April 28, 2025 • 40 mins
Rose Brady’s job running Baltimore County’s SVU was a frustrating one. The sexual violence crimes she and her team were investigating were just the tip of the iceberg. Her department was sitting on thousands of unsolved rape cases, dating back decades - with little hope of ever finding the perpetrators.
That was until Rose made an incredible discovery: At a local hospital, a diligent forensic pathologist had kept in storage all the biological evidence from every rape exam he had ever performed. This could be the key to getting justice for hundreds of desperate women.
This is a story of hard work, dogged persistence and a series of incredible coincidences…
If you’ve been affected by sexual violence, there are organisations which can help.
In the US: https://www.nsvrc.org/survivors
In the UK: https://survivorsnetwork.org.uk/get-help/
We want YOUR stories for our Girlfriends hotline! Did your bestie ever bail you out of an awful date with a fake emergency phone call? Or show up on your doorstep with three weeks’ worth of lasagne when you’d just had a baby? Or sit with you in solidarity while you grieved the loss of a beloved grandparent? We want stories that are big or small, meaningful or silly.
Record yours as a voice memo (under 90 seconds) and email to thegirlfriends@novel.audio. Please don’t include your own name or anyone else’s real names.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, listener, I just wanted to give you a heads
up that in this episode we tell quite a lot
of stories about rape and sexual assault. If you're affected
by anything that you hear, there are some resources you
can access for support in the show notes, but also
no pressure to listen if you do want to, though
there's lots of really.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Inspiring stuff in there.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
You're going to hear one detective's dogged quest to bring
perpetrators to justice.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's a great listen, all right, take care.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The story starts on a Friday night back in two
thousand and four, and it starts, as it will go on,
with a mind blowing coincidence.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Oh it was like a scene in the movie How
It Happened. I was going to a barescuit bing girl,
and I invaded a couple of my best friends.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Rose Brady is a police sergeant and after years of
working in homicide, she's just been put in charge of
Baltimore County's SVU, the team investigating cases of sexual violence.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's a frustrating job.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
The crimes she's investigating are just the tip of the iceberg.
Her department is sitting on thousands of unsolved cases dating
back decades. So that Friday night, Rose wants to blow
off some steam in the most wholesome way imaginable by
playing basket bingo, which, as far as I understand, it
(01:21):
is the same as regular bingo, only you play it
for longer burger baskets. I've looked into it and it's
a brand of these old timey looking woven baskets.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Longen Burger biskets are a big thing, or they were
back then two thousand and four. I mean, women will
die for these baskets. Well, if you win the bingo,
your prize is a Longenburger basket in they fill it
with all kinds of goodies.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Rose is heading to this basket extravaganza with one of
her best friends, Mary, who happens to work at a
local hospital.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
She worked in forensics, and she worked for a doctor
Braknegger who I didn't know who. That was driving her
van and I'm sitting in the front on the passenger's side,
and she said to me, well, when are you going
to come and get doctor B's slides? And I'm like,
(02:13):
what are you talking about? I don't even know what
are you talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
This is when Rose discovers that Mary's boss, the forensic
pathologist Dr. Rudy Breitnecker, had in storage all the biological
evidence from every rape exam he had ever performed at
the hospital. Alarm bells went off for Rose. It's like
she'd hit on a solution to a problem she hadn't
even realized could be solved.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
When she said that, I said, going back to what date?
Because in nineteen seventy seven a friend of mine had
been sexually assaulted by a stranger and had never been cleared.
So I asked her how far back did these slides
go and she said to nineteen seventy seven. I was like,
you have got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Those slides could contain the DNA of the man who
attacked Rose's friend, which now in two thousand and four,
could be used to solve her friend's case, but not
only that.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And I said, how many do you have? And she said,
we have like probably hundreds and hundred.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Rose has stumbled upon the key to more than one
thousand cold cases of rape.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I knew, and I think I told her this that
there's a gold mine there.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
On this week's episode of The Girlfriend's Spotlight, the story
of what happened once Rose and her team set their
sights on doctor Brightnecker's database.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Our game plan was that we were going to get hit,
so we were going to like people up.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
They came up with a way to go back in
time and close cases that had lain dormant for decades.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I've never had this feeling before in my life. They
here on the back of my neck is starting to
see up. I mean, it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
In the end, Rose's mission was simple to give justice
to women across Baltimore who thought that they would never
see the day. I'm Annasinfield and from the teams at
Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend's Spotlight, where
(04:25):
we tell stories of women winning today rosels at least
eighty six cold cases. These days, Rose Brady is retired.
(04:52):
Her life is a million miles away from the one
she led as a police officer. She actually lives on
a mule farm now out in the Marria Land countryside,
and she rides motorbikes. She doesn't even own a trivial
thing like a computer anymore. She says she's given up
on all that stuff. But back in two thousand and four,
she was on the rise in Baltimore.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
County PD.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Before taking over the Special Victims Unit, she led the
homicide team for nine years, and homicide detectives they're kind
of like the jocks of the police department.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And homicide you get whatever you need because you've got
a murderer out there. That was a no brainer. I
got whatever I needed. My detectives got whatever they needed,
whether it was equipment, if I needed bodies to work
on the cases that they needed help with anything, we
got it.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
When Rose took charge of the SVU, she instantly felt
a stark contrast.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I go over to sex crimes is what it was
called at the time till we change the name, and
my guys didn't even have the latest equipment. So I
always called this like the red headed stepchild or something.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Rose says she also experienced judges being lenient with sentencing
for perpetrators of sex crimes, and then there were the
general attitudes around sexual violence, which would even seep into
the verdicts juries would deliver.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
One of our cases was a prostitute. She was working,
as you know, in a hotel room, but the guy
came in with a gun and not only did he
robb her, but he raped her. And you know what,
I don't care if you're a prosty or not. You
can still be raped. And we've always had that attitude.
But anyway, this woman was brutally raped by gunpoint and
(06:30):
it was a jury trial. So this jury, we're having
problems that a prostitute can't be raped. He should have
gotten like, I don't know, fifty sixty years. And then
we had a charge that was I think he stole
cell phones and stuff like that. The jury comes back
and finds him not guilty of the first degree rape
(06:53):
of the assault. The only thing they would find him
guilty of was the theft of her cell phone, and
the judge did the only thing he could do. He
gave him the maximum sentence for the theft. So you
even had, you know, people on a jury thinking, our
prostitut can't be raped? Are you kidding me? So frustrating
(07:14):
You got me riled up there.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I can understand that you're riled up about that. That's
infuriating and it makes you feel like there isn't really
you know, the system we have in place isn't necessarily
built to.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Serve you just had to educate people.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Another crucial difference between Rose's experience of the two departments
was what would happen to evidence when cases went cold.
In murder investigations, physical evidence would never be destroyed even
decades later, but things were very different in the Special
Victims Unit.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
I didn't find out until I went into sex crimes,
but departments all over the country for years had destroyed
evidence because basically, you only have enough room in evidence rooms,
so then they would start getting rid of evidence because
you had new evidents coming in and people didn't know
about DNA. No one ever even knew that there would
be such a thing as the evidence they took from
(08:08):
that victim would actually point to a suspect. So a
lot of the cases were destroyed.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But Dr Brightnecker, the forensic pathologist at Greater Baltimore Medical Center,
was kind of a visionary. Starting in nineteen seventy seven,
he catch all the forensic evidence from every rape exam
he ever did, and he did it all off his
own back.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
As a scientist, he was way way ahead of you know,
everyone else, and he always felt that the evidence that
he took from the rape exams would someday lead to
a suspect, and that once he retired his you know,
the friend of mine, who ran the forensic unit in
the hospital. She had literally was going to start destroying
(08:51):
the slides because they didn't need them. They just kept
them because doctor Breitnecker asked them when he retired, he
wanted her to keep it. She didn't know this was
going to happen.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So tell me about these slides, this kind of database,
What does it actually mean?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
What do they look like.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It's just like you see on the old TV shows.
