146. The Bike Path Murders
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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Moreland and I'm Garrett Marlin and he's the husband. I'm the husband. You guys, thank you so much for the love we have already received on Binge. That is my new true crime show that is coming January 11th. That should be this Wednesday if you're listening to this in real time and I'm freaking excited. We have been working on this for so

so long and I really can sit here and tell you guys that we have gone through so many different formats and so many different episodes to make sure that Binged is a quality podcast and

And I like I cannot even believe it's here. The show is live. There's no episodes yet. There will be episodes Wednesday, January 11th. Depending on when you're listening to this, there might already be episodes. But it is going live January 11th. There should be links all over the place. Links below, links somewhere. That takes you directly to the show to listen to Binged.

And also the way the new show is going to work is we're going to have Murder With My Husband and Binged. And if you subscribe to those on Patreon or Apple Podcasts,

All those episodes will be ad free and there's going to be bonus content. It'll be one price to have all those ad free and bonus content. No worries. If you already do subscribe, that is just added right in because they're sister shows. We had a couple of people worried about what was going to happen to murder with my husband. Nothing's happened to murder with my husband. We are not going to.

- I'm not going anywhere. - I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. Don't worry about it. - We just really, you guys just kept asking for more content. And so this was our way to get it to you. But Murder With My Husband is literally here forever. - I don't hate it that much.

All right. Well, you guys, it's a big week for us. So take it away with your 10 seconds. But I don't think you're going to up binged. Honestly, we've been working. Shoveled for the first time this year. I was watching everyone with like their snow plows, you know, just going through with those electric snow plows. I was like, dang, I need one of those. You were like the girl on...

The Grinch? When the one neighbor's sitting there shooting all those lights and then she's the one who hit it up. That was you. That was me. I was just shoveling away. I just cleared, I just left everything on the driveway there. I just cleared a little path for like- UPS. For like, yeah, delivery drivers and- DoorDash. DoorDash.

We gotta make sure our DoorDash driver is not slipping when they're delivering our food. There literally is just a nice little path with a whole bunch of salt on it. That's all he shoveled. Happy 2023. Let's make it a good one. And we're excited for all the content that we're going to bring you guys. 2023.

is our year this is everyone who's listening to this you guys this is our year our episode sources are born to kill on investigation discovery bpd then and now moonpage.com newspapers.com and a couple more that will be listed i just don't want to give it away so the real world boogeymen are the serial offenders who attack strangers at random i think we can all agree on this

Serial killers, serial rapists, boogeymen who trawl in cars, boogeymen who break into houses. You're saying boogeyman so much. And boogeymen who haunt dark, lonely places at night.

Now, recently we told you the story of the pathway killer in England. He was one such boogeyman who, like many other boogeymen before him, might have remained a nameless, faceless evil, claiming many more victims had a breakthrough in forensic science not led police directly to him. And we are talking about DNA. This was the case that first used DNA. It's the thing that so often now robs these killers of their ability to get away with it.

It's because of DNA that serial crimes are becoming rarer and rarer because these criminals are getting caught earlier in what would otherwise become a series, often now after only their first crimes. If DNA had been used in forensics in 1981, for example, the monster at the center of today's story could have been stopped before he went on to rape over a dozen more women, killing at least three of them.

And we'll begin today's story near the end of its timeline. It was September 29th, 2006. The city was Clarence. We're in upstate New York, which is an upscale suburb about 35 miles east of Buffalo. With winter around the corner, temperatures were on their way down. And when winter would finally hit, it was going to hit hard.

So in these last few days of moderate weather, fitness-minded locals like Joan Diver took to the bike trails and jogging paths to enjoy her last blast of outdoor activity before nature was going to basically plunge into a deep freeze. Now, Joan Diver was a 45-year-old housewife and mother of four. And on that Friday morning, as she drank her coffee and had breakfast with her family, they talked about catching a movie that night.

School for scoundrels had opened that weekend and so did open season. So these were a couple of possibilities that the family could go see. Now the family went over dinner plans and they discussed buying electric toothbrushes for the kids. This is just routine stuff in 2006. It was really just such a routine weekday morning. Then the three older kids left for school and Joan's husband, Steve, set off for work, which was the University of Buffalo, where he was a chemistry professor.

Speaking of movie theaters, it used to be an experience to go to a movie theater and I feel like it's still great. But it was just different when I think you grew up without all the social media. Going to a movie theater was just like the thing. Yeah, because now kids think, oh, I could just watch the movie on Netflix. Whereas, you know, when people listening to this were younger, it was, oh, I'm going to have to go to the movie theater if I want to see that anytime soon.

So this family, in the meantime, after Joan dropped off her four-year-old son at preschool, she decided to go out for her usual jog, which was through the Clarence bike path right around the corner, only a short two-minute drive from her house. So she parked her Ford Explorer in the lot beside the path and entered, beginning her run down the six-and-a-half-mile-long asphalt paved path, rocked the road, and then went to the next one.

right past the sign that greets those entering the trail. A sign that reads, "Be safe, walk with a friend." Now, if you look at the clearance bike path on the map, you'll see that it cuts straight through the town in an almost completely linear direction. And that's because the path used to be home to a railroad track,

which had long ago been closed and now paved over. But the path, like railroad tracks often are, was lined by trees and brush on either side. So as Joan jogged that morning, she saw fewer and fewer people as she pushed deeper and deeper into the path. Now her iPod pumped tunes into her ears, leaving her pleasantly removed from her surroundings as she jogged.

