Dateline Originals - Murder in the Hollywood Hills - Ep. 6: Sisterhood

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Women who’d been targeted by Kristi’s killer fight for justice, and one of them confronts him face-to-face.                                      This episode was originally published on April 11, 2024.

It was a grim little ceremony, the reshackling of Victor Palaeologus at the conclusion of his murder trial, the shuffling out of the courtroom and off to prison. Closure is the word that gets tossed out to meet such moments. No such thing, of course. Nor did the trial or the verdict or the sentencing bring healing to Christie's parents. No, they knew they would live every day with sorrow, even their moments of happiness shot through with gray like an overcast day. I have grandchildren. I have, you know, the blessings of so many things in life. However, there's always,

always this element of knowing that Christy is missing. Just 21 and quite suddenly just gone. She's not on vacation. You know, she's not ever going to be part of either of my daughter's lives. And that's like really sad because she was a really great person. So much she might have done, might have been, perhaps like the other women have done and have been, the ones who survived Victor Palaeologus. In this episode, you will hear how that group of strangers,

connected only by their close calls with Christy's killer, formed a family of sorts, a sisterhood, with a mission. In 25 years, we're going to be there with bells on to say, don't let this guy out. You'll hear how one of those women, hounded by an insistent suspicion, undertook an investigation of her own. Had Victor Palaeologus murdered before?

She had seen my one Jane Doe case, and she had asked me if I'd ever heard of the name Victor Palaeologus, which at the time I had not. And you'll hear how that investigation led to a high-stakes meeting with Paleologus himself in the prison yard. I wanted him to know that I wasn't scared of him. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Murder in the Hollywood Hills, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 6, Sisterhood. It was the day after moving day. One of those days when a new house or apartment is cluttered with boxes, and the job of unpacking them all seems very daunting. It had been a heck of a couple of days, sweeping out the old place, moving into the new one.

Kathy DeBono had just taken a break from unwrapping dishes and pictures and knickknacks and collapsed into a comfy chair. That's when she heard a close friend who was helping her settle in open a random box of books. On top of that box was a book that someone had written about this case. And my friend sees my photo on the cover of this book and she's, what the hell is this? What is this book? It was a book about Victor Palaeologus and the Christy Johnson case. Kathy grimaced. On the cover, the publisher had used old driver's license photos, hers and the other women who had encountered that guy. The photos were not flattering.

Looked like mug shots. Like she and the other women were the criminals. Kathy let out a big sigh. It was a long story, she said. So I told her the story of the trial I'd testified at, you know, several years before, and she hadn't heard it before. And this friend of mine was an indie film producer, and she was enthralled by the story

and just didn't know why she'd never heard it before. The more Kathy talked, the more interested the friend became. Might be a film in it, she told Kathy. A documentary, a story about women banding together to take down a predator. Mind you, this was four years before the Me Too movement brought about a national reckoning for men who'd used positions of power to sexually abuse women. We decided we wanted to make a documentary about the women who testified in this case because it was their collective testimony that pretty much tipped the scales in the prosecution's favor. And so that's how the project was born, to make a film that would tell the story of the women who brought down a predator. I wanted to put all of these women who stepped up on this case to talk to each other. You know, we've never met each other. No, because during the trial, they had to be siloed, kept away from each other.

Each one of them walked into the courtroom alone and walked out alone. So they had not heard each other's stories, had no real idea how they all fit together. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to know how they felt about it. And I wanted to know if they knew that what we had done together had sealed the deal. It was March 2013 when that idea for a documentary took root. Kathy didn't know the finer details of the case. So she and her partner started by having coffee with Virginia Obenshain, the now retired detective who'd handled the case from the beginning. What I found out from her is that investigating him was sort of like investigating a ghost. They couldn't find much of anything. And so when the parade of women became the crux of the case

for the prosecution, there wasn't a need to dig further into his history or his background. And I still felt the need for that. I still felt the curiosity in knowing who is this person? Who are we dealing with? Kathy seemed uniquely qualified to find out. She not only had the time and the motivation, she'd also developed skills that few investigators possess. I'm a psychotherapist. I was an actor at one point.

