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he would do what he could and went about his business. He could not worry about every fallen robin.
At noon on Monday, April 20, at Inspector Bevan’s behest. Sergeant Larry Maracle called Nuriey, New Jersey, psychic Dorothy Alison and told her about Kristen French. What would Ms. Alison need, to try and help them find her? Sergeant Maracle asked. Dorothy already had a bad feeling, but she held her tongue. She would need a small personal item that belonged to Kristen and a photograph, if possible. Sergeant Maracle got a small barrette that Kristen always wore in her hair from Mrs. French at 1:00 p.m. Two days later, Maracle mailed it to Nudey, along with Kristen’s picture.
Linwell Road was a busy street. By midweek the police had interviewed a dozen “eyewitnesses” to Kristen’s abduction. A young schoolmate of Kristen’s had passed her in his car as she walked east, on the north side of Linwell Road, west of Howard Street, around 2:55 p.m. that afternoon.
Another twenty-year-old woman saw a “creamy yellow Camaro-style car” pulled partway off the road around that time. There were two men in the car and she thought the driver was speaking to a girl in a Holy Cross school uniform, who was walking on the north side of Linwell. The girl had long brown hair—below her shoulders. The woman would never forget the driver’s face.
Another woman was cut off by a car speeding out of the church parking lot. She thought it had round headlights. It might have been a Firebird, Camaro or Berlinghetti. Inspector Bevan had her hypnotized and she remembered the car was a yellow-beige color but she still could not pin down the make or model.
By the time half a dozen different poHce officers finished interviewing a dozen “eyewitnesses,” the witnesses were all telling tales of strangely behaved, light-colored Camaro-Hke cars on Linwell Road that afternoon. They saw the car slow down, they saw it parked in the Grace Lutheran Church lot, they saw the driver, they saw it cut cars off, speed through intersections.
run red lights, fishtail and careen around corners. They saw it explode into oblivion under a bridge five niiles away.
This mythic Camaro bhtzed up the canyons and charged over the arroyos in the collective imagination of every cop and civilian in the City of St. Catharines. The word Camaro became as the Bat signal, luminous in the skies, high above Gotham City.
Inspector Bevan narrowed his search terms to Camaros manufactured between 1978 and 1982 that were currendy registered in the Niagara region. The color would narrow it down even further.
In St. Catharines, the citizenry got behind the crusade. Mothers turned in sons they suddenly realized drove Camaros, daughters called in their fathers and bo^^iends, strangers—seeing a Camaro on the street—immediately recorded hcense-plate numbers and ran into strange houses in order to report them to the police.
George Angersback, who was responsible for the interior-design instrumentation of the Camaro, had a stock Camaro’s four-speed manual gearshift installed on his office chair. He would wile away the afternoons, images of the ultimate Camaro in the cumulus clouds high above the Motor City, shifting the gears on his chair.
Shortly after the Camaro was launched in September, 1966, the fact that camaro meant “loose bowels” in Spanish hit the press and the shit hit the fan at General Motors. Heads rolled down the corridors like so many guttered bowHng balls. Undaunted, a massive advertising campaign dubbed the car “King Camaro” and “His Majesty,” loose bowels and all, and the Camaro began to conquer the marketplace.
“Low and mean. Born to run. Camaro lets you limit your speed without cramping your style,” the inaugural ads proclaimed. Car and Driver said: “A road machine of the first rank … intended for the macho enthusiast … a special breed of aspiration car … aggressive, quick, agile, dependable.”
Inspector Vince Bevan knew that eyewitness reports were
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among the most unreliable types of evidence and that the pohce should always be wary of them. But the imaginations of the inspector and his handpicked team of seasoned investigators were captured by the Camaro. They became as “loose bowels” and voided all other options. From that moment on, everyone—police, media and civilians alike—knew that Kristen French had been abducted by a man or two in a cream-colored 1982 Camaro.
