Cold Case Files - The Shopping Cart Killer

Episode Date: December 19, 2017

Detectives track a serial killer and predator through the projects of East Harlem, who keeps finding new and creative ways to dispose of bodies, and elude police.

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all the way up to Harlem, overlooking the East River. Various footpaths, bridges, and tunnels cross over, under, and alongside FDR Drive as it goes. On January 24, 1991, a man walking his dog along the footpath that passed under the Wards Island Bridge discovered a body. She was a young Latina girl, barely a teenager. She lay there still, lifeless, but with no clear cause of death. Her hands were at her side, and we couldn't quite tell exactly what had killed her at that time.

They couldn't tell what killed her, because there was no blood. One-third of all murder cases in America remain open. Each one is called a cold case, and only 1% are ever solved. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. NYPD Detective Gary Dugan responded to the call. It was probably about 13 degrees. The wind was whipping up, and her jacket was opened.

An ambulance tech began inspecting the girl's body at the scene. When he lifted up her sweater, it quickly became apparent what had killed her. There was a stab wound in the center of her chest, and further examination revealed that she had a ligature around her neck, and there was hardly any blood coming from the stab wound. An autopsy by the medical examiner would later confirm that the girl had been strangled and stabbed, not just once, but three times in the chest. Bruising around her pelvis indicated a possible sexual assault as well, a theory bolstered by the recovery of a single foreign

pubic hair from the victim's body. If she'd been attacked in that spot, though, there would have likely been a lot of blood from the stab wounds. Since there was no blood, that signaled to Dugan that her body had been dumped under the bridge after the fact. She almost certainly had been killed somewhere else. Where, though? And who was this young Jane Doe? Dugan got an answer to the second question in almost no time. I guess we were there probably about 45 minutes when we heard that there was a female at the 23rd precinct reporting that her daughter was missing. 13-year-old Paola Iera had left school earlier that day, but never made it home. And her family of nine was worried sick. With a picture of their Jane Doe in hand, Detective Dugan and his partner, Detective Maria Bertini, are able to confirm with the family that the girl under the bridge and their missing daughter are indeed one and the same. She had recently come from Cali, Colombia.

She did not speak English. She was going to school to learn it. Paola was a very sheltered girl. She wasn't allowed to go out alone. She wasn't a street child. So now you're totally confused because she wasn't out. How did this happen? According to Paola's uncle, she hadn't gone missing on the walk home from school. Not exactly. While school was the last place she was seen, she was heard from around 4.45 p.m. She buzzed her apartment. Her grandmother and uncle were at home at the time, and they asked on the intercom, who is it?

And she replied, it's me. They buzzed her in, and she never reached her floor. Detectives began canvassing the building, questioning other residents and showing Paola's picture, trying to find anyone who may have seen her that afternoon. Two detectives reported that they located a woman who was on the elevator with a girl. She stated that the girl got off first, and then there was another man who got off at a different floor, and then she got off.

Police believe this witness was on the elevator with Paola. The other person on the elevator was another resident in the building, a man by the name of Warford. Dugan found Warford's apartment number and knocked on his front door, but got no answer. With Maria, I went back there probably six times. Each time there was no answer at the door, I would leave my card. So that was one individual that I definitely wanted to speak with, but never had the opportunity. With no clear suspects from the apartment building, police developed a theory that Paula may have been stalked, that her attacker may have been someone who followed her home

either from school or from somewhere along the way. We started to trace the girls' movements up First Avenue from 102nd Street to 110th Street. And we checked every single store. We stopped and spoke with people along the way, people who looked like they would be out there every day. We spent countless hours doing that. One person who stood out was a local grocer

who seemed to have a particular interest in Paola, as well as a car, which police thought could have been used to move Paola's body from the apartment building to the spot under the bridge where it was dumped. So detectives searched the grocer's car. And in searching this car in the glockopalmer, we found a drawing. And it was a drawing of Paola in the casket, wearing the dress that she was wearing in the casket. And we thought that that was strange. Why would somebody have that?

