by James Renner
Based on the timeline provided by the bouncer, Detective Null estimated Andrea was in the river no longer than four hours.
Then the case grew cold.
* * *
The manager’s office at Lisa’s Cabaret is an unused section of an old saloon that was walled in when the dance floor was constructed. The cherry wood bar is dull now, unpolished and dusty. A television sits in the corner, propped up by a set of lockers. In front of it sits John (real name changed by request).
John is a thick, solid mass of muscle, which fills out his navy blue jumpsuit, deftly. His head is bald, making him look distinguished in a way only large black men can really pull off. On this February night, he’s watching 19 Action News on the small TV. At first, he doesn’t want to talk about Andrea. He doesn’t want his business associated with that tragedy. But after a moment, he decides if it can help, he’ll tell everything he knows. Andrea was special to him, one of the best dancers he’s known. Her stage name was Gemini. And since her death, John hasn’t allowed anyone else to use that name. “Somebody comes in here—say they’ve been using the name Gemini for 40 years—they come in here, they’re gonna need a new name.”
As Gemini, she would dance to “Peaches & Cream,” by Monifah. She used to send some of her money to her mother.
John explains that the dancers at Lisa’s Cabaret, like all the clubs he knows of, have no set schedule. If a woman wants to dance that night, she can come down and dance. Any time, any day; Lisa’s Cabaret is a 24/7 operation. And in the world of Rubber City stripping, there is no such thing as a noncompete clause. “We hope they come here,” he says. “But they’re free to go down to XTC or the Platinum Horse, that’s fine. We hope they’re comfortable working here.”
He describes Andrea almost exactly as her high school guidance counselor at Lordstown High did: energetic, fun, somewhat high-strung. He says Andrea was smarter than most. She modeled herself after Aaliyah, a singer and actress who died in a plane crash in August 2001, at the age of 22.
He remembers Conrad, too. “He tried to come in here when she was working,” says John. “But that’s something we don’t tolerate. We can’t have boyfriends hanging out down here.”
John is saying something about anchorwoman Sharon Reed’s body when two women enter the room. One is nearly naked, breasts exposed through a sheer top; the other, a strawberry-blonde, wears a long-sleeved purple sweatshirt and jeans. They exchange money, and the mostly naked woman walks back into the main room.
The woman in the purple sweatshirt is the house mother this evening; retired from the pole, she manages the small group of strippers and tends to their needs. Heather (name changed at her request) was here before Andrea started and helped show her the ropes. “She always wanted people to laugh,” Heather recalls. “If you were ever in a bad mood, she could make you smile. We were like her second family, I think.”
Heather became concerned about Andrea’s relationship with Conrad long ago. They were always arguing, for one. She never understood what Andrea saw in him, believing he won her over by persistence more than charm. At least Andrea could feel secure that he would always be there for her. “Why he had that pull on her, I can’t tell you,” she says, shaking her head in frustration.
“When she started, Andrea worked the day shift,” says Heather. “That changed about a year ago. When she started working third shift—that’s 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.—she started having problems. She wasn’t the same person anymore. She wasn’t as easygoing. She didn’t seem happy. I think she got into some things she couldn’t handle.”
Heather, however, will not elaborate.
Only in the last few months did Heather notice a change for the better. “She was trying to get her life back on track,” she says. “I think the reason she stopped stripping was she found out she was pregnant. The last time I saw her, she looked happy. She was talking about getting a job at McDonald’s.”
A manager pulls a photograph from the lockers. It’s Andrea’s last glamour shot, taken just before she quit. Her hair is shorter, her eyes darker, and she’s wearing a turquoise bikini top, but she still has that honest smile.
Jeff, the bouncer at Flashdance Cabaret, is a brawny white dude with black hair in a bowl cut and tatts running down both arms. He knew Andrea. Says she was fired because of her tendency to leave with customers.
