Lethal Intent

by Sue Russell

  More telling, to Munster’s mind, was the preponderance of bullet wounds in the victims’ torsos. There were head wounds, too, but those didn’t strike him as being ‘the purposeful wounds’. In the case of Dick Humphreys, the closest shot, the shot perhaps fired to make sure he was dead, had been aimed at his heart. In handling female suicides he’d learned a key difference between the sexes. Whereas men won’t hesitate to execute someone by pumping a bullet into their head—hit-men traditionally aim a gun barrel point in someone’s ear to blow their brains out—women are infinitely more delicate about such matters. On rare occasions a woman might end her life by putting a gun in her mouth, but generally women don’t like to disfigure themselves. That theory would carry over into the way they killed others. Where a woman decides to kill a husband or lover, she generally aims for the heart or the torso. Also, .22 calibre revolvers are responsible for a high percentage of deaths nationwide because of their handy, readily concealable size, but are nevertheless generally considered a woman’s choice. Increasingly, these homicides seemed to bear a female stamp.

  The big question was: if investigators were seeking female serial killers, might these women be the first? The elusive answer depended upon your criteria. Certainly, a considerable number of women have killed multiple times, but what set such women apart from their male counterparts was that they functioned differently. They had not, as far as criminologists knew, infringed on that macabre, male-dominated turf of preying on strangers, picking them up and killing for the thrill of it. Predators stalking victims. That remained the dark province of men. The FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia, defines a serial killer as someone who kills at least three times over a period of time in different locations with a cooling-off period in between. Very few, if any, multiple murderesses could be categorized in quite that way.

  Despite the lack of precedent for women killing strangers, after weighing all the evidence, the investigators thought it made sense. And the FBI, when consulted, concurred.

  With this new pooling of information, Marion County naturally evolved as the task force headquarters. Most of the bodies were found there, most of the cars dumped there.

  Sergeant Brian Jarvis released the sketches of the two women seen leaving Siems’s car to a local paper but no one was quite ready to show their hand and announce the women as possible murder suspects. The story came, was given low prominence, and went, drawing no concrete results.

  (Later, Brian Jarvis claimed that he’d been reprimanded by his superior, Captain Binegar, then the CID commander responsible for overseeing major crime investigations, for releasing them at all. Jarvis discovered that Captain Binegar had decided to take over the job of funnelling information to the outside world himself.)

  Meanwhile, investigators began scouring their female arrest reports and checking the criminal records, for instance, of women who’d been stopped hitchhiking or walking on the interstates. They were looking for two needles in a haystack.

  Dick Humphreys’ car was spotted by Deputy Cameron from the Suwannee County SO on 19 September—just one week after young Paul and Mike had found his bullet-riddled body, and just six days after the autopsy in Leesburg had officially classified the case a homicide.

  Even to the naked eye, it was obvious the Firenza had been wiped down, inside and out. Someone was clearly hell-bent on not leaving any fingerprints. The deputy noted it had been stripped of its vehicle tag, manufacturer’s and model identification, and bumper stickers.

  Munster and Taylor went up to see the car where it had been towed, in the back yard of a private garage, and arranged for it to be moved down to Marion County’s evidence bay on a flatbed trailer. Munster took photographs and he and Taylor interviewed people in the area and subpoenaed the records of a nearby pay phone. (It threw up some leads, but they didn’t pan out.)

  Closer inspection of the car about a month later revealed one good, old-fashioned clue that intrigued the detectives. On the car floor, beneath one of the pedals, lay a cash register receipt for the purchase of beer or wine. Using its Emro store number, 8237, investigators traced it to the Speedway truck stop and convenience store located in Wildwood, at SR 44 and I-75. The receipt was dated 11 September, the day of Dick’s disappearance and murder, and marked with the register time of 4.19 p.m. It was a lead.

  Investigators had already been busy asking questions, and had deduced that the last person who actually knew Dick Humphreys to have seen him alive was Gayle, a pretty, blonde, 28-year-old mother who was once part of his HRS caseload. Her HRS case file was closed, but after leaving the Wildwood Police Department on the last day of his life, Dick had made an unscheduled stop at her home in the Wildwood Commons housing complex sometime between 3.10 and 3.30 p.m.

