Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer

by Bruce Henderson

  OTHER BOOKS BY BRUCE HENDERSON

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  Brought to you by KeVkRaY

  TRACE

  EVIDENCE

  THE HUNT FOR THE I-5 SERIAL KILLER

  BRUCE HENDERSON

  Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer

  Copyright © 1998, 2013 by Bruce Henderson

  eISBN: 978-0-9894675-0-6

  Published by: BruceHendersonBooks, Menlo Park, CA

  www.BruceHendersonBooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information, address Writers House LLC at 21 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10010.

  For legal reasons, some of the names in this book have been changed.

  To those highly trained men and women of law enforcement who are entrusted with the profound responsibility of investigating violent death.

  And to the loved ones of murder victims everywhere—they who, without ever forgetting, somehow find the strength and courage to go on.

  MAY JUSTICE BE SERVED.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dramatis Personae

  Epilogue

  Photo Insert

  Index

  About the Author

  Prologue

  JULY 1954

  CHULA VISTA, CALIFORNIA

  It was summertime at the beach.

  Palm trees swayed lazily in a steady sea breeze that kept the days balmy and the evenings cool in this San Diego suburb six miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border at Tijuana.

  After hanging some clothes out to dry, Esther Underwood, thirty-six, of 447 Casselman Street went in the house to iron. Around 4:30 P.M., she looked out the window and saw that some clothes had apparently blown off the line.

  She went outside. Reaching the clothesline, she stood dumbfounded—there were no clothes on the ground, yet garments were definitely missing. The clothespins that had held them in place were still properly spaced on the line.

  She looked around the yard but found nothing. Mentally inventorying the clothes still on the line, she realized that her orchid dress was gone, along with two bathing suits. Also, four pairs of nylon stockings.

  She hurried into the house and called the police.

  AFTER TAKING A report from the lady at 447 Casselman, patrolmen Don Morrison and Doug Gardner were driving past a nearby park on C Street when they were flagged down by a young girl.

  Judy Faureck, age nine, reported that while playing in the park about an hour earlier she had noticed a teenage boy on a green bike enter the park. He had caught her attention because he was riding with a cardboard box on his handlebars and a shovel under one arm. The boy had ridden to a gully next to the public rest rooms, where he parked his bike. Carrying the box and shovel, he crossed to the opposite bank and walked a short distance along the fence line. He then dug a hole adjacent to the fence, put the box inside, and covered it with dirt and leaves. The boy, whom the young witness described as being around fourteen or fifteen years old, about 5-foot-4, with short brown hair and wearing a white T-shirt and Levi’s, then rode off on his bike.

  The officers uncovered the box. Inside, they found the orchid dress and two bathing suits.

  The patrolmen contacted a workman they saw cleaning up around the American Legion Hall next to the park. Given the suspect’s description, custodian Jack Kearns remembered seeing him that day. Kearns didn’t know the boy’s name, but he had previously seen the kid in the park with a boy whose family he did know.

  The officers went to the address provided by the custodian. They described the suspect and his bike to the man who answered the door. The man said it sounded like his son’s friend who lived on Casselman.

  AT THE CHULA VISTA Police Department the next day, juvenile officer Leo J. Kelly read the report filed by the two patrolmen.

  The boy who lived on Casselman had admitted to burying the box in the park. While the fifteen year old denied to the patrol officers that he had stolen the clothes, the officers arrested him for petty theft and prowling. They transported him to the station house, where they made out a contact report. As was customary with juvenile cases, the boy was returned home and turned over to his parents, who were informed that the case would be referred to the department’s Juvenile Office for further investigation. The officers had then returned the items of clothing to their owner.

  The incident had been the latest in a series of thefts of women’s apparel from clotheslines in the same neighborhood. Any type of crime was such an unusual occurrence in this law-abiding town of seventy thousand residents with a police force that numbered only twenty-three officers that the series of clothesline capers had made the news columns of the Chula Vista Star.

  Kelly, a U.S. Navy Seabee during the war, was an imposing 6-foot-3 Irishman and father of six children—five of them boys. In his five years on the force there had been just one narcotics bust in town. Homicides and armed robberies were virtually unheard of. As far as juveniles went, it was usually pretty minor stuff. Truancy, some runaways, a few burglaries. One sixteen-year-old boy had been caught stealing pocket change from the school office and was sent to Juvenile Hall. When the boy got out, Kelly tried to get him into the Big Brother program but it didn’t happen. When the boy went to see if he still had his drugstore job, he found another kid working in his place. Three days later, the boy hanged himself. Kelly hadn’t been able to shake the tragedy. The juvenile officer with five sons of his own would never forget the boy who had needed help and understanding but found few adults with the time or inclination to give it to him.

