06.Evil.Beside.Her.2008 (30 page)

James shredded the paper into confetti and threw it into the complex Dumpster. When Linda arrived home that evening, she found no warning that a woman had been raped within shouting distance of her front door.

In March, Linda visited Colt Hargraves in the hospital, where doctors scheduled tests for his annual examination. But Linda’s health, not his, monopolized the afternoon’s conversation. Hargraves had worried about Linda for months. He’d grown to view her as a friend, and it was difficult to sit by and helplessly watch as she deteriorated in front of him. Always skittish, she constantly seemed on edge, sometimes to the point that she lost her temper or cried over the smallest things. And she was drinking. It had become unusual to see Linda Bergstrom when she wasn’t raising a small bottle of white wine to her lips. She kept Hargraves’s refrigerator, her car, sometimes even her purse, stocked with ten-ounce bottles of Sutter Home White.

Hargraves didn’t know how to feel about the way she was changing. Had he been wrong to trust her? His faith in Linda hadn’t come without challenge. His mother, once she learned her son had bought his new aide a car, told him almost daily that he was being used. “You’re letting this one take you for a ride,” she’d say. “There hasn’t been anything in the papers about any rapist on the loose.”

In the hospital room, Hargraves echoed his mother’s words to Linda.

Please believe in me,
she thought.
Not you, too.

All she said out loud was, “I’m telling the truth.” Then, “I’ve got to leave.”

“You’re going to drink,” he scolded.

“Yeah, I am,” she admitted. “Why not? Ashley’s with the sitter. I don’t care anymore. It’s the only way I can relax and not think about it. It takes the pressure off for a little while. If this is my life, I’ve got to do something to cope.”

Yet no anesthetic was strong enough to drown out the guilt that haunted Linda, that of freeing James on an unsuspecting world. It ate away inside her, spawning horrific nightmares. In desperation during one argument, she scratched her husband’s face, etching bloody lines from forehead to chin. “I wanted people to see it,” she’d say later. “I would have liked to put a red
R
for rapist on his forehead. I wanted people to know what he was.”

At work, James explained away the scratches claiming three teenagers jumped him at his apartment complex’s Coke machine.

“James,” Allen Gibson cautioned when he heard James’s tale. “Kids these days, you don’t know they weren’t armed. You better be careful.”

“Maybe so,” James said.

Gibson had noticed a change in James. His absences from work had become increasingly frequent. Many of the hourly workers at Devoe knew Bergstrom habitually arrived late or left early, if he came in at all. “I’d ask where James was and one of the guys would say he wasn’t coming in today,” Gibson would say later. “It got so it was routine. When he was there, he was in a world of his own. His body was there, but his mind wasn’t. James didn’t want to shoot the bull no more.”

Gibson wrote Bergstrom’s detachment off to problems at home. Later he would remember other things: that he’d heard of a rape in the apartment complex next to the one the Bergstroms lived in on Edgebrook; and the day one of the men in the plant said he’d seen James running out of an apartment complex, not the one where he lived. When
Gibson mentioned it to him, James claimed he’d been playing tennis with a friend.

Since Maggie Heller’s rape, opportunities had dried up for Bergstrom, making him increasingly frantic. “I watched the papers and there weren’t any articles about the rape,” he said later. “But everybody seemed more cautious. Doors were locked. Garage doors weren’t up. The women around the apartments seemed more cautious. I figured I had to come up with another way to get inside.”

In early March, Linda noticed a hard hat and sunglasses in the Grand Prix’s backseat.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

“It’s from work.” James shrugged, innocently. “I just forgot to put it away.”

Later she’d learn the truth. That like the ski masks, duct tape, rope, and guns she’d found, a hard hat, clipboard, vial, and sunglasses were now part of her husband’s rape kit.

At 3:30
P.M.
on March 16, 1992, Sandy Colyard gossiped on her portable phone with a friend in the living room of her Friendswood apartment, a ten-minute drive from the Clear Lake strip Bergstrom had stalked for the previous five months. A fourth grade teacher, the twenty-three-year-old Colyard had slept in on the first day of spring break. Just out of the shower, she felt her wet hair tickling her neck, so as she paced the room, she ran her fingers through thick, dark curls.

Colyard had looked forward to this leisure for months. She’d had a tough spring semester with a particularly unruly class. “I really needed this R and R,” she told her girlfriend on the phone. Then she went on to detail her week’s plans. Her boyfriend, a student at the University of Texas, was in town, and after a few days of rest, they were considering a short trip, maybe to the Texas hill country if the bluebonnets were blooming.

“Hold on a sec,” Colyard said, when she heard a knock at the door. “I’ll be right back.”

When she opened the first-floor apartment door, there stood a man in a hard hat and sunglasses, carrying a clipboard and a test tube.

“There’s a problem with the water. I’m here to check it,” James Bergstrom said. “It’ll just take a minute.”

Colyard’s immediate reaction was suspicion.

“You got a note from the apartment manager last week
saying we were coming,” Bergstrom persisted when she didn’t let him in.

