Evil Next Door

by Amanda Lamb

  “I think the two brothers compared notes,” psychologist Michael Teague said of Donald and Drew Planten and their apparent shared proclivity for sexual deviance.

  Teague said the bond the brothers probably shared involved something called “the risky shift phenomenon.” According to psychologists at ChangingMinds (changing minds.org), this is defined as: “When people are in groups, they make decisions about risk differently from when they are alone. In the group, they are likely to make riskier decisions, as the shared risk makes the individual risk less. They also may not want to let their compatriots down and hence be risk-averse.”

  In other words, if one of them did something deviant, it made it okay for the other one to also engage in similar behavior. Drew Planten may have looked to his older brother as a mentor when it came to his peeping behavior.

  Given the sexual nature of Stephanie’s murder and the fact that the killer might have been a Peeping Tom, investigators couldn’t totally rule out the very remote possibility that Donald Planten may have visited his brother, Drew Planten, in Raleigh and committed the murder himself. Donald Planten also bore a striking resemblance to the original composite, even more so than Drew Planten. Knowing the brothers’ DNA would be very similar, Sergeant Perry thought it was imperative that investigators get a DNA sample from Donald as well as from Drew to compare to the killer’s DNA. This comparison, he thought, would ultimately eliminate Donald Planten as a potential suspect and erase any lingering shred of doubt in anyone’s mind.

  “It was decided that we would have to get DNA samples from both of them in the interest of being thorough,” Perry said.

  Detectives Jackie Taylor and Ken Copeland were sent to Asheville with instructions to do their best to get Donald Planten’s DNA. They hooked up with the Asheville Police Department because they were out of their own jurisdiction and asked for their investigators’ assistance—assistance the Asheville detectives were more than happy to give.

  Unlike the hunt for Drew Planten’s DNA, Taylor and Copeland had no problem getting Donald Planten’s DNA. Boodee said Donald worked as a waiter in a local restaurant and bar in the small western North Carolina city. Copeland and Taylor went into the bar pretending to be visitors. They talked Donald into socializing with them after work and were able to get several beer mugs he drank from and a pen he used on the job. Boodee remembered with a chuckle that Taylor had even taken a turn or two on the dance floor with Donald in order to distract him so Copeland could take the glasses from the table without his noticing.

  Boodee told the detectives he would wait and test the DNA from Donald Planten and Drew Planten at the same time. As they left Asheville with Donald Planten’s DNA evidence in hand, they knew they were halfway to their goal of finally having an answer in this gut-wrenching case. One down, one to go.

  Watchful Eyes

  Detective Ken Copeland continued to maintain his e-mail relationship with Joanne Reilly, the manager of the laboratory where Drew Planten worked. He had told her that the Golden Corral DNA sample was close, but not close enough. He was thankful that she was still on board with him, willing to help with the investigation in any way she could.

  On Monday, September 19, 2005, at 3:12 P.M., Copeland wrote Reilly an e-mail:Hello Joanne, Just hollering at you to see if there are any “Drew” events occurring. As always, he is the first person that comes to my mind when I sit down at my desk.

  At 3:42 that same afternoon, Reilly responded to the investigators in her own e-mail:Hi Ken. Not really. He is sitting in front of his chromatograph as always, but he is shaking from head to toe, which I have never seen before, but maybe it is a nervous mannerism of his. I glanced at him a couple of times when I went through the lab looking for his supervisor, and his whole body was shaking. He did not respond to my greeting. I just decided to leave him alone . . . Joanne

  Even though her managers now knew what was going on with the investigation, Reilly was still nervous about talking to police on the phone at work or using her work e-mail to relay information to them. She felt more comfortable and communicated more freely with Copeland from home through her personal e-mail.

  On September 20, 2005, Reilly wrote a long letter to Copeland from her personal e-mail account:I don’t know why he was shaking. I asked his [direct] supervisor if he had seen him do that before and he had not.

