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- [00:00]
David Schutz
Wondery subscribers can binge all episodes of Felonious Florida Season four early and ad free right now. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. This episode contains graphic language and descriptions of sexual violence that some listeners may find disturbance. There's a handwritten note taped to Corinne Burns apartment door in south Miami. It's 8am on Thursday, May 30, 1985. Corrine's car is in the shop and her friend and co worker Susan is here to pick her up. The note says, I'm sick and won't make it in today. I'll call you later. It's odd though, because Susan and Corinne had been out together and until 11:30 the night before, and Karine seemed fine. But Susan is running late, so she grabs the note off Karine's door and heads to work. Behind the door of apartment three is a horrifying and bloody scene. Corrine is dead. She'd been tied up on her bed with a telephone cord, apparently sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. And in an empty apartment a few doors down, some of her belongings have been stashed, along with a bloody pillowcase. Homicide investigators call Detective Dave Simmons with an alarming possibility. The clues suggest that Corrine was a victim of the serial rapist Simmons has been hunting for years, but with one terrifying difference.
- [01:51]
Dave Simmons
They called me not knowing whether the pillowcase rapist now had finally killed someone.
- [02:05]
Lindsey Graham
Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry's American Scandal. In our latest series, a family of religious fanatics moves to Ruby Ridge, Idaho to wait out the apocalypse. But their paranoia and suspicion of authority lead to a confrontation with federal agents and their own own personal Armageddon. Follow American Scandal on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:34]
David Schutz
From the South Florida Sun Sentinel this is Felonious Florida, the podcast that leads you into the dark side of the Sunshine State. I'm David Schutz and we're at episode four of our six part series in the the Hunt for Florida's Pillowcase Rapist. In this episode, we'll unravel the most intense year in the investigation. 1985. A rollercoaster. 12 months marked by hopeful leads, violent suspects and emotional dead end. By 1985, the pursuit of the pillowcased rapist was in its fourth year and the cases continued to stack up. Four years ago this month, the Pillowcase Rapist began his spree of sexual assaults and robberies in Dade and Broward, and last night he claimed his 40th known victim, a young woman in the Kendall area near Baptist Hospital. It was clear that Detective Simmons and his team of five investigators weren't nearly enough to break the case.
- [03:42]
Dave Simmons
The higher ups in the department finally decided we need to assist Simmons and get him some help because he's been doing a good part of this on his own with the help of his squad. So they set up a task force of about 60 detectives that they drew from specialized units from all over the department. And we ran down hundreds and hundreds of leads.
- [04:06]
David Schutz
The jobs of dozens of officers on the task force would be to pore through every tip, to brief patrol officers on detecting suspicious people and activities, and to find and interview every potential suspect that surfaced that spring. One did. The first real suspect so far, in the early morning hours of May 30, 1985, he killed Kareem Burns.
- [04:33]
Dave Simmons
I was called one evening that Homicide was working a case down in the area where we had experienced a lot of cases with the pillowcase rapist down in the vicinity of Dayland Mall between Sunset and Kendall Drive. They said that a 26 year old female had her apartment broken into. She was apparently sexually assaulted. They weren't sure, but they were wondering if I could come out to take a look at the scene.
