Cruel Death

by M. William Phelps

  “Why would you have spent bullet casings in your purse?”

  For Bernal, who had worked several homicide cases before this one, it was rather obvious that two and two made four: spent bullet casings and IDs from a missing couple probably meant someone had been shot.

  “My husband shot my gun and gave me the casings to show me how my gun worked.”

  It seemed that Erika had an answer for every question.

  With all the evidence the OCPD found inside the Jeep, it appeared to them that maybe Erika and BJ had taken Geney and Joshua hostage and were holding them at the Rainbow against their will.

  Bernal was concerned. He and Moreck decided to head over to the Rainbow right away with a team to see what they could find.

  36

  There Are No Coincidences

  State’s Attorney Joel Todd’s home phone was ringing. Although he didn’t know it yet, the OCPD was on the other end, calling with some news about the missing persons case that detectives had been investigating since the night Geney’s friend Gloria had called and reported Geney and Joshua missing. Leading up to Memorial Day weekend, 2002, Worcester County state’s attorney Joel Todd had been briefed about what had turned into a nagging, strange missing persons case the OCPD just couldn’t understand, or let go of. For locals, especially in law enforcement, Ocean City is a small region. For that reason, Todd told me later, “I am probably made aware of things more often than my counterparts are in larger metropolitan areas.”

  In any event, Todd had been briefed about the calls the OCPD had been receiving regarding Geney and Joshua. But Todd, of course, busy with more cases than he could handle, stuffed the information in the back of his mind and went about his immediate business. What could a state’s attorney do, essentially, for a missing persons case?

  Now, though, here it was, the middle of the night, and Todd’s ringing phone was telling a different story. It was Detective Sergeant Richard Moreck.

  “Hey, Joel, it’s Sergeant Moreck, with Ocean City. Sorry to wake you up, but we’ve made an arrest of two people in a burglary. And get this, they had identification of those two missing people on their person.”

  It was well after midnight. Todd was still half asleep. “OK,” he grumbled, “let me get up and I’ll be right over.”

  It was important for Todd to get over to the OCPD so he could begin consulting detectives on how to handle the case from this point on. It’s not every day a burglary arrest turns into a connection to two missing people. Every step detectives made from this point on—if things turned out the way everyone had hoped they wouldn’t—would be scrutinized at some point by a judge, jury, and, more important, defense attorneys.

  Still, it didn’t take a supersleuth to consider that something had happened to Geney and Joshua, and that Erika and BJ, having been caught with Geney and Joshua’s driver’s licenses and other personal items, had had something to do with it.

  Now dressed and wide awake, Joel Todd got into his car and headed over to the OCPD. Although he didn’t realize it just then, it was the first hour of what was slated to be a twenty-three-hour workday for him.

  37

  Probable Cause

  Finding those items of Geney’s and Joshua’s on Erika and BJ after their arrest gave the OCPD the opportunity to use an “exigent circumstance” clause in the law to go right into BJ and Erika’s condo without a search warrant.

  “They went in under this exigent circumstance to see if there are any people there alive,” Joel Todd said later. “The OCPD had found flex cuffs, ski masks, and that kind of stuff on the two suspects.”

  Which was enough to cover them under the law.

  Detectives were “hoping,” Joel Todd said, it was a hostage situation. “Because, let’s face it, you normally wouldn’t need flex cuffs and ski masks if you’re going to have dead people. You would generally only need those items for live people.”

  Early the following morning, OCPD detectives, with uniformed officers and emergency medical technician (EMT) backup in tow, busted into room 1101 at the Rainbow, and conducted a quick search for any live people.

  Upstairs, Moreck went into the bedroom. After searching that room, the corresponding balcony, and the bathroom with the hot tub, he found no one. But as Moreck passed that glass table in the kitchenette area downstairs a few moments later, he saw two spent rounds of ammunition just sitting there.

  Both had what appeared to be flesh and blood on them.

  Son of a bitch.

