Part 12 (1/2)

Hazelwood was the first profiler to routinely bridge that distance by conducting a series of research projects on violent s.e.xual criminals.

The first of these encounters was with Jon Barry Simonis, the Ski Mask Rapist, who would prove as challenging, and enlightening, as any offender Roy has ever interviewed.*

Hazelwood entered the case in 1980, when he received a request for a.s.sistance from the police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

For the past year, Baton Rouge and jurisdictions in many other states had shared a common problem, a particularly vicious traveling s.e.xual criminal and thief known as the Ski Mask Rapist.

A white male, about six feet two inches tall, with a slender frame and dark hair, the Ski Mask Rapist targeted residences exclusively. He habitually entered a house between dusk and 1:00 a.m., gaining access through open or unlocked doors and windows.

He usually was armed with a gun or a knife. In his later attacks, he occasionally carried both. He sometimes struck when victims already were home. Other times he waited in their darkened houses for them to return.

After gaining their attention with his weapon, he would rea.s.sure his victims that no one would get hurt. Once they were bound, however, he s.e.xually a.s.saulted the women. He commonly committed these attacks in full view of their husbands, fathers, brothers, or boyfriends, a key behavioral clue in Roy's subsequent profile.

Afterward, he usually robbed the household, and he frequently fled in the victim's car, which he ditched many blocks away.

Roy agreed to prepare a profile, and asked the police for official reports and victim statements from five of the Ski Mask Rapist's earliest known cases, plus five cases from the middle of his criminal career, as well as five of his latest offenses.

In this way, Hazelwood hoped both to produce a behavioral portrait of the UNSUB and possibly to predict his future patterns.

Roy noted among the early a.s.saults that the rapist used a screwdriver or some similar tool to enter his victim's residence. He'd capture her, bind her with her own articles of clothing, and s.e.xually a.s.sault her. But he did not subject his early victims to any added, gratuitous, physical a.s.sault. He stole mostly home appliances: stereos, microwaves, and televisions-all easy items to p.a.w.n.

In the middle group of crimes, the Ski Mask Rapist began bringing his own handcuffs with him (a sign to Hazelwood that this criminal was capable of learning and improving his MO) and began to physically a.s.sault his victims. He demanded a.n.a.l s.e.x and forced women to f.e.l.l.a.t.e him. He punched the women, often in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The level of violence applied by a s.e.x offender is part of his ritual, not his MO.

”How much physical force a rapist uses against his victim is a matter of satisfying himself, not simply to overcome her resistance,” Hazelwood explains.

The Ski Mask Rapist therefore seemed to Roy to be evolving from a power a.s.sertive rapist, who applies moderate force or coercion, toward s.e.xual sadism. His psychos.e.xual needs were changing. A whole new criminal character was emerging.

In one case, he forced a woman to f.e.l.l.a.t.e her date, and then to f.e.l.l.a.t.e him, while her date watched.

In another, he surprised a thirteen-year-old baby-sitter, whom he forced to perform oral s.e.x.

Afterward, when she warned him that he better run because he was in a police officer's home, the Ski Mask Rapist seemed delighted. ”No s.h.i.+t?” he said. ”What time does he get home? I'll wait for him.”

When the officer and his wife did return, the intruder forced them to handcuff one another. Then he v.a.g.i.n.ally raped the woman.

”Are you all right?” her husband asked her at one point.

”Yes, he's being a gentleman,” his wife replied.

At that, the Ski Mask Rapist grew enraged and began brutally pummeling the woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. So serious were her injuries that a double mastectomy later was necessary.

Roy recognized that the UNSUB was highly macho. Hazelwood based this conclusion on the offender's deliberate habit of committing his s.e.xual a.s.saults in front of his victims' male companions.

”That told me he was extremely confident,” Roy says. ”He was not at all threatened by the male's presence. In fact, he wanted to humiliate him. That is an unambiguous expression of macho. He thinks of himself as macho, and he projects a macho image.”

Roy enumerated several corollaries to that core judgment.

The Ski Mask Rapist probably consumed alcohol and/or used marijuana, Hazelwood said, because in the rapist's perception that is what real men did. Likewise, he would be athletic, a sports partic.i.p.ant as well as a spectator, who took care of his body, worked out, and exercised a good deal. Appearance meant a lot to him. He liked to show off his muscles.

