by Jamal Shakur
“Well thank you detective, I’ll try to remember the next time I open my mouth how taken with me you are, but over the years with numerous perverts who border on homicidal traits, I’ve been working hand in hand with the homicide division. But be that as it may, three of the bodies you have on the table, I was highly acquainted with when they were alive. All three were involved with a pimp and unlike the others who were independents their pimp normally watched their back, which is strange to say the least because of their recent demise.
Ch 4
Webster’s dictionary defines murder as “the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law” but if you were to Google murder online your result would be mainly pictures. Pictures are more exact than words and that’s mainly how I look at the subject of murder, I see it often and sometimes it works on the mind and soul sublimely but the average Joe couldn’t see the results or the way it leaks into our everyday existence.
It was early morning and I was called to look at a newly murdered victim, she was a hooker and was killed the same way as the other hookers. But this one left a note written on the wall of the pissed soaked alley. “I’m often wrong and I’m distinctly right, if you know my position and offenses, you will catch me, Lucky. It was signed with the great seal of the dollar bill and with the Ripper and a smiley face. These guys can hardly contain themselves, they are basically self-absorbed and paranoid and must include themselves in some way into the investigation, and it would seem that this would be stupid on their part but they just can’t help it. Deep down inside they want to be stopped and the communication with the investigations will eventually lead us closer and closer to the perp, he will eventually be apprehended.
All the women had a distinct look about them, they were all brunets who wore their hair shoulder length, and each woman also had tattoos on their lower arm. All of the tattoos had the name Mom written in small cursive lettering. I headed downtown to Spring Garden Street; this place has been here before tattoos became popular. Sailors, criminals and malcontents would often come and have tats written all over their bodies. “Look, I have some pictures of some women who might have some work done here, you want to take a look at them,” I said to the dirty looking young man behind the counter. “Hey man I’m not the only tattoo joint in the area; did you talk to the rest of them?” He shouted uncontrollably in response. “I didn’t ask you all that shit, just look at the damn pictures.”
“ l recognize these two , he indicated by pointing them out, man they were some fine bitches, they both work for Juan the chilly pimp , in fact he’s right outside on the corner , you can ask him all the shit you want instead of harassing me,” he said. ”So out of all the women I’ve shown you these are the only ones you recognize, so tell me one other thing , do a lot of prostitutes come in to use your service.”
“Over the years a lot of them broads have come here, even when it wasn’t popular. But you got to understand that my shop ain’t the only shop in the downtown area, you have, the bikers, hip hoppers and the middle class crowd and also some people who do tats from their basements.”
I noticed on his wall that the mom tattoo was a popular one amongst some of the hookers, why I don’t know. But our unsub seem to focus on the women who have that tat. It’s strange but the only way to see some of these tats are to be close up on the Vic maybe she is unclothed. However, that seem sort of random and he would have to go through the process of receiving services from them before finding the identifying tattoo. Detective work is not like the movies or TV, it’s a lot of shoe leather that’s utilized, and I guess that’s why originally the detective was also known as a gum shoe because walking around and turning every rock to find information was one of our main characteristic.
I was fascinated with the tattoo info but it didn’t lead anywhere. However, in each one of the Vics they had a line of similarity, they were all born in prisons to hookers and they had become hookers just like their mothers. This was info that was tantalizing as it was extraordinary. It would lead one to believe that whoever the unsub turned out to be his stressor probably had a lot to do with his own mother. Each one of the corpses was displayed with care and respect, with the exception of the cuttings performed with the use and skill of a trained scalpel. There wasn’t any sexual content to the murders.
I had to find this unsubs stressor to discover his real reasons for these murders. Remember homicide 101, that these guys all have unique reasons for becoming murderers and the stress that breaks their mental bond is different. There is a certain panache to all these fellows which we call signatures, it could be original but in the case of this unsub he has chosen to copy the deeds of one of the most prolific and infamous murderers in recorded history, Jack the Ripper.
Ch 5
I was upstairs at homicide sitting at my old desk in the cubicle that faced the window which looked over the parked vehicles and human traffic in center city. I had to admit I missed the hub and bub of the precinct. I was enamored with the olfactory aromas of murder and the reverberation of slaughter that was contemplated. Don’t get me wrong the dissecting of cadavers was exciting but the skullduggery involved with trying to discover the personality of an unsub was intriguing, it was like a deep conscious game of chess.
I was sitting across from my old friend and partner Detective Omar Johnson, he wanted my desk but the captain wanted my station opened just in case I was coming back. But detective Johnson was just as happy to be a part of homicide, since he had just ended his stint as a uniform police officer. He was happy to be inside. I didn’t have many friends at the precinct but me and Omar hit it off from the very beginning, he was a big muscular guy about 6/4and 250 pounds, I guess he had the same physique he had at Temple University where he played defensive end back in the day on the football team.