That's right. After her first encounter with Victor 17 years earlier, Kathy went back to school and became a licensed psychotherapist. And it was that training, she said, that led her to think Victor Palaeologus might have left a longer trail of victims in his wake than authorities knew about. Men in general will display their propensity for violence in the age range of 18 to 24. Our first documented instance of Victor's violence is in 1989 when he attacked Christine Kludgen. Christine Kludgen, you'll remember, was the young woman who had to fight for her life with Palaeologus after going out with him on a first date. And by then he was already 27 years old. And also his modus operandi showed a lot of signs of sophistication by then. So it's really highly unlikely that was his first offense.

Soon Kathy's home became a repository for all things paleologus. Public records, business filings, credit applications, anything she could find, really. It all helped fill in the gaps. Kathy learned that Victor was the youngest of four boys, that he grew up in South Jersey, the son of a man who'd emigrated from Greece and worked at a popular diner in the area called Olga's. As far as Kathy could tell, Victor Peleologos had no recorded run-ins with the law as a kid. In the 70s, the family moved to New Mexico. Victor and another brother had actually graduated high school out in New Mexico, but then the whole family had moved back to the East Coast after that. And then he went to the University of New Mexico.

Kathy tried contacting members of the paleologus family back East, but no luck. No one in his family was responsive. They did not want to talk to me. They must have stories to tell. I would love to hear them. There's, you know, all the gaps in understanding Victor's psychology. After college, Victor moved to L.A., where, as we now know, the story got complicated. It wasn't long before dockets and transcripts covered Kathy's coffee table. Stacks of police files and probationary reports were piled on the living room floor. I tried to look up as many addresses or places of where he may have lived or worked.

I started by looking into those places for cold cases of missing women or unsolved murders that had an MO that might be similar to his or could be akin to his. Her investigation deepened. Three by five index cards. Soon covered a wall of her home office. Details of various Jane Does. Contact names and numbers. And then I would contact those law enforcement agencies about that case.

And ask them if they knew about Victor Pellialogos and that he had lived in their area before. Most of those calls went nowhere. But in the spring of 2014, Kathy learned about a coal case in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. Some details of the case had been posted online. A woman's skeleton was found in 1988 in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, just a few miles from where Victor had an address. The remains were believed to be that of a young woman between 17 and 21 years old. Investigators estimated she'd been dead for three to five years when her remains were found in 1988. In a location where you'd have to be a local to know this area.

You know, it was behind this abandoned distillery and she was down in a bunker hole underground. Kathy might have skimmed over the story, gone on to some other case. But a few details about that poor young woman's fate jumped out at her like a case of goosebumps. She had the heels, the stockings, a skirt, and a camisole. Not exactly like the outfits Victor asked his victims to wear, but so very similar. And as she read on, she thought, this guy was into that same sex fantasy.

Another thing that stuck out to me with these heels is they were not the right size for her feet. And there were cuts made back in the seams on the ends of the shoes, almost as though she were wearing someone else's shoes, or maybe someone had brought them for her. If it was not the full-blown Bond girl fantasy of the paleologus she encountered, maybe it was an early version? They are not the white button-down shirt. They are not the black skirt. It is not the black stilettos. But it could be an early attempt at honing this fantasy before he got really into the details of his specific preferences. Kathy called the number of the detective in Bent Salem who was handling the case.

She told me who she was, and she was calling me about one of the cases I had on the internet. And that is Detective Chris McMullen. She asked me if I'd ever heard of the name Victor Palaeologus, which at the time I had not. And she told me that he used to live in Ben Salem at one time, which were located just outside of Philadelphia. A little checking revealed that Victor moved out west before that girl was killed. But Kathy wondered, what if Victor had met this Jane Doe while back east visiting family?

A strange and perhaps iffy theory, but enough to launch a cross-country collaboration between the detective and the filmmaker. Is it nice out in L.A. today? I'm here. It is. I'm out here. It's about 72 degrees and sunny. Guys, it's been LA today? I'm here. It is. I'm out here. It's about 72 degrees and sunny.

