by Amanda Lamb
In the reports, the detectives found an interview with a woman who had been walking through the breezeway at Dominion with her son. A man passed them wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses. The woman recalled her son saying hello to the man, but the man didn’t speak to the child.
“Who is that guy you’re speaking to?” the woman asked her son. She was startled that her young son was talking to someone who was a stranger to her.
The boy told his mother the man was the uncle of one of his friends. When the interview was first recorded, everyone assumed the boy was speaking about a man who did live with his nephew on the top floor of this particular apartment building.
But then Copeland and Taylor went back and re-interviewed the boy. They discovered that he was actually talking about a man who lived on the bottom floor of the building. The man had hung out with a young boy he referred to as “his nephew,” when in fact he was not really related to the child. The “nephew” turned out to be the same young man who had admitted to stealing the underwear and throwing it on the shrubbery the night Stephanie was murdered.
Putting all of the witness statements together, Taylor and Copeland determined the man this woman had seen, and the man who another woman witnessed in the breezeway talking to a little boy, both had to be Planten. There was just no other logical explanation. The description fit, and the building where he had lived at the time was just on the other side of a narrow patch of woods from Stephanie’s apartment building.
“And that’s when we said,” Copeland said banging on the table with a fist, “he’s right there at her front door.”
E-mail Buddies
Joanne Reilly felt uncomfortable talking to the detectives on the phone at her office. She just knew at any moment Drew Planten might walk in, and she would be caught talking about him behind his back. Given her feelings, Ken Copeland suggested they start communicating through e-mail.
Reilly had started to notice strange things about Planten. He rarely if ever ate or drank and was constantly wiping down things he touched or putting them in his knapsack after he used them. It was if he knew that someone might be trying to get a DNA sample from him. But how could he know? Reilly didn’t think she had done anything to tip him off, but she also knew he was very bright and probably paranoid after his last visit with detectives.
By this time, Planten’s direct supervisor and Reilly had started talking about ways they could get a DNA sample from him for police. Every day one of them would stay late and look for strands of Planten’s hair around his workstation. They thought that surely, with such long hair, he was bound to leave a strand or two behind, but every day they came up empty.
“He used to comb his hair, and save it, put it in his pocket,” Reilly said. “And apparently, he would clean it up off the floor before he left every day.”
Reilly confided in Copeland that despite her strong initial feelings that Planten could not be their suspect, his unusual behavior had started to make her nervous.
On Thursday, August 25, 2005, at 7:30 in the morning, Reilly wrote an e-mail to Copeland:Hi Ken. Nice to hear from you. I was thinking about you yesterday. Do you have fingerprints from the scene? I have some paperwork that your person of interest personally placed on my desk. I picked them up with a piece of paper and they are in a plastic bag. I have also been thinking about bringing in some ice cream or something since our fertilizer season is winding down. I may be able to get a used spoon for you without being too obvious. I would probably need your help planning that. Would that help? Joanne
In another attempt to get Planten’s DNA, one day Reilly gave Planten a can of Pepsi. After he left for the day, she and Planten’s supervisor searched his workstation and all of the trash cans inside and outside the office for the can. It was gone. It had simply vanished. The only explanation they could come up with was that Planten was obviously onto them and was making sure he left nothing with his DNA on it anywhere in the laboratory. Still, Reilly reassured herself that this didn’t mean he was necessarily guilty; it only meant that he didn’t want anyone to violate his privacy by testing his DNA.
One night Reilly was working late when she ran into Planten standing alone awkwardly in the office thirty minutes after he was supposed to have gone home. She had no idea he was still there and was startled. For a moment, she was frightened by his sudden appearance, but then she looked at him as he meekly slinked away, and she told herself once again the police had to be wrong. This gentle man could not be a killer.
Eventually, Reilly decided it was time to tell her managers what was going on. She had been so sure she could handle it by herself that she had been reluctant to bother them. But things were getting serious now, and she felt like she had already taken too many risks that could have gotten her into serious trouble. It was time to come clean.
“I probably could have gotten fired for all of the stuff that I did,” Reilly said.
Reilly knew her managers would want to protect the reputation of their division first and foremost. They wouldn’t want the public to think the state of North Carolina had knowingly hired a killer. But she also knew that without their blessing and cooperation, she couldn’t go on helping the police and trying to stay beneath the radar. It was too risky. She felt strongly that they would understand the importance of the situation and agree to allow her to continue working with investigators.
Reilly first told the director of the division the extent of what was going on and the extent of her involvement.
“His mouth stayed open for a period of time,” Reilly said, remembering his reaction to the news.
The director called in other administrators to discuss the situation. She explained to them she wanted to help the police by staging a luncheon where they might be able to get a DNA sample from Planten. They told her she could plan the event, but added it needed to be off state property. They didn’t want to host a party at the laboratory for the specific purpose of trapping one of their employees.
