3. At this point, police had no grounds on which to arrest Eric Rubright. His presence at the police station, as well as his decision to take a polygraph exam, were purely voluntary. One of the constant challenges to detectives is to create an environment in which suspects will speak with them willingly. As Lieutenant Albert Joseph, Jr. says in his book, We Get Confessions (A. J. Book, 1997): “Treat them with respect + bullshit them a little + get them to like you = sell them that vacuum cleaner or get that confession.”
4. Although suspects and witnesses may view polygraphs as a trap, and defense attorneys reflexively counsel their clients not to take them, police routinely use the polygraph as a way of eliminating suspects. As with Rubright, observing an individual take a polygraph provides valuable information, not simply through the person's words or the polygraph results, but through the body language.
5. It is a fact that anyone has the right to refuse to speak with the police after the initial phase of stopping if requested and identifying oneself. There is usually no legal obligation to cooperate. The obligation to cooperate stems from the moral obligations of membership in a civilized society and the simple recognition that there are many citizens and few police, and citizen cooperation is essential for an orderly society (known as the Thin Blue Line argument).
Chapter 4 (pp. 41–52)
1. Practical Homicide Investigation, p. 719.
Chapter 6 (pp. 65–80)
1. Portland Press Herald, Tuesday, November 11, 2003.
Chapter 7 (pp. 81–100)
1. Locard's Exchange Principle, a cornerstone of forensic science, states that when an offender comes into contact with a location or another person an exchange of evidence occurs.
2. Except for Gorman's own call to the police, reporting the thirdhand information that someone had told him that someone had seen Amy outside the Industry at 2:30 a.m. on the morning she disappeared.
3. Among the things the evidence techs found in Gorman's car was a stolen library copy of The Boston Strangler. Inside the back cover was written: “Get fucked up. Stay fucked up.” Signed: Jeffrey Gorman.
4. The FBI description of post-offense behavior includes altered physical appearance, pronounced anxiety, atypical media interest, noticeable mood swings, withdrawn behavior, unusual level of preoccupation, unusual absenteeism, and altered sleeping and/or eating habits.
5. Over the next few months, he would offer varying explanations for this. He told one person he was cleaning it because he had a date, a second that he was loaning the car to someone, a third that Amy had been sick in the car.
6. Learning to listen to instinct, one of those hardwired, primitive senses designed to keep us safe, is especially difficult for women who've been socialized to “be nice.” Still, this small thing, not divulged at earlier interviews, would stay in the detectives’ minds, rising to haunt them again and again throughout the case. If Sharma had told the truth—no, he's not okay—might Amy have been saved?
7. A reserve police officer is an officer with partial police training, in Campbell's case, a hundred hours, who serves on an on-call basis when needed. Many departments do not subscribe to this expediency and require much more training. Portland, for example, does not have reserve officers. A person seeking to become an officer must attend the 16-week police academy, spend sixteen weeks with a field-training officer and then undergo a two-year probation period.
8. As an example of the way detectives check and recheck facts, the girls from Munjoy Hill were located, and one of them later confirmed, in an interview, the incident when Gorman took Campbell's gun out of the car and showed it to her.
9. Campbell's behavior regarding the loss of his gun ultimately lost him his job as a part-time police officer and his bid to become full time.
10. At one point, Westbrook police went to interview Campbell about his missing-gun report and Gorman was there, standing outside. As they were leaving to take Campbell down to the station, Gorman banged on the side of the police van, yelling, “You found the gun, right?”
Chapter 8 (pp. 101–111)
1. From an investigative point of view, anything that has proven to be successful in one investigation should certainly be considered in other cases, especially in cases where there is limited information. The use of a psychic can be considered as an additional investigative aid. Geberth, Practical Homicide Investigation, pp. 665–666.
2. Marie's drawing, which had roads and bodies of water but no street or town names, later turned out to be uncannily correct.
