00:00:11
[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE:
Alexandria, Virginia, 2016, a young female
lifeguard raped at work.
00:00:23
That was the most
severe sexual offense crime that I'd come across
in my career at that time.
00:00:29
I think what was
the most frightening was how well planned out
it was, how calm he was.
00:00:35
The level of calm that
he exhibited really-- it just exuded that he knew that
he wasn't going to get caught.
00:00:44
NANCY GRACE: Police soon
learn of a similar attack in nearby Fairfax
County, Virginia,
00:00:49
just two years earlier. As far as the sexual acts and
the statements that were made,
00:00:56
they were almost identical to
our offense down to the order of events and the exact words
that were said to the victim.
00:01:04
There's obviously a
great deal of worry that the person is
going to strike again.
00:01:09
NANCY GRACE: But
police hit a dead end. There was a lot of
uncertainty caused by it because
00:01:15
of the lack of information
because the police didn't have any information to provide.
00:01:20
They weren't withholding it. There just wasn't any
information to provide. It was the detective
team that first
00:01:25
proposed perhaps using
genetic genealogy to look into the matter. NANCY GRACE: This is the story
of two brutal rapes, a sex
00:01:32
predator with a
devious plan and how "Bloodline Detectives" catch
him before he can attack again.
00:01:40
I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:10
September 3, 2016,
Alexandria, Virginia, police respond to an emergency
call about a young woman
00:02:18
lifeguard sex assaulted. The incident
occurred in essentially a pool house for a condominium
and townhouse neighborhood.
00:02:28
I get there. It's the end of summer
or the beginning of fall. The pool is empty.
00:02:33
It's overcast, so there was no
one swimming that day or no one was going to be
swimming that day.
00:02:38
Standard pool house to the left
is the women's changing room. To the right is the
men's changing room.
00:02:43
Since the victim is
a woman, I called out into the women's changing
room, and I heard
00:02:48
her calling from the pool. So I went through the
female changing room and into the pool, and
that's when I encountered
00:02:54
her right outside the
women's changing room right into the pool area. She get-- she was able to
get a jacket or something
00:03:02
across her shoulders, but
other than that she was essentially naked
with their hands
00:03:07
bound behind her back crying. Her makeup was very, very,
like, smeared not in shock
00:03:12
but very, very panicked. I almost thought that she
wasn't too comfortable with me
00:03:16
when I was on scene because
of what just happened to her. So she kind of-- she kind of step back
when I got there.
00:03:23
The most reassuring way
possible said police. I'm here to help. What happened? Are you OK?
00:03:29
Are you OK? The first-- first thing. Are you hurt and then
realizing that her hands
00:03:35
need to be cut free. So I went to look for her hand. Soon as I was able to get
them from out of the jacket,
00:03:41
I found that her-- the zip ties that she
was tied with were so tight her hands
were blue, and she was
00:03:48
definitely losing circulation. The zip ties looked like they
had been cutting into her skin.
00:03:52
So as soon as I could, I took
my pocket knife out and very, very carefully considering how
tight those zip ties worked
00:03:59
my pocket knife in
between and cut her free, in the process
cutting my own thumb
00:04:03
while I was cutting her free. NANCY GRACE: Officer
Sanderson tries to figure out who the
victim is and get a sense
00:04:12
of where the crime happened. The victim was a lifeguard. She was here just
for the summer.
00:04:19
She was from an Eastern
European nation. We're right outside
of Washington DC, so it's a heavily
populated area.
00:04:26
In the summer, there's
a lot of pools, and we have a lot of people
coming from outside of the US
00:04:33
to come here and
serve as lifeguards. So she was very young. She was only here temporarily,
and indeed this was
00:04:39
relatively late in the summer. She was probably
finishing up her time here unfortunately when this
terrible incident occurred.
00:04:46
The swimming pools in a
kind of small neighborhood of townhouses and condos. The neighborhood
itself sits on a hill,
00:04:53
and the pool is near
the top of the hill. It's surrounded by a fence
and by a lot of trees,
00:04:59
so there's not a lot of
visibility into the pool area. The pool's only used by
residents of that neighborhood,
00:05:07
and, again, it's a pretty
small neighborhood. It's a small pool. She was the only lifeguard
working there at the time.
00:05:13
There's one lifeguard
at the pool. And so there are,
you know, often days where no one would
come to that pool at all,
00:05:21
and the lifeguard would
just be there by themselves. And this was one of
those days, especially
00:05:25
because of the weather, so she
was there by herself all day. BRYAN PORTER: Pool
itself wasn't very large.
