[Debra] I think it's the right time
for me to do this interview, because I feel like
it was important to maybe let others know
that it's OK...
[producer speaks indistinctly]
...let people know
not to be ashamed, not to be afraid that people are gonna
look down on you, I erroneously thought things
that weren't true, and I was
mistakenly believing him.
Everything he said to me, I believed.
It's a shameful thing, what our family members did,
but it isn't a reflection on us.
Things go wrong with them, but that doesn't mean that
it's in us.
We just happen to share some genes.
But I think it's time.
[sighs heavily]
You see this look? You see this look?
What a mean son of a bitch. Look at the face.
Oh.
This is the face of evil right here.
So I thank God
that through whatever means,
I was not in his path of destruction.
Right here, we're looking at a monster.
Right here, you can see the evil in his black eyes.
I could slay him with my words.
Hmm, you're a sorry piece of [bleep],
and I'm glad that you can't hurt anybody anymore.
I just wish that you would have died before all of this mess
happened to these poor people,
because you're nothing but a monster.
Today, I can tell you, this is done.
I will probably not speak about this bastard ever again.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
-[knock at door] -[creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[water dripping]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
[Debra] My mom and dad were high school sweethearts,
they both grew up in Fort Lauderdale,
and they married pretty young.
When Jimmy came into the world, he was so small and so cute.
I'm the older child, the older sibling, and I had
such a love in my heart for him.
Jimmy was the baby of the family.
And we just -- I doted on him.
He was my little brother, and he was so cute.
He did some things when he was little that were bad,
but the trouble that he got into was not violent of
any kind, it was just very mischievous.
It became a theme in our family because of his shenanigans.
It was a lot, all the time.
My brother Ricky or I never did the things he did.
I had no inkling of what was to come down the wire,
I'll tell you that.
No inkling at all.
You think you know someone? You really don't.
Even at a young age, he got in trouble outside the home.
One incident happened where I noticed, across the street,
the hose was in the front door of the house.
Mom!
The neighbors weren't at home at the time, but he had put
that hose in their house and turned it on.
And the house was flooded from this hose.
My mom just ran across the street, got the hose out of
the house, turned it off.
I think their house would have been ruined
if I hadn't have noticed.
It would have been a lot worse damage.
So she asked Jimmy, "Did you do this?
Did you put this hose in the people's house?"
And he said, "Yeah."
She said, "Why would you do that?"
He said, "I don't know. I don't know."
He never explained why he did it.
He just said, "Yeah, I did it," and he laughed.
But he admitted that.
It was like one of the few things he had ever admitted to.
And he got in trouble for it, but it didn't faze him at all.
I mean, at this point, my dad would spank him.
A lot of times, he would just smile.
He would laugh and shrug it off as, "You didn't get me.
You didn't penetrate this facade."
I was seeing a dark side emerge from him.
His lack of emotion when he would get in trouble was
something we all should have been a little concerned about.
Jimmy never mentioned our mom once we were not
with her anymore, never cried a tear.
And it didn't strike me as odd until I had children of my own.
And then I thought back to that time and thought,
that's really weird that he never cried once for our mom.
I cried for her, Ricky cried for her.
Jimmy just didn't seem to care.
His lack of emotions through things that were
very life-altering was quite telling,
although we didn't know it at the time.
Looking back, I realized that was a big...
a big flag that somebody should have picked up on,
but nobody did.
Jimmy's relationship with Stella was different from
the very beginning.
For some reason, he wouldn't give her
the time of day.
I don't recall them ever having a normal conversation, ever.
I believe Jimmy hated Stella.
Without a shadow of a doubt, he hated Stella.
And that's all he had for her was anger, just anger.
Stella had a favorite lamp.
And one day, it was broken when I came out of the bedroom.
Stella came home, she saw the lamp was not there,
and she was just beside herself.
She was so angry.
I didn't do it.
Ricky wasn't home at the time,
so she started grilling him about it, and he just kept
denying it, "I didn't break the lamp."
"I didn't do it." That's what his response was.
"I don't know. I didn't do it."
And he would say nothing else.
I knew he did it. He never admitted to it.
He would take stuff from her that
she liked or cared about.
