00:00:06
for 15 years a serial rapist preyed on
00:00:09
single women in the small college town
00:00:12
of lafayette louisiana
00:00:14
although his mo was always the same
00:00:17
investigators had few clues to his
00:00:20
identity
00:00:22
the masked assailant would break into
00:00:25
women's homes late at night blind them
00:00:27
with a flashlight and assault them at
00:00:30
gunpoint
00:00:32
but when the locations of all these
00:00:34
crimes were entered into a new computer
00:00:36
program
00:00:38
police learned more about the
00:00:39
perpetrator than they were prepared for
00:00:52
[Music]
00:00:56
[Applause]
00:00:57
[Music]
00:01:03
[Applause]
00:01:08
[Music]
00:01:11
in august of 1995 in lafayette louisiana
00:01:15
thousands of college students were
00:01:17
arriving for the fall semester at the
00:01:19
university of louisiana
00:01:21
one of the students beginning her senior
00:01:24
year was a 21 year old woman whom we'll
00:01:26
call anne
00:01:28
anne was working her way through school
00:01:30
at a local health club and earned extra
00:01:33
money by babysitting for a friend who
00:01:36
lived in an affluent suburb not far from
00:01:39
school in fact a city official lived
00:01:42
right across the street from this woman
00:01:44
where i babysat
00:01:45
i couldn't have picked a place to feel
00:01:47
safer it was just a place that that had
00:01:50
american dream
00:01:52
no one can hurt you here's written all
00:01:54
over it
00:01:58
on august 30th 1995
00:02:01
anne's friend had to go out of town for
00:02:03
a business trip
00:02:04
so ann agreed to stay overnight with the
00:02:07
two children
00:02:10
[Music]
00:02:20
and put them to bed around 10 o'clock
00:02:23
she allowed them to stay up a little
00:02:25
later that night since they didn't have
00:02:27
school the next
00:02:34
day afterwards ann started in on some of
00:02:38
her homework
00:02:40
after they were asleep i
00:02:42
worked on the computer a little bit
00:02:44
decided to get a head start on
00:02:46
some of the assignments that i'd gotten
00:02:48
that day then probably around 11 o'clock
00:02:51
i decided to go to bed
00:02:53
[Music]
00:02:58
[Music]
00:03:03
around 2 a.m anna woke to find a masked
00:03:06
intruder armed with a gun he threatened
00:03:08
to kill her and the children
00:03:11
he
00:03:12
shone a flashlight in my face so i
00:03:15
really couldn't see anything at all
00:03:17
he was wearing these
00:03:18
wool gloves some really scratchy gloves
00:03:21
he had a flashlight and then in one hand
00:03:23
and a gun in the other
00:03:26
the man wore a knit hat and a bandana
00:03:28
over his face and forced him to walk
00:03:30
through the entire house
00:03:34
he said he was looking for money but
00:03:36
took nothing of value
00:03:40
he found anne's home address in her
00:03:42
backpack and said he would track her
00:03:44
down if she did not do exactly as she
00:03:46
was told
00:03:48
he really could kill me in just a second
00:03:51
so i knew that to save my life and to
00:03:53
save the two children's lives
00:03:56
i had to do what he said
00:03:58
and so i did and
00:04:00
and he raped me
00:04:04
later the perpetrator led anne to the
00:04:06
bathroom told her to urinate and to
00:04:09
count to 100 before getting up he also
00:04:13
told her not to call the police because
00:04:15
if she did he said he would know about
00:04:18
it and he would get revenge
00:04:21
he left without harming the children
00:04:24
at the hospital a rape test kit
00:04:27
recovered a semen sample but no other
00:04:29
trace evidence such as foreign hairs or
00:04:32
fibers
00:04:34
because of the flashlight cap and
00:04:36
bandana all ann could say was that the
00:04:39
perpetrator was an overweight white male
00:04:42
with piercing blue eyes
00:04:44
went to school the next day following
00:04:47
sat in class and
00:04:49
felt like everyone in there was looking
00:04:51
at me
00:04:52
it felt like
00:04:53
every white male who was slightly
00:04:55
overweight that even slightly resembled
00:04:58
the man who would hurt me was staring at
00:05:00
me and felt like that must be him maybe
00:05:03
