Part 17 (1/2)

”Mike was everything I ever thought I could ever want,” she says. ”But two days after we got married he started physically abusing me. I didn't tell anyone for quite some time because I was so ashamed.”

In the eighteen months they were together, Joyce estimates that Mike physically abused her eight times or more. He never left marks, and never s.e.xually a.s.saulted her.

”He would terrorize me,” she says. ”Lock me in my room and not let me out. Pin me down. I remember one time he pinned me on the bed and held a pair of scissors over me like he was really going to stab me.”

Once at a movie, ”Somebody was killing somebody on the screen, and was putting his arm around the guy's neck. Mike looked at me and said, 'It only takes a second.' The way he said it just gave me the creeps.”

Overdrafts on her personal checking account soon began to appear. Joyce attributed them to confusion at the bank. Several months later, however, the manager of the bank where she kept her corporate account informed Mrs. Jones that Mike had kited seven thousand dollars' worth of checks on that account. Joyce paid the amount due, went home, and ordered her husband of six months out of the house.

Mike left, but was back shortly. ”He played on my sympathy,” says Joyce.

And her fortune.

Like many people who routinely receive credit card solicitations through the mail, Joyce dumped the unwanted offers in the trash. Mike would retrieve the applications, fill them out, and have the new plastic mailed to a post office box he maintained. Then he'd max out each card before moving on to a new one.

Roy in 1993-After sixteen years with the BSU, Hazelwood's casebook included more than 10,000 deviant a.s.saults, murders, and other crimes.

Roy Hazelwood From hot rods to the military police-Roy as a Texas teenager (above), a second lieutenant at Ft. Rucker in Alabama (below), and in Vietnam (right).

Roy Hazelwood The BSU in 1978-Front row: Roy is at far left, John Douglas at far right. Second row, far left, is Roger Depue. Next to him is d.i.c.k Ault. Third from left (partially hidden) is Bob Ressler.

FBI photo Harvey Glatman, the Lonely Hearts Killer-A prototypical modern s.e.xual criminal, Glatman in the 1960s was a dark mystery to Roy and everyone else in law enforcement.

UPI/Corbis-Bettmann Fear-Glatman's victims believed he was photographing them for detective magazine covers.

Pierce Brooks s.e.xual bondage-The Lonely Hearts Killer took painstaking care with his ropes and knots.

Pierce Brooks Death in the desert-After securing the women, Glatman strangled them. Later he led investigators to their bodies.

Pierce Brooks Macabre victims-Roy's study of aberrant behavior began with a fellows.h.i.+p to the Armed Forces Inst.i.tute of Pathology. The cutting and stabbing syllabus he wrote there included this bizarre suicide by ballpoint pen.

Roy Hazelwood Dangerous solo s.e.x-Roy's first project at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit was his unique, comprehensive study of autoerotic fatalities.

Roy Hazelwood Jon Barry Simonis in custody-Roy and fellow profiler Ken Lanning spent nine hours debriefing the Ski Mask Rapist inside Louisiana's Angola Prison.

UPI/Corbis-Bettmann Nikia Gilbreath-Her murder stumped investigators for nearly four months.

John C. Ba.s.s A close-knit family-Nikia with her father and walking her daughter, Amber, with her mother-in-law.

John c. Ba.s.s The d.a.m.ning evidence-Investigators discovered approximately $3,000 worth of plastic-bagged lingerie inside Ray Ward's partially built house, as well as part of Nikia's swimming suit and the Gilbreaths' missing comforter.

John C. Ba.s.s Bob Rhoades as a s.e.x slave-A cla.s.s s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t, Rhoades tried gradually to destroy Debra Davis.

Debra Davis Debra Davis then and now-”Roy gave me the courage to take control of my life,” she says.

Karla h.o.m.olka-Although she was implicated in Paul Bernardo's murders and s.e.xual a.s.saults, the Canadian authorities agreed with Roy that Karla was a victim, too. Her dark ”racc.o.o.n eyes” were caused by Bernardo's blows to her head.

About a year into their marriage, Joyce went searching in the bas.e.m.e.nt for some old tax return doc.u.ments. As she worked her way through the acc.u.mulated papers, she discovered that Mike had filed for unemployment benefits the month they were married, and also had filled out a bogus automobile accident report.

