Some local residents still shudder, and for reasons that have nothing to do with ghosts and goblins. That day, i went from having so much fun with my family on that halloween night, and it exploded in my face like a bomb. Theres very few days that go by that i dont think about this case. Narrator around 10 00 that evening, 36yearold Mary Risinger was washing her car at the local car wash. With her was her daughter, kristen, who was just about to turn 4. Mary had stopped to clean their car because kris was going to be baptized the next morning and she wanted to get her car clean. Narrator as mary was rinsing off her car, kristen was playing in the water. A man drove up and got out of his truck. It didnt seem like he was there to get it cleaned
she lies there naked on the ground, with blood gushing out of her throat, listening, listening, listening for the footsteps that would tell her that the man who s attacked her is leaving. narrator: finally, wendy s attacker left the area, apparently assuming she was dead. the one thing she knew for sure is if she was going to die, she didn t want to die in the woods. she wanted to die in a place that they would find her body. hidalgo: she untied herself and walked out to the roadway and was spotted by a construction worker, who got on his radio, called for police and an ambulance. merillat: i wonder if i would have that same courage that she had. and she endured great pain, great suffering, and not knowing if she d ever see her parents again or if anybody would find her body. narrator: alert detectives studying this crime thought it looked familiar. it bore some similarities to mary risinger s murder just one year earlier, as well as the rape and murders of alice martin and debra ewing
that it was high risk to the offender. the suspect is putti himself at high risk of being ught for coitting that kinof a crime. narrat: evtual, coin confessed for coitting to a total of three murders, including the murder of mary risinger. merillat: i de it verylear to him throughout the procs thathat i was doing was gointo endp in a capital murd trial one day, did he realize that, and he said yes. and i said, do you understand that i ll be on a witness stand one day trying to take your life? and he said, yeah, i just wish they would hurry up with it. narrator: corwin came remarkably close to getting away with multiple murders. with dna technology in its infancy, the only physical evidence against him was the single fingerprint he left on wendy gauntt s car. without it, he might have walked away and claimed even more victims. merillat: i m fully convinced had he not been prosecuted, he d have do this again. i don t think he would have stopped.
the technology to extract dna and collect dna from crime scenes and from bodies was very rudimentary back then. merillat: there were no surveillance cameras that we could utilize. that was a very rare thing, to have surveillance cameras, especially in huntsville. i don t know of any business that had them at that time. narrator: with the dearth of resources and the absence of physical evidence, mary s case went cold. bush: i had, i think, three deputies working for me, three detectives. we still had burglaries going on. we still had cars being stolen. still had drugs being sold. some things stick with you more than others. i ve seen a lot of dead people. i ve seen them killed with firewood, hatchets, shot, stabbed, run over. some things stick with you that others don t. i think it was the little girl being involved. i wish i could ve done more for her. narrator: nearly a year after mary s murder,