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In the early hours of New Year's Day, 1981, police
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in St. Paul, Minnesota, received an hysterical 911 call. The
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anonymous call was made by her attacker, and it was
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to be the first of many.
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She was badly beaten. with a tire iron, left for
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dead in the snow. When I went there the next morning,
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the blood was still in the snow, and we thought,
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there's no way this person who'd been so viciously beaten
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could have survived.
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The assailant soon became known as the weepy voice killer.
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His eerie tones were so distinctive that he was quickly
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linked to many more attacks.
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You knew that it was the same person. I've listened
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to those calls so many times over the years. So
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you know that it's the same person making these phone calls.
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I think he was looking for absolution, and he never
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got it.
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He had confessed his sins, but there was no forgiveness
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for Paul Stefani, the weepy voice killer, who'd become one
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of the world's most evil killers. Between January 1981 and
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August 1982, police in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St.
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Paul received a series of disturbing, anonymous phone calls from
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a serial killer. Each time, they were linked to the
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discovery of a woman's body. I can't stop myself.
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I keep killing somebody. There was a sense of urgency
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of the danger that he was out there and also
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a sense that he wanted to be caught because I
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can't remember a time in 40 years of covering crime
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of somebody calling up and leading police that way to
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the victims and seeming hysterical. There was a lot of
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fear in the community. There was a sense that this
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would be solved quickly, that the voice would be recognized.
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But then nothing happened.
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The now infamous whiny voice in the 911 calls caused
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him to be dubbed the weepy-voiced killer. He brutally attacked
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five women.
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This isn't somebody who wants to be caught. It's somebody
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who wants status, who wants recognition. He is absolutely desperate
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to be seen as a serial killer. He wants a recognition.
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of being a serial killer. That's something that's quite important
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to him.
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This killer's story begins in Minnesota. Paul Michael Stefani was
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born on the 8th of September, 1944.
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Paul Stefani was born in a smaller town down in
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southern Minnesota by Austin. It's my understanding that his parents
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divorced and that he had a very strict stepfather who
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was a devout Catholic.
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It's quite interesting looking at the religious background of serial
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killers because it tends to affect them in one of
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two ways. On the one hand, they might use the
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kind of values that they've grown up with as a
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justification for their behavior. On the other hand, their failure
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to live up to those values might be something that
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they feel fundamentally ashamed of, and it's that shame that
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actually drives their offending.
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He seemed to have a strong bond with his mother.
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There's a strength there, so there was nothing that I
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could find that made any sense that could even explain
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why he did what he did.
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I think there would have been quite clear boundaries around
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what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, ideas about sin.
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Stefani had been diagnosed with epilepsy as a child, and
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when he kept losing his jobs as an adult, he
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blamed the condition. Nevertheless, he did appear to settle down.
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He moved out of Austin to St. Paul, and by
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the age of 26, had met his wife.
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In 1970, he got married. So far, so normal. Didn't
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last all that long. They divorced five years later.
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The 1970s, there's still quite a bit of stigma around divorce,
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especially within Catholic communities. So I think this, on his part,
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perhaps would have been seen as something of a failure.
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So I think it's quite an interesting element of his background.
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Sometime after his divorce, Stefani went off the rails and
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showed his violent side for the first time. The details
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of the incident are unknown, but Stefani was convicted of assault,
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meaning his name was now on a list of known
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violent offenders. Stefani soon moved on and began a relationship
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with a Syrian girl who he reportedly hoped to marry.
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They were pretty close, dating for four years, and then
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she leaves him for an arranged marriage that she had
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no control over.
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Stefani struggled with the rejection. When he lost yet another job,
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this time at Marmberg Manufacturing, things were spiraling out of
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his control.
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Something is burning at him inside. Something is eating at
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Paul Stefani.
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In the early hours of New Year's Day 1981, things
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took a sudden and sinister turn. As the night's celebrations
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wound down, 36-year-old Stefani encountered a 20-year-old student, Karen Potak.
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She was walking home when she suddenly was attacked right
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off Pierce Butler Road, a main road in St.
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Paul.
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It's an absolutely vicious attack. Callous without warning and for
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no reason. At 3 a.m. on New Year's Day, the
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police in St. Paul receive a phone call, an anonymous
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phone call.
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The phone call was a hysterical person.
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It wasn't clear if it was a man or a woman.
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This is incredibly deliberate on his part.
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He is wanting to appear to be somebody who can't
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help what he's doing.
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He thinks she's dead.
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She's certainly left of her dead.
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And he's consumed. You've got two conflicting emotions inside Stefani. One,
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an absolute desire to hurt women. Two, a fierce guilt
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about having done it.
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What's the address? I don't know. Who are you? There
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was just this urgency, get there, help her. And an
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ambulance was sent there, and that's where they found Karen
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Potak near death in the snow.
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She'd been hit over the head with a tire iron
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multiple times to the extent that some of her brain
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was actually exposed to the elements. So this is a really,
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really significant attack. And it's one that shows us that
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the person who carried it out wanted to kill the victim.
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The location of Stefani's first attack would later form a
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key part of the investigation as police worked to identify him.
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She's found in a very significant place, near some railway tracks,
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near a factory in which Stefani once worked.
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It was the Marmberg Manufacturing Company where Stefani had lost
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his job. He would later claim this upset to be
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the reason he attacked.
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That's something about serial killers, too. When they first begin
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killing people, and of course, Potaki didn't kill her, but
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he left her for dead, really. They go to places
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that are familiar with them at the beginning of their assaults.
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Karen was taken to hospital, but was not expected to survive.
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When I went there the next morning, the blood was
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still in the snow, and we thought, there's no way
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this person who'd been so viciously beaten could have survived.
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In fact, miraculously, Karen is not dead, although perhaps, mercifully,
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she doesn't remember anything about the attack, and she certainly
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doesn't know who's attacked her.
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The police attributed that to the cognitive damage that was
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done to her in the assault. She was never the
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same after that.
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Paul Stefani has got away with what he thought was murder,
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but in fact wasn't.
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I expected two things, that Karen Potak would not survive,
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which she did. I expected this case to be wrapped
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up right away. They would catch this person, man or woman,
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but nothing happened.
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Things were quiet for five months, but on the 3rd
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of June, Stefani's soon-to-be infamous weepy voice was heard again.
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He sounds.
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Quite childlike and pathetic, essentially.
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There's an emphasis on poor me, feel sorry for me,
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I can't help myself. So this is very deliberate on
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his part. This is all about him.
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30 minutes after the 911 call, a grim discovery was
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made in bushes by a freeway in St. Paul.
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Some boys were out playing and a ball went over
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to the edge of where they were playing and they saw,
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they thought it was a dummy laying in the grass.
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kind of hidden, and they realized it was an actual
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person and a body, and they called the police.
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She's dumped in the bushes, and when we think of
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the kind of things that we find in the bushes,
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it's things that we discard. It's things that we don't
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want anymore. It's things that we would consider to be trash,
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and that's very much how Stefani saw this victim.
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The body was that of a woman wearing a red jacket,
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She had no identification, but did have a single key
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on her person.
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The key was to the Greyhound bus locker in St.
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Paul by Mickey's Diner, a pretty iconic location in St.
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Paul.
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Through there, they found some of her identification and were
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able to figure out it was Kimberly Compton.
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Working backwards, the police then found out she had just
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arrived that day from Pepin, Wisconsin. Police had to tell
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her family that She was brutally assaulted and murdered. So
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at this point, we didn't have any idea of who
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or why or what had happened.
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She'd only that day gone to St Paul on the
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Greyhound bus to start a new life after leaving Wisconsin.
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This was going to be a clean slate. This was
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the beginning of a new life. And sadly, it was
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the end.
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Tracking Kimberly's last movements, police discovered that after arriving at
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the bus station, Kimberly had gone to a nearby diner
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where she'd met a friendly local who seemed keen to
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welcome her to the city.
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Stefani was personable, got a conversation going with her and said, hey,
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you're from Wisconsin, let me show you some of the
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sights of St.
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Paul.
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So he came across as sort of an older man
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looking out for this young woman with hopes and dreams.
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15 minutes later, she was dead.
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Kimberly Compton was stabbed 61 times in the upper body, mostly,
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and that in a very violent assault.
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With an ice pick.
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Later on, the medical examiner determined not only was she stabbed,
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but she was also choked to death with some shoelaces.
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This method of killing, this ferocity, it isn't about losing control.
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This is about gaining control.
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This killer is somebody who wants to not just kill,
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but absolutely obliterate his victim.
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Two days after Kimberly was murdered, police received another call
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from the high-pitched caller. It wasn't recorded, but investigators were
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hopeful it would provide more clues that could lead them
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to the killer.
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He stayed on the phone a little bit longer, and
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the police traced his phone call to a phone booth
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at the bus depot, where she had just gotten off.
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And police followed up and went to the bus depot,
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tried to take fingerprints, but there were so many people
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that had used the phone in that area that it
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would not have any positive results.
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On the 11th of June, the killer called again.
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Don't talk, just listen.
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He's quite frustrated.
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He's quite annoyed.
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He wants this murder to be recognized. He wants something
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to happen.
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He's telling the police, you know, hey, I'm in charge.
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I want you to do what I want you to do.
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Don't talk. Listen. Stop me. I can't help myself. Do
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your job, you know. Basically saying, catch me.
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Police were quick to make the connection between the recent
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911 calls and the one they received five months previously
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in the unsolved Karen Potak case.
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One of the people, I believe, in the 911 center said,
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that sounds like an individual about a year ago that
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called that same squeaky high weeping type of voice.
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I'm sorry, I killed a girl.
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Two young women found a few miles apart, brutally attacked,
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and that phone call, police felt they had a serial
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killer on the loose and alerted the media that the
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connection they believe existed.
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In an attempt to put a name to the voice,
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they released the 911 calls.
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We put the phone call on the air, and we
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were sure people would recognize the voice.
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The media soon dubbed him the weepy voice killer.
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We're hoping that somebody will recognize the voice, whether it
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be a friend or a relative or a neighbor or
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someone you work with or drink with.
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You would think that somebody would recognize that. Anybody who'd
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had an argument with him or heard him stress would
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recognize him from the voice. It was so distinct.
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With no immediate leads, detectives tried to find other links
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to the victims in the hopes of identifying the predator.
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They noted that both victims had been wearing red. FBI
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profilers theorized that the color could be a trigger. A
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warning was issued to the public.
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He's got a whole town, a whole city in fear.
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00:16:58.529 --> 00:17:01.289
Everybody is going to be watching their backs and making
250
00:17:01.350 --> 00:17:04.769
sure that they don't wear anything red, especially women. Now,
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00:17:04.809 --> 00:17:07.529
Stefani is someone who enjoys controlling women, and when he
252
00:17:07.609 --> 00:17:10.809
says something like this, he's controlling not just one, but
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00:17:10.849 --> 00:17:12.490
potentially thousands of women.
254
00:17:13.509 --> 00:17:16.799
These victims of his were wearing red, and he had
255
00:17:16.910 --> 00:17:22.119
dated a girl from Syria for about four years, and
256
00:17:22.220 --> 00:17:24.359
the only picture I ever saw of her that he
257
00:17:24.440 --> 00:17:26.079
had She was wearing red.
258
00:17:28.259 --> 00:17:30.279
This was a big story in the Twin Cities. A
259
00:17:30.359 --> 00:17:33.940
lot of coverage of the serial killer, we believe, was
260
00:17:34.019 --> 00:17:36.019
on the loose, even though there'd only been one killing
261
00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:38.180
at that point. And then things got quiet.
262
00:17:42.009 --> 00:17:45.609
For months, there was no word from the weepy voice killer.
263
00:17:46.250 --> 00:17:51.519
Residents hoped they'd seen the last of his horrific acts. Then,
264
00:17:51.839 --> 00:17:56.259
in late August 1981, police in St. Paul received an
265
00:17:56.339 --> 00:18:01.480
emergency call. An individual named Alan Lopez was holding his
266
00:18:01.559 --> 00:18:02.680
family hostage.
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00:18:02.700 --> 00:18:06.349
A negotiator is sent, a SWAT team is sent. He
268
00:18:06.410 --> 00:18:09.930
insists that he's going to kill them.
