Dark Intentions

He said that the devil keeps making him do it.

Oh, wow.

And I said, oh, my God, you've done this before.

He called me very frantic. He was telling me my sister was murdered.

Two murders in the same apartment complex.

I just couldn't believe it.

This is someone that's here. They're connected here, living, working. We've got to start looking at every male in this complex. He is going to strike again.

I had a strong feeling that I was next.

I saw a man in a mask.

He asked me, do I feel the gun in my back? And I said yes.

It took a part of me. It felt like a death.

I promise that I'll never quit unless God takes my breath.

He attacked in the dead of night.

I hear breathing and the sound. I just felt darkness or like evil. I felt something not right.

An intruder with dark intentions.

And he jumps up on my bed, and I can feel the coldness of the gun in my back. He said, don't scream, and I won't kill you.

This is every woman's worst nightmare.

Right.

His rampage would nearly paralyze a city.

I was so scared that I couldn't be in the dark. I didn't think I would make it past 30..

Young women everywhere were scared.

Absolutely. You just think, evil like that will never touch you.

It's the call everyone dreads, the one in the middle of the night. For Hip Vu, it came in mid-September. He had just returned home from a business trip when his phone rang.

He was very frantic. You know, it was kind of hard to understand what he was talking about.

The man on the other end was his sister, Christine's boyfriend, Tang Koo. What was he saying?

Basically, she's gone, she's gone. You know, someone killed her, somebody killed her. It was very frightening.

Christine was an elementary school teacher in Arlington, Texas, outside of Dallas. Hip couldn't imagine her being a murder victim.

We grew up in a relatively small town. You only hear stories about this. You never experience it yourself.

Tang said he found his girlfriend in her bathtub at the Peartree Apartments. Arlington. homicide detective Tommy Lenore caught the case.

He tried to resuscitate her and could not do it. Panicked, ran outside the apartment, called for help.

Crime scene investigator Joel Stevenson was one of the first on the scene.

Boyfriend apparently had lifted her out of the tub and placed her on the floor outside the bathroom.

He noted that the 25-year-old was still warm to the touch. She hadn't been dead for long.

We do not know how she's been killed. Her wrists had been duct taped behind her back. She had duct tape around her neck. Ankles were duct taped. She's face up on the floor of the hallway to the bedroom, nude.

What does that say to you? The way she's found, the duct tape, the bathtub?

Your immediate first impression is she was sexually assaulted. It's just a horrific scene. There's absolutely nothing that indicated this death was anything other than someone who brutally murdered her.

Investigators took a look around the apartment and saw no signs of forced entry.

All the windows were locked, secured. That patio door was locked and secured. There was only one way the assailant made it inside that apartment, and that was through the front door.

There was no indication of a struggle, either. To detectives, that meant Christine might have known her killer. They spoke to her boyfriend, Tang, who was still at the scene. What's Tang's behavior like outside of the apartment?

He was upset, smoking cigarettes. So upset, nervous, scared.

Tang told detectives Christine usually got home from school around 4.

He unlocked the door, but he couldn't open it.

He said the inside deadbolt was locked.

So he knocked on the door, thinking that, well, maybe she's in the shower, maybe she doesn't hear me.

No response. Tang said he couldn't hear anything inside, not even Christine's dog barking.

He goes out to his truck, smokes a cigarette, gives it a few minutes, walks back to the door, tries to get in once again. Still deadbolted from inside. Knocks again, no response. So he goes back to his car again, and he gets a quarter.

According to Tang, he walked to the pool area and called Christine on the apartment payphone, but she didn't pick up.

He walks back to the apartment, puts his key in, and this time the door opens.

Tang said that's when he found Christine face down in the tub.

According to his story, that meant the suspect was inside the apartment, killing her while he was sitting there smoking a cigarette and had to wait for him to leave, and was able to exit and blend into the community with him. being in that close proximity. No one was ever seen coming or leaving the apartment.

That's quite the story. If Tang's story was true, the crime scene investigators hoped the deadbolt could provide a clue. They dusted it for prints. You found a print. Yes.

On the front door, interior-only deadbolt latch.

What condition was the print in?

It was a high-quality latent print. Once we lifted it and put it on a card and looked at it, there was a noticeable scar in the finger.

Investigators had their first solid piece of evidence, but would it lead them to the boyfriend or someone else?

He had some scratches on his wrist, his neck, and then he had some marks on his back.

That could be consistent with someone fighting back.

Absolutely.

The race to find Christine's killer was on, but not before investigators made another horrible discovery. Carbon copy murder.

It is carbon copy déjà vu.

They would eventually encounter several more victims.

I am fearful, absolutely, but I'm also thinking, how do I get out of this? He said, if you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you.

And detectives would need to unravel a double life as they confronted a killer beyond compare. This man has to be stopped.

Yes, he's evil. He is going to strike again.

