This is Deborah Roberts.

Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Each week, we reach back into our archives and bring you a story we found unforgettable. Only a true psychopath could do this.

A pool of blood coming from his head. Somebody had been paid to kill me. Why would you want your husband killed? Take a listen. Coming up. There are certain cases that stand out. When you're a predator, you don't care. This is one that's going to stand out for a long, long time. He was a modern day Casanova with charismatic appeal. He just captivated me. Very charming, very manipulative live. He stood up and held out his hand and led me down the hall like the sheep to the slaughter. What's your strategy for the day? Kill. What was his sordid secret that terrified these women? I just thought, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. It's as if he took a gun and he shot all of them. I said, I never want to meet another person like you in my life again. Targeting them one by one. He's doing this on purpose. He is a serial killer. Dangerous Affairs. I'm John Quignones. They were a group of vulnerable women looking for love. He was a charming Don Juan with a charismatic appeal feel that made each of them feel like they were the only woman in the world.

But as Elizabeth Vargas first reported in 2010, these women soon discovered they had much more in common than the attention of one two-timing boyfriend.

Once a month, a group of women from Dallas, Texas, meets for drinks. You might mistake them for being old friends, overhear them talking about their kids, their ex-husbands, their careers. But what you wouldn't know is that these women share a secret.

I am Sophia. I'm Susan. I'm Diane. I'm Trisha. I'm Megan. I'm Lisa.

In 2006, they discovered that they were all dating the same man, many of them at the same time. And not just a few dates, for some, it was several years. But the betrayal didn't end there. And to understand their story, you have to start with this woman.

Double press two, double press three.

At 58 years old, with a sixth Degree black belt in Taekwondo, Diane Reeve isn't afraid of much. But the martial arts instructor from Dallas says there is one thing she does fear: dating.

It's terrifying. There's a lot of different ways to meet people, and you don't know which ones are okay and which ones are not okay.

After an 18-year-long marriage ended, the mother of two says she turned to the Internet as a way to get back on the dating scene. Did friends encourage you?

Oh, yeah.What'd they say to you?Oh, yeah. They said, Well, you need to get out there. You've had your time to heal, and it's time for you to move on. I had dated a number of different guys that didn't work out. It was like you got to kiss a lot of frogs.

And a few mouse clicks later...

That I met Philippe.

Prince Charming. His name was Philippe Padoue, a 46-year-old network security analyst from nearby Frisco, Texas. What was he like?

Very well-built, very handsome. The first date that we went out on, just had an empathizer and drinks and talked and talked and talked and talked. There it is.

Like Diane, Philippe was also a martial arts enthusiast. Born in France but raised in Detroit, he was well-spoken, polite, and gainfully employed. To Diane's surprise, he seemed taken by her. Just two months in, she says they agreed to date exclusively. Before long, trips to New York, Paris, and tropical islands. Diane says she was literally swept off her feet.

We were in Guadeloupe, and we climbed up to see a volcano, and I was tired, cold, and wet, and he literally picked me up and carried me down that mountain.

Diane came to Philippe's rescue, too. When he lost his job, she paid for his cell phone, his health care. She even hired him as an instructor at a martial arts studio that she owned. Really right in the force. Then a devastating blow. Diane says she walked in on Philippe, kissing another woman. And he admitted to you that he had been unfaithful.

He had told me that he had been approaching another woman, and that it was his fault, and that she was saying no, but that she appealed to him, and he was sorry. He was contrite. He held his head down. He was ashamed. He said it would never happen again.

But never came a little sooner than expected.

We had a family event that we were supposed to attend together, and he called me and said, I'm sick. I don't feel like I can make it tonight. But he didn't call me from the home phone. He called me from the cell phone. And that just raised a red flag. Something was up.

So, she says, she drove over to Philippe's house.

I sat in the driveway for a couple of hours and cried and got bored and started checking cell phone messages.

Not her messages. They were Philippe's. Diane says a jealous heart and a sting of betrayal got the better of her. She says she lied to the phone company to access his voicemail. And what were the messages you heard?

One was, Oh, baby, I'm so sorry I couldn't meet you tonight. I had to go get diapers for the baby. And the other one was, Yeah, Sunday afternoon sounds really good. I'll see you then. Two different women.

