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- [00:01]
A
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. It's March 20, 1992, in St. Louis, Missouri. At 2am 25 year old Antoinette Kovar gets into her car and drives home from work. Her boss follows behind in his car until he sees Kovar pull safely into the garage of her Southside home. The woman then walks the path alone to her back door. She turns the key and steps into her kitchen. Inside, a masked stranger waits in the darkness.
- [00:54]
B
I had my hand on the handle, but he was behind me and had his hands over my eyes and my mouth and said, don't say a word. I'm not gonna hurt you. The next thing I remember, he was kind of dragging me from the back to the bedroom.
- [01:08]
A
Kovar feels a hard object pressed into her ribs. She's convinced it's a gun.
- [01:14]
B
I thought he was just gonna kill me. I couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't come in my house. Why would he be here?
- [01:19]
C
Why?
- [01:20]
B
What would his intentions be?
- [01:22]
A
The stranger's intentions are soon made clear.
- [01:25]
B
He started to pull down my sweatpants that I had and I said, oh my God, you gotta be kidding me. And he threw me on the bed and attempted to have oral sex with me.
- [01:38]
A
The intruder then shifts from performing oral sex on his victim to forced intercourse during the attack. Kovar's bedside phone continues to ring. She tells the rapist it's her boyfriend and he'll be coming home soon. With that, the man abruptly stops and heads for the front door.
- [01:57]
B
He said, don't you come after me or I'll come back. Well, at that instant, when I heard the screen door close, I said, that's too bad. And I jumped up, grabbed my. It was a robe, sitting on my stationary bike. I grabbed that, wrapped it around my bottom, and I ran out the front door after him, but he was gone. I was in the middle of the street. He was gone.
- [02:18]
A
Antoinette runs back to her house and dials 911. Police arrive and discover that the rapist entered through an unlocked window in the living room. They dust the house for fingerprints, but find only those of Antoinette, suggesting the rapist wore gloves. Meanwhile, Kovar is taken to the emergency room, where an examination yields a sample of her attacker's semen and possibly his DNA. Now all she can do is wait for the police to make an arrest
- [02:49]
B
for, like, the next three months. I got the alarm put on the house. I Walked from my garage door to my back door with a 9 millimeter, daring any individual to come up on me and attempt to do what he had intended to finish because I was going to let him have it.
- [03:07]
A
Antoinette never gets a return visit from her rapist. Twelve days later, however, another woman is attacked less than a mile from Kovar's home. This time, the intruder hits the woman with his fist, then orders her to disrobe again. He performs oral sex on his victim before forcing her to have intercourse. Detective Mark Chambers works the case.
- [03:32]
D
He would come through a window. Usually, he always wore gloves. He would either cover the victim's face or his face was very careful about not being identified. We began to see a pattern developing, and we knew that we had a serial rapist.
- [03:48]
A
St. Louis detectives begin to watch for any other sexual assault cases fitting the perceived pattern of attack. Over the next two months, they identified four more rapes, all occurring on the south side of St. Louis, all with the same M.O. a single man, face covered with, wearing gloves and carrying a gun. He marks his crime with a signature behavior, Performing oral sex on his victim before raping her. After the attack, he adds a final detail.
- [04:19]
D
He would make them bathe after he raped him, I guess to destroy evidence. He thought, you know, his thinking was he could destroy evidence that way, so he would make the victim bathe.
- [04:27]
A
DNA samples from the six rapes are compared against each other and. And found to be identical, Confirming for investigators what the patterns of attack have already made clear. A serial rapist is stalking the south side of St. Louis. In May of 1992, St. Louis mobilizes a task force to hunt for a man detectives are now calling the south side Rapist. The team sets up a hotline and asks the city for help. Homicide detective Cliff Sassinger joins the effort.
- [05:00]
E
The hotline was the main goal. We had people calling in with all kinds of tips, and we'd follow each lead out. Hundreds of leads came out on this, and a lot of good tips.
