48 Hours - Hunted

Episode Date: November 22, 2016

48 Hours goes inside the mind of a serial rapist hunting his victims while two detectives were hunting him. Correspondent Maureen Maher investigates. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Real people. Real crimes. Real life drama.

Real people, real crimes, real life drama. He was going out late at night. He was out trolling around looking for rape. If you want to find targets, you know, handle it at once. Hours and hours and hours. Walking around various different apartment complexes. I'm a single mother. I try not to live a paranoid life.

I mean, I want to think that people are good, and so I don't look for bad things. I suppose because I wasn't looking for that, it just never occurred to me that it could happen. Did you have any idea that somebody was stalking you? Not at all. Watching your every movement? No. Walking in and out of your house?

No idea whatsoever. Every morning, you kind of had a different reaction. You know, you'd kind of be paralyzed with fear. You'd start screaming, right? And probably the ones, others would, you know, be quiet. Well, I just screamed, and he just told me, kept telling me to shut up. He had a black mask, and the only thing that showed was his eyes,

that he had a gun in his bag. If I didn't shut up, he would kill me. There's definitely a rhythm. There's definitely a time pattern of when I'm normal and when I'm rape guy. He came in my room and jumped on my back. He told me all he wanted to do was rape me. I was terrified. These women had been through something so horrendous.

The type of person that committed these crimes was a heinous individual. I did think that he had done this before. I'm thankful that this case came to me. I knew we had to catch this guy. He would do physical surveillance. There was no secret thing that they all had in common. Just looking for victims. This one is serial.

It kept going and going and going. I felt scared. I felt scared for other women in society. I felt afraid for myself. That's why I think we were so driven. It's a question that you ask again and again. Is it somebody that has been involved in more horrific things in the past? I definitely felt like we were up against the clock.

It was ticking. I could hear it. I could feel it. I felt like we just had to get him off the street. I'm Maureen Maher. Tonight on 48 Hours... Hunter. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast,

Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge?

Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bolder risk takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye?

Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party. So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. I knew that she lived alone. to you that you were vulnerable living by yourself? No.

It was just after midnight in Aurora, Colorado, 10 miles outside Denver. This woman, who we will call Mary, had no idea she was being stalked by a strange man. I brought her down tonight and saw that the bedroom light was on. I thought I knew she was there. In October of 2009, Mary, a 65-year-old grandmother, was jarred awake by a large masked man. He climbed on top of her, tied her up, cut off her clothes, and for the next four hours, brutally raped her. I just lived moment to moment. Whatever he told me to do, I did it. Did you ever think I'm going to try to escape? I never felt like I had the opportunity. Then, as if all that hadn't

been enough of a violation, he pulled out a camera and photographed her. Did he threaten you with the pictures? Yes. He told me that if I called the police, he would put it on the Internet. When he was done, he went about carefully cleaning anything that could have any trace of his DNA, stripping bedsheets and removing her clothes from the scene. Finally, he brought Mary to the bathroom

and ordered her into the bathtub. When he told me to fill the bathtub, that really made me nervous. Did you think he was going to kill you? I thought he was going to drown me. He warned her not to come out of the bathroom until he left. She waited like he told her, in that bathtub, cold and frightened for more than an hour. What was going through your mind in that hour? Is he gone? Is he gone? I wonder if he's gone. mind in that hour. Is he gone? Is he gone? I wonder if he's gone. Investigators were able to find some of the rapist's DNA on this teddy bear in Mary's house, but when they ran it through national databases, they couldn't find a match, and Mary's case went cold. Two years later and 25 miles away

Golden, Colorado police detective Stacey Galbraith I take all my cases pretty personally She was just starting her shift when a call came in The patrol was being dispatched to a sexual assault that had just occurred Galbraith immediately headed to the scene Right here is the building that the Golden victim was living in at the time of her attack. And spoke to the victim, a 29-year-old woman who said she was in bed when she was attacked. She remembered hearing a noise.

And then a masked person came into her bedroom, straddled her, and he threatened to shoot her. He had a gun with him. He sexually assaulted her, photographed her, and had her take a shower and then left. Crime scene technicians found little evidence. He took everything that we could have collected DNA from. He took the bed covers. He instructed her, you know, to use soap, to use toothpaste, to basically wash away or take away any of the evidence that we needed to solve the case.

