Cold Case Files - The South Side Rapist

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

A series of brutal rapes in St. Louis goes unsolved for many years until a fluke audit of a license plate number leads police to the culprit.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy an...d California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's March 20th, 1992 in St. Louis, Missouri. At 2 a.m., 25-year-old Antoinette Covar gets into her car and drives home from work. Her boss follows behind in his car
Starting point is 00:00:38 until he sees Kovar pulls safely into the garage of her south side home. The woman then walks the path alone to her back door. She turns the key and steps into her kitchen. Inside, a masked stranger waits in the darkness. I had my hand on the handle, but he was behind me and had his hands over my eyes and my mouth and said, don't say a word.
Starting point is 00:01:01 I'm not going to hurt you. The next thing I remember, he was kind of dragging me from the back to the bedroom. Kovar feels a hard object pressed into her ribs. She's convinced it's a gun. I thought he was just going to kill me. I couldn't imagine why anyone would come in my house. Why would he be here?
Starting point is 00:01:19 What would his intentions be? The stranger's intentions are soon made clear. He started to pull down my sweatpants that I had, and I said, oh my God, you've got to be kidding me. And he threw me on the bed, and attempted to have oral sex with me. The intruder then shifts from performing oral sex on his victim to forced intercourse. During the attack, Kovar's bed sign phone continues to ring.
Starting point is 00:01:48 She tells the rapist it's her boyfriend, and he'll be coming home soon. With that, the man abruptly stops and heads for the front door. He said, don't you come after me or I'll come back? Well, at that instant, when I heard the screen door close, I said, that's too bad. And I jumped up, grabbed my, it was a robe sitting on my stationary bike. I grabbed that, wrapped it around my bottom, and I ran out the front door after him. But he was gone. I was in the middle of the street.
Starting point is 00:02:16 He was gone. Antoinette runs back to her house and dials 911. Police arrive and discover that the rapist entered through an unlocked window in the living room. They dust the house for fingerprints, but find only those of Antoinette, suggesting the rapist war. gloves. Meanwhile, Kovar is taken to the emergency room where an examination yields a sample of her attacker's semen and possibly his DNA. Now all she can do is wait for the police to make an arrest. For like the next three months, I got the alarm put on the house. I walked from my garage door to my back door with a nine millimeter, daring any individual to come up on me and attempt to do
Starting point is 00:03:03 what he had intended to finish, because I was going to let him have it. Antoinette never gets a return visit from her rapist. Twelve days later, however, another woman is attacked less than a mile from Kovar's home. This time, the intruder hits the woman with his fist, then orders her to disrobe. Again, he performs oral sex on his victim before forcing her to have intercourse. Detective Mark Chambers works the case. He would come through a window usually. He always wore gloves.
Starting point is 00:03:35 He would either cover the victim's face or his face. He was very careful about not being identified. We began to see a pattern developing, and we knew that we had a serial rapist. St. Louis detectives begin to watch for any other sexual assault cases fitting the perceived pattern of attack. Over the next two months, they identified four more rapes all occurring on the south side of St. Louis. all with the same ammo. A single man, face covered, wearing gloves, and carrying a gun.
Starting point is 00:04:08 He marks his crime with a signature behavior, performing oral sex on his victim before raping her. After the attack, he adds a final detail. He would make them bathe after he raped him, I guess to destroy evidence, he thought, you know, his thinking was he could destroy evidence that way. So he would make the victim bathe. DNA samples from the six rapes are compared against each other. and found to be identical, confirming for investigators what the patterns of attack have already made clear.
Starting point is 00:04:38 A serial rapist is stalking the south side of St. Louis. In May of 1992, St. Louis mobilizes a task force to hunt for a man detectives are now calling the South Side rapist. The team sets up a hotline and asks the city for help. Homicide Detective Cliff Sassinger joins the effort. The hotline was the main goal we had, people calling in with all kinds of tips, and we'd follow each lead out. Hundreds of leads came out on this, and a lot of good tips. More than 30 task force members hit the streets identifying hundreds of possible suspects and taking DNA samples wherever they can.
Starting point is 00:05:18 After two months, investigators have not been able to identify the rapist, and to make matters worse, he seems to have vanished. Every two weeks, we had one. up until about May 29. And then it stopped. Just stopped. And, of course, the theory was in. He was incarcerated somewhere. He was dead.
