Original subtitles

-A gentle caretaker of horses is found dead

in her dorm room at a popular racetrack.

-She was hanging.

-There was blood everywhere.

-And her wrists were also slashed.

We weren't sure if it was gonna be a homicide or suicide.

-That obviously raised a lot of questions.

-It makes no sense.

-Three years later, hundreds of miles away,

another horse groom is found dead.

-This was a crime scene.

-She said that he was gonna get her.

-Could these two cases be connected?

-This guy left a trail and got away with a lot.

I don't believe in coincidences.

-We were both shocked.

-They're both females, they're both white,

and they both work in the track.

-It's a race against the clock as detectives hunt for a killer.

-He liked women that he could intimidate.

-I felt as though I let Pam down.

-We all made a mistake. -All hell broke loose.

This guy, he's a predator.

You can't let him be on the street.

-And there's no doubt he's going to rape

or hurt another woman.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-On a humid summer evening, a little after midnight...

♪♪

...a frantic 911 call sends firefighters to Vernon Downs,

a popular racetrack located in Upstate New York.

-Vernon Downs is a harness racing track.

It has dormitories in the back where the grooms are housed,

and the grooms are individuals who take care of the horses.

-A fire has broken out in one of the dormitories.

Firefighters quickly get the blaze under control,

but once the smoke clears, they make a horrifying discovery.

-There was a dead female that was in the dormitories.

She was hanging.

♪♪

There was an extension cord around her neck.

-And there was blood on that.

-Detectives notice that the extension cord

is tied to a shelf above the victim's head,

and they speculate that this could be a possible suicide.

-And there was a vodka bottle next to her body.

There was blood on her everywhere.

♪♪

-Her throat was cut.

There was a electric knife by her on the floor.

You could see the blood from her throat.

And her wrists were also slashed.

-The scene was gruesome.

-I have never seen anything like that.

I don't think any of us saw anything that violent

like that before.

-It looked, to all appearances, like a self-inflicted death.

-There are papers surrounding the victim's feet

that did not burn, and investigators are hopeful

that there might be a suicide note

to explain what happened here.

-But there was no note

indicating she had killed herself.

No suicide note was found at the scene.

-Detectives learn that the victim was a horse groom.

Grooms work in the stables

and take care of the horses at the racetracks.

Coworkers identify the victim

as 39-year-old Leslie Dickenson.

-I knew Leslie Dickenson

because she worked at Vernon Downs with me

as a groom.

She was very quiet, very petite.

Loved animals.

Grooming is very physical.

You can get very dirty.

You get wet because you're bathing horses.

You got to clean their stalls, clean their water buckets.

Leslie was very fragile. She wasn't very strong.

So I would help her with her water buckets.

Just a very nice lady.

♪♪

I was absolutely shocked.

I've never been in that situation

where a groom has died.

And it was...hard to believe.

-To those who knew her, Leslie was kind and compassionate,

making her violent end difficult to comprehend.

As investigators examine the fire she apparently perished in,

they find it only more confusing.

-How the fire started looked a little bit suspicious.

Candles were lit under something

so that they would burn and catch fire.

-It was very difficult to tell what happened.

-Was the vodka poured around

and lit to start the place on fire?

-As they take a closer look at the victim,

several details stand out that make investigators wonder

if their first impression of suicide may have been wrong.

-When the body was hanging,

the pants were unbuttoned and the zipper was down.

-That obviously raised a lot of questions

in our mind as to what exactly happened.

Generally, when you see women who commit suicide,

it's usually with pills.

They don't usually scar or mark up their body.

Honestly, I've been to many, many, many scenes

where people were dead.

I've never seen a person have this many methods

for killing themself,

which, in her case, was slitting the wrist

and hanging herself up then burning the room.

We knew we still had a lot of investigating to do.

-As the forensics team continues to process

the crime scene for evidence,

detectives zero in on the grooms.

-We interviewed 20 or more of the grooms.

Everybody that may have seen Leslie that day,

may have been with her.

Trying to get a timeline.

-According to the grooms,

Leslie finished work around noon,

and this Friday was payday.

