Authors: Linda Fairstein
What you know about serial killers couldn't fill a thimble,
Chapman." Dickie Draper had arrived twenty minutes later and joined
us in the conference room.
We'd been ordered to marshal all the case evidence for the
mayor's presentation. The long wooden table with elegantly carved
legs that had once been the centerpiece of Teddy Roosevelt's office
in his time as New York City's police commissioner was covered with
DD5s and crime scene photographs.
Scully and Peterson were scrambling to notify their borough
commanders. By 5:00 p.m., when the mayor would make his
announcement, he would have to be able to say that he had assembled
a task force to search for the killer. Officers would be pulled
from squads and foot patrol to give the community the illusion of
safety when the frenzy started
What I do know, Dickie, is that while you were daydreaming
about your next meal, Elise Huff's killer struck again."
“What can I say? The odds were against it.” The mustard from his
ham and provolone sandwich was smeared on Dickie's jowls.
“We're at three and counting. That's the FBI's magic number to
go serial.”
“Pulp fiction. A broad can't go to the supermarket or the
hairdresser without getting snatched by a lunatic if you're looking
for box office dollars or best sellers,” Dickie said, wiping his
chin with the back of his hand. “C'mon, can you name a serial
killer who's worked this city in the last five years?”
I couldn't think of a single one.
“Rapists, sure. Serial sex offenders, you probably have fifteen,
twenty patterns a year in Manhattan, just like we got. Queens and
the Bronx, too. I'm right about that, aren't I, Alex?”
“Yes.”
It was an indisputable fact. There was never a month when the
NYPD's Special Victims Units weren't looking for recidivist
rapists- usually several of them at any given time. There were a
hundred Floyd Warrens in this country for every serial killer, who
are far more common in the pages of crime novels than in real
life.
“What are we supposed to be doing here?” Dickie asked, walking
around the table to look at the exhibits that had been laid
out.
“Give the commissioner the answers to all the questions he'll be
asked by the reporters,” Mike said.
“What questions?”
“Do a full Battaglia,” I said. On dozens of occasions, I had
gone in with Mike and Mercer to brief the district attorney on
every aspect and detail of an investigation. Before I could pause
for breath, Paul Battaglia would cross-examine us about factors we
had never considered. “Think of all the questions the best
reporters will ask and arm him with the answers before he gets on
the platform.”
“Where and how have serial killers hit in this city before? Is
there anything useful in the facts of those cases to help us put
this one together?” Mercer asked. “Give Scully some ready answers.
Separate facts from fairy tales.”
Dickie grabbed the bag of chips and sat across from me. Mike's
chair was at the far end, and he leaned it back and put his feet up
on the table.
“Son of Sam,” Mike said. “In this town, it all starts with David
Berkowitz, 1976.”
“No disrespect to Ted Bundy,” Dickie said. “Ted just never got
to Gotham, but his numbers make Berkowitz look like a piker. He put
up some numbers, that Bundy kid.”
“We're not talking NFL stats,” Mike said. “Son of Sam.”
“Your father work the case?” Mercer asked.
“The great Joe Borelli ran the show. Sure, my dad and every cop
they could mobilize. One pathetic whack job and it took the
department more than a year and two hundred detectives to bring Son
of Sam down,” Mike said. “You taking notes, Coop? Operation Omega,
that's what they called it. Scully needs to give this task force a
name. Something strong. That always placates people.”
The Son of Sam story was a law enforcement legend. Berkowitz had
been a quiet misfit who stalked and shot his victims, some on city
streets and some in parked cars, killing six and wounding many
others. Most were young women, either alone or caught in
compromising positions on isolated lovers' lanes.
“Everybody knows the expression Son of Sam but I don't
remember much about him, other than photographs in the press,” I
said.
Like many cops, Mike and Dickie knew the details of department
cases as if they had worked the jobs themselves.
“Berkowitz had a neighbor with a black lab named Sam. Claimed it
was a devil dog, possessed by Satan. When Sam howled,” Mike said,
“it was a message to Berkowitz to go out and kill women. All a
bullshit story he admitted making up so he could use an insanity
defense if he got caught.”
“But they weren't sexual crimes, were they?” I asked. I didn't
think Berkowitz had ever molested the women he killed.
