Cold Case Files - Midnight Attacker

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

From 1997 to 2002, Long Beach, CA detectives attempt to track down a serial predator known as the Belmont Shore Rapist. Treat your hair with MADISON REED! Get 10% off plus FREE SHIPPING on your first Color Kit with code "COLDCASE" at www.madison-reed.com   If you love Cold Case Files -- check out A&E's PD STORIES with TOM MORRIS, JR! https://www.podcastone.com/PD-Stories 

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. Hi everyone. If you go to the episode description, you can check out our sponsor deals. Our sponsors make it possible for you to download cold case files each week for free. So check out the promo code deals. You might just find something you like, something you need, or a great gift for your friends and family. On to the show. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Use your best judgment. I talk a lot about people living in small towns being especially surprised when a terrible crime is committed. Because living in a small town gives people a sense of security.

This case didn't happen in a small town. It was in Long Beach, a city in Southern California with a population of around 450,000. But even with nearly half a million people living in Long Beach, it still felt like a small town in a lot of ways. Many of the residents of Long Beach lived in large houses in upscale neighborhoods. The streets were quiet and clean. People knew their neighbors. And knowing that gave the people who lived there a feeling similar to that small town sense of security. No one expected someone to break into their home. No one expected to get raped. But it happened. And in this case, it happened in Long Beach more than 20 times. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files.

I'm Brooke, and here's the matchless Bill Curtis with a classic case, The Midnight Attacker. It got to be about 9.30 or 10 o'clock, and I went out to return a video and I noticed that the deadbolt had been tampered with. A Long Beach woman we will call Jane leaves home and walks to the local video store. At the back of her mind, a hint of concern about the lock on her front door. I thought maybe I should do something, you know, maybe someone had tried to get in

and all the possibilities ran through my mind of calling a friend or calling the police, wondering what they would do. In the end, Jane returns home and gets ready for bed. I think I was pulling my nightgown on over my head, so my arms were up. He leapt out of the closet and grabbed me and threatened me, told me to be quiet and cooperate or he would get ugly. The intruder wears a mask, gloves, and a pair of underwear. He forced me down on the bed and eventually raped me. At one point, he asked me if I would forgive him for doing this, and I said that I would pray for him.

Two hours later, the rapist slips out the back door and into the night, and Jane calls police. I went to the hospital as a part of a sexual assault response team call-out and met the victim there, who had been transported by patrol. J. Craig Newland is a sex crimes detective with the Long Beach PD. We had her examined, did a forensic medical exam, and that evidence was packaged and preserved. She seemed to be coping fairly well, although she was tearful and obviously afraid. Initial testing yields a sample of her attacker's saliva.

With no suspect identified, however, DNA testing is put on hold. The evidence is packaged and preserved. Meanwhile, Newland begins his investigation. What I did was I issued a press release and just asked for the public's help of anybody who might have been seen that was acting suspicious in the neighborhood or anybody who fit that general description that people thought might have been involved. The press release generates a few leads, none of which pan out.

Six months after the attack, Jane's rape remains unsolved, and her case is shipped to the cold files. I didn't really feel that he had singled me out or was attacking me personally. It felt like, you know, this is a crime that's been committed against women since the beginning of time, and I was unfortunately an easy enough target for someone with this criminal mind to take advantage of. A rape victim sits in her home very much alone and very much afraid.

Unfortunately, she is about to have a lot of company. Obviously, this was an area here that was very close in proximity. of company. Obviously this was an area here that was very close in proximity. Detective Catherine Kriskovic works in the Long Beach Sexual Assault Unit and is at the center of a growing investigation. In the 18 months since Jane was attacked, 10 more women have been assaulted. All of the attacks centered in the upscale towns of Belmont Shore and Belmont Heights in Long Beach, California. We needed to solve this case.