-The grooms travel from different track to track,

but they're a close-knit group.

They know each other, and they get along usually very well.

-They're there 24/7 to take care of the horses.

And very often, you know, when they get done working,

they'll have a drink.

-Coworkers tell police that Leslie joined them for drinks

from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

-Leslie had been sitting on a picnic table

outside of her dormitory room.

They just had a couple drinks.

That was the last anybody had seen of her.

-Around midnight, smoke fills the dormitory

where Leslie lives...

alerting grooms of a fire.

-There was one witness who said he smelled smoke

before anybody else smelled smoke.

Another groom went up to the guard station

and told the guard there was a fire.

-Investigators continue to press grooms

for information about Leslie.

They want to know if she was having trouble

with anyone at the track.

-Anybody we asked said she's a nice person, you know,

kept to herself a lot, but everybody liked her.

There was absolutely no bad things at all said about her.

-She was well liked by other grooms, never bothered anybody.

Took care of her horses and did what she had to do.

-While Leslie's body is transported

to the coroner's office,

detectives are faced with the difficult task

of notifying Leslie's family of the tragic news.

-It was pretty shocking to them.

-She had a very good relationship with her family.

She seemed to be very close with her sister.

-They said she was an outgoing person,

said she loved horses, loved the job she was at.

-When digging into her background,

detectives uncover a secret that Leslie Dickenson

kept from her friends at the track,

and this troubling information

sheds new light on the investigation.

-She had a previous suicide attempt.

-Leslie's family confides that she struggled as a teenager,

even attempting to take her own life with

over-the-counter medication two decades earlier.

But according to her family, those dark days were behind her.

She'd found happiness and was dating

a fellow groom from the track.

Investigators, however, discover

that the pair had recently parted ways.

-People said they didn't get along, they had argued.

And then other people said they were together.

-Investigators wonder if the breakup

may have triggered Leslie's mental-health issues,

sending her spiraling into a depression.

So they turn their attention back to the grooms,

looking for clues about Leslie's state of mind.

-The first question investigators asked --

"Did you notice that she was depressed?"

-She was actually doing pretty good.

She had just bought herself some new clothes.

She seemed upbeat.

-And no one seemed to have any idea

that she was unhappy with life.

And everybody said no. She seemed fine.

There was nothing out of the ordinary with her.

-She was quiet, but I would have never

guessed her to commit suicide, by no means.

-Looking for answers, investigators turn

to Leslie's ex-boyfriend, but they're surprised to learn

that he relocated to another track

several hundred miles away just two days before the fire.

-Boyfriend had shipped out with his horse

and the owner to a different track.

-Could Leslie's boyfriend have used his departure as an alibi?

-We weren't sure if it was gonna be

a homicide or suicide,

but the fact that Leslie's boyfriend had left town

is very suspicious, so we had to track him down.

♪♪

-The door was locked from the inside.

It was pretty apparent this was a crime scene.

-I don't believe in coincidences.

And there are similarities between what happened

to Leslie and Pamela.

-After learning alarming information,

detectives zero in on Leslie's ex-boyfriend

as a possible suspect,

and they hunt him down at a racetrack

several hundred miles away.

-We did interview him.

We learned it was a very good relationship between them,

and he said they were getting along fine.

-Leslie's ex-boyfriend tells detectives he was working

on the night Leslie was killed...

300 miles away from Vernon Downs,

and several eyewitnesses confirm his story.

-He wasn't there. He wasn't a suspect in it.

-If Leslie's ex-boyfriend is not their suspect,

detectives wonder if it's possible

that someone on the horse circuit killed Leslie

and slipped away before detectives could find them.

-The lifestyle of a groom is very seasonal.

Constantly moving around.

But they are kind of a small community

because they get to know each other

at all of the different tracks.

And people knew all the circumstances of this case.

This was a very big deal.

But there was no real prime suspect.

-At this point, to try to determine

if this was a homicide was difficult to do

because we didn't really have anything glaring at us.

-With no clear leads, detectives are hopeful

that the autopsy report will help them

figure out what happened to her.

-The autopsy determined that this was a suicide.

They labeled it a suicide.

