Unseen - The Only Survivor of the Terrifying Railroad Killer: The Shocking Case of Holly K. Dunn | UNSEEN

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

"She basically came back from the grave to nail him" -- On August 28, 1997, college student Holly Dunn doesn’t know that a sweet date with her friend Christopher Maier at a campus party would take the darkest turn: Chris and Holly are attacked by a notorious serial killer ‘The Railroad Killer’. What happened that night had to be kept a secret for years, until the start of the trial, where Holly could finally face her attacker, the first time since that deadly night, and ultimately bring him down. Footage from: Sole Survivor (A&E), I Survived a Serial Killer (A&E), CBS 48 Hours, BBC Great Crimes & Trials, Jackeline Cacho, Holly's House, Law & Crimes Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I stopped her just like a pig. Because these countries like the mother of all countries, and what happens in the U.S. can change the entire world. So how do you want to change it? With death, with blood? Yes, this is the only way out. They want to see blood, and I give them blood. This is the railroad killer.

He evaded the death penalty for years by pleading to be legally insane. And since his arrest, nobody has been able to prove him, wrong. There is something wrong with him, but does it make him any less morally responsible? The FBI was convinced that out of his 23 victims, none survived, until one did. I'm Holly, and I'm the only known survivor of the railroad serial killer. Assaulted, beaten, stabbed, and left for dead. 20-year-old Holly K. K. Dunn came face to face with the infamous railroad killer. It was a horror show. Heads beaten to a pulp, just horrific. violence. But instead of succumbing to her injuries, she became the sole survivor out of his 23

alleged victims, the only one able to stop him. From his perspective, she basically came back from the grave to nail him. Holly was fresh out of her parents' house in Indiana, as she had just left for college with her boyfriend. In late August, 1997, I was a student at the University of Kentucky. It was about the second night of classes. It was a Thursday night, and I went to a party with my boyfriend, Chris Meyer, not far from campus. Later that night, the two decided to leave to take a walk beside the railroad tracks. It is at this point that they came face to face with a shadowy figure. It was very dark and you couldn't see very well, so it was very startling to see someone

come out that was crouched behind an electrical box. The man gave them a menacing look, pulled out a weapon, and ran towards them. And I don't remember being hit. I think he thought he had killed me. During the assault, she had to go through much more than just getting knocked out. but what really happened that night would only be revealed years later during her attacker's trial. When she eventually woke up, her boyfriend wasn't responsive at all. Holly had to leave him there and went to look for help on her own.

I was definitely knocked out, but I somehow at some point got up to get help. All I could think was go get help. The night of August 29, 1997, about 2.45 in the morning, we received a call for a female that had been injured. Behind the phone is Chad Getz, another student. He was studying late until a woman covered in blood broke into his house. The screen door was closed. I opened the screen door and walked into this person's house. I was sitting in my chair studying, and the corner of my eye just glimps something.

Her face, it looked like a boxer whenever they get cut during a boxing match. I thought she was going to die. There was no doubt in my mind. Despite her broken jaw, Holly was still able to speak. After laying down, she told him that her boyfriend was still down by the tracks. And I did keep saying to him, my friend's still out there. You know, like, be sure they know my friend's still out there. My friend's still out there.

Soon after Chad made the call, the police and paramedics arrived and checked up on Holly. When we walked through the front door, I remember saying a lot of dry blood on her face and in her hair. Had some deformity to her jaw. We found a puncture wound, I believe, in her neck. She was able to tell us her name was hot. and that she'd been raped, she'd been beaten, and she told us she was hurting. She gave the paramedics more details about what happened to her, and asked them to leave her, and go look for Chris instead.

She told us that her friend was down the tracks. One of the paramedics that I was with said he would go down there with the police to find this person. The third paramedic came back. He confirmed us that there was a body down there that had been hitting the head with a rock, that he wasn't viable for us to call for another ambulance to transport the hospital. But he whispered it to me so not to let the girl know what he had found. So we didn't want to make her situation any worse than it already was.

At the hospital, Holly kept asking her family about Chris. Everyone was told not to talk to me. I just said Chris is dead, isn't he? And my dad actually is the one. that I said that to, and he was like, yes, he died. He was charming and so sweet and kind. He was just a great guy. When Chris died, I think I felt I didn't understand why I was still alive and why he wasn't.

And this wasn't the only shocking revelation she had to deal with that night, since the police immediately linked the case to more murders. At that point, four people had been murdered, and I was the only survivor. The realization that not only Chris died, but also more people, came crashing down as the survivor's guilt she felt was unbearable. I started to feel it more as more and more people were being killed.