Starting point is 00:05:39 Or he just stopped, which I don't believe that. But some people believe that he may have just stopped doing it. While St. Louis detectives are glad the rapist has stopped attacking in their city. They are also running out of leads. My job as an investigator is to find out primarily who did it. and bring that person to justice. And, yeah, it's very frustrating, especially when you have so many of these crimes taking place
Starting point is 00:06:05 and you don't have anything. For the South Side rapist victims, not knowing who or where their attacker is, makes it even more difficult to return to a normal life. Just every person you see walking down the street, everyone you see that says anything to you think that could have been him. Why did he say hi to me? Why is he looking at me?
Starting point is 00:06:27 Does he know me? Did he know me? Did he come in my house? Does he know something that I should be knowing? And you just think that could be him. Three months after its inception, the task force is out of working leads, and there are no new cases to follow. The team is dissolved, and the investigation goes cold for nearly three years. It's January 19, 1995. At 1 a.m., sex crimes detective Mark Chambers is working alone at his desk, when the phone rings. On the line is a woman who has just been raped.
Starting point is 00:07:02 Apparently, the rapist came through a kitchen window because we found a kitchen window open where he had gotten in. Came through a kitchen window and came upstairs. As he investigates the crime scene, Chambers begins to remember. After three years, the M.O. of the South Side rapist
Starting point is 00:07:18 is still immediately recognizable. He was wearing a ski mask. He was armed with a gun. He had gloves on his hands. And he did basically the same thing that the Southside rapist had done in the past, including the bathing, made her bathe afterwards. And there was no doubt in my mind that it was a Southside rapist. Sex crimes Mark Kennedy begins his shift at 8 a.m.
Starting point is 00:07:42 When he walks into the squad room, he finds Mark Chambers waiting. If he's still there when we get there, it means that there was a serious crime committed in a previous evening. As soon as he came in the door, I said, Mark, you're not going to believe this. You know, the Southside rapist, I think he struck again. And his reaction was like, you've got to be kidding, you know, where. The case had been dormant for almost three years,
Starting point is 00:08:07 and people were kind of skeptical, but he was insistent that it was a Southside rapist. Everything he did was the same as in the past cases. And I just knew it was him. I don't know, it was a good gut reaction, maybe. I just knew it was him. Three years after his last known attack, it appears the Southside rapist may have returned, but St. Louis detectives need hard evidence.
Starting point is 00:08:34 They send a semen sample from their victim to be compared to the DNA profile developed from the previous assaults. Four weeks later, the results are in, and the DNA is a match. We thought, okay, now this guy's back. He's been on a hiatus for some time, but he's He's starting up again and he's not going to stop. In March of 1995, Detective Mark Kennedy and a team of sex crimes detectives renew the hunt for the South Side Rapist.
Starting point is 00:09:07 They dig through 10 years of unsolved rape files, trying to determine if any of them can be linked to their suspect. Detective Kennedy uncover several cases that share the South Side rapist's MO, but no DNA evidence. Kennedy continues to dig and finds two more rapes, occurring within a month of each other in 1988. We brought those cases out of our archives. We found the evidence.
Starting point is 00:09:33 We asked the DNA unit to run that. And we linked those two cases also to 1992. At the same time, detectives expand their investigation geographically, hoping to get a grasp on their suspect's reach. We decided to call a meeting of all the interested departments from the area to see if any of them had any similar occurrences. The meeting is productive. Reports of rape speak into filter into St. Louis sex crimes.
Starting point is 00:10:03 From across the Mississippi in Collinsville, Illinois, Dave Roth is a detective sergeant with the Collinsville Police Department. He liked to go through windows. If a window would be open, he'd just rip the screen out and go in, unlocked doors. He would be picking women that were by themselves a lot of the times. although that wasn't the case all the time. So the M.O.'s just matched. Roth submits two Collinsville cases he believes can be attributed to the South Side
Starting point is 00:10:34 Rapist. Two names, detectives add to a growing list of victims. We started putting details up in the middle of the night to where we'd have cops and playing clothes in neighborhoods to where had been hit previously. As they work, however, detectives come up short, as the South Side Rapist continues to stalk and attack. You feel like a moron. You feel like you're not doing your job.
