The Fayetteville Predator | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: March 31, 2006, Fayetteville, North Carolina. This was a out-of-the-blue stranger rape.
NANCY GRACE: This attack is not an isolated incident. Soon, more sex assaults are reported
along the very same street. KELLIE BERG: We definitely had a serial rapist. We knew that he was entering homes.
He was watching people before he identified them as the victims. NANCY GRACE: Despite countless hours of police work
and public surveillance, no breakthrough-- victims and the community alike, trapped in fear.
I didn't know who he was. I didn't know where he was. Was he going to look at my license
and say, OK, I'm going to go get her? He said he was going to find out if I contacted authorities,
that he would find out and kill both my daughter and myself. NANCY GRACE: This is the story of the hunt for a serial sex
predator whose victims live in a nightmare of fear while he is out, roaming free.
I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Fayetteville is a historic city
located in the southeastern part of North Carolina. It's also home to thousands of servicemen and women
stationed at Fort Liberty. PAUL WOOLVERTON: It is the largest military base in the country by population.
There's generally approximately 50,000 people stationed here in uniform. The military drives the economy here and a lot of the community.
Some of the 82nd Airborne is home to a lot of Special Operations soldiers. There's a saying, "When the world dials 911, they pick
up the phone at Fort Liberty." JOHN SOMERINDYKE: It's grown quite a bit in the past few years or so.
Got a lot to do here, have baseball team, a lot of restaurants, movies, outdoor theater,
things of that nature. Two hours from the beach, four hours from the mountain. You can't go wrong there.
NANCY GRACE: Beginning on March 31, 2006, this peaceful and beautiful city is rocked
by a series of brutal sex attacks, all concentrated along one street, North Ramsey Street.
The first of these attacks occurs when a woman is horribly raped at her own apartment.
JOHN SOMERINDYKE: The victim was inside the shower. She got out of the shower, and the suspect was in her bedroom.
Not sure how he got in. There was no signs of forced entry, but he basically forced her onto the bed
and sexually assaulted her. PAUL WOOLVERTON: Afterwards, he told her to wait at least five minutes
before she called for help. She was a juvenile at the time because the juvenile detectives
that was-- they were very private about the cases that came into juvenile. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: Per protocol, they would call detectives out.
A canvas would be done of the area looking for any potential witnesses, looking for any video cameras
or things of that nature, or any evidence, either in the room or outside in the parking lot or outside of the apartment.
When I learned about it later, it was actually closed because there was no DNA at the time.
NANCY GRACE: But then, another attack, once again on Ramsey Street. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: She actually ran
to the closest convenience store and had the clerk there call 911. One patrol officer would respond to the scene
and a patrol supervisor also, due to the magnitude of the call. And once they determined a crime did occur
and that it actually happened in our jurisdiction, they would call detectives out.
KELLIE BERG: She was running like she did every morning. She left the house. She ran down Ramsey Street.
As she was coming back, this person-- she'd seen him run across the road, and he knocked her into the wood line on the side of the road.
He told her he had a gun. He held her down, and he raped her. She actually told me that she'd seen two officers drive by,
but she couldn't do anything. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: When he was done, he fled the area on foot.
But after that, we didn't know if he got into a vehicle. NANCY GRACE: Police throw more detectives
and more forensic personnel into the investigation. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: They're doing a Canvas of the area,
looking for any potential witnesses, anything the victim may have dropped, anything the suspect may have touched.
KELLIE BERG: She was a triathlete. She was a runner. And he was able to come from across the street
and catch her and knock her into the woods. So he said, OK, this has to be somebody that's
fit and capable of catching. So they run a lot. That was kind of our mentality at the time.
We knew that he was between 5'10 and 6'1, white or Hispanic male. And he had a really funky odor.
JOHN SOMERINDYKE: That was something described as maybe a mechanic type of oil or grease,
maybe somebody who works on cars. And some people in the military, they have jobs where they work with vehicles, and machinery,
and equipment that they might get some oil on them and so on. That would make kind of a smell.
JOHN SOMERINDYKE: She was brought to Cape Fear Valley Hospital, which is the main hospital here
in Fayetteville. And the on-call SANE nurse would be called in to perform the sexual assault exam.