that's him
00:05:04
so i left that class and just cried and
00:05:07
cried
00:05:08
i knew that life was never going to be
00:05:10
the same
00:05:12
[Music]
00:05:13
one of ann's friends heard about the
00:05:15
assault and called her with an important
00:05:18
piece of information
00:05:20
she said i heard what happened to you
00:05:22
and i really want to talk to you about
00:05:24
it it sounded a whole lot like what
00:05:26
happened to me
00:05:28
as we talked
00:05:30
we found out this is the same guy
00:05:33
everything he did everything he said
00:05:36
every movement was identical
00:05:40
anne's friend had been raped three years
00:05:42
earlier just one mile from where anne
00:05:44
was assaulted
00:05:47
lafayette police detective mack galion
00:05:49
noticed that anne's case was similar to
00:05:53
other unsolved rape cases some dating
00:05:56
back 10 years
00:05:58
i researched previous sexual assaults as
00:06:01
far back as 1982
00:06:03
but
00:06:04
i think i found some as
00:06:06
early as 84
00:06:09
that were
00:06:11
similar in uh
00:06:12
mo
00:06:14
if these cases were connected
00:06:17
lafayette police not only had a serial
00:06:20
rapist on the loose
00:06:21
but one sophisticated enough to elude
00:06:24
police for years
00:06:29
[Music]
00:06:31
to the lafayette police the rape of the
00:06:33
21 year old college student sounded
00:06:35
similar to a number of other unsolved
00:06:38
rape cases all
00:06:40
on the south side of the city
00:06:43
four miles from where ann was assaulted
00:06:45
a 32 year old office worker living alone
00:06:48
had also been raped
00:06:50
a year before that one mile away a
00:06:53
40-year-old hotel receptionist living
00:06:55
alone reported a similar attack
00:06:58
all of the rapes were identical
00:07:03
the women were asleep the perpetrator
00:07:05
had a gun and flashlight and wore heavy
00:07:07
woolen gloves a bandana and knit cap
00:07:12
he walked the women through their homes
00:07:14
saying he was looking for valuables but
00:07:16
his motive wasn't robbery that type of
00:07:19
rapist wants to go through the whole
00:07:21
scenario of if i'm in this room and i
00:07:23
got to get out where can i go if i'm in
00:07:25
the living room where can i go in any
00:07:28
position that house where can i get out
00:07:30
if i need to
00:07:32
in many cases the perpetrator ordered
00:07:34
the women to shower afterwards
00:07:37
presumably to remove trace evidence such
00:07:39
as semen hair and
00:07:42
fibers detective mack gallian identified
00:07:46
a dozen rape cases all on the south side
00:07:49
of the city within a five mile radius
00:07:52
all with the same mo
00:07:55
in some of these cases semen samples
00:07:57
were collected from the victims
00:07:59
in others washcloths found in the
00:08:02
victims homes were found to contain
00:08:04
semen presumably from the perpetrator
00:08:07
all were sent for dna testing if we
00:08:10
can't find the sample we can't analyze
00:08:12
the sample and diluting a semen stain
00:08:16
which only takes water
00:08:18
is a very effective means
00:08:21
unfortunately for
00:08:23
well
00:08:24
in this particular case it wasn't
00:08:25
effective enough
00:08:27
six of the semen samples matched
00:08:30
the others were inconclusive
00:08:33
investigators discovered that all of the
00:08:35
women shopped at the same grocery store
00:08:37
and many were members of the health club
00:08:39
nearby
00:08:40
since most of the women were single and
00:08:43
living alone investigators suspected
00:08:45
that the victims had been stalked
00:08:48
and there were some other clues that
00:08:49
concerned police
00:08:52
first was something the perpetrator said
00:08:54
to all of the women
00:08:56
he didn't say if you went to the police
00:08:58
with it i'll find out about it he said
00:09:00
if you go to the police i will know
00:09:02
about it and the fact that he uses the
00:09:04
the phrase i will know tells me that he
00:09:07
has a stronger insight
00:09:09
to the police department
00:09:11
another clue was the way the perpetrator
00:09:14
held the flashlight high around his head
00:09:17
gripping it behind the lens
