Journey into Darkness

by John Douglas

  Defense attorney Vilaume, who seemed more devastated by the verdict than his client and made a public statement professing his belief in Knowlton’s innocence, still said he believed Judge Lynch was fair and conducted a good and impartial trial.

  Cassie’s mother, Ellen, who also testified at the trial, came away from her ordeal dedicated to educating others about dangers to children and urging tougher enforcement of laws aimed at protecting them. Noting that Knowlton had been beaten and abused by his father, she called in media interviews for putting abusing parents in prison so that their victims didn’t become abusers themselves. Only if the vicious circle of incest is broken, she said, will child molestation decrease, and one of the most important things was that children who’ve been abused be made to feel comfortable opening up to parents or other relatives, teachers, or family friends.

  Ellen Hansen and her husband, William, had done a good job of preparing their children, Cassie and Vanessa, to deal with threats to their safety. They were taught not to speak with or go with strangers who approached them and that if they were afraid, to scream loudly and run. The Hansens therefore have no idea how their daughter was lured or forced away.

  Knowlton was first incarcerated in the mental health unit of Oak Park Heights State Prison, but then transferred to St. Cloud Reformatory because correctional officials feared for his life. Even other convicts won’t tolerate child killers in their midst.

  I don’t want to give the impression here that girls are the only victims of child molesters, or even that crimes against boys are confined to youngsters. While not in the same danger as females, males the age of Alison Parrott or Kristen French can become targets.

  That’s what happened to thirteen-year-old Shawn Moore. The case is another good example of how profiling can help investigators focus their efforts on the right type of suspect.

  Shawn was somewhat small for his age—only four foot ten and about eighty-five pounds—but very good-looking, with straight, longish blond hair, bright hazel eyes, and an infectious smile. He was, according to my colleague Special Agent Jim Harrington, “a kid who had everything going for him.” On the afternoon of Saturday, August 31, 1985—Labor Day weekend—he was helping his dad mow the lawn of their house in Green Oak Township near Brighton, Michigan, about thirty miles northwest of Detroit. It was hot for that time of year—almost ninety—and the weather was taking its toll. Shawn asked his father if he could ride his bike down to the local convenience store. The Pump ’N Pantry was not quite two miles from the house, but it was near old U.S. Route 23, and there was often a lot of traffic, particularly on a holiday weekend. But Shawn really wanted to get a root beer, so after characteristically telling his son to be careful, Bruce Moore, promotions director for the Ann Arbor News, reluctantly agreed to let him go.

  Shawn never came back home. His maroon and silver Huffy ten-speed touring bike was found later that day near the convenience store, on the side of the road where the gravel shoulder met the grass embankment, about a mile from the state police post. The twenty-six-inch bicycle was big for him, but he was hoping to grow into it, and had worked hard to pay half its cost. He was very proud of that bike, according to his father, and never would have willingly abandoned it. He also wouldn’t have wandered off for a long period of time because the family was going to the movies that night. Reconstructing the time of the disappearance, we noted that a Livingston County sheriff’s car would have been about a block away.

  There were conflicting witness accounts. One woman thought she saw a blond man in his twenties drive away in a Jeep with “Renegade” in blue letters on the side of the hood. Another saw a man in his forties driving a truck. A third spotted a “heavyset, out-of-shape” man in his forties running after the boy. There was also contradiction on whether the young boy seemed to be afraid or in distress, and whether the man was actually pursuing him or merely talking to him, perhaps asking directions. Each of these potential suspects could take the investigation in an entirely different direction.

  It was the Tuesday after Labor Day Monday when the FBI was called in to the presumed kidnapping. By that time a multiagency task force had been established which already included the Michigan State Police, Brighton City Police, and the sheriff’s department. The state police was the lead agency. When they requested the assistance of Ken Walton, the special agent in charge of the Detroit Field Office, he handed the case to Jim Harrington, who was the field office’s profile coordinator. A number of the people who worked with me in the Investigative Support Unit over the years had first been profile coordinators.

