Authors: Jon Wells
“Did You Kill Char?”
The night police told her about Charlisa, Sue Ross turned her thoughts almost immediately to her grandson, Eugene. He had to have been in the apartment when Char was killed.
“What about Eugene?” she asked. “Where is he?”
The police officers told her that he was fine, unhurt. He had been interviewed once by police, was with social services.
“Well, he has to be with me,” she said.
After taking heart that Eugene was unharmed, Sue next felt fear that Eugene’s birth father, who had been long estranged from Charlisa, would make a move for custody. Sue could not let that happen. The man had been abusive toward her daughter and had a criminal record.
The day after she was informed of the murder, Sue was reunited with Eugene. She needed to convey to her grandson that his mother was gone. Sue had once told him that his grandfather became an angel when he died. She took the same approach. She sat him on her knee.
“Your mommy, Charlisa, is an angel now,” she said. “Just like Papa.”
Hearing the words, Eugene sat straight up, rigid.
“No, she’s not,” he said.
Sue spoke very quietly, but firmly. He had to know. “Yes, she is,” she said.
She took Eugene to meet the police for a second interview, this time with a Hamilton detective named Duncan McCulloch.
“What happened when you went to sleep?” he asked the three-year-old.
“My mama gone.”
“Mama put you to sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Was anyone else there?”
“Pat.”
“When you went to sleep, who else was in the apartment?”
“Pat’s friend.”
“Who’s Pat’s friend?”
“Got paint ... all over ... Pat. Paint all over.”
“We’ll slow down. When you woke up, what happened?”
“Me.”
“Was it light out or dark?”
“Light.”
“Who else was with you?”
“Me.”
“Anyone else?”
“Pat.”
“Where’s Pat?”
“In bed, my house, in mama’s bed.”
“Where was mama?”
“I dunno. She was gone.”
“Were you lonely for a long time?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you do?”
“TV broken. Cord gone.”
“How did you get out?”
“Me.”
“How did you open the door, was it heavy?”
“Yes. Big door.”
Eugene’s words during the course of two interviews had not been easy to decipher, but a picture emerged: he had tried to wake his mother and Pat; had seen the blood-soaked bedding and walls — blood he equated, given Charlisa’s passion for art, with paint. He tried to watch TV but it was broken, perhaps disabled by the killer, if the TV had been working at all before. He had been “with his shoes,” perhaps hiding in his closet, either during the murders or after. He talked of seeing someone drive a white van away outside the building. That had been Pat’s father, Flavio Del Sordo.
The detective mentioned a new name to the boy.
“Do you know Spencer?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s Spencer?”
“Pat’s friend.”
“Was he there with you?”
“No.”
“When you were alone in the apartment, was Spencer there?”
“Yeah.”
“What did he say?”
“Mama gone.”
“Who told you Mama’s gone?”
“Me. Couldn’t find her. Hiding.”
“You couldn’t find her?”
“No.”
Spencer was among those individuals Charlisa had known well, someone that Lead Detective Don Forgan was working to eliminate as a suspect in the early hours of the investigation. There had been no forced entry to the apartment, so it seemed possible that the killer knew at least one of the victims. Those who kill often do so for love or money. Charlisa had no money. Could it have been a jealous ex-boyfriend? She had previously had a relationship with Spencer, who worked at a club she frequented. A friend of Charlisa’s said she had once been “crazy about him.”
On June 21 Forgan interviewed Spencer at the man’s home in Hamilton. He told Forgan he had known Char for several years, and said that they had dated on and off. He had last spoken with her just two days before she was murdered. It was an interesting admission, but then the man also co-operated enthusiastically with Forgan — offered a blood sample for DNA, his palm print, finger print, two pairs of shoes, and his watch for examination. That same afternoon, he volunteered to take a lie-detector test.
“Last weekend,” the polygraph officer asked him, “did you kill Char?”
“No.”
“Last weekend, was it you who killed Char?”
“No.”
“Last weekend, were you the person who killed Char?”
“No.”
The officer said Spencer’s physiological reactions indicated that he was telling the truth. And, ultimately, forensics, including shoe prints found at the scene, did not match his. He was cleared.
Forgan continued eliminating associates of Charlisa and Pat’s from consideration as suspects. Start the circle tight, work from the victim out, and that includes the families. Forgan investigated Charlisa’s abusive ex, Eugene’s father. The man worked as a bouncer at a bar in Lindsay, two hours northeast of Hamilton, near Peterborough. Forgan called the Lindsay police and asked them to pay the man a visit. Police officers showed at his door and asked where he was the night of the murders. He told them that he had been working at the bar until closing time, then he had hung with co-workers until very late, arrived at his home where he lived with his mother. He added that he did not own a car. He said he hadn’t seen Charlisa for two years. Not only would he never hurt her, he said, but he actually had people in Hamilton keeping an eye out for her.
