[indistinct radio chatter]
[Lt. Joe Kenda] It's February 12th of 1994.
Officer Carter from the Thornton Police Department
is arriving for work.
And sitting in front of the Thornton PD,
is a running car.
It's gone up over the curb and it's sitting in the grass.
All he's trying to do is come to work
And he discovers that work has come to him.
He didn't know whether this was a drunk driver crash
or otherwise.
[Lt. Joe Kenda] He goes into police officer mode
and pales out of his car to see what's happening.
There is a woman behind the wheel, covered in blood.
She has suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
[woman] Help me. Please. He shot me.
Please, please. Help me.
[D.A. Robert Grant] She was able to communicate that
a passenger in her car had been abducted by a man.
There's another victim in the hands of the shooter
and he's fled off into the early morning light.
She said this just happened.
You have to find him.
He's got that woman.
I spent my career closing murder cases.
But I'm not the only one who answered the call.
It takes a rare breed to solve the unsolvable,
to catch a ruthless killer.
To find justice for the dead.
That's what it takes to be an American detective.
I'm Rick Archer.
I'm a retired Thornton Police Department detective.
I've never introduced myself
that way I'd introduced myself.
Hi, I'm Rick. [laughs]
I was in college in Indiana State University.
And I had full intent ongoing to law school.
This was not the lid to fit my pot.
So, look, I've got this great education,
and what I do with it? I guess I'll become a police officer.
I hit my stride when I was moved into detectives.
I got to use more brain power.
And ultimately, was named as lead to homicide investigator.
I was sound asleep,
enjoying rest which I rarely got.
Then I just got a call from patrol sergeant.
There's not a lot of times you end up with a shooting victim
on the front lawn of the Thornton Police Department.
So, just the circumstances, really unique.
[Kenda] Detective Rick Archer is summoned
to handle a crime scene
at his own police department. Somewhat odd.
We've don't provide curb service,
but sometimes we have to.
[Archer] So, I get over there and I take a look around the scene.
And there it is.
The gold Cadillac in the front lawn
of the Thornton Police Department.
Uh, driver side door and passenger side door open.
There was, uh, blood throughout the interior.
[Kenda] Archer looks more closely at the car
and sees bullet holes in the driver's door
and sees a bullet hole in the seat.
[Archer] There was also evidence
of somebody having been drug
from the passenger side into the street.
And they're telling me that there's a possibly
abducted woman as part of this.
And your mind just races trying to figure out.
"Okay, what resources am I going to need?"
[Kenda] The only person that knows details
is in a Denver Hospital.
EMTs are not confident
that this woman is going to survive.
[Archer] From that point,
I send a team of two detectives
to the hospital so that
if Jaquie's able to provide any statements pre-surgery,
we have somebody there to get them.
[Kenda] Some people have a very strong will to live
and that's obviously the case with this girl.
She has suffered three gunshot wounds
but she's with us, and she is conscious.
[Kenda] And she thinks maybe they need
some assistance of some kind
and she pulls over behind the car and stops.
It was a small blue Geo Metro.
[Kenda] And all of a sudden, a girl not wearing a top
runs to her car, jerks the door open.
Uh, and so Jackie took off.
The girl told her her name was Rhonda Maloney.
She got off work and she was driving back home
when she got rear-ended by a car.
It just bumped her
so she stopped to see what the damage was.
And when she got out of the car
she was immediately attacked.
So now, they've driven only a short distance.
The car the girl got out of
begins to immediately chase them.
The driver of the car continued firing on them
all the way up the highway.
[Kenda] Jackie feels herself get hit with a bullet.
Multiple gunshot wounds.
But she continues to drive.
She's determined to reach the police.
At some point, she realized that
her legs weren't working.
And ended up coming to rest
on the lawn of the Thornton Police Department.
[Kenda] That's normally when a criminal goes the other way.
Not this guy. He's not done yet.
[woman] No!
[Kenda] This guy looks directly at her...
points to gun at her face.
Rhonda was curled up in a ball in the passenger side.
