S3 EP4 - A Cold Hit

Summary

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American Nightmares – S3 EP4 “A Cold Hit”

Podcast: American Nightmares (Gamut Podcast Network)
Episode: Season 3, Episode 4
Date: October 25, 2022

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode continues the investigation into the “Potomac River Rapist,” focusing on the unsolved 1998 murder of Christine Mirzayan in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and its surprising connection to a series of rapes in Montgomery County, Maryland. Through in-depth interviews with detectives, law enforcement, and family, host Paul Wagner unpacks how DNA evidence and the relatively new CODIS system led to a breakthrough “cold hit,” connecting crimes that stumped investigators for over a decade. The episode dives deep into the challenges of DNA forensics in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the dogged work of detectives, and the emotional stakes for families left waiting for justice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Unknown Subject and His Pattern

• Recount of the Rapist’s Methods:

  • Investigators were frustrated by the suspect’s brazen tactics and apparent familiarity with victims’ routines.
  • Detective Joe Madonna: “He seemed like he was nuts. Crazy, but extremely competent. He was in total control. So that's just not a good combination.” (04:11)

• High Risk, Calculated Attacks:

  • Attacks took place in early evening hours when most people would be at home.
  • Investigators speculated the suspect may have been married or lived with someone, requiring him to be “accountable” and explaining these risky timeframes.

Frustrations and Dead Ends (07:19–12:00)

• Detective Dean Combie & Team:

  • Felt “very frustrated,” emphasizing that unlike other cases, there were no witnesses or clear evidence in Mirzayan’s murder, only forensic material from her body.

• Command Pressure in Georgetown:

  • Homicide Commander Mike Farish addresses the influence of community affluence and pressure from police leadership in Georgetown:
    “...Sometimes it's a little more difficult to work your cases when you have this kind of political haranguing... We tried to eliminate that from getting down to the detectives as best we could because they had a job to do, and it was a serious job to do.” (11:00)

DNA, CODIS, and the “Cold Hit” Explained (13:17–21:06)

• Genesis of CODIS:

  • The forensic DNA system started in 1994, became national in 1998, and was still new and limited in 1998 DC.
  • DC relied on the FBI lab, which prioritized federal cases; delays were routine, often six months or more.

• DNA Evidence in Christine’s Case:

  • Took until 2001 for FBI to examine and upload Christine’s DNA profile.
  • Montgomery County’s own lab updated protocols and re-uploaded rape evidence profiles in 2004, leading to a pivotal “cold hit.”

• Detective Mike Farish on the early days:
  “...To get them to approve us sending DNA to somewhere like a bode lab, you know, and not actually have to climb the mountain and talk to the Dalai Lama to get it, was, you know, unheard of.” (20:52)

The Breakthrough Connection: Mirzayan Murder and Montgomery County Rapes (26:57–32:00)

• The Eureka Moment:

  • In 2004, CODIS connected the DNA from Mirzayan’s murder to 8 unsolved rapes, though the suspect remained unidentified.

  • Detective Dean Combie: "J.C. young called me up on the phone, said, hey, you know, you just, you gotta, you know, you gotta CODIS hit on Rosalien. And I was like, sweet... He says, but it's an unsub, though." (27:42)

  • What investigators had was a link to more crimes – all by “Unknown Subject,” not a named perpetrator.

• Surprise at the Link:

  • Detectives (Joe Madonna and Combie) were astonished—not previously suspecting a connection due to major differences in MO:
    • Christine was attacked outdoors, in public; the rapes took place inside victims’ homes after surveillance.
    • “If we'd have just relied on MO alone, never would have associated him at all.” (28:49) – Combie

Investigative Dead Ends & Academic Links (31:05–32:43)

• Investigators explored:

  • Potential connections through NIH, work locations, and social patterns, but all efforts led to dead ends.
  • “It was kind of unusual because most of the victims were well educated women like Christine.” (31:52) – Combie

• Still No Understanding How Victims Were Chosen:

  • Despite attempts, detectives could not figure out the method the attacker used to select his victims.

