INFAMOUS: Bathtub Killer

[00:00] Hi, Crime Junkies. It's Britt, and I have big news. One of my favorite seasonal shows, CounterClock, is back with a brand new season, and it is wild. Host Delia D'Ambra is digging into the 2008 Lane Bryant murders. I mean, this isn't just a recap. It is a reinvestigation. She's talking to law enforcement, people from the community, even sources who have never spoken publicly until now. And you know I love a show that asks all the questions. Listen to CounterClock Season 8 now wherever you get your podcasts. [00:30] Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you this week is more proof that no case is ever truly frozen for good, and that sooner or later, the past will catch up with you. This is the story of the Bathtub Killer. [00:50] - [01:21] Late in the afternoon on September 17th, 1996, in Arlington, Texas, a man named Thang Koo is headed home from work and back to the apartment that he shares with his fiancée, Christine Vu.

[01:34] Since she's a third grade teacher, Christine usually gets home from work before things. So he's expecting her to be there just like normal. So he puts his key in the lock and turns the knob, but the door won't open. [01:47] It's locked like deadbolt and all. [01:50] Wait, he lives there. [01:51] Thought you said he had a key. So he does live there and he does have his keys. But apparently the way that their apartment was designed, like there's one special deadbolt lock that's only accessible from the inside as some kind of extra security thing. So Thang's key isn't enough today. So Thang figures, OK, no big deal. Christine is probably in the bathroom or something. She's, you know, flipped that security lock. I'm going to come back in just a minute. [02:21] to finish her shower, whatever it is she's doing. Except when he goes back upstairs a few minutes later, the door is still locked. Now, at this point, Thang's starting to wonder what is going on here. He's not like super worried, but I mean, you know what it's like at the end of the workday. You're ready to just get home, see your partner, maybe pet your dog and just kind of collapse. So like he wants to be inside. So this time, instead of going back to wait in his car, Thang actually [02:51] Like surely she'll hear the phone, but he dials and it rings and rings and rings, but there's no answer. And this is pretty out of character for Christine. She's a teacher, has that consistent schedule, and now is when things are starting to feel off for things.

[03:10] He decides to go back up to the apartment one more time, hoping she's finally done with whatever she's doing so she can open the door. [03:17] He gets to the door for the third time now. [03:20] And wouldn't you know it, third time's a charm. It's not locked anymore. [03:26] But as soon as he walks in, there is this eerie quiet to their apartment, almost like no one is home. But that can't be right. Thang calls out Christine's name, but he just gets a heavy silence in return. [03:40] This isn't right. Something isn't right. I mean, she was just here. The door was just locked like 10 minutes ago. Spine tingling, Feng walks through the small apartment searching. He walks into the kitchen. [03:53] No Christine. The bedroom. No Christine. It's not until he checks the small apartment bathroom that his search ends and the nightmare begins. Because there, lying face down in the half full bathtub, naked, bound and gagged, is an unmoving Christine. [04:12] Fang hauls her out of the bathtub thinking that maybe there's still time, but he quickly realizes that he's too late. [04:19] According to Robert Tharp's reporting in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Thang runs out of the apartment and starts banging on the neighbors' doors, yelling and begging them to call police, paramedics, anyone. Just send help. Eventually, Thang manages to calm down just enough to call 911 himself, and he is like yelling into the receiver, begging them to come right away. And they do. Police arrive at the Pear Tree Apartments to find Christine laying dead next to the bathtub that Thang had pulled her from.

[04:49] a cause of death. No gunshot wound, no stab wounds, no trauma to her head or body, though her hands are bound together and so are her feet. And they're actually connected down her back with duct tape. Like hogtied? Yeah, exactly. But with duct tape. When police talk to Christine's fiance, Thang, he's, I mean, totally out of sorts at this point, understandably. And Thang tells police the whole story, coming home from work, the locked door, about leaving [05:19] that he got home that first time around 5.30. And police were able to kind of piece together the rest of the timeline because they knew that that 911 call had come in at 5.45. So, I mean, we're talking just a short 15-minute window. Police asked Thang for more details. I mean, they want to know, what else did you see? What did you hear? I mean, just trying to hone in on the details to see if any of it is useful. But Thang tells them, like, [05:44] I didn't see anything. Everything seemed totally normal, except for the fact that that door was locked and then somehow just unlocked. [05:54] Now, there's something about Fang's story that's just not adding up to police. Like, to them, it's almost too convenient. That timeline is just too tight. And their biggest thing is, like, dude, if you lived here, I mean, who cares if she's in the bathroom or something? Like, shouldn't you both be comfortable enough with each other to be in the same house when one of you is going to the bathroom? You know what I mean? Like, why would she lock the door? Why wouldn't she let you in? Like, it's just feeling fishy and off to them.

