Inmate 1577

by Alan Jacobson

  “There are distinct characteristics of the typical offender who sexually murders elderly women. And this UNSUB just doesn’t exhibit them.”

  Even in the muted lighting of the video room, Vail could see Burden’s face shade red.

  “Since this is my case, why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

  “It’s not that easy,” Vail said.

  “Karen, I think I’m getting close to being comfortable enough with our relationship to call you what your friends do.”

  The reference seemed to confuse Friedberg, but he apparently sensed it was not a flattering remark. “Hang on a sec,” he said, pulling the cigarette from his mouth. “Let’s take it down a notch. We’ve got two very upsetting murders. Let’s keep our heads clear and work together.”

  “There are going to be others,” Vail said.

  “How the hell do you know that?” Burden asked.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that notch was quite as low as your partner suggested. But to answer your question, this UNSUB is skilled at what he’s done. He appears to do lots of planning. He’s thoughtful, cool under pressure, and engages in high-risk behavior without the anxiety one would expect to see. He shows preplanning and a certain level of comfort that doesn’t come the first time out of the box. He’s brought his torture weapon with him, meaning he’s either done this before to others, or he’s thought a lot about what he wants to do and how he’s going to do it.

  “Based on what I’ve seen at the crime scenes—the way he gained access to the vic’s house is one example—I think he’s intelligent, and if I had to guess, I’d say he’s got formal education. He’s physically agile to some extent. He’s aware of police presence—the hooded sweatshirt might be one indication, though I’m not entirely sure of that yet. We’ll see if tracking down the ice cream vendors pays off. I’m betting it won’t. From what I’ve seen so far, this guy is smarter than that. He wouldn’t expose himself that way. And there’s definite purpose in how he posed Mr. Anderson’s body. Why, what it means, we don’t know yet. But when we figure it out, I guarantee you it won’t have been random.”

  Shit. I just gave them a profile...well, a bit of a profile. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. But I’m not very good at that, am I?

  They sat in silence for a moment, absorbing that information. Finally, Burden spoke. “So it seems like you’ve already got a decent feel for this guy.”

  “I’m in for a dime, so might as well make it a million bucks. Here’s more to consider. Leaving William Anderson in the middle of San Francisco...he’s flipping off the police, the FBI, and the victim. In the unit, we call it a ‘360 degree Fuck You.’ It’s extremely arrogant, risky, and shows a complete lack of empathy. The point is that all of these factors are indicative of psychopathy. This type of psychopathic individual would likely be more of the interpersonal type versus a white-collar psychopath.”

  “Interpersonal type?” Friedberg asked.

  “The lack of defensive injuries implies he was able to use his verbal skills to get close enough to the victim to take control. We call that type of psychopath interpersonal for obvious reasons. Contrast that with the bully type, which would hit the victims over the head with a club—no talking, just bam! and he’s in.”

  “So you’re saying he’s a social guy,” Burden said.

  “Not exactly. He has advanced verbal skills that allow him to appear less threatening to his victims.”

  Burden looked over at the frozen image on the screen. “So we’ve got a glib serial killer who’d just as soon as ram an umbrella up your ass and tear up your internal organs as chat you up in engaging socially stimulating conversation. This just keeps getting better.”

  Now you’re starting to see what we’re up against. “Our offender has physical violence in his repertoire of behaviors—behaviors that I believe he’s used in the past, maybe even more than his verbal skills. His anger is intense and he sustains it. But here’s the thing—even though he can experience anger, it’s not like the anger you and I feel. His comes and goes—it’s very intense, then suddenly it’s gone. Jekyll and Hyde.”

  “But the crime scene,” Friedberg said. “The blood, all the torture, all the physical damage to the victim—he obviously lost it. No?”

