MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Shanquella Robinson

17:38Brit Prawat:He, like, jumped up. He didn't know it was her. He fought back. But that seems to be contradicted by his own words. Because in an episode of On the Case with Paula Zahn and in an episode of Forensic Files, he told those producers that at some point in her pregnancy, he had slapped Diana hard enough to leave bruises. So now that they know all of this, police bring Kevin in for an interview to suss out what he knows about the weapon used in Diana's assault. I think they're probably hoping he's going to say too much. But he stays calm through the whole thing. Later, he even agrees to take a polygraph that he passes.

18:14Brit Prawat:But police can't shake this feeling that something isn't adding up. But does that mean he tried to kill her? The idea that a roaming psychopath just happened upon their apartment in the exact small window that Kevin went out to get food seems almost unbelievable. Except for the fact that at this very time, there was a roaming psychopath attacking women in almost the exact way that Diana had been attacked. And just a week into the investigation of Diana's case, police get word of another brutal attack. A 24-year-old named Deborah Kennedy is found by her sister bludgeoned to death inside their shared apartment.

18:57Brit Prawat:Now, authorities determined in that case that Debra had been sexually assaulted. And the similarities in the victim profiles are hard to ignore. Both Diana and Debra are young white, living in the same neighborhood, attacked the same way, both in first floor apartments. And these two attacks actually fit a much larger pattern. because for two years, police have been responding to assaults all across Orange County, California. And at least 10 other women who lived in first floor apartments with either unlocked windows or unlocked doors had been attacked in the middle of the night. They'd all been beaten with some kind of blunt object, mostly fatally, and some were sexually assaulted.

19:44Brit Prawat:Now, police believe that they're all the work of a serial killer that they're calling the bedroom basher. And for some reason, it takes until Deborah's murder for police to finally form a task force to investigate this.

20:00Ashley Flowers:Is Diana the only survivor?

20:01Brit Prawat:No, so there are others. Definitely one that we know of who was attacked in July of 1979. She had to have a tracheotomy because of her injuries and has difficulty speaking. and all she remembers about her attack is hearing noises in her apartment hallway before a man grabbed her, told her to shut up. And it doesn't seem like any description of her attacker was ever shared by police, so I'm not sure if she couldn't remember what he looked like because of her injuries, maybe she never saw him. I don't know. So for a while, again, Diana's still recovering. She doesn't remember anything. So they're like really trying to dig into this line of inquiry, hunting down a potential serial killer.

20:41Brit Prawat:But along the way, they get hundreds of tips with conflicting information, which kind of leads them to wonder if they're right. Like, is this a serial killer or are these a bunch of different people? Because to them, it seems so far-fetched. Like, really, how could one guy commit all of these horrible assaults so closely together and just fly completely under the radar?

21:02Ashley Flowers:I mean, it's 1979. This is literally, like, the time to do that.

21:06Brit Prawat:I'm with you. Like, I don't think it's that wild, but at the time, it was. And then there's another attack. On October 21st, 17-year-old Deborah Sr. is found dead by her roommate after leaving a party that they both went to earlier in the night. Again, Deborah's Costa Mesa apartment is on the first floor, and there are no signs of a break-in. But even with new evidence from this murder, I mean, they actually have handprints on the windowsill and a semen sample, Police don't find any solid leads, and they do end up disbanding the Bedroom Basher task force by the end of October. They only give it a month?

21:44Brit Prawat:Less than that, like, from what I can tell. Like, which I couldn't believe. What's the point of a task force for five minutes? Exactly. And there's no real reporting explaining why it was disbanded so quickly. I don't even feel like you could, like, get through all the materials in that time. Or get on the same page as a task force. Yeah. Retired detective Tom Tarpley, who was with the Tustin PD, he took over the cold case investigation. He told us that in that time, basically, the task force just, like, ran its course. And with no new information coming in and, like, possible staffing shortages, like, that one seems most likely to be.