“I still have love for the lady,” he told the officers. He asked how his son was doing.
Don Forgan needed to take the guy’s measure himself. He drove up to Lindsay, entered the darkened tavern in mid-afternoon, wearing a suit as usual. A group of regulars huddled at the bar. They all went silent. Forgan felt a smile. Could they tell he was from out of town?
“Is the manager around?” Forgan asked pleasantly.
He interviewed Charlisa’s ex, who repeated what he had told the Lindsay police: he had been at the bar the night of the murders until 5:00 a.m. He went straight home, had coffee with his mother. Forgan interviewed the other employees at the bar, who all confirmed that he had worked till close and that they left with him. He gave Forgan his fingerprints and palm prints, and readily agreed to take a polygraph. But when he took the test, the results suggested he was being deceptive. He grew angry when hearing the result, but insisted he was innocent.
Forgan knew that his alibi seemed solid. The man did not have opportunity to come to Hamilton in the window when the murders took place. But was the guy beyond arranging for someone else to do it? In Forgan’s book that remained an open question.
At the same time, the detective worked to eliminate other individuals, including members of Pat Del Sordo’s family, such as Pat’s father. Flavio had been alone in the white Del Sordo construction van, the one Pat had driven to Charlisa’s. The afternoon after the murder, Flavio was the one who drove it back home from the scene. Why did he do that? The van was needed for the investigation and had been towed to the police station for examination.
Forgan asked Flavio to supply shoe, finger, and palm prints, and take a polygraph. Pat’s father provided prints, but bristled at doing a polygraph. Pat’s mom, Ruth, grew frustrated with the investigation, and told the police so. Their son, her Pasquale, had been murdered; they were beyond grief, and, yet, the detectives kept questioning their family. It was too much to bear. Flavio would die for his son, and Pat worshipped his father, she said. But since Flavio did not want to take the polygraph, it kept him in the investigative loop.
Down the road in the investigation, Ruth, at the end of her rope, volunteered to take the lie detector test instead. When the polygraph officer asked her about any potential involvement of her husband, she laughed. “Not in a million years,” she said.
In the apartment the ident team found traces of blood in the bathroom on a hand towel, a diluted drop on the edge of the tub, and another on the sink’s hot water tap. The killer had tried to clean up. Did he leave fingerprints? The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) were called in to assist with their forensic laser truck. Wearing orange goggles OPP investigator Dave Sibley joined Hamilton detectives Hank Thorne and Ross Wood, scanning the apartment for fingerprints with a blue-green laser projected from a fibre-optic cable. If the laser detected a print, it would stand out. But this time it revealed no fingerprints on any of the walls or doors inside the apartment. The result was disappointing but not shocking: most people don’t leave fingerprints in everyday life. Identifiable prints are deposited if sufficient pressure is applied to a surface, and if the digit has secreted natural substances (sweat, lipids) or transferred foreign substances (blood).
Next, they sprayed surfaces in the apartment with chemicals such as leuchocrystal violet, to reveal more signs of blood. After spraying the floors, small footprints appeared in purple — Eugene’s footprints. He had trailed blood to the kitchen and living room, back and forth, around the apartment after the murders, the footprints fading as the blood wore off his bare feet.
Sibley took several items back to his lab for testing: bottles, glasses — and the aluminum baseball bat. Hank Thorne explored the shoe tread impression left in blood on the bedroom floor. Don Forgan had people of interest submit shoes for examination — including officers who first reported to the scene — so Thorne could check for a match. The impression appeared to be from a Reebok running shoe — identifiable because of the distinctive intersecting-lines pattern. Thorne visited local stores looking for a tread-design match in Reebok shoes but had no luck. He went to Reebok Canada and pored through catalogues. It became apparent the shoe was probably not a Reebok, but a knock-off.
On June 23, at 8:00 a.m., Dave Sibley examined the rubber grip of the baseball bat for prints in his OPP lab. The standard procedure was to start with the least invasive method, then, if necessary, apply chemicals to draw out a print. Sibley sat in a dark room with a lamp box that projected a concentrated white light. He shone it on the grip, the light turning the black rubber a milky colour. There: ridge detail. It was a palm print, made in some kind of residue: a substrate, perhaps sweat. Had to be from the killer’s hand. He felt a rush, got his camera and took photos of the print, then phoned Hank Thorne with the news. It was a big break. They needed another: a palm print to match it.
