Pod Insights The Binge Crimes Hunting the Bogeyman | 1. The Nightmare About this episode Nicole is home alone when a masked man breaks in and sexually assaults her. She’s confident she can help police catch him. But things don’t go to plan.
Binge all episodes of Hunting the Bogeyman ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access.
From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go.
The Binge – feed your true crime obsession.
Hunting the Bogeyman is brought to you by Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence Productions.
Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 5,294 words · 10 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 Two Girls, One Ghost.
0:02 Speaker 01 Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. Where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners. Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost. But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.
0:29 Speaker 02 Hello, I'm Elizabeth Day, the creator and host of How to Fail. It's the podcast that celebrates the things in life that haven't gone right. And what, if anything, we've learned from those mistakes to help us succeed better. Each week, my guests share three failures, sparking intimate, thought provoking and funny conversations. You'll hear from a diverse range of voices, sharing what they've learned through their failures. Join me Wednesdays for a new episode each week. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
1:01 Speaker 03 You can listen to all episodes of Hunting the Bogeyman ad free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge. Feed your true crime obsession.
1:29 Speaker 03 Hi listeners, this is Peter. I just want to let you know that this series includes stories about sexual assault and violence. Please use discretion when listening.
1:44 Speaker 03 We all have our bedtime routine. There's the hygiene part. Maybe you lay out your clothes for the next day, set your alarm, turn out the lights, put down your phone. But another part of the routine is safety. You're about to shut down your senses. It's the most vulnerable part of your life and you do it every day. So you lock your doors at night. Maybe you have an alarm system. There's a word for the thing we're protecting ourselves from in the middle of the night. The boogeyman.
2:18 Speaker 04 The boogeyman that we want to believe doesn't exist. And then you're confronted with the reality that they do.
2:29 Speaker 03 That Sacramento prosecutor Keith Hill, who has seen his fair share of boogeymen, but none like this one. This boogeyman is truly the manifestation of a nightmare. The boogeyman in this story, no one could find him for almost 30 years. To catch him required a groundbreaking forensic discovery and a badass detective who cracked one of the biggest murder cases in history. But the heart of this story is a courageous woman named Nicole. She not only survived this nightmare, she went after the boogeyman. And years later, she realized that what happened to her
3:11 Speaker 03 was only the beginning of this terrifying pattern. The man who attacked her went on to attack many others, and no one could find him.
3:20 Speaker 05 Every day, I fantasize about him getting caught. Could he figure out where I live? Is he somebody I know? Is he in my own community? Like, those types of things are really hard to live with for that many years.
3:34 Speaker 03 The first thing you need to know about Nicole is that she's a pretty fearless person. For most of her life, she wanted to find this guy and unmask him. But that's not where this story ends.
3:46 Speaker 05 I wanted to understand what happened to him and what made him be this monster.
3:55 Speaker 03 She wanted to meet him, face to face. From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, you're listening to Hunting the Bogeyman. I'm Peter McDonnell. This is Episode One, The Nightmare.
4:13 Speaker 00 I'd like to give you a brief overview of the series. What we know is this started in 1991 in Ronert Park.
4:26 Speaker 03 Ronald Park, a small town north of San Francisco. It's where Nicole Ernest Pate bought her first home when she was just 19 years old.
4:35 Speaker 05 It was a really cute place. I fell in love with it when I saw it.
4:39 Speaker 03 It was a two-story townhome, and she lived there with her boyfriend, who was six years older. It was a rocky relationship, though, so when Nicole turned 21, she dumped him.
4:50 Speaker 03 When her ex moved out, he took pretty much everything with him. All Nicole had left were her bed, a couch, some chairs, and a landline telephone that sat on her bedroom floor. She also had a mortgage to pay all by herself. But for the first time in her life, she was single. She went out, had fun, and started casually dating her friend, Mark.
5:12 Speaker 05 The guy was, you know, kind of a bad boy. I mean, not bad boy, bad boy. And he kind of, you know, he was the first guy I'd ever dated who had tattoos. And my parents were mortified, mortified, that I was going out with a guy with tattoos. I'm like, oh, really? Are you mortified? Oh, this is fun.
5:30 Speaker 03 But she didn't want to invite Mark to move in with her. She decided to put an ad in the local newspaper for a roommate. She got some calls right away.
