Original subtitles

♪

- There are a few cases that stay with you,

and this is one of them.

- It has been a while since I've thought about the girls.

♪

- These victims were dumped on the side of the road

along Tamiami Trail.

- That is his hunting ground.

It appears the body has been re-dressed.

- Tire tracks across one of her legs.

- Strangulation marks on all six victims.

This was something I had never seen before.

There was writing on this person's back.

The killer's sending us a message.

- I'm going to rub your nose in this,

'cause you guys, you're not going to catch me.

- He's saying, "I want people to come into my sick world,

and I want them to play this game with me."

- We don't know when he's going to strike again.

We have to catch this individual--

the Tamiami Strangler.

♪

[ Theme music plays ]

♪

♪

- Miami in the mid-'90s was peaceful,

but it also had its dark side.

There was a serial killer targeting victims

on Southwest 8th Street, known as Tamiami Trail.

- So, the Tamiami Trail is a strip of road with businesses

from Miami to the west coast, the Naples area.

Most of it is Everglades,

except for the populated areas of Miami and Naples, Florida.

- The area of Tamiami Trail near Miami is an area

that was frequented by prostitutes.

Cheap hotels where prostitutes would take their clients,

people would use drugs.

- Early in the morning, a call comes in that a body was found.

This is a residential neighborhood

three blocks from the Tamiami Trail.

- The way the body was found,

it was a Miami Herald newspaper delivery person

who saw the body, called the police.

♪

- Based upon how the person was dressed,

detectives initially thought that this was in fact a female.

But when they turned that person over,

they realized the person had male genitalia.

- The clothing was placed on this body backwards, inside out.

- It appears the body has been re-dressed.

And also, we saw lividity on his arm,

which indicated that he died somewhere else

and the body was moved sometime thereafter.

There were fibers found on the body.

The fibers were a plum-colored carpet fiber.

Whoever did this wanted this person to be found.

- There was a tire scuff over one of the legs.

- It appeared with this victim

that they were dumped on the side of the road.

But we don't know the exact cause of death.

- Fingerprints are taken to see if we can identify the body.

- The victim was identified as 27-year-old Hispanic male

Lazaro Comesana.

- Lazaro has a history of prostitution arrests.

So, he's from the area,

and it's close to where the body was found.

We want to find as much as we can, interview associates,

friends, family members.

- Lazaro was a successful hairstylist and manicurist

and had a family.

He was a husband and he had a daughter.

But when he engaged in sex work, he was dressed as a woman.

So, in 1989,

Lazaro and a Pakistani woman named Sabrina

were married after they met at his hair salon.

Two years later, Sabrina gave birth to a baby girl.

Ultimately, she and the baby returned to Pakistan.

Lazaro dreamed of being reunited with his family.

It could be one of the reasons that he turned to sex work.

Perhaps he was making some extra money

to try to save for that trip to get back to his family.

And they were absolutely shocked and horrified

when they learned of his death.

♪

- A toxicology exam is conducted

at the medical examiner's office,

which determines the presence of narcotics in their blood.

This was during the Cocaine Cowboy era.

- Miami was known for drugs at that time--

usage of drugs, selling drugs.

- This could have happened when he was socializing with friends.

Maybe they were partaking of drugs

and he had this reaction.

They're not going to call the police.

- There is not usually a trusting relationship

between sex workers and law enforcement

because of criminalization.

People can't come forward because they risk arrest.

- Maybe he was naked at the time

and they hurriedly re-dressed him,

and that's why some of the clothing is inside out.

There's all these possibilities that we're considering.

There were faint marks on his neck,

so these marks could have been incidental to rough sex.

- Maybe choking is part of it. Maybe it went too far.

Maybe the drugs contributed to the inability to breathe.

- What we call a rape kit is conducted

at the medical examiner's office.

There was semen found,

and that was-- very likely would have been the last person

that would have been with Lazaro before he passed away.

- When they tested it and ran it against their database

and the FBI database, there was no hit.

They found drugs in the system.

