Mindhunter

by John Douglas, Mark Olshaker

  When Mrs. Smith asked for assurance her daughter was well, he said, "Shari is protected and . . . she is a part of me now and God looks after all of us."

  Ultimately, all of the calls were traced to public phones in the area, but in those days, "trap and trace" required keeping the caller on the phone for about fifteen minutes, and that was never possible. But the recording system had been set up, and copies of the tapes were rushed to us by the FBI field office. As Wright, Walker, and I listened to each recording, we were struck by Mrs. Smith’s strength and control in talking with this monster. It was clear where Shari had gotten it from.

  Hoping there would be more calls, Metts asked us how he should advise the family to deal with them. Jim Wright told him they should try to react very much like a police negotiator handling a hostage situation. That is, listen carefully, restate anything of possible importance the caller said to make sure they understood his message, try to get him to react and reveal more about himself and his agenda. This could have several benefits. First, it might keep the call going long enough for a successful trap and trace. And second, it might "reassure" the caller that he was getting a sympathetic hearing and encourage him into more contact.

  Needless to say, this degree of controlled performance is a tall order to a horrified and grief-stricken family. But the Smiths were amazing in their ability to pull it off, getting us important information.

  The kidnapper called the next night, this time speaking to Shari’s twenty-one-year-old sister, Dawn. It had been four days since Shari disappeared. He gave Dawn details about the kidnapping, saying he had stopped his car when he saw her at the mailbox, appeared friendly, and took a couple of photographs of her, then forced her into his car at gunpoint. Through this and other conversations, he veered back and forth between being outwardly friendly, cruelly matter-of-fact, and vaguely regretful that the whole thing "got out of hand."

  He continued his narrative: "Okay, four fifty-eight a.m.—no, I’m sorry. Hold on a minute. Three-ten a.m., Saturday, the first of June, uh, she handwrote what you received. Four fifty-eight, Saturday, the first of June, we became one soul."

  "Became one soul," Dawn repeated.

  "What does that mean?" Hilda asked in the background.

  "No questions now," the caller stated.

  But we knew what he meant, despite his assurance that "blessings are near," and that Shari would be returned the following evening. He even told Dawn to have an ambulance standing by.

  "You will receive instructions where to find us."

  For us in Quantico, the most significant part of the taped conversation was his comment on the time: 4:58, then going back to 3:10 a.m. This was confirmed for us by the grim call Hilda answered at noon the next day:

  "Listen carefully. Take Highway 378 west to traffic circle. Take Prosperity exit, go one and a half miles, turn right at sign Moose Lodge Number 103, go one-quarter mile, turn left at white-framed building, go to backyard, six feet beyond we’re waiting. God chose us." Then he hung up.

  Sheriff Metts played back the recording, which led him directly to Shari Smith’s body, eighteen miles away in neighboring Saluda County. She was wearing the yellow top and white shorts she’d last been seen in, but the decomposition of the body told the sheriff and medical examiner she’d been dead for several days—since 4:58 on the morning of June 1, we were pretty sure. The condition of the body, in fact, made it impossible to determine the method of killing or whether Shari had been sexually assaulted.

  But Jim Wright, Ron Walker, and I were convinced her murderer had strung the family along with hopes for her return just long enough for critical forensic evidence to degrade. The sticky residue of duct tape was on Shari’s face and hair, but the tape itself had been removed—further indication of planning and organization. They don’t generally start out this well organized, which indicated to us an intelligent, somewhat older individual who was returning to the body dump site for some type of sexual gratification. Only when the body had decomposed to the point where a "relationship" was no longer possible would he stop going back there.

  The abduction itself, in the middle of the afternoon in a rural, residential area, required a certain degree of finesse and sophistication. We pegged his age at late twenties to early thirties, and I definitely leaned toward the higher end. From the easy cruelty of the mind games he was playing with the family, we agreed among ourselves he’d probably been married early—briefly and unsuccessfully. At present, he’d either be living alone or with his parents. We expected some kind of criminal record—assaults on women, or at least obscene phone calls. If he had any murder priors, it would be children or young girls. Unlike a lot of serial killers, this guy wouldn’t go after prostitutes; he’d be too intimidated by them.