5:39 Speaker 05 But I got this specific inquiry that stuck in my brain because it just sounded like an odd name. My name is Bob Smith. Really? Your name's Bob Smith. Interesting. And I just remembered his voice. His voice was quite flat and just monotone. And told him about the room, the rent, where it's located, yada, yada. He told me that he was in the construction trade, and I believe he said he had kids. Might have said he was married, but he has to commute for work, and so he just needed a room.
6:12 Speaker 03 The guy asked when he could come over and see the place. Nicole said, well, she had to work on Friday and Saturday.
6:19 Speaker 05 Well, what about Sunday morning? And I said, well, not too early because I'm sure I'll be out late on Saturday night. He said, okay.
6:27 Speaker 03 It was a plan. On Friday, Nicole went out with some friends. She got home late, got up early on Saturday. Back then, she was a hairdresser and spent all day on her feet.
6:39 Speaker 05 Then I came home from work exhausted and I took a bath.
6:43 Speaker 03 And she called her friends.
6:45 Speaker 05 And I said, I'm not going out. I'm staying here.
6:47 Speaker 03 She pretty much canceled all her plans and said she wasn't going to set a foot outside until she had to go back to work on Tuesday.
6:54 Speaker 05 I'm gonna go watch TV. It was hot, so I put on this, it was a little green robe. That'll become important later. I didn't have anything on underneath. So like, I'm just gonna go lay down on the couch. It's probably 8:30 as I'm starting to get really sleepy.
7:08 Speaker 03 Nicole fell asleep on the couch in her living room. Across from her was a sliding glass door that led to her enclosed patio. The other townhomes had their patios in the back, but for some reason, Nicole's place was turned around. Her patio faced the parking lot, so she used her sliding glass door to come and go. The only problem was, she couldn't lock it when she was gone. But she figured, ah, she didn't have much to steal anyway. And she always locked it when she was home. Her friend, Mark, had even installed a motion sensor security light above it. When Nicole fell asleep on the couch that Saturday night, the TV was on, her patio gate was closed, her sliding glass door was locked, and her
7:51 Speaker 03 motion sensor light had a fresh bulb.
7:58 Speaker 03 But at some point, after sunset, something woke her up.
8:04 Speaker 05 The TV was no longer on.
8:08 Speaker 05 And there was an arm around my neck. He had his hand over my mouth and he had a glove on. I caught glimpse of a mask, ski mask, and I realized that he had a gun at my head.
8:24 Speaker 05 Is this a prank? And then he very quietly said, "Don't move. I'm just here to rob you." He attempted to kind of lift me, and I knew my robe would come open, so I sort of shook my head, and he put me down, but he still had the gun on me the whole time. And then he walked me upstairs with my hands behind my back. I will never forget the feeling of being walked up the stairs. I will never forget that as long as I live, because that's when it hit me, oh shit, I'm in real trouble.
9:00 Speaker 03 What happened next is most people's worst nightmare. The masked man who invaded her home sexually assaulted her for hours. Nicole's life would never be the same.
9:14 Speaker 05 I thought about this crime every day of my life and still do, and I always will.
9:20 Speaker 03 Estimates vary, but about 80% of the time, victims of rape know the person who attacked them. Nicole had no idea who the man was.
9:29 Speaker 05 Did not know his name, did not know what he looked like. Is he somebody I know? Is he in my own community?
9:35 Speaker 05 It's a really, really weird, scary, strange way to walk around in life. And what I would sit and fantasize about was how I would be informed that he was caught. Every day. Never told people, never discussed it, never told my husband. I would fantasize about how good it would feel to not have to wonder who he was for the rest of my life and be scared for the rest of my life.
9:59 Speaker 03 Last summer, Nicole and I met in person for the first time. She's now 55, tall, confident. She's a lot of fun. She still lives in Sonoma County, but we met at a recording studio in nearby Marin. It was nothing fancy, behind a warehouse, but this place is famous. Santana, Van Morrison, Jackson Brown, too many legends to name, had recorded there. And Nicole had heard of it. She was excited to be there. An old friendly dog greeted us when we came in. Aaron, the engineer, set us up at a little table in a soundproof room.
10:34 Speaker 05 Wow, I feel like, I feel like all those, like, you know, popular people on the Internet I did podcast. Oh, I can hear you.
10:41 Speaker 03 Okay, there we go. Okay.