00:05:33
You've got a pool. You've got a pool deck
with some chairs on it, and there's a small office.
00:05:39
And, of course, it's got a
gate and a fence around it, but it's not secure in any way.
00:05:43
NANCY GRACE: The victim,
understandably shaken, Officer Sanderson
does his best to piece
00:05:48
together what happened. BRADY SANDERSON: I was looking
for stuff around the area,
00:05:53
and she actually did make
it into the restroom. I knocked on the
door, and I asked
00:05:57
her point blank were you raped. And she answers back yes. I was like I need you to
stop, get off the toilet,
00:06:04
do not flush. And she said OK. And she actually was very,
very responsive in this
00:06:09
and came out of the stall. And I was able to preserve
whatever was in the toilet
00:06:15
and then also was able
to start talking to her, asking her exactly
where everything
00:06:21
happened so I can start
securing that crime scene. She was able to tell me location
where exactly it happened,
00:06:28
and it happened in we call
it the pump room, the pumps for the swimming pool. It's about the size of a
closet, and that's where she
00:06:36
told me the offense took place. NANCY GRACE: Medics
arrive to take the survivor to the hospital--
00:06:42
JESSICA BEST SMITH:
Both to check on her and then ultimately to
take her to the hospital
00:06:46
for a sexual assault exam. The sexual assault exam
has a number of components. So there's an
external examination
00:06:54
where the nurses will
document injuries to the body. So they looked at, for
example, her wrists
00:06:59
had very deep abrasions
in them from the zip ties. There were abrasions
on her back from where
00:07:05
the zip ties head
dug into her back while she was
placed on her back. Everywhere externally to see
signs of bruising or abrasions
00:07:13
that were caused by the assault. They also do an internal
exam for a number of reasons
00:07:19
to look for injuries. In a rape case, it's
actually relatively rare to have internal injuries,
but the victim in this case
00:07:27
did have a rather
significant internal injury. The nurses also use the
internal and external exam
00:07:33
to collect evidence to look
for DNA or anything else that might have been left behind.
00:07:40
So here they took
a number of samples both internally and
externally to look for the DNA of the perpetrator.
00:07:48
What occurs during the SANE
exam is dependent upon what the victim reports occurred.
00:07:52
So because the victim here had
reported that he had placed his mouth on her breast
during the attack,
00:07:58
they did swab her breast area
for saliva, any DNA that would have been left behind there.
00:08:04
She had also reported that
during the course of the rape that he had ejaculated and
that he had not used a condom,
00:08:11
so the nurses observed what
appeared to be semen inside of her and they took swabs
both internally and externally
00:08:21
to look for DNA that might
be contained in there. NANCY GRACE: Some police
departments give a traumatized
00:08:27
victim time before a detailed
interview takes place, time for the victim to try
to gather her thoughts
00:08:35
after such a brutal experience. NEAL AUGENSTEIN: It was a gray
afternoon, Labor Day weekend.
00:08:43
There was nobody
else at the pool. And later that afternoon,
someone came up to her
00:08:49
and asked if he'd left
his flip-flops there. RYAN CLINCH: So the victim
kind of helped him look around.
00:08:55
Generally at the pool, they have
some sort of lost and found, and so she had taken him to
the area at the clubhouse,
00:09:03
which was the pump room. Kind of looked around, no
flip-flops, and he left. Short time later,
gentleman returned, kind
00:09:12
of asking the same questions. Look-- you know, looking
for flip-flop shoes. And she agreed to
help him look again.
00:09:19
JESSICA BEST SMITH:
She did notice that this time when
she was walking around that he didn't seem to
be looking like he was before.
00:09:27
He was just kind of
following around behind her. RYAN CLINCH: And at
this time, that's
00:09:31
when they go over to the
clubhouse, the pump room, and checks again, and
then when she turns around
00:09:37
he produces a firearm. NEAL AUGENSTEIN: Told
her that he would shoot her if she screamed.
00:09:43
JESSICA BEST SMITH: He put
on some blue latex gloves. And tied her wrist
together with zip ties.
00:09:53
RYAN CLINCH: And at
one point he sticks a piece of tissue in her mouth. JESSICA BEST SMITH:
He repeatedly told
00:10:02
her that he might shoot her. He did tell her that
he was going to rape her or kill her or both.
