Body Hunter

by Patricia Springer

  It would take as few as fifty human cells to provide trained scientists with a genetic fingerprint with the power to damn a suspect or absolve him. National databases, including one maintained by the FBI, were being set up across the county, but unless their suspect had a felony record and had been required to give a sample, he wouldn’t be found among the more than five hundred thousand offenders already profiled by the FBI. If he had been registered, the Wichita County/Archer County case was a prime candidate for the national database system—multiple jurisdictions working in harmony. A unique association for the far North Texas region.

  There was another important ingredient that Cole and Little had in their favor. Luckily, the semen samples taken from the bodies of Sims and Gibbs had been frozen and properly preserved at the Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas in hopes that one day a suspect would be found. All Smith and Little had to do was gather a DNA sample from their suspect and have it tested at a forensic lab. Then they would know if their two-year search for a killer was over, or if they would continue the tedious process of poring over the case files for another lead.

  But a routine background check on their newest suspect gave Little and Smith cause for optimism.

  Little went to his boss’s office, trying to hide his optimism. “What would you say,” he asked Macha, “if I told you that I think I’ve got the guy we’re looking for, that I can put him in the middle of everything that happened, and that he’s already been to prison for murder?”

  “Faryion, this is David,” Doerfler said over the phone. “You’ve been out of the Victim Offender Mediation program for a couple of years now, and out of prison about a year. I want to do a follow-up interview with you. We’ll be able to use it at a later date for funding requests.”

  “Sure. Come on up to Olney. I’ll talk to you,” Wardrip said.

  Doerfler and a female reporter drove from Doerfler’s Austin, Texas, office three hundred miles north to Olney. The three sat down at the Olney factory where Wardrip worked and began talking.

  “We just want to know how you’re doing,” Doerfler began. “Tell us about your job, where you live, your life here in Olney.”

  “I’m married to a good Christian woman,” Wardrip began. “Glenda is the love of my life. I am so lucky to have her. She keeps me focused in the right direction. She’s older than I am, more stable, although she’s been through some bad times as well.

  “We live in an apartment in town we share with our poodle.

  “I’m teaching Sunday school at the Church of Christ and occasionally leading the Wednesday night services. Glenda also works with the kids at church.”

  “Sounds like things are going really well for you, Faryion,” the woman said.

  “They are,” Wardrip replied. “I’m a different person than I was all those years ago. I don’t even know who that person was. I can’t imagine taking the life of anyone.”

  The murder of Tina Kimbrew remained an appalling reminder of his dark days of alcohol, drugs, and uncontrollable anger.

  “What about work? How’s the job going?” Doerfler asked.

  “Great. I like the work. I have lots of different duties, so it keeps my interest. The Duncans, who own the company, are good people, and Dave Collard is a good friend as well as my boss.”

  As Wardrip spoke, he subconsciously straightened the papers on the desk and rearranged the pencils in the glass.

  “Well, that’s about it. I’m glad things are going so well,” the woman said.

  “They’re perfect, just perfect,” Wardrip responded.

  As the two interviewers made their way back to Austin, the woman spoke to Doerfler.

  “The interview with Faryion was really good,” she said. “He’s on his way. He’s done everything perfect. But I’m bothered by one small thing.”

  “What’s that?” Doerfler asked.

  “That man is terrified to death,” she said. “And I don’t know why.”

  Doerfler agreed. He had sensed Wardrip’s anxiety as well, but he couldn’t put his finger on why Wardrip appeared so fearful. Faryion seemingly had it all. What could he be so afraid of?

  It was agreed that John Little would conduct surveillance on the newest suspect. Tailing him. Watching him. Waiting for an opportunity to collect a DNA specimen undetected.

  “We’ll either eliminate him and move on, or we can start building a case for the DAs,” Little said.

  Investigator Little watched the buildings of downtown Wichita Falls shrink in his rear-view mirror as he headed south down Route 79 toward the little town of Olney. Wichita Falls was a thriving metropolis in comparison to the tiny Texas town. The city of one hundred thousand was supported by oil, agriculture, Sheppard Air Force Base, and Midwestern State University.

  Known for their love of the traditional Friday night high-school football game, Wichita Falls hosted the annual Oil Bowl, which matched high school all-stars from Texas against rival all-stars from neighboring Oklahoma. The other major sporting event was the Hotter ’N Hell Hundred, a bicycle competition that annually attracted thousands to the sun-baked roads of the North Texas city in temperatures that well exceeded the one hundred degrees of the event’s namesake.

  Little was thankful that the February temperatures were far below those of the hot Texas summers. He might be sitting for hours in his car watching his suspect, waiting to seize the opportunity to gather a DNA sample from him.

  The man’s routine had been fairly easy to follow. He left for work each day at the same time. Ate lunch at the plant, either brown-bagging it or waiting for his wife to deliver a hot meal, attended church on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.

  That leg monitor has made this easier, Little thought as he stared at the closed front door of the apartment at the Mockingbird Lane apartments. He can’t leave the city without permission and he’s limited within the city limits to work and church. Little knew that if the man were more mobile, it would have been difficult to keep him under observation without being discovered.

