Of Guilt and Innocence (25 page)

His gun was still drawn as he walked purposefully into the garage, trying to understand what was being said by the officers inside. He heard them clearly, they were cursing, they were angry. But what did it mean? He made his way slowly to the back corner where the SWAT team had congregated, his gun lowered to the ground. Then he understood their anger and frustration. He understood because his was far greater. He holstered his weapon and turned away, putting both hands behind his head. “God damn it!” He screamed. John and Kristin ran into the garage past him. They froze just as he had.   

The stench overwhelmed each of them first as they entered. Just based on that alone they should have known what their eyes were going to see. Among the clutter of the garage, near the entrance hatch to the apartment above, which was open with the ladder pulled down, Louis lay face down on the cement. Flies and other insects swarmed him; his extremities had begun turning darker shades. Around his neck was a noose, made from old rope that had probably been in the garage since his father was alive. The rope had snapped a short distance from the hangman's knot with the other end still hanging down from the apartment above. The rope had apparently given way under Louis's weight, but it appeared to have done so post mortem as a fall from such a short distance would not have caused his death.

Next to his body, on a stack of boxes, was a note. It had been folded up and placed in an envelope, but not sealed. Jorge pulled the note carefully from the envelope with gloved hands and read its contents. It was simple and short, hardly the confession one would expect at the end of such a monstrous life. It read, “Mom, I'm sorry.” No details on his crimes, no description of what he was sorry for. Jorge felt that the note, though vague, and the following suicide were admissions of guilt for what he had done to his mother, and in a way he was right.

The crime scene investigation would go deep into the night. The small apartment was indeed a treasure trove of DNA evidence as Jorge had suspected it would be. The car once shared by Louis and his mother also yielded DNA evidence, as well as a police scanner radio. The delicate brushes and swabs of the interior forensic investigation eventually gave way to the brute strength of a backhoe, which would be used in the exterior investigation. Jemile had told of digging being done, and even though all the South Florida Strangler victims' bodies had been found in their homes, Jorge thought perhaps there were more victims no one was aware of. Maybe this was how he started; burying his victims in the backyard.

Sure enough as the digging progressed in the small yard, multiple skeletons were found. A large amount of animal bones were found, but scattered among them were three human skulls. Jorge looked on in amazement and excitement. But as he approached the skulls he noticed a problem. He was no pathologist, but he knew what the size of an adult skull should have looked like, and the three before him did not match up. They were too small. He puzzled over it. They couldn't belong to children. It didn't fit the strangler's pattern. He wouldn't just switch like that. Then he thought of Jim Brekenridge and the conversation they had had days before.  Amidst his panic he tried to convince himself that Louis could still be his guy. He needed to hold judgment until the DNA results came in.

 

 

CHAPTER 18

 

 

About two weeks had passed since Carlos had taken Anne's life. To him it still seemed like yesterday. He replayed that evening over and over in his head and was extremely pleased with its outcome. He was certain he had left no traceable evidence behind and would continue to go on undetected. He had reveled in the media sensationalism of his crimes. Discussed in the newspapers or on television every day since Anne's murder, he was known only as the South Florida Strangler, of course. It had scratched his itch for the time being. He continued on with work as he normally would: performed a few surgeries, saw several patients. It was as if he was back to being a normal person. It was Dr. Jekyll who was now present.

He had tried to spend more time with Julia, though she had not had a lot of time for him. She would tell him she had plans with friends or had picked up some modeling jobs, something she did quite frequently, and he would end up spending his time alone instead. He never blamed her for it and certainly never expected that anything was going on behind his back. With his being away from the house so much, either with work or with his extracurricular activities, he had encouraged her to go out and be social in his absence. And now he understood that he couldn't just say, “I'm done killing people for a while, I demand you spend time with me while I am free.”  

