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[Music] up next two brutal murders put a city on edge we're all bothered by it
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it's it's hard to sleep at night was this the work of a serial killer there were multiple similarities between
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the two scenes police have few clues these crime scenes primarily were all debris
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basically but plenty of motive he has obviously a hatred towards women the case went cold until
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a lover's quarrel flew out of control [Music] in the early 1990s seattle washington
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was one of the fastest growing cities in the country renee powell a 43 year old registered nurse visited
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seattle on vacation and never left she blew him just like a flower she bloomed you cannot believe how she looked and
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how she talked and she giggled and she left but two years after renee moved to seattle
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tragedy struck on a cold february night a fire broke out in her apartment when firefighters extinguished the blaze
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they found renee's body the victim was face down arms to the side legs apart
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an ice pick was found between her legs most of her clothes had been torn off there were only remnants of a shirt that
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she had been wearing [Music] renee had been gagged and bound and appeared to have been
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strangled to death before the fire the origin of the fire showed a possible motive
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it appears that the fire had been lit between renee powell's legs although there were no
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signs of forced entry renee's purse and credit cards were missing and all her electronic equipment was
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missing like her tv and vcr she had recently been doing laundry because there was laundry
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stacked on a sofa you could tell she had recently put together or made a pitcher of iced tea because there
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was a pitcher full of iced tea on the counter and you could see where the ice cubes
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had melted from the heat of the fire i picked up the phone and my sister was voice was very unusual
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she said she's gone she's dead i said who's dead and she said renee i said renee who
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she said renee's i said she can't be dead i just talked to her at the autopsy the medical examiner
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found evidence that renee had been sexually assaulted [Music] we just couldn't come up with that
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person that would be wanting renee dead never was able to find any person no family no relatives no past
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lovers no no one at work then a month after renee's murder there was another fire
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in the same apartment complex suspecting arson police used a helicopter with heat sensors to see
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if anyone was hiding nearby watching the fire it doesn't see objects per se it sees
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heat signatures or heat given out by a person there were no suspects hiding in any of the bushes
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when the fire was extinguished they found another female victim 54 year old barbara walsh the similarities between
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the two homicide scenes and the two women were extensive both barbara walsh and renee powell were single
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lived alone and worked in the healthcare field both apartments were on the first floor
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there was evidence that both women had been doing their laundry at the time their attacker entered their apartment
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both women had been bound using undergarments their own undergarments the bindings also
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included electrical cords had been cut off from lamps within the apartment the killer was organized
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and his crimes well planned in both units he took down the smoke detector before setting the fire
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and even took down the doorbell ringers he went out of his way to make sure that
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the fire wouldn't be discovered prematurely both victims had been stabbed strangled
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and burglarized both were doing laundry in the basement before they were attacked
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we theorized that she had left the sliding glass door unlocked when she went down to the laundry room to start a
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load of laundry and when she returned the suspect had been in the apartment the similarities were
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too blatant to be ignored and the conclusion too horrific to avoid the two most gruesome murders that i've been involved
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in my reaction to seeing the violence and overkill was this individual will kill again
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based on the evidence seattle police suspected the same man raped and murdered two women in the same apartment complex
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residents were demanding round-the-clock protection and that is the saddest thing that has
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ever happened to me that i can't even feel safe in my home we're all bothered by it
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it's it's hard to sleep at night and i mean i'm a positive person and i hate
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to like now look at everybody i see walking down the street as some suspicious arsonist
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the victims renee powell and barbara walsh had no known enemies she had this laugh
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that if anybody knew her they'd never forgot her laugh a very generous person
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you know she didn't have a lot but she was willing to help anybody the nature of the murders had police
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checking every registered sex offender within a 50-mile radius we talked to people for weeks trying to
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find something that would lead us towards a killer and and came up empty but what stood out
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most to police was the remarkable similarity of the two cases both victims were bound and sexually
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assaulted although dna evidence was recovered from only one of them both lived on the first floor and were
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doing laundry before they were attacked both had electronic items stolen from their apartments
