The episode titled ‘Through the Pouring Rain’ of ‘Dateline NBC’ covers the gruesome crimes of the serial rapist Robert Jason Burdick, infamously known as “The Wooded Rapist,” due to the fact that he attacked during rainy nights under the cover of trees. Between 1994 and 2008, he is known to have committed at least fourteen rapes in the Greater Nashville area before the authorities finally brought him to justice.
Who is Robert Jason Burdick?
Born on December 7, 1969, Robert Jason Burdick grew to become an owner of a technology company and a technician in WB Technologies, a company located at 2201 Murfreesboro Pike, which specialized in burglar alarm technology. It is believed that it wasn’t until March 1994 that the terror of his monstrous acts began, with Pat Young being the first of his many victims. The courageous 22-year-old lawyer, who lived alone and was engaged to be married, was asleep in her house before she was awakened by a masked stranger who had his hands on her.
Despite the struggles of Pat, the perpetrator pinned her down, overpowering her as he was much more aggressive and physically powerful than her. But she managed to bite a piece out of his hand while he continued attacking her and hid the evidence under the bed. After he fled the scene into the woods behind the house, she called the police, who questioned and collected the bit of skin from the rapist’s hand as evidence.
Another one of Robert’s victims was a 16-year-old girl named Zea Miller, who was attacked in November 1999 in Brentwood, even though her parents and dog were in the house. She was awakened at gunpoint around 2 in the morning and taken to another location near her house before he committed the act. According to reports, he committed three more rapes in 1999 and 2000 before he stopped for a while and continued his sinful deeds once in 2004, twice in 2005, and twice in 2006.
Although Robert’s victims were vastly different in age and other aspects, his crimes were eerily similar in each instance. His pattern involved him stalking his victim for a while, attacking on rainy nights regardless of anybody else’s presence on the property, appearing out of the woods, sometimes taking the victim to a nearby secluded area at gunpoint or using another weapon, and then disappearing back into the woods. After each crime, the authorities arrived at the scene and searched for evidence but to no avail, as there were no clothing fibers and hairs left behind.
However, Robert slipped up on a rainy night on April 29, 2008, in an affluent Nashville suburb as a dog started barking at him, and a woman noticed him in a driveway with a ski mask on and a flashlight. After the woman reported the incident to the police, they made a traffic stop on Robert in the neighborhood. He told the police officer in charge that he was in the area attending a party. But when he refused the officer’s request to search his vehicle, it raised his suspicion, after which the authorities started 24/7 surveillance of him.
After getting their hands on Robert’s DNA from a restaurant he ate at the next day, they submitted it to the crime lab for analysis. They got back the results within 48 hours and his DNA matched with the DNA found on victims of The Wooded Rapist. Finally, on May 1, 2008, 38-year-old Robert Jason Burdick was charged with multiple counts of rape and arrested.
Robert Jason Burdick is Still in Jail
The trial of Robert Jason Burdick began in April 2009, and in July of the same year, he was sentenced to 32 years for raping a Nashville woman while awaiting trials for allegedly raping more than a dozen more women. The defense appealed the conviction as well as the sentence length as the convict’s lawyer said, “Our argument is there is not a factual basis (for the longer sentence).” He was charged with additional years in prison, more than 70 years, when he was proven guilty of other counts of rape as well.
Years after getting convicted, in May 2021, the 51-year-old convict requested a new trial, although his chances of ever getting out of prison were slim. A month or so later, his appeal was denied. However, he did not give up as he hired a new private attorney in an attempt to overturn the convictions against him but to no avail as the scientific evidence is hard to compete with. Currently, he is serving his sentence at The Trousdale Turner Correctional Center at 140 Macon Way in Hartsville, Tennessee.
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