00:00:00
She is very carefree, loving. She was amazing. I just can't tell you the feeling that went through my mind.
00:00:12
I couldn't think of anybody that would ever want to do what they did to her. Amy Jane was an angel, traveling the world with her church to help children.
00:00:26
They loved Amy. They loved Amy so much. But back home, something sinister lay waiting.
00:00:32
It was a pretty horrific crime scene. A bright young life snuffed out. Who would do that? It doesn't make any sense at all.
00:00:39
Months later, a mob out for a walk vanishes. Karen's gone. I don't know where she is. I just cried.
00:00:47
One murder, one disappearance in the same small town. But soon, police would discover a creepier connection.
00:00:55
One of the detectives had gotten his hands on an image of Amy Jane Branhag and Karen Lang together.
00:01:01
Oh my God. The dead teenager and the missing mom, arm in arm. In that moment, most of us knew that that wasn't coincidence.
00:01:09
Was someone stalking the women of this tight-knit church. This sounds more like a Zodiac-type killer.
00:01:16
Absolutely. A race to connect the dots, revealing a truth darker than anyone imagined.
00:01:22
I don't get that. I mean, it's just evil. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
00:01:30
Here's Keith Morrison with Someone Was Out There. There are children born into this world for whom the dance never ends.
00:01:41
For whom joy seems uncontained. For whom exuberance is uncontainable. Amy Dane, what are we doing right now?
00:01:50
We're riding on the roof of a car. There was this young woman, a sprite really, in a young woman's body, who loved adventure and people, and who danced to music no one else could hear.
00:02:04
Which is why. It haunted me. This case haunted me. Haunted the police. Haunted the whole town.
00:02:12
Is there a serial killer around? A serial killer with plans? For two women in one particular church? In one particular photograph?
00:02:22
I was like, this is insane and everybody needs to find this person. Yes, but it began with that girl, that Sprite.
00:02:33
Just the freest spirit that you could think of, like literally not having a care in the world.
00:02:39
Kate Cook is talking about her friend and fellow missionary, Amy Jane Branhagen,
00:02:44
talking about her now that it's happened, that it's all over. Kate and Amy Jane went to India and Nepal together back in 2012.
00:02:52
Small-town girls, Kate from Wisconsin, Amy Jane from Oregon. She was always ready to give and pour her heart out to people
00:02:59
and just give everything that she had to offer. They were there three months for something called Youth with a Mission, or YWAM for short.
00:03:11
Like tourists, they went to the Taj Mahal. And like preachers, they spread the word.
00:03:16
to children mostly for whom amy jane was magnetic irresistible when they would see her they would
00:03:24
run up to her they go dd dd which means sister sister you know like so excited and when the
00:03:30
three-month mission trip was over she hated it she was like i don't want to go home
00:03:35
Home for Amy Jane was a universe away from vibrant, teeming India. Here it is, Pendleton, safely tucked into a small valley on the vast rolling flanks of eastern Oregon.
00:03:54
Cowboy country. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pendleton Round. Home to one of the nation's biggest rodeos, the Pendleton Roundup,
00:04:10
which, each September, celebrates the town's rough-and-tumbled past as a brawling and bordello-filled cow town.
00:04:20
And then, good conservative citizens wave goodbye to departing cowboys and settle into a safe and predictable life,
00:04:28
and fill the pews every Sunday morning without fail. People like Bill Caldera, who was like family to Amy Jane and her parents, Dave and Kathy Brantagen.
00:04:37
They brought Amy Jane home when she was three days old, and we were there when she was brought home.
00:04:45
Bill knew and adored the remarkable little girl from the very beginning. You watched Amy Jane grow up?
00:04:52
Yes. And saw what sort of girl emerge? She is very carefree, loving, didn't know a stranger.
00:05:02
The Brandhiggins asked Bill to speak for them after what happened, when they sorely needed their church family at Pendleton Free Methodist.
00:05:10
Like Youth Minister Jed Hummel and his wife Lisa, who encountered the dancing sprite when she was in middle school.
00:05:16
If she got the feeling that you were left out, she'd find you. And make sure you knew that you had a friend.
00:05:24
A little bit like Pippi Longstocking or something. Oh, certainly. And I always remembered she knew everyone's name.
