Cold Case Files - Man in the Shadows / The Hitchhiker

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

After running DNA tests on more than 50 suspects, Ohio police finally get a good a lead on a serial rapist suspected of attacking at least 14 women. And a cigarette butt found at a murder scene helps investigators to smoke out the killer 29 years later.Figs: Check out Wearfigs.com and use code FIGSRX for 15% off your first order!Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Quince: Go to Quince.com/coldcase for free shipping on your order and 365-day returnsShopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/coldcase and take your retail business to the next level today!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. There was a dog that lived next door, and the neighbors used to let him out all the time, and it was February, it was dark, it was cold. Late at night in February of 1992, 23-year-old Christina Ruth,

hears a noise outside her Columbus, Ohio home and opens her back door. I went ahead and opened the door, and suddenly this person, like, came into my doorway. And I went to shut the door, and he reached out and, like, slammed the door open. The man forces his way in, turns out the lights before Christina can get a look at him and attacks. We made it to the living room. It was where he had me, had his hands around my neck, and he was choking me and was beating my head into the floor. And he kept saying he was going to kill me. Christina Ruth has a choice to make and chooses life.

She submits to her attacker who begins to tear at her clothes. During the attack, Christina retreats into her mind. You pray, you step out of your body. It's just my body. It wasn't me. It was just my body. After three hours, the rapist leaves. Christina dials 911 and is taken to the hospital where semen is collected.

As Columbus police worked the case, Christina braces for a long investigation. And there just really wasn't much for them to go on. And I knew that even with DNA, it's just like a fingerprint. unless you have a person to go with that, it doesn't help. Within weeks, Leeds dry up, and the case goes cold. One year later, the predator remains at large, walking the streets of Columbus, selecting the time and place for his next attack.

It's the upper Lindenview neighborhood of Columbus, pretty much from Weber Road north, and then a lot of his attacks were on those streets that would intersect Weber Road. John Weeks is a detective with the Columbus Police Department. But he committed attacks all the way up and down, this segment of the neighborhood here. In the 12 months since Christina Ruth's attack, five more women have been raped. Each attack centered in the Linden neighborhood of Columbus.

A lot of the earlier attacks were in this close concentrated area here. You know, the distance here between like attack one and the attack two locations, probably a half a mile. or less. All of the attacks show the same M.O. And although the rapist tried to hide his face, some of the victims were able to provide the police with the beginnings of a description. Male black, usually six foot or taller, a little bit heavier build, usually would commit multiple sex offenses, usually armed with some type of a household knife.

It's not uncommon for him to converse with the victims before, during, and after the attacks. Sketches are circulated and residents are warned to be on the lookout for a man now known as the Linden area rapist. Investigators believe their suspect will continue to hunt until he is caught. Investigators, however, are wrong, and in the fall of 1992, the attacks suddenly stop. We often thought that he was a resident somewhere in that neighborhood, a current resident, but we kept, you would think over time that you would stumble on to him, in that respect, and we never did. So we didn't really didn't know where he was or who he was, obviously,

and didn't know what to think about him. After nearly two years of terror, the streets of Columbus again grow quiet, and the community begins to relax. I'm sleeping, and then the next thing I felt was someone leaning on the bed. On February 11, 1995, just after 8 a.m., Yvonne Murrell wakes to a stranger in her bed.

I was scared, and then he just threw me to my side real quick and told me not to look and had a knife. And he was real close to me, his face was, and then he had a knife by my throat. Eight and a half months pregnant, Yvonne begs for mercy. I did tell him, don't hurt. You know, I'm pregnant. Please don't hurt the baby. And then he kneeled on the bed and pulled my underwear down. So then at that time I knew what he was going to do.

