Original subtitles

[reporter 1] He's a railroad riding drifter

accused of being a notorious serial killer.

[Alicia] In the summer of 1999,

the FBI launched a nationwide manhunt for Angel Resendiz-Ramirez.

[reporter 2] It's one of the largest manhunts in the United States.

He was known as the "Railroad Killer."

He was a ghost, riding the rails.

[Chief Kennedy] He murdered somebody that I loved.

It's hard to understand why.

[Curless] A lot of people were on edge,

especially around railroad tracks.

I keep the doors locked and keep a pistol by my bed.

[Greg] Only one person survived

the Railroad Killer's brutal attack.

And she helped authorities put an end to his killing spree.

[train honking]

[theme music playing]

My name is Holly Dunn, and I am from Evansville, Indiana.

We grew up on 13 acres.

I mean, so much room to play and have fun.

I thought it was an amazing place to grow up.

My parents were super fun and they loved each other,

which was amazing to see as a child.

They gave us a great example for what we wanted in our lives.

I had a half-brother that passed away in a car accident.

And we all needed to learn how to heal

and learn how to deal with that.

But, my sister and I always were so close.

She was only 19 months older than me.

I always felt very loved and safe.

I had lived a carefree life,

until I went to college.

[Alicia] In 1995,

18-year-old Holly Dunn is excited to start her freshman year

at University of Kentucky in Lexington.

I loved Lexington.

I felt safe and at home, just that I belonged.

And that's what you want to feel when you go to college.

My sister was in a sorority.

So, I decided to go through recruitment,

and I joined Kappa Kappa Gamma.

[Annie] I met Holly through a mutual good friend of ours

who was also in our sorority.

She's just really funny.

She's just one of those people that just cracks everybody up when she's in the room.

[Holly] I'm kind of the life of the party.

I walk into a room and I want you to notice me.

I was feisty.

After her sophomore year,

Holly stays in Lexington for the summer.

And one night, they're out celebrating

her friend Annie's 21st birthday.

I was just looking forward to my first legal drink.

We walked in, we kind of got a table off to the side.

There was a group of guys there too.

Holly went up to the guy group

and just started talking to all the guys. [chuckles]

[Holly] We all started just talking about what was happening,

it was Annie's birthday and you know we were Kappas.

They were also in a fraternity

It became this conversation, "Oh, we have so much in common.

How have we not met before?"

[Alicia] One of them, 21-year-old Chris Maier

definitely catches Holly's eye.

[Annie] Chris had a hippie-ish vibe to him,

just laid back, just like Holly.

They just instantly seem to be hitting it off.

[Holly] I just noticed that he was really tall,

and I thought he was cute.

He was personable and could talk to me.

I just left that bar thinking, "That guy's really cute.

I'd like to know him some more."

I thought it was awesome.

I mean, Holly's personality is boisterous,

and Chris was outgoing and fearless, too.

And so, I thought to myself that they could be a perfect pair.

It was just a cute, little budding romance.

The next day, we wanted to have a picnic,

but it was raining.

And Chris went out and jumped in the puddles.

So, I'm starting to see that child-like spirit that he had.

It was something I'd never experienced before in meeting a guy,

and I liked it.

He found a reason to have fun every single day.

I don't think I had any idea what love was.

I just knew that I wanted to spend more time with him.

[Greg] A few months later, school is back in session,

and on August 29th 1997,

Chris picks up Holly and they go to a house party.

[Holly] It's 10 o'clock.

I remember Chris had put some beers

and some different things in his backpack.

And we get to the party and an hour went by,

and we couldn't really talk, I mean, it was too loud.

He's like, "Well, let's go take a walk by the tracks."

I'm really excited to have some time alone with Chris.

And we went maybe like, half a block

to get to the railroad tracks.

Yeah, I've only been back here twice.

To the actual scene.

Just how different it looks.

I mean, in the daytime,

it's like a whole different place.

It doesn't look like a terrible place.

[train honking]

[Holly] It was a really dark night,

like, there was not a moon lighting up the night sky.

But, all I needed to see was Chris.

You know, I was gazing in his eyes.

We probably talked for at least 30 minutes at the tracks,

and then we decided that we'd go back to the party.

I don't think we realized that anybody was around or watching us

until this man comes out from behind an electrical box.