- [05:10]
A
More than 30 task force members hit the streets, identifying hundreds of possible suspects and taking DNA samples wherever they can. After two months, investigators have not been able to identify the rapist. And to make matters worse, he seems to have vanished every two weeks.
- [05:29]
E
We had one up until about May 29, and then it stopped. Just. Just stopped.
- [05:35]
D
And of course, the theory was then he was incarcerated somewhere, he was dead or he just stopped, which I don't believe that. But some people believe that he may have just stopped doing it.
- [05:46]
A
While St. Louis detectives are glad the rapist has Stopped attacking in their city. They are also running out of leads.
- [05:53]
D
My job as an investigator is to find out primarily who did it and bring that person to justice. And, yeah, it's very frustrating, especially when you have so many of these crimes taking place and you don't have anything.
- [06:09]
A
For the Southside rapist victims, not knowing who or where their attacker is makes it even more difficult to return to a normal life.
- [06:18]
B
Just every person you see walking down the street, everyone you see that says anything to you, you think, that could have been him? Why did he say hi to me? Why is he looking at me? Does he know me? Did he know me? Did he come in my house? Does he know something that I should be knowing? And you just think that could be him?
- [06:35]
A
Three months after its inception, the task force is out of working leads and there are no new cases to follow. The team is dissolved and. And the investigation goes cold for nearly three years. It's January 19, 1995. At 1am Sex Crimes Detective Mark chambers is working alone at his desk when the phone rings. On the line is a woman who has just been raped.
- [07:02]
D
Apparently, the rapist came through a kitchen window because we found the kitchen window open where he had gotten in, came through a kitchen window and came upstairs.
- [07:11]
A
As he investigates the crime scene, Chambers begins to remember. After three years, the MO of the Southside rapist is still immediately recognizable.
- [07:22]
D
He was wearing a ski mask. He was armed with a gun. He had gloves on his hands. And he did basically the same thing that the south side rapist had done in the past, including the bathing, made her bathe afterwards. And there was no doubt in my mind that it was a south side rapist.
- [07:38]
A
Sex crime's Mark Kennedy begins his shift at 8am when he walks into the squad room, he finds Mark Chambers waiting.
- [07:46]
F
If he's still there when we get there, it means that there was a serious crime committed a previous evening.
- [07:55]
D
As soon as he came in the door, I said, mark, you're not gonna believe this. You know, the south side rapist, I think he struck again, and his reaction was like, you gotta be kidding. You know where?
- [08:05]
F
The case had been dormant for almost three years, and people were kind of skeptical, but he was insistent that it was a south side rapist.
- [08:15]
D
Everything he did was the same as in the past cases. And I just knew it was him. I don't know. It's a good gut reaction. Maybe. I just knew it was him.
- [08:26]
A
Three years after his last known attack, it appears the Southside rapist may have returned. But St. Louis detectives need Hard evidence. They send a semen sample from their victim to be compared to the DNA profile developed from the previous assaults. Four weeks later, the results are in, and the DNA is a match.
- [08:47]
F
We thought, okay, now this guy's back. He's been on a hiatus for some time, but he's starting up again, and he. He's not going to stop.
- [08:58]
A
In March of 1995, Detective Mark Kennedy and a team of sex crimes detectives renew the hunt for the Southside rapist. They dig through 10 years of unsolved rape files, trying to determine if any of them can be linked to their suspect. Detective Kennedy uncovers several cases that share the Southside Rapist's M.O. but no DNA evidence. Kennedy continues to dig and finds two more rapes occurring within a month of each other.
- [09:26]
F
In 1988, we brought those cases out of our archives. We found the evidence. We asked the DNA unit to run that, and we linked those two cases also to 1992.
- [09:40]
A
At the same time, detectives expand their investigation geographically, hoping to get a grasp on their suspect's reach.
- [09:48]
F
We decided to call a meeting of all the interested departments from the area to see if any of them had had any similar occurrences.
