Original subtitles

I'd known Leafie since I was 16 years old.

She'd call every so often and just chitchat.

Just to... basically to say, "Hi" and "Don't forget me."

October 2nd, I get a call

telling me that Leafie hasn't shown up to visit her sister,

and they were worried about her

and wanted me to go to her house to check on her.

Front door's locked, so I crawl in through the window.

I have this feeling of dread.

Everything is quiet.

It's... it's eerily quiet.

I walk in to where her bedroom is,

and I see this body that has been covered by a blanket on the floor,

and I pull it back.

And there's Leafie.

She'd been beaten to death.

It was just a... It was a shock.

"I just talked to you, just a few days ago."

"Mm. And here you are."

Ah.

She was my friend.

It's just pure evil. It's just evil.

"Why did you murder her?"

I decided I am going to bring whoever did this to justice.

"If it's the last thing I do, I am going to find you."

"I don't care if it takes me the rest of my life."

"I'm gonna find you."

Randy, take one. ABC. Countermark. Soft sticks.

My name is Randy Kennedy, Chief of Police, Hughes Springs, Texas.

I've been in law enforcement for a total of 46 years.

I, uh... I've slowed down some.

It's like Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry, would say,

"A man's gotta know his limitations."

But, uh, I like catchin' the bad guys.

Find the ones responsible and bring 'em to justice.

Leafie's murder still weighs heavily on my mind.

It's, uh, one of the worst feelings that, uh, you could ever experience.

At the crime scene, I'm looking at Leafie.

The marks around her head, her body.

And I see that she's been beaten

with a blunt instrument.

"Who in the world would come in here and do this to you?"

"Because you don't have any enemies."

In the bathroom, her purse is there, with her identification,

her wallet, laid out on top.

It's being displayed, like he's proud of it.

And in the kitchen sink, it looks like a meal had been eaten.

"Did you leave this here, Leafie, or did the killer leave it here?"

As I walk to the back of the house, I notice this window.

This individual pries the, uh, window out with his fingertips and pulled back.

But it pressed his palm prints up against it.

They were clear, pristine palm prints.

And I look across the street there.

Just right across the street, it's a railroad track

No one in the community would do this to her.

It... it just hit me that it had to be the train.

Somebody got off the train, came over here and murdered her,

and got back on the train and left.

I know that, uh, hobos ride the train quite a bit.

They stop at Hughes Springs every so often.

So over the next few weeks, I'm getting their palm prints,

having those compared to the palm prints I found.

No match, nothing.

This person could be anywhere.

So I'm gonna see if any other department anywhere here in the state of Texas

has had anything similar to what I'm investigating here.

About a week later, I'm in my office.

I get a call from Sergeant Ken Macha with West University Police Department.

He tells me they had a murder.

The MO was very familiar with the case that I had here.

Detectives search through a West University home looking for clues.

A woman found murdered upstairs in a bedroom.

Bloodstains were also found in several areas of the room,

as well as a large knife in the room.

There was blood on the knife.

It's hard for a person to believe

that a human being could have that much rage and hate

and to want to kill in that fashion.

I know things like this occur,

but they just weren't occurring in our small little city.

Dr. Benton was a mother of lovely twin daughters.

Just a... a... a huge, um... a huge blow.

I tell Chief Kennedy some of the details concerning Dr. Benton's murder.

Dr. Benton was bludgeoned with a bronze figurine.

The body was covered,

and the identification card was turned upright.

The purse was turned over.

As he was telling me this,

the hair on the back of my neck just stood up.

One of the other strange aspects about the case was that he ate food

and left some of the scraps there in the kitchen.

I asked, uh, Sergeant Ken Macha, "Do you have palm prints?"

He tells me, "No."

But the fingerprints that we recovered

from inside of the house,

they were compared to all the unknown prints

in the fingerprint database,

and a match was made.

He tells me the suspect is called Rafael Resendez-Ramírez.

