[music playing]
NARRATOR: 20-year-old Kira Ash awakens to a nightmare.
There is a man in her bedroom.
I saw him for a split second, and he turned me around and
blindfolded me with a bandanna.
He just said, do everything I say.
He kept telling me, don't look at me.
Do exactly as I say.
Don't say anything, and I won't hurt you.
I just was just like, God, just please just save me.
You know, I don't know what's going to happen here,
but don't let him kill me I'm not ready to go yet.
NARRATOR: The man rapes Kira and leaves
her with a set of instructions.
KIRA ASH: He told me to lie down,
as I was already on my knees.
Told me to lie down face down, not to look to the left
or to the right, and to count to 15.
NARRATOR: Kira Ash does as she is told.
Eventually, police are contacted.
A rape kit is taken, but no semen is recovered,
and the case goes cold.
Meanwhile, a rape victim moves on,
but never entirely past the moments
that changed her life forever.
Even another rape victim can't understand
what you've been through.
They have their own story.
And no one can understand the emotions that you feel.
God had helped me erase that almost from my memory.
Not erase it from my memory, but erase it from my heart.
Somebody jumped on top of me and said,
don't you know when somebody's robbing you,
you pretend like you're asleep?
NARRATOR: Four days before she is to be married,
Lisa Meredith finds herself alone with a man
intent on raping her.
LISA MEREDITH BURNS: He immediately
put a pillowcase over my head.
And so I didn't see anything.
When he pulled me over to the side of the bed
and he asked me to take my clothes off, I knew then.
That's when I started really getting scared.
And I knew what was going to happen.
NARRATOR: Lisa is sexually assaulted,
then told to count to 200.
Before he left, he tied me up with Michael's ties
and tied me up on the bed.
NARRATOR: Michael is Michael Burns, Lisa's fiancee.
The night it happened, we had had an argument,
and I had left the apartment.
So, you know, it was my fault because I wasn't there.
If I wouldn't have gone out, the door
might not have been unlocked.
You know, so I felt guilty.
I would try and tell him, if he was there,
it could have gone--
gotten a lot worse.
You know, he could have even killed him,
or they got in a scuffle.
Lineup today, Mark Hall.
NARRATOR: Louisville police begin
investigating Lisa's rape, but find
more questions than answers.
At the time, working these types of cases, we
were a little skeptical of whether this actually occurred.
NARRATOR: Lisa cannot provide a description of her attacker.
And there is no sign of forced entry
or semen from Lisa's rape kit.
We really didn't have a whole lot to go on.
Looking back on the domestic dispute
and the things that occurred prior to,
we kind of had a little question.
They, more or less, thought it was just a lover's quarrel,
and she was trying to get back at me.
They asked me to take a lie detector test,
and I said, yes, I'll do whatever.
Just please somebody believe me.
NARRATOR: Lisa passes the polygraph,
but the investigation takes its toll on the young couple
and casts a shadow over what should
have been the happiest day of their lives.
LISA MEREDITH BURNS: Up to one point,
we had decided to postpone the wedding.
And we decided, you know what?
We're not going to let him take this away from us.
[applause]
NARRATOR: Michael and Lisa Burns go on with their lives.
Lisa's case, however, joins the rape
of Kira Ash in the cold files, where both
will sit for six more years.
Lieutenant Joe Richardson is head
of sex crimes at the Louisville Metro Police Department
when he answers the phone and finds
Michael Burns on the other end.
I explained my situation, asked him--
you know, I told him my wife--
told him that my wife was raped six years ago, seven years ago,
and nothing's ever happened, and I want to know what's going on.
NARRATOR: Richardson pulls the file.
Initially, it doesn't look too promising until he happens
upon a few sheets of paper.
JOE RICHARDSON: These three sheets were
in the back of that case file.
And that's what got the ball rolling in
this particular investigation.
NARRATOR: The paperwork is part of a 1996 interview
between a career burglar named John Boston and Louisville
Detective Mike Loran.
And he targets the locations throughout the Louisville area
where he and others had committed different types
of crimes, burglaries.
And I think there were some robberies involved.
NARRATOR: One location in particular interests Loran.
It is the former residence of rape victim Lisa Burns.
Mr. Boston had claimed that another individual had
gone into an apartment there.
