- I'm kate snow,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
♪♪
- I think back, and I go,
This was such a senseless murder,
And why diane?
Why when she was ready to start a brand-new life?
I'll never know that answer.
- The calls kept coming.
- By 2 o'clock, it was too late.
- Someone had-- had killed her.
- We had her body, we had the scene,
And that was all.
- She had a fiance.
- They argued a lot.
- And a co-worker with a crush.
- He was an odd character.
- Everybody was suspect.
- Then a break, tips from other women
Who'd been targeted, too.
- He wanted to get me in there,
And I didn't budge,
And all the bells were going off.
- I jumped in my car and took off.
I felt I'd dodged a bullet.
- The who was frightening but the why was much worse.
- In my wildest dreams,
I never imagined that a website like this
Could even exist.
- You certainly had your motive.
- Yes, we did.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
At 40, diane holik was ready to turn the page
On single life.
The effervescent beauty got engaged
And put her house on the market.
Then, with her next chapter on the horizon,
She was murdered.
The investigation would uncover a storm
That had been brewing for decades
And a deadly secret clouded by the lies of a killer.
Here's keith morrison with "after the storm."
- It was the afternoon of November 15th,
Austin, texas, 4 p.M.
There was something ominous in the air.
Suddenly, the smell of it,
The familiar feel of it against the skin,
Storm coming, something big.
- They did tell us, you know, on the news,
If you don't have to go out tonight, don't...
Because we are going to get relentless rains.
- And then the sky overhead turned dark
Like midnight in the afternoon.
- And when it gets like that, it's pitch black out,
And you have the fear for tornadoes.
- Sure enough, said the announcers on tv,
Twisters had been spotted,
Headed toward parts of the city,
Including the northwest.
- And diane lived in the northwest,
And I called her, and I said, "hey, girl."
I said, "you know, they just said that there was a tornado
"heading in your direction."
And she was like, "my direction?"
And, uh, she was like, "I don't know what to do.
"I've never been in a tornado."
- So, she must have been kinda freaked out.
- She was very freaked out.
- And then the ferocious rain, and hellish wind,
And fickle funnel clouds
Dipped and swirled around the city.
The next morning, a Friday, it was all over.
Friends checked on friends,
But no one could reach diane, the freaked out one.
Diane holik worked from home, worked for ibm.
That Friday morning, so unlike her,
She missed a conference call.
- All day, phone calls from ibm and from friends
Went to voicemail.
- She didn't.
- I got to the club, and I was waiting,
And she didn't come, she didn't come,
And I spent all my time wondering
When she was gonna show up.
- Had she been caught in the storm?
Was her house hit?
A co-worker called the police,
Who cruised over to diane's exclusive neighborhood
And found her fine, big house unscathed.
They peered through windows, saw no one.
They secured a key.
They went upstairs,
And there, all but hidden behind a guest room bed,
They found diane.
- Someone had-- had killed her.
I actually had a-- a scream of some sort.
Just like, "ahh!"
You can't-- it's not true.
It-- that's not-- that's not what happened.
That's not diane.
- But, of course, it was.
Diane holik, 43 years old,
Suddenly the unlikely center
Of a strange and disturbing mystery
And a most unlikely victim of murder.
- Absolutely lived a life with gusto.
She was a vivacious, beautiful woman.
- Lynn lepore had known diane since the '90s
When they started working together at ibm.
- She loved her friends. She loved her family.
We would vacation together.
We'd have so much fun and just laugh,
And laugh, and laugh.
- Well, a lot of the things we liked to do all together
Was, we hit the clubs a lot, you know.
- Lots of dancing. - Lots of dancing.
- Diane met anita lachamy and sharon cooper
In the ladies room of an austin bar.
- She was in there.
She goes, "oh, you've got on cowboy boots.
You must know where a country bar is,"
And I said, "well, yeah, I do."
Said, "well, my best friend is coming," and I said,
"we're gonna go there when she gets here,"
And, um, she said, "cool. I'm gonna go with y'all."
[laughing] first time I ever met her.
Never seen her before.
- She'd only been in town three weeks.
- Yeah. Diane said,
"well, I'm not dressed for the club."
So, she gets in...
[laughing] - yeah.
- She gets in the trunk of her car where her clothes are
And starts pullin' out somethin' western wear
And starts puttin' it on right there in the--
In the parking lot. - Parking lot.
- She was crazy.
And she's throwing on things that she feels is western.
- Strippin' right there in the parking lot.
- Right there in the parking lot.
So, we all went dancing all night long.
She was just having a blast, and she was so happy
That she had met the two of us because she said,
"now, I have me some dancing buddies."
- So, magnetic, which, said her colleague, lynn,
Helped make her a fine recruiter for ibm.
- I would send her off to colleges,
And these kids,
They would just gravitate to her.
She had a personality that just stood out.
- And her attitude? Endlessly adventurous.
- One time, I remember sending her off
To do a recruiting trip,
And she got out there,
And they were doing a balloon fest,
And she called me up and said, "I need half a day off,"
And I said, "why?"
She says, "I'm jumpin' in a balloon and goin'."
- She'd always kinda test the edges, would she?
- Always, yes.
- She would throw all kinds of parties at her house
And invite everyone she knows.
- So, they may not know each other,
But everybody knew her.
- Every-- yes, yes, and she-- and she was great.
She just loved having...
All of these wonderful people around her.
- In any room, any crowd,
Diane was the lure,
Especially to men.
- It was never a problem going out with her
Because she was like a magnet for all of us.
[laughing]
- Yeah, there was always men around
Whenever diane was there,
Always. - Yeah.
- So, there were, and now she was dead,
And the one thing that seemed obvious
There in that second floor bedroom,
What happened to diane bore the mark of a man.
- Coming up...
A killer as calm and cool as he is cold-hearted.
- You commit the act of murder, and then you-- you leave.
You don't wanna get caught.
This person didn't do that. That in itself was odd.
- And a suspect emerges, someone close to diane.
- An interesting thing happened when she hit 40.
She decided I need a partner. I want a marriage.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- I got a page from the supervisor in homicide
Saying that a woman had been found deceased in her home
In northwest austin.
- Detectives tracy gerrish and eric del los santos
Had long since learned
That if the callout didn't tell them much,
The crime scene probably would,
But when diane holik was murdered?
- We had her body, we had the scene,
And that was all in the beginning.
- They looked for evidence of forced entry.
There was none.
- The doors were locked,
And the windows were all intact.
- So, either the killer knew her and had a key to those house,
Or she let the person in.
In any event, it certainly didn't look like
A robbery turned deadly.
- Because she still had her watch on,
She still had a tennis bracelet on,
And she had a charm that was stuck in her hair
That had obviously been on a necklace
That was not around her neck.
She also had some money that was sticking out of her pocket.
- So, maybe diane's body would tell them the story
Of what happened to her.
The killer had hidden her under a bedspread.
- It appeared that she'd been strangled,
Uh, a ligature mark around her neck.
- It could have been a rope.
It could have been, uh,
One of those flex bands that you use to exercise.
- But clearly not somebody's hands, wasn't it?
- Clearly. - No.
- There were no finger marks. - No.
- What about her eyes and her face?
Was there any sign there?
- She definitely had petechiae in the eyes,
And that usually happens from strangulation,
And she appeared to have a bruise on her cheek.
It was like a rubbing type of a bruise on her cheek,
And then she had four of 'em on her stomach.