So now we were already looking at him, now we're looking at him a little bit more. Personally, I don't have much trouble imagining a man who was so affected by the sudden, violent death of a local teenager, one of his regular customers, and that he expressed his grief and emotion in the form of a drawing. Either way, police found the drawing suspicious and asked the grocer if he'd be willing to submit DNA samples to compare with those found at the crime scene.

We collected some hairs from him, both pubic hairs and head hairs, to be compared with the hair that was preserved at the lab from this crime scene. We've mentioned it on this podcast before, but it bears repeating that hair match analysis has a flawed history as a forensic technique, something that the FBI formally acknowledged in 2015. Fortunately, it wasn't an issue for the grocer. That turned out to be not a match for him. Detectives Dugan and Bertini were running out of leads fast.

Paolo's murder case was going cold, and they were powerless to stop it. There's a basic theory in any given homicide. If you haven't solved the case within 72 hours, stop, go back, and start over again, which is what I did countless times with this case. I went back and I reread all the reports, and I just couldn't see it. I wish I had seen it back then.

What Detective Dugan doesn't see is a pattern, a connection between Paola and other victims of unsolved crimes in the East Harlem neighborhood. See, Paola Ayera wasn't the first victim of her killer, nor would she be the last. Six years later, in September of 1997, firefighters respond to a call in East Harlem. The fire is coming from the roof of a high-rise apartment complex. At first, it appears to be a pile of trash that caught a spark and burst into flame. It doesn't take long for the firefighters to put it out. But as the water does its work, they realize what they thought was trash

was actually a body doused in gasoline instead of blaze. Detectives arrive on the scene quickly, but the damage is already done. Here's Detective Thomas Lombardo. When I get up there, there was also a lot of other people up there, but you could see the outline of a body that was burnt beyond recognition up on the roof landing. And unfortunately, the crime scene was ruined because of the fire department when they put the water on,

but it wasn't their fault because, of course, they didn't know that there was a body over there. I imagine the firefighters would have had an obligation to put out the fire whether they knew there was a body or not. But regardless, the water had washed away any possibility of finding blood or bodily fluids which could have led the police to a killer. All that was left were a few bits and pieces of burnt clothing and jewelry, which indicated that the victim was a young woman. Well, your first step is you have to try to find an identification on the body. And of course, if there's no ID or anything at the scene, we have to go knock on doors throughout the whole project facility,

which is a lot of buildings. Police go door to door in the nearby buildings, but are unable to get any information about the burned girl on the roof. So they start combing through missing persons reports and put out word of their murder to precincts all around New York City. We got a response from a Bronx precinct who had a missing person report of a young woman by the name of Jo Hallis Castro. That's Scott Wagner, the NYPD detective who worked this case.

Wagner took the burned jewelry to the family in the Bronx, who reported Castro missing, and they confirmed that it did indeed belong to her. Dental records then confirmed that the woman from the roof was Johalis Castro. But identifying Castro only led to more questions. Like, what was a girl from the Bronx doing on a rooftop in Harlem? I read her diaries. I spoke with her family members. I spoke with her friends.

I spoke with the father of her child, with her ex-boyfriends. The father of Castro's child, in particular, stuck out to the police, partially due to the history of domestic violence. So Detective Wagner brought him in for questioning. He said, yeah, I hit her. I had my beefs with her. She sent me to jail. Yeah, we went through trying times, he says,

but kill the mother of my child? Especially in a way like that? I said, he says, no way. Wagner began to follow up other leads and assemble a timeline of Jill Hollis' final hours. Her phone records showed that she had made several calls from her home in the Bronx to an apartment belonging to a woman named Cynthia Key in East Harlem. I spoke to Ms. Key on the phone.