269
00:18:10.950 --> 00:18:13.130
The police were trying to get him to come out,
270
00:18:14.130 --> 00:18:17.529
and Alan Lopez, during that conversation with the police, said
271
00:18:17.549 --> 00:18:20.490
he is the person that killed Kimberly Compton.
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00:18:23.109 --> 00:18:25.970
I covered that standoff, and it was bizarre enough on
273
00:18:26.029 --> 00:18:28.750
its own, and then we hear that he's confessing to
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00:18:28.769 --> 00:18:30.430
being Kimberly Compton's killer.
275
00:18:32.069 --> 00:18:36.190
Eventually, the standoff is resolved. The SWAT team enter the
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00:18:36.230 --> 00:18:40.410
house to discover that Alan Lopez has indeed killed his father, mother,
277
00:18:40.450 --> 00:18:43.529
and sister.
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00:18:43.549 --> 00:18:47.599
26-year-old Lopez was arrested for the murders of his relatives,
279
00:18:48.140 --> 00:18:53.789
and investigators worked on connecting him to Kimberly Compton's murder. However,
280
00:18:54.089 --> 00:18:59.079
a voice comparison between Lopez and the weepy-voiced 911 calls
281
00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:07.000
found no similarities. The questions remained unanswered, and in February 1982,
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00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:13.380
Lopez committed suicide in jail. In August, another woman's body
283
00:19:13.440 --> 00:19:16.539
was found across the river in Minneapolis.
284
00:19:17.480 --> 00:19:20.339
It was a very brutal scene, and police were called,
285
00:19:20.440 --> 00:19:24.799
and ambulance called, and She was found deceased by numerous
286
00:19:24.819 --> 00:19:25.460
stab wounds.
287
00:19:26.640 --> 00:19:30.900
Investigators trying to piece together what had happened struggled to
288
00:19:31.009 --> 00:19:35.869
identify the woman. Two days later, a 911 call came
289
00:19:35.970 --> 00:19:40.309
in with a familiar-sounding voice. Fire emergency.
290
00:19:40.450 --> 00:19:42.329
Please don't talk to me, listen.
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00:19:42.529 --> 00:19:45.430
I'm sorry, I killed that girl.
292
00:19:45.569 --> 00:19:47.369
I stabbed her 40 times.
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00:19:47.450 --> 00:19:49.910
Kimberly Compton was the first one over.
294
00:19:53.480 --> 00:19:55.640
So now we knew it couldn't have been Alan Lopez
295
00:19:56.099 --> 00:20:00.059
because now we have another murder with the same weepy
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00:20:00.119 --> 00:20:02.519
voice calling the police department.
297
00:20:04.059 --> 00:20:08.430
It was a challenge to the police department. showing that, here,
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00:20:08.509 --> 00:20:10.910
I've done this, now see if you can catch me.
299
00:20:12.049 --> 00:20:15.109
There's quite a lot that's happening in this call. Firstly,
300
00:20:15.250 --> 00:20:17.970
he's asserting that status and authority, you've got to listen
301
00:20:18.009 --> 00:20:21.849
to me. Then he's almost boasting about the number of
302
00:20:21.910 --> 00:20:24.859
times that he's stabbed, drawing our attention to how violent
303
00:20:24.890 --> 00:20:28.430
he is. And then he's linking those two killings.
304
00:20:28.450 --> 00:20:31.519
I'm sorry what I did to Compton.
305
00:20:31.700 --> 00:20:35.700
I couldn't help it. Don't know why I had.
306
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:42.089
To stab her. He'd gone quiet for close to a year,
307
00:20:42.369 --> 00:20:44.569
and suddenly we have this murder of a young woman
308
00:20:44.990 --> 00:20:45.690
in Minneapolis.
309
00:20:47.589 --> 00:20:50.230
The Minneapolis Police Department got a hold of the St.
310
00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:54.579
Paul Police Department, and they started working together on trying
311
00:20:54.599 --> 00:20:56.380
to identify who this caller was.
312
00:20:58.839 --> 00:21:05.369
Investigators were also working hard to identify the victims. A
313
00:21:05.470 --> 00:21:08.710
vital tip came when a postal worker handed in a
314
00:21:08.750 --> 00:21:12.950
woman's purse belonging to a local nurse, Barbara Simons.
315
00:21:14.490 --> 00:21:17.940
Her purse was in a mailbox, and they tracked down
316
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:21.559
who Barbara Simons was. They knew she was killed near
317
00:21:21.599 --> 00:21:24.000
the Mississippi River, and they found out that she had
318
00:21:24.039 --> 00:21:27.400
been at a bar, the Hexacon Bar, the night before
319
00:21:27.420 --> 00:21:28.579
her body was found.
320
00:21:30.509 --> 00:21:35.789
Witnesses from the bar remembered seeing 40-year-old Barbara with a man.
321
00:21:36.329 --> 00:21:39.579
Stefani came up and asked her for a cigarette, and
322
00:21:39.730 --> 00:21:42.900
he danced with her, and very open that he was
323
00:21:42.980 --> 00:21:44.970
with her, had made contact with her.
324
00:21:46.059 --> 00:21:47.980
This would appear to be quite a bold move on
325
00:21:48.059 --> 00:21:48.619
his part.
326
00:21:48.660 --> 00:21:51.180
So he's going out and he's hunting for victims out
327
00:21:51.240 --> 00:21:53.359
there in public where other people.
328
00:21:53.119 --> 00:21:53.859
Can see him.
329
00:21:54.319 --> 00:21:56.799
But by this stage, he's gotten away with murder, and
330
00:21:56.819 --> 00:21:58.480
I think he's becoming a lot bolder.
331
00:21:59.390 --> 00:22:01.819
Seems like they hit it off, according to some people
332
00:22:01.839 --> 00:22:03.799
at the bar, and he offered to give her a
333
00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:04.359
ride home.
334
00:22:06.460 --> 00:22:10.160
In fact, if I recall, she said to the waitress
335
00:22:10.180 --> 00:22:12.740
there at the bar, saying, boy, I hope he's a
336
00:22:12.809 --> 00:22:15.309
nice guy because he's going to give me a ride home.
337
00:22:17.849 --> 00:22:21.470
And obviously he wasn't, and she was killed that night.
338
00:22:23.619 --> 00:22:27.180
He took her down to an area, assaulted her, stabbed
339
00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:30.130
her numerous times and left her to be found too.
340
00:22:31.609 --> 00:22:33.950
And I believe this time that they thought that a
341
00:22:34.430 --> 00:22:39.150
Phillips screwdriver, similar to an ice pick, was used in
342
00:22:39.190 --> 00:22:39.950
those assaults.
343
00:22:42.130 --> 00:22:46.650
Bar staff gave detailed descriptions of the man's appearance and
344
00:22:46.710 --> 00:22:51.400
detectives began trawling through a database of violent offenders in
345
00:22:51.440 --> 00:22:51.900
the area.
346
00:22:52.599 --> 00:22:56.220
Based on the description of what the bartender and the
347
00:22:56.259 --> 00:22:59.579
waitress said, they narrowed it down to about eight or nine,
348
00:23:00.079 --> 00:23:03.759
and the bartender picked out Paul Stefani as being the
349
00:23:03.799 --> 00:23:06.619
person that was talking to Barbara Simons that night.
350
00:23:10.039 --> 00:23:12.759
Police began to focus on him, trying to figure out
351
00:23:12.819 --> 00:23:15.609
where he lived, try to put the pieces together on
352
00:23:15.640 --> 00:23:19.740
Paul Stefani. Investigators on both sides of the river at
353
00:23:19.779 --> 00:23:21.720
this point are working on the case. They knew they
354
00:23:21.759 --> 00:23:23.500
had a very dangerous person out there.
355
00:23:24.599 --> 00:23:29.509
Investigators learned all they could about Stefani's background, making a
356
00:23:29.650 --> 00:23:32.130
crucial link from another of the attacks.
357
00:23:33.230 --> 00:23:35.869
Among the things they figured out about Paul Stefani is
358
00:23:35.910 --> 00:23:38.890
that he had worked in Malmberg manufacturing. which is the
359
00:23:38.930 --> 00:23:42.740
place where Karen Potak, the first victim, had been attacked.
360
00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:45.579
And I think that was significant to them because not
361
00:23:45.640 --> 00:23:47.779
only had he given the street where she was found,
362
00:23:47.839 --> 00:23:50.119
he named a business, and that was unusual.
363
00:23:51.380 --> 00:23:56.329
Police were now confident that Stefani was the weepy-voiced killer.
364
00:23:57.269 --> 00:23:59.869
They knew who they believed they were looking for at
365
00:23:59.910 --> 00:24:02.809
that point, and the clock was ticking. Is he going
366
00:24:02.829 --> 00:24:04.819
to do it again? Is he going to call in
367
00:24:04.859 --> 00:24:08.809
with something? And so investigators are working, comparing notes on
368
00:24:08.849 --> 00:24:11.210
both sides of the river. The media's, we're in a
369
00:24:11.230 --> 00:24:13.269
kind of a frenzy to keep it out there because
370
00:24:13.309 --> 00:24:14.670
we didn't want one more victim.
371
00:24:16.210 --> 00:24:22.089
To everyone's horror, there would be another. Despite now being
372
00:24:22.170 --> 00:24:25.960
under police surveillance, he slipped through the net and on
373
00:24:25.980 --> 00:24:30.759
the 21st of August, 1982, went hunting for his next victim.
374
00:24:31.619 --> 00:24:34.420
That night, Stefani met Denise Williams.
375
00:24:36.119 --> 00:24:39.680
Denise has been engaged in sex work for quite some years,
376
00:24:39.720 --> 00:24:42.109
so she's out and about on the streets quite frequently.
377
00:24:42.670 --> 00:24:45.049
And he offers her money to engage in a sex
378
00:24:45.150 --> 00:24:48.630
act with him. So she accepts, she gets in his car,
379
00:24:48.890 --> 00:24:51.150
they drive off, they exchange business.
380
00:24:53.430 --> 00:24:55.559
And he says that he's going to take her back
381
00:24:55.599 --> 00:24:58.440
to Minneapolis. He found her in Minneapolis, he's taking her back.
382
00:24:59.700 --> 00:25:02.299
She got suspicious because he didn't seem to be going
383
00:25:02.339 --> 00:25:05.740
back to where he was supposed to take her. Suddenly
384
00:25:05.819 --> 00:25:10.059
he pulls over his car and viciously attacks her. She
385
00:25:10.140 --> 00:25:14.259
fights back. She's street savvy. She fights back. She saw
386
00:25:14.299 --> 00:25:18.180
a pop bottle. She takes that bottle, smashes it across
387
00:25:18.220 --> 00:25:22.480
his face, and causes him to bleed. She manages to escape.
388
00:25:23.519 --> 00:25:26.180
And he started going after her and stabbing her again.
389
00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:29.480
A person heard her screaming, came over and helped her out.
390
00:25:30.210 --> 00:25:33.410
And Stefani turned on him and threatened him, and he
391
00:25:33.450 --> 00:25:36.950
got Williams away. Stefani took off and left the scene.
392
00:25:40.910 --> 00:25:43.049
Stefani is a killer who is used to being 100%
393
00:25:43.049 --> 00:25:47.559
in control when it comes to his crimes. But this time,
394
00:25:47.680 --> 00:25:50.339
he's really met his match in Denise. He's come up
395
00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:52.519
against a woman who is not going to put up
396
00:25:52.539 --> 00:25:54.460
with this. She is not going to just let this
397
00:25:54.539 --> 00:25:58.599
guy take her life. She is quite tough. She's quite streetwise,
398
00:25:58.779 --> 00:26:02.140
and I imagine she's been in quite a few altercations
399
00:26:02.180 --> 00:26:06.789
with clients before. So this really rattles him. This woman
400
00:26:06.829 --> 00:26:10.309
has won and he is lost in this particular situation.
401
00:26:10.390 --> 00:26:12.390
So I think it really does knock him off balance.
402
00:26:13.730 --> 00:26:15.430
He had to think in the back of his mind,
403
00:26:15.470 --> 00:26:18.339
if he was rational at that time, that police are
404
00:26:18.630 --> 00:26:21.759
going to be interviewing him. How did this assault happen?
405
00:26:21.980 --> 00:26:22.940
Where did it happen?