- Rubbing type of a bruise?
- Like as if you were being dragged across the carpet,
And it was a rug burn. - Okay.
- They discovered smudges of lipstick and mascara
On the carpet in the bedroom.
- And we also found a spot of urine
Where her body would have been
Had she been strangled. - Uh-huh.
- So, we knew something bad happened there
At that particular spot.
- She must have been killed there
And dragged behind the bed where they found her body.
Was there any indication
That she had been sexually assaulted in any way?
- No.
- Her clothes weren't messed up.
There was nothing to indicate that she had been fighting,
And she had no scratch marks on her neck.
You know, why didn't she try to defend herself?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Why didn't she try to remove the ligature?
So, as we continue to look at the body,
Then we see--
We notice some faint red marks on her wrist.
That was interesting
Because you don't usually see that.
- No. - There was no ties.
There was no rope.
There was no tape that was around her in the room or--
- Just red marks. - Yeah, just red marks.
- Little red marks that looked somehow familiar.
- It looked like two parallel lines,
And then perpendicular to those lines
Are little-- little lines
That are probably a 16th of an inch apart.
I-- I've seen these marks before,
You know, sometimes on the flex ties
That we use to make arrest if somebody is--
- Or zip ties as people-- - or zip ties.
We thought-- it as like, oh, wow,
He used zip ties to bind her.
- But then he would've cut them off afterwards.
- He obviously cut them off afterwards,
And we knew that immediately.
- Detective del los santos' mind went to the darkest of places.
Diane must have been restrained with these zip ties,
Helpless and terrified as she watched her killer
Prepare the ligature and put it around her neck.
- What kinda horror did she go through?
What-- what was goin' through her head?
- And after she was dead,
The killer must have stayed for a while
Carefully erasing any sign of his or her presence.
- So, that in itself was odd.
That doesn't happen a lot.
You commit the act of murder,
And then you-- you leave. You're scared.
You wanna get out of there. You don't wanna get caught.
This person, we didn't know male or female,
Didn't do that.
- Who was this person, so deliberate, so cold-blooded?
This was no straightforward case,
Nothing simple about it.
- I probably didn't sleep for 72 hours.
- As they chased down their endless questions.
So, what does that leave you with?
Was it a targeted killing? Somebody was angry with her?
- Those were all possibilities.
Most of the time, you're gonna be killed by someone you know.
- Yeah.
- Sometimes it's someone you know very well,
And, of course, we're all familiar
With domestic violence and such.
So, you know, we wanna see who-- who is the--
In the immediate inner circle of her life.
- From diane's friends they learned
She had been married years before
But had spent most of her adult life
As a single woman and happily so
Until she changed her mind.
- She loved her single life,
And she loved her independence,
But an interesting thing happened when she hit 40.
She decided I need a partner.
I need somebody like my friends have.
I want a marriage. - Right.
- I want-- I want the things they have.
- So, diane set out to find a mate
With the help of the dating service
It's just lunch,
And pretty soon she met a divorced father of two
Named dennis conley.
- I think they truly immediately had a chemistry.
I think they were in love.
He was a successful businessman.
- Mm-hmm. - He was handsome.
He took her everywhere,
And that's what she was looking for.
- Just two months later,
Dennis presented diane with the bauble of a lifetime,
A $20,000 engagement ring.
- He loved her.
He put her on a pedestal and treated her like a queen.
- She liked his daughters.
She cared very much for his daughters,
And that was a good strongpoint.
- They made plans, as lovers do.
Dennis had moved from austin to houston.
The idea was diane could sell her big house
And move down there, too.
It was a down market then,
But, as diane told her friends,
She'd met at least one potential buyer,
But now diane was dead,
And there were all those questions.
Not a robbery,
And yet, as the detective soon discovered,
Something was missing, that $20,000 engagement ring,
Nowhere to be found.
So, police wondered.
Where was fiance dennis during the violent storm,
And did he know something?
- Coming up...
A storm outside and in.
- They argued a lot.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- It was true. All her friends knew it.
Diane holik was in love with the man she met
Through the dating service,
Smitten like a teenage girl,
But the road of love, as we all know,
Isn't always smooth.
They were engaged so quickly. Too quickly?
Before long, they encountered some serious issues
Said her friends, anita and sharon.
- They argued a lot.
- About, one example, her dogs,
Who were like children to diane,
But she told her friend dennis didn't want any dogs
In their new house in houston.
They fought, said her friends,
About what he seemed to want her to be.
- Yeah, she was always talkin' about he didn't want her
To do this or didn't want her to do that,
And that would cause arguments.
- She would not go along with it.
- Right. - No, she wouldn't. Un-uh.
- She was independent. - Mm-hmm.
- What was he? - Controlling.
- Oh. - Very controlling.
- That can be a difficult combination.
- Yeah.
- So, it was confusing.
She proudly wore the spectacular ring,
But the engagement was off and then maybe on again.
And yet, that very week, said her friends,
Diane told them she still didn't know what to do.
So, she was going back and forth and back and forth.
- Oh, yeah. - Yeah, yeah.
Emotionally, it's a roller coaster for her
Because she just couldn't see how it was gonna work,
And none of us could see how it would work either.
- Especially when she told sharon
She made a date with another man.
- We kept telling her,
"if you're still wanting to do these things,
"you're not ready for that."
- But she had her house for sale, right?
- Yeah. - She was gonna downsize.
- Oh. - Yeah.
- If she didn't get married to dennis,
She was gonna downsize anyway,
She said, "'cause this house is just way too big."
- Waffling on her plans with dennis?
A date with another man?
Anita said she had seen dennis angry.
So, after diane was murdered, she wondered.
- Maybe he had just lost control this time
And killed her. That was my first thought.
- Detective gerrish asked dennis to come into the station
Where he agreed to speak to them
Without the aid of a lawyer.
- We've developed some information.
- The detectives focused on the timeline.
They believed diane had been killed
That stormy Thursday afternoon or evening.
Her body was discovered about 5:30 p.M. On Friday.
- We were definitely interested in,
You know, where he had been for the last three days.
Uh, he knew he was gonna have to verify his alibi to us.
- At the station,
Dennis seemed upset but composed
As he told investigators he was in his office in houston
The night of the big storm
But exchanged online messages with diane
Back in austin that afternoon.
- Dennis said he got home from work late Thursday evening
And was back at the office early Friday.
- We looked at the timeframe.
Could he have driven down to austin, murdered diane,
And theoretically driven back in time for work?
And, yes, he probably could have.
- They checked diane's answering machine
And found messages from him.
This one was left on Friday, the day after the big storm.
She was dead by then.
- Another message Saturday morning.
- Which could have been some sort of cover-up,
Of course.
Dennis admitted their relationship was iffy.
- But he said they were going to therapy,
Which was helping.
- About diane's dogs, for example.
- And not long before diane was killed...
- Everyone has his or her version of the truth,
Of course.
Dennis' story not at all what diane's friends said
They had been hearing from her.
- I wanted so many times to just say,
"dude, you're just so stupid
"because she didn't want to marry you."
- Yes.
- Detective gerrish took fingerprints,
Collected dennis' dna, made plans to check his alibi.
And dennis?
Before he left,
Dennis brought up another name.
- Ray was a colleague of diane's at ibm.
- And according to dennis,
Ray and diane were not on good terms.
- So, time for a talk with ray.
