“Since she went missing from downtown,” Buck says, “the Panama City police began the investigation, but since her car was found out in the county, the sheriff’s department took over and . . .”
“Evidence was lost,” Henry says. “Sheriff’s department says they never received certain things like Angel’s computer or all the items listed on the contents log from the car.”
“Was it sloppy police work?” Buck says. “Or were the cops covering up for the son of one of their own?”
“Eric Pulsifer?” I say.
He nods. “His dad was a PCPD officer at the time. He could have destroyed evidence, called in favors, or just misled the investigation. We don’t know. We just know he could have.”
“We don’t know everything,” Kay says, “but based on what we do know I think it’s most likely that some combination of Eric and Justice and Jessica did it and helped cover it up. They were all downtown that night, lurking, up to no good. They’re the only kids who were part of the trial who wouldn’t take a polygraph test. All the other kids did. They all had means and opportunity, we just don’t know what the motive was, but my guess is Angel stumbled on something they were doing, saw or heard something, or Eric just lost it.”
I nod and think about it. “It’s unusual for so many polygraphs to be given. Especially to witnesses. How’d that come about?”
Mary Elizabeth says, “When the investigation wasn’t going anywhere and it became obvious they were going to scapegoat Qwon . . . we just thought . . . Kathryn said we can prove Qwon couldn’t have done it. It was a strategy to get the police to stop wasting their time and energy on an innocent boy. His defense team set it up but it was independently conducted. But did the police listen to it, to actual evidence, for a single second? Of course not.”
“Bottom line,” Buck Diaz says, “we know Qwon wasn’t involved. We know Justice Witney was. Just find out if he killed my little girl or helped someone else cover it up. We need to know for sure. We need to know who all was involved and exactly who did what. That’s all we need to know, but we need to know for sure.”
I can tell there’s something sinister behind what he’s saying.
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“I’m an old man,” he says. “Growin’ older by the minute. I’ll gladly trade my life for the lives of those who took my little girl from me and her mother, but I have to be sure. Once I know for sure . . . their time of walking around, enjoying this life like they didn’t destroy the most precious thing in the world to us is over. Swear to Christ it’s over in that hour.”
173
On my drive home I listen to the episode of Wrongful Conviction about Angel’s car.
“Welcome to another edition of Wrongful Conviction. I’m your host, Natasha Phillips. Today we’re going to be talking about Angel’s car. As you know Angel was never found, but her car was. But it wasn’t found right away. It was found nearly a month after she went missing. Where was it all that time? Why wasn’t if found sooner—or was it? Who parked it where it was? Now, supposedly Justice Witney took police to Angel’s car. In fact, a lot of people find him to be credible primarily because of the fact that he knew where the car was—well, that and the cellphone evidence that backs up his statements. Some of his statements, I should say. Anyway, I say supposedly because our guest tonight has serious questions about whether Justice really led the cops to the car. And speaking of our guest . . . tonight we’re joined by Nancy Drury of the Nancy Drury Woman Detective Blog. Welcome, Nancy.”
I swerve to the side of the road, nearly hitting another car and almost running into the ditch.
Pausing the show, I call Merrick.
“I’m listening to the Wrongful Conviction podcast,” I say.
“That’s good stuff. I—”
“Nancy Drury is on it,” I say.
“I know. She was on several. Really made a name for herself in true crime circles. I heard her on several before we got her letter and invited her onto ours. It came out quite a while before she was on our show, before . . . everything.”
“I . . . I wasn’t expecting to hear her. It was shocking.”
“I can imagine,” he says. “Sorry. You okay? Would’ve warned you if I had known.”
“We should reach out to every show she was on,” I say. “Interview them about her. See if they know anything that can help us.”
“Already did,” he says. “They all knew even less than us. Far as I can tell she never said anything that would give any kind of clue as to where she might be. I’ve also been monitoring true crime podcasts and blogs to see if I recognize her voice or writing style, even if it’s under a different name.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s . . . really . . . great work, Merrick. Guess I’m just a little slow on the uptake.”
“This just happens to be my area right now,” he says. “I figure if we all work on what comes to us and in our areas, eventually one of us will come across something that leads us to her or to Daniel.”
“Absolutely, but . . . this demonstrates why we should coordinate, get together occasionally, share what we have, brainstorm on other avenues of inquiry.”
“Sounds good to me,” he says. “Not used to cops sharing info.”
“Sorry about that. But this is a special case. I know Merrill is working it hard too. We’ll try to find out who else is and set up a meeting.”
“Just let me know when and where. I’ll be there.”
We end the call and I turn back on the podcast and sit there on the shoulder of the highway listening for a few moments.
“Thanks for having me,” Nancy says. “It’s a pleasure to be here. I find this case fascinating and I love your show.”
“It’s great to have you on,” Natasha says. “I read your blog religiously.”
It’s surreal to hear her voice again, to be sitting here listening to her talk about the very case I’m working on right now, and I find it disconcerting.
“So let’s talk about Angel’s car, shall we?” Natasha says.
“We shall,” Nancy says.