[06:24] don't go away when they start to process the crime scene because there's no sign of forced entry and it doesn't look like anything's been taken. In fact, the apartment doesn't even look like there had even been a struggle in it at all. So they're assuming that Christine knew her killer. Exactly. So they keep talking to Thang. I mean, they're asking him about their relationship. Was it going well? Did you guys fight? And he says, no, like we've been dating for a couple of years. [06:54] heat. [06:56] They decide to look at the physical evidence. Police go inch by inch through the crime scene and they finally find something that might be helpful. According to another one of Robert Tharp's pieces for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, they find one single fingerprint. And it's on the deadbolt lock inside of her apartment. [07:17] Now, obviously, there were other prints in the house, but this one, this one they thought could be significant. Like, sure, it might just belong to Christine or even Thang, but what if it didn't? It could be the only proof in the entire place that would prove someone else was in the apartment, that someone else was behind the door when Thang tried to get in, and that someone else had made their escape when Thang went to that fitness center to call home. [07:42] With little else to collect in the apartment, police are hopeful that the autopsy on Christine's body will prove to give them some more insight as to what happened to her. But we all know that that's going to take some time to get. And so in the meantime, they've already started looking around for suspects. And the first person they train their sights on is, surprise, surprise, the one.

[08:02] Bang! [08:03] And they're suspicious of him not just because Thang is obviously the closest person to Christine, but also because of the sheer impossibility of his story. Again, for them to believe Thang's story, they have to believe that the killer was literally inside the apartment with Christine already dead or dying and then was only able to escape because Thang didn't persist in his knocking and just went away not once, but actually twice. [08:27] But Thang is adamant he had nothing to do with Christine's murder. And he's eager to cooperate with police to rule him out as a suspect. And honestly, he was maybe a little too eager. [08:38] Brian D. Crescente reported in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Thang not only takes a polygraph test and hands over the keys to his car to a search team, but he is more than happy to provide fingerprints, hair samples, fingernails, even pubic hair, all of it. And he does all of it without ever getting a lawyer first. So he's being really cooperative. Really cooperative. I mean, literally breaking all the crime junkie life rules here. I mean, no lawyer taking a polygraph. Yeah. None of this is really the sign of a guilty man. [09:07] And I think that's why he was so cooperative. Like, in his mind, maybe if they see I'm not trying to hide anything, they'll know that I really have nothing to hide. [09:18] And slowly, police begin to think twice about Fang as a possible suspect. But they're not totally ready to eliminate him completely just yet. They need to get those results back. They need to learn more about Christine, about the circumstances around her death, about Fang and their relationship. In particular, they want to know if there's any kind of history of violence there. I mean, this wouldn't be the first time domestic violence escalated to murder. So their next stop is to see Christine's family in Amarillo.

[09:48] learned there turns everything in this case upside down. [09:53] For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. [10:13] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now. [10:20] wherever you get your podcasts. [10:24] When police talk to Christine's family in Amarillo about their daughter and her live-in fiancé, her family is like... [10:32] Fiancee? [10:33] What fiance? What? Right. So they say they had no idea Christine was even engaged. Christine's little sister told the Fort Worth Star Telegram in October of 96 that Christine hadn't said anything about getting engaged to Thang. And they were even talking on Labor Day, which is just a couple of weeks before she died. And she said that Christine was talking about how she didn't want to get married young. [11:03] that the relationship had gotten more serious. Right. And that's a pretty... [11:08] big departure from Thang saying that they had had like wedding plans. Right? But I don't think that necessarily means that [11:15] thing was lying about it. Maybe Christine, you know, just didn't tell her family. And plans is a loose...