No, it was more like 10 different women. Philippe, it turns out, was quite the Casanova. Seeing and sleeping with different women almost every night of the week. Many of them, like Diane, had paid for trips, dinners. Happy birthday, baby. Even his Corvette. Why was he so irresistible?

He has this air about him. He walked by, and it just captivated me. I thought, I'd like to get to know that guy. He was handsome? Very handsome. He carried himself with a lot of assurance Really. A great job. He's very intelligent. He just portrayed that, that he had it all.

It sounds like all of you, to a certain extent, when you met him, were swept off your feet.

Yes. Fair to say? Absolutely. When you're dancing with him, and you put your hands in his shoulder, and his hands real strong. You feel swept away.Protected.Protected..

It's also if he's a very attractive man, if you are attracted to him.

Was it flattering? He's a little confident. And you just feel helpless because there's just something about him.

Did each of you think you were the only woman in Philippe's life?

I did, yes. Yes, I did. He made me feel like I was the only woman on the of the Earth.

Are you guys surprised that he was able to have all five of you? Never calling someone the wrong name, never confusing. It was all Sweetie.

He never got our names confused because it was all, Hi, Sweetie. He was very clever.

But Philippe's web of women began to unravel in the fall of 2006. After the relationship with Diane ended, she took back the cell phone she bought for him and obtained his phone bill. Over the next month, she tracked down nine other girlfriends to warn them about Philippe's infidelities. And what did you say when you called them?

I told them what the situation was. I told them that I had been with him for four and a half years.

One of those calls was to Susan, a financial executive who'd been dating Philippe for more than a year.

She said, Would you like to meet and get together? And I said, Okay. And at this point in my relationship with Philippe, I was getting suspicious of things that were happening in his life, problems that he was having. So I was curious, and we met, and I think we had a good meeting.

I have to say it must be a curious thing, though, to walk to a meeting to meet the woman who's also dating, sleeping with the man you've been dating, sleeping with.

Oh, it's a heart palpitating moment.

The two women say they hit it off, but Susan decided she wasn't quite ready to leave Philippe.

Did you Did you find out what Diane was telling you? Just a little bit. I thought, This sounds like a woman scorned.

But the meeting, it turns out, wouldn't be their last. After a routine checkup, Susan discovered something that would change both of their lives forever.

And I called her and I said, Can you tell me what's going on? And she said, We need to talk.

Stay with us.

After a year of dating Philippe Padou, Susan Brown of Dallas, Texas, said goodbye for good.

Months earlier, she had met Diane Reeve for drinks and learned that their boyfriend was simultaneously dating several women. But putting Philippe behind her would be tougher than she ever imagined. After an annual physical, Susan received a call from her doctor.

My doctor called me at work. It was the end of the work day, and asked me to go somewhere quiet and have a to eat because she had some news for me. So I was really nervous, and she said, Well, I have some bad news. Your test came out that you You are positive for herpes. She said, But that is the least of our problems. You also tested positive for HIV. I was so shocked, and I was speechless, and I just thought, I'm going to die.

She immediately called Philippe.

I said, Well, I think that I might have got this from you, and I'm really I've agreed for you, and I think you need to go and have a test. And he didn't call me back.

Several calls, even a letter, still nothing. Finally, one evening, he answered and told her he was HIV positive, too.

He said, Well, yes, I have been tested. I'm positive. And so I just said, Have you notified anyone else that you may have been with? And he said, Oh, yes, I've already done that. And well, some of them are positive and some of them are negative.

Susan then told him that the health department had asked for names of her sexual partners, and that's when she says the call turned ugly.

He said, What? You Why would you give them my name? Why would you give them my name? You're trying to ruin my life. Why? And he was really upset with me, and I couldn't understand that. I thought, Now, this is weird. And that made me very suspicious.

So suspicious, she says, that she dialed the Health Department again. This time, she told them there was someone else they needed to call.

Got a call from someone that said that they were with the Dallas County Health Department, and that I needed to come in and be tested for S2Ds. And all the puzzle pieces that were mystifying me just fell into place.

For months, Diane had been fighting inexplicable fatigue and illnesses, but never considered an HIV test. Now, it all made sense.

