The Last Scoop

by R. G. Belsky

  God, I wished I could talk to Marty again. Ask him more questions, get his guidance, hear him say: “Clarissa, don’t you see what it is you’re missing? Didn’t I teach you anything as a reporter?”

  Yep, that would be swell.

  But—unless I acquired a supernatural way to communicate with the afterlife—it wasn’t going to happen.

  All I had was what he’d left behind. But had I missed anything? I’d been through his computer and the paper files in his room at the 68th Street townhouse, and he’d talked about a bit of it that day in my office. But not enough to help me now. So who else might he have confided in? Well, I don’t think he would have told his daughter, Connie, anything, and I was even more certain he wouldn’t have talked about it with Thomas Wincott.

  But there was one person in his family that he might have confided in.

  His granddaughter.

  He was close to his granddaughter, Michelle. He encouraged her in her acting career, he supported her in her battles with her father, and he talked about his newspaper career with her. Hell, he even told her about me. And she was the only one in that house who showed any emotion after he died.

  Michelle Wincott lived in a cramped studio apartment in a not-so-great building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, just off the Bowery. The Bowery used to be synonymous with poverty and down-and-out inhabitants. But, in more recent years, it had been transformed into an area of luxury apartment buildings, Starbucks-like coffee shops, trendy restaurants, and all the other elements of a hip neighborhood.

  The hip people hadn’t gotten around to Michelle’s building yet, which stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of all this affluence. Michelle Wincott told me her father had offered to foot the bill for a better apartment, but she refused. She didn’t say it in so many words, but the meaning was clear: She’d rather live like this than take money from her father.

  She didn’t seem very concerned about her father’s legal situation now. In addition to criminal charges from the Morelli/Enright fallout, Thomas Wincott had been targeted with several civil lawsuits, his realtor’s license was suspended, and he was under intense scrutiny from various local, state, and federal agencies. When I asked Michelle how he was dealing with all this, she just shrugged. Like I was talking about someone she hardly knew, not her father.

  They didn’t seem to have an ideal father-daughter relationship.

  “I came to see you because I’m hoping to find out some more information about your grandfather in those last days and weeks before he died,” I told her. “I got the impression when we talked earlier that you were close to him. Maybe even closer to him than your mother was—and certainly more than your father.”

  “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then how do I know what you want to hear?”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe we can figure out together what it was we don’t know.” I smiled in encouragement.

  She smiled back. She seemed like a good kid, Michelle Wincott. And why not? She was Marty’s granddaughter, his own flesh and blood. But what had happened to Marty’s daughter, Connie? Was she like Michelle when she was younger and growing up with Marty and his wife? Did she change when she met and married Thomas Wincott? Or had she always been like that, and that’s why she and Wincott were attracted to each other? Maybe the good genes in a family skipped a generation.

  Michelle talked again about how much Marty had encouraged her acting career. Cheering for her successes, helping her feel better during the disappointments, and always telling her to keep reaching for her dream. There’s no limit to what you can do if you believe in yourself, he told her. Never give up that dream. I realized as I talked to her that Marty had told me the same thing a long time ago when I was close to her age.

  There were some pictures on the wall of her apartment. Most of them were acting shots of her taken for promotion or her in various acting roles. But one of the pictures—placed prominently on the wall behind where she was sitting now—was of her and Marty. It showed the two of them outside Radio City Music Hall, and it must have been taken a number of years ago. Michelle was a young teenager at that point.

  “He took me to see the Rockettes show there,” Michelle said now, pointing to the picture. “It’s one of my favorite memories. He took me to see other shows, too, on Broadway and elsewhere around the city when I was growing up. Even back then, I had aspirations to be an actress. So he told me he wanted to make sure I saw the best in the business. That way one day I could be just as good, or maybe even better.”

  I noticed there were no pictures of her mother or her father in the apartment.

  “Did you see much of Marty before he died?”

  “A lot. More than ever before. I mean, he was always talking to me about the news stories he was working on around town. Battling against politicians and that sort of thing. He used to get himself so worked up when he talked about it. I mostly listened and tried to calm him down. Most of the time it worked. But at the end, well … it was different. He asked me for my help before he died. He’d never done that before. So I knew it was important to him. That’s why I did what I could.”

  “What kind of help did he want from you?”

  “He used that laptop computer of his to put his notes into—he’d been able to be part of the 21st-century technology that way—but he still didn’t understand how to do a lot of things online. Me, I grew up with all that and know all about cell phones and laptops. So I showed him how to do things he didn’t know how to do on the computer.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “Well, we built a website for him. The one where he posted all those news stories of his. I think it was important to him, almost like he was writing for a newspaper again. I helped him organize a lot of other stuff, too. I even helped him set up a special password-coded area that he wanted for posting material in case anyone ever gained access to his computer.”

