Chapter 46
CHAPTER
Fairfax county sheriff’s detective Deb Angelis was in her forties, a little locomotive of a woman with tawny hair and a way of chopping at the air when she got worked up about something.
“I can give you twenty minutes, then I have to leave,” Detective Angelis said as we stood on the porch outside the crime scene putting on hairnets, latex gloves, and booties.
“We appreciate it,” Sampson said.
“Can you tell us what’s solid so far?” I asked.
“A couple from Chevy Chase were the last people to see Brenda Miles alive. They said they saw a workman on his way in as they left. A plumber, they thought,” Angelis said.
She gestured down the street. “After the murder, two neighbors who were driving by reported seeing a man carrying a toolbox and wearing a green coverall and booties like these cross the street and go to a white panel van.”
A woman who’d been out walking her dog said she saw the van pull out fast.
“She said the rear plate wasn’t illuminated, but there was enough daylight left and she was close enough to see that the plates were gold and blue, like Pennsylvania plates.”
“She didn’t see any numbers at all?”
“She’s seventy-seven. We’re lucky she caught the colors. No one else got a good look at either his face or the plates.”
Sampson asked, “What about the headlights on the van? Was one missing?”
“No one mentioned that.”
That didn’t help us, but it didn’t rule out the van either. He could have fixed it.
We went inside. Angelis showed us the chalk outline where Brenda Miles had been found. A table and lamp were turned over. The floor runner had been kicked aside. Faux pearls from a broken necklace lay where they’d fallen. A crime scene photographer documented their locations.
Sampson said, “She fought him.”
The detective nodded. “Her fingernails were broken and so was one of her heels. But he had to have surprised her to begin with. The medical examiner said he used a rope from behind, crushed her larynx.”
Angelis said the ME believed the body had been moved postmortem, after the rope was taken from her neck.
“Then she was turned prone, and her slacks and panties were pulled to her knees,” the detective said. “He sexually abused her with a wooden spoon that he left in her.”
Sampson said, “He leave anything on her?”
“Nothing obvious. But her clothes haven’t been processed yet.”
“No other sign of sexual contact?”
She shook her head. “From the timeline we’ve put together, he was in and out of here in ten, fifteen minutes.
No more. The couple said he came up the walk at roughly five minutes to five.
The older lady with the dog thought it was no later than ten after five when he squealed out of his parking spot. Pretty brazen.”
This was wildly different from the Talbot and Beltsville shootings. I tried to imagine the same suspect doing this. Aside from the white van, nothing seemed connected.
Detective Angelis looked at me. “I read about your theory that the shooter in those other cases was imitating Berkowitz. You’re a profiler, right?”
I nodded. “I wrote my PhD dissertation on serial killers and mass murderers.”
Sampson said, “It’s gonna be published. The man’s got insight.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say my white van is your white van, and this same guy is responsible for five attacks, four dead bodies. Tell me who we’re looking for here, aside from the physical descriptions we’ve got.”
I thought about it for a few moments. “With the Bulldog shootings, there was a sense of randomness, that maybe those were crimes of opportunity. He might have seen people drive out to Bear Island and gone there knowing he’d find targets. Same thing with the two hospital techs.
“But if this is the same white Ford Econoline van, then the killer is more than just an opportunist, and we’d have to rethink.
Similarities to Berkowitz’s MO aside, if we assume it’s the same perp, we can note he always kills up close, first with the forty-four and now with the rope.
This suggests that it’s satisfying to him to be in proximity to his victim.
He gets his jollies from being right there. ”
I theorized that this seemed like an escalation, that the killer had probably enjoyed strangling Brenda Miles more than he had the close-range shootings. It likely excited him, sent his adrenaline surging.
“You described him earlier as brazen, Detective,” I went on. “But unless he’s an out-and-out homicidal maniac, he’s a thinker and a thorough planner, and that’s what allows him to act so brazenly.”
She crossed her arms. “Explain.”
“Think about it. Whether or not our guy personally knew Brenda Miles, he clearly knew how real estate open houses worked. The choice to come in at the last minute, dressed as a workman, carrying the toolbox? He had reason to believe that approach would allow him to get close to the victim.”
“At least get him in the door,” Sampson agreed. “But how’d he know she’d be solo?”
“No clue. But, and I’m speculating here, he could have just taken a chance that she’d be alone. Or he could have scouted the place, watched her earlier in the day.”
Angelis asked, “What does he get out of this?”
“Aside from the rush? He’s living out his fantasies, certainly. Maybe he became fixated on the Son of Sam murders and decided to copy them. And then he wanted a more intimate experience and picked up the rope.”
“Assuming it is the same van and the same driver,” Sampson said, “why did he leave the scene so quickly when there was still some daylight? Do you think he wanted to be seen?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he is completely unstable and does not care,” I said.
Angelis shook her head. “This guy cared. Sounds like he was intentionally hiding his face. Witnesses said he was carrying the toolbox up on his right shoulder and holding his left arm and hand across the other side, like he was shielding himself from the headlight glare. Totally blocked anyone’s view of his face. ”
Sampson said, “So maybe he wanted to be partially seen leaving the house, crossing the street to the van, and driving away fast. What’s the motivation for that?”
Sampson was looking at me. I threw up my hands. “Even with my doctorate in the psychology of criminal minds, John, I have no good answer for that.”