  “One of the projectiles,” Moreck said later, “was significantly more damaged than the other. . . .”

  More than that, one of the spent bullets had what appeared to be blood on it.

  And it smelled.

  Moreck called Bernal over. “Look at this.”

  There was human tissue on the bullet, too. It was as if someone had extracted it—or even dug it out—after firing it into a person’s flesh.

  With that, probable cause had been established. It was time to get a judge to sign a search warrant so they could get the forensic team into the room, as well as some more uniformed officers, and go through the condo more thoroughly.

  38

  The Robot

  While in lockup, BJ Sifrit was tight-lipped, living up to the SEAL code of ethics when taken into custody: “Name, rank, and serial number,” said one investigator, referring to how quiet BJ had become that night. He knew his rights and he knew that not saying anything would serve him down the road.

  On the way back from the room, Bernal called the station and requested that BJ be brought to the CID interview room from his cell. Bernal wanted to give BJ a crack at explaining his situation (or possible involvement) in this entire scenario, based on what Bernal and Moreck had learned while sniffing around the Rainbow rooms.

  Bernal’s colleague, Detective Brett Case, who had also been part of the Crutchley/Ford missing persons search earlier that week, was on the opposite side of the two-way glass as Bernal sat with BJ. Case was a tough cop. He not only looked the part—with his steely gaze and the tall frame of an NBA basketball player—but Case had an amiable way about him. A guy like Case was an asset to any investigation. Sitting with him, just chatting, he had a way of making you feel like you had known him all your life.

  Bernal had seen BJ’s type before. “Shy on appearance,” Bernal said, “but totally driven inside. Whatever BJ set his mind on doing, he proved to himself he could do it.” It was a challenge, in other words, for BJ to set his mind on something and then go for it.

  Bernal read BJ his rights. BJ signed off. Then Bernal said, “I’m an honor man, like you,” referring to their military connection, but BJ wouldn’t bite on the common-ground rapport Bernal was trying to build.

  “Talk to my wife,” BJ said a number of times.

  “You want to tell me what’s happening here?”

  “Like I said, talk to my wife. She knows.”

  “What about you, BJ, what’s your part in this?”

  BJ said, “Hey, can we talk off the record?”

  “We’re legally bound by this form.... We cannot really speak ‘off the record.’ You can waive your rights, however, and talk to us without an attorney.”

  BJ thought about it. Sat back in his chair. “I want to talk to a lawyer.”

  Bernal got up and walked out of the room. Case and a few other OCPD officers were waiting.

  “Take him back to his cell. We’re done here.”

  39

  The Trade-off

  Erika Sifrit was another story.

  After an immediate breakdown, in which she kicked and screamed and said something about not being able to live without her husband, she sat down with Bernal and said she wanted to cut a deal.

  “A deal?”

  “I will trade information about [the missing couple] to drop all of the burglary charges against me,” Erika told him.

  Bernal was floored by this.

  Burglary? Why burglary?

  40

  Gir
ls on Film

  As crime scene technicians, detectives, and uniform officers began to go through room 1101 at the Rainbow Condominium complex, they began to see the disturbing picture of what had possibly taken place inside the bathroom, six days prior. Of course, no one at that moment knew or foresaw how cruel and violent and brutal these murders would actually turn out to be, but a clear portrait of a terrible crime became apparent almost immediately.

  For starters, Geney and Joshua’s Atlantis room key was found on a small table in the living room. Beyond that, police began to rip apart the bathroom upstairs, and what shocked them most wasn’t all the blood they had uncovered, but that some of it was still tacky and wet. Moreover, roll upon roll of film—along with photographs of BJ, Erika, and, yes, Geney and Joshua—were quickly located. The one thing about Erika was that she documented just about every major event in her life. Apparently, murder—and the attempted cover-up—was one of those events.

  The most telling area of the condo was the bathroom upstairs. On the wall, for example, leading to the toilet, was one drop of blood dripping down alongside the vanity. In fact, when technicians ripped out the vanity itself, all along the floorboard (or toe-kick) was a channel of dark and thick dried blood. It appeared as if the blood had found its way into the channel between where the tile floor met the vanity toe-kick.

