Pathological

by Henry Cordes

  As Mois looked around the Hunter home, he saw valuables in every room. Computers. A brand new digital camera and big lens. Entertainment equipment. Nice furnishings. Nice everything. None of it touched. Sherman’s purse, holding $800 she’d just collected as rent on a property she owned, still sat on the dinette table where she always left it. The only room that looked ransacked was Tom’s bedroom, but Mois later learned from Bill Hunter it was just a case of Tom being Tom. To Mois, this was clearly no robbery or burglary. So why were Tom and Shirlee killed?

  The knives were also a curious thing. In addition to the blades left in the victims’ necks, two other knives had been pulled from the block. Mois found one beneath Tom and another sitting atop a stack of Bon Appetit cooking magazines on the dining table.

  Why were the victims killed with knives taken right from the home? If the man in the suit had come with intent to kill, wouldn’t he have brought his own weapon? Had he killed in spur-of-the-moment rage? Was he familiar with this house?

  It was also curious that the culprit seemed to come and go so brazenly, in broad daylight. Why was this guy so unconcerned by all the neighbors who saw him? That, and the pastel-colored, unfamiliar license plate, made Mois surmise the killer may not have been from Omaha.

  The stab wounds seemed the most significant part of this mystery. Mois had seen more than his share of stabbing deaths. When someone pulls a knife, it’s typically a wild, angry event, the victim stabbed and slashed all over. Here, it seemed the wounds were delivered with purpose, confined on both victims to the same small area on the right side of the neck. “The wounds kind of baffled us,” he’d say later. “They were so extreme.”

  But Mois would soon have more light shed on the nature of the wounds to Tom and Shirlee. Because after Mois stayed up all night processing the Hunter crime scene, he headed straight for the county morgue to witness the autopsies. Mois looked on as Dr. Jerry Jones, the pathologist on duty that day, removed the knives — a 5-inch blade from Tom, a 7-inch blade from Shirlee. Then Jones documented the products of the killer’s cruel work, numbering all the wounds.

  With both victims, some of the cuts were superficial, as if the killer was probing with the blade or inflicting torture. Others were clearly deep and gaping. Shirlee had suffered 18 distinct cutting wounds around her neck. On both victims, most all the wounds were clustered below the right ear and jaw line. “Is there a reason he would stab them there?” Mois asked Jones.

  Sure, Jones replied. The wounds appeared to target the carotid artery and jugular vein, both critical for blood flow to the head. Severing those lifelines would very quickly incapacitate and kill the victims. And indeed, Jones would ultimately find in his internal probing that in both victims, both the carotid and jugular had been completely severed. If the killer truly was “going for the jugular,” he seemed to know what he was doing. An ominous thought popped into Mois’ head: Maybe he has done this before.

  By the time Mois wrapped up at the morgue and turned for home, he’d been working close to 30 hours. His wife and two young sons were already asleep.

  But even after all he’d been through, Mois wasn’t ready to rest. He couldn’t if he tried.

  So instead, he went out the back door to the wood deck he’d years earlier built by hand. It was time for an emotional reset.

  With big oak and ash trees towering overhead, the deck always served as the detective’s sanctuary after a bad day at the office. A day where he had to notify a family of a loved one’s death. Or a day, like this one, where he’d witnessed unspeakable carnage.

  Other than the department store massacre — where there was so much blood a metallic, iron scent permeated the air, so thick Mois could taste it — no crime scene would ever weigh on him more than the one he witnessed in the Hunter home. But like the many other type-A toughs who seem to gravitate to police work, for Mois these were things you simply didn’t talk to others about. He internalized all his feelings from the day.

  In the darkness, Mois pulled up a chair, put his feet up on the railing and listened to the peaceful solitude of his suburban neighborhood. He did his best to decompress, disengage and turn the feelings off. Still, the father in Mois made it hard for him to avoid thoughts of young Tom.