10:44 Speaker 05 I grew up here in the 80s and 90s, and, and when I moved here, it was the land of, you know, hot tubs, peacocks, and rainbows. It was very kind of like rich hippies, kind of a place where no one really asked, what do you do for a living? And people were much more interested in, in what you believed in and who you were as a person.
11:03 Speaker 03 When Nicole was 12, her parents went through an ugly divorce. Nicole and her older brother moved to Marin County with their mom.
11:10 Speaker 05 We had very ambitious parents, driven parents, very driven father. He's very good looking. He's very confident. He's very fit. He's very, you know, the cocky fighter pilot.
11:22 Speaker 03 You said he was part of Top Gun, I think.
11:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, he was. He'll correct me on it. It was the very first class of what they were developing. He used to always make the joke, never be afraid to fly with me because I tried to kill myself in a plane for years and it never worked.
11:33 Speaker 03 When Nicole told me this, I thought, oh, she must have gotten her fearless confidence from her dad. But then she told me about her mom.
11:43 Speaker 05 My mother was a teacher and she raised me from a pretty young age continually saying, become independent, never depend on a man and be confident in yourself as a woman in all aspects of being a woman, by the way, and not letting society tell you that any part of being a woman is wrong or weak. She was the most fierce person I've ever met.
12:07 Speaker 03 That Saturday night, when the masked man appeared in Nicole's house, she didn't hear him come in. The motion sensor light didn't come on and all her doors were locked. So how did he get inside? The only thing that made sense was that he was already there when she got home from work that day, hiding while she took a bath, listening while she called her friends to cancel her plans and waiting for the moment when she fell asleep.
12:34 Speaker 05 And I kept thinking, he's just here to rob me. He's not going to do anything. My robe, my robe, my robe. Keep it closed, keep it closed.
12:41 Speaker 03 The man wore a ski mask, jacket and gloves and led Nicole upstairs.
12:47 Speaker 05 He hogtied me face down on the bed and then just left me there for a while and just rummaged around my house.
12:54 Speaker 03 He put duct tape over her mouth and eyes.
12:57 Speaker 05 I kept thinking, is this really happening to me? I can't scream. No one's going to hear me. And if I do scream, he has a gun. Is he going to shoot me? And he was rummaging around my house for a very long time. So I kept thinking, maybe he is just here to rob me. He's looking for something. I don't have anything. I mean, look at my house. There's nothing, there's nothing here.
13:19 Speaker 03 When Nicole could no longer move, see, or speak, the man began to talk.
13:24 Speaker 05 He had a very specific voice that I will never forget. He was very monotone, just like the caller was on Thursday, Bob Smith.
13:35 Speaker 03 What did he say to you?
13:37 Speaker 05 He knew a car I drove, like, he knew where I worked. He could describe, like, the parking lot to the salon where I worked. He knew what my pattern of behavior was. I know exactly where you live. I know what your ex-boyfriend looks like. I know how tall he is. I can describe him to you. I can describe your friends that were at your house this week.
13:52 Speaker 03 Oh, my gosh. The man would talk to her, then leave the room to rummage through her house.
13:58 Speaker 05 He was looking for a specific item, the very high-end video camera.
14:05 Speaker 03 And he couldn't find it. This happened in 1991, by the way. The video camera belonged to Nicole's mom and was returned to her three weeks earlier.
14:15 Speaker 05 So it wasn't in my house. He was real angry.
14:19 Speaker 03 But somehow, he knew she'd had it.
14:22 Speaker 05 And that's when I really started to put the timeline together that he's been in my house before.
14:29 Speaker 03 He was looking for something else, too, her ATM card. When he found it in her purse, he asked for her PIN number. Nicole used her chin to point toward the foot of her bed, where the PIN number was written on a piece of paper.
14:41 Speaker 05 And he was like, oh, you can see. So then he added a pillowcase and tied the pillowcase around my head.
14:46 Speaker 03 Then he started to play sadistic games.
14:50 Speaker 05 He would go downstairs, be very, very quiet. And then he would say, again, he'd say, I'm gonna leave. Then he'd come back and he said, no, I'm still here. And he would do that repeatedly.
15:00 Speaker 03 The man found Nicole's stereo, brought it into the bedroom, and tuned it to an FM radio station.
15:06 Speaker 05 Our love songs, let's play these love songs.