And I said, please, please, you know, I'm pregnant. it, you know, but he went ahead. After the assault, the rapist walks out the back door and Yvonne calls police. Sergeant Jeff Sackstetter reviews the case and immediately touches base with John Weeks on the Linden Area rapes. Both men agree Yvonne Murrell is part of a larger pattern. His positioning of the victim, his entry into the house, his language spoken to her. He was back in that Linden neighbor.

of the city. We couldn't account for that gap of time between the 91, 92 attacks and in his sudden recurrence in 94. We didn't know if he'd been sent off the prison, if he'd gone in military commitment, whether a job had moved him out of town. We had no way of knowing. Detectives step up the investigation, releasing new sketches and ordering a heavier street presence for police. The Linden area rapist, however, continues to stalk and to hunt. Hunt. Seven more women are assaulted in their homes and detectives are still without a suspect. Oh yeah, it became real frustrating. It was, it seemed like all the efforts you put in and you could never get any closer to...

By the spring of 1995, the total number of attacks stands at 15, when once again, the assaults suddenly stop. We didn't know who he was. We didn't know anything about him, didn't know where he was. If you don't know those things, you don't know what the likelihood of him returning is. For seven years, the Linton Area rapist again goes quiet, his victims making their way into the cold files, until the summer of 2002, when the predator returns. It's important for each case to be recognized as a person and as an individual. Dave McKee is a detective in the Columbus Sexual Abuse Squad. On a slow afternoon in 1999, he decides to take a look at a string of

unsolved rapes from the early 90s. known in the community as the Linden Area Rapes. We had multiple cases here, and we took them out of the boxes and laid them out in a room. And at that time, I think it hit home on how many cases and how many people were really involved. Original detectives had linked cases from 1991 through 1992 and a second set from 1994 to 1995 based on geographical proximity and M.O.

McKee believes the working theory to be sound, sound and uses science to confirm it. So we took the DNA from the first series and compared it to DNA on the second series, and it was determined that they were both the same suspect. Detective John Weeks worked the original set of crimes and believes the timeline of attacks holds a key to IDing the offender. We kind of came to that conclusion that the number of years that he kept disappearing would be consistent with someone being sent off to be incarcerated somewhere.

a year and a half, six and a half, seven years. Those are consistent with prison terms. In Ohio, DNA from felony offenders is uploaded into CODIS, a national data bank of DNA profiles. If the Lyndon rapist has, in fact, been in prison, his DNA should be in the system. But there are no guarantees. But we weren't getting any hits.

It was kind of the situation where everybody was geared up and we were thinking, well, we're going to get a hit out of it, and we didn't. McKee and Weeks are resigned to a strategy of wait and see their best chances for solving the case, unless the Linden Area Rapist decides to attack again. We had had another sexual assault occurring up in that Linden neighborhood again. The date is June 20, 2002. Detective Weeks takes a call on a sexual assault that bears the signs of the Linden Area rapist. When you looked at the offense on paper and you compared the,

the description of the suspects and his characteristics and his behavior and the location he had committed the attack and the method he had entered the home, you felt pretty certain that this was probably this man back again. DNA testing confirms weak suspicions. After seven years of inactivity, the Lyndon rapist is back. Where has he been all this time? And what is it about that neighborhood up there that keeps drawing him back? We got to stop this guy.

We got to give him identified somehow. The new attack causes Columbus to assemble a task force. This time, they will not wait for their suspect to attack again. There was fear up there, but there was this urgency, if you will. These people wanted him caught. Detectives revisit each case file and compare notes. What they realize is the rapist is getting smarter and more bold. Change the area, change the MOs.

When I say areas, just onto the side of the freeway to the campus area, He really started hitting her at the end. And he did a couple on Hudson Street, gone towards High Street. We realized how far he had spread out. Like that number nine attack over there, we thought for a number of years that he was concentrated just in this neighborhood.