You know, he would break things.
-What happened? -I don't know!
Where in the world would you come up with doing
that even? It's so destructive.
The reason he did these things was as, uh,
entertainment for himself.
He thought they were funny, wanted to get a rise out of,
just a rise out of anyone for anything.
One day, Stella was out and about doing errands.
When she came home, she was crying.
She was very distraught. She was just hysterical.
And I guess there were some kids that were rioting on
a corner near our house.
And as she drove by, one of the kids threw a brick at
the front windshield of the car.
Glass shattered all over Stella.
If the brick hit her in the head,
it would have killed her.
-It was horrible. -[as Stella sobbing]
She's telling us what happened.
[as Stella, sobbing] It was terrifying.
Jimmy was right there with us, and Jimmy laughed.
[laughing]
[laughter continues]
We told him, "This is not funny. This isn't funny at all."
He says, "Yeah, I think it's pretty funny."
Stop!
-[Debra] Jimmy just laughed. -What?
He just laughed. That's good.
She deserved it.
She didn't deserve that. What is wrong with you?
Looking back now, I think that was another sign
that we all missed.
Because when you have pleasure at someone else's pain,
there's something wrong with you.
This is a picture of
Jimmy.
Smile was still there, but not the twinkle in his eye.
That was gone.
He's not the innocent little kid anymore.
He's changing, all right. He's changing.
And, in this photo, he was changing to where
he was a ma-- he wore a mask, I want to say.
It's like he wore a mask.
And everybody thought he was a good, nice boy, nice boy,
which I think afforded him the luxury to do even worse
things, because nobody was suspecting him
and his charming self.
But what was starting to happen was,
he...[sighs]
He was doing more and more things
that he would get in trouble for, serious things.
Jimmy always just acted like he could do whatever he wanted.
Nobody's gonna say anything to him.
I think at that time is when things started to
change for him, and we just didn't know it.
And then things just got worse as we went.
One day, it was before I had to go to school,
and my dad had told me that
Jimmy was caught at the neighbor
Alice Stock's house. -Excuse me?
[Debra] I said, what are you talking about?
She was an elderly neighbor of ours.
Jimmy was in the process of trying to steal something from
her house when she woke up and saw him in there.
Alice Stock recognized him and said, "You're Jimmy Rode.
What are you doing in my house?" And Jimmy just fled, he fled.
So the police came, and Jimmy denied it, as usual.
Even though Alice Stock called the police on Jimmy,
he didn't get arrested.
We have her saying it did, we have him saying it didn't,
but nothing ever came of that.
Jimmy sidestepped the whole situation.
We're all crazy, he didn't do it.
Dad just told me what happened.
Nothing happened.
[Debra] Now, a right-minded person would know that
Alice Stock knew us well.
We had been living there for quite some time, so there was
no mistaking my brother. -I wasn't there.
[as Debra] Seriously?
[as Jimmy] I don't know who it was, but it wasn't me.
[Debra] I didn't know at the time, but he had a weapon.
He had taken a knife into her house and went at her with
the knife and threatened her.
Looking back, it was almost like he was anticipating
getting ready to do even worse things to people.
And he's, at this point,
he's escalating.
It eventually broke my stepmom and my dad up.
They ended up splitting because of Jimmy.
And I know he knew it was because of him.
I know he knew that.
And I felt bad for her, she got thrust into this.
She was an OK lady, she really was.
She did the best she could with us.
She just didn't know what to do with three grown kids.
Jimmy really just kind of lived to spite her.
And no matter what she said, he would just not even
give her the time of day.
Wouldn't even, he'd stop answering her even and just sit
there and stare into space.
We all underestimated his hatred of Stella,
even my dad -- we all underestimated that.
I was crushed. My dad was crushed.
I wish that it would have been Jimmy,
which is a horrible thing to say,
but it's true.
I really wish that it would have been the other way around.
It was after that that Jimmy went all kinds of sideways.
One evening, I got a call from my dad.
[phone ringing]
-[phone receiver clicks] -Hello?
[Debra] And he was really upset.
He asked me if I was sitting down.
"Yeah, I'm sitting down.
Don't tell me anybody else has died."
What happened?