-The cause of death was the strangulation

as a result of the cord and the hanging.

-The autopsy report states death by asphyxia and hanging.

This, coupled with Leslie's history of mental-health issues,

leads to the coroner's conclusion

that Leslie did indeed go to great lengths to kill herself.

-They thought she cut her throat

and wrapped the cord around and then hung herself

and then cut her wrist as she was hanging.

-Upon learning the devastating news,

Leslie's family struggles to say goodbye,

and they lay her to rest in a baby-blue coffin

that matches her eyes.

For Detective Lisi and his team,

the Leslie Dickenson case is closed.

Then, three years later,

1,500 miles south of Vernon Downs,

police are dispatched to the Pompano Beach Racetrack

in response to a suspicious 911 call.

-On February 20, 1990,

the Pompano Beach Police Department

received a call for a woman that was thought to be sick.

She didn't report to work,

so her employer went to the room to check on her.

The door was locked from the inside.

He pushed the door open a little bit.

And he could see the victim...

...on the floor in the room.

And she was unresponsive.

-When we arrived, we discovered

that it was a female victim

who was an employee at the harness track.

She was a groom.

-Attempts to revive the victim are unsuccessful,

and she's declared dead at the scene.

The victim's boss identifies her

as 32-year-old Pamela Albertson,

a groom from Blanchester, Ohio.

♪♪

-She's in the room by herself and a door that's locked.

We looked at her windows, and it gave enough way

for a person to slide through the window.

-The room was very sloppy.

Knocked-over soda on the floor.

Things were just thrown about.

Pam was laying right inside the doorway.

It appears as though there may have been some sense of a struggle.

-So we knew then that somebody had been in there

and locked the door from the inside and went out the window.

-Her clothes were somewhat on the floor.

It appeared as though somebody put her pants back on her.

She had no underpants on.

Her pants were pulled up,

but they weren't secure in any way, unzipped.

-Pamela's body had bruises

on both sides of her head and her upper lip.

-We felt pretty confident

there was foul play, that she was assaulted.

-The crime-scene unit and the medical examiner

arrive together and begin to process the scene

for DNA evidence.

-They gathered items that were on the floor,

one of which was a tank top, red in color,

and that was sent to the lab, as well.

We also secured vaginal swab evidence from Pam.

-CSI techs also discover a key piece of evidence

that could lead them to the killer.

-They recovered hairs from Pamela's hand.

They weren't cut.

They were pulled from somebody's scalp.

-Our next step was basically to identify any witnesses.

We started knocking on doors in the dorm.

The dorm room directly above Pam Albertson's dorm room,

a woman by the name of Ann Santoriello lived.

She was a groom.

-When detectives give Ann the tragic news

about her neighbor, Pamela, they have no idea

that Ann was at Vernon Downs three years earlier

when Leslie Dickenson died.

-We spoke with her about Pam.

-I was absolutely shocked. I really was.

I knew Pam because we lived in the same dorm.

And we would just talk.

She was very cute.

She was just a sweet, sweet lady.

Very hardworking.

-Nobody spoke in any bad way about Pam.

She was perceived as a very nice person and was friendly,

had a social life with the other grooms.

-She'd hang out with a few guys,

and she just enjoyed shooting pool and having a few drinks.

-Detectives wonder who would want to hurt this gentle groom.

And while talking to Ann, they learn

some alarming information.

-She explained that Pam was very much afraid

of someone named Mississippi.

-Pamela was very scared of him.

It was a groom.

He was called Mississippi because he's from Mississippi.

-So it was an alias that he adopted that people knew him by.

-Pamela told me that he was harassing her.

He said that he had sex with her.

There was no shot of that,

because she wanted nothing to do with him.

She told me she was getting afraid of him.

I asked Pamela, could she go home?

And she said she would get a bus ticket to go home.

And she was gonna go home in two days,

but never made it because she got killed.

-Ann reveals intriguing information about Mississippi

to detectives that could provide a motive for Pamela's murder.

-He got fired about a week or two prior to Pam's homicide.

And some of the other witnesses

thought he got fired for harassing Pam.