- [05:04]
David Schutz
About a month earlier, Karine had landed a new job as a sales representative for a promotions company. That's where she met Susan and the two became friends. On Wednesday night, May 29, the two had gone out together to a bar called Rick's Cafe. Susan drove because Corinne's car was being repaired. She dropped Corrine at home just before midnight and promised to pick her up for work the next morning. Susan showed up at 8 and that's when she found the note on Corrine's door and went to work. By early that afternoon, Susan still hadn't heard from Corinne. Neither had her boss. This was a brand new job for Corinne and Susan was sure she'd call the office if she was taking a sick day. She was growing more uneasy with every minute. Susan took out the note that she had taken off Karine's door and compared it to some of Karine's office paperwork. The handwriting did not match, but why would somebody else write it? And who? At about 6pm Susan was back at Corinne's apartment. It's in a place called Bermuda Villas, a typical Florida apartment complex of two story motel style buildings separated by parking areas. Each apartment has a door in front and back. Susan knocked on Corinne's front door and didn't get an answer. And the blinds in all of her windows were shut. Susan was now sure that Corrine was in trouble. She went across the parking lot and tried to convince a security guard to open the door. He did, and Susan went in first. They walked through the dark apartment toward the back. At the bedroom door, Susan could see Corinne. She was lying in her bed, face up with a sheet pulled up to her chin. Her hair seemed wet and slicked back. The security guard stepped in and touched Karine's foot. She was cold to the touch. Corrine was dead. The two ran back to the office and called the police. But actually it was the second time that evening that somebody had called about a problem in apartment 3. About an hour before Susan discovered Karine's body, a maintenance worker saw a dog sitting in front of Karine's apartment, just waiting at her door. It was a mangy gray German Shepherd. The worker went around the building to avoid the dog and knocked on Karine's back door. When he returned to the front, he saw the dog walking away from Karine's apartment with a man he had never seen before. He was carrying a briefcase and a paper grocery bag full of items that were later determined to be from Karine's apartment. The worker followed the stranger to a vacant unit a few doors up, where he left the items and disappeared with the dog. The worker called the police to report a possible burglary, but officers hadn't responded by the time Susan showed up an hour later and reported Corinne's death. This time officers rushed to the scene and the investigation into Corinne's brutal murder moves at lightning speed. Within hours, detectives identified the stranger seen with the dog at Karine's apartment. His name was Jeffrey Patrick Davidson, a 34 year old tow truck driver who lived across the street from Karine's apartment at Bermuda Villas. When officers questioned him, he denied being at her apartment. He said he was out walking his dog, the 10 year old German shepherd, who he named Satan. And Davidson had his own theory about the murder of his neighbor. As he sat in the back of a patrol car, he told officers he'd read about the Pillowcased rapist in the news and he thought he's the person who probably killed her. That's a story he stuck to. But he hadn't yet met Detective Dave Simmons, who was going to get to the truth. Simmons had to determine if Jeffrey Davidson was Karine's killer and if he was the Pillowcase Rapist. If so, it would be the first time one of the Pillowcase Rapist victims had been murdered.
- [09:40]
Dave Simmons
We hadn't experienced it yet, but some of the cases were getting a little bit more physical in terms of the jabbing and lightly slashing with his knife. And this clearly was a case where a knife was used. So I went to the scene, took a look, and was told what they had at the time. They were still waiting for the medical examiner to arrive and finish processing.
- [10:10]
David Schutz
There were certainly enough similarities in the case to suspect the pillowcase rapist. Davidson matched some of the physical descriptions of the suspect. The screen of a back window had been sliced so the door could be unlocked. Karine had been tied with a phone cord and apparently sexually assaulted her. Items that were found in a nearby vacant apartment included a bloody pillowcase. And it's fairly common for an unchecked serial rapist to progress to murder. But Corrine hadn't just been murdered. She had been brutalized, mutilated.
- [10:47]
Dave Simmons
He took a pillowcase and put it over her head. At one point, he stuffed socks and nylon stockings down her mouth to keep her quiet.
- [10:58]
David Schutz
That probably caused her to suffocate. But her attacker stabbed her anyway, at least two dozen times. And the horror got even worse.
- [11:09]
Dave Simmons
She had been decapitated, her head placed back on her body. After he killed her, he went into the kitchen and got oil and rubbed it all over her body that he had been touching to eliminate the possibility of lifting any body prints from her. And he wrote on the walls in blood.
- [11:30]
David Schutz
If the pillowcased rapist had done this to Karine, this case had taken a terrifying turn.
- [11:42]
Anna Richardson
The town of AGDA in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex. But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn. The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption. His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful, beautiful clairvoyant. Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
- [12:07]
Dave Simmons
I am the Archangel Michael.
- [12:10]
Anna Richardson
The whole town has been thrown into.
- [12:12]
David Schutz
Chaos as the mayor is unable to carry out his duties. I would like to address you. All legal proceedings have been initiated.
- [12:21]
Anna Richardson
Join me, Anna Richardson and journalist Leo Chic for the mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption and magic. Binge all episodes of the mystic and the Mayor, exclusively and ad free right now on Wondri. Start your free trial in Apple podcasts, Spotify or the Wondery app.
