00:00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: August
1995, San Diego, California, a young
woman out jogging
00:00:19
is brutally sex attacked. She thought she was gonna die. The suspect at the time was
described as a large man,
00:00:26
large muscular build, wearing
a ski mask over his face, wearing gloves, and having
a large kitchen knife.
00:00:34
NANCY GRACE: In October,
just two months later, another woman sex assaulted,
this time in her home.
00:00:41
The following month,
two more women victims attacked in their own homes. The attacks don't stop.
00:00:51
Police now under enormous
pressure, but they cannot catch the predator. From 1995 to 2004, the
suspect was raping people
00:01:02
and leaving his DNA behind. We knew, we had the
profile of who did this. No question.
00:01:07
We just had no one
to match it up with. NANCY GRACE: This is a story of
a cold case team that will not
00:01:13
quit until they ID a serial
rapist who has remained on the loose almost 25 years.
00:01:20
I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:01:51
San Diego, California,
2019, nearly 25 years after a woman jogger's raped in
a quiet San Diego neighborhood.
00:02:01
The hunt is on to ID
the man who assaults her and five more women at least
over the next 10 years.
00:02:10
It's a surprise these crimes
have gone unsolved, especially since San Diego is regarded
as one of the safest
00:02:18
big cities in America. JOHN SULLIVAN: It's a very
community-oriented feel where every community and neighborhood
has their own culture and kind
00:02:30
of their own vibe so to
speak, and, you know, the officers and working
and getting experience
00:02:34
at different neighborhoods
throughout the city, we became really well acquainted
with the different cultures
00:02:39
that are associated with
the different neighborhoods. [MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: 2019, Detective
Sergeant Ron Bailiff
00:02:47
gets a call about a
series of sex attacks that take place
between 1995 and 2004.
00:02:57
RONALD BAILIFF: I received a
telephone call from a husband of one of the victims.
00:03:03
He told me that his wife,
she still has so much trauma over the case and so that
he would make phone calls
00:03:12
every few years to try and
inspire a detective in order to restart this case
up, to rework the case.
00:03:21
JOHN SULLIVAN: My
neighbor was my boss at the time named Ron Bailiff. Being nosy, I'm a detective and
here my boss answer the phone,
00:03:28
so kind of prick my ear up and
I hear him talking to somebody. After the phone call,
I walk over to him,
00:03:34
and for some reason, it was
relatively kind of a low case load at that time. And I go, hey, sarge, you
know, what was that about.
00:03:41
And, you know, he hands
me a piece of paper. He's like, hey,
Sully and-- everyone
00:03:46
calls me Sully at work. Hey, Sully, would you mind
going to the file room and pulling this case out and
let's take a look at this.
00:03:54
So I take the paper, and I go
back to our little archive file room. I find a couple of boxes where
these old cases were kept.
00:04:03
And seeing what awful things
were done to these women really pissed me off. RONALD BAILIFF: I knew
what I was asking John
00:04:18
and that was he was about to
embark in a very serious case. It was going to be an
exceptional amount of work,
00:04:24
and I knew that he was going to
be the right person to do it. I just buried my
head in these books
00:04:30
and reviewed all
the, you know, crime scene photos and the cases
and going through everything.
00:04:35
RONALD BAILIFF: It was as if God
had his hand in this whole case because from that point
on, it was seemingly
00:04:43
like things just matched up. It was kind of perfection
in terms of how things were
00:04:49
linking, the people that
were coming within our path on this investigation. NANCY GRACE: Detective John
Sullivan and his team dive
00:04:59
into each case, all
of which are linked to the same perp, the first
attack way back in August 1995.
00:05:09
In that incident, the victim
who we'll call Jane Doe 1, went out for a jog in the
Clairemont Mesa neighborhood.
00:05:18
She approached this kind of
shrub area right off the path. She was running. The suspect jumped
out and surprised her.
00:05:27
The suspect at the time was
described as a large man, large muscular build, wearing
a ski mask over his face,
00:05:34
wearing gloves, and having
a large kitchen knife. Being shocked,
surprised, scared,
00:05:42
the Jane Doe 1 just decided-- she thought she
was going to die. And the suspect at the time
ordered her to accompany him
00:05:50
off the sidewalk into the
ground where it was secluded from the rest of the public eye,
and that's where he sexually
00:05:58
assaulted her at knife point. The victim went
to survival mode. She did exactly as she
was told because she
00:06:05
believed that if she didn't
that he was going to kill her. Jane Doe 1 returned home
to where her father was,
00:06:15
and she was very, very
emotionally distraught. She and him called 9-1-1 and
notified San Diego Police
00:06:22
Department that
she was just raped at knifepoint by a stranger. And the officers who made
contact with Jane Doe 1
00:06:29
described the victim as
catatonic where she has been crying but she was in shock.