22:16Brit Prawat:They just had to return the cases back to, like, their local jurisdictions and everyone had to kind of work them separately. So in Diana's case, their last real remaining hope is that Diana will be the one to solve her own case. Maybe she heals. Maybe her memory will come back and she'll be able to tell them who did this to her. And sure enough, out of the blue, one day late in November, they get a call from Diana's dad. He says Diana remembered something, something really big. For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases.

23:02Brit Prawat:And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

23:20Brit Prawat:so apparently diana had tagged along to her mom pat's dentist appointment earlier that day and while waiting for her mom diana's sitting in the lobby just kind of like flipping through some magazines and as she's doing that she comes across this picture of a baby and that's when all of a sudden the pieces start clicking into place i mean again at this point she remembers nothing but she sees this baby and all of a sudden she remembers that she'd been pregnant and from there images of her attack start appearing in her mind. And when Pat came out of her dentist's office, Diana was trying to tell her something, but she was struggling to find the words.

23:56Brit Prawat:Because again, remember, she was having to learn how to talk all over again. It's not just her memory's gone, her basic skills are.

24:02Ashley Flowers:So she said something like,

24:04Brit Prawat:Ivan hit me, Evan hit me. And to her mom, Pat, it sounds like she's trying to say Kevin instead of Ivan. So what they do is they take Diana to a speech therapist before anyone even confronts Kevin with this because this is huge. And when that person asked Diana, who hurt you? Diana points to her wedding ring and the therapist asks her if she means Kevin. And Diana says yes. And that's all police need to hear. Detective Tarpley believes that this is when they pull Diana's case out of the bigger bedroom basher investigation. Like in that moment, I mean, again, they're all worked separately at that point.

24:45Brit Prawat:But in that moment, they're like, oh, clearly this is something else. And they like pull it out because they're like, OK, our surviving victim has just told us who did this.

24:52Ashley Flowers:And there's no chance that it's all one and the same, right? Like Kevin can't be the bedroom basher.

24:57Brit Prawat:No, they've ruled Kevin out on those other attacks based on his work schedule alone. So it was always just two options. Either she was part of this serial killer spree and Kevin was innocent or Kevin attacked his wife and her case is unconnected.

25:09Ashley Flowers:It had nothing to do with the rest of them. Right.

25:10Brit Prawat:And it's clear to them now. It is the latter. Police believe they have their guy. He's been right there in front of them this whole time. And on November 30th, exactly two months after Diana was attacked, they send a squad of patrol cars out to track Kevin down. They find him leaving a 7-Eleven, and he is completely caught off guard when police arrest him on charges of murder, attempted murder, and assault. But five days after Kevin's arrest, he's released. The DA doesn't file charges against Kevin because of concerns about Diana's ability to testify against him, at least right now. But they aren't just throwing in the towel.

25:51Brit Prawat:To them, it just means that they need to get more. So while Diana divorces Kevin and begins to work with her speech therapist to put words to what happened to her that night, police work on buttoning up their case. They go back to the hospital and they find another nurse that they hadn't spoken to before who has even more stories about Kevin's strange behavior while his wife was in the hospital. She says that after Diana woke up, Kevin said, what if she wakes up and doesn't remember who did this and thinks it was me?

26:22Ashley Flowers:Which is like not a great choice of words.

26:25Brit Prawat:But the next thing that the nurse reports is even more disturbing, at least to me. The nurse tells police that there was this time when Diana was restrained using a posy vest. That's like this jacket used for trauma patients so they don't pull out their tubes or hurt themselves. And the nurse left Diana alone with Kevin while she checked on another patient. And when she looked back through the window into Diana's room, she saw Kevin pulling the ties on Diana's vest so that when she stepped forward, she would be like pulled backward and have to sit down. And the nurse claimed that Kevin was laughing while this was happening.

27:02Brit Prawat:But Diana, who was still getting her speech back at this point, seemed like completely frustrated. Yeah, that feels so cruel.

27:11Ashley Flowers:Yes, but that still just proves he's a shitty husband.