Chapter 10 (pp. 123–136)
1. A part of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, under Maine statutes, 12 M.R.S.A. sec. 10105(4), the search and rescue arm of the warden service, upon “notification that any person has gone into the woodlands or onto the inland waters of the State on a hunting, fishing or other trip and has become lost, stranded or drowned, the commissioner shall exercise the authority to take reasonable steps to ensure the safe and timely recovery of that person.” Maine is unusual in having search and rescue in a conservation agency. In many states, the state police do it.
2. DOJ study: “Case Management for Missing Children Homicide Investigation, May 1997.” Kenneth Hanfland, Robert Keppel, and Joseph Weis, Grant No. 93-MC-CX-K006, Office of Juvenile Justice.
3. In 2002, Guay and Reba received the Search and Rescue Canine Case of the Year award at the Maine Warden Service Awards Banquet.
4. Detectives knew it was crucial to keep this discovery from the public. Subsequently, Sergeant Stewart would get a heads-up call that a curious reporter was enroute to the Westbrook Police Department to look at records and had to persuade the reporter that revealing the traffic stop would seriously damage the state's case.
5. The next most dangerous are domestic calls.
Chapter 12 (pp. 149–168)
1. “Under ordinary circumstances an outdoor scene should not be searched during nighttime hours. Weather changes the rules. Under no circumstances should the crime scene and/or body be left unguarded and unprotected until daylight hours.” Geberth, Practical Homicide Investigation, p. 807.
2. Crime scene response instructors teach that “the amount of destruction to a crime scene is proportionate to the number of people having access to that scene … non-essential persons must be kept out if the criminal investigation is to proceed in an effective and efficient manner.” Training bulletin developed by the Portland Police Department.
3. “The ultimate goal is to recreate as accurately as possible the circumstances of the crime committed, identify and apprehend the perpetrator(s), and successfully guide the case through the criminal justice system.” Robert M. Boyd, “Buried Body Cases,” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, February 1979.
Chapter 13 (pp. 169–186)
1. There is endless cop lore about how to deal with death smells, which linger in the clothes and sometimes in the nose, for days. Often an officer returning from a death scene will strip down in the laundry room and throw the clothes into the washer with ammonia or bleach, leaving shoes outside the door to be dealt with later with water and ammonia. Some bury their clothes in the yard for a few days. Sometimes the odor gets so bad the officers simply find a dumpster and throw their clothes away. Often there will be “phantom” smells the next day or in response to events that recall the death scene. Cops also use other smells to mask the odor—Vicks, piña colada, or mint. The risk is that, later, those scents will be associated with the death scent and become unpalatable as well.
2. Danny Young, who in part of his detective career was a rape and sex crimes investigator, said that based on the condition of the body and on his experience, he felt certain that a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault had taken place. Although Gorman was never charged with a sexual assault, Young said the medical examiner, based on her experience, concurred with his opinion.
3. Later, Tammy Westbrook would send her teenage daughter, Britney, to stay with Mary Young in Florida to get her away from all the turmoil and stres
s surrounding the investigation.
4. This was in a probation officer's notes in connection with the Probation and Parole Department's request to issue an arrest warrant for Gorman as a result of his probation violation.
5. Gorman's grandmother would later tell police that she didn't ask her grandson to leave because of his Uncle's expected return but because he had a gun.
6. Police would subsequently obtain phone records from Dot Gorman's house and Tammy Westbrook's cell phone that confirmed a twenty-two-minute call from there to Tammy Westbrook's cell phone on 12/9/01 at 2:27 p.m. EST.
7. As with so many of the tests that were conducted on Amy St. Laurent's body, the search for gunshot residue had been complicated by the decomposition process. Amy's body was taken from Augusta to the University of Maine in Orono, where Dr. Sorg conducted X-ray procedures. It was then returned to the medical examiner's office where subsequent testing was able to identify lead in the area of the exit wound, allowing the examiners to confirm that it was a gunshot wound.