So they're a little glass slide and they would do
smears from the evidence from rape. And what you're looking
for on these slides is sperm.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So after Rose found out about the slides, just weeks
into her new job leading the SVU, she decided on
a plan of action. She knew she couldn't solve all
of the cold cases at once. There are actually over
a thousand of them, and her relatively small team still
had new crimes coming in all the time, so she
told them to look for a very specific kind of
(09:42):
unsolved rape case.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I had my corporal go literally through our log box
and starting at nineteen seventy seven and poor on every
open case that we had, and of course the open
cases were the ones that were stranger cases which were
the ones you wanted to fine.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
What Rose calls a stranger case means the victim was
sexually assaulted by someone they didn't know, often didn't even see,
and so they couldn't identify their attacker.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
The reason why I wanted to pursue them is because
if they reaped this girl and there's a stranger reap,
then they're still out there. So we still wanted to
pursue it because we still had to find whoever did
it and get them in jail, because they were still
probably raping and they.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Were Rose's idea was to find old unsolved cases like
this and see which of the victims were originally examined
by doctor Brightnecker. Then she'd request the DNA evidence from
the hospital and run it through this still fledgling national
database of criminals. But it was slow and expensive to
get this process up and running. It could be months
(10:44):
before her team would be able to crack one of
the cold cases. Only once again, an incredible coincidence happened.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
After the break.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
How a stroke of luck put Rose's team on the
trail of a rape who had been evading detection since
the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I had only been in the Union as a sergeant
for I went in September of two thousand and four,
so it was Christmas time and I'm actually off. I'm
the sergeant, so usually I can take off, lucky you,
and my corporal was in charge. So I'm home and
we hadn't even started picking up the slides yet. I mean,
this was only four months into it and we still
(11:43):
had to figure out how to get them and do
the subpoenas and stuff. So I wasn't even thinking about
getting call like this. And my corporal called me and
he said, Sorrd, we actually got a code has hit
on one of our cases. And I'm thinking, well, wait
a minute, we haven't even got and picked up the
slide jet. How is this possible.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
CODIS is that national DNA database, And this match was
possible because someone in another department had the idea of
running surviving DNA evidence from rape cases through CODIS. It
was a separate effort to use DNA to close unsolved cases.
And what Roses corporal was about to tell her Shot Rose.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
He said, in your names in the report. And I
said what And he said, your names in the report?
Let me read this. It's like apparently you were a decoy,
and I said, you have got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
The name that matched on the DNA database was Thaddius Clemmens,
and it took Rose right back to the start of
her career.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
How I remembered that name from the eighties, eighty six
or whatever it was to two thousand and four, but
it always stuck in my mind. When I got permoted
to corporal, I went to Wilkins Precinct and there was
another corporal there and he had told me about this
rapist that they had, like I don't know how many
cases now, it was like five. He had a whole
booklet on like five or six rapes.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
All these rapes were by the same perpetrator using the
same emo.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
He would grab the women and they were really from
teens to like twenty one. They would always get off
a bus in a certain area at nighttime, and when
they got off the bus, he would grab them from
behind with a gun and he would put what we
call welder's glasses on them. And the welders glasses are
glasses that go in front and on the sides, so
(13:33):
literally they couldn't It's like a blindfold, honestly, So they
never saw him, and he would take him to a
vehicle and they couldn't get out because he had it
fixed so that they couldn't open the door and jump out.
And then he would take these to me young women.
He would drive them to all they could describe was
it seemed like it was a ball field from a school.
(13:53):
Then he would sectually assault them.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
The police weren't able to catch the guy because none
of the women ever saw him, and he always drove
a different car. Back in the mid eighties, when this
corporal told young Rose about the attacker, she could tell
he was really concerned.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Sid was really worried that he's going to kill somebody
because he always had a gun and the one of
the victims started to fight him, then he was going
to kill them. So between the two of us we
came up with. I said to him, well, you know what,
I was around the same age. I was in my
twenties at that time, and I said, well, let's do
a decoy operation.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Why would you do that?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Okay? So then I mean, I've seen that on TV.
I said, I know they do this on TV. Then
he said okay.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
So one night Rose found herself undercover trying to lure
the attacker in out on the street where he stalked
his victims.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I had officers in the in the trees. I mean
I had so much covered. They were everywhere. And I
was walking up and down the sidewalk right around the
same time and one of the bus routes that he had,
and all of a sudden, I hear all these police sirens.
I thought, what the heck is going on? And one
of the guys pulled up next to me and said,
(15:02):
you're not gonna believe this, but he just grabbed a
woman three streets down. I said, you have got to
be kidding me, and she actually got away from him
and gave a description of a vehicle. They pulled it over,
and they pulled a guy out of the truck and
she couldn't ide him. Now remember this was in the eighties,
(15:23):
so there was no such thing as DNA, So if
you couldn't id a victim of a sexual assault, couldn't
pick him out. They were going to walk but anyway,
they had to let him go. And his name was
Thaddius Clements.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Twenty years later, as she sat on the phone to
her corporal in the s FORU, Rose remembered Clemens case.
The corporal told her how they finally connected him to
DNA that was still sitting in the evidence room. Thattius
Clemens was arrested for the sexual assault of a little
girl who was a relative of his.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
He was arrested for it, he was convicted of it,
and that's what put his DNA into the CODIS database.
That's how we got him.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
In two thousand and five, Thaddeus Clemens was convicted of
five rapes he committed between nineteen eighty five and nineteen
eighty eight. It seems to me that the case, while
not the result of doctor Brightnecker's database, was a sort
of call to arms to Rose and her team. It
showed that they could use old DNA evidence to close
rape cases that had been open for decades, and there
(16:28):
were thousands of those. It was time to start solving
them using doctor Brightnecker's slides. So once the funding was
in place, they began to extract the DNA and run
it through the database. Soon matches started coming through.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Every time we got a CODIS hit, well, I mean
we were a boom. We were out there looking for
the guy and locking them up. And that was a
good thing. The way they had to handle the cases though,
was totally different from a current case. Totally different.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, I'm sure, because yeah, you're not dealing with an
immediate crime scene or immediate report.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
No, you literally had to go back twenty and thirty
years and you need to locate the victim. Sometimes they
had to really do some great digging. But my guys
were great with the computers, and so they would locate
the victim.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And it must be really shocking for the victims to
suddenly get a phone call about a case that they
would have moved on from.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Well, and I didn't want phone calls. I wanted my
detectives to see them in person because exactly that. And
most of these people their names have changed, the women,
they've gotten married, and in many cases, their families didn't
even know this had ever happened to them. Wow, you
could be walking in and there could be kids there
and teenagers and they never even knew it happened because
(17:43):
it's so horrific for them and they just wanted to
put it behind them, so they didn't even tell their
immediate family. And I had told my detectives when they
first went there, just to make sure you tell these
women that we've never forgotten you. And the case has
never been closed. It was an open case, so we
never forgotten you.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And were these victims grateful for you guys coming in
and still investigating.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Were they angry?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
They were, but they were in shock, like it just
brought it back. You never forget it. And so we
felt bad about We felt like we were re victimizing them.
But then again the comments that we got from them
once they were convicted, found guilty, it relieved them. And
as one of the victims told me a very first
case in two thousand and four, was that her entire
(18:31):
last twenty years, she was looking over her shoulder because
she never knew if the guy that walked by her
was the one that raped her. Yeah, it is the
only way to give a victim of a sexual assault
that's a stranger closure is if you find them and
you arrest them, because they never know, they'll never know
who did this to them.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Once a hit in the CODIS database came through on
a case, Rose and her team devised a plan. They
wanted to make sure none of the perpetrators could talk
their way out of the.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
When we made an arrest, they wouldn't tell them what
they were arrested for. They were just saying, we've got
to take it back to headquarters. So think about twenty
years later. These guys are no way thinking they're getting
locked up for a rape they did twenty and thirty
years ago. They think they're getting locked up for something current.
