For a moment, Elle stared at him. Everything he said was what she had been worrying about for days, since she walked in and found Leo lying dead on the floor. But the constant buzz of terror in her mind when she thought of Amanda and Natalie, the thought that he could know more than what he was saying—that made her brave. It made her fearless.
Her face stretched into a wide grin, teeth bared. “Don’t you see, Duane? That’s the best part. I’m not a cop. I’m just a citizen who cares about finding that van. I’m just the host of a podcast with hundreds of thousands of listeners who would happily give your name and place of work to the whole internet and let them know you not only got rid of evidence in a little girl’s kidnapping, but then gave us the runaround when we asked for your help finding the guy who brought it in. But don’t worry. People on the internet are notoriously happy to hear both sides of the story when it comes to crimes against children.”
Duane’s face drained of color. “What the fuck?” He turned to Sam. “You’re just going to let her threaten me like that?”
Sam’s brow wrinkled in feigned confusion. “I’m sorry? I wasn’t listening.”
“His name’s Eduardo, okay? I don’t know his last name.” Duane’s eyes skittered between Elle and Sam. Drops of sweat broke out across his forehead, among the dark stubble on his scalp. “Don’t talk about me on your podcast, okay? I know the kind of thing you do, taking clips of what people say out of context and analyzing them so it sounds like they meant something different. I’m telling you the truth—that’s all I know. And you didn’t tell me this was about a fucking kid getting kidnapped. I would have told you everything right away. Geez.”
Elle ignored the insults. Men who took issue with her voice and theories on the cases she investigated were old news at this point.
“Seriously? That’s all you have for us?” Sam walked around the desk to face Duane. His voice was casual, friendly. It made him even more frightening. “We came all this way, man. I’m sure you have more information about the guy than that. You probably know everyone who comes in and out of here, don’t you?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.”
“Course you do! Smooth businessman like yourself. You can’t afford to forget a face. Sure you can’t remember anything more about this guy?”
Duane’s expression changed, the color returning to his cheeks. He managed to stare up at Sam in both fear and admiration. “H-his name’s Eduardo. He’s about your height and Mexican. Or Central American—I don’t know. He works at Mitchell University, cleaning the floors and shit. That’s all I got, I swear.”
Sam stood up with a wide, genuine-looking smile, and clapped Duane on the shoulder. Duane flinched, and Elle smirked, knowing Sam was squeezing hard. “Great, thanks, man.” He turned to her, teeth still showing, and lifted his hand in a wrap-it-up motion. “Let’s go.”
28
Justice Delayed podcast
January 16, 2020
Transcript: Season 5, Episode 6
Elle voice-over:
Twenty-one.
Seven.
Three.
These are the numbers that run through my brain, every moment of every day. Turning them over, pushing them together and apart—dividing, multiplying, adding, subtracting. They repeat over and over in the Countdown Killer’s series, so much that it’s noticeable when they don’t. The 1996 TCK murders don’t fit with the pattern the way he established it in 1997, but I am confident they belong to him nonetheless. So, it must mean something that they were different. Killing does not come naturally to us, no matter what anyone might tell you. Even those who seem to have been born with the desire to end people’s lives have to learn the craft of murder. And they make mistakes—sometimes throughout their careers, sometimes just at the beginning.
It never made sense that TCK started with a twenty-year-old victim when we know his obsession with the number twenty-one. For the past two months, my producer Tina and I have been looking into every missing person and murder we could find in the area, hoping to find something we might have missed. Hoping to find the start of the countdown.
[SOUND BREAK: A phone ringing.]
Sykes:
Hello?
Elle:
Detective Sykes. You asked me to call?
Sykes:
Elle, I think you did it. I . . . I really think it’s him.
[THEME MUSIC + INTRO]
Elle voice-over:
Sometimes people ask me why I do this podcast. They accuse me of acting like I am capable of something police are not. But replacing police has never been my goal with Justice Delayed. My goal has always been to bring attention to stories that have faded into obscurity, to focus new resources and ideas on investigations that have long gone cold. A couple weeks ago, just such a case was brought to my attention by a listener. Formerly a resident of Eden Prairie, Christina Presley now lives in rural North Dakota. She kindly met me halfway, in a little roadside truck stop outside Fargo. Apologies if you hear more background noise than normal; we’ve done our best to cut it down, but it was a game day, so there will be a few cheers now and then. Skol, Vikings.
Christina is a white woman in her mid-sixties. Having spent her early adult life staying home as a mom of four, she now works part-time for the local library in her town. She is a kind-looking woman, but there are deep lines around her mouth that appear when she tells me her story. We talked for nearly two hours, and despite all that she had to say, I never once saw her cry. Grief can be like chronic pain—what is so sharp at first becomes a part of you until you forget what it was like to live without it. When the ache is constant for years, shedding tears over it feels excessive.