-Detectives are now on the hunt for any witnesses

who might have seen Pamela with Mississippi.

-We identified a woman

that lived in the dorm right next door,

and she said that evening

she witnessed Pam at her doorway to her dorm room

with an individual she'd never seen before, a Black male.

-She said Pam was telling him, "I'm going to bed.

You can't come in."

-Investigators are stunned by this eyewitness account.

Could this unidentified man actually be Mississippi?

-We had a person of interest.

-Police are on the hunt for a mysterious suspect

in the murder of Pamela Albertson.

And while interviewing grooms at a neighboring stable,

they learned that Mississippi is actually

27-year-old horse groom Robert Hayes.

-He was working as a groom, cleaning out one of the stalls

when we encountered him at Tagariello Stables.

-We said, "Hey, we're investigating a homicide.

We'd like to talk to you about it."

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

-He seemed cooperative.

He said he had heard Pam had been murdered.

-He volunteered to come down to the police station.

♪♪

Rob had volunteered to give his fingerprints.

But as we started to investigate him, more information came in.

-Detectives confirmed that Robert Hayes

did spend time in jail for assault.

-He had a fight with a groom from a neighboring barn,

and it was a very violent fight.

He got the guy on the ground.

He was putting dirt in his eyes.

He smacked him with his belt buckle a couple of times.

-People felt he was dangerous.

-A number of witnesses who were on scene

had mentioned Robert Hayes

and the problems that Pam was having with Robert

over the weeks and months before.

-However, no one reported any of the incidents

they witnessed between Pamela and Robert.

As detectives dig in,

they learn that most grooms live under a code of silence,

preferring to handle things themselves

instead of going to law enforcement.

But police find the recent murder

has made the grooms more forthcoming.

-When we spoke to people at multiple other racetracks,

we were both shocked.

There were other incidents at other tracks.

He's been banned from a couple tracks.

Was a victim in new Jersey

in which Robert Hayes assaulted her.

She says Hayes came to her room, asked her for a cigarette,

and he forced his way in the door

and just started strangling her.

-This guy left a trail and got away with a lot.

-Another victim tells detectives

of a horrifying encounter she had with Hayes

while working at a track in Delaware.

-He wanted to have sex. She denied him.

And then he attacked her, began choking her.

And he threw her off the second- floor balcony of the dormitory.

-He liked women he could intimidate,

and they don't come forward because they're scared to death.

-We really start to focus

on Robert Hayes as our main suspect.

-I went with Detective Flynn.

He wanted me to pick a photo lineup

of who I thought murdered Pamela.

And I picked Robert Hayes very easily.

There was no doubt in my mind.

-Detectives also bring in the eyewitness

who saw the suspicious man outside Pamela's dorm room

the night of her murder.

-And she identified Robert Hayes in that lineup,

indicating that that was the person

she had seen at Pam's door the evening prior.

And he denied ever being with Pam in a room.

He never put himself at the doorway.

-Investigators go back to Robert with these accusations,

insisting he knows more than he lets on.

-He showed no emotion at all.

It didn't faze him in the least way.

He denied any involvement in it,

and when confronted with if he's ever had sex with Pam,

he had stated that he had sex with her about a month ago.

-He said she had a reputation.

-But an eyewitness comes forward with a damning testimony

that pokes a hole in Robert's story.

-A gentleman named Clyde Tate witnessed an incident

that took place at the stables one evening.

He had heard Pam yelling for help.

♪♪

He said he found Robert Hayes -- Mississippi -- on top of Pam.

He was in the process of taking his pants off.

When Clyde approached him, separated them,

Robert went on his way.

That wasn't reported, but certainly

that led to the fear that Pam had.

-Police pressure Robert.

They want to know when was the last time he saw Pamela alive.

-He said he didn't see Pamela, but we have witnesses

that put him together close to the 9:00 p.m.

We knew he was lying.

We knew he had been in the dorm building with her,

and we knew he was at the door.

-After hours of interrogation,

Robert changes his story and finally admits

that he was with Pamela on the night she was murdered.

-Robert finally confessed that yes, in fact,

he had been with her.

