[Baldwin:] In a fight to save her own life, an escort in West Virginia says she believes she saved others from a serial killer.
[Unidentified Female:] I know he was there to kill me. I could tell that he had already done something because he said that he was in prison for a long time and that's when I knew that he was going to kill me.
[Baldwin:] So this woman goes by the name Heather. She seemed pretty calm there. But I want to play you something. This is the 911 call she made back from July 18th. This was moments after she shot and killed this man, Neil Falls. She arranged to meet him from a website called backpage.com.
[Caller:] There's a lady in an alley here. She's saying that some guy tried to rape her and she had to defend herself and he's on the kitchen floor.
[Unidentified Female:] He pulled a gun on me.
[Caller:] He pulled a gun on her. She's got cuts and stuff all over her.
[Operator:] Does she know who the guy is?
[Caller:] Do you know who the guy is?
[Unidentified Female:] No.
[Caller:] She said no.
[Unidentified Female:] I opened the door and he said, "Live or die," and the to me, and I wrestled him and he was going to kill me.
[Operator:] Did he try to rape her?
[Caller:] I'm not sure.
[Operator:] Was she able to injure him in any way?
[Caller:] Yeah, she shot him. She said he's on the kitchen floor.
[Baldwin:] After police arrived, they found in his car what they called a kill kit. In it, some hand cuffs, shovels, bleach. You can see what they found. Heather says she could tell Falls knew what he was doing as he tried to strangle her.
[Unidentified Female:] He had it down pat. He said, you're going to be quiet. I'm going to call the orders. He was saying everything. You could tell he was comfortable with what he was saying. When he strangled me, he just wouldn't let me get any air and so I grabbed my rake and when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him. I just grabbed the gun and shot behind me.
[Baldwin:] Well, investigators in West Virginia believe Falls could be connected to women's murders in Las Vegas, in Illinois, and in Ohio. In Ohio alone, six women have either vanished or turned up dead in the past year or so. And in Las Vegas, four escorts were found dismembered. Joining me on the phone, I have Lieutenant Steve Cooper, who is leading the investigation in West Virginia. Lieutenant, are you with me?
[Lt. Steve Cooper, Chief Of Detectives, Charleston, West Virginia, Police Department:] Yes, I am.
[Baldwin:] Thank you, sir, for jumping on the line. Before we get to this kill kit, can you just tell me, first, why you think these cases in Las Vegas and Illinois could be connected to this guy?
[Cooper:] They could be connected because the cases in Illinois and Nevada are connected. There was dismemberment involved in those cases. All of the victims were escort. In the case that happened in Charleston, the victim was an escort and the items that we found in the vehicle, that you have photographs of, included machetes, axes, box cutters, bleach, trash bags. And some of the body parts were found in trash bags in the Illinois and Las Vegas cases. Again, he had four sets of handcuffs in his pockets when he attacked our victim and, of course, the.9 millimeter firearm.
[Baldwin:] Oh, my goodness. As you it's gruesome to talk about. But when you describe these items as a kill kit that was in his car, the kill kit for the purpose of dismembering, which then would be the key piece in tying a lot of these women together, correct?
[Cooper:] That's right. We are suspicious that it could be connected to a Las Vegas case. Certainly, at age 45, it's unlikely this is his first violent crime. And he brought four sets of handcuffs into the home. That's a pretty sinister combination when you take all of it into account.
[Baldwin:] Lieutenant Cooper, I don't know how long you've been in law enforcement but have you ever come across this kind of discovery in someone's car?
[Cooper:] No. We run across a lot of interesting and strange and scary stuff. This one is right up there. The facts that he had so many knives and a machete and that many sets of handcuffs and the bleach and the trash bags, it all just taken it all together, again, it's pretty scary and we're glad that our victim survived and that Mr. Falls came out on the losing end.
[Baldwin:] Let me end on Heather. How is she doing? I know she's not being charged with anything, acting there in self-defense. How is she?
[Cooper:] She had a broken vertebrae, a separated shoulder, and, of course, a lot of mental trauma. She's doing better. She's recovering mentally and physically and there are people trying to help her get into a new lifestyle.
[Baldwin:] To think that she acted as quickly as she did. If this is the serial killer, she potentially saved a lot here. It's tremendous. Lieutenant Steve Cooper, in Charleston, West Virginia, thank you. Appreciate it.
[Cooper:] Thank you. Thank you.
[Baldwin:] Just ahead here, President Obama calling out Republican front-runner Donald Trump and also Mike Huckabee from his state visit to Africa. His stern words for the Republican presidential candidates, that's ahead. While he was in Africa, the president spent a lot of time there with his sister, Dr. Auma Obama, who I happened to spend half a week with just recently in Kenya ahead of her brother's visit. What she remembers about the president's first visit to Kenya. That's next.