The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo

He's hunting women.

It's devastating.

My heart dropped.

What if it is the same guy?

We're casting for the new James Bond movie. You're perfect.

He told me there was a photo shoot happening up in the Hollywood Hills.

High heels, but not too high.

A shorter skirt, but not too short.

I said, this guy's done this before.

He'll do it again, and he will kill someone.

I wanted to get all these women together.

I wanted to bring him out of the shadows.

But in a Hollywood twist, could they turn the tables on him?

I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Here's Keith Morrison with The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo.

This is where she came.

The young woman drove in her little car up the winding confusion of narrow roads.

Among houses perched like spectators, peering out at the show down below.

Hollywood, and the vast city beyond.

Her name was Christy Johnson.

She was 21, not quite 22.

And then, as evening fell over the steep canyons, she simply vanished, like the sun.

It's about a smooth-talking Hollywood predator.

We come together and use our voices, we win. It's powerful.

Christy Johnson was just starting out, finally on her own.

Here in the city of a million dreams.

Or close to it, a shared apartment in Santa Monica.

And with dreams of her own, said her dad Kirk.

But not the starry-eyed kind.

Christy's were more grounded.

She wanted to be a makeup person, she talked about working behind the scenes.

That's correct.

Producing, or directing, possibly.

Something in that industry.

She felt like she was on her way, you know, when this happened.

When this happened?

Seems like another age now.

More than 20 years have passed since the events I'll describe here.

All before the iPhone, or Facebook, or the widespread use of high-def TV.

But I'm telling you now because it's a tale that did not die.

Even now, remains a wound that hasn't quite healed.

I met Christy's mom, Terry Hall, back toward the beginning.

She had no idea what was to come.

How could she?

You know, we enjoyed being with each other and doing things together.

And had a very close relationship.

That Saturday morning, like every morning, Christy called her mother at home up in Northern California.

She told Terry she was headed to the Century City Mall to do some shopping.

Pick something out and it'll be your Valentine's present.

She did not.

You know, that I can't get a hold of her.

Two days went by.

No answer, no call.

And when I got her answering message on her work phone is when I became very alarmed.

Christy, ever conscientious, wouldn't miss work.

Terry called a co-worker of Christy's who was also worried.

And so far away and beyond anxious, Terry phoned the Santa Monica police.

Mind you, not so uncommon for a young woman to just take off for a while.

Maybe that's what happened?

Just the same?

The officer took a report.

Tall, attractive young woman, blonde hair, hibiscus flower tattoo on the small of her back.

The officer was getting a bad feeling about this one.

And so he walked down the hall to talk to the on-duty detective, Virginia Obenchain, who got that very same feeling.

So you really were taking this seriously from the get-go?

That's devastating, you know.

There's not a word to describe that other than the fact that you just, you don't have any answers.

What is this? Maybe she got on a sailboat and went to Mexico.

Maybe she went to a concert.

You better hope so.

Yeah, you're hoping that that's the case.

And immediately, I made travel arrangements to fly to Los Angeles.

Detective Obenchain told the family that investigators had spoken to Christy's roommate, a woman named Carrie.

Carrie gave the police an important lead that Christy had indeed gone to the mall, bursting into their apartment with big news.

Something about an incredible opportunity, a very special audition to perhaps appear in a Bond movie.

A man's white dress shirt, a super short miniskirt, sheer pantyhose, and a pair of sky-high stiletto heels.

You've checked all the hospitals, you've checked the tapes at the mall, you've checked with the roommate, you've checked with the phone, and no Christy. What do you do?

And no one has seen her since Saturday afternoon.

And calls started coming in. One of them from a young woman named Susan Murphy.

What was it like to get that call from Susan Murphy?

Because he almost killed me.

Christy Johnson's mother rushed to L.A., frantic, eager to do something.

To find her.

Unable to do much beyond hold it together, or try to, and spread the word.

Her father, Kirk, flew in, went to Christy's apartment in Santa Monica, did all he could think of just then.

When I got there, here are these two local TV vans.

Someone said, who are you? Well, I'm Christy's father.

And I had made a poster with a picture of Christy.

And I wrote a note. I said, Christy, please come home. Love, Dad.

You know, the strength of the family.

Kirk told everyone who'd listened about Christy.

Born in California, moved with her family to Saugatuck, Michigan,

where she played high school basketball and sailed out on the lake.

She was a great sailor. She was very skillful at that.

She had a very close group of friends.

She had a high school class of 60, so everybody knew everybody.

But after a year of college, Christy decided she really wanted to be out west.

And now, now she was beside herself.

Boy, I can't imagine how that must feel.

I was almost void of having feelings. I was just on the phone the whole time.

Does it sound like Christy?

Not really, because Christy was very, I would say, street smart.

Yeah, that's what others have said about her.

That she would have some doubt, you know.

But, you know, she knows, don't speak with strangers, you know.

You don't know who they are.

