Unsolved Mysteries with Dennis Farina - Season 7, Episode 22 - Updated Full Episode | Forensic Files

next on unsolved mysteries a desolate road a teenage girl driving alone and one fatal bullet under hypnosis
a witness may have described her killer guests at the southern end gets something extra with the price of their
rooms ghosts of former residents who died of foul play he's brutal cunning and responsible
for 10 murders and 50 rapes authorities need your help to catch him is earth on the doomsday collision
course with a deadly asteroid it's happened before and it will happen again cunning deceit and lies
maybe you can guess who's telling the truth i'm dennis farina and this is unsolved mysteries
[Music] [Music] valdez north carolina on the night of december 22nd a recent high school graduate
rhonda henson attends her first ever company christmas party [Music] at midnight rhonda leaves with two
girlfriends after dropping off her companions rhonda plans to make the 10-mile drive
to her home where she lives with her parents at exactly 1am rhonda's mother wakes up
from a sound sleep with a strange premonition i woke up feeling panicky scared because i felt like something had
happened rhonda i felt like rhonda was dead i felt like she had been in an automobile accident
i got up and i had a little cb scanner that you listen to you know your accidents and all that stuff on it
and for some odd reason i just turned it on you know thought maybe you know if it'd been actually not here
on the scanner and the minute i turned it on it came over you know if they'd been a
homicide 120 check a vehicle in the ditch footage springs mountain at i-40 complainant
rhonda's car was discovered just a half a mile from her house the driver's door was open and a few
feet away rhonda was found dead she was lying on her back and her arms appeared to have been deliberately
placed at her side she had been killed by a single bullet fired by a high-powered rifle
it tore through the trunk of her car through her seat and penetrated her heart the hardest thing is living every day
wondering who did this rhonda was the most loving caring person that you've ever
known romney was the type daughter that everybody would like to have at first the murder of rhonda henson
appeared to be a random act of violence but as the investigation unfolded disturbing clues emerged
suggesting that ronda may have been murdered by someone she knew several weeks after ronda's graduation
she began to act strangely previously happy to drive alone she started asking her father to go with
her on trips into town and on one of these trips she made a disturbing statement dan i've
got something to tell you but i'm afraid to you know i said no matter whether it's
good i'm bad tell me and she said i'll think about it and she never did explain never did tell me why
what it was you know she's afraid to tell me well you keep your mind on your job okay
her mother also recalled the strange conversation shortly before rhonda's death i was
wondering if it's ever okay to go with a married man i said rhonda there's never a time that
it's all right to go with a married man the only thing that comes from that is people getting
hurt rhonda's comments suggested that she was under some kind of personal pressure the police
investigation began to uncover evidence that someone may have been stalking her the night that she was killed
between 12 15 and 12 30 on the morning that ronda henson was murdered a witness drove under
the interstate 40 bridge on mineral springs mountain road she observed a blue chevrolet
facing in a northerly direction with two white males in the vehicle the car was parked next to the same
off-ramp that rhonda used to exit it was spotted 30 minutes before the fatal bullet was fire key
and just 200 yards from where her body was found later that evening another witness
traveling down the same road past a similar blue car with a single man at the wheel
speeding away from the motorcycle as he continued down the road the witness saw ronda's vehicle parked
at the same spot where her body was found a woman was slumped over the steering wheel
and a man was standing at her door the witness did not get a close look at the man and drove on
assuming the couple had been drinking there were some latent prints on the driver's door
but these latent prints have not been identified please put the witness under hypnosis
and ask them to recall more details this is the actual audio tape of that session chevelle
looks blue serving them all i believe looks like the front end has been messed up
the same primer i promise gray he's not a big guy he's six foot five ten he's not made himself it's on
a dark brown headed guy the witness also remembered seeing a second car parked down the road
from ronda's vehicle it was a black or dark blue trans am some believe that car may have been driven by the murderer who
killed rhonda henson and why authorities are certain that she would never have stopped for a stranger
was rhonda pulled over by someone she knew who then fired the fatal shot was the man seen at rhonda's car the