  The Detroit Field Office had been my first assignment in the Bureau, directly out of New Agents Training. There was always a lot of action in Detroit, and the Detroit police were among my best teachers. Much of my experience with profiling began with my informal interviewing of serial bank robbers we arrested while I was working a bank robbery unit. Jim Harrington called me as soon as he had gathered the facts on Shawn Moore’s disappearance.

  He gave me the details on the phone and together we came up with a profile which we elaborated to the task force in a phone conference. There were two prevailing theories of the case which we tried to dispel. One was that Shawn had been the victim of a stalker who had been targeting him for days or weeks before he finally struck. The other theory was that a close family member was involved. As horrible and unnatural as it is to contemplate, parents do kill their children, for a variety of reasons. And normally when they do so, they report them missing or abducted, leaving a staged scene. As dispassionate investigators, we always have to consider parents, children, spouses—whoever was closest to the victim.

  Some of the police felt that Bruce and Sharon Moore, an elementary school teacher, weren’t reacting properly; they didn’t seem sufficiently grief-stricken and seemed overly optimistic about the prospect of their son’s safe and speedy return. This raised red flags. But when Jim went to see the Moores, he saw a loving, caring couple with strong, solid values. Their lack of overt grieving struck Jim as their attempt to be unwavering beacons of hope for everyone throughout the ordeal. He came away touched and impressed by both of them. Studying the victimology, everything Jim found that was so solid about Shawn appeared to be a reflection of his nurturing parents.

  The stalking scenario didn’t make much sense to us, either. A grab of a thirteen-year-old kid on a bike in broad daylight near a major highway was too daring and high-risk for that. Anyone who’d been stalking this young man with the idea of eventually abducting him would have had many less obvious and personally dangerous opportunities to take him. We were convinced this was a crime of opportunity committed by a stranger.

  So what did this abduction scenario tell us about the UNSUB here? For one thing, he knew the area. He wasn’t someone passing through who just happened to be there. For another thing, he was probably under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time. He would have needed something to lower his inhibitions even to attempt so foolhardy a snatch.

  Not surprisingly for this type of crime and this type of victim, we pegged him as a white male in his early to midtwenties. He would not be happy with himself—an inadequate type personality with a low self-image for which he was constantly trying to compensate. This could include a macho, kick-ass kind of car, guns, hunting, or fishing. But these would all be a mask to hide his preoccupation with young boys; so would a girlfriend if he had one. That would be a cover, a purely platonic relationship to make him appear more “normal” to himself and the rest of the world. I would doubt that he’d ever had heterosexual relations, and if he had, the experience would have been intimidating, incomplete, or unsatisfying to him. His real relationships would be with younger males, with whom he would feel more comfortable than with his own peers. Even so, he would use money or material possessions as gifts to keep them interested in him. He’d be soft and weak. Even in his choice of a thirteen-year-old to abduct, he chose a small one who would seem easier to intimidate and control.

 
This would not be someone with a sophisticated job or education, but he would be employed because he had the means to maintain and operate an automobile. He’d be bluecollar and not highly skilled, would probably have graduated from high school but not gone to college. Along with his macho aspirations, he might have thought about joining the service, but would probably realize he couldn’t cut it. If he did have a service record, I expected to see a dishonorable discharge. Another consideration which led us to the conclusion about his job was that since we were convinced this type of daylight snatch would have been accomplished with the inhibition-lowering aid of drugs or alcohol, he would have been used to drinking during the day. This would also point to a suspect who didn’t have a high-powered job as well as to someone from the area.

  Even emboldened by some artificial substance, the UNSUB had to have had experience to pull off this crime so well. We told the police they should be looking for someone with a history of sex charges against him and at least some experience with similar abductions. The charges might have resulted in either imprisonment or hospitalization or both. In any event, there would be a record.

