Dateline NBC - The Santa Strangler

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

In this Dateline classic, two women believe they have information on a decades-old cold case that has been virtually forgotten. And when the Los Angeles Police Department opens a new cold case unit, the stories the women tell would give detectives a chance to catch a serial killer. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on June 20. 2008.Additional footage: San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce 

Deep in the archives of the Los Angeles Police Department is a room they call the tunnel, filled with files that were once active investigations. Now they're as dead as their victims. And they'll stay dead unless a cold case investigator like Detective Richard Bengston can somehow bring them back to life. We're the last chance homicide detectives because once we've looked at it, if we can't solve it, then nobody else is going to look at it.

But where to begin? Just in the near 50 years between 1960 and our visit, 9,000 unsolved homicides landed in that dustbin of justice. How do you solve 9,000 cold cases? You know what? You can't. But if you can just solve one, one unsolved case that nobody else could solve, just bring answers to one family that didn't have answers before. In 2002, Bengston was assigned to a 30-year-old triple homicide. In 1972, Lois Petrie, a recently widowed woman in her 40s, killed on the bed of her bungalow. Two years later, Catherine Medina, a middle-aged laundry worker, turned up dead in a park. A month after that, the nude body of 53-year-old Anna Felch dumped on the side of a road.

It appeared the victim shared the same killer who had raped and strangled them all, leaving no evidence behind. I don't know if we knew we had a shot at cracking it, but I enjoy the putting the pieces back together. Pieces? What pieces? Well, no one knew it yet, of course, but there was a piece, a clue for this unsolved puzzle, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Her name? Jeannie Loudenburg. Around the time of the murders back in 1975, Jeannie was a college student who met a guy who lived in California. They decided to move in together, so she flew out to the coast, San Luis Obispo, to find an apartment. Her beau was out of town, so his stepfather, a man named Adolph, picked her up at the airport. They hit it off. He seemed like an elderly, fatherly figure, and just really nice. He smiled a lot, he was very kind, and we got along great. So they did, And Adolph squired Jeannie around town as she found an apartment, and then he helped her get it ready for the arrival of his stepson. We went to flea markets together.

We did a lot of shopping for the apartment. And we just had a good time together. But she was young and perhaps naive. Within just a few days of their meeting, says Jeannie, Adolph started acting a little too nice. I don't quite know how to phrase it, but he had fallen in love with me, or at least he had said he had. Did this come out of the blue like a thunderbolt? To me it did. Yeah, I was very surprised. Jeannie claims she tried to brush him off, but Amara's Adolph was smitten and started leaving her love notes.

It was creepy. I mean, this is a fellow who's I don't know how many years older than I. And it was very strange. And then one day, Jeannie and Adolph were in a car together, alone. And he turned his face to her. And the words that came from his lips, well, what's that phrase? Her blood ran cold. He said that he had murdered four women. Three were in the LA area and one was in San Francisco. Did he say how he killed them? He had strangled them. He had raped them. He had? The man she was sitting with in the car, her intended father-in-law,

he was a rapist? A serial killer? And I didn't believe him at first, not until I saw him angry. I remember very vividly he was banging on the car. He was very upset about something. He seemed very strong. And I thought, yes, he could be capable of doing this. During his stunning confession, said Jeannie, Adolph referred to the murders as his four sins. Now Jeannie worried she could be the fifth sin.

I would go and stay in the library because I was afraid to be alone in the apartment. And then her boyfriend arrived, Adolph's stepson, and such was his and Jeannie's mutual horror that the two worked up their courage and went to the local police station, and inside they revealed what Adolph had told Jeannie. And? They didn't believe me, so I really felt they had blown me off, and I was angry about it. The San Luis Obispo police did refer the case to the LAPD, and the L.A. cops took Adolph to headquarters and questioned him. He denied everything. There was no evidence beyond that strange episode with Jeannie.

He had no record, so they let him go. What else could they do? There was no other evidence that LAPD could find to tie him to any one of these three cases. So at that point, you have a he said, she said, which would not be able to hold up in court. And I thought, well, that's the end of it. It was, needless to say, an uncomfortable summer of 75 after that. Jeannie got married, but Adolph was not invited. And soon after, she and her new husband packed up and moved to Pittsburgh. Within weeks, she started getting love letters

from Adolph in the mail. I was petrified. I was afraid to go about my daily business. I didn't know if he would show up, when he would show up. In his letters, he apologized, but still expressed his love for her. And then the letters stopped coming, and Adolf Lautenberg seemed to disappear. Or had he? In 2002, 27 years later, a shocking story.

And who was it from? Another daughter-in-law of Adolf Lautenberg. Turns out, she said, he confessed his sins to her, too, leaving her terrified of a man she thought she knew. By the spring of 2002, Jeannie was divorced from Adolph's stepson. The investigation into the murders of Lois Petrie, Catherine Medina, and Anna Felch had also faded away. That is, until Adolph confessed again, this time to another daughter-in-law. It was the same confession that he'd made to Jeannie 27 years earlier.

