CYNTHIA MCFADDEN, ABCNEWS (VO) Joe Smith is a convicted rapist and serial child molester.
(OC) Are you a monster?

JOE SMITH Am I a monster? In some people’s eyes, I probably am.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Some people want to kill him, and others, like his doctor, Fred Berlin (ph), want to cure him.

FRED BERLIN Mr. Smith’s problem is that he’s driven sexually in a way that he can’t control. If you could cut that part of his brain out in terms of the rest of his character and temperament and personality, he’s basically, and I choose these words carefully, a fairly decent human being.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Polly Franks’ daughter was one of his victims.

POLLY FRANKS I’ve heard people say that before, he’s a nice guy. Nice guys do not rape five-year-old girls.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Joe Smith’s story begins almost 20 years ago, back in San Antonio, Texas. He was the shadowy figure stalking this neighborhood at night. Preying on women. Naked except for a mask. The newspapers dubbed him the ‘Ski Mask Rapist.’ Ray Taylor (ph) would become his lawyer.

RAY TAYLOR There was an entire quarter of San Antonio that was living on needles for fear that the Ski Mask Rapist would be creeping into their home in the middle of the night. It was—it was—it was—doesn’t get any worse than this case happened. It was terrible.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Terrible for those living in fear and worse still for those who became his victims. Like the woman who lived here, a 26-year-old single mother. Smith says all he intended to do was peek in the window at her while she slept.

JOE SMITH When I was peeping in her windows, I observed some of the things that she was doing. And when I did enter the home, my full intentions were just to be closer and masturbate. And that’s all I was gonna do. I was gonna leave.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) But he didn’t. He broke into the house and raped her. The San Antonio police had no idea who was behind the mask. And the attacks continued. Smith’s lawyer now says Smith had as many as 200 victims, though Smith will admit to only this one. What is clear is that Smith was getting bolder. Bold enough to return to the house at 931 Sumner Lane. The Alred family lived in the house next door.

GENE ALRED He came back the second time, I think about a month later, and raped her again. And everybody was just fit to be tied around here then.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) If the police couldn’t catch the Ski Mask Rapist, Gene Alred was sure he could.

GENE ALRED Well, I figured this guy was crazy enough to come back the second time, he was—he’d come back again. I was gonna get him.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) By this time, Alred’s neighbor was so traumatized that she had moved out. And the Alred family set a trap in their neighbor’s empty house, first installing microphones. It was a clever plan.

GENE ALRED We fixed the dummy in the bed and put a wig on this mannequin’s head and we left the bathroom door cracked open just a little bit to leave enough light in there that—so you could—looked like there was a body in bed but there weren’t (sic).

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) For a month, they waited until one morning at 2:30 their microphones picked up something.

1ST MAN We heard noises coming from next door, and it sounded like a window being raised.

GENE ALRED So we grabbed our pants and our pistols and—and my son-in-law went out the front door and he jumped the chain-link fence. My son and I went to the front.

2ND MAN And we all three went over the fence tackling this guy, me and my brother-in-law. And we ended up on the ground back there scuffling.

GENE ALRED He wasn’t wearing anything but a ski mask and socks. That’s all.

2ND MAN Real bad smell. He smelled like a dumpster baking in a hot sun all day. I mean he stunk.

GENE ALRED So we subdued this—this scumbag, and my son Curtis said, ‘OK let’s see what you look like.’ And he pulled the ski mask off his head. And he was a dirty, long-haired, stinking scoundrel.

2ND MAN And my brother-in-law and my dad made me come in the house once we got him cuffed, because I was gonna kill him right there.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) The Alred family became local heroes and Smith became a pariah.

RAY TAYLOR I had San Antonio’s most unpopular defendant in decades. And I needed to figure out some way to minimize the impact on him, because he was looking at some consecutive life sentences.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) An unpopular defendant whose only chance was an unprecedented and risky defense. Taylor decided that Smith should admit he committed the rape but argued that he could not control his actions.

RAY TAYLOR I thought there was something biochemically wrong with Joe. And when he told me that he was just absolutely dominated by his desire for sexual stimulation, I went out to the medical school and started doing some research on abnormal sexual drives. And I literally stumbled across the writings of Dr. Fred Berlin.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) The same Dr. Berlin that would become Joe Smith’s doctor. Dr. Berlin founded the sexual disorders clinic at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He has spent his career treating and trying to understand sex offenders like Joe Smith. He feels Smith is a prisoner of his obsessions.

