[music playing]
NARRATOR: Paul Savini is a detective
with the Woonsocket police.
In April of 2003, he works the missing persons
case of a local prostitute.
KYLE STONE: Her name was Audrey Harris.
She was in her 40s.
NARRATOR: A month after Audrey Harris
goes missing, her case remains unsolved,
when a second woman disappears off a Woonsocket Street corner.
KYLE STONE: My partner and I were assigned a missing persons
case on a Christine Dumont.
She was a 42-year-old white female reported
missing May 3rd of 2004.
NARRATOR: Like Audrey Harris, Christine Dumont
is a woman on the edge, a drug user who has worked the streets
for years and is now missing.
Debbie Boerger worries about her daughter, Stacie.
I think she was looking for fast money
and got up in the wrong situation and liked the cash
but didn't like what she did.
NARRATOR: In July of 2004, a mother's worst fears
are realized when Stacie's boyfriend files a missing
persons report with police.
He says, Stacie's missing.
I says, what are you talking about?
He said yeah, she didn't come home last night.
That's it.
It's like she disappeared off the face of the Earth.
The people who were missing, we knew that they were arrested
before for prostitution.
We know that's a high-risk endeavor.
NARRATOR: The pair dig into the three cases
and quickly ID a pool of suspects.
We really had no other suspects
other than a potential john.
We want to know everyone that's coming into the city,
picking up these prostitutes.
NARRATOR: An anonymous call to the PD
gives detectives a fresh lead.
The information was a phone call,
an anonymous phone call, that said we might want
to speak with Jocelin Martel.
I had a heroin addiction.
I did it because I needed the money for my drug addiction.
NARRATOR: In July of 2004, cold case detectives
sit down and listen as Martel talks about the night
a trick almost turned deadly.
He pulled up.
I was walking on the sidewalk.
And he's like, you want to make some money?
And I was like, yeah, you know?
We went into the house.
We spoke about money for sex.
I asked him where he wanted to go.
And as soon as I turned my back to him,
he put his arm around my neck and started choking me.
What I did was, is, I banged my head back on his head.
And we both fell backwards.
And when we both fell backwards, I stuck my thumb in his eye.
And he let me go, and I ran out the door.
NARRATOR: Jocelin survived the assault
but never reported it to police.
It's unfortunate.
A lot of times, they think that the police
aren't going to help them because of the lifestyle
they're in.
And that's certainly not the case.
NARRATOR: Jocelin doesn't know her attacker's name,
but she remembers where he lives.
The color of the house and she described
the shutters, the trim.
She described how she got in.
We were able to get that address,
run it through our computer system,
find out who lives there.
NARRATOR: The house is rented by 33-year-old Jeff Mailhot.
He's nowhere to be found in our database.
Not a ticket, not an arrest.
NARRATOR: Mailhot seems clean.
Then detectives run his home address
through their computers.
We did a computer check, and then Eddie
found that there was another case at that house
that had happened several months earlier
with another prostitute.
NARRATOR: Another prostitute who tells detectives about a john
who tried to kill her.
TEESE MORRIS: He said, all right, you know.
Come in, have a drink.
So I sat at the kitchen table, you know.
And we was talking and everything like that.
I opened up a can of beer, and I grabbed the napkin.
And when I went to turn back around, he was behind me.
He comes up from behind, gets her in a choke hold,
and she has a violent struggle with him.
She remembers a point of almost losing consciousness.
TEESE MORRIS: The man grabbed me with his forearm
and had me like this in a chokehold.
I could not breathe.
And I couldn't scream.
So I'm thinking, oh, my God.
I'm going to die.
She just screams and pleads for her life.
Please, please, please, if you let me go,
I won't say anything to anybody.
TEESE MORRIS: He didn't say not one word to me.
And I knew at that point, my life was over.
And I started crying.
I'm saying, sure, please, I have a baby.
My money's in my pocketbook.
Please, just don't hurt me.
And he just, she says, just gives her this cold stare
and just tells her to leave.
And she walks out the apartment.