  From his four years’ experience working Juvenile, he knew it would be advisable to confront the errant youngster about the stolen clothes as soon as possible.

  When Kelly pulled up in front of the residence at 545 Casselman Street, he saw it was one of those small, cookie-cutter stucco houses with slab floors built after the war that sold mostly to returning GIs for something under $10,000 with nothing down. They all had postage-stamp-size lawns, front and back. More than not, each block had at least one flagpole flying Old Glory.

  Kelly knocked on the door, and met the father, a recently retired Navy chief working for the post office. He was told the boy’s mother was at work. He asked to speak to the fifteen year old—the oldest of three brothers—alone in his bedroom.

  The boy sat at the foot of
his bed, head hung low. He was a good-looking all-American type, with a thin face and skin freckled from a summer under the sun.

  Kelly pulled up the only chair in the room. The juvenile officer had a deep, bass voice that filled a room, even when he spoke softly, as he did now.

  “I need to know what’s been going on, son.”

  When no answer was forthcoming, Kelly spoke some more in his fatherly yet firm manner, hoping to draw out this sullen boy who shyly made eye contact but remained mute.

  When the boy finally did start to talk, Kelly was not surprised that he stuttered. It fit.

  The boy confessed to stealing the clothes.

  In fact, he admitted much more. He had been taking women’s clothes off clotheslines in his neighborhood for the past year. He couldn’t say how many times in all but he estimated he had done it about once or twice a week. He usually ended up burying the clothes in the park or throwing them in trash cans.

  “Did you take only women’s clothes?” Kelly asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you steal anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Did you break into anyone’s house?”

  “No.”

  Not only was the boy monotone, but he was so emotionless that he seemed unmoved by his own confession, or even by the fact that a cop was questioning him in the sanctity of his room. That was strange, Kelly thought. Most kids cornered like this would be sweating bullets.

  When Kelly stood to go downstairs and talk to the father, the boy went to his closet. He removed a box from the overhead shelf.

  In an apparent act of contrition, he solemnly handed it over to the juvenile officer.

  LEO KELLY HAD recently received a framed “Good Neighbor Award” from the local Soroptimist Club for his work with juveniles. When he was so honored, Kelly had given a short talk, mentioning that he wanted to get counseling for disturbed kids instead of just shipping them off to Juvenile Hall, but that many families couldn’t afford professional services. Afterward, a woman whose husband was a local car dealer came forward.

  “Next time you come across a family that doesn’t have the money to send their child for counseling,” said the well-groomed woman, “I’ll pay for the first three visits.”

  In the boy who lived on Casselman, Kelly had an obvious candidate for help. All the warning signals were there, flashing brightly. By any measure, the boy’s family, headed by concerned, hardworking parents, seemed normal. Yet, one of their children obviously had severe problems. When Kelly had suggested counseling for their oldest boy, the parents had voiced concern over the cost.

  Kelly contacted the Good Samaritan. She asked him to find out how much it would cost. When Kelly called her back and told her three sessions with a highly recommended San Diego psychiatrist would be $270, the woman came right over to the station house and delivered it in cash.

  The boy’s parents took him to see the psychiatrist for the three sessions. When Kelly called the doctor to check on the boy’s progress, he was coolly informed that such information was confidential. Kelly hoped that the parents would see the value in the treatment and find a way to pick up the ball themselves. He later found out, however, that they didn’t.

  Kelly remained concerned that something more serious could develop in the future from the type of behavior exhibited by this somber fifteen-year-old boy. Left unchecked, Kelly knew, these disturbing tendencies could escalate. A youthful fantasy that hadn’t yet harmed anyone might one day become a frightful reality.

  The juvenile officer was haunted, and would be for years to come, by the contents of the box from the boy’s closet. On top he had found a pair of scissors, the long-handled kind with an angled cutting edge favored by medical personnel to cut bandages and adhesive tape. The boy’s mother, Kelly had learned, was an emergency room nurse at Chula Vista Hospital.

  Also inside were the most intimate articles of women’s apparel—panties, bras, garter belts, nylons.

  They had all been cut up.

  One

  JULY 1986

  SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

  Stephanie Marcia Brown woke with a start before midnight. Something had scared her, but as she lay motionless in the dark, she had no idea what.

  A loud, jarring knock on the front door was followed in quick succession by another.

  Stephanie was a vivacious soon-to-be twenty year old with many friends, some of whom occasionally kept late hours. She and a roommate her own age shared a two-bedroom duplex, and though the young women often went their separate ways, they understood. That was one benefit of not living at home.

