Dateline: Secrets Uncovered - A complete timeline of Victor Paleologus' murder trial, revisited

Dateline: Secrets Uncovered offers a fresh look at old mysteries that were previously featured on Dateline NBC, sometimes uncovering new information. The most recent episode titled "The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo" which aired on September 12, 2025, focused on the murder of Kristi Johnson.

In 2003, a 21-year-old aspiring makeup artist named Kristi Johnson vanished after leaving her Santa Monica apartment for what she believed was an audition connected to a James Bond movie. The man who lured her with that promise was Victor Paleologus, a repeat offender who had been posing for years as a Hollywood insider.

Prosecutors later revealed that Johnson’s case wasn’t an isolated tragedy but the culmination of more than a decade of allegations involving women who said Paleologus tied, choked, or tried to rape them under similar pretenses.

As shown in Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, her disappearance set off an intense investigation that combined eyewitness accounts, old case files, and survivor testimony.

What followed was a trial in Los Angeles that relied heavily on those women’s stories because the physical evidence in Johnson’s murder was thin. Over two weeks in court, jurors heard details of Paleologus’ pattern: expensive suits, promises of big paychecks, and requests for the same provocative outfits.

Midway through the proceedings, Paleologus accepted a deal to avoid the death penalty and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. His sentencing to 25 years to life closed the trial, but his parole eligibility ensures the story continues to resurface. With Paleologus' parole hearing approaching, this case has become relevant again.

Dateline: Secrets Uncovered - Inside the trial that exposed Victor Paleologus’ double life

As shown in Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, the central focus of the trial was how a man like Victor Paleologus was able to operate for so long without being stopped. Prosecutors walked the jury through his history, beginning in 1989 when he posed as a Columbia Records executive to lure a woman to a hotel room.

She testified that he pulled ropes from behind the headboard and tried to assault her before she escaped by biting him. That case ended with a conviction for false imprisonment rather than attempted rape, a decision that survivors later said allowed him to continue targeting women.

By the mid-1990s, he had been accused of breaking into a woman’s home with a ligature and later staging an audition that ended with another victim bound by her ankles and nearly strangled. In that case, he was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape, yet still received the chance to reenter society. The prosecution argued that these prior cases established a consistent pattern that was directly tied to Kristi Johnson’s disappearance.

During Johnson’s trial, women, including actress Cathy DeBuono, described nearly identical encounters. He told her to wear a man’s white dress shirt, a black miniskirt, high heels, and a necktie for a so-called photo shoot. The requests matched what Johnson’s roommate remembered her being told to bring to her audition. Detectives used these details to show the jury that Johnson’s murder wasn’t an isolated act but the final escalation of the same scheme.

As shown in Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, the lack of physical evidence made this testimony essential. Rain had washed away DNA from the hillside where Johnson’s body was found, and her car had been scrubbed clean. Prosecutors leaned heavily on the credibility of the women, arguing that too many accounts lined up to dismiss as coincidence. After nearly two weeks of testimony, Paleologus abruptly agreed to plead guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty.

The plea deal ended the trial but not the controversy. Survivors voiced frustration that it took Johnson’s death to finally put him away, despite years of red flags. For Johnson’s family, the deal at least guaranteed he would remain behind bars for 25 years before parole was even possible.

That timeline is now reaching its next stage, with a parole hearing scheduled for November 2025, keeping the case in public view decades after the staged audition that ended in tragedy.

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