Okay, it's been raining for two days straight here. Kathy recorded this call for the documentary she was working on. You've already heard several excerpts from that project. In this episode, you will hear even more. You were able to get DNA of the body, right? Yeah, her DNA is in the CODA system. All I need is a surviving family member to say, hey, I'm missing a sister, I'm missing a daughter. The detective paid a visit to one of Paleologus' brothers. And as that detective recently told us, the brother confirmed that Victor had, in fact, returned to the area to visit. One of those visits was in 1985. That seemed significant because that was about the time it was estimated

his Jane Doe had died. He told me that Victor was at his wedding, and his wedding was in town, and that was one of the theories I thought, well, did he bring a guest to the wedding? The brother didn't remember. But there was just one other thing about this Jane Doe that the detective thought might help identify her. Or maybe lead to a boyfriend? Fetal bones. They'd been found among the remains. This Jane Doe was pregnant when she encountered her killer.

I kept saying all along, somebody has got to be missing this girl. And the fact that she was pregnant made me think that even more. The detective wondered if DNA testing might identify the baby's father. And Kathy wanted to know if that father might be Victor Palaeologus. Long shot?

Yes, one with problems. Problem number one was there wasn't enough DNA in those bones to upload to CODIS, the National DNA Data Bank, for comparison with millions of other samples. There was, however, enough DNA for a partial profile of the father. What the detective needed was a DNA sample from Victor Palaeologus for a direct comparison. Which brings us to problem number two. California refused to give up a sample of Palaeologus' DNA for a cold case fishing expedition. California didn't want to play ball with us on that, so we went through it. We obtained it other ways.

The other way? Well, that's where Kathy DeBono comes in. So I decided to go in to the prison and come out with his DNA, if possible, and a confession of killing Christy, if possible. By March 2016, Kathy DeBono had three years invested in her documentary project. She'd talked to all the women who testified at Victor Paley-Logos' trial, and several more who had not. She'd interviewed forensic psychologists, handwriting experts. She'd even got Judge Robert Perry to sit down for an interview about the case.

So, thank you so much for doing this. Well, to me, this is an important case. The judge remembered the case well. There are bad people out there who will prey on young women. And that's what happened here. But now it was time to shoot one of her movie's biggest scenes. The one where she brings together all the people who testified at the paleologus trial.

It was so lovely that we all have a chance to meet each other today. It was a three-day weekend in San Diego. You're my hero. Terry Hall and Susan Murphy were there. So were Alice Walker and Christine Kludgeon. Hi, I'm Christine. Nice to meet you. Paul Cady came, the real estate agent who'd spent a week house hunting with Victor. Thank you. You guys for having me here.

And so did Christy's brother, Derek, and a couple of her best friends from Saugatuck, Michigan. All right, let's get some good Saugatuck gossip. What do you want to know? Camera crews roamed the big house Kathy had rented for the occasion, ignored, for the most part, by that most unusual gathering. And I thank you all for coming because without you,

I probably couldn't do as much justice as I'd like for Christy's life. During that remarkable weekend, the strangers became friends and listened as friends to each other's stories. It's been 13 years since my Christy was murdered. Here they could let themselves be vulnerable and share it all. It's one of the moments in my life I'll never forget. I'm super grateful that I was able to be of help. That's Susan Murphy talking.

We've got this group together now and we've got a story to tell that hopefully a cautionary tale for other young people. As the women talked, it became clear that they all had strong feelings about the tale they wanted to tell. Not one of victimization, no. One of empowerment. And who better to tell it than someone who'd also been one of Paleologus' targets. I've done every interview for every media outlet,

and they always get the story wrong. They're not stressed enough how cunning and how susceptible people can be to this kind of evil. To Kathy, understanding Victor Paleologus' psychology was key to demonstrating why he was a criminal who could never be rehabilitated, a predator who should never be paroled. When you look at Victor Palaeologus, he really waves a flag in the face of anyone that has insight into any of this that he might be

psychopathic. But it wasn't enough to just toss out a claim like that. Not for Kathy. She wanted to understand. She wanted to say it with some authority. So I went and got trained by the Darkstone group. They are the people that train the FBI profilers. Because Kathy knew all too well what would surely happen if she didn't get that training? If you're a woman and you're associated with a case like this, there's almost a glass wall that comes down in front of you where people can't really hear you anymore. They can't hear certain details. This is something we've heard women say forever.

