by Amanda Lamb
At 10:39 A.M. on that same day Reilly wrote an e-mail to Copeland again. There was just one simple line:Gloves are on.
Swab the Gloves
The entire investigative team had met on the previous Friday, October 14, 2005, and decided the search of the fertilizer laboratory would take place the following Monday after work. Detective Ken Copeland was working off-duty security at the North Carolina State Fair that same week and would not be able to participate in the search. It was an annual stint that paid so well he couldn’t pass it up. Besides, he knew the Bennett case was in the capable hands of the scientists now. He had done all he could do. This was it.
On Monday, October 17, Sergeant Perry, Detective Taylor, and two agents from the SBI, including Boodee, waited for Drew Planten to leave the laboratory. They sat in their cars across the street waiting for Reilly to give them the all clear that Planten had left the building.
Reilly hustled across the parking lot of the art museum around 6:00 P.M. to tell them that Planten had finally left. Boodee said she was sweating profusely as she told the investigators that Planten had lingered that evening for some strange reason. The security guard had found him uncharacteristically sitting alone in the break room of all places, two hours after he was supposed to have left for the day. Finally, the security guard told Planten he was locking up the building. Planten reluctantly got on his bike because his rusty old Camaro was still out of commission and left.
“What they thought is that he was waiting for everyone to leave so he could clean and get his gloves,” said Boodee.
Reilly accompanied the team of investigators into the lab and showed them where Planten worked. Boodee said they swabbed Planten’s computer, his wooden stool, and the dial on a radio near his workstation.
“It took a long time. They swabbed everything that he could have possibly touched,” Reilly said, sounding exasperated at the mere recollection of the search.
But Planten’s gloves were what they’d really come for. The gloves were made of thick rubber and looked like the kind of gloves people wore to wash dishes.
“What is the best item of evidence?” Perry asked Boodee point-blank as they stood together in the laboratory assessing the situation.
“Those gloves are,” Boodee said without missing a beat.
The question everyone had was whether to simply take samples from the gloves and leave them, or to take the gloves themselves and replace them with a similar pair. Planten’s gloves were of a particular style and color not made anymore. They had also become stained and worn in specific places from so much use. The concern was that Planten might notice the differences if they switched the gloves, and even with a rush job, it would take at least a day or so to do the DNA test. If he noticed the gloves had been switched, he was more likely to run.
They also thought about simply taking the gloves and then not replacing them in the hopes that Planten would think he had lost them. But given his meticulous nature, it was unlikely Drew Planten had ever misplaced anything.
Perry wanted the agents to swab the gloves; Taylor wanted them to take the gloves. Boodee told investigators the best way for him to test the gloves would be to take them back to the lab where he could cut them up and test the individual pieces of the gloves for DNA.
“I want the gloves,” Taylor said over and over.
“I was worried about taking them, the whole expectation of privacy thing. [Detective] Jackie [Taylor] was not as concerned as me,” Perry said.
Taylor and Boodee won the debate. They took the gloves. Investigators replaced them with a similar pair, hoping that Planten wouldn’t notice, at least right away, and it would buy them some time. They knew they were taking a chance. Their biggest fear was that if he learned they were definitely closing in on him, he might take off or try to hurt himself. They decided it was a risk they had to take if they were going to solve this case.
The team left the laboratory that night feeling like they were sprinting to the finish line. Finally, identifying the man who might be Stephanie’s killer seemed within reach. They were determined not to let him go.
“We’re feeling very, very strong that we’re cooking with gas,” Perry remembered.
Cooking with Gas
On Tuesday, October 18, 2005, Agent Mark Boodee began analyzing the samples he’d obtained from Planten’s workstation. While he was on an emotional high believing he might just have the literal key to the case at his fingertips, he knew the true job of a scientist was to deal only in facts. Scientific facts don’t lie. It is the most credible evidence you can have in a criminal trial. It is also what jurors expect to see. In a day and age when television crime dramas solve cases in an hour, jurors want everything, including DNA, handed to them on a silver platter.
Boodee ran all of the samples from the lab and studied what are called electropherograms—peaks on a chart that show whether the sixteen specific areas on a chromosome are the same as those same areas on the suspect’s chromosomes.
He was hopeful that they had been able to retrieve good samples from Planten’s lab, but he also knew that in public spaces, it was always a gamble trying to get a clean DNA profile with no contamination from another person. Yet, right away, the computer showed Boodee that he had taken several clean samples from Planten’s work space, primarily from the gloves and from the dial on the radio.
There was one unusual configuration of a chromosome Planten had that matched with an unusual chromosome in the killer’s profile. Boodee had rarely, if ever, seen this particular chromosome configuration before in any sample he had analyzed previously in his career.
“I was like, I can’t believe it. It’s either him or it’s a very close relative,” Boodee said.
By itself, the unique chromosome configuration meant nothing, but it was a promising start to the process. Next, Boodee clicked on the rest of the profile analyzed by the computer program and, voilà!, there it was.