  North Texas temperatures could be brutally cold in February. The car’s heater would provide welcome warmth, but the exhaust from the tail pipe could give him away. Little took no chances. He had been following the suspect for weeks. Watching. Waiting for a chance to get his evidence sample and turn it over to Gene Screen for testing.

  In the weeks Little had been following the suspect, he had used a number of different cars to avoid detection. Little felt certain the man was the key to their case. The break that law enforcement, the people of Wichita Falls, and the victims’ families had waited for these past fifteen years.

  The dark-haired detective slumped down in his vehicle as he observed the front door to the apartment open and the man he had been expecting emerge. The suspect was followed closely by his wife. Little waited until the couple’s blue Honda Civic had passed before he started his engine and made the half circle at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  Well behind the blue car, Little moved slowly through Olney, past white, frame houses, turning windmills, and barking dogs. Heading north down Main Street, Little passed the Olney Door and Screen factory, watching carefully as the woman pulled the Honda to a stop in front of the factory’s double-gated, chain-link fence.

  Little turned his car down a side street, doubled back, and parked behind the coin-operated laundromat across Main Street from Olney Door and Screen. He could see the man kiss his wife, then walk into the back entrance of the factory. It was 6:55 A.M. on February 2, 1999.

  The detective needed a better vantage point. The laundry building concealed his vehicle, but also obstructed his full view of the factory yard. He needed to move in closer.

  Little had thought ahead. He knew he would need to blend in with people arriving to wash and dry their clothing. The investigator had even borrowed a basket of clothes his wife had left in their laundry room at home.

  Little entered the concrete-block building and watched silently through the large, grimy, plate-glass windo
w that spanned the storefront. He wisely began washing, rewashing, drying, and redrying the clothing. Waiting for his chance to secure the coveted DNA sample.

  The laundry kept Little warm, as well as gave him a great observation point from which to watch the suspect. He stood near the window and waited. Hoping for an opportunity to gather his evidence.

  The suspect went in and out of the factory yard, drove a forklift, and loaded a trailer. Then he disappeared into the factory’s main building. Little stared at the door the man had entered. Would he be inside the remainder of the day? Had this been just another wasted day of observation? Little shifted uneasily.

  In five minutes, the man emerged from the same door he had entered earlier. It was nine o’clock.

  The now familiar blue Honda pulled into the factory parking area and stopped just west of the double fence gates. Within seconds, the warm exhaust smoke that had penetrated the cool crisp morning air vanished.

  The tall, lanky figure of a man emerged from the building. He’s taking his coffee break, Little thought to himself as he watched the familiar figure put a package of crackers in his mouth as he opened the gate, then closed it behind him. He sat in the passenger-side seat of the Honda.

  A smile of satisfaction crossed Little’s handsome face as he watched his man open the package of cellophane-wrapped cheese crackers and drink from his paper cup. The man seemed at ease. He talked casually with his wife and the small child she was baby-sitting in the backseat of the vehicle, unaware of the probing dark eyes that watched his every move from across the four-lane street.

  The cup, Little thought. He can’t leave it in the car. At one point, he even toyed with the idea of running across the street, reaching through the window to grab the cup, and taking off with it. But Little waited patiently.

  After fifteen minutes, the man climbed out of the Civic, said something in parting to his wife, and closed the passenger-side door. Little’s eyes were fixed on the tall figure standing by the car. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He stared at the suspect as he set the coffee cup on the car, opened one side of the double gate, leaving the other side open. He took the cup from the hood of the car, and walked back into the yard. Only when the man tossed his crumpled cellophane wrapper and used coffee cup in the blue, fifty-five-gallon barrel inside the gated fence did Little’s face register a small but satisfied grin.

  Little continued to wait. He watched patiently as the woman drove away in the Honda and her husband climbed aboard a forklift inside the factory gates. For a few minutes, he moved metal poles from the yard into the building at the rear of the compound known as “the pole barn.”

  It was time for Little to make his move. He walked past the yellow painted sign that read LAUNDRY and strolled casually across Olney’s four-lane Main Street dividing the factory from the laundromat, then through the fence gates. He coolly sauntered toward the blue trash barrel.

  The suspect, seeing Little inside the yard, climbed down from the forklift.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I just need to get a spit cup,” Little said, looking up at the man who stood more than four inches taller than him and pointing to the bulge of tobacco in his right cheek.

  “A spit cup? Sure, help yourself,” he said.

  Little’s eyes immediately settled on the small, eight-ounce paper cup with the words WILDCARD POKER in red and black lettering on it. The cup still held traces of the cheese crackers his man had been eating only minutes earlier.

  The detective discreetly reached into the barrel and lifted the cup, careful not to touch the rim where the suspect’s saliva might be present.

  Got it, Little thought. Now all I have to do is get this to Gene Screen for the DNA testing.

  Nodding toward his benefactor in a symbolic gesture of thanks, Little left the factory yard with his evidence in hand.

