Evil Next Door (19 page)

The surveillance team also sent a cigar butt found on the sidewalk after Planten and a friend were seen smoking outside the building. This intrigued the detectives because Planten had clearly stated in his interview with them at his apartment that he did not smoke. Maybe it was just a little white lie, but it was a lie nonetheless. If he lied about this, what else had he lied about?

As exciting as this development seemed to be at the time, neither sample gave the investigators what they were looking for. It was like a kick in the gut for Boodee, who, like Taylor and Copeland, had thought that this time they might really be onto something.

“First of all, the samples didn’t match each other, and then they didn’t match up with the profile [of the killer] as well,” said Boodee after analyzing the cigar butt and the water bottle. “Either your 24-7 surveillance didn’t pick up the right stuff, or they were from someplace else, and he’s just trying to throw you off the track.”

The cigar butt not matching had a logical explanation.

“As fate would have it, we got the friend’s cigar because we weren’t close enough to actually see where it landed, so it was kind of a shot in the dark,” Perry said with regret.

Copeland and Taylor were floored. There started to be rumblings among the cops at the station that they obviously had the
wrong guy.
But the detectives weren’t ready to give up yet. Their guts told them something was wrong with the samples, not with their suspect. They could explain away the cigar butt snafu, but the DNA from the water bottle not matching made absolutely no sense to them.

“Sometime after that,” Perry said, “one of the officers assigned to the fugitive squad admitted they were not a hundred percent certain Planten had actually drank from the water bottle.”

Given this information, it was possible Planten either didn’t drink from the bottle at all, or he switched it with a clean bottle before he got out of the car and threw the decoy into the Dumpster.

“He very well may have made the surveillance detail on him,” Perry said. He added this didn’t reflect on the quality of the team, but on the fact that Planten was already anxious about police after having been visited by the detectives twice. As a scientist, he obviously knew the ways in which investigators might go about trying to get his DNA. So when the water bottle came back negative, Taylor and Copeland decided it probably wasn’t an accident after all.

“At that point we thought, Drew really was smarter than we gave him credit for. He pulled one over on us,” Copeland said.

Despite some skepticism from within the police department, Boodee was still on Copeland and Taylor’s side. He encouraged them to keep trying to get a good sample for him to analyze.

“Those two were like dogs with a toy. They would not let go,” said Boodee. And neither would he.

“We were told it’s not him, move on,” Jackie Taylor said, recalling their marching orders from the top brass.

While many people at the Raleigh Police Department now doubted Taylor and Copeland’s hunch about Drew Planten being the one who killed Stephanie Bennett, they were not deterred. The detectives decided it was time to pay Planten another visit. They would ignore the naysayers until they had exhausted every possible means to get a good DNA sample from Planten.

This time Taylor and Copeland went unannounced to Planten’s apartment without an appointment as he had required for their second meeting. They stayed out of sight and waited for him to get home from work. They watched him go inside his apartment briefly, and then leave again to walk his dog. When Planten left with the dog, the detectives got out of their car, stood by his front door, and waited for him to return. They hadn’t rehearsed what they were going to say, but they had agreed it was time to be brutally honest with Planten about where this investigation was going and what role he played in it.

When Planten rounded the corner and saw the detectives hovering around his front door, his expression turned dark. It was obvious he was surprised and unsettled to see Taylor and Copeland standing watch in front of his home. With a shaky voice he told them he needed to put his dog up and would come right back out and speak to them. He was gone so long, they wondered if he was really coming back. Seconds stretched into minutes as they both nervously glanced at their watches. He finally reappeared, but on this visit, Planten did not invite the detectives inside. They were unwelcome visitors. The three of them stood awkwardly outside Planten’s apartment door and waited for someone to speak first.

“This interview was a little bit more argumentative and confrontational,” Taylor said. “It showed us just how smart he was because he could quote exactly what we had said to him in the first interview.”

Taylor said she believed Planten had taken notes regarding what they talked about during their encounter with him a few weeks earlier in May. This was probably at his mother’s advice, seeing as she was a lawyer who was no doubt concerned about police interviewing her son. It was as if he had not only taken notes on their first meeting but had also memorized those notes. He spit back things the detectives had said to him
verbatim
whenever he spotted a contradiction in what they were saying now.

Gone was the calm man who had politely answered question after question, waiting patiently for the next one to be lobbed at him. This time around, Planten challenged and corrected almost everything the detectives said to him and threw it back in their faces. Gone was the subdued, shy, buttoned-up man they had met just a few weeks ago.

“People have seen you over at Bridgeport,” Copeland said to Planten firmly.

“That’s their opinion,” Planten replied.

“That’s not an opinion, Drew, that’s a fact,” Copeland retorted.

It was a long shot, but once again the detectives asked Planten for a DNA sample. They told him this was the easiest way to get them out of his hair for good.

“No, you’re not getting that. You trick people. I know what you do. I know how the police work,” Planten said defensively to the detectives.

At that point the detectives laid it on the line. Copeland told Planten because he had refused to cooperate with them he had “graduated to the class of suspect” and they would be “looking at him
hard
now.” Planten seemed to bristle at this suggestion. Rather than retreat, he took an even more combative stance. He bowed up his thin chest and crossed his arms.

“You’ve gone from a person of interest to a suspect,” Taylor told Planten in no uncertain terms.

“Once you’ve elevated yourself to a suspect, there’s a whole lot more I can do with you,” Copeland added, picking up where Taylor left off. But nothing they said seemed to move Planten. He simply glared at them and folded his arms with hostility even tighter into his body.

Realizing nothing they could do or say was going to break this man, the detectives decided it was time to go. They shook Planten’s hand awkwardly and said an abrupt good-bye. From this day forward there would be no more handshaking. Things were about to change dramatically. The gloves were off, and as far as Taylor and Copeland were concerned, the game was on.