Julia, of course, continued to exploit Carlos's unwavering love and trust in her. Over the course of the past few weeks, when Carlos had been so desperate to make up for lost time, she was meeting up with her boyfriend. She had finally gotten through to him and the two began spending a lot of time together. Julia had all but stopped seeing other men, at least during that time, and just spent time with him. Each time she would come back home to Carlos she felt trapped. Trapped by his money. Trapped by her lavish desires. She had felt this way often and for some time, but the feeling of ensnarement was becoming greater and greater.

Carlos sat in his home office reading a magazine at his desk. Julia had gone to a nail salon to get a manicure with Vikki, so Carlos took some time to study up on some new surgical procedures discussed in the current issue of a medical journal he subscribed to. As he read his mind began to wander. He thought back to some of the news reports he had seen on television about his alter ego. He beamed as he recalled how they described him as extremely intelligent and methodical. He recalled his run-ins with police and how he had outsmarted them. First with Rebecca Sullivan, then more recently with the detective investigating Anne Bradford. He felt a sense of pride, a sense of invincibility.  

He was just about to unlock his “trophy” drawer when he heard the front door open. Julia was home. His trophies would have to wait to be enjoyed. “Julia, I'm in the office,” he shouted from his desk chair. “Let me see those beautiful hands.” He went back to reading his magazine, waiting to be interrupted. He could hear her footsteps getting closer as he read until he knew she was standing at the door, so he swiveled his chair and looked up.

A deafening, almost annoyingly loud noise pierced the air, but only for a moment, then there was silence. His chair rocked backward then snapped forward, gently tossing him face first onto the carpeted floor. A sea of red tarnished the once white Berber carpet. Carlos's body slumped on the floor; his buttocks rose slightly toward the ceiling, his knees and what was left of his forehead rested on the carpet, arms tucked beneath his body. Brain and skull covered one of the office walls like an abstract painting punctuated by a single bullet lodged there. The life of yet another monster had come to an abrupt end.

The South Florida Strangler died swiftly, something he had never provided to his victims. He never had to gasp for air as they had. But Carlos's killer had no interest in the serial killer's real crimes. It wasn't a man who sought vengeance for the death of a loved one that had killed Carlos. It was a man who sought to protect someone from Carlos's wrath. It was a man who had listened to tales of abuse and torture until he could take it no longer. It was Julia's boyfriend, Tom Wooten.

As Tom stood in the foyer he felt nothing. He felt empty. No fear, no sense of urgency to get out, nothing. He took a black backpack off his shoulders and opened it up. He took out a pair of navy blue cargo shorts, a t-shirt, and sneakers and changed into them. The khaki pants, blue polo shirt, and dress shoes he had been wearing replaced his new attire in the backpack. He fixed his hair as best he could with his hands and the black Nike ball cap he had been wearing went in to the backpack with the rest of his clothes. He pulled a pair of dark sunglasses out of a side pocket of the backpack and put them on. A slight change in his appearance to help him go undetected after his crime. Though he didn't know it, it was a very similar technique to those used by the man he had just murdered. He opened the front door while still clad in white latex gloves, then closed and locked it. He quickly walked away from the house on the sidewalk, removing the gloves and placing them in his pocket as he did.

  The houses in the community where Julia and Carlos lived had quite a distance between them as each property had roughly a half acre of land. Julia and Carlos lived almost on the apex of a curve in the road, and so Tom really only had the neighbors across the street to avoid, at least initially. As Tom walked the mile distance to the exit of the complex, he reflected on how his life had come to this. How he had been driven to murder. How in less than a month's time his life had become unrecognizable.  

He met Julia about five months ago. She had been spending some time in Boca Raton on a photo shoot and decided to get her nails done for the occasion, as she often did. She went to a salon that was in the same strip mall as Tom's computer shop. As Julia left the nail salon she noticed the little computer store as she walked by. She had recently been having problems with her laptop and she wondered if they could give her some suggestions on how to fix it. As she entered the store searching for help Tom was sitting at the front desk.

