Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 21 - Smiley Face - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a young boy witnesses a terrible crime she was gagged she's been tired her hands were tired
and everything the chief suspect virtually turns himself in he appeared exactly like the composite sketch we
have him with no alibi but forensic tests failed to tie him to the crime it was not a cheerful day for the
prosecution i couldn't believe they were going to let him walk to possibly do this to somebody
else could forensics provide the answer [Music] the laurel village mobile home park in
delaware was home to 32 year old kaye robinson a single mother living with her 11 year old son
laurel is a farming town and a regular working class person lives there one night around two in the morning
kay was awakened by someone banging on her front door [Music] she went to the door look out the window
and see this stranger out there they said they want to use the telephone said their name was jack wilson and they
needed a ride could they use a telephone kay refused to let wilson inside think you should
leave you need to go kay robinson called 9-1-1 and the delaware state police did
respond but didn't see anything out of the ordinary so they cleared the scene without any further
investigation thinking everything was all right kaye went back to bed a half hour later she was awakened again
by a noise in her kitchen that's when she saw the same man she had seen on her porch
in her kitchen holding a butcher knife he chased kay through the house grabbed her by the arm
put a knife to her throat and told her to follow his orders if not he said he'd kill her son who was
in the adjoining bedroom from that point as little she could do it was just completely three hours of torture
just horrific torture that she endured [Music] after sexually assaulting her the man
told kaye that he lived in the same mobile home park and had two children then he stabbed her
almost 30 times and left her for dead before leaving the perpetrator checked on kaye's son
who pretended to be asleep when the man left the house kay's son rushed to their neighbor's house for
help in one word what's your emergency um if my next door neighbor has been robbed
and she's been stabbed it sounded like they might have raped her police arrived to find kaye near death
her neck was cut as bad as anyone's neck i've ever seen in my life she was stabbed
several times in her back i it was over 25 times and her neck was cut basically from side
to side as kay was rushed to the hospital paramedics noticed that her attacker had drawn a smiley
face on her back in her own blood the smiley face is one of those chilling details uh of a crime scene
that seems to serve no purpose other than to sort of mock or demean the victim of
that attack you have to know that this person is very sick very violent and possibly a serial killer
miraculously despite being stabbed 28 times kay survived when i woke up i didn't want to be there
i was furious that i was on life support my throat was cut in 10 to 15 different
places i basically felt like he was trying to decapitate me um i felt like i was in a horror movie
they didn't sever her carotid artery or her jugular vein or spinal cord so that she would have
been paralyzed or anything like that she's extremely lucky it's just unbelievable
a miracle in my book and i think everybody felt that way kaye not only survived she said she'd be
able to identify her attacker if she ever saw him he didn't blindfold me i was making
myself remember every little detail that i could about him right down to the length of his
fingernails all police had to do was find him k robinson will never forget the look on
the man's face who mercilessly stabbed her over and over again he was asking are you dead yet [ __ ] and
when i tried to reply i mean he continued stabbing me with even more force i knew right away that i was going to
have to pretend to be dead this is a very brutal crime and the way it happened the random way it happened in the
horrific way it happened let everybody start feeling a little bit uneasy and a little bit unsafe
the intent was to kill it was not to wound it was not to leave a mark it was to kill the attacker did
something police found highly unusual he left the bedroom light on throughout the attack
so kaye was able to watch him over an extended period from her description police artists
created a composite sketch which was released to the media however they didn't tell the media about the
smiley face drawing the attacker made on kaye's back it was not part of any press release
therefore this would be something that would only be known to the attacker or be familiar with to the attacker
kaye also said she made a mental record of everything he touched the man took pains to wipe off his
fingerprints but kate thought he might have overlooked one of the items a blue glass
he drank out of the glass and then he made a point to take his sleeve and wipe the prints off
of the glass but then grab the glass out of his hand and set it back on the table
there were several prints on the glass we thought it may have been some kind of lubricant
used by the perpetrator fearful that the prince might smear or even melt pegman placed the glass in
a freezer the idea to put the tumbler in the freezer was actually to set the print to cause it become rigid
so we could apply powder at some point in time and left it three full prints were lifted and
photographed two weeks after the attack police were called again to kay robinson's home
this time by her neighbors they said a man drove up to kay's home lit a candle and got down on his knees to pray
he was very concerned that the person who attacked k robinson be apprehended and wanted to pray for