And he says, "Do you have any money?"

I could hear in his voice like, an accent,

that made me think this guy is not from the United States.

I think maybe he's from Mexico.

He had a weapon,

like some sort of ice pick or screwdriver or something

that he was holding on Chris the whole time.

Chris started the conversations of,

"Hey, if you want money,

we could get you our ATM card and we've got a car,

we could go and get you money."

Or, "There's other stuff in my backpack, if you--

What do you want?"

[Greg] It becomes clear that he's not interested in robbing them.

He's doing something far more sinister.

[Holly] He made Chris get down on his knees to go through his backpack.

And then all of a sudden,

he was tying up Chris's hands

with the straps from Chris's backpack.

I felt scared.

I felt like I didn't know what was happening.

I didn't understand.

You feel such confusion.

You-You feel like you can't do anything.

Because I wasn't gonna leave Chris.

I-- He had a hold of him.

I wasn't gonna leave him.

And then the man comes over to me,

and he takes off my belt

and he ties up my hands behind my back with my belt.

Then he pulls Chris by his shirt,

from the railroad track into the ravine beside the tracks.

So, I follow him down there.

It felt like the only thing I could do.

He took us and laid us down on our stomachs in the ravine.

And then I remember hearing him rip a shirt

to tie up our legs and make gags for us.

At that point, our attacker was saying

"I just broke out of jail." Just like, talking crazy.

He kept going back up to the tracks

and leaving us for a few seconds.

And then he'd come back, and then he'd leave.

When he was gone, I got my hands untied

and I got our gags loose.

My shoes had come off and I was trying so hard

to get my feet untied, and I couldn't get them.

I was trying to get Chris' hands untied,

and I was trying to get his legs untied.

Everything I was planning to do,

it's like, this is not working.

I was thinking, "How are we gonna stop this man from hurting us?"

I was in fear and I was scared.

He was super calm and peaceful.

At that time, he probably had no idea.

But...

Chris' last words to me were,

"Everything's gonna be okay."

That's when our attacker picked up a 52-pound rock,

and I remember him carrying it over

and it just felt like a dream.

I just remember him struggling to carry it.

And he just lifted it as high as he could

and dropped it right on Chris's head.

[thuds]

[Holly] When he hit Chris,

Chris did like, a gurgling sound.

I knew in my heart that he had died.

[crying] I mean, he was just-- I can't--

I-I cannot explain.

But I know that at that moment,

I'm thinking like, "Okay, I'm gonna die.

This is-- I'm gonna die." [sniffles]

He comes over to me after he hits Chris

and he climbs on top of me and I realize he's gonna rape me.

So, I'm trying to fight him.

I try to kick him in the balls and hurt him.

I'm screaming and I'm punching

and I'm doing whatever I can.

And he takes whatever weapon he had,

and he stabs me in my neck,

which I didn't feel, but I knew he did it.

And he says, "Look how easily I could kill you."

And so I stopped.

I'm like, "Okay, this is gonna happen."

So, he rapes me.

And...

I remember floating above my body.

I mean, I was floating above

and didn't feel anything.

The one thing that I could control

was memorizing his face.

Because if I do make it through this,

I'm gonna know every detail of your face

'cause I'm gonna get you someday.

I don't know how much time passed,

but he put my pants back on.

This is when I think he picks up something to hit me.

But, he didn't pick up the rock that he hit Chris with.

He picked up something else.

He hit me five or six times in my face.

I think I put my hand up to block it

'cause my hand was uh, swollen.

I think I turned over because I didn't wanna be hit in the face,

and I think he hit me five or six times in the back of my head.

He knocked me unconscious.

I don't really know how long the attack occurred.

I don't know how long I laid there unconscious.

There was a lot of time that I was just passed out.

And somehow I get up.

I didn't even know I was really hurt.

The only thing that I knew felt strange was that my jaw felt wrong.

I couldn't bite or talk properly.

The man who killed Chris and attacked Holly is nowhere to be seen.

But, there's no telling if and when the man will return.

Holly realizes that she has to get up

and leave Chris behind in order to get help.

She's bloodied, she's in pain

and she gets up and walks,

and about 100 yards from where they were,

there's a house with a light on.

