and the way i look on this is, i ve had a great life for 38 years and one bad day. narrator: up next a late-night walk in an upscale neighborhood results in murder. the victim suffered a horrible, agonizing, painful death. narrator: surprise evidence sends investigators in an unexpected direction. murder has no boundaries. we re going wherever we got to go. narrator: after weeks of investigation, the case comes down to a single phone number. the bottom line to this investigation is forensics. the cellphone forensics actually brought the whole focus 180 degrees. the forensics is the glue that sticks it all together. narrator: after meeting online and living for a while in europe, fred and sherry engel married and moved his consulting business to myrtle beach, south carolina, in 2006. the couple, both in their early 50s, lived in a complex called carolina forest. carolina forest it was really a planned-unit development, but it stretches into what was just a bare tr
narrator: up next, this part of south texas was known for being safe. we didn t lock our doors back then. narrator: that changed after local women came under attack. she would not let me go. she kept telling me, protect me from the bad man. narrator: are these attacks random, or are they related? the only word that would come to mind is evil. just pure evil. narrator: if you go to huntsville, texas, and mention halloween night 1987, 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. there s very few days that go by that i don t think about this case. narrator: around 10:00 that evening, 36-year-old 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 th
That s how we finished it. narrator: this was the final sketch. just one hour after it was released to the media, a prison guard called police. he said he was sure it was an inmate once housed at one of the local prisons. the inmate s name? daniel lee corwin. merillat: i ve seen a lot of composites in 40 years of police work, and never seen one that good. that looks just like him. narrator: in the mid-1970s, when corwin was in high school, he was found guilty of assaulting and attempting to murder a fellow student. her name was brenda evans, and like wendy gauntt, she also survived by playing dead. when she s in the ambulance, she can barely speak cause her throat s been cut, and she said, daniel corwin did this. narrator: the attack on brenda was virtually identical to the attack on wendy, on mary risinger, and the other two cases in which the victims did not survive. in all those cases, the killer used a knife,
get them out the back door, get them out as fast as possible. narrator: after his release, corwin went to work for a local cabinet maker. corwin s employer, ben pruitt, had taught a carpentry class at the prison. he knew of corwin s past and wanted to give him a second chance. but when local women started getting attacked, mr. pruitt suspected corwin might be responsible. after the highly publicized attack on wendy gauntt, mr. pruitt remembered something strange from right after the murder of mary risinger. ben pruitt recalls daniel corwin coming to work the day after halloween 1987 with cuts on his hands. narrator: could daniel lee corwin be the man who was attacking local women? it looked that way, but in the absence of any physical evidence and there was none there was no way to be sure. police procedurals look so simple on tv, and they re just not. you know, even when you know it s somebody,
Back then, they mailed the print in a letter. it took two days. when it finally came back, it matched. narrator: daniel lee corwin was immediately arrested for the attempted murder of wendy gauntt. investigators were eager to know what drove corwin to kill. to their disappointment, he really didn t know himself, or at least couldn t explain it. okay. faced with the evidence against him in the wendy gauntt case, corwin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years. but the open murder cases for which corwin might be responsible still begged for resolution. hidalgo: when you re a homicide detective or you investigate homicide, you speak for the dead. there s no one else that s left. narrator: at times, corwin seemed remorseful.