Through The Pouring Rain

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

It was the year the rain changed. The year the rain in the dark in the woods became a thing to fear. The year a visitor came to call in a privileged green suburb called Forest Hills, and a Nashville lawyer learned about her security – or, rather, that she was not secure at all.

Pat Young: We're all safe-- you know, a man's home is his castle.  We're-- we're safe at home. Well, you're not always safe at home. 

It was March 1994.  That's when the terror began. It was the middle of the night.  Pat Young, accomplished, gutsy woman, successful lawyer, engaged to be married, alone,  asleep in her house, heard something, felt something.  Opened her eyes.

Pat Young: It was a-- a stranger in my home.

Keith Morrison: How terrifying is that?

Pat Young: It's a life-altering event. 

Somehow, some way, a man had broken into pat's house. Now he loomed above her, anonymous, a stocking over his face, his hands on her.  No question what he was there for.

Pat Young: You're at home asleep in your bed and you wake up with a stranger telling you to do what I tell you.  I don't think anybody would doubt what's getting ready to happen. The only doubt is you wonder are you gonna be killed.                       

She struggled.  He was much larger, aggressive, powerful.

Pat Young: You're reduced to nothing so fast that everything-- every ounce of power is taken away from you.  You can have a weapon.  I had a weapon.  If you reach for the weapon, it's probably gonna be used against you.  So everything at your disposal is taken away.

He pinned her down. She felt she would die. And then she did the one thing she thought might survive her, to let someone know what had happened.

Pat Young: I bit a piece out of his hand.

Keith Morrison: As the attack was going on.

Pat Young: Which is why they had DNA in my case.

Keith Morrison: And what, you held on to it?  Hid it?

Pat Young: I put it under the bed.

Keith Morrison: And were able to retrieve it later.

Pat Young: The police found it later.

Courageous?  The man had a gun on her, could have killed her any second. But at that very moment, Pat Young made a decision: She would not be - refused to be - a passive victim.  A sentiment she was going to share with other women yet to come. Pat Young risked her life, and bit the man. 

Eventually, he fled, into the woods behind her house. Then the police came, the questions began, the evidence search. They found that bit of skin from the rapist's hand.  That precious little piece of DNA. And Pat, the tough, independent lawyer, got up the next day and went to work. 

Pat Young: My receptionist didn't recognize me, I was so swollen and beaten.  And I passed a lawyer downstairs.  He told me later, "That looked a lot like Pat except-- look-- looked a lot like Pat's hair.  But I wonder if that was a car wreck or what."

Nashville DA Roger Moore heard about the vicious attacker, the violence of his assault- and was alarmed.

Roger Moore: We knew this was a person that needed to be found.  And the sooner the better.  And in 1994, we had the DNA.  We had what it took to identify the person.

And of course, had the DNA found its match in some database somewhere back then, back in 1994, what followed might never have happened. But there was no match - nothing in the file, at least. And so the evidence, useful though it was, sat filed away, waiting for a suspect against which it could be compared.

And years passed by in which this horrible but apparently solitary crime went on doing its' corrosive work in the life of lawyer Pat Young.  And she left her home in that leafy neighborhood - though there were other reasons, too.  But mostly, she left behind her sense of personal safety.

Pat Young: I would sit in a house-- every door was locked.  I would check with a handgun, every door, every room, under every bed and every closet.  Even though there was an alarm on where I went after I left my house.  But I'd get in the car and now I've got to get out of the car and go in the house.  What if he's here?  What if someone's here?  What if someone's between me and the house?  I did that for a long, long time. You'd tell yourself that you're being ridiculous. But it does, it alters you.

So it did.  And Pat began to realize that she was, in many ways, alone. 

Pat Young: One of the worst remarks that got made to me was at a Christmas party.  And a woman said "Oh, well, was it good for you?"  And I stood there and looked at her.  And said, "Oh, my god." I went up to the hostess of the party and said, "I have to go."  He said, "Why?"  I said because I'm gonna-- I'm gonna hit somebody and I have to go home now.

And then it was November 1998. It wasn't very far away. Another of Nashville's green, wooded suburbs. It happened again.  And then again. And then...again.

WSMV reporter Dennis Ferrier:

Dennis Ferrier: He shows up, and he shows up big.

Keith Morrison: And these are upscale neighborhoods.

Dennis Ferrier: Very upscale neighborhood, very nice neighborhoods. In 1998 it probably happened four times, but it happened the exact same way: rainy night, wooded area, someone is attacked in their own home.  And the guys got a mask.  He's got gloves.  He's got rope.  He's got a condom.  It's like the same MO.  It's very meticulous.

Keith Morrison: That was when people started talking about it.

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Dennis Ferrier: That's when people started talking about it because you have someone in a very affluent part of town breaking in and raping people in a very brazen way.  It's gonna get attention.

The rapes were always vicious, accompanied by brutal beatings, threats to kill the victims and their families -  who were often asleep in the same house.

Dennis Ferrier: You have a husband upstairs and a woman downstairs, and he goes in and effectively rapes the woman downstairs while the husband is upstairs asleep.

Just think how long he watched to understand that this was OK.

Keith Morrison: Because he'd been watching them for some time

Dennis Ferrier: Who knows how long. 

And soon a long, creeping terror wound its way around and through the leafy precincts of some of Nashville's most  affluent citizens.

Dennis Ferrier: You start to hear about this and you're a woman living in that area and it starts to rain and you're afraid.

Zea Miller: You don't think you're gonna live. I was convinced I was gonna die.  That was it.  I was not going to see my birthday.

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