by Pat Brown
I think signature elements are not about something they had to do. It’s something they wanted to do, yes, something that amused them at the time of that particular crime.
In the attack on Sarah, I found a few possible signature elements:
The killer used the coat hanger contraption that resembled a horse bridle when he strangled her.
He threw her body into the parking lot.
He left her body faceup: But was that a signature, or was it just the way the body landed?
It would have been to his advantage to simply drive away and dump her in a ditch. So to me, the fact that he left her in that public location to be found immediately was indeed a signature element that he wanted the fun of her being found.
Leaving the ID with her was definitely a signature move.
The fact that he repeatedly bit her showed his style. He didn’t have to do that-you don’t have to rape anybody, either-but he obviously liked doing that, and the fact that he excised the right nipple also suggested to me that this was something that gave him an extra cheap thrill.
These signature elements showed us what kind of offender he was. It showed us how he got his thrills. But it didn’t necessarily mean that every other crime in which an ID was left with a body or there’s a bite mark meant that it was the same guy, and it didn’t mean this person would do the same things the next time around. Some guys are repetitive just because they get used to doing something and like doing it. But there are other guys who get bored with what they’re doing and don’t bother with that particular act next time. We have to be cautious saying that every time there is something unusual in the crime that it’s going to be a trademark that he’s going to sign every one of his crimes with. That would imply that any crime without that trademark isn’t him, and every crime with it is him. That’s nonsense. There will be crimes he’s committed where none of the elements are the same, and the crime is still his, and there are other crimes that look just like his and aren’t his.
Back to convicted rapist and strangler and murderer Jeffrey Todd Newsome.
In Alabama and North Carolina, he strangled girls with coat hangers, but there was something different about Jeffrey Newsome’s crimes. He always used a car; he never used a van. He transported the bodies to distant locations. He was proud of the fact that nobody would ever find them, and that’s what he told people. So it didn’t seem likely to me that he would kill Sarah Andrews and dump her where she was sure to be found the next day.
As a matter of fact, that reliable trait is what did Newsome in. He abducted his last victim in a car and drove her way out into the woods so he could rape and strangle her, which he did. But then his car got stuck in the mud and he found himself in a bit of a bind.
Newsome did what every guy would. He called a buddy.
“Hey, can you come down and help me? My car is stuck in the mud.”
Of course, he had a dead, strangled girl out there just yards from his car and when the authorities found the dead girl, they were able to pin it on Newsome. He erred when he went off-road with his sedan to dump the body.
WE KNOW THAT Sarah was involved with several guys, including Suspect #1, a married man, who supposedly made some passes at Sarah. This did not end their relationship, as they were close friends. They were both stationed with the army at the same place.
Suspect #1 was away at military training the night of the murder. He reportedly said to his wife, who was out of town, that he left training to fix a military vehicle, but then he denied that he left training when interviewed by the police. It is odd that his superiors would have no record of his leaving. He would have been driving a military vehicle, not a van. He did not own a van.
Suspect #1 supposedly had some scratches on the left side of his neck. This is the only piece of information that interested me when considering #1 as a suspect. I would have been interested in knowing more about those scratches.
SUSPECT # 2 WAS an extremely violent cross-dresser who was imprisoned in another state at the time I profiled Sarah Andrews’s murder. He was serving time for the abduction and aggravated assault of his wife and three children.
His brother was also on the same base as Sarah at the same time she was there, and it was possible that Suspect #2 visited or ran drugs there. He supposedly worked the bars in that area-yet another bouncer enters the picture. He may have been introduced to the victim or had access to a van through his work.
His possible connection to a construction company might be important as I believed the two ringlike indentations on Sarah’s body were consistent with the lids of Minwax sixteen-ounce cans of wax, polyurethane, or enamel.
Suspect #2 was a strong suspect due to his violent nature and his connection to the murder location. Although he was married, that relationship was bizarre. It was clear from his behavior that he felt entitled to do what he wanted with women. A number of people were frightened of him and hinted at a possible connection to the crime. That Suspect #2 was not in jail for life and had a violent reputation may have deterred people from ratting on him. It was possible he spoke of committing the crime, alluded to it, or people knew he was there at the time of the murder but were afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation.
The only two reasons he was questionable as a suspect were that the comfort level Sarah would have felt getting into a vehicle with this person wasn’t there, and the lack of purpose the dump site would serve for this particular suspect.
The police never quite proved Suspect #2 was in the area at the time of Sarah’s murder. One of the reasons that some people thought it might be him was because he worked with horses, and Sarah had two hangers wrapped around her head. But if you look at any kind of pornography or bondage, you find lots of women with bridles around their heads. That’s the way brutal men control women.