  Damn. The site with the password Clarissa.

  “I also did a lot of research for him. Most of it on my computer here. It seemed easier that way, to do it myself and give him the results, rather than try to teach him how to do all that on his own.”

  “What kind of research did you do for him?”

  “Oh, looking up material on a big story he said he was working on. Of course, they were all big stories to him. But this one seemed especially important.”

  “Was it about the series of buildings in New York City that wound up involving your father?”

  “No, it was a bunch of other stuff. He had asked me to look up things about the buildings at first. I didn’t know at the time it had anything to do with my father. But he stopped asking me about that and became obsessed, instead, about something else. A bunch of old murders that he was interested in. Most of them were a long time ago, and not even from around here. I asked him why he cared. He told me he was working on a book about unsolved murders. Anyway, he gave me this list of names—people who’d been murdered over the years in all sorts of places around the country—and I looked up a lot of facts and information online for him.”

  “Do you still have that information on your computer?” I asked, trying to make the request sound as casual as I could—even though I was desperate to see what was on her computer.

  “I believe so.”

  “Would it be all right if I looked through it?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  She showed me the materials on her computer she’d assembled for Marty.

  On the murders, there were more details about the crimes and their aftermath and the police investigations, but no idea of why Marty had thought there was a link between any or all of these long-ago killings. I started to go through it all painstakingly, making whatever notes I could as I went along. I realized at some point that I would need to ask Michelle Wincott to print it out for me to take back to the office. But I continued to look through th
e computer files as we talked.

  “You’re sure he never told you what this was all about?” I asked her.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he mentioned one name. A name he was especially interested in. My grandfather asked for all sorts of biographical background—and anything else I could find out—about this guy. It wasn’t easy either. This person is someone who is very secretive and avoids any kind of public exposure. An extremely private person. But I learned everything I could about him. I never got a chance to ask my grandfather what it was all about though. Grandfather died before I could do that.”

  “Who’s the person Marty was so interested in?” I asked.

  “A man named Russell Danziger,” Michelle Wincott told me.

  The material she’d compiled on Russell Danziger for Marty painted an incredibly sinister picture of a powerful, corrupt political mover and shaker who would do anything he needed to achieve his goals. Break rules. Skirt the law. Use bribes, extortion, and work with anyone—even the mob—to get what he wanted. And to put the people in office that he wanted. All consistent with what I’d already heard about him.

  There were more details, too, about how secretive and mysterious a person he was. He had no wife. No children. No real friends that anyone knew about. No one even knew exactly where he lived or even if he had an office. He had various contact points around the city, but nothing that was officially listed anywhere.

  Danziger was sixty years old. He’d been born in Eugene, Oregon—and grown up as the son of a decorated Army general who’d served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The father had been in Vietnam and other war zones and had been attached to the CIA for a number of intelligence assignments.

  Russell Danziger’s mother had died when he was five, so he was raised by his father at military bases around the country. Later, he followed in his father’s footsteps and began a military career. He was accepted into West Point in the late seventies and graduated as a second lieutenant in 1981. He moved steadily up the ranks in the Army until he reached the rank of colonel. While in the Army, he also took advantage of college courses in business and eventually earned a master’s degree in business administration.

  He then resigned his commission in 2003 and went into private business—where he quickly became extremely successful. That led to his political consulting business and his fame as a kingmaker—or at least a maker of senators and governors—and, if things worked out with Terri Hartwell’s campaign, a big-city mayor.

  People who worked with him told of how he ran his business like a commanding officer—with tight schedules, rigid rules and regulations, him barking orders to everyone. A total no-nonsense guy. I thought again about the way he barged into Hartwell’s office that day I was there. Even Hartwell—a powerful person in her own right—seemed to jump to attention as soon as she found out it was Danziger who wanted to see her.

  He was now an extremely rich man. He had a massive apartment somewhere in New York City, people said; a house on an island off the coast of New England; he owned a boat; and he even had his own private plane. But there was no specific information about any of this, any more than there was about the location of his office or his personal life or anything else. The man had managed to shroud himself in secrecy and live his life out of the public spotlight. He was the ultimate loner, but an incredibly wealthy and successful loner.

  All this was interesting enough, but then I found something even better.

  A map. Marty had gotten together a map. At first, I didn’t know what it was. Just a bunch of locations around the country. But, when I studied it closer, I realized it was the various locations Russell Danziger had been stationed while he was in the military. A few of them were overseas, but mostly throughout the U.S. Like most military people, he’d moved around every year or so.

  Then I saw a second map.

  Another series of locations around the country.

  The crime sites for the twenty murders on his list.

  I must have gasped at that, because Michelle asked me quickly if I was all right.

  I nodded.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.

  I sure did.

  And more.

