Original subtitles

Anjeanette was on her way to school

and never made it.

My son kept telling me, "look for Angie.

She's in the basement. She's hiding."

I told him, "no, she wasn't in there."

She never came home.

It was a murder.

What are you doing? Stop! Let me go!

It was this cold-blooded murder.

Aah!

I've been on murder scenes in my career,

I don't remember having one like this one.

I think of a young girl who had her whole life ahead of her,

was trying to find her place in this world,

and it was cut short for no good reason.

No!

This is somebody's daughter.

It had to be a nightmare for Anjeanette's mom.

There's no doubt in my mind that this was somebody evil.

This is all a dream, a bad dream.

You want her back

through all these years,

you're still dreaming that you can just find her.

Captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

captions paid for by discovery communications

Smith: Angie was really special.

She would light up her room when she'll come in.

Hey, mama. So what are we doing today?

Are you really gonna do this to me?

Yes, why not?

Anjeanette was a 17-year-old whose life was full of hope

and dreams and promise.

All right, well, this is grandma's recipe.

Yes.

I'm just gonna put this right here

so I can be in it with you.

Great, you get to be in it with me.

I'll help.

Angie was trying to finish out high school

in good form for this year so she could graduate.

She had been filling out

all these applications to go to college.

She had so much energy.

Hi. -Hello, beautiful.

She was gonna make it happen.

Narrator: On Monday, September 30th, 1996,

Paulette, Anjeanette's mother,

is concerned when her daughter doesn't come home from school.

Hello?

In the afternoon, about 5:00, I got a call.

A automated system that the school district had

that said that my daughter didn't show up at school.

That was unusual because she always showed to school.

Always.

During the afternoon, I called all her friends

to see if they had heard from her.

Narrator: One of the first people Paulette contacts is

Anjeanette's boyfriend, Christian.

Hello. -Hello, Christian?

Hi, it's Paulette, Angie's mom.

Is she with you?

No, I haven't seen her since last night.

All right, well, if you hear from her,

have her call me, okay?

Okay, I will. -All right, thanks.

No one had seen her that day.

No, she's not at my house.

No, I don't know where Angie is.

Narrator: When Anjeanette's 10:30 P.M. curfew

comes and goes,

Paulette's concern grows to full blown panic.

Smith: So I called the police and let them know

about my daughter that she hadn't come home.

Hi, my name is Paulette Smith.

I'd like to report my daughter is missing.

The police took down my information,

what she was wearing.

She's got brown hair, brown eyes.

She's about 5-foot-4.

She was wearing a maroon jacket, white top.

She has a really colorful school bag.

She's only 17.

And they told me that

they would have to give it a 48-hour wait

because that's the policy that was in place.

They waited 48 hours.

Thank you, officer.

One of the first things that you would think of

as police officers is did she run away

or is she somewhere

that she may have communicated with the mother,

the mother didn't get the message.

The officer that was investigating the missing

persons report believed that she was with friends

and that she would be eventually be returning home.

Smith: But she didn't have anything with her.

This was not planned.

All her money was upstairs.

It didn't make sense that she would leave everything.

So that night, I stayed up.

She never came home.

Narrator: The next morning, Angie's mom, Paulette,

takes matters into her own hands.

I started calling the hospitals, the prisons.

Her name is Anjeanette maldonado.

Did anyone have someone that showed up,

they didn't have a name for?

No. Okay, thank you.

There were no leads.

So I made a flier.

Missing flier.

And some of her friends, Christian included,

put the fliers up over the neighborhood.

At that time in Philadelphia, in the area she lived in,

it was a high crime area.

It was during the height of the crack addiction.

All right, this is good.

So it was kind of dangerous

going back and forth in those streets.

Woman: Look around the sides.

Some of her friends went looking around to see

if they could find her because there were

a lot of abandoned lots.

That's where we thought she might be.

But we couldn't find her.

My son kept telling me, look for Angie,

she's in the basement, she's hiding.

And I told him no,

I had already looked in the basement

she wasn't in there.