So when my detectives go in there, the first thing
(19:22):
they ask them and they'll show them a picture do
you know this person? And they'll look at it and
they'll say no. So they'll be adam and saying I've
never seen her before. So and they'll say a nine,
you know this name first before they show the picture. No,
I've never heard that name, never seen her in my life.
Now this is recorded because by the time we get
to court, their defense attorneys trying to say that they
(19:46):
were girlfriend, boyfriend, or they you know he was, she
was a prostitute, horrible stuff. And then in front of
a jury, we'd play the taped video and here he is,
you know, looking at this saying I've never seen her
in my life. So that was so important because it
also helped the victim if we had such a good case,
(20:06):
which DNA to me, is awesome. If the victim didn't
have to testify that was a good thing. Yeah, And
most of our cases they end up pleading, and they
end up pleading till like they would get thirty forty
to fifty years.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Roses detectives would repeat this process over and over again
across the years.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Every time we got another hit, I couldn't wait to
tell them, and they were just so excited, and it's like, Okay,
put your case together, let's go get them. And we
didn't wait. I mean, as soon as we got the hit,
you know, I'm thinking, I'm not waiting. I mean, these
guys they're still out there raping. We have to get them.
I was not going to have another rape on my watch.
When we knew that this guy was a rapist, we
got hits on him.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So that's okay, ass And tell me how the first
signs of the next huge serial rapist case started appearing.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
When we started submitting the slides. I started getting hits,
like I the first one I had. I had two
hits from like two different case, two different victims in
the suspect Unknow.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
The DNA didn't trace back to a specific name. Instead,
it came back as a match to another one of
the slides in doctor B's database.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
So the same suspect raped these two women, and then
we got another hit and it was the same guy,
and it was all we called the lock raven corridors
on the same area. And when I was up to
the fourth hit, I was beside myself.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Rose could tell that these four DNA matches, which showed
that four seemingly unconnected rapes were committed by the same man,
could turn into a huge case, and.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
So I went to my major. I pretty much wore
out the carpet from my office to his, and I said,
I need help. I need somebody. My detectives don't have
time to do this. I need a help to start
going through all their cases, because after I had four,
it's like, well, if there's four, there's got to be more.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
These four cases spanned from the nineteen seventies all the
way to the early two thousands. Tell me about your
personal connection to this case.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
When I first came on, a friend of mine was
sexually assaulted in it was never cleared.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
This friend, an old colleague of Roses, was the one
she instantly thought of that night she heard about Dr
B's database, and Rose thought of her friend again when
this unknown attacker's DNA got connected to several different cases,
all in the same area. It was exactly the same
place where Rose's friend had been raped back in the
nineteen seventies. When Rose ran her friend's slide, it came
(22:36):
back as a match to the unknown serial rapist DNA.
Now the investigation was personal.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Coming up.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The matches keep mounting, but then a long forgotten TV
interview gives Rose's team their big break.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Glad you, How glad you?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Glad you?
Speaker 4 (23:07):
How glad you.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
One day in the late seventies, Rose's friend, a fellow
police officer, had returned home to her apartment. There was
a stranger, a man hiding out in the bushes near
the entrance. When Rose's friend opened her door, the man
forced his way in and sexually assaulted her. Over the
span of two months, in nineteen seventy eight, two other
(23:31):
women in the same apartment building were attacked and raped
by a stranger. And now in two thousand and seven,
Rose had discovered that her friend's case was connected via
DNA location and m O to what appeared to be
the same serial rapist who had also attacked many other
women in the same area. Over nearly thirty years. This
(23:53):
was already a huge case, but now it was personal
for Rose.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Two.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
If she was going to find the rapist and get
justice for her friend, she needed more people on her team.
So Rose marched into her boss's office to make her demand.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
So he actually gave me a detective who was on
light duty because she was pregnant Eve, and she loved
it because I think she was stuck like answering phones
or something. And I had got a civilian. I gave
him the four cases we had, and I said, Okay,
go back from this time, all the way up till current,
this area in this mo and pull every case that
(24:30):
you can find that's similar to this. Well turned out,
we ended up with I think eleven or twelve cases
that we had slides.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
And then I'd get another hit in another hit, and
I was beside myself because we're spanning nineteen seventy eight
to two thousand, so you know he's still out there somewhere.
So I think she pulled twenty some cases. Her and
the civilian pulled twenty some cases that could be this guy.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Rose's team had uncovered a rapist who, from what they
could estimate, was even more prolific than Thaddeus Clemens. Now,
something you need to know about eve the pregnant detective
on light duty who was helping out with the case,
is that she also happened to be a trained forensic
sketch artist.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
One day, she had gone through the files and she
came into my office because I had her work in
next door, and she said, Sorge, I've actually got a
composit in one of these folders from a victim.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I said, really, a composite, meaning a sketch of the
attacker from the recollection of one of the victims. This
surprise Rose. She didn't think any of the victims had
seen the guy.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
The ones I had been reading. They didn't wake up
until he was already on top of them. And you know,
if it was inside, he covered him with a blanket
outside it was nighttime. She said, yeah, it was one
of the really old cases.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Evelyn told Rose that she wanted to try and age
the original sketch to see what the guy might look like.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Now, twenty years later.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
She was doing it at home and she had a
big table, you know, her dining room table, and she
would have you do it in stages. You know, you
do eyes a whole nine arch. You do different parts
of it, so she'd had them spread all over her table.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
This is the point where I have to issue another
cosmic coincidence of that.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
And this is like another story out of a movie.
But I'm not kidding. Everything was meant to be, is
what I'm going to say. Yeah, her husband, who I
happen to know, was a Baltimer City detective. So he's
looking at these drawings that his wife's doing, and then
he ends up having to go to something that we
all have to go once a year. Police officers have
(26:36):
to go to what's called in service training to do
with policing, obviously current law, case law. Then you might
do physical stuff, how to defend yourself, stuff like that.
And I find this out on Monday. They come walking
into my office, he and his wife. He had a
VHS tape. Okay, so those two thousand and six and
he has it in his hand. They're both looking at
(26:58):
me and they say, I had to go to this
in service training in an instructor did not show up.
I'm not kidding you on this. An instructor did not
show up. So they put this tape in on a
forty eight hours interview.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Wow Like the Substitute Teachers in forty eight Hours is
a true crime news documentary program on CBS. The story
that was played in Eve's husband's training was about a
cold rape case from Baltimore in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, I'm thinking, where are we going with this? So
then they said he's watching this video and when it
was over, he goes up to instructor and say, can
I get a copy of that? My WAFE sergeant needs
to see this.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
The victim in the case was Laura Newman. When she
was eighteen, she was raped by a stranger. She got
home late at night after working her shift as a
waitress in a Mexican restaurant. At around two am, she
was lying in bed when she heard the clatter of
someone breaking in through a window. She disregarded it, thinking
she was maybe dreaming, which is when she was startled
(27:57):
by a pillow pressed onto her face. The case wasn't
solved at the time. Laura never saw her attacker, and
the fingerprints lifted off her windowsill didn't match anyone, but
she never let her case go. She kept calling the
police department, asking them to look at it again. So
in the early two thousands. A couple of detectives reran
(28:17):
the perpetrator's prints through the system.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Well, the fingerprints hit on this guy, Alfonso Hill. They
arrest him for a second degree rape, and he confesses.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
It was such a remarkable story that forty eight Hours
wanted to interview everyone involved, even Hill, who, despite his
lawyer's probably very salient advice, agreed to go on TV.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
They're telling me, Sergi, it looks just like everyone's composite,
that she's aged. And that's like, there's no way, I said, So,
you're telling me he's incarcerated right now, and he's been
incarcerated for a couple of years. Yes, I said, well
he should have.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Hit because Hill was in prison. His DNA should have
already been in the CODIS database. All of these rape
cases should have gotten a match to Hill right away.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I said, it can't be him. Well, I'm just telling you, Sarge,
it looks just like him. So I said, all right,
I'll look at it. I put this VHS tape in
the office. When my detectives found one or player, we
put it in and we've got the composite next to us.
