Then Sgt. Walker surprised Sasha with an especially encouraging phone call. He reported that the investigative file compiled years earlier by retired Investigator York had been located. A meeting was going to be convened to review it. They were going to contact the TBI. Sasha was ecstatic. She wanted to call everyone she’d met while researching the case and share the good news, but she decided to wait until she’d heard more. Past experience had proven that promising leads don’t always pan out. Her caution turned out to be correct. Weeks passed, and no meeting had taken place. Turns out, the file had not been found. False alarm.
Another month or so passed and Sgt. Walker called again, friendly and apologetic. There had been four promotions in his department, he explained. They were operating on a skeleton crew. But, he added hopefully, it looked like the KPD might finally get a cold-case investigator. That was the last time Sasha had contact with Sgt. Walker.
Sasha was worried the case had hit another dead end. Then one evening she arrived home late from work and found that she had an email from Lt. Stiles, which simply said: “Call me when you get a chance, please.” It was too late to call by the time she read the message, so Sasha had the whole evening to allow her imagination full rein. Such a cryptic line, and unlike any she had previously received from the lieutenant. Sasha wondered if something significant had developed in the case.
She called Lt. Stiles the next morning. He had news: the KPD now had a cold case investigator named Jeff Day. “This case has been on my mind a lot,” Stiles said. “I’d like this one to be the next one we investigate.” Lt. Stiles was sending Investigator Day to meet with Sasha at her home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Day wanted to review the materials she had.
Sasha was excited and hopeful about this development, yet still cautious after the missing-file false alarm. She decided that no matter the outcome, she had to email Anita. Hopefully it would comfort her to know that something was happening, new eyes were looking at her daughter’s old case, no matter how much of a long shot it might turn out to be.
“Great news!” Anita replied.
Before Investigator Day arrived, however, Sasha received more good news, of a sort. The FBI’s notes on its closed Michelle Anderson case finally arrived. Much of it had been redacted, but in those notes was another clue to a mystery that had bothered Sasha since she’d first received Dr. Bass’s files: what had happened to the collected forensic evidence?
The physical evidence collected at the recovery site had been handled by three different law enforcement agencies: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Knoxville Police Department. Initially, the TBI had collected the evidence. In a Knoxville News Sentinel story published four days after Michelle’s remains were found, Lt. Charles Coleman, then head of the Major Crimes Division at the KPD, indicated that the TBI had turned the clothes and jewelry recovered at the site over to the KPD. (Marci remembered going downtown to the Knoxville Police station when she was called in to identify her sweatshirt which Michelle had been wearing.) The University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center report, issued by Dr. Bass and his team, indicated that the clothing collected at the site had been transported from the KPD to UT and from there would be sent to an FBI lab for analysis. Nobody Sasha talked to could remember for sure if this had actually been done.
But the FBI files Sasha received confirmed that the evidence had been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia. The files stated that the lab had then returned the evidence to the KPD, by registered mail, along with written reports and recommendations. What had happened to that evidence once it got back to the KPD, no one knew. And the decades-old notes couldn’t tell anybody where the evidence was now.
A few days later, KPD Investigator Jeff Day was on his way. It’s a five-hour drive from Knoxville to Tuscaloosa (historically spelled Tuskaloosa, the one Sasha always preferred). Like so many of its southern counterparts, Tuscaloosa retained its Native-American name even after the Creeks, Choctaws and Cherokee were forced from their lands following passage of the Indian Removal Act under President Andrew Jackson in 1836. Just five years before that, in 1831, the University of Alabama had been formed about a mile east of the young town.
Day checked into his hotel the evening before the scheduled morning meeting and took a drive around town, having never before been to Tuscaloosa. He was especially interested in seeing the campus of the University of Alabama, home of the Crimson Tide. Sasha had lived in both Knoxville and Tuscaloosa—more than a decade in each—and experienced the religion of SEC football firsthand. Day is a Tennessee Vol; his blood runs Big Orange, not Crimson Tide red. Still, he had to admit that the stadium was something to behold and the UA campus emanated a beautiful Deep-South charm.