27:16Brit Prawat:They need something more. And they might have the ace in the hole. So there was a lot of speculation early on about whether or not Diana had been sexually assaulted. Everyone seemed to have an opinion. Everyone was hearing different things from different people in the early days. But they had done a forensic exam while she was in the hospital just to be sure. And they had found semen. Now, initially, this wasn't a huge deal because part of Kevin's story to police was that he and Diana had had sex that night to try and induce labor. Right. So when they did antibody tests on the semen and found that it came from someone with Kevin's O-negative blood type, it didn't really do anything to prove or disprove his guilt.

28:00Brit Prawat:About 7 % of people are O-negative. Kevin's in that 7%.

28:04Ashley Flowers:But still, he's not denying that they had had sex that night. Right.

28:08Brit Prawat:But that totally changes when Diana is able to speak enough to tell police her version of events that night. Because Diana told us that her speech wasn't all the way there yet when she talked to police, but they understood what she was trying to get across. She communicated that Kevin was drinking and smoking weed that Saturday, which upset her because she was so close to her due date. When we talked to her, she claimed she even called him while he was out on that, like, long-ass weed run because she was having contractions. Now, Kevin denies this. He's like, you know, if she was having contractions, we would have gone to the hospital.

28:46Brit Prawat:Either way, by the time he got home, Diana says they fought about this because she was upset. She went into their bedroom, slammed the door. Kevin came in, apologized. He wanted to have sex. But Diana says she said no. And when she resisted, Kevin violently sexually assaulted her. And the last thing she remembers is Kevin picking up his key caddy and striking her in the head with it, which she believes knocked her out. What's a key caddy? Um, it's basically like this key ring that sometimes like retracts. You can like put it on your belt loop or whatever. Okay.

29:22Ashley Flowers:And I hate to ask this, but with the head trauma, how reliable is Ayanna's memory at this point? And you mentioned earlier that she had had some memory loss.

29:32Brit Prawat:This is part of the thing, right? So Kevin told us he remembered doctors warning him that Diana was pretty suggestible. But the police reports that Diana sent to us contain a statement from her doctor saying that she only has issues with her speech now at this point, not her memory. Now, based on the police reports, her friends remember her telling them what she told police at the time, that sex had gotten too painful for her by that point and she was bleeding so she didn't want to have sex anymore. Though, there is one friend who remembers Diana saying that she and Kevin tried having sex to induce labor that day, but it hurt too much so she wanted to stop.

30:12Brit Prawat:But that was even earlier in the night. Like it doesn't line up with Kevin's story when he claimed they had sex. Now, Kevin claims they never even found any blood on his key caddy, but none of the case files that we have even mentioned the key caddy one way or another. So I don't know about that part. So they don't have any kind of weapon. We don't know if it's the key caddy. It doesn't seem like it would be a key caddy. Again, remember, her brain's exposed. But the DA believes Diana. And that means finding semen that's likely Kevin's to them means he attacked her. So in March of 1980, Kevin is arrested a second time.

30:49Brit Prawat:And this time the charges stick. Police add a spousal rape charge, making Kevin one of the first people to be tried for that after California had previously passed a law against it. Which is like wild that you have to pass a law against it, but they did. Now in the months leading up to Kevin's trial, Diana is determined to get justice for her daughter that she'd never got to see grow up. The state's case, which has become front page news by this point, rests on her shoulders. Without much other evidence, is Diana's account enough? And what about the emotional and physical demands of a trial? Is Diana up to testifying in court?

31:26Brit Prawat:I mean, these are the questions hanging over investigators who seem to have concerns about the strength of the case. because according to an article in the Hanford Sentinel, they end up dropping the spousal rape charge at some point leading up to the trial. I don't know exactly why, but from those records Diana sent us, it seems like it was tough to establish whether or not the sex was consensual or not, like every rape case where I've been like, they're not taking on that fight. So in October of 1980, just over one year after her attack, Diana takes the stand in front of Kevin and devastatingly details an abusive marriage that culminated in an assault that caused permanent, life-altering damage.

