transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. New York State Investigator Dave Madden heads up a team of four men and women who work in a constant stream of murder cases.

Speaker 2:
[00:35] And even he pointed out that it was a handgun, and Darling was shot with a shotgun.

Speaker 1:
[00:40] Many of the homicides are fresh. Some are decades cold.

Speaker 3:
[00:45] He kind of substantiates everything he said 20 years ago, but gave us a little bit more information on that.

Speaker 1:
[00:52] One of the files opened by the squad takes them back to August of 1987 and the banks of the Hudson River.

Speaker 4:
[01:00] I was told to respond to this area in connection to an apparent homicide that occurred.

Speaker 1:
[01:06] In August 1987, John Murray works homicide for the New York State Police.

Speaker 4:
[01:12] As I walked down towards the end of the trail here and reaching the river, I noted that there was a concrete shelf-like area, and against that shelf area, there was the body of a woman lying partially submerged in the water. Her back was scraped up from what looked like her sliding down this rough surface of the concrete into the river.

Speaker 1:
[01:38] Initial signs point to murder. An autopsy will later determine the victim had been strangled and confirms the presence of semen and the possibility of a sexual assault. Meanwhile, John Murray needs to ID his victim.

Speaker 4:
[01:53] Her pocketbook wasn't found. There was nothing here that indicated who she was.

Speaker 1:
[01:59] An APB is put out and investigator Murray waits for someone somewhere to recognize his victim.

Speaker 5:
[02:07] Well, she didn't come home. And I knew she always would come home. And this time she didn't.

Speaker 1:
[02:16] Mary Ann Diso is worried. She has not seen her daughter, 19-year-old Diana, since last night.

Speaker 5:
[02:24] It is now going on 11 p.m. We were sitting watching the news at 11 o'clock. And they had said that they had, you know, found an individual on the other side of the Hudson in North Greenbush. And I looked at my husband and he looked at me and I said, Oh, no, I said, this can't be.

Speaker 1:
[02:47] The family contacts police, who put them in touch with investigators working the Hudson River case.

Speaker 5:
[02:53] One of the investigators had her brush and, you know, he showed me that and he said, is this hers? And I said, yes.

Speaker 4:
[03:04] Right away, the mother believes that the boyfriend, Michael Pullman, is probably involved.

Speaker 5:
[03:11] He was like, you know, the motorcycle guy, used to hang out and, you know, kind of see the bars in Albany.

Speaker 4:
[03:20] He was an automobile mechanic. He had a reputation for having a temper. He also was known to be a little bit abusive.

Speaker 5:
[03:29] He wasn't your stand-up, everyday guy, you know. That's why I didn't approve of her being with him.

Speaker 1:
[03:38] Marianne may not have approved, but Diana was infatuated with Pullman. In fact, he was the only thing on her mind the night she went missing.

Speaker 4:
[03:48] Diana apparently made several phone calls trying to contact Michael, hoping that they were going to have some sort of a rendezvous that night.

Speaker 5:
[03:55] That was her mission. There was no other reason to think of anybody else. It was just him.

Speaker 4:
[04:06] Well, we went looking for him, obviously, that very next morning as a person that we really needed to interview because she had, in fact, left looking for him. We wanted to know if she had found him.

Speaker 6:
[04:19] I was on my way to work when I got pulled over by half a dozen police officers and state police and everything else.

Speaker 1:
[04:26] Michael Pullman is surprised to see blue lights flashing in his rearview mirror. His thoughts immediately turned to Diana Diso.

Speaker 6:
[04:35] And I says, I know what this is all about. They said, oh, you do? I have a feeling. And they wanted to know, what did I think? I said, this is about Diana Diso.

Speaker 4:
[04:47] We found that to be kind of a strange thing for him to ask right off the top like that. I mean, he could have been stopped for any number of things. And the first thing that comes out of his mouth is this in relation to Diana.

Speaker 1:
[05:00] Pullman is brought in for questioning and told Diana has been murdered.

Speaker 6:
[05:06] I just flipped. I just couldn't believe it. I didn't know what to do, who to turn to. I just didn't know where to go with it.

Speaker 4:
[05:15] Well, this whole area was very well and highly used.

Speaker 1:
[05:20] Detectives know exactly where to go. Focusing on Pullman's whereabouts, the night Diana went missing.

Speaker 4:
[05:27] He told us he did not see Diana that night. He told us that he had never had any sexual contact with Diana. He told us that he had to go in the bed at 1 o'clock in the morning with his girlfriend. The alibi that he had was basically substantiated with the girl he was living with, but it was pretty shaky.