Starting point is 00:11:00 So you get very frustrated. I spent hours thinking and rethinking about it. Here's a guy. You know he's going to hit and you know that the same people are going to be asking you questions as though what you're doing to solve this. You know it's coming and there's nothing you can do about it. On February 5th, 1995, the Southside rapist strikes yet again. 33-year-old Jennifer Jewer lives in a small house with her 8-year-old son.
Starting point is 00:11:27 After putting him to bed one winter evening, Jewel relaxes on her couch and begins to read. Within 30 minutes, she has fallen asleep. The next thing I knew, somebody apparently had shut the light off and was sitting on my lap facing me, pinning down my legs and arms and with a gloved hand over my face
Starting point is 00:11:50 like this. And he said, if you make any noise, I'll eff and kill you. You hear me? I'll eff and kill you. Jewel can't see her attacker's face because it's covered, nor does she know what he wants. This black dread just washed over me. I didn't know, really. But then he said something to the effect of,
Starting point is 00:12:16 I ain't going to do nothing. It ain't been done to you before. Oh, then I knew, and then I just tried to fight him, but he had me pinned down so hard and so tightly I couldn't get away. The man threatens Jewel her with what appears to be a gun, then he forces her into the bedroom and begins to sexually assault her. He put a t-shirt over my face and a pillow over my face later, so I couldn't see who he was. When the rapist is finished, he sits on the edge of Jewer's bed and smokes a cigarette while continuing to threaten her. He kept saying, you go to the cops or call the cops, I'll come back and I'll kill you. But at the same time, I was determined to go to the police.
Starting point is 00:13:08 There wasn't anything that was going to stop me. But I wanted to convince him that I wasn't going to go. Finally, the rapist gets up and leaves the room. When Jewor is convinced he's no longer in the house, she wakes up her son and drives them both to the police station. Detectives escort Jewel to the hospital where she is examined. Using a rape kit, detectives collect evidence from the victim's body and send it to the crime lab for DNA testing. Meanwhile, Jennifer begins to put her life back together. She starts by writing down everything she could remember about the attack.
Starting point is 00:13:44 She gives six typed pages to Collinsville detectives that read like an operating manual for the South Side Rapist. They read that thing and they said, this sounds exactly like the same man. This is the same modus operandi and everything. Six weeks later, DNA confirms investigators' suspicions and Jennifer Jewelor becomes the 13th confirmed victim of the Southside rapist. And it was him and I was so happy because
Starting point is 00:14:13 I knew then that there was a greater possibility of it being solved. We knew what his DNA was. We just didn't know who he was. So we started buckle swapping people, basically getting their spit and being able to get their DNA from there. And so we'd go after the white males in between certain ages, see if they had any connections to St. Louis as well as Collinsville or those areas in between.
Starting point is 00:14:41 After three months, detectives are still more. know closer to identifying the rapist. They do not, however, give up. You didn't want to see him to continue to do this and affect these people's lives like this. You just didn't want to see that. And so it causes you to realize the importance of the case, and it makes you want to focus even more on solid. It's May 10, 1995. St. Charles, Missouri is a suburb 20 miles outside of St. Louis, and the oldest town on the banks of the Missouri River. It's a quiet place where, on a warm spring evening,
Starting point is 00:15:26 windows are left open for the breeze. At 2 a.m., Sue Cleshulte wakes to find a stray beam of light outside her bedroom door. I saw a light come up in my hallway, and I thought, you know, I knew it was a flashlight, and I thought, I can't believe my son would try to sneak in the house with a flashlight. And then just seconds later, the flashlight was shining bright in my room. my face and the voice just said, if you scream or make any noises, I'll kill you. The intruder binds Sue's eyes with duct tape and tells the single mother he's going to rape her.
Starting point is 00:16:02 He gave me a list of sexual events that were going to take place. And, of course, I started praying out loud and telling me to be quiet, you know, when he first entered my bedroom. Kli Shulte continues to pray while the intruder attacks. After the rape was over, he got me out of my bed, put me in my shower, insisted I take a shower. So I'm thinking that this is going to be over shortly, I'm going to make sure that none of the evidence goes away. I just put the stopper in the bathtub and let all the water remain in the tub for evidence. And he left. Within 20 minutes, the police are knocking on Clayshulte's door.
