Evil Season (4 page)

Night fell. Criminalist Valerie Howard was processing evidence within the gallery. It would be Howard's job to keep each piece of evidence separate and correctly labeled. She did this by photographing each piece of evidence in its place, then filling out a form that described the evidence, giving the location of where it was found and the ID number of who found it.

For example,
Description: Swab from toilet tank. Where Found: Northwest bathroom. Recovered by: #1432. Photo: #1622.

Detective DeFrancisco arrived at 6:30
P.M
. Tutsock retrieved the victim's keys, which were still in or near her purse. The key ring had keys to both Wishart's business and her car. Tutsock gave the business key to DeFrancisco. The car keys he gave to Scogin.

Scogin and Howard again crossed the street to the parking garage. They'd previously photographed the car. Now, armed with the keys, they performed a preliminary search of the victim's vehicle for fingerprints, without luck.

At 6:45
P.M.
, Scogin drove the car to the SPD, where it was secured in the sally port.

 

 

A half hour later, two body-retrieval personnel from the ME's office arrived, Jeff Parris and Brian Lang. They would transport the body from the crime scene to the medical examiner's suite, where it was scheduled to be autopsied. At 7:44
P.M.
, the body was placed in a bag and removed on a stretcher. At 10:10
P.M.
, the investigators called it a day. The gallery remained under guard, but most of the peace officers and technicians left, locking the front door behind them.

The officer guarding the front door remained until 2:49
A.M.
, when he was relieved by a fresh officer, who'd remain till the morning.

Dr. Russell Scott Vega began Joyce Wishart's autopsy at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital morgue at 8:30
A.M.
on January 22. Representing the SPD at the procedure were criminalist Walter Megura and Detective Tom Laughlin.

Megura took digital photographs throughout the postmortem. He tried to take the victim's fingerprints, but this was impossible because of decomposition. He injected Sirchie Tissue Builder Solvent into the fingertip areas. The resulting inked fingerprints were of little value due to the advanced decay of the skin itself.

Dr. Vega verified his earlier conclusion that the victim's clothes had been opened to expose her after she was dead. The stab wounds on the body had perfectly corresponding holes in the clothes she'd been wearing. The body weighed 160 pounds and was five-eight in height. She was wearing a medical-emergency bracelet on her left wrist that read:
Lymphedema Alert No Blood Pressure No Needles in This Arm.
That meant she had a blockage of the lymph vessels that hindered the drainage of fluids from tissues in that arm, perhaps as a consequence of cancer or cancer treatments. (The victim's medical history would indicate that she had been a cancer survivor.) The hair on Wishart's head was red and varied in length from four to six inches. The scalp hair was slipping easily from the scalp because of decomposition. Her teeth were all real and in a good state of repair. The bloating from decompositional gas was most notable in the abdomen, which was distended due to suffusion.
The back and anus are unremarkable,
Vega wrote. There were numerous stabbing, slashing, and incised wounds. There were twenty-three distinct stab wounds, including three over the right side of the forehead, two on the scalp, four on the right side of the neck, one on the back of the neck, five on the back, four on the chest, three on top of the right shoulder, and one on the left shoulder. Those wounds resulted in several perforations of the lungs and one of the heart. The neck wound started at the angle of the jaw and went all the way to the other side, an “ear-to-ear throat slashing.” Five separate confluent strokes with a sharp instrument had resulted in the single throat slashing, which was, when finished, thirteen inches in length.

As the corpse lay on Dr. Vega's table, the throat wound hung open, four inches at its widest. All of the large vessels in the neck had been severed. The larynx was opened up, and the sharp instrument had cut into the cervical spine.