Speaker 1:
[05:45] Shaky because some witnesses say Pullman was out in his truck the night Diana went missing. Some even recall seeing his truck in the area where Diana's body was found.

Speaker 4:
[05:57] It was a red truck and it had a blue and green hood. It would be a truck that if you saw it, you'd remember it.

Speaker 6:
[06:04] I didn't even know what they were talking about.

Speaker 1:
[06:06] Pullman denies driving into the area that night. His story, however, does change. Pullman now remembers leaving his house after midnight to look for towing jobs. Senior Investigator Ed Gertler is suspicious of Pullman's new story.

Speaker 7:
[06:23] I don't know what he was looking for, tow jobs with that particular kind of truck he had because it sure wasn't constructed to be a tow truck. According to the people, they did in fact see this truck going up and down this area here.

Speaker 1:
[06:38] Pullman's changing story piques the interest of investigators, who ask to search his truck.

Speaker 6:
[06:44] My car, my house, my clothes, my truck, and what triggered them off a lot even better is when they searched my truck, I had a blanket on my seat of my truck.

Speaker 4:
[06:56] There was some fibers found on Diana at the time of autopsy, as well as some dog hair. There was fibers found on a blanket in Michael's truck, as well as dog hair, that were all similar in nature to the ones found on Diana. That puts Diana in contact with the blanket, which was found in Michael's truck.

Speaker 6:
[07:20] Duh, no kidding.

Speaker 1:
[07:23] Diana had sat in the front seat of Pullman's truck many times, making the fiber evidence a tenuous link at best. Pullman is asked to take a polygraph and passes.

Speaker 7:
[07:34] Matter of fact, when we told him he passed the polygraph, he wanted to hug my partner at the time.

Speaker 1:
[07:40] Pass or fail, Pullman remains suspect number one, and his attitude doesn't help.

Speaker 6:
[07:46] I had a cocky attitude toward him because they didn't have nothing on me. I knew that. And they couldn't pin anything on me. I knew that.

Speaker 4:
[07:56] He didn't want to cooperate in the investigation. It would seem if he didn't have anything to hide, that he'd really be interested in trying to find out who had killed Diana.

Speaker 6:
[08:06] I always had to look over my shoulder, because I didn't know when they were going to show up or who would follow me. And I've had a couple of them follow me.

Speaker 1:
[08:15] Michael Pullman is not arrested for Diana DiSo's murder. The investigation eventually runs cold. The suspicion surrounding Pullman, however, never seemed to fade.

Speaker 6:
[08:27] And my own sister turned around and said, Did you do it? I said, What? I said, You too? I said, Where are you people getting this from?

Speaker 4:
[08:35] Well, this box here was a rape kit that was done on Diana.

Speaker 1:
[08:40] It is now 1997, and investigator John Murray is re-opening the cold homicide case of Diana DiSo, a 19-year-old found strangled to death 10 years earlier.

Speaker 4:
[08:53] Samples of human sperm were found in a couple of areas, as well as on her clothing.

Speaker 1:
[09:03] In 1987, DNA testing was not available to police. Now it is, and investigator Murray knows who he wants tested first.

Speaker 4:
[09:14] We had circumstantial evidence putting Michael Pullman at the scene.

Speaker 1:
[09:20] Michael Pullman was a friend of Diana DiSo, and Murray's chief suspect 10 years earlier.

Speaker 4:
[09:26] He said that he had never had sex with Diana, and we had the sperm from Diana indicating that she had had sex the night that she was murdered. So we thought, along with the circumstantial evidence that we had with Michael, if we could prove that he was the one that had had intercourse with her, that it would be enough for us to arrest him.

Speaker 1:
[09:48] Murray obtains a warrant and asks Pullman for a sample of his blood.

Speaker 6:
[09:53] They wanted me to do a DNA. Do I have a problem with the DNA? And I said, not at all. And I went and did the DNA and…

Speaker 8:
[10:00] This is the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center. This is where we process hundreds of criminal cases.

Speaker 1:
[10:07] Dr. Allison Eastman works on evidence in the DSO homicide, including a rape kit taken from D.S.O.'s body.

Speaker 8:
[10:15] And I developed a DNA profile from a very probative item.

Speaker 1:
[10:21] The profile is then compared to Michael Pullman's blood sample.

Speaker 8:
[10:25] And it wasn't a match.

Speaker 4:
[10:27] It basically shot us in the foot. We had no case. We had no real viable suspects from there. This would have made our case for us. When it came back, it's not his. It was devastating to the case and devastating to the investigators' work in it.