  Gayle had been outside and had watched him drive by. Thinking he was the insurance man, she waved. Seeing her, Dick stopped, backed up his car and got out. Only then did Gayle recognise him. He wasn’t there for business, it was just a friendly stop. He seemed nervous, she thought, as he stepped inside with her. Gayle’s live-in boyfriend, Michael, arrived shortly afterwards and the three chatted for a few minutes, then Mr Humphreys explained that he’d been looking for some people and must have had a wrong address. He went out to his car and abruptly left.

  To Gayle, he seemed different that day; preoccupied and nervous. She thought back to the first time he’d called on her in the line of duty. She’d been defensive, like any mother whose suitability as a parent has been questioned and who finds herself under the magnifying glass. Despite her attitude, he was perceptive enough to win her over quickly. She admired that, just as she admired the fact he didn’t take her neighbours’ complaints at face value. He’d heard her out. She wasn’t quite sure how to put it, but he seemed to have faith in her. That was something that Gayle, who had only recently escaped a husband who had sexually abused her young children, badly needed.

  And whenever Mr Humphreys had dropped by and found her outside her apartment, sunning herself in her bikini, there was never any hint of sexual harassment or pressure. She was more used to being propositioned than treated with respect and she knew which she preferred. She liked the fact he told her about his happy marriage to Shirley.

  The morning after his hasty departure, Gayle had an appointment with a counsellor in the next building and dropped in to see Dick Humphreys at his office, quite unaware of his disappearance. Ken Jones, Dick’s co-worker, was tied up at the time, busily hitting the phones, calling sheriffs’ offices, hospital emergency rooms and highway patrols, trying to find some trace of Dick. When Gayle was told Mr Humphreys wasn’t in, she left, but fortunately, she’d told the secretary what she was doing and Ken, as soon as he heard, rushed after her. She filled him in on her last encounter with Dick.

  Ken Jones duly passed this information on to the cops. So it was that Investigator David Taylor was in turn bringing Sergeant Brian Jarvis, the major crimes supervisor, and Investigator Bruce Munster up to speed at 3.36 a.m. on the morning of 13 September. Less than twenty minutes later, the witnesses were being ushered into CID Interview Room 2 and Taylor and Munster questioned first Gayle, then Michael. Their stories were the same. At around 5 a.m. Jarvis and Munster gave them a ride home and, with Gayle and Michael’s permission, searched their apartment. They found nothing suspicious.

  David Taylor, then the lead investigator on the Humphreys case, was at the Dunnellon Police Department the next evening, handing over a copy of the homicide bulletin on Humphreys, when he was paged by his office. He was to call a Ms Lori Stephens who might have some valuable information. Lori, an employee of the Journey’s End Motel in Wildwood (close by the Speedway store where they’d later learn the beer or wine had been bought), had seen the news of Mr Humphreys’ murder on TV. Shc thought she might have seen him on the day of his disappearance.

  Talking to Journey’s End employees, David Taylor took statements and began piecing the story together. One staff member remembered Mr Humphreys pacing up and down the
halls that afternoon as if he were looking for someone. He also made a call from the pay phone. It might have been the call he made to his office.

  Thanks to his own efforts, his presence at the motel had been memorable. At around 4 p.m., while a clutch of employees gathered around the desk in the lobby, chatting, he walked up, showed his i.d., then introduced himself as Dick Humphreys, HRS. Who owned the blue Buick Skylark in the parking lot with the child in it, he wanted to know? Motel employee, Tina Strickland, admitted that the boy was hers. Her son was sleeping peacefully where she could see him.

  ‘Well you shouldn’t leave him in the back seat. Go get that kid and bring him in here,’ Humphreys told her.

  He had a quiet air of authority which somehow automatically commanded respect, so she did as he said. Then she and the other employees, curiosity roused, watched as he headed down the street to a McDonald’s. About ten minutes later, he was back at the motel. He didn’t say anything, but again seemed to be looking for someone.

  David Taylor checked the Journey’s End records for 10 to 12 September for himself, but they only confirmed what the clerks had told him. Mr Humphreys had not booked a room. Introducing himself as Dick Humphreys, HRS, and bringing himself to the attention of a gaggle of employees, didn’t sound much like a man who was up to no good.

