Tracks Of A Killer | FULL EPISODE | The FBI Files

the nation's railroads become the conduit of a killer he strikes at random then disappears recurring clues tell police they face the worst predator of all a ritual serial killer he's cunning deadly and on the move but the authorities are determined to stop him in his tracks [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] more than 200 000 miles of train track across the united states from california to kentucky few living near a railroad felt safe in the summer of 1999. a serial killer rode the rails picking towns and victims at random he left behind a trail of bloodshed but no trace of where he would turn up next i'm jim calstrom former head of the fbi's new york office as the number of victims grew the fbi enlisted the help of a profiler to help predict the killer's next move [Music] on december 17 1998 in west university place texas [Music] a young woman called the police from outside the house of a friend she worked with she was worried about her [Music] she told them that her friend a prominent doctor at a nearby medical school had failed to show up at work that morning according to her colleague this was completely out of character she had not responded to phone calls to the house all day nor had she answered her door she said she'd see me tomorrow nothing out of the ordinary and that that was yesterday the colleague was sure that something was wrong [Music] i'm just very concerned about it the doors and windows of the house were locked from the outside everything seemed normal the officers found that the garage door was unlocked and inside the door to the house wide open jewelry on the floor suggested a robbery [Music] so the house had been ransacked the officers moved cautiously [Music] an intruder could still be inside the downstairs was clear but a trail of clothes led to the second [Music] floor in the master bedroom they found the doctor she had been brutally murdered 222 let me have a supervisor in the crime scene unit to the scene detective kenneth maher responded to the scene [Music] though a 10-year veteran of the department he was surprised by the report of a homicide west university plays just a small little suburb 2.2 square miles right in the middle of houston largely residential and affluent community and the last time we had a murder was in 1985 during a robbery of a pharmacy [Music] the brutality of the crime struck the detective blood spatter was all over the place in the hallway and on the walls and the door the body was completely covered except for one arm sticking out and her two legs [Music] there was a large butcher knife that was near the body laying on a pillow [Music] investigators also recovered a heavy blood-spattered blunt object nearby both were weapons of opportunity the killer found in the house [Music] police contacted the doctor's husband and learned he had taken the couple's two children out of town to visit relatives before christmas they'd been gone for several days the victim had work obligations to take care of that wave so she was not able to travel with him evidence suggested that the killer had taken his time in the house [Music] he tore open christmas gifts and rummage through the victim's belongings contents of her purse were spilled out and her driver's license was clearly left out and displayed it was quite strange to see it like that [Music] in the kitchen the detective found partially eaten fruit [Music] possibly more evidence the killer had lingered in the house [Music] he also found the keys to the victim's jeep according to the doctor's husband it was the only set [Music] in the garage there were no foreign fingerprints at the suspected point of entry but on a workbench investigators found the broken cover of a steering column next to some pry tools the killer must have stolen the victim's jeep we surmising that he had to break the steering column of the jeep to actually crank it up and to start it here the murderer made a crucial mistake when i picked up the large piece of the steering column i could visibly see fingerprints on the shiny black plastic the column cover was bagged for later analysis at the lab at autopsy the medical examiner determined cause of death multiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma to the head the victim had been sexually assaulted the gruesome nature of the murder worried detective maha it just didn't fit the pattern of a random killing it was a step beyond investigators knew that killers like this usually don't strike only once two days later and 200 miles away san antonio police found an abandoned jeep in a motel parking lot the plates were traced to west university place it belonged to the doctor the plastic cover of the steering column was missing inside investigators found a guitar and a meat cleaver the doctor's husband had noted that both items were missing from the house someone had hot wired the jeep in a hurry we noticed too that the steering column was just an absolute disarray [Music] the jeep was fingerprinted inside and out but technicians found no usable prints at the police department's forensics lab analysts made electronic copies of the fingerprints lifted from the jeep's steering column cover and ran them through an automated matching system and at that time we got a positive match on an individual named carlos