It can last up to several hours long, has often been described as a continuation of the rape itself.
It's that bad. KELLIE BERG: They're scraping your fingernails, and you're having to get naked in front of a stranger.
And they're going into orifices, your mouth, and they're scraping, and they're taking pubic hairs.
And it's a huge violation. But then there's those other questions. What were you doing prior?
What did you eat? Things that you don't think are very important until the worst
moment of your life happens. And then somebody's asking you, when's the last time you had sex?
Who did you have sex with? How many times did you have sex? You've just been raped, and you're asking some pretty
detailed, hard questions. And all you can think about is, I want to be safe. I want to make sure that I don't have any diseases or injuries.
So the victim's going through their own thing. And selfishly-- because it is selfish, because as a detective,
I need that evidence to help you solve your case. And I'm asking you to do it at your most vulnerable time.
So it's one of the trainings that we do is you have to be extremely sensitive to the victim's needs.
NANCY GRACE: Samples from the same rape kit are then taken to the Fayetteville crime lab for testing.
DNA was located in the sexual assault kit and was loaded into the National DNA database.
CODIS is a software that searches law enforcement databases for a match to a DNA profile
from a crime scene. So if somebody has had their DNA collected when they've been arrested or convicted of a crime, they will get that match.
And that is enough to arrest somebody. But if somebody has never had their DNA taken during an arrest
or after they've been convicted of a crime, then CODIS isn't going to find a match.
NANCY GRACE: There is no match in CODIS, the national DNA databank. Detectives examined the previous attack on Ramsey Street.
Lieutenant Somerindyke was able to find some evidence, some sheets and stuff that we're in our evidence room
and tested them for DNA, that it matched these cases. NANCY GRACE: Then, six months later, February,
2007, the rapist strikes again. This time, it's a middle-aged woman in her apartment building
just off Ramsey Street. The victim, again, was home alone, sleeping. Suspect broke in, sexually assaulted her.
They were able to get DNA from the assault, and they put it in their database. And they discovered that there had
been a match from another crime in Harnett County, which is a neighboring county just North of Cumberland County,
just North of Fayetteville. And Ramsey Street is the road to Harnett County. When we reached out to Harnett County,
they had been into this one particular neighborhood 30, 40, 50 times in a month.
They just constantly being called. Described him as a male, light-skinned, again, 5'9, 5'10 to 6 foot.
And it just so happened a deputy had been out there multiple times, was just frustrated.
And he just got a swab and swabbed the window and put it in his trunk. And a week before this case, he actually put it in.
And that's how we got the match. So we knew that the offender had been up in Harnett County, peeping.
We knew that neighborhood that that was occurring in was predominantly military.
There was a lot of special forces guys. We knew that because they would do recon.
They would go out in the woods because they wanted to catch this peeper. And then they never had any incidents when they were
out in the woods, watching. So they thought, OK, he has to be a military guy because he
knows what we're doing. Maybe he worked on airlines or helicopters because he had that oil smell to him.
Then we thought, maybe he's a mechanic. NANCY GRACE: The net of the serial rapist grows wider.
So Fayetteville Police create a multi-agency team to fight back. They join forces with nearby agencies
to broaden the investigation. KELLIE BERG: It was the third victim where we actually started a task force.
We had the State Bureau of Investigation, FBI, local agencies, the County, Harnett County, Hoke County,
and we would meet about once a week. We had a huge task force. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: They had to link to Harnett County.
So they were in Harnett County doing a canvas of the neighborhood. They are canvassing the neighborhoods here
in Fayetteville, where the rapes happen, responding to any call that happened in any
of these neighborhoods in Fayetteville, reading all reports going back years. KELLIE BERG: We definitely had a serial rapist.
We knew that he was entering homes. He was watching people. When you don't know who the suspect is, especially,
and you can't figure it out, you're looking at everyone. I used to carry around a pack of DNA swabs.
And everywhere I went, I'd be like, oh, can I have a swab? I collected a lot of DNA.
NANCY GRACE: The next attack occurs less than a month later in an apartment off Ramsey Street.
JOHN SOMERINDYKE: The victim was 15 years old. She was home alone. The victim was sleeping, wakes up to the suspect on top of her.
