TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (12 page)

At 3:45
A.M.
, the operation was shut down. Of an estimated 350 vehicles to pass Detective Holloman in four hours, only the pickup and VW had stopped.

The detectives were back out on I-5 the next night from 11:30
P.M.
until 3:30
A.M.
Two vehicles, a van and a white Toyota, stopped within the first half hour. A station wagon pulled over the second hour, and two big rigs stopped the final hour. Five would-be Good Samaritans out of 400 vehicles. Once again the license numbers were duly logged, even though no one who stopped looked at all like the composite. At least this night went a little better for Bertocchini: he brought along a big stick to beat back his tormentors.

The next day, Bertocchini was ordered by his supervisor to shut down the decoy detail. He was sorely disappointed, not so much with the lack of success in only two nights but at not being able to continue. He had known, going in, that they would be incredibly lucky to snare a killer in just a night or two. He had hoped they could stay with it for a week or ten days.

He filed a one-page report on the decoy detail. The unsuccessful operation that had tied up six detectives for two nights revealed, Bertocchini knew, just how desperate they were for viable leads.

Bertocchini submitted all the pertinent details of Stephanie Brown’s abduction and murder to the
FBI’s
Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia, to see what the
profilers could come up with in terms of painting a likely picture of the killer.

They responded in writing quickly:

1. The location and condition of victim’s vehicle when found was puzzling. This vehicle was found with the light switch in an “on” position, both doors unlocked, and the driver’s window down. This indicates to us the victim was pulled over or stopped without evidencing any apprehension or fear.
   
2. In all probability, the victim was lost, or at least going in the wrong direction when confronted by her assailant, as indicated by the direction of the vehicle.
   
3. No indication of struggle by the victim could be an indication of her experiencing extreme fear or suffering physical restraint.
   
4. There is nothing to support the concept of two assailants involved in this crime.
   
5. The victim died of choking and the body showed no evidence of her attempting to frantically remove the ligature. This supports that she was restrained by some method which limited the movement of her arms and hands.
   
6. The cutting of the victim’s blouse and hair could have been a form of intimidation, control, or degradation.
   
7. In our opinion, the assailant was familiar with the dump site because of the remote location of same. The method of body disposal suggests that the assailant was without any remorse.
   
8. Although we are unable to determine the time of the victim’s last consensual sexual activity, the amount of sexual activity evidenced does not reflect the presence of two assailants.
   
9. Some assailants are known to engage in choking during their sexual activities. This choking enhances their sexual stimulation. It is possible that the strangulation suffered by the victim may have been the result of that type of sexual activity.
   Was this how it had come down?
   Reed wondered.
   

W
HEN THE
phone rang at home on the afternoon of Sunday, November 9, 1986, criminalist Jim Streeter of the California Department of Justice
Crime Laboratory in Sacramento had a feeling it might be work.

DOJ’s Sacramento lab served fourteen mostly small, rural counties in northern California that did not have their own crime labs, or
criminalists on the payroll. Criminalists—skilled forensic scientists trained in the identification, collection, and preservation of physical evidence—are most often called in to assist in serious criminal
cases such as murder, bombings, and arson. They conduct lab tests on the evidence, prepare reports, and testify as expert witnesses.

A criminalist usually has a special area of expertise. In Streeter’s case, it was serology. However, Streeter, who had gone to work for DOJ directly out of college thirteen years earlier, had undergone intensive FBI training in processing crime scene evidence and handling serial murder
investigations.
As a result, he was sent out to a lot of crime scenes—over the years he had worked seven serial killer cases and countless other murders. He much preferred going to the scene to waiting back at the lab.

A criminalist’s function at a crime scene varied from collection (or merely helping with the collection) of evidence to the interpretation of physical evidence such as trajectories of bullets, blood splatters, position and location of bodies, drag marks to determine how the victims came to those positions, and what exactly happened to them leading up to their murder.

