Bloodline Detectives - Episode 18 - Town Path Predator | Forensic Files

Tonight, a rape in a historic city in the UK. The moonlight ambush is sudden, and the victims
are threatened at gunpoint. This is the story of the Town Path Rapist, the impact
his crimes have on his victims, and how an extensive investigation and the revolutionary science
of familial DNA finally reveal his identity. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives."
[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): It's October 2001. A young couple is assaulted in Salisbury, England.
I just felt a connection to the head and then I went down and blacked out for 20, 30 seconds.
And then grabbed me around my neck and put a gun to my head. And yeah, I got sexually assaulted by him at gunpoint.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The attack sends fear throughout the historic Cathedral City.
Firstly, it was a very strange crime to happen, the fact that it was a serious sexual assault.
But add that to the use of a gun and two people being attacked, this was extremely rare, indeed.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): An investigation begins to track down the violent sex predator.
STEPHANIE RUDD: I suffered really bad anxiety and depression, and post-traumatic stress
disorder as well. And I lived in fear that he would kill me. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): To the torment of the victims,
the perp avoids detection for over a decade. It doesn't take away what actually happened.
That will obviously live with us both until we die. I remember us all just going like, yes!
Like being absolutely static that we got the verdict that we wanted. Absolutely amazing.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): This is the story of the Town Path Rapist, the impact his crimes have on his victims,
and how an extensive investigation and the revolutionary science of familial DNA
finally reveals his identity. I'm Nancy Grace. Welcome to "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC] October, 2001, Wiltshire police are contacted about a serious crime.
A phone call details a sex assault on a small walkway in Salisbury, known as Town Path.
The early hours of the morning we received a 999 call from the mother of a young girl who was 16 saying
that her daughter had been sexually assaulted whilst walking home. And so we immediately attended and spoke
to her and her partner, another 16-year-old lad who'd been assaulted as well. Stephanie Rudd has just returned home
with her boyfriend, Adam Underwood. Been assaulted, been ambushed as it were, on a late night
on their way home. I'd just left school and I was 16. I met Adam when I was at school.
We met at a park when we were about 15, and I really liked him, and he's my first love.
And we just were two young lovebirds together and we were really happy. Normal kid, you know?
Into my football. Obviously very close with Steph, partner at the time. Doing what, you know, young, aspiring adults do, you know?
Going out, mixing with friends, and yeah-- just sort of living the life, really.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The night in question for the couple is the same as any other night
out with friends. STEPHANIE RUDD: The plan was that my friend and I, who we lived near each other,
we were going to go home together like we normally do. We'd either walk down the path together,
Town Path together, because it's safer in numbers. You wouldn't really walk down there by yourself.
Or you'd get a taxi, which is probably what we would normally do. That particular night, she was with her boyfriend.
She wanted to stay out longer, and Adam and I wanted to go home earlier. So because I was with Adam, I classed myself as being safe.
I was with my boyfriend, she was with her boyfriend. We said goodbye to each other.
We walked home along Town Path. It was a cold October's evening. It was about 2:00 in the morning.
It was cold. It was dark, and we headed along Town Path. Halfway along, there are sort of some gates, there's some trees.
And we took shelter under the trees because it was raining so bad. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): As Adam and Stephanie take shelter,
they suddenly realize they're not alone. Steph said, there's someone stood there.
And obviously, face deadpan. You're winding me up. No, honestly, there's someone there.
So then obviously, now I looked, and yeah, the silhouette of said person stood there, blending
into the surrounding fence. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Adam and Steph decide to keep
moving, but they don't get far. As we take a couple of steps, hear the rustle because there's lots of leaves, because of the time of year,
on the floor. And then yeah, I just felt a connection to the head and then I went down and blacked out for 20, 30 seconds.
He hit Adam over the head with a gun, knocked him out, and then grabbed me around my neck
and put a gun to my head. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): With Adam unconscious on the ground,
the attacker dragged Steph away. I just remember waking up and hearing Steph screaming
and saying, let me go! What are you doing? And you're thinking, well, what is actually happening right now?