I called up, identified myself. I asked her if she knew this person. She said, no. She says, but I have to Ms. Key on the phone. I called up, identified myself. I asked her if she knew this person. She said no, but I have a son who is about that age. Maybe he might know her. She said he wasn't home at the time. So I left her my name and number and I said, do me a favor, when he comes in, have him call me. Detective Wagner began looking into Cynthia Key's son, Aaron, and finds that he had spent some time in prison for robbery.

The next day, Aaron calls Detective Wagner and agrees to come into the station for an interview. When we came in, one of the first remarks that he made was something to the effect of, Wow, that's your house. What a damn shame. Look how pretty she was. And basically that's where we started. He was very well-spoken, very charismatic, a good-looking man.

He was dressed casually, yet clean and neat. He would look me dead in the eye. Every question I asked of him, he seemed to answer readily. He seemed to be forthright. Aaron confirmed that he did know Joe Hollis. The two of them were friends. According to him, they had made plans to meet up on the day she was murdered, but she didn't show. He says that he grew concerned and that after not hearing from her, he called her residence and the parents had told him that she hadn't come home and they hadn't heard from her. The interview went on for about an hour, and Aaron readily answered all of the detectives' questions, apparently ready and willing to cooperate. Ultimately, Wagner let him go. But as the investigation stalled and began to go cold, there was something about Aaron Key that Detective Wagner couldn't let go. My partner and I basically sat down, and we just said, maybe we're missing something.

Maybe there could be something staring at us right in the face, and we're missing it. One year later, in June 1998, a resident of a high-rise housing project makes a discovery as she descends from her 16th floor apartment. The elevator's broken, so she begins her long descent down the stairs. She only makes it down one flight when she comes across a woman lying in the middle of the 15th floor landing. At first, she thinks the woman might be asleep,

but then quickly realizes she's encountered a dead body. Here's Detective Mike Ulocco and Detective Scott Wagner. At the time we found her, we weren't sure exactly what had happened to her. Here's Detective Mike Yulako and Detective Scott Wagner. face and upper body, but she was nude underneath, no bra, no shirt. The woman was Rashida Washington, a local 18-year-old who had gone missing while walking home the night before. According to the medical examiner, Washington died by asphyxiation from compression on her chest and neck. That sounds like she was choked or strangled. She was also sexually assaulted, and the ME was able to get a DNA sample of her attacker. The investigation was slow going. After numerous interviews, police still didn't have a viable suspect.

Then, six months later, forensic scientist Karen Dooling was working evidence kits from unsolved homicides. She entered the DNA collected from Machida Washington's murder in the New York City DNA database and got a hit. It wasn't with another murder case, though. It was a match with an unsolved rape case. The victim was ID'd in the system as Rape Victim 1. Here's Karen Dooling. The case from Rape Victim 1 was originally believed to be part of a different pattern. And as it turned out, that case was not part of that rape pattern,

but had created a new pattern with homicide victim Rashida Washington and this rape case. Not just this case, but three unsolved rape cases were linked to the same person who assaulted and killed Rashida Washington. So, in order to solve their murder, detectives start working the rape cases. Here's Detective Robert Mooney, who investigated the case. When we looked at those cases and we looked at Rashida, there was a lot of similarities. The physical characteristics of the victims, they almost all looked like each other. In speaking to the rape victims themselves, police were able to establish a pattern.

The perpetrator would follow the same sequence of violence with every one of his victims. They also took descriptions of the attacker and turned them into composite sketches, which were then printed on flyers and posted around East Harlem. Residents of the neighborhood took note of the flyers and began calling in tips. The strongest tip led them to a particular complex of buildings where residents told police they should speak to a man named Ace. As a result of that information, we searched the computers and find out that a man by the name of Aaron Key, who also used the name Aaron Warford, has the

nickname of Ace and lives at 420 East 111th Street. And when we get a picture of him, he very eerily resembles the person in the sketch. Do those names sound familiar? Aaron Key, a.k.a. Aaron Warford, a.k.a. Ace, you're probably putting it all together right now. And so will detectives. After the break. If you're like me, your favorite part of going to the mall as a kid was stopping by Mrs. Fields. It'll probably be your favorite part of going holiday shopping this year, too.