15:09 Speaker 03 He untied Nicole's legs and raped her.
15:21 Speaker 05 I'd already had multiple out of body experiences at this point, too, as a protective mechanism. And I was frustrated because I was floating below my ceiling, looking down at the bed, but I couldn't see his face. It was torture.
15:33 Speaker 03 Then the man began cuddling with her, kissing her, and acting like he was her boyfriend.
15:39 Speaker 05 This person believes that I am his girlfriend somehow, and has this warped fantasy.
15:46 Speaker 05 He really believes that in his head. He believes that I'm his girlfriend. And that's when I was like, this is a psychopath.
15:53 Speaker 03 The man said he'd never done anything like this before, and he wouldn't ever do it again. Nicole was just so pretty. He said he was sorry.
16:02 Speaker 05 You're so kind and sweet, and I don't know why I've done this to you. And I've, you know, I've never done this before, and I'll never do this again. So I tried to kind of appease that a little bit. He would start to let me talk. So I would say, why have you done this to me? Well, you know, you were just, you were just so beautiful, and I just didn't think you would ever talk to me. And, you know, I, I didn't think you'd be this nice. And then he'd go, oh, by the way, if you talk about this at all, I'm gonna shoot you.
16:32 Speaker 03 Then Nicole realized that this guy didn't break in after she fell asleep. He was there when she got home from work that day, hiding somewhere in the house, maybe upstairs in the second bedroom. He'd heard her take a bath and call her friends.
16:49 Speaker 05 So good that you don't have any plans until Tuesday. I'm not leaving till then. I don't have any plans either. And all I could think of was, my friend, Mark, please show up. Please, just, you know, know that I'm not answering my phone.
17:06 Speaker 03 But the man had unplugged Nicole's phone and put it somewhere. If Mark called, all he'd get was a busy signal. The man raped Nicole three times and then threatened to kill her.
17:19 Speaker 05 And then I thought, then how are they gonna alert my parents? They're gonna be told your, your daughter's been raped and murdered in her home, and she's got flies all over her body. I cannot have my parents suffer that. I don't care what he does to me at this point. I did not care. You are not gonna put my parents through that.
17:41 Speaker 03 Throughout the man's attack, Nicole remained remarkably self-possessed. She knew she'd be the only witness, and she began trying to collect as much evidence as possible.
17:54 Speaker 05 I was a hairstylist. I was used to touching people's hair and their face, you know, their heads, right? It's gonna get a little bit graphic. I was hogtied, and he was attempting to orally copulate me. And I grabbed his head, his face, and I pulled him up. And I was like, absolutely not. This is not, uh-uh. And I fought him. Now that I got his face, I'm gonna feel it. How thick is his skin? Where's his hairline? And I started feeling his ears. Where are his ears? I identified him as someone who had relatively pockmarked skin, high cheekbones, maybe Eastern European, definitely Caucasian, likely blond hair, very thin, fine blond hair. I got all of that in like two seconds.
18:42 Speaker 05 I had at the time a bladder infection, which for any woman who's had a bladder infection, you know how miserable they are. So I was like, I have to go to the bathroom. So he lets my feet go, but nothing else. So he walks me to the bathroom by my hair. Doesn't need to. Didn't need to do that. Just felt like it. As I'm walking to the bathroom, there's a mirror to my left, where my sink is. So I take the opportunity to look underneath the tape to see if I can catch his face. I never caught his face, but I saw his hair, and it was blond. But I could also confirm that he was not heavy, but he was thin and soft.
19:24 Speaker 03 Did you have any idea who this person might be?
19:27 Speaker 05 No, not a clue. I was thinking of any guy I'd dated, gone out on a date with. Nothing. I had nothing. He resembled nobody I knew.
19:39 Speaker 03 But Nicole had a theory. The man seemed to know what he was doing. She didn't think it was his first time.
19:47 Speaker 05 He's a very smart criminal. The cadence of his voice, the formality of the way he spoke, the way he was measured, and his gun. So you know how police officers, they have kind of a formal way of speaking? He's talking in that way. The whole night, he's talking like that. I thought he could be a police officer.