  If he abducted this boy, he probably knew the area pretty well and had someplace specific in mind to bring him that was secluded and afforded a measure of privacy. This type of individual would be dependent: though his relationship with his parents would have been a troubled one, we expected him to be living with them or some other family member, perhaps an older sister or aunt. Therefore, he couldn’t bring Shawn back to his house. Where he would bring him was a place in the woods he had found that he knew no one else was likely to come to, or, since we thought it possible that he hunted or fished, there might be a cabin within an easy drive that either belonged to one of his friends or family or was abandoned. Despite the Moore family’s optimism that Shawn would be returned safe and sound, Jim and I were preparing for the worst. If he hadn’t been released the first day, or even the second, we were afraid the kidnapper wasn’t intending to release him at all. Eventually the body would be found, and it would likely be found by the side of a road or in the woods a short car ride from wherever the UNSUB had taken him.

  As far as I was concerned, this would be a pretty solid, unambiguous profile. Again, the factor we’re usually most unsure about is age, but in this case I was pretty confident even about that. Somewhere around here, we told the police, there had to be a suspect who fits this description, and you may even have spoken to him already.

  From our research and experience, we believed the abduction was the result of some precipitating event or other stressor, probably related to one of the two most common triggers: job or personal relationship. Either was certainly possible here, but since this was a holiday weekend, we were giving more weight to the relationship one. People of the type we thought we were dealing with are often lonely, frustrated, and depressed on holidays, and if he were, he might have needed to vent it on someone. My guess was that the individual who rejected him would be someone he perceived to be very much like the young boy he abducted. Shawn, therefore, was a surrogate, a displacement for anger or rage against whomever the UNSUB felt he’d lost.

  Each day that passed without Shawn’s safe return made us more and more pessimistic about a happy outcome. But with the profile as a guide, the police began concentrating their investigation in the direction of the type of individual we’d described. They gave greater weight to the witness report of a blond or light-brown-haired man in his twenties, driving a Jeep. They disseminated the information to surrounding police jurisdictions and the media. They also put out a wanted flyer with a photograph of Shawn, a police artist’s sketch of the suspect, and a photograph of the car they thought he’d been driving based on the description. This turned out to be a Jeep Renegade hardtop, white or a light metallic color, with the word “Renegade” or “Cherokee” printed in large blue letters on the side of the hood. Two phone numbers were printed on the flyer: one directly to the investigative team and another for people wishing to leave an anonymous tip.

  We were sure this guy was from somewhere in the general area and there couldn’t be too many people who matched this description. That’s why I’ve always been such an advocate of involving the public in the search. In almost all cases, someone out there knows something and is willing to cooperate if he or she only knows they have information to contribute and that we need their help.

  In this case, it was a member of the law enforcement community who recognized the profile and came forward. He was a police officer in Livonia, a town about halfway between Brighton and downtown Detroit. He called the task force command center and mentioned a young man named Ronald Lloyd Bailey.

  “You’ve got to look at this guy,” he said. “We’ve had him in before on these sexual fixations with young boys and he sounds just like the guy you’re describing.”

  The task force checked him out. Jim and I were almost stunned by how well he fit the profile. He was a twenty-sixyear-old white male high school graduate who lived in the general area—Livonia—and had a blue-collar job as a delivery man. He lived with his parents, with whom he had never gotten along well. His father, Alfred, was strict and career-oriented, and from the time he was young, his mother had always warned him about girls. In fact, it later turned out that when Shawn Moore disappeared, Al Bailey worried that Ron might be responsible. Recently, Ron had bought a silver Jeep Renegade hardtop. He was soft and slightly built, had straight, longish blond hair like Shawn’s, and was known as a loner who’d been in trouble with young boys. In fact, he’d been institutionalized on three separate occasions.

