Original subtitles

I don't believe it.

The first thing I think of is that could have been me.

Just hearing him describe the blood

and how she laid there for four hours.

It makes me mad.

That's terrible.

That she layed there all that time.

Everyone says you've got to get over it.

I don't know if you can.

I just I hope their daughter doesn't know about it.

I have vague memories of how, you know,

I found out.

It was like, your mom was killed.

And I found out later, too, that he had attempted

to attack other women as well.

He's a piece of [bleep].

This madman is attacking women.

Why are they doing it? Because if we can figure out why,

then we maybe could predict where their next victim is gonna be.

You're in the presence of evil.

To get into his head and understand what was motivating him,

how he was committing these crimes.

You need to see things in the world that other people don't.

[opening theme music playing]

[Renee] I was driving home from my girlfriend's house

and I picked up dinner.

Parked in the driveway like I normally would.

That's when all of a sudden,

I just see somebody walking towards me.

I thought it was my nephew who lived around the street.

I said my nephew's name, and then he looked up.

And I realized it wasn't my nephew.

He came up to me.

I just remember him never saying a word.

And he looked so distant.

He first grabbed my arm.

He started to pull me down my driveway.

It was a suburban area in the woods.

I just kept thinking, he's gonna pull me

from my house and he's gonna kill me in the woods.

I could feel hairs on the back of my neck.

I then realized you're gonna die if you don't do something.

All I could think of is, how am I gonna get out of this situation?

I punched him. He fell on the ground.

That's when he ran away.

I called 911.

I'm like, he wanted to kidnap me.

He wanted to rape me. He wanted to kill me.

And they said...

[clicks tongue] "Are you're sure?

How could you be sure of that?"

And I said, "Because I could feel it."

No one really believed me.

They didn't listen to me.

[screams]

[Walt] The crime occurred on Mother's Day weekend around 2:30 in the morning.

Four hours later, her body was discovered.

I was duty detective.

I got a call from our police radio.

There was a a woman found on the side of the road.

It appeared that she was the victim of an assault.

When I pulled up there, I was not expecting what I had seen.

This was a very violent attack.

And they found the victim

on the front lawn, partially clothed by police.

She was stabbed 17 times.

Krista DiFrancesco, she was 24 years old,

newly married, with a ten-month-old daughter.

Okay.

Nothing at all. I was ten months old, so.

I'm told that she was, um...

She was a really good person and she was a light in everyone's life,

and she was like, the life of every party.

I'm told that I'm a lot like her.

So I guess that's as close as I could get to

knowing her.

I might look like her.

I don't really see it, but they tell me that I look more like her every year.

When I was in, like, second grade,

so when I was like six or seven,

my dad told me what happened,

but in ways that you could tell a second grader.

It was very vague. He was like,

"Your mom was killed."

My family doesn't really like to talk about it.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

[Walt] When I arrived, she was already transported to the hospital.

She had significant injuries to her face,

to her back, stab wounds to her arms, buttocks.

[Walt] Up by the front door

where the red door is on that little landing,

I noticed that the blood began there.

You could tell it was lighter in color.

It was like more orange in blood than like the deeper red.

And I had noticed there was an earring on the step.

So I, you know, could envision that she pulled up in front of the home.

She walked that short distance to the front door.

And that's where the attack occurred.

And then there was a lot of blood where her body was found

because she probably laid there for about four hours.

Over here, we found some clothing that was discarded.

The clothes wore on when the stabbing was done,

and then after the the attack,

at some point, the clothing came off.

You try to think not like a normal person.

You try to think from the position of the suspect.

My best guess for that would be that somebody

is sexually stimulated by the violence.

I guess I've read, like, similar things in the police reports.

You know, where the stab wounds were.

Just draws a visual for me.

I always knew that it was in front of the house.

It's hard to talk about...

The older I get, the more I realize

there's certain things that, um...

that I think would be different if I'd had a mother.

Can we take a second?

Damn! [crying]

This is harder than I thought.

Walt and I relentlessly pursued

every angle that we could think of.

Her husband, Bill DiFrancesco had an alibi.

He was home with his daughter.

Ex boyfriends that we interviewed,

former coworkers that we interviewed.

