Strangler

by Corey Mitchell

  “We’ve got a killer DNA lab called Orchid Cellmark out of Dallas,” King was told, “and there is this analyst there named Katherine Long, who is just great. We send her evidence and [she] found the old DNA. We don’t have any DNA on Dana Sanchez. She was just rawhide and soot. We want the DNA from Estrada and Rebollar to send to Orchid Cellmark. If there is DNA to be found, they’ll find it.”

  “So, I went back and I told Captain Holland and Lieutenant [Greg] Neely this is what they want. Well, it’s a lot of evidence to be tested and it all costs money. So, Captain Holland arranged to get the funding for it. This is a months-long process and it’s late August or early September before this stuff can be sent and paid for.”

  Wednesday, October 15, 2003,

  Orchid Cellmark,

  13900 block of Diplomat Drive,

  Farmers Branch, Texas.

  According to its Web site, “Orchid Cellmark is one of the oldest and most experienced providers of forensic DNA identity testing services.” The company’s services have been used by police departments worldwide and in high-profile cases such as O. J. Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey, and the “Green River Killer.”

  At the behest of Captain Holland, Bob King was able to submit samples, specifically Maria Estrada’s fingernail clippings, to Katherine Long for DNA analysis. It did not take long before Long discovered a hit. She forwarded the results to Dr. Dennis Loockerman, the supervisor in charge of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) at the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), to check for a comparison.

  CODIS is a tool created by the FBI that is used to index DNA samples from crime scenes that can be accessed by “federal, state, and local crime labs to exchange and compare DNA profiles electronically, thereby linking crimes to each other and to convicted offenders.”

  On October 16, 2003, CODIS struck gold. Long received an answer from Dr. Loockerman in short order.

  The following morning Long contacted the Houston Police Department and spoke with Captain Holland.

  “I was at home,” King remembered, “and Captain Holland called.”

  “Does the name Anthony Allen Shore mean anything?” Holland asked King.

  “No,” responded the detective confidently. He knew the names of every suspect.

  “We’re gonna research this guy,” Holland informed King. “And we’re gonna do it without him knowing we’re doing it.”

  Part IV

  TONY

  The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

  —Raymond Chandler

  CHAPTER 24

  Anthony “Tony” Allen Shore was born on June 25, 1962, at Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, South Dakota, to Deanna and Robert Shore. According to Shore, his mother wanted to name him Anthony Steven Shore. His father overruled her because Anthony’s initials would have spelled out “ASS,” so they changed his middle name to Allen.

  Ellsworth Air Force Base was established in 1942 as a training base for B-17 Flying Fortress crews for World War II. Thousands of pilots, navigators, gunners, and radio operators made their way through Ellsworth during the war.

  The base was also home to twenty-three squad members who tragically lost their lives in a crash over Newfoundland in March 1953. One of the twenty-three was Brigadier General Robert E. Ellsworth, commander of the Twenty-eighth Strategic Reconnaissance Wing. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the base in honor of General Ellsworth.

  By October 1960, Ellsworth Air Force Base refocused its efforts on the “Space Race,” with the establishment of the 850th Strategic Missile Squadron. The focus of the 850th was work on the Titan I Intercontinental ballistic missiles, which arrived in early 1962. The Titan I’s lifespan in South Dakota was cut short by that same July; one week after, Tony Shore was born in the base hospital.

  The Shore family lived east of the Black Hills National Forest off Highway 16, north of Mount Rushmore National Park.

  According to Tony Shore, his mother, Deanna, or “Dea,” did not want to have any more children. She and Robert, more informally referred to as “Rob,” did, however, have more children: two daughters—Regina, whom they called “Gina,” and Laurel.

  The Shore family stayed in Rapid City until Tony turned three. Thereafter, they began a perpetual cycle of moving from one city to another as Rob continually received new job offers. The Shore family shuttled back and forth between Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where Rob’s parents lived, and Liberal, Kansas, where they had more family.

  The Shore family also followed Rob to New York City for a brief stay. Tony remembered that his mom was always worried about the rats.

  The Shore family then moved across the country to Irvine, California, to stay with Dea’s parents, Don and Elizabeth Lasley—or “Pappoo” and “Mammoo,” as they were affectionately known. Tony described their residence as a “gorgeous home surrounded by orange orchards.”

  Tony Shore also remembered living in a white house in Fair Oaks, California, when he was four years old. “I recall my little sister—most of my memories involve her. Mom and Dad always were yelling or fighting, it seemed.”

  He recalled being “attacked savagely” by a giant Saint Bernard dog while living with his father’s relatives. He claimed that he carried a severe paranoia of dogs for years as a result.

  Used to packing up his bags and heading out to a new city at a very young age, Tony also learned that it was not wise to strike up friendships with the other kids because, sooner or later, he would be moving again.

  He also claimed to have a recurring nightmare that haunted him for years. In the nightmare Tony would appear in a field of flowers. “Blue flowers waving in the wind.” He described being in the mountains; however, he could not see the peaks of the mountains. It was always a beautiful sunny day.

