00:00:00
[Music] up next a young boy witnesses a terrible crime she was gagged she's been tired her hands were tired
00:00:12
and everything the chief suspect virtually turns himself in he appeared exactly like the composite sketch we
00:00:19
have him with no alibi but forensic tests failed to tie him to the crime it was not a cheerful day for the
00:00:26
prosecution i couldn't believe they were going to let him walk to possibly do this to somebody
00:00:30
else could forensics provide the answer [Music] the laurel village mobile home park in
00:00:44
delaware was home to 32 year old kaye robinson a single mother living with her 11 year old son
00:00:51
laurel is a farming town and a regular working class person lives there one night around two in the morning
00:01:03
kay was awakened by someone banging on her front door [Music] she went to the door look out the window
00:01:12
and see this stranger out there they said they want to use the telephone said their name was jack wilson and they
00:01:17
needed a ride could they use a telephone kay refused to let wilson inside think you should
00:01:25
leave you need to go kay robinson called 9-1-1 and the delaware state police did
00:01:32
respond but didn't see anything out of the ordinary so they cleared the scene without any further
00:01:38
investigation thinking everything was all right kaye went back to bed a half hour later she was awakened again
00:01:53
by a noise in her kitchen that's when she saw the same man she had seen on her porch
00:01:59
in her kitchen holding a butcher knife he chased kay through the house grabbed her by the arm
00:02:06
put a knife to her throat and told her to follow his orders if not he said he'd kill her son who was
00:02:12
in the adjoining bedroom from that point as little she could do it was just completely three hours of torture
00:02:21
just horrific torture that she endured [Music] after sexually assaulting her the man
00:02:30
told kaye that he lived in the same mobile home park and had two children then he stabbed her
00:02:37
almost 30 times and left her for dead before leaving the perpetrator checked on kaye's son
00:02:46
who pretended to be asleep when the man left the house kay's son rushed to their neighbor's house for
00:02:54
help in one word what's your emergency um if my next door neighbor has been robbed
00:02:59
and she's been stabbed it sounded like they might have raped her police arrived to find kaye near death
00:03:09
her neck was cut as bad as anyone's neck i've ever seen in my life she was
00:03:13
stabbed several times in her back i it was over 25 times and her neck was cut basically from side
00:03:21
to side as kay was rushed to the hospital paramedics noticed that her attacker had drawn a smiley
00:03:29
face on her back in her own blood the smiley face is one of those chilling details uh of a crime scene
00:03:38
that seems to serve no purpose other than to sort of mock or demean the victim of
00:03:45
that attack you have to know that this person is very sick very violent and possibly a serial killer
00:03:54
miraculously despite being stabbed 28 times kay survived when i woke up i didn't want to be there
00:04:02
i was furious that i was on life support my throat was cut in 10 to 15 different
00:04:08
places i basically felt like he was trying to decapitate me um i felt like i was in a horror movie
00:04:15
they didn't sever her carotid artery or her jugular vein or spinal cord so that she would have
00:04:21
been paralyzed or anything like that she's extremely lucky it's just unbelievable
00:04:27
a miracle in my book and i think everybody felt that way kaye not only survived she said she'd be
00:04:35
able to identify her attacker if she ever saw him he didn't blindfold me i was making
00:04:42
myself remember every little detail that i could about him right down to the length of his
00:04:47
fingernails all police had to do was find him k robinson will never forget the look on
00:05:01
the man's face who mercilessly stabbed her over and over again he was asking are you dead yet [ __ ] and
00:05:11
when i tried to reply i mean he continued stabbing me with even more force i knew right away that i was going to
00:05:18
have to pretend to be dead this is a very brutal crime and the way it happened the random way it happened in the
00:05:26
horrific way it happened let everybody start feeling a little bit uneasy and a little bit unsafe
00:05:33
the intent was to kill it was not to wound it was not to leave a mark it was to kill the attacker did
00:05:41
something police found highly unusual he left the bedroom light on throughout the attack
00:05:48
so kaye was able to watch him over an extended period from her description police artists
00:05:56
created a composite sketch which was released to the media however they didn't tell the media about the
00:06:03
smiley face drawing the attacker made on kaye's back it was not part of any press release
00:06:09
therefore this would be something that would only be known to the attacker or be familiar with to the attacker
00:06:17
kaye also said she made a mental record of everything he touched the man took pains to wipe off his
00:06:26
fingerprints but kate thought he might have overlooked one of the items a blue glass
00:06:35
he drank out of the glass and then he made a point to take his sleeve and wipe the prints off
00:06:41
of the glass but then grab the glass out of his hand and set it back on the table
00:06:47
there were several prints on the glass we thought it may have been some kind of lubricant
00:06:53
used by the perpetrator fearful that the prince might smear or even melt pegman placed the glass in
00:07:01
a freezer the idea to put the tumbler in the freezer was actually to set the print to cause it become rigid
00:07:09
so we could apply powder at some point in time and left it three full prints were lifted and