Dr. Vega itemized the defensive wounds on the victim's hands, some of which were extremely superficial, before turning his attention to the gaping hole between the victim's legs. There was excision of the skin and subcutaneous fat of the lower abdominal wall, vulva, vagina, and part of the anal skin. The margins of the excision were smooth; and the wound was accomplished, he could tell, by at least four smooth skin strokes and multiple, additional deep soft-tissue strokes. All of the excised tissue, he noted, remained missing. The overall defect, Dr. Vega measured, was ten and a half inches in length and seven inches wide. There was a skin tag where the wound came closest to the anus. (He originally wrote that “some” anal skin was missing, but later changed this to “most.”) There was a dip in the wound at the point where the victim's buttock met her thigh. In between these areas the skin margins of the wound appeared smooth. The outer edges of the wound took at least four strokes to create, and there were probably many more strokes to remove the entire crotch from the body. The excision had gone deep. Partially removed was the fat under the skin along the victim's abdominal wall. On the left side the wound was so deep that muscle was exposed. No bones were disturbed. Only the outer half of the vagina was gone. The back of the vagina was still in the body, as were a portion of the urethra, bladder, and rectum. The reproductive system had been removed, as if the killer had attempted to perform a crude hysterectomy with his sharp instrument. The uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries were missing.

Dr. Vega left the wound between the body's legs and returned to the head. Peeling back the scalp, Dr. Vega examined the skull. There were no fractures, despite the stab wounds in her scalp. The top of the body's skull was then sawed off to expose the brain, which was green-brown in color and of normal weight. A thin layer of mucus coated her upper respiratory system, but there were no obstructions. Her tongue was uninjured. Her body cavities contained nothing unexpected, and her cardiovascular system appeared to have been healthy. Except for the fact that a sharp object had perforated them, her lungs were normal as well. Liver, gallbladder, pancreas—all normal. The stomach was empty and the digestive system looked normal. Kidneys, pituitary gland—normal.

She'd been a remarkably healthy woman. She had beaten cancer. There was no indication that the disease had returned.

Dr. Vega then organized the pieces of evidence that would require further testing, such as the bags that had covered the victim's hands and feet as the body was transported from the crime scene to the morgue. The medical examiner took fingernail clippings. If the victim had managed to scratch her assailant during the attack, she might have taken some of her killer with her: DNA evidence that could not be removed by amateur surgery. Dr. Vega also confiscated pulled hair with the root still attached, and the victim's watch, scarf, medical-alert bracelet, and a pair of white pearl earrings. Also bagged as evidence were the victim's jacket, pants, sweater, panties, bra, panty hose, the sheets the body had been wrapped in before being placed in a body bag, as well as oral, vaginal, and anal swabs. Yes, vaginal swabs were taken from the remaining vaginal tissue. A sample of the victim's brain and liver was also taken.

As the victim's identity was assumed rather than confirmed during the autopsy, the name of the deceased on all documents was listed as
Doe, Jane.
The entire autopsy, from beginning to end, took just shy of seven hours; it was completed midafternoon. All of the evidence seized during the autopsy was turned over to Valerie Howard.

The following day Dr. Vega would be provided X-rays via Joyce Wishart's dentist, and a comparison proved that the victim was, as assumed, Wishart.
Doe, Jane
was removed from the case's file, replaced with
Wishart, Joyce.

The autopsy helped determine that the murder probably took place on Friday, January 16, 2004. The victim's work computer revealed that she had logged off at 4:52
P.M.
The gallery was to close at five o'clock. Best guess was that the killer entered the building during those eight minutes. In addition to the locking of the doors, the victim would have turned on the gallery's alarm system at five o'clock, but a check of the alarm company's opening and closing records revealed that the alarm was never turned on during the evening of the sixteenth. According to the preprogrammed schedule, the alarm system was to be on from 5:00 to 11:00
P.M.
, so the system must have been turned off before five on Friday.

 

 

On the street and at police headquarters, the initial thinking was that there might be a connection between the murder and the Sarasota Film Festival, which had attracted upward of thirty thousand strangers into town. Investigators thought it doubtful that robbery was the motive. There wasn't any money in the galleries. Transactions were made with checks or credit cards.

