Not to mention, with a second female having been burned the way she had, did this indicate that perhaps her killer, after realizing his first body had been found so easily in that culvert, had now figured out that he might want to try and get rid of his victims from this point on?
CHAPTER 14
On Monday, November 16, Shellie Nations was at home, keeping herself busy doing what housewives and mothers do. She had been thinking about the last time she saw Randi on Randi’s birthday and how sad Randi had seemed. Some weeks had gone by. They’d spoken on the phone a few times and made plans to see each other, but life had gotten in the way and priorities kept them apart. What Shellie didn’t know—and how could she?—was that Randi’s life had been on a fast-moving, downward trajectory over the course of the past few months.
Randi had been living with a boyfriend, Tim Gause, in a house they had emptied out because it was being foreclosed on. She had been running with some of the same people Heather Catterton had. The sting of drug addiction for Randi had become infected. She had been doing things that, had it not been for the drugs, she would not have ever thought of attempting. Randi essentially had become the type of person she had once helped out. Tragically, she managed to keep it all hidden from those in her life who could have helped her.
What was she thinking? Shellie thought as an item on the nightly news caught her attention. Shellie had just sat down, happy to be off her feet for the first time that day, when the newscaster reported another body had been found in York County, South Carolina, just below the North Carolina border.
When Shellie heard of possible ties to Gastonia, she paid attention.
The YCSO had released a photograph of a tattoo found on the woman’s body—one of only a few sections that had not been burned or charred beyond the recognizable beauty and ceramic-like texture of the woman’s skin. What greatly worried investigators was how the woman’s killer had wrapped her in a blanket and bound her legs with what they now knew to be a piece of cut electrical cord. This was not some sort of overdose or accidental death being covered up by a group of dopers, a gallon of gas and a stupid idea. That deduction was clear from the evidence thus far.
“York County was greatly concerned,” said one North Carolina law enforcement official, “that they had a serial killer on their hands and he would soon strike again. And when they discovered that both victims lived in Gastonia, that was when they called on the Gaston County Police [Department] for help.”
Shellie was listening to every word spoken by the newscaster, who was reporting from as close to the Kings Mountain State Park crime scene as cops would allow. In the background, as the reporter told a familiar tale, you could see the yellow crime-scene tape flapping in the wind, marking off the area. A black char mark on the ground was visible in the distance.
Then the news showed a photograph of the tattoo. Investigators were hoping the victim’s family would recognize it and call in.
That tattoo looks very familiar, Shellie thought, staring at the television. The YCSO had released a partial photo, actually: just the green leaf section of what had been a red flower.
Shellie called out for her husband.
“Yeah?” he responded, walking into the living room.
“I really want you to watch the news. This tattoo they’re showing really looks familiar to me.”
It was 5:30 P.M. As each moment passed, Shellie was beginning to worry more.
“We need to go find Randi right now,” she told her husband. Shellie wanted Randi in front of her, so she could see her and hug her and know—without a doubt—that this was all just a terrible coincidence. She wanted to convince herself that the way she felt was how several other people watching might be feeling, staring at the same tattoo.
“Sure, Shell. Let’s go.”
Shellie and her husband searched all the places she knew Randi either hung out or had spent time at. Randi had been so mobile over the past few months that it was hard to track her down to any one spot.
“We could not find her,” Shellie recalled.
Shellie and her husband returned home near midnight. As the time passed, Shellie went through a roller coaster of emotions.
“My mind was telling me she was all right,” Shellie said. “But my heart was telling me something different.”
Shellie’s and Randi’s mother had severe heart problems. She’d been struggling with those issues for many years. Shellie didn’t want to concern her mother, but she did want to tell her what was going on.
It was the tattoo. Shellie kept seeing it in her mind.
That . . . coincidence.
“Listen, Mom,” Shellie told her mother that night, “they found a girl over at the [park], and I cannot find Randi.” Shellie’s voice told her mother how concerned she was that her sister was not around and she hadn’t heard from her.
“Oh, Shellie, she’s all right,” her mother said. “You worry too much.”
Shellie stood with the phone in her hand. She felt a “pit,” as she described it later, in the middle of her stomach. “And I knew,” Shellie said later, “that it was not all right.”
CHAPTER 15
The following morning, Shellie woke after a night of tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling. She immediately called Crime Stoppers. She wanted more information about the tattoo and the girl found in the woods. Shellie knew Randi had a second tattoo of a sun with a smiley face on the right side of her upper back. If she could confirm that the girl found in the woods did not have that same tattoo, she could go back to her life and stop worrying.
“I cannot share any of that information with you, nor do I know,” the Crime Stoppers operator said. “But I can have an investigator call you back.”
Shellie figured it would take forever. Something also told her that when Randi found out all the trouble Shellie was going through in searching for her, “she was going to be really pissed off at me.” There was a little angel of optimism whispering in Shellie’s ear that Randi had run off somewhere and would find out about all of this and become angry with Shellie for inviting the cops into her life. Yet, it was a risk that Shellie was willing to take to curb the anxiety of thinking that Randi was in the morgue.