32:11Brit Prawat:I mean, still, she is partially deaf in one ear, fully deaf in the other. She's lost her sense of smell. She has a plastic plate in her head. And she has had to relearn basic language skills from scratch. Reading, writing, speaking, communication that was once as easy as breathing is now a daily struggle for her. After her emotional testimony, Kevin's defense is up next. They can't introduce the polygraph that he passed into evidence. The judge won't allow it. So they put all of their focus on discrediting Diana's memories. They point out that in pre-trial hearings, she said that her attacker took off all his clothes.

32:49Brit Prawat:But then at the trial, she said he was fully clothed. They have Kevin take the stand in his own defense, and he points the finger at the man who was standing outside the apartment. Someone he says that police didn't look at hard enough, especially while this bedroom basher was roaming the streets. And after a grueling week and a half long trial, the jury only deliberates for three hours before coming back with a verdict. Kevin is found guilty of Diana's attempted murder and the second degree murder of their daughter Chantal Marie. And the judge sentences him to 15 years to life in a maximum security prison.

33:26Brit Prawat:And to be clear, no one's happy about any of this. I mean, to Diana, this verdict is a tragedy. But I'm sure Kevin's sentence finally makes her feel safe. I mean, she told us that's when she could move on with her life. That's when she got a job. She went to beauty school. And then two years after Kevin's conviction, she met someone new. Someone she'll end up having a daughter with. And meanwhile, Kevin's not exactly a model prisoner. According to an article in the Deseret News, he deals drugs. He starts fights, which he told us is how he survived in prison. Now, come 1989, Kevin is up for parole for the first time, and Diana remembers him showing up in chains.

34:06Brit Prawat:And she attends every single one of his parole hearings to make sure he stays behind bars. But in the DA's eyes, Kevin seals his own fate at those parole hearings because he never takes responsibility for the crime that he was convicted of. he still claims that he's innocent. And he still claims that the guy outside his apartment is the one responsible for attacking Diana. So not seeing any signs of remorse, the DA's office opposes Kevin's release. But then a few years into his time in prison, Kevin seems to turn his life around. He gets sober. That same article in Deseret News reports that he earns a degree in computer science.

34:45Brit Prawat:He gets a job as an office clerk in the prison. And that's actually where he meets his third wife. And he and his daughter with his first wife both told us that from that point, he stays on track. He actually tries to be as present of a dad as he can be from prison. She and her mom told us they always believed in Kevin's innocence and that he was never capable. They didn't think he was capable of attacking Diana so brutally. And actually, a detective working on one of those bedroom basher cases in 1996 is about to find out that they're right. For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore.

35:27Brit Prawat:I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

35:52Brit Prawat:So with advances that come in DNA testing in like mid to late 90s, Detective Tom Tarpley of the Tustin PD starts taking a second look at all those murders that had once been attributed to this elusive bedroom basher. Those cases are all still unsolved, and they were hoping to make progress on them years later. And one of those cases that he's looking into stands out. Deborah Kennedy. She's the one who was killed just a week after Diana's attack. So Detective Tarpley submits a DNA sample that they have on file from Deborah's case to CODIS, and so soon he gets ahead. The sample matches 41-year-old Gerald Parker, who Detective Tarpley learns has been serving time in a prison for a parole violation.

36:38Brit Prawat:And thank freaking God he did this testing when he did because Gerald was scheduled to be released the next month. His DNA was in CODIS because he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl after abducting her. Like, he had grabbed her and thrown her into his van on her way home from her dad's funeral. What? I know. So in June of 1996, Detective Tarpley visits Gerald in prison. And he's not alone. Police in Costa Mesa have been looking into Gerald, too, because his DNA matched samples from three of their unsolved murders.

37:16Ashley Flowers:Were these cases known bedroom basher cases?

