Vulgar Favours

by Maureen Orth

  “We knew right away it may be a gay thing,” says Sergeant Bob Tichich (pronounced titch-itch), a twenty-four-year veteran of the Minneapolis police force, who responded to the call at 4:55 P.M. “The caretaker knew he was gay. We made the assumption it was Madson’s body—it was a reasonable thing to assume. He hadn’t shown up for work—it was him!”

  Tichich called police technicians to photograph the body and process the apartment. “We just did a cursory walk-through. They were processing. We were interviewing.” On the dining room table was David’s wallet, and inside the refrigerator were two partially eaten plates of food. A light had been left on. On the bedroom dresser they found two pairs of handcuffs with keys, leg cuffs, two empty drinking glasses, two partial rolls of duct tape, a bottle of For Play lubricant, and two packs of Wet formula, another lubricant. There was a bag containing balled-up duct tape on the dresser, and more balled-up duct tape on the nightstand and on the floor in front of the dresser.

  Next to the dresser was the black duffel bag Andrew had packed with clothes, pornographic videos, and steroids. Now it also contained an empty gun holster, an empty magazine, and a box with fifteen live .40 caliber Remington Golden Saber bullets in it. The other ten were missing. At first glance, the police assumed that a sex scene had gone on and that the bag belonged to David.

  At 5 P.M., Linda Elwell called Jennifer Wiberg, who was talking to police. Elwell reiterated that Greg Nelson had to be a suspect. Tichich talked to Linda Elwell at about 7 P.M. He told her that they believed David had been beaten to death. His only question to Linda was “Did you touch the doorknob? This is important.” She assured him that she had not. A few minutes later Lieutenant Dale Barsness, Tichich’s boss, came by. “It was a very brutal crime scene,” he says, “somewhat bizarre—the body rolled up in the rug. We believed that the killer or killers planned on moving it.”

  There was no urine or feces in the apartment, which indicated that the dog had been taken out and walked for at least two days following the murder. Crime technicians sawed out planks of the hardwood floor with bloody footprints on them. Nobody went near the body. Police waited for the medical examiner, Dr. Eric Burton, to arrive at 7:20 P.M. before unrolling the rug to reveal the body. But the body was not removed from the rug for fear of losing valuable hair and fiber samples. As the hours ticked by, the police went on believing that the dead man was David. Moving the body off the rug for positive identification would not be done until it was at the morgue for an autopsy.

  David’s friend Monique Salvetti, a public defender, had arrived to check on David only to find the building surrounded by police. She would have been able to rule out David as the body in the rug and identify Jeff, but the body was still rolled up and she was kept out. Sergeant Steve Wagner took her to headquarters to interview her. Monique named Greg Nelson as a prime suspect. She also told Wagner that a man named Andrew, a dark-haired former lover of David’s from California who might be into something “shady,” had been staying at the apartment that weekend. She related details of his relationship with David and told what she knew of their activities the previous weekend, but she couldn’t remember Andrew’s last name.

  Meanwhile David and Andrew were heading north on Highway 35 in David’s red Jeep.

  EVER SINCE THE O. J. Simpson trial, the rules of evidence have changed. Fearing that they’ll be humiliated in court the way the prosecutors in the Simpson case were, in spite of a plethora of circumstantial evidence, state and county district attorneys have reined in police departments. They now demand a much higher threshold of proof before they will charge suspects with crimes, and they insist that police adhere to strict procedures in order to avoid potential defense motions and objections during trial. The situation has caused considerable tension in some police quarters. In this instance, in the first, crucial hours when they could have at least broadcast a bulletin for David Madson’s Jeep, the officers involved were doggedly guarding the evidence.

  “While it’s important to identify the body,” Tichich explains, “you cannot lose evidence that will lead you to the killer. So it has to be done in a methodical, painstaking way, so no evidence is ruined or spoiled.”

  Initially, even David’s friend Linda Elwell and his boss, John Ryan, accepted the idea that the body in the rug was likely to be his. But soon, says Linda, they told Tichich that they didn’t believe it: “David was a bodybuilder. He wouldn’t let someone beat him.” Meanwhile, Monique suggested that Sergeant Wagner call David’s friend, Minneapolis attorney Jim Payne, to see if he knew Andrew’s last name. Payne told Wagner he thought it might be Kunanen, but when Wagner tried to find such a listing in San Diego on the computer, there was nothing. He then called Monique, who said Andrew’s name was definitely Kunanen or Cunanen (sic). Monique said Wagner could probably get it off of the Rolodex in David’s office.