  More than once in the past 24 hours, Mois had to take a deep breath and emotionally re-collect himself as he thought about Tom’s ghastly final moments. The detective pictured it in his mind: the terror the 11-year-old boy must have endured. And in the place where he should have felt safest — at home, waiting for his dad.

  Out on his deck that night, Mois knew this, too: The monster capable of such evil still lurked out there, free to lash out again.

  CHAPTER 5: SPINNING WHEELS

  Bill Hunter was in shock and not thinking completely straight when he sat down for his first interview with Omaha detectives, about an hour after finding his son with a knife through his neck. During an emotionally grueling session at Omaha police headquarters downtown, his interrogators gently pressed him, at times asking uncomfortable questions.

  Any marital problems between you and Claire?

  Are you having any problems with neighbors?

  Do you have any patients upset with you? Does your wife?

  Are you having any trouble with gambling?

  Do you have any suspicion of the boys using drugs?

  Do you have any idea who or why somebody would do this?

  In obvious anguish and frustration, Hunter covered his face with both hands. At other times, he rested his forehead flat on the table and groaned. Hunter simply had no answers. He just could not imagine who could have done something so ruthless and horrific to his family. “Honestly, I’m racking my brain,” he told the two detectives, desperation in his voice. “We live a peaceful existence, almost ridiculously simple.”

  Indeed, there were scores of questions and few answers as Omaha detectives collectively sought to learn what happened inside the Hunter house on March 13, 2008. Seven detectives were initially assigned to work the case that around the department came to be known simply by the name of the quiet neighborhood where the crime occurred: “Dundee.”

  It was obvious to everyone that the key to solving Dundee would be found in identifying the olive-skinned man driving the silver CRV. It seemed clear he had come with intent to kill, the reason he had parked around the corner from the Hunter house. This seemed premeditated murder. But who was he? Where did he come from?

  Whoever he was, he’d been able to slip in and out of the Hunter house like a ghost, leaving no physical trace. The crime lab found no relevant DNA or fingerprints anywhere in the house. Essentially the only solid lead they had on him was the CRV. But with no plate number, there were literally thousands of vehicles on the road that fit that description.

  To aid in the suspect’s identification, an artist within days rendered neighbors’ collected observations into a composite sketch, depicting the profile of a man with dark eyes and dark, close-cropped hair. And as Mois would later put it, the drawing generated “a shit ton of tips” after it was released to the media.

  The vast majority of the tips coming in were from callers suggesting the drawing looked vaguely like someone they knew: the guy who fixed their car, or a man who used to live down the street. Detectives would run down nearly all such tips, almost always finding the person mentioned had zero connection to either of the two victims. Eventually, Omaha police asked the media to stop running the image. All it seemed to produce was dozens of false leads.

  To spur other tips, a reward fund was quickly established, one that would, ultimately, with the help of Sherman’s family, grow to more than $50,000. Its size spoke to how much these slayings had traumatized the city. In all, Omaha police would log some 148 various tips during the first two months of the investigation, sending detectives looking in dozens of different directions.

  “What everybody’s asking is, ‘Who could have d
one this, and why?’” said Dr. Roger Brumback, Hunter’s boss and the chair of the Creighton University pathology department.

  As Omaha detectives set out to answer that question, they faced a major barrier: No one even knew who the killer was targeting. Could Shirlee have been the intended victim? Was it Tom? Perhaps Drs. Bill or Claire Hunter, or even one of their older sons, was the true target. There was no obvious place to start.

  Detectives turned to “victimology,” diving deep into the backgrounds of all of those people to see if anyone they’d been in contact with could have had motive to kill.

  Right away, detectives learned about Shirlee’s battles with her daughter and her daughter’s violent boyfriend. There was also evidence of past drug use within Shirlee’s family. Perhaps the killings had been in retaliation for some kind of drug deal gone bad.

