set, knowing that it could have been them. it very easily could have been us. we were expecting it, though. i don t think they were expecting it. i don t think too many people realize what he was capable of doing. before he dated tracy whitehead, joe palczynski s girlfriend was 16-year-old stacy culotta, the daughter of diane and vince culotta. he used to tell her all the time if she broke up with him that he d set the house on fire with us in it. it was a chance encounter at a local gas station that brought stacy culotta and joe palczynski together in july of 1996. early on, joe showered her with gifts and his undivided attention, as he did with most of his girlfriends. i am trying to look at it from my daughter s point of view or any 16-year-old s point of view, is that here is a guy, you know, an older guy that is
taken anything but good common sense to look at this guy s history and say, we have a big problem. this is victim number six. we need to act. she faults the police and court system for the way they handled joe s last arrest and bail. they took a look and said, in essence, no connect, not a problem here. let s treat each of these instances like they were disparate and separate events with no history before, and i think that was a huge, huge mistake. if joe was found guilty of the assault charges against tracy, he would have had to go to prison for ten years, because he was already on probation for aggravated assault of another former girlfriend. tracy had reached out to the legal system to protect her from joe palczynski. but ironically, it may have triggered the rampage of violence that followed. the rock and the hard place for battered women, and i think we see it all through the palczynski story of the girlfriends is that they fear
that followed the murders and hostage standoff. the issue of palczynski s background and how he was handled by both the courts and the mental health system was the subject of very intense debate. steven bailey is the chief prosecutor in the domestic violence unit at the baltimore county state s attorney office and he has said on the record about joe palczynski that the scary thing is the system worked quite well. i would argue that if that s as good as the system works, then we should not be surprised that joe palczynski was able to abuse six women, to kidnap tracy whitehead, to torture various family members and to get away with it. if that s the system working well, then the outcome should have been predicted and expected. msnbc had an interview scheduled with steven bailey, but then his boss, the elected state attorney, sandra a.
were sentenced to eight years in jail on charges of espionage and illegal entry. they have 20 days to appeal that decision. the two men maintain they were hiking along the border. a mother of two children were killed in flash floods in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. heavy rains overwhelmed the drainage systems and submerged dozens of vehicles. more news later. now back to murderous obsession. at the center of any criminal investigation is a dark heart and the iron hand of justice. after taking his girlfriend hostage and killing four other people, joe palczynski became the subject of one of the largest manhunts in maryland s history. many of his ex-girlfriends and their families locked their doors and went into hiding, thinking any one of them could be his next target. as it turned out, they had reason to be afraid. palczynski s reign of terror was far from over.
joe palczynski remained at large for ten days. one step ahead of a statewide manhunt for the killer of four. in fact, he had escaped to virginia, but his obsession and anger with ex-girlfriend tracy whitehead would get the best of him. despite law enforcement predictions to the contrary, he came back to baltimore in the into the teeth of the manhunt in a brazen attempt to get tracy whitehead. 911. on march 17th, 2000, a frantic 911 call comes into the baltimore county police department. palczynski was at the home of tracy s mother, lynn whitehead, for a final confrontation. i remember having a sick feeling in my stomach and all of us walked back in the bedroom with the telephone. palczynski pretends to be the police. after banging on the door, he then shoots his way inside.