Theory: Difference in Victim Response (33:38–35:23)

• Christine’s Response May Have Led to Her Murder:
  • Victim’s husband, David Hakos, shares:
    “I think that that's why she was killed, because she would not have. She would have fought very hard back.” (33:46)
  • Police speculate Christine may have regained consciousness and fought back, compelling the killer to escalate to murder.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Frustration of “Wheel Spinning”:
  “You try and think of any possible thing that you could, you know, to look at to see if there might be something that could help you. ...Got nothing.” – Detective Combie (08:19)

• On the Reality of DNA Forensic Delays:
  “We can do everything right, package it up, send it off to the FBI, and it could still take us three to six months to hear anything.” – Mike Farish (18:44)

• On Political Pressure in Affluent Cases:
  “…That kind of brutality would draw the attention if it occurred anywhere in the city…” – Mike Farish (10:36)

• On the Publicity Campaign:
  “The FBI launched a website with a map and a timeline of all the attacks. There was a composite sketch... age progressed it, giving the picture of the suspected attacker lines on his face.” (38:25)

• On the Impact of Linking the Cases:
  “So it gives us hope that we're going to identify who this person is after all these years in that, you know, we have now tied these cases together, some...pretty violent cases...Now it's trying to find out who is this person and how are we going to be able to do it.” – David Gillespie (40:22)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Detectives describe rapist’s patterns & frustrations: 02:26–05:51
• Discussion of Mirzayan’s murder as a cold case: 07:19–12:00
• Introduction of CODIS and DNA forensics: 13:17–21:06
• The “cold hit” and detectives’ reactions: 26:57–32:00
• Speculation about victim selection and academic links: 31:05–32:43
• Victim’s response and theory on murder escalation: 33:38–35:23
• FBI publicity campaign and call for public help: 38:14–41:25
• Christine’s husband on learning of DNA link: 42:31–43:39

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Episode Flow & Tone

The episode is methodical, haunting, and investigative, enriched by first-person interviews with determined but often frustrated detectives, victim family members, and candid law enforcement voices. Language remains earnest, at times raw, highlighting the dogged efforts to solve a case that haunted investigators and devastated those left behind. Tension builds around the limits and evolution of forensic science and the hope—and disappointment—tied to each new “development.”

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Conclusion

“A Cold Hit” serves as a powerful microcosm of late 20th-century investigative challenges, the slow embrace of DNA technology, and the emotional toll exacted on families and law enforcement alike. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, noting the hope sparked by the FBI’s public appeal, and foreshadowing new evidence about to come to light—the pursuit of justice is not over.

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Transcript

[A]

Lets face it, more people are seeing UFOs and some of these sightings completely defy explanation.

[B]

You have things that are going hundreds of knots under the water, anti gravity.

[A]

But it has to be something like our own secret tech or maybe even adversarial, right?

[B]

So the claim that it's our tech

[C]

or that it's an adversarial tech.

[D]

No, it is not.

[A]

This is Steven Deener from the hit podcast uap. And I have conversations like that every week as I keep up with all the latest relating to UFO topics. Just search UAP wherever you get your podcasts. As we continue to ask the question, are we alone in the cosmos?

[B]

Previously in episode three of WTOP's American Nightmare series.

[C]

Unknown subject for several days prior to this incident happening. She was getting the feeling that somebody was coming in her house. So she's actually in bed and the next thing she knows this guy comes bursting. She, she heard something in the hallway and she sat up in bed and the next thing she knows a guy comes bursting into the room. He would meet violence with violence. So after he realized that she wasn't gonna fight him, he stopped trying to injure her. What's concerning about him is he's very brazen. And as we learned as we go through these cases, he's breaking into these homes and committing these offenses at probably the highest risk time frame you could imagine. These are early. Most of these are early evening hours. This guy is, he's not wrapped too tight. There's something pretty scary about him that he would act like that. But the fact that he's so competent at what he's doing is what makes it even scarier.

[B]

In August of 1998, when Christine Rezaian was murdered in Washington D.C. s Georgetown neighborhood, Detective Joe Madonna in neighboring Montgomery County, Maryland was at a dead end. Seven rape cases with no suspect, no arrest, no leads. Since May of 1991, Modano and his team had seemingly used every investigative tool in hopes of catching a man they knew to be a huge risk taking predator. They even tried surveillance, deploying undercover officers into neighborhoods similar to the ones the rapist had had been haunting.

[C]

They got to the point when you're spread out from almost D.C. to Damascus, surveillance becomes almost pointless at that time. They're so spread out, just always looking for DNA. Doc. Department of Correction releases arrests after these incidents happen. Constantly looking through other reports in the same geographical area where there might have been other attempts where maybe he was, you know, scoping out other places. Suspicious person reports. There's always stuff to look at. But it spans such a long period of time in such a large geographical area that, you know, after a while it's like you either have to catch him in the actor, get a DNA hit because through investigative techniques, there was really nothing else to do. But what was scary though is like I said, he seemed like he was nuts. Crazy, but extremely competent. He was in total control. So that's just not a good combination.

[B]

And willing to take extreme risks.

[C]

He got to the point he just interview the people so much and it's like he had to have crossed paths with them. But we did these surveys where all these victims, we asked them, who's your cable provider? Did you have any furniture deliveries? Did you have any appliances repaired? Who's your insurance company? Where do you go? Grocery shop. Just trying to find any common denominator and could not come up with anything.

