He lowered the windows about an inch to let air come in, then killed the engine and opened the door. Before getting out he took out a matchbook and a pack of cigarettes. He lit a cigarette with a match and drew in deeply, watching the tip glow hot in the rearview. He coughed as the smoke invaded his lungs. That always happened. He then folded the matchbook around the middle of the cigarette and put the improvised fire starter down on the center console. He adjusted it so the cigarette was tilted slightly downward and would continue to burn up toward the matches. With any luck the matches wouldn’t be necessary and the cigarette would do the job.
He got out of the car, closed the driver’s door, and quickly moved to the front of the car. He checked the front bumper and the plastic skirt below it to see if there was any blood or debris. He saw nothing and bent down to check beneath. He saw blood dripping onto the concrete like oil from the engine of a gas-powered car.
He smiled. He thought that was ironic.
He moved back to the side of the car and opened the rear passenger door. There was the natural-gas canister he had removed from Hammond’s poolside barbecue on the back seat. He had cut the rubber-hose attachment three inches from the coupling and then bled off most of the contents. He did not want a large explosion. Just enough to do what was needed.
Now as he opened the valve he heard the hiss of the remaining gas escaping into the car. He stepped back, peeled off his gloves, and threw them into the car. The Tesla had served him well. He would miss it.
He closed the car door with his elbow and started walking toward the escalator that would take him down to the street.
On the second escalator down, he heard the unmistakable thump of the explosion ignite inside the Tesla. Not enough to blow out the windows but good enough to engulf the inside of the car and burn away every trace of its final user.
He was confident they would never know who he was. The car had been stolen in Miami and the current plates on it were from a duplicate Tesla in the long-term parking lot at LAX. They might have a picture of him but they would never know his name. He had taken too many precautions.
He opened the Uber app on his phone and ordered a pickup on the La Cienega side of the mall. In the destination prompt he typed:
LAX
The app told him his driver Ahmet was on his way and that he would be at the airport in fifty-five minutes.
That was time enough to decide where to go.
THE FIRST STORY
FBI: “DNA Killer” on the Loose
By Emily Atwater and Jack McEvoy
The FBI and Los Angeles Police have begun an urgent hunt for a man suspected of killing at least 10 people in a cross-country murder spree that included breaking the necks of eight young women.
The killer, who is known as the Shrike on the Internet, targeted the women based on specific profiles from DNA they had provided to a popular genetic-analytics site. The victims’ genetic profiles were downloaded by the unidentified suspect from a site on the dark web that catered to a clientele of men seeking to take sexual advantage of women.
The FBI has scheduled a major news conference tomorrow in Los Angeles to discuss the investigation.
This week the two operators of the site—which was closed down by the FBI today—were murdered by the suspect, authorities said. Marshall Hammond, 31, was found hanged in his Glendale home, where he operated a DNA lab. Roger Vogel, 31, was mowed down in the street in a hit-and-run just seconds after being confronted by reporters from FairWarning. A third man was also killed by the suspect earlier when authorities believe he was mistaken for Vogel.
Prior to the killing of the three men, seven women in places stretching from Fort Lauderdale to Santa Barbara were brutally murdered by a suspect who used a signature method of breaking the necks of his victims. An eighth woman survived a similar attack but was rendered quadriplegic by her injuries. The 29-year-old Pasadena woman, whom FairWarning is not identifying, helped provide investigators with links connecting all of the cases.
“This is one of the most vicious serial offenders we have ever encountered,” said Matthew Metz, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “We are doing all we can to identify him and run him to ground. No one is safe until we get him.”
The bureau released a composite sketch of the suspect as well as a shadowy video of a man believed to be him and taken from a home-surveillance camera in Marshall Hammond’s neighborhood shortly after his murder.
The bureau missed a chance to apprehend the suspect yesterday when he eluded a surveillance that was placed on Roger Vogel, who worked in the administration offices at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. FairWarning reporters confronted him at a smoker’s bench outside the hospital, where he denied any responsibility for the deaths.
“None of this was supposed to happen,” Vogel said. “I’m not responsible for what that crazy person is doing.”
Vogel then stepped into a crosswalk at the intersection of Alden Drive and George Burns Road and was immediately hit by a car believed to be driven by the murder suspect. He was dragged under the car for 30 feet and sustained fatal injuries. The car was later located by the FBI in the nearby Beverly Center parking garage, where it had been set on fire in an attempt to destroy any evidence that could lead to the identity of the killer.
The Shrike came to light after the murder a week ago of Christina Portrero, 44, who was found in her home with a broken neck after last being seen with a man at a bar on the Sunset Strip.
FairWarning began an investigation of the death after learning that Portrero had supplied her DNA to GT23, the popular online genetic-analytics company, for hereditary analysis. She had also complained to friends that she had been stalked by a stranger who knew intimate personal details about her. That man is not believed to have been the Shrike but another customer of the same dark-web site where the Shrike selected his victims according to their DNA makeup.
