I was anxious to get the original police reports from Oceanside PD and start working on the Rebecca Novell case. I called ahead and asked for copies of the reports to be made and then I scheduled an appointment with one of their detectives. I needed to inform Oceanside PD that one of their runaways was located in our county and appeared to be a murder victim. It was a professional courtesy thing.
When I arrived at Oceanside PD, I was met by one of the detectives and handed a copy of the original runaway report from 1986. It was a thin report, about 5 pages, which is never a good way to start a murder investigation. That meant there wasn't a lot of work done on this case originally.
The detective who gave me the report was nice enough to sit down and talk to me about it, but she didn't have much to add. 21-years-ago when this report was taken she was a high school kid herself. She had no personal knowledge of the case. While we were talking, a man entered the room and identified himself as the Administrative Lieutenant for Oceanside PD. He thanked me for bringing this case to their attention and then he asked me how long it would take to gather all of my notes and files and hand them over. I said, "Excuse me?" The lieutenant then advised me that Oceanside PD would be taking over the murder investigation, since Rebecca Novell was originally reported missing from their jurisdiction.
I smiled and politely explained that it would be a cold day in Hell before he relieved me of this case. I told him I had way too much time and energy invested in this case over the last four years to simply hand it over. We agreed to disagree and I left with my 5 page report in hand. My administration would have to confer with the administration from Oceanside PD and decide who was going to handle the case. When I returned to Riverside I spoke to my Captain and strongly relayed my opinion about losing this case. He backed me up but the decision would be made further up the chain of command. In the mean time the case was put on hold and I was told not to take any further actions.
I sat down and read the 5-page runaway report. I learned that Rebecca Novell was reported by her mother, Patty Novell, upon being released from county jail in September of 1986. Patty was a drug-addicted prostitute in Oceanside and she had been in jail for the past two months. She told the reporting officer that she did not know where her teenage daughter was and she wanted help in locating her. Patty told the officer that Rebecca had been staying with a friend from school because Patty didn't want her daughter to be exposed to Patty's lifestyle. Patty gave the officer the name of the friend, Kelly Pierson, but she did not have an address or phone number.
According to the report, the officer did nothing to follow up the information himself. He wrote the report as a "missing juvenile" and forwarded it to the Detectives for follow-up. The case wasn't picked up by a Detective until two months later in November 1986. The Detective attempted to locate Patty Novell but there was no address or phone number for contact. The Detective went to the local high school and attempted to contact some of Rebecca's friends, but he didn't obtain any relevent information. The Detective then changed the report from a "missing juvenile" to a "runaway" without any further explaination. He entered Rebecca's name into the national computer database as a runaway and he suspended the case.
The next entry in the Oceanside Police report was written a year later in July of 1987. The same Detective that handled the case a year ago wrote that Patty Novell had written two letters from county jail asking if anyone had located her daughter yet. The Detective wrote that he would conduct further investigation into Rebecca's disappearance when Patty Novell was released from jail and could provide more information. The next entry from the same Detective indicated that Patty Novell never contacted him after getting out of jail, so he closed the case.
I was becoming more and more angry as I read the police report. How in Hell do you close a report on a missing person when the person hasn't been located yet? Especially when the person is a child with no parental support? There was no indication that Oceanside PD even identified the friend that Rebecca was staying with or where she lived.
The next entry in the police report was written 2 years later. This entry was made by another Detective with Oceanside PD. It was only 3 sentences long. The first sentence was that he was assigned to review the case. The second sentence was that he ran Rebecca's name in the computer and confirmed she was still missing. The third sentence was that Patty Novell could not be located to provide additional information. The case status was then changed from "closed" to "suspended" and it was put back on the shelf.
The next entry in the police report was in September of 1989, three years after Rebecca was first reported missing. Patty Novell was calling from Long Beach and she wanted an update on the status of her daughter's case. The Detective taking this phone call had not previously been involved in this case and was not familiar with Patty or Rebecca. He immediately asked Patty why she waited 3 years to inquire about her missing daughter. Patty told him that she had been strung out on methamphetamine for years and her memory was very poor. She told the Detective that she was now clean and sober and she was trying to locate her daughter.
The Detective met with Patty and obtained an old photograph of Rebecca. He then went to a dentist office in Oceanside where Rebecca once had x-rays taken. He obtained Rebecca's x-rays and submitted them into the national database with Rebecca's photo. Then the Detective wrote that Patty disappeared again, so he suspended the case and put it back on the shelf.
The next entry in the Oceanside PD report was made in February 2000, fourteen years after Rebecca had been reported missing. The Detective making this entry wrote that Rebecca was still in the system as a runaway. He wrote that attempts were made to locate and interview Patty Novell, but the phone numbers and addresses were no longer valid. This was the last entry in the police report and the last action that Oceanside PD ever took in this case.
I was furious about the lack of investigation given to this case by Oceanside PD. There was no excuse for such laziness and incompetence. This 13-year-old child was reported missing to the police but nobody bothered to look for her. Somebody raped her, murdered her, and dumped her body on a remote hillside and nobody knew about it for over twenty years. She deserved better than this. She deserved a better mother. She deserved a better police investigation. It was too late for me to save Rebecca, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let Oceanside PD take this case back and try to redeem themselves now. They had their chance, many times over.
Within the next two days I received two phone calls. The DNA match was confirmed, the bones of Janie Doe were a positive match to Rebecca Novell. And my Sheriff told the Chief of Police in Oceanside to go pound sand. The case was staying with me.
The first thing I did was go to the computer and try to find the elusive Patty Novell who Oceanside Detectives had such a hard time locating for so many years. It took me about 3 minutes to find her current address in downtown San Diego.
I immediately jumped into my car and headed to San Diego. I was anxious to meet this woman. I wanted to look her in the face and ask her why she abandoned her daughter 21 years ago. I wanted to ask her why she chose methamphetamine over caring for her own child. The photographs of Rebecca's bones were on the seat next to me. I glanced over at them and wondered if Patty would show any remorse when I put them on the table in front of her. I thought to myself, "This bitch better cry."
My hands began to ache and I realized that I was gripping the steering wheel with all of my frustration. I took a deep breath and tried to relax.
I pulled up in front of the address in San Diego and looked at the front of the building. I shook my head as I looked at the sign over the door. I don't know why I was surprised. "Salvation Army Women's Shelter."
"I guess she hasn't changed much." I said as I grabbed the photos and headed for the door.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Castaway - Chapter 5
Boxing up the Shelly Phillips case was depressing. A year of hard work was just pulled out from under me in a single phone call. Not only was I back to having an unidentified 12-to-15 year old murder victim, but Shelly Phillips went back to being a missing person. What made it worse was now she was classified as a, "voluntarily missing adult," because she was a runaway who had since turned 18. That was the lowest priority she could be in, which meant nobody was ever going to look for her.
