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next on unsolved mysteries a desolate road a teenage girl driving alone and one fatal bullet under hypnosis
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a witness may have described her killer guests at the southern end gets something extra with the price of their
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rooms ghosts of former residents who died of foul play he's brutal cunning and responsible
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for 10 murders and 50 rapes authorities need your help to catch him is earth on the doomsday collision
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course with a deadly asteroid it's happened before and it will happen again cunning deceit and lies
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maybe you can guess who's telling the truth i'm dennis farina and this is unsolved mysteries
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[Music] [Music] valdez north carolina on the night of december 22nd a recent high school graduate
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rhonda henson attends her first ever company christmas party [Music] at midnight rhonda leaves with two
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girlfriends after dropping off her companions rhonda plans to make the 10-mile drive
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to her home where she lives with her parents at exactly 1am rhonda's mother wakes up
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from a sound sleep with a strange premonition i woke up feeling panicky scared because i felt like something had
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happened rhonda i felt like rhonda was dead i felt like she had been in an automobile accident
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i got up and i had a little cb scanner that you listen to you know your accidents and all that stuff on it
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and for some odd reason i just turned it on you know thought maybe you know if it'd been actually not here
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on the scanner and the minute i turned it on it came over you know if they'd been a
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homicide 120 check a vehicle in the ditch footage springs mountain at i-40 complainant
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rhonda's car was discovered just a half a mile from her house the driver's door was open and a few
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feet away rhonda was found dead she was lying on her back and her arms appeared to have been deliberately
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placed at her side she had been killed by a single bullet fired by a high-powered rifle
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it tore through the trunk of her car through her seat and penetrated her heart the hardest thing is living every day
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wondering who did this rhonda was the most loving caring person that you've ever
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known romney was the type daughter that everybody would like to have at first the murder of rhonda henson
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appeared to be a random act of violence but as the investigation unfolded disturbing clues emerged
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suggesting that ronda may have been murdered by someone she knew several weeks after ronda's graduation
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she began to act strangely previously happy to drive alone she started asking her father to go with
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her on trips into town and on one of these trips she made a disturbing statement dan i've
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got something to tell you but i'm afraid to you know i said no matter whether it's
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good i'm bad tell me and she said i'll think about it and she never did explain never did tell me why
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what it was you know she's afraid to tell me well you keep your mind on your job okay
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her mother also recalled the strange conversation shortly before rhonda's death i was
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wondering if it's ever okay to go with a married man i said rhonda there's never a time that
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it's all right to go with a married man the only thing that comes from that is people getting
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hurt rhonda's comments suggested that she was under some kind of personal pressure the police
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investigation began to uncover evidence that someone may have been stalking her the night that she was killed
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between 12 15 and 12 30 on the morning that ronda henson was murdered a witness drove under
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the interstate 40 bridge on mineral springs mountain road she observed a blue chevrolet
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facing in a northerly direction with two white males in the vehicle the car was parked next to the same
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off-ramp that rhonda used to exit it was spotted 30 minutes before the fatal bullet was fire key
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and just 200 yards from where her body was found later that evening another witness
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traveling down the same road past a similar blue car with a single man at the wheel
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speeding away from the motorcycle as he continued down the road the witness saw ronda's vehicle parked
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at the same spot where her body was found a woman was slumped over the steering wheel
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and a man was standing at her door the witness did not get a close look at the man and drove on
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assuming the couple had been drinking there were some latent prints on the driver's door
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but these latent prints have not been identified please put the witness under hypnosis
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and ask them to recall more details this is the actual audio tape of that session chevelle