“He didn't rape them, if that's what you mean. He and Ted Bundy
were the first two serial killers ever interviewed by the FBI.
Berkowitz claimed he became aroused by the act of stalking women.
After he shot them, he'd often go back to the scene and masturbate.
Tried to find his victims' graves for the same reason. That's got
sexual sadist stamped all over it.”
Dysfunction was a problem for many assailants attempting to rape
or sodomize. If our killer hadn't consummated any sexual acts with
our victims, the lack of DNA might be explained by his physical
inability to complete the assault.
“Any other sexual history?”
“Best the shrinks could tell, Berkowitz had sex one time in his
life. Got a venereal disease from a prostitute his first time out,
when he was in the army.”
“He had a military record?” I recalled the letters he'd written
to the press, taunting them to capture him. Berkowitz had called
himself “Beelzebub, the chubby behemoth.”
“He didn't look the type.”
“Three years. Tell Scully to keep that in mind. That flabby
lunatic Berkowitz-nothing personal, Dickie-didn't fit the physical
stereotype. And yes, he learned all he needed to know about guns in
the army.”
“You believe in the MacDonald triad?” Dickie asked Mike.
“MacDonald-the researcher who says there are three traits that
are childhood predictors of a serial?”
“Pyromaniac, zoosadism, bedwetting beyond an appropriate
age.”
“Berkowitz set fires in the hood all the time when he was
growing up.” Mike and Dickie were in their own killer zone, trading
perpetrator pedigree information like most boys would banter
baseball batting averages. “Cruelty to animals? All his life. He
even shot Sam, the dog. And bedwetting? It's still a problem for
him in state prison. There's a helpful hint. Check Herb Ackerman,
Coop. Maybe that's what the diapers are about.”
“How'd they finally catch him, guys?” I asked. “That's the
detail we need.”
“Dumb luck. They had the task force working round the clock for
a year, going nowhere. Then the schmuck ends up getting a parking
ticket when he steps out of his car to murder somebody,” Mike said.
“Put a star next to that one. Our guy has to have a car or a van to
move these bodies. We need scrips of vehicles, checks of E-ZPass
before and after the girls were found in Queens and upstate, and
parking violations. Check it all out.”
“Give me another one, Chapman,” Dickie said. The crumbs from the
bag of chips were scattered on his tie and the shelf created by his
stomach when he sat. “Who else you got?”
“The Zodiac.”
“Very good, Mikey. Eddie Seda, 1989. I worked that one myself.
Seven years till we got the bastard.”
“I thought the Zodiac was a serial killer on the West Coast, in
the Bay Area,” I said.
“That's the original Zodiac,” Dickie said. “Never caught that
one. Brooklyn, we had the copycat. East New York, Highland Park.
Ambidextrous, he was.”
“Ambidextrous?”
“Whatever they call it. Killed men, killed women. I think he had
some sexual identity problems. Sent a letter to the cops with all
the zodiac symbols and a note-'Orion is the one who can stop
Zodiac.' Mailed it with one of those LOVE stamps. Then began
belting out bodies like clockwork. Libra, Taurus, Virgo, like
that.”
“Did you nail him, Dickie?”
“Eddie shot his sister in the ass with a zip gun 'cause he could
hear her making love in the next room. Dumb luck again. Precinct
guys show up at the house, take him in for questioning. While
they're talking to him about the domestic, his palm prints match up
to some of the case evidence. He killed more people than
Berkowitz,” Dickie said, licking the salt off his fingertips. “I
did Rifkin, too.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Joel Rifkin, 1989 to 1993. Another outer boroughs boy. Eighteen
murders. Picked up his girls in the city but dumped them out by us.
Hookers, mostly. Had sex with them, then strangled them to death.
This one's your classic-not guns like the other two. He was the Ted
Bundy kind-real hands-on stuff, strangulation, not shooting. And by
the way, always after he had sex with them.”
“There's the prostitute angle again,” Mercer said.
“That might work for Amber Bristol, but not for the others,”
Mike said. “Elise Huff and Connie Wade weren't pros.”
“Rifkin liked to snap their necks, those hookers,” Dickie said,
brushing the crumbs off his tie.
It was a sickening thought. “Why?”