37:19Brit Prawat:All three of the Costa Mesa murders were, and those include Deborah Sr. So Gerald says he did have violent urges. He heard voices, but he says he's been prescribed medication for those mental health issues. And he can't remember assaulting anyone, let alone, he says he can't remember the four women that they're talking to him about. He claims that his memory of that time and his life apparently, like as a whole, isn't great because of his substance use disorder while he was in the Marines. And at the time of the murders in Costa Mesa, he was living at a Marine Corps air base working nights in a helicopter squadron.

37:59Brit Prawat:Working around helicopters like Kevin did. Bingo. And at the same time, at the same base in Tustin. Yeah. Yeah. And this is when like all the feelers go up because apparently so many years on, even the DA had started making some rustlings. Like by this point, he wasn't so sure that Kevin was their guy anymore. I don't think anything specific was being done yet in Diana's case to prove or disprove that feeling. But a case that they once thought was connected to Diana now being solved, the killer having a connection to where Diana's husband worked, was just like a little too weird to write off. Yeah.

38:44Brit Prawat:So when Costa Mesa police don't really get anywhere with Gerald, Detective Tarpley goes in and tries his hand at questioning him. And he shows Gerald first a picture of Deborah and asks, why would your DNA be at the scene of this woman's murder? But Gerald claims he doesn't recognize her, says he has no idea why his DNA would be there. But he does admit that he had been in that area where her apartment was. And that's when Detective Tarpley runs Gerald through Diana's attack and reminds him that Kevin is serving time for it. And Gerald not only admits that he read about the case, but he gives up details only someone who had been in the apartment should know.

39:26Brit Prawat:Like the street it was off of, the layout of the bedroom Diana was attacked in, the fact that the door to the apartment was on the side of the building. Detective Tarpley is actually amazed by how much Gerald remembers after 16 years. So he asked him if he knew Kevin while they were in the Marines, but he says he didn't. I mean, how? I don't know. I have no idea how many people served on that base or worked like in that squadron. But it was like a 4 ,700 acre facility. So, I mean, we're not talking something small, but still, it feels like a big coincidence. Like, massive. Anyway, Gerald asked Detective Tarpley if Kevin is on death row, and Detective Tarpley says he's not sure.

40:08Brit Prawat:But hearing about Kevin's conviction seems to flip some kind of switch in Gerald. He's, like, lost in thought. And Detective Tarpley thinks that he's on a verge of a confession. So he makes one last plea for Gerald to do the right thing. And that hits Gerald hard. He finally asks for Costa Mesa police to come back in because he's ready to talk. And when everyone is back in the room, he says he believes an innocent man, meaning Kevin Green, is on death row for something that he did. And out of all the murders, all the assaults, all the horrible things he's done, that's what's been eating away at him for almost two decades.

40:51Ashley Flowers:That's the only thing that's been eating away at him. That's all.

40:55Brit Prawat:Not concerned about the women he killed or left fighting for their lives. Right. This man who was in prison for something he didn't do. And though to even be clear, like it's not like he did anything once he saw that Kevin had been arrested and convicted. Right. This has been decades on now. And it's when he's confronted. But now at least he's finally telling something resembling the truth. Gerald likely was the man that Kevin saw by the van when he left the apartment that day. Because Gerald says after a night of drinking, he parked his van near the Greens apartment complex and he was walking past their apartment when he heard Kevin and Diana arguing.

41:31Brit Prawat:And then he heard a door slam. He heard a car drive away. So Gerald says that he went back out for a drink for what he thinks was an hour before coming back to the apartment. Now, this is where like things don't totally add up because we know that Kevin was only gone for like 20 minutes. so the timeline is weird but Gerald does admit that he was high during all of the murders so my only thought is that maybe what felt like an hour to him was 20 minutes or he even got that wrong because I don't even know how he'd have time to go and come back. Anyway, someone's timeline isn't quite adding up but Gerald says he comes back to the apartment at some point and by that time he had gotten in the habit of just checking if doors or windows were unlocked and Kevin, remember, had left that kitchen door unlocked so he says he picks up a board like some kind of two-by-four piece of plywood that he found outside.

