“A vehicle big enough to put an adult victim in the back seat or back compartment,” Craig said. “Also, those vehicles often have tinted rear windows, decreasing the chance of anyone spotting the victim.”
“I should tell you that also in this class is the Police Interceptor, the law enforcement version of the Explorer.”
“Are you suggesting this could be a law enforcement officer?” Brian asked.
“We don’t have any evidence to suggest that at this time, so I’m just putting it out there for the full picture. Based on the tire tread pattern, these vehicles are supported by the make and model of tires at the scene, which would be found as original equipment. The tires also hadn’t seen much wear, suggesting this is a late-model vehicle.” She flipped through a few more pages. “As far as other evidence goes, we have the security footage from Hampden Manor. The techs estimate the suspect is approximately six foot three and two-twenty. Body shape indicates a muscular build. We have no visual record of his face.”
“That weight makes sense considering the load he needs to carry during the abductions,” Meg stated. “I know these people are elderly, and probably slim and frail, but he needs to subdue and transport them through difficult urbex sites without dropping them or risking himself. Has anyone done staff interviews at Hampden Manor?”
“I did that personally,” Kate said. “I interviewed staff members who were on duty not just that day but on prior days. Multiple people from different shifts recognized the workman’s uniform. It’s from an outside company that the home contracts to do their maintenance work. As a result, workmen are there on a regular basis. If something in the building needs attention, it’s reported to management, who contact the maintenance company and they send workmen out ASAP. They’ve worked with the company for years and never had any trouble.”
“I’m sure you checked, but I bet our guy doesn’t work for that company. He just used a uniform that made him essentially invisible,” Lauren said. “It’s the perfect way to hide in plain sight. But how did he get that uniform?”
“I checked with the company. They had a break-in a few weeks ago that went unreported. They came in one morning and found the door forced, but nothing appeared to be missing.”
“Because they were cataloging valuables or electronics that might have been stolen,” Scott suggested. “They wouldn’t have been counting how many spare uniforms they had in the back room. This guy really did his prep work. He must have watched Hampden Manor beforehand to find the best way to get in without attracting attention.” He looked at Rutherford for confirmation and received a nod in response.
“All contracted workers for that company are alibied for the time of the sighting,” Kate stated. “Management doesn’t have any repairs on record for that day or the few days leading up to the abduction. Of course, the nursing staff wouldn’t have known that, so they didn’t blink at yet another workman carrying tools, making his way through the place.”
“Wait,” Meg interrupted. “Tools?”
“Yes, tools. They were found in Mrs. Devar’s room after the abduction.” She held up a hand to forestall Meg’s question. “And before you ask, the techs dusted for prints, and every piece was clean. Looked brand-new, in fact. There weren’t even that many in the tool bag, just enough to give it some heft and to make it look real. In the video, the suspect is seen wearing work gloves, so that likely explains the lack of prints. From conversations with several staffers, it’s clear he was there several times over the previous few days, doing ‘repairs’ in Mrs. Devar’s room, and had been spotted going in and out a few times.”
“But no one got close enough to see his face?” Brian asked.
“No. He always kept his head down. By and large, the workmen aren’t really visible to the staff. They come in, they do their thing, they go out. Unless they cause trouble, they’re kind of like wallpaper—there, but basically unnoticed.”
Meg glanced down at Hawk, who caught her movement and looked up at her from his place beside Lacey, lazily thumping his tail a few times. “Any idea how he got Mrs. Devar out of the building so Hawk and I had a trail to follow?”
“I asked the staff about that as well,” Kate said. “No one saw her leave with him, and no one heard anything. So she didn’t go out kicking and screaming, but for all we know, she also may have been drugged. They did a tox screen on her at the hospital, but we don’t have results yet.”
“I think the profile will speak to how he got her out of the residence,” Rutherford said. “If you’re ready to move on to that.”
“Just about. One more thing to add. I visited Mrs. Devar in the hospital, and I was not able to get a victim statement. She is fairly far along in her dementia and was very confused. Very pleasant, but I think she’s back in the 1970s. She doesn’t appear to remember anything of her experience, including anything about the man who abducted her.”
“Bad for us,” Meg said, “a godsend for her.”
“I agree. She has enough challenges.” Kate closed the file folder and pushed it a few inches away. “That’s everything I have so far. SSA Rutherford, I’m interested in what you’ve been able to determine from the little we’ve been able to gather.”
“It’s a lot more than you think. And no, this information doesn’t change the profile. It simply confirms it.” Rutherford picked up a folder from the table in front of him and stood. “Bear with me while I lay the case out from the beginning. I know you’re all familiar with the progression, but it helps paint a clear picture of how the evidence leads to and supports the profile. There’s no hocus-pocus in a suspect profile, just minute details, some psychology, and the ability to put yourself in the suspect’s shoes.” He pulled out the first photograph and tacked it to the board on the wall. “This is Donna Parker. She was found deceased by Ms. Jennings and Hawk when they were trespassing in the abandoned Massaponax Psychiatric Hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia.”
