The tow truck left with the Dodge Colt.
When the helicopter set down a few minutes later, kicking up a maelstrom of dust, Machen hopped aboard with his camera. After putting on a headset with microphone—it was impossible to yell over the loud whish-whishing of the rotator blades—he told the two deputies up front where he wanted to go. One of the pilots handed him the picture of Machen’s missing person.
They flew the route Machen figured the killer had most probably driven once he had the young woman in his car and under his control. The detective wasn’t exactly sure what he was hoping to find—maybe, nearby, some clothing belonging to Stephanie Brown, or even her missing purse along the road.
Encouraging the pilot to fly just as low as possible, Machen kept his nose pressed to the window.
They flew south on I-5 from the Hood Franklin off-ramp to the Highway 12 exit, a distance of 16 miles. Midway, they crossed the Sacramento–San Joaquin county line. They continued west on rural Highway 12 for a few miles, then turned around, as Machen did not know the precise location where the body had been found that morning.
Had he killed her down there, Machen wondered as he looked at the vast fields and interlocking irrigation ditches that lined both sides of Highway 12, or had he done it somewhere along the way?
Back at Hood Franklin, Machen found Pete Rosenquist and Vito Bertocchini waiting, along with several Sacramento deputies who had completed a canvass of the area—knocking on the doors of the surrounding farmhouses to find out if residents had seen or heard anything suspicious during the night. No one had.
The San Joaquin detectives pulled out a starkly lit Polaroid shot taken at the morgue two hours earlier before the postmortem had begun. Jane Doe lay naked on her back on a chrome table outfitted with countless drainage holes. Her eyes were shut; her pale lips parted slightly; her hair swept back off her forehead; her complexion clear; her arms at her sides. She was, in truth, a beautiful young woman. Other than the angry dark furrow in the flesh of her neck left by some type of ligature, she might have been sleeping peacefully before awakening to begin a new day.
Machen took out the snapshot of the very alive and smiling Stephanie Brown that her roommate had handed the patrol deputy that morning.
The three detectives looked hard at the side-by-side images, then at one another. Although they would still need a fingerprint comparison for positive identification, there was absolutely no denying it.
Jane Doe had a name now.
Two
At the postmortem earlier that afternoon on the as yet unidentified body, Vito Bertocchini had found himself in a disagreement with the pathologist before the procedure began.
The detective had simply asked the pathologist to conduct a “rape kit,” a routine collection process in cases involving possible sexual assault. The body’s orifices are swabbed and the specimens transferred onto glass slides to be examined by microscope at the crime lab.
“We don’t need that,” the pathologist announced.
Bertocchini looked at Rosenquist. The veteran detective had, an hour before, made a point to tell Bertocchini to be sure and have a rape kit done.
For many years, the only thing that could be determined from blood, saliva, and semen had been an assailant’s blood group. As there are only four human blood groups, such information could apply to any one of millions, or even billions, of people. Obviously, this had limited value to detectives hunting for a rapist or killer. Then, in the 1970s, scientists discovered elements in blood and body secretions that made it possible to match a sample to a much smaller number of people. Further advances since then have greatly perfected DNA analysis, or “genetic fingerprinting.” When DNA is extracted from the cells contained in blood and secretions like saliva and semen, it can now be linked to a specific individual. However, there are minimum requirements to conduct DNA work: the dead body needs to be fresh enough to provide biological specimens, and there has to be an adequate sample available for this intricate testing.
“We want to send samples to the crime lab,” the low-key Rosenquist matter-of-factly explained to the pathologist, whom the detective knew to be one of the best in the state.
“She was in the water,” the pathologist said. “Any semen that was in there has been washed away.”
Bertocchini was keenly aware that he was the new kid on the block in Homicide. He hated to start getting a reputation so soon. But dammit, this was his case, and given the circumstances of the crime, a rape kit was called for.
“Humor me,” said Bertocchini, his voice now in a don’t-fuck-with-me growl that had caused many a street punk to stop in his tracks. He’d had enough already.
The pathologist turned away momentarily, then went over to the foot of the gurney holding a short cotton-tipped swab that wasn’t as wide as a pencil. He pried open stiff legs.
“You’re not going to get a thing,” he muttered. “I don’t know why you guys even bother.”
The pathologist shoved the swab out of sight. Quickly withdrawing it, he told the detectives: “See, you got nothing.” Using clean swabs, the pathologist next swabbed her rectum, then her mouth, rubbing the cotton tip of each onto separate slides that would be sent to the crime lab along with the swabs.
Next, he combed out her light brown pubic hair—microscopic examination by the crime lab would determine whether her attacker had shed any of his own hair. The pathologist then made scrapings from beneath her fingernails, which would be studied under a microscope for blood and skin in the event she had scratched her attacker. Finally, he took a sample of hair from her scalp.
Bertocchini would not be surprised when the crime lab reported later that chemical tests indicated the presence of seminal fluid on the vaginal swab and a microscopic examination of that slide detected sperm cells. (No seminal fluid or sperm cells were found on the oral and rectal swabs or slides.) The lab reported that there was not enough semen present to conduct any genetic fingerprinting DNA tests. Bertocchini felt certain that had they been able to obtain a larger sample, they might well have ended up with more conclusive evidence. Of course, until they actually had a suspect, these findings meant very little.