  Monique also told Wagner that David’s hair was blond—almost white in the back. In David’s apartment, the police couldn’t help but notice that the hair sticking out from the top of the rug was dark, almost black. After interviewing Monique, Wagner alerted the officers at the loft that David’s hair was blond, which was easily verified by photos of him in the apartment. Moreover, it seemed that his unknown, dark-haired weekend houseguest, name of Andrew, might even be the victim.

  “Oh God, we hope we’re not in shit now,” Tichich recalls thinking. “When Steve Wagner got the description, we realized that it very possibly was not Madson—the hair color, we could see, was black. So now this becomes a serious issue. We can’t by law go in without a search warrant if David’s not the victim.” Tichich was convinced he might have made a major error in entering the apartment without a search warrant, although many law-enforcement officials would not have been so scrupulous. Wagner kept calling Monique back, asking for more physical details about David. Linda Elwell also called Tichich and described him: “Blond hair, baby-blue eyes, muscular.” Tichich told her, “Well, then, based on your description, this body is not David’s.” At 8 P.M. the police removed the body; at 10 P.M. they decided to leave the loft and start fresh in the morning with a search warrant. David Madson’s family still had not been notified.

  Since David was fanatic about working out, the police assumed the steroids they found were his. Tichich had also learned that neighbors had seen David freely walking around with his dog. To Tichich, therefore, it was a no-brainer: David Madson was the chief suspect.

  AROUND NOON ON Tuesday, Stan and Ann Trail went to their daughter Lisa Stravinskas’s house in Elgin, Illinois, to pick up their two young grandsons. The family was going from one medical crisis to another. Lisa was eight months pregnant and experiencing an extremely difficult pregnancy that had culminated in premature labor. She had to be in the hospital in order for doctors to determine whether the baby’s lungs were sufficiently developed for a C-section to be performed. Ann Trail was still recovering from cancer surgery she’d undergone a few weeks before. Nevertheless, the Trails would care for the boys while Lisa and her husband went to the hospital for an amniocentesis and a sonogram. Jerry Davis was unable to reach the Trails until late Tuesday afternoon.

  At first Jeff’s parents thought that their son might have taken off for Texas to see his sister Candy because he couldn’t take Minneapolis anymore. Jerry Davis called back the Bloomington police to verify that the Trails had not heard from Jeff, and made an appointment for himself and Jon Hackett to talk to a detective Wednesday morning. Finally the Bloomington police agreed to issue a missing-persons report.

  “Be sure to let Jeff know that I might be having the baby,” Lisa told her stepfather. “He wanted to be here when it came.” Stan Trail answered, “I can’t. Jeff is missing.” Jeff’s body was still rolled up in the rug in the Minneapolis morgue when, at 9:47 P.M. on Tuesday, April 29, the Bloomington, Minnesota, police issued a notice for “Missing Adult Jeffrey Allen Trail.” The report incorrectly stated the license-plate number of his 1996 green Honda Civic (it no longer said, “Navy 91”). Th
e report also stated that Jeff had been going to meet an old friend named Andrew at a coffee shop, and that Andrew “lives with a man named Dave.” It gave Madson’s home phone number. The report called for a metrowide search. The police assured Jerry Davis that if nothing happened overnight they would do a national missing-persons alert on Wednesday morning.

  AT 6 A.M., on Wednesday, April 30, David Madson’s Jeep pulled into a parking garage at 300 N.E. Water Street in Chicago. No one saw the driver. At 8:15 A.M., in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, Jeff’s sister Lisa Stravinskas gave birth to a baby girl, Emmy. At almost the same time, a Bloomington detective calling Stan Trail to verify that Jeff had not contacted the family told him brusquely, “You know he’s a homosexual, don’t you?” Lisa Stravinskas says today, “As if that explained everything.” In fact Stan Trail did not know Jeff was gay, but at that moment, he recalls, the discovery seemed “minuscule compared to the fact that Jeff was missing.”