Either way, Joan couldn't have known what lay just a little ways ahead, hiding in the brush just beside the trail. She couldn't have known what kind of man was lurking in the brushes just out of view waiting for her to pass. Now, obviously not her specifically, but for someone like her, attractive, distracted, and alone. It was a man who had been to this trail before and other trails like it.

A man who had been pulled back again and again, mapping out the area, working up the nerve, unable to resist any longer a compulsion that had been nagging at him for far too long. Oh my gosh.

Far too long since it had been satisfied. It was a sick, violent, unwholesome urge that would make this man, despite being a total stranger to her, one of the most consequential people in Joan Diver's life. A life that was about to end after 45 years. Just minutes after she parked her car and jogged into the trail. As Joan approached the man hiding out, the lead... Was it dark?

It's the middle of the day. - Okay, I can't remember if it was the middle of the day or not. - She just dropped her son off at preschool. - Which is even more crazy. - Right? - Right in the middle of the day. - It's even more crazy because this still happens today. - Oh, 100%. - We hear about it all the time. - Yep. - So as Joan approached the man hiding out, the leaves began rustling while he was waiting. Rustling that Joan Diver could not hear through the music in her ears.

Oh my gosh.

This is when she saw stars from the impact as the man tightened the ligature tighter and tighter until Joan lost consciousness and never regained it.

And although this outcome wasn't new to him, this still wasn't quite the outcome that the man had anticipated. And rather than carrying out exactly what he had fantasized, this would be a fantasy that included rape. He instead dragged her further into the underbrush, hiding her. So typically he wanted her to stay alive for this whole thing, but he killed her sooner than he thought. Oh, she's dead. She's dead. Wow.

- Wow. - I would say it's most likely because Joan struggled so much that there wasn't any time for him to stop strangling her, which is how she died. - Okay. - After dragging her body and hiding her, he took the keys to her Ford Explorer and then started it up and drove himself away from the crime scene. It was later found three miles from where Joan had originally parked it that day.

That afternoon, Joan's husband, Steve, received a phone call. It was the preschool where their four-year-old son had been waiting, looking out the window for any sight of his mommy who never showed up to pick him up. Panic ensued. Joan was nowhere to be found. A search was started. An official missing persons report was filed.

Two days later, searchers would find Joan's body hidden off the side of the trail. That's so sad. And not just because he was a husband, Steve was initially the investigator's only suspect. He had been active in the search effort and had circled two locations on the map where he felt the investigator should focus their search before they found her.

And what do you know? Joan's body was found within one of those two locations. He had also been unable to account for a two-hour period of his mourning, a period when no one at the university recalled seeing him. And then early in the afternoon, one of his co-workers described Steve's behavior being uncharacteristically bizarre and

And so Steve had claimed that he'd peddled to the clearance bike path later that afternoon to look for Joan when he found out that he, that Joan hadn't shown up to pick up their son, but somehow failed to check the parking lot to see if her Ford Explorer was there. There's no way it's him, right? Well, these strange circumstances are among several reasons that Steve became a suspect in his wife's murder.

But less than two weeks earlier, another woman, two towns away in Amherst, this is one of America's safest cities, had an encounter with a man on a similar trail that even at the time she knew was significant. But no one would know quite how significant until after the murder of Joan Diver.

The previous attack a town away had happened on September 20th, a Wednesday. The girl's name was Alice. She took her dog, a medium-sized Cocker Poodle mix, along with her to the Ellicott Bike Path, which is a paved five-mile trail that cuts through the sprawling campus of the University of Buffalo.

It was a trail that Alice knew well, but she usually jogged there during the day. When she arrived on this date, it was already early evening and the sky was growing dim. And because she was alone, Alice made sure to stay within shouting distance of another woman that she saw on the trail ahead of her. Very smart. She also had her dog with her and she remained vigilant as she jogged along the path. Now, as the sky turned a dull shade of blue, the woman up ahead was suddenly nowhere to be seen. Now, Alice and her dog were all alone on the trail. And it

And at this point, the moon gave off just enough light to make out the shapes along the path. This would be like the foliage, the brush, the pavement ahead. Everything though was now an ashy blue gray tone, which you can kind of picture. Like it's still light enough that you can see, but it's not light enough that you can see. It was her dog that heard the sound first this day. He stood at attention and growled a low warning sound while she was running. Now Alice hadn't heard it, but she heard the next sound after it.

something definitely had just rustled the brush and it wasn't the wind because at that moment there wasn't any wind. And you said the dog was like a poodle? A cock or poodle mix. Okay. Man, I wish it was like a German shepherd or something. It could still fight for her. I mean, I know where this is going and it makes me sad because I don't know. Keep going. Well, here's the thing.

The dog did warn her before she heard it. The dog knew. The dog was on alert, which put her on alert. And that's when she heard something moving in the woods. Now to Alice's ears, what she was hearing sounded like footsteps, human footsteps. They were stepping in the wooded area behind her as she was going down the path. Now she looked around, but she saw no one, only darkness beyond the path.

And because of the footsteps and the lack of visibility, Alice was now feeling a chill, obviously, both from the cool evening air and from within her. It was dawning on her just how vulnerable she was in this moment, completely alone, save for some unseen figure moving in the shadows next to her. Imagine how scary that would be. She begins traveling faster, jogging down the trail. And when suddenly she saw another person walking the trail ahead of her, it was an elderly man in the distance.

So she shouts out to him and begins waving her hands, but the man does not notice her and he doesn't hear her. And pretty soon he's out of sight as well. So for Alice, this initially pleasant walk had become a different experience, very unsettling and surreal. Like she'd entered some other realm where the only thing existing was her on this trail and a hiding predator next to her.

