They talked about Bill Yoder. Katie couldn’t provide anything useful.
VanNamee went back to the stress test and how accurate the device was, saying he had done “hundreds of these things. That’s why we don’t use a polygraph anymore, because this is ten times more accurate.”
Katie wanted nothing to do with it. She seemed on the verge of tears. She bounced a bit in her chair, waved her hands around, repeatedly took nervous sips from her water bottle, screwing the cap on and off. Meanwhile, she kept repeating how she was going to be blamed for the murder because Adam had set it up that way.
VanNamee pressed for fifteen more minutes, focused on the test, which would help investigators “get [her] out of the way.”
Katie became so agitated and jumpy, she stood and paced, stared out the window, played with her car keys.
“I’ll be back,” she said when VanNamee pressed for a date and time to take the test.
“Give me one second,” VanNamee said. He walked out of the room.
Katie took out her phone and scrolled.
Nelson walked in. “So you don’t want to take the test?”
“No, not right now!” she said, irritated. “No! If it was, like, three hours ago . . . but I have an engagement to get to.”
“Well, do you feel that you’re not going to take it because you’re not going to pass it?”
“No!”
The lieutenant described how they had established that Katie was connected to the letter, and the letter had outlined detailed accusations. They needed to talk that through as soon as possible. Nothing in her life should be more important than clearing her name. What “engagement” could possibly usurp the significance of being charged with murder?
Nelson demanded a date and time. The implied impression was that of a detective investigating a murder, asking a person of interest when she was coming back to continue answering questions and take a lie detector test. If Katie should have ever flipped the “I want a lawyer” card, it was in this moment. But instead of asking for a lawyer, she said she couldn’t give them a time or date.
Nelson explained that the evidence did not point to Adam or Bill Yoder. All of it had come back to Katie and her iPhone.
“I know,” Katie said as the interview concluded, and she walked out of the building.
56
THE OCSO STRATEGIZED CAREFULLY after the December 2015 interviews with Katie. She had backed herself into such a tight spot with so many lies, there seemed to be only one way out of it.
The voice stress test.
Would Katie, as she promised, submit to the test?
“We needed to tread very lightly with Katie, because we wanted to keep her talking,” VanNamee said later.
The goal was to have her sit down and take the test—without walking into the OCSO with a lawyer.
Meanwhile, outstanding subpoenas, which the OCSO had filed, were continuing to come back. They had more information than they could unpack at once. In addition, VanNamee wrote additional search warrants for Katie’s house and phone. Although they had seen some of what was on her phone—a cursory search while she was at the OCSO, and information from IP addresses computer forensics had collected—VanNamee and Nelson wanted to look at any files or apps she had deleted.
In the meantime, Bill Yoder was still a suspect. He had not been cleared. On December 23, the OCSO asked him to come back in for a sit-down interview. Bill dropped everything and drove to the OCSO that morning. Sat down in the interview suite.
“I’ll help any way I can.”
Neither VanNamee nor Nelson conducted the interview. But they sat with Bill in advance and talked.
“I don’t believe this is an accident, Mr. Yoder,” VanNamee told him.
Bill turned pale. The confirmation of his wife being murdered stunned him.
“We need your help.”
“I’m an open book.” As they talked, Bill turned everything he had over to the OCSO: cell phone, laptop, iPad. “Whatever you need.” Bill then explained the relationship he was currently in with Mary’s sister, Kathleen.
Without telling him, the OCSO had already been over to speak to Kathleen. “Bill brought that up to us,” VanNamee recalled—which was important. Bill came across as having nothing to hide. He talked about his entire life.
At one point, VanNamee said he was in the middle of writing a search warrant for the office. It was a warning. The warrant would take some time, but they were going to be turning the entire office upside down. If evidence of murder existed, they would eventually find it.
“We were interested in Bill’s reaction to this,” VanNamee recalled.
“You don’t need a warrant,” Bill said. “I’ll give you permission right now to go in and do whatever you need to. You want to go there today, I’ll take you myself.”
“He didn’t suggest a day or a week later,” VanNamee recounted. “He said ‘now.’”
They took him up on it.
57
IN LATE DECEMBER, KATIE agreed to return to the OCSO for the voice stress test. When she arrived, VanNamee stepped out from his office to greet her.
“These are my parents,” Katie said, introducing her mother and father.
VanNamee struck up a conversation.
“Do you think she’s involved? Should we get her a lawyer?” one of Katie’s parents asked.
“We’re not saying she’s involved,” VanNamee said. “We just need to talk with her.”
Before the test began, VanNamee, Nelson, and the officer conducting the test met. No matter what the test revealed, they were not going to tell Katie that she was lying.
“We made a choice that those words would not come out of our mouths,” VanNamee said. “The goal was one more interview. Her parents could have taken her home, lawyered up, and said you are never speaking to our daughter again.”
Katie sat down. Got settled in the chair. The test began. As she recited her name alone, “her stress levels were off the charts,” VanNamee said.
