MICHAEL: I've never given an interview
about Marc or his crimes.
This is the first.
Marc does know, I'm -- I'm doing the interview.
I felt the need to kind of ask him if he was okay with it.
He was -- was supportive of it.
It was definitely kind of
a relief and kind of made the decision,
um, for me a little easier.
If he had said no, that he wasn't supportive of it,
I think it still would have been important for me to
tell it.
I don't know other people's background and their stories,
but I do know his, and I just feel like people kind of need
to know more information.
From day one regarding the case,
there just wasn't enough back story, kind of what led
up to the year and the days of the crimes.
So I just feel like it was important,
just to kind of express my side of the story.
There's definitely two sides to every story,
and, uh, I definitely think there's, you know, two sides
to him -- the one side, you know,
of being a loving family member, brother.
And then, you know, the other side
that I think was just his dark side.
He wasn't
okay with this other side, and he didn't embrace it.
He was trying to -- to fight it
and to overcome it, and he, you know, lost that --
that battle, obviously.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
[knock at door] [creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[water dripping]
[banging on door] [creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
MICHAEL: I have a handful of photos, uh, that I keep.
This is a picture of, uh, my brother
and I -- just funny to kind of see, um,
us at that age, you know.
He wasn't
always a bad person.
I felt like he was a good older brother.
We definitely were pretty close.
My brother's temperament growing up I felt like was
always, um, always very calm,
never cruel to people, to animals.
He always treated everybody with respect.
He never lied.
I always looked up to him because of that.
I never looked at him and was scared.
Any time I see a picture of Marc, you know,
there's always that kind of black cloud hovering, you know,
of -- of where
his life, you know, ended up going.
It's hard to really have a good memory without,
you know, thinking about what happened.
I can't imagine
that it turned out like it did
looking at this.
After September 11th,
he enlisted in the active duty Army.
He served most of his time out in South Korea.
He got orders to come back to
the States to a unit in Washington state.
And at that point, he kind of transitioned into the reserves.
It seemed -- seemed like everything was great.
But I think he had been in Washington State for maybe
a year, maybe two,
and then decided to move back to Colorado.
I remember you couldn't wait to get out of here.
[laughs quietly]
Well, what can I say? I missed you.
At the time, I thought that he had --
he had left Washington, because he had separated from his wife,
and he just wanted to be closer to family.
I'm really surprised you're back.
I thought you liked it up there.
Yeah, well, it got old.
I needed a change of scenery.
MICHAEL: But now, it definitely seems like he
was kind of running from, you know,
something out there.
Looking back in retrospect,
um, I do believe that Marc, um, left Washington to kind of
escape because of the crimes he had committed out there.
Actively attacking women started in Washington.
He had already committed rapes before, you know,
or a rape, at least.
And he was wanting to get out of there.
But nobody believed her when she made the claim.
I think that he felt like he had, you know,
covered up his tracks well enough where he didn't really
have anything to worry about.
And I think the more crimes
you commit, the more confident you get.
I kind of decided to ask Marc
if I could move in with him during that time,
and he didn't tell me right away that I could.
He told me he was gonna think about it.
Looking back, if he had told me that I couldn't move in,
that would be a little weird,
you know, because he had the room.
That potentially could have raised
some red flags of why wouldn't you let your brother move in?
So he told me I could move in.
But he basically said, you know,
the only real stipulation or rule was just to --
to not touch his stuff.
Hey. What are you doing?
MICHAEL: On the day that I was moving in,
I remember specifically him saying,
"Don't be snooping around in any of his stuff.
Why don't you keep your stuff in your room?
I don't really want you touching my stuff.
Yeah. Um, okay, no problem, man.
MICHAEL: That was like the only thing he had told me,
so it kind of stuck out -- you know, at the time,
it made sense.
We had a history that I had, you know,
gone through his [bleep] plenty of times when we were kids.
If we're just about done,
then I gotta go. -All right.
So at the time, just seemed like
a normal thing that you might tell your younger brother.
But in retrospect, looking back,
it was definitely kind of a red flag that he may have been
hiding something.
MICHAEL: He had already had souvenirs in the house
at that point,
and he didn't want me to find any evidence of,
you know, any of the crimes that he had committed
up to that point.
After he was arrested, they kind of released a list of
evidence that they were using against him, you know,
and that's when I kind of saw that the pink digital camera
was on there, and I had seen that in the office.