The sounds from the brush and the foliage beside the trail continued, seemingly following her and growing newer. Now remember, she's began running and this person is now running in the woods next to her. That's absolutely insane. So Alice reached into her pocket and flipped open her phone. Again, it's a flip phone. And she pretended to place a phone call, carrying on a mock conversation as she hurried down the path with her dog speeding up to keep pace.

I'm almost at the bridge, she said on the phone loudly so that whoever was in the brush could hear her. Do you see me? As she slowed down and turned around to check behind her, she saw a man suddenly pop out of the woods on the other side of a small stream that ran parallel to the path. The man bent down to pick something up from the brush and

And then Alice took off running. And while darting away as fast as she could, she looked back and noticed the man, the one who had emerged from the woods, was now pedaling a mountain bike coming straight toward her. Holy crap. This is not real. That's what he had picked up from the bushes. His bike. A freaking mountain bike or freaking bike. Yeah. Alice picked up speed, though her dog was now struggling at this point to keep up with her. And as she approached the tennis courts, which were

populated with people playing tennis that evening the man continued pedaling right on by her so for her she's like okay and i know this exact feeling she's feeling okay well i was making it up like i was i thought he was following me but apparently not because now i'm he was i'm at a populated place there's now people i've made it to safety and he just rode right past me so it seemed to alice that this strange nightmare this potential brush with danger had passed

But then the man turned his bike around and suddenly once more began pedaling right towards her, now staring at her as he's driving up to her. And as he passes her, the man shoots her a menacing look. Alice would later describe this as an evil smirking grin. And indeed, it disturbed her. She felt like, okay, I wasn't making it up. This man was following me. And now that he's just done this, I know he's messing with me.

And I think sometimes it's hard for others to understand just how violating even a physically unscathed experience like this can be.

So the man didn't actually hurt her or even talk to her, but his actions of following her creeping her out on purpose. It's disturbing. It's icky. It's violating. People should be able to jog or walk a path without feeling threatened. Yet this happens every single day. You know, why are there so many weird dudes out there? I don't know. Don't be like that. Like,

Like literally this happens on a jogging path while walking through Target. It's so hard because I've, I'm a male, I'm a man. I've never experienced this and I probably never ever will experience this. Right. But I've talked to, I feel like every single female in my life that I know, it's probably like seven out of 10 of them have experienced something like this. And it just blows my mind. Like there's that many just creepy, crazy people out there. It's like, why? Why?

Why make me feel uncomfortable? Why make me feel unsafe? Like this is what's happening and it's disturbing. Well, he obviously had something in mind. I mean, this wasn't just. For sure. Yeah. He just didn't get to her fast enough.

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when Alice finally escaped the path and returned home, she immediately began drawing a sketch of this man. Every detail of whose face she was sure to commit to memory. He was a man in his late 40s or early 50s entering middle age. He had deep set brown eyes with dark, thick

eyebrows and a baseball cap on his head. He looked athletic. He was wearing athletic clothes, gray sweatpants, sneakers, and a green t-shirt pulled over a long sleeved white undershirt. So she definitely looked at him and remembered this. He had a round face with graying hair on the sides. She sketched him out as best as she could. And the next day she went to the police with her sketch and her story. Dude, all I know if it's Joan's husband, I'm come on.

And this happened to Alice before Joan. Come on. Yeah. So she goes to police and she says, listen, I know nothing happened to me, but I, this is the guy he was being creepy. I think if I wasn't around people, something bad would have happened. So I'm giving it to you and I'm urging you to be vigilant. And then a few days later, she and her husband walked the path several times warning women who were jogging there alone. Hey, I had this weird run in with this guy. I'm just warning you to be safe. Alice wasn't going to let this man continue to bother other women.

And then after her brush with the man who stalked her at the bike path, Alice couldn't help but remember this man that she had heard of. This man that was named the bike path rapist. A serial rapist turned killer who had stalked that very bike path that she was jogging on that day more than a decade earlier. So this was like a cold case, a cold serial rapist. Oh, it was this long before? So...

All of this that she's remembering, this bike path rapist was 10 years earlier. But then when this happens to her on this exact path, she can't get help but go, wow, that was eerie because this is the exact bike path that the bike path rapist would attack on. And Alice wondered, okay, well, I know it's been 10 years, but is he back?

Like this was weird. This was just too weird for her. In fact, it was on September 29th, 1990. This was 16 years prior to the day that Joan Diver was killed.

that a 22 year old college student named linda yalum was murdered on that very same path in broad daylight under circumstances and with an mo almost identical to jones linda yalum was a sophomore communications major at the university of buffalo and she was also a marathon runner at the time she was training to participate in the new york marathon and she was five weeks from the end of training just five weeks away from the marathon itself

That morning, Linda left her dorm room at about 9.30 a.m. and made her way to the Ellicott bike path nearby. It was a warm, sunny day. Linda had her Walkman with her with a Tears for Fears cassette loaded up, her earphones over her ears as she jogged along the trail.

But that afternoon, Linda failed to return to her dorm room. She had made plans to see a movie that evening with her roommates, and when Linda had not returned by 9.30 that night, which was 12 hours after she had headed out for that jog, her roommates contacted the police to report her missing.

The five-mile length that the bike path stretched across was searched extensively, and at about 5.20 p.m. the following evening, Linda Yalum's body was found. She was concealed by her own sweatshirt, lying in a clearing off the bike path, surrounded by underbrush, mere yards from a footbridge that extended over the Elliott Creek. Linda's running pants and underwear had been pulled off, and her t-shirt and bra had been pushed up.