Nobody's listening to me. So what I wanted to do by getting this training was make sure that I could talk about Victor in terms of his psychopathy and in terms of his criminality in a very informed, educated way that really makes my voice worth listening to. And that's what I went and made sure that I did. Early on, Kathy started writing to Victor Palaeologus in prison. At first, to ask for an interview, and even though he declined, the correspondence continued. I tried to make it as appealing to him as possible, and the entirety of our letters

exchange could almost be seen as a bit of a chess game because there was a lot of strategy going on. For three years, they wrote to each other about hobbies and interests, jobs and pets, travel. Occasionally, they flattered each other, almost like they were flirting. One letter that Paley Logos sent Kathy was positively pornographic. The letter described his fantasies involving her. Disturbing scenes that combine sex and violence. I had a lot of feelings about receiving this letter. They were mixed emotions. One of them was just satisfaction that I was able to earn his trust enough to get him to talk to me in that way, to be able to learn what I wanted to learn. And then anger, knowing that that's

what he actually wanted to do to me. That's what he wanted to do to other women. Using a standard checklist method of assessing the mental makeup of people thought to have neuropsychiatric disorders or psychopathy, Kathy reviewed all that she knew about Victor Palaeologus. She talked to people who'd known him personally and professionally over the years. She scored his letters. She graded his relationships, rated his criminal history. And this is what she found. If the highest score on a psychopathy report that you can have is a 40. Victor is a 36.8. And this is a score that I gave him, Keith, by allowing any kind of allowances that I could in the instrument

for bringing that score down. And Victor is still a 36.8 on the psychopathy scale. He is a severe psychopath. And with that, you can pretty much expect certain things out of that character. Psychopathy is a personality structure. And so with that, you can expect certain things. What kind of things? Well, compulsive lying, for one. They're really good on their feet. And someone like Victor is going to be very successful in those wriggly moments. I'd seen that up close firsthand and soon enough.

So would Kathy. In 2017, after years of studying the man, years of letter writing and relationship building, Kathy was ready to make her move. I'd always known that creating this dynamic with Victor would lead to a day where I would visit him in prison and talk to him in person. Because really my ultimate goal was, I'm going to get him to trust me and I'm going to get him to tell me he killed Christy.

Kathy also intended to gather a sample of Paleologus' DNA for comparison to that Jane Doe cold case back in Pennsylvania. So on a sunny Sunday in July, Kathy walked into the California State Prison for Men in Chino. It was Victor Paleologus' birthday, and Kathy's visit was a surprise. No cameras or recording devices were allowed on the inside, but waiting in the parking lot was her filmmaking crew. And so waiting in my van with my production team was a forensic scientist and her kit to collect whatever it was that I brought out.

On her right middle finger, Kathy placed one of those fabric-feeling band-aids, which she hoped to rub against Palaeologus to gather his DNA. Because he was in a medium security prison, guards led her to an outdoor courtyard, told her, he'll meet you here. So I'm sitting at the picnic table. He comes out of the prison and he's walking towards me. So I stood up and walked towards him. I just, I did not want him getting towards me and then looming over me. I wasn't nervous. I walked straight up to him and just went in for a kiss and I kissed him on the cheek. I let him kiss me on the cheek. I made a mental note of where his lips touched me and I thought, okay, got his DNA. So we sat down and he put his arms on the table and I could see that he had shaved his arms. So this was the perfect opportunity to reach over with my bandaid and rub his arm and say, oh, I see that you shave your arms. Oh my. He wouldn't have seen that as a come on at all.

Oh, well, no, he did. He did. Saw that as a bit of a come on. For three hours, said Kathy, they sat there in that prison yard. A casual observer might have thought they were star-crossed lovers, hands touching, gazing intently into each other's eyes. But remember, Kathy used to be an actress, a skill set that was coming in handy now. I can still see in my mind's eye, Keith, where he would reach over with his hand and sort of stroke my hand a little bit.