Starting point is 00:16:40 They process the scene and send their evidence to St. Louis. A month later, DNA confirms what Cold Case Detects. already suspect. Sue Klesholti is yet another victim of the South Side Rapist. I didn't have a clue who it was who raped me. I have to tell you, you know, you look at everybody and you go, you listen to their voice to see if it resembles the voice that you heard the night you were raped. Who is the South Side Rapist?
Starting point is 00:17:09 After 11 years and 18 confirmed assaults, the answer to that question still proves elusive. The problem was that this guy was a ghost. He was a phantom. He, nobody could tell you exactly what he looked like. And if you look at the composites over the years, you'll have six or seven different composites that are completely different people. Even more frustrating for cold case detectives,
Starting point is 00:17:33 the South Side rapist seems never to make a mistake or at least one that will get him caught. That is, until he meets Eugene Frigo. It's midnight on the south side of St. Louis, on September 12, 1998. Six years after a serial rapist brought notoriety to the neighborhood, Eugene Frigo and his girlfriend
Starting point is 00:17:55 are spending a quiet Saturday night at home when Frigo hears a noise in the yard outside. Well, we heard a lot of boom, a beating, you know, somebody beating on a car hood or something. And then I stood up and looked out the vertical blinds
Starting point is 00:18:12 and seen a face. and then he's seen mine and he turned around and started running down the street. The man jumps into a van and drives away, wearing only a pair of shorts. Frico grabs his keys, gets into his car, and gives chase. I basically just wanted to get the license plate number. But as I got closer to him, he sped up.
Starting point is 00:18:36 Frico's attempt at getting the man's plate number turns into a high-speed pursuit through the streets of St. Louis. He was going up different streets, making sharp turns, and not slowing down at four-way intersections, you know, where you should, going through red lights. I mean, I had the really sense that he was really trying to get away for some reason. In the middle of the chase, Frigo realizes he has a cell phone in his car and dials 911. I heard somebody kicking the cars and everything,
Starting point is 00:19:06 and I looked out the window and there was somebody on my porch. The guy sawed me, he ran away, his car was parked at the end of my street. I got him in front of me right now. His license rate is 090 BNP, Missouri. I'm going to go, man, that's not going to slow down. I look down at the Spounder. It's like 85 miles an hour. You know, it's pretty quick.
Starting point is 00:19:27 I'm thinking like, God, I hope to please get here pretty soon to slow this thing down a little bit. But I need you to stop following here. Okay, this guy is moving now. I'm letting him go. Okay, you let him go. You tell me where you are. And it's least you.
Starting point is 00:19:42 Freiko lays off the gas and the van disappears into the night. The next morning, police officers knock on Freego's door. And then they took a walk around the house, and that's when they discovered that the side window had been kicked in. Apparently, that was the noise. Eugene Frego and his girlfriend file a police report. The next day, it lands on the desk of Detective Randy Sassinger, a burglary investigator also assigned to the Southside rapist investigation. So I took the destruction property report, and I went back out to the alma address, and I interviewed Eugene Freegel and his girlfriend. Well, he asked me what happened. We took a drive on the route of where I chased him and everything.
Starting point is 00:20:23 So he knew exactly where we had gone. Sassinger runs the license plate number Frigo provides, but determines that the plates are stolen. Then, detectives enter the tag number into the regional justice information system, or Regis. This database acts as a cross-check, allowing Sassinger to see if any other law enforcement agency has run the plates within the past five months. A postal inspector had run the plate, and Dennis Simpson was the postal inspector. And I asked him why he had processed the plate. Four months earlier, Inspector Dennis Simpson had been working surveillance on a house suspected of trafficking narcotics.