  The precise directions and the self-correction about time gave us other important insights. The directions had been carefully thought out and written down. He had gone back to the scene several times and had done exacting measurements. When he called the family, he had been reading from a script! He understood that he had to get his message out and get off the phone as soon as possible. Several times on the phone, he’d lost his place when interrupted and had to begin again. Whoever he was, he was rigid and orderly, meticulous and obsessively neat. He would take notes compulsively and keep lists on everything, and if he lost his place in his notes, he would lose his train of thought as well. We knew he had to have driven to and from the abduction site in front of Shari’s home. I guessed from the personality that his car would be clean and well maintained, three years old or newer. All in all, a mixed presentation of someone whose outward arrogance and contempt for the whole stupid world out there conflicted continually with deep-seated insecurity and feelings of inadequacy.

  In this type of case, the crime scene becomes psychologically part of the killing. The geography of the crime also suggested a local man, probably someone who had lived in the area for most or all of his life. For the things he wanted to do with Shari, then with her body, he would need time alone in a secluded area where he knew he would not be disturbed. Only a local would know where those areas would be.

  The Signal Analysis Unit of the FBI Engineering Section told us the caller’s voice distortion was accomplished by something they called a variable speed control device. Teletype requests for assistance on tracking down manufacturers and retail outlets went out to field offices throughout the country. We decided from this report that the UNSUB had some sort of background in electronics, and possible employment in the home construction or remodeling field.

  The next day, as Bob Smith was making final arrangements with the funeral home for the burial of his younger daughter, the killer called again, this time collect, and demanded to speak to Dawn. He said he would be turning himself in the following morning, and that the photographs he had taken of Shari at the mailbox were in the mail to the Smith family. He self-pityingly asked Dawn for the family’s forgiveness and prayers. He also implied that instead of turning himself in, he was considering committing suicide, lamenting again how "this thing got out of hand and all I wanted to do was make love to Dawn. I’ve been watching her for a couple of—"

  "To who?" Dawn interrupted.

  "To—I’m sorry, to Shari," he corrected himself. "And I watched her a couple of weeks, and, uh, it just got out of hand."

  This was the first of several instances in which he would confuse the two sisters, not a difficult thing to do since both girls were pretty, outgoing blondes who looked strikingly alike. Dawn’s picture had been in the newspaper and on television, and whatever appealed to him about Shari probably applied to Dawn as well. Listening to the recordings, it was impossible not to be sickened by this sadistic and monumentally self-indulgent performance. But I knew at that point—as cold and calculating as it may sound—that Dawn could serve as bait to catch the killer.

  In a call the same day to a local television anchorman, Charlie Keyes, he reiterated his intention to turn himself in, saying he wanted the po
pular Keyes to serve as a "medium" and promising him an exclusive interview. Keyes listened, but wisely remained detached and promised the caller nothing.

  First of all, I told Lewis McCarty on the phone, he has no intention of surrendering. He isn’t going to kill himself, either. He told Dawn he was a "family friend," and he’s just psychopathic enough to want the Smiths to understand and empathize with him. We did not believe he knew the family; this was just part of his fantasy of being close to and loved by Shari. He is totally narcissistic, and the longer this goes on, I counseled McCarty, the more reaction he gets from the family, the more comfortable and into the whole experience he becomes. And he will kill again, someone very much like Shari if he can find someone like that, another victim of opportunity if he can’t. The underlying theme of everything he does is power, manipulation, domination, and control.

  On the evening of the day of Shari’s funeral, he called again and spoke to Dawn. In a particularly perverse action, he had the operator tell Dawn it was a collect call from Shari. Once again he claimed he was going to turn himself in, then went into a horribly casual and banal description of her death:

  "So, from about two in the morning from the time she actually knew until she died at four fifty-eight, we talked a lot and everything and she picked the time. She said she was ready to depart, God was ready to accept her as an angel."

