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♪ narrator: up next, this part of south texas was known for being safe. we didn't lock our doors back then. narrator: that changed after local women came under attack. she would not let me go. she kept telling me, "protect me from the bad man." narrator: are these attacks random, or are they related? the only word that would come to mind is "evil." just pure evil. ♪ ♪ narrator: if you go to huntsville, texas, and mention halloween night 1987,

some local residents still shudder, and for reasons that have nothing to do with ghosts and goblins. that day, i went from having so much fun with my family on that halloween night, and it exploded in my face like a bomb. ♪ there's very few days that go by that i don't think about this case. ♪ narrator: around 10:00 that evening, 36-year-old mary risinger was washing her car at the local car wash. with her was her daughter, kristen, who was just about to turn 4. mary had stopped to clean their car because kris was going to be baptized the next morning and she wanted to get her car clean. narrator: as mary was rinsing off her car, kristen was playing in the water. a man drove up and got out of his truck. it didn't seem like he was there to get it cleaned.

dowgar: i believe she knew something was up when this perpetrator pulled up. narrator: the man pulled out a knife, grabbed mary from behind, and tried to drag her toward his truck. he didn't appear to see the child. he had something in mind for mary risinger, and nothing was going to prevent him from doing that. narrator: he tried to force mary into his truck, but she wasn't going anywhere, especially with a toddler to protect. burro: that woman fought like a demon, and i'm convinced that it was less to do with saving her own life than her daughter's. narrator: mary, unarmed and outmatched, didn't stand a chance. her throat was slashed, and she was dead within minutes. a lot of lives changed forever that night. dusty dowgar, an officer with the walker county sheriff's department, was trick-or-treating with his family very near the car wash when he heard what happened.

he rushed to the scene. dowgar: looked like a horror film. soon as i pulled into the car wash, i seen a female body. and she was covered in blood. ♪ narrator: officer dowgar checked the car and saw kristen. the terrified little girl had locked herself inside the car. told her i was a police officer, come out, and i would protect her. she unlocked the door. i'll never forget this -- she jumped into my arms. that was the hardest bear hug i ever had. she was scared to death, and she would not let me go. narrator: this photograph was taken later that night. dowgar: she kept telling me, "protect me from the bad man. he's killed my mom."

that's all she could say. and i held that little girl... until we got some help. she wouldn't let me go. narrator: the young girl was wearing a ballerina costume. at first, officer dowgar thought it was red. as he lifts her up, he realizes that it's not a red costume. this little girl is covered in her mother's blood. it's been 40 years, but i can look back at that and it's just like it happened. i can see the little girl in a ballerina costume... covered in blood from head to toe. and all she was wanting was somebody to protect her. narrator: within minutes, kristen's family met her at the sheriff's office. berger: i took her to the bathroom, and i took her in there and washed her off. and as i was getting her dressed,

she looked at me and she said... sorry. she said, "my mama's dead. for real. "my mama's dead." [ crying ] i'm sorry. narrator: did mary know her killer? was this a random attack? no one knew. even worse, there was no murder weapon, no fingerprints, or any other physical evidence at the scene, and the only eyewitness was a severely traumatized child. ♪

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don't wait- call today. narrator: texas detectives amassed all the resources at their disposal to find mary risinger's killer. the problem was that back in 1987, there weren't all that many resources at hand.

the technology to extract dna and collect dna from crime scenes and from bodies was very rudimentary back then. merillat: there were no surveillance cameras that we could utilize. that was a very rare thing, to have surveillance cameras, especially in huntsville. i don't know of any business that had them at that time. narrator: with the dearth of resources and the absence of physical evidence, mary's case went cold. bush: i had, i think, three deputies working for me, three detectives. we still had burglaries going on. we still had cars being stolen. still had drugs being sold. some things stick with you more than others. i've seen a lot of dead people. i've seen them killed with firewood, hatchets, shot, stabbed, run over. some things stick with you that others don't. i think it was the little girl being involved. i wish i could've done more for her. narrator: nearly a year after mary's murder,

wendy gauntt, a student at nearby texas a&m university, was leaving campus at lunchtime when she was confronted by a man with a knife as she got into her car. burrough: the man was on her in seconds, and immediately, as if he'd rehearsed it, got her arms behind her, wrapped up her wrists, and connected it somehow to the safety belt so that she couldn't move. the windows were closed, so even to the extent that she was making noise, the parking lot was largely empty. nobody heard it. i mean, not a soul. narrator: the man drove wendy to a wooded area at the edge of town. he took her out to a park in the college station area and raped her, tied her to a tree, and cut her throat. she's not dead, but she knows she's dying. narrator: despite a gaping neck wound so deep, she couldn't scream or even talk, wendy was determined to survive. she survived the attack by playing dead.