406
00:26:23.299 --> 00:26:23.940
Who did it?
407
00:26:24.619 --> 00:26:27.720
And that it was unravelling very fast for him after
408
00:26:27.779 --> 00:26:30.980
Denise Williams died. started pounding him with that bottle.
409
00:26:32.559 --> 00:26:36.900
Having failed in his attack, the predator returned home to
410
00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:38.140
assess his injuries.
411
00:26:39.240 --> 00:26:41.700
He goes home to St. Paul, and then he made
412
00:26:41.740 --> 00:26:45.849
another phone call. This time, he wasn't calling to get
413
00:26:45.910 --> 00:26:48.490
help for a victim. He was calling for help for himself.
414
00:26:49.630 --> 00:26:54.250
He actually calls 911 and requests an ambulance, and his
415
00:26:54.309 --> 00:26:58.299
voice wasn't quite as high and quite as weepy or
416
00:26:58.339 --> 00:27:01.339
anything else. He said he was hurt and he needed
417
00:27:01.420 --> 00:27:02.079
an ambulance.
418
00:27:03.140 --> 00:27:06.710
The call raised alarm bells for the person who received it.
419
00:27:08.160 --> 00:27:11.150
Hey, this sounds like the guy that's been on television
420
00:27:11.750 --> 00:27:14.470
that I've heard, the weepy voice killer. It sounds like
421
00:27:14.529 --> 00:27:19.049
his voice is very similar. So they got the police involved.
422
00:27:20.589 --> 00:27:23.819
The St. Paul Police Department, who had Stefani under surveillance,
423
00:27:23.859 --> 00:27:25.690
saw the police department show up.
424
00:27:27.190 --> 00:27:31.720
Next thing he knows is an ambulance shows up at
425
00:27:31.740 --> 00:27:32.940
Stefani's residence.
426
00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:37.839
And the murder-killing spree was over. They arrested Paul Stefani,
427
00:27:38.200 --> 00:27:39.299
and it ended right there.
428
00:27:40.220 --> 00:27:44.180
Denise Williams had become the second victim to have survived
429
00:27:44.220 --> 00:27:46.809
the brutal attack of a serial killer.
430
00:27:47.670 --> 00:27:50.569
She had been the victim of an assault and went
431
00:27:50.589 --> 00:27:56.920
to the hospital, and she described her and the police
432
00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:01.680
then showed her some mugshots of different people, and she
433
00:28:01.740 --> 00:28:03.240
picked out Paul Stefani.
434
00:28:05.339 --> 00:28:07.420
She became, in many ways, the hero of all this.
435
00:28:07.849 --> 00:28:11.730
What she did and her response was life-saving for others,
436
00:28:11.789 --> 00:28:12.589
herself and others.
437
00:28:14.250 --> 00:28:18.630
Stefani was charged with the assault of 19-year-old Denise Williams
438
00:28:19.230 --> 00:28:26.190
and with the murder of 40-year-old Barbara Simons. But the
439
00:28:26.230 --> 00:28:28.970
weepy killer had lost his voice.
440
00:28:30.259 --> 00:28:32.519
Although he said in his phone calls to police, somebody
441
00:28:32.559 --> 00:28:35.279
needs to stop me, he certainly didn't give them enough
442
00:28:35.319 --> 00:28:39.200
information to actually make that happen. He wanted to continue,
443
00:28:39.259 --> 00:28:41.849
but he wanted people to think that he wasn't in
444
00:28:41.900 --> 00:28:44.369
control of what he was doing. He wanted people to
445
00:28:44.430 --> 00:28:46.750
have sympathy for him, to feel sorry for him.
446
00:28:49.170 --> 00:28:52.190
Paul Stefani went from the guy calling in, confessing, to
447
00:28:52.230 --> 00:28:54.630
when the police had him, he's not cooperating at all.
448
00:28:55.019 --> 00:28:57.079
But as they're pressing him, they show him, I believe,
449
00:28:57.119 --> 00:28:59.799
some crime scene photos. And that seemed to be the
450
00:28:59.839 --> 00:29:00.420
trigger point.
451
00:29:02.839 --> 00:29:05.829
When the police would open up their file, there were
452
00:29:05.880 --> 00:29:11.289
pictures of Karen Potak and Kimberly Compton. His voice elevated
453
00:29:11.390 --> 00:29:12.750
to a higher pitch.
454
00:29:15.710 --> 00:29:20.089
He starts getting hysterical in his voice. And they felt
455
00:29:20.130 --> 00:29:22.450
at that point, this is it. How he sounded in
456
00:29:22.490 --> 00:29:26.380
that room paralleled the phone calls they'd been getting. So
457
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:29.410
at least from their experience in the room, they felt
458
00:29:29.809 --> 00:29:31.670
no question this was their guy.
459
00:29:32.910 --> 00:29:35.930
And so when we looked at everything that we had
460
00:29:36.029 --> 00:29:41.410
between Karen Potok and Kimberly Compton and Denise Williams and
461
00:29:41.519 --> 00:29:47.420
Barbara Simons, the stronger cases with the actual identification were
462
00:29:47.460 --> 00:29:52.079
the Minneapolis cases, Barbara Simons and Denise Williams. So we
463
00:29:52.119 --> 00:29:55.460
went ahead with the prosecution of those two cases first.
464
00:29:58.440 --> 00:30:02.619
In 1984 and 1985, when he faced trials for the
465
00:30:02.700 --> 00:30:07.009
attempted murder of Denise Williams and the murder of Barbara Simons,
466
00:30:07.470 --> 00:30:09.670
Stefani pled not guilty.
467
00:30:10.690 --> 00:30:15.329
The Denise Williams evidence was her ID describing how the
468
00:30:15.410 --> 00:30:19.369
assault took place. The Good Samaritan that came up could
469
00:30:19.430 --> 00:30:24.359
identify Stefani as attacking her and then threatening him with
470
00:30:24.460 --> 00:30:25.119
a screwdriver.
471
00:30:27.180 --> 00:30:31.099
The violence displayed in his attack was evident in his
472
00:30:31.140 --> 00:30:32.559
demeanor in court.
473
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:36.210
There seemed to be a lot of rage that was contained,
474
00:30:36.289 --> 00:30:38.470
and physically the thing that stood out the most was
475
00:30:38.490 --> 00:30:41.529
just the glare, looking around, the glare that he had
476
00:30:41.569 --> 00:30:44.329
in that courtroom. There's sort of a disdain for everyone
477
00:30:44.410 --> 00:30:45.089
in the courtroom.
478
00:30:47.190 --> 00:30:49.559
When we're looking at his behavior in court, when he's
479
00:30:49.599 --> 00:30:54.420
having these outbursts, when he's quite antagonistic and he's quite confrontational,
480
00:30:54.700 --> 00:30:57.309
this is the real him. And I think up until
481
00:30:57.349 --> 00:31:00.410
this point in time, it's only his victims who've seen this.
482
00:31:01.990 --> 00:31:06.069
The weepy voice killer had become infamous for the 911
483
00:31:06.069 --> 00:31:10.740
calls in which he confessed to his crimes. Prosecutors used
484
00:31:10.779 --> 00:31:12.740
these recordings in the trial.
485
00:31:13.759 --> 00:31:15.859
During the trial, there were a number of witnesses and
486
00:31:16.180 --> 00:31:19.319
evidence that was presented, but by far the most compelling
487
00:31:19.380 --> 00:31:23.079
evidence was stuff he gave to them, his phone calls. He,
488
00:31:23.119 --> 00:31:26.349
in essence, put on a platter Here I am. I'm
489
00:31:26.369 --> 00:31:30.410
the guy that called. And their efforts to challenge it
490
00:31:30.430 --> 00:31:32.250
and whether it was really Paul Stefani or not.
491
00:31:32.269 --> 00:31:34.609
Yes, please, this is an emergency.
492
00:31:34.650 --> 00:31:35.609
Please have a call.
493
00:31:35.650 --> 00:31:38.819
You knew that it was the same person. I've listened
494
00:31:38.839 --> 00:31:42.259
to those calls so many times over the years. So
495
00:31:42.299 --> 00:31:45.160
you know that it's the same person making these phone calls.
496
00:31:46.559 --> 00:31:49.960
Some key people who testified and said they recognized the voice,
497
00:31:50.079 --> 00:31:53.819
they included his ex-wife, his sister, so people who knew him.
498
00:31:55.009 --> 00:31:57.049
was able to describe that's the same guy.
499
00:31:58.369 --> 00:32:02.339
To have two women up there incriminating him really does
500
00:32:02.440 --> 00:32:05.140
turn on its head all of those values he's got
501
00:32:05.240 --> 00:32:07.200
about the role of men and the role of women.
502
00:32:07.569 --> 00:32:10.269
Women are supposed to be passive, they're supposed to be subservient,
503
00:32:10.309 --> 00:32:13.490
they're supposed to be compliant, and here they are convicting him.
504
00:32:15.119 --> 00:32:20.930
Despite the seemingly overwhelming evidence connecting Stefani to the 911 calls,
505
00:32:21.349 --> 00:32:25.410
they were deemed inadmissible for identifying the attacker in the
506
00:32:25.529 --> 00:32:28.230
earlier Weepy Voice cases in St. Paul.
507
00:32:29.549 --> 00:32:32.750
During the course of that trial, the judge threw out
508
00:32:33.549 --> 00:32:36.829
the voice identification of the Weepy Voice killer. He said
509
00:32:36.869 --> 00:32:42.410
it wasn't sufficient to tie him to Karen Potak or
510
00:32:42.509 --> 00:32:49.079
Kimberly Compton. The only thing we had connecting Stefani was
511
00:32:49.279 --> 00:32:52.539
his voice on those calls, and we didn't think we
512
00:32:52.599 --> 00:32:56.779
had enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
513
00:32:56.819 --> 00:32:57.880
we could prove it was him.
514
00:32:59.720 --> 00:33:05.299
Consequently, Paul Stefani was never tried for those crimes. He
515
00:33:05.339 --> 00:33:09.079
was found guilty of the second-degree murder of Barbara Simons
516
00:33:09.700 --> 00:33:13.849
and the attempted murder of Denise Williams. In total, he
517
00:33:13.880 --> 00:33:16.750
was sentenced to 58 years in prison.
518
00:33:18.130 --> 00:33:21.269
Essentially a life sentence. He wasn't going to be getting out.
519
00:33:21.670 --> 00:33:23.829
We didn't want to go through another trial if we
520
00:33:23.849 --> 00:33:27.329
didn't have to, unless we could absolutely prove it.
521
00:33:28.650 --> 00:33:32.599
In a shocking twist, 12 years into his sentence, the
522
00:33:32.660 --> 00:33:38.200
weepy-voiced killer himself would give investigators all the confirmation they needed.
523
00:33:38.779 --> 00:33:42.200
Stefani had one final confession to make.
524
00:33:44.289 --> 00:33:47.410
Paul Stefani found out that he had terminal cancer and
525
00:33:47.450 --> 00:33:50.690
he wasn't going to live more than a month to
526
00:33:50.690 --> 00:33:53.349
12 months. That was what the doctors were giving him
527
00:33:54.089 --> 00:33:57.819
because of skin cancer. So he asked the guards at
528
00:33:57.859 --> 00:34:00.160
the prison Oak Park Heights to get a hold of
529
00:34:00.200 --> 00:34:02.740
the St. Paul police because he wanted to talk to
530
00:34:02.799 --> 00:34:05.099
them about what he had done.
531
00:34:06.440 --> 00:34:08.420
And so the investigator went in and met with him.
532
00:34:08.460 --> 00:34:11.500
He'd already been convicted in Barbara Simon's murder as well
533
00:34:11.559 --> 00:34:12.840
as Denise Williams' assault.
534
00:34:14.340 --> 00:34:19.460
Stefani admitted that he had assaulted Karen Potok and he
535
00:34:19.519 --> 00:34:25.550
admitted killing Kimberly Compton. So all four, he admitted that
536
00:34:25.820 --> 00:34:28.550
he was responsible for their assaults or their deaths.
537
00:34:30.070 --> 00:34:34.289
This isn't that he's suddenly become remorseful, that he's suddenly
538
00:34:34.329 --> 00:34:37.630
grown a conscience overnight, that he knows he's going to
539
00:34:37.670 --> 00:34:39.809
meet his maker and he needs to offload.