Roy speculated that the rapist had served in the military and had chosen the ground forces-the army or marines-because to him those were the most manly services to join. His car would be a reflection of that macho image, too: a fast, flashy vehicle. The Ski Mask Rapist would not drive a sensible four-door sedan.

Roy profiled the UNSUB in his late twenties or early thirties, roughly the same age range as his victims. ”Based on my research, I know that rape is basically a young man's crime,” says Hazelwood. ”He would a.s.sault females who were about his own age. Also, macho offenders do not rape preteens or old people.”

The Ski Mask Rapist was single and never married, Roy believed, for the same reasons. Loving and being true to one woman did not suit his self-image. Marriage was for suckers.

His demonstrated ability to learn indicated he was of at least average intelligence. Based on the BSU's familiarity with other offenders who fit this profile, Hazelwood further believed the rapist's education or training extended beyond high school, possibly including college. He either was currently employed in a job requiring some sort of special skill, Roy thought, or once had worked in such a position.

Although never married, the Ski Mask Rapist had ongoing consenting relations.h.i.+ps with various women, again a conclusion based on BSU research, but he would never be faithful to any of them.

Roy's final conclusion was in fact an admonition. The Ski Mask Rapist was growing ever more violent. Hazelwood predicted that unless he was caught, he seemed likely someday to cross the threshold and become the Ski Mask Killer.

On the night of October 29, 1981-approximately one year after Roy submitted his UNSUB profile-a policeman in Gonzales, southeast of Baton Rouge, noticed a bright red Pontiac Trans Am parked alone in a city lot. The vehicle struck the cop as suspicious, out of place in the neighborhood.

That same night, a ski-masked gunman surprised three women, recently returned from shopping together, in a Gonzales residence. He bound all three, plus one woman's husband, with ligatures he'd brought with him. Then he robbed the females of their jewelry, raped all three of them, and departed in one of the victims' cars.

The Gonzales police officer learned of the a.s.saults over his car radio. On a hunch, he returned to where he'd seen the red Pontiac. It was gone. But parked near where the Trans Am had been was the rape victim's missing car. On the ground nearby, police also found a pair of men's gloves similar in description to those worn by the rapist that night.

Members of the multijurisdictional Ski Mask Rapist Task Force, only recently formed, immediately were told of the incident in Gonzales. Several reported back that a distinctive red Trans Am also had been seen in their communities prior to a.s.saults believed committed by the Ski Mask Rapist.

A regional BOLO (be on the lookout) bulletin was issued for the car.

Weeks pa.s.sed. Then on the Monday before Thanksgiving, off-duty Louisiana state trooper Herman Rogers saw a bright red Trans Am in Lake Charles, near the Texas border, and jotted down its license number.

The owner turned out to be thirty-one-year-old Barry Simonis, a former all-state high school quarterback, army veteran, and onetime hospital cardiovascular technician.

Hazelwood's profile had been dead on.

After identifying Simonis, the police surveilled him for nearly a week, keeping the suspected Ski Mask Rapist in their sights while investigators all over the Southeast and Southwest worked to see if they could connect him with their known cases.

”He loved to drive,” state police lieutenant Butch Milan told a reporter. ”He would drive right by us and never look at us. He just wandered aimlessly.”

As Simonis enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at his mother's house, the investigators made do on 7-Eleven fare.

When they finally had their affidavits and arrest warrants in order, they tailed him to a Lake Charles convenience store and grabbed him as he walked out.

Simonis was barefoot as he stepped from the store, carrying a loaf of bread and two packs of cigarettes.

”State police,” Butch Milan said as he approached the suspect. ”You're under arrest. Are you armed?”

Simonis was not.

The capture received wide press attention-Barry Simonis confessed to rapes and burglaries from coast to coast. Roy learned of it back at Quantico, and was gratified to see that his profile had been so accurate. Hazelwood decided he wanted to talk to Jon Barry Simonis should the opportunity arise.

It did, almost three years later.

On a humid summer day in 1984, Simonis welcomed Hazelwood and Ken Lanning to his permanent address, the Louisiana State Prison at Angola. The penitentiary is set down in remote and forbidding backwaters along the Mississippi River, where the lower portion of the state of Mississippi juts westward into Louisiana like Homer Simpson's upper lip. Angola itself is too small to warrant its own dot on most atlases.

Swamps surround the facility, where consensus wisdom has it that if would-be escapees from the prison are not shot, the snakes or the alligators will get them.