“At the same time, however,” Shellie admitted, “my heart was telling me something was wrong. I just knew.”
Within five minutes, an investigator called Shellie back. This was exceptional, Shellie knew.
Five minutes?
“Can we speak to you in person?” the investigator asked. He wanted Shellie to meet him and another investigator.
“Sure, sure . . . ,” Shellie answered. “I’m on my way.”
And with that, Shellie recalled, she breathed a sigh of relief. She honestly now believed they had found Randi. They had located her in a jail somewhere and Shellie needed to go and bail her out. It was actually a weight off Shellie’s shoulders to hear the investigator say he wanted her to meet him downtown.
CHAPTER 16
Dr. Sabrina Gast was overseeing the autopsy of the latest girl found in the woods. Here it was a few weeks later and now two women had been found. The attending pathologist on this new case was Dr. Nicholas I. Batalis. He would conduct the autopsy at the Department of Pathology, on the University of South Carolina campus.
As Batalis got to work, unlike in Heather Catterton’s case, it became clear within no time at all that they were dealing with a homicide. The cause of death, undisputed among doctors, was strangulation.
From a careful observation of the body and how it had been burned, the doctor determined that the woman’s killer had wrapped her in a comforter. The burns were postmortem, most likely, which gave everyone some relief that she had not been burned alive.
Portions of a burned comforter, Batalis noted, accompany the body and are on the left side of the face, under the body, and on the left leg. The doctor also identified several pieces of “burned fabric” and an “identifiable brassiere,” along with a copper colored metal wire [wrapped] aroun
d the lower extremities, just below the knees.
In his notes, Batalis described a tattoo of a “red flower with green leaves,” a portion of which had been publicized on the news. He also found a tattoo of a “sun with a smiley face” on the woman’s “upper right side” of the back. There was a third tattoo of “a band design” (barbed wire) on her upper right arm, “nearly circumferential.”
The next section of Batalis’s report was under the title EVIDENCE OF INJURY—and there it was: “strangulation.” Batalis was certain, adding: The inferior right eyelid has scattered purple petechiae.
Petechiae are small red or dark-colored spots indicating hemorrhage. There are only a few reasons why someone would have these types of spots (broken capillary blood vessels) in their eyes. Trauma was on the top of the list.
The discovery that caused Batalis to consider that she had been strangled to death was a faint 2 ½ inch area of blue contusions . . . on the lateral left side of the mandible and neck—approximately ten red contusions, up to 1 inch, are on the anterolateral left side of the neck.
When Batalis cut and then filleted her neck back and examined the muscles, tendons, and tissue, he found additional hemorrhaging, along with several fractures. Unlike Heather Catterton, who might have been choked and then killed by asphyxiation (a bag or a pillow over her face), this woman’s killer kept up pressure on her neck, choking her until she died.
Moving forward with the theory they were looking at the work of one killer, the question became: Had he learned from his earlier experience with Heather? Serial killers, any armchair profiler can reckon, evolve from one murder to the next, even if they choose the same MO.
There were other injuries Batalis noted: contusions on her tongue, back, arms, one ear, legs, left eye, nose, and additional places.
With this, and no further explanation, it appeared her killer had savagely beaten her, too.
YCSO Forensic Investigator Brian Bagwell attended the autopsy. Bagwell was there to collect any evidence that he could take back to the lab for further testing. Part of Bagwell’s job was to identify victims of murder. Bagwell was on the team that had taken Heather’s fingerprints and identified her after putting them into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS).
“AFIS is a computerized system that basically searches all of the criminal arrest records and police records in South Carolina,” Bagwell explained. “We have access to the federal, as well, throughout AFIS. But what it does is allow us to enter fingerprints in and plot points of minutiae on it. And the computer, through its little magic and rhythms that it uses, it looks at those points that we have plotted and tries to find matches for us.”
Sort of—but not exactly—like the procedures chronicled on dramatic television series, such as CSI and NCIS, which exaggerate the tool a bit, but under the guise of factual significance.
Bagwell did the same with Randi as he had done with Heather: He submitted her fingerprints into AFIS. He also collected her clothing (what was left of it) and any fabric debris left over from the fire, the copper wire ligature unbound from her legs, some “pulled scalp hair,” oral, vaginal, and rectal swabs, along with a tube of blood.
Regarding the victim’s anus and vagina, Batalis indicated that he did not find any evidence of violent sexual behavior. Similar to Heather’s case, Randi’s killer did not appear to be sexually motivated. His MO was not to rape or sexually torture these women. He was not a sexual deviant in the sense that these women were there for his sexual pleasure. When that type of killer was done with the sexual aspect, he would murder and discard them—an uncontrollable urge many serial killers exhibit.
No intact spermatozoa are identified on vaginal, oral and rectal smears, Batalis noted.
