Eight years ago, while her two children slept soundly down the hallway, a Waterbury woman was assaulted and raped by a masked intruder in her Overlook home. Terrified, and in shock, she reached out to the Waterbury Police Department for help. That call triggered a chain of events which eventually proved to be more damaging to the woman than the rape itself.

WATERBURY, CT - Police believe they have solved a decade-old rape case that prompted the department to change how it handles sexual assault investigations.

At the end of another long day at police headquarters, Neil O'Leary climbed into his car and headed home. For the past 15 months, O'Leary had served as the acting chief of the Waterbury Police Department. As he headed home on that September night two months ago, O'Leary, 46, had a lot on his mind. The city had begun testing 11 candidates for the permanent chief's job, and O'Leary was stressed about taking the oral and written exams. While many insiders assumed O'Leary was a shoo-in to get the job, he knew better. He had to score in the top five candidates to move into the interview phase with Mayor Michael Jarjura, where he would be the prohibitive favorite to get the job. But he had to pass the test.

SARATOGA SPRINGS - A Connecticut man is accused of trying to drag a 17-year-old Saratoga Springs High School senior into a van in a school parking lot after cross country practice Monday.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - A Ford Windstar van stocked with maps, a tarp and a rope with slipknots sat in the Saratoga Springs High School parking lot Monday evening.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - A Connecticut man accused of trying to kidnap a 17-year-old girl in a Saratoga Springs High School parking lot Monday evening planned to take her to another location, police said.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - The city school district is considering putting surveillance cameras in its parking lots in the wake of Monday's attempted kidnapping at the high school.

WATERBURY, CT- Staked out in his van, John Regan took photographs of dozens of unsuspecting women, including a 21-year-old former co-worker he previously tried to assault, according to Waterbury police.

MILTON, NY - John F. Regan was evaluated for his risk of suicide when he arrived at Saratoga County Jail and didn't raise any red flags, Sheriff James D. Bowen said Thursday.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - Police prepared their case against accused kidnapper John F. Regan for a grand jury Monday as Regan himself underwent treatment at a maximum-security state psychiatric hospital near Utica.

WATERBURY, CT - When a Connecticut salesman was charged with trying to kidnap a New York teenager from her school parking lot Halloween night, police believed it was a random, isolated abduction attempt.

The investigation into accused abductor John Regan paints a chilling portrait, and the fear strikes close to home. Just two weeks ago, he was charged with grabbing a Saratoga Springs High School girl after cross country practice, trying to drag her into his van.

Her husband was in Colorado for a wedding, the first time in more than a decade of marriage he had left her home alone. She stayed behind because a co-worker's wife was expecting a baby.

A tornado of controversy, and revulsion, engulfed Waterbury resident John F. Regan this past month. Local, state and federal investigators suspect - at the least - the work of a serial rapist, and have launched a multi-state task force to piece together Regan's movements during the past three decades.

WATERBURY, Conn. - John F. Regan had been out on bail for a year when a concerned photo clerk at the Walgreens on West Main Street called the police earlier this fall.

BALLSTON SPA - A Connecticut man accused of trying to drag a Saratoga Springs High School girl into his van in October pleaded innocent Friday in Saratoga County Court.

BALLSTON SPA - Attorneys for a Connecticut man accused of attempting to abduct a Saratoga Springs High School senior in October will try next week to keep evidence against him from being seen by a potential jury.

BALLSTON SPA, NY - Evidence suppression hearings in the case of a Connecticut man accused of trying to kidnap a Saratoga Springs High School senior in October have been postponed until Monday, May 8.

For the past year friends and family of John Regan stood by his side after he was arrested for allegedly raping the wife of one of his best friends. The charge was so outrageously off the wall, and despicable, that many people in the community refused to believe he had committed the crime.

