Cold Case Files - REOPENED: A Killer's Skin

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

After a pair of attacks on older and middle-aged women, police believe they are on the trail of a sexual predator turned murderer. But when a third victim shows up who doesn't fit the profile, the investigation is forced to take a hard turn. Sponsors: Earth Breeze: Subscribe to Earth Breeze and save 40% at EarthBreeze.com/COLDCASE  Uqora: Get proactive about urinary tract health and get your life back today. Text COLD to 64-000 to get 30% off *By Texting 64000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Uqora. Message and data rates may apply. Not all carriers covered. No purchase required. Terms apply, available at Uqora.com. Reply "STOP" to stop, "HELP" for help. Simplisafe: Customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes at simplisafe.com/COLDCASE . Go today and claim a free indoor security camera plus 20% off your order with Interactive Monitoring. ZocDoc: Go to Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours.

Hey, Cold Case fans, we have something special for you. We're bringing you double the episodes every week. We know you dedicated fans need your fix in between new episodes. So every Thursday, we are back bringing some of our best episodes from previous seasons. Let us know which classic episodes you'd like to hear again in the comments. And don't worry, we'll see you back here every Tuesday for all new episodes of Cold Case Files 2. Now, on to the episode. It was someone who was clearly stalking an individual for the purpose of sex.

Six weeks later, he sees some more prey, follows her into her house, attempts to take sex. And when she defends herself, he is not afraid to turn in a moment and turn it into a homicide. In January of 2000, Albany Police Sergeant P.J. McKenna received a strange call. An elderly woman had been found wandering around the streets of Albany, lost and confused. Some neighbors found her and helped her home, but when police arrived in the scene, they found blood and evidence of an attack. The woman, who was 85 years old, had dementia and couldn't remember much about what happened, only that someone had hurt her. Who would attack a helpless old woman, and why?

Unfortunately, it would take another five years and two victims to bring this woman's attacker to light. And the trail along the way has left some to wonder, could these attacks have been prevented? From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. I'm Brooke, and this story, adapted from a classic episode of Cold Case Files, is told by the one and only Bill Curtis. What are we bringing upstairs? We got the bedspread from Martha Montalvo's house.

Inside a police evidence room, these men are collecting items from a cold case. Each of these items have significant DNA evidence. All these were marked out. Among them, a bedspread. The killer actually would have wiped his hands on this comforter as he left. A pair of jeans. You can actually see there is blood all over her jeans. And a steel bar. Someone had stood over him and repeatedly thrust out with this. For Sergeant P.J. McKenna, unwrapping the evidence is easy. Unwrapping this investigation, however, is another story. One that takes him back to a cold night in Albany six years earlier. We'll call one out to the patrol division for a woman in the area, and there was a complaint of a potential assault.

At 8.30 p.m., Albany Police Detective P.J. McKenna rolls to 799 Myrtle Avenue. An 85-year-old woman has been found wandering the neighborhood. We were informed that she was in the early stages at the very least of dementia and really couldn't provide much, only to say that he had hurt her. Inside the old woman's house, McKenna finds blood and evidence of a possible rape.

Nothing was taken, but the phone cords were pulled out. It was the phone cord that was actually tied up in a knot, as if used for holding something, tying someone up. With no identified suspects, the case is not a priority for DNA testing. Eventually, a DNA profile is extracted from semen found on the victim's body and entered into the state's data bank as an unsolved case. With no one in the neighborhood being able to know anything, nothing off-canvas, nothing off registered or known sex offenders,

it went cold. We had no leads in this case. 50-year-old Martha Montalvo was discovered stabbed to death by her landlord, who looked through a rear window and saw Martha laying in a pool of blood. As we went into the house, you pass through a living room. Less than two months later, Detectives McKenna and Tim Carroll arrive at the apartment of Martha Montalvo, a 50-year-old woman with a history of mental illness.