  His supervisor also told me that Drew had been acting a little more strangely lately. Ordinarily, he sits on the stool in front of his ion chromatograph 9 hours a day—straight through lunch—and the supervisor told me he didn’t ever see Drew leave his seat, even for the bathroom. Now he is spending 20-30 minutes each day in the bathroom/locker room, where he keeps his knapsack.

  Last Friday [the day after our lunch] the supervisor saw Drew bring the knapsack into the laboratory and get some antibacterial soap from the cupboard. He watched Drew pour the soap into a beaker. Then he got busy and didn’t notice Drew again until he heard him rinsing the beaker out in the sink. He was wondering if Drew had a container in his knapsack now full of antibacterial soap or what??? The supervisor also said that he noticed yesterday that Drew is not leaving used paper towels or tissues in the bathroom, but is flushing them.

  Now, what can we do to help? The guy is starting to make me nervous. What do you need to get a search warrant that you haven’t been able to get yet? Is there any way he could leave DNA on his bike, which is parked here? Would hair help? We will watch out for long hair around his stool, but if it falls out naturally there is less chance of DNA right? We also have a pair of safety glasses identified that his supervisor says he wears occasionally. No one else wears them. Do you want those? I saw him polishing them the other day, (like the fork?), so perhaps they wouldn’t help. Outside of getting my ring caught in his hair and giving it a good yank, I don’t really have any more ideas. I am starting to dream about him. Help!

  Reilly also engaged Planten in conversations at work in order to learn more about him and his family. She eagerly passed on what she learned to Copeland. She felt most of it was benign information that further revealed Planten was just a regular person with a normal, mundane life. At this point, she was the only person on the inside, the only person who was talking to both Planten and the police. As Copeland saw it, she was his only hope of getting Planten’s DNA.

  On Thursday, September 22, at 3:23 P.M., Reilly wrote to Copeland again from her personal e-mail:Hi Ken. Any News? I did find out that Drew did not have a dad in the picture, at least from the time he was a young-to-mid teen. He grew up in New Jersey, and he, his mom, and brother and moved to Michigan so that his mom could go to law school.

  Reilly was getting anxious. She wasn’t a lawyer or a cop. She didn’t know exactly what authorities needed in order to make a move on Planten or to eliminate him as a suspect, but she desperately wanted to help. One way or another, she wanted a conclusion to what had become a daily obsession for her. It was an overwhelming distraction from her work, her personal life, from everything. She was in deep, and she knew it.

  One afternoon Reilly decided to take matters into her own hands and throw an ice cream party at the office to see if she could get the elusive DNA sample from Planten. The failure to get a good sample at the Golden Corral had continued to haunt her even though investigators assured her it was not her fault. Yet, it was still eating away at her. She was determined to make it right.

  So Reilly brought ice cream bars on popsicle sticks to the office with the hope that Planten might throw his stick away and then she could grab it for police. She knew it was a long shot given his history of not throwing away anything that he had touched, but she decided it was worth a try. She planned it for the same day as the division director’s retirement party, thinking that distraction might give her an opportunity to slip away and be alone in the fertilizer laboratory for a few moments and score something with Planten’s DNA on it.

  “I ate [an ice cream bar] that had a red stick to match the red stick that he had, just in case I was abl
e to switch them,” Reilly said sheepishly revealing her well-crafted plan. She figured everyone, including Planten, would find it hard to resist the offer of a special treat during their mid-morning coffee break. And she was right. Even Planten, who rarely ate anything at work, helped himself to several popsicles.

  Reilly then left the lab and called back a few minutes later to talk to Planten’s direct supervisor. He told her that, as usual, Planten was holding on to his popsicle sticks instead of throwing them away. She told the supervisor to keep an eye on them and let her know where Planten put the sticks when he was done. Eventually, the supervisor called her back and told her that Planten had put the popsicle sticks in his drawer. Score, she thought. I can do this.