  He described having sex with her and said that he’d given her a choice of death—shooting, drug overdose, or suffocation. He said she’d chosen the last one and he’d suffocated her with duct tape over her nose and mouth.

  "Why did you have to kill her?" Dawn tearfully demanded.

  "It got out of hand. I got scared because, ah, only God knows, Dawn. I don’t know why. God forgive me for this. I hope and I got to straighten it out or he’ll send me to hell and I’ll be there the rest of my life, but I’m not going to be in prison or the electric chair."

  Both Dawn and her mother pleaded with the caller to turn himself over to God, rather than kill himself. In my unit, we were pretty damn sure he had no intention of doing either.

  Two weeks to the day after Shari Smith was kidnapped, Debra May Helmick was abducted from the yard in front of her parents’ trailer home in Richland County, twenty-four miles from the Smith home. Her father was inside the house at the time, just twenty feet away. A neighbor saw someone pull up in a car, get out and speak with Debra, then suddenly grab her, yank her into the car, and speed off. The neighbor and Mr. Helmick immediately took off after the car, but lost it. Like Shari, Debra was a pretty, blue-eyed blonde. Unlike Shari, she was only nine years old.

  Sheriff Metts launched another intense effort to find her. Meanwhile, things were starting to get to me. When you do the kind of work my unit and I do for a living, you have to maintain some degree of distance and objectivity from the case materials and subject matter. Otherwise, you go crazy. And as difficult as that had been in the Smith case so far, this latest horrible development made that all but impossible. Little Debra Helmick was only nine—the same age as my daughter Erika, also a blue-eyed blonde. My second girl, Lauren, was just barely five. Aside from the horrible, gnawing sensation of, "This could have been my child," there is that understandable feeling of wanting to handcuff your kids to your wrist and never let them out of your sight. When you see what I’ve seen, not actually doing that—giving your children the space and freedom they need to live—is a constant emotional struggle.

  Despite the difference in the Smith and Helmick girls’ ages, the timing, circumstances, and modus operandi indicated we were likely dealing with the same offender. I know that both the sheriff’s department and my unit agreed on that. So with somber acceptance of the probability that they now officially had a serial killer on their hands, Lewis McCarty flew up to Quantico and brought all of the case materials with him.

  Walker and Wright reviewed all the decisions that had led to the profile and all of the advice they had given. With the added information from the new crime, they saw no reason to change their evaluation.

  Despite the voice disguise, our UNSUB was almost assuredly white. These were both sexually based crimes perpetrated by an insecure and inadequate adult male. Both victims were white, and we had found it unusual to see this kind of crime cross racial lines. He would be outwardly shy and polite, have a poor self-image, and would probably be heavyset or overweight, not attractive to women. We told McCarty we would expect our man to be displaying even more compulsive behavior now. Close associates would notice some weight loss, he might be drinking heavily, not shaving regularly, and he would be eager to talk about the murder. Someone this meticulous would be following television reports avidly and collecting newspaper clippings. He would also collect pornography, with a particular emphasis on bondage and sadomasochism. He would now be thoroughly enjoying his celebrity, his sense of power over his victims and the community, his ability to manipulate the grieving Smith family. As I’d feared, when he couldn’t get a victim who matched his fantasies and desires, he went for the most vulnerable victim of opportunity. Because of Shari’s age, she had at least been reasonably approachable. But if he really thought about it, we didn’t think our guy would feel particularly good about Debra Helmick, so we didn’t expect any phone calls to her family.

  McCarty went home with a twenty-two-point list of conclusions and characteristics about the subject. When he got back, he said he told Metts, "I know the man. Now all we have to find out is his name."