  “I would swoop down through the flowers,” he recalled, “as if in a part of the wind or some omnipresence until I came upon a little girl in a blue dress with lots of lace. She would be about three or four years old (maybe five at best). She was divine with curly long blond hair that fell in ringlets around her. She had eyes, as blue as the flowers, that seemed to look right through me.”

  In Shore’s nightmare he saw that the little girl “would be far away and as I would get closer and closer, until I could almost reach out and touch her, I would realize suddenly [that] she looked confused or possibly afraid. And then it would start—the paralyzing cycle of the nightmare that I could not wake up from.”

  The dream was only beginning. “I would look at her eyes and [their] confusion, and all else would disappear and blackness would set in. It was as if I closed my eyes to escape some imminent evil, and when I would open them, I would be looking up from the bottom of a deep hole in the earth. The smell of dirt [was] overwhelming me. My eyes no more than blinded.

  “Filled with terror,” Shore continued, “I would look up from this hole and see the sky of clouds passing by. It’s still daylight and I could see a few blue flowers near the rim of the hole.” Shore dreamed he was stuck in the hole and that a multitude of logs engulfed him.

  “I couldn’t breathe. This time the black void would last for a few moments as the void would fill up with the face of a man with black long hair and a black beard. He was old, with a long nose and lines in his face, and had dark piercing eyes, and he would start to smile the most evil smile.

  “Before I could scream,” Tony continued, “I felt like I was swallowing my tongue. I would feel sharp electrical-type shocks and suddenly I was back in the field of blue flowers. Just as abruptly, the fear would disappear and there I was flying over this field.”

  The hunt for the little girl continued. “Swooping down through the flowers, blowing in the breeze, and I would see her again. Far away at first, but getting closer. I would see the same little girl in a blue dress with blond hair and blue eyes, holding
in one hand one of the beautiful blue flowers, and [then] the same identical series of events would repeat over and over and over. [It] would seem like an eternity—hundreds of times.”

  Tony admitted that the nightmare often made him wet the bed.

  He also stated that the nightmare occurred “at some point when I was very sick. [I had] the same recurring nightmare for many years to come . . . usually at times of severe illness and was accompanied at times with shocking pains, like electrical sparks all over my body, but primarily my legs.”

  Tony would have this dream over and over again throughout his early years.

  Anthony Shore continued to be haunted by the nightmare of the old man.

  “It wasn’t until many years later in life that I finally recognized the face. [I] positively identified the evil old man.

  “We were living in Orlando, Florida, at the time. I must have been about twelve years old and I was looking at one of my mom’s books, Czar Nicholas, and in that book was a picture of the very infamous warlock witch Rasputin.”

  Grigori Efimovich Rasputin was a Russian mystic who manipulated the Russian czar Nicholas II and his wife, Czarina Alexandra, even claiming he could heal the lame, to garner political power. Eventually Rasputin was assassinated.

  “I screamed and damn near swallowed my tongue. It was him!!! Positively.

  “Also, ironically, my dad bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Czar Nicholas. In fact, they could be twins.”

  * * *

  When Tony was five years old, the Shore family moved to Shawnee, Kansas. Tony claimed this is where he had his first girlfriend and allegedly got into fights with a boy named Scott Beavis. Tony said he had long curly hair, which his mother got rid of and replaced with a severe buzz cut, and which he cited as the first time he received a severe beating at the hands of his mother.

  When Tony was six, his second sister, Laurel, or, as he called her, “the unwanted child,” was born. He claimed that his parents “did not plan on her and resented her.”

  It was during this time that the Shore family relocated to Marietta, Georgia. Tony remembered it as a time when his parents continued to scream and fight with each other.

  Tony also recalled that his best friend was a little black boy who lived across the street; that he had another friend who was killed; that he had his first crush, on a schoolteacher; that he had a crush on a black girl from school; and that he got into a lot of fights in school.

  Somewhere between third grade and fourth grade, Tony’s family moved to Alabama. His random thoughts from this era pointed toward a severe internal change. He claimed that he was the “whipping boy” at Fifth Avenue Elementary and that his family lived in a “bad neighborhood.” He believed his teacher hated him and he continued to get into fights with other kids frequently. His mother fought with the school to do something about the bullies who picked on her son, but the school was unable to stop them. Tony “hated school” and claimed that he had a “chip on his shoulder” and that he was “always afraid and mad.” He also feared for his life, especially after another student was stabbed on the school playground.

  Tony was relieved when he was able to return to Irvine, California, to live with his Pappoo and Mammoo. But though he loved it there, something deeper seemed to be transforming inside him. At an incredibly young age he declared that he “stopped believing in God” and that he “felt cursed.”

  By the fourth grade Tony’s family moved yet again, this time to Houston, Texas. He felt like an outcast. He did not remember much of the year he spent there.

  The following year the Shores moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where they, according to Tony, lived in a huge mansion. Tony claimed that his sister Gina was diagnosed with schizophrenia the same year and put on Ritalin. She was in third grade.

  Tony was in fifth grade and claimed to have an Indian female friend, who was a “major girlfriend.” He took judo lessons, guitar lessons, and rode motorcycles. He claimed he was a football star and that he liked shooting his BB gun.

