The Haunting of the Gemini
Page 1
PRAISE FOR JACKIE BARRETT AND
THE DEVIL I KNOW
“If this is the final word on the matter straight from the killer’s mouth, it has ended the only way it could have. Barrett has given us one last look at the case that engulfed New York, and does not disappoint.”
—Fangoria Magazine
“Jaw-dropping, utterly fascinating.”
—Mobile Ghosts
“Barrett is a wonderful writer and the details . . . about the Amityville case that come to light through her interactions with DeFeo are fascinating . . . Barrett does give readers an intimate look into the mind of a notorious killer and an in-depth description of what she has experienced as someone with extraordinary gifts.”
—Library of the Dead
“Fans of horror and of true crime are certain to enjoy this book . . . [The Devil I Know] is a book you must add to your . . . reading list. Highly recommended.”
—Jenn’s Bookshelve
Berkley titles by Jackie Barrett
THE DEVIL I KNOW
THE HAUNTING OF THE GEMINI
THE HAUNTING OF THE GEMINI
A True Story of New York’s Zodiac Murders
JACKIE BARRETT
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
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THE HAUNTING OF THE GEMINI
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2014 by Jackie Barrett.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62097-7
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley premium edition / March 2014
Cover art: Skyline of downtown New York © beboy/Shutterstock;
Zodiac signs © Svitlana Amelina/Shutterstock.
Cover design by Jane Hammer.
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Contents
Praise
Berkley titles by Jackie Barrett
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
Photo Inserts
For William, Joanne, Jude, and Jane.
In loving memory of Patricia Fonti, 1953–1992.
You will never be forgotten.
Out of this world and into the next.
Lost, but found.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Claire Booth, an award-winning journalist who was able to dive deep into my world of the notorious and sinister minds and souls on this side and in the afterlife. Some bonds will never be broken, as some paths are meant to cross. Your exceptional dedication and wittiness shines through. My gratitude you have.
I would also like to thank Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, my brilliant editor at Berkley Books, who takes pride in detail and has a truly extraordinary perception of true crime, life and death, heaven and hell. My deepest respect you shall always have.
Jim McCarthy, my agent and vice president of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management, is an incredible man of leadership and knowledge. I’m proud to call you my friend. Never lose your humor!
To my husband, William, words cannot express my love for you. Into my many shades of darkness, you shined light. Your patience and strength are remarkable. You have been my hero, never being too far behind me. Loving you now and ever after.
My talented and amazing daughter, Joanne Agnelli, is also my partner and executive assistant. There isn’t a person alive who could fill your shoes. Your magical energy has healed and touched countless souls, including my own. I’m blessed to have such a relationship. Loving you.
I also want to express my appreciation to retired police captain Sean Crowley, who has never left my side, even when I disappeared into the seedier side of life and death. You are my forever partner and kin. You’re incredible.
And I could never forget to thank Jude Weng, who holds so many titles—executive producer, director, writer, negotiator. You always put my best interests first and are one of the few who knows the many sides of Jackie. You are a true believer who has traveled many journeys and encouraged me to challenge the two tigers that reside within me. One is fear, and the other is courage. You touched my life, and I am forever grateful!
And last, to my two Maltese puppies, Teddy and Miss Violet, who showed me that I could love again. The proof and power of love comes in many forms. Meeting up with two old souls isn’t so unusual for me, whether they have two legs or four. Love never dies.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder who you are
In the dark, you stalked the night
With your mask, holding a knife
—JACKIE BARRETT
PROLOGUE
There had been many doors, many different choices he could have made. But he had seen only one. He knew what was behind it, and he opened it anyway. And so the devil came to stay.
When he was a child, he would kill animals with little homemade bombs, or torture them with fire. He was very interested in their screams. In school, he would daydream. The walls would change color to a murky dark green, and blood would drip down the walls. Everyone else would be dead in their seats. Pools of blood from slashed throats covered the desks. The room would be still and silent.
He was in high school when he first began to plan. He brought a homemade gun to school and got caught and thrown out. He was rejected by the army after failing its tests, and his frustration grew. He went to peep shows to see all those dirty, rotten whores shaking their asses for a dollar in quarters. He liked to look, not touch. It felt good to be an intruder. He could violate every inch without being seen. He could have easily approached any one of those
women, said a few nice things, gone back to her place, and had sex. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t need what was between his legs. Just what flowed in their veins. The feeling of shooting or slicing someone was what made his body shake.
