The “Lo End 9mm” didn’t cross my mind again until I went to the semiannual gun show. I was surprised to find several of them offered for sale. The asking price was a little over a hundred dollars. By comparison, what I considered a decent pistol was going for $400 or more at the time. One of the vendors told us that it was a great backup gun, especially if you’re a hunter. From then on we referred to it as a “hunting weapon” that every sportsman should have. It became a running joke.
About six months later, I was wandering through another Baton Rouge gun show, checking out the latest guns and hoping to buy ammo for myself at a good price. I was browsing among the two hundred or so gun-dealer tables when I came upon a police officer I knew. He was amusing himself by watching a Lo End 9mm being touted and sold. The gun dealer had a table full of what we consider to be “off-brand” and “cheap” firearms. Some resembled assault weapons. We pretty much know the type of person who is attracted to this type of table, and it is never a true firearm aficionado. The buyer in question, a black male dressed in a rather nice patterned shirt, was listening intently. The shirt is really what caught the officer’s eye as it showed various Harley-Davidson motorcycles on a blue background. Both he and I ride Harleys, so the shirt struck us as rather interesting. We stood there and listened as the dealer expounded on the outstanding qualities of the firearm. “Best gun on this table, for the money.” We were amused by the sideshow presentation the dealer had mastered. He reminded me of a barker outside a Bourbon Street strip club. I could hear him doing his spiel in the same voice—“Come on in, buddy. Most beautiful ladies in town . . .”
Ultimately the guy buys the gun. His gold teeth glistened as he smiled over his new acquisition. He looked up, made eye contact with us, and my policeman friend said to him, “Hey, buddy, good gun. I’d put a lot of WD-40 on it and the bullets to make it shoot better.”
The guy thanked him. The next pitch from the dealer was the type of 9mm ammunition worked best in the gun. He just happened to have some there on the table. We went on about our business and laughed about the Lo End being a hunting gun. The officer mumbled something to me about how the point of his WD-40 recommendation was to “gum up the works and maybe save some cop’s life out there.”
As we were leaving the show, we ran into the buyer again and said, “See you later, buddy.”
Buddy responded with: “Yeah—cool, man. See you.”
My friend turned to me and finished his thoughts on the matter, “But he won’t see us, because he’s going to get killed out there with his sportsman’s Lo End. . . . Nice shirt, though. I like it.”
My response was typical: “You’re profiling, but, you may be right.” After all, this guy had been a police officer for many years.
We then discussed the issue of “Saturday-night specials” and the “gangsta” market that such a firearm would appeal to. We also talked about profiling and police work.
His whole demeanor changed when we touched on the topic. I guess he had developed a clear perspective from his police experiences. “If I see a carload of white males riding around in an all-black neighborhood at eleven P.M. and I think they don’t belong there and are up to no good, am I profiling? Sure I am. I’m assessing risk based on what I know. It’s not about racism, it’s about actuarial data, just like the insurance companies do to assess risk.” Then he closed with his final point: We both opined that the person buying that type of weapon from that type of dealer is at high risk for shooting someone or getting shot.
I concurred, and encouraged him to lighten up. “Hell, I’m on your side.”
At a death scene soon after, we were gathered around a customized two-door Buick. It was about five A.M. and the sky was starting to turn a light blue as it readied for daybreak. The humidity already hung heavily in the air and draped about us. The car was light green. The paint job was immaculate. I guessed it to be a late-1960s model, restored to perfection. The “gangsta” whitewalls and the “spinner” hubcaps reminded me of the old muscle-car days.
It was a nice ride, very clean, except for the blood on the white leather upholstery.
An examination of the crime scene revealed the driver of the Buick had lost control at the intersection, which was about a hundred yards away from the current location of the car. The vehicle had jumped the curb and come to a stop in an empty lot next to a small warehouse. There was no indication that the driver had applied the brakes. The car had rolled to a stop but was still in gear. Evidently the engine died when the Buick bounded over the curb. The driver had a Tootsie Pop in his mouth and a bullet in his heart. He was wearing a rather nice shirt patterned with Harley-Davidson motorcycles on a blue background. My friend recognized him immediately and made a rather concise comment to me on the situation: “Profiling, huh?”
His Lo End pistol was not with him. We surmised that another “sportsman” had taken it. The whole episode seemed surreal.
Coincidence? Educated guess? Who knows? Bottom line is that if you live by the sword, or the 9mm . . . there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing you but you won’t see us.
Since I come from a clinical background, there are times when I drift into a clinical assessment paradigm. What that translates into is that I focus on the biological or physical aspects of the corpse first and foremost. But, I also try to consider any signs or clues that might give me some indication of the victim’s psychology as well as that of the perpetrator. For example, if the victim has track marks, the possibility that he is a drug addict goes to the top of the list. But he could also be a recent plasma or blood donor or even be a dialysis patient. An indication is not a fact. If he has an appointment card for a visit to a mental health clinic, that’s a clue. Or multiple “jail house” tattoos might indicate a multiple offender. If he is a blatant homosexual, there is the possibility that this is a hate crime and the perpetrator has a character disorder. If he has the address of a married woman in his wallet, this might be a passion murder. The list of possibilities may seem endless, but it is important to keep an open mind. Then there is the social context. The type of lifestyle of the victim may well point to the type of person who would kill him. The most obvious being a gang war. And we have to consider the spiritual context, especially with serial killers who might be on a “mission from God.” Maybe the killer feels justified if not morally compelled to kill a sexual predator who has exploited his child.