FRED BERLIN In my judgment, Joseph Smith is sick. Not only is what he’s doing wrong, but it’s totally irrational. What rational person would be preoccupied with thoughts of recurringly going out at night, leaving a consenting relationship, wanting to enter homes, wanting to stand over someone’s bed and rubbing up against them. I think even a layman, if we would step back from it to look at it, would say there’s something terribly disturbed about a person who has this as a central preoccupation in his life.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Joe Smith says it’s not that he doesn’t want to control himself, it’s that he is unable to do so. He says he has been completely dominated by his sexual desires.

JOE SMITH I mean, I know in my mind how much I fought with it and didn’t want to do what I was doing.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN You didn’t want to, but you did. Why did you?

JOE SMITH I wish I could answer that.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Where did the obsessions come from? Part of the answer, according to Dr. Berlin, is that Joe Smith is suffering from a chemical imbalance. Smith’s testosterone level is significantly higher than the average mans. But this alone, says Dr. Berlin, does not account for his behavior. Dr. Berlin believes that childhood trauma also played a role.
(OC) A psychologist who had evaluated you said at one point in court that, as a child, you were exposed to more sexual stimulation than you could handle.

JOE SMITH Yes, ma’am. I experienced seeing my sisters having sex. I had experienced seeing my mother having sex, which angered me.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Made you mad?

JOE SMITH Made me mad.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Were you molested? Something happened.

JOE SMITH Stop this.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN These are very painful memories.
(VO) Dr. Berlin believes that this trauma combined with Smith’s particularly high level of testosterone flipped some basic biological switch in Smith’s brain. Joe Smith has given Dr. Berlin permission to talk to us about his case.

FRED BERLIN The sex drive is another powerful biological force. God or nature put it into us so that the human race would continue. When that drive gets pointed in that the wrong direction, as is it is in the case of Mr. Smith it still recurrently wants to be satisfied, and it doesn’t take a mental health expert to recognize what a problematic situation that can then be.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN So about 20 years ago, at approximately the same time Joe Smith was posing as the Ski Mask Rapist, Dr. Berlin and others were developing a treatment for sex addicts like him. It’s called chemical castration. And at the time, it looked like it worked. A drug called Depro-Provera, a female contraceptive that reduces the male testosterone level to the point where most men would be incapable of or uninterested in engaging in intercourse. In fact, 90 percent of sex offenders treated by Dr. Berlin, many with Depro-Provera have not reoffended.
(VO) Ray Taylor turned Dr. Berlin’s theory into an unprecedented legal defense, arguing that between his biochemistry and his horrific childhood, the jury should see Joe Smith as chronically ill and that the proper outcome was not the punishment of jail but treatment with Depro-Provera.

RAY TAYLOR It was tough. Texas jurors are notoriously difficult, and we introduced some scientific testimony. We explained how the drug worked. We explained that Joe, himself, was not a bad person, that his blood chemistry was absolutely a mess, and that this would cure the problem.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Tom Rickoff (ph) was the judge in the case.

JUDGE TOM RICKOFF He basically said this man has a beast within him and that if he just gets this chemical, it will reduce the testosterone in his system and he has a good conscience. And he will not act out again because he knows right from wrong.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Gene Alred who had captured Smith didn’t buy it.

GENE ALRED Mr. Smith wasn’t sick in any way that anybody could help him. He did this because he wanted to do this.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) But surprisingly, the Texas jury, which had the power to decide Joe Smith’s sentence, did buy the defense, even though Smith had admitted to rape, the jury said he shouldn’t go to prison. Instead, they gave him a ten-year suspended sentence on the condition that he was treated with Depro-Provera.

GENE ALRED I was numb. The jury turned this—this guy loose. It just—I was—I was just devastated. Like everybody else was. It wasn’t right. We could have shot him out there in the alley. That would have been the best for Mr. Smith and for the other victims.

BARBARA WALTERS With the jury’s verdict, Joe Smith was free to begin a new life. He could move to a place where nobody knew his violent past. But how would he act when this radical experiment was put to the test in the real world? Cynthia McFadden with the dramatic final chapters of his story when we return.

ANNOUNCER He’s a rapist who was given a second chance by a powerful drug that controlled his urge to attack.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN But you have to take it for it to work?

JOE SMITH Right.