[11:21] to her. Maybe they had talked about it, but, you know, hadn't set a date, gotten a venue, picked out a dress, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, you're keeping a very open mind about it. And I agree. But the police at the time kind of take this pretty closed minded approach. And I mean, this information they're getting from her family makes them really zero in on thing. And now they're thinking like, OK, if he could lie about this. I mean, because, again, they're not thinking like, oh, maybe she just didn't tell them. They're assuming that there's some kind of [11:51] Right. Exactly. They're like, what else is he lying about? And does lying about your relationship status make you capable of murder? [11:59] Well, when Christine's autopsy results come back, it paints a much clearer picture for police of what happened in that apartment that day. First of all, they learned that her cause of death is found to be manual strangulation with drowning. [12:13] And she had been sexually assaulted as part of the attack. And the attacker left behind DNA. [12:19] Investigators collect sperm from Christine so they can use the DNA to look for matches in the convicted offender DNA database. But again, that stuff takes time. The autopsy showed that Christine's larynx was crushed while she was held underwater and she had cuts and bruises on her body that looked consistent with fighting her attacker. [12:49] and 5.45 p.m. when Thang made that 911 call.

[12:52] Okay, and that's a really small window of time. So they have that, they have the fingerprint, they have the DNA... [12:59] Obviously, DNA getting submitted to CODIS and compared takes ages. But were they at least able to compare the fingerprint and DNA to things to potentially eliminate him? So they were. And to their surprise, neither were. [13:15] was a match to Thang. Thang wasn't the one who sexually assaulted her, and he wasn't the last person to turn the deadbolt lock. And I assume they ruled out Christine's prints from the lock, right? Right. So... [13:30] It's not hers. It's not Thang. It's someone unknown. So suddenly this whole story seems totally different. And police have to sort of stop and reevaluate because this is the first real moment where they have to stop and consider. What if Thang has been telling the truth this whole time? What if there really was someone else there in the apartment? [14:00] a complete stranger to Christine, which is at this point like a novel idea to them. And the DNA collected from her assault, they put it into CODIS, but they don't get any hits. And they run the fingerprint through APHIS, hoping to get a match. But again, there's nothing. [14:17] All throughout the fall, police are digging into this investigation, looking for anything that they might have missed that could lead them to Christine's killer. But gradually, the investigation starts to go cold.

[14:29] Until late on Christmas Eve of 1996, at about 11 p.m. that night, police get a phone call from the Pear Tree apartment complex, the same place Christine and Thang lived. And this caller said that a woman named Wendy Prescott had been found dead in her apartment. [14:59] this crime scene. They've seen [15:02] every single thing about this before. Just three months ago when Christine was murdered in the very same apartment complex, almost the very same apartment. Like Wendy lived in Christine's old apartment? So not exactly, but they lived in almost identical apartments. Like the layout was exactly the same. They were basically a carbon copy of one another. So when they get to this [15:32] an identical living room, into the same bathroom, and into the same crime scene. Because Wendy is bound with duct tape around her wrists, ankles, and neck, and she's laying face down in the bathtub. [15:47] At this point, police are starting to fear that their worst case scenario is coming true. Whoever killed Christine has struck again and they may have a serial killer on their hands. Do we know who found Wendy's body? So the Californian reported that Wendy's aunt Brenda and Uncle Norman are the ones who found her. As they tell police, they had come in to check on Wendy after she missed the family's annual Christmas Eve party.

[16:17] And since no one had been able to get a hold of her all night, they got Wendy's spare key from her older sister and drove over to her apartment to see if everything was OK. But it turns out they didn't need a key because when they got there, the door was unlocked. And inside is where Norman found Wendy's body. And then he immediately called 911. So did they jump right to a serial killer or did someone consider a copycat killing or something like that? [16:47] talking about copycats, I have to assume that police at least considered it for a while. But I don't know like what their investigative like theories or tactics were like day one when they realized that clearly, whether it's a serial killer with a copycat, like there's something connecting these two. Otherwise, it's too strange. Now, just like at Christine's apartment, there's no sign of forced entry. Nothing is missing. And just like they did with Christine's apartment, techs process the crime scene. And once again, they find one little thing. [17:17] In the dust on the TV stand is a perfect fingerprint, and they're hoping that it belongs to whomever killed Wendy. [17:25] Now, it's worth noting that in death, these victims are virtually the same. But it's when police start to dig into Wendy's background that they start to realize just how similar Christine and Wendy really were. I mean, they were both women of color, both in their 20s. They both worked in elementary education and they both lived in the same identical apartment, just 150 feet away from one another. Oh, my God. Do we know if they knew each other?

