This guy was a level beyond most criminals. He was the first suspect ever to confess that he’d researched me, and I was completely thrown when he started questioning me in the middle of a police interview. Usually the person whose hands aren’t cuffed is the one asking the questions.
I decided to answer him, thought it was a step in the right direction for building rapport. “It usually works pretty well,” I said, “but organizing ten kids can be a challenge.”
There was nothing threatening about his physical appearance. He was a pleasant-looking, clean, reasonably well-dressed man. Most people wouldn’t have a problem talking to him.
I did. I was the father of six daughters, and he’d killed more women than I had in my entire family.
He seemed so normal, or The man I knew could never murder people, I could already imagine Ott’s neighbors saying when the media descended upon them.
I asked, “You need anything? Something to eat? A drink?” Suspects were quick to claim mistreatment, and I wasn’t about to lose this crucial statement on that account.
Ott looked me right in the eye and said, “I’m not hungry. And your process is inefficient. I can save us all some time.”
“How’s that? From the moment you committed your first murder you were on stolen time. You stole years of your victims’ lives that they and their loved ones will never get back.”
“That’s one way of looking at my actions, Detective Bennett,” Ott said. “I see them differently.”
We were approaching a stalemate, so I changed tack.
“How do you choose your victims?” I asked.
“American women with their attitudes and smart mouths set me off,” he said. “I heard an intern at an insurance office brag that she was studying communications in college so she’d never have to be a lonely telephone tech. Can you believe that? I am a grown man who provides for his family and that little bitch was looking down her nose at me.”
He was talking about Elaine Anastas.
“That’s why you killed her, and then wrote that threatening letter, ‘To the Women of New York’?”
“I was teaching them a lesson. I wrote that I would kill the ones who didn’t respect me, and I always do exactly what I say,” Ott sneered. “I’ve been killing women for ten years, Detective Bennett, longer than that partner of yours has been on the force. A significant portion of your own career.”
I can sit quietly through the most horrifying stories, nodding along with what feels like perverse encouragement. Lots of I see or Wow as a suspect continues detailing incriminating actions, when all along I really want to scream You sick asshole.
But in all my years interviewing suspects, this was the first time I had ever been left absolutely speechless.
I forced myself to continue the interview.
“Do I understand you correctly?” I said. “Are you making a confession?”
“I confess to committing the capital offense of first-degree murder. Many times over.”
“Mr. Ott, I’ve advised you of your rights,” I said. “Are you sure you want to continue?”
“Oh, I’m just getting started,” Ott said. “You have no idea what I’ve done, what I planned to be doing for the rest of my life, until you came along. You, who didn’t even understand the messages I left.”
I ignored his taunt. “Why don’t you start by telling me about the homicides here in New York. Then we’ll review Atlanta and San Francisco, where your presence was verified during all of the related murders in those cities.”
“That’s how you found me, isn’t it?” Ott asked. “Timed the murders to the schedule of my contract work?”
I knew better than to confirm any information. “There were a lot of factors that went into your arrest.”
Ott ignored my non-answer to his question and continued. “And then you saw me at the library. That was my big mistake. I got so used to most people looking right through me that at a crucial time I forgot a detective might be watching. You got my attention that day as a worthy opponent,” Ott said. “I tried and failed to derail your investigation. You won. And now I won’t hold anything back. I promise.”
I sat there, astonished, as Daniel Ott began listing the murders he’d committed in New York City.
“When I first arrived in New York,” he said, “I went exploring, looking for interesting neighborhoods and people I wanted to spend time with.”
“That’s your way of saying you wanted to kill them, isn’t it?” I asked.
He nodded, then said, “I found a woman in the Bronx, and one in Brooklyn. I don’t even know their names, only that they had loud American mouths on them.”
Ott made no effort to hide his obsession with forcing women to obey rules and show respect. I shuddered to think how he treated his wife and daughters.
“It was easier to get to know the women in Manhattan,” Ott said. “I met them on the job. One was a law student moonlighting in a medical supply office. And I told you about that disrespectful intern already.”
“She had a name,” I said. “Elaine. Her mother and friends called her Laney.”
Chapter 95
Tactically, it wasn’t the smartest idea to loosen Daniel Ott’s handcuffs and move them to the front, but I had to reward him for being so forthright.
Though Ott, by his own admission, had made some mistakes, I knew he was skilled and he was smart. Scary smart. He’d evaded us a number of times. I didn’t want to find out he was some kind of martial arts genius or an assassin who could take a straw and cram it up your nose into your brain. Or maybe I’d just watched too many Jason Bourne movies.
“Tell me about the librarian,” I said, focusing on one of the recent murders I was not absolutely sure he’d committed. I wanted confirmation one way or the other. “That’s where your pattern seems to have suddenly shifted.”
“I didn’t want to kill the librarian,” Ott said, “and I didn’t enjoy it the way I did spending time with the others. When she confronted me in the computer room, she saw my face, and I couldn’t risk her recognizing me.”
“That doesn’t explain why you killed the young man,” I said.