There were a few rubbles amongst the rank and file because I was the lead detective, seeing as I was the coroner also. But because of my success in the numerous homicide cases and my families sacrifice in the face of mad men, the antagonisms were at a minimum. But like the day before there was another body to examine, we had a got a call from the Germantown area of all places, this was way out of our venue. I had to coordinate with other homicide detectives in that area. I arrived on the scene at approximately ten o’clock am. It was an odd aura about the whole thing. For one, the murder was in a residential area which was the place where the Underground Railroad took place. Was the unsub trying to tell us something or was he getting desperate to reenact as many murders similar to the Ripper as possible. Murder alone, is a personal morale corruption that has no worthwhile and body of intelligence known only to the serial killer, he sees himself as the creator of some sort of scholarly movement. Perpetrators like the Ripper are seen as pioneers of bloodletting. These types of men see themselves as superhuman because they have eliminated the feeling of mercy. If you can kill without mercy and feelings, then you were seen as a superman to these men.
“Did you see the morning newspaper,” announced Detective Miles. The unsub has contacted the paper and has given his side of the story, as if there could be a side for murder and mayhem. But, these guys have to be involved in the investigations they can’t help it. I found it curious some of the ways the women were murdered, they were purposely not reported. But here it was in black and white in the paper. Which let us know that this was the unsub we were looking for.
The mind of the serial murderer varies with the life experience and IQ of the unsub. His moral apparatus doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his actions. In fact some would say that a good number of these murderers were geniuses but no one would like to admit that point. We notified the public via the news media, this was something that I didn’t want to participate in. I have done so many of these types of interviews and profiles to the public about a multitude of unsubs that it was hard to distinguish one from the other. I asked someone else to do it but to no avail. The captain thought about it but he and the powers that be considered m
e to be the face of the homicide division, especially weird murders.
“The suspect is a white male approximately twenty five to thirty years old, he could be employed in the health field ranging from a surgical nurse are perhaps even a doctor. We are asking women who are involved in prostitution especially those that walk the street, that if you have to display your wares walk with a partner and be very careful, the perpetrator has no qualms about killing.” I announced. And that was it; everything went back to normal and the murders ceased. My phone wasn’t blowing up like it was in my previous cases; it was ego taming but I kind of enjoyed being inconspicuous. But I was soon proven wrong. The phone almost rung off the hook it was inspector Miles, “Hello, we have another one but this one is different, the vic was shot about five times at close range.” she exclaimed. “You can give me all the particulars when the body arrives at my office,” I said.
The body was on the slab when I returned from lunch. I changed into my scrubs and turned on the tape recorder. The Vic was a Caucasian female stunningly beautiful; she didn’t have any of the roughness of street life compared to the other cadavers. She was roughly in her late twenties. There were five shots all aimed at her torso, one shot each aimed at her breast and the other three aimed at her abdomen. He was really off the mark as far as his MO was concerned all of the other women were stabbed with their throats slashed; this Vic was exclusively murdered using a 9 millimeter pistol. This type of action illustrates the desperateness of the unsub. Since the Vics are taking precautions, he is simply grabbing anyone and using any weapon at his disposal.
I examined the woman thoroughly, there wasn’t any damage internally. Besides the five shots she was perfectly normal. His rage was explosive, he couldn’t do what he did like the other five women and it would seem the blade of the knife was his appropriate weapon but the gun was a weapon he couldn’t seem to get into. It was a rush job and I think that he isn’t finished simply because he is unsatisfied. A blood fiend like this unsub has to have the satisfaction of the kill, the blood kill is more delicious to him than the physical aspect of sex. Hence, to him it is more delightful than the sex act.
Ch 6
Monday 3:00 am
Suburban Philly is an area that has this belief that is impervious to security which is an unimportant subject. They are under the false impression that they are exempt from the craziness of the inner city but the actual reality is quite different. As the famous bank robber Willie Sutton once said, when he was asked, why he robbed banks, he simply answered “because that’s where the money is”. And that’s where the possessions to be stolen are, right here in the suburbs. We were chasing the unsub into a hole and he couldn’t come up for air. There was news spots about the profile that we had given, the news media and all the working girls were under alert. It was a successful endeavor but it gave the unsub a period of desperation.
Janice Malberino lived on the tree lined street of Maple Ave for ten years. She was originally from the inner city but the solitude of the suburban area delighted her. Sometimes it worried her; you could walk around for hours and not see a soul. Her neighbors seemed to stay locked in and enjoying the possessions that they had indoors. The only time they came out was in the hot days of summer; barbeques were an everyday thing around here but as the temperature decrease the number of people disappeared.