Sarah was bitten, bludgeoned, punched, strangled, and brutalized. This was not done by what you would call a sadistic serial killer. It wasn’t that at all. This wasn’t a guy who took her someplace and tied her up in his basement and tortured her for days on end. Remember, we’re talking about a guy who committed a crime probably in fifteen minutes flat. This was extreme rage, anger, and power that he threw at her all at once. She surely fought back while he was striking out at her.
While she certainly suffered a torturous experience, the perpetrator wasn’t someone who set out to torture her. The contraption he put around her head, neck, and mouth was probably more to control her in a moment of anger than anything else.
A danger of the investigator’s or profiler’s job is that sometimes we glamorize things beyond what they truly are. On the other hand, if the guy was a horse rider, maybe he did know bridles, and it occurred to him this was a nice way to bend up old coat hangers. We can’t eliminate that, but we have to be careful not to overstate it, either. So this cross-dressing weirdo was a decent suspect.
I GOT SOME more information about the ex-con bouncer-Suspect #3-who worked at the nightclub. And while the facts were a bit sketchy, what I learned put him near the top of my suspect list. His father owned a repair service. There was no information as to whether Suspect #3 owned a van or his father’s business used vans in the course of their work, but it was likely.
It was reported that Suspect #3 suggested to police that Sarah got into a van with two black males the week before her death. He also stated that she danced with a black male the evening of her murder. It was interesting that Suspect #3 found it necessary to implicate black males. Was it an attempt to focus the investigation away from Caucasians or to focus the investigation on soldiers, as most black men in the area were connected with the military at that time? Was it an inadequacy issue? Was it a method of inferring the victim was “loose” because she would hang with black men? Was it a way of saying she deserved to be killed? Or was he just being helpful?
Members of Sarah’s family told me that she had mentioned to them that she dated a bouncer from a nearby town, the location of another murder victim. I don’t know if th
is bouncer she reportedly dated was the same one who worked at the nightclub. As a bouncer at the nightclub, Suspect #3 would have excellent knowledge of the movements of the locals and the police in the early hours of the morning. He would have been well acquainted with the back lot of the nightclub. He would have lived in the vicinity and have had no reason to travel out of the area with the body of the victim. It would serve a purpose to leave the body behind the club where he could participate in the next day’s activities and have a legitimate reason to be there.
Bouncers at clubs get to know regular customers, are familiar faces to them, and are knowledgeable of their comings and goings and observant of their behavior. It was also possible a bouncer might keep coat hangers available to help customers who locked their keys in their cars. They also might be available to give a ride home to someone.
A bouncer can often leave his job and not be missed for a period of time. It is possible that the reason the police and army CID (Criminal Investigation Division) never identified him as a suspect was because they overfocused on the military connection and ignored possible civilian candidates.
I SAW AN overdose of theories and ideas concerning Sarah’s murder that served only to distract and confuse the investigative process. Many of these well-intentioned theories were a result of a lack of familiarity with sexual homicide. Even police investigators and FBI agents can lack understanding of this area of crime and psychopathology. Too many approaches and an unlimited number of suspects led to no progress at all.
One of the main purposes of bringing in a profiler on a case is to reduce the number of suspects and to prioritize investigative avenues. While anything is possible, everything is not probable. If we give equal weight to any and all theories, we accomplish next to nothing. If we wished to bring Sarah’s killer to justice, we needed to focus all our attention and resources on the top suspects.
LET’S REVIEW THE elements of this case that were important and what evidence was valuable in identifying the perpetrator:
There was only one perpetrator in the murder of Sarah Andrews.
From the forensic evidence presented, the attack was not economically motivated and not one of revenge. The offender appeared to be what is called a power-assertive rapist, one of the quick types. No one neat label can exactly explain the behaviors of these kinds of offenders, but the more dominant features fit the behaviors of the offender in this crime.
The power-assertive rapist has doubts about his masculinity and his sexual adequacy. He likes to exert his power in a situation where he can win and feel satisfied. He does not necessarily plan to kill his victim, but he wants what he wants and rising anger and frustration may cause him to escalate into more violent levels of control.
Because of the level of violence exhibited in this murder, some might feel this offender would be more appropriately labeled an anger-retaliatory rapist, one who kills to take out his anger against a particular person or class of persons. It is possible that the invitation to the vehicle was just a ruse to get Sarah into his hands. He would then surprise attack her and kill her. It is also possible that some elements of this type of offender are mixed in with power-assertive elements, and all we really can be sure of purely based on the evidence is that we have a quick, violent attack by a serial killer.
From the presentation of forensic evidence in this case, it would appear that the victim entered the offender’s vehicle willingly. There was no evidence of a weapon being employed in this attack. Control of the victim appeared to have been through the sheer physical advantage of the killer. Whether he planned all along to rape and kill Sarah or lost control when she refused him, we will never know. Even the killer might not really know that, as serial killers tend to twist the truth, even in their own minds, claiming, “The bitch made me do it,” when, in fact, he planned to do that “bitch” in all along.