He rapes her. They did the canvas, collected evidence, got her little cartoon sheets from her bed
because she is a little girl. She also did a sexual assault kit. No evidence was retrieved from her sexual assault kit.
But we did recover the suspect's DNA from her cartoon bed sheets. NANCY GRACE: Next, on "Bloodline Detectives,"
the speed with which this serial rapist strikes, victim after victim, has police and the community
reeling and demanding answers. NANCY GRACE: Fayetteville, North Carolina, 2007--
a serial sex attacker strikes so many victims so quickly, police give him a name, "the Ramsey Street Rapist."
We definitely had a serial rapist. We knew that he was peeping at this time. We knew we had a peeper.
We knew that he was a white or Hispanic male, 5'9 to 6'1. The big indicator that we had was that funky smell.
I think every one of the victims described him as smelling really bad. NANCY GRACE: Then, September 18, 2007, another brutal attack.
This time, the victim is a criminology student. She's one of three women in her apartment
when the sex attack occurs. I had fallen asleep. My roommate and a friend that was visiting that night
had gone into her room and was listening to music and stuff, and I had fallen asleep in the living room.
I had a headache, so I had one of those squishy pillows. And I had put it over my eyes to help me fall asleep.
And next thing I knew, it was a hand around my throat and the pressure of his hand over the pillow on my face.
I pretty much just froze at first. And next thing I know, he had said, if you scream or make any noise, the other two will get it.
So instantly, I went into protection mode. So in my mind, I was just trying to get him to stay away or not
to have any harm come to them. I didn't have any shoes on or anything. And we lived on the ground floor.
He told me, get up, and we're going to walk outside. And the whole time he was walking me out,
the pillow was still over my face. So he was using my shoulders to guide where we were going.
I never got a clear vision of his face. I did, at one point during the attack, try to barely open my eyes so he wouldn't
realize my eyes were open, and I just saw that he was white. He had this mechanical oil, sickening
sweet kind of smell to him that was kind of mixed with body odor. It was-- I don't know.
It's really hard to describe. He had walked me out into an open field, and that's where part of the attack happened.
I think something spooked him when we were out in the field. And then he walked me back up to our back porch area,
and that's where he finished the attack. And then he told me to go back inside and to make sure I locked the door behind me at that time.
He said, don't call the police. I'll know If you do. And I probably sat down for maybe four or five
minutes, if that, before I got up, and I went and woke my roommate and my friend up.
I don't remember details. I do remember they got me up, and put me in the ambulance,
and took me to the hospital. And my roommate rode to the hospital with me. It was how a lot of women say, it's like being
violated all over again. But I just kept telling myself, in the long run, this is going to help.
This is going to be one of those pieces of that puzzle they're going to need. NANCY GRACE: Now, five separate sex attacks linked
to the Ramsey Street rapist. And still, investigators have not trapped him. Victims living in fear, knowing he's still prowling the area.
He had my ID. He had all of that. I didn't know who he was. I didn't know where he was.
Was he going to look at my license and say, OK, I'm going to go get her to make sure she doesn't
run her mouth or can't find me? Even today, I'm way more hyper-aware of my surroundings.
In the very beginning, if I went anywhere, it was not by myself, and I had at least one or two other people with me.
NANCY GRACE: January, 2008, only four months after the last sex attack, there's another assault
on Ramsey Street. This victim is a 29-year-old military wife at home with her two young children.
KANDICE CASTILLO: I had worked the day before. And I remember just being exhausted.
And the little one, I remember putting him to bed. And then my three-year-old, she and I
fell asleep on the couch in the living room. And I woke up at one point and picked her up and put
her in her bedroom on her bed. She was afraid to sleep in the dark, so I made sure that the hallway light and her bedroom light
stayed on. And then I watched TV for a little bit, and then turned off the TV, and I just fell asleep on the couch.
For a split moment, I thought maybe my husband had come home from his deployment
at the time he was deployed overseas. Very quickly, I realized that this was not my husband.
I was woken up with someone covering my eyes, and covering my mouth, and telling me to get up, and get up
now and listen to them and do what they told me to do so that they don't hurt me or my children.
Actually, he said my daughter because literally you could see her room because the light was on.
