Cruel Death (28 page)

Her idea of the perfect life, Erika later said, as she began to date and think about perhaps going to law school, became: Could she live up to what was expected of her, without failing? Erika Grace: the overachiever who, inside, was scared to death of disappointing and letting people down. Scared because, as Erika grew into a woman, she began to have these strange feelings guiding her—feelings of darkness and remorse, anger and resentment. Feelings that her mother and father cared more about their marriage than they did for their daughter. On paper, Erika had the ideal upbringing. In reality, underneath her transparent, thin skin, Erika suffered self-esteem issues that would lead her away from her goals and into a life Mitch and Cookie could never have imagined possible—even in a nightmare.

“It’s such a horrible crime,” Mitch Grace later told me, talking about what had happened to Geney and Joshua, “so it’s hard to talk about it. I don’t want to make light of it, implying that she (Erika) is more important than the poor thing that had happened to these good people.”

Although Mitch was clear that he didn’t want it to sound like his daughter was more important than the victims in this case, he was concerned that his daughter would be forever branded a monster for the fact that Geney and Joshua were dismembered, admittedly, by Erika and BJ. Mitch, of course, didn’t want to view his daughter—what father would—as some sort of barbarian who could cut another human being up in pieces.

“She has been portrayed as this horrible killer,” Mitch continued, “but no one understands.... Because she’s my daughter, I feel there’s a huge difference between actually killing somebody and not knowing. Everybody in a situation has their own tragedy.”

The implication was that Mitch believed Erika had had nothing to do with actually murdering Joshua and Geney—that it was all BJ’s doing. And yet, as Erika herself continued to explain to Carri Campbell, she had participated willingly in these murders, ordered them, and then took part in dismembering their bodies.

71

Can It Be True?

Agent Carri Campbell noticed that Erika had what looked to be a fairly new snake tattoo on her right side, slightly above her hip. It was in the same location that she had just claimed to have made that first “cut” on Geney. “Is that the location you cut [Geney]?” Campbell asked, pointing to the tattoo.

“Yes,” Erika answered without hesitating. “I got this tattoo two or three days later.”

“Did you choose that particular location on your body for some reason?”

“Yes, I did.” Erika seemed intrigued by the conversation. Even stimulated by it. Not in the least bit sorry or remorseful. “BJ told me to get it there! He loves it, too. He compliments me all the time on it.”

This was important to Erika, because BJ, she claimed, had only made compliments to her about “two things. Before the murders he said I was a cool wife for going to strip clubs with him, and now he says he likes the tattoo because it is in the same location that I cut [Geney].”

Campbell noticed that Erika had a small scar above her thumb. “Is that from cutting yourself while cutting [Geney]?”

“No,” Erika said. “That’s a crocodile bite.”

After she finished “cutting” Geney, Erika explained, she went downstairs to get some garbage bags. When she returned, she got her first view of the horror that had gone on inside the bathroom, and the additional horror, in fact, that was about to take place. Now there was blood covering just about every square inch of the floor, all over the walls, and even on the blinds. BJ was naked, as if participating in some sort of ritual, and completely covered in blood. By now he had moved the bodies into the hot tub.

BJ just sat there for a moment as Erika looked around the room. Still, seeing her husband naked and covered in blood didn’t really have that much of a negative or even sinister effect on Erika. Because no sooner had she walked into the bathroom did she run back out into the bedroom, she later explained, “to look for my shit.”

It was important for Erika to find her jewelry. After all, two people had lost their lives because of that jewelry.

“I just love my stuff,” Erika explained to Campbell, as if they were two women out for a day of shopping, “and have about forty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds, including a two-inch carat canary diamond my grandmother gave me.”

According to Erika, as she was looking around the room, BJ came in and said, “Look underneath the bed.”

She said she got on her stomach and lifted up the blanket hanging over the edge of the bed—and there it was: all her stuff.

“He put everything there,” Erika said later, “to mess with me. He probably did it so I would be upset with Geney and Joshua and want to kill them.”

This part of Erika’s story doesn’t add up: the bed had only about a half-inch clearance underneath it.

Nonetheless, Erika said, she sat on the bed with her things, looking through them, to make sure everything was there.

Within a few moments, BJ sat next to her. Without warning, he said, “I masturbated over their bodies.”

“What?”

He said it again.

Erika later explained that she didn’t see him do it, “but he told me he did.”

72

Horror Show

Erika explained to Carri Campbell that she was still wearing the same clothes she had wet herself in, which now had blood on them, when she went out to get those garbage bags for BJ, at 4:00
A.M
.

When she returned about thirty minutes later, and ran immediately up to the bathroom, she said, “I saw BJ cutting a leg off one of the bodies.”

“Do you know what that is?” BJ asked, pointing to another body part on the floor next to the tub.

“An arm?”

“Can we eat it?” BJ asked.

“No, Beej. We cannot eat it,” she answered.

After he finished carving both bodies into six parts, BJ put all the body parts into garbage bags, tied them securely, then put the garbage bags into military duffel bags and loaded those bags into blue plastic tubs. Erika admitted that she helped him wrap up Joshua’s torso with a “cream-colored blanket” she took from one of the closets in the condo (which was later confirmed).

She was detailed in describing,
Campbell wrote of Erika’s descriptions,
the way Josh’s torso (with no arms, legs, or head attached) was balanced on the edge of the hot tub.

Again, Erika showed no emotion or even cried as she talked about these graphic scenes of her husband dismembering two human beings. It was as if she was describing a dream, or some horror movie she had recently seen. There seemed to be no human or emotional connection whatsoever to what had transpired.

After disposing the bodies in Dumpsters behind a grocery store in Delaware, Erika explained, she and BJ “were both very tired and just slept downstairs for a few hours.”