- [09:58]
A
The meeting is productive. Reports of rapes begin to filter into St. Louis sex crimes from across the Mississippi. In Collinsville, Illinois, Dave Roth is a detective sergeant with the Collinsville police department.
- [10:11]
G
He liked to go through windows. If a window would be open, he'd just rip the screen out and go in unlocked doors. He would be picking women that were by themselves a lot of the times, although that wasn't the case all the time. So the mos just matched.
- [10:30]
A
Roth submits two Collinsville cases he believes can be attributed to the south side rapist. Two names detectives add to a growing list of victims.
- [10:40]
G
We started putting details up in the middle of the night to where we'd have cops in plain clothes in neighborhoods to where had been hit previously.
- [10:49]
A
As they work, however, detectives come up short as the Southside rapist continues to stalk and attack.
- [10:56]
G
You feel like a moron. You feel like, you know, you're not doing your job. So you get very frustrated.
- [11:02]
F
I spent hours thinking and rethinking about it. Here's a guy you know he's going to hit, and you know that the same people are going to be asking you questions, as though what you're. What you're doing to solve this, you know it's coming and there's nothing you can do about it.
- [11:17]
A
On February 5, 1995, the Southside Rapist strikes yet again. 33 year old Jennifer Jewer lives in a small house with her eight year old son. After putting him to bed one winter evening, Juher relaxes on her couch and begins to read. Within 30 minutes she has fallen asleep.
- [11:37]
H
The next thing I knew, somebody apparently had shut the light off and was sitting on my lap, facing me, pinning down my legs and arms and with a gloved hand over my face like this. And he said, if you make any noise, I'll effing kill you. You hear me? I'll effing kill you.
- [12:00]
A
Juror can't see her attacker's face because it's covered. Nor does she know what he wants.
- [12:07]
H
This black dread just washed over me. I didn't know really. But then he said something to the effect of I ain't gonna do nothing that ain't been done to you before. Oh, then I knew and then I just, I just tried to fight him. But he had me pinned down so hard and so tightly I couldn't get away.
- [12:34]
A
The man threatens Juer with what appears to be a gun. Then he forces her into the bedroom and begins to sexually assault her.
- [12:42]
H
He put a T shirt over my face and a pillow over my face later so I couldn't see who he was.
- [12:49]
A
When the rapist is finished, he sits on the edge of Juher's bed and smokes a cigarette while continuing to threaten her.
- [12:57]
H
He kept saying, go to the cops or call the cops, I'll come back and I'll kill you. But at the same time I was determined to go to the police. There wasn't anything that was going to stop me, but I wanted to convince him that I wasn't going to go.
- [13:16]
A
Finally, the rapist gets up and leaves the room. When Jur is convinced he's no longer in the house, she wakes up her son and drives them both to the police station. Detectives escort Duart to the hospital where she is examined. Using a rape kit, detectives collect evidence from the victim's body and send it to the crime lab for DNA testing. Meanwhile, Jennifer begins to put her life back together. She starts by writing down everything she could remember about the attack. She gives six typed pages to Collinsville detectives that read like an operating manual for the Southside Rapist.
- [13:52]
H
They read that thing and they said this sounds exactly like the same man. This is the same modus operandi and everything.
- [14:02]
A
Six weeks later, DNA confirms investigators suspicions and Jennifer Jewer becomes the 13th confirmed victim of the Southside rapist.
- [14:11]
H
And it was him. And I was so happy because I knew then that there was a Greater possibility of it being solved.
- [14:20]
G
We knew what his DNA was, we just didn't know who he was. So we started buccal swabbing people, basically getting their spit and being able to get their DNA from there. And so we'd go after the white males and between certain ages, see if they had any connections to St. Louis as well as Collinsville or those areas in between.
- [14:42]
A
After three months, detectives are still no closer to identifying the rapist. They do not, however, give up.
