Coroner's Journal: Forensics and the Art of Stalking Death

by Louis Cataldie

  Four days later, a state survey crew working near Whiskey Bay Bridge discovered a gruesome sight. Whiskey Bay, so named because an old riverboat full of whiskey sank in the area, is located on the I-10 corridor that runs through Baton Rouge and on to Lafayette and farther westward. And there, located in a marshy area of the woods beneath the bridge, surveyors came upon a human-like figure lying near the water’s edge. As they approached, they discovered it was the nude, decomposing corpse of a woman. It was Pam Kinamore. Her throat had been cut.

  Since her body was discovered in Iberville Parish, her murder fell under the jurisdiction of that coroner and that sheriff, and it was they who processed the crime scene. They also collected a piece of evidence that seemingly had no overt connection to the crime. It was a piece of telephone cord.

  The Iberville Parish coroner sent Pam’s remains to New Orleans for autopsy. Later, when the East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney, Doug Moreau, assumed jurisdiction, she became my responsibility and we brought her home. I had a forensic anthropologist as well as our own forensic pathologist waiting for Pam, to reexamine her remains.

  Pam’s body was transported from New Orleans directly to the LSU forensics lab. My forensic anthropologist, Mary Manheim, again was tasked with the examination of the bones. Much to my shock, Pam had not been X-rayed at the New Orleans morgue. Subsequently, we subjected her remains to total body X-ray to see if there were any clues, such as bone fractures that might indicate a certain type of trauma, or nicks on her ribs that might indicate stab wounds. This was necessary, as her remains were badly decomposed when I got her. I was also looking for a skull fracture that might indicate an attack to her head. Once she was X-rayed at the FACES lab at LSU, I returned her to the trailer morgue for a second autopsy/review by Dr. Michael Cramer, my forensic pathologist who does the actual autopsy.

  It’s not that I had any reservations about what the New Orleans pathologist had done on the gross autopsy. He’s very well thought of professionally. I just wanted to make sure everything was done to my standards and protocols. I had already examined two of this killer’s known victims, as well as Christine Moore, and there might be some subtleties that we could see or know to look for that someone else might not. The jurisdictional issue was also addressed by establishing a working relationship between my office and that of the Iberville coroner, just in case a similar situation arose again.

  Pam’s wedding ring was still on her finger. We carefully retrieved it. Obviously the killer was not interested in robbery. His heinous appetites were far more depraved. Pam’s ultimate cause of death was exsanguination—she bled to death.

  On July 29, two weeks after Pam’s body was discovered, the Louisiana State Crime Lab was able to link her death to the killer of Gina Wilson Green and Charlotte Murray Pace.

  As she was the third “linked” victim, it was announced that her killer had fulfilled the requirement for being officially labeled a “serial killer.” Terror seized the city.

  Pam’s death hit especially close to home for my family and me. Her son goes to Parkview Baptist School, the same school as my eleven-year-old son. Pam’s son is a grade ahead, and DeAnn knew who Pam was—another school mom.

  It fell to me to bring Pam’s wedding ring back to her husband. What is there to say? Not much except “I’m sorry” and “we’re trying to find the guy.” Little solace to a man who just lost his loving wife and the mother of his young son. Even worse, the cops had considered him a suspect in the first days of the investigation. How does a man in a wheelchair carry a body through a muddy swamp? He’d been injured many years ago and was wheelchair-bound even before they were married. Gimme a break!

  As I was walking back to my car from the front door of Byron Kinamore’s house, which sat on a street lined with magnolias, I was accosted by a news reporter. I guess they had the house staked out. I was enraged that the media would encroach upon this family in their time of acute grief. I showed my displeasure in my choice words and the reporter got the message. Needless to say, there was no interview. Someone with me at the time told me he’d never seen me that angry and thought I was going to hit the reporter. Maybe I was too close to the situation. And maybe not. Maybe it was the reporter who was too close.