00:05:30
She was just fun. Mind you, when she was far away in India, the people who loved Amy Jane worried a lot
00:05:37
and didn't breathe easy until she returned home to the safety and security of Pendleton.
00:05:43
Where? She was waiting for God to tell her what to do next, whether it was going to be to travel the world
00:05:48
or go back to YWAM or go to school. She wanted more freedom, too, so she moved out of her parents house and got herself a little apartment in downtown Pendleton Worked two jobs to pay for it including a job cleaning motel rooms at the Travel Lodge across from City Hall
00:06:06
She was excited to get this other job, but she wasn't so sure about working at the hotel.
00:06:12
She was a little nervous about it. After all, she'd never done that sort of thing before, or answered to a boss who, well, this
00:06:20
one sounded gruff. But she went, and she scoured and scrubbed those little rooms that looked
00:06:25
out on downtown Pendleton. And then, it was August 14, 2012. 911, what is your emergency?
00:06:33
I'm calling from Travelodge, here in Pendleton. There's a girl dead in the bathroom. I don't
00:06:39
know. A girl dead in the bathroom? I think she passed out. Okay, I'm going to get the police and an ambulance headed that way, okay?
00:06:47
In his office down the hall from the 911 operator, Bill Caldera listened and felt the dread flooding.
00:06:53
It just gave me a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was not good about this call.
00:07:00
Bill, remember, was a close friend to the Brandhagen family, attends the same church.
00:07:05
But he's also a policeman, and that day, with the chief on vacation, Lieutenant Bill Caldera was the man in charge.
00:07:13
As soon as one of my patrol sergeants arrived on scene, he requested my presence, which I knew then we were probably dealing with the homicide.
00:07:21
But as he raced to the motel, he couldn't know what had just been started there any more than whose life had just ended.
00:07:31
What this veteran investigator was about to find would leave him stunned. I just can't tell you the feeling that went through my mind.
00:07:43
When we return, a crime that may be impossible to solve, thanks to a suspect list that could include anyone and everyone.
00:07:51
Within the first hour of being at the crime scene, upwards of 50 people walked by.
00:07:56
If God had a plan for Pendleton, Oregon, on the afternoon of August 14, 2012, one could hardly have imagined it would be this.
00:08:17
My mom, what is your emergency? There's a girl dead in the bathroom. Lieutenant Bill Caldera prepared himself as he drove over to the tribal lodge and then climbed the stairs to room 231.
00:08:29
All the preparation in the world would not have been enough. Lying on the bathroom floor, her lifeless body, punctured by the starkling scarlet of a dozen stab wounds,
00:08:40
was the sweet, free spirit he'd known since she was a baby, 19-year-old Amy Jane Brandhagen.
00:08:46
It just felt like that somebody had kicked me in the pit of my stomach. I just can't tell you the feeling that went through my mind.
00:08:57
Yeah, almost like she was your kid in a way. Very much. Lieutenant Caldera took it upon himself to notify Amy Jane's parents.
00:09:04
And that was probably the toughest thing that I've ever had to do in my career. And I can't tell you the feeling that we all had.
00:09:15
We broke down in tears. But why would anyone want to kill Amy Jane, of all people?
00:09:20
I was just crushed. Like, how is this even possible? I'm just speechless. And then I just sat crying in the bathroom for probably the next hour,
00:09:30
like, not understanding, like, craziness. As word spread through Amy Jane's church family, so did the questions.
00:09:38
High school youth pastor Chris Thatcher. Early on, was there any indication of who may have been responsible?
00:09:44
I don't think anybody had any idea. I think that's what made this so hard, is that so many of us, we know each other.
00:09:54
We're family here. But there was the dismal work to do. Lieutenant Caldera returned to the motel where Amy was murdered.
00:10:01
It'd be pretty hard for you to take part in an active investigation. No, I wouldn't have.
00:10:07
I couldn't have. Not with my relationship. Lieutenant Caldera turned the case over to Detective Sergeant Rick Jackson.
00:10:14
It was a pretty horrific crime scene. It was obvious. Amy Jane fought for her life.
00:10:20
Her glasses lay in the bathtub. Blood spattered the walls. DNA of a male, presumably her attacker, would be found under her fingernails.