He said, "No, but what has happened is your brother
went over and got into Stella's house, and he raped her."
I remember being incredulous, like I couldn't believe that
it happened.
I never in a million years thought he would do anything
like that to her or anybody else.
She called my dad, who was at work, and apparently, when Jimmy
knocked at the door, she was startled,
but she wasn't afraid.
Like she did not -- otherwise, she wouldn't have let
him in.
She had no idea that he was there to do her any harm.
-[as Stella] Jimmy. -[as Jimmy] Can I come in?
[as Stella] Sure, yeah.
[Debra] And then his look in his eyes changed,
and Stella said he just
got a whole cold look about him.
And then he grabbed a hold of her, and I guess they wrestled
around, and he ended up raping her.
Jimmy told her, "If you tell anybody, I will come back,
and I will kill you."
I'm sure she must have been scared out of her mind.
I never anticipated that kind of violence from him.
And with Stella,
it was...brutal.
I was sick to my stomach, and it's terrible.
It's awful.
She told us, "I'm not going to the police,
"because if he finds out, he'll come back here,
and he'll kill me."
I tried so hard to get her to change her mind.
She would have none of it.
So I respected her wishes, and I didn't say anything.
Well, after the incident happened, I came over to visit
my dad, and Jimmy came in, and we were right in the middle
of talking about it.
We just asked him, what -- "Is this true?
"What did you do?
"Jimmy, Stella says you raped her.
So what, she's just making that crap up, dude?"
"I guess. I guess.
She hates me so much."
[as Debra's father] Just tell us what happened.
[as Debra] What would she lie?
[as Jimmy] She's always had it out for me.
-[Debra] Jimmy denied it. -I didn't do it!
[Debra] There was nothing else to talk about.
We never spoke about it again.
I believe he raped Stella because he was trying to exert
his extreme power over her.
I think it was absolutely more satisfaction to him that
he knew she had to walk around and live with that.
And then I felt even worse ashamed,
in hindsight, looking back,
that I didn't do anything about it.
That was a really horrible thing.
I acknowledge and I know that I didn't do
the right thing there.
And I think that helped him to continue to feel that he could
get away with whatever he wanted to do.
Nobody was gonna do anything about it.
[Debra] After the incident with Stella,
we just tried to tiptoe around it.
We didn't speak about Stella around him.
We just let that whole part of our life be.
I think that it was a little bit of fear and denial
because of the fact that I had already lost one brother,
and I didn't want to lose this one.
I was in such a way that I tried to overlook a lot of
things because of the fact he was all I had left.
But I think deep down, I was afraid of him.
After he raped Stella, everything ramped up,
and he just got worse.
One night, my family and I had gone to the drive-in.
We came back from the movies, and there was ambulances
everywhere, fire trucks, police.
I didn't know what had happened.
Oh my gosh, I ran upstairs, and my mom told me that Jimmy
had went in and beat grandma, beat grandma to a bloody pulp.
[knocking noises]
My grandma said that he came and knocked at the door,
and she looked out the peephole and saw it was Jimmy.
She thought, well, wonder what he wants?
So she opened the door.
My grandmother said he came in and started talking to her.
She said he looked at me, and he looked at me like
I wasn't even there. -[door slams shut]
Like he was looking right through her.
-Is there anyone here? -No.
[Debra] And she said, "Jimmy, Jimmy, are you OK?"
"Jimmy," she said that a couple of times to him,
and he didn't respond. -Is everything OK?
And that's when she said he just came over and started
strangling her -- he didn't say anything to her.
He didn't say a word.
He just continued to beat her until she laid
and pretended she was dead on the floor.
And she said he finally left.
And she was able to crawl to the phone and call 911.
[distant siren wailing]
And the scene at my grandmother's was horrific.
The whole kitchen was covered in blood.
I was really upset, like, shaking inside.
It made me so upset. I didn't know what to think.
I couldn't believe it. I could and I couldn't.
She was so meek and mild, my grandmother wouldn't
hurt a fly.
She was never anything but really good to all of us.
The police came and picked him up, and that's when
they photographed his whole body.
There weren't no blood on him, and there was no marks of
a physical kind on him.
