Fatal Romance: A True Story of Obsession and Murder

by Lisa Pulitzer

  Farish nodded. Even in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the nation, there was no question in the sergeant’s mind as to why this particular homicide scene was drawing so much attention from police brass. Directly across the street at the German Embassy, guards now stood poised with machine guns in front of wooden barricades. The brass knew this case was going to be getting more than its share of ink from the media, and they wanted to make sure that the investigation was being properly conducted.

  Farish was confident that he had covered all the bases. The three detectives on the scene—Dwayne Partman, Ralph Durant, and Dejuan Williams—were busy at work. He had assigned an officer to accompany Nancy Akers’ body to the emergency room. He also had directed his men to canvass the neighborhood, keeping on top of their activities on a minute-by-minute basis, maintaining regular communication with them via the department’s “talk-around” channel. The system allowed him to talk to officers who were within a few blocks’ radius while the dispatcher was on the line.

  As Farish responded to questions from the three commanders, he noticed that David Eyster was among the officers on duty that night and was immediately heartened by his presence. Until recently, Eyster had been an officer assigned to the Youth Division, working with traumatized children and young adults. He had just been promoted to sergeant and was assigned to the Second District—Farish’s district—as a patrol sergeant. Farish had confidence that Eyster would be of great assistance in his next task: interviewing the Akers children, who were the only witnesses to the shooting.

  After Eyster had been apprised of the situation, he accompanied Farish into the home of the Akerses’ next-door neighbor. Passing through the living room, the officer noted the presence of several small children, including a newborn baby. They found both Zeb and Isabelle sitting numbly on a couch in the family room.

  While both men were braced for an emotional outpouring from the children of the murdered and the murderer, they found instead two preteens sitting upright, and in Farish’s words, “calm, collected, composed, and mannerly.”

  Farish knew that interviewing children who had just been involved in a horrific incident was always a challenge—and that the interviewer had to be careful not to “hit the button” that would trigger hysterics. His immediate goal was to find out what had happened, and if, in fact, it was their father who had shot their mother.

  His approach was to ask a series of low-key questions that would elicit the answers he was looking for. Because Eyster had considerably more experience in this area, Farish let him lead the questioning.

  Sergeant Eyster decided to direct his questions at Zeb, who seemed unusually composed, and from the outset of the investigation precociously intelligent. At first, Zeb’s answers gave little information to the seasoned investigator. At one point, the eleven-year-old responded to a question by saying: “I am sorry, that would be more beneficial to you if I were to answer than to my father.” Most other questions, however, were answered with a simple, “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.”

  Yet Zeb and Isabelle were not always so dispassionate. It became clear to Farish that Zeb was angry with his mother—and that Jeremy had been fueling the flames. It also became obvious to him that Jeremy had told the children that their mother was a whore and that their mother and Jim were “touching each other in inappropriate places.” Zeb was as protective of his father as he was furious with his mother for abandoning him and his sister.

  Zeb also told the police that his older brother was in Kill Devil Hills. Farish was familiar with the place as the site of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, and he knew it was on the Outer Banks area of North Carolina. Zeb provided the officers with Finny’s phone number, as well as the number of his grandparents in Alabama.

  The fact that Finny was “of age” made him the obvious choice as temporary custodian of the younger children. Farish stepped into the hall to call him. After Finny heard the bare-bones details he immediately jumped into a car with his girlfriend and began the trip north to Washington. The children’s grandmother in Alabama was also notified, as was the Department of Social Services, which took temporary custody of the children until Finny’s arrival. But in all the commotion, no one from Nancy’s family was contacted.

  Still in the family room of the neighbor’s residence, Farish and Eyster tried to learn the address of Nancy’s boyfriend. They were convinced that the blind rage of Jeremy Akers would make Jim Lemke his next victim. But while the children told Farish the phone number of Nancy’s best friend, Emily, the only information they had about Lemke was his general location.

