by Becky Durfee
To be productive, she called Ellen and got the phone numbers of both Charlie Patterson and the Pryzbycks from her notes in the dining room. She figured she could at least have a discussion with the people who had been at the cookout before the murder while she waited. With the numbers in hand, she slipped out onto the back deck to make her phone calls.
She called Charlie first but had to leave a message. Next, she dialed the home number of the Pryzbycks, and a male voice answered. “Hello.”
Assuming she’d gotten the husband, Jenny posed, “May I speak with Ed please?”
The man’s reply was blunt. “Ed isn’t here.”
“Oh, well, may I speak to Renee please?”
“Yeah, hang on.” She heard him call in the distance. “Renee! Phone’s for you.”
After a moment Jenny heard a woman’s voice. “Hello?”
“Hi, Renee…My name is Jenny Larrabee. I got your number from Megan Patterson regarding the murder of Stella Jorgenson.”
“Yes,” she said with recognition, “Megan told me you might be calling.”
“Well, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about what happened at the cookout the weekend before Stella was killed. I know you were there, as were both of Stella’s boyfriends, and I was wondering if you had seen anything that might indicate which of them—if either—might have been angry enough with her to do such a thing.”
“Sure,” Renee said. “It’s been a long time, but I’ll do my best to try to remember. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it since Megan called me last night…I’ve been trying to recall some of the details of that day.”
“Have you come up with anything?”
“Well,” she began, “I do remember how angry Colin was when he first showed up. The doctor guy wasn’t upset at first…it wasn’t until Colin started demanding to know who he was that the doctor became elevated.”
“Were any threats exchanged between the two of them?”
“No, I don’t remember any threats. Insults, maybe, but not threats.”
“How about after the guys became separated? After Colin left, did Doctor Burke say anything to you about him?”
“He did make one comment, although I can’t remember exactly what he said. It was something to the effect of a boy will never win if he tries to compete in a man’s game, or something like that.”
“What about Colin? Did he say anything after he came back that night?
“He asked questions more than anything. He asked me if I knew exactly what the doctor was holding over Stella’s head…what he was making her do to keep her job…that kind of thing. I remember feeling uncomfortable because it was obvious from her behavior that the doctor wasn’t requiring Stella to do anything against her will—that was just something Stella had told Colin to explain why Doctor Burke was at the house.”
“So, how did you respond to his questions?”
“I deferred, mostly,” Renee admitted. “It wasn’t that difficult to do. This was my first time meeting her. I had just started dating Ed then, and he only knew her because he was roommates with Megan’s boyfriend. Megan usually hung out at his and Charlie’s place…she didn’t like to flaunt her boyfriend in front of Stella. This was the first time that I know of where Charlie and Ed actually hung out at Megan’s.”
“What was your impression of Stella?” Jenny asked.
“Um…well…I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I wasn’t that impressed by her. I mean, she was nice and all, but she slept with two men in a single afternoon. I was a little put off by that, obviously, as was Ed. He actually made some comments about what a slut she was…not to her face, certainly, but afterward.”
Jenny was unsure what to feel. She couldn’t fault the Pryzbycks for having that opinion of Stella. However, knowing why she acted the way she did, Jenny felt genuine sympathy for her. This whole situation was just sad.
Jenny concluded the call with Renee and considered the information in front of her. If Colin sincerely believed that Stella had to perform sexual favors in order to keep her job, his fury certainly wouldn’t have been directed at her…he would have wanted to exact his revenge on Doctor Burke.
But the trail of blood inside the house led out the back door, which faced the apartment complex where Colin had lived. It almost seemed like the path was being laid out to her killer.
Was it possible that Colin had discovered he was being duped and was angry at Stella for that? Angry enough to kill her?
Jenny let out a deep sigh of frustration. None of her questions would be answered while she sat in the house waiting for the forensics team to show up, and waiting was her least favorite thing to do.
The van finally arrived; a man and a woman in uniform emerged, carrying kits into the house. Zack and Rob greeted the detectives as Jenny remained quiet in the background.
After looking around, the female detective announced, “First we have to verify that these stains are actually blood.”
“Does that mean you’ll use Luminol?” Zack asked. He appeared proud of himself.
“Actually, no,” the woman replied. “We would use Luminol to try to find blood that isn’t visible to the naked eye. Since we can see this, what we want to do instead is run some tests to make sure it’s human blood we’re looking at.”
She rubbed a wet cotton swab on the large stain in the living room, dripping a substance from a small bottle onto the tip, which immediately changed color. Holding up the swab, the detective added, “This spot is definitely human blood, and based on the amount of it, I would say it’s a safe bet that this is where the victim was assaulted. I know she ultimately didn’t survive her injuries, and a pool this large would be indicative of a fatal level of blood loss.”
She bled to death, Jenny thought. What a horrible way to go.