And I'm telling you, I've never had this feeling before
in my life. The hair on the back of my
neck was starting to stand up because this was the guy. Wow,
(29:26):
I mean, it was unbelievable. But I'm still thinking it's
not possible. So I call Maryland State Police because they
run the actual code is database, and I was in
first name basis with the woman Michelle that was running
it by then, and I'd say, Michelle, are you sure
you don't have this guy in the database, Serge, I
don't have them.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Rose hung up, but she couldn't shake the similarity between
Hill and their suspect, so she dunald Michelle's number again.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
So then this time I gave her a name. Like
an hour later, she calls me.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
She told Rose that Alfonso Hills DNA hadn't been put
into the national database yet because Maryland State Police were
extremely backed up with all the DNA that was now
being uploaded.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
She suggested that.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Her team should go to the prison, get their own
swap of Hills DNA and run it against the serial
rapists themselves.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Not a problem. Click. I go right into the office
where my detectives were working that case. I said, get
a search warrant, let's go. We're going to go up
to I think he was in Hagerstown. It's like, we're
getting his swabs. Even when I was in homicide, I
don't think I ever got results back this fest. I'm
sitting in my office a week later, and all of
a sudden, I hear all these people walking and all
(30:41):
this commotion, and all of a sudden, all these my detectives,
the biologists are all standing in my doorway, and I'm
looking at him and I said, please tell me that
Alfonso Hill, that it's him, And they said it's him.
It's like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Bill was still serving time in prison for the rape
of Laura Newman, but Rose's team had DNA evidence that
he'd committed many more. When they confronted him with it,
he seems to realize that there was no point in
denying it. Once he was charged with these rapes, he
pleaded guilty to them. After decades of assaulting women in Baltimore.
In two thousand and eight, Alfonso Hill was finally held
(31:21):
responsible for his crimes. He had been applying for parole,
and now he would likely never be free again. All
but one of the survivors came to his court hearings.
It was an opportunity for them to finally stare him down.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Every single one of them except for one, wanted to
be there. It was just something you just don't see.
We take him to the courtroom and they're all sitting together,
and all of a sudden, the door opens, and I'm
looking at my survivors and it's like like laser. I mean,
as soon as that door open, he started walking horns
(31:57):
and is like laser, because remember, all but one of
them have never saw his face. The state's attorney reads
every single one of these horrific cases, and the judge,
who'd been around a long time, he was speechless. And
then all of a sudden, after they read the last one,
(32:18):
and before the victims could even go up there and
do their impact, he said, you know, that's a shame
doctor Britnecker's not here, because what he's done and what
he thought before anyone else did, is why we're here.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Well, it turns out that Rose was way ahead of
the judge. She also wanted doctor b who is now
in his seventies, to be there for this moment, so
she asked her colleague Linda to bring him to the courtroom.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
So Linda and has to make he such a humble
man and had to make him stand up. Let me
tell you, everybody in that courtroom collapsed. I mean he
got to see what he did.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
That's so beautiful. How did he react to that moment?
Speaker 3 (33:02):
He just he just looked at everybody and you know,
did the hand like okay, you know, thank you, you're well.
You know, he's just very he's a big man and
he's Austrian, so he's got a very heavy Austrian accent,
and he was embarrassed. I guess that. You know, we
made him stand up, but in everybody clapping, even the
even the deputies, I mean everybody.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Well he deserved it.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
So I mean he's passed away. I went to the funeral.
He passed away a couple of years ago. This would
have never happened for all these women without him.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
One an amazing guy.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
It does seem like so much of your work here
has just You've had a lot of coincidences.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
How do you feel about that?
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Yeah, do we call it fate? I don't. I don't know.
Meant to be, I mean God's will, it was time
to get these cases cleared. I don't know, because it
just seemed to fall these cases like this crazy.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, in these incredible ways. Obviously your amazing worked.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Well, it's my detectives, they did the investigations.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
How many of these cold cases did you close in
total in your whole time at the SPU.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
From what I remember, it was eighty.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Six eighty six. You must be so proud of that number.
That's incredible.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So I think it was around eighty six.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, yeah, amazing, but that works still being done as
we speak.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah, they have actually the department actually has a cold
case unit now. Incredible think out when after I retired
they finally put one together.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Oh yeah, that's great. So look, I've got one final question.
I guess it's a bit of a reflective one. I'm
wondering kind of what your message would be to survivors
of sexual violence who are listening to this podcast, because
I know already that there are many and a lot
of those people will have cases that are cold and
(34:52):
haven't been solved.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Well, look at wherever department that handled your case whenever
it was, call them, because most apartments across the country
have called key sexual assault teams now and if you're
a survivor, there's some place you can go to for help.
There's plenty of victim agencies that will help you get
through the emotional part of it, because don't live with
(35:14):
it without telling people. There's so much help out there,
but you have to ask for it. But it is
out there. I guarantee you it's out there. And don't
walk alone.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
No, don't walk on.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I mean that feels very inclusive of the kind of
girlfriend's mantra.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
If we're all in it together on this podcast.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
I know that sexual violence cases are a particularly tough
listen for women. It's not exactly something that we need
to be curious about, because it's something we all have
to be sadly attuned to. One out of six women
in the United States have experienced sexual violence, and research
from the Rape, Abuse and Incess Network suggests that for
(35:59):
every one thousand and rapes that happen in the United States,
only three hundred and eighty four are reported to the
police and only seven end in a felony conviction. It's
depressing data, and for a series that claims it tells
the stories of women winning, this episode is full of
far too many women losing out in the worst possible way.
(36:27):
But what dodr B and Rose have done is a
real win to me. Their dogged determination has brought convictions
into a woefully unprosecuted space and proven that solving cold
cases doesn't just bring about historic justice, but it can
protect people today. Next time the Girlfriend's spotlight, Madison and
(37:02):
Christine become digital detectives.
Speaker 5 (37:07):
So we just started adding new folders of this victim,
this victim, this victim, And let's be honest, like, I
was very motivated to help you, but it's nothing's more
motivating than your own boobs being on the internet.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Hey, it's Anna, you've reached the girlfriend's hotline. Leave your
story after the tone.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Okay, I gotta go love you.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
When I was skiing in Colorado, I fell and broke
my arm, and I was in a lot of pain,
but I was mainly just very sad and very low
because I had a lot of plans are up in
the air and the healing time is really long.
Speaker 6 (37:50):
When I texted my closest group of girlfriends from home
to tell them i'd broken my arm, I sent them
a mirror selfie in the hospital room with my swing,
and most of their first responses we're just commenting on
how great may hair looked, which made me laugh.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
If you have your own story like the one you
just heard, and you'd like the whole Girlfriend's Gang to
hear it, then please send it to us. You can
record it as a voice memo under ninety seconds please
and email it straight to the Girlfriends at novel dot Audio.
Please don't include your name, we're keeping things a little anon.
(38:31):
We want stories like say that one time you faked
an emergency on an awful date and your bestie bailed
you out with a phone call we love her. Or
that time when all of your girls showed up on
your doorstep with five pizzas, two tups of ice cream,
and three bottles of seven you're blanc because the man
of your dreams just dumped you. I want stories that
(38:52):
are meaningful or silly. I want big, I want small.
I'm desperate to hear them, so send them over. This season,
The Girlfriend's Spotlight is supporting the charity Womankind Worldwide. They
do amazing work to help women's rights organizations and movements
to strengthen and grow. If you'd like to find out
(39:14):
more or donate to help them secure equal rights for
women and girls across the globe, you can go to
Womankind dot org dot UK. The Girlfriend's Spotlight is produced
(39:34):
by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit
novel dot audio. The show is hosted by me Anna Sinfield.