Narrator: By Tuesday night,

Anjeanette has been missing for nearly 48 hours.

Smith: I was a mess, I didn't know what was going on.

I'm thinking something seriously happened to her.

Mcdermott: On October 2, 1996, at around 2:45 A.M...

...a homeless male flagged down a patrol wagon.

And inform them that there was a female

who appeared to be dead inside an abandoned house.

It was about the only row home left on that block

that wasn't torn down.

The front was boarded up and sealed.

In the back, the wood was torn away

from the kitchen window,

allowing entry into the property.

That abandoned house was frequently used

by all types of individuals

for drug activity and for prostitution.

Once inside, there was trash everywhere.

There were numerous old tires in the front room,

empty cases of beer, and crack vials laying around,

strewn throughout the property.

It was a mess.

Narrator: When patrol officers discovered the body,

they immediately alert the homicide unit.

Detective dilacqua responds to the call.

I went in there and made a quick survey of the scene

and I saw a dead body

on the ground.

The body was that of a young female,

16, 17 years old,

she was lying on her back,

naked except for socks,

and she had facial injuries that were apparent of her right eye.

One of the first things I said was,

there ain't no way in a world this is a hooker.

Because we had a lot of prostitutes.

And the arrest we make to keep them off the streets,

we got to know a lot of them out there, a majority of them.

So when I looked at that young lady on the floor,

I knew she wasn't one of them.

Because the body was naked and the way it was positioned,

we considered that it was a real possibility

that a sexual assault had occurred.

When I left the building,

just looking around for any evidence,

I remember seeing an ID card from her school ID.

And they were able

to identify the body of Anjeanette maldonado

at that time.

There was no doubt in my mind

that anybody wouldn't think

that we had some sort of a murder here.

At 4:00 in the morning, someone rang my doorbell.

I went downstairs

and opened the door

and it was the cops.

Ms. Smith, can we come in? -Yes, please. Come in.

And that's when they told me they had Angie

and that she was dead.

What? No!

Ms. Smith, I know this is a lot to take right now.

No, no, no.

No.

It feels like all of this is happening

and you're off to the side just watching.

My god!

You have nothing to tell me except that she's dead.

It's very hard as a parent.

No, I can't believe this is happening.

It's just unreal.

The whole thing is unreal.

Dilacqua: I've been on murder scenes in my career.

I don't remember having one like this one.

Looking at her face looking up

how young she was, it kind of affected me.

I'm thinking to myself, this is somebody's daughter,

some parent has just lost this young, beautiful girl.

There are some things you don't forget

and this was one of them.

Narrator: Paulette's 17-year-old daughter,

Anjeanette, has been found brutally murdered

in an abandoned building on north hope street.

The first thing we do in a homicide investigation

is to secure the scene,

don't touch anything, don't move anything,

don't touch her, her clothing, anything.

In Philadelphia,

we had a full-time crime scene unit.

They would document, collect, and preserve the evidence.

I can tell you that they methodically go over the scene

looking for any type of trace evidence,

such as hairs, fibers, blood.

And in a sexual assault,

obviously, that would be bodily fluids and semen.

So it's crucial that the evidence is preserved

and collected the proper way.

Narrator: In hopes of finding possible

eyewitnesses to Anjeanette's death,

police canvass the neighborhood.

Vega: In any homicide investigation,

a lot of people are hesitant to talk.

You know, they're afraid that here's a murder,

if I give you information on a murder will the murderer

come after me?

Officers did knock on doors looking for any witnesses,

but there weren't a lot of people to talk to.

They did find the one neighbor, one Anjeanette's street.

Hi, ma'am, sorry to bother you.

I just wanted to know if you knew your neighbor,

Anjeanette maldonado?

Yeah, that's Paulette's daughter.

Do you know, when's the last time you've seen her?

I saw her on Monday morning.

I think she was on her way to school.

It was about 8, 10 in the morning.

After that, we have no idea where she went.

And was she by herself or with anyone else?

No, she was by herself.

Latty: The community had no tips.

They were all very sad about Anjeanette

and what had happened,

but they had nothing to offer.

