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

by Bruce Henderson

  A few days later, Jo-Allyn Brown called Bertocchini and asked for directions to the crime scene, explaining that she and her husband wanted to see where their daughter had been found. “We just want to be in the last place she was. Somehow, we think it will help.”

  “Please don’t go by yourselves,” cautioned Bertocchini, who could only imagine how difficult the trip would be for the bereaved parents. “If you’ll give me a couple of days, I’ll take you myself.”

  That Saturday, he took the Browns where they wanted to go. They drove the route from where Stephanie’s car was found on I-5 to the ditch off Highway 12. Her mother commented ominously on what a long ride it was. “I hope she was already unconscious,” added Stephanie’s father.

  Bertocchini hadn’t the heart to tell them.

  THE WEEK after Stephanie’s murder, the detectives were ready to turn over her Dodge Colt to her parents. The entire vehicle had been dusted inside and out for latent fingerprints. Unfortunately, the only ones found belonged to Stephanie.

  Rosenquist drove the Colt, with Bertocchini following. At one point, Bertocchini had to stop for gas, but Stephanie’s car had plenty.

  They had found in the car a credit slip for a Sacramento Union 76 station. It was dated the night of Stephanie’s disappearance. The next day, they measured the distance from the gas station to where her car had been found. It was 31.2 miles. The trip odometer on Stephanie’s car, when it was found deserted on I-5, had read 31.3. Obviously, she had reset it when she bought gas that night.

  During the thirty-minute drive to Loomis, Rosenquist noted that the Colt’s temperature and oil pressure were within normal range. As they neared their destination, Rosenquist braked the vehicle hard several times to see if it would stall during an emergency stop, but the engine purred right along.

  When they arrived, the detectives asked Jo-Allyn Brown to come outside and take a look at the car. At the crime lab, it had been discovered that the armrest and a metal shield that fit in behind the door handle on the passenger’s side were lying on the floorboard.

  “Do you know if the armrest might have fallen off or been removed at any point?” Rosenquist asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” said Stephanie’s mother. She explained that her daughter had been proud of her little car and always took good care of it.

  The broken armrest conjured up another image for the two detectives: Stephanie, who by all accounts would not have gone meekly with her abductor, struggling with someone intent on pulling her from the driver’s side of the vehicle, and her desperately reaching in the opposite direction for something to hang on to.

  Like the armrest.

  LT. RAY BIONDI had a strong intuition that Stephanie Brown had been abducted and murdered by a serial killer. He had no real proof, just a nagging hunch wrought from long experience in such sordid matters.

  As commander of Sacramento County’s Homicide Bureau for a decade, Biondi had been involved in and directed more than 400 murder investigations. The majority were what cops call “smoking-gun” cases, where there is an abundance of incriminating evidence. In these cases, the killer is usually a “novice” and often someone the victim knew—a spouse, a lover, a relative, a business associate—and is quickly identified. In other cases—known in the homicide trade as “whodunits”—the killer is not so easy to find. Solving these Sherlock Holmes–type cases required skill, dedication, and perseverance on the part of the detectives assigned to them.

  Serial killers, who actually enjoy making people suffer and die, represented the biggest challenge of all. And while murder is murder, their victims usually died in the most horrifying ways. Biondi had often found law enforcement to be ineffectual in stopping serial killers, in large part because of a failure either to recognize or accept that a string of seemingly unconnected killings have a common denominator. Instead of focusing on a single killer, investigators tended to scatter in divergent directions. An unsolved murder series has all the confounding aspects of any whodunit with the added urgency of a race against time: until solved the killing would continue.

  Serial killers differ from common, garden-variety murderers—they kill not for money or revenge or in the heat of an argument, but randomly, and for far darker reasons known only to themselves. They have no remorse, and can be highly organized. They are hard to catch, difficult to convict, and almost impossible to comprehend. Their crimes may or may not be about sex, but they’re almost always about power and control. No one can know when or where they’ll hit next, or whom they’ll serve up as their next victim.

