Evil Season

by Michael Benson

  Noteworthy residents of the past included Julio de Diego (the onetime husband of Gypsy Rose Lee), who walked around town in a bizarre hat and cape; Boris Margo, whose artistic style twisted reality and was called decalcomania; Lois Bartlett Tracy, who brightened the world with her spontaneous abstract watercolors; Jon Corbino, whose heroic paintings depicted conflict and violence; Ben Stahl, the prolific magazine illustrator, who never threw stones, or hung paintings, because he literally lived in a glass house; and John Chamberlain, who had made art films showing himself and female Andy Warhol protégées making love in unusual places, such as in a tree. Sarasota residents lived their art through unconventional lifestyles.

  Sarasota first leaned toward the artistic during the early 1900s when circus baron John Ringling spent much of his life scouring Europe for Baroque masterpieces to place in a Sarasota museum.

  For generations circus folk speckled the population. It was not unusual to see “circus midgets” and their families, with chins held high, strolling down the city’s most toney streets, while Rolls-Royces drove past them, with their occupants smoking cigarettes through long holders.

  Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer moved to a ranch outside Sarasota and metamorphosed into a rootin’-tootin’, ropin’ and ridin’ cowgirl as she bred prize-winning cattle. John D. MacDonald wrote his murder mysteries; MacKinlay Kantor wrote about the Civil War and won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The author known alternatively as Ed McBain and Evan Hunter placed his Matthew Hope series of murder mysteries in a thinly veiled version of Sarasota.

  Back then, Sarasota was a true artists’ colony, and everyone knew each other. It wasn’t all business and creativity, of course. With all of those characters around, there was a lot of strange fun as well. That was the image Sarasota wanted to maintain, but it was hard with the annexation of sprawling suburbia that had grown there. Still, there were about sixty art galleries in Sarasota, the majority of those downtown.

  The victim’s hand was clearly gesturing toward the “Fine Madness” article. Plus, there was evidence that this article had been a deliberate choice.

  Though the magazine was open to page 86, crime scene investigators (CSIs) would later discover blood on page 88, indicating the killer flipped pages to find the one he liked best. On page 88 was the portion of the article about Ben Stahl, the guy with the glass house.

  Along with Sarasota Magazine, an old April 1971 issue of New Magazine was also placed near the body. (The victim had apparently been studying Sarasota’s artistic history, so she could chat up the locals.) The second magazine had a photo of Ben Stahl on its cover, and appeared bloodstained. The victim’s hand gestured most specifically to a black-and-white photo of a man in a sporty cap, with an impressive moustache. His photo rested beside the article’s title and its caption, in a scripted-handwriting font, read, Fletcher Martin. Police subsequently learned that Martin was an American artist who had lived from 1904 to 1979, much of that time in Sarasota, where he had painted beautiful expressionistic paintings. Some of his better-known pieces were The Smoker, The Picador, and Young Girl at the Beach.

  The victim’s right hand was lying near a gallery art identification card. Also near the right hand was a white piece of paper, which had been used to wipe a bladed weapon clean.

  The piece of paper had the name Werner Pfeiffer written on it. Police found Pfeiffer’s “profile card” and learned he was an artist whose work was also for sale in the gallery.

  All the people who saw the crime scene tried desperately to erase it from their minds, but it was seared into their memories. They knew they would never again get to sleep at night without first thinking of this moment, of this traumatizing attack on civilized sensibilities.

  To see the victim in that condition, a person couldn’t help but imagine the surgery that must have taken place, the feverish cutting by a killer who played in his victim’s blood. To have viewed the scene was to have one’s imagination run amok, visiting places the mind didn’t usually like to go.

  It wasn’t like any crime scene the respondents had seen before. It was a set piece, a photo out of Fangoria magazine, a carefully constructed piece of horror-film art direction.

  Detective DeFrancisco tried to make sense of it. Was this poor woman killed and posed this way as some sort of sick social commentary?

  There was something sophisticated about it, yet so sick, so primal as to be unthinkable.

  Was this a cannibal’s work?

  Was it the work of a dark artist—maybe a Black Mass–type guy who painted men with the heads of goats in the blood from his altar?

  Was it both?

  The killer had apparently taken the victim’s female parts with him. Was it to dabble in cannibalism and/or necrophilia? Or was this most horrendous of mutilations merely a matter of cold-blooded practicality? If the victim had been raped, the mutilation might have removed some or all of the potentially damning DNA.

  DeFrancisco took a closer look at the pieces of art in the alcove with the victim and saw something that made him shiver. Leaning against a tripod was another picture, signed J. Gaddie, and it showed a woman with one arm outstretched, just as was the victim’s.

  Was the real-life victim posed to resemble that particular picture—and if so, why?

  There was further evidence that this particular piece of art was important to the killer. The art identification card that the victim’s right hand appeared to be gesturing to was for an untitled work of art by an artist named Jennifer Gaddie.

  DeFrancisco stepped away from the body for a moment to get the big picture. He observed the open office area behind the alcove, as well as the hallway with two bathrooms behind the office. Three tables had been set up. A computer and other office-type items sat on the tables. There were two white bookshelves in a small alcove near those tables with various items displayed, including a credit card machine and a fax machine, with its receiver off the hook, dangling from a wire to the floor.

