Criminalists tried to get latent prints and DNA evidence, but all of the fingerprints in the bungalow belonged to the victim or her housemate. Later, after searching his memory for any possible suspect whom she might have let into their home, the housemate of Ashley Ellerin mentioned “Mike the furnace guy” to police. He said that Ashley and a friend had met Mike when he’d walked out of the nearby dog park one day. Mike was described as being six two, 180 pounds, and having a “dark demeanor. ” He had stopped by the bungalow one afternoon when Ashley was not at home, telling the housemate that he wanted to work on her furnace, and he had been spotted driving his truck slowly past the bungalow on another occasion.
That crime resulted in a seven-year investigation that eventually led Hollywood Division detectives to Illinois and the Pacaccio murder, as well as to other blitz attacks in the Los Angeles area in 2005 and 2007. A detective with the L.A. Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau described one of them as “the most violent murder I ever saw, bar none.” The attacker had done horrible “staging” with body parts on that one, and it looked as though the victim had been ravaged by a pack of sharks.
And finally, in 2008, a Santa Monica woman was attacked in her home but managed to fight off her assailant and survive, despite serious stab wounds. DNA evidence was collected and coordinated and it brought everything together. Michael Gargiulo was at last in custody, awaiting trial in 2010. And Hollywood paparazzi would be ready for Ashton Kutcher if he should be required to testify, drooling over the possibility that his wife, Demi Moore, might accompany him to court.
So there was no dearth of violence and other serial crimes for the dozen overworked detectives at Hollywood Station to deal with, and the detectives at the Major Assault Crimes table got their share of domestic violence cases in that first year of the recession. The MAC detectives who responded late on a blistering hot afternoon to an unusual domestic violence call from a woman in an apartment building in Little Armenia were both cops with more than twenty years on the Job. Gina Villegas, a forty-three-year-old energetic Mexican American, and Carl Cheng, a forty-two-year-old laconic Taiwanese American, were both children of immigrants who got to use their language skills frequently in the polyglot community that was Hollywood.
They hadn’t needed their foreign-language skills when they got ordered to Little Armenia. They were responding to a telephonic plea made to their D3 supervisor by a terrified woman who said that she had been stalked and threatened by an ex-lover who was father to the baby she had given birth to only five weeks prior. Thelma Barker, their detective supervisor, was a bootstraps-up black veteran with thirty-one years on the Job. She was born and raised in Compton and had been a victim of domestic violence herself during a brief marriage at the age of nineteen.
The old three-story building in Little Armenia, consisting of twenty-eight rental units, was a rectangular block of gray stucco, and was possibly the most protected apartment building in that part of east Hollywood. Because of episodes of tagging by street gangs in the area, the owner had taken the extraordinary step of hiring local pensioners as watchmen. The geezers took turns sitting in a tiny office off the lobby from 9 P.M. to 6 A.M. seven days a week, when vandalism was a threat. There were no fire escapes or any exterior balconies that could be easily accessed.
The detectives rang the manager and were buzzed inside by a retired plumber who also did handyman jobs in the building. When he learned who the detectives were looking for, he said, “Confidentially, I don’t like it when the owner of this property gets so charitable. The girl in three-ten is his niece, or so he claims. She’s behind two months in the rent and still he lets her stay. Don’t tell her I told you, but she leaves her two babies alone sometimes. I’ve felt like calling you when she does it, but she’s the boss’s special tenant, if you know what I mean, and I don’t wanna lose this job.”
Gina Villegas thanked him, and when they got to the one-bedroom apartment on the third floor, a dangerously thin woman met them at the door. She was a twenty-five-year-old strawberry blonde with frightened, darting eyes, trembling hands, and suspiciously stained teeth.
Carl Cheng’s glance toward his partner said, Tweaker.
Before either cop could say anything to her, the woman said, “I’m the one who called your office. My name’s Cindy Kroll. My ex-boyfriend is threatening me. I think he wants to kill me.”
“And why would you think that?” Gina Villegas asked while Carl Cheng glanced around the little apartment.
There were two chairs at the small Formica table in the kitchen. And in the living room, if you could call it that, was a sofa, a shabby overstuffed chair, an infant’s crib, and a playpen, all crowded together around a big-screen Sony TV.
Carl Cheng smirked subtly in his partner’s direction as if to say, No matter how crappy they live, they always have a better TV than I do.
Cindy Kroll said, “Sorry there’s no place to sit down.” She pointed to a thirteen-month-old in the playpen. Then she said, “My five-week-old baby boy’s asleep in my bedroom. We don’t have much room here.”
Gina Villegas said, “A thirteen-month-old and a five-week-old? You’re not wasting time starting a family, are you?”
“My baby boy was an accident, and that’s what’s causing the problem,” Cindy Kroll said. “His father wants me dead for demanding child support.”
“Are you married to him?” the detective asked.
“No,” she said. “After my first baby was born, my husband, Ralphie, took off and left us. I had a tough time and could only make a few bucks cleaning houses. I had a job cleaning the apartment of Louis Dryden every week for four months. He lives up on Franklin Avenue and has a pretty good job at a real-estate company in Santa Monica, selling vacation rentals. He’s maybe ten years older than me, and, well, we started getting intimate while I was working for him and pretty soon I got pregnant.”
“Pregnant by him?” Gina Villegas said.
“Of course by him.” Cindy Kroll’s darting eyes flashed. “I’m no slut.”
“No, I didn’t mean that you were. But you also have a husband, right?”
“He’s outta my life. I got pregnant by Louis and nobody else.”
“Go on,” Gina Villegas said.
“He gave me some cash to get an abortion but I didn’t do it. I decided to have the baby and hire a lawyer. For the past couple of months my lawyer’s been calling him, but Louis says the baby isn’t his. He says he’s engaged to a terrific woman now and I’m ruining his life with my lies.”
“How about a paternity test?” Gina Villegas said. “That should settle the matter.”
“That’s what my lawyer’s working on now. We’re gonna take him to court.”
Carl Cheng spoke for the first time and said, “Why’re we here, ma’am?”
“He stalked me today,” Cindy Kroll said. “He caught me at the Seven-Eleven store I always go to and told me this is my last chance. He said he’d give me five thousand dollars to leave him alone and quit saying the baby’s his.”
“And what’d you say?” Carl Cheng asked.
“I told him to talk to my lawyer.”
“And when you were at the store, where were your babies?” Gina Villegas asked.
After a long pause, Cindy Kroll said, “I was only gone for a few minutes.”
“You can’t leave babies alone like that. It’s child endangering and it’s against the law,” Gina Villegas said.