00:09:20
a lay
00:09:21
will probably point a flashlight out in
00:09:23
front
00:09:25
but most professionals that use
00:09:26
flashlights in their work
00:09:29
sometimes hold it up like so
00:09:32
including police officers this is a way
00:09:34
in which we usually hold off last ones
00:09:38
since the perpetrator held his
00:09:40
flashlight in the same way
00:09:42
investigators suspected he may be
00:09:45
working in law enforcement or in a
00:09:47
related field
00:09:49
crime analyst ronnie smith was asked to
00:09:52
develop a psychological profile of the
00:09:54
rapist by studying the manner in which
00:09:57
the crimes were committed
00:10:00
smith says that by ordering the women to
00:10:02
bathe after the rapes the rapist was
00:10:05
trying to do more than simply remove
00:10:08
forensic evidence so it's kind of like
00:10:10
to make a woman clean up is going to be
00:10:13
basically
00:10:14
to get rid of the evidence but the
00:10:16
outcome would be is you do feel better
00:10:18
about yourself because you're clean now
00:10:20
and you don't have that that
00:10:22
anger towards the guy
00:10:24
the rapist knew that bathing would
00:10:27
reduce the likelihood of the victims
00:10:29
reporting the crime and the
00:10:32
psychological games didn't stop there
00:10:35
he gave me some warnings about
00:10:38
making sure that
00:10:40
the lock on the window gets fixed
00:10:42
gave me all sorts of
00:10:44
fatherly sort of advice
00:10:47
which was pretty disgusting after what
00:10:50
he'd done to me as if it were my fault
00:10:52
that he came in and did that to me
00:10:55
he's telling them okay this is not all
00:10:56
my fault okay if you would have done
00:10:59
this this and this you wouldn't have
00:11:00
been a part of it but the fact that you
00:11:02
did leave your door unlocked or you did
00:11:04
leave your window unlocked uh this was
00:11:06
what happened to you
00:11:07
but in one case the rapist got careless
00:11:10
his bandana came loose for a moment
00:11:13
giving the woman
00:11:14
a glimpse of his face
00:11:18
from that description
00:11:20
a police sketch artist prepared a
00:11:22
composite drawing which was released to
00:11:24
the press
00:11:25
unfortunately it did not appear to
00:11:27
resemble anyone in the police department
00:11:30
who had piercing blue eyes
00:11:32
the only other lead was from one of the
00:11:35
rape victims who said
00:11:37
she saw a 10 year old brown ford pickup
00:11:40
truck leaving the neighborhood
00:11:42
immediately after she was assaulted
00:11:46
but there were over 12 000 brown tan and
00:11:49
beige ford pickup trucks registered in
00:11:52
the state of louisiana and none were
00:11:54
registered to an employee
00:11:56
of the police department
00:11:58
since most of the rapes occurred on the
00:12:01
south side of town the local press
00:12:03
dubbed him
00:12:05
the south side rapist
00:12:07
the guy was good he was very good he
00:12:10
planned out everything he thought about
00:12:12
it he knew what to do
00:12:14
he handled himself well once he got in
00:12:18
and if the perpetrator was a member of
00:12:21
law enforcement
00:12:23
he would be very difficult to catch
00:12:30
in lafayette louisiana dna testing
00:12:33
confirmed that a serial rapist was on
00:12:36
the loose
00:12:37
police identified 12 unsolved rape cases
00:12:41
all with the same mo
00:12:45
the rapes began in 1984 and continued
00:12:48
into the 1990s but in 1995
00:12:52
after the sexual assault of the 21 year
00:12:55
old college student the rapes
00:12:57
mysteriously stopped
00:13:00
police checked hundreds of leads and
00:13:02
eliminated thousands of suspects all
00:13:04
were dead ends
00:13:06
police were starting to wonder whether
00:13:09
they'd ever catch the south side rapist
00:13:12
and whether the perpetrator was simply
00:13:14
too smart
00:13:16
but a magazine article in police chief
00:13:19
magazine
00:13:21
changed their luck
00:13:22
it described a new technique called
00:13:25
geographic profiling written by a
00:13:28
detective inspector with the vancouver
00:13:30
police department kim rossmow
00:13:33