540
00:34:39.469 --> 00:34:40.110
All of this stuff.
541
00:34:40.829 --> 00:34:43.570
What he's trying to do is control what he leaves behind.
542
00:34:43.969 --> 00:34:46.360
He doesn't want to leave this world not having the
543
00:34:46.460 --> 00:34:48.780
credit for all of the murders that he's committed.
544
00:34:50.119 --> 00:34:53.860
Stefani had confirmed that he was responsible for all of
545
00:34:53.929 --> 00:34:57.630
the crimes he had been suspected of, but his next
546
00:34:57.710 --> 00:35:00.230
admittance would stun investigators.
547
00:35:01.530 --> 00:35:04.030
And then out of the blue, he mentioned that he
548
00:35:04.130 --> 00:35:07.750
also had drowned this woman. He couldn't remember her name,
549
00:35:07.789 --> 00:35:10.079
but drowned a woman in Lauderdale, which is a suburb
550
00:35:10.099 --> 00:35:10.760
of St. Paul.
551
00:35:12.460 --> 00:35:17.000
He confessed to a murder that nobody had any indication
552
00:35:17.039 --> 00:35:20.940
that he'd ever done. In fact, in his confession, it
553
00:35:20.980 --> 00:35:24.829
took them for a while to identify who that victim was.
554
00:35:26.420 --> 00:35:29.079
The police went back to say, is there any unsolved
555
00:35:29.179 --> 00:35:33.219
cases where someone was drowned and you never found a suspect?
556
00:35:33.960 --> 00:35:40.090
And sure enough, they found Kathleen Greening in 1982.
557
00:35:40.989 --> 00:35:45.050
She was a schoolteacher in the St. Paul area, and
558
00:35:45.170 --> 00:35:48.550
apparently she and Paul Stefani had gone out on a date,
559
00:35:49.550 --> 00:35:53.929
and she was drowned. And for many years, police suspected
560
00:35:53.989 --> 00:35:54.820
her husband.
561
00:35:58.659 --> 00:36:01.420
When the police went back to look at the evidence,
562
00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:04.300
he gave them evidence about her house that only the
563
00:36:04.340 --> 00:36:07.280
killer would know the layout of the house, how he
564
00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:07.650
did it.
565
00:36:10.179 --> 00:36:12.840
He had strangled her, drowned her in a tub in
566
00:36:12.889 --> 00:36:13.489
her own home.
567
00:36:15.340 --> 00:36:21.369
This time, Stefani hadn't phoned 911. And in another stunning revelation,
568
00:36:21.710 --> 00:36:24.849
he claimed that wasn't the only thing that was different
569
00:36:24.909 --> 00:36:29.239
in this case. he'd met with Kathleen on several occasions.
570
00:36:30.179 --> 00:36:32.929
He described the murder. You know, they're going up to
571
00:36:32.969 --> 00:36:37.489
a bathtub. Are they going to have consensual sex? This
572
00:36:37.570 --> 00:36:40.590
is completely different. He had feelings for this person.
573
00:36:41.369 --> 00:36:43.949
He's a master of information control.
574
00:36:44.050 --> 00:36:46.820
He wants to be very careful about the story that's
575
00:36:46.900 --> 00:36:50.380
emerging around his murders. The reason that Stefani didn't call
576
00:36:50.559 --> 00:36:53.719
the police after killing Kathleen was that he didn't want
577
00:36:53.760 --> 00:36:57.429
them to know about it. There's something he feels ashamed of,
578
00:36:57.469 --> 00:37:00.710
something he feels embarrassed about, something that doesn't quite fit
579
00:37:00.769 --> 00:37:02.570
with the persona that he's trying to create.
580
00:37:03.789 --> 00:37:08.210
Reporter Caroline Lowe was intrigued by this killer who'd suddenly
581
00:37:08.289 --> 00:37:09.150
confessed all.
582
00:37:10.010 --> 00:37:12.550
I went to prison to meet with him to see
583
00:37:12.570 --> 00:37:15.449
what I could learn because most killers, most criminals I've
584
00:37:15.469 --> 00:37:17.590
covered never admit they've done anything. I thought, is there
585
00:37:17.630 --> 00:37:20.349
anything we can learn from him? And I remember sitting
586
00:37:20.369 --> 00:37:23.469
there in prison as he's describing Kathy Greening, he said,
587
00:37:23.510 --> 00:37:26.070
we had a really good evening. We went out, we
588
00:37:26.110 --> 00:37:29.000
went home, and then he takes his hands up to
589
00:37:29.039 --> 00:37:30.800
his throat and he said, I just suddenly felt like
590
00:37:31.559 --> 00:37:33.920
doing this to her. And he's showing me with his hands.
591
00:37:34.340 --> 00:37:38.099
It was chilling to see him just calmly describe what
592
00:37:38.119 --> 00:37:42.980
he did. Talking like, what did you do for your
593
00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:46.849
vacation last summer? But he's talking about killing people, attacking people.
594
00:37:48.570 --> 00:37:53.449
Investigators reexamining the evidence in Kathleen's case were able to
595
00:37:53.530 --> 00:37:55.710
prove that she had known her killer.
596
00:37:56.650 --> 00:38:01.750
They found his telephone number in her address book that
597
00:38:01.809 --> 00:38:04.969
the authorities had overlooked in their original investigation.
598
00:38:05.989 --> 00:38:08.489
We didn't have these smartphones and everything in those days
599
00:38:08.530 --> 00:38:10.590
that you could put somebody's name and telephone number in.
600
00:38:11.269 --> 00:38:14.070
She had it in there, Paul S., and they knew
601
00:38:14.570 --> 00:38:17.429
from the arrest of him that that was his telephone number.
602
00:38:18.800 --> 00:38:21.940
There was one aspect of the confession that bore a
603
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:25.139
striking resemblance to the Barbara Simons case.
604
00:38:26.300 --> 00:38:29.239
He mentioned that he'd put her purse in a mailbox,
605
00:38:29.820 --> 00:38:31.940
and that was one of those details that only the
606
00:38:31.980 --> 00:38:34.099
killer knew. In one of the other cases, a purse
607
00:38:34.119 --> 00:38:36.489
had been put in a mailbox, but that was so significant.
608
00:38:36.869 --> 00:38:39.190
So he gave them things that there was no doubt
609
00:38:40.329 --> 00:38:42.210
by the time they were done that Paul was in
610
00:38:42.250 --> 00:38:43.030
fact her killer.
611
00:38:45.389 --> 00:38:49.530
There was a big revelation for the media and county
612
00:38:49.590 --> 00:38:52.909
attorney's office because two or three different offices had reviewed
613
00:38:52.949 --> 00:38:56.789
that case. And part of the problem was the medical
614
00:38:56.849 --> 00:39:01.710
examiner couldn't determine if it was accidental or a homicide.
615
00:39:02.329 --> 00:39:05.050
So the cause of death was undetermined.
616
00:39:06.860 --> 00:39:10.699
It had taken 15 years, but finally her loved ones
617
00:39:10.780 --> 00:39:14.960
knew the truth about who was responsible for Kathleen's death.
618
00:39:16.070 --> 00:39:20.260
the depraved killer had confessed to murdering three women and
619
00:39:20.300 --> 00:39:23.679
to the attacks on Karen Potak and Denise Williams.
620
00:39:24.820 --> 00:39:28.630
The way he abused those women, stabbing a person 61 times,
621
00:39:29.869 --> 00:39:32.909
beating a woman with a tire iron until she's unconscious,
622
00:39:32.949 --> 00:39:36.760
leaving her for dead, that's a violent, evil person.
623
00:39:38.380 --> 00:39:40.960
When you look at that and the brutality and the anger,
624
00:39:41.239 --> 00:39:45.719
you just wonder why somebody wasn't alerted to the rage
625
00:39:45.780 --> 00:39:48.619
in this person and the evil of this individual a
626
00:39:48.659 --> 00:39:49.300
long time ago.
627
00:39:50.980 --> 00:39:56.190
But Paul Stefani hadn't finished his final chapter. Before he died,
628
00:39:56.530 --> 00:39:58.010
he contacted Caroline.
629
00:39:58.730 --> 00:40:01.130
He wrote me a letter, actually, I got the next week,
630
00:40:01.570 --> 00:40:05.829
and he asked me if I would reach out to
631
00:40:05.849 --> 00:40:08.840
the victim's families. This is the letter, which I still have.
632
00:40:09.679 --> 00:40:11.460
He asked me if I'd reach out to the victim's
633
00:40:11.519 --> 00:40:15.139
families because he's wanted me to tell them that he
634
00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:20.289
wanted to put flowers on their graves. I would not
635
00:40:20.329 --> 00:40:23.730
be a go-between between the serial killer and these families
636
00:40:24.369 --> 00:40:27.570
to help him maybe feel better as his life is
637
00:40:27.630 --> 00:40:28.190
winding down.
638
00:40:30.250 --> 00:40:34.949
I think that he wanted to make his slate clear
639
00:40:35.789 --> 00:40:39.750
in the eyes of law enforcement, in the eyes of God.
640
00:40:41.429 --> 00:40:45.170
As a devout Catholic, I am admitting to all my sins.
641
00:40:45.949 --> 00:40:50.690
Please forgive me. I'm telling the police everything I did,
642
00:40:50.909 --> 00:40:53.889
and that's why I believe that he did not commit
643
00:40:53.989 --> 00:40:56.090
any more murders than those he confessed to.
644
00:40:56.110 --> 00:41:05.159
53-year-old Paul Stefani died of cancer in June 1998. After
645
00:41:05.340 --> 00:41:09.139
all of his confessions, one question remained unanswered.
646
00:41:10.019 --> 00:41:15.730
Why? Why? A lot of us thought that maybe his
647
00:41:15.849 --> 00:41:22.230
religious upbringing and his family falling apart, he was taking
648
00:41:22.289 --> 00:41:26.719
it out on women. He was very hostile in the
649
00:41:26.760 --> 00:41:30.820
brutality of the attacks. You don't stab someone 61 times
650
00:41:30.860 --> 00:41:34.239
with an ice pick, you know, without having a lot
651
00:41:34.280 --> 00:41:35.280
of rage and anger.
652
00:41:42.159 --> 00:41:45.820
The Twin Cities will never forget the losses suffered by
653
00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:49.179
their communities at the hands of Paul Stefani.
654
00:41:49.760 --> 00:41:54.210
You mentioned the weepy voice caller, killer. Anyone in Minnesota
655
00:41:54.550 --> 00:41:57.150
remembers that. If they were around back then, they remember
656
00:41:57.170 --> 00:41:58.309
the weepy voice killer.
657
00:41:59.670 --> 00:42:02.429
Paul Stefani thought he could do whatever he wanted to
658
00:42:02.469 --> 00:42:07.250
do in his rage. and his being evil and that
659
00:42:07.309 --> 00:42:09.809
he could call up and tell the police that he's
660
00:42:09.869 --> 00:42:12.699
sorry and that he would be forgiven or go to
661
00:42:12.760 --> 00:42:16.219
church and he would be forgiven. But I think he
662
00:42:16.260 --> 00:42:19.860
was looking for absolution and he never got it.
663
00:42:21.099 --> 00:42:23.360
He's a small town boy, became one of the most
664
00:42:23.719 --> 00:42:26.130
notorious serial killers in Minnesota history.
665
00:42:27.800 --> 00:42:31.389
Paul Michael Stefani has become etched in the minds of
666
00:42:31.650 --> 00:42:35.369
all who knew him as the notorious weepy voice killer,
667
00:42:36.110 --> 00:42:40.289
whose rage-fuelled and vicious attacks took the lives of three
668
00:42:40.469 --> 00:42:44.440
unsuspecting women and forever changed the lives of two more.
669
00:42:45.989 --> 00:42:49.570
Stefani may have believed he would be forgiven for his sins,
670
00:42:50.010 --> 00:42:53.469
but his horrific and violent actions mean he will never
671
00:42:53.530 --> 00:42:57.900
be absolved as one of the world's most evil killers.