She was livid about the way she had to deal with loneliness. Her husband was a medical supply salesman, and was on the road away from her and the two kids for months. Janice went into the house by herself, the kids were at hockey practice and she was totally by herself for the first time since they moved there three years ago. It was raining outside with thunder and lightning flashing which scared the hell out of her. Suddenly the lights went dark and she found herself in total darkness. Maybe it was just a fuse she thought to herself but she thought again, this isn’t like the old place, she didn’t have fuses, but the house had circuit breakers. She would have to go down in the basement into the long desolate basement and turn the switches of the breakers up and down to restore her electricity. She walked gingerly down the steps, she said to herself, “I can do this, I can do this” over and over again. She suddenly felt something on her ankle and whatever grabbed her soon caused her to topple face down across ten flights of stairs.
I was at my desk upstairs in homicide HQ, I was drinking some of the week old brewed coffee, and I didn’t have a chance to go out to one of those coffee places. I liked the precinct coffee though, it seemed to give you some of the reality of life by ingesting liquid funk, and you knew where you were by just inhaling this stuff. The phone rang more than once; it was the same phone on my desk since twenty two years ago, a rotary. “It’s Detective Miles; there’s been another killing, but this time in a home in the suburbs.” I wasn’t shocked by the news of the murder but I was surprised that the unsub was moving inside. I arrived at the home at approximately 2:00 pm; it took me about twenty minutes driving down Roosevelt Boulevard like a bat out of hell, I finally arrived in Glenside. The house was completely roped with police caution tape. There were about ten patrol cars and the usual looky-lu’s from the neighborhood. It was a quiet block not the usual type in the inner city but it remained to be seen if the neighbors would be forth coming with any information, maybe the snitching code hadn’t reached this far. I stepped into the house, detective Miles was standing near the staircase just staring at me; I guess she was waiting for my response if any. The house was immaculate but there was blood splattered everywhere, there was a trial of blood on the floor and blood sprayed on the ceiling. The spray of blood probably came from the unsub slitting the vic’s throat and the blood released up to the ceiling. It was the same victimology but it looked different because we were inside which gave everything a different feel, a more deadly feel and a gross sense of reality.
His signature was the same as the other deaths, it was the copy of the Ripper killings, the throat was cut from ear to ear and the lower stomach was slit open with some of the organs removed and taken with the perp. I was curious to search the rest of the home; ground zero seemed to be the dining room and ended in the basement. I slowly went upstairs, drawing my weapon at every step. I announced loudly, “clear”. It was surreal and eerie at the same time. There was only one room touched upstairs and that was the master bedroom. The unsub ransacked the Vic’s room, going through her draw and taking some of her personals, mainly her panties. It was unusual because none of the other murders illustrated a sexual component such as molestation or rape.
There a was component for the whole case that I couldn’t understand , why remove the organ and take it with him, but the constant reminder to the public had only seem to make the unsub more desperate as ever. I arrived at the morgue to examine the body, I enter the little room and retrieve my navy blue smock and put on my goggles’ and gloves and attached the microphone to the tape machine to my mask. The extractions on her neck were sliced with perfection from ear to ear. The cutting in the abdomen was exactly like the other four bodies, which was expertly cut like a surgeon at work. There was something strange about the neck marks. The marks were perfectly done but I thought this was similar to the cuts in the abdomen but the marks were similar to something that I had seen before. The first markings was similar to a bowie knife but the second marks looked liked the markings of garrote, that were used by the ancient thuggie clan. It seems that the suspect used a stealth movement to sneak up on the Vic and perform a strangling move using the garret. I went into the holding room and pulled each draw of the cold austere dwelling holding the five bodies, they all had the garrote markings. His victimology and signature held true for each Vic. So his Ripper persona wasn’t a pure victimology but it was a mixture of other murder techniques which led us to the thuggie’s of India.
My assessment of his physical bearing or stature is that he is a tall man, simply by the ligatures found on the neck was on the lower nip, meaning he had to bend further down to finish his job of strangulation. He was acco
rding to my assessment approximately 6 ft three. I measured the rest of the Vics and they had the same length of indentions on their necks. After what I thought was a thorough exam of the body I had found something that was annoying about this body and I further examined her once again. I went behind the abdominal wall and I shouted an expletive that astonished those in the room. Which I had good reason to do, the unsub left what looked like a DVD in the cavity. I quickly viewed the DVD in the audio visual room upstairs at homicide. The tape started off with the visual picture of the outside of my very office and then it blackened out with the unsub dressed in all black which was topped off with a black nondescript mask. I turned the volume up to hear if he was going to say anything. “My name is Phansigar, I want you to spell it correctly and announce my coming out party,” he said with a deep bellowing laughter. He turned back and whispered into the camera “khoon tu kao”. We all were crowded around the tape in the little room all nine of us, but detective Miles was the only one who had anything to say out right. I googled the name he gave us. The name Phansigar means noose and is used in Southern India. That’s very good inspector Denise but what the hell is it that he said at the end. Denise stared at me as if the proverbial cat had her tongue and said, “Upon killing their victims the Thuggie’s would say 'khoon tu kao', which meant, feed thou upon blood.”
