♪♪
Up next,
this part of south Texas
was known for being safe.
We didn't lock our doors
back then.
That changed after
local women came under att*ck.
She would not let me go.
She kept telling me,
"Protect me from the bad man."
Are these att*cks
random, or are they related?
The only word that would
come to mind is "evil."
Just pure evil.
♪♪
♪♪
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 b*mb.
♪♪
There's very few days that go by
that I don't think about
this case.
♪♪
Around 10:00 that evening,
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.
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.
I believe she knew
something was up
when this perpetrator pulled up.
The man pulled out a Kn*fe,
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.
He tried to force Mary
into his truck,
but she wasn't going anywhere,
especially with a toddler
to protect.
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.
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.
Looked like a horror film.
Soon as I pulled
into the car wash,
I seen a female body.
And she was covered in blood.
♪♪
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.
This photograph
was taken later that night.
She kept telling me,
"Protect me from the bad man.
He's k*lled 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.
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.
Within minutes, Kristen's family
met her at the sheriff's office.
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."
I'm sorry.
Did Mary know her k*ller?
Was this a random att*ck?
No one knew.
Even worse,
there was no m*rder w*apon,
no fingerprints, or any other
physical evidence at the scene,
and the only eyewitness was
a severely traumatized child.
♪♪
Texas detectives amassed
all the resources
at their disposal
to find Mary Risinger's k*ller.
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.
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.
With the dearth of resources
and the absence
of physical evidence,
Mary's case went cold.
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 dr*gs being sold.
Some things stick with you
more than others.
I've seen a lot of dead people.
I've seen them k*lled
with firewood, hatchets,
sh*t, 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.
Nearly a year
after Mary's m*rder,
Wendy Gauntt, a student
at nearby Texas A&M University,
was leaving campus at lunchtime
when she was confronted
by a man with a Kn*fe
as she got into her car.
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.
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 r*ped her,
tied her to a tree,
and cut her throat.
She's not dead,
but she knows she's dying.
Despite a gaping
neck wound so deep,
she couldn't scream
or even talk,
Wendy was determined to survive.
She survived the att*ck
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 att*cked her is leaving.
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.
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.
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.
Alert detectives
studying this crime
thought it looked familiar.
It bore some similarities
to Mary Risinger's m*rder
just one year earlier,
as well as the r*pe 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.
Perhaps the answer
lay with Wendy,
who was determined to find
the man who tried to k*ll her.
At the hospital,
she had two urgent requests.
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."
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.
♪♪
After her miraculous escape
from a r*pist
who left her for dead,
Wendy Gauntt found herself
unable to speak
because of a nearly fatal
Kn*fe 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.
And that was to identify
the man who tried to k*ll 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.
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?"
To jog Wendy's memory,
Karen Taylor showed her
an FBI manual of facial types.
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.
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.
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.
I've seen a lot of composites
in 40 years of police work,
and never seen one that good.
That looks just like him.
In the mid-1970s,
when Corwin was in high school,
he was found guilty
of assaulting
and attempting to m*rder
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."
The att*ck on Brenda
was virtually identical
to the att*ck on Wendy,
on Mary Risinger,
and the other two cases in which
the victims did not survive.
In all those cases,
the k*ller used a Kn*fe,
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 k*ller wasn't something
that came to my mind.
The idea
that there was a serial k*ller
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 t*rror1st
on the south side of our town
making a nuclear b*mb
before I'd be thinking
that there was a serial k*ller."
Corwin served just
for the attempted m*rder
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.
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 att*cked,
Mr. Pruitt suspected
Corwin might be responsible.
After
the highly publicized att*ck
on Wendy Gauntt,
Mr. Pruitt remembered
something strange
from right after the m*rder
of Mary Risinger.
Ben Pruitt recalls Daniel Corwin
coming to work
the day after Halloween 1987
with cuts on his hands.
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
♪♪
Texas investigators
were familiar
with Daniel Lee Corwin.
When Debra Ewing was r*ped
and m*rder*d back in 1987,
Corwin was brought in
for questioning.
Just hours before
Debra's m*rder,
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 m*rder,
he was a potential suspect.
What really struck
the people who interviewed Danny
that Monday morning
in Huntsville
was there was no sense
of what they thought
a k*ller 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.
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 k*ller
but a serial k*ller.
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."
Investigators were worried.
They were convinced
Corwin was their k*ller,
but they didn't have
a shred of evidence.
They wanted to arrest him,
but the D.A. basically said,
"It would be nice if you had
some physical evidence."
Wendy's vehicle
had been impounded,
and forensic technicians
combed every inch of it.
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.
Daniel Lee Corwin
was immediately arrested
for the attempted m*rder
of Wendy Gauntt.
Investigators were eager to know
what drove Corwin to k*ll.
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 m*rder cases
for which
Corwin might be responsible
still begged for resolution.
When you're a homicide detective
or you investigate homicide,
you speak for the dead.
There's no one else that's left.
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.
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 k*lled.
♪♪
Even Corwin admitted
he got into a trancelike state
during these att*cks,
and this might explain
one other commonality
with all his crimes.
All of them were spontaneous,
spur-of-the-moment att*cks
in public places with plenty
of potential witnesses.
They're obviously high-risk
crimes from the standpoint
that it was high risk
to the offender.
The suspect is putting himself
at high risk of being caught
for committing
that kind of a crime.
Eventually, Corwin confessed
to a total of three murders,
including the m*rder
of Mary Risinger.
I made it very clear
to him throughout the process
that what I was doing
was going to end up in
a capital m*rder 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."
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.
I'm fully convinced
had he not been prosecuted,
he'd have done this again.
I don't think
he would have stopped.
In December of 1998,
Daniel Lee Corwin was ex*cuted
by lethal injection.
He was 40 years old.
I didn't want
something like Daniel Corwin
to hurt either of my kids
or any other kids like that.
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.
♪♪
Daniel Corwin
picked the wrong woman
to att*ck that day.
He still
would have kept k*lling.
There's no doubt in my mind that
that would have...
there would've been
more people out there dead.
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.
Not a lot of people like that.
She actually said to me,
"I've had a great life,
and the way I look on this is,
I've had a great life
for 38 years and one bad day."
♪♪