Christine Vu had been found strangled to death in her bathtub. in Arlington, Texas. Detectives were canvassing the Peartree apartment complex, hoping a neighbor had seen or heard something. Just knocking on door after door.

Knocking on doors.

Are they getting anywhere?

No one heard anything. The only thing anyone actually heard was when Tang Koo came out yelling and screaming.

Based on Tang's account, investigators believed Christine was murdered soon after arriving home from work. The attacker is taking a chance, though. I mean, this is brazen, committing a crime like that at that hour of the day.

It's remarkably risky. This is such a bold and brazen act. Would a perpetrator actually do this? Or would someone who would not worry about anyone seeing him come and go, who would not bring out any suspicion, come in and go, do this, and then stage the crime scene?

Christine's brother remembers how hard her murder was on the family.

It was very devastating, extremely devastating.

She really was the glue for our entire family.

She had a good relationship with everybody, all the siblings. Every sibling she loved equally.

Christine was the second of five kids. She was born in Vietnam, but her family fled to the U.S. at the end of the war. Your parents were doing what was best for their family.

Exactly. It was a lot of unknowns, and there was a lot of fear, and just hadn't the opportunity to exit the country for a better life.

The family settled in Amarillo, Texas. Christine was quiet, studious, and helped look after her younger siblings. On Saturdays, she played teacher. Her brother and sisters were the students. What kind of teacher was she with all of you?

She was very stern. She was very stern.

And so once we got too old, we weren't going to play with her anymore in terms of her students.

Christine got a degree in education and her first teaching job in Lubbock, where she and her brother shared an apartment. Hip says she was an introvert, but was passionate about travel and cooking.

Nowadays, we're, you know, you call them foodies, right? But she was probably a foodie back then. She definitely loved to experience new cuisines, new areas, new restaurants and stuff. She loved to travel. She loved to experience new things.

Christine was ready for a bigger city and accepted a job teaching third grade in Arlington, where she started dating Tang Koo.

Christine and Tang had some common ground, right? They both lived in Arlington. They both had connections to Amarillo.

And they both emigrated from Vietnam. The two had been dating for a couple of years. Tang was quiet. like Christine. He worked for his parents' small business and was good with computers.

Definitely.

Introvert as well?

Definitely an introvert.

You know, he seemed to spend a lot of time together, you know, as evident by some of the trips. they've taken, photos and stuff like that.

To Hip, his sister's life seemed to be right on track.

You know, it's the American dream, right? You do well in school. You go to college. You know, after college, you set your path to get a job. It was kind of like how it was supposedly scripted.

And then this happens.

Yeah.

This is not the America that you ran to.

No, exactly not.

Now, Christine's family had a lot of questions. They started to notice minor variations in Tang Koo's account of the murder.

The story changed a couple times. And so that was where the question mark started to pop up.

It should be cemented in your brain.

The exact events that unfolded prior to and after the discovery. It just seemed like the story changed every time he regurgitated.

Are you getting suspicious of Tang?

Oh, very suspicious, absolutely.

It's like, why would the story change, you know?

Did you question him on that and say, why are you changing?

Absolutely not. I mean, it was in our place, number one. Number two, part of it is a little bit of fear, right?

You're fearful.

Investigators had questions, too, and had been grilling Tang at the police station. What's his demeanor like when he's sitting there and you're looking at him as a potential suspect?

Tang is quiet in nature. He's still upset. He's still obviously insistent that he had nothing to do with it. Voicing, what can I do to help you all catch this person? We're certainly listening to that.

Tang provided his fingerprints and consented to giving his DNA. He also let police do a physical examination. Did Tang have any injuries on him, scratches?

He had a few on his wrist, his neck, and then he had some marks on his back.

That could be consistent with someone fighting back.

Absolutely.

Did he say where he got the scratches?

He talked about how the scratches came from playing with the dog.

Did you buy that?

Frankly, no.

So the investigators gave Tang a polygraph. How did he do?

He failed two major questions.

What were the questions?

Did you injure Christina and did you place duct tape on her?

Those are big questions to fail. Those are huge questions. What was his response?

His response is, I'm not lying.

Detectives weren't so sure, but without solid evidence, they had to let him go.

Tang is still at the forefront. He is still one of the primary suspects.

Investigators were eager to compare Tang's fingerprint to the print lifted from Christine's door latch. They were expecting a match, but when the results came back...

Tang was excluded from those prints.

So this is one reason why you can't be putting all your eggs in one basket with Tang.

Absolutely. Someone other than Christine, and Tang's prints are on that latch. If Tang is not your killer, those are the prints of our killer.

A fingerprint wasn't all police had. They'd confirmed Christine had been sexually assaulted, and there was DNA.

They found male DNA from two separate males, and one of the profiles came back to Tang.

Which was no surprise to the detectives, since Tang was Christine's boyfriend. The other DNA profile, however, belonged to an unknown male. Could he be the killer?