00:06:40
And at that point, the
officers who were on scene accompanied Jane Doe
1 in their police car
00:06:48
back to the crime scene to
try to locate exactly where the assault took place, but
she was able to point out
00:06:53
where it occurred. Investigators were
called to the scene to locate evidence,
and witness checks
00:07:00
and, I mean, good, good, old
fashioned police work was done. I mean, everything-- every I
was dotted, every T was crossed,
00:07:07
and unfortunately as far
as the crime scene goes, it didn't yield any evidence. NANCY GRACE:
Investigators obtain
00:07:14
as much biological evidence
as they can from the victim. In all sexual assault cases,
what we really want is DNA,
00:07:24
fingerprints, any type of item
left behind from a suspect. We would encourage a victim
to do a sexual assault kit.
00:07:34
What we call here in San
Diego is a SART exam. We encourage victims to do
that so that we can get DNA.
00:07:42
As a woman I could
only imagine what it would be like to not only be
sexually assaulted than to have
00:07:50
to go through a
SART exam and then the next day go to your job,
go to the grocery store,
00:07:56
walk the same streets. For those victims, it's a daily
battle to get up in the morning
00:08:03
and to know that your
attacker is still out there. NANCY GRACE: Then just
two months later, police
00:08:11
called to another
sex attack less than 10 miles from where the
original Jane Doe was attacked.
00:08:18
When Jane Doe two walked into
her home and in the hallway, she was confronted
by the suspect.
00:08:27
The suspect was described
as a large male, ski mask over his face, and he had
a large kitchen knife.
00:08:37
At the initial confrontation,
it took the victim by surprise, and she was very scared.
00:08:44
And she described the suspect as
being very calm and in control. And the suspect made several
statements to the victim
00:08:52
to look at my knife. You see this knife. I will kill you if you don't
do what I say and ordered her
00:08:59
to disrobe at which
point he proceeded to sexually assault the
victim inside of her own home.
00:09:06
NANCY GRACE: The police arrive. Jane Doe 2 agrees to be
interviewed by detectives
00:09:12
and gives a horrific
account of the attack. JOHN SULLIVAN:
During the assault the suspect bound and
gagged the victim,
00:09:22
so she was incapacitated
as far as me able to move. He ordered her to
stay on the ground
00:09:29
and threatened to kill
her if she made a sound. At that point, the
suspect we believe just
00:09:36
exited through the front door. The victim untied herself
and put some clothing on
00:09:42
and ran to the living
room, which she grabbed her phone to call 9-1-1. Right when she's on
the phone with 911,
00:09:47
her boyfriend got to the
house, in a matter of minutes, seconds, missed the assault
and missed the suspect
00:09:55
running out the front door. NANCY GRACE: The police
are called to a third crime scene just one month later.
00:10:02
They're virtually
certain a serial rapist is loose in their community. That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:10:10
[MUSIC PLAYING] November 14, 1995, San
Diego detectives already investigating two serious
and brutal sex assaults
00:10:29
when they're called
to yet another. They know they're dealing
with a serial sex predator.
00:10:39
JOHN SULLIVAN: In the
third incident, which is very similar to the
second incident, the victim,
00:10:46
she heard some noise,
and she kind of thought, oh, my boyfriend's
here because he-- you know,
00:10:51
they're at a point
in their relationship where he would let
himself in the front door.
00:10:55
Upon not seeing anybody,
she went to the window to look outside
because that's where
00:10:58
her boyfriend would park when
he would come to her house. She didn't see his car.
00:11:05
And there was a suspect
standing in the middle of her living room. MEGHAN BUCKNER: He
tells her to be quiet
00:11:11
or he was going to kill her. He then drags her
into a bedroom. He throws her on the
ground, and he forcibly
00:11:20
rapes her at knifepoint. He then tells her to lay on
the ground and don't move, and he escapes out of the house.
00:11:30
And we don't know how he got
out of the house in that case because her doors were locked.
00:11:35
We can only think that
it was out of a window. Investigators were
called to the scene.
00:11:40
Crime scene personnel responded
and processed the scene. Again, the suspect was wearing
gloves and wearing ski mask,
00:11:47
so a canvas was done
in search that maybe he discarded these types of
evidence or the knife he had.