He would lock himself in his room at home, making his own bullets and assembling his own guns. He couldn’t even write properly, yet he began to understand certain codes and hieroglyphics, symbols and signs, other components of the occult. He had not studied to earn this knowledge, but it was suddenly there, helping him get closer to fulfilling his needs.
He didn’t need food or water. He didn’t get hungry. He was just empty, except for the hate, the anger, and the lust. When he looked in the mirror, he saw that his pupils had vanished. All that remained were two all-black eyes. The day he first signed his mark, he felt like he was two people in one body. One hand did not belong to him. It was as if he had a twin. That other hand was not his conscience, though. He didn’t have one.
As he roamed the dark streets night after night, he started to notice the stench. He had always been clean, always hated dirt and dirty people. But now, no matter how often he showered, he stank of rotting meat. His breath smelled like shit, and the odor of a slaughterhouse seemed to ooze from every pore. He knew—the more he became the beast, the more he smelled like one.
Before he would go out, before he would kill, he needed to get ready. So he would stand in his tiny childhood room and put on the mask. This was his own private one, not the bandanna he wore out to hunt. It was a ski hat with holes cut into it for his eyes and nose. He would pull it over his face when he conducted his rituals, when he wrote the symbols and spoke the words that summoned the dark gods. He pulled on his second skin and became the devil.
He always wrote the letters first. He knew what their signs were before he shot them. So he wrote the notes that included the signs of his victims and left them near the scenes of his shootings. The devil always knows a person’s sign. And so he did, too.
The devil helped in other ways as well. The one victim who’d been able to give the cops a description had gotten it all wrong. The pigs were searching for someone who looked nothing like him—a man who was even of a different race. That proved very helpful as he continued to do his work. Even the prostitutes he would see at the park could never remember his face. It was as if he were invisible, which was of great benefit when you had so much work to do. He still had not found that special someone—his perfect victim. He had to keep looking.
He would stand before the mirror with his face covered and slowly glide a knife over his body, touching his nipples with its tip. He would lean forward, closer to his reflection. “You want me to fuck you? Come closer, let me smell you. Whore . . .” The knife would go between his legs until he came in his own tight black pants, turning them sticky until they dried to his flesh. He did this for himself because no one else was worthy of touching him.
He would pull on his heavy black boots and arm himself. He placed a gun in the back of his waistband and one down his boot. He saved a special makeshift gun for the front, shoving it down in his pants so that it touched his penis. The cold metal and the thought of using it made him hard.
He would twist and turn as candles illuminated his moving reflection. Sweat formed on his brow, and his eyes darkened. He reached for a small bowl of water soaked with oils and herbs that sat next to his ritual book, which contained information about the Seal of Solomon, an ancient talisman of great power. He had no intention of using that knowledge for good but instead wanted it to help increase his own power and to blind others to his presence and the unholy acts he longed to commit. His hands dipped into the liquid and brought it to the mask, where he anointed himself by trickling drops into his eyes and mouth. The mask absorbed the rest and, with it, the last remnants of his humanity. One last stare deep into the mirror, and the Zodiac was ready.
ONE
When I was eight years old, I died. I died on the operating table as doctors tried to take out my appendix. It had ruptured, and the contamination caused me to go into shock. I flatlined for more than three minutes. A large and immediate blood transfusion was the only thing that brought me back, the doctors said.
But they hadn’t gone where I had. They hadn’t followed me into the bright tunnel. Yes, it was indeed a tunnel, where I felt happy and weightless. A dog came running toward me, barking cheerfully, and he was followed by my grandfather—my father’s father, a Native American medicine man who had passed away years before. I ran forward and hugged him. He reached up and took a medicine bag from around his neck and put it around mine.
The tunnel began to fill with people, standing behind my grandfather and blocking the way through to the other side. One appeared off to the side, a very tall man dressed in black. My grandfather bent down toward me. “You must fight this man,” he said, as the man began walking toward me. “You must go back and follow your spirit. Never forget who you are.” Then he turned around and walked away from me, fading away, along with the protective crowd of people. “You shall win,” he said as he vanished, leaving me alone with the tall man in black.