His description was so, I mean, it went from one extreme to the other, from 5'5 to 6 foot. Well, it went to the one victim said that she was 5.11. We had to pull everything together from over years and years of reports. Over a period of 11 years, the Linden rapist has assaulted at least 16 women, none of whom got more than a glimpse of their attacker. It kind of demonstrates when you got a victim in a situation like that

where they may, so traumatic may not be able to completely give you a full description or an accurate description. I mean, you knew you had two, like there were some instances where we had two attacks, where we knew it was him because of the DNA match, but when you looked at the physical descriptions, there was big disparities in. Yeah, his MO was. We didn't really didn't know who he was, obviously,

and each assault just added to that frustration. You would hope that at some point in time he'd make a mistake. That never seemed to be the case, so, you know, the frustration just kept compounding. The task force begins pulling in suspects, taking saliva swabs, and sending them to the crime lab for genetic. crime lab for genetic comparison. More than 50 suspects later, the Lyndon rapist is still unknown, still at large, and still active. I had no idea what was going on. And at first, I mean, I was

half asleep, pretty groggy. You know, all I knew was that I couldn't breathe. On June 6, 2004, a Sunday morning, 20-year-old Diana Cunningham, wakes up to find a man on top of her. His hands around her throat. You know, he's telling me to shut up or he'll kill me. And he had told me that if I opened my eyes, he would slit my throat. The man demands money, then makes it clear he is not going to leave the apartment before he rapes Diana Cunningham. When I just kind of realized that this is going to happen, there's nothing I could do to stop it,

um, started crying. At first, he, you know, kept saying, shut up. up, stop crying, that kind of thing. Although later on, when I cried a little bit, he would, like, wipe my tears away. The man attacks Diana for more than an hour, all the while insisting she keep her eyes shut. There were times when I knew that he could not see my face, that I did open my eyes and try to see anything that I could. Even as she's being raped, Diana Cunningham is collecting evidence, trying to form a mental picture of her attacker for police. During the assault itself, I don't know what he thought I was doing, but I kind of felt around

on his head, face, arms, found the scar on his arm. That was another identifying characteristic. I got the bald spot on the back of his head. She also engages her rapist in an almost constant stream of conversation, a ploy she hopes will save her life. I had actually read a magazine. I had actually read a magazine article from another woman who had been raped in her own home and that was one of the tactics that she had used and I remembered that. It makes them see you as a person, just any attacker in general. If you can get them talking and open up a little bit about yourself and get them to open up a little bit if it's possible, it just helps them to see you as a human being and it makes

it harder for them to attack you, really. It makes it harder for them to hurt you. Diana's strategy seems to work, as the rapist makes it clear he's not going to kill her. He is, however, intent on not leaving any kind of forensic evidence behind. Basically, he said, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to take a shower. And he watched me, washed myself to make sure that I did. And while I was in the shower, wiped my apartment for prints, actually poked his head in the bathroom to let me know that he was leaving.

told me to lock the door to keep people like him out. I knew there was a house full of just college students, all guys across the street. And so I grabbed a knife from my kitchen, went across the street, knocked on the guy's door, told him what happened. They sat with me and let me use their phone to call the police, you know, stayed with me through the whole thing.

Columbus Police converge on Diane's neighborhood and immediately recognize the work of the Linden Area rapist. man who has eluded authorities for 13 years, a man whose luck is about to run out. Lately, I've been all about quality over quantity, especially when it comes to my closet. If something's not versatile and well-made, it just doesn't earn a spot. That's why I love Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fit is thoughtful, and the prices actually make sense. Quince makes high-quality wardrobe staples from premium fabrics, like 100% European linen, silk, organic cotton poplin, and that dreamy, lightweight cotton cashmere that's perfect for those

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If I'm mine, I'm dying. This is the mindset. Free. This is the mantra. Free. This is the... Movies like Titanic, Dream Girls and Gladiator. Why are you detained?