[17:55] No, they didn't. I kind of get the impression based off my research that Wendy moved in right after Christine was murdered. And I'm not 100% sure if their apartments were across the hall or if they were maybe like catty corner from each other. But they live like super, super close to one another. [18:12] And truthfully, I think the apartments themselves could be the biggest clue. Like, whoever this guy was got to know the layout. He also seemed to know how to get in and out without any kind of trace. And it seemed like every time he just vanished into thin air within, like, minutes or maybe even seconds of someone dying. [18:34] being there. And all of this to me is stuff that you wouldn't be able to do or you wouldn't know unless you spent a fair bit of time at Pear Tree Apartments. Or... [18:44] unless you lived there. [18:45] I watched a Cold Case Files episode that talked about this case and the segment that they did called Deja Vu. They say that panic starts to spread like wildfire that Christmas morning. And a lot of the tenants at Pear Tree Apartments at the time, I mean, they were single women. And after two murders in just over two months, they were terrified that they were going to be next. [19:15] So as you can imagine, this Christmas Day mass exodus did a number on the investigation. I mean, it was next to impossible to get statements from neighbors or to even canvas a neighborhood with everyone coming and going. I mean, it was complete chaos. Not to mention the perfect opportunity for the killer to escape without evidence.

[19:35] any red flags. [19:38] Exactly. [19:38] And the next day on December 26th, police get what feels like the first really solid lead in the case. But it's nowhere near the pear tree apartments. As they're interviewing people in Wendy's life, her sister Skyla tells them something that sets police on a whole new path. She tells them Wendy had a stalker. [20:03] For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. [20:23] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now. [20:30] wherever you get your podcasts. [20:34] Not only does Skyla tell police that her younger sister Wendy had been stalked, but she tells them that it had been going on for months and all by the same man. Oh my God, do we know who the guy was? [21:03] boyfriend. But whoever this guy is, though, this stalker, according to Skyla, he's also been making death threats. He's been telling Wendy that she's going to die just like her mom did. Wait, what? Yeah, that's exactly the reaction I had. So I started kind of like going back and looking and I'm

[21:22] I mean, it's horribly tragic. And I feel like we've seen this sometimes where we read about a person or a family that's just had like one tragedy after another. That's honestly kind of Wendy's family. It turns out that her mother was also murdered back in 1977. And that case to this day has still never been solved. Oh, my God. What a... [21:43] terrible, horrible coincidence. Yeah. I mean, sadly, according to data from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, Black women like Wendy and her mom, Aura, are two and a half times more likely than white women to be murdered by a man. And it says that more than nine out of 10 Black female victims know their killers. Now, I obviously can't say for sure if Aura knew her killer since that case has never been solved. But both mother and daughter meeting a similar brutal fate is [22:13] heartbreaking coincidence. [22:16] So acting on Skyla's tip and with the likelihood that Wendy probably knew her killer, police follow up and find the harassment report that Wendy had filed about this person back in May. But the report, all it says is, quote, vague and non-threatening, end quote. OK, that gives us nothing. And is that what they're saying now or like after they interviewed him or what? [22:46] Fort Worth Star-Telegram that made it sound like that. Like they had gone, met with him, talked to him, and their like assessment of him was that he was vague and non-threatening. That's how I took it. And it's so weird to me because like vague and non-threatening to me is a huge leap from somebody who was apparently making death threats to her. But like, of course, they're going to be nice to you. You're the police that show up. It was kind of just a weird like write off to me. Clearly, you know, they might know more than me. They like actually met with this guy.