The next morning, he crossed the Black Warrior River, passed through the charming, artsy streetscape of historic downtown Northport, and pulled into Sasha’s driveway a few minutes early for their nine a.m. meeting. Of average height and build, Day wore the collar of his beige shirt unbuttoned beneath a blue sport coat. His close-cropped hair framed a pleasant face with a ready smile; his demeanor was friendly and outgoing.
“Hi, thanks so much for coming,” Sasha said with genuine gratitude, shaking his hand.
“Glad to be here,” he replied.
Sasha and the newly-assigned cold-case investigator gathered around an oval-shaped dining room table where they spread out Sasha’s materials. Sasha found Day to be congenial and open to her questions. She learned that he was a North Knoxville boy. His mother, Brenda, had known Anita when they were kids in school. He was near the age Michelle would have been, had she lived. As a youngster, he had attended the same church as Anita’s cousin, Susan.
And like his boss, Lieutenant Stiles, Day had followed in his father’s footsteps to become a Knoxville Police officer. Jerry Day had been Chief of Detectives before he’d retired. There were a number of perks to this position that Day liked: the hours weren’t bad, usually daytime and fairly flexible, leaving evenings for the wife and three kids or moonlighting as security. “It takes a lot for a family of five,” he said.
The only thing he didn’t like about being labeled a cold-case homicide investigator was the word cold. He didn’t want families of victims to associate that word with him. But other than that, and the fact that he was the only cold-case investigator of a hundred unsolved cases at KPD, he liked the gig just fine.
To expedite a review of Michelle’s case, Sasha gave Day her “Who’s Who” list of people involved with the investigation—the names and identities of nineteen people related to the case: victims, witnesses, family, and law enforcement. Day quickly absorbed the facts and timeline as Sasha went on to describe the pattern Larry Lee had exhibited in the commission of his crimes, his modus operandi: offering assistance to attractive, petite young girls and women in a time of need, getting them alone, then choking and hitting before raping them.
“I’d love to nail a guy like this,” Day remarked. He said he’d also love to see the look on Larry Lee’s face when they showed up at his house to bring him in after more than twenty years, “Even if all he said was, ‘I want an attorney.’” Sasha explained that Larry Lee had a history of lawyering up, at least he did in the early years of this investigation, when Ruby’s money paid the fees. “These days,” Day said, “it would likely be a public defender.”
Still, he explained with some regret, the case would be hard to prosecute. “In real life, once the lawyers get involved, they don’t even talk to the cops. It’s difficult for us to prosecute murders unless they’re almost open and shut. Without a confession, it’s going to be hard.”
Day would have to decide how and when he was going to approach questioning Larry Lee. If he went to his home, Day could talk to him, but it would likely be unproductive. If he brought Larry Lee in to the station, Day would have to Mirandize him, and Larry Lee would probably ask for a lawyer, and that would be that. Tight choices.
“Most of these cases, I won’t
be able to solve,” Day said. “They’re cold for a reason. A case like this, oh my God, it’d make my job worthwhile. If I ever get with the DA and get this case going…” His voice trailed off.
“The biggest challenge in this case is the absence of hard evidence,” Day continued, “especially DNA.” DNA evidence was increasingly the magic ticket in the effort to clear out cold cases. And in a number of the cases that Day was working simultaneously, it had done just that. But at this point, no known DNA evidence existed in the Michelle Anderson case.
Yet Sasha wondered if there might have been DNA in the still-zipped, hip-section remnants of Michelle’s nearly-disintegrated size 5 Levi’s, the ones with the still-readable label inside the waistband, discovered by the forensic team buried in leaves among her remains—but now missing along with the other forensic evidence carefully collected years ago. From the location of the bones inside the jeans, Dr. Bass and his team had been able to conclude that Michelle’s body was abandoned there minus underwear (in addition to the missing shoes and socks). Someone had dressed her in a hurry before placing her on the cold forest floor.