the basic theory that underlies
00:13:35
geographic profiling is something called
00:13:38
environmental criminology that means
00:13:40
that people in regards to their
00:13:42
non-criminal behavior such as shopping
00:13:44
will engage in many activities close to
00:13:46
their home same thing applies to
00:13:48
criminals lafayette police asked
00:13:50
detective rossmo to generate a
00:13:53
geographic profile of their south side
00:13:55
rapist
00:13:57
so rosmo flew to lafayette to inspect
00:14:00
the crime scenes
00:14:01
first with an aerial inspection then by
00:14:05
visiting the crime scenes at night and
00:14:07
also during the day
00:14:10
rossmo did not believe that the grocery
00:14:12
store or health club played any role in
00:14:15
the selection of victims most of the
00:14:17
rapes occurred in homes without window
00:14:20
coverings where it was easy to see
00:14:23
inside from the street
00:14:27
once back in vancouver detective rossmo
00:14:30
entered all of his information into a
00:14:32
computer program he developed as part of
00:14:35
his phd thesis in criminology a program
00:14:38
he calls
00:14:39
rigel
00:14:41
rosmo designed the program after
00:14:44
studying the relationship between
00:14:46
hundreds of crimes and where the
00:14:48
perpetrators lived in relation to the
00:14:51
crimes they committed then the computer
00:14:54
assesses distances
00:14:56
between the various crime sites and
00:14:58
distances from the crime sites to
00:15:01
what is really a 40 000 pixel grid um
00:15:04
covering the area where we call the
00:15:06
hunting area where the crimes have taken
00:15:08
place for each one of those 40 000
00:15:10
pixels it'll sign a probability value
00:15:13
representing the likelihood that's where
00:15:14
the offender lives
00:15:16
when detective rossmo entered the
00:15:18
locations of the 12 rape cases in
00:15:20
lafayette
00:15:22
the computer identified something
00:15:24
important it was a specific neighborhood
00:15:28
just two miles from each of the crime
00:15:31
scenes
00:15:32
according to the computer this one-half
00:15:35
square mile area was the neighborhood in
00:15:38
which the perpetrator either lived or
00:15:41
worked
00:15:43
surprisingly
00:15:44
a deputy sheriff from lafayette lived in
00:15:47
that very neighborhood at the time the
00:15:49
assaults took place although he had
00:15:52
recently moved his name
00:15:55
was randy como
00:15:57
a 20-year veteran of the sheriff's
00:15:59
department who often worked on juvenile
00:16:01
rape cases
00:16:03
he was divorced had a young daughter and
00:16:05
was engaged to a volunteer at the local
00:16:08
rape crisis center
00:16:10
during the 10 years that the rapes
00:16:12
occurred
00:16:13
como was living in the center of the
00:16:16
area identified by the geographic
00:16:19
profile
00:16:22
one of como's friends was sergeant terry
00:16:25
regan the officer in charge of the south
00:16:27
side rapist task force
00:16:29
united bell apprentice but i was pissed
00:16:31
off
00:16:32
we go all the way back until the mid 80s
00:16:35
working
00:16:36
cases together
00:16:38
we visited together
00:16:40
i am personal friends with randy cuomo
00:16:44
but police needed to make sure that
00:16:47
randy como was the rapist and they
00:16:49
needed to gather more evidence before
00:16:52
proceeding
00:16:53
for that they looked in the most
00:16:56
unlikely place
00:16:58
is garbage
00:16:59
[Music]
00:17:03
lafayette police discovered that one of
00:17:05
their own sheriff's deputies randy como
00:17:08
was living in the neighborhood
00:17:09
identified by the computerized
00:17:12
geographic profile
00:17:14
but como's colleagues weren't entirely
00:17:17
convinced he was the perpetrator another
00:17:19
reason i didn't want any of this to get
00:17:21
out is because at the beginning i wasn't
00:17:23
really sure that he was in fact the
00:17:25
actual perpetrator
00:17:26
so i didn't want to ruin his career
00:17:29
until we found out for sure at about the
00:17:32
same time
00:17:34
an anonymous caller told police that
00:17:36
randy como was the rapist they were
00:17:39
looking for
00:17:41
