>> 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. just please don't rape me. >> he started to choke me. i couldn't breathe. i was gasping for air when he finally stopped. >> no one knew what he was going to do next. >> we had a huge problem. this guy wasn't going to stop. >> when police find him, the dna evidence exonerates him. >> he was smart enough to outwit the investigators. >> 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 then i was like, no, i want to save the money so we can have a better christmas. >> so, 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 -- saying 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 in me just 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. don't look at my face. >> stevie described her assailant 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 produced a dna profile. unfortunately, that dna profile did not match the database of any known criminal offenders.

police checked files for known sexual offenders living near the crime scene. one stood out. kenneth ray johnson had just moved to texas city after serving 25 years for rape. >> he was really a good suspect because he was new to the area. he didn't want to cooperate at first, but then he did. he had several alibis, if i'm not mistaken. >> 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?

with no one in custody for stevie green's rape, 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 rocha and her 16-year-old boyfriend were in a secluded area of godard park in downtown texas city. >> we went out there on many occasions and never had anything to worry about. >> a man walked up rapidly to the couple. >> we looked up and saw a man with a desk mask and ran up and told my boyfriend to turn and not to look at him. >> the man pulled a gun on vanessa's boyfriend and ordered her to undress. >> he was calling me every name in the book. he started to choke me. i couldn't breathe. i was just gasping for air until he finally stopped.

>> after the sexual assault, he told vanessa's boyfriend to remove all of his clothes. >> i was terrified. i really thought he was going to kill us. i don't know the how to explain it. you can't explain something like that. >> he demanded the keys to the couple's car and then 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're teenagers, we don't think anything's going to happen to us until it happens. >> the assault was similar to the stevie green case except vanessa rocha's case was more brazen. >> i have never read about or talked to anyone who had worked a case where two people were abducted and totally controlled, stripped down in front of each other with a girl being sexually assaulted.

>> very seldom do you have an attack take place with a witness present. attackers in most sexual assaults don't want any other witnesses. z >> 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. and that the point, we really started focusing in on that he did live in that area and that was his area of comfort where he was acting from just to 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 secluded area behind the school in a little cul-de-sac. one suspect taking two into control and totally humiliating one in front of the other. >> he sexually assaulted one of the women 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. every day, people fall. from a simple misstep, to tripping over a rug,

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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 to 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 that was 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 injure 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 a description by a witness that he had a gold front tooth. investigators scoured files for people in the area who fit this 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 had been 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 then felt we had enough to get a search warrant for his dna, for his blood and that he understood that. there was nothing concrete to connect him to any of the sexual assaults and he basically denied everything. >> price also refused to provide his dna. >> the detective wanted to get price's dna legally without him knowing it. >> i have learned from tv shows like forensic files that you can obtain a dna sample from a cigarette butt or a coke can and it's lawfully attained. >> during his interrogation, the detective offered him a can of soda.

>> we got through with the interview and chad had not finished the mountain dew. >> i had an empty 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 anything that spills out of that can could possibly affect that dna that's 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 that was committing 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 some tremendous evidence that supported all of the other evidence in the case, including the dna. 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 that he was not the rapist, that the mountain dew can never touched his lips so therefore the police did not have his dna and that he was going to be required to take another blood sample and when the results of that blood sample were made available, it would show that his dna was not at any of the crime scenes. >> 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 dna testing. this time, his dna did not match the biological evidence from the victims. >> i 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.

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 performed their test, it showed chad price wasn't the rapist. prosecutors couldn't believe they had the wrong man. the blood sample from the independent lab had been drawn from price while he was in custody at the galveston county jail. a technician went into the prison, checked his identification, took his blood,

then wrote the inmate's name on the vial containing his blood >> when samples are taken, there is a fingerprint that goes with the vial of the sample of blood. the individual who gave this blood obviously put their fingerprint on this vial. >> so prison officials compared the print on chad price's blood vial to chad price's fingerprint. >> the expert said that's not chad price's fingerprint on the vial. great. the next step. whose fingerprint 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 or held in the galveston county jail on unrelated charges. he was in the same pod as chad

price and in each pod, there must be 50 or 60 inmates. two jailhouse informants told prison officials how they -- how chad price switched the dna samples. >> they admitted to me that they witnessed and have personal knowledge of the conspiracy between chad price and derek perry to switch arm bands for 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 instead of chad price standing up and walking forward to give blood, it was derek perry who came forward. >> i another dna test confirmed what investigators had long suspected. the dna from their rape cases was from 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 even explain the way i felt. i don't have to see the 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. is because 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 since 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 that cocky and that brazen behind bars as quickly as possible. >> chad price thinks he can beat whatever the system has to present. technology is foolproof given the best circumstances. we had those circumstances. breaking news, direct hit. arthur makes land fall overnight. >> we are seeing strong winds as it makes its way to land. a vicious category two wind gusts. towns under tornado watches, trees toppled and power out for tens of thousands. >> please be safe inside your home and stay inside your home. >> hurricane windings lashing the coast as arthur makes the fourth of july march north. >> plus, bombshell hearing. >> did he discuss being afraid of children and his child dying? >> yes. >>