19 years later, 'bathtub killer' survivor speaks

ARLINGTON – He was known as the "bathtub serial killer."

He murdered two Arlington teachers and raped four other women before getting caught.

In the 19 years since, none of the survivors have talked. But the last victim in this case says it's time.

Adrienne Fields remembers watching the news about the murders of Christine Vu and Wendy Prescott. She had a strange feeling wash over her.

"When I seen it on TV, I just had this crazy feeling like, 'I am next,'" Fields said. "I just knew it. I can't explain it."

Vu and Prescott were murdered in 1996. They were strangled and left in their bathtubs at the Peachtree Apartments in Arlington.

Fields, fearing she was being followed, moved to Grand Prairie.

"I told my friends, 'I am moving because he's going to get me,'" she said. "I just had this crazy feeling he was going to get me."

On Oct. 26, 1999, at 3 a.m., her worst nightmare came to life.

"I hear swish, swish, swish, swish. You know, that sound," Fields said. "I turned over slowly, and as I turned over, here is this guy with a stocking on his head, running towards me."

At the time, she didn't know that man, Dale Scheanette, was the same man who killed Vu and Prescott.

"He jumps on the bed and he covers up my mouth and he puts a gun in my back, and he said, 'Do you feel that?' And I said, 'Yes," Fields said. "And he says, 'If you keep screaming, I'm going to hurt you.'"

She didn't know him, but he knew her.

"He knew my name, and I'm like, 'Oh my God, how does this guy know me?'" she said.

Police believe he stalked his victims after seeing them at a night club where he was a bouncer.

He raped Fields for two hours.

"I remember he said, 'The devil keeps making me do it,' and he said, 'You are not like the others,'" Fields said, "and that's when I realized, he had done it before."

He was getting ready to leave when she said, "Oh my God, you have done this before."

"He stopped in midstream and he pushed me in the back of the head, down to the floor," Fields recalled.

At that moment the victim says she started to pray, thinking she was going to die.

"And I said, 'Oh Lord, please forgive me of all my sins. If I have to die tonight, I just want to go to heaven. Don't let my life have to end,'" Fields said.

Remarkably, Scheanette walked out of her apartment and never looked back.

"I don't know what made him change," Fields said. "I don't know what changed his heart to give me another chance."

Police matched DNA from Fields' apartment to the DNA at Vu and Prescott's murders.

Fields said she lost all sense of security. She would wake up all night, afraid he would come back.

"On the inside, I was a wreck," she said. "On the inside, I was up, check the window, check the door, go upstairs, go downstairs, check the back, make sure the alarm is set. Over and over again."

Fields didn't have any peace until police called her in September of 2000 to say they had caught Scheanette.

"I remember thinking I can finally sleep now," she said.

Scheanette was executed on Fields' birthday: February 10, 2009.

"The day of my birth, he lost his life," Fields said, "so it's time for you to live again."

She stayed quiet for nearly two decades, suffering through depression, divorce, and self doubt.

"I was dealing with the fact that they got killed and I lived, and why did that bother me so much?" Fields said. "To know that they died and I lived, because I felt so unworthy to be living."

But this year, she started ministering and telling her story. She even launched a website to empower women.

Adrienne Fields has a message: "You don't have to feel like you are alone, and you don't have to feel like life is over because things happened to you."

She hopes her story will help others overcome their fears and find peace in surviving their pain.