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COLDCASE to save 20% on any Mrs. Fields product, including their best-selling Peace, Love, and Cookies tin, which comes with holiday favorites like Nibbler's Bite Size Cookies, Brownie Bites, and more. Just click on the microphone and enter promo code COLDCASE to get 20% off any product at mrsfields.com. Hey, my name is James Petrigallo. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Please join us every single Tuesday for Crime in Sports.

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an athlete, we break him down, we make fun of everything he's ever done. But in order to do that, we have to build up and tell you all about their career and get you to what, James? To grace. And then watch them fall from grace as they inevitably do. Join us. Big criminals, small criminals, sports you've never heard of, doesn't

matter. It's the crime, it's the comedy, it's such a good time. Join us every Tuesday for Crime in Sports. You can join us every Tuesday at PodcastOne.com, the Podcast One app, or subscribe on all Apple products. Find us every Tuesday and laugh at people. While investigating the murder of Rashida Washington, detectives are pointed toward a man from the East River Landing apartment complex who goes by Ace, a nickname for Aaron Key, who also goes by Aaron Warford. He had a horrendous reputation over there. They would call him Chester the Molester. And we find out that there was like a constant parade of young girls

that would go into his apartment with him. And then he would brag to the boys in the neighborhood about how he was having sex with all these kids. Investigators think they're closing in on their suspect. Aaron's connection to the crime seems too close to be pure coincidence, but they still need evidence. And knowing that a man who's openly known as Chester the Molester is still walking the streets, officers need to find a solid connection, and fast. So they revisit the physical evidence in the murder of Rashida Washington, the 18-year-old girl who was found dead in a stairwell. They also review the evidence in the three rape cases that share a DNA match with Washington.

They comb through every piece of evidence in all four cases looking for a connection to Key. And they find something. It isn't much, but the investigators discover a sweatshirt left behind by the attacker in one of the rape cases. Inside that sweatshirt, they find a piece of a tag from a laundromat. Investigators canvas the area, questioning employees at laundromats and dry cleaners all over the neighborhood. And they get lucky. One dry cleaner recognizes the ticket as his. He's even able to run the number on the ticket through his customer's database.

And he produced a list of customers, and there on the list was Cynthia Key, which is Aaron's mother. The piece of evidence solidifies investigators' suspicions. Aaron Key is now at the very top of a short list of suspects in at least one murder and three rape cases. But detectives think he can be linked to even more crimes. They dig back into their piles of cold cases, looking for rapes or murders that match Key's M.O. Two cases immediately stand out, the murders of Paola Aiera and Johalis Castro. Aiera, the 13-year-old whose body was found dumped under a bridge in 1991, was last seen in the elevator of her apartment building with a man who was known to his neighbors as Aaron Warford, now known as Aaron Key. Six years later, Castro's burned remains are found on a rooftop in East Harlem, and the man believed to have had last contact with her?

The victim's friend, Aaron Key. But unlike several of the cases we've heard about on this podcast, investigators weren't able to DNA test dozens, even hundreds of suspects. In New York City, the laws about DNA sampling were strict. In New York State, the defendant's rights are vehemently protected by the law. And in order for us to get a warrant for anything, you have to have probable cause. At this stage of the game, we did not have probable cause. We were working on building probable cause. Detectives meet with Assistant DA Richard Plansky to determine their next move.