In the past, Colyard had missed notices on the exterminator and the maintenance man.
Maybe I just didn’t see it again,
she thought.

“Okay,” she said. “Come on in.”

James Bergstrom walked in and headed toward the bathroom as Colyard picked up the phone. Her friend, who had heard everything, chastised her. “You shouldn’t just let someone you don’t know in your apartment,” she said. “Stay on the phone until he leaves so I know you’re okay.”

Colyard did just that, watching suspiciously as Bergstrom left the bathroom to draw a water sample from the kitchen. Two vials of water in his hand, he let himself out the door.

“He’s gone and I’m fine,” Colyard told her friend as she locked the front door behind him. “Thanks, but I’ve got to go.”

In the bathroom with the hair dryer buzzing, she never heard James Bergstrom jump the six-foot barrier surrounding her patio. She never heard the scraping of the patio door as he eased it open. She never realized he was there until she saw a man in a ski mask staring back at her in the mirror. Bergstrom quickly grabbed her neck with his left arm.
It’s not really happening,
Colyard thought as she stared in the mirror at her own face shadowed by a stranger holding a gun to her head.

“Do exactly what I say and I won’t hurt you,” the man ordered.

Immediately Colyard recognized the voice as that of the water tester.

“Lay down,” he ordered.

Lying face down in the hallway, Colyard winced when the stranger jerked her hands behind her. In a process that seemed to take forever, he meticulously tied her wrists together behind her back with long black shoelaces. A throb
bing pain shot through her hands into her fingers as he yanked on the bindings to test them.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she said, in a voice so frightened, it sounded like it came from someone else.

“I won’t if you do what I say,” he said, clutching her by the arm and hoisting her to her feet.

Is he going to kill me?
she wondered. When he pushed her toward the bedroom, she knew exactly what he intended for her.
My God, he’s going to rape me.

The stranger shoved her harder in the direction of the bedroom, but this time, incensed, Colyard lunged, hitting him in the chest with her shoulder. Bergstrom abruptly stopped and stared at Colyard. Later he would say he had the unshakable impression that she recognized him as the water tester. She sensed immediately that something had changed.

“All I want is money,” Bergstrom hastily demanded, shyly looking away from her.

“I’ve got two dollars in my purse,” she said, no longer frightened. “Take it and leave. My brother should be here any minute.”

“I want your money,” he said, again.

“Then take it and leave,” she shouted. “Get out of here.”

Colyard, hands still bound behind her, followed her would-be rapist into the living room, screaming at him to get out.

“Calm down,” Bergstrom ordered her, as he grabbed the money from the purse. “I’m going to put you in the bathroom. I don’t want you following me.”

“Okay,” said Colyard. “Just get out.”

Bergstrom closed the door on Colyard, and a moment later she heard the front door squeak and slam shut. She turned her back to the bathroom door and strained against her bindings until she grasped the doorknob, turning until it swung open. Then she rushed out, eager to call for help. When she reached the living room, there was the water tester,
mask off, getting ready to flee. Bergstrom ran out the door, Colyard chasing him and shouting for help. When she spotted the apartment’s maintenance man, she ran toward him, turning so he could see the bindings on her wrists. “Don’t let him get away,” she shouted. “Look what that guy did to me.”

Once she was certain the other man was in pursuit, Colyard rushed to the manager’s office, kicked at the door until someone opened it, and screamed, “Call the police. Now.”

Within minutes, the apartment lot was flooded with squad cars. Officers took Colyard’s statement and that of the maintenance man who’d failed to catch Bergstrom as he fled from the scene. Among those present at Colyard’s that afternoon was Detective Frank Fidelibus, a twelve-year veteran of the Friendswood police force. He took one look at the square-type knot in the shoelaces the apartment manager had cut from Colyard’s wrists and said, “You know, I’d be willing to bet this guy’s been in the navy.”

The next morning, Frank Fidelibus, slight, dark-haired, with a manicured mustache and beard and wire-rimmed aviator glasses, started making inquiries. First he called the water department and confirmed that no testers were working in the area of Sandy Colyard’s apartment that day or in previous months. Then he asked around the office and learned there had been two similar attacks in Friendswood subdivisions, also unsuccessful, in the spring of 1990 and another in February 1991. When Fidelibus checked with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, someone mentioned they, too, had a detective investigating a series of sexual assaults in Houston’s southern rim.

“Tonry here,” the detective said when he answered the line.

“I’m Frank Fidelibus, detective, Friendswood,” the other man said. “I understand you’re looking into some rapes. A guy who likes to tie women up?”

“Yeah,” Tonry said. “I sure am.”

The following day, Tonry and Fidelibus met at Friendswood’s police headquarters. In Frank’s office, they compared files. Tonry explained everything he knew about Bergstrom and the rapes he was already suspected of.

“This guy’s wife’s been trying to turn him in,” Tonry went on, telling him about Sergeant Rusty Gallier at HPD and detailing Gallier’s talks with Linda, and Bergstrom’s history in Washington State.