  Shirlee’s brothers at first were very suspicious of the violent boyfriend. As one of them would later put it, they gave him to police “on a platter.” And Omaha detectives indeed were hot for him, too, putting him on the front burner of the investigation. They questioned him at length and did so on numerous occasions, once picking him up in the middle of the night to drag him downtown. They even tailed him.

  But in the end, they also cleared him. His alibi for the time of the killings appeared solid. And the detectives also decided there was no reason to think he even knew Shirlee was at the Hunter home that day. The Waite family also eventually decided the boyfriend couldn’t have done it. Police told them the assailant had gotten out of the Hunter house so cleanly, it was almost like a professional hit. The Waite family decided this guy couldn’t have pulled off something like that.

  As part of the victimology work, both Bill and Claire Hunter were questioned numerous times in the early days. Claire Hunter had learned of her son’s death in a phone call while in Hawaii. A dear friend who saw the sketchy early news reports on TV told her “something awful” had happened in her home. For all Claire knew at the time, the two unnamed victims being referred to were her husband and Tom, fears that were only fueled when Bill failed to answer her frantic phone calls. She didn’t know that at the moment, he was downtown being questioned.

  When a detective in the interrogation room finally answered Bill’s phone, Claire was adamant: You let me talk to my husband. Now. Bill got on and calmly broke the heartbreaking news. “I don’t know what happened,” he told her.

  After her long, empty flight back to Omaha, Claire proved an emotional rock, helping her family pick up the pieces and arrange for the burial of her youngest child. But only a mother could truly appreciate the pain, grief and pangs of loss that stirred within Claire’s strong exterior.

  Detectives wanted both Hunters to think of anyone from their past who could have been driven to do this. During decades-long tenures at Creighton’s medical center, both had come into contact with countless co-workers, students and patients.

  Bill Hunter, a San Francisco native, had taught at Creighton since 1980. And since 2000, in addition to teaching duties, he had headed the school’s residency program in pathology. In that role, he oversaw the new medical school graduates — known in the business as residents — who came to Creighton to receive training in pathology as their chosen medical specialty.

  Claire, a Kansas City native, similarly oversaw young doctors seeking advanced training in cardiology. While Bill as a pathologist did not tend to interact with many patients or their families — instead consulting or performing tests related to patients under the care of other doctors — Claire had provided direct care for thousands of heart patients. Certainly a few of them over the years had some gripes.

  During one early joint interview with the Hunters at their home, detectives did their best to prompt the doctors. They even suggested they draw up a list of people with possible grudges. It proved a short list. Bill Hunter would recall it included a disgruntled doctor-trainee Claire Hunter had worked with; and two medical students Bill Hunter had recently given bad reviews, including one who made what could be interpreted as a vague threat against another Creighton staffer on Facebook.

  Bill Hunter offered little encouragement to police that they’d find any Creighton connection to these deaths. While he could think of other students he dealt with who had conflicts with the pathology department or Creighton, he didn’t see where their issues were with him personally. In the end, he simply found it hard to believe anyone he’d been associated with at Creighton could have committed these horrible crimes.

  The Hunters were also grilled about neighbors, home repair contractors and delivery drivers. Police ultimately dug into the Hunters’ phone records, email accounts and finances, just to be sure there wasn’t anything they were hiding. Investigators talked to others at Creighton, including nurses and staff who worked with the Hunters. No one was beyond scrutiny.

  Mois also talked to the Hunters as part of the initial assignment he was given in Dundee: determining if young Tom had been the primary target. Mois would spend weeks learning about the boy’s teachers, bus drivers, basketball coaches and camp counselors. Did any of them appear to have a special or inappropriate interest in the boy?

  There was no evidence Tom had been assaulted sexually in the attack. Still, Mois had to consider the potential that this was the work of some kind of sexual predator. But after weeks of interviews and scoping the backgrounds of dozens of people, Mois found nothing that appeared out of line.