At the word “trespassing,” Meg sunk a little lower in her chair.
Rutherford hung a photo of the Massaponax Psychiatric Hospital beside the victim. “Mrs. Parker was eighty-five years of age and a widow who lived alone in Fredericksburg. According to the police report made by her son, she was fiercely independent and insisted on having her own place. But they compromised, and her son got an apartment in the same building. They talked daily and he knew her schedule, so when she didn’t answer his phone calls, he was worried she was ill or had fallen. He went up to her apartment, but it was deserted. He reported her missing right away.”
He pulled out a second photo and mounted it below the first, following up with a photo of the Bethlehem Steel furnaces. “This is Warren Roth, also found deceased, this time in a restricted section of the decommissioned Bethlehem Steel plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, by Mr. Foster and Lacey. Mr. Roth was seventy-nine and disappeared from his retirement community in Allentown. He was supposed to meet friends for dinner, and intended to as of that afternoon, then failed to appear. When they went to his house, his car was still in the driveway, but there was no sign of him at home. His family was also not able to locate him and reported him missing. Cause of death was found to be difethialone, a rat poison, widely available for both commercial and residential use for many years, but it’s been off the residential market for a decade. The difethialone was suspended in 190-proof grain alcohol.”
“Moonshine?” Lauren’s tone conveyed her distaste.
“Moonshine would do it,” Rutherford agreed, “but the chemical composition in this case is too pure. It’s Everclear, a widely available grain alcohol.”
“Isn’t that banned in some states?” Scott asked.
“It is. West Virginia, for instance. But you can buy it in New York, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and right here in DC. Wherever home base is for our killer, he could find multiple outlets for it and then bring it back across state lines.
“We got lucky when our third victim, Bahni Devar, was taken from Hampden Manor, outside of Baltimore, Maryland.
Hampden Manor is a long-term care facility for persons suffering from dementia, and specifically Alzheimer’s, so they monitor their residents closely. They knew shortly after she was taken that she was missing, and sounded the alarm. As Agent Moore described, Mrs. Devar was escorted out of the residence by the suspect, lead through the backwoods behind the building, and transferred to a vehicle parked and waiting for them off-road. She was driven about twenty minutes away to the abandoned site of the former Bowie Meat Packing Plant.” Photos of Mrs. Devar and the location were tacked to the board. “The body drop site could be reached only following a hazardous climb, which the suspect managed while carrying Mrs. Devar, who was then left on the roof to die. However, Ms. Jennings and Hawk arrived before the anticoagulant properties of the poison killed Mrs. Devar, called for assistance, and an air ambulance responded. Mrs. Devar is currently recovering in hospital.
“I understand there are three additional potential victims found previously in New Jersey, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. However, in this short time period I wanted to concentrate on the current victims because I didn’t want to muddy the profile if any of the additional three are not truly connected. More information is being gathered there, so they will be added into the profile when and if it makes sense. And then there’s this.” Rutherford pulled a list out of the file folder and held it up. “The list of a number of other senior citizens, any or all of whom could also be victims. Twenty-three additional individuals, eighteen of whom were eventually found.” He turned to Kate. “Have you considered exhuming those eighteen to test for difethialone?”
“We’re working on exhumation orders for ten of those victims. The other eight were cremated, so we won’t be able to do toxicological testing. But if any of those ten have difethialone in their system, we’ll be expanding our victim pool.”
“Then that aspect of the case may be updated as the case progresses. For now, we’re going to work solely with these three victims. And, more specifically, on the killer. What do we know so far from the evidence and the established incidents? He drives a large late-model vehicle, possibly one picked out for this specific activity. He’s organized, a planner, and he’s willing to put in the time to make certain the abduction is successful. Consider the last abduction. He selected the victim, observed her in her environment, determined that the best way to perform the abduction was by entering the residence, and then devised a foolproof way to gain access not only to the manor but to the victim herself. To do that, he had to actually enter the building and determine her location. After that, he was seen going into her room several times, so he may have been offering ‘friendliness’ ”—he mimed air quotes around the word—“to try to win her over. Of course, given her state of dementia, that might have been a futile effort. In total, all this might have taken weeks to work out. But he was willing to put in both the time and the effort.”
“You said he selected the victim,” Meg said. “You don’t think the victims are being selected for him?”
Brian stared at her questioningly. “You mean like a contract killer being hired to carry out a hit?”
Meg nodded. “McCord developed a theory that’s way out there, but we have to consider it.”