1
00:00:06.240 --> 00:00:09.019
In the early hours of New Year's Day, 1981, police
2
00:00:09.060 --> 00:00:24.609
in St. Paul, Minnesota, received an hysterical 911 call. The
3
00:00:24.750 --> 00:00:28.359
anonymous call was made by her attacker, and it was
4
00:00:28.420 --> 00:00:30.140
to be the first of many.
5
00:00:30.839 --> 00:00:34.009
She was badly beaten. with a tire iron, left for
6
00:00:34.049 --> 00:00:37.159
dead in the snow. When I went there the next morning,
7
00:00:37.530 --> 00:00:39.530
the blood was still in the snow, and we thought,
8
00:00:39.549 --> 00:00:42.640
there's no way this person who'd been so viciously beaten
9
00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:43.539
could have survived.
10
00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:48.820
The assailant soon became known as the weepy voice killer.
11
00:00:49.240 --> 00:00:52.679
His eerie tones were so distinctive that he was quickly
12
00:00:52.759 --> 00:00:54.719
linked to many more attacks.
13
00:00:55.560 --> 00:00:58.780
You knew that it was the same person. I've listened
14
00:00:58.799 --> 00:01:02.250
to those calls so many times over the years. So
15
00:01:02.270 --> 00:01:05.170
you know that it's the same person making these phone calls.
16
00:01:12.709 --> 00:01:16.329
I think he was looking for absolution, and he never
17
00:01:16.370 --> 00:01:16.750
got it.
18
00:01:18.290 --> 00:01:22.359
He had confessed his sins, but there was no forgiveness
19
00:01:22.390 --> 00:01:27.060
for Paul Stefani, the weepy voice killer, who'd become one
20
00:01:27.099 --> 00:01:54.280
of the world's most evil killers. Between January 1981 and
21
00:01:54.500 --> 00:01:59.170
August 1982, police in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St.
22
00:01:59.170 --> 00:02:04.189
Paul received a series of disturbing, anonymous phone calls from
23
00:02:04.209 --> 00:02:08.969
a serial killer. Each time, they were linked to the
24
00:02:09.009 --> 00:02:13.870
discovery of a woman's body. I can't stop myself.
25
00:02:14.009 --> 00:02:18.460
I keep killing somebody. There was a sense of urgency
26
00:02:18.479 --> 00:02:20.400
of the danger that he was out there and also
27
00:02:20.439 --> 00:02:23.159
a sense that he wanted to be caught because I
28
00:02:23.199 --> 00:02:26.280
can't remember a time in 40 years of covering crime
29
00:02:26.659 --> 00:02:30.310
of somebody calling up and leading police that way to
30
00:02:30.319 --> 00:02:33.780
the victims and seeming hysterical. There was a lot of
31
00:02:33.840 --> 00:02:36.590
fear in the community. There was a sense that this
32
00:02:36.629 --> 00:02:39.330
would be solved quickly, that the voice would be recognized.
33
00:02:40.409 --> 00:02:41.689
But then nothing happened.
34
00:02:42.849 --> 00:02:47.620
The now infamous whiny voice in the 911 calls caused
35
00:02:47.659 --> 00:02:52.080
him to be dubbed the weepy-voiced killer. He brutally attacked
36
00:02:52.340 --> 00:02:53.000
five women.
37
00:02:59.159 --> 00:03:01.500
This isn't somebody who wants to be caught. It's somebody
38
00:03:01.520 --> 00:03:05.969
who wants status, who wants recognition. He is absolutely desperate
39
00:03:06.219 --> 00:03:09.150
to be seen as a serial killer. He wants a recognition.
40
00:03:09.560 --> 00:03:12.580
of being a serial killer. That's something that's quite important
41
00:03:12.599 --> 00:03:12.979
to him.
42
00:03:14.759 --> 00:03:20.530
This killer's story begins in Minnesota. Paul Michael Stefani was
43
00:03:20.590 --> 00:03:23.270
born on the 8th of September, 1944.
44
00:03:23.270 --> 00:03:28.129
Paul Stefani was born in a smaller town down in
45
00:03:28.250 --> 00:03:34.449
southern Minnesota by Austin. It's my understanding that his parents
46
00:03:34.509 --> 00:03:38.560
divorced and that he had a very strict stepfather who
47
00:03:38.639 --> 00:03:39.879
was a devout Catholic.
48
00:03:42.599 --> 00:03:45.460
It's quite interesting looking at the religious background of serial
49
00:03:45.500 --> 00:03:48.030
killers because it tends to affect them in one of
50
00:03:48.090 --> 00:03:51.110
two ways. On the one hand, they might use the
51
00:03:51.150 --> 00:03:53.509
kind of values that they've grown up with as a
52
00:03:53.550 --> 00:03:57.710
justification for their behavior. On the other hand, their failure
53
00:03:57.729 --> 00:04:00.009
to live up to those values might be something that
54
00:04:00.030 --> 00:04:03.060
they feel fundamentally ashamed of, and it's that shame that
55
00:04:03.099 --> 00:04:04.280
actually drives their offending.
56
00:04:05.719 --> 00:04:07.590
He seemed to have a strong bond with his mother.
57
00:04:07.879 --> 00:04:10.789
There's a strength there, so there was nothing that I
58
00:04:10.810 --> 00:04:14.590
could find that made any sense that could even explain
59
00:04:14.629 --> 00:04:15.449
why he did what he did.
60
00:04:17.350 --> 00:04:19.879
I think there would have been quite clear boundaries around
61
00:04:19.920 --> 00:04:23.259
what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, ideas about sin.
62
00:04:25.060 --> 00:04:29.439
Stefani had been diagnosed with epilepsy as a child, and
63
00:04:29.500 --> 00:04:32.620
when he kept losing his jobs as an adult, he
64
00:04:32.689 --> 00:04:37.209
blamed the condition. Nevertheless, he did appear to settle down.
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He moved out of Austin to St. Paul, and by
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the age of 26, had met his wife.
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In 1970, he got married. So far, so normal. Didn't
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last all that long. They divorced five years later.
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The 1970s, there's still quite a bit of stigma around divorce,
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especially within Catholic communities. So I think this, on his part,
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perhaps would have been seen as something of a failure.
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So I think it's quite an interesting element of his background.
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Sometime after his divorce, Stefani went off the rails and
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showed his violent side for the first time. The details
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of the incident are unknown, but Stefani was convicted of assault,
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meaning his name was now on a list of known
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violent offenders. Stefani soon moved on and began a relationship
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with a Syrian girl who he reportedly hoped to marry.
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They were pretty close, dating for four years, and then
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she leaves him for an arranged marriage that she had
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no control over.
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Stefani struggled with the rejection. When he lost yet another job,
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this time at Marmberg Manufacturing, things were spiraling out of
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his control.
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Something is burning at him inside. Something is eating at
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Paul Stefani.
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In the early hours of New Year's Day 1981, things
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took a sudden and sinister turn. As the night's celebrations
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wound down, 36-year-old Stefani encountered a 20-year-old student, Karen Potak.
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She was walking home when she suddenly was attacked right
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off Pierce Butler Road, a main road in St.
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Paul.
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It's an absolutely vicious attack. Callous without warning and for
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no reason. At 3 a.m. on New Year's Day, the
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police in St. Paul receive a phone call, an anonymous
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phone call.
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The phone call was a hysterical person.
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It wasn't clear if it was a man or a woman.
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This is incredibly deliberate on his part.
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He is wanting to appear to be somebody who can't
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help what he's doing.
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He thinks she's dead.
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She's certainly left of her dead.
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And he's consumed. You've got two conflicting emotions inside Stefani. One,
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an absolute desire to hurt women. Two, a fierce guilt
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about having done it.
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What's the address? I don't know. Who are you? There
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was just this urgency, get there, help her. And an
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ambulance was sent there, and that's where they found Karen
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Potak near death in the snow.
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She'd been hit over the head with a tire iron
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multiple times to the extent that some of her brain
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was actually exposed to the elements. So this is a really,
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really significant attack. And it's one that shows us that
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the person who carried it out wanted to kill the victim.
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The location of Stefani's first attack would later form a
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key part of the investigation as police worked to identify him.
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She's found in a very significant place, near some railway tracks,
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near a factory in which Stefani once worked.
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It was the Marmberg Manufacturing Company where Stefani had lost
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his job. He would later claim this upset to be
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the reason he attacked.
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That's something about serial killers, too. When they first begin
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killing people, and of course, Potaki didn't kill her, but
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he left her for dead, really. They go to places
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that are familiar with them at the beginning of their assaults.
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Karen was taken to hospital, but was not expected to survive.
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When I went there the next morning, the blood was
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still in the snow, and we thought, there's no way
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this person who'd been so viciously beaten could have survived.
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In fact, miraculously, Karen is not dead, although perhaps, mercifully,
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she doesn't remember anything about the attack, and she certainly
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doesn't know who's attacked her.
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The police attributed that to the cognitive damage that was
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done to her in the assault. She was never the
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same after that.
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Paul Stefani has got away with what he thought was murder,
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but in fact wasn't.
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I expected two things, that Karen Potak would not survive,
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which she did. I expected this case to be wrapped
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up right away. They would catch this person, man or woman,
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but nothing happened.
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Things were quiet for five months, but on the 3rd
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of June, Stefani's soon-to-be infamous weepy voice was heard again.
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He sounds.
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Quite childlike and pathetic, essentially.
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There's an emphasis on poor me, feel sorry for me,
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I can't help myself. So this is very deliberate on
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his part. This is all about him.
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30 minutes after the 911 call, a grim discovery was
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made in bushes by a freeway in St. Paul.
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Some boys were out playing and a ball went over
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to the edge of where they were playing and they saw,
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they thought it was a dummy laying in the grass.
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kind of hidden, and they realized it was an actual
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person and a body, and they called the police.
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She's dumped in the bushes, and when we think of
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the kind of things that we find in the bushes,
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it's things that we discard. It's things that we don't
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want anymore. It's things that we would consider to be trash,
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and that's very much how Stefani saw this victim.
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The body was that of a woman wearing a red jacket,
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She had no identification, but did have a single key
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on her person.
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The key was to the Greyhound bus locker in St.
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Paul by Mickey's Diner, a pretty iconic location in St.
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Paul.
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Through there, they found some of her identification and were
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able to figure out it was Kimberly Compton.
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Working backwards, the police then found out she had just
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arrived that day from Pepin, Wisconsin. Police had to tell
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her family that She was brutally assaulted and murdered. So
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at this point, we didn't have any idea of who
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or why or what had happened.
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She'd only that day gone to St Paul on the
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Greyhound bus to start a new life after leaving Wisconsin.
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This was going to be a clean slate. This was
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the beginning of a new life. And sadly, it was
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the end.
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Tracking Kimberly's last movements, police discovered that after arriving at
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the bus station, Kimberly had gone to a nearby diner
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where she'd met a friendly local who seemed keen to
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welcome her to the city.
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Stefani was personable, got a conversation going with her and said, hey,
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you're from Wisconsin, let me show you some of the
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sights of St.
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Paul.
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So he came across as sort of an older man
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looking out for this young woman with hopes and dreams.
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15 minutes later, she was dead.
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Kimberly Compton was stabbed 61 times in the upper body, mostly,
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and that in a very violent assault.
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With an ice pick.
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Later on, the medical examiner determined not only was she stabbed,
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but she was also choked to death with some shoelaces.
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This method of killing, this ferocity, it isn't about losing control.
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This is about gaining control.
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This killer is somebody who wants to not just kill,
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but absolutely obliterate his victim.
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Two days after Kimberly was murdered, police received another call
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from the high-pitched caller. It wasn't recorded, but investigators were
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hopeful it would provide more clues that could lead them
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to the killer.
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He stayed on the phone a little bit longer, and
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the police traced his phone call to a phone booth
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at the bus depot, where she had just gotten off.
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And police followed up and went to the bus depot,
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tried to take fingerprints, but there were so many people
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that had used the phone in that area that it
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would not have any positive results.
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On the 11th of June, the killer called again.
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Don't talk, just listen.
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He's quite frustrated.
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He's quite annoyed.
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He wants this murder to be recognized. He wants something
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to happen.
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He's telling the police, you know, hey, I'm in charge.
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I want you to do what I want you to do.
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Don't talk. Listen. Stop me. I can't help myself. Do
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your job, you know. Basically saying, catch me.