“He was there.” Ott shrugged. “I tried to do a quick job in front of the apartment building since there were people nearby, so I slashed her across her throat and intended to keep walking. Then that guy came out of the building at the wrong time and saw her dead body. I had to kill him too. I had no choice.”
There’s always a choice, I wanted to say, but someone like Ott would never understand.
“And the bartender from The Queen’s Castle?” I asked, referring to the incident report I had been handed as I entered the interview room.
“My latest victim,” Ott said with a fearsome smile. “How I did enjoy her, once she stopped talking.”
This story was getting sicker and sicker, but I had mostly known the answers to the questions I had been asking Ott. I was about to forge into unknown territory.
“What about the murder on Staten Island?”
“Staten Island?” he said. “I’ve never even been there.”
“You had nothing to do with the stabbing of Marilyn Shaw in her apartment?” I said, showing Ott a picture of the murder victim.
He leaned back like we were old friends having a beer after work. “That must’ve been the one I read about in the paper. I have enjoyed reading about myself, but you know as well as I do that the media is wrong most of the time. It should have been obvious I wasn’t the Staten Island killer.”
I took my time writing some notes. I needed to think about this. I wanted him to think about it too.
I asked him about the SoHo homicide, which was another one he hadn’t confessed to. “What about Lila Stein in SoHo?” Again, I displayed a photo of the victim.
He shook his head. “Not me.”
I looked at Ott, trying to get a feel for him. Here was a guy who had freely admitted to committing half a dozen murders in the city. Plus more across the country that he’d
done throughout the past decade. I had to dig deeper.
“In your letter to the New York Daily News,” I said, “you wrote, ‘Think of the one who has killed the most. I am better than him.’ Who is that?”
“The person who killed those two women was trying to copy me,” Ott said. “Everyone should copy the master, the one who has killed the most. The Butcher of Rostov. The Red Ripper. I learned his ways when I was a young man, working for my first employer.”
Ott’s confession had been flowing, then suddenly he’d turned cryptic. My mind flashed on the prolific serial killers Ott had been tracking. Little. Bundy. Chikatilo.
I took an educated guess. “Andrei Chikatilo.”
Ott looked surprised and pleased. “You know the master’s name.”
But there was more I had to know.
“You took the blood of your victims and mixed it with blood at fresh crime scenes,” I said. “You haven’t been home for more than six weeks. Where is the blood of your New York victims?”
“The blood vials I collected here are in sealed plastic bags inside a can falsely labeled shaving cream. You can find it in my hotel room. The others are in a safe in my home office. I wouldn’t want my girls getting into them.”
I couldn’t resist asking, “Why do you mutilate the women’s left eyes?”
“That’s simple. I stand over them, and they’re completely in my control. The last sight they see is my face.”
Internally, I was reeling with horror, but I couldn’t stop the interview.
“Did you push a woman in front of a bus near our office?”
“By the elevated train?”
I nodded, already knowing the response.
“I meant to shove the detective with the broken nose. He tried to be a hero and lost.”
I had to move off the subject before I got too angry and did something stupid. I simmered for a minute. I was too wound up that Ott had made Hollis his target. That he had known about my kids, about Mary Catherine and our wedding. I couldn’t focus.
But there was one more question I had to ask. “Why did you sign your letter ‘Bobby Fisher’?”
Before Ott could answer, I heard voices outside the door. Loud voices. Arguing.
Chapter 96
The sounds outside the interview room brought even Daniel Ott up short.
Someone bumped against the door. This was more than an argument. This was a scuffle. Then I heard Harry Grissom’s voice. He was regaining order.
I stood up and gestured for Ott to stay seated. I walked across the small interview room and popped open the door. I stuck my head out into the hallway with the idea of shouting, Keep it down!
Instead, I was shocked into silence at the sight of Harry and a precinct captain named Jefferson squaring off with several extremely well-dressed people, including Robert Lincoln, the assistant special agent in charge of the New York FBI office.
How did they even know we made an arrest? Are they trying to physically steal our suspect?
What I said was “Hey, what’s going on?” My voice sounded remarkably calm, especially considering my confusion.
Emily Parker stepped through the pack of people. She looked at Harry as if she was trying to calm down an angry lion. Then she turned to me. “We have a federal warrant for your suspect, Daniel Ott.”
I stepped out into the hall and shut the interview room door behind me. “You worked a separate case on him? Without even talking to me?”
“Mike, it’s not what you think.”
It was Harry Grissom who spoke next. “I think it’s bullshit. This is just some kind of stupid FBI ploy. They’re claiming this mope is a spy.”
I twisted my face as I looked at Emily.
She nodded.
A spy? That’s why Emily had been stalling the help she’d promised me. She was after a bigger prize.
The world seemed to be spinning too quickly. I’d had my run-ins with the FBI over the years. I’d cracked a lot of jokes about the federal agency. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought they were capable of taking control of a suspect who was in the midst of confessing to multiple homicides. The only real question I had was if they had fabricated an excuse to steal my suspect, or if they’d specifically withheld information and waited for the right time to screw up my case.