Sasha didn’t know a lot about DNA or whether it survived that long, but she reasoned that the semi-protected fabric in the crotch portion of those blue jeans, shielded by layers of thick, waxy oak leaves, possibly held a dried reservoir of bodily fluids. Whoever drove Michelle’s body to the remote location had probably raped her either before or perhaps during the taking of her life. So the fibers in those Levis might hold chemical clues about Michelle’s last hours.
But, of course, the forensic evidence was still missing. Sasha told Day what she had recently learned, that the evidence had supposedly made its way from the FBI back to the KPD. Day said he would look into it, as well as York’s missing file. He was also counting on the TBI to have some records on the case. Sasha told him how she’d had no luck with the TBI, but Day assured her that he’d be able to get the files from them (if they still existed).
As the meeting came to a close, Sasha touched on McNair’s investigation in the crucial first hours of Michelle’s disappearance. It was near the end of McNair’s career, Investigator Day pointed out, making more of an observation than a point. Day never knew McNair, but his father had commented on what a nice guy the late detective was.
“Now, I’m going to be honest with you,” Day said to Sasha. “Runaway juveniles are very common. We get a lot of them. We don’t blast an alert.”
He was referring to an AMBER Alert, named for Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old who was abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996. AMBER evolved into an acronym: America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response. AMBER Alerts use a broad array of media to blast an alert of a child abduction fast and far, around the world, if needed. Police departments currently use an assessment tool to determine the likelihood that a teen ran away. Investigators ask relevant questions: problems at home, clothes or backpack missing, and so on.
Sasha pointed out that just to have had the community recognize that Michelle had been abducted—back when she’d first disappeared—would have been a soothing balm to her bewildered and desperate family.
“You can pretty much get a sense immediately of whether a kid is a runaway or not,” Day noted. “The TBI won’t issue an AMBER Alert unless certain criteria are met. We have training every year. But Michelle’s case would have been a classic AMBER Alert, even if Larry Lee wasn’t a sex offender.”
As Sasha showed Investigator Day to the door, he expressed gratitude for the head start her research had given him. “I really appreciate this,” he told her. Before he left, he turned and added a final thought, something, perhaps, that had been bugging him all day: “Smith likes his victims just old enough to be sexually attractive but young enough that he can manipulate them. I wonder how many more are out there.”
14. THE LONE NOTE
The day after Michelle went missing, Anita and Doug stood opposite Larry Lee in the Western Heights apartment he supposedly occupied with his girlfriend, Maryanne. She was away in Florida with her son, he explained. Yet in the two years that Michelle remained missing, and the more than twenty years that her case remained unsolved following the finding of her remains, Maryanne was rarely, if ever, mentioned again. No law enforcement officer working the case explored who or where this person might be. If she existed at all, she was marginal to the case of a murdered Knoxville teen. But Maryanne Parker was real, and she knew a lot about Larry Lee.
When the redacted FBI notes had finally arrived in the early fall of 2010, there was one memo that stood out from the rest, unrelated to the known crimes of Larry Lee. For a while, Sasha gave it little attention, being drawn to the obviously more relevant information contained in the other memoranda. But periodically she would glance at the lone note, puzzling over its meaning and its message.
This lone memo, initialed by FBI Special Agent DeVuono and his supervisor, described a booking report obtained from the Collier County, Florida, Sheriff’s Department, dated 8/29/85—a year and four months after Larry Lee had been released from the Florida prison for rape. Collier County, whose seat is Naples, is several hours down the gulf coast of Florida’s peninsula from Pinellas County, where his kidnapping and rape of Katherine McWilliams had occurred. Yet Collier County is just south of Bonita Springs in Lee County, home to Larry Lee’s father and stepmother when he moved to Florida in 1981.
