another room, close the door, and screamed, and then asked Paul, "Can you hear that?" Which kind of struck me as odd. Odd? Yes. More than odd. Disturbing. So Obenshain got the list of the properties Katie showed Victor.

Many were near Laurel Canyon, where Christy made her last phone call. All the houses that the real estate agent had shown Victor, we wrote search warrants on to see if there was any evidence in there and to see if she was in there. But they didn't find her or anything else that would help their case. Down the hill in Century City, though, something had turned up. But was it good news?

No, it was not. Kristen Johnson's car was found parked right here at the St. Regis Hotel valet parking area. The St. Regis was right beside the Century City Mall. So of course police went over every inch of the Miata, swabbed it for DNA, dusted for fingerprints on every surface, and there weren't any. Aside from one print from Christy, the car was perfectly clean. But here was a useful bit.

The valet attendant told detectives that a man dropped off the car before dawn, the morning after Christy disappeared. Drove the Miata into the valet area, and he just left. And the valet said, no, no, I've got to park the car. And he just took off. Was that man Victor Palaeologus? The detective arranged for a lineup. It's where they put the suspect with five other detectives.

similar-looking people and see if the witnesses can pick the right person out. She brought in Susan Murphy, too, and her boyfriend, along with the parking valet. Susan and her boyfriend both picked Victor out. Right away? Like that? Right away. Mm-hmm.

and the valet could not identify him. Interesting. Did that worry you? Yes and no. The valet only saw him for a brief second and really didn't have that much to look at other than a quick glimpse and then the back of his head. Line up over, the detective and her witnesses emerged into the L.A. sunshine. And then what happened? Then we get out of the lineup and the phones were ringing incessantly.

Something happening in the Hollywood Hills. I got lowered into the ravine. Got lowered? Lowered. By? By the fire department. Was Christy down there? What had Victor Paley-Logos done?

The very question another detective would soon contemplate about another young woman all the way across the country. I started looking into unsolved cases that we had, and one of the ones I found was a Jane Doe that had been discovered in January of 1988. Maybe answers would come with a kiss in a prison yard. He didn't know that I was coming on that day. I surprised him. I wanted him to be a little off guard.

21-year-old Christy Johnson was just hitting her stride. Working, going to college part-time, pursuing work behind the scenes in the film industry. And now she was missing. It's like she vanished off the face of the earth. Yeah. They say it never rains in Southern California. But in mid-February of 2003, it poured. Torrents came roaring down the gloomy hills around Hollywood. Rain and mud everywhere.

And then one day the sun finally emerged and a few locals set out on a hike in the hills. And they saw a body, or what looked like a body, down a steep hillside and called 911. Detective Virginia Openchain had just walked out of the county jail after that lineup with her person of interest, Victor Palaeologus, when her phone blew up.

So he must have scooted up to the Hollywood Hills. Yes. The spot on the hill wasn't very far from a house. The real estate agent had shown Victor. In fact, police had already searched the house. What the hikers had seen was about 80 feet down the steep incline. A body, partially hidden by a sleeping bag, caught up in some brush. Obenshain needed to get down there. I got lowered into the ravine. Got lowered? Lowered. By? By the fire department.

She had been told that Christy had a flower tattooed on the small of her back. Did you see this hibiscus tattoo? I did. It was her, no question. She'd been tied up. Her hands and feet were still bound. It had been 16 days since Christy told her roommate she was rushing off to an audition for a part in a new Bond movie. And instead, it appeared she had run into a trap set by a predator.

The chief of police called to let Christy's parents know. And he said, "We found Christy, but she's no longer with us." That's what he said. And I told him, I said, "Just treat her with dignity, please." The coroner determined the cause of death. She was strangled and that she had a radiating fracture of the skull. There were no signs of sexual assault, though.

Obenshain was already beginning to form a theory of the crime. It's about the manipulation and domination. Correct. He tried something and she said no, and his reaction was to strangle her until she was dead. Or until he thought she was dead. That's our speculation.

And then, said Detective Obenshain, the killer tossed Christy Johnson over the edge and down that steep hill. That was perimortem when she was pushed down the side of the mountain. So she wasn't dead yet? Not quite. With Christy there on the hillside, those stilettos and the hose she'd been told were so important to bring, Christy's mother had held on to hope for as long as she could.