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and there were other similarities that detectives identified as the killer's signature the signature
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consists of five parts which would involve binding the victim stabbing the victim
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disposing of their body setting fires or arson and then taking souvenirs since much of the evidence was destroyed
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in the fire police turned to the public for help and within days they got more than 600 tips
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one in particular logged as number 316 caught their attention we had an individual that lived nearby
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a short distance about three miles away that was brought to us from a domestic violence advocate at the
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the nearby court 23 year old gary dolan had a history of minor offenses but he'd never serve jail time
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it was his own sister who reported him to police she was alarmed by hundreds of incredibly lurid
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poems he'd written and shown her most of his writings were angry writings the one in particular dealt with
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with forcing a kind lady to have sex with him after he'd strangled her grabbing her head and snapping her neck
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the poor little old lady hit the deck now she's dead there's no life in her
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later tonight i'll eat her for dinner some poems talked about sexual activity
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with older women sexual activity with with dead people i'm happy with my life sharpening the
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blade of my unholy knife this is where true hatred lies screams of agony my victim dies
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police certainly knew that they were working with someone who was very sick gary dolan was unemployed and had no
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alibi for either murder he also refused to take a polygraph test and he wouldn't provide a dna sample so
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police had to find another way to get it we knew he smoked we knew we could get dna from the cigarette butt
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but we couldn't take the cigarette butt from him unless he abandoned it sheriffs followed gary until they saw
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him outside smoking a cigarette they questioned him at length hoping he'd cast the butt aside when he
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was finished which to their relief he finally did that butt was sent for testing and the
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results provided yet another setback the dna profile from the cigarette butt did not match the dna profile from the
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crime scene so gary dolan was eliminated as a suspect and for the next two years the trail of
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the killer turned cold two years we've beat our head against the wall trying to find the
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killer [Music] investigators often request a psychological profile of a serial killer
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in the belief this insight will help in efforts to apprehend him in these two murders the victims were
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bound sexually assaulted their bodies placed in a position that would shock investigators and then
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both scenes were set on fire these elements were unusual these women were substitutes they became targets and
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victims because he's taken his revenge feelings his hatred of some female in his life and acting
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out against them so he's replaced the person that's been in his life with these victims
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for two years investigators searched for the killer with no success then investigators got a new lead from an
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unusual source a woman incarcerated in the local prison i mean this tip is just too much to not
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not handle right away and we go up and we talk to her her name was princess gray she was in jail
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awaiting trial for assaulting her boyfriend robert parker when he had the audacity
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to leave her for another woman she had assaulted the new girlfriend and then later when they were in court on
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that she had also assaulted robert in the courtroom and so she was now in jail on those assaults princess gray said her
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ex-boyfriend robert parker was the man who murdered renee powell and barbara walsh
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it was the kind of tale police had heard hundreds of times before princess gray did have reason to lie she
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was the jolted woman but gray said she and robert lived just a hundred and fifty yards away
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from the apartment complex where renee powell and barbara walsh were murdered he started bringing stuff in the house
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and i was like what are you doing where'd you get this stuff i was just like just
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move just be quiet be quiet and quiet so he brought the stuff in then he put pepper
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all over the floor inside routes and inside and outside the pepper would throw off the scent of any police
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sniffer dogs in the area she said she still had the items parker took from the crime scenes
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and where's that now i have it okay at your apartment yeah in the couple's
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apartment investigators found the items stolen from renee powell and barbara walsh's
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apartments tvs vcrs coats and other items identified by the victim's relatives when
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questioned by police 23 year old robert parker denied any involvement in the murders
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there were no fingerprints there were no eyewitnesses he never admitted to being in those
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apartments but a background check revealed passed brushes with the law at the time of the murders robert was
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making his money by selling drugs on the street and it pawning property and selling property
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most likely stolen property that he got in drug trade and stuff but then princess gray recanted her
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story apparently she and robert parker had reconciled their differences princess gray now claimed
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they found these items in the trash she claims that he was in the apartment all night
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that she had gone out and found the property by some garbage cans or a dumpster without princess gray investigators had