  During his career, Biondi had earned a reputation as one of the country’s most respected experts on serial murders. He had helped capture and convict more than his share of serial killers, among them: Richard Chase, the “Vampire Killer,” who in less than a month (in 1978) murdered and eviscerated four adults, a youngster, and an infant; Gerald Gallego, a second-generation killer (his father had been executed by the State of Mississippi in 1954), who raped, tortured, and killed at least six teenage girls, three young women, and one young man in California, Nevada, and Oregon (1978–80); Marty Trillo, a gardener who broke into the homes of elderly women in broad daylight and raped and killed several victims (1978–80); and Jon Dunkle, who killed one teenager and two young boys in northern California (1981–85).

  Biondi understood how difficult it was to explain fully why a serial killer does what he does (almost all serial killers are, in fact, men). The rational mind views such crimes as senseless and motiveless. They make a kind of sense to the killer, to whom alone the act has meaning. To the rest of us they seem maddeningly arbitrary. Even when a serial killer is apprehended and the case solved, police and the relatives of victims are often left wondering why it happened. Biondi was convinced that a serial killer wasn’t made overnight or, for that matter, born to his calling. In some instances, something very negative has happened in the perpetrator’s life at a crucial age, then festered inside for a long time until it implodes and starts him killing. No matter what unresolved emotions and unfulfilled fantasies bring him to that moment, after the first time he finds it easier to do again. And he usually keeps getting better and better at killing.

  True, in Stephanie Brown, police had just one dead young woman, not two or three. Yet, Biondi had little doubt that she had been a random victim, and her abduction and murder a stranger-on-stranger crime. A random victim of opportunity is usually targeted by someone who kills more than once. For these reasons, Biondi was already very much thinking series rather than one isolated, stand-alone killing.

  Stephanie Brown’s body had been discovered almost immediately, despite the fact that it had been partially submerged in the deep ditch bordered by heavy undergrowth located off a dead-end dirt road. Logically, she should not have been found for some time, which the killer no doubt counted on. Fate had intervened in the form of the fisherman looking for crawdads. The missing persons report had just been filed and was already being investigated, and also, the jurisdiction with the Jane Doe happened to telephone the law enforcement agency that had the “right” missing person. The match had been made quickly. In Biondi’s judgment, they had gotten lucky with this one. Given the killer’s modus operandi, Biondi wondered how many of the dozens of unsolved homicides involving young females in the area this guy might be responsible for.

  As Stephanie Brown had been a Sacramento County missing person and a San Joaquin County murder victim, either county could have legally assumed jurisdiction in the case. Biondi brought this up when Vito Bertocchini and Pete Rosenquist came to his office.

  “I don’t want you guys to ever say we were quick to unload a case on you,” Biondi said lightheartedly.

  Rosenquist shrugged. “You’ve got the missing persons report, the car, and the abduction. But we’ve got the body.”

  Characteristically, Bertocchini spoke with more intensity. “We did the crime scene and the autopsy. This is our case, Ray.”

  Biondi agreed, even though there was a
strong possibility that a serial killer was stalking the roads of his jurisdiction. He was impressed with the two San Joaquin detectives; they seemed capable and were taking it very seriously, as working homicide detectives are inclined to do. Biondi could only hope that they would get the support they needed in terms of man-hours and other resources from their bosses. Biondi pledged to assist the San Joaquin detectives in any way possible.

  As usual in the beginning stages of a homicide investigation, there were a multitude of facts and pieces of information to sift through; they were looking for pertinent leads while eliminating the worthless ones. It took old-fashioned legwork, and a lot of it.

  Take the loud knock at the door of Stephanie’s Sacramento home the night she was killed, as reported by her roommate. Had it meant anything? Probably not, detectives had concluded. Door-to-door interviews with neighbors had not resulted in any reports of suspicious persons lurking about. Moreover, if someone had been waiting outside to harm her, he likely would have attacked her when she stepped out the door, alone and in the dark, rather than follow her vehicle around town, striking only after she had become lost on the highway.