- [14:49]
F
You didn't want to see him to continue to do this and affect these people's lives like this. He just didn't want to see that. And so it causes you to realize the importance of the case and it makes you want to focus even more on solvent.
- [15:10]
I
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- [15:43]
A
It's May 10, 1995. St. Charles, Missouri is a suburb 20 miles outside of St. Louis and the oldest town on the banks of the Missouri River. It's a quiet place where on a warm spring evening, windows are left open for the breeze. At 2am, Sue Kleesholty wakes to find a stray beam of light outside her bedroom door.
- [16:06]
J
I saw a light come up my hallway and I thought, you know, I knew it was a flashlight. And I thought, I can't believe my son would try to sneak in the house with a flashlight. And then just seconds later, the flashlight was shining bright in my face and the voice just said, if you scream or make any noises, I'll kill you.
- [16:26]
A
The intruder binds Sue's eyes with duct tape and tells the single mother he's going to rape her.
- [16:32]
J
He gave me a list of sexual events that were going to take place. And of course I started praying out loud and telling me to be quiet, you know, when he first entered my
- [16:43]
A
bedroom, Kleeshulty continues to pray while the intruder attacks.
- [16:49]
J
After the rape was over, he got me out of my bed, put me in my shower, insisted I take a shower. So thinking that, you know, this is going to be over shortly, I want to make sure that none of the evidence goes away. I just put the stopper in the bathtub and Let all the water remain in the tub for evidence, and he left.
- [17:07]
A
Within 20 minutes, the police are knocking on Clay Schultz's door. They process the scene and send their evidence to St. Louis. A month later, DNA confirms what cold case detectives already suspect. Sue Kleesholti is yet another victim of the Southside Rapist.
- [17:25]
J
I didn't have a clue who it was who raped me. I have to tell you, you know, you look at everybody and you go, you listen to their voice to see if it resembles the voice that you heard the night you were raped.
- [17:37]
A
Who is the south side rapist? After 11 years and 18 confirmed assaults, the answer to that question still proves elusive.
- [17:47]
F
The problem was that this guy was a ghost. He was a phantom. He. Nobody could tell you exactly what he looked like. And if you look at the composites over the years, you'll have six or seven different composites that are completely different people.
- [18:01]
A
Even more frustrating for cold case detectives, the south side rapist seems never to make a mistake, or at least one that will get him caught. That is, until he meets Eugene Frigo. It's midnight on the south side of St. Louis on September 12, 1998. Six years after a serial rapist brought notoriety to the neighborhood. Eugene Frigo and his girlfriend are spending a quiet Saturday night at home when Frigo hears a noise in the yard outside.
- [18:32]
K
Well, we heard a loud boom, a beating, you know, somebody beating on a car hood or something. And then I stood up and looked out the vertical blinds and seen a face, and then he seen mine and he turned around and started running down the street.
- [18:51]
A
The man jumps into a van and drives away wearing only a pair of shorts. Frico grabs his keys, gets into his car and gives chase.
- [19:00]
K
I basically just wanted to get the, you know, the license plate number, but as I got closer to him, he sped up.
- [19:06]
A
Frico's attempt at getting the man's plate number turns into a high speed pursuit through the streets of St. Louis.
- [19:13]
K
He was going up different streets, you know, making sharp turns and not slowing down at four way intersections, you know, where you should going through red lights. I mean, I had the really sense that he was really trying to get away for some reason.
- [19:26]
A
In the middle of the chase, Frigo realizes he has a cell phone in his car and dials 911.
- [19:33]
E
911. Yeah, I was at my house. I heard somebody kicking the cars and everything, and I looked out the window and there was somebody on my porch. The guy spotted me, he ran away. His car was parked at the end of my street. I Got him in front of me right now. His license plate is 090 BMP, Missouri.
- [19:50]
K
I'm going, man. That's not gonna slow down. I looked down at the speedometer. It's like 85 miles an hour. You know, it's pretty quick. You know, I think like, God, I hope the police get here pretty soon, you know, slow this thing down a little bit.