I just allowed it at that point. He wanted a drink. I bought him a drink. He wanted a monster drink. He drank that. And that was also something I collected with me on the way out. A treasure trove of DNA. We got plentiful, plentiful amounts of his DNA. Yeah.

Of course, Kathy went in with the intention of getting more than Victor Peleologos' DNA. She wanted him to feel comfortable enough with her to talk about Christy Johnson. And she said, he did. I asked him to talk to me about it. I said, well, you tell me what happened with Christy. No, you don't want to hear about that. I do. I want to hear about that. I want to know. I want to hear about that. And basically, he gave me a story of consensual sex. They were playing with erotic asphyxiation. It went too far, and it was an accident, and then he panicked. That was his story. It was a lie, of course.

Yet another self-serving story, likely imagined in the moment. We obviously know that this isn't true, because he's sitting there talking to a woman who he tried exactly the same ruse on. But she didn't push back. She didn't confront him. Not that day. That day was for pretending she believed him.

Kathy was playing the long game. I was not done talking with him or holding on to this dynamic I created with him where he felt safe enough to tell me things like this. So therefore, the relationship of some sort of relationship with him continued. I still needed something that would be useful at a parole hearing to demonstrate that he is not reformed. He is not remorseful. And that he still is deviant in his sexual desires. You couple that with his level of psychopathy and he remains a recidivism risk for the rest of his life. There is no drop off. But as an octogenarian, you could still be considered a risk for sexual violence?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Kathy DiBuono had every reason to believe that day in 2017 that it would be a long, long time before Victor Palaeologus ever became eligible for parole. And why shouldn't she? Even Judge Perry, the judge who'd sentenced him, had assured her she need not worry about Victor Palaeologus being paroled. If I have someone I've sent to prison coming up for parole hearing, I'll get a letter from the parole board saying, do you care to comment? Generally, I don't. You think you'll want to be at this one? Oh, probably not.

It wouldn't concern you that a parole board may let him out? I think the parole board pretty much does its job, you know. He was on parole when he killed Christy. He sure was. It's really disappointing that someone goes to prison and within a few weeks of coming out of prison is right back doing the same thing. Disappointing? Yes.

But in 2014, when that interview was recorded, that seemed unlikely to happen again, at least as far as Victor Palaeologos was concerned. He was 52 that year and facing at least another 14 years in prison. But in 2022, California instituted an elder parole program to reduce prison overcrowding. And in the fall of 2023,

Victor Palaeologus became eligible for parole because he met the state's minimum conditions for early release. He was over 50 and he'd been incarcerated for 20 years. There was no 50 and he'd been incarcerated for 20 years.

There was no announcement. There was no heads up given to the family of Christy Johnson. It was a surprise to us that it came up five years before what was originally anticipated. That's Christy's mom, Terry Hall. He murdered Christy weeks after he was released last time. So I think that speaks pretty highly of what's going to happen if he's released again. In the years Kathy DeBono worked on her documentary, she experienced all the travails of an independent filmmaker. Her partner left the project, funding dried up. At one point, a big cable network stepped

in with money to complete the project. It was greenlighted for eight episodes. But pretty soon, Kathy saw that the network brass had a different vision for her project than she did. And eventually, the whole thing was shelved. When the documentary ended in the end of 2017, things had gotten so intense and stressful, not even necessarily because of dealing with Victor, but because of the network executives I was dealing with. Even the DNA sample she'd gotten from Victor during that prison visit went nowhere.

Paleologus was not a match for the fetal bones recovered alongside the Pennsylvania Jane Doe. Still, though he obviously wasn't the father of that unborn child, could he still be a suspect in the young woman's murder? Yes, he could be. It doesn't clear him. I mean, in my opinion, he's still a strong person of interest, but it's circumstantial. That's been Salem detective Chris McMullen. There was a lot of circumstantial reason that, you know, I listened to Kathy and took a good hard look at Victor. A good hard look at all of it, which, after an extensive search of several genealogical databases,

produced a name. Detective McMullen was finally able to identify his Jane Doe in 2022. Her name was Lisa Todd. She was 17 years old when she vanished in 1985. Her home in northeast Philadelphia was about a 15-minute drive from the spot where her bones were found three years later. Why had it taken 33 years to identify Lisa? Call it a clerical error. In October of 1985, Lisa had been reported as missing and even said she was pregnant.