- Coming up...
- A co-worker with a crush
But did he want something more?
- Honestly, in my heart,
I believed that he really, truly loved her
And would have married her.
- If she'd have him. - Yeah, if she would have him.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow.
If dennis conley was hiding secrets,
Detectives looking into the murder of diana holik
Had not found them just yet.
Now, police were eager to talk to another man
In diane's life, a co-worker who worshiped her,
But this investigation was just getting started,
And the trail of men in diane's wake
Would prove longer than they knew.
Back to keith morrison with "after the storm."
- Suspicion...
There was lots of it to go around
After diane holik was choked to death
In her own guest bedroom.
At least one of diane's friends directed her suspicion
At dennis, the man who said he was her fiance,
But was he anymore?
Dennis swore it wasn't him,
But maybe he was suspicious, too.
"what about this guy?" he asked.
What about ray?
- There was a-a man that she worked with
By the name of, uh, raphael chancey,
And she had actually hired him at ibm,
So she was kind of his boss.
- Maybe more than his boss?
Here's what diane's friends told the police
And us about ray.
- He was johnny on the spot.
Every time she needed somethin', you always
Call ray, and ray was there.
And he did-- I-- you know, honestly, in my heart,
I believed that he really, truly loved her
And would have married her.
- If she'd have him. - Yeah, if she'd have him.
- It seemed off to dennis, ray's relationship
With diane, he told the police.
It was a little too cozy, obsessive maybe.
- He always felt like ray kinda took a liking to her
And was-was very infatuated with her, and he would
Always offer to take care of her dogs when she was
Out of town, always wanted to be kind of close to her.
And so he thought maybe that he had too much of
An interest in diane.
- What's more, ray had his own personal key
To diane's house.
And remember, there was no forced entry.
The killer was either invited in or had a key.
So, detective gerrish asked ray to come into the station
To answer a few questions, except it was ray
Who seemed to be full of questions.
- And he seemed excited to share what he knew.
- He was an odd character, super eager to help us,
Almost too eager to the point where we were--
It-- it just threw us off a little bit.
- They played good cop, bad cap.
Another detective came in and pressed ray.
- Ray agreed, yes, he did have a key to her house,
But he also had an alibi.
He was at work the day diane was murdered.
- That day, ray said he stayed late at work
And then drove home through that terrible traffic
Created by the storm.
Didn't get home 'til 10:30 p.M.
And, after that, stayed home.
- Of course, they'd need to verify all of that.
But when they asked ray about dennis, the fiance?
- Clearly, diane had complicated relationships
With dennis and ray.
So, just as they had done with dennis,
Police fingerprinted ray and took a dna swab,
And went on looking. Sharon told the detectives
Diane had a date with a man
The very night she was killed.
They couldn't figure out who that man was,
But they tracked down every man she'd met
From the dating service it's just lunch.
- I interviewed every single date she had
Through that service. - Too many options.
Police wondered-- had diane been strangled
By a man she'd met through the dating service,
Or a man she knew well, even loved?
And yet, something seemed to be missing.
But what? This wasn't going to be easy.
- Coming up... - Oh, god, he did
A morbid thing, I mean, beyond belief.
- And finally, a clue.
- Was this one of his mistakes?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- That is an affluent neighborhood.
It's not normally where you find, uh, murder victims.
- Darla davis was worried. Diane holik's body was
Barely cold when prosecutor davis jumped
On the case and encountered the problem.
- The fact that she lived by herself.
- There were men who wanted to change that single status,
And there was certainly reason to look at them
Carefully, but the prosecutor worried, too, about
Another possibility.
- We might have a stranger on stranger offense,
Which is way harder to solve. - So, essentially,
A dead body, not much evidence around.
- Right. - And no idea who did it.
- Exactly. And I decided that
We were gonna, Monday morning,
Quarterback the crime scene right away.
- That meant she and the investigators went back
To diane's house and took a more in depth look.
- And went over it with the alternate light source.
You have to do it in the dark.
You just take it and put it, like, on carpeting,
Or any kind of fabric, or the wall, or anything,
And certain things will fluoresce.
- For example, if there was blood or something.
- Uh, mostly, the alternate light source,
We're looking for, uh, seminal fluid.
- It didn't look like diane had been
Sexually assaulted, but they had to know for sure.
And when they tested...
- There was no indications that, uh, there was any semen
Anywhere in that room or different parts of the house
That we checked.
- Nothing, no semen, no blood, no evidence of sexual assault.
And apart from her missing engagement ring,
Nothing in diane's house seemed out of place.
Except in the middle of the otherwise pristine
Living room. - And there on the loveseat
Is this towel that's just thrown over there.
- Weird. - Yeah.
- It was definitely out of place.
- Yes. - As if maybe
It was left behind by the killer?
- Was this one of his mistakes?
- Was anything found on that towel?
- There were some hairs later on.
- Her hairs? - No.
- There were seven hairs
Found on that towel.
- They sent the hairs to the dna lab, and waited
While her friends planned the excruciating details
For diane's memorial service here in austin.
- Sharon found a funeral home and the lady to do
The makeup and everything. We went in with 'em
And helped 'em pick out, uh, her casket and all.
- And her dress for an open casket.
- I needed to make sure that whatever we got looked right
And covered the appropriate parts of her.
Seeing where the wounds were, seeing where the lig--
Ligature marks were was probably just as difficult as
The day I found out that she'd passed.
- Dennis came to the service, as expected, but...
- He tended to not speak with anybody,
Which I found somewhat strange for a man who was
So in love with diane. - He didn't come sit
Front and center like a fiance might?
- No, he did not come sit front and center,
Which somewhat surprised me.
- They watched him through a haze of grief and suspicion.
When diane's parents flew her body from austin
To their family home in new york for the funeral,
Diane's friends went along, as did dennis.
But there, as diane lay in her open casket,
Something very strange happened.
- Yeah. - Oh, god, he did
A morbid thing that just infuriated her parents,
I mean, beyond belief.
- Dennis had brought a minister with him to the funeral.
- To actually say the marriage vows to him
As she was laying in the coffin,
And then took her hand and put that gold band on.
I thought mom-- I thought mom was going to come unglued.
- Diane's parents removed the ring, said her friends,
But though diane's family was appalled,
And her friends were deeply suspicious,
Back in austin, investigators were
Looking at all kinds of possibilities.
Dennis, ray, and other men diane had known
Remained on the list, their statements viewed,
Their alibis checked and rechecked.
Wouldn't be the first time love turned to murder.
But that worry prosecutor davis talked about,
Was that really what happened?
Was the killer some random predator?
- It's not a great feeling to know that
You're gonna have to expand out into the possibility
That this was somebody who was a stranger to her,
Because that makes it so much harder.
- That second, more intense search of the crime scene
Confirmed everything the detectives found
The first time, including that this killer,
Whether lover or stranger, had been chillingly careful,
And, clearly, had prepared for what he or she was going to do.
This person was trying to avoid being captured,
And so he's not leaving any evidence.
- Yes, yes. So, he cut the zip tie
Off of her and took the zip tie with him.
- And thus, removed the evidence.
But there was this one other thing, just a passing comment.
They heard it from anita, who, remember, was
On the phone with diane as that huge storm was
About to roll through austin.
- She said that she had somebody that
Had come by earlier and had looked at the house,
Was very impressed with it. I said, "that's good."