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looks blue serving them all i believe looks like the front end has been messed up
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the same primer i promise gray he's not a big guy he's six foot five ten he's
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not made himself it's on a dark brown headed guy the witness also remembered seeing a
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second car parked down the road from ronda's vehicle it was a black or dark blue
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trans am some believe that car may have been driven by the murderer who killed rhonda henson
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and why authorities are certain that she would never have stopped for a stranger
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was rhonda pulled over by someone she knew who then fired the fatal shot was the man seen at rhonda's car the
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murderer or was he someone who happened by and then left the area when he saw that
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ronda was dead we have some different stories but to really be able to substantiate these
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stories we don't have that information that's what we're looking for those
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little pieces of information that we can substantiate what happened a 20 000 reward is being offered in this
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case [Music] if you have any information please log on to our website at unsolved.com
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next a 200 year old mansion is now a hotel where ghosts are as common as guests in saint francisville louisiana sits
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the myrtles plantation a 200 year old mansion that's been converted into a bed and breakfast it claims to be
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one of america's most haunted houses shooting poisoning and lynching at least eight people have died violent
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deaths here and some say their spirits are still on the property i've had enough happen to let me know
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that other people live here that we can't always see legend has it that in 1796
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the original owner general david bradford built the house directly on top of an indian burial ground
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since then hundreds of ghostly sightings have occurred could it be that spirits are haunting
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the plantation the myrtles plantation is said to be a window into the supernatural
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guests here know their stay might include a ghostly encounter i guess i have to say i really didn't
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believe that there were actually ghosts or spirits there that it was just folklore and legend and
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it wasn't until i was already in that things began to happen that convinced me that yes they are here
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[Music] but by then it was too late financially i couldn't afford to be scared
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when amy campbell and her friend michelle came to stay at the bnb one october they were well informed of
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its ghostly past we were very hesitant if we were going to stay all night because we had heard
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that the place was haunted we had heard that there were ghosts that visit people at night that
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tuck you in fix your clothes we weren't sure we wanted to experience any of that
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i was sleeping for a little while and i woke up feeling bouncing on the end of my bed
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and i saw a little girl jumping on the end of my bed and i thought surely i'm dreaming and i
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stuck my head back under the covers it kept bouncing and bouncing and bouncing it felt like forever
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and all of a sudden it stopped and i looked back up at the little girl that was jumping
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on the bed was gone the child ghost is thought to be cornelia woodruff one of four people who died in a series
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of tragic events 175 years ago cornelia was the daughter of judge woodruff whose family lived at the myrtles in the
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early 1800s when the woodrus house slave chloe was caught eavesdropping on the judge
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he decided to punish her this is the third time i've caught you i wasn't
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listening i will not tolerate it the judge ordered chloe's ear cut off [Applause]
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[Music] afraid of also being sent to the fields to do hard labor she devised a plan she ground poisonous
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oleander leaves into a birthday cake hoping to make the family sick and then she would redeem herself by
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nursing them back to hell i picked your favorite cake with sarah she may have thought she was boiling
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just enough on leander to make the family sick already knowing what was wrong she would
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take care of them be the hero and be left in the household to take care of them but chloe's scheme backfired young
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cornelia her mother and sister all died from the poison a lot of guests want to know what
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happened to chloe after the poisoning it's believed that she was killed by a
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mixed mob black and whites were probably together of course the other slaves were probably
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afraid of what was going to happen to them she was supposedly beaten hung and then
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thrown into the river it's believed that cornelia along with her mother and sister
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has joined chloe in haunting the house [Music] several years ago mark and holly parenti