We did not want any more victims. Detectives pull each case file and compare notes. What they see is not one, but two serial rapists on the loose, each with a distinct M.O. The first, dubbed the Belmont Shore Rapist, targets older women in Belmont Shore. Women

40s up into 79. And he would commit the sexual assault and flee. The second rapist, known as the Belmont Heights rapist, works farther inland, targets younger victims and likes to linger after the attacks. He would actually spend time with the victims, in some instances several hours,

and it was a date to him and that is how he described it to the victim. He would cuddle with them. He would converse with them. Sketches are circulated but generate few leads. Meanwhile, detectives warn the public to be especially careful to lock their doors and windows. It's disheartening that there's another victim, but in the same sense that adrenaline kicks in to go out there and do whatever it is that we can.

It's just after 10 p.m. and Detective Kriskovic rolls out to the most recent attack. A 54-year-old woman raped by a masked man. It is an M.O. that fits the Belmont Shore rapist. Kriskovic cordons off the block and calls out the dogs. At this point, we were using as many tools as we could possibly come up with. And one of the tools was the bloodhound team and they collected several scent pads from the area of the entry as well as the suspect's exit and from that point they used that scent pad and the dogs trailed them to an apartment complex. Detectives begin knocking on doors and talking to tenants.

One in particular catches their eye. A man who looks a lot like sketches made of the Belmont Shore attacker. A man named Jeffrey Grant. We believed that we finally had a break. Ultimately, we had three victims positively ID'ing Jeffrey Grant. Grant is arrested, charged with rape, and put behind bars. A sample of his saliva is sent to the LA Sheriff's Crime Lab for comparison with DNA from three of the Belmont Shore rapes. Everyone involved agrees. Grant is their man.

And science will cinch the case. Basically, our job is to screen for biological fluids. We primarily analyze blood, saliva, and semen for purposes of DNA testing. On October 1st, criminalist John Bockroth sends semen from two of the rape kits along with Grant's saliva sample to an outside lab for testing. Three months later, the results are in. He was excluded as a suspect on the two cases that came back as a match to each other.

DNA confirms the Belmont Shore attacks are the work of one man, but not the work of Jeffrey Grant. After three months in stir, Grant walks out of jail a free man. It was back to square one and back to digging and trying anything and everything that we can do because we knew that we did not have that serial rapist. The digging begins back at the property room where detectives pull rape kits from the second string of attacks, the Belmont Heights series.

In January of 2000, DNA analysis on that group is complete. As expected, the cases yield the same profile and are connected. But then the case takes yet another twist. The profile also matches the Belmont Shore series of rapes. It was surreal. To have two series going on in your city split and then all of a sudden put together, we realized that we had an extremely horrific series going on. One man responsible for attacking 18 women over the past four years.

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Use code COLDCASE. That's code COLDCASE. From A&E, the creators of Cold Case Files, comes your next true crime podcast obsession, PD Stories. Every week, law enforcement professionals join host Tom Morris Jr. from America's Most Wanted and Live PD to share their experiences, insights, and perspective on policing.

You're not going to want to miss this show. Be sure to subscribe on Podcast One, Apple Podcasts, and many other podcast apps so you can get new episodes every week. With at least 18 confirmed victims, a serial rapist was on the loose in Southern California. Investigators thought that they had found the perpetrator. He was even identified by three of the victims. But in a surprising twist, the DNA evidence didn't match his profile. With their only lead and only suspect ruled out, the investigators were forced to accept that the perpetrator was still on the loose and likely still hunting his next victim.

It's kind of one of the few areas of the city that still has a town, neighborhood feel. A lot of people that grow up there stay there. And a lot of people, you know, didn't have locks on their gates. A lot of people slept without locking their doors, you know, when you just don't see that too often anymore. Tracy Menzer is a reporter for the Long Beach Press-Telegram. Crime is Menzer's beat. The Belmont Shore Rapist, her headline story.

You saw people putting in security systems, the little signs advertising security systems were cropping up all over. We joked like weeds. They knew they had somebody in their midst who was watching them and preying on people, and they did not know who it was. The attacks began in 1996. By 2000, at least 18 women have been assaulted.

