Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind

by Hazelwood, Roy

  Brian Goetz, one of the resident advisers at Langford Hall, was another of Brett Byers’s longtime friends. Goetz testified that he was surprised to learn from Byers of the stereo theft. Goetz didn’t think Byers was capable of an act of this nature.

  He told the court Byers said that he felt guilty about taking the stereo but couldn’t give it back because he had sold it.

  The night of the murders, Byers came home from work with a magnum of German wine, which he had with him at nine o’clock when he visited his friends, James Hesterberg and Jeff Nygard, in their room, 327. He offered the bottle around, but neither Hesterberg, Nygard, nor a fourth student in the room, Scott Strobel, was drinking that night. So Byers drank the wine by himself.

  The friends listened to music, played computer games, and watched television together. According to Strobel, around midnight they moved the gathering to his room. Around one, Hesterberg and Nygard left. Byers, who by now had finished the wine, was visibly drunk.

  He and Strobel started playing low-stakes blackjack. Byers lost about three dollars over the next hour. Near two, he suddenly offered to bet his truck against a penny. Scott Strobel wanted nothing to do with the bet.

  “I was very reluctant,” he testified. “In his condition, he would have given me the keys, and I didn’t want to take them.” Instead, Strobel asked Byers to leave, explaining that he needed to get some schoolwork done. Byers rose, said, “Good night,” and departed.

  “He was real passive,” Strobel explained in court. “He was drunk when he left. He was staggering slightly.”

  Scott Strobel assumed his friend was headed for bed.

  Instead, Brett Byers headed for the parking lot to move his truck from a restricted area so that he wouldn’t get a ticket. As he later recounted to Dr. William D. Stratford, the pickup fishtailed as he hit the gas and swung into a black truck parked nearby.

  This incident sent Brett Byers over the edge.

  As Dr. Stratford would testify, he grabbed his sawed-off Marlin out of the pickup, walked over to the black truck with it, and smashed the driver’s side window. From there Byers headed on foot for Langford Hall. On the way, he used the shotgun to break out the passenger window on a white truck. Then he entered the dormitory, walked down to room 130, and murdered Brian Boeder and James Clevenger.

  I don’t believe there was any practical way this double murder could have been anticipated or prevented.

  In my report and testimony, I classified the crime as a revenge murder, as defined in the Crime Classification Manual to which I was a contributing author. Revengemotivated murderers kill in retaliation for a wrong, real or imagined, committed against themselves or someone close to them. This killer may stalk an intended victim for years or may act out spontaneously, as I believe Brett Byers did.

  Here is a list of factors commonly seen in revenge killings, taken directly from the manual and compared against the facts of the Boeder-Clevenger slayings.

  A significant event links the offender and the victims(s).

  Brett’s truck had been the target of numerous acts of vandalism. He erroneously believed that Brian Boeder was responsible for the damage. Recall that he also went to Boeder’s room and stole the stereo.

  The revenge motive that grows out of this event may be unknown to the victim or to the victim’s family or friends.

  Students and officers responding to the shotgun blasts reported that neither Byers nor Clevenger was aware of why they had been attacked, even though they both had seen and physically described their attacker.

  This element of secrecy is a major reason why revenge murders are so difficult to prevent. Prospective victims, unaware of their potential peril, can do nothing to avert it or to protect themselves.

  Multiple victims may be involved.

  Byers went to Boeder’s room unaware that James Clevenger also would be there. In revenge-motivated killings, it is not uncommon for innocent parties to be killed if they are present when the intended target is attacked. For this reason, children or other relatives or visitors are often killed in domestic murders.

  The precipitating event and the killing that follows often occur in separate locations.

  In this case, the precipitating events (truck vandalism) occurred in the campus parking areas. The murders occurred in Room 130 of Langford Hall.

  A so-called “mission-oriented” killer may have no criminal background.

  Byers clearly didn’t.

  The offender is apt to be in a highly charged emotional state at the time of the killing.

  Byers was extremely agitated. His truck repeatedly had been vandalized, and he believed he knew the individual responsible. He feared that he might soon lose his driving privileges due to traffic tickets and bad grades. He chronically gambled and lost. He was drunk the night of the offense. He offered to bet his truck against one penny. He went out in the rain to move his pickup to a legal parking position. In the process, he damaged his most prized possession, the truck.

  As further evidence of his irrational frame of mind, his crime carried a high risk of detection, and he left evidence (the shotgun and expended shells) linking himself to the crime scene.

  The crime may exhibit a clear shift from organized to disorganized behavior, possibly manifested by a skillful approach to the crime scene and then a blitzstyle of attack followed by a rapid exit.

  Byers entered the dormitory at a time when most residents were in their rooms, asleep or studying. No one realized he was about to kill his “enemy.” After being invited to come in, he entered the room firing the shotgun. That was disorganized. Though armed with a lethal weapon, he didn’t control the victims; they physically attacked him. He also left physical evidence in the room and encountered an acquaintance on the way to his truck.

  Because vengeance is the point of a revengemotivated murder, the killer often gives no thought to an escape plan.