Of course this process of trying to fill in those biological, psychological, sociological, and spiritual blanks can lead to a great deal of speculation with some infusion of my own bias. But, like speculation, this approach can offer some benefit since it does get me thinking in an orderly and comprehensive fashion. I just have to keep in mind how speculative it is. A supposition is definitely not a fact but it can help lead me to a fact. It can be dangerously seductive, too. The danger is that I may try to make the facts fit a “pet” scenario.
Sally Givens is what we’ll call her, a single mom raising two kids and struggling to stay afloat financially. It was about four A.M. in the fall of 1999 when she turned her car down a side street off of North Acadian Thruway. She was delivering newspapers before the city awakened. The side street was dark. The streetlight was overgrown with vegetation.
Her headlights revealed a black female lying in the driveway of one of her paper customers. Sally was too street-smart to stop and check it out. She turned the vehicle around immediately and drove straight to the closest police station. EMS was dispatched and arrived in three minutes and fifty-seven seconds. About three hours too late for the victim.
A local who was staggering about that morning informed EMS that he recognized the deceased as a working girl by the name of Tasha. That was all he knew, except that he had seen her in the area earlier, but couldn’t remember when. He was quite inebriated. He did stick around to talk to the police, but they got little more from him.
The shrill ring of the cell phone ended my sleep at five A.M. The message awakened me immediately. “Got a black h
ooker down. Could be our boy is at it again.” “Our boy” referred to a person killing black prostitutes. He was also becoming known as the “non-serial killer,” a title that originated as a sarcastic retort to those who dismissed the string of black prostitute murders as just coincidental.
De, awakened by the call, asked if she could come with me. “Sure, De, you’re legal.” Besides, this may be him and we can always use a woman’s touch.
DeAnn, whom I first met in a psychiatric hospital in 1985, is a medicolegal death investigator and a registered psychiatric nurse. She was obviously grateful that I was allowing her to come, and her response was one of understanding and gratitude: “Always a smart-ass! Okay, just for that you’re taking me to Frank’s for breakfast after this.”
The scene was a typical southern Louisiana morning. The sun was on the rise and the dew was burning off in the form of steam. Mosquitoes were swarming about and the air was heavy with insect repellent. The responders had sprayed themselves liberally with the stuff. I guess they believe in West Nile virus. We followed suit and sprayed ourselves. The usual cast of characters was present: detectives, crime-scene officers, uniformed officers, and gawkers. Amazingly, the press had not arrived yet.
The crime scene was on Randall Street, which runs off of Plank Road. The beginning of Randall was blocked by the crime-scene van. The scene was cordoned off down Randall until the street intersected with another. That end was blocked by a marked police unit, so we had control of the street for a whole block. As we waited to be cleared by crime-scene officers to enter the area, we chatted among ourselves—mostly about the possibility that this prostitute could be part of a string of murders that many felt was the work of a serial killer.
We were cleared to approach the body.
We found a blue purse several feet away from the body. It was open and its contents spilled out over the driveway. Condoms and several twenty-dollar bills were scattered about. The presence of the twenties suggested that the crime scene had not been tampered with to any extent. Nobody in this neighborhood is going to walk past a twenty-dollar bill, let alone six of them.
There was also a six-inch kitchen knife in view. It did not appear to have any blood on it. Murder weapon? Victim’s weapon?
Tasha (not the victim’s real name) was lying face down in the first driveway on the left. The ants had found the body almost immediately. The blow flies were still napping and there was no other insect activity on the corpse. The victim was dressed in blue slacks that appeared so tight as to make the gold-colored belt superfluous. She had on a pink striped blouse and blue shoes. Her hair was shoulder length, but it looked like a wig.
As it happened, my initial speculation was that this was the work of the serial killer. “Wonder if it’s him . . .” I mumbled to myself. I mumbled a little too loudly.
Upon which my wife blurted out, “Nope, it’s not him.” She said this in a very authoritative manner, and of course everyone heard her say it.
Now, I like to think I can put professional pride aside and be open to input from any source. But I must admit this irked me just a little. “Now, how in the hell do you now that, De? How do you know this is not the serial killer’s work? We haven’t even examined this woman yet!”
“Because I know this ‘woman’ is a male. I don’t even have to see the face. Look at the hands—too big. Look at the feet—too big. Plus the butt is too angular. The body fat isn’t in the right place, and besides . . . that outfit is atrocious.”