We were like the funnel. Everything had to come through our task force office. In the spring of 2000, Estella Martinez and Catherine Kriskovic act as point on the investigation. Despite four years' worth of legwork, the ladies quickly realize, in terms of leads, they have a whole lot of nothing. Everything that we normally depend on to try to solve cases, everything was out the door in this case. This case was going to be solved by DNA, and we were going to have to be awfully, awfully lucky to come across that one particular swab that was going to match.

Kriskovic calls in reinforcements from CCAT, a covert surveillance unit, and asks them to hit the streets looking for suspects and collecting DNA samples. Our unit was eight detectives and one sergeant, so we had nine undercover vehicles. Mike Dugan acts as the investigation's eyes and ears on the street. He works the neighborhoods where attacks occurred, looking for anyone and anything unusual. People dressed in dark clothing, walking down streets, looking at residences, somebody walking up a driveway

and then returning to the sidewalk. Because there was so many descriptions of the suspect, he was white, he was Hispanic, he was Italian, he was light-skinned black, we didn't know what to really look for. If a suspect is ID'd, a marked car is dispatched to stop the individual and question him. We will request a swab from him, and it usually was a consensual swab, which most of the people submitted to. Over the next two and a half years, cold case detectives swab and eliminate 81 suspects.

Meanwhile, the Belmont Shore rapist remains at large, doing what he does best, stalking and attacking women. It's past midnight, and 71-year-old Margaret Gentry goes to sleep with her front door unlocked. Around 1 a.m., she awakens to a pair of hands at her throat. He kept pulling my head back and telling me not to scream. I want to live.

If it means not screaming, so be it. You'll do anything when it's your life. He took me around the bedroom into the bathroom and stretched me out on the counter. Raped me there. Then he come back and put me back in the bed and raped me again. So I was raped three times. He rubbed my back. Calm down, calm down, calm down.

You can't calm down. When you're frightened half to death, it's pretty hard to calm down. After an hour and a half, the attacker is finished and leaves the house. Margaret Gentry gathers herself, finds a phone, and calls police. I refuse to be intimidated. I won't let him get the best of me. When that phone rang, the heart sank. It was, please don't let it be another hit. Squad cars converge on Margaret Gentry's neighborhood, but the Belmont Shore rapist has once again

disappeared. He will reappear for the last time six months later. I wasn't able to breathe, so for a while I really thought, you know, this may be it. On November 7th, Julie Adler awakens to a man on top of her. A shirt is tied around his head, and he is ripping at her clothes. And then I just told him, you know, I'll do whatever you want. I'll do whatever you want. The man eases up, and Adler thinks fast.

Once I realized there was no knife or no gun, then I just kind of started stalling. thinks fast. Once I realized there was no knife or no gun, then I just kind of started stalling. Adler asks if she can use the bathroom. Once inside, she locks the door. He started banging on

the door, and the only option I had was just to scream out the bathroom window and hope that somebody heard me. And the next thing I knew is he's coming at me from outside. He's reaching in the window. Adler bolts out of the bathroom and heads for her front door. She is tackled in the hallway and fights to stay alive. At some point in the struggle, his hand slipped in my mouth, and I bit him.

Just total instinct, I just bit him, and that was enough for him to stop. The attacker flees. Adler runs to a neighbor and calls 911. Kriskovic arrives on scene. In this particular area, the homes are so close, everything is fairly compact, that it would be literally less than a block would be the first perimeter,

then the second perimeter, then an outer perimeter. Less than ten minutes after the attack, a shirtless man on a bicycle spins out of an alley. An officer stops the man and notices he has a bloody finger. The biker identifies himself as Mark Wayne Rathbun and agrees to provide a saliva sample. We learned after all these years not to get too terribly excited because of the letdown. And we were used to letdowns. When Kriscovic runs Rathbun's criminal history, however, pulses quicken.

