Cold Case Files - Second Story Rapist

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

After a predator known as the second story rapist terrorizes Sacramento Country in California investigators are unable to pin down a suspect. Years later,when the statute of limitations is nearly up, the DA uses and unprecedented legal strategy in the pursuit of justice. Progressive - Progressive.com  Rosetta Stone - Cold Case Files listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off when you go to RosettaStone.com/coldcase 

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. In Sacramento County, California, in the darkness, just before dawn, a rapist slips through windows and doors, attacking as his victims sleep. In October of 1993, 500 Point West Avenue. In January of 1994, 1100 Howe Street. In each bedroom, the story is the same. Each victim lives alone in a second floor apartment. Each survives. Each describes the same attacker. Description was a male black in his early to mid-20s, 5'7 to 5'8, a little bit overweight, roundish face. A sketch is developed and circulated through the community. Soon after, phones inside Sacramento's police department begin to light up with leads. I would estimate we received over a hundred tips on who we should look at. I know we took a lot of photographs and ID'd a lot of people. That's how you do it. That's

how you eliminate people. Snapping photos, comparing fingerprints, eliminating suspects. It is the heavy lifting of a criminal investigation, and it takes time. Meanwhile, a rapist waits in the shadows for the right moment and his next victim. He's a predator. He's an animal. He has no respect for women. I think he got more comfortable and more brazen every time because I think he thought he was invincible. Nobody's going to catch me. In May of 1994, a young woman named Paula

lives alone in a new apartment. She is cautious, locks her doors at night, and sleeps with a gun under her pillow. Early one morning, Paula wakes at five and jumps in the shower. As the water runs, an uneasy feeling washes over the 24-year-old. I thought I was overly paranoid. When I was in the shower, I had heard a noise,

and I opened up the curtain. Didn't see anything, so I closed the curtain. With nerves on edge, Paula peeks out two more times and sees nothing. After that, I had noticed the light in the vanity area had gone out. And when I opened up my curtain, he was standing there with a gun. And I screamed like I never thought I could ever scream. Holding Paula's own gun, the man orders her into the bedroom and throws her down on the bed. He had taken the pillows and put them over my face, and I don't know how many times he threatened to kill me. It was just a nightmare. A half hour later, the rapist leaves,

and Paula calls the police. Sergeant Mickey Links hears the radio call. As soon as the dispatcher voiced the call that a black male suspect had broken into her home and she had been sexually assaulted, we knew it was part of the series. These were pre-planned. He didn't just happen to be walking by. I mean, he knew who was in that apartment if he's going to pry the window open, because there were no men at home. He did walking by. I mean, he knew who was in that apartment if he's going to pry the window open. Because there were no men at home. He did his homework. He knew who he was looking for.

Paula goes to the hospital, where a nurse collects semen from the assault. The attack's now number three, and the man detectives call the second-story rapist appears to have no plans of stopping. We beat the streets looking for this guy. I mean, every deputy that worked patrol, especially graveyard, because we knew that's when he was out moving around. For months, the investigation goes nowhere. The only trace of the rapist, the terror he left behind.

I can't think of anything more frightening than being in your home, being in your bed or in your shower, and being confronted by home, being in your bed, or in your shower, and being confronted by somebody, a stranger. On an August night, a young woman named Gwen goes to bed, alone, in her second-story apartment. She has seen and heard of Sacramento's second-story rapist and knows how he operates. The heat inside the young woman's apartment, however, is stifling,

and she decides to take a chance. It was a hot night, so I left my window partially open with the screen, thinking I was okay. Gwen sleeps until dawn, when she is awakened by a noise at her bedroom door. I see a man shrouded in heavy clothing, the sweatshirt way over his face, and I got very upset, and I said, who are you? Why are you here? Get out. And before I even finished the words, he was on the bed with a knife. The attacker threatens to kill Gwen if she does not cooperate. He had me remove the covers and he raped me. And then he came out and I don't know what he was doing. He was just touching my body.