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): When Adam came around, Steph was being taken across a fence into a field.
And it was in that field that a sexual assault-- a very serious sexual assault took
place whilst Adam was made to watch. He ordered her to perform oral sex on him and threatened Adam,
you know, not to get in the way, not to get involved. Adam was desperately trying to protect his girlfriend
from being hurt and injured. My sole thought was, what can I do to help Steph? How do I help her and try and convince him that it's me
you need, not her. Let her go. I got sexually assaulted by him at gunpoint. I remember the feeling of the cold, heavy, wet gun
against my head. I can remember Adam saying, please don't hurt my girlfriend, please don't hurt my girlfriend,
over and over again. And to be honest with you, I don't really think I was saying much at this point
because I was just-- he was telling me to shut up and not speak, and I just was frozen.
I wasn't allowed to look at his face at all. And if I looked at him, then well, yeah, he kept saying don't look at me.
Don't look at me. Every time I attempted to look, straightaway, don't look at me.
Turn away, otherwise you'll feel the gun, basically. I genuinely, genuinely did think that night
that I was going to get killed. Yeah. I really did. At the end of the ordeal he gives the couple's strict
orders before making a getaway. He told us to lay there. He said we had to lay eagle spread,
and he said, if I find out you've told anyone, or if you move, or if you get up, then I'll kill you.
He said to them that he was going to count to 50 and he was going to disappear. And he also asked them directions to the Wilton Road,
which is a road that sort of leads out of Salisbury towards the sort of Bath and Bristol area.
We adhered to those commands, if you like, based on, obviously, fear. We were told that he would return and shoot us if we
told anyone, called the police. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): When they're sure he's gone,
they climb back over the gate. I just remember being sick-- being physically sick, struggling to walk.
My legs felt like they were going to collapse. Adam was sort of holding me up, helping me to walk.
And we didn't ring the place straightaway because I was just convinced that he was
lurking around, double-checking that I said what I was going to do. I wasn't going to tell anyone.
So when we finally reached back home to my mom's house and we got in, and the door was shut, and I realized actually,
you know, he-- I can tell someone about it, then it all came out. And then I told my mom and she rang the police at that point.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police respond to the call and are on the scene within minutes.
Obviously, mass panic at that stage. And obviously we got to give statements and try
and get this guy caught. Ideally sooner, rather than later. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The fact
the man committed a serious sex assault and an attack on the victim's partner is shocking enough.
But the attacks also perpetrated at gunpoint-- something rare in England at the time.
And that leads police to believe they're dealing with a dangerous man who must be captured.
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." October of 2001. In Salisbury, England, police began
a hunt for a man who's committed a serious sex attack close to town. During that attack, the victim's boyfriend also is assaulted
and the couple has suffered the entire ordeal at gunpoint. For police and the community, the attack stands out.
Salisbury's quite a sleepy place. Nothing ever happens in Salisbury-- lived there my whole life.
And for that to happen is obviously going to be A, big news, but B, needs to be--
the [INAUDIBLE] needs to be caught. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Statements are taken from the victims that night and forensic evidence
is gathered immediately. Swabs are taken from Stephanie's clothing for forensic analysis.
The year was 2001. DNA was very much something that detectives are aware of, and they knew that if they could get some from her,
from her body, would be able to at least start looking for this perpetrator. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police and forensic experts
also examined the crime scene for evidence. The path was shut from the beginning
to the end of the path. A fingertip search all along there, looking for the weapon that may have been discarded,
and obviously any other forensic evidence that would aid this investigation. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): With no time
to waste in tracking down a suspect, the investigation team is set up. You get what you call fast track actions.
So what are the things that we can do really quickly to push this investigation forward?
So that's things like house to house at the end of the path, any CCTV. The pub on the corner at the end of the path had some cameras--
would that yield a picture of the suspect? Would it show that the victims have walked through?
