Monday May the 8th 2000 Houston Texas angel matador renders stands accused of being one of America’s most terrifying serial killers the man who became known as the railroad killer I stared at him the whole time I’m going to remember your face I’m not going to forget it because if I live through this I will get you the entire country is riveted as the defense claims their client is delusional mentally ill and not responsible for his actions while the prosecution seeks the ultimate punishment it is over it is over he didn’t deserve to
live after what he did is this man insane or a cold calculating killer the trial will hinge on an extraordinary conf confrontation between the killer and his only surviving victim 20-year-old Holly Dunn is a junior at the University of Kentucky living away from home for the first time it’s here she meets Chris Meyer Chris Meyer was my very good friend he was just the nicest kindest man we decided that we wanted to be more
than friends and be started dating um and we dated for about 3 months Chris and I were attending a party we decided that the party wasn’t very fun so we went to go take a walk by the railroad tracks we sat down and and talked for a while and when we got up to leave a man comes out from behind an electrical box so he actually uh had a weapon on Chris okay it was some sort of ice pick or screwdriver something sharp I guess our immediate thought was he’s going to rob us that’s when we realize he wants money we start thinking
okay well you could have our credit cards you can have our ATM cards you could have our car then he started tying up Chris’s hands behind his back he came over to me and he took off my belt and he tied up my hands behind my back and that’s when I start thinking okay this man doesn’t want to Rob us he takes Chris by the shirt and he pulls Chris I can see it on his face that he’s in pain as he’s pulling him across the Rocks into the ditch beside the railroad tracks I followed on my knees he told us to lie down in the
ditch I stared at him the whole time I memorized his face I memorized his he had a tattoo on his arm he had you know I was thinking if you have any scars I’m going to remember your scars I’m going to remember your face I’m not going to forget it because if I live through this I will get you the last thing that Chris said to me was uh everything’s going to be okay 4 hours later Holly Dunn is at the University of Kentucky hospital fighting for her life she had been raped beaten and left for dead I had um a broken jaw
a broken eye socket and then Cuts large Cuts in the back of my head that they had to staple shut and then I had cuts on my face everyone was told not to talk about Chris to me I just said Chris is dead isn’t he and and my my dad actually is the one that I said that to and he was like yes he he died Lexington detectives visit Holan Hospital although still weak and traumatized she provides a description of her attacker detailed enough for police to create a composite drawing of a man who she says had a Mexican accent DNA from the rape is entered into
a National Database but police find no match I think that’s an interesting thing this one piece will make 52 layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription required then just over a year later and a thousand miles away in Houston Texas 39-year-old mother of two Dr Claudia Benton is asleep at home a few days before Christmas it appears that she was sleeping he was able to get in he had uh picked up a bronze statuette from the mantle in the living [Applause] room he was relentless uh in beating her
the skull fractures themselves would have killed her he then stabbed her three times in the back with a very large butcher knife Dr Benton was raped as she lay dead or dying her house was right next to the railroad a train came by and when that train came by I could not hear myself think it was so loud I said what a perfect cover for someone to get in the house without being heard this time fingerprints as well as DNA are recovered from the crime scene the prints are a matched to a career criminal Raphael resendes Ramirez but
detectives discover this is just one in a string of aliases his real name is Angel Marino rendes a Mexican itinerant with a prior record of arrests for minor felonies stretching back more than 20 years I think his first arrest when he was 16 or 17 years old and U I believe that he got a separate FBI number from a 1995 arrest in California he was caught in a railway area with the pistol at this point no one links the murder of Claudia Benton to the attack on Holly Dunn and Chris Meer in Kentucky then a few months later there’s
another murder in the small Railway town of wear Texas 90 M from Houston the bodies of Pastor Norman cernik and his wife Karen are found in their bed they had been attacked with a sledgehammer while they slept Karen had been sexually assaulted assigned to the case is Harris County prosecutor Devin Anderson he watched these places it wasn’t an accident that all of these people were asleep when he attacked he would watch them wait for them to go to sleep get into their house and he would strike them before they would even wake
up I thought we we have got to catch the sky Norman and Karen cernic like Claudia Benton live right next to the railroad detectives don’t think it’s a coincidence they contact other police forces searching for similar crimes and soon hear from Kentucky police the DNA from the attack on Holly Dunn and Chris Meyer matches that from the Texas murders this is a crucial breakthrough with four murders in two states the authorities realize they’re dealing with a highly mobile serial killer that’s when we knew that this was a