Chapter 14 (pp. 187–205)
1. In retrospect, different players would remember this evening differently, but Harakles would say, of himself, “I certainly am a team player, but on this issue, I was a little pigheaded.” And Sergeant Stewart, acknowledging this, would agree that, “Scott can be a handful.”
2. This girl never voluntarily contacted the police. As Tommy Joyce says, “no one ever thinks to pick up the phone.” She eventually mentioned knowing about the case in earshot of a security guard at a Marshalls store where she was working. The security guard contacted police. In a subsequent interview, she reported meeting Gorman the Sunday morning after Amy St. Laurent disappeared and seeing his pants and shoes covered with blood. He explained the blood was the result of his mother's dog having puppies. Investigation showed the puppy story to be a lie.
3. It is a fact of human nature that most people are deeply troubled by knowledge of a crime. As in so many other aspects of police procedure—it's a peculiar balance. Cops are cynical about the level of citizen cooperation, often with good reason, and yet the system relies on the existence of a conscience and the witnesses’ willingness to exercise it. Often the detective's biggest challenge is to appeal to that conscience in a way that will cause the person to do the right thing. Some willingly come forward, while others have to be found and talked into talking. Frequently, though, once they are found, they are relieved to have a chance to talk.
4. Scott Harakles notes that, in Gorman's confession to his mother, part of his motivation was clearly to hurt her and blame her for what had happened. In his confession to Mamma E, he was more frank, but he still tried to put an innocent gloss on things. He still made the abduction a moonlight walk by the pond and tried to blame his behavior on drugs and alcohol, even as he was describing a cold and calculated effort to get rid of evidence and cover up a crime. Even to himself, he was unable to admit that he was a sexual predator.
5. Gorman and his uncle, Daniel Gorman (Dot's son), had been involved in many criminal incidents during Gorman's adolescence, including stealing Dot's car.
Chapter 16 (pp. 214–234)
1. The decision to use divers to do the search brought out one of the occasional conflicts between Portland and state police. Once Sergeant Joyce and Detective Young decided the search was necessary, they wanted to do it right away; Sergeant Stewart and the MSP wanted to have a meeting to discuss and plan it before proceeding. Sergeant Joyce just said, “Well, we're doing it tomorrow.” As with most such conflicts, this wasn't a conflict of purpose or a disagreement about the value of the proposed event; it was a question of command structure and internal process.
2. The most common characteristics of sexual predators are: refusal to accept responsibility, a desire for power and control, a sense of entitlement, the inability to empathize with others, being unable to form intimate relationships, an abusive and/or troubled childhood, poor self-esteem, abuse of drugs and/or alcohol, and deviant sexual attitudes or behaviors. See Leigh Baker, Protecting Your Children from Sexual Predators (St. Martin's, 2002).
3. “When you talk about rapists, you need to understand, a large proportion of the male population will engage in coercive sex. As a male, there is a belief that getting to have sex is a birthright.” From a talk by Robert Prentky, Ph.D. to Sisters in Crime, December 2003.
4. According to Robert Prentky, Ph.D., director of assessment and training at the Justice Resource Institute in Massachusetts, and a specialist in evaluating sex offenders, those who come into a rape essentially misogynistic are going to react with rage and violence when a woman resists. Many of the witnesses interviewed described Gorman's toxic relationship with his mother and his negative attitudes toward women.
5. On October 21, 2001, the moon was only a waning crescent and the temperature around 36 degrees.
6. It is a common misunderstanding that men who rape must lack access to consensual sex. Another is that coercive acquaintance sex is not rape. However, researcher David Lisak, a professor at UMass Boston, has identified an entire population of so-called unindicted rapists who are off the radar screen. These men stake out their victims, stalk their prey, create opportunities through drugs and alcohol, and regularly engage in coercive sex, using whatever level of force is necessary to secure the cooperation of their victims and accomplish their acts, without considering themselves rapists or their behaviors criminal acts. Lisak identifies the characteristics of rapists as being: angry at women, need to dominate women, seeing women as objects to be conquered, seeing violence as normal in relationships, believing in rape myths (i.e., don't see what they are doing as rape), adopting hypermasculine attitudes, and having deficits in empathy. David Lisak, Ph.D., at a conference, “Stalking: Innovative Approaches to Investigation and Response,” January 2004, sponsored by the Massachusetts Office of Public Safety and the National Center for Victims of Crime/Stalking Resource Center.
