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Texas True Crime Decapitation Murders Full Documentary · Weird Darkness:True crime & The unexplained

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Well, in about one hour and a half, the 1970s
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: will be all over and it will be the 1980s.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Is it getting wild? Well, there's a lot of energy,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of stuff going on. Things are just quick
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: and happening all the time. There was definitely a. a
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: lot of energy in a high-five environment back then. At
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: least that's how I recall it.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Murder rate continues to soar tonight in the final hours
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: of 1979.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Houston is in the middle of a murder wave the
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: likes of which its city has never seen before.
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: Where was the head in position to the body? The
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: head in position to the body? Well, the head was
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: not on the body. We don't know where the head is.
• 0:49
  Speaker 5: There's murder, and then there's what happened in 1979 in Houston, Texas.
• 0:54
  Speaker 5: Elise Rankin was stabbed and her head decapitated back near
• 0:59
  Speaker 5: the end of July. Elise Rankin, Mary Calcutta, Doris Threadgill,
• 1:03
  Speaker 5: Joanne Huffman, Bobby Spangenberger. Five victims. Some of Houston's most grisly,
• 1:10
  Speaker 5: infamous killings happened at the end of a booming decade.
• 1:14
  Speaker 5: Murders you may not have ever heard of. More than
• 1:18
  Speaker 5: 45 years later, they are still unsolved. Are they connected
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: and how? Detectives have worked on answering those questions for decades.
• 1:28
  Speaker 6: It's difficult after.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: All this time if it hasn't yet been solved. I
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: hope that something, somebody remembers something, somebody saw something. But
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: I'm in my 70s and Mary would be.
• 1:40
  Speaker 6: 2 and 3.
• 1:44
  Speaker 7: I don't know anymore.
• 1:45
  Speaker 5: I'm Courtney Fisher, and this is Texas True Crime, the
• 1:49
  Speaker 5: decapitation murders. The lost America's apartments in southwest Houston is
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: like a little city. Immigrants from Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras, Cuba, Colombia,
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: a melting pot of cultures and families, mostly from Latin America,
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: working and living together. one of the most diverse neighborhoods
• 2:15
  Speaker 5: in all of Houston. Back in the 1970s, this area
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: looked a bit different. When blocks and blocks of apartments
• 2:22
  Speaker 5: were built for and catered to young, single working professionals,
• 2:26
  Speaker 5: Houston's oil industry was booming. All those new jobs, young
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: men and women moving to town in droves needed a
• 2:33
  Speaker 5: place to live where they could meet people, have fun, date.
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: That was the vibe.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: This was a growing, growing town back then.
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: It was the Orchard Apartments in 1979.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Oil was big at that time, and that's what drew
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: a lot of people over here.
• 2:51
  Speaker 5: People like Elise Rankin, a 33-year-old secretary for an engineering
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: firm studying psychology at the University of Houston, working towards
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: her bachelor's degree, her family says. Elise had a 13-year-old
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: daughter but had recently separated from the girl's father, moved
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: into the Orchard Apartments. She was looking for a fresh start.
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: But on July 27, 1979.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: You can tell that there was a fight based on
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: the photos.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: Elise was murdered.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: There was no forced entry, so whoever the killer was
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: was allowed inside, or at least the door was open,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: and it went from there.
• 3:29
  Speaker 5: Blood on the green door of apartment 409. Inside, detectives
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: photographed and inspected the brown shag-carpeted one-room unit... Books, records,
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: stuff on the couch. It was tough to figure out
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: what was out of place and what wasn't.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Single woman, obviously, living by herself. You know, it wasn't
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the best kept apartment. There was a little bit of
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: clutter here and there. But there was definitely a struggle.
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: The young mother was found by a colleague who went
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: looking for Elise when she didn't show up for work,
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: police say. Her lifeless body laying in a bedroom. She
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: was naked with a pillow over her head, reports at
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: the time said, and she had been sexually assaulted, according
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: to investigators. Electric cord was found wrapped around Elise's wrists
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: and ankles, Houston Police Detective Richard Rodriguez says, and a
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: bloody butcher knife was found on the floor near a
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: razor blade on the bed. Investigators believed Elise had been
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: killed that morning, mere hours before she was discovered. But
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: perhaps the most disturbing part of it all, Elise had
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: been decapitated and her head was gone. Outside the door,
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: a blood trail.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: The suspect took the head and when he went down
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: to the vehicle, it looked like he placed the head
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: down onto the parking lot because there was a blood
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: stain that just matches something like that.
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: No one saw anything, or at least there's no documentation
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: of it, police say. No witnesses at the time came forward.
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: From Elise's apartment, officers collected some loose papers and traveler's checks.
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: Nothing stood out back then, Rodriguez says. But the thing
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: that really baffled police is what happened to Elise's head.
• 5:13
  Speaker 8: You know, I helped investigate some grisly crimes.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: This one tops them all.
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: On the 6 o'clock news, Elise's murder was profiled.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Babb and other detectives have gone over the woman's past
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: with a fine-tooth comb.
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: Days and weeks had passed. Lisa's head hadn't been found.
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: Where was it? And what were police doing to find it?
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: I don't believe anybody up here knows why her head
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: was taken.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: We do know her head left the apartment, possibly in
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: a pillowcase, taken to a car, then driven away.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: We have been getting 50 to 100 leads a day.
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: Tips may have been coming in, but nothing panned out.