[Holly] I don't know how I got to the house

where I went to get help.

Especially with no marks on my feet,

walking through rocks and glass

and who knows what on the railroad tracks.

I didn't ring a doorbell.

I didn't knock on the door.

I just walked straight into their house.

And I remember seeing somebody sitting at a desk.

I couldn't really talk,

but I know I said, "Call 911, my friend is still out there."

I remember feeling like I just wanted to go to sleep.

And I mean, I-I couldn't like, think of anything else.

Within minutes, police cars and an ambulance

arrived at the young man's home.

[Holly] I was very in and out of it.

I remember getting loaded on the stretcher,

being on the ambulance,

and there's this guy in the back

and he's doing things, and beeping and...

I remember taking a deep breath and going,

"Oh my God, I'm safe. Like, I'm safe."

I was the on-call detective who responded to the scene

on the side of the railroad track,

where it was reported that we had a homicide victim.

There was a lot of brush and trees.

It was very dark.

I walked down the tracks and saw Chris

laying on the ground with traumatic injuries.

He was bludgeoned to death with a large rock

and created massive injury to his head.

The patrol officers informed me that

a living victim by the name of Holly Dunn

has been transported to the hospital for treatment.

There were several pieces of evidence collected.

Shoelaces and shoes and a possible stick

we thought was used to assault her.

We didn't have fingerprints.

I needed to talk to Holly Dunn.

She's the only person that can identify a suspect.

Holly is rushed to the ER

at the University of Kentucky hospital.

[machines beeping]

[Greg] She has a broken jaw, a broken eye socket.

She has multiple stab wounds to the neck,

and there's blood everywhere.

She's in bad shape.

[Holly] I was really in and out of consciousness in the hospital.

I don't remember a whole lot.

I had these deep gashes in the back of my head

from whatever he hit me with that they stapled shut.

[Curless] When I went to the hospital,

she was in horrible shape.

But, if she's talking,

I wanna extract the information that I can

about our suspect,

before the doctors start taking over.

I am automatically leery, and I'm not feeling good.

My stomach doesn't feel good,

and I'm like, "You really don't wanna talk to me right now."

[Curless] It was taxing for her to communicate.

I think it would be traumatic and very troubling

to be restrained and watch your boyfriend be bludgeoned to death.

But, I ask Holly to describe the suspect.

I told them he's like, 5'6", 5'7".

He had those black eyes

and he's wearing a white shirt.

He's a Mexican person, and he can speak English.

And he has glasses.

I was giving him every detail that I could.

I knew that they were gonna have to do a rape kit,

and I was not looking forward to that,

especially after you've just been traumatized.

But, I was okay with them doing it,

because I'm like, we need to collect evidence.

[Curless] Those swabs would be very critical

in preserving DNA evidence to identify our perpetrator.

[Alicia] After police collect the suspect's DNA

from Holly's rape kit,

they let her rest.

[Greg] At that point, the dark reality of the previous few hours

begins to really set in.

[Holly] My parents got there at five o'clock in the morning.

My dad comes and holds my hand,

and I mean, I just look at him

and I say, "Chris is dead, isn't he?"

And he said, "Yes, he died."

It wasn't fair.

I didn't understand why I was alive, and he wasn't.

[Annie] When I saw Holly for the first time at the hospital,

the blood everywhere and the swelling of her face and...

her being unrecognizable.

She just did not look like herself.

It was just awful.

I couldn't-- I just couldn't imagine how she had-- [sniffles]

Holly was in the hospital for five days,

and after she was released,

she went home to Indiana with her family.

[Holly] I really started to feel not only the physical pain,

but the emotional pain of everything I had been through.

I was sleeping probably 20 hours a day.

In Lexington, police enter the suspect's DNA into CODIS,

the national DNA database.

But, there is not a match to Holly's attacker.

So, investigators turn to Holly for help.

[Holly] The sketch artist came after I'd been home for a couple of days

to do the drawing with me of my perpetrator.

I knew that this was gonna be a hard thing to do.

But, during the attack,

the one thing that I could control was memorizing his face.

And I'm like, "You gotta do this to the nose.

Put glasses on him.

Square lenses."

All of a sudden, we got to where

I was like, "This does look like him.

That is exactly what he looked like."

