Original subtitles

[newscaster]As many as a dozen murder cases

can now be connected to alleged serial killer Bruce Lindahl.

Bruce Lindahl was a predator who hid in plain sight.

[woman] Just four houses from my girlfriend's house.

[Patrick]He was the charismatic neighbor down the street

with a friendly smile and disarming eyes.

He had the goddamn this blue eyes you've ever seen.

He exploited the young and the innocent.

[newscaster 1]Investigators made sure to retrieve the DNA--

[newscaster 2]Body was found in rural--

[newscaster 3]Sexually assaulted and killed.

And for every victim they uncover now,

there are many more that we don't know about.

She has not been seen or heard from since her disappearance.

At People magazine we wanted to share the stories

of the people who survived this monster.

I never thought that 40 years after something

so horrible happened to me that it would come to light.

I was in real danger and didn't know it.

I fell right into the trap like a trapped animal.

[theme music playing]

[Sherry] I'm a couple of different people in this story.

I'm a girl who lost her best friend in high school.

And I'm a girl who dated a man

who harmed and threatened and murdered a lot of women.

A man who was controlling everything that I was doing without realizing it.

Growing up back in 1970s, Downers Grove, Illinois,

was very much a Mayberry type of place.

Very quiet.

You never locked your doors.

And nobody ever worried about anything.

At 19, life was extremely busy.

I was always working two jobs.

I was keeping an apartment.

I started working at a restaurant

where I had met someone who owned a plane.

And was a flight instructor,

and he offered to give me flying lessons

for the price of gasoline.

So if I could get enough gasoline money together,

I could take as many flying lessons as I wanted.

To sit in that front seat and take off

was actually very scary for me,

but it was almost like,

one of those fun, scary like roller coaster ride.

And I fell in love with flying right after that first flight.

That's what I learned to love to do.

It was an adventure.

It was freedom.

[Samira] She fell in love with it.

There was no going back for her.

But it was also during her flying lessons

that she met Bruce Lindahl.

Who would eventually take her life down a deep, sinister spiral.

I met a parachute instructor at the airport.

His name is Bruce.

He was 20 something.

He said, "Hello.

Do you fly out here all the time?"

And I said, "Yeah, I do. I'm here all the time."

And when I had landed the plane, he was still here.

He asked me where I worked,

and I had told him the restaurant where I was working at.

And he came by later that day, and sat in my section.

He had incredibly deep blue eyes,

and you just couldn't take your eyes off of his eyes.

They actually sparkled when he talked,

and he had such a great smile.

And he was very charismatic and very down to earth.

And it was just so intense

on everything you were saying all the time.

And we hit it off like right away.

He paid a lot of attention to me,

so I paid a lot of attention to him.

You know, I think back,

I didn't know I had anything to be afraid of at the time.

Sherry and Bruce begin dating,

and soon Bruce won't let her out of his sight.

[Sherry] My boss was never happy about him coming in

because he was always taking up so much of my attention.

I just told him he had to stop seeing me at work

because he was getting me in trouble all the time.

He said, "Okay, I'll be outside waiting."

At the time I said, "Okay, go outside and wait

and he would sit out and wait for me

[producer speaking]

Yeah, I didn't think anything of it.

Now I know how creepy it was the fact

that he always wanted to know where I was

and what I was doing all the time.

Yeah, hindsight.

Twenty-20 type of deal.

I was being stalked and didn't realize that I was.

Then one day, Sherry and Bruce have a conversation

that stops her dead in her tracks.

[Sherry] We were driving by the university in Lisle

and Bruce had said, "That's where I like to go hiking.

Let's go back there." And I said, "I'm not going back there.

That's where they found my bod-- my friend's body."

And he just looked at me and he goes,

"Which friend is that?"

And I said, "My girlfriend Beth, that I grew up with."

And then he became very, very interested in Beth.

And what happened to Beth?

[Patrick] Elizabeth Drews was a teenage girl

whose family moved to Downers Grove, Illinois,

in the early 1970s.

Her friends called her Beth.

Beth and I were best friends from the very beginning.

From the day we met.

We had regular sleepovers.

And we'd stay up all night long

running around the neighborhood.

We bent the rules, like sneaking out at night,

and we thought, "This is cool. Let's go out."

Two or three o'clock in the morning

go sneak down the street.