00:11:54
The victim did not believe
that the knife he used was her knife, so we
believe that the suspect
00:12:00
brought his own knife. This being another
residential sexual assault, I think we are pretty
confident that we have
00:12:08
a very violent rapist
out there, you know, terrorizing the community. NANCY GRACE: Then
just three days later,
00:12:17
a fourth attack reported. MEGHAN BUCKNER: The
perpetrator had a knife, the exact same modus operandi.
00:12:25
Before she could say anything,
he put his hand over her mouth, pulled out the knife and said
if you scream I will kill you,
00:12:32
dragged her into the
bedroom, and forcibly sexually assaulted her. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
now certain all four attacks
00:12:41
committed by the same perp. They send semen samples for
testing and confirmation.
00:12:49
MARTIN DOYLE: When
this first started, there were four separate
detectives looking
00:12:52
at four separate assaults. Ultimately, you know,
when they got together and they looked at the
commonality of them,
00:12:58
they proposed that
it was a series and that it was the
same perpetrator. That would later be confirmed
by the DNA evidence linking
00:13:05
all four of the assaults. NANCY GRACE: Detectives believe
the attacker is targeting
00:13:10
a particular type of victim-- young, very pretty,
and mostly blond. The DNA analysis confirms
the same predators
00:13:22
responsible for all
four sex attacks. Investigators upload
the sample to CODIS, the national database that
tracks DNA of convicted felons.
00:13:35
CODIS is our national
database for DNA. Every felon, at
least in California, is swabbed every time they
are arrested for their DNA,
00:13:46
and that is uploaded into CODIS. So we have a bank of DNA,
at least in California.
00:13:51
I know every other
state is different. So we have our
local CODIS database and then the national one.
00:13:57
That was put into CODIS,
and there was-- there were no matches at the time. MARTIN DOYLE: We
knew that it was
00:14:04
the same perpetrator because
we had that matching profile. But you can run that profile
as many times as you want.
00:14:10
If you have no known person
to match it up against, you're not going to be able
to identify the perpetrator,
00:14:16
and that's the situation
that detectives faced in the many years they
tried to solve this series.
00:14:23
NANCY GRACE: The police set
up roadblocks and increased their presence in the
community, but they
00:14:28
don't capture the rapist. JOHN SULLIVAN: We had a
lot of undercover officers positioned throughout the city.
00:14:37
We had a high
uniformed presence, and we were all hands on deck. And the sex crimes
unit who had the case,
00:14:44
I know all the detectives were-- they were canvassing area. There were crimestopper
notifications that
00:14:49
gone out to the local media. And we were fielding
phone calls from people with potential tips.
00:14:57
At this point, given that the
description across the board was a fit, strong,
white male, calm, cool,
00:15:06
collect, in control,
there was-- yeah, we started looking
at military personnel 'cause being in San Diego, we
have a large military presence
00:15:14
here, a lot of Marines,
a lot of sailors, and that kind of fit the mold,
general mold, of maybe a combat
00:15:19
veteran. And we started looking
down that path. They contacted the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police
00:15:25
at one point in an attempt
to put together a profile and do a geographical
study to link them.
00:15:30
Then ultimately they were
left with very few leads. NANCY GRACE: San Diego
rapist remains at large.
00:15:39
Police cannot identify him
even though they've got DNA, and then suddenly
the attacks stop.
00:15:47
As we see next on
"Bloodline Detectives," the cases go cold until
seven years later.
00:15:54
[MUSIC PLAYING] San Diego, 2002, it's
seven years since the rapes of four women go unsolved.
00:16:12
The case is now cold. Then there's a sex attack
with the very same MO as the ones from back
in 1995 but this time
00:16:25
in northeast San Diego. MARTIN DOYLE: She put
her daughter to bed, and when she left
her daughter's room,
00:16:31
the perpetrator was masked
with a knife waiting for her. The suspect threatened
to harm the young daughter
00:16:42
if the victim didn't comply. She wasn't gonna let anything
happened to her baby girl,
00:16:47
and she submitted and
survived a horrible attack inside of her home. He told her to wait
until calling the police
00:16:57
and give a certain
period of time or that he would return and
attack her and her daughter.
00:17:02
JOHN SULLIVAN: Given
that it was a hot prowl residential sexual
assault, that DNA recovered
00:17:08
from the Riverside case, which
is we'll call the case number five, was uploaded into CODIS.