murderer or was he someone who happened by and then left the area when he saw that
ronda was dead we have some different stories but to really be able to substantiate these
stories we don't have that information that's what we're looking for those little pieces of information that we can
substantiate what happened a 20 000 reward is being offered in this case [Music]
if you have any information please log on to our website at unsolved.com next a 200 year old mansion is now a
hotel where ghosts are as common as guests in saint francisville louisiana sits the myrtles plantation a 200 year old
mansion that's been converted into a bed and breakfast it claims to be one of america's
most haunted houses shooting poisoning and lynching at least eight people have died violent
deaths here and some say their spirits are still on the property i've had enough happen to let me know
that other people live here that we can't always see legend has it that in 1796 the original owner general david
bradford built the house directly on top of an indian burial ground since then hundreds of ghostly sightings
have occurred could it be that spirits are haunting the plantation the myrtles plantation is said to be a
window into the supernatural guests here know their stay might include a ghostly encounter
i guess i have to say i really didn't believe that there were actually ghosts or spirits there
that it was just folklore and legend and it wasn't until i was already in that things began to happen that
convinced me that yes they are here [Music] but by then it was too late financially
i couldn't afford to be scared when amy campbell and her friend michelle came to stay at the bnb
one october they were well informed of its ghostly past we were very hesitant if we were going
to stay all night because we had heard that the place was haunted we had heard that there were
ghosts that visit people at night that tuck you in fix your clothes we weren't sure we
wanted to experience any of that i was sleeping for a little while and i woke up feeling bouncing on the end of
my bed and i saw a little girl jumping on the end of my bed and i thought surely i'm dreaming and i
stuck my head back under the covers it kept bouncing and bouncing and bouncing it felt like forever
and all of a sudden it stopped and i looked back up at the little girl that was jumping
on the bed was gone the child ghost is thought to be cornelia woodruff one of four people who died in a series
of tragic events 175 years ago cornelia was the daughter of judge woodruff whose family lived at the myrtles in the
early 1800s when the woodrus house slave chloe was caught eavesdropping on the judge
he decided to punish her this is the third time i've caught you i wasn't listening
i will not tolerate it the judge ordered chloe's ear cut off [Applause] [Music] afraid of also being sent to the fields
to do hard labor she devised a plan she ground poisonous oleander leaves into a birthday cake hoping to make the
family sick and then she would redeem herself by nursing them back to hell i picked your favorite cake
with sarah she may have thought she was boiling just enough on leander to make the
family sick already knowing what was wrong she would take care of them be the hero and be left in the household
to take care of them but chloe's scheme backfired young cornelia her mother and sister all died from the poison
a lot of guests want to know what happened to chloe after the poisoning it's believed that she was killed by a
mixed mob black and whites were probably together of course the other slaves were probably
afraid of what was going to happen to them she was supposedly beaten hung and then
thrown into the river it's believed that cornelia along with her mother and sister
has joined chloe in haunting the house [Music] several years ago mark and holly parenti
spent a frightening night at the myrtles mark had been reluctant to visit but knew that his wife would be intrigued by
the hotel's history it's known as one of the most haunted plantations in america and i wasn't looking forward
to finding out why come right now it is it's a beautiful house it was scary the thought of being in
this haunted house was very scary more probably to mark than me but i was scared too
[Music] perhaps mark and holly had reason to be nervous another of the resident ghosts a former
owner named william winters was supposedly gunned down during the late 1800s he is said to haunt the main staircase
mark in holly's room was just beyond that flight of stairs my mind had gotten to me a little bit
because i wouldn't let her turn the lights off so we're laying in bed and she's sort of having a nervous chit chat and
what i heard was a very deep sounding bang sounds like the steps as soon as i heard that noise you know
the adrenaline rush no no how do i stay here oh come on no i want to look if i had to venture a
guest it sounded like footsteps the reason william winters was murdered remains a mystery
winners william winners it was late one night in 1870 when a mysterious horseman appeared on
the myrtle's front lawn who's there are you william winners yes i'm william winners