I know that this is my guy.

Ramírez is a Mexican national.

We have no address, no permanent location.

We needed somebody that could run down leads across the state

as they would come in.

That's why we enlisted the help of the Texas Rangers.

So I just go sit and look at the camera?

Do I gaze in her eyes lovingly or what?

Uh, my name is Drew Carter, and I was formerly a sergeant in the Texas Rangers.

What's synonymous with the, uh, West is the good guys wear the white hats.

So you'll find that all rangers are gonna wear a white hat,

because at the end of the day, we're good guys.

I was three months into my career as a ranger.

I was just excited to be working cases.

That's all I ever wanted to do, was be a Texas Ranger, and here I was, livin' it.

Typically, if someone has committed some type of violent act,

they want to escape.

This guy did the opposite.

He stayed in there for a long period of time.

Now we have to figure out who this individual truly is,

where they're from, and where they're at.

In both cases, the houses were by railroad tracks.

And in his immigration file,

he does have a history of being taken off the trains for trespassin'.

That gave more credibility to the fact that he might be usin' the railroad

to get to where he's goin'.

I learned that not only has he been arrested multiple times,

he's been all over the place.

He's been arrested in Michigan, California, east coast Texas.

He's all over.

We really don't have a... a pattern, as far as figuring out where he might go.

What made this very challenging is that each time that he was arrested,

he provided a different name.

Different date of birth.

And, in some cases, a different social security number.

Our initial leads revolved around the wanted poster that had been put out.

You know, it's... it's frustrating.

We have a lot of tips about a Mexican male that matches the description,

but nothin' concrete, nothing that leads to any indications of where he might be.

So it's now five, six months since the... the murder took place.

I receive a call from another investigator in our department,

and he's discussin' a case with me that happened 100 miles west of Houston,

which is the area where Dr. Benton was murdered and sexually assaulted.

You have, uh, someone that's going into the church parsonage...

...and killin' the pastor and his wife while they're sleepin' in their bed.

With a sledgehammer.

This guy comes into your house, you're behind locked doors,

where you think you're safe.

This is pure evil starin' you in the face.

Karen Sirnic was sexually assaulted during this attack

and was left in a pose similar to what, uh, Dr. Benton was.

They're that similar that you have to stop and take a look.

And it very well could be that they're connected.

The next step is to compare the DNA evidence collected from Dr. Benton

and the evidence collected from Karen Sirnic to one another.

A couple weeks later, I get a call from the crime lab.

They tell me that the evidence from Claudia Benton

and from Karen Sirnic match.

This is much bigger than what we initially thought.

We know that we, uh... we now have a serial killer.

This is a huge case,

so would you say you now really need the FBI?

I don't know if I can say we need the FBI.

My name is Thomas McClenaghan.

I was a special agent in the FBI from 1984 to 2009.

I always thought if you're gonna get into a profession,

try to get on with the best.

And in the United States,

the FBI really is considered the best law enforcement agency.

The FBI needs to get involved in this case

because state and local law enforcement don't have the reach that the FBI does.

We use thousands and thousands of agents we have all across the country.

The manhunt for Rafael Resendez-Ramírez

was the biggest criminal case that I've ever been part of.

His actions dwarf anything else that I've worked during my career.

To try to find someone who is jumping on and off trains is a horrendous problem.

I want to get his story out into the media

so that everybody in the United States is looking for him.

We need to get him in front of every screen,

in front of every newspaper,

so that all of America is looking for this guy.

We print 400,000 flyers,

which contain his photographs, his description, both English and Spanish.

We send the leads to all the 56 FBI field offices

to go out to all migrant camps, all soup kitchens,

any place that a transient would be staying at,

and just blanket the area with these flyers.

And hopefully, a lead will come out of that.

A news conference is held by the FBI,

trying to keep the search alive for Rafael Resendez-Ramírez.

Unveiled today, the most recent pictures of the suspected Railcar Killer.