  Brett Byers clearly had not thought beyond the killings. Earlier in the evening he had very nearly gambled away his only means of transportation. After the murders he departed MSU in his truck with no obvious plan to hide out or avoid detection. He apparently was headed for his hometown when he was observed, pursued, and captured.

  The murder weapon is most often a weapon of choice brought to the scene. It may be left there.

  From all accounts, the sawed-off Marlin was Byers’s second most prized possession after his truck. Yet he left the shotgun at the murder scene, where his victims knocked it from his hands. This haste and poor planning are indicative of disorganized behavior.

  The revenge-motivated homicide often is opportunistic and spontaneous.

  I have no question that this was an impulsive crime. Byers’s behavior belied nothing out of the ordinary that evening. He seemed the same as usual to everyone. It seems clear that the idea to kill Brian Boeder came to him after he damaged his truck. Something snapped.

  There is no evidence of premeditation. All he seemed to have on his mind was the intended victim, the location, and the means, which required no reflection at all. He had no plan for escape and/or a location to “hide out” following the crime. Also, he left the weapon at the scene and was observed by at least two acquaintances departing the vicinity of the crime scene.

  The killing commonly is committed at close range and is confrontational.

  Byers walked in, pointed the shotgun, and started shooting.

  The offender derives satisfaction at rendering “justice.”

  Following the murder, Byers was observed by two dormitory residents. “Tim,” he said to one of them, “call the police. There’s been a murder.” Neither witness reported that he was distraught. I believe his lack of appropriate concern reflects Byers’s sense that he was justified in killing the two victims. When he was arrested, he did not first ask how Clevenger and Boeder were but if his truck was damaged.

  After the homicide, the offender often feels relief. Mission accomplished. He may stay at the scene or make no attempt to conceal himself o
r his identity.

  While Byers did not remain at the scene, he made no apparent effort to avoid being observed. Two witnesses positively identified him in the hallway; he spoke to one of them.

  The precipitating event is the key to understanding revenge-motivated murder. However, it may hold significance only to the offender.

  As previously noted, neither victim understood why he had been attacked. Friends and acquaintances of Byers couldn’t believe that he had committed murder.

  Ken Baker, an old friend and partner in the Academy Group, testified that in his opinion the untrained eye could not have detected behavioral indicators that Brett Byers was about to commit a homicide. No one claimed that they had. Also in Ken’s opinion, Byers himself did not know he was going to commit murder until minutes before he did so.

  I testified that I did not believe these murders would have been prevented by more stringent security measures unless they included armed guards and metal detectors at all dormitory entrances twenty-four hours a day. Even that would have been no guarantee of safety.

  Brett Byers was a legitimate resident of Langford Hall dormitory with authorized access to the building. Had the doors been locked or “card accessed” that night, Byers would still have gotten inside. If the building had security guards, they would have admitted him. Because the murder weapon was compact, he could have easily hidden it within a container or otherwise gotten it past security. As for metal detectors, Byers had a first-floor room. He could have tossed the shotgun through his window, just as he talked of flipping his homemade bomb through a window.

  If weapons were not allowed on campus (they were), he still could have concealed the weapon in his truck, as was the case.

  Psychological testing might have identified Byers’s potential for endangering others; but with no history of committing violence, tests alone would not have been sufficient to deny him enrollment at MSU and probably would be unconstitutional anyway.

  The survivors’ lawsuits were argued in front of a jury in Helena for seven full days in June 1995. After ten hours of deliberation, the jurors voted unanimously that Montana State University bore no responsibility in the murders.

  Afterward, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys approached me outside the courtroom, offered his hand, and said that although the verdict was a disappointment, he believed that Ken and I had given honest testimony and that he respected our point of view.

  I deeply appreciated the gesture and told him so.

  15

  A Complete Killer

  Christine Burgerhof was a secretive young woman. Her parents believed their married daughter was a receptionist at a local school for the deaf. But when Christine was brutally murdered in early April 1996, their pain at her sudden, violent death was compounded by the surprise discovery that twenty-four-year-old Christine had been working in a massage parlor.

  Henry and Donna Negvesky were thunderstruck. They told investigators they could not believe that Bob, Christine’s husband of nearly two years, would allow his wife to work in such a place. But that was just the beginning.

  The discovery that Christine was a prostitute was the first of many surprises this case held for her family, the investigators, and me.

  Christine’s body was discovered in the late morning of Saturday, April 6, 1996, in a Scranton, Pennsylvania, warehouse district parking lot. She had been positioned on her back at the rear of the facility, between an FBZ Company tractor-trailer and a red Dumpster. Her head was turned left and faced the trash container; her feet pointed toward the rear of the truck.

  She was naked except for her gold hoop earrings and the gold wristwatch on her left arm. Both arms were placed at her sides, palms down, and her legs were slightly parted. Her auburn hair had been carefully fanned out over the pitted asphalt.

  Whoever had killed Christine had done so in a burst of fury.

  At the autopsy, Dr. Gary Ross, a forensic pathologist, noted multiple assault marks around the victim’s neck. Her face had suffered a severe battering as well. Her left eye was black and blue, and her cheeks were swollen. She had suffered numerous abrasions and contusions on her body.