Because Katie had such a faint, low voice, adjustments were made to counteract it. As soon as they dialed in Katie’s voice and pressed forward with the test, Deception Indicated lit up across the computer screen. Confirmation: She was lying.
Per their plan, neither VanNamee nor Nelson told Katie how she’d scored. Instead, they presented her with new warrants and confiscated her phone. “We’re going to be heading over to your residence to take your computers and anything else we deem important to the investigation.”
Katie and her parents were speechless.
“Katie, listen,” VanNamee told all three of them, “you passed the voice stress test.”
58
IN THE EARLY PART of February 2016, after a respite in pressure put on Katie over the holiday season, the OCSO received a multitude of subpoenas back from Google. One important piece of information they learned was that on January 12, 2016, a new e-mail address was accessed from the Conley residence: [email protected].
They also were interested in the money Katie had loaned Adam. The OCSO wondered where Katie would get such a large amount of cash.
“It wasn’t like five hundred bucks,” VanNamee said. “It was fifteen, twenty grand. Where did she get that kind of money? Here’s a girl who lives at home, goes to school, has a job that pays a small wage. But she loans Adam all this money and then, in January 2016, [she] buys a three-year-old Honda Accord.”
“When they searched Katie’s bedroom,” one law enforcement source claimed, “a large bag of cash was found in her room.”
“We have no idea where she got it,” VanNamee said.
* * *
VANNAMEE GOT HOLD OF Bill Yoder. He asked Bill about any cash potentially missing from the business.
“I would not be able to tell you,” Bill said. “I have no idea.”
The Yoders were the type of people who ran a business because they were passionate about helping people. If you didn’t have money to pay for treatment, they’d work it out anothe
r way. Bill and Mary never kept a close eye on the books.
“It’s clear Katie was embezzling money from the business,” one law enforcement source said.
After having a chance to study the books for the time period Katie worked at Chiropractic Family Care, Bill Yoder agreed.
The more the OCSO looked at the receipt recovered next to the bottle of colchicine in Adam’s Jeep, they understood the electronic trail and how the colchicine was ordered and paid for. Through that receipt, VanNamee found Rosa Vargas, which put him onto the Hannaford supermarket. This led to the prepaid credit cards and a PayPal account.
“We contacted Copper Harbor, the company that actually had the colchicine. They told us a payment was attempted from a PayPal account, but was eventually paid for with a prepaid credit card . . . and we came to find out there were two prepaid credit cards. One was loaded onto PayPal and the other was actually sent to Copper Harbor–ArtChemicals with the correct amount.”
This was all done within a few days of the prepaid credit cards being purchased—which pointed the OCSO in the direction of the supermarket and a possible video of Katie walking in and buying the two prepaid cards.
Looking at a map of the area around the Hannaford supermarket, VanNamee noticed something. If you left the Yoder office and drove toward Katie’s house, which she did every workday, Hannaford was directly along your path. Both prepaid credit cards were purchased within one week of each other. The dates and lag time in between dovetailed perfectly with the electronic trail the OCSO received regarding when and how the colchicine was purchased.
In the opinion of the OCSO, Katie purchased the prepaid cards and the colchicine. Her iPhone and several deleted files they had recovered corroborated the theory. Through that, a timeline matching the timeline of ordering and purchasing the colchicine was created.
VanNamee and Nelson wanted Katie back in the chair, talking. “But before we do that,” VanNamee said, “I need to do one thing.”
The Hannaford videos had been deleted by the time the OCSO tracked down where the prepaid credit cards had been purchased. VanNamee had an idea, however. He took several blank DVDs, printed Hannaford supermarket labels with the dates the cards had been purchased, and stuck them on the blank DVDs.
“I could then take those DVDs with me into an interview with Katie. She would believe we had video of her purchasing the cards.”
This was a risky move, however.
“Because what if she sent her sister into the supermarket, or a friend, to purchase the cards for her? We didn’t really know.”
VanNamee came up with a foolproof plan for that specific contingency. It would cover him in the event Katie did not purchase the cards.
Katie returned on February 5, 2016. Again, she was without a lawyer. The OCSO knew this was likely the last chance they would get to break her.
Katie entered the OCSO by herself. She was dressed in a puffy red winter jacket with a hood, black jeans, and bright-colored sneakers. She wore glasses. Her dark black hair, thick and stylishly trendy, flowed down past her shoulders. She seemed agitated. Restless.
VanNamee wore a bright blue shirt and black slacks. He had a harder edge to him this time, giving Katie the impression time was running out.
“Hey, Katie. How are you?”
Katie didn’t answer.
“Come on in. Let’s get this done. I really want to help you, Katie. But you have to help us.”
Katie sat down.
VanNamee pulled up a chair across from her and sat down. Their knees were corner to corner. He then spread several papers over the table between them.
“You ready, Katie?”
“I guess.”
The detective started by telling Katie he was going to be taking a deposition of her statement. Anything she said was going to be on the record. The last two times she’d sat in this same interrogation room, the OCSO had recorded the interviews. VanNamee explained he was doing the same.
Katie calmed herself. She looked at the detective and appeared willing to help.