INS officials want to encourage everyone to come forward,

including illegal immigrants who may be afraid to come forward.

Whenever you have a bunch of different various law enforcement agencies,

they all think they should be the ones running the operation.

The only people who have bigger egos than the FBI are Texas Rangers.

Type A personality like Drew Carter,

he's gonna start doing things that I'm not aware of.

So I assigned Kim to work with Drew Carter

because I knew that they would be able to get along.

I knew I could trust her.

Kim, take one. ABC mark.

Thank you.

This is more stressful than being interviewed by the FBI.

My name is Kimberley Barkhausen,

and I was a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During my entire career,

my kids never thought what I did was very exciting,

and they never paid much attention to it, and it was just everyday life.

They are in their 20s now,

and I had mentioned that I was going to be on Netflix,

and they were so excited!

How would you describe Kim in three words?

I would describe Kim as hardworking, fierce,

but gentle in the way that she gets along with people.

Yeah. Drew and I got along beautifully.

He's pretty funny if you talk to him.

Kim didn't have to tell you immediately that she was FBI.

She was there to be on the team,

and, uh, she acted very much like a team player,

not havin' to bring attention to... to who she was or her expertise

or anything like that.

We spent a lot of time together for a short amount of time.

We were both pretty young, early in our careers.

Both have young children.

It was easy. It wasn't... it wasn't... it wasn't work to make it go.

When I first see the crime scene photos,

I... I'd get a sick feeling

because these people died a very brutal death,

and it... it's horrifying to see.

As a person, it takes away any kind of innocence,

any kind of deniability of the bad things that are really happening out there.

I tasked Kim to look at all the cases she can come up with,

looking at IDs, eating food,

occurring along railroad tracks.

Because we don't know if there's ten more out there

or 50 more out there.

With serial killers, they are very ritualistic.

So entering them into a database can easily cross-reference them

with all the other unsolved cases nationwide.

Within hours, we have another case,

and it's from Kentucky, and it's from two years ago.

There are two college students walking along the railroad, and they are attacked.

The murders have taken place, now, not 100 miles apart,

but states apart.

Uh, and the timeframe of two years has spanned.

The murders haven't stopped, and they're probably gonna continue.

It's been about a week since we learned about the Kentucky murder,

and we get a phone call that there's been another murder.

It's an elderly woman named Josephine Konvicka.

This case is approximately three miles from the Sirnics' murder in Weimar, Texas.

He was back in our backyard.

I drive over to the crime scene.

I'm not sure what to expect,

because this is the first crime scene I have been on as an agent.

I approached the bed. What's very distinctive is the smell.

You never forget that smell... of a body.

She appeared to be peacefully sleeping when this occurred.

The killer's MO is to inflict blunt force trauma to the victim's head.

And in Ms. Konvicka's case, this was a pickax.

There's this dichotomy of a peaceful sleep

and this horrible, brutal murder.

In one of the rooms, there's a newspaper that we discover.

Has an article about the Sirnics' murder,

and it is displayed.

And we also discover that he has found a toy train,

and he's displayed it in the box.

He recognizes that he has an identity now.

He is a... Not only is he a serial killer. He's the Railroad Killer.

And I think that's something that feeds his ego.

He's almost leaving clues.

He is reveling in his crimes.

After we learn about Josephine Konvicka,

within hours, we learn about Noemi Dominguez.

Houston.

Twenty-six-year-old Noemi Dominguez was found beaten to death

in her home near the tracks.

The victim is Noemi Dominguez.

She's on the floor, evidence of blunt trauma.

As well as sexual assault, similar to the other cases.

I'm concerned at this point in time

because the number of people being killed continues to rise,

and we're no closer to catching him than we were,

you know, several months before.

So now we have two people killed in one day.

The case is escalating.

He could be anywhere.

There are 140,000 miles of railroad tracks across the US.

I am scared. Scared for any future victims.

We've got to find this guy.

There's been a run on locks, alarms, knives, and guns.