We were able to focus our investigation

on a suspect, male Hispanic,

age range of 25-30.

[train honking]

The sketch is circulated throughout Lexington,

and tips begin to pour in.

Lexington has several industries

that rely on migrant workers.

The migrant workers will come and go from this town,

using railroad as transportation.

We had DNA which positively links the suspect to the crime.

We went around interviewing,

getting DNA samples from Hispanics traveling on the railroads.

We collected a lot of DNA samples.

But, there wasn't a positive match.

It was frustrating because it's like

looking for a needle in a haystack.

There's a trailer park, Gibson Avenue Trailer Park,

a pretty good population of Hispanics there.

We wanna pass around some flyers.

We'll have joining teams coming up.

We shouldn't be short on manpower.

[Curless] In the back of your mind, you know

if the suspect can encounter law enforcement

and-and get into the system,

then you have the potential to identify them.

They told me that maybe they thought

they were never gonna catch him until he did it again.

[Annie] That was very scary.

Just knowing that he might strike again.

[Alicia] Just one month after the attack,

Holly returns to school in Lexington.

[Holly] I went back to school

because I needed to get back into something

that I felt, you know, that I could control

and be comfortable doing.

But, every man, I'm-I'm like,

looking them up and down and like, thinking,

"Are you the one? Are you the one? Are you the one?"

I was very hyper aware.

I didn't like being that way, but I couldn't help it.

The triggers were hard to work through.

I started hearing trains at times

and-and I couldn't talk anymore,

and I'd, like, break out in a cold sweat,

and I'd like, hyperventilate. I couldn't breathe.

I would go to the police station and meet my detective.

My detective had told me,

"You gotta keep living your life.

Don't focus on all this.

That's our job, and we're gonna do that

and we need you to just keep on living and doing your life."

So I tried to go on with my life.

I started hanging out

with a lot of Chris' old roommates and his friends

because we all needed each other.

We'd cook dinner together and reminisce and talk about Chris,

and it was just a really healing year.

[Alicia] As Holly continues to heal,

time passes without any progress

on identifying her attacker.

If they were given information, they did not share it with me.

I had graduated from college,

and I still didn't know really what was happening.

[Alicia] Then, almost two years

after Holly and Chris were attacked,

there is a knock on Holly's apartment door.

[knock at door]

[Alicia] It's a detective from the Lexington Police Department.

He said, "We have been submitting the DNA from your case

to other cases, and we have a suspect."

[Greg] The DNA from Holly's rape kit

matches a man suspected of committing four murders

in Texas over the last year alone.

[Curless] There was a homicide in Texas,

and that scene had fingerprints and DNA evidence.

That DNA evidence was linked to our DNA evidence.

[Holly] He said, "We're 99.9% positive

that the person that did this in Texas

did this to you.

His name was Angel Resendiz-Ramirez."

[Holly] When I found out we have a suspect,

I think I felt scared and happy,

all at the same time.

[Alicia] Holly learns, over a year after she was raped

and Chris was murdered,

in the fall of 1998,

an 87-year-old a woman named Leafie Mason

was found bludgeoned to death in her Texas home.

[Kennedy] Since I was 16 years old, Leafie was my friend.

One of the summer jobs I had was to mow yards.

Leafie would bring me some tea out to drink.

I'd finish drinking the tea

and I'd finish mowing the yard and...

Leafie, you know, she was always nice to me,

and I enjoyed-- I enjoyed visiting with her and talking to her.

Of course, I grew up and graduated.

In '97, I took over as the Chief of Police here, in Hughes Springs.

[Alicia] Leafie was living alone just across the street

from the railroad tracks.

And Randy Kennedy checks in on her often.

[Kennedy] Leafie hadn't been seen for a few days.

So, I decided to go and see if she was okay.

[clears throat softly] I'm sorry.

Well, it's just, um...

I don't know what else I could have done,

but maybe...

I don't know.

It just feels like I failed her.

Leafie...

She'd been beaten to death.

I saw the uh, antique iron

with the handle missing from it,

in the chair by the front door.

And then, I found the iron handle

with bloodstains on her bed.

So, I knew then

that this was the instrument that was used

to murder her with.

It was violent.

I mean, just the, uh, the number of blows

to her face and head and stuff,

I mean, this was basically an overkill.