  Investigators were also interested in possible ties between the Dundee killings and the murder the previous year of another Omaha woman. Intriguingly, that victim, Joy Blanchard, had also been stabbed in the neck with a knife taken right from her home. And as in Dundee, the knife was left impaled in her neck. That was hardly something you saw every day. In fact, longtime detectives in homicide could not recall any other cases where that happened.

  Though detectives didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest in Blanchard’s death, they had a pretty good idea one of her relatives had killed her. They looked hard for possible ties between that male relative and any of the victims in Dundee. In the end, that also went nowhere. Another theory discounted. Another road to nowhere.

  Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. Most of the best leads and most promising lines of inquiry were being exhausted one by one. Even the detectives working the case could see it: The Dundee investigation was faltering. They also knew that time was now the enemy. With each passing day, it became less and less likely this murder mystery would ever be solved.

  CHAPTER 6: COLD CASE

  Most of the detectives originally assigned to Dundee slowly drifted off over the summer to pursue more recent murders. The killing never stops. There was a shooting involving white gang members from a suburban high school, a crime that proved violent gang activity wasn’t limited to the inner city. And a couple of cases where parents were gunned down right in front of their terrified toddler children.

  Those crimes needed to be investigated, too. While the Omaha police department had committed considerable resources to Dundee, they weren’t unlimited. Still, department brass didn’t want the investigation of such a high-profile case to die. So late that summer, they tabbed 42-year-old Scott Warner to take the lead.

  Warner was an Air Force veteran who had spent 16 years as an Omaha cop, including time in a cruiser, on bike patrol and even astride a horse as part of the department’s mounted patrol. He’d been an investigator for several years now. And a week after the Dundee killings, he’d been pulled from another detective unit to help out the regular homicide investigators, chasing down a random hodgepodge of tips.

  Now he would be the only detective solely devoted to this case. But he wouldn’t work completely alone. The homicide chief decided Mois would assist Warner. In effect, Mois would be pulling double duty. He still worked his regular night shift in homicide, picking up and investigating new cases. But he would also come in a few hours early most days
to chase down Dundee leads.

  The pairing of Mois and Warner marked the start of a long and fruitful partnership within Omaha’s homicide unit, one that in coming years would see the smart and dedicated duo solve dozens of Omaha killings. When it came to personality, though, the new partners came from opposite poles of the planet.

  The son of a Missouri engineering school dean, Warner had a professorial look of his own, with a well-groomed mustache, jowly face and a document bag often slung over his shoulder. Warner was a stickler for the department dress code, always looking squared away in his crisp suits and ties. He’d also just as soon hack off a limb than get a tattoo. “Not my cup of tea,” he’d say.

  While Mois, like many homicide detectives, swore around the office like a longshoreman, no such words ever crossed Warner’s proper lips. Neither man was easily ruffled or excited. But Warner exuded an almost priest-like calm — a demeanor he used to his advantage as one of the department’s best interviewers and interrogators.

  Around an interrogation room, Warner displayed a practiced patience that was almost inhuman. For most criminals, lying comes as easily as breathing. Warner understood that, accepted it and never got flustered in the least. He’d simply outlast them. Warner could question a subject for hours, hearing nothing but a web of untruth and seemingly getting nowhere. Then just when the subject might think the grilling was finally, mercifully over, Warner would calmly say, “OK, let’s start over again. From the very beginning.”

  It was enough to drive even his fellow detectives mad. But his persistence also frequently produced results. The subject would often slip into an inconsistency. Or perhaps fall victim to Warner’s soft, fatherly approach, coming clean like a kindergartner before the school principal.

  As the new lead detective, Warner represented a fresh set of eyes for Dundee. He spent hours poring over the crime scene photos, scoping every detail to see if something had been missed. Warner himself was a new father, so the images of the vulnerable Tom really hit home with him. He’d previously heard the killer described as some kind of monster, a madman, a sociopath. From what Warner could see in these pictures, he could be all of those things. Warner wanted badly to see the killer in cuffs.