Inside, they find a dead body and a crime scene already several days gone cold. There was no forced entry. There was no struggle by the doors. She was decomposed. Advanced stages of decomposition. Her buttocks was propped up on some pillows. She was partially naked. There was a towel draped on her face. She was blood-soaked. And we had both said, after speaking to dozens of people in the area and seeing the scene that this was going to be a forensic case. It was going to be something where we were going to need a forensic break. An autopsy reveals no evidence of semen in the body.

The victim's bloodstained jeans and bedding are sent out for DNA testing. Meanwhile, the story gets a lot of play in the press. A quiet Albany neighborhood filled with families has been plunged into concern and fear by the murder of a woman who lived alone at 1071 Madison Avenue. The news coverage generates attention, then a phone call, and Detective McKenna's first solid lead. And a phone call came in from a person who identified himself as Adam Scope. He told us that he was a friend of hers and that he was concerned

about what had happened and he'd known her for a long time and he wanted to offer his assistance in any way to the investigation. We were just acquaintances. We saw each other once in a while. Like Montalvo, Adam Scope has a history of mental illness,

along with a history of sexual violence towards women. McKenna decides to pay him a visit. When we went to speak to him, it was very difficult to keep him on point on any question. He would go off on tangents. They were like playing good cop, bad cop with me, you know. We could attribute some of that to his telling us that he was on medication and that may affect his thought process,

but it was difficult to tell if he was avoiding questions and being evasive in his answers or if he was actually having a problem coming up with clear thoughts. They were pressuring me to admit to killing Martha, and I didn't, I wouldn't, and couldn't, and I just felt like I was being arrested without being told I was being arrested. After two interviews with police, Scope realizes he has become a suspect in the murder and decides to approach the media with his side of the story. Adam Scope lives just a few doors away from what was once the home of 50-year-old Martha Montalvo. We interviewed Adam Scope after he contacted us here at News 10.

He said that he was very interested in trying to figure out who killed Martha Montalvo. TV reporter Sarah Welch interviews Scope. Like detectives, she finds his story has some holes. When we interviewed him, said that he clearly had an alibi for the night that Martha Montalvo was murdered. However, at the time, police had not yet released a specific date as to when Martha was killed. Well, you and your girlfriend saw Martha on Sunday and her body was found on Monday, the coroner says that Martha had been dead for at least

a couple of days. No. At one point, he did tell us that he didn't know Martha very well. However, in the next breath, he told us that he loved her or he thought that he loved her. His comments were at times very unpredictable, borderline strange and bizarre. Bizarre maybe, but to detectives, Scope's performance on the evening news is something they've seen before. My first thought was Wayne Williams from the Atlanta child killings. He was very close with the police, very close to the investigation, and very close to the media at the same time. I mean, that was a classic scenario. So here we have a person doing the same thing, and you have to ask, is this person following that same pattern? Is he directly involved?

Police suspect Adam Scope might be their killer. The problem is a matter of proof, until a forensic scientist takes a look at the victim's bloodstained jeans. The minute I got those jeans out of the bag and looked at them, I thought, this is going to be a very interesting case. Well, I remember that I was called upstairs and told that this was a high-priority case. On March 24th, Dr. Allison Eastman takes possession of a pair of blood-stained jeans. They once belonged to Martha Montalvo, a woman found stabbed to death in her apartment. On the front side, there was a single drop of blood located right near the pocket that looked like it was totally unrelated to the other blood. It was assumed all the blood on the jeans belonged to the victim. Eastman sees the small round drop and thinks otherwise. What I thought it might have, what might have happened is that someone leaned over her body and the blood fell from that individual, as though the individual was leaning over her

body and blood fell, possibly from a cut, and deposited like that, forming a small circle. Eastman's suspicions are well-founded, as a male DNA profile is developed from the stain. This is a vial of Adam Scope's blood, which we obtained via search warrant. Detective P.J. McKenna has one good suspect in the case, an acquaintance of the victim named Adam Scope. He looked good in the beginning. He did.