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Although the attacker ordered his victims not to look at him, they're
still able to give a vague description of the suspect. They described him as 25 to 45.
They described him as having very close-cropped hair or bald. They described him as not being very tall.
But they also describe quite a strong-- what they believed at the time would be a Scottish accent.
They soon put together a photo fit. Both Steph and Adam thought it looked very much like the attacker, so the police
had to get it out there. They put it out into the local newspaper in Salisbury, but then decided to put their net wider
and they put it on a program called "Crime Watch." It was a very popular British program
which tried to find crime perpetrators and asked people to phone in. So when it was put on that program,
the police would have been quite hopeful that somebody would recognize the attacker.
We were very fortunate. Lots of witnesses came forward, all in a way corroborating
the description of the suspect. Unfortunately, nobody was able to provide us with any more information in terms of a name
or direction of travel. CHRIS SUMMERS: Several eyewitnesses said that they had seen a man--
possibly this very man-- standing either in that exact spot or further along the Town
Path that evening, various points in the evening. And he wasn't sort of doing anything.
He wasn't smoking a cigarette or on his mobile phone, he was just standing, looking quite suspicious.
So that stuck in their memory, but none of them actually recognized his face. None of them could put a name to him.
So while that was helpful, it wasn't really going to help the police hugely. It's very difficult to trawl all CCTV in Salisbury
because there probably were thousands of people on that night, drinking in Salisbury,
with a very similar or not completely different description. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): An experienced profiler
is also brought into the investigation to try and gain more information about the suspect.
I was, I think, originally requested quite soon after the offense had taken place.
It was quite rigid, what kind of background characteristics could we expect this individual to have.
And the investigators were quite keen to turn that into some sort of structure to allow them to prioritize people
that were notified to them. One early theory of investigators is that the attacker might have a military background because
of his language and use of a gun. I wasn't convinced about his military credentials at all.
He seemed to do some things right-- the way that he talked about the firearm and you know,
the damage that it would do, it kind of felt like he was more of a sort of military wannabe.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The next theory is that the suspect was local. ADAM GREGORY: To account for the offender to be in the location
that he was at 2 o'clock in the morning, the idea that he wouldn't be local or have some local knowledge would be really unexpected.
Probably the most consistent finding in the behavioral science literature is around the geographic association between offenders
and where they offend. So they don't just on a train and arrive somewhere, and see
if they can find a victim. They stalk and [INAUDIBLE] places where they think it might be conducive to carry out
an offense. That was very much the impression I got of this offender. So when he started talking about, where's the Wilton Road
and where am I? Wasn't really buying any of that, to be fair. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Another interesting aspect
of the statement are his attempts to hide his true identity. The victims said they believe the attacker
might have been trying to use a different accent. This was described as a slight accent, which
is reassuring to me usually. Because if you put on an accent, it tends to be a very sort
of stereotypical, broad accent. Whereas to come across as a slight Northern or slight Scottish accent, which is an important factor
for the investigation because we're now talking about someone who has almost certainly got local association
but is probably not born and bred in Salisbury. And therefore, people with an association
elsewhere but with a connection at the time in the Salisbury area-- whether that's residential, or employment,
or any other association-- should be the people that we're prioritizing. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): While initial investigative work
is being carried out, a forensic analysis of crime scene evidence is also taking place.
During the sex attack, the offender ejaculated in her mouth and he made her spit it into a tissue which he took away from the scene.
But very fortunately, or cleverly, she wiped her hand in her mouth and wiped it onto her jeans.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The fact investigators now have the perpetrator's DNA seems
like a big break in the case, but that's only if "Bloodline Detectives" can find a match.
The year 2001. Investigators in Salisbury, England, are hunting a man who, using a gun,
commits a serious sex attack and attacks close to the town. The victims are Stephanie Rudd and her boyfriend,
Adam Underwood. Despite the sick nature of the attack, Stephanie did something that will seriously
underpin the investigation. As a young girl, you know, I made sure in my best possible way I could, to make sure
that his bodily fluids were away from me as much as possible. And I remember being disgusted.