42:21Brit Prawat:He went inside to where he found Diana in the bedroom. And he says that she actually, like, when he walks in, she, like, sits up in bed and, like, stared at him before laying back down. And Gerald says he thinks this is why she thought it was Kevin. She, like, didn't realize it wasn't him. I don't know if he was, like, backlit or something. And, like, put the pieces together. If someone's in my room, it's got to be Kevin. The guy that just, like, left and came back. But as soon as she, like, gets up, lays back down, Gerald says he rushed at her with the board, striking her in the head before sexually assaulting her.

42:52Ashley Flowers:So, hold up. Kevin has been telling the truth this whole time.

42:56Brit Prawat:Yes. He's telling the truth about not being the one who attacked her.

43:02Ashley Flowers:Okay.

43:03Brit Prawat:The thing is, like, there's no version of Kevin's story that he's ever told where him and Diana fight before he leaves. But, like, that seems like that's what happened, right? Right. Like based on what neighbors heard, based on Diana's own account, based even on what Gerald said that he witnessed. Do they ever try to say that Kevin hired Gerald? No, I think they just take Gerald at his word when he says that him and Kevin didn't know each other. And I mean, after all this time, like Gerald has never said that.

43:29Ashley Flowers:And it would have helped him. Right. To say that. Right.

43:32Brit Prawat:And listen, while it might be easy for someone to argue with this confession of a man who is a serial killer, like what you can't argue with is DNA. And luckily, the sexual assault test kit that was done in Diana's case has not been thrown out yet. And it hadn't been ever tested for DNA, remember, just a blood type. Right, because it was back in like the late 70s. Yeah, and in another just like weird coincidence, Gerald and Kevin have the same blood type. But PCR tests confirmed that the DNA was Gerald's, not Kevin's. And just so, like, we're on the same page, these tests that prove that Kevin didn't attack Diana, that Kevin wasn't the one who killed their daughter, those by this point had been available for, like, 12 of the 16 years he'd been in prison.

44:21Ashley Flowers:And did Kevin's defense ever try to get these tested before?

44:24Brit Prawat:Mm-hmm. Kevin said they tried. He said they reached out to, or he did at one point reach out to a lawyer who was, like, one of the first in California to successfully defend a client using DNA. But it wasn't feasible. That lawyer wanted like 10 grand to just look into whether there was DNA to test and then like another 10 grand to actually do the test, which he just didn't have. But now, all in all, police use DNA to tie Gerald to seven bedroom basher cases, including five murders beside Chantal Marie's. Those are Sandra Frye, Kimberly Rollins, Marilyn Carlton, Deborah Kennedy and Deborah Sr. And he's also identified as a man who attacked a woman named Jane Pettengill, who she's the one who was the other survivor who tried to describe him back in like 1979 to police.

45:16But even though he's identified as that, he's not charged for that because the statute of limitations on that assault ran out.

45:23Brit Prawat:Which is always so wild to me that like, especially when the intent was to kill someone, attempted murder, like just because you failed, like you get to.

45:31Ashley Flowers:There's a time limit on being able to be charged. It's so wild. Right.

45:34Brit Prawat:So on June 20th, 1996, this is nearly 16 years after Kevin was sent to prison, the new evidence is brought in front of a judge. And there, a DA recommends that Kevin be declared innocent. The judge agrees with the recommendation and apologizes to Kevin for all the years he's lost to imprisonment. So finally, Kevin's a free man. But it takes time to sink in. His ex-wife remembers him calling her from a hotel, terrified that police were going to send him back to prison. Like, he can't even believe he's out now. He has to enter also a completely different world than he left. I mean, he's spent almost half his life behind bars.