- [12:41]
Mike Corey
Think about the most shocking true crime stories you've ever heard. Now imagine discovering that behind them lies a medical mystery so disturbing, the government tried to keep it hidden for decades. On medical mysteries, we dive deep into unexplained medical cases that will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about the human body. And in our episode called A Redacted Medical Mystery, we teamed up with Declassified Mysteries to expose how one patient's symptoms led to the discovery of dangerous government experiments and suspicious deaths. From hospital rooms to classified files, this story reveals dark secrets that powerful institutions never wanted you to find. The episode is available now on both Mr. Bolland's medical mysteries and Redacted Podcast feeds. Listen to A Redacted Medical Mystery on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget, you can listen to this episode and more of your favorite Wondery podcasts ad free by joining Wondery.
- [13:37]
David Schutz
The savagery of Karene Byrne's murder on May 30, 1985 was already making Detective Simmons skeptical that her killer was the Pillowcase rapist.
- [13:48]
Dave Simmons
It was too, too brutal, too, too gruesome, unless the guy just went off his rocker. He seemed to set in his method of operation in our rape cases that I don't think he lost that much control that he would take a knife and cut someone's head off and do the things he did to her body with knives and other things.
- [14:13]
David Schutz
But Simmons had to follow every possible lead. And if there's even a possibility of a suspect, he, he had to talk to him.
- [14:21]
Dave Simmons
They had a subject in custody, Jeffrey Davidson, back at the homicide office. I went there and was told that he had started talking. Then he invoked his constitutional rights and didn't want to speak anymore. And it was playing games back and forth. He ended up reaching out to us saying that no, he decided to waive his rights. We went through constitutional rights form with him again and he initially denied, denied, denied for hours.
- [14:50]
David Schutz
But the maintenance worker at Bermuda Villas identified the dog he had seen as Davidson's German shepherd, Satan. Davidson couldn't explain that away. A Detective Simmons told him that items taken from Corrine's apartment were being checked for his fingerprints. So Davidson changed his he admitted that he had gone to Corinne's apartment that evening to rob her. He described a note that had been taped to her door and said he broke in and found Corrine already dead. So he ran. But Simmons knew that Susan had taken the note with her when she went to pick up Corrine at 8am almost 10 hours before Davidson was seen at the apartment. There was no way he could have known about the note or what it said unless he was the one who put it there.
- [15:44]
Dave Simmons
And we Talked and talked and talked, and eventually he came around. And once confronted with a bunch of inconsistencies in his story, based on what the investigators were finding back on the scene and through interviews of his roommates back where he lived, I was confronting him with some of that information that he had lied about previously. And finally he ends up confessing and telling the gruesome details of the case.
- [16:18]
David Schutz
It turns out Davidson had broken to Corrine's apartment in the early morning hours and killed her. When she woke up, he wrote the fake note for the door, went home, then came back with his dog later that evening to look for more items to steal. Less than 24 hours after Corrine's murder, her case was solved. But the confession also meant that Detective Simmons was probably right. Jeffrey Davidson was a killer, but he was not the pillowcase rapist. Tests of Davidson's blood proved it beyond a doubt. He didn't have the unique blood subtype of the pillowcase rapist, eliminating him as a suspect. Davidson was convicted in Corrine's murder and sentenced to life in prison. The suspected pillowcase rapist continued his attacks through the summer of 85. He was increasingly threatening and violent. In one attack on June 21, a victim asked him, wouldn't you rather be doing this with someone who likes you? The rapist replied, don't you like me? And he pressed the knife to her throat until she answered yes. On July 24, a 41 year old divorced mother of two was attacked from behind as she read a magazine at her dining room table. When she turned to look at him, he told her, if you try to look at my face, I'll cut you in half. She struggled with the attacker for control of the knife, and the woman was badly cut. Summer rolled into fall, and in September, two new leads surfaced. They were promising, but just as quickly slipped away.
- [18:09]
Dave Simmons
We had a case of a flasher that was out in the middle of an apartment complex in our target area that was caught one early morning and we had him brought to our office and I interviewed him, thinking he might be our guy.
- [18:24]
David Schutz
His name was Michael Gersley, a 30 year old airport worker who lived at the former Elysian Lakes apartment complex. That's where the earliest attacks of the pillowcase rapist were believed to have been committed.
- [18:37]
Dave Simmons
His MO Would be he'd go up to an apartment door with a work belt on with tools and knock on the door, saying that he was sent by management to check her air conditioner inside. And once inside, he'd raped her.