- [20:02]
E
Okay, I got the plate, sir, but I need you to stop following him, okay? This guy is moving now. I'm letting him go. Okay, you let him go, you tell me where you are.
- [20:13]
A
Frico lays off the gas, and the van disappears into the night. The next morning, police officers knock on Frigo's door, and then they took a
- [20:21]
K
walk around the house, and that's when they discover that the side window had been kicked in. Apparently, that was the noise.
- [20:28]
A
Eugene Frigo and his girlfriend file a police report. The next day, it lands on the desk of Detective Randy Sassinger, a burglary investigator also assigned to the Southside Rapist investigation.
- [20:41]
E
So I took the destruction of property report, and I went back out to the Elma address, and I interviewed Eugene Freegle and his girlfriend.
- [20:47]
K
Well, he asked me what happened. We took a drive on the route of where I chased him and everything, so he knew exactly where we had gone.
- [20:56]
A
Sassinger runs the license plate number Frigo provides but determines that the plates are stolen. Then detectives enter the tag number into the Regional Justice Information System, or regis. This database acts as a cross check, allowing Sassinger to see if any other law enforcement agency has run the plates. Within the past five months, a postal
- [21:18]
E
inspector had run the plate, and Dennis Simpson was the postal inspector. And I asked him why he had processed the plate.
- [21:25]
A
Four months earlier, Inspector Dennis Simpson had been working surveillance on a house suspected of trafficking narcotics.
- [21:33]
K
Part of that surveillance was monitoring who
- [21:35]
A
went in and out of the house,
- [21:37]
K
writing down license plates of vehicles that came and went. And one of the license plates that
- [21:43]
A
I wrote down happened to be one
- [21:44]
K
Detective Sassinger was interested in.
- [21:47]
E
So I asked him if he would mind if I would follow up the plate and actually go to the address. And he didn't care. He said it was all right, his investigation was cold.
- [21:55]
A
Randy Sassinger is on the hunt. He may just be tracking a suspected burglar, but it may be that the man who attempted to break into Eugene Frigo's home is actually the elusive south side rapist.
- [22:09]
E
Any offender, such as a serial offender rapist that is a home invader, is a burglar. He's Got to be a good burglar to get into a house and get out without being seen. This type of person, his objective wasn't to steal. It was to attack females.
- [22:26]
A
On October 15, Sassinger begins surveillance on the house where Dennis Simpson first observed the stolen plates. Fourteen days later, a van bearing the tag number appears in the driveway. Sassinger calls for backup.
- [22:41]
E
We drove over to the address and I asked who owned the vehicle. And a person named Dennis Rabbit said he was the owner of the vehicle. And I said, well, guess what? I got a warning on this vehicle. Know you're with me. We talked about the investigation of the Southside Rapist and that I had fingerprints on other burglaries in the same area and that I would like him to consent to be fingerprinted as a way of eliminating him if he's not the person responsible. And I also told him about the DNA buckle swab, which would give me a DNA sample for possible elimination as a South side rapist.
- [23:17]
A
After four hours of proclaiming his innocence, Rabbit agrees to provide Cold Case detectives with his fingerprints and the DNA sample. Investigators then have no choice but to release their suspect back into society.
- [23:31]
F
At the time, I think Dennis knew that he was about to be released, and he figured he was buying himself time by agreeing to do all of this.
- [23:39]
E
We conveyed Dennis back home and we searched his vehicle with his permission. And then I submitted the DNA to the laboratory and waited for analysis.
- [23:49]
A
On October 30, 1998, DNA analyst Mary Beth Carr begins the process of comparing Dennis Rabbit's DNA profile to that of the south side rapist. After six years in more than 600 DNA comparisons, she has little hope for a match. The next morning, she reviews the results. I was working on the computer and looking, doing the analysis, and I was like, oh, my God, it's him. I thought I even said it in the lab. I was looking at the computer. I was like, oh, my God. But fell off the chair. Mary Beth Carr has matched Rabbit's DNA profile to the genetic signature of the Southside Rapist. The first person she notifies is Detective Randy Sassinger.