All the elements of the murder indicated a violent sexual attack, including vaginal and anal rape, biting of sexual parts, and the removal of a sexual part.
It was not a drug hit, a revenge killing, or a robbery. Therefore, it did not matter who Sarah knew and associated with prior to the murder other than to indicate that she might have crossed the path of this killer and might have known him in some manner. The elements of this homicide indicated an experienced serial murderer, not a first-time accidental killing.
The evidence for this lies in the signature aspects of the crime rather than the MO. The fact that Sarah was lured, attacked, raped, and murdered by ligature does not prove an experienced killer. This MO merely shows that the perpetrator used those methods to assault and kill her. However, the fact that the perpetrator added a second coat hanger to the ligature configuration shows he had a more advanced knowledge of bondage methodology and, perhaps, prior experience with the use of ligatures.
The boldness of leaving the body in a public place ruled out the accidental killing by a well-known acquaintance or novice killer. Also, the fact that the victim was left faceup showed that the perpetrator had no guilt about this crime; in fact, he was damned proud of himself.
The ID left with the body was another bold move. The perpetrator had little fear that he would be identified as the killer. A rule of thumb among killers is to leave the body as far away as possible or as hidden as possible, allowing for the passage of time to obliterate evidence and the memories of any possible witnesses. Killers who leave a body where it will be easily found are extremely arrogant and confident that no one will connect them to the murder. If the perpetrator was well known to Sarah or served in the army with her, I doubt he would have left the body to be so quickly found.
If the perpetrator were in the military, it is also unlikely that he would have left a body with bite-mark evidence to be found; the marks would eventually have been matched up with army dental files.
The lack of any other major physical evidence such as body fluids or fingerprints is more support for the theory of a more experienced killer.
There is a relatively high chance that the killer was watching and possibly involving himself when the police were processing the crime scene. It is my belief that the perpetrator was a local resident, not in the military, and had connections to the crime scene area. He probably has lived in the area for quite a while and committed other murders or rapes and possibly other lesser crimes. He may or may not have a criminal record.
There was no evidence of two perpetrators involved in the crime. The particular kind of behaviors evidenced in this crime led me to believe this killer acted alone. The lesbian theory that was offered by some had absolutely no credibility.
The following is my analysis of the information derived from the murder evidence:
1. One individual committed the murder.
2. The murder was typical of a power-assertive rapist type.
3. No elements of the murder were extremely unusual in the MO.
4. The signature elements of the murder are as follows:
1. The use of an added coat hanger for the mouth.
2. The location of the body being placed in a very public location.
3. The leaving of the ID with the body.
4. The bite marks on the breast.
5. The excision of the right nipple.
5. The signature elements of the murder, while in combination point to a particular kind of personality, are not separately unusual in the history of sexual homicide.
6. The killer did not appear to have used a knife as a weapon in this homicide.
7. The vehicle used was most likely a panel van; the body of the victim was probably dumped from the right side of the van from the open sliding door of the vehicle.
8. There was no evidence of binding of the hands or feet.
9. The victim appeared to have been raped and murdered in the vehicle.
10. There was no evidence of torture.
11. There was evidence of extreme violence.
12. The entire event probably occurred in a relatively short time, between twenty
and thirty minutes.
13. The perpetrator probably used some kind of pliers to twist the coat hangers. He may also have used an instrument to excise the nipple, perhaps a wire cutter.
14. The double-ringed circles on the buttocks of the victim provide evidence that following her death, the body was left in a supine position. It would appear that following her death by ligature, the perpetrator then rolled the victim onto her back and excised the right nipple. The buttocks rested on two lids that left the marks.
15. The two circles were the exact dimensions of the lids of sixteen-ounce Minwax cans of polyurethane, enamel, or wax. The warp in the measurements is likely due to the removal of the can lids by prying them up with an instrument of some kind. There may have been other possible sources of these circular marks, but we should be careful not to base any investigative avenues on sources that have not been proven to be of those exact dimensions described in the autopsy report.
16. The prioritizing of the suspect list should have been based on the following:
1. The suspect must have a power-assertive rapist personality.
2. The suspect must have access to a panel van or similar vehicle.
3. The suspect must be relatively strong.
4. The suspect must have no relationship or a minimal relationship with the victim.
5. The suspect must have some connection to activities using Minwax, pliers, and coat hangers.
6. The suspect must be very familiar with the area where the victim’s body was left.
7. The suspect, having no guilt about the murder of Sarah, most likely has psychopathic personality traits.
The suspects that I determined deserved top priority in this investigation were as follows:
1. Suspect #3.
2. Suspect #2.
3. An unknown guy-some man described in one report as having lived in the area and who cut off a woman’s clothing and bit her breasts: this behavior was consistent with a power-assertive rapist.