  Tony also believed that his father went through severe violent episodes; however, he was vague about the details.

  Tony claimed that when he was in sixth grade, a “crazy woman,” who lived around the corner, tried to “kidnap Gina.” He also claimed that his mother had an affair with a neighbor named Pablo, that she smoked “lots of pot,” and that she developed an interest in witchcraft the following summer, between his sixth and seventh grades.

  Tony’s life continued this way for years. He would fall in love with a beautiful girl. He would get beaten up. He would play music and would get in trouble at school. He claimed he was often left at home to take care of his sisters while his mom was out sleeping around and his dad was traveling—and sleeping around as well. By the time his family moved back to Texas, he had a self-proclaimed “bad attitude.”

  Eighth grade was a pivotal year in Tony Shore’s sexual awakening. In addition to lots of fights and, as he wrote, “being repulsed by noses,” Tony “discovered [his] first gay kid.” He also had sexual relations for the first time. He claimed that his first carnal experience was with a girl named Cindy at an 8 Days Inn motel. According to Tony, she wore hip-huggers and had the “beginning of breasts.” He fell in love and “wished on stars.” He and Cindy went at it for three to four days when she suddenly left. Tony was devastated. “Thought I wouldn’t survive the heartbreak.”

  Tony’s family moved to League City, Texas, the summer after eighth grade. He recalled that his mom tried to be a housewife, but she was too bored. He also claimed that she got heavier into witchcraft and also took up astrology. The burning of sage to ward off evil spirits was a common occurrence in the Shore household.

  Tony also claimed that his mother molested him when he was thirteen or fourteen years old.

  “Mostly she would wrestle with me and touch my privates, tickling me or kissing me inappropriately.”

  Tony added that he was inexperienced when it came to sex and that his mother encouraged him to try masturbation, but he was not too fond of the practice.

  “I attempted to masturbate a few times,” Tony recalled, “but never successfully ejaculated.” He added, “I never grasped, and to this day still don’t understand, how anyone could get all that excited over a greasy palm or a two-dimensional piece of paper with a picture on it.

  “By this time,” he continued, “I was pretty much disgusted by my mother and her ideas about masturbating, that I never got past the notion that this activity was gross and kinda disgusting. The few times I tried, I always had a heavy feeling of shame and disgust.”

  Dea Shore denied ever molesting her oldest child. Everyone else in the Shore family denied that such behavior ever existed.

  “My first intercourse was with a friend of my mother’s,” Shore claimed, conveniently forgetting Cindy from the 8 Days Inn. “She was twenty-nine and I was fifteen.” Tony, the stud, then claimed that he had two girls on the side named Patty and Christina, each of whom had boyfriends. Tony said he had sex with each girl “as often as possible” and also engaged in several ménage à trois trysts with the two girls.

  “I was very sexually active,” Tony proclaimed. “From day one I would say I had sex four to five times a week. Sometimes two or three times the same day and occasionally with multiple partners.”

  Tony did not see anything unusual about his sex life. “I never thought of it as deviant. I thought more of sex as recreational fun.”

  Tony also stated that by this time his dad had several girlfriends all over the place and that his mom “started seeing Dad’s friends.”

  The alleged “unusual behavior” in the Shore household was what, Tony Shore claimed, drove him to seek companionship of a different sort. He loved music and became enthralled with musical instruments.

  Tony’s love for music showed itself at a very early age. Shore claimed to remember that he had musical memories as far back as the age of three when he “was watching these long hairs called the Beatles on
Ed Sullivan and wanting to be a rock-and-roll guitar player star.”

  Another memory was his strong desire to own a guitar. Tony claimed that he bugged his father continuously until he finally relented and bought him one from a garage sale for $5. “I begged and begged relentlessly for a guitar till my dad finally gave in one day.”

  Tony was a natural, quickly teaching himself to play several children’s songs such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and some Christmas songs as well.

  “My parents, mainly Mom, were very impressed to [discover] I had musical aptitude,” recalled Shore.

  The guitar was Tony’s preferred musical weapon of choice. His mother enjoyed piano music and encouraged her husband to purchase one for the family. Rob Shore bought an inexpensive upright piano from a local garage sale. Tony had no interest in playing the piano but “was forced to take lessons.” This resulted in one of Tony’s first displays of aversion to authority. “My piano teacher was an old hag and wouldn’t let me play what I wanted to. Instead, I was forced to play what was written on the page of music. Play note for note what is written. This leaves very little room for artistic interpretation.”

  At the age of five Tony was battling it out with his elders. “My piano teacher and I went head-to-head often.” Tony begrudgingly played music her way, but “much to her dismay, I would learn [the songs] her way, then interpret them and play them the way I thought they should sound.”

  Shore’s memory of his musical background was strikingly clear. “I specifically remember playing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’ I could play what was written fine, but refused because it sucked. I would play it my way and change it to something else.” Shore’s ego knew no bounds. “I liked it so much better my way. I was convinced the composer [Julia Ward Howe] was an idiot.”