The blade glinted in the air. Rainey tried to scream and tore at the bindings, ripping skin as the rope dug deeper into her wrists. The small part of Rainey’s brain that was conscious and horrified by what it saw began to beg.
Please God, start the siren.
Rainey’s silent prayer was answered with the sweet sound of a distant whine blaring from a patrol car in route to save the day. It was an accident, a mistake that saved her life. The orders were to approach in silence. A rookie cop hit his siren and charged toward the scene before someone told him to turn it off. Mercifully, it sang out just long enough to warn her attacker.
The dream resumed its chilling retelling of the night JW Wilson nearly killed her. Katie’s body disappeared. Rainey once again inhabited her private hell alone with JW, who bolted from the bed and scampered out of the room. Now came the moment when he paused at the door and looked back over his shoulder. Rainey could see his mouth move, but she could never make out what he said—until now.
She could only imagine he believed she wouldn’t survive the overdose of narcotics he’d given her, or at least the amnesia-inducing effects would block her memories. Rainey didn’t remember, but her subconscious had witnessed the entire attack and kept a record. It had been a long reveal, one painful disclosure at a time, but Rainey had now seen it all. Her mind finally played the last moments on the memory reel.
JW looked down at her. “I should have done that years ago.”
The next and last second of the movie played in slow motion. It was the first time it had ever advanced this far. Rainey watched in disbelief.
Oh, my God!
“Rainey, wake up. Rainey! Wake the hell up!”
Rainey’s eyes flew open. Katie was standing by the bed, cautiously hitting her with one of the decorator pillows from the chaise lounge by the window.
“Wake the hell—oh, there you are. Wow,” Katie said, “that was a bad one. Sorry, I had to hit you. You were losing it. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Rainey sat up. “I’m sorry, honey. I wasn’t loud, was I? I didn’t wake the kids, did I?”
“No,” Katie said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “It was one of those where you’re trying to talk, but it’s all garbled in your throat. Are you okay, now? Did Freddie hurt you? He was biting your wrist.”
Rainey blinked her eyes a few times and looked down at the tiny feline bite marks on her left wrist. She sighed deeply and then wrapped her arms around her wife. She buried her face in Katie’s hair and whispered into her neck, “No, honey, I’m not. I need to call Danny. I need help.”
6:30 AM, Sunday, December 14, 2014
Residence of Glena Sweet
Madras Lane, Orange County, NC
“The pace of his escalating violence is nearly unprecedented. I’ve not personally dealt with an offender like this,” Rainey said, as she removed latex gloves from her hands, “but I’ve read about them, studied them. This is going to end very badly for a lot more women if he isn’t stopped. He’s just reaching his full potential.”
Detective Sheila Robertson followed Rainey down the front steps of the two-story colonial revival home, after examining another in a series of crime scenes in perfectly manicured suburban neighborhoods.
“She should have been safe here,” Sheila commented aloud what she was thinking.
“No one is safe, not from a predator like this. I would bring the BAU in if it were up to me.”
Sheila, while crossing her arms in a defensive posture, responded, “That call is above either of our pay grades. The BAU is aware of the case and has thus far agreed with everything you’ve said. The task force saw no need to request BAU presence on the case just to reassure you that you are correct in your analysis. We are doing exactly what should be done.”
“And yet, here we are on a Sunday morning, attending to another woman’s broken life. Maybe I’ve missed something. More eyes and ears would be better.”
Sheila dropped her crossed arms and led Rainey a bit further away from the law enforcement personnel swarming the scene and the gathering nosey neighbors. Once a safe distance from prying ears, she began to chastise Rainey for the display of insecurity.
“Self-doubt is not attractive on you, so don’t start wearing a hair shirt yet. I don’t think you’ve missed anything. The departments have all consulted their individual experts. There have been a ton of eyes on this material. They all say the same thing. He’s escalating and we need to catch him, but no one seems to know how to do that.”