Now she could not help but imagine things no mother should ever have to imagine. Those horrific last moments,

we will never know exactly what happened. - Do you find yourself wondering and imagining? - Oh, of course, of course. And there are the nightmares that accompany that. The only way that I can actually deal with that is to constantly remind myself when those thoughts come into my mind that Christy is not there anymore. She's not at that spot.

At the Santa Monica PD, Detective Obenshain knew she needed to find some tangible evidence to connect Christy to her person of interest, Victor Palaeologus. She had her eyewitnesses to his behaviors, Susan Murphy and her boyfriend, who'd easily ID'd him in the lineup. I knew who it was immediately. But Obenshain needed DNA, fingerprints, something to hang a case on.

They had her Miata, but except for one of Christie's prints in the doorjamb, it had been wiped clean. Whatever forensic evidence detectives hoped to find with Christie on the side of the hill had been washed away in the rain, or was never there in the first place. And there isn't always DNA. There isn't always trace evidence. There isn't always a fingerprint left. And there wasn't a lot of stuff in this case. There was nothing.

Nothing but an ever-growing chorus of women who said Victor Palaeologus targeted them too. Women like Alice Walker and Kathy DeBono and Susan Murphy. Were there other women who came forward to tell you their stories? There were. There were several other women that came forward. Like this woman who said she had to fight for her life.

I'm now screaming help, help, rape, help, and he's yelling profanities at me right and left. No certainty their stories would even be allowed at trial, let alone believed. But Detective Obenshain hoped so, because it was all she had. 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 Virginia Obenshain could not help but see the pattern. The killing of Kristi Johnson was the final link in a chain. It started with Susan Murphy's recollection of the mystery man at the mall. He said, "I'm a director of photography and we're casting for the new James Bond movie." Alice Walker echoed that. He said, "Well, you need this certain outfit, a men's dress shirt,

and that he would provide a necktie. Cathy De Bono got the come on, too. He said the stockings were important because it was all about the legs. But to establish a pattern of behavior that would be admissible in court, Obenshain needed more. So she dove into Victor's past. His rap sheet. I read through some cases and I read through a lot of reports and I was finding more and more victims. I didn't realize that he was that prolific.

Oh, but he was. Burglaries, identity thefts, frauds were listed. But it was the many terrible things Victor Palaeologus had perpetrated on women that caught Obenshain's attention. Starting all the way back in 1989, when Christine Klugian met Victor Palaeologus, she was 21 at the time.

She told us the story nearly 20 years ago. He looked good. He had a nice suit on, and he was very well groomed.

He told her his name was John Marino and he worked in the music business. And when he asked her out, she said, "Great." He said, "I'll pick you up in a limousine. We'll have dinner and there's a big industry party." You'd meet some famous people. He mentioned Madonna. He mentioned a couple of other people. So, well, that's fun. He took her to dinner and after to a downtown hotel for that big industry party.

But something didn't seem quite right. We went up to the 20-some-odd floor of the Bonaventure Hotel. And at this point, I didn't hear noise. I didn't see security for a party. Then he had a key card, and I thought, this guy is definitely conning me right now. But in an instant, they were in the room. And what followed was a kind of nightmare. He was trying to kiss me, and I pushed him away, and then he...

He just attacked me. He grabbed me. He threw me on the bed. He tried to rip my clothes off. And in that moment, he pulled ropes from behind the headboard. He would have had to arrange those before. Exactly. She tried some self-defense moves, she had learned. You were actually fighting with him there. I was fighting with him, pushing him off. It went on, said Christine, for more than an hour.

In one moment, he seemed contrite. I'm so sorry. This is terrible. I know this is not the way to get a woman. It's just things are going so badly at Columbia Records, and my brother has just died, and, you know, I'm just really, really stressed right now, and I'm really sorry. This is not... And then he would come and attack me. She tried to unlock the hotel room door. In that moment, he knew, aha, she... She's leaving. She's leaving. He grabbed me.

pulled me by my hair, dragged me back to the bed. We rolled over the bed. He grabbed my neck with his arm and started to choke me. Christine wriggled away somehow. And then... Then I bit him on his crotch, which was he was fully clothed. You bit him on his crotch? I bit him on his crotch. What happened? As hard as I possibly could. It works. He rolled over. He rolled over. He fell over. He was yelping and screaming. Then Christine started screaming too. I'm now screaming, help, help, rape, help.