Psychics and Camaros aside, Big Jim Moody wanted to know how Kristen French’s shoe got fifty yards into the parking lot, a considerable detour on her otherwise straightforward routine afternoon walk home.
He knew, as did everyone else, that Kristen French was an inteUigent, street-proofed, mature, responsible teenager. A young lady like Kristen would never approach a strange man, or two strange men, in a strange car, whether it was a Camaro or not.
Forlornly abandoned, the shoe told Moody that Kristen either knew her abductors or for some reason they did not scare her in the least.
She willingly had walked over to a parked car in which someone then abducted her at knifepoint—the piece of hair the pohce found had been shced off by a sharp knife.
As a seasoned investigator. Moody knew that salvation lived within seemingly insignificant details. What about that piece of map from Scarborough? Why Scarborough? What did that mean? By the time Big Jim was able to ask these questions, no one was listening. The task force was engaged in a generously financed frenzy.
Sergeant Maracle began to help compile a photographic inventory of Camaros and Firebirds from 1978 through 1982 and track automotive paint samples used on Camaros through those years on Wednesday afternoon. Instead, they could not get the paint samples from General Motors in Detroit. They got them
that very afternoon from Kim Squires at the local ICI Auto Color outlet. At 5:20 p.m., Paul and Karla crossed the border at Lewiston in the gold Nissan. They smuggled some more cigarettes and booze. After all, the rent was due in eleven days and Karla’s birthday was only fifteen days hence.
Inspector Vince Bevan told Sergeant Maracle to fly to Quantico, Virginia, on Wednesday, April 29, 1993, and brief a team of FBI profilers about Mahafly, Anderson and Kristen French. Sergeant Maracle realized he had been working on the Mahaffy case for almost a year and remembered his lengthy meeting with FBI Special Agent Wagner and Supervisory Agent McGrary in the early days of the Mahafly investigation.
They had told him that whoever killed Leslie probably knew her and was a laborer, familiar with tools and materials. If the individual who killed her was so famiHar with tools r.nd materials why was there evidence of false starts on her dismembered body parts? Why were the cement blocks so poorly conceived? The one containing the torso had separated on the bottom of the lake and let the torso pop to the surface like a grotesque cork.
Since there was irrefutable forensic evidence that Mahaffy had been raped, the FBI’s statement that the crime had been sexually motivated was a no-brainer. That murder was secondary, committed to avoid detection and conceal the crime was also pretty obvious, although nothing in a murder investigation should be taken for granted.
That the perpetrator had fantasized the scenario and acted out only when the opportunity presented itself was neither here nor there, because it did not give the poHce a clearer understanding of exactly what had happened the night Leshe disappeared, nor did it point to an individual or explain anything.
When Maracle had talked to McCrary about Mahaffy, it seemed that McCrary just assumed the killer had made the forty-mile drive from Burlington to Lake Gibson because he was comfortable with that particular area and could easily explain his presence at Lake Gibson to police if they happened on
him while he was there. That assumption made little or no sense.
Driving a car with nine hundred pounds of cement-encased body parts forty miles would seem, at first blush, to be far riskier than finding a place to bury the blocks in his own backyard.
Burlington was a city of appealing disposal sites. Lake Ontario was right there. Why bother with a small, shallow manmade lake such as Lake Gibson? It just did not make any s
ense.
Those were standard clauses in the pro forma FBI sexual-assault profile, along with post-crime stress, sudden religiosity and possible increased drug and alcohol use. The Niagara Region was a haven for drunks, drug addicts and religious fanatics. How to distinguish between one man’s motivation and another’s conviction?
Sergeant Maracle developed the profiles of Kristen French and Terri Anderson and caught the next available flight to Quantico. Special Supervising Agent McCrary was waiting for him at the Washington airport on Thursday evening, April 30, 1992.