Here's ADA Plansky. So at that point in time, we were in sort of a tricky position in that we were all quite sure that we knew who this serial murderer and rapist was. And yet he's completely at liberty and there was nothing we could do about it. So the strategy was, let's see if we can find a way to get his DNA. In 1999, a full eight years after the first body surfaced, detectives are as certain as they can be that Aaron Key is their man. They believe he's responsible for four rapes and three murders. But to really seal their case, the investigators need DNA evidence,

and they're willing to get creative in order to get it. Detective Robert Mooney explains their strategy. The orders were, if you see him, follow him wherever he goes. If he spits on the sidewalk, get out with a paper towel and try to sop it up. If he throws a cigarette butt away, get that. If he throws a soda bottle away, go in the garbage and get it. Whatever we have to do to get something that's gonna yield a DNA sample. Officers and detectives track Key's every move

for more than a week, but they come up empty. No discarded gum, no cigarette butts, no soda bottles. It was almost as if Key saw them coming. We had detectives who didn't fit in that well in that neighborhood, and we're pretty sure that Key knew he was being followed. He was easily able to evade them. And the bottom line was we were not successful

in obtaining DNA that way. We had to get lucky again before we got his DNA. After 10 days, the surveillance is called off and investigators are forced to look elsewhere for the DNA. But it seems like they might be out of opportunities. Key appears to know he's being followed, so he's being careful. For a while, at least. Investigators catch a bit of luck when Aaron Key is arrested on petty larceny charges in February of 1999. It's not enough to hold him for rape and murder though, so they need to act quickly. Again, they get creative. Detectives Robert Mooney and Joel Potter bring Key in for questioning, but before they do, they fill the interrogation room with tissues and soda and cigarettes,

hoping he might leave behind some DNA evidence. Our intention was to try to get the DNA legitimately but surreptitiously so that he didn't know that we were looking at him that way. Key's no dope, you know, so you have to play it, you know, kind of laid back. So we waited a while, and then we had him brought up by patrol, and we put him in the interview room. And Detective Mooney and I sat down, and we started talking to him. The detectives are careful.

They don't come right out with the rape and murder charges. Instead, they start asking Key about other crimes he might know about, and Key is more than willing to talk. He started coughing up all sorts of information about drug dealers in East Harlem, which all turned out to be complete nonsense, but Aaron is a very, he's a very narcissistic individual and likes to be in the spotlight.

Periodically, you know, I'd offer him coffee or a can of soda, or we had tissues, I believe, on the table, anything to get a shot at getting DNA evidence. But he didn't take any of it. Key isn't taking the bait, and detectives are running out of time, so they switch tactics. So finally we bring in the female detective dressed as the doctor, and she goes through her routine. Under the guise of being a medical examiner, the detective tells Key that the Department of Health is testing detainees for TB,

and she needs a sample of his saliva for screening. Key agrees to the screening and is given a consent form to sign. He reads it closely. And on that release it says that the saliva is going to be typed for DNA and will be stored in the medical examiner's data bank. Key literally had pen in hand until he read that last line, because we were watching him real close. And he just put the pen down, and he looked at us, and he said, I can't do this.

Then he told us he was a Jehovah's Witness, and that he couldn't do it. It was against his religion. It would be an invasion to his body. The detectives' last and arguably bizarre plan has failed them. So they step out of the interview room and regroup. And that's when Detective Joel Potter has a sudden burst of inspiration. So we're sitting there, you know, kicking it around. What are we going to do? Too bad, you know, it was a good shot.

And then it dawns on me, they feed these guys. So I hustle my butt downstairs, and I took all the coffee cups from his cell. Detective Potter gathers up five cups in total from Key's holding cell. Meanwhile, Key's arraigned on a larceny charge and gets out on bail. Now investigators are racing against time to find a positive DNA match between the victims and one of the cups. Every day that they wait, young girls all over East Harlem are in danger. Three days later, forensic scientist Karen Dooling

is rapidly testing the five cups. She swabs them all, then begins analyzing each for a DNA match. Almost immediately, she gets back a match, then another, and another. First she matches the DNA from one of the cups to the two rape cases. Then she tests it against the unknown profile in the Rashida Washington case.