  “No. A guy like this, their scenes can be at the extreme end of the injury scale, but they can be very composed on the inside. So he can appear to be in control because he doesn’t experience emotions the way we do.” She scooted her chair forward. “Not only that, but he likely ejaculated. That suggests what I just described—that he’s capable of losing his anger enough to experience sexual arousal and then go back to acting out aggressively.”

  “Are you sure we’re dealing with a psychopath?” Burden asked.

  “There was a study done by Safarik, O’Toole, and Meyers on simultaneous states of arousal. An offender can’t be in a state of rage and sexual arousal at the same time. So at a scene where I see a lot of physical injury to the victim, and she was sexually assaulted and semen deposited rectally or vaginally, it strongly indicates a psychopath. They’re the only ones who can go into a heightened ‘emotional’ state like anger, then lose it quickly and then get sexually aroused. That’s just not normal.

  “In terms of practical application to our case, we’d likely see this as a hallmark of his in his past crimes. Interpersonal crimes of violence. And—it’s probable that he’s had contact with law enforcement before because of this anger.”

  A long moment passed. The two inspectors appeared to be absorbing the information.

  “Well,” Friedberg finally said, “you’ve totally ruined my day, Karen. Sounds like this is a seriously bad dude we’re after.”

  “I’d have hoped you would’ve already known that from what he did to the wife.”

  Burden cleared his throat. “So why do you say it doesn’t fit the typical elderly female sexual killer?”

  Vail sighed deeply. She looked over at the hooded offender on the screen. “Okay, here’s the deal. There are a number of similarities here. I’ll be totally honest with you so you can make your own assessment. When we’re talking about an offender who sexually murders elderly women, the mean age of the victim is usually around 77. So we’re in the ballpark here. And the vics they choose are overwhelmingly Caucasian—about 86 percent. Our vics are Caucasian. And more than 70 percent of the typical vics have lived in their place of residence for ten years or more. The Andersons have been there nineteen. And like the Andersons, over 70 percent of the typical elderly vics did not have better home security than simple locks on their doors.”

  “You saw the crime scene,” Friedberg said. “No alarms and no forced entry.”

  “Right. And we see that in about 60 percent of the cases, where the offenders enter through unlocked doors or windows—”

  “So that fits.”

  Vail bobbed her head. “Yes—but maybe not. For the moment, let’s stick with the similarities. The injuries inflicted on the victims appear to be consistent with what we would expect to see. The typical injury severity in an elderly sexual homicide is much greater than what’d be necessary to cause death.”

  “Overkill,” Burden said.

  Vail nodded. “We’re getting away from the term ‘overkill’ and starting to call it an ‘excessive injury pattern’ because it’s more accurate. But yes. The vics often suffer multiple severe injuries. Strangulation is the most common, somewhere around 65 percent of the time. Blunt force trauma is second, in the high thirties. But broadly speaking, that’s really where the similarities end.”

  “These guys who do this to old women...” Friedberg said. “I remember Safarik talking about a specific motive, but I can’t remember what he said it was.”

  “Safarik found that, on the surface, it’s all about power, or anger, or both. In a deeper sense, though, it’s really about punishing, dominating, and controlling his victim. This offender’s assaults are rarely about sexual gratification. Physical force is the predominant form
of violence they use—often involving their hands, fists, or knives.” Vail leaned back in her chair. “But the most interesting thing—and I think this makes a hell of a lot of sense—is that these offenders, who tend to be younger men—see the elderly female as representing an authority figure. Or they may even be the actual woman who was the source of the anger he’s feeling. And that’s obviously why he wants to exert power over her. With these sexual homicides, sexuality is the method he uses to get his revenge or to transmit his hostility.”

  Friedberg placed both elbows on the desk. “You said the UNSUB we’re looking for doesn’t look like the typical offender who rapes and murders elderly women. But everything you’ve said so far sure looks like the kind of guy we’re looking for.”