that to happen and to assist police in any way that he could to see that that attacker was
apprehended the man was 38 year old doug de silva in his truck taped to his windshield
he had a newspaper article about the case with a copy of the attacker's composite sketch when
he was asked about that why he had that he said that so that he could drive down the road and
look for the suspect and keep his eye on the composite at the same time to try to find someone that
looked just like that but someone did look just like that doug de silva he very distinctly
resembled the composite drawing of the suspect in that attack da silva lived a hundred miles away but
his ex-wife and daughter both lived in the same mobile home park as kaye robinson a year earlier
he was a suspect in the murder of a 16 year old girl at a nearby high school he was also a person of interest in a
murder that had occurred six months prior to the attack on brenda k robinson police brought da silva in for
questioning in the middle of the interrogation he did something very odd he asked for a job application because
he said he wanted to become a state trooper we thought maybe he might even be taunting us at that point
we were very suspicious of that police put together a photo lineup and kaye robinson identified
de silva as the man who attacked her she immediately picked him out as the person that was in her house there was
no doubt in her mind i know that this is the man that did it it was more like an
internal reaction so with the physical appearance and that i was very confident that that was the person that attacked
me and kaye's son also identified de silva the man actually came into his room and
he was able to see him but he pretended to be asleep so he was able to also get a good enough
look at the person that he was able to also identify him in a photo lineup when da silva completed his job
application to become a policeman he turned it in that's when investigators noticed the most bizarre
thing they'd ever encountered there was a smiley face on the bottom of the document and that had the
same chilling effect on the investigators because they knew that on kay robinson's back that the attacker had
drawn a smiley face in blood since this detail hadn't been released to the press
investigators were certain they had their man doug de silva never did deny that he was
involved in the kay robinson case he'd made several statements that he was sorry for what happened to her
wanted to apologize for what happened but investigators and kaye robinson were in for a big surprise
just two weeks after kay robinson's vicious attack she identified doug de silva as her
assailant from the photo lineup i was very certain i wanted to hear him say something
to be sure that that was him when i heard him speak i thought that that was the person that was in my home
de silva had no alibi for the night of the crime i've never been so sure in my life as a
detective that doug da silva was was the right person the silva was arrested and charged with
the attempted murder of kay robinson he said to tell her i'm sorry i didn't mean to do it
i remember going there but i don't remember stabbing her to me that's a confession but then
came the bad news the silva's fingerprints did not match the prints taken from the
blue plastic glass in kaye's home the fact that we didn't get any fingerprints that matched doug de
silvas from the scene never led us to believe that he wasn't the suspect because a lot of times we don't find any
fingerprints and perhaps the worst piece of news was that the silva's dna profile did not
match the evidence collected from kay robinson's rape kit dna evidence has conclusively ruled out
douglas silva as being involved in this crime it was i mean almost like being struck in the head by
two by four we were extremely shocked it was like someone had punched you in the stomach
this was devastating the investigators the prosecutors in the case that were just
flabbergasted did not know what to do in fact they ran the dna test twice just to make sure
again the dna didn't match and at that point you can't go forward with the prosecution of douglas da silva
even though the dna report said that this wasn't the person that broke into my home i was still
convinced that it was i couldn't believe they were gonna let him walk to possibly do this to somebody
else so kaye decided to take matters into her own hands i bought a gun i found out where he lived i went to his
house i sat outside of his home i wanted to go to the door and knock on the door
and just ask him if he remembered me and i mean i just wanted to take care of it
myself but kaye thought better of it the primary reason was my son i wanted to raise my son i didn't want
to be in jail but if de silva wasn't the perpetrator a violent sexual sadist was walking the
streets and police had no new suspects i will never be able to understand why a man who was innocent of a crime
allowed himself to get so close to the crime and allowed himself to become so suspect you go back through your
investigation because then you start to doubt yourself a little bit did i miss something did i
overlook something years passed with no solid leads the longer we worked the colder the case
got then nine years later detective rob hudson got a call from detectives 30 miles away
in neighboring maryland they had a case that was very similar to the 1995 case with kay robinson the maryland victim
was a single mother living in a mobile home since she saw a man in her room bedroom
and she thought she was dreaming she saw a knife and a rolling pin in his hand and he told her he was not going to hurt
her if she gave him what he wanted the man tied her up sexually assaulted her and carried on a lengthy conversation