  It was later discovered that the phone line to the fax machine had been cut, and there was what appeared to be blood on the wire. A digital clock was stuck on January 20, 10:44 P.M.

  The entry to the hallway was on the back left side of the gallery. A louver door separated the hallway from the office. There was blood in the area of the louver door handle, and also on the light switch to the right of it.

  DeFrancisco again visited both bathrooms, this time looking more carefully. He didn’t observe any blood on the right bathroom, but there was much blood on the other side.

  The door trim, wall switch, sink, floor, and towel dispenser were bloody in the left bathroom. Just left of the pathway between the alcove and the back hallway was a table, and resting on that table was a bloody frameless picture.

  A roll of white plastic garbage bags lay on the left, and a single bag was lying on top of the desk.

  There was a computer on the desk, a phone, a daily planner, and other odds and ends. The office was not in disarray.

  The victim was presumed to be the Provenance’s proprietor, Joyce Wishart, who lived on Wagon Wheel Circle in Manatee County. A positive identification wouldn’t be made until the next day.

  Of the victim’s multiple stab wounds, at least three could have been fatal, in particular the throat slash.

  Police learned that no one had seen Joyce Wishart since before the previous weekend. And that was odd. She was usually around. Saturday was a big shopping day.

  An errand boy from Jessica’s Picture Framing Studio, who had a package for the Provenance, pounded on the gallery’s door on Monday, January 19, but no one was home. It started to rain, so he dropped the package off next door, at the Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art Gallery.

  A brief initial investigation revealed that Wishart had incorporated the Provenance Gallery two and a half years earlier, on June 25, 2001, and had appointed herself its registered agent. Over that time she’d displayed a wide range of art, some abstract yet commercial, which she chose herself. A typical framed piece—pa
inting, drawing, whatever—cost thousands of dollars. Notices of the gallery as a “Thing to Do” in Sarasota appeared on websites dedicated to Florida’s winter-rental business and tourism.

  The presumed victim drove a 1994 four-door green Honda, which was found in the nearby parking garage in her reserved spot. Locked up and untouched. Nothing suspicious there.

  Criminalist Valerie Howard, who responded along with Officer Lawrence Europa, officially pronounced the victim dead at 2:15 P.M.

  Officers secured the crime scene. Officer Europa taped off the front of the business to prevent pedestrians from inadvertently contaminating the crime scene. Rope was added to the tape to make the barrier appear more formidable.

  Sergeant Howard Hickok ordered Officer Ford Snodgrass to take front-door duty. Snodgrass stood just outside the gallery’s front door (where, thankfully, there was at least some fresh air) and recorded the names and time of everyone who entered and left the crime scene. Hickok notified the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and Criminalistics that this one was special—a bizarre, beyond-belief crime scene. As soon as Hickok was relieved at 3:30 P.M., he got the hell away from that art gallery and its gruesome final exhibit.

  Detective David Grant entered the gallery at 3:45 P.M. Twenty minutes later, Dr. Russell Scott Vega and Kevin Brown arrived from the medical examiner’s office.

  The technicians on the scene were James Tutsock, Jackie Scogin, Walter Megura, and Valerie Howard. Scogin thoroughly photographed the crime scene with a Nikon D100 digital camera. Tutsock covered the same territory with a video camera. Megura looked for fingerprints; when he found some, the location of the print was photographed by Howard, also with a Nikon digital.

  As the others continued working inside the gallery, Scogin went across the street, to parking garage level 4B, space #153, the first parking space in from the center staircase, and photographed the victim’s car.

  Dr. Vega, the medical examiner (ME), was an expert in anatomic and clinical pathology. He earned his degree at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, and trained at the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office.

  Now, inside the gallery, Dr. Vega became the first person to move Joyce Wishart’s body, lifting the head, and thus discovering that there were additional wounds to the victim’s head and the back of her neck. He noticed that when the bra was cut, it was not with one clean cut, but with several jagged cuts. The same sawing motion had been used to cut the pants and panties. The cut was just to the left of the bra’s hook mechanism, and the bra cups were pulled to one side so that the breasts were exposed.

  The medical examiner observed that there were early-to-moderate changes in the body due to decomposition. The skin was slipping in places and there was some green-brown discoloration, along with some subtle marbling on the torso and extremities. There was some bloating but no evidence of insect activity.

  The decomposing changes were less noteworthy on the victim’s hands than they were elsewhere on the body. The fingertips were hardened and dry, a manifestation of mummification-type changes.

  The most noteworthy feature of the corpse was the essentially complete excision of the perineum, vulva, and vagina. He couldn’t tell with external examination alone if the anus was still intact.

  Dr. Vega noticed that the multiple stab wounds in the victim’s chest were “paralleled” by matching holes in the bra and sweater.

  The major throat slash extended over the entire lateral and anterior aspects. Dr. Vega saw no obvious trace evidence over the surfaces of the body and clothing.

  Before the body could be removed from the scene, the medical examiner wanted criminalists to take a look at it and the surrounding area, using an “alternate light source,” an ultraviolet light that cops called the “crimescope.”