From my 16-year-old perspective,

it looked like her parents were way, way too strict.

She was grounded for a lot of staff.

That's one of the reasons why we started

sneaking out at two or three o'clock in the morning.

[chuckles] Because she was grounded all the time.

Sherry and Beth are best friends

into their high school years.

But that comes to a stop on June 1st, 1977.

When Beth goes missing.

[phone ringing]

[Sherry] The phone rang and it was best Mom.

She was asking if Beth was over at our house

'cause she hadn't come home all day.

[Patrick] Beth is reported missing to police.

But after interviewing family and friends,

investigators come up with a theory

that is not popular with Beth's friends.

[Sherry] They said that she was a runaway.

Right away.

I guess because she was a teenager

and she was arguing with her parents

and we kept saying that she wasn't a runaway

and they kept saying, "No, she's a runaway."

That's the angle they took.

She wouldn't have left and not contacted us.

It's frustrating talking about it now

because I know so much more.

They were wrong

and they just said no, "We're right."

And they didn't want to listen.

[Samira] On October 6th, 1977

four months after her disappearance,

Beth's remains are found in the woods in Lisle,

near a local university.

[Sherry] That day was my 17th birthday,

She was in the woods next to the university in Lisle,

So my 17 year was a very hard, difficult year.

[Patrick] Beth's death is categorized as unnatural.

And local authorities begin an investigation.

[Samira] She was found in the same woods

where the body of another student was found

just two years before Beth's.

Her name was Pam Maurer.

Pam Maurer was a 16-year-old girl

from Woodridge, Illinois.

She was, by all accounts, just a quiet, nice girl,

somewhat gregarious, average student.

And she liked hanging out with her friends.

On January 12th, 1976

she disappeared, and then the next morning

they found her body on the side of a road in Lisle.

She was raped and she had been strangled.

A piece of rubber automotive hose was recovered

near her body that we believe was the murder weapon.

[Patrick] Pam Maurer's murder goes unsolved,

and within a month into the Beth Drew's case,

that investigation stalls too.

[Samira] At this time, police are completely unaware

that there is a serial killer

operating right in their backyard.

And his name is Bruce Lindahl.

[ominous music playing]

Police don't make a connection between the deaths

of Pam Maurer and Beth Drews.

and it leaves Beth's family and friends without any answers.

Her mom had an extremely tough time after the loss.

Extremely tough time.

[producer speaking]

I don't know.

They moved away.

Eventually, her family moved away and moved out of state.

But I'm sure the memories were just too tough.

Teenage years grew into adult years,

and over time, life just changed.

And that's how I moved on.

So at 19, I'm dating Bruce for about a month or so,

and he became highly focused in on Beth

and what happened to Beth.

He was asking me about the police.

What were they asking you?

Who were they focused on?

Who did they think did it? Constantly.

I mean, it became an everyday topic for us.

At the time, I didn't find it odd

because I was really young.

[Patrick] Bruce's fixation on Beth's murder

builds and builds until one day,

when he tries to take Sherry to the scene of the crime.

He asked me to go into the woods,

and my immediate reaction was,

And he parked the car right at the gate of the woods.

And I'm like, "No, I'm not going back."

And he's like, "Come on, get out of the car.

Let's just go in." And I'm like, "No."

I refused to get out of the car.

[Samira] Because Sherry didn't give in.

She may have saved her own life.

I was in real danger and didn't know it.

[Samira] Sherry doesn't want to go into the woods

because that's where her best friend's body was found.

And Bruce is persistent.

[Patrick] He eventually backs off.

But it's just one of many examples

of Bruce flying off the handle

when he doesn't get his way.

[Sherry] Bruce would get angry very easily whenever I said no.

He had a temper on him.

A very, very quick temper.

There was one time I found an earring in his car,

and I said, "Whose earring is this?"

He took it out of my hand. He says,

"My sister's earring."

And he rolled down the window and threw it out.

And I said, "Why would you throw out your sister's earring?"

We don't need it.

She doesn't need it.

So there was just things

that were off the Richter scale in his reactions.

For Sherry, Bruce's anger was one thing.

But his dangerous behaviors didn't stop there.

[Sherry] Sexually he got a little rough.

There were times where I woke up

and never remembered falling asleep.

And I'd wake up and I'd be late for work,

and a couple of times I'd be really groggy,

and I was like, "Oh, my God, I can't wake up."