That in itself.

Was that a shocker? When you hear two?

It's a shocker, but.

So one could be the assailant, one could be the boyfriend.

One could be consensual, one could be the product of a sexual assault.

But that didn't mean Tang was off the hook. Perhaps Christine was seeing someone else, and her boyfriend found out about it.

Did he find out? Did he kill her and sexually assault her?

It was a puzzling case, and it was about to get much harder. Just three months after Christine Vu's murder, detectives would be back at the Peartree Apartments, facing another grieving family, and an eerily identical crime scene.

She was face down in the water, and she had duct tape on her legs.

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We were freaking out.

Skyla Taylor is Wendy's big sister.

She says, I can't wait till I move out of the apartments. And we had discussed moving in together when her lease was up.

You'd always been the protective sister.

I was very worried. I would call her every day.

Skyla couldn't help but look out for Wendy after a tragedy they'd experienced as little girls. Their mother was murdered on her way home from work. The killer never found. How did that affect both of you and change the course of your lives?

We got more close. We were more close. I was like, I'm going to protect my sister, because this is all we have. It was me, my sister, and my brother.

Their Aunt Brenda and Uncle Norman took them in, and Wendy flourished.

She was just so full of life, just vivacious. She would come in the room and just be so happy and make us all laugh. It was just wonderful.

Tasha Fry still remembers meeting her best friend Wendy on the playground during recess. How old were you?

I was like nine or ten, third grade. She was in second grade. And we've hit it off ever since.

So this friendship really endured between you two, from the playground all the way into adulthood.

All the way up until adulthood. I'm going off to college, full life ahead of me, not married, and end up getting pregnant at 20.. And it was Wendy. She was like, Tasha, we can do this.

Everyone needs friends like Wendy.

Absolutely.

And Wendy relished time with her friends and family, cooking, shopping, and especially dressing up for a night out. She turned heads? Yeah, always.

The boys liked Wendy, and the women wanted to be Wendy.

That is a good spot to be in. Yes, yes. Wendy brought her fun and nurturing spirit to her job as a teaching assistant. And she wanted to be a teacher? Yes.

That was the next step.

In December 1996, Wendy was looking forward to spending the holidays with her family. On Christmas Eve, Skyla was at home waiting for her to arrive, so they could go do some last-minute shopping.

It got kind of late, so I was like, huh, Wendy hasn't called yet. I wonder what's going on.

She thought maybe Wendy lost track of time. She tried calling her. No answer. She checked with Aunt Brenda, who couldn't reach Wendy either.

She's like, I'm going to come over there, and we're going to go, you know, to her apartment.

They knocked on Wendy's door. No response. Skyla had an extra key. Her uncle grabbed it.

When he put it in the door, I guess he shoved it in, and the door just opened.

Nothing seemed out of place until they reached the bedroom.

It looked like, you know, just like somebody got out of bed, and she didn't make her bed, which she normally always makes her bed.

Then her uncle looked in the bathroom.

I remember him turning the light on. He didn't see anything when he first went in, and then all of a sudden I heard my uncle say,

Another young woman killed in the same complex as Christine Vu. Detective Lenore was about to learn. this was no coincidence.

This is horrifying, because now I'm going, my Lord, I've got an individual responsible for two murders.

And he was running against the clock.

So it's more than catching a killer. You're trying to prevent additional victims.

It was Christmas Eve, 1996.

I'm at home putting a Barbie house together, playing Santa Claus, and I get the call.

An urgent phone call from his sergeant. 22-year-old Wendy Prescott had been murdered at the Pear Tree Apartments in Arlington, Texas. Christmas presents would have to wait. Lenore was the first homicide detective at the scene. What are you told?

As I said, Detective Lenore, this looks a whole lot alike with Christine, and I said, I've got to get in there. So we walked in, and when I saw that crime scene, it was identical to a murder that I'd been working for three months. that is unsolved, only 200 feet away. And at that point in time, I knew, number one, this was not an isolated incident, and, more importantly, I came to the reality that this crime is a continuance of three months ago.

Does that send a chill down your spine?

It sends a chill down your spine, but it is a gut-wrench fear. And one of the thoughts go to my mind is, this is number two, my God, when am I going to see number three? I don't want to see number three.

Just like Christine, Wendy had been strangled and likely sexually assaulted.

Once again, no evidence of forced entry. Everything is secure.

Were the windows locked?

Windows were locked. He either came through the front door, or he broke in and locked things behind him.

Whatever the case, it was unlikely he was let in. Wendy kept a baseball bat by her door.

And I'll tell you what that tells me. She's not going to open the door for somebody unless she knows them.

Crime scene investigator Joel Stevenson was also at the scene, and also stunned by the similarities to Christine's murder.

It's eerie, all right. It's almost more than that. It's just, I mean...

Carbon copy murder.

It is. Carbon copy deja vu.