This particular person was not there to rob me, to take any of my personal belongings,
but to victimize a woman with two small children. He asked me to lock the door to the bedroom.
But I was defiant, and I was in a survival mode, like, what do I need to do? What can I do?
And so I was thinking, we need fingerprints. I need fingerprints. So I did not lock the door.
He ended up locking the door. He then asked for me to undress. Again, I was defiant and did not do that.
He was going to have to do whatever it was that he wanted to do. I won't go into details for the next what seemed like eternity,
but probably an hour or so of different things, but constantly threatening my daughter's life and my life
and reiterating that if I tell anyone what just occurred that he would find out.
He knows who I am. He knows where I live. He would find me. He would find my daughter, and he would kill both of us.
For a split second, I thought about not reporting what had just happened. But I thought of my daughter, and I thought of my husband,
and I thought of just everybody. This is not right, and I have to do something. I called the authorities and reported
what had just happened to me. I never saw his face. He had a hoodie on, and he had it cinched so
that I could not see his face. He smelled like grease, like diesel, like works on cars type of thing, a mechanical type thing.
He smelled dirty. Patrol arrived on scene. They secured the scene. They contact forensics, our ID techs and detectives, who,
one will go to the hospital. They'll try to talk to the victim. And one will go to the site, and they'll
start processing the scene, looking for evidence. In this case, they processed the doors, and the windows,
and the bedroom. And then she was taken to the hospital and given a rape kit. Fayetteville Police Department poured a lot of resources
into that area after the last rape. I mean, they were doing undercover patrols, foot patrols.
They had a vacant apartment they are using as a decoy apartment to maybe lure the suspect in to attempt to rape
the undercover officer. They are stopping everything that moved in that area after midnight and getting cheek swabs
from folks to send to the crime lab to compare for DNA. NANCY GRACE: Detectives decide to use local media
and talk publicly about the brutal serial rapist, hoping it will generate leads.
It finally came out in 2008 that there had been a series of rapes, all attributed to the same person
based on DNA. And that's when things ramped up, I think, even more with fear and concern in the community.
Shortly after the news conference, I went to a local gym that was holding a free self-defense session for women, and it was just filled.
And they were all scared that they might get assaulted. NANCY GRACE: There have now been six sex assaults.
The community is aware and on guard, but police find themselves no closer to catching a suspect.
The case begins to go cold. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: After the cases did officially go cold,
Kellie Berg kept them warm each year by reaching out to the victims, by reviewing the case files.
She was the only one doing anything with these cases for at least five years. NANCY GRACE: After seven long years,
a new cold-case team is formed. Can groundbreaking forensic science finally identify a serial sex predator?
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." NANCY GRACE: Fayetteville, North Carolina, 2013,
a team of cold-case detectives try to identify a serial rapist responsible for a series of six known sex attacks committed
between 2006 and 2008. Kellie Berg was one of my sergeants for two weeks, and then she got transferred out.
And when she got transferred out, she lugged all these black books, these case files for these Ramsey Street cases.
She made sure I wasn't going to forget about them. She didn't want anybody forgetting about them.
NANCY GRACE: At this time, a breakthrough forensic technology emerges called DNA phenotyping.
This revolutionary new method offers a clearer profile of the attacker by actually providing a visual image.
It can bring detectives one step closer to uncovering the predator's identity. Fayetteville Police Department contacted Parabon to request
a snapshot phenotype analysis. This analysis would predict the person's traits who is responsible for these terrible attacks.
And then in July 2016, Parabon delivered the snapshot phenotype image and predictions to Fayetteville Police
Department. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: So it did confirm our suspect was of European ancestry.
We weren't 100% sure because one of the victims said he may be Hispanic just because of his complexion.
So it cleared that up. But it also predicted that his eye color was going to be brownish or hazel, predicted his hair color was
going to be brown or black, and predicted maybe slight freckling, and predicted the face shape.
So that automatically helps narrow down your suspect pool with the Fayetteville area
at least by half. I actually drove down to Fayetteville that weekend to look at the pictures.
I actually almost felt guilty because when I looked at them, it didn't spark any kind of memory.