“What about these littler spots over here?” Zack asked as he pointed. “These are the ones that lead me to believe the killer left out the back door, not the front door.”
The detective raised her eyes to look at Zack. “I can test these spots for human blood, but there’d be no guarantee that these blood stains are from the same time period as the murder. Somebody could have had a nosebleed last year, and that would explain why there are drops of blood in a trail.”
Zack looked a bit defeated as the woman tested the spots, which also resulted in a positive reading. “It is blood,” she said. “Human blood.” She gestured to her partner, who in turn walked over to her with a kit.
They proceeded to cut out little sections of the floor that had blood on it, both from the small drops and the larger stain. After bagging and tagging the samples, the forensics detectives started to pack their belongings.
“So, what now?” Zack asked.
“Well, next they will run a DNA analysis on the blood…but that will take a while. Once they get a profile, they will determine if the trail of blood came from someone other than the victim. If it did, they will compare it to the DNA of known criminals in the database. Even if they hit on a match, that wouldn’t be a slam dunk…it would just mean that somebody with a criminal record has bled in this house.” As she walked toward the front door, she added, “But it could at least give the lead detective a place to start looking.”
Zack thanked the team and walked them outside. Jenny took the opportunity to follow the trail of blood to the slider door, looking out into the backyard, past the trees and to the brick building that sat a few hundred yards away. She could barely see the apartment building through all of the leaves, but she imagined in the winter time the view would have been much more direct. Although, she surmised, the murder took place in the summer, so the killer would have been able to hide relatively well in all the foliage. Perhaps those dense leaves provided sufficient cover for the killer to disappear without notice.
Zack returned into the house, and once again Jenny found herself overwhelmed by instant and inexplicable attraction to him. The fact that he was unaware of her sudden feelings made him even more appealing. He
was just going about his business, and yet he looked very good to her. Perhaps they would need to have a little more alone time at his parents’ house that night.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” he said sadly.
“Don’t worry,” Jenny replied as she went over and put her hand on his arm. “We’ll get there. I’ll go back to your parents’ house and start looking through the documents again. We’ve only scratched the surface of those…maybe there’s something hidden in there that will help.”
He nodded, although his disappointment was still apparent.
“Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think it looks like a nosebleed. I realize the detectives are required to interject doubt into every scenario, but I find it a little bit strange that a nosebleed would start right at the same spot Stella had been killed and the bleeder would head straight for the back door. If your nose was bleeding, or you had innocently cut yourself, why would you leave? Wouldn’t you head for the bathroom or the kitchen to get a towel or something?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Zack said.
She patted his back. “This may still pan out. It may take a while, but it might give us our answer.” With a smile she added, “And by the way…the house is looking great.”
“I don’t get this,” Jenny muttered as she once again studied the picture of the bloody handprint. “How could this have just been ignored?”
She set aside the picture as she began the more daunting task of looking through the written documents; there seemed to be a million of them. After thumbing through countless pages, she stumbled across a piece of paper that induced an undeniable wave of familiarity over her. Pulling that paper out of the stack, Jenny realized she was staring at a copy of the signed confession.
She covered her mouth with her hand as she began to read. Almost immediately, another wave washed over her, this time taking her back to that room at the police station she had visited with Detective Wilks. She was seated at a table with Sergeant Finneran standing on the other side, leaned over with his fists resting on the table. A cigarette burned between the fingers of Finneran’s right hand; Jenny found herself irritated by the smoke. The sergeant looked angry, although she couldn’t figure out why. Perhaps he was mad that she hadn’t been able to call the police once she had gotten back to her house.
“So, why don’t you tell me why you went over there today?” Finneran’s Boston accent was thick.
“Over where?”
The sergeant seemed angered by the question; his response was unnecessarily loud. “To Stella’s house.”
“I heard Miss Stella scream. I thought she might have hurt herself.”
“Uh-huh. Okay.” Sergeant Finneran leaned in closer. “So why don’t you tell me why you really went over there.”
Jenny was confused. She had just answered that question. “Um…I thought Miss Stella was hurt.”
Finneran took a drag of his cigarette and squinted. “So, you’re telling me you went over there after she had already been stabbed.”
“Yeah.”
“Then why did you have a knife with you?”
“I found it.”
“You found it?”
With a nod, Jenny said, “Yes.”
“Where was it?”
“On the floor…next to Miss Stella.”
“And you picked it up and used it to stab her, didn’t ya?”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean no?”
“I picked it up, but I didn’t stab her.”
“So, you found the knife at her house, and you picked it up, but you didn’t stab her?”
“That’s right.”
Finneran stood up with frustration and paced a few moments. He sucked on his cigarette one more time before saying, “And why, exactly, would you do that?” He resumed his position of intimidation, leaning over Jenny at the table.
She wasn’t sure how to answer, so she remained quiet.
“You don’t have an answer for me, do ya? That’s because you’re not telling me the truth. You went over to her house with that knife, didn’t ya?”