00:17:13
There is a match to the
four San Diego cases. So the Riverside
investigators, you know,
00:17:18
it kind of gave them
a little something extra to work with
knowing that, you know,
00:17:22
there are four San Diego
cases that took place in 1995. And, again, like
the San Diego cases,
00:17:29
you have the
suspect's DNA profile, we just don't know
who it belongs to. NANCY GRACE: The sex
predator still walks free,
00:17:38
and then he attacks again two
years later, November 2004. MARTIN DOYLE: That was
nearby Palm Desert,
00:17:46
California, also in
Riverside County, also in the Coachella Valley. A woman had come home from
her boyfriend's house.
00:17:53
JOHN SULLIVAN: She returned to
an empty home with her daughter confronted by the
suspect and, you know,
00:18:00
again, the description
across the board-- calm, cool, collect, in control. He never yelled.
00:18:07
He-- part of what
he his commands were was to make sure the
victim saw the knife.
00:18:12
He'd say look at the knife. Look at it. And then once they looked
at it, he would give them
00:18:17
their commands and what to do. Jane Doe number 6 was
sexually assaulted at knifepoint and
similarly survival mode.
00:18:25
I mean, these women
just-- they want to live. You know, they have a
lot of will to live.
00:18:29
They have their daughters
in the house with them while this is
happening, and they're
00:18:33
going to do whatever it takes. And in this case, my hat
goes off 'cause they did it.
00:18:37
They survived. They protected their daughters,
and they came out of it-- I mean, sustained trauma,
but they came out alive.
00:18:47
NANCY GRACE: There's yet
another huge complication for investigators. The statute of
limitations in California
00:18:54
for rape without the ID of
the perp is just 10 years. That could mean this
attacker can escape
00:19:02
justice for the 1995 assaults. What a miscarriage of justice. So Riverside prosecutors
made the decision
00:19:14
to file a criminal complaint
against the DNA profile itself. And when they did that, they
were able to generate a warrant
00:19:20
for that person's arrest. And in California
and many states, the courts have held that
charging a DNA profile
00:19:26
is sufficient to identify
a person for statute of limitations purposes, and so
Riverside decided to do that.
00:19:34
NANCY GRACE: By 2019, the cold
case team knows the rapist is still not registered in CODIS.
00:19:41
MARTIN DOYLE: We knew we had
the profile of who did this. We just had no one
to match it up with.
00:19:46
And so CODIS, which is a
database that has offender profiles from all
over the nation,
00:19:52
was constantly being
run against this known profile from all six cases. And we just could never get a
hit because the known offender
00:20:00
was not in that database. And the detectives
worked many years. They kept running it and
running it and going back,
00:20:05
and still that person's profile
was not in the database. NANCY GRACE: The detectives
need a break, a way
00:20:11
to shake up the investigation. The answer, a brand new
crime solving forensic tool.
00:20:19
So, you know, being
in a big city detective, I like to stay up on and current
on what's going on, especially
00:20:23
in the state of California. And learning that the
technique in order to catch the Golden State
Killer used forensic genealogy.
00:20:33
So I'd go back to
my little dingy desk and I'd jump on my desk
phone and I called the FBI.
00:20:37
I go, OK, here's your
San Diego office. So I introduce myself
to him, and I go, hey,
00:20:42
if you could point-- stir
me to the right direction to the special
agents that worked
00:20:47
on the Golden State Killer
case, can you have them call me? I'd really like to talk to
them because I have a case that
00:20:53
would really benefit from
utilizing that same technique and utilizing some
of your resources.
00:21:01
I mean, I'm talking,
like, two minutes, I got a call on my cell phone
from a guy named Steve Busch.
00:21:06
He introduced himself and
let me know that, you know, it was his team that worked
on the Golden State Killer,
00:21:11
and he wanted a briefing
on the series that I have. So, you know, spent about
10 minutes on the phone
00:21:18
letting him know, you know,
hey, it's a very violent series. You know, these women
need some closure.
00:21:24
STEVE BUSCH: John Sullivan at
the San Diego Police Department says, hey, I've got this
guy's DNA all over the place.
00:21:29
I don't know who he is. Can we use the same process
that you guys used in the Golden
00:21:33
State Killer case? Can we use that and
try to determine who this serial rapist is?
00:21:38
And we said absolutely. We would love-- we would love
to help you out with that.
00:21:41
Let's take his DNA
and let's send it off to a private
laboratory and let's get the SNP profile that we
need so we can get started.