  With the task force in place, Jerry Thompson and Marvin Padgett found themselves spending a lot of time over in Marion County, and attended another meeting there on 21 September. Bruce Munster presented all the information on Burress, and Tom Muck did so on Pasco’s still anonymous victim. For the first time, Volusia County’s Richard Mallory was introduced into the mix. The investigators decided to send all the vacuumings, fibres and bullets found for laboratory comparison.

  29

  On Saturday 29 September, when Vishnu walked past Ty and Lee’s open room door, he caught sight of them doling out some of their possessions to some women he’d seen before from the Casa Del Mar. It looked for all the world as if they were packing up and getting ready to leave. As they hadn’t paid him since the 20th, he could be forgiven for suspecting they might be skipping out on their bill. Prompted thus, Vishnu confronted Lee.

  ‘Are you guys leaving? I want my money,’ he asked, good-naturedly enough.

  ‘Oh no, no … we’re not leaving or anything. We just want to give these people some of our stuff,’ Lee reassured him, equally politely.

  But sure enough, Vishnu later saw Lee and Ty about to take off. Hurrying past the open door of their bare room, he saw the room keys on the bed. She’d lied. They were doing a flit.

  ‘You guys leaving?’ he asked more sharply, running over to them. To his amazement, Lee snapped back at him.

  ‘Don’t mess with me, motherfucker! Don’t mess with me!’ She’d never cursed at him before. Suddenly, her expression and whole bearing had changed. She seemed like a totally different person.

  ‘How can you guys be like that?’ he cried.

  Furious at her threat, he thought fast. He’d noticed they had a cab waiting for them out back and he was tempted to call the cops, then pull his car in front of the cab to block its exit. But he discarded the plan almost as soon as he came up with it. Cops always took too long. He couldn’t stop them leaving.

  Checking their vacant room later, Vishnu discovered a small knife and a few odd tools and power sockets tucked in a drawer. The women had also left a TV which he plugged in and tried; it didn’t work.

  Mostly what they left behind was junk, their bill, and plenty of bad feeling.

  When, later that same day, they checked into the Fairview Motel on Ridgewood Avenue in Port Orange, they arrived not by cab but wheeling their neatly boxed belongings on a dolly cart. The Fairview was a clean, respectable, family-owned establishment. Lee signed the register as Cammie Lee Greene and they paid $43.60 cash down, which was two days’ rent in advance, for room No. 8. Rose McNeill, the owner, had a feeling they were lesbians.

  As the days unwound, the usual pattern emerged. Ty, who was still not working, stayed pretty much behind their closed door. The only time Rose saw her, really, was when the two of them walked off together down the street. There was no reason to have much contact. Lee did all the talking. She seemed nice enough, and when she went off hitching for a couple of days’ work, she was always concerned that Ty would be OK while she was gone, and would have enough money for food.

  Just making casual conversation during one of her absences, Rose remarked to Ty that she thought it was terrible that Lee had to hitch all the way to Orlando to work. Ty soon shut her up.

  ‘Her business is private. I don’t talk about her business,’ she said with a definite air of finality.

  On 12 October 1990, one of Bruce Munster’s numerous telephone calls brought good news from the Ocoee Police Department: Dick Humphreys’ badge case and HRS i.d. had been found in a wooded field off 27 by a man who’d been out snake hunting. It could be the break they needed.

  The next day, Munster and David Taylor rendezvoused with the snake-hunter and two Ocoee deputies at a hamburger joint, and they escorted them to the spot off Boggy Marsh Road in southern Lake County. They spread out and searched. Bingo. They found, scattered around, Dick’s ice-scrapers, a wadded-up map, his pipe and tobacco, some personal and business papers, his car ownership and warranties. Near Dick’s property they also found Miller Lite and Budweiser beer cans and one .22 calibre shell casing, lying in the sandy soil. There was also a ball of paper that turned out to be his yellow Highway Patrol Association bumper sticker.

  Later, when technicians tested everything for fingerprints, they delicately separated the rolled-up bumper sticker, hoping to find a fingerprint or two. There was a single print and it lifted well—but it belonged to Dick Humphreys.