rodriquez a computer check revealed another name rafael resendez ramirez this was forwarded to the fbi's criminal justice information services division a search of their extensive database revealed dozens of other aliases and more information on the senders he had an extensive record going back more than 20 years and an active warrant on a stolen vehicle charge investigators reviewed the suspect's file from the immigration and naturalization service and learned resendez traveled regularly and illegally between the united states and mexico most recently he had been arrested in california for trespassing on railroad property with a loaded firearm and was deported to mexico now it appeared that rafael resendez was back in texas his transient lifestyle would make him difficult to find detective maha searched the suspect's records for a place to start and found the name of the fugitive sister she lived in albuquerque new mexico in a pre-arranged phone conference maha spoke with her at the albuquerque police department some information about your brother if that'd be all right she wasn't able to tell me a whole lot about current activity of her brother she did not have much contact with him she did mention that he would sometimes drift through albuquerque stay with her for a few days and then just disappear detective maher asked her to call if she heard from her brother and i think there was a little bit of anger and resentment on her part it being having to be involved with it she really didn't want to be associated with him if indeed he was a real killer as we thought that he was authorities also asked the public for help they distributed wanted posters along the train routes resendez was known to use dozens of tips turned up nothing [Music] in march three months after the doctor's murder there was a series of reported sightings in rail yards near san antonio [Music] crusaders had traveled 200 miles west each time he fled before police could respond the suspected killer was still on the move hopping trains and eluding authorities with thousands of miles of train tracks to choose from rafael resendez could be anywhere [Music] five months after the doctor's murder and only 90 miles away in weimer texas members of a local church went to check on their pastor [Music] he and his wife had not been to church that morning [Music] the couple was found murdered in their own bed weimer's a small town murder is nearly unheard of texas rangers and the fort bend county sheriff's office arrived at the scene the preacher and his wife had been bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer a weapon of opportunity taken from their garage the car in a set time of death at 24 to 36 hours earlier the couple had been murdered late friday or early saturday morning money and valuables lay in plain sight robbery was clearly not the motive deputies process the bedroom with luminol a chemical that reacts to the protein in blood and other bodily fluids it revealed the victim's blood and bodily fluid from an unknown source forensic testing later revealed the woman had been sexually assaulted it appeared that after the murders the killer had lingered at the crime scene he ate in the victim's kitchen and took his time studying their driver's licenses the investigators at the scene were unaware of the west university place murder but not for long in may 1999 texas authorities were on the trail of a fugitive rafael resendez fingerprints implicated him in the murder of a doctor in west university place four months later a preacher and his wife were found beaten to death in their home in weimer the couple's red pickup truck was missing probably stolen by the killer police put out an apb for the vehicle [Music] at the department of public safety investigators from the texas rangers were troubled by the crime scene the evidence in the house partially eaten food and displayed id cards suggested a ritualistic killer the rangers contacted the fbi's houston field office to get the opinion of a criminal profiler special agent mark young you have in a crime scene a lot of messages a lot of forensic evidence and a lot of behavioral evidence you can pick up not only the forensics the fingerprints the dna the hairs and fibers and those types of things but you can also get a look into the offender's behavior the way he commits that crime is unique it's different than any other offender young noted that this killer acted with extreme rage but no sign of panic what really struck me behaviorally was this offender unlike a lot of others spent an incredible amount of time in that house going through everything their wallet and purse respectively were opened up and their identification was showing in other words the offenders sat there and looked at their photographs did not taking any credit cards not taking any cash profilers can analyze a killer's behavioral choices in an attempt to reveal details about him in this case after killing the victims the perpetrator kept striking with his weapon but then he covered their bodies this suggested perhaps even he was repelled by the results of his actions displaying the victim's id cards might be an act of domination as if he wanted details about the lives he had taken one of the texas rangers young spoke to had seen something like this before he realized because he had some knowledge of the case