  Meanwhile, at 9 A.M. in Minneapolis, the autopsy on Jeff’s still unidentified body was beginning, with Sergeant Wagner present as police witness. Sergeant Tichich, after getting the phone number of David Madson’s parents in Wisconsin, was over at the courthouse, where, at 9:20 A.M., he obtained a search warrant to enter David’s apartment.

  When Jeff’s fully clothed body was finally lifted from the blood-soaked rug, the medical examiner found a black nylon wallet in the right rear pocket of the victim’s jeans. It contained all of Jeff’s identification and forty-two dollars. Jeff was ultimately identified by a tattoo of Marvin the Martian on his left ankle. He also had a pierced nipple and toe ring. The wallet’s contents easily led the coroner to the Trail family in De Kalb, Illinois, where a local Catholic chaplain accompanied by a police officer arrived at the Trails’ home later that morning to tell them that their son had been murdered.

  SERGEANT STEVE WAGNER returned from the autopsy with the news that the body had been identified as Jeff Trail’s. He had had a gut feeling, he confided to fellow officers, since hearing about Andrew and his relationship with David in his interviews with Monique, “that David didn’t fit this whole thing. I think we’re going to find David Madson dead.” He also remembered that Monique had mentioned Andrew’s having a friend named T.J. or J.T. He called her, and she told him yes, Andrew’s friend was indeed Jeff Trail.

  Ferrellgas, Jeff’s employer, was then notified, and Jerry Davis drove over to Jeff’s apartment to break the news to Jon Hackett. Now they would no longer have to keep their Wednesday morning appointment with the Bloomington police.

  While he was waiting for Jerry Davis, Jon Hackett restlessly dialed David Madson’s apartment one more time. When the phone rang, Tichich, who was there with his warrant, had just been apprised of Jeff Trail’s identity. He did not pick up the phone but was jolted to have the caller I.D. read “Jeff Trail residence.” Oh, my God, Tichich thought, I’m talking to a dead man. He called back immediately and Jon Hackett answered. Who is he? Tichich wondered, thinking, Am I talking to the murder suspect? Hackett also was curious. “We got in this cat-and-mouse game,” Tichich says. When Hackett explained that he had reported Jeff missing to the Bloomington police, it was the first Tichich had heard about it. But that was not unusual. Missing adults are routine. “Every day we get calls about people not showing up for work, and 99.9 percent of them want to disappear.”

  Tichich asked questions about Jeff’s relationship with Andrew and about Jeff’s tattoos, which Hackett was able to answer. Then Tichich confided, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but we’ve found a body. We think it’s Jeff.” Jon Hackett was so stunned he had Tichich repeat this, twice. Just then Jerry Davis arrived, and he confirmed the horrible news.

  Jon Hackett’s parents were planning a birthday celebration for him that night at his brother’s house, forty-five minutes to the north. Jon’s mother picked up the phone to hear her shaken son say that he was gay and that his lover had been murdered. She told him that being gay was something they could discuss later; just come home. It wasn’t until he was on the freeway and heard Jeff’s name on the WCCO six o’clock news, Jon recalls, that it really sunk in: Jeff was dead.

  Wednesday morning, on page B7 of the metro section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, readers found the first two-paragraph press mention of the soon-to-be-giant story: “A man’s body was found Tuesday afternoon in an apartment in Minneapolis’ Warehouse District, and police were investigating his death as a homicide …”

  A FEW HOURS after giving birth by cesarean section Lisa Stravinskas was told about her brother’s death. Jeff’s secret, kept until then by her and her sisters, was out. Under the most tragic circumstances possible, even as they had to begin making arrangements to get back the body of their brutally murdered son and brother, the Trail family for the first time as a whole was suddenly having to come to grips with the fact that Jeff was gay. Stan Trail thought back and remembered Jeff telling him that one of his reasons for quitting the California Highway Patrol was that “it was not tolerant of people with alternative lifestyles.” Today Jeff’s father says, “But he never said he was one of those people. Jeff never told his mother or me he was homosexual, but he gave us every hint. He never hid anything. He introduced us to people who were obvious homosexuals—I never made that connection. That’s a remark on my perception. He did everything but grab me by the shoulders; he wanted me to ask him, but I never could. Maybe sub-consciously there’s something that didn’t let me.”