  In a matter of days, Faryion Wardrip would either be completely cleared of any suspicion in the murders of Terry Sims and Toni Gibbs, or he would be charged with capital murder.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “John, this is Judy Floyd with Gene Screen. I was able to collect a saliva sample from the cup you sent me. I’ll be able to make a comparison,” the DNA expert told Little, indicating there had been enough of the salivary excretion to perform the test.

  “The only way there won’t be a match is if I somehow picked up the wrong cup out of that barrel,” Little said confidently. Instinctually, the investigator knew Faryion Wardrip was his man. He only needed the technological evidence to prove it.

  Little, Smith, and the district attorneys of both Wichita and Archer Counties waited anxiously for the results of the testing. For fifteen years, they had longed for a break in the case, but the next few days of waiting for the test results would be excruciating.

  The cases of Sims and Gibbs had been dormant for years. An occasional lead that landed in the DAs’ offices would be followed up, but for the most part, the cold cases had remained a mystery.

  Floyd sat at her lab table at the Gene Screen facility in Dallas. She carefully took the biological material from the paper cup supplied by John Little and mixed it with chemicals that would break down other cellular materials. She only needed a tiny sample of the DNA, just one hundred to two hundred cells.

  The DNA molecules consisted of paired filaments that interlocked like zippers. Each filament, made up of chemical bases, aligned in unique sequences. The DNA was amplified by separating paired filaments and mixing them with short fragments known as primers. When a primer locked on to a particular site on a sample DNA molecule, it triggered production of a longer fragment that matched a piece of the sample. A sample mixed with thirteen primers multiplied into millions of distinctive molecules. Exposed to an electrical current, the molecules sorted into color-coded bands on a gel.

  Floyd then began to compare the crime-scene sample taken from the corpse of Terry Sims with Faryion Wardrip’s sample. As an expert in the DNA field, Floyd knew it was virtually impossible for an unrelated person to match up perfectly on thirteen different levels. If Wardrip’s sample matched, the odds of him being the perpetrator would be overwhelming.

  Floyd bent over her microscope to make the comparison.

  On February 12, 1999, the fax machine in the Wichita County District Attorney’s office screeched the arrival of an incoming fax. The header at the top of the page announced that the communication was from Gene Screen.

  More than two dozen suspects had been tested for a DNA match. Some had volunteered and others, like Wardrip, had their DNA collected secretly. Several men identified by the six police agencies who had worked the Sims, Gibbs, and Blau cases were immediately eliminated. Little and Smith waited impatiently to see if Wardrip would be among those whose semen didn’t match Sims or Gibbs.

  “The individual whose saliva was deposited on the cup cannot be excluded as a contributor in the sperm DNA found on Terry Sims’ oral swab. The frequency of occurrence of the genetic profile found in this individual is as follows, 1 in 16,310,932 (Caucasians),” the communication read.

  Little grinned with recognition. Recent breakthroughs in DNA testing had set many men free, exonerating them from violent crimes, but the tests had worked in his favor. The results confirmed Wardrip was their man. Little expected to narrow the DNA numbers down with further testing, but they had enough to request a warrant for Wardrip’s arrest.

  District Attorney Barry Macha was elated with the news that technology had made it possible to identify a killer that had been at large for more than fifteen years, but he knew old-fashioned gumshoe investigative work had come up with Wardrip as a possible suspect. Macha immediately gave credit to his investigator and Paul Smith, the Archer County investigator, for their work. He couldn’t have been more pleased with the marriage of proven investigative techniques and recent technological advances.

  Little and Smith rushed to get an arrest warrant authorizing the apprehension of Faryion Wardrip for the capital murder of Terry Sims. A s
eparate warrant would have to be obtained for Wardrip’s blood sample and fingerprints. They would be compared with crime-scene evidence once the arrest had been made. The investigators wanted Wardrip in custody as soon as possible. The arrest warrant was issued within hours.

  Saturday morning, February 13, 1999, Faryion Wardrip prepared to report to his parole officer in Wichita Falls. This would be the last day he would be encumbered by the surveillance device on his ankle. He had done his time and adhered to the rules of his release for two years. Finally, he would be free—released from the constant reminder of his violent indiscretion and free from the confinement of the device he had come to think of as a ball and chain. Faryion had arranged to take the following week off from work. Now he and Glenda could take the honeymoon they had postponed for nearly four months.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Faryion told Glenda as he took the car keys and headed for the door of their apartment. “Then our honeymoon will begin.” The newlyweds smiled at one another, kissed; then Faryion was gone.

  John Little and Paul Smith talked with probation officer John Dillard in his office in the Wichita County courthouse. Smith occasionally eyed the manila folder he had placed on the desk that separated the probation officer and the investigators. All three men anxiously awaited the arrival of Wardrip: Dillard, for Wardrip’s regularly scheduled parole check-in; Smith and Little to make an arrest for the murder of Terry Sims.

  Dillard listened as Little and Smith explained the arrest warrant, which included an abundance of circumstantial evidence, such as the fact that Wardrip had lived two blocks from where Sims’s body was found, one mile from where Gibbs’s car was abandoned, and across the hall from one of Blau’s close friends. He’d worked as an orderly in the same hospital as Gibbs, and later two businesses away from where Blau served fast-food on Burkburnett Road.