One difference, Stevenson noticed that Wendy's clothes seemed to have been carefully placed on a chair in the bedroom.

As we started looking, examining that clothing, it was similar to what we were told she was last seen wearing, stacked from the way you would take it off.

Her purse and two green pillow shams were placed on top.

So these clothes being stacked as they were, told us that she disrobed with no fear, calmly. There's no fight at this point.

Yeah, she has no idea that anything's about to happen.

No idea that anything's going on.

It looked to Stevenson like the killer had been lying in wait.

We think he's in the closet. That's what the evidence is kind of suggesting.

And this time, some belongings appeared to have been stolen, including a VCR, telephone, and answering machine. If this was the same perpetrator, he seemed to be skilled at breaking and entering.

You don't become that criminally sophisticated overnight. You don't just wake up and have the ability to get inside of a woman's apartment and three months later, get inside of another woman's apartment.

But even the most sophisticated criminal makes mistakes. While swiping that VCR, the killer appeared to have left behind a thumbprint, a particular kind of print.

And it's very important to know about dust prints. They're remarkably vulnerable because the slightest, and I mean the slightest, breeze or motion will distort that thumbprint. But it was so pristine and so defined.

You're guarding that thing with your life.

You better believe it. It's a miracle that dust print survived. This was multiple hours into the investigation, and nobody had laid a clipboard, notebook, sat on, leaned on that area.

Oh my gosh, that's so scary to think that that easily could have happened. The print was photographed with the hope that there would be a match in the FBI's fingerprint identification system. Now, police had a thumbprint from Wendy's apartment and an index fingerprint with a scar from Christine's. They were different fingers and couldn't be compared to each other. But there was something they could compare.

Yes.

It's a good start.

It's a very good start. We just got to find somebody that both of those match.

A match that could also tell them with certainty if one person was responsible for these crimes.

You could have a copycat killer. You just don't know.

But those results would take a while, and there was a possible serial killer on the loose.

Now you have mass panic. You don't have fear. You don't have concern. You've got absolute panic.

The Caretree apartment complex was suddenly the best-known address in Arlington, Texas, for all the wrong reasons.

Who killed 22-year-old Wendy Prescott? It's the second murder investigation here in three months. Once Wendy was killed, it didn't even take a press conference from the police department. You look up and you see a picture of Wendy Prescott. You see crime scene tape 200 feet away from what just happened, and word spreads like wildfire.

Residents began packing up and leaving in droves.

You never know who it could be, you know. That's probably the reason why most people are getting out and don't know who it could be next.

Correct.

So moving trucks, just pulling up, one after the next, out of here.

U-Hauls, moving trucks, people coming in from out of town to get their friends, their daughters. It was just incredible.

I would do that.

If I was a young woman living here, I would get the heck out of here.

While investigators waited for the results of the comparison of the DNA samples taken from the bodies of both victims, and for word of any matches to the fingerprints from the crime scenes, they were trying to figure out if Christine and Wendy knew someone in common. Turned out, they might have.

We found a neighbor who actually worked for the school district in another city, which is interesting because he lived across from Wendy Prescott. But at the time of Christine Vu's murder, he lived by her.

Oh, so, he moved within the complex, and he had an educational background.

And he has an educational background.

Just like Wendy and Christine, who both worked at elementary schools, Detective Lenore interviewed the neighbor and collected blood, saliva, and print samples. The neighbor said he'd moved apartments so he could live next door to his sister, who happened to live right by Wendy. He was concerned about his sister's safety after Christine's murder.

And he just didn't want her to be put in jeopardy. If, in fact, he is excluded, it's just a coincidence.

In the meantime, they learned more about Wendy.

Wendy's 22 years of age. She's young. But Wendy is a very outgoing young lady with lots of friends and lots of socialization.

Wendy's cousin, Nika, she was the people person.

Yes, we just kept thinking, like, who or why? You know, just why would someone even do that?

Wendy also had lots of love interests. There was one boyfriend in particular that concerned Wendy's friend, Tasha Fry. She went to the police about him after the murder. Wendy was in a relationship that had some issues.

Yes. We didn't like him. He was verbally abusive. He was emotionally abusive. It was like he would try to break her down.

This ex-boyfriend wouldn't have any connection to Christine Vu, but yet you can't just ignore that she had issues with her ex-boyfriend.

Well, not only did she have issues with him, she filed a harassment complaint against him. He was an ex-boyfriend who didn't really want to break up. So I definitely had to find this guy, bring him in, interviewing, and, knowing that, what evidence we have, I want to collect his fingerprints, I want to collect his saliva and blood for DNA.

Was he cooperative? What was he like when you interviewed him?

He was actually very cooperative with me, but he was emphatic. I didn't kill anyone. My concern is, if that's not you, give me your saliva, give me your blood, give us your fingerprints, and let's exclude you.