00:10:29
But the medical examiner said it was not a sex attack, and it wasn't robbery either.
00:10:33
Amy Jane's purse and cell phone were still right there on the bedside table. And nobody saw a thing.
00:10:40
Even though... Even though this was during broad daylight with a motel room door with motel room doors open.
00:10:45
The only potential witness, if he was a witness at all, was a painter working at the motel
00:10:51
who said he saw a young man with longer hair, darker skin, perhaps Hispanic or Native American,
00:10:58
walking near the back parking lot. It may have been the person who did it. It may not have been. It may have just had somebody passing by.
00:11:03
Sure, while we were there, shoot within the first hour of being at the crime scene.
00:11:10
Upwards of 50 people walked by. I mean, this is a pretty busy area of town. Busy, yes, and started with CCTV cameras.
00:11:20
Banks, bridges, city hall, walking trails along the river that runs through town.
00:11:27
Detectives painstakingly went through the footage. There was nothing. They took DNA from dozens of motel guests to check against the sample taken from Amy Jane's fingernails.
00:11:37
Wasn't any of them. So Detective Jackson went to the people who knew Amy Jane well, or perhaps romantically.
00:11:45
Those stab wounds were all focused around her heart, which often indicates some kind of crime of passion.
00:11:52
But I think most of the males we spoke to really viewed themselves as her protectors Pendleton Police Chief Stuart Roberts hurried back home from his abbreviated Mexican vacation and encountered a case going nowhere fast
00:12:07
Everybody that knew her characterized her in the same way. She knew no stranger.
00:12:12
She didn't have an evil bone in her body. As the investigation entered its second week,
00:12:16
Amy Jane's family prepared a memorial service at the church where they'd raised their daughter.
00:12:21
Amy loved thunderstorms, and it was one of her favorite things to do was to go out barefoot and dance in the rain because she just loved it.
00:12:28
In the morning of her memorial service, there was a loud clap of thunder that came over town about 630.
00:12:35
And several of us heard it. I think we knew. Up there dancing in the rain somewhere, huh?
00:12:46
I think she was. And together we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Hundreds crowded into Amy Jane's church,
00:12:55
and many, like Jed and Lisa Hummel, were amazed by the strength of Amy Jane's parents.
00:13:01
They were hurting deeply, but they weren't looking for vengeance. Me, on the other hand, I was just ticked.
00:13:07
I was like, this is insane, and everybody needs to find this person. Oh, they were certainly trying, even at that very moment.
00:13:16
We had about 10 to 12 undercover officers in and about the memorial service looking for anybody that would strike us as odd.
00:13:27
But no one stood out. Hang in there, Caleb, hang in there! A month after the murder, the famous roundup filled the streets as usual.
00:13:37
And then they emptied again. And as the autumn wind turned raw, Detective Jackson's investigation chased down every lead and got nowhere.
00:13:48
We call them rabbit trails. We ran hundreds of rabbit trails down. The holidays came and went. Holidays for other people.
00:13:56
Not Detective Jackson. Not Chief Roberts. It haunted me. This case haunted me. And then, a spring breeze dipped into the Pendleton Valley,
00:14:06
curled its warming fingers into secret corners, and came out whispering a name. Coming up.
00:14:15
We've gone for months with nothing and now this. Out of the blue, a tip. Have cops found their killer?
00:14:23
We go out and find his girlfriend. She's going, I always believed he could have done this.
00:14:28
When Dateline continues. Six months after the murder of Amy Jane Brandhagen, investigators finally caught a break.
00:14:46
The county jail inmate looking for a deal got word out to the cops. He claimed to know who killed Amy Jane.
00:14:54
I mean, we've gone for months with nothing, and now this. There were two of them, said the inmate, Ira Draper and Eric Torres, both well known to local law enforcement,
00:15:05
who soon confirmed the men were in the area the day of the murder. They found Torres first and looked like they were on to something.
00:15:14
Torres said, yes, he was in on it, but he didn't kill her. It was the guy he was with, he said, Draper, who went into the motel room and came out very bloody.
00:15:25
He basically tells him, yeah, I was driving their getaway car. It was his buddy who did the killing, he said, Ira Draper.