Now, duct tape covered her nose and her mouth, indented in a way that suggested that she had been struggling to breathe when this was over her. And she had extensive injuries on her face and body that told a story of a vigorous fight that Linda had obviously lost. Her throat bore distinctive double ligature marks, evidence of a double looped rope, and she had been raped by her killer.

She was attacked in the middle of the day on a busy bike path and no one had seen. Except perhaps one witness, a woman who later called police to say she had seen a man that day on the footbridge with his arm around a woman's neck pulling her from behind. Now when she saw it, she just assumed that it was two lovers kind of like clowning around wrestling until she read the news reports a couple days later. Oh, dang.

A composite sketch was then made and released to the media. Other witnesses came forward to report having seen the man on the same path, fitting the description on various days before Linda Yalum was killed and that this man had kind of been

Staking out the area, acting weird, making women uncomfortable. It also seemed based on his M.O. that he was the same man who had committed several rapes dating back to at least 1986 on this and other similar bike paths, surprising women jogging alone, tightening a rope around their necks and then raping them.

That man's physical description was also very similar to the man witnesses had described around the time of Linda Yalum's murder. So essentially what police are figuring out here is that decades and even earlier,

This girl gets murdered. And after she's murdered, police are like, we think this has been connected to a bunch of rapes that have already happened. But hers ended in murder. So the killer has obviously escalated. He typically would just rape them and leave them alive. But this one ended up dying. And then he took a 10-year sentence.

12 year whatever break or whatever you want to call it right well that's what alice is thinking yeah because she can't help but remember all these past ones another one of these past attacks was on july 14 1986 in the town of hamburg this is south of buffalo 17 year old susie coggins was late for school that morning and so she took a shortcut through a bike path near her high school while she was alone on the path she heard someone running through the woods

And when she turned to look, she saw a man carrying some rope. She thought that perhaps this man had a dog with him and was playing with the animal. But that wishful assumption evaporated the moment he approached her from behind and wrapped the rope around her neck. He literally lifted her up off the ground and into the air so she couldn't breathe. He dragged her into the woods until they reached a desolate area. That's when she looked into his eyes and saw pure rage, something she would never forget.

She thought she was going to die that morning, that she'd never see her family or her friends ever again.

That man asked her how old she was and then if she'd ever been intimate before. And for what felt like an eternity, the man proceeded to sexually assault her. And when he was finally done, the terrified young woman asked, well, what happens next? By this time, the man's energy, according to her, had completely changed. The anger had gone away and was now replaced by the faintest hint of guilt. And he said nothing and just got up and walked away.

leaving the battered young teenager to find her way out of the woods to ask for help. The attack on Susie was the second in what would become a series of at least six rapes, culminating to the murder of Linda Yalum in 1990 that we already discussed.

And Yalum's murder would soon be linked by DNA to several previous rapes. A June 1986 attack in Delaware Park in Buffalo, an attack two years later on a high school student in the Riverside neighborhood of Buffalo, and another attack in May of 1989 on another student on the same path. And one additional attack on a high schooler on the Willow Ridge bike path in Amherst. Can you believe that's even real? Yeah, it's insane. That DNA has linked this person to this many attacks. It's pretty cool that...

I mean, thank goodness for DNA. Right? Thank goodness. The attack on Susie and one additional attack on Ellicott Trail four months before Joan Diver was killed there were linked purely by MO, but police were confident it was the same guy. And it was after this that the bike path rapist seemingly vanished. Just out of the blue. The rape stopped happening. There was not another murder. Nothing.

Then, a decade later, in the early 2000s, another murder from that period would be linked to the bike path rapist by DNA. So a decade later, they solve a cold case and link it to him. In November 1992, it was a sex worker named Majane Mazur who was found strangled to death in a grassy field near an Amtrak line in downtown Buffalo. She had been covered up by a sheet of plastic with a plastic bag around her neck and garbage bag pulled over her head.

And although she had double ligature marks on her neck, Majane hadn't been connected to the bike path rapist at the time because she was different from his usual type of victim. She wasn't jogging or anything. And I dare say she was a sex worker. So police were like, oh, there's absolutely no way. It's like she has. Yeah. It's the same thing around the same time. Exactly.

In fact, investigators back then felt her murder may have been related to another series of killings of sex workers in the Rochester area, 70 miles away. So instead they linked her to those. - Got it, okay. - Which is just devastating that there were two different serial killers who she could have been linked to. So after Joan Diver's body was found and we're back in 2006 and her Ford Explorer was found parked three miles away, a forensic team wanted to process the car for potential DNA.

But Joan's widow, Steve Diver, wouldn't let them. He also wouldn't allow bloodhounds to search around their home, and he refused to take a polygraph test, which, in our opinion, is often a wise move if you're innocent, since polygraphs have been proven to be inaccurate. But to cops, refusing a polygraph always looks suspicious, especially on top of everything Steve is doing. This has nothing to do with...

Steve or what's happening right now. But I've always thought about that. Like if something were to happen and I'm just like, I want a lawyer. I know everyone would be like, Oh, Garrett did it.

Well, this is suspicious. Steve literally gets an attorney immediately. His wife is the right thing to do. Like in all reality, that's exactly what you should do. I know it might look suspicious, but whatever, just do it. Unless you're a murderer and you're listening to this, don't get one. It's such a waste of time. Exactly what happened because you're going to jail forever. Yeah. So suspicion around Steve was beginning to expand beyond just the police force.

