by John Douglas
It was clear to us that during his interrogations he had been scared and confused, had been given too much information, and, in a pathetic effort to please and cooperate, he had told police of his “dream” in which he had murdered Carolyn Hamm. With all the input he had at that point, he very well could have dreamed it. But that didn’t make him a murderer.
Together with Joe Horgas and the Arlington Police Department, we asked Arlington County Commonwealth Attorney Helen Fahey to request Governor Gerald Baliles to grant Vasquez a full pardon. Since he had confessed, that would be the quickest route to getting him out of prison.
On October 16, 1988, we sent Fahey our written report concluding that the murderer of Carolyn Hamm was the same man who had murdered the other victims. The report, in the form of a five-page letter signed by both Steve and me, went with Fahey’s petition to the governor.
The pardon process took longer than we expected, as both the governor’s office and the Board of Pardon and Parole individually reinvestigated the case and reviewed our analysis. But finally, David Vasquez was released January 4,1989. He returned to his mother’s house and contemplated legal action against Arlington authorities. Eventually, on the advice of several different lawyers, he decided not to sue, and instead received a $117,000 settlement. Frankly, I would have given him a lot more if it was up to me.
But as troubling as David Vasquez’s arrest and conviction are—and they are sufficiently troubling that I think they must become an object lesson to all of us in law enforcement—when the possibility arose to Joe Horgas and then to us that this man might have confessed to and been imprisoned for something he didn’t do, no attempt was made to sweep a mistake under the rug. Rather, great effort was made to get to the truth of the matter.
As Steve Mardigian put it, “Arlington PD, that same department that got Vasquez arrested, had the willingness to go back and review the case and take the shots they knew would be forthcoming. I think that is a tremendous testament to that department’s integrity and dedication.”
And as Paul Mones eloquently points out in Stalking Justice, “What is unique about the story of David Vasquez is that the people who put him behind bars were also the ones who set him free. No family member, crusading journalist, or civil libertarian banged the drum for David’s release. Police and prosecutors did. Ironically, it was Susan Tucker’s horrific demise that ultimately became David Vasquez’s salvation.”
The time and effort my unit spent on the behavioral analysis in this group of cases was the most we’d ever spent on any case up to that time, including the Atlanta Child Murders and Green River. And the bulk of that effort, actually, was devoted not to finding and arresting a guilty man, but to getting an innocent man freed.
CHAPTER 12
Murder on South Bundy Drive
Practically every decade, it seems, has its own “Trial of the Century.” In the 1890s it was Lizzie Borden. In the 1920s it was the Scopes “Monkey Trial” challenging the teaching of evolution. In the 1930s it was the Lindbergh kidnapping case. In the 1940s, the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. The 1950s, the Rosenberg atom bomb spy trial. The 1960s gave us the Chicago Seven. In the 1970s, the Manson Family. The fact that each of these, in its time and place, qualified to someone as the Trial of the Century (and I’m sure we can all think of alternates for each—Dreyfus, Sacco and Vanzetti, Eichmann, Bundy?) speaks to two things. The first is the media’s obsession with the moment, of course. The second, I think, has to do with our collective compulsion toward the examination of evil or wrongdoing, or, in the case of politically oriented trials such as Scopes, the Chicago Seven, and, some might say, Sacco and Vanzetti and the Rosenbergs, other people’s very perception of truth.
The 1990s Trial of the Century (at least so far) undeniably has been the O.J. Simpson trial in Los Angeles. Perhaps no trial in history was as examined in excruciating detail from outside, or argued from as many points of trivia inside. The only things lost in all of this were truth and, to many people’s way of thinking, justice. With as much money and legal resources as were thrown around in this trial, truth became a commodity—to be bought and sold and manipulated in the marketplace of public opinion—and logic became a means to service already-held beliefs.
Millions, if not billions, of words have already been written on the subject and virtually every pundit in the known universe has weighed in with his or her opinion. And iike a Rorschach test, that opinion often reveals more about the opinion holder than the case itself. And whatever you say about the criminal trial jury’s verdict, you can’t convince me the few hours they spent were sufficient time to examine seriously and conscientiously the many months of testimony and such a huge volume of complex evidence. Their own verbal and written commentaries after the fact demonstrated that most of them didn’t have a clue what this case was all about.
It’s not my intention to pass judgment on the trial itself or the performance of the lawyers or Judge Lance Ito. There’s been plenty of that already and if you care enough to have an opinion, I probably couldn’t change it anyway. Nor are we going to deal extensively with the physical evidence which, in itself, makes or breaks a case. We’re only going to deal with it in its behavioral context, and see how much we can learn about these murders strictly from that perspective.
What I do want to do here is something that, for all the time and money expended in this case, really wasn’t done. And that is to examine the double homicide that occurred at 875 South Bundy Drive on the evening of June 12, 1994, from a behavioral perspective and examine what the facts at, and surrounding, the crime scene tell us about the killer from a behavioral point of view. In other words, forgetting O.J. Simpson’s celebrity, forgetting the Trial of the Century aspect, forgetting the racial polarization it created, had the LAPD contacted my unit at Quantico for consultation on this particular murder investigation, what could we have told them about who did it? Because if you strip away all of the sensationalism and false issues, the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are not so different from many other cases we’ve examined over the years.