Reilly agreed to the terms of the luncheon, and agreed to keep her managers in the loop about all of her future dealings with the Raleigh Police Department regarding Drew Planten. She had gone out on a limb this time and there was no turning back.
Banana Pudding
On Monday, September 12, 2005, Joanne Reilly e-mailed Detective Ken Copeland and told him their end-of-the-fertilizer-season office luncheon was scheduled to be held at the Golden Corral on Glenwood Avenue at 11:30 A.M. the following Thursday. She typed up an invitation asking everyone on the floor to attend. Everyone, including Drew Planten, was expected to be there.
The wheels were in motion. Sergeant Perry decided to send two plainclothes detectives to the restaurant that day, George Passley and Dale Montague. As far as Perry knew, Planten had never seen either of these investigators before. Their mission was single-minded: Get his DNA. While Planten had consistently avoided eating and drinking at his workplace, investigators couldn’t see any possible way he could avoid eating or drinking at a restaurant.
Copeland told Reilly that she wouldn’t know who the detectives were in the restaurant. They wanted her to be able to act naturally and not call attention to them.
On the day of the luncheon, the employees from the fertilizer laboratory piled into several vehicles in order to caravan to the restaurant. Planten was in the backseat of a white state-owned van in front of Reilly’s car. As soon as she got into her car, she got a call from Detective Montague checking in to make sure everything was on go. He wanted to know exactly what Planten was wearing and what kind of vehicle he would arrive at the restaurant in. Reilly assured him that Planten was so unique looking the detectives would not have any problem spotting him.
“Drew turned around and stared at me the whole way,” Reilly remembered. “And here I am on the phone talking about him.”
It literally gave Reilly the chills seeing Planten peer out the back window of the van with his sad, gentle face. She wondered in his heart if he knew she was the Judas who would ultimat
ely betray him. She hoped not. She hoped he would never have to know what she had done, that once he was cleared the police would move on and never reveal she had helped them.
Once the group arrived at the restaurant and was shown to a large table, Reilly was careful to pick a seat where she could observe Planten without being right next to him. She didn’t want it to look like she was watching him even though she really was.
“I tried to not pay attention at all,” Reilly said. But she couldn’t help herself. Her eyes kept wandering across the table to see if Planten was still doing the weird stuff he did in the office, wiping things down, putting trash in his pockets. And he was. It deflated Reilly’s hopeful demeanor. Not only did it make her more suspicious of Planten, but she worried that investigators would find nothing useful to test because he was cleaning everything he touched.
For the most part, Planten ate finger foods, a cheese-burger and fries, things for which he didn’t need utensils. He did use a straw, but every time he got up from the table to go to the restroom, he would put the straw into his pocket.
“He blew his nose at one point and I thought, yes, maybe he’ll leave that,” Reilly said. But to her dismay, the used tissue also went into Planten’s pocket, along with the straw and everything else he was hoarding.
Even though she had been warned to keep her cool, Reilly casually scanned the restaurant looking for the undercover detectives. There they are, bingo! The guy in the denim jacket and his friend in the baseball hat, cops trying to look like regular folks. But every time she would think she had found them, the men would get up and leave, and then she would realize she was wrong. Detectives Montague and Passley blended in so well that Reilly never spotted them. She hoped that meant that Planten didn’t spot them either.
Passley and Montague knew what Planten looked like from his DMV picture that had been passed around the Major Crimes Task Force multiple times. Their prodding of Reilly for a description of her co-worker’s clothing turned out to be unnecessary. They quickly spotted Planten sitting with the large group of employees from the fertilizer laboratory as soon as they entered the restaurant. The undercover detectives decided to sit at the table directly across from Planten’s so that they would be close enough to see what possible sources of his DNA might be available.
At the time, Sergeant Perry and Detectives Copeland and Taylor were busy working on a kidnapping case in North Raleigh. Passley excused himself from the table and went outside to call Perry to update him on how things were going.
“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” Passley told Perry.
“George, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Perry responded with agitation, wanting Passley to get to the point. “Tell me what you got.”
“This guy is completely weird. He is wiping off every utensil. He’s gone to the bathroom several times. It looks like he’s throwing away napkins. He put a straw in his pocket,” Passley said.
Perry of course wondered if the reason for Planten’s strange behavior was that he had spotted the undercover detectives in the restaurant. Passley told Perry he didn’t think Planten had any idea they were there. Perry then wondered if the detectives were messing with him, pulling his leg. He even hung up and called Montague to get his version of the story. To his surprise, it matched Passley’s in details and sincerity.
“He had become so concerned that we were trying to capture his DNA, that [this behavior] was probably just an everyday thing for him,” Perry concluded regarding Planten’s odd cleansing rituals. Bottom line—Planten was always on guard.