she lies there naked on the ground, with blood gushing out of her throat, listening, listening, listening for the footsteps that would tell her that the man who's attacked her is leaving. narrator: finally, wendy's attacker left the area, apparently assuming she was dead. the one thing she knew for sure is if she was going to die, she didn't want to die in the woods. she wanted to die in a place that they would find her body. hidalgo: she untied herself and walked out to the roadway and was spotted by a construction worker, who got on his radio, called for police and an ambulance. merillat: i wonder if i would have that same courage that she had. and she endured great pain, great suffering, and not knowing if she'd ever see her parents again or if anybody would find her body. narrator: alert detectives studying this crime thought it looked familiar. it bore some similarities to mary risinger's murder just one year earlier, as well as the rape and murders of alice martin and debra ewing,

two local women whose cases also remained unsolved. we were getting to wonder if we had one person that was in this area who's basically a predator on young ladies. narrator: perhaps the answer lay with wendy, who was determined to find the man who tried to kill her. at the hospital, she had two urgent requests. burrough: when she comes to complete consciousness there in the hospital, she motions for something to write with because she can't talk -- her throat has been deeply cut -- and she immediately writes out two things. one is, "somebody go feed my horse." and the second is, "get me a sketch artist." narrator: karen taylor, a noted forensic artist, was called in and faced a challenge like none she'd ever seen. how do you create a sketch with a victim who can't even speak?

my immediate supervisor, he thought there was no way. we shouldn't even attempt this. ♪

narrator: after her miraculous escape from a rapist who left her for dead, wendy gauntt found herself unable to speak because of a nearly fatal knife wound to her neck. wendy was one of the most self-possessed people you can imagine in such a situation. she knew exactly what had happened to her. she knew exactly what she needed to do. narrator: and that was to identify the man who tried to kill her. forensic artist karen taylor was brought in to see if she could come up with a composite sketch of wendy's attacker -- a difficult task under any circumstances, but particularly difficult in this one. taylor: she could nod yes or no, and i would ask always open-ended questions to avoid leading her in any way. i would ask things like, "was he a certain type?

did he strike you as sort of a jock, or was he a cowboy kind of a guy, or more of a rocker kind of a guy? was there a certain type?" narrator: to jog wendy's memory, karen taylor showed her an fbi manual of facial types. taylor: i began to introduce the reference feature pictures so she could further refine each feature for me -- the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the hairstyle, and the glasses shape she described. once she was into it, she was into it, and she kept -- and this sometimes happens. the memory is refreshed, and the detail just keeps coming. and that happened with her. it's amazing how well we were able to communicate, even though she couldn't speak. narrator: despite the pain wendy was in and the trauma from what she'd just gone through, she and karen worked together for hours. i just remember her nodding and nodding and being so pleased. i let her decide when we were done, when it was as accurate as we could get it. and she was happy, i was happy.

that's how we finished it. narrator: this was the final sketch. just one hour after it was released to the media, a prison guard called police. he said he was sure it was an inmate once housed at one of the local prisons. the inmate's name? daniel lee corwin. merillat: i've seen a lot of composites in 40 years of police work, and never seen one that good. that looks just like him. narrator: in the mid-1970s, when corwin was in high school, he was found guilty of assaulting and attempting to murder a fellow student. her name was brenda evans, and like wendy gauntt, she also survived by playing dead. when she's in the ambulance, she can barely speak 'cause her throat's been cut, and she said, "daniel corwin did this." narrator: the attack on brenda was virtually identical to the attack on wendy, on mary risinger, and the other two cases in which the victims did not survive. in all those cases, the killer used a knife,

which was not left at any of the crime scenes. police in huntsville, texas, were confronting something they'd never seen before. when this case dropped, serial killer wasn't something that came to my mind. burrough: the idea that there was a serial killer in some small texas town, as one of the police said to me, you know, "you might as well tell me there was some nuclear terrorist on the south side of our town making a nuclear bomb before i'd be thinking that there was a serial killer." narrator: corwin served just 9 years of a 40-year sentence for the attempted murder of his high-school classmate. and you say, "well, what gives? this is texas. isn't texas supposed to be super tough on offenders?" well, yes and no. back in the '80s, the problem that texas had was it was growing incredibly rapidly, and with the growth in people came a growth in prisoners. as a result, not only were texas prisons incredibly crowded, but there was immense pressure to get them -- as they said --