I boxed up all the notes and information I gathered on Shelly Phillips and the two Marines in the faded blue Oldsmobile and I shipped it to San Diego PD. It was their case now. I turned my attention back on trying to identify little Janie Doe.
I contacted the producers of the television show America's Most Wanted and asked about a possible broadcast of this story. Maybe somebody would remember this 5' 7" blonde in a purple Le Tigre polo shirt. The TV producers decided that it would be a great story, but only if we had a picture of Janie Doe to put on TV. They felt the story would only tug at America's heart strings if they could see the girl's face and make a personal connection. Think about those late-night commercials with the starving children in Africa. It's those sad little faces staring into the camera that makes people dive for their checkbooks.
I contacted the Coroner's Office and requested a Forensic Reconstruction of the skull. That's when an artist builds one of those clay molds around the existing skull in an attempt to re-create what the victim actually looked like. Like everything else in Government, the request took 2 months to get approved, but the skull was eventually shipped off to the artist so he could begin his work.
The forensics lab was carefully examining Janie Doe's remains for any evidence they could possibly locate. The only two clothing items found with the bones were the shirt and bra. This part bothered me every time I thought about it. That means she wasn't clothed from the waist down when her body was put in the duffle bag and tossed over the cliff. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how this poor girl spent her last remaining hours alive. Some sick bastard putting his filthy hands on her little body and breathing whiskey in her face as he forced himself on her. The images were painful but they keep me moving forward.
The other items located inside the duffle bag with Janie Doe's remains were interesting:
1. One blue, electric blanket. It appeared the body had been rolled up in this blanket and then stuffed into the duffle bag.
2. One piece of cotton rope about 15" long tied into a circle. It was extremely frayed and degraded. It was probably used as a ligature for strangulation.
3. One thin piece of nylon rope tied onto the metal eyelet of the duffle bag, probably used to secure the bag closed before it deteriorated and came apart. The knot used to secure this rope to the eyelet was significant. A fancy knot tied by someone with nautical experience.
4. Orange and brown carpet fibers. DOJ told me the polyester fiber blend was the type commonly used in residential carpets.
5. Black carpet fibers. The type commonly used in automotive carpets, interior and trunk lining.
6. Black and white cat hairs.
7. Numerous blonde hairs belonging to the victim.
This was everything I had. This was all I had to work with. Without knowing the identity of the victim I couldn't even start an investigation. I couldn't use her DNA to identify her from the NCMEC database because there is no database for the DNA of missing persons. DOJ only keeps the DNA of convicted felons on file.
Months went by, and then a year, with no word about the Forensic reconstruction of the face. It turned out the man who was hired to do the work had been on family medical leave. His wife was dying of cancer. It took me several more months just to get the skull returned to the Coroner's Office so I could look for someone else to do the job.
Apparently there was nobody else. You see, it's the responsibility of the Coroner's Office to identify any unidentified bodies, not the Sheriff's Department. So no matter how badly I wanted this done and how many people I called and yelled at, the Coroner's Office was just on cruise control and in no apparent hurry to get Janie Doe identified. There are litterally dozens of bodies in cold storage at the morgue waiting to be identified. And the Deputy Coroner who was in charge of the Janie Doe case had recently retired. This case just went cold. I had dozens of other cases to tend to so I put the Janie Doe case on the shelf next to my desk. And that's where it sat without any hope for another three years.
Every month I called the Coroner's Office and asked about Janie Doe. Every month I got the same answer - excuses about being short-staffed and extremely busy. I always knew what they were going to say, but I called anyway. I wasn't going to let them forget about her. I wasn't going to let Janie remain a number on a body bag.
One day I came across a website for Dr. Henry Lee, the Forensics Expert who is widely known for his work on high-profile cases such as JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson, and O.J. Simpson. Dr. Lee has a Forensics Institute in Connecticut at the University of New Haven. I called Dr. Lee and asked him if he would be willing to take a look at this case. Dr. Lee invited me to present my case and all of the evidence to his Forensics class as an active case assignment. Dr. Lee told me he would oversee the investigation by his class and guide them in their work.
I boxed up the files and the evidence and I flew to New Haven, Connecticut to present my case. This was January 2007, four-and-a-half years after finding Janie Doe's remains on that hillside. I spent three days with Dr. Lee and a class of very intelligent, up and coming Forensic Technicians. They gave me some really good ideas and I learned about some new procedures being used in the field of DNA science. I was going to leave Connecticut with some hope of breathing new life into this case again.
On the last day I was there, as I was saying my goodbyes, I got a call on my cell phone. It was the Coroner's Office back home. Janie Doe had been positively identied by a match of the dental records... again. I withheld any excitement this time because I was duped the last time. I told the Deputy Coroner on the telephone that I wanted a DNA confirmation of the parents scheduled immediately.
I flew back home to California and found an envelope from the Coroner's Office sitting on my desk. I didn't want to open it because I knew the identity of another little girl was inside. I didn't want to get my hopes up again without the DNA match. I sat down at my desk and opened the envelope.
Rebecca Novell was a 13-year-old girl from Oceanside, California who was reported as a runaway in 1986. The name was immediately familiar to me. I pulled out my list of the original 12 names that I submitted to DOJ with the dental records over four years ago. The results I had received from DOJ four years ago was that #11, Shelly Phillips, was a match. Turned out she was not. I shook my head in disbelief as I looked at the list and saw the name Rebecca Novell in the #1 spot. They had Rebecca's name the first time and they matched the dental records to the wrong person.
I knew the only way to get a DNA match on Rebecca was to locate and visit her parents. That meant I was going to have to tell another mother that her missing child from 21 years ago had been located... and she wasn't coming home.
Here we go again.
I boxed up all the notes and information I gathered on Shelly Phillips and the two Marines in the faded blue Oldsmobile and I shipped it to San Diego PD. It was their case now. I turned my attention back on trying to identify little Janie Doe.
I contacted the producers of the television show America's Most Wanted and asked about a possible broadcast of this story. Maybe somebody would remember this 5' 7" blonde in a purple Le Tigre polo shirt. The TV producers decided that it would be a great story, but only if we had a picture of Janie Doe to put on TV. They felt the story would only tug at America's heart strings if they could see the girl's face and make a personal connection. Think about those late-night commercials with the starving children in Africa. It's those sad little faces staring into the camera that makes people dive for their checkbooks.
I contacted the Coroner's Office and requested a Forensic Reconstruction of the skull. That's when an artist builds one of those clay molds around the existing skull in an attempt to re-create what the victim actually looked like. Like everything else in Government, the request took 2 months to get approved, but the skull was eventually shipped off to the artist so he could begin his work.