[23:16] newspaper articles from decades ago. Right. But like even when I go to the grocery store, I hope to appear to be vague and non-threatening. It's a very broad statement. Yeah. So there's not a lot out there about who this guy was or what exactly happened between him and Wendy. But I do know that the police follow up basically eliminated him as a suspect. [23:37] Now, when Wendy's autopsy report comes back from the medical examiner on the day after Christmas, the findings continue to point to even more disturbing similarities between her and Christine. Wendy's cause of death is strangulation and submersion in bathwater. And Wendy, too, was sexually assaulted before she died. Were they able to recover any DNA from Wendy's killer? They do. They are able to get a DNA profile and police send it off for analysis. [24:07] for the results because if it matches the DNA found at Christine's crime scene, [24:12] They've got a serial killer, but if it doesn't match, then they have two killers on the loose in Arlington and one of them is a copycat. [24:20] As Christy Gonzalez reported in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, when the DNA results come back, it is, in fact, a match. The same person sexually assaulted both Wendy and Christine and ended their lives in the same brutal fashion. [24:36] But knowing this, I mean, knowing that it's the same guy isn't even half the battle. They still need to find him. And once again, when they run the DNA and the fingerprints through all the systems, there is still no match. Whoever this guy is, he doesn't have a criminal record. That seems so crazy to me because we have two violent crimes in three months in the same period.

[25:00] place, basically. Yeah. It sounds like he's escalating. And it's, for me at least, hard to believe that he's never shown up in the system anywhere before. I literally had the same thought. Like, you have to believe in the case of somebody who is now a serial rapist and murderer. I mean, these are violent, violent crimes. You would think that there would have been some warning signs, like the kind that leave a trail for police, because it seems almost impossible to me that [25:30] Totally. And something that I'm thinking about is maybe he was committing crimes, specifically like sexual assaults, and they just weren't being reported. Girl, we are the same person because I had that literally that same thought when I was doing my research. So I did a little digging on this. And according to RAINN, which is the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, three out of every four sexual assaults go unreported in the United States. I guess my question to that would be if they're unreported, how do we find that number? Are they being tracked or something? [26:00] So... [26:01] From what I can tell, that particular information came from a crime victimization survey that was done between like 2010 and 2016 by the Department of Justice. And so it found that only 230 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults were reported by individuals. [26:16] police, which is a heartbreaking statistic. And it absolutely could explain the reason why this suspect suddenly just like popped onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere. And so at this point, with these two murders happening within just a couple of months from one another, the police are on pins and needles waiting basically for either a significant break in the case or, I mean, worst case scenario, another victim.

[26:43] But they don't want to just sit back and wait. So they go back to Pear Tree Apartments where they are sure their killer must have lived or worked or knew someone there. I mean, they're pouring over everything that they can get their hands on, determined to stop this guy before he can strike again. [26:59] But to everyone's shock, while they continue their investigation, their killer seems to go quiet. There are no more attacks, no more murders, and nothing similar. Eighteen months pass, and during that time, they clear more than 300 potential suspects with DNA, fingerprints, and alibis. And just like that, after all that time, all that interviewing, all that testing... [27:25] Both cases just go cold. [27:29] early on the morning of February 23rd, 1999, when police get a call from the University of Texas at Arlington about a sexual assault at a sorority house on campus. The victim is a senior at the university named Shima Benson. [27:45] Despite the fact that she had been severely beaten, she's able to give police a pretty thorough description of the man who attacked her. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in April of 99, Shima describes her attacker as a light-skinned African-American man between 22 and 24 years old with kind of a larger build somewhere between 5 foot 8 and 5 foot 10 inches tall. [28:09] Now, there's something important that Shima tells police. She mentions to them that during this attack, she actually bit her attacker's genitals, like bad enough to injure him. And she figured bad enough to leave a permanent scar.

[28:24] This is a huge piece of the puzzle that police decide to use. They decide to give this case a lot of publicity, both on and off the UTA campus. Partly, I mean, to warn people that this man is out there and partly to get some help from the public identifying their suspect. And it works because shortly after the attack, the detective on Shima's case gets a phone call from a woman who says this. It should have been me. [28:53] For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. [29:13] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now. [29:20] wherever you get your podcasts. [29:24] When police get the call from a woman saying that she should have been the victim, they are understandably just, I mean, taken aback. What are you talking about? It should have been you. I saw in an episode of that Cold Case Files that I mentioned that this woman tells the detective that she was not only a friend of Wendy Prescott, but she also says that she had just moved out of the sorority house where Shima was attacked. [29:54] get away from her stalker ex-boyfriend.