  It was amazing. Whoever killed him hadn’t even left a print in the sticky residue. Clever, or merely lucky? It was beginning to look like clever.

  The drifting, delectable aromas of home-cooked Yugoslav fare drew Lee back to the Belgrade Restaurant, an old haunt from the early eighties. It was just past the RV lot a few doors down from the Fairview, and when she stopped by for a meal, she found it was still owned and operated by Vera Ivkovitch and her husband Velimir. Vel fixed cars in the garage out back and Vera ran the kitchen. She recognised Lee immediately, calling, ‘Welcome home!’ In the old days, Lee had come in regularly with clients to eat. Her hair was lighter now and she seemed a little more subdued, more bitter, somehow. Back then, she used to yatter like a typewriter, Vera remembered.

  ‘I’m gonna be next door at the motel,’ Lee explained, ‘so I’m gonna stop in for breakfast and lunch.’

  ‘OK,’ Vera said, wiping her hands on her apron and smiling, pleased as always when a customer affirmed the appeal of her cooking.

  True to her word, on Sunday 14 October, Lee took Ty, her ‘friend’, in for a meal. As they sat in the spartan restaurant, which does not serve alcohol, Lee asked Vera if she knew of any places to rent? They couldn’t stay at the motel, it was too expensive. They’d lost their business and their car, in fact they’d lost everything they had. They had to find somewhere cheaper.

  ‘We got room!’ Vera cried in her heavily fractured English, only too happy to oblige. ‘Bathroom, TV, stereo. Fifty dollars a week.’

  ‘We’ll move in tonight!’ Lee grinned without hesitating. She was excited by the saving. Fifty dollars a week! That was a real steal. She and Ty enlisted Sandy who, anxious to get rid of all their boxes from her garage, was only too glad to give them a hand to move.

  Vera and Vel’s guests kept themselves to themselves. No one ever stopped by to see them. No one drove by to pick them up. No one called. Once, a man called for Lee, but that was literally it.

  They stayed holed up in their room at the back of the restaurant, the low drone of the TV emanating twenty-four hours a day. It had started out a loud drone, but Vel soon insisted they turn it down. Ty, especially, rarely ventured out and never alone. The Ivkovitchs thought it was odd, the way tha
t when they went to the gas station next door to buy beer, they skirted round the back and through the bushes, rather than walk across the parking lot and out on the street. Odd, but not suspicious. Some nights, the women drank two cases of beer—48 cans. Vera couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw all the empties spilling out of the trash. Sometimes, when Ty was holed up alone, Vera coaxed a cigarette from Vel for her. Of course, Vel thought Vera had taken up smoking again, but she didn’t care. She felt rather sorry for Ty.

  Vera, suspecting that Ty was Lee’s lover, asked Lee outright if she’d become a lesbian. Lee was surprised more than angry, wanting to know how Vera could tell.

  ‘I can tell on you,’ Vera replied. ‘But I respect. No problem.’ The only thing that drowned their TV or music was the sound of Lee screaming at Ty. Screaming. Always screaming. ‘She’s my lover,’ Lee explained to Vera, adding, in a manner eerily reminiscent of Leo Pittman, that she’d kill Tyria if she caught her with anyone else.

  ‘How can she find another girl?’ Vera retorted. ‘She never leave the room!’

  Lee and Ty’s disputes never came to blows though, the Ivkovitches were pretty sure of that. Just screaming. ‘I spank you, Lee! You’re too bossy!’ Vera chastised her. When the Yugoslav couple had another guest—a retired sheriff from New York City—they quietened down considerably.

  As if intimidated by the presence of others, when they wanted to eat in the restaurant, they always checked first to make sure it was empty, then they’d venture out and sit at one of the chequered-tablecloth-covered tables. If anyone else came in to dine, they picked up their food and retreated to their room. Whatever the lighting and no matter the hour, Lee always wore a ball cap and sunglasses.

  Just as their lesbianism was no problem, it was no problem, either, when the two women asked for credit. But with breakfast, lunch and appetisers, it soon mounted up, and they fell behind with their rent, too. The bill climbed to $230. More mornings than not, while Vera was up at dawn slaving over a hot stove, Lee languished in bed until lunchtime.