by H. B. Rae
"I'm Tammy Williams," I said, eager to see what this woman knew. "I understand that you have some information about the woman we found?"
"Yes," Lesley replied, taking a seat. "And I think it might be very useful to you."
"Go on," I said.
"Well, I think the missing woman was Eve Roberts, if you don't know that already."
I remembered the name from one of the missing person's files. She had gone out for a party that night, but the person who reported her could not recall what she was wearing.
"And why do you think that?" I asked Lesley.
"Because she was wearing the pink dress the night she went missing. I remember it. I am...was a very good friend of Eve’s, and when she went missing I knew she'd been murdered. It was just so unusual of her," Lesley replied in a fairly shaky voice.
I was beginning to get very excited now.
"And why did you not say any of this before?" I asked her.
"Because one of my other friends said she sorted it out. She said she told the police everything and that there was no need to speak to them. I've only just realized that she never mentioned the dress. I know it's Eve. It has to be," replied Lesley, getting fairly excited.
"Right, and can you tell me about the time she went missing?" I asked her.
"I can't really remember," she said.
"Can you remember the last time you saw her?"
"Well, we were at the party just a few miles away from here, in a club. A lot of people were quite drunk. Eve went out for a cigarette, and that was that. She never came back in."
Lesley started to cry now.
"It's O.k.," I said, reassuring her.
I thanked her for the help she gave me, and gave her the contact details should she ever think of anything else. I now had the name of the victim, because Eve went missing in 1988, and she was twenty-eight years old. In a way, come to think of it, she looked quite a lot like the skeleton. I now had the name of the victim, and I prepared for the rest of the journey ahead.
Chapter 4
My first task was to find out if any of Eve Roberts' relatives were alive, other than her friends. I telephoned Lesley again and informed her that the body we had found was indeed Eve's, and asked her if Eve had any living relatives. Lesley told me that Eve had a sister, who was now quite old. She gave me her contact details, and I went out to find her sister, whose name was Evelyn.
When I first met Evelyn, I noticed that she still looked upset. She must have been told the news, I thought to myself. This was confirmed when she opened the door to allow us inside, as she said to us, "I have been waiting for this news for twenty-four years."
She picked up a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eye clean. I knew she felt like it was a giant weight lifted off her shoulders. However, justice was not yet served, so although Evelyn knew what happened to her sister, and how she died, the killer was not yet found, and that was my main purpose for coming to see her.
Previously, I had done some research about Eve and discovered that she had divorced and filed an official complaint about her ex-husband stating that he had assaulted her on several occasions. However, before any further action could be taken, Eve was killed. This made me very suspicious of her ex-husband, whose name was Kurt Roberts.
"Mrs. Drake," I asked Evelyn, "I know this is hard for you, but I need to talk to you about Eve."
"Of course," said Evelyn, gathering herself together. "Come inside, please."
She invited Graham Mitchell and me inside, and we sat down with her. I decided that I needed to get this out the way for her as quickly as possible, so I asked the questions straight away.
"We need to establish when you last saw Eve, if you can remember," I asked the poor oldwoman.
"Of course I can remember," replied Evelyn. "It was the day she went missing, or died, as we know now. God, I still can't get over it. Deep down, I knew that she was dead, but I had hoped it was a quick and painless death, not one like this. Who can do such a thing?" she asked.
"In time, you will find the answer to that," I replied, trying to reassure her. "But for now, we need to establish a few basic facts about Eve's life, particularly about the day she went missing. Can you tell us if she made any unusual calls, or if she was behaving strangely?"
"No, that's the thing! She was behaving normally. I just don't understand", Evelyn replied.
"Did Eve have any enemies?"
"Well, there was the obvious one," said Evelyn. "Her husband was the horrible one. He hit her a few times, you know?"
"We've read the files about that," I said, trying not to go into any details about it, "but do you really think he was capable of killing her?"
"Well, it's been decades since I saw him last. I saw him just before the divorce, but I don't know where he is now. But he was a very aggressive man, and it was his way or no way. That's what it was like around him."
"Okay," I said. "And is there anyone else who hated Eve?"
"I don't think so. Not with a passion, anyway."
I decided to leave things there.
"There is one more thing," said Evelyn.
I was intrigued.
"Go on," I said to her. Mitchell was ready with his notepad.
"Well, I think Kurt was stalking Eve."
"Why do you think that?" I asked her, rather interested by this revelation.
"Eve carried pepper spray. And another thing – a few days before Eve died she was on the telephone to Kurt. I was round her house, and she mentioned his name a few times."
"What did she say to him?" I asked, somehow thinking that this piece of information could be important.
"Well, I remember a bit of it that's stuck with me for the rest of my life. Eve said to Kurt, 'I know it's you. I know it's you who is standing at my window all the time'."
"Did you asked her about it?" I asked, mildly intrigued.
