In researching his new caseload, which stood at slightly more than four hundred inactive cases, Nance was greeted with open arms by some police departments and found plenty of resistance from others. In his attempts at researching cases from the resisters, Nance was often forced to find other means to gather information on a particular case, even required to read through back issues of local newspapers to find the names of the investigating detectives or officers originally involved in a long-dormant case.
It was painstaking work but Nance persevered, knowing that the keys to solving a cold case, along with technological breakthroughs in forensic science, were determining what had changed in the investigation over the course of time, and what had changed in the relationships between those involved.
In a cold case, somebody knew something somewhere, and a witness could have been reluctant to offer information to police at the time of the disappearance for a variety of reasons. As years passed, Nance found if those same people were tracked down and interviewed, they’d usually offer honest, and helpful, answers.
By the end of 1999, Nance established protocols for cold-case investigations at the National Center, which included gathering all information previously collected by local police, new interviews with family and friends, and new information provided by independent investigators hired by the National Center to serve as case managers (a group known as Project ALERT, for America’s Law Enforcement Retiree Team; they are usually retired law enforcement officers who are hired to work as case managers as well as field investigators at the request of police departments).
All the information gathered was brought under one umbrella and solvability was then separated into three groups: good solvability; something there but don’t know what; and nothing is hopeless.
Nance hated the term hopeless and for cases that fit into the third group, information was warehoused with the belief that additional clues would someday turn up. Nance maintained a collage of photos on the wall next to his cubicle, photos of dead children, some horribly burned or maimed, set against other photos of smiling children. The children ranged in age from infant to teens and all had been missing for years. The photos served to remind Nance and his staff that the long-term missing had names and families and loved ones, and for every case that was solved, a family could finally find closure. Hopeless, said Nance, was not a word to be used in his department.
Perhaps a hunter or fisherman would one day walk over a pile of bones, or a witness with a guilty conscience would one day come forward. More likely an identification would come thanks to the use of advanced technology—specifically DNA testing—to help identify long-lost remains that suddenly surfaced.
Since its introduction in England in 1985, nearly one hundred years after another major breakthrough—fingerprinting—was conceived (also in the U.K.), DNA testing revolutionized forensic science and improved significantly with each passing year. The standard test, called nuclear DNA testing, compared the nucleus of a cell from one sample to a sample from a family member, preferably a parent. Nuclear testing was usually performed using “wet” samples, either blood or saliva, semen, or other bodily fluids.
DNA testing helped the National Center identify the remains of twenty-five missing children, and by 2003 the technology had become so advanced that trace amounts of blood, saliva, bone, or tissue, invisible to the naked eye, could be amplified and tested, with results delivered within days.
DNA, or “genetic fingerprints,” helped police close rape cases, exonerate innocent inmates in prison, particularly those on death row, and secured guilty verdicts for prosecutors with little other evidence.
By the turn of the new century a new technology had revolutionized DNA testing.
Called mitochondrial testing, it was different than the standard nuclear testing in that it traced the maternal bloodline, the hardier proteins outside of the nucleus extracted and compared.
Known as the “dry” method, mitochondrial testing was used to compare DNA taken from bones or other human samples where the nucleus of a cell had degraded. Mitochondrial testing was labor intensive and far more expensive, up to ten thousand dollars per test, than a standard nuclear DNA test. By 2003 only a handful of labs in the U.S. had the capability of performing mitochondrial DNA testing. One was the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia; the others were private companies, including the Bode Technology Group of Springfield, Virginia, the largest private forensic DNA lab in the country.
Known as Bodetech, the scientists there perfected mitochondrial DNA testing in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Some thirty thousand bones and bone fragments recovered at Ground Zero, labeled DM for Disaster Manhattan, were sent to Bodetech for analysis. Many of the samples had arrived in generally poor condition, having been shattered during the collapse of the buildings or burned under the intense heat.
Initial testing identified a small percentage of the remains. The scientists and technicians at Bodetech persevered, and the specific testing techniques utilized to extract mitochondrial DNA were significantly enhanced and improved as a result of the thousands of bone samples collected at Ground Zero. The high volume shaved several years off the time needed to perfect mitochondrial testing and Bodetech was producing results in 2002 not expected until 2005. By the end of 2002 Bodetech had completed processing of the Trade Center remains, having processed one thousand bone samples per month and eventually identifying more than six hundred additional victims.
By 2003 the Bode Technology Group, through its parent company, Choice Point, of Atlanta, Georgia, had entered into an agreement with the National Center to perform as many as a dozen mitochondrial DNA tests annually. The work was pro bono, and reserved for investigations by Gerry Nance and his cold-case division.
Nance and his staff had performed admirably since forming the new division, solving 226 out of 409 cold cases, a remarkable 55 percent average. Many children thought lost forever were found alive and reunited with their families. Others were found dead. In each case Nance and his growing staff provided closure for the family of the missing child.