  Tonight, however, Stephanie was alone. Her roommate, Patty Burrier, had a new boyfriend and was over at his place more often than not. In truth, Stephanie was a bit envious of all the time Patty was spending with her new boyfriend. Falling in love was much more fun than falling out of love.

  Stephanie flipped on the lights and went to the door. When she opened it, no one was there.

  That was strange. Who would knock at this hour and run away? Could it have been Randy? Maybe he’d changed his mind at the last minute about waking her? After living together for a few months, they had split up last winter. The emotional scenes so common in the beginning had seemed to run their course, and they got along okay now. Although she had been very hurt by his declaration that he wanted his “freedom,” she still cared for him. If they were ever to seriously get back together, she knew it could not be until he had gotten that out of his system.

  Stephanie went back to bed.

  Her close friends recognized that Stephanie had been moody lately. She was depressed over her fairly barren love life, and disgusted with herself for putting on weight. In the past few months she had added 15 pounds to her driver’s license weight of 135 pounds. A statuesque 5-foot-8, she had the height to carry it and turn heads in a bikini. But she felt heavy around the hips and hated the way her clothes fit. She had tried to establish an exercise and diet regimen but her good intentions were too often thwarted. This weekend, for instance, she planned to attend a Mountain Air rock concert at Angel’s Camp in the heart of California’s gold country with several friends. How could one not overindulge at a time like this?

  Stephanie had just drifted off when the phone rang. For the past few weeks she and Patty had been getting late-night obscene calls. If it was the heavy breather, she was prepared to give the lowlife a piece of her mind.

  But it was Patty calling from a pay phone. She and her boyfriend, Jim Frazier, had gone out in his roommate’s car, Patty explained, and now the car wouldn’t start. They couldn’t reach his roommate, and Jim, a late-night disc jockey, had to be at work soon. Would Stephanie come out and give them a lift to Jim’s place, where Patty could pick up her car?

  In spite of the late hour, Stephanie wouldn’t have dreamed of turning down such a plea. That was the kind of friend she was. Besides, she had experienced her share of car trouble, and had always been grateful for friends coming to the rescue.

  “We’re downtown in front of Pine Cove Liquors,” Patty explained.

  That meant nothing to Stephanie, as she lived and worked on the north side of Sacramento and seldom ventured downtown. So, Patty put Jim on the phone to give directions.

  “I get lost in a parking lot,” Stephanie warned.

  Jim gave her directions, and added reassuringly, “You’re only fifteen minutes away.”

  Stephanie put on shorts, a tank top, slipped into sandals, and grabbed her purse on the way to the door. She wanted to be done with this mercy mission as soon as possible so she could get back to sleep.

  It was Monday night and her alarm would be going off early so she could get to her $930-a-month teller job at Sacramento Savings and Loan by 8:30 A.M. sharp. On the job eight months, she prided herself on never having been late for work. Stephanie enjoyed her job and had big plans for her career. She hoped to promote to loan officer or branch manager one day. Stephanie, who came from a close-knit family with four girls ranging fr
om fifteen to twenty-four years of age, saw no reason why she couldn’t one day have it all: a good career, a loving husband, and children, too.

  Not the type who feared the dark, Stephanie stepped out the door at 6905 Centennial Way and strode quickly to her six-year-old yellow Dodge Colt hatchback parked in the driveway. The engine started without difficulty, testimony to the efforts of her handy neighbor who had worked on the car a few weeks earlier. With a rebuilt carburetor and new Montgomery Ward tires, Stephanie’s little car was in the best shape since she’d bought it—for $500 down and $80 a month—shortly after graduating from high school.

  As she backed out, she checked the fuel level—the needle pointed precariously close to E. She’d have to find an all-night gas station that took Visa because after looking in her wallet she realized that she didn’t have any cash. This was turning out to be one of those nights.

  It had started off quietly enough. After work, she had driven to her parents’ home on two acres in rural Loomis, 20 miles northeast of downtown Sacramento. After dinner, she spent the evening doing her laundry and visiting with her parents, Tom and Jo-Allyn, and younger sister, Michaela, fifteen, the only daughter still living at home. Her little sister sometimes needed a sisterly dose of advice or cheering up, which Stephanie was always happy to provide. After calling some friends and chatting for a while, she’d flown out of the house around 9:30 P.M. on the heels of her usual, breezy “I-love-you” farewell to her parents. Arriving at her place a half hour later, she’d put away her clothes, showered, and gone to bed.

  Stephanie drove into Elk Horn Union 76 on nearby Diablo Street. She normally pumped her own, and despite the lateness of the hour she pulled up to self-serve, as she was careful with her money. The self-serve pumps were locked, however. The attendant directed her to full-service, where he kindly pumped gas for her and charged the lower price.