  “It occurred to me,” says Ann Trail, “but the one reason that I wasn’t able to close on that was that Jeff was intolerant of people who deviated from his expectations on behavior—people who smoked pot and, for a long time, people who drank alcohol. I wanted to ask him, but I thought, If I ask Jeff a question like that, he’s never going to speak to me again. I really thought he would be totally insulted and hurt if I asked him.”

  18

  Suspect

  THIS IS A weird one, Sergeant Bob Tichich remembers thinking when he first viewed the crime scene at David Madson’s loft. I wonder how this is all going to turn out.

  In the Trail murder investigation, which he headed, Tichich was destined to play the role of the “bad cop.” To David Madson’s family, he was the unsympathetic blue meanie who initially suspected David of being involved in Jeff Trail’s murder and who then would not reverse his original thesis. Why? Simply because he didn’t think the evidence allowed him to. He still says, “My gut tells me he didn’t do it, but my gut doesn’t count.”

  Stubborn and scrupulous, Tichich, fifty-two, is tall and balding, with a “just the facts, ma’am” demeanor. He speaks in a monotone and with a seemingly breathtaking lack of comprehension of how his blunt speech might affect others—he is tone-deaf to feelings. A mountain climber who digs deep for his facts, he sees no need to conform. In the Madson case, he stood on principle. Actually, Tichich and his younger partner, Pete Jackson—a hip, black, fast-talking ex-narc—bickered like an old married couple and looked as if they had just stepped out of a TV sitcom about cops. The frustrated friends of David Madson who refused to believe he would have aided Andrew in any way, didn’t see the TV connection. They used a closer-to-home film metaphor: For them, Tichich was “Fargo without Margie.”

  Tichich was trying to enlist Jerry Davis’s help in locating Andrew. Would Jerry search Jeff’s apartment for Andrew’s phone number? Jerry wanted to know if he should keep everybody out of the town house. “Absolutely not,” Tichich told him. “That’s not the murder scene.” When Davis asked if he could scrub the apartment down, he was told yes. “But Andrew just stayed there. Should I leave his bathroom alone, at least?” He said Tichich told him, “No, no, you can scrub it down.” Davis decided not to take Tichich’s advice. “I left the bathroom alone, and the room Andrew stayed in alone, but we went through everything.” (Davis, worried that Jeff’s family might find pinup-boy magazines, was intent on “de-gaying” the apartment.)

  After Jerry Davis came up with Andrew DeSilva’s name and San Die
go phone number from Jeff’s Rolodex, it was Jackson, at Tichich’s direction, who later discovered Andrew’s number on David’s caller I.D. by going through all its long-distance calls. When Jerry had called the number, he got a message saying, “You’ve reached Andrew and Erik.” The message also gave Andrew’s cell-phone number. On Wednesday, Jackson asked San Diego police to try to locate Andrew and warned San Diego that two murder suspects might be heading their way. The San Diego police then confirmed Andrew’s address, 1234 Robinson, and supplied the name of his roommate, Erik Greenman.

  Wagner went to David’s office to get his Rolodex and ask John Ryan to check and see if David was using his corporate credit cards or his phone-calling cards. The more he learned about David Madson, the less he saw him as someone who would be involved in a murder. “I was getting the impression of David as a nonviolent, peaceful guy, willing to do anything for anybody, including Andrew Cunanan.”

  It was only Wednesday evening at 9 P.M. that Tichich put out the first national all-points bulletin on David Madson and his vehicle, but there was no mention of Andrew as a suspect and nothing in it asking police to hold on to the driver. It would not be until Friday that a felony warrant was issued for Jeff’s missing car. Sometimes police deliberately omit the names of suspects they are seeking because they don’t want them tipped off. Other times they don’t know who it is they’re looking for. In this instance, says Steve Wagner, “It was a little bit of both.” Jeff’s car, which had been parked a couple of blocks from David’s loft since Sunday night, had a new license-plate number, so it had not yet been discovered. And it was not until Wednesday night that police contacted the Minneapolis airport to see if David’s Jeep was parked there. They had not yet tried to learn whether Andrew had flown home or not. But Tichich had contacted the Barron County sheriff in Wisconsin to find out where David’s parents lived.