We just did not gain any traction.

There was nothing to latch onto

to further our investigation.

[Walt] The sexual assault, it was after she was

stabbed 17 times, and she was bleeding.

But that alone set this attack up different than others.

That's very disturbing.

In order to still stay at that heightened sexual arousal level,

I want to understand what was going on inside of him.

[Walt] How can somebody be programmed like that?

I don't know how you could engage in sex with somebody in that condition.

I'm trying to understand what they're thinking.

We're now faced with the fact that it's somebody

that is sexually aroused by violence.

I want to get inside their mind

so that I can at least attempt to appreciate

their perspective in committing the crimes.

But I can't place myself inside his mind

and even begin to understand how he could continue

to assault Krista DiFrancesco in the manner in which he did.

When she clearly was losing her life right in front of him.

[Walt] A person that would do this, your thinking isn't normal.

He's not just gonna stop.

But there was no way to determine

when he would strike again.

The feeling of doom always being on the horizon, you know,

knowing that this person is out there,

but we still haven't identified him.

When it becomes difficult is when you realize

we've pursued everything and we just don't have anything yet

that we can really latch onto.

It was November third of 2003.

The middle of the afternoon, I get a call from Walt on my cell phone,

and when Walt called me, he was amped up

and he said, "Mike, it happened again.

She looks just like Krista."

[Renee] So after I was attacked,

I really didn't want to talk to people.

If people didn't know about it,

I didn't want to say anything.

If people did know about it, I didn't wanna talk about it.

I would lay on the couch a lot.

I was very distant.

I didn't answer the door.

Ever.

I didn't feel like it was over.

I was constantly on alert.

I was always on the lookout for this person.

I had this ominous feeling that he drove by my house

and he wasn't finished with me.

But I didn't know about

all of the women that got hurt.

It was November 2003, Nancy Clark was returning

from a walk from this direction.

This fence is her property,

and as she was approaching her driveway,

she sees a young man walking towards her, smoking a cigarette.

And as they were about to pass,

she nodded hello to him.

Just after he passed her, she heard him come running back behind her

and he grabbed her around her head

and immediately started stabbing her.

So she decided at that moment to play dead

with the hope that he would leave her alone.

And then, as she played dead, she said he stabbed her one last time in the chest.

And then just calmly, you know,

jogged away down the pathway from the direction he came.

[Walt] I responded there and Nancy was on the floor of her kitchen.

She had slashing wounds, like, around her neck.

She had, it seemed like a puncture wound

around her left eye and stab wounds in her back,

her body and her head.

Both the daughter and the mother thought

that she was not going to survive.

She was very fortunate.

She played dead. So from his perspective,

he had killed her and he had moved on.

[Michael] It's tough for me to speculate what's going on inside of another man's head.

But if I had to guess as to why he didn't sexually assault her,

it was because the sexual completion for him

was when he plunged that knife

that one time in her neck and felt it entering her body.

It's hard to watch.

When he said he didn't do anything in anger,

I just I don't.

It just doesn't sit well with me.

A year later, I met Nancy at a victim advocate breakfast.

She had scars right across here

and in her eyelids, in her head.

He punctured a lung. So he learned from me.

With me, he did it from the front.

And the other women, he walked past them.

And did whatever he did from behind.

Krista's injuries and Nancy's injuries were much the same.

However, this time we had a crime scene

that happened in broad daylight.

He wasn't concerned with somebody seeing him.

When you think about, like,

something from a suspect perspective, he took a pretty big risk.

So that leaves important psychological clues for us

of like, you're looking for somebody that's a high risk taker,

somebody that's willing to do this,

that's so driven by this desire.

They would overlook all the reasons why not, like,

"I could get caught because it's in front of a house and somebody could hear me."

To me, it showed that he was singularly focused on what he wanted

and ignored everything else.

It demonstrated that...

his urges were so pronounced for him

that he couldn't overcome them.

This is about him dominating this person.

And he got the sexual arousal out of that.

And the violence was just a means to accomplish what he wanted to do.

Nancy Clark got a good look at her attacker.

We know we're looking for a younger white male, thinner build.

You know, we have facial descriptions.

This is the composite sketch.