person who had been killing and was going to continue to kill with matching DNA fingerprints and Holly Dunn’s description of her attacker police are confident rendes is their man real dangerous very dangerous a real violent person we need to get him off the streets the FBI Texas Rangers and Texas State Police join forces in the hunt they suspect rendes is traveling from one brutal killing to the next by rail stowing away on freight trains to escape detection he could be in here he could be in Canada definitely easily back in
Mexico and we we just had no clue whatsoever there were officers on Horseback helicopters in the air and just search the yard looking at all the trains passing by if there were people spotted on trains trains would be stopped it’s a surch made even more difficult because rendes constantly Alters his appearance everybody was scared people were seeing him everywhere then just a month after the ceric were found murdered two people 90 M apart killed on the same day in her Houston apartment close to the railroad tracks Naomi Dominguez is found brutally
bludgeon to death with a pickaxe her killer steals her car drives to wear and kills 73-year-old Josephine kichka with the same weapon he kept killing people he he would not stop and his mode of transportation using the railroads was brilliant because they couldn’t be monitored I mean there’s thousands of trains and millions of miles of tracks all over the United States just a few days later and a thousand miles away in Illinois he kills again we’re here today to announce that the that Raphael rendes Ramirez has been
elevated to the FBI’s 10 most wanted list it’s now 2 years since the first murder authorities still have no idea where rendes is or even if he’s still in the country I I felt so hopeless at the time because if you’re willing to sleep in a train and you’re willing to sleep in a field or you can stay lost for a long time and I did not think we were ever going to catch him but then in June 1999 there’s a dramatic breakthrough detectives discover renders has aist in the US and persuade her to try to get him to turn himself
in incredibly after agreeing to a deal that includes family visiting rights and access to a psychological evaluation on July the 13th the sendes walks across a bridge linking Mexico with Texas and into custody the surrender was voluntary and it’s something that he did on his own and it was also the wishes of his family I have never felt such relief in my entire life and I probably never will again just thank God when Holly Dunn sees the news about her attackers arrest the memory comes flooding back I mean it was a relief for
me it but I you know I I mean I was still very scared I I didn’t I didn’t know I this really meant I think when he surrendered that I knew that I was going to have to that I was going to face him again at the time of his arrest rendes is linked to six murders in Texas two in Illinois and one in Kentucky his arraignment in Harris County Court Houston Texas is the first chance prosecutor Deon Anderson gets to see the railroad killer face to face he was Shackled his ankles and His Hands he was um probably about 55 not a tall guy
come on but his forearms were ropey they with muscles he was really scary even though he was small you could feel he was dangerous he was a dangerous person he looked like a wild animal who had been caught because of the strength of the forensic evidence linking rendes to the killing of Claudia Benton the prosecution decides to concentrate all their efforts on this one murder if successful it could be all they need to secure the death penalty can be done very quickly so that I can say that I’m guilty all right
rendes pleads guilty to killing Dr Benton from now on the trial will hinge on one question is rendes evil or crazy his defense will try to show he is legally insane if they succeed he’ll be found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state Psychiatric Hospital there’s a remote chance he could even one day be released Insanity was The Logical defense because no one wants to believe that there’s someone out there that will do things like that that was the thing that worried me the most about the case was that jurors
would just throw up their hands and say nobody in their right mind can do what he does a verdict of insanity and a life sentence is what the prosecution is determined to avoid thing about a life sent with rendas would have been he would have enjoyed it he would have enjoyed it I mean he would have had pen pals he would have given interviews if they had let him I mean he would have loved it and I knew that and he didn’t deserve to live after what he did he just didn’t he caused so much pain and so much heartache and so much
Terror that it just that that’s what the whole focus of the trial it had to be the defense lays out their case painting a picture of a Madman their psychiatrists say rindes has paranoid schizophrenia resulting from head injuries drug abuse and a family history of mental illness they say he has a delusional perception of the world and believes he can cause earthquakes floods and explosions and that God told him to kill his victims whom he believed to be evil the defense experts based their opinion on what he told them about how he was
feeling at the time of the capital murder we on the other hand looked at it as what show what actions did he take that showed he knew what he was doing was wrong when it’s the prosecution’s turn they must produce evidence that rendes wasn’t insane but a cold calculating murderer to do this they pick apart every detail of his crimes they show how he used the railroad so effectively to move around and evade capture they suggest he stole items from his victims not to keep as bizarre trophies but so that he could
sell them he made a living off stealing people’s things and having his wife sell them in Mexico that was his job and then his Recreation was killing the people who lived in the house they present evidence of his meticulous method ology how he carefully selected his victims sneaking up on them when they were most vulnerable after killing Naomi Dominguez and stealing her car and driving it up to Mrs kitka’s house he undid the light in her car so when he opened the door it wouldn’t come on that that’s who we were
