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tv   Criminal Mindscape  MSNBC  September 20, 2015 12:00pm-1:01pm PDT

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you are about to enter the "criminal mindscape" of serial killer reginald mcfadden. >> were you a monster? >> the worst of the worst. >> a man whose lethal vengeance towards society began in his teens. >> she started howling. gagged her, tied her up. >> convicted of murder, he gets life. but 24 years later, he's let loose. >> it was a really new beginning. though in my subconscious, there were other things.
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>> why does his second chance spiral into a deadly rampage? >> he's not in the public very long before he's engaged in kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. >> now, a former fbi profiler probes into the psyche of this murderer. >> do you think it would be safe to let you out now? >> no, it wouldn't be safe. i have learned to hate white people. you mark your own fate. >> he enjoyed that power and control. >> i am the only living victim of reginald mcfadden, a psychopath. >> all the acts from beginning to end was intentional, it was deliberate, it was calculated and above all, what it was, it was pure evil.
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the opportunities to interview serial offenders is pretty rare. any time i think any of us are able to interview significant violent offenders, it's a good opportunity for us. >> before his retirement, mark safarik spent over 30 years in law enforcement, including 23 years with the fbi, the last 12 as a profiler in the bureau's famed behavioral analysis unit. >> my main work was in sexual homicide, and my research work was sort of a subspecialty of the sexual homicide area, and i looked at sexual homicides of elder females. >> one of the elder homicides at the center of safarik's research was committed by reginald mcfadden. this interview will be safarik's first opportunity to ask mcfadden about that case and four others.
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>> i want to talk to him about, you know, what he felt about those when he was doing them, what he was thinking about, and what were his goals in the crimes? why did you decide to do this interview? >> you know, comes a time in a person's life that you have to try to find a way to communicate with the people that you might have done something wrong to. people who, for whatever reason, served for me at the time as an example of my own revenge, my own rage. >> i think that reginald mcfadden presents us with a unique opportunity. you have an individual who is now in higgs mid-50s who really has been involved with the criminal system since a young child. one thing that we want to look
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at is what is the progression for this individual from his first homicide into the later homicides and sexual assaults? let me just ask you about your chimed childhood because i know that you were arrested numerous times -- >> yeah. >> -- before you were 16. and i think the earliest age, you were 6 years old? >> no. the earliest age was 12. >> 12? >> okay. what happened? if you got 18 arrests between 12 and 16 -- >> well, prior to my 12th birthday, i generally lived with my grandmother in south philadelphia. she was my -- you could say my rock of gibraltar. when she died, i started rebelling. and then i had to go and live with my mother. >> but, i mean, is this when you started getting into criminal activity?
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>> that's when i started truancy and it started escalating up to burglaries, stuff like that, going all the way up until '69. >> on december 9, 1969, 15-year-old reginald mcfadden commits his first murder in the well-to-do philadelphia suburb of wynnefield, not far from his mother's home. he and three other juveniles break into the house of 60-year-old sonia rosenbaum. >> we went in the house thinking no one was home. but what happened was that one of us goes upstairs. and mrs. rosenbaum was in the bedroom upstairs and she started hollering. we gagged her and tied her up and we fled the house. but because of her age, she died of suffocation, and they arrest us like two, three days later, they arrest all of us. >> the crime makes the front
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page of "the philadelphia enquir enquirer" which reports that three of the four suspects were arrested after mrs. rosenbaum's nude body was found tied up with a washcloth stuffed down her throat. >> everybody agrees that the death was accidental. it wasn't intentional. but because of the pennsylvania law of felony homicide, they tried all of us as adults. >> in the rosenbaum crime, he minimizes his role in this, that he didn't do it, he didn't commit the homicide, he didn't know this was going to happen, wasn't his plan, but that's very typical of an individual like this because really they're looking out for their own best interests. so very easy to blame everybody else. >> mcfadden's crime becomes a touchstone issue during then police commissioner frank l. rizzo's campaign to become mayor. >> he vowed to the jewish community he was going to send me away for life. i was only 17 years old.