I had never, like, looked through it or anything
like that, um,
but I definitely remember just seeing it
sitting on the, uh, on the shelf.
He had taken it from one of the victims' houses,
but I just thought that it was
one of his girlfriends or his ex-wife's.
Hypothetically, if -- if things weren't hidden so well,
I definitely would have found something and he might have
had to kill me.
I just don't know
what would have happened in that scenario.
The whole time I was living there,
he was getting random checks all the time, every few days.
And he had told me that he had
actually gotten into developing porn sites.
My initial reaction was that he was able to kind of do that
and just have money,
basically free money coming in.
He was making more money than I was making
working a full-time job.
Looking back on it now, in my opinion, 100 percent,
he had a sexual addiction,
and I do think, uh, that exposure had a lot to do
with, uh,
the urges and kind of how they, um,
kept growing and what they kind of turned into.
The amount of, you know, time probably throughout his
life that he had spent, you know,
looking at porn, I would assume that it's gonna fuel
that addictive reaction.
It's definitely not gonna help the urges.
I just think that it drove him deeper into the dark world that
he was kind of engulfed in.
[Marc speaking]
MICHAEL: Marc was always a night owl.
He would be up until who knows when, three and four
or five -- five o'clock in the morning,
doing whatever he was doing.
As far as what he did all night long,
I never heard anything or saw anything.
We had such different schedules that, I mean,
I would say it wouldn't be uncommon to go a couple of days
without seeing him.
Looking back, in retrospect,
I was the perfect roommate for him.
I was going to school full time,
five days a week, and then working nights.
If his door was shut,
I wouldn't know if he was in his room or not.
I honestly don't know exactly how many crimes he committed
in the timeframe that I was living there.
It could have been multiple nights a week.
One of the weirdest things to -- to think about is just how,
you know, there was --
could have been multiple days where I talked to him, like,
right after he had done something.
-[knocks lightly] -Marc?
MICHAEL: It's definitely, uh, you know,
kind of haunting when you think about what he was doing
at night, you know, after I went to sleep.
I would think he would have had to spend a lot of time out
doing surveillance on people, on his victims.
[Marc speaking]
MICHAEL: I definitely remember, during the time I was living
with Marc, there was always gloves by the door,
some black gloves that he would consistently wear
all the time.
Really thought nothing of it until after he was arrested,
you know, then you just kind of
start replaying every little instance.
There was one time specifically,
we went out to a little place for dinner, and I just remember
him having the gloves on while he was driving.
I think it was probably, like, fall, you know,
so it wasn't, you know, snowing.
That's one thing that I remember that, you know, at
the time, I didn't think anything of, but looking back,
I definitely felt like, you know, it was a little weird
that he, you know, was wearing the gloves the whole time.
You know, if you're cold, I can turn on the heat.
No, I'm good.
MICHAEL: Any time he could get away with wearing them
and not looking out of place, he was wearing them.
The more I thought about it, it's like, what good
does wearing gloves in your own car do?
It seems like he was taking precaution, wearing them
for the purposes of not leaving any prints anywhere.
-Something wrong? -No, nothing.
It made me think, like, did he always take precautions
not to leave, like, any prints in his own car?
Little things like that always kind of make me wonder how
much time and effort
was going on behind the scenes without anybody
knowing, including myself.
[Marc speaking]
MICHAEL: I had woken up one morning.
I remember it being pretty early.
It was probably, like, six a.m.,
and I walked into the office to do something on the computer,
and it was a little odd, because there was
a book that was opened up, like, on the desk.
So I looked at it, and it was a book on self-hypnosis.
It was different, so it did stick out.
I'm like, huh, this is a little odd, you know?
He was pretty open about everything when
it came to what he was, like, studying,
you know, and he had never mentioned anything about
the hypnosis.
He never really seemed, like, too stressed out.
I definitely thought it was weird,
but I didn't ask him, because he had told me not to,
you know, go through his stuff
or be snooping around anything in the house.
-What are you doing in here? -Um...
nothing.
Just sending some emails.
MICHAEL: Looking back on it now,
I think he was trying to fix himself.
And the only reason I say that is just because it's the thing,
to me, that makes the most sense, you know?
I'm done. It's all yours.
Great. Thanks.
MICHAEL: I think maybe, you know, that was -- that was one
of the ways that he was trying to suppress those urges --
hypnotize himself out of the urges
and trying to, like, fix himself in a way.
It's like an addiction.
