A pair of victims has been found every two years since 1992, marking a distinct cyclical pattern to the killings. Other than the single DNA sample, law enforcement also has grainy CCTV camera footage from 1992 of the killer leaving a set of bins behind a restaurant, as well as a rough sketch from a botched kidnapping attempt in 1999. Both give nothing more than a general description of the killer, as he was skilled at keeping his face hidden during both sightings.

Police are cautioning women in the Tri-State Area to be on the look-out for suspicious behavior and only travel in groups of three or more, as well as to be cautious of opening their doors to strangers in the evening, and to keep doors and windows properly locked.

His fingers gripped the edge of the newspaper so tightly that it wrinkled, causing creases to ripple through the text. At the bottom of the article was the pathetic excuse for a police sketch that really didn’t look anything like him except for the baseball cap. The guy in the dark, grainy image from the video footage could be anyone at all – it was almost comical, really. He laid the paper down on the scarred wooden table and sat back. They had missed several details. A sharp smile stretched across his face, lingering as he reflected on how he had outsmarted the police for so many years. While it was a mistake that he hadn’t been aware of the security camera in the alley where he’d discarded numbers two and three, and he’d miscalculated the time the second roommate was arriving home that one fateful night in 1999, causing him to scramble out the back door, the fallout from both had been minimal. After forty years of carrying out his mission, they only had his approximate height and eye and hair color. He’d been savvy enough to adjust his process after that girl, Sara, had changed her routine. The solution was ingenious. It lured these women into unknowingly allowing him full access into their lives. And the police were still no closer to finding him, the imbeciles. He was not worried.