Chuck Hustmyre - A Killer Like Me

The woman lies on her back, moaning and twitching. She is clothed only in a short pajama set, bright orange boxer shorts and a matching tank top. The pillowcase covering her head is cinched around her neck with duct tape. Her wrists are taped together in front.

The killer steps closer, holding the plastic bottle out in front of him. He moves his hand, centering it over her face. Then he tips the bottle and spills a little bit of the ether onto the pillowcase.

He steps back and screws the top on quickly, afraid of the effect the fumes may have on him. For a moment, the woman seems revived. She struggles against her bonds and twists her head from side to side. He hears her take a deep breath and hold it, but her pathetic attempt to avoid the fumes filling the pillowcase is already too late. The deep breath she took was filled with ether, and by holding it in she is merely accelerating the passage of the gas from her lungs into her bloodstream, and then into her brain.

Within sixty seconds she stops moving. Unconscious, not dead, the killer hopes. He has never used ether before and is unsure of the dosage. His first thought was chloroform. He has seen it used in movies and on television a thousand times, but while searching the Internet for a chloroform supplier, he stumbled upon an article about diethyl ether.

According to his research, doctors began using ether as a general anesthetic in the mid-1800s, nearly two decades before the Civil War. Modern medical practitioners, particularly in Western countries, have long since replaced ether, which is highly flammable, with safer anesthetic agents, but developing countries still use it because of its reliability, its low cost, and its high therapeutic index-the margin of safety between an effective dose and a lethal one. Currently, ether is used mainly as a laboratory cleaning solvent and by hophead kids for a cheap high, and to some extent, by homeopathic healers and alternative-medicine types.

The killer found a homeopathic medical supplier on the Internet that sells ether. Although the supplier doesn’t sell to individuals, it was simple enough to set up a corporate account for a bogus homeopathic store with a Mid-City address. He bought the pint of ether for twenty dollars and had it delivered to his door by UPS.

His captive is small: five feet three inches, perhaps 115 pounds. He selected her partly because of her size-he knew he was going to have to carry her-and partly for who she is and what she has done.

She is a thirty-two-year-old civilian employee of the New Orleans Police Department Crime Laboratory whose husband filed for divorce last year. In his lawsuit, the husband said his wife had been unfaithful to him. She had moved out of their marital home and was shacked up with a policeman. The couple has two children, whom the cheating wife has left in the custody of her cuckolded husband.

Capturing her was fairly simple, though the killer was nervous at first. There was nothing to picking up a prostitute on the street. That was easy. Even getting a woman to open her door to a well-dressed stranger in the middle of the afternoon hadn’t been difficult. But snatching a woman late at night from her home and taking her with you, that was a challenge.

But with God’s help, he met that challenge.

The killer waited until the boyfriend drove away, probably for work, in his black Ford Crown Victoria that looked very much like an unmarked police car. After the woman went to bed, he used a foot-long screwdriver to pry open the back door. He worked quickly and made no attempt at stealth.

Then he concealed himself in the den and waited. Within seconds, the woman stumbled out from her bedroom to investigate the noise of the break-in, wearing nothing but pajamas and carrying a small pistol. As she passed him, the killer jammed the stun gun into her neck and pressed the trigger. Then he trussed her up and threw her into the trunk of his Honda. Since he knows nothing about guns and has no need for them, he left the pistol on the floor where it had fallen.

At Mazant and Burgundy, the killer lifts the unconscious woman out of the trunk and lays her across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Standing at the back door, already straining under the weight, he stoops to retrieve his gym bag, then unlocks the door and steps inside the dark building.

The door opens onto a small foyer tucked beneath a wooden staircase. Beyond the foyer is a large open room. Straight across is a kitchen and a bathroom. Diagonally across, to the killer’s right, is an open doorway leading to a second room, almost as large as the first. On the other side of that room is the front door. There is no furniture.

Last year, the killer saw a flyer advertising the building for rent for two thousand dollars a month. With two big open rooms on the ground floor and living space upstairs, including bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small galley kitchen, the flyer billed the property as ideal for a pair of artist’s studios. Or since there was also a full-sized kitchen downstairs, as a large, single-family home with an open floor plan.

The killer had another idea for the property. After settling on eighteen hundred dollars a month, he handed the owner a check for the deposit and the first month’s rent.

With the woman slung across his shoulders and his gym bag hanging from one hand, the killer trudges up the stairs. By the time he reaches the top, his legs are burning. He drops both the woman and the bag to the hardwood floor and leans against the wooden railing to catch his breath.

A central hallway runs the length of the second floor. Along the hall are five rooms: two bedrooms and a bathroom on the left, and two slightly larger bedrooms on the right. An open space surrounds the top of the stairs. Near the stairs is the kitchenette.

Leaving his bag behind, the killer grabs the woman’s ankles and drags her down the hallway. He pulls her into the first bedroom on the right.

The walls are completely covered with old mattresses, nailed into place to provide crude but effective soundproofing. Across the room, a set of French doors look out over Mazant Street. The glass panes have been coated with thick black paint.

On the right side of the room sits a single wooden chair. Directly opposite the chair, along the left-hand wall, stands a tripod with a video camera mounted to it. There is nothing else in the room.

The woman moans as the killer lifts her into the chair. She is waking up sooner than he expected. Next time he must remember to use more ether. He rushes from the room to the top of the stairwell and retrieves his gym bag. Back in the room, he sets the bag on the floor and pulls out a coil of black parachute cord and a KA-BAR combat knife.

His captive begins to move. The killer hurries. He cuts the tape from around her ankles, then uses lengths of parachute cord to tie her legs to the front of the chair.

Next, he slices through the tape binding her wrists. Although her hands are free, she can barely move them because he has wound a long strip of tape around her chest and upper arms, cinching her elbows to her sides. The killer ties her wrists to the chair arms. He then uses a long piece of cord to lash her upper body to the back of the chair.

She leans forward and he hears her retch inside the pillowcase. Nausea and vomiting are common side effects of ether. She will drown in her own vomit if he doesn’t remove the gag from her mouth. He rips the tape from around her neck and pulls the pillowcase off her head. Her eyes are open but unfocused. Using his fingernails, he peels a corner of the tape away from her mouth, then yanks off the rest. He steps back as she throws up again.

When she finishes retching, her head slumps forward onto her chest.

The killer stares at her.

A few minutes later, she shakes her head, trying to clear the effects of the ether. But she is only partially conscious, not yet aware of the horror that awaits her. The killer’s eyes dart around the room, at the mattresses nailed to the walls, at the window panes painted black. He has created his own type of artist’s studio, a private killing room.