"I tried to, but she just talked about something else instead. I tried to help her, I really did, but now I realize if I could have helped her, maybe she wouldn't have died!"
Evelyn broke down into tears. I sat her down, calmed her down and left.
The next thing we had to do was trace Kurt Roberts. He was around somewhere, and I knew it. I knew that at this point in the case it was probable that he was the murderer.
We found him. He was living in the next town to us. We approached him as he was standing talking to someone in the middle of the street. We were able to trace him so easily because we went to his flats first, and a neighbor told us that he had gone out downtown. I was prepared for a chase.
Just as we expected, as we approached him he said, "I've done nothing wrong."
"We'd like you to answer a few questions down at the station, if you don't mind," said Mitchell.
He then decided to run off, and he was a fast runner. It took about three minutes before we caught him, and it took twice as long to escort him back to the car.
We entered the interview room later that day. His arms were folded, and he was glaring at us.
"Do you remember a woman called Eve Roberts?" I asked him.
"What do you think?" said Kurt, trying to be clever with us.
"Well, she was your wife. Now, you divorced with her. Can you tell us why that is?"
He looked at us for a few seconds, remaining quiet, and then he said to us, "well, you're the police officer. You work it all out."
"Believe me, I will!" I said. "And if you don't start talking now we'll charge you with murder!"
"Who the Hell has been murdered?" he said, trying to look confused.
"Your ex-wife," Mitchell told him.
"Which one?" asked Kurt.
Mitchell and I looked at each other. He was clearly a stupid man.
"Eve Roberts was killed almost twenty-five years ago," I replied. "Do you remember her disappearance?"
"No," Kurt replied.
"Well, she was murdered shortly after your divorce, and before she died, she was about to go to court because she cl
aimed you were domestically abusing her!"
I was getting excited, excited to charge this man with the murder, but he was not necessarily the killer.
"I don't know nothing," he said, folding his arms.
"Also, Eve claimed that you were stalking her."
"No comment," said Kurt.
Unfortunately, we continued to talk to him, but he kept saying, "No comment." Although usually that was a sign that the person was guilty of a crime, I thought that Kurt was too lazy to speak to us anymore. So, we looked into his criminal history, and he was clean. I couldn't believe it. We had to release him without charge. I was devastated, but before he left, I warned him I would be keeping a close eye on him.
However, I had something else to be shocked about, as well. In a surprise twist to the investigation, I received a call from the boss.
"Are you sitting down?" D.I. Mitchell asked me.
"I am now," I replied. "Why?"
"Because you're about to be in shock. At the field where Eve Roberts was found, we've discovered another seven corpses."
Chapter 5
It took us five days to identify each individual murder victim, but we got there in the end. It was difficult, because like Eve Roberts, each victim had had their teeth pulled out. I was certainly not expecting this to happen – I was dealing with a complete, utter psychopath.
The first victim of the extra second we identified was Irene Ford. When she went missing, she was forty-eight years of age. She had short, brown hair and was a mother of two. She was a nurse before she died, although she was found wearing casual clothes. She lived around the Minot area. On the day she went missing, the last person to see her was her husband. She said that she was going out down town, but no closed-circuit cameras could confirm that she ever made it to town. Some suspected that she took a shortcut home, and that was that for her. I would look into more detail about this later. As far as forensics could make out, she was beaten to death with something metallic, especially across the skull, but also the spine. She died in 1990.
The second victim was named John Crawford. He was aged forty-nine when he went missing. He worked in a petrol station and lived just outside of town. He had a wife and son – his wife was long gone, but his son was still alive. It was his wife who last saw him. He said goodbye to her before going to work, but he never turned up for work. His family knew that he’d been murdered, and they had launched several search parties over the years to look for him. He was shot in the head in 1990, but also suffered two shots to the chest. He was killed with a shotgun.
The third victim was Sienna Stewart. She was aged thirty-seven. She had quite long, blonde hair, and she was loved by all. Although she had no family, she had many friends and was a very sociable person, so it was very unusual for her not to make any contact with anyone for several days. She was murdered in 1989, apparently by electric shocks to the skull. The forensics team thought she may have been subjected to torture by some sort of powerful source of electricity before her death. The last time she was seen or heard from was a phone call to her mother, who died before her body was found.
The fourth victim was the most shocking, and that was of a fourteen-year old boy whose name was Kieran Bradley. He was an aspiring Olympic cyclist and he had many friends in the school where he lived. He was killed in 1988, just after Eve Roberts went missing as well. He was choked to death, as forensic scientists found that several dozen cotton wool balls had been forced down his throat. He was a very popular child at school, and I found this quite surprising as he had worn glasses. I thought it was horrific when I told his parents about the discovery, and how he had died. I will never forget their faces.