He fit a lot of the criteria that we were looking at, and when it came back negative, it was just, okay, well, let's move on. Scope is not a match for the mysterious bloodstain. An initial run through the state's DNA databank also fails to generate a suspect. Two years later, however, detectives get a hit, not to an individual, but to the unsolved rape of an 85-year-old woman committed just six weeks before the Montalvo homicide and only five blocks away.

In the first case, it was someone who was clearly stalking an individual for the purpose of sex. And six weeks later, he sees some more prey, follows her into her house, attempts to take sex. And when she defends herself, he is not afraid to turn in a moment and turn it into a homicide and kill her to put her down. Detective McKenna believes he is looking for a sexual predator, one who targets older or vulnerable women. Detective McKenna, however, is wrong. We'll be right back after this break. When you go shopping for laundry detergent, have you ever stopped and noticed just how much plastic is being used? The jugs are hard to reuse, and 91% of that plastic just ends up in landfills and oceans, harming our planet and marine life. I can't help but think there has to be a better way. Luckily, we found one

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plus 20% off. Detective PJ McKenna of the Albany Police Department had an unsolved rape of an 85 year old woman with dementia and an unsolved murder of a 50 year old woman with mental illness, which appeared to have started as a sexual assault. McKenna felt sure these cases were connected and that a sexual predator was on the loose and wasn't afraid to kill. There'd only been one real suspect, but despite his odd behavior and inconsistent story, the DNA evidence ultimately didn't support his involvement. Four years later, the attacker struck again. And as it turned out, McKenna was right about those two cases being connected.

His theory about why, though, was very wrong. We have a apparent homicide of a 68-year-old Alexander Street resident. George Young, an Army veteran, lived alone in his Alexander Street home. It was so violent. Right here, when they came through the door, he had to stand up to open the door. And he was laying here

almost like in a fetal position. Just after 12 noon, P.J. McKenna and Detective Jack Grogan respond to the home of 69-year-old George Young. Inside, they find Mr. Young beaten, bloody, and dead. And the pool of blood that Mr. Young was laying in, you could see that it was an extremely violent crime that happened here. And when forensics got here, as you looked up to the ceiling, you could tell that whoever was doing it was lifting and striking and lifting

and striking and moving around him as they hit him over and over again. And you'd have blood spatter all the way back in an outward pattern away in every direction. Detectives find an unlocked safe near the body, indicating robbery to be the likely motive. Also near the body, a bloody piece of steel, otherwise known as rebar. Just looking at the position of George Young and the way his head looked, to me, that looked pretty obvious that that was probably the murder weapon.

An autopsy determines that George Young was both beaten and shot. While detectives don't recover a gun, this news bolsters their theory that this was a two-man operation. When one of them brought the safe down, they stopped right about here, and they put the safe on the floor while this was going on. The other one was beating George still. He beat him numerous times in his head about the body. From the injuries that we could see from the autopsy photos,

it was numerous to count. Detectives hit the street, hoping to find out who knew what about George Young's money. Everyone in that part of town, which is economically depressed, said that George had money. He wouldn't let people in his house unless he knew who they were. And that's one of the things that piqued our interest when we found Mr. Young. How did somebody get into his house? Not by not forcing the door.

He had a lot of men, so he had to know who they were. Detectives learn of a handyman who did odd jobs for the victim. Someone George Young would have allowed into his home. Someone already familiar to police. This was someone who had a checkered history. His name had come up in a previous investigation, a previous homicide investigation. His name was on a short list of possibilities amongst street people. The handyman is brought in for questioning and denies killing Young.

We also asked him to take a polygraph, which he initially agreed to, and then, as hard as it is to imagine for a person who's in his 40s, refused to cooperate any further unless his mother could be in the interview room with him at all times. He didn't want a lawyer. He wanted his mom. The handyman ultimately refuses to take a polygraph. Meanwhile, evidence from the crime scene is examined for possible clues. Of particular interest, the probable murder weapon. Ultimately, the decision was made by our forensics unit to send it out for identification in the hopes that whoever had taken this,

I mean, when you use this with such force, if you're not wearing gloves, you can cut your hand on the metal, or as it twists in your hand, you can leave skin scrapings behind. The actual piece of rebar in the case was longer. On February 11th, criminalist Nicole Zavotek examines the piece of rebar used to kill George Young. She focuses on the end with very little blood, believing it to be the end most likely handled by the killer. I took another swab towards the very end, and that's the swab, DNA-wise, that ended up yielding a mixture profile.

