Dateline NBC - On the Trail of the Bike Path Rapist

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

In this Dateline classic, Keith Morrison reports on a series of rapes and murders on a peaceful bike path that went unsolved for decades. Could they all have been committed by the same man? Originally aired on NBC on June 8, 2008.

Not far from the tourist shops that ring the thundering falls is a long, quiet path that snakes through the city of good neighbors, bucolic, green, sweet, and sometimes deadly. And I just remember there being a sense of fear. Once there was a young family in Buffalo, New York, a transplanted chemistry professor named Stephen Diver, his four children, and their mother, his wife, Joan Diver. She'd been a runner for a long time, and she was just trying to stay in shape. Well, and she said it's a great stress reliever, something you do for yourself,

something you do to give you a better perspective on things. Her older sisters remembered growing up with her, the baby of the family, back in Salt Lake City. She had a very strong personality. She knew what she wanted and she went after it. And what Joan Diver wanted on a fine September morning in the year 2006 was to see the children off to school, drop the youngest one at daycare, and drive down to her favorite run, the long path that winds to Clarence, one of the safest towns in America, the bike path, they call it. I had asked

her, is it a safe place? And she says, oh, it's really safe. People go there all the time. She says, there's a wooded area. I don't go up to the wooded area. I always turn around and come back. We talked about if someone tried to grab us, what would happen? And she says, oh, I'd give them a fight. And I says, oh, I would too. And I looked at her and I says, but what about your little kids? And she just said, well, Steve would have to take care of them. And we laughed it off. That was the last time I spoke to her in person. September 29th, the day Joan Diver disappeared. It was later in the day when Stephen Diver learned Joan had not picked up their son from daycare.

He called 911. Hi, I'm calling because my wife didn't show up to pick up my child at preschool, and I'm concerned that she might be at home and she might be incapacitated somehow. Your name sir? My name is Steven Diver. I'm her husband. And then he called again when he realized where his wife had gone. Buffalo police 9-1-1. I called before about my wife being in the bike path and she is somehow out there. Oh she hasn't returned? She hasn't returned, but she's probably injured. I saw her vehicle at the bike path, and we're going to drive out on the bike path and find her because she's out there. Stephen Diver told the deputies that he'd searched all up and down the bike path, went far longer than the usual two and a half miles his wife usually ran. In fact,

he said he saw her SUV, a full bottle of water on the console at the entrance to the bike path, which was strange because when they went back to look for the car, it wasn't there. They found it three miles away. Yet, Jones' husband claimed up and down that he didn't move it. Dozens of law enforcement officers are combing the Clarence bike path tonight looking for a missing mother. It's been nearly 30 hours since the husband... Good evening. The investigation into the disappearance of a Clarence mother... Police are saying if you're a jogger, they really want you to make sure that you bring a partner.

The news of the mysterious disappearance of a middle-class professor's wife, a mother of four, was no small thing in Buffalo. A very big deal, and a search commenced. Sheriff's deputies beat the bushes up and down the eight-mile stretch of the bike path. They scoured the area with ATVs and search dogs, but they could not find a trace of Joan Diver. And we really didn't know. We didn't know whether she was alive or dead. We had no idea.

And so the search was called off. She wasn't to be found. But, of know whether she was alive or dead. We had no idea. And so the search was called off. She wasn't to be found. But of course, she was. Two days after she went missing, a mother of four from Clarence has been found dead. A volunteer had joined a search party organized by Joan's husband. The volunteer called out the alert. He'd found the body. Alan Rosansky, then a detective with the Erie County

Sheriff's Office, arrived soon after. She was about 70 or 80 feet from the bike path and another 20 feet into the brush. Had she been strangled? Is that what it happened? That's correct. Yes, she was. But there was something significant, a potential clue in what was not done by the murderer. The manner in which she was clothed, she had not been raped. In fact, there was no trace of DNA evidence found on her body. Nothing to indicate her attacker. The next step seemed obvious. Since it wasn't a sex-related killing, investigators started looking at the people closest to Joan Diver.

