Their Date Was Interrupted by 'The Railroad Killer.' Only 1 of Them Survived (Exclusive)

Holly K. Dunn recalls coming face-to-face with Ángel Maturino Reséndiz on a new episode of 'People Magazine Investigates: Surviving a Serial Killer'

Holly K. Dunn and her boyfriend, Christopher Maier, had ducked out of the party early for a quiet moment alone.

Sitting along the railroad tracks in Lexington, Ky., Dunn, then 20, recalls “gazing in his eyes” as they talked side-by-side for half an hour.

“I don't think we realized that anybody was around — or watching us — until this man comes out from behind an electrical box,” Dunn says. “And he says, ‘Do you have any money?’”

In an upcoming episode of People Magazine Investigates: Surviving the Railroad Killer — premiering Sunday, May 12, at 9/8C on ID and streaming on Max — Dunn recounts that harrowing summer night in 1997 when Ángel Maturino Reséndiz beat, stabbed and raped her before leaving her for dead. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

A transient man who rode the rails across the country, Maturino Reséndiz – better known as the Railroad Killer – ultimately confessed to killing nine people, although DNA evidence later linked many other deaths to the serial killer, who killed people from California to Florida. Dunn is the only person who is known to have ever survived his vicious attacks.

It was an uncommonly dark night when the couple headed back toward the party that August 28 night.

That’s when the University of Kentucky students were stopped by Maturino Reséndiz, who was armed with something resembling an ice pick or screwdriver, which, Dunn says “he was holding on Chris the whole time.”

“‘Hey, if you want money,’” Dunn recalls her 21-year-old boyfriend saying as he tried to diffuse the situation. “‘We could get you our ATM card, and we've got a car. We could go and get you money.’”

Maier tried again: “There's other stuff in my backpack, if you want it. What do you want?”

Instead, Maturino Reséndiz ordered Maier onto his knees. He rifled through his backpack, then tied Maier’s hands with the straps.

“I didn't know what was happening,” Dunn says. “I didn't understand.”

At that point, Dunn could have tried to flee, but she says: “I wasn't gonna leave Chris.”

Then Maturino Reséndiz turned his attention to Dunn.

“The man comes over to me,” she says. “And he takes off my belt and he ties up my hands behind my back.”

With the couple both bound, Maturino Reséndiz pulled Maier “by his shirt from the railroad track into the ravine beside the tracks,” Dunn recalls.

And, again, Dunn stayed by her boyfriend’s side, following them down to the ravine.

“It felt like the only thing I could do,” she says.

People Magazine Investigates: Surviving the Railroad Killer premieres Sunday, May 12 at 9/8C on People Magazine Investigates: Surviving a Serial Killer on ID and streams on Max.

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