And it worked perfectly—well, almost perfectly. At the end of the meal Planten, who had been eating mostly finger foods, broke format and decided to try a bowl of banana pudding. The detectives watched with guarded amusement wondering how Planten was going to pull off eating this one without a utensil. He took two bites of the pudding with a fork and then vigorously wiped down the fork with a wet napkin. It was as if he didn’t care who witnessed this bizarre behavior, and clearly, his colleagues had become so numb to this that no one paid him any mind. All the undercover detectives could think was Boy, he must have really wanted that banana pudding.
“They said he spent five minutes wiping the fork,” Taylor said in disbelief.
“At that point we said he may not have killed Stephanie, but he’s done something,” Copeland said.
And apparently he didn’t do a good enough job wiping down the fork.
“That’s what did him in,” Copeland said.
“Banana pudding did him in,” Perry added.
As they were leaving the restaurant, Reilly was hopeful the undercover cops had seen Planten use the fork, but she didn’t know for sure since she was never able to pinpoint who they were. She literally crossed her fingers as they walked out of the restaurant hoping the operation had been a success.
Planten followed Reilly and the other employees down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant on the way to their cars. She turned around to ask him how he liked his meal, and suddenly, he was gone. Reilly froze, wondering if Planten had figured out what was happening and had decided to run. She rushed back inside the restaurant just in time to see the back of his head as it disappeared around the corner into the men’s restroom. At that point, Reilly was sure Planten was getting rid of more things that might have his DNA on them—maybe even the fork. She panicked and ran back outside to call the undercover officers on her cell phone. Reilly was reassured by Montague that he was aware of the situation and had sent his partner into the bathroom to see exactly what Planten was doing.
“He’s already been flushing his napkin and straw and everything else he has down the toilet,” Montague told Reilly.
“He said they had the fork, but he didn’t know if it would be of any use,” Reilly said with obvious disappointment in her voice.
Montague was lucky enough to snag the fork Planten used to eat the banana pudding. He had no idea whether or not it would contain Planten’s DNA given all of the wiping down, but it was worth a shot. The fork was taken immediately to the State Bureau of Investigation laboratory for DNA testing. Their go-to guy, SBI Agent Mark Boodee, agreed to put a rush on the test once again.
As Copeland waited for the test results later that day, he had a permanent smile on his face. Things were finally coming together. He e-mailed Reilly who wanted to know how everything had gone on their end at the restaurant.
Copeland replied to Reilly on September 15, at 4:16 P.M.:I’m quite sure you will remember this day for awhile.
Putting It to the Test
Detectives told Agent Boodee about Drew Planten’s strange behavior at the restaurant, not leaving his straw or napkin, instead flushing them down the toilet. They told him it was very difficult to get a DNA sample for this reason; the fork was the best they could do.
“He was clearly someone on the fringes of society,” Boodee said. “The guy was a molecular biologist. He knew ways he could be tripped up, and he was being very careful about what to do and what not to do.”
Boodee said the detectives were so pumped about the possibility of the fork being the definitive thing to cement Planten’s fate, they hand-delivered it to him personally.
“It’s like, here’s the trophy,” Boodee recalled thinking when he received the fork.
Boodee was also thrilled about the potential that this might finally be the evidence investigators needed to solve their case. He once again worked through the weekend isolating and analyzing DNA from the fork. He hadn’t been this excited about the case in years. Finally, there was a chance he would get a match and not just be eliminating another poor dude who happened to live near Stephanie Bennett.
Boodee told the detectives the fork had probably not been washed well before Planten used it, and thus had already been contaminated with another diner’s DNA when he put it in his mouth at the restaurant.
“On six out of fifteen chromosomes that I looked at, I got matches, but with the other chromosomes that I tested, I have mi
xtures with this other female,” Boodee said. “We can’t hang our hats on this. You’ve got to do better.”
But he also told them that the partial match they did get was very promising. He said they should not under any circumstances give up on this potential suspect yet. He really felt like the detectives were onto something this time. He didn’t want them to lose hope simply because they hadn’t nailed it on the first try.
“Part of the mixture was really, really strong,” Perry said. “The closest we’d ever gotten.”
And for the detectives, close meant they had no choice but to keep going. They had come this far and weren’t about to throw in the towel at this late stage in the game. Boodee wasn’t ready to give up either.
“I felt like they had the right guy. They just had to get the right sample,” Boodee said definitively.
CHAPTER TEN
If the DNA Fits
Fall 2005
Conscience is the chamber of justice.
—ORIGEN
Unlike any other scientific marker, our DNA is unique to us as individuals. The only time someone’s DNA is going to be strikingly similar to another person’s DNA is if the two people are biologically related, and even then, it won’t be exactly the same unless they are identical twins.
As it turned out, Detectives Jackie Taylor and Ken Copeland had discovered through their research that Drew Planten had an older brother in Asheville, North Carolina, named Donald Planten. And that wasn’t all—Donald Planten had previously been convicted of secret peeping in February 2004. Asheville police reports revealed that Donald had rigged up a video camera in the women’s bathroom of the architectural firm where he worked in order to watch women in various states of undress.