- [18:53]
David Schutz
That landed him the moniker the AC Rapist. Like the Pillowcase Rapist. He threatened his victims with a knife and bound them with cords. He even had the same shoe size. Patrol officers throughout the county had been briefed by Simmons about the pillowcase rapes. Were on the lookout for suspicious men. Late one night in September, two patrolmen spotted Gersley running through an apartment complex in South Miami. He was exposing himself to women. They chased him down and called Detective Simmons. Gersley confessed to several rapes in the early 1980s but said he'd stopped after having feelings of guilt.
- [19:36]
Dave Simmons
He was a rapist that digressed and turned into just a flasher because his last rape was a 15 year old girl that he felt so bad about. He was going to commit suicide. And he decided to change his MO to just become a flasher exhibitionist and Peeping Tom. He was peeping in windows in the same apartment complex as where some of our victims lived. So I thought man, we finally got the guy. But it wasn't him.
- [20:03]
David Schutz
Once again, it was the Pillowcase rapist's rare blood subtype that excluded Gersley as a suspect. He was convicted on charges that included sexual battery, kidnapping, burglary and indecent exposure. The Pillowcase rapist's ultra rare blood type had become Detective Simmons most valuable tool in the investigation. The rapist had a unique blood antigen found in tests of his semen and shared by less than 1% of the population. In late September, Simmons would put that clue to use again. In one of the most bizarre twists in the case that month, a killer confessed from his jail cell that he was the Pillowcase rapist. But he wasn't just any guy. He was a former cop. A one time Miami city police officer. A man who was fired sits in jail tonight accus of killing his girlfriend. His name is Pedro Gonzalez. Her name was Nilsa Martinez. They found Ms. Martinez's body this morning in her North Bay Village home. She had been shot many times.
- [21:11]
Unknown Speaker
We were contacted by city Miami homicide who said that they had arrested a one of their own, a former police officer by the name of Pedro Gonzalez. When they searched his car they found a mask and a pillowcase with blood stains on it. And wanted to let me know if we might be interested in looking at him for the Pillowcase rapist case.
- [21:40]
David Schutz
Gonzalez had been hired as a young cop in Miami's rush to get officers on the street during a huge surge in violence in the early 1980s. In episode two we heard Dr. Paul George of History Miami describe the drug fueled violence of The ERA and the police department's frantic hiring spree.
- [21:59]
Dave Simmons
The city was so desperate to hire additional policemen under a lot of pressure outside and inside, including federal pressure, that they hired a bunch of folks who they had no idea what their backgrounds were. And some had criminal backgrounds. Some are recent rivals in Miami, and they become rogue cops.
- [22:16]
David Schutz
That's the class of police officers Gonzalez joined. According to Miami city attorney at the time, department higher ups were considering firing Gonzalez just two months after he was sworn in. He lasted for just 15 months before being fired in disgrace. Detective Simmons says Gonzalez's behavior then turned disturbing and homicidal.
- [22:39]
Unknown Speaker
He had told several people he was following the pillowcase rapist case in the newspapers, had told people at the security guard job that he worked at and as well as his girlfriend that he was the pillowcase rapist himself and showed up at her apartment one night wearing a Halloween costume and climbed up her back balcony just like the pillowcase rapist had done in a few cases and scared the hell out of her.
- [23:08]
David Schutz
His girlfriend believed him that he was the pillowcase rapist, and she even told some of her friends about the incident, but no one reported it to the police. A few days later, on Sunday, September 22, Gonzalez returned to his girlfriend's apartment. He brushed past her roommate, stood in her bedroom doorway, and shot her five times. Gonzalez was arrested the next day, and that's when the blood stained pillowcase was found under the front seat of his 1980 Chevy Citation. And months in jail, Gonzalez again confessed to being the pillowcase rapist.
- [23:51]
Unknown Speaker
So we pulled him out of jail, brought him over to our office and interviewed him at length for hours and hours and hours. And he played cat and mouse with us. When we'd asked him for case details on some of the cases to prove what he was saying was true, he just smiled at us and said, you're missing a key clue. If you ever found out what it was, you'd be able to bury me.
