Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One.

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One.

An A&E original podcast.

Have you ever woken up from a dream and gotten lost for a few seconds in that place between a sleep and awake?

You're not sure if the dream is reality or if you're still sleeping?

Usually it's pretty easy to shake yourself awake and the line between dreams and reality becomes clear.

But in San Antonio, Texas in 1983, that line seemed to blur.

And one man's dream seemed a little too close to reality.

He dreamt of a murder.

Actually, he dreamt of a crime scene where a woman was assaulted and murdered.

And the crime scene he dreamed up looked a lot like a real-life murder where a woman named Rachel Kossab was raped and strangled to death.

For Rachel's daughter, Kristen, who was eight at the time, every day was a waking nightmare.

Not only was her mother taken from her, but the murderer was also still out there somewhere, like a boogie man waiting in the shadows.

She lived with a trauma for over 20 years until a resourceful cold case detective and a very organized DNA analyst helped bring her nightmare to an end.

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast.

I'm Brooke.

And this story, adapted from a classic episode of Cold Case Files, is told by the luminous Bill Curtis.

I knew she was killed. I knew she had died. I knew that someone had choked her.

Kristen Nukham is 28 years old. In 1983, she was eight. When her mom, Rachel Kossab, was murdered.

And that's all I needed to know at age eight. But as you get older, you do start to wonder.

And I've always loved cold case shows. And I just knew one day that it would be solved. I parade every day. But it would be solved.

This is my office. This is where I go through my cold cases.

...