ANNOUNCER But what would happen if he stopped? The surprising results of a bold experiment when 20/20 continues.

(Commercial break)

BARBARA WALTERS Joe Smith admitted he was a rapist. But a jury set him free, on the condition that he be treated with a drug that controlled his sexual urges. At the time, some people were outraged. Would the experiment work? Or would someone else pay the price for Joe Smith’s second chance? As Cynthia McFadden picks up the story, the real test was about to begin.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Joe Smith became the poster boy for a whole new way of looking at sex offenders.

REPORTER (From “60 Minutes”) Depro-Provera can actually help control the...

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) In 1984, “60 Minutes” profiled him. And the radical and successful treatment this rapist was receiving. Not as a criminal but as a patient.

JOE SMITH (From “60 Minutes”) I’m not the monster they think I am. I’m a person. With a problem.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Joe Smith moved to Baltimore and became Fred Berlin’s patient. It seemed that this man whose every waking moment had been dominated by perverse desires was now able to function normally. It was, he says, an immense relief.
(OC) When you were taking Depro-Provera, no incidents of any kind.

JOE SMITH Right, nothing.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN So you’re here to tell me that Depro-Provera works?

JOE SMITH Yes, definitely.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Worked for you.

JOE SMITH Definitely.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN But you have to take it for it to work?

JOE SMITH Right.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) And that’s where Joe Smith’s story begins to unravel. While being treated by Dr. Berlin at Johns Hopkins, he met and fell in love with a nurse who had been one of those giving him the Depro-Provera injections.
And you married her?

JOE SMITH Yes.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN And the cynical might say that you picked the very person who could help you escape this program.

JOE SMITH Well, it could be the very person as far as a female goes that would understand it, too.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Though Dr. Berlin says he had reservations about Smith’s marriage, Smith left with his wife for Virginia, 200 miles away in this quiet neighborhood in Richmond. Though he was still on probation in San Antonio, no one in Richmond, not even the police knew he was a sex offender. As far as neighbors were concerned, Joe Smith was a truck driver and his wife a nurse. Paulie Franks lived down the street.

PAULIE FRANKS This is a good neighborhood. There’s people here who work hard and are very—very—we support each other. I mean, there’s good people in this neighborhood. We didn’t know that there’d been a monster put right in our neighborhood and lived among us for years.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Initially, Smith drove twice a week to Dr. Berlin’s clinic in Baltimore for treatment. But then Smith and his wife decided they wanted to have children, almost impossible while Smith was taking the drug. After three years of treating Joe Smith, Dr. Berlin decided it would be safe to taper him off the Depro-Provera and let his sex drive return.

FRED BERLIN I felt that perhaps some people, if we began it allow their drive to come back, would have learned enough about other ways of resisting temptation that the Depro-Provera might not be needed. And from a physician’s point of view, that would be the way to go.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Do you think in a way, you tricked Dr. Berlin? Did you fool him? Did you fool yourself?

JOE SMITH I might have been fooling myself, because if you take that—if you take Depro long enough, it does stop the compulsion.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN You feel cured.

JOE SMITH You feel cured. It’s just like an alcoholic that says he can stand by a beer and not take a drink, but once he takes that one drink, he’s fallen off the wagon.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) In 1989, soon after Smith stopped taking the Depro-Provera, the police began getting calls about a man prowling through Joe Smith’s Richmond neighborhood, wearing nothing but a bandanna, peeping in windows, then entering the houses. The Ski Mask Rapist was now the Bandanna Bandit. At times, it seemed almost comical. Neighbors reported sighting a naked man on a bicycle wearing a bandanna pedaling down the streets at night. But his victims were anything but a joke. The most vulnerable of all, children.

JOE SMITH I’d rather had age appropriate women to look on, and I don’t know if I should say this or not, but an older person wakes up easy, easier. And that’s not my intention to wake anybody up.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN You want to go in...

JOE SMITH And leave. If nobody’s ever woke up, nobody knows, and that’s fine.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Police say that for the ten years after he stopped taking the Depro-Provera, Joe Smith broke into at least 70 houses and abused dozens of children, often crawling into bed and violating them. This woman’s five-year-old daughter was one of his victims.