I wanted desperately to run after my grandfather, but I couldn’t move. The tall man took my hand and grinned at me. “Jackie, you’ll grow to realize that things are already set. If I let you go now, it will change everything else.” He turned me back the way I’d come. I tried to resist. “Cheer up,” he said. “I thought you would like a good fight. I will watch you as you watch me, and when certain deeds are done, we’ll meet again.”
He pushed me out of the tunnel, his laughter following me as I returned to life.
* * *
Part of my work as a psychic medium comes from families desperate to contact loved ones who have passed away. Most of the time, these are not good deaths. They are people who have died suddenly—through something like accident, suicide, or murder—or who have died while distanced from their relatives by some force, like drugs or estrangement. Always, there are things left unsaid. That is where I come in. I am the communications link between the two sides. The living and the dead. And helping one side also helps the other. I have stopped being surprised at how much both sides still have to say, even after it’s too late. So then they find me—because I help it be never too late.
I have spoken with the dead since I was a little girl, even before my own brush with death as a child. I know them well. I often hear people say, “No time for sleep—I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” I just smile to myself. If only they knew the truth: it is the living who rest. The dead don’t need to. Some of them work and play, or relive their lives, or stay to comfort the grieving loved ones left behind. Some go on long journeys, traveling over hills and roads, doing everything that was restricted during life. They are free.
But some are not. This is especially true for those who die violently or much too young. They come to me the most, I think because they know I can communicate what they were robbed of the chance to say. Can you imagine walking around and having no one see or hear you, not even those you loved the most while alive? They try to get back, they try to break through. It takes a gentle hand, a kind heart, and patience to help them face what they often haven’t been able to accept—their own deaths.
And so, when I meet these spirits, they give me clues about what their lives were like, signs that only their closest loved ones would recognize, so that the living will know that the spirits really are communicating through me.
I always start with a photograph. I don’t go by names. It’s the imprint of the face that I take with me as I go on my personal journey to the other side. I stare at the picture and sit back in my office chair. That and a bright light are all I need—none of that other fancy crap psychics on television use.
The journey usually comes with a bump. I smell flowers, or cologne, or cigar smoke—anything that was their favorite. The walls of my office often change, and the world turns into wavy lines and lights
before my eyes. I look past the photo and go through the door of death. I feel weightless. The temporal world no longer holds me. I travel down that familiar tunnel. The lights turn into a steady stream, illuminating the walls as I pass crowds of people slowly walking toward me. I hear the whispers, voices reaching out to me with enduring messages.
Have you seen my son?
Tell my daddy I love him.
Tell my daughter I saw her wedding. I was right there in my favorite dress.
Has my girlfriend cried yet? I don’t want to scare her by coming around.
How can the living think that the dead don’t feel? The body is just a house for a short time. The soul lives forever. When they come through me, I begin to write. After I get what I need, I pull myself out as fast as I can. Sometimes their sufferings are more than I can bear. The pain of the families and the dead is now mine as well. If only I had the ability to prevent such tragedies, to bring the dead back. But, unfortunately, death is an industry that never stops.
And I can never say no. So I was at work two days into the new year, my holiday break over. I sat in my office and stared at the photograph of a middle-aged man. The attached note from his children and sister said he had passed away almost three years earlier. They hoped to make contact with him.
I had three hours before their call. I didn’t need that much time to travel to the beyond and back. I stared at his face. “What happened to you?” I asked out loud. This time, there was no bump, no scent of the past. I went through the door anyway, and down that tunnel. I searched and searched, but I knew I would not find him. I kept going because I wanted to have something to tell the grieving family. But he was not there.
Gradually, the crowds of people thinned until there was no one, and the empty tunnel began to echo with dripping water. The floor started to feel thick and pulled at my feet, making my footsteps heavy and unsure. A ball came bouncing toward me—the red rubber ball of a child—and I looked toward the end of the tunnel to see a little girl in a yellow raincoat appear. The sludgy water dripped all around her, but not a drop actually touched her. She covered her eyes and cried out for her mother. She choked back her sobs and looked at me. “Will you please play with me?”