And then he raped me again. And I was crying and just wondering if he was going to kill me or not. You know, the thoughts go through your head. It's light outside when the rapist finally leaves and Gwen picks up the phone. Sacramento Police Detective Pete Will Gwen picks up the phone. Sacramento Police Detective Pete Willover responds to the call. We were told exactly what happened, the M.O., the physical description of the suspect. There was no doubt that it was the same individual. Investigators sweep Gwen's apartment for evidence. The sheets were collected.

We were able to observe what appeared to be obvious fresh semen on the sheets. Semen is also collected from Gwen's body. In 1994, blood typing is the extent of forensic testing available to Sacramento police. The sample is typed and matched to evidence from the previous second-story rapes. Once again, the community is alerted. More leads flood in and just as quickly run dry, until police arrest a burglar with a story to tell. It's been great learning Spanish with my daughter this summer using Rosetta Stone, and now that she's going back to school, I'm looking forward to continuing lessons on my own to keep up with her. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program,

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His history, at least four assaults in 10 months. Investigators exhaust every clue, sketches, fingerprints, blood typing, and finally, DNA. Specifically, an unknown genetic profile developed from semen samples collected at two of the crime scenes. By then, we had entered the DNA from both cases or submitted both of the DNA samples to

the Department of Justice database. A run through a DNA database compares the profile to thousands of felony offenders, but fails to turn up a genetic match. The identity of the second-story rapist remains a mystery until a man already behind bars decides he wants to cut a deal. In February 1995, Detective Mike Ticino works the burglary detail. He's looking for a lead in a string of unsolved break-ins and sits down with a thief already doing time. His name is Ed Salas and Ed likes to talk. I found his information is what we call a term in our business, golden. And everything he had told me, in fact, nothing ever panned out to zero. Everything he told me, every person he ever told me was right on the mark.

Tachita takes Ed for a ride around town, a criminal tour of sorts. Salas directs and Tachita drives. The points of interest? Holmes Salas claims he and his partner, a man named Paul Robinson, burgled. Salas admits to dropping Robinson near Target apartments and waiting in the car while Robinson broke in. The informant goes on to explain that on occasion,

Robinson would return with more than stolen goods. Sometimes he would come back with stories of the women inside the apartment. In one case, he told me that he had raped a woman and the woman had, or the victim, had demanded that he use a condom and provided him with a condom. Tachita passes the tip along to sex crime investigators. On February 10th, sexual assault detective Richard Carlson follows up on the lead in a sit-down interview with the informant. What did he tell you when he came over? He said it was bad, you know, bad, bad.

And she just gave him the condom and started poking him. So this girl's a stranger. He goes into Bergerize's apartment and she, when she wakes up, there's a strange guy in the bedroom and she just throws him a condom and he has sex with her? That's what he did. Not in your wildest dreams does that happen? That's what happened. He raped her? Okay, he raped her, but he came with, she had given him the condom. Okay, anything else that he Salas says the incident happened at 1100 Howe, the same apartment complex as one of the unsolved second-story rapes. We went back to each one of these cases and looked at Paul Robinson as a suspect in those cases, both submitting latent print comparison

against his known prints that were on file, Paul Robinson's, and the latents that had been lifted at the scene. And in each one of those cases, none of those latents came back to being Paul Robinson's. Blood typing keeps Robinson in the pool of potential suspects. But 14% of the Black population is in there too. DNA testing will tell detectives for sure if Robinson is their man. In 1995, however, the process is expensive, time-consuming, and reserved only for the most solid of suspects. Unfortunately, we didn't feel that we had enough to arrest Paul Robinson for any one of those rapes

because we had nothing more than the fact that Salas stated he had taken him over to that apartment complex and seen him go into these apartments. So we just did not believe that we had that much. With that, Paul Robinson is set aside as a suspect. And the cases of the second story rapist are placed back into the cold files, where they will sit for four more years. Cold Case Files is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming, like when your favorite podcast is playing and the person next to you is talking and your car fan is blasting, all while you're trying to find the perfect parking spot. But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, like quoting with Progressive