The cutoff for AIDS is 200 T cells. Mine were at 31.

31 T cells?

I was at 31. I had AIDS.

But the shock and utter horror was soon replaced with a mission, warning the others. Susan and Diane immediately called Megan, a neighbor of Philipps, who had dated him for more than two years. She tested positive, too. I can't imagine what a devastating, shocking diagnosis that is to receive.

Yeah, it's unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. All the worries start piling up, one on top of the other until there's just no more room.

One of those worries, the women say, was the nagging feeling that Philipp, a man they loved and trusted, had done something unthinkable. The women say Philipp had always insisted that he got tested for sexually transmitted diseases every year.

I wasn't worried at all because he had always told me that he was clean. He was always told me that there was never any problem. I didn't give it a second thought. I knew I was clean, and I believed he was clean as well. And he told me in no uncertain terms that he was clean.

Why were you convinced that Philippe had knowingly infected you?

Because of his reaction when I told him was not what you would expect.

Susan says Philippe didn't even seem surprised upon learning about her or even his own infection. And if he had lied to them about other relationships, the women wondered, could he have lied about this, too?

We believe he was purposefully doing it. He was trying to get as many women infected as he could.

The women say they turned to the police for help.

Frisco Police Department, Corporal Presley.

Corporal Tom Presley of the Frisco Police Department took the initial call in early 2007.

The first thing that went through my mind was, what is the offense in the state of Texas in this case? It was clear to me that any intimate contact between Philippe Padou and his victims was consensual. The difficult part that we had was to prove whether or not he knew that he had HIV when he had unprotected sex with him. With going to the police, they said, Well, we just can't go arrest him. We have to make a case. And they wanted to move very carefully. And in their defense, they have to move very carefully in order to make the case stick and make it right.

But while the police worked to make their case, Susan, Diane, and Megan say they started their own investigation. At some point, you two decide to start, in essence, spying on him.

We wanted to protect other women. We didn't want it to happen to a single, solitary other individual.

The women say they had good reason to be worried. They had noticed more and more women in and out of Philippe's home, even after he had admitted he had HIV. You could see them coming and going? Right.

She was the connection, and she would get the license tag.

You took down license plates of the women who were going to his house?

Yeah, of the cars that were in his driveway overnight. She would call me and she'd go, I've got another one for you. I have a friend who works in an attorney's office who has access to DMV, and I would have her run the plates. When they would run the plates, we would get names and phone numbers.

How many women did you call?

We had a list of 23. 23 women?

23 women. Would you tell these women that he has been tested positive for HIV?

Yes. But we would go into that very gently, not to just hit him with it immediately, but that we want to reach out to you because our fear is that he may be doing this and not taking precautions.

So what was the reaction of these 23 women when you would call them out of the blue and say, Guess what your boyfriend has?

We got a mixed bag. Some of them were very thankful. Some of them were very grateful. Some of them wanted to meet with us.

Soon, the amateur slews were staked out at Philippe's house day and night, rumaging through his garbage. They even followed women seen leaving his driveway.

I got one lady to pull over on the side of the road, and I said-How did she do that? I actually followed her, and she said, Yeah, I'm moving in with him. And I'm like, Really? Well, I said, I'm HIV positive, and I'm quite sure he is, too. And she then moved her things out.

When Susan and Diane had to work, Megan would watch the house. When Megan When he was busy, she recruited her children to keep an eye on him. Were you ever worried that you were doing something wrong by going out and saying to people, He's HIV positive?

No. We were convinced that we had to do it. The police, the prosecutor, the Health Department all knew what you were doing?

Absolutely.

And they were okay with it? They were a remarkable group of women. They were feeding me with lots of information to make my life easier, make the case successful. They were the ones that did the work.

That work involved getting more women to come forward to police. And while the criminal case gained momentum, the County Health Department showed up on Philippe's doorstep with a cease and desist order, essentially telling him to stop having unprotected sex. Even that, the women say, didn't seem to faz Philippe.

He was court-ordered. He had a car in his driveway that night. And the night after. He was actually on the increase. He was increasing. It was like he was on a mad rush to do as much damage as he possibly could.

But these desperate housewives weren't about to give up. Do you think Philippe ever suspected that the three of you were girls?