How cooperative was the husband? Well, it was not extremely cooperative at all. You know, when people don't cooperate, quite often... That raises our suspicion. That's correct. And ultimately, his response to this whole thing was a little different than I'm accustomed to. Why had Joan's SUV been moved, apparently after her death? What did her husband Stephen know?

And why wasn't he cooperating? The investigator's suspicions soon leaked into the press. Headlines questioned Stephen's culpability. 92% of cases where a woman is killed, it turns out that it's a male that she knew well. That's right. And a lot of families don't know, you know, what's going on within marriages and things,

and you find out later that could be the case. We certainly didn't think so, and we love Steve and the family. So when this notion hit the public that maybe you should look at Steve, it just seemed to you, what, ludicrous? Yeah, we didn't think that was right. But then the investigation seemed to stall. And far away in Salt Lake City, Joan's family waited for news. And waited.

What was rather hopeless at first, too, is they just had no clues on what had happened. She was just there, and they didn't know. Nobody had seen anything. They didn't have anything to go on, you know, and it was just a terrible feeling. Then it was October, and an early storm blanketed Buffalo under two feet of snow. The hope of finding Joan Diver's killer seemed to be buried, too. There was just one thing that all along had bothered Detective Rosansky, something about the way Joan was killed.

Double ligature marks around her neck. It got a feeling going in his gut, reminded him, eerily, of an old case that had haunted Buffalo for more than 20 years. The Bike Path Rapist. A man tied to nine rapes, including two murders. 22-year-old Linda Yellam, a UB student, was sexually attacked and strangled. But it couldn't be. After all, Joan Diver had not been raped.

And besides, the last they'd heard of him was way back in 1994. The case had never been solved. The man was probably dead by now or in jail. There were similarities to the bike path rapist, but we were not absolutely sure at the time whether it was a copycat or was it just another homicide. It was November, six weeks after Joan's murder, when a strange DNA result came in. It came from a spot, a speck, a whiff of something human, swabbed from the steering wheel of Joan's SUV, three miles away from where her body was found. Someone had been in there.

And that someone was not Stephen Diver. So much shocking information is that this case is tied to other known cases. The Joan Diver murder tied by DNA evidence to the bike path rapist. The new evidence cleared Stephen Diver, of course, but more astonishing was where that microscopic piece of DNA would lead. Its powers of revelation even then stirring unseen fates in a prison cell far away. But not yet.

Fates have a way of brewing for a while. For the moment, what jumped out hard and clear was something truly morbid. Joan Diver had been killed on someone's anniversary. It was the date of the Linda Yellen death,

which was at Amherst back in the 90s. After 12 years of hibernation, was Buffalo's bike path rapist announcing his return? Buffalo was a giant once, whose rail system, the second biggest in the world, hauled steel one way, finished goods back again. But times change, promise fades. Buffalo's railways languished and became, in modest resurrection, bike paths. Miles and miles of them, winding from the city through places like Delaware Park and Clarence and safe, secure Amherst.

Something's happened on this bike path. Now haunted by a man they called the bike path rapist. And now, like some almost forgotten ghost, after a 12-year absence, he was back. Authorities call the similarities haunting. Dr. Charles Ewing is a forensic psychologist at the University of Buffalo. He consulted campus police in 1990 when the bike path rapist killed for the first time. And now, said Ewing,

I believe it was a way of saying to the police, it's me, I'm back, you still haven't caught me. So now the old failed investigation coughed back to life, and the cops reopened the frustrating old file that puzzled them for more than 20 years. They had the assailant's DNA, yes, but he was still out there, lurking in the past. No one's going to use the bike path for a long time. In Buffalo, there is a statue of David.

And if this story is true, it was cast as a direct copy of the original by Michelangelo. The bike path runs right past it. The highway just beyond that is a very public place. And yet that is where, more than 20 years before he killed Joan Diver, police believed the bike path rapist struck for the first time. It's a 44-year-old woman who was jogging, raped, and strangled, and strangled in such a way that almost every blood vessel in her eyes was burst, horrifically strangled, and left on the pad. Remarkably, that first rape victim in 1986 survived, as they all did at first. All of the women attacked in the morning in broad daylight.

