Original subtitles

- They find a young woman laying in the bushes.

- She had been stabbed 61 times.

- And this horrible, scary voice, that's our killer.

- He was taunting the investigators.

- The next victim was stabbed 106 times.

- He's escalating in his offending behavior.

- We were never the same after she was gone.

- There's this evil demon inside of him.

- I'm never gonna forget that voice.

That's gonna stay with me forever.

♪

- 1980-'81, New Year's Eve.

It was a very cold night, about three hours after midnight.

The St. Paul Police Department received a frightening call.

There's a girl hurt there.

- It's a strange voice.

High-pitched, frantic, squealy.

- They tried to get information from the caller,

but the caller hung up.

- When the first responders went to the scene

where the phone call had directed them,

they come across this young woman.

- She was lying near the railroad tracks

in the rear of this manufacturing plant.

The victim was found partially nude.

She was severely beaten with something.

- It was so bad, her skull was cracked open from the attack.

But she was alive.

The police found identification on the body

and saw that the victim was Karen Potack,

a 20-year-old student.

She was from the St. Paul area.

- She's unconscious.

The beating was so severe that they weren't even sure

if she was going to survive.

- They rushed her to the hospital,

trying to save her life.

- When the police started doing their investigation,

they found the blouse of the victim about 50 or 60 feet away.

- Her blouse was torn off,

which would indicate a possible sexual assault.

- As far as the evidence, that was it.

And there was nothing else discovered at the scene.

♪

- She was unable to be a witness for herself.

So police talked to Karen Potack's family.

- When they learned that she had been brutally attacked,

they were very upset and distraught,

and they were just happy that she was alive.

- Through her family,

we learned that Karen had been out that evening with friends.

She was at a bar about 2 miles from where she was assaulted

and beaten nearly to death.

- Sometime after midnight, Karen just left by herself.

She decided to go home.

Nobody saw her leave with anybody.

- According to her family and friends,

there hadn't been any issues with her or anybody else.

From what they could tell at that point,

it was a random assault.

Police initial thoughts were that, when she left the bar,

it was cold, and perhaps the suspect offered her a ride

and then brought her back to this isolated area

and left her there for dead, essentially.

- The biggest mystery was who made that phone call to police.

- We believe that the suspect could well have been the caller.

- I think if he is the offender,

he's calling in because he is actually very distressed,

and I think he is very conflicted about what he's done.

- If we hadn't received a phone call,

it would probably have been several days

before she was ever found.

- The area around Malmberg Manufacturing

is a fairly remote area.

The suspect probably knew the area, knew it was isolated,

knew that no one would be there.

- That led police, the next day,

talk to the owner of Malmberg Manufacturing.

- Was there any possible staff that they could point to

that might do such a thing?

But they didn't come up with any viable leads.

- A few days later, Karen regained consciousness.

- Even though she survived,

Karen Potack was never the same person after that.

- Her trauma was so bad that she had no memory

of the assault at all.

The working assumption was, it was a sexual assault.

But on analysis at the hospital,

there had been no sexual assault.

So the police were back at square one.

- Several months go by.

The Karen Potack case

becomes a cold case, at that point.

It's very frustrating.

On June 3, 1981, 7:00 at night...

The St. Paul Police Department receives

another disturbed phone call.

- The police didn't know what

they were dealing with at this point.

The caller is not giving them

any information to find the victim.

- But then, 30 minutes later, we receive another call.

- Three boys are playing in kind of a wooded area,

and they discovered a body, and they called 911.

The police immediately go out there.

They find a young woman laying in the bushes.

- She had been stabbed multiple times and was deceased.

- There was blood all over.

It looked like she hadn't been out there that long.

- She didn't have any identification on her,

but they did find a key in her pocket

to a locker at the St. Paul bus depot,

which is about 2 miles from where the body was found.

- There was no evidence at the scene.

Nothing that would be considered a murder type weapon was found.

- The police sent investigators over to the bus depot

to check out the locker.

- Once they opened the locker,

the investigators found two bags in there

and then an ID to the victim.

- The victim is Kimberly Compton,

and she's an 18-year-old, a female from Pepin, Wisconsin.

- The police told my dad Kim was murdered in St. Paul.

My dad was so devastated, he was shaking and crying.

That was like his daughter.

