The Best American Magazine Writing 2016

by Sid Holt

  She was wearing new boots that day. Whenever she looked at them in the future, she would remember catching O’Leary. For Galbraith, it was important to be the one who made the arrest. “I wanted to see the look on his face, I guess,” she said. “And for him to know that we figured you out.”

  The search of the home validated the detectives’ investigation. Investigators found a pair of Adidas ZX 700 shoes in O’Leary’s closet. The treads matched the footprints in the snow in Golden and outside the window in Lakewood. They discovered a pair of Under Armour gloves with a honeycomb pattern. In the bathroom was a black headwrap, tied to serve as a mask.

  “He was military—so he was very organized,” Galbraith said. “This was the cleanest house I’ve ever searched. It was so organized, we were like, ‘Oh, thank God.’”

  The victims’ accounts were also borne out. Most had described a white man with green or hazel eyes, about six feet tall, weighing about 200 pounds. They talked about being tied up. They mentioned that he had stolen their underwear. In O’Leary’s house, investigators turned up a black Ruger .380-caliber pistol, a pink Sony Cyber-shot camera and a large backpack, along with wet wipes and lubrication. Hidden inside a piece of stereo equipment in his closet, detectives found a collection of women’s underwear. Trophies.

  That night, Hendershot drove to break the news to her victim, the fifty-nine-year-old widow in Westminster. The woman had lost her husband to cancer the previous year. She had no family nearby. She was still emerging from the mental and physical suffering she endured during the attack. Hendershot met her at a Denny’s restaurant. She found her in a back corner, eating dinner alone.

  “I walked in, and she was super happy to see me, and I told her. I mean, I get shiver bumps thinking about it, just even now,” Hendershot said. “I told her, I said, ‘It’s over. It’s over. We have him.’” By early March, a forensic computer specialist cracked into files that O’Leary had stored on his hard drive. He found a folder called “girls”—and pictures that O’Leary had taken of his victims in Golden and Westminster. Galbraith recognized them by sight. But then Galbraith stumbled across an image of a woman she didn’t recognize. It was a young woman—far younger than the Colorado victims, perhaps a teenager. The pictures showed her looking terrified, bound and gagged on a bed. Galbraith felt sick. How would she identify her? How would she find justice for her?

  After looking through the images, she found an answer. It was a picture of the woman’s learner’s permit, placed on her chest. It had her name. And it had her address.

  Lynnwood, Washington.

  August 11, 2008. Lynnwood, Washington

  He arrived in the predawn hours, then waited outside her apartment, outside her bedroom, listening to her on the phone, waiting for her to fall asleep.

  The night was dry, letting him settle in. The wall was thin, letting him hear her voice. A couple of times he left his position, for just a while, for fear of being spotted lingering.

  He liked trees, for the cover they provided, and the Alderbrooke Apartments had plenty of them. Apartments didn’t offer the privacy of a house, but still, there were advantages. All those windows, for one thing. And all those sliding glass doors—ridiculously easy to pick, when they weren’t left unlocked, which so often they were.

  She wasn’t his type, not really. He’d realized that before while peeping into her bedroom. But he spent so much time hunting (that’s what he called it, hunting), hundreds of hours, maybe even a thousand, that he conditioned himself to incorporate as many women as possible, young or old, into his fantasies.

  That way his work wouldn’t be wasted.

  He had prowled before and broken into women’s homes before, but following through was another matter. He had learned from past failures—one time, a guy walked in as he stood there, mask on, outside the bedroom door of the woman he planned to rape—so now, he did painstaking surveillance: peeking in windows, breaking in beforehand, gathering information. Years later, detectives would find notes on his cell phone from his surveillance of another target (his word) that detailed which room she was in and when, what lights were off or on, which windows and blinds were opened or closed, whether her boyfriend was there or gone. “BF in PJs, game over,” he wrote in one night’s entry.