He goes, "Don't worry,

you'll wake up, It'll wear off.

It's fine.".

I had no idea the time.

Now I look back at that and think...

The guy drugged me and I didn't know.

His apartment creeped me out.

It was dark. It was garden level.

I remember walking in one time

and the smell of mosquito repellent

was so strong in the apartment that I couldn't breathe.

I asked him why he was using so much,

and he said it was to cover up the smell of things.

And I couldn't-- I'm like, whatever could smell this bad

that you you can't breathe.

Everything he kept very hidden.

And always told me not to open closet doors

or not to look at things.

"Nope. Stay out of there. That's private.

No, stay out of that. That's private."

It's like, "Why are you keeping all this stuff from me?"

That creeps me out today knowing

probably what I was smelling so bad.

I think the last straw in the relationship was, he said,

that I wasn't making enough time for him.

And he wanted more time,

and I said no, and that was it.

That was the end.

[Patrick] That same year in nearby Aurora,

another woman encounters Bruce Lindahl,

and she walks right into the hunter's trap.

[Annette] This house was in my nightmares for years.

It could have changed a lot of things

had I not walked into this garage.

I just can't believe I'm here today.

Forty years ago, thought I was gonna die here.

When I was 19,

I didn't really know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I hadn't figured out who I was.

I had a job.

I worked as a nurse's aide and I took my work serious,

And I had a steady boyfriend.

And we lived together.

March 6th 1979.

It was a spring day.

It was kind of sunny.

I decided to walk to Cindy's house.

We were best friends. We still are best friends.

I could have taken the bus, but I decided to walk.

You know, save myself 50 cents

I was standing on the corner at the stop sign

of Ohio and Front Street,

So going to Cindy's house,

which you can see from this corner,

and a car rolls up.

A man. He asked me if I needed a ride

and I'm like, "No, no, I don't need a ride.

I'm going right over there to my friend's house."

And, he says, "What are you gonna do

when you go to your friend's house?"

Being kind of naive.

I'm like, "Oh, uh probably hang out

and smoke pot with her."

So the conversation went towards smoking pot.

and how he had some really good reefer.

And did I want to buy some?

And I'm like, "Yeah, sure."

He said, he lived around the corner.

I was like, "Okay, I'll follow you there."

He had striking blue eyes.

He seemed very nice and easygoing.

I didn't feel uncomfortable at all.

I thought he's in this car. I'm on foot.

It's daylight.

So I'm gonna buy some pot.

I'm not doing anything wrong.

We just didn't know that there was a monster among us.

Just half a block from where I was.

Just four houses from my girlfriend's house.

We pulled into this garage

and there's an electric door.

And as he was sitting in his car, in the garage.

I'd be standing out here, and I'm thinking, "What is he doing?"

So I walk in the garage and I walk up to the car.

I'm kind of like, "Hey, what's going on?

What are you doing?"

It was like the beginning of the end

walking into this garage.

As soon as I got close enough to the car,

I hear the garage door started coming down.

And for a split socket, something told me.

Leave, run.

But I stood there and watched

that door come down,

and I'm like, "What did I just get myself into?"

Why would he shut the garage door?

Time out. I need a break.

I'm starting to sweat.

This is making me nervous.

[sighing impatiently] I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I just need some air.

-[sighs softly] -[door creaks open]

I didn't realize how much something like that would come back.

It's like in the archives and your body starts reacting.

Something in your brain

that you haven't thought about for a long time.

A lot of demons here, a lot of bad energy.

Shake it off.

I got this.

When he got out of the car

first, he was friendly and he invited me in.

Offered me a drink.

I said, "No, thanks."

He's like, "Come on downstairs.

I wanna show you my bird."

I came down the stairway.

In the corner over there,

there was a falcon, that's a prey bird.

I thought that was a little strange, but okay.

Hey, you know.

He asked me if I liked the Moody Blues

and he wanted to put this song on,

and I guess, sure, why not put on.

The Moody Blues "Nights In White Satin".

That was the name of the song.

Every time I hear that song on the radio,

that song takes me right back there.

I just wanted to get the pot, and I'm like,

well, You know, I really got to get going.

We came up from the basement

and I'm in this little landing

and he said, "Just wait here.

I'll be right back."

And when he came back,

it was not the person that left

because this man that came back

put a gun to my head a 9 mm.