GT23 openly states that selling anonymized DNA to second-tier labs helps it keep costs to consumers low. Customers pay only $23 for a DNA hereditary analysis.
Among the labs the company sells DNA to is Orange Nano, a research laboratory in Irvine operated by William Orton, formerly a biochemistry professor at UC-Irvine. According to Orange County authorities, Orton left his post three years ago to start Orange Nano when he was accused of drugging and raping a student.
Orton has vehemently denied the accusations. Hammond was a graduate of UC-Irvine and had been a student of Orton’s. He later started a private research lab that received hundreds of samples of female DNA from Orange Nano after they were purchased from GT23.
The FairWarning investigation determined that Hammond and Vogel opened a site on the dark web called Dirty4 more than two years ago. Customers of the site paid access fees of $500 annually to download the identities and locations of women whose DNA contained a chromosome pattern known as DRD4, which some genetic researchers have concluded is indicative of risky behaviors including drug and sex addiction.
“They were selling these women out,” a source close to the investigation said. “These creepy guys were paying for lists of women they thought they could get an edge with. They could go pretend to meet them in a bar or someplace and they would be easy marks. It is so sick, and no wonder you end up getting a killer in the mix.”
The FBI said website records indicated that Dirty4 had several hundred paying members, many of whom were solicited in online forums catering to incels—men who designate themselves as “involuntarily celibate”—and other misogynist viewpoints.
“This is a horrible day,” said Andrea McKay, a Harvard University law professor and recognized expert on ethics in genetic fields. “We have reached the point where the predators now can custom-order their victims.”
The DNA passed on by GT23 was anonymized, but authorities believe that Roger Vogel, a skilled hacker who used the name RogueVogue online, infiltrated the company’s computers and was able to retrieve the identities of the women whos
e DNA was sold to Hammond by Orange Nano.
One of the Dirty4 users was the Shrike. The FBI believes he used access to the profiles provided on the site to target victims in his murder spree. Agents have identified 11 victims, including the Pasadena woman who survived her attack, and believe there may be more. An exhumation in Santa Fe was scheduled for today and could lead to the determination of a twelfth victim.
The connection between the female victims is the cause of death or injury. Each of the women suffered a devastating neck break called atlanto-occipital dislocation. Medical examiners refer to this as internal decapitation—a complete break of the neck bones and spinal cord—that occurs when the head is violently twisted more than 90 degrees past normal limits.
“This guy is strong,” the FBI’s Metz said. “We think he literally breaks their necks with his bare hands or in an armlock maneuver of some kind. It is a horrible and painful way to die.”
The Shrike takes his online name from a bird that is known as one of nature’s most brutal killers. The bird silently stalks its prey—field mice and other small animals—and attacks from behind, gripping its victim in its beak and viciously breaking its neck.
The killings and the investigation are sure to impact the quickly growing and multibillion-dollar genetic-analytics industry. A FairWarning investigation determined that the industry, which falls under the control of the federal Food and Drug Administration, is virtually unregulated as the agency is in the midst of a long-running effort to promulgate rules and regulations for the industry. The strong indication that measures to protect the anonymity of DNA samples have been compromised is sure to send a shock wave through the industry.
“This is a game changer,” said Jennifer Schwartz, a life-sciences professor at UCLA. “The whole industry is based on the principle of anonymity. If that is compromised then what do you have? A lot of scared people and a whole industry that could start to wobble.”
The FBI shut down the Dirty4 website and is actively attempting to contact women whose identities were revealed and sold by Hammond and Vogel. Metz said that there are strong indications that the suspect has multiple profiles that he retrieved from Hammond’s lab computer after killing him. He said that GT23 and Orange Nano are fully cooperating with that part of the investigation.
“That’s the priority at this moment,” Metz said. “We have to find this guy, of course, but we need to reach all of the unsuspecting women so we can warn and protect them.”
Metz said it was unclear why Hammond and Vogel were murdered but that it is likely the two men held the keys to identifying the Shrike.
“I think he got wind of the investigation and knew that the only two people who could help identify him were these guys,” Metz said. “So they had to go, and they ended up with a dose of their own medicine. There is not a lot of sympathy around here for them, I’ll tell you that.”
Little is known about the relationship between Hammond and Vogel but it is clear that the two men met at UC-Irvine, where they were roommates. Students from that era say the two men may have crossed paths in an informal and unsanctioned group at the school that was involved in digital bullying of female students.
“It was a forerunner of these incel groups you are seeing today,” said a school official who requested anonymity. “They did all kinds of things to female students: hacked their social media, spread lies and rumors. Some girls left school because of what they did to them. But they always hid their trail. No one could prove anything.”
Incels are primarily men who identify themselves as involuntarily celibate and on Internet forums blame and disparage women for their romantic problems. In recent years there has been an uptick of crimes against women attributed to incels. The FBI has listed the groups as a growing concern.
