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[Music] up next did this surveillance image show a kidnapping or a casual encounter it was
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a very curious surveillance tape digital photo enhancement shows the trip wasn't consensual if you get into a car
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you go to the second spot most likely you just sign your your death certificate then there's
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a second murder hauntingly similar to the first for the most part you had a female
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you had an early morning event you had control you had geographical area close in time close to
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the proxima was a serial killer on the loose every morning 55 year old librarian
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demaris nguyen walked for miles in duncan park a 100 acre wooded area next to her house in spartanburg south
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carolina if you're standing in the middle of the park um you might feel like you were on a well-traveled
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trail in a national park but as soon as you took 10 or 15 steps on either side of the center you would
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see houses so it is by no means isolated one morning however she didn't return
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home a few hours later a municipal worker found her body in some underbrush in the park
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less than a hundred yards from her home she was nude with the cord from her walkman around her neck jewelry still on
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the body which is more important to me as a prosecutor than any other fact because you now know that robbery was
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not the motive that something helps all of demaris's clothing was gone did the killer take it as some sort of
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trophy the crime scene we had was a forensic nightmare for us because of the downpour where she was
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lying began to fill up with water an autopsy revealed damaris had been sexually assaulted
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the cause of death was manual strangulation but it looked like the killer tried using the cord to her
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earphones why wrap the cord around the neck if you choked her with your hands her
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walkman however was gone we felt like the suspect most likely took the walkman we had searched
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through the park trying to locate you know the walkman her clothing any other items that we could find and
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we just did not turn up anything it was just this overwhelming how can this happen
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in our community and instantly people thought a stranger is amongst us demaris's husband james
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said he was home and she went for her morning walk it was a saturday and he didn't have to
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go to work when she didn't return he claimed he drove around the neighborhood looking
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for her he thought he was going to find his wife around the corner you know holding her ankle or her leg
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but he even said as the time went on something in his gut let him say this just is not right
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but police found something suspicious in the couple's home it was damaris's walkman we have the
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purple walkman still in her residence we have her outside across the street wearing a purple headphones
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that was very interesting from the beginning when confronted with this evidence james
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wynn offered an explanation one investigators found hard to believe he claimed damaris had
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two walkmans and he offered to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence he failed and then james did something
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even more suspicious he had his wife's body cremated against her family's wishes you know if
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the husband didn't do it then why'd he have her body cremated it could never be
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looked at exhumed again and looked at and and those are the obvious reasons police were convinced james nguyen
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was responsible for this murder until they compared his dna to the evidence collected from his
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wife's rape kit we received a sample with the initial submission it did not match the evidence from the
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rape kit and once they took him off the block people then started going back to the
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well could it have been somebody else or did he get away with murder the perpetrator's dna profile was also
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entered into codis the national dna database there were no hits i think it means that
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the perpetrator had not committed a crime that qualified him to be a part of our database
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it looked as if police had a random murder on their hands the hardest type to solve
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duncan park is a landmark in spartanburg south carolina since 1926 families have used the park for
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recreation and picnics so it's an unlikely place for a brutal murder investigators learned that on the day
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damaris wind was murdered four municipal workers were cutting trees in the park all of them were asked to provide a dna
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sample as was any male who lived near the park or worked with damaris we swabbed around 25
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individuals we tried to pinpoint people that we really thought may be involved and everyone we went to you know
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volunteered their swabs again there were no matches five months later it was a similar
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murder in the reidville community of spartanburg county 15 miles away it was the same essentially there were
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some differences but for the most part you had a female um you had an early morning event 32 year old
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rhonda ward drove into the parking lot of the convenience store where she worked
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it was early in the morning and it was rhonda's job to open the store ronda was the type of lady that if
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she was supposed to be there at seven she came in at 6 30. security cameras in the parking lot
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showed a man walking up to her and having a conversation you can see a subject walking up the
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sidewalk then he cut across coming to the parking lot approached her and she was standing at the door it
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looked like the two knew one another they got into ronda's car and drove away
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this was totally unlike running it was a break in her pattern and that's what also made me very