-He was talking to her outside her dorm,

but he denied the murder.

-The witness statements, the fact that he lied --

he said he wasn't with her, then he changed his story --

we felt that we had enough to charge him with murder.

He had collected evidence at the room.

He did fingerprinting off the windows, the doors.

We were hoping that would reveal some more information

that would connect Hayes to this crime.

-The items were recovered,

was sent to the crime lab for further testing

in the search for the presence of DNA.

-We're talking about the early 1990s.

DNA testing was not as sophisticated as it is now.

-I had great concern about that.

And DNA evidence was brand-new.

This was the first DNA case

that Pompano Beach had presented to the court.

-While detectives wait for DNA results,

the medical examiner releases the autopsy report

confirming Pamela's cause of death as a homicide.

-The autopsy report came back

and determined that she had been murdered.

♪♪

She had a broken hyoid bone in her throat.

-The cause of death was strangulation.

-I could have done more to save her life.

And that really, really bothered me,

because I know without a doubt in my mind,

he was coming for her.

The woman didn't get to live her life.

-For Ann, the harrowing turn of events calls to mind

Leslie's unfortunate death years prior --

information she takes to police.

-She said she was at Vernon Downs

three years earlier.

♪♪

-I remember Robert Hayes worked at Vernon Downs

when I worked there.

I really didn't pay that much attention to him.

-And a young lady by the name of Leslie

was murdered in Vernon Downs.

And in that case, she said it was ruled a suicide,

but Robert Hayes was on the track

when that incident took place.

♪♪

Ann Santorelli suspected it was a murder in Vernon Downs.

-I would have never guessed her to commit suicide.

It makes no sense.

Who sets themselves on fire

and puts a cord around her neck?

-You know, the grooms all talk.

They were highly suspect, many of them,

that Leslie Dickenson was a questionable death

and that some further investigation

should have taken place.

-I don't believe in coincidences.

And there are similarities

-Detective Flynn and his team have just learned

that the prime suspect in Pamela Albertson's murder

was working at Vernon Downs when Leslie Dickenson died.

-We realized that maybe it wasn't a suicide.

Robert may have had some involvement

in that case, as well.

All of that needed to be looked at more intently,

because Robert Hayes' case against Pam Albertson

was a circumstantial case.

-Which means that there's a strong possibility

there's not enough evidence to

convict Robert for Pamela's murder

and he could go free.

-That compelled me as an investigator

to try and look into Leslie Dickenson's death.

The state of Florida has a Williams rule --

Williams vs. the state of Florida.

-Under Florida's Williams rule,

if investigators can uncover evidence of past crimes

that mirror the current charge,

prosecutors can use it to strengthen their case.

If Robert Hayes is linked to Leslie Dickenson's murder,

Detectives believe that evidence

could help secure a conviction in Pamela's killing.

-So we had to look at Leslie's case for the similarity

to show that he has done this before.

-One week later,

Robert Hayes is arrested for Pamela Albertson's murder.

[ Telephone rings ]

-We reached out to Oneida County Sheriff's Office.

-Detective Flynn asked me

if I was familiar with Robert Hayes

from our case -- Leslie's death.

I was not.

So we brought the case out of the file.

And it turns out we did interview a groom

named Robert Hayes.

His statement was that he smelled smoke.

-Even though detectives interviewed Robert Hayes

at the scene of Leslie's death,

he did not give them any indication

to suggest that he could be a suspect.

-We had no evidence of Robert Hayes being involved.

-As Detective Lisi and Detective Flynn

compare Pamela's case to Leslie's case,

they see glaring parallels.

-They're both females. They're both white.

They both were grooms, and they both work in the track.

-Not only are the victims similar,

but the crime scenes are, as well.

-There were just a lot of, you know, consistencies

in the manner of death --

enough to strongly merit reopening the case.

-We realize that it's a good possibility

that Detective Flynn was right, that there was a mistake made,

it was not in fact a suicide.

That he's probably right, this was a homicide.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

I was sent to Florida for two weeks

to work with Detective Flynn

and the Pompano Beach Police Department.