46:16Brit Prawat:But eventually, the state of California passes a bill to compensate him$100 a day for each day he's served, which comes out to about$620 ,000. So when he leaves, Kevin, he flies to Salt Lake City. Then he goes to the Midwest to reunite with his family to start over. And finally, he gets to be present for his daughter, who goes on actually to get a criminal justice degree. And in most of the reporting, that's where this story ends. But Diana told us that's not where it ended for her. She tells the media how shocked she was by these revelations. I mean, she's like at the time struggling to reconcile her memories with Gerald's confession.

46:59Brit Prawat:She ends up actually meeting with police who show her a photo of Gerald, but she has no idea who the guy is.

47:06Ashley Flowers:I honestly can't imagine how difficult that would be to process.

47:10Brit Prawat:Like you said, to reconcile what you feel like you know versus what is known. Right. And it has to be, I mean, you went to trial. You believe it in your soul, like something that happened to you. and now she's like also in this place where she's having to like go through that attack again and again trying to make sense of it but every time she's like sure she didn't mix up she is sure she didn't remember another instance where kevin had hurt her like he like had done so many times before so i mean i'm sure someone was like oh maybe you're conflating this with something else and she's like no like i remember what happened and as everything does slowly start to sink in police drop another bombshell.

47:53Brit Prawat:They let her know that Kevin has already been released. So, like, as she's learning this, she probably thinks it's something that's going to happen.

47:59Ashley Flowers:And she still has a sense of, like, safety or security as she's processing all this. And then that's just gone.

48:05Brit Prawat:And then she has to jump into survival mode. In an L.A. Times article by Renee Lynch and Dexter Filkin, she says she is considering filing a restraining order against him at that point. Like, that's truly just how scared she was. And she said, like, she kept, I don't know, like, the way it was for her, she kept calling police and, like, asking them about specific details about the investigation. Like, she just keeps trying to make things add up. And she said, finally, police tell her, like, listen, like, we've told you everything. Like, you know what might be a good idea is for you to go straight to the source.

48:40Brit Prawat:Like, maybe you should go talk to Gerald before he goes on trial.

48:44Ashley Flowers:So they tell her to just talk to the serial killer who attacked her. Yeah, and she does.

48:50Brit Prawat:She goes and talks to the serial killer who attacked her with her mom right by her side. For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

49:29Brit Prawat:Diana shared with us her mom Pat's super detailed handwritten account of that visit to Gerald, which is dated August 25th, 1996. In a room divided by glass with one seat and a phone on one side and another seat and phone on the other, Gerald sat down across from Pat and Diana. And Pat told Gerald that they wanted to confront him and to get answers about what happened. And according to this letter, Gerald told them even more than they expected. He said that he was wandering around Diana's apartment complex when he heard Kevin and Diana arguing. He didn't know what caused the argument, but he stood outside the window and watched Kevin and Diana.

50:10Brit Prawat:And according to Pat's account, Gerald claimed that he couldn't make out what it was, but that he saw Kevin reach over, pick something up from the dresser, and hit Diana a few times.

50:23Ashley Flowers:Did Gerald mention that in his original confession?

50:26Brit Prawat:Not that I could tell. Like, we weren't able to get the full transcript before the recording. But Pat wrote that Gerald said when he went inside and he found Diana, she was like in this daze. Remember, this is when she like lifts her head, looks at him before like flopping back down. And then the rest is what he told police. But this meeting with Gerald is what reinforces Diana's belief that Kevin hurt her before Gerald attacked her. Like in her mind, both can still be true. So while Diana leaves, believing that Gerald is responsible for attacking her, she feels more convinced than ever that so did Kevin.

51:04Brit Prawat:And it is incredibly hard for her to wrap her head around the outpouring of public support that he's getting. Diana and Kevin have never spoken in the years since this. Diana told us that he's never tried to reach out to apologize or to make amends. and she firmly believes that he does have something to apologize for. It's the reason that she's never been able to forgive him while she says she has been able to forgive Gerald because he at least apologized. Now, Kevin told us that he never reached out to her because he doesn't want to make things harder for her. But things were already pretty freaking hard for her.