  “Like I said, there are similarities. But they’re mostly similarities relative to victimology. If we look at offender characteristics and the behaviors left at the scene, it’s a different story. The offenders who sexually abuse and then murder elderly women are criminally unsophisticated. It’s a spontaneous act, with little or no planning. They leave behind a fair amount of evidence and the scene is sloppy and random.

  “He doesn’t make efforts to hide or protect his identity. And he uses a blitz attack to gain control and disable his target. While our UNSUB’s attack was brutally violent, it wasn’t blitz-like. Like I said before, it was controlled anger. And it doesn’t look like he had any trouble controlling Maureen—or William. We’d also see property taken, money or valuables. Far as we know, nothing was missing. There’s more about these offenders I can tell you, but unless we’re convinced this is the type of guy we’re looking for, it’s senseless—”

  “Like what?” Burden asked. “Share it all so we can make an informed decision.”

  Vail frowned. “Fine. These offenders tend to be alcohol or drug users. They have lower intelligence and are what we used to classify as disorganized. They’re often unemployed and have a poor work history. Not surprisingly, that goes with a diverse arrest record, for a variety of unrelated crimes. And they also tend to be antisocial and/or socially incompetent—which doesn’t appear to be the case with our UNSUB because, unless the Andersons were easy marks, it looks like our offender was able to talk his way into the townhouse with no signs of difficulty.”

  “You’re holding back on us,” Burden said. “You said there was an exception to all this.”

  Indeed I did. Vail sighed. “I didn’t want to confuse things because—”

  “Confuse things, or confuse us?”

  Keep calm. Count to ten. Hell with that—who’s got time to count to ten? “Safarik did have a case like Maureen Anderson. Robert Mark Edwards tortured an elderly woman to death. Rammed things up her vagina and ruptured her uterus and internal organs, then pulled her fingernails off with pliers and did the same to one of her nipples. Edwards was a sexual sadist who was also a smart guy. But he’s an outlier.”

  Burden spread his hands apart. “So our UNSUB could be an outlier, too.”

  “Sometimes you have to go with your gut. You’ve been a cop a long time, you know that. And I know Mark Safarik and I’ve discussed all his cases with him. And if Mark were here, he’d tell you that guys like Edwards are exceptionally rare, that our UNSUB is a different animal than the animals in his research.”

  “Well, he’s not here to tell me that. I’ve gotta take your word for it. Regardless, you shouldn’t have held that back.”

  “Burden, listen to me. You know how many serial offenders there’ve been? I can’t brief you on every case that could be similar to this one. Part of my value to you and Robert is to cut through all the fat and narrow things down. Just like if you had a list of fifty suspects, my profile would pare it down to a handful who are most likely to be our UNSUB. That outlier case is so rare, it wasn’t worth mentioning. And there are other things, too, which support that.”

  There was a silent moment as Burden and Vail stared at each other.

  Friedberg cleared his throat. “Back at their place, you wanted a list of all residents within a six-block radius.”

  “Because these offenders typically live in the neighborhood and walk to their victim’s house. They’ve lived in the area for years, and they may’ve even seen the victim a number of times in the past. A guy I know does geographic profiling—which is basically the study of where offenders feel comfortable operating from a geographic point of view. The research suggests some offenders create ‘mental maps’ of an area when they identify one or more victims who interest them.”

  “Mental maps?”

  “An offender catalogs victim information in a mental ‘card file’ that allows him to find that victim again in the future. Mental mapping.”

  Friedberg stuck the cigarette back in his mouth. “So much for being safe in your own neighborhood.”

  “I still think there’s too many questions,” Burden said. “We can’t reach any conclusions yet.”

  “Honestly, you’re probably right,” Vail said. “But I strongly believe we’re looking at something different here. A psychopath. But the most important point in all of this is that we’re not just talking about the sexual homicide of an elderly female. He killed the husband, too. And that may tell us more than anything about this offender, and his motivations.”

  “Maybe he had to get the husband out of the way. Maybe he killed him first. We don’t know yet on the TODs.”