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suspicious 36 hours later ronda's nude body was found in an apple orchard about 15 miles from
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the convenience store she'd been stabbed to death and sexually assaulted but again because the time of the year
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it was cold decomp hadn't started and we really we had a lot to work with blood underneath the body indicated
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rhonda had been murdered where she was found and just like damaris winds murder the killer had taken ronda's clothes
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when news of ronda's murder became public a potential witness contacted police
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she said that on the morning rhonda disappeared she was driving by the orchard where the body was found
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she saw a white car parked on the shoulder of the road with two individuals walking toward the
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orchard she said one looked like the victim the other was a light-skinned black man
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at the time the witness didn't think anything of it i'm certain he'd been there before knew
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about the area may have already planned it out in his mind police assumed the killer had also
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stolen ronda's car fortunately after speaking with the nissan car company investigators discovered the company had
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something they could do the ability to start the car could be disabled if payment were not made
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and because of her death she missed a payment and the car was disabled how they were able to do that
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with a satellite i don't know but i do know that they disabled the car apparently the gambit worked police
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found ronda's abandoned car three miles from the crime scene someone presumably the killer had set it
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on fire most likely to destroy potential forensic evidence you just don't burn cars because they
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won't start unless you got something on high but the radio was missing so police put
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word out to their informants to be on the lookout for an individual trying to sell a
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nissan car stereo store employees who watched the security camera videotape said the man
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looked like chester donovan a man rhonda had been dating it was someone that rhonda had more than just a
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friendship with 32-year-old chester donovan was a teacher's aide at the school ronda's children attended
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a background check revealed a previous arrest for domestic violence donovan denied any involvement and
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consented to a polygraph test which he failed you've got him identified you've got him filling a polygraph and
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he had a connection to miss ward with a violent past so i mean obviously that was where the investigation was
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focusing when a witness reported seeing rhonda ward walking towards the orchard with an
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unidentified man she was asked to identify him in a photo lineup out of six people in that lineup the
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witness we had actually picked chester out chester donovan was dating ronda ward at
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the time but donovan had an alibi he was at work at the time rhonda ward was abducted
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he had an alibi better than the one i had that morning nobody could tell you where i was at seven
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o'clock that morning except my wife he had about five people that could tell
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where he was in addition to his alibi investigators performed a dna test and donovan's dna did not match the
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biological evidence from the rape test kit but the dna test did provide an important clue
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the dna of ronda's killer matched the dna profile of damaris winds killer i don't know that any of us actually
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expected it there were a few that actually expected it but there were some that were like
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well you know it'd be a luck hit if we get it investigators knew that the man with
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ronda ward on the surveillance image was her killer two surveillance cameras captured the incident
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but both produced dark and blurry images so spartanburg investigators contacted the secret
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service which has a lab with state-of-the-art equipment for video enhancement i know most people associate us with the
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protection of the president but the secret service was originally created in 1865 as a law enforcement
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agency in fact the secret service was working on technology that would get one of its
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first tryouts in this case it was just an amazing coincidence that a case of this high
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profile came in to our office for us to work on it the secret service discovered that the
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surveillance cameras in the parking lot were out of focus to correct that they returned to the parking lot set up
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a beam of light through a panel in the same spot as ronda's car then photographed it with the
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surveillance camera the single point source represents a single point of data on the image file so in a focused camera
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this point source would be a round circle a autofocus camera would actually be a distorted
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image of that circle and it's that image file then is used and imported into the software
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to attempt to refocus the image this camera was pretty out of focus it was pretty bad
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in terms of quality being able to clean up clarify some of the things in the video help identify some of the
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actions that took place to to put together the story of what would happen the improved images revealed that
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something different happened between ronda and her assailant something that investigators hadn't seen
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before she gets in the driver's side and he has to walk around the front of the car when he gets in
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there is a slight movement of the hand the man reached across from the passenger seat
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and put the keys in the ignition the man must have grabbed ronda's car keys out of camera range
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as soon as she got out of the car one thing that stood out to me as a woman is never let them take you to the second
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spot if you get into a car you go to the second spot most likely you've just signed