00:15:33
So we go out and find his girlfriend. She's going, I always believed he potentially could have done this.
00:15:40
He's aggressive, and he has these journals, and they're journal entries about defiling women and killing and burying them.
00:15:49
They found and questioned Draper, who said he understood why he was a suspect. Have you ever thought about killing anybody?
00:15:57
I've never really planned it out, but maybe thought about it, yeah. But after a few minutes with Draper, Jackson had a familiar sinking feeling.
00:16:08
He was very much so enamored by the fact that the police were giving him attention.
00:16:14
And he was playing it. He was just playing it for all it was worth. He was getting a little bit of street cred for it.
00:16:19
And the DNA confirmed it was all an act. Two unpleasant men, the police said, who seemed to be enjoying themselves at the expense of the cops.
00:16:28
So, back to Zero. By August 2013, it had been almost a full year since Amy Jane Brandhagen's murder in Pendleton.
00:16:41
Investigators had exhausted hundreds of leads, and themselves. I knew it was having an impact on my physiological health, as well as my mental health.
00:16:52
On August 8th, the chief took his family out of town for some R&R. And the very next day, a woman named Karen Lang happened to be a member of Amy Jane's church,
00:17:03
announced to her husband, Dan, she was going for a walk. And she came down, and I'll never forget what she said.
00:17:12
She said, well, you know, I was thinking that we can maybe go out for dessert afterward.
00:17:17
Karen was an accomplished singer and pianist. Dan, vice president of the local community college.
00:17:23
Her walk along the river levee near downtown Pendleton, the river walk, was an almost daily habit.
00:17:28
It was 4.30 p.m. Lots of sun left on a warm August afternoon. And the last words she said to me were, well, I guess we'll just have a nice boring evening.
00:17:40
Dan went back to tinkering on his motorcycle. Lost all track of time. It was dark when his son walked into the room and asked an innocuous question.
00:17:51
where's mom? I said well I don know I give her a call so I went I tried to make the phone call and I couldn get a hold of her But it was after 9 p Karen usually walked for less than an hour
00:18:09
She'd been gone for five. In some people, anxiety stokes panic. Dan is not like that. It's a coping mechanism. He stays calm.
00:18:18
He made another call. Long day. 10 o'clock at night. My phone rings. I answer, hey, hi, Dan.
00:18:24
Remember Jed and Lisa Hummel, friends of Amy Jane's from church? Karen always parked her car in front of their house when she took her late afternoon walks.
00:18:34
He says, is Karen at your house? No. I just got home and I asked Lisa if she had been over.
00:18:43
I said, no, I haven't seen her. And I had looked outside and sure enough, the car was still there.
00:18:48
So we went out to the car and she wasn't there. So Jed and Lisa grabbed flashlights and walked a couple of blocks from their house down to the river levee.
00:18:58
There in the parking lot sat a Pendleton policeman. What should they do, they asked him.
00:19:04
And he just thought it was unusual enough that he got a hold of Dan. As the officer left to talk to Dan, Jed and Lisa kept looking through the dark along the riverbank.
00:19:15
There's a fear of not finding anything, and there's a fear of finding something.
00:19:19
When I got to where the policeman was, we were talking, and he said, you seem to be awfully calm for your wife being missing.
00:19:30
And at that point, I thought, holy mackerel. You know, if there's something bad that happened to her, I could be a suspect.
00:19:41
From his patrol car, the officer was able to pull up images from cameras stationed around the river levee.
00:19:46
No sign of Karen. Then her cell provider sent a ping to Karen's phone. It turned up across the main road about a half a mile from the river,
00:19:55
in the parking lot at Walmart, where again the officer could not find Karen. What was going on?
00:20:03
Around and around the river walk they went, pointing their puny flashlights at a sea of dark.
00:20:09
I did go home at about five. I wrote an email saying, Karen's gone. I don't know where she is.
00:20:23
I just have to go to bed. And I went and I just cried. He did not sleep long. The phone call that startled him awake brought news.
00:20:34
Some good. Some very, very bad. Coming up. Amy Jane's murder. and Karen's disappearance, could they be connected?
00:20:45
Investigators are about to discover a disturbing clue. I think in that moment, most of us knew that that wasn't coincidence.