Victim number two was a 17-year-old girl. She was raped and strangled as well with the double-legged chair. Lisa Redman, then a detective, was all too familiar with the bike path rapist resume from her work at the Buffalo Police Sex Offense Unit. The next victim was a young girl on the railroad tracks in Buffalo, raped and strangled. The next victim was also in Buffalo. It was another young girl on those same railroad tracks. And there were more survivors to find. He told me to get down on the

passenger side of the floor. Denise Foster still carried ligature scars on her neck when we spoke with her almost 20 years later. Put the rope around my neck and just held it. And he told me if I moved or if I screamed, he would pull it tighter. The rapist took her down to a wooded creek side, forced her down on a rock, stripped off her clothes. And that's when he raped me and he strangled me and just left me there.

Remember it getting tighter? Yeah. I blacked out and I was unconscious. When she regained consciousness, she says, she stumbled naked into the road where a neighbor saw her and called police. He left me for dead because he didn't want me to identify him. Six rape victims survived. And then on September 29,th 1990 the violence escalated. The bike path rapist became a killer. Linda Yalem's body was found yesterday along the

Ellicott Creek bike path in Amherst. The 22 year old UB sophomore had been training for a marathon. The bike path rapist killed again in 1992. 29-year-old May Jane Mazur, a prostitute, her body discarded beside the railroad track. In 1994, he struck again, raping a 14-year-old on her way to school, raising the bike path rapist toll then to nine rapes, including two murders. And then he simply stopped, disappeared until 2006, when he killed Joan Diver on the anniversary of his first murder.

Ironically, her disappearance and death came 16 years to the day Linda Yalen was killed on the Amherst bike path. Now there was a new urgency to solve the 20-year-old case. Police say they will dedicate a team to hunting down the rapist and killer. So for the first time ever, four police departments, the Buffalo Police, the Amherst Police, the State Police, and the County Sheriff joined in a special task force to find the man now tied to 10 attacks, including three murders that spanned more than two decades. The public demanded it. And who knew if the killer would strike again? He started going backwards and looking at cases that happened prior to the diver homicide. Dennis Delano was a cold case specialist with the Buffalo Police Department at the time.

The detective had a bit of an attitude. If I have to turn over every rock we can, we're going to exhaust all possibilities to get at the truth. But every task force member knew this. That the diver homicide was linked to the other crimes. If we solve that crime, you have to solve the rest. For years, law enforcement had known that DNA evidence from seven rapes and now three murders was left by one man. But who?

FBI profilers said the bike path rapist most likely worked at night. And what investigators now knew from modern DNA analysis was that the killer was of Hispanic origin. But what struck Delano was his M.O., the distinctive signature he left. All of them had double ligature marks on their neck. A lot of them were told to put an item of clothing over their face and eyes. Then, as detectives worked through the yellowed old files, Delano came across something very strange, bizarre. A completely different file of rape cases, which occurred in the same place by the statue of David a few years before the first known attack by the bike path rapist. We wound up making a spreadsheet of all of the crimes.

They were all basically identical. The only difference that we could find was that a gun was used or a knife in the first set of crimes and a ligature was used from 1986 to 2006. But here's what made that case so strange. Somebody else was convicted of the earlier crimes near the statue of David. A young man named Anthony Capozzi. Though he wouldn't be so young anymore, he'd already been in prison for over two decades. And yet, when Delano and the others compared the rapist's crimes with those of Capozzi, it made the hair stand up on the back of their necks. A lot of the mannerisms that the perpetrator was doing were all identical in all the crimes. What sort of mannerism? When he was leaving, he told them to wait

a certain amount of time. Give me 20 minutes to get away. Give me 10 minutes to leave. Give me five minutes. Could there have been two rapists with a virtually identical M.O. on Buffalo's bike path? Had one taken over in perfect imitation

the psychopathic crimes of the other? It was very uncanny the way they all just seemed to match. The Joan Diver murder tied by DNA evidence to the bike path rapist. The return of a ghost in one of the safest towns in America reignited a cold case that had haunted Erie County for more than two decades. And if he's been able to self-control himself for 12 years before the next crime, it's somebody that's very cautious. After 12 years of dormancy, the bike path rapist was back.