But the victim did remember that the attacker was white and blonde because she could see the hair on his arms. This victim was very articulate. She wasn't, you know, visibly shaken. She wasn't crying. She wasn't emotional. She was able to sketch this image of a masked man and this distinctive egg-shaped birthmark she saw on his calf. instinctive egg-shaped birthmark she saw on his calf. She was able to give all these very detailed bits of information that at some point in the investigation, these are things I'm going to be looking for. Her attacker brought a pair of pink high heels and made her wear them while he took photos of her with a pink Sony CyberShot like this one. Outside the victim's apartment, a security camera recorded a suspicious white Mazda truck, but the plates weren't visible. And in the snow, a single shoe print. And it came back as an Adidas. So we knew if we could find the right person and they were wearing

that shoe or had that shoe, you know, we could be a little bit closer. But none of what the victim recalled was enough to break open this case. And Detective Galbraith, now leading the investigation, was deeply frustrated. Later that night, she did what many married people do and vented to her spouse, who just happened to be a police officer in a neighboring town. And he immediately just kind of looked at me and said, you know, I think we've had that here recently. And what he picked up on was that they were made to shower for a certain time period and basically wash away the evidence.

First thing the next morning, her husband put her in touch with the lead investigator on that case, 19 miles away in Westminster, Colorado, Detective Edna Hendershot. It seemed pretty obvious that there was some connection. Both of their departments assigned the detectives to work together on the cases. The description of the attacker was almost exactly the same. A white male, about 6'2", 180. He had light colored hair. She also described him as a little bit chubby. I said, my victim had a pink Sony Cybershot camera that was stolen from her. And Stacey immediately keyed on that and said, my victim was photographed with a pink Sony CyberShot camera.

What's more, Detective Hendershot was able to link the rape of 65-year-old Mary in Aurora to the same attacker. That made for three attacks in two years. And at Detective Hendershot's crime scene in Westminster, another piece of evidence. Turned out to be glove impressions that were alongside the railing outside of the apartment where the Westminster victim lived. So not quite a fingerprint. Definitely not a fingerprint. But, but. Impressions from a glove. And we described them as a honeycomb pattern. impressions from a glove. And we described them as a honeycomb pattern.

What's the profile you have on this guy? Who do you have in your mind? Who is this guy? We're thinking potentially military. He knew what he was doing. I was kind of scared maybe he could be in law enforcement. I kind of felt like, like, do any of my cops here look like this guy? Does anyone have this mark on his leg that my victim is describing? In all the cases, the rapist told his victims he'd been stalking them for months, watching their every move and breaking into their homes during test runs. If they couldn't stop him soon, they knew he would strike again.

He's hunting for his victim, and then the next victim, and then the next victim. Did you ever consider that he may be a serial killer and not just a serial rapist? I think everything was on the table at that point in time. Those are time to spend. Banzai didn't hunt me. Once you kind of decide, you kind of, you know, almost go past this point of no return. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal.

There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still a virgin. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch.

It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in the Chicago housing project. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. Candyman. Candyman? Now we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're going to talk to the people who were there.

And we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked. And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America. If you really believed in tough on crime, then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women.

Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free on Wondery Plus and the Wondery app. As you get more proficient, you start making less mistakes. He was educated enough to know what we were looking for and know what he needed to take to throw us off. He was experienced with what he was doing. Probably be a little bit difficult to find. Colorado detectives Stacey Galbraith and Edna Hendershot were working

overtime to find the pattern behind the attacks. Our victims spanned age ranges. The victim in Aurora was in her 60s. The victim in Golden was in her 20s. The Westminster in Golden was in her 20s. The Westminster victim was 59 years old. Trying to figure out what is it that they have in common that would make them targets for this particular individual. That was very frustrating. Because there was no consistency. There was not.

Other than that they were women. But there were pieces of a puzzle. That glove print on a railing in Westminster. The Adidas shoe print in the snow in Golden. And a pink camera like this one used to photograph the victims during the attacks. But nothing to pull the entire picture together. He was counting on the fact that we wouldn't talk to one another, that we wouldn't reach out, that we wouldn't communicate. That's what he was counting on the fact that we wouldn't talk to one another, that we wouldn't reach out, that we wouldn't communicate. That's what he was counting on.