Put it to my temple.

I think he said something to the effect of

You know what's happening?

And I said, "No, I'm leaving."

And he grabbed me by my neck

and he pushed me up like, against the wall.

It scared me so bad that it--

I call it an out of body experience.

It was like, I'm watching what's happening to me.

It's not happening to me.

But at the same time,

something was telling me, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die.

I kept hearing I'm gonna die.

[Annette] He had a hold of me

and he dragged me to this part of the house.

And I'm thinking,

how am I gonna get away from this person?

What's gonna happen to me? I'm scared to death.

I'm trying to remain calm,

but the whole time in my mind,

my body, I'm just...

freaking out, and I'm scared.

So I said, "Okay, okay.

But I have to go to the bathroom."

In my mind, I was thinking, I'll lock myself in

and I'll get out the window.

If I have to kick the window out,

I'm going out the window.

That's it, It's how I'm gonna do it.

And he's like, "Yeah, that's fine. Go to the bathroom."

-[door lock clicks] -Got in that bathroom, I locked that door

and there's clear glass bricks.

They don't open. They're placed in there.

There's no way I could get out.

I didn't want to come out of that bathroom.

And my plan wasn't gonna work.

Oh, my God.

It was a horrible feeling.

[banging door]

[door lock clicks]

I just opened the door and came out.

He took me in the bedroom.

He takes me in here into this bedroom.

-[gun cocking]-And he has the gun still.

And I'm begging him.

Please take the clip out of the gun

because I'm scared. I'm scared of that gun.

And he actually took the clip out of the gun.

I just wanted it out of there,

so it would take him a while if he was gonna shoot me,

he'd have to at least put the clip back in.

That Give me a few seconds.

He hesitated, but he took it out.

[producer speaking]

Because my angels were protecting me.

That's the only thing I can say.

And then he told me to take my pants off.

He gets on top of me.

He proceeds to rape me.

All I could think was

"How am I gonna get out of here? I gotta get out of here."

And it's not working.

He's not being able to perform.

He's trying over and over again.

It's not working.

I'm like, "What am I gonna do now?"

Now he's gonna beat me up because he can't perform.

Just came to mind that I should talk to this man.

So I started talking to him.

"I really like you.

You're my type. Look, you're so handsome."

And I'm like, "Don't worry about this.

You know, this is no thing we can try again later."

You know, "Let's go on a date this weekend."

He-- He bought it. The glance he gave.

I'm like, "Give me a piece of paper.

I'll write my phone number."

Well, the whole atmosphere changed.

He seemed to just-- Have a split personality,

like the monster was going away

and the human being was coming back.

I gave him my actual phone number

and he let me get up and get dressed.

I followed him out of the room into the garage.

I was holding my breath.

Please, just let me out.

Please, just let me out. I'm thinking the whole time.

Just another foot. Just another foot.

And I walked out. Just give me a call.

Okay? Bye.

Just like that.

As soon as I got out of sight,

I did a beeline right to Cindy's.

And I was gone.

I don't believe in luck.

You know, I believe my guardian Angels are with me.

What can I say?

But I got pretty close that day.

I called the police.

They said to go to the hospital

and they'd meet me there, and that's what I did.

I told him that he was about 5'5" dark hair,

piercing blue eyes, the them where he lived.

I described the house.

I didn't know his name, but they knew who he was.

They found him.

After the police interview the man

they call Annette in for a follow up interview?

[Annette] Well, interview, I'd say it was more

like an interrogation, not an investigation.

The investigator he just took that piece of paper, said,

"What's this?"

And I'm like, "That's what saved my life.

What do you mean, what's that?"

I told them I gave it to him.

I told him why I did it, but they didn't like my story.

They-- They made me feel like I did something wrong.

I don't know if they thought

that we were having a lover's quarrel

or if he was dating me,

or I don't know why.

But when they interviewed him,

he had pages of what he said happened.

Mine was one paragraph.

They didn't believe me. They dropped the case.

End of story. That's all I ever heard.

But the police told me his name was Bruce Lindahl.

And I never forgot that name.

And I'm not very good at remembering names,

but I never forgot that name.

We went to California.

It was nice to get away from Aurora.

It just-- That was a bad thing. I just--

I didn't really want to be here.

So we went to California.

Just a few months after Annette's rape,

another young woman in the area goes missing.