They would take me around where I could go to the track

and interview same witnesses that they interviewed

and try to gather enough evidence

to determine this was not a suicide.

-While in Florida,

Detective Lisi works with Detective Flynn

to track down dozens of grooms,

hoping to find witnesses

who may have information about Leslie's death.

-There was one witness who said

that Hayes had talked about going out with Leslie.

This information was never revealed to us

at the time of Leslie's death.

-The investigator, Lisi,

was getting help from the people in Florida.

The case started to build.

-In order to prove that Leslie Dickenson was murdered,

the medical examiner has to change the cause of death

from suicide to homicide.

And the only way to do that is to exhume the body.

-Exhumation of the body is always difficult.

We didn't know if the judge would grant it.

-But the judge isn't the only hurdle

for Detective Lisi and his team.

-You have to include

in your motion to the court for permission

the family of the person.

So that's usually who gives you the greatest pushback.

-But we had communicated with the family what we were doing,

why we were doing it.

The family was given a disservice from the start

because a death case that should have been a homicide

was ruled a suicide.

-She had a previous suicide,

and they thought that that was exactly what had happened.

So they were surprised about it,

but they were not opposed to us reopening the case.

-The good part was the family said yes.

And the judge -- he granted the exhumation.

[ Dramatic music plays ]

-On November 15, 1990,

Leslie Dickenson's body is exhumed.

-I have to raise the casket,

and it'd have to be taken to the medical examiner's office.

-Upon close inspection,

the medical examiner notices that Leslie

has a broken hyoid bone and defensive wounds on her hands.

-The hyoid bone was very, very telling.

Along with the defense wounds that were on her hands

led everybody to believe

is indicative of her protecting herself.

Combined with the blood splatter,

it's not consistent with her cutting her own wrists.

And this totality is very suspicious.

-There was a blood splatter on her back.

That means it fell straight down from right up above her.

How could a drop of blood fall directly on her

unless someone was standing over her with a bloody instrument?

This was not a suicide. This was a murder.

-In 1987, when Leslie died,

Oneida County was using the traditional coroners system

that allows hospital pathologists

to conduct autopsies in lieu of a medical examiner.

And at that time, many pathologists were not trained

to identify hyoid bone fractures or defensive wounds,

which is why

in Leslie Dickenson's first autopsy,

these crucial details were overlooked.

-Things like blood splatter,

hyoid bone, the defense wounds --

that's the stuff that a pathologist does not see

and a medical examiner does see.

We all made a mistake.

And that's what it was -- a mistake.

-Although the medical examiner

changes the cause of death for Leslie Dickenson

from suicide to murder,

Detective Lisi does not have enough evidence

to press charges against Hayes for Leslie's death.

-When you build a circumstantial case,

you haven't got a smoking gun.

You haven't got a DNA sample,

You haven't got an admission.

-Once we knew that it was a murder,

then the whole question was how or when was Robert Hayes there

and was he responsible for it?

-Robert Hayes was our suspect,

and it was my job to connect the dots

that this person was involved

-While detectives in New York

continue to investigate Leslie Dickenson's murder,

hoping to find a smoking gun to prosecute Hayes,

the DNA results in Pamela Albertson's case

come back,

and all eyes turn toward Florida.

-The evidence that was gathered --

vaginal swabs,

as well as the shirt that was taken from the room

with the DNA evidence on it --

[ Dramatic music plays ]

the lab called me and told me

that the evidence came back as a match to the sample

that was obtained from Robert Hayes.

So that linked him to the homicide of Pam Albertson.

-Although DNA evidence on Pamela's clothing

traces back to Robert Hayes

and they have multiple witness statements

claiming that Pamela was afraid of Robert,

there is still no guarantee

that Robert will be convicted for Pamela's murder.

-The fact that his semen was on the tank top

does not prove he killed her.

Proves he was there at some point.

But that doesn't make him the murderer.

-Robert Hayes maintains his innocence,

claiming that he was not in Pamela's room

on the night of her murder.

-This was 1990.

There were no security cameras on properties.

There wasn't any eyewitnesses to the absolute attack.

There was no fingerprints that we discovered

that put him inside that room.