She goes, "yeah, I might finally sell this thing,"
You know. - Could that visitor be
Connected to diane's murder somehow?
Or that discarded wet towel
With those seven tiny strands of hair?
- Coming up... A stranger knocking on doors.
What happened next still haunts the women who answered.
- Jumped in my car, locked the car, and took off.
And I felt I'd dodged a bullet.
- He wanted to get me in there, and I didn't budge.
I stood there, and all the bells were going off.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- The detectives investigating the death of diane holik
Were all too aware that stranger killings were
Among the hardest to solve.
At the point when you were driving around, uh,
Talking to people here, did you have any idea
What you were looking for even?
- No, none.
- Especially if that stranger is as careful as
Diane's killer appeared to have been.
- I mean, it was-- it was a true whodunit.
- The medical examiner looked carefully for evidence
Of sexual assault-- semen, the killer's saliva,
Dna under her fingernails, that sort of thing--
And there was none, none at all.
So, police 101, maybe one of the neighbors saw
Something or someone suspicious. And, sure enough,
Not one but serval neighbors had seen a stranger,
A potential homebuyer, who was a welcome visitor,
Frankly, in the difficult housing market that year.
They all agreed he was tall, had dark, slick backed hair,
And a big nose, and that he said he wanted to pay cash
For a nice house. So, was he the man
Who toured diane's house day of the storm?
- You always try to find the last person
That saw the victim alive. - Sure.
- And we thought, "well, this man could be
"the last person to see her alive."
- Who was this phantom homebuyer?
Did anybody get a name?
- We did get one name, walter miller, and a number.
- Walter miller? Of course, they looked up
The walter millers around austin and found two of them.
Neither one fit that description, though.
And the phone number the man left?
- It ended up being a fax machine.
It belonged to, um, the wife of a guy
By the name of matthew [indistinct].
- Matthew [indistinct]? - Yes.
- What was he all about? - He did have a background
That involved, um, some drug addiction, some assaults.
Um, he'd had a restraining order put against him.
And then we eventually tracked down matthew.
- And they realized right away he could not be the killer.
- He was in a neck brace. He'd been in a bad accident,
And he had some paralysis in his arms,
So we knew it couldn't be him.
- Meaning this visitor, whoever he was,
Had left a fake name and a fake phone number.
Who would do that? And then they found
Another neighbor who'd talked to the guy,
Heard his story, got a good enough look at him
To help with a composite sketch.
- And we aired it on the 10 o'clock news.
- Austin police have asked for help in solving a murder.
Police want to question a man that was seen
In the area a few days before that murder.
The man is described as white, between the ages of 35 and 45.
He's about six feet tall and neatly dressed.
- And we were hoping to get tips.
- What do you know? Before long,
Women started calling with tales about
A man who wanted to buy a house.
So, what were you hearing from people who, um,
May have had a visitor? Was it the same story
They were hearing, or what? - Pretty much.
- Yeah, yeah. Hey, we're gettin' this story
About this guy that sold his ranch in south austin.
He wants to pay cash. Him and his wife are
Lookin' to do this quick. And then the physical
Description, they were all the same.
- Some callers, like tammy tayman,
Added curious details.
- He had on brand-new jeans that were probably
Three sizes too long.
- It was the kind of strange thing you'd remember,
Said real estate agent tammy.
- He had on a shirt, a striped shirt, that had
Wrinkles in it. I mean, folds.
- Just came out of the box. - Oh, he'd just bought clothes.
I'm sure of it. He had suspenders on,
Which-- nobody wears suspenders, and it wasn't like
His pants were fallin' off.
- But it's when she showed him into the house
That her nerves went on alert.
- He said, "oh, after you, after you," and it was
A standoff at the bottom of the stairs-- I wouldn't go.
You know, my stomach is tight inside.
- Hmm. Tammy was wary.
Years earlier, she had been raped by an armed customer
At a store she managed.
- I knew that my instincts and all that I had learned
And all that I have been through were the reason that
I was nervous about him.
- He said his name was jim sage.
He kept trying to get her into upstairs rooms.
- He wanted to get me in there, and I didn't budge.
I stood there, and all the bells were going off.
- The next day, tammy called the police
To report this jim sage.
- "did he hurt you? Did he threaten you?
"did he put his hands on you?"
And I had to say no to all of that.
He said, "I'm sorry. There's nothin' we can do."
- But now, diane holik had been murdered, strangled.
And with a shudder, tammy remembered
The man's odd suspenders.
Did he use them on diane holik's neck?
When did that hit you?
- After, when I-- - after you found out.
- After I found out she was strangled.
- The calls kept coming in, women with stories
Of a strange man posing as a homebuyer,
Some truly hair-raising stories, like what happened
To ex-real estate agent melody blount
Six months before diane was murdered.
A man had called her about one of her houses.
- It was a vacant listing, and, uh, I asked him
If he had been prequalified by a lender,
And, "I'm payin' cash," and so I, uh, drove over
To meet him at the house.
I go to the door to greet him, and immediately
He was behind me.
He would never walk in front of me.
- Which made melody uncomfortable, especially
Because he only wanted to see vacant houses, and...
- The whole time that I was showin' him the home,
He was never looking at any room.
He seemed to be more interested in looking out
Windows than he did the actual room.
- She said something else seemed off about him.
- He has a tic in his neck.
He's constantly cracking and popping his neck,
And, um, breathing very heavy.
- Melody wanted to leave, but then the man noticed
The detatched garage.
- He was adamant about getting in the garage.
He said, "I really want to see inside the garage,"
And started that neck popping.
- Her hands shook as she tried to
Work the key in the door. - It didn't open.
I just turned to him. I said, "I'm leavin'."
Jumped in my car, locked the car, and took off,
And I left him.
- She drove home, still shaking.
- I have never cried nor prayed so hard
In my whole life because I felt I'd dodged a bullet.
- Melody called the police, too.
Got the same message as tammy.
- They did not believe me. Um, "did he touch you?
"did he hurt you?" and, well, no, he did not.
- But once she saw the story about diane and the sketch...
- I looked at it, and immediately knew that
It was the same man.
- Meanwhile, the police and prosecutor investigating
Diane's murder were working every angle
They could think of. - We were just coming up zero.
- Yeah, so, whoever this killer was knew
What he or she was doing, and was very careful
About doing it just so.
- That's the impression that we were getting,
And that's what was increasing our anxiety.
- So, they waited for dna results from those tiny hairs
Found on the towel in diane's living room,
And they listened to the women who called in
To tell about being frightened by a mysterious
Would-be homebuyer. But who was he?
And then one more call, and they knew
This could be their breakthrough.
- She said that she had seen the news,
And she thinks that that man had come to her house,
And she possibly had a flier that he had handled
That he had left behind.
Uh, we were really excited about that.
- Which meant that maybe there might be fingerprints.
She saved this thing? - She did it by accident.
- She didn't just throw it away?
- Nope, she actually picked it up and put it
In the back of the stack.
- What happened before that to her was a story
That by this time sounded altogether too familiar.
- She was excited to sell her house.
He was gonna pay cash. He wanted to bring
His wife back to look at the house.
And he asked her if he could look around,
And she said, "sure." so, she kinda followed him
Into, uh, one of the bedrooms,
And when he got to the closet, uh, he turned around on her,
And she said there was this awkward silence,
And he just stared at her. She became so uncomfortable
She thought something bad was gonna happen.