Hamilton police stored fingerprints in an electronic database for easy scanning and comparison, but the same was not true for palm prints. Assuming Charlisa and Pat’s killer happened to have a palm print on file in Hamilton, it would be among all those collected over the years, taken from suspects arrested for break and enters and robberies. Those palm prints were on cards filed away by name in a box — about 3,000 of them. “Like looking for a needle in a stack of needles,” said Thorne.
Bad Man
Carl wondered if the police might come after him, but as the weeks and months passed, he felt safer. At times he thought back to that night, to the blood, the sounds. He remembered feeling that night like he was outside himself, looking at what was going down. The girl’s death: that bothered him, because she had a little boy. Carl saw the boy in the other room. Had to be her kid. But the guy, the big guy, he didn’t feel so much for him.
He was no multiple murderer, he thought, not some sick guy. On the other hand, while Carl wasn’t much for self-examination, he did wonder if, maybe, with his temper, and the violence he had displayed over the years against men and women, he was bad inside. Evil. He didn’t blame his behaviour on his upbringing.
Carl was born November 26, 1974, in Hamilton. His family had moved back and forth between Sussex, New Brunswick, where they had roots, and Hamilton. Mostly, Carl grew up out east. He was never sure why they kept moving; the family history always seemed a bit shady to him, more than a little screwed up. He had one sibling, Audrey, who shared his red hair, but they had little else in common. When Audrey was 16, she decided to leave home out east. Carl came home one day to find she had suitcases packed in the hallway.
“Well?” she said. “See the suitcases? Want to say anything about that?”
“No,” Carl said.
“I’m leaving.”
“Good luck.”
And that was it. She ran away to a relative in Hamilton, eventually settled out west.
Carl didn’t have many friends growing up; had girlfriends, but not guys. He had a bad relationship with his father. One day, when he was 13, he was out hunting in the bush. His father had walked ahead up on a knoll. Carl fell in behind. He was freezing cold, shivering. He took off the safety on his 20-gauge shotgun and sighted on the back of his dad’s head, finger on the trigger. A couple of positive images popped into his mind. His mom. His dog. He lowered the shotgun and put the safety back on.
He felt like he stood up to his dad for the first time, face to face, when he was 15. Carl was smoking a lot of pot, and one day he was doped up and walked up to his old man, jutted his chin out, and challenged him. He knew he saw fear in the man’s eyes.
At 18, Carl was convicted for a break and enter and assault. After that he moved out west: Edmonton. He began smoking lots of hash; fled town with outstanding drug possession and break and enter charges. He returned to Hamilton and dated a woman named Tracy. He ripped her off, withdrew $1,000 from her bank account, and left town, hitchhiking to New Brunswick. Carl later returned to Hamilton and got back together with Tracy and they had a daughter. The relationship didn’t last. The final straw was a fight in December 1997. Carl had finished cooking steaks. Something set him off and he threw the food in the garbage in a rage. Tracy slapped him in the head.
“Stop, or I’ll hurt you,” he said, and then hit her to the ground.
He was convicted for assault in January. Police shipped him back to Edmonton to answer the charges he had fled there. He served eight months in jail then returned to Hamilton.
A restraining order kept him from Tracy and his daughter. He and a buddy, who had a car, would pull in front of Tracy’s house, burn rubber, crank tunes. It bothered Carl, not being able to see his daughter. He fumed that Tracy was being a cold bitch.
It was in 1999 that he experienced an awakening. Carl was dating a stripper, trying to make Tracy jealous. The stripper introduced him to crack. He inhaled, held it in, exhaled. She started to speak. He grinned, raised his hand. “Shhh — quiet for second,” he said. “You know what? That’s what I’ve been looking for all my life.”
For Carl it was a new beginning and a dark end. The violent fire that had burned inside him for as long as he could remember now had new fuel. He was hooked. He spent every dollar he made, and stole, on crack.
In the summer of 2000, he was cracking it up a lot. The Father’s Day weekend was not a good time for Carl, not with his memories of his own dad and the restraining order keeping him from his own child. He needed an escape. He needed some cash.
He saw an open door on the balcony of the apartment on King East. A bat leaning by the front door. Down the hallway, past the kid’s room. Big guy on the bed. Blood. More blood, and the sound of final breaths. That sound — Carl couldn’t take it. He had to make it stop.
Stop breathing
, he thought. A young woman appeared. He knew what he had to do.