“On January 16, 1999 when Angel Diaz went missing, so did her car,” Natasha says. “This led some to conclude that she had runaway.”
“Exactly,” Nancy says. “In fact, her classmates stopped looking for her the night she went missing because her car was gone too and they thought she just decided to go home. According to several statements given by family and friends, she would do that—just leave when she got tired, often not saying anything to anyone, including goodbye.”
Checking to see what’s coming, I pull back onto the highway and continue listening to the person I’m searching for as I continue my journey back home.
“Right,” Natasha says, “I’ve heard the same thing from several people. Her car was missing too, so it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption that she just took off, but the police didn’t handle it as if that’s what happened. They treated this like an actual missing persons case—even earlier than they ordinarily would have, right? I mean, I thought they wouldn’t consider someone Angel’s age with a car missing until forty-eight hours or so, but the next morning when Angel’s parents contacted the police, they came right out, took the report and started looking for her. Do you have any idea why?”
“I think I do,” Nancy says. “Sex trafficking in or actually through Florida was getting a lot of attention at the time.”
“I know. I worked on several stories about it.”
“Yes you did. Won some awards for it, didn’t you? Anyway . . . it wasn’t just Eastern Block girls being brought in. American girls were being taken from right here in Florida. Some of the hotspots for sex trafficking at the time were Pensacola, Jacksonville, Tampa, and Miami. And there were stories not only about what was happening with sex slaves being moved to and through these places, but some young girls from around them being taken, too. About a month before Angel disappeared, a seventeen year-old girl vanished from Ft. Walton Beach and was later found chained to a b
ed in a Pensacola brothel. So I think that’s one reason cops acted so fast.”
“Wow,” Natasha says. “You’re probably right. That makes sense. They wanted to make sure she hadn’t been taken by the sex traffickers.”
“The other reason,” Nancy says, “and the one that’s far more likely, is that another Panama City girl, a sixteen year-old who attended Mosley, had been killed in October of the previous year—so less than three months from when Angel went missing—and her case was still unsolved at the time. Later, her boyfriend, a twenty-year-old student at Gulf Coast, confessed, but at the time it was unsolved and I think the police involved wanted to make sure the two cases weren’t related, make sure they didn’t have a serial killer on their hands.”
“Wow,” Natasha says again. “I had no idea. That makes perfect—explains why the cops responded the way they did. You’re really good at this, Nancy. Thanks again for being on my show and sharing this with my listeners.”
“Happy to be. Thanks for having me.”
“We don’t have time to discuss it today,” Natasha says, “but you raise an interesting point and that is . . . could a serial killer have abducted and killed Angel Diaz? It’s a statistical long shot, but something we should consider . . . given the sophistication of this crime. It being eighteen years and we still don’t have a body. What do you think, Nancy?”
“I think we have to look at everything in every case. Anything less is sloppy and lazy and like too many official investigations where one suspect is focused on too early, to the exclusion of others.”
“So let’s have you back on to talk about psychopathic killers another time,” Natasha says. “For today, let’s stick with Angel’s car. So the police are looking for Angel and her car from Sunday morning, the seventeenth. But they didn’t find it until the fifteenth of February. Panama City is a relatively small town. Why wasn’t Angel’s car found sooner?”
“It could’ve been hidden, of course,” Nancy says, “but I don’t think it was. I, however, think it was moved around during that time. The thing is . . . we know at least one PCPD patrol officer and two Bay County Sheriff’s deputies found the car and called it in.”
“Think about that,” Natasha says. “Three different law enforcement officers ran the plates on Angel’s car during the month it was missing. How can that be? Wait for it. Wait for it. Nancy?”
“The PCPD officer who took the missing persons report from Angel’s parents wrote down the tag number wrong or maybe they mistakenly gave it to him that way. Either way the tag was wrong on the form. So when it was called in, it didn’t come back as belonging to Angel, which is more tragic than anything else, but what is interesting is that those three calls came from three different places around town, meaning . . . the car was being moved during that time.”
“Any theories why?” Natasha asks.
“Haven’t a clue,” Nancy says. “But if we could figure out why, we might be able to figure out who—and the who is either the killer or someone helping him cover it up.”
“Yes,” Natasha says. “Let’s do that. Now . . . eventually the mistake was realized, the form fixed, and Angel’s car was found in long term parking at the Panama City airport one day short of a month since she first went missing.”
“And we’re talking about the old airport,” Nancy says. “The one in town, not the new one out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Right. So let’s talk about what was in it.”
“And what was not,” Nancy adds.
“Exactly. So Acqwon Lewis’s prints were all in the vehicle.”
“As you’d expect them to be,” Nancy says. “The two had dated for six months or so and he’d been in the car several times. But guess what wasn’t in the car.”
“Any of Justice Witney’s prints,” Natasha says. “Which contradicts his statements to the police.”
“He claims he wiped his side down but there are prints all over that side, so if he’d have wiped it down they wouldn’t be there.”
“We’re not sure what else Justice Witney is, but we know he’s a liar,” Natasha says.