  I was not at the initial Whiskey Bay scene due to jurisdictional issues, but I got to know Pam’s family and we did visit the area with them. A weathered wreath, placed there by her family, marked the spot where Pam was found. I credit her mom, Lynne Marino, with keeping these deaths in the forefront of everyone’s minds and keeping the focus on the investigation. She is a most tenacious and outspoken lady, and she demanded accountability from the authorities. She took a lot of flack for that, but she never let up. And people listened. And, more important, they responded. The families became the conscience of the investigation. They insisted upon actions and answers from the authorities, they got politicians involved, they held rallies, and they also met and did their own victim-profile analyses. In this way did it emerge that Pam had been at LSU for a function the day before her abduction. Maybe there was a connection. Maybe this was a clue as to the predator’s hunting ground.

  ELEVEN

  Unsolved Mysteries

  Random murder makes people feel very vulnerable, especially when they share multiple traits with the victims. It scares you for your wife, your children, everyone around you. For instance, what if Pam Kinamore’s young son had been in the house? What would have happened to him? Fear is a protective emotion. Fear is not a bad thing, but ignoring it is. DeAnn was listening to her fear in early August when she had gone to visit a friend at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital. She called me at nine P.M. to come escort her to her car because there was no one around to do it. I drove over to the hospital and walked her to her car. I guess I could have called hospital security, but I preferred to handle this myself. What mattered was that she was fearful of venturing out into a dark lot because of the serial killer.

  Then there was the evening when she called to tell me that Jack, our three-and-a-half-pound Yorkie, was barking and there might be someone lurking about. DeAnn is no wimp and she knows how to handle a firearm. Yet she had grabbed my old antique .45 Webly revolver instead of her own .357 Smith & Wesson and was grasping it in her hand while standing in the hallway waiting for the intruder—and she was scared. I rushed home and cautiously announced my presence. I didn’t want to get shot. Actually, I am absolutely certain that if there had been an intruder, it would have been his dead ass that I’d have been greeted by. I understand her feelings; as coroner I am in a highly visible position. She had been to those death scenes and understood just how ruthless this bastard was. What’s more, she had been on camera and knew he was watching the TV. Also—she fit the victim profile.

  At any rate, all of Baton Rouge was ready for the police to do something. And, we all readily embraced the belief that a task force was that something. In August 2002, a task force was formed of some forty investigators from various law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Baton Rouge Police Department, the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, the Louisiana State Police, the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office, and the Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office, among others. This Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force was formed to establish clearer lines of communication among the various bureaus. They believed this could help them share information better and catch the killer more quickly.

  The serial-killer cases were top priority now, and no expense was to be spared. Lab results would be processed in a timely manner. That was good news. Of course, it did little for all the other cases they had to process. The dedicated scientists at the Louisiana State Crime Lab continued to compare DNA samples of the killer with samples taken from several dozen unsolved murder cases over the previous decade. Limited financial and personnel resources made this an arduous task, to say the least. DNA casework was already backlogged. One of the reasons for that backlog was me—and other coroners. We do rape kits on living and deceased persons and we submit
them to the crime lab. We don’t do our own work for the simple reason that the crime lab does it at no cost to us. When I tried to get funding to do some of my own lab in house, I was informed that we got it for free, so that was not a sound move, in fiscal terms. The end result is that just about everyone in the area sends samples to the state police crime lab, fully aware that it might take months to get the results back, depending on the priority of the case.

  The response to the linked deaths of Gina, Murray, and Pam was dramatic. FBI experts came to town and developed the killer’s profile. A twenty-four-hour hot line was set up. Hundreds of males were swabbed for DNA. The families of the victims became outspoken advocates for the killer’s capture. A bounty was placed on his head. National news media came to town. Special bloodhounds were brought in. There were waiting lists to purchase Mace spray. Self-defense seminars flourished. Gun sales increased dramatically.