51:44Brit Prawat:I mean, lingering effects of her physical attack itself aside, now that Kevin has been exonerated, The media all but blames Diana for his wrongful conviction. So after Kevin's convictions overturned, his lawyers say in that LA Times article that nothing Diana says should be believed because her testimony at Kevin's trial has proven that she's not reliable. But if there's one thing that this story has taught me, it's that memory is a complicated thing, no matter if you've suffered a brain injury or not. Like, for example, a friend told police that Kevin said that the reason he went out for that cheeseburger at the Jack in the Box was because Diana was craving one.

52:22Brit Prawat:Diana remembers it that way, too. But when Kevin talked to us, he said that he'd never craved anything in his life like that cheeseburger. And Kevin told us he didn't drink anything the night of the attack. But multiple witnesses remember him drinking that day. And again, clearly there was some fight that took place that night. But that's never been part of Kevin's story. And is it memory? or is it trying to change our memory to make the truth better for certain people, easier? Now, just to be clear, nobody ever believes that Kevin is responsible for the crime he was wrongfully convicted of. He has been completely cleared.

52:58Brit Prawat:And by cleared, I mean ultimately exonerated of it. He was proven factually innocent in a court of law. Kevin claims that some police officers called Diana and her mom the crazy ladies when the story like really went public. And I've said it before, we as a society are quick to write women off as crazy. But while Diana has had to work hard to communicate her thoughts, she speaks powerfully when she reflects on what she went through. And she does just that when she takes the stand again, this time to testify against Gerald when he goes to trial in 1998 for the murder of her daughter and the murders of five other Orange County women, ones that his DNA was tied to.

53:38Brit Prawat:And in that case, the jury deliberates for less than two hours before returning a verdict of guilty on all six counts of first-degree murder with a recommendation of the death penalty. Diana told us that she felt a sense of relief when Gerald was convicted of her daughter's murder because he's where he should be, in prison, where he can't hurt anyone else. But she still says she wouldn't call it closure. She said that when she got our call about speaking about her perspective of this, she felt some hope that maybe talking about it, talking about what she went through, like the real full story of what she went through, maybe that will bring closure.

54:15Brit Prawat:I mean, since the attack, her life at times has been difficult and frustrating. When she was in high school, English was her favorite subject. And before the attack, she loved writing poetry to put her innermost thoughts to paper. But since then, she has had to work hard to find the right words to even express herself, even in everyday conversations. But she has also surprised herself. She recovered better than she ever hoped that she would. Like, she only had, I don't know if you know this, a 10 % chance of survival in the hospital. And now she is like the pillar of support for her friends. She drives them to doctor's appointments and keeps busy and goes on vacations with her grandkids.

54:51Brit Prawat:And she raised her daughter from a place of hope and never a place of fear. So she lived. She lived. And we asked Diana what she wants crime junkies to take from her story. And she told us that she hopes that we'll look at her case in a different way than everyone has in the past. That there is more to her story than people think. And more to her than what she survived. And there is no doubt in my mind that no matter what happened that night in 1979, Diana is a survivor. That is who she is at her core. She survived a volatile relationship, a heinous attack by an evil stranger waiting in the shadows, and the death of a child.

55:30Brit Prawat:I mean, her world was turned upside down again and again and again. She is strong, and she has never stopped living. So if you, crime junkies, you or someone you know are experiencing domestic violence, you can reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. We're also going to link to more resources in our show notes.

56:19Brit Prawat:new episode.

56:53Brit Prawat:Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

57:03Ashley Flowers:Okay, Crime Junkies, you know I absolutely love a twist and a turn, especially when it comes to people who turn out to be someone they're not.

57:11Brit Prawat:That's why I have been obsessed with the podcast Chameleon.

57:15Ashley Flowers:Every Thursday, host Josh Dean deep dives into a scam so bizarre, it will leave you wondering how did they get away with that it is truly one of my favorite podcasts right now and i've been listening for years i think you'll love it too listen to chameleon wherever you get your podcasts