[B]

That for an investigator must have just driven you crazy.

[C]

It was it that really. It was. There was ever a case I wanted to close. It was that just because it's like you, you want to know how. Why is he doing this? How is he getting these victims? It's usually with these serial cases, they're in a tight area and usually find something in common. But these, but they weren't. Even though these were spread out all over the place, you say, okay, well they're random, but they weren't random because he did a lot of. He did his homework. You know, he's not. He went into the house knowing that he's not going to beat any resistance. He wasn't afraid of dogs. You know, one woman's husband is away on a business trip, but he knows that he's watching these homes for a period of time. And the fact that he. The other thing that really bugged us is the fact that he's doing it in such a way. High risk time period. In the early evening, the only thing that I could think of was that he was married or living with somebody where his time is accountable. He can't be out at 2, 3 o' clock in the morning because he would get in trouble with a wife or girlfriend. So he had to be accountable to somebody or why risk doing it. And at a time when literally everyone's home. Yeah, early evening is everyone's home. You have the greatest chance of being seen or caught.

[B]

You may RECALL in episode three, the last known rape in Montgomery county was on November 14, 1997, just a little less than two weeks before Thanksgiving. It was the one with the vicious dogs in the house. Ten months later, Christine Rezaion was murdered in Georgetown. It was August of 1998. Joe Madonna never really gave it a thought. He'd heard about the case. He remembers the early publicity, but the circumstances were just so different from the rape cases he'd been investigating. For one, Christine was attacked on the street, pulled into a wooded area, and killed. None of the victims in Joe's cases were killed, and every attack took place inside. The one common denominator was the huge risk the killer took in grabbing Christine off busy Canal Road and forcing her into the woods. Joe's rapist was a risk taker. But was he also a vicious killer who had now crossed a line? Meanwhile, in D.C. in 1998, D.C. police Detective Dean Combie knew nothing of the rapes in Montgomery County. He was a homicide detective in a city that gave him plenty of work. And as the calendar turned from 98 to 99 and then into 2000 and beyond, the investigation into the murder of Christy Mirzaiyam was basically sitting on a shelf.

[D]

It's very frustrating, very frustrating.

[B]

Again, there are landscapers in the background of this clip, because the interview was outside.

[D]

Because a lot of. A lot of times I've had cases that, you know, you didn't really have much to start with, but you'd get something, you know, that you could. That you could, you know, pull on to make it unravel, to solve the case. But not always, you know, most of the time when you have, you know, a murder in a drug area, I can guarantee you there's probably at least 10 people that saw it, you know, but don't want to, you know, they don't want to be involved, stuff like that. But, so. But eventually, if you keep going back and basically nagging him enough, somebody will tell you what you want to know and so that you can, you know, get it. But in this particular case, nobody, you know, there was no witnesses, you know, there was no witnesses that actually saw anything, you know, any. Anything probative, I guess I should say.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So. And the only. Basically the only evidence we had, of course, was stuff we could recover from, remember her body. It didn't appear that anything had been taken. I couldn't. Couldn't establish anything that he'd actually taken anything from her because, I mean, I can't tell you the number of murders I worked where somebody would, you know, they would rob them and shoot them and take their credit cards and go. Then go use the credit cards to buy themselves some shoes or something, you know, whatever, or steal their car and be riding around in a car you know, that sort of thing. But when you get a murder that's like this and you have not much of anything to go on, you do a lot of wheel spinning. You know, you try and think of any possible thing that you could, you know, to look at to see if there might be something that could help you. Yeah, well, I looked in every place I could think of and, you know, got nothing.

[E]

Basically, my impression was the guy was a savage.

[B]

That's Mike Farish, the former commander of the D.C. police Department's Homicide unit. He's retired now and living in Kentucky. Mike is well known as a ball buster, a cop who likes to rag on people, but never in a mean way. He's a guy with a wicked sense of humor. I got to know Mike quite well While working for Fox 5 at a time when he was trying to solve some cold cases. And I would interview him for features we would run on Saturday nights. In a recent interview, I asked him what he remembers about the Mirzion case and the extent to which his investigators tried to close it.

[E]

Well, I. There's no doubt about it. The case was worked and, you know, the. As a kind of a. A grim humor, if you will. Anytime there was a murder in that neck of the woods up and upper, up and over In Northwest in 2D, we used to joke at the Homicide branch that, you know, probably end up being a task force just because the community there is a little. I'm not, you know, I'm retired. I can say pretty much what I want now, so. Yeah, like I didn't before, right, Paul?

[B]

Right, Right, exactly.