One of the state police artists met with Nancy

when she was still in the hospital.

I thought it was gold.

It put a face to what we were doing.

We felt pretty confident that it was gonna help generate some tips.

[Renee] When I saw this, I was very upset.

We went to a convenience store to just get something to eat for breakfast,

and as I walked up to the door,

I see a composite drawing.

I just stopped right in my tracks and thought,

"Hey, I know that guy."

And then it hit me.

It was him. It just was him.

I was just in such a trance.

And all I could think of was, you tried to kill me.

I realized that he hurt another woman.

And I just took it off

and asked the girl, "Can I have this?"

And I remember being very, like, shell shocked.

And then I said," We have to go to the police right now."

I brought the composite to Detective Miller.

[Michael] We're asking each other,

do we have a serial offender on our hands?

I remember thinking, I was scared of that answer.

Our focus was now, like, let's look at unsolved cases,

both in our community and in neighboring communities

and let's see if we can find anything

that kind of fits the bill.

[Michael] Walt and I then start diving into

the law enforcement database.

[Walt] This woman and her husband were at a local diner

and they got into an argument.

She walked home.

She didn't see him coming and he attacked her from behind.

And immediately started striking her with a tire iron.

Upon her falling to the ground,

he laid down the tire iron

and then attempted to remove her pants.

When he did that, she was able to reach for the tire iron.

The first attack was a strong arm attack, and he failed.

The second attack was more violent with a tire iron. He bludgeoned her.

But he failed.

The third attack chronologically was the knife attack.

Krista DiFrancesco.

And then with the fourth attack on Nancy Clark,

he replicated the success that he had with Krista.

It's like living in a real life nightmare

when you see an offender that's improving

upon his previous attacks.

[Walt] That's when we realize that we have a major problem here.

We had a serial killer.

[Renee] It was awful for those months.

I remember,

all I could think of is that If he had the opportunity,

he would come back and finish the job.

He's after me because I'm the only one he didn't physically hurt.

And I'm the one that maybe he's mad at because I got away.

It's the one that got away.

I was always on the lookout for this person.

[Michael] We knew we had a DNA profile

that was not in the system.

We needed to obtain DNA for comparison purposes.

As a result of disseminating that composite sketch,

we identified well over 100 lookalikes.

We assign each of those lookalikes to a team of investigators

conduct an interview and then ask for their consent

to provide a DNA swab and a photograph.

We didn't have the luxury of waiting 18 months.

So we sought the assistance of somebody else that could help us

focus on who this individual was

by way of the psychology of them.

[Walt] You have to start thinking about things

from their perspective and understand

why they would act like they do.

So I reached out to the FBI and asked to schedule a time down at Quantico.

After our presentation to the behavioral analysis team,

they provided us with a profile.

Our expectations from the profile

were that our suspect was going to be a loner,

somebody that doesn't fit in in the neighborhood where they reside.

But he lived his life otherwise, in such a manner

that he really was on nobody's radar as being a violent person.

So he wasn't, you know, the disheveled looking person

that, you know, is a recluse.

This person would operate in an area

that they were familiar with,

and their familiarity would come from either residing in that area,

working in that area.

[Walt] All the crime scenes were just so disorganized, so haphazard.

The on switch for attack was always on,

and all of a sudden,

they would just come up to an opportunity

and they would seize the opportunity.

They would overlook all the reasons why not.

It's a narcissistic, ego driven standpoint

that his desires and needs outweigh someone else's right to live.

[Michael] The varying times of day when the attacks happened

indicated to them that this person would not have a routine job.

They probably were not married.

Maybe they lived with their parents

and that they would have the ability to come and go as they please.

In the Krista DiFrancesco attack in particular,

this was the first time they had ever attacked anybody with a knife.

The earlier injuries to her were on the top of her head.

And if you stab somebody on the top of their head,

the knife is not going to penetrate the skull.

In fact, most likely it's gonna break, the blade will break off.

It told us this was a young person who started out in the early part of the year

with very little experience in how to attack another human being.

[Michael] He's developing his craft.

And the third and fourth attacks,

it seems like he's kind of found his stride

and he told us there will be more attacks.

He's not gonna choose to stop.