When they got up at noon that same day, Erika told BJ, “We need to clean up the bathroom.”

“We used cleaning supplies, such as bleach and Drano,” Erika explained to Campbell.

The following day, they went and made sure the Dumpsters had been emptied.

According to Erika, “Boy, what a number you did on [Geney’s] throat,” BJ said to her as they were driving. This was the first time Erika Sifrit had ever admitted—in not so many words—that she had actually slit Geney’s throat.

73

Deal’s Off

Arcky Tuminelli paced, drank coffee, and wondered what in the world was taking the Secret Service so damn long. He’d had some previous experience with polygraph tests, and they had never gone on for this duration of time.

Come on . . . what’s the problem here?

Something was up.

Arcky went and got a drink of water, wondering if he should go in and interrupt the test. In truth, however, if he destroyed Erika’s chances for taking the test, the deal would be taken off the table. There was no legal grounds on which he could barge into the interview to check and see if things were going all right.

In the interim of talking with Joel Todd about when to do the polygraph, Arcky had been presented with a second agreement, on top of that first agreement he and Todd had drafted late into the night in Joel Todd’s office. This second agreement was actually a document designed to protect Erika. In it, under no condition or circumstance could anything Erika say during the
polygraph
be disclosed to anyone without her written consent.

It’s important to note the word “polygraph” here.

So Erika had walked into that interview under the impression that whatever she said—no matter what—could not be used against her, even in a court of law, without her written consent. This test was simply a way for the state’s attorney to feel more comfortable about granting Erika the deal.

One would have to wonder: Was this why Erika decided to open up to Carri Campbell? Was she displaying a hubris on her part that said,
“You people are so stupid . . . . I can say whatever I want to, and still walk out of here”
?

What was important about the wording of the second agreement, however, was that it covered the polygraph itself,
not
any of the preinterviews.

When Erika finished what had become an almost four-hour pre-polygraph interview and Campbell emerged from the room, Arcky took one look at the pregnant Secret Service agent and knew something was wrong. He had been sitting and waiting with the Assistant State’s Attorney E. Scott Collins. The morning had dragged on. It was well into the afternoon.

Looking at Campbell, Arcky said, “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

By now, Erika had been sent back to her holding cell. According to several witnesses who saw her later that day, Erika looked as if she had unburdened herself of a great weight. She had color in her face. A bounce in her step. A smile. She was either callously having some fun in describing such gruesome aspects of her crimes, or she was seriously trying to release an overwhelming amount of evil that had accumulated in her system.

The two Secret Service agents stood in front of Arcky Tuminelli and Scott Collins. Campbell spoke first. “We cannot use these questions,” she said, holding a piece of paper.

Arcky looked concerned. “What do you mean? What’s going on?”

For a polygraph to work properly, the relevant questions need to elicit a
negative
response from the interviewee. The test is set up in a way in which the answer that is
not
incriminating would have to be
no
. If it is a
yes,
then the entire test has to be reworked and new questions written to correspond with whatever new information has been accrued.

Arcky knew this. So when Campbell said she couldn’t continue the test based on the questions they had all previously agreed to, his heart skipped a beat. He stood up. “
What
are you talking about?”

The surprises for Arcky just kept coming and coming.

The problem was that Erika had admitted to Carri Campbell that she had taken part in the crime itself. She said she was
there
at the moment of the murders and had even participated in the act and, in some respects, had commissioned the murders. One of the relevant questions on the polygraph was
Did you cut on any of those people?

Erika had admitted that she had, in fact, “cut” Geney Crutchley.

Knowing what she now knew, Campbell understood that Erika would have to answer
yes
to that question when she asked it during the polygraph and, essentially, negate the polygraph test itself.

What did this do for the deal Arcky Tuminelli had drafted for Erika with Joel Todd? For starters, the examination was over. They could not continue.

According to a report drafted by Detective Scott Bernal, who was there during all of this legal madness now taking place,
It was decided that with the answers Erika Sifrit gave to Special Agents Doyle and Campbell that the relevant questions which were intended to be asked should no longer be asked. Mr. Todd [and] Mr. Collins discussed this with Mr. Tuminelli and he agreed . . . [that] the actual polygraph examination should not be administered.

The other problem—which became larger as the day carried for ward—was that Erika had made a claim that BJ told her to “cut up” Geney. Erika said she cut Geney on the side of her hip. This particular answer, of course, canceled out the other relevant question on the pretest regarding cutting any of the victims.

“We need to reformulate these questions,” Carri Campbell announced.

Scott Collins nearly jumped out of the chair. Arcky Tuminelli felt as though he’d been burned once again by Erika.

“We don’t need to reformulate anything,” Collins said. “There’s not going to be a polygraph. The deal’s off!”

Rubbing his head, Arcky Tuminelli said, “Wait a minute . . . just wait a minute, Scott. Hold on. You were
not
there when we drafted the agreement. Hold on.”

“No . . . the deal was that she didn’t have anything to do with the murders.”

It was clear that Erika had admitted to her involvement. The details of what she did, and how and when she did it, well, none of that really mattered as far as the agreement was concerned—at least from where Scott Collins and the state’s attorney’s office stood.

“Get Joel to come here,” Arcky said. “We’ve got to talk about this.”

“No. The deal is off.” Collins didn’t want to hear about it. “She
participated
in the murder, Arcky.”

End of story.

74

Technicalities

Arcky found himself—and his client—in a terrible position. Why would Erika do such a thing? Why would she jeopardize the agreement by spending nearly four hours talking about her involvement in a double murder, without her attorney present?

“To place all the blame on Benjamin,” said one source from the prosecution’s side. “If you notice, everything during that interview with Carri Campbell she said was designed to implicate Benjamin and lessen her involvement.”