dealing with someone who who really knew how to sneak around who really knew how to avoid detection and the prosecution had one very enlightening witness the best piece of evidence we had for his sanity was a prisoner from Florida who spent a lot of time with him in the law library researching the issue of insanity and helping other inmates raise that issue in their cases so to me I it was like this when the defense experts would start talking he was a very intelligent person who worked the system and knew exactly what kinds of
things to say to get that defense to work the prosecution rests but have they done enough will the jury find rendes guilty of murdering Dr Benton or Not Guilty by reason of insanity after deliberating for a nail biting 7 hours the jury returns their verdict mrend would you please why guilty of murder in the first degree the guilty verdict was such a cuz I thought now we can get to the the real what we really need to be here to talk about which is what has happened to these victims because everybody needs to
know what he did now the prosecution can push for the death penalty Devon Anderson will need to provide decisive evidence to prove rendes committed each of the murders and show the jury the full horror of all his crimes she displays a series of brutal crime- scene photographs and presents testimony from the victim’s families although the decision about the death penalty is supposed to be an analytical one and a cold one I wanted them to hate him to see what a monster he was if you look at all of the evidence that you’ve
heard in this case he knows what he’s doing and he’s making the choice to do it and he won’t stop and we’re not here to say he’s a sick weirdo he is sick there is something wrong with him but does it make him any less morally responsible no I wanted that jury to understand we have to take care of him today it is over it is over but there’s one Final witness who needs to appear 3 years after she was attacked it’s Holly Dunn’s turn to testify as the only surviving victim I was in the hotel in Houston with my family and
I woke up screaming and crying I was so scared to face him again I just didn’t think that I could I could do it I remember Devin telling me I’m sitting in like the waiting room about to go into the courtroom then I went back there and said okay are you ready and she said yep and I said he’s going to be in there looking at you don’t look at him just look at me don’t look at him until I ask you to and she said okay and I gave her a hug and came back out here and called her when I went into the courtroom I sat
down in the the chair to testify I did not look at him I was looking straight at Devon I remember the very first question that Devon asked me was something like what did you do last weekend I was really excited to say I graduated from college to me it it I was saying to him you didn’t destroy me I just graduated from college and then I went into the details of of that night Holly begins to tell the jury the whole story of that night on the tracks Chris had said run if you can and I couldn’t get my legs untied so I
couldn’t run I don’t know how much time passed between that time and when our attacker came with the rock there was no warning he drops this rock on Chris’s head [Applause] I’m I’m just thinking what just happened I mean how did this what you know I don’t even know what just happened I went into survival mode I’m thinking okay I mean he’s going to kill me I I could may as well fight I’m going to fight he unties my feet and climbs on top of me and I start to kick and scream and hit him but he held that knife or ice pick or whatever and he just said
look how easily I could kill you I you know stopped everything and then he raped me amendes had no intention of leaving a witness they hit me five or six times in my face um I think I put my hand up and that I turned over and that he hit me five or six times in the back of my head he hit me hard he was trying to kill me I I think I I I laid there and he thought I was dead just I felt so proud of her for doing it and she cried I mean she was very you know emotional but she told it she got
it out the jurors were crying Devon was crying now prosecutor Deon Anderson prepares to ask her final question everything in the trial had been building to this it was the moment I had been waiting for in the trial because I wanted a victim of his to to face him down because no one else could and then they say could you please tell us what he’s wearing and so at this moment I knew I was going to have to look at him so I look at him and I you know point to him and I say he’s wearing a white button-down shirt
and as I’m saying that I feel my hearing going into my head I get really hot and I feel like I’m about to faint and she looked him in the eye and she identified him and it was a great moment it’s a great moment because she got to call him out for all those other people sitting in the courtroom and for all those other people who were dead she got to call him out it was great you know I saw him and he had basically a a emotionless face I broke down at that point and they had to carry me out of the courtroom I was so
emotionally destroyed I mean I I couldn’t give any more than I gave during that trial rendes is sentenced to death in 2006 when the last of his appeals is denied he is executed by lethal injection today Holly dun runs Holly’s house an organization that helps victims of violent crime it it happened and I have to live with it for the rest of my life but this event does not define Me How I Live Now is for all the victims and for especially for Chris but for all of renda’s victims because the those loved ones aren’t here anymore I’ve been