- [24:18]
David Schutz
Gonzalez did fit some of the general descriptions given by the pillowcase rapist's victims. But there were also discrepancies that were impossible to ignore. Gonzalez spoke with an accent, but victims said the pillowcase rapist didn't have one. And work records showed that Gonzalez was on duty as either a cop or a security guard at the time of nine of the pillowcase rapists confirmed attacks. So Simmons pressed Gonzalez to submit a blood sample for testing. He agreed at first, but kept stalling.
- [24:50]
Unknown Speaker
He agreed to do it, and then he would stop and say, no, I don't want to today. Can we do it tomorrow? Kept putting us off, putting us off and making excuse after. Excuse me. So finally, we went and got a search Warrant.
- [25:07]
David Schutz
On Friday, September 27, a judge ordered blood and saliva samples be taken from Gonzalez by force if necessary. And that's what they did. The next morning, at 3:45 on Saturday afternoon, Simmons got the lab report. Gonzalez didn't have the rare type of blood found in samples taken from the rape scenes. He could not be the pillowcase rapist.
- [25:30]
Unknown Speaker
So he had successfully wasted about five full days of our investigative time working with him and interviewing him at length, only to find out that he was probably trying to build a insanity defense for his murder case that he was in jail for.
- [25:53]
David Schutz
Gonzalez was convicted of murdering Nilsa Martinez and given a life sentence. He died in December 2006 at age 45 at a prison hospital in Lake Butler, Florida. The calendar flipped to 1986, and a pillowcase rapist, now the region's most wanted fugitive, continued to elude detectives. Then, early that year, a new suspect surfaced. An intruder had left fingerprints at the scenes of two rapes in early 1986, and investigators were able to match them to a known local criminal. It wasn't the first time such a thing happened, but this one was different. This time, samples taken from the crime scenes did contain the rare blood subtype that had excluded so many previous suspects. This could be the man they'd been hunting for years.
- [26:55]
G
Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast, Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. And sometimes we get to hear from survivors themselves in their own words. On our next season, it's May 2023. Competitive swimmer Allie Truitt has just graduated from Yale and and completed her first marathon. But a few days after graduation, Allie is snorkeling in the Caribbean when suddenly she's attacked by a shark and finds herself in a fight for her life. Ally's epic journey to reclaim her love of the water pushes her further than she could have ever imagined. All the way to the Paris Paralympics. Follow against the odds on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge the entire season ad free right now only on Wondery Plus. Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts, or Spotify.
- [27:50]
David Schutz
Today we acting bad, bad, bad, bad. We ain't trying to hurt nobody. For decades, he was untouchable. I'm going from Harlem to Hollywood. But now it's all coming undone. Sean Combs, the mogul as we know it is over. He will never be that person again.
- [28:08]
G
Even if he's found not guilty of these charges.
- [28:12]
David Schutz
I'm Jesse Weber, host of Law and Crimes the Rise and Fall of Diddy the Federal Trial A front row seat.
- [28:18]
Mike Corey
To the biggest trial in entertainment history. Sex trafficking, racketeering, prostitution, allegations by federal.
- [28:26]
David Schutz
Prosecutors that span decades, and witnesses who are finally speaking out. The spotlight is harsher, the stakes are higher, and and for Diddy, there may be no second chances. You can listen to the Rise and.
- [28:41]
Mike Corey
Fall of the Federal Trial exclusively with Wondery.
- [28:45]
David Schutz
Join Wonder plus in the Wondery app.
- [28:47]
Mike Corey
Spotify or Apple Podcasts Right now the.