The forensics lab was carefully examining Janie Doe's remains for any evidence they could possibly locate. The only two clothing items found with the bones were the shirt and bra. This part bothered me every time I thought about it. That means she wasn't clothed from the waist down when her body was put in the duffle bag and tossed over the cliff. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how this poor girl spent her last remaining hours alive. Some sick bastard putting his filthy hands on her little body and breathing whiskey in her face as he forced himself on her. The images were painful but they keep me moving forward.
The other items located inside the duffle bag with Janie Doe's remains were interesting:
1. One blue, electric blanket. It appeared the body had been rolled up in this blanket and then stuffed into the duffle bag.
2. One piece of cotton rope about 15" long tied into a circle. It was extremely frayed and degraded. It was probably used as a ligature for strangulation.
3. One thin piece of nylon rope tied onto the metal eyelet of the duffle bag, probably used to secure the bag closed before it deteriorated and came apart. The knot used to secure this rope to the eyelet was significant. A fancy knot tied by someone with nautical experience.
4. Orange and brown carpet fibers. DOJ told me the polyester fiber blend was the type commonly used in residential carpets.
5. Black carpet fibers. The type commonly used in automotive carpets, interior and trunk lining.
6. Black and white cat hairs.
7. Numerous blonde hairs belonging to the victim.
This was everything I had. This was all I had to work with. Without knowing the identity of the victim I couldn't even start an investigation. I couldn't use her DNA to identify her from the NCMEC database because there is no database for the DNA of missing persons. DOJ only keeps the DNA of convicted felons on file.
Months went by, and then a year, with no word about the Forensic reconstruction of the face. It turned out the man who was hired to do the work had been on family medical leave. His wife was dying of cancer. It took me several more months just to get the skull returned to the Coroner's Office so I could look for someone else to do the job.
Apparently there was nobody else. You see, it's the responsibility of the Coroner's Office to identify any unidentified bodies, not the Sheriff's Department. So no matter how badly I wanted this done and how many people I called and yelled at, the Coroner's Office was just on cruise control and in no apparent hurry to get Janie Doe identified. There are litterally dozens of bodies in cold storage at the morgue waiting to be identified. And the Deputy Coroner who was in charge of the Janie Doe case had recently retired. This case just went cold. I had dozens of other cases to tend to so I put the Janie Doe case on the shelf next to my desk. And that's where it sat without any hope for another three years.
Every month I called the Coroner's Office and asked about Janie Doe. Every month I got the same answer - excuses about being short-staffed and extremely busy. I always knew what they were going to say, but I called anyway. I wasn't going to let them forget about her. I wasn't going to let Janie remain a number on a body bag.
One day I came across a website for Dr. Henry Lee, the Forensics Expert who is widely known for his work on high-profile cases such as JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson, and O.J. Simpson. Dr. Lee has a Forensics Institute in Connecticut at the University of New Haven. I called Dr. Lee and asked him if he would be willing to take a look at this case. Dr. Lee invited me to present my case and all of the evidence to his Forensics class as an active case assignment. Dr. Lee told me he would oversee the investigation by his class and guide them in their work.
I boxed up the files and the evidence and I flew to New Haven, Connecticut to present my case. This was January 2007, four-and-a-half years after finding Janie Doe's remains on that hillside. I spent three days with Dr. Lee and a class of very intelligent, up and coming Forensic Technicians. They gave me some really good ideas and I learned about some new procedures being used in the field of DNA science. I was going to leave Connecticut with some hope of breathing new life into this case again.
On the last day I was there, as I was saying my goodbyes, I got a call on my cell phone. It was the Coroner's Office back home. Janie Doe had been positively identied by a match of the dental records... again. I withheld any excitement this time because I was duped the last time. I told the Deputy Coroner on the telephone that I wanted a DNA confirmation of the parents scheduled immediately.
I flew back home to California and found an envelope from the Coroner's Office sitting on my desk. I didn't want to open it because I knew the identity of another little girl was inside. I didn't want to get my hopes up again without the DNA match. I sat down at my desk and opened the envelope.
Rebecca Novell was a 13-year-old girl from Oceanside, California who was reported as a runaway in 1986. The name was immediately familiar to me. I pulled out my list of the original 12 names that I submitted to DOJ with the dental records over four years ago. The results I had received from DOJ four years ago was that #11, Shelly Phillips, was a match. Turned out she was not. I shook my head in disbelief as I looked at the list and saw the name Rebecca Novell in the #1 spot. They had Rebecca's name the first time and they matched the dental records to the wrong person.
I knew the only way to get a DNA match on Rebecca was to locate and visit her parents. That meant I was going to have to tell another mother that her missing child from 21 years ago had been located... and she wasn't coming home.
Here we go again.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The Castaway - Chapter 4
I contacted NCIS at Camp Pendleton and began the search for those two Marines. I was really shocked to learn that Camp Pendleton was home to approximately 36,000 Marines. There were approximately 6,000 homes located on the base and the rest of the personnel lived off the base in neighboring communities such as El Cajon.
This was the year 2002 and I wanted information about who lived off-base 14 years ago in 1988. I was told those records were archived in Washington DC and it was going to take weeks before they could be obtained. I was also told that it would require a physical search of the records by hand, since the computer program was designed to search for a Marine by name, not the neighborhood that he lived in. There were going to be thousands of records to search through.
I was confident that I was on the right track and following the right leads, but while I was waiting for the records from Washington DC, I started looking into some other possibilities for Shelly's murder.
Shelly had been sexually molested in 1986, a couple of years before her disappearance. Her attacker, a family friend, was arrested and sentenced to six years in state prison and he was still in custody at the time of Shelly's disappearance. It would have been rare and unusual, but not out of the question to consider that Shelly's murder was in retaliation for her testimony against that man. Convicted criminals seeking revenge will often pay a fellow inmate who is being released to carry out such deeds. But this was the murder of a child, very rare for even the hardest of criminals to consider. I made a mental note of the possibility and moved on.
I used the Internet and began reviewing the events and archived news reports from the 1980's in San Diego County. Whenever I'm working a cold case I like to familiarize myself with the local events at that time in that area. This is the kind of work that twenty years ago would have meant traveling to the local library and searching old newspaper clippings on microfiche. God bless the Internet. Most of the time this type of research is fruitless but occasionally it pays off. I don't ever want to be responsible for a case going unsolved simply because I didn't take the time to check out the little things.
I found a newspaper article from 1986 in the San Diego Evening Tribune that caught my attention. "Police suspect serial killer in San Diego." The article claimed that in the past five months, the bodies of 15 young women had been discovered dumped in remote areas of San Diego County. Most of the women were from the El Cajon area. Police did not have a suspect.