Speaker 1:
[10:42] The results appear to clear Pullman as a viable suspect. Investigator Murray still isn't convinced.

Speaker 4:
[10:49] It doesn't mean that he's not the killer. It means that he's not the one that had sex with her. It means that he's not the one that had sex with her prior to her death.

Speaker 6:
[10:58] I see a lot of these TV programs where they always find a crooked way or another. If they ain't got no witnesses, they're going to try to pin it on somebody. And that's what I thought. I figured, well, they probably ain't got nobody else, so if the DNA doesn't match, they're going to make it match just to get somebody on this case because it looks bad for them because they ain't got nobody.

Speaker 1:
[11:17] For years, Michael Pullman remains on edge about a possible setup. Pullman, however, is wrong. The New York State Police are simply waiting for evidence that will lead them to the truth.

Speaker 8:
[11:30] Family tragedy touches us and we're not cold lab robots, we're human beings and we personally get involved in these cases.

Speaker 1:
[11:42] In 2004, seven years after she first worked on Diana Disso's rape kit, Dr. Allison Eastman hasn't forgotten her.

Speaker 8:
[11:51] They just kind of stick to you. A young woman, 19 years old, just goes out one night and then her family never sees her again. And you're thinking about what if it happened to your family?

Speaker 1:
[12:02] In 2004, Eastman is working with a new breed of DNA testing called short tandem repeat or STR. It's a prerequisite for access to CODIS, a database containing one and a half million felony samples, and requires a new profile extraction from the Disso evidence.

Speaker 8:
[12:22] I knew there was a little bit of evidence left and I thought, we can't just leave this case sitting. So I figured that we would just give it one more try and go for the gold, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[12:36] Eastman is able to develop a full STR DNA profile. She enters it into CODIS and finds a match.

Speaker 8:
[12:44] It hit on a convicted offender by the name of Ray Keller.

Speaker 9:
[12:48] Once we got the DNA hit on Ray Keller, this is where we came and did all our research.

Speaker 1:
[12:53] Dave Madden jumps on the Ray Keller lead, teaming up with investigators Steve Ortiz and Debbie Komar.

Speaker 10:
[13:00] What was the connection between Ray Keller and Diana Dassault?

Speaker 9:
[13:04] Yeah, we really worked that hard. We had a lot of investigators in both your unit and in our unit. We really beat the bushes on that.

Speaker 1:
[13:12] Keller has no apparent ties to Diana, but the team finds his criminal past to be telling.

Speaker 11:
[13:18] Just looking at his criminal history, which has sexual assaults in it, rapes, again, that was another thing that to us indicated he was a real good suspect in this cold case.

Speaker 1:
[13:29] Keller is serving up to 25 years for raping a girl in 1989 in New York. Detectives decide to talk to Keller's victim before speaking with the suspect himself.

Speaker 10:
[13:41] She was scared to death of Ray Keller, and one of her first or second comments were, he tried to kill me.

Speaker 1:
[13:50] Comar notes that the attack bears a striking similarity to Diana DiSos case. Like Diana, this victim was choked. Unlike Diana, she survived.

Speaker 10:
[14:01] I can't emphasize enough the importance of her describing his neck hold on her and knowing that cutting off someone's air supply like that could cause death in a very short amount of time.

Speaker 1:
[14:15] Investigators have Keller's DNA at the scene and a similar act. To put their case over the top and eliminate Michael Pullman as a suspect, they need a confession to murder.

Speaker 9:
[14:27] We had talked about the possibility that somewhere along the line that night, Diana had had a sensual encounter and that Michael Pullman had found out about it. And as either in a temper, a fit of rage or jealousy, very well could have committed the homicide in that the DNA sample could have been from nothing more than an innocent encounter.

Speaker 11:
[14:50] One of my big fears was that he was going to shut us right out. Yeah, I had sex with her, so what?

Speaker 1:
[14:56] Investigators need to get inside their suspect's head to get him thinking and then get him talking.

Speaker 12:
[15:03] At some point, something snapped inside of me. Something went wrong. I was just, you know, squeezing, squeezing. I was just squeezing.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 13:
[18:05] During my day, I typically meet with adults who have committed sex offenses of different types.

Speaker 1:
[18:11] Dr. Richard Hamill is a psychologist who spent the past 22 years talking to sexual predators.

Speaker 13:
[18:18] These are folks who oftentimes have unusual ways of looking at the world. And if they sense that you don't understand or are being judgmental about their way of thinking, they clam up, they keep quiet right away.