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>> i think that reggie felt that in a sense the system betrayed him because his sentence for the same crime of the murder of sonia rosenbaum was, in his mind, much greater than his cohorts. in actuality, everybody took a plea bargain. he went to trial, so he ended up getting a more severe sentence. >> i vowed that wherever i got out of jail, i would pay frank rizzo and his party back for what they did to me. >> we have criminals walking our streets that will never be rehabilitated, cannot be rehabilitated, and should be put in prison. >> the overarching focus for him was frank rizzo, and for 24 years in prison, that feeling festered. >> in 1993, he died of a heart attack on the campaign trail.
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i felt the mixed pleasure of both pleasure that he died, finally he died, but also felt cheated. and i still had in me this desire to get back at him. >> if mcfadden's vengeful, it's not apparent. he seems to become a model prisoner, converting to islam, taking college courses, and helping guards restore order during 1989's notorious camp hill prison riots. >> he's a bright guy, he understands how you manipulate the system so that it works for you. >> mcfadden's good behavior seems motivated by his desire to get out of prison. from 1977 to 1992, he applies for commutation of sentence no fewer than eight times. >> you have to realize that he really was using this commutation to get out that he felt he had been wronged in his original sentencing, and eventually he decided, well,
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they're either going to approve this commutation or i'm going to escape. >> do you know how many times i tried to escape before that commutation came through? >> a lot. >> the only thing that kept me from deciding to go was that hope of commutation. if that commutation didn't come first, i was gone. >> despite his checkered prison record, 41-year-old reginald mcfadden's sentence is commuted. and on july 7, 1994, he is released to new york state, where an islamic organization provides him with work and a place to live. >> take me back to that summer of july 7th when you get to new york because you've been incarcerated for 24 years and now what were you thinking about? what were you feeling? >> when they decided to let me out, it was really a new beginning. though in my subconscious, there were other things that i thought
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i suppressed. >> once as he was out, those as he described them demons, that evil component of himself sort of snuck its way back up into his consciousness. >> and he's not in the public very long before he's engaged in really egregious, horrible, horrific crimes. coming up -- >> this man was beaten. i went berserk on him. he wasn't a human being to me. he had no rights. especially rights that was deserving of respect. ♪ (phone ringing) what's up mikey? hey buddy i heard you're having a party. what? if i was having a party, i'd invite you. would you? yeah. (phone ringing) oh! i got another call. adam: i'm not having a party! hey chris what's up! you heard about adam's party man? it's going to be crazy. i knew it! (beep) find the closest party store... introducing app-connect. (google voice) here are your directions.
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on july 7th, 1994, convicted murderer reginald mcfadden walks out of a pennsylvania prison and rejoins civilized society in a quiet new york city suburb along the hudson river.
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for the first time since 1969, he's tree to mingle amongst law-abiding citizens. but is mcfadden ready? >> he became incarcerated at the age of 16, and i think there's an emotional or psychological component of him that has stayed stunted. and 24 years later, reginald is released. and who do we see? in a 90-day period, we see the sexual assault, kidnapping, robbery and murder. >> mcfadden's downward spiral begins on september 7th, 1994, in the long island village of elmont. >> how it came about is when my car broke down, right? this guy come driving up. and he seemed to be a nice guy, you know. he's saying to me, can i help you? you know, i got a phone in my
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house. you can use my phone, you know. i live right around the corner. i said, okay. i get in his car. we go to his house. >> who is that guy? >> robert silk. >> robert silk. okay. >> robert silk. >> if you look at the victimology of robert silk, he was essentially a gentle soul. but he was really a loaner. he was a computer guy that stayed to himself, so the thought that robert silk would all of a sudden materialize into this extrovert who would jump out of his car and say, hey, can i help you find bhafwhatever yo looking for, it doesn't make sense. >> he went upstairs and i said can i use your bathroom? he said, yeah, go upstairs and use the bathroom. i got to the bathroom and he's sitting there with his birthday suit on. i tried to push by him. he knew i been to jail. he said you been in jail, you
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know about this. you should know about this, right? and he touched me and i learned in prison that only the cruelest survive, right? and i spunned around and i hit him every which way you can hit a person. you see his autopsy reports. this man was beaten, all his ribs was broken, his skull was broken, everything. i went berserk on him. >> reggie had alleged that robert silk had been a homosexual aggressor trying to get him to engage in sexual activity. there's no indication in any of the police investigations that robert silk was a homosexual. by all rights robert silk should be gravely injured and certainly unconscious, but then you hear this story, and it's really fantastical. it's almost this sort of magical