Now genuinely alarmed, she hired two private investigators to look into her husband's past. They found that Mike had not gone to college. The security clearance was a fake. He'd operated at various times under two or three Social Security numbers, and four different birthdays. Mike's mother later told Joyce that her son's military experience was confined to the National Guard.

The PIs also turned up Mike's rap sheet. It went back more than a decade, and included guilty pleas for forgery, receiving stolen property, theft of services, and theft by deception. Mike had done two years in prison.

Frightened and confused, Joyce tried not to betray what she'd learned as she considered what to do about it. However, Mike must have sensed something.

On a vacation cruise some weeks later, he got drunk and began slamming her against their cabin wall.

He told Joyce that with a phone call he could empty her house of its possessions that night. Then, coldly, he added: ”I will destroy you, starting with your family. Nothing will happen to you because I want you to stand by and watch.”

She was resolved to file for divorce the next morning, but delayed doing so in order to attend, with Jones, a religious pageant that her brother had organized.

Mike capitalized on the moment. ”G.o.d spoke to me here like he never has before,” Mike told Joyce. ”I'm going to change.”

He didn't.

Over the holidays he was arrested on a drunk driving charge. Back home, he a.s.saulted Joyce, tearing her sweats.h.i.+rt in the process. She filed a report with the police that night, and Jones was taken off to jail.

Joyce finally filed for divorce in the spring. She last saw her husband when he came by to pick up some tools. Her Dad died in early June.

McIntyre's family soon discerned that, despite a.s.surances to the contrary, the authorities dismissed out of hand their murder theory of the case.

The first autopsy seemed to confirm the official point of view. The local medical examiner, a forensic pathologist, discovered minor abrasions on the backs of both Andrew McIntyre's hands, as well as small bruises on his right shoulder and upper right arm.

While the marks could have been defensive injuries, the ME found the weight of the forensic evidence-including ligature abrasions on the victim's neck-was consistent with suicide.

McIntyre's children paid for a second autopsy, also conducted by a forensic pathologist, who was less dismissive of their father's unexplained injuries.

”I fully agree with you,” the doctor wrote Joyce, ”that there are many troubling factors concerning your father's death which could lead an objective observer to question if he died as a result of suicide.”

Neither autopsy addressed the victim's time of death. However, McIntyre's bedside medicine dispenser had a single tablet left in it, a pill he was to have taken at 9:00 p.m. Since he definitely was still alive at about 8:00 p.m. (when he made his strange telephone call to Mabel Lowe), whatever impulse or incident had led to his death apparently occurred between 8:00 and 9:00.

Two months after his death, one of his granddaughters. .h.i.t on an idea. She lived in eastern Virginia with her husband, and was aware via the local media that Roy Hazelwood, late of the FBI, also resided in the area. In fact, her family and the Hazelwoods attended the same church.

One Sunday in August 1996, she approached Roy after services and explained the McIntyre family's dilemma.

Would he review her grandfather's death?

Roy said he would look into it.

A couple of weeks later, Carla came to Virginia and laid out for Roy everything the McIntyres knew. Unable to resist such a mystery, Hazelwood agreed to undertake an equivocal death a.n.a.lysis for the family, cost-free.

After conducting his survey and reviewing all available investigative records-the local police gave Hazelwood a one-page single-s.p.a.ced ”Incident Data Sheet,” but the medical examiner refused to share Andrew McIntyre's autopsy photos-Roy constructed two detailed lists, one of factors consistent with suicide, and another of factors consistent with homicide.

Those elements that supported a conclusion of suicide included first of all the manner of death. ”Hanging,” Roy wrote, ”is a highly lethal and frequently observed means of suicide.”

There was also no evidence of a struggle anywhere in the house or garage, nor were there any scratch marks on McIntyre's neck to indicate he had resisted the noose. Roy also agreed with the police that the tidiness with which his shoes (and gla.s.ses) had been placed by the box in the garage was consistent with suicide.

There was no evidence McIntyre had been bound, drugged, or incapacitated in any way, and there was no evidence of an a.s.sociated crime, such as robbery or burglary.