In the fall the investigation was into its third month and detective Don Forgan was nowhere close to making an arrest. On September 27 he spoke with a child life specialist at McMaster University in Hamilton, who agreed to engage little Eugene in play therapy, study his actions and words.
“Did mommy get hurt a little or a lot?” she asked him.
“Lots.”
“Did you see who hurt mommy?”
“Yes.”
“Were there one, two, or three people?” she asked, holding up three fingers.
Eugene held up three fingers in response. Did that mean two victims and one killer? Or had there been more than one attacker?
Sue Ross attended the play therapy sessions and took notes. At one point Eugene was given a dollhouse to play with, including figures of a man, a woman, and a baby. He smashed the dolls, put the baby in a car, and drove it away. It appeared as though he was re-creating what had happened to him. One day he asked the therapist for markers. He took a red marker and marked up the inside of the dollhouse, red splashed everywhere.
How close had Eugene come to the killer that night? Eventually, in therapy, he said that the “bad man has scary eyes.”
Forgan believed that Eugene had been eye-to-eye with the killer, perhaps while hiding in his closet. The therapy was meant to encourage Eugene to recall any information that might be useful to the investigation, and also to help him deal with his mother’s death. That transition had been a painful one. He was now terrified of the dark, could not get to sleep, and cried often. Sue kept him in her bed every night.
To help Eugene complete the circle of what happened to him on Father’s Day, Constable Randy Carter came to Eugene’s home, saw the boy for the first time since meeting him at the variety store on King Street East that day. Carter now gave him a teddy bear. Eugene christened it “Police Bear,” and slept with it every night.
Meanwhile, Forgan chased every angle. He sought help from veteran OPP criminal profiler Jim Van Allen. In December Van Allen offered his analysis. No forced entry to the apartment, victims naked on the bed, the child unharmed: it suggested to Van Allen that the primary target had been Charlisa, and it was probable that a lone killer was responsible — one who had a previous intimate relationship with her.
On January 3, 2001, Forgan met Charlisa’s son for the first time. He had studied notes from Eugene’s interviews and play therapy, but had not yet met the boy in person. Sue brought him to the station. The detective kept it friendly but businesslike, even though on the inside he wanted to pick the kid up, give him a hug, and cry for him.
Forgan explained to Eugene that he was the lead investigator on the case.
“You’re going to catch the bad man?” Eugene asked.
“I’m going to try.”
But the Clark/Del Sordo investigation, as it was called in homicide branch, had to share manpower with other cases. In the early days after a murder, police flood the zone, but now, six months in, detectives had been dispersed to other assignments. Warren Korol was tied up with the Sukhwinder Dhillon double-poisoning trials, so detective Mike Thomas was brought on to replace him as case manager. And soon Thomas and Forgan would be assigned to help investigate the case of a woman’s remains found in a field near African Lion Safari in Flamborough.
Forgan re-examined Charlisa’s phone book and diary, and interviewed and re-interviewed people of interest. The most tantalizing piece of evidence so far sat in an OPP lab — the baseball bat. He learned from a biologist at the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto that two DNA profiles had been developed from blood found on the bat: they matched Charlisa and Pat’s DNA. But the palm impression on the bat handle still had no match. At the OPP lab, investigator Dave Sibley had compared that palm print with those belonging to more than a dozen people sent his way by Hamilton police. No luck.
Forgan made a pitch to his superiors in Hamilton: why not assign a willing ident guy to manually comb through the palm-print cards on file with Hamilton Police looking for a match? He was denied. They were short-staffed, the task would require unknown hours to wade through thousands of cards, and the suspect’s print might not even be there.
In June 2001, the first anniversary of the murders, Forgan placed flowers on Charlisa’s and Pat’s graves. The cards read, “We promise to see that justice is served.”
Sue tried to stay patient, kept telling herself that the investigation would take time. She spoke with Pat’s mom, Ruth, who was bitter at how long the investigation was taking, and how it was being conducted. Ruth would often phone Forgan with suggestions and questions.
“Ruth,” Sue told her, “they can’t tell you anything.”
Sue believed in Forgan, felt he was doing all he could. She found herself compulsively watching crime shows —
Law & Order
,
CSI
— as though vicariously searching for the killer through the television screen. And she wrote poetry, something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl:
I am drowning in the pain.
It feels like you’re living and sometimes you are, but I am drowning in the reality, and it is massive.
The realization that you are never to be again, and never coming back, it is more than I can bear.
I flip my mind to somewhere else to push the reality away, but there’s no worse place in the whole universe.
You are not coming back and the reality is drowning.
A test of my faith, can I truly accept you in another form?
Can I breathe your energy, can I stop drowning?