From all outward signs, this killer was much more dangerous than your sexually motivated serial, because here, it appeared, he was driven entirely by the kill itself—at least the way things looked at this stage. And any time investigators stared down the barrel of that type of serial killer, they knew a race was on: Because if this guy was getting off on the act of strangulation alone, or watching as these ladies suffered horrible deaths, he was more of a danger than most. What made his clock keep time, in other words, was a sheer determination to kill. Nothing else. He liked to put his hands around women’s throats and play God. Stare at them in the eyes as he took their lives. A guy like that cannot stop. Killing, in turn, becomes as addictive as a drug.
CHAPTER 17
Shellie was not in a melancholic mood or worried about Randi as she drove toward her meeting with two YCSO investigators on the morning of November 17, 2009. She was hopeful. That call she took from an investigator somewhat convinced her there was soon to be a reunion with her sister.
All right, Shellie told herself. Randi’s in jail and I’ll have to get her out.
There were worse things. Randi would be upset. They’d talk it out, but everything would be okay.
Shellie pulled into the parking lot and saw two investigators standing by an unmarked police vehicle.
“They had no expression on their faces,” Shellie remembered.
She parked, got out of her vehicle, walked over to the men.
They introduced themselves.
The tallest one asked, “By any chance, did your sister have a sun tattoo—a picture of a sun, on her back?”
This stunned Shellie, stopping her in her tracks. A brick wall.
By instinct alone, Shellie walked backward. Her hands flew over her mouth; her mind shouted, No ... no.... Please, no. Not Randi. . . . No. Please . . . God. No. No.
A barrage of tears then came on. Shellie ran, but did not get too far. Her legs gave out and she collapsed on the pavement. She was weak from emotion, not enough strength even to get up off the ground. An overwhelming amount of grief took control of her body. It crushed her.
The detectives rushed over and picked Shellie up off the ground.
They didn’t say much. They didn’t need to.
It didn’t seem real—like one of those numbing moments in life when time stands still. In this situation, your mind wants to tell you that it must be some mistake. There is some other woman out in the world with the same tattoo, the same color hair, the same eyes, the same lovable demeanor.
The same name.
But Shellie knew better. Denial would not serve her right.
“Come on, Mrs. Nations. We cannot let you leave here like this.”
It took some time, but Shellie got herself together the best she could. She was going to get through this like she’d gotten through every other traumatic moment of her life. Shellie had the will of a lion, the heart of a lamb. She was strong. The big sister. She had to be there now for Randi in other ways. It was going to hurt like hell once this settled, but she needed to pull herself together, at least for the moment.
The children.
“You cannot tell my mother about this right now,” Shellie told detectives. “Her heart is weak. She’ll have a heart attack.”
More tears.
My God . . . Randi. No.
That ripple effect of one murder: Shellie was living it. She was feeling it.
Shellie explained that she wanted to be the one to break the news to her mom.
They agreed.
Shellie drove out of the parking lot and decided she’d better go over and talk to her mother now, before the woman saw it on the news.
Her mother lived in a house with three steps leading up to the front door. Shellie got out of her car, feeling emotional pain pulling her down weightily. She said, “I could not even make it up three steps. I had to crawl into my mother’s house.”
The pain was unbearable. Randi was gone. As it hit her, Shellie crumbled. No more tacos on their birthdays. Laughs. Serious talks. No more watching TV together and chatting about their lives. All those thoughts and memories any one of us would think of in this situation ran through Shellie’s mind. Her only sister—they were so close in age—was never coming home. And now Shellie
had the grave task of revealing this information to their mother.
Shellie’s mother had never seen her daughter in this state of total emotional devastation. The loss was written all over Shellie’s face.
“Shell, what is wrong with you?” her mother asked.
She told her.
Shellie’s mother walked from one end of the house to the other, not knowing what to do with herself, where to go.
“I felt so helpless,” Shellie said later. “It was horrific.”
Then Shellie had to tell Randi’s oldest boy, just fourteen then. He was visiting at the time.
Shellie sat him down at the dining-room table. “It’s your mom, honey. She’s been . . . she’s been killed.”
The boy turned pale. He took a moment. His lower lip quivered. He was trying to hold it together.
“I really thought you were going to tell me that Mom was in jail,” he finally said.
Telling a fourteen-year-old that his mother had been murdered, Shellie said later, “was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life.”
CHAPTER 18
Nick Catterton was looking for his daughter Nicole as news spread of another body found under similar conditions and circumstances to Heather’s. Most everyone believed Heather and Randi’s killer was the same man and that he might have known both women.
When Nick saw Randi’s picture on the news, he thought, Shit. I know her. She’s been over to my house.
Nick was also beginning to think he knew Heather and Randi’s killer. Florida, it occurred to Nick. Nicole had taken off to Florida with her boyfriend, Danny Hembree. She said something about going down there to pick up some of Danny’s belongings.
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