He didn't know where it was coming from, but he knew something was up. He knew he was getting busted.

We'll be right back. Hey, I'm Andy Mitchell, a New York Times bestselling author. And I'm Sabrina Kohlberg, a morning television producer. We're moms of toddlers and best friends of 20 years. And we both love to talk about being parents, yes, but also pop culture. So we're combining our two interests by talking to celebrities, writers, and fellow scholars of TV and movies.

Cinema, really.

About what we all can learn from the fictional moms we love to watch. From ABC Audio and Good Morning, America, Pop Culture Moms is out now wherever you listen to podcasts. We're just weeks into this year, and the news is already nonstop. Two overseas wars, a presidential election already testing the democratic process, a former President in court. It can feel impossible to keep up with, but we can help. I'm Brad Milke, the host of Start Here, the daily podcast from ABC News. Every morning, my team and I get you caught up on the day's news in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand. So kickstart your morning. Start smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed unformed shouldn't feel like a chore. In the spring In 2007, three women from an unassuming suburb of Dallas, Texas, were taking matters into their own hands. Susan, Diane, and Megan all suspected their boyfriend, Philippe Padu, had knowingly infected them with HIV. The only problem was proving it.

I called the police Department. I said, Let me tell you something. If he'd have shot us, his rear-end would be in jail right now. It's no different. He's doing this on purpose. He is a serial killer. You have to do something.

But the police say their hands were tied. Philippe had no legal duty to disclose his infection. The only way to make a case was to prove he knew he had HIV and lied about it. But with strict health privacy laws, it was easier said than done. So Frisco PD turned to the victims.

This is Paris stuff.

Diane, remember, had paid for Philippe's health care. Going back through her records, she discovered a check for a doctor's appointment in September of 2005, when Philippe had multiple tests, including one for HIV.

When he walked out of the doctor's office, he walked straight to my car. I rolled down my car window, and he looked me in the eye and he said, All the tests are negative. I said, The HIV test is negative? And he said, Yes, the HIV test is negative. We obtained a grand jury subpoena, and with that grand jury subpoena, we were able to obtain his medical records that disclosed that he found out that he was HIV positive in September of 2005.

Finally, the smoking gun, the evidence they so desperately needed. Records that confirm that Philippe was told he was HIV positive and warned to practice safe sex. For two years, the women say he had concealed his HIV status, never warning them, never telling them to get tested, and never using protection. Frisco police charged Padu with aggravated assault. In July 2007, Philippe Padu was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Six women, all of whom slept with him after he tested positive, were part of the criminal case. In all, 11 former girlfriends say they contracted HIV. Six of them sat down to speak with us.

I am Sophia. I dated Philipp for four months. Four and a half years. Almost a year and a half. I'm Trisha, and I I dated him four months. On and off for a little bit over two years. I'm Lisa, and I dated him for four months.

We'll get to Lisa's story a little later.Diane, nice to meet you.Diane.

Nice to meet you. Megan.

All of the women with the exceptional of Diane and Trisha would only agree to an interview if 2020 provided them with pseudonyms, wigs, and makeup to disguise their identities. They say the stigma of having HIV has prevented them from telling friends, coworkers, even family. Family, like Sophia, who discovered her infection in early 2006.

Everything went black. I was shocked. I also asked, How long do I have?

Who did you tell in your life, Sophia?My ex-husband.

Your ex-husband?

Yes, because I thought I'm dying, and I needed somebody to take care of my child.

She suspected Philippe but never confronted him. A year later, she read about his arrest.

I told my gynecologist when I went back after they already arrest him, and I saw his picture in the paper, and I told them, That's the one.

And Sophia wasn't alone.

Philippe Padu faces charges of aggravated assault. Thank God for media and TV. And that's why I'm here.

Because you saw his picture on the news and thought, wait a second.

The 10 o'clock news. I saw his the mug shot, and I thought, That looks like Philippe.

Trisha had only been intimate with Philippe twice. Even the health department told her not to worry.

There was a very sweet lady there that said, Honey, your test will come back tomorrow. And she said, Only two times. I've never seen it happen. Never in all my years. I had high hopes that I could have possibly learned some lessons. But dodged the bullet. Dodged the bullet, but I didn't. I was told that I also had 30 T cells.