Debbie McCall went to Downers Grove North

when she disappeared.

Downers Grove North is the sister school

of Downers Grove South.

[Patrick] Both Pam Maurer and Beth Drews

were found dead in the woods by a nearby university.

But Deb McCall's body is never found.

She had gone to school and asked a friend

if they wanted to cut class with her, and they said no.

So the last person that saw her

was this friend who she has to cut class with.

Not only does she match the type of victims

that Bruce has had in the past,

she also goes missing from the same

hunting grounds where Bruce operated.

[producer speaking]

Yeah, uh-- Yes.

I learned about another woman

who was here that was abducted.

From a shopping center in North Gate

I'm talking about Debra Colliander.

[Karen] I still feel like, I can see her.

I can still see the whole thing.

It's been with me forever.

I was getting my girls in the van

and I was standing on the porch

locking the door,

and there were bushes in front of the house.

And she came between the house and the bushes.

And then I saw this naked girl.

She just walked straight up to me

and asked me if I could help her.

And I quickly unlocked the door

and let her in real quick before anybody saw her.

I gave her some clothes to wear.

And we stood there and she told me the whole story.

She said, she was kidnapped and raped.

Then he took pictures of her, and when she described him,

she said he had the God damnedest blue eyes you've ever seen.

And my daughters looked at each other.

And they said, "Mom, that's Bruce."

[Karen] I called the police and told them

that I had a woman here at my house

that had been kidnapped and raped.

She told me her name was Debbie Colliander.

Deb lived in Aurora

and had gone to a exercise class at the North Gate Mall.

She rode her bike and she was approached

by a subject later identified as Bruce Lindahl.

And he asks for her help to help him start his car.

[Det. Loudon] He charmed her into getting behind the wheel of the car,

and in the minute she did,

he took a sharp object and put it against her neck.

And told her to slide over to the passenger side.

He then took her to his house.

He raped her at gunpoint.

He forced her to take lewd photographs,

and then, when he fell asleep,

she escaped to a neighbor's house.

[Karen] When the detectives came to my house later that afternoon.

My girls had known who he was from selling

Girl Scout cookies.

And the detective told me that my girls were very lucky.

[producer speaking]

Because they could have been one of his victims.

When police arrived, the evidence was all there.

The gun was there. The Polaroid pictures of Debra were there.

There was no question it was Bruce who did it.

He was arrested.

Debra was interviewed.

And then it proceeded toward trial.

[Patrick] After years of flying under the radar

of law enforcement, Bruce Lindahl

is finally charged with the kidnapping

and rape of Debra Colliander.

And prosecutors are building a strong case against him.

-[phone ringing] -[Sherry] When I was 20-years-old,

I got a call from an attorney

that said he was representing a girl who had been raped

and that Bruce Lindahl l had raped her.

And that they needed a character witness

against Bruce on his demeanor.

And it shocked me.

I thought, What a [bleep] What a jerk!

Not being able to hear the word, "No".

So to stand up for the girl, I decided to testify.

And when the trial date came up,

I never heard from the attorney.

[Annette] I read about her case.

Two weeks before Debra's case came up for court.

She went missing from work.

[Det. Loudon] Colliander didn't show up for the trial,

and eventually the judge had to determine

that they didn't have a victim or a witness.

And they dismissed the case.

She was gone, dropped the case.

[Sherry] I called the attorney and he just told me that

the charges had been dropped

and my services were no longer gonna be needed.

Never told me that she was missing.

And then months later,

I pick up the paper and there's an article

that a boy had been stabbed,

and it was Bruce that did it.

[Crd. Guerrieri]April 4th, 1981

the Gala Lanes Bowling Alley in Naperville.

At some point, Bruce convinced Charles Huber,

who was 18 at the time, to come back with him.

Bruce attacked Charles and stabbed him 29 times.

And so, as the fights occurring,

Bruce, in his rage,

stabbed himself in the right thigh

and slowly bled out

and just collapsed on top of Charles Huber.

The both of them lay dead on the floor, covered in blood.

It shocked me that he attacked somebody with a knife

and before that raped Debra Colliander.

I couldn't believe that

I knew someone who stabbed another person.

[Patrick]Bruce Lindahl's history,

as well as the murder of Charles Huber,

has local law enforcement making inquiries

both near and far.