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: And after Elise's sexual assault kit was processed, police say
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: there were still no leads.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: This is one of those bloody cases where you got
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: to think to yourself, what kind of individual can do this?
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: What did she do to make this happen to her?
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Reading in the reports that just a normal girl, a
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: woman trying to make her way, trying to make the
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: best out of her life here in Houston.
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: A normal woman trying to make her way. Malise was
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: the first. Then, exactly two weeks later... Two separate brutal
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: murders in their apartment project. A second young, vibrant woman
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: stabbed to death in the same complex. This time, it
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: was Mary Calcutta, a 27-year-old clerk who had also lived alone.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Purse-sized containers of mace went on sale at the office
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: of the Orchard Apartments today.
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: Some women there were terrified. Others thought... I guess I
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: can have it just about everywhere. But everyone was asking,
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: could it happen again?
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: I went and bought me a shotgun today and I
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: can use it.
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: Mary had lived a couple floors above and a few
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: doors down from Elise's unit. Again, it looked like there
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: had been a struggle. Again, a butcher knife left at
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: the scene. Again, signs of a sexual assault, police say.
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: Clear similarities in what happened to Elise, but in Mary's murder.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: When he was done with it, all the best he
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: could do was just almost decapitated, and at some point
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: he just had to leave.
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: What did police have on their hands? Was this the
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: same killer? Why these two women, who, by all accounts,
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: investigators say, didn't even know each other? 1,300 miles from Houston,
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: Mary's family would get the call in Pittsburgh.
• 7:34
  Speaker 8: My mother screamed bloody murder, so I hugged her, you know,
• 7:39
  Speaker 8: as tight as I could, just trying to comfort her.
• 7:41
  Speaker 5: They're married. who left home seeking independence and adventure.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Do you ever think that it's going to happen to
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: you or a friend that you know?
• 7:50
  Speaker 7: No.
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: Was gone. In this old bricked porch house in Pittsburgh.
• 8:05
  Speaker 8: When she was older, she had that room up in
• 8:07
  Speaker 8: the third floor.
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: Mary Calcutta grew up as the middle of six children.
• 8:11
  Speaker 8: This was home for everybody.
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: Sister Margaret Ann was the eldest, 10 years and two
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: days older than Mary.
• 8:17
  Speaker 8: We always took pictures out here.
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: Margaret Ann said she prayed her parents would give her
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: a sister, remembered vividly the day her father came home
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: with news from the hospital.
• 8:26
  Speaker 8: But I remember yelling out the window, what did mother have?
• 8:30
  Speaker 8: And And he said a girl, and I was just
• 8:33
  Speaker 8: so excited.
• 8:34
  Speaker 6: You needed a girl on your team.
• 8:35
  Speaker 8: That's right.
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: From day one, Margaret Ann looked out for her little Mary.
• 8:40
  Speaker 8: Mary was always very happy, you know, and we used
• 8:44
  Speaker 8: to call her Princess.
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: Mary had health issues, Sister Margaret Ann says. Trouble balancing,
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: controlling her muscles, symptoms of cerebral palsy. But she says
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: Mary refused to let that hold her back. She loved
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: baking cakes, took up square dancing, would try anything once.
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: But her passion, Margaret Ann says, was traveling.
• 9:03
  Speaker 8: I don't recall her ever thinking about herself or thinking
• 9:06
  Speaker 8: for me or her health.
• 9:07
  Speaker 6: How did your parents feel about her leaving Pittsburgh?
• 9:10
  Speaker 8: You know what? I think they probably would have rather
• 9:13
  Speaker 8: she stayed here.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: She called me on the phone and she said, hey,
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: I'm moving to Houston, Texas.
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: Beth McKinstry was Mary's best friend.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: I remember this so distinctly, blurted out, saying, you can't
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: do that. You don't even have a job. And she said,
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: but I do. And she knocked my socks off. She
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: just surprised me because she had the ability to, and
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: the determination, I guess is a better word, to find
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: a job in Houston.
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: Beth says they had just graduated high school. Beth went
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: off to college while Mary went on to secretarial school.
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: But the two had stayed close.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: Mary and I grew up on the same street. Our
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: mothers were friends. We'd get together, have dinner go to
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: movies together, do things together.
• 10:00
  Speaker 6: She was more than just a friend.
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: I mean, she really was a part of your family.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes, yes.
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: That says Mary was itching to get out of town,
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: ready for adventure. Houston was it. She moved to the
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: Orchard Apartments.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: She had her own apartment. She enjoyed it very much.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: There was no coming back.
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: On Sundays, Beth and Mary had their weekly catch-up call.
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: Mary had lived in Houston less than a year when
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: she called her on a weeknight. Unusual.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Something told me that something was wrong. And it popped
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: right out of my mouth. Why are you calling me
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: on a weeknight? And she explained that there was a murder.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: her building and she was afraid.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Detective Jean Babb has been with the police department for
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: 16 years.
• 10:45
  Speaker 8: I just remember her just being so nervous about it.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Those apartments at 5913 Glenmont.
• 10:50
  Speaker 6: Have you ever heard fear like that in her voice
• 10:53
  Speaker 6: ever before?
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: No.
• 10:55
  Speaker 8: I never heard fear in Mary's voice because she was
• 10:58
  Speaker 8: always happy. Happy having a good time.