Well, you're just scared to death. It's hard to sleep. You know, you lock up.

After sunset, streets are deserted,

porch lights left on.

Everybody's livin' in fear.

I'm horrified by what he's done to communities.

It's just like a tide of horror and devastation

that he's just leaving in a wake.

It's crazy. It was crazy.

It was difficult for me to reassure my community

that this was not gonna happen again.

And I realize how hard it was for my wife.

We didn't have an alarm system, so she talked about putting tin cans

in front of the front door

so they'd make noise if somebody opened it.

She didn't feel safe, because I wasn't there.

The command center is as busy as always.

People taking phone calls, assigning leads, tracking facts.

But it's getting more and more somber as the time goes on.

There's a lot of pressure to get this case solved,

spending a lot of hours at the office.

I have three small children at home.

It's very difficult to strike a work-and-life balance

when there's something this important going on.

You know that this job demands a lot from individuals,

and you have to, at times, place your family second,

and that's a very difficult thing to do.

But Drew and I helped each other

to make it all through this case.

I would never, you know, advocate taking anything away from one's family.

But making sure another family isn't victimized

becomes very important.

Information is coming rapidly from all different directions.

And we learn, much to everybody's surprise and disappointment,

that several weeks earlier, the subject has crossed the border

and been detained by immigration officials.

But due to a computer failure, he was let go

because the agents weren't notified that he was actually wanted for murder.

It was a big deal.

A big deal.

It almost makes you sick at your stomach that the, uh, circumstances allowed that.

Federal agents revealed today

they had the accused, so-called Railroad Serial Killer

in their hands just weeks ago.

But somehow, he slipped through the bureaucracy, allegedly to kill again

and to become the object of an even more intensive,

frustrating manhunt.

He reentered the United States

and murdered Josephine Konvicka and Noemi Dominguez.

After all the work we've been doing,

I feel completely angry, disgusted, betrayed.

We had him.

We could have ended this case immediately.

He was in... in custody, and he got let go.

I mean, how do you... how do you answer that?

It's... it's terrible. It's terrible.

Rafael Resendez-Ramírez

has officially become one of the nation's notorious criminals.

He joins the ranks of terrorists, armed robbers, and other murderers

on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted fugitives list.

By placing Resendez-Ramírez on the top ten list,

authorities say they can now better coordinate their effort.

When he became a top ten fugitive, the reward money was around $125,000.

It's a lot of money, and when you have that kind of a reward out there,

a bounty hunter would love to be able to capture an FBI top ten.

In the year 1999, there is no social media,

so your most valuable tool

in getting the word out to as many people as possible is television.

And America's Most Wanted focused simply on wanted fugitives

So we were very happy to have their cooperation.

I go to Washington, DC, where the show is going to be taped.

- Yay, Drew! - I'm back!

That was my first involvement ever with any type of TV production

or anything like that,

and it was... it was an eye-opening experience.

Reporters were drawn to Drew.

Rangers look great in their white hats, and they have a presence.

And he's charming, and they gravitated towards him

because he could talk to them.

And y'all throw all these lights on a guy, and then you tell him he can't sweat?

The whole point of me going up there, uh, for the show

was to see if we could generate any credible tips,

uh, that would lead to the capture of Resendez-Ramírez.

The key was gonna be identifying someone that's close to him.

We start out, obviously, on the East Coast.

And it airs in every time zone.

East Coast, then, uh, Central, then... then Mountain Time,

and then, finally, uh, it airs out on the Pacific coast.

The volume of calls is very surprising.

And they range from,

"I have someone that's mowing my yard that looks like that,"

to something as... as crazy as, "My cat told me so-and-so."

I mean, you get all kind of people that are callin' in

on something like that.

Ramírez? Uh-huh.

So I'm called over to one of the call-takers,

and she is, uh, talkin' with someone.

Okay. How are you?