-As the prosecutors approach trial,

they feel confident they've put together

a strong case against Hayes.

-The trial took place in October 1991.

At the time, the death penalty in Florida

required a recommendation from the jury,

but the jury did not have to be unanimous.

The final decision was the judge's to make.

-Trial lasted two weeks,

and ultimately, he was found guilty

of murder in the first degree.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

Robert Hayes was convicted

and sentenced to death in the electric chair.

-On June 5, 1992. Robert Hayes is found guilty

and sentenced to death row in Florida

for the murder of Pamela Albertson.

-I really thought this guy was a danger to women.

I was happy that he's off the street,

he's not gonna hurt anybody else.

-Now that Robert Hayes is on death row,

the investigation into Leslie Dickenson's murder

screeches to a halt.

-Our investigation was at a standstill.

-Simply because of the fact that the person

who was our prime suspect was on death row.

-Legally speaking,

there should be only one way out of death row,

and that's in a casket.

But that's not what happens in real life.

In real life, there are appeals --

many appeals.

More people have been taken off of death row in Florida

than have been executed.

-After Robert Hayes was found guilty and sentenced to death,

he appealed the conviction.

-The Innocence Project looks at cases

where DNA evidence is used

and tries to determine whether they actually have somebody

who is innocent of the crime with which they were charged.

-In 1995, the Florida Supreme Court ruled

that the original DNA testing used on the red T-shirt

in Pamela's case involved band shifting --

a method they deemed scientifically unreliable.

-And the t-shirt testing that was done

was a method called band shifting,

where in the DNA process,

certain bands matched that of Robert Hayes.

So it pointed to him as a suspect,

but it was not pointing to him with absolute certainty.

-The method that investigators use

to examine the DNA that was left on the shirt

was considered no longer reliable by the Supreme Court.

-The second go around was a bit of an uphill battle.

We lost a lot of the DNA evidence

that we had in the first trial.

The appeals court said we couldn't use that DNA testing,

the red shirt, as part of our material

going forward in the prosecution the second time.

So we were going back to trial

with only half the DNA evidence that we had the first time.

-They were no longer able to use the testimony of witnesses

who had told them that Albertson was afraid of Hayes.

-There was another issue of hearsay and opinion

that it cannot be allowed in the new trial.

We still had the hairs on Pam's hands.

Those hairs were likely associated

with that of the individual that caused the attack.

-In 1997,

after being incarcerated on death row for six years,

Robert Hayes goes to trial a second time

for the murder of Pamela Albertson

to prove his innocence.

And the defense zeroes in on the hairs found in Pamela's hands,

arguing that they must have belonged to the assailant.

-These hairs belonged to a Caucasian.

Hayes is a Black man.

So we knew right away something is wrong here.

Whose hair is that?

-The defense argument was. it was a Caucasian.

Defensive wounds -- she grabbed the suspect's hair.

She had some of his hair, and it couldn't be Robert Hayes.

-Which led the jury to come back with a verdict

of not guilty for Robert Hayes in Pam's death.

-The three hairs had been examined,

but they had never been tested for DNA.

-Later on, it was determined by a lab

that those hairs were from the victim, Pamela.

-In a mind-blowing twist,

Robert Hayes is released from Florida's death row

on July 16, 1997.

-And he was free to go back into the community

wherever he chose to go.

-A person like Robert Hayes to be released

would be the worst thing they could possibly do.

-That was a gut punch. I felt as though I let Pam down.

[ Dramatic music plays ]

♪♪

I still feel like that.

♪♪

-After being exonerated,

Robert Hayes cannot be tried again.

It's called double jeopardy.

And once you're exonerated by a jury, that's it.

You can't be tried for that crime.

♪♪

-Knowing his violent history, Detective Flynn and his team

are desperate to keep Robert Hayes behind bars,

and their only hope is to reach out to New York,

because Hayes has never been tried

for the murder of Leslie Dickenson.

-So now they put the ball back in our court

to really go ahead and try to find out the truth

and find enough evidence to indict Robert Hayes,

because we knew he was guilty,

but now he was gonna be free.

