06.Evil.Beside.Her.2008 (31 page)

Linda Bergstrom would always remember March 1992 as a nightmare. It began the morning she blew her hair dry in the bathroom only to have Ashley sidle up next to her. She playfully squeezed her daughter in her arms, tickling her soft, round belly, then placed the child with her wispy fawn-colored curls on the vanity next to her. In the past, the toddler would have mischievously giggled, inspecting herself and robustly slapping the mirror with her soft little palms, squealing in delight at her own reflection. This afternoon, to Linda’s horror, Ashley solemnly posed staring into the mirror, one tiny hand with its perfect fingers ominously cupped across her mouth like a gag, just as James had positioned Linda during so many of his sex games.

Could she have seen James do this to me? Linda wondered.

The next day, when Ashley’s baby-sitter reported the two-year-old acted strangely, Linda’s translation of Ashley’s actions took on a more dire interpretation. “She’s crying every time I change her diaper,” explained the matronly woman. “As soon as I start to take her diaper off, she just sobs. I don’t know what’s wrong, but she’s upset about something.”

Dread overwhelmed Linda, who drove directly to the pediatrician’s office. Once inside the examining room, she told the physician about James, his history including his molestation of a little girl, the baby-sitter’s concerns, and Ashley’s
chilling play in front of the mirror. “I never thought he’d do anything to her when she was so small,” Linda cried. “My God, she’s a baby.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” the doctor warned. “Let’s just take a look.”

Linda sat nervously fidgeting in a chair as the woman examined her daughter.
I watched her. I did everything I could. This just couldn’t have happened,
she thought, pain and guilt rushing through her body like adrenaline.
Not my baby.

When the examination was over, the doctor sat down with Linda. As Ashley played at their feet, she said she’d found no physical signs that James had sexually abused his daughter. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen,” the doctor cautioned. “I suggest we set Ashley up for play therapy with a psychologist.”

“If they think he’s done anything, will I be able to get Ashley away from him?” Linda asked, fighting back tears.

“It’s possible, but it’s hard,” the doctor admitted. “With a child so young, when there’s no physical evidence. She’s too young to testify. But don’t worry about that now. Let’s just wait and see.”

Linda, however, was no longer willing to wait and see. She’d done that for more than two years, and what had it accomplished? She was sure there were still more victims—now maybe even her own daughter. All her good intentions to protect everyone else had accomplished nothing. In fact, she was no closer to safely escaping James than she had been when they first arrived back in Houston.

She had to find some way to protect her daughter.

On the drive home, Linda thought back, remembering how Maria had threatened a few weeks earlier to report her and James to Children’s Protective Services, because they’d argued in front of Ashley one night at the Bergstroms’. It gave her an idea.

When James arrived home that night, Linda told him about her trip to the pediatrician, but said that she’d been
ordered to take her there by CPS. “Someone called in an anonymous tip about you and that little girl and what happened in Washington State,” she said. “They’re going to check Ashley randomly to make sure you aren’t abusing her.”

Then she told him the doctor had prescribed play therapy, during which a psychiatrist would watch Ashley and interpret her actions to determine if she expressed the type of sexual overtones often displayed by children who have been sexually abused.

James became incensed. Assuming, as Linda knew he would, that his sisters were behind it, he picked up the phone and called Adelaide and Maria, demanding to know if they’d been the ones who had phoned in the anonymous tip. Startled, both James’s sisters denied any involvement. From that day on, Linda noticed James kept his distance from Ashley. He shunned her to the point of not picking her up or holding her on his lap, obviously afraid to be close to her.

For the meantime, her lie seemed to be having its intended effect, keeping James at arm’s length from Ashley. But she knew at best it was a Band-Aid on a problem that would surely fester. In her heart Linda knew she no longer had any choice. There was nothing left to consider. Despite the risks, she had to take Ashley and flee. If that meant hiding out, moving to a strange city away from her family to start over on her own, then that’s what she had to do.

The following day, Linda called Colt and asked him if he was still willing to help her escape. “Sure,” he said. “Just tell me what you need.”

“A place to stay until I can get away from him.”

“You’ve got it.”