[E]

But the community's a little more affluent, has more. More political connections, and, you know, they definitely believe in the old axiom, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So management on the department would definitely been in a tither right after this occurred. Aside from just the brutality. I mean, that kind of brutality would draw the attention if it occurred anywhere in the city. But add on to that that it was right near Georgetown University is just going to increase the amount of pressure from the community on the police department. I mean, I know in the branch, we really didn't care if it was on, you know, Good Hope Road, Minnesota Avenue or Canal Road, Northwest. We looked at them all. They were all serious because they were someone's loved one. And so we tried to work them that way. So sometimes it's a little more difficult to work your cases when you have this kind of political haranguing occurring because management, you know, puts the pressure down onto the branch itself. You know, that was one of the things when I was the commander of the branch and some of my predecessors were very good at it. We tried to eliminate that from getting down to the detectives as best we could because they had a job to do, and it was a serious job to do.

[B]

But the affluent Georgetown community and the pressure it may have put On Detective Combi, Lieutenant Farish and the D.C. police Department had absolutely no bearing on the case at all, Farish said. You can put all the pressure in the world on an investigator and his team, but if there is nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, and no one to investigate, then the case eventually goes cold. And that's exactly what happened.

[A]

Hey, it's Stephen Deener from the hit podcast uap. And you never know who might show up to talk to me about the alien topic. Like Snooki from the Jersey Shore.

[B]

You literally are my favorite UAP alien UFO podcast.

[A]

Or Nick Pope from the popular show

[B]

Ancient Aliens from the Temple Walls in Egypt. The way in which there are similarities between that and how scientists now think we might open a wormhole, it's uncanny.

[A]

Find out why millions of others have already downloaded UAP and listen now just by searching uap, wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

According to court documents I've seen Police received some 100 tips and leads in the case over the years and investigated a good number of them. Three years after Christine was killed, another D.C. intern went missing, a case that drew international attention and saturation coverage on cable news. I'm sure you've all heard the name Chandra Levy, the intern for the Bureau of Prisons who vanished one spring day after leaving her Dupont Circle apartment. The case drew incredible scrutiny when she was romantically linked to Congressman Gary Condit. The search is on in the District for a missing woman. Her name is Chandra Ann levy. She is 24 years old and hasn't been seen since April 30. He lived in an apartment on 21st street in northwest Washington.

[D]

She has no history of this, and

[C]

based on the fact that we went

[D]

to her apartment to check on her,

[B]

I worked that story hard that summer and broke a number of angles in the case. The appetite for news and Chandra's disappearance was off the charts. I've never seen anything like it. Eventually, her body was found and Congressman Condit was ruled out. For a while, there was some speculation Christine's murder could be connected to not only the disappearance of Chandra Levy, but another young woman who vanished from Dupont Circle under mysterious circumstances.

[F]

Anything is possible. We're still going on all scenarios, but it just leads Me personally to think

[D]

that Bob Pley was involved.

[B]

Joyce Chung was a young government attorney whose body turned up in the Potomac river months later. Even David Hakos, Christine's widower, wondered if there might be a connection between Christine's killing and the disappearance of Levi and Chung. But there was never any hard evidence linking them. Eventually, police made an arrest in the Levy case, charging an undocumented man from El Salvador who had previously been convicted of attacking women in Rock Creek park, where Levy's body was found. After his conviction, the case against Ingmar Guangdike fell apart over questions about information that hadn't been shared with his defense attorney. He was never retried for the crime, but he was deported back to El Salvador. In the Chung case, police closed the investigation, telling reporters they had finally identified the suspects. But no charges were filed because the two were already locked up, doing long prison sentences for other crimes. But Christine's case remained wide open for Detective Dean Combie and Christine's family. It seemed the only hope now was that DNA. Hoping and waiting for what's known as a cold hit. A direct match in the FBI's CODIS database. CODIS is an acronym for Combined DNA Index System, which holds DNA profiles from every DNA data Bank in all 50 states, the district of Columbia and. And Puerto Rico. Here's how it works. Let's say police are investigating a crime. Often there's a lot of forensic evidence that can provide clues to police. Blood, saliva and hair. And investigators can get a DNA profile from all of it. If the DNA belongs to someone police believe is a suspect in a case, they can upload it to codis. Now, there are two parts of codis. One takes the DNA profile uploaded by investigators and compares it to the profiles of other known offenders. This includes the DNA profiles of people convicted of and arrested for most violent crimes. If a detective uploads a DNA profile into CODIS and they get what's called a cold hit, that's a big leap forward for the investigation. Now, that cold hit could link to a known offender or an unsubscribe. That's the other part of codis, the forensic index. This database contains DNA profiles collected from crime scenes in the US And Puerto Rico, where investigators have no idea who the perpetrator is. A cold hit here doesn't point detectives directly to the suspect, but may match other crimes carried out by the same person. CODIS began with a handful of States in 1994 and then went nationwide in October of 1998, just two months after Christine's Murder. It's been a remarkable tool for law enforcement, connecting suspects to crimes that otherwise may never have been solved. According to the FBI, CODIS now contains more than 20 million offender profiles. As of April 2021, the FBI says CODIS has aided over 545,000 investigations since its inception. But in 1998, the database was still brand new. There were not that many DNA profiles in the system. And the District of Columbia was slower than neighboring states of Virginia and Maryland in uploading DNA profiles to the system. For one thing, the District did not have its own crime lab at the time and was relying on the FBI for virtually all of its forensics work. A partnership that had existed for decades. Here again is Mike Farish.