Police again had to wait for those results to come back. Meanwhile, they expanded their search and began the painstaking process of looking at any men who had spent time at the apartment complex over the past few months. Current and former residents, locksmiths, maintenance workers. There were a lot. It was almost overwhelming.

Yeah, it was absolutely overwhelming. We had close to 500 leads, but that is misleading in itself, because there were several leads that had multiple suspects, and these were the license plates that were recorded in the apartment complex when Winnie Prescott was killed.

So you just went around the apartment complex? We had all the license plates. And just started writing them down?

Yes, we had.

And then, yeah, got to look into everyone?

Just the license plate in itself can identify many suspects, and we would sit in that complex, and it would be so frustrating just to sit there watching people leave, knowing, my God, is that my suspect? Yeah. Is that somebody that knows my suspect?

It's like finding a needle in a complex.

That's a pretty good cliche.

They checked alibis and collected fingerprints and DNA from dozens of men with connections to the complex. The long list of leads was daunting. But then, a call came in. The results from the DNA samples taken from Christine and Wendy were back.

They were identical. They were carbon copies.

There's one killer out there that you need to find.

There's one killer. We just don't know who that killer is.

They did know who he wasn't. The DNA results cleared the neighbor who'd lived near both women, Wendy's ex, and Christine's boyfriend, Tang.

I know it's a male that I can match DNA to, if I ever find him, and I know it's a male that I very likely have prints I can match to. Problem is, that male is a ghost.

Tommy Lenore was stumped, and it wouldn't be long before the ghost he was hunting struck again. But this time, there was a survivor, a woman, whose story would change the course of the entire investigation.

He said, don't scream, and I won't kill you.

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By 1999, Detective Tommy Lenore was growing impatient. Over two years had passed since the murders of Christine Vu and Wendy Prescott. He was still conducting countless interviews and collecting new DNA samples for testing. It's just taking a lot longer than you thought.

It takes a long time. If I were in a perfect world, it would have been solved a lot quicker. Unfortunately, the world that I live in and what we deal with, it's not a perfect world.

Shima Benson, a recent transfer student at the University of Texas at Arlington, was unaware of the fear that had gripped the area. Just a few months away from graduating with a degree in public relations, she'd finally gotten serious about her studies.

My freshman year, I went to a different school, so I would have rather been there, but I was actually, my parents made me go to UTA, and so we'll come back to Texas to finish up, because I was having way too much fun, and my grades weren't so good.

But Shima still managed to keep a busy social life at UTA. She joined Alpha Kappa Alpha and moved into the sorority house near campus. Shima's bubbly personality helped her fit right in, and she balanced her studies with her social schedule.

I was active in my sorority, so we had step shows and community service, things of that nature.

That must have brought even more happiness to the college experience, having all these new friends. Yes, yes, we had a great time. But everything changed. one February night. Shima chatted with a friend on the phone before bed.

When we started talking about just guys in general, I was saying that I don't like a particular guy from the South because of the way that they tend to approach me.

And not all Southern guys, just a certain type? No, there was a particular type,

because I had a date with a Southern gentleman in a few days.

So just girl talk? Yeah. After she said goodnight to her friend, she heard a strange rustling on the roof. She didn't make much of it, thought. maybe it was an animal outside.

I just felt darkness or, like, evil. I felt something not right. It's hard to explain it, but it was just like, it was like an evil presence had entered my space, and it woke me up, and I was disoriented. And then I made sense of what I was seeing. Then I realized, oh, my God, it's a person.

The story you're about to hear is disturbing.

I saw a man in a mask.

It was dark.

He had a gun. And he said to not scream. Don't scream, and I won't kill you.

This is every woman's worst nightmare.

Right.

Yeah.

I wasn't thinking he was going to kill me. I was thinking he was going to rape me. I didn't even think about being killed. I was thinking about being raped and how much I did not want that to happen.

Does fear just take over your whole body? Are you just frozen?

I am fearful, absolutely. But I'm also thinking, how do I get out of this?

How do I get out of this? Was there anything around you that you could fight back with? My keys.

My keys were on the nightstand. And then just threw them at him. And then I had my phone as well, the handset that I threw at him as well.

Like an old phone, a landline.

Yeah, an old landline, right.

Shima doesn't remember saying anything to the man, but he made this chilling comment.

So he said to me, so you don't like guys like me from the south. Like he was offended by me, having said what I said earlier on the phone.

So he was listening to your phone conversation.

Yeah, it did kind of click for me there. Like, oh wow, he heard what I said. He's been out there this whole time.

Things escalated quickly from there. Shima did what she could to try to protect herself.

And so I bit him.

The man reeled from the bite to his genitals. That must have really angered him. Oh yeah.

And so then he started hitting me and hitting me and hitting me in my face.

That's when the beating turned to sexual assault. My brain was in overdrive.

How did he get there? Who is this person?

He's beating you and raping you.