It didn't. But again, I never really saw his face. I guess a small part of me was really hoping that when I saw
the picture, I could be like, oh, yeah, I know him from, and it didn't. So it was a little disappointing.
They then released that image and description to the public, hoping to generate tips.
As far as leads go, we got dozens of leads immediately. But in this case, it did not lead to the identity
of the Ramsey Street rapist. Detectives find all the leads dry up again. They need another scientific breakthrough.
When we return to "Bloodline Detectives," we find out if they get one. NANCY GRACE: 2018, Fayetteville, North Carolina,
Bloodline Detectives attempt a new forensic science, trying to catch a serial rapist on the loose since 2006.
It still has not produced a suspect. But now they seek out another new forensic weapon,
investigative genetic genealogy. Investigative genetic genealogy is using traditional genealogy and DNA in order
to help law enforcement identify violent criminals and unknown deceased individuals.
It's where they use basically family-tree-type DNA. So if you might contact a company called GEDmatch DNA
and you submit your DNA to them, these companies will help you find your ancestors and your relatives.
So the police will look at your DNA that they have from the rapes, and they will look
at the DNA in this database. And they say, OK, this person over here did not commit the crime, but the DNA clearly is related.
In 2018, when I joined forces with Parabon, we reached out to Fayetteville Police Department
to offer to perform genetic genealogy on their case. The good thing with that they already had that profile
from the phenotyping. So we could skip that step, and they could get right on it, which increased the turnaround
with our results. Because the DNA had already been analyzed for the snapshot phenotyping, all we had to do was
upload that file to GEDmatch to see if we could get any strong matches in that database.
And when I saw that match list, I just couldn't believe it. There was an individual who shared
over 800 centimorgans of her DNA with the unknown Ramsey Street rapist. It took me a week or so to start working on the case.
And once I did, I thought it was going to be very straightforward because we had this incredibly
promising match. But it didn't turn out to be quite as simple as I thought. As I was trying to find somebody who fit the profile to be
the Ramsey Street rapist in this family, I was coming up against a lot of challenges.
Nobody fit just perfectly. And notably, the only person that I identified who seemed
like he could potentially be the Ramsey Street rapist had bright-blue eyes. And we had very high confidence that he had brown or hazel eyes.
And so that really gave me pause. I felt like something was wrong, something was missing,
but I just couldn't figure out what it was. After beating my head against the wall for a while,
I wrote up a report for Detective Somerindyke with my findings. And very quickly after I briefed him with that report,
he followed up on the leads that I provided. And they were all dead ends, just as I feared.
When I dug more deeply into this match's family tree, I discovered that her paternal half-sibling
married her maternal uncle, and this was what I needed to find. So instead of looking at her great nephews,
I started looking at her half great nephews, who were also her first cousin, once removed.
So half great nephews originally wasn't an option because they would only share about 6% of their DNA,
and the match shared 12%. But if it's a double relationship, you add those amounts of DNA together.
So first cousins, once removed, share about 6% of their DNA. And half great nephews share about 6% of their DNA.
So 6 plus 6 equals 12. A-ha. I just couldn't stop. I didn't sleep at all. I worked on it straight through.
And it was 2:00 AM when I finally found him. I came upon the person who fit everything perfectly,
and that was Darold Wayne Bowden. I just couldn't wait. I'm on the West Coast. The detectives were on the East Coast.
And I thought, well, maybe he'll be up. It's 5:00 AM his time. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: I'm an early riser.
I got up at about 5:00 AM. I saw I had an email from Cece. I was doing some research for Cece
on our end for records she could not access. So I was going to the vital records
section in Raleigh, which is the state capital here in North Carolina. When I had an email from Cece, said, do not go.
It's like, stop the presses. Do not go to Raleigh. Call me immediately. And so I just replied and said, hey, OK, I'll be in the office
at 8 o'clock this morning. I'll just call you when I get in. And then she replied back immediately on the email, hey,
no, just call me now. I thought Detective Somerindyke was going to jump out of his skin.
He was whooping, and hollering, and probably waking his entire house up. It was a very exciting morning for both of us.
When I told Detective Somerindyke his name, he did not recognize it. But he very quickly dug in and started researching and learning
everything he could about him. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: And he was living the life. He had his own business.