Like most, Tom was immediately struck by Julia's beauty, and she appeared to be equally as interested in him, giving him a seductive smile as she approached. She explained her computer quandary to Tom, who in turn gave her some advice on fixing it. It had indeed been a very minor problem with an easy solution. The two flirted and joked for a while. As Julia reluctantly began her stroll to the door, she turned just as she reached for the handle and asked if Tom wouldn't mind helping her with her computer problems personally. “I know it's a long drive to Coral Gables, but I don't think I can do this on my own. I need someone with experience,” she said, punctuating her demand with a sultry emphasis. Tom of course agreed to assist her and gave her a business card with his office telephone number.  

A few days later she called and Tom headed out for the “service call.” Tom had observed Julia wearing a wedding ring when she had come into the shop, but being married himself, he didn't care. Julia, as she had planned, was alone when Tom arrived and the evening went much the way he had expected and hoped it would, the way other similar service calls had. But there was something different about Julia. She was addictive. Her beauty was consuming. Her personality was enthralling. He couldn't stop thinking about her afterward. And, apparently, the feeling was mutual as she began calling his work number regularly, setting up future “service calls.”

The only phone number Tom had for Julia was the disposable cell phone that she used for her secret lovers. She told Tom he should do the same so the two could keep the affair from his wife and explained to him her process of buying everything in cash. Over the months he had seen Julia quite a bit, telling Lisa he was on service calls or out of town on work related trips. He had become absolutely smitten by her and realized he had fallen in love.  

Julia had always talked about how she was afraid of her husband. She had always told Tom he beat her and if he ever found out about their affair he would kill them both. Tom bought into this even though he had never observed any signs of physical injury on Julia, but then he had bought into everything else Julia told him as well. Like that she loved him and that she wished they could be together someday. In the past two months she had ramped up her stories of physical and mental abuse. She claimed Carlos would beat her and rape her each night. She said he was an alcoholic and he would drink so much he would be incapable of reasoning with. He would accuse her of infidelity and he would beat her for it. Tom was never a violent man, but the tales Julia spun enraged him. Such a beautiful, angelic woman; he could not understand the monster that would intentional inflict pain upon her.  

When Ashley died, Tom's whole life and way of thinking changed. He was in a constant state of pain and sorrow. What was already a failing marriage became worse, at least in his eyes. He became emotionally numb. Nothing mattered to him anymore. That is, except for Julia. After the shock subsided, he finally contacted her and explained what had happened. He began seeing her again shortly after that, when he would tell Lisa he had gone to the office at night, not that she noticed. Julia told him tales of how the abuse had gotten worse. How she now very seriously feared for her life. She told Tom that in a drunken haze Carlos had tried to strangle her but she was able to kick him in the groin and get away.

Tom had had enough. Enough of the hurt and the pain inflicted on those he loved. He viewed the world differently now--there was a tremendous amount of evil in it that he had never known existed. He no longer gave society the benefit of the doubt. There were evil men out there that wanted nothing more than to take those he loved from him. Not this time, not ever again. The two hatched a plan to execute Carlos. The first order of business was to find a gun. Julia had determined the best place to purchase a gun would be a drug riddled neighborhood she knew of in Davie.

Julia recalled how Vikki had been mugged years ago when walking from the bar where she worked to her car after her shift. She had told Julia one of the bar backs at work had given her a gun to keep in her purse and that he had gotten it from a drug dealer in Davie. That bar back was now a bartender at the same bar, and Julia asked him one night where in Davie she could get good cocaine. She said she heard he knew a guy there years ago, to which he acknowledged he did and told her the neighborhood she needed to go to, but strongly advised against going there alone. She failed to share the bartender's warning with Tom before he ventured out, however.

As Tom pulled up on J Street, he was overcome by doubt and fear. He had never seen anything like the neighborhood he was in now, at least not in person. He knew he was already standing out. He thought about bailing, but quickly regained his nerve by remembering his purpose. He was there to save the life of someone he loved. Something he had failed to do once before, but would not fail at again.