One reason Streeter preferred being on the scene himself was that evidence collected by others could be innocently contaminated by people who didn’t know any better. Also, he would never really know its relationship to the crime scene as a whole. He could be shown photographs, but they were nothing more than a one-dimensional moment in time, usually well after the crime. His own senses of sight, sound, smell, and touch could tell him much more. Had the article of clothing found behind a tree been dropped there or was it thrown? Was the body meant to be found or had there been an attempt at concealment? All of it might mean something when it came to catching a murderer.

Streeter, hearing the voice of a colleague on the phone, knew he’d guessed right.

“Wanna go to
Amador County today?”

“What’s up?” Streeter asked.

“Human remains found by a deer hunter.”

“Sure, I’ll go.”

In spite of his years on the job, Streeter, in his mid-thirties and with the sinewy build of a marathon runner, remained enthusiastic about his work. The day he burned out was the day key evidence might slip past him—the day cold-blooded murderers might walk because of his mistakes. Sincere to the core, Streeter had promised himself that would never happen.

Amador County, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, was in the heart of California’s gold country, where forty-niners flocked to stake a claim and strike it rich panning in rivers and digging in mines. And some even did. Today, with a scant 29,000 residents dispersed over 600 square miles ranging in elevation from 200 to 9,000 feet, Amador was still the frontier. Gold Rush hamlets like Buckhorn, Pioneer, Fiddletown, Big Bar, Dry Town, and Sutter Creek might have become forgotten ghost towns elsewhere. But here, they lived on, as did fourth- and fifth-generation descendants
of hearty, self-reliant prospectors who refused to give up even after the boom ended well before the turn of the century.

It took Streeter forty-five minutes to reach the Sacramento-Amador line. Continuing another 10 miles through tree-studded rolling hills, he then went south on Highway 124 toward the town of Ione for about five miles before spotting several patrol cars parked on the shoulder next to a fenced field.

Gathering his equipment, including a camera, Streeter clipped an ID badge onto his shirt pocket and climbed over a sagging section in the barbed wire. Not seeing anyone, he zigzagged through scrub oak to the crest of the first hill over pastureland baked brown by the summer’s heat. A short distance down the other side of the knoll he came to a group of uniformed deputies at a clearing near the rotting trunk of a huge oak that had been down for some time.

“DOJ,” Streeter said to no one in particular.

A deputy pointed to a sizable grease spot on the ground. In the middle of the stain were skeletal remains, including a human skull, that appeared to have no flesh or soft tissue remaining.

As Streeter studied what was clearly a torso, he realized there was something wrong. There were no long bones—no arms or legs.

He saw what appeared to be a black bra around the area of the rib cage. Her dark shirt was open and pulled up. Some type of black material seemed bunched up at her neckline. About 10 feet away he found a pair of panties.

Streeter began to take pictures.

About then, a private pathologist arrived. Some deputies greeted him as “Doc.” Balding, potbellied, and sporting a snow-white goatee that looked sharpened at the chin, the sixtyish pathologist returned the greetings with a thick German accent.

Searching the immediate area, Streeter found more remains scattered randomly about—a 12-inch straight bone, a ball joint that might have been an elbow, and an 18-inch straight bone with a ball socket at one end. All these bones were picked clean, too, and several had bite marks. Foraging animals, at some point, had shown more than a passing interest in the find.

Pronouncing the remains as human, the pathologist wanted them moved off the ground. A sheet of corrugated metal was slid under the bones. With a deputy at either end, the remains were taken to a sheriff’s pickup parked about 100 yards away.

In the interest of preserving evidence, Streeter would have preferred that the body be carefully bagged and not carted through the field. But he understood the politics of law enforcement: this crime scene belonged to the locals and was not his to run. And when it came to the body, the pathologist was in charge.

Streeter continued to photograph the scene and assist a civilian technician process the evidence. When they finished, he went over to the pickup, where a deputy was videotaping the pathologist’s examination.

The remains had been laid out on the open tailgate. Doc, gloveless and puffing on a fat cigar, was measuring various bones. He had already concluded that the body was that of a female in her mid-twenties.