He had a pretty decent girlfriend from all accounts, had five kids. So yeah, I think he thought he was cruising.
And as long as he didn't get his DNA collected anywhere, I think he thought he was going to be good.
NANCY GRACE: 43-year-old Darold Wayne Bowden, no stranger to the law. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: The best way to describe this guy is a career
petty criminal, and he barely stayed under that DNA radar his entire criminal career,
going back to the early '90s. I mean, he served time in prison for breaking into cars,
but they aren't collecting DNA for felony arrests back then. I mean, he had a lot of theft, arrests, a lot
of domestic violence arrests. And unfortunately, in North Carolina, we don't collect DNA for domestic violence arrests.
So as we're doing research on Bowden, a lot of things matched up-- you know, the height, the weight.
He was from Linden. And people in Linden typically do have a country accent, which
is what the victims described. We found out Bowden now-- so this is in 2018. He actually owned his own heating
and air conditioning business. So we're trying to figure out a way to collect his DNA.
NANCY GRACE: Detectives must now prove Darold Bowden is the perpetrator. So they've got to get a sample of his DNA.
Will they get it? That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." NANCY GRACE: In Fayetteville, North Carolina, 2018, detectives
believe they have finally identified a serial sex predator. His name? Darold Wayne Bowden.
But now they must prove Bowden's DNA matches DNA from the attacker found at the crime scene.
The genetic genealogy report, that's basically all it is. It's like a Crime Stoppers tip.
You still have to do an independent police investigation. You have to lawfully obtain that person's DNA if--
you know, if justified, and get that DNA, match-- that one-on-one DNA match at your state crime lab.
NANCY GRACE: Darold Bowden owns a company that sells and installs HVAC units. Investigators decide to use this to their advantage.
We were able to actually get our hands on a couple of vacant decoy houses. And we had an undercover guy call Bowden out
to come get an estimate because one of the houses had no AC unit at all. It had been stolen.
And while Bowden's inside, we have an undercover guy outside that swabs the handle to the truck
that Bowden came up in. And then when Bowden left, every place he touched, we swabbed for DNA, including the undercover guy's
hand, who he shook. This was, like, in June, and it's 95 degrees and humid in Fayetteville.
And there's no heat in our air in this house, so we have a bucket of water with cups.
We have little bottles of water that we're offering. Bowden, trying to get him to drink something that we
can get his DNA from that. He declined that. So I think we wound up getting about eight or nine
different DNA swabs, hoping to get a touch DNA sample that we sent off to the state crime lab.
NANCY GRACE: The heat on that day, however, does not favor the undercover agents.
Every sample we sent, there was not a viable sample that could be entered into the national DNA database.
I consult with our police attorneys at the time and with the senior Superior Court judge in Cumberland
County, Jim Ammons, and I prepare a search warrant to get Darold Bowden's DNA. We called Bowden out to a second house
to serve the search warrant on him. We had the same undercover guy call Bowden back
out to a second vacant house. Our undercover guy was presenting himself as a house
flipper and just said-- you know, called Bowden out to come get an estimate. NANCY GRACE: Police quickly swoop in.
They reveal their identities to Bowden and obtain a DNA swab before releasing him.
The cat's kind of out of the bag then. We serve the search warrant on him, so we were keeping tabs on him.
I got a call from the forensic biology manager himself. And I know he was kind of excited about it
too, Jodie West, and he put me on speakerphone with his staff that worked on the case.
And, yeah, they let me know. My office is kind of in the back corner, but I always leave my door open.
But I had to turn my chair around, facing away from the door. I did have a little moment to myself
there, where I may have teared up a tad bit, yeah. NANCY GRACE: Detectives have an arrest warrant.
And now it's time to apprehend Darold Wayne Bowden. Prior to going to Bowden's house,
I just said to one of the marshals, hey, I said, I don't care when, but at some point,
I want my handcuffs to be on him at some point in this process. We are up at o'dark hundred the next morning,
staging up with the US marshals and surrounded the house. They had to breach the door because he
wouldn't answer the door. After they breached the door, me and my detective are standing on the front porch as the marshals
are in there, handcuffing him. I hear one of our guys say, hey, get John's handcuffs.