We will not stop until we have an arrest in this case. But now a task force desperate to find the bike path rapist discovered in some of its musty old case files something very strange. A quite separate case of rape back in the mid-80s. In this very same place, a woman jogging past the statue of David. And suddenly a man came up behind her, put a gun to her head, dragged her down into the bushes, and raped her. Scott Brown was a reporter who covered the story. Three rapes all around the same area,

and the arrest of the apparent rapist, a young man named Anthony Capozzi. I think the community kind of let out a sigh of relief. Capozzi was 29, a schizophrenic who lived at home, one of the five children of Mary and Albert Capozzi, who spoke with us in 2007. Anthony was asleep, said Mary, when the police came to get him. He said, Ma, don't worry, I'll be back. Because he figured he didn't do anything, you know,

that he'll be back. Young Capozzi was charged with three counts of rape, brutal attacks with a knife and a gun. The prosecutor was able to put together a very solid case with the aid of one of the victims who identified Capozzi from a photo lineup. Capozzi was convicted of two of the rapes, sentenced to 35 years in prison. And the prosecutor personally thanked the eyewitness for her courage in coming forward. I think the case shows that if you're the victim of a violent crime, particularly a rape, that if you come into court and you testify,

that the jurors will do the right thing. The victim thought so too. If enough women can get up there and say this has happened, then maybe rape and sodomy and all these horrible crimes will become a thing of the past. And the Capozzi family watched as the authorities took Anthony off to prison. Oh my God. Every day, every night when you go to bed, you don't think of anything else. You think of what's happened to your family. Every day, Mary prayed. Every week, Albert and Mary drove to whatever prison Anthony was being kept in for 22 years. Five times he came out for parole. Five times was denied.

You know, they did offer him a chance to get out. All he had to do was confess. When did he do that? His younger brother said to him, Anthony, tell him you did it because they'll get you out earlier. He said, Al, why should I tell them when I didn't do it? And now, after 22 years, members of a task force looking for the bike path rapist and killer found themselves staring at the Capozzi case with brand new eyes. The truth didn't seem to match the circumstances. It just didn't jive. Why?

Because after Capozzi went to prison, the rapes continued. These new ones couldn't have been him, yet they occurred in the same place, same M.O. Horrifically strangled and left on the path. The detective was convinced it had to come back to that little area right around the statue of David. In fact, to that bit of brush right on the side of the bike path. Supposedly they were two separate cases, but why hadn't anybody noticed that the location of the crime was exactly the same, that the method used was virtually identical?

These crimes had to be the work of one man. As investigators, you look for the truth, not necessarily the perpetrator. You're looking for exactly what happened. What is the truth of that situation, that crime? And that leads you to the perpetrator. Now, once you know the truth, you can pretty much figure out who did what, when. In this case, nothing seemed to add up. And we kept going over and over it again,

and it just kept coming up the same way. There was something wrong here. And again, as an investigator, if the pieces don't fit, you just keep investigating. And that's what you do until they do fit. Maybe the trial transcript would offer some solid evidence that those rapes attributed to Capozzi were somehow different than the others. But...

There was no other evidence linking him to those crimes other than eyewitness identification. Was it possible Capozzi was misidentified by a rape victim that he was sent to prison for crimes committed by somebody else? That's when we took a write-out.ica Correctional Facility to interview him. It didn't take long to talk to him, to know he wasn't the type of person that could do heinous crimes. Their job was to catch a rapist and killer, Joan Diver's killer, not to fret about an

old, resolved case. Still, they put together what they'd learned about Capozzi and took it to the district attorney. In my experience, if you go to a prosecutor and say, I think you've got an innocent man in jail, they're not likely to react very positively to that. They didn't in this case either. Frank Clark was the district attorney then.

He told the detectives there wasn't much his office could do. The law requires hard evidence. The statute is very, very clear as to what's required in order to overturn a jury verdict. So detectives followed their instincts. Perhaps rape kits, slides of evidence from the Capozzi case stored in the vaults of the medical center, would have traces of DNA and that might exonerate Capozzi. And we had hoped the Erie County Medical Center had some slides and we were told there was no such thing.