It's also a match. Dueling as sure as she can be that the cup she matched to the rapes and murder is Key. But it's not exactly airtight. After all, there was another man in the holding cell that day. We knew that Aaron Key had drank from one of those five cups and that one of those five cups were consistent with the pattern, but you couldn't exactly link a particular cup with Aaron Key and to the pattern. The cup's DNA isn't enough to charge Key, but it is enough to provide probable cause.

Warrant in hand, the detectives head out in search of Aaron Key. Late on February 12th, Detective Rob Mooney knocks on the door of Key's East Harlem apartment, but it isn't Key who comes to the door. Instead, his roommate answers, claiming he has no idea where Aaron is or when he'll be home. Then, the roommate's phone rings. Clearly, by the look on his face, I say to him, is that him? And he says, yes. And Aaron's on the phone. So I take the phone from him, and I explain to him who I am. And he says, yeah, I know who you are. And I said, remember we spoke the other day in Midtown. He goes, yeah. He goes, you tried to get my DNA from me, but it didn't work.

He's having this whole taunting conversation with me on the phone. And I explained to him. I said, listen, every radio car in the city of New York has your picture in it right now. Everybody is looking for you. So why don't you just come in and get it over with? You're not going to get away from us. We're going to catch you. Key agrees to turn himself in and tells Detective Mooney that he'll meet him around the corner in five minutes.

He says, I'm going to come into 110th Street from 1st Avenue. I'll meet you in the street. He goes, but I don't want a million cops jumping on me. I said, all right, no problem. I said, I'll come down the street and I'll meet you. I said, but come in the block with your hands out where I can see them because we don't want to have any bad things happen. Detective Mooney heads downstairs and now on to 110th Street, waiting for Key to show his face. But five minutes go by, then 10. Key never shows up, which isn't a huge surprise to investigators.

Instead, Key goes on the run and he takes his girlfriend at the time with him, who's just 16 years old. But investigators are close on his tail. Responding to a tip from one of his friends, they follow Key to Newark, New Jersey, but he slips away. Then, four days later, Key makes a call to a friend, which is traced to a payphone outside a hotel in Miami. Detectives Rob Mooney and Daryl Hayes get on a plane and head south, hoping to catch Key, and hold him this time. Mooney and Hayes land in Miami,

and their first stop is the Miami Sun Hotel, where Key's last phone call was traced. They stake out the seedy motel and settle in for the long haul. But they don't have to wait. Within 10 minutes of their arrival, Key and his girlfriend, Angelique, appear, walking down the street in broad daylight. Key hasn't met Detective Hayes

before, so Hayes follows the couple into the hotel. He wants to be sure of what they're seeing and confirm that the man really is Key. When I walked into a hotel, Aaron Key and Angelique Stallings happened to be sitting in the lobby of the hotel. I go over to the vending machine with the chains, get a soda, and I stood right next to Aaron Key, opened up the soda. It actually splashes on both of us. I apologize. We have a discussion for a quick moment. Convinced as Key, Hayes leaves the hotel, signaling to Mooney that the suspect is inside. Mooney calls a SWAT team and they raid the hotel. The team does a floor-by-floor sweep,

checking every room. So as they did the floor-by-floor, it started out with 30 rooms left, 20 rooms left, 10 rooms left, five rooms left, still no Aaron Key and Angelique. The SWAT team gets down to the last few rooms, and a detective begins to wonder whether Key has managed to slip away again. Me and Detective Mooney are sitting in the lobby, and we're saying, this don't look good, it's getting ugly. Then, the SWAT team enters the very last room in the hotel. There, in bed, under the blankets,

they find Aaron Key and his teenage girlfriend, Angelique, who is a good ten years his junior. Key comes quietly. He seems to know it's all over. So when he comes down and he sees me standing in the hotel, he just looks at me and he's, like, very teary, and he goes, oh, I'm sorry, man. And I said, okay. Quiet now.