[E]

Back in the early days of DNA, it took so long, I mean, to get your results. You could be talking tooth. And see, in D.C. we didn't have labs, so we had to send our stuff to the FBI. Well, the FBI is the FBI and they have their own pecking order. Their pecking order was FBI cases then and then, and then and then D.C. and, you know, it was understandable. It was their lab. And their work's more important to them than my work was to them. I get that. I'm not mad or anything like that. You know, the damn shame at that time, we couldn't have our own DNA lab. But, you know, it was the beginning. And who knew where this was going to really lead? Who knew how quickly so much less DNA would be needed to do what they did? We can do everything right, package it up, send it off to the FBI, and it could still take us three to six months to hear anything. For the FBI, their focus changed a lot on 9, 11, right? Even their criminal cases took a backseat to their terrorism and anti terrorism work.

[B]

In fact, it took the FBI until 2001 to examine the DNA in Christine's case and upload it into CODIS. Mike Ferris says in the early 2000s, the D.C. police Department could no longer rely on the FBI, and so investigators had to look elsewhere.

[E]

We ended up, instead of going through the FBI, we would reach out to Bode Labs out there in Lorton, Virginia. But we knew the bill was coming due. And I mean, I seen some of those bills and it was like, holy moly. I mean, we were talking about, you know, five, ten grand. You gotta remember. We're also talking about when D.C. was so broke, there were members like myself that were paying to put gas in police cars.

[B]

In the late 90s, D.C. was on the brink of financial ruin and the federal Government had installed a financial control board which watched every penny being spent for years.

[E]

It was ridiculous is what it was. And to get them to approve us sending DNA to somewhere like a bode lab, you know, and not actually have to climb the mountain and talk to the Dalai Lama to get it, was, you know, unheard of.

[B]

While there were clearly some kinks to work out, CODIS was leading to some amazing breakthroughs in solving coal cases around the country. Remember the other serial rapist I told you about in the last episode, the Silver spring rapist? In 2005, they finally found him, and CODIS played a big part. This is kind of a complicated story, so stick with me. It turns out the man who was preying on women in Silver Spring in the late 80s and early 90s had moved out of the area in 1992, first to New Jersey and then points elsewhere. By 2005, the man, Fletcher Anderson Worrell, was in Georgia and attempted to buy a shotgun in DeKalb County. The background check turned up two arrest warrants for New York, where he'd been charged for a 1973 rape, but skipped town. After his arrest, Prosecutors reopened the 1973 New York rape case. And buried in an evidence locker, they found a pair of women's underwear. The victims, and they tested them for DNA, something that didn't exist in 1973. It turns out Worrell's DNA was on that underwear. And when investigators uploaded the sample to codis, the system lit up. Worrell's DNA was also linked to two sex assaults in New Jersey and nine attacks in Montgomery County, Maryland. He was first convicted in New York and given a 30 year sentence in Attica State Prison. Convictions in New Jersey and Maryland followed. The Silver Spring Rapist. Locked up after nearly three decades. When he was arrested, the New York Post called the evidence that helped NAB him a DNA time bomb. Investigators in D.C. were surely hoping for something big to go off in Christine's case, too. It's another summer in D.C. it's now 2011, 13 years after Christine's still unsolved murder. I was working for Fox 5 TV in Washington, D.C. where I had the police beat. You may not know it, but reporters often get their stories by just hanging around the courthouse, police headquarters, anywhere you might be able to run into a source, someone who may be willing to, as we called it, throw you a bone. The best I can recall, it was a June day, and I was walking by the main entrance to D.C. police headquarters when I saw a detective I knew. And we got talking about cold Cases I had developed what we call in TV news, a franchise, a feature series that ran in the 10 o' clock news on Saturday nights in which the I would interview detectives and family members about unsolved murders. I'd already featured the Christine Rezaion case once before, but as I learned by covering this beat, you had to consistently ask cops about their cases. They rarely volunteered any new developments. On this day, I mentioned Christine's murder and I was stunned by what this detective told me. He said, you know, there is a DNA link between that murder and a series of rapes in Montgomery County. He said it matter of factly, but to say I was surprised would be an understatement. At the time, I didn't know about all those attacks Joe Madonna had been investigating, the ones I told you about in episodes two and three. They did not get a lot of publicity. And since I had been following Christine's case, I knew the police had DNA, but I had no idea it was connected to other crimes. I made some calls and worked the story and went to see the Montgomery county police. I remember the police official in charge of the Major crime section was reluctant to speak with me that day and would only say there was commonality between the rapes and the murder. The official I interviewed refused to say it was DNA. I broke the story later that night. Christine's murder remained unsolved, but now I knew police had evidence linking Christine's killing with a series of unsolved rapes. Investigators knew the same man committed all those crimes, but they had no idea who he was. A great get as we call it in the news business. But to my surprise, no other TV station, radio station or newspaper picked up the story. To say I was perplexed would be an understatement. The police have connected a high profile murder with a series of rapes in a neighboring county, and the rest of the news media just shrugs. It made no sense to me. And there was another very puzzling thing about the connection between Christine's murder and the Montgomery county attacks. The match was actually made years before, but never made public. For as long as I've been following this case, I've never known exactly when that link was made. But now I've learned CODIS made the connection in 2004, seven years before I broke the story. Which raises the question, if the FBI had uploaded the DNA profile from Christine's murder into CODIS in 2001, why wasn't there an immediate match to the rapes in Montgomery county that also had puzzled me for years we now know from police documents that the Montgomery county police lab in 2004 retested evidence from two of the rape cases under a new protocol and then put those DNA profiles back into codis. And that's when they got a cold hit. Detective Dean Combie says he got word from his supervising sergeant, J.C. young.