- And just then, in a nearby room,
The woman's baby cried. - And it gave her
The opportunity to break the encounter with him
To grab the baby, and he-he followed her
Into the room and was standing behind her
When she turned around with the baby in her arms,
And, uh, it must have spooked him.
- And he just left. - Yeah.
- Leaving behind the flyer. - Leaving behind the flyer.
- So, they picked up the real estate flyer
And brought in a latent fingerprint expert.
Those prints just might belong to their killer.
Except, remember, they found no prints in diane's house
To compare them to. In fact-- and this was
Strange-- even diane's own prints were hard to find,
As if the killer may have wiped them clean.
- There was really not even the fingerprints that
You would think you would find
In a house that was occupied.
- That's-that's very rare, hmm?
- Yes, it was very rare, and scary.
- Scary because they couldn't know who he was.
Scary because if he was a stranger just looking for
A convenient target, he had probably seen
The stories on tv, the composite sketch,
And knew they were looking for him.
So, he could've changed his appearance,
Or left the area, or, even worse,
Might strike again somewhere else.
But then there was this one more phone call
From a woman who said she, too, had had
An experience with a male homebuyer.
And this caller just might lead them
To an actual person.
- Coming up...
- She immediately got a creepy feeling from him.
- The break detectives had been waiting for.
- She actually wrote down his license plate
And called the police.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow. It was a startling discovery.
A mysterious house hunter was stalking
The women of austin. Police now wondered
If he was the same man knocking at diane holik's door
Just before she died. The odds told investigators
That diane probably knew her killer,
But what if she didn't? A stranger's secret identity
Was about to be revealed. Once again,
Here's keith morrison with "after the storm."
- The idea that the murder of diane holik had
Something to do with her attempt to sell her house
Was gaining some traction. Even the friend
Who remained so suspicious of diane's fiance
Wondered about that.
- I just had a fleeting moment that maybe it was somebody
Dealing with the realty and the selling of the house
Because there were quite a few people that
Came in, husbands, and wives, and stuff, and I thought,
Well, you know, maybe a-a-a husband
Found her attractive, you know, made a move,
And she didn't go for it.
- Calls were pouring into the police station
From women who all shared a similar story.
They described a man who claimed to be
In the market for a new home but seemed to be
Shopping for something more sinister.
One woman provided police with the mystery man's fingerprint.
Remember, though, detectives thought
The crime scene had been wiped clean, so there was
No way to match it back. But there was a new caller,
And she was about to give them more.
- And she basically had told us that, months earlier,
That this man with the same story
Had come to her home but in a different neighborhood.
- But very affluent, so it kinda matched.
- Yes. - Okay.
- And he was very insistent about wanting to go in
And see that house, and she immediately got
A creepy feeling from him and told him no.
And her husband said, "well, if he ever comes back,
"you need to call the police or get his license plate,"
Uh, 'cause it really scared her.
And about six months later, he came back and was
Very insistent on going in to see her house,
And she told him no. She was not going to
Allow him to come in, and so she called the police.
- Nothing happened then. The reaction she got was
Like those other women.
The police could hardly arrest some guy
For just seeming creepy. But this woman did
Something different. She wrote down
The name and phone number the man gave her,
But, more important, his license plate number.
Stuck it on her fridge. Instinct?
Luck? Maybe both.
- She didn't know if he would come back again.
She thought it was concerning enough that
She would just leave it on her refrigerator
Just in case, and she gave us the original piece of paper
That she wrote his license plate down with.
- And... - Well, we immediately, uh,
Ran his license plate, and it was a minivan,
And it was, uh, registered to, uh, patrick russo
And his wife, janet russo. - Patrick russo?
Could he be the guy who'd creeped out all those women?
Could he also be the killer?
His last known address was in a rural area
About a half hour outside austin,
So they decided to pay a visit.
It's a pretty drive to bastrop county
Through the gently rolling greenery, the live oaks,
The cypress trees. But at 4 a.M.,
Detectives gerrish and de los santos weren't
Exactly taking in the view as they drove
To russo's home, hoping this was a lead that
Could shed some light on the murder of diane holik.
Though all they had, remember, were stories
About a creepy guy looking at houses for sale.
Was patrick anthony russo that guy?
Maybe, maybe not.
Dawn was hours away when they knocked at his door.
The man who woke up to answer it looked like
The composite sketch. - Coming up...
Patrick russo seemed an unlikely killer.
But an odd coincidence-- he was in diane's area
The day she was killed.
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- A torrent of tips called in to austin police
Led detectives tracy gerrish and eric de los santos
To the doorstep of patrick russo,
A man matching the description of the mysterious stranger
Seen in diane holik's neighborhood
Day of the murder.
- We told him that his name had come up
In an investigation in austin, and he basically just
Told his wife that these things will happen
From time to time because he's a convict
And out on parole, and not to worry,
That he'd be back in a couple hours, and we left.
- On the ride to the police station, he said
He went by his nickname, tony, and he wasn't
Surprised they wanted to talk to him.
- Have a seat right down here.
- Yeah, have a seat right there.
- He seemed eager to help and wanted detectives to know
He'd turned his life around when he was in prison.
- It was behind bars where tony met his wife,
Janet, she a church volunteer, and since his release,
He said, he'd published an autobiography about
His tough childhood, his battle with drugs,
And his redemption.
- At his local church, he said he'd become
The minister of music.
- And in his spare time, he fronted
A christian rock band.
- Again, said tony russo, he was more than willing
To cooperate with the investigation
Any way he could.
- So, they asked him-- where was he
When diane was murdered? Did he have an alibi?
- Knle is a christian radio station.
Tony said they were helping him create
A website for his christian rock band.
- Hmm.
- Then, of course, he got caught in that awful storm.
- Thing was, diane's house where she was killed
Was not far from the radio station.
- Tony was adamant. He'd never seen diane.
- Interesting. Then, detectives asked,
Had he been doing some house hunting?
- Of course, they knew a thing or two about that,
So the detectives leaned on him a little.
- "go ahead," he said, "search my house, my car."
He even offered to take a polygraph.
- Tony's wife, janet, was very helpful, too,
And her story about that day
Was just about the same as his.
- Candle is a nickname for knle,
The christian radio station.
When the interviews ended, tony asked to see janet.
- Tony and janet russo had answered all their questions,
Had been cooperative, and tony even gave them
A swab of his dna and his fingerprints.
So, the police thanked them and took them home.
- But police were not done with tony russo yet.
The interview part two was about to go down,
And this one would be a little tougher.
Coming up...
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- The day after police interviewed tony russo
And his wife, they brought him back in, and, again,
He was cooperative. Said he was surprised
To be a suspect in, of all things, a murder.
- But bits of information and the women's stories
About a creepy man who looked a lot like him
Were stacking up. Detectives asked him about
The upscale neighborhoods where several women had
Reported seeing him, often driving his minivan.
- By the time the detectives interviewed tony,
They'd already checked for priors, and guess what?
That conviction, the one he was on parole for,
Was for kidnapping with a very particular twist.
- He had gone into a office where a woman was alone
And, um, tied her up with zip ties and choked her.
Did not kill her, um, but did choke her.
- Disturbingly familiar, given what happened
To diane holik. Back then, a decade before
Diane's murder, tony confessed to kidnapping
And was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
It was there he met and married janet
And soon after was paroled after serving
Only one-third of his sentence.