Sheila paused to gain control of surfacing emotions. Rainey knew it for what it was. Seeing the depths of human depravity took its toll. The stress of being unable to solve a case could break the most seasoned of investigators, catching them unaware. Rainey was well aware of the pressure they were both under to solve this case. She waited for the deep breath Sheila needed to take hold. Once accomplished, Detective Robertson was ready to go back to work.
“So, our eyes and ears are going to have to be enough at the moment. Now, what went on in this house? That woman took one hell of a beating. From the looks of things, she fought hard for her life. Professor Sweet is lucky to be alive.”
“Have you spoken to her?” Rainey asked.
“I stopped by the emergency room, but she’s too injured to interview right now. They have to wire her jaw back together first.”
“Did you see her or has anyone noted her injuries for you?”
Sheila pulled out her phone and opened the photo file, before handing it to Rainey.
“I took a few pictures in the exam room. The sexual assault nurse examiner will be more thorough.”
Rainey used her fingers on the phone screen to manipulate the pictures until she was satisfied she’d seen enough.
“The pictures don’t show it, but the doctor said the sexual assault was violent. She’ll need some reparative surgery for those injuries,” Sheila said in disgust.
Rainey returned the borrowed phone, saying, “He completed his transformation from power reassurance rapist to sadist pretty quickly. The first one, the assault on Mary Tweedy showed inexperience with a live victim. He surprised her in her sleep and overpowered her almost immediately using only his size and strength. He hit her only once with his fist to quiet her. She stopped resisting. He showed concern for her comfort, tried to initiate personal conversations, and reassured her that she was pretty. He promised not to penetrate her, and he didn’t, although he did please himself in other ways. He was not brutal, but he paralyzed her with fear so severely, she waited to call the police for a half an hour, as he had instructed.”
“The second assault victim, Arianna Wilde—,” Sheila began.
Rainey interrupted, “How’s she doing, by the way?”
“She got her stitches out, put the farm up for sale, and bought a ticket to ‘someplace warmer.’ She left her ex-husband’s phone number for contact information and said to call only if we caught the son of a bitch.”
“I can’t much blame her,” Rainey commented. “She had a security system, just like the professor here, and he still got in. How safe could she ever feel in that house? The lingering effects of trauma cling to things and places as well as people. Recovery is different for every victim, if it happens at all.”
Sheila turned her head to look at Rainey, a questioning look on her face, but she only said, “I hope she finds some peace.”
Rainey agreed, “Me too,” before continuing the analysis. “He blitz-attacked Arianna. Hit her with a flashlight while she slept. That’s immediate application of excessive force. Although his first assault had all the elements of a power reassurance rapist, there were anger indicators— the binding, the picture taking, the degrading posing. Mary Tweedy described his repeated ramping up of her fear only to return to casual conversation about the Halloween decorations in her yard. It’s all about controlling her fear, when she shows it and how much. The anger behaviors indicated evolution to a truer sadistic nature was inevitable.”
“With Arianna,” Sheila began, “he followed the blitz attack with forcefully binding her while she was still dazed. He cut her tee shirt and panties off with a knife. He teased it across her skin and slapped her when she screamed. He had no inflection during the assaults, she said. He calmly told her what to do and when to do it. But then he would speak to her as if they were old friends. That ‘I love what you’ve done with the place,’ line, was just creepy as hell.”
“That was the sadist assuming his role as the torturer, whether in person or within the victim’s mind. Mary Tweedy will never decorate for Halloween again. Arianna is selling the family home where she always dreamed she’d grow old. It’s taunting with residual effects. He wants them to know he was watching and they never knew.
He plants the seed of doubt. The one that whispers, “You will never be safe again. I will be watching.” Then he sits back and lets it take root. With or without return visits to his victims, he knows the mental terror he inflicted will stay with them long after he has gone. Again, that’s about control and fear. Remember how Arianna said when she went limp, focused her mind elsewhere, he stopped raping her and put the knife to her throat again. He needed her terrified to complete his fantasy. That’s the sadist too.”