whoever was there shot him in the chest he made it back through the double doors
trying to reach his wife sarah she was upstairs he only made it to the 17th step
he died there in her arms all i know was that it was enough for me you know it was enough for me to make me
want to leave in a way i think we were both hoping it might have been our imagination
but it definitely wasn't there are certain times that uh i'm uncomfortable here uh certain times that yeah you could say
i get the creeps you can feel a sadness or you can walk in and you hear especially upstairs footsteps you know
you hear them someone is right behind you you can stop the footsteps stop once you have the encounter and you
feel the sensation you will know that their intention is not to harm you they are truly here to protect you they
protect this home this is their station this is their life this is where they live
next a series of brutal rape stretches across 400 miles and a dna match links them to the same suspect
[Music] sacramento california [Music] i remember waking up with a flashlight shining in my face
and i was looking down the barrel of a gun and he said uh don't move don't make a sound or i will kill you
give me your hands and within a moment's notice my life was all of a sudden in the control of somebody else just do
as i tell you this rape victim whose identity we are not revealing at her request is one of more than 50
women believed to have been assaulted by a serial rapist who terrorized the sacramento area
during the 1970s the mysterious attacker known as the east area rapist has never been identified now advances
in law enforcement technology have linked him to a series of murders that happened a decade
earlier authorities need your help to track down this very cunning and very dangerous criminal
the east area rapist displayed some unusual habits including lingering in the victims homes
for hours i know that at some point he was out in the living room smoking and the police felt that he maybe had
gotten into my refrigerator i think he was in the house anywhere from two and a half to three hours
[Applause] i lay there for what seemed like a long period of time with no noise and then all of a sudden
i couldn't see i couldn't move and i couldn't yell and i remember wondering is this
it is this the way i'm gonna die after sexually assaulting his victims the rapist would quietly
sneak away can you tell me maybe a little what he looked like maybe how tall he was the east area
rapist very definitely did a psychological rape along with the physical rape in the manner in which he would threaten
the victims the length of time that he stayed in the home his crime was different and unique
the first 15 attacks occurred in houses were only women and children were at home but then the rapist began
targeting homes in which a man was also present when the rapist would come in he would at gunpoint order the female
to tie up the the male in the house and then he would remove the female to the other part of the house
where he would also tie her up and then he would put the dishes on the husband if i hear one place
i'll while he was in the other room occupied with the sexual assault he could hear
whether or not the male was trying to get free yeah there was so much fear in the
community so we were holding town hall meetings we understand your concern they were incensed to think that a man
could have been in the home when these rapes occurred and not have done anything about it
i think that he liked the excitement of the game i think it was as much a game with the investigators as it was before
what he was doing to the victims the rapist sadistic game sometimes extended beyond the attack itself hello
several victims reported getting disturbing phone calls from the rapist years later who is this
i felt by what he said to me that he had been still watching me and stalking me i felt
absolutely terrified i think the phone calls were just his way of saying you're still my hostage even though i'm
not in your house psychologically you're still my hostage police believe that this recording made
by one of the victims is the actual voice of the rapist by the late 1970s the east area rapist
had apparently moved 50 miles to contra costa county five more assaults were reported there
then the attacks abruptly stopped everybody speculated on where this guy might have gone or why he went
why he might have stopped and there was nowhere to go with it we had no real physical description
the trail grew cold but over the years criminalist paul holmes continued to work the case
he ran dna profiles and semen recovered from the five rapes in his county and then he tried to track down the
rapist holes began contacting agencies across the state 400 miles south in orange county
forensic scientist mary hong had used dna to link six rape murders in her county to a
single killer in 2001 mary got a call from paul holmes let me grab that file independently he was thinking that
this guy has to be committing these crimes somewhere else so he actually was calling these agencies and
finding out if they had any cases that fit his profile okay i've got d3 1516. i had him read me the profile that he had