But he certainly wasn't counting on them looking for help, which they did. When they formed a task force with local prosecutors, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI. On that task force was veteran FBI special agent Johnny Grusing. Did you have a sense that he's going to strike again? Absolutely. He scoured area police files for similar attacks and found a report in nearby Lakewood that was labeled a home invasion. But when he looked closer, he saw it was a failed rape attempt. The victim describing a masked man. Around 2.33 in the morning, she heard a dragging sound coming down the hall. That woke her up and she saw a large masked man in her doorway holding a knife. Then he straddled her, made her go face down.

However, she was able to actually lift up, turn around, and face the man and tell him that he was not supposed to be there and this was not going to happen. She's willing it not to happen at this point? Correct. She was very brave. The woman started screaming a man's name, yelling for help. The attacker thought someone else might be in the Lakewood house. And he makes the decision he's going to let her go for a second and check the room. By the time he jumps off of her and checks the room, she gets on her bed and dives out a window that is about one foot high by four feet wide onto the concrete outside.

She shattered her vertebrae, that two ribs were broken, and her lung was punctured from that fall. But she still got up, ran to her neighbor's house and called the police. Her police file had been sitting dormant for half a year when the Denver Area Task Force finally came across it. That one case turned out to be a treasure trove full of evidence and information that definitively linked all the attacks together. The evidence in the Lakewood case was absolutely key in linking this to one attacker. Specifically, each piece of evidence from one of the other assaults had a connection

to the Lakewood case. For example, the glove like this. This glove pattern was found in the Lakewood case, and this pattern was also found in the Westminster case. And remember that Adidas shoe print in the snow in Golden, there was a perfect match in Lakewood. Then, at the end of a long task force meeting, a mention of a suspicious white vehicle seen at the Lakewood attack. So this is the bulletin that the crime analyst in Lakewood held up at the conclusion of our meeting. It described a white Mazda pickup truck. That was when I am like, okay, we had a white truck and it's just like that. I just knew in my heart that that was it. For that truck to be in that neighborhood in Lakewood and also be in mine, that had to be significant.

Now, the task force had a plate number. Now, the task force had a plate number, and when they dug through their database, they came across this picture of the truck with a white man standing next to it, about six feet tall. When I saw this truck and the man standing next to the truck, I thought that that looked like what all the victims who had been attacked described. That was that aha moment. We have a truck that's in the same two areas, and now we've got to see who it belongs to and who is this guy. And who was that guy? Mark O'Leary. Had you ever heard that name before?

No. Was he on anybody's radar? No. Was he on anybody's radar? No. Mark Patrick O'Leary, a man fitting the very profile described by several of the victims. He had a military career that took him all over the world, from Washington State to Korea. The 32-year-old O'Leary was separated from his wife and studying at a local community college. Did he have any prior criminal history whatsoever? Insignificant. No assaults?

No. No violent crime? No. Nothing to indicate that this guy was capable of what he was being accused of? Nothing like that. I mean, you got the truck. You got the guy. You got the guy. You got an address.

He's right there. Like, did you want to just get in your car, go over, bang on the door, and take him right then? No, we couldn't do that yet. I know you couldn't, but did you want to? Well, we needed to make sure. And so it became important at that point in time to start conducting surveillance on him, attempt to get the DNA from this individual. Marco Leary, suspected of stalking and attacking so many women, was about to become haunted

himself. We're in Lakewood, Colorado, and this is the neighborhood where we set up on Mark O'Leary's residence. We waited and watched. The task force finally had a viable suspect in Mark O'Leary, and Agent Grusing's team didn't have to wait long for things to pick up fast. And they see the truck leave, and it looks like the registered owner gets in it with a female.

As part of the team followed the couple to lunch at this restaurant, Grusing stayed behind, hoping to install a surveillance camera on the house. But first, he needed to make sure no one else was home. I walked up through this driveway. We knocked on that white door where the light is, and Mark O'Leary appeared in the doorway. Which you were not expecting. I was not expecting.

He really wasn't. He thought he had just seen O'Leary drive off in the truck. And what was his demeanor when he came to the door? He looked a little surprised. He was curious, I would say, more than anything, to see why would we be knocking on his door. So you had to do a little tap dance. What happened?