  Scogin and Howard returned briefly to the Criminalistics Unit Laboratory, picked up the crimescope, and returned. Tutsock and Megura used the crimescope with the body in the alcove area to search for trace evidence.

  Other criminalists processed the front door and window exterior glass for fingerprints. When photography and crimescope observation of the body was complete, Tutsock bagged the victim’s hands and feet, so whatever they picked up during the attack could not be polluted during transport.

  It is normal procedure for the Criminalistics Unit and the medical examiner’s office to take many photographs of a murder scene from all possible angles—but they were particularly thorough in that art gallery. The crime scene was so bizarre, so straight out of hard-boiled fiction, that literally everything could be a clue.

  Detective DeFrancisco contacted James McClelland, the building employee who reported the odor. McClelland emphasized that he didn’t touch anything when he briefly entered the gallery and discovered the body. He wanted DeFrancisco to know that he didn’t take the decision to enter the gallery on his own lightly. He’d tried to contact the gallery’s owner, Joyce Wishart. He called the gallery and Wishart’s home. No answer. He left messages, waited two hours, accessed the key and alarm code for the gallery, saw the body, and skedaddled to tell Nancy Hall what he had seen.

  DeFrancisco talked to Hall next. She verified that it was she who had told McClelland about the odor. Yes, she’d given Joyce Wishart’s contact info to McClelland.

  “I also have a message to relay to you from the building’s valet supervisor, Bart Winer,” Hall said.

  “What’s the message?”

  “He said her car has been parked in her spot in the Bay Plaza Garage for at least two days.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “About a week ago. Joyce said sewer water was coming up through her sink. I told her that wasn’t the building’s responsibility, that she’d have to call a plumber herself.”

  More bad odors.

  Top brass arrived. Chief Peter Abbott, Deputy Chief Lieutenant Ed Whitehead, and Captains Tom Laracey and Stan Duncan were at the scene.

  After summarizing for the chief what he’d learned so far, DeFrancisco called Allyn Gallup, the business owner of the building next door, and asked him what he knew.

  Gallup said he’d smelled the bad smell as early as Monday morning. He also knew that an employee from Jessica’s Picture Framing came to the Provenance on Monday, but no one answered the door. Gallup took the delivery and promised to give it to Joyce as soon as she was around. Gallup said he’d knocked on the business door Monday through Wednesday, because of his concern. But, obviously, there was no response.

  “When was the last time you saw Joyce Wishart?”

  “Thursday. Last. That was, what? The fifteenth. I have no idea what time of day it was.”

  “She married? Have a boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know about that. I know she has a son.”

  DeFrancisco next spoke to Bay Plaza employee David Sekelsky, who worked at the front desk and usually parked right next to Wishart on the parking garage’s third level. He worked until 11:00 P.M., so Joyce’s car was always gone when he left—except it wasn’t gone last Friday. He remembered thinking it was odd that she was working so late. Sekelsky didn’t recall the last time he had seen Wishart, and had no clue regarding her love life.

  As the major case supervisor, it was Sergeant Norman Reilly’s job to keep a checklist to make sure no aspect of a complete investigation was omitted. First task: coordinate the immediate area and begin canvass searches. Then make sure the various roles had been appointed: The CID commander was Captain Tom Laracey. Reilly listed the detectives working the case. The investigators quickly knew their roles: Detective Jim Glover was appointed the case’s lead investigator, assisted by Detective Carmen Woods, the department’s sex crime specialist, and Mark Opitz. Detective DeFrancisco would be the investigator in charge of the crime scene. Sergeant Hickok was placed in charge of crime scene security. Communication channels had to be kept open between the detectives and canvassing officers. Communication with other law enforcement agencies and non–criminal-investigation
personnel was also key. All physical evidence needed to be documented and collected. Search warrant requirements needed to be determined; those search warrants needed to be acquired and carried out. The body needed to be positively identified by the medical examiner, and next of kin had to be notified. (That was on Sergeant Reilly’s personal list of things to do.) The division commander needed to be briefed; a flow of communications was required to be maintained through the Criminalistics Unit; all leads needed to be followed up. Investigative reports had to be written; daily case reports written; eventually a summary of the investigation—when the killer was caught—would be supplied to the prosecutor.

  During the early evening of the discovery, Sergeant Reilly called James “Jamie” Wishart, the presumed victim’s son, to inform him of the body in the gallery.

  Jamie was so upset by the news that his girlfriend, Karrie Good, had to take the phone from him and complete the conversation.

  Reilly emphasized to Good that a “positive identification had yet to be made.”

  Good told Reilly that only recently she had assisted in hiring a private detective to locate Wishart’s ex in an attempt to improve her Social Security payments. Good didn’t know if Joyce had had any contact with her ex. She never mentioned if she had.

  Reilly next called Patricia “Patty” Wishart, Joyce’s daughter, who told them that she already knew about the body in the gallery because she and other members of her family were getting an onslaught of phone calls from the local media. Patty said she was busy getting in touch with the rest of her family and making arrangements to get herself to Sarasota as soon as possible.