Although Polly’s father, Marc Klaas, was an immediate suspect, the story the girls told seemed to eliminate him, since Polly would certainly have recognized him. The Petaluma police broadcast a description of Polly’s abductor, but not every police officer in the area received the report.
Responding to a trespassing report near Santa Rosa, twenty-five miles away, the sheriff’s deputies encountered a man standing by a Ford Pinto stuck off the road. He was sweating profusely, despite the late hour and the cool night. The police checked for outstanding warrants, and the man came up clean. However, a full background check would have shown that he was wanted for violating parole on a previous crime and that he had a long history of violent assaults against women and girls, along with robbery, burglary, and kidnapping. That would have allowed them to search his car, which might have saved Polly’s life. Instead, the police freed the stuck Pinto and let Richard Allen Davis drive away.
Within days, the details of Polly’s abduction and her abductor were everywhere: printed on posters, spread through computer networks, faxed around the country, and shown on America’s Most Wanted. Actress Winona Ryder, who grew up in Petaluma, offered a reward of two hundred thousand dollars. The Polly Klaas Center was established to coordinate the efforts and accept telephone tips. Nichol and Klaas were definitively ruled out as suspects through polygraph tests.
On October 19, Davis was picked up for drunk driving. The arresting officers didn’t note his resemblance to the sketches of Polly’s abductor that had been so widely circulated, and he was released once again.
The Polly Klaas Foundation achieved tax-exempt status, and Bill Rhodes, the print-shop owner who had started it, was named its president. Although the hunt for Polly was still on, the foundation expanded its mission to the search for missing children everywhere. Rhodes turned out to be a registered sex offender who had preyed on young girls, using a knife to subdue them. He then became an instant suspect, since the perpetrators of such crimes often like to involve themselves in the investigations. The police checked out his alibi and cleared him, but he was removed from the foundation.
On November 28, the owner of the rural land on which Davis had been trespassing when his Pinto got stuck found some strange items on the property, including a sweatshirt, red tights, a condom wrapper and a loose condom, and binding tape. Police looked at the old trespassing complaint and finally matched Davis with a palm print found in Polly’s room. They picked Davis up, and after a few days in custody he confessed to Polly’s murder, then led the investigators to where her body had been exposed to the elements for the last two months. He had strangled her with a piece of cloth after the run-in with sheriff’s deputies over the stuck Pinto. He denied having molested her, but his story was full ofinconsistencies, and there was no scientific way to tell after so much time had passed.
Davis, a loser who had spent his life in and out of prison, was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances. His reaction to the verdict was to display both middle fingers to the courtroom. When he was allowed to speak at his sentencing hearing, he used the opportunity to claim that Polly told him that her father had sexually molested her. The judge said that this outburst made it very easy to sentence Davis to death, which he did. As of this writing, although the California Supreme Court recently upheld the sentence, Davis remains on death row at San Quentin.
Marc Klaas (who later created the group KlaasKids) and the original Polly Klaas Foundation have become tireless advocates for missing children and have helped many families reunite.
In “The Boogeyman,” Dr. Reid and Morgan examine a tight-knit community in Texas to determine who has been victimizing local children.
ANOTHER YOUNG victim mentioned in the episodes “What Fresh Hell?” (112) and “Seven Seconds” (305) is Danielle Van Dam. Danielle was seven years old on February 1, 2002, when she was taken from her home in the upscale San Diego suburb of Sabre Springs. Her mother, Brenda, had gone out to a bar with friends, leaving her father, Damon, at home with the girl and her two brothers. Damon put Danielle to bed around 10:30 p.m. When Brenda returned home at 2 a.m. with her friends, she shut Danielle’s door but didn’t look in on her. The friends stayed for about an hour, then left. In the morning, Danielle was gone. Her parents searched the house, growing increasingly frantic, then called the police.
