Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[music playing]
NARRATOR: Up next, a little girl goes missing.
-Kids don't just disappear.
Her name is Cynthia, and she's nine years old.
NARRATOR: Searchers spend weeks looking her.
BARBARA COREY: They did a search, basically,
on their hands and knees looking for evidence.
NARRATOR: But a psychic told them where to go.
HECTOR CASTRO: I don't know any other way to explain it,
but she described it as having a vision, some sort
of religious experience, where she saw something
or in her mind.
NARRATOR: Some dead plants give investigators a vital clue,
but will it be enough to find the killer?
-It's difficult to conceive of an individual who would
do that to a nine-year-old girl.
NARRATOR: It was a normal 4th of July,
as residents of Lakewood, Washington
celebrated with the usual parade and picnics.
For Rhonda Hebison, it was time to spend with her three
daughters, Brittany, Ashley, and Cindy.
RHONDA HEBISON: Cindy, basically,
was in and out the house all day, playing.
And I was doing chores around the house.
And thought maybe later on that day
we would go down by the waterfront
and watch the fireworks.
NARRATOR: But nine-year-old Cindy
didn't come home at dinnertime as she usually did.
RHONDA HEBISON: So I started walking
around the neighborhood, asking people if they had seen her.
And they hadn't seen her.
NARRATOR: As night fell, hundreds of people
gathered for the fireworks display.
That's when Cindy's mother called
the Sheriff's Department.
Sheriff's deputies searched the neighborhood
and found no trace of her.
DETECTIVE BERG: By morning, it had become quite serious.
She still had not returned and there
had been no phone calls by her or anyone else.
NARRATOR: Over 100 volunteers helped in the search.
HECTOR CASTRO: You've got brushy areas.
And in this part of the country, you
have these blackberry bushes with these, just,
nasty thorns on them.
So these searchers, they were going through these weeds
and these bramble bush, and they were coming out just scratched
and bleeding.
-I'm sorry amazed how many people
have been coming together and helping
me out, and praying for Cindy.
NARRATOR: 48 hours passed and police focus their attention
on Cindy's parents, who were divorced.
Cindy's father had an alibi for the afternoon
of her disappearance.
But during the call to reporter Cindy missing,
investigators thought her mother sounded vague.
DETECTIVE BERG: She didn't
about her daughter being missing.
She didn't seem concerned or very worried.
NARRATOR: Police interrogated Rhonda for hours.
HECTOR CASTRO: They brought her in there
on night about 9:00 PM, and they kept her there
until 6:00 in the morning the next day.
-That was really horrible.
It was, uh, it was a nightmare.
I thought I was going to go to jail.
NARRATOR: Rhonda denied involvement in her daughter's
disappearance, but she failed a polygraph test.
DETECTIVE BERG: During the mother's polygraph,
she was asked questions about whether she had
any knowledge of Cindy's whereabouts.
And that was the question that she failed.
She had said she did not.
I hadn't been sleeping, I hadn't been eating.
I was a mess.
NARRATOR: Neighbors prayers for the child's safe return
went unanswered.
Even the promise of a $5,000 reward didn't produce results.
-Have you guys heard about the missing little girl?
Her name is Cynthia and she's nine years old.
NARRATOR: Two weeks passed.
Then police received a call from a member of Rhonda's church.
She said she saw something in a dream.
HECTOR CASTRO: She described it as having a vision,
like some sort of religious experience,
where she saw something in her mind.
NARRATOR: The woman said, she had a vision of a young girl
lying in a field, who was either asleep or dead.
She even drew a map of where the body was.
The spot was a half mile from Cindy's home,
an area volunteers had already searched.
BARBARA COREY: They did a search, basically,
on their hands and knees looking for evidence
and they didn't find her the first time.
NARRATOR: But this time, they found Cindy Allinger's body.
She was under a water heater and wrapped in some carpet.
-It will never be the way it was, all the kids.
It won't.
You see them walking in twos now, still.
And I think it'll stay that way, because the kids now
know that it could happen to anybody.
NARRATOR: Police now faced an unusual situation,
a mother who failed a polygraph test
and a psychic who mysteriously knew
the location of Cindy's body.
HECTOR CASTRO: I thought this was so bizarre, that they
would have found the body this way.
NARRATOR: Nine-year-old Cindy Allinger
was buried amid a community stunned
by the brutality of her death.
Her autopsy revealed she had been
sexually assaulted and beaten.
-I think it was just shocking and scary to imagine
what's out there.
NARRATOR: Cindy's body was found next to an abandoned
house in a large field.
The body was wrapped in four layers of thick *** carpet.
-This neighborhood was known to be
the highest gang area in our city.
There were approximately 64 sex offenders
registered in that area.
So the area was pretty well saturated with sex offenders.
NARRATOR: Before police could interview them,
they needed to know when Cindy was murdered.
For that, they looked at insect activity on her body.
DR. GOFF: After death, insects will, in fact, find the body
and then begin to exploit the body as a source of food.
NARRATOR: But in this case, Dr. Goff
needed to know if the carpet that covered Cindy's body
hindered the insect activity.
