This Deep Space Nine Actor Helped Catch A Real-Life Killer – TheShockNews

Followers of “Star Trek: Deep Area 9” know that the dabo ladies at Quark’s bar are way more than simply window dressing. However Cathy DeBuono, the gorgeous actor who portrayed dabo woman M’Pella and was a physique double for Terry Farrell, proved she was fabricated from magnificence, brains, and bravado when she helped catch a real-life serial killer. In a narrative featured on a 2024 “Dateline” episode ,”The Woman With the Hibiscus Tattoo,” DeBuono recounted her brush with a Hollywood Hills predator who lured in his prey by posing as a casting agent.

As recounted within the Keith Morrison-narrated “Dateline” episode, DeBuono was amongst a number of Los Angeles girls to be approached over the course of a number of years by a person claiming to be a Hollywood casting agent. Based on their numerous accounts, the person would goal his victims in public areas like Westfield Century Metropolis Mall and invite them to an audition to be the following Bond woman. The ladies got a really particular, Shania Twain-esque gown code for the audition: a males’s white gown shirt, super-short black mini skirt, sheer pantyhose, tightly slicked-back hair in a ponytail, and black “sky-high stiletto heels.” The casting agent, they had been informed, would offer a black tie on the audition.

DeBuono had been purchasing on the mall in late-1998 or early-1999 when the then 28-year-old actor, a daily on “Deep Area 9” on the time, fell for his lure. Based on DeBuono, when the well-dressed man approached her to ask if she was a mannequin or actress and informed her she can be good for one thing he was casting, no pink flags went up — at first. “At this level within the dialog, his creep degree didn’t exist,” DeBuono informed Dateline.

Based on DeBuono, the unusual request for a photograph shoot did put her on alert, although it didn’t appear harmful at first. Usually, DeBuono stated, audition requests would undergo her agent. However though alarm bells went off and the pink flags lastly appeared, DeBuono stated her personal curiosity bought the higher of her. “He appeared actually good at what he was doing, so I stayed and continued to speak to him,” she informed Morrison.

It was then that the person advised she go away the mall instantly and experience with him to a Hollywood Hills location for a photograph shoot. Conscious now that one thing was shady however too curious to let it go, DeBuono drove to the second location on her personal, bringing alongside “Deep Area 9” stuntman Chester E. Tripp III. However after they arrived, the person by no means got here out to fulfill her. “He noticed Chester and aborted his mission,” DeBuono surmised. “I might simply have to maneuver on and hope that nobody fell for his ruse.”

However different girls did fall for his ruse, girls like aspiring actor Alice Walker. She was working as a Century Metropolis restaurant server in 2003 when she met the person, who launched himself as Victor earlier than inviting her to a photograph shoot with the movie’s director in a dodgy-looking West Hollywood location. Though she arrived within the prescribed apparel solely to seek out the director wasn’t there, Victor nonetheless managed to persuade her to return for a second time and, in the end, a 3rd. It was round that point that each DeBuono and Walker noticed a sketch of a person who seemed like Victor in an area information story. He was wished in connection to the disappearance of actor Kristi Johnson, who went lacking whereas on her method to a Bond woman audition with him.

Discovering the predator, whose actual title was Victor Paleologus, would change into the straightforward half. Contemporary out on parole after doing a stint as a intercourse offender, legal mastermind Paleologus had virtually instantly rotated and gotten himself locked again up making an attempt to abscond with a take a look at drive automobile. However even after Johnson’s physique turned up in a ravine and a number of other witnesses linked Paleologus to the crime, getting Paleologus to confess to homicide on prime of his grand theft auto prices proved difficult.

Though a number of girls would quickly step up with horror tales about him courting again to 1989, encounters that included tales of assaults and knockout drug-laced drinks, Paleologus, who might have confronted the loss of life penalty on the time, refused to return clear. To compound the problem, shortly after slicing a plea deal mid-trial, Paleologus tried to withdraw his responsible plea, claiming that he had been coerced into it. The choose, nevertheless, denied his try, and Paleologus was sentenced to 25 years to life in jail.

The daughter of a New York detective and a girl whose personal intuition had at all times identified Victor was as much as one thing, Cathy DeBuono couldn’t let it go. To DeBuono, who had gone on to review psychology with an emphasis on legal psychopathy, Victor had appeared so easy at his recreation that she frightened that if he hadn’t already dedicated different murders, he actually would if launched. In 2016, she started engaged on a real crime documentary on Paleologus, bringing collectively his surviving victims to bond over their shared eager for justice within the course of. When her analysis into Paleologus led DeBuono to a Jane Doe case close to Philadelphia, DeBuono went to go to her “pen pal” in jail, intent on surreptitiously getting a DNA pattern to assist with the case. Not solely did she get one (although the DNA in the end didn’t match the Jane Doe case’s proof), however DeBuono says she additionally managed to coax a homicide confession out of him whereas there. Years later, Paleologus opted to delay his personal parole listening to; it’s at the moment scheduled for November 2025.