But the kidnapping charge wasn't all they found
In tony's record. Even earlier,
Years earlier, there was her.
- It had actually been a quiet day, so, um--
- Donna schenk encountered tony when she was
A 21-year-old apartment manager
In lake jackson, texas, all alone late one afternoon
In her building's rental office when a man walked in.
- And he wanted to look at a two bedroom apartment
For his self and his girlfriend, he says.
- Donna showed him an available apartment.
- We're walking down the hallway.
We get back to what would be the master bedroom.
So, I open the closet door and went into the closet
To turn the light on, and, in a split second,
He had me by the throat.
- She struck out at him, tried scratching
And slapping him in an effort to get away,
But he took her down.
- Before I knew it, I was on the floor.
I was on the floor face up, and he was straddling me
With his-- both of his hands around my throat
Just-just squeezing. - Tight.
- Very tight. I wasn't able to speak.
I wasn't able to breathe. I was thrashing and kicking.
- Grabbing at him and things.
- Bucking, you know, everything I could do,
Until he grabbed my hands and pinned them,
I guess, under his knees, but I couldn't--
I couldn't move my hands. It just, you know,
Dawned on me, "okay, well, this is it."
You know, "this is the end."
- Is this absolute terror, or is it sort of--
- It's-- it is absolute terror to where, you know,
Your life flashes before your eyes and--
- And you think, "I'm gonna die."
- And-and you're-- this is it.
- Then she thought, "no," this is would not be it,
And she thrashed about until she was able
To free her hands. - And I put my hands
On his forearms, trying to pull him away.
I had sort of a high neck sweater on, and he kept
Pulling my sweater down to look at my neck,
And his eyes are very, uh, very different, very scary,
And it was completely different.
It was like flipping a switch.
It was a very scary, crazed look.
- Then donna, in a panic, said all she could
Think of saying. - "I've been gone too long.
"they know what apartment I'm in.
"they will come looking for me."
And he would say, "you're lying.
"don't-don't lie to me. You better not be lying to me,"
And would call me profanities and would strike me.
- He's still holding onto you, your throat.
- Yes. - But he seemed to realize,
Yes, there was a possibility
Somebody would be coming to look for her,
And as quickly as he had become a monster--
- His expression changed again, and his eyes went softer.
Then he completely took his hands off of me
And just went like this and just covered his face
And then sat back up, and he said,
"I can't believe I did this. Are you okay?"
- Like he's a different person now.
- Yes, to the point that he was apologizing profusely
For doing it, asked me if I was hurt, asked me
If I was okay, helped me up off of the floor,
Helped me collect my necklace that was, you know,
Torn off and thrown about.
- He begged donna not to call the police,
But she did, and he confessed.
He was convicted of misdemeanor assault
And was put on probation.
But as the years went by, he attacked five other women
In similar ways, including his kidnapping victim,
And now he's being questioned by austin police
About a murder involving zip ties and choking,
And was denying he knew anything about it,
Saying the similarities with earlier incidents
Were merely coincidence.
- But the truth was, at that point,
Police could only prove patterns of behavior,
Patterns tony insisted he broke when he became
A born again christian. But really?
So, the detectives set up a little trap and asked him
If his fingerprints could possibly be found
On a real estate flyer.
- But even as tony insisted otherwise,
They already had received the test results
From the real estate flyer saved by that woman.
- Thank you, lord, tony russo's fingerprints
Were positively on that flyer, so--
- What happens in the old gut when that--
- Well, I mean, we-we knew it was him.
We just weren't able to put him anywhere,
And now we had him. We had him dead to rights.
- True, they had him recently in the home
Of a woman who'd been terrified by his behavior,
But they didn't have him in diane holik's house.
To get that evidence, they needed time,
And they worried. Would he run?
And then the prosecutor had a canny idea.
When tony russo said he didn't touch
The real estate flyer, that was a lie,
And lying to the police was a parole violation.
- So, the d.A.'s office cleverly came up with
This charge that allowed us the time we needed
To send off all the dna and physical evidence
To see if we could actually put him at her house.
- Bring your right hand back.
- So, into jail went tony russo.
- Coming up... Showtime with a script,
As his victims come face to face with tony russo.
- I did not expect him to be right in front of me,
So that was extremely frightening.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back. Tony russo professed
To be a devout christian on the righteous path,
But investigators believed he was hiding
A sinful secret. The ex-con had a history
Of assaulting women, crimes with similarities
To diane holik's murder. Investigators wondered
If diane's killer had an m.O., which begged
A frightening question. Was the creepy homebuyer
Reported by dozens of women really prowling
For his next victim?
Here again is keith morrison with "after the storm."
- It was a bit of a reach, frankly, jailing tony russo
For lying about leaving his fingerprints
On that real estate flyer. Still, tony was on parole,
After all, and his lie was technically a parole violation.
But mainly, detectives wanted him safely behind bars
While they looked for evidence to tie him
To the murder of diane holik.
Mind you, they'd already noticed something,
Like the fact that tony changed
The look of his van after he became a suspect.
- He took all the pinstriping off of his van,
Which several of the women noticed.
- So, he went to some trouble to make his car
Look different. - Yes.
- He even changed the, uh, the symbol of the christian fish
That was a sticker on the back windshield.
He took that off.
- Of course, they searched tony's van top to bottom,
But they didn't find diane's engagement ring
Or anything else that belonged to her
In the van, and a search of tony's house
Came up empty, too.
Though, on some rolled up wire fencing
Outside the house, they found zip ties,
Which appeared to match the markings
On diane's wrists. They tracked down
His alibi, too, of course.
Asked employees of the christian radio station
If tony could've knocked on the door without being seen
That afternoon of the big storm,
And the radio people said, no, not possible because...
- As part of their tornado protocol, everybody
In the building had to go to the-the front lobby
Of the, uh, radio station. There's no way that
He could've shown up there with them not knowing,
Because there's probably 20 people
Sitting in the lobby, and they would've seen him.
- Yet, his cell phone pinged in the area,
Which happened to be near diane's neighborhood.
And those women who'd been calling in who described
A tall, dark haired man with a big nose and beer belly--
Could they help make a case against tony?
- We had so many women that had let him into their
Homes in different neighborhoods
All over austin. South austin, north austin,
Uh, even realestate agents that he had called
When he wanted to look at vacant houses.
- Please enter the stage and stand at your
Assigned position.
- But could any of those women actually identify
Tony russo as their guy?
- We felt like we needed to do a live lineup
Because the-the phrasing and his ruse that he used
Was so specific,
And the women remembered his voice,
And they remembered his story.
- So, they rounded up some austin police officers
Who looked like tony and put him and them in a lineup
And brought the women in.
- And there were five guys standing, like,
On a, um, like, a theater setting.
- Number one, take one step forward.
- A couple of feet above me and we're down below.
- Number two, repeat the following phrase.
"you have a beautiful house." - you have a beautiful house.
- We had a script that each person
Had to step forward and exactly repeat
What the detective was telling them to say.
- "I'm going to pay cash for a house."
- I'm going to pay cash for a house.
- It was everything that was said to each one
Of these women when he went into their homes.
- "I came to this house before, didn't I?"
- "I came to this house before, didn't I?
- Repeat the following phrase.
"do you have any information about the floor plan
"of the house?"
- Do you have any information about
The floor plan of the house?
- He was number one, right in front of me.
I did not expect him to be right in front of me
So that was extremely frightening.