According to a police report from April 2004, Andrea once left with a patron named Angel Perry, a 19-year-old, freckle-faced kid who appeared harmless enough. When Andrea realized he wasn’t driving toward her apartment, she demanded he turn the car around. When he didn’t, she began honking the horn to alert the attention of other drivers along Route 8. Perry lost control of the vehicle momentarily, rammed a cement wall, then continued on. She tried to call 911 on her cell, but he snatched it from her and threw it out the window. When he stopped at a red light, Andrea managed to get out of the car and ran to a gas station. Perry was charged with kidnapping. He’s not a suspect in Andrea’s murder, however, because he was in jail at the time on a parole violation.
Bouncer Jeff also remembers Conrad’s temper, from when he temporarily worked at Lisa’s Cabaret. “He brought three or four of his buddies in with him,” he says, “He would have Andrea give them free dances. I watched him come in angry one night and rip her off the stage.”
“If it wasn’t him, it was a stalker,” says a dancer who’s been sitting nearby on an elderly gent’s lap in the mostly empty lounge. As she talks, Laura (not her real name) takes off her shirt and puts on the new one the geriatric brought in for her as a present. She smells faintly of lilac.
“All us dancers get a stalker after a while. When Andrea was in here last year, this guy kept calling her, showing up at the bar, buying her drinks. She knew she had a stalker when she was here.”
This is a scenario the detectives also feel is likely, based on interviews with other dancers, who have stalkers of their own.
“And I don’t buy that talk that she quit stripping,” says the bouncer. “That was her meal ticket. She could have hid her pregnancy. I got a girl in here eight months pregnant, you couldn’t tell. [Andrea] talked a lot about leaving town. She needed money to do that.”
Flashdance has made the news in relation to another murder lately. Steven Spade, an eagle scout from Mogadore, was brutally beaten, decapitated, dumped in West Virginia, and burned beyond recognition by a group of people that included Lisa Penix. Penix tended bar at Flashdance. Her boyfriend, Shane Rafferty, and his meth-addict friends who helped him kill Spade, were frequent customers.
Detective Null does not believe there is a connection. Akron’s efforts to restrict strip bars to certain areas concentrates criminals there, he says. “When you have that element of people, you’re going to find them in that part of town.”
Across the canal from where Andrea ended up that Saturday night is an old honky-tonk bar called Sam-E’s Lounge. It is quite full by 10 a.m. most days. Sam-E’s stays open until 2:30 a.m. on Saturdays and would not be completely empty of all patrons and employees until close to 3:30 a.m.
Next door is Carnegie Coin Laundry, which opens automatically every morning at 5 a.m. and is busy every Sunday morning. The hobby fishermen also begin showing up around 5 a.m. during the summer months, and will occasionally stay overnight, angling by lantern.
This shortens the window for dumping Andrea’s body significantly. It would appear she ended up in the canal sometime between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. But no one at these businesses, nor in the apartments which look out over the dumpsite, recalls seeing anything out of the ordinary until the police arrived the next morning.
The corner of Manchester and Carnegie is a 12-minute drive from where Andrea was last spotted at 2:45 a.m. Arlington will take you most of the way. Still, it would have taken time to bind her in chains somewhere private before transporting her body out of town. And yet, somehow, her killer was not seen. At least not by anyone who is willing to speak to detectives.
Outside of Akron, fe
w know the story of Andrea’s tragic end, or how close she was to leaving the nightlife behind. Her story was not told with the same fervor as similar cases involving abducted and murdered white women. No memorial sits at the bank of the canal where she was found.
Her parents are reluctant to speak to the media. In 2006, Andrea’s father set up a scholarship in his daughter’s name at Lordstown High. It’s for cheerleaders who are interested in higher education.
Those hard luck cases who frequent the red light streets of Akron have begun to wonder lately if Andrea’s murder was Act 2 of a serial killer’s spree. The body of Donna Pittinger was found floating in the Tuscarawas River in Lawrence Township in April 2005. But, as with Andrea’s death, it didn’t make prime time news because Donna was also a prostitute with a history of drug addiction. Donna’s story only gained attention in late 2007, after armchair detectives blogging on crime sites started to search the web for tales of other dead hookers and happened upon the details of Donna’s tragic end.