We'll talk later. Nearly 10 years after the murder of Paula Aiera and roughly 1,000 miles south of where the investigation began, detectives finally have their man in custody. In the Miami Police Department, detectives Mooney and Hayes sit down with Key. For seven hours, they question him about the rapes and murders. But Key stays quiet. He refuses to give

up any information. He's not upset. He's calm. Aaron Key is fascinating to talk with because everything with him is short and sweet. He doesn't want to answer a whole lot of questions in detail. He denied vehemently ever having committed any of these crimes. I explained to him about the DNA. He questioned whether or not it was possible for the lab to make a mistake because he never did these things. Confronted with DNA evidence, Keyes still keeps his cool. Then investigators show him something that cracks his veneer. They present him with a crime scene photo of 13-year-old Paola Ayera lying dead near FDR Drive. He put his head down and would not talk for one hour.

Put his head down. It was like he was stunned that we knew that that was him as well. No matter what we did, no matter what we said, we couldn't get him to respond for anything. Key does manage to say something. He asks for an attorney, and the interrogation is over. Disappointed, the detectives leave the interrogation room. Outside the door, Key's girlfriend, Angelique, is waiting. She asks Daryl if it's okay if she goes and says

goodbye to him before she leaves. And Daryl comes over and he says, can we let her do that? And I was like, no, absolutely not. She's 16. We're not letting her go in and say goodbye to a murdering rapist. That's not happening. But Hayes thinks Angelique might jar something in Key, so he's persistent. And eventually, Mooney allows Angelique to speak with Key, under the supervision of Detective Hayes, of course. He hugs her and they're kissing. He's telling her verbally, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And he says, boo, I love you, I love you.

And it's an emotional moment. With Daryl in the room, she says to him, What did you do? And he blurts out admissions about every single thing. All three murders and the rapes. The detectives finally have their confession, but they aren't quite sure of what to do with it. Technically, he had already lawyered up, so was the confession admissible?

I'll let Assistant DA Plansky explain. The problem being that it was also after he had asked for a lawyer. Now, the rule about that is once somebody asks for a lawyer, you can no longer interrogate them. However, that doesn't mean that if he decides to say something, you can't listen and write it down, which is exactly what Detective Hayes did. So that was an unexpected bonus that we had essentially a confession. In addition to his confession, detectives collect Key's hair, blood, and saliva to test against the victims. His hair is matched to the mitochondrial DNA testing to the pubic hair left behind at Paola's rape and murder. He's also matched the DNA found on Rashida Washington. And despite a lack

of DNA evidence in the burning murder of Johalis Castro, circumstantial evidence strongly links Key to that scene as well. Ultimately, Key is extradited back to New York where he's set to stand trial for four rapes and three murders. Detectives believe a guilty verdict is all but guaranteed. Then, Key pulls a twist that is nothing short of film-worthy. The best analogy that I can think of is the movie The Usual Suspects, in which Kevin Spacey is being interrogated by a police detective and using objects in the room, puts together this tremendously detailed fabrication that explains why he's innocent.

Inside a Manhattan courtroom, the district attorney lays out what he believes to be an open-and-shut case. He was a classic predator, a serial rapist, a serial murderer, who preyed on children in East Harlem for eight years. There were, I believe, about 130 witnesses, including the four living rape victims, the families of the young women who had been murdered, lots of forensic evidence, pretty much every type you can imagine. The prosecution makes a tight case.

Aaron Key operated in East Harlem for years, raping and killing young women whenever the mood struck him. One of Key's ex-girlfriends told the jury exactly how he was able to dump the bodies without attracting attention. Key's preferred mode of transferring bodies was to make them look like laundry, stuff these beautiful young women into shopping carts, make them look like dirty clothes, and wheel them around town, sometimes in broad daylight. And then he would just walk around the neighborhood until he found whatever building it was

that was going to suit his purpose that day, and then dispose of the body and the building. That's how Rashida got into 1345 Fifth Avenue. That's how Johalis got to the roof of 218 East 104. And that's how Viola got to 102nd Street underneath the footbridge, walked over there in a shopping cart. And while the prosecution presents their case, Key is calm. He sits at the defense table, typing on a laptop, taking notes.