And the University of Buffalo relieved him from his teaching duties for the duration of the fall semester. And keep in mind, this is 10 years after the bike path rapist was known to last. This is going to blow my mind if it's Steve. Well, it's also like,

Police are even like, is this related? Like it's been 10 years. That would be pretty weird. So they just keep on investigating and they are very suspicious of Steve. They're thinking maybe this is, you know, despite Alice's run in earlier with that guy and her being so worried, maybe the two are completely unrelated. There's creepy men everywhere. And Steve did murder his wife.

So eventually the police obtain a search warrant and they begin processing Jones Ford Explorer and they find a possible DNA source. Remember, whoever killed her moved her car. A small drop of sweat on the steering column near the ignition tumbler where the key is placed. So the area was carefully swabbed and the swab was sent off to the crime lab. A month later, the results come back.

The DNA from the sweat found on Joan Diver's steering wheel matched the DNA from the murders of Linda Yalum, Majane Mazur, and several of the bike path rapes. Okay. This confirms the bike path rapist who was not known to have offended in 12 years was

was alive and he was back. So you said they had three kids, four kids? Four kids. So, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how old the kids are, but it could be why there was a 12, whatever year break, break. Too busy being a father. Too busy being a- Raising a family. Now deciding to be a father and raise a family. Yes. So either way,

This is stunning for police. And this is terrifying that they have to now go back to the community and say, remember that bike path rapist and murderer that we never caught 12 years ago, 16 years ago? He's back. He's back. It's been 12 years and he's back and he's killed another woman. Can they not get Steve's DNA? They could, but he has a lawyer. So they're going to have to find more evidence before they can get it. Can't they just follow him around and do the typical, oh, he went into a coffee shop and I grabbed the cup that he used. Is that illegal? No.

it's not illegal, but they could, but I'm sure it's a lot harder now that he has an attorney. So,

To them, to police, it's the highest degree of importance to identify him as soon as possible before he strikes and kills again. So at this point, current day detectives Josh Keats and Betsy Schneider went to the Amherst Police Department and began exploring old suspect files in the bike path rapist. All they're wondering is had police back then missed something? They wanted to find out. They needed to comb over every single document.

One that caught their eye was the file on a man named Altamayo Sanchez. Now Altamayo, who went as Al, was a married father of three who worked at a brass factory and had first come to the attention of investigators back in 1990, shortly after the murder of Linda Yalum. It was at the time that Al's co-worker and friend from work, a guy named Bob Brandish, was faced with a dilemma.

Everyone at this point knew of the supposed bike path rapist. And Bob had begun to suspect that his coworker, Al Sanchez, might possibly be the bike path rapist and he didn't know what to do about it. Back on August 24th, 1989, when Bob was driving home from work on the Lockport Expressway, he happened to spot his friend Al Sanchez driving in a neighboring lane.

Bob knew that Al lived in the opposite direction from where he was traveling, but he just assumed that Al was headed towards Bally's Fitness. This is where he and Al worked out together, having both signed up under a company plan that gave them discounted rates. But oddly, Al didn't turn off at the exit that would have taken him to Bally's. He just kept driving.

Later that day, a 14-year-old girl was choked and left for dead after being dragged off the Willow Ridge bike path. And she was also raped by a man whose description fit the bike path rapist. It was a connection that, in Bob's mind, seemed like a real stretch of the imagination. But he couldn't help but be like, I saw Al and then this girl, you know. Wouldn't it be weird if someone you knew, like a co-worker, you were like, I think they're killing people. Like, I think they're raping people. I always...

Go back to that family annihilation case where he leaves and then years later he's on America's Most Wanted and his neighbor. Yeah. Sees it. Sees the it's like the clay form. And it's just like what? It's like wait he murdered his whole family years ago. It's just so weird. It'd be super surreal. But so after this you know Bob's starting to get on this owl but he's like okay I'm probably just making this all in my head.

But then one sunny afternoon the following September, Bob had been out riding his bike on the Ellicott Trail when he spotted his friend Al from work again. And this time he was jogging along the path. They stopped. They got to chatting and Bob asked, oh, what are you doing out here? And he said, oh, my wife, she's she's taking a class at Buffalo State.

Now, Buffalo State, which was a different school from the University of Buffalo, was 10 whole miles away. Which is far. 10 miles, it might not seem far, that's far. Well, and surely there were trails closer to Buffalo State. 100%. So Bob found this whole thing strange, but again, he thought nothing more of it until weeks later when a composite sketch of the supposed bike path rapist was released to the public. And it was a composite sketch that looked different

just like Bob's workmate, Al Sanchez. So Bob couldn't conceive of this guy, you know, a friendly and pleasant Al Sanchez as doing something as heinous as raping and killing, but he couldn't shake the synchronicity of it. Al seemingly out of place, offering a suspicious explanation for why he was on the trail. And then just look at the sketch. Al

After sitting on his worries for nearly two long weeks as they ate at him, Bob decided pretty reluctantly to go to the police. And that's when the past investigators opened a file on Al Sanchez.

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Now, Al Sanchez, like I said, was married with three kids and he was thought of as mild mannered. He was an outgoing guy. He was popular among his colleagues at the factory and also among his neighbors. Al's coworkers liked hanging out with him outside of work, especially for sporting activities. He was athletic. He was into running, golfing, softball. He coached a boys baseball team, played on community teams through his church and was well established in his community and active within his church.

So in the neighborhood, Al was a warm and generous presence, plowing neighbors' driveways with his snow plow during winter. He mowed lawns for free. He always invited everyone to his house for barbecues. So police can't help but note that he doesn't quite fit the profile that they had developed back then for the bike path rapist. I just feel like I'm confused because I think I thought it was the husband. But then now we have this suspect who, Al's a little too nice, first of all. Right.