The case quickly turned into a media sensation—it was a Polly Klaas-style disappearance, but in an age even more saturated with twenty-four-hour news channels and the Internet. Brenda and Damon held news conferences and appeared on national TV shows like Today and Larry King Live, expressing their hopes that their daughter’s abductor would bring her home safely.
It didn’t take long for the Van Dams ’ personal lives to be made an issue in the case: they were swingers and were open about their lifestyle. Brenda was bisexual, and she had watched her husband having sex with her friends. While their private lives didn’t seem to make a difference, when a suspect was arrested and the case finally brought to court, these factors were raised as a way to claim that the accused wasn’t the only person with access to Danielle; the friends—two women and two men with whom Brenda had been out drinking and dancing—might have done something to the girl.
In the end, that was all a distraction. One of the people in the bar that night was David Westerfield, a neighbor who lived two doors down from the Van Dams. Westerfield drove his RV out into the California desert that weekend, and a tow truck operator reported having towed it from deep sand near the Mexican border. When Westerfield returned home with his RV, he had it thoroughly cleaned. He also dropped off laundry at a dry cleaning shop that weekend: comforters, pillowcases, and a jacket. Testing would later reveal Danielle’s blood on the jacket as well as inside the RV. The police rapidly made Westerfield a suspect and put him under surveillance. They found child pornography in his home, but it was the DNA evidence from the jacket and the RV that led them to place him under arrest. He denied abducting Danielle, and he had no criminal record.
Five days later, on February 27, Danielle’s body was found in a remote desert spot, twenty-five miles from San Diego. She had been dumped almost immediately after her disappearance, with no attempt made to cover her up. The authorities were unable to determine the cause of death because her body was badly decomposed.
At his trial, Westerfield, who had failed a polygraph test, continued to proclaim his innocence. In addition to offering the DNA and fiber evidence and the massive amounts of pornography found in his home, the prosecution showed that Westerfield had fondled his own niece when she was seven years old. (In an echo of this case, the victim in “Seven Seconds,” six-year-old Katie Jacobs, is abducted from a shopping mall by her uncle, who has been molesting her.)
The jury convicted Westerfield of kidnapping and murder, and he was sentenced to death. After the trial was over, a rumor spread that he had been about to make a deal for life in prison in return for showing the location of Danielle’s body, but just before the details were hammered home, her body was located. Like Richard Allen Davis, Westerfield is currently awaiting execution at San Quentin.
DR. SPENCER REID looks into an old case that stimulates dreams about half-recalled memories of his own childhood, in the two-part “The Instincts” (406) and “Memoriam” (407). When Reid was a boy, he had known the victim, six-year-old Riley Jenkins, and the mystery’s solution reaches deep into Reid’s own life, helping to explain his parents’ divorce.
During the initial investigation, Riley’s parents were suspected, and they stopped cooperating with the police—just like, it’s explained in the episode, the parents of JonBenét Ramsey.
JonBenét’s murder is one of the most infamous unsolved crimes of the twentieth century, and it’s also brought up in the episode “Children of the Dark” (304). JonBenét’s mother, Patsy, was a former beauty queen, and her father, John, ran his own computer company. The family was affluent and had moved from Atlanta, Georgia, to Boulder, Colorado, when JonBenét was nine m
onths old. They lived in a large, expensive home at which they entertained frequently. Only six years old, JonBenét had already participated in and won many beauty pageants. The winter of 1996, Patsy had just overcome ovarian cancer, and John was selected as Boulder’s “businessman of the year.” It should have been a charmed time for the Ramsey family.
But the morning after Christmas 1996, Patsy was on her way downstairs when she found a note on the staircase demanding a $118,000 ransom for JonBenét’s safe return (John Ramsey had received a holiday bonus of just that amount). If the ransom wasn’t paid, the note warned, JonBenét would die. Patsy dashed to JonBenét’s room, but the girl was gone. She called the police, and the couple almost immediately started working on raising the ransom payment.