00:10:09
He also strangled her,
put his hand on her neck. And then at that point
he starts to lift her shirt
00:10:17
licks her breasts,
starts attempting to try and have sex with her. That time he was not
erect at the time.
00:10:26
So he stuck his
fingers in her vagina that must have aroused him. You know, at this point
he's on top of her.
00:10:35
His penis enters her vagina. You know, she laid there. She recalls his face against
hers and the heavy breathing.
00:10:45
He got off of her, patted
her on the shoulder, and left. So she waited a little while
to make sure that he was gone
00:10:55
and then got up. BRADY SANDERSON: There
was no cell phone really on scene or anything like that.
00:11:00
The only phone was a-- like, a 1980s corded phone
that was on a window seal that
00:11:07
was just about the
right height where her hands would have been when
they were tied behind her back.
00:11:12
And she dialed the
phone number from memory without looking at the keyboard
and called her boyfriend
00:11:19
and also the pool manager. NANCY GRACE: Police know this
is no random act of violence.
00:11:25
It's well thought out. As we see next on
"Bloodline Detectives," investigators think a serial
rapist is on the loose.
00:11:33
[LOGO NOISE] [MUSIC PLAYING] September 2016,
Alexandria detectives investigating the brutal
rape of a female lifeguard.
00:11:50
They work the crime
scene for strong clues but find almost none. JESSICA BEST SMITH:
There was very little
00:11:58
evidence at all at the scene. So the investigators there
just basically documented what
00:12:04
the pool looked like, what
the pump room looked like, collected her clothing,
collected the zip
00:12:09
ties that had been cut off. So the detectives really
started with the most basic
00:12:16
aspect of the
investigation, which was just looking for witnesses. No one had seen anything out
of the ordinary that day,
00:12:23
so they were very
much at a dead end at the very beginning
of the investigation.
00:12:29
NANCY GRACE: Police
try their best to create a sketch
of the perpetrator with the victim's help.
00:12:35
JESSICA BEST SMITH: The victim
set down with a sketch artist early on. It had been the hope of
the police department
00:12:41
that as a result
of that interview that they'd be able
to release the sketch and ask the public for
help in finding the person.
00:12:49
But after sitting with a sketch
artist for quite a long period of time, the victim didn't
feel like the sketch that
00:12:57
was produced looked
like the perpetrator, and we weren't
confident that it would
00:13:02
get any leads based upon that. So they weren't able
to release that. NANCY GRACE: Detectives
learned of a similar sex attack
00:13:10
on a lifeguard,
that one two years earlier in Fairfax, Virginia. BRYAN PORTER: It's
rare for us to have
00:13:18
this kind of violent sexual
assault in this area-- I can't say it never happens--
00:13:22
and then to find that within
just a couple of years a similar offense involving
a lifeguard at a secluded
00:13:27
pool just a couple of miles
away from the location of our offense that occurred.
00:13:31
NANCY GRACE: Investigators
now take a hard look at the Fairfax sex attack. BRADY SANDERSON: Just like the
incident that happened in ours,
00:13:40
the weather wasn't so great. A male suspect came to the
pool with a similar type ruse.
00:13:48
NEAL AUGENSTEIN: Nobody
else was at the pool. A man came up and asked about
how he could get a pool pass.
00:13:55
And the lifeguard told
him what he needed to do. JESSICA BEST SMITH: He was
wearing sunglasses, which
00:14:01
is striker as strange given
that it was kind of a rainy, cloudy day. In retrospect obviously,
it appears that he was
00:14:10
trying to conceal his identity. NEAL AUGENSTEIN: The man
left after that conversation,
00:14:14
but he came back a
couple of hours later and said that he thought he'd
left his sunglasses behind
00:14:21
and asked the lifeguard if
she would do him a favor and go check for them. He pulled out a gun and
said this is a robbery.
00:14:32
The lifeguard said she
didn't have any money. The man pushed
her to the ground, he tied plastic wrist
ties around her wrists,
00:14:40
and he puts something
over her mouth. RYAN CLINCH: And proceeded
to try and rape her.
00:14:46
JESSICA BEST SMITH: The one
big difference between the two offenses was that in Fairfax,
the victim felt a sharp pain
00:14:54
in her bottom right
before feeling very woozy and passing out. So in the Fairfax offense,
the victim was drugged.