No DNA. No proof of anything. And Anthony Capozzi stayed in prison. It wasn't a good feeling. It's sickening. Meanwhile, in the search for the bike path rapist, detectives seemed to be stymied. Now we have a serial killer rapist out there and an innocent man in jail. So all of a sudden,

we found ourselves in the middle of two investigations. And that's about the time they discovered, in the old Kaposi file, a clue. And I said, this is our guy. In the months after Joan Diver was murdered by Buffalo's bike path rapist, the task force Manhunt produced two bizarre discoveries in a case file that have been gathering dust for more than 20 years. One, the possibility that Anthony Capozzi, a convicted rapist, was an innocent man. And two, a clue buried in the old Capozzi file that had never quite been tracked down. It was involving a rape many years ago and a rape victim and possibly

in it was in this Anthony Capozzi file because possibly they suspected Anthony Capozzi of that rape. When did that rape occur? 1981. And what was the clue tucked away in the file? A license number from the back of a car given to police by a woman who reported she'd been raped by the car's driver. We came across the fact that the victim had spotted She took down the license number. At the time, way back in 1981, the owner of the car had an alibi. But now, when detectives checked again, it turned out the owner had been hiding a guilty secret all those years. He wasn't in the car, but someone he knew was. And he said, detective, you're looking for me.

I said, yes, I am. He says, is this about something that happened many years ago? Yes. And I didn't even pry. He supplied. He goes, my nephew, Altimio Sanchez, was driving the vehicle. Sanchez. Remember, DNA had revealed the bike path rapist

was most likely of Hispanic heritage. So could this Sanchez be the man they were searching for? First, some investigative grunt work. A mistake now would be disastrous. We took Hispanic names that were previously investigated, narrowed those down through state police resources, which ones were arrested prior for prostitution, because the FBI did a profile years ago and said that most likely the suspect frequents prostitutes. There were 84 names on the list, and one of them was Altimio Sanchez. And I said, this is our guy. Was he?

This Altimio Sanchez had been arrested twice, this is our guy. Was he? This Altimio Sanchez had been arrested twice in Buffalo for soliciting prostitutes, but that was years and years ago. Now detectives decided not to interview Sanchez unless they could find hard evidence to connect him to the rapes on the bike path. Well, we decided we were going to surveil Altimio Sanchez and get a DNA sample from him because we decided we pow-wowed amongst all of us and said, you know, if we knock on his door and say, hey, can we have a DNA sample, he's going to say, see you later, goodbye, and now he's going to be looking over his shoulder. It was a Saturday night when they got their chance. Sanchez took his wife out on a date to a restaurant. That was the moment to find that hard evidence, DNA evidence.

Investigators asked the waiters at the restaurant not to touch the couple's glasses when they left. He left a glass and a napkin. But would the glass or napkin yield enough DNA for some kind of identification? Investigators rushed the glass and the napkin to the forensics lab, and then the wait began. So now everyone's at the office. All the chiefs are there, the entire task force, everyone from Amherst, the state police, the sheriff's department. It was like waiting for a baby to be born. We were literally hovered around the phone. And it was him. And now we all know who this guy is. Now we've got to figure out what to do.

The next morning was January 15, 2007. Altimio Sanchez clocked out after his night shift, got in his car and drove away. Squad cars pulled in beside him. And Sanchez just stopped by the side of the road. He did not resist. It's the break that law enforcement and people living around the Clarence bike path have been waiting for. The official announcement was, perhaps understandably, colorful. The monster that's been known as the bike path rapist has been taken into custody. And then gradually out came a horrific surprise. The DNA linked Sanchez to crimes beginning years before anyone had even heard of the bike path rapist.