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your death certificate despite the enhanced video the images still weren't clear enough to
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identify the suspect in this case it was just too far away from the crime you know from what happened to
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be able to make out faces technology provided some answers but investigators weren't
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any closer to finding the killer [Music] the murders of damaris wynn and ronda ward
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were five months and 15 miles apart investigators had the killer's dna but no clues to his identity
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his dna was not in any of the state or national dna databases in our state if you were convicted of a violent
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offense then you were part of our database you were required to provide a dna sample to
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sled be included in our database the requirement became effective in 2002 so either the killer had never been
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convicted of a crime or if he had it was before 2002 as police searched their files for any
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crime similar to these murders they got a tip they learned that a local man tried to
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buy cocaine by trading a radio from a nissan automobile this was significant since the radio was
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missing from ronda's car when it was found he went by the name snow so perhaps he
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didn't think anybody would know who he was but police informants identified the man
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as frederick evans evans lived within walking distance of ronda's workplace where this surveillance video was shot
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and he was no stranger to law enforcement this was a bad man to the core and i've
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seen some of the lowest of the low and the thing about frederick evans you look at
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him doesn't scare you thirty-five-year-old evans a short-order cook divorced with a
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13-year-old daughter served time in prison for rape and robbery prior to 2000. this
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was only the latest in a series of crimes that began in his teens frederick evans
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had one assault and battery with intent to kill where he sliced a man's throat with a box cutter one
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larceny and simple assault where he stole a woman's purse and punched her in
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the face evans denied any involvement in either murder police decided to call his bluff they
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told him they'd shown the surveillance tape to his mother he said you showed it to my mom i said
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absolutely and he said what did she say and i said mr evans you know what she said she
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identified you in the video evans fell for this ruse and changed his story his story was that they knew each other
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it was consensual sex um got rough they got in a fight um and she tried to stab him
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and he turned around and stabbed her that's not even a good lifetime television movie i mean that's just
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ridiculous investigators obtained evan's dna and the test results left no doubt his
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dna matched the biological evidence from ronda ward's rape test kit his dna also matched the evidence
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in damaris winds case frederick evans friends told police that evans was sleeping on a bench in duncan
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park on the morning of damaris's murder [Music] prosecutors believe evans abducted her
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dragged her to the woods sexually assaulted her then strangled her to death first with
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her headphones and then manually for reasons that aren't entirely clear it appears
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evans took damaris clothing and her walkman possibly as a trophy but didn't take her
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jewelry [Music] in ronda's case prosecutors believe evans was walking through the store
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parking lot when he saw ronda ward drive up to the convenience store to open it for the day
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according to the surveillance video he grabbed her keys probably threatened her with violence
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and told her to get in the car [Music] evans forced her to drive to a deserted location nearby
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and that's when the witness saw the two walking towards the orchard and just as in
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damaris's case evans sexually assaulted ronda killed her and took all of her clothes
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later evans was unable to start the car because the manufacturer had disabled the starter
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so evan set the car on fire but not before taking one last item the car radio which led to his capture
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well ma'am it's not as it's it's not as it seems it's it's not as it looks you know what
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is it tell me what it is there's two sides there restore them tell me your side of the story
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i can't i don't have enough time to sit here and explain to you how why did you
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murder ronda ward into marriage i'm not going out today one year after the crimes
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frederick evans went on trial for multiple charges including murder and kidnapping you're entitled to know
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the impact that ronda ward's death has had on her family and friends and you
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are entitled to know the character of frederick antonio evans and you got it 20 years taking what he wants
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when he wants it evans did not testify in his own defense i used to have this whole quote you know
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what you call defendants who don't testify at trial and the answer is inmates the experience
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is one that i would not wish upon anyone it is very time consuming it is very emotional
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it is very heartbreaking evans was convicted on all counts and was sentenced to death you had
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looked at frederick evans he had a pattern it was just a pattern that took a while for them to connect
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the only way in this day and age to get a death sentence is to have very strong forensics and frankly the only
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way to get a conviction at the guilt phase is to have strong forensics much more
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than eyewitness testimony or any of the other old standbys it's all about science
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and if you don't have science you're not going to win you