[Michael] The randomness of our suspect's attack

on our victims was a hurdle for us to overcome.

We could not anticipate whether he was gonna strike next week, next month.

I'm looking for a young white man in a town of 50,000 people.

We were quite literally looking for a needle in a haystack.

Walt and I felt helpless.

We were doing everything we could to try to move this case along,

but we weren't getting the break that we needed.

[Michael] We got the break we were waiting for. The DNA hit came back.

It just came out of nowhere.

The match with the cigarette butt

came back to one of our localites.

Christopher Kornberger.

Christopher Kornberger was an 18-year old man

that lived in the south end of town.

The fact that he was so young really shocked us all.

When you read about serial murderers, serial offenders,

they tend to be a little bit older.

[Walt] Not a great student, disciplinary issues in school,

but nothing in his background

that would have given an indication

that, you know, he would have been

the person responsible for all this.

The fact that a kid like him could do that,

we were surprised.

I wanted to know how did he become this.

There's the haircut.

Christopher Kornberger. I had never heard of him.

I never even saw him.

He just looks like some kid.

If he showed me this and I wasn't attacked,

I would say he's just some... he's just some kid.

He looked like one of the kids in the neighborhood,

which were nice kids,

and I think that's what really throws you off.

He just seems like a nice kid.

It's scary how people can hide it, too.

You know, like, his parents had no idea.

He just looks like any high school kid.

He was a senior in high school,

at the high school that I went to and graduated from.

It's just very strange, especially as I was growing up

going to that high school.

You know, walking through the hall,

it's like, you know, he went here.

This is where he was.

I'm older than he was when he did it all.

It was in May. It was right before he was supposed

to go to senior prom and graduate.

Actually, a few days after the DiFrancesco murder,

he escorted a girl to a dance at the local high school.

I don't know how you attack a woman on Mother's Day

and then a couple of days later, go to a prom.

She was all excited that her daughter went to the prom.

So I was happy for her.

So she said, "You want to see a picture?"

He had scratches all over his face,

and he said, "I'm a landscaper and I fell into a bush."

And after the dance, she called her mother and said, "Please pick me up."

She felt creeped out the whole time.

And I'm happy that nothing happened to her.

[Michael] We decided we needed to put him under 24-hour surveillance

to strategize our approach to him.

Our expectations from the profile were

that our suspect was going to be a loner.

You expect this person to be the bogeyman.

In this case, he wasn't.

He lived with his parents, had siblings,

and went to the local high school.

It really was an ordinary average family.

[Walt] If you look at him, he looks like the average kid.

He's going around, hanging out with friends.

He had normal relationships with other kids, girls his age

where there was no violence present.

The ability to transition from

the person that is attacking people and then the normal life,

it's almost like a Jekyll and Hyde type scenario.

He's one person in the attacks, and he's another person

in his interactive life with the rest of the world.

Looking at him, he was like a normal, everyday kid

and you probably wouldn't have taken him as a threat.

That's probably as scary as it comes.

[door opens]

[Michael] The game plan was we were not leaving that room until we got to the truth.

I told Mr. Kornberger that the reason

that he was there to speak to me,

that I believed he knew what it was all about.

He said he didn't know where to start.

I essentially gambled and said, it's easier if you think about

the most vivid image that stands out in your mind.

I said, "Tell me about the most vivid image."

The way Mike structured that question of, you know,

which one stood out the most in your head.

It was the perfect question

that empowered him to pick the one that he wanted to talk about.

They have to feel a certain sense of empowerment,

a certain sense of control of it all.

And at that moment, he had all the control.

I didn't fully expect what was going to come from his mouth.

He came right out of the gates with the homicide confession.

So it was an absolute surprise to both of us.

I was shocked when he went straight to Krista's murder.

He confessed to the murder first.

I don't know.

I don't really...

He's a piece of [bleep].

I don't know. What do you want me to tell you?

I hope he has nightmares about it.

I don't know.

[scoffs] Wow.

How could he say that?

It's just...

Why did she scream?

And he says, "I don't know."

"I don't know."

Wow, that's just...

He said it so nonchalantly.

There's no remorse in there.