Speaker 1:
[18:31] In 2004, he's tapped by cold case detectives who want to get inside the head of Ray Keller.

Speaker 13:
[18:38] Prison changes people, and it seems that he has made some changes.

Speaker 1:
[18:42] Keller is a convicted rapist and suspect in the murder of 19-year-old Diana Diso 17 years ago. Dr. Hamill offers to study Keller and classifies him as a sexual-type rapist, one who harbors romantic fantasies about his victim.

Speaker 13:
[19:00] There are some types of rapists who really don't care about the perceptions of others, but the sexual-type rapist often does. They feel unfairly rejected or stigmatized by other people, and so oftentimes work to have folks have as positive an image of them as possible.

Speaker 1:
[19:21] Dr. Hamill suggests playing on these insecurities in the hopes that Keller might open up.

Speaker 13:
[19:27] If he thought he was being misunderstood or might be misunderstood, it was possible that he would step forward and provide incriminating information toward the goal of showing people that he was not such a bad guy.

Speaker 1:
[19:41] The plan is to present Keller with the DNA evidence and give him the opportunity to take responsibility and put himself in the best possible light.

Speaker 9:
[19:50] It's your suggestion, the direct approach. Don't play games, just go right at him, tell him what you got.

Speaker 13:
[19:56] This was the one time that he had to go on the record. This was his one shot to introduce some information to you, potentially back to the court.

Speaker 1:
[20:06] For detectives, it is also their one shot at a confession.

Speaker 12:
[20:10] The day that they called me, I just knew, I just knew that today was the day.

Speaker 1:
[20:18] On December 17, 2004, detectives Ortiz and Madden have a face-to-face with inmate Ray Keller.

Speaker 9:
[20:25] I see a man who looks almost like a deer caught in the headlights.

Speaker 12:
[20:29] They bring me out, shackled up and all coughed up.

Speaker 9:
[20:32] I think a little bit of him in the back of his mind knew why we were there.

Speaker 12:
[20:38] They put me in a corner, and Officer Ortiz was basically a foot away from me.

Speaker 11:
[20:45] So I just told him, 1987, he had an encounter with a girl named Dianne Desso. He indicated he does not know who that name is.

Speaker 12:
[20:54] I'm like, well, I don't know. It's 17 years ago, a long time ago, whatever.

Speaker 9:
[21:01] When he said he didn't know anything about her or had any connection to her or any recollection to her, it's then when Steve showed him the picture.

Speaker 12:
[21:08] That's when they asked me, do you know who this is? I was like, no.

Speaker 9:
[21:15] And we were in a good place. Because even if he continued to deny, we knew from our DNA evidence that he knew her. He was there with her. And by denying it, it really, it helped. But yet we weren't quite there yet. What we wanted, we were there for is, we wanted to know exactly what happened and how it happened. And we wanted him to tell us that.

Speaker 1:
[21:34] That's when detectives play their trump card. The DNA match between Keller and Seaman found at the scene.

Speaker 11:
[21:42] And after, I'd say, 20 to 30 minutes, he just looked up into the ceiling and said, hypothetically, if I were to tell you what happened, how do I know that you wouldn't tell the truth when you left this room?

Speaker 9:
[21:54] When he said that to us, I knew we had him.

Speaker 1:
[21:56] With audio tape rolling, Keller takes detectives back to 1987 and the night Diana Diso was murdered.

Speaker 14:
[22:06] Hi, Ray T. Keller, on December 17th, 2004. It's made the following to be as true to my memories at this time.

Speaker 12:
[22:18] I was high on coke, and wild. I guess you could say I was looking for maybe some sex. I'm not going to sit here and say maybe that wasn't in my mind.

Speaker 1:
[22:33] Keller says he was driving around when he spotted a young woman hitchhiking and pulled over.

Speaker 12:
[22:39] I asked her where she was going, said she was going home. She got in the vehicle. I asked her what was going on.

Speaker 14:
[22:48] She said that she had a fight with her boyfriend, and she seemed upset.

Speaker 12:
[22:52] I guess you could say she was in an angry mood, hurt, whatever, from what I recollect.

Speaker 1:
[22:58] The two ended up at a secluded area near the Hudson River.

Speaker 14:
[23:02] We then went out to the back of the truck, and that's when we had sex, but not by her choice.

Speaker 1:
[23:11] Keller sexually assaulted Diana, then allowed his victim to get dressed. That's when Diana Deso made a comment that probably cost her life.

Speaker 14:
[23:21] I remember her saying she was going to tell.

Speaker 12:
[23:25] At some point, something snapped inside of me.