When I got to the back of the house,

I found that the window had been partially prised out

and palm prints had been smashed up against the window pane.

That was huge.

That-- that was the number one link

to my suspect, if we could ever find him.

[Greg] The palm print also points to

how he entered the home, which was through the window.

Police Chief Kennedy makes an observation

that the window faced the railroad tracks.

[Kennedy] I was reaching out to a lot of other departments and news media.

- And a few days later, I was contacted... -[phone rings]

[Kennedy] ...by Sergeant Ken Macha with the, uh,

West University Police Department in Houston.

He said, "There are a lot of things in your case there

that match my case here with Dr. Benton."

[Greg] On December 17th, 1998,

a month and a half after Leafie was beaten to death,

Dr. Claudia Benton

was found raped and beaten to death

in her suburban Houston home.

The attacker had used a statue that was in the house

to beat Claudia to death.

Claudia's home was also right near the railroad tracks.

After attacking Claudia,

he stole her car.

The car was later recovered,

but authorities were able to find fingerprints on the car.

[Kennedy] Sergeant Macha told me,

"We've got our suspect."

[Barkhausen] The FBI has a nationwide fingerprint database

that maintains fingerprints for all agencies,

and, of course, immigration fingerprints as well.

We knew that the fingerprints at the Benton crime scene

matched someone who had been crossing the border from Mexico.

Fingerprints and DNA ultimately connect

39-year-old Angel Resendiz-Ramirez

to the murders of Leafie Mason,

Dr. Claudia Benton,

and to the double homicide of husband and wife,

Norman and Karen Sirnic in seven months' time.

[Kennedy] It's just uh...

hard to believe

that Leafie was the victim of a serial killer.

[Holly] To have nothing for two years in Chris and I's case

and then to all of a sudden just have a suspect,

I thought, "This is crazy." You know?

I mean, I just couldn't believe it.

And they just keep adding cases on and cases on,

and it's getting bigger and bigger.

It just helped me to know that all the evil I was thinking he was,

is exactly what he was.

[Barkhausen] In 1999,

I was working on a task force

to capture Angel Resendiz-Ramirez.

The FBI started developing the criminal profile.

The method of murder in these cases

was blunt force trauma to the head.

And all the victims had railroad tracks right next to their homes.

Railroad drifters know exactly where to go

when they jump a train.

They can hide in this tiny space

on what's known as a hopper car,

and no one would ever even know they were there.

[train honks]

[Kennedy] He would get off the railroad

and uh, murder people,

and then he would get back on the railroad track

and, you know, ride the rails to somewhere else.

So, that's how he got the name of the "Railroad Killer."

[Alicia] The FBI learns that Angel Resendiz-Ramirez

had first entered the country illegally,

21 years earlier in 1976

as a transient.

[Barkhausen] Over the years,

as he was riding around the railroad,

there were crimes that he had committed.

But, he would use a lot of different aliases.

So, while he had law enforcement contact,

it wasn't realized that all of these crimes

were actually linked to one person.

Resendiz-Ramirez had some work as a migrant farm worker.

But, it wasn't like he had a--

a place that he was always at.

[Curless] It became a manhunt.

Trying to track a transient person

is a lot more difficult

than someone who's living and staying in one location,

or who has a phone, a credit card, a car.

[reporter] They're also watching from the sky

and looking under and in between train cars.

[woman] My husband leaves in the morning,

so I make sure my daughter and I leave with him.

And we don't come home until he comes home,

'cause we're sitting right on top of tracks.

We take this very seriously.

Uh, this suspect is somebody that needs to be in jail.

[Alicia] On June 3rd, 1999,

Resendiz-Ramirez strikes twice in one day.

[Greg] In Houston,

he kills a school teacher, Noemi Dominguez,

with a pickaxe.

It was a brutal attack.

And then he steals her car and drives Schulenburg, Texas.

Using the same pickaxe,

he kills a 73-year-old grandmother, Josephine Konvicka.

At that scene, he left a toy train.

[train honks]

He also had the newspaper article

talking about the Sirnics,

the couple he murdered in Weimar, Texas,

sitting on her couch.

So, it appeared as though

as many serial killers in the past,

he seemed to enjoy letting the police know that he's in charge.