And TV shows like Survivor, Spongebob. Square pants, the fairly odd parents and ghosts. Pluto TV is always free. Hazzam! Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. This computer system is part of the Kodas database. Rina Clarkson is a forensic scientist working for the Columbus Police Crime Lab. The first thing she does on Monday mornings is check with a woman who runs the lab's Kodas system. Each weekend, the computer processes any new entries into the data bank and compares them against

unknown rape profiles. On Monday, June 7th, the administrator finds a red star beside the unknown DNA profile pulled from the Lyndon rapes, a series of at least 19 attacks stretching over 13 years. She said, oh my, or something to that effect, and I looked over her shoulder, and I said, that's him, isn't it? This is the 3138 in the convicted offender profile, matching the 3138 in the convicted offender profile, matching the 31-38 in the unknown sample. Forina Clarkson, the forensic hunt is over.

The identity of the Lyndon rapist seemingly established to a scientific certainty. It's 2225, and it also matches the 2225 in the unknown profile. This match was a match at all 13 low side that we look at, as well as the Amarylogenum, which is the sex of the sample, which is the best match that you can get. The profile belongs to Robert Patton, and named Detective John Weeks, is unfamiliar with.

He's a convicted felon. He'd been in prison in 1995. He'd entered Ohio prison systems. Upon his release in 2001, Patton was required to provide a saliva sample for DNA testing. Unfortunately, that sample sat in a backlog for three years. So he'd been stockpiled. somewhere for some reasons that beyond me to explain.

And it had never been taken and processed and entered into that indexing system until 2004. In the meantime, Robert Patton continued to attack women. I believe the system failed, not advising law enforcement agencies that, yes, we're swabbing your suspects, but we're not running the test from the swabs. And that was never... given to us, and that's the failure of the system.

Detectives now put their frustrations aside, and with a warrant in hand, they pull Patton off the streets and sit him down for some questions. We went in there hoping that he would at least talk to us. Around 5 p.m., Detective Weeks comes face to face with a man he has hunted for more than a decade. A man Weeks believes to be the Lyndon rapist. I was surprised how candid he really was and how forthcoming he was. information. Anything on that one looks familiar?

I'm saying this picture of all these pictures here looks familiar. Cold blood, smell on the ground. This is me. Patton reviews crime scene photos from 19 separate sexual assaults and claims responsibility for all but two. I'm not only going to try to make your guys job easier, right? I want to make this whole process easy, right? I mean, if I can get to the judge, I can get to the judge or whatever.

Listen, we don't even have to go to trial. My plea won't change. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Within five minutes, Robert Patton appears to put an end to all the questions police might have. Then, Patton goes further and tells detectives all the things they don't know. He says, well, you obviously know about these cases, but there's more out there. There's more cases out there that aren't responsible for. I mean, I'm not going to dispute any of them.

and put kids. Well, some of them we know are you, without a doubt. Okay, well, probably maybe all of them is meeting. I'm not even talking about the other rapes. All right. Where else are those other rapes are? That night, Patton hops in a van with detectives and leads them on a tour of a 17-year career in crime.

And I didn't see him get upset, excited. I didn't see him really show a whole lot of emotion. He's pointing out things and telling us to turn down this street and stop here and we're one street too far and that sort of thing. As Weeks drives, Patton talks, and detectives discover that robber Patton's pension for rape is far beyond anything they have ever imagined. He took us to 69 locations, and of those, you know, 39 were the rapes, and 30 of them were burglaries.

And the list that we were looking at and working from primarily was 17 known rapes. During the drive around town, Patton has graduated from terrorizing women in Columbus, Ohio, to one of the country's most prolific serial rapists, eventually being linked to at least 37 sexual assaults. Weeks deposits him in a jail cell and prepares a long list of charges. I mean, it's the most prolific rape case I've ever been a part of. In June 2004, Christian Domus handles the prosecution of Robert Patton. When he walked into the courtroom, the first of the first of the court room,

The first thing he said was, let's get this party started. And he's got this smile on his face, and he's smirking. And the judge asks him, how do you plead? And he smiles and says, guilty is charged. In his first court appearance, Robert Patton has not changed his story a bit, still fully cooperative and willing to plead guilty to the Lyndon rapes. The next time he appears in court, however, Patton is singing a different tune. And he said, well, I'm not going to plead to anything.

