without recreating this case, rebecca hughesman's murder would have definitely gone cold and unsolved. >> forensic science was phenomenal in this case. it was -- as one person put it, it is where old fashioned police work meets modern science. up next, a predator terrorizes a texas town. >> i said i have a family, i have a son. please don't rape me. >> he started to choke me. i couldn't breathe. >> no one knew what he was going to do next. >> we had a huge problem. >> when police find him the dna evidence exonerates him. >> i knew he was just evil and i never knew there was evil people on this earth like that. >> it was 9:00 p.m. in texas city, texas.

19-year-old stevie green was waiting for a friend to drive her home from work. but the friend never showed up. >> i'm in a ticked-off mood because he left me hanging. christmas was coming around the corner. i thought about taking a taxi. but i'm like no, i want to save the money to have a better christmas. >> stevie decided to walk home, which was about a mile away. suddenly she heard someone running up behind her. >> the footsteps just stop. the knife was in my back. i didn't want to die. i was willing to do anything this man was going to ask me to do. >> he said he'd stab her if she didn't take off her clothes. >> as he raped me i just kept thinking in my head the lord's prayer. the more i said it, the more angry he got. >> afterwards still holding the knife he told her to get up. >> he told me to turn around and have my back to him.

and when i stood up something told me to run and i grabbed my shoe and booked into the middle of the street screaming at the top of my lungs. >> stevie was traumatized, in shock, but lucky to be alive. >> it was difficult to get a good description other than general build, general height, things of that nature. >> the whole time he kept telling me don't look at my face. >> he was described as an african-american wearing a hooded sweatshirt that concealed his face but nothing more. >> it was shocking that it did happen at 9:15 at night walking home on a street i walked and my kids have walked and i would trust them to this day to walk that street. >> no clues to identity was left at the scene but a rape test kit

left a dna profile but it did not match the database of known criminal offenders. police checked files for known sexual offenders living near the crime scene. one stood out. kenneth ray johnson just moved to texas city after serving 25 years for rape. >> he was really a good suspect because he was knew to the area. he didn't want to cooperate at first but then he did. he had several alibis. >> johnson denied any involvement. since he was on parole he was wearing an ankle bracelet that tracked his movement using gps technology. it showed johnson was at home at the time of the rape and his dna did not match the dna of the rapist. >> i never questioned that he would be found. i knew that you he was going to pay for what he did one way or another. >> but would he be caught before he could strike again?

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investigators feared he would strike again. >> as the investigation went into the fifth week and we heard nothing more about any suspects being arrested or charged or identified, it became an idea that maybe this was going to be an unsolved crime. >> then, five weeks later, 15-year-old vanessa roacha and her 16-year-old boyfriend were in a excluded part of goddard park in texas city. >> we went out there many times and never had anything to worry about. >> a man walked up to the couple. >> a man with a devil mask on ran up and told my boyfriend to turn and not to look at him. >> he pulled a gun on vanessa's boyfriend and order her to undress. >> he was calling me every name in the book. he started to choke me. i couldn't breathe.

i was gasping for air. >> after the sexual assault, he told vanessa's boyfriend to remove all of his clothes. >> i was terrified. i thought he was going to kill us. you can't explain something like that. >> he demanded the key to the couple's car and made his get away. >> he told us not to get up until we heard him start the car. >> unfortunately because of the mask, neither of the teenagers was able to provide a detailed description. >> he was covered up from head to toe. what caught my attention was his mask that he was wearing. it was the devil. when we are teenager we don't think anything is going to happen to us until it happens. >> the assault was similar to the stevie green case except that ves necessary is a rocha's case was -- >> i had never worked a case

where two people were stripped down in front of each other. >> seldom do you have an attack with a witness present. >> a rape test kit collected biological evidence and the results showed it was the same perpetrator in both cases. >> the next morning, investigators found the teenager's car just a few blocks from where vanessa was assaulted. >> we realized he didn't keep the car long. at that point we focused in on that he did live in that area and that was his area of comfort. where he was acting from to just give him an easy route to get home wherever that was. >> unfortunately, police found no foreign fingerprints or other trace evidence inside the car. the very next night, two women