in west university that some of the same types of things had happened and he said hey guys uh you know could this be connected not only are we looking at some mo that that seems similar but we're looking at behavior this uh ritualistic behavior or what we call sometimes signature of an offender if there was a connection between the two cases the forensics lab would find it one of the advantages we had is that we had forensic evidence in both places we had fingerprints and dna evidence in the west university case we also had dna evidence at the weimer location dna analysis revealed that the bodily fluid recovered in both cases matched the same man sexually assaulted both women since the first victim's jeep had been recovered investigators wondered how the killer got to the second crime scene in both cases the vehicle had been stolen after the crime that would have meant traditionally that somebody had to bring the person there or that they were somebody from close by [Music] young studied the case file of suspect raphael resendez there was information already in that fugitive investigation indicating that resendiz got around by train according to the file there were train tracks 50 yards from the doctor's house in west university place we turned around and looked there's a train track immediately across the street from the weimer location with the two cases directly connected investigators believed rafael resendez was a ritual serial killer the manner that he did these crimes is somewhat evolutionary you don't just wake up one day and and boom get involved in that type of crime it's something that you've practiced you've built up to and you've done before and he's not going to stop all of a sudden either they feared resendez was using stolen vehicles and the railroads to find his next victim [Music] at the houston field office the fbi's fugitive squad joined the hunt for resendez special agent bobby eckerd led the investigation we knew that he had fled the jurisdiction and had most likely traveled interstate and in fact into mexico because rescinders had likely left texas they obtained an unlawful flight to avoid prosecution warrant it would allow the fbi to add its federal resources to the hunt the first thing that we wanted to do is to find out everything that we possibly could about resendez we knew that he had been arrested over 13 times i immediately started getting all the prison record pin packets so that i could identify not only relatives but associates determine his patterns all the interviews revealed to us that this was a man who was not well known by anybody his family had not really had a lot of contact with him since he left home at 12 years of age and moved to acapulco and eventually to florida with little to go on criminal profiler mark young tried to unlock the drifter's past to predict his next move he forwarded details of both cases to analysts at the fbi's violent criminal apprehension program vicap analysts use sophisticated databases to identify similar unsolved cases immediately they were able to return to me a case in lexington kentucky a hispanic male had assaulted a college student and murdered her boyfriend [Music] this happened late at night in 1997 near the railroad tracks where these two had been walking the male was killed by his skull being crushed by a rock and the female was sexually assaulted she was also physically assaulted pretty severe injuries though dazed by the attack the young woman somehow survived seeing that her boyfriend was dead she made her way to a nearby house where residents called the police she was able to give them an artist depiction a local artist of the offender young received the sketch from the lexington police department [Music] i compared it and i didn't immediately say wow you know this is him what i felt was kind of a guarded optimism that this could be the same guy but a sketch isn't proof young needed scientific evidence to be sure he learned that the lexington police still had dna samples from the sexual assault two years earlier and arranged for the samples to be flown to the fbi lab in washington dc [Music] at the dna analysis unit examiners began processing the samples a couple samples to be worked examiner alan giusti inside out of kentucky we look at 13 different unique dna regions and we develop an individual profile at each one of those regions i describe it like looking at a person's physical characteristics you can look at one dna region and it might be the same as another person's and that'd be like saying that two people both have brown eyes well that's very common you look at 13 different dna regions it's like saying somebody has brown eyes is left-handed is six foot three is got red hair the more dna regions you look at the more complete the picture you get of the person after mapping the dna profile of the perpetrator from lexington giusti contacted the examiners in texas who would map the samples from weimer and west university place by comparing the results that i obtained with the results they obtained we were both able to determine that we had a possible common donor in other words the same person was committing these crimes in texas young forwarded the news to the other investigators i was able to call lexington pd and i heard a lot of hooping and hollering because they thought it was going to be an unsolved