- [28:51]
David Schutz
Street is still dark at 6 o' clock on Monday morning. It's January 7, 1986. A man is prowling through a neighborhood of small bungalow style homes in South Miami. This is the area most frequented by the Pillowcase Rapist. He's been to this specific neighborhood before. It's a very warm winter morning, even by Miami standards, and the man's wearing jeans, a denim jacket and a pair of brown work boots. He'd just come from a long night at Rollo's Lounge, a seedy rock n roll bar about four, five miles away. The man stops at a house on Southwest 77th street where there's a light on. He walks to a sliding glass door and peers inside. The 69 year old resident, Alma, is walking toward her front door. The man scurries to the home's carport and crouches in his shadow. He watches as Alma walks out the door in her pink nightgown, picks up her newspaper and goes back toward the house. But before she's inside, the man grabs her from behind and Alma's scream pierces the predn quiet of the secluded neighborhood. Up the street, a neighbor is out walking her dog and hears Alma scream. It's haunting, especially since moments earlier, she'd seen the stranger walking in the direction of Alma's house. The neighbor runs inside and calls Alma's phone. Nobody answers, so she calls 911. Within minutes, two Metro Dade police officers are on the scene and the attacker? He's still inside Alma's house. What happens next is inexplicable and a devastating missed opportunity. While one of the police officers waits in the patrol car, a second one goes to speak to the neighbor who heard the scream. She tells the officer about the stranger on the street and a scream from the direction of Alma's house. The officer jots down the information, then joins his partner Back in their patrol car, and this is baffling. The officers don't go to Alma's door to check on her. They don't even walk around the property. What they do is slowly drive by and shine their patrol car's searchlight on the house. They don't see anything and they don't hear anything. So they leave. Inside, Alma, the 69 year old widow, is being raped at knifepoint. Shortly after the officers drive off, Alma's neighbor tries calling her again. This time she answers. She's sobbing hysterically and says she's just been raped by a stranger. All Alma could tell detectives about her attacker is that he had a nylon stocking over his head. He had seen the officer shine the light on the house. So he grabbed some money from Elma's purse and took off. As soon as a patrol car was out of sight. The cops had a chance to catch a serial rapist in the act and squandered it. Still, not all was lost. A few weeks later, on March 4th, Alma returned to her house to find it had been burglarized. At some point since her rape, some of her underwear and jewelry were missing and a pillowcase had been taken from the bed. But fingerprints were left behind. Detectives found them on a window the burglar had used to get into Alma's house. The prints were run through a police database and a match came back to a local man with a long rap sheet and a history of deviant behavior. And days later, matching fingerprints surfaced again at another home not far from Alma's, where a second elderly woman had just been raped. The fingerprints left at the two rape scenes belonged to Ronald Thomas Beasley. He was a 38 year old landscaper and driver for a moving company.
- [33:12]
Dave Simmons
He was a strange dude, big, tall guy with one eye that was crossed. And he had just gotten out of Rayford after serving, I want to say 18 years for rape, violent sexual battery.
- [33:27]
David Schutz
Beasley's criminal record went back to his years at Coral Gables High School. He dropped out in the 11th grade after his first stint in jail. He was a regular at Rolo's Lounge and was known to sell cocaine on the streets around the bar. His attack on Elma was consistent with his deviant past.
- [33:49]
Dave Simmons
Beasley had a fetish for older women. He said that he was abused as a kid and his parents disowned him and hated him and beat him, gave him to his grandmother to raise him. And he loved her and adored her. When she died, he went to her funeral and clipped the lock of her Hair and would carry it around in his underwear at all times. He would go out at night through yards in south Miami, Coral Gables mainly, and steal panties and bras off back clotheslines and peep in windows.
- [34:27]
David Schutz
That's what he was doing on the night of Alma's rape. And it's what he was doing again 10 days later in the early morning hours of March 14, 1986. Like the night of Alma's attack, Beasley had spent the night at Rollo's bar, then found himself prowling through nearby neighborhoods. He spotted a house with a light on and broke in through a back door. In the kitchen, he took a small steak knife from a drawer and took it with him to the bedroom where an 89 year old woman was asleep on her bed. As he went through a jewelry box on the dresser, the woman began to wake up. So he scurried back to the kitchen, took off his T shirt and wrapped it around his head to hide his face. He waited for the woman to walk from the bathroom back to her bedroom. Then he grabbed her from behind, threw her on the bed, and raped her. After the rape, Beasley took the jewelry box and fled. But once he was outside, he realized he'd left his shirt in the house. It was easily identifiable. A beige 1984 Miami Grand Prix T shirt. He had to go back. But the woman he'd just raped was there in the kitchen, and she began hitting him and yelling for him to leave. Beasley didn't fight back. He later told police he let the woman hit him because he deserved it, since she was just an old grandma. He fled, tossing the knife and the woman's belongings into the bushes of a nearby house where he had once lived. But once again, Beasley was sloppy. He left his fingerprints at the scene. Now, detective Simmons was sure Beasley was a serial rapist. But was he the pillowcase rapist now targeting elderly women? That became a very real possibility when the stunning results came in from the forensics lab. They tested samples taken during a rape exam done on one of the victims, and they found the same extremely rare blood subtype that they knew the pillowcase rapist had.