The fifth victim was an elderly lady named Elizabeth Beckett. She was eighty-three and she was an old age pensioner with three children and eight grandchildren. Over her life she had been an influential woman, as she had taught for forty years. She came to a grisly end with her limbs being chopped off. Forensics identified the murder weapon as an axe – somebody had chopped her legs off and left her to bleed to death before burying her, and this was in 1991.
The sixth victim was also an old age pensioner, but this time he was a man. He was named Fred Lesley, and he was also a respectable member of the community. At seventy-eight, he had been a football coach and youth worker for most of his life. He was married with five children and fifteen grandchildren. He was the only victim to have been found in a box. He had been killed in 1994, and the killer simply placed him in a box while tied up, cut his teeth out, nailed the box shut and buried him, leaving him to suffocate.
Finally, the body of a twenty-two year old man was found. He’d been missing since 1996, his name was Christopher Eggles, and he was a student training to be a surgeon. He had a very promising career ahead of him. He had a girlfriend and they were even considering getting married and having children. He was last seen leaving the university. His car was found in Minot forest, a few miles away from where his body was found. The car had crashed into a tree, but there was no trace of him whatsoever. He had been choked to death, probably by a rope. The forensic scientists were not completely sure, but they thought he had been tied up and hanged from a tree nearby.
After having finished reading the files on each victim, I sat back a moment. Was this really happening? How could anybody in the world do this to a fellow human being? I almost cried, but I knew I needed to get my head together and focus on the case, putting my emotions to one side. After all, it was what solved the case last time for me. I knew that this case would be a tough one, as no DNA evidence was left anywhere on the scene, so I was dealing with a somewhat intelligent person, no matter how twisted or psychotic they were.
I started looking for connections between the victims, if any. I knew from the start that each victim was completely different. They were a variety of ages, and their personalities and jobs were all different. Even the way they all died were completely different (apart from choking and strangulation, which were quite similar, and excluding the fact that they all had their teeth pulled out). They all lived in different places in Minot, and they all led different lives, so how could it be possible that the killer could be acquainted with each of them? What did all of these people have in common? It was going to be tough, so I decided to sleep on it, if I could.
Chapter 6
I woke up the next morning not knowing where to go or what to do next. I had slept rough, as I was awake for several hours in bed, thinking about the murderer and who it could be, like I always do. I was trying to create a profile in my mind of this psychopath: the suspect was probably male, had a very disturbed past, and was reasonably intelligent. I could not think of anything else. What possible motive could there be for murdering these innocent people? Perhaps there was no motive – perhaps they were driven and motivated by their excitement in killing a human being.
I arrived at the station, and Patricia approached me.
"Tammy, there is someone here who wants to speak to you." she said, pointing to a woman who appeared to be in her fifties.
I walked over to the woman, and it was clear to me she was a relative of one of the victims. Her eyes were red and she had obviously received some traumatic and devastating news, although she probably expected that news already, deep down.
"Hello," I said, approaching her as kindly and in as friendly a manner as I possibly could.
"Are you the one working on the Kieran Bradley case?" she asked.
It suddenly hit me. She must have been Kieran Bradley's mother, the one who was killed when he was fourteen.
"I am," I replied, trying not to show my emotions too much.
"Well, I need to talk to you about something," she said.
"Take your time," I told her, allowing her to sit down and talk to me somewhere private, in the soft interview room.
"So, what is it you want to talk to me about?" I asked her, after offering her some coffee. She had refused, as she just wanted to get this conversation over with.
"I
might have a little bit of information to give you about the murders," she said. "There were eight more, weren't there?" she asked.
"There were eight in total," I replied.
After hearing that, she gasped, and her hand ran down her fragile face. She was bewildered at the fact that her son had died at the hands of a psychotic serial killer.
"Were they all young boys?" was her next question.
"No," was my straight answer. "There were also some women, and the victims were of different ages. Some were old, some were young, and others were middle-aged."
"So why did he pick my son?" she said, trying not to shout too loud.
"I'm trying my best to get to the bottom of that, I really am, but for now I need as much information as I possibly can," I replied, trying to keep the poor woman as calm as possible.
"That's why I'm here," she said. "I've got an idea about who the killer might be," she said.
"Go on," I said, becoming rather excited.
"Well, the killer might, just might be Ian Green."
"Who is he?"
"He's that strange man who used to live near us. I don't know where he lives now."
"And why do you think he's the killer?"
"Well, I remember back to when I had a conversation with my son. It was one of the last conversations I had...
“It was a normal day, and I was dropping Kieran off at school in the car. Before he left, he talked to me about Ian Green. He pointed him out. At that point Ian was talking to some young children. He must have been in his twenties back then! Anyway, Kieran started saying things about him.
“'That's the one who talks about killing people all of the time', he told me.
“'That one who is talking to the kids right now?' I asked him.
“'Yeah. He's always talking about how he would want to die, and if he were to kill someone, he would torture them and bury them alive.'
“'Well, there is clearly something seriously wrong with that man. Why does he come here? He looks too old to go to school!'
