The Killer Book of Cold Cases (19 page)

John Kracht had developed the idea that Jane was somehow involved in the murder with Tom—if not assisting in actual murder, then in being an accessory by concealing information. But as Kracht’s investigation continued, and as more facts became known, he changed his point of view and no longer thought that was true.

Jane Alexander changed her point of view, as well. In the beginning, she had been very concerned about Tom’s safety and believed that he was not guilty of anything. But as time went by, she realized how Tom had quietly emptied her accounts, leaving her in terrible financial shape, and she began to regard him as a scamster.

As Kracht probed, nothing he discovered lessened his conviction about O’Donnell being a killer and a con man. For example, throughout their relationship, Tom had told Jane that he owned a trust in Switzerland that was about to mature. When Kracht contacted Swiss authorities, he found out that O’Donnell’s trust did not exist. Also, O’Donnell had been barred from the country because he had failed to pay taxes on some diamonds he had sold there.

Kracht found other evidence of O’Donnell’s thievery, and eventually Jane gave up the view that Tom had been a loving person with her best interests at heart, realizing instead that he had been preoccupied with his own interests. To satisfy John Kracht, she took a lie-detector test and passed with flying colors.

Now she was ready to help Kracht find Tom O’Donnell. From letters and other indicators, he was thought to be roaming around Europe or South Africa. Then Tom’s friend Harry Carmichael called Jane, saying he had received a letter to Jane from Tom in Antwerp, Belgium, and that Tom asked him to destroy the envelope.

Harry sent the letter to Jane and she read it, weeping throughout. Tom expressed his love to her, but she could sense a certain callousness beneath the surface. The letter was also in good condition, like it had been mailed from Modesto rather than Antwerp. Jane recalled what Kracht had told her: “Tom is probably only an hour away from you.” While all of this was going on, Jane was still deeply in love with Tom. Brutal truths can be hard to accept.

Kracht knew that they didn’t have enough evidence to convict O’Donnell of murder, so he asked Jane if she would sign a complaint about the $10,000 O’Donnell obviously had swindled from her. She said “yes,” for the first time agreeing to go against O’Donnell. Slowly but surely, she was becoming a fanatic in pursuing him, ultimately for the murder of her beloved Aunt Gert.

The Marin County District Attorney didn’t have enough evidence to file murder charges, but at least Kracht was able to explain to Jane how he figured O’Donnell had killed Gert while establishing an alibi. Basically, O’Donnell had driven to Gert’s house from his friend’s house in L.A.

The cops were able to find where he had rented the car and determine that the mileage on the car from the rental place to LA and Gert’s house in San José was almost exactly as the crow flies. O’Donnell had gone to L.A. to establish an alibi, driven to San Jose, murdered Gert, and then driven back to L.A.

One of the main obstacles was finding a prosecutor willing to go after O’Donnell, and Jane kept at this task without letup. After a couple of false starts, Jane teamed up with an assistant district attorney named Joyce Allegro. At first, Jane wasn’t that impressed with Joyce, but as time went by, Joyce proved herself.

As detectives probed O’Donnell’s life, it became apparent—if it hadn’t been apparent before—that O’Donnell was a total con man who preyed on women. They discovered women all over the world that he had lived with.

For Jane, perhaps the most shocking discovery was a $250,000 life-insurance policy that he had taken out in her name. Detectives had no question that O’Donnell would have murdered her when it was convenient for him.

The case was a circumstantial one, with Jane the chief witness against O’Donnell. But with Jane’s assistance, Allegro’s investigation produced valuable details. Jane kept a detailed diary of what went on in her life, and those details proved invaluable at the trial.

For example, O’Donnell talked to his relatives in Montana about Gert McCabe being dead, but that wasn’t public knowledge until the next day. A few weeks after the murder, O’Donnell told Jane that he had found Aunt Gert’s check register in the bureau drawer. But one of the detectives on the case, Jeff Quimet, went over crime-scene photos that included a shot of the drawer where O’Donnell said he had found the register. The drawer was empty, so O’Donnell had to have placed the register there.

O’Donnell was arrested and tried, with Jane leading the way with her testimony, and he was found guilty of Gert’s murder in October 1996 and sentenced to twenty-five years to life. Jane’s battle to bring justice to her aunt had taken almost thirteen years. Though justice was indeed delayed, it was ultimately served.

Lynda Mann was one of two daughters of an English family who lived in Narborough, a village six miles southwest of the city of Leicester. Nearly everyone had a garden, and the village had more than its share of quaintness, with winding paths and woodsy areas, as well as grazing cows and sheep. Kath was Lynda’s mother, a short, dark-haired, buxom woman, and her stepfather was Eddie Eastwood, a strapping, blond-haired man. In 1983, Lynda was fifteen, and her sister, Susan, was seventeen.

Lynda had a lot going for her. She loved life, music, clothes, makeup, and hairstyles, and she was a good student at the Lutterworth School. She got plenty of A’s and was studying French, German, and Italian. Her goal was to be a multilinguist, so she also wanted to try Chinese.

