Serial Killer Podcast Documentary · Peter Jesse

Killer Caught After 3 Years By New Fingerprint System

February 27, 2026·45 min·3 clips

Dale Devon Chenette’s DNA matches Christine Vu, Wendy Prescott, and Shima Benson across 13 genetic loci.

1. Serial Killer Podcast Documentary follows the Arlington, Texas bathtub murders and the later fingerprint match that identified Dale Devon Chenette. 2. Ed Featherston, Tommy Lenore, Derek Robinson, and crime lab specialist Connie Patton drive the investigation because they connect the 1996, 1999, and 2000 cases. 3. The episode asks how one man stayed unidentified for years while leaving fingerprints, semen, and witness evidence behind. 4. On a Tuesday in 1996, Featherston responds to Apartment 816 at the Pear Tree apartments after Tang Chi Koo reports Christine Vu missing. 5. Koo says he found the door deadbolted from the inside, smoked a cigarette, and later found Christine Vu bound with duct tape in the bathtub. 6. Featherston finds no forced entry, and semen recovered from Vu’s body confirms she was raped before she was killed. 7. Koo becomes the first person of interest, but Featherston’s initial suspicion does not end the investigation. 8. In December 1996, Brenda Norwood and her family find 22-year-old Wendy Prescott dead in the same Pear Tree apartment complex. 9. Tommy Lenore says Wendy Prescott’s scene is identical to Christine Vu’s, including the floor plan, furniture, bathroom design, and duct tape binding. 10. Wendy Prescott’s case produces semen, an unknown body, and a thumbprint pressed into dust on a TV stand. 11. The semen profiles from Christine Vu and Wendy Prescott match, proving the two bathtub killings were committed by the same man. 12. Detectives search the Pear Tree complex, gather blood and saliva from hundreds of tenants, and clear 102 suspects through DNA after 18 months. 13. Sergeant Gary Krohn later revisits the 1996 evidence and sends the unknown dust print to the FBI’s iAFIS system. 14. The print returns a name: Dale Devon Chenette, who had been living at the Pear Tree apartments and had no prior criminal history. 15. Joel Stevenson compares Chenette’s inked prints with the latent prints from Christine Vu’s deadbolt and sees a scar on the right index finger match. 16. Lenore then brings Chenette in, and the suspect refuses voluntary samples until investigators obtain them by court order. 17. Shima Benson’s 1999 assault at the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority House adds another DNA link and gives investigators a description of an African-American male in his mid-20s. 18. The unusual injury to the attacker’s penis, caused when Benson bit him, becomes a detail detectives use in later searches and an APB. 19. The episode is told as a forensic true-crime investigation with police interviews, lab testimony, and a steady timeline of evidence gathering. 20. Listeners who want DNA-driven cold-case work and detailed detective procedure will get the most from it, while people avoiding graphic assault detail may skip it.

As heard by us

Old assaults and a new fingerprint search pull the case into focus.

This episode follows a murder case as older assaults, an APB, and a newly sharpened fingerprint search start lining up around the same suspect.

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A dead-end murder case finally moves when a fingerprint system catches up.

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