This episode was written and produced by Jake o'taibitch. Our
assistant producer is Lucy Carr. Our researcher is Zayana Yusuf.
The editor is Hannah Marshall. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan
(39:57):
are our executive producers. Production management from Joe Savage, Srie
Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by
Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Jacob Tivich,
Nicholas Alexander and Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa
Gerstein and Jemma Freeman. The series artwork was designed by
(40:21):
Christina Lemkool. Willard Foxton is creative director of Development and
Special Thanks to Katrina Norvelle, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson
at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carl Frankel and the
whole team at WM
Hey, listener, I just wanted to give you a heads
up that in this episode we tell quite a lot
of stories about rape and sexual assault. If you're affected
by anything that you hear, there are some resources you
can access for support in the show notes, but also
no pressure to listen if you do want to, though
there's lots of really.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Inspiring stuff in there.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
You're going to hear one detective's dogged quest to bring
perpetrators to justice.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's a great listen, all right, take care.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The story starts on a Friday night back in two
thousand and four, and it starts, as it will go on,
with a mind blowing coincidence.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Oh it was like a scene in the movie How
It Happened. I was going to a barescuit bing girl,
and I invaded a couple of my best friends.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Rose Brady is a police sergeant and after years of
working in homicide, she's just been put in charge of
Baltimore County's SVU, the team investigating cases of sexual violence.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's a frustrating job.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
The crimes she's investigating are just the tip of the iceberg.
Her department is sitting on thousands of unsolved cases dating
back decades. So that Friday night, Rose wants to blow
off some steam in the most wholesome way imaginable by
playing basket bingo, which, as far as I understand, it
(01:21):
is the same as regular bingo, only you play it
for longer burger baskets. I've looked into it and it's
a brand of these old timey looking woven baskets.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Longen Burger biskets are a big thing, or they were
back then two thousand and four. I mean, women will
die for these baskets. Well, if you win the bingo,
your prize is a Longenburger basket in they fill it
with all kinds of goodies.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Rose is heading to this basket extravaganza with one of
her best friends, Mary, who happens to work at a
local hospital.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
She worked in forensics, and she worked for a doctor
Braknegger who I didn't know who. That was driving her
van and I'm sitting in the front on the passenger's side,
and she said to me, well, when are you going
to come and get doctor B's slides? And I'm like,
(02:13):
what are you talking about? I don't even know what
are you talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
This is when Rose discovers that Mary's boss, the forensic
pathologist Dr. Rudy Breitnecker, had in storage all the biological
evidence from every rape exam he had ever performed at
the hospital. Alarm bells went off for Rose. It's like
she'd hit on a solution to a problem she hadn't
even realized could be solved.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
When she said that, I said, going back to what date?
Because in nineteen seventy seven a friend of mine had
been sexually assaulted by a stranger and had never been cleared.
So I asked her how far back did these slides
go and she said to nineteen seventy seven. I was like,
you have got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Those slides could contain the DNA of the man who
attacked Rose's friend, which now in two thousand and four,
could be used to solve her friend's case, but not
only that.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And I said, how many do you have? And she said,
we have like probably hundreds and hundred.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Rose has stumbled upon the key to more than one
thousand cold cases of rape.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I knew, and I think I told her this that
there's a gold mine there.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
On this week's episode of The Girlfriend's Spotlight, the story
of what happened once Rose and her team set their
sights on doctor Brightnecker's database.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Our game plan was that we were going to get hit,
so we were going to like people up.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
They came up with a way to go back in
time and close cases that had lain dormant for decades.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I've never had this feeling before in my life. They
here on the back of my neck is starting to
see up. I mean, it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
In the end, Rose's mission was simple to give justice
to women across Baltimore who thought that they would never
see the day. I'm Annasinfield and from the teams at
Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend's Spotlight, where
(04:25):
we tell stories of women winning today rosels at least
eighty six cold cases. These days, Rose Brady is retired.
(04:52):
Her life is a million miles away from the one
she led as a police officer. She actually lives on
a mule farm now out in the Marria Land countryside,
and she rides motorbikes. She doesn't even own a trivial
thing like a computer anymore. She says she's given up
on all that stuff. But back in two thousand and four,
she was on the rise in Baltimore.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
County PD.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Before taking over the Special Victims Unit, she led the
homicide team for nine years, and homicide detectives they're kind
of like the jocks of the police department.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And homicide you get whatever you need because you've got
a murderer out there. That was a no brainer. I
got whatever I needed. My detectives got whatever they needed,
whether it was equipment, if I needed bodies to work
on the cases that they needed help with anything, we
got it.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
When Rose took charge of the SVU, she instantly felt
a stark contrast.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I go over to sex crimes is what it was
called at the time till we change the name, and
my guys didn't even have the latest equipment. So I
always called this like the red headed stepchild or something.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Rose says she also experienced judges being lenient with sentencing
for perpetrators of sex crimes, and then there were the
general attitudes around sexual violence, which would even seep into
the verdicts juries would deliver.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
One of our cases was a prostitute. She was working,
as you know, in a hotel room, but the guy
came in with a gun and not only did he
robb her, but he raped her. And you know what,
I don't care if you're a prosty or not. You
can still be raped. And we've always had that attitude.
But anyway, this woman was brutally raped by gunpoint and
(06:30):
it was a jury trial. So this jury, we're having
problems that a prostitute can't be raped. He should have
gotten like, I don't know, fifty sixty years. And then
we had a charge that was I think he stole
cell phones and stuff like that. The jury comes back
and finds him not guilty of the first degree rape
(06:53):
of the assault. The only thing they would find him
guilty of was the theft of her cell phone, and
the judge did the only thing he could do. He
gave him the maximum sentence for the theft. So you
even had, you know, people on a jury thinking, our
prostitut can't be raped? Are you kidding me? So frustrating
(07:14):
You got me riled up there.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I can understand that you're riled up about that. That's
infuriating and it makes you feel like there isn't really
you know, the system we have in place isn't necessarily
built to.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Serve you just had to educate people.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Another crucial difference between Rose's experience of the two departments
was what would happen to evidence when cases went cold.
In murder investigations, physical evidence would never be destroyed even
decades later, but things were very different in the Special
Victims Unit.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
I didn't find out until I went into sex crimes,
but departments all over the country for years had destroyed
evidence because basically, you only have enough room in evidence rooms,
so then they would start getting rid of evidence because
you had new evidents coming in and people didn't know
about DNA. No one ever even knew that there would
be such a thing as the evidence they took from
(08:08):
that victim would actually point to a suspect. So a
lot of the cases were destroyed.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But Dr Brightnecker, the forensic pathologist at Greater Baltimore Medical Center,
was kind of a visionary. Starting in nineteen seventy seven,
he catch all the forensic evidence from every rape exam
he ever did, and he did it all off his
own back.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
As a scientist, he was way way ahead of you know,
everyone else, and he always felt that the evidence that
he took from the rape exams would someday lead to
a suspect, and that once he retired his you know,
the friend of mine, who ran the forensic unit in
the hospital. She had literally was going to start destroying
(08:51):
the slides because they didn't need them. They just kept
them because doctor Breitnecker asked them when he retired, he
wanted her to keep it. She didn't know this was
going to happen.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So tell me about these slides, this kind of database,
What does it actually mean?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
What do they look like.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It's just like you see on the old TV shows.