It's a mixture of blood from the victim and a little something from the killer. Most likely it's skin cells, shed skin cells or from sweat. The partial profile is plugged into CODIS. It doesn't match to any offenders in the system or to a voluntary DNA sample taken from George Young's handyman. But investigators do get a match, one that takes them by surprise. And we got a case-to-case hit on this case with two other previous cases. A hit to two crimes that have already been linked, the sexual assault of an 85-year-old Albany woman

and the murder of 50-year-old Martha Montalva. It was an unbelievable revelation when it came back from the lab. Scary. These people, they had no connection to each other. They had none. DNA has connected the dots for detectives. Three crimes, one person. Now the hunt is on to find out who.

It was someone who was very much alive, someone who was still very much active, unfortunately, and had expanded not only their area, but their MO. It hurt, you know, to know that someone who had eluded us, eluded me initially, for two and a half years, had gone out and killed somebody else. And, you know, there's a sense of responsibility there. The first two had a sexual nature to them. There was a rape, and then there was a murder in the middle of an attempted sexual attack. And they're females, both with some form of mental illness. And now you have a 65-year-old male in the complete opposite end of town who's bludgeoned

to death. I mean, it took a right-hand turn. It made no sense initially. The lack of any identifiable pattern makes the investigation difficult. Then McKenna takes yet another call from the forensics lab. You know, that day when DCJS told us all three cases had a name to it, I mean, Jack and I wanted to run out the door. All right, guys, let's do it. Let's talk about UTIs. I know, I know.

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Going through his criminal history, very petty stuff. I mean, some drug arrests and that attempted robbery, but other than that, nothing, nothing major. Nothing major, and no substantial ties to any of the victims. A DNA match, however, would seem to be enough for a conviction. You know, how many crimes could he have committed? Assistant DA Michael McDermott disagrees. If the only proof we had was that we found his DNA at the scene,

I mean, that's really compelling proof, but I think the jury's going to want more. Like, how did he get there? You know, who was he? Why was he there? How did he get in? You know, what happened after the fact? And without a statement from him, we wouldn't be able to fill in those blanks. You know, if you have a skilled defense attorney, they could come up with a million cockamamie reasons why their client's DNA was, you know, found at a crime scene, you know?

The order from the district attorney's office is simple. Get a confession. Detectives McKenna and Grogan pack their bags and head upstate for a chat with their suspect. PJ and I were expecting to see a monster, and we didn't see that. We saw what appeared to be a very scared 20, 22-year-old kid. Detectives sit McGill down and get down to business, beginning with the most recent murder. We just started with, you know, did you ever know George Young? First he denied it, asked him if he'd ever been in this house, old George's house, and he said no.

Detectives know they've caught McGill in a lie and begin to unpack their evidence for the suspect. Well, let me show you some paperwork. This is your DNA, and this says that the odds of another person having the same DNA are one in something like 26 billion. So do you want to tell me how it is that your DNA is in this house? Do you want to tell me the truth now? His shoulders just seemed to, they went down like, you know, now it's time. You know, it's time to tell us what actually happened.

Ramon McGill confesses to beating George Young to death, but he says he didn't do it alone. He names another person as the one who shot Young, the same handyman who refused to take a police polygraph at the time of the murder. Once old George opens the door, Ramon starts to hit him. They demanded where the safe was because they knew there was a safe in the house. When the safe was brought down, he asked him the combination. The combination was wrong and he started striking again and again.