McCrary turned out to be a bankerly-looking fellow in a good suit. He had been with the FBI for twenty-four years, the last eight of which had been at the feet of profiHng guru, John Douglas. Douglas was the inspiration for the Jack Crawford character in TIte Silence of the Lambs. There was a picture in Douglas’s office of Douglas with Jonathan Denmie, the director of the movie, and the actor who played Douglas, Scott Glenn.
McCrary was being groomed to take over for Douglas, who was near retirement. Sergeant Maracle’s briefing about Mahaffy, French and Anderson was scheduled first thing the following morning. Included in the meeting would be McCrary, Agents Steven Mardigian, Jana Munroe, Larry Ankron, Bill Magmaier, and a female student just like the Silence of the Lamhs heroine, Clarisse Starling.
At 8:20 A.M. Maracle got a call from Staff Sergeant Steve MacLeod, who told him they had just found Kristen French’s body in a ditch along Sideroad One, only a few hundred yards from where Leslie Mahaffy had been buried in Burlington. The
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body was naked but intact; there was some kind of knife wound on the shoulder and her hair had been hacked off.
That day, the group of profilers concluded that the French and Mahafiy-killings were not related. The effort to which the perpetrator or perpetrators had seemingly gone to dispose of MahafR’ mitigated any connection. The proximity of the French body to the Mahaffy’ grave was coincidental.
There was possibly a connection between the Mahaffy and Anderson cases, particularly since Anderson’s body had not yet been found. With Mahaffy, the perpetrator had been foiled by the realities of cement. With Anderson, he obviously had found a better way.
As far as Kristen French was concerned, the profilers had been told what no one else knew—there were two offenders. The profilers said their ages likely ranged between tw^enty and thirrv’-five. One was dominant, the other docile—this was typical FBI-profile dogma, w^henever sex crimes involved more than one perpetrator.
Allegedly, Kristen French had been held for two weeks, which suggested the perpetrators were not living in a multiple-housing unit. They had to be living in a single-family dweUing, probably in a rural area, but possibly in a residential area.
The two offenders were profiled as males with low self-esteem; their behavior was characterized by very poor social and interpersonal skills, especially with women.
Neither was a pedophile, since all of the victims had been over twelve years old. They probably wanted adult females, but were unable to deal with them; victims who had just achieved puberty were less likely to put up resistance.
The low self-esteem bit was derived from the fact that there were two of them and that they had found it necessary to use a knife. They would be longtime friends. The docile one would find reasons to leave the area when the body was recovered, a move which would be totally out-of-character and potentially noticeable. Otherwise, the two were inseparable.
The dominant one would have a record of sexual assaults. This might not have been the first attempt at abduction; there
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might have been other failed attempts involving adult or elderly females, all motivated by sexual fantasy.
The weaker one was a follower. He had probably bonded with the victim and might have had nothing to do with the homicide. That idea was gleaned from the dressed knife wound. The docile perpetrator might also have had the task of looking after the victim.
There were three possible reasons the hair was cut: one, as a trophy; two, because the smell of a perm was repulsive to the offenders; or thirdly, in an effort to conceal the victim’s identity.
The perpetrators would be under a great deal of stress. Again, the profilers strongly recommended manipulating the media—using the anniversaries of the murdered girls’ deaths, memorials, victims rights’ protests—anything to attract the media’s attention and get stories on television or in the newspapers.
On Kristen’s upcoming sixteenth birthday, the FBI suggested the police plant human-interest stories with angles such as “Sweet Sixteen but No Prom, No Driver’s License, No Graduation, No More Anything Because of Untimely Death.” The family should do something at Kristen’s grave site on her birthday and her friends should do something at the site where her body was found.
The local poHce must cover the funeral home, the church and the cemetery, as killers often showed up out of guilt and remorse, or conversely out of curiosity, hunting souvenirs. The press would publicize the fact that many items had been left at the grave site. A hidden video camera at the grave would record any and all comings and goings over the following couple of weeks.
Even though the press had not been told there were two abductors, the FBI recommended that the police use the press to try and drive a wedge between the perpetrators.