Right. I don't know. But he's kind of there. He's just kind of always there. Yeah, I mean, he's doing some weird stuff. I don't know. Right. Well, and police are with you. They're like, he doesn't really fit the profile. We thought this guy would be socially inept, a loner. And Al Sanchez is clearly not that.

So the detectives at the time, this is back then, drove out to Sanchez's house and noticed that one of the cars in his driveway was a light blue Pontiac. This is the same color, though not the same make, as described in a tip that had been phoned in by a witness who saw something like a light blue Dodge parked near the bike path the day that Linda Yelum was killed. So even his car fits, not necessarily the make, but the color. Yeah.

So they decide to call Sanchez in for an interview. This was in October 1990. Now remember, Joan doesn't get murdered until 2006. So Sanchez denies that he'd ever been on that particular bike path, the one that Bob claims he encountered him on. So he's like, I know Bob says that, but I wasn't. And then they asked him if he minded them checking his work schedule at the factory where he worked. And he said he had no problem with that.

When they followed up with his supervisors at the brass factory and went over Al Sanchez's work schedules, they discovered that he'd been either out of work or late. In other words, available for each of the seven known bike path rapist crimes up to that point.

So he doesn't have an alibi. On the day of Linda Yalum's murder, he had been scheduled to work overtime until 1130 a.m., but for whatever reason, he had skipped that overtime and clocked out at 730 a.m. And on the day of the earlier Ellicott bike path rape in May of that year, he had come to work an hour late and his paycheck was docked accordingly.

Hmm.

And that was that. So current day detectives, Keats and Schneider, while reexamining these old case files in 2006, are completely puzzled by this. That Al Sanchez was eliminated by Amherst PD back then purely on the basis of fingerprints on a water bottle that may have not even been related to the crime. Like that water bottle could have been anyone's. It's out in the middle of nowhere. Right.

Therefore, they decide to reinvestigate Sanchez now, pulling his DMV records, his address history, arrest records, if there were any. And indeed, there were two arrests, both of them for trying to pick up sex workers on the streets of Buffalo. Once was in 1999 when he tried to pick up an undercover vice officer, and the other was in 1991 for the same thing, trying to solicit sex. So Al Sanchez now is beginning to look very interesting after Joan Diver's murder, but

But then something else was found, yielding another suspect that they wanted to reexamine. Apparently, there was a series of rapes before the bike path rapist rapes that someone else had already gone to prison for. But in the search for that guy, a victim came forward claiming that after she was attacked, she saw her attacker again out and about at the Boulevard Mall in Buffalo.

And because there were so many rapes in the area around this time, the two investigations crossed over, which was how 2006 detectives were now getting this information as well. I feel like there's so many people in jail for raping people. Right. And like, how are there this many? Yeah, there's a suspect after suspect after suspect.

There's a series of rapes that someone's apparently in prison for. Now there's the bike path rapist and now he's raping again years later. So back in the 1980s, this victim wrote down the man's license plate number and gave it to police once she thought she saw him at the mall. The police traced that license to a man named Wilfredo Carabaolo who lived on the west side of the city. Now, Wilfredo Carabaolo ended up not

being the man arrested and convicted of these rapes. So he was taken off the suspect list back then. But now, 25 years later, detectives on the new bike path rapist task force were grasping at any lead and they decide to try and track down Wilfredo and they were having a hard time finding him. He'd moved away from the home he'd last lived in and the relatives they talked to claim they didn't know where he was. When they showed his own sister a picture of Wilfredo, she claimed that she wasn't even sure it was him in the picture.

And they were like, what do you mean you don't know if that's your brother? And she says, well, I don't know. I just need to, I don't know. So she says he may have returned to Puerto Rico. She really wasn't sure. It sort of felt like detectives, two detectives, like his family members weren't being totally forthcoming. Like maybe they were hiding something, which made them even more suspicious of this potential lead.

But then they were able to locate another sibling, a brother named Herabato Sanchez Caraballo. And explaining that they were trying to rule out his brother as a suspect, they asked him if they could swab his mouth for DNA. And to their surprise, he agreed. And if you're wondering where this is going, I promise I'm getting somewhere. I really did have to introduce all of this to get you the answers in this case, but

But while police are trying to track down Caraballo, Detective Schneider went to the local FBI office trying to dig up more on their first suspect, Al Sanchez. So basically, they're just working these two angles. Remember him? He was the first suspect they came across in the old files. And Detective Schneider learned that Al Sanchez's mother's maiden name was Luz Caraballo.

And he had been born in Puerto Rico. Okay, okay. So Al Sanchez, our first suspect, his mother's name is Caraballo, which is the last name of Wilfredo Caraballo, the man a rape victim ID'd back in the 80s during the bike path rapist who they are assuming is Al Sanchez. So it was starting to possibly look like the 2006 investigators, two main suspects, Wilfredo Caraballo and Al Sanchez, might be real.

related to suspects whose circumstances, the circumstances that led them to the attention of police were

were completely unrelated and separated by nine years. Like these two guys are in two completely different police files, but 2006 police have just found out that they are related. So it was after learning this insane happen chance that detectives finally get a call from Wilfredo. And the investigator explained to him why he was calling, that he'd been following up on a contact from 25 years earlier. His car had been spotted at a shopping mall parking lot. And

And he goes, oh, that wasn't me driving the car. And the detective is like, okay, well, who was it? And he said, well, I had loaned the car to my nephew, Al Sanchez, that day. Okay. So you heard that right. Yep. This means that both suspects were actually Al Sanchez.