Speaker 14:
[23:29] Next thing I knew, I had my arm around her neck and throat and a choke hold from behind.

Speaker 12:
[23:36] I had Diana by the back, by the throat, my arms around her throat, and I was just squeezing.

Speaker 14:
[23:44] She was struggling, but couldn't say anything because of the choke hold.

Speaker 12:
[23:50] Just anger. Just anger was going through my mind, as I was just, you know, squeezing, squeezing. I was just squeezing.

Speaker 1:
[23:58] Diana collapsed and Keller was left holding her body.

Speaker 12:
[24:02] I must have believed at that time that she was dead. I must have thought that or if I didn't think that she was dead, I guess I must have thought that I put her in the water, she will be dead.

Speaker 14:
[24:13] I then dragged her over from the back of the truck by her shoulders, to the embankment and pushed her down towards the river. I left and went home.

Speaker 1:
[24:25] Detectives Ortiz and Madden have pushed the right buttons, and their suspect confesses, exactly as Dr. Hamill predicted.

Speaker 9:
[24:34] We knew what he did, and everybody was going to know what he did, and now he needed an opportunity to try to make himself look as best as possible.

Speaker 15:
[24:42] 19-year-old Diana DiSA was raped and strangled 17 years ago, and today her killer, Ray Keller, was finally sentenced to 22 years for the crime.

Speaker 10:
[24:52] You are a despicable coward.

Speaker 1:
[24:54] In a Rensselaer County courtroom, Ray Keller stares straight into his past and into the face of Mary Ann DiSA, whose daughter he murdered.

Speaker 5:
[25:05] I pray every day that your miserable existence consists of cold-steer bars, torment and turmoil, and the faces of your victims. He's a little Napoleonic figure and was asking for our forgiveness, and, you know, just like most of them do. And, well, I wasn't going to stand for that at all. Revenge is sweet for us, and there will never be any forgiveness for you coming from the DiSoe family.

Speaker 1:
[25:35] Keller is sentenced to 22 years to life for raping and murdering Diana DiSoe.

Speaker 12:
[25:41] Nobody's gotten the real side of the whole story.

Speaker 1:
[25:45] In his interview with Cold Case Files, Keller readily admits to murder, but now claims there wasn't any rape.

Speaker 12:
[25:52] There was nothing. No fighting, no nothing. No force for sexual, you know, for the sex that we had.

Speaker 14:
[26:01] We then went out to the back of the truck, and that's when we had sex, but not by her choice.

Speaker 1:
[26:10] Keller's latest story contradicts his official statement and doesn't sit well with detectives who worked the case.

Speaker 9:
[26:17] I think rape is a very powerful thing, particularly for a man to admit that he's a rapist. I think now that he's had time to think about what's going on and he's gotten some feedback on all of what's happened and realizes what he's told us, I think he's trying to back off on that.

Speaker 12:
[26:31] I'm completely, you know, I'm truly sorry for what I've done, you know, and all the people I've hurt, you know, and I've got nobody else, you know, or nobody to blame but myself, you know. I mean, I did what I did.

Speaker 1:
[26:43] For longtime suspect Michael Pullman, Keller's words lift the shadows of suspicion. His life, once again, is his own.

Speaker 6:
[26:52] I can just go back to my normal self again. Just be wild, crazy, outgoing. Just, you know, live life to the fullest and enjoy it.

Speaker 1:
[27:00] As for Mary Ann Diso, she is left with nothing but her grief and a gravesite in place of her child.

Speaker 5:
[27:07] You're safe. I know you are. Person responsible for your death is put away for hopefully for the rest of his life. I kind of wonder today what she would be like. So she would be 37. And I don't know, she might have children. I believe that she would have been special for somebody.

Speaker 16:
[27:40] I knew she was killed, I knew she had died, and I knew that someone had choked her.

Speaker 1:
[27:46] Kristen Newcomb is 28 years old. In 1983, she was eight, when her mom, Rachel Kossab, was murdered in San Antonio, Texas.

Speaker 16:
[27:57] And that's all I needed to know at age eight, but as you get older, you do start to wonder. And I've always loved, you know, cold case shows, and I just knew one day that, you know, it would be solved. I prayed every day that it would be solved.

Speaker 17:
[28:15] This is my office. This is where I go through my cold cases.

Speaker 1:
[28:20] George Sadler is a cold case detective with the San Antonio Police Department.

Speaker 17:
[28:25] As you can see, we have several files behind us. This is just one case sitting here of a young 11-year-old girl that came up missing and found dead. These are where I keep my stats because I have so many cases going on.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] In 2003, Sadler's phone rings. At the other end is Kirsten Newcomb.