The other best theory was that Wishart's allegedly abusive ex-husband, whom she hadn't seen in years, was responsible for her death. Many locals, in fact, were
hoping
that the ex-husband had done it. Though tawdry, it was a solution that would have ended the fear. The alternative was that there was a psycho on the loose, perhaps still walking among them.

Anyone who'd seen the crime scene knew that there was a madman on the loose, a pseudo-artsy psycho who had confused destruction for creation. Those officials knew that the posing of Joyce Wishart's remains had been a sad and sick swipe at art.

Sarasota women, used to going out at all hours without fear of danger, were now nervously looking over their shoulders and asking men to escort them to their cars.

Neighbors of the Provenance Gallery were in shock. During the days following the discovery of Wishart's body, Jamie Jones, of the
St. Petersburg Times,
interviewed some of them, including Vicki Krone, who worked at Admiral Travel on North Palm, “just across the driveway” from the murder. She explained that police had asked her if she'd seen anything unusual during the past week. Her first reaction was, she'd never seen anything unusual
ever.
This was the very last place on Earth she would expect something like this to occur.

Now that it had occurred, Krone was looking at every stranger in a new light. “Now I find myself looking out the window, wondering about people. It's changed our everyday pattern,” she said.

Police and reporters canvassing Palm Avenue crossed paths; and when they could, they exchanged information. Officer Europa spoke to sixty-three-year-old neighbor Allyn Gallup, who recalled last seeing Joyce Wishart on the afternoon of January 15, the previous Thursday. The deceased had been in her gallery.

Europa spoke to sixty-year-old Phyllis Becker, two doors down, who didn't remember when she last saw Joyce. “I'm certain that I didn't see her yesterday, because her shop was closed yesterday,” Becker said.

Two witnesses who knew Wishart—one walking his dog, the other driving by—noted that on Friday night that the lights in the rear of the Provenance were on, and it wasn't like Wishart to work late.

Europa interviewed thirty-nine-year-old Bart Winer, the building's valet supervisor, the one who had informed Nancy Hall of Joyce Wishart's unmoved automobile. He didn't remember the last time he had seen Joyce Wishart. Winer explained that among his jobs was washing the residents' cars, so he had a reason to pay attention to Wishart's car during the days before and after the murder. He'd noticed that there was a nail on one of Wishart's tires. It wasn't between treads however, as it would probably be if someone had purposefully attempted to flatten her tire.

At eight-thirty, Thursday morning, the day after the discovery of the body, Detective Jack Carter was given the task of gaining access to the victim's financial statements. If she owed money, that might help provide motive.

Turned out Joyce Wishart owed just shy of $2,000 on her Visa card. The most recent activity had her purchasing gas at a Hess station in Sarasota on January 14.

Carter didn't always get the info he wanted. At one bank he was told they couldn't release any info without a warrant. However, they would flag her account and contact police if there was any fresh activity on her credit or debit card. The bank was able to divulge that the card's last usage was at Publix on Ringling Boulevard at 7:00
P.M.
, on January 15.

Carter tried to gain access to the surveillance video to verify that it was the victim who used the card, but he was frustrated to learn that the Ringling Publix couldn't find the tape that covered the period of January 13 through 19. Further investigation revealed that it had never been made in the first place. A Publix spokesperson blamed “human error.”

The surveillance video from Wishart's bank was available, proving that it
was
the victim, by herself, who had last used their drive-thru ATM. State-of-the-art photo-enhancing techniques were used and it was determined that there was no one in the car with her when she used the ATM.

Financial records could be used to determine the victim's customers as well. Using those records, Carter located Donald F. Goldsmith, who had recently purchased a large painting from the Provenance for $4,300.

Carter contacted Goldsmith, who said Joyce Wishart and Jamie delivered the painting and subsequently took it back and redid the frame for him. He described the son Jamie as five-ten, slim, maybe 150 pounds, with brown hair. In Goldsmith's presence, mother and son discussed Jamie living in Italy and visiting Morocco. Goldsmith said the victim seemed like a very nice lady and all of his contact with her had been related to business.