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thinking. you know, you're sort of in disbelief because then you look at the evidence that goes along with the crime and never the two shall meet. >> he was still alive. >> did he have his clothes on? >> he was in his birthday suit. >> so, he had no clothes on? >> right. right. right. he gets back in -- when he gets up, unconscious -- i mean, semi conscious, he then puts some clothes on. i agree to take him to the hospital. he told me, no, don't take me to the hospital. i have a girlfriend. take me to her house. en route there, got lost, and i said you know which way to go? and he's still aware, he's not -- he's bleeding and whatever, but this guy is still making advances, right? and i gets out of the car and he comes out to reach for me. and he reached for me. i swung around and i kicked him, roundhouse kicked him, and he
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went over the side of the rail. that's where they eventually found him. >> in terms of my experience in having looked at thousands of homicide cases, it just didn't make any sense. reggie admits that he killed robert silk, but we know that. still, he is essentially blaming robert silk for, in a sense, causing his own death. >> on march 10th, 1995, six months after robert silk's disappearance, detective steven toth and robert vancura are summoned to a patch of woods in rockland county. >> we were called by some kids playing across the street, found a body in the water here where this culvert meets. >> it was partially decomposed,
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part had been preserved and part was in a severe state of almost skeletal remains. we would learn the next day at an autopsy that robert silk had been violently bludgeoned to death. >> the crime scene is almost 50 miles north of silk's house, but six miles from where mcfadden lived at the time of the murder. >> how were you feeling when this was happening? were you angry with him? >> angry? i wouldn't say -- i wouldn't say the word angry. i think i didn't see him as a human being. he was just a jewish person. he wasn't a human being to me. they become a nonperson. and this is what has happened over the years when it comes to people that i feel as though either did me wrong personally or did my faith, islam, wrong personally. >> i think that he enjoyed that power and control, and clearly i
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think there are -- is a part of these crimes that's very exciting for him, you know, exert this control by inflicting tremendous injury and selecting these vulnerable targets. coming up -- >> once he starts into that assault and murder role, he's accelerating in his behavior. >> and rage and anger is running through me all at once. verizon keeps your data flowing fast and steady. but some budget networks slow your data after you reach your limit. you can barely watch your shows. this is no way to treat people. a better network doesn't mess with your data. (underwater echo) at ally bank no branches equalsit's a fact.. kind of like mute buttons equal danger. ...that sound good? not being on this phone call sounds good. it's not muted. was that you jason? it was geoffrey! it was jason.
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two weeks after robbing and killing robert silk, reginald mcfadden is looking for his next target in south nyack, new york, not far from where he claims to have kicked silk over a highway guardrail. >> so you're starting to, as you see it, sort of spiral down now, with silk's murder, now you move on. what happens next? what's going on now? >> well, once i went back and found out that he was no longer there where he fell over the rail, i figured he got up. and i know he said he had a girlfriend in south nyack. so i figured that would be the
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person that he would try to get to. so i went looking for him at his girlfriend's. >> he thinks robert just got up and went to his girlfriend's house. robert's not going to be in any condition to get up and put his clothes on, and rocket was a loner. he didn't have a girlfriend. you have to sort of squeeze those round pegs into these square holes in order to make the whole story fit. >> how did you know where to find his girlfriend? >> well, because his wallet, he had 216 fairmont avenue. right? 216. so i mistook the numbers, 126 and went to the wrong house. and what happened is i wound up taking the wrong person. >> who was that? >> jeremy brown. >> 55-year-old social worker
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jeremy brown is the mother of two and lives not on fairmont avenue, but another street just a quarter mile from mcfadden's home. >> reggie's explanation for coming into contact with jeremy brown revolving around essentially his hunt for robert silk's alleged girlfriend. it fits in the story because it allows reggie then to get down to jeremy brown's address, what he thought was the girlfriend's address, which was actually the transposed address of jeremy brown. well, what's the likelihood of that? so when you get to this address that you think is robert silk's girlfriend, what do you do there? do you wait? do you watch? robert wasn't there, obviously. this isn't his girlfriend. >> it was clear it wasn't robert. she had no connection to robert. so, i decided to release her. >> you did? >> i decided to release her. i figured she didn't know who i was. she didn't see me.