Because she had said, oh no, I saw him driving his car. That's the man who raped me. But it was actually Al Sanchez, not Wilfredo. But police aren't learning this until 2006. So it looks like it might be Al Sanchez. Yes, they've basically just eliminated this other suspect. So when the phone call ended, police were fairly confident that they had found their man. Al Sanchez had to be the bike path rapist.

And when the DNA results from his uncle's DNA came back, the results indicated that the man was closely related to the bike path rapist. Am I just suspicious of the husband for no reason? Yes. Yes. There's no reason. Nothing you're going to get to. No, the husband doesn't come back into the story. Oh my gosh. You made it seem. I thought for sure, like the husband was involved, but he's squeaky clean. Poor guy. Okay. But I did. I'm blaming the husband. It wasn't even him because,

everyone blames the husband. And I did it for a reason. Because if a husband decides to get an attorney, decides not to take a polygraph, isn't necessarily 100% cooperative because they're protecting themselves. Everyone thinks it's him. Everyone thinks it's them. Yes. And it's like, well, where's the...

What do you do here? What do you do here? Because the husband is always the first suspect. But this this husband tried to protect himself. And because of that, everyone, including you, were suspicious. Yeah. You led me astray. I didn't lead you astray. I told you the story straight up. Whatever you say. So basically, they've confirmed that Al Sanchez's brother's DNA may.

is somehow related to the bike path rapist. So this all but confirmed it. So they placed Al Sanchez under 24 hours surveillance. Again, this is in 2006 after Joan Diver's murder. And they're waiting for him to spit, to toss a cigarette butt, our basic way that police are now collecting DNA. Anything that would contain his DNA for them to sweep in and collect it.

Now on the evening of January 12th, 2007, police followed Sanchez as he and his family drove to a popular Latin restaurant in Buffalo called Soleil.

After the Sanchez's entered and were seated, the detectives discreetly followed them inside and they showed the manager their badges and pointed out the Sanchez table explaining that the family seated there were under investigation and they needed to make sure that all of the glasses and the tableware, the utensils were left untouched after the family left. So police go in and say, can you please not mess with this? The restaurant agrees to cooperate. And after the Sanchez's finished, the glasses, silverware and plastic straws were collected and bagged by detectives.

Everything was sent to the crime lab. And at 5 p.m. the next day, the results came in. Oh, that's fast. Yes. Al Sanchez's DNA matched that of the bike path rapist. Okay. The serial rapist and killer who had been stalking Buffalo's bike paths for more than two decades. Now considering Joan Diver's murder. Like that is such a huge find. Such a long time. And it is such a solid DNA find. I'm kind of surprised he wasn't caught earlier.

I mean. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, because he was a suspect back in 1981. He was a suspect all the way back then. He had a whole file. They had said his car was the right color. He happened to be in the area. His friends had become suspective of him. So yeah, you and everyone else is kind of like, well, you had his name clear back then.

So on January 15th, Al Sanchez was arrested and brought in for questioning and telling Lee after he was first placed in cuffs, Sanchez never asked why he was being arrested. So they arrest him. They put him in cuffs and he never asks because he knew why.

But his wife, who was also brought in for questioning, was absolutely stunned. It can't be, she told police. There must be some mistake. Me and my husband have a normal sex life, she told investigators. He had never been rough. He had never choked her. They told her that based on semen collected from two of the rapes, they were sure that the bike path rapist had a vasectomy sometime between 1990 and 1992. They asked her if this was true, and she confirmed that it was. Al Sanchez had...

had undergone a vasectomy in 1993. Imagine how devastating and just like life-changing that would feel. Right. So reality was beginning to set in for Al Sanchez's wife. And when Michael Sanchez, this is one of Al's grown sons, joined his mother at the Amherst police station, he said to the detective, wait a minute, you're telling me that my father's DNA was found in,

in those girls and the detective confirmed yeah like we've 100 matched it michael then turned to his mother and said he's effed

Meaning there's nothing we can do. Like dad is completely effed this happened. So in the interrogation room, Al Sanchez calmly denied having anything to do with the rapes or the murders. And so police confront him with the DNA evidence repeatedly. And he continues to insist they have the wrong guy. After eight hours of not getting anywhere, the lead detective entered and announced, okay, that's a wrap. Sanchez stood up like he was expecting to go home.

Like he stands up like he's going to leave. And police are like, whoa, you're not going anywhere. You're never going home. You're going to jail. We have your DNA. How many times do we need to tell you? He was turned around and handcuffed. And that's when he began to lose the cocky, cool attitude that he'd maintained throughout the interview. He looked pretty shocked as he realized that he was not going home and

In May of 2007, Al Sanchez changed his tune and pled guilty to all of the charges against him. And he was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison. And a review of rape cases in the area dating back decades revealed that Al Sanchez had likely been attacking women as far back as 1975 when he was still in high school.

Which is something we see happen often in these rape cases. Like they thought that the bike path rapist started at this time. And then once they find the person, they realize, oh, he had been doing this for much longer. I also think it's pretty crazy. He was still in the same city, whatever you want to call it, the same area. Like he's been raping girls, killing people for two decades. And he's like, ah. I'm going to go back to the same trip. Yeah, I'm going to stay here. I think everything will be fine. Right. Right.

So then there was the 1985 murder of 15-year-old Catherine Harold, who was found strangled and stabbed to death on some railroad tracks not far from the brass factory where Sanchez worked. This murder has never been solved, but Sanchez does remain a possible suspect. He's not talking about it.

but police definitely think that he probably did this. It's been reported that Sanchez might be moved to a prison closer to his family if he confesses to other murders and rapes, but so far he hasn't done so, so he's staying in prison. Now, before we end, there is another aspect to this case that I can't not include. It's a devastating aspect on top of all of this devastation.