Beginning, in fact, years before Anthony Capozzi, still sitting in prison, was convicted of two of those very rapes. Sanchez, 49 years old, was charged initially with two counts of murder and the second degree. He pleaded not guilty. And in the hours and days after his arrest, all of Buffalo watched, both horrified and astonished, as they learned about Altimio Sanchez. Who really was he? Was it actually possible a man of his standing and reputation

could have committed such awful crimes? A great many people in western New York can relax. The bike path rapist has been taken into custody. This predator is off the street. In the city of good neighbors, it turned out the suspected bike path rapist and killer was just that, a good neighbor living among them. He's a fantastic guy. The most wonderful family. We just love them dearly. They have just been the best neighbors anybody could want. Beautiful wife, beautiful children, two boys, and Al has always just been so gracious and kind. It was simply beyond imagining. Altimio Sanchez, accused of raping and killing women for decades, was a regular guy who lived a quiet, middle-class life in a Buffalo suburb. I never would imagine the bike path rapist murderer was

a house away. 49-year-old Altimio Sanchez had owned his own house for years. He'd held, also for many years, a steady, respectable job working the night shift at a brass factory. Like any family on any suburban street, he was always the first one that signed up for the charity things and volunteered to help out. Did you have any idea at all? Sanchez's family, said police, his wife of 25 years, had no idea, not a clue,

until the headlines and news reports brought their whole world crashing down. She had no suspicion, nothing? No. She was absolutely dumbfounded. They were going on vacations. Their sons were both grown up. They were going on vacations. Their sons were both grown up. They were spending more time together. She seemed very normal.

How could it be? The man finally arrested after more than 20 years of brutal attacks, rapes, murders. The ugliest of human behaviors turned out to be a married, church-going dad. A Little League coach, some of whose players called him with affection Uncle Al. The better he acted, the more model a citizen he was, the less likely it was that he would ever get caught. Forensic psychologist Charles Ewing was among the few who were not surprised. They don't wear signs, I'm a killer.

Most of them are fairly ordinary people. As investigators searched for information to back up the DNA evidence, they were astonished to discover that in the evening of the very day he allegedly murdered Joan Diber, Sanchez was attending a party with his wife. That's the kind of person we're dealing with when we talk about a psychopath. Somebody who can commit a crime like this and hours later it's miles and miles away. It's as if it never happened. When the investigators interviewed

Sanchez they were confronted they said by a wall of self-control and denial. He was dancing a lot. I think he was probably preparing this for years. And he didn't crack? No, he did not crack. But with that solid DNA evidence linking Sanchez to those seven rape cases and three murders, there was little chance he was going to walk. Then District Attorney Frank Clark told us in 2007. In the public's eye, when you have this DNA, which takes the probabilities to the tens of billions, I mean, the public just assumes DNA, that, him, guilty, case over. And the citizens of Buffalo and the suburbs of western New York let out a collective sigh of relief. Or at least almost all of them did. Denise Foster saw it on TV. The news showed his face. I just like went into stone.

I knew it was him. And the torment flooded right back. How'd you know? I remember the face. Is that clear? Yes. Did it bring it all back to you? Yes. When we spoke to her 22 years later, Denise told us that terror still lingered. The rock, the rape, the strangulation, the blackout, the naked stumbling for help that hadn't gone away. Even the physical scars were still there around her neck. I've had nightmares. About this place? Yeah. What does it seem to you now? It's still the same place, but there's nothing that can happen to me here no more. As the investigation continued, the task force discovered that Denise was just one of many in a growing list of casualties,

more victims than anybody had suspected. Beginning, investigators now believed, in the late 70s. But as they put together their case for the trial of Altimio Sanchez, a second obsession gripped members of the task force. Their belief that an innocent man, Anthony Capozzi, had been wrongly convicted of two of the rapist's crimes. I knew he was innocent and he was in jail. I felt that we had enough circumstantial evidence

to create a doubt that he was guilty. That belief was not shared, however, by the DA. I don't have any quantitative proof like DNA where we can look at it and make a determination. We found out that it's a lot more difficult getting somebody out of jail than it is putting them in jail.