They found marks around the neck,

but they were unwilling to determine which manner of death

they wanted to classify this.

- If it's unclassified,

that means more investigation is necessary.

- Nobody had any expectation

that somebody would be coming running down the street

and saying, "Oh, oh, oh, I know something about this case."

- We really didn't get any information of value.

We were hitting a dead end on Lazaro.

♪

A few weeks later, we find another body,

a female,

not too far from where Lazaro's body was found.

- The victim was identified through fingerprints

as 44-year-old Daphne Martinez.

♪

Also, the lividity showed that she was moved to that site

hours after her death.

- When the rape kit is done,

there is no semen that is found.

There appears to be some type of tire mark

on the body, like Lazaro.

When we do a closer examination,

some of these plum-colored carpet fibers

are also found on the body.

Again, very similar to Lazaro.

- Daphne was from Cuba and had four children.

Daphne worked as a secretary

and had enrolled at an adult education center.

She wasn't making enough to sustain life,

so she turned to sex work to supplement her income.

Stigma leads us to cast people engaged in sex work

outside to the margins.

But sex workers are part of their communities.

They're parents. They may have other jobs.

They're involved in their churches.

- Again, prior arrests for prostitution,

for drug possession.

Very similar background as Lazaro.

The first thing that comes to my mind

is there's a probability that both of these

are just overdose deaths.

- The medical examiner was unable

to find a clear cause of death.

And so that death was also ruled as an unclassified death,

pending investigation.

- During '94 and '95,

I was between jobs and I was living at my house

and had my father living there, and I was taking care of him,

and I had a lot of people coming and going from my house.

Daphne is one of the girls that lived at my house.

I was involved in a lot of activities.

She came through my house for a business transaction initially,

and then we became friends.

She was a caring person.

When I was away from the house,

she would take care of my father.

My father was disabled.

She was living the life she was living,

but she was a good person.

When I heard the news about Daphne's death,

I was heartbroken.

♪

Sorry about that.

♪

- November 20, 1994,

myself and my team were sent to a deceased victim,

Hispanic female, possibly a drug overdose,

a block, block and a half off of Southwest 8th Street,

Tamiami Trail.

- It was very close to where the other two bodies were found.

When I arrived at the scene, the body was face-down.

She was covered with a yellow police blanket.

So we pulled back the blanket completely.

This was something I had never seen before.

There was writing on this person's back,

from the top of their back

all the way down to the buttocks.

The writing is with what appears to be a black magic marker.

It starts with "third."

It then follows with "I will call Dwight chan 10."

Then it says, "See if you can catch me,"

but "see" are two eyeballs.

It's clear communication.

It indicates this person wants attention.

"Police, wake up.

The first two were me also.

This is my third."

- We knew that there was more to this.

We had a homicide.

We didn't just have a drug overdose.

- Police also found a message scrawled across the back

of the latest victim--

a message they hope will lead to the killer.

- It's brazen. It's disrespectful.

There's an extra humiliation here

where I'm going to use this person's body

as a canvas to relay messages.

- At this point, it was clear--

we have a serial killer on our hands.

- Her husband is coming home with scratches.

He doesn't have very good explanations

for his whereabouts.

- It appears that his attack on these prostitutes

was because of his life falling apart.

- She reminded him of his wife.

Somebody had to pay.

♪

♪

- When we saw the message on the victim's back,

we knew that this was possibly a serial killer.

Now we're trying to figure out what this may mean.

- The killer's sending us a message.

- Below the word "third,"

"call Dwight chan 10."

- At the time, Dwight Lauderdale was

probably the most prominent news reporter

in the Miami area.

- We reached out to Dwight.

He agreed to cooperate in the investigation

and allowed us to monitor his phone calls.

- "See if you can catch me" is his way of saying,

"I'm going to rub your nose in this, 'cause you guys,

you're not going to catch me."

- And then on the buttocks are the initials N.Y.R.

- We didn't know where to go with that.

We felt it was a good investigative lead

in case we caught the killer, that it might be his initials,

but also, we probably wouldn't know

until we catch the person who did it.

