My mind was racing as Hammond put down the garage door to set the scene. As he did, he said something wholly inappropriate and even more anxiety inducing.
“Don’t worry,” Hammond said. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”
Excuse me?
Why would he assume that I was thinking he was going to do something to me? Why would this cross his mind? Why was he saying this?
A sense of dread crept up on me as the door came down. I noticed that the windows were completely smeared, like they hadn’t been washed in years. I found it hard to believe that that man could have seen anybody inside a vehicle from this garage.
I could feel panic just about to overtake me. I suddenly realized that I was alone with a stranger, and one who was making me feel increasingly uncomfortable. I wanted to get out of there fast. I pulled the phone out of my pocket, pretended I had dialed my office really quickly, and as he turned to face me, I said, “Oh, yeah, I’m over here at Mr. Hammond’s house, next door to the Joshis… Yeah…I should be through with the interview in about ten minutes, so I’ll be back at the office by five thirty.”
He suddenly looked at me coldly, and he said, “You can go now.” He marched me straight to the front door and out of his house.
Hammond ’s behavior and the incongruity of his story made me suspicious.
Was he involved in the case? Or was he just a really weird neighbor?
I wonder to this day what would have happened if I hadn’t managed to fake that phone conversation.
I STILL HAD a multitude of questions about Deborah’s murder.
Why would anybody take that big plastic jar of quarters?
Did they need the money or was it more of a diversionary tactic?
Did somebody go into the Joshi residence to steal something or was it a rape gone wrong? Did Deborah fight back and a rapist ended up stabbing her before he had any fun, decided to steal a few things, and used her SUV to get home? Could the killer be Painter or Williams?
Was someone burglarizing the house when Deborah came home unexpectedly early from work? Was she killed in a panic? Was the SUV just driven to the strip mall to make it look like the killer lived farther away? Was Deborah killed because she could identify the man in her house? Could it be the neighbor, Hammond?
Or was it really Davis staging a crime to cover up offing his wife?
The only suspect was the husband, and no one has been charged.
CHAPTER 7.MARY BETH:A METHOD OF OPERATION
The Crime: Homicide, burglary
The Victim: Mary Beth Townsend, fifty-two, librarian
Location: Condominium, Virginia
Original Theory: Killed by her fiancé
When Mary Beth Townsend, a fifty-two-year-old librarian, was found dead in the closet of her condominium, the detectives had the case solved within hours. A couple days later, after grueling hours of interrogation, her fiancé confessed to accidentally killing her during an argument.
Unfortunately for the police, his forced confession didn’t match the evidence when the autopsy came back.
MARY BETH OWNED a condo in Virginia that she shared with her fiancé, Sam Bilodeau. They had been together for eight years, and after seven years of living together, they were finally, happily, preparing to marry. They were also building a house together on weekends and planning a honeymoon trip to Paris.
Mary Beth and Sam got along well in their eight years together. Her son, Art, who lived and worked in the area, knew Sam well, liked him, and had no issues with him.
On Friday, August 21, 1998, Sam left at 6:45 a.m. to arrive by 7:00 for his job at the Home Depot, where he worked on the loading dock. Mary Beth stayed behind. She took the day off from the library, where she had worked for fifteen years, planning to go down to the pool for a swim, something she did every day. Later in the day, Sam called Mary Beth but she wasn’t home. He thought she must be at the pool or running errands.
When Sam finished his work shift around 6 p.m., he drove home expecting they’d do what they always did on Fridays-drive over to the property where their house was under construction and then spend the weekend doing whatever needed doing. Oddly, Mary Beth’s car was not parked in the driveway out front. As he unlocked the front door of their condo, Sam noticed that only the bottom lock was locked; the top, a dead bolt, was not. He walked into the condo and noticed that Mary Beth’s purse and tote bag were not there, but that made sense because she was out with the car.
I guess she’ll be coming back soon, because we have plans for tonight, he thought.
He also noticed that the condo had been freshly vacuumed, which was a little odd because that was a task usually done over the weekend.
But she didn’t come back, didn’t call, and Sam soon grew wary. Where is she? What’s going on?
He called friends, including Mary Beth’s son, Art, around 9 p.m., but no one knew where Mary Beth was, and he wasn’t getting anywhere. He called several hospitals in town, thinking maybe there had been an accident, and asked each if she was there. She wasn’t. He called a friend who was battling cancer, but Mary Beth hadn’t been over to visit her.
This wasn’t like Mary Beth, and he grew anxious, a mixture of anger and dread. Why doesn’t she come home? Meanwhile, he washed some clothes to pass time between 9 and 10 p.m. in the building’s downstairs laundry room and chatted with neighbors.
When Sam returned to the condo, Mary Beth still wasn’t there. He lay down in bed and dozed off. When he woke up, it was 1:30 a.m. He looked over at the bedroom closet, and for the first time since coming home from work, noticed that the door was closed. Mary Beth almost always kept it open, except when she vacuumed.
Sam got up and looked in the closet. There was Mary Beth, scrunched up in a fetal position, facedown on the floor of the closet, dead.
She was wearing a blouse and slip; her hair was combed as if she had just come out of the shower, which was consistent with her routine after a swim. There was no blood. Sam touched her once on the cheek and she was cold. He left the room and called 911. The police came out and took him in for several hours of questioning. He told them what happened, that he found her in the closet, and they said they didn’t believe him. They asked him what really happened and he told them the same story again. They told him Mary Beth had been killed in the evening, after 6 p.m., after Sam arrived home. Nothing made sense to Sam-that his fiancée was dead and the police said he killed her. He told them again he didn’t. They said he did. Then they told him to go to a hotel for the time being and they would contact him.
The police told reporters that Mary Beth Townsend’s death was suspicious, but it took six months before it would officially be ruled a homicide. According to the local paper, they “insinuated” to reporters that Mary Beth was killed by someone she knew, so the public had no reason to fear that a serial killer was on the loose. The condominium unit was sealed for the next three weeks.
Meanwhile, Sam Bilodeau waited in limbo. On that Saturday, after he had been interrogated by the police and checked into a hotel, he called Art but couldn’t get hold of him. Unable to just sit alone and do nothing, Sam decided to visit Mary Beth’s father-his almost-father-in-law. When he was driving back, he saw Mary Beth’s car, a light blue hatchback, off the side of the highway in a distressed part of Washington, D.C. The police had been looking for the car, but he was the one who found it. That made the police even more suspicious of him.
Sam called the police, who arrived on the scene with a dog that sniffed Mary Beth’s car and then pulled its handler toward the woods. The police brought Sam in for more questioning and leaned on him, hard.
“We know what happened,” the detective said. “You came home from work. You had an argument with Mary Beth, you pushed her, she hit her head, and she died. You panicked and put her in the closet, and you drove her car down to an area of town where you thought criminals came from, dumped the car there, and took the train back.”