Part 11 (2/2)

”Because my brother may have done it.”

The woman explained how her family had lived near Chloe's house in Eastern Canada. Her brother, Antoine,* had startled her after the murder, she said, by confiding that Chloe was his girlfriend, when she knew that to be untrue. After the murder, he had begun constantly bathing and was.h.i.+ng himself. She had been further troubled by Antoine's obsessive interest in the crime's aftermath. He carried around a photo of Chloe in a notebook he filled with newspaper clippings about the case.

All of this had come back to her twenty years later, she went on, because Antoine, who still lived with her, seemed to be repeating the same behavior. He was fixated on a restaurant waitress, although he hardly knew her.

Once the broad outlines of her story checked out, and the Hazelwood-Douglas profile was consulted, the Mounties reexamined their physical evidence. Looking closely at the wrapped rifle stock, preserved in an evidence locker for two decades, they discovered a human hair-Chloe's-wedged in its splinters.

Then the Canadian authorities looked at the photos they'd taken of Chloe's funeral. Sure enough, Antoine appeared in one picture, leaning against a telephone pole across the street, looking on intently.

The Mounties subsequently informed Roy that Antoine was tried and convicted for the double murders.

At about the same time they were working the Canadian double homicide, Hazelwood and Douglas also were a.s.signed a serial prost.i.tute murder case with its own unique twist: For a while, it appeared that the two profilers inadvertently had shared their special expertise with the killer himself.

The bodies of five prost.i.tutes-all strangled to death with ligatures-had been discovered, one by one, dumped in remote spots progressively closer to a military base in a large western state. In each murder, a souvenir was taken, a watch or a piece of jewelry.

There had been no witnesses and no useful physical evidence left behind. The victims apparently had not struggled. This killer was careful and patient-organized.

The homicide detective in charge of the investigation-who in twenty years had never failed to solve a killing-was sent to Quantico to work directly with Hazelwood and Douglas on the case.

His ident.i.ty and certain facts of the investigation must be kept a secret. The investigator has never been told that for a while his own department suspected he was the killer they were looking for.

”We spent three days with him,” says Roy, ”and we went over the cases in great detail. I remember it was our belief the killer was someone at the military installation. Because the bodies were found out in the wilderness, we a.s.sumed he was familiar with the terrain and comfortable in it.

”We surmised that he was an outdoorsman, and we believed he was a noncommissioned officer. It seemed to us that an enlisted man probably would have been too young to commit such mature murders.

”Beside the profile, we told the detective what the UNSUB's postoffense behavior likely would be. We also offered some proactive techniques, investigative suggestions, and interview suggestions should they develop a suspect.”

During the intense three days in Virginia, word came back to the investigation that two more bodies had been found. ”He was just devastated,” Hazelwood recollects.

”Then the guy went home and the murders stopped. He called us for more ideas. We told him that maybe the killer had left town, and suggested he check transfers from the base.”

About six months later, an emergency call came down to the BSU from FBI headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. Director William Webster had been contacted directly by the detective's superior with deeply disturbing news.

The investigator's girlfriend had turned him in as a suspect in the killings.

The woman related how she'd seen a box of women's watches and jewelry among his possessions. On nights that the victims had disappeared, she said, he'd been hyper, couldn't sleep, demanded s.e.x. She recalled driving out into the woods with him, where he'd point out sinkholes, and remark how ideal they were for secreting bodies.

There were some other oddities as well. Hazelwood and Douglas had told the detective that his killer probably hung out in bars near his victim disposal sites. But they hadn't predicted how strange his behavior would become.

”One day,” says Hazelwood, ”he recovers the body of a teenage girl whose parents lived on the base. He puts her body in the trunk of his car, and drives to this bar. He forces everybody inside to come out and look at the body in his trunk. Then he drives to her parents' house, brings them out to his trunk, and asks them if that is their daughter.”

Director Webster ordered that Hazelwood and Douglas fly at once to consult with the suspect officer's superiors.

”Oh my G.o.d, we've given the store away,” Hazelwood said to Douglas on the plane. ”He knows everything we think!”

The profiling partners then pondered the situation for a moment. ”Of course, this is going to be extremely interesting,” Douglas then added hopefully.

”Yeah!” Hazelwood agreed, also looking for some positive spin on a grim dilemma. ”And from a teaching standpoint, the story is great. We're always talking about how killers inject themselves in the investigation. Well, here's an example!”

The jollity ceased when Hazelwood and Douglas reached the local FBI office.

”The only two people there who knew why we'd come were the SAC and the a.s.sistant SAC,” says Hazelwood. ”Everybody else in the office was hinky. They thought one of them might be in trouble, and here were two mindzappers from Quantico coming in to tell management how to screw with the guy's mind.”

Working in secrecy, Hazelwood and Douglas reviewed every shred of available evidence. ”We spent days going over his personnel file and everything else known about the man,” says Hazelwood. ”There was nothing that remotely suggested a propensity toward violence, temper, authoritativeness, or abuse of his position. We even interviewed his ex-wife. 'He is not a violent person,' she told us.”

The fact that the detective's girlfriend had no concrete evidence to offer against the accused also had important weight in their deliberations.

”We thought he'd shared the facts of the case with her, but that she hadn't actually seen anything,” says Hazelwood. ”We felt she was repeating what he had described. And we also guessed she was angry at him because he'd broken up with her and she was trying to get even. That turned out to be the case.”

And the macabre scene with the dead girl in his trunk? ”We believed he was exhibiting signs of stress. We thought he was close to a nervous breakdown, caused by his inability to solve this string of killings.”

At Hazelwood's and Douglas's suggestion, the detective's girlfriend was approached in a low-key, nonthreatening manner.

”We suggested they bring up that there was nothing to corroborate her story, but not to make her suspect that they didn't believe her over their fellow officer.

”We felt they should say something like, 'We certainly appreciate your bringing this to our attention. We have put a lot of man-hours into this case. So far, we've simply found nothing. Can you give us anything to corroborate what you say?'

”The rest of the advice was to tell her how the thing was escalating, that there was going to be a major political impact. We felt she needed to see how the case was going well beyond her specific problem with him.”

The detective's girlfriend at last conceded she'd fabricated the story, putting the investigation back where it started.

Soon thereafter, however, another woman came forward to report her suspicions of her boyfriend. This time the doubt and worries proved well founded.

As the profile had predicted, the suspect was an NCO and avid outdoorsman. According to his companion, before his recent transfer to another post, he used to take her on frequent camping trips. While they were out alone together in the woods, she said, he'd disappear for hours. On these occasions, she sometimes would catch him hiding off in the distance, pointing his crossbow at her.

She also enjoyed sunbathing in the nude, the woman continued, but she did not enjoy it when he sneaked around with his camera, clicking pictures of her.

When authorities checked to see when her friend had been transferred, they discovered the date coincided with the last known prost.i.tute murder in the series.

Again, Hazelwood and Douglas offered interview tips to the investigators. One of the most important suggestions, the profilers stressed, was to confront the suspect when he was out of uniform.

This type of offender, Hazelwood and Douglas said, closely identified himself with the military. In uniform, he'd be self-a.s.sured. In mufti, he'd be far more vulnerable.

So the investigators in fact did wait for a Sunday, when they found their suspect in his civvies. Under questioning, in his walking shorts, he confessed to the killings.

12.

”My intentions Were to Inflict Fear”

Intimate as a profiler becomes with an offender in the process of studying his crimes, the relations.h.i.+p between BSU agent and UNSUB usually is remote and short-lived.

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