  When the group from the fertilizer lab, including Planten, moved upstairs for the retirement party, Reilly went back to the laboratory alone. She practically crept, walking quietly on the balls of her feet, scanning the room carefully for people as she moved closer to Planten’s work area. Ever so slowly she slid open Planten’s drawer. Immediately, she saw what she came for. The popsicle sticks were laying there wrapped in a paper towel right in front of her. Her heart skipped a beat as she reviewed the plan in her mind. She felt a sudden sense of panic rising in her chest.

  “I just felt scared at that moment,” Reilly said. “I didn’t think I could do it fast enough. I knew he was upstairs at the retirement luncheon, but I also knew that he suspected me of trying to get things from him by the way he looked at me.”

  Reilly couldn’t help but think that if Planten was in fact innocent and found out that she had intruded in his personal space, he would never forgive her. She felt ashamed of herself for snooping in his drawer, but she had little time to dwell on this feeling. Suddenly, Reilly heard the back door to the lab swing open on its squeaky hinges. As quietly as she could, she slid Planten’s desk drawer shut. Houston, we’ve got a problem, she thought. She was still holding her own red popsicle stick in her hand, the one she had planned to switch with Planten’s, and had no pockets to hide it in. She knew it would look suspicious for her to be standing there holding the stick so long after they had all finished their ice cream. Thinking quickly, Reilly shoved the stick into the waistband of her pants beneath her shirt concealing it from view. She turned around and walked away and almost crashed right into Planten who simply stood there and stared at her. She knew she must have looked flustered, but she managed a weak smile and a half wave as she mumbled “excuse me” under her breath and kept on walking.

  Reilly turned around slightly to glance at Planten as he passed her without saying a word and went right to his drawer. She turned away quickly so that he wouldn’t think she was watching him. That’s when she heard the drawer open. Reilly heard paper crinkling as Planten apparently took something out of the drawer. She heard the drawer close and then the faucet turn on in the sink. She tried to busy herself with a computer on the supervisor’s desk, acting like she was looking up something. He was washing something. She could hear intermittent sounds as he ran something underneath the stream of water. It had to be the popsicle sticks, she thought. Reilly glanced up just in time to see Planten putting something into his knapsack when he was done.

  On Monday, October 3, 2005, Reilly e-mailed Copeland:Any news? We had our reception/ice cream party. I had an opportunity to get something, but felt very uncomfortable about it and backed off. Let me know when you hear something and if we need to, I will decide if/when we might set something else up.

  Thanks Ken . . . Joanne

  Gloves On

  Agent Mark Boodee felt strongly that the best place for investigators to get a sample from Drew Planten was inside the state fertilizer laboratory where he worked. He felt like there would be multiple possibilities in and around Planten’s workstation that might yield a strong DNA sample. Boodee suggested swabbing Planten’s computer, his chair, and his desk. He said the best sample would come from something Planten had had close contact with for a period of time that no one else would have touched. Being a scientist himself, Boodee knew people who worked in laboratories often wore gloves when they performed certain experiments. He recommended getting Planten’s laboratory gloves as he felt like they would yield the best opportunity for getting a good DNA sample.

  At the same time, Sergeant Clem Perry was in constant discussions with the Wake County District Attorney’s Office, as well as the police department attorney, Dawn Bryant, about how they could legally obtain Drew Planten’s DNA. Assistant District Attorney Susan Spurlin was the prosecutor now officially assigned to the case.

  Spurlin, a no-nonsense, tough-talking litigator, had been with the Wake County District Attorney’s Office off and on since 1980. She left briefly in 1984 for several years to work as a criminal defense attorney, but the pull of being the one to get the bad guys off the streets was too powerful for her to ignore. So she returned to her first passion, criminal prosecution.