The Dirty4 website appeared to be fueled by similar attitudes and sentiments, Metz said.
“These guys were women-haters and took it to an extreme limit,” he said. “And now seven or eight women are dead and another will never walk again. It’s horrible.”
Meanwhile, authorities fear that the hit-and-run killing of Vogel yesterday may indicate that the Shrike is changing his methods, which could make him more difficult to track.
“He knows we are on to him and the best way to avoid the net closing in on him is to either stop the killing or change his routine,” Metz said. “Unfortunately, this guy has a taste for killing and I don’t see him stopping. We are doing our very best to identify him and take him down.”
JACK
41
One hundred days after our first story was posted, the Shrike had still not been identified or captured. In the course of that time Emily Atwater and I wrote thirty-two more stories, staying with the investigation and running out in front of the rest of the media that descended like locusts after our first dispatch. Myron Levin negotiated an exclusive partnership with the Los Angeles Times and most of our stories were carried on the front page above the fold. We covered the expanding investigation and the confirmation of two other victims. We posted a full take on William Orton and the rape case he beat. We wrote a piece about Gwyneth Rice and later covered a fundraiser to help meet her medical expenses. We even wrote stories that captured the sickening online deification of the Shrike by incel groups who celebrated what he had done to his female victims.
Myron Levin’s concern about losing half his staff came true, but for unexpected reasons. With the Shrike still out there somewhere, Emily grew too fearful that we would become his next targets. As the story started to lose oxygen because of the lack of developments, she decided to leave FairWarning. We had gotten offers for a book and a podcast. We decided she would take the book deal and I would record the podcast. She moved back to England to an obscure location that even I wasn’t privy to. She maintained that it was better that way because the secrecy meant that I could not be forced to reveal her location to anyone. We communicated almost every day and I emailed her the raw reporting for the final stories she would write under our names.
The one-hundred-day mark of the story was also the end point for me at FairWarning. I had given notice and determined that whatever updates came about I could report on the podcast. It was a new form of journalism and I enjoyed going into a sound booth and telling, rather than writing, the story.
I called it Murder Beat.
Myron was not too upset about having to replace us. He now had a whole drawer full of résumés from journalists who wanted to work for him. The Shrike had put FairWarning into the public eye big-time. Newspapers, websites, and TV news programs across the world had to give us credit for breaking the story. I made guest appearances on CNN, Good Morning America, and The View. 60 Minutes followed our reporting, and the Washington Post profiled Emily and me and even likened our occasionally combative partnership to that of the greatest journalism tag team in history: Woodward and Bernstein.
Readership was also up at FairWarning and not just on the days we posted a Shrike story. One hundred days out, we were starting to see an uptick in donations, too. Myron wasn’t on the phone so much cajoling potential supporters. All was well at FairWarning.
The last story Emily and I wrote was one of the more fulfilling of the thirty-two. It was about the arrest of William Orton for sexual assault. Our stories on Marshall Hammond and Roger Vogel had spurred authorities in Orange County to reopen the investigation of the allegations that Orton had drugged and raped his one-time student. They determined that Hammond had taken the DNA sample submitted by Orton to the sheriff’s lab and replaced it with an unknown sample, thereby creating the finding of No match to the swabs in the rape kit. Under the new investigation, another sample was taken from Orton and compared to the material in the rape kit. It was a match and Orton was arrested and charged.
Most of the time, journalism is simply an exercise in reporting on situations and occurrences of public interest. It is rare that it leads to the toppling of a corrupt politician, a change in the law, or the arrest of a rapist. When that d
oes happen, the satisfaction is beyond measure. Our stories on the Shrike got a warning out to the public and may have saved lives. They also put a rapist in jail. I was proud of what we had accomplished and proud to call myself a journalist in a time when the profession was constantly under attack.
After shaking Myron’s hand and leaving the office for the last time, I went to the bar at Mistral to meet Rachel and celebrate the end of one chapter in my life and the start of another. That was the plan but it didn’t work out that way. For one-hundred days I had carried a question inside that I could no longer contain.
Rachel was already at the bar, sitting at the far left end where it curved to the back wall and there were two seats we always tried to occupy. The spot gave us privacy and a view of the bar and the restaurant at the same time. There was a couple sitting in the center of the long side and a man by himself at the end opposite Rachel. As with most nights, business started slow and then picked up later on.
The French Impressionist was working this night. That was what Rachel had started privately calling Elle, the bartender with the phony French accent. I signaled her over, ordered a martini, and was soon clinking glasses with Rachel.
“To new things,” Rachel said.
“Sláinte,” I said.
“Oh, so now we have an Irish poet to go with the French Impressionist?”
“Aye, a deadline poet. Formerly, I guess. Now a podcast poet.”
My Irish accent wasn’t cutting it, so I dropped it and drank half the martini. Liquid courage for the big question I had to ask.
Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020) Page 26