A police check of the Bay Plaza security shift–activity reports revealed that there were no logged-in security checks between three-thirty on Friday afternoon and eleven o'clock on Saturday morning. At five after eleven, on Saturday morning, the storefronts were visually checked by a security guard, who reported seeing nothing extraordinary. The first indication to Bay Plaza security that something was wrong came with the foul-odor reports of the following Wednesday.

That same morning, an SPD investigator contacted the coordinator for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP), Lesa Marcolini. After hearing the details of the Wishart murder, Marcolini went to work and came back with the disconcerting news that there were twelve similar, unsolved cases in the United States. It was a sick sex thing; mutilators usually started with the sex organs.

 

 

The matriarch of Sarasota's art scene was Marcia Corbino, widow of Jon Corbino, one of Sarasota's most famous artists, and a longtime historian of Sarasota's “fine madness.” She was also the author of the magazine article, “A Fine Madness,” that became part of the crime scene.

Why her article had been chosen, she had no clue. Perhaps it had something to do with her husband. Jon Corbino had been one of the most acclaimed American artists of the twentieth century. According to his widow, he was a “young rebel.” Back in the 1930s, his work was in sharp contrast to the quiet of American Scene painting. His paintings used, she explained, “smoldering color, monumental figures, and violent action.”

Born in Vittoria, Sicily, on April 3, 1905, Corbino came to America at age eight. On the way he saw the devastation of an earthquake that destroyed the city of Messina. His ship was caught in a hurricane at sea. He recalled these images when he began painting a series of disasters, which also included floods in Montana and the horror of the Spanish Civil War.

“In the late 1940s, Jon changed his aesthetic vision,” Mrs. Corbino said. He moved “from the heroic themes of social and political crisis to the fantasy of the ballet and circus. Although these paintings featured action and color, there was an aura of illusion as opposed to a physical reality.”

In the early 1950s, Corbino began a series of “Crucifixions,” a theme painted by all the great artists of the past.

During his career his paintings appeared on the covers of art magazines, and feature articles about Corbino appeared in
Esquire, Time,
and
Life,
as well as in art magazines and newspapers. He was listed in
Who's Who in America.

Corbino died in Sarasota of lung cancer in 1964. Today, almost a half-century later, his paintings remain in museums and galleries throughout the country.

Marcia Corbino had been his widow for forty years when Joyce Wishart was murdered. Now, in the days after the murder, Mrs. Corbino felt the fear.

“The women in the neighborhood, and there were almost all women, were terrified for a good six months,” Corbino later said. “Every one of them tried to get their fathers, their husbands, or some other male to come to work with them for protection.”

Not surprisingly, Mrs. Corbino knew the victim.

“I met her at the gallery,” Mrs. Corbino said. “She was having a show of a friend of mine. Then a mutual friend of ours suggested that she invite me for lunch, to get some ideas about running a gallery. She was such a nice person, and so eager to make her gallery the best it could be. It had been a lifelong dream of hers, and now that dream was coming true. She knew nothing about running a gallery, but she was eager to learn, and a mutual friend recommended we get together.”

Corbino had operated a gallery with her son for eighteen years and knew the ropes. Wishart had no experience and was hungry for all of the advice she could get. Wishart was a quick study, as it turned out. She usually featured the work of artists who had been recommended to her, and those whom she had thoroughly researched.

Mrs. Corbino—who had no idea her writing was considered an integral part of the crime scene—still assumed that she would be among the first to be interviewed by police. As it turned out, they didn't get to her until several weeks later.

 

 

A woman named Kay Yount contacted SPD sergeant Philip DeNiro and told him she'd seen a possibly abandoned satchel in an alley near the Provenance on Sunday, January 18. It was gone by the time police looked for it.