case lexington police now had rafael resendez as their prime suspect authorities across the southwest canvassed homeless shelters and train yards [Music] they knew rescindus was out there somewhere on may 28th authorities found the preacher's truck abandoned near a train yard in san antonio [Music] it looked like rescindus had returned to the rails finding him would be an overwhelming task for special agent eckert and her team we had never faced this type of obstacle before there are thousands of tracks there are thousands of trains every day and it was difficult to determine which line that he rode [Music] with a massive search area to cover they had to be resourceful [Music] one way we handle this is we developed a small wanted poster that we gave to the people that frequently rode the railroads in train yards across the nation locals were advised to be on the lookout for rafael resendez if they spotted him they should call the fbi fugitive squad immediately when we received these calls we would contact the railroad police they would pull the person off the train and identify them agents in railroad police responded to hundreds of sightings [Music] the fbi's best lead was the fugitive sister in new mexico agents stayed in contact with her hoping she might hear from him [Music] and if she did hear from him they hoped she'd talk i told you the last time we spoke so far it seemed the only way to track recendez was to follow a trail of bodies on june 4th 1999 a fayette county texas woman stopped by her mother's house to check on her the 73 year old widow lived alone the house had been ransacked there was no sign of her mother mom as she searched each room her panic rose then in the bedroom she found her mother's body the elderly woman had been bludgeoned to death in 1999 agents were on the trail of rafael resendez linked to four murders in texas and kentucky as his notoriety grew the press dubbed him the railroad killer now an elderly widow had been murdered in rural fayette county texas like the other victims she lived near a railroad the gruesome crime looked like the work of rafael resendez according to fbi special agent mark young when you looked at that real brutal style of murder you felt like yeah okay dealing with the same guy because she was covered similarly there were jewelry boxes that had been opened up in other rooms things had been opened and gone through and there were items taken it was a familiar and disturbing pattern cash and jewelry had been left behind instead the killer stole trinkets and personal items as if taking souvenirs fingerprints in the laundry room indicated the killer had broken in through a rear window the print was later matched to rescinders after slaying his victim he was in no rush to leave not only did he go around to all of the rooms take certain items and spend an inordinate amount of time he went and had some fruit and some bread which was a thing that we had seen a number of times i take that to be more of a signature showing that i totally own and dominate this individual and their belongings more than a i'm hungry and i need something to eat two distinctive clues at the fayette county scene seemed intended as a message to investigators [Music] a newspaper had been placed on the sofa open to an article about the recovery of the preacher's stolen vehicle in a guest bedroom they found a toy train it had been recently unpacked and set up on the bed it seemed the railroad killer was taunting the authorities the k-9 unit followed his scent to the train tracks from there the trail went cold [Music] less than 24 hours later the next victim was discovered [Music] another gruesome murder near railroad tracks this one 95 miles from fayette county i got a call in regard to a crime scene in houston that was being assessed by the houston police department they were noticing some similarities a 26-year-old school teacher was found sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death in her bedroom her driver's license had been removed from her wallet and displayed on a table like the other victims she lived near railroad tracks the teacher's car a white honda sedan had been stolen later dna analysis confirmed resendus had assaulted the woman now he was killing at a much faster pace one of the concerns we did have was that this guy was going to evolve into what we call a spree killer uh a lot of times in the past we've had serial killers ted bundy uh for instance that the pressure got so great that they went into a spree mode and that is they begin to kill a number of victims with really no cooling off period [Music] with his last two victims killed in the 24-hour period it appeared rescinders had made the shift to spree killer three-step protection on the conductor jumping in hambrick on june 6th a rail yard worker spotted the fugitive in flytonia texas halfway between houston and san antonio 2014 we have a trespasser on premises called central dispatch brian westbrook immediately notified local police in the fbi operation train stop was created now investigators from more than 30 agencies were assigned exclusively to the case special agent bobby eckert was part of the operation that was comprised of two basic squads you had the one squad that was the serial homicide investigators that were looking into the various homicides developing evidence of crimes