Donna danced at the some of the same clubs where Andrea worked the pole. She lived within a block of Andrea’s apartment and hooked on Arlington, though usually picking a corner further from Exchange. She was known for her bubbly, outgoing personality. Years ago, she had attended Coventry High School, which is in sight of the canal where Andrea’s body was found.
Donna was somewhat of a legend in the underbelly of the city. Clients were so fond of her, they often cruised Arlington, hoping to find her on duty. Some still extol her virtues on seedy website message boards devoted to area prostitution. On USASexGuide.info, a man using the name “Me Tigger” writes this chilling epitaph:
10+ years ago she should have been a porn star. I have never ever in my life f***ed a woman with as much energy as she had. Pure nympho in my book. She was into making sure my kahunas were thoroughly drained. I used her as an escort to company xmas/cocktail parties on a couple occasions. Cleaned her up, dressed her up, wined & dined her and she took care of business. Lost touch with her about 6-7 years ago. Then 2 years ago summer I see her on Arlington. What a fall. She was whacked on crack. The little head let her in the car and big head was sorry his buddy did. Never again. Spring of ’05 I hear on the radio that she is holding her breath for a long time.
For the moment, detectives do not believe that the two cases are connected, but they are not ruling out the possibility. “We haven’t found any names of suspects that overlap Donna and Andrea’s cases,” says Detective King. “But, because they were both hookers, we did send the files into the FBI.”
There should be one more murder included in that file at the FBI. On October 6, 2007, the body of Sandra Varney was found inside a room at the Noble Motel on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. Varney was also a prostitute, known around town as “Little Bit.” Sandra’s last John had a knack for binding and torture. Her killer bound her wrists with wire and suffocated her with a plastic bag.
Detectives Bertina King and Steven Null may yet bring closure to the Flenoury family. Their list of suspects is shrinking. They remain hopeful, hungry for the day they can look the killer in the eyes and know that Akron’s red light wanderers are safe again.
* * *
Anyone with information concerning Andrea Flenoury’s murder can call the detectives at 330-375-2490. To report an anonymous tip, call Crimestoppers at 330-434-COPS.
Flenoury was a star cheerleader during her senior year at Lordstown High, a small school just outside of Warren. (Lordstown High School yearbook)
Flenoury lived in a rundown section of Akron, near Arlington, but hoped for a better life for her child.
When she was at work, Flenoury was known as “Gemini.” (Lisa’s Cabaret)
Flenoury’s body was wrapped in chains and dumped into the canal here, a few miles from where she was last seen.
The strip club where Flenoury worked was later forced to close for promoting prostitution.
Chapter 5
The Not So Innocent Victim
The Unsolved Murder of Tony Daniels
The drone of the riding lawnmower sputters to a stop as the young Mexican landscaper maneuvers to the edge of the woods behind the parking lot and kills the engine. The mower’s bag is full of fresh clippings and must be emptied. Piles of decaying grass lie among the bracken and stagnant pools of water here.
Javier is short, about five foot five. Large, dark eyes emote his feelings better than words—which is good, because he does not speak a lick of English. He carries the bag into the woods between the office complex and I-90, but deeper this time. He doesn’t want to dump all the clippings in one place.
Then he sees it, next to a tiny brown pond. It’s the color of alabaster, of drywall. And although Javier has only ever seen such a thing in movies, he knows right away what it is.
Calavera.
Quickly, he races to find a supervisor. Out of the woods now, Javier tries to find someone who can interpret for him the dire meaning of one simple word.
Calavera.
Skull.
* * *
Detective Lt. Ray Arcuri sits at a picnic table outside the Westlake police station, eating his lunch. At 39, with a smooth, round face and a full head of dark hair, he looks too young to be in charge of a bureau of detectives. But he’s respected in town, admired for his near-photographic memory and his passion for the job.