The Boulder police didn’t do themselves or the case any favors. They didn’t immediately search or seal the house or perform a full investigation of the crime scene. Neighbors and friends came and went at will. Hours after the police had arrived, a detective suggested to a family friend, Fleet White, that he and John search the house for anything unusual. In the basement, eight hours after the police had been called, John and Fleet found JonBenét covered with a white blanket, dead. There was duct tape over her mouth. Her wrists were bound with white cord, and more of the same cord was wrapped around her throat, where it had been used, along with a paintbrush handle, to garrote her. She had been strangled, and her skull was fractured. There was inconclusive but likely evidence of sexual assault, and although DNA evidence was recovered from her underwear, it has never been matched to anyone.
Because the little girl had never left the house, and John Ramsey had found her, the parents, and to a lesser extent JonBenét’s brother, Burke, were immediately suspected. The media coverage played up this angle, stretching the facts on occasion to make it appear more likely that the Ramseys were involved.
JonBenét was buried in Atlanta on New Year’s Eve 1996. After the Ramseys returned to Boulder, the stories about them grew ever more heated. Videos of JonBenét participating in pageants hit the airwaves, and the Ramseys were accused of sexualizing and exploiting their six-year-old and perhaps even sexually abusing her during her lifetime. Seeing the suspicion with which the police viewed them, the Ramseys did indeed cease cooperating.
Various bits of evidence—a boot print, a palm print, a pubic hair, and more—were found that indicated that an intruder had come into the house and murdered JonBenét. However, there was no sign of forced entry. Experts suggest that the killer probably knew the family, knew about John’s bonus, and felt comfortable enough in the house to assault and kill JonBenét there instead of taking her away. The murderer brought in the duct tape and the white cord, so he always intended to abduct, if not kill, the child.
The years have passed, with accusations, suspicions, and lawsuits, but with no solid suspects and very little movement in the case. A convicted sex offender named John Mark Carr confessed to JonBenét’s murder in 2006, but it didn’t take long to determine that he didn’t know the facts of the case and wasn’t even in Boulder that fateful Christmas.
Patsy Ramsey died on June 24, 2006, after her ovarian cancer recurred. She went to her grave never knowing who killed her daughter—unless, as many continue to insist, she was involved. Some evidence suggests otherwise, however, and she was never charged. Although the Boulder police have kept the case open and return to it from time to time, there’s every likelihood that this case will never be solved and that JonBenét’s murderer will never be brought to justice.
BILLIE COPELAND, the eleven-year-old victim in “What Fresh Hell?” (112), is abducted by a stranger using the “lost dog” trick: asking a child to help search for a lost dog in order to lure the child away from adult supervision. A similar ruse was used on July 15, 2002, to abduct five-year-old Samantha Bree Runnion, who is mentioned in that episode, from outside her home in Stanton, California. A stranger approached Samantha and a friend, who were playing outside, and asked if they had seen his lost Chihuahua. When Samantha moved closer to the man, he grabbed her and wrestled her into his car. She kicked and screamed and called out to her friend to tell her grandmother, and then she was gone.
Samantha’s friend remembered enough details about the kidnapper and his car to allow police sketch artists to come up with a reasonable likeness. The drawing was promptly displayed on posters and in the media, but it was too late for Samantha. The next day, her battered, sexually molested nude body was found beside a rural road in nearby Riverside County. Her killer had spent several hours with her before crushing her abdomen and strangling her.
Alejandro Avila was arrested three days later, after having been singled out by a telephone tip. He had been to Samantha’s apartment building before, because his ex-girlfriend and her daughter lived there. Avila had been accused of molesting the daughter and another friend when they were young girls, but he had been acquitted. With the Danielle Van Dam trial making headlines not far away in San Diego, there was furor over Avila’s arrest, with local and national officials, including President George W. Bush, declaring Avila “Samantha’s killer” before he had even gone to trial.
The physical evidence was overwhelming. His tire tracks were found near Samantha’s body, her DNA was inside his car, and his DNA was under Samantha’s fingernails. This and other evidence from the abduction scene and the murder scene was presented to the jury, which convicted him of kidnapping, murder, and lewd acts upon a child.