00:21:48
MEGHAN BUCKNER: What I knew
about genetic genealogy was what I would see on TV, that
it would be someone's DNA
00:21:56
is in the system, we
would get a hit to it, and then we would have to
more or less build up a family
00:22:03
tree of close relatives. I truly didn't know
a whole lot of it until I was assigned this
case when I had to really
00:22:10
investigate it and learn. RONALD BAILIFF: When
we're talking to Steve, we both could read
each other's minds
00:22:16
and say this is the technique
that we need to use in order to solve this case because I
had a serious amount of doubt
00:22:22
as to whether we were going
to be able to solve it. Evidence hadn't changed,
technology hadn't changed up
00:22:28
until that point, and the
amount of evidence that we had, there was nothing
that we were going
00:22:33
to be able to do that
wasn't any different than previous
detectives had done when they reopened these cases.
00:22:40
So it was that genetic
genealogy that was our hope. JOHN SULLIVAN: How I explain
investigative genealogy
00:22:46
or forensic
genealogy is that you have a mystery person's DNA. I mean, we don't know
who it belongs to,
00:22:52
but we have their DNA. And what we're going
to do is we are going to upload this DNA
profile into an open source DNA
00:23:03
database. You think of 23andMe. You think of know
Family Tree DNA. You think of all these really
cool services out there, I'm--
00:23:12
personally I'm a customer. I think they're really neat. And what you do is you throw
the mystery person's DNA
00:23:17
up into this, and it's going
to cast a wide net as far as capturing who relatives are.
00:23:24
And you with DNA, it's very--
it's a precise science. So, you know, there are
specific ranges of DNA
00:23:31
in common that ancestors
will have each other. So ideally when you
throw this DNA up
00:23:38
and you try to get
a relative, you want to get a close
relative because it makes the work a little easier.
00:23:42
So the more distant
the relative, the more difficult and
tedious the work is. We had lots of options in
order to get the SNP profile,
00:23:51
and so we decided to
go with Gene by Gene laboratory in Houston, Texas. They utilized a
microarray in this case
00:23:57
in order to get the SNP,
and once they got that, that SNP was uploaded into
GEDmatch and into FT DNA
00:24:04
to see who the folks that
are going to be related to this unknown SNP profile. NANCY GRACE: Genetic genealogy
appears to be working.
00:24:12
More hits from distant
relatives come in. Is it just a matter of
time before "Bloodline
00:24:19
Detectives" can reveal
the suspect's identity. That's next. [MUSIC PLAYING] 2019, San Diego
cold case detectives
00:24:35
investigating six
heinous rapes that took place between 1995 and 2004. They've got the suspect's
DNA, and now they
00:24:46
turn to a revolutionary
new crime-solving tool, forensic genetic genealogy. JOHN SULLIVAN:
Steve Busch's team
00:24:55
with the FBI, along with
their crime analysts, some agents working on there,
I mean, they worked hours
00:25:02
and hours and hours and hours
and hours trying to build this family tree
so that we could
00:25:09
identify the possible suspect. What entails is you have to
build this family tree using
00:25:16
census data, birth
records, marriage certificates, baptismal
certificates in some cases.
00:25:22
STEVE BUSCH: We started
building family trees and trying to connect people. We got some matches back,
and they were decent matches.
00:25:28
They were, you know, second
or third cousin matches. Those are matches that we
can typically work with.
00:25:33
Once we started
making connections, things started to become a
little bit more clear as it
00:25:37
always does, and we
were able to narrow down the connections to a
couple of particular families.
00:25:42
And at that point, things
started to become a little more clear to us that
we might be looking
00:25:46
at a particular one
or two different men as a possible suspect. NANCY GRACE: The detectives are
slowly building a family tree
00:25:55
based on DNA, and now
that tree is finally yielding fruit, solid hits. The suspect's DNA
matches two brothers
00:26:06
who actually live nearby in
Palm Springs, California. JOHN SULLIVAN: Now we have a
couple of names to work with.
00:26:14
So I do a whole back-- you
know, from social media to Facebook to
Instagram to LinkedIn to
00:26:19
and all the law
enforcement databases that I have access to. In '95, both brothers
lived in San Diego.
00:26:25
In 2000s, they both live
in the Palm Desert area. These two brothers in
particular were very different.
00:26:31
They led very different
lifestyles and which is-- you can tell through their
socials they're just different.
00:26:36
You know, one is like
a super devout family man and very religious,
and the other
00:26:41
was a little more transient. I knew at the time he was
married, and he had a child.