given a second chance and and I want to live life to the fullest it’s the European trial of the century six young girls vanish Without a Trace snatched from their families they are raped tortured and locked in a cage it’s unbelievable how someone can think that you can can leave a human
being even even two such a tiny tiny place the crimes were so horrific they sent the country of Belgium reeling into National mourning which erupts into Fury over Revelations of how police bungled the investigation it was possible to save killing children to save four children who are dead now grieving families lead the nation in a fight to find the truth in the trial of mock the TRU March 2004 the court of AIS Alon
Belgium 44-year-old Mark Dru arrives to stand trial today the parents of the children he is accused of kidnapping raping torturing and murdering see him face to face the true elicits loathing that verges on violence so a specially built compartment Shields him behind bulletproof glass over the next 16 weeks the full horror of what happened to the six abducted girls will be revealed he for Paul maral the father of 17-year-old Anne some of the evidence is so gruesome he collapses through distress I was uh under trial every day
every hour I was there during four months Julie lean’s father Jean Deni now sits only meters away from the man accused of killing his daughter the tru’s horrific Crim spree start in June 1995 when 8-year-olds Julie leun and Melissa Russo vanish after spending the afternoon playing together 2 months later teenage friends and marelle and apia lamri disappear from a holiday
Resort frustrated by inadequate police response an’s distraught parents launch their own search for the girls I again to make a poster with disappeared and if you dare phone us please let us know something in just 2 months four girls have gone missing a year later police still have no leads then 12-year-old Sabine Darden disappears on her way to school 2 months later 14-year-old Laticia Dees also seems to vanish but a witness spotted the batted old van used to AB doctor someone noted the the the number plate of the car and he told it to the
police they started checking the combination in their listings and they found the name of marru on August 13th 1996 police raided one of dru’s seven rundown houses in the shalawa region of Belgium they arrest everyone there 39-year-old unemployed electrician Mark Dru his wife 37-year-old Michelle Martin and 25-year-old drug addict Michelle lra 2 days later after listening to a flurry of phone calls to True receive the night latia went missing police arrest 55y old businessman Michelle n after 48 Hours of questioning the tro
breaks and leads police to his house in marel in the basement they find two young girls they’ve been kept locked in a cage a meter wide two M long and just over 1 and 1/2 M high they are 14-year-old Leticia Dees and 12-year-old Sabine Darden Leticia had been in the cage for almost a week Sabine had been there for nearly 3 months the fact that two girls survived such an ordeal gives poor marshel hope he May yet find his daughter an alive she’s now been missing for a year we saw that Sabine have lived for
more than two months in there and so it was possible and so I believe that we could find an and AIA live and perhaps Julie and Melissa too but Paul’s hopes are dashed when the true leads police to the graves of other kidnapped girls in the garden of his house in salaber police uncover the remains of Julie leun and Melissa Russo 30 km away in his house in jum buried beneath a shed are Anne marel and apia lambre at then moment it was a sort of release that we found an and AIA alive or de it helps that you can find
them at the girls funerals the nation comes out to grieve it’s not normal to lose a child it’s normal that you lose your your father or your mother because they are older and everyone must go someday but not the child to many it seems God has deserted his children
in the weeks that follow the funerals the public move shifts profound grief turns to anger as it’s revealed the police incompetence on a breathtaking scale is partly to blame for the terrible deaths of these four innocent girls Dru was released in 1987 after serving just six of his 13-year sentence for kidnapping and raping children in fact the police had placed him under surveillance two weeks after
The Disappearance of the first two girls Julie and Melissa they put the camera in front of his house they they followed him during several weeks and the incredible thing is that during this operation he kidnapped two other girls on an AIA but they didn’t for some strange reason they didn’t notice if you try to escape she was naked on the roof of the house at a certain moment but the camera didn’t pick up the image what’s more dru’s mother had sent a letter to police stating that two teenagers were being kept in a cage in
her son’s basement and most incredible of all officers raided to troose marel house twice specifically looking for the kidnapped girls in a particularly cruel twist while searching the cellar officers heard girls voices on the other side of the wall but left without investigating further their final blunder was to confiscate homemade child pornography and videos in which detr is actually filmed constructing the cage they never watched the tapes most of the Belgian people agree
with jundi rumors of a police cover up start to circulate they are reinforced when Mark drr presents his defense he claims he didn’t act alone and is part of a pedophile network with high level government connections the network is when several people together do a handle in abusing violating children for money for a lot of money and I’m sure that uh it exists now an important new player enters the scene lead investigator judge Jean Mar kovo he takes the pedophile Network allegations seriously and launches a nationwide appeal for