You had full-blown AIDS.

I still do.

They say the diagnosis turned their worlds upside down.

I was dating a very, very special man, and immediately I picked up the phone, and my life was over like that. He We said, I guess we're over. Here we are, middle class America. The stigma is still there. People don't want to be next to you.

Women now account for more than a quarter of all new HIV/AIDS infections. And according to the CDC, a woman has a higher chance of contracting HIV than a man during heterosexual intercourse. With each of you, how aggressively did he pursue a sexual relationship?Very.

Aggressively.immediately. We were there at his house. We were talking, then we were kissing. Then he stood up and held out his hand. And led me down the hall like the sheep to the slaughter. And you just feel helpless because there's just something about him.

Did any of the rest of you ask him to wear a a condom during sex? Yes.

At different times, yeah. Yes.

And what would he say?

He would give me a hard time about it. I'm very manipulative about it.

Saying what?

Why do I have to wear a condom? It's just you and I.

Even that first time when you've just met him, you allowed him to have sex with you without a condom?

No, that is not true for me because it was inconsistent. It was either sometimes a condom and sometimes not a condom. It felt like it was a constant battle. When you're older, my thought is, Well, I don't need birth control anymore, but a condom would be a good thing. And he said, Well, I don't have any. And besides, I get tested for STDs, and I just had a test recently, and I'm clean.

The women we spoke to, ranging from age 40 to 60, say they simply never thought they were at risk.

We're not in a high-risk group. We're not IV drug users. We're not prostitutes. Who would ever think that this was on our list of things to worry about contracting? We didn't get the education that our children get these days. We didn't know of the risks, and still under very much the impression that it was a gay disease. And really, in actuality, it's an everyone disease, and it does cross all classes, all cultures, all races, all ages. All genders, all ages.

It wasn't like you were gals about town or something. I mean, no.

Absolutely not. No, we all were in caring relationships with him. So what is the common denominator? The common denominator is vulnerability. I was two years post-divorce, and you had just exited a really difficult situation. He honed in on the week like a lion in the jungle. Cycle.

Coming up, the women finally face Philippe in court.

We initiated this case to ensure that he could never again infect another person.

And why the man at the center of it all says they've got it all wrong. That's next.

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High emotion today in a Colin County court. Six counts of aggravated assault with a deadly violence. While knowingly infecting women with HIV.

After two years waiting in jail, Philippe Padu finally comes face to face with the women he says he loved. The charge and the case are unusual, to say the least. A man accused of criminally infecting six former girlfriends with HIV. But in court, Philippe is hardly the villain Lothario the women say they once knew. The time behind bars in isolation has taken a toll on his health and his appearance.

I was shocked. You were? At how thin he was, and his hair was completely different. He didn't look like the same person at all.

He didn't look healthy.

No, he didn't look healthy. He was very ill.

Diane Reeve, who dated Philippe for four and a half years, hopes the trial will bring some much-needed clothes closure.

I want the jury to know that this man is a danger to society and that he needs to be stopped.

Intentionally, knowingly-The state's case is simple. Philippe knew he had HIV and did nothing to protect his partners. When you're a predator, you don't care because that's what he wants.

He wants access to anybody he can get. Now, he's a ticking time bomb. He's a lethal weapon. Good.

The prosecution points to these medical reports from 2003 to 2005, when Philippe visited two separate doctors with symptoms of STDs. Both doctors repeatedly urge him to take an HIV test.

How many times did two different doctors tell that man, You need to get HIV tested. You need to have safe sex.

According to the records, Philippe told one doctor he'd been tested before and was HIV negative. Then, just a month after he received his diagnosis in 2005, he visited a second doctor and never mentioned his positive results or asked for a second test.

Here's the thing about that.

But the defense says Philippe was in denial, unable to recognize the harm he could cause.

There's no way you can define him guilty from intentionally. That means he's got to go out with a desire, the specific intent to infect these women. Mr. Perdue is not a predator. He's a polygamous.

And his lawyers say the women are also at fault.

Think about what the ladies said. They all love him. You hear any one of them tell you they only had sex with them one time. You need to be responsible for your own health.