The more I researched this story, the worse it became. I discovered that San Diego County had one of the worst serial killing sprees in US history during the 80's. 43 young women had been murdered from 1985 to 1988. Most of the women had been strangled. Most of the bodies had been dumped off the side of the road in remote areas. Many of the women were from the El Cajon area and a couple of the bodies had been discovered near the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base. Was Shelly another victim of this serial killer?
My heart began to race a little as I read each of the stories covering the killings over the years. Each new article about the increasing body count - 18, 23, 28, 32! A monster was on the loose, the public was panicking and the only thing the police were catching was a lot of grief. The District Attorney's Office formed a multi-agency task force and poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the investigation.
The San Diego serial killer case was never solved. The killings stopped in 1988 and the task force was eventually disbanded without a suspect ever having been arrested. I had to ask myself if the task force ever knew about the Shelly Phillips case. Shelly was only in the system as a runaway and probably never made it onto the task force radar. If they had the information in 1988 about the two Marines in the pale blue Oldsmobile, they would have certainly been able to locate the house in El Cajon and identify the Marines.
This was the year 2002 and I wanted information about who lived off-base 14 years ago in 1988. I was told those records were archived in Washington DC and it was going to take weeks before they could be obtained. I was also told that it would require a physical search of the records by hand, since the computer program was designed to search for a Marine by name, not the neighborhood that he lived in. There were going to be thousands of records to search through.
I was confident that I was on the right track and following the right leads, but while I was waiting for the records from Washington DC, I started looking into some other possibilities for Shelly's murder.
Shelly had been sexually molested in 1986, a couple of years before her disappearance. Her attacker, a family friend, was arrested and sentenced to six years in state prison and he was still in custody at the time of Shelly's disappearance. It would have been rare and unusual, but not out of the question to consider that Shelly's murder was in retaliation for her testimony against that man. Convicted criminals seeking revenge will often pay a fellow inmate who is being released to carry out such deeds. But this was the murder of a child, very rare for even the hardest of criminals to consider. I made a mental note of the possibility and moved on.
I used the Internet and began reviewing the events and archived news reports from the 1980's in San Diego County. Whenever I'm working a cold case I like to familiarize myself with the local events at that time in that area. This is the kind of work that twenty years ago would have meant traveling to the local library and searching old newspaper clippings on microfiche. God bless the Internet. Most of the time this type of research is fruitless but occasionally it pays off. I don't ever want to be responsible for a case going unsolved simply because I didn't take the time to check out the little things.
I found a newspaper article from 1986 in the San Diego Evening Tribune that caught my attention. "Police suspect serial killer in San Diego." The article claimed that in the past five months, the bodies of 15 young women had been discovered dumped in remote areas of San Diego County. Most of the women were from the El Cajon area. Police did not have a suspect.
The more I researched this story, the worse it became. I discovered that San Diego County had one of the worst serial killing sprees in US history during the 80's. 43 young women had been murdered from 1985 to 1988. Most of the women had been strangled. Most of the bodies had been dumped off the side of the road in remote areas. Many of the women were from the El Cajon area and a couple of the bodies had been discovered near the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base. Was Shelly another victim of this serial killer?
My heart began to race a little as I read each of the stories covering the killings over the years. Each new article about the increasing body count - 18, 23, 28, 32! A monster was on the loose, the public was panicking and the only thing the police were catching was a lot of grief. The District Attorney's Office formed a multi-agency task force and poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the investigation.
The San Diego serial killer case was never solved. The killings stopped in 1988 and the task force was eventually disbanded without a suspect ever having been arrested. I had to ask myself if the task force ever knew about the Shelly Phillips case. Shelly was only in the system as a runaway and probably never made it onto the task force radar. If they had the information in 1988 about the two Marines in the pale blue Oldsmobile, they would have certainly been able to locate the house in El Cajon and identify the Marines.
I didn't want to get ahead of myself, but I couldn't help but get excited about the possibility that I might be holding the key to solving a serial killing spree of 44 murders.
Unfortunately, my excitement began to fade as the weeks and the months rolled by. It was mid-2003 now and I still couldn't get anything from Washington DC. Apparently asking National Archives for the home addresses of 10,000 Marines in 1988 was a big deal. Whatever.
I continued to do my own investigation and I even located one of Shelly's former friends that remembered the approximate location of the El Cajon house. He had dropped Shelly off in front of the house one time and he thought he might be able to find the street for me. I met him in the parking lot of a shopping center off the 8 Freeway. I shook his hand and said, "Okay, let's go find this house."
The painful expression on his face said it all. "I think we're standing on it."
The entire neighborhood where the Marines lived in 1988 was now home to The Corners Shopping Pavilion. Because Lord knows we need another fricking Starbucks. Terrific.
So I was going to have to do this the hard way. At least now I knew the general location of the neighborhood. The City Planning Commission would have the names of the former residential streets that occupied this area. I was guessing maybe twenty streets could have occupied this space prior to construction. With the street names I could obtain the names of each owner from the utility companies. I would have to track down each owner and find out who rented their property to a Marine in 1988. This was going to take a long time but what other choice did I have. This case wasn't about one 12-year-old girl anymore. This was about 43 other women as well.
Another six months had passed and I was making progress. I had all the addresses of every home that ever occupied The Corners Shopping Pavilion. I had a lot of the names, addresses and phone numbers of the former owners. The work was tedious and exhausting, but I kept my sights on the big picture. I kept Shelly's picture pinned up over my desk at work. A 6th grade school picture that I got from her mother. I saw her smiling face every day when I came to work and she kept me going. She kept me in the fight. This case was about 43 other women too, but 12-year-old Shelly was my motivation.
Then one morning everything changed. I got a phone call from a lab technician at the Department of Justice in Richmond, Calif. The news wasn't good.
The DNA results came back from the blood work I had done on Mrs. Phillips. She was not the mother of the little skeleton. The bones in the green duffel bag located almost a year ago were not the remains of Shelly Phillips.
Back to square one.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Castaway - Chapter 3
Okay, so Shelly Phillips was reported as a runaway in 1988. The first thing I had to do was obtain the original police report and find out what the circumstances were leading up to her disappearance. I drove to San Diego and obtained the report from the San Diego Police Department records bureau downtown.
I obtained the names and birth dates of Shelly's parents and then ran them in the computer to get a current address. They each had different addresses and it turned out they divorced a couple years after Shelly's disappearance and have both re-married since then. The father was in another state back east, but the mother was still in the San Diego area.
These phone calls are never easy to make. I had to call Mrs. Phillips, whose child went missing 14 years ago, and tell her the bad news. Shelly won't be coming home. I could only hope that she would find some relief in knowing that her daughter is not in any pain or suffering and the "waiting" was finally over. She had probably expected this phone call for many years, hoping it would never come, and then again, hoping it would.
