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
those horror movies. he s like your worst nightmare. after his relieve he got a job and moved to suburban atlanta. he was a free man and enjoying life. here he is sky diving and loving it. daker s freedom galled homicide detective john doss. the karmen smith murder was now officially a cold case. to doss, daker was the one that got away. does a case like this haunt a police department? absolutely, because these cases go home with you in your mind. but for years, doss couldn t do anything about it. and then just by chance he was sent to a dna training seminar in 2008, a random assignment that would change everything. back in the mid 90s very, very little at all could be done with the hair except to say the color of the hair. now when there s any tissue from the root on the hair whatsoever,
her story, calling him a victim. you know what? i messed up really bad. despicable. lottie s reversal was astonishing. in the years since karmen smith s murder, she was raising her young son in a new home. by recanting her testimony, she put all of that at risk. how worried are you right now that you could go to jail for perjury? i m very worried. i know that i m facing prison time and there will be severe penalty for what i do and i don t want to be ripped away from my little boy. i have everything to lose. a year after daker s conviction, the hearing began on the motion for a new trial. daker again, representing himself called the doctor, the dna expert, to the stand.
doing this because this is right. prosecutor jesse evans portrayed lottie as a unreliable person. evans next move was stunning. he presented evidence that he said explained lottie s incredible reversal, letters confiscated from daker s prison cell. 4,000 pages of correspondance between the convicted murderer and the woman who testified against him. i sent him daily devotions and bible cards and a lot of information, case files. i actually feel like i m his personal secretary in a way. it turned out lottie had actually been helping with daker s appeal. he gave her research assignments. she looked up cases and printed documents, mailed them to prison, and then waited for his