00:15:02
The last thing she
remembered before passing out was that he did, in fact,
rape her, and she passed out
00:15:10
woke up feeling very
groggy sometime later. Was able to make her way
out of the pool house
00:15:16
and to a nearby home where she
asked some of the neighbors to call for help. NANCY GRACE: The Fairfax victim
gives police exactly what
00:15:26
they're hoping for,
a crucial piece of evidence linking both
attacks to the same suspect.
00:15:34
JESSICA BEST SMITH: The
Fairfax victim was able once the officers
arrived to provide
00:15:40
a description of a
white man in his 30s with a little bit of a beard. He was wearing a ball cap
at the time and a t-shirt.
00:15:52
BRYAN PORTER: The
suspect was described in a similar manner led us
to pretty quickly assume
00:15:58
that the two must be linked. There were no sperm
identified or DNA identified from the swabs from her body.
00:16:05
However, there was DNA,
a very small amount of DNA found in her underwear. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
scientifically
00:16:14
link both sex attacks with
DNA found on both victims. BRYAN PORTER: The DNA from
both scenes was compared.
00:16:23
That link took a
little bit longer. It was a matter of
a couple of months before we had definitive proof
that the two were linked.
00:16:29
JESSICA BEST SMITH: The
victim in the Fairfax case was likewise a seasonal
lifeguard here on a work visa,
00:16:37
and this was near the
end of the season. I believe the Fairfax
offense was in August.
00:16:42
It was striking to
the investigators that in both cases,
he selected victims with obvious foreign
accents working in jobs that
00:16:51
are in our area frequently
worked by students who are here on work visas from overseas
and that these offenses were
00:17:00
committed at or near
the end of summer when these students
would be going back to their home countries.
00:17:06
So it struck us that he was
perhaps selecting these victims because quite simply
that they wouldn't
00:17:12
be around to
prosecute the offenses once they went back home. NANCY GRACE: Now
there seem to be
00:17:18
red flags about a serial
rapist everywhere. Police in Alexandria combine
old fashioned detective work
00:17:25
with the very newest
forensic science. BRYAN PORTER: The first
step that was tried
00:17:31
was a phenotype analysis. Basically what that allows is
to use the DNA to produce what
00:17:37
amounts really to a
computer-generated composite sketch and an effort to produce
some likeness of the person,
00:17:43
perhaps hopefully
a better likeness than the composite
sketch that was originally used in the matter.
00:17:48
So we were able to obtain
a computer-generated composite sketch based
on the DNA profile.
00:17:55
The police did release
that to the media, and the hope, of course, is that
it's going to spur tips, leads.
00:18:02
And some tips did come in. My recollection is that
we did receive some tips, but most of them are
very, very, very soft,
00:18:08
things like I saw a guy that
looked like that on the bus the other day, nothing that
could really be followed up,
00:18:14
nothing concrete, and nothing
that led to the identification of a suspect. NEAL AUGENSTEIN: The idea
of a lifeguard being raped
00:18:22
while at her job
at a deserted pool was shocking to
anybody who heard that. It was a shocking
story to report on.
00:18:33
I think that every
person who's ever worked a job where they're
by themselves, you know,
00:18:40
the thought had
crossed their mind at least at some point that
just being alone like that
00:18:47
could put you at risk. There was a lot of
fear in the community, especially in that neighborhood.
00:18:54
It was a very quiet
neighborhood, a very small neighborhood, and there
were a lot of questions
00:19:01
from the people
in the media area about what the
investigation was, why it hadn't yielded a
suspect, and why there
00:19:08
wasn't any more information. There was a lot of uncertainty
caused by it because
00:19:14
of the lack of information,
because the police didn't have any information to provide.
00:19:18
They weren't withholding it. There just wasn't any
information to provide. BRYAN PORTER: There's
obviously a great deal of worry
00:19:24
that the person is
going to strike again. I think there is unfortunately
kind of like when are we going
00:19:29
to be able to
identify this person, so there was a great
deal of pressure when trying to find
the perpetrator.
00:19:35
But I would point out I don't
think the community pressure was as tough as the
pressure on the detectives
00:19:40
that they bring on themselves. The detectives
that work this case really take cases
like this to heart,
00:19:45
and they refused to give up. And obviously it was
the detective team that first proposed perhaps
using genetic genealogy
00:19:51
to look into the matter. NANCY GRACE: The sex assaults
are almost identical. So is the description of the
attacker from both victims.
00:20:00
And there's a DNA match. But police are still stumped. Can the "Bloodline Detectives"
stop a serial rapist before he
00:20:09
strikes again, and he will. That's. Next [LOGO NOISE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Alexandria, Virginia detectives
hunting a serial sex predator
00:20:27
who has already raped two young
female lifeguards in August 2014 and September 2016.