Starting point is 00:21:02 Part of that surveillance was monitoring who went in and out of the house, writing down license plates of vehicles that came and went. And one of the license plates that I wrote down happened to be warned Detective Sassinger was interested in. So I asked him if he would mind if I would follow up the plate and actually go to the address, and he didn't care. He said it was all right. His investigation was cold. Randy Sassinger is on the hunt. He may just be tracking a suspected burglar,
Starting point is 00:21:29 but it may be that the man who attempted to break into Eugene Frigo's home is actually the elusive Southside rapist. Any offender, such as a serial offender rapist that is a home invader is a burglar. He's got to be a good birter to get into a house and get out without being seen. This type of person, his objective wasn't to steal. It was to attack females. On October 15th, Sassinger begins surveillance on the house where Dennis Simpson first observed the stolen plates. Fourteen days later, a van bearing the tag number appears in the driveway. Sassinger calls for backup.
Starting point is 00:22:10 We'd roll over to the address, and I asked who owned the vehicle. And a person named Dennis Rabbit said he was the owner of the vehicle. And I said, well, guess what? I got a warrant on this vehicle, you're with me. We talked about the investigation on the Southside rapists and that I had fingerprints on other burglaries in the same area and that I would like him to consent to be fingerprinted as a way of eliminating him if he's not the person responsible.
Starting point is 00:22:36 And I also told him about the DNA buckle swab, which would give me a DNA sample for possible elimination. for possible elimination as a Southside rapist. After four hours of proclaiming his innocence, Rabbit agrees to provide cold case detectives with his fingerprints and the DNA sample. Investigators then have no choice but to release their suspect back into society. At the time, I think Dennis knew that he was about to be released, and he figured he was buying himself time by agreeing to do all of this.
Starting point is 00:23:08 We conveyed Dennis back home, and we searched his vehicle with his permission. And then I submitted the DNA to the laboratory and waited for analysis. On October 30th, 1998, DNA analyst Mary Beth Carr begins the process of comparing Dennis Rabbit's DNA profile to that of the Southside rapist. After six years in more than 600 DNA comparisons, she has little hope for a match. The next morning, she reviews the results. I was working on the computer and looking, doing the analysis. and I was like, oh my God, it's him. I thought, I even said it in the lab.
Starting point is 00:23:48 I was looking at the computer, I was like, oh, my God, but fell out the chair. Mary Beth Carr has matched Rabbit's DNA profile to the genetic signature of the Southside rapist. The first person she notifies is Detective Randy Sassinger. I think I almost broke her in half. She tells me that, and I grabbed her and squeezed her, and I was glad to see the end of this, you know. Something was finally coming true. there was an ending insight. Detective Mark Kennedy has been working on the Southside rapist case since 1995.
Starting point is 00:24:21 Carr calls to tell him the news. She says, hey, you're not going to believe this, but Randy Softed. He's got the guy. I said he's got him right there at the station now. And she says, no, no, no, we know who it is, though. We know who it is. You've got to get in right away. Kennedy returns to the police station and dispatches a team of detectives to Rabbit's last known address.
Starting point is 00:24:43 but can't locate the suspect. The search of the neighborhood and then the entire city proves equally futile. Dennis Rabbit, it appears, has decided to run. We couldn't find him anywhere. But see, the problem was that Dennis had no fixed residence.
Starting point is 00:24:59 He sometimes stayed with friends. Other times he'd stay with a girlfriend. So we weren't convinced that he had left the state yet. Three months passed with still no sign of Rabbit. Meanwhile, the media presses for an arrest and Rabbit's victims wonder why he was ever released in the first place. It was a mistake. It was a terrible mistake, and I'm sure they're paying for it, but it was a mistake. Somebody, another jurisdiction, not even 30 miles away, is looking for a man and has been looking for a man for 10 years,
Starting point is 00:25:27 and you have him in your hands, and all of a sudden, he's gone. Six months after the DNA match was first made, the truth is all too clear. St. Louis's Southside rapist, now believed to be Dennis Rabbit, has once again, escaped. It's February 28, 1999. 1,000 miles away from St. Louis in the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. A mother calls the police to report that her 15-year-old daughter is missing. She found a note that had a person's name by the name of Nathan Babbitt, a phone number, and a room number. And she gave it to the Sheriff's Department.
Starting point is 00:26:09 The phone number is traced to the Freeway Inn, a $29 a night motel on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Officer Scott Parsons and his partner follow up with a knock on the door of Room 121. A middle-aged man answers. He saw both of us standing in our uniforms and raised his hands and said, you know, she told me she was 18. And anytime somebody begins their conversation with the police officer, she told me she was 18, there's probably going to be a problem.