So Dr. Goff wrapped a dead animal
in several layers of carpet and placed it outside.
Then he monitored the insect activity.
DR. GOFF: You work backwards, and then you
determine approximately when the egg was laid.
And this is going to be an estimate
of the minimum period of time since death.
NARRATOR: The test showed that the carpet prevented insects
from getting to the body for a full day.
This proved that Cindy was murdered on or about the day
she went missing, July 4.
Police interviewed all 64 sex offenders in the area
to ascertain their whereabouts for the 4th of July.
All had alibis.
-I didn't know that there was that many sex
offenders in that area.
When I heard about that I was like, I-- I'm moving.
NARRATOR: It was Cindy's sister, Ashley, who was seven years old
at the time, who provided an important clue.
ASHLEY ALLINGER: I do remember we were playing together.
And then she told me she was going down to Ras' house.
I know she liked going down there a lot.
Ras was a guy that lived down the street
from us, an older man.
NARRATOR: Ras was Guy Rasmussen, a 30-year-old musician.
ASHLEY ALLINGER: I actually went over
there with her a few times.
She just played with his dog and go
and, he had a drum set in his shed,
and she would go in there with him and play the drums.
-Guy Rasmussen stood out in the neighborhood,
because he looked like a hippie with his tie-dye shirts.
And he seemed out of his time zone.
NARRATOR: Cindy's mother originally
thought Ras was the same age as her children.
When she learned he was an adult, she put her foot down.
-I thought it was a kid.
And then she said it was a man.
And I said, well, you can't go over to this man's house.
I don't know him, and you're not supposed
to play with grown men.
NARRATOR: When police questioned Rasmussen,
he denied Cindy had been to his home on July 4.
He also claimed to have an alibi.
DETECTIVE BERG: Guy Rasmussen told us that he was picked up
from the store by his friend at approximately 4:15
that afternoon.
And then they went to a rock festival in Thurston County.
NARRATOR: Pay phone records confirmed this 4:15 call.
Cindy's mother said she last saw Cindy at 4:30.
HECTOR CASTRO: If she had last seen her at 4:30,
then Guy Rasmussen would have had an air-tight alibi.
NARRATOR: But like Cindy's mother,
Rasmussen also failed a polygraph test.
-It is probably the most frustrating
case of anyone's career.
NARRATOR: But in Rasmussen's trash,
police found a torn drawing of Rasmussen's dog
that Cindy had given to him several weeks earlier.
DETECTIVE BERG: It was interesting
that he had torn up this picture.
And this was after he knew that she was missing.
NARRATOR: But did this mean anything?
Cindy Allinger's mother, Rhonda, and a neighbor, Guy Rasmussen,
both failed polygraph examinations
when questioned about Cindy's ***.
But then a new suspect emerged, Rhonda's boyfriend,
Chris Doyle.
BARBARA COREY: He had a history of domestic violence.
He had hit Rhonda.
It was not clear whether or not he had physically
assaulted the kids, but he did have a temper.
NARRATOR: During police interrogation,
Doyle admitted he once threw Cindy off of the porch
during an argument, but denied any involvement
in Cindy's ***.
RHONDA HEBISON: When he was questioned,
there were things that he didn't want me to know about,
that he admitted to hurting Cindy.
See, I didn't know about that.
I thought it was an accident the whole time.
DETECTIVE BERG: The mother's boyfriend
was given a polygraph exam, as well.
And he did pass that polygraph exam.
NARRATOR: Police also questioned the psychic
who had led police to Cindy's body.
HECTOR CASTRO: She you would never go on the record,
in terms of agreeing to an interview.
But we spoke on the phone.
NARRATOR: But the psychic had an alibi
and was eliminated as a suspecting.
So police turned their attention back to Guy Rasmussen.
A background check revealed Rasmussen served six years
in prison for raping a teenager and assaulting
a 10-year-old girl.
He had have also been a suspect in two previous murders,
although wasn't charged because of a lack of evidence.
-He had been polygraphed in both those homicides and had failed.
NARRATOR: In Cindy's case, Rasmussen
claimed to have an alibi for the time of her ***.
DETECTIVE BERG: He had called his friend at approximately
4:15, on the pay phone, to come pick him up.
NARRATOR: And telephone records confirmed it.
Cindy's mother told police she last saw her daughter
at 4:30 on the afternoon of July 4th.
But investigators replayed the 911 call Cindy's mother made
to police and discovered a discrepancy.
BARBARA COREY: We were able to determine that, basically,
Rhonda's sense of what happened that day
was simply not accurate.
NARRATOR: Cindy's mother said, it was a simple mistake.
This information provided a window from about 3:00 to 4:15,
when Rasmussen could have committed the crime.
Armed with this new information, investigators
searched Rasmussen's home and confiscated the clothes
he was wearing on July 4, the clothes his friends said
Rasmussen was wearing at the concert.
-Guy Rasmussen had been keeping his unwashed clothing
in the bathtub in the home.
And so it was just all strewn in there.
NARRATOR: Of particular interest were tiny bits
of plant material on his shoes and socks.
So police sent the samples to forensic botanist
Dr. Le Rea Dennis Johnston.