  There were also the obscene phone calls that Stephanie and her roommate had been receiving for some weeks. The caller was male, and Patty Burrier reported that he knew her name (but apparently not Stephanie’s). This wasn’t so ominous given that they had a listed phone number in Patty’s name. Also, it was a mighty big jump from obscene caller to kidnapper-rapist-killer. To the detectives, it seemed highly unlikely that these calls, disturbing as they had been for the young women, had any connection to the murder.

  Detectives also uncovered a burglary report that had been filed by Stephanie five months earlier. Arriving home shortly after 8:00 P.M., she had heard noises in the back of the house. When she walked into her bedroom, she found that someone had pried open a window. The burglar had fled. Although no property was missing, the television had been unplugged and pulled away from the wall. There was nothing to suggest, however, that this aborted burglary had anything to do with her murder.

  Biondi remained convinced that Stephanie’s abduction had been carried out by someone unknown to her who happened upon a victim of opportunity. He found Bertocchini and Rosenquist in complete agreement.

  Based on the facts of the case and what he had learned about the condition of the crime scene, Biondi speculated that they were looking for a serial killer who was at least in his thirties (most were). He was patient rather than impulsive, and experienced. Biondi assigned the killer these attributes due to the fact that the crime scene had been amazingly devoid of any incriminating evidence. Clearly, he was a hands-on killer (strangulation), as are most serial killers, with NewYork’s “Son of Sam” the notable exception.

  Biondi believed that the killer had killed before and was looking to do it again. He was a cool customer, and he knew how to cover his tracks. He had to be a consummate prowler, driving long stretches of road late at night, searching for the right situation and victim. He had found her in Stephanie Brown, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her killer had no doubt developed a taste for all of it—the adventure, the manipulation, the craving to act out his fantasies, and the ultimate power he felt in deciding when someone would die by his hands. Chances were very good he would not stop on his own.

  A press bulletin released by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department urgently requested that residents—particularly individuals who had traveled I-5 on the night Stephanie was abducted—contact either Sacramento or San Joaquin investigators if they had any information concerning the Brown case. But detectives did not wait for the phone to ring.

  In an unusual joint operation by both sheriff departments, with the assistance of the state road department and the California Highway Patrol, a roadblock went up on Interstate 5 at the Hood Franklin off-ramp at midnight on July 29, 1986.

  The idea was to stop and talk to motorists on the same day of the week and at approximately the same hour that Stephanie Brown had been abducted two weeks earlier. Had a truck driver or late-night commuter who traveled the route regularly seen anything suspicious that night? Had anyone seen the young woman sitting in or standing next to her car? Or a second vehicle? Or another person? Could their memories be jogged by the right questions?

  Interstate 5, it has been written, is “a Mississippi without romance.” Cutting a direct swath through the flattest and most vapid portions of the otherwise picturesque Golden State, the highway carries 10 million travelers a year along its 853 miles of California roadway. Yet, it is undeniably the quickest route from one end of the state to the other—from the warm beaches of the south through the vast agricultural heartland to the rainswept north.

  Within days of Stephanie Brown’s murder, Vito Bertocchini had phoned Biondi with the idea of an I-5 roadblock to conduct a “witness canvass.” It was a long shot in terms of coming up with any eyewitnesses, Biondi figured. But he saw it as an opportunity to advertise the case further through the media in the hope that the publicity might generate some new leads in a case that he sensed was in imminent danger of reaching a dead end. The randomness of the terrible crime and the likelihood that Stephanie had been killed by a complete stranger meant there was no link between her and her killer for detectives to uncover, no matter how hard they worked.

