a 12-year-old girl claimed she had been kidnapped, but police weren't so sure. her memory was too clear, her manner too unemotional. her heroism too unbelievable. until some fibers on her clothing forced police to reconsider. it happened on a wednesday afternoon in freeport, texas. 12-year-old dana stinson walked to her bible study at church just a few blocks from home. two hours later, when the class

was over, dana didn't return home. >> her mother went looking for her and was advised by the teacher that she had never appeared in class, and then the police got involved. >> i knew right away. my stomach went into knots. my legs were shaking. i was just certain something had happened. >> their neighbors joined in the search but found no sign of the young girl. dana's father was a local prison guard and he feared that an exconvict had taken revenge by targeting his daughter. >> i thought one of the offenders might abduct her. that was the first thought that came to my mind. might have been right or wrong about it at the time. i don't know. >> several hours passed. then shortly after 10:00 p.m., a few miles away in oyster creek, texas, dana walked up to some boys playing basketball and claimed she had been kidnapped.

>> this was a deserted road. it was dark. not a lot of traffic. if you were there at night, you would think you're in the middle of nowhere. >> dana was taken to police head quarters and reunited with her family. >> she was like calm. there was a real calmness about her and to me, that is very strange. >> she had a very flat affect. and it was extremely odd to me, her demeanor. >> dana told police that she was in the church parking lot and couldn't locate her classroom. then a white middle-aged man gave her directions. he walked her towards the door. then grabbed her and forced her into his van. tied her up and put her in a wooden box lined with carpet. dana said he drove the van somewhere near the ocean.

she could hear the waves. then at the sexually assaulted her. an hour or two later, he assaulted her again in a motel room. she said the man had a knife. >> and she told him don't kill me, don't do this to me. don't kill me and he said i'll let you go. you better not tell anybody because i know everything about you and i'll kill you. and he pushed her out of the van. >> i was extremely skeptical because horrible things that he did to her. there was no emotion when she told us about these things. so initially, i -- i had a difficult time believing that. >> police were skeptical. she said she was kidnapped in a church parking lot in broad daylight. yet, no one saw it. and the kidnapper released her in an area not far from the home of one of her friends.

>> she was released in an area that a young man lived that she knew personally. and some people described their relationship as maybe girlfriend and boyfriend. >> investigators told dana they thought she was lying. >> that was the first sign of emotion that we saw from her. and she said, you can do what you have to do. i'm not lying and i mean, she was as closer to tears then when she was accused of that or told that than she was during the entire interview. >> i couldn't believe why they were like questioning her and interrogating her and stuff and saying that she might have made this up or this might have been a prank. >> police confiscated dana's clothes for analysis, then asked her to return the next day for another interview. and it gave investigators a new insight into the case. ñ

the day after dana stinson's alleged kidnapping, she returned to police headquarters for a

second interview. they wanted to make sure her story didn't vary. this time, investigators saw something that wasn't clearly visible the night before. >> i can see what looked to be burn marks or red marks around both of had her wrists, red marks at the outset of her eyes, red marks around her mouth where it appears that there's been some type of tape or something placed around her. >> dave na said these were caused by the tape the kidnapper used over her mouth and around her wrists. gradually, police began to believe her. >> and see told detective dietrich in no unconcern terms. i am not lying. exactly what i told you has happened. >> her parents took dana to the hospital for a physical examination but by this time, potential forensic evidence was gone. >> she should have gone to the hospital sooner. she didn't.

had she gone sooner, i'm not sure they ultimately would the have recovered in he dna, but we always try as part of the procedure get to the victim to the hospital as soon as possible to be checked out. >> fortunately, police had dana's clothes. a pair of jeans, a pullover and some socks were given to trace evidence analyst devin crago-stasicha. using tape lifts, she found numerous fibers. >> it wasn't like i just found one or two of these carpet fibers. i had multiple of these fibers from different articles of her clothing. you could not ask for much better than that. >> magnified 400 times, devin noticed that there were two different types of blue fibers presumably from two different sources. >> one was a light blue, and it was a very sharp angular triangular shape, and then there was a lighter kind of a bluish gray fiber but it was also more round.

