Page 12 - John Jamelske News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> as they were driving into the police station, he started telling them about the fact that he was with this girl who was a friend of his, and they'd had a relationship. >> and he's 67 and she's how old? >> 18. >> according to him? >> according to him. she's, in fact, 16. >> so he is talking without the lawyer? >> he's talking. >> a misunderstood may/december romance is all there was to it, the old man said. >> that he didn't plan on making it a permanent thing, it was just kind of a fling for the present time. >> midlife crisis, or what? >> he was a little bit old for a midlife crisis. >> bu...

Emotional. >> very, very much. >> even before his house became snared in a tangle of yellow police tape, jamelske was well-known in his suburban syracuse hometown of dewitt but not exactly beloved. his upscale neighbors put up a fence to prevent his junk-strewn yard from spoiling their view. though many knew that jamelske, a retired grocer, collected returnable bottles for the deposits, few could have guessed the eccentric old man was actually a self-made millionaire, thanks to some shrewd real estate investments out west and his own obsessive penny-pinching. >> i'm very thrifty, extremely thr...

Nerve-racking when you think you have about 3, 3 1/2 feet of soil above us. >> investigators were dumbfounded. not only was the 16-year-old apparently telling the truth, but police say she might never have been victimized at all if jennifer had given them more to go on two years earlier. >> had we believed everything she had to say, we still couldn't have found him. >> the one fact she did have is she remembered that car. >> thoroughly investigated the car, but unfortunately we had the wrong year on the car. we didn't look at '75s and '73s and '76s. you know, we just exhausted the possibility ...

But for 15 years police say john jamelske had another identity as a sexual slave master in a makeshift underground dungeon he had built himself to abuse and imprison a string of young women. now he's heading to trial, accused of kidnapping and rape, and there would be a drama in the courtroom. once more, here's rob stafford. >> in early summer 2003 john jamelske entered a syracuse courtroom for the first time. after two months of saturation coverage, the place was packed with people who wanted to see the notorious dungeon master up close. investigators determined that over 15 years there had b...

Empty beer bottles, shelf after shelf meticulously organized by brand, some of them stacked alphabetically. but it was at the back of this room that police discovered what they were looking for, the entrance to the dungeon. it was secured by four heavy steel doors. this ten-foot tunnel separates the dungeon from the rest of the house. you have to get on your hands and knees to get there. it's cold, dark and damp down here. police say this was the path to john jamelske's other collection. the underground prison was clearly a homemade job. the uneven, roughly finished walls were covered with gra...