  “Yes, Burden—but what he did with William was far different from what he did with Maureen. It may not look like it, but there were nearly as many behavioral clues left on William as there were with Maureen.”

  “How so? William was pretty clean—”

  “Think about it a minute. Remember what I said? In placing William in the middle of San Francisco, in one of its beautiful enclaves that symbolized a rebirth of the city, he was telling all of us—SFPD and any other law enforcement who investigated—that he was king.”

  “Back at the crime scene, you said something about William not having any defensive injuries.”

  Vail curled a lock of red hair behind her right ear. “It would make more sense to me if he had defensive injuries, which would indicate he was forcefully taken, or overpowered by the offender against his will. But the absence of defensive injuries suggests a control issue. The offender wanted to control William during the time Maureen was attacked. So maybe part of the attack on Maureen was a psychopathic maneuver to get William to talk about something. There was no ongoing assault evident in other areas of the house, right? It seemed to all occur in the bedroom. And there was no ransacking. So it got me thinking, what if there was money in the house, and he was trying to get William to tell him where it was? Or maybe they owned bonds or some other asset that he could steal.”

  Friedberg pulled out his pad and clicked open the pen. “We can look into that.”

  “We should. But, that said...because of the type of violence, I really think...” She stopped. “Cold-blooded instrumental violence once again points toward psychopathy. We need some direction here, so I’m gonna commit. We should approach these murders from the perspective that we’re dealing with an interpersonal psychopath. And in cases like this we always have to ask, How’d the offender find these people? Why these victims, and why now? If we can answer that last question, we’ll have made major progress in solving this case.”

  “So if we’re dealing with a psychopath,” Burden said, “in your experience dealing with these monsters, what are the ramifications?”

  “He has no remorse for these victims, and like a hardened inmate in a penitentiary, he’s got no regard for the rules of society. So he will kill again, it’s just a matter of time. The only positive in all this is—and this is a macabre way of looking at it—the more victims he amasses, the more we’ll learn from him.”

  “As the body count rises,” Friedberg said, “so does our knowledge base.”

  That’s a concept I’m all too familiar with. Vail took another glance at the screen, where their UNSUB stood in
shadow. She was likely looking right at the killer.

  Yet she couldn’t see him.

  15

  May 16, 1958

  Columbia, Alabama

  Walton MacNally adjusted his black fedora. He was standing half a block away observing the First National Thrift building—specifically taking note of the flow of people entering and exiting. Evaluating the quality of the clientele and looking for potential pitfalls and traps.

  Last time, he more or less had gone in unprepared and, in the end, that had worked out pretty well. But he knew that it wasn’t worth taking such a risk again. He was smart enough to know that he’d gotten lucky.

  This time, he wanted to think things through, have a sense of what the bank looked like inside, where the security guards were located, how the tellers dealt with the customers. He wasn’t sure what he should be looking out for, but he would keep his mind—and his eyes—open.

  MacNally made three trips past the bank on foot before going inside. It was a stately interior, with marble columns and intricately carved wood desks, velvet-looking drapes covering the tall windows. This was a classier outfit than the community thrift he’d robbed last time. Three security guards stood at strategic locations, in a triangle formation: one at each end of the teller’s row, and one in the back, amongst the executive desks.

  He tapped his foot with nervous energy. This would undoubtedly be a tougher job.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  MacNally spun around, nearly knocking over the woman who was behind him. “I—I was just looking. I was—I was just thinking about opening up an account and I wanted to check the place out.”

  The middle-aged woman with poofed beauty parlor-set hair tilted her head. “Are there any questions I can answer for you? Would you like to come over to the vice president’s desk and talk with him about the ba—”

  “No-no, that’s okay,” MacNally stammered. “I think I’ve seen enough.”

  The woman nodded slowly. “All right. Well, if you think of anything you want to ask, my name is Nancy and I’ll be right here.”