“I don’t know. This Colyard case is different than the ones you and Gallier have. This time the guy posed as a water tester,” Fidelibus said, stroking his dark beard. “I think Bergstrom could be my guy, but do you think he’s done them all?”

“Beats me,” Tonry said. “But I’ve gotta say, I think he could have done my cases, too.”

“Well, those knots he used on Colyard,” Fidelibus went on. “I’m a boater and I’d swear this guy’s been on a boat. The navy thing fits. Let’s map it out.”

Fidelibus grabbed a yellow legal pad from his desk and made up a grid. On the left he listed the names of his four victims, including Ann Cook and Sandy Colyard, and Tonry’s three, including Jesse Neal, the waitress. Across the top he listed different categories: date, time, place, means of entry, ski mask color, material used to tie victim up, type of weapon, what said, what he did to each victim.

As with Gallier’s examination months earlier, there were differences and similarities, but both officers’ gut instincts told them Bergstrom was responsible for the majority if not all of their cases.

“Have we got a picture?” Fidelibus asked.

“Gallier’s got one.”

“Well, I’m gonna send for one. Then we can stop guessing,” Fidelibus said, picking up the phone and dialing the Texas Department of Public Safety for a copy of Bergstrom’s driver’s license photo.

“It’ll be here tomorrow,” he told Tonry when he hung up. “Then we’ll know for sure.”

When the photo arrived via Federal Express the following morning, Fidelibus called Sandy Colyard and made arrangements to meet her at her apartment at noon.

“Take your time,” Fidelibus told her as he arranged the eight photos on a table. “We’re in no hurry.”

Fidelibus stole a glance at her wrists and saw that, though it had been four days since the attack, the red, tender ridges from the shoelaces were still plainly visible. He knew the knots Bergstrom used were designed to tighten, cutting deeper into the skin if she fought against him.

“This is him,” Colyard shouted almost instantly. “I know it’s him.”

Colyard held photo number six—James Bergstrom.

“Sure?” he asked.

“Positive,” Colyard answered. “Absolutely positive.”

On Friday, March 20, 1992—four days after the attack on Sandy Colyard—Friendswood detective Frank Fidelibus and Harris County detective Robert Tonry drove to HPD headquarters on the outskirts of downtown Houston for a meeting with Sergeant Rusty Gallier. When they arrived, Gallier led them into an empty office. Each man carried an armful of files.

“You think Bergstrom could be responsible for all of these?” asked Gallier, whose cases included Maggie Heller’s rape.

“Tonry and I mapped ours out yesterday,” Fidelibus said, pulling out his yellow legal pad. “Let’s add yours.”

To the bottom of their existing list, Fidelibus added the names and data on the rape of Maggie Heller, the attack on Andrea Hoggen, and two unsuccessful attempts in the Clear Lake area. The completed list included two rapes and seven attempted sexual assaults. Then Fidelibus drew a map plotting all the cases and noting the date of each. One thing showed up quickly: The attacks were all clustered on Interstate 45, fanning out into Clear Lake and Friendswood. Except for the two cases in which victims had identified Bergstrom, no evidence linked him to any of the crimes.

“The MO was all over the place,” Gallier would say later. “We all thought he was the one who did ours—not theirs. It just didn’t seem like it could all be the same guy. Usually rapists settle into a pattern of what’s worked for them and
they keep repeating it. We had cases where he walked in through unlocked doors, others where he followed women and forced himself in; now he was posing as a water tester.”

“If this is all him, the guy’s damn smart,” Fidelibus said that afternoon, echoing sentiments Tonry and Gallier had expressed months earlier.

“This could be the same guy,” Tonry postulated.

Gallier agreed, but he wasn’t optimistic. He’d already reviewed the new Friendswood case—Sandy Colyard’s—with an assistant DA. As in Hoggen’s case, according to Gallier, the prosecutors couldn’t charge Bergstrom with attempted rape because he’d never told Colyard what he intended to do to her. The most they could come up with was a burglary charge for the two dollars Bergstrom lifted from her purse on his way out of the apartment. The prosecutor could go with burglary, a second-degree felony with a sentencing range of two to twenty years. Since Bergstrom had no other felony convictions, a judge would undoubtedly give him probation or a two-year sentence. With good time in jail, Bergstrom probably wouldn’t serve more than a few months, and any advantage they had from the element of surprise would be gone.

“We’re sitting here with possible rapes,” Gallier stressed after reviewing the situation. “If we move in now, we may stop him for a little while, but we’ll have blown the bigger cases and he’ll be out in no time.”

“But we can’t just keep letting this go on,” Fidelibus argued.

“What say we wait until the end of the month?” Gallier asked. “If we don’t have more on him by then, we group what we’ve got together and go into the DA’s office and see if we can’t convince them to package these cases based on his MO.”

All three officers knew it was a weak case. None of them liked the bargain, but it was the best they had.

“Let’s do it,” Tonry said, and Fidelibus nodded in agreement.