On a summer evening in June 2012, Kristene Chapa, 18, and her girlfriend Mollie Olgin, 19, were on a date in a park outside of Corpus Christi, Texas. A man approached them with a gun, sexually assaulted them, shot them execution-style and left them for dead. Chapa survived (she suffers from paralysis on the left side of her body), Olgin did not. Chapa believes it was a hate crime although there is no evidence to prove it.
When their alleged attacker, 27-year-old David Malcolm Strickland was arrested he smiled for his mugshot. Chapa wrote on Facebook, “It sickens me that this coward not a man who attacks at night smiles in his mugshot.” Before being sentenced to life in prison, Strickland said he was “absolutely not guilty.” His lawyers intend to appeal the 2016 conviction. Dateline airs Fridays at 10pm on NBC.
