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