20:08 Speaker 03 The man pretended to leave, and then suddenly, he was back and seemed to savor Nicole's fear. She still couldn't see, she couldn't move, she couldn't really say anything through the duct tape. She said she was so exhausted, she even drifted off to sleep. The horror became weirdly disorienting. She had no idea how much time had passed. At some point, she just became sick of it. Her fear faded, and she became angry, and she yelled through the tape for him to get the hell out. And then she heard the zipper of a bag. He touched her again, freed her hands from behind her back, and bound them in front of her with duct tape. He gave her a butter knife.
20:49 Speaker 05 He said, "Let three songs go by before you cut yourself loose. I want to make sure I have time to get to the bank and get your money, and I don't want anything happening. I don't want you following me. He told me I will hear the scanner. If you call the police, and I will come back and shoot you before they get here. So don't call them." He was walking out my bedroom door, and I could kind of hear him turn around towards me.
21:13 Speaker 05 He said, "Oh, by the way, you might want to start locking your doors from now on. Somebody might want to come in and try and hurt you." And then he marched out the door.
21:22 Speaker 03 She listened for the sound of his feet on the river rocks in her patio, then for the sound of his car engine, but she didn't hear anything. The third song ended. She ripped off all the duct tape and stood up.
21:38 Speaker 05 I'm shaking. I'm in shock. My mom was a volunteer for the Rape Crisis Center, of all things. I remember her telling me things that you needed to do to preserve evidence. Don't brush your teeth, don't drink water, certainly don't take a shower.
21:54 Speaker 03 She pulled on a pair of loose sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Then she found her clothes iron and held it up like a weapon.
22:00 Speaker 05 I have to figure out if he's still in the house.
22:04 Speaker 03 She tiptoed out of her bedroom and onto the landing. She looked down into her living room and didn't see him. She pushed open the door of the second bedroom and turned on the light. Clear. Then she went down the stairs. Her living room, kitchen, half bathroom, all empty. He was gone. She turned on every light, locked every door. She found her phone on the living room floor. She plugged it back in and called her mom.
22:37 Speaker 05 I don't know how she did it. As a mother myself, I don't know how she did it. She was remarkably calm. She was very panicked, but she was calm and very instructional. It was like her operating system kicked in and she said, I need you to hang up the phone and call 911 right now. And I was like, I'm not calling 911. I told her why, and she said, sweetheart, I know that you feel that way. I need you to call 911 right now. And I was like, I'm not, I'm not calling the police. And she said, I'm on my way.
23:16 Speaker 06 You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle, no negotiation, no guy from an online listing lowballing you. Which means by the time I'm done explaining this, you could have basically done it.
23:40 Speaker 06 Still haven't started? Hey, better late than ever. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.
23:46 Speaker 02 Hello, I'm Elizabeth Day, the creator and host of How to Fail. It's the podcast that celebrates the things in life that haven't gone right and what, if anything, we've learned from those mistakes to help us succeed better. Each week, my guests share three failures sparking intimate, thought provoking and funny conversations. You'll hear from a diverse range of voices sharing what they've learned through their failures. Join me Wednesdays for a new episode each week. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
24:19 Speaker 03 Nicole didn't want to call the cops because she thought the man who raped her might be a cop. He said if she reported the rape, he'd hear about it and be back for revenge.
24:29 Speaker 03 Nicole's mom must have driven over 100 miles an hour. And when she turned onto the road in front of Nicole's townhome complex, she saw a police car on the side of the road. Two cops were in the middle of giving someone a speeding ticket. Nicole's mom stopped, jumped out, and screamed for them to help her. They jumped in their patrol car and followed her to Nicole's house.
24:50 Speaker 05 And that's how the police got there. I never called them.
24:53 Speaker 03 Nicole's mom came in first and gave Nicole a big hug.
25:00 Speaker 03 What the police did next was typical in a rape investigation. Nicole gave them a statement. They began looking for evidence in her home. And the worst part was when Nicole went to the local hospital where they collected evidence of the rape from her body. It was the middle of the morning when she went back home to take a shower. Her mom went with her. The place was a mess. There was black fingerprint dust everywhere. Police were everywhere. Nicole went upstairs to the bathroom, turned on the shower. She cried and shook as she scrubbed her skin and hair. And then she got dressed. She tossed some clothes and toiletries into a garbage bag to take to her mom's and left.
25:42 Speaker 05 You can burn this house down. I don't care. I'm never, ever stepping foot back in this house again. Never.
25:49 Speaker 03 A few days later, Nicole drove to the Roanoke Park Police Station to meet with the investigators assigned to her case. She wondered if they had any leads.