Starting point is 00:26:38 Parsons wants to know why the man has a young girl in his room. But first, he asks for identification. He began by saying he was Dennis Babbitt. It was only about the third or fourth attempt by myself and my partner that we were able to get his correct information. He was definitely trying his hardest to conceal his identity. While Parsons keeps an eye on the suspect, his partner checks the man's social security number. Five minutes later, a slew of felony warrants from St. Louis comes back to one Dennis Rabbit. When Parsons tells Rabbit he's under arrest, he bolts from the motel room and into the parking lot.
Starting point is 00:27:17 Mr. Rabbit had decided to try to cut between cars, so my in-orbit takedown ended up taking him down into a minivan, at which point Officer Middleton, my partner, did basically a hockey check into the minivan. Albuquerque notifies the FBI that Dennis Rabbit is in custody. The news then makes its way north to St. Louis. I'm laying in bed on a Sunday morning, 10 o'clock in the morning. Paul Swenson from the FBI calls me up and says, we've got him. I say, hey, don't play with me, Paul. He goes, no, no, I'm not playing.
Starting point is 00:27:49 This is for real. We've got him. They're on the parking lot in the Albuquerque. They haven't even brought him back to the station yet. I just wanted you to know. Arrangements were made. Warrants were issued for us to fly to Albuquerque and bring Dennis Rabbit back.
Starting point is 00:28:02 So I entered an airplane for the first time in my life. I went to Albuquerque. On March 3rd, Dennis Rabbit is extradited out of New Mexico. In 2002, Dennis Rabbit spoke to Cold Case Files. I've been with quite a few women. I mean, you see it with me, most of the time they think it's a hate crime, okay? I don't hate women. I actually love women, and I've been looking for something all my life.
Starting point is 00:28:36 Eight hours after Dennis Rabbit was apprehended at an Albuquerque motel, cold case detectives from St. Louis arrived in New Mexico, anxious to meet the man whose genetic fingerprint matches that of the South Side Rapist. The investigators sit down in an interview room with Rabbit, whom they have been hunting for more than 14 years. You've got so many questions you want to ask him. I mean, this man's been a part of your life for two years, three years,
Starting point is 00:29:03 in some cases, five years, you know? I mean, you've developed your own picture of who he might be and what he was doing, and now you want to get out there and you want to close us out. And understanding these rights, do you agree to be interviewed? Yes, sir. Okay. After seven hours of building a rapport with their suspect, detects set up a video camera,
Starting point is 00:29:25 and Dennis Rabbit agrees to come clean. We're going to start off in 1998. We're going to try to work our way backwards. And Dennis basically bled his heart. He told us everything. He would get into details of the color of the victim's car. It was amazing the things that he would remember. I've seen her. I've seen her sleeping on the couch.
Starting point is 00:29:44 How did you see her sleeping on the house? I went to the front door and looked at the window. Two hours into the interview, detectives arrive at a 1995 rape in Collinsville, Illinois. Rabbit remembers it well. They went to the living room, and before I woke her up, I turned a line out. And then I accost her, I also had a fake pistol with me. And I took her in a bedroom and I read her. Okay, did you perform oral sex on her?
Starting point is 00:30:12 I believe I did. Okay. Dennis Rabbit is describing the rape of 33-year-old Jennifer Jewer. After two hours, he has added 23 other names to the list of women he has attacked. Rabbit eventually pleads guilty to 49 charges of sexual assault and is sentenced to five consecutive life sentences. After two years in prison, Dennis Rabbit agrees to discuss his career as a criminal. Rabbit begins when he was just a teenager with a fascination for peeping.
Starting point is 00:30:44 There was certain houses in the neighborhood. I knew the women what time they took their showers and they never closed their windows. And I always used to go watch and it excelled from there. At the age of 17, Rabbit decided to stop watching and climb through his first window. I don't know what pushed me through that first window. I was just, I was looking at the light was on in the bathroom. I didn't see anything. Yeah, I just went through the window.