Christy had told her roommate that her meeting with the industry guy was at 5.30 p.m.

But where?

Phone technology was not quite so revealing back then.

But cell phone records might tell them something.

So Detective Obenshain got Christy's.

And discovered that her cell phone last dialed out at 5.32 p.m.

But not from Beverly Hills, which is where she told her roommate she was going.

Instead, the call was placed from Laurel Canyon, up in the Hollywood Hills.

So you must have been wondering, what the heck is she doing up there?

a woman named Susan Murphy saw a tiny article in the Los Angeles Times about Christy

and how family and police were trying desperately to find her.

who disappeared after going to meet a photographer.

And that's all it says.

And they immediately put me in touch with the lead detective on the case, Detective Obenshain.

just a few weeks before Christy went missing.

He told her he was in the business, and he gave a name, Victor Thomas,

which gave police something to work with, at least.

Except there seemed to be no such person, at least no Victor Thomas who fits Susan's description.

But when they pulled security video from the mall, sure enough, there was a guy.

First he seemed to be following Susan around Macy's, and then he approached her.

He said, I'm a director of photography, and we're casting for the new James Bond movie.

And he said, we've been casting all day, and you're the look we want. You're perfect.

And I'd had enough experience to kind of know that this was a come on, a pick up.

And I knew that, and I was very intrigued.

If it's true, hey, cool. That'd be great. How fun would that be to be a Bond girl?

Gave her an address in West Hollywood, and she went.

But she brought her boyfriend along, just in case.

I said, well, first of all, I'm not going anywhere with you.

I said, I need some identification.

He said, oh, I don't have any identification.

I said, you don't? I go, where is it? He goes, I left it on the set.

I go, you did? On the set? On the set.

But there were crucial extra details Susan had to offer to Detective Obenshain,

details police had not made public,

and very similar to what Christie had told her roommate.

And then he said a black miniskirt, preferably, but any miniskirt would be great.

Pantyhose, a white man's shirt, hair slicked back really tight in a ponytail, and a man's tie.

He said he would provide the tie.

and then the Santa Monica PD got the drawing to the media.

And one morning soon after, an actress named Kathy Debono happened to be watching TV.

But Kathy wasn't going to be the prey. She would become the hunter.

and so I wanted to see if I could understand what he was about.

Ooh, wow.

So this could be your ace in the hole.

I'm Eamon Jabbers from CNBC.

I'll take you inside a shocking Russian crime targeting the American financial system.

Follow and listen to The Crimes of Putin's Traitor wherever you get your podcasts.

When police investigating the disappearance of Christy Johnson appealed to the public for help,

Christy's grateful family could only hope it would make some sort of difference.

Somebody will know something.

And sure enough, somebody did. Lots of somebodies.

Beginning with Susan Murphy's story of her frightening encounter with the man who said his name was Victor Thomas.

What kind of response did you get?

We got, oh, probably a thousand calls on the tip line.

This woman, Kathy Debono, the guy in the mall?

She knew about him, all right.

There was no doubt in your mind?

I called the police.

it instantly brought her back to an experience she had at that very same Century City mall late 98 or early 99.

She was 28 at the time, unusually tall and very fit and already in the business of Hollywood.

She was just minding her own business when a well-dressed man approached her.

And I just stopped and said, yeah.

And he said, I really like your legs.

You look perfect for something we're casting right now.

Can we talk about it for a little while?

His weird level was his creep level was at this point in the conversation.

and whether it would work for some TV or movie role.

But this guy seemed just a little off.

Like when he tried to lure her to a photo shoot and told her to bring the very same provocative wardrobe

that Christie's roommate and Susan Murphy had described to police.

He said the stockings were important because it was all about the legs.

And a black mini skirt as short as it could be, as tight as it could be.

And black stiletto heels.

And anytime anyone wanted to set up an audition, I would have them go through my agent.

That was just sort of the run of things. That's how you did it.

And he didn't want to do that.

You know, a lot of people would just get up and walk away.

Forget it, Creek. You're gone. Why didn't you do that?

I think the only way I can answer that is my own natural curiosity.

Anyway, the guy at the mall.

So I stayed and continued to talk to him and asked him questions.

And he told me there was a photo shoot happening right now.

That it was up in the Hollywood Hills, not far away from the Century City Mall.

Right then and there, he would drive me to the audition and bring me back to my car later.

Well, I certainly was never going to do that.

But she took a little insurance with her.

A friend and professional stuntman named Chester.

So she got to the house, but the guy did not come out to meet her.

So he would have looked out the window, saw Chester in the car, and just didn't do it.

Yeah.

I was disappointed because I wanted to learn more.

And now the opportunity to learn more was done.

I would just have to move on and hope that no one fell for his ruse.

Except, of course, it wasn't.

That strange man was going to change the course of her life.

Hers. And a few more, that is.

You were his target that day.

No signal from her phone. No sign anywhere of her white Miata.

Though the Santa Monica police had already issued a BOLO, be on the lookout for the car.