As she grew up, her looks grew with her. She was pretty, with dark hair and eyes, and very fair skin. When people described her, they spoke of her outgoing, bubbly personality. For Lynda Mann, life was good.

Monday, November 21, was like most days for Lynda. She had a babysitting job scheduled after school and would be coming home after 6:00 p.m. That particular evening, Eddie and Kath Eastwood made a night of it. First they went to a ladies’ dart-throwing tournament at the Carlton Hayes Social Club, and then they went to the Dog and Gun Club where he played darts and they had a few beers.

They returned home at 1:30 a.m. and got an unpleasant surprise. Their older daughter, Susan, said that Lynda had not come home, although she was supposed to be back before 9:30 p.m. Eddie Eastwood immediately went out searching for her, including walking down the Black Pad, a tarmac path that ran adjacent to a housing complex that was being constructed and was part of the property owned by a mental institution, the Carlton Hayes Hospital. He found nothing and went back to the house and called the police.

The next morning on his way to work, a man walking along the Black Pad looked through the five-foot-high, wrought-iron fence next to him and saw what looked like “a mannequin, lying in the grass surrounded by a cluster of trees,” as Joseph Wambaugh wrote in
The Blooding
. Not sure whether he was seeing a human body, the man ran into the road and flagged down a hospital driver. He opened the gate and approached. Soon he determined it was a body of a young girl, her jeans, underpants, and shoes wrapped in a bundle five yards from her. There was dried blood on her nose, her face was bruised, and her scarf was wrapped around her neck. Her body was stiff, rigor mortis having set in.

Shortly thereafter, cops descended on the scene and the story exploded. Lynda Mann had been brutally murdered, strangled, and the inhabitants of the small village were not used to that kind of thing.

During the autopsy, investigators discovered that Lynda had not only been strangled but also beaten badly, taking heavy blows to her chest. Lynda’s nails were not damaged, indicating that she had not fought back. Victims who fight back frequently break nails and, important to investigators, may have trace material from the assailant, such as skin, embedded under the nails.

Lynda also had been raped; dried seminal fluid was found on her vaginal hair. She had been hit hard in the face, possibly knocking her unconscious, and she had bitten her tongue as she was being strangled. Her anus and vagina had been penetrated. Investigators were able to do quite a detailed secretor analysis. Of course, this did not lead them to a suspect, but they stored the evidence in case someone would come along that they could match the samples up with.

The police, as usual, started their investigation from the inside of the family out, and the first suspect was Lynda’s stepfather, Eddie Eastwood. The police reasoned he was a natural suspect since he was her stepfather and had, in fact, only been married to her mother, Kath, for a few years.

As part of the investigation, Eddie Eastwood was required to take a blood test. Using the semen found on Lynda, the technology of the time allowed investigators to determine the killer’s blood group. Eastwood’s blood did not match that of the 10 percent of people who had the killer’s blood type. Meanwhile, Eastwood was so traumatized by being considered a suspect that he could not speak for three weeks.

The investigation swung into full bore, including the complete vetting of the staff of the Carlton Hayes Hospital, a massive Edwardian brick structure that housed mental patients near Lynda’s home. Canvasses were conducted, and reports followed up. The police also vetted the records of the patients in the hospital, some of whom had perverse sexual backgrounds, but nothing came up. The effort was massive and the police were very confident that they would make an arrest quickly; but though there were many suspects, no arrests came.

One of the suspects was a man with a rather unusual name, Colin Pitchfork, a 25-year-old baker who lived in Little Thorpe, the town next to Narborough. When police called at his house in January, he was very nervous because he had stolen some home-improvement materials. But the police hadn’t shown up for that. They were just conducting routine canvassing about the murder.

Pitchfork was one of the people who didn’t have an alibi, but he did not become a suspect because he said he was minding his baby between the hours of 6:15 and 9:30 p.m. on the night of the murder, and investigators accepted that. How could he leave the baby at home, commit a murder, and then return to his babysitting chores?

The area where the murder had occurred, meanwhile, was in a state of fear, with villagers wondering if whoever had killed Lynda would strike again. As time went by and stretched into spring, the number of cops assigned to Lynda Mann’s murder decreased. Initially, there had been 150, but by April only eight cops were still actively investigating the case.

At Easter, the lead detective, Ian Counts, announced with tears in his eyes that the investigation was being shut down, and by August it was over completely. Police did have one thing: around 150 blood tests that had been given during the course of the investigation. But these were serology samples, not DNA, and none came close to exposing whoever the perpetrator was.

At one point the Eastwood family, desperate to know who had murdered their daughter, hired a psychic, a fortyish woman on the frail side. She went into Lynda’s bedroom and tried to communicate psychometrically, a process whereby the psychic touches objects that the person who has “crossed over” has touched in the hopes that psychic communication can occur.