  As gratifying as his faith in us was, things are seldom so simple. Combined state law enforcement agencies and the Columbia Field Office combed the area, looking for any trace of Debra. But there was no communication, no demands, no fresh evidence. Up in Quantico, we waited for word, trying to prepare ourselves for whatever happened. The empathy you feel for the family of a missing child is almost unbearable. At both SAC Ivey’s and Sheriff Metts’s request, I packed my bags and flew down to Columbia to give on-scene assistance in what promised to be a breaking case. I brought Ron Walker with me. It was the first trip we’d made together since he and Blaine McIlwain had saved my life in Seattle.

  Lew McCarty met us at the airport, and we wasted no time, familiarizing ourselves with the various scenes. McCarty drove us to each of the abduction sites. It was hot and humid, even by our Virginia standards. There were no overt signs of struggle in front of either home. The Smith body dump site was just that—the murder had clearly taken place elsewhere. But seeing the locations, I was more convinced than ever that our UNSUB had to know the area intimately, and even though several of the calls to the Smiths had been long distance, he had to be a local.

  There was a meeting at the sheriff’s department for the key people on the case. Sheriff Metts had a large and impressive office—about thirty feet long with twelve-foot-high ceilings, and walls completely covered with plaques and certificates and memorabilia; everything he’d ever done in his life was up on those walls, from testimonials for solving murders to appreciation from the Girl Scouts. He sat behind his massive desk with the rest of us—Ron and me, Bob Ivey, and Lew McCarty—in a semicircle around him.

  "He’s stopped calling the Smiths," Metts lamented.

  "I’ll get him to call again," I said.

  I told them the profile should provide a valuable aid in the police investigation, but I thought we also needed to try to force him quickly into the open and explained some of the proactive techniques I had in mind. I asked if there was a local newspaper reporter who’d cooperate with us. It wasn’t a question of censorship or giving him or her direct orders what to write, but it had to be someone sympathetic with what we were trying to accomplish who wouldn’t be all hot to break our backs, as so many journalists seem to be.

  Metts suggested Margaret O’Shea from the Columbia State newspaper. She agreed to come to the office, where Ron and I tried to educate her about the criminal personality and how we thought this individual would react.

  He would be closely following the press, we told her, espe
cially any story featuring Dawn. We knew from our research that these types often went back to the crime scenes or grave sites of their victims. I told her that with the right type of story, I thought we could entice him into the open and trap him. At the very least, we hoped we could get him to start calling again. I told her we had had close cooperation from members of the press in the Tylenol poisonings, and that had served as a model of the way we wanted things to be.

  O’Shea agreed to give us the kind of coverage we wanted. McCarty then took me to meet the Smiths and explain what I wanted them to do. What I had in mind, essentially, was using Dawn to bait our trap. Robert Smith was extremely nervous about this, not wanting to place his remaining daughter in jeopardy. As concerned as I was about this ploy, I felt it represented our best shot and tried to reassure Mr. Smith that Shari’s killer was a coward and would not come after Dawn amidst such intense publicity and scrutiny. And having studied the phone recordings, I was convinced Dawn was smart and courageous enough to do what I wanted her to.

  Dawn took me into Shari’s room, which they had left intact from the last time she was there. As you might expect, this is common among families who’ve lost a child suddenly and tragically. The first thing that struck me was Shari’s collection of stuffed koala bears—all shapes and sizes and colors. Dawn said the collection was important to Shari, and all her friends knew that.

  I spent a long time in the room, trying to get a feel for Shari as she must have been. Her killer was definitely catchable. We just had to make the right choices. After some time, I picked up a tiny koala, the kind whose arms open and close as you squeeze its shoulders. I explained to the family that in a few days—just enough time to get full newspaper coverage—we would hold a memorial service at Shari’s grave at Lexington Memorial Cemetery, during which Dawn would attach the stuffed animal to a bouquet of flowers. I thought we had a good chance of drawing the killer to the service, and an even better chance of having him return to the scene after the ceremony was over to take the koala as a tangible souvenir of Shari.