When a pregnant woman is found brutally beaten in her apartment, the race is on to find out whether she’s a serial killer’s latest target – or if her attacker is hiding in plain sight.If you or anyone you know is experiencing domestic violence, you can reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. Resources are available and can be found at this link. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: crimejunkiepodcast.com/survived-dianna-d'aiello/Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies. Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Chapter 1: What happened to Diana D'Aiello?
Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Britt.
And the story I have for you today has been living in my head rent-free for months. It's one of those older cases that when I first learned about it, I'm like, how am I just learning about it? And if it was new to me, I had a feeling it would be new to a lot of you as well.
And this is one where we got to go like full crime junkie, going super deep, talking to the people who actually lived this story. So even if you do think you know it, I promise I will give you something new. And I promise it will leave you thinking long after this episode. Because while this is a rare solved case where the victim actually survived,
It will have you questioning the reliability of memory and how stories, even the ones that feel straightforward, are always so much more complicated and live in the gray when you dig deep into the details. And that's what we're going to do today. This is the story of Diana D'Aiello. So let me set the scene. We're in Tustin, California, September 30th, 1979.
It's around 2 o'clock in the morning when a 19-year-old named Judy is startled awake by the sound of a voice calling her name. And it takes her a second to, like, get her bearings. Like, she even wonders if she is dreaming. But it sounds like her downstairs neighbor, 20-year-old Diana Green.
So she goes to the window to see if she can like see anything out in the yard, but she doesn't see anything. It's like too dark. So she crawls back into bed next to her husband. And what feels like 15 minutes later, she hears another voice, this time a man's voice. And she hears the man say something like, I leave you alone for 10 minutes, half an hour. This is what happens to you.
So she kind of just lays in bed and listens in silence, probably holding perfectly still and not wanting to even breathe too loud, just trying to figure out what's going on. And it's the man she hears again next. Judy, Judy, please wake up. And this time she knows she's heard it. So she goes to the window again and outside she sees Diana's husband, 21-year-old Kevin Green.
And he's running like in and out the back door of the Green's apartment, just in this panic, crying out for help. And at one point, she looks through the Green's open kitchen door and she sees him making a phone call. Now, Judy's first thought must likely be, oh, this must be the baby. Because you see, Diana is pregnant two weeks past her due date with her and Kevin's first child together.
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Chapter 2: What were the circumstances of the attack?
But that was even earlier in the night. Like it doesn't line up with Kevin's story when he claimed they had sex. Now, Kevin claims they never even found any blood on his key caddy, but none of the case files that we have even mention the key caddy one way or another, so I don't know about that part. So they don't have any kind of weapon. We don't know if it's the key caddy.
It doesn't seem like it would be a key caddy. Again, remember, her brain's exposed. But the DA believes Diana, and that means finding semen that's likely Kevin's to them means he attacked her. So in March of 1980, Kevin is arrested a second time. And this time the charges stick.
Police add a spousal rape charge, making Kevin one of the first people to be tried for that after California had previously passed a law against it. Which is like wild that you have to pass a law against it, but they did. Now in the months leading up to Kevin's trial, Diana is determined to get justice for her daughter that she'd never got to see grow up.
The state's case, which has become front page news by this point, rests on her shoulders. Without much other evidence, is Diana's account enough? And what about the emotional and physical demands of a trial? Is Diana up to testifying in court? I mean, these are the questions hanging over investigators who seem to have concerns about the strength of the case.
Because according to an article in the Hanford Sentinel, they end up dropping the spousal rape charge at some point leading up to the trial. I don't know exactly why. But from those records Diana sent us, it seems like it was tough to establish whether or not the sex was consensual or not. Like every rape case where I've been like, they're not taking on that fight.
So, in October of 1980, just over one year after her attack, Diana takes the stand in front of Kevin and devastatingly details an abusive marriage that culminated in an assault that caused permanent, life-altering damage. I mean, still, she is partially deaf in one ear, fully deaf in the other. She's lost her sense of smell. She has a plastic plate in her head and...
She has had to relearn basic language skills from scratch. Reading, writing, speaking, communication that was once as easy as breathing is now a daily struggle for her. After her emotional testimony, Kevin's defense is up next. They can't introduce the polygraph that he passed into evidence. The judge won't allow it. So they put all of their focus on discrediting Diana's memories.
They point out that in pretrial hearings, she said that her attacker took off all his clothes. But then at the trial, she said he was fully clothed. They have Kevin take the stand in his own defense, and he points the finger at the man who was standing outside the apartment. Someone he says that police didn't look at hard enough, especially while this bedroom basher was roaming the streets.
And after a grueling week and a half long trial, the jury only deliberates for three hours before coming back with a verdict. Kevin is found guilty of Diana's attempted murder and the second-degree murder of their daughter Chantal Marie. And the judge sentences him to 15 years to life in a maximum security prison. And to be clear, no one's happy about any of this.
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