- [24:35]
E
I think I almost broke her in half. She tells me that. And I grabbed her and squeezed her. And I was. I was glad to see the end of this. You know, something was finally coming true. It was. There was an ending in sight.
- [24:46]
A
Detective Mark Kennedy has been working on the south side rapist case since 1995. Carr calls to tell him the news.
- [24:54]
F
She says, hey, you're not going to believe this, but Randy, Randy Solved it. He's got the guy. I said, he's got him right there at the station now. And she said, no, no, no, we know who it is, though. We know who it is. You got to get in right away.
- [25:07]
A
Kennedy returns to the police station and dispatches a team of detectives to Rabbit's last known address, but can't locate the suspect. The search of the neighborhood and then the entire city proves equally futile. Dennis Rabbit, it appears, has decided to run.
- [25:24]
F
We couldn't find him anywhere. But see, the problem was that Dennis had no fixed residence. He sometimes stayed with. Four other times he'd stay with a girlfriend. So we weren't convinced that he had left the state yet.
- [25:37]
A
Three months pass with still no sign of Rabbit. Meanwhile, the media presses for an arrest, and Rabbit's victims wonder why he was ever released in the first place.
- [25:48]
B
It was a mistake. It was a terrible mistake, and I'm sure they're paying for it, but it was a mistake. Somebody another jurisdiction, not even 30 miles away, is looking for a man and has been looking for a man for 10, 10 years. And you have him in your hands, and now all of a sudden, he's gone.
- [26:03]
A
Six months after the DNA match was first made, the truth is all too clear. St. Louis's Southside Rapist, now believed to be Dennis Rabbit, has once again escaped. It's February 28, 1999, 1,000 miles away from St. Louis. In the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a mother calls the police to report that her 15 year old daughter is missing.
- [26:29]
E
She found a note that had a person's name by the name of Nathan Babbitt, a phone number and a room number, and she gave that to the sheriff's department.
- [26:40]
A
The phone number is traced to the Freeway Inn, a $29 a night motel on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Officer Scott Parsons and his partner Frank follow up with a knock on the door of room 121. A middle aged man answers.
- [26:55]
G
He saw both of us standing in our uniforms and raised his hands and said, you know, she told me she was 18. And anytime somebody begins their conversation with a police officer when she told me she was 18, there's probably going to be a problem.
- [27:09]
A
Parsons wants to know why the man has a young girl in his room. But first he asks for identification.
- [27:16]
G
He began by saying he was Dennis Babbitt. It was only about the third or fourth attempt by myself and my partner that we were able to get his correct information. He was definitely trying his hardest to conceal his identity.
- [27:30]
A
While Parsons keeps an eye on the suspect. His partner checks the man's Social Security number. Five minutes later, a slew of felony warrants from St. Louis comes back to one Dennis Rabbit. When Parsons tells Rabbit he's under arrest, he bolts from the motel room and into the parking lot.
- [27:47]
G
Mr. Rabbit had decided to try to cut between cars. So my in orbit takedown ended up taking him down into a minivan. At which point officer Middleton, my partner, did basically a hockey check into the minivan.
- [28:01]
A
Albuquerque notifies the FBI that Dennis Rabbit is in custody. The news then makes his way north to St. Louis.
- [28:09]
F
I'm laying in bed on a Sunday morning, 10 o' clock in the morning. Paul Swenson from the FBI calls me up and says, we've got him. I say, hey, don't play with me, Paul. He goes, no, no, I'm not playing. This is, this is for real. We've got him. They still got him. They're on the parking lot in Albuquerque. They haven't even brought him back to the station yet. I just wanted you to know arrangements were made.