[Grant] The fellow pulled Rhonda out,
saying, something like, "You thought you were gonna get away?"
He drags his screaming woman back to his car
and they drive off.
Good God. Who are we dealing with here?
Is this Jack the Ripper?
He was described as a younger light-skinned
moon-faced black male.
She says, "His face is burned into my mind."
She's a very good witness.
The reason that was unique to us
was just there weren't a lot of Saturns out.
I don't think most people even knew
what a Saturn was in those days.
So, at that point in time,
the immediate thing is to find Rhonda.
[Kenda] Anytime a kidnapping has occurred,
the urgency is absolutely extreme.
The only way for a kidnapping to end
and for a criminal to ensure his escape
is to kill the victim.
[Archer] Our focus was trying to find that Saturn.
We had already requested assistance
from the Air National Guard to come out with helicopters.
And doing anything they could for us.
[Kenda] They do a search of the area
and they find nothing.
[Archer] Jaquie had told us where Rhonda's car was.
And we went down there.
Rhonda's vehicle was a small blue Geo
and it had some minor damage on it.
[Kenda] There's a fresh dent
in the rear of Rhonda Maloney's car.
[Archer] There were some footprints.
There were some tire tracks.
We had nothing else.
[Kenda] Archer is thinking about this case now
as the pursuit hopefully begins soon on the Saturn.
And he remembers something.
An intelligence report he read several years before
about a girl who wound up murdered
in Estes Park in 1988.
Seventy miles northwest
of the Thornton Police Department.
[Archer] So, at that point in time,
I reached out to Larimer County
and then I got a copy of their case file.
It had never been solved.
And reading through the case file,
it was just carried on, just literally vanished.
[Kenda] There are moments in cases
where something comes to light
and it just strikes you as like a lightning bolt.
That happens to Archer.
And he wonders, "Could this be the same guy?"
The search continues for Rhonda Maloney without success.
But Archer believes he's dealing with someone
who's a repeat offender.
He then reaches out
to the Larimer County Sheriff's Department
and asks to speak to the detective
who worked the Jessica Arredondo case in 1988.
And he's put in touch with Detective Toppenberg.
[Archer] I didn't know Toppenberg,
but I hear a lot of really, really good things about John.
I'm John Toppenberg. Retired deputy
with the Larimer County Sheriff's Department.
I retired as a detective working major crimes.
-Detective Archer. -Toppenberg.
[Toppenberg] There were obvious similarities
between these two cases.
This particular case started with people,
uh, that were going south
out of Rocky Mountain National Park.
-[man] This is really nice. -[woman 2] Yeah. Beautiful really.
[Kenda] Two tourists are returning
from an early morning visit
to Rocky Mountain National Park.
They spot another overlook next to the highway.
Turnouts, where you can go and take photographs.
And then they find something horrible.
They observe the naked body of a female
lying in the rocks.
Detective John Toppenberg
from the Larimer County Sheriff's Department
responds to the scene.
[Toppenberg] From examination of the scene,
it was obvious that the body was airborne
for a short while.
And came to rest 26 feet from where she was thrown.
Uh, there were tire tracks
that indicated a car pulled into the turnout
and threw it over the impingement.
She was without clothes
when she was thrown over the edge.
It was obvious that she had sustained
significant trauma to major portions of her body.
[Kenda] The body shows signs of sexual assault.
Her face shows evidence of enormous blunt trauma.
She's been kicked. She's been stomped.
Her teeth are caved in backwards, still in her mouth.
This was perpetrated with purpose, with emotion.
This is someone who is enjoying what he's doing.
He is in a wild rage.
[Toppenberg] We did not know who the victim was.
It became clear
that a missing person case in Denver
uh, coordinated with the description of the victim.
The girl is Jessica Arredondo,
who just turned 21 years of age.
She is from a Denver suburb.
We followed up with Joe Arredondo,
the victim's father.
[Joe] I was such a... So, so sad that that happened.
We were hoping for the best but no...
It just was terrible, what happened.
Jessica is very sly.
And uh, very beautiful.