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Police were quick to make the connection between the recent
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911 calls and the one they received five months previously
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in the unsolved Karen Potak case.
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One of the people, I believe, in the 911 center said,
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that sounds like an individual about a year ago that
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called that same squeaky high weeping type of voice.
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I'm sorry, I killed a girl.
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Two young women found a few miles apart, brutally attacked,
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and that phone call, police felt they had a serial
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killer on the loose and alerted the media that the
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connection they believe existed.
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In an attempt to put a name to the voice,
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they released the 911 calls.
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We put the phone call on the air, and we
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were sure people would recognize the voice.
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The media soon dubbed him the weepy voice killer.
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We're hoping that somebody will recognize the voice, whether it
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be a friend or a relative or a neighbor or
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someone you work with or drink with.
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You would think that somebody would recognize that. Anybody who'd
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had an argument with him or heard him stress would
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recognize him from the voice. It was so distinct.
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With no immediate leads, detectives tried to find other links
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to the victims in the hopes of identifying the predator.
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They noted that both victims had been wearing red. FBI
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profilers theorized that the color could be a trigger. A
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warning was issued to the public.
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He's got a whole town, a whole city in fear.
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Everybody is going to be watching their backs and making
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sure that they don't wear anything red, especially women. Now,
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Stefani is someone who enjoys controlling women, and when he
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says something like this, he's controlling not just one, but
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potentially thousands of women.
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These victims of his were wearing red, and he had
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dated a girl from Syria for about four years, and
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the only picture I ever saw of her that he
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had She was wearing red.
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This was a big story in the Twin Cities. A
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lot of coverage of the serial killer, we believe, was
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on the loose, even though there'd only been one killing
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at that point. And then things got quiet.
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For months, there was no word from the weepy voice killer.
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Residents hoped they'd seen the last of his horrific acts. Then,
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in late August 1981, police in St. Paul received an
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emergency call. An individual named Alan Lopez was holding his
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family hostage.
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A negotiator is sent, a SWAT team is sent. He
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insists that he's going to kill them.
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The police were trying to get him to come out,
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and Alan Lopez, during that conversation with the police, said
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he is the person that killed Kimberly Compton.
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I covered that standoff, and it was bizarre enough on
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its own, and then we hear that he's confessing to
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being Kimberly Compton's killer.
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Eventually, the standoff is resolved. The SWAT team enter the
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house to discover that Alan Lopez has indeed killed his father, mother,
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and sister.
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26-year-old Lopez was arrested for the murders of his relatives,
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and investigators worked on connecting him to Kimberly Compton's murder. However,
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a voice comparison between Lopez and the weepy-voiced 911 calls
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found no similarities. The questions remained unanswered, and in February 1982,
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Lopez committed suicide in jail. In August, another woman's body
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was found across the river in Minneapolis.
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It was a very brutal scene, and police were called,
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and ambulance called, and She was found deceased by numerous
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stab wounds.
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Investigators trying to piece together what had happened struggled to
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identify the woman. Two days later, a 911 call came
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in with a familiar-sounding voice. Fire emergency.
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Please don't talk to me, listen.
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I'm sorry, I killed that girl.
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I stabbed her 40 times.
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Kimberly Compton was the first one over.
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So now we knew it couldn't have been Alan Lopez
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because now we have another murder with the same weepy
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voice calling the police department.
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It was a challenge to the police department. showing that, here,
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I've done this, now see if you can catch me.
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There's quite a lot that's happening in this call. Firstly,
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he's asserting that status and authority, you've got to listen
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to me. Then he's almost boasting about the number of
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times that he's stabbed, drawing our attention to how violent
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he is. And then he's linking those two killings.
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I'm sorry what I did to Compton.
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I couldn't help it. Don't know why I had.
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To stab her. He'd gone quiet for close to a year,
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and suddenly we have this murder of a young woman
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in Minneapolis.
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The Minneapolis Police Department got a hold of the St.
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Paul Police Department, and they started working together on trying
311
00:20:54.599 --> 00:20:56.380
to identify who this caller was.
312
00:20:58.839 --> 00:21:05.369
Investigators were also working hard to identify the victims. A
313
00:21:05.470 --> 00:21:08.710
vital tip came when a postal worker handed in a
314
00:21:08.750 --> 00:21:12.950
woman's purse belonging to a local nurse, Barbara Simons.
315
00:21:14.490 --> 00:21:17.940
Her purse was in a mailbox, and they tracked down
316
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:21.559
who Barbara Simons was. They knew she was killed near
317
00:21:21.599 --> 00:21:24.000
the Mississippi River, and they found out that she had
318
00:21:24.039 --> 00:21:27.400
been at a bar, the Hexacon Bar, the night before
319
00:21:27.420 --> 00:21:28.579
her body was found.
320
00:21:30.509 --> 00:21:35.789
Witnesses from the bar remembered seeing 40-year-old Barbara with a man.
321
00:21:36.329 --> 00:21:39.579
Stefani came up and asked her for a cigarette, and
322
00:21:39.730 --> 00:21:42.900
he danced with her, and very open that he was
323
00:21:42.980 --> 00:21:44.970
with her, had made contact with her.
324
00:21:46.059 --> 00:21:47.980
This would appear to be quite a bold move on
325
00:21:48.059 --> 00:21:48.619
his part.
326
00:21:48.660 --> 00:21:51.180
So he's going out and he's hunting for victims out
327
00:21:51.240 --> 00:21:53.359
there in public where other people.
328
00:21:53.119 --> 00:21:53.859
Can see him.
329
00:21:54.319 --> 00:21:56.799
But by this stage, he's gotten away with murder, and
330
00:21:56.819 --> 00:21:58.480
I think he's becoming a lot bolder.
331
00:21:59.390 --> 00:22:01.819
Seems like they hit it off, according to some people
332
00:22:01.839 --> 00:22:03.799
at the bar, and he offered to give her a
333
00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:04.359
ride home.
334
00:22:06.460 --> 00:22:10.160
In fact, if I recall, she said to the waitress
335
00:22:10.180 --> 00:22:12.740
there at the bar, saying, boy, I hope he's a
336
00:22:12.809 --> 00:22:15.309
nice guy because he's going to give me a ride home.
337
00:22:17.849 --> 00:22:21.470
And obviously he wasn't, and she was killed that night.
338
00:22:23.619 --> 00:22:27.180
He took her down to an area, assaulted her, stabbed
339
00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:30.130
her numerous times and left her to be found too.
340
00:22:31.609 --> 00:22:33.950
And I believe this time that they thought that a
341
00:22:34.430 --> 00:22:39.150
Phillips screwdriver, similar to an ice pick, was used in
342
00:22:39.190 --> 00:22:39.950
those assaults.
343
00:22:42.130 --> 00:22:46.650
Bar staff gave detailed descriptions of the man's appearance and
344
00:22:46.710 --> 00:22:51.400
detectives began trawling through a database of violent offenders in
345
00:22:51.440 --> 00:22:51.900
the area.
346
00:22:52.599 --> 00:22:56.220
Based on the description of what the bartender and the
347
00:22:56.259 --> 00:22:59.579
waitress said, they narrowed it down to about eight or nine,
348
00:23:00.079 --> 00:23:03.759
and the bartender picked out Paul Stefani as being the
349
00:23:03.799 --> 00:23:06.619
person that was talking to Barbara Simons that night.
350
00:23:10.039 --> 00:23:12.759
Police began to focus on him, trying to figure out
351
00:23:12.819 --> 00:23:15.609
where he lived, try to put the pieces together on
352
00:23:15.640 --> 00:23:19.740
Paul Stefani. Investigators on both sides of the river at
353
00:23:19.779 --> 00:23:21.720
this point are working on the case. They knew they
354
00:23:21.759 --> 00:23:23.500
had a very dangerous person out there.
355
00:23:24.599 --> 00:23:29.509
Investigators learned all they could about Stefani's background, making a
356
00:23:29.650 --> 00:23:32.130
crucial link from another of the attacks.
357
00:23:33.230 --> 00:23:35.869
Among the things they figured out about Paul Stefani is
358
00:23:35.910 --> 00:23:38.890
that he had worked in Malmberg manufacturing. which is the
359
00:23:38.930 --> 00:23:42.740
place where Karen Potak, the first victim, had been attacked.
360
00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:45.579
And I think that was significant to them because not
361
00:23:45.640 --> 00:23:47.779
only had he given the street where she was found,
362
00:23:47.839 --> 00:23:50.119
he named a business, and that was unusual.
363
00:23:51.380 --> 00:23:56.329
Police were now confident that Stefani was the weepy-voiced killer.
364
00:23:57.269 --> 00:23:59.869
They knew who they believed they were looking for at
365
00:23:59.910 --> 00:24:02.809
that point, and the clock was ticking. Is he going
366
00:24:02.829 --> 00:24:04.819
to do it again? Is he going to call in
367
00:24:04.859 --> 00:24:08.809
with something? And so investigators are working, comparing notes on
368
00:24:08.849 --> 00:24:11.210
both sides of the river. The media's, we're in a
369
00:24:11.230 --> 00:24:13.269
kind of a frenzy to keep it out there because
370
00:24:13.309 --> 00:24:14.670
we didn't want one more victim.
371
00:24:16.210 --> 00:24:22.089
To everyone's horror, there would be another. Despite now being
372
00:24:22.170 --> 00:24:25.960
under police surveillance, he slipped through the net and on
373
00:24:25.980 --> 00:24:30.759
the 21st of August, 1982, went hunting for his next victim.
374
00:24:31.619 --> 00:24:34.420
That night, Stefani met Denise Williams.
375
00:24:36.119 --> 00:24:39.680
Denise has been engaged in sex work for quite some years,
376
00:24:39.720 --> 00:24:42.109
so she's out and about on the streets quite frequently.
377
00:24:42.670 --> 00:24:45.049
And he offers her money to engage in a sex
378
00:24:45.150 --> 00:24:48.630
act with him. So she accepts, she gets in his car,
379
00:24:48.890 --> 00:24:51.150
they drive off, they exchange business.
380
00:24:53.430 --> 00:24:55.559
And he says that he's going to take her back
381
00:24:55.599 --> 00:24:58.440
to Minneapolis. He found her in Minneapolis, he's taking her back.
382
00:24:59.700 --> 00:25:02.299
She got suspicious because he didn't seem to be going
383
00:25:02.339 --> 00:25:05.740
back to where he was supposed to take her. Suddenly
384
00:25:05.819 --> 00:25:10.059
he pulls over his car and viciously attacks her. She
385
00:25:10.140 --> 00:25:14.259
fights back. She's street savvy. She fights back. She saw
386
00:25:14.299 --> 00:25:18.180
a pop bottle. She takes that bottle, smashes it across
387
00:25:18.220 --> 00:25:22.480
his face, and causes him to bleed. She manages to escape.
388
00:25:23.519 --> 00:25:26.180
And he started going after her and stabbing her again.
389
00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:29.480
A person heard her screaming, came over and helped her out.
390
00:25:30.210 --> 00:25:33.410
And Stefani turned on him and threatened him, and he
391
00:25:33.450 --> 00:25:36.950
got Williams away. Stefani took off and left the scene.
392
00:25:40.910 --> 00:25:43.049
Stefani is a killer who is used to being 100%
393
00:25:43.049 --> 00:25:47.559
in control when it comes to his crimes. But this time,
394
00:25:47.680 --> 00:25:50.339
he's really met his match in Denise. He's come up
395
00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:52.519
against a woman who is not going to put up
396
00:25:52.539 --> 00:25:54.460
with this. She is not going to just let this
397
00:25:54.539 --> 00:25:58.599
guy take her life. She is quite tough. She's quite streetwise,
398
00:25:58.779 --> 00:26:02.140
and I imagine she's been in quite a few altercations
399
00:26:02.180 --> 00:26:06.789
with clients before. So this really rattles him. This woman
400
00:26:06.829 --> 00:26:10.309
has won and he is lost in this particular situation.
401
00:26:10.390 --> 00:26:12.390
So I think it really does knock him off balance.
402
00:26:13.730 --> 00:26:15.430
He had to think in the back of his mind,
403
00:26:15.470 --> 00:26:18.339
if he was rational at that time, that police are
404
00:26:18.630 --> 00:26:21.759
going to be interviewing him. How did this assault happen?
