Michael Capuzzo - The Murder Room - The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases

Ware said brusquely, from his elevated pose: “Well, you’ve asked for this meeting. What do you want?”

Walter snapped back, “We want charges filed against Leisha Hamilton and Tim Smith in the murder of Scott Dunn.”

The DA scoffed. His voice filled with condescension, as if addressing schoolchildren, he said, “You don’t have a murder charge. All you have is a missing person. You don’t even have a body. Without a body you don’t have a murder. Come back to me when you have a body.”

The profiler removed his horn-rims and glared. “If you want a goddamned body, I’ll give you one. It’s right here, in Dr. Shepherd’s report.” His face flushed with color, Walter stood and dropped on the desk a slim blue-bound report titled “Forensic Pathology and Analysis of the Crime Scene in the Murder of Roger Scott Dunn.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s right here,” Walter said. “Dr. Shepherd’s report proves conclusively that Scott Dunn died in that room, and was murdered.”

Walter had asked Detective English to have a forensic pathologist examine the crime scene to determine if enough blood had been spilled to indisputably have caused the death of a six-foot-two, 170-pound man. Dr. Sparks Veasey, the Lubbock County pathologist, had refused the job, saying there wasn’t enough information to reach a conclusion. At Walter’s direction English had mailed a large package with copies of the entire case file, photographs, and bloody carpet samples to Walter’s friend Dr. Richard Shepherd, forensic pathologist at Guy’s Hospital, London, England, internationally known consultant to Scotland Yard. “Dick’s brilliance is unsurpassed,” Walter said. “And he owes me a favor.”

After studying the sprayed blood on the south and east walls, ceiling and doorknob of the bedroom, Dr. Shepherd wrote that the “by far most likely cause” of the blood spatter was “repeated blunt trauma.” Furthermore, “The distribution of the spraying of blood is entirely consistent with the victim lying on the floor while the blows that resulted in this spraying were struck.” Although the amount of blood lost was impossible to calculate, the blood spatter indicated Scott Dunn was forcefully and repeatedly bludgeoned about the head and such blows to the brain were “the prime cause of death in such cases.”

As DNA testing indicated the bloodstains were 958,680 times more likely to originate from the offspring of James Dunn than from anyone else on Earth, Dr. Shepherd concluded that bloodstains in the room:

“(1) have not resulted from a natural disease process; (2) are entirely consistent with the infliction of multiple blows from a blunt instrument or instruments; (3) are entirely consistent with those blows being delivered with a force of sufficient strength to cause death; (4) that a child of James Dunn has suffered severe multiple blunt trauma injuries while in the corner of the south and east aspects of this room, and these injuries resulted in the death of that individual.”

The report was signed: “Richard Thorley Shepherd, B.S.C., M.B., B.S., M.R.C.C. PATH, D.M.J., senior lecturer and honorary consultant in forensic medicine. United Medical Schools of Guy’s and St. Thomas ’s, Guy’s Hospital, London.”

The DA looked up from the report, his chin set in defiance. There still was no body in the case, he said. “I’m not sure what Texas law would say about this.”

“I just happen to have that section of Texas law with me,” Walter said, grinning.

Ware issued a wan smile. “I thought you might.”

Walter opened a statute book and read, interpreting as he went. “In essence, Texas law says we have to have A) a body, B) part of a body, or C) a confession with corroborative evidence. We have B. We have blood; blood is connective tissue; ergo, we have part of a body.”

Ware leaned back in his chair, tenting his fingers. He stared at the profiler.

“All right,” he said. “You’ve got a murder.”

For an instant the thin man’s smile flashed triumphantly, but his voice was soft.

“As it happens, I agree.”

The three men huddled in the smoky light of a Philadelphia pub, discussing their coldest cases.

Bender said he had been asked to do a facial reconstruction of John Wilkes Booth. It could help solve mysteries surrounding President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.

Walter was chosen as the profiler on an eight-person forensic all-star squad, including Los Angeles coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, investigating Jack the Ripper on the one hundredth anniversary of the murders. “It was quite easy. The murders show a clear learning curve not understood in 1888, and only Montague Druitt was capable of it.

“The Home Office begged me not to make a fuss about it.” He smiled. “Kill the mystery, and there goes all that tourism.”

“Good work, men. Maybe you two can figure out who killed King Tut,” Fleisher cracked, holding up a Philadelphia Daily News. “Meanwhile, check out the twentieth century.” The June 9, 1993, headline in the tabloid newspaper said: FETISH MURDER? KILLED BY FOOT FETISHIST? DREXEL STUDENT WAS SLAIN IN ’84.

Walter picked up the story: “A twenty-year-old Drexel University student, strangled more than eight years ago, was killed for her white sneakers,” he read.

“No kidding,” Bender deadpanned. “That sounds like an interesting case.”

“Good for them,” Walter said. “Justice is done.”

The day before, Philadelphia police homicide detectives had arrested David Dickson Jr., a thirty-three-year-old U.S. Army sergeant and former Drexel University security guard, at the Army office where he now worked as a recruiter. Police charged him with “murdering Drexel University student Deborah Lynn Wilson in November 1984 because of his fetish for women’s white sneakers.”

Walter raised an eyebrow and read on.

Wilson may have been murdered after she dozed off in front of the computer in Rendell Hall-and caught the guard trying to remove her Reebok sneakers.

“Law enforcement sources” said Dickson was believed to have a “foot fetish” and “gets enjoyment from smelling women’s sneakers and socks.”

“Clever of them,” Fleisher said. Walter smiled.

According to accounts in the Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dickson had been a suspect all along, but police never had enough evidence to arrest him. They decided to take a fresh look at the cold case but weren’t getting far until “investigators learned of his alleged foot fetish and linked it to the fact that Wilson ’s sneakers and socks were missing.” For eight years, investigators thought the missing footwear was important, “but they didn’t know why. Then, in 1993, police said they found a clue in the files of the U.S. Army.”

Dickson had been arrested and court-martialed for the theft of women’s sneakers on an Army base in Korea in 1979. Army Sergeant Gwendolyn Garrett-Jackson, who now lives in Birmingham, Alabama, was prepared to testify that Dickson broke into her quarters on the Korean base and stole her white sneakers, video camera, and other belongings. Based on the Army court-martial, police obtained warrants to search Dickson’s apartment on City Avenue and his storage bin at the Philadelphia Navy base.

In both locations, police seized more than a hundred pairs of women’s white sneakers, all used, and confiscated seventy-seven videotapes of women wearing white sneakers. The tapes were pornographic, including sex scenes of women in white sneakers, and women fondling other women’s feet. There were shots of Dickson’s Florida vacation to Disney World, with the camera trained on his female partner’s feet, and a scene in a fast-food restaurant where the camera was focused on women wearing white sneakers. There was a home-shopping commercial for a cross-country ski machine showing a woman on the machine wearing white sneakers, and a naked store mannequin wearing white Keds.