And secretly, I put my hands in my mouth and went like that on my trousers. And then he gave me a handkerchief
and told me to wipe my mouth. And I remember pretending to him that he was helping me
with the handkerchief, but when he gave it to me, I was thinking to myself, does he know that I've already kind
of disposed of that anyway? So when we sent that sample away for analysis, we discovered there was a single sperm head on her jeans
which could have only come from the suspect. They compared the DNA profile to the list of prime suspects
and none of them were matched. As much as our hopes got raised, very quickly they got dashed.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): No DNA match as of yet, but the existence of DNA means they could at least eliminate people more definitively.
As detectives work to find the person responsible, Stephanie and Adam's lives are changed.
I tried to continue my life as best as I could. I just really couldn't. I suffered really bad anxiety and depression,
and post-traumatic stress disorder as well. Everyone seemed to be going out, having a really good time,
and you know, so carefree. And I remember feeling really angry because I had all these issues, and all this stuff
on my shoulders, and all these emotions that were inside me that wanted to come out.
And I sort of felt like those years were taken from me, really. I felt like I let Steph down.
Confidence was obviously shot to pieces. Become a bit reclusive. Didn't want to go out.
Didn't trust anyone who had a shaved head of a certain age. So lots of factors, and obviously trying
to grow up and find your feet in life, and that did knock me back quite a bit, to be fair.
As more time passes, those involved began to lose hope that a suspect will ever be apprehended.
SEAN MEMORY: So after about 18 months, the lines of inquiries that we were carrying out
were becoming less and less important. So it was decided that actually, whilst it would never be ended,
that the investigation would be wound down and the resources would be placed elsewhere.
For me and the team, it's very disappointing because you have lived and breathed that investigation.
But more importantly for the victims, it's horrific for them to be able to go and see them, and say, look, I know you
were attacked 18 months ago. However, we've been unable to catch anybody. And so effectively, we're saying it's not going away
but we are not going to give any more resources to this. So I can't begin to think how Adam and Steph must
have felt that this person who did this to them had not been caught. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): And the victims
had to live with the knowledge the suspect is still at large. STEPHANIE RUDD: I lived in fear because I didn't
know what he looked like, but he must have known what I looked like. I thought, you know, that's it now.
I'm a goner. Like, he's going to kill me. And I lived in fear that he would kill me.
I ended up not finishing my college course, spiraling into depression, and turning into a bit
of a recluse, really. And I probably wasn't that much of a nice person when I look back at it now.
I probably was quite angry and quite bitter, especially to Adam. And we ended up--
we ended up splitting up, you know, as all young couples do. But when I look back now, I probably
wasn't that nice to him. I probably said a few hurtful things to him, which I obviously didn't mean.
But I had all these emotions as a young girl and they all needed to come out. We tried to continue, if you like.
I personally felt quite guilty for the whole experience. The longer time went on, obviously,
the more disheartened you get and you think this is never, never going to happen.
So I think we just both reached the point where we just-- me and Steph both collectively said,
you know, I don't think this is ever going to happen. The Assault on Stephanie Rudd and boyfriend, Adam Underwood,
remain cold six long years. But as we see next, "Bloodline Detective" Sean Memory won't
give up on the investigation. And in 2007, he decides to revisit the case. In 2007, a cold case in Salisbury, England,
is brought back to life by "Bloodline Detective" Sean Memory. It's the sex attack six years earlier
of a young woman, an attacked her boyfriend was forced to witness. SEAN MEMORY: The first thing we did
was, even though I'd worked it originally, was let's go and revisit the file. Let's read all the statements again.
Have we missed anything glaringly obvious? It happens. You know, there was hundreds of witnesses.