25:59 Speaker 03 The crime was so horribly fresh in her mind. She could recall every detail, right down to the shape of the man's face, the sound of his voice, what he said to her, and his behavior. She gathered so much evidence without even being able to see him. Her ability to remember so many details of the rape was unusual. It's actually common for victims of sexual assault to have gaps in their memory and recall it in a nonlinear way, especially at first. It's part of the brain's normal defensive response to extreme psychophysical stress. Nicole was different.
26:38 Speaker 03 She entered the Ronard Park Police Department, which doubles as the fire department, and sat down in a small room with two investigators, a woman and a man.
26:48 Speaker 03 Nicole was just 21 years old, but her mother always said she seemed 10 years older. As she told them the story of what happened, though, she sensed they weren't exactly following along. They looked skeptical, which was when the female investigator said something that, for Nicole, was almost as much of a violation as the rape.
27:14 Speaker 05 She said, "This sounds like some sort of, you know, movie plot. Like you made this up from a movie plot." I was in shock.
27:23 Speaker 03 They didn't believe her.
27:26 Speaker 03 Nicole's ability to confidently say what had happened seemed to be working against her. They suspected she made it up, that the masked man, the rape, the gun, the silent break-in, that it was all fiction.
27:42 Speaker 03 This wasn't only a problem for Nicole. It put everyone who could become the man's next victim in danger. Nicole didn't know it at the time, but the man's attack on her was the first in a series of sexual assaults in Northern California, spanning nearly two decades. What she told the police was the first set of clues in the terrifying pattern. But if the police didn't believe Nicole, was anyone even looking for the pattern?
28:13 Speaker 03 Someone needed to connect the dots. Eventually, one of those people would be Paul Holes.
28:24 Speaker 03 A couple of years before the pandemic, cold case detective Paul Holes came up with an idea to solve one of the biggest serial killer cases in history, the Golden State Killer. How he did it, we'll get to that later. All you need to know now is that Paul and a small team of investigators revolutionized detective work worldwide. Their innovation opened the door for thousands of unsolved violent crimes to finally be solved. One of those cases was this one. And it's also a history-making case because it's the first case ever in which this revolutionary crime-solving tool was tested at trial.
29:06 Speaker 03 When Paul Holes first learned about the masked attacker who would become known by the moniker, the NorCal Rapist, Paul was just 28 years old, at the start of his storied career. It was 1996, and Paul worked as a criminalist at the sheriff's crime lab in Contra Costa County, 50 miles from Ronard Park. That Halloween, the rapist broke into a woman's home near the sheriff's office. The next morning, when Paul learned about it, he was very concerned.
29:34 Speaker 07 This is a serious offender. I thought there was a high probability that there would be related cases.
29:45 Speaker 03 If Paul could find those other cases, it would help him see the rapist's pattern, anticipate his next move, find him wherever he lurked. Because someone had to do something. Someone had to stop him. On this season of The Binge, Hunting the Bogeyman, a serial predator remained on the loose.
30:04 Speaker 08 He is kind of the boogeyman in the night that you are truly afraid of.
30:10 Speaker 03 And no one could find him.
30:13 Speaker 04 A wolf in sheep's clothing. He could be in my fantasy football league.
30:16 Speaker 03 It would take an extraordinary innovation to track him down.
30:19 Speaker 07 This DNA technology is going to be pretty significant for these types of cases.
30:25 Speaker 03 And, two decades later, a landmark forensic breakthrough. But the suspect wouldn't admit to a single thing.
30:33 Speaker 05 The why, the what, the why me, all of those things that I think most victims think about, that will probably, you know, eat at me a bit until I get those answers.
30:43 Speaker 03 There's really only one source for that information, and it's him, right? It's him.
30:55 Speaker 03 Hunting the Bogeyman is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence. It's hosted and reported by me, Peter McDonald. From Perfect Cadence, I'm the executive producer. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. The series was sound designed and mixed by Matt Gergel. We used music from Audio Network. The show's production manager was Sammy Allison. Our lawyer is Allison Sherry. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rassik, and Jamie Myers. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave a review. It's the best way to support us. Thanks for listening.
31:47 Speaker 09 Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human. Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.
Previous Introducing: Hunting the Bogeyman Next Hunting the Bogeyman | 2. This Is Not a Movie Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated