“I didn't need to ask my questions, as I didn't need to know why he had done it...I knew he had committed those macabre and sadistic murders. The rationale to why he had committed those loathsome acts was locked away in the rabid mind of a man driven to madness by the cruelties of the priest and his mother.”
“What did you do?”
“As inglorious as it may sound, I walked out of the interrogation room and threw up.”
“I had come face to face with as much evil as any one person should ever see in this life and it unnerved me. Behind those eyes there was something wild and insane, it wasn't normal and it wasn't earthly.”
After that moment, Carly had stayed on the fringe of the whole affair, acting as an ad hoc historian to the process for the most part, helping log the evidence, chronicling the story by Sister Anastacia regarding the motive and Dombrowski’s past sexual history. The District Attorney, his assistants and a few of the real hard cases in the department did the dirty work in bringing Dombrowski to trial and getting the conviction. They spent several weeks seeking out just the right questions to ask, readying the evidential materials that led to the physical case against him.
The preparation was extraordinary. The department was as meticulous in this case as anyone could have been on any case in the country. The mound of physical evidence logged would have provided a solid conviction without the admission of guilt he had given in questioning. The department went beyond even that though. It was a given that when all was said and done, Dombrowski was not about to walk out of the courtroom a free man even if there had been a thousand trials.
Personally, all told, I eventually spent a good three or four years sorting through thousands of pieces of evidence, reading transcripts of the interrogations and the trial. Long after I left the force, I continued to study every psychological profile, every psychiatric report, every test and evaluation ever done on that man. I did interviews with other detectives who had worked with Dombrowski as well as mounted patrolmen who had spent time with him, both as a boy and then later as a man. I interviewed neighbors, people from the polo club, local horse owners who had work done by Dombrowski. I went back to some of the old LoDo natives and talked to them about little Petr, his mother, and Father Kaspian.”
All this was done in an attempt to figure out why Dombrowski had done the things he had done. Every act he had committed had such symbolism in his crimes, which related back to events from his childhood. It was a complicated schema, more so than one would have thought Dombrowski capable of following, but he had managed to just that. He obviously had lived it, day in and day out for his entire life. Perhaps since he had nothing else in his life but that nightmarish childhood, he could keep it all straight. No one knew for sure. All Dombrowski had in his life was the murders. It had been hard for Carly to believe Dombrowski would have said anymore to him. When Carly had looked in those eyes, he had seen nothing that gave the appearance of anything more than pathos, let alone the skill to execute those women and elude capture for seven months.
“I guess in all truthfulness, I never believed he was competent to stand trial,” Carly admitted.
No one connected to the case really had believed otherwise, yet no one had dared to say it aloud. The police and the district attorney would not have let Dombrowski escape the death penalty for the safety and potential freedom a mental hospital would have afforded him.
“I would have liked to have found the trigger to what finally set him into motion, in terms of the killings. I never did, no one ever did. Maybe he would have told me. Why had he waited until that year to go on a rampage? There hadn't been anything of significance that leapt forward as the initiating reason. It wasn't any kind of anniversary of his molestation, first or last, or the deaths of Kaspian or his mother. Maybe if I had stuck it out initially and questioned him when I had the chance he might have said something. Maybe if I had established some type of relationship with him over the long haul, he might have talked to me eventually. I doubt it though. He went to the gas chamber, never having said anything more than 'yes' or 'no' to anyone. I talked to one of his attorneys and he told me it was the same with them, just the 'yes' or 'no' answers…nothing more.”
Failure to communicate was a primary reason why his lawyers had pushed for diminished capacity as a defense. When that had not been upheld, they went for the insanity plea.
“His attorneys of record were referrals out of the public defender’s office. The Public Defender office decided that they wanted first chair in the case to be a private attorney, with their office doing the back up. They wanted to assure that his defense in the case was impeccable. No one wanted to have the conviction over ruled on appeal, thus he was given as good as a defense as possible, all things considered. The attorneys weren't the highest caliber, most private lawyers who do public defender contract work aren't, but they were the best on the referral list. All things considered they did right by Dombrowski, as it took two years of appeals before the State got him onto death row.”
Dombrowski had pled guilty, signed a confession, and there was an insurmountable mountain of evidence to go along with motive and method. His attorneys started with the diminished capacity plea, but he had not been intellectually disabled. Countless tests had proven otherwise. The trial was more or less for the benefit of determining whether he would get capital punishment or an eternal room in the forensic ward at the State Hospital in Pueblo.
“From a psychologist's point of view it was an incredible trial. The defense presented several nationally recognized psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and psychologists. They had experts on child molestation and pedophilia. For every defense expert, the state brandished two of it's own. It must have cost the State of Colorado a bundle, since it was picking up the tab on both sides. The insanity defense eventually went out the window, as most of the psychiatrists and psychologist, on both sides, who tested or interviewed him said he appeared sane, rational, and even calm. Other than a lack of expressive communication skills, he had appeared to understand what was going on during the investigation and trial. While his acts defiled any sense of sanity, there was nothing to suggest he did not know what he was doing.”
The defense had pulled out all the stops and actually subpoenaed Sister Anastacia. They thought if the jury heard firsthand about Dombrowski and the priest, the taunting by the other children, and the traitorous nature of his mother's support, they'd understand the depth and breadth of his rage, his need to act out in some fashion.
Carly smiled as he thought about the last time he had seen the ancient nun. “It didn't work, even though the old girl was marvelous for them on the stand. Clear and concise, she never hesitated a bit in telling her story. I thought she actually liked all the attention. We spent a good deal of time together while she was in Denver. She seemed almost giddy. After a few years in a retirement home for nuns, the hubbub of the trial and the constant attention must have been the highlight of her 'golden years'. I took her for a tour of LoDo and some of her old haunts and had lunch a couple of times. I owed her that much, and more. Even though her testimony had to have elicited some sympathy for Dombrowski, I knew she was the only reason a trial had actually come to pass. Without her we wouldn't have caught him unless it had been directly in the act. After seven months of trying, we had not proven to be too adept at doing that.”
“She flew back to her retirement home a couple of days after her testimony. It was the last time I ever saw her, as she passed away about six months later.”
All in all, Carly had thought she felt good about what she had done. It didn't look too good for the church however as she painted a terrible picture of child abuse, pedophilia, and the church's cover-up. She took great satisfaction in knowing she had cracked the case for us and ended the killings. In the end, it had been a good trade-off for her emotionally. She had done the right thing, just as she had tried to do all her life.
The media made a real circus out of it all. Not just locally, but nationally, after all the concept that th
e one of the most notorious killers in modern America was the direct result of a Catholic priest's buggering, made the ratings needles jump off the meter. Carly told them the notoriety was such, there was even a movie of the week about Dombrowski, albeit a cheesy affair no one had watched.
The offshoot of the media coverage was something Carly could laugh about now, but then it had been a scratch along his thin line of sanity. The tabloid shows, the internet, the blogs and the yellow rag newspapers were even worse. Carly knew it had gone over the edge when his partner brought in a headline that inferred, Dombrowski was the love child of the pope and an female alien. That aspect of it was pathetic for all the police who had worked the case. All of them had gotten tapped by some rabid little reporter wanting to find some a new slant to the case. They snooped through the trash bins, they hacked social media accounts, they followed the officers and detectives home, they called them night and day, the reporters did virtually anything to get information. Some of the squad didn't have to buy drinks or dinners out for two years, as the reporters were picking up the tabs just trying to get a story."
Snickering, Carly added, "In some of the cases, a few of the crew might have compromised the honor of a journalist or two, as a tradeoff for a lead, provided any of that lot had any honor to trade. To this day Carly had a real fear of the media. In his mind, their concept of truth was directly linked to the ratings, hits, likes and circulation figures."
“As it turned out, the jury had found him sane and guilty of murder in the first degree in all seven homicides, along with a laundry list of other related charges, like kidnapping. In some ways, I was surprised by the verdict. The evidence seemed to suggest he was forced into becoming a horribly demented child who grew to be an equally demented adult. A poll of the jurors, showed that the cold calculating manner in which he had operated belied a mind out of control. One juror said Dombrowski made him think of Hitler in the sense that, '... sure he was mad, but he knew what he was doing...'. They were right in that vein, he had plotted relentlessly and meticulously. He had proven to be our match for quite the while.”
Sully shook his head as he asked, “He might have known what he was doing, but did he really know why?”
“I don’t know. A part of me says he just wasn’t competent enough to do such acts methodically, yet he had,” Carly answered back. “The inner Dombrowski was always an enigma”.
Carly took a sip of his drink and caught Diane smiling at him. He grinned in what he thought was a dopey half-smitten look and continued on before he actually starting mooning over the attractive woman leaning on the desk. The exchange had not gone unnoticed among those in the room. “Once he had been determined to be competent and sane, he was convicted on all counts. The final step was sentencing. Without blinking an eye, the judge had sentenced him to death in each capital charge. It had to be the easiest and quickest capital punishment ever levied in the State, which fortunately had the death penalty at that particular point in time.”
From that time on the case was essentially closed for Carly. Dombrowski’s lawyers went through all the normal appeal routes, but to no avail. There wasn't an appeals court in the land who could find a crack in the prosecution's case and to some extent, no one had been sure if even there had been something askew any judge would have let that man walk away from what he had done. The animosity he had generated was quite powerful. Within five years after Carly found Sister Anastacia in Michigan, even though he wasn't on the force any longer, he was invited back to watch as Dombrowski was executed by the State of Colorado. The 'Crucifixion Killings' as they were called came to an official and proper ending in the state prison in Cañon City, Colorado. Dombrowski was put to death by lethal injection as twenty-four of the detectives who had worked the case watched. He went as quietly to his death as he had to his capture and trial…no last words, no tears, no anger.
“Carly, what did you do after it was all over?”