My sister Joyce got pregnant with Kim,

and my parents raised her.

So Kim was like my baby sister.

Kim was very loving, very caring.

I mean, everywhere she went, she made friends.

Losing Kim really was devastating.

At that point, all I wanted to do was die.

[ Sniffles ]

♪

- The police learned she had just graduated from high school

like two weeks before.

- She was a straight-A student.

There was nothing there for her in Pepin anymore.

So she got on the bus to go to St. Paul, Minnesota,

where she could find work and go on to college.

- She got in town about 3:30

and was violently murdered just hours

after she got off the bus from Wisconsin.

- Her family didn't think she even knew anybody in the city.

In this case, again, it

seems like we were dealing with a stranger.

- If I could've saved her, I would have been there.

I have dreams about her calling for me to help.

It's really hard.

[ Sniffles ]

♪

- Medical examiner determined

that she had been stabbed 61 times,

and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

That amount of rage in a person, when they kill somebody,

it's something that we're not used to dealing with.

- Her offender clearly had hatred towards her,

and he likely targeted her

because she represented something to him symbolically.

- The medical examiner determined

that she had been stabbed, probably with an ice pick.

- They surmised that it was probably the same person

that called in that killed her.

- The Karen Potack case was a cold case at that point,

but we recognized the similarity in that voice.

- The police realized that it was the same individual

that made these calls.

So they were convinced that the same person

attacked Karen Potack and killed Kimberly Compton.

- We're dealing with somebody who is preying on young females.

- The community is absolutely terrified.

- He's clearly calling in

because he wants recognition for what he's done.

- Things were escalating at that point.

- She said, "He snapped,

and he started stabbing me in my stomach."

- June 1981, St. Paul Police Department

had two young women that were brutally attacked.

One survived--

Karen Potack with severe head trauma, six months earlier.

And now they have Kimberly Compton found dead,

stabbed 61 times with an ice pick.

- In both cases, police received

a phone call from a party.

It's kind of a high-pitched voice.

- Police felt that this person calling them,

that this was their killer.

- These calls were the only evidence we had

that there was any connection between these two.

- When the police were investigating

the Kimberly Compton murder,

Detectives learned she arrived that very day

at 3:35 in the afternoon,

and she was dead before the sun set.

- Now we know that she's only been here four hours.

In that period of time, where had she gone?

So we're gonna canvass the area.

- That led investigators to Mickey's Diner,

which is right across from the St. Paul bus depot.

- Investigators showed employees a picture

of Kimberly Compton.

They identify her as being a customer.

- She had been in there alone.

At some point, a white male, dark hair,

possibly around 50 years old,

started talking to her.

They thought that she didn't know the party

that she was talking to,

but she had left with that person.

We're pretty sure he's our killer,

but we don't have enough information yet

to come up with a suspect.

- Investigators in St. Paul, their frustration was very deep.

Even though there had just been two cases,

they knew it had the marks of a serial killer.

They wanted to catch this person before he struck again.

- On June 11th, another call comes in.

- At that point,

everybody in our communication center

is well aware of this voice.

He's confessing to us

but not giving us who he was.

It's almost as if he was taunting the investigators.

- He's clearly calling in

because he wants recognition for what he's done.

He said it feels like a big dream.

Perhaps, to him, it's a dream

because he's talking about his fantasy life

and that he's engaging in fantasy.

- This was so unusual.

Killers don't just call in.

- Back then, when we received a phone call,

we had the ability to track down the location

of which phone made the call.

It took a few days,

but we learned the calls were made

from telephone booths around the city.

But nothing ever came of it.

The whole police department was a heightened awareness.

We've got to catch this person.

So the police released some of the recordings to the media.

- We're hoping that somebody will recognize the voice,

you know, whether it be a friend or a relative or a neighbor

or someone you work with or drink with.

- The community is absolutely terrified

when this comes out in the newspapers and on the TV.

- There was a lot of fear, particularly for young women.

Just the fear of, "Who's he gonna pick next?"

- The offender, they would feel very powerful

and perhaps very gratified that they had been responsible

for making the city feel so afraid.

- It was chilling. It was creepy.

After the phone calls were released,

the person who was calling in

was being called the "Weepy-voiced Killer."

- Yeah, I'm never gonna forget that voice.