  A team of state police investigators went to talk to Bailey on September 10, but he had an alibi. The day Shawn Moore disappeared, Bailey said, he was up north in Caseville boating and fishing with a young boy he knew. The fishing wasn’t any good, so they’d cut their trip short and come back on Labor Day Monday. It was the next morning when Al Bailey told him about the Moore boy’s disappearance and said police had a description of a Jeep that sounded similar to his son’s. Ron did have access to a rustic hunting and fishing cabin near Gladwin that belonged to the family of his professed girlfriend, Debbie. He and Debbie’s brother were scheduled to go up there the next week and Ron knew it would be empty until then.

  But when the investigative team approached the boy Bailey said he was with, the young man reported that while he did know Ron Bailey and was supposed to go away with him for the weekend, his mother had found out about the trip and had forbidden him to go.

  How did Ron take this rejection, the police asked.

  He was very upset and disappointed, the boy replied.

  The next day, police went back to Bailey and confronted him with the inconsistency. Bailey stuck to his story and at that point demanded a lawyer. The lawyer refused to let him answer any more questions, and when he was placed in a lineup, witnesses didn’t identify him. So the police had to release him.

  But they didn’t give up on him. He was still the strongest suspect and the only one who conformed to the profile. What’s more, his alibi didn’t square and the details provided by the young boy suggested a triggering event of the type we’d predicted. So a surveillance team was set up to keep an eye on Bailey and see what he’d do next. I was convinced he’d revisit the body dump site and we were hoping he would lead police right to it.

  What he did do was visit an ATM machine and withdraw several hundred dollars in cash. Then he drove to the airport, bought a ticket for Delta Flight 807 to Florida, and boarded the plane without any luggage. On the other end, Florida police tracked him into the woods.

  In the meantime, on September 13, Shawn Moore’s nude body had been discovered by the side of a road, covered with a tent of twigs, leaves, and brush. The entire skull and most of the rib cage showed through. The body was already so badly decomposed from exposure, hot weather, animals, and insects that the medical examiner couldn’t determine an exact cause of death, other than that it was a homicide. Witnesses came forward who had
seen a Jeep matching Bailey’s near the cabin the weekend Shawn had disappeared. The investigators now felt they had enough to move and gave instructions to their colleagues in Florida to try to bring Ron in.

  They searched, and eventually found him in a tool shed where the bugs were eating him alive. He turned himself in peacefully.

  The ongoing investigation into Ron Bailey turned up some interesting information. His sexual experience with boys his own age and younger was extensive. He had also, apparently, had two sexual encounters with women, the first a nurse at a mental hospital to which he had been sent. She was in her twenties when he was in his mid-teens.

  During interrogation sessions with Ron, detectives were able to piece together the key elements of the story.

  He had been planning a big, fun weekend up at the cabin and was sorely upset when his young friend canceled on him. In fact, he slammed down the phone in a rage. He then asked virtually everyone else he knew to go with him, but for one reason or another, no one could make it. Debbie had to baby-sit. A friend wasn’t feeling well. One cousin had a wedding, another had to go back to school. He started driving around in his new car, looking for parties, drinking beer, and smoking marijuana. He drove around for several hours, going from one friend’s house to another, occasionally stopping for gas or to buy more beer or more of the cigarettes he smoked almost continuously.

  He stayed at a party in Brighton for a while, then left and got back in his car. He noticed that he had passed the Brighton post of the Michigan State Police. He stopped at a convenience store just off U.S. 23 and bought two packs of cigarettes. Like many smokers, he had the idea that if he only bought a couple of packs at a time rather than an entire carton, he might cut down.

  It was in front of the convenience store that he spotted the young boy who turned out to be Shawn Moore. He was dressed in a tan T-shirt, gray jogging shorts, and blue sneakers, sitting on the curb with his bike drinking a bottle of soda. He was slim and blond and handsome and reminded Ron of his idealized self. He described Shawn as “the bestlooking of them all,” and thought he seemed lonely. He sat in his Jeep watching him for several minutes.