00:20:53
Dawn took its own imperious time on the morning of August 10th, 2013. By that time, going on 6 a.m., Karen Lang had been missing more than 12 hours.
00:21:18
And then finally, the morning sun lit up the banks of the Umatilla River and... The policeman called and he said, we found your wife.
00:21:28
She was found and alive. But what the policeman said next was terrifying. Well, when he said, we found your wife and she's alive.
00:21:39
that was a great relief but um but he certainly made it sound like it was a tough tough thing
00:21:50
oh it was karen had been struck from behind by some heavy blunt object her skull was crushed
00:21:58
the wound was massive right away the detective called the chief on vacation in the mountains
00:22:04
It's five hours away. And describe the way they found her. Did he think she was dead already?
00:22:10
He thought she was dead. A tremendous amount of blood. He indicates that he reaches for her wrist to see if she has a pulse and her leg moves.
00:22:18
And she gasps. But it didn't look like she'd be alive for long. The detective drove Dan Lang to the hospital, told him,
00:22:26
Prepare for the worst. As he arrived at the emergency room, Dan ran into a nurse he knew.
00:22:31
and she took one look at me and it was so heartbroken that I, of course, broke down.
00:22:46
And then I had a chance to see Karen. The doctors gave her a slim chance, one in a hundred maybe.
00:22:52
She was airlifted to a bigger hospital in Portland for specialized care. And as Dan kept watch at her bedside,
00:22:59
He remembered an odd comment Karen made a few days before she was attacked. Her boys were in college, nearly grown.
00:23:06
She wasn't sure what her purpose was anymore. As she told Dan, I really wish that I could be, you know, more useful if I'm going to remain here.
00:23:17
On planet Earth. On planet Earth, yeah. And I would assure her with, but God has a plan.
00:23:23
And you will be used. But what kind of use was this? If she lived, she might never regain consciousness.
00:23:31
If she regained consciousness, she might never be the same. How useful could that be?
00:23:37
And then suddenly, the case of the murder of Amy Brantagen and the attack on Karen Lyon
00:23:41
seemed to take on a new and terrifying meaning. Chief Roberts returned from his vacation to be handed this photograph by investigators.
00:23:51
It had been taken four years earlier. one of the detectives had gotten his hands on an image
00:23:56
of Amy Jane Branhagen and Karen Lang together dated August the 14th. Oh my God. Amy Jane Branhagen was murdered on August the 14th.
00:24:08
Karen Lang was assaulted on August the 9th, one year after Amy Jane's murder. Like somebody's targeting them,
00:24:14
or somebody within the church has some strange motivation. It could be a member of the congregation,
00:24:19
or it could be somebody who they provided outreach services to. In Pendleton at the Free Methodist Church,
00:24:26
the word spread quickly. I think in that moment, most of us knew that that wasn't coincidence.
00:24:34
And I can't tell you how we knew. Well, small town, same church. Small town, same church.
00:24:41
We all knew each other. I think we just knew. In a town where murder is rare, two women, one photo, and dates that lined up like a message had to be a connection.
00:24:55
Oh, it certainly crossed my mind. And I think it crossed everybody's mind. So once again, Detective Jackson and the other scoured hours of video recorded by dozens of cameras stationed around town looking for a suspect.
00:25:09
Good luck. When Amy Jane was murdered in broad daylight, those videos turned up exactly nothing.
00:25:16
And then, then luck turned. They saw this recorded by one of the cameras stationed around the Riverwalk.
00:25:23
6.31 p.m. Karen Lang. There she is right there. out for her walk. And following her, a man watching her with what looks like a pipe hidden
00:25:34
behind his back right there. They cross a small footbridge. There's a short stretch there, maybe
00:25:39
50 or 60 yards where there's just no visibility from any direction unless you're actually on the
00:25:44
path. And right there is where he attacks her. Is that where her, where she was found? She was found
00:25:49
about 30 feet down the path. And then they found this video recorded by another camera about an hour
00:25:56
after the attack, same man enters a parked bathroom and minutes later emerges to use a drinking
00:26:01
fountain. I immediately said it's the same guy. We've got to show it's the same guy.
