Shortly before midnight on March 25, 1992, a couple, identified as R.G. and B.G., were abducted at gunpoint by two men as they were getting into their truck after an evening out in the West End area of Dallas, Texas.
One of the men was armed with a Tec-9 semi-automatic pistol. The men forced themselves into the couple’s truck and drove them to an ATM, where they forced the woman, R.G., to withdraw $200. The man with the gun then said they should go to the “castle.”
They drove to an abandoned home at the dead end of Eads Avenue. The couple were forced to strip off their clothes and then were tied up. The man with the gun raped R.G., and the other man forced her to perform oral sex.
During the assault, another couple, B.D. and his girlfriend, S.C., unexpectedly drove up. B.D. was a musician and had viewed the building during the daytime. He wanted to see it at night because he was trying to decide whether it could be the site of a music video.
S.C. was behind the wheel of her white Jeep when the man with the gun approached, yelling at her to shut off the engine and get out. She shut off the engine and the man reached in and turned off the headlights. When she got out of the car, the man clubbed her in the head with the Tec-9.
B.D. was ordered out of the Jeep and was pistol-whipped. Both were forced inside where they were ordered to strip. They were tied up as well.
At that point, the two men decided to flee and drove off. One took the truck and the other took the Jeep.
The two couples freed themselves, dressed and ran for help. Not far up the road, they spotted the car of Robert Glover, a school district security officer who happened to be in the area patrolling school property. Glover notified police and paramedics. B.G. was taken to the hospital, where a rape kit was collected.
The man with the gun was described as a Black man wearing a baseball cap and short hair.
One week after the abduction and rape, the police created a photographic lineup that included the photograph of 22-year-old Patrick Waller. At the time, the police suspected Waller of a different robbery and assault. Three of the four victims picked Patrick Waller out of a photo lineup. B.G., who had been raped, later testified that she refused to look at the photographs because she was traumatized and scared.
On April 9, 1992, Waller was arrested and put in a live lineup. B.G. viewed the lineup and identified him as the man with the gun who had raped her.
Waller, who was on probation for possession of cocaine conviction, was charged with aggravated robbery and two counts of aggravated kidnapping. He was not charged with rape.
Waller went to trial in Dallas County District Court in December 1992 on the aggravated robbery charge only. The aggravated kidnapping charges were held in abeyance. Police had not charged anyone as the gunman’s accomplice.
B.G. testified that Waller was the man with the gun who had raped her. “There is no doubt,” she told the jury.
B.D. and S.C. also testified and identified Waller as the man who forced them out of the Jeep, pistol-whipped them and forced them inside the building. S.C., who was 21 years old, said she studied the gunman’s face so that she would recall it later.
“He was pushing us into the house,” she testified. “I was thinking, ‘God, what’s going to happen?’ I just kept thinking about all of these statistics and how we were going to be a statistic and no one was going to know.”
S.C. said she decided to try to “remember as much as I can. If I get out, I don’t want this guy to go unpunished. So I started kicking into these survival tactics, whatever you want to call them ... And when we walked further into the house and I saw [the other couple]…tied up..and they were naked, and I thought that this was 10 times worse than I could have imagined.”
She said the gunman ordered her and B.D., who was 27 years old, to take off their clothes. S.C. said that while she was starting to disrobe, she saw the man with the gun beating B.D. with the weapon. “I finished taking off my clothes and he pushed us into another room,” she said. “He pushed us against the post, and he started waving around his machine gun, going, ‘You all are going to die. I’m going to kill you.”
The man ordered them not to move and left the room, she said. When he returned, he saw that B.D. had moved. “When [the gunman] came back in, he was freaking out, S.C. testified. “He was so mad…He went over and hit [B.D.] again. He was just waving around the machine gun … He put the machine against my temple and said, ‘Do you want to die?’ I said, ‘No.’”
S.C. said she feared the man with the gun was going to rape her, so she told him she was on her menstrual cycle. She said the man was “disgusted” and got even more angry. He then took S.C.’s underwear and shoved them into B.D.’s mouth, S.C. said.
Michelle Skidmore, an analyst from the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, testified that she had conducted serology testing on a rape kit and identified semen on a vaginal swab. She said Waller could not be excluded as a potential source of the semen because the rape kit showed blood type A and a PGM 1+ marker and Waller had these markers as well.
During cross-examination, Skidmore said the frequency of blood type A was 30 to 35 percent of the human population and PGM 1+ was 42%. She testified that the frequency of having both was “Forty-two times about thirty-five percent. So a little less than forty-two percent.”
She also said that Waller was a non-secretor, meaning he did not secrete his blood group markers into his other bodily fluids. Waller’s defense attorney, Charles Shavers, Jr., failed to point out that since Waller was a non-secretor, there was no way Skidmore could say that the type A blood could have some from Waller.
Skidmore said that Waller "is a member of the population that has these characteristics, and those characteristics are also on the evidence."
Waller testified and denied committing the crime. He said that on the night of the attack he took his girlfriend to her night classes at a beauty school. He said he picked her up at about 10 p.m. and then went to her home. She went out to get food and woke him at midnight when she returned. He said that he then went to bed.
A copy of Waller’s driver’s license showing him with long hair that protruded from under a baseball cap was introduced into evidence. He also showed the jury a visible gold tooth. Waller also noted that he wears glasses and is required to wear them when he is driving, particularly at home. None of the victims had mentioned that the man with a gun had a gold tooth. And all said the gunman was not wearing glasses.
Waller’s girlfriend, Gina Babcock, testified that he was with her at the time of the crime.
Willie Morris, a security guard at the apartment complex where Babcock lived, testified that sometime after 10 p.m. on the night of the crime, he saw Waller and Babcock arrive in the parking lot. He said he spoke with them briefly before they went inside.
On December 7, 1992, the jury convicted Waller of aggravated robbery. He was sentenced to life in prison. He then pled guilty to the two counts of aggravated kidnapping and was sentenced to 30 years in prison to be served concurrently with the life term. His probation on the cocaine possession conviction was revoked and he was given 15 years for that.
His conviction was upheld on appeal.
On September 26, 2007, after the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office created a Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), the prosecution agreed to an order for DNA testing. The Innocence Project of Texas paid for the testing.
On December 20, 2007, the crime laboratory of the Texas Department of Public Safety issued a report that said Waller was excluded as the source of the semen in the rape kit.
The prosecution then submitted the unidentified male DNA profile to the FBI’s National DNA Index System (CODIS). The profile was associated with Baron DeMon Bell, a Dallas man who was on parole for an unrelated conviction.
When Bell was located, he admitted that he was the man who had had raped B.G. He identified his accomplice as Lamando Simmons.
Simmons, who had been convicted and incarcerated in 2002 for assault on a public servant and released in 2004, also admitted to his role in the crime. Neither man could be charged since the statute of limitations on the crime had expired.
In 2008, Waller’s lawyers filed a state petition for a writ of habeas corpus. On July 3, 2008, a judge recommended that Waller’s convictions be vacated as well as the revocation of his probation. On September 24, 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the writ, and vacated his convictions. His probation revocation also was reversed. The case was then dismissed.
Waller was later awarded $1.3 million in state compensation plus a monthly annuity of $6,300.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 07-31-2026