• 11:02
  Speaker 6: So this had really rattled her.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah. We talked about all the precautions that she
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: could take We talked about not letting anybody in that
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: you didn't know. We talked about walking the halls and
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: making sure you look over your shoulder. One of the
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: things that she told me she was thinking about doing
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: was moving a bookcase that I imagined in my mind's
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: eye was right next to the door and that she
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: was going to slide it over to put in front
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: of the door and I said to her that seems
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: like a good idea. And so That's kind of where
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: we ended it.
• 11:41
  Speaker 6: When you hung up the phone, you felt like, she
• 11:44
  Speaker 6: has a plan, my friend is safe.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: I was hoping it was just one person that unfortunately
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: met her demise that way.
• 11:56
  Speaker 8: Never dreamed that anything could happen to Mary.
• 12:00
  Speaker 9: Never dream.
• 12:00
  Speaker 6: And Mary Calcutta was stabbed to death this past weekend.
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: Exactly 14 days after Elise was killed and decapitated, another
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: gruesome scene at the Orchard Apartments. On August 10th, 1979,
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: Mary Calcutta was found murdered on her bathroom floor, stabbed
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: to death dozens of times. So many times, police say,
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: she was nearly decapitated. Her blood spattered all over the
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: linoleum floor and her powder blue bath mat. The 27-year-old
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: had also been sexually assaulted. Investigators would later learn. Her
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: one-bedroom unit was three floors above Elise's apartment, and police
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: couldn't ignore the similarities to Elise's murder. By the time
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: a friend of Mary's found her and the butcher knife
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: next to her body, investigators say they thought she had
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: been dead nearly 18 hours.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: She was really fighting this guy, and I think that's
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: probably partially why she was not completely decapitated. Because I
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: think that was a huge struggle. He had to have
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: been tired. I just don't see that any other way.
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: Stuff looked out of place, Detective Rodriguez says. Photos show
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: a couple jumbled chairs next to the front door, clearly
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: dusted for prints. But there'd be no real leads. As
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: officers collected evidence from Mary's apartment, Margaret Ann was helping
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: her parents clean up after dinner in their Pittsburgh home.
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: When the phone rang, her father answered.
• 13:31
  Speaker 8: I'm putting dishes away and my mother's coming up from
• 13:33
  Speaker 8: the basement and my father's.
• 13:36
  Speaker 6: Going, yes, yes, yes. Well, who is this?
• 13:41
  Speaker 8: Yes, yes, yes. Who is this? And he turned around
• 13:46
  Speaker 8: and he said, Mary Mike's been murdered. And when he
• 13:48
  Speaker 8: said that, my heart completely stopped.
• 13:52
  Speaker 6: I mean it.
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: 45 years ago, the very house we're sitting in today.
• 13:58
  Speaker 8: I just remember sitting in this living room All night
• 14:02
  Speaker 8: we never went to bed. That night we just kept sitting.
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: Up here in.
• 14:08
  Speaker 8: Shock. I think everybody was quiet, very quiet.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: It was the next day when her sister, Sister Margaret Ann,
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: called me to tell me that Mary had passed. And
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: I just remember saying to her, but I just spoke
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: to her on the phone. I just spoke to her
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: on the phone. And I don't really remember much more
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: about that conversation.
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: I just know I cried for three weeks straight.
• 14:39
  Speaker 8: My mother, she had a really hard time. My father
• 14:41
  Speaker 8: said that she would just cry all night, all the time,
• 14:45
  Speaker 8: for a long time afterwards.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: I couldn't process it. But I remember that the detective
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: called me and asked me some questions about Mary. Would
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: Mary open the door for anybody that she didn't know?
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: And I said, absolutely not. I said she wouldn't do
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: that on a normal basis, and especially after we talked
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: about that, I'm sure she wouldn't do that, and especially
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: after what had happened.
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: Two women murdered two weeks apart.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: They're both in the same apartment complex. That's number one.
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: According to police reports, detectives quickly theorized Mary and Elise
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: were likely murdered by the same person.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Number two, the M.O. Pretty much exactly the same. Outside
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: of One was decapitated. The other one wasn't. But the
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: second case, she was almost decapitated. Now, why didn't he
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: go through with the decapitation? I don't know. Did he
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: get scared off? Did something happen? Was it just too hard?
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: You know, fill in the blank. I'm not sure. But
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: those two cases are pretty much exactly the same. I
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: would find it highly unlikely that you have two separate
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: suspects or two separate killers go to the same apartment
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: complex and commit two separate murders that are exactly the same.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: If it's a copycat, that's a whole lot of energy
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: going into that second killing.
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: The grisliness of it all. This wasn't a typical Houston murder.
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: Why did you buy it?
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: Well, I'm trying to.
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: Take precaution so I wouldn't get, you know.
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: But how could you protect yourself from this?
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Two women were raped and murdered, their bodies horribly mutilated.
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: Elise's head was gone. Mary was left butchered.
• 16:47
  Speaker 6: You cannot even walk to the U-Totem to get a drink.
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: What kind of person could do something so heinous, so violent?
• 16:55
  Speaker 9: And that's why all of us are fighting together.
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: We want to be able to get our whites back
• 16:59
  Speaker 6: that we can walk.
• 17:00
  Speaker 9: Down the street.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: There's something inside these individuals that just it just switches
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: they go to another state of mind to do this
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: to another human body because at the end of the
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: day what are we looking at we are looking at
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: another human being and you have to disassociate yourself and
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: say this is no longer a human being anymore to
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: physically decapitate somebody.
• 17:32
  Speaker 10: Is there a prime suspect, one person, in both of
• 17:36
  Speaker 10: these unsolved murders?