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you know what i mean? and i released her. >> did you think that she was going to go to the police? >> oh, she was -- yeah, i knew she was going to go to the police. >> jeremy brown does call the police and later testifies about what mcfadden never mentions, that he brutally raped and assaulted her multiple times over a five-hour period. >> i was surprised actually by the amount of injury that she had, you know, her nose was apparently broken. her eyes were swollen. she was in quite a bit of pain. >> he has raped her repeated times. he has beaten her. and then, at some point, he takes her from the house and puts her inside a sleeping bag into her car, drives her around to different atms and is trying to take money out of the atm.
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and when she, at one point, tries to escape, he threatens to kill her. he beats her, but at some point, he sort of had this change of heart. >> she told me she was a counselor. that's what saved her life. >> so it's what she told you then, is that -- >> and she talked to me. she talked to me. i mean, she talked me down. >> is there any way that you would not have let her go? >> no. i would have let her go, because she had no -- there was no connection. she had no connection to robert silk. >> mcfadden pleads not guilty to charges that he raped and assaulted jeremy brown. during his trial, mcfadden represents himself and personally cross-examines his victim. later, brown becomes an outspoken victims' advocate. >> i am the only living victim of reginald mcfadden, a
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psychopath who was sentenced to life in prison for a murder in 1969. >> why do you think he spared your life in this attack? >> my behavior was such that i didn't cause him to accelerate. i just listened to what he asked me to do, i did what he said, i didn't get hysterical, and i didn't fall apart, so to speak. i held my own and prayed a lot. >> what were you feeling now at this time, after you have released jeremy, robert's dead? what are you feeling? are you feeling out of control, or -- >> honestly? i mean, here you're talking about someone who probably didn't sleep in like 16 days straight, and rage and anger is running through me all at once. normally when you've been hurt, you want someone else to hurt. and these are things that rages through my head.
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>> is this why there was so much injury to both jeremy and to robert? were you raging? >> you say most of the injuries. margaret kierer, she was ritualistically killed. coming up, 78-year-old margaret kierer is mcfadden's next victim and his most violent attack. >> this particular case was probably the only time i dealt with a true sociopath. i could get used to this.
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i'm richard lui. pope francis has met with fidel castro. the pontiff met with the former cuban leader for half an hour for an informal conversation. it came after the pope celebrated mass. muslim groups are condemning remarks by presidential candidate ben carson. on "meet the press" carson saying the islamic faith is inconsistent with the constitution and would not agree with a muslim being elected president. now back to our msnbc special.
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reginald mcfadden has been out of prison for just over two months. in that time, he commits a murder and a rape. now he's going to escalate his crime spree and carry out his most heinous offense. on september 27th, 1994, mcfadden's rage reignites in floral park, long island, where his broken down cadillac is being repaired. angry at how much it will cost, he louters around a nearby railroad station well into the evening. >> it was rage, rage. rage is going through me. i decided to go ahead and go back into manhattan. i got up on the platform and the train on the other side came.