It was Robert Lincoln who took advantage of my shock. He stepped forward and slipped into the interrogation room so smoothly, I barely even noticed him sliding past me.
I stepped back into the room as well. Ott didn’t acknowledge anything unusual going on.
Lincoln looked at him and said, “You’re Daniel Ott, correct?”
He nodded.
“I’m Robert Lincoln with the FBI. You’re in the custody of the NYPD, but I have a federal warrant. It has nothing to do with the homicides Detective Bennett has been questioning you about.”
Ott said quietly, “I’ve been expecting you. My previous employer must have sent you.”
“And who would that be?”
“The Russian government.”
I stepped between him and the FBI ASAC. I turned to the FBI ASAC and said, “What the hell are you talking about? What’s your warrant for?”
The athletic, well-dressed man smiled. “Espionage. He came to the US about twelve years ago working for the Russian government. They lost track of him almost a decade ago. And so did we. But now we finally have him.”
“You mean, I have him.”
“Not any longer.”
Chapter 97
The little interview room was crowded with NYPD brass and FBI agents. Ott continued to sit quietly on the plastic chair with his handcuffed hands folded in his lap. Two FBI agents stood on either side of Ott like someone from the NYPD might try to grab him and run.
Ott wasn’t Jason Bourne. And he wasn’t Andrei Chikatilo. But he was dangerous.
I was smart enough to let Harry Grissom do most of the talking. The way he snatched the warrant out of Robert Lincoln’s hands told me just how pissed off he really was.
Harry turned to the FBI ASAC and said, “Where’s the affidavit for the warrant?”
“It’s sealed. National security. You don’t need to see it anyway. All you need to know is that it’s a legitimate warrant that says the FBI is taking custody of Daniel Ott. Are you disputing that?” Lincoln was sharp and not about to wilt under the searing glare of my lieutenant.
Emily Parker quietly tugged on my elbow and moved me out into the slightly less crowded hallway. She said, “This is no joke, Mike. The case is legit. Daniel Ott came here as a spy under the assigned American identity David Hastings. He was told to marry and raise an American family, but about ten years ago he met a Polish woman and used her contacts to change his identity. Then he disappeared.”
“Is serial killing part of his assignment?”
“He is a trained assassin, but we’ve learned that as a young man, he developed an interest in the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo that escalated into an obsession when Chikatilo was executed in 1994. He was never known to have acted on it. We now know that was false information.”
“How’d you pick up on the fact that Daniel Ott used to be David Hastings?”
“We suspected it from a DNA hit from a cold case in Omaha. Then we heard from a source in the NYPD that you’d made an arrest, and the source also sent us a copy of Ott’s fingerprints from here at the precinct. All we had to do was fill in the last part of the affidavit and here we are.”
“So this isn’t just some cheap ploy by your asshole boss?”
“He’s been circling for days, waiting for you to make the solve. Several of us wanted him to wait until after you finished your interviews and Ott was booked into Rikers Island. Lincoln did want you to get credit for that.”
I wanted to believe my old friend, but Lincoln never wanted to share credit, especially with me. I stepped back into the room. An agent I didn’t recognize spoke to Ott in what sounded like Russian. Ott answered him. Also in what I assumed was Russ
ian.
As two FBI agents helped Ott to his feet, Harry Grissom leaned in close to me and said, “At least he’s not getting back on the street. It hurts to lose a suspect this way, but we did everything we could.”
“I know, Harry. All I wanted to do was stop the killings. I’m getting used to the FBI taking credit for shit.” Then I smiled.
Harry gave me a concerned look and said, “You’re not having some kind of seizure, are you?”
“No, Harry. Ott is going to prison, and I’m getting married. Moving on.”
Ott turned to me as he was led to the door. “I’m glad you’ll get to see your daughters grow up, Detective Bennett. That’s what I’ll miss the most.”
Chapter 98
I managed to time my homecoming to the news of the arrest hitting the airwaves. It was a sweet moment. Mary Catherine greeted me with a big hug and a kiss on the lips. The kids joined in with cheers and high fives all around.
Stopping these murders was an important accomplishment, but I was having a seriously hard time wrapping my head around the shadow case—in which Daniel Ott was not only a killer but a killer spy.
It was an unbelievable story. My wife-to-be was the second person I told. First honors belonged to my NYPD partner.
I had stopped in to visit Hollis on my way home. Even from his hospital bed, with half his body in a cast, he’d still managed a pretty good string of obscenities describing his outrage over the FBI stealing our case.
Our professional bonding ended the moment Brett Hollis’s mother entered the room, however, and motioned me out into the hallway with her.
Mrs. Hollis said, “Are you trying to stir him up? I’m running out for a sandwich. Don’t be here when I get back.”
I had to ask. “Have I done something to offend you?”
She clearly had an answer at the ready, but paused, almost as if for dramatic effect. “You allowed him to believe that he could be like you, and that delusion nearly got him killed. I have no use for the NYPD. Or for you.”
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