  He would rifle a target’s personal documents. He would learn her date of birth and license plate number. He would watch her watching TV. And at the hunt’s end, before he committed, he would take a final pass through the home, or what he called “precombat inspection,” to make sure there weren’t any weapons within the target’s reach.

  • • •

  At a little before sunrise, he heard the phone conversation end. He waited a little longer, letting the silence stretch out, then climbed over the railing and slipped through the unlocked sliding glass door. For the next half hour or so, while she slept, he got ready while talking himself into following through.

  He had first spotted her a couple of weeks before, through a window, while lurking outside her apartment. He had since broken into her place twice, both times through that same glass door.

  He had a term for what he was about to do: “rape theater.” Deviant fantasies had gripped him since he was a kid, way back to when he had seen Jabba the Hutt enslave and chain Princess Leia. Where do you go when you’re five and already thinking about handcuffs? he would ask himself. He was only eight the first time he broke into a home. It was such a rush. He had broken into more than a dozen homes since.

  Now he was thirty, an army veteran—infantry, two tours in South Korea—who had enlisted in the reserves, only he hadn’t appeared for duty in months.

  In the kitchen, he went to the knife block and removed a black-handled blade from the top row, far left.

  In the living room, he removed the laces from her black tennis shoes and put the shoes back. One detective later wrote in a report, “The shoes were lying next to each other near the end of the couch and the bedroom door, on the soles as if placed there (not disturbed).”

  He was just being neat and orderly, the way he was with everything.

  He threaded one of the shoelaces through a pair of underwear.

  Then he walked to the bedroom.

  Around seven a.m., he stood in her bedroom doorway, holding, at shoulder height, a knife in his left hand.

  He watched as she awoke.

  Turn away, he told Marie—and she did. Roll over onto your stomach, he told her. She did—and then he straddled her, putting the knife near her face.

  Put your hands behind your back, he told her. She did. He bound her wrists and he covered her eyes. He stuffed cloth into her mouth to muffle any sound.

  That was an interesting conversation you were having, he said, letting her know that he had been there, listening, waiting.

  You should know better than to leave the door unlocked, he told her.

  Roll back over, he told her—and she did, and then he raped her, and while he raped her he ran his gloved hands over her.

  He put her learner’s permit on her chest and took pictures of her.

  When he was finished, he said that if she told the police, he would post the photos online so that her kids, when she had kids, could see them.

  He took out the gag and removed the blindfold, telling her to avert her eyes and to keep her head in the pillow.

  One of the last things he said was that he was sorry. He said he felt stupid, that it had looked better in his head.

  He left the room, and walked to the front door, and he was gone.

  Epilogue

  O’Leary pleaded guilty to twenty-eight counts of rape and associated felonies in Colorado. On December 9, 2011, almost a year after his arrest, O’Leary was sentenced to 327½ years in prison for the Colorado attacks—the maximum allowed by law. He is currently housed in the Sterling Correctional Facility in the barren, remote northeastern corner of Colorado. He will never be released.

  In an interview with police after his conviction, O’Leary recounted his
attacks in detail. He described the feeling after raping one elderly victim. “It was like I’d just eaten Thanksgiving dinner,” he said.

  He let spill some lessons for law enforcement. He boasted of the countermeasures he’d taken to avoid getting caught. He knew that the army had a sample of his DNA. So he took steps to avoid leaving any traces of genetic material. He also realized police departments often did not communicate. So he deliberately committed each rape in a different jurisdiction.

  The five other attacks—one in Washington, four in Colorado—all came after the attack on Marie.

  “If Washington had just paid attention a little bit more, I probably would have been a person of interest earlier on,” O’Leary said.

  • • •

  Working from Colorado, Galbraith not only linked O’Leary to the rape in Lynnwood, Washington but to the rape in nearby Kirkland. She made the connection by working with a Washington state criminal analyst to search a database for unsolved cases similar to O’Leary’s crimes. She then found the Kirkland victim’s name on O’Leary’s computer, attached to an encrypted file.

