'20/20': Ex-Con Contractors

June 28 -- Most people can't imagine inviting a convicted felon into their homes. Often though, many families are doing just that when they open their doors to workers and salespeople who make housecalls.

Six years ago, Don and Terina Ferminick and their and five-month-old daughter had just moved to Alameda, Calif., where Don took a position as a church minister. "Our life was wonderful," Don says of his life then. But Don's family was permanently scarred when Giles Nadey came to clean the carpets of the church rectory.

Terina went to the rectory to pay Nadey and never returned. That evening Don went to check on her and found his wife stabbed to death and covered with blood. There was even blood on the walls. "I guess through the course of events, he sodomized her, and I guess to cover up what he had done he decided to take her life," Don says.

Nadey was later convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. What was particularly troubling to Don Ferminick is that the horrible act might have been prevented. Had Nadey's employers bothered to run a background check, they would have learned that he had two previous felony convictions. Nadey even acknowledged his criminal record on his job application, but the company still hired him to clean carpets in people's homes.

Two years later, in the same county, Kerry Spooner-Dean, a 30-year-old pediatrician, was viciously stabbed to death by another carpet cleaner named Jerrold Woods. Woods had eight prior convictions for armed robbery, but the carpet cleaning company never did a background check. Dan Dean, the victim's husband, recently won a $9 million judgment against the company.

Secret Histories

Sadly, these brutal crimes are all too common. And the recent revelation that Utah police investigating the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart are focusing attention on an ex-convict who worked as a handyman in the Smarts' Salt Lake City home is bringing more attention to the problem.

David Taitte is serving 25-30 years in a Nebraska prison for raping a woman after delivering a pizza to her house. When he applied for his job at Domino's, he had been in jail 16 times including once for sexual assault. He says he knew Domino's would neither hire him if he admitted to his convictions, nor investigate his background if he lied. So he left the box blank on the application where it asked if he was a felon.