Bertocchini and Rosenquist were at the autopsy that day because the postmortem examination is a vital evidentiary link for detectives in the beginning stage of any homicide investigation. Their main concern was recovery of any and all evidence. Exactly how their murder victim died was a key question. The answer could lead them to why she had been killed, and the ultimate question: by whom?
Experienced homicide investigators have different ways of getting through the macabre ordeal—inhaling the combined odors of formaldehyde and disinfectant and stale death that pervade a morgue; watching a human body be opened up like a ripe watermelon by scalpel, drill, electric saw, and other assorted hand tools; vital organs like the heart, kidneys, lungs, and brain examined, removed, weighed, and dissected. Some old-timers puff on cigars, bathing their smell and taste senses in strong smoke. The trick, most detectives agree, is to remain detached. The body on the table isn’t someone they know, and it isn’t even the human being it had once been. That person is gone.
For this—only his second autopsy as a homicide detective—Bertocchini kept notes, as it was his case. The distraction was a welcome one. Seeing a dead body was a strong argument to support the existence of a divine savior, he had already concluded. Without the spirit of life, a human body was just a piece of meat.
In his seven years working Homicide, Rosenquist had been present for more than a hundred autopsies. The only ones that got to him anymore were when the victim was a baby or young child. In such cases, the procedure was akin to cleaning a chicken.
During the autopsy of Jane Doe, Bertocchini took down his and Rosenquist’s observations, which were later typed up by a clerk and made part of the case journal, known euphemistically as the “Murder Book.” The pathologist turned in his own signed coroner’s report.
Before the body had been disrobed by a co
roner’s technician—the clothing would be bagged and labeled and sent to the crime lab—the detectives took another look at the twigs underneath the rear brassiere strap. The longest was about 5 inches, and it was centered under the bra. This was a big-busted young woman, and the bra was tight. In fact, once her bra was removed, a clear impression was left in her back by the twigs. Even if she had been dragged on her back—the trail of matted-down grass at the crime scene suggested that the body had been dragged to the ditch—it seemed unlikely that these long twigs could get so far under the strap. Besides, they had seen brush with these types of twigs and leaves growing down by the water in the ditch, but none up on top of the embankment. Had the killer placed these twigs under her bra as part of some weird ritual? Or had the bra been snapped together by his fumbling hands in the dark as his victim lay on the ground by the ditch, either dead or otherwise incapacitated, and in so doing did he catch the twigs accidentally inside the strap?
They had also noticed something funny about the way she was wearing her shorts. The waistband was turned inside, suggesting to the detectives that someone else had last pulled them up. Had the killer actually taken the time to dress his victim before dumping her body? If so, he had missed one article of clothing: her top. Had he hidden it? If so, why? Or had he taken it?
After the Polaroid shots of Jane Doe were taken, Bertocchini began his report with a detailed description of the victim. “Short blond hair. Brown eyes. One pierced hole in each earlobe. Moderate tan with white bikini-marked areas. On her upper chest her skin is peeling due to a sunburn. No jewelry.”
Meanwhile, the pathologist had opened a metal drawer and laid out an assortment of tools on an adjacent chrome table. He slipped on a headset with a small microphone at the mouthpiece, then turned on the tape recorder clipped to his belt.
Looking down at the dead body as if it were a familiar road map, he began. As he worked, he spoke into the recorder with the clinical cadence of someone who had done this hundreds of times before.
“The neck has a discontinuous horizontally oriented 1-inch bandlike abrasion. It is most noticeable in the left anterior neck but also present on the right anterior neck. On the posterior surface of the neck, the abrasion is seen to continue around the left side, where it’s quite definite. There’s a faint discontinuous extension around the right posterior side. The mark encircles the neck in a discontinuous fashion at the level of the cricothyroid junction.”
The detectives had noticed at the scene that the ligature marks around the neck were irregular, which seemed odd. When someone is strangled with a ligature, in most cases the red, ugly band extends uninterrupted all the way around the neck. It had been Rosenquist who ventured that perhaps something had gotten caught between the skin and garrote in those areas where the skin showed no ligature marks.
The pathologist offered no opinion on the matter, and moved on. “There are no fingernail scratch marks or other marks about the neck,” he recited. “On the tip of the chin there is a three-quarter-inch mottled abrasion.”
Bertocchini leaned in for a closer look. Medical double-talk aside, to the experienced street cop it looked as if the young woman had been slugged squarely on the jaw.
“On the top of the right shoulder at the acromioclavicular joint, there is a 3-inch cluster of three light purple bruises, faint.”
She’d been held tightly.
“On the right distal forearm near the ulnar styloid, there is a 1-inch group of horizontal scratch abrasions. Above this, there is a faint 1-inch pink bruise.”
These scratches and bruises on her right wrist looked as if she’d been bound.