So remember how I said that Caraballo had been ID'd by that victim in the mall in those other rapes? And now we know it was actually Al that had been ID'd, not Caraballo. Well, if you recall, I told you that the reason that Caraballo had even been dropped in the first place wasn't because it was actually Al. It was because someone else went to prison for those rapes.

rapes for that series of rapes. Originally, police did not think those were the bike path rapist rapes. We now know they were, but that means someone else was in prison for this. So what's going on? From November 1983 through July 1984, before Al's original known attacks, six female joggers were attacked in Buffalo's Delaware Park by a man who surprised them with a handgun, ordered them off the trail into some brush, and raped them.

All of the attacks took place near the park statue of Michelangelo's David. Now, while looking for a suspect, police got a lead to a license plate. Two officers from Buffalo's sex offenses squad ran the plate and they traced it back to a 29-year-old man named Anthony Capazzi. Now, three of the six victims at this point in the investigation all chose Anthony Capazzi's picture out of a lineup as being the man who had attacked them.

And on that basis, Kapatsi was arrested and charged with multiple counts of rape, sodomy, criminal possession of a weapon, and robbery. So how does that happen? How do three people choose a suspect out of a lineup and he ends up being innocent? He had to have looked like Al. Like how does that, how does... It's devastating.

Was he... I just don't understand how that happens. He just had to have looked like Al or police were dishonest and led them to that person without actually saying that they had. Interesting. But he denied having anything to do with the rapes. Meanwhile, his defense attorneys began considering an insanity plea because Kapatsi had a history of psychiatric hospitalization. And they believed that this was the only way they were going to get their client out of serving prison time. Which the reason I'm including this is...

Apparently, Kapatsi definitely had some mental illness. Did that make him an easy target? The women pick him up out of the lineup, and now he also has this. Does that make him an easy target? But the insanity plea was rejected, and the case went to trial in 1987. It gets worse because while awaiting trial, another rape happens underneath that statue, and the state brushes it off as unrelated. We now know that was Al Sanchez. Yep.

But even though they have their man in custody and another rape happens, they brush it under the rug. So what happens? Does he go to prison? A jury finds him guilty on multiple counts connected to two of the Delaware Park rapes. And he was sentenced to 12 to 35 years in prison. Did he get out? Well, in a statement right after being sentenced, he says, listen, I am wrongfully accused. I never did these crimes. I'm innocent.

And now, as you know, Kapatsy did not rape these girls. Those rapes were actually from the bike path rapist, Al Sanchez. But Anthony Kapatsy went away for the rapes while Al remained out free. And Anthony Kapatsy served more than two decades. No freaking way. While Al was still out and then went on to rape and kill. And he was denied parole every time it came around. He was inhumane.

Did he go back and sue or something at least? Yes. I'm sure there's a whole story to it. There is. A whole. But it gets even worse because the DNA from those attacks had been around this whole time. Oh my gosh. It makes me sick. It could have been tested.

as soon as testing became an option, but it wasn't. That DNA just sat there. Could you imagine? Oh, I can't even imagine that. It wasn't tested until 2006 when Al Sanchez was found and then they believed, okay, well, if this one girl ID'd Al Sanchez during those rapes, how is Anthony Capazzi in prison right now? That's what police are thinking. So Anthony Capazzi now finds

years old returns home to his family after spending nearly half of his life in prison for crimes that he didn't commit. You know, I don't know who was on that jury. Look, I know it would not be good at being on a jury, but I'm just surprised without DNA evidence, he was convicted. Okay, but three women testified saying it was him. Yeah, I understand that, but I think I'm also...

Understand that it's traumatic. Yes. I think I also understand it's traumatic. You're also like, even things like, um, like, Oh, my house was on fire or something happened. You, I feel like your brain, sometimes you start to just say things. Well, and also even though three did ID him, three said, no, it wasn't. Yeah. So it'd be like, well, yeah. If,

If not all six said it was him and they all saw him, we might have to be like, it might not be him. Right. And I know we always want to err on believe the victim because the victim is the person who had. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe he went. But what makes it even worse is he's sitting in prison as soon as DNA testing became available. But think about how many people this is happening to right now. How much DNA is available to be tested right now and isn't because of funding.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And how many more Anthony Kapatsis are sitting in prison because of this. Yeah. So he returns home to his family. He's a free man. And not long after his release, he and his family and the members of the new Bike Path Rapist Task Force go to a celebratory dinner together. Anthony, who is now spending most of his time living at an assisted care facility, went on to file a $41 million lawsuit against New York State. So he's old at this point. 50. 50.

He's 50, so not too old. But he has spent half his life in prison. And New York settled for $4.25 million. That's it?

Well, yeah. Oh my gosh. Dude deserves like $50 million. That's all I'm saying. And this inspired the passage of Anthony's law in New York state is, which is a law ensuring that cases like his filed by wrongfully convicted individuals who have been exonerated receive priority expedited treatment in civil court, which is the least you can do. And I can't even believe that had like that, that became had to become a law because if you learn that someone is wrongfully accused and it's been sitting in prison, immediately,

Immediately the next day, their case should be bumped up to the top and they should be let out. I feel like there's always like some guinea pig, which is horrible. You know, there's always, it sucks. It sucks. But that is the entire case of the bike path rapist. And I know it got confusing because there were so many names and police had initially split up.

the rapes and treated them as two different suspects when in reality it was just one man the bike path rapist all right you guys that is our case for this week and we will see you next time with a regular episode i love it and i hate it goodbye