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: From what I read, they really hadn't come up with
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: a prime suspect or a person of interest that they
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: were saying, you know what, this is going to be
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: our guy.
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: Did Alice or Mary know their killer?
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm not going to say yes and I'm
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: not going to say no. How common is it for
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: your neighbor, for a maintenance man, for whoever, come knocking
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: on the door, But you have to remember, once that
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: door's open, you've been breached. And if somebody's intent on
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: doing something because they've selected you to be their next
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: target or their next victim, that's all they need is
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: just that one opening.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: It's kind of.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Scary because you don't know why they did it.
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: That feeling, that fear from Mary's murder led to 10 p.m.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: News.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Bids are also out to replace every lock of every
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: one of the 552 apartment units.
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: But seven hours before officers showed up to her apartment,
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: there had been another girl, another murder. Doris Armstrong Threadgill
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: stabbed to death in her townhome just about nine miles
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: north of Mary and Alice. Her throat, too, slashed and slashed,
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez says. But there was something about this crime scene.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Doris's murder, in my opinion, is a little different.
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: That struck investigators.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Either she just made herself a very easy target or
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: she knew the killer.
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: Regardless, three women killed in two weeks in the most ghastly, gruesome,
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: vicious way. What was happening in Houston? Doris Threadgill's blood
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: dotted the linoleum kitchen floor of her townhome. The trail
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: went out the front door, down her sidewalk, Doris had
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: been stabbed in the chest multiple times, investigators say, so
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: severely cut that she was virtually decapitated, reported the Houston
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: Post in 1979. Another one. But this scene was different,
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: Detective Rodriguez says.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: For a murder where somebody is almost decapitated, it was
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: a very clean crime scene.
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: What detectives noted about Doris's murder, says Rodriguez, was that
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: nearly nothing was disturbed. No knife was left at the scene.
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: Doris' front door wasn't kicked in or forced open. She
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: was wearing all her jewelry and clothing. No furniture out
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: of place. Nothing knocked from shelves. And she wasn't sexually assaulted,
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: according to police reports. By the kitchen sink, investigators photographed
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: a couple wine glasses and packaged cigarette butts from an
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: ashtray as evidence.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: To me, it didn't look like there was a big struggle.
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: Was Doris expecting someone?
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Either she just made herself a very easy target or
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: she knew the killer.
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: Doris lived alone, her family tells me. The 26-year-old was
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: married but estranged from her husband of less than four years,
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: they say. He was interviewed, cleared by an alibi, and
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: never considered a suspect, Rodriguez says. Doris worked at a
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: hearing aid company and was last seen the night before
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: around 9 p.m., according to initial reports. An exterminator found
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: her dead about 12 hours later. Elise, Mary, Doris. Initially,
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: investigators believed all three murders could have been connected. They
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: kept going back to the brutal way these single young
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: women were terrorized. Yet Rodriguez sees it differently.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I just find it difficult for you to commit a
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: murder like Mary's where she clearly fought. To leave there, recoup, re-energize,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: do whatever, get your mindset back to, okay, now I'm
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: ready for the next one. It's hard for me to fathom.
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: For the next two months, detectives would question dozens and
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: dozens of people. The interviews, long, stored in thick folders.
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: Police reported they'd talked to 75 persons of interest in
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: Elise Rankin's case alone. Weeks passed, then months. No breaks.
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: Nothing released to the public, anyway.
• 22:02
  Speaker 10: There was a murder of four small children this morning
• 22:05
  Speaker 10: in Houston.
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: Meanwhile, Houston's murder rate was climbing.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Five more people were killed overnight, bringing the total for
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the year to 392, and that is 122 more persons
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: killed during the same period last year.
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: By August 1979 was on track to be the most
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: lethal year in Houston's history. The nation's fifth largest city,
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: with so much promise and opportunity for some, was suffering
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: a crime wave never seen before, rising steadily.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Do you see the mood of the city, the mood
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: of the people changing?
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: There's nothing I can put my finger on.
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: Murders went unsolved.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Still another murder of a young Houston woman.
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: The Rankin family, the Calcuttas, the Threadgills, all waiting for
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: investigators to bring them answers. Friends and neighbors left living
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: in fear.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: They were probably scared. I'm sure they were. You have
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: to be. If you're watching the news at all, reading
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: the newspaper, or just aware of what's going on around you, yeah,
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: you're definitely looking over your shoulder.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Only the killers can tell us why they choose to
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: take someone else's life, and we can only hope that
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: it doesn't happen to us.
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: Two months later, it happened to them.
• 23:13
  Speaker 11: They went out on a date. on a Tuesday night
• 23:15
  Speaker 11: and just didn't come home.
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: Bobby Spangenberger and Joanne Huffman murdered. The bodies of the
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: young couple dumped a few miles from each other. Joanne
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: left in the middle of a park. Bobby in the
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: trunk of this white Dodge.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: The body was.
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: Lying on its right side in what I guess you
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: could call a fetal position in the trunk of the
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: vehicle I'm sure that you saw.
• 23:36
  Speaker 11: Sometimes it feels like you can remember like it was yesterday.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Where was the head in position to the body?
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: The head in position? Well, the head was not on
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: the body. We don't know where the head is.
• 23:53
  Speaker 11: I don't want to think of him having to go
• 23:56
  Speaker 11: through that. They said his hands were all torn up,
• 24:00
  Speaker 11: that he fought, that he fought them.
• 24:06
  Speaker 9: I saw the blood on the car, and that's when
• 24:08
  Speaker 9: I went and called the police.