faith moody runs the local rape crisis
00:17:44
center and was alarmed to learn that
00:17:46
randy cuomo was a suspect the sense of
00:17:49
betrayal for it being
00:17:52
randy como and i have a hard time
00:17:54
sometimes calling him detective
00:17:56
was that he did work cases under the
00:17:58
children's advocacy center he had work
00:18:00
cases
00:18:01
for us as sexual abuse response center
00:18:04
since police had a dna profile of the
00:18:07
south side rapist from semen samples
00:18:10
from the victims they wanted to gather a
00:18:12
dna sample from randy cuomo for
00:18:15
comparison without his knowledge so
00:18:19
they sterilized an ashtray and
00:18:22
discreetly placed it in front of him at
00:18:24
the police station during his coffee
00:18:27
break
00:18:40
[Music]
00:18:42
when como left
00:18:44
the entire ashtray was sent to the
00:18:46
forensic lab for testing
00:18:48
[Music]
00:18:49
investigators hoped that one of como's
00:18:53
cigarettes would contain enough of his
00:18:55
saliva for dna testing
00:18:59
first
00:19:00
the end of the cigarette was placed into
00:19:02
a vial along with a chemical cocktail
00:19:05
that dissolves everything except the
00:19:08
epithelial cells from como's saliva a
00:19:11
rich source of dna
00:19:14
then
00:19:15
phenol chloroform was added which
00:19:17
allowed the dna to float free
00:19:20
in this gel-like bundle of molecules
00:19:23
was randy como's genetic blueprint
00:19:28
that blueprint the dna profile can be
00:19:31
visualized with the test known as pcr
00:19:35
and when the dna profile of the semen
00:19:38
taken from six of the rape cases was
00:19:41
compared to the dna profile from como's
00:19:44
saliva
00:19:46
investigators had a match
00:19:49
randy cuomo
00:19:51
was the south side rapist
00:19:53
we were really shocked
00:19:55
and taken aback by the fact that it was
00:19:57
it was one of our own
00:19:59
uh we were very disappointed
00:20:02
once he crossed that line he was just
00:20:03
another criminal to us
00:20:06
immediately following como's arrest he
00:20:08
confessed not only to the rapes he was
00:20:11
accused of but the two other rapes the
00:20:13
police knew nothing about bringing the
00:20:15
total to 14.
00:20:17
when police searched como's apartment
00:20:19
they found underwear from his victims
00:20:22
which he kept as trophies books on rape
00:20:25
and road maps of the south side
00:20:27
neighborhoods
00:20:28
[Applause]
00:20:30
police also found a brown ford pickup
00:20:32
truck at como's brother's home 200 miles
00:20:35
away in shreveport louisiana
00:20:37
[Applause]
00:20:39
for close to 15 years como stalked his
00:20:42
prey and used his police training to
00:20:44
control his victims from the very outset
00:20:48
of the assaults
00:20:49
but he unwittingly left an important
00:20:51
clue a trail that led from his crime
00:20:54
scenes straight back to his own
00:20:56
neighborhood most of his crimes happened
00:20:58
within two miles of his home
00:21:01
we were looking for somebody who was
00:21:03
right under our noses all the time
00:21:06
somebody who had the information
00:21:08
somebody who knew
00:21:09
and
00:21:10
probably at some point was laughing at
00:21:13
us the whole entire time
00:21:14
even being a cop and having that inside
00:21:16
authority you know you're still going to
00:21:18
mess up
00:21:19
you're still going to do something wrong
00:21:20
and all you got to do is find that one
00:21:22
thing wrong in each case and you can
00:21:24
build on that
00:21:26
randy cuomo pleaded guilty to six counts
00:21:29
of aggravated assault and was sentenced
00:21:31
to six life terms in prison
00:21:35
if i could turn back time i would never
00:21:38
want this to happen again
00:21:40
it was the most awful thing
00:21:42
in my life that could happen but again i
00:21:45
chose to use this as an opportunity to
00:21:48
to learn more about myself
00:21:51
to appreciate the people that i have in
00:21:53
my life because they could be gone
00:21:55
tomorrow and that
00:21:57
has given me so much more than i had
00:21:59
before this happened
00:22:02
[Music]
00:22:12
[Music]
00:22:33
you