We gotta get John's handcuffs. He was actually William Britton. He remembered me and came out and got my handcuffs.
And they arrested Bowden using my handcuffs. CECE MOORE: Darold was arrested in his own home,
and he was photographed at the time of his arrest, shirtless. And that revealed that he had a large swastika tattoo,
which just reinforced my feeling about this disgusting individual. JOHN SOMERINDYKE: That picture pretty much
sums up who Darold Bowden is-- swastika prison tattoo. You know, just terrible person.
Yeah, who gets that? NANCY GRACE: Lieutenant Somerindyke wastes no time telling the victims the news
they've waited for so long. He didn't even say hello or anything. Just instantly, he was like, we got him.
And I just-- I collapsed. I mean, I started crying. I was smiling. I was-- it was almost instantly like this huge weight had just
lifted. I just remember, like, crying, and I couldn't believe it. I couldn't because I really wasn't sure if that call would
ever come, you know, after so many years of it-- like, just not hearing anything.
And the weight that I had on my shoulder that I didn't even realize I had was gone.
It was, like, a year and a half, almost two years of waiting. And it was probably not even a month
before we were supposed to start the trial that I got a call that said he had decided
he wanted to take a plea deal. PAUL WOOLVERTON: He had been charged with 47 total crimes,
and he pleaded guilty to just a small handful of those. And as a result, he's going to be serving 27 years in prison.
Is that sufficient? Some people would say, no. The question is, how long will he live?
Will he live to get released? You know, he was arrested in his late 40s, so I guess there's a possibility he might survive.
But we'll just have to see. NANCY GRACE: This moment marks the beginning of a new journey
for the survivors. He knows he's guilty, and he is not having a great freedom time in America, walking around.
He is in prison. He is in a jumpsuit. And I'm OK with that because he can't hurt anybody else.
I think, to a certain extent, even today, I still kind of do the-- the looking over my shoulder, or I'm way more
hyper-aware of my surroundings. But it definitely, in the very beginning, if I went anywhere,
it was not by myself, and I had one or-- at least one or two other people with me.
CECE MOORE: It was incredibly profound to hear Kobi's story from her personally.
I had never been able to talk to one of the victims in the cases I was involved in because they were all deceased.
And she really drove home to me how they carry this terrible burden with them after a violent crime,
and especially if they don't know who the perpetrator was. And she described to me of always wondering, looking
over your shoulder, wondering if that person is around, and not even wanting to leave her home,
and how she felt like her life just stopped at that moment. And then she expressed her appreciation for my work
and told me what investigative genetic genealogy had done for her and how much it meant to her
to finally have a name and a face to connect to her attacker. NANCY GRACE: For the brave survivors of Darold Bowden,
it's time to find a path forward, knowing he is no longer a threat to them. The bravery of these victims through
their own individual nightmares that last for years-- it's an inspiration. I'm Nancy Grace, and I want to thank you for joining us
here on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]

A string of assaults in the mid 2000s shrouds the community of Fayetteville, North Carolina in fear. Years later a forensic DNA technique brings the twisted perpetrator to justice.

Now in its fifth season, Bloodline Detectives is the leading true crime series that explores how police departments harness genetic genealogy to solve crimes that were once considered "unsolvable," bringing long-awaited answers to victims' families.

Brief Summary

The Ramsey Street Rapist terrorized Fayetteville, NC, until DNA advancements led to the identification and arrest of Darold Wayne Bowden.

Key points

The Hunt for a Serial Predator. Nancy Grace introduces the chilling story of a serial rapist terrorizing Fayetteville.
Fayetteville's Military Community. A look at Fayetteville, home to the largest military base in the U.S.
The Ramsey Street Rapist. Police give a name to the serial rapist after multiple attacks.
A Breakthrough in Forensics. New DNA phenotyping technology offers hope in identifying the rapist.
Identifying the Suspect. Detectives believe they have finally identified a serial sex predator: Darold Wayne Bowden.
The Arrest. Detectives apprehend Darold Wayne Bowden after a long investigation and DNA collection.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He said he was going to find out if I contacted authorities.

Victim recounting a threat from the rapist.

0:57WatchJun 28, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.