Through fingerprints, this victim was identified

as 23-year-old Charity Fay Nava.

- The body of the latest murdered prostitute,

Charity Fay Nava, was found this past Sunday

just off Southwest 8th Street.

- She was originally from Illinois.

Charity's mother, Sherri, gave her that name

because she wanted something biblical for her first child.

At 10 years old, Charity's life changed drastically

when her mother was shot and ended up in a wheelchair.

Charity ultimately dropped out of middle school.

She had to help support her family.

In the subsequent years,

Charity got a job as a dancer in a strip club.

Charity started using drugs and engaged in sex work,

and was arrested a number of times.

♪

- When we do the examination at the medical examiner's office,

we find a condom.

There's fluid in the condom, which is identified as semen,

and that semen matches the semen found in Lazaro,

victim number one.

- There was tire tracks on the victim,

very similar to the other two cases.

- We believe the killer is stepping out of the car

and removing the victim

and placing the victim on the ground.

The tire abrasions on the victim's body

was caused by him dragging

and placing the body next to the car.

- The carpet fibers that were found on Charity

matched the plum-colored fibers on the Comesana case

and on the Daphne Martinez case.

- Charity's neck did show some marks of strangulation.

Charity's case, of course, is classified as a homicide,

and now the medical examiner is able to use that information

to then make a determination

that the first two cases are homicide cases as well.

All three cases are linked.

♪

Serial killers have this unquenchable desire to kill.

- They want their work to be on display.

It's a taunt to law enforcement.

It's a taunt to other sex workers and potential victims.

- I was focusing on, "Now we need to catch this guy."

- The search for the killer has become

one of the biggest manhunts in county history.

- This case now is drawing a lot of media attention.

- It has become a deadly game of cat and mouse

for prostitutes working the Tamiami Trail.

- Once Daphne was murdered,

some of the girls had moved away from the area out of fear.

- It now becomes a huge focus.

A lot of resources are going to be needed.

So we put a task force together.

So, we are checking motels in the area

to try to see if there's carpet fibers

that may match to the fibers found on the victims.

We know he's dumping these bodies,

so we are trying to identify areas

that are maybe the next dumping point.

So we're having those areas surveilled throughout the night.

- We had a lot of officers out on the street

socializing with the prostitutes on that area

to try to gather information,

talking to the pimps, talking to the johns.

- Also alerting them that there is a killer out here.

- People who work in the sex industry are more vulnerable.

They typically have poor housing, poor social support,

abuse backgrounds, mental illness, substance abuse.

They make the perfect victim, unfortunately.

With serial killers that target sex workers,

you would see maybe more misogyny,

maybe somebody who has rage and hatred towards women

or towards sex workers

and views them as less than, or parasitic on society.

- These are victims and they deserve the same dignity

as anybody else does.

The morning after Thanksgiving,

another body is found in the same general area.

- When she was found, she was in a parking lot.

She had some of the similarities--

tire marks on her and near her.

- The victim, Wanda Crawford, 38 years of age,

was identified through her fingerprints on file,

and she was also a sex worker from that area.

When the body examination was done

at the medical examiner's office,

there were clear signs of strangulation.

- In addition, they found plum-colored fibers on her body,

consistent with the other three victims.

- By all accounts, we were thinking

this was another victim of the serial killer,

and eventually, DNA evidence was found

that matched the other victims, as well.

- Four victims in two months.

- I remember Wanda's name as Touch.

That's what she liked to be called.

And Touch and Daphne were friends.

They were both at my house, living with me,

my father, and my girlfriend.

And we were like a family.

I remember Touch as more of a jokester.

She'd kid around a lot.

At the time that it had become apparent

there was a serial killer,

Touch had changed her hours,

she changed her location,

but sometimes the old habits are hard to stop,

and they would gravitate back to the Southwest 8th Street area

on Tamiami Trail

because of all the adult hotels.

It has been a while since I've discussed

or thought about the girls, and, um, I feel a little hurt.

♪

- We don't know when he's going to strike again.