I want my trial, and I want it today. Despite Patton's confessions, Domus must now prepare for a trial. Seven months later, jury selection is underway when Patton suffers another change of heart. He pleads guilty to 58 counts of robbery and 76 counts of rape and assault. And demands the judge give him a long prison sentence. At one point, he said 50 years isn't enough. So the judge, after hearing that he wanted more than 50 years, granted his request and gave him 68. I've never had a defendant ask for more time and actually get it from the judge.

Many of Patton's victims sit in the courtroom and watch as the man who terrorize them answers for his actions. For Diana Cunningham, the sentence is bittersweet, one that brings some closure to a crime that never should have been committed. When I found out that they had the evidence to put him away in 2001, that just... astonished me that I'm still having a little trouble with it's it's very hard not to be bitter about something like that but aside from that what's important now is just making sure that every state reduces their backlog and keeps up on it had they done what they were supposed to do in the very beginning it never would have happened I was going through our cold cases at the

Mendocino County Sheriff's Department and Lieutenant Smolcomb told me about a case that he had worked in 1993. Kevin Bailey is a homicide detective with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. In April of 2004, Bailey opens up the cold file on Jerry Sullivan, a hitchhiker found shot to death in the summer of 1975. The first thing I do when I get assigned a case like that is I go through the case file itself. In reviewing that evidence list and reconciling that with the case file, I saw that there was a pretty particular important piece of evidence and that was a fingerprint.

The fingerprint was lifted off the inside of the victim's wallet almost 30 years earlier. It is a lead that takes cold case detectives back to a counterculture revolution and murder inside a patch of woods in northern California. Well, here we're at Navarro, California, and we're about approximately 15 miles from the coast. In the fall of 1975, Detective Ralph Mays and criminal technician Grover, Bethard's, walk through the woods and into a crime scene. He was lying face down. All you could see was the top of his head. And I recall the sleeping bag was zipped open slightly.

Slightly, yes. Inside the sleeping bag is the body of Jerry Sullivan, a cast on his left leg and a bullet in his brain. He could not see anywhere where somebody had been scumpling or any fighting or anything went on. We'd not only searched this midi area here, we searched up, we expanded our search area all, you know, all up into these redwood trees here and all around. I remember, you know, we walked down along the highway looking for whatever we could find in.

Police collect an assortment of items including the victim's sleeping bag, maps, and a cigarette butt discarded near the body. What investigators don't find, however, is anything that helps ID their victim. No wallet, no other cards or anything. with them. And so we try first, one of the things you try for, of course, is fingerprints. Bethard's checks the victim's prints against the DMV database and pulls up Sullivan's license. The 20-year-old is originally from New York State and was hitchhiking up the coast. In the mid-70, they call them the hippies, you know. Everybody living free and doing pretty much

what they wanted to do, kind of living for the day. Detective Mays contacts Sullivan's family members, but they can offer no clue at the as to who might have wanted Jerry dead. That is, until two days later, when Sullivan's family receives a package in the mail, inside it is Sullivan's wallet. The wallet, the insert, including the driver's license, had been nailed back to the address

that appeared on the driver's license. He was given to me by Sergeant Bays, and he wanted me to see if I was able to develop any fingerprints on it. And I was able to develop a nice print on the plastic case to the driver's life. The unknown print is entered into California's fingerprint database. In 1975, it fails to generate a match.

With the cast on his left leg, you know, that was a pretty obvious. Yeah, that would be pretty obvious, you know, we saw that. Meanwhile, detectives continue to pick through the back roads of Northern California, looking for anyone who might have picked up a hitchhiker wearing a cast. I mean, of course, I wasn't real happy to be seeing the Mendocino County Sheriff because, you know, At the time, I smoked a lot of marijuana, and I wasn't real, you know, what are they doing there? In 1975, Kathy Smith is 24 years old and living the life of a hippie. I lived in an old apple orchard, like in a tent.