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spent a frightening night at the myrtles mark had been reluctant to visit but knew that his wife would be intrigued by
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the hotel's history it's known as one of the most haunted plantations in america and i wasn't looking forward
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to finding out why come right now it is it's a beautiful house it was scary the thought of being in
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this haunted house was very scary more probably to mark than me but i was scared too
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[Music] perhaps mark and holly had reason to be nervous another of the resident ghosts a former
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owner named william winters was supposedly gunned down during the late 1800s he is said to haunt the main staircase
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mark in holly's room was just beyond that flight of stairs my mind had gotten to me a little bit
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because i wouldn't let her turn the lights off so we're laying in bed and she's
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sort of having a nervous chit chat and what i heard was a very deep sounding bang
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sounds like the steps as soon as i heard that noise you know the adrenaline rush
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no no how do i stay here oh come on no i want to look if i had to venture a guest
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it sounded like footsteps the reason william winters was murdered remains a mystery
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winners william winners it was late one night in 1870 when a mysterious horseman appeared on
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the myrtle's front lawn who's there are you william winners yes i'm william winners
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whoever was there shot him in the chest he made it back through the double doors
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trying to reach his wife sarah she was upstairs he only made it to the 17th step
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he died there in her arms all i know was that it was enough for me you know it was enough for me to make me
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want to leave in a way i think we were both hoping it might have been our imagination
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but it definitely wasn't there are certain times that uh i'm uncomfortable here
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uh certain times that yeah you could say i get the creeps you can feel a sadness or you can walk
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in and you hear especially upstairs footsteps you know you hear them someone is right behind you you can stop
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the footsteps stop once you have the encounter and you feel the sensation you will know
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that their intention is not to harm you they are truly here to protect you they protect this home
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this is their station this is their life this is where they live next a series of brutal rape stretches
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across 400 miles and a dna match links them to the same suspect [Music] sacramento california
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[Music] i remember waking up with a flashlight shining in my face and i was looking down the barrel of a
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gun and he said uh don't move don't make a sound or i will kill you give me your hands and
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within a moment's notice my life was all of a sudden in the control of somebody else just do
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as i tell you this rape victim whose identity we are not revealing at her request is one of more than 50
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women believed to have been assaulted by a serial rapist who terrorized the sacramento area
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during the 1970s the mysterious attacker known as the east area rapist has never been identified now advances
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in law enforcement technology have linked him to a series of murders that happened a decade
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earlier authorities need your help to track down this very cunning and very dangerous criminal
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the east area rapist displayed some unusual habits including lingering in the victims homes
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for hours i know that at some point he was out in the living room smoking and the police felt that he maybe had
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gotten into my refrigerator i think he was in the house anywhere from two and a half to three hours
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[Applause] i lay there for what seemed like a long period of time with no noise and then all of a sudden
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i couldn't see i couldn't move and i couldn't yell and i remember wondering is this
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it is this the way i'm gonna die after sexually assaulting his victims the rapist would quietly
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sneak away can you tell me maybe a little what he looked like maybe how tall he was the east area
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rapist very definitely did a psychological rape along with the physical rape in the manner in which he would threaten
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the victims the length of time that he stayed in the home his crime was different and unique
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the first 15 attacks occurred in houses were only women and children were at home but then the rapist began
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targeting homes in which a man was also present when the rapist would come in he would at gunpoint order the female
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to tie up the the male in the house and then he would remove the female to the other part of the house
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where he would also tie her up and then he would put the dishes on the husband if i hear one place