• 24:11
  Speaker 11: I do wonder what his life would be like now.
• 24:15
  Speaker 11: You know, what career would he have? You know, he
• 24:19
  Speaker 11: literally just graduated high school.
• 24:22
  Speaker 9: What did you see when they opened the car? When
• 24:24
  Speaker 9: they opened the trunk, I saw the body, and it
• 24:26
  Speaker 9: was very gruesome because the head was missing.
• 24:29
  Speaker 11: What were his dreams? Would he be married? Would I
• 24:33
  Speaker 11: have nieces and nephews?
• 24:35
  Speaker 9: And if I had known what I was going to see,
• 24:38
  Speaker 9: I would have stepped back. I wouldn't have looked, but
• 24:42
  Speaker 9: You know, I really wished I hadn't because it was
• 24:45
  Speaker 9: a very gruesome sight. But that's all I've got to
• 24:51
  Speaker 9: say about it. It's just then I turned around and
• 24:53
  Speaker 9: walked off.
• 24:56
  Speaker 11: He was such a kind, helpful, thoughtful person. He really was.
• 25:02
  Speaker 9: I had no idea that man could be that cruel,
• 25:05
  Speaker 9: you know.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: The why, you know.
• 25:07
  Speaker 11: We've always wanted to know why.
• 25:10
  Speaker 8: What happened?
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: Brenda Spangenberger's older brother Bobby was just 18 years old
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: in 79.
• 25:18
  Speaker 11: He was funny. He was a musician. He was a
• 25:23
  Speaker 11: drummer in a band.
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: The one with the great hair, outgoing, who caught the
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: attention of 17-year-old Joanne Huffman. Boyfriend, girlfriend, less than a year,
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: but smitten with each other, Brenda remembers.
• 25:36
  Speaker 11: I know he was looking out for her. I just
• 25:39
  Speaker 11: knew her as Bobby's girlfriend. You know, they were at
• 25:43
  Speaker 11: the house. They went out on dates.
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: October 3rd was one of those date nights when Bobby
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: and Joanne ended up at Watonga Park in northwest Houston.
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: But Brenda didn't know where Bobby was that night, just
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: that he still hadn't returned by the next morning. She
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: remembers getting a note at school from her mother, come
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: home at lunch.
• 26:05
  Speaker 11: I didn't know what to be afraid of. When I
• 26:07
  Speaker 11: got home and saw Mom.
• 26:10
  Speaker 11: And how panicked she was, that panicked me. And I
• 26:13
  Speaker 11: remember we got in the car and we drove around.
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: No sign of Bobby, no sign of his car, no
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: word from Joanne.
• 26:21
  Speaker 11: We go back to the apartment and immediately the phone rings.
• 26:25
  Speaker 11: We got a phone call and it was the detectives.
• 26:29
  Speaker 11: And they said they needed to come and talk to us.
• 26:32
  Speaker 11: So they were in the leasing office waiting for us
• 26:34
  Speaker 11: to get back. Knock on the door, mom answers it.
• 26:37
  Speaker 11: They come in and There was an older detective and
• 26:41
  Speaker 11: a younger detective, and the older detective said, we have
• 26:44
  Speaker 11: reason to believe your son has been murdered. And Mom
• 26:48
  Speaker 11: just gasped, and he helped her sit in a chair,
• 26:51
  Speaker 11: and I just started saying, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: We know for a fact that Joanne was shot and
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: killed there at the park.
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: Joanne was found first earlier that morning. As Brenda and
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: her mother were riding around town looking for Bobby, they
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: had no idea the park had become a crime scene.
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: Joanne found dead by a passerby.
• 27:14
  Speaker 9: I was just riding my bike through the park and
• 27:16
  Speaker 9: I seen the body laying face down.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I rode over by it and looked at it and
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: seen the big puddle of blood. Went home and called
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: the police.
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: While officers were at the park, a call came across
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: the radio. A few miles away, a body found in
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: the trunk of an abandoned sedan at a used car lot.
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: It was Bobby.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: I think we mentioned earlier that it was decapitated. What
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: other injuries, if any, there are, I don't know at
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: this time.
• 27:42
  Speaker 11: Our whole lives changed. I mean, completely and totally in
• 27:47
  Speaker 11: a second.
• 27:48
  Speaker 6: What kind of person cuts someone's head off?
• 27:52
  Speaker 11: And takes it with them.
• 27:54
  Speaker 6: I know.
• 27:56
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 27:57
  Speaker 11: I used to imagine all kinds of things. Is it
• 28:00
  Speaker 11: in a jar in somebody's basement? Is that something that
• 28:04
  Speaker 11: they keep, you know?
• 28:06
  Speaker 7: Is that....
• 28:09
  Speaker 11: Why?
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Dehumanizing this person and walking away with their head, like,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, who does that? Other than a sick,
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: sick individual. Who does that?
• 28:23
  Speaker 11: But I can remember driving places at night, like to
• 28:26
  Speaker 11: a football game or something, and not wanting to look
• 28:29
  Speaker 11: out the window. Because in my head, you know, you
• 28:33
  Speaker 11: see the bags of trash. Is his head in there?
• 28:37
  Speaker 11: What am I going to see in the ditch? So
• 28:40
  Speaker 11: I wouldn't look.