Mrs. Phillips answered the phone like I imagine she would have on any other day - no concern, no expectations. When I introduced myself, her voice began to show some apprehension, but mostly curiosity. Then I told her I was calling about Shelly. There was a long silence... and then softly, "Is she dead?"
"Yes," I answered. "I'm sorry."
I heard a deep breath, a sigh of relief perhaps. There was no sobbing or hysterical reaction. It had been a long time and she had probably played this moment out in her head a hundred times. I made arrangements to come to her house the next day and gather some information. I arrived about 10am and we sat at the kitchen table. Mrs. Phillips was an attractive woman about 48-years old, but you could see the years of anguish had taken it's toll on her physically. She looked tired.
Mrs. Phillips told me that Shelly disappeared a couple of days before the Super Bowl, on January 29th 1988. Shelly had been invited by friends who had tickets. Shelly was a big Denver Brocos fan and they were playing the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII at nearby Jack Murphy Stadium (Now Qualcomm). But Mrs. Phillips didn't feel comfortable letting her 13-year-old daughter attend the largest sporting event of the year with a crowd of 70,000 people, so she told Shelly, "No." They argued about it and Shelly stormed out of the house. That was the last time Mrs. Phillips ever saw her daughter.
Mrs. Phillips told me that she and her husband suspected Shelly had gone to the football game and would return home soon thereafter to accept her punishment. But when they finally located Shelley's friends, they discovered that Shelley did not attend the Super Bowl and the friends had not seen or heard from Shelly in several days. The friends told the Phillips that they suspected Shelly was grounded again and unable to leave the house or call.
One of the friends then suggested that the Phillips search for a house located in nearby El Cajon. Without providing any specific details, they said that Shelly had been dating a 19-year-old Marine from Camp Pendleton. They said Shelly often ditched school and went to the boys house during the day. The friends were unable to provide a name or an address for the boy, but they gave a general location and description of the house.
The Phillips made a report to the San Diego Police Department, who took the report as a voluntary runaway and entered Shelly into the system. With a city the size of San Diego, that's about all that gets done on a voluntary runaway case. There just isn't enough manpower to chase kids all over town who don't want to be home. The Phillips were pretty much in charge of their own investigation.
A couple of days later, Mr. Phillips was driving around El Cajon attempting to find the house described by Shelly's friends. A faded blue Oldsmobile pulled up next to him at a traffic light. Mr. Phillips looked over and saw two young men in the front seat with the trademark Marine Corps haircuts. Mr. Phillips gasped when he saw his daughter sitting in the back seat. He fumbled for the door handle and screamed, "Shelly!" He honked his horn and tried to put his car in park all at the same time.
Shelly casually looked over and spotted her father in the car next to her. A sudden look of fear came over Shelly's face and she shouted something at the two Marines. They looked at Mr. Phillips and then punched the gas and sped away in the Oldsmobile.
Mr. Phillips yelled, "No, wait!" And it seemed to take an eternity to get the car back into gear and give chase. The Oldsmobile was already so far down the road that Mr. Phillips was losing sight of it at the curve up ahead. Mr. Phillips had the gas pedal floored and he had the advantage of a more powerful Mercedes engine. He was slowly closing the distance on the much older Oldsmobile and he could start to see Shelly looking out the back window, watching her father gain the upper hand.
As Mr. Phillips came within a hundred feet of the Oldsmobile he wondered what he was going to do when he actually caught up to them. That thought, unfortunately, was quickly interupted by the sight of the Marine on the passenger seat leaning out the window and pointing something backward at Mr. Phillips. A brief second of disbelief by Mr. Phillips was suddenly confirmed by the "pop" of a handgun and the shattering of his windshield.
The bullet punched a hole dead center of his windshield and passed between the front seats. The smashing of the windshield however completely blinded Mr. Phillips and sent the car spinning in circles down the road. The force of the spinning car caused Mr. Phillips to be pinned against his door and all he could think of was how badly it was going to hurt when he crashed.
The Mercedes stopped spinning and came to rest against a curb. The Oldsmobile was gone. Shelly was gone.
Mr. Phillips reported the incident to the San Diego Police Department, but with no license plate and only a brief look at two generic looking Marines, there wasn't much information for them to go on. San Diego PD still considered Shelly to be a voluntary runaway.
As Mrs. Phillips finished telling me this story, she shook her head in disbelief. She said, "Shelly told those boys to speed away. She didn't want to come home. They tried to kill her father and she still didn't come home. She didn't even call us to see if her father was alright. How could our child hate us so much?"
Before I left Mrs. Phillips' house, I made arrangements for her to go to the Coroner's Office and provide a blood sample for DNA analysis. I told her that even though the dental records matched Shelly, we always prefer to collect DNA to be 100% sure.
After I left the Phillips home, I went straight to the Sheriff's Station back in Riversie County and saw the evidence technician. I told her I needed to see the green canvas bag that we found Shelly's remains in.
The canvas bag was broken into dozens of brittle pieces, but now I saw it differently. After listening to the story from Mrs. Phillips, I couldn't wait to get back here and confirm my suspicions. I sifted through the pieces of dirty canvas and found a couple of metal grommets, then a metal clasp. It was beginning to look very familiar.
I found a small piece of green canvas with faded black letters on it. "M.C.".
I found another piece with more letters. "U.S.".
My suspicions were confirmed. The bag that Shelly's body was stuffed into before she was tossed over the cliff onto Pete Garrity's property was a US Marine Corps, military duffel bag. That narrow road that curved through the hills above Garrity's house also happened to pass by the back entrance of the Camp Pendleton Marine Base twenty miles away.
I had a lead, a good lead. Now I had to figure out who those two Marines were in that faded blue Oldsmobile. I was getting closer but there was still a lot of work to do.
I obtained the names and birth dates of Shelly's parents and then ran them in the computer to get a current address. They each had different addresses and it turned out they divorced a couple years after Shelly's disappearance and have both re-married since then. The father was in another state back east, but the mother was still in the San Diego area.
These phone calls are never easy to make. I had to call Mrs. Phillips, whose child went missing 14 years ago, and tell her the bad news. Shelly won't be coming home. I could only hope that she would find some relief in knowing that her daughter is not in any pain or suffering and the "waiting" was finally over. She had probably expected this phone call for many years, hoping it would never come, and then again, hoping it would.
Mrs. Phillips answered the phone like I imagine she would have on any other day - no concern, no expectations. When I introduced myself, her voice began to show some apprehension, but mostly curiosity. Then I told her I was calling about Shelly. There was a long silence... and then softly, "Is she dead?"
"Yes," I answered. "I'm sorry."
I heard a deep breath, a sigh of relief perhaps. There was no sobbing or hysterical reaction. It had been a long time and she had probably played this moment out in her head a hundred times. I made arrangements to come to her house the next day and gather some information. I arrived about 10am and we sat at the kitchen table. Mrs. Phillips was an attractive woman about 48-years old, but you could see the years of anguish had taken it's toll on her physically. She looked tired.