You know, you want to stop, you want to quit,
but it just draws you back in.
MICHAEL: In retrospect,
you know, I think everything that Marc did at the time
all played a role in him evading police.
He definitely, um, showered more than he used to,
comparing it to what he used to do
before he was in the military, like, he would go
days without showering.
He was definitely a little bit, like, hyper-hygienic,
taking multiple showers.
At the time,
it wasn't something that stuck out where I'm like, man,
why are you showering again, you know?
I thought it was a combination of being in
the military and the discipline he had kind of
um, taken on.
But looking back, if he showers at 2 in the morning
or 3 in the morning or comes home and showers at,
you know 4 in the morning,
it might have been after the crimes he's showering
like crazy to get, you know, any evidence off,
kind of just make sure that he was clean all the time.
[Marc speaking]
When I had moved in with Marc, I was in barber school, and, uh,
Marc had asked me to give him
a haircut on a couple of different occasions.
You sure you want a buzz cut again?
Yeah.
And he, you know, wanted such a short, military-style cut.
It's kind of short as it is -- there's not much a trim.
I like it this way.
It's definitely a little weird, thinking --
thinking back on that.
He basically had long hair
all the way through high school.
Once he got out of the military,
he didn't have to, you know, but he did want his hair
really short.
You can grow it out if you want, you know that, right?
Mike, I told you I like it this short.
Besides, I thought you wanted the practice.
Yeah.
MICHAEL: I think leaving it a little longer
might have been something that you would want to do if
you, you know, had been forced
to get a really short cut for a long time.
But he was pretty adamant about just making
sure it was, you know, like skin-tight.
In retrospect, he might have
been wanting that short of a haircut
so it was less, you know, DNA evidence
that he might leave behind at the crime scenes.
-Thanks. -No problem.
MICHAEL: And also, I did notice that he always kept
his fingernails short,
he always kept his face clean-shaven,
and wore hats a lot.
Almost every time he left the house, he was in
some kind of hat.
It definitely could have been a strategic move, you know?
All of his energy, seemingly, was
put into not leaving DNA behind.
He was definitely -- wanted to kind of get in
the routine of constantly, you know, covering his tracks.
And some things are, you know, starting to kind of be weird.
He had mentioned that I wasn't to use his laundry detergent.
I just needed to have my own laundry detergent.
I thought it was a little weird,
so I asked why -- he had told me it was because of all
the chemicals that, you know,
were put in all these things that supposedly were
causing cancer.
What are you doing?
Doing laundry.
MICHAEL: Made perfect sense.
He was definitely very health conscious at the time,
so it didn't really, you know, raise any red flags with me.
Did you take my clothes?
Yeah, I saw them piling up.
I thought I'd help out.
But he always used scent-free laundry detergent.
He was always adamant about using natural products
that wouldn't leave any specific scents on him
and never wore any cologne,
any scented lotions or anything like that.
Don't use that stuff.
MICHAEL: Looking back, you know, you kind of think like,
you know, why?
I think there was a good chance that he was trying
to avoid giving off
any noticeable or recognizable scents when he was,
you know, doing these attacks.
You know, you wouldn't want a specific smell
if you're out committing rape.
You don't really want to give off any specific, like,
fresh scent.
So, in retrospect, the scent-free soaps
and the detergents were probably, in his mind,
just as important as his rape kit to commit the crimes.
MICHAEL: Definitely the longer I lived there,
it was getting weirder.
This is a picture of the living room.
This is exactly how I remember the room
always looking -- blinds were shut all the time.
This blind right behind the sofa was the one that
I think at one point, I had left open,
and Marc told me that, you know, we needed to keep that shut.
One day, he had noticed that the blinds were, like,
either opened or partially opened
or something like that, and he was just upset.
What are you doing?
Just letting some light in.
MICHAEL: He told me that, you know, just make sure
we keep all the blinds shut all the time.
He said it wasn't a very nice neighborhood, and there's
burglaries that happen, and if people can
see in your house, you know, it's like they can spot exactly
what you have in there.
And he was just -- just basically told me that we
just need to make sure that we keep the blinds closed,
just to make sure nobody can see in the house
to plan any type of robbery or anything like that.
But it doesn't make sense.
There was nothing in there of any value other than
the TV and the Playstation.
What are they gonna take, the TV?
Just keep them closed.
I think that he was taking measures to
basically not be seen as much as possible.
Okay. Yeah, no problem.