And when he came back out, Mr. Boston asked him--
his accomplice what had happened.
He was talking about a sexual assault
that had-- a possible sexual assault that had happened.
Something about this one, I just
had the feeling that it wasn't the person
that he was trying to claim did it.
I thought that he might have been involved in it.
NARRATOR: Loran had passed the lead on in 1996,
but it was never followed up.
Lieutenant Richardson intends to correct that oversight.
JOE RICHARDSON: The first thing I did was to check the arrest
records over at Corrections to see if this accomplice,
the person that Boston said did perform the burglary,
was in custody.
And sure enough, he was in custody on this date.
So that tells me, he didn't do the offense.
NARRATOR: The man John Boston claims admitted
raping Lisa Burns was in jail at the time
the rape was committed.
John Boston himself, however, was not.
NARRATOR: Richardson digs deeper into the old interviews
with John Boston and finds the burglar
led police to a second house where a rape had occurred.
And I recognized that address is where we'd had
a sexual assault back in '95.
NARRATOR: It's the attack on Kira Ash, one
that bears some striking similarities
to Lisa Burns' assault.
In the end, it was the same.
He, middle of the night, broke in, covered her head up,
raped her, threatened her, and then looked for something,
some articles to steal.
NARRATOR: Richardson eventually locates
another assault, a rape from 1994
that carries an identical MO.
I said, bingo.
This is a third case.
NARRATOR: Unlike the first two, this last attack
has semen evidence.
Now the hunt is on to find John Boston and get his DNA.
JOE RICHARDSON: This evidence contains
the letter that John Boston sent the Police Department.
NARRATOR: That is, until the suspect licks an envelope
and unwittingly seals the case against him.
It's unusual for somebody to try to taunt the police
and show that they're leaving the country,
to quit looking for me, you know?
He just made one mistake, and that was the fatal mistake--
sent me his DNA.
NARRATOR: The envelope John Boston presumably
licked is sent to the Kentucky State Crime Lab in the hope
that a DNA profile might be developed.
At that point, the DNA profile was compared to the Combined
DNA Indexing System Database and was found to match
one unsolved rape case.
NARRATOR: It's one of the three rapes Richardson
suspects John Boston of committing
and the only one with DNA evidence.
On May 10, 2002, Captain Steve Thompson and Lieutenant Joe
Richardson sit down with Boston and let their suspect
do what he does best--
talk.
John Boston quickly lets investigators
know he knows what they really want to talk about.
He obviously interrogated some previous law enforcement
officer in Texas to find out what the game plan was with us
on what he was really facing.
I can tell you, from knowing John Thomas Boston,
he probably was trying to educate
himself as rapidly as possible about everything DNA is about.
NARRATOR: Despite the DNA link, Boston refuses to fold.
He is arraigned on three counts of forcible rape,
and a trial date is set.
On March 2, 2004, assistant Commonwealth attorney Tom Wendy
Rothstein lays out his case against John Boston,
starting with the 1994 rape, the only one with DNA evidence.
Critical to the case is the testimony of the rape victims.
Each takes the stand and relives the day
she was blindfolded, then raped.
Now, today, the defendant is in the courtroom.
Is that man who raped you that night in the courtroom today?
Yes, he is.
Point at him.
For eight years, my most vivid memory has been
of that night, not my wedding.
And I feel like I've cheated my husband from that.
NARRATOR: When it's time for John Boston to take the stand,
suddenly he's a man of few words.
Did you rape [bleep]?
No, I didn't.
Did you rape Kira Ash?
No, I didn't.
Did you rape Lisa Meredith?
No, I didn't.
NARRATOR: The jury doesn't buy it
and finds John Boston guilty on all counts.
He gets 420 years.
Kira Ash's verdict has since been overturned.
The Kentucky Supreme Court found statements Boston made in 1996
inadmissible in her case.
For Lisa and Michael Burns, the conviction
puts an end to the nightmare and helps to heal a marriage that
has already survived so much.
LISA MEREDITH BURNS: When you've been through as much
as we've been through, to let everyday things
like most people get divorces over
is nothing to us we laugh about.
We've been through way too much.
And we have our faith in each other
and trust and our faith in God.
And that's what's gotten us through.
I love you more today than I did 11 years ago.
Ditto.