Witnesses but just when he starts to make progress he’s removed from the case dru’s lawyers successfully claim he’s biased in favor of the victim but his firing fuels allegations of a cover up when Conor was taken out of this uh case the Belgian people uh don’t uh accepted in a mass demonstration known as the white March over 300,000 people protest in the streets of Brussels the Belgian Capital there was anger there was uh uh a lot of emotional feelings at that moment white symbolizes the innocence of children the March is an outpouring of
public anger and a gesture of support For The Grieving families I got a lot of flowers it was very heavy to to carry them with me and at that moment it was a feeling like I have an in my hands the following day Paul visits an’s grave and covers it with the flowers he finds a note which gives him some comfort I put all this flowers on the grave of an and I found a little paper it was not signed but there was someone who writes on this paper and yesterday again I saw your father
laughing and that’s that was the White Marsh despite the public out cry over the case it’s not until 2004 7 years later that Mark D Tru is brought to trial the 47-year-old is charged with conspiracy kidnapping rape and murder his now ex-wife 44-year-old Michelle Martin is charged with conspiracy kidnapping and rape Michelle Lev 32 is charged with conspiracy kidnapping and rape 62-year-old businessman Michelle NE is charged with kidnapping drug dealing human trafficking and conspiracy the three codefendants deny
all charges Dru admits to abduction and rape but pleads not guilty to all murder murder charges the court first hears the traumatic account of how 8-year-old friends Julie leun and Melissa Russo were kidnapped and for 8 months kept in a cage in tru’s basement you couldn’t stand up it was like that big that that that high he wouldn’t even put a dog in such a tiny place in November 1995 markat Tru was sent to jail for car theft the two imprisoned little girls were left in the hands of dru’s then wife Michelle Martin the true is in jail and the kids
are alone in that house in in this cage and at that moment as far as we know he asks his wife Michelle marttin to bring them Foods by the time the TRU is released 4 months later Julie and Melissa are starving to death barely clinging to life as far as we know when marru comes out of jail the bo is still alive but they die on the same day and he buries them in saher Michelle marttin confesses that she brought food to the house for her dogs but she didn’t Feed the Children the court has little time to recover from the sickening testimony
before they hear the fate of an Marell and aphia lambre the two teenagers were kept in dru’s house in marel for about 10 days where they were repeatedly raped then they were driven 30 km to J in the north of shalawa they have been given medication to sleep and then uh theyve been been buried they have been buried alive the explanation of mar true was um after all we discovered that they were too old for what we were looking for there is no letup in the horror the true surviving victims Sabine Darden and Leticia Dees take the
stand Leticia was locked in the cage for 6 days she recounts how she was led up from the cellar chained to a bed and raped Sabine was held captive for 80 Days her testimony reveals how the true tortured her psychologically as well as physically saine kept a diary he um made her believe that this was a case of uh of money that her family had to pay for her but that the family didn’t answer his letters that nobody cared about her except he magru also made her think that uh when he abused her that it’s some kind
of payment she had to do he put all the responsibility on this little girl 12-year-old Sabine wrote letters to her family which were read to the court in them she describes what she calls the room of agony where Dru took pornographic photos and raped her when cross-examined about the pedophile Network she says she was only ever abused by Mark D Tru Sabin has never seen anybody else except Marr so she’s the the biggest opponent of all these theories about uh pedophile Rings she says I haven’t seen anything of it
and there’s nobody here who’s been closer [Applause] before Sabine and Leticia can leave the trial behind there is a final ordeal to overcome the victim’s parents as well as all the accused make the journey to the house in Mar they see firsthand the room of agony
downstairs they enter the dungeon like basement it has never been heated and it’s cold and [Applause] damp this is the removable wall which hid the cage now off its hinges the hollow space behind is accessible and brightly lit for the court but the children imprisoned there shared one lamp it would have been dark
this is where Julie and Melissa starved to death on the 14th of June the jury start their deliberations it takes 4 days for them to return a verdict Michelle marttin is found guilty on all counts she is sentenced to 30 years in prison Lev is guilty on all counts as well he gets 25 years the jury can’t come to a decision on the businessman neol he is later acquitted of kidnapping by one vote but found guilty of drug dealing human
trafficking and conspiracy he is sentenced to 5 years Dru is found guilty on all counts of kidnapping rape conspiracy and murder and is sentenced to life in prison he’s to be kept at the government’s disposition which means they can choose never to release him after the verdict there is relief outside the courthouse for Betty and Paul maral it’s been a long time coming after uh almost 9 years it’s uh but now uh I’m I’m feeling uh better much better for the two young women who survived drr dungeon the verdict brings justice but it cannot
end their suffering I wouldn’t say that it has lifted a weight of my shoulders because I will have to live with the memory for many years to come but at least I’ve been listened to I Was Heard and now I will get on with my life as before it’s done now but 7 years after the deaths of their daughters Paul maral and Jean Den Le are granted no closure verif Expos a Noe
[Applause] a