Speaker 16:
[28:44] I had reached out to Detective Sadler and just begged him, is there anything that we can do, one last ditch effort?

Speaker 17:
[28:51] The attitude when she calls me, she's not calling me to blame anybody. She's not trying to blame the police department or the system. She called looking for honest help.

Speaker 1:
[29:00] Sadler agrees to take a look at the case that began 20 years earlier with a call to the San Antonio Police Department.

Speaker 18:
[29:07] About 921, I had the San Antonio Police Department dispatcher number five call our office and request that we make the scene.

Speaker 1:
[29:19] In 1983, Frank Tovar works as a medical investigator. On June 6th, he is called to an interior design shop in Northeast San Antonio.

Speaker 18:
[29:30] Well, I walked to the rear and I saw a Hispanic female lying face down on a carpet surface, partially nude.

Speaker 1:
[29:40] Rachel Kossob lies dead on the floor, her pantyhose cinched around her neck.

Speaker 18:
[29:46] And the fact that her clothes has been torn off, she's nude from her waist down mostly, there's a strong possibility she was sexually assaulted.

Speaker 1:
[29:57] Seaman is recovered from the body, confirming Tovar's suspicions. Meanwhile, detectives work the scene.

Speaker 18:
[30:04] There was no indication of force entry. So it's someone who either she knew or she let in under, he came in under false pretenses or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[30:15] Investigators question out locals and known sex offenders, but fail to turn up a viable suspect. One year later, however, they get a break in the form of another victim.

Speaker 19:
[30:28] Well, we had in this area, we had had a rape that occurred in Universal City, which is a neighboring city.

Speaker 1:
[30:34] Gary Hopper is a detective in the city of Live Oak, about 12 miles outside San Antonio. In 1984, he is working a string of sexual assaults.

Speaker 19:
[30:44] We definitely knew it was something serious and we wanted to get on top of it right away. I interviewed both of the ladies and they were able to prepare a composite sketch for me of the suspect that attacked them.

Speaker 1:
[30:56] Hopper runs the sketch on the evening news and waits for tips.

Speaker 19:
[31:00] I received a call that morning that I knew sounded very promising. It was a gentleman. He owned a business. He told me that his secretary could identify this person.

Speaker 1:
[31:11] The secretary says the man in the sketch often loiteres around her shop and seems like he's up to no good.

Speaker 19:
[31:18] She was frightened enough of this individual that one day, as he went to the car and got into the car, she wrote his license plate down, kept it, and that's what she gave to us that morning.

Speaker 1:
[31:29] Hopper runs the plate and it comes back to Mike Dossett, a local Little League coach with no criminal record. Hopper tracks down Dossett at his home.

Speaker 19:
[31:39] When he came and saw us and we looked at our composite and looked at him, it was almost right there in my mind. I said, we've got the guy, this is him.

Speaker 1:
[31:48] Dossett is confronted about the two assaults and almost immediately, he confesses.

Speaker 19:
[31:53] He seemed like a lot of pressure was off of his back. He seemed like, you know, I'm glad this is all over with. He then told me, he said, you know, I really got something else I need to tell you.

Speaker 1:
[32:04] Dossett tells Hopper he's been haunted by a recurring dream and a possible murder.

Speaker 19:
[32:10] As he started talking about this dream, he told me that, you know, I'm in this building, I'm on the staircase. So I'm looking down, he said, there's this lady. He said, I know she's dead. I know I have something to do with it.

Speaker 1:
[32:24] As Dossett talks, Hopper remembers the Rachel Cosip murder just one year earlier.

Speaker 19:
[32:30] At that point, just simply, you know, coincidence hit, you know, this was, to me, I knew what it was. It was the murder of Rachel Cosip at Santa Murphy Design because I'd been in the business before. I had been on that staircase. I knew at that point, right then and there, that, you know, this is the man that murdered Rachel Cosip.

Speaker 1:
[32:50] Hopper's suspicions are confirmed when he gets a look at the crime scene photos.

Speaker 19:
[32:55] This is what he was describing to me. This is what he was telling me about. And I knew right then and there, you know, this wasn't in the newspaper. It wasn't reported. There was only one way he knew about that. And that was he had to have been there on the day of that crime.

Speaker 1:
[33:09] San Antonio has jurisdiction over the Cosip murder. When Dossett sits down with their investigators, however, he refuses to talk.

Speaker 19:
[33:18] Maybe he got down there and really realized at that point, now I'm in big trouble, you know. These guys got me for something, a rape. Now they've got me for something here that could, you know, put me in the death chamber or life in prison.