One of Ken Copeland’s gifts as a detective was developing relationships with ordinary people in the community who might be able to help him with the investigation. He looked like a regular guy and spoke like a regular guy, not like some tough-talking detective you see in the movies or on television. People trusted him and spoke to him like they were chatting with an old friend over a beer.

When Drew Planten shut them down hard on the third visit, Copeland knew it was time to up the ante. He needed someone inside Planten’s little world who could watch him and maybe assist in helping detectives get a good DNA sample. Given his introverted personality and the fact that the surveillance team had noticed no friends coming and going from Planten’s apartment, Copeland felt like Planten’s office was the only hope of finding such a person.

After talking with several people who knew the hierarchy in Planten’s laboratory, Copeland zeroed in on Joanne Reilly, a section supervisor of several chemistry laboratories in the fertilizer division. In November 2004, she had been promoted to supervise the lab where Planten worked. Reilly was an accomplished state employee who had worked for North Carolina’s government off and on for the better part of two decades.

When she inherited Planten from the former supervisor, she didn’t know him other than to say good morning or hello. Before Reilly took the promotion, Planten had barely spoken to her, only in passing and only when she spoke to him first. In the beginning, because of his long hair and effeminate features, Reilly wasn’t even completely sure whether Planten was a man or a woman. She would see Planten from behind walking down the hallway and do a double take.

But Reilly, a gracious older woman with gray hair, a kind smile, and an affable way about her, made an effort as a supervisor to get to know all of her employees, including Planten. She was old enough to be his mother, and sometimes she felt her motherly instincts kick in when she was around him. Reilly pitied the reclusive young man who appeared to be afraid of any human interaction or contact.

“I would ask him about his family, what was he going to do that night, how was his dog doing? He would talk a little bit, but you had to drag it out of him,” Reilly said, recalling their early conversations.

To Reilly, Planten looked like a young hippie, tall and extremely lean with long, thin hair. Despite his unusually long hair, she felt he always appeared clean and well groomed at the office. Reilly considered herself a pretty good judge of character, and felt like Planten was a harmless young man who just needed some love and attention in order to come out of his shell.

“He had a really gentle face, just a really gentle face with the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen on a man or a woman. They were bright green,” Reilly remembered, her voice trailing off.

Joanne Reilly said people who worked in the office felt sorry for Drew Planten because he seemed so painfully shy and even more painfully thin. It wasn’t unusual for co-workers to bring in food for him. They wanted to fatten him up, but Reilly said she rarely, if ever, saw Planten eat anything.

In many ways, Copeland knew approaching Reilly was a risky move that could backfire badly. If she told Planten the police were onto him or told anybody what was going on, he might run. But, on the other hand, Copeland was out of bright ideas and losing ground on the case fast. The “water bottle incident,” as it was dubbed, was constantly being thrown back in his and Taylor’s face as proof they were on a witch hunt. But they knew better and were out to prove everyone wrong.

Copeland called Reilly one day at her office and set up a meeting with her for after work. He decided it was best to try to get her cooperation face-to-face instead of over the phone. In person, he could better assess her reaction to what he was asking her to do.

“He said he wanted to speak to me about an employee of mine,” Reilly said, intrigued. “He said it was totally confidential, and I was not to tell anyone. I agreed.”

When Copeland told her the man they wanted to talk to her about was Drew Planten, a “person of interest” in a murder case, she was speechless.

“I thought oh my God, he would be the least likely person, he looked so weak,” Joanne said of the frail, meek young man.

Copeland also told her that he wanted to make sure Planten had left the building before they met with her because he didn’t want to risk running into him.

Around 4:30 P.M., when Planten normally left for the day, he was instead on his stool hunched over his lab table working. Reilly said good night and called Copeland on his cell phone to tell him Planten was still hanging around in the building for some reason. She left the laboratory and drove across the street to the North Carolina Museum of Art to make it look as if she were going home for the day. When she returned a few minutes later, Planten and his bike were gone. (Recently, Reilly said, Planten had been riding his bike to work because, no surprise, his car was out of commission.)
The coast was clear.

Reilly let Taylor and Copeland into the building through the front door and led them back to a small library where they could talk privately. Once everyone shook hands and sat down, the detectives told her they were investigating the Stephanie Bennett murder and Planten’s possible connection to the case.

“We went in there the first day to get a feel for her,” Copeland said. “Just to see if she was tight with Drew. We were dancing kind of a fine line.”

Reilly was devastated at the mere thought that one of her employees could be involved in such a brutal crime. As an avid news watcher, she had followed the Stephanie Bennett case closely and knew just about every detail.
It couldn’t be him, no way. It’s not possible.

“It just really hurt my heart,” Reilly said of the murder. She recalled the beautiful pictures of a smiling Stephanie splashed across the television screen and on the front page of the local newspaper. She remembered seeing tearful interviews with Stephanie’s family pleading for the public’s help in solving the heinous crime. It made her tear up just to think about it.

“We explained to her that we had spoken to Drew, and Drew had not cooperated,” Copeland said.

“They said out of 246 people so far, he was the only one who had consistently lied to them and refused to give a sample of DNA,” Reilly said.

Knowing how shy Planten was and that his mother was a lawyer, Reilly wasn’t immediately swayed into thinking Planten was guilty just because he refused to give a DNA sample.

“I could see him saying, ‘That’s private, you need a warrant to get that,’ ” she said.

The detectives asked Reilly lots of questions, questions to which she didn’t have the answers. While she supervised the laboratory where Planten worked, she did not directly oversee him on a daily basis. But because Planten was painfully shy, even those who worked with him more closely knew little about him. Reilly figured she had as much of an opportunity as anyone to help investigators learn more about Planten.