"get them out the back door," get them out as fast as possible. narrator: after his release, corwin went to work for a local cabinet maker. corwin's employer, ben pruitt, had taught a carpentry class at the prison. he knew of corwin's past and wanted to give him a second chance. but when local women started getting attacked, mr. pruitt suspected corwin might be responsible. after the highly publicized attack on wendy gauntt, mr. pruitt remembered something strange from right after the murder of mary risinger. ben pruitt recalls daniel corwin coming to work the day after halloween 1987 with cuts on his hands. narrator: could daniel lee corwin be the man who was attacking local women? it looked that way, but in the absence of any physical evidence -- and there was none -- there was no way to be sure. police procedurals look so simple on tv, and they're just not. you know, even when you know it's somebody,

it's not about knowing. you got to prove it. ♪

narrator: texas investigators were familiar with daniel lee corwin. when debra ewing was raped and murdered back in 1987, corwin was brought in for questioning. just hours before debra's murder, corwin had been installing cabinets at the vision center where debra worked, and as an ex-con who served time for a sexually motivated attempted murder, he was a potential suspect. burrough: what really struck the people who interviewed danny that monday morning in huntsville was there was no sense of what they thought a killer would look like or act like. there was no sense of anxiety. there was no sense of, "oh, they got me." he was just flat. he was just without emotion.

narrator: at the time of the debra ewing case, corwin appeared to have a solid alibi. now investigators were becoming convinced he was not only debra's killer but a serial killer. could one of the still-living victims, wendy gauntt, identify him? detectives put corwin's picture in a photo lineup to see if she could. it didn't work. if i recollect correctly, it wasn't a matter of she couldn't identify him for sure. i think it was one of those, "maybe, kind of looks like him, but i'm not sure." narrator: investigators were worried. they were convinced corwin was their killer, but they didn't have a shred of evidence. burrough: they wanted to arrest him, but the d.a. basically said, "it would be nice if you had some physical evidence." narrator: wendy's vehicle had been impounded, and forensic technicians combed every inch of it. burrough: a tech came back with a single fingerprint that was not wendy's. and so they sent it up to temple, where danny had the adolescent record. today, that takes, what, eight minutes.

back then, they mailed the print in a letter. it took two days. when it finally came back, it matched. narrator: daniel lee corwin was immediately arrested for the attempted murder of wendy gauntt. investigators were eager to know what drove corwin to kill. to their disappointment, he really didn't know himself, or at least couldn't explain it. okay. faced with the evidence against him in the wendy gauntt case, corwin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years. but the open murder cases for which corwin might be responsible still begged for resolution. hidalgo: when you're a homicide detective or you investigate homicide, you speak for the dead. there's no one else that's left. narrator: at times, corwin seemed remorseful.

investigators hoped he might confess and sent veteran detective a. p. merillat to interview him. merillat thought a trip to the crime scenes might provoke something in daniel corwin. merillat: i brought him to the car wash. i pulled into the bay that he described as being the one he drove into. and it was really odd to me that he appeared to go into, like, a trancelike state, or -- at first, i thought he was faking, but he continued to do this every time we met. so i think it was real. but he started reliving the events of that night when mary risinger was killed. ♪ narrator: even corwin admitted he got into a trancelike state during these attacks, and this might explain one other commonality with all his crimes. all of them were spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment attacks in public places with plenty of potential witnesses. they're obviouy high-risk cres from the standpoint

that it was high risk to the offender. the suspect is putti himself at high risk of being ught for coitting that kinof a crime. narrat: evtual, coin confessed for coitting to a total of three murders, including the murder of mary risinger. merillat: i de it verylear to him throughout the procs thathat i was doing was gointo endp in a capital murd trial one day, did he realize that, and he said yes. and i said, "do you understand that i'll be on a witness stand one day trying to take your life?" and he said, "yeah, i just wish they would hurry up with it." narrator: corwin came remarkably close to getting away with multiple murders. with dna technology in its infancy, the only physical evidence against him was the single fingerprint he left on wendy gauntt's car. without it, he might have walked away and claimed even more victims. merillat: i'm fully convinced had he not been prosecuted, he'd have do this again. i don't think he would have stopped.

narrator: in december of 1998, daniel lee corwin was execut by lethainjection. he was 40 years old. i didn't want something like daniel corwin to hurt either of my kids or any other kids like tha narrator: investigators are convinced that the sketch created by wendy gauntt and karen taylor, the one that finally alerted detectives to daniel corwin, saved an untold number of lives. ♪ hidalgo: daniel corwin picked the wrong woman to attack that day. he still would have kept killing. there's no doubt in my mind that that would have -- there would've been more people out there dead. taylor: wendy put a face on him. there was a lot of investigative work done on all these cases, but make no mistake, it was wendy who brought down daniel lee corwin. she connected the dots. it was her strength that put it all together. burrough: not a lot of people like that. she actually said to me, "i've had a great life,