Had we missed someone? Had someone been swabbed that wasn't who they said they were, given us false identity,
anything like that? So we spent several weeks just reviewing it so that we knew that all of the old ground
had been covered properly. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): As part of this exercise, Adam Gregory reviews his findings
from the original investigation. Most of the advice I think that I gave initially kind of
hung together. But some of the patterns, particularly some of the patterns that we'd picked up in the research
had developed over the intervening time. So the chance, for example, of that individual having
previous sexual crime convictions, we were starting to find that actually, research had overinflated that.
So I think I backed away from the idea that he's likely to have sexual previous convictions,
and I also increased his likely age based on some more up-to-date research around eyewitness
testimony that was suggesting that younger victims can be less accurate. As a 16-year-old, you're very good at working out
if someone's about two or three years younger than you, four or five years, at most, older than you.
That's your kind of context. Put someone in front of a 16-year-old who's 35 and say, how old are they?
They have no real frame of reference until it gets to kind of, well, that's about the same as my dad
or my mom. So you have this void in-between which can be really inaccurately reported, so you
have to be really cautious. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police now share this revised information with the public.
SEAN MEMORY: We launched it with the local paper initially, saying that we had a new team, fresh ideas,
the victims were still on board, this offender was still out there. We were delighted with the response
that we got from the local press. Lots of new leads. Lots of new names. But of course, whilst you get excited by a new name,
it's very quick to go and tap on a door, and take a swab, and eliminate that person.
And so quite quickly, all of those exciting moments and research you do, and you say,
yeah, I think we've got the right one here, it's knocked on the head because you go and swab,
you get the result back, and they're eliminated. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): But a new development
in DNA profiling has arrived. SEAN MEMORY: By the time that we re-investigated, familial DNA had come in, which was
basically a technique that looked at criminality runs in family. So the likelihood is, is that if the offender has
relatives on there, that that profile will match very closely to theirs. So whilst it doesn't give you a suspect,
it says, this family is more likely to be related to the offender than that family.
Because we managed to improve the quality of the DNA, we were able to undertake this familial DNA technique.
So we would look at the top families that matched it and then we would do a family tree of the surname.
And off we'd go and visit, and we'd swab dads, uncles, brothers, until we got to a place
where we could definitively say that particular family-- Smith, Brown, or whoever-- they've been eliminated.
So we carried that out for over a year of eliminating people. But what is really key is, is that on a monthly basis,
a large number of people are added to the National DNA database. Because each time someone's arrested,
they're swabbed for DNA and then it's added to the database so you get new names.
CHRIS SUMMERS: Every year, around about 40,000 people were added to the DNA database.
So as much as they were going through links, there were new people added to it every moment so
that was quite difficult for them to catch up with. But as they were beginning to lose heart with this process,
right when they were sort of running out, they suddenly got a call saying that we have somebody here
who is very, very close match on the familial DNA of the perpetrator, and we think you should have a look.
SEAN MEMORY: And a new name came very close to the top of the list, the surname being Henderson.
So initially we're very excited. There's a new name, not one that had featured previously.
So we did some research and we quickly identified that there was a Keith Henderson
who'd never been swabbed. He wasn't on the database, but he had been living in Salisbury.
And when we did the research into his work, he'd been working in Salisbury very close to the attack scene
at the time. CHRIS SUMMERS: He'd actually worked as what's called a Close Constable
in the Salisbury Cathedral. It's like a patrol officer. And to make matters even better for them,
he was supposed to be working a night shift on that very night of the attack. We just think we've hit the jackpot.
But again, the one thing as a manager I was saying to the team is, until we manage to swab him,
we won't know. Investigators have been disappointed before, but now they've got a name.
Is it the right man? With a potential perpetrator in their sights, investigators now doubled down on Keith Henderson.