And with George's dying breath, he gave the correct numbers to the combination to stop the beating. McGill says his accomplice then shot George Young in the head, and they took off with about $1,200 in cash. Detectives next press McGill about Martha Montalvo. He was confronted again with the DNA, and he was told, you told us what you did on Alexander Street. You told us that the DNA down there was yours.

So how do you explain your DNA? And there was this pause, and he looks out the window, he looks back, and he said, okay, that was me. I was there. I killed her. McGill again takes detectives back to the night he murdered Martha Montalva. He told us that he had followed her into the house. He told us that he attempted to engage her in kissing and petting, and he started to get her clothes off when he said she freaked out. There was a little bit of a struggle. Ramon stated to us that Martha grabbed the knife and he took it away.

He stabbed her 16 times in the chest. Detectives now have two confessions and go for the third. PJ said to Ramon, he said, we need to discuss one more incident. Is there any place else you think we might find your DNA? And that's when he brought up Myrtle Avenue. P.J. said, what happened on Myrtle Avenue? He said, the old lady in a question form. He was asked, what about the old lady?

And he said, yeah, we had sex. Ramon McGill pleads guilty to the murders of Martha Montalvo and George Young and to the sexual assault on Myrtle Avenue. All that's left, sentencing. This is a matter of people versus Ramon McGill. In an Albany courtroom, Ramon McGill faces his past, etched into the faces of the families of his victims.

But today, there is a sense of relief. Perhaps now we can begin to heal, knowing that this, his rampage of lawlessness, his campaign of death, has come to an end. My mother was a very beautiful light, like at sunrise. Her light was put out when Ramon McGill came into our lives. And I want you to think about how I felt after seeing this new scooter parked in his house, blood spattered all over it. Ramon, why did you kill my brother George? What did he do to you to cause you to be so brutal? When it's the killer's turn to speak,

Ramon Miguel fails to muster up an apology or take responsibility. I would like to say my prayers go out to the victims' families and also that justice is not served here today because the killer, Madman, still runs free and I'm being punished for it. The killer McGill refers to, the accomplice he says shot George Young, a handyman police had looked at in 2004. The challenge now is to develop sufficient evidence apart from what McGill has told us to prosecute this other person, because under New York law,

we cannot use a co-defendant statement as a basis for a prosecution. We need some evidence, whether it's testimonial or whether it's physical evidence, linking this other person to the commission of the crime, and the police are working on that now. As for Raymond McGill, he will serve 40 years to life for his crimes. Investigators say two of those crimes might have been prevented had the killer been forced to provide a DNA sample for a 1999 misdemeanor conviction.

Right now, if you're convicted of a misdemeanor, you have to give up your fingerprints. That's 19th century technology. That's the way they identified people back at the turn of the century. Why not include their DNA, which is, you know, cutting-edge technology. If you look at the facts of this case, it just cries out to expand the group of people included in the database to include all offenders. It's an idea supported by Sergeant P.J. McKenna,

who six years later finally gets to see his suspect off to prison. It was mission accomplished, two out of three. Two of the cases are completely closed. One of the people involved in the most recent homicide Will be eligible for parole When I'm in my mid-80s So I don't think that he's going to be a threat to society anymore And in the back of my mind There's still a little bit of work to be done.

In our research, we couldn't find anything about this handyman since the case went to trial. No articles, no court records, nothing. Raymond McGill's name, however, has been in the news several times in the last few years. Raymond is still in prison, but his case became a prime example cited by the state of New York in 2012 as the government pushed to expand its DNA databank. Prior to 2012, New York collected DNA samples from only around 48% of offenders convicted of crimes. That meant people like Raymond McGill didn't have their DNA collected

when they committed crimes like petty theft, as Raymond did in 1999. Six months later, he assaulted the elderly woman and shortly after, murdered Montalvo. The government argued that had Raymond's DNA been collected in 1999, the other crimes could have been prevented. The DNA databank expansion went through in 2012, and now an additional 400 crimes, including all penal law misdemeanors, require a DNA sample to be collected. This story was adapted from A&E's Cold Case Files, which was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by the one and only Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case F files at aetv.com

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