Let me remind you that we in my unit are not in the business of solving cases on our own or delivering the names and addresses of UNSUBs. All we can do at this stage of an investigation is help point to the type of suspect on which the police should be concentrating. If they already have suspects, we can help them limit and qualify them with our input. And if they are still looking for the UNSUB, we can often help them focus that search.
To pull off this imaginary consultation, we may have to make certain assumptions and stipulations along the way, such as the case not reaching the level of publicity as fast as it actually did. That is to say, we have to assume that I’d have the opportunity to come up with my own objective conclusions before being bombarded by detail in the media. But there’s plenty of precedent for that kind of supposition. As a control exercise, those of us in my unit have often examined controversial cases of the past, including those of the Boston Strangler, and Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Cleveland osteopath accused of murdering his wife in 1954, who was found guilty and later not guilty of the crime, and who died before the controversy had quieted. In October of 1988, I took part in an internationally broadcast television special profiling the identity of Jack the Ripper and came up with some interesting and surprising results, as we described in Mindhunter. Recently, I was invited to analyze the Lizzie Borden case, one of the most ambiguous in American history.
When the South Bundy murders occurred in June of 1994, I was still chief of the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit, which included some of the top profilers and criminal investigative analysts in the world—Larry Ankrom, Greg Cooper, Steve Etter, Bill Hagmaier, Roy Hazelwood, Steve Mardigian, Gregg McCrary, Jana Monroe, Jud Ray, Tom Salp, Pete Smerick, Clint Van Zandt, and Jim Wright. Let me emphasize that, in actuality, we did not consult on this case, nor were we asked.
But if we had been, this is how I think it would have gone. This would be a typical and represen
tative case consultation and analysis.
We would have gotten a telephone call from someone in the LAPD who was designated point man on the case. He probably would have been a detective and he already would have talked to the profile coordinator in the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. Let’s call him Detective Kenneth Scott so we don’t get involved with any of the real personalities in the case.
Unbeknownst to me or my unit at this point, Scott and his investigative team have collected a fair amount of blood and other forensic evidence. But he’s not going to tell me about this and I’m not going to want to know, unless it points to behavior. Ultimately, when I finish my analysis, then we’ll go over the forensics together and see if they match what I’ve said. If they do, then we’ve helped him narrow his investigation and focus with more confidence on a particular type of suspect. If not, then it could point to serious flaws in the case.
Scott begins, “We have a double homicide in Brentwood—that’s an upper-middle-class neighborhood not too far from the UCLA campus. When you go several blocks north and get on the other side of Sunset Boulevard, it becomes a strictly upper-class neighborhood. You might say the people living south of Sunset aspire to do well enough to move to the north side. Victims are a twenty-five-year-old white male and a thirty-five-year-old white female. Both died from sharp-force trauma, stabbed multiple times outside the residence of the female victim.”
“Have there been any similar crimes lately in the neighborhood?” I ask.
“No, nothing like this,” Scott replies.
“How about burglaries or any voyeuristic activities?”
“No.”
At this point, I tell him that I want the report of the first officer on scene, a map of the area with sites significant to the crime scene marked, I’ll need to see crime scene and autopsy photos, autopsy protocols and the medical examiner’s report, if it’s in yet, and I’ll need as much as he can get me on the victimology—what were these two people like?
What I do not want from him is a suspect list (if he’s developed one) or any theories about who it could be. I don’t want to be influenced by what he’s already decided or leads his task force has already pursued.
If this were a major “hot” case—one in which the UNSUB seemed to be active, with danger of new victims at any moment—I might fly out to Los Angeles to give onscene help and analysis. But in the hours and days following the murders, there haven’t been any others with similar MO, so unless the situation changes, I’ll continue doing my analysis from Quantico, so I don’t get too far behind in my administrative responsibilities or the hundred-plus other cases on which my unit is working.
The Brown-Goldman case materials arrive by overnight mail and I take most of the morning reviewing them, trying to put myself in the place of both victims and perpetrator, trying to discern the “subtext” of the scene. The key thing I’m asking myself is: Why were these particular people the victims of this violent crime? Before we can know the Who? we must understand the Why? And in trying to come up with the answer to that question, I’m asking myself if there is a connection between these two victims or is it simply that one of them was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
By the time I finish, it’s just before lunch—morning on the West Coast. Scott is in his office and can arrange a conference call with other key members of the task force.