were walking home from a nightclub around 2:00 a.m. when they were approached by a masked man brandishing a pistol. >> they were both abducted at gunpoint. he took them to a excluded area behind the school in a cull desack. one suspect taking two into control and humiliating one in front of the other. >> he sexually assaulted one of the woman but not the other. >> again, a brutal sexual assault took place, very brazen, very cocky in the presence of the witness who was there. >> both women described a young black male. all they could see was his eyes and mouth. but they noticed something distinctive. the assailant had a gold front tooth. police finally had something besides his dna profile that might identify him. i'm randy and i quit smoking with chantix. for 33 years i chose to keep smoking...

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in the oil refinery town of texas city, texas, three rapes within five weeks of each other had some striking similarities. the rapist used masks or clothing a cover his face. it appeared he didn't know any of his victims before he

attacked them. his rapes all happened within a radius of two miles. and most alarming, the crimes showed an unmistakable arrogance. >> it indicates a very strong willed, angry, cocky, arrogant individual who wants to play games with the police, thinks he is better than the system and can beat the system. and it's a game for him. >> a dna test was conducted on rape kits from every similar crime. >> i was able to look at these three cases and say, yes, this was the same person in the sperm fraction of all these extractions. >> police had a serial rapist on their hands and worried about what he would do next. >> we were all concerned about the escalation of these offenses. oftentimes a serial rapist will turn into a serial killer or injury their victims much more severely than he was injuring

his victims. so we were very concerned about it. >> the only clue to the rapist's identity was the description by a witness that he had a gold front tooth. investigators scoured files for people in the area that fit that description and one did, chad price, a 29-year-old construction worker. >> chad price was a father, married, seemed to be actively participating with his wife and children in different things in the community. he had developed a reputation in the community of being just that bold, taunting, in your face, catch me if you can type of guy. >> price had never been arrested but a suspect in a series of robberies a year earlier. the robberies were unique because the perpetrator would call reporters to brag about his crimes. >> sometimes he would call and say he was going to rob a building and sometimes he would

call and threaten the lives of the reporters. during one particular attack actually called the police department and started telling them that he was watching them actually investigate the crime. >> the audacity of the robberies mirrored the audacity of the rapes. police brought chad in for questioning. >> we felt we had enough to get a search warrant for his dna and blood and he understood that. there was nothing concrete to connect him to the sexual assaults and he basically denied everything. >> pryce also refused to provide his dna. >> the detective wanted to get his dna legally without him knowing it. >> i have learned from tv shows like "forensic files" you can obtain dna from a cigarette butt or soda can.

>> the detective offered him a can of soda. >> we got through with the interview and chad had not finished the mountain dew. i had a new trash can liner and i said don't spill it. it will get all over there and leak out. >> investigators knew they had to drain the soda by making a hole in the bottom of the can. >> that's probably the best thing to do is go ahead and drain the can so there's no chance that something in the can could effect the dna on the mouth of the can. >> then dna testing could begin. the very next day, before the dna results were in, there was another rape ten miles away. a 17-year-old girl and her 22-year-old boyfriend were parked at the dickinson bayou boat ramp when they encountered

trouble. >> two people were present, girlfriend and a boyfriend and out of nowhere came the assailant opened the door, produced a gun, had them removed from the pickup truck and then the terror began. >> the man sexually assaulted the girl at gunpoint while her boyfriend stood by helplessly. investigators were convinced this was the work of chad price. at the dna lab, christie whimsack swabbed the opening of the mountain dew can with a sterile swab. a dna profile was produced and it matched the dna from all of the rape cases. >> i called texas city police department to let them know this was the guy -- the guy that drank out of this can was the guy who was committed these rapes in that area. >> on september 12th, 2000, chad