She was very, very bubbly.
She was a head cheerleader and she was very popular.
She got along with everybody.
[Kenda] This is just a young girl starting her life,
age 21, has her first job.
She works at US West as a telephone operator.
We are really, really proud of Jessica.
She's just a perfect daughter.
[Joe] The last time I saw her was on that Friday night.
And she had plans to go with her boyfriend.
They were going to go out that night to a nightclub.
And at the last minute, she decided
she wasn't feeling well and didn't want to go.
[woman 3] All right, babe.
[Joe] She said, I'll take you down there to the club
and I can leave you off there and I'll come back and pick you up.
So that's what she did. She went...
She took him to the club and that's it.
[Kenda] She drops him at the bar,
says she'll be back in an hour,
and she never returns.
The father says that the night she disappeared,
she was driving a new car she had just purchased.
[Joe] An '88 Mustang.
And she had to have that car.
She loved that car so much.
She didn't want any scratches or anything to happen to it.
[Kenda] And the next question is obvious.
Where is that car?
So, Toppenberg puts out a BOLO
to all law enforcement agencies Denver Metro.
Within hours, the Mustang is found.
[Toppenberg] The vehicle's proximity to the bar was...
It was least a mile away.
So, Toppenberg arrives at this car.
The hazard lights are flashing.
The keys are in the ignition.
Now, this is this girl's dream to own this brand new car.
Is she gonna walk away? No.
It would be speculative, but obviously,
there would have been a kidnapping.
Violent kidnapping.
Where she was taken.
[Kenda] Toppenberg looks more closely at the car
and he notices fresh rear end damage.
As if she's been tapped from the rear
by someone in a car.
What if the driver of that car is the killer?
And he is trying to get her to stop.
She puts her four-way flashers on
and gets out of her car
to check the damage of her dream machine.
[woman 4] What the hell, man?
[Kenda] He gets out of his car and grabs her by the throat.
And now she's gone
and winds up thrown off a cliff on Highway 36.
But as that case progressed,
we ran into way too many dead ends.
The Arredondo case goes cold.
Until February 1994.
It looked like it was a case basically like Rhonda.
If I didn't know better, I'd say the same person
who killed her killed Jessica Arredondo.
Our Killers MO is the use of a fender bender,
all for a simple reason.
it's successful.
[Toppenberg] The Arredondo case came into sharp focus
the moment the Rhonda Maloney case came into view.
And, uh, there was no looking back.
[Kenda] Archer and Toppenberg are both convinced
this is the same fellow.
Using the same technique.
This is him.
[Kenda] Archer and Toppenberg are investigating two cases.
It's the current case of the missing Miss Maloney,
who still hasn't been found,
and of course the death six years earlier
of Jessica Arredondo.
These are girls from the Denver suburb.
They were hit from the rear by another vehicle.
[Archer] I was literally just matching Toppenberg's case.
to my suspect who had the exact same MO.
[Toppenberg] I don't recall having any real question about
whether that was perpetrated by the same suspect.
It all fit.
This is only the beginning of this case.
And there's about to be another murder
if we don't find that girl.
[Archer] At that point, we were still searching
for Rhonda and that Saturn.
And so, I start reaching out to Rhonda's family
'Cause that's where we wanted to start.
Where did she come from? Where was she going?
Why was she wherever she was, when she was abducted?
My name is Kerri Gemeinhardt.
I'm Rhonda Maloney's sister.
Rhonda was my best friend.
We spent, um, the majority of our time together.
Growing up, she was always with me.
We pretty much did everything together.
Rhonda was a happy person who was lively and funny,
and had a great sense of humor,
and could live life to the fullest.
At the time that this happened,
it was myself, Rhonda, my brother-in-law, Carey, and my mom.
We all lived in a house together in Broomfield.
They told us that they had found Rhonda's car
on the side of the highway.
You know it's not going to be good at that point.
Rick Archer made quite an impression on me. He just...
seemed very focused.
You have to be understanding and patient
while professionally pushing for the answers you need.
It was really established early on that Rhonda had been at work.