and he's yelling profanities at me right and left. And he grabbed his jacket and he ran out the door. He ran out the door? He ran out the door. Hotel security came to help her. Her wrists were lacerated, she was bruised, she was traumatized. And Victor was arrested, charged with attempted rape, assault and false imprisonment. There was a trial, but the jury...

believed him. Our producer called and the jury foreman said he didn't look like a rapist. Now I'm getting angry. What does a rapist look like? He didn't look like a rapist. Well, what does a rapist look like? For the one charge the jury hung on, false imprisonment, Victor Palaeologus pleaded guilty. His sentence was probation. Did that stop him? No.

Two years later, in 1991, he met a young actress named Elizabeth Davis and told her he worked for Disney, took her to a bar supposedly to talk about her career, and when she noticed a white powder had appeared in her drink, he ran away. Police came, took Elizabeth's statement, but Victor was not charged. In 1996, a woman he dated briefly said he broke into her house and chased her with a ligature.

To avoid arrest, Victor barricaded himself in a mobile home in Malibu. He's coming out. When they finally arrested him, Victor refused to walk. So they carried him to the waiting patrol car and his journey to jail. He faced multiple charges, but pleaded them down to simple burglary, his sentence again probation.

Two years later, in 1998, he lured a young woman named Heather Maher to his vacant restaurant for a fake Bond movie audition. There he bound her ankles, climbed on top of her and tried to strangle her before she somehow found the strength to escape. He did time for that one, not quite four years, after he managed to deal away the most serious charges: attempted rape and false imprisonment. He pleaded no contest, only to assault.

Then, January 20th, 2003, he was released into an unsuspecting world and went hunting. 26 days later, he found Christy Johnson at the mall. He'd been assaulting women for years and making sweet deals with the law.

Even though way back in 1989, Christine Klugian tried to tell them. I said it then to everyone involved in the case. The DA, the detectives, the police. I said, this guy's done this before. He'll do it again and he will kill someone because he almost killed me. This time, Detective Obenshain wanted to put him away for good.

So how did you persuade a prosecutor that they should go ahead with charges? And this is a very serious charge against this guy, right? Death penalty, possibly. It was a death penalty case. We had enough of the women that came forward with the exact same story, with the exact same clothing that he wanted them to wear. It's prior acts. On May 12th, three months after Christy died, Victor Palaeologus was charged with her murder.

But Paleologus' attorney, Andrew Flyer, said it was all outrageous. His client was innocent. His past was brought up and they just assumed that because he has a past, he must have done the present. Flyer was so confident, he agreed to allow Victor to speak to me. Well, in jail, awaiting trial. I had few expectations.

just as well. Did you, for example, ever portray yourself to a woman as being in the entertainment industry? The women who survived their encounters with Victor Palaeologus described a man who, at first, was a gentleman. Apparently successful, professional, disarming. But for our interview, Victor played a different role.

With his lawyer beside him, the Victor I met in early 2005 portrayed himself as the ultimate downtrodden man, whose mantra seemed to be, woe is me. This is actually a hard time for me right now. My mother just passed away. I just learned about it. So I'm very emotional about all of this. He told me he was a religious man, a Catholic. I can't imagine going through this without the...

Love of God being with me. He said jail was a scary place. Perhaps the truest thing he said. Truth was not really on offer here. Victor did admit to some fraud and ID theft, but when it came to the women he had preyed on, it was all stories, he said, stories they made up about him. You've got a list of women who are telling pretty similar stories.

I asked him about Christine Klugian.

The woman who said he tried to rape her at a downtown hotel. How do you explain that? I explain it for what it was. It was, I had met this young lady at a bar in Manhattan Beach. We had a relationship. We went out on a date. We ended up at a club in the West End Bonaventure. While we were there in the club, you know, dancing, we decided that we were going to get a room. Did you tie her up?

No, nobody got tied up. There was no attack whatsoever. As for the bruising and the lacerations on her wrists? She had a string purse on her. I picked up her purse and grabbed it. She wrapped it around her wrist. She was pulling back. We got into this tug-of-war type of issue. Her strap broke, and she went flying back over to Credenza. Then, he said, she threw an ashtray at him, and he stormed out.