  Sadly, the public’s expectations of the FBI profilers was a little overblown. This was colored in part by books and movies like The Silence of the Lambs. I think people expected the FBI to be able to give us the guy’s name, address, and Social Security number, and the name of his maternal grandmother to boot. Such high and unrealistic expectations introduced an element of dissatisfaction into the reality of the process.

  The tip line was a great idea. Historically, many serial killers have been caught thanks to information supplied by people in the community. However, the robust community response quickly deluged the system. In short, it was swamped. There were lots of tips about white pickup trucks. A witness came forward saying he had seen a nude woman slumped over in the passenger seat of a white pickup truck pulling off the Whiskey Bay exit of I-10. Under hypnosis, he said the truck was white and so was the driver. Suddenly, if you were white—and drove a white pickup—there were more than 27,000 in the Baton Rouge area, according to one account—you were eyed with caution. Prioritizing those tips became an issue. The truck in question was described as a late-1980s GM truck with bad paint and bad window tinting. It wasn’t too long before bumper stickers began to appear on some white pickup trucks that read simply: NOT THE SERIAL KILLER.

  Even DNA became a “sore spot.” If a person was turned in to the tip line, that person got swabbed. Sounds innocuous enough on the surface, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it seemed to take on a life of its own and became a substitute for police investigations. Several “suspects” felt they were being coerced by Gestapo tactics. Here is the scenario. Two police detectives show up at your door. They tell you an anonymous tipster thinks you might be the serial killer and they are here for a DNA swab. They don’t check to see if you were in town or even in the country at the time of the murders. They just want the DNA. If you resist, it is a sign of guilt and they will get a subpoena, which will be noted in the public record, letting everyone know you are a serial-killer suspect. If you comply, you don’t get the negative result back when you are ruled out, and you wonder later what database your DNA “fingerprint” will end up in. Not surprisingly, lawsuits followed.

  I felt obliged to find out exactly what was going on at the safety seminars that were being held throughout the city, so I attended one. You can’t support something unless you know what it is you’re supporting. Since I was there to observe, I found myself standing in the back of a library that was jam-packed with women of all ages. The safety tips were good, and the presentations by peace officers were on target. The one thing that bothered me a little was the self-defense demonstration on how to handle an attacker. The instructors have much more confidence in the simple tactics they were teaching than I did. I figured the killer to go two hundred pounds or so and be strong as an ox. There was no way these young women were going to fend him off in a physical altercation. Charlotte Murray Pace had given him a hell of a battle but died anyway. So I watched the demonstrations and hoped the women were more attuned to safety and were not getting a dose of false confidence.

  At least most women no longer jogged alone.

  One of the most “colorful” comments relating to self-defense came from our governor, Mike Foster. During one of his Live Mike weekly radio shows, he told the citizens of Louisiana that “if you have some fruitcake running around . . . [a gun] sure can save you a lot of grief.” That view seemed to be shared by lots of folks, because in the first week of August 2002, the state police had 447 requests for concealed handgun permits. That averages out to about ten per hour. Now, I’m a believer in appropriate handgun carry. I’m comfortable around firearms, and I know my way around a gun shop. It was at a local gun shop that I became somewhat alarmed by what I saw and overheard. A dealer was trying to convince this 110-pound young woman that she needed a .357 Sigarms pistol. Now, there is no way this novice was going to be able to control that weapon, at least not without considerable training. And I’m sure she’d rapidly get tired of carrying such a huge gun around. Maybe the salesman was just uninformed, or maybe he was trying to sell an expensive gun because his small handgun stock was low. I hope it was for the former reason.