It was just a few months later, her 18th birthday passed, and apparently she was just taken out of the system. Lisa Todd's missing persons report simply slipped through a rather large crack. That was not, however, what happened with Victor Palaeologos' early parole hearing. That was intentional. Policy, even. His hearing was scheduled for November 7th, 2023. Oh, it was posted online, in advance, all right. But it seemed that anybody who might have wanted to speak in opposition to Palaeologus' parole was in the dark, unaware, uninformed.

Christy's mom, Terry Hall. I was not notified. The way I found out that it was coming up five years earlier than what the sentence was, was a close friend of mine was actually monitoring on a regular basis to see where the inmate was. And to her surprise, realized that it was coming up prematurely. That friend, the one who told Terry that Paleologus was coming up for early parole? Well, wouldn't you know, it was Kathy DeBono. I have the link to Victor's CDCR page. That's his California Department of Corrections page. It's in my bookmarks, and every so often I just check that page,

and it will tell me what his parole status is. That's how I learned that he was eligible for parole. As you might imagine, a plan to oppose parole for paleologists came together quickly once Kathy was on the case. Parole. It had been the fear of all those who came to Kathy's gathering in San Diego back in 2016. The fear that Victor Paleologus might one day be paroled and be free to prey on someone else's daughter, Terry Hall. I would say there's zero chance that he would be rehabilitating,

and there's 100% chance that he's going to be even more of a danger. Under guidelines set forth by the current Los Angeles District Attorney, George Gascon, prosecutors are not allowed to appear at parole hearings or speak in opposition to an inmate's parole. No, that job falls to the victims and or someone they might designate to speak. It was going to be Christy Johnson's mom, her dad, her brother. It was going to be Christine Klujan, women that he did physically attack. And it was going to be me. And I was listed as the representative for some of these women so that I could speak while I was at this

hearing. What a surprise that would have been for Victor Peleologos, seeing his old pen pal standing with the others who showed up to oppose his parole. Well, it never came to that. Months before that scheduled hearing, Victor Palaeologos waived his right to parole. Did he know that his victims had organized to oppose parole for him? We don't know. Victor Palaeologos did not respond to our request for a comment for this podcast. I can only guess that that might be why he waived his parole hearing voluntarily for two more years. Maybe he looked at that day and thought, I'll never win on that day. I don't know. Could be.

But maybe he assumes you and the others will get tired of coming to parole hearings and he'll sneak through. Right. That's not going to happen. We can't let it happen. Paleologus will be eligible for parole again in 2025. And again after that, every two years. Kathy DeBono and the other women have vowed to show up for every one of those parole hearings until the day Victor Peleologos dies behind bars. It's been more than 21 years, though, since the afternoon when the sky threatened rain and Christy Johnson stopped her little car in front of Douglas and Francoise Kirkland's house

to ask for directions. And I remember Douglas sort of coming in the house and saying, ah, it's another one of those, like, little hopeful girls who is going to a photo shoot. I hope she's going to be okay. That's Francoise Kirkland. And of course, now we know Christy Johnson would not be okay.

She died one week shy of her 22nd birthday at the hands of a predator, one that was practiced at the art of selling dreams. Just tell all the young girls to be very, very, very, very careful. Don't go to some stranger's house by yourself. Bring a friend and make sure that you're safe. Because this can happen again. Oh yes, it can and likely will happen again.

There are plenty of creeps, predators out there. More perhaps than the cops and the courts can handle on any given day. But for the women whose experiences with one of those predators made them a sisterhood, the lesson of the Christy Johnson case seems clear. Justice for those who've been victimized is a struggle, a struggle that never ends. We need to stay active and in participation in these things to make sure that the system stays locked down on guys like this, to make sure that we follow through. That's the unfortunate thing about being a victim

is you have to participate fiercely, fiercely in what happens next or it just goes away. Murder in the Hollywood Hills is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beecham is the producer. Thank you. co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Catherine Anderson. Bryson Barnes is head of audio

production.