  Dr. Ross listed the cause of death as asphyxia due to manual and ligature strangulation. However, he found no apparent defensive wounds. Christine was having her menstrual period, but her tampon was undisturbed. She had several superficial tears around her anus, but lab tests revealed no trace of seminal fluid anywhere.

  So far, there was little to go on.

  The investigation quickly led detectives to the place where Christine worked. The Reflex Center was a four-room enterprise on State Street in the little town of Clark Summit, about five miles from the parking lot where Burgerhof’s killer had deposited her body. Within twenty-four hours of her murder, coworkers and clients were telling police what they could about Christine and her chosen profession.

  The employees said that a basic massage at the Reflex Center cost fifty dollars. For another forty dollars the girls took off their tops and would masturbate the customer. For an additional sixty dollars they would take off all their clothes and allow the client to fondle them.

  Christine was among the more popular of the Reflex Center’s regular workers, and records showed that in the month prior to her murder, she had serviced thirty-six customers. She also made house calls and sometimes worked in nearby Wilkes-Barre, where her customers knew her as Crystal. The work was lucrative. Christine made approximately one hundred thousand dollars in the two years she worked at the Reflex Center.

  Ron,* one of her steady customers, never learned her last name, but described her as “shy, timid, not a slut.” He said he became friends with Christine, and sometimes she would come by his house for their sessions. Ron said she had rebuffed his attempts at kindling a romance between them, and that they never engaged in intercourse. As far as investigators could determine, Christine restricted full sexual contact to just two of her paying companions, and neither was a suspect in her homicide.

  Susan, a coworker, said Christine didn’t smoke or drink, that she was a very cautious and evasive person, and was sometimes difficult to get along with. Susan said Christine played “head games” and described her as being “paranoid.” Another of Christine’s coworkers reported that Christine was jealous of her and was intentionally trying to get her fat by leaving cookies and chocolates lying around the Reflex Center.

  According to Susan, Christine claimed she was being stalked in the weeks just prior to her murder. Someone was leaving flowers for her at the shop, at her home, and on her Jeep Grand Wagoneer, she said. Since Christine brought some of the flowers into the shop and displayed them there, Susan suspected the story was one of Christine’s odd fabrications. Christine became angry when Susan told her this.

  On Friday, April 5, the night of her murder, the victim was working alone at the Reflex Center. She was reported to be wearing a purple, short-sleeved sweatshirt and blue jeans over black fishnet tights. She received at least one identified client, who told police that Christine was alive and well when he left her at 11:45 P.M.

  Christine’s husband said that he awoke at 4:45 A.M. and discovered that his wife had not returned home. She customarily got in around midnight unless she was with a client, such as Ron, who sometimes took her out for a meal after work. At eight, Bob Burgerhof drove to the Reflex Center, where he found Christine’s empty Jeep parked in the covered area behind the building. The door to the paneled massage parlor was open, and Burgerhof could see that the bathroom light was on.

  Approximately three hours later, he called the owner of the Reflex Center and told her about Christine’s absence and the fact that the door to the business was open. The owner suggested that he notify the police, which he did.

  What the police found at the Reflex Center was interesting and also contradictory. There was no sign of a forced entry or struggle, yet the business safe had been forcibly and clumsily pried from a shelf in the closet—screwdrivers and a hammer had been used—and sat ups
ide down on the massage table. Portions of the wood shelving were still attached to the bottom of the safe. Someone appeared to have used coat hangers and the screwdrivers to extract client records from the safe. These slips, along with a Caller ID terminal and all known cash, were missing from the scene.

  One of the witnesses detectives sought out in the first few days of their investigation was Catherine Biasotto, the victim’s former college roommate. Biasotto told investigators that she’d met Christine Negvesky in the spring of 1991, when they both were junior class pledges at College Misericordia, a small coed Catholic liberal arts school in Dallas, Pennsylvania, not far from Scranton.

  Biasotto, during a tearful interview, said that Christine was a distant person who distrusted most people. She didn’t have many friends, male or female; and Biasotto said she believed the only steady male in Christine’s life was Bob Burgerhof, whom she married in 1994. Cathy Biasotto had been the maid of honor at the wedding.

  Biasotto remembered that her roommate received occasional visits from “an old man with gray hair,” as she described him. Christine told Cathy that he was her former boss “at some mental health place in Wilkes-Barre.” Biasotto recalled, “The guy liked Christine, and I used to ask her why he would come to visit her when she was getting married in July. Christine would say that she felt sorry for him because he was going through a bad divorce.” Biasotto said the man’s visits made her uncomfortable, and she used to leave the room whenever he showed up. When the Burgerhofs were married in July 1994, this special male friend of Christine’s gave them an expensive wedding present.

  In the midst of her interview, Biasotto suddenly volunteered that most of what she had heard about Christine’s murder and its aftermath had come from Christopher DiStefano. She described the twenty-seven-year-old DiStefano as a friend both to herself and to Christine, whom he had once dated. According to Biasotto, who at the time of the murder was living in Virginia, DiStefano told her that the killer knew Christine and had been stalking her for the past few weeks.