We're doing everything we can to catch him.

We were going to still continue to do our work,

and hopefully something's going to break.

Lucky for us, less than a month later,

the manager of a CVS on Tamiami Trail

near the area of where the bodies were found,

he comes out to his car after closing the store

and he sees these Polaroids blowing through the parking lot,

and he's able to reach out and grab a few of them.

And when he looks at them, he realizes

this is strange.

And when he shares those with the task force,

it's a picture of a woman.

It looks like she's either passed out or could be dead.

There's an individual, a blond male, writing on her...

...very similar to Charity Nava.

This could be one of our victims

waiting to be discovered.

This is significant. Drop everything.

Probably the best lead we've had so far.

♪

- There was a CVS pharmacy.

One of the managers there found photographs of a woman

with writing on her stomach,

who appeared to be unconscious or dead.

- In the photograph, the writing says, "I love Kim."

They identify who this person is.

This is one of the prostitutes that we have interviewed.

Her name is Kim Mio.

So, investigators go out and locate Kim Mio,

and she tells us that she was at her ex-boyfriend's house.

His name is Eddie Rowe.

And that is Eddie drawing on her.

She remembers that she was using drugs.

She had passed out, and she says she believes her ex-boyfriend,

Eddie Rowe, wrote on it as a joke

for her new boyfriend to find it.

So, let's look for Eddie Rowe

and let's get a swab from him right away

and try to see if he's our killer.

- The investigators did question me.

I was under the impression

that somebody was trying to implicate me.

- He was overly cooperative, sensitive to the issues,

gave DNA samples, gave fingerprints.

- And there is no match.

Eddie Rowe is not our killer.

- I felt like they were wasting their time,

not looking for the real killer,

because I knew that I had cared about all of the girls,

but especially Daphne and Touch.

♪

- We got to a point that the case was very frustrating.

- We thought we were getting in front of this,

but we were getting behind this.

- We were worried about catching the killer.

♪

About a month later,

another victim is found near Southwest 8th Street,

a short distance from Tamiami Trail.

It's a 28-year-old, Necole Schneider,

who was also a sex worker and a drug user.

She was found on a swale with tire tracks on her body.

- Police have confirmed this latest victim worked

on the Tamiami Trail,

just like the four other victims before her.

- On the streets, meanwhile, police say those still out here

are setting themselves up to be the next victim.

- Necole Schneider's scene was the best tire impression we got.

Through our crime lab, they were able to determine

that the most likely vehicle was probably a Toyota Celica.

This was a significant break in the case.

We use a database

and we're able to identify all owners of Toyota Celicas

within that year period.

And then we decided to take a five-mile radius

from the center of Tamiami Trail

and work our way out,

to go out there and interview those individuals.

- What's on your mind is catching this killer.

♪

- And then, less than a month later,

our sixth victim is found.

- It's 21-year-old Rhonda Dunn.

She was found on what's called Grand Canal Drive,

a block north of the Tamiami Trail.

- Dunn's body was discovered yesterday

lying between the sidewalk and the street.

- She was a little kid from the Midwest,

very recently finished high school,

come down to Florida,

couldn't find the type of work that she wanted,

and became a prostitute.

- Most sex workers turn to sex work

because of their circumstances.

They've decided that given their circumstances,

it is the best choice for them.

- There were strangulation marks on her neck.

There were abrasion burns on her elbows and her knees.

There was petechiae in the eye,

which is an indication of strangulation,

and there was some bruising on her head as well,

where she was struck by something.

More than likely she did fight back

and the killer was much more violent.

- For most serial killers, there is an emotional high.

Some compare it to even something like substance abuse

and constantly chasing that first high.

You need more and more and more in order to satisfy that need.

That's why we usually see an escalation in violence.

- All the Toyota Celicas that we were able to locate

within that initial five-mile radius

proved not to be our guy.

At the same time, we're still monitoring

Dwight Lauderdale's phone,

and the killer has not reached out.

It was incredibly frustrating,

but it's the reality that we have to deal with.