Identification of the long-term missing added yet another feather in the cap of the National Center, which by 2003 was a $25 million federal/private nonprofit enterprise with a sparkling new headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, and a website that drew 3.5 million hits per day.
Just across the river from Washington, D.C., the five-story building was outfitted with top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art equipment that offered cutting-edge technology in the recovery and location of missing children, including age-progression and facial-reconstruction services to help law enforcement throughout the country.
Since its formation in 1984, the National Center had developed the most complete database of missing children in the country; operated a twenty-four-hour toll-free hotline to report missing children in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; provided complete year-round classes, training programs, and technical assistance to individuals and law enforcement professionals focusing on prevention, investigation, prosecution, and treatment of cases involving missing and exploited children; and despite their own denials became a powerful lobbying force to effect state and federal legislation.
Even the FBI, when faced with a federal investigation involving a missing child, turned to the National Center. Within its five floors thousands of photos of missing children lined every hallway on every wall; large flat-screen television monitors displayed the sad pictures and even sadder stories of the missing. Law enforcement professionals from small and large departments throughout the nation traveled to Alexandria to attend daily training sessions, filling first-floor classrooms and learning new preventive techniques or advances and suggestions in missing-child investigations, their expenses fully absorbed by the National Center.
Forensic services were now available, including handwriting analysis, polygraph services, Automated Fingerprint Identification System database searches, and photo enhancement, including computerized
age progression for long-term missing children. Reconstructionists even created facial images for investigators from morgue photographs of unidentified dead children.
The National Center also worked to support the AMBER Alert plan. Created in 1996, the AMBER Alert is an early-warning system designed for broadcasters to offer special “alerts” whenever a child is confirmed to have been abducted. It was named after Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old girl who was kidnapped and murdered while riding her bike near Dallas, Texas. By 2003, a growing number of states, thirty-three, had enacted AMBER Alert legislation. And thanks to laws that require police to take action whenever receiving a report of a missing person under eighteen years of age, 95 percent of the estimated 800,000 children who go missing every year are recovered.
Despite the National Center’s startling success, the number of missing and abused children remained high.
A second NISMART study, released in 2000, revealed that of the 800,000 children reported missing each year, 58,200 had been abducted by nonfamily members. And more than half of those children were sexually abused. Another 115 children were victims of long-term abductions, or stereotypical kidnappings, of which 40 percent were killed each year.
The efforts of the National Center and other groups notwithstanding, violence toward America’s children continued unabated.
Nance and the National Center were on the front lines of a never-ending battle, and with each identification of a long dormant missing child, they earned a victory.
Shelley Denman of Kansas City, Missouri, was a mortgage loan underwriter who in 2000 embarked on a search for several missing members of her husband Robert’s family.
Robert Denman, sixty, grew up in rural Wisconsin with ten brothers and sisters. A middle sibling, Freda, was living in Independence, Missouri, in 1974 with her husband, Michael Johnson, and two children, Sherri Lynn, four, and Michael, ten months, when they all suddenly disappeared.
Shelley, forty-eight, who had been with Robert since 1991 and married him in 2000, heard the whispers of the missing sister, a story too tragic and too painful to repeat in general conversation. Growing up in Wisconsin, the Denmans were farmers, simple people who had put their faith and trust in the police to find Freda and her children. All that the Denmans knew was that Freda and her family were last seen in November 1974. The Independence police closed the case in June 1975 after learning that Freda’s husband, Michael, was really a petty thief and ex-con named Henry Harbison.
Freda met Harbison, a.k.a. Michael Johnson, at a bus stop in Chicago in 1969. Harbison worked in Chicago as a window washer, while Freda was simply passing through. A quick romance resulted in a pregnancy, and Freda gave birth to a daughter, Sherri Lynn, on September 21, 1970. The couple married three years later in December 1973, though Freda remained oblivious to her husband’s real identity. She was also unaware, at the time they met, of his violent behavior and criminal record, which dated back to the 1950s.
In 1954 Harbison was convicted of stealing a car and attempting to escape arrest and served time from 1954 to 1959 at Leavenworth and the infamous federal prison at Alcatraz. He was arrested again in Kansas City in 1960 for stealing cars and served nine years. He was released in May 1969.
Following Sherri Lynn’s birth, Harbison and Freda moved to Alabama, where he was arrested again in 1971, this time for counterfeiting and forgery. He served twenty-two months in a state prison in Alabama and upon his release married Freda and moved his family into a rented house in Independence, Missouri.
Harbison was a violent man and abusive to his young wife, who left him for a short time, only to return when he threatened to kill her entire family. In August 1974, Freda told a friend at a local Kmart that her husband was beating her. She said she was scared for her life and if anything should happen to her, the friend should take care of her children.
