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

Smith, believing his romantic dreams had come true, had instead lived a nightmare, subjected to walking in on his girlfriend having sex with other men, and being beaten by her for questioning it. Acting ever eager to help find Scott’s killer, Hamilton told police she was afraid of her new boyfriend. She showed them Tim Smith’s love letters, addressed to “Dear Green Eyes” and signed, “Superman” or “The Flash,” letters that called Scott a “snake” and an “asshole” and demanded she choose between them. “If only Scott wasn’t around,” Smith wrote, “we could be happy together.” Hamilton confirmed to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that her boyfriend was a “suspect” in Scott’s disappearance. He had been “fiercely jealous of her relationship with Scott.” The police soon considered Smith a primary suspect.

Moving in on her prey was exciting for Hamilton. “This need for stimulation is quite insatiable for a psychopath, the ego gratification to prove they’re smarter than anyone,” Walter explained to Dunn. “The ‘Gotcha!’ ”

Walter had rattled Smith in a private interview, squeezing him to reveal what had happened to Scott’s body.

Smith had refused to say. He said he “couldn’t turn on the others… it wouldn’t be Christian.”

“Is it Christian to commit murder?” Walter demanded. “Is it Christian to cover it up?”

Tim Smith didn’t reply.

Walter watched the trial at the Lubbock County courthouse with Jim and Barbara Dunn, and the three of them exulted as Smith was convicted of the first-degree murder of Scott Dunn. After six years, justice was finally being served. Walter felt vindicated. Though he had once again been prevented from testifying as a profiler, Rusty Ladd, the prosecuting attorney, praised him for helping the state zero in on Smith as Hamilton ’s chief accomplice. Leisha would never have gone to jail, Tim Smith never would have been convicted, if it wasn’t for Walter, the prosecutor said.

Smith was sentenced the next day. He faced ninety-nine years or life in prison for his involvement in Dunn’s prolonged torture, murder, dismemberment, and disposal. Hamilton had received twenty years. Walter had hated to tell Dunn, but the truth was that Hamilton could be out in less than a decade for good behavior.

Now the jury deliberated for about an hour. Timothy James Smith received no jail time at all for first-degree murder.

He was sentenced to ten years’ probation and a $10,000 fine.

Dunn was stunned. He couldn’t conceive how “Tim Smith, convicted of murdering Scott, was free to walk the streets of Lubbock ” and did not have to reveal the location of Scott’s body.

Because Smith had no prior criminal record, the jury had the option of probation.

Walter was outraged.

“It would appear that the jury attempted to do God’s work of forgiveness at the sentencing,” he later wrote. “In these matters, it would seem the jury should leave God’s work to God, and do the work of the State of Texas. Unfortunately, the jury allowed Timothy James Smith to benefit unfettered from the murder for which all life has been cheapened.”

Walter was concerned about Jim Dunn.

Within days of the trial, the aggrieved father threw himself on Smith’s mercy, now that the killer was “beyond harm,” begging to Smith to reveal, even anonymously, the location of Scott’s body. “Please… let him have the decency of a proper burial,” he wrote. “Look at your son, who is alive, then contact me. In your heart you know the right thing to do… I will be waiting for a message from you or your intermediary. Send it to Box 986, Morrisville, PA, 19067.”

Dunn also returned to taking phone calls from Leisha Hamilton, hoping to learn where his son was buried. Hamilton kept calling the grieving father from her prison cell, toying with his emotions. Dunn was a wreck. Leisha had murdered the son; now she was destroying the father.

“Stop talking to her,” Walter said, scolding him. “You’re dealing with a classic psychopath. The murder is not over with the killing. The murder isn’t over until the murderer says it is. The murder’s not over for her. She’s still enjoying it. Don’t feel hate toward Leisha. It weakens you. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is neutrality, ‘I don’t care.’ If you ignore her, she will lose her hold over you.

“Damn it, Jim, she got your son. Don’t let the killer take another victim.”

The quest to find his son’s body to put under the stone was destroying him.

Dunn sat quiet while Walter lit a Kool, and watched the plume of smoke disintegrate over the porch.

“But it was quite fascinating,” he said. “Here you have Leisha Hamilton, the dominating, power-driven killer, controlling and using submissive Tim Smith like a dog, seducing him into murder, setting him up to take the fall. The jury sees right through her, is repulsed by her, she goes to prison. Then you have Tim Smith, whose submissive nature makes him Hamilton ’s hapless victim, using that very quality to turn the tables on the jury. He’s no less psychopathic, but he’s dreamy, poetic, and the jury falls for his charming-nice-young-Christian-man act.”

He stood and looked across the street at St. Paul ’s, rising quietly now from its grove of old trees.

“I’m probably more agnostic than I am an atheist, but in any event, even if one doesn’t believe in God, in our line of work one must have substance, structure, strong faith, character.” He snuffed out the cigarette. “It used to be that people had character; now houses have character and people have personality. That won’t do. The eternal things, the good, the true, the beautiful, must be unbreakable.”

“One must have standards,” Stoud said, grinning.

“One must.”

“One should.”

“I do,” Walter said, “and mine are quite low.” They were laughing now.

Walter laughed himself into a coughing fit as he walked into the house.

The thin man sat in a wing chair with his hard green pack of Kools, battered metal ashtray, and ceramic coffee cup resting on a walnut side table from nineteenth-century Lyon. The coffee cup, a gift from an admiring Midwestern homicide squad, was inscribed “When Your Life Ends, Our Work Begins.” The parlor, dim at midday, was crowded with antiques; the front door was attended by the bust of a French knight, a chevalier of the last century, lit by an enormous red Chinese paper lantern.

The afternoon was quiet but for the ticking of the grandfather clock and Walter spinning the triple-digit combination on the steel-ribbed, aircraft-aluminum briefcase. It was the classic 1940s-style Zero Halliburton, the near-indestructible model that protects the U.S. president’s nuclear codes and red button.

“This is strictly proprietary,” Walter said as the double-bolt lock sprung and the case hissed open. “Not to be discussed outside this room.”

“I saw that attaché on Mission: Impossible,” Stoud teased. “I don’t believe it’s for country gentlemen.” He knew the classic Zero was fashionable with spies, federal agents, and pretentious film noir directors-but that Walter, with justification, used it to guard information that had proved extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.

“Information can be harmful when you’re not ready for it,” Walter said. “Dostoevsky said there were some ideas you could eat, and some that ate you. These are devouring ideas.”

Nested in the rich leather interior, protected from dust and moisture by the neoprene gasket-sealed case, was a stack of photographs of the corpse of Terri Lee Brooks with the knife sticking out of her throat. Under the stack were simple manila files.