So they're a little glass slide and they would do
smears from the evidence from rape. And what you're looking
for on these slides is sperm.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So after Rose found out about the slides, just weeks
into her new job leading the SVU, she decided on
a plan of action. She knew she couldn't solve all
of the cold cases at once. There are actually over
a thousand of them, and her relatively small team still
had new crimes coming in all the time, so she
told them to look for a very specific kind of
(09:42):
unsolved rape case.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I had my corporal go literally through our log box
and starting at nineteen seventy seven and poor on every
open case that we had, and of course the open
cases were the ones that were stranger cases which were
the ones you wanted to fine.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
What Rose calls a stranger case means the victim was
sexually assaulted by someone they didn't know, often didn't even see,
and so they couldn't identify their attacker.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
The reason why I wanted to pursue them is because
if they reaped this girl and there's a stranger reap,
then they're still out there. So we still wanted to
pursue it because we still had to find whoever did
it and get them in jail, because they were still
probably raping and they.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Were Rose's idea was to find old unsolved cases like
this and see which of the victims were originally examined
by doctor Brightnecker. Then she'd request the DNA evidence from
the hospital and run it through this still fledgling national
database of criminals. But it was slow and expensive to
get this process up and running. It could be months
(10:44):
before her team would be able to crack one of
the cold cases. Only once again, an incredible coincidence happened.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
After the break.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
How a stroke of luck put Rose's team on the
trail of a rape who had been evading detection since
the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I had only been in the Union as a sergeant
for I went in September of two thousand and four,
so it was Christmas time and I'm actually off. I'm
the sergeant, so usually I can take off, lucky you,
and my corporal was in charge. So I'm home and
we hadn't even started picking up the slides yet. I mean,
this was only four months into it and we still
(11:43):
had to figure out how to get them and do
the subpoenas and stuff. So I wasn't even thinking about
getting call like this. And my corporal called me and
he said, Sorrd, we actually got a code has hit
on one of our cases. And I'm thinking, well, wait
a minute, we haven't even got and picked up the
slide jet. How is this possible.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
CODIS is that national DNA database, And this match was
possible because someone in another department had the idea of
running surviving DNA evidence from rape cases through CODIS. It
was a separate effort to use DNA to close unsolved cases.
And what Roses corporal was about to tell her Shot Rose.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
He said, in your names in the report. And I
said what And he said, your names in the report?
Let me read this. It's like apparently you were a decoy,
and I said, you have got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
The name that matched on the DNA database was Thaddius Clemmens,
and it took Rose right back to the start of
her career.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
How I remembered that name from the eighties, eighty six
or whatever it was to two thousand and four, but
it always stuck in my mind. When I got permoted
to corporal, I went to Wilkins Precinct and there was
another corporal there and he had told me about this
rapist that they had, like I don't know how many
cases now, it was like five. He had a whole
booklet on like five or six rapes.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
All these rapes were by the same perpetrator using the
same emo.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
He would grab the women and they were really from
teens to like twenty one. They would always get off
a bus in a certain area at nighttime, and when
they got off the bus, he would grab them from
behind with a gun and he would put what we
call welder's glasses on them. And the welders glasses are
glasses that go in front and on the sides, so
(13:33):
literally they couldn't It's like a blindfold, honestly, So they
never saw him, and he would take him to a
vehicle and they couldn't get out because he had it
fixed so that they couldn't open the door and jump out.
And then he would take these to me young women.
He would drive them to all they could describe was
it seemed like it was a ball field from a school.
(13:53):
Then he would sectually assault them.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
The police weren't able to catch the guy because none
of the women ever saw him, and he always drove
a different car. Back in the mid eighties, when this
corporal told young Rose about the attacker, she could tell
he was really concerned.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Sid was really worried that he's going to kill somebody
because he always had a gun and the one of
the victims started to fight him, then he was going
to kill them. So between the two of us we
came up with. I said to him, well, you know what,
I was around the same age. I was in my
twenties at that time, and I said, well, let's do
a decoy operation.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Why would you do that?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Okay? So then I mean, I've seen that on TV.
I said, I know they do this on TV. Then
he said okay.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
So one night Rose found herself undercover trying to lure
the attacker in out on the street where he stalked
his victims.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I had officers in the in the trees. I mean
I had so much covered. They were everywhere. And I
was walking up and down the sidewalk right around the
same time and one of the bus routes that he had,
and all of a sudden, I hear all these police sirens.
I thought, what the heck is going on? And one
of the guys pulled up next to me and said,
(15:02):
you're not gonna believe this, but he just grabbed a
woman three streets down. I said, you have got to
be kidding me, and she actually got away from him
and gave a description of a vehicle. They pulled it over,
and they pulled a guy out of the truck and
she couldn't ide him. Now remember this was in the eighties,
(15:23):
so there was no such thing as DNA, So if
you couldn't id a victim of a sexual assault, couldn't
pick him out. They were going to walk but anyway,
they had to let him go. And his name was
Thaddius Clements.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Twenty years later, as she sat on the phone to
her corporal in the s FORU, Rose remembered Clemens case.
The corporal told her how they finally connected him to
DNA that was still sitting in the evidence room. Thattius
Clemens was arrested for the sexual assault of a little
girl who was a relative of his.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
He was arrested for it, he was convicted of it,
and that's what put his DNA into the CODIS database.
That's how we got him.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
In two thousand and five, Thaddeus Clemens was convicted of
five rapes he committed between nineteen eighty five and nineteen
eighty eight. It seems to me that the case, while
not the result of doctor Brightnecker's database, was a sort
of call to arms to Rose and her team. It
showed that they could use old DNA evidence to close
rape cases that had been open for decades, and there
(16:28):
were thousands of those. It was time to start solving
them using doctor Brightnecker's slides. So once the funding was
in place, they began to extract the DNA and run
it through the database. Soon matches started coming through.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Every time we got a CODIS hit, well, I mean
we were a boom. We were out there looking for
the guy and locking them up. And that was a
good thing. The way they had to handle the cases though,
was totally different from a current case. Totally different.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, I'm sure, because yeah, you're not dealing with an
immediate crime scene or immediate report.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
No, you literally had to go back twenty and thirty
years and you need to locate the victim. Sometimes they
had to really do some great digging. But my guys
were great with the computers, and so they would locate
the victim.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And it must be really shocking for the victims to
suddenly get a phone call about a case that they
would have moved on from.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Well, and I didn't want phone calls. I wanted my
detectives to see them in person because exactly that. And
most of these people their names have changed, the women,
they've gotten married, and in many cases, their families didn't
even know this had ever happened to them. Wow, you
could be walking in and there could be kids there
and teenagers and they never even knew it happened because
(17:43):
it's so horrific for them and they just wanted to
put it behind them, so they didn't even tell their
immediate family. And I had told my detectives when they
first went there, just to make sure you tell these
women that we've never forgotten you. And the case has
never been closed. It was an open case, so we
never forgotten you.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And were these victims grateful for you guys coming in
and still investigating.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Were they angry?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
They were, but they were in shock, like it just
brought it back. You never forget it. And so we
felt bad about We felt like we were re victimizing them.
But then again the comments that we got from them
once they were convicted, found guilty, it relieved them. And
as one of the victims told me a very first
case in two thousand and four, was that her entire
(18:31):
last twenty years, she was looking over her shoulder because
she never knew if the guy that walked by her
was the one that raped her. Yeah, it is the
only way to give a victim of a sexual assault
that's a stranger closure is if you find them and
you arrest them, because they never know, they'll never know
who did this to them.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Once a hit in the CODIS database came through on
a case, Rose and her team devised a plan. They
wanted to make sure none of the perpetrators could talk
their way out of the.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
When we made an arrest, they wouldn't tell them what
they were arrested for. They were just saying, we've got
to take it back to headquarters. So think about twenty
years later. These guys are no way thinking they're getting
locked up for a rape they did twenty and thirty
years ago. They think they're getting locked up for something current.
So when my detectives go in there, the first thing
(19:22):
they ask them and they'll show them a picture do
you know this person? And they'll look at it and
they'll say no. So they'll be adam and saying I've
never seen her before. So and they'll say a nine,
you know this name first before they show the picture. No,
I've never heard that name, never seen her in my life.