405
00:26:21.980 --> 00:26:22.940
Where did it happen?
406
00:26:23.299 --> 00:26:23.940
Who did it?
407
00:26:24.619 --> 00:26:27.720
And that it was unravelling very fast for him after
408
00:26:27.779 --> 00:26:30.980
Denise Williams died. started pounding him with that bottle.
409
00:26:32.559 --> 00:26:36.900
Having failed in his attack, the predator returned home to
410
00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:38.140
assess his injuries.
411
00:26:39.240 --> 00:26:41.700
He goes home to St. Paul, and then he made
412
00:26:41.740 --> 00:26:45.849
another phone call. This time, he wasn't calling to get
413
00:26:45.910 --> 00:26:48.490
help for a victim. He was calling for help for himself.
414
00:26:49.630 --> 00:26:54.250
He actually calls 911 and requests an ambulance, and his
415
00:26:54.309 --> 00:26:58.299
voice wasn't quite as high and quite as weepy or
416
00:26:58.339 --> 00:27:01.339
anything else. He said he was hurt and he needed
417
00:27:01.420 --> 00:27:02.079
an ambulance.
418
00:27:03.140 --> 00:27:06.710
The call raised alarm bells for the person who received it.
419
00:27:08.160 --> 00:27:11.150
Hey, this sounds like the guy that's been on television
420
00:27:11.750 --> 00:27:14.470
that I've heard, the weepy voice killer. It sounds like
421
00:27:14.529 --> 00:27:19.049
his voice is very similar. So they got the police involved.
422
00:27:20.589 --> 00:27:23.819
The St. Paul Police Department, who had Stefani under surveillance,
423
00:27:23.859 --> 00:27:25.690
saw the police department show up.
424
00:27:27.190 --> 00:27:31.720
Next thing he knows is an ambulance shows up at
425
00:27:31.740 --> 00:27:32.940
Stefani's residence.
426
00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:37.839
And the murder-killing spree was over. They arrested Paul Stefani,
427
00:27:38.200 --> 00:27:39.299
and it ended right there.
428
00:27:40.220 --> 00:27:44.180
Denise Williams had become the second victim to have survived
429
00:27:44.220 --> 00:27:46.809
the brutal attack of a serial killer.
430
00:27:47.670 --> 00:27:50.569
She had been the victim of an assault and went
431
00:27:50.589 --> 00:27:56.920
to the hospital, and she described her and the police
432
00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:01.680
then showed her some mugshots of different people, and she
433
00:28:01.740 --> 00:28:03.240
picked out Paul Stefani.
434
00:28:05.339 --> 00:28:07.420
She became, in many ways, the hero of all this.
435
00:28:07.849 --> 00:28:11.730
What she did and her response was life-saving for others,
436
00:28:11.789 --> 00:28:12.589
herself and others.
437
00:28:14.250 --> 00:28:18.630
Stefani was charged with the assault of 19-year-old Denise Williams
438
00:28:19.230 --> 00:28:26.190
and with the murder of 40-year-old Barbara Simons. But the
439
00:28:26.230 --> 00:28:28.970
weepy killer had lost his voice.
440
00:28:30.259 --> 00:28:32.519
Although he said in his phone calls to police, somebody
441
00:28:32.559 --> 00:28:35.279
needs to stop me, he certainly didn't give them enough
442
00:28:35.319 --> 00:28:39.200
information to actually make that happen. He wanted to continue,
443
00:28:39.259 --> 00:28:41.849
but he wanted people to think that he wasn't in
444
00:28:41.900 --> 00:28:44.369
control of what he was doing. He wanted people to
445
00:28:44.430 --> 00:28:46.750
have sympathy for him, to feel sorry for him.
446
00:28:49.170 --> 00:28:52.190
Paul Stefani went from the guy calling in, confessing, to
447
00:28:52.230 --> 00:28:54.630
when the police had him, he's not cooperating at all.
448
00:28:55.019 --> 00:28:57.079
But as they're pressing him, they show him, I believe,
449
00:28:57.119 --> 00:28:59.799
some crime scene photos. And that seemed to be the
450
00:28:59.839 --> 00:29:00.420
trigger point.
451
00:29:02.839 --> 00:29:05.829
When the police would open up their file, there were
452
00:29:05.880 --> 00:29:11.289
pictures of Karen Potak and Kimberly Compton. His voice elevated
453
00:29:11.390 --> 00:29:12.750
to a higher pitch.
454
00:29:15.710 --> 00:29:20.089
He starts getting hysterical in his voice. And they felt
455
00:29:20.130 --> 00:29:22.450
at that point, this is it. How he sounded in
456
00:29:22.490 --> 00:29:26.380
that room paralleled the phone calls they'd been getting. So
457
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:29.410
at least from their experience in the room, they felt
458
00:29:29.809 --> 00:29:31.670
no question this was their guy.
459
00:29:32.910 --> 00:29:35.930
And so when we looked at everything that we had
460
00:29:36.029 --> 00:29:41.410
between Karen Potok and Kimberly Compton and Denise Williams and
461
00:29:41.519 --> 00:29:47.420
Barbara Simons, the stronger cases with the actual identification were
462
00:29:47.460 --> 00:29:52.079
the Minneapolis cases, Barbara Simons and Denise Williams. So we
463
00:29:52.119 --> 00:29:55.460
went ahead with the prosecution of those two cases first.
464
00:29:58.440 --> 00:30:02.619
In 1984 and 1985, when he faced trials for the
465
00:30:02.700 --> 00:30:07.009
attempted murder of Denise Williams and the murder of Barbara Simons,
466
00:30:07.470 --> 00:30:09.670
Stefani pled not guilty.
467
00:30:10.690 --> 00:30:15.329
The Denise Williams evidence was her ID describing how the
468
00:30:15.410 --> 00:30:19.369
assault took place. The Good Samaritan that came up could
469
00:30:19.430 --> 00:30:24.359
identify Stefani as attacking her and then threatening him with
470
00:30:24.460 --> 00:30:25.119
a screwdriver.
471
00:30:27.180 --> 00:30:31.099
The violence displayed in his attack was evident in his
472
00:30:31.140 --> 00:30:32.559
demeanor in court.
473
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:36.210
There seemed to be a lot of rage that was contained,
474
00:30:36.289 --> 00:30:38.470
and physically the thing that stood out the most was
475
00:30:38.490 --> 00:30:41.529
just the glare, looking around, the glare that he had
476
00:30:41.569 --> 00:30:44.329
in that courtroom. There's sort of a disdain for everyone
477
00:30:44.410 --> 00:30:45.089
in the courtroom.
478
00:30:47.190 --> 00:30:49.559
When we're looking at his behavior in court, when he's
479
00:30:49.599 --> 00:30:54.420
having these outbursts, when he's quite antagonistic and he's quite confrontational,
480
00:30:54.700 --> 00:30:57.309
this is the real him. And I think up until
481
00:30:57.349 --> 00:31:00.410
this point in time, it's only his victims who've seen this.
482
00:31:01.990 --> 00:31:06.069
The weepy voice killer had become infamous for the 911
483
00:31:06.069 --> 00:31:10.740
calls in which he confessed to his crimes. Prosecutors used
484
00:31:10.779 --> 00:31:12.740
these recordings in the trial.
485
00:31:13.759 --> 00:31:15.859
During the trial, there were a number of witnesses and
486
00:31:16.180 --> 00:31:19.319
evidence that was presented, but by far the most compelling
487
00:31:19.380 --> 00:31:23.079
evidence was stuff he gave to them, his phone calls. He,
488
00:31:23.119 --> 00:31:26.349
in essence, put on a platter Here I am. I'm
489
00:31:26.369 --> 00:31:30.410
the guy that called. And their efforts to challenge it
490
00:31:30.430 --> 00:31:32.250
and whether it was really Paul Stefani or not.
491
00:31:32.269 --> 00:31:34.609
Yes, please, this is an emergency.
492
00:31:34.650 --> 00:31:35.609
Please have a call.
493
00:31:35.650 --> 00:31:38.819
You knew that it was the same person. I've listened
494
00:31:38.839 --> 00:31:42.259
to those calls so many times over the years. So
495
00:31:42.299 --> 00:31:45.160
you know that it's the same person making these phone calls.
496
00:31:46.559 --> 00:31:49.960
Some key people who testified and said they recognized the voice,
497
00:31:50.079 --> 00:31:53.819
they included his ex-wife, his sister, so people who knew him.
498
00:31:55.009 --> 00:31:57.049
was able to describe that's the same guy.
499
00:31:58.369 --> 00:32:02.339
To have two women up there incriminating him really does
500
00:32:02.440 --> 00:32:05.140
turn on its head all of those values he's got
501
00:32:05.240 --> 00:32:07.200
about the role of men and the role of women.
502
00:32:07.569 --> 00:32:10.269
Women are supposed to be passive, they're supposed to be subservient,
503
00:32:10.309 --> 00:32:13.490
they're supposed to be compliant, and here they are convicting him.
504
00:32:15.119 --> 00:32:20.930
Despite the seemingly overwhelming evidence connecting Stefani to the 911 calls,
505
00:32:21.349 --> 00:32:25.410
they were deemed inadmissible for identifying the attacker in the
506
00:32:25.529 --> 00:32:28.230
earlier Weepy Voice cases in St. Paul.
507
00:32:29.549 --> 00:32:32.750
During the course of that trial, the judge threw out
508
00:32:33.549 --> 00:32:36.829
the voice identification of the Weepy Voice killer. He said
509
00:32:36.869 --> 00:32:42.410
it wasn't sufficient to tie him to Karen Potak or
510
00:32:42.509 --> 00:32:49.079
Kimberly Compton. The only thing we had connecting Stefani was
511
00:32:49.279 --> 00:32:52.539
his voice on those calls, and we didn't think we
512
00:32:52.599 --> 00:32:56.779
had enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
513
00:32:56.819 --> 00:32:57.880
we could prove it was him.
514
00:32:59.720 --> 00:33:05.299
Consequently, Paul Stefani was never tried for those crimes. He
515
00:33:05.339 --> 00:33:09.079
was found guilty of the second-degree murder of Barbara Simons
516
00:33:09.700 --> 00:33:13.849
and the attempted murder of Denise Williams. In total, he
517
00:33:13.880 --> 00:33:16.750
was sentenced to 58 years in prison.
518
00:33:18.130 --> 00:33:21.269
Essentially a life sentence. He wasn't going to be getting out.
519
00:33:21.670 --> 00:33:23.829
We didn't want to go through another trial if we
520
00:33:23.849 --> 00:33:27.329
didn't have to, unless we could absolutely prove it.
521
00:33:28.650 --> 00:33:32.599
In a shocking twist, 12 years into his sentence, the
522
00:33:32.660 --> 00:33:38.200
weepy-voiced killer himself would give investigators all the confirmation they needed.
523
00:33:38.779 --> 00:33:42.200
Stefani had one final confession to make.
524
00:33:44.289 --> 00:33:47.410
Paul Stefani found out that he had terminal cancer and
525
00:33:47.450 --> 00:33:50.690
he wasn't going to live more than a month to
526
00:33:50.690 --> 00:33:53.349
12 months. That was what the doctors were giving him
527
00:33:54.089 --> 00:33:57.819
because of skin cancer. So he asked the guards at
528
00:33:57.859 --> 00:34:00.160
the prison Oak Park Heights to get a hold of
529
00:34:00.200 --> 00:34:02.740
the St. Paul police because he wanted to talk to
530
00:34:02.799 --> 00:34:05.099
them about what he had done.
531
00:34:06.440 --> 00:34:08.420
And so the investigator went in and met with him.
532
00:34:08.460 --> 00:34:11.500
He'd already been convicted in Barbara Simon's murder as well
533
00:34:11.559 --> 00:34:12.840
as Denise Williams' assault.
534
00:34:14.340 --> 00:34:19.460
Stefani admitted that he had assaulted Karen Potok and he
535
00:34:19.519 --> 00:34:25.550
admitted killing Kimberly Compton. So all four, he admitted that
536
00:34:25.820 --> 00:34:28.550
he was responsible for their assaults or their deaths.