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The victim is a woman named Gwen, the fourth victim of the second-story rapist, and the only case not barred from prosecution by California's six-year statute of limitations. Willover knows the clock is ticking. The statute will run out on Gwen's case in just a few months, and the second-story rapist will be beyond his reach forever. I anticipated that the statute of limitations were going to run out in August for the very last case. I telephoned a local district attorney, Ann Marie Schubert, and I was aware that she was involved in a new program dealing with DNA. That he had this unsolved case and he had gotten a call from the property warehouse saying they wanted to destroy the evidence because the statute was coming up and it was a case that's been sitting on his desk

for six years and was there anything we could do with it? On any other day, Shubert would have told Willover she couldn't help him. This day, however, is different. There was a case in Milwaukee and I had read it in the Sacramento Bee, basically saying that they were filing a John Doe warrant based on DNA.

A John Doe warrant, an innovative way to file charges without identifying a suspect by name. Instead, Schubert proposes to use the suspect's unique DNA profile as an identifier. Four days before the statute of limitations is set to expire, a judge accepts the DA's application and issues an arrest warrant. Lori Earle is an assistant prosecutor with the

county. That is great. Everything's great, but we still don't have a suspect. Right. So on that end, we have initiated prosecution and saved the statute of limitations from running, but we'd really like to find out who this person is. Finding that person turns out to be easier and faster than anyone expected. Three weeks after the arrest warrant issues, Detective Willover gets a call from the state crime lab. I got a phone call telling me that we had a positive match to Gwen's case. The match's name, Paul Eugene Robinson, the same man detectives suspected five years earlier. DNA testing connects Robinson to three of the second story rapes from the early 1990s, as well as an additional rape from 2000. California's statute of limitations, however, only allows for Robinson to be charged in two of the attacks.

In December 2002, Paul Robinson's trial begins with a motion for dismissal. The defense attacks the arrest warrant issued on the case, arguing it violated Robinson's Fourth Amendment right and that it did not identify him with a reasonable amount of certainty. District Attorney Jan Scully. Arguments were made, motions were filed, the judge took it under submission, thought about it for a while, came back to court about a week later and said, you know, in this day and age, when you're talking about reasonable descriptors, you can change the color of your eyes,

you can change your facial appearance, your body appearance, you can change your social security number, your driver's license. I mean, frankly, there's little that you can't change in this day and age and technology. But the one thing you can't change in this day and age and technology. But the one thing you can't change in this day and age is your DNA. Frankly, it is the best descriptor or identifier we have to date. Motion denied.

Motion denied. And Paul Robinson's best chance at walking out of court a free man disappears. As a jury listens, a parade of victims take the stand, each describing how Paul Robinson attacked and raped them. After that comes forensic evidence, conclusively tying Robinson to Gwyn's rape in 1994. The DNA evidence for the attack in 2000 is not so convincing. A statistical probability linking Robinson is one in 180,000 African Americans, giving the jury room for reasonable doubt. Robinson is found guilty in only Gwen's attack. Still, the conviction helps victims come to terms with the monster in their

memories. After I stood next to him and I watched him and I heard about his pathetic life. He just shrunk. He just became this pathetic human being. He's clearly proven time and time again that he just was not fit to live in our society. And he deserved to be caged, locked up like the animal he is. And while the women sleep easier with their attacker off the street, scars remain. In a way, it's like murder kills a piece of you.

And I don't know how to ever get over it completely. I don't think you can. In 2001, the state of California amended its statute of limitations to allow a one-year window for bringing sexual assault charges from the date a DNA match is made, regardless of how much time has elapsed since the attack. The intent is that in the future, rapists like Paul Robinson will not be able to find refuge in the statute of limitations when faced with a definitive DNA match. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay,

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