So, I guess at that time, you know, because she was
so distraught, they thought she would lie about her grandson.
He looks you in your eye.
And he is so adamant about his innocence that you end up
believing him because, I mean, even no matter how hard
you would badger him about it, he would just laugh
and discount it as, "You are crazy.
I would never do anything like that."
It was some way he had about him.
The trial for this was horrific in that they had this
in the newspapers, the local newspapers.
And they had my grandmother, like, up on the stand.
One of the pictures they showed of her,
you could tell she was old and frail.
Eventually, my brother was acquitted of the charges of
beating my grandmother and attempting to murder her.
And they said there was not enough evidence to
prove otherwise, they had reasonable doubt.
So he was acquitted.
They said my grandmother was old and was probably confused.
I was pretty shocked when it came back with an acquittal.
And therefore, he's back out.
And because he didn't get in any trouble for doing that,
we, I guess we took on the attitude when we're talking
to Jimmy, we have to act like
that was a big mistake, and he really didn't do it.
And that was part of what made me think for a moment,
maybe he really didn't truly remember these things.
Maybe he truly doesn't remember, and that's why
he's so adamant that, "I didn't do it, I didn't do it."
But that wasn't true.
One day, I received a call from him, from Jimmy, while he was
in prison.
And he was all excited when he called.
And I said, "Why are you so excited?
"What's going on? Did you get good news?
Are you gonna get out?"
He said, "No, I met someone in here, a really cool person."
I said, "Who is that?" He said, "Ted Bundy."
At this point, I just wanted to cry.
And I told him, "Ted Bundy,
why are you even talking to him?"
Oh, my gosh.
I didn't know what to say. I was speechless.
He continued laughing about it.
He had met this horrible killer.
And in my mind, I thought, what kind of stuff is
he learning from him?
He spoke to Ted Bundy at length
about different things,
one being that he should look at the Want Ads and look at
the Want Ads in Oregon, which is where Ted Bundy said that
he got a lot of his victims from.
I think he definitely aspired to be like Ted Bundy.
I think evil people have a way to hide that evilness that
we don't see until they're ready to let it out.
And then it's just awful for whoever they let it out on.
He was evil through and through.
So many people suffered because of him.
One day, when I came home to visit my dad,
there were police cars everywhere,
all over our street.
I didn't know what had happened, but ran in the house,
make sure my dad was OK, asked him, what is going on?
He said the neighbor, Alice Stock, had been
raped and murdered.
And my dad and I looked at each other.
Oh, my gosh.
Immediately, we both suspected that Jimmy
had something to do with that,
because of the fact because of the fact he had broke into
her house prior.
It seemed really coincidental that he would get out of prison
and within just a matter of a few weeks,
our neighbor was killed.
Looking back, I think he went back to Alice Stock's house to
finish what he had attempted to do the first time
he broke into her house.
[phone ringing]
One day, I got a call from Jimmy.
He told me, "I've decided that I'm gonna change my name."
"Well, I can't get a fair shake with Adolf James Rode
"everywhere I go.
"People are gonna think that I'm guilty of something,
and I didn't even do anything. So I'm gonna change my name."
"What are you gonna change your name to?"
He told me Cesar Francesco Barone.
I was like, "What? What?
Why would you pick that name?"
"I just thought it sounded cool," he said.
So he changed his name, but I figured maybe it's better,
because he won't be underneath the cloud of suspicion
everywhere he goes.
I knew he did things to my grandmother.
I knew he did these things to my stepmother,
but I was really hopeful that he was becoming
a different person.
I was proud of the fact that he joined the Army.
When Jimmy first joined, he joined as
Cesar Francesco Barone, not Adolf James Rode.
So they never knew of his name and his other records.
Now I know the reason that he did it was to --
so he could do more bad stuff
and not get detected.
My brother had a double life.
He had another side that did horrible things.
He was not telling me what he was doing
with his spare time in Oregon.
But comes a point in time where you have to be open to
the facts that are staring you in your face.
One night, I was at the house,
getting ready to watch "America's Most Wanted."
And "America's Most Wanted" comes on.
And, in front of my very eyes, is my brother on the screen.
My heart almost stopped.