  Leaving Eyster with the children, Farish strode briskly to his car, and dialed Emily’s number on his cell phone. He hoped that she could provide him with the information necessary to prevent another violent crime.

  Emily picked up the phone on the first ring, still groggy from a deep sleep. When Farish told her what had happened, she was stunned. After regaining her composure, she immediately volunteered to come right down to be with the children. But Farish warned her to stay home, lock all her doors and windows, and keep all the lights off in case Jeremy came looking for her. When she continued to insist on “being there” for the children, Farish told her that the most helpful thing she could do was supply him with Jim Lemke’s phone number, which she did.

  He immediately dispatched several officers to the area, hoping it was not too late. His next step was dialing Jim’s number to alert him to the fact that he was in danger. As Farish pressed the numbers on the keypad, he was completely unaware that at that very moment, the fugitive he was looking for was less than one mile away from him, skulking around the back alley of 4840 MacArthur Boulevard in search of his next intended victim.

  * * *

  Crouching behind the garbage pails that obstructed the view of basement apartment T-R2, Jeremy kicked at the iron grating that safeguarded the above-ground windows, mindful not to wake the neighbors or call attention to himself. His keen sense of feeling out the enemy, honed during his years as an officer of the most prestigious branch of the United States military, told him that his victim was cowering inside, crouching in a corner of the darkened apartment. Peering through the smog-streaked glass panes, he strained to get a good look inside the cramped living area. A sick feeling crept over him as he caught sight of the desk that had once been the centerpiece of his wife’s first-floor office.

  Realizing that he could not gain entrance through the ground-level windows, Jeremy went around to the front of the five-story apartment building. His heart pumped furiously as he scanned the names and numbers on the building’s glass-encased directory.

  His rage escalated as he began ringing the buzzer to apartment T-R2. It was clear to him that Jim had to pay for his sins in the same way Nancy had. Pure logic dictated that the man who had stolen his wife and disgraced him in front of his children, his friends, and everyone else who knew him deserved to be punished, and punished in the most pernicious way. If the destruction of his life hadn’t been enough, Jeremy felt, then the low-life who continued to flaunt what he had done by moving into a seedy, one-bedroom flat with Nancy, on the very same street where Jeremy and his children lived, was more than enough reason to do away with him. He was the enemy, and if there was one thing Jeremy knew better than most people, the enemy had to be destroyed.

  “Lemke, I know you’re in there!” Jeremy growled in the direction of the building’s intercom, his deep, throaty voice echoing in the darkness. “Come on out. I want to talk to you!”

  The silence told Jeremy that either Lemke wasn’t home—or that he wasn’t coming out. He also realized that he was running out of time. There was no doubt in his mind that by this point, the police were already on his tail.

  But Jeremy Akers had absolutely no intention of being taken alive.

  * * *

  As Jeremy steered his Mercury Mountaineer toward the Rock Creek Parkway, his emotions ran the gamut from fits of burning rage to spasms of regret—not for what he had don
e, but for what he had failed to do. That Nancy had left him for another man—a much younger and less educated man—was a dishonor of the highest order. His only disappointment was that he hadn’t killed him too! He had hoped to find them together, to make Nancy and her lover pay for their sin at the same time.

  He was ten times the man Lemke was, Jeremy thought bitterly. Even now, at the age of fifty-seven, he could still outplay men half his age at basketball, jog more than ten miles a day, and sport a physique that he knew was the envy of men decades younger than himself.

  As he maneuvered his powerful SUV along the winding parkway, passing Washington landmarks like the Watergate Hotel and the Kennedy Center, Jeremy continued to recount his assets—assets that Nancy had clearly forgotten about, he fumed, when she decided to abandon her family for some cheap thrills.

  It wasn’t enough that he had graduated from the University of Virginia’s prestigious School of Law, and received a Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, and countless other medals and honors, including a citation from the President of the United States, for his service in the Marines during the Vietnam War. And it wasn’t enough for her, he fumed, that he had served as an assistant state attorney in Dade County under the direction of Janet Reno and was also counsel for the United States Justice Department. That he had worked as counsel to numerous companies on Super-fund site-related problems, spending weeks, sometimes months, in hotels to further his career, and provide for his family.