All this other baloney that never happened, okay? It was a lie. It never happened. Odd, then, that he pleaded guilty to false imprisonment for what he did to Christine. I asked him about Heather Marr, the woman he attacked at the vacant restaurant, the case that sent him to prison for four years. He said he met her at a bar and bragged he knew a famous director who was making a James Bond kind of movie.

When we got to her car where she was parked in the street, she said, well, I'll tell you what, why don't we have a meeting? She said, why don't we get together tomorrow? It was all Heather's idea, said Victor Palaeologus. And her story about what happened was just, what, a lie? Yeah, it was a lie. Palaeologus did admit to some things, more benign things.

All right, Alice Walker and Susan Murphy, I have no problem with saying that I did meet them, okay? You did meet them? I did meet them, okay? Did you say that you were in the movie business? Absolutely not. He denied telling them what to wear or that he could get them an audition for a movie. The reality, said Victor, was he was the victim here. All the women, he said, were using him.

I think that the incredible coverage of this whole case has drawn a lot of attention to people who have their own motives in mind for their, you know, to get themselves noticed in some way or fashion, to get themselves out of the drudgery of the no-name. They want to be actresses. Right. You're talking about some women who had some hidden agendas. You didn't have an agenda that day that involved going to the

mall where you'd been before, where you'd talked to women before, where you'd been seen approaching women before. You didn't approach Christy Johnson there. That's what the world thinks happened. And that you suggested that she could be in a Bond film and she, in her tremendous enthusiasm for some sort of career, drove up there in her Miata and you tied her up and killed her and put her in a sleeping bag and dumped her off the ravine? No, that never happened.

None of it happened, said Victor. I've never gone after anyone in any shape, way or form to hurt them. Period. Come trial, woman after woman would disagree.

But remember, the trial was about Christy, not about those other women. Victor's attorney, Andrew Flyer, told us that with paltry evidence, the prosecution didn't stand a chance. This is a perfect textbook example of how somebody who's innocent, I don't care what about his past, can be railroaded based on prior prejudice. It is suspicious and it is coincidental. That does not equate to beyond a reasonable doubt. ♪

Many homicide cases are circumstantial. No video, no witnesses to the actual crime. But in the murder of Christy Johnson, the prosecution had an even bigger hurdle. The fact that there was no forensic type evidence certainly was a challenge. A challenge prosecutor David Walgren hoped would be overcome by the testimony of woman after woman, each of whom had a story to tell about Victor Palaeologus.

They were everything to the case, and without them, we most likely would not have had a case. More than three years after Christy's death, on July 13, 2006, the trial began. The prosecutor told the jury about Christy's outing to a mall where she met a man who told her he could get her a part in a Bond movie.

if she came to an audition that very evening wearing a very specific outfit: a man's white dress shirt, a super short miniskirt, sheer pantyhose, and a pair of sky-high stiletto heels. But to prove that man was Victor Palaeologus, the prosecutor brought in not fingerprints or DNA, but a parade of women who would tell their own stories of what happened when they encountered Victor.

starting with Susan Murphy. When that moment came, it was... I don't think that words can even describe the fear that I had. Fear? What of? Just facing this person again. He's going to remember looking at me three and a half years ago and remember the things that he wanted to do to me. That was scary. Susan identified herself on the video at Macy's and ID'd the man following her in the baseball cap as the defendant.

As her voice quavered, she told the jury about meeting Palaeologus at the Century City Mall, about the Bond film audition, and the outfit he told her to wear. All of it, word for word, what Christie had told her roommate before she left and never came home. Kathy DeBuono told nearly the same story to the jury. He told me that it was an opportunity to be a poster girl for the James Bond films.

Then it was Alice Walker's turn. Did you worry about the no DNA proof as a trial approach and you knew it was kind of going to be on you to tell a story they might believe you, they might not believe you? Well, I didn't even think that they couldn't believe me. There's no other person that could have done this. And she told the jury about that last message Victor left her. I'm trying to get a hold of you. You just sounded strangely frantic. That was February 15th.

The day he turned his attention to Christy Johnson. Alice never called him back. But if she had? I hate thinking about that possible fate. The jury never heard from Christine Kludgian. The defense argued to keep her out of the trial, and the judge agreed. But Elizabeth Davis testified she was the woman whose drink was spiked.