[Annette] The police called me in California

and told me that he was

passed away that he had died.

And I remember saying, "Good.

I'm glad he's dead."

And they wanted to ask me questions about my encounter.

And I didn't want to talk to them.

I said no, "I'm not answering questions.

You didn't care about me when I came to you.

Now you want to ask me questions?"

[chuckles softly] Not happening.

And I basically told them to go eff themselves and hung up.

I wasn't interested in helping the police.

About a year after Lindahl's death,

police discover why Debra Colliander

never showed up for court.

A farmer checking his field saw an indentation,

he pulled out a spade, started digging

and found the remains of Debra Colliander.

[Annette]It pisses me off.

because it could have been prevented.

That poor girl...

imagine if it would have been me and they prosecuted him.

Maybe that would have happened to me.

Oh, my gosh, I just-- I can't think about it.

[Samira] At the time of his death,

police were aware of at least a few of the violent crimes

that Bruce Lindahl committed.

This included the rape of Annette Lazar,

the kidnapping and rape of Deb Colliander

as well as the death of Charles Huber.

But many more of his crimes remained uninvestigated.

[Det. Loudon] In the 1970s,

there was a lot of misogynistic attitudes.

It seemed like there just wasn't enough

focus on crimes against women.

[Samira] Eventually, Pam Maurer's case from 1976,

turns out to be the key that connects him to the series

of unsolved murders in the area.

[Patrick] After Maurer's raped and strangled body

was discovered in the woods.

The case is cold for decades

until Lisle Police Department

Cold Case detective Chris Loudon,

decides to take a fresh look at it.

It was considered unsolvable

because there just never was any suspects

developed from the beginning.

The case grew colder, and the the list of suspects

didn't get any bigger

and people started dying and forgetting,

and it became a point where if we didn't try, solving it now

we were never going to solve it.

And we had one ace in the hole

that the other investigations didn't have.

And that was DNA.

We had semen that was left

on Pam's underwear.

There wasn't a lot of it.

Some of it had degraded,

and we sent that evidence to the lab and the lab extracted

a profile from that DNA.

And they compared it to

DNA on file on public databases

like 23andMe and ancestry.com.

And they found a familial hit.

When they called me from the lab, they said,

Does the name Lindahl mean anything to you?

[Patrick] Detective Loudon researches the family tree

and finds that there were two brothers named Lindahl,

living in the area at the time of the murders.

One of whom was named Bruce.

[Det. Loudon]And the first thing I learned about Bruce Lindahl

was that back in 1980

he was accused of kidnapping and raping

a young woman in Aurora named Debra Colliander.

So we went to Aurora and found out Bruce

had been accused of another rape in Aurora,

that involved a woman named Annette Lazar.

[Patrick] Loudon also comes across a box recovered

from Lindahl's house during the Colliander case.

And it contains hundreds of photos.

[Det. Loudon] Among them were young women,

some clearly under age.

[Crd. Guerrieri]Various poses, some head shots,

some full body shots,

some laying on a bed, some clothes,

some partially clothed, some fully nude,

[Patrick] Fearing that these pictures might be images

of unidentified Lindahl victims.

Detective Loudon expands his search

to other unsolved cases in the area from that time.

[Det. Loudon] We found out about a young woman

named Debra McCall who had disappeared

and they never recovered her body.

We also found out about a girl named Beth Drews,

who was found dead in 1977.

Once we made our list of potential

Lindahl victims,

we had the dry erase board and we had about 12 names on the board.

And then we started just comparing each picture.

One by one.

We ended up getting at least three girls

that we are reasonably confident.

Our girls that were found dead.

There were pictures that Bruce Lindahl had in his possession.

And my partner and I looked at each other

and said, "We think we have a serial killer on our hands."

The problem we encountered

was Bruce Lindahl died in 1981.

We weren't going to be able to interview him.

And unless you have an actual match from your suspect,

it really doesn't mean anything,

so we had to get his DNA.

[Patrick] At this point, the police will have to do something so rare

that no one in the county has ever done it before.

They will need to exhume his body.

[Det. Loudon]We needed to dig up Bruce Lindahl's body.

And then remove fingernails, hair,

the femurs and his molars.

To send to a lab

to have it developed into a profile.

To compare against the DNA

we collected from Pam's underclothing.