00:26:07
Wait, same guy as who? Chief Roberts remembered. After Amy Jane was murdered, the only witness who saw anything
00:26:15
reported a young man with dark hair wandering near the motel. Basically the description
00:26:21
was fairly generic. Male, 20-something, dark hair, a little bit longer, with dark-toned skin.
00:26:30
Now we have the second crime a year later, almost to the anniversary, and here's a male profile or image on our network camera system that fits.
00:26:41
It fits. But who was he? And why was he targeting women from the same church? Within hours, a very unusual kind of Pendleton roundup was underway.
00:26:54
The order was clear. Find him. Fast. Coming up. The evidence that was about to send this case into overdrive.
00:27:06
It gave me chills. When Dateline continues. When the Free Methodists of Pendleton, Oregon
00:27:22
went to their weekly worship services that Sunday in August 2013, they offered their prayers for Karen Lang,
00:27:29
lying in a Portland hospital in a coma, her husband Dan a constant presence at her bedside.
00:27:36
The prognosis was poor, But Dan, optimistic by nature, struggled to hang on. It's just a faithful attitude that says no matter what happens, it's God's plan.
00:27:49
And his plan is to prosper us. Even if I were to lose Karen, I had to hold on to that and realize that.
00:28:01
In those first two days since Karen was found in the brush alongside the Pendleton Riverwalk,
00:28:06
shock spread like bad electricity. Someone came up to her senior pastor and said,
00:28:12
you know, I think I'm glad I'm not part of your church. After all these things that have happened,
00:28:17
you're thinking, is there a serial killer around? Not fear, exactly. Not yet. But someone was out there, was among them,
00:28:29
had killed once perhaps twice And so the unease grew Dark places were avoided The odds of a stranger picking two people that were as connected difficult to wrap your mind around
00:28:43
Umatilla County District Attorney Dan Premis. Yeah, I mean, this sounds more like a Zodiac-type killer. It's like one of those weird puzzles.
00:28:52
Absolutely. As you're working these investigations, you're thinking of all those things.
00:28:56
and trying to determine what connection is there between Karen Lang and Amy Jane Branhagen.
00:29:03
It seemed very likely to the police and the DA the man seen in the surveillance video
00:29:07
was the one who attacked Karen Lang, and that he might also have been the killer who stabbed Amy Jane to death in that motel room one year earlier.
00:29:16
But who was it? The chief asked his street cops to look at that video. Anybody recognize him?
00:29:23
And what do you know? One of them did. He looked at the image for a second. He said, that's Danny Wu.
00:29:30
How did he know? Because he'd encountered him four times in the previous year. Minor infractions, though.
00:29:38
So they never confirmed that his name actually was Danny Wu. But there was one thing that might help ID him.
00:29:45
He had a very distinct tattoo on the inside of his left wrist, which read, Semper Fi.
00:29:52
He's a Marine. That was my initial reaction. But while Chief Roberts didn't know who the man really was, or where he was now,
00:30:00
or why he targeted two women who once taught Bible school together, he knew they had to track him down right away.
00:30:07
This was a community on edge. And now he's out there. He's out there. And we've got to find him.
00:30:14
There could be more victims. The chief canceled all time off, called in every available officer.
00:30:19
A manhunt was on. And then, a bit of luck. The very same sharp-eyed detective who found Karen noticed something odd nearby.
00:30:30
A wooden panel on the back of an old batting cage beside the riverwalk looked not quite right.
00:30:37
So the officer reached behind the loose panel and found a pipe that appeared to have blood on one end.
00:30:45
The DNA confirmed it was Karen's blood. And then, when the crime lab compared a DNA sample from the other end of the pipe
00:30:54
with the material found under Amy Jane's fingernails. I get that call on a Sunday afternoon.
00:31:00
Now we've connected the dots. The man who assaulted Karen and Amy Jane Brandhagen's killer were one and the same.
00:31:08
Right away, the police chief shared the news with the DA. I was at home. Chief asked me if I was sitting down.
00:31:15
He told me that the DNA from the pipe matched the DNA found underneath Amy Jane's fingernails, and it gave me chills.
00:31:24
But, though Chief Roberts' officers scoured the town, even distributed flyers with Wu's picture on them, they found nothing.