I pulled out the flyer that I had ready, and it was of a person we were looking for in another investigation. He looked at the sketch, said it did not look familiar. He said that his brother lived there with him. We didn't even know he had a brother until that moment. It turned out Grusing's team was tailing Michael O'Leary, Mark's younger brother, who looks an awful lot like him. They collected the cup that Michael drank out of at lunch, hoping that strain of DNA might match the DNA on that teddy bear and other samples they obtained.

And what did it reveal? It revealed that strain of male DNA from the O'Leary family was on all of our victims' possessions. But they had no idea which O'Leary brother was responsible, so they went to find out. What are you feeling feeling you're this close to this guy I'm ready and I'm praying and hoping that we don't lose him somehow and someone else gets hurt at 6 o'clock that Sunday morning the team knocked on the O'Leary's door guns drawn Stacy found herself face to face with

Marco Leary he just went pale just like you could just kind of see the life go Guns drawn. Stacey found herself face-to-face with Mark O'Leary. He just went pale. Just like, you could just kind of see the life go out of him for a second. He had real baggy pants on, so I lifted each pant leg up, and I saw the egg-shaped birthmark on his calf. It was identical to that unusual birthmark that Galbraith's victim had described on her attacker's leg. I said, turn around, put your hands behind your back, you're under arrest.

They knew they finally had the right O'Leary in custody. It's gratifying to finally put someone like that in handcuffs. Leave these officers with you here for just a minute, okay? Mark O'Leary seemed strangely amused by the circumstances. Guard, you be coming. And he would not cooperate. I need to talk to an attorney. At that point, we were wanting to see what was in the house.

A search warrant of his home yielded a gold mine. He had all of these things that he used to facilitate these assaults just in places about the house. Hidden in plain sight. Hidden in plain sight. So in his closet, we came up with, we came up with this, his shoes. What did you think? I knew those were them. That's it. They were a perfect match to those shoe prints found near two of the crime scenes. Just inside O'Leary's front door, a pair of gloves with that distinct honeycomb pattern. And that wasn't all. This is a pink Sony Cybershot camera that was collected from the office of O'Leary's residence.

He had kind of some bookshelves, and he had it just kind of propped up on a shelf. It was the exact camera that was stolen from the Westminster victim and used to photograph the Golden victim. And then, perhaps most disturbingly, they came upon this backpack full of items O'Leary had brought with him to perpetrate the rapes. So these are the high heel shoes. Which victim? Golden.

So this is your victim? Yeah. You get quiet when you see him? I actually haven't seen these things beyond pictures. Why do you get quiet? It's just sad. Yeah. these things beyond pictures.

Why do you get quiet? It's just sad. Yeah. You know, it's just a thing until you know the details of what the thing was used for. Right. You don't usually find this, in my opinion,

this much cooperation. Mm-hmm. That's absolutely fair. This corroborated every, I mean, just... He didn't seem to be really working hard to hide everything. He wasn't expecting us.

But in all that evidence, there was nothing to link Mark O'Leary's brother, Michael, to any of the attacks. At this point in time, you do not believe he was involved with it in any way? No, no. It was in Mark's room, in Mark's possessions, that the detectives would make a worrisome discovery. Hard drives containing hundreds of pictures, and not just of the four victims they knew of. Deputy Jefferson County District Attorney Bob Weiner. There were photographs that depicted other women in what I think can only be characterized as a rape scenario. I wondered if they were victims of sexual assault, if they were even alive anymore.

The investigators had to find them. In O'Leary's phone, they found he had called this woman numerous times. Her name is Amy. So we're now on our way to meet Amy. Amy wasn't a victim. She was actually O'Leary's girlfriend. Now, can you imagine you find out the guy you had dated was actually a serial rapist at the time the two of you were together? I mean, what would you say? How would you react?

We're about to find out. Hi, Amy Maury Maher with 48 Hours. Nice to meet you. Have a seat. Thank you. So I was at work and a message was on my phone from Special Agent John Grusing from the FBI regarding Mark O'Leary. In early 2011, then a 35-year-old bartender, Amy was unsure why the FBI would be calling her about her ex-boyfriend. He said, well, I'm sure you know what's going on with Mark O'Leary. And I said, no, actually, I don't. And he said, well, it's been all over the news. He's committed a series of rapes.