So, now there is a lull in activity.

We had the sixth victim.

Months have gone by, and there are no other victims.

Serial killers don't just stop.

Until we caught him, it would be a matter of time

before there was another victim.

And then there was a significant break in the case.

Six months later, a woman was heard screaming by neighbors,

and the neighbors called the police.

And when they arrive, they see wrought-iron doors

and a woman screaming from the inside.

And the police are able to force the door open.

- The woman was inside. She was naked.

And she was identified as Gloria Maestre.

- And Gloria tells a tale that's incredible.

Gloria is also a sex worker from the Tamiami Trail area.

Gloria says that she was picked up by an individual

the night before on Tamiami Trail

and brought to that individual's home.

- He physically restrains her,

and he has bars on his windows and doors to prevent escape.

- He grabbed her, raped her.

He told her that he had to go to court

and that he'd be back to kill her.

♪

- A woman by the name of Gloria Maestre

is found screaming inside a home.

The police arrive,

and Gloria says that she was picked up by an individual

the night before on Tamiami Trail

and brought to that individual's home.

Then he tied her up.

He told her, "I have to go to court,

but when I come back, I'm going to kill you."

And he left.

She was able to loosen her bindings,

but she couldn't get out

because there's wrought-iron bars

on the windows and doors.

So she started screaming.

And that's where the neighbors heard the screams

and called the police.

- There was one of our guys who was there to process that scene.

He noticed that there was

a plum-colored carpet in the residence.

And that carpet seemed to match

the plum-colored fibers on the victims.

- He puts two and two together, and he calls me and he says,

"You need to get out here."

When I get to the apartment,

the carpet in the bathroom was a perfect match

to the fibers found on the victims.

I thought, this is significant.

- There are photographs inside of that house,

and she pointed to one of the photographs

and said, "That's the person who kidnapped me

and told me he was going to kill me."

We got the killer.

- This serial killer now escalated to the point

where he is keeping a victim in his house,

which involves psychological suffering

and intense fear

that I'm sure he's aware that he's instilling in her.

So it's more of this game.

It's more of this coercive control.

It's more of this not viewing her as a human, but as a toy.

- We need to know whose apartment is she in.

So we're going to interview all the neighbors.

We identify who the person is.

The individual is identified as a 30-year-old male--

Rory Enrique Conde.

- Born and raised in Colombia,

came to the United States with his grandmother

and was living here, was actually married

and was going through a hard time with his marriage.

- His wife had moved out months before.

Rory Conde is run through the database,

and turns out he did have a hearing that day

for a shoplifting charge.

- I assume he thought that having an arrest warrant

was a very bad thing for him,

because they might come to his house

and arrest him and see the evidence.

So he went to the hearing.

- So, the apartment is staked out,

hoping that he'll come back.

We process the scene, regroup,

and then put a team together to try to find him.

In doing the victimology of Rhonda Dunn,

we spoke to her pimp.

Her pimp told us that she wore a bracelet

and she wore a necklace with an initial "R" on it.

That necklace and that bracelet

was found in Rory Conde's apartment.

Charity always had a green pager.

In the apartment, we also find a green pager.

Conde had kept these.

- They probably serve a purpose for Conde to fantasize

and relive the atrocities that he's engaged in.

He wants to remain in control.

He's in control of them. He's in control of their lives.

He's in control of these items.

- We suspect that the killings happened in his apartment.

Not too long ago, some neighbors saw him

walking with a companion

that appears to be drunk or passed out...

...walking that person to his vehicle.

They didn't think anything of it.

Now we know it was probably one of the victims.

We learned Rory did drive a Toyota Celica,

but it was registered to a family member, his grandmother.

- The detectives waited at that apartment,

but he never came back.

- Maybe he went to his grandmother's house.

A team is assigned to follow that lead

and try to find Rory at his grandmother's house.

- His grandmother lived several miles away.

That was not identified during our earlier searches

for the Toyota Celicas,

because it was out of the range of the five miles.

- Investigators arrive at the grandmother's house,

knock on the door.