We're going to go up the hill.

Groups of people who didn't even know Christy gathered to see if they could help.

Christy was a very strong woman, and I knew that if she was in a circumstance that she could survive, that she would.

I talked to the media. It was a big media blitz of just trying to get the message out there of Christy's missing.

And I said, oh, OK, Mom, thanks. I'll keep my eyes open for that.

She'd brought her skills with her. She was an actress, dancer and writer.

None of them paying very much yet.

So to make ends meet, she got a job as a server at a popular restaurant in the Century City Mall.

This is how she remembers it two decades later.

And I didn't know what snuff films were, so he had to he had to tell me what they were.

There are films where someone gets killed and really gets killed.

to try out for a role in a Bond movie.

He invited her to an audition, she said.

It would be here in this building in West Hollywood, same place Susan Murphy had gone for her bogus audition.

But it sounded real, said Alice.

Victor told her the movie's director would be there to watch her audition.

Oh, and also, Victor told her she'd have to wear a black miniskirt, pantyhose, stilettos, and a man's white dress shirt.

And she went. But the director wasn't there.

Still, Victor suggested, why not practice a few moves?

OK, she said.

And then he showed me, you know, kind of one other thing.

I had to cross my legs and then put, hook one ankle over the other ankle.

OK.

And it was very important that my ankles were really, really tight.

Then Victor told her she'd have to come back again when the director was available.

And so a few days later, she did.

But still, no director.

And this time it got a little weird when he told her to try on the necktie he'd brought with him.

And I just kept my finger there, kind of just ready to.

He said, well, let's try again in a day or two. I'll see what the schedule is.

Alice was watching TV and saw the sketch of the person of interest.

And then I just, I didn't take it in that they could be the same person.

And then a co-worker from the restaurant phoned her.

Somebody said something about James Bond and it made me think of you and that person you were meeting with.

And then it just kind of all came together.

So went to the police and brought the outfit.

He had told her that he was producing the next Bond movie and he wanted her to be a Bond girl.

Yes.

And the same pickup place.

Just hours after he ran away from Susan Murphy and her boyfriend.

Same guy. Same M.O.

Alice told the police that the last time she heard from him was February 15th.

The very day Christy went missing.

I remember in the message he said something like, you know, I really need to get a hold of you.

I'm trying to get a hold of you.

He just sounded strangely frantic.

And just who was he?

That's about when Detective Obenchain got yet another phone call.

Something about that composite sketch, said the caller.

about a possible suspect in the disappearance of Christy Johnson.

The most urgent of those tips was attached to a name.

Victor, a smooth operator who'd apparently been approaching young women for years,

inviting them to audition for a role in a Bond movie.

Just like the guy Christy had rushed off to see.

But what happened to her?

L.A. is a vast expanse of places to hide.

A living person or a body?

What did you suspect at that point?

We didn't know if she was still alive.

We were hoping she was still alive.

We never gave up hope.

Nothing.

There was no phone activity.

Nothing.

I mean, we had overtime people manning the tip lines.

We had all six of us in robbery homicide working the case.

We had other detectives helping us pass out flyers at the Century City Mall,

do other computer work that we were looking for.

And we were working pretty much 20-hour days without a day off.

We were exhausting every lead possible, everything that we could think of.

and found herself talking to yet another woman who'd encountered Victor,

his parole officer.

that he was her parolee.

She gave us his full name, his birthdate, everything.

Here, finally, was the Victor who'd targeted Alice Walker and Susan Murphy

and Kathy DeBono.

Had to be the very same Victor who lured Christy to some phony audition

in the Hollywood Hills.

The parole officer told Detective Obenchain that Victor Paleologos

had not been checking in after he was released from prison on January 20th,

less than a month before Christy went missing.

And he just got out of prison for what?

I was very, very concerned for Christy.

He hadn't taken off somewhere, though he may have wanted to.

No, Victor had made a big mistake.

he was in custody by Beverly Hills Police Department for auto theft.

They got back to the dealership, and he said, I'm going to take the car.

They had some conversation, and he walked by where the keys to the car were,

picked up the keys, and took the car.

as it raced into the parking lot of another Los Angeles mall.

How long did it take to catch him?

in downtown Los Angeles.

But when they got there to pick up Paleologos, they couldn't find him.

Thousands of men are housed here at any given time.

And somehow Victor must have learned that police were on their way

and had gone into hiding.

But how is that possible in a jail?

He had to be in here somewhere.

Guards were sent off to find him.

and there were three other inmates there,

and he was offering to give one of the inmates $5,000

to switch wristbands with him because it was a matter of life or death.

Well, we all know you don't get the death penalty for car theft.

Yes, you do.

At least one.

Was it somebody who looked like he did or that they could be confused?

and tried to pin him down.

Where was Christy? What had he done to her?

And it was like trying to eat soup with a fork.

They are the families of the missing in America,

and they're desperately searching for answers.

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.