on this case okay and i compared that to the profile that i had in our cases and they matched
all the way across wow looks like we've got a match at that point we knew that we had
just connected the series of sexual assaults in northern california with a series of homicides down in
southern california in southern california during the 1980s the east area rapist began murdering his
rape victims and their partners he was the suspect in 10 such killings i don't know of anyone
like him he's a very unique offender 50 rapes that we're aware of 10 murders that we're aware of we
suspect that he's probably responsible for more rapes and murders and crimes outside of what we've identified
police think a clue to the attacker's identity might be found in his habit of stacking
plates on the victim's partner during the assault it's a signature aspect of our offender
is it possible that someone abused him and treated him the same way terrorizing him perhaps
as a boy when he grew up as is possible somebody out there has to know something
about this person and if the information could come forward will it ever bring closure to the victims
only that they would feel safe that he is not out there to attack again i don't want
to end my career without having solved this if it's not solved by the time i retire
i'll think about it till the day i die update there are new developments in this case here's one of our staff
with details a suspect in the case of the east area rapist now popularly known as the
golden state killer was arrested more than 40 years after the initial crimes joseph james
d'angelo admitted to committing more than a dozen murders he pleaded guilty to 26 charges and was
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole next is planet earth on a collision
course with a deadly asteroid imagine the entire country devastated in less than a minute a large city wiped off the
map in a matter of seconds a nuclear nightmare no a natural disaster unlike anything in
human history and it will come from outer space july 16 1994 a frightening preview the most powerful
chain of explosions ever witnessed by scientists they began when huge fragments of a giant comet
called shoemaker levy slammed into the planet jupiter well out of this series of
fragments there were actually 15 that survived that we saw hit the planet and of those about four or five were the
big ones when each of those largest fragments hit jupiter had had about the same energy
as if you had taken all of the nuclear bombs in the world dr jean shoemaker is co-discoverer of
the shoemaker levy common put them all in one big pile and set them off all at once that's about
10 000 million tons of energy [Music] one of the explosions created a cloud of debris as large as the earth
if it happened there can it happen here large collisions like shoemaker levy occur only once
every hundred million years but we're not entirely safe there are thousands of asteroids and
comets streaking through our solar system is it possible that one could collide with our planet
well in fact it's already happened and more than once 40 miles east of flagstaff arizona is
meteor crater long before the dawn of civilization a massive asteroid slammed into the
desert floor scientists estimate its velocity at more than 40 000 miles per hour
meteor crater is the first recognized impact crater on the earth it's 4 000 feet across about 600 feet
deep it was formed by an iron asteroid about 50 yards in diameter and it was formed very close to 50 000
years ago but if you'd been there you wouldn't want to bend too close if you had been standing
where flagstaff is today 40 miles away you would have probably been knocked over by the shock wave
buildings would have been collapsed large meteors striking the earth aren't just ancient history
in 1908 a fireball raced through the sky over siberia it exploded above the remote area of tanguska
spraying debris with the force of a thousand atomic bombs to get a good idea of a
devastating effect of this impact event a city that i know very well houston has
surrounding it a highway a beltway highway 610 loop everything inside the 610 loop
would have been flattened and charred all the buildings all the infrastructure nothing would
have been standing inside that area anyone who lived there would have been dead such devastation did occur on a
worldwide scale at least once in the history of our planet it was 65 million years ago during the age of the
dinosaur a giant meteor five miles across plowed into mexico's yucatan peninsula
where the small town of chiksaloop now stands the surface expression would not lead
you to believe that there is an impact crater there you have a nice flat yucatan peninsula
with really no topographic signs that a crater 180 to 200 miles across exist below
so what would it be like to witness such a cataclysmic event well immediately before the impact we
think you would see a comet keep in mind that this object is traveling at about 140
000 miles per hour you don't have a lot of time between the time it goes into the atmosphere and the