00:26:46
We found wedding
photographs and social media of he and his wife. And his wife was just
remarkably close in appearance
00:26:59
to all of the victims. STEVE BUSCH: When we examined
the physical descriptions given
00:27:04
by the victims and then we
examined the physical natures of Chris VanBuskirk, there was
a pattern of similarities that
00:27:12
led us to believe he could
potentially be the person, it's always difficult with
these traumatic events
00:27:16
though because
sometimes the victims-- the descriptions are
all over the place. One might say he's taller
and one says he's shorter
00:27:23
and one says he's heavier. One says he's thinner. In this case, the
physical descriptions
00:27:27
were pretty accurate. NANCY GRACE:
Investigators now focus all efforts on Chris VanBuskirk,
who lives in Arizona.
00:27:36
RONALD BAILIFF:
The FBI agent who was responsible for the
team out in Phoenix-- his name's Wyatt Storm--
00:27:43
And he very, very spectacular
individual who's absolutely so helpful, and he ran
the Violent Crimes
00:27:49
Task Force that's out there. And so we asked him, hey, can
you please do surveillance
00:27:54
on this individual
and we're going to need a surreptitious DNA. He and his team started
watching Christopher VanBuskirk
00:28:05
and saw that he was actually
a manager at a restaurant. JOHN SULLIVAN: This team made
a decision, OK, you know.
00:28:12
We're going to go in undercover
and just pose as customers. So they end up going
in and just eating
00:28:17
at the restaurant like everybody
else, and just coincidentally, the suspect end up
taking a lunch break.
00:28:25
One of the undercover operators
kind of befriended him, sat next to him,
started talking with him
00:28:31
and, hey, this is
a great restaurant and you do great work and
kind of made small talk.
00:28:36
RONALD BAILIFF: That particular
restaurant had like bar tables, and so this FBI agent just sat
right across from Christopher
00:28:43
VanBuskirk, started up a
conversation until the point that Mr. VanBuskirk
had to go back to work.
00:28:49
And so he said let me get your
plate for you, and so he-- I'll go throw it away.
00:28:53
And so as he's going
to the door in order to throw away the tray, he
grabs the fork with a napkin--
00:28:59
JOHN SULLIVAN: Threw it in a bag
and sealed it and, hey, Sully-- everyone calls me Sully
at work-- hey, Sully,
00:29:05
we got what you need. When can you meet? I drive about eight hours to
get a fork, and I drive back.
00:29:12
And, you know, the lab
working on this case is also very excited
because we-- you know,
00:29:16
they know exactly what I'm
working, and I told them, hey, I'm coming.
I'm coming.
00:29:20
This needs to be tested ASAP. And so I submitted the fork
for testing that morning,
00:29:25
first thing that morning. About two hours
later, we got a-- I got a phone call from
the criminalist lab
00:29:31
saying, yep, that's him. It's a match. It's your bad guy. You know, at this point, as
a-- as a detective I go, oh,
00:29:38
OK, you know, what do I do now. Like, OK, now I know
who the bad guy is. He's out of state, and kind my
head starts swimming as far as,
00:29:44
like, what are the next steps. RONALD BAILIFF:
We knew one thing. We can't let a very
dangerous individual
00:29:50
stay out on the streets
when we know who he is. And so that was our goal. Get him into custody as
fast as we possibly can.
00:29:58
NANCY GRACE:
Detectives immediately create a plan to lure
VanBuskirk into custody.
00:30:04
RONALD BAILIFF: We get a
warrant for his arrest, and we include Wyatt
Storm's team in Phoenix
00:30:10
to be able to on their
end get a search warrant for the individual's house. And then we were going to mete
out there in Phoenix with him,
00:30:18
and we were going to
serve the arrest warrant and serve the search
warrant at the same time.
00:30:23
JOHN SULLIVAN: We got there very
early, and he was already gone. We check a lot of areas
that he frequents,
00:30:28
and we couldn't find him. So the decision was made by
the supervisor out in Phoenix
00:30:34
to ruse the suspect. RONALD BAILIFF:
Christopher VanBuskirk was a witness and a credit card
fraud case that happened years
00:30:42
before, and so we
brainstormed that and decided let's use
that as a ruse in order
00:30:49
to try and pull him out. NANCY GRACE: After
nearly 25 years, San Diego investigators
are closing
00:30:57
in on a brutal serial rapist. As we see next on
"Bloodline Detectives," all they have to do now
is actually catch him.
00:31:07
[MUSIC PLAYING] San Diego, 2019, San
Diego cold cases close in on Chris VanBuskirk, a serial
rapist whose attacks date all
00:31:28
the way back to August 1995. JOHN SULLIVAN: So ruse is done
saying, hey, hey, you know,
00:31:34
here's detective so-and-so. We're investigating this
fraud case that you filed. Hey, can you meet us?