- [28:28]
E
Warrants were issued for us to fly to Albuquerque and bring Dennis Rabbit back. So I. I entered an airplane for the first time in my life and went to Albuquerque.
- [28:38]
A
On March 3rd, Dennis Rabbit is extradited out of New Mexico. In 2002, Dennis Rabbit spoke to cold case files.
- [28:46]
C
I've been with quite a few women. I mean, see, with me, most of the time they think it's a hate crime. Okay, I don't hate women. I actually love women. And I've been looking for something all my life.
- [29:03]
I
When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts, and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Done. Call 1-800-granger click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [29:37]
A
Eight hours after Dennis Rabbit was apprehended at an Albuquerque motel, cold case detectives from St. Louis arrived in New Mexico anxious to meet the man whose genetic fingerprint matches that of the Southside rapist. The investigators sit down in an interview room with Rabbit, whom they have been hunting for more than 14 years.
- [29:58]
F
You got so many questions you want to ask him. I mean, this man's been a part of your life for two years, three years, in some cases, five years. You know, I mean, you've developed Your own picture of who he might be and what he was doing. And now you want to get out there and you want to close this out. And understanding these rights, do you agree to be interviewed?
- [30:19]
A
Okay. After seven hours of building a rapport with their suspect, detectives set up a video camera and Dennis Rabbit agrees to come clean.
- [30:28]
F
We're going to start off in 1998. We're going to try to work our way backwards.
- [30:33]
E
And Dennis basically bled his heart. You know, he told us everything. He would get into details of the color of the victim's car. It was amazing the things that he would remember.
- [30:42]
C
I seen her. I've seen her. And sleeping on the couch.
- [30:45]
D
Okay.
- [30:45]
E
How did you see her sleeping on the couch?
- [30:47]
C
I went to the front door and looked through the window.
- [30:49]
A
Two hours into the interview, detectives arrive at a 1995 rape in Collinsville, Illinois. Rabbit remembers it well.
- [30:58]
C
I went into the living room, and before I woke her up, I turned the light out, and then I accost her. I also had a fake pistol with me, and I took her in the bedroom and I ran raped. Okay.
- [31:10]
F
Did you perform oral sex on her?
- [31:13]
C
I believe I did.
- [31:14]
F
Okay.
- [31:15]
A
Dennis rabbit is describing the rape of 33 year old Jennifer Jewer. After two hours, he has added 23 other names to the list of women he has attacked. Rabbit eventually pleads guilty to 49 charges of sexual assault and is sentenced to five consecutive life sentences. After two years in prison, Dennis Rabbit agrees to discuss his career as a criminal. Rabbit begins when he was just a teenager with a fascination for peeping.
- [31:45]
C
There was certain houses in the neighborhood. I knew the women, what time they took their showers, and they never closed their windows. And I always used to go watch. And it excelled from there.
- [31:56]
A
At the age of 17, Rabbit decided to stop watching and climb through his first window.
- [32:03]
C
I don't know what pushed me through that first window. It was just. I was looking. The light was on in the bathroom. I didn't see anything. I just went through the window.
- [32:14]
A
The men who tracked Rabbit for over a decade often wondered why he attacked so many women. In their conversations with rabbit, they found the answer to be long and meandering.
- [32:25]
F
I started every interview the same way. Dennis, tell me why you do something like. Like this. And initially, he started to tell a little story about how when he was young, he would have these recurring nightmares in which this headless female torso would come to him in the middle of the night and have sex with him.
- [32:44]
C
And I asked detective Kennedy about it. If he ever heard of a demon coming to a person or spirit. You know, I believe in this stuff, okay? And he told me that in folklore, there was a female demon called a succubus.
- [32:59]
A
In mythology, a succubus is a female demon believed to descend upon men and have sex with them while they sleep.
- [33:06]
F
And he brightened up, and he had never heard that word before. He says, you mean there's, like, the name for it? And I said, yeah.