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." It's 2007. British detectives have reopened the 2001 sex attack
case on a young woman which her boyfriend was forced to watch. Revolutionary new familial DNA has led them to a suspect named
Keith Henderson, who is now the central focus of the investigation. CHRIS SUMMERS: The detectives looked into who exactly
Keith Henderson was. He had, in fact, got a job in the army. And like the profiler had said, he
was not a Royal Marine Commando or some SAS guy, he was mainly working for the Pay
Corps, which is processing the soldiers payroll, basically. And also during his time there, he'd worked a base in Scotland,
so he would have been familiar with a Scottish accent. He may have well been able to put it on.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): And there is also the fact he was working as a security
officer at the Salisbury Cathedral at the time of the attack. STEPHANIE RUDD: Now when I look back, everything he said to me
was to make the police go this way, when really he was working in the Cathedral Close the whole time
and he knew exactly what he was doing. He assaulted me, went back to the Cathedral Close,
let himself in the Cathedral Close with the keys because he was a Close Constable.
And so he sent all the police all off that way with his pretend accent, telling me he didn't know where he was.
When really, he knew exactly what he was doing. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Investigators
are now sure they've tracked down the man responsible for the attacks back in 2001.
CHRIS SUMMERS: The police decided that rather than just bringing in Keith Henderson and ask him for a DNA swab which he
might immediately refuse, that they were going to put him under surveillance. They were hoping that he might be a smoker, that he might
discard cigarette ends, which obviously would have his saliva on, have his DNA. Sadly, he didn't smoke, but he did like a cup of coffee.
And they put him under surveillance as he went into a coffee shop. We're not empowered just to take the mug,
but the surveillance team witnessed him drink. And the moment he got up and left the table,
they cleverly just swabbed the lip of the cup. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The swab's immediately
rushed to the lab for analysis. SEAN MEMORY: I remember getting the call to say firstly, brace yourself-- you've managed
to get a full profile off him. Because of course you're not swabbing him properly,
you're just taking it off a glass. And secondly, take a seat because you won't believe it,
but he's a direct match. You're so excited as a team because you think, this is what
we've waited for 10, 12 years. And how are Steph and Adam going to be thinking? And do you go and tell them now, or do
you wait until he's arrested? NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The next step is to arrest Keith Henderson.
We were meticulous in the way that we planned it. However, like all good plans, there's often
something that goes wrong. So we had checked that his car was there overnight, so we knew that he was in the premises
and we knew that that car had not moved for a day or so. So we knock on his door, 5 o'clock in the morning,
and an utter surprise to find that he's not there. It turned out that his wife had driven his car
and dropped him off, and he'd flown to Scotland, and he was undertaking some training there.
Fortunately for the police, when they call Henderson in Scotland, they're trying not to spook him.
They're not going to say exactly what they need to speak to him for, but they just say he needs to come back to Salisbury
so they can interview him. And he clearly is thinking about something entirely different.
It turns out that a few weeks earlier, he'd been questioned about a suspected peeping Tom incident
with one of his neighbors when she saw him outside. He'd cleverly told the police at that time
that he heard a disturbance and had been sort of checking out that his neighbor hadn't been burgled or something,
and that he had a totally innocent explanation. But he presumably thought that this had cropped up again
and they were wanting to ask him some more questions, and that's why he just agreed to come
back without for one minute suspecting it was about the rape. SEAN MEMORY: I genuinely think because he didn't think he left
DNA at the scene and that he wasn't on the database, that he wasn't coming back for this offense.
That for some reason when I said I needed to speak to him about something serious,
that it was something else. And it never crossed his mind that we had caught him for this offense.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police are waiting for Keith Henderson as his train comes into the station.
He Walked straight up to me, shook my hand, and said, hi, I'm Keith. Pleased to meet you.
My colleague then arrested him for the attack on Steph and Adam. His world dropped out at that time.
He couldn't breathe. He was struggling for breath. It had clearly come as a massive shock.
And in that drive from the railway station to the police station, you could see his mind trying to process,
how the hell have they got me? And he was just flabbergasted and unable to speak.
After years of fearing their attacker may one day come back for them, Stephanie and Adam finally
get the news he's been caught. Well, you can imagine-- it was nearly 10 years to the day he attacked me that I got that phone call.