Though no charges were filed, Santa Monica PD had stored that drink for more than a decade. And when it was finally tested after Christie died, it was found to contain a knockout cocktail. And Heather Maher spoke too. Victor's attack on Heather cost him four years in prison.

To show premeditation, the prosecutor called real estate agent Paul Cady, who told of showing Victor houses in the Hollywood Hills and his unusual request. At times he had the realtor step out of the room he was in or step out of the house because he said he wanted to check the sound quality, the sound insulation of the home. Only possible conclusion, said the prosecutor. He was looking for a place to commit this murder.

When it was Victor's turn, his attorney, Andrew Flyer, began telling the jury that no evidence, none, tied Palaeologus to the murder of Christy Johnson. He pointed out that the only real witness in this case was the parking lot attendant at the hotel where Christy's Miata was left. The man driving the car, the killer most likely, tossed the keys to the attendant, who did not pick Victor Palaeologus in a lineup.

And as for that past behavior the women alleged occurred, wasn't relevant, said the defense attorney. Certainly wasn't proof. And then, quite suddenly, it all screeched to a halt. We had been in trial for, I believe, almost two, two and a half weeks. I had called almost 40 witnesses to the stand. So certainly I was surprised that they approached us.

They, the defense, said Victor had decided he wanted to make a deal, a plea agreement, just as he had done so many times before. And as so many times before, the prosecution was not opposed because... We knew that we didn't have the forensic evidence and all it took was one juror and we either have to retry the case or the case goes away.

So the two sides negotiated the terms. Victor refused to reveal exactly what he did to Christy. He would only admit he was responsible for her death. It wasn't a full confession, but that was as far as he would go. And the judge, the prosecutor, and Christy's family accepted the deal. Victor would plead guilty. The jury was dismissed. It was all settled. Or...

Maybe not. The court this morning received a letter, it's very lengthy, from the defendant. The man, who had wriggled out of trouble so many times before, had another card to play, a wrench to slide into the big wheel of justice. It's part of the big cog wheel that just keeps on turning. That's the way it works. I'm sorry to tell you, but that's the way it works. ♪

September 15th, 2006. Everyone assembled in the downtown courtroom for the sentencing of Victor Paliologos. But... The court this morning received a letter. It's very lengthy from the defendant. It's 11 pages. Victor claimed he'd been sleep-deprived and pressured by his lawyer to agree to plead guilty. His lawyer, by the way, said that wasn't true.

Just the same, said Victor, he wanted out of the deal. Now was claiming he did not kill Christy and so wanted the trial to continue. Was he serious? Or was Victor playing for a better deal? Counsel, have you had a chance now to look at the letter? Yes, sir. Whatever it was, the judge wasn't having it. I'm going to deny the motion, Mr. Paley. Logos, the loss...

states very clearly a plea may not be withdrawn simply because the defendant has changed his mind. Then, Christie's family was given the chance to speak. Christie's father, Kirk. Christie is my guardian angel. She is the girl that I look up to. She's the one that provides me with strength. And I go back to the last Father's Day card that Christie sent me. It's a beautiful card. I cherish it. Her mother, Terri.

Victor Pellogos has been allowed the freedom to let the evil in his life escalate, resulting in the heinous murder of Christy, my beloved young daughter, a beautiful young woman on the threshold of her life. Then the judge sentenced Victor to the term already agreed upon, 25 to life, with the possibility of parole.

Three days after that, I returned to the L.A. Men's Central Jail, hoping, at least, that he might finally admit to his crimes. A long shot, of course, and I knew it. And sure enough, I encountered one very slippery man. You took responsibility for Christy's death. I had to. I had to in order to get the plea. And that's what you did. It was a solemn oath. That's what you want to withdraw? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Absolutely. That is what I wanted to withdraw. Because I'm not responsible for her death. Victor and I went round and round. You don't take a plea saying you killed a young woman if you didn't kill the young woman. You do when you're facing the death penalty. There's no solemn vow and taking pleas are done all the time, every day. That's the way it works. Was he feeling especially clever that day?

He and I both knew he bargained down his punishment, from death penalty, past, life without parole, to the possibility of parole after 25 years. He also knew that because of California's three strikes law, his theft of that BMW would have put him behind bars for the very same term, even if he had never touched a hair on Christie's head. It was all so wrong, thought Kathy DiMono.

Victor Palaeologus had gotten away with too much, gamed the system, never fully admitted to killing Christy. She began to believe years ago that Christy may not have been the only woman Victor killed. Because what stood out to me in 1999 was how smooth he was at what he was doing. When Christy was murdered, Kathy was already studying psychology.

But with the crimes of Victor in mind, she immersed herself in the study of criminal psychopathy. And Victor, she came to believe, fit that label, psychopath, to a T. And after I started to really research Victor and consult with FBI profilers and different forensic psychologists and really started to understand this is what we were dealing with here, this wasn't a guy who is rehabilitatable.

But, after all, he was in prison for life, wasn't he? His chance of parole, the prosecutor had told us, virtually nil. Still, Kathy felt the need to tell the world, warn the world, about Victor and what he'd done.

she decided to make a documentary and in 2016 gathered together the women and those close to them to meet. As Kathy's cameras rolled, Christy's mother, Terry, gave Christine Klugean a hug. Here, a kind of sisterhood now.

They finally shared their stories and their anger at how they believed Palaeologus repeatedly gamed the system. And then, Cathy wrote to Palaeologus himself to ask for an interview. I just decided to write him, tell him exactly who I was, that I'd testified against him, that he'd never actually harmed me, and I was doing this documentary and would he be interested. And then so the penpal-ship began.

Their correspondence lasted for years and told Kathy a lot. I finally said to him in one letter, Victor, you've been a perfect gentleman up until now. Why don't you write your next letter and write to me about what you really want to talk about? And he just kicked that open door right in. And the next letter I got from him, I got within a week. It came really fast. And it was basically a hardcore sexual fantasy.

Finally, said Kathy, he had begun to reveal himself. And safe to say, he is absolutely still marrying sex with violence. Remember, said Kathy, Victor fit the sexual psychopath's profile. And sexual psychopaths often start acting out in their teens. So Kathy went looking in Victor's past. She learned he grew up on the East Coast, near Philadelphia. I was like, let me just have a look at these people

public databases and see if any of these cold cases stand out as possibly matching his MO. The one that stood out the most was a Jane Doe in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. Kathy called Bensalem PD and found cold case detective Chris McMullen in 2014. And she had told me that she was doing research on a person named Victor Palaeologus, who I did not know of.

Then Kathy laid out who Victor was and his M.O. and told Detective McMullen why she thought he could be a suspect in this young woman's murder. She's found in this bunker hole. With her in this hole is a second outfit, a shirt, stockings, fishnet stockings, and high-heeled shoes, pumps. She'd been killed around the time Paleologus was nearby, attending a brother's wedding. And one more thing, Jane Doe had been pregnant.

Intrigued, Chris McMullen and Kathy wondered if there could possibly be a paleologus connection. Maybe he was the father of the unborn fetus? I always had the theory that whoever the father of Jane Doe's unborn child was, it was very possible that whoever the father was was responsible for her death. They knew it was a long shot. They'd need hard evidence, and

The authorities in California would not just give a detective across the country with a hunch of paleologous DNA sample too much of a fishing expedition, they said. So, Kathy decided she would get that sample herself. But that means you're going to have to go and touch him somehow, and you'd get really close to him. Yeah, but we shake hands with strangers all the time, right? It can't be that hard. Kathy had a surprise in store for Victor.

And then it would be Victor's turn to surprise everyone. Victor, sooner than anybody thought, was about to get a chance at parole. She walked into the Chino State Prison, alone, and watched him walk toward her. The man who'd once tried to entrap her. The man she believed to be an unrepentant killer. An incurable psychopath. "You nervous?" "I wasn't nervous." More like, "Ready?"

Kathy DeBono had a plan. I had two goals that day. One of them was to come out with his DNA, if possible. And the other one was to get him to talk to me personally about what he did to Christy Johnson. And so what did Kathy do? The first thing I did was shake his hand and then pull him in for a kiss on the cheek. Victor couldn't have known the kiss was for DNA collection.

I made a mental note of where he landed the kiss. Wasn't that strange? It was strange, I suppose, but at the end of the day, it was just a kiss on the cheek. And to be absolutely 100% sure she got his DNA? I put a band-aid on my finger. You know those fabric kind? Yeah. When he sat down on the table across from me and put his arms down, I could see that he shaved his arms. That seemed like a good opportunity or a good reason to rub that band-aid on his arm. And, oh, you shave your arms.

She got his DNA, but she kept him talking because there was that second goal. I said, Victor, what happened with Christy? He hesitated, then made her promise not to tell a soul. And she said, Of course not, Victor. So he tells me this story that he did meet her at the Century City Mall. And he did invite her up to that house and that they smoked some weed together.

and that they had consensual sex, and that he asked her if she wanted to try erotic asphyxiation, and she said yes. Kathy pretended to believe him. He said it went too far. He tried to wake her up. "Christy, Christy." He said when she wouldn't wake up, he panicked, he didn't know what to do, so he just wrapped her up in this sleeping bag and rolled her down the hill and ran.

Now, obviously this is a lie. A particularly ugly lie. Like he was killing that poor young woman all over again. Had to be disappointing. It was disappointing. I can't say it was surprising. But buried in that nasty fiction was also finally a nugget of truth. He admitted it. He admitted it that he killed her. You fooled the fooler. Yeah.

Victor's DNA, it turned out, did not match the unborn child of that Jane Doe back in Pennsylvania. Though both Kathy and cold case detective Chris McMullen still believe that Victor may have killed the young mother-to-be. In my opinion, he's still a viable candidate, but he's not the only one. Anyway, thought Kathy DiBono, it wasn't like Victor was going anywhere.

He had negotiated his plea deal with a chance of parole, yes, but the idea he'd ever actually be released seemed impossible. The prosecutor himself told us that after the trial. Being convicted of murder, first-degree murder, I'm comfortable saying he will not ever be paroled. He couldn't have known, then, that California's approach to incarceration would change.

New rules: as of 2022, prisoners over 50 with more than 20 years on the inside get a hearing. An overcrowded system wanted them out, so the idea that Victor's crime was so bad he'd never be paroled didn't necessarily apply anymore. And in 2023, a parole board hearing was scheduled for Victor Palaeologus, five years earlier than his original sentence.

No one told Christy's family or the other women. Kathy was stunned when she found out. I just went to that website to check his status, and there it was, eligible for parole, November 2023. That's how you found out? That's how I found out. You didn't get a phone call or a letter or a warning of any kind? No, nothing, nothing. ♪

But all the work she had done prepared her for this moment. Though she has yet to finish her documentary, she has saved everything. Transcripts, probation reports, and of course the disturbing letters Victor sent her. Proof that he has not changed.

And she got right back in touch with that sisterhood she'd brought together to film in 2016, as well as Christy's mother, Terry, and many others who loved and still miss Christy. She enlisted Virginia Obenshain, now retired. I wrote a letter to the parole board that I did not want him paroled, that he would be a repeat offender. He is a repeat offender, and he'll continue offending. And you really think if he got out of prison, he'd go and do it again? I think so. Yes.

Together they put up a website. They got in the news. And maybe Victor got wind of it all? He decided to postpone his hearing. It's now scheduled for November 2025. Still too soon, said Kathy DiBono.

And at this point, it's not because we hate the guy. It's not because we want revenge on the guy. We experienced him. We know who he is. We know what he is. It's like letting a shark back out into the swimming pool. You can't do it. He will eat some kids in the swimming pool. And leave others scarred for life. How often do you think about that? It's sort of always in the back of my mind. It's a sad truth, but...

human beings that I, at the young age of 22, just didn't know. I just didn't know that. I just didn't know. And I grapple with it all the time. I grapple with that it could have and should have been me. Before he ever met Christy Johnson, Victor Palaeologus had been looking with a realtor at empty houses on lonely roads in the Hollywood Hills.

He was planning then to do something bad to someone. He picked Christy. The day after he discarded her in that rain-soaked ravine, he called the realtor again, went out looking again, looking at empty houses where no one can hear you scream.

That's all for this edition of Dateline. Be sure to listen to Keith's original podcast on this story, Murder in the Hollywood Hills, available wherever you get your podcasts. And go behind the scenes of the making of tonight's episode in our Talking Dateline podcast, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.