His walkie-talkie suddenly cuts the silence. A landscaper has found some bones off Clemens Road.
Arcuri calls in the animal control officer to check it out, figuring it’s a dead dog or some other creature. The animal control officer, however, tells him it’s human. There also appears to be a bullet hole in the back of skull. The rest of the skeleton is MIA.
“Grab your camera and hustle down to the site,” Arcuri says to Detective Patricia Weisbarth as he jogs back into the office. “I’ll be there in a second.”
The inner sanctum of the detective bureau is nothing more than a wide room with four desks arranged in open cubicles around the center. The carpet is gunmetal gray and still clean. The desks are orderly, but personalized. Arcuri keeps photographs of his family next to his computer. Tacked to the push-pin wall next to Weisbarth’s computer is an ALF calendar.
Before he heads to his cruiser, Arcuri makes a couple of phone calls. One is to the Cuyahoga County coroner’s office, a request for their trace evidence team. The other is to an outfit called NOSES, which provides cadaver dogs, canines trained to sniff out dead bodies. Then he heads out to see the bones for himself.
Javier’s mower is still sitting where he left it. Yellow tape stretches across the edge of the parking lot, sealing off the woods from the employees gathering at office windows and from the local reporters already on their way.
As Arcuri gets out of his cruiser, he slips on a pair of rubber gloves. He is led into the woods, toward the thicket where the landscaper found the skull. No one has touched it yet.
Bending to it, Arcuri pulls the skull from the ground. He turns it around in his hands, looking like some actor playing with a prop in a community production of Hamlet. Decomposition is complete; patches of algae cling to its surface, but no tissue. A clean, round hole is found on the back of the skull, near the top. The lower mandible is missing, but Arcuri notes something unique about the top set of teeth. One molar rests at an odd angle and appears to be capped, the bottom portion discolored, gray like cement. He bags it and sends it with a patrolman to the coroner’s office on Cleveland’s East Side.
The cadaver dogs fail to locate the torso. Arcuri’s not surprised; this victim died years ago, from the look of things. Ohio’s erratic weather has stripped away everything except bone, including any personal scent the animals might hone in on. So he searches the old-fashioned way: by lining up his officers two arm-lengths apart and marching through the woods.
Soon someone finds a femur. Then, a tibia. Each time a new bone is discovered, it is carefully sealed in a bag and an orange traffic cone is put in its place. Seven bones are found, scattered about
the property.
Some local television stations show footage of the search beginning with the six o’clock news cycle. Human skull found in Westlake! The city is affluent, and homicides are rare, making this unfolding mystery all the more tantalizing. Updates at 11!
At 7:30 p.m., with the sun on the horizon, Arcuri calls off the search for the night. An officer is assigned to stake out the crime scene until morning. Until then, the detective goes home to his wife and a brood of young boys who look just like him.
* * *
It’s not even 9 a.m. when Arcuri gets his first call the next day. It’s a woman, her voice slippery, thick with a Vietnamese accent. She sounds excited.
Her name is Mai Daniels. Arcuri can barely make sense of what she’s saying, but he catches enough to understand she believes she knows whose bones they have found. Daniels believes it’s her son, missing since September 27, 1997. He was last seen at his stereo store on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland.
No way could it be that easy, Arcuri thinks. It’ll be months before we sort out who that skull belongs to.
“Ray, the coroner’s on the phone,” an assistant tells him.
Arcuri, however, continues talking with Daniels, trying to discern exactly why she seems so convinced they have found her son.
“Ray, Doctor Balraj is on the phone.”
“Here, take this call,” Arcuri says to Detective Jim Janis, a rugged-looking fellow with a wiry goatee.
As Janis speaks to Daniels, Arcuri talks with County Coroner Dr. Elizabeth Balraj, who explains that her trace evidence team will be returning to the woods, along with an anthropologist from Kent State University. Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy works as a part-time consultant for the coroner’s office and has a knack for riddling out the age, sex, and race of a victim from recovered bones.