TEESE MORRIS: I don't know why he didn't kill me.
I don't know why he let me go.
He just said, get the [bleep] out of here.
I don't want to see you around here no more.
NARRATOR: Teese Morris is the second woman
to allegedly be attacked by Mailhot
and lived to tell about it.
I mean, this guy's playing this game.
He's already choked two girls.
I mean, a chokehold is a very, very dangerous move.
He tried it on these two.
Obviously, he might have tried it on other girls,
and maybe they didn't get away.
And that was our whole theory.
So yeah, we had an arrest warrant and a search warrant.
And we were very hopeful to get him in.
NARRATOR: On July 16, Sergeants Lee and Nowak
head to 221 Cato Street and slipped
the cuffs on Jeff Mailhot.
SERGEANT LEE: All right, Jeff.
It's a game.
You go into that room, and your sole purpose is to retrieve
whatever he's hiding.
NARRATOR: Mailhot admits to choking prostitutes
but will go no further.
NARRATOR: Detectives aren't buying Mailhot's story.
Lee switches gears and slides photos of three
girls across the table.
When I threw those three photos
down there, the three victims, he had an immediate reaction.
You could see it all over his body, his body
language, his expressions.
He was very nervous.
And you knew there was something there.
He told us, you guys think I killed these girls.
We had never told him that the girls were dead.
We didn't know the girls were dead.
So that was a red flag for us.
That's when we really started hitting
them a little harder with the questions we were asking.
NARRATOR: Detectives are walking Mailhot
closer and closer to the very edge of a triple homicide.
It was apparent that he was going to give it up.
I mean, he was starting to cry.
He was shaking.
He would pause long, unnatural pauses,
like he was thinking about what should I do.
Tears started to well up in his eyes
that you can't see on the videotape.
But sitting there, that's when you realize,
oh, my God, he's going to confess to this.
NARRATOR: A little more than an hour
into the interview, Mailhot breaks.
You're working so hard, and then
when it finally comes, it's like, oh, my God,
he's really done this.
A million things are going through your mind.
Your heart's racing.
Your adrenaline's flowing.
SERGEANT LEE: Where are they?
NARRATOR: Mailhot says he cut up each victim in his bathtub,
wrapped their body parts in black plastic bags,
and threw them in dumpsters.
I wanted to choke him myself.
I mean, I could not believe that some human being could
do that to another human being.
NARRATOR: Just before 9:00 PM, Mailhot is
cuffed and led to a jail cell.
With confession in hand, detectives
believe their case is complete, that is,
until the DA decides the state needs more.
PATRICK YOUNGS: It's not enough to say-- for somebody to say,
I did it.
You have to give some evidence that it occurred.
And we didn't have the bodies.
NARRATOR: If Jeff Mailhot dumped his victims like trash,
their remains should be at the local landfill.
On July 19, cold case detectives head out with a backhoe.
STEVE FAIRLEY: It's kind of hard to believe the magnitude
of what's behind me, but the size of the landfill,
the amount of trash that was here,
I just realized, I mean, you're kind of, in essence,
looking for a needle in a haystack, I guess you can say.
NARRATOR: For six days, the team searches,
but comes up empty handed.
On the seventh, Detective Fairley
unearths a small black bag wrapped in duct tape.
When I did open it, it was kind of a little shock to me.
I saw the remains of a scalp, a crushed scalp.
I believe there was two forearms.
The skin was removed.
The bones were crushed.
But I was able to decipher what was what, distinguish
those amongst other body parts.
NARRATOR: The remains are eventually
ID'ed as Stacie Goulet, the last of Jeff Mailhot's victims.
The remains of Audrey Harris and Christine Dumont
are never recovered.
On February 15, the defendant pleads
guilty to three counts of first degree murder
and two counts of assault.
So he got life plus life plus 10 years.
That's how it broke down.
What he did was horrendous.
And to me, I look at him, he's just a monster.
I was satisfied for what he received.
I'm confident that he'll never see the light of day again.
And he'll spend the rest of his remaining years
behind bars, where he belongs.