Dateline NBC: What happened to Wendie Prescott and Christine Vu?

The coldblooded murders of Christine Vu and Wendie Prescott in 1996 brought the small town of Arlington to a standstill as women kept a watch over their shoulders. Both Christine and Wendie were school teachers who were residing at the Peartree Apartments where they were found bound, r*ped, naked, and submerged in their bathtub.

The killer, Dale Devon Scheanette, was identified later from the DNA evidence and fingerprints left at the crime scenes. Both Wendie Prescott and Christine Vu were manually strangled to death, as per court documents.

The new Dateline NBC episode titled Dark Intentions showcases the murders committed by James Walraven as it airs on June 7, 2024, at 9 pm EST on NBC exclusively.

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How was Christine Vu murdered?

The 26-year-old Christine Huyen Vu was a third-grade teacher at Morton Elementary School while living at the Peartree Apartments in Arlington, Texas.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Peartree Apartments and its sister complex, Plumtree Apartments, had about 600 residents with an average rent of $463 per month, attracting young employees. As the neighborhood had five schools, many teachers lived in the complex building.

On September 17, 1996, Christine Vu was found murdered in her bathtub by her longtime partner, Thang Khuu. Khuu returned home around 5:30 pm local time to find the door bolted from inside. Assuming that Christine was in the bathroom, he smoked a cigarette, called her twice from a pay phone, and went back to find the door unlocked.

Thang Khuu found Christine Vu's nude and beaten body submerged in a bathtub half-filled with water. According to court documents, Christine's hands, ankles, and neck were bound together with duct tape. The autopsy reports stated that the cause of Christine's death was manual strangulation.

According to NBC5 News, the authorities at the scene collected DNA evidence in the form of fingerprints and seminal fluid as they determined that Vu had been r*ped before her murder. Christine Vu was manually strangled to death.

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How was Wendie Prescott murdered?

A similar incident took place later in the same year as the murder of Wendie Prescott took place under identical circumstances. The more eerie connection was that Wendie was the teacher's aide for second-grade students at Erma Nash Elementary living in Peartree Apartments — 150 feet away from Christine Vu.

Wendie Prescott was scheduled to go shopping with her sister and visit her grandparents' place on the Christmas Eve of 1996. Her uncle and aunt, Norman and Brenda Norwood, visited her apartment around 11:00 pm local time but she failed to show up.

According to the court documents, the Norwoods found Prescott's naked body in the bathtub while her neck, hands, and feet were tied together behind her back. The authorities conducted a s*xual assault examination and found that Prescott had been r*ped as well, as per The Shorthorn.

The similarities in the two murders alerted the Arlington Police who feared for the safety of women given the atrocity of the crimes. As more cases of s*xual assault and r*pe started to pile up, the police found a break in the case when they arrested Dale Devon Scheanette in DeSoto, Texas, in connection with a burglary of a car audio shop in 1999.

Scheanette's saliva sample matched the DNA evidence collected from the crime scenes. The fingerprint from Prescott's TV stand had returned inconclusive for four years. The authorities subsequently discovered that Dale Devon Scheanette had been a resident in the Peartree apartments.

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Find all the details about the Bathtub Killer on the latest episode of Dateline as it airs on NBC on Friday.