And that was very frustrating.

On a case like this where there are no witnesses,

it makes it very difficult.

Thank you. -No problem.

You know, we have to rely on physical evidence...

...for the most part.

Narrator: Later that morning, Anjeanette's remains are taken

to the medical examiner's office,

where a full autopsy is performed.

During the autopsy,

she was found to have one fracture to her skull.

There was apparent ligature strangulation

and there was bruising on her face.

So it just appeared that she was punched repeatedly.

The cause of death was found to be strangulation

and blunt force trauma.

During the medical exam, semen was collected.

Back in '96, they were using cotton swabs.

And these were packaged into either a plastic tube

or a glass tube kept refrigerated,

submitted to the laboratory for testing.

Narrator: In hopes of gathering clues

about Anjeanette's final hours,

detectives go back to talk to Anjeanette's mother, Paulette.

A starting point for an investigation like this

would be to try to find out where she might have been going,

who she'd normally associate with.

I'm sorry, miss Smith, I know this is a difficult time,

but what can you tell US about Angie?

Did she have a boyfriend?

She had a boyfriend.

And who was that?

Christian.

Paulette Smith reported that Anjeanette had a boyfriend

by the name of Christian vrabec.

He had been dating Anjeanette maldonado

for about one year.

They had a volatile relationship for the last few months

and she was concerned that Christian

may have something to do with her disappearance.

I don't know.

I mean, he's got a terrible temper.

I didn't have anything to prove it,

but that's how I felt.

This was the only person I thought it was.

I don't know, maybe he got really upset.

I don't know.

Chris and Anjeanette's typical routine every day

would be him meeting her and him walking her to school.

And then, she gets out of school,

he walks her either home or to her job.

The night before she went missing, they had a fight.

Paulette Smith tells US about a fight

that Christian vrabec and Anjeanette had

the previous night outside her residence on the block.

I could hear them screaming in the street.

I didn't see it, but my neighbor said

that Anjeanette smacked them,

that they were arguing about his lack of ambition,

that he doesn't want to get a job.

She said she was fed up with him

and things couldn't keep going the way they were going.

Christian vrabec definitely becomes a person of interest,

so speaking to him was critical at that point.

He's a person that we wanted to talk to.

Narrator: Detectives bring Anjeanette's boyfriend,

Christian, into the station for questioning.

Christian said that he was willing to cooperate

and do anything that we needed to help in this case.

Thank you for coming in today, Christian.

I'm gonna ask you a few questions.

Just need simple answers, all right?

Okay.

What's your relationship to the victim?

She was my girlfriend.

And how long have you two been together?

I don't know about -- about a year now,

since November 3rd of last year.

So the morning of September 30th,

did you walk Angie to school that morning?

I did not.

Mcdermott: He said that most mornings

he would meet Anjeanette and go to school with her.

This morning, he claims that she paged him

and he failed to see the page and he slept through that.

And how would you describe your relationship?

You know, kind of like a roller coaster.

Narrator: Christian admits to having fought with Anjeanette

the night before her disappearance.

Do these fights ever get physical?

Narrator: But he claims they made up before he returned home.

We make up after and everything's okay.

When was the last time you and Angie were intimate?

He tells detectives that he had a sexual encounter

with Anjeanette either the previous Thursday or Friday,

which should've have been several days

before she was found.

We also asked if he knew whether she was intimate

with anybody else, which he says no,

I thought she was only with me.

Narrator: Detectives then checked Christian

for defensive wounds.

Homicide detectives had him take off his shirt

and everything to check his arms, his back,

his chest, his neck to see if there were any injuries.

And we think with how we found her body

that she had fought the person who had done this to her.

All right, can I get you to turn around?

He would've had some injury,

maybe a bite Mark, a scratch or something like that.

It was obvious he had absolutely no injuries on him.

All right, keep your arms up and turn around.

Mcdermott: But even though there were no apparent injuries,

Christian could not be ruled out.

He had no real alibi as to where he was that morning

except he says he was asleep in his apartment.

So while in homicide that morning,

a DNA sample was taken from Christian vrabec.