[29:57] What? Yeah! Wait, like a different stalker? Not the same one that Wendy had reported on? [30:03] Yeah, if you can believe it, we're talking about a completely different guy. But she thinks that her ex might be the person who killed Wendy back in 96. And it's a solid lead, especially considering that this woman used to live in the same building in the same room as Shima. So hearts pounding, the detective makes a phone call. He wants to know if the DNA from Shima's rape kit could possibly be linked back to Wendy and Christine. [30:30] When the results come back in April of 1999, the connection is clear as day. [30:35] The man who raped Shima is the same man who killed Christine and Wendy. Were they able to track down a potential suspect? [30:44] The stalker ex-boyfriend number two? Yes, they do track that guy down. But here's the thing. His DNA doesn't match either. What? [30:55] Yeah, I mean, again, like... [30:57] Unbelievable. But once again, police are back to the drawing board on suspects. OK, here's something I cannot stop thinking about. This guy raped and murdered Christine and Wendy. How did she must survive? So here's the crazy thing to me. He let her go. Which is it like goes against everything I thought I knew about criminal activity. I mean, it's almost like a de-escalation. Exactly. I mean, how many times do we hear about escalating criminal behavior? It's kind of what we talked about earlier. [31:27] How did this rape and murder start? Was there nothing before? But we don't usually hear about de-escalating behavior. But in this case, I mean, it seems like that's exactly what happened, though. I mean, me now, police then had no idea why.

[31:57] And they also decide to start looking at unsolved sexual assaults that didn't involve murder to see if maybe there are any potential connections there. Again, just like broadening and broadening their search parameters to try and figure out like who this guy could possibly be. And they're hoping to maybe connect more cases to him because even though this guy seemingly hasn't murdered anyone since 1996, with the report from Shima, police know that their guy is either reemerging after being spooked by the investigation. [32:27] case scenario, maybe he's been active all this time flying under the radar because what we've talked about earlier, like if he stopped murdering these women, maybe he was sexually assaulting women and it just wasn't getting reported. Right. Police are more sure than ever at this point that this guy is going to strike again. Like he's not just going to go away. But when he's [32:45] And where and will his victims walk away from the attack like Shima or will it be far worse like Christine and Wendy? All of that is an unknown to them. [32:54] Until later that year, in October of 1999, when police get the call that they hoped would never come. Another woman had been sexually assaulted, this time in Grand Prairie, just east of Arlington. Arlington. [33:08] And their victim was another young woman living alone. This woman's name is Adrienne. And she tells police one of the craziest things I've ever heard. She tells them that she actually moved out of Arlington to Grand Prairie. Because, you know what, here, I want you to read me what she told WFAA News back in 2015 about why she left Arlington after Christine and Wendy were murdered. Adrienne said, quote,

[33:36] When I seen it on TV, I just had this crazy feeling like, [33:40] I am next. [33:42] I just knew it. I can't explain it. [33:44] End quote. [33:45] Can you feel my wide eye emojis? Oh my God. Full body chills. Yeah. Adrienne tells police that she woke up that night to the sound of someone else's breathing. Her attacker sexually assaulted her at gunpoint, telling her that the devil keeps making him do this and that she's not like the others. And Adrienne says in that moment, she knew that he'd done this before and she was sure that she was going to die. [34:13] Now, Adrienne was pregnant when she was attacked, and she prayed to God that the man would spare her life and the life of her baby. And her prayers were heard because for whatever reason, like in Shima's case, he lets her live. [34:27] According to the office of the Clark County prosecutor, as her attacker was leaving, Adrian asked him why he did this. And he told her. [34:35] I don't know. He said that he was just mad at the world. [34:38] Police are able to collect DNA from Adrian's apartment after the assault. And in a surprise to no one, it is another match with the DNA from Christine, Wendy and Shima. But there is still no one to match this to. So police keep the evidence. They test the evidence. Technology improves. They test again. They never stop looking and they never stop believing that sooner or later the past is going to catch up with this guy.