00:20:36
Investigators now turn
to a forensic science proving to be successful in
other high-profile cases.
00:20:44
BRYAN PORTER: The
detectives approached my office with the idea of
enlisting Parabon to assist.
00:20:50
We had some
conversation about that. I'll be honest. At the very beginning of
this, I wasn't convinced
00:20:55
that it would be useful. I felt like it was
a shot in the dark, and it was something that
was being tried because we
00:21:00
had nothing else to try. But this was several years ago,
and while the technique had
00:21:04
been used before and
Parabon had been used in criminal
investigations before, I wasn't particularly
well versed in the methods
00:21:11
and how it works. And this was about the time that
the Golden State Killer case was really groundbreaking
news, and the detectives
00:21:19
who were involved who
really felt that this had a great chance of
working used that case,
00:21:23
the Golden State case, as
an example of the power of genetic genealogy. And it was the
combined force of, hey,
00:21:30
we really have reached a dead
end and the investigation coupled with trying to find this
offender before he struck again
00:21:38
and also the fact that
the technique had worked in other jurisdictions that
led us to believe that we
00:21:43
needed to give it a shot. We laid out some
parameters about the need for obtaining search warrants
wherever possible, and then
00:21:49
the detectives took it
and proceeded forward and try to use the
genetic genealogy
00:21:53
technique to find and
identify a potential offender. NANCY GRACE: Genetic
genealogy's a groundbreaking
00:22:01
crime-solving tool,
detectives in Alexandria anxious to understand
just how it works.
00:22:09
BRYAN PORTER: Human beings are
very interested in genealogy. They take their own DNA
sample, they turn it
00:22:15
in to a private company,
which maintains a database, and the database can
comprise literally
00:22:20
millions of DNA profiles. Then you take a known
sample from an offense, you've got a DNA
profile that you've not
00:22:27
been able to identify,
and you basically use the millions of DNA
profiles that have been uploaded
00:22:34
to the internet, uploaded
to this database, that's kept in the cloud. And you try to use it to
compare and then establish
00:22:41
some potential
familial relationships between the offender's
DNA and people that are actually have
their profiles in the cloud
00:22:49
on the database. You're not-- in
other words, you're not necessarily actually looking
for, quote unquote, a match.
00:22:55
Instead what you're looking for
is a substantially close DNA profiles, the kind of narrowed
down the potential family
00:23:04
connections for the offender and
through the family connections if you can get someone with
a close enough DNA profile
00:23:09
to the offender's
profile, you can then use maybe normal
detective techniques to try to narrow down the
field to potential offenders.
00:23:17
Using a mix of the
ancestry information and then social media information,
right, because it says,
00:23:24
oh, it's somebody in
his family and then you figure out how many
people in this family
00:23:27
live in this area,
how many of them are of an age where they could
do this, how many of them
00:23:31
are male. And so then they
came down to it seems like it's this person, right. BRYAN PORTER: I do remember
very clearly the day
00:23:40
when the detectives told me that
they thought they had narrowed it down to a potential
offender and they informed me
00:23:47
that he not only lived
in Arlington County but that he worked at
our local hospital.
00:23:52
I had a real immediate
visceral reaction, and I was convinced
of the capabilities
00:23:58
of genetic genealogy. I mean, to use the technique
to find somebody who matched the description, was
in the right age group,
00:24:05
lived a couple of
miles away, and worked in the city was really amazing. And at that point we were pretty
confident we had the right guy,
00:24:11
but we still had a
lot of work to do. NANCY GRACE:
Alexandria detectives now have a new weapon,
familial genealogy.
00:24:19
They also think they've got
a suspect, Jessie Bjerke. Can they climb that
family tree fast enough
00:24:28
to stop another
sex assault. That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [LOGO NOISE]
00:24:39
[MUSIC PLAYING] Alexandria police believe
they've identified a serial rapist on the loose
who's already assaulted
00:24:48
two young female lifeguards. His name, Jesse Bjerke. Now they've gotta find him.
00:24:56
NEAL AUGENSTEIN:
Alexandria police began to think about Jessie
Bjerke as a possible suspect,
00:25:04
and they staked him out. RACHEL WEINER: They
went to his apartment. They looked through his trash.