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i'll while he was in the other room occupied with the sexual assault he could hear
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whether or not the male was trying to get free yeah there was so much fear in the
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community so we were holding town hall meetings we understand your concern they were incensed to think that a man
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could have been in the home when these rapes occurred and not have done anything about it
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i think that he liked the excitement of the game i think it was as much a game with the investigators as it was before
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what he was doing to the victims the rapist sadistic game sometimes extended beyond the attack itself hello
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several victims reported getting disturbing phone calls from the rapist years later who is this
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i felt by what he said to me that he had been still watching me and stalking me i felt
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absolutely terrified i think the phone calls were just his way of saying you're still my hostage even though i'm
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not in your house psychologically you're still my hostage police believe that this recording made
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by one of the victims is the actual voice of the rapist by the late 1970s the east area rapist
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had apparently moved 50 miles to contra costa county five more assaults were reported there
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then the attacks abruptly stopped everybody speculated on where this guy might have gone or why he went
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why he might have stopped and there was nowhere to go with it we had no real physical description
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the trail grew cold but over the years criminalist paul holmes continued to work the case
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he ran dna profiles and semen recovered from the five rapes in his county and then he tried to track down the
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rapist holes began contacting agencies across the state 400 miles south in orange county
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forensic scientist mary hong had used dna to link six rape murders in her county to a
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single killer in 2001 mary got a call from paul holmes let me grab that file independently he was thinking that
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this guy has to be committing these crimes somewhere else so he actually was calling these agencies and
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finding out if they had any cases that fit his profile okay i've got d3 1516. i
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had him read me the profile that he had on this case okay and i compared that to the profile
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that i had in our cases and they matched all the way across wow looks like we've got a match at that
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point we knew that we had just connected the series of sexual assaults in northern california
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with a series of homicides down in southern california in southern california during the 1980s
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the east area rapist began murdering his rape victims and their partners he was the suspect in
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10 such killings i don't know of anyone like him he's a very unique offender 50 rapes that we're aware of
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10 murders that we're aware of we suspect that he's probably responsible for more rapes and murders
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and crimes outside of what we've identified police think a clue to the attacker's
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identity might be found in his habit of stacking plates on the victim's partner during the
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assault it's a signature aspect of our offender is it possible that someone abused him
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and treated him the same way terrorizing him perhaps as a boy when he grew up as is possible
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somebody out there has to know something about this person and if the information could come forward will
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it ever bring closure to the victims only that they would feel safe that he is not
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out there to attack again i don't want to end my career without having solved
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this if it's not solved by the time i retire i'll think about it till the day i die
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update there are new developments in this case here's one of our staff with details a suspect in the case of
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the east area rapist now popularly known as the golden state killer was arrested more than 40 years
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after the initial crimes joseph james d'angelo admitted to committing more than a dozen
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murders he pleaded guilty to 26 charges and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of
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parole next is planet earth on a collision course with a deadly asteroid imagine the entire country devastated in
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less than a minute a large city wiped off the map in a matter of seconds a nuclear
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nightmare no a natural disaster unlike anything in human history and it will come from outer space
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july 16 1994 a frightening preview the most powerful chain of explosions ever witnessed by scientists they began
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when huge fragments of a giant comet called shoemaker levy slammed into the planet
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jupiter well out of this series of fragments there were actually 15 that survived