  Rumors of all sorts were rampant and this fueled the sense of terror. It’s important not to get caught up in that emotional roller coaster. If you become so emotionally involved with a murder victim that you let your emotions impair your objectivity, you can make mistakes that could allow the perpetrator to get away or get a less appropriate sentence. For instance, if I’m overheard at a crime scene saying something really stupid like: “I’d like to kill the dirty, gutless, sociopathic son of a bitch who did this,” I have compromised myself for later testimony. “Is it not true doctor that you said in an open forum that you would like to kill my client? . . . Do you know my client? . . . Can you really be objective here? . . .” And, then, if you jump to conclusions, you might end up trying to make the facts fit your pet theory, ignoring other evidence that doesn’t fit your picture of what happened. Of course you’ll feel emotions at the scene, but you must compartmentalize them and put them aside and deal with them later.

  And in the midst of it all, the “usual” flow of murders, accidental deaths, questionable deaths, and suicides continued. There were the business-as-usual homicides also.

  TWELVE

  In the Sights of a Sniper

  At about 6:35 P.M. on September 23, 2002, Hong Im Ballenger locked the front door of the Beauty Depot, her beauty-supply shop located near the center of Baton Rouge, and began walking to her car. In one hand she held her keys; in the other, her empty lunchbox. A stiff breeze was blowing, a welcome relief from the unseasonably warm weather.

  A witness told police that as the forty-five-year-old Korean woman was about to get into her Mitsubishi Montero, a man confronted her. Thus did the police get the initial impression that someone came up to her, possibly demanded her purse, then shot her and ran off. Another witness would later report that a dark-blue car parked in a vacant field across from the parking lot approached the spot where Mrs. Ballenger was shot and picked up the man holding her purse.

  She was shot once in the head, killing her almost instantly—not even enough time to pull her can of pepper spray from her pants pocket. She obviously hadn’t been expecting any trouble, as the spray canister was deep within her pocket. That might suggest that no suspicious person had been in the store earlier, or at least no one who alarmed her. The murder occurred against the backdrop of a serial killer on the loose in Baton Rouge. Stores were selling out of Mace, and self-defense classes were filled. Public-service TV spots ran nonstop. None of that does any good if you don’t stay on full alert, but, as we would learn in time, no amount of caution could have saved Mrs. Ballenger.

  When I walked up to the crime scene, the wind was blowing hard enough to lift the plastic blanket off of Mrs. Ballenger’s body. Her shop was on the north side of Florida Boulevard, about two blocks from the Baton Rouge General Hospital. I know the area well because I worked at the General for about twenty years. The shop sits on the cusp of a rough neighborhood that has hopes of being improved by mid-city revival
ist efforts.

  Across the street, on the south side of Florida Boulevard, the inevitable crowd was building and people began climbing on the hoods of their parked cars to observe the show. They were joined by the local news crews, and the cameras were rolling. The dome strobes from the official vehicles only added to the scene’s slightly carnival effect.

  There was a long, partially coagulated trickle of blood running out from under the blue tarp. It had followed the slight downhill grade of the blacktop parking lot and pooled up about three or four feet from the edge of the improvised body cover. The source of the blood was Mrs. Ballenger’s head and neck area. Her body was stretched out parallel to the car, her lunch container at her side. I examined her visually only, careful not to touch her lest I contaminate any evidence; plus, the homicide detectives needed to see how her body was before I moved her.

  As I stood up from my initial, brief visual examination of Mrs. Ballenger, I noticed a child in a nearby truck—I soon found out it was her son. Night had just fallen and the boy’s face was illuminated by the staccato strobe of the police vehicle lights. He looked so small and vulnerable. He never looked my way. It struck me how confused and scared he must be.

  Mrs. Ballenger’s husband, fifty-five-year old Jim Ballenger, was appropriately distraught. It’s a shame we have to assess that, but we suspect everyone, especially spouses, in any homicide. His wife was a native of Inchon, South Korea, and they had married when he was in the military. They moved to Baton Rouge in 1996 with their three sons. “I know my wife is in heaven,” he told the local press later. And he did not believe in the death penalty. “Jesus said to forgive, and I am born again. The man who did it needs to do time in jail.”