00:25:10
They tried to get a DNA
match from his trash but were unsuccessful. They followed him and his wife
to a restaurant in Old Town
00:25:17
Alexandria, and then after,
they left they picked up the straws from their table.
00:25:23
And they took those,
and that's how they were able to get his DNA. JESSICA BEST SMITH: The items
from the trash and the straws
00:25:31
were all submitted to the lab
to be compared with the STR profile that had been
developed from the DNA
00:25:39
that had been found
in the sexual assault kit from the victim. They were determined to
be first and foremost all
00:25:46
from the same person
and then also a match. RACHEL WEINER: They looked
at his cell phone records,
00:25:52
saw that his cell phone
had been turned off during the time of this attack,
saw that he had left work early
00:25:58
saying he was sick
the day of the attack, and then they got
a search warrant. RYAN CLINCH: We took the
case before the grand jury,
00:26:07
and the grand jury
issued warrants. We set up our surveillance
again back at the residence.
00:26:13
When he left, he drove into
the city of Alexandria here. Traffic stop was initiated,
and he was placed under arrest.
00:26:24
JESSICA BEST SMITH:
He appeared oddly unsurprised and calm when
he was informed of what
00:26:32
he was being arrested for. After he was placed
in the police cruiser, he was taken back to
the police station
00:26:40
and interviewed by the police. RYAN CLINCH: He was cooperative. Yeah, I think he was a
little afraid, having
00:26:47
not been in this situation. He had no criminal history. We talked for a little while.
00:26:54
He denied raping a lifeguard. Going into an interview
like this with somebody who's committed
these sort of crimes,
00:27:06
it's almost like a chameleon. They're good actors. There were some questions
of why I'm here,
00:27:12
you know, those sort of things,
some nervousness, some things you would expect for
somebody who's never been
00:27:19
arrested before or
have been caught for crimes they've committed. NANCY GRACE: With
Bjerke in custody,
00:27:30
investigators now use
more forensic weapons to prove his guilt. JESSICA BEST SMITH: After he was
arrested, than the detectives
00:27:38
executed a search
warrant to obtain a buccal swab from him so
that, A, a known DNA comparison
00:27:46
could be done. The Department of
Forensic Science was able to calculate
statistics that were related
00:27:52
to the comparison, finding
that it was one in 7.2 billion, which is approximately
the world population.
00:28:01
NANCY GRACE: Jesse Bjerke
now officially charged with two rapes but investigators
still want more evidence to put
00:28:09
him behind bars for good. RYAN CLINCH: We made an arrest. Now we're working
backwards to try and gather
00:28:18
as much evidence as possible
as far back as we can go. We got search warrants
for his residence.
00:28:24
We got search warrant for
his car, for his cell phone, for his work locker, at
Inova Alexandria hospital,
00:28:31
and we were just kind of
looking for anything that could place him at the
scene, any evidence
00:28:37
of how to commit these crimes. For example, his phone, there
was a lot of crime articles
00:28:44
stuff, particular genetic
genealogy sort of stuff that we ended up recovering. JESSICA BEST SMITH:
The second thing
00:28:51
we were able to determine
from his cell phone records was his location at the time.
00:28:58
And we were able to determine
that for the Alexandria offense that he was present, that his
phone was hitting off the tower
00:29:08
right next to the pool just
prior to the first time that the victim reported that
he entered the pool claiming
00:29:16
to have lost his flip-flops. Now the location evidence ended
there, but what was significant
00:29:23
was that the phone
appeared to have been either put
into airplane mode or turned off after that time.
00:29:30
And in looking at his
records, the detectives and investigators looked
back for some period of time
00:29:37
and found very, very
few other instances where his phone went
off and definitely
00:29:43
not during the day like that. So that appeared to us
to be an attempt to-- a conscious attempt to conceal
his location during that time
00:29:54
by turning his phone
off or putting it in an airplane mode for
the exact time period
00:29:59
that the offense occurred. The detectives were
very detailed on what they were looking for to
corroborate the offense.
00:30:06
So, for example,
blue latex gloves, they were also doing a search
warrant for the Fairfax offense
00:30:12
as well in that their
perpetrator and our perpetrator were one in the same even
though the Fairfax defense
00:30:18
hadn't been charged yet. So we were looking for
ketamine, for syringes. RYAN CLINCH: We got Mr. Bjerke's
time and attendance records.
00:30:28
We did see on the
day of the fence that he had left work early. He mentioned something
about feeling ill or not
00:30:37
feeling well. And, you know, that to us
right there, it was like, wow. He wasn't at work.