Yes, and gets my clothes off. And I don't really know how that happened, but I know I was fighting back.

Shima says the attack seemed to go on for hours, then suddenly stopped.

I heard the front door close. And once I registered that the front door closed and it didn't sound like he was coming back, I got up and got into the mode of getting. literally everything I'd been saying the whole time is how do I get out of here. Now I can get out of here.

Were you able to call 911?

No, because I wasn't able to call 911.

I could not find it.

So I went across the hall to my roommate's room, picked up her phone, and there was no dial tone.

Do you think he had cut the phone line?

I do think he cut the phone lines, yeah. So I ran over across the street to the fraternity house to get help.

What's that moment like when you finally reach a person that can help you? I was just crying.

Can you call the police? I was drenched in blood. I can only imagine what they thought opening the door, seeing me like that, you know? And then I'm crying and asking for them to help me.

A fraternity brother called 911 as Shima tried to reckon with her injuries.

I didn't realize what my face looked like, but it was swollen, extremely swollen, on the left side.

Help was on the way, but Shima's life was changed forever. Tasha Fries was about to change too.

I'm thinking, was he after me? Did I put her in a situation? Was I the reason that she was attacked?

While a rapist and killer was still free to stalk more prey.

And he asked me, do I feel the gun in my back? And I said, yes. And he said, if you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you.

Leaving investigators desperate but determined to find answers for the victim's families.

They don't want false promises. They don't want false hope. They want to know that we care, which we do, and that we are not going to stop fighting. And we're not.

Shima Benson lay in a hospital bed, almost unrecognizable.

The pain started setting in while I was at the hospital, the pain in my face.

Her injuries were so severe, she needed surgery.

The bone holding my eye, my left eye up, was broken. So they had to remove it. They had to go in through the eyeball to fix it.

It shows you he had a lot of strength, too. Oh, yeah.

And I'm pretty small. I was smaller then. I didn't even weigh 100 pounds.

Could you believe that you had endured it, you made it through, that you're alive?

You know, I didn't have that realization right away.

It took a lot.

I think, honestly, it took a lot for me to get to the point where I was also grateful that I'm still here. I wasn't murdered, but it still took a part of me. It still felt like a death in a sense.

You went through something just extremely traumatizing.

Yeah.

And this is something that every woman fears will happen to her at some point, and it happened to you.

Yeah, this is true. You just think, evil like that will never touch you.

News of Shima's attack spread quickly across campus, scaring students like Wendy Prescott's best friend, Tasha Fry. Turned out. she was also Shima's sorority sister.

To know he did that to Shima, that was my line, sister. That wasn't just a sorority, sister. We pledged together.

It was hard for Tasha to fathom that yet another friend had been targeted. This time, the attack hit much closer to home.

Shima was brutally raped in the room that I'd moved out of. I immediately—.

Oh, my gosh, Tasha. How do you even— Shocked.

Shocked.

I have no words. Yeah, me either. Me either. Complete shock.

Tasha had only been in her new apartment for a month, but she would still visit the sorority house for meetings.

I'm thinking, was he after me? Did I put her in a situation? Was I the reason that she was attacked?

All the fear and anxiety she felt after Wendy's murder came rushing back.

I was a mess mentally. I don't even know how I was functioning.

Lightning doesn't strike twice. Right. It did for you. Yeah. In the worst possible way.

In the worst possible way. It was like reliving a horror all over again.

Wendy's killer was still at large. Now, so was Shima's rapist. But this time, Tasha's friend survived. What do you say to someone after something like that? What did she say to you?

What do you say? First off, it was shocking because he broke her face. He broke her face, this monster.

Tasha was wracked with guilt. She thought she might know the rapist's identity. A man, she says, had been stalking her for months. You were being stalked? Mm-hmm.

This guy that we had all met together at a first Friday party. that was prevalent back in the day. We had dated for a little while. He got really weird. So I ended things, and he wasn't taking no for an answer.

So what was he doing?

Just coming by, calling, making accusations about we are needing to still be together. Like, you did this to me. You did that to me. Like, it was just weird stuff.

Tasha moved out of the sorority house, but she was told her ex kept showing up there. He'd even come by hours before Shima's attack.

Now I'm scared for my life because I'm like, is he after me?

After Shima's rape, Tasha went to campus police about her ex. They'd taken the lead on Shima's investigation.

I thought that they needed to know that this guy has been coming around. Maybe he was coming there for me, but wanted to just share all the information that I had, because my goal is I want to help. I need this person caught.

Tasha's ex quickly became the lead suspect, and campus investigators set out to bring him in for questioning. She had mentioned her friendship with Wendy to them, but didn't think Wendy's murder had any connection to Shima.

Totally different circumstances. Rape and a murder, rape and a beating.

In a sorority house?

In a sorority house. No bathtub, no strangling, no, any of that.

Tasha had also complained about her ex to the Arlington police. She told the detective that her ex knew Wendy too.