Speaker 1:
[33:30] Dossett pleads guilty to sexual assault and robbery, but is not charged with the Cosip murder.

Speaker 19:
[33:36] I tell you, it probably was a thing that ate on me more than anything in my career. Just thinking that this guy was going to be back out on the streets, you know, he was coming back to San Antonio, he was going to be twice the threat he was before.

Speaker 1:
[33:51] In December of 1992, Mike Dossett is released on parole. A decade after that, Detective Sadler promises Kirsten Newcomb he will take a look at her mother's case. When Sadler pulls the file from storage, everyone involved is in for a surprise.

Speaker 16:
[34:09] He said that we don't have a case file, we have a piece of micro fish. And I thought, wow, everything has been destroyed. We'll never get this case solved.

Speaker 1:
[34:25] Picture this, it's late, I'm scrolling, and I spot that perfect new top I've been hunting for. I add it to my cart, I'm excited, until I hit checkout and realize, I have no idea what password I used for the site. I'm about to give up when I see that little purple pay button at the top. One tap and done. No wallet, no typing, just the sweetest cha-ching ever. Turns out that purple button comes from Shopify, the powerhouse behind over 10% of all online shopping in the US. They're the platform behind some of your favorite brands like Allbirds and Magic Spoon, as well as tons of small companies just getting started. If you've ever wanted to launch your own store, Shopify makes it easy. Hundreds of gorgeous templates, built-in AI tools to write product descriptions, and even features to enhance your photos. Everything you need all in one place, from marketing and payments to inventory and analytics, streamlined, supported and ready to go with award-winning 24-7 help if you ever need it. Shopify makes it simpler to shop and sell beautifully. See less cards go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their Shop Pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/coldcase. Go to shopify.com/coldcase. That's shopify.com/coldcase.

Speaker 20:
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Speaker 17:
[36:21] A working file usually looks something like this in the green, and this is usually what we start out with when we start looking.

Speaker 1:
[36:29] In 2003, Detective George Sadler is looking for a cold file, the 1983 murder of Rachel Kossub.

Speaker 17:
[36:37] By the time we get done with our cases, if they're finite cases, like this one here takes up three file folders. So I was expecting to find something like that, and we had two or three pieces of paper in a file folder, and we couldn't find any files.

Speaker 16:
[36:52] He said that we don't have a case file, we have a piece of micro fish. And I thought, wow, everything has been destroyed, we'll never get this case solved.

Speaker 1:
[37:04] Kirsten Newcomb is Rachel Kossub's daughter. After learning her mom's file is missing, Kirsten is at first discouraged, but then she offers Sadler a lead.

Speaker 17:
[37:16] Then she calls me, you know, and she tells me she's got the name. And she says, well, are you aware of the fact that this guy Mike Dossett is a suspect?

Speaker 1:
[37:24] Mike Dossett is a convicted sex offender, free on parole. In 1984, he became a suspect after he told police he had dreams about a dead woman.

Speaker 17:
[37:35] He had a dream, and in his dream, he's describing what happens or what he does to a woman.

Speaker 1:
[37:41] Dossett's dream tracks reality, painting a vivid picture of Rachel Kosob's murder scene. A dream, however, is no substitute for hard evidence.

Speaker 17:
[37:52] This was going to be one of my tough ones, yes.

Speaker 1:
[37:55] The detective believes he has a viable suspect. Without a case file, however, his options are limited.

Speaker 17:
[38:01] Once I started looking into it and talking to all the retired detectives and stuff, there was so much out there, and I realized, you know, everything they're telling me is just missing pieces of paper. That could be re-created. And that's what I started doing. I started re-interviewing witnesses, getting statements from them, and again, started searching for the physical evidence that I knew was still in the property room or out at the lab.

Speaker 1:
[38:24] His paper file is re-created, and Sadler heads to the police property room, looking for the cost of rape kit.

Speaker 17:
[38:32] Over the years, we've had three different crime labs. Somewhere in the shuffle, switching over, some of the evidence has gotten lost. I really had almost given up hope and was just totally frustrated with the fact that we couldn't find evidence.

Speaker 1:
[38:45] After weeks of searching, Sadler heads back to the crime lab for one last-ditch effort. If he finds nothing there, this cold case investigation could be over before it starts.

Speaker 17:
[38:57] This is the Bexar County Crime Lab and Morgue.

Speaker 1:
[39:01] On April 17th, Sadler walks into the county crime lab. In the hallway, he meets Dr. DiMaio, chief medical examiner.