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a train came by, guess who was standing there? margaret kierer. >> and margaret kierer is the next victim. margaret is a 78-year-old woman. although pretty healthy, she is elderly. and she's getting off the long island railroad around midnight. her intention is to walk home. she doesn't make it very far from the train station before she is attacked. >> the next day, nassau county homicide detectives are called to a quiet neighborhood less than a mile south of the train station. >> he accosted margaret kierer right here on the street, and then dragged her up the driveway
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here into the backyard. that's where the actual homicide took place. then after he killed her, he dumped her between that chain link fence and the garage back there. >> and what did you do? >> i ritualistically killed her. >> tell me what that means. >> well, you make it a situation that the crime had to be symbolic or a crime had to send a message to a bigger picture in my estimation, and it had to be such that it be devastating. if that was a case that happened in the bronx or it happened to a minority, it probably wouldn't have hit the front pages. it was intentional, it was deliberate, it was calculated. and above all what it was, it was pure evil. >> he described his behavior of ritualistic. his description of that, his interpretation of ritualistic is different from mine. from our perspective, it really derives from a need-based behavior that usually develops
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early in adolescence. and so it comes from an emotional or psychological need to engage in certain activities. >> the killing was such an over murder -- margaret kierer was strangled, neck broken, multiple blunt trauma to the head, stabbed in the neck six times, probably with a screwdriver. sexually assaulted. her hands were taped. >> what did you use to stab margaret with? >> what was available. what was available on the lawn, you know, the things that sticks down lights, the lights that stick in the ground. >> okay. and the tape? >> that was the tape that was connected to silk and connected to jeremy brown. same tape. >> what we know he had was this brand new roll of carton tape. i think he has it because he's
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planned to do another homicide. and 78-year-old margaret kierer was the woman who fit that bill. and then i asked him, well, let me ask you about something that's, you know, kind of sensitive. margaret was sexually assaulted. >> no, no, she wasn't. she was impaled. >> impaled? >> impaled on the fence. >> i think that would be hard to get that kind of an injury being impaled on a chain link fence. >> it wasn't a chain link fence, it was a white fence. >> the problem is when you look at the autopsy report, it's clear that that injury did not occur from any kind of activity or engagement with a fence. i mean, it's clearly a sexual piece, but he just doesn't want to the own that. he doesn't want to acknowledge that aspect of the crime, and
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it's pretty horrific. coming up -- as investigators close in on mcfadden, there's another victim. for years mcfadden denies any involvement, but now, for the first time, he publicly admits his role in the death. >> they're saying that i'm responsible for her case, i'm admitting that i'm responsible for the death. plaque psoriasis...
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what's up mikey?ringing) (beep) play awe♪ome party song. hey buddy i heard you're having a party. what? if i was having a party, i'd invite you. would you? yeah. (phone ringing) oh! i got another call. adam: i'm not having a party! hey chris what's up! you heard about adam's party man? it's going to be crazy. i knew it! (beep) find the closest party store... introducing app-connect. (google voice) here are your directions. michael: i'm gonna throw my own party. the things you love on your phone, available on 11 volkswagen models. 78-year-old margaret kierer, bound, brutally raped and stabbed to death. reginald mcfadden's third victim since being released from prison just over two months earlier. when police identify mcfadden
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through atm surveillance, they discover a killer with an elder homicide already in his past. >> well, we go into his background, we do find out that the woman he was convicted of murdering 26-some-odd years ago had been bound hand and foot, had been brutalized, and had been raped. we got enough of his background to realize what type of person we were dealing with. >> on october 6th, 1994, police arrest and charge mcfadden for jeremy brown's rape and margaret kierer's murder. he is also charged for robert silk's homicide. mcfadden is convicted in all three cases. he gets 75 years for the rape, and two life sentences for the murders, all to be served consecutively. >> i guess this is the opportunity for me to say i'm remorseful, i'm sorry.
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well, i'm not remorseful. i'm not sorry, because i'm not guilty. yeah, give me the maximum sentence. matter of fact, give me a thousand years, because it wouldn't make a difference. if it's possible for me to sign my own death warrant, i don't fear death because i've seen death a thousand times over. it don't make a difference to me. i've learned to hate white people. you mark your own fate. so, quite frankly, don't show me no mercy, because if i had the opportunity and i was where you were at, i wouldn't show you a bit of mercy. >> during mcfadden's 92 days of freedom, investigators think one more victim may have fallen by his hands, but the case is still unsolved. mcfadden remains the prime suspect. the grisly postscript begins on
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march 26th, 1995, when police discover a badly decomposed body near a highway overpass in rockland county, new york. the victim is identified as local transient, 39-year-old dana blaze demarco. >> dana was sort of a free spirit, described as an artist, a drifter, so it would be very likely that she would have come in contact with mcfadden. >> eventually, we would learn through the autopsy that she was also killed with blunt force trauma, a fractured skull was found. >> there's a couple of indicators from the crime scene that suggest that mcfadden is involved. one is the type of injury, the location of the injury, the severity of the injury. as i understand it, there was a piece of jewelry that was found with other jewelry possessed by mcfadden that belonged to dana. >> dana's body is found not far from where mcfadden left robert silk's body.
