Then it was the children’s turn on the table, the little girl first. Maynard took about forty-five minutes with each one. The kids were beyond caring what happened to them, but for Murphy the child autopsies were torture. He stepped back and leaned against the wall, as far from the examination table as he could get.
While Maynard poked, prodded, cut, and peeled, he kept up a running commentary. Everything he saw, the doctor said, was consistent with what the detectives concluded at the crime scene. The little girl had died from suffocation, most likely with her own pillow. The boy died from manual strangulation.
“Due to a lack of blood present in the area of the torn rectal tissue, coupled with the lack of swelling,” Maynard said into the microphone, “I’d say the sexual assault occurred postmortem. The rape kit will confirm, but I did not detect the presence of semen. The faint trace of a latex smell leads me to suspect the perpetrator used a condom.”
Maynard’s mention of a condom reminded Murphy of something. They had found no used condoms or open packages at the crime scene, but there had been condoms in the house. In the master bedroom, downstairs, a two-drawer nightstand had been emptied, the contents dumped on the floor.
Other than the bodies, the nightstand was the only thing that had been disturbed inside the house. Several unopened condoms were lying on the floor next to a small overturned wicker basket.
To Murphy, only one explanation fit the facts. The killer got a hard-on while he strangled the little boy. He ran downstairs into the mother’s bedroom, found a basket of condoms, then rushed back upstairs and raped the boy’s dead body.
The killer was branching out, expanding his victim profile. Beefing up patrols where street-walking prostitutes tended to gather wasn’t going to do any good. The murder of Carol Sue Spencer and her two children had been as much of a message as the killer’s letter to the Times-Picayune. He was boasting that he could strike anywhere he wanted, and the police were powerless to stop him. No one was safe. Not even children.
To catch him, Murphy realized, he had to get inside the killer’s head. He had to figure out how the killer operated and how he selected his victims. He had to think like the killer.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Wednesday, August 1, 12:10 PM
Murphy stepped outside of the coroner’s makeshift office and squinted in the harsh sunlight. It made his head hurt.
His cell phone rang. It was the secretary from the Homicide office. Captain Donovan wanted to see him right away.
On the way to the office, Murphy stopped at the Coffee House on Canal Boulevard near the railroad tracks. He was in no hurry to see the captain. He bought a large cup of black coffee and a newspaper. Kirsten’s article was on the top of the front page.
SERIAL KILLER CONFIRMED!
Killer sends letter, proof to newspaper
NOPD confirms existence of serial killer
By Kirsten Sparks, The Times-Picayune
The Times-Picayune received a package yesterday from someone who police say may be responsible for as many as eight recent homicides in New Orleans.
The package contained a letter and an item allegedly taken from a recent murder scene. The New Orleans Police Department is working to confirm the legitimacy of the item, which investigators consider a crucial piece of evidence, but they have asked the Times-Picayune not to further describe that item. In the letter, the killer took credit for at least two recent killings and suggested responsibility for more, though the letter writer did not give an exact number.
The letter, which the killer insisted the newspaper print within two days, also contained what the killer described as a code that gives clues to his or her identity and the reasons for the killings.
Times-Picayune editors are considering whether to reprint the letter tomorrow but had not reached a decision as of press time.
Shortly after receiving the package in the mail, the Times-Picayune notified police officials, who dispatched Detective Juan Gaudet and Lt. Carl Landry to the newspaper’s offices on Howard Avenue to collect the original letter, packaging, and the item of evidence.
Assistant Chief of Police Larry DeMarco confirmed yesterday that homicide detectives now believe several recent killings are linked to the same killer, though DeMarco would not be specific about how many.
DeMarco’s admission stands in stark contrast to statements made just…
The rest of the story was an anal exam of the police department’s crawfishing on the serial killer. Kirsten hadn’t pulled any punches. One of DeMarco’s more poorly thought-out comments even suggested the department had known there was a serial killer all along but had publicly denied it in order to get the upper hand on the killer, which is exactly what Murphy had told Kirsten the rank would say.
Murphy reread DeMarco’s idiotic comment. “In order to maintain the integrity of our investigation,” DeMarco said, “we did not immediately disclose everything we knew about those particular cases to the public because we did not want the killer to know exactly how much information we had. We even compartmentalized some of that information within our own staff, to include the investigative component.”
The simplified translation: We kept crucial information about a series of related murders from our own detectives because we didn’t want the killer knowing we were on to him.
Below the fold, Kirsten had a second story, this one about yesterday afternoon’s murders uptown.
MOTHER, TWO CHILDREN MURDERED, SERIAL KILLER SUSPECTED
By Kirsten Sparks, The Times-Picayune A 36-year-old mother and her two children were found dead yesterday afternoon inside their home on Freret Street. Police have not officially named the recently confirmed serial killer as a suspect, but sources close to the investigation have said they believe the same person who committed the brutal slayings on Freret Street is responsible for eight other recent homicides. Although the names of the victims have not been…
The “LOG” tag carved into the woman’s backside and the sexual assault on the boy had not been released to the newspaper. Still, even without those details, the city was going to go berserk. Plus, there was a storm coming.
Bumped by the serial killer to the bottom right-hand corner of the front page was a story that on any other day would certainly have rated a more prominent position. Early computer models showed that Tropical Storm Catherine was headed toward the Gulf of Mexico. The storm had picked up both wind speed and lateral speed and was tracking west-northwest toward Puerto Rico at eighteen miles per hour. Maximum winds were in the neighborhood of sixty-five miles per hour and expected to strengthen.
The article quoted city officials who said they were monitoring the storm closely and reviewing the city’s as-yet-untested post-Katrina evacuation plan.
Murphy finished his coffee on the way to his car. He tossed the newspaper on the backseat and drove south on Canal Boulevard to City Park Avenue and hung a left. Within minutes he was parked at the rear of the police academy, near the back door that led to the Homicide Division. He loitered in the parking lot for a few minutes before going inside, trying to prepare himself for his meeting with Donovan. The key was to remain calm. Don’t blow up, no matter what Donovan says.
Inside the captain’s office, Donovan and Assistant Chief DeMarco were waiting. Surprisingly, the atmosphere seemed almost cordial. The captain waved Murphy into one of the two chairs in front of his desk. DeMarco remained standing.
“I put you back on this case, Murphy, because I want results,” Donovan said. “And I want them fast.”
Murphy shifted in the chair. Most serial-killer investigations took months if not years to crack. It had taken the cops in Seattle two decades to catch the Green River Killer. “What resources do I have?”