WATERBURY, CT - John Regan, the Overlook family man, pleaded guilty Friday in New York to trying to drag a Saratoga Springs High School girl into his van last Halloween.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - In a surprise move, John F. Regan of Waterbury, Conn., pleaded guilty Friday to trying to drag a Saratoga Springs High School senior into his van following cross county practice on Halloween.

BALLSTON SPA - John F. Regan said nothing in his own defense Thursday as he was sentenced to 12 years in state prison for trying to kidnap a 17-year-old girl at Saratoga Springs High School this past October.

BALLSTON SPA - John Regan's DNA will soon be added to state and national databases so police can compare it with evidence left behind at unsolved crimes, Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III said Friday.

WATERBURY, Conn. - John F. Regan, the man who tried to kidnap a 17-year-old girl at Saratoga Springs High School last October, will be in a Connecticut court Thursday to answer kidnapping and sex abuse charges dating back several years.

WATERBURY, CT - The harshest words for John Regan came Thursday from the husband of a woman Regan attacked in 1993.

WATERBURY, Conn. - A man who admitted to trying to kidnap a 17-year-old girl outside Saratoga Springs High School last year was sentenced to 15 years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to a separate kidnapping case in Connecticut.

Rachael was ready. She had waited more than a decade to stand up in court and face the man who had raped her 13 years ago in her own bed. The time was near. Her mind spun as a prosecutor read out loud a condensed version of the attack. Rachael had rehearsed the statement several times that she was about to make to the court, but her stomach was flipping and her heart thumped hard inside her chest. Then, bizarrely, with just moments before standing up in court to face her attacker, a strobe light on the ceiling kicked on and a high pitched wail filled ears inside the courthouse.

Authorities formed a task force Friday to determine if John Regan was involved in sex crimes here and in other states.

HARTFORD, CT - As far as his criminal record shows, John Regan kidnapped a woman inside her Overlook home in 1993.

BALLSTON SPA - John F. Regan said nothing in his own defense Thursday as he was sentenced to 12 years in state prison for trying to kidnap a 17-year-old girl at Saratoga Springs High School this past October.

Donna Palomba was alone in bed on a September night in 1993, when she heard the distinct sound of footsteps approaching closer and closer. Then she saw him. The man in the mask.

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- "Dateline NBC" will air a two-hour special Sunday on convicted felon John F. Regan and the women he terrorized in Saratoga Springs and his hometown of Waterbury, Conn. The story, titled "The Man Behind the Mask," focuses on Donna Palomba, a Waterbury woman who said Regan raped her 15 years ago while her children were sleeping.

Jane Doe. Over my years as a reporter, I've read countless police reports about her, and always found that spare, staccato pseudonym doesn't do her justice. Is her real name Melanie or Janice or Grace? Because behind that fig leaf of anonymity, there is a real woman: A woman whose life changed in an instant, a woman who has been subjected to violence, terror and heartache.

The story of how Saratoga Springs law enforcement helped bring John F. Regan to justice for the attempted abduction of a high school track runner and a 1993 sexual assault in Connecticut will air at 7 p.m. Sunday on "Dateline NBC."

SARATOGA SPRINGS - City Police Chief Edward Moore is not particularly interested in watching a "Dateline NBC" special tonight on John Regan, the man who tried to kidnap a Saratoga Springs High School student from outside the school on Halloween 2005.

Everyone likes a story with a happy ending and, by most counts, the case of rapist and would-be kidnapper John Regan is one.

Waterbury, Conn. - Overlook is a lovely old neighborhood in Waterbury, a small town in Connecticut. It's the kind of place where family ties run deep and friendships run long. Where the kids you play with in kindergarten are buddies for life. A place where you sleep safe at night. Or so Donna Palomba thought-until one terrifying night in 1993.

Donna Palomba is no longer Jane Doe.
"A doctor would tell me where there's secrets, there's shame," she said last week. "I don't want to have shame about this because I did nothing wrong."

Browse articles and video detailing Donna Palomba's successful campaign for the state of Connecticut to change the statute of limitations in sexual assault cases where DNA evidence is uncovered.