Her first task was to identify the different plants
on Rasmussen's clothes to see whether they were
the same as those at the crime scene.
-The samples were mostly seeds, very small.
I checked them out with my hand lens.
Ended up putting them under a microscope.
There were a couple of species of broom grass, Holcus
lanatus, which is velvet grass.
NARRATOR: More than a dozen plant species
were identified on Rasmussen's clothes.
They weren't only the same species as those found
at the crime scene, they were also
at the exact same stage of development.
This led to only one conclusion.
DR. JOHNSTON: If he said he wasn't there
and the plants are showing that he was, then they can say,
he was there.
NARRATOR: But Rasmussen continued
to maintain his innocence during a radio interview.
He told the audience he met Cindy only once.
What Rasmussen said was one thing.
But something scientists found on his shirt was quite another.
The chief suspect in Cindy Allinger's ***
was Guy Rasmussen, who had a history of *** violence.
His credibility was shattered when police learned he had lied
about his relationship with Cindy.
HECTOR CASTRO: Guy Rasmussen told investigators,
and he told me that he had only met Cindy once.
But later it came out that he had
actually met her a few times.
-We learned from the younger sister,
Ashley, that Guy Rasmussen had given them a stuffed animal.
A rabbit with a carrot is what he gave her.
NARRATOR: But the only evidence linking him to the crime
was some kind of material on his clothing.
But then investigators found something
else-- a stain on Rasmussen's shirt.
-When we initially collected the items from Guy Rasmussen's
home, we didn't realize, right away, what we had.
The clothing was dirty, unwashed,
and the shirts were multicolored,
so it was hard to see what was on it.
NARRATOR: A preliminary test confirmed
the stain was human blood.
But DNA tests found not one, but two genetic profiles.
-They confirmed that the stain on his shirts
was the blood from Cindy Allinger.
And the ***, Guy Rasmussen's.
And they were a mixed stain.
It was DNA positive that he had committed this crime.
-Well, I can't describe how disgusted
I am when I think about him.
[sirens]
NARRATOR: Rasmussen was arrested while on stage
playing a concert at a local club.
He wasn't on the county sex offender list,
because his last conviction came before the law
went into effect.
-Charging the defendant with aggravated ***,
first-degree kidnapping and first-degree child ***.
BARBARA COREY: Guy Rasmussen is a monster.
It's difficult to conceive of an individual who
would do that to a nine-year-old girl.
NARRATOR: The man who appeared in court
was a far cry from the long-haired musician
of just a few days earlier.
But prosecutors painted a different picture of Rasmussen
for the jury.
They said that on July 4, Cindy went to Rasmussen's home,
as she often did.
-Hey, Cindy.
You know, I'm going to go buy a new place soon.
You want to come check it out with me?
NARRATOR: But this time, Rasmussen somehow lured her
into an abandoned house several blocks away,
possibly telling her he was thinking
about buying it to fix it up.
Once there, he *** and murdered the little girl.
Then he wrapped her body with a carpet from the house.
He left her in the field, picking up the plant
material on his shoes and socks.
Then he walked to a nearby pay phone and called a friend,
in order to create an alibi.
The insect activity established an estimated time of death.
And the plant material on his shoes and socks
proved he was in the field.
But his clothes stained with Cindy's blood left no doubt,
he was the killer.
-We needed science to guide us.
We needed things like the botanist
and the entomology studies, and the DNA especially,
to get us in the right direction.
NARRATOR: During his trial, Rasmussen's lawyers
claimed the forensic entomology report was incorrect.
And that Rasmussen was innocent, because the crime occurred
during the time he had an alibi.
That argument failed to impress the jury.
JURY FOREMAN: We, the jury,
guilty of premeditated ***--
NARRATOR: Rasmussen was convicted
of first-degree ***, and sentenced to life in prison
without parole.
-I'd like to see him get executed.
He don't deserve to live.
He killed my daughter.
She was only nine years old, she didn't
have very much of a life.
-It was important to show the jury how
painstakingly the police built the case.
That it wasn't a rush to judgment, anything this sort.
That it was done very professionally
and deliberately.
ASHLEY ALLINGER: It's kind of like losing
everything you've got.
Like somebody just takes everything away from
you, like, including your insides.
It's just like your heart's been ripped out.
RHONDA HEBISON: If I could talk to her,
I would just tell her I love her, very, very much.
And that she was a real sweet, loving little girl.
NARRATOR: Many believe Rasmussen would
have continued on his crime spree.
But a combination of evidence-- bugs, plants, and DNA--
ensured he would never again prey on little girls.
RHONDA HEBISON: If they didn't have forensic science,
it would be kind of hard to pinpoint the killers.
But it's amazing what they're able to do these days with just
the tiniest little things, a piece of grass.
-You have to remain scientifically objective
and neutral.
You can't adopt, let's get the bad guys, mentality.
You can't take sides.
In all instances, you have remain impartial.
NARRATOR: About the only thing science
couldn't explain was how the psychic
knew the location of her body.
BARBARA COREY: The searchers didn't find her.
But for the tip from the psychic,
it may well have been a long time before she was found.