  O’Leary pleaded guilty in both of the Washington cases. In June 2012, he was sentenced to 40 years for the rape in Kirkland and to 28½ years for the rape of Marie in Lynnwood.

  • • •

  After O’Leary was linked to Marie’s rape, Lynnwood police chief Steven Jensen requested an outside review of how his department had handled the investigation. In a report not previously made public, Sgt. Gregg Rinta, a sex-crimes supervisor with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office, wrote that what happened was “nothing short of the victim being coerced into admitting that she lied about the rape.”

  That Marie recanted wasn’t surprising, Rinta wrote, given the “bullying” and “hounding” she was subjected to. The detectives elevated “minor inconsistencies”—common among victims—into discrepancies while ignoring strong evidence the crime had occurred. As for threatening jail and a possible withdrawal of housing assistance if Marie failed a polygraph: “These statements are coercive, cruel, and unbelievably unprofessional,” Rinta wrote. “I can’t imagine ANY justification for making these statements.”

  Jensen also ordered an internal review, which was similarly damning. Mason’s judgment was unduly swayed by Peggy’s phone call. The detectives’ second interview with Marie was “designed to elicit a confession of false reporting.” The false-reporting charge arose from a “self-imposed rush.”

  Despite the reviews’ tough language, no one in the Lynnwood Police Department was disciplined.

  In a recent interview, Steve Rider, the current commander of Lynnwood’s Criminal Investigations Division, called Marie’s case a “major failing” that has left members of the department with a profound sense of regret: “Knowing that she went through that brutal attack—and then we told her she lied? That’s awful. We all got into this job to help people, not to hurt them.” Lynnwood sergeant Rodney Cohnheim said of Marie, “She was victimized twice.”

  Sgt. Mason is now back in narcotics, in charge of a task force. Interviewed in the same room where he had confronted Marie seven years before, he said: “It wasn’t her job to try to convince me. In hindsight, it was my job to get to the bottom of it—and I didn’t.”

  Marie’s case led to changes in practices and culture, Rider said. Detectives receive additional training about rape victims. Rape victims get immediate assistance from advocates at a local health-care center. Investigators must have “definitive proof” of lying before doubting a rape report, and a charge of false reporting must now be reviewed with higher-ups. “We learned a great deal from this. And we don’t want to see this happen to anybody ever again,” Rider said.

  Rittgarn, who left the Lynnwood Police Department before O’Leary’s arrest, declined to be interviewed for this story. So did Zachor & Thomas, the law office that handled the prosecution of Marie on Lynnwood’s behalf.

  In 2008, Marie’s case was one of four labeled unfounded by the Lynnwood police, according to statistics reported to the FBI. In the five years from 2008 to 2012, the department determined that ten of forty-seven rapes reported to Lynnwood police were unfounded—21.3 percent. That’s five times the national average of 4.3 percent for agencies covering similar-sized populations during that same period. Rider said his agency has become more cautious about labeling a case unfounded since Marie. “I would venture to say we investigate our cases a lot more vigorously than many departments do,” he said. “Now, we’re extra careful that we get the right closure on it.”

  • • •

  Two and a half years after Marie was branded a liar, Lynnwood police found her, south of Seattle, and told her the news: Her rapist had been arrested in Colorado. They gave her an envelope with information on counseling for rape victims. They said her record would be expunged. And they handed her $500, a refund of her court costs. Marie broke down, experiencing, all at once, shock, relief and anger.

  Afterward, Shannon took Marie for a walk in the woods, and told her, “I’m so sorry I doubted you.” Marie forgave, immediately. Peggy, too, apologized. She now wishes she had never shared her doubts with police. “Because I feel that if I would have shut my mouth, they would have done their job,” she says.

  Marie sued the city and settled for $150,000. “A risk management decision was made,” a lawyer for Lynnwood told the Herald in Everett, Washington.

  Marie left the state, got a commercial driver’s license, and took a job as a long-haul trucker. She married, and in October she and her husband had their second child. She asked that her current location not be disclosed.