[ Chuckles ]

That's gonna stay with me forever.

♪

- The police were very frustrated

because they have a community that is terrified

and they have no leads.

So the St. Paul Police Department put together

a task force to try to solve this case.

- The police have established a special line.

- This line is specifically for this investigation.

- There were a lot of calls,

just a deluge of people that say, "Yeah, I know who that is."

- Think they got over 150 tips,

and none of them led anywhere.

- Officials say, at this point,

they have not been able to positively identify

the voice of the caller.

- He is out there, and we have to catch him,

because there's no doubt that he was gonna strike again.

- The Weepy-voiced Killer murdered Kimberly Compton

and almost murdered Karen Potack,

two young women in St. Paul, Minnesota, five months apart.

- And then, several months go by, and there are no more calls.

Hopefully he quit, but we really don't think he's going to.

- At the core of most of these offenders

is their desire to kill.

They might stop for a while

because they have achieved that gratification

from committing the offense.

But that tension builds up,

and they feel the need to do it again.

- On August 6, 1982,

over a year after Kimberly Compton's murder...

♪

...a paper boy across the river in Minneapolis

makes a horrific discovery.

A young woman, murdered by the river.

♪

- I arrived at the scene.

The victim was lying up against the brush, face up.

In a laid-back position.

She was a white female, and it was quite obvious

that she was just recently murdered.

You could tell she had been stabbed several times.

We search for evidence,

but there wasn't anything found at the scene.

- Detectives talked to the paper boy,

and they scoured the neighborhood, door-to-door.

Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything.

- At the time of the autopsy,

it was learned that the victim was stabbed 106 times

with a round object.

- Where the wounds entered the body,

it was a peculiar cross marking.

And they concluded that a probable murder weapon

was a Phillips screwdriver.

- It was an instrument similar to an ice pick.

And the nature of the wounds

were somewhat similar to the killing of Kimberly Compton.

The medical examiner had determined

that there had been no sexual assault,

but stabbing a person 106 times,

there has to be an incredible rage

by the individual doing this.

- The next step for us was getting her fingerprints

at the morgue, and at that point,

we identified her as Barbara Simons.

- The police find out that Barbara Simons is a nurse,

40 years old, living in Minneapolis.

And they notified the family.

- Her family said there was no significant other in her life

that would have been considered a suspect.

- But detectives learn Barbara Simons,

according to friends,

would frequent a place called the Hexagon Bar,

which was about 2 miles from where her body was discovered.

- We proceeded to the Hexagon Bar

to speak with the employees there.

They knew who Barbara Simons was,

and we told them that she had been murdered.

- Barbara Simons was a well-known customer.

They all liked her. They felt she was a nice woman.

- We learned that Barbara Simons was, in fact,

in the bar the night before her body was found.

Barbara was there alone,

but she had met a guy in the bar.

- He asked if she appeared to know the guy.

They said he was a total stranger to her.

- Around 11:30, Barbara spoke with one of the waitresses,

and she mentioned that, "I hope this is a nice guy

because he's gonna give me a ride home."

- And that's the last anyone ever saw of Barbara Simons.

- They had described him as being a white male in his 40s,

approximately 6 feet, about 180, 185 pounds.

- Black hair, balding, dark eyes.

He did have a mustache.

- The waitress described him as being real quiet.

- They didn't know who he was, his name or anything like that.

- At this point, this seemed like a very promising lead.

- As the investigators were working on the case,

they're aware of the ones across the river in St. Paul.

But one thing that was different.

is there had not been a phone call.

- But then, 48 hours after Barbara Simons body was found,

a call came into the Minneapolis Police Department.

- It's him.

It was the Weepy-voiced Killer.

- 48 hours after Barbara Simons' murder,

a call comes in

to the Minneapolis Police dispatch center.

♪

- The call, basically, was a confession.

That's what we took it as.

- Immediately, police thought these cases could be connected.

- At that point,

I contacted the homicide division in St. Paul.

- Minneapolis and St. Paul started working together,

looking at the similarities of the cases,

trying to figure out who is this person.

- We felt that the suspect was a serial killer

and that things were escalating at that point.

- If you are looking at his trajectory,

him going from bludgeoning a woman

to stabbing someone 60 times and then 100 times,

it does look like he's escalating

in his offending behavior while still being careful.