  Moreover, the door leading into the bathroom had just been painted, that much was obvious.

  Even more disturbing, when detectives took out one of the drain spouts in the bathroom sink, the water stopper itself, from the bottom up to the top, was drenched red with blood. There was also a piece of someone’s scalp with black hairs still attached, stuck inside the drain, along with more fresh blood.

  After a careful examination of the grout, it was hard to find a place where blood hadn’t stained it. On the side of the vanity were spatter and smudges of blood, as though there had been some sort of struggle there.

  The mattress upstairs in one of the bedrooms had a large stain, about the size of a garbage can lid, on one end of it.

  Over in the corner of one room was a blue Playmate cooler. Inside were two of Erika’s massive, three-inch-thick, five- to six-foot snakes.

  In the laundry room were new bottles of Drano. Fresh cans of paint. KILZ stain sealer. Rollers. Sandpaper. Paintbrushes. Tarps.

  Someone had done a little remodeling recently, cops figured as they looked at the stuff.

  The clothes dryer’s lint catcher was filled with hair and tissue and what appeared to be coagulated blood that had gelled up like veal stock put in the refrigerator.

  Inside a duffel bag downstairs was Erika’s stash of Yellow Jacket speed pills she had purchased from the Internet and stolen, as well as more Xanax.

  But it was all the blood that concerned detectives most—and the fact that there was no sign of Geney or Joshua. There had been a struggle for life in this condo, detectives were certain. And it appeared that the only two to walk out of it alive were sitting in prison not saying anything all that much.

  41

  Fifty-Fifty

  Detective Scott Bernal went in to see Erika again, after BJ had asked for a lawyer and she had made it known that she wanted to cut a deal for the burglary. For Bernal, a seasoned investigator who had made it his business to study the body language of the suspects he interrogated, the way a person shifted and moved was key to how an interview went forth and how he would proceed with questions. Bernal closely watched a suspect’s body and how she reacted to certain questions. He’d ask a question that he knew the answer would be “no” to and carefully watched how the person reacted. Then he’d ask a question he didn’t know the answer to and see if he got the same result.

  “You can never control your body language,” Bernal said later. “It’s instinct.” Once Bernal was questioning a man for a series of burglaries. He asked the guy, “Did you do this one?”

  The suspect shook his head “yes” while answering “no.”

  “You cannot control how your body moves when you speak. In that sense, Erika was easy to read,” Bernal said. “She lied so much that we knew exactly when she was lying, because she couldn’t stop herself from the way her body moved.”

  The other aspect of a good interrogation is quite simple, that is, where it pertains to questioning someone who you know had had at least some involvement in a crime. The guilty will always minimize their involvement. No matter what. Even if a suspect is giving a confession, he or she will always diminish his or her culpability. It’s human nature.

  “All Erika cared about, truthfully,” Bernal added, “was that you liked her.”

  Once Bernal picked up on that, he used it to his advantage.

  As Bernal sat down and began talking to Erika that second time, she told the same story she would begin to add to over the course of the next several weeks: Geney and Joshua had stolen her purse. They all searched the condo together. Couldn’t find it. Erika was standing downstairs in the living room, BJ was upstairs with Geney and Joshua, when she heard BJ shoot both of them.

  “I was asleep when he put them in plastic bags and took them from the condo unit,” she said.

  “Look,” Bernal said to Erika, “I know BJ told you not to talk, but I spoke to him and he realizes what he did.... Being in the navy, he feels guilty. He confessed.”

  Erika had a quizzical look about her face. She didn’t say anything.

  “I already know the truth, Erika, I just need to see if you’re going to lie to us.”

  Her jaw dropped to the floor.

  “Why do you need me, then?” Erika asked smartly after a moment of reflection. She wasn’t taking the bait.