537
00:34:30.070 --> 00:34:34.289
This isn't that he's suddenly become remorseful, that he's suddenly
538
00:34:34.329 --> 00:34:37.630
grown a conscience overnight, that he knows he's going to
539
00:34:37.670 --> 00:34:39.809
meet his maker and he needs to offload.
540
00:34:39.469 --> 00:34:40.110
All of this stuff.
541
00:34:40.829 --> 00:34:43.570
What he's trying to do is control what he leaves behind.
542
00:34:43.969 --> 00:34:46.360
He doesn't want to leave this world not having the
543
00:34:46.460 --> 00:34:48.780
credit for all of the murders that he's committed.
544
00:34:50.119 --> 00:34:53.860
Stefani had confirmed that he was responsible for all of
545
00:34:53.929 --> 00:34:57.630
the crimes he had been suspected of, but his next
546
00:34:57.710 --> 00:35:00.230
admittance would stun investigators.
547
00:35:01.530 --> 00:35:04.030
And then out of the blue, he mentioned that he
548
00:35:04.130 --> 00:35:07.750
also had drowned this woman. He couldn't remember her name,
549
00:35:07.789 --> 00:35:10.079
but drowned a woman in Lauderdale, which is a suburb
550
00:35:10.099 --> 00:35:10.760
of St. Paul.
551
00:35:12.460 --> 00:35:17.000
He confessed to a murder that nobody had any indication
552
00:35:17.039 --> 00:35:20.940
that he'd ever done. In fact, in his confession, it
553
00:35:20.980 --> 00:35:24.829
took them for a while to identify who that victim was.
554
00:35:26.420 --> 00:35:29.079
The police went back to say, is there any unsolved
555
00:35:29.179 --> 00:35:33.219
cases where someone was drowned and you never found a suspect?
556
00:35:33.960 --> 00:35:40.090
And sure enough, they found Kathleen Greening in 1982.
557
00:35:40.989 --> 00:35:45.050
She was a schoolteacher in the St. Paul area, and
558
00:35:45.170 --> 00:35:48.550
apparently she and Paul Stefani had gone out on a date,
559
00:35:49.550 --> 00:35:53.929
and she was drowned. And for many years, police suspected
560
00:35:53.989 --> 00:35:54.820
her husband.
561
00:35:58.659 --> 00:36:01.420
When the police went back to look at the evidence,
562
00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:04.300
he gave them evidence about her house that only the
563
00:36:04.340 --> 00:36:07.280
killer would know the layout of the house, how he
564
00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:07.650
did it.
565
00:36:10.179 --> 00:36:12.840
He had strangled her, drowned her in a tub in
566
00:36:12.889 --> 00:36:13.489
her own home.
567
00:36:15.340 --> 00:36:21.369
This time, Stefani hadn't phoned 911. And in another stunning revelation,
568
00:36:21.710 --> 00:36:24.849
he claimed that wasn't the only thing that was different
569
00:36:24.909 --> 00:36:29.239
in this case. he'd met with Kathleen on several occasions.
570
00:36:30.179 --> 00:36:32.929
He described the murder. You know, they're going up to
571
00:36:32.969 --> 00:36:37.489
a bathtub. Are they going to have consensual sex? This
572
00:36:37.570 --> 00:36:40.590
is completely different. He had feelings for this person.
573
00:36:41.369 --> 00:36:43.949
He's a master of information control.
574
00:36:44.050 --> 00:36:46.820
He wants to be very careful about the story that's
575
00:36:46.900 --> 00:36:50.380
emerging around his murders. The reason that Stefani didn't call
576
00:36:50.559 --> 00:36:53.719
the police after killing Kathleen was that he didn't want
577
00:36:53.760 --> 00:36:57.429
them to know about it. There's something he feels ashamed of,
578
00:36:57.469 --> 00:37:00.710
something he feels embarrassed about, something that doesn't quite fit
579
00:37:00.769 --> 00:37:02.570
with the persona that he's trying to create.
580
00:37:03.789 --> 00:37:08.210
Reporter Caroline Lowe was intrigued by this killer who'd suddenly
581
00:37:08.289 --> 00:37:09.150
confessed all.
582
00:37:10.010 --> 00:37:12.550
I went to prison to meet with him to see
583
00:37:12.570 --> 00:37:15.449
what I could learn because most killers, most criminals I've
584
00:37:15.469 --> 00:37:17.590
covered never admit they've done anything. I thought, is there
585
00:37:17.630 --> 00:37:20.349
anything we can learn from him? And I remember sitting
586
00:37:20.369 --> 00:37:23.469
there in prison as he's describing Kathy Greening, he said,
587
00:37:23.510 --> 00:37:26.070
we had a really good evening. We went out, we
588
00:37:26.110 --> 00:37:29.000
went home, and then he takes his hands up to
589
00:37:29.039 --> 00:37:30.800
his throat and he said, I just suddenly felt like
590
00:37:31.559 --> 00:37:33.920
doing this to her. And he's showing me with his hands.
591
00:37:34.340 --> 00:37:38.099
It was chilling to see him just calmly describe what
592
00:37:38.119 --> 00:37:42.980
he did. Talking like, what did you do for your
593
00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:46.849
vacation last summer? But he's talking about killing people, attacking people.
594
00:37:48.570 --> 00:37:53.449
Investigators reexamining the evidence in Kathleen's case were able to
595
00:37:53.530 --> 00:37:55.710
prove that she had known her killer.
596
00:37:56.650 --> 00:38:01.750
They found his telephone number in her address book that
597
00:38:01.809 --> 00:38:04.969
the authorities had overlooked in their original investigation.
598
00:38:05.989 --> 00:38:08.489
We didn't have these smartphones and everything in those days
599
00:38:08.530 --> 00:38:10.590
that you could put somebody's name and telephone number in.
600
00:38:11.269 --> 00:38:14.070
She had it in there, Paul S., and they knew
601
00:38:14.570 --> 00:38:17.429
from the arrest of him that that was his telephone number.
602
00:38:18.800 --> 00:38:21.940
There was one aspect of the confession that bore a
603
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:25.139
striking resemblance to the Barbara Simons case.
604
00:38:26.300 --> 00:38:29.239
He mentioned that he'd put her purse in a mailbox,
605
00:38:29.820 --> 00:38:31.940
and that was one of those details that only the
606
00:38:31.980 --> 00:38:34.099
killer knew. In one of the other cases, a purse
607
00:38:34.119 --> 00:38:36.489
had been put in a mailbox, but that was so significant.
608
00:38:36.869 --> 00:38:39.190
So he gave them things that there was no doubt
609
00:38:40.329 --> 00:38:42.210
by the time they were done that Paul was in
610
00:38:42.250 --> 00:38:43.030
fact her killer.
611
00:38:45.389 --> 00:38:49.530
There was a big revelation for the media and county
612
00:38:49.590 --> 00:38:52.909
attorney's office because two or three different offices had reviewed
613
00:38:52.949 --> 00:38:56.789
that case. And part of the problem was the medical
614
00:38:56.849 --> 00:39:01.710
examiner couldn't determine if it was accidental or a homicide.
615
00:39:02.329 --> 00:39:05.050
So the cause of death was undetermined.
616
00:39:06.860 --> 00:39:10.699
It had taken 15 years, but finally her loved ones
617
00:39:10.780 --> 00:39:14.960
knew the truth about who was responsible for Kathleen's death.
618
00:39:16.070 --> 00:39:20.260
the depraved killer had confessed to murdering three women and
619
00:39:20.300 --> 00:39:23.679
to the attacks on Karen Potak and Denise Williams.
620
00:39:24.820 --> 00:39:28.630
The way he abused those women, stabbing a person 61 times,
621
00:39:29.869 --> 00:39:32.909
beating a woman with a tire iron until she's unconscious,
622
00:39:32.949 --> 00:39:36.760
leaving her for dead, that's a violent, evil person.
623
00:39:38.380 --> 00:39:40.960
When you look at that and the brutality and the anger,
624
00:39:41.239 --> 00:39:45.719
you just wonder why somebody wasn't alerted to the rage
625
00:39:45.780 --> 00:39:48.619
in this person and the evil of this individual a
626
00:39:48.659 --> 00:39:49.300
long time ago.
627
00:39:50.980 --> 00:39:56.190
But Paul Stefani hadn't finished his final chapter. Before he died,
628
00:39:56.530 --> 00:39:58.010
he contacted Caroline.
629
00:39:58.730 --> 00:40:01.130
He wrote me a letter, actually, I got the next week,
630
00:40:01.570 --> 00:40:05.829
and he asked me if I would reach out to
631
00:40:05.849 --> 00:40:08.840
the victim's families. This is the letter, which I still have.
632
00:40:09.679 --> 00:40:11.460
He asked me if I'd reach out to the victim's
633
00:40:11.519 --> 00:40:15.139
families because he's wanted me to tell them that he
634
00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:20.289
wanted to put flowers on their graves. I would not
635
00:40:20.329 --> 00:40:23.730
be a go-between between the serial killer and these families
636
00:40:24.369 --> 00:40:27.570
to help him maybe feel better as his life is
637
00:40:27.630 --> 00:40:28.190
winding down.
638
00:40:30.250 --> 00:40:34.949
I think that he wanted to make his slate clear
639
00:40:35.789 --> 00:40:39.750
in the eyes of law enforcement, in the eyes of God.
640
00:40:41.429 --> 00:40:45.170
As a devout Catholic, I am admitting to all my sins.
641
00:40:45.949 --> 00:40:50.690
Please forgive me. I'm telling the police everything I did,
642
00:40:50.909 --> 00:40:53.889
and that's why I believe that he did not commit
643
00:40:53.989 --> 00:40:56.090
any more murders than those he confessed to.
644
00:40:56.110 --> 00:41:05.159
53-year-old Paul Stefani died of cancer in June 1998. After
645
00:41:05.340 --> 00:41:09.139
all of his confessions, one question remained unanswered.
646
00:41:10.019 --> 00:41:15.730
Why? Why? A lot of us thought that maybe his
647
00:41:15.849 --> 00:41:22.230
religious upbringing and his family falling apart, he was taking
648
00:41:22.289 --> 00:41:26.719
it out on women. He was very hostile in the
649
00:41:26.760 --> 00:41:30.820
brutality of the attacks. You don't stab someone 61 times
650
00:41:30.860 --> 00:41:34.239
with an ice pick, you know, without having a lot
651
00:41:34.280 --> 00:41:35.280
of rage and anger.
652
00:41:42.159 --> 00:41:45.820
The Twin Cities will never forget the losses suffered by
653
00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:49.179
their communities at the hands of Paul Stefani.
654
00:41:49.760 --> 00:41:54.210
You mentioned the weepy voice caller, killer. Anyone in Minnesota
655
00:41:54.550 --> 00:41:57.150
remembers that. If they were around back then, they remember
656
00:41:57.170 --> 00:41:58.309
the weepy voice killer.
657
00:41:59.670 --> 00:42:02.429
Paul Stefani thought he could do whatever he wanted to
658
00:42:02.469 --> 00:42:07.250
do in his rage. and his being evil and that
659
00:42:07.309 --> 00:42:09.809
he could call up and tell the police that he's
660
00:42:09.869 --> 00:42:12.699
sorry and that he would be forgiven or go to
661
00:42:12.760 --> 00:42:16.219
church and he would be forgiven. But I think he
662
00:42:16.260 --> 00:42:19.860
was looking for absolution and he never got it.
663
00:42:21.099 --> 00:42:23.360
He's a small town boy, became one of the most
664
00:42:23.719 --> 00:42:26.130
notorious serial killers in Minnesota history.
665
00:42:27.800 --> 00:42:31.389
Paul Michael Stefani has become etched in the minds of
666
00:42:31.650 --> 00:42:35.369
all who knew him as the notorious weepy voice killer,
667
00:42:36.110 --> 00:42:40.289
whose rage-fuelled and vicious attacks took the lives of three
668
00:42:40.469 --> 00:42:44.440
unsuspecting women and forever changed the lives of two more.
669
00:42:45.989 --> 00:42:49.570
Stefani may have believed he would be forgiven for his sins,
670
00:42:50.010 --> 00:42:53.469
but his horrific and violent actions mean he will never
671
00:42:53.530 --> 00:42:57.900
be absolved as one of the world's most evil killers.