- When the police investigated, they looked for fingerprints,

a weapon, any solid evidentiary leads at the crime scenes,

and they came up with nothing.

The calls were the only evidence they had.

- He absolutely does not want to be caught.

- At that point, the FBI was brought in

to analyze all of these tapes

and give us a profile as to what type

of a person the suspect was.

- Part of the profile is that the killer

was seriously conflicted

and struggled with guilt and shame of what he had done.

- That's a pretty unusual line, "I won't make it to heaven."

He may have some sort of religious belief.

Perhaps he is calling the police

to get absolution or forgiveness.

- The FBI profiler,

he also thought that the person that did this

would probably have a criminal record.

- It's highly unlikely that an offender starts

with their first offense being killing.

- Generally, they start out at lesser crimes,

and they build up to this.

So now we have one more piece to look at,

somebody that's done time.

- The police went back and looked at anyone

that might have had an aggravated assault

or violent history in their past.

- At that point, we had approximately

147 mugshot photographs of people

who were arrested for assaults that had not been in jail

at the time of the attacks.

Because of the description we had of the suspect,

we were able to get him down to 15 to 20 possible suspects.

- The next step was to go back to the Hexagon Bar.

- We talked to the waitress

that had previously described the suspect.

We showed her the photographs, and upon going through them,

she stopped, pointed at one.

- She positively identified 37-year-old Paul Stephani.

Now we got a name, and we start running

a background check on Paul Stephani.

- Several years prior to the Karen Potack assault,

Paul Stephani was convicted of aggravated assault,

spent some time in jail.

- There isn't much information about that offense,

but it was against a woman.

- Paul Stephani is single and living in St. Paul.

- They found out that he was living

in a pretty small apartment on the East side.

He'd had jobs like working as a machinist or a janitor.

- We find out that Stephani had been employed

by Malmberg Manufacturing.

Of course, that right away set off the alarm

because Karen Potack was found brutally attacked

at Malmberg Manufacturing.

So that ties him to Karen Potack's case.

- They contacted the owner of Malmberg Manufacturing

and found out Stephani worked there in 1977,

four years before the attack on Karen Potack.

He didn't work there that long.

The owner did say Stephani, when he'd get upset,

he would have this horrible, squealy voice.

- So now they think they have the possible suspect

that could be linked to all three of these cases.

♪

- We didn't have enough evidence for an arrest

or a search warrant.

So we set up a surveillance on his residence

to prevent him from doing any further murder or assault.

- They were watching him all hours of the night and day,

go in and out.

- August 21, 1982,

when it was just getting dark,

Paul Stephani leaves his apartment

and starts driving towards Minneapolis.

- At which point, detectives followed him.

- His car weaves in and out,

and eventually the police lose Paul Stephani in the traffic.

- Whether he knew they were following him or not,

he managed to evade them.

- So they have no idea where he's going.

- He was out there. This person is very dangerous.

What's he gonna do next?

- A short time later, a good Samaritan calls

into the Minneapolis Police Department.

- The man told police that he witnessed

a woman being attacked.

The man who was attacking the woman was gone

and the woman was bleeding.

- The location of the attack

was just over the border in Minneapolis,

kind off of the beaten path.

- They put her in an ambulance, take her to a hospital.

- Officers responded to the hospital

to interview the victim.

Her name was Denise Williams.

She was able to talk about what happened.

- Denise Williams told the police investigators

she was a prostitute working in Minneapolis.

The perpetrator pulled over and picked her up.

Then he started driving into this isolated area.

- At that point, Denise said,

he pulled his car over and parked,

and he reached over to his glove compartment,

pulled out a screwdriver.

- She said, "He snapped

and he started stabbing me in my stomach."

- She reached to the floor and found a soda bottle,

and she hit him in the head.

[ Bottle shatters ]

- Broke the pop bottle,

stabbed him a couple times in the face

and managed to get out of the car.

But he's still after her.

- Guy tackles her, gets on top of her,

starts stabbing her again.

She starts screaming for help.

- Denise is shown a photo lineup of mug shots,

and she identifies a photo of Paul Stephani

as the party that attacked her in the car.

- Now we can arrest him for the assault on Denise Williams.

If only we can find this guy.

