killer in a mask. he s clearly a brilliant individual. a brilliantly scary individual. his target, a doting young mom. she was a gorgeous strawberry blond who loved her son more than anything in the whole world. she was so scared. he struck once. would he kill again and would she be next? we were just so shattered and hurting so bad. imagine being hunted in your own home, held a virtual prisoner, your children in danger from a man with a blueprint for murder. i was terrified. she will face down evil and come forward with a new revelation that will make your jaw drop. what i did is wrong. there are no words. i have everything to lose. hello, and welcome to dateline. it was a brutal crime and right away one woman said she knew what happened. it would take years to bring the alleged killer to trial. but the verdict was far from the end of this case. it s a story of obsession and control that will keep you guessing until the very end. here s an
imagine being hunted in your own home, held a virtual prisoner, your children in danger from a man with a blueprint for murder. i was terrified. she will face down evil and come forward with a new revelation that will make your jaw drop. what i did is wrong. there are no words. i have everything to lose. hello and welcome to dateline. it was a brutal crime and right away one woman said she knew what happened. the verdict was far from the end of this case. it s a story of obsession and control that will keep you guessing until the very end. here s andrea canning with the killing in cobb county. a new attraction can be so exhilarating, but not always. sometimes attraction turns into a dangerous obsession. bonnie spencer says she knows all about that. he would show up at my job. he would show up at the store. no matter where i went, she would be there. bonnie said she had a stalker, a teenager who got into her house, into her car, and worst of all, into her
a sexual relationship. there was no relationship so there s nothing, you know, more that i can say about that. did he ever try and do anything like kiss you no. since he s so in love with you. never once. never once tried to kiss me or anything. when daker finally turned to those hairs, he called on dr. greg hampekian. he challenged the state s key evidence. the nuclear dna test matching daker to karmen smith that was done on the root tissue of a single hair. the problem, he says, is none of the hairs recovered from the crime scene had any roots. there were hairs taken from the body and they were all clearly indicated on the report as having no root. that s something you can do with the naked eye and of course the experts at the time used a microscope. are you 100% sure they had no root? the records all state that.
in his room we found a piece of paper with the address where this crime occurred. we found a torn up letter that was his words to lottie spencer. daker s torn up letter to lottie was hateful and threatening. prosecutor jesse evans. he specifically talks about having plans and backup plans to exact revenge on lottie and the worst part about the letter is he gets to the end and he says, but i m going to let you live. i m going to get revenge on you but i m going to let you live. to police and prosecutors, this wasn t just a rant, it looked like a blueprint for murder. now they tried to link daker to the crime scene. some of the important evidence we start with is the hair and fiber evidence that was recovered off of karmen smith s body. there was a broken knife blade. it was a fairly clean crime scene, other than that. karmen had small puncture wounds on her back and terrible bruising, suggesting a ferocious struggle.
to know. and even 18 years later, nick remembered it like it was yesterday. my dad and my aunt told me that my mom didn t make it and, i mean, i didn t really understand it then. i still don t really understand it. it was such a senseless act. nick and his family could only grieve and wonder why. but back at the apartment, now a crime scene, a chill ran through lottie. she told police she could explain exactly what happened. i told them that i had somebody that had been stalking me and it was my belief that he was the one behind what happened to nicholas and carmen. coming up, who was this man in the mask who would kill the young mother and try to kill her son? he s pure evil. he s a monster.