VanNamee apologized, but said he could not get around this next step. “I need to read you your rights.”
Katie nodded.
As VanNamee read Katie her Miranda rights, she bowed her head, put her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes, as if the detective was reading a prayer. With that out of the way, he pulled out the facsimiles of the anonymous letter (two pages) once again, same as he did the previous December, and placed them in front of her. He asked Katie where she wrote and printed the letter.
“School,” Katie admitted.
VanNamee knew it was a lie. So he explained rather matter-of-factly how the two of them needed to go through the letter, line by line. Each sentence. Maybe each word. As he began, VanNamee asked Katie if she recalled writing several sentences, which he read aloud.
Katie looked at him, turned pale white. She shuffled nervously a bit in her chair and began breathing heavily.
“Katie, you okay?”
“Sorry . . .”
“Katie, we’re going to get through this. You’re my best witness.”
Katie hyperventilated. Her chest heaved in and out. Her breathing became loud and labored. She started crying. “I’m so scared,” she uttered in that quiet voice she could turn on and off.
“What are you scared of?”
No answer.
“What. Are. You. Scared. Of. Katie?”
“If Adam knows . . . if Adam knows . . .” she said, barely able to get the words out.
For the next minute, Katie continued hyperventilating and crying. Her shoulders dropped. She slouched over.
I’ve got her, VanNamee thought.
The detective moved his chair directly in front of Katie. This, he knew, was when a suspect generally gave it up. Katie seemed to be on the verge of admitting whatever was weighing on her conscience, causing all this visceral stress. Her body was reacting to the guilt she felt. An instinctive response to hard evidence is telling, VanNamee knew. It was completely involuntary.
“Puzzles,” VanNamee said, pouring it on. “We’re putting puzzles together and we already know where ninety-five percent of the pieces go.”
“Okay . . . okay.” Katie rocked in her chair.
“I’m going to cut to the chase in a hurry, okay?” VanNamee said.
Katie appeared to be getting sick.
“Do not puke on me, Katie!”
It took a few minutes, but Katie was able to regroup. She removed her glasses, rubbed her eyes. Took a prolonged, deep breath. Then covered her entire face with her hands, before letting out a deep, high-pitched sigh.
She asked for water.
VanNamee made it clear that if she helped him, she would not have to worry about Adam any longer, giving her the impression they were still going after her ex-boyfriend.
After that, VanNamee pulled out the first draft of the anonymous letter. He explained how they believed she had modified the final draft she had sent to the OCSO and ME’s office. The changes in the opening lines were important to VanNamee. In the original draft, which VanNamee pointed to with his index finger, Katie had written that Adam was drunk when he admitted he had killed his mother.
“And we noticed on your phone in the Notes app, you wrote yourself a note saying, ‘don’t say drunk.’ ”
As they looked at the final draft, there was no mention of Adam being drunk. It appeared as if Katie had been writing fiction, editing and redrafting the letter, making it up in her Notes app as she went along.
Why would she do this? It either happened the way it did, or it didn’t. The truth does not change.
“This isn’t my letter,” Katie said.
“I’m absolutely sure it’s your letter.”
“Neither one of these,” Katie insisted, explaining how both the first draft and the draft she sent to the OCSO and ME’s office were not the same letters she had written.
As they continued, Katie remained certain neither of the letters was a facsimile of wh
at she had sent.
VanNamee pulled out photos of the tape ribbon from the typewriter at the office. It was an old-school typewriter. You hit a key, and it left an imprint on the ribbon. He showed Katie certain phrases and words straight from the letters.
After discovering the ribbon at the office during their Bill Yoder–sanctioned search, the OCSO knew Katie had lied about where she typed the letter. Why lie about such a thing after admitting you wrote the letters?
Katie did not respond to the photos of the ribbon.
VanNamee explained a typo on the envelopes sent to both places and how that same typo was executed from the typewriter at the office, because the ribbon had the same typo imprinted into it.
“No,” Katie said.
They argued about when she sent the letters. Katie was sure she’d sent the letters in September. VanNamee said the date was not in dispute. It was an immutable fact. She had sent the letters on November 20, 2015. They had more than enough proof to corroborate the date with an electronic trail from the post office attached to it. Why was she pushing back on this?
It did not matter what VanNamee said, what evidence he presented, Katie would not agree she sent the letters in November.
“I didn’t do it on a typewriter,” she added.
VanNamee became frustrated. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Katie stared, didn’t respond.
“We know that you had the CamScanner app in your phone. When they forensically broke down your phone, the CamScanner app was there.”
Katie had deleted it. When forensics went into the App Store on her iPhone and searched for the CamScanner app, there it was. Because she had purchased it—even if she deleted the app—a cloud icon with an arrow pointing down (so she could re-download the app at any time) was fixed in the store. Once you purchased an app, you owned the app. It was always available, even if you deleted it. In addition, in the stored password portion of Katie’s iPhone, every app on the phone had a listing, whether deleted or not. There was no way to delete an app completely from an iPhone. It was impossible.
We Thought We Knew You Page 21