[SOUND BREAK: Distant referee’s whistle; a low rumble of conversation.]
Elle:
Thank you for agreeing to meet me here. Like I told you over the phone, my police contact, Detective Sykes, was able to get ahold of the case file. But before we go through that, can you please tell me about Kerry.
Christina:
Of course. Kerry was a senior in 1996, studying physics. It was the start of spring semester, just four months until graduation. All our kids made us proud, but we knew Kerry had something special. All the professors seemed to agree, and doctoral programs around the country were offering fellowships. But then . . . only a couple weeks after returning to campus, he disappeared.
Elle:
When did you find out?
Christina:
It took a few days. That was back before everyone had cell phones, you know, and Kerry would usually call us just once or twice a week. The first indication we got that anything was wrong was a call from one of his housemates. None of them had seen him, so they wanted to check if he had come to visit us. Of course, we were immediately worried. It wasn’t like him to disappear without telling us. I called his girlfriend to see if he was with her, but she said they had broken up four days before. They had been very close, and I knew Kerry was thinking about marriage, so this made me even more concerned. My husband and I thought . . . We thought maybe he had gone somewhere to blow off steam, maybe did something silly like fly to Vegas for a few days. But it still didn’t explain why he wouldn’t contact us.
Elle:
[Over the sound of cheering in the background.] When did you report him missing?
Christina:
We never filed an official report. We talked to police, of course, but they said Kerry was a low-risk victim and was probably just taking a few days to himself. Dealing with the stress of being a senior, getting dumped, you know. And then . . . then they called us a few days later to say they’d found his body.
Elle voice-over:
Kerry Presley was found half-buried in a snowdrift on the banks of the Mississippi, just a few miles from the house he rented with four guys from his university. At first, police believed it to be a suicide. There was a rope around his neck, tied to a tree behind him, and his body was slumped forward as if he had used its weight to hang himself.
&
nbsp; Elle:
Can you go through the autopsy results for us, Martín?
Martín:
Sure. First, let me clarify something. As a medical examiner, I am asked to determine two things in the autopsy room: the cause of death and the manner of death. Essentially, what killed the person and how they died—whether it was homicide, suicide, natural causes, et cetera. Like you said, the scene was set up to make it look like Kerry had taken his own life. Preliminary MOD was suicide, but once the ME cut their case, things got more complicated.
Elle:
Just for listeners who haven’t heard that term before, when you talk about the medical examiner cutting their case, you mean performing an autopsy, right?
Martín:
Yes, that’s right. Without going into the gory details, the ME confirmed that Kerry’s hyoid bone was fractured, a classic sign of strangulation. However, there was no indication that a rope or similar ligature was used to effect his death. The marks you would expect to see around the throat of a hanging victim—bruises, hemorrhaging—were not present. In fact, the autopsy report states that based on the lack of abrasions on the skin, it’s likely the rope was not put around his neck until long after he was dead.
Elle:
So, it was staged to look like a suicide.
Martín:
Correct. At least, that’s how it appears to me. However, when the ME examined the victim’s stomach, he found dark red and brown spots covering the lining.
Elle:
What does that mean?
Martín:
It happens when the body’s temperature is dropping, as the blood supply redirects, trying to save essential organs. Despite the strangulation injuries, Kerry did not die of asphyxiation. His cause of death was officially hypothermia, and based on my review of the autopsy results, I would have to agree with that. Which brings us to the manner of death. The investigation determined that the suicide was staged, which automatically makes the average person assume it was a murder. But the ME on the case could not definitively prove whether this was a homicide or an accident that was later covered up to look like Kerry took his own life. Hypothermia is an extremely rare method of homicide, so it’s understandable why the ME was loathe to make that determination, despite pressure from the family. At the same time, it makes sense why they would want homicide to be the manner of death, as it would force police to investigate it more seriously.
Elle voice-over:
Unfortunately, the official manner of death on Kerry’s death certificate was listed as “undetermined,” and the family’s fears soon came true: with no real leads on who had staged the suicide and no proof that foul play had occurred, police soon moved on to more pressing cases. And the Presley family has been left without answers for more than twenty years.
Elle:
Thank you for sharing your son’s story with me. I’m so sorry about what you have gone through. Not getting any real answers, having your son’s death just fade into the background. It’s gut-wrenching.