It was hard for Amy to believe. She'd met Marco Leary on the online dating site OkCupid in 2009. And the man she thought she knew presented himself very differently. He was pretty chivalrous and protective.

Was he charming? He was very charming. He was really fun to talk to. We talked for hours at a time, quite frequently. There was a lightness to him, even though he had a dark sense of humor. But it didn't last long for the couple. We attempted a sexual relationship, but things did not go very well in terms of chemistry. Mark needed the other person

to be scared. The fear. Yes. And the dominance. Yes. And did you ever see that violent side of him? No, I didn't see any violence. Like, I knew what he liked and what

turned him on, but I didn't show him fear in any real way, and he knew I wasn't scared. It was tofu to somebody who wanted steak. Amy had no idea that when she wasn't with Mark, Mark was out preying on women. was out preying on women. I talked to Special Agent Grusing for a long time, and then after I got off the phone, I went and threw up.

It was pretty upsetting to me. As Amy struggled with Margo Leary's arrest, a few miles away, a detective broke the news to Mary. First, I didn't believe him. I said, you sure? He says, yep, we got him. That's what he said, we got him. Did you feel a sense of relief? Oh, my, yes.

There were so many victims. And he was so sick. Mark Patrick O'Leary was charged with more than 30 counts of sexual assault, kidnapping, and burglary. Prosecutor Bob Weiner. To have actual photographs, as disgusting as they were, of the actual rapes ended any speculation as to whether we had the right guy. as to whether we had the right guy.

Faced with overwhelming evidence, O'Leary agreed to plead guilty to the sexual assault charges. He was meticulous in the way he stalked these victims. But it was at his sentencing hearing that fireworks really began. I am a sexually violent predator. Surprisingly, he has the chance to address the court as well. He took advantage of it. And I'm out of control. I've been out of control for a long time. Words are just inadequate to describe how just horrible I, you know, I acted and I can only hope that my sentence today will

satisfy them. His sentence would more than satisfy. Over 300 years in prison. A staggering number. In some crazy way I felt sorry for him. He said he was just going from one prison to another. So he was in his own prison. And something else he said at the sentencing caught the detective's attention.

He said that he would be willing to answer questions, and in law enforcement, that's the green light. They were about to get a rare look into the mind of a serial rapist. Are you okay? Yeah, I'm all right. Johnny Grusing took the lead, playing to O'Leary's ego. I told him that our profilers were very interested in him because of how intelligent he was, and he seemed to like that.

You know, he hear a psychologist, you know, Shrink, who say, you know, rape is a crime about power and control. That's not accurate. Power and control are a means to an end. What has turned me on is fear. Talked about how his pendulum would swing and he could not control it. He would have to fill that need. And that's the monster talking to him.

He never won any of these battles with the monster. And Grusing saw that monster up close. O'Leary described his feelings after one of the rapes. I still remember this moment is that's when he leaned back and smiled. O'Leary says even as a child, he had rape fantasies, but didn't act on them until he was in the military on a tour of duty in Korea where he tried but failed to rape two women. Back in the States, he was going to use his military training to figure out a way to stalk his victims, to not be caught, and to satisfy this urge that would come. O'Leary brought up one woman he'd been planning to attack.

planning to attack. Julie Peck. Remember her? The single mother who had no idea O'Leary was stalking her. He was lining her up for an assault. I saw him out there and I said, what the f*** are you doing here? Get out of here, I'm going to call the police. And I just watched him. He just turned around, went down the stairs, went out to the back, climbed over the fence and left. Julie, unnerved, always set her home alarm after that, but never thought about it again until the FBI called her. It was very hard for me to process it. But the FBI didn't tell her everything. Did you know that at one point he was in the house and you were asleep? I did not know that.

Walking in and out of your house? No. Taking things from your place? No idea whatsoever. And what about those hard drives with the hundreds of photos of other women? O'Leary wasn't willing to discuss anything that he had not pled guilty to. that he had not pled guilty to. Even behind bars, O'Leary wasn't done tormenting women.

Before the interview ended, he had a special message for Detective Galbraith. Was it unnerving? Yeah. I didn't sleep well that night. It wouldn't be the last sleepless night. We discovered another victim. But what happened to that woman was far worse than the detectives could imagine.