“The driver’s side had been wiped down some—the steering wheel, gearshift, door handles, turn signal,” Nancy says. “What you’d expect to see if the killer or someone attempting to help him cover up the crime had driven the car.”
“Exactly. Which, if it were Qwon, wouldn’t you think he’d wipe down the entire car? He had to know his prints were all in it.”
“Unless, in the heat of the moment, he wasn’t thinking that clearly and didn’t realize how many he was leaving,” Nancy says, “but the fact that the car was moved so much argues against that because whoever moved it had to wipe it down each time. Surely if it was Qwon he would’ve thought about his prints being all in the car at some point and wiped the entire car down. Or burned it or driven it into the bay.”
“There were signs of violence in the car,” Natasha says. “Like a struggle had taken place there. So it was assumed that’s where Angel was killed. Several of the knobs for the AC, radio, et cetera had been kicked off and were laying in the floorboard. The turn signal or wiper handle—there’s conflicting reports—had been broken and was dangling down. Some of Angel’s blood was found in the car, which you might expect—it really wasn’t a lot—and in the trunk, which you probably wouldn’t expect. There wasn’t a ton of blood in either place, but there was more in the trunk.”
“The theory is she was killed in her car and then her body was placed in the trunk and remained there for a while so there’s more blood in it.”
“Angel’s car had the normal teenage stuff you’d expect to find,” Natasha says. “CDs, school text books, random clothes and shoes, gum and candy wrappers, fast food cups and bags and trash, a few soda bottles, but nothing very revealing or incriminating. Qwon had a couple of shirts in the backseat.”
“Which, again, if he did it, you’d think he would’ve taken,” Nancy says.
“True. Now let’s talk about one of the more interesting things found in Angel’s car. There was a mileage log. Angel worked for Dominos and delivered pizza, which she was paid mileage for. She also worked part-time as a courier for a law office downtown, which she was also paid milage for. She got into the habit of recording all her miles in her log and she was meticulous about it.”
“Which means,” Nancy says, “we know how many miles were put on her car after she and it went missing.”
“And it’s not a small number,” Natasha adds.
“No it’s not. Nearly six hundred miles, which means the car was used and moved a lot in the month after Angel went missing.”
“Somebody was using it to the tune of about twenty miles a day,” Natasha says. “Which seems like a very big risk.”
“Unless,” Nancy says, “he knew the police had the wrong tag number.”
“How could he know something like that?” Natasha asks.
“One obvious way,” Nancy says, “would be if his dad was a cop.”
174
“Yeah, my father was a cop back then,” Eric Pulsifer says. “But two things. One, I didn’t do anything, so there was nothing for him to cover up and two, he was a patrol cop. He couldn’t have done anything on one of the detectives’ investigations anyway—even if he wanted to, which he didn’t, ’cause I didn’t do anything.”
Doesn’t mean he didn’t have a buddy who was a detective who did it for him, but I don’t mention it.
It’s the afternoon of the next day. I spent the morning in meetings with Reggie at the sheriff’s department about, among other things, finding Daniel.
Unlike the awkward, unfortunate looking teenage boy he had been, Eric Puller is now an average mid-thirties man who wears expensive casual clothes and plenty of aftershave. His hair isn’t as red now and much more closely cropped, his freckles have faded some, and stubble helps define his puffy face and conceal his nearly nonexistent chin. He’s the manager of a seafood restaurant in Mexico Beach, the small coastal town between
Port St. Joe and Panama City on Highway 98.
The restaurant, the Shrieking Gull, sits on the Gulf side, a huge wooden structure with a large deck and a crow’s nest bar up a narrow staircase. We’re sitting on a wooden bench behind the kitchen, facing the Gulf as we talk.
It’s offseason. The little lunch crowd is long gone, the restaurant mostly or maybe completely empty. The sun is high in the sky, the February day is bright but cool, the breeze blowing in off the water biting. Beneath the clear, cloudless sky, the green Gulf is calm, its sea foam whitecaps lining the surf like the wrinkled forehead of a furrowed brow.
“When’d you change your name?” I ask.
Something flashes in his eyes then is gone, and I’m not sure what it is—anger? pain? embarrassment? Perhaps a complex mixture of all three.
“Long time ago now,” he says, squinting his eyes, seeming to think about it. “Wow. I’ve been Puller nearly as long as I was the other.” He shakes his head slowly. “Can’t believe how quickly my life is flying by.”
It’s not lost on me that he can’t even say Pulsifer, and I wonder exactly why that is. But I don’t have to wonder for long.
“High school was hell for me,” he says. “Far worse when Angel dumped me. Most of the kids thought I was weird and I guess I was a little. But . . . really it was just a little . . . I was just a little different. Awkward. Uncomfortable. Shy. But goddamn the price they make you pay for that. The cruelty was . . . severe. I knew what they thought of me. I tried to be different, tried to fit in, but everything I did backfired, made it all worse. They called me Pussifer and Eric Pussyface and all kind of other names right in front of me. It was . . .”
“I’m very sorry,” I say.
He looks at me, the painful memories burning in his eyes. “Are you?”
True Crime Fiction Page 70