In shock, the new daughter-in-law called the police to report Adolph's confession and talk to Detective Chris Merlo. She told me that these ladies were all in their late to mid-50s. She told me all their females, whites. It was actually that phone call that reignited the investigation into the cold cases. Suddenly, after three decades, the San Pedro cold case was as hot as they come. It's our obligation to start over at the beginning. So anybody who was talked to back whatever year, whoever had an interview back then,

we go back and we re-interview them in person. First, a trip to Pittsburgh to meet Jeannie Lautenberg, who had originally reported Adolph's stunning confession way back in 1975. We just showed up at her doorstep. I had a feeling I knew what it was about, but I was really waiting for them to tell me. Adolph, the murders, the confession. After 30 years, it all came rushing back.

They always say, once a serial murderer, always a serial murderer. And I'm thinking, how many other people did he kill over the years? And am I a marked woman? And I don't know what to think. I was very scared. But even if Jeannie's story, and now his other daughter-in-laws, were true, it could be dismissed as hearsay. How could police find the sort of evidence that would actually stand up in court?

They had asked me if I had a picture of Adolph, and I knew I did. And I also found my date book. From 1975? It was from 1975. And what was in that date book? Well, this is the mind blower. As a code, I wrote, Dad confesses sins. And it was only like a week after I had met him. The date book was our jackpot. In her date book, she had detailed things that were occurring at that time in her life. She used it kind of like her memoirs. She can't make up 20-something years later. What's the importance of that?

It just goes to her credibility. She's able to produce for us something from that same time period that leads to her credibility as to what she's saying. Intriguing? Oh yes. But incriminating? Not quite. At least, not without some solid forensic evidence linking Adolf Lautenberg to the three San Pedro murders. But when Detective Bankson looked closer into Adolf's background,

he hardly seemed to play the part of a murderer. Never been in prison, never been arrested, no parking tickets. He even looked kind and trustworthy. Big gray beard, gray mustache. If you went to the mall at Christmas time, you could probably put him in a Santa suit and you'd find your kid sitting on his lap. And he probably would act a good Santa Claus because he was a friendly type person that everybody liked. When the San Pedro murder case was reopened, Laudenberg was living in a mobile home and spending most of his time at a Porsche repair shop run by his pal, Tony Ugas.

He was like family. I call him Pops. The customers that used to come by, they all liked him. It didn't exactly fit the profile of someone who strangled and raped several women. It was very hard for us to figure out where in his mind he went wrong with wanting to hurt people. Could it be the cops were wrong? A serial killer who looked and acted like Santa Claus? All along, I was just thinking the police is, you know, just framing some poor guy. And sadly, back in L.A., the whole thing looked poised to go cold again.

Until, well, you know how surprises can come from the unlikeliest places. Cold case detective Richard Bankson had a prime suspect for a series of murders in the seaside town of San Pedro. A seemingly kind old man named Adolf Lautenberg. But he also had a big problem. We needed some physical evidence. These days, detectives like Bankson have come to rely on a very helpful new friend. DNA. A speck of human tissue that wouldn't have been useful as evidence back in the 70s could solve his case now if he could find it.

The victims had been strangled and also raped, meaning the killer must have left behind evidence that could be checked for DNA. Typical in sexual assault cases that the coroner will take a sexual assault kit, the coroner will take a sexual assault kit,

which involves taking different smears from different parts of the body. Slides from two of the victims, Catherine Medina and Anna Felch, had already been tested, but the specimens were too old and too degraded to extract any DNA. And what about the slides from Lois Petrie, the killer's first victim? Bankston called the coroner. He was not able to find anything on the Lois Petrie case, which was our main case that we were looking at. Bankston had one last desperate idea. He decided to search through the slides of the coroner's office himself. Maybe something else will come up. So we got to know the evidence clerk at the coroner's office very well and schmoozed her a little bit into showing us the evidence room.

Home to hundreds of files and thousands of slides, but finding anything in that musty, murky room was a long shot. So we start thumbing through them. And there they were, just sitting there. The Lois Petrie slides from 1972. Whew. I don't know. I think I had to sit down when it happened. I couldn't believe it. But given the useless condition of the other old slides

they'd already tested, it didn't seem very promising. He sent the slides off to the DNA lab and waited. His slides had joined hundreds of others, all waiting for answers. Time crawled. If you watch TV, it takes 38 minutes. But in the real world, it takes six to eight weeks to get things tested.

Then Bankson finally got the call. Her first words to me are, you better sit down. I said, oh, this is going to be good. So she tells me we were able to get a DNA profile off those slides. This is the attacker? This is the attacker. This is a deduced profile. This is the suspect. Wow. Unbelievable. But there was one more little problem. What Bankston did not have was any sort of DNA sample from Adolf Lautenberg for comparison. And how would he ever get that? The law is very clear. Without a warrant, he couldn't just walk up to Lautenberg and grab some DNA.