But Delano, as we said, has a bit of an attitude since he couldn't get anywhere with the DA. Channel 2 knows it's sex. He went public and spoke with reporter Scott Brown. In my mind, one person committed all the DA. Channel 2 knows it's sex. He went public and spoke with reporter Scott Brown. In my mind, one person committed all the attacks. A lot of the verbiage, which I can't

really get into, was similar in most of the cases. He's like Andy Sipowicz, and he wouldn't let go of this thing. Capozzi's sister Pam Gunther saw Delano's appeal on TV. I was shaking. I said, I cannot believe this. This is an angel. She called her parents Anthony's parents. You didn't know what was happening? No. You didn't know. Mom, what would you like? The best thing you could have. We said Anthony, naturally. And sure

enough, the DA was still unmoved by Delano's arguments. Without some concrete evidence to show his innocence, something like DNA, Anthony Capozzi, already in prison 22 years, would stay right where he was. Try as they might, detectives on the task force just couldn't find the hard evidence that could undo what they now firmly believed was a gross miscarriage of justice. So, as the trial of Altimio Sanchez approached, they wondered, would two people wind up in prison for the very same crimes? I mean, that's not right, Bill. It's always been my understanding that if something's not right, you try and correct it, not just overlook it.

But even Delano was going to be shocked by the impending discovery. In the summer of 2007, after more than 20 years, Buffalo celebrated the revival of its bike paths. But Altimio Sanchez had already decided not to wait for his day in court. The number of rapes attached to his name had mounted to 15, along with three murders, and investigators had discovered something truly creepy. On the roster of the runners in a race commemorating the victim of the bike path rapist's first murder was the name Altimio Sanchez wearing bib number 679. It was on that last anniversary of that very same murder that the rapist spent the morning

killing Joan Diver and spent the evening at a party. This is somebody who has to find ways of reliving the thrill of the kill. And the ultimate way, of course, is do it again and do it again on the same date. In May 2007, four months after his arrest, El Timio Sanchez, without explanation, elected to plead guilty to three counts of second-degree murder, the statute of limitations that run out on the rape cases.

His wife attended his court hearings, visited him in jail, and, according to sources, was unable to get her husband to tell her what he did or why. But that isn't the whole story, of course.

What about Anthony Capozzi, in prison 22 years for supposedly committing two rapes? The district attorney's office is telling us that we need hard evidence to free Anthony Capozzi from prison, even though we knew beyond a shadow of doubt in our hearts that he was innocent. Stuck at injustice. And then suddenly there was news. The Erie County Medical Center, after years of misinformation, officials revealed a remarkable discovery. The rape kits, the swabs, the slides of evidence collected in the Capozzi case were there after all. There was DNA. And the test revealed the rapist was not Anthony Capozzi.

It was Altimio Sanchez. And that's how it came to be that on a fine spring morning, Mary and Albert Capozzi, after 22 years, gathered their family around them and phoned their son in prison to tell him... You're free, Aunt. You're free. They realized that you didn't do any of those things, Aunt. You're free. They made a mistake.

They made a mistake. All right, that sounds great. It's a miracle. It was really a miracle. Anthony was 29 when they took his freedom away. He said, Ma, don't worry, I'll be back. Because he figured he didn't do anything, you know, that he'll be back. But he came back 22 years later.

In all those years in prison, he continued to suffer from schizophrenia. So he was released to a psychiatric center to get help to adjust to an independent life. The family invited us to the psych center where he was released to after jail. And when we saw Anthony Capozzi for the first time as a free man, there were no words. There were no words. When he saw me at the psych center, he goes, this is for you. I remember he was a piece of candy. He goes, this is for you. So I keep it in my pocket. Let me see.

I wrapped it up, fell apart. Now, there was one more thing to do. On August 14, 2007, Altimio Sanchez, the bike path rapist, appeared in court for sentencing. I just wanted to mention that whatever sentence I get today, I deserve. I know I'm going to be spending life behind bars, never to see the streets again. But I committed, I did these crimes, and I should pay for these crimes. He will. The sentence was 75 consecutive years in prison. Following Anthony Capozzi's release, the New York State Legislature passed a bill

known as Anthony's Law, signed by the governor in 2007. Its purpose? To expedite compensation claims brought by individuals who have been wrongly incarcerated. In 2010, Anthony Capozzi received a settlement of $4.25 million from the state of New York.