time that actually strikes the earth lasts much less than a second obviously the impact at chixolube was heard and
felt in every corner of the earth the ground surged upward tons of rock and dust
formed a massive curtain hundreds of miles across and hundreds of miles high as this dust started to make its
way into the atmosphere it would block the sunlight completely it would be as dark as night
as some of this material started to re-enter the atmosphere however things would begin to light up not by
the illumination of the sun but by the illumination of countless meteorites shooting stars streaking
through the upper atmosphere these balls of fire ignited a raging inferno that spread across the entire western
hemisphere the smoke joined with the impact debris and covered the earth with a suffocating cloud for at least a
year there was no sunlight triggering a new ice age roughly 75 percent of earth's plant
and animal life died the most well-known victim was the dinosaur the consensus is today that dinosaurs were doing
very nicely up until this event and immediately after this event they were gone and they never came back according to
nasa more than 5 000 asteroids can be classified as near earth of those nearly 1 000
are considered potentially dangerous for the planet in 2004 scientists discovered a new
asteroid named apophis a chunk of interplanetary rock between 700 and 1000 feet across although it's too soon to know
for sure there's a small chance this near-earth object will eventually collide with our planet the
date april 13th 2036. the hazard of impact in terms of loss of life on the earth
you don't take out just a hundred thousand lives lost you could wipe out half or more of the
entire human population if an event similar to the one that formed chickula happened tomorrow then there would be no
civilization there is no doubt about that it would be widespread devastation death
like we have never even imagined and there's no protection for it it's just one of those things that
we have to live with fortunately however events like chichalub are extremely rare
next the amazing encounter of identical strangers who may be long-lost relatives and later
a horrific accident leads to a rescue by a mysterious good samaritan in december of 1943 ken palmer was the
second lieutenant in the army air court he was traveling from texas to wisconsin during a change of trains
he had the most remarkable encounter of his life ken had the feeling that someone was
staring at him and then he saw why he was being watched by his exact double i was amazed and both of us
saw it and both of us reacted so much to it both of us sat down our bags and stared
and until i got a hold of myself and extended my hand he didn't move he was just frozen looking
at himself in a different uniform i'm ken palmer my name is palmer my first thought of
course was that he's closely related we began to exchange our father's names our grandfather's names where we lived
things of this nature and that didn't get it my grandfather's from brownsville the
two men couldn't find a single relative in common but when ken mentioned an old family legend
he was stunned by the stranger's response my family often talks of this uh lost treasure in india
two palmer brothers were at uh party in the court of st james they uh they cut the uh the queue off a
court official yeah that's right they had to flee england i mean that's the story left the
did he know about it he added details that i checked out with dad later and they were accurate
things that i didn't know so it was perfectly obvious that we were related and yet we couldn't understand
how we could be you write down your name and address when i get back home i'm going to
contact you i took his name and address stuffed it in my pocket i'll write it goodbye goodbye
i picked up my luggage and scooted off from my train if i'd had the sense that god gave geese
i would have stopped right then and uh we would have spent some time together [Applause]
when i got on the train and settled i reached in my pocket to get that slip of paper
it wasn't there it all fell apart at that moment i i was devastated ken never saw his double again and all
attempts to find him have been unsuccessful these pictures of ken palmer were taken
in the 1940s the man he met looked virtually identical like ken his last name was palmer his
first name may have been robert or james [Music] i would like very much to find him and
or part of his family how many times are you going to walk across the station and see that double
out of all the people in the united states we walk into one another and we set down our bags and stare at
one another magical moment ken believes that his double lived in the eastern united states
possibly new jersey at the time the man was either a technical or staff sergeant
in the army air corps if you have any information that could help clear up this case
please log on to our website at unsolved.com [Music] ocala florida 48 year old wilma drew was just a mile
from home she had driven up this hill hundreds of times but a few miles away a car had entered