Speaker 22:
[39:10] And then you began to ask me about the rape kits.

Speaker 1:
[39:14] Sadler tells DiMaio about the missing evidence.

Speaker 22:
[39:17] I said, rape kits? I've got them all. You never threw them away.

Speaker 1:
[39:21] I know.

Speaker 17:
[39:21] You could have knocked me over with a feather. I fell over.

Speaker 22:
[39:26] I kept every rape kit from 1981 when I arrived until 1988, when after that, all the evidence went directly to the crime lab.

Speaker 1:
[39:37] DiMaio leads Sadler down the hallway.

Speaker 22:
[39:40] This is the toxicology laboratory. And if you look in the freezer, there was all the way in the back, on the right-hand side, on the floor, a large brown cardboard box with all the unanalyzed rape cases from 1981 to 1988, which we had been storing.

Speaker 1:
[40:06] On the floor of the county freezer, Detective Sadler finds the evidence he has been looking for.

Speaker 17:
[40:12] The clerk pulled it out here for us. She opened the top and they were lined up in rows in the very first one because I knew the name and the case number already was sitting right there on top. In fact, in my excitement, I wanted to reach down and grab it. I said, okay, I need this to go to DNA. And they had to stop me. They said, no, there's a procedure for getting it from there to the other side of the building. And I'm like, well, I don't care how it's done, but I want this tested.

Speaker 1:
[40:35] Swabs from Rachel Kosub's body are rushed to DNA analyst Lonnie Ginsberg for testing.

Speaker 23:
[40:41] The actual swabs that we tested were in very, very bad condition. There appeared to be mold growing on these swabs, which is very, very detrimental for DNA analysis.

Speaker 1:
[40:52] Despite the long odds, a genetic profile is generated and compared to Mike Dossett.

Speaker 17:
[40:59] Lonnie Ginsberg paged me and told me that they had got a match and that it was Dossett's DNA.

Speaker 1:
[41:05] On June 26th, Dossett is arrested and charged with murder. In January of 2005, Mike Dossett stands trial for killing Rachel Kossob 21 years earlier. Rita Spiegel prosecutes for the state.

Speaker 24:
[41:21] We had that physical evidence, that last piece, and yes, it was the DNA that was the deciding factor.

Speaker 1:
[41:27] In addition to DNA evidence, Spiegel presents Dossett's dream statements to the court.

Speaker 24:
[41:33] I do recall seeing myself standing by a banister that curves and looking out a window. I don't know if this is at the interior decorating place on Randolph Boulevard or not. And there is your curved banister. It's a wooden banister about two or three inches wide. And there it is again, just the way he describes it. I remember seeing a picture of a girl laying naked all tied up and I could see that she was dead. I could not see her face. And there she is, the bottom with the banister. And you can't see her face.

Speaker 1:
[42:05] Dossett's statements put the case over the top. After seven days of trial, the jury is back with a verdict, guilty of murder in the first degree. At sentencing, Dossett receives a term of 40 years and Kirsten gets a chance to speak to the man who killed her mom.

Speaker 21:
[42:24] My family, myself and my son.

Speaker 16:
[42:28] I think the hardest thing I've ever had to do was to face the defendant and tell him what I felt.

Speaker 21:
[42:35] Today, I want you to know, you have not only raped my mother, you have raped my father, my family, myself and my son.

Speaker 16:
[42:46] I felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders after all of these years.

Speaker 21:
[42:51] You raped my little son or grandmother, you will never know. Someone who would love you dearly and would ship the ground for your son.

Speaker 16:
[43:00] And I knew that it was finally over. Closure was near and I was going to be able to hopefully move on with my life and finally put it behind me.

Speaker 17:
[43:11] I don't think he expected your mother there that day.

Speaker 1:
[43:14] Also in the courtroom that day is Detective George Sabler.

Speaker 17:
[43:18] I mean, the look on her face and talking to her, this is not about me, it's not about an investigator. It's about the families of these victims that are left behind.

Speaker 16:
[43:26] I'm so thankful to Detective Sabler. If it wasn't for him, I don't think this case would be solved. His persistence and just the care that he showed, you know, in this case was just incredible. He's a great man.

Speaker 1:
[43:41] After 21 years, Kirsten Newcomb finally has answers and justice for her mom.

Speaker 16:
[43:48] The day after the verdict and he was sentenced, I brought a huge bouquet of yellow roses out for her. It's a, she always loved yellow roses and favorite color. So I brought a huge spray for her and put it there and told her that she could rest in peace now. And I really think she is able to.

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