  The logistics of northern California’s second freeway roadblock—the first, some 30 miles northwest of Sacramento, had gone up a decade earlier to find the fugitive killers of two California highway patrolmen—had fallen to Biondi because Hood Franklin was in his county. He had tried to set it up in time for the one-week anniversary of the crime, but the state road department had balked. It would take days to move into the area the equipment and personnel required to pinch off the state’s major north-south arterial. The volume of traffic, even at that late hour, would be heavy.

  It was clear at midnight on July 29, and cooler than it had been the night Stephanie was killed. A stiff Delta breeze whipped the jackets of the nearly two dozen lawmen who had gathered.

  Bertocchini and Pete Rosenquist had shown up with several other San Joaquin detectives. From one of their cars they unloaded a large stainless steel urn filled with hot coffee brewed at their jail. As the road crews were finishing up, the first thing everyone else did, cops being cops, was to grab a cup.

  When the roadblock was finally activated, motorists were met with more than a mile of lighted cones and several large trailers with flashing arrows—enough wattage to light a major runway and bring in a 727. Beyond that, flashing red-and-blue police car lights winked angrily astride the broad freeway.

  Biondi was there with his crew of detectives. Standing on the hard, asphalt surface of southbound I-5’s right lane, he hoped very much that the drivers behind the line of headlights coming their way would obey the lights and temporary “One Lane Ahead,” “Merge Right,” and “Stop Ahead” signs. Normally, this was no place for anyone without a death wish to be loitering, flashlight and notebook in hand.

  Among the first to be stopped were a station wagon from Los Angeles packed with a family headed for an Oregon camping vacation, a semi out of Fresno loaded with tomatoes, and another 18-wheeler sagging with lumber. They kept coming, despite the lateness of the hour, at a clip of two to three vehicles a minute.

  “Do you travel this road regularly on Monday nights or Tuesday mornings?” drivers were asked. “Were you driving along here two weeks ago at this time?”

  If they answered no, they were motioned on, although not before their license numbers were noted.

  If they answered in the affirmative to either question, they were directed to a second area off to the shoulder of the highway where another group of detectives was waiting to question them more carefully.

  At one point, the CHP officers up the line began hollering and waving their flashlights.

  “Incoming!” someone yelled.

  A car containing two elderly ladies had whizzed through the mile of
flashing lights and signs without slowing down at all. At the last possible moment, the driver noticed a truck stopped in front of her and slammed on the brakes. The brakes locked up, and the car skidded for the last 200 feet through the slow lane before coming to a stop, sideways, some 10 feet short of the rear of the big rig.

  By then, there wasn’t a detective in sight. They’d all bailed from their positions, scattering like fallen bowling pins to the road’s shoulder. There was a lot of loud grumbling after that about how anyone in their right mind would want to be a highway patrolman.

  The roadblock was covered by the television and print press, which had been tipped off earlier in the day with the caution not to release advance notice to the public. In a roadside interview that night, Biondi called the canvass a “valuable exercise that may help to develop more information on a viable suspect.”

  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

  In all, 296 vehicles were stopped between midnight and 2:00 A.M., when the roadblock was shut down.

  The resultant publicity led to dozens of phone calls from local residents over the next several days. No one interviewed by police, however, reported seeing the young woman or her abductor on I-5 that night.

  On August 4, not quite a week after the roadblock, Bertocchini and Rosenquist went back to the ditch that they had gotten to know so well. They hoped that another search might turn up more evidence.

  The detectives would like to have drained the ditch, but that proved impractical with the continuous irrigation going on until harvest, still two months away. So, they returned with Bertocchini’s chest waders and, this time, a pole with a large magnet secured on the end. The water depth was the same as it had been every other visit to the scene: about three feet.

  In the area where he’d found Stephanie’s tank top, Bertocchini soon pulled up a pair of muddy scissors caught by the magnet. Wiping them off, he could clearly read “Primstyle, chrome plated.” They were about 8 inches long overall, with 3-inch cutting blades. They didn’t have a spot of rust on them.