Avila was sentenced to death on July 22, 2005. In Samantha’s memory, her mother, Erin Runnion, and Erin’s partner, Ken Donnelly, established the Joyful Child Foundation to advocate for the protection of children from abduction and sexual abuse.
WHEN A CHILD DISAPPEARS, one of the first responses of law enforcement today is to issue an AMBER Alert. (AMBER stands for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Reponse, but in some states the alerts go by other names, commemorating local abduction victims.) AMBER Alerts have shown up on Criminal Minds in the episodes “The Instincts” (406) and “A Shade of Gray” (421).
When an AMBER Alert is issued, it is broadcast on commercial radio, network TV, and cable TV stations; on the national Emergency Alert system; on electronic highway signs; and over the Internet and cell phones to people who have signed up to receive alerts. The system is voluntary but elicits a great deal of cooperation among law enforcement and other branches of local and state government, private industry, and individuals.
The original source of the acronym and the name was the case of Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old girl who was snatched while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas, on January 13, 1996. A witness saw a man grab her from the bike and throw her into the front seat of a pickup truck.
Four days later, a man walking his dog found Amber’s corpse in a creek bed. Her throat had been slit, but she had been kept alive for two days before being killed. Her murderer has never been discovered, but the knowledge that her legacy continues to help other families helps Amber’s loved ones cope with their loss.
NOT EVERY violent crime against children is committed by an adult. Some attacks on children are committed by other children—a tragedy that can ruin or end two young lives instead of just one. Criminal Minds acknowledges this sad pattern. The serial killer of young children in “The Boogeyman” (206) is a child himself. And in “A Shade of Gray” (421), the killer of seven-year-old Kyle Murphy is Kyle’s older brother.
“A Shade of Gray” first aired in April 2009, so it couldn’t have been inspired by the case of Andrew Conley, who was arrested in December 2009 for killing his little brother. But Conley admitted to being inspired by TV—specifically the cable series Dexter, about a serial killer. After Conley, seventeen, allegedly strangled his ten-year-old brother, Conner, to death, he said the act made him feel just like Dexter.
Conley says that he was wrestling with his brother and then began choking him. This went on for about twenty minutes, until he saw blood leaking from the younger boy’s nose and mouth. Pulling a plas
tic bag over Conner’s head, Conley affixed it with electrical tape, then dragged the body into the basement and finally to his car, striking Conner’s head on the ground several times en route. He put the body in the trunk of his car, then drove to his girlfriend’s house to give her a ring.
The girlfriend later told the investigators that Conley seemed happier than he had been in a while. Conley dumped Conner’s body in a park. He confessed to the police and told them where to find Conner, admitting that he had fantasized for years about killing someone.
A few weeks earlier, on October 21, 2009, according to her confession, fifteen-year-old Alyssa Bustamante allegedly stabbed to death a nine-year-old neighbor, Elizabeth Olten, in Missouri. Bustamante, whose online profile listed “killing people” and “cutting” as hobbies, had been institutionalized for a suicide attempt in 2007. Days before the murder, Bustamante dug two holes in the ground in a wooded area; then she killed Olten with no provocation, she said, because she wanted to know what it felt like.
Conley and Bustamante will both be tried as adults, a process that owes much to a young man named Willie Bosket.
One of the most vicious young offenders in U.S. history, Willie Bosket is already in prison, where he will spend the rest of his life. But for Bosket, prison doesn’t necessarily mean an end to violent crime.
Bosket was fifteen when he killed for the first time, on March 19, 1978, but he already had an extensive criminal history. He once attempted to rob a snoozing New York City subway passenger, but the man woke up. Bosket pulled a .22, sold to him by his mother’s boyfriend, and shot the man through the eye and in the temple, killing him instantly. Within days, the boy was robbing again, in and around the transit system, and on March 27 he killed again.
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