MICHAEL: I'm pretty sure he was going grocery shopping at, like,
dark, because the less noticeable he was,
the less chances he had of getting noticed or caught.
I think he was doing his best to just keep
as low of a profile, just in general in every aspect.
And I think that he felt like he had,
you know, covered up his tracks well enough where he didn't
really have anything to worry about.
But I'm not really sure how much of a hunch
he had as far as the cops being onto him.
Come to find out, the FBI or the police
were watching the house.
I think they were at least watching for at least, like,
a month.
One of the victims in the case identified the truck,
and then they were drawn to the house because of the truck.
They were surveilling the house, and they were
looking for an opportunity when Marc left the house
to knock on the door and talk to me.
But me and Marc definitely look pretty similar.
They basically had us confused.
They weren't quite sure which one of us it was,
because we pretty much had the same build.
So one day, I came home.
What are you doing?
I saw Marc, and, uh, we started talking, and he said
that the, uh, police had stopped by.
The cops were here before.
Wait, what?
And basically were just informing him
that there would -- there had been a series
of robberies that had taken place
in the neighborhood and that we just needed to just be alert
and make sure we keep everything locked up.
Are we supposed to do anything about it?
Nah, they just want to make sure we're being safe.
MICHAEL: He could have gotten a little bit nervous
at that time,
but when he was telling me about it, he didn't
seem paranoid.
You would think that he would be at least a little, you know,
nervous and asking me, like,
oh, have they stopped by any other times, have they --
have you seen them around?
But he seemed pretty calm and pretty normal at the time.
I didn't even think twice of it.
I was totally under the impression that,
you know, there were some burglaries going on
in the neighborhood.
After the police stopped by, you know,
I didn't see any real change in Marc.
I would think at that point, he would have started taking some
real measures to, you know,
skip town or do whatever if he was actually thinking
that they were on his trail.
But I think that he thought that his process
was pretty foolproof, and he was almost smarter
than -- than the police.
[Marc speaking]
MICHAEL: One day, me and Marc are just kind of
chit-chatting, and I noticed
a book that was related to, like, survival
and stuff like that.
So I started asking him about what he was researching up on.
-What are you doing? -Packing.
And he started telling me about being able to survive,
you know, on your own in the woods.
He was gonna get dropped off in a remote spot in
the wilderness and basically have
to survive out there for a long period of time
on your own with, like, nothing pretty much.
Why would you do something like?
To see if I can.
MICHAEL: No supplies, no tent, no gear.
So it was kind of like a life or death,
live-or-die situation.
You either survive it and make it out, or you --
or you're dead.
Within the next six months was when he was
saying that he was gonna do that.
So when are you going?
I don't know yet. I just wanna be ready.
MICHAEL: At the time, my initial reaction was,
you know, you're crazy.
He had never spent any alone time in the wilderness.
He wasn't a hiker, he wasn't...
into the camping, fishing, anything like that.
So it was definitely, uh, something that, you know, was
out of character, but after being in the military,
I didn't put it past the fact that he could do that.
Looking back, I think there's a possibility
that he could have just been
getting ready in case he had to disappear
at any given moment.
I think that is a possibility, that he was kind
of preparing for having to evade police at some point.
The day Marc got arrested,
I'd been playing poker.
I was basically coming down First Avenue and went to go
make a right onto the street
we lived on and noticed that the whole
street was blocked off.
I jumped out the car and just started walking to my house.
I see kind of a group of police,
and they basically just start walking toward me.
MICHAEL: I didn't even make it to my house.
They started just asking me questions about my brother.
This is your house?
What's your relationship to Marc O'Leary?
They told me that Marc
was under investigation for serial sexual assault.
I couldn't believe it.
My initial feeling, I think, was just pure shock, because
he never had a history of any violence towards anybody.
So I just wouldn't think that he would
be capable of -- of committing these type of crimes.
I'm just like, you guys, you know, you screwed up here.
You got the wrong guy.
-You -- you made a mistake. -Sir, your brother has been
arrested on multiple crimes.
And then that's when they kind of told me that they had been
investigating for,
you know, a long period of time
and that they, you know,
were 100 percent positive that -- that it was him.
There was tons of charges -- rape, assault, kidnapping,
just a list of charges.
In that moment,
you know, you're just so numb, because it's so much shock.
You don't know how to feel.
I never would have thought my brother
would have committed any violence on anybody.
October 4th, 2009,
a 65-year-old woman contacts Aurora police
and reports that she has been sexually assaulted.