[Walt] When he talked about the details

of the DiFrancesco attack, like, hearing her scream,

seeing the fear in her.

You know, you could tell by his...

What he described, that he got pleasure from that.

The reason I introduced the next crime to him

and phrased it in the way I did,

is all part of the strategy.

I'm not calling it the next crime,

and I'm not calling it the next attack,

or the next stabbing.

I don't use words that would cause him

to raise his threat level assessment.

He then transitioned into confessing to what he did to Nancy Clark.

[scoffs]

That's a lot to take in.

He said it so normally, that it's disturbing.

Almost like he was telling you what he did at the game.

I hate to say I'm glad it didn't happen to me

because I feel that that's not fair,

but I'm glad it didn't happen to me.

At one point during the interview, Kornberger started crying.

[sniffles]

I remember at that point, you know, I just felt like,

you know, what he was saying was bull [bleep].

I don't think he was capable of feeling any remorse.

I think it was the realization

that he's now gonna be held accountable,

and, you know, he doesn't like that feeling.

[crying]

I always wondered that. I wondered if he, like,

thought about what I have to go through now because of what he did.

He didn't just kill a woman. He killed a mother, so.

That means that he's, um...

aware of the damage he's done.

It's interesting to see that he actually did understand,

like, what he did and acknowledged that...

the effect that it had on me, too.

The one thing that bothered me the most about that was, you know, he says that,

you know, he felt bad that this kid's going to live without a mother

and a couple of months later, he sees two women walking,

pushing a baby and then, "I'm gonna attack her."

He kind of flared up emotionally.

You could tell almost as if a little bit

of his darkness started to come out.

I feel that anger coming out.

I do, and he says

that he would feel this way if it happened to his mother.

It doesn't seem like he thinks about it as to what he did to other people.

During the time that Walt and I were interviewing Kornberger,

the rest of our investigative team was carrying out

search warrants at his residence.

During that search, some of the investigators

came across things that were startling, to say the least.

I could best describe them as poems or rap lyrics.

"Bitch out of my face. Slit your throat.

Leave without a trace. I'm crazy like that.

Creep up on you right from the back.

Bury your body. Add an X on the map.

Killing you would give me pleasure.

Send over to your mom a sympathy letter.

And so it is told, [bleep] can't be cold.

It's got to be warm and tight

because I'm gonna [bleep] that tonight."

Well, I don't think this is just a rap lyric.

I think this is him describing himself.

This was the real Chris Kornberger.

These are the thoughts that were running through his mind.

These are his desires that were driving him.

I've thought about, like, going to the to the prison and speaking with him.

But I also just don't want to give him the satisfaction.

I feel like that would be worse for me.

I don't think it's gonna have any effect on him.

[Renee] And that's the hardest thing about this,

is that there is no closure.

And I know for a while, I had survivor's guilt after Krista.

And everybody tells me it's not your fault.

I get that.

I just felt too vulnerable.

And then one day, I don't know what happened.

I just said, I'm not gonna let this spoil my life.

I never think about him.

I mean, there's times that he does pop up.

But it isn't, like, every day anymore that I'm...

thinking of this person.

I believe Mr. Kornberger was the most violent person

that I had ever sat in a chair across from and spoke to.

His issue, was then, and I suspect will always be

is this sexual urge that he has to hurt women.

[Walt] I think he's evil.

I don't know what made him evil.

But whatever demon was inside of him,

it took over and I do think he would have become

a full-fledged serial killer if we didn't catch him.

He was on that path.

I'd definitely sleep better at night

knowing that, you know,

nobody else has to worry about him anymore.

[shots firing]

We knew time was against us. his body count is rising

and we have to get him off the street.

It's like putting a puzzle together in the dark.

I turned around. He pulled out his gun

and he shot me.

The whole thing is a ticking clock.

Every hour that she's missing the pressure grows.

Who knows what's going on in the midn of a serial killer.

Would he kill her?

And I'm like, "Yes, he would kill her."

I'm the victim of a serial killer that no one knew about.

I went to prison for 21 years for something he did.

Enjoy the hunt.

You're trying to get in a man's mind.

He's playing his games we'll play ours.

I'd like to see him shot in both knees, doused in gasoline,

strike a match and walk away.