WOMAN She said a man had been in her room, that he didn’t have any clothes on, and that he had something tied around his face, which was a bandanna. She told me that he had tried to put things in her mouth, himself and that he pulled her underpants down and he turned her over.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Finally, Smith was about to be discovered. One night in 1994, his wife walked into their living room and found him standing over three sleeping children, one of whom was his own daughter. Another was Polly Franks’ seven-year-old daughter, who was spending the night.

POLLY FRANKS He was naked and masturbating over all three of the children, one of whom was his very own.

JOE SMITH I have never touched my children. They were sleeping on the floor. I was watching TV and masturbating. They were not in the picture at all.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN You don’t see anything wrong with that?

JOE SMITH Oh, yeah, yeah. They were sleeping. I was watching the TV mainly, watching pornographic stuff on the TV. That’s the only TV in the house.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Mr. Smith, you say that as if that’s completely understandable?

JOE SMITH Maybe it’s not, but I did not touch my children.

POLLY FRANKS It’s as sick as it gets. Yes, he—I think he’s very ill. I mean, to—you would assume that having the presence of your own child would prohibit you from doing that. And it didn’t.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Amazingly, even after this incident, his wife didn’t tell the police about his prior sex conviction. Jan Stem was a detective on the case.

DETECTIVE JAN STEM Had she mentioned that in the state of Texas he was convicted of raping a woman and his means of operation were pretty much the same as our Bandanna Bandit, hopefully, we would put two and two together and had him as a suspect a lot earlier than we did.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) Instead, it was treated as a domestic dispute. His wife asked for a divorce and Smith was put on probation. It would be years before anyone would discover the truth about Joe Smith.
So the reason you didn’t tell them right there and then, I have a past as a sex offender, help me, is?

JOE SMITH I didn’t want to be locked up forever. I wanted help.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN To be fair, Smith did try to get help. He went to a Richmond psychologist, who treated him with what is called aversion therapy. Every time Smith felt the urge to abuse children, he’d take a drug that would make him vomit. But even with this extreme treatment, he couldn’t control his compulsions.
So the question remains, why not immediately call the only guy who had ever been able to seem to help you, Dr. Berlin?

JOE SMITH With the job that I was doing, there was no way I could get back into regular programs with Dr. Berlin. I had switched jobs from what I was doing where I could regulate and go two times a week to Baltimore, which is 700 miles, whatever a week.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Sounds like excuses.

JOE SMITH A lot of people would think so, but I did try.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Do you feel in any way responsible?

FRED BERLIN I wish to God—in any treatment that I do, whether it’s cancer or a sexual disorder that I could always treat it in a way that’s going to be successful. The reality is that I can’t—that I can’t and so I just have to do the best I can, do it as conscientiously as possible. In looking back on it, I think I made a mistake in agreeing to lower that medicine. If I had it to do over again, I would have just kept him on it the whole time and hopefully he would still be on it at this point.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) For four years after his wife left him, Smith continued to prey on children. The police set up task forces, put surveillance teams in neighborhoods, but the Bandanna Bandit’s identity remained a mystery. Finally, after a series of attacks, a police stakeout caught Joe Smith. In his back pocket was a bandanna.
What is the appropriate punishment for you, Mr. Smith?

JOE SMITH What is the appropriate punishment? I wish I knew.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Is 12 years enough? Is 30 years enough? Is six years enough?

JOE SMITH If they look me up, if they keep me locked up forever, they’ve gotten rid of me. There’s a whole bunch more that’s going to be doing the same thing. I guarantee you.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN If someone did to your children what you’ve admitted having done to someone else’s child, what would the appropriate punishment be for that person?

JOE SMITH I hate to even think about. I mean, actually I would want to kill them.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (VO) In December of last year, Joe Smith was sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years.

BARBARA WALTERS Cynthia, I understand that there are eight states that use chemical castration, but if this is going to be a condition of parole, shouldn’t it be supervised?

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Well, exactly Barbara. Dr. Berlin would agree with you. This drug, Depro-Provera doesn’t work if you don’t take it and he would say that if you’re going to give it to someone, it’s a condition you have to follow them.

BARBARA WALTERS Of course, we don’t know whether these cases are all chemical imbalance. Is there a study being done in this area?

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Well, there’s another point that Dr. Berlin would make. There is very little research money available in this area. In 1998, 300,000 alleged sexually related crimes were committed, so there’s an important area for research here.

BARBARA WALTERS But probably most people feel they’d rather spend it researching other diseases?

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN Exactly.

BARBARA WALTERS And this is important. Thank you Cynthia.