00:30:47
JESSICA BEST SMITH: We learned
that he had already given notice at his job and at his
apartment that he was leaving
00:30:54
his job and that he would be
moving out of his apartment, breaking his lease,
and he had planned
00:30:59
to become a traveling nurse . And so had we made this arrest
even a month later, not only
00:31:06
would he have been gone, he
would have been in a position to victimize women
all over the country
00:31:12
and continue moving on, making
it even harder to find him or to identify him
as the perpetrator.
00:31:20
NANCY GRACE: Does
the suspect Bjerke know police are on his tail? Is that why he's making
a move to leave Virginia?
00:31:29
That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives." [LOGO NOISE] [MUSIC PLAYING] Alexandria, Virginia,
2019, police
00:31:43
believe they have identified the
perpetrator in the brutal rapes of two young women.
00:31:49
His name, Jesse Bjerke. Now investigators want to
know just who is this guy. RACHEL WEINER: He was married.
00:31:57
He had a child. He had a daughter. He had previously been
married and divorced, and his attorney said for
him that that divorce had
00:32:06
impacted him mentally
in a way that maybe contributed to these crimes. He was also sexually
assaulted himself.
00:32:13
He was sexually abused
as a young child as an eight-year-old,
and that was something
00:32:17
he had never dealt
with in therapy until he committed these crimes. An older man when he
was eight years old
00:32:25
had sexually violated him and
introduced him to pornography. NANCY GRACE: Jesse Bjerke
maintains his innocence,
00:32:35
and his family and
friends stand beside him. RACHEL WEINER:
Everyone in his life
00:32:40
had no understanding that this
was happening or could happen. I think his family, even
with the DNA evidence,
00:32:49
had some belief that there had
been a mistake because that does happen with this
DNA evidence, which
00:32:53
is one argument to be
cautious about the use of it. But he told them it
wasn't me, and they
00:33:00
believed him because, like
I said, he was a nurse. He was a father. He was, by all accounts,
a good husband.
00:33:06
He just had this other side
that he went to great lengths to conceal. NANCY GRACE: Prosecutors decide
to try both cases together,
00:33:17
and a trial date is set. BRYAN PORTER: We
indicted him for-- in Alexandria for rape, use
of a firearm, and abduction.
00:33:26
Later on in the case, he was
charged in Fairfax County, but we agreed to resolve
all of the matters
00:33:33
in our Alexandria case. That can be done
if the defendant himself waives objection.
00:33:38
So generally
speaking, normally we would have to prosecute the
Fairfax offense in Fairfax
00:33:42
and the Alexandria
offense in Alexandria, but if the defendant
waives any objection
00:33:47
to the jurisdiction
of the court, they can be all put
together in one case. JESSICA BEST SMITH: And the
Fairfax case, he was indicted
00:33:55
for similar offenses for rape,
for object sexual penetration, abduction with intent
to defile, and then he
00:34:02
was charged with one
count of use of a firearm in commission of a felony. NANCY GRACE: The evidence
against Jessie Bjerke
00:34:09
is strong, but investigators
still need his victims to return to the US. JESSICA BEST SMITH: If we hadn't
been able to find the victims,
00:34:18
there would have been
nothing that we could do. So the Constitution
guarantees an offender
00:34:24
the right to confront
their accuser, and there are rules of
evidence that prohibit hearsay
00:34:31
from being admitted at trial. So if we hadn't been able
to find these victims, then there would have been
nothing that we could have
00:34:40
done to prosecute the cases. Both cases required
their willingness to come back to the United
States and testify at trial.
00:34:51
NANCY GRACE: Detective
Clinch contacts one victim, urging her to come
home and help the prosecution.
00:34:59
RYAN CLINCH: She was
here in the United States and was a victim of
this horrible crime
00:35:06
and left with
essentially no justice. I had reached out to her
and started talking to her,
00:35:12
introduced myself, and
just let her know that we didn't forget about you. I continue to talk to her
throughout the investigation,
00:35:21
talk to her, you know, at
least once a week if not more. JESSICA BEST SMITH: And
that relationship ultimately
00:35:29
resulted in her agreeing
when we had a trial date set and when we were ultimately
able to start the prosecution,
00:35:37
she agreed to come over. NANCY GRACE: The evidence
against Jesse Bjerke looks overwhelming, and finally
he faces that fact as well
00:35:46
and changes his plea to guilty. JESSICA BEST SMITH: The
defendant ultimately entered
00:35:52
a plea of guilty in Alexandria,
but it was a conditional plea of guilt. And what that meant
was he was admitting guilt
00:36:00
but he was reserving
the right to appeal a motion to suppress that had
been litigated in the case.