The caller says that her name is Lupe,

and that, uh, she's a cousin of Resendez-Ramírez.

That... that she knows who he is and... and where he's from.

Did you happen to see what kind of...

I'm very surprised, and I immediately just blurt out,

"What's his mother's name?"

And she says, "Virginia."

I knew that we had something there because that was not public information.

I'm pretty excited at this point in time.

It's the first bit of... of hard information that we have

that actually points to someone

that's willing to talk about this individual.

Lupe tells the call-taker that Resendez is actually using his uncle's name.

Rafael Resendez-Ramírez is his uncle.

His real name is Ángel Reséndiz. It's not Rafael Resendez-Ramírez.

And identifies that he has another sister named Manuela

that actually lives in Albuquerque.

So Manuela's the logical person to go to first

because she's the only known family member, other than Lupe,

that lives in... in the United States.

Okay. Thanks. We're out.

Kim and I traveled out to Albuquerque

and met with Manuela at her house.

She invites us into the house,

and... and we go sit, uh, sit in the living room.

Drew's easy to talk to and friendly,

and sometimes law enforcement can be intimidating.

You get a whole lot more from being nice to people,

and I believe he has that same theory.

Persuading Manuela that we're there, not to cause her any grief or pain,

but simply to get her brother into custody so that he doesn't hurt anybody else,

is a sensitive subject.

How do you tell someone that their loved family member is a serial killer?

I'm not sure she believes us, necessarily, but I think part of her is saying,

"I don't want to believe this is true, but if it is true,

I don't want it to continue."

I asked her specifically, "Do you know where your brother's at?"

And she says, "I don't know where he's at."

I said, "Manuela, you need to prepare yourself

for what you're gonna do when he calls you."

And... and she made the statement,

"Why would he call me? I have not talked to him."

And I said, "Because he has no other choice."

He had no place to go.

You know, during the course of our conversation,

we realize that we're both strong in our faith.

And I think she saw that... that I was sincere, and... and, uh believed me.

She decided that she would help, because it was the right thing to do.

Drew and I are excited, but spending years in law enforcement,

you know that nothing ever really happens the way it should happen,

so you're still a little cautious.

And now we're just hoping for him to call.

An 80-year-old man fatally shot and his daughter bludgeoned to death

inside their home in Gorham, Illinois.

Tuesday's discovery has police taking a closer look...

So we're building this relationship with Manuela,

and we find out yet another double murder in Gorham, Illinois.

Father and daughter.

It's very disheartening,

and it's 800 miles or more from his last murder scene.

So once again, needle in the haystack. He could be anywhere at any time.

We have a body count of eight.

Eight people have been confirmed murdered in this case,

and four of them have been just over the last few weeks.

I get a call from our communications center,

and they advise me that Manuela had called them

and said that she needed to speak with me.

I called her, and, uh, she told me that her brother had been in contact with her,

and that he was tired...

and weary.

I'm thinkin' that if he's tired, then maybe that means he wants to give up.

She trusted us. That is our biggest contribution,

was that relationship that was developed.

The fact that he was now a top ten FBI fugitive

and had 100 bounty hunters searching for him in Mexico,

probably led to him reaching out to her.

This phone call is a big step forward and a great break in the investigation.

After that phone call, there was no sleeping, there was no eating,

there was nothing but that phone call.

I didn't know exactly what would happen,

but I knew that, uh, it was very important that I get out there

because if anything was gonna come of it, uh,

I'd have to be out there to help orchestrate it.

I told a little white lie when I called and talked to my captain.

I told him that, uh... I told him I thought he wanted to surrender.

Didn't know that at the time, but I didn't want to be told I couldn't go either.

Drew and I leave Houston, Texas,

and fly to Albuquerque, New Mexico,

to meet with Manuela

so that she can hopefully facilitate the surrender of the Railroad Killer.

We had to trust each other, and we had to work together.

We were gonna be there as long as it took,

and it didn't matter how bad we smelled or if we hadn't had any sleep.