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that we saw hit the planet and of those about four or five were the big ones when each of those largest fragments hit
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jupiter had had about the same energy as if you had taken all of the nuclear bombs in the world
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dr jean shoemaker is co-discoverer of the shoemaker levy common put them all in one big pile and set
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them off all at once that's about 10 000 million tons of energy [Music] one of the explosions created a cloud of
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debris as large as the earth if it happened there can it happen here large collisions like shoemaker
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levy occur only once every hundred million years but we're not entirely safe
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there are thousands of asteroids and comets streaking through our solar system is it possible that one could collide
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with our planet well in fact it's already happened and more than once 40 miles east of flagstaff arizona is
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meteor crater long before the dawn of civilization a massive asteroid slammed into the
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desert floor scientists estimate its velocity at more than 40 000 miles per hour
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meteor crater is the first recognized impact crater on the earth it's 4 000 feet across about 600 feet
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deep it was formed by an iron asteroid about 50 yards in diameter and it was formed very close to 50 000
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years ago but if you'd been there you wouldn't want to bend too close if
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you had been standing where flagstaff is today 40 miles away you would have probably been knocked
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over by the shock wave buildings would have been collapsed large meteors striking the earth aren't
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just ancient history in 1908 a fireball raced through the sky over siberia it exploded above the
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remote area of tanguska spraying debris with the force of a thousand atomic bombs to get a good idea of a
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devastating effect of this impact event a city that i know very well houston has
00:28:14
surrounding it a highway a beltway highway 610 loop everything inside the 610 loop
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would have been flattened and charred all the buildings all the infrastructure nothing would
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have been standing inside that area anyone who lived there would have been dead such devastation did occur on a
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worldwide scale at least once in the history of our planet it was 65 million years ago during the age of the
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dinosaur a giant meteor five miles across plowed into mexico's yucatan peninsula
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where the small town of chiksaloop now stands the surface expression would not lead
00:28:59
you to believe that there is an impact crater there you have a nice flat yucatan peninsula
00:29:04
with really no topographic signs that a crater 180 to 200 miles across exist below
00:29:14
so what would it be like to witness such a cataclysmic event well immediately before the impact we
00:29:22
think you would see a comet keep in mind that this object is traveling at about 140
00:29:29
000 miles per hour you don't have a lot of time between the time it goes into the atmosphere and the
00:29:37
time that actually strikes the earth lasts much less than a second obviously the impact at chixolube was heard and
00:29:44
felt in every corner of the earth the ground surged upward tons of rock and dust
00:29:51
formed a massive curtain hundreds of miles across and hundreds of miles high as this dust started to make its
00:30:00
way into the atmosphere it would block the sunlight completely it would be as dark as night
00:30:06
as some of this material started to re-enter the atmosphere however things would begin to light up not by
00:30:12
the illumination of the sun but by the illumination of countless meteorites shooting stars streaking
00:30:17
through the upper atmosphere these balls of fire ignited a raging inferno that spread across the entire western
00:30:26
hemisphere the smoke joined with the impact debris and covered the earth with a suffocating cloud for at least a
00:30:35
year there was no sunlight triggering a new ice age roughly 75 percent of earth's plant
00:30:43
and animal life died the most well-known victim was the dinosaur the consensus is today that dinosaurs were doing
00:30:53
very nicely up until this event and immediately after this event they were gone and they never came back according to
00:31:04
nasa more than 5 000 asteroids can be classified as near earth of those nearly 1 000
00:31:12
are considered potentially dangerous for the planet in 2004 scientists discovered a new
00:31:19
asteroid named apophis a chunk of interplanetary rock between 700 and 1000 feet across although it's too soon to know
00:31:30
for sure there's a small chance this near-earth object will eventually collide with our planet the
00:31:36
date april 13th 2036. the hazard of impact in terms of loss of life on the earth
00:31:46
you don't take out just a hundred thousand lives lost you could wipe out half or more of the
00:31:53
entire human population if an event similar to the one that formed chickula happened tomorrow then there would be no
00:32:01
civilization there is no doubt about that it would be widespread devastation death
00:32:09
like we have never even imagined and there's no protection for it it's just one of those things that
00:32:17
we have to live with fortunately however events like chichalub are extremely rare
00:32:28
next the amazing encounter of identical strangers who may be long-lost relatives and later
00:32:36
a horrific accident leads to a rescue by a mysterious good samaritan in december of 1943 ken palmer was the
00:32:55
second lieutenant in the army air court he was traveling from texas to wisconsin during a change of trains
00:33:03
he had the most remarkable encounter of his life ken had the feeling that someone was
00:33:10
staring at him and then he saw why he was being watched by his exact double i was amazed and both of us
00:33:22
saw it and both of us reacted so much to it both of us sat down our bags and stared