The grandmother answers the door.

They ask her, "Is your grandson home?"

And she says, "Yes, he's here."

And she allows them into the house.

- She says, "He's right in there,"

at which time they see him scurry into the bedroom

and crawl under the bed.

He could have firearms underneath the bed

from which he could shoot and kill.

We don't know.

♪

- Investigators arrive at the grandmother's house.

They ask her, "Is your grandson home?"

And she says, "Yes, he's here."

And she allows them into the house.

The detectives search the house.

They get into the bedroom

and they find Rory Conde under the bed.

- He came out and told them that he was,

in fact, the right guy--

Rory Enrique Conde.

They put the cuffs on him.

They brought him downtown.

- We eventually found the Celica at his grandmother's house.

It was processed by Crime Scene,

and sure enough, the tires matched.

The vehicle matched. That was our car.

Conde gives a sample for DNA.

It's going to take some time for the lab to analyze that.

So now we were able to interview his grandmother.

We find out that Rory Conde's mother died

when he was just a baby.

He was raised by his father, who later remarried.

He did not have a good relationship with his father.

He did not have a good relationship

with his stepmother.

- Conde's father was emotionally abusive.

He's not receiving proper nurturing.

He's not receiving proper parental guidance.

It would have been hard,

and he would have likely had to fend for himself

at a very young age.

- Eventually, he came to the U.S.

and was raised by his grandmother here in Miami.

So, we identify who his wife is.

We interview her.

- What we found out from Carla

was that she was 13 when he was--

When he met her, he was 19.

And they ended up getting married.

They had a child together.

Somewhere along the line with the relationship,

he got abusive toward her.

- She came home one day and she found

their camcorder out of the normal location.

So she played it,

and there was a video of her husband

having sex with someone on their bed.

She confronted her husband.

Her husband began to cry and said

that he had an addiction to prostitutes,

and then became violent towards her.

- Instead of being overly apologetic and empathic

and taking accountability for his behaviors,

he does the complete opposite.

He becomes violent towards her,

as if she's the source of his decision making.

So he's incapable of taking accountability.

- She actually left the house several times,

he actually kicked her out of the house several times,

and she would always come back.

You know, they always got back together.

- So, they eventually reconciled.

They had a second child.

- A little further on in the marriage,

Carla starts to notice some concerning things

about Conde's behavior.

Her husband is now claiming that he's going fishing,

but not returning with any fish.

He's also coming home with scratches.

He doesn't have very good explanations

for his whereabouts.

- In 1993, she recalled that when she had girlfriends over

and they would use the bathroom,

Conde would be looking underneath the bathroom door.

- Voyeurism is actually

a significant risk factor for escalation.

And so what this tells me about Conde in particular

is that he's getting more bold.

He's getting more brazen.

- In July of 1994, she had reached her limit,

left Conde, and moved back in with her parents.

Conde remained living in the apartment by himself,

and the first murder, of Lazaro Comesana,

occurred just a few weeks after.

- Although he became somebody who frequented prostitutes,

his wife, Carla, didn't suspect he was the person who did it,

and she was shocked.

- Conde is brought into an interview room

in the homicide bureau.

So, I go in and I start talking to him about the case,

and I start asking him questions.

And he's just sitting there. He's not answering.

So I took out a napkin and I did a very rough drawing

of where the bodies were dumped.

And I put that in front of him.

And I showed him and I said, "We had everything surrounded,

waiting to catch you, and you outsmarted us.

When you dumped victim number five,

it was outside of the area that we were surveilling."

And then a smile came on his face.

That was the only reaction I got.

So I stepped outside, met with the other investigators,

and we decided it's time to book him.

He is charged solely with the abduction

and sexual battery on Gloria Maestre.

We're still waiting for the DNA to come back.

And of course, we want a confession.

There are so many questions that remain unanswered.

We regroup again and we decide--

let's give it another shot.

This time, we tried a different tack.

Knowing his relationship to his grandmother,

how is his grandmother going to react

when he is painted as a monster by the media?