00:31:32
Hours piled up, days, more than a week, no Danny Wu. But anxiety? Oh, yes. You didn't leave garages unlocked, sheds, doors, windows, cars.
00:31:43
Yeah, you do. You feel kind of like there's a serial killer in town. And then a call from the local convention center.
00:31:51
Two catering company employees told the dispatcher they'd gone into a side door to the kitchen.
00:31:57
And here sits this person who they readily recognized as this Danny Wu that we had disseminated the images of.
00:32:04
And he was sitting there drinking a Coke. And he basically picked up his stuff and disappeared into the facility.
00:32:11
So he's in the building somewhere. It's a big building. It's a big building. Within minutes, the police surrounded the convention center.
00:32:18
A search dog trained to bite joined in. They set up a command post outside one of the center's windows.
00:32:24
The dog's just woof, woof, woofing at the door. And the Oregon State Trooper behind us says,
00:32:30
I can see a leg hanging out of the ceiling. And they're looking through a window.
00:32:34
I take about two steps back from where I'm standing and I can see it. So I give them the command to enter.
00:32:40
they enter, go straight to this location in the stairwell, and there he is. Minutes later,
00:32:46
the suspect, the man known as Danny Wu, the man who may have murdered one woman, possibly even two,
00:32:52
and terrorized the town of Pendleton, walked out in handcuffs and into the flashing cameras
00:32:58
of the local paper. Later, officers took this video of his hiding spot in an air conditioning
00:33:04
he ducked in the convention center ceiling, where he had a blanket a radio and some clothes It looked like a nest and it looked like he been there for a while coming and going hiding in plain sight He been here all year
00:33:19
But now what? Would he talk? Lawyer up? Or even, would he reveal who he really was?
00:33:26
And why it appeared he was targeting the women of the Free Methodist Church. Coming up, Inside a Heart of Darkness.
00:33:35
I didn't understand that. I've never heard that before. Revelations that would leave this town and its investigators shattered.
00:33:43
I didn't know whether to cry, I didn't know whether to scream. I was just dumbfounded.
00:33:57
Here he was. The man they knew as Danny Wu. The man Detective Sergeant Rick Jackson had been chasing for a year.
00:34:05
I'm Sergeant Rick Jackson. I work at the Penfield Police Department. I know I'm not dressed like a normal police officer.
00:34:13
Jackson was out hunting elk when they caught Danny Wu and rushed in still in his camo,
00:34:18
hoping finally to get answers to his year of questions. Are you willing to talk to a certain point?
00:34:25
The chief and the DA watched from a nearby office. I didn't expect him to say anything.
00:34:30
I expected him to ask for a lawyer. I wasn't sure how he was going to respond to any of the questions.
00:34:36
But D.A. Premise and all of them were in for a big surprise. What's your name? My name is Luca Chang.
00:34:43
May I write it down? What's your last name? Chang, C-H-A-N-G. Sure enough, not Danny Wu.
00:34:50
Luca Chang, 23 years old, the son of Christian missionaries, a deserter from the U.S. Marines who drifted into town without any plan
00:35:01
and stayed in that downtown motel where he encountered a maid named Amy Jane. Did you talk to her?
00:35:09
No. Only in passing. She would knock on the door and say, hey, you want your room clean?
00:35:13
Soon, Chang was broke, living on the street, spending his days at the town library
00:35:18
across the street from the travel lodge. You just walked by and you saw her? I just thought I was working.
00:35:23
I just wanted to talk to her. So I just walked in and waited. Okay. How long did you have to wait?
00:35:29
Probably half an hour. You're waiting there a half hour. You're thinking to yourself, what?
00:35:35
You're going to do it. Grabbed her, brought her into the motel room, hurry into the bathroom, and then what happened?
00:35:40
I stabbed her. With what? Tonight. But when Detective Jackson tried to get into this young man's head,
00:35:48
the conversation veered off into a cold and disturbing place. As a missionary's son,
00:35:55
was Luca Chang rebelling against his parents, against God? Detective Jackson asked the question on just about every mind in Pendleton, Oregon.
00:36:05
Why? See how it felt. See how what felt? Taking a life. Why? I was curious. How did it feel?