“Right, the thalaikoothal theory.” Rutherford left the board and came closer to the table. “Let’s talk about that. Part of what he’s laid out is correct, without question. Mr. McCord dug into the publicly available background of the three victims and discovered that they all have ties to India. They are of Indian descent, married someone of Indian background, or were adopted into Indian families. India is a large country, and there does seem to be a trend in victim connection with the southern states of the country, especially Tamil Nadu. And that’s where Mr. McCord’s theory comes into play. There is a historical Indian Tamil practice of geronticide, the killing of family elders through a ritual called thalaikoothal. It is usually carried out by the family and, in practice, can be a community ritual.”
“By the . . .” Brian seemed briefly at a loss for words. “By the family? They kill their own relatives? That’s barbaric.”
“There are stories of seniors who get wind of the planning and then flee their own homes to save themselves. It doesn’t happen often today in India, but it does still occur. There are recent stories online highlighting the practice. McCord questioned whether that’s what this is. But I don’t think it is.”
“You think there’s a more basic motive than simply age?”
“I do. It’s a centuries-old established practice there, and people, including the authorities, are willing to look the other way. But that’s not going to happen here. It would be a huge risk to take for relatively little reward. And perhaps you might find some people in the community who would want to do this, but we have three in less than a month and possibly twenty-six over a longer time frame. Yes, there are communities of Tamil diaspora living in many US states, but not that many. Not to mention in an affluent country like America, we have other options to take care of our elderly, including social security, Medicaid or Medicare for citizens, and family members who are likely earning more money and are better able to care for their elderly family members. Parts of India are devastatingly poor, and for some, they may see it as the only way to keep the remaining family intact.”
“Still barbaric.” Brian shook his head in disgust.
“It is, without a doubt. I do think Mr. McCord is onto something with the connection, though. This case has all the hallmarks of a single killer, so something has to be linking the deaths.”
“You don’t think this is a contract killer?”
“I don’t. Let’s talk about the killer’s personality. What do we see in his kills? For example, consider the abduction of Mrs. Devar. We know the most about this case. He controls the situation, inserting himself into the environment as someone who can freely walk the hallways of a residence of vulnerable people. He manipulates the victim into walking out of the residence with him. There is some resistance—we know she struggled with him from the trail that Ms. Jennings and Hawk followed and from the evidence left behind. During that fight, he dominated her and maintained that control until he abandoned her to die. Control. Manipulation. Dominance—the three cornerstones of serial killer behavior. But what is his motive? It’s not the kill. Killers who find pleasure in killing do it themselves, often by hand so they can watch the life fade out of the victims’ eyes. It makes them feel powerful. This strikes me as more like a business transaction. He puts in the work, days or weeks of planning, carries out an abduction that puts him at risk of being caught, especially now that several other fatalities have been discovered and have made headlines in the media, and then enters what has to be a preselected body dump site that puts him at physical risk. But then he doesn’t stay to ensure the kill is successful?”
“Do you think that’s so he can be somewhere else at the time of death?” Scott asked. “Giving him an alibi?”
Rutherford walked to the board and stood for a moment staring at the victims’ faces. “No, I don’t. He has to know that in a suspicious death, the first thing we’re going to do is an autopsy. Then we’ll know cause of death, and the kind of window required for it, and will work backward through the time line. Not to mention we have him on the security camera at Hampden Manor removing the victim from the facility. He can’t toy with that time line. That leaves us with a killer who is killing not for pleasure but for a different motive. This is what we classify as a Hedonistic: Comfort Killer.”
There was a moment of silence as the room absorbed the label. It was Meg who finally broke the silence. “He finds comfort in the kill?”
“Not in the way you think. Let me break it down a bit further. Hedonistic killers kill for a variety of reasons, but it’s always grounded in self-indulgence. Lust killers have an overwhelming need to kill because that’s how they find sexual gratification. Thrill killers are sometimes hard to tell from lust killers, but in their case, although they are motivated by sexual gratification,
what they get out of the kill is pleasure derived from the victim’s terror. These two categories are almost exclusively men. The third kind of hedonistic killer is the comfort killer, and you can find women in this group. They kill for something that brings them comfort, not the victim, and most of the time that involves money. Contract killers would fit into this category as well, but I think there is too much connection in this case for contract killing. We’re simply missing the actual connection and the trigger for the case. Once we figure out those two issues, then we’ll have the complete picture. But the victims and the killer show all the classic traits of this kind of kill: organization, controlled crime scene, specifically known victim. These killers typically leave the weapon at the scene, which is not relevant here due to the cause of death. They also tend to concentrate their kills in one geographic area, but something else is at play here that is spreading them out geographically. And that’s tied to the motive, which we have yet to discern.
“What happens during a crime like this speaks volumes about the perpetrator, and this raises another point about the killer—because of the incentive, which may be monetary, I don’t sense a focus on the victim. The victims are really trivial to the mission. He spends time figuring out the abduction, but once he has the victim, he or she seems to be secondary. Retain, subdue, poison, abandon. There’s no pleasure in the kill, or any concern about a protracted death.”
No Man's Land Page 12