-And there's no doubt he's going to rape

or hurt another woman.

-He was a dangerous individual, and the only hope I had

was that Oneida County

-On July 16th, 1997, Robert Hayes is set free.

And once again,

Florida detectives turn to New York for help.

-When Robert Hayes was found not guilty

in the second trial for Pam Albertson,

I let Oneida County Sheriff's Office know that.

-All hell broke loose with the investigators.

They were in my office like immediately.

-I felt we should have to do something,

we have to do something.

I had talked to Mike Arcuri.

I said, "We have to go forward with this investigation."

-This guy -- he's a predator.

You can't let him be on the street.

The investigator is in Florida knew full well

that they had the right guy,

but that the evidence was tainted somehow.

So now they were pushing us,

"You guys have to get him for the Leslie Dickenson case."

[ Dramatic music plays ]

-We realized that putting the case together,

the grooms were key.

They were all over the country.

We went all over the East Coast --

South Carolina, North Carolina --

multiple states to try to find different witnesses.

A lot of them opened up.

A lot of them were afraid of him.

There were a couple women that he had actually threatened.

The end of the day,

they did come forward and give us statements.

-Detective Lisi finally gets a break when two men,

a groom and a former cellmate of Robert's,

come forward with the same statement.

-There was an individual who said

that he had an admission from Robert Hayes

that Robert Hayes had committed this murder...

up at a track in New York.

-There were grooms

and a prisoner that he was in jail with

where he admitted that he had killed Leslie.

-The witness statements

and the admission of guilt from Robert Hayes

is enough evidence

for New York state prosecutors to arrest him.

-In 2003, Hayes was indicted for second-degree murder

in the death of Leslie Dickenson.

-In November 2004, the trial of Robert Hayes

for the murder of Leslie Dickenson begins.

-I was there in Oneida County with Joe Lisi.

-In a heart-stopping turn of events,

Robert Hayes pleads guilty to the murder of Leslie Dickenson.

-Hayes decided to enter a guilty plea to manslaughter.

[ Soft music plays ]

-We were both shocked.

-I never expected him to plead guilty.

It was like a relief.

-The court required him to allocute --

that is to tell exactly what happened

on the night Leslie Dickenson was murdered.

Robert Hayes indicated yes,

he did go down to her room that night,

that he tried to take some money from her,

that she slapped his hand,

that he got mad, they had words.

He punched her in the face and knocked her out,

at which point he got worried.

He thought that he was going to get in trouble.

Then he took the electric knife, cut her wrist, cut her neck...

tied her up with the cord.

He took the vodka, poured it around, and lit it

to try to hide what he did

and to try to make it look like a suicide.

-Robert Hayes was sentenced

to between 15 and 45 years in prison.

-But with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

I had great concerns whether or not he gets paroled.

-The biggest feeling I had

was the sense of making it whole for the family.

Because in totality, we screwed up.

The whole criminal justice system

let that family down.

We missed things that shouldn't have been missed.

But now we righted a wrong.

[ Down-tempo music plays ]

-When they got him for Leslie's case,

that made me very happy.

♪♪

-Although Robert Hayes pled guilty

to Leslie Dickenson's murder,

the story doesn't end there.

Hayes claims he is innocent in the murder of Pamela Albertson

and wrongfully spent time on death row.

He reaches out to the Innocence Project,

demanding that the DNA in Pamela's case be retested.

-The Innocence Project asked the Broward State Attorney's Office

to retest the vaginal swabs, retest the shirt,

and let's show once and for all that this was not Robert Hayes.

-They retest Pamela's clothing for DNA samples,

and they discover that it belonged to Robert Hayes.

-The DNA found on her body belonged to Hayes.

Instead of clearing his name,

Hayes condemned himself as the murderer of Pamela Albertson.

-Although Robert Hayes cannot be retried in Pamela's case,

the DNA evidence can be used by New York state prosecutors

to keep Hayes behind bars for Leslie Dickenson's murder

when he's eligible for parole.

-The parole board can consider the murder of Pamela Albertson

in determining whether he gets paroled.

-My feeling when that happened

was that justice is finally being served.