then the other side was the fugitive investigators that their sole purpose was to locate apprehend and arrest rescinded the fugitive squad looked for patterns in the suspect's past we were able to determine that he followed the crops throughout the united states in washington state he followed the avocado route in florida he would be involved in the citrus crops in kentucky and north carolina he would pick tobacco after identifying farm work sites and addresses of friends and family [Music] agents would try to eliminate these comfort zones when you go everywhere that you can possibly think of that the fugitive might show up by going there by law enforcement presence in those places people aren't willing to help out the fugitive anymore but this fugitive was comfortable traveling fast and on his own without any help and his murder spree was not yet over eight days after the school teacher was killed in houston her car was found 300 miles away near the mexican border inside was a knife but no sign of where rescinders had gone nearby were train tracks giving the killer a clean escape to almost anywhere in 1999 more than 30 law enforcement agencies hunted for rafael resendez known as the railroad killer whenever a new crime appeared to be the work of the killer special agent mark young investigated i was getting hundreds of calls from departments around the country wanting me to listen to their stories about their crimes and and determine whether the cases might be linked on june 15th the bodies of a 51 year old woman and her father were discovered in their home in rural gorham illinois the local sheriff's office believed resendis was involved and called mark young apparently took place as soon as we walked onto the scene we could have been in one of our crime scenes in texas the double rail tracks were right behind the older man's residence the killer broke in through a back window he used a weapon of opportunity a shotgun he found in the home he stole a few trinkets and ate the victim's food but this time the killer had added something new a statement scrawled on the wall a lot of people thought oh god we got some other type of offender here that's making a political statement pseudo-intellectual type but young knew better he had reviewed the fugitives prison file including his correspondence [Music] he had been writing political messages and letters that we were able to view in the past that was even further indication to me that is the same offender because this now is the rest of his fantasy coming out in his own mind resendez was a deep political thinker [Music] but authorities knew he was a vicious predator he [Music] they believed he got to gorham on the train and left in the victim's car which was recovered the next day 60 miles south near the kentucky border police across the country checked cold cases looking for murders rescinders might have committed special agent young investigated one in hughes springs texas in october of 1998 a woman had been beaten to death with an antique flatiron though unsolved the murder had been thoroughly investigated and documented that's right and i felt like there was a good possibility that resendez was responsible for that case too we had blunt force trauma she was an elderly victim she was not sexually assaulted but she was covered in a similar fashion and in looking at his crime scene photography i see where her identification had been placed up as if the offender looked at it because it happened because the spree killer could be anywhere the fbi placed raphael resandis on their 10 most wanted fugitives list his mug shots were posted with 30 different aliases special agent bobby eckert hoped it might shake new leads free what this does is it raises the awareness of the case the fugitive status and it also allowed for us to offer up to fifty thousand dollars for the successful apprehension of recendez news of the rescindus case swept through the country on heightened alert agents and police searched hundreds of freight trains and train yards it was as if rescinders had a disappeared don clark then special agent in charge of the houston field office held press conferences to help spread the word but he was candid about the case's difficulty it's a very complex investigation it's one like many of us have never been involved with before we are dealing with a lot of unknowns here we're dealing with a lot of pieces of information and it's a very difficult investigation for all of the agencies the story led news broadcasts nationwide and with eight victims now dead the public was terrified eight is more than enough many more than enough one is more than enough and that's all that i can assure the public is that law enforcement is working together to try and get this person out of the street the fugitive was deceptively smart and incredibly dangerous he could move across the country easily and slip across the border at will what we were trying to let people know was this is not some railroad hobo or bum that doesn't have any sense traveling around this is a guy with a good iq that knew how to evade law enforcement that we needed a lot of assistance in capturing this is a guy that was attacking innocent people in their sleep and there was nobody really safe the reward for the fugitives captured climbed to 125 000 calls came in from all over the country in