They were searching for the murder weapon of
a particular murder that he had done with a firearm.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought
here, my brother's gonna be on the screen.
It was horrible. I was so ashamed.
And then I immediately was angry because of all the stuff
I was beginning to see was all lies, all lies.
[Debra] They were searching for my brother for
multiple murders that he was a suspect in.
Between 1991 and 1993, Cesar killed at least
four women in Portland, Oregon.
He also sexually assaulted at least three others,
and most of his victims were elderly women
who he raped and then strangled.
After he was captured, Jimmy called me from jail
one afternoon and told me that he had been arrested.
He laughed and said, "I didn't do anything.
This is -- somebody's framing me for this stuff."
I didn't really believe him, but that's what he told me.
I just didn't have the strength to deal with it.
I didn't have the strength to listen to a bunch more lies.
I never told him that I didn't believe him.
I just was neutral when I spoke to him.
I didn't know enough about the murders at that time.
I didn't really know a lot about the murders
and the rapes to...
confront him with it.
I acted like my normal big sister, because I loved him,
and I felt guilty for loving him.
I felt guilty that somehow I should have cut him at
the knees and just been happy to do it,
but I wasn't, and I was -- I really grappled with that.
I wanted to do the right thing.
I think that the law enforcement was interested in
speaking to me because it was apparent that I didn't know
a lot of these details.
They came, and for about an hour, they went through
all of the horrific things that he was accused of
as a courtesy to me,
because I was totally in the dark.
We know that all of this information is coming as a bit
of a surprise.
[Debra] They came with so much evidence.
I was taken aback that all of this stuff had been occurring.
And these were factual
police reports, witness statements.
I asked, "Do you think this is possible that he doesn't know
"what he's doing, that he somehow,
"his mind, it separates itself, and he's not aware
of his actions?"
And they told me, "There's absolutely
no truth to that at all," and they can show me.
And they proceeded to do just that.
No, unfortunately.
I thought that he had gone to Oregon to start a new life
with his new wife and son.
But apparently, he was in Oregon continuing to murder and rape
women, all elderly women.
I don't know why he targeted the elderly people.
First, I thought he did that because they were not able to
fight back maybe, easy targets for him.
But later on, I started realizing it was
more than that.
I was so sure in my mind it was something to do with our mom.
I believe he had issues with my mom
and my mom leaving our life
at such a young age for him.
It's horrific to go back
and think of all the things he did.
It was very hard for me to think
that he could be so cruel.
And I changed that day,
stopped thinking and trying to give him a benefit of a doubt,
because there wasn't any.
And, at that point, I knew in my mind and in my heart that
he was guilty.
I had no choice but to acknowledge it
and realize this is all true.
And my first thought is, "I'm going to lose my last brother."
I needed that at that time to help me to bridge that between
how I thought my brother was and how he actually was.
And all I had left in front of me was someone I did not know.
It was horrible.
I just wish I would've known sooner.
I wish I would've
known sooner.
This is Martha Bryant.
This is Margaret Schmidt.
This is Chantee.
This is... Betty Williams.
And this is Alice Stock, our old neighbor.
I'm so sorry he did this to you guys.
For Alice, for all intents and purposes, he got away
with her murder -- that was the beginning of it,
right there at Alice Stock's house is where
his killing began,
when he was becoming this terrible monster
that he became.
The only thing they all have in common is they crossed
the monster's path.
As the sister of the man who took these women's lives,
I will never forget their names.
I will never forget their faces.
I'm very sorry for what my brother caused in your lives.
None of you deserved that.
And it's very well possible and probable, in my mind,
that he did do that to others that were just never...
caught, never found out about.
Nobody really knew that my brother was a serial killer.
And I didn't really tell anybody.
But it feels really good to say out loud, he's a monster,
and he's a murderer.
It feels really good to acknowledge that
and put that out to the world.
My brother was a bad man, a bad man.
He was someone I didn't even know,
and I'm not gonna grieve for him anymore.
I am, for once, in my whole 68 years of existence, I can be
at peace about my brother, knowing that I'm not
a bad person because he is a [bleep].
I'm not a bad person because he's a murderer, not me.
He's the murderer.