Three months later, Freda, her husband, and the children were gone. Their landlord didn’t report them missing until March 1975. The Independence police investigated and learned that Harbison was wanted by the FBI. Believing that Harbison fled the area with his family, the police closed the case.
The family was never seen or heard from again.
Intrigued, Shelley contacted her sister, Shannon Kaye Stevens, who lived in Dallas, Texas, and worked for a private eye. In 2000, Shelley and Shannon decided to try to solve the mystery of the missing sister and her children.
The novice detectives requested and received a portion of the Independence police file, which offered a number of clues. The latest TV guide found in the house after the family disappeared was dated November 1974. More ominous information included a report of dried blood found on, around, and under a chair in the living room. The blood was identified as type O, the same type as Freda’s. The blood had been smeared, as if someone had tried to clean the chair. In the bedroom was a bloodstained pair of women’s slacks. There was women’s clothing in the closet, while most of the men’s and children’s clothing were gone.
Also found was an envelope with a return address of a John Price of Iowa City, Iowa. It was a P.O. box that had been opened in August 1972 and closed in 1974.
The address belonged to the Church of the New Song. The police report indicated that Harbison entertained friends at the Independence home, mostly ex-cons who were passing through the area.
Neither Shelley nor Shannon had ever heard of the Church of the New Song, so they called Iowa City, hired a researcher, and waited.
Penal Digest International was a newspaper published in Iowa City, Iowa, and conceived during some very heady, and culturally revolutionary, times. It was 1970 and the Vietnam War, the Black Panthers, and the recent assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy all helped to create a radical melting pot that pervaded the national consciousness, particularly in the nation’s prisons.
The PDI published stories of concern to inmates across the country, including prisoner rights, their accomplishments, and major court cases. The PDI also published news-worthy stories, even following the bloody events at the state penitentiary in Attica, New York, in 1971 where inmates took over the prison, an act that ultimately resulted in the deaths of prison guards and inmates.
PDI was, at its core, an underground newspaper that was made available to virtually any inmate in America. Sold by subscription, if an inmate wanted to read PDI but had no money, a copy was provided.
The newspaper had its own reporters, sales representatives, and representatives within each prison. Those who took an interest in PDI were commonly jailhouse-lawyer types who turned to the prison library as a means to escape the utter boredom of prison life.
The staff, which started with two people, grew to twenty-five, nearly all the staffers ex-convicts. Joe Grant, an ex-con who served time in prison for forgery, was the publisher and founder of PDI.
Some fifteen hundred miles away at the federal prison in Atlanta, another movement began in concert with the PDI.
Harry Theriault was a violent career criminal serving a lengthy sentence in 1970 at USP Atlanta for bank robbery. He often split his time between solitary confinement and the prison library, where he took an interest in religion and the United States Constitution. During one lengthy stint in solitary an idea took hold, and that was the creation of a “religion” for inmates supported by inmates. Theriault named it the Church of the New Song, or CONS. With the help of several other inmates, including Jerry Dorrough, who was serving ten years for bank robbery, Theriault filed a petition on June 18, 1970, in the federal district court for the Northern District of Georgia seeking recognition of the Church of the New Song.
Theriault sought the same rights afforded other inmates who were Protestant or Catholic, and also introduced “communion” to his new church. Only instead of wafers and wine, Theriault suggested steak and Harvey’s Bristol Cream.
Theriault’s petition included 165 signatures from inmates at USP Atlanta.
Soon after filing the petition for recognition of his new church, prison
officials decided to nip the church in the bud and Theriault was transferred to the USP in Marion, Illinois. Only the plan backfired. Theriault spread the word of his church at Marion while Jerry Dorrough and others carried it on in Atlanta. News of the church spread throughout prisons across the country and instantly gained new members. Theriault was returned to USP Atlanta in 1971, where he acted as lead counsel and the principal witness at hearings to determine recognition for his church.
On February 25, 1972, Theriault and his followers earned a stunning victory when a district judge ruled that the Church of the New Song was a legitimate religion and inmates were to be afforded the right to gather.
The decision shocked prison officials, who transferred Theriault on March 3, 1972, to USP at La Tuna, Texas. Three days later the first “church” service was held at USP Atlanta and attended by six hundred inmates who gathered in the prison auditorium.
Penal Digest International reported on the service and spread the gospel of the new church through its pages. Joe Grant became a crucial member of the Church of the New Song and continued to report on the Church and events surrounding the new “religion” through the PDI.
Inmates in Atlanta and throughout the country earned a temporary victory, but the Federal Bureau of Prisons fought the new church, and legal battles ensued for two years before the church met its ultimate, and predictable, demise. Still, the damage had been done. From 1970 through 1974 inmates were connected by the comraderie offered by the Church of the New Song and PDI, and upon their release many ex-cons would find themselves drifting throughout the country, many finding refuge at PDI headquarters in Iowa City, where Joe Grant provided a place to sleep and food to eat as they passed through.
A Beautiful Child Page 23