price was arrested and charged with the crimes. >> they cut a search warrant for a storage shed where price had items. they found a duffel bag. in the duffel bag they found tremendous evidence that supported all the other evidence in the case, everything from ski masks to the halloween mask of the devil, to a gun. >> despite the evidence, price continued to deny any involvement and he insisted that the dna test on the soda can was falsified. >> he told me he was not the rapist and that the mountain dew can never touched his lips and he would be required to take another blood sample and once the results were made available it would show his dna was not at any of the crime scene. >> in a shocking development, chad price turned out to be right. when price was arrested, a sample of his blood was

collected and sent to an independent lab for testing. this time, his dna did not match the biological evidence from the victims. >> couldn't believe that we had the wrong person and that all the testing we had done had been wrong and i wanted to, if it wasn't him, let's get him out of jail no matter what i thought of him. >> but what went wrong? investigators were determined to find out. sfx: car unlock beep. vo: david's heart attack didn't come with a warning. today his doctor has him on a bayer aspirin regimen to help reduce the risk of another one. if you've had a heart attack be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen.

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a dna test conducted by texas law enforcement indicated chad price was the serial rapist terrorizing texas city, texas. but his defense attorney insisted on an independent dna test and when a private lab purchas performed their test it showed chad price wasn't the rapest. prosecutors couldn't believe they had the wrong man. the blood sample from the independent lab had been drawn from price when he was in custody at the county jail. a technician checked his

identification, took his blood and wrote the inmate's name on the vial containing his blood. >> there is a print that goes with the sample. the individual who gave this blood obviously put their fingerprint on this vial. >> so prison officials compared the print from the vial to chad price's print. >> the expert said that's not chad price's fingerprint on the vial. great. the next step. whose print is it? >> the unknown print was run through afis, or the automatic fingerprint identification system and there was a hit. the print belonged to 36-year-old derek perry. >> derek perry was another inmate being detained on

unrelated charged. in each pod there are 50 or 60 inmates. two jailhouse informants told prison officials how they switched the dna samples. >> they witnessed and have personal knowledge of the conspiracy to witch arm bands before the blood sample. >> the medical staff does not look at faces. they don't know chad price from derek perry. they call the name chad price and it was derek perry who came forward. >> another dna confirmed what investigators had long suspected. the dna from their rape cases from was chad price. he was just as brazen in the rapes as he was in his attempt to get away with them. >> i think chad price believes he can beat anything the system

will give him. and that he is smarter than we are. and just anything is the limit for him. >> on may 24th, 2001, a jury took just two hours to find chad price guilty of aggravated rape, kidnapping and robbery for the attack on stevie green. he was indicted on the other rapes and the jury was informed of his involvement during the penalty phase. they sentenced price to life in prison plus 60 years. >> he got a life sentence and i found that to be surprising because i really -- i really thought he might get the death penalty. >> i was just excited. knowing that he was going to be there for life. i mean, there's no -- i can't explain the way i felt. i don't have to see this man. i don't have to worry about this man ever coming for me. >> i'd love for him to admit it.

that's the only thing out of the whole trial. i think that's why i felt so robbed. i wanted him to admit it. i wanted him to say yes, i did this. >> derek perry, who was due to be released from prison the day after he switched wristbands with price was charged with fabricating evidence and got an additional five years in prison. the galveston county jail has sinced changed its procedures for drawing blood but the lesson for investigators and for chad price was that criminals may lie but forensic technology doesn't. >> without that mountain dew can to link him to the sexual assault cases, they might not have ever been able to get a warrant to get the actual known sample to compare to the sexual assault case. i would say the dna was key in this case. >> we take a lot of pride in putting a person like chad price

behind bars. it is nice to get someone that arrogant and cocky and brazen behind bars as quickly as possible. >> chad price thinks he can beat whatever the system has to present. technology is >> up next a young woman is missing and someone has stolen her identity. >> no one saw her leave or arrive back at her apartment. >> who wanted to harm her? >> she had received some har issing phone calls prior to her being missing. >> everybody and their brother was trying to make a steal with the devil. >> yet me tell you i'd have no problem casting all the stones. >> live as anned adventure