A detective with our department brought this stalking report to my attention, and the reason being is because it mentioned Wendy Prescott.

As soon as he read it, Detective Lenore realized Tasha was the common denominator between the two cases, Wendy's and Shima's.

I knew that name because I'd been dealing with her back when Wendy was killed.

It all seemed too much of a coincidence, Tasha, knowing two rape victims. Lenore needed to know more about her stalker, so we gave Tasha a call and discovered a startling connection between Shima and Wendy.

I find out that her and Wendy both knew him and met him back before her murder.

Which is like makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Now I am going to insert myself into this investigation.

He immediately got on the phone with one of the campus police officers.

And I just told him, look, we need to look at this gentleman for a couple of reasons. Number one, yeah, he may be your sexual assault suspect, but he very well could be my killer. Because I have a connection with this guy and with Wendy Prescott back at the time of her murder.

There was only one way to know if Tasha's ex was responsible for the murders at the Peartree Apartments and Shima's rape. A DNA match. Is there DNA with Shima?

There is DNA. So we sent that to the lab.

If the DNA in Shima matches Christine and Wendy?

If it matches Christine and Wendy, we know for a fact that that's our killer. Yeah. We just don't know that's this individual being named. It was imperative that we got his prints and we got his blood sample.

But that turned out to be much harder than detectives anticipated. Tasha's ex refused to provide a sample.

Not only was he not cooperative, he was confrontational. He let myself and the detective from UTA know right up front, I'm not giving you anything.

This is highly suspicious.

Oh, it's beyond that.

Detectives had to wonder, did his lack of cooperation mean he was hiding something? They'd have to jump through legal hoops to find out. But when they did... Tasha might just lead you to your killer, or at least the beginning of finding your killer.

Absolutely.

Somebody knows something.

I'm Josh Bankels. Join me for Season 3 of Missing in America. Listen carefully, because just one small detail might allow you to solve a mystery.

We have seen miracles happen.

Dateline. Missing in America. All episodes available now, wherever you get your podcasts. For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline. Have you ever seen such a thing before?

What goes through your mind when you make a discovery like that?

And when you subscribe to Dateline Premium, it gets even better. Excuse me if I sound a little skeptical. Every episode is ad-free.

Ooh, wow. So this could be your ace in the hole.

And not just ad-free, you also get early access to new intriguing mysteries and exclusive bonus content.

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Dateline Premium. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or DatelinePremium.com. You ready for what's coming?

Detective Lenore felt confident he was on to the man who killed two women in Arlington, Texas. The same man he believed raped UTA student Shima Benson, Tasha's ex-boyfriend. Tasha had reported to police that her ex had been stalking her. He'd even shown up at the sorority house looking for her hours before Shima was attacked. Tasha might just lead you to your killer, or at least the beginning of finding your killer.

Absolutely.

When Tasha's ex refused to cooperate with police, Detective Lenore went to the grand jury to compel him to provide a DNA sample. The next day, the ex voluntarily agreed. And when the results came back?

He was excluded from the DNA.

His DNA didn't match the DNA found on Shima. But Lenore had requested a separate DNA test, comparing Shima's case with the bathtub murders. Those results confirmed his suspicions.

I get a report, the person that raped Shima is your killer.

Oh, so you got a match.

I got a match. We are connected.

The rapist from Shima's case was the bathtub killer. How do you process news like that? He's accused of killing two women.

So I think it really drove home that, oh my God, I could have very well been another one of the victims.

Detective Lenore wanted to meet with Shima, so he traveled to San Diego where she'd moved to be with family. She was concerned. the attacker mentioned her phone call about Southern men and believed he'd overheard her talking on the phone to her friend. She told Lenore she was also worried about another conversation, a chat with a friend at the mall, before she was raped.

She told me of an individual she was concerned about. that may have overheard her. Shima was saying some pretty negative things about Southern men. And this individual overheard her. And so her thought was, you don't think he came after me because of this?

Who is this guy?

He was a friend that knew Tasha. He was in that circle.

Lenore discovered an even more ominous detail about this man. Just two months before Christine was killed, he'd moved into the same apartment complex. Did he have a criminal record? Was there anything to be concerned about with this man?

This person had no criminal record. That doesn't really mean anything, but he had no criminal record.

The man voluntarily spoke with Lenore and provided a DNA sample. And when the results came back?

He was excluded.

So another frustrating dead end.

Correct.

Shima did give Lenore something important, something his investigation never had before, a description of the bathtub killer.

She didn't seem well enough to be able to give us a good physical description of the face, but she was absolutely certain he was an African-American male. What that does immediately is I go back to this casebook with probably 2,000 suspects, and I exclude 70 percent of them. just like that. I go to our apartment list, which is a separate list, and we've got probably another 150 people on that list, and I cut that out. And now it's down to about 40..