[Joe] She works in a casino,
in one of the mountain towns close to Denver,
where gambling is permitted.
[Kerri] Uh, Rhonda was a cocktail waitress.
She loved it. She made great money.
She was really happy out there.
She had to work the later shift, 6:00 p.m. till...
2:00 in the morning, 'cause that's when the casinos close.
[Joe] You're looking for a sexual predator,
and here we have a pretty, young woman, who works in a casino
as a cocktail waitress.
Has our man been a customer in that casino?
We just had no idea.
It was very important to get into the central city casinos,
to review, um, security footage,
because, as we all know,
a lot can happen in a corner where somebody else isn't going to see it.
We wanted to know
if there was a casual connection
with Rhonda and, uh, a young, black man up there,
that could have expanded into something like this.
Or maybe somebody was a little handsy,
or... a little bit too interested.
[Joe] Archer reviews all of that
to see to it that, yes, she was at work that night,
normal hours, no confrontations.
No one followed her out the door.
She left work when her shift was over and was headed home.
So, that reveals nothing to him.
It's now been 24 hours
since Rhonda Maloney was dragged out of the front yard
of the Thornton Police Department.
And we still have not found her.
The search for the car continues, but no result.
So, at that point in time,
we actually returned to the initial scene where Rhonda's car was.
Now, the car was already gone because we'd impounded it.
[Joe] The crime scene is all you've got.
And when you're not getting anywhere,
you go back and start over.
Look again and see again. See something new. Who knows?
[Archer] The scene down on I-76,
it was dynamic. It was...
It was changing... not even daily. It was changing hourly
based on traffic flow and... and weather conditions.
[Grant] They, um, spent hours...
canvassing that scene.
And the detective walking up towards the abutment,
which was, uh, some ways away from the car,
he saw a black shape that was in the snow.
[device beeping]
[Archer] He heard something in the snow and walked over,
and found a pager,
something that nobody else had seen.
[Joe] This is 1994.
People carried pagers,
a little box that hooks on your belt,
tied to a telephone number,
where someone can transmit information to you.
[Grant] They had... were able to turn the pager on,
and discovered that
it had a message on... on there that said,
"This is Belt Harlan,
Detective Sergeant, Denver Police Department.
If you found this pager, please return it to me at the Denver Police."
[Joe] What's a Denver PD pager doing here?
What if our sexual predator, killer, is a cop?
Archer is shocked to discover
this pager belongs to a Denver Police Department detective.
What is it doing at a crime scene
of a kidnapping and an attempted murder?
[Archer] We pretty quickly
put together a lot of information on Belt Harlan.
Belt Harlan had a...
[chuckles]
...challenging career at the Denver Police department.
He had got angry at someone in the drive-up lane,
and he tried to climb through the window
of the drive-up place to get at this guy.
He was known for having a terrible temper.
[Joe] If a policeman decides
to start committing crimes, he's a dangerous criminal indeed.
He knows the game.
[Archer] We knew he had a troubled past.
But the primary thing was that
he didn't even come close to matching the description of our suspect.
[Grant] He was older, up in age, darker-skinned,
nothing at all like the description that Jaquie gave.
[ringing]
[Archer] Around that same time, my partner,
through, uh, his computer work at DMV, found a Saturn
with the plate number, "cha-ching".
This really interested us, because we really felt that
that was the sound that a one-armed bandit makes
at the casinos, is "cha-ching" when it pays out.
[Joe] He is a gambler.
Well now, Miss Maloney is a waitress in a casino.
He does some more checking and he finds that the owner of that car is Robert Harlan.
Robert was a light-skinned black man with a moon face, and young.
[Joe] We're not looking at a detective here.
We're looking at a detective's son.
It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.
[exhales] Craziest thing.
[Joe] So, he looks up Mr. Robert Harlan.
What Archer is amazed by,
is the length and depth of his criminal record.
Robert Harlan was a bad egg.
Robert Harlan had many, many allegations of sexual assault,
many, many allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace.
In addition to that,
Archer discovers something else.