He's proud of it.

You know, uh, he's flaunting it.

"You couldn't stop me.

Look what I did."

[reporter] Resendiz-Ramirez is wanted in questioning in southeast Texas.

The fact that he may be riding the rails

even has train workers nervous.

Homeowners are taking precautions too.

I keep the doors locked and keep a pistol by my bed.

The speed of his murders was increasing.

He was progressing in his bravery.

We knew that if we didn't get him into custody,

more people were going to become victims.

Serial killers don't just stop killing.

Lives were at stake.

There was up to $126,000 worth of reward

for information leading to his arrest.

People in Mexico were looking for him,

people in the-- in the US were looking for him.

As hoped for, it brings in lots and lots of tips.

-[phone rings] -[Greg] One in particular seems especially promising.

A person who identified themselves

as the cousin of Resendiz-Ramirez

provided information that

his sister Manuela lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

[Alicia] While the FBI attempts to track down Manuela,

her brother is still on the run.

On June 15th,

DNA links Resendiz-Ramirez

to two additional murders in Gorham, Illinois,

which is just a two hour drive from where Holly Dunn grew up.

There's all these cases piling up

and it's really scary and we don't know where he is.

I started feeling a lot of survivor's guilt.

He was breaking into people's homes and like,

getting them in their sleep.

It did seem like he was being more violent

with everyone else.

It's like he was saying,

"I made a mistake leaving her alive.

I'm gonna make sure that I don't do that again."

I kept thinking, like "Was he coming to get me?"

I was so scared that I was like,

"I'm going to Europe for the summer

and I'll see you later."

Days after Holly leaves the country,

FBI Agent Barkhausen and her partner

receive a case-breaking phone call

from Angel's sister, Manuela.

[inaudible]

She told us, "He's in Mexico.

But, I think he's considering coming back to the US,

and turning himself in."

And we were shocked.

I mean, how many serial murderers

do you know that turn themselves in?

It's unheard of.

And all we could attribute that to

is the reward, the pressure, the media,

the law enforcement, all looking for him.

He didn't have the freedom that he once had.

And he was looking at being in prison.

And in a Mexican prison,

you don't have as many rights as you do here.

[Greg] The next day, there's a three way call

with Resendiz-Ramirez, Manuela and the FBI.

And Manuela is translating for her brother,

who ultimately agrees to turn himself in to authorities

right at the border in El Paso, Texas.

[Alicia] Almost two years after Holly Dunn was attacked

and Chris Maier was killed,

agents from the FBI, Texas Rangers and the US Marshals

descend on El Paso, Texas.

[Barkhausen] He was supposed to be coming across the border any minute.

And we were just, "Please, let this happen.

Please let this happen."

[man over radio] Unit two, move into position.

I mean, your heart starts to beat faster.

[man over radio] Possible targets approaching.

[Barkhausen] And there's always in the back of your mind,

"Is this a setup?

Something bad is gonna happen."

[Barkhausen] We're standing at the border in El Paso,

getting ready to arrest the Railroad Killer.

And eventually,

we saw a pickup driving toward us.

And we knew that was him.

And the door opens.

And he gets out.

A Texas Ranger puts the handcuffs on him.

He was completely silent the entire time.

And he didn't even... blink an eye.

[handcuffs clicking]

[Barkhausen] And we put him in the car,

and we take a sigh of relief,

that that part of it's over.

[reporter 1] He's a railroad riding drifter

accused of being a notorious serial killer.

[reporter 2] It brought an end to one of the largest manhunts

ever launched in the United States.

Following his surrender,

Resendiz-Ramirez is taken to Houston to face charges.

He's appointed a lawyer

and pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.

He surrendered and I was still in Europe.

I heard about it on the news, just like everybody else.

I think I felt relief.

[reporter] The crime spree took place between 1997 and 1999.

Investigators say they have fingerprints and DNA

linking Resendiz to the brutal work of the railroad serial killer.

[Holly] I was almost like, giddy,

because I was so happy

that he would never hurt another person again.

[Alicia] Resendiz-Ramirez's murder spree

spanned three states, Texas, Kentucky and Illinois.

In Texas, he faces capital murder charges,

which are punishable by death.