It is a sentiment shared by another of Philippe's ex-girlfriends. Marlene Zarkowski has stood Philippe throughout the arrest and the trial. She's even helped with his defense. Marlene says she's one of the lucky ones who didn't contract HIV. She says the charges in this case go too far.

I feel it's my responsibility, and if I put myself in danger and I don't protect myself, I'm the only one to blame. I shouldn't blame anybody else.

What do you say to people who might say, Look, maybe he knew he had HIV and was sleeping around, but you all made the decision to have sex with him that was unprotected, and that's your mistake.

He intentionally knew and lied about it. That's a difference. He purposefully lied. There's a huge difference in setting out to hurt someone and a person who innocently doesn't know and accidentally spreads something that they're not even aware that they have.

Criminal cases involving HIV, like this one, have been difficult to prosecute and controversial.

You talk about community safety.

As courts try to deal with the spread of HIV and assigning blame. John Netschman and Mitchell Kateen teach courses on HIV and the law in Houston.

By having laws that criminalize the transmission of HIV, we basically place a label on people with HIV as potential criminals. Many organizations are very opposed to having laws that are specific on HIV and criminal transmission because, quite frankly, we just don't do it with other diseases.

32 states have made it a crime to knowingly infect or risk infecting others. Texas has no such law.

Mr. Padu had no duty to disclose.

But the state has prosecuted individuals using other charges.

Have a health code provision that requires the disclosure. You can lie even. However, those can all be used to show intent.

But there's another piece to the case against Philippe, his own DNA.

Please tell us your name. My name is Michael Lee Metzger.

For the first time in Texas and only the third time in the US, genetics is used in court to prove HIV transmission between a defendant and his accusers. Dr. Michael Metzger, a professor of genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, was asked by the prosecution to conduct a study comparing blood samples from Philippe and the six women. Metzger says he can show how two HIV strains are related using their DNA, and in this case, which one was the source of the related samples?

One sample, sample one, was the source of most, if not all, of the other samples infection. There's one common denominator amongst all those women, and who is that? Philippe Padou.

But would it all add up for the jury?

He could have said, Hey, I'm HIV positive. He chose not to break that chain.

All rise.

Does the jury reached a unanimous verdict in all six cases? Yes, sir.

That's next. After six days of testimony, the trial of Philippe to do comes to a close.

It's as if he took a gun and he shot all of them. There's no HIV law in Texas. He gave them a virus that's going to ultimately kill them. These women had a responsibility. We're asking you to find him guilty.

And 12 people are left to make sense of a complicated case.

It's an opportunity for me to close a chapter on my life. I can move on. I can put this behind me. You Home rise.

Five hours later, a verdict.

Will the jury find the defendant guilty of the offense of aggravating assault discharged in the indictment? And we assess his punishment at confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to serve five concurrent terms of 45 years and one term of 25 years. We can only assume by his indifference he intended for us to die.

He had no duty to disclose.

That's the law. There is no duty to disclose. Of.

When you have someone who blatantly ignores health advice in a life or death manner, it's hard to ignore that. However satisfying the verdict might be, there are still people who question the outcome. The local paper in covering the trial got a lot of readers who wrote in and said, Hey, takes two to tango, as one writer said.

Yes, it takes two to tango, but it only takes one to pull the trigger. And that's what our stance is.

But the trigger man in this case he is the victim. Just a week after a jury convicted him on six counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Philippe Padieu emerged from a county jail cell to talk to 2020. He said he wanted to set the record straight on the charges, the women, and his HIV diagnosis in September of 2005.

I believe that I had a false positive because I believe that I was negative. I think it's human nature to think that the glass His glass is halfway full. I think we tend to believe that everything is going to be okay, that it just can't be that bad. That's the perception that I had at the time.

Despite that belief, he claims he told his partners to get tested. He also blames the women for not protecting themselves, and surprisingly, him. We're all responsible.

This was conceptual sex. We all agreed to have sex. Are they not a willing participant? I didn't create the HIV virus. One of these women normally and intentionally infected me.

Philippe says he doesn't believe the results of the genetic testing and that prosecutors inflamed the jury by painting him as a predator.

They needed this serial killer image that never really existed. I didn't go out and try to infect anybody or spread this disease. I was in love with some of these women. I had long-term relationships. The pattern just doesn't fit these charges. Abuse.