To learn more about Mark O'Leary from his ex-girlfriend, go to Facebook at 48 Hours. Among the hundreds of photos found in Mark O'Leary's home, a picture of a young woman bound and gagged stood out. In that case, he actually photographed her like he'd done our other victims, but he thoughtfully photographed her with her driver's license on her. So you knew exactly who she was? Yes.

She was an 18-year-old woman whose identity we are not revealing, living just outside Seattle in Linwood, Washington. And did you contact that police department in Washington? Oh, right away. It turns out they knew about her. They even had a rape report from 2008. Only they believed it was a false report. Linwood Police Department Commander Rodney Conheim. She reported that she woke up to find an intruder in her bedroom standing at the doorway. He was armed with a knife. He approached

her, bound her hands behind her back, gagged her, blindfolded her, had her roll over, and then he raped her for a period of time. But during the investigation, they began to doubt the young woman's truthfulness. One detective even threatened to charge her if she was lying. The young woman gave an interview to NPR's This American Life. He told me that if I took a lie detector test and it came back that I was lying, that he was going to take me to jail himself. After that, she quickly changed her story. She says that she thought she may have dreamed that this occurred. And at one point, she said that it didn't happen.

And ultimately, she was given a citation for false reporting. She was forced to pay a $500 fine and plead guilty for lying about being raped. Detective Galbraith couldn't believe what she was reading. I actually felt emotional. I knew that was wrong because I could prove their case now. And what was their response when you called and said, hey, you know that case of that young woman who you thought

was lying and you charged her? Guess what? I got a picture of her after she's assaulted from the actual rapist. And they came out immediately? Mm-hmm. I was stunned. It's an absolute nightmare.

Everything that she told us was the absolute truth. She was isolated, alone, and then nobody believed her. That's a lot to digest. The commander and his team headed straight to the young woman's home. Three years had passed since she had reported her rape. She was very surprised to see us, and we told her what we had learned. She was stunned. She was quiet at first. She began to cry. It was heart-wrenching to know that she had lived with this alone for all those years.

The woman's charge was expunged from her record, her fine was reimbursed, and she eventually settled a lawsuit with the police department for $150,000. Well, we learned many lessons here at the Linwood Police Department on the heels of this investigation. We had outside groups come in to teach officers and detectives ways to investigate sexual assaults.

Not every victim of a violent crime reports it in the same way, and that we need to understand that as strange as some circumstances seem, they can be true. It's an observation not gone unnoticed by the rapist himself. or they probably would have been a person of interest earlier on. O'Leary was charged with that woman's rape and yet another similar sexual assault in Washington. He pled guilty in both cases, bringing the known number of victims to six. But Stacey and Edna believe it doesn't stop there.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's more. O'Leary had encrypted computers that investigators are still unable to open. It went to Quantico. It went to the FBI lab here. Nobody can get into it? Nobody can get into it. And I was told that probably no one ever will.

All of this begs the question, if Mark O'Leary was willing to give such explicit details about the terrible crimes they already knew he had committed, what possible horrific things was he still hiding on those hard drives? Do you think it's worse? Don't know. The other thing we wonder is, could someone else have been involved? Ex-girlfriend Amy wonders the same thing.

It sounds to me like maybe he's protecting somebody else if he's willing to fess up to everything that he's done, but he's not willing to turn over all of the information that he has. But Mary is hoping other victims of O'Leary's will come forward. Well, I think the big thing is just that rape victims don't have to be ashamed. He kept getting away with it. And he wanted to do it again. And each time he did it, he got a little more cocky about what he was doing and a little more dangerous.

And there's no fear in your life now associated with it? No. I won't let it happen. I won't let him instill fear in me. I don't want anybody to do that to me. Her strength fuels the work that Edna and Stacey have committed their lives to. the work that Edna and Stacey have committed their lives to. He's only behind bars because of the work that you did together.

Right. But it's not two people, right? It's not three people with Johnny involved. It's a whole group. It took the entire group. Knowing that you pulled someone like that so horrible out of society so that he can't hurt anyone again it was very very rewarding. This is why I do this. Stacy Galbraith is now an agent for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Edna Hendershot was promoted to the rank of sergeant with the Westminster Police Department. Galbraith and Hendershot both stay in contact with the women Mark O'Leary attacked.

For more of O'Leary's FBI out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.