Blood brothers

Sara James Correspondent • Profile

DORCHESTER, MASS. - It was a chilly April night in 2001, and on the second floor of this house, a young woman unwound for bed as she usually did.

Her habit? A small dose of “Letterman” before drifting off to sleep.

Sara James, Dateline correspondent: How much of the show did you watch that night, do you remember?

'Kate': Maybe 20 minutes or so.

Living with male and female roommates,  the woman “Kate” didn’t worry much about security even though she lived in the heart of big-city Boston, in the blue-collar Dorchester section.

'Kate': It didn’t even cross my mind to be afraid. You know, you’re at home in the place that you would think would be the most safe.

But around midnight, she was startled awake by a nightmare—a man she’d never seen before, standing at the foot of her bed. And this nightmare was real.

'Kate': I started freaking out. I started asking him to leave, telling him to, trying to raise my voice so I could alert maybe my roommates to that, you know, there was someone in my room. And nobody heard me.

James: Did you scream?

'Kate': I was about to scream. And it was at that point that he actually raised his hand to me and said to me, “Do you want me to bleep you up?”

James: You were afraid that he would kill you.

'Kate': Yeah.

Kate didn’t know it at the time, but just eight months earlier and a few blocks away in Dorchester, there had been another violent sexual assault.

James: Were you afraid he was going to kill you?

Jennifer Hogrell, other victim: Yes. I begged him not to kill me.

This woman, Jennifer, also had been watching television and had fallen asleep.  A stranger crept through her window and raped her in her own living room. 

James: What is it that brings tears to your eyes right now?

Hogrell: Just the thought of trusting everybody in the neighborhood and knowing everybody. And then to have it happen.

This is a story about two rapes and one trial—a trial that would change four lives forever. When the case was finally over, it would tear apart two young men—once linked by the closest of bonds; while forging a life-long sisterhood between Kate and Jennifer—two determined yet decidedly different young women.

'Kate': I was wearing a night dress. And he started you know moving the night dress up on me. And ...  sorry. It’s just very...

James: It’s still hard to talk about.

'Kate': It is. It’s very uncomfortable to talk about.

Kate isn’t her real name, but one she asked us to use. She says when she was interviewed by police in the early-morning hours after her attack, she couldn’t identify her rapist—other than to say he was a tall, thin light-skinned black man wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a baseball cap.

During her rape, semen, containing tell-tale DNA, got on her nightshirt. The rapist walked out with the nightshirt, the evidence ...

Prosecutor David Deakin: He knew that his semen could link him to the crime.  He didn’t want that to happen.

But it turned out he missed some of the evidence. Police found semen on a pillowcase, and it turns out, it matched DNA recovered from that other rape—Jennifer’s rape—eight months before.  Police now knew they were searching for a serial rapist. 

But who was he? While police had tantalizing DNA, they didn’t know whose it was, because it didn’t match anyone in their computer system. Then, ten weeks after Kate’s rape,  in July 2001, police caught a big break.

James: Were you aware of the unsolved rapes in Dorchester in 2000 and 2001?

Corde Miller: Yes I was.

That Saturday night, a third Dorchester woman heard a rustling at her window and went outside to investigate.

Miller: And, at that point, I was out there, totally vulnerable.

Vulnerable because she was now face to face with a stranger—a stranger trying to climb through her window.

Miller: So, I said to him, “Get away from my windows and get off the property.”

The man ran away.

James: You thought you’d scared him off.

Miller: Yeah.

But just an hour later—an unbelievable, terrifying moment—she saw that the stranger had returned, and once again was trying to jimmy her window. 

Miller: He was determined to get into the house.  So, I just grabbed the phone and dialed 911.

A caravan of police cars, blue lights flashing, arrived almost immediately, silhouetting the man still at her window.

Miller: The whole street was just a sea of blue. At that point, it kinda dawned on me, maybe this is the home invader.

James: Maybe this is the rapist.

Miller: Right.        

Police arrested 27-year-old Darrin Fernandez, who also lived in Dorchester, for attempted breaking and entering.  What’s more, he’d also tried to break in to the house next door. 

Was he a desperate thief or something more sinister?  Police found traces of blood containing DNA on a window sill where the man had cut himself trying to get in – DNA  which proved to have serious repercussions for Fernandez. 

Deakin: That little drop of blood matched his DNA profile and also linked him to the two prior rapes.

Police felt sure they’d nabbed their serial rapist. That’s because a DNA match ordinarily singles out the only person in the world with that specific scientific signature. And yet, there was something quite unusual about this blood evidence—something police had never seen before.