- We have a Twin Cities serial killer on the loose.

The clock was ticking.

♪

- Shortly after we learned

Paul Stephani attacked Denise Williams,

another call came in to St. Paul emergency

requesting an ambulance.

- And they're sitting there in the Fire Emergency, going,

"Does that sound like somebody we know?"

And then, "Holy [bleep] That's him."

The first thing they did after hearing the voice is,

they got ahold of a detective.

- We assume this is Paul Stephani,

the Weepy-voiced Killer.

But the sound of the voice was pretty normal,

so we don't know for a fact.

- So, an ambulance was sent to his location,

and he was brought to the hospital in St. Paul.

Detectives arrived at the hospital,

and it was Paul Stephani.

They observed his injuries.

It was apparent that Denise Williams

had cut his face open with the pop bottle.

He claimed that he was a victim of a robbery

and that he was assaulted.

We knew that was not the truth.

- They moved forward with arresting him

for the aggravated assault of Denise Williams.

- We know the Weepy-voiced Killer is Paul Stephani,

but he doesn't know that we know.

- At that time, I proceeded to interview the suspect.

Paul Stephani seemed normal,

and his voice was at a soft-spoken tone.

- Our challenge was, you know,

actually get him to confess to killing these women.

- So, then, I had my folder

with all the photographs of the victims--

Karen Potack, Barbara Simons, Kimberly Compton.

I opened it up and asked him

if he remembered any of those people.

At which point, he got up from his chair,

and his voice went up to a high pitch,

and said, "You're not gonna pin those on me."

- When he was experiencing heightened emotion,

his voice changed into this very excitable tone.

That compartmentalization

that he was engaging in is not unusual.

- His voice sounded just like the recordings

of the Weepy-voiced Killer.

- We know that, yeah, this is the same guy.

♪

- And he pretty much remained silent after that.

At that point, the interview was terminated.

- We searched his car and his apartment,

but nothing that would be considered

a Phillips screwdriver

or an ice-pick-type weapon was ever found.

- Minneapolis still had some pretty strong evidence,

both in the Denise Williams assault

and Barbara Simons homicide

because of the eyewitness identification of Paul Stephani

by the waitress at the Hexagon Bar,

and then also the personal identification

by Denise Williams that all kind of tied it together.

And so they moved forward on those two crimes in Minneapolis.

- Stephani was charged with attempted second-degree murder

and second-degree assault.

- When Paul Stefani was arrested, it was huge news.

They had caught the Weepy-voiced Killer.

It was just a sense of relief,

and thank God before there were any more.

- When we found out that Kimberly was killed

by a serial killer,

we just couldn't believe that that had happened to Kim.

If I would have been there, I would have beat him down.

- At that point, investigators are looking

at Paul Stefani's background,

talking to his family and the people that he knew.

- They learned that he came from a large family.

His mother was deeply religious, Catholic.

- With his strict Catholic upbringing,

that was definitely a factor in him calling the police

and, in a way, confessing.

- They found out that his stepfather was

very abusive to his mother, Paul, and his siblings.

- This physical abuse,

perhaps watching the way his stepfather treated women,

where he had this script of, "When you're angry,

you perhaps take it out on women."

That may have led him to be more likely to commit violence.

- There's just a rage in him. There's just something--

Maybe there's just an evil inside, too.

♪

- On February 28, 1984,

Paul Stefani went on trial for the murder of Barbara Simons.

- It was pretty strong circumstantial evidence,

but it was key to try to match up the voice of Paul Stefani

to the Weepy-voiced Killer.

So Prosecutor Ryan calls Stephani's sister

and put her on the stand.

- I told Stephani's sister,

"I know this is going to be difficult for you to do,

but I'm going to play some recordings."

- At this point, Stefani was pretty much quiet

and had his head down.

- I said, "Do you recognize the voice you're listening to?"

And... she started crying. I started crying.

"That's Paul. That's my brother."

I was really sad.

'Cause I just felt so bad for her.

Man, that was her younger brother.

And now she knows that he killed all these people.

♪

♪

The jury deliberated for less than an hour.

- He was found guilty and sentenced to 40 years

for the homicide of Barbara Simons,

and then 18 years for the aggravated assault

of Denise Williams.

- There was just a huge sense of relief.