Officer DeNiro interviewed Linda Joffe, who said she was a friend of Wishart's, although she was not familiar with the details of her life. They knew each other because she was marketing director for the West Coast Symphony at the same time Wishart held the same position for the Asolo Repertory Theatre. It was her impression that Wishart had four children, but two were estranged from her. One was believed to live in Italy. Two had not forgiven her for changing her lifestyle.

Joffe said that when Wishart left the Asolo, it was on a harsh note. She'd had major conflicts with the theater's executive director. Joffe thought there might still be a lawsuit pending. Joffe thought Wishart had a lover, but she didn't know his name. Joffe was pretty sure it was a long-distance relationship, that the guy was from out of state. They only saw each other a couple of times a year.

DeNiro quickly found the theater's managing director with whom Wishart had had difficulties. Her name was Linda DiGabriele, and she said she hadn't seen Wishart in more than a year, the last time at an arts event at the opera house. She said there was nothing remarkable about Wishart's leaving the theater, that her contract had come up for renewal and it was not renewed. She recalled no harsh note. There was no lawsuit. She only knew Wishart as a coworker and knew nothing of her personal life.

“She was a very pleasant woman,” Marsha Fottler told DeNiro. Fottler served with the victim on the city's arts council, and wrote the “Shop Talk” column for
Sarasota Magazine,
where she once plugged Wishart's gallery.

Fottler got to know Wishart through working on committees with her, such as Smart Talk, the Sarasota Arts Council, and the Sarasota/Manatee Breast Cancer Committee.

“The gallery was the joy of her life,” Fottler added. The thing that bothered Fottler the most was that the gallery became the place of Wishart's worst and final agony. She died horribly in the place she loved the most.

DeNiro interviewed a Sarasota artist named Linda Salomon whose work was exhibited at the Provenance. She said she had a fifty-fifty deal with the gallery. Anything that sold, she got half, and Wishart got half. Sadly, she said, her opening was supposed to be that night (January 22).

A preview of Salomon's show was in the December 2003 issue of
Sarasota Magazine
. There was a photo of Salomon and her animal dolls and a pull quote saying how Salomon's friends teased her because she became attached to her dolls and didn't want to part with them.

Salomon told DeNiro that she last saw Wishart on January 8, and last received an e-mail from her on January 14. She'd always gotten along with Wishart, but she had heard verbal arguments between the victim and employees of the nearby A Step Above Gallery.

A Step Above Gallery was DeNiro's next stop. No one there remembered an argument, but Lois Ross, the owner's wife, said she last saw Wishart on Friday afternoon, talking with a man outside the Provenance, a man dressed nicely but not in a suit. The sighting was either at one o'clock in the afternoon, when Ross was on her way to an appointment, or at four o'clock, when she was returning.

A woman named Margaret Pennington had gone into the Provenance around noon on the day of the murder to admire Linda Salomon's animal dolls. Wishart was very pleasant and introduced herself. No sign of trouble. She couldn't remember what Wishart was wearing. “I was looking at her red hair most of the time,” Pennington said.

DeNiro made a list of all of the callers on Joyce Wishart's caller ID, both home and at the gallery. One by one, he tracked them down, looking for suspects. He found the chapters of Joyce Wishart's life—old friends, neighbors, her dentist—but not a clue regarding her death.

On the victim's caller ID was Elaine Fox, who knew Wishart in Ohio, where they worked together at Chemlawn, and in Florida after both moved to Sarasota. Fox and her husband were the first to move south. Wishart came to visit, loved it, and she migrated as well. Fox told police that the last boyfriend of Wishart's she remembered was a guy from Denver. She didn't know his name, but she thought he worked for a government nonprofit group and had a daughter in St. Petersburg. Fox said she was under the impression that Wishart broke up with this man before she herself moved to Florida, maybe 1998. Fox said Wishart was the type of person who could make people angry, but not to the point of creating enemies. Wishart was kind of a “know-it-all,” Fox said, and could degrade people “without even knowing it.”