Back at that time,

blood had to be drawn in order to do a DNA comparison.

Narrator: Christian's DNA will be compared to the DNA

found on Anjeanette's body.

Christian vrabec was still considered a person of interest,

but he could not be arrested at that point.

Narrator: Desperate for information...

James, thanks for coming in.

Narrator: ...Detectives question

a close friend of Christian's, James Moses.

How do you know Anjeanette maldonado?

My friend Chris was her boyfriend.

And how would you describe their relationship?

Mcdermott: According to what he told US,

Anjeanette and Christian were in love with each other.

Do you think Chris had anything to do with Angie's murder?

Absolutely not.

If you think it's Chris, you have the wrong guy.

That they argued, but they always got back together again.

I know he really cared about her.

He wouldn't have wanted anything like this to happen to Angie.

It was frustrating and annoying at that point

because we didn't know what to believe.

Narrator: According to James Moses,

Christian vrabec had nothing to do with girlfriend

Anjeanette maldonado's murder.

If you think it's Chris, you have the wrong guy.

James talked about them, he said they were loving.

I know he really cared about her.

No way would Christian have been involved in this,

but also were aware that he's friends were Christian

so he would have a reason to cover up for his friend.

Before you go, will you voluntarily give US

a blood sample?

Yeah, no problem, absolutely.

I don't have anything to hide.

Narrator: On December 19, 1996,

nearly three months after Anjeanette's

violent rape and murder.

The DNA results are finally in.

Detective mcdermott.

The DNA that was collected during the autopsy,

turned out to be two separate individuals.

One came back to Christian vrabec,

the other source was unknown.

Narrator: But the presence of Christian's DNA

doesn't necessarily prove

that he's the killer.

We knew the Christian vrabec very intimate relationship

with Anjeanette,

so that would account for the semen being present.

The fact that his DNA was there,

it's not uncommon to have semen, you know, still be discovered

a day, two days, three days after the sexual act occurred.

Mcdermott: The second DNA profile that was found

was absolutely unknown.

We could not determine who it was.

We needed to identify the second source of DNA

before we could move forward with any arrest.

So we also considered his friend,

James Moses, could've been involved.

We took this DNA sample from James

and it was compared against the DNA that was recovered

and he was excluded.

It wasn't him.

So who is this second male? We don't know who it is.

Have you heard of anything from any surrounding precincts?

Narrator: A chilling and sinister possibility

dawns on the detectives investigating

Anjeanette's murder.

On a case like this with the brutality

and the fact that she was sexually assaulted,

the possibility that a serial rapist was in the area

or committed this crime had to be considered.

Was this a violent rapist

who has nothing to do with her world,

who just grabbed this little girl off the street

and did this to her?

Police department arrest records are checked

and we checked into other convicted sexual offenders

who live in the area with no success up to that point.

Calling detectives in other units

and other districts saying, have you heard of anything,

this will happen to my victim.

You got any victims

with the same type of injuries or style of rape.

Any similar cases? Young girls.

Just looking for anything

that might help US get a few leads.

We had a good team of detectives who did their work.

Can't really tie anyone down to this.

But at that time,

they were having trouble finding a possible suspect.

Bye.

Nothing.

And they're kind of hitting a dead end.

Narrator: After months with no new leads,

the daily news and Anjeanette neighbors

pooled funds to offer an $8,000 reward

for any information leading to the arrest

of Anjeanette's killer.

I was really hopeful that the reward would help solve it.

I was so excited that they did that.

And I said, wow, $8,000 is a lot of money,

especially back then

and especially in that community.

Maybe this would be the trigger that somebody

would come forward, but that didn't happen.

Once a week past, a month, I kind of lost hope

that they were gonna catch the person who did it.

Narrator: With her killer still on the loose

Anjeanette's mother, Paulette Smith,

makes a difficult decision.

She leaves the family home.

We moved out. We couldn't stay in that house.

We didn't know who you could trust.

Latty: She was afraid.

She wanted to keep herself and her family safe.

The fact that it was an unknown perpetrator

wasn't allowing her to have any peace.