00:31:39
Here's some pictures of a
suspect we want you to look at. We knew we were kind of baiting
him into a specific area.
00:31:45
So we were already all set up. Our undercover car's
throughout the parking lot. That plan was made.
00:31:50
He parked, he got out, and
seeing him at a distance, he's a big guy. And he was walking
toward the meeting spot.
00:31:58
The supervisor on scene
called out the signal, and we jumped out and
took him down at gunpoint,
00:32:02
put him on the ground, and
arrested him without incident. Shortly after handcuffing
him and standing him up,
00:32:11
I walk up to him, I put
my hand on my shoulder, and I go, hey, you have a
lot of questions as to what's
00:32:19
going on right now. All this is happening
because of me. Like, I'd like to talk
to you a little further,
00:32:23
but, you know, we gotta get
through this real quick. But I want to answer
all your questions.
00:32:28
And he looked at me,
and he just kind of took a big [SIGHING HEAVILY]
and kind of just
00:32:34
sighed and shook his head. He didn't ask one question
about what's going on. He didn't seem surprised.
00:32:41
He didn't cause a commotion. He was just-- he saw this
day coming a long time. And I think that he's
almost relieved in a sense
00:32:51
to be caught. MARTIN DOYLE: The
detectives from San Diego actually tried to interview
him, and he did not
00:32:56
give a statement at that time. He invoked his right
to an attorney, so they were precluded
from, you know,
00:33:02
speaking with him
about the case. NANCY GRACE: Chris
VanBuskirk tries to impress detectives when
he's extradited to San Diego.
00:33:11
JOHN SULLIVAN:
Sergeant Bailiff and I met the deputies
at a local airport where he turned
over custody to us.
00:33:19
And, you know, we were
just taking a detective car, a big Ford Taurus. So I sat in the back
seat with the suspect,
00:33:25
and Sergeant Bailiff drove. And, you know, obviously when,
you know, a suspect, you know,
00:33:30
asks for a lawyer, we're not
gonna talk about the case. It's just the legalities
that we can't do.
00:33:34
But he was very chatty,
just very, very chatty, and you could tell by
how he's kind of, like,
00:33:43
trying to be friendly,
it was very manipulative. He wanted us to like him, and
he wanted to kind of impress
00:33:50
this with sports
memorabilia he had and different jobs
he's had and, you know, professional athletes that
he knows and all this stuff.
00:33:56
And we found it kind of odd,
you know, kind of with the trip down to San Diego jail.
00:34:02
I didn't see a lot of remorse. I can tell you that. I didn't see concern. I didn't see much going on
in his verbal or nonverbal
00:34:10
communication. NANCY GRACE: The investigative
work is finally over, but now John Sullivan performs a
detective's last act, informing
00:34:23
six victims of the news. He took it upon himself to
notify the victims to let them
00:34:30
know that after decades of not
knowing who their attacker was, where he was, that
he was finally
00:34:37
going to be brought to justice. And I know that it was
one of those things that after knowing Detective
Sullivan for as long as I did,
00:34:48
he truly was the right
person for the job for that. MARTIN DOYLE: They were--
all reacted differently,
00:34:55
which is absolutely normal. Some were relieved. Some were somewhat indifferent. Some were-- just broke
down in front of him.
00:35:03
Most of them were really
happy to have this chapter of their life closed. JOHN SULLIVAN: There is
one victim who's Jane Doe
00:35:10
2 who didn't answer the phone. I left a message,
and I even tried texting the phone number I had
and I didn't get a response.
00:35:19
I knew this was-- the media
was going to cover this case, and I just did not
want this poor victim
00:35:24
to see on the morning news
what happened without her not hearing it from me. I ended up driving out
to Jane Doe 2's residence
00:35:31
to notify her in person. I can honestly say
this is probably one of the most
memorable experiences
00:35:38
I've ever had I mean as a
cop and as just a person. So I show up and I get
out my badge on a chain
00:35:45
and on my ID and I
knock on the door. I hear somebody from
inside say who is it.
00:35:52
And I asked Jane Doe by name. Hey, I need to speak to
Jane Doe specifically. Are you her?
00:36:00
And I confirmed her identity
to make sure it is who I need to speak to and she's like yes.
00:36:04
And I go, you know, I'm here
to give you news on the case what happened to you in 1995.
00:36:11
And I let her know. I go I've identified him
and I have arrested him and he'll never get out jail.