Detective Lenore widened his net and put out feelers to surrounding law enforcement agencies, including the Grand Prairie Police Department. Grand Prairie is near Arlington. Grand Prairie. So you're thinking, why not?

It's not only near Arlington. It's on the east side, which is not far from Perry Tree. And I went and met a detective in Grand Prairie that I knew and worked with, and I just said, do me a favor. I said, I need you to do something for me. Go through all of your sexual assaults.

Two months after that conversation, Lenore's phone rang. It was the detective at the Grand Prairie Police Department. The moment Lenore had been waiting years for had finally arrived.

He says, I may have your guy.

The bathtub killer had eluded police for three years, but women around Arlington hadn't forgotten him or what he was capable of.

Everything inside of me knew that I was going to be a part of that story.

It was a premonition 22-year-old Adrienne Fields carried for years. She had lived near the Perry Tree apartment complex but left after the murders. And even though she moved away, she couldn't shake the feeling she would be the bathtub killer's next victim.

I started feeling like someone was following me. Coming from work, it started seeming like someone's exiting everywhere. I exit. I'm at the grocery stores and I'm noticing someone's following me. I'm like, I'm super, I'm tripping.

Her uneasy feeling only grew. Adrienne was terrified to be alone, to sleep by herself. But in October 1999, she decided to reclaim her life.

I wrote a letter to myself and I was like, you are 22 years old and today is going to be the first day of the rest of your life and you are going to sleep with the lights off and you are going to listen to jazz. You're not going to have a TV light. You're going to not have anybody spend the night with you. You're going to be a big girl.

She taped the letter to her fridge and followed the plan. Lights off, jazz on. From bed, she called her mother and sister to say goodnight. While she was on the phone, she heard something.

Pop, pop is what it sounds like. My sister says, I'm coming over. And I said, no, don't come over. I told you, I'm a big girl tonight.

Well, you've prepared yourself for this night. I prepared myself, right.

And so she says, well, are you sure? Are you sure you don't want me to come over? And I'm like, I'm positive. Can you all just stay on the phone with me until I fall asleep?

Adrienne drifted off, but an hour later, something woke her.

I hear breathing and this sound. And I'm praying, Lord, please, please, Lord, please, please, please, Jesus. Like at this point, I'm begging God not to let anybody be there as I turn over. And as I turn over, and it's like I connect to him in the dark.

An intruder wearing a stocking over his face was in her bedroom.

And he sees me turn over. And he takes off running towards me like really fast. And he jumps up on my bed. And he puts the gun in my back. And I can feel the coldness of the gun in my back.

Does he say anything to you?

He says, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, like that. And he puts his hand over my mouth. And he asked me, do I feel the gun in my back? And I say, yes. And he said, if you cooperate, I'm not going to kill you.

Did you think you were going to die?

I did, I did.

Then the man began to rape her. All of your worst fears are coming true in this moment.

Yes.

What does he do next?

He tells me to get on the floor, just directing me of what he wants. He's telling me that he wants me to act like there's no tomorrow. I ask him, is there a tomorrow? And he says, of course there is. And I say, but is there for me?

Adrian didn't believe him.

I'm crying. He's asking me, why am I crying? And I say, because I'm scared.

You're having a conversation with this man? The entire time.

Mm-hmm.

He started to ask me, what is your name? And I wouldn't tell him my name. And so he was like, well, how about I call you Adrian?

Mm-hmm.

So he knew my name. Oh, my gosh.

Adrian.

Mm-hmm.

It was real.

That is so scary. Mm-hmm. So right, then, you knew that those times you felt like you'd been followed, that changes everything. Right.

It changed everything for me. It was so personal.

What was inside of you that instead of just going into a shell and just wanting it to be over, you're engaging with him?

I think it was just instincts, just survival instincts. And I think that it just made me human for him. I asked him, why was he doing it? And he said that the devil keeps making him do it. Oh, wow.

Mm-hmm.

Adrian says. the intruder continued his assault on her for two hours before leaving her broken, alone, but alive.

When I went to the hospital, they took pictures, did all of the stuff, raped kid. Then the next day, I went back to my parents' home, slept with my mom for probably six months.

As is true for every survivor, the agony was hardly over.

Every time I closed my eyes, it was real again. It was the traumatic experience over and over and over again.

Adrian had reported her assault to the Grand Prairie police and described what she could make out of her attacker through the stalking he wore over his face. A diligent detective there, remember Tommy Lenore looking for a suspect who matched that same description. He called Lenore.

The description Adrian gave was very similar to what Shima gave, African-American male in his 20s, stocky, but not muscular.

Adrian also reported her rapist had a scar. It was in the very same spot where Shima Benson said she bit her attacker. And sure enough, when investigators compared the male DNA found on Adrian to that found on Shima, Christine Vu, and Wendy Prescott, they all matched.

So now I have the killer identified, two sexual assault victims, and two murder victims.

Unbelievable.

Right.