  Marty must have found out about Russell Danziger’s connection with Becky Bluso and Eckersville, as I had when I went there.

  And now he was tracking Danziger’s movements around the country at the time of the other murders.

  There were a few possible reasons for this, I suppose.

  But only one that made any sense.

  Marty thought Russell Danziger could be The Wanderer.

  CHAPTER 40

  THE NEXT FBI meeting I attended with Manning, his boss Gregory Wharton, and the rest of the bureau’s “Wanderer” team was different from the first one. Not better, just different. The mood toward me being there had changed from shocked disapproval to a mere grudging acceptance of my unwanted presence. I tried to stay as quiet and unobtrusive as possible at the beginning while Wharton updated everyone on the status of the investigation.

  They had focused mostly on the five female victims where a definite link now had been determined from the crime scene evidence. There had also been some investigation done on the cases on the list where there had been a possible or likely DNA link, but their main concentration right now would be on the five definite matches that gave them the best chance of pursuing more evidence that might provide a clue to the killer.

  The five definite links from the victims’ list were:

  LEIGH STOCKER, 1992—Ohio University coed; 21 years old; killed while hitchhiking home for spring break from the OU campus in Athens, Ohio, to her home outside Youngstown; body found stabbed to death and mutilated in a wooded area alongside Interstate 71. She was last seen at a rest stop fast-food place along the highway. A manager there remembered her talking to a man at a table before her murder, according to police accounts at the time. The manager couldn’t remember much about the man, but he positively identified Leigh when shown a picture of her.

  MONICA CARSTAIRS, 1994—A 24-year-old gymnastic teacher in Denver. She was found stabbed to death inside her car in the gym parking lot one night. Authorities at the time believed it was a random robbery or attempted sexual attack—and never linked it to any other crimes.

  TONI GENARO. 1997—Schoolteacher in Allentown, PA. Stabbed to death in a wooded area near the school by an unknown assailant. Police had suspected either a troubled student or a disgruntled parent, but no arrests had ever been made.

  SANDI NESS, 1999—19-year-old waitress at a beachside restaurant near St. Petersburg, FL. She was found strangled on the beach not far from where she worked. There were minor stab wounds, but the cause of death was determined to be strangulation—with the killer using his hands, not a rope or other device. Friends said Sandi liked to take long walks on the beach, and the assumption was that was where she had been confronted by her killer.

  WENDY HILLER, 2001—Divorce attorney in Seattle, WA. She was the oldest victim at 36 years old. Found stabbed and strangled in her bedroom by her boyfriend when he returned home. The boyfriend was a suspect for a while. So were some of the clients and their spouses involved in messy divorce cases. But Wendy Hiller’s murder remained unsolved nearly two decades later.

  “In all of these cases, the murder was initially determined to be an isolated, random case by local law enforcement officials. There was never any indication they might be part of a larger spree of killing,” Wharton told everyone.

  “As you can see from the material I passed out, the circumstances were different in each case. The majority of victims had brown or black hair, but some were blond and one—Wendy Hiller—was a redhead. Their ages vary from nineteen to thirty-six. Different parts of the country—with no apparent link between any of the locations. And the method of murder varied between stabbing—in most of the cases—to strangulation and even physical beating. A gun was never used. In many
cases—but not all—rope was used to restrain the victim prior to the murder.

  “There never was—and I believe this is highly significant—any evidence of a sexual attack on any of the victims. No semen, no bruising around the sexual organs, and all of them were still fully clothed when they were found.”

  “If the motive wasn’t sex, what was it?” one of the agents asked.

  “Oh, it still could have been sex,” Wharton replied. “Just not the kind of sex we can identify with. But we presume the killer got some sort of sexual thrill out of what he was doing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have targeted attractive young women the way he did. Except he never made an effort to claim credit for any of the murders. They were all done under the radar with no publicity. Other serial killers have wanted public attention. Not this guy. That’s what makes him so scary. He breaks all our rules.”

  Wharton pointed to a map on the wall that displayed the Wanderer’s murders and the locations of each. All of them—both the confirmed DNA ones as well as the others on the list.

  “Several of the early murders were in the eastern part of the U.S.,” he said. “That made us suspect that was the killer’s original location where he targeted women, but that theory didn’t hold up. The second killing was in Denver, and many of the later ones jumped all over the place—Florida, Nebraska, Alabama, Texas, California, then back to Massachusetts and the East Coast.

  “We’ve been in touch with local law enforcement authorities at each of these locations to get them to reopen their investigative files. Maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble onto something significant by combing over it all again like this.”

  I found that last part disturbing. That meant a lot of people were now aware of the existence of this serial killer. I understood the FBI’s need to do this. But it increased the chances of a leak to other media. If that happened, I would be scooped on my own story.