  Before leaving Washington to restart her life, Marie made an appointment to visit the Lynnwood police station. She went to a conference room and waited. Rittgarn had already left the department, but Mason came in, looking “like a lost little puppy,” Marie says. “He was rubbing his head and literally looked like he was ashamed about what they had done.” He told Marie he was sorry—“deeply sorry,” Marie says. To Marie, he seemed sincere.

  Recently, Marie was asked if she had considered not reporting the rape.

  “No,” she said. She wanted to be honest. She wanted to remember everything she could. She wanted to help the police.

  “So nobody else would get hurt,” she said. “They’d be out there searching for this person who had done this to me.”

  The Intercept

  WINNER—COLUMNS AND COMMENTARY

  Meet Barrett Brown: “Good News!—The U.S. government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex. For the next 35 months, I’ll be provided with free food, clothes, and housing as I seek to expose wrongdoing by Bureau of Prisons officials.” Inmate Brown now writes a column for The Intercept, an online publication founded in 2014 by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalists widely known for their work with Edward Snowden. The judges who awarded The Intercept the National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary described these three columns as full of “irrepressible wit and free-roaming erudition.” Read them. Want more? Go read Tim Rogers’s profile of Barrett Brown from D Magazine, which won its own Ellie and was published in The Best American Magazine Writing 2012.

  Barrett Brown

  A Visit to the Sweat Lodge and Santa Muerte, Full of Grace and Stop Sending me Jonathan Franzen Novels

  A Visit to the Sweat Lodge

  Back in the go-go days of 2011 I got into some sort of post-modern running conflict with a certain declining superpower that shall remain nameless and shortly afterwards found myself in jail awaiting trial on seventeen federal criminal counts carrying a combined maximum sentence of 105 years in prison. Luckily I got off with just 63 months, which here in the Republic of Crazyland is actually not too bad of an outcome.

  The surreal details of the case itself may be found in any number of mainstream and not-so-mainstream news articles, from which
you will learn that I was the official spokesman for Anonymous, or perhaps the unofficial spokesman for Anonymous, or maybe simply the self-proclaimed spokesman for Anonymous, or alternatively the guy who denied being the spokesman for Anonymous over and over again, sometimes on national television to no apparent effect. You’ll also find that I was either a conventional journalist, an unconventional journalist, a satirist who despised all journalists, an activist, a whistleblower, a nihilistic and self-absorbed cyberpunk adventurer out to make a name for himself, or “an underground commander in a new kind of war,” as NBC’s Brian Williams put it, no doubt exaggerating.

  According to the few FBI files that the bureau has thus far made public, I’m a militant anarchist revolutionary who once teamed up with Anonymous in an attempt to “overthrow the U.S. government,” and on another, presumably separate occasion, I plotted unspecified “attacks” on the government of Bahrain, which, if true, would really seem to be between me and the king of Bahrain, would it not? There’s also a book out there that claims I’m from Houston, whereas in fact I spit on Houston. As to the truth on these and other matters, I’m going to play coy for now, as whatever else I may be, I’m definitely something of a coquette. All you really need to know for the purposes of this column is that I’m some sort of eccentric writer who lives in a prison, and I may or may not have it out for the king of Bahrain.

  Over the last couple of years of incarceration, I’ve had ever so many exciting adventures, some of which I’ve detailed in the prior incarnation of this column, “The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Jail.” I’ve watched two inmates get into a blood-spattered fight over the right to sell homemade pies from a particular table. I have participated in an unauthorized demonstration against an abusive guard and been thrown into the hole as a suspected instigator. I’ve shouted out comical revolutionary slogans while my Muslim cellmate flooded our tiny punishment cell in order to get back at the officers who’d taken his Ramadan meal during a search. I’ve found myself with nothing better to read than an autobiography by Wendy’s Old-Fashioned Hamburgers founder Dave Thomas, and read it, and found it wanting.