Allison Brennan - Stalked

No one has been arrested for the crime, but sources close to the investigation indicate a search warrant has been issued for one of the McMahons’ guests who has been in police custody for two days.

The Newark office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working in close conjunction with the Newark Police Department, devoted all available agents to interview witnesses, process evidence, and search for Rachel. Media Information Officer Special Agent Dominic Theissen stated, “We are deeply saddened at the discovery of Rachel McMahon’s body late this afternoon. An autopsy and thorough investigation will be completed to ensure that justice will be swift.”

The McMahons were unavailable for comment.

The FBI confirmed that there is no connection between Rachel McMahon’s disappearance and that of Camille Todd, a twelve-year-old girl who went missing from Newark the previous week.

On the surface, the case appeared straightforward-an eleven-year-old girl had been kidnapped from her bedroom late on a Saturday night. The time of her disappearance was a bit sketchy. No one had seen her between 10:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. Her brother told police they’d been playing games in their playroom until 10:00 p.m. when she went to her room to call her best friend. He fell asleep and woke up at 3:00 a.m. The house was quiet, he went to her room, and she wasn’t in her bed. Her friend told police, and phone records confirmed, that they’d spoken for nearly an hour, hanging up at 11:03 p.m. Rachel wanted to go over to her friend’s house that night, but the mother had forbidden it. For the first day of the investigation, local police falsely believed that Rachel had either run away or left to visit her friend. The search focused on the four blocks between the McMahon home and the Miller home.

Because of the age of the missing girl, the FBI was called more as a formality in case there was foul play. In his personal notes, Tony had written:

The local PD covered their ass by calling us, but they didn’t seriously consider her disappearance a kidnapping until they interviewed the neighbors and learned about the party the night before.

An attached newspaper article printed the day before Rachel’s body was found illustrated that this wasn’t a typical neighborhood get-together.

A neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he was at the McMahons’ party Saturday night.

“We’re swingers. It’s all safe; we have rules; nothing bad has ever happened.” The neighbor, who is also married, said he’d never seen the McMahon children at the parties and assumed they were staying with relatives. “We’re consenting adults.”

The closing of one of the earlier articles, before Rachel’s body was found, seemed important to Lucy, so she wrote it down in her notebook.

Search parties have been looking for eleven-year-old Rachel for the past twenty-four hours. Notably missing from the search is her father, Aaron McMahon, who has been interviewed by both local police and the FBI regarding his daughter’s kidnapping.

What made that interesting was that the next day the newspaper reported that the mother, Pilar McMahon, was a person of interest. Both McMahons had lied to police about the nature of the party on Saturday night and whether any of their guests knew the children were home. Other inconsistencies in the McMahons’ statements had been highlighted by Tony in his own notes. He wrote:

Their daughter is missing yet they both lied about the orgy. Neither admitted, until confronted with evidence and witness statements, that they hosted a sex party for ten invited guests, but a total of fifteen people had access to the home that evening. Originally, Mr. McMahon said that it was a neighborhood BBQ, stating as much to both responding officers, the local media, and in his initial statement to the FBI. Mrs. McMahon said she thought her daughter was trying to get back at her because of an earlier argument, but the longer Rachel was missing, the more distraught she became.

The press had gone after the parents after it was leaked that they were swingers. A new article penned by Rosemary Weber appeared every morning, each one putting a more unsavory and sensational twist on their lives. Nothing was held back. How much was true and how much exaggeration Lucy couldn’t tell, but Tony’s notes showed deep contempt because of the delay in information coming from the parents. Ultimately, however, their obstructions couldn’t have saved Rachel from her fate, because evidence proved she’d been dead within hours after her abduction.

Hard physical evidence had led police to Benjamin John Kreig. Kreig had been stalking Mrs. McMahon after he’d attended one of their sex parties a year before. Two weeks before Rachel’s disappearance, he’d confronted Mrs. McMahon about hooking up again, and she said it disturbed her. She told her husband, but neither McMahon had seen him at the party. Two witnesses said he’d been there-they both saw him in the family room, which was adjacent to the staircase that led to Rachel’s bedroom-but no one else saw him.

Police rightfully questioned why it took evidence of his guilt to prompt Mrs. McMahon’s memory of the conversation.

But what was the most heartbreaking for Lucy to read was the statement of Peter McMahon, the nine-year-old brother of the victim. Tony, who had a degree in child psychology, interviewed him. The first part of the interview was Peter recounting what he and Rachel did until she left the attic playroom just before ten the evening she was kidnapped. Tony noted that Peter McMahon’s statement was consistent in all the key facts.

Supervisory Special Agent Tony Presidio, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Newark Field Office

Annette K. Frederick, Washington Department of Social and Health Services

Peter James McMahon, brother of Rachel McMahon, 9

TP: You told the police officer who came to your house that you went to your sister’s room in the middle of the night. Why?

PETER: Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night I go to Rachel’s room.

TP: Not your mom and dad?

PETER: (unresponsive)

AF: Nothing you say here is going to get you into any trouble. I promise you, Peter, you did nothing wrong.

PETER: Rachel always lets me sleep on her floor if I have a nightmare.

TP: Do you have a lot of nightmares?

PETER: Sometimes. Sometimes I just wake up because I have to pee, but I don’t like my room because the branches from the tree next door scratch my window in the wind. Rachel’s room doesn’t have any trees outside.

TP: You fell asleep in the attic?

PETER: Dad made it a real room, and we have a TV and video games and beanbag chairs.

TP: Sounds like a great place to hang out.

PETER: I guess. The rain was really loud, though. That’s what woke me up.

TP: And you went to Rachel’s room?

PETER: She wasn’t there. I thought she went to Jessie’s house and didn’t tell me.

TP: Why did you think that?

PETER: Because Rachel wanted to spend the night there, but Jessie was grounded.

TP: Does Rachel sneak out of the house a lot?

PETER: (unresponsive)

TP: Rachel isn’t in any trouble. I promise you, cross my heart, I won’t get Rachel in trouble. It’s important we have all the facts so we can find her.

PETER: She did it a couple times. But she always came back before Mom and Dad woke up. So I went to her bed to wait for her.

TP: When you walked into the room, what did you feel?

PETER: I don’t know.

TP: Was the room warm? Cold? Was her bed warm?

PETER: Oh. She left her window open a little. I closed it because her room was freezing.

TP: Is that how she sneaks out? Through the window?

PETER: No-she uses the back door.

TP: You thought she was at her friend Jessie’s house. You didn’t go to your mom and dad?