His record includes arrests for peeping in women's windows and residential burglary. He works odd jobs, a lifestyle that would allow him to roam freely without raising eyebrows. We were at that point sitting on pins and needles waiting for his analysis on that oral swab to come back. Two days later, the DNA is in, and the police hold a press conference. To the citizens of Long Beach, sleep well tonight. Sleep well. We have the suspect. Rathbun's DNA provides a full genetic match to semen collected in the Belmont Shore rapes.

He is charged with 47 counts of sexual assault and brought to an interview room for questioning. After six long years, Kriskovic comes face-to-face with her suspect. I want you to speak from the heart. I said I can't undo what I have done, and I sincerely regret that I wish it never happened. Okay.

In August of 2004, Rathbun is convicted of raping 14 women and sentenced to more than 1,000 years in prison. For Catherine Kriskovic, it is the end of a journey and the end of a nightmare. Justice was served. It was one of the best feelings in the world to be able to say that there was an end, that it's done, it is over. I'm just glad that he's behind bars and that he's going to stay there. Whatever happens to him in jail is fine.

Margaret Gentry is a rape victim, one of thousands each year. For Gentry, telling her story is the first step out of a world of shadow and back to living her life. And I think that anybody that has been raped, I think that they need to talk about it. I think that as long as he's got you intimidated till you can't talk about it, you're never going to get over it. On the day that Mark Rathbun was arraigned,

his mother, who was 75 at the time, apologized to his victims. She then looked at her son and asked him why he did it. She didn't get an answer. Mark Rathbun is currently incarcerated in California. He's 49 years old. He'll be eligible for a parole hearing in 2030, after his 60th birthday. Cold Case Files the podcast is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve

Dolomater. Our associate producer is Julie McGruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me at Brooke Giddings on Twitter and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group Podcast for Justice. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash real crime. Hello, PD Stories listeners. I'm Tom Morris Jr. And I'm excited for an all new season of PD Stories with episodes dropping every Tuesday. We've got some incredible

stories from officers across the country and a new focus on community impact. From U.S. Marshals to Chiefs, Majors, Sergeants, and more, you'll hear from those truly making a difference in the communities they serve. Here's some of my favorite moments you can expect to hear in this season. And she was hanging 11 floors up and I was holding on to her arms and screaming for help. It was a point in my career when I realized, you know, how serious what we do is and that we are responsible for the lives of other people. So I was in the back, we were doing the checkpoint and I hear a shot fire. The moment I hear that, I'm thinking in my mind, one of my Marines, he's shot. The minute I got into law enforcement, I said, I want to find people that don't want to

be found. So it's like an adult game of hide and seek, a serious adult game of hide and seek. We remember the first time that we saw crack in the late 80s, and it just changed the whole face of the drug trade here and the violence that came along with it. There were people running across the bridge to get out of the city. There was all smoke in the air, and someone's driver's license landed right in front of me. From the World Trade Center? Yes. Wow.

I remember picking it up and really just, I didn't even know what to think. It really was a nightmare. I felt like I was a role model for my community. Being black, it really benefited me. I still have the same and only cell phone number I've ever had from the police department. I still have it. And one of the reasons is because so many people in the community had that cell phone number. How did you get into law enforcement? Because I got arrested. When I was 16 years old, got arrested for egging police cars. Made a big impression, turned my life around. Our job is to also be a vanguard for communities of color because they are being affected by police interactions, right or wrong. When the interaction occurs, the point is that we have to do something to address

those issues. Back in the 60s, nobody ever heard of PTSD. But when you get out there and you see the dead bodies, it takes your toll on your psyche. Get ready for some hard but important conversations about their toughest cases, policing in America, and some of the biggest challenges facing our country today, from mental health to race relations and more. Join me as we look behind the badge and walk a mile in an officer's shoes. Stay tuned. PD Stories is coming back with new episodes every Tuesday.