So it was living very close to the land. And it was really nice. It was beautiful. I loved it. I loved it. Three days after Jerry Sullivan turns up dead, Smith's says, commune with nature is interrupted by a visit from police. Locals in the nearby town of Philo tell police Smith picked up two male hitchhikers.

Smith said she had picked up the two men several days earlier, and one was wearing a leg cast. I picked him up, and I told him that I wasn't going all that far, probably five or six miles down the road. So I had both of them get into my car, one in the back and one in the front. Kathy Smith is one of several locals who apparently picked up the two hitchhikers, one of whom detectives believed to be Jerry Sullivan, the other hitchhiker, potentially Sullivan's killer. We've interviewed several of the people that gave them rides, and I did what they called Identiquet of the person's features and face, so we made up a composite of this person. We had several different composites made up.

After we had developed the composite drawings, we were able to to, in talking to enough people, learn of a free school, they call it in them days, up the coast from here, probably about 25 miles up the coast. According to witnesses, the free school called Summerhill West was mentioned by the second hitchhiker as a place he had once attended. Mays heads north to see if anyone at Summerhill might be willing to talk. There was this huge movement actually to Mendocino County and we were part of that movement. And even though we were a school, they called us a commune.

We were a Summerhill commune. In 1975, Heidi Bohan is living at Summer Hill West, a destination of choice for a lot of young people heading north out of San Francisco. In October of that year, Detective Mays arrives on campus, asking a lot of questions and carrying a composite sketch of his mysterious hitchhiker. That was a period of time that it was extremely sensitive, that you didn't have relationships with the police. I interviewed and talked with a lot of paranoid people.

They were always wondering, you know, why, you know, what are you looking for me for? We were a counterculture, and so to call the police and to actually initiate some sort of contact was a big deal. Heidi Bohan might not like the police, but when she sees the composite sketch of the man believed to be Jerry Sullivan's traveling companion,

she decides to come forward. I thought it was this young man that had not been there very long. I wasn't close to him. Was it so when I knew real well, but his name was Bob Holt. The name Bob Holt is one of many to land in Detective Mase's notes. Efforts to track down Holt, however, go nowhere. And it was disheartening, you know, like I said, Mr. Sullivan, the father would always, you know, we were in contact,

and he always wanted to hear something positive, and oftentimes there was nothing good to tell him, you know. An unknown fingerprint, a hitchhiker, and a name. Jerry Sullivan's murder is a puzzle. One detectives won't piece together for another 30 years. When I first started my podcast, I thought, okay, how hard can it be? Then it came the editing, the branding, the endless tech decisions. Suddenly, I wasn't just a host.

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And right now you can take 15% off your first order at wearfigs.com with the code figs rx. That's wherefigs.com code figs rx. When I was referring to the wall of shame to the Hall of Fame, The wall of shame was this when we, Mr. Sullivan's case started. Kurt Smallcomb is a detective with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. In 1993, he opens up the file on Jerry Sullivan, a hitchhiker found shot to death 18 years earlier. When I started going through it, just reading the case and then coming across the,

looking at the latent print and the information like that, it was, okay, it's workable and let's, you know, let's go to work for the Sullivan's. Alcombe runs the single unknown print lifted off the inside of the victim's wallet through APIS, the automated fingerprint identification system. That led to the Department of just coming back with a hit on Mr. Cordero. Mr. William Cordero is a resident of Oregon, a man with no hard criminal history, but someone with a lot of explaining to do. My reaction was, hey, this could be our guy.

We felt that, hey, you know, this guy is going to have to have a pretty good reason why his fingerprint would be inside the victim's wallet. In the 1970s, Cordero had ties to the Mendocino area, often going there to fish. Smallcomb decides to travel north to Oregon to talk to Cordero. What's going on here? Well, again, the reason why here is over the unsolved palmicide happened years ago.