Starting point is 00:31:13 The men who tracked Rabbit for over a decade often wondered why he attacked so many women. In their conversations with Rabbit, they found the answer to be long and meandering. I started every interview the same way. Dennis, tell me why you do something like this. And initially, he started to tell a little story about how when he was young,
Starting point is 00:31:36 he would have these recurring nightmares. in which his headless female torso would come to him in the middle of the night and have sex with him. And I asked Detective Kennedy about it. If you ever heard of a demon coming to a person or a spirit, you know, I believe in this stuff, okay? And he told me that in folklore there was a, there's a female demon called a succubus. In mythology, a succubus is a female demon believed to descend upon men and have sex with them while they sleep. And he brightened up. And he had never heard that word before.
Starting point is 00:32:08 You mean there's like the name for it? And I said, yeah. Rabbit believes he has been hunted by a succubis demon since he was a young man. He says his desire to find out her identity drove him to rape women. That fantasy, however, is just a small part of Dennis Rabbit's compulsion. It was love to me. It wasn't power. It wasn't forcing them.
Starting point is 00:32:31 It was somehow, and I don't understand how I could inquite raping the love. But to me, it was, that's what I was looking for. One of Rabbit's signature behaviors was to perform oral sex on his victims. An act Rabbit believed would somehow transform the crime of rape into consensual sex. That was my MO. That's how they always knew it was me, because most rapists don't do that. That's something that's done for the woman, whereas the other ones are just trying to enjoy themselves. I mean, it's just outrageous that he would think. would intrude in someone's home,
Starting point is 00:33:09 that he would threaten him with their life, tell him he would kill them and think that they'd turn around five minutes later that he would be pleasing them, extremely misguided. Some of them did orgasm, okay? They tell me it's involuntary, I don't know, you know, but in my mind it wasn't, okay?
Starting point is 00:33:27 I didn't feel any pleasure, and I can't imagine why, how he could even fathom in his little, that mind of his, that he would, Be giving pleasure to someone. There is no way. I've been with quite a few women. I mean, you see, with me, most of the time they think it's a hate crime, okay?
Starting point is 00:33:50 I don't hate women. I actually love women, and I've been looking for something all my life. He'll talk freely about actual going into somebody's house. He'll talk freely about, yeah, he raped women. But they enjoyed it, you know. he won't talk to you about as far as any violence. And he, you know, cutting the women, tying their hands and maybe beating them with a phone or whatever blunt object he can grab.
Starting point is 00:34:18 The reality of Dennis Rabbit's rapes can best be found in the police reports generated by his victims. But even for the women whose bodies he left unbroken, a legacy of unseen scars remains. He didn't break any bones. He didn't draw any blood. but that's not what rapes about. It's not about breaking bones and having cuts or whatever.
Starting point is 00:34:42 You know, rape is a power issue, and it affects your soul and your thought about every aspect of your life. Dennis Rabbit does not like to be looked at as a bad person. He wants people to like him. All of his friends that knowing, like him, Dennis wants to be well liked, but Dennis is a monster. Dennis Rabbit is serving his life sentence at the state prison in Cameron, Missouri. Although detectives may never be certain just how many women Rabbit assaulted,
Starting point is 00:35:13 they know he is one of the most prolific serial rapists in history. And if you look at the way he operated, he was averaging about four rapes a year during the period that we were aware that he was operating. Extrapidated over like 25 years, you're up to 100 rapes right there, and God knows how many attempts. Dennis Rabbit says he has no clear understanding of why he rapes, but he does know that if he was released, he would almost certainly rape again.
Starting point is 00:35:45 Yeah, I deserve to be here the rest of my life, but I also deserve some answers on why and why this started. And I think the people out there would be better suited if we came up with some answers. I did some terrible things, you know, and I needed it. to get it out of me. And I needed to set myself free and I needed to help those people that I did hurt the best way I could. The people Dennis Rabbit hurt the most are his victims, 30 women at least ranging in age from 14 to 90, who want nothing more than for society to lock Dennis Rabbit into his
Starting point is 00:36:22 cell and throw away the key. Thank God they got the right guy and I didn't have to testify and go through it all over again because he surely could have dragged it out. And for what reason, I don't know, he admitted to it, and I was glad that it was over. I think all of his victims, all the legal experts have said this man will not see be outside the walls of the jail ever for the rest of his life. So I'm quite satisfied with that. That's fine with me. If you know the name of the movie you'd like to see, just stream it for free on Pluto TV.
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