7. Increasingly, prosecutors coming before juries without forensic evidence fear what is sometimes called the “CSI effect,” named for the television show, worrying that the TV crime shows “taint the jury pools with impossibly high expectations of how easily and conclusively criminal cases can be solved using DNA analysis and other forensic science.” Entertainment News, December 19, 2002. There is a growing public expectation that police labs can do what TV labs can. “How Science Solves Crimes,” Time, October 21, 2002. The public doesn't necessarily understand that this is fiction. A Florida medical examiner who teaches crime scene technique used to assign his students to watch CSI programs and record the errors. One episode alone had sixty-four errors. And most state and city crime labs are so understaffed and saturated with evidence that only the most serious crimes can be accepted. Even then, it may be many months before results are available. Nor do they necessarily have the latest and best equipment.
Chapter 17 (pp. 235–254)
1. On March 18, 2002, in recognition of his work on the Amy St. Laurent case, as well as his other outstanding work on the force, Danny Young was honored by the Portland City Council as the Portland Police Department's Officer of the Year. Diane Jenkins threw a party for him at her real estate offices.
2. This was one good reason for the police policy of getting to witnesses early on and locking up their stories, so that their fuzzy recollections could be refreshed at trial.
3. Despite her unwillingness to cooperate with the prosecuting attorneys, during the eleven months between the grand jury hearings and the trial, Tammy Westbrook called Bill Stokes a few times, trying to get him to help her with legal issues involved in trying to get her daughter, Britney, back from Florida where she had gone to stay with Mary Young. Stokes had to explain that he was on the opposing side in a criminal matter, that hers was a civil matter, and that he wasn't able to help her.
4. “Quashed” is a legal term meaning suppressed or overruled. As a potential witness, Tammy Westbrook was subject to a sequestration order just like all the other witnesses. This meant she
could not be present in the courtroom except during the time that she was testifying.
5. A more detailed account of the use of forensic entomology can be found in M. Lee Goff's book A Fly for the Prosecution (Harvard University Press, 2000).
Chapter 18 (pp. 255–265)
1. In law, a voir dire is a preliminary examination, outside the presence of the jury, of prospective jurors or witnesses under oath to determine their competence or suitability.
2. Portland Press Herald, January 15, 2003: “Judge Orders Suspect's Mom to Take Stand against Her Son.” Portland Press Herald, January 16: “Gorman Jury to Hear about Telephone Call.”
Epilogue (pp. 298–309)
1. Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber described the appeals and postappeals process in a criminal case. First there is the appeal to the state supreme court, which may take up to a year for argument and months more for a decision. Then, where warranted, a motion for reconsideration, followed by a petition claiming ineffective representation of counsel, which could take another year or two, followed by further appeals to federal court.
2. The RAD system was developed in 1989 by Larry Nadeau, a Virginia police officer, who was looking for an accessible course that would meet the specific needs of women. Since then, over 250,000 women have taken the course, which is offered on many college campuses, as well as in communities, through their local police departments.
3. Richard Sparrow, Amy's longtime boyfriend, who, like her mother, had spent countless hours searching for Amy, took the training to become a RAD instructor. An exception to the training rules, which normally allow only men who are police officers to be trained as RAD instructors, was necessary to allow Sparrow to participate. Along with Sparrow, the police officers who trained included Mary Sauschuck, Lucas Porter, and Coreena Behnke.
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