July 6th, 2010, a 40-year-old woman
calls Lakewood police to report
that she was attacked in the middle of the night.
She was able to jump from a window and escape.
August 10th, 2010, a 59-year-old woman calls
police to report that she has been sexually assaulted.
January 5th, 2011,
a 26-year-old woman called Golden police
and reported that she had been sexually assaulted in her home.
MICHAEL: And then to know, you know,
that there was even yet another victim
in Washington that nobody believed her when she, you know,
made the claim.
[Marc speaking]
Just knowing that, you know, you --
that I lived with somebody who was committing this stuff,
it's definitely a -- kind of a haunting feeling, you know?
A lot of these things were going on probably
while I was sleeping or --
or who knows when.
[Marc speaking]
That's pretty tough to watch, for sure.
I had never seen any of that footage before.
It's hard to -- to comprehend that, um, that anybody,
especially, you know,
the brother that I thought I knew, um, would enjoy,
you know, putting somebody else in such a state of fear
and that it would, uh, excite them, you know?
MICHAEL: It seems like he was almost approaching it
like it was a game.
It seems like he, at that point, was -- was proud of --
of what he had done --
if not proud, he was definitely, uh,
very desensitized to how hurtful it was
to people, like he had no real regret.
It's tough to imagine that somebody could, you know,
talk about stuff they had done that was so evil
and talk about it with no real regret or remorse.
[Marc speaking]
I think he was just obviously so sick that I don't think
there was anything that was
gonna fulfill what he was ultimately looking for.
If sex and fear ended up not being enough,
you have to think that, you know, it could
have potentially
moved into a whole 'nother realm that could have been
murder or who knows what it could have escalated to.
To think about, you know,
what these women went through,
it's just horrible.
It's definitely, you know, something that I probably
won't forget, you know, for a long time, if -- or ever.
Being in court that day when he put in the plea of guilty,
you know, it was, uh, definitely one of the hardest --
hardest days of my life -- it felt,
you know, just like basically your whole world, you know,
was just crashing down.
We went over to the county jail
and saw him, and it was through a piece of glass.
I remember when I sat down, um, he wasn't there yet, you know,
so there was a moment, and that's another one of those
moments that feels like an eternity when you're waiting
on somebody you're visiting to, like, come through the door.
They brought him out, and he looked just kind of blank,
you know, like there wasn't...
there wasn't any emotion.
There wasn't
much to be said, you know, other than, like, how you doing
kind of thing, like, you don't know what to say.
You know, you want to ask all these questions, but you can't
really ask anything.
Are they treating you all right?
I'm all right.
MICHAEL: And that never really changes, you know?
Still 10 years later.
Marc and I still, um, keep in contact
a few times a year -- we just kind of
usually keep it pretty light.
He'll want to hear about, you know, things I'm doing and how
things are going with my life.
He said that since he had been arrested,
that was actually, like, the freest that he had ever felt,
because he felt like he knew he couldn't
hurt anybody else while he was in there.
But as far as an explanation,
I don't know if I want one or not, you know?
If that's something that he wants to get off of his chest,
um, I would want to be there to listen, but up to this point,
I've never really asked him anything about his case.
I don't think it would offer
me any closure or anything like that.
It was good seeing you.
Yeah.
MICHAEL: Part of me thinks that maybe he wants to talk about it,
but then part of me thinks that, you know, it could drive
us apart.
When the time is right, you know, I'll kind of know.
This situation just never -- never gets any easier.
You get numb, more numb to the pain.
It's definitely hard trying to get past it.
I wouldn't say that I'm angry with him, more sad.
It's really hard to think of
him as a sexually violent predator.
I completely understand, you know, why the victims
and people who are families to
the victims would hate my brother,
but I still have love for my brother.
It's been difficult, you know,
to -- to find that love and to maintain that love.
But, um, I think at the end of the day, you try to love
family no matter what, you know?
You always want to, you know,
find it in your heart to forgive, and you always want to,
you know, not be judgmental,
but I definitely think, you know, in this situation,
it's definitely put me to the -- to the ultimate test.
I've never, you know, made an excuse for what he's done,
but I just think that he definitely has a good side,
and, um,
you know, in my,
um, experience throughout life, you know,
that's all I ever knew.
I think of him as the person that I knew, you know,
and in my heart of hearts,
I know he's a good person, and he just fell victim to
the -- the evil urges that were kind of eating at him.