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it's also a mere quarter mile from where mcfadden lived at the time of his arrest. but all this circumstantial evidence isn't enough to charge mcfadden with dana demarco's murder. >> whether or not reginald mcfadden will ever face trial for the case is unknown. he's already serving several life sentences for the other crimes. >> it is an important case. it is -- it's a human being that lost her life in a homicide. clearly, detectives and prosecutors felt very strongly that mcfadden was involved. >> i think they said, you know, we could move forward on it, but does it really change anything? no. but mcfadden sees it as the bargaining chip. >> prosecutors say they'll never cut a deal. >> he's not going to be
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released. nobody is going to release him. i would do anything legally in my power to ensure that that does not happen. >> in correspondence with nbc news prior to his "mindscape" interview, mcfadden says in a letter that he will publicly reveal the truth about dana demarco's death, information mcfadden says authorities would have known if they'd been doing their jobs correctly when they were secretly tailing him in the hours prior to his arrest. >> i have never been tried and the reason why i have never been tried for it is because how can they explain to the public that they had me under 24-hour police surveillance and while they had me on 24-hour police surveillance, right, this woman gets killed. >> we had been using a van from one of the folks that got him out of prison and was helping him. >> were you aware you were being followed? >> sure, sure, i knew i was being followed. i ducked down a side road, and as i was coming over trying to
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get away from them, i ran into something i thought was an animal. i thought it was a deer, right? >> okay. >> and i kept on going with the van. later on i come to find out that what i ran over was a girl by the name of dana blase demarco. >> you ran her over? >> i ran her over because i'm getting away from the tail, the people that was tailing me. >> how did you know you hit her? >> because when i stopped my van, there was blood on the front of my van. i wiped the blood off my van. they found dana demarco's blood inside the van from the shirt i used to wipe off the front. i was thinking it's animal blood, but they found her blood. they had dna connecting me to dana demarco. >> according to investigator robert ventura and official
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records, blood was not among the many pieces of evidence collected from the van. if you hit dana demarco on the street -- >> right. >> -- shouldn't her body have been on the street and shouldn't it have been found -- >> no, this is a very wooded area, and when she was hit, she was hit from this angle and went over the overpass. they found her on the side of the overpass right where it would be logically where she would have fell. >> do you think the medical examiner who did the autopsy on dana demarco, he would say that she was hit by a car? because car injuries are pretty specific. >> i seen the medical report. she had multiple head injuries, so it's consistent with getting hit by a car. >> authorities say demarco's autopsy indicates her head injuries were consistent with blunt force trauma, not being struck by a motor vehicle. the injuries are similar to those sustained by robert silk.
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>> they're saying that i'm responsible for her case. i'm admitting i'm responsible for the death. >> but you're saying it's an accident. you're saying you didn't see her and you're -- >> but, still, i could have stopped. i didn't do that. you know, i was -- and i ran away from the scene of the crime. so, that in itself is a crime. >> he still interestingly says, well, i should be prosecuted for it. but prosecuted really how? if you were to proceed with the demarco case, as he's presented it, at the most you might have voluntary manslaughter. so admitting being responsible for dana's death as a homicide serge would have helped her family and those people that knew her. it would have brought closure to the case, but we didn't really get that. so it was in a sense very anti-climactic for us. coming up --
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>> do you think it would be safe to let you out now? >> i wouldn't want to get out. i chose that. >> but i'm asking you -- >> no. it wouldn't be safe. oss of paste became a serious problem for a family business. faced with horses that needed feeding and a texas drought that sent hay prices soaring, the owners had to act fast. thankfully, mary miller banks with chase for business. and with greater financial clarity and a relationship built for the unexpected, she could control her cash flow, and keep the ranch running. chase for business. so you can own it. cththere's no easy, way to do your job when you're sick. tough symptoms need alka-seltzer plus cold & cough it's four cold symptom fighters put you back in control. stay unstoppable. alka-seltzer plus. hey babe, last one home cooks? ♪
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this is the american justice system. >> reginald mcfadden. >> 30 days, ain't taken a shower or nothing. convicted rapist, guilty of three murders and the prime suspect in one more homicide. he will serve the rest of his life in prison. throughout a four-hour interview, retired fbi profiler mark saforic tries to peel away the complex layers of mcfadden's psyche. what does he find? a killer who preys on a particular type of victim. >> i think mcfadden is always on the lookout for vulnerable victims and that person then becomes the focus of his activities and his energy.