“No.”
Finneran’s voice became louder and even angrier. “Maybe you’re not hearing me correctly. I said, you went over to her house with that knife in your hand, didn’t ya?”
Jenny knew that for some reason she was supposed to say yes to the question, even though it wasn’t true. Saying no was making this man angry, and she didn’t want that. He was scaring her with how mad he was. “I guess.”
“You guess? What do you mean, you guess?”
“I guess I brought the knife over.”
With that, Finneran stood up and looked satisfied. “Now we’re talking.”
Jenny felt relief that he didn’t seem angry anymore. She decided that just agreeing with him would keep him calm. For whatever reason, she was supposed to just say yes to whatever he said.
The vision faded, and Jenny found herself staring at the confession, still shaken by the Sergeant Finneran’s intensity. As the immediate fear left her body, sadness took over. Nate Minnick, the boy who won the citizenship award—the boy who would have bought sand in a desert if he thought saying no would have been offensive—simply didn’t want to upset the man who was interviewing him. Based on the amount of confusion she felt during the interrogation, Jenny figured it was a safe bet that Nate didn’t know how much was at stake. He hadn’t realized that by agreeing with the sergeant he was sealing his fate, and Jenny found that notion to be horribly upsetting.
She continued to read the confession, noting how many sophisticated words were weaved into the narrative. With an IQ of seventy-two, Nate wouldn’t have known what a lot of those words meant. He simply signed on the bottom line to make his immediate life easier.
Ultimately, she focused on exactly what Nate had agreed to. The statement had said that Nate had gone to Stella’s house with the switch blade and made sexual advances toward her. When she turned him down, he became angry and initiated an attack, stabbing her eight times in the back and chest.
Jenny noted the confession offered no explanation for how a bloody handprint would have gotten on the back door sill, nor did it state what on earth would have possessed Nate to suddenly go over there that day, knife in hand, and make sexual advances that he’d never made before. Considering Nate’s IQ and the holes in the story, Jenny marveled at how this confession ever held up in court.
Before she made a stink, however, she wanted to make sure she had her facts straight. Reaching for the phone, she immediately dialed Megan. Fortunately, she was available.
After the typical pleasantries, Jenny stated the reason for her phone call. “I was just wondering how often Nate Minnick came over to your house to visit before the murder.”
“How often he came over?”
“Yes,” Jenny replied, “how many times did he knock on your door?”
“Never,” Megan said, seeming somewhat surprised by the question. “I mean, he may have rung the doorbell when our mail got delivered to his house by mistake, but he never just came over for no reason.”
“That’s what I figured,” Jenny remarked. “You didn’t mention any visits when I spoke to you, and I imagine that you would have brought that up if it had been something that happened with any kind of regularity.”
“You’re right,” Megan agreed, “I would have mentioned it.”
Jenny thanked her for the information and ended the call. Unsure of whether she should have called Detective Wilks or Kyle, she decided to call the person who claimed to be less busy.
“Hello, Jenny,” Kyle said when he answered. “What can I help you with?”
“I’m troubled,” Jenny confessed.
“Troubled? By what?”
“Given his low IQ, I just don’t see how the jury could have convicted Nate based on his confession, especially if you consider there was an unaccounted-for handprint on the back door.”
“That’s because you’re young,” Kyle said. “
You grew up in the DNA generation. Back in the eighties, however, there was no such thing as DNA analysis, so the biggest factors in a slam-dunk investigation were a confession and eye-witness testimony…both of which were present in this case.”
“But his confession was clearly coerced. There were words in that document that a person with a seventy-two IQ wouldn’t have understood.”
“I know you may find this hard to believe, but the notion of a false confession is a relatively new concept. Back when I was first starting out in this field, people took confessions at face value. It wasn’t until the advent of DNA that law enforcement realized that sometimes people confess to crimes they didn’t commit. Joe Psycho would swear up and down that he was the perpetrator, only for the DNA at the scene to prove he wasn’t. It was mindboggling at first—nobody could figure out why someone would risk spending life in prison—or even the death penalty—if they hadn’t committed the crime. More recent research has been able to provide us with some answers. Some people are looking for attention; others are mentally ill or, like Nate, mentally impaired. There’s also the added dimension of sketchy interrogation techniques. Even a perfectly sane, intelligent individual can confess to a crime he didn’t commit if the questioning is brutal enough. After hours and hours of being yelled at with no food, drink or bathroom breaks, even the most competent individual can give in and admit fault. They’re that desperate for the interrogation to end.”
Jenny scratched her head as she considered this information. “Do you think there is a videotape of this interrogation somewhere? Maybe if the right person sees it, they can determine that Nate’s confession was unreliable.”
Kyle’s sigh gave away the fact that he was about to deliver bad news. “Unfortunately, back in 1988, interrogations weren’t routinely videotaped. That, too, is a relatively new phenomenon.”