the nodes weren't as sharp. >> triangular or trilobal fibers are usually from carpet. there were other fibers on dana's socks. these were round and small. the type normally seen in ropes. this was consistent with dana saying her ankles were tied with rope. the investigation was taking a 180 degree turn. now the forensic evidence was corroborating much of what dana was saying. >> i was extremely impressed even to the most minute detail, she -- she remembered and through the things that she went through, most adults wouldn't be able to remember the things that she remembered. >> dana said her assailant was white with blonde hair, blue eyes, in his mid 40s, and had a medium build. he was driving a white van with tinted windows and the word "wood" painted on the glass.

she said she was forced into a coffin-like box covered with blue carpet. and she remembered something else. >> the victim described inside the van an orange ice chest, cooler-type object. she said that it said igloo on it and it had some other writing on it she couldn't exactly remember. lowes, home depot, something of that nature, and inside that cooler were dr. peppers. >> investigators decided to go public with dana's description of the van. they were hoping that someone in the area might have seen the van or witnessed the abduction. two days after dana stinson's kidnapping, one of her , it's time to get a hotel.

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two days after dana stinson's kidnapping, one of her neighbors contacted police saying he might have witnessed at least part of the abduction. >> he said, "i saw a white van in the area. it said surfside floor and tile on the side of it. i saw it in and around circling the church all afternoon.

i saw it parked at the church. i saw it leave the church around 5:30, 5:45 and it never returned." >> this was consistent with information dana told investigators. >> the child in the case was able to describe a word. she remembered wood that was on the side of the van. >> investigators checked the phone book. and found a business called surfside installation ceramic, vinyl, tile and wood. the owner of the business was 36-year-old randy lee allen. married for 17 years and the father of a 7-year-old boy. he had no criminal record. >> he was told that he may have been a witness to a crime and would he voluntarily follow us to the police department. his response was sure. >> randy lee allen said he knew nothing about any kidnapping. he told police he was in a restaurant having dinner with his wife and child around the time of dana's abduction. his wife corroborated his alibi.

the case appeared to have hit a dead end. but police wanted one more thing from randy allen. they wanted to look inside his van. and he readily agreed. there was no coffin-like box in the back of his van like the one dana described. but one thing particularly caught the attention of detectives. >> there's an orange ice chest igloo with the word home depot on it that the lid's off of it. inside that ice cooler are dr. peppers. >> dana described seeing is the same kind of ice chest in the abductor's truck as well as the same color carpeting in the van's interior. investigators also found some blue and white rope. blue fibers from the carpet in the van seen on the right with the same shape and size of fibers found on dana's clothing. both samples were put under

infrared light causing the molecules to vibrate in unique ways. these can be charted to determine a sample's chemical makeup. >> so if it's a nylon, it's going to show up as a nylon. if it's rayon, it's going to show up as rayon. if it's a acrylic, it will be a totally different pattern. >> samples from the van and from dana's clothe were both made from a compound known as nylon 66. to take the comparison one step further, analysts turned to a micro-spectrophotometer. >> that was basically a microscope that measures color. we pass light through a ample and it measures how much light of that is absorbed by our sample, and that actually tells us basically what color. it gives us a spectra of the color representation. >> the colors in both samples were identical. the same set of tests were

conducted on rope in allen's truck and the rope fibers on dana's clothing. again, they were virtually identical. >> when we get the phone call from the lab that those fibers match, we know we have randy allen. we are expecting at that point he's going to plead. >> in randy's home, police found pieces of lumber similar to pieces that would make a wooden box. police asked randy if he would put the pieces back together. surprisingly, randy agreed. while doing so, he made an incriminating statement. >> he said almost to himself, well, she was a little one. she was a little one so yeah, this is how i did it. >> investigators noticed there was blue carpet lining the inside of the box. fibers from this carpet matched the last remaining piece of forensic evidence found on dana

stinson's clothing. finally, police prepared a photo lineup and showed it to dana stinson telling her that their suspect may or may not be in the lineup. >> less than five seconds, less than three. as soon as i gave it to her, she scanned it and she pointed to his picture and she said he's the man that took me from the church and did that to me. >> randy lee allen was confronted with dana's identification and the forensic evidence. he confessed and read his statement on videotape. >> i saw a little girl, grabbed her and started walking her towards my van. >> but one thing bothered investigators. if randy allen was the perpetrator, how could he have