“Now,” Doc said, carefully putting the cigar down on the tailgate as if he were in a St. James Place smoke shop, “I’m gonna do a field autopsy.” He slipped on a pair of yellow rubber gloves.

“Or maybe a tailgate autopsy,” chortled Doc, who, whenever asked how many autopsies he’d performed, claimed to have stopped counting at ten thousand. “No reason to go anywhere when I can get what we need right here. I’m not charging for a regular autopsy, you know. Saving the county
lots
of money.”

Streeter was horrified. The pathologist had to be thinking that this was some kind of nothing case that would never go to trial. Otherwise, how could he possibly be so cavalier in his protocol?

“Oh, man, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Streeter muttered.

The deputy next to him shrugged.

Doc started pulling the brittle remains apart. As he did, various items of
clothing—the bra, a skirt, and nylon half-slip—came free. The pathologist vigorously shook out each item like an old washerwoman.

Streeter winced but said nothing.

Reaching a hand inside the skeleton, Doc found a perfectly shaped polished fingernail, which he showed everyone before placing it in an envelope.

A few minutes later, the pathologist turned. “We got strangulation,” he said.

Streeter moved in for a better shot and so did the deputy with the video camera.

The black material Streeter had noticed earlier turned out to be wrapped around the victim’s neck bones. The pathologist pointed to strands of blond hair no longer attached to the skull that were caught underneath the ligature.

“She was tied,” Doc announced.

“Tied
up
?” a deputy asked.

The pathologist nodded, pointing to a black nylon material that encircled both wrist bones.

When he was finished, the pathologist took the skull in his hands and snapped off the upper and lower jaws like a giant Thanksgiving wishbone. In the process, several teeth fell out onto the ground.

Handing the jaws to a shocked deputy, Doc said matter-of-factly, “The odontologist will want these.”

Asked how long the victim had been dead, the pathologist speculated that decomposition may have advanced faster than usual. To be completely skeletonized, a body would normally have to be out in the elements for a year or more. In this case, however, due to the extensive “animal activity” and the fact that the remains were in the open on a sunny south slope during a particularly hot summer, the pathologist said the victim could have been dead for anywhere from “three plus months” on.

Streeter left without any evidence. He was told that the clothes and the other items recovered at the scene had to go to the sheriff’s office before being delivered to DOJ for analysis.

Streeter didn’t wait to get to work on the case, however. When he arrived at DOJ shortly before eight o’clock the next morning, he stopped in to see a colleague,
Paul Pane, a criminal identification specialist at the Missing Persons Unit.

Realizing that the key to getting the ball rolling in any murder case was to identify the victim, Streeter told Pane about
Amador’s Jane Doe in the hope that a missing persons report might be on file with the DOJ that could be matched to the victim. He explained that the pathologist thought she was in her twenties.

“How long she been there?” Pane asked.

“Three months anyway. She was skeletonized, but a pack of hungry critters had really gotten to her.”

Pane blinked. “Was she wearing high heels?”

“Yeah.”
Lucky guess
, Streeter thought.

“And maybe a purple skirt?”

“What the—”

“Been keeping this one handy,” Pane said, snatching a manila folder from the top of a nearby file cabinet. “Knew she’d be found sometime.”

Opening the file, Pane started reading.

“The heels were alligator—”

“Right.”

“Two-thirds-length skirt was—whoops,
lavender
, not purple.”

“Close enough.”

Pane read on.

“Sounds good,” Street finally said.

“Wish they were all this easy.”

As Streeter left, Pane was picking up the telephone to call Amador County authorities. Since it hadn’t been possible to fingerprint this particular Jane Doe, Pane knew that positive ID would have to come from dental records.

At noon, the victim’s upper and lower jaws were delivered to Pane by an Amador detective. Comparing the teeth with dental charts from the missing persons file, Pane felt there was a match. But wanting an expert’s opinion, he made an appointment for that afternoon with Dr.
George Gould, a leading odontologist—a specialist in the study of teeth and their surrounding tissue.