The lab told us that

the chances of Pam's killer,

being anybody but Bruce Lindahl

was one in eight quadrillion people.

We held a press conference

and we had decided that we were going to offer a tip line.

If anyone has any information regarding Bruce Lindahl,

please call us.

We finally put a name and a face to this monster,

and that's pretty much what he was.

Within maybe a week or two.

I had 75 phone calls.

[Sherry] In 2020,

my mother noticed an article

and she said, look at this guy had

was around at the same time, that Beth disappeared.

Do you think that he had anything to do with it?

And I looked at the article and I said,

"Oh, my God, Mom, I dated him.

When I looked at the article, my whole world stopped.

Everything started rolling in.

And flooding my mind and wouldn't stop.

And I thought, "Oh, my God."

And all the pieces came together.

I called the detective

and said, "I think you need to put Beth Drews on your list

as potential victims."

And he said, "She's already on the list."

[Det. Loudon] Sherry gave me some extra information

we didn't know about Beth.

And then she told me that she dated Bruce Lindahl.

Not that long after Beth's body was recovered,

which was just an amazing coincidence.

What she told me about Bruce and what Bruce said to her.

It cemented in my mind what I already suspected.

That Bruce was responsible for Beth Drew's death.

I had an intimate relationship

with a man who killed my best friend.

And I live with that.

I still haven't overcome it.

It's something I deal with on a daily basis.

That's hard.

That's the hard part.

[Samira] Over the years,

the families of his victims and his survivors

were left with grief, trauma

and whatever pieces they had to pick up

and move on with their lives.

[Annette] I didn't trust nobody after that, especially men.

I didn't let nobody close to me.

I didn't go places where I could be trapped.

Claustrophobic, quit smoking pot

changed me in a lot of ways.

[Sherry] When I had my daughter,

I had major major concerns for her safety.

When she would go off to events

or she would go even on dates.

I had to really, really manage my emotions

because of all the memories of Beth.

Flashbacks of Beth missing

were extremely hard for me to deal with on a constant basis.

It really made a difference

in the way that I parented my daughter.

[Annette] I just had to move on,

and that's exactly what I did.

I never talked about it to anybody.

Not my family, not my son or his father.

I just put it in the back of my mind for 40 years.

Come on, boy.

I never told them until 2020,

when the police called me.

[Det. Loudon] When I talked to somebody like Annette,

who I know still had...

[sighing grimly] so much pain

to deal with.

I felt that she deserved

an apology from the police community.

[Annette] Oh, yes, I was mad.

I survived a serial killer

where a lot of other women didn't survive.

And it could have been prevented.

Can you imagine if they prosecuted?

But they dropped the case.

I'm just sorry for the other families and lives lost.

[Det. Loudon]It breaks my heart that somebody

who went through such a horrible thing

can feel that we failed them so badly.

It's infuriating as a cop.

It's infuriating as a detective,

and it's infuriating as a dad,

because none of these other girls this had to happen.

How do you do that?

I'm pissed off again.

[Sherry] I don't think they're going to truly know

how many victims he actually did have.

I don't think they're ever going to truly get down to the bottom of it.

[Crd. Guerrieri]I'm still haunted by Deb McCall

and the girls who disappeared, and we've never found.

Until you find a body or other evidence.

Otherwise, it's going to be tough.

To get some closure for their families.

[Det. Loudon] Bruce Lindahl was a small statured person

with evil running from the top of his head to the pinkie toe.

I did cases with child pornography

and human trafficking.

And Bruce Lindahl is still my standard

for as low as a human being can be.

[Annette] If-- if you were a victim of this person,

don't be afraid, you did nothing wrong.

Your story connects to somebody's loved one being found.

You know, they could all tie together

because the stories connect.

Tell your story. Be strong.

It's exposing somebody

that did terrible things to people, young people.

There's no shame in that, if you were a victim.

I'm not ashamed of it.

My story's been told and I'm at peace.

It's really great when you get closure.

It's a good feeling.

-So... -[man] Yeah, glad.

Come on, let's go.

Get your cookie. Let's go Now.

I'm a survivor.

I'm a survivor.

I can still see him standing there.

There really are monsters, and in this case, brothers.

They stalked young couples to bloody ends.

[Reporter] Police are intensifying their search.

I heard the gun go off.

I don't know how she survived but she did.

A lot of people say I'm a victim,

but I think I'm a survivor.