- I picked him out of a lineup immediately.
I was feeling a lot of guilt.
I don't know why.
You know, you just feel-- what could I have done?
Somebody is dead, and this man was with me.
- How many of those witnesses picked out the right guy?
- I believe it was 15 women.
- Out of a total of how many?
- I think it was 30.
- Eyewitness testimony is notoriously not great
And often doesn't carry much weight in a trial,
So you needed something more, right?
- Yes.
- What they needed was something definitive
To put tony russo in diane holik's house.
They'd sent off dna samples from diane's finger
Where her ring had been yanked off
And from that towel on her couch.
And finally, the results.
What did the dna tell you?
- The swab on her hand was a mixture
That was consistent with a combination
Of diane holik and, uh, russo.
- Was it enough to say for sure, though, 'cause dna--
- No. - Oh.
- No, no, no. No.
We can't exclude him.
Um, it's consistent with him,
But it's not the kind of dna
That you can eliminate the rest of the world.
- Mm-hmm. Right.
Just really increase suspicion, is all.
- Yes. It was helpful.
It was not dispositive.
- And the hairs found on that wet towel
Left on diane's couch?
- We sent the hair off to a lab,
And they did a mitochondrial dna test on the hair.
- Mm-hmm.
- And again, we could not exclude mr. Russo.
- But you couldn't say for sure it was him.
- You couldn't say for sure, no.
- So close, just not quite the absolute proof
They'd been hoping for,
But the dna did provide one very helpful service.
While police had confirmed the alibis
Of diane's fiance, dennis, and her ibm friend, ray,
These tests definitively eliminated them as suspects.
- But we cannot eliminate mr. Russo.
- Finally, six months after diane's death,
Tony russo was charged with murder.
A risk?
Maybe.
They'd only get one shot,
And the evidence they were going to take to court
Did not absolutely link him to the murder of diane holik.
Then, as the trial was almost upon them,
They found something, something almost beyond belief.
- In my wildest dreams, I never imagined
That a website like this could even exist.
- The dark side of the web and tony russo.
- You certainly had your motive.
- Yes, we did.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Her personality was like this giant bubble
That just kept getting bigger,
And she put as many people around
To be in this bubble of fun, of-of life.
- Uh-huh. - She lived life to be--
To be having a good time.
- Two years after diane holik's happy, vibrant life
Was so suddenly asphyxiated,
Her friends gathered again for a murder trial,
Friends and a whole group of women
Who had never met each other
Or diane holik but...
- You could see they were all attractive women.
It looked like he had a type.
- It was obvious what this man was looking for.
Everyone had the same look.
- And the same determination to testify against tony russo,
Music minister, born again christian,
Happily married man,
But the case against him, not so easy.
- It was the most complex murder case,
Definitely the most complex murder case I've ever tried.
- That's because without hard evidence
Linking tony to the murder or even putting him
In diane's house, she'd have to assemble
All the jagged puzzle pieces of coincidence
Into a coherent pattern for the jury.
- When you're getting ready for trial,
You put it together almost like a play.
You know, what are-- what are you gonna tell them first?
And so, you script it out.
- There were the zip ties on his property
That seemed to match marks on diane's wrists.
His cell phone pinged near her house.
The radio station alibi was a lie.
The dna, though it wasn't absolutely definitive,
Could not eliminate him,
And all those women could identify him as that creepy guy
Claiming he wanted to buy a house with cash,
Cash which he certainly did not have.
But then...
- He really wasn't looking for houses.
He was looking for victims.
- Like realtor melody blount, who cried and prayed
After her encounter with tony russo.
She found it so terrifying to testify, but did.
- I did not expect for patrick anthony russo
To be sitting across from me, within ten to twelve feet,
And having to testify with that man looking at me,
It was petrifying.
- And most unsettling
When she noticed something all too familiar.
- Now, I'm glaring at russo, and what does he do?
He starts that tic in his neck,
Starts that popping,
And I raised my hand up, and I said, "there he goes.
"he's doin' it, right now."
- The state also called tony russo's victims
From earlier years, including donna,
The young apartment manager
He attacked in lake jackson, texas.
- This phone call just out of the blue,
Um, after all of that time.
- She was not only surprised.
She was angry, very angry.
- Why did that have to happen?
Why did someone have to be killed
Before this man was stopped?
- And the emotions of that whole ugly ordeal
Flooded right back.
- My heart started racing.
It was just being terrified all over again.
It was just like being blindsided.
- But some of the compelling evidence
Came courtesy of tony's first wife,
As he'd been married once before.
- The first wife said that he could not
Get aroused sexually unless he was choking her
And that he choked her when they had sex.
- And the second wife?
- The second wife confirmed that he also choked her
While they had sex.
- So, a strange and potentially dangerous fetish,
But was that all it was?
Isn't it possible, though,
That he really didn't wanna kill diane holik?
- It's just my belief that he did,
That just choking and not killing,
It was no longer enough.
It wasn't enough anymore.
- And why was she so sure?
Because of what turned up during a forensic analysis
Of tony russo's computer.
The I.T. People landed on it
Just as the trial was about to begin.
Disturbing is perhaps too bland a word
To describe what was in there.
- He was a member of a-a website,
One that you had to pay money to see.
It's described as tastefully erotic death scenes,
And mr. Russo had chosen
The, uh subcategory of asphyxiation.
- O-m-g. - Mm-hmm.
In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that
A website like this could even exist
Or that an-- anybody would want to look at it.
- You certainly had your motive.
- Yes, we did.
It's called sexual sadism.
- So, he felt a compulsion to go and choke people.
- Yes.
He was sexually aroused by women being choked.
- Oh, boy, that gets into pretty dark territory,
Doesn't it? - Yes.
- They nailed him big time.
- Diane's friend, anita, was in the courtroom
When the state rested,
And she waited to hear tony's defense.
- We were all thinkin', okay, well, here we go.
We're really gonna hear a whole bunch of stuff,
And the-- the room was packed solid with people,
And so his attorney, uh, just stood up and said,
"defense rests,"
And there was, like, a huge gasp in the room
And then totally silent.
- Diane's friend, lynn, arrived just in time
To hear the closing argument from darla's co-prosecutor.
- He kind of stood quiet for a minute,
And then he walked over to the jury,
And he looked them all in the face,
And he said, "I need you to understand
"what happened to her that night."
He put his hands up in the air like this,
And he put his thumbs down,
And he shook his hands like this
As though he were choking someone.
- And then he said, "imagine,
"it took her two and a half,
"maybe even three minutes for her to die."
- As he's holding onto her. - Yeah.
Stood there, and he looked at his watch,
And just waited,
And for at least two and half minutes,
Nothing moved in that courtroom.
- And it was silent, and he held that position
With shaking hands
Until enough time had passed that a person would have died
From being choked.
- And all of a sudden,
Slams his hand down on the table.
I mean, he said, "that's how long it took
"for her to die."
And the whole courtroom just,
I mean, we all broke down, at that point,
To think that that's how long it took
For her to die, how long she suffered.
- The defense, which did not call a single witness,
Instead made the case in its closing argument,
For all the drama, the state, they said,
Failed to prove, because it couldn't prove
That tony russo was ever in diane holik's home.
Couldn't prove he killed her.
Tony did not testify, but he did talk to us.
- The verdict.
- When the jury walks back into the jury box,
I can't even look at 'em.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Darla davis had put everything she had
Into the case against tony russo.