late june resendez was spotted at a homeless shelter in louisville kentucky but he never stayed in one place for long before the police could arrive he was gone sergeant mark barnard of the lexington kentucky police department warned the public uh if i live near a railroad track i'd certainly have it well lit uh i'd check and make sure nothing is out of the ordinary i'd know my environment my neighbors i'd checked my doors and windows the tips kept coming we had 3178 calls that came into the command post from those calls we generated over 1100 leads in other words things that needed to be done throughout the united states and in mexico one credible tip was phoned into the denver field office the caller reported seeing rescindus at a house in commerce city colorado [Music] after authorities traced a phone call from the house to the mexico town where rescinders had family a tactical arrest team responded [Music] and moved in for the capture seven months into the search for rafael resendez an arrest team raided a house in commerce city colorado [Music] [Applause] [Music] they secured the occupants and searched the house but rescinders was nowhere to be found and authorities later determined the tip was a case of mistaken identity texas rangers and the fbi agents kept in contact with a fugitive sister in new mexico she assured them that she had not heard from her brother but promised that if he called she would contact them but at the fbi command post in houston the next big lead concerned a relative no one knew about before agents learned resendus had a wife in mexico special agent bobby eckerd followed up on the surprising new lead the command post became aware that he had a common-law wife because she was interviewed by mexican media and a local station got a copy of that interview and showed it aired it locally at that point we brought his wife to houston for a two day interview authorities needed to know as much as they could about resendez his patterns and the places he had stayed and did he write you all the time she provided us with a lot of information about resendez and his habits over the last two or three years she advised that he brought her jewelry he brought her figurines sometimes little angel figurines he brought her a guitar i knew that a lot of these items had been stolen from crime scenes and it in fact turned out that these items were linked to the homicides she said resendis had been in mexico very recently but she hadn't seen him in days she was cooperating because she feared he wasn't safe there in mexico bounty hunters were after him resendez was running out of places to hide on july 10 1999 investigators received a phone page from albuquerque it was the fugitive's sister yes i'm returning your call she needed to talk to authorities according to special agent mark young there were relatives in mexico that were being approached by law enforcement by bounty hunters by curiosity seekers there were people that really didn't care how they got him across you know dead or alive i want the reward money um she said her brother had called her she did not want him to be harmed law enforcement told her that we could affect a safe surrender for him and we would agreed to treat him humanely and get him in custody to resolve this thing on july 12 1999 rafael resendiz agreed to turn himself in to a texas ranger at a small border crossing respecting his sister's wishes authorities agreed to let him walk across and to take him in with a minimal arrest team one of the most vicious serial killers in the nation's history was taken into custody quietly and without incident in follow-up interviews with mark young resendiz would confess to a total of 13 murders four of them not yet connected to him by authorities he could recall in incredible detail crimes that occurred several years before after discussions with him i would contact the jurisdictions that had primary control of the investigations that he was referring to and we resolved two homicides in florida marion county florida one in colton california and one homicide in barrow county georgia you tell me the train the question in everyone's mind was why in the interviews resendez made the sickening claim that he killed to wipe out evil yet among his victims were a doctor a preacher and his wife a teacher and elderly people all upstanding citizens well loved by their families [Music] the search for rafael resendez took eight months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars [Music] in court he attempted to use an insanity defense to explain his crimes but in may of 2000 he was found guilty of first-degree murder [Music] four days later raphael resendez was sentenced to death [Music] you

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Keywords: FBI, FBI Files, FBI Documentary, Documentary, Crime, Crime Documentary, Crime Patrol, True Crime, True crime daily, Unsolved, Crime Stories, Crime Documentaries Full Episodes, Full Episode, unsolved true crime, fbi files full episodes, we got him, mystery, solved, investigation, police, criminal, prison, jail, Tracks Of A Killer, tracks of a killer trailer, tracks of a killer 1996 full movie, mexican serial killer, angel resendiz documental, angel resendiz documentary, Railroad Killer

Id: H0N_7rw89aA

Length: 49min 23sec (2963 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021