So what could Bengston try? Well, how about that old reliable staple of police work, coffee and doughnuts, and a remarkable sting operation. We came up with the plan to have an undercover officer meet with him and discuss with him a burglary from motor vehicle problem that was occurring in the area that he was living in. Which brings us to undercover surveillance specialist Bob Dinlocker. His assignment? Invent some pretext to have a cup of coffee with Lautenberg. So he'd leave his DNA how? When he was drinking? When he was taking a sip from the... Leave a little saliva behind?

Yes. That provides the DNA? Yes. And that's being compared to DNA that was collected 27 years ago. Now, the really tricky part. Get the suspected killer's DNA without breaking any of the very particular rules about evidence gathering. The primary thing is that for us to collect the DNA sample without notifying him of exactly what it's being used for, it had to be a voluntarily discarded and a completely discarded

DNA sample. It was an excellent plan. The only trouble was, where was Adolph Lautenberg? Lautenberg was a transient, living all over sprawling L.A. County, apparently in a mobile home. But where?

Before Dinlacher could run the sting, he first had to find him. I was starting to really get concerned that we weren't going to find him or the guy wasn't in the area anymore. And here's a really good workable case. For the next three months, Dinlacher cased every transient trailer park in the area. Finally, he got a tip from a woman he'd given his card to, who'd spotted Lautenberg's old white camper. I get a phone call on my cell phone,

and the caller identifies himself as Adolf Lautenberg. And he agreed to meet me at a coffee shop. And there he was. A surveillance camera trained on him through the window, sipping on a cup of coffee. Dinnlacher walked in, made contact, started talking. About car burglaries. I knew going in there that I had to focus on keeping Adolf Lautenberg focused on my questions and my ruse.

Things were going smoothly. Maybe too smoothly. Because then... He says, I thought you were here actually to talk to me about some murders that happened in San Pedro back in the 70s. Right away, my heart started pounding and the blood went up. If he starts to convince himself that that's why I'm there, there's nothing stopping him with grabbing that coffee and leaving. Can Dinlocker save the sting? Or will Adolph, the suspected murderer, walk away? The investigation of a 30-year-old serial murder case now hinged on whether undercover cop Bob Dinlocker could get what he needed from the prime suspect, a man who looked like Santa Claus, of all people.

He needed Adolf Lautenberg to leave behind a saliva sample on a styrofoam coffee cup. But the well-planned sting operation was already starting to unravel. Suddenly, Lautenberg had asked if he was being questioned about the murders. Dinlacher had to think fast. My mind was telling me, get him back on your ruse. And it worked. Dinlacher got the San Pedro murder story dropped. Lautenberg drifted back to the original conversation.

And as it worked out, the best possible circumstances happened. He got up, apparently forgot about the coffee, and just walked away from it. And I followed him out of the restaurant. And in a heartbeat, a second undercover cop swooped in and took Lautenberg's cup with the precious saliva sample and then rushed it to the crime lab.

Would the DNA from the coffee cup match the sample taken from Lois Petrie's body? Finally, after six weeks, an answer. The evidentiary profile from the Lois Petrie case, from the vaginal slides, is an exact match with the suspect profile of Adolph Lautenberg. Unbelievable. 20-something years later, and we finally have answers to one piece of the puzzle. For the next several weeks, detectives gathered more evidence.

Then one September morning in 2003, they tracked Adolph down at his friend Tony's car repair shop. The camper was right along the fence fence and that's where they came and arrested him and this was absolutely a total shock. While officers searched Lautenberg's mobile home looking for incriminating evidence, Bengston took his suspect downtown for questioning. I don't have anything to add. That's fine. It's just that I'm not going to get shook up for where I have a problem. He's a little arrogant. You know, he thought, you got nothing on me. You didn't talk about with Jeannie the four sins of your life?

The four sins that you've committed? What four sins? Four sins involving four women that were killed. Oh, I don't know. I didn't. You don't know anything about that? I didn't kill any four women. That's what you're talking about.

I have the truth on my side. Okay, take it to the Lord and just get me a lawyer and let him talk to you. All right, we'll take care of that. Whatever. And that was that. No more talking. Later that very same day, Laudenberg was charged with first-degree murder for killing Lois Petrie, the only one of the San Pedro murders in which usable DNA was found.

The case finally went to trial in November of 2006, some 34 years after Lois Petrie was found strangled on her bed. Laudenberg was 80 by now, frail and feeble. The trial lasted three weeks. The jury deliberated just one day. Its verdict? Guilty. Murder in the first degree. Laudenberg lost his appeal and died in prison. Jean Laudenberg returned to her quiet life in Pittsburgh, and at the LAPD archives, the cold cases still pile up. But there is one less homicide now, and Detective Bengston attacks the stack of mysteries with the vigor of a man who solved a big one and provided, finally, some answers for a grieving family.