It grew bigger. You know, all these people were dying by this person, but somehow I lived through it, and why did I live through it? As he kept killing more and more people, investigators started to lose hope. He would not stop, and his mode of transportation using the railroads was brilliant because they couldn't be monitored. I mean, there's thousands of trains and millions of miles of tracks all over the United States.

Devin Anderson, the state prosecutor, discovered that he was a train hopper with multiple aliases. If you're willing to sleep in a train and you're willing to sleep in a field or you can stay lost for a long time. And I did not think we were ever going to catch him. On the verge of death at the hospital, Holly still wanted to help investigators. And to their surprise, she ended up being extremely helpful to the case. Even if she was weakened by her injuries, she took mental, notes of everything she could remember about her attacker's appearance. I mean, I was doing things during the attack thinking, I'm going to burn your face into

my memory. I'm going to remember every tattoo you have, every scar you have, I'm going to look on every part of your body and I'm going to know everything about you because if I survived this, I'm going to get you. Despite being disfigured and heavily injured, she survived, but it would take a while before she got a chance to call him out. After three years and nine more victims, The FBI finally identified the man to be Angel Matarino Resendez, a criminal from Puebla, Mexico, who recently got caught crossing the U.S. border. The only reason they were able to catch him was because of the tattoos and scars descriptions given by Holly years earlier.

The sketches and general descriptions had been useless so far since he was always changing his appearance after killing someone. Now that they knew his identity, they got his sister to persuade him to turn himself in in exchange for a psychological evaluation. But what they didn't know was that he was. was already planning his defense. Insanity was the logical defense, because no one wants to believe that there's someone out there that will do things like that.

That was the thing that worried me the most about the case was that jurors would just throw up their hands and say, nobody in their right mind could do what he does. As Holly heard the news about her attacker's arrest, her traumatizing memories came flooding back. I mean, it was a relief for me. I mean, I was still very scared. This really meant, I think, when he surrendered that I knew that I was going to face him again. After years of pursuit, Prosecutor Anderson finally got to see the man she so far only knew as the railroad killer. You could feel he was dangerous. He was a dangerous person.

He looked like a wild animal who had been caught. As Anderson guessed, his defense team planned an insanity defense. If successful, Resindis could be put in an institution and eventually even released into the world. but the prosecutor still had one last trick up her sleeve. I flew into Houston with my family the night before I was going to testify, and I woke up during the middle of the night screaming and crying. What I was most worried about, I think, when I testified, was seeing him again. Mere minutes before the trial started, Anderson took a minute to talk to the panicked Holly.

I went back there and said, okay, are you ready? And she said, yep, and I said, he's going to be in there looking at you. Don't look at him. Just look at me. Don't look at him until I ask you to. She took a second to give her a hug and pointed her towards the doors. I cannot imagine the amount of courage she had to marshal to come into that courtroom, to walk in and face him. She chose to present Holly as the last testimony of the trial.

As the sole survivor, she was her only hope to convince the jury. We're going to tell you about the people, the people who've been murdered, most of whom murdered in their own homes. I knew that I wanted Holly to testify last. So by the time she took the stand, the jury had heard the gruesome details of all the other murders that we had solved at that point. When I went into the courtroom, I sat down in the chair to testify. I did not look at him. I was looking straight at Devon. As an opener, Anderson asked her a very unusual question. What did you do last weekend?

But behind that question was an opportunity to empower her and showed her rescindus that she was strong. stronger than him. I was really excited to say, I graduated from college. To me, I was saying to him, you didn't destroy me. Finally, Holly was allowed to share her story publicly, as beforehand, it had to be kept secret for the investigation. Then I went into the details of that night. After explaining that Resindis first asked for money, before forcing them to kneel down

in front of him, Holly went to explain the actual assault. Be warned that the following segment may be disturbing to some people. He made Chris get down on his knees and started going through Chris's backpack. I thought he was looking for money. But really what he was doing was tying up Chris's hands behind his back with his backpack. At that point, with the weapon in his hand, he took off my belt and he tied my hands behind my back with my belt. He pulled Chris into the grass beside the tracks. With Resindis' attention focused on Chris, Holly could have ran at any moment.