And he says he still cares for the women.

I feel empathy for them. I don't feel this vengeance that they feel for me. I should have done things differently. I should have obviously not had as many partners I should have been more aware of the HIV, and I should have been more responsible.

Months after the trial, Philippe wrote us and said he had more he had to say. So we came here to this maximum security prison in Texas to meet with him. But shortly after our arrival, Philippe announced he'd had a change of heart. What Philippe didn't know was that we had more information to share with him, too. Information uncovered from his past. I'm Lisa. Remember Lisa? Well, she was also intimate with Philippe, except that Lisa dated Philippe in a totally different state in 1997, a full decade before the Texas case.

The last time that we had saw each other is that he took me to a swingers party.

A swingers party?Yeah.

It ended very badly.

Lisa stormed out of that party and says Philippe Padeu then became a distant memory. She got married and applied for life insurance. But in a letter from the insurance company, Lisa learned not only was she denied coverage, she had HIV.

I fell to the floor exactly how these women felt. I wanted to commit suicide. I was Just the shame. I felt like my life was over.

Then in 2007, she said she found Philippe's business card and searched his name on the Internet.

When I googled him, I came across all these articles from Colin County, and the titles were to the extent of Man Arrested for Infecting Women with HIV. And my heart just stopped.

Lisa called the prosecutors in Texas, but Because she dated Philippe in another city before 2005, she could not be part of the criminal case. But if Philippe was, as he insists, infected in 2005, how does Lisa fit into the picture? 2020 approached Dr. Metzger with this question and arranged for Lisa to provide a blood sample.

So far, the preliminary data are supporting the same finding that we found for the other six recipient samples. That one sample still sample one, appears to be the source sample to now these seven samples.

Sample one, Philippe Padou. According to Dr. Metzger's preliminary blood analysis, Philippe gave Lisa HIV back in 1997. If he'd been HIV positive that long, based on his sexual habits, he may have infected countless others. What did he know and when did he know it? How many other victims might there be beyond this circle of women? Do you think that that was the first time he'd been told he was HIV positive?

Absolutely not. There's a lot more women, and there's a lot more different women that aren't here.

Which is why the women say they came forward. And even though Philippe may spend the rest of his life in prison, they want people to know about the life sentence they have been given.

I've had bone marrow loss, bone density loss, diagnosed recently because Because of the HIV medicine. I have a higher risk of heart disease. I have a higher risk of cancer because I have no immune system. Everybody's on antidepressants, sleeping pills in order to wind down at night because we have serious posttraumatic stress disorder. Most of the women will require medication for the rest of their lives, a costly medication that has serious side effects. If you don't have insurance and you don't qualify qualify for drug assistance programs, the cost can be $2,500 a month.

Philippe's health care is free, courtesy of the state of Texas. He is not yet in a prison ward for men with advanced AIDS. If you could all say something to him, what would you say?

I remember one last thing that I said to him. I said, I never want to meet another person like you in my life again, ever. He basically He said to me, Why don't you just go away and leave me alone about this? This is not a death sentence. I said, But the point is, if I didn't know that I had it, it It would kill me.

Doctors say in all likelihood, these women will one day die of AIDS when depends on their immune systems. Despite everything, there is an upside to what they have been through.

I felt I felt like I really wasn't a victim. I felt like, Look what you did. You made bad choices. I didn't want to get in a group of women that were going to be negative. I found some of the best friends I've ever had in my life. I think there are many more women out there that are sick, and they don't know why they're sick, and they might have already died.

One reason the women believe they've survived is that they have one another.

I walk around otherwise at work or in my daily life feeling like an imposter, and I can't let people know what's going on inside. Other than my family, my husband. But they don't know what it feels like to be HIV positive. And these women do. They do. You're so alone and afraid, and you don't know who you can talk to and trust. We feel strength together that we could never have as individuals.

This is Deborah Roberts with an update to this story. Philippe Padou remains in prison with a release date of July 19th, 2022. There are laws now in 35 states which criminalize HIV exposure. You've been listening to 2020's True Crime Vault. Join us Friday nights at 9:00 for all new broadcast episodes of 2020.

Thanks for listening.