00:36:20
Empowering. Saddening. Empowering and saddening? Mm-hmm. At the same time? Yes. Empowering because I took a life.
00:36:31
Saddening because I realized at the same time, life is precious. That was it? To see how it felt?
00:36:39
I didn't understand that. I'd never heard that from a killer before. But why the second attack?
00:36:46
Did he target those two women because they taught Bible school together? Because they appeared in that photograph together?
00:36:53
Not really. It was approaching the anniversary of the first time. And that was just about it, said Luca Chang.
00:37:00
She was walking by. I noticed. Followed. Contact. He was a brick wall. if the real answer was buried in his religious past or his failed military career or some
00:37:11
mother's secret corner we were not to know ever you feel remorse not really why is that i got tired of feeling emotions and stuff like that i got tired of feeling feelings
00:37:27
so i'm like all right let's just cut that out see what i did and then having had his say the man
00:37:34
The man the police had been chasing for so long was safely tucked away in a jail cell,
00:37:39
soon to plead guilty to murder and attempted murder and to begin serving 35 to life I can even describe the relief It like the world is lifted off your shoulders I didn know whether to cry I didn know whether to scream I just didn I was just kind of dumbfounded
00:37:56
Across the state in Portland, Dan Lang told his comatose wife, Karen, they caught him.
00:38:01
Though, of course, she couldn't hear that. And then? Then a few days later, Dan turned on his video camera.
00:38:09
And? Well, see for yourself. Karen, can you raise your hand again? Yeah, can you raise that hand up?
00:38:17
There you go Yeah, very good To the astonishment of her doctors Life flooded back
00:38:25
I'm doing very well, I feel great And just a year after that vicious attack Here she was
00:38:32
Karen Lang The woman whose ordeal wound up catching a killer Not exactly the purpose she expected
00:38:39
when she talked to her husband Dan that day. Like, I told him not that long ago, I said,
00:38:46
don't ever pray for more to do with your life. Because, boy, do you get answered on that.
00:38:55
Her recovery took a long time, of course. Three hospitals, surgeries to rebuild her skull,
00:39:00
months in a protective helmet. But of that awful night, she has no memory at all.
00:39:07
What was the sense that you recall, at least, of coming out of this blackness into back up, into life again?
00:39:15
Well, a lot of it was just a feeling that I didn't know what was wrong. I didn't know why I was in a hospital.
00:39:24
I didn't know I was in Portland. Delang's troubles were not over. A few months after Dan brought Karen home from Portland, he was diagnosed with cancer.
00:39:34
So, skeptics question. You know, you too have been through so much in the last year that, I mean, has this not damaged your faith?
00:39:49
Are you not angry at God for picking on you? No. I mean, if there's a plan for you, it's your plan to be so brutalized by an attack and by cancer.
00:40:00
Well, the beauty is that we also see the blessings, see how it's had such a positive effect on people and how it could be so much worse for me.
00:40:12
I see it as we need to go through it. It will be a season of recovery for us. And then September 2014, it was Pendleton Roundup time again, and the MC's voice boomed through the arena.
00:40:27
Miracles happen, said the announcer. No one in Pendleton knows that better than our singer today.
00:40:31
For our national anthem, please welcome Miss Karen Lang to the arena. Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light.
00:40:50
I looked at it as an opportunity to really just thank the people of Pendleton for all the support and things that they did for me and for my family.
00:41:09
Two years later, Karen found herself in the arms of the community again when Dan died.
00:41:16
And Pendleton was once again a smaller, sadder place without Dan and the girl who always reached out to the lonely, the strangers,
00:41:25
just like the one who drifted into town and killed her. Pretty remarkable, huh? I mean, isn't he exactly the sort of person that she would have sought out?
00:41:36
I find that very ironic. And it's also the same person that if she were here today,
00:41:43
she would say, take the way of forgiveness. It's the better way. Let's pray. Come, Lord Jesus.
00:41:49
And every Sunday, the faithful still fill the pews at the Pendleton Free Methodist Church.
00:41:57
And a barefoot sprite who loved to dance lives on, at least in memory. Amy's life is great, and I think that the people who knew her
00:42:08
would want to live better lives because of knowing her and knowing who she was. That's all for now.
00:42:16
I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us. you