the highway going the wrong direction it was headed straight for wilma at 55 miles an hour
[Applause] david vititope was driving right behind wilma as we were approaching the crest i saw
headlights approaching us and the minute the lights came into view i immediately tried to get over in the
right hand lane to avoid the collision [Applause] automatically just in my gut knew that
somebody was going to be dead david stopped the help the driver and passenger in the wrong way car
seemed to be moving but wilma was not she was pinned in her car the steering column
wedged up against her chest the driver's window was open but the other windows and all the doors
were jammed go out to my truck i'll get a tour i decided to run back the truck to grab a
tire tool try to pry the door open or whatever i could do to try to get into a sister
possibly better another good samaritan matthew white also stopped to help the two men didn't know it
but wilma's neck had been broken cutting off her air passage she was suffocating
all the doors are jammed her driver's side window was busted out and we couldn't break the windows out so
we were trying to get someone who has something that could break the window david tried flagging down help a tanker
truck stopped remarkably the driver seemed to know exactly what to do and how to do it
after i busted the window he climbed in into the back seat and reached over and lifted and held
wilma's head up [Music] wilma took a breath let's get this thing off her give her some room
matthew and david struggled to lift the steering column off wilma's chest the trucker kept her neck motionless
the ambulance arrived 10 minutes later okay sir i need you to let go and come out of the car okay i'm not letting go
until you put a brace around her neck get out of the car the paramedic was just insistent
that he let go of her head and got out of the car and the the man would not let go
overhead until um i held it while he got out and the paramedic got in you got her yeah gently wilma
was stabilized but during the confusion no one saw the truck driver leave no one had a chance to get more than a
glimpse of what he looked like wilma's husband came upon the crash scene a short time later when i saw the
vehicle in my mind nobody could have lived through it i remember a lady asking me if that was
my car and i said yes and my wife's dead and she says no she isn't they just you
know left here where they're in the helicopter it took 11 operations and almost a year
to begin to repair the damage wilma's right leg had been nearly torn in half her left ankle was shattered
her brain stem was so damaged that it caused permanent double vision and one of the
vertebra in wilma's neck was completely severed the neural surgeon told us he's never
seen anybody survive that injury and he can't understand why she's still alive and that was kind of eerie
i don't know why it happened to me but i know that there is a purpose for it and it's even peculiar that i've never
experienced any anger i'm just very thankful to be alive she breathing yeah the neurosurgeon said he did it
exactly right had he done it any different it wouldn't work he gave the doctor something to work
with and he just saved her life and gave her back to us thank you just really seems so
insignificant as far as the way we feel that someone would take the time to get involved and to do all he did for me
and then just disappear [Music] update after seeing himself portrayed on unsolved mysteries the truck driver
contacted our phone center we put him in touch with wilma he explained that he used to be an emt
and that's why he just knew what to do when he came upon the scene three years after her accident wilma was
finally able to thank the man who had saved her life he was thrilled to hear that she had survived the accident
[Music] [Music] [Music] you

This episode includes: Christmas Party Murder, Myrtles Plantation, California Killing, Asteroids & Meteors, Brief Encounter and Pick Axe Savior.

Brief Summary

The episode discusses Rhonda Henson's murder, haunted Myrtles Plantation, the East Area Rapist, and asteroid collision threats.

Key points

The Mysterious Murder of Rhonda Henson. Rhonda Henson's tragic death raises questions about her killer's identity and motives.
The Haunting Myrtles Plantation. Guests at the Myrtles Plantation share eerie encounters with spirits from the past.
The East Area Rapist's Reign of Terror. A serial rapist terrorizes Sacramento, leaving a trail of fear and unanswered questions.
The Golden State Killer Arrested. After decades, the notorious East Area Rapist is finally apprehended, bringing closure to many.
The Cataclysmic Impact. A giant meteor struck Earth 65 million years ago, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs.
A Life-Saving Encounter. Ken Palmer meets his exact double during World War II, but loses contact forever.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I felt like Rhonda was dead.

Rhonda's mother describes her premonition about her daughter's fate.

2:15WatchJul 26, 2021

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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