[D]

J.C. young called me up on the phone, said, hey, you know, you just, you gotta, you know, you gotta CODIS hit on Rosalien. And I was like, sweet, you know, Cause I'm, you know. He says, but it's an unsub, though.

[B]

I was like, now what does unsub mean?

[D]

Unknown subject.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So he's not clear.

[B]

That's police talk for, yeah, unknown subject.

[D]

Yeah, just unknown.

[B]

And at that point, though, you must have had like a eureka moment, thinking, oh, yeah, you've connected this guy to something, that you're going to be able to solve this case.

[D]

Right.

[B]

For a brief moment, Dean Combie thought he had a major break in the case. A DNA profile with a name attached to. It's every detective's dream, but that's not what he had. He had a link to more crimes by the same unknown subject. And in some ways, that CODIS hit. Linking Christine's murder to the Montgomery county rapes only deepened the mystery. Who was this guy? Detective Combi suddenly had a number of new leads to follow, and Joe Madonna was about to become his new best friend.

[D]

The FBI never called us, but CODIS notified Montgomery county that there was a match to, like, like, eight rapes that they had up there. So, you know, I contacted Joe Madonna and we got together and we, you know, kind of exchanged information and stuff like that. I went up there several times and we, you know, looked at each other's cases and so on and so forth. And I got a lot of materials from them. And I can tell you right now, if we'd have just relied on, like, MO alone, never would have associated him at all. Never.

[B]

Detective Combi says when he learned the facts in the modus operandi of the Montgomery county rapes, he was stunned at how different they were from Christine's murder on Canal Road.

[D]

Because those cases up there were completely different. I mean, completely different than, you know, than a grab on the street. I mean, in those cases up there, he was. He'd evidently been watching them for some time. He broke into houses and lay in wait for them. He was masked. He took. Made, you know, a lot of efforts not to be identified that they couldn't see him. I mean, I know there was one where the people had three dogs, three good sized dogs. And he just got them right on into a. Into a bedroom. And they never bit him or anything. It's just like, what the hell, you know?

[B]

The CODIS hit also surprised Joe Madonna, and it actually sent investigators digging for more possible links. Do you recall getting the notification that the Mirzaian murder was connected to your rape cases?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I do. And I was, like, shocked as soon as. Because I knew that case, I knew the Mesallian case, but I would have never guessed that would be connected. But then again, it offered new avenues of investigation. She was staying in the dorms at Georgetown University when this happened. So did this guy. Was he maybe working at Georgetown then? The other avenue we looked at was she had just gotten her PhD in cell biology, remember?

[B]

For a while, investigators in Montgomery county wondered if there might be an NIH connection in their attacks. One of the victims in Montgomery county, the woman who lived in the house in Silver Spring with those dogs, well, she worked at the agency. And one of the earlier victims, mothers had some connection to NIH as well. Christine's husband, David Hakos, was due to begin a job there in the fall after Christine was murdered. And Christine was a cell biologist, just like the Silver Spring victim.