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: Of course, no surveillance cameras at that car lot. This
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: was 1979. And no one ever came forward saying they
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: saw anything unusual there, Rodriguez says. But the night before
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: the bodies were found, a neighbor near the park called 911,
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: reported hearing a woman scream, followed by gunshots, according to
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: the case notes.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: The original investigators did talk to a witness that said, yes,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: I saw somebody, a female, getting dragged in the park.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: A unit was dispatched that night as well to go
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: out there and check. And obviously nothing was found.
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: Joanne had been shot. Bobby's head was gone. Neither had
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: been robbed, according to the reports, but detectives didn't have
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: much more than that.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: We don't know why he was killed, where he was killed,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: but there was blood on the outside of the vehicle
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: to where it looked like maybe the head was taken
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: out or maybe the blood transferred from when the body
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: was put in. It's kind of hard to say.
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: And it's hard to say what kind of person could
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: have wanted these two young people dead. Enemies with such
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: a violent vengeance? But they were just teenagers, barely starting
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: their lives. Police didn't find anyone in their past like that,
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez says.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: This screams more psychopath this doesn't scream oh you know
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: i pissed off somebody in this particular crowd and you
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: know they're coming for for revenge.
• 30:10
  Speaker 11: Anybody you talked to that knew him liked him.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: It just seems to me that these guys were just
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: was just waiting for the right.
• 30:21
  Speaker 10: Victims decapitations aren't common they're not common and then you
• 30:25
  Speaker 10: have One in August, two other women whose throats are
• 30:29
  Speaker 10: slashed so deeply that their heads are nearly off. And
• 30:34
  Speaker 10: then you have this couple and the young man is
• 30:37
  Speaker 10: found decapitated.
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: Could they be all connected?
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: No, they could be. Like I said, I think it's
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: highly irregular that you have multiple suspects all in the
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: same area decapitating people at the same time. I'm not
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: ready to say that it's the same individual.
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez says he's putting together a sort of jigsaw puzzle
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: with all these cases. Crime scene photos, one piece, witness statements,
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: another piece, the missing piece, forensics, and all the advancements
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: in DNA over the past four decades.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: But with the technology that we have today, there's a
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: whole lot there.
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: And so we went to the evidence room, where reporters
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: aren't usually allowed to go when it comes to looking
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: at unsolved cases.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: This is good stuff right here. This is good stuff.
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: And what we found, well.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: They're individually packaged, so there's no cross-contamination with these. Oh man,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: this is awesome.
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: It could be the break investigators need. The small gray
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: evidence viewing room with no windows is bleak. No one
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: seems to notice. Anxious nerves have taken over. We're here
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: for the boxes of evidence in Elise's, Mary's, Doris's, Joanne's,
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: and Bobby's murder. Some haven't been opened for decades.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: This looks like it's going to be stuff from the car.
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: Detective Rodriguez doesn't let most people into this room.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: And honestly... I don't think they even took photos of
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: this on the original crime scene.
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: We start with Bobby's box. In it, old roadmaps from
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: the white Dodge where his body was found, newspapers, some photos.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: As far as what we can test, it doesn't look
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: too hopeful right now.
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: The goal, to go through each one of these five
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: unsolved cases to see what evidence police have, what's been
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: potentially misplaced. and what items can be retested for DNA.
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: Bobby's box doesn't have much physical evidence. Rodriguez cross-references items
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: that should be in there from a log. He says
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: some things are missing, though won't go into detail. Mary's
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: evidence is next. There are deposit slips, receipts, papers from
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: her apartments, a checkbook, Mary's library card, a phone bill.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: There's some hair in here. I better know.
• 33:14
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez takes the hair, but isn't confident there's enough sample
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: to test. It's not labeled. He doesn't know whose hair
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: it is. And then, this.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Here's Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, the Lady of Situations. Interesting.
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: A line from the T.S. Eliot poem, The Wasteland, prose
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: about brokenness and loss. Is it Mary's handwriting? Rodriguez says
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: he doesn't know. The poem was never noted as evidence
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: in her case file, he says.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I'm definitely going to read the report again to find
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: out where they collected this from and then try to
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: figure out the significance of this.
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: He spends hours unboxing and wrapping carefully, thoughtfully. We get
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: to Doris's box.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: There should be a lot of DNA.
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: The box Rodriguez had been anticipating the most. Because Doris's
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: report says police collected several cigarette butts. Remember her apartment?
• 34:16
  Speaker 10: Neat.
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: Undisturbed, Rodriguez said. Those two wine glasses sitting on the counter?
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: As if Doris had been expecting company or already had
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: someone over.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: It appears, it appears that nothing has been tampered with
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: from when it was originally collected. You can't ask for
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: anything better than that. Especially with a case this old.
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: One after the other, Rodriguez removed sealed white envelopes. Evidence labeled.
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: Cigarette butts, cigarette packages, a candy wrapper, matchsticks.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: For the most part, they're all individually packaged.
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: None of these envelopes have ever been opened, Rodriguez says.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: And this is why I was really excited about this
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: case right here. As far as from the testing aspect.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Because it did not look like they went back.
• 35:11
  Speaker 8: And.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: looked at testing anything forensically.
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: This is what he had been hoping for. Undisturbed evidence
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: that could be tested for the very first time. And
• 35:24
  Speaker 5: that's what Rodriguez says he plans to do.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to get my hopes up too high.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: These are old cases. DNA degrades over the years. So
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: we'll just see what we have and then go from there.