  No, nothing had been enough for Nancy’s outsized ambitions, he concluded angrily, for her constant status-seeking and her chronic, oppressive discontent.

  The final straw for Jeremy, it would become clear, was Nancy’s intention of taking his children away from him. The thought of Jim Lemke even trying to fill his shoes sickened and enraged him.

  His ruminations had escalated to a furious pitch by the time the Memorial Bridge came into sight. With his destination already in mind, Jeremy veered off to the left, heading onto Constitution Avenue. As he spotted a parking space, he stepped hard on the brake and pulled in. He picked up the bundle wrapped in the blue-and-white–checkered tablecloth that he had carefully placed next to him on the front seat. Cradling it gingerly in his arms, he strode toward the National Mall—the home of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, with the names of many of the fallen heroes he had fought alongside engraved in granite.

  Yet he didn’t go directly to the mournful black monument. Instead, he continued past the Lincoln Memorial, stopping at one of two freestanding pay phones that lined the walkway to call his old buddy, Bill Ranger.

  * * *

  “He’s a trained killer, a hunter who grew up in a rural area in the South, a guy at home in the woods, a man who knows weapons,” Sergeant Farish told the three commanders as they stood on the lawn outside Jeremy Akers’ house. “I am not sending my guys out with a flashlight to run through the woods with Rambo.”

  The police officials on the scene were considering mobilizing a manhunt, sending officers into a nearby park where Jeremy frequently hiked with Zeb and Isabelle. But Farish didn’t like this strategy, convinced that his men had not been properly trained for an action that, to him, amounted to jungle warfare.

  Many of the officers, he knew, were city folk, raised in urban centers like Philadelphia and downtown DC. Even the idea of an overhead search, conducted by a helicopter equipped with infrared lights, didn’t make the idea of a full-out manhunt any more palatable. Besides, he knew that there was a pecking order when it came to using the helicopter. The United States Park Police had first dibs, then the Medevacs, and finally the Metropolitan Police Department.

  He and his men continued to go back and forth with possible solutions to the problem of finding enough resources for a full-scale effort when one of his officers tapped him on the shoulder.

  “There’s somebody here you’ll want to talk to,” the stocky officer whispered in the Sergeant’s ear.

  Farish followed him down to the barricade the police had constructed and was introduced to a friend of Jeremy Akers who reported that he had just received a phone call from the alleged murderer.

  Farish was relieved that Bill Ranger had brought something even more important than the news of the phone call: the phone number from which the call had been made.

  Learning that Jeremy had left a large part of his rambling message on Ranger’s machine, the sergeant instructed one of his officers to accompany Ranger back to his home to hear the tape.

  Meanwhile, Farish pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number that Ranger had provided to him. Impatiently, he listened to it ring repeatedly. He was about to hang up when he heard a man’s voice on the other end.

  “Who’s this?” Farish demanded.

  “Who’s this?” the voice repeated.

  Farish’s mind raced. It sounded to him as if the man who had answered the phone was out of breath, and he was not sure if he had dialed a cell phone or a pay phone, or if he had reached Jim Lemke, Jeremy Akers, or someone else.

  The two men went back and forth, neither wanting to reveal who he was. Finally, Farish identified himself as a member of the Metropolitan Police Department. In turn, he learned that the person who had answered the phone was Sergeant Vincent Guadioso of the United States Park Police.

  “Where are you?” Farish asked.

  “The pay phone by the Lincoln Memorial,” the officer replied.

  The horrifying scenario that was about to unfold immediately became clear in Farish’s mind. He realized that the suspicion that had haunted him—that Akers was going to head for one of the Washington’s war memorials—had been right on. The Lincoln Memorial was located near three such sites, one of them the famous Vietnam War memorial, commonly known as “The Wall.”