[35:07] And it's true because more and more we hear stories where after years of a case being unsolved, even decades, police are able to link suspects to crimes using DNA evidence. Right. Season of justice. Season of justice. But here's the thing. In the end, in this case, it's not the DNA that gives police what they've waited so long for in this case. It's actually that fingerprint from Wendy Prescott's apartment. [35:37] has never stopped improving throughout all of these years. And it got a really big boost back in 1999 when the FBI database AFIS, A-F-I-S, changes to IFIS, I-A-F-I-S. And the whole system just basically runs better. The automation is better. It can analyze fingerprints in new ways that it couldn't before. And the new IAFIS system can look at fingerprints from more angles and find more points of comparison [36:07] So it's basically more detailed and more sensitive. [36:11] So in the summer of 2000, police send the DNA and fingerprint samples back to the FBI to run them through their database again. Because like I said, they never stopped looking, never stopped trying. And this time, according to court documents, the system comes back with a name. The fingerprint belongs to a 27-year-old man named Dale Devon Shunet. [36:35] This guy was just arrested for the first time one year before in May of 1999 for a burglary outside of Dallas. Now, Dale matches the description Shima gave of her attacker to a T. And wouldn't you know it, back in 1996, when Christine and Wendy were killed...

[36:54] Do you even want to guess where he lived? Was it pear tree apartments? Exactly. Just like police have suspected all along. [37:02] Since he still lives in Arlington, police get Dale in for questioning. Of course, he denies having anything to do with the murders. But at the same time, he can't explain how his fingerprints got in Christine and Wendy's apartments. Now, he says he's not willing to give them a DNA sample either. And he's like, I'm definitely not dropping my pants so you can check my genitals for scarring, not without a warrant. But police have zero trouble getting that warrant. And soon enough, they've got the DNA that they've been waiting for. [37:32] that Dale Devon Shunet's DNA matches the semen collected in all three cases, Christine, Wendy, and Shima, as well as Adrian when they're able to connect hers. And eventually, they're even able to get a warrant to check his full body, and he has a scar on his genitals right where they were expecting to find one from Shima's attack. [37:55] According to Robert Tharp's article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in September of 2000, Dale is arrested and charged with capital murder, which makes the perpetrator eligible for the death penalty. Once he's arrested, the whole case starts to snowball. And by the time his trial starts in 2003, DNA evidence links him to a total of five sexual assaults, along with the rapes and murders of Christine and Wendy. Honestly, though, I would figure there are more than just those five.

[38:25] reading through Dale's appeal, they kind of listed off the dates of the attacks. And most of them are like crazy close together. Like there's three just in the last four months of 1998, September, October, December, all with similar M.O.s. And I mean, all of them, like I'll spare you the details, but I mean, it's hard to even read like this guy belongs behind bars. [38:50] Now, Christine Vu's family and her former fiance, Thang, all attend the proceedings. And Wendy's uncle, Norman, is the first person on the stand. And he's the one that tells the jury the heart-wrenching story about the Christmas night that he discovered her in the tub. [39:05] This gut-wrenching testimony from survivors and their families, along with the damning forensic evidence, means it's a pretty short trial. On January 8th, 2003, Dale is found guilty of capital murder in the death of Wendy Prescott. And during the sentencing phase, all five sexual assault survivors tell their stories. [39:25] In the end, Dale is given the death penalty. [39:28] And on February 10th, 2009, part of this 13-year nightmare that he inflicted on his victims, their families, and the communities that they lived in finally came to an end when Dale died by lethal injection. [39:43] In the years since, his survivors have reclaimed their power by going public with their experiences. Sheema Benson talked about surviving her violent attack when she was a contestant actually on Big Brother in 2009. And in 2015, Adrienne Fields decided to tell her story in the hopes that it would uplift, empower, and show others that there is life after trauma.

[40:05] If you want to see pictures and all of our source material for this episode, you can find all of that on our blog post. That's on our website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. And be sure to also follow Audio Chuck to hear about all the new shows that we have coming your way. [40:35] be back next week with a brand new episode. [40:38] *music* [40:59] you [41:00] you [41:01] *music* [41:03] *music* [41:06] Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? [41:14] Okay, Crime Junkies, you know I absolutely love a twist and a turn, especially when it comes to people who turn out to be someone they're not. That's why I have been obsessed with the podcast Chameleon. Every Thursday, host Josh Dean deep dives into a scam so bizarre, it will leave you wondering, how did they get away with that? [41:32] It is truly one of my favorite podcasts right now and I've been listening for years.

[41:36] I think you'll love it too. [41:37] Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.