I couldn’t let it go. “We’ll see.” De helped me turn Tasha over. Examination revealed Tasha had on a black sports bra. Each cup was stuffed with a rolled-up stocking. A key was in the right cup and a driver’s license in the left one. Tasha was a man I’ll call Alton. Alton also had on thong underwear that allowed him to fold his penis back toward his buttocks. De was right. Alton, alias Tasha, was definitely a male.
Still, I couldn’t capitulate without a final stand. “So maybe the serial killer made the same mistake—I mean assumption.”
De: “He hasn’t shot anyone to date, has he?”
Smart-ass. I’d kept that part to myself.
Examination revealed that Tasha had sustained a gunshot wound to his right upper back. The bullet nicked a major pulmonary vessel and caused him to bleed to death. He also sustained a gunshot wound to his left hand. He was able to run from his corner of business to the driveway before he lost too much blood to continue.
I asked De to interpret the blood trail. “Well, he was running from the corner of Plank Road. You can see from how the drops splattered that he was moving fast at first; then you can see where he slowed down. Looks like he may have just stood here for a moment before he collapsed because the drops here are almost at ninety degrees.”
One of the crime-scene officers felt the need to share that he was impressed with her interpretation. I had to agree. I was proud of her.
The empty casings were .380 caliber. Some were under the PD’s crime-scene van—they had parked right on top of them.
Of course, as the case unfolded, the prime suspect became the victim’s lover. That’s always the first suspect, assuming he had a lover. There are several lessons here. Even though I know better, I found myself giving in to that seductress known as speculation, who tempts you to look for ways to make the facts fit your preconceived assumptions. That’s an investigative pitfall, and one—as Tasha and DeAnn reminded me—I’m not immune to. We all need reality checks now and then. I was jumping to a conclusion. Indeed, on our way to the scene, I had been replaying the other similar victims in my mind. Maybe I had allowed myself to be biased by the initial call. But, I was on the wrong page. The biology was wrong here. The victim was a male, albeit a female impersonator, and one who fooled me at first glance. But he was still a male, and not our serial killer’s type. The cause of death, a gunshot wound, didn’t fit either. The “non-serial killer” likes close contact, and strangulation is close and personal, so the psychology was just wrong. “Our boy” would never have just shot someone and run off. There was no positioning of the corpse to display his work, and like I said, bullets just aren’t as intimate as choking a person to death with your hands.
The other lesson here is that men and women tend to see things differently. I strongly believe that some subtleties, especially in female homicides, are best detected by a female. A female investigator is a valuable resource to have on your team. Actually, this was only a preview of how that value would express itself later in other cases. Ironically, I would be criticized by my more vocal detractors for allowing my wife to volunteer her services. There were wrong about lots of other things too.
By the way, just as an addendum, Frank’s is a local restaurant where lots of us judicial types meet up. We did go to Frank’s for breakfast that morning. Our waitress recognized us, and when De ordered crow for me, both she and the waitress laughed. Personally, I failed to see the humor in that. Where’s my damn biscuits and alligator sausage?
STAND IN MY SHOES
There is a “switch” that most emergency responders have developed. I’ve seen it in EMS paramedics, police officers, healthcare providers, and even in myself. This objectivity switch is flipped on immediately when we get a call-out. We try to put our emotions aside in order to be able to render care, or do an investigation or an autopsy, free of subjectivity. We are applying scientific methods to the task at hand.
But just because a person is not reacting emotionally to the events he or she is dealing with does not mean the emotions are not coming—because they are. We repress them at the scene. That’s a good thing. We need to be able to compartmentalize situations. That ability allows us to function optimally in a crisis situation. But if we do not deal with those emotions after the acute crisis is over, then they will surely deal with us later. Those repressed emotions bubble up to the surface as alcoholism, prescription drug addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, divorce, and even suicide. We all know comrades who have burned out.
I t
hink that to really understand what all this does to a person and how it expresses itself, you have to stand in the shoes of a responder. I hope this journal entry clarifies some of it.
One warm, mosquito-infested Saturday night in May of 2001, we were out among the usual responders at the death scene of a teenager. I say “we” because DeAnn was with me. It was just before midnight, and the humid “air” clung to us. He was not a big kid—the eighteen-year-old Broadmoor High student looked about fifteen. He had sustained a single gunshot wound to his neck and had bled to death, alone, there on a main thoroughfare in Baton Rouge.
He had tried to run from his assailants. I could tell this by the blood path he left and the way the droplets of his blood patterned on the pavement. He seemed to be running in the direction of his home. He had a lacerated jugular vein. If he had known to put pressure on it he might have lived. I thought of how scared he must have been and how his death was pointless. Death doesn’t play fair! Death doesn’t “play” at all!
So there he was, crumpled up on the side of the road. His name was Demetrius White. He was walking home from a nearby apartment complex where he was visiting friends. The police were already on the trail of the killers. Minutes before midnight, three men in a four-door maroon Oldsmobile approached White and tried to rob him. White struggled and was shot in the back of the neck. The criminals went on to carjack three other men in just hours.
Coroner's Journal: Forensics and the Art of Stalking Death Page 14