“Shortly after the trial concluded, I had completed my Master's degree in criminal psychology. The trial had piqued my interest in the field all the more, so when the opportunity arose with my disability, I retired from the force and went back to school full-time to pursue my Ph.D. I parlayed the writings on my thesis, which I had compiled in the Dombrowski case and used them for my doctorate dissertation on maladaptive motivation. A sharp advisor made sure that my dissertation was in publishable form, so I was able to springboard that effort into a book on the subject. The rest is history so to speak. I became a successful author and psychologist all because of Dombrowski.”
“All in all, it was a wild case to say the least. It was the break of a life-time, without Petr Dombrowski who knows where I'd be today.”
Chapter Six
The stiffness in Carly's hip and the dryness in his throat brought him to the sudden recognition that he had been talking a very long time, a lot longer than he had anticipated or had realized. A quick glance at the clock told him his lecture had lasted exactly an hour. Perhaps there was an innate teacher's clock in him after all, he mused to himself realizing he had just completed a standard one-hour lecture. Just as if he had been in a class he lost track of time, but the recall to reality usually existed in the students' fidgeting. Surprisingly, as he scanned the room, he saw no fidgeting amongst this audience. Slowly, as he began to ease out of his seat he saw that five or six other detectives had joined Sully and Inspector Edwards in a close and attentive circle around him.
Sheepishly, he rose to his full height giving his legs the room they demanded. “Sorry Inspector, I can't believe I ended up with a full blown and absolutely boring narration. It's been a long time since I thought about that case in such detail. I couldn't stop,” he apologized, almost embarrassed by the ease in which he had grabbed center stage.
Watching the tall lean figure, gingerly limp across the room to the coffeepot, Diane Edwards shook her head as if to ward off the apology that seemed to hang in the air of the silent room. “No need to apologize Carly. It's an amazing story. I remember some of it from the newspapers and TV, and some of it from your book, but nothing addressed that case the way a cop saw it, the way a cop lived the case. While your book was excellent, it was written from a psychologist's perspective. What I heard today was from one of my peers. You've got to keep in mind, we are at the same place you were before you got Dombrowski. It gives me a bit of hope to think that we might have our own Sister Anastacia sitting out there somewhere just waiting to help us.”
“If we're good enough to find her,” a voice from the back of the room whispered.
“It's been awhile since I've been a good practicing Catholic Diane, but given the chance I'm willing to don a habit or a collar to help you as much as I can. I'd be willing to be Sister Anastacia if I thought it would help. What can I do?” He offered in a generous fashion, really wanting to help them and specially to help Diane.
Her reply was prompt, depicting the urgency she felt. “Help us make some comparisons. If we can see what our boy is doing that is similar or different to Dombrowski, maybe, just maybe we can get a profile of our killer. If we can be sure that we've got ourselves an actual copycat killer, that knowledge may be of some use in anticipating his next move. Taking a page from your book, if we know his strengths then we might be able to use that against him.”
Making a quick round of introductions of the other detectives, Diane continued, “Sully and Detective Hernandez here have made poster boards mock-ups of each of our murders, which show the basic facts as we know them. What we want to do is go through the details of each case with you to see where our boy is trying to be a junior Dombrowski and where he has the balls to act out on his own.”
Suppressing a grin at the fire in the attractive woman's voice, Carly queried, “Poster boards? You came prepared. You were pretty sure I'd help out, weren't you?”
She laughed aloud. “Of course, I did. Once a cop, always a cop!”
She knew he couldn't resist a chance to climb back in the saddle. “Say what y
ou want about the bliss of academic life, but it can't compare with the adrenaline rush you got coming into the building this afternoon. Can it?”
Carly felt sheepish at how transparent he had become.
With a tongue in cheek crudeness, Diane added, “I'd be a piss-poor detective if I didn't know what makes some people tick. Besides, if you weren't here with us right now, you'd be back at the conference weaving through a crowded hospitality suite, with a tall scotch in one hand, wishing there was a cigarette in the other, and trying to avoid Merriwhether and Oona.”
Surprised that the Inspector would know about his nemesis, let alone his drinking habits, he complimented her on the thoroughness in which he had been researched. “That's pretty good. You've done your homework.” Grinning, he found her interest and scrutiny more complimentary, as the level of detail was flattering in its exactness and depth. Not wanting to ask, he wondered what else she knew about him.
“I'm a detective, Professor. A very good one,” she said as she smiled warmly at Carly, sending a flush of color along his narrow face.
Trying to ignore the flirtatious banter igniting between his boss and the Professor, Sully set up the first poster board, and interrupted before the two of them forgot where they were. In a tone meant to convey all business, he directed Carly away from Diane with all the aplomb of a career politician. “Professor, let's go over a few of the basic facts we got from each of our homicides. We can line them out in comparison to the 'Crucifixion Case' in Denver. Let's work for an hour or so and then break for dinner. If it's all right with you we can pick up again after we eat, or even work through the meal if that's amenable to you. Whatever you find is most comfortable, after all you're the guest. The idea is to try and pick your brain so we can build a database of the consistencies and inconsistencies between the two cases.”
“Well if you let me move about to keep this damn hip oiled up properly, I game for an all-nighter if we need.”
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