- When,
Not if,
Will this sexually sadistic psychopathic predator
Strike again?
- She believed he was a dangerous man
Who should never be set loose to victimize another woman.
Her circumstantial case was powerful,
Overwhelming,
But nothing, not even the tiny bits of recovered dna
Could absolutely prove beyond all doubt
That tony russo killed diane holik,
And so prosecutors, investigators, friends,
And family were anything but calm as the hours passed,
And they waited for the jury.
Then, after 11 hours...
- When the jury walks back into the jury box,
I can't even look at 'em, even now.
- Chest going boom-boom-boom? - Yeah.
I just look down at the table,
And I wait for the judge to read.
- And then...
- We, the jury, find the defendant,
Patrick anthony russo,
Guilty of the offense of capital murder.
- It was great.
We really worked for this one.
- So they did,
And won a case which remains as relevant
A cautionary tale as it did back in 2004
When the jury pronounced its verdict.
Seller beware.
- That was quite eye opening,
The effect on not only her friends,
But the community as a whole and the real estate business.
- People need to see this and be aware,
So maybe this will stop that from happening.
- And tony russo?
His hair has gone silver now.
He's in prison for life.
And here one Friday morning, he brought his bible
To the barrier that separates his world from ours,
His holy stamp of assurance that what he was about
To tell us about his role in the murder of diane holik
Would be god's truth.
That jury comes back and says, "guilty."
What's that like?
- Devastating.
When you're innocent, it's devastating.
- Innocent?
Yes, and...
So I hear from the warden that you have--
You got your bachelor's in divinity.
- Yes, sir.
If I had to spend the rest of my life in here,
I wanna use it for christ.
- Throughout our talk, he wore his christianity
Like a badge and like an accusation.
- I notice that, uh, in the media,
They love to sensationalize, uh, any christians
Or people that claim to be christians,
That somehow they just-- they've got a--
There's some hidden secrets in their life and-and--
- But your victims were christians, too.
- Okay. Well, sayin' you're a christian
And bein' a christian are two different things.
- In other words, you're saying you have to be
Totally honest if you're a christian.
- I don't think you have to be totally honest,
But I think there's things in your life
That you're gonna exhibit whether christ
Is in your life or not.
- And the evidence against him?
He had answers for everything, like whey he lied to the police
When he said he wasn't looking at houses
When, in fact, he was.
- I did deny in the interview because I felt like
I was gonna incriminate myself in the inter--
- Mm-hmm. - The original interrogation.
I did, however, share with my attorneys.
- Right.
- Uh, what had been goin' on.
- Which was, he said, perfectly innocent research.
- Lookin' at the different designs and things.
For a long time, we had talked about building a house.
One of my friends from church had lived
In a, uh, mobile home while he built a house
On the back of his property.
- So, we wondered-- why did he behave in a way
That terrified all those women
Who testified in court against him?
Gol, you gotta admit that it was a pretty creepy thing to do.
- Well, I don't know how creepy it is to look at houses
Or designs of houses.
- Well, it's to tell people a whole shaggy dog tale,
A bunch of lies, about why you're there,
To follow them around the house,
To make 'em nervous.
- Well, actually, I preferred not to follow anybody
Through a house.
They're the ones that wanna show you the house,
So they tend to lead you.
- The rental agent he attacked and half strangled
Back in 1989-- what do you have to say
To a woman like her? - Okay.
I-I don't remember her at all. I don't.
- And yet, he actually confessed to attacking that woman
Back in 1989.
And what about the witness so frightened by his visit
To her house that she and her husband saved
His license plate number?
And they kept the license number
'cause they were so freaked out by you.
- They actually kept about four license plate numbers
Of house-- people that looked at their house
Or wanted to look at their house without a realtor.
- Not true, said darla davis.
His license number was the only one they saved.
I also asked him about his decision
To take the pinstriping off his van just then.
He said that wasn't because police were looking for it,
But because it had been vandalized.
- I was gonna redo the pinstriping
Since I had originally put it on there.
- The zip ties police found wrapped around fencing
On his property?
They belonged to a friend he said.
And the statement by his wife, janet,
That he would sometimes choke her during sex...
- I never choked anybody.
- You choked your wife.
- Okay. No, I did not.
- She said you did. - No, she didn't.
- She said you choked her as part of the sex act.
- I know what she said. No. - That's how you had sex.
- No, that's not true.
That's a manipulation. - She's lying?
- That's a manipulation of what she said.
No, that's not true. - By whom?
- I'm just telling you that that's not what she said.
- But we reminded tony he'd been married twice,
And in marriage number one, same issue.
But your ex-wife says you choked her.
- Okay.
- And that's how you got sexual arousal.
- Okay. Well, that's--
- The only you'd get sexual arousal.
- Well, I'm not gonna-- I'm not gonna go into detail
To embarrass her, so I'd rather, um,
I'd rather not say anything about her.
- You know it's a tactic, don't you?
I've seen this done 1,000 times.
- You-you can call it a tactic. Well--
- If you've got something to say about the woman,
Say it, but don't do that where,
"I'm not gonna say a bad thing about her
"because it would be mean to her."
That's b.S., and you know it.
- Well, under the world's standards,
Yeah, that would be b.S., but as a christian, it's not.
- We asked about that pornographic website
Purporting to show the killing by asphyxiation of women,
The one he had to register and pay for
Before he could access it on his computer.
- I cannot help that porn sites pop up on the computer.
- Well, they don't pop up on your computer
Unless you look at some porn site or other.
So, there's an explanation for everything.
- Well, there's the truth to everything.
- Oh, yes.
Tony russo had an answer for everything.
- I am absolutely innocent, and it disgusts me
That every time you try to say you're innocent, uh,
Everybody says, "isn't that what everybody says?"
- Have you confessed the ultimate sin to god?
- What's the ultimate sin that you're talkin' about?
- Murder. - Okay.
If I had murdered someone, I definitely would have.
- But you say, with your hand on your bible?
- I will die claiming my innocence,
And people can believe it or not believe it.
I, absolutely, I'm innocent,
And I don't care how guilty I look.
I'm innocent.
- He couldn't convince any courts of that, though.
All his appeals failed.
So, here will stay, while outside this institution,
Several women still struggle with the anxieties and fears
In prisons of their own created by him.
- It-it'll come back any time I get a call from a man
That wants to see a house who's single, every time.
I could have been a victim. - Absolutely.
- He-- I was an intended victim.
- Yeah. - That's why he called me.
So, that's-that's a hard thing to think about.
- And they told us the trauma lives on.
Though...
- It's comforting to know that he's in there,
That, um, he can't hurt anyone else.
- They are sorority sisters of a sort who,
Unwilling to live their lives as silent victims,
Came together to help get tony russo
Off the street for good.
- We did our job, and we got him convicted.
- So, they did, this sisterhood, for the sake of a woman
Whose fate might have been theirs,
Diane holik, whose friends came together to remember
How they miss her even after all these years.
- She was a constant friend.
She was in my life every day.
And all of a sudden, she was gone out of my life
In an instant, like blowing a candle out.
- You see the smile in all these photographs.
Was she always smiling? - Yeah, yeah.
- Always, always, yeah. - Huh.
- She had a magic smile. It-it was infectious.
If she was smiling, everybody else had to,
You know? You had to. - Yes.
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow.
Thank you for watching.