00:36:16
And she collapsed, sobbing,
crying, apologizing to me because she wanted
to come give me a hug
00:36:28
but she's scared of men. And it broke my heart. It was so-- I mean, it was
pretty emotionally driven.
00:36:35
And I sat with her. I sat down next to the door. I said, hey, keep
the door locked.
00:36:39
You don't have to
open the door for me. I go, hey, I'm just happy
I could be here with you.
00:36:43
I'm so blessed to be able
to give you this news, and I'm just happy that
I'm able to do this.
00:36:50
And she's crying and just
thanking me and calling me you're my angel, and it
was just really sweet.
00:36:56
And I told her I
want to come back and I'll bring my female
partner if you're OK with that.
00:37:01
I'd like to sit
and talk with you, but I want to make sure you're
comfortable because, again, I'm
00:37:06
respectful of what's
going on here. And then she said yes. So I arranged for
my female partners
00:37:12
to go back the next day, and
she made us coffee and brownies. And it was super
sweet, and we got to--
00:37:16
she got to give me that big
old hug she wanted to give me. And it was very endearing, but
I can say that was one of--
00:37:22
that was one of the most
memorable experiences ever-- from this case, like,
I really take away
00:37:27
that in-person
notification I gave. NANCY GRACE: Prosecutors filed
multiple challenges to stop
00:37:35
rapist Chris VanBuskirk. I made sure that we had
all of our ducks in a row, that when he was brought
back to San Diego
00:37:45
we could jump on it right away. We came up with forcible
rape of all of the women.
00:37:51
We also charged rape in
the course of a robbery, and then we also charged
the multiple victims
00:37:56
allegation which then
allows for a life sentence. NANCY GRACE: Then Chris
VanBuskirk switches strategy
00:38:04
and shocks the courtroom
with a guilty plea. JOHN SULLIVAN: He
pled guilty to all six
00:38:09
cases, which is a sentence of
50 years to life in prison. RONALD BAILIFF:
He was being heard
00:38:15
through a box where he could
hear us and we can hear him, but he was a coward. And he stayed in the
very back of the room.
00:38:23
He gave an apology, but it was-- it was insincere. It was-- it was a joke. JOHN SULLIVAN: I think
VanBuskirk was looking out
00:38:34
for VanBuskirk,
and he just wanted to save face as best as
he could with his child
00:38:38
and maybe his wife, too. But, you know, the second we
went to a preliminary hearing,
00:38:43
I would have been on the
witness stand disclosing all kinds of details
of these assaults,
00:38:47
and that would have been
out for the whole world to see and hear. And I think that he
just decided to plead
00:38:53
guilty so that would still
remain his deep dark secret. RONALD BAILIFF: This
selfish part of me,
00:39:00
I wanted this to go to trial. I wanted genetic genealogy to
be blossomed in the public.
00:39:06
I wanted the public to see how
valuable this technique is. I wanted it to go through
that court process.
00:39:14
But then the mercy that the Lord
showed for the victims is what was important because by not
having to go through that trial
00:39:23
by VanBuskirk admitting guilt
and simply being sentenced, they didn't have to suffer
through those trials,
00:39:31
which would have been a
horrible experience for them. NANCY GRACE: The case
of Chris VanBuskirk
00:39:37
highlights the power
of genetic genealogy. RONALD BAILIFF: This
is the way to go.
00:39:43
This is something
that not is only going to solve these old
cases, this is something
00:39:48
that we can use right now in
order to solve cases that we can't just readily solve.
00:39:54
I think that genetic
genealogy can explode as to something
just unbelievable in law enforcement.
00:40:02
STEVE BUSCH: It is so effective. It exonerates the innocent,
and it identifies the guilty
00:40:07
as quickly and as
efficiently as law enforcement can possibly do. So I think that's something
that the public needs to start
00:40:14
to understand that genealogy
is actually a lot less invasive than traditional
investigative methods,
00:40:19
it's much more efficient,
and it's always right. MEGHAN BUCKNER:
What this case did
00:40:24
for me was it reminded me
that even when it's dark, there's always hope. NANCY GRACE: Six
women, six victims
00:40:34
of the same brutal
crime, six survivors who wait years for justice. Thanks to "Bloodline
Detectives,"
00:40:42
they finally get that, justice. In the privacy of
their own thoughts, they still endure
pain but possibly rest
00:40:54
just a little easier
tonight knowing the man who tormented them
has been put away behind bars.
00:41:02
I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us
on "Bloodline Detectives." [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:41:14
[CLOSING THEME PLAYING]