[C]

They both got their PhD right around the same time in the exact same field of study. So we did a lot of work at NIH also looking for possible suspects, but everything was a dead end.

[B]

Again, here's Detective Dean Combi.

[D]

It was kind of unusual because most of the victims were well educated women like Christine. We started getting that stuff. I mean, I started looking at people from academic science. I was looking at, you know, because they had, you know, people, you know, security guards from where she, you know, where some of these women were working, because some, you know, apparently. Well, at least one of the instances is the woman had a roommate who was out of town, who had gone out of town the day before, before she was attacked. And, you know, who knew she was going to be alone. I mean, so, you know, you had to be watching her continually or had to have some knowledge that she was going to be alone in the house. So, I mean, we were looking at the, you know, security folks. Anybody that might have known that she was going to be alone at the

[B]

house, you know, that was driving Joe nuts that he couldn't figure out how he was picking his victims.

[D]

Right. And I still don't know if he. If they ever figured out how he's picking those women.

[B]

That possible National Institutes of Health connection, like so many other Possible leads. Well, it went nowhere. The biggest difference in these two cases, Christine's murder, the Montgomery county rapes, was how Christine's ended up. But the Montgomery county rapist had turned violent before, especially when his victims struggled. Like the housekeeper in the basement, who was beaten with a boombox. Remember what Christine's husband, David Hakos, told me? Christine was a fighter. She was fearless.

[G]

She would have fought back. I think that that's why she was killed, because she would not have. She would have fought very hard back.

[F]

Yeah.

[G]

She would not have allowed herself to be raped.

[B]

Only the killer knows why he did what he did. But it's hard, given everything I've learned from police, from David, not to speculate. We know what the attacker wanted from Christine. We also know that Detective Dean Combi said there was something distinctive about the way Christine's clothes had been taken off, inside out. As if she'd been knocked unconscious, put in a chokehold, perhaps before her clothes were pulled off. But did Christine start to come, too, to regain consciousness at some point as she was being assaulted? Remember, the witness walking his dog that night, heard a scream. And David's clear. If she had a chance, Christine would. Would have fought like hell. The scream, a possible struggle. Christine is messing up the attacker's plan. And this time, he's not. Inside a secluded house out in the suburbs. It's all happening right there off busy Canal Road. The unknown subject suddenly not in control anymore. His brutal act, picking up that boulder, seems like the act of a desperate man. After years of preying on women, is he scared he's going to get caught smashing that 73lb rock into her head, committing a monstrous act of murder and the ultimate act of cowardice.

[E]

Sa.

[B]

As I've already said, the DNA link between the rapes and the murder of Christine Rezaion was kept secret for years. For reasons still unclear, police officials in Montgomery County, Maryland and Washington, D.C. decided to keep it out of the public eye. Why? I still don't know. Maybe they were banking on the fact that it wouldn't take long to close the case. Thanks to law enforcement's new super tool, codis. All they had to do was wait for a cold hit. Virtually every day, labs in all 50 states were uploading new DNA profiles, some of them known, some of them unknown. If the man, Detectives Combie and Madonna, were after, the same unknown subject who killed Christine and attacked all those women in Montgomery county, committed another serious crime, his DNA would almost certainly show up in CODIS eventually. But years went by after Christine's horribly violent Murder. And nothing happened. Was the unknown subject dead? Already in prison for a crime? They didn't take his DNA for or out of the country. The big break seemed to be another dead end. It's now a few days before Christmas 2011, several months after I stumbled onto the stunning news that the same man who killed Christine Mirzaion in August of 1998 had also carried out a string of rapes years before in Montgomery County. The FBI called a news conference with police from Montgomery county in D.C. they were finally going to give their unknown subject a name, sort of. They still didn't know his identity, but they gave him a nickname, perhaps in hopes of drumming up publicity, something that would catch the public's interest. The Potomac River Rapist. This is something the FBI is known for. The 2001 anthrax attacks came to be known as Amerithrax. And when they were looking for a man known for sending letter bombs to college campuses, they called him the Unabombered. Ron Machen, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, was there, and he told reporters it's never too late to

[E]

bring justice to the victims and their families. We believe the individual that was responsible for these attacks is still on the

[D]

loose, and we need the public's help

[E]

in trying to find that individual and hold him accountable.

[B]

The FBI launched a website with a map and a timeline of all the attacks. There was a composite sketch of the attacker, though, one made by that Virginia police officer and his wife who had seen that man following Christine on Canal Road the night she was murdered. It had been more than 12 years, so they age progressed it, giving the picture of the suspected attacker lines on his face. There were also photos of the crime scene in the dirt and brush off Canal Road. There's a photo of a pair of sunglasses and Christine's intern key card. Sadly, it has an expiration date of August 8, exactly one week after she was murdered. And the large bloody rock police said the attacker used to kill her. The FBI had put up billboards and posters in bus shelters, a composite picture of the suspect with the words wanted, sought for questioning. The bureau was also offering $25,000 to anyone who could help investigators find the man responsible for the crimes.