00:33:30
and until i got a hold of myself and extended my hand he didn't move he was just frozen looking
00:33:40
at himself in a different uniform i'm ken palmer my name is palmer my first thought of
00:33:52
course was that he's closely related we began to exchange our father's names
00:33:59
our grandfather's names where we lived things of this nature and that didn't
00:34:05
get it my grandfather's from brownsville the two men couldn't find a single relative
00:34:10
in common but when ken mentioned an old family legend he was stunned by the stranger's
00:34:16
response my family often talks of this uh lost treasure in india two palmer brothers were at uh party in
00:34:25
the court of st james they uh they cut the uh the queue off a court official yeah that's right they
00:34:30
had to flee england i mean that's the story left the did he know about it he added details that i checked out with
00:34:37
dad later and they were accurate things that i didn't know so it was perfectly obvious that we were
00:34:44
related and yet we couldn't understand how we could be you write down your name and address
00:34:52
when i get back home i'm going to contact you i took his name and address stuffed it in my
00:34:58
pocket i'll write it goodbye goodbye i picked up my luggage and scooted off from my train
00:35:08
if i'd had the sense that god gave geese i would have stopped right then and
00:35:16
uh we would have spent some time together [Applause] when i got on the train and settled i
00:35:24
reached in my pocket to get that slip of paper it wasn't there it all fell apart at
00:35:31
that moment i i was devastated ken never saw his double again and all attempts to find him
00:35:39
have been unsuccessful these pictures of ken palmer were taken in the 1940s the man he met looked virtually
00:35:51
identical like ken his last name was palmer his first name may have been robert or james
00:36:00
[Music] i would like very much to find him and or part of his family how many times are
00:36:08
you going to walk across the station and see that double out of all the people in the united
00:36:16
states we walk into one another and we set down our bags and stare at one another
00:36:23
magical moment ken believes that his double lived in the eastern united states possibly new jersey at the time the man
00:36:33
was either a technical or staff sergeant in the army air corps if you have any information
00:36:40
that could help clear up this case please log on to our website at unsolved.com [Music]
00:36:50
ocala florida 48 year old wilma drew was just a mile from home she had driven up this hill hundreds of
00:37:00
times but a few miles away a car had entered the highway going the wrong direction it was headed
00:37:08
straight for wilma at 55 miles an hour [Applause] david vititope was driving right behind
00:37:16
wilma as we were approaching the crest i saw headlights approaching us and the minute the lights came into view
00:37:24
i immediately tried to get over in the right hand lane to avoid the collision [Applause]
00:37:33
automatically just in my gut knew that somebody was going to be dead david stopped the help the driver and
00:37:42
passenger in the wrong way car seemed to be moving but wilma was not she was pinned in her car the steering
00:37:50
column wedged up against her chest the driver's window was open but the other windows and all the doors
00:37:57
were jammed go out to my truck i'll get a tour i decided to run back the truck to grab a
00:38:03
tire tool try to pry the door open or whatever i could do to try to get into a sister
00:38:08
possibly better another good samaritan matthew white also stopped to help the two men didn't know it
00:38:17
but wilma's neck had been broken cutting off her air passage she was suffocating
00:38:23
all the doors are jammed her driver's side window was busted out and we couldn't break the windows out so
00:38:29
we were trying to get someone who has something that could break the window david tried flagging down help a tanker
00:38:38
truck stopped remarkably the driver seemed to know exactly what to do and how to do it
00:38:53
after i busted the window he climbed in into the back seat and reached over and lifted and held
00:39:00
wilma's head up [Music] wilma took a breath let's get this thing off her give her some room
00:39:11
matthew and david struggled to lift the steering column off wilma's chest the trucker kept her neck motionless
00:39:19
the ambulance arrived 10 minutes later okay sir i need you to let go and come out of the car okay i'm not letting go
00:39:27
until you put a brace around her neck get out of the car the paramedic was just insistent
00:39:31
that he let go of her head and got out of the car and the the man would not let go
00:39:36
overhead until um i held it while he got out and the paramedic got in you got her yeah gently wilma
00:39:45
was stabilized but during the confusion no one saw the truck driver leave no one had a chance to get more than a
00:39:52
glimpse of what he looked like wilma's husband came upon the crash scene a short time later when i saw the
00:40:01
vehicle in my mind nobody could have lived through it i remember a lady asking me if that was
00:40:08
my car and i said yes and my wife's dead and she says no she isn't they just you
00:40:13
know left here where they're in the helicopter it took 11 operations and almost a year
00:40:20
to begin to repair the damage wilma's right leg had been nearly torn in half her left ankle was shattered
00:40:27
her brain stem was so damaged that it caused permanent double vision and one of the
00:40:33
vertebra in wilma's neck was completely severed the neural surgeon told us he's never
00:40:40
seen anybody survive that injury and he can't understand why she's still
00:40:44
alive and that was kind of eerie i don't know why it happened to me but i know that there is a purpose for it
00:40:55
and it's even peculiar that i've never experienced any anger i'm just very thankful to be alive she
00:41:04
breathing yeah the neurosurgeon said he did it exactly right had he done it any different it wouldn't
00:41:11
work he gave the doctor something to work with and he just saved her life and gave her back
00:41:19
to us thank you just really seems so insignificant as far as the way we feel that someone
00:41:28
would take the time to get involved and to do all he did for me and then just disappear
00:41:38
[Music] update after seeing himself portrayed on unsolved mysteries the truck driver
00:41:48
contacted our phone center we put him in touch with wilma he explained that he used to be an emt
00:41:56
and that's why he just knew what to do when he came upon the scene three years after her accident wilma was
00:42:03
finally able to thank the man who had saved her life he was thrilled to hear that she had survived the accident
00:42:19
[Music] [Music] [Music] you