Dickie looked at me as though I had two heads. “Why? I told you
why. He just liked doing it, I guess. Liked the noise it made. How
the hell do I know? He said he liked it.”
“Your squad make the arrest?” I asked.
“State troopers.”
“Now that's the last thing Scully wants to hear,” Mercer said.
“Troopers getting credit for the collar. The press'll jump all over
that one.”
“Once again, dumb luck. Routine traffic stop. Rifkin didn't have
a front plate on his van. Troopers chased him and he crashed into a
lamppost,” Dickie said, taking a swig of his soda. “There's your
sexual sadist, Alex. That's the kind of creep you're looking
for.”
“Kenneth Kimes. Sante Kimes,” Mike said, trying to play perp
catch-up with Dickie. “Manhattan, 1998.”
“Mother-son grifter team. Doesn't count, Mikey. Yeah, they
killed people from California to the Big Apple, but it was all
about larceny. They were poking each other, that sick broad and her
mama's boy. They weren't interested in sex with anybody else, just
each other. Like you can't count your mutt drug dealers and your
gang shoot-'em-ups. They're not serials. You got your
Malvo-Muhammad nuts, too. Beltway snipers. They're spree killers,
not serials. You got your mass murderers-”
“We're looking for a type like James Jones,” Mercer said. “I
worked that one.”
“Never heard of him. He make the papers? The news never got as
far as the BQE,” Dickie said, referring to the Brooklyn-Queens
Expressway. “How many'd he do?”
“Strangled five, but only two of them died. Nine-month rampage,
1995. They were all prostitutes, too.”
“There you go. That's why he didn't get any press attention. I'm
telling you, if this guy had just done your girl Amber, nobody
would have cared. It worked for Jack the Ripper. It doesn't work
anymore. They had that series of murders out near San Francisco,
remember? Cops closed them all with a code: NHI.”
The unsolved crimes had been back-burnered until a reporter
revealed that the letters stamped on the police files were
shorthand for No Human Involved. Serial killers who picked
underclass victims often got a pass when there was no one in the
community to pay much attention to their disappearance or ultimate
fate.
“Your man Jones,” Dickie asked, “he shoot 'em or what?”
“No, he used a rope.”
“See? Hands-on. Just like Rifkin and Bundy. The real deal-hard
to come by.”
“Picked them up, took them to cheap hotel rooms,” Mercer said,
looking over at me. “Bound and gagged them. I mean they let him do that to them. All of the survivors admitted it.
Told them he said he couldn't get off unless he did.”
“You're thinking maybe Amber allowed herself to be bound?” I
asked.
Mercer shrugged his shoulders. “Scully's got to consider
that.”
“Then he yoked the rope, this Jones guy?” Dickie asked, reaching
for another sandwich.
“Last thing he did was make them each point their toes. Like a
ballerina, he said. Made them point their toes, and then he killed
them.”
“Wasn't he the guy who worked at that lawyer's organization on
Forty-fourth Street?” Mike asked.
Mercer nodded. “Yeah, Jones was smart, with a good job,
actually. He was in charge of all the audiovisual programs for the
Association of the Bar.”
“Was there a task force?” Dickie asked.
Mercer smiled. “You know better. Not for those victims. Word was
out on the street, working girls looking out for each other, like
they usually do. They figured they'd find him before we would. One
of the surviving vics saw him a few months after she was attacked,
flagged down the RMP, and pointed him out to the two rookies in a
patrol car.”
“I'll be damned. Dumb luck again,” Dickie said.
I could remember only one serial sadistic sex murderer who had
been prosecuted since I joined the office more than a decade ago.
Both Mercer and Mike had been assigned to the investigation in its
later years, and I had gone to the courtroom often to watch two of
my colleagues-Rich Plansky and John Irwin-try the case.
“Arohn Kee,” I said.
“Worst case I ever worked,” Mercer said.
Kee's attacks began with the sexual assault and murder of a
thirteen-year-old girl in East Harlem in 1991. For the next eight
years, his own reign of terror in that neighborhood went unchecked,
and more than six other teenage girls were raped and attacked-some
strangled and stabbed to death, one burned beyond recognition on
the rooftop of her building-before he was identified and
charged.
“He killed kids?” Dickie asked. “All kids? How come that one
didn't make the news?”