00:07:18
photographed two weeks after the attack police were called again to kay robinson's home
00:07:25
this time by her neighbors they said a man drove up to kay's home lit a candle
00:07:32
and got down on his knees to pray he was very concerned that the person who attacked k robinson
00:07:39
be apprehended and wanted to pray for that to happen and to assist police in any
00:07:45
way that he could to see that that attacker was apprehended the man was 38 year old doug de silva
00:07:55
in his truck taped to his windshield he had a newspaper article about the case with a copy
00:08:02
of the attacker's composite sketch when he was asked about that why he had that
00:08:07
he said that so that he could drive down the road and look for the suspect and keep his eye on the composite at the
00:08:14
same time to try to find someone that looked just like that but someone did look just like that
00:08:21
doug de silva he very distinctly resembled the composite drawing of the suspect in that attack
00:08:30
da silva lived a hundred miles away but his ex-wife and daughter both lived in the same mobile home park as
00:08:37
kaye robinson a year earlier he was a suspect in the murder of a 16 year old girl at a nearby high school
00:08:46
he was also a person of interest in a murder that had occurred six months prior to
00:08:52
the attack on brenda k robinson police brought da silva in for questioning in the middle of the interrogation he
00:09:01
did something very odd he asked for a job application because he said he wanted to become
00:09:08
a state trooper we thought maybe he might even be taunting us at that point we were very suspicious of that
00:09:18
police put together a photo lineup and kaye robinson identified de silva as the man who attacked her
00:09:26
she immediately picked him out as the person that was in her house there was no doubt in her mind
00:09:31
i know that this is the man that did it it was more like an internal reaction so with the physical
00:09:38
appearance and that i was very confident that that was the person that attacked me
00:09:43
and kaye's son also identified de silva the man actually came into his room and
00:09:50
he was able to see him but he pretended to be asleep so he was able to also get a good enough
00:09:55
look at the person that he was able to also identify him in a photo lineup when da silva completed his job
00:10:03
application to become a policeman he turned it in that's when investigators noticed the most bizarre
00:10:12
thing they'd ever encountered there was a smiley face on the bottom of the document and that had the
00:10:21
same chilling effect on the investigators because they knew that on kay robinson's back that the attacker had
00:10:27
drawn a smiley face in blood since this detail hadn't been released to the press
00:10:33
investigators were certain they had their man doug de silva never did deny that he was
00:10:41
involved in the kay robinson case he'd made several statements that he was sorry for what happened to her
00:10:46
wanted to apologize for what happened but investigators and kaye robinson were in for a big surprise
00:11:00
just two weeks after kay robinson's vicious attack she identified doug de silva as her
00:11:06
assailant from the photo lineup i was very certain i wanted to hear him say something
00:11:12
to be sure that that was him when i heard him speak i thought that that was the person that was in my home
00:11:18
de silva had no alibi for the night of the crime i've never been so sure in my life as a
00:11:25
detective that doug da silva was was the right person the silva was arrested and charged with
00:11:31
the attempted murder of kay robinson he said to tell her i'm sorry i didn't
00:11:36
mean to do it i remember going there but i don't remember stabbing her to me that's a confession but then
00:11:45
came the bad news the silva's fingerprints did not match the prints taken from the
00:11:51
blue plastic glass in kaye's home the fact that we didn't get any fingerprints that matched doug de
00:11:57
silvas from the scene never led us to believe that he wasn't the suspect because a lot of times we don't find any
00:12:04
fingerprints and perhaps the worst piece of news was that the silva's dna profile did not
00:12:12
match the evidence collected from kay robinson's rape kit dna evidence has conclusively ruled out
00:12:19
douglas silva as being involved in this crime it was i mean almost like being struck in the head by
00:12:26
two by four we were extremely shocked it was like someone had punched you in the stomach
00:12:32
this was devastating the investigators the prosecutors in the case that were just
00:12:38
flabbergasted did not know what to do in fact they ran the dna test twice just to make sure
00:12:46
again the dna didn't match and at that point you can't go forward with the prosecution of douglas da silva
00:12:54
even though the dna report said that this wasn't the person that broke into my home i was still
00:12:58
convinced that it was i couldn't believe they were gonna let him walk to possibly do this to somebody
00:13:04
else so kaye decided to take matters into her own hands i bought a gun i found out where he lived i went to his
00:13:15
house i sat outside of his home i wanted to go to the door and knock on the door
00:13:22
and just ask him if he remembered me and i mean i just wanted to take care of it
00:13:25
myself but kaye thought better of it the primary reason was my son i wanted to raise my son i didn't want
00:13:33
to be in jail but if de silva wasn't the perpetrator a violent sexual sadist was walking the
00:13:41
streets and police had no new suspects i will never be able to understand why a man who was innocent of a crime
00:13:50
allowed himself to get so close to the crime and allowed himself to become so suspect you go back through your