The next question was, would St. Paul cross the river,

charge Paul Stephani for the murder of Kimberly Compton

and the assault on Karen Potack?

- Our evidence was not as good as Minneapolis.

We didn't have any ID on the Kimberly Compton murder

or the assault of Karen Potack.

We didn't know that we could prove it

beyond a reasonable doubt.

And so our two cases would not be going to trial.

- Our family knew who killed Kimberly,

but we still didn't know anything about

why he killed her.

There never was any justice for Kim.

- People thought that was it. The story ends.

But the case of Paul Stephani took a very strange turn

12 years later.

- In December of 1997, I'm working in a homicide unit.

We get a phone call from the maximum security prison

in Minnesota, and they tell us

that Paul Stephani wants to talk to us.

- On December 5, 1997,

15 years after Paul Stephani was arrested,

St. Paul Police get a call from the prison

that Paul Stephani has some information to share.

- We sit down. Right away, he tells us he has cancer.

- He had a melanoma, and he was given a year to live.

- He was dying of cancer.

He wanted to set the record straight.

We hope he's gonna finally confess to these murders.

So we asked him about the Karen Potack case to start with.

He said that he was out driving around,

and he found this young gal in the alley behind the bar.

It was freezing cold out, so he asked her, "Do you need a ride?"

- He said he would bring her home,

and instead he brought her to this isolated area

and they got out of the car,

and he started beating her with a tire iron.

- One part of him is the monster that kills people,

and then all of a sudden, the other part of him says,

you know, he's sorry for what he did.

The next one we talked about was Kimberly Compton.

- Paul Stephani said he was in Mickey's Diner

when Kimberly Compton got off the bus

and went over to get something to eat,

and she ended up sitting next to him.

Then he offered to show her the sights.

- That's the pretense that he uses

to get her over into the wooded area.

- And he says, "I don't know why I did it, but I did it.

It's something in my head that's telling me

that I have to kill these people."

- He didn't actually say that much about why he did it.

But there's clearly negative feelings towards women.

He probably has fantasies about harming these women,

and he's getting gratification from

enacting those fantasies in real life.

- He also admitted that he killed Barbara Simons

and he assaulted Denise Williams.

- After we go through the cases, we ask,

"Paul, s there anybody else that you've killed?"

and he said, "Yeah, there was this woman."

- Paul Stephani said he was out on a date

with a woman in St. Paul.

He went over to her house,

and then, uh, he drowned her in the bathtub.

♪

And they went back to see

if there was any unsolved drowning cases,

and they found a case from 1982.

A woman was drowned in her bathtub.

- It was a young schoolteacher, 33-year-old Kathleen Greening,

on July 21, 1982,

just a few weeks before Barbara Simons was murdered.

- Her death was right amongst the other murders

that Paul Stephani had committed.

- In the police files, they found the address book

of Kathleen Greening,

and there was the name "Paul S." with a phone number.

And when the police looked at the phone number,

it was Paul Stephani's number.

- He doesn't call it in.

His other victims were strangers,

but with Kathleen, he knew her,

and so he was afraid he would have been investigated for it.

- To actually get him to admit to it,

as an investigator, that's a-- that's a real win.

- He was likely not doing this for the victims

and the families.

He probably needed to come clean to absolve himself

so he can increase his chances of, in his mind,

getting into heaven.

- Evil is evil, and you can't candy-coat it

because he said he's sorry and admitted to killing people.

- There's this evil demon inside of him.

He's not going to heaven.

- There will never be a closure in Kim's case.

It sticks with you for the rest of your life.

It's like it never goes away.

My quiet time when I'm by myself,

I sit and I talk with Kim.

I just tell her how much I love and miss her,

and that I really wish she was here

'cause my life just isn't complete.

It's really hard.

[ Sniffles ]

If I could snap my fingers and bring her back, I would.

- All of these people

just living their lives, doing nothing wrong,

and they had the horrific misfortune of connecting

with this evil person.

Barbara Simons, a nurse having a drink after work.

Karen Potack celebrating New Year's Eve.

Kimberly Compton starting a new life.

Kathy Greening, a schoolteacher going through divorce,

and then Denise Williams.

She's one of my heroes. She fought back.

She did the damage

that was necessary to stop a serial killer.

♪