[F]

There's no piece of information that's too small or any information that we wouldn't be interested in looking into, because those are the things that sometimes build the puzzle and bring this case together. So if anybody has any information or any thoughts about who this might be, urge them to contact their local police or the FBI.

[B]

That's David Gillespie. He was also at the news conference in his capacity as the Montgomery County Police Department's Director of Major Crimes. He's now Chief of Police in Melbourne, Florida, where we spoke via Zoom one day in the fall of 2021. I asked him what he remembered from that time in 2011, knowing the crimes were linked by DNA.

[F]

So it gives us hope that we're going to identify who this person is after all these years in that, you know, we have now tied these cases together, some. Some. Some pretty violent cases, and now we're able to make that connection. Now it's trying to find out who is this person and how are we going to be able to do it. So, you know, as you know, the way CODIS works is if, you know, suspects DNA goes into the system, and then if there are any matches, we get a hit here. We had a number of different matches, but we couldn't tie it to an individual. And that's what made, you know, it gave us hope that, hey, we knew we had this person, but now what happened to them? You know, why did they just drop off? Because did they stop doing their crimes? And you have to look at how much time has passed, how old they might be, have they been deceased? Are they in prison for other offenses? And then how is it now when we have good evidence, how are we going to tie that to the person that's responsible for that DNA?

[B]

Yeah, because at that point, you had a period of at least 12 years where there was no seemingly criminal activity that could be tied to this guy's DNA after Christine Marzion's murder. So you. That point, at that point, you and your detectives are wondering, right, where is this guy? Is he locked up? Is he dead? Has he left the area? That's the kind of thing that you're dealing with at that point.

[F]

That's correct. You always wonder, why did they just stop? Because usually you don't just stop with that kind of criminal behavior. You just don't stop until you're either incarcerated. And if they were incarcerated for something similar, their DNA would have already been entered into codis. So we knew that didn't happen. So they were either incarcerated for a different offense or they had died. Something changed in the way they operated from that time frame because of the connection in the time frame and the location of where they were.

[B]

At this point. 12 years have passed since Christine was murdered and David Hakos was back in California, where he picked up the pieces to the life he had planned and tried to move on. David told Me, he had no idea investigators had linked the cases until he heard it on the news.

[G]

I don't know what I thought about it. I mean, to me, it was just a piece of information that would hopefully help them find the. The person, the perpetrator. Because, you know, with, with. With all of those rape cases, you know, there, and the fact that most. That I think all of the.

[F]

The.

[G]

The victims had survived.

[C]

Right.

[G]

And they were able to provide a lot of identifying information about the individual at that time.

[F]

So.

[G]

But it still took. I mean, it still was not. I mean, even with all that extra information, they were still not able to find the person.

[B]

That big effort with the website and billboards was inspired by a similar public information blitz that led to the capture of the east coast rapist in March of 2011. In that case, police arrested the suspected attacker wanted in 14 sexual assaults in Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Within days of launching it, investigators got a tip and put a man under surveillance. And when he threw away a cigarette, they collected it and tested it for DNA. It was a match. There was still a long road ahead for Christine's case, but there was a reason police hold those news conferences in hopes of generating new leads in troubling cases. After that December 2011 news conference with the FBI, a tip came in that led police to evidence that would shed new light on all of the attacks. Evidence that had been sitting on a

[E]

shelf for 15 years for whatever reason, I don't know. But her rape kit basically hadn't been processed or at least uploaded into codis.

[B]

That's next Time on Unknown Subject, season three of WTOP's American Nightmare series. Written by me, Paul Wagner, with editorial assistance from Jack Moore, Julia Ziegler and Craig Schwab. This episode would not be possible without the help of retired Montgomery County Police detective Joe Madonna, retired Montgomery county police commander David Gillespie, David hakos, and retired D.C. police detectives Mike Farish and Dean Combie. Reporting and production of this podcast was supported by a grant from Spotlight DC Capital City Fund for Investigative Journalism. For grants, Please apply to spotlight.org Our show relies on people like you leaving ratings and reviews on Apple to help us climb the podcast charts and attract new listeners. We hope if you like what you hear, you will take a minute to do so. If you have questions or comments about the show, send us an email through our website, American Nightmare podcast.com We are also on Twitter and Facebook book at AM Nightmare Pod the Music in the show is ethereal thoughts by Olive music and steadfast by moments and as always. Thanks for listening,

[D]

Sa.