[reporter] If convicted of killing the Houston doctor,

the 40-year-old Resendiz

could face death by lethal injection.

[Holly] I knew that Texas knew how to do the death penalty.

So, I was happy that he surrendered in Texas

and that Texas was taking control of it all.

[Barkhausen] When I testified at trial,

it was a very short part of the testimony,

because I wasn't involved directly with the murder case,

just with the arrest.

It didn't bother me to-- to look at him,

because... it's done.

His judgment is coming.

It doesn't come from me.

[Greg] On May 18th, 2000, a jury convicts Resendiz-Ramirez.

Then comes the penalty phase,

and Holly testifies as a witness and a survivor.

The day before I testified, I almost had a complete panic attack,

screaming and crying and saying that I couldn't do it.

Because I couldn't be in the same room with him again.

I didn't wanna see him again.

But I was like, "You can do this, Holly."

My family was there and my sister was there,

and everybody just surrounded me again and picked me up.

I did not look at him.

Then, I went through the whole story.

They got to that point where they said,

"Is the person who attacked you in the courtroom today?

Could you please tell us what he's wearing?"

And so I looked at him, and I mean,

he had an expressionless face,

almost a smirk on its face.

I said, like, "He's wearing a white button-down shirt."

And the minute I said it,

my hearing started going into my head

and I started breaking out into a cold sweat,

and I-- I was gonna faint.

I mean, I-- I had felt that before,

like, that-- I was this close to fainting.

The judge and everybody else realized

that that was about to happen, too,

because they quickly said,

"Defense, do you have any questions?"

"No." And the bailiff, like,

picks me up and carries me out of the courtroom.

[Alicia] On May 22nd, 2000,

Holly returns home to Indiana with her family.

I heard about the verdict when we landed.

He was given the death penalty,

and I thought, "Thank you, Texas."

He never needs to go to anywhere else to do a trial.

[Alicia] Before his death,

Angel Resendiz-Ramirez admits to committing nine murders.

But law enforcement believes that number is really closer to 15,

after linking him to six additional murders

in Georgia, Florida and California.

Angel Resendiz-Ramirez A.K.A. the Railroad Killer

was ultimately put to death

by the state of Texas on June 27th, 2006.

I was told at the execution of Angel Resendiz-Ramirez

that his last words were,

"I ask you to forgive me.

I ask the Lord to forgive me,

for allowing the devil to deceive me."

It-It gives me, uh, closure

and uh, peace to know that

he's not gonna be able to kill anybody else.

I believe that it was justice in Chris and I's case,

and in everybody that he killed.

It helped me to feel safe again.

The way she persevered and overcame it,

I remember thinking to myself, "There is no way,

if this had happened to me,

that I would be dealing with it

the way that Holly does."

She just, was amazing.

[Alicia] In 2008,

Holly partners with a detective

from her hometown in Indiana,

to create a nonprofit that's named Holly's House.

[Greg] It's an advocacy center

that helps victims of sexual assault and sexual abuse.

And we opened right after Labor Day,

on September 2nd of 2008.

At 8:00 a.m., and probably at 8:30,

we had a domestic violence victim walk in the door,

and we knew that we did the right thing.

I think Holly Dunn is one of the bravest people I've ever heard of,

to go through what she did

and come out a good person on the other side.

Holly has been able to build a beautiful life for herself.

She lives with her husband and her children.

[Holly] I have my amazing husband

who has been through all of my healing with me.

[people applauding]

And we have two miracle sons

who are just the light of our lives.

When I get home,

I cannot wait to get a big, giant hug from them

and you know, they're just like my...

my happiness.

I don't know if I'd be the same person I am today

had this never happened.

There's times where I can just feel Chris' energy.

And I mean, I feel child-like myself at times,

especially with my kids now.

And it feels like I know exactly how to be like them

because I am in touch--

so in touch with my child-like spirit.

And that's all from Chris.

I mean, I knew what that was because of him.

I know one thing, that if Chris was still in the world,

he would still be my friend.

So, you know, I'm-- I miss him.

[man] Old women, children...

it didn't matter to him.

Whoever was there happened to be the victim.

[woman] He was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I didn't know from one moment to the next

if i was going to be killed.

But I had to survive, and I decided

to make the Casanova Killer fall for me.

And it worked.