Latty: God knows where he is or if he's after her,

who the hell knows?

It just must have felt like a Boulder on her back.

Narrator: One year after Anjeanette maldonado's

gruesome murder, investigators hit a wall.

At the end of 1997,

we weren't getting any new information at that point.

We had no new physical evidence to connect the perpetrator.

And I think some of the problems with the early investigation

was that DNA technology was still evolving.

So the case kind of came to a standstill.

You have to realize,

in addition to this murder happening,

we're forgetting that this city is being ravaged by drug wars

and other violence.

So every day there's another murder

and these detectives not only concentrate on hers,

but there are new murders coming in that

they have to investigate.

Narrator: Still, there are people on the Philly

police force who will not give up on the case.

If there was just one detective

who wouldn't let it go,

there was gonna be hope.

Mcdermott: When we first got the case,

we knew that Christian vrabec was a person of interest,

but he could not be arrested at that point

because his DNA was present.

We knew that they had an intimate relationship.

And that could account for why the DNA

was present during the autopsy.

We needed to get that other source of DNA identified

and talk to that person

before we could make any arrest in this case.

We decided to start from square one and go back

and try to reinterview everyone that we've spoken to previously.

We were hoping that one of these individuals that we spoke

to would have some new good information.

Sometimes people were hesitant to come forward initially.

With the passage of time might feel guilty

or they're in a different neighborhood now

or have a different life circumstance

that they feel more safe to cooperate with the police.

So there's always that hope

that maybe someone who didn't step forward

might tell everything they know.

Narrator: On July 1st, 1998,

detectives again reach out to Christian's friend,

James Moses.

We took him up to the homicide unit,

which is on the first floor of the police administration

building in interview room d.

James, thanks for coming back in to speak with US.

We're still looking into this case, you know,

the Anjeanette maldonado case.

We're still looking for answers.

Is there anything else you can remember from that night?

He tells US that he lied during his initial interview.

Nothing I told the detectives that day was true.

I was too scared to say who really did it.

He tells US that Christian vrabec

told him after the murder that he did it.

Narrator: If true,

it's a shocking and unnerving revelation.

When was the last time you saw her?

Last time I saw her, they were arguing on the street.

He was calling out to her.

He was yelling at her to come back.

He tells US that they argued over a previous boyfriend

Anjeanette had.

And then the next time I saw him,

he just said that he got rid of her.

He tells US that Christian vrabec told him

that he got rid of her, meaning Anjeanette.

That he killed her in the abandoned house

on hope street.

I didn't believe him at first

until he began telling me how he did it.

Christian vrabec told him that he choked Anjeanette,

hit her with a hammer,

and had forcible sex with her inside that house.

Did you witness any of this or he just told you this?

He told me.

He said he left her book bags and her clothes in the house.

You know, it's kind of shocking all of a sudden

after all this time that,

you know, he's coming forward with this information.

He pointed to the abandoned house on hope street

and he asked me if I wanted to see it.

And I said no.

The account that James Moses gave US at the time

seemed credible and trustworthy

because of the amount of detail he was able to go into.

Why didn't you call the police then?

I was scared.

And for him to come in and tell US

that Christian did this

and give US details of how the murder supposedly happened,

at that point, we had no reason not to believe James Moses.

Our next step was to try to corroborate

what James Moses told US,

and we went out there initially to speak to his family members

to see if he said anything to them

about what he was told by Christian vrabec.

He's good friends with Christian,

do you know him by chance?

I've met Christian before, yeah.

Narrator: James said he had told

his mother about Christian's confession.

Yeah, I actually don't know what you're talking about.

The fact that we couldn't corroborate through his family

lended me to pause and proceed cautiously

because he had told US

that he told his mother that Christian did it

and she denied having any knowledge of that.

Later on that day, we reached out to Christian vrabec

and asked him if he was willing to come back in and speak to US.

He indicated that he was, we picked them up,

we drove them into homicide, and spoke to him.

Narrator: Detectives do not tell Christian about his friend

James Moses' allegations.