  “I just need to see how honest you’re going to be. That’s going to matter a great deal in this case, Erika. We want to see how truthful you can be with us.”

  A test.

  Erika started crying. “Do you like me? . . . Do you like me?” she asked, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Do you think I’m pretty? Do you like me?”

  “Of course, Erika. We just want the truth here.”

  “Do you like me?” she kept asking. “Am I really pretty?”

  “Erika, why wouldn’t I like you? You’ve done nothing wrong to me.”

  That seemed to pacify Erika’s minor sense-of-worth meltdown.

  “What we need to talk about, Erika, is what you and BJ did to the other couple.”

  She shook her head as if to say she was ready.

  “Are the bodies in the bay or the ocean?” Bernal asked.

  He had assumed from listening to Erika—whom he knew to be lying—that she and BJ had dumped the bags into the water. Moreover, looking at the crime scene itself, Bernal and his colleagues were certain that whatever had happened to Geney and Joshua wasn’t some sort of spontaneous crime that just came to Erika and BJ on the spur of the moment. The forensic unit had found a tremendous amount of blood present in the bathroom upstairs. However, in no other area of the condo—save for the laundry room, which could be expected—did any sign of blood turn up. “That told us,” Bernal said, “that some sort of planning had gone into this crime. Otherwise, you would have seen bloody footprints tracked all over the condo.”

  “Neither,” Erika said, wiping away tears, meaning that Geney and Joshua’s bodies were not in the water.

  Ah, finally some truth, Bernal thought. He had been paying strict attention to her body language.

  “Where are they, Erika?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “No?”

  “But I can show you.”

  “Let me ask you,” Bernal said, “what are the chances that Geney and Joshua are still alive? Give me a percentage if they’re dead or alive. Sixty-forty? Seventy-thirty?” Bernal was a smart cop. He had been down this road before. You always want to put a limit on responsibility. He knew percentages meant absolutely nothing. A person is either alive or dead. But somehow, by putting it in this manner of speaking, it made the suspect always feel better.

&
nbsp; Erika thought about it. “Fifty-fifty,” she answered.

  By telling Bernal “fifty-fifty,” Erika was actually saying that Geney and Joshua were dead. “Because look,” Bernal remarked later, “if you know they are alive, they’re alive. There’s no two ways about it.”

  “I want to talk to BJ,” Erika said. “I want to talk with BJ.” She started crying again.

  “BJ said you’re on your own, Erika. He doesn’t want to talk to you. He’s already covered his ass.”

  “What can you do for me?” Erika asked.

  “I need to find these people, Erika. If they are still alive, and we can help them, that’s a hell of a lot less serious charge against you. What if they die while you’re in here?”

  Erika didn’t say anything.

  “What do you want to go to jail for?” Bernal continued. “Because you are going to jail. You have to decide, Erika. Murder charges or something else?”

  It was close to sunup. Erika was tired.

  “What can you do for me with the burglary charge?” she asked once more.

  Bernal was again confused: Burglary charge? Why is she worried about the damn burglary charge when two people are missing and presumed dead?

  42

  Pulling Teeth

  The OCPD needed to move quickly. Public defenders for BJ and Erika had been contacted to help consult both of them in regard to what to do next. It was well into the early-morning hours of Friday, May 31, 2002, by this point. The public defender’s office had decided to take on BJ’s case because it believed BJ was facing the more serious charges, but they also sent in an attorney to speak with and advise Erika.

  No one really knew what was going to happen over the next few days. Two things, however, remained absolute. For one, BJ and Erika would face a judge on Monday morning for a bail hearing. Right now, they were being charged with burglary. And, yet, Erika had indicated a desire to trade off some information she had about Joshua Ford and Geney Crutchley for the state to drop any possible burglary charges against her. The fact that the couple could be dead, and BJ and Erika charged with those murders, never entered the picture at this point. Strangely enough, Erika indicated a concern more for getting out of the burglary, not for anything associated with the missing persons case that was at the focal point of all the discussions.