Can I mean, it was 1975. Inside an interview room, 250 miles north of Mendocino County, Kurt Smallcomb begins digging at the newest suspect in the Jerry Sullivan homicide. I started to go out there, it was all about getting this statement. Were you ever in, Minnesota County in 1975? Get this statement from Mr. Cordero. If I could put him in the location. You know, I might have been there because I'm a salmon fish.

Okay. And I know a lot of people here and there. Putting himself in that location, I'm thinking, this guy is pretty good. You ever pick up any of the church? Oh, I might have. I probably did back in those days. You know, now I don't, but then I did. That was the attack for myself.

To go back with a cash. You absolutely denied. Knowing anything about Mrs. Solner, ever finding anything belonging to anybody else in Mendocino County. Cordero is never told about his print found inside the victim's wallet. After their interview, he gets a lawyer and refuses to speak to police a second time. Without enough evidence to charge Cordero, to tell him, detectives are once again stuck, and the case again goes cold.

Until 11 years later, when a fresh set of eyes gets involved and gives an old cigarette butt a second look. Our victim, Gerard Sullivan, was not a smoker, and I noticed that in 75 they had collected a cigarette butt from the crime scene. In April of 2004, Detective Kevin Bailey inherits the Sullivan file from Kurt Smalcombe. Bailey believes William Cordero to be his first and best suspect. but needs more evidence before he can charge him. Then Bailey notices a single cigarette butt sitting in the Sullivan file.

I felt that we did get DNA off that cigarette butt that it would match Mr. Cordero. Bailey sends the butt out to be tested. While waiting for the results, he heads north with District Attorney Investigator Tim Kiley for another chat with Cordero. It's a nightmare, you know what I mean? I haven't done anything like anything that hurt anybody. ever in my whole life. Okay, well, then let's put it up.

Let's just sit down, go over this thing, and be done with it. Bailey and Kylie confront Cordero with a search warrant. Initially, they don't tell him about his fingerprint found inside the victim's wallet. He maintained there was no contact with Mr. Sullivan. He had never hitchhiked with anyone with the leg cast. He'd already told us that there was no, that he'd never found a wallet, that he'd never seen the victim's body.

And so he couldn't come back now and say, yeah, I did find a wallet or some excuse. So we felt it was safe to tell him at this point about the fingerprint. Your fingerprint was found on his wallet. On his wallet. He's sitting inside his wallet. And that insert, I can't believe that. It almost seems like enough evidence for you to take me to jail. He went through various emotional states.

At one point, he was lying on the ground outside his residence, almost weeping. Emotions aside, Cordero offers no credible explanation for the print and is asked to provide. a DNA sample. Detectives promised they will be back in touch, next time, perhaps with a warrant for Cordero's arrest. This is the main DNA extraction laboratory. This is where we sample the evidence. In the summer of 2004, DNA analyst Diana Kacer

has a stack of cold cases to work on, one of them almost as old as she is. I was born in September of 1974, and this case happened in 1975. So, yeah, I thought it would be interesting to do a case that was almost as old as me. Kayser pulls out a cigarette but collected from the Sullivan crime scene 29 years earlier. She suspects DNA extraction will be a long shot, until she notices that the cigarette was actually hand-rolled.

Presumably, the saliva that's in between these two creases is somewhat preserved because it's not exposed to the elements in any way. It's kind of smashed between the two pieces of paper. Kayser is able to extract a partial genetic profile. Before she compares it to William Cordero, Kayser runs the sample through Kodas, the state's DNA database. When she does, Kevin Bailey's murder investigation takes a turn. She goes, I did get DNA off the cigarette butt, and I do have a match.