So it was pretty-- it was pretty strange. And I never thought I was going to get
that phone call to tell you the truth, so it was a massive shock to me. Amazing.
I was thinking finally, after all these years, can this? Being a bit skeptical. It seems like it's been too long.
Do we think we're, you know-- obviously they're confident. I'm probably less confident in this stage.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): But it is true. And after a decade evading police, Keith Henderson is now in custody and headed to trial.
When we got to trial, the judge prior to the jury being sworn in said to Keith Henderson,
have you really thought this through? Because have you really looked at the evidence?
Because I want you to really consider whether you want this to go to trial. And he was adamant that he wanted to go to trial.
So he made Steph and Adam relive their ordeal. He made them give evidence against him.
Well, the pair of them had waited so long for this they were doubly determined that They weren't
going to be frightened by this guy, and this was their one opportunity to face him, face to face, and tell him what he did.
I'd feared this man, or this person-- I'd feared for years. So to see him at a trial, and to see him, that he is actually
just a human being with two arms and two legs, and when I saw him, it is just surreal
that you think this person I feared for so long. But now when I stand here look at you, you're just nothing.
When the jury were making a decision we broke for lunch, and I remember walking past him and his partner,
or whoever he was out with. And he was eating a sandwich, and he was still trying to intimidate me.
He was staring and glaring at me, and I could see him. I was walking past him, and I briefly glanced at him
and he was giving me the eye, like still trying to intimidate me after all those years.
ADAM UNDERWOOD: Pure arrogance. He thought that he was better. Thought he got his all plans worked out.
Thought he was smart. Blatant denial, although obviously, the evidence was stacking up.
Story didn't quite match during certain parts of the evidence. So yeah, that basically sums up the guy,
that he thinks he's going to get away with committing acts and go undetected. So yeah, he thought that he was sort of home and dry
and this was just going to be a formality. CHRIS SUMMERS: The jury really didn't spend that long
deliberating because the evidence against him was so overwhelming, and they brought back a guilty verdict.
And that was a huge relief, not just to Steph and Adam, but to the community as a whole.
He was given six months for the forced imprisonment, but 12 and 1/2 years for the sexual assault.
I remember us all just going like, yes! Like being absolutely ecstatic that we got the verdict that we wanted.
Absolutely amazing. It doesn't take away what actually happened. That will obviously live with us both until we die.
But the fact that we've now gone through all emotions, the experience, and then come out the other side,
and that we didn't quite give up meant the most. That you know, I was saying thanks
to Sean and the rest of the team for not giving up on us. The brave souls, Stephanie Rudd and Adam Underwood,
show remarkable resilience after this horrific assault. And Stephanie was especially strong
in the moment of the crime, preserving DNA from the suspect that became the pinnacle evidence
for the investigation. It's also a testament to the far-reaching power of familial DNA and the work of Sean
memory and his fellow "Bloodline Detectives" who, despite setbacks in the investigation, never give up.
I'm Nancy Grace. Thanks for being with us on "Bloodline Detectives." [MUSIC PLAYING]

Brief Summary

The episode recounts the Town Path Rapist case, focusing on the assault, investigation, and eventual capture of Keith Henderson through familial DNA.

Key points

The Town Path Rapist. A couple is assaulted at gunpoint in Salisbury, England, sparking a decade-long investigation.
A Night of Horror. Stephanie Rudd and Adam Underwood face a terrifying attack that changes their lives forever.
The Aftermath. The victims struggle with anxiety and depression as the investigation stalls.
Cold Case Revisited. After six years, the investigation into the assault is reignited by Sean Memory.
The Arrest of Keith Henderson. After years of investigation, Keith Henderson is finally arrested for the 2001 attack.
Trial and Confrontation. Stephanie and Adam face their attacker in court, seeking justice after a decade.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I remember us all just going like, yes!

The moment of receiving the verdict after a long wait for justice.

2:05WatchApr 1, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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