00:13:59
investigation because then you start to doubt yourself a little bit did i miss something did i
00:14:04
overlook something years passed with no solid leads the longer we worked the colder the case
00:14:12
got then nine years later detective rob hudson got a call from detectives 30 miles away
00:14:20
in neighboring maryland they had a case that was very similar to the 1995 case with kay robinson the maryland victim
00:14:33
was a single mother living in a mobile home since she saw a man in her room bedroom
00:14:43
and she thought she was dreaming she saw a knife and a rolling pin in his hand and he told her he was not going to hurt
00:14:49
her if she gave him what he wanted the man tied her up sexually assaulted her and carried on a lengthy conversation
00:14:59
when she pleaded for her son's life the man's demeanor changed he begged her for forgiveness and then
00:15:06
he gave her some directions to not get up until a certain time and take a shower and
00:15:12
then she was allowed to go to work but not to call the police the man's point of entry a broken window
00:15:19
at the front of the house it appeared that he picked the window up after he busted it and set it
00:15:26
leaning against the trailer at the base of it 43 year old mark eskridge was tied to
00:15:32
that crime through his fingerprints the known standards of one mark eskridge were identified to the
00:15:40
latent prints that recovered from the glass from the point of entry from the crime scene
00:15:44
the cave robinson case is similar in many ways single mothers a trailer park with a sun early morning
00:15:51
hours lots of conversation uh a knife was used in both and eskridge looked similar to the
00:15:59
composite drawing of k robinson's attacker nine years earlier he matched the height the weight he had
00:16:07
the facial uh configuration that she had described with the scruffy beer unfortunately
00:16:15
eskridge's fingerprints did not match the prints on the drinking glass found in k robinson's home
00:16:22
and k robinson said eskridge wasn't her attacker i did tell the detectives that this was not the person
00:16:31
would this be yet another dead end mark eskridge was the prime suspect in the rape and attempted murder of kay
00:16:43
robinson after he committed a similar crime in maryland a background check revealed that
00:16:51
eskridge who was married and had a small child lived in the same mobile home park as kay robinson
00:16:58
when the attack occurred he lived in fact just a few streets away from k robinson
00:17:04
he may have had the opportunity to observe her and know that she resided in that house
00:17:11
with her son investigators were sure that eskridge was their man but there was only one problem k
00:17:19
robinson was unable to identify mark eskridge as her attacker that was not the man that broke into my
00:17:26
home but it had been nine years since her attack memories change and so did eskridge's appearance
00:17:36
fortunately investigators had the dna of k robinson's attacker and when they
00:17:43
compared eskridge's dna to the biological sample from k robinson's rape test kit investigators
00:17:50
finally got the answer they'd been waiting for when i received the call that the dna
00:17:56
was a match i couldn't believe it i was overjoyed i couldn't wait to call
00:18:01
k robinson i went through a lot of emotions i thought oh my god i'm glad i didn't
00:18:06
kill the silva because it would have been the wrong guy but i mean he could have been his twin
00:18:12
they were identical investigators believe mark estridge targeted kaye robinson since they lived in the same mobile home
00:18:21
park and he probably knew she was a single mother living alone with her son prosecutors think that eskridge knocked
00:18:31
on kay's door claiming he had car trouble because he wanted to make sure no men were in her home
00:18:45
later that night he broke in and [Music] attacked he told kaye that he lived nearby
00:19:01
because he had no intention of letting her live [Music] he attacked her repeatedly with a knife
00:19:08
but kay robinson's will to survive was too great i still had a life to live and i wanted
00:19:15
my life back and i was going to take it back a piece at a time eskridge left valuable dna evidence behind
00:19:23
more reliable than any eyewitness a decade after the crime mark eskridge went on trial for the sexual assault
00:19:33
and attempted murder of kay robinson he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison
00:19:40
plus 20 years he was a sick individual i don't believe that you can stab somebody that many times
00:19:48
taunt them and then spend that much time with him and not have something really really
00:19:53
wrong with you would he be considered a serial rapist or is he a serial sex predator
00:19:59
i mean he's a serial something authorities cite the case as a reason to be skeptical of
00:20:06
eyewitness identifications especially when the witness is under extreme duress you have an eyewitness identification
00:20:14
which is as certain as certain can be but you have science and dna evidence telling you otherwise
00:20:23
doug de silva's bizarre behavior and his equally bizarre resemblance to the actual attacker
00:20:29
almost landed him in jail doug de silva's whereabouts are unknown even to his ex-wife it's still very very
00:20:39
strange and very puzzling as to why doug de silva had ever gotten involved in the case why
00:20:47
he introduced himself into the case you always know somebody's going to get caught
00:20:51
or you're going to catch them it's just you don't know when sometimes
00:20:56
so i just say you know hats off to dna is a great a great tool and i tell you it's in this
00:21:03
case to be able to free one man and convict another i say that says a lot for justice