“On the knees, just above each kneecap, there are brush abrasions measuring an inch and a quarter on the right, 2 inches on the left. Along the left anterior thigh there are faint vertically oriented parallel scratch abrasions. There is also a suggestion of scratch marks oriented vertically on the anterior right thigh. On the medial left thigh, just below midlevel, there is a resolving 1½-inch green-brown bruise with a central area of pallor. Above the right knee on the lower anterior thigh, there is a 1¼-inch pink-brown bruise.”
Bertocchini was trying to put some of the scattered pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. She had been bound, punched, and roughly grabbed. She’d been made to kneel, long and hard enough to leave bruises on her knees, and perhaps forced to lie on the ground face first, as all the scratches and bruises were on the front of her. When her attacker was finished doing all the terrible things he did, he tightened the ligature around her neck—probably from behind—until she could no longer breathe. Her death had not been painless or quick.
“On the knees just below the kneecaps, there are irregular postmortem pressure marks …”
Marks left after death. Bertocchini could picture it: The killer had a dead body he wanted to stash so he held her by the legs, under the knees, and dragged her on her back down the steep embankment.
The pathologist removed a fresh blade from a silver packet on the small adjacent table and snapped it onto a scalpel handle. It was time to go internal.
From a point above each breast, he made the traditional opening incision, which met at the sternum and sliced downward to the pubis. The large cut formed a perfect Y. He then carved through the fatty tissue that still held the incision together, not with the delicate, deliberate touch of a surgeon, but with the sure-handedness of a butcher dressing a side of beef.
The rib cage was opened with oversized pruning shears, amid loud snapping and cracking noises. In less than a minute, it was cut free and placed intact at the foot of the gurney. After the autopsy, it would be placed back in the body, which at that point would look more like a hand-carved canoe than a human being. The body would then be sewn up before being released to the family for funeral services.
The pathologist examined the various internal organs, finding them normal and free of any disease. He also cut open the throat and removed the neck organs as a block, then carefully dissected them in layers.
“There are several half-inch to three-quarter-inch glistening purple-black hemorrhages in the strap musculature in the supraclavicular area,” he droned on with both precision and detachment. “There is also hemorrhage in the strap musculature over the left lower thyroid area. There are also multiple glistening purple-black hemorrhages in the retro-esophageal area.”
When he had finished, the pathologist pulled off his rubber gloves and turned to the sink. “Your cause of death is asphyxia with evidence of ligature strangulation,” he told the detectives as he washed. He sounded more conversational now that the tape recorder was off. “I didn’t find any gross signs of rape. No tears or bruising in the vagina or anus.”
“What’s your opinion on the time of death?” Rosenquist wanted to know. That was, he knew, one of the weakest areas of forensic medicine because there are so many variables. The rule of thumb was to figure a drop in the body’s normal temperature of about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit per hour after death. That could vary, however, depending on the surrounding environment. In this case, the body had been partly submerged in water, which could have drawn out the warmth much quicker.
“I’d estimate she died sometime between late last night and early this A.M.,” said the pathologist.
That was as close as they would get.
BERTOCCHINI and Rosenquist interviewed Stephanie’s roommate at 8:30 P.M. that night at the faded-brown duplex with a postage-stamp front lawn that the two young women shared on Centennial Way.
At the time, the detectives were still waiting on positive identification of the body. They did, however, tell Patty Burrier that Stephanie’s car had been found on I-5 south of Sacramento, and also that they had strong reason to believe that her body had been found at another location some distance away.
“We think she got lost,” Rosenquist explained, “and was abducted, then murdered.”
The color drained from Patty’s face.
“I know you’ve already been interviewed at length about wha
t happened last night,” Bertocchini said sympathetically, “but please start from the beginning.”
Although she looked shaken and exhausted, Patty recounted the details of the previous evening.
When she was finished, Bertocchini asked if Stephanie was carrying a purse when Patty last saw her.
“I don’t remember. But I know she always took it whenever she went out.”
Bertocchini asked Patty to describe what Stephanie had been wearing when she had last seen her. It all checked out with what Jane Doe had been wearing, with the exception of the missing top.
“You say it was a blue top,” the detective said. “Can you give me some more detail?”
“It’s a sleeveless tank top with a flower design on front,” she said, pointing to just below her neckline. “With lacy edges.”
“Did Stephanie have a current boyfriend?”
“She doesn’t have a steady boyfriend,” said Patty, who seemed unwilling or unable to talk about her roommate in the past tense. “She used to go with a guy named Randy. I have his phone number if you want.”
Bertocchini took the number.
“How long did they date?” he asked.
“About a year and a half. They lived together a few months before Stephanie and I got this place.”
“They were still on friendly terms?”
“Oh, yes. They’re friendly.”
The phone rang and Patty answered it.
“It’s for you guys.”
Rosenquist went to the phone. After a brief conversation, he hung up and said solemnly, “The prints match.”
Bertocchini nodded, and closed his notebook. They would need to notify the parents right away.
“Before we go,” Bertocchini said, “I want to ask you something, Patty. What do you think Stephanie would have done if she had been confronted by a stranger or found herself in a dangerous situation?”
Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer Page 4