- [36:35]
Dave Simmons
We thought we finally got him. I was tearful.
- [36:44]
David Schutz
But there was a problem. Something was not right. By the Last week of March, 1986, Detective Simmons and his team were staking out Ronald Beasley. They had his fingerprints from the scenes of the two rapes, and they'd found items he'd stolen from his victims in the bushes of a nearby house where he'd been staying. Recently, that was enough to get an arrest warrant. On the night of March 23, detectives followed Beasley to a ZZ Top concert at the old Sportatorium in Hollywood, Florida, at just after midnight. As Beasley was leaving the concert, officers placed him in handcuffs. Within hours, he was facing Detective Simmons in an interrogation room. At first, Beasley denied everything, but over hours of questioning, his story began to break down, and he ended up confessing to the prowling, to the burglaries, to the rapes, and to more rapes than just the two recent ones.
- [37:54]
Dave Simmons
He took us around to countless places where he had broken in and done things.
- [38:02]
David Schutz
But despite his confessions, Beasley was adamant that he was not the pillowcase rapist. And in fact, Beasley wasn't a strong physical match to descriptions provided by the pillowcase rapist victims. But what about the lab results that had been so conclusive in other cases? Simmons had the lab take another look.
- [38:22]
Dave Simmons
One of the victims turns out, ironically, to have the same blood type as the pillowcase rapist she had. And it showed when it was commingled with the assailant's body fluids. You can't tell whose is whose at first, and the lab kind of jumped to a conclusion that, oh, he's shown up again, and now he's raping elderly women. So we were thrown off course for a little bit. But once we separated them out and got his blood and her blood analyzed independent of one another, we saw where the mix up was.
- [39:02]
David Schutz
It was the victim's blood type that matched, not Ronald Beasley's. So for the fourth time in 12 months, blood typing eliminated a suspect as the pillowcase rapist.
- [39:14]
Dave Simmons
Again, another false alarm. It wasn't the right person.
- [39:19]
David Schutz
But Simmons did have Beasley, who was convicted in the two 1986 rapes. As of February 2024, Ronald Beasley was serving out two consecutive life sentences in a state prison in Crawfordville, Florida. He's 76 years old. The pillowcase rapist was still on the loose. Each time a promising lead had sprung up, it just as quickly withered. Frustrated and desperate, Detective Simmons and his investigators needed a breakthrough. A real one. And around the time of the Ronald Beasley investigation. Investigation. They get it. The pillowcase rapist attacked again. But this time, his victim tricked him.
- [40:06]
Dave Simmons
He didn't realize that she had seen him.
- [40:09]
David Schutz
Within days, the suspect's face is everywhere. And then he vanishes. That's next on episode five of Felonious Florida.
- [40:24]
Unknown Speaker
Foreign.
- [40:34]
David Schutz
Thank you for listening to this episode of Felonious Florida. Please support the show. By leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can listen to more episodes on the Wondery plus app online at floniesflorida.com or or wherever you listen to podcasts. This season was reported written and produced by Me, David Shoots editing by Robin Webb and Gretchen Day Bryant sound design and production by Sean Pitts Web design by Carbell Multimedia with illustrations by John DeLuca soundtrack by DeWolfe Music sound clips courtesy of the Miami Dade Police Department and the Wolfson Archives at Miami Dade College. Special thanks to retired Detective Sergeant Dave Simmons for his assistance with our reporting. This show is a production of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, a division of Tribune Publishing. Felonious Florida was created by Lisa Arthur and Juan Ortega. Follow Felonious Florida Season 4 in the Wondery app. You can binge the entire series early and ad free right now by joining Wondery and the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
- [41:49]
Lindsey Graham
In 1992, federal agents surrounded a remote cabin in the mountains of Idaho. It belonged to Randy Weaver, a Christian survivalist with links to the far right. Weaver was wanted on a minor weapons charge, but a series of blunders and misunderstandings turned the situation into an armed and deadly standoff. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history presidential lies, environmental disasters and corporate frau. In our latest series, a family of religious fanatics moves to Ruby Ridge in northern Idaho to wait out the apocalypse. But their paranoia and suspicion of authority lead to a confrontation with federal law enforcement and their own personal Armageddon. Follow American Scandal on the Wonder Yapp or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad free and be the first to binge newest seasons only on Wondery. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today.