“Then I looked at all the rest of them, and they all matched up. I was like holy shit! I can’t believe we got the right guy. I can’t believe this is finally coming to an end,” Boodee said excitedly.
At the same time, Boodee also ran the samples taken from Drew’s brother Donald, which had been obtained from a blue ballpoint pen, two brown Newcastle Ale mugs, and the door handle of his car. While they were similar to Drew Planten’s profile, they did not match the killer’s profile.
“At that point I was like, that’s it! I know we have the right guy,” Boodee said.
Boodee told his supervisor, Bill Weis, about the results of the tests. Weis immediately got on the phone with Raleigh police chief Jane Perlov to tell her what they had found.
“ ‘Look, we’ve got the right guy. It’s time to take him down,’ ” Weis said to the chief.
Boodee said that up until that point, everyone at the State Bureau of Investigation had been sworn to secrecy about the latest development in the Stephanie Bennett case. But the rush of knowing that they finally had a match was almost too much for Boodee to keep to himself. It was really happening. He hoped an arrest would be imminent so he could share the good news with the world.
“I always knew that this case would be solved eventually, simply for the fact that I know that DNA is such a great tool,” Boodee said with a smile from ear to ear.
The science had worked. It was now time to sit back and let the police do their work.
Gotcha
On Wednesday, October 19, 2005, Sergeant Clem Perry and Detective Jackie Taylor were walking around in a daze at the police station. They were physically and emotionally drained from the case, and from waiting for the DNA test to come back. Detective Ken Copeland was still working security at the State Fair, waiting patiently for his colleagues to call him when the results of the DNA test came in.
They knew Agent Boodee had put a rush on the test, but they also knew science took time. After all the time they had put into the case, what were a few more hours of waiting? Who were they kidding? It was agony. If t
he DNA didn’t match this time, they were right back where they had started—nowhere. It was unlikely they would get any more chances. If Planten’s DNA didn’t match, it was over. The investigators’ anxious haze was interrupted by a call from Bill Weis, the director of the State Bureau of Investigation laboratory.
“Okay,” he said to Perry. “Are you sitting down?”
“Give it to me, Bill,” Perry said anxiously.
“You got him,” Weis said matching Perry’s level of excitement through the phone. “Now we have a question for you: Which one do you think it is? Is it Drew or his older brother?”
This debate had been an ongoing discussion between Perry, Copeland, and Taylor. Even though they had gone through the motions to get Donald Planten’s DNA, Taylor and Copeland never had any doubt in their minds that Drew was their killer based on everything they had learned in the past few months. They never really considered Donald a viable suspect.
“It’s Drew,” Perry said to Weiss definitively.
“Yeah,” Weis said. “Let everyone know.”
It was a surreal moment for the detectives who had waited so long for this day. Taylor was literally jumping up and down in the Major Crimes office unable to curb her excitement. After taking a breath, she immediately called Copeland on his cell phone at the fairgrounds to tell him the good news.
“It’s Drew, it’s Drew,” Taylor shouted into the phone at Copeland.
“We knew it was Drew,” Copeland said as his partner confirmed what they had believed for some time now.
The excitement of the DNA match was quickly replaced by the seriousness of planning the next step—the arrest. The detectives didn’t want Planten to spend one more minute on the street where he might be able to hurt someone, but at the same time, they needed the blessing of the district attorney to move forward, even with the damning evidence they now had.
“That’s when the stress started,” Taylor said.
At first, the group decided they needed to do some more follow-up investigation before they made an arrest, just to be thorough. But then they came to the consensus that they couldn’t sit on this information for long. If it leaked, they might lose Planten forever. This was a risk they were not willing to take.
“We decided right then and there to go ahead and get an arrest warrant,” Perry said.
Perry and Taylor headed to the Wake County District Attorney’s Office. Luckily, given the new information, prosecutor Susan Spurlin gave them her blessing to move forward as they’d hoped she would. She helped them prepare the arrest warrant. Chief Resident Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens then signed the warrant, making it official. Everything was on go. Now all they had to do was to plan Drew Planten’s takedown.
At the same time they got the arrest warrant, investigators also prepared search warrants with Spurlin and had Stephens sign off on them as well. They wanted to be ready to search Planten’s belongings for more evidence as soon as he was in handcuffs. The warrants gave them the legal authority to search his apartment, his car, his work space, and to take a DNA sample directly from him. They would need a DNA sample taken in a controlled scientific setting to use at trial. The initial sample from the fertilizer lab was simply used to establish the probable cause needed to make an arrest. But the sample taken in a controlled environment, as directed by the search warrant, would be the one used in court to link Planten beyond a reasonable doubt to Stephanie Bennett’s murder.
With the arrest warrant in hand, Detective Ken Copeland, Detective Randy Miller, and Officer David Green loaded into an unmarked van and headed to Planten’s laboratory. Copeland’s heart was beating out of his chest. He couldn’t believe this day had finally come. They had succeeded. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Planten’s face when he told him he was under arrest.