Of course, we're all assuming it's going to be Mr. Cordero. Then she gave me the bad news as it was not. It came back to Robert Vaughn. Robert Vaughn is a convicted murderer. now sitting in a California prison. What's more, Vaughn carries a history of attacking hitchhikers. Robert Vaughn had attacked a man with a rock while the two of them were camping together in a rural area,

very similar to this murder. It's definitely one of the reports that jumped out of both of us, and, you know, that was almost T for T the motive that happened in ours. Bailey and Kiley do background on their suspect. Deep in the paperwork, they discover a second connection to the Sullivan murder. In reviewing Mr. Vaughn's rap sheet, I see that one of his aliases is Robert Holt, H-O-L-T. I go through the case. I find a scrap of paper that was written by Detective Ralph Mays at the time.

On that scrap of paper, I find the name Bob Holt. In 1975, a 20-year-old named Heidi Bohan, I'd a student named Bob Holt as a possible match to a composite sketch of the killer. Bailey tracks down Bohan and emails her some recent photos of Robert Vaughn. I just asked her, look at the photograph and tell me if this is the person you knew is Bob Holt back in 75. When I opened it, I actually immediately said that's Bob Holt. You coupled that with the DNA evidence, his violent history and the assault that he did with a person that survived with the rock in the head.

And, you know, this looked like a sure thing. Tim Kiley might think it's a sure thing, but assistant DA Richard Martin, however, feels otherwise. I told him, I need a confession. I need this guy to admit that he did it or an eyewitness that saw him do it. Because right now, he can't say that he was not at the scene. We can prove that without any doubts at all. We have to show that he was involved in the homicide. Bailey and Kylie need more than a cigarette butt to make their case against Vaughn.

In September 2004, they decided. decide to sit down with the suspect and see if they can get him talking. I told him, well, we're here investigating a homicide that occurred about 30 years ago. And I think that maybe you can help us. Robert Vaughn doesn't really want to talk, but remains intrigued as to how and why detectives suspect him in Sullivan's death. He seemed very curious as to why we were there. We told him was a homicide.

In our minds, of course, he knows why we're there very, very well. Tim told him we're going to get there. get there. And what Tim told him is you're going to love it. But you're going to tell us your story before we tell you ours. Vaughn is serving 15 years to life on an unrelated murder charge and is up for parole in a couple years. Bailey lays out a few hard truths for him, what his life will be like if Vaughn refuses to talk to police. And what I told him is, you know, you've been before the parole board and you've been denied. And you plan on going again. And this case is not going to go away. And you're the guy that did it.

Now you can go before the parole board every five years for the rest of your life saying, I don't know anything about this case, and I'll be sitting in a chair behind you saying that you're good for it. I said, or you can probably for the first time in your right life, in your life, do the right thing for the right reason. And he said, I think I can clear this up for you. He goes, I can tell you the caliber of the gun. And that started the dialogue for the interview.

We had an argument that I could give what it was about. We had a fight or something. So when he was asleep, after the argument, he's sleeping. Yeah. What happens after? Yeah. Do you remember how close you were or how far away? What I was.

Robert Vaughn provides Bailey and Kylie with a full confession and eventually pleads guilty to Sullivan's murder. He's sentenced, according to 1975 laws, to a term of seven years to life. William Cordero is eventually cleared of any involvement in the murder, although the existence of his print on the victim's wallet remains to this day. a mystery. After his confession, Vaughn presses detectives, still curious as to how they got onto him, what clue he left behind. That's cigarette butts what brought us here. And I get plugged into this case and there's a cigarette butt at the scene and I submit that and guess what? I hit something in you.

So we're on a cigarette butt? I kid you not. I promise. Robert Vaughn says something like, isn't that something? You know, it's my favorite show. It's a cold case documentary. I love that show. And one of said, well, maybe someday you'll be on that show. Thousands of free movies and TV shows. You swear? If I'm mine, I'm dying. This is the mindset. Free.

This is the mantra. Free. This is the... Like Titanic, Dream Girls and Gladiator. Are you not entertained? And TV shows like Survivor? SpongeBob Square Pants, the Fairly Odd Parents and Ghost. Pluto TV is always free.

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