The nature of the crime and the identity of the victim were redacted. Certainly if it were another sex crime, Sasha reasoned to herself, she would have already heard about it from York or DeVuono. What was the 1985 Collier County arrest of Larry Lee for? Some petty crime? Was it worth her effort to probe?
Finally, Sasha resolved to check it out and contacted the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. Through the Clerk of Courts, Criminal Division, she obtained documents that included the name of the victim: Maryanne Parker. The documents also contained her date of birth (a year younger than Larry Lee), the charges (burglary of an occupied dwelling and sexual battery), and the outcome in the Collier County Criminal Court (the victim had refused to testify).
Sasha had trouble tracking down Maryanne Parker, so she reached out to DeVuono, who, since retiring from the FBI, had obtained an Illinois private investigator license. DeVuono quickly replied with a probable address in Florida. Sasha used it to contact Maryanne by mail.
She explained that she was researching a cold case in Knoxville and asked Maryanne to describe her history and relationship with Larry Lee Smith, including what happened when she pressed charges against him in Florida and then didn’t follow through.
Maryanne replied. She wrote that although the mere mention of Larry Lee’s name in Sasha’s letter brought on “bad nightmares,” she would comply with the request and describe her experiences and her history with her sadistic ex-boyfriend.
She’d met Larry Lee in early 1985 when she walked into the Circle K convenience store where he worked and they struck up a conversation. He seemed like a nice-enough guy, so they began to date, which evolved into a relationship.
At first, Larry Lee was kind and treated her and her toddler son well. Then she stumbled upon his prison-release papers and asked him about them. He gave her the same story about “statutory” rape that he had given his family. Her intuition told her to get away, but Larry Lee could be convincing, and he convinced her to stay. He was a “changed man,” he told her.
Then one day Maryanne walked in on him telling her two-year-old son to “suck my pop.” Larry Lee had stuck his penis into a bag of sugar and was trying to entice the toddler by saying, “Want some pop? Here it is in my lap. Take a big lick.”
Maryanne immediately confronted him, screaming at him.
“It’s a game,” Larry Lee said.
“You’re sick,” she responded. That led to a huge fight and Maryanne kicked him out. Despite her outrage, she didn’t call the police.
But Larry Lee didn’t take rejection lightly. Just past dark on a humid Florida night, he returne
d, broke through the latched door on Maryanne’s screened porch, and attacked her. He beat her, choked her, and then raped her—all in front of her son. Then he sauntered out the door.
This time, Maryanne mustered enough courage to call the cops. Larry Lee was arrested that night, but by the time the court date rolled around some months later, Maryanne declined to testify. “After I filed,” she explained in her letter, “he came to me and said that if I didn’t drop the charges, I wouldn’t see my son ever again, except in a box, if they could identify the pieces. So I dropped everything in fear of my son’s and my life.”
In no time at all, Larry Lee had Maryanne back under his control. He even convinced her to return home with him to Knoxville. For the first few months they stayed in his basement bedroom at his mother’s house. But Ruby, who’d gained custody of Larry’s son, Joey, wasn’t too keen on having another family downstairs.
To get this new girlfriend out of her house, Ruby helped Maryanne apply for the public housing apartment in Western Heights, the one Larry Lee lived in when Michelle disappeared. Maryanne’s recollections of Ruby were very similar to those shared by Sara. “I tried not to upset her,” Maryanne recalled, “but if you sneezed wrong, she would lose it: Shut up! Keep it down! Get out of my house!”
For a while after Maryanne moved into her own place, Larry Lee backed off a bit, gave her some space. She and her son were doing okay, but then he staked his claim again. “Larry Lee came back around, told me things were going to change.” It wasn’t a false prediction.
“Larry Lee made my life hell—getting me into drugs, forcing me into prostitution and making me have sex with other men while he hid in the closet to watch. Then he’d say he didn’t trust me, always accused me of things. Larry Lee was violent. He beat me and my son. He told me that if I told anybody what he was doing to me, I would die.
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