Mrs. Phillips told me that Shelly disappeared a couple of days before the Super Bowl, on January 29th 1988. Shelly had been invited by friends who had tickets. Shelly was a big Denver Brocos fan and they were playing the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII at nearby Jack Murphy Stadium (Now Qualcomm). But Mrs. Phillips didn't feel comfortable letting her 13-year-old daughter attend the largest sporting event of the year with a crowd of 70,000 people, so she told Shelly, "No." They argued about it and Shelly stormed out of the house. That was the last time Mrs. Phillips ever saw her daughter.
Mrs. Phillips told me that she and her husband suspected Shelly had gone to the football game and would return home soon thereafter to accept her punishment. But when they finally located Shelley's friends, they discovered that Shelley did not attend the Super Bowl and the friends had not seen or heard from Shelly in several days. The friends told the Phillips that they suspected Shelly was grounded again and unable to leave the house or call.
One of the friends then suggested that the Phillips search for a house located in nearby El Cajon. Without providing any specific details, they said that Shelly had been dating a 19-year-old Marine from Camp Pendleton. They said Shelly often ditched school and went to the boys house during the day. The friends were unable to provide a name or an address for the boy, but they gave a general location and description of the house.
The Phillips made a report to the San Diego Police Department, who took the report as a voluntary runaway and entered Shelly into the system. With a city the size of San Diego, that's about all that gets done on a voluntary runaway case. There just isn't enough manpower to chase kids all over town who don't want to be home. The Phillips were pretty much in charge of their own investigation.
A couple of days later, Mr. Phillips was driving around El Cajon attempting to find the house described by Shelly's friends. A faded blue Oldsmobile pulled up next to him at a traffic light. Mr. Phillips looked over and saw two young men in the front seat with the trademark Marine Corps haircuts. Mr. Phillips gasped when he saw his daughter sitting in the back seat. He fumbled for the door handle and screamed, "Shelly!" He honked his horn and tried to put his car in park all at the same time.
Shelly casually looked over and spotted her father in the car next to her. A sudden look of fear came over Shelly's face and she shouted something at the two Marines. They looked at Mr. Phillips and then punched the gas and sped away in the Oldsmobile.
Mr. Phillips yelled, "No, wait!" And it seemed to take an eternity to get the car back into gear and give chase. The Oldsmobile was already so far down the road that Mr. Phillips was losing sight of it at the curve up ahead. Mr. Phillips had the gas pedal floored and he had the advantage of a more powerful Mercedes engine. He was slowly closing the distance on the much older Oldsmobile and he could start to see Shelly looking out the back window, watching her father gain the upper hand.
As Mr. Phillips came within a hundred feet of the Oldsmobile he wondered what he was going to do when he actually caught up to them. That thought, unfortunately, was quickly interupted by the sight of the Marine on the passenger seat leaning out the window and pointing something backward at Mr. Phillips. A brief second of disbelief by Mr. Phillips was suddenly confirmed by the "pop" of a handgun and the shattering of his windshield.
The bullet punched a hole dead center of his windshield and passed between the front seats. The smashing of the windshield however completely blinded Mr. Phillips and sent the car spinning in circles down the road. The force of the spinning car caused Mr. Phillips to be pinned against his door and all he could think of was how badly it was going to hurt when he crashed.
The Mercedes stopped spinning and came to rest against a curb. The Oldsmobile was gone. Shelly was gone.
Mr. Phillips reported the incident to the San Diego Police Department, but with no license plate and only a brief look at two generic looking Marines, there wasn't much information for them to go on. San Diego PD still considered Shelly to be a voluntary runaway.
As Mrs. Phillips finished telling me this story, she shook her head in disbelief. She said, "Shelly told those boys to speed away. She didn't want to come home. They tried to kill her father and she still didn't come home. She didn't even call us to see if her father was alright. How could our child hate us so much?"
Before I left Mrs. Phillips' house, I made arrangements for her to go to the Coroner's Office and provide a blood sample for DNA analysis. I told her that even though the dental records matched Shelly, we always prefer to collect DNA to be 100% sure.
After I left the Phillips home, I went straight to the Sheriff's Station back in Riversie County and saw the evidence technician. I told her I needed to see the green canvas bag that we found Shelly's remains in.
The canvas bag was broken into dozens of brittle pieces, but now I saw it differently. After listening to the story from Mrs. Phillips, I couldn't wait to get back here and confirm my suspicions. I sifted through the pieces of dirty canvas and found a couple of metal grommets, then a metal clasp. It was beginning to look very familiar.
I found a small piece of green canvas with faded black letters on it. "M.C.".
I found another piece with more letters. "U.S.".
My suspicions were confirmed. The bag that Shelly's body was stuffed into before she was tossed over the cliff onto Pete Garrity's property was a US Marine Corps, military duffel bag. That narrow road that curved through the hills above Garrity's house also happened to pass by the back entrance of the Camp Pendleton Marine Base twenty miles away.
I had a lead, a good lead. Now I had to figure out who those two Marines were in that faded blue Oldsmobile. I was getting closer but there was still a lot of work to do.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Castaway - Chapter 2
So how was I going to identify the body of a 12 to 15-year-old child from skeletal remains? At this point she was listed at the Coroner's Office by a number, "U-02018." The "U" stood for "Unidentified." We referred to her as little Janie Doe.
Dental impressions were taken from the skeleton and they were entered into the Department of Justice computer for comparison against the nationwide database. But dental impressions are not as accurate as fingerprints and the results can often be unreliable. It's always best to have a list of possible matches to compare them with. It also makes the process much faster. If I submitted the dental records without a name to compare them with, the examination and results could take up to a year. If I submitted a list of possible matches then the examination and results would only take a couple of months. So where was I going to start my search for possible matches?
Considering this was the 21st Century, naturally my best resource was the Internet. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) was developed in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan. This program created a national database of infomation that could be shared by law enforcement agencies across the country. When a child went missing, their information was entered into this database.
I was familiar with the NCMEC because I had taken hundreds of reports in my career of missing and runaway children. I had entered their names in the system when their parents reported them missing, and I had removed their names when they were located. What I did not realize until I worked this case, was how many children were reported missing every year.
797,000 children are reported missing in the United States every year. That's 2,100 children every single day. This was like searching for a needle in a haystack. I knew my victim was female, but that only reduced the number of possibilities by a small margin. I had to somehow narrow my search parameters if this was going to work.
In addition to searching only female victims, I focused on Southern California, specifically Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles Counties. I now had a list of 10,000 missing children to search through. I was amazed at how many children had been reported missing and never returned. Where in the Hell were all these children? My jaded view of humanity made me picture these massive graves with the bodies of hundreds of children all over Southern California. That's just insane!