Now this is recorded because by the time we get
to court, their defense attorneys trying to say that they
(19:46):
were girlfriend, boyfriend, or they you know he was, she
was a prostitute, horrible stuff. And then in front of
a jury, we'd play the taped video and here he is,
you know, looking at this saying I've never seen her
in my life. So that was so important because it
also helped the victim if we had such a good case,
(20:06):
which DNA to me, is awesome. If the victim didn't
have to testify that was a good thing. Yeah, And
most of our cases they end up pleading, and they
end up pleading till like they would get thirty forty
to fifty years.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Roses detectives would repeat this process over and over again
across the years.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Every time we got another hit, I couldn't wait to
tell them, and they were just so excited, and it's like, Okay,
put your case together, let's go get them. And we
didn't wait. I mean, as soon as we got the hit,
you know, I'm thinking, I'm not waiting. I mean, these
guys they're still out there raping. We have to get them.
I was not going to have another rape on my watch.
When we knew that this guy was a rapist, we
got hits on him.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So that's okay, ass And tell me how the first
signs of the next huge serial rapist case started appearing.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
When we started submitting the slides. I started getting hits,
like I the first one I had. I had two
hits from like two different case, two different victims in
the suspect Unknow.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
The DNA didn't trace back to a specific name. Instead,
it came back as a match to another one of
the slides in doctor B's database.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
So the same suspect raped these two women, and then
we got another hit and it was the same guy,
and it was all we called the lock raven corridors
on the same area. And when I was up to
the fourth hit, I was beside myself.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Rose could tell that these four DNA matches, which showed
that four seemingly unconnected rapes were committed by the same man,
could turn into a huge case, and.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
So I went to my major. I pretty much wore
out the carpet from my office to his, and I said,
I need help. I need somebody. My detectives don't have
time to do this. I need a help to start
going through all their cases, because after I had four,
it's like, well, if there's four, there's got to be more.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
These four cases spanned from the nineteen seventies all the
way to the early two thousands. Tell me about your
personal connection to this case.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
When I first came on, a friend of mine was
sexually assaulted in it was never cleared.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
This friend, an old colleague of Roses, was the one
she instantly thought of that night she heard about Dr
B's database, and Rose thought of her friend again when
this unknown attacker's DNA got connected to several different cases,
all in the same area. It was exactly the same
place where Rose's friend had been raped back in the
nineteen seventies. When Rose ran her friend's slide, it came
(22:36):
back as a match to the unknown serial rapist DNA.
Now the investigation was personal.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Coming up.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The matches keep mounting, but then a long forgotten TV
interview gives Rose's team their big break.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Glad you, How glad you?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Glad you?
Speaker 4 (23:07):
How glad you.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
One day in the late seventies, Rose's friend, a fellow
police officer, had returned home to her apartment. There was
a stranger, a man hiding out in the bushes near
the entrance. When Rose's friend opened her door, the man
forced his way in and sexually assaulted her. Over the
span of two months, in nineteen seventy eight, two other
(23:31):
women in the same apartment building were attacked and raped
by a stranger. And now in two thousand and seven,
Rose had discovered that her friend's case was connected via
DNA location and m O to what appeared to be
the same serial rapist who had also attacked many other
women in the same area. Over nearly thirty years. This
(23:53):
was already a huge case, but now it was personal
for Rose.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Two.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
If she was going to find the rapist and get
justice for her friend, she needed more people on her team.
So Rose marched into her boss's office to make her demand.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
So he actually gave me a detective who was on
light duty because she was pregnant Eve, and she loved
it because I think she was stuck like answering phones
or something. And I had got a civilian. I gave
him the four cases we had, and I said, Okay,
go back from this time, all the way up till current,
this area in this mo and pull every case that
(24:30):
you can find that's similar to this. Well turned out,
we ended up with I think eleven or twelve cases
that we had slides.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
And then I'd get another hit in another hit, and
I was beside myself because we're spanning nineteen seventy eight
to two thousand, so you know he's still out there somewhere.
So I think she pulled twenty some cases. Her and
the civilian pulled twenty some cases that could be this guy.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Rose's team had uncovered a rapist who, from what they
could estimate, was even more prolific than Thaddeus Clemens. Now,
something you need to know about eve the pregnant detective
on light duty who was helping out with the case,
is that she also happened to be a trained forensic
sketch artist.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
One day, she had gone through the files and she
came into my office because I had her work in
next door, and she said, Sorge, I've actually got a
composit in one of these folders from a victim.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I said, really, a composite, meaning a sketch of the
attacker from the recollection of one of the victims. This
surprise Rose. She didn't think any of the victims had
seen the guy.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
The ones I had been reading. They didn't wake up
until he was already on top of them. And you know,
if it was inside, he covered him with a blanket
outside it was nighttime. She said, yeah, it was one
of the really old cases.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Evelyn told Rose that she wanted to try and age
the original sketch to see what the guy might look like.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Now, twenty years later.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
She was doing it at home and she had a
big table, you know, her dining room table, and she
would have you do it in stages. You know, you
do eyes a whole nine arch. You do different parts
of it, so she'd had them spread all over her table.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
This is the point where I have to issue another
cosmic coincidence of that.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
And this is like another story out of a movie.
But I'm not kidding. Everything was meant to be, is
what I'm going to say. Yeah, her husband, who I
happen to know, was a Baltimer City detective. So he's
looking at these drawings that his wife's doing, and then
he ends up having to go to something that we
all have to go once a year. Police officers have
(26:36):
to go to what's called in service training to do
with policing, obviously current law, case law. Then you might
do physical stuff, how to defend yourself, stuff like that.
And I find this out on Monday. They come walking
into my office, he and his wife. He had a
VHS tape. Okay, so those two thousand and six and
he has it in his hand. They're both looking at
(26:58):
me and they say, I had to go to this
in service training in an instructor did not show up.
I'm not kidding you on this. An instructor did not
show up. So they put this tape in on a
forty eight hours interview.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Wow Like the Substitute Teachers in forty eight Hours is
a true crime news documentary program on CBS. The story
that was played in Eve's husband's training was about a
cold rape case from Baltimore in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, I'm thinking, where are we going with this? So
then they said he's watching this video and when it
was over, he goes up to instructor and say, can
I get a copy of that? My WAFE sergeant needs
to see this.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
The victim in the case was Laura Newman. When she
was eighteen, she was raped by a stranger. She got
home late at night after working her shift as a
waitress in a Mexican restaurant. At around two am, she
was lying in bed when she heard the clatter of
someone breaking in through a window. She disregarded it, thinking
she was maybe dreaming, which is when she was startled
(27:57):
by a pillow pressed onto her face. The case wasn't
solved at the time. Laura never saw her attacker, and
the fingerprints lifted off her windowsill didn't match anyone, but
she never let her case go. She kept calling the
police department, asking them to look at it again. So
in the early two thousands. A couple of detectives reran
(28:17):
the perpetrator's prints through the system.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Well, the fingerprints hit on this guy, Alfonso Hill. They
arrest him for a second degree rape, and he confesses.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
It was such a remarkable story that forty eight Hours
wanted to interview everyone involved, even Hill, who, despite his
lawyer's probably very salient advice, agreed to go on TV.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
They're telling me, Sergi, it looks just like everyone's composite,
that she's aged. And that's like, there's no way, I said, So,
you're telling me he's incarcerated right now, and he's been
incarcerated for a couple of years. Yes, I said, well
he should have.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Hit because Hill was in prison. His DNA should have
already been in the CODIS database. All of these rape
cases should have gotten a match to Hill right away.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I said, it can't be him. Well, I'm just telling you, Sarge,
it looks just like him. So I said, all right,
I'll look at it. I put this VHS tape in
the office. When my detectives found one or player, we
put it in and we've got the composite next to us.