  Something else also became clear—that Guadioso’s men were in danger.

  “You tell your guys to be careful,” Farish warned his fellow officer, after summarizing the events of the evening. “This guy has made it clear he has no intention of being taken alive.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Even before Farish’s phone call, Guadioso had been alerted to the fact that there was a man with a gun on the loose.

  “Man with gun!” the disembodied voice had crackled over the radio strapped to Guadioso’s shoulder about twenty minutes earlier. The veteran officer scanned the darkness for signs of movement. “We have a description of the suspect,” the announcement continued. “Male … wearing a dark-colored sweatshirt, and blue jeans. Last seen driving a Mercury Mountaineer with Alabama tags … suspect possibly armed with a handgun.”

  Guadioso had been in the vicinity of the Lincoln Memorial Circle when the call blared over his two-way radio. Jumping on his Honda motorcycle, he checked his watch. It read 00:26 hours, 12:26 a.m. civilian time. Keying the mike, he responded to the broadcast.

  “Roger,” he announced. “I’m on the lookout.”

  It was Sunday, the sixth of June 1999, and the thirty-seven-year-old Guadioso, a “beat” officer, had been assigned to night patrol of the Lincoln Memorial, one of the more popular tourist attractions in the District of Columbia’s vast National Park system. In spite of the patchy clouds wafting overhead, the temperature was a pleasant sixty-four degrees and the uniformed sergeant had elected to ride on one of the department’s 250cc Yamaha motor scooters—a benefit reserved for officers with motorcycle training.

  Instinctively, he surveyed the people strolling in front of the Greek architecture that houses Abraham Lincoln’s marble likeness, searching their expressions for anything out of the ordinary. His pale blue eyes continued to dart around the perimeter of the traffic circle as he slowed his navy-blue motor scooter and directed it toward the curb to wait for more information.

  As he scanned the area for anything suspicious, the dispatcher’s voice crackled once again over the radio receiver, broadcasting that the suspect had made a telephone call that police had traced to a pay phone on French Drive, just a few yards away from where the sergeant was now stationed.
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  Dropping the Yamaha into gear, he steered his scooter up onto the cement pavement, rounded the deserted tourist shanty, and headed for the two freestanding pay phones that bordered the walkway. The balmy night air sprayed his windshield with mist as he drove in closer to the suspect’s supposed location, his heart beating faster as he neared the two telephones. As the mild evening’s breeze blew against his face, his heart began to race. Nearing the phones in a mad dash to investigate the urgent radio broadcast, memories of his months as a rookie officer flooded back to the Brooklyn-born sergeant.

  Guadioso recalled how he had first been assigned to Beat #141, the Lincoln Memorial, back in 1991 after graduating from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia. Upon completion of his eighteen weeks at the national academy, he returned to DC, where he spent several weeks on the beat with senior officers before being designated to the US Park Police’s Central District, where he was assigned to his current post.

  It was a duty that Guadioso and his fellow officers did not take lightly. He and the others quickly realized that Beat #141 required its patrolmen to maintain a keen awareness of their surroundings at all times. Experience had taught them that a large number of suicides occur in National Parks, and that a fair share happened in their own jurisdiction at places such as the Vietnam Vet’s Memorial. The commemorative monument had proven a favorite site for ex-servicemen, many bearing arms—either actual weapons or antique replicas.

  Over the years, the sergeant had been summoned there to follow up on a number of “shots fired” calls. In some instances, his investigation revealed that the bullets were fired by accident, while others turned out to be a deliberate act of suicide.

  Now, as he raced his motor scooter toward the pair of pay phones only a few hundred yards south of the Vietnam Memorial, his only thought was to find this guy with the gun before he could cause any harm—to himself or anybody else. The muffled sounds of tourists’ voices in the distance distressed the officer as he sped his bike up close enough to the phones to observe that there was no one talking on either line. Suddenly, one of the phones began to ring, and he answered it to find Sergeant Farish of the Metro police on the other end of the line.