Pat Brown - The Profiler - My Life Hunting Serial Killers & Psychopaths

Deborah was black, and when I went to her house, I expected that her husband might be as well. However, Joshi is an Indian name, and Davis, it turned out, was of Asian descent; he was a Trinidad Indian. It’s possible that he might be mistaken for a black man if he was seen driving by very quickly. The SUV was found a mile away in a neighborhood strip mall. The plastic container that held the quarters was found in an apartment complex parking lot across from the mall but the quarters were gone. Nothing else was ever discovered.

The logistics didn’t support Deborah’s husband as a suspect. He would have had to leave his vehicle at the strip mall, walk home, kill his wife, then take her vehicle back to the strip mall, get in his own car, and drive back to the scene.

She was dying when the ambulance arrived. If he did it, he would have wanted to make sure she couldn’t speak and would have made sure she was dead.

There was no evidence ever found in his vehicle. Also, there was no blood evidence connected to him, which one would expect if a woman was stabbed seventeen times. Davis would have committed the perfect crime in the short amount of time between Deborah’s arriving home from work and when he got to the house just shortly after dark. The police looked at him right away, as they do when a married woman ends up murdered. Usually hours or days separate the time of a murder and the husband’s “discovery” of the body, leaving plenty of time to get rid of evidence, wash up, vacuum the car, and so on. Yet in the Joshi murder, the police found not a shred of evidence linking Davis to Deborah’s death in spite of how quickly the police were on the scene of the crime.

I went to the strip mall parking lot where Deborah’s car was dumped, and I couldn’t believe the coincidence: Harold Painter lived but two blocks west of that strip mall. And Walt Williams lived two blocks to the east.

Davis thought his dying wife muttered something about either a guy in black or a guy who was black, but she was dying, and it wasn’t clear whether he was leaning on Hammond ’s description of the suspect or he really heard her say that.

I asked the police if they interviewed Hammond, and they said no, they didn’t spend any time with him. I knocked on his door and said I was there to ask questions about the crime.

“Come on in,” he said.

He had a glass of scotch in his hand, and he was smoking a Marlboro cigarette-the kind found on the ground outside a window at the crime scene and a brand that was not smoked by the Joshis. An interesting coincidence, but of course it is a popular brand.

Hammond welcomed me into his house, chitchatting about this and that, quite friendly. But he quickly turned the conversation to a sexual note, and I became uncomfortable. “So, what’s a gorgeous woman like you doing in the detective business? I’m a lucky guy to have a sexy lady like you show up on my doorstep.” He leered at me. Why is this guy making sexual innuendos toward me?

I noticed, when I came through the front door, he went behind me, let the dog out, and shut the door, making sure it was locked. That seemed innocent enough. But then he walked to another door and locked that one, too.

My skin began to crawl. What was he doing?

Hammond talked about the crime and walked me to the garage, where he said he would show me where he was when the murder happened. He reminded me that he hadn’t heard the dogs bark when Deborah was being assaulted.

I was getting nervous about Hammond.

Did the dogs not bark because it was the husband who committed the crime? Or did the dogs not bark because the perpetrator was someone else they knew? Or maybe the dogs did bark and Ham mond simply didn’t hear them. Or could he be lying about it?

“I saw the car fly out of the driveway,” he said, “and I saw this black man…well, dark, like it could have been Davis…”

My mind was racing as Hammond put down the garage door to set the scene. As he did, he said something wholly inappropriate and even more anxiety inducing.

“Don’t worry,” Hammond said. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

Excuse me?

Why would he assume that I was thinking he was going to do something to me? Why would this cross his mind? Why was he saying this?

A sense of dread crept up on me as the door came down. I noticed that the windows were completely smeared, like they hadn’t been washed in years. I found it hard to believe that that man could have seen anybody inside a vehicle from this garage.

I could feel panic just about to overtake me. I suddenly realized that I was alone with a stranger, and one who was making me feel increasingly uncomfortable. I wanted to get out of there fast. I pulled the phone out of my pocket, pretended I had dialed my office really quickly, and as he turned to face me, I said, “Oh, yeah, I’m over here at Mr. Hammond’s house, next door to the Joshis… Yeah…I should be through with the interview in about ten minutes, so I’ll be back at the office by five thirty.”

He suddenly looked at me coldly, and he said, “You can go now.” He marched me straight to the front door and out of his house.

Hammond ’s behavior and the incongruity of his story made me suspicious.

Was he involved in the case? Or was he just a really weird neighbor?

I wonder to this day what would have happened if I hadn’t managed to fake that phone conversation.

I STILL HAD a multitude of questions about Deborah’s murder.

Why would anybody take that big plastic jar of quarters?

Did they need the money or was it more of a diversionary tactic?

Did somebody go into the Joshi residence to steal something or was it a rape gone wrong? Did Deborah fight back and a rapist ended up stabbing her before he had any fun, decided to steal a few things, and used her SUV to get home? Could the killer be Painter or Williams?

Was someone burglarizing the house when Deborah came home unexpectedly early from work? Was she killed in a panic? Was the SUV just driven to the strip mall to make it look like the killer lived farther away? Was Deborah killed because she could identify the man in her house? Could it be the neighbor, Hammond?

Or was it really Davis staging a crime to cover up offing his wife?

The only suspect was the husband, and no one has been charged.

The Crime: Homicide, burglary

The Victim: Mary Beth Townsend, fifty-two, librarian

Location: Condominium, Virginia

Original Theory: Killed by her fiancé

When Mary Beth Townsend, a fifty-two-year-old librarian, was found dead in the closet of her condominium, the detectives had the case solved within hours. A couple days later, after grueling hours of interrogation, her fiancé confessed to accidentally killing her during an argument.

Unfortunately for the police, his forced confession didn’t match the evidence when the autopsy came back.

MARY BETH OWNED a condo in Virginia that she shared with her fiancé, Sam Bilodeau. They had been together for eight years, and after seven years of living together, they were finally, happily, preparing to marry. They were also building a house together on weekends and planning a honeymoon trip to Paris.

Mary Beth and Sam got along well in their eight years together. Her son, Art, who lived and worked in the area, knew Sam well, liked him, and had no issues with him.

On Friday, August 21, 1998, Sam left at 6:45 a.m. to arrive by 7:00 for his job at the Home Depot, where he worked on the loading dock. Mary Beth stayed behind. She took the day off from the library, where she had worked for fifteen years, planning to go down to the pool for a swim, something she did every day. Later in the day, Sam called Mary Beth but she wasn’t home. He thought she must be at the pool or running errands.