when she pleaded for her son's life the man's demeanor changed he begged her for forgiveness and then
he gave her some directions to not get up until a certain time and take a shower and
then she was allowed to go to work but not to call the police the man's point of entry a broken window
at the front of the house it appeared that he picked the window up after he busted it and set it
leaning against the trailer at the base of it 43 year old mark eskridge was tied to
that crime through his fingerprints the known standards of one mark eskridge were identified to the
latent prints that recovered from the glass from the point of entry from the crime scene
the cave robinson case is similar in many ways single mothers a trailer park with a sun early morning
hours lots of conversation uh a knife was used in both and eskridge looked similar to the
composite drawing of k robinson's attacker nine years earlier he matched the height the weight he had
the facial uh configuration that she had described with the scruffy beer unfortunately
eskridge's fingerprints did not match the prints on the drinking glass found in k robinson's home
and k robinson said eskridge wasn't her attacker i did tell the detectives that this was not the person
would this be yet another dead end mark eskridge was the prime suspect in the rape and attempted murder of kay
robinson after he committed a similar crime in maryland a background check revealed that
eskridge who was married and had a small child lived in the same mobile home park as kay robinson
when the attack occurred he lived in fact just a few streets away from k robinson
he may have had the opportunity to observe her and know that she resided in that house
with her son investigators were sure that eskridge was their man but there was only one problem k
robinson was unable to identify mark eskridge as her attacker that was not the man that broke into my
home but it had been nine years since her attack memories change and so did eskridge's appearance
fortunately investigators had the dna of k robinson's attacker and when they compared
eskridge's dna to the biological sample from k robinson's rape test kit investigators
finally got the answer they'd been waiting for when i received the call that the dna
was a match i couldn't believe it i was overjoyed i couldn't wait to call k robinson
i went through a lot of emotions i thought oh my god i'm glad i didn't kill the silva because it would have
been the wrong guy but i mean he could have been his twin they were identical investigators believe mark estridge
targeted kaye robinson since they lived in the same mobile home park and he probably knew
she was a single mother living alone with her son prosecutors think that eskridge knocked
on kay's door claiming he had car trouble because he wanted to make sure no men were in her home
later that night he broke in and [Music] attacked he told kaye that he lived nearby
because he had no intention of letting her live [Music] he attacked her repeatedly with a knife
but kay robinson's will to survive was too great i still had a life to live and i wanted
my life back and i was going to take it back a piece at a time eskridge left valuable dna evidence behind
more reliable than any eyewitness a decade after the crime mark eskridge went on trial for the sexual assault
and attempted murder of kay robinson he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison
plus 20 years he was a sick individual i don't believe that you can stab somebody that many times
taunt them and then spend that much time with him and not have something really really
wrong with you would he be considered a serial rapist or is he a serial sex predator
i mean he's a serial something authorities cite the case as a reason to be skeptical of
eyewitness identifications especially when the witness is under extreme duress you have an eyewitness identification
which is as certain as certain can be but you have science and dna evidence telling you otherwise
doug de silva's bizarre behavior and his equally bizarre resemblance to the actual attacker
almost landed him in jail doug de silva's whereabouts are unknown even to his ex-wife it's still very very
strange and very puzzling as to why doug de silva had ever gotten involved in the case why
he introduced himself into the case you always know somebody's going to get caught
or you're going to catch them it's just you don't know when sometimes so i just say you know hats off to dna
is a great a great tool and i tell you it's in this case to be able to free one man and convict
another i say that says a lot for justice

The woman had been sexually assaulted, stabbed repeatedly, and left for dead. When someone who fit that description practically turned himself in, police were sure they had their man... until the DNA evidence proved them wrong.

Brief Summary

Kaye Robinson survived a brutal attack, leading to the eventual identification and conviction of Mark Eskridge through DNA evidence after years of investigation.

Key points

A Night of Terror. Kaye Robinson faces a terrifying home invasion that turns into a brutal attack.
The Smiley Face Clue. A chilling detail emerges when Kaye's attacker draws a smiley face in her blood.
Miraculous Survival. Despite being stabbed 28 times, Kaye Robinson survives and identifies her attacker.
DNA Evidence Breakthrough. After years of investigation, DNA evidence finally leads to the real attacker.
Justice Served. Mark Eskridge is convicted for the brutal attack on Kaye Robinson, bringing closure to the case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I felt like I was in a horror movie.

Kaye Robinson describes her traumatic experience.

4:12WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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