The building was surrounded by officers in preparation for Planten’s exit from any door that he might choose to leave through. They were taking no chances in case he saw them and decided to run. One way or another, Planten was going to leave work that day in handcuffs.
Countdown
Wednesday, October 19, 2005, was cleanup day at the state fertilizer laboratory. Large Dumpsters were placed outside the building, and employees spent the day going through drawers, closets, and storage areas throwing out what they didn’t need. They also took stock of their inventory and took notes on what supplies needed to be replenished.
Reilly had grown fond of Drew Planten in a motherly way despite everything that was going on behind the scenes. The more time she spent with him, the more she pitied him and worried about him. She was torn between a sense of guilt about what she had done behind Planten’s back, and an overriding need to help investigators find justice for Stephanie Bennett. Still, in her heart, she felt that if she cleared him, all would eventually be forgiven or, even better, Planten might never have to know what she had done. The police would simply walk away when the DNA didn’t match.
On cleanup day, Reilly chose to work side by side with Planten. She knew the DNA test could be completed at any moment, and that police might swoop in and arrest him. They had not shared with her what the plan would be if Planten’s DNA matched the killer’s. But she figured they would act quickly. She realized that this might be her last day with Planten.
Together, Planten and Reilly went through the inventory of chemicals in the laboratory, cataloging what they had and what they were running low on. They chatted casually. Ironically, Planten seemed to trust Reilly more than his other co-workers. He was still painfully shy, but with her, he shared a small amount of personal information that he didn’t with anyone else.
Around 4:20 P.M., just as Reilly went back to her office and was getting ready to leave for the day, Major Dennis Lane of the Raleigh Police Department called her on her cell phone. Lane was in charge of all of the investigators in the Raleigh Police Department. A thirty-year veteran of the police force, he very rarely got involved directly in cases, but this one was different. This was the case everyone in the department wanted to solve, including Lane. Perry, Taylor, and Copeland had been briefing him on the case since his promotion. It was after the detectives paid Planten a visit at his apartment that Lane felt like they were truly onto something.
“When they told me about that visit it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. To me at that point there wasn’t a doubt that we were headed in the right direction,” Lane said.
So on the day of Planten’s planned arrest, Lane decided he would be the one to contact Reilly. When he called her, he asked her in a very serious tone if Planten was still at work. Without hesitation, she put the phone down and went into Planten’s lab where she spotted him in his usual spot on his stool hunched over his desk. She got back on the phone and reported this to Lane.
When Reilly returned to the phone, Lane told her the building was surrounded by police officers.
“I guess the DNA was a match?” Reilly asked solemnly even though the fact that the building was surrounded had given her the answer already.
“It was a perfect match,” Lane told her. He didn’t want Reilly to panic, nor did he want Planten to run. He knew he was walking a delicate tightrope act. He also had a responsibility to protect anyone in the building, including Reilly, from a man whom detectives now believed was a cold-blooded killer.
Lane asked Reilly what door Planten usually used to exit the building. She told him Planten left through the back door and would be riding his bike home again because his clunker of a car was still out of commission. Lane then asked Reilly to call him and let him know the moment Planten was leaving the office. The last thing Lane wanted was for them to exit the building together. There would be many guns drawn on Planten as he left work that day; Lane didn’t want any citizens anywhere near the action, including Reilly. Because they were unsure of what Planten might do, the officers had to take every possible precaution to protect themselves from this man no matter how fragile he appeared to be.
Reilly’s heart started racing
after she hung up the phone with Lane. An overwhelming feeling of deep sadness came over her. Her months of trying to do the right thing, hoping the test would confirm her belief Planten was not the person responsible for this heinous crime would now end with his arrest. It was a scenario she hadn’t planned for in her mind or in her heart, but she also knew there was no denying the absolute credibility of a DNA match. Like a good soldier, she would follow through with the major’s orders.
“Here I am running around, trying to be invisible, trying to watch when he’s going home, and hoping my cell phone won’t bug out on me down in the basement,” Reilly recalled hysterically.
At that time of day, few people were left in the building. Reilly could hear flushing in the men’s bathroom and assumed Planten was in there. She called Lane back and told him Planten was in the restroom, and she thought he would be out momentarily. She tried to look busy at her desk. When she heard the bathroom door swing open and shut, she got up to look for Planten. She couldn’t find him anywhere. It was like he had simply vanished.
“I couldn’t find him,” Reilly said. She peeked into the back hallway and saw that his bike was still there. “I know he knew. He had to have known.”
Reilly got fed up after a while thinking Planten had to be hiding from her. There was nothing more she could do to make him come out. She was also admittedly a little concerned about being alone with him in the building knowing that he was now officially accused of murder. She was weary. She was done. So, at a few minutes before 5:00 P.M., she decided the police would have to take it from here. She ignored police orders, left the building without calling Major Lane, and went directly to her car.