Christina:
It is. No one seemed to care why or how he froze to death, or who would make it look like he’d killed himself. It never made sense to me. How could they just not care? Anyway, when I was listening to your podcast the other day, you said something about trying to find TCK’s first victim. You wanted to know about any unexplained or unsolved deaths around the same time as Beverly Anderson’s, and so I emailed you about Kerry. I figured it wasn’t connected, but I don’t know . . . I just needed someone to listen to me, you know?
Elle:
I do. And you’re right, it does seem unrelated. Nothing about Kerry’s death looks like a TCK murder. But your email caught my eye, mostly because you sound like so many of the other mothers I talk to for these cases. Women who have waited years, decades, for answers that never came. So, we looked into it. And Mrs. Presley, we think you might be right.
Christina:
[Inaudible.]
Elle:
Take your time.
Christina:
You . . . are you sure?
Elle:
Detective Sykes got me a copy of the case file, and we’ve gone through it together. Based on statements from you and his friends, it appears Kerry went missing on the first of February, 1996. That’s three days before TCK’s first confirmed victim, Beverly Anderson.
Christina:
Oh. I . . . Is there more?
Elle:
Yes. There were multiple witnesses who walked the same trail along that part of the river who said they hadn’t seen Kerry there the day before he was discovered. Because of that, police thought he was probably placed there the day he was found. The medical examiner could not determine time of death because his body was frozen, but the contents of his stomach were only partially digested and appeared to contain pineapple and some pork substance. His girlfriend said they’d had Hawaiian pizza the last time she saw him, the night they broke up. If that’s what it was, then he would have been dead within hours of that.
Christina:
So, you’re saying he was killed the night he went missing and just . . . just kept somewhere?
Elle:
I’m sorry, I truly hate having to tell you this. But I can promise you one thing, Mrs. Presley. If your son really was killed by TCK, I just got one step closer to finding him. But no matter what, I’m going to do everything in my power to get justice for your son.
Elle voice-over:
Kerry was twenty-one years old. Like the other two victims in 1996, he was a college student in the Minneapolis area. Even though he died in a different way from the young women, other aspects fit the pattern. He went missing three days before Beverly. His body was found seven days after he vanished. The reason he’s never popped up as a potential victim is because he was killed in such a different way, and of course, because he’s a man and the rest of TCK’s victims are women. As I looked into Christina Presley’s eyes, though, I couldn’t help but think of the irony. Even when his victim was a man, TCK still found a way to destroy a woman’s life.
Everything about the 1996 murders seems to indicate TCK was finding his feet, and I actually think it makes perfect sense that his first victim would be so different. It explains why he changed. He obviously didn’t intend to kill Kerry, at least not the way he did. The murder is sloppy, unplanned—nothing like the deliberate poisoning we see with the girls.
Maybe he strangled Kerry in a moment of passion, and—thinking he’d killed him—he panicked and brought the body to wherever he kept the others later on. If he dumped Kerry in a barn or some type of outbuilding and left him for days, TCK would never know that he really died of hypothermia. I can only hope that Kerry never regained consciousness before it happened.
The first victim being a man tells us something about the profile, too, I think. It tells us that TCK’s initial instinct to kill was probably not born out of his hatred of women, but that—finding no satisfaction in murdering a young man—he switched to young women and girls after. If Kerry is the first TCK victim, and I believe he is, that means that the numbers have always mattered to him. The medical evidence proves Kerry was killed within hours of his disappearance, but he was not found until seven days later.
Even if TCK did not enjoy killing a man, he found a way to be fulfilled by it. He found a way to include his signature—by waiting until the seventh day to let his body be discovered. I keep thinking about that Bible verse Nora saw in TCK’s cabin: “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.” There are many meanings I could infer from this, but here’s what I think. I think that producing a body on the seventh day, making sure it is found, that is what gives TCK fulfillment. That is how he finds rest.
Staging Kerry’s death to look like a suicide, though, that also tells me something. It tells me that TCK did not want credit for that murder, and the only reason a killer would spend so much time staging a body and risk discovery is if he had some sort of known relationship or connection to
him. And that is what I’m going to find.
Next time, on Justice Delayed . . .
29
DJ
1989 to 1992
It wasn’t enough for DJ’s father when he excelled in school. It wasn’t enough when he was specially chosen to serve as an altar boy at their church’s midnight Mass on Christmas. It wasn’t enough when he received scholarships to summer math programs.
Nothing he did made his father look at him the way he had looked at his older sons—the pride, the love that had shone in his eyes. His father remained a husk of the man he used to be; the shape of Josiah was there for everyone to see, but inside he was hollow.
DJ left home when he was sixteen, after graduating high school early. He took all the money he’d saved mowing lawns for the last two summers and bought a bus ticket to New York City. He did not say goodbye.
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