Out of these 10,000 missing children, a very large percentage were from Los Angeles County. I decided to narrow the parameters even more and remove Los Angeles from my search. This brought my list of possible matches down to 4,000. Since the location of the body was on the border of Riverside and San Diego County, I removed San Bernardino and Orange Counties. My list of possible matches came down to about 1,800. Based on the information provided by the Forensic Anthropologist, I narrowed my search down to children who were reported missing between 1975 and 1995. That drastically reduced the number of names down to about 300. 300 hundred little girls between the ages of 12 and 15 years old who disappeared from Riverside and San Diego Counties from 1975 to 1995 were never found. This was a horrifying revelation. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this? What happened to all of these little girls?
Okay, so 300 names was a workable list. Not easy, but workable. The only way for me to narrow the list even more would be to enter any specific information about Janie Doe that I could. Height, weight, hair and eye color, race, anything I could learn about this girl would help. I went to the morgue and tried to find out anything I could about our little skeleton.
The Deputy Coroner brought out a small bag from the refrigerator and put in on the examination table. It was kind of creepy to see how a disassembled body could fit into a bag the size of a pillow case. The Forensic Anthropologist was also there and we began laying the bones out anatomically on the table. I held up a bone that looked a little bit like a drumstick and I wondered where it belonged. I thought to myself, "I'm building a human jigsaw puzzle."
There were a few small pieces of hair still attached to the skull. The hair was extremely deteriorated but we were able to determine that it was originally blonde. This was also helpful in narrowing my search parameters to Caucasian or Hispanic and eliminating African American and Asian. Obviously there could be exceptions, but I was willing to take any help I could get.
I asked if it was possible to determine the victim's eye color. The answer was, "No." Eye color can sometimes be determined by DNA analysis but not skeletal examination. I asked if we could determine the victim's height. The Forensic Anthropologist then attempted to explain the complex scientific process involved in determining a person's height by measuring the femur and pelvic bones and inserting a mathematical formula. She told me this cannot be done with a child because the bones have not stopped growing yet. I could tell she was trying to be careful not to insult my high school education and my limited scientific knowledge. I looked down at the skeleton laying on the table and asked, "Does anyone have a tape measure?"
I measured the skeleton from head to toe and obtained a height of 5' 7". For a 12 to 15 year old girl, 5' 7" was pretty tall. This was possibly the best piece of information I had obtained in narrowing down my search parameters. When I eliminated African Americans and Asians from the search and then searched only blonde females, the list came down to about 170, but when I inserted a height between 5' 6" and 5' 8", the list dropped to only 12 names.
I looked at the final list of 12 names that I obtained from the NCMEC and I wondered if little Janie Doe was one of them. This was all completely dependent upon a few important factors. Was she actually reported missing? Was she ever properly entered into the system? Did I narrow my search parameters too far and unintentionally eliminate her name from the list?
I submitted the list of 12 names along with the dental records to the Department of Justice for comparison. About two months later I got the good news. Little Janie Doe was #11 on the list. She was actually 13-year-old Shelly Phillips from El Cajon and she was reported by her parents as a runaway in 1988.
Now the real work was to begin. How did Shelly Phillips end up stuffed into a canvas bag on a hillside in Riverside County?
Dental impressions were taken from the skeleton and they were entered into the Department of Justice computer for comparison against the nationwide database. But dental impressions are not as accurate as fingerprints and the results can often be unreliable. It's always best to have a list of possible matches to compare them with. It also makes the process much faster. If I submitted the dental records without a name to compare them with, the examination and results could take up to a year. If I submitted a list of possible matches then the examination and results would only take a couple of months. So where was I going to start my search for possible matches?
Considering this was the 21st Century, naturally my best resource was the Internet. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) was developed in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan. This program created a national database of infomation that could be shared by law enforcement agencies across the country. When a child went missing, their information was entered into this database.
I was familiar with the NCMEC because I had taken hundreds of reports in my career of missing and runaway children. I had entered their names in the system when their parents reported them missing, and I had removed their names when they were located. What I did not realize until I worked this case, was how many children were reported missing every year.
797,000 children are reported missing in the United States every year. That's 2,100 children every single day. This was like searching for a needle in a haystack. I knew my victim was female, but that only reduced the number of possibilities by a small margin. I had to somehow narrow my search parameters if this was going to work.
In addition to searching only female victims, I focused on Southern California, specifically Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles Counties. I now had a list of 10,000 missing children to search through. I was amazed at how many children had been reported missing and never returned. Where in the Hell were all these children? My jaded view of humanity made me picture these massive graves with the bodies of hundreds of children all over Southern California. That's just insane!
Out of these 10,000 missing children, a very large percentage were from Los Angeles County. I decided to narrow the parameters even more and remove Los Angeles from my search. This brought my list of possible matches down to 4,000. Since the location of the body was on the border of Riverside and San Diego County, I removed San Bernardino and Orange Counties. My list of possible matches came down to about 1,800. Based on the information provided by the Forensic Anthropologist, I narrowed my search down to children who were reported missing between 1975 and 1995. That drastically reduced the number of names down to about 300. 300 hundred little girls between the ages of 12 and 15 years old who disappeared from Riverside and San Diego Counties from 1975 to 1995 were never found. This was a horrifying revelation. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this? What happened to all of these little girls?
Okay, so 300 names was a workable list. Not easy, but workable. The only way for me to narrow the list even more would be to enter any specific information about Janie Doe that I could. Height, weight, hair and eye color, race, anything I could learn about this girl would help. I went to the morgue and tried to find out anything I could about our little skeleton.
The Deputy Coroner brought out a small bag from the refrigerator and put in on the examination table. It was kind of creepy to see how a disassembled body could fit into a bag the size of a pillow case. The Forensic Anthropologist was also there and we began laying the bones out anatomically on the table. I held up a bone that looked a little bit like a drumstick and I wondered where it belonged. I thought to myself, "I'm building a human jigsaw puzzle."
There were a few small pieces of hair still attached to the skull. The hair was extremely deteriorated but we were able to determine that it was originally blonde. This was also helpful in narrowing my search parameters to Caucasian or Hispanic and eliminating African American and Asian. Obviously there could be exceptions, but I was willing to take any help I could get.
I asked if it was possible to determine the victim's eye color. The answer was, "No." Eye color can sometimes be determined by DNA analysis but not skeletal examination. I asked if we could determine the victim's height. The Forensic Anthropologist then attempted to explain the complex scientific process involved in determining a person's height by measuring the femur and pelvic bones and inserting a mathematical formula. She told me this cannot be done with a child because the bones have not stopped growing yet. I could tell she was trying to be careful not to insult my high school education and my limited scientific knowledge. I looked down at the skeleton laying on the table and asked, "Does anyone have a tape measure?"