He worked at US West,
which is where Arredondo worked.
He worked there when she worked there, six years ago.
He is the perfect candidate
for who we're looking for.
This is our guy!
So, at that point in time,
in our world, it was called "balls to the wall."
This was the most dynamic case I have ever seen in my life.
Things were unfolding so rapidly.
Our focus was trying to find Rhonda.
In... In a case like this, you... we always use SWAT.
[Joe] In a cop world, everything is "RFN."
"Right [bleep] Now."
"I need a SWAT team."
"I need a hundred policeman."
"I need a helicopter."
Whatever it is you require, is going to show up...
right [bleep] now.
[Archer] We knew he was armed,
and absolutely knew he wasn't afraid to shoot.
So, we used explosive entry
- and... -[muffled explosion]
...flash-bangs.
[Joe] A flash-bang detonates,
-creating this enormous noise which will... -[shouting indistinct orders]
...deafen anybody for a few seconds, and a brilliant
flash of light that will blind you.
You are completely disoriented. You can't hear,
and you can't see.
And that's the point.
[Archer] Uh, the SWAT team made a dynamic entry into the grandmother's house,
and we found Robert Harlan in his bedroom.
[man in house shouting indistinctly]
We woke him out of his sound sleep.
We took him into custody
with, literally, no issues whatsoever.
-[radio beeps] -[dispatcher over radio] Seven-eight, twenty-nine.
[dispatcher continues indistinctly over radio]
[Joe] Here is Robert Harlan.
There is no Miss Maloney.
Where is she?
-[yelps] -They've got a canine with them.
The canine hits on the car.
They can see in the window, nothing's in the car.
But they can't see into the trunk.
Archer is concerned he's going to find something horrible
in the trunk of this machine.
Archer opens the trunk.
And it's empty.
Where is she? And what did he do with her?
[Archer] We transported Robert back to Thornton Police Department.
My sergeant informed me that
he had selected two other detectives
to conduct the interviews with Robert,
and that I was supposed to go home...
to get some rest.
I just explained to them that's not ever going to happen.
[Grant] Robert Harlan was wrapped in this blanket
and... and speaking very softly.
Of course, Rhonda was missing.
And... And they were still hopeful...
to some degree, that they might find her... alive.
Deny, deny, deny...
That's what he does.
[Archer] I was watching the interview, and I was watching Robert...
just run the entire thing.
And after a bit,
I just walked to the interview room,
opened the door and said, "You two are done. Out."
[Grant] Archer came in, fresh face, and...
and a new sort of approach.
[Archer] First thing, right in the door,
I was like, "Okay, you're not in charge here. I am."
Up to this point, he's been able to play the victim.
Well, now, you have somebody who's going head to head with him.
[Joe] What does he do?
He puts himself with the victim.
He says, "For the purpose of selling drugs."
We say, "For the purpose of rape and murder."
But he puts himself with her,
and that is significant.
[Archer] I was starting to get to him.
And this has been part of my training for all those years,
is to continue down that path.
And behold, there is a knock at the door,
'cause an attorney showed up at our police department,
and, uh, put a stop to everything.
Everything.
It was horrible.
It was absolutely horrible,
because I knew that he was ready
to give me his version of the rape.
So, they're left with no confession,
a few incriminating things maybe.
But ultimately, the case stands as it is.
But the next day, Archer's in his office,
and gets a call from the front desk
that Robert Harlan's father,
Detective Belt Harlan,
is there to see him.
And he's carrying a cardboard box.
[Archer] So, Belt told us that he received a call
from his other son, who said that
the day before, Robert had come by his place,
he was fully covered in blood,
um, asked if he could take a shower.
[Grant] He took his shirt off,
[shower water running continuously]
and he took out a gun.
[Archer] He'd left his gun there,
borrowed his brother's car.
And...
went, what we assume, is looking for his pager.
[Grant] And that's how that evidence was... was bought into the case,
the gun that shot Rhonda and that had her blood on it,
and the clothing that Robert had been wearing,
that had her blood on it.