  “I missed the courtroom. I missed trying cases. I missed working with the victims. I missed working with law enforcement,” said Spurlin of her brief stint in criminal defense work with esteemed local attorney Joseph Cheshire. “I’m one of the very fortunate people who loves her job, loves coming to work.”

  Spurlin was a thin woman with glasses who always wore very traditional, tailored business suits and kept her brunette hair cut sensibly short. In the courtroom she was a pit bull who had successfully convicted many murderers in her two-plus decades as a prosecutor. But in her spare time, she was an avid horse rider. On her horse, out in the country, was where she really let herself be free. When she climbed on top of a horse, she said she was at peace. It was the one place not even the bad guys could creep into her mind and ruin her day.

  When Spurlin first heard about Stephanie Bennett’s murder, she reacted emotionally like everyone else who had heard about the case. What kind of a monster could do this to a young woman? she thought. Even before it was officially assigned to her, she’d followed the case with great interest.

  “I was aware of it from the sense that it was so tragic, because you had a victim that did not put herself in harm’s way,” Spurlin said. “Everyone ought to be safe in their home. This was a terrible, violent crime. I was aware early on that once they identified the person it would be conclusive because of the evidence that was left at the scene.”

  Spurlin had been kept up-to-date all along and consulted with investigators throughout the summer about what they were trying to do in order to get Planten’s DNA. The detectives wanted to make sure their actions were legal and wouldn’t get them into hot water down the road if the case went to court.

  “They did it in ways that you legally can collect DNA. They didn’t invade his privacy. They didn’t take anything for which he had any expectation of privacy,” Spurlin said firmly.

  They considered every possible idea that was brought to the table for getting Planten’s DNA. For example, investigators discovered Planten had failed to change the address on his driver’s license when he moved from Dominion to the new apartment complex across town. They considered doing a traffic stop and arresting him on this minor violation simply in order to get his DNA, but after consulting with attorneys, they decided this might be considered entrapment.

  Boodee kept the pressure on investigators to go forward with his plan to get Planten’s work gloves, which he wore when he performed experiments. He insisted the best place for them to get the DNA was from the fertilizer laboratory. Boodee reasoned that because Planten was employed by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, the lab was state government property. According to Spurlin, this gave law enforcement carte blanche to search the area without Planten’s permission because it was owned by the state of North Carolina.

  “Our legal advisors informed us there would be no expectation of privacy for him there,” Perry stressed.

  But before they went into the lab, investigators wanted to make sure they had the best possible items to choose from that might contain his DNA. With Planten�
��s history of sanitizing his work space, they knew it was going to be a challenge to find usable samples.

  Detective Ken Copeland talked to Joanne Reilly about things she saw Planten touch in the lab on a regular basis. He wanted to glean what locations might offer the investigators their best shot at getting a credible DNA sample. Reilly told Copeland that yes, sometimes Planten wore his lab gloves when performing experiments, and that all of the scientists had personal sets of gloves assigned to them. But Copeland had also learned from Boodee that the DNA in the gloves had to be fresh in order for it to be a good sample. He needed Planten to have worn the gloves just before the State Bureau of Investigation agents entered the lab to collect the DNA.

  Reilly cleared the SBI agents’ visit to the lab through top administrators with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. They were now running the show when it came to Planten. Reilly said they had become somewhat reluctant but were, nonetheless, participating in the unfolding drama. She had agreed to help the investigators with the glove issue, to make sure Planten wore them at some point on the day of the search.

  On Monday, October 17, 2005, at 10:07 A.M., she e-mailed Copeland:I have reassigned ten limestone samples to Drew, stating that they were brought to my attention as being in question by my supervisor. He is upset at having to repeat his work. We cannot guarantee that he will use the gloves, but he usually does when he is running limestones . . . Joanne

  Because limestones are rough on the hands, chemists in the laboratory usually wore gloves when performing experiments involving them. Reilly hoped Planten would wear the gloves while he reevaluated the ten limestone samples she had assigned him to review. There was no guarantee, but it was their best shot.