The profilers gave Sergeant Maracle an example of what they meant: “The offender is dangerous, as he has killed once already and would not hesitate to kill again; if he has fears of being
caught by the authorities, the offender’s family and friends could be in grave danger.”
The whole idea was to get as much publicity as possible for the police point-of-view. The Green Ribbon Task Force followed the FBI’s advice. There was nothing like a bereaved mother to get the media’s attention.
It was a cloudy, overcast day. It had rained during the night. Sideroad One was a paved, unmarked, hilly, country road, bordered by a narrow gravel shoulder and ditches on both sides. It was a walkable distance east from the Guelph Line to the spot where Kristen’s body had been found by a scrap-metal picker.
On the north side, there was an open field and an orchard. Mature trees hned the road. Direcdy across the road from where Kristen’s body had been found, there was a ver^’ large estate surrounded by several acres of property. A fence bordered the entire propert^ On the south side of the road was dense forest and brush.
The scrap-metal picker had been out scavenging with his metal detector when he saw the body in the ditch, several feet below road level on the south side, away from the traveled portion. At first he did not know what it was, just that it was not a color anyone would expect to see in the brush.
He was in that area because he knew the place to be a garbage dump. There was garbage several feet from the body. Just to the west there was an elevation of earth that rose even with the roadway, where people pulled in and illegally dumped garbage. A footpath continued in a southerly direction and there were deep tire impressions in the mud. Direcdy south of the body there was a dense forest and to the east, in the brush, a narrow flowing stream of water, which gurgled through a culvert that drained under the road.
The body was nude, in a three-quarter-prone position, almost parallel to the road. The head was toward the west and the feet toward the east. Beneath the body there were branches and decaying and dried forest vegetation. To the left was a fallen log. Broken tree branches and forest vegetation were placed on top
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of the body in a halfhearted attempt to conceal it. The scrap-metal picker ran to the nearest house and called the pohce.
The body was slightly discolored and marked, probably by the vegetation and broken tree branches. There were signs of fly larva in the ears, vagina and anus. Dried blood had drained onto the upper Hp from the nose. There was purple discoloration under the fingernails. The right arm of the victim was beneath the body with the forearm and h
and extended to the left. The left arm was bent at the elbow, supported by the fallen log.
The scene was extensively videotaped and photographed by the police. The I-dent officers put the feet, hands and head in paper bags before the body was rolled into a body bag. The face appeared to be severely bruised and the lips were a deep purple-black color. Shghtly right of the chin, there was a horizontal bruise on the front of the neck.
Legions of police and media arrived. When Inspector Bevan saw that the tip of the baby finger of the left hand was missing, he knew it was Kristen French. He went directly to the Frenches’ and told them. The body was removed at 4:20 p.m.
Three and a half hours later a positive identification was made from fingerprints at the Ontario Provincial Police technical services branch building in Toronto. Several hairs and what appeared to be fibers were removed from the body.
The forensic pathologist. Dr. Noel McAuliffe, examined the body. Maggots were present in the vaginal and rectal areas. Having all seen Tlie Silence of the Lambs, the police started to debate forensic entomology to establish time of death, but one of the forensic pathologists quickly told them to forget it. Species of flies were unique to specific areas, but there was no database for the Niagara Region. These specimens would start one.
There was controversy about the time of Kristen’s death. One pathologist said she had been dead for some time—maybe as long as two weeks. The other, more diabolical scenario, was that she had just been killed—within the past twenty-four hours—meaning she had been held captive, repeatedly raped and tortured for as many as fifteen days. The most diabolical scenarios have the greatest cachet. Inspector Bevan told Mr. and
Mrs. French that their daughter had hkely been held captive for two weeks. In spite of a news blackout the inspector had imposed, that was the story the newspapers printed.
Sergeant Maracle phoned Dorothy Ahson, the New Jersey psychic, and told her they had found Kristen French’s body. Dorothy had known they would.
Invisible darkness : the strange case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka Page 25