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no evidence it wasn't unexpected since her and parker shared a child but damn it when you have someone who
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is providing you good evidence that directly connects the killer with the crime scenes
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it's a hard nut to swallow you started bringing stuff in the house princess gray implicated her boyfriend
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robert parker in the murders of renee powell and barbara walsh but later recanted after the two had
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reconciled which version was correct she had facts that no one but the investigators
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the victim and the suspect or someone close to the suspect would know but investigators didn't give up
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princess gray had given them hours of information all on tape countless details of her life with
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boyfriend robert parker some of it telling was your sex life pretty normal then yeah except for one time or of having
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sex and he started to act like he had split personality and she started like choking me and calling
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me and and stuff and gray said something else about parker's personal hygiene she had mentioned that
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after she and parker had made love he frequently would go into their bathroom clean up using their towels and then
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just leave the towels laying about the vanity we had found two towels in barbara walsh's bathroom that were
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laying on top of her vanity although the towels had been in the fire investigators wondered if parker might
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have used them after the sexual assault of barbara walsh to find out investigators took a close
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look at those towels the towel was kind of folded or wadded up and as we opened up and started to
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examine it we found four four hairs that were if they weren't heat damaged they were you know they
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were certainly visually different from from barbara walsh's hairs and one of those hairs had the potential
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to be a gold mine of evidence the first hair that i glommed on to was probably the largest here and it had a
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root and it had a root with some some tissue onto it dumb luck kept that towel from burning up and
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burning the pubic hair with it investigators now had dna evidence from both crime scenes biological evidence from
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renee powell's rape test kit and the hair from barbara walsh's apartment
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scientists compared robert parker's dna to those dna samples robert parker's
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dna profile was compared to the profile previously generated from the vaginal swabs
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it was a match robert parker had denied ever being in the victims apartments and
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now the evidence directly contradicted him we felt damn good it was just indescribable relief
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to get dna which is pristine unattackable scientific evidence went up to that point you only had the
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circumstance and the testimony of someone like princess gray two years after the crimes
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twenty-three-year-old robert parker was arrested and charged with two counts of murder prosecutors
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believe parker spent weeks watching his victims with renee powell he waited in the woods
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next to her apartment when she went to the laundry room in the basement she left her door open
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he went inside grabbed a knife from the kitchen and hid when renee returned he attacked binding her
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arms with lamp cords from inside the apartment then sexually assaulting and stabbing
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her to death he grabbed some items of value a vcr a coat dismantled the smoke detector
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then set the fires to destroy evidence the case of barbara walsh was virtually identical
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she too was doing her laundry and had left the door open while she went downstairs
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[Music] like the first crime parker used materials he found inside the apartment
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[Music] [Applause] after the sexual assault and murder he used the towels in the bathroom to clean
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up before setting the fire in the folded towels one hair with the root intact survived the
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intense heat smoke and flames a tiny hair found with the help of an angry girlfriend
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intent on getting revenge the towel itself was was singed and burned a little bit but it wasn't
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like it was burned up completely and so the hairs that were inside this towel were never exposed to the high
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high heat investigators think the motive for parker's crimes was in part his anger and resentment towards
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his girlfriend princess gray i believe that robert had been home with princess and that
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there had been some kind of an argument where he left princess and and left angrily i assume it's
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because he had a lot of pent up anger to princess who was dominant extremely difficult person to
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deal with and i suspected that contributed to the release of this sexual deviancy
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that we see in the murders after a four-month trial robert parker was convicted of two
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counts of aggravated murder and sentenced to life in prison his crimes were planned all the way down
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to his attempts to destroy the evidence but science uncovered evidence he didn't even know
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existed it remains incredibly unsettling that there could be other parkers just walking the streets
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among us and there's nothing to tip you off there a lot of cases would go unsolved
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if they there was no forensic science around you just never know because it can be microscopic or it can
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be something as big as a footballer or something like that it's it's that's
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the that's the beauty of forensic sciences you just don't know what's going to be the most
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important part of your analysis