So do you know why we brought you back in here?

I'm assuming to talk about Angie again.

Even though I keep telling you guys that

I had nothing to do with it.

Mcdermott: Again, he completely denied any involvement,

again, said how much he loved Anjeanette

and would never do anything to hurt her.

We had no physical evidence linking him to this.

Vega: Christian is still a person of interest.

And with what James said, you know,

we're really focusing on him.

But other than James' word,

which we really can't corroborate,

we don't have enough to arrest him.

I don't know what all these questions are.

I want to find out who the killer is

just as much as you do, but I'm innocent.

As the years passed, I continue to monitor Christian vrabec's

whereabouts and James Moses' whereabouts.

We continue to monitor any arrest in that area,

especially sexual assaults.

We continue to check for sexual offenders.

We spoke to people that were under arrest and in some cases

have their DNA profile checked against the evidence

that we had with no success up to that point.

The longer it took,

I knew that it was gonna get really hard to solve this case.

I mean, it had to be a nightmare for Anjeanette's mom.

I knew they were looking,

it just helped reassure me

that they were doing everything they could.

But all these other crimes are getting solved,

and you're wondering why yours is not.

I was a mess.

Narrator: After Anjeanette maldonado's gruesome murder,

10 long years pass,

her boyfriend, Christian vrabec,

remains a person of interest the entire time.

Mcdermott: I had to still consider him until otherwise.

And as the years passed, became frustrating

that we weren't able to make any real headway in this case.

We were basically at a standstill.

Narrator: Then in 2009,

the Philadelphia police department

receives a federal Grant

to reinvestigate unsolved cases using DNA.

One of the first cases I thought of when we received this Grant

was the Anjeanette maldonado case.

So I chose that case for review because the DNA was collected,

turned out to be a mix of two separate individuals,

one being Christian vrabec, the other source was unknown.

I actually thought that eventually someone

would come to our attention

and we'd be able to check their DNA against that profile

and we would get a positive identification.

Narrator: The Philly p.D. Uses the Grant

to run the 13-year-old

unidentified DNA profile through codis.

The codis database is really just an additional tool

you know, they have in their toolbox now

that they didn't have in '96.

Codis is the DNA system where we can upload samples,

upload profiles and compare it to samples

from across the nation.

Pfleegor: So anytime somebody is convicted of a felony,

they're required to give a sample

to go into the DNA database.

And every state in the u.S. Does this.

Narrator: Finally, a DNA match is made.

The results shocked everyone involved with the case.

The actual codis hit came back to match a male identified

as Raphael crespo.

Raphael crespo.

Who was found to be serving a 15-year sentence

for sexual assault on a minor

who turned out to be a stepdaughter down in Florida.

After all this time, it passed that a DNA hit

and that unknown profile was finally identified,

I was very much surprised.

Narrator: Detectives fly over a thousand miles to Florida

to confront Raphael crespo, who was set to be released

from the Hardy correctional institution in three years.

Mcdermott: When we arrived at the prison in Florida,

the warden provided US with a room for the interview.

I'm detective mcdermott with the Philadelphia p.D.

And we're here to talk to you about a case.

I didn't know what to expect,

but I was surprised when we went into the room

to speak to him, he was soft-spoken.

He was wearing glasses.

He didn't look much like a threatening person.

People have this thought that a rapist murderer

has a certain look and they look horrible and like monsters.

Now they look like you and me.

I told Mr. Crespo

we were there investigating the murder of a girl

named Anjeanette maldonado in 1996

and that his DNA matched evidence from that case.

Then I showed him a picture of Anjeanette.

Do you recognize this girl?

She looks vaguely familiar.

You don't recognize her at all?

You're asking me to go back to 1996?

Yeah, she looks familiar.

She looks like someone I had sex with

maybe back then.

Mr. Crespo told US that he had been in Philadelphia

for a 10-day period with his wife

visiting his wife's relatives.

He said that he had an argument with his wife

and went out drinking at several bars in the Kensington area.

After the bar's closed,

he went out looking for a prostitute on front street,

was not successful.