[Archer] It takes an amazing person
and a strength of character
to be able to turn evidence in,
and admit that your son's a killer.
[Joe] Now, Archer has hard, physical evidence.
Robert is bought and paid for, for this case.
But they still don't know what happened to Miss Maloney.
[Archer] Three days after taking Robert Harlan into custody,
I received a call.
It was, uh, a road out in Adam's County, called Imboden Road.
And a small bridge over a, um, ditch or creek...
And underneath the bridge, was Rhonda's body.
[Joe] This girl is naked,
savagely beaten and tortured.
[Grant] Shattered jaw, shattered, uh, eye sockets,
in addition to a bullet
that was fired into her forehead.
I was at that business for 28 years,
and I've seen some horrendous crime scenes.
And this is one of the most horrendous,
in terms of the injuries done
to Rhonda Maloney.
[Kerri] When they found her,
I was with my dad, and I saw the look on his face.
And all I remember was screaming at him,
"No, don't... Don't say anything."
Because I knew, as soon as I saw him.
Her family was very much...
"All we want, is for him to be convicted.
And that... That's all we need."
[Joe] Robert Harlan goes on trial for the first-degree murder of Rhonda Maloney,
and the attempted first-degree murder
of Jaquie Creazzo.
In the autopsy, the toxicology report came back negative.
This totally unravels Harlan's statement
about selling this girl drugs.
She doesn't use drugs.
[Grant] We presented evidence that showed that Harlan
was a sociopath, that he was a predator.
And it was a way of his life.
[Joe] The idea of surveilling
and selecting a victim at advance,
makes it plausible
that Robert Harlan followed Rhonda Maloney's vehicle
after she left work at the casino.
He caused a minor vehicle accident, causing her to stop.
She got out of her car to look for damage.
-He was able to get her into his car... -[indistinct arguing]
[Rhonda screaming and crying]
...raping her at gunpoint for two hours.
[Archer] Jaquie came around the corner.
Jaquie stops...
And then, it's a foot race.
[Rhonda] Help me!
[Archer] Robert goes running towards them,
trying to stop them.
Hence, in the process, lost his pager.
-[muffled scream and window shattering] -[Joe] Harlan fired at the car
as he pursued it,
-as they tried to escape from him, -[muffled scream]
until they crashed in the front yard of the Thornton PD.
So, he grabbed the victim again
and dragged her out of that car, back into his.
He ended Rhonda's life that night,
and put her body in a place where he thought no one would ever be able to find.
[Grant] Obviously, the central piece
in this case, was Jaquie. She was shot in the spine,
that caused her paralysis. And she testified...
bravely, [chuckles]
[titters] incredibly detailed.
She just did amazing.
[Joe] Jury finds him guilty of first-degree murder,
of attempted first-degree murder,
first-degree sexual assault,
and second-degree kidnapping.
Mr. Robert Harlan will spend his life behind bars.
Robert Harlan never admitted
to the murder of Jessica Arredondo.
There was never enough evidence found or presented,
to move anywhere forward with charging him with the homicide.
[John] If it had not been for his attorney,
we would have certainly gone and interviewed him.
It left me with a feeling of frustration,
a feeling of anger.
[Joe Arredondo] We think he's involved,
but he has never admitted
or even said anything about it.
We keep on hoping that something will come up,
and that we will be able to, and, uh, know wha-- what really happened.
[Archer] I think this case was really important.
It left me feeling really proud
of everything that we have accomplished.
Proud and sad, because I did--
I didn't think Rhonda's family would ever really get over it.
[Kerri] Her birthday, I'd go up to the cemetery and...
I'll go sit and talk to her.
And I tell her all the time, I love her,
miss her.
I never want Rhonda to be forgotten.
[Joe] Robert Harlan is exceptionally dangerous.
He is sociopathic.
I don't believe that he sat still for six years.
This guy is a sexual predator.
I'm sure he committed other rapes in ad interim,
but there's no proof that he did.
You often hear people say, "There is good in everyone."
I disagree.
Not everyone.