I measured the skeleton from head to toe and obtained a height of 5' 7". For a 12 to 15 year old girl, 5' 7" was pretty tall. This was possibly the best piece of information I had obtained in narrowing down my search parameters. When I eliminated African Americans and Asians from the search and then searched only blonde females, the list came down to about 170, but when I inserted a height between 5' 6" and 5' 8", the list dropped to only 12 names.
I looked at the final list of 12 names that I obtained from the NCMEC and I wondered if little Janie Doe was one of them. This was all completely dependent upon a few important factors. Was she actually reported missing? Was she ever properly entered into the system? Did I narrow my search parameters too far and unintentionally eliminate her name from the list?
I submitted the list of 12 names along with the dental records to the Department of Justice for comparison. About two months later I got the good news. Little Janie Doe was #11 on the list. She was actually 13-year-old Shelly Phillips from El Cajon and she was reported by her parents as a runaway in 1988.
Now the real work was to begin. How did Shelly Phillips end up stuffed into a canvas bag on a hillside in Riverside County?
Friday, July 31, 2009
The Castaway - Chapter 1
It was the summer of 2002 and Pete Garrity was clearing the overgrown sage brush from a steep hillside behind his home. He was using a metal rake to pull at the scrub and suddenly the rake pulled something else out from under the bushes. It was faded green and very weathered. It looked like a blanket. He tried to snag it and pull it closer so he could see it more clearly, but it was brittle and it broke apart. Pete was startled when a human skull rolled out of the blanket and landed at his feet.
Pete ran to the house and yelled for his wife to call 911. He told her that he found a body in the bushes. Within the hour, Pete Garrity's quiet countryside property was swarming with police cars, fire engines, and reporters. I was the homicide detective assigned to the case. My first task was to figure out if we actually had a homicide. As funny as that might sound, you would be surprised how many times we get called out when someone finds old animal bones burried in their yard. And even when the bones are human, it's not always a homicide. Sometimes it's a person who died of natural causes or an accidental death and there is no crime. A homicide is defined as, "The killing of a human being by a human being."
When I examined the hillside where Pete Garrity found the skull, I quickly made the detemination that we had a homicide. Not that I'm actually that good at my job, but sometimes it's a no-brainer. There was an obvious human skull that rolled out of some type of bag. It looked like a large green canvas bag. 100' up the steep hillside there was a paved road that wound through the hills for about 35 miles. The road was not well travelled, but I knew it was there because I patrolled these hills for several years as a young deputy. The location of this canvas bag and the human skull inside told me that someone probably pulled their car over and tossed the body over the edge. That's not an accident. That's a homicide.
As we processed the crime scene we found what we expected. The rest of the bones were still inside the canvas bag. We placed each of the bones anatomically on top of a white plastic tarp until we had a full skeleton. The bones had no flesh on them. When we finished, it looked like one of those skeletons you would purchase at a novelty store to put on your porch at Halloween. With the exception that this one was wearing a purple Le Tigre polo shirt and a bra. A very small bra.
The Sheriff's Department has a Forensic Anthropologist for cases such as this. She responded to the scene to examine the bones and make a determination on age, sex, and how long the bones had been at this location. She conducted her analysis and gave us the bad news, something we all knew was coming after seeing the bra. The bones belonged to a female between the age of 12 and 15 years old. All homicide detectives will tell you the same thing. We can't get emotionally involved in our cases and we can't take it personal. This one just got personal.
The Forensic Anthropologist also determined that the body of this little girl had been inside the canvas bag under these bushes for more than ten years, probably closer to twenty years. That was heart wrenching. Somebody lost their child twenty years ago and they've never known what happened. The horrible grief the parents must have suffered all this time. I had to shake off that thought and stay clear. I couldn't let myself imagine a happy family who's daughter simply didn't return home from school. I had to remember that most child deaths are actually committed by someone in the family. Statistically, they were more likely to be suspects than grieving parents.
My biggest task still lay ahead. How could I question the parents if I didn't even know who the girl was? And how was I going to identify a child who had been dead twenty years when all I had was a skeleton? I had a lot of work to do.
Pete ran to the house and yelled for his wife to call 911. He told her that he found a body in the bushes. Within the hour, Pete Garrity's quiet countryside property was swarming with police cars, fire engines, and reporters. I was the homicide detective assigned to the case. My first task was to figure out if we actually had a homicide. As funny as that might sound, you would be surprised how many times we get called out when someone finds old animal bones burried in their yard. And even when the bones are human, it's not always a homicide. Sometimes it's a person who died of natural causes or an accidental death and there is no crime. A homicide is defined as, "The killing of a human being by a human being."
When I examined the hillside where Pete Garrity found the skull, I quickly made the detemination that we had a homicide. Not that I'm actually that good at my job, but sometimes it's a no-brainer. There was an obvious human skull that rolled out of some type of bag. It looked like a large green canvas bag. 100' up the steep hillside there was a paved road that wound through the hills for about 35 miles. The road was not well travelled, but I knew it was there because I patrolled these hills for several years as a young deputy. The location of this canvas bag and the human skull inside told me that someone probably pulled their car over and tossed the body over the edge. That's not an accident. That's a homicide.
As we processed the crime scene we found what we expected. The rest of the bones were still inside the canvas bag. We placed each of the bones anatomically on top of a white plastic tarp until we had a full skeleton. The bones had no flesh on them. When we finished, it looked like one of those skeletons you would purchase at a novelty store to put on your porch at Halloween. With the exception that this one was wearing a purple Le Tigre polo shirt and a bra. A very small bra.
The Sheriff's Department has a Forensic Anthropologist for cases such as this. She responded to the scene to examine the bones and make a determination on age, sex, and how long the bones had been at this location. She conducted her analysis and gave us the bad news, something we all knew was coming after seeing the bra. The bones belonged to a female between the age of 12 and 15 years old. All homicide detectives will tell you the same thing. We can't get emotionally involved in our cases and we can't take it personal. This one just got personal.
The Forensic Anthropologist also determined that the body of this little girl had been inside the canvas bag under these bushes for more than ten years, probably closer to twenty years. That was heart wrenching. Somebody lost their child twenty years ago and they've never known what happened. The horrible grief the parents must have suffered all this time. I had to shake off that thought and stay clear. I couldn't let myself imagine a happy family who's daughter simply didn't return home from school. I had to remember that most child deaths are actually committed by someone in the family. Statistically, they were more likely to be suspects than grieving parents.
My biggest task still lay ahead. How could I question the parents if I didn't even know who the girl was? And how was I going to identify a child who had been dead twenty years when all I had was a skeleton? I had a lot of work to do.
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