been at dinner with his wife and child while the abduction took place. the answer is unbelievable. >> when randy lee allen confesses to the abduction and sexual assault of a 12-year-old nineteen years ago, we thought, "wow, how is there no way to tell the good from the bad?" so we gave people the power of the review. and now angie's list is revolutionizing local service again. you can easily buy and schedule services from top-rated providers. conveniently stay up to date on progress. and effortlessly turn your photos into finished projects with our snapfix app. visit angieslist.com today. ♪

>> when randy lee allen confesses to the abduction and sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl, his friends, business associates, and particularly his wife cough hardly believe it. she had been married to him for quite some time. they had a child together. she, of course, didn't want to believe that he was capable of this behavior, no one in his family wanted to believe that he was capable of this. >> and with good reason. the evidence showed a particularly calculated crime. prosecutors believe allen was cruising the neighborhood near dana's church looking for a victim. he saw dana stinson who appeared to be lost. so he offered to show her where her classroom was. as they passed his van, allen forced her inside. gagged her with tape, wrapped it

around her hands and tied her feet with rope. then at the forced her into the coffin-like box with the lid on top, making it soundproof. he drove out near the ocean, parked his van and sexually assaulted her. then allen put her back in the coffin and incredibly, drove home. >> he got out of the van, walked upstairs, got his wife and his child, walked downstairs, got in his wife's car and they went to dinner. they were gone at least over an hour. he came back, his wife and child went upstairs. he 20e8d his wife had he more work to do. he went and got in the van with the child still in the box and drove off. >> he took dana to a local motel, but this time dana fought back. she refused to do what he asked and demanded that he let her go.

this experts say altered the balance of power in dana's favor. she became demanding. i'm not doing that anymore. i want you to let me go. i want you to let me go now. and i this i in the end that shook the suspect a little bit. >> i wish more of us could handle things that way, but most people aren't going to have that kind of strength and most people aren't going to show that type of resilience early on and are going to need more help kind of coping with that long-term. >> randy allen acquiesced, drove her to a deserted location and let her go. prosecutors believe he had intended to kill her. >> i don't think that randy allen ever thought he would be caught in this case and never considered forensic evidence being something that could link him back to this. i think that because i think he intended to kill his victim. >> almost all au sex criminals exhibit some kind of deviant

sexual behavior in their teens or early 20s. randy lee allen appeared to be one of the few exceptions. >> i just found it incredibly strange you know all of a sudden he s one day he woke up and decided to commit such a horrific crime. when somebody decides to learn to dive into water, they don't usually jump off of a cliff first. they'll jump in off of a pool and to me this was jumping off of a cliff. there had to be more in his background. we just were unable to uncover anything. >> randy lee allen lived in the callas fourth let, texas at the time when the a number of young girls were abducted. >> i feel like there's probably other victims. and that's our department's opinion. the investigators that worked on this case, the investigators that have read this case outside of our department, the prosecutor's office all believe there are probably other victims

out there. >> but none has been found. and randy lee allen made no more confessions. in september of 2003, he was convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault and received two consecutive terms of 75 years. dana stinson is a pseudonym for the remarkable young girl who showed courage, determination, and whose near photographic memory helped solve the case. and the forensic evidence helped, too. >> her clothing and all that, her body, that's amazing. i can't believe how they can pick up something that small and make something stick like this which i'm glad it did. through science and all that. >> it's amazing how you know, the world of forensics, how interesting it is and how from a tiny, tiny piece of nothing, they can find evidence. you know, that is very amazing. i find it very, very amazing. and like i told you, i mean, if i was young and i have to do it all over again, yes, i think i would go into forensics.

investigators described it as a one in a million chance. a tiny manufacturing flaw on an envelope exposed a murderer who was willing to kill innocent victims to get at the one person he wanted dead. it was a typical monday morning at the transamerica title insurance company in tempe, arizona, there were only four employees, all friends who spent their days processing paperwork.