- And they started talking about his grandmother with him,

and she would be disappointed in him of not being honest

and not being-- coming clean.

- Then he said, "Okay, let's talk."

♪

♪

- We suspect that Rory Conde is the Tamiami Trail Killer.

He's put into an interview room in the homicide bureau,

but he's not saying anything.

- The turning point of this investigation was

when Sergeant Jimenez felt that, let's change our strategy.

- Conde said that as his marriage began

to develop problems,

he then began soliciting prostitutes

on the Tamiami Trail.

- Eventually, Conde decided that "Whoever I pick up,

they're in for it.

I'm going to beat them up,

I'm going to strangle them, I'm going to hurt them,

and then kill them and dump them."

- Eventually, Rory Enrique Conde gives

a very, very detailed confession

on all six victims.

♪

There was very little emotion.

It was almost matter-of-fact.

Conde is blaming the failure of his marriage on sex workers

that he chose to solicit and have sex with.

Somebody had to pay.

- It was the sex workers' fault.

He's not willing to take any accountability

for his behaviors, not for his wife leaving him,

and not even for murders.

It's everybody else's fault but his.

- For Thanksgiving, he was invited to his in-laws'

to try to reconcile with Carla, with his wife,

and it didn't work out.

- Carla didn't talk to him. She ignored him.

And of course, that night when he left that dinner,

he met the fourth victim, Wanda Crawford,

and ended up killing her.

And so it appears that his attack on these prostitutes

was because of his life falling apart, according to him.

- As to the last victim, Rhonda Dunn,

Conde mentioned that she reminded him of his wife.

Victim number three, Charity, had the writing on the back,

so we wanted to decipher that.

We were wondering about the "N.Y.R." on the buttocks.

So, the "N" was the initial for his mother's name, Nadia,

the "Y" is the Spanish "and,"

and then the "R" was his initial, for Rory.

So he signed it with his mother and his name.

When Conde was arrested, in his wallet,

Rory had a poem that he had written to his mother.

And it was almost like a love letter.

He never knew his mom. She died when he was very young.

- I think he probably did genuinely have a soft spot

for the fact that he lost his mother at a young age.

- We can infer that there is something there

about the misogyny that he felt towards women,

based on the fact that he probably felt

like he was abandoned by his mother,

even though she died of tetanus.

- I had never seen anything like that.

When we got the confession, most of our questions,

if not all of our questions were answered.

Ties into all the evidence.

The DNA comes back the next day

and it's a positive match.

Without a doubt, Rory Conde is the Tamiami Strangler.

- The bodies turned up in the mornings

from September to January.

Dead prostitutes dumped on residential lawns

along the Tamiami Trail--

all, police say, killed by one man.

Today they say that man is Rory Enrique Conde,

who confessed to being the Tamiami Killer.

- Mr. Conde, you have six charges of first-degree murder.

No bond.

- The decision is made by the State Attorney's Office

to prosecute him only on the sixth victim, Rhonda Dunn.

- I knew that Rhonda Dunn's was the one

that tied everything together.

So, in October of 1999, we went to trial

on the murder count involving the homicide of Rhonda Dunn.

- Rory sat stone-faced throughout the trial.

- And he was convicted of first-degree murder

and got the death penalty.

And eventually he pled guilty to the murders

of the other five victims.

- Consecutive life sentences on each of the other five murders.

And in fact, today,

Mr. Conde sits in the local jail

trying to litigate a chance to get another trial.

He's suggesting that the quality of the lawyer

who represented him wasn't up to snuff,

and he'd at least like another chance at an appeal.

- There are a few cases that stay with you,

and this is one of them.

The victims were human beings.

They were somebody's daughter, somebody's sister.

- They really were people, with friends and families

and dreams and worries, just like the rest of us.

Their lives shouldn't be reduced to the moment

that they were murdered.

- I just want everybody to know that,

don't look down at the people you see,

because you never know what happened

to make them where they're at,

but a lot of them are good people.

It is bringing up some raw emotions,

but I'd rather feel than not feel.