Sheila paced the ground in front of Rainey while the crowd of neighbors grew outside the crime scene tape. She stopped to ask a question.
“But, remember, Arianna said when she fought him again, after the attack had been going on for some time, he hit her with the flashlight, knocked her out, and she awoke to him raping her again. She wasn’t showing terror then. What does that tell you?”
“When she just checked out, she was ignoring him. That was unacceptable. An incapacitated victim, that’s a whole other ballgame. Unconscious victims can represent to the offender the complete domination and subjugation, particularly one wrapped in sexual bindings unnecessary to prevent escape. It’s part of his visual fantasy of the perfect victim. This guy is finding his sadist groove.”
“So, what looks like Glena Sweet fighting for her life is him ramping up the violence.”
Rainey nodded her head in agreement. “That’s my assessment. I’d say with her slight stature and what the other two victims have said, he easily could have overpowered her and prevented much of the struggle. Look how this house sits further back in the woods than the others. At the end of the cul-de-sac and with this much spacing between houses, no one would have noticed her screams before he gagged her. That’s another change to his methods with this one. He did not wait for her to go to sleep. He was probably in the house when she came home. For the first time, his victim saw him coming. He took her while the neighbors’ houses were filled with the noise of family activities.”
“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Sheila said, shaking her head. “Why come when she’s still awake? Why change what has been working?”
“He’s hunting the rush. This behavior is more psychologically motivated than practical, making it part of his signature. Standing over them while they slept was thrilling. Seeing her fear when he surprised her in the basement laundry, that was orgasmic to this guy. He enjoyed the fight inside this house. The blood evidence shows he pummeled her repeatedly as he drove her up to the second-floor bedroom. I’m not so sure he meant to leave her alive. Her binding bruises looked the same as the others, but she’s the first with finger marks on her throat. He probably tried manually strangling her and thought she was dead. It takes a long time to strangle someone to death with just your hands, about three minutes.”
Sheila interjected, “So, maybe he doesn’t know how to take a pulse. That rules out medical personnel.”
“More than likely he blew his wad and lost his composure. This is just a guess, and I’ll be interested to know what Professor Sweet has to say, but I’d be willing to bet he was assaulting her while attempting to squeeze the life out of her. He was seeking the ultimate act of domination, made even more sexually satisfying because of the death struggle of his victim. His timing was off on his first attempt, but he learned something.”
Rainey looked back at the second story window where Glena Sweet fought for her life.
“He didn’t kill this one, but he’ll kill the next one and he’ll do it soon. He’ll bring something else to strangle her with, extra rope, a garrote, something to give him more control and leverage. He’s an emerging sexual sadist serial killer. And we have a front row seat to his edification.”
#
Monday, December 15, 2014
Press Release
Durham County Sheriff’s Office
The Durham County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division and a Multi-Jurisdictional Task Force involving Wake, Chatham, Durham and Orange Counties are investigating a series of burglaries and sexual assaults, the majority of which have occurred within three miles on either side of a section of Highway 751 running south from I-40 in Durham County to the spillway bridge at Jordan Lake in Chatham County. These attacks appear to be connected to a series of voyeur reports and fetish thefts occurring in this area, as well as burglaries and a sexual assault that occurred in lower Chatham County, near Brickhaven. These crimes span from a burglary on September 2, 2013 to a violent sexual assault on December 13, 2014.
Early in the investigation, the majority of these crimes occurred inside single-family homes while the residents were away. Articles of clothing belonging to the female residents were taken. The suspect then began entering the homes of women living alone, while the women were at home and without their knowledge. On October 24, November 22, and December 13, 2014 the suspect escalated to violent sexual assault. In each of the assault cases, the female victim lived alone. The suspect enters through locked or unlocked doors and windows and has used a device to disrupt wireless security systems in some cases.
The suspect is described as a white male, 35-45 years old, 6’ to 6’3”, well spoken, extremely strong, and physically fit. He may be an avid photographer. He is probably a runner and uses the greenways and running trails in the area for access to the crime scenes.