And I'm telling you, I've never had this feeling before
in my life. The hair on the back of my
neck was starting to stand up because this was the guy. Wow,
(29:26):
I mean, it was unbelievable. But I'm still thinking it's
not possible. So I call Maryland State Police because they
run the actual code is database, and I was in
first name basis with the woman Michelle that was running
it by then, and I'd say, Michelle, are you sure
you don't have this guy in the database, Serge, I
don't have them.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Rose hung up, but she couldn't shake the similarity between
Hill and their suspect, so she dunald Michelle's number again.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
So then this time I gave her a name. Like
an hour later, she calls me.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
She told Rose that Alfonso Hills DNA hadn't been put
into the national database yet because Maryland State Police were
extremely backed up with all the DNA that was now
being uploaded.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
She suggested that.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Her team should go to the prison, get their own
swap of Hills DNA and run it against the serial
rapists themselves.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Not a problem. Click. I go right into the office
where my detectives were working that case. I said, get
a search warrant, let's go. We're going to go up
to I think he was in Hagerstown. It's like, we're
getting his swabs. Even when I was in homicide, I
don't think I ever got results back this fest. I'm
sitting in my office a week later, and all of
a sudden, I hear all these people walking and all
(30:41):
this commotion, and all of a sudden, all these my detectives,
the biologists are all standing in my doorway, and I'm
looking at him and I said, please tell me that
Alfonso Hill, that it's him, And they said it's him.
It's like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Bill was still serving time in prison for the rape
of Laura Newman, but Rose's team had DNA evidence that
he'd committed many more. When they confronted him with it,
he seems to realize that there was no point in
denying it. Once he was charged with these rapes, he
pleaded guilty to them. After decades of assaulting women in Baltimore.
In two thousand and eight, Alfonso Hill was finally held
(31:21):
responsible for his crimes. He had been applying for parole,
and now he would likely never be free again. All
but one of the survivors came to his court hearings.
It was an opportunity for them to finally stare him down.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Every single one of them except for one, wanted to
be there. It was just something you just don't see.
We take him to the courtroom and they're all sitting together,
and all of a sudden, the door opens, and I'm
looking at my survivors and it's like like laser. I mean,
as soon as that door open, he started walking horns
(31:57):
and is like laser, because remember, all but one of
them have never saw his face. The state's attorney reads
every single one of these horrific cases, and the judge,
who'd been around a long time, he was speechless. And
then all of a sudden, after they read the last one,
(32:18):
and before the victims could even go up there and
do their impact, he said, you know, that's a shame
doctor Britnecker's not here, because what he's done and what
he thought before anyone else did, is why we're here.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Well, it turns out that Rose was way ahead of
the judge. She also wanted doctor b who is now
in his seventies, to be there for this moment, so
she asked her colleague Linda to bring him to the courtroom.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
So Linda and has to make he such a humble
man and had to make him stand up. Let me
tell you, everybody in that courtroom collapsed. I mean he
got to see what he did.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
That's so beautiful. How did he react to that moment?
Speaker 3 (33:02):
He just he just looked at everybody and you know,
did the hand like okay, you know, thank you, you're well.
You know, he's just very he's a big man and
he's Austrian, so he's got a very heavy Austrian accent,
and he was embarrassed. I guess that. You know, we
made him stand up, but in everybody clapping, even the
even the deputies, I mean everybody.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Well he deserved it.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
So I mean he's passed away. I went to the funeral.
He passed away a couple of years ago. This would
have never happened for all these women without him.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
One an amazing guy.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
It does seem like so much of your work here
has just You've had a lot of coincidences.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
How do you feel about that?
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Yeah, do we call it fate? I don't. I don't know.
Meant to be, I mean God's will, it was time
to get these cases cleared. I don't know, because it
just seemed to fall these cases like this crazy.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, in these incredible ways. Obviously your amazing worked.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Well, it's my detectives, they did the investigations.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
How many of these cold cases did you close in
total in your whole time at the SPU.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
From what I remember, it was eighty.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Six eighty six. You must be so proud of that number.
That's incredible.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So I think it was around eighty six.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, yeah, amazing, but that works still being done as
we speak.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah, they have actually the department actually has a cold
case unit now. Incredible think out when after I retired
they finally put one together.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Oh yeah, that's great. So look, I've got one final question.
I guess it's a bit of a reflective one. I'm
wondering kind of what your message would be to survivors
of sexual violence who are listening to this podcast, because
I know already that there are many and a lot
of those people will have cases that are cold and
(34:52):
haven't been solved.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Well, look at wherever department that handled your case whenever
it was, call them, because most apartments across the country
have called key sexual assault teams now and if you're
a survivor, there's some place you can go to for help.
There's plenty of victim agencies that will help you get
through the emotional part of it, because don't live with
(35:14):
it without telling people. There's so much help out there,
but you have to ask for it. But it is
out there. I guarantee you it's out there. And don't
walk alone.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
No, don't walk on.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I mean that feels very inclusive of the kind of
girlfriend's mantra.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
If we're all in it together on this podcast.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
I know that sexual violence cases are a particularly tough
listen for women. It's not exactly something that we need
to be curious about, because it's something we all have
to be sadly attuned to. One out of six women
in the United States have experienced sexual violence, and research
from the Rape, Abuse and Incess Network suggests that for
(35:59):
every one thousand and rapes that happen in the United States,
only three hundred and eighty four are reported to the
police and only seven end in a felony conviction. It's
depressing data, and for a series that claims it tells
the stories of women winning, this episode is full of
far too many women losing out in the worst possible way.
(36:27):
But what dodr B and Rose have done is a
real win to me. Their dogged determination has brought convictions
into a woefully unprosecuted space and proven that solving cold
cases doesn't just bring about historic justice, but it can
protect people today. Next time the Girlfriend's spotlight, Madison and
(37:02):
Christine become digital detectives.
Speaker 5 (37:07):
So we just started adding new folders of this victim,
this victim, this victim, And let's be honest, like, I
was very motivated to help you, but it's nothing's more
motivating than your own boobs being on the internet.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Hey, it's Anna, you've reached the girlfriend's hotline. Leave your
story after the tone.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Okay, I gotta go love you.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
When I was skiing in Colorado, I fell and broke
my arm, and I was in a lot of pain,
but I was mainly just very sad and very low
because I had a lot of plans are up in
the air and the healing time is really long.
Speaker 6 (37:50):
When I texted my closest group of girlfriends from home
to tell them i'd broken my arm, I sent them
a mirror selfie in the hospital room with my swing,
and most of their first responses we're just commenting on
how great may hair looked, which made me laugh.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
If you have your own story like the one you
just heard, and you'd like the whole Girlfriend's Gang to
hear it, then please send it to us. You can
record it as a voice memo under ninety seconds please
and email it straight to the Girlfriends at novel dot Audio.
Please don't include your name, we're keeping things a little anon.
(38:31):
We want stories like say that one time you faked
an emergency on an awful date and your bestie bailed
you out with a phone call we love her. Or
that time when all of your girls showed up on
your doorstep with five pizzas, two tups of ice cream,
and three bottles of seven you're blanc because the man
of your dreams just dumped you. I want stories that
(38:52):
are meaningful or silly. I want big, I want small.
I'm desperate to hear them, so send them over. This season,
The Girlfriend's Spotlight is supporting the charity Womankind Worldwide. They
do amazing work to help women's rights organizations and movements
to strengthen and grow. If you'd like to find out
(39:14):
more or donate to help them secure equal rights for
women and girls across the globe, you can go to
Womankind dot org dot UK. The Girlfriend's Spotlight is produced
(39:34):
by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit
novel dot audio. The show is hosted by me Anna Sinfield.
This episode was written and produced by Jake o'taibitch. Our
assistant producer is Lucy Carr. Our researcher is Zayana Yusuf.
The editor is Hannah Marshall. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan
(39:57):
are our executive producers. Production management from Joe Savage, Srie
Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by
Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Jacob Tivich,
Nicholas Alexander and Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa
Gerstein and Jemma Freeman. The series artwork was designed by
(40:21):
Christina Lemkool. Willard Foxton is creative director of Development and
Special Thanks to Katrina Norvelle, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson
at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carl Frankel and the
whole team at WM
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