And then in the morning,

he encounters Anjeanette maldonado.

This girl was there and she took me to this

abandoned house.

And we had sex.

So she took you to go have sex?

Yes and we both took our clothes off.

And, you know, we just went to it.

He was basically, matter of fact,

that he had sex with this girl,

that she agreed it was consensual.

And that he claims that

she asked him to choke her during the sex act.

And how did you choke her?

She asked me to use her shirt.

So I started choking her and it's kind of hot,

I don't know this is new for me,

but I'm choking her and...

She went limp.

I guess she passed out. I mean, it scared me.

I just thought, come on,

this is -- I don't know what to do here, so I left.

So you didn't know if she was alive or dead at that point?

She was alive. Come on, man. She was alive.

She just passed out.

So he left her on the floor but didn't think he killed her.

Never saw on the news and he claims he forgot about it.

Narrator: Crespo weaves a bizarre

and very disturbing story.

She asked me.

She asked me to choke her.

He tried to say it was Anjeanette's fault

that she was in that house and ended up dead

and also that he was drunk, that it wasn't really his fault.

I find that oftentimes

when people make statements of admission,

they try to deflect some of the blame and blame the victim

for a lot of what happened to them.

In this case, Raphael crespo, he tried to do that.

Hello? Hello, detective.

The detectives did call me and told me

that the man's name was Raphael crespo

and that we didn't have to worry.

You don't have to look for him. He's already in jail.

It would have to be a monster to do something like that.

Thank you, detective.

It was a shock.

I just never could understand

why he would even do anything like that.

Never.

Narrator: After more than a decade,

detectives can officially rule out Christian vrabec.

When we spoke to Christian vrabec,

he told me that he still loved Anjeanette

and he thought about her every day and he was happy

that we were finally able to give the family some closure.

Narrator: And as for why James Moses'

accused his friend, Christian vrabec of murder...

For reasons unknown,

he admitted he had lied to US in 1998

and that kind of cleared up that aspect.

Narrator: Now, detectives can finally piece together

the tragic murder of 17-year-old,

Anjeanette maldonado.

On September 30, 1996,

Anjeanette maldonado left for school shortly after 8:00 A.M.

We know that she paged Christian vrabec,

her boyfriend,

and he failed to return her page.

Narrator: Meanwhile, Raphael crespo is in town

from Florida.

The night before he had had an argument

or something with his wife, went out drinking,

and when all the bars closed in Philly and he was drunk,

he decided to walk around and he wanted a prostitute.

Narrator: Instead, he finds Anjeanette on her way to school.

Mcdermott: She was followed

and somehow forced into that house.

Let me go! Please.

Help! No!

Don't hurt me!

We know based on what her body's telling US

and what that crime scene is saying

is that he attacked her...

No, please. No!

...he ripped her clothes off...

Don't do this, please.

Aah! -Shh.

All right, come on.

...and he raped and strangled her.

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Mcdermott: After this assault,

I think Raphael crespo left that house

as soon as possible

because that abandoned house

was being used by homeless people,

by drug addicts, and that's how the body was found.

So I think that he didn't want to be found in there

with Anjeanette's body and he left.

Narrator: On September 10, 2015,

Raphael crespo is convicted of first-degree murder,

rape, and abuse of a corpse

in the death of Anjeanette maldonado.

He is sentenced to life in prison.

In Pennsylvania, life is life, and fortunately,

Mr. Crespo will never be getting out.

Dilacqua: I had a feeling that someday

that justice would be served.

Just looking at that girl,

I could never get it out of my mind.

This was a combination of hard work

by the police, technology advancing,

and pure luck.

Anjeanette maldonado had her whole life ahead of her,

was trying to find her place in this world,

and it was cut short by a predator like Raphael crespo

for no good reason other than his own satisfaction.

There's not a doubt in my mind that had she lived,

she would have done great things with her life,

despite growing up in a community

that could have forced her to do everything wrong.

Smith: I think of Angie every day.

She has a very strong spirit.

Her smile, her energy.

She plays a big part in my life.

Angie's there.

We know she's still with US.