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: Police Rankin's evidence has been tested, he discovers next. Since
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: Elise and Mary Calcutta were believed to have been sexually assaulted,
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: in 2010 investigators decided to take another look at both
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: Orchard apartment cases.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: But then again, in the world of DNA, that's a
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: long time ago.
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez pulls out Elise's traveler's checks, her $ 215 rent receipt,
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: magazine clippings, and then.
• 36:01
  Speaker 6: She.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Has an incident slip for burglary of her apartment. the
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: month before. This is interesting.
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: No mention of any burglary the month before in Elise's
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: case file, Rodriguez says. Did investigators ever follow up on
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: that incident report? Did they know they had it shuffled
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: in her papers?
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Maybe the guy was casing her apartment, broke into it
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: the month before, got a lay of the land, knew
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: where everything was at. I mean, obviously I'm spitballing here,
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: but man, that's crazy though.
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez photographs the burglary slip before moving on to Joanne's evidence.
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: There's a gun in her box, but no mention in
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: her case report of a firearm found at the scene,
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez says. He thinks it's from a different case entirely.
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: And that's the issue with some of this old evidence,
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: he says. Through the years, things can get misplaced and moved.
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez had hoped to find the knives from Elise's and
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: Mary's murder. They were collected, police initially documented, but they
• 37:17
  Speaker 5: weren't in the boxes. The whole process, sifting through evidence,
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: takes more than five hours. Detailed, slow work. Frankly, Rodriguez
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: knows may or may not pay off.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: I've done this long enough to know that just because
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: you have the evidence and just because you get it tested,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: you don't always get DNA. This is definitely not the movies.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: This is definitely not CSI.
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: That's what working cold cases is like.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the DNA is just not there.
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: In Pittsburgh lives a family still hopeful. Mary Calcutta's sisters
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: and brothers know getting answers about what happened to Mary
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: is complicated. Testing that old evidence guarantees nothing, as you
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: now know. So Sister Margaret Ann thought, what can I do?
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: How can I work alongside police on a 45-year-old case?
• 38:18
  Speaker 8: Oh yeah, no, I remember it like it was yesterday.
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: Help.
• 38:21
  Speaker 8: That's something I won't forget.
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: Not hinder.
• 38:23
  Speaker 8: I won't forget that night.
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: Well, if you're Sister Margaret Ann, you'll try anything. Which
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: means Cole calling an investigator who knew nothing about Mary's murder.
• 38:33
  Speaker 8: I was reading the newspaper, and he had solved this
• 38:35
  Speaker 8: cold case of a woman that had been murdered three
• 38:39
  Speaker 8: weeks after Mary in the same year, but here in Pennsylvania.
• 38:43
  Speaker 7: There's somebody like me everywhere.
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: Investigator Annie Gall has a passion for working on cases
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: that have long gone cold.
• 38:53
  Speaker 8: I got in touch with him.
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: I tracked him down.
• 38:56
  Speaker 7: Well, first off, you can't turn Sister Margaret Ann down.
• 38:59
  Speaker 8: We've been friends ever since, and he's been such a
• 39:01
  Speaker 8: gift to our family.
• 39:02
  Speaker 7: I remember hanging up and saying to my wife, because
• 39:05
  Speaker 7: she's listening to my end of the conversation, she says,
• 39:08
  Speaker 7: what are you going to be able to do in Houston, Texas?
• 39:12
  Speaker 7: And I said, well, I don't know, but I'm going
• 39:15
  Speaker 7: to try.
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: Gall, while working as an investigator at a district attorney's
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: office near Pittsburgh, took an interest in Mary's case.
• 39:22
  Speaker 7: The vast majority of the people in that apartment complex
• 39:25
  Speaker 7: were nice, young, working professionals. There's always a predator. There's
• 39:34
  Speaker 7: always somebody who moved in there for that exact reason.
• 39:40
  Speaker 7: And we all know that predators don't really look like
• 39:45
  Speaker 7: the ones they put in the cartoons. They They look
• 39:48
  Speaker 7: like real, regular people.
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: Dozens and dozens of neighbors and workers at the complex
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: were interviewed, police say, but investigators didn't find any potential suspects.
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: Gall kept a portrait of Mary under the glass on
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: his desk in his law enforcement office before retiring this year.
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: A reminder, one of four cases he says he can't
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: solve yet.
• 40:10
  Speaker 7: You see it every day. They're looking at you, and
• 40:14
  Speaker 7: they make you never forget.
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: His copies of Mary's case file is worn, filled with
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: handwritten notes, the leads he's chased for more than a decade.
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: Gall says he won't stop digging. And perhaps that's the
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: greatest comfort to Sister Margaret Ann.
• 40:29
  Speaker 6: I think your grit and tenacity, you might solve this case.
• 40:36
  Speaker 8: Well, because I'll keep badgering people.
• 40:39
  Speaker 7: You see these family members who become your friends. It's hard.
• 40:46
  Speaker 7: once you meet somebody, not to care.
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: It's emotional, huh?
• 40:56
  Speaker 7: It is.
• 40:56
  Speaker 10: It is.
• 40:59
  Speaker 7: I just, you look at what good could come from
• 41:04
  Speaker 7: something like this. Our friendship came from that. And otherwise,
• 41:10
  Speaker 7: if this had never happened, we would have never met.
• 41:12
  Speaker 8: The only thing we can do is leave it in
• 41:14
  Speaker 8: God's hands and try to get all the help that
• 41:16
  Speaker 8: we could get and take all the counsel we can
• 41:18
  Speaker 8: get and then just trust how God's going to lead
• 41:20
  Speaker 8: it all.