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they're all older than the offender, easily controlled, not going to put up much of a struggle. you don't see mcfadden taking on a 28-year-old male in good shape. >> saforic believes that there may be another reason why criminals like mcfadden choose certain female victims. >> i think that a lot of those offenders they see the victim as a surrogate, as a symbolic victim that represents someone in their life, a controlling, dominant, female in their life whom they cannot act out against. their mother, grandmother, aunt, some individual who they have a lot of anger towards. >> the subject of mcfadden's mother appears to prompt a shift in his mood. >> i wanted to see my mother. my mother --
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>> your mother is very special to you. >> she's deceased now, but she raised ten children by herself. a very strong woman, right? she kept us clean. she made us respectful. >> he spoke very highly of his mother, essentially this impression that it was a happy childhood except for the fact that his stepfather, you know, was very physically abusive to him. >> did your mother protect you from your stepfather's beatings? >> i came in on him one time and james came out mad -- that was his name, james, and he beat me with an extension cord. my mother was in denial that he beat me. >> i got the sense that you really loved your mother. >> yeah. >> but did you ever resent her for not protecting you from james?
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it was a conundrum for him because on the one hand he wanted to express the love he had for his mother, but on the other hand, he holds a tremendous amount of animous for his mother that she didn't protect him from this abusive environment. >> over a million cases of child abuse and neglect occur in the u.s. and few children go on to become serial killers. so why does someone like reginald mcfadden follow that path? >> the answer to that is we don't know. there has certainly been research that's looked at, you know, is it an environment in which they've been raised or a biological component, a genetic component, you know? i think the research that's been done so far shows that it's both. some people learn how to deal with that adversity and that
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stress and others do not. >> do you think it's been helpful for you today to talk? do you feel like it? >> being in prison, you know, i wish i could bring robertson back and heal all of the wounds of mrs. brown, and of course, dana demarco, right? and i can't do that. you know. >> were those the only cases that you were involved in? >> they tried to link me up with other cases, and as a matter of fact they each came out and said i might have been the serial killer, but all of that was disproven. they couldn't find evidence of that. >> do you think you are a serial killer or not? >> well, i read the types of serial killers and none of those cases fit within the categories of a serial killer. the way i execute i don't think they do it like that, you know what i mean? well, some do, i mean, under the definition of serial killer i think your crimes would apply.
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i think someone calling you a serial killer is legitimate. you may not see yourself that way. ♪ ♪ >> thanks. >> all right. thank you. >> i think at the end of the interview, you know, when all was said and done, reggie thought he'd done a really good job in essentially managing the image that he put out there. >> so are you leaving with more answers? >> oh, absolutely. as opposed? >> it was a success, then. >> i don't think i'm leaving with all of the answers, i wouldn't tell you that. i never expect to get all of the answer, but i think it takes time, too. not only on my part, but on your part. >> and the look on his face sort of changed from i'm really proud of myself to, yeah, okay. well, i really didn't, but you know, that's as much as i was willing to give you. >> okay.
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we're good. >> all right. all right. >> i'll be in touch. >> all right. >> were you a monster? do you think you were? ♪ >> i was -- i was the worst of the worst. >> do you think it would be safe to let you out now? >> no. it wouldn't be safe. >> it would not be safe? >> i wouldn't want to get out. >> i have to pay for my crimes. i think no one should have the right to take another punierson life. no one should have the right to do what i've done to these people. >> my expectations of reggie, meeting him would be that he would want to put his best foot forward. he would be engaging in what i would describe as image management. he is managing how he is perceived not only by the public who is watching this, but by the affected family members of the victims and by the population that surrounds him. the inmates that he will spend
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the rest of his life with. ♪ ♪ ♪ you are about to enter the criminal mindscape of joel rifkin. >> when you were strangling them, were you looking at them? >> some i was, some of them no, some of them i was looking out the window, some i was looking out into space. >> he brutally strangled women and dumped body parts along the

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