00:36:06
The biggest motion the one
that he wanted to appeal dealt with whether the police
needed a search warrant
00:36:12
to develop a DNA
profile from the items that they had taken
from his trash or from the straws
at the restaurant.
00:36:19
RACHEL WEINER: He cried and he
apologized for what he'd done and said he couldn't
really explain it.
00:36:25
He apologized to his family for
lying to them because again up until I think pretty
much the moment
00:36:30
he confessed, his wife
and his mother-in-law were holding out hope that he
had somehow been misidentified,
00:36:38
and I think he had
told them that. NEAL AUGENSTEIN: The
sentencing for Jessie Bjerke
00:36:43
I was in the courtroom at the
time-- one of the few reporters there-- and watched the
victim in the 2016 attack
00:36:54
give her victim
impact statement. She told the judge
that she was a dreamer. Anything was possible.
00:37:05
She told the judge
that after that day, she doesn't believe in anything. In her words, my
life ended that day.
00:37:15
JESSICA BEST SMITH: We argued
for a sentence of 80 years. The defense argued for
sentence of far less time,
00:37:23
essentially asking the court
to consider his daughter and that he wanted to be a
part of his daughter's life
00:37:30
and that a lengthy
sentence essentially wasn't necessary in the case. Our argument, the Commonwealth's
argument after the victim
00:37:38
impact statements, was
focused upon the danger that he presented
to the community.
00:37:44
This is someone who had
committed this offense twice without any obvious remorse with
an extensive amount of planning
00:37:53
both in selecting victims
who were vulnerable, likely to leave the
country, and unable to-- be
00:37:59
unable to participate in
prosecution any further but also in avoiding detection
and wearing the gloves
00:38:06
and picking secluded locations
on days without witnesses. All of these things led us to
believe that he was someone who
00:38:15
would commit this offense
again, and the court ultimately across
all of the cases
00:38:21
sentenced him to a
term of 65 years. NANCY GRACE: Jesse
Bjerke is in prison. Has justice been served?
00:38:31
JESSICA BEST SMITH:
Whether justice was served is a tough question. I think for the community,
justice was served.
00:38:39
I think for the victims, that's
something only they can answer. RACHEL WEINER: In some ways,
especially because the victims
00:38:47
had come from another country, I
think there's a sense that, you know, you let someone
in as a guest,
00:38:54
someone travels all the
way here just for a summer to work in another place
and what they think
00:39:00
is going to be sort of
a vacation, you know, to see the capital
of another country,
00:39:06
there's a sense that you've
made a promise to that person that they will be protected.
00:39:12
One of the victims said
for her in some ways it was worse than death. I think this is
something that really
00:39:18
terrorizes people, an idea that
preys on them psychologically. NANCY GRACE: For the "Bloodline
Detectives," the science
00:39:29
of genetic genealogy
sends a signal that previously
unsolvable crimes are now within reach for investigators.
00:39:40
JESSICA BEST SMITH: It is
helpful on several levels, one for them to know that they
can't do this anymore,
00:39:48
that it's not the case that
just because your DNA isn't in a database that you can
go on and commit these crimes
00:39:54
without any fear of detection. But it's also really
important for the community to know that we can
catch these people,
00:40:05
that this is the type of crime
that prior 'til now, prior to the last few years,
there isn't anything
00:40:11
we would have been able to do. This would have remained
an unsolved case forever
00:40:16
without genetic genealogy. BRYAN PORTER: Genetic genealogy
was the linchpin of this case.
00:40:21
To put it bluntly, if we had
not utilized the technique, I am very confident that Mr.
Bjerke would never have been
00:40:28
identified and he would
be free right this moment as we are conducting this
interview to hurt someone else
00:40:36
and to assault another
human being with impunity. NANCY GRACE: There
is never closure
00:40:42
for violent crime victims. Tears and scars
may never go away. But genetic genealogy is
an incredible breakthrough
00:40:53
in forensic science because
it tells the guilty there is another more powerful weapon
to track them down and ease
00:41:01
the suffering of crime victims. I'm Nancy Grace, and this has
been "Bloodline Detectives."
00:41:07
[LOGO NOISE] [CLOSING THEME]