• 41:21
  Speaker 7: I wouldn't be as lucky as a person as I
• 41:23
  Speaker 7: am if I never met her. And it's just, and
• 41:28
  Speaker 7: her tenacity makes you want to continue.
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: So they will, together. The retired detective and strong-willed older sister.
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: They're a force for Mary Calcutta.
• 41:43
  Speaker 7: The investigators report.
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: See, the families help drive these cases. Elise Rankin, Mary Calcutta,
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: Doris Threadgill, Joanne Huffman, Bobby Spangenberger. Their memories collected in
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: faded photo albums and handwritten notes.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Beth, to a very sharp friend. She liked to use
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: the word sharp.
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: Mary's best friend still has them all.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: Remember the Friday night... Dates we used to have.
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: Some of those memories Beth McKinstry plays over and over,
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: blocking out the trauma of losing Mary.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: I have a tendency to.
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: Erase some of the worst parts.
• 42:26
  Speaker 6: Self-preservation.
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: Because it's not just the fact that Mary's gone. Beth
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: is always grieving the life together she lost. Mary wasn't
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: in Beth's wedding, didn't see her children come into this world,
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: couldn't help celebrate career accomplishments.
• 42:46
  Speaker 11: It's just still very hard after all these years because
• 42:51
  Speaker 11: I loved her so much.
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: She was like a sister.
• 42:56
  Speaker 7: I don't have sisters, but she was like a sister
• 42:59
  Speaker 7: to me.
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: So Beth won't give up. Like Margaret Ann and Andy Gall.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: At some point, you say it's out of your control
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: that you've provided what you know to be true. And
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: it's up to somebody else to find the answers.
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: Five violent slayings over two and a half months.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Women now prefer to walk in pairs.
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: Terrified the city, tortured the families, and left police asking...
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: Are they connected?
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: I can see where somebody would say, oh yeah, that's
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: the same guy. I can see that. On the surface,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: it looks that way. But again, for me, I have
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: to go back to the hard physical evidence. What does
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: the evidence say and what is it telling me?
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: On the surface, all the evidence has been exhausted, Rodriguez says.
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: But nearly half a century after these murders, he's ready
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: to dig deeper. DNA testing, sure, but Rodriguez also wants
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: to understand the profile of this killer or killers.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: A lot of these psychopaths and serial killers, they like
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: to take trophies. You know, some it's an article of clothing,
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: piece of jewelry, pictures.
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: A head.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: You know, a head. I mean, it's just hard to
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: get into the psyche of some of these individuals.
• 44:30
  Speaker 7: The person who did this has to be close in
• 44:33
  Speaker 7: age to me or slightly older. You get into a
• 44:38
  Speaker 7: period of your time that you are starting to realize
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: your own end could be coming near. If they have
• 44:49
  Speaker 7: any conscience at all, they see something like this, they
• 44:53
  Speaker 7: can speak out themselves.
• 44:55
  Speaker 11: I think the why, Courtney, is so much more important
• 44:58
  Speaker 11: than the who. Because it really doesn't matter who. You know?
• 45:04
  Speaker 11: But the why. Why would somebody do that? so horrifically.
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: And that, they may never know. These were people living
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: their own lives, just starting out.
• 45:17
  Speaker 11: This is Joanne and Bobby. I want them to remember
• 45:19
  Speaker 11: him for his life, not for the horrific details of
• 45:23
  Speaker 11: his death, because he was so much more than that.
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: The people left behind have learned to live with the heartache.
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: It doesn't leave, just gets pushed aside. But the ripple
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: effects are felt through the years.
• 45:36
  Speaker 11: Oh, I believe that heartbreak killed my mother. She only
• 45:41
  Speaker 11: lived 12 years after he died. And that's it. It's
• 45:44
  Speaker 11: a lot for a mom to go through. And I
• 45:50
  Speaker 11: didn't realize how much she went through until I became
• 45:54
  Speaker 11: a mother. And it changes how you mother. It changes
• 45:58
  Speaker 11: how you treat your family.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: After all this time, if it hasn't yet been solved,
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: we're talking 45 years and some a long time I'm
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: in my 70s and Mary would be too and I
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: don't know anymore.
• 46:20
  Speaker 8: I have to believe that you know somehow God will
• 46:23
  Speaker 8: let come to light what he can.
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: Have you forgiven the person who killed Mary.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: Oh yes.
• 46:31
  Speaker 8: Yeah if we don't find out the person has to
• 46:34
  Speaker 8: live with their own conscience you know That person knows
• 46:39
  Speaker 8: who they are, and if they've murdered more than one person,
• 46:42
  Speaker 8: they have to live with that, and they cannot be
• 46:44
  Speaker 8: living in peace.
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: That's something Sister Margaret Ann shares with the person who
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: took her sister, not living in peace. Sister won't stop
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: asking for help, asking people to pay attention. She's a fighter,
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: like Mary was, and Elise, and Doris, Joanne, and Bobby.
• 47:07
  Speaker 7: No one has the right to take your life. If
• 47:14
  Speaker 7: the case is solved, I'm not a believer necessarily in closure,
• 47:21
  Speaker 7: but at least you have an answer and you can
• 47:25
  Speaker 7: move on. If it's never been explained why and who
• 47:33
  Speaker 7: took your life, somebody has to still look because it
• 47:39
  Speaker 7: should never be forgotten. It's too important to the people
• 47:45
  Speaker 7: that are left behind.