Later, the prosecution would realize the notes were a blueprint for Key's bizarre, film-worthy defense. He was writing furiously throughout the trial. In the end, we realized that what he was doing was concocting his last great con, which was a conspiracy theory that he threw together to account for the devastating evidence that we had assembled against him. On December 13th, Key finally took the stand. His defense shocked everyone, but convinced no one.

According to Key, he was framed to cover up a massive black market organ scam running out of the New York medical examiner's office. He stated that he was given information that exposed the scam on a CD that was confiscated by the police when he was arrested. Then things took an even more bizarre turn. Here's assistant DA Richard Plansky again. Fortunately for him, he had written down the pertinent information from the CD on his T-shirt, which he happened to be wearing while he was giving his testimony, and had not washed in two years. He asked the judge if it would be possible for him to step off the stand, remove his shirt, take off the T-shirt so he could refer to his notes, and the judge, who was as shocked as the rest of us said yes so key then went in the back and came back a few minutes later holding this incredibly nasty t-shirt that had writing all

over it and used it to refresh his recollection and spin this tale that he made up from any available information that he picked up from the media and movies and books and the trial. Shockingly enough, the jury didn't buy it. After three days of deliberation, the jury decided it probably wasn't very likely that Key had found himself in the middle of an elaborate organ-selling cover-up. More likely, he was a vicious, calculating rapist and murderer who would say and do anything to avoid jail time. The jury convicted Aaron Key on four counts of rape and three counts of murder.

He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Rashida Washington and 25 years to life for the murders of Johalis Castro and Paola Aiera. For the four rapes in which the victim survived, Key was sentenced to a total of 475 years. So the bottom line is that Aaron Key's days of raping and murdering the little girls of East Harlem are over. There's a saying we work for God because a homicide victim can't speak for themselves. So you as a homicide investigator are there to speak on behalf of that person. You represent that person.

In this case, you get a little bit more satisfaction because you know a person like him would have continued to commit crimes like this. Other women would have been raped. Other kids would have been murdered. Even though he's behind bars, Aaron Key's story continues to unfold. In September of 2002, the New York City Medical Examiner's Office matched DNA evidence from a 1994 rape to Key's genetic profile, and an additional 20 years was tacked on to a sentence. There are a lot of labels that might apply to him. Some people might say he's a sociopath, narcissistic personality, psychopath. Use whatever words you want, but the bottom line

for Aaron Key is that he's evil. He is a person who enjoys inflicting pain on children. He enjoys that. He is the closest thing to pure evil that I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of bad guys. He's the worst by far. I don't feel great about labeling people with words like good and evil, but Key's story gets even worse. When we looked into what Aaron Key's been up to lately, we found something truly horrifying. Perhaps more horrifying than the crimes themselves. Key's found a sickening way to capitalize on his notoriety from behind bars. In 2009, it was reported that Key was selling handwritten cards from prison on the internet. While this might sound like the story of a man rehabilitated, or at least a nice arts and crafts project, it's the chilling opposite.

In the cards, which I saw on sale for $25 on a website that I refuse to name, Key painstakingly recounts each of his rapes, including graphic detail. I didn't read the letter I came across. I couldn't close the window fast enough. But I did notice that it's currently out of stock. I don't want to begin to think about what kind of person would purchase something like this, but the fact that Key is making a profit in such a perverse way is truly sickening. Given the evidence and Key's actions since the sentencing, I have no doubt that the detectives put the right person behind bars. Hopefully, that provides some solace to the victim's families as well.

Cold Case Files the podcast is hosted by Brooke Giddings. Thank you. This story was adapted from A&E's Cold Case Files, which was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at aetv.com and by downloading the A&E app.