I was not going to leave Chris. I remember him ripping a shirt and he tied up my legs, he tied up Chris's legs, and then he made gags for us. Chris had said, run, if you can, and I couldn't get my legs untied, so I couldn't run. I don't know how much time passed between that time and when our attacker came with the rock. It was like so heavy that he was having to like kind of hold it like a baby, and I just remember him coming. over to Chris and he just dropped it on his head. And it was like a dream. I mean, I didn't really understand what was happening.

In her confusion, she heard a loud noise, a sound she had never heard before. What I heard was actually a death rattle. It was his last breath. That's what I heard. After the murder, he turned his eyes towards Holly. And from the way he was looking at her, she knew he had something else other than murder on his mind, but she was determined to fight him. And then he climbed on top of me.

and I knew at that moment he was going to rape me. I tried to kick him, I tried to punch him, and he stabs me in my neck, and he said, look how easily I could kill you. And this is the moment it happened. Out of respect for Holly and the other victims of Resindis, we won't be covering much of the assault past this point, but note that afterward, Resindis tried to kill her.

My mind completely blacked out. He hit me hard. He was trying to kill me. I laid there and he thought I was dead. I'm just thinking, I mean, how did this? What, you know, I don't even know what just happened. With this last statement, Holly finished her testimony. The entire courtroom was filled with a mix of disgust, disbelief, and sadness.

And at that moment, Anderson looked straight into Holly's eyes. Just I felt so proud of her for doing it. And she cried. I mean, she was very, you know, emotional, but she told it, she got it out. The jurors were crying, Devin was crying. It was the moment I had been waiting for in the trial because I wanted a victim of his to face him down because no one else could.

But Anderson wasn't done yet, as she went on to ask her last question to Holly, the question that would finally put an end to the railroad killer's rampage. To her, everything else had been building up to this moment. Anderson asked, can you please identify the accused? What is he wearing? And so at this moment, I knew I was going to have to look at him. So I look at him and I, you know, point to him and I say he's wearing a white button down shirt.

I have never felt such relief in my entire life, and I probably never will. Just thank God. It was a great moment. It's a great moment because she got to call him out for all those other people sitting in the courtroom. And for all those other people who were dead, she got to call him out. It was great. And as I'm saying that, I feel my hearing going into my head. I get really hot, and I feel like I'm about to faint.

Even though it was a cathartic moment for Holly, one can only handle that much. You know, I saw him and he had basically a emotionless face. I broke down at that point, and they had to carry me out of the courtroom. I was so emotionally destroyed. I mean, I couldn't give any more than I gave during that trial. After Holly was carried outside of the courtroom, Anderson addressed the jurors one last time before they finally gave their verdict. There is something wrong with him, but does it make him any less morally responsible? No.

The jury did find that he was a future danger to society, so the judge sentenced him to death. There's a reason I trust my shopping list with shipped. Shoppers with shipped know that no order is ordinary and come through adding care to my cart. They double-check labels, wouldn't confuse mozzarella for Monterey Jack, and they know what's right. With shipped, it's never just delivery.

It's shopped same day in the same way you would. Use code savings to become a shipped member for half off only $49 at shipt.com slash offer. Terms apply. One surprising fact is how fast Holly landed back on her feet. Way before the execution, even before the trial itself, she was already trying to help other victims. I started speaking about two years after the attack. He said, look how easily I could kill you.

To me, it felt like part of my healing process to talk about it and to cry about it and to be emotional. Because for so long, I had to kind of detach emotion from it. The way that I went on with my life was I had to forgive him and look for the good that could come from this. When I was speaking, I didn't have to worry about that. I could work through my emotions, and that really helped me in my healing process. Being a survivor is one thing, but helping other survivors and knowing how to do that in a professional manner was another thing. And she isn't using the word professional lightly. She literally turned her entire life around with the urge she felt to help other survivors.

This is why she decided to found her own advocacy center for victims of violent crimes. They opened in 2008 and have already served justice to more than 300 survivors. Holly is a hero because she did not let what happened to her destroy her. She decided to make it her reason to live or her reason to help people. And even if her work today is very impressive, her internal journey was even more so. She ended up redefining herself. No more was she a victim. She was now a survivor.

A survivor is someone who gets up each day and lives their life and can choose happiness, can choose to smile. I think that that's a survivor. You don't have to be a person who goes out and does public speaking or writes a book. You get up each day and you put your two feet on the ground and you choose to do something. It's that simple. He attempted to destroy her, but she's the one who came

up on top. Today, she wants her story to be heard. For all the voiceless survivors out there, she wants them to know that they survived for a reason. I survived because I wasn't done. I survived to do something.