I call Manuela up, I tell her,

"Manuela, I know you're scared, but I'll be there in 30 minutes."

Manuela gets a call from her brother.

And that's when I knew that... ...this is... this is for real and game on.

The atmosphere in the room is extremely stressful.

We're communicatin' back and forth with Reséndiz through Manuela,

negotiatin' and... and finalizin' the terms of the surrender.

He would talk about what he wanted through Manuela.

We never spoke directly to him. It was all through Manuela.

Their phone must have been dying, 'cause it kept goin' out,

so the phone... phone call is, like, a minute.

And we would either get disconnected or he would hang up.

And then it was 45 seconds.

And the phone keeps going dead.

Sometimes hours are lapsing

...and we don't know if he's going to call back.

He'd call back, then 30 seconds.

We don't know if he's going to change his mind.

It's now the end of hours and hours and hours

of these phone calls going back and forth.

We finally get it out of him that he wants to surrender at the El Paso border.

So it's... it's the middle of the night. He's gonna be there in six hours.

We load everybody up in a car

and, uh, we take a road trip from Albuquerque to... to El Paso.

This is the strangest road trip of my life,

and it was a very tense situation.

It was a very serious thing that was... was about to occur.

Nobody back in Houston knows what we're doin'

or has any control over what we're doing.

There were a few hours before he was going to be coming to the border.

So I called my supervisor, Tom.

He's really the only person I felt bad for,

because I knew he was gonna have to act as the intermediary

to tell people what was going on.

And... he's like, "What?"

And... and I'm like, "Um, I'm... I'm at the border."

"I was... I was afraid too many people were gonna show up."

His response, I'll never forget it, is,

"I know what you did and why you did it, but don't ever do that again!"

And then he hung up on me.

I'm watching Drew walk across the border.

I was just kind of on adrenaline.

The biggest thing that can go wrong is that he doesn't decide to turn himself in,

and then we're right where we were, needle in a haystack, trying to find him.

I don't know how long it will go on if this doesn't happen.

I don't know how many more people are gonna be his victims,

so the stakes are very high.

He could get cold feet and run across to the other side. He'll go back.

I really didn't know if his intent was to surrender, or... or what it was.

So I'm watchin' the vehicles as they're goin' by.

I don't know what kind of vehicle they're gonna be in,

so I'm checkin' the vehicles.

And I'm there for what seems like an incredibly long time.

And, uh, just all of a sudden, I see a truck comin' towards me,

and that truck has three people in it.

And in the middle, I immediately can see that Reséndiz is sittin' in the middle.

That's the first time where I told myself, "This is actually gonna happen."

Reséndiz starts movin' to get out.

He was wearin', uh, blue jeans, a long-sleeve shirt, glasses, and a belt.

And I'm... I'm struck by how small this guy is.

I mean, he was not very tall. He was like 135 pounds.

Man, how can somethin' that small have inflicted so much... damage?

He didn't really talk. Didn't have anything to say.

I stuck my hand out and just said, "I'm Drew,"

and, uh, I shook his hand

and just turned him around and cuffed him right there.

The cuffs go on,

and I'm just

relieved and exhausted and excited.

It's finally over. There's finally an end to this.

The surrender was voluntary, and it's something that he did on his own,

and it was also the wishes of his family.

Rafael Resendez-Ramírez arrived in Houston Tuesday afternoon,

apparently ready to put his fate

in the hands of the Texas criminal justice system.

Houston PD confirmed the palm prints

from Leafie's house did belong to Reséndiz,

and when I got, uh... uh... when they told me that,

I let out a... a, you know, a... big, you know, whoop.

I'm jumpin' up and down, and I run down the hallway.

You know, yellin' to everybody,

"We've got him! We've got him! We've got him!"

And now Leafie will have justice.

When I made the choice to retire at a young age, people asked me why.

And the biggest part of the reason was

I don't want to see the bad things people do to each other anymore.