- [33:12]
A
Rabbit believes he has been hunted by a succubus demon since he was a young man. He says his desire to find out her identity drove him to rape women. That fantasy, however, is just a small part of Dennis Rabbit's compulsion.
- [33:26]
C
It was love to me. It wasn't power. It wasn't forcing them. It was somehow. And I don't understand how I could equate rape into love, but to me, it was. That's what I was looking for.
- [33:43]
A
One of Rabbit's signature behaviors was to perform oral sex on his victims, an act Rabbit believed would somehow transform the crime of rape into consensual sex.
- [33:53]
C
That was my M.O. that's how they always knew it was me, because most rapists don't do that. That's something that's done for the woman, whereas the other ones are just trying to get, you know, enjoy themselves.
- [34:06]
J
Man's just outrageous that he would think a stranger would intrude in someone's home, that he would threaten them with their life, tell him he would kill them and think that they'd turn around five minutes later that he would be pleasing them. Extremely misguided.
- [34:20]
C
Some of them did orgasm, okay? They tell me it's involuntary. I don't know, you know, but in my mind, it wasn't, okay?
- [34:28]
H
I didn't feel any pleasure, and I can't imagine why, how he could even fathom. In them, it's little. That mind of his that he would be giving pleasure to someone. There is no way.
- [34:43]
C
I've been. I've been with quite a few women. I mean, see, it was with me most of the time. They think it's a. It's a hate crime. Okay? I don't hate women. I actually love women, and I've been looking for something all my life.
- [34:55]
G
He'll talk freely about actual going into somebody's house. He'll talk freely about, yeah, he raped women, but they enjoyed it. You know, he won't talk to you about as far as any violence, any, you know, cutting the women, tying their hands, and maybe beating them with a phone or whatever blunt object he can grab.
- [35:19]
A
The reality of Dennis Rabbit's rapes can best be found in the police reports generated by his victims. But even for the women whose bodies he left unbroken, A legacy of unseen scars remains.
- [35:32]
J
He didn't break any bones. He didn't draw any blood. But that's not what rape's about. It's not about breaking bones and having cuts or whatever. You know, rape is a power issue, and it affects your soul and your thought about every aspect of your life.
- [35:52]
E
Dennis rabbit does not like to be looked at as a bad person. He wants people to like him. All of his friends that know him like him. Dennis wants to be well liked, But Dennis is a monster.
- [36:04]
A
Dennis rabbit is serving his life sentence at the state prison in cameron, missouri. Although detectives may never be certain just how many women rabbit assaulted, they know he is one of the most prolific serial rapists in history.
- [36:18]
F
And if you look at the way he operated, he was averaging about four rapes a year during the period that we were aware that he was operating extrapolated over, like, 25 years. You're up to 100 rapes right there and God knows how many attempts.
- [36:36]
A
Dennis rabbit says he has no clear understanding of why he rapes, but he does know that if he was released, he would almost certainly rape again.
- [36:45]
C
Yeah, I deserve to be here the rest of my life, But I also deserve some answers on why, where, and why this started. And I think the people out there would be better suited if we came up with some answers. I did some terrible things, you know, and I needed it to get it out of me, and I needed to set myself free, and I needed to help those people that I did hurt the best way I could.
- [37:10]
A
The people Dennis rabbit hurt the most are his victims. Thirty women at least, ranging in age from 414 to 90, who want nothing more than for society to lock dennis rabbit into his cell and throw away the key.
- [37:25]
B
Thank God they got the right guy and I didn't have to testify and go through it all over again because he surely could have dragged it out, and for what reason, I don't know. He admitted to it, and I was glad that it was over.
- [37:35]
J
I think all of his victims, all the legal experts have said this man will not see be outside the walls of the jail ever for the the of rest rest of his life. So I'm quite satisfied with that. That's fine with me.
- [37:51]
C
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A
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C
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B
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C
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A
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E
Caesar sauce equals extra crispy Chicken Caesary Greatness sounds delicious.
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C
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