“The killing is at close range and confrontational. The weapon is a knife, which tells you this is a very personal type of crime. The crime scene is a mixed presentation,” I begin. “There are both organized and disorganized elements to it, which we’ll get to shortly. But I would say the killer was basically organized, which leads me to believe he is a mature individual with intelligence and sophistication and that some planning and intent went into the crime. He wore a cap and gloves and brought a weapon to the scene. The killing of the female victim is efficient and almost militarystyle, along with a tremendous amount of “overkill.ߣ At the same time, there are disorganized elements that suggest it didn’t go quite the way he planned, and that though he is mature, he has little, if any, experience in crime. There is an obvious lack of control relating to the male victim and evidence of panic when things didn’t go quite his way. So you may see some domestic complaints on the offender’s rap sheet, possibly minor altercations or fights in a bar, but certainly nothing like a murder and he hasn’t done time. So don’t expect a police record to lead you to the guy. The mere fact of leaving a cap and glove at the scene and wearing shoes which leave a distinctive footprint speak to a lack of criminal sophistication and experience. He also cut himself, probably as he comes around her throat, and there’s a cut in the glove found at the crime scene, which shows he wasn’t prepared for that level of fight with Ron Goldman.
“The homicide took place at Nicole Brown Simpson’s residence,” I continue. “That alone is strong evidence to suggest that she was the primary target. We also know that Goldman was there because Brown’s mother had left her glasses earlier in the day at the restaurant where Goldman worked. Nicole had called the restaurant, they’d found the glasses, and Ron had volunteered to drop them by. So his being at Bundy at that particular time was happenstance. Unless the killer actually followed him, he could not be considered the primary target. And if he was being followed, it makes no sense at all that the killer would wait until he was with another person and near potential eye- or ear witnesses. But let’s look at some of the other facts:
“As you said, the ME’s report says that both victims died of multiple stab wounds. And Goldman’s got diffuse multiple defense wounds on his hands and arms. She’s found in a fetal position at the bottom of four concrete steps leading up to her condominium door. Her black dress is hiked high up on her thigh, but this looks like it’s due to the shortness of the dress and the way she fell rather than any attempt to lift the dress or expose her. This is confirmed by the fact that her panties are in place and there’s no evidence of sexual assault and no evidence of staging.
“But there is a lot of bleeding and she bled out on this last step, which was probably where the fatal assault took place. Her throat is cut so deeply she’s practically decapitated. The other stab wounds are much more concentrated and directed than they are with Goldman. The killer didn’t have trouble controlling her as he did with Ron. He stabbed her repeatedly, not because he “hadߣ to, but because he ߢwantedߣ to. And this is another reason I say the woman was the primary victim, not the man: the attacker knew her, and knew her well.”
“Why do you say that, John?” one of the detectives asks.
“As we’ve noted, there’s no sexual assault, so this isn’t a scenario where she pissed off a rapist. This kind of overkill represents rage directed at a particular person, especially since so many blows were directed at the neck. This is not a stranger murder. He did not have to do what he did simply to kill her. He was making a statement. He was punishing her.
“The wounds on the male victim are different. Goldman put up an incredible struggle, one hell of a fight. The types of wounds on him—the defense wounds on the hands and arms and the deeper thrusts to the body—show that the UNSUB was doing what he had to strictly to kill him. He wasn’t interested in punishing him or making a point. He was just trying to neutralize him. That’s what I mean when I say it didn’t go quite the way the attacker planned. He didn’t plan for another man to be there. That messed up his organization real fast.”
“But as you know, we found a glove and a dark knit watch cap at the scene, John. Couldn’t that belong to someone who came to rob?”
“Sure it could,” I say. “But nothing was taken. In fact, the UNSUB never entered the house.”
“But you said yourself that he was surprised by Goldman being there. Maybe it was his intent to rob and he never got to it.” I don’t think the investigator really believes this. He’s probably playing devil’s advocate with me, which is fine, since I should have to support the logic behind everything I say. I’m not necessarily tellin
g them things they don’t know or haven’t figured out on their own, but it’s important to go through my take on the events before we start sharing information.
“First of all, you told me you weren’t having problems with burglars in this neighborhood,” I say. “But more to the point, a burglar doesn’t generally bring a knife with him to the scene. He either brings a gun or no weapon at all. A burglar has two goals: the first is to get in and out without a confrontation and without being seen. If he can’t achieve that and he does find himself in a confrontation, his second goal is to get the hell out as quickly as possible. He won’t stick around to hurt anyone unless he feels that’s his only option for escape. A gun might help him do that; a knife isn’t going to do the job. It’s too up-close-and-personal and too labor-intensive a way of killing. It is possible, however, that the offender planned on going inside to commit the crime, but was sidetracked when he saw Nicole and Ron together and probably thought there was a romantic relationship between them. She had candles lit all over the house—the kitchen, the bathroom—in spots that could be seen through the windows. This had always been a romantic ritual with her. So someone who knew the meaning of this ritual, who had participated in it himself, might be enraged if he presumed that she was preparing it for someone else.
“We don’t know for sure whether or not there was a relationship beyond friendship between Brown and Goldman, but we do know at the very least that they weren’t planning anything that night because Goldman was scheduled to meet several of his buddies after he dropped off the envelope containing the glasses.”