Then Linda called her younger sister, Alice, and asked her to get the family together for Saturday, March 28, James had plans to spend the day with Sam McDonald, and while they were out, Linda’s family would have time to move her belongings and Ashley’s.

“I need to get away from him as soon as possible,” she
told her sister. “If James ever finds me and Ashley, he’ll kill both of us.”

When Linda hung up the phone, she made a vow—no more drinking. Not a drop. Ashley needed her vigilance. From now on, she would think only of her daughter until they were both safe.

On Sunday night, March 22, a ski-masked intruder stalked the University Green Apartments on Bay Area Boulevard, the same complex where Andrea Hoggen had been attacked just three months earlier. Later the two women would speculate that the man who attacked them had picked them out at a nearby Laundromat where they’d washed clothes earlier that evening. Neither heard the interloper jump the fence and slide open their patio door. When he entered, he flashed a gun. Then he tied them, one at a time.

“Two,” the man mused as he slipped a knotted nylon stocking around the last woman’s wrist, pushing her into a chair. He ripped at one woman’s clothes, as they both realized the stranger was not after their money.

“Don’t fight. I won’t hurt you,” the stranger ordered.

But the women were unmanageable, wildly shouting and screaming.

“Please leave us,” one pleaded as the other wailed.

The would-be rapist was nervous. There’d been so much commotion, surely someone had heard it. He turned and ran, leaving the two women crying out for help.

After calling 911, the apartment manager dialed the phone number for another of his tenants, Sergeant Charles Dunn, who worked burglary and theft in HPD’s Clear Lake substation. A brotherly-looking man with blond hair and a full reddish mustache, Dunn had recently moved into the apartments after separating from his wife. His landlord’s description of
the night’s events piqued Dunn’s interest. Before hanging up, he assured the man he’d look over the file on the case the next morning.

At the Clear Lake substation that Monday, Dunn pulled the file on the attempted rapes of the night before and dropped in to consult the officers in crime analysis. “A guy with a ski mask and a gun isn’t a onetime rapist,” Dunn told them. “I bet we’ve got a serial rapist here. Run a check on ski mask, bondage, white male, rape, and attempted rape for me.”

Later that day, Dunn got the news: There were clusters of similar incidents throughout the area, and one of his counterparts at HPD sex crimes, Sergeant Rusty Gallier, had phoned in a request for information on all such cases. Dunn dialed Gallier’s number at headquarters.

“I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes,” he said, when Gallier answered, “but I’ve got an attempted rape here with bondage. I hear you’re working on a similar case.”

Gallier filled Dunn in on Bergstrom and the string of rapes he was suspected of. “You think the two women can identify him?” he asked.

“It’s doubtful,” Dunn admitted. “They were pretty shook up. We had a hard time even taking statements. And the guy had something like a ski mask on.”

“Like a ski mask?”

“Yeah,” said Dunn. “They said it looked funny. It was real long and the eyes were cut out.”

“That fits,” said Gallier. “Bergstrom makes his. Some of the other women have reported the same thing, and the two we picked up from his wife in December were hacked out of a knit hat and a shirtsleeve.”

The following day, Dunn hooked up with Gallier at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, where they met with an assistant DA. They detailed the cases, as Gallier had in the past, but added the new one. There was still no real evidence tying Bergstrom to anything beyond the attacks on Andrea Hoggen and Sandy Colyard. “Get me some more
IDs,” the prosecutor suggested. “We can package enough cases, maybe we’ll have something.”

“Well, hell,” said Dunn to Gallier. “I can afford a little overtime. Let’s go out and see if we can’t get them some.”

Gallier was doubtful but frustrated enough to give anything a try.

On Thursday, March 26, four days after the attacks on the two women, Dunn and Gallier began their rounds. It took most of the day, but they tracked down one after another of the women who’d filed the complaints. Each time it was an emotional moment as the women eyed the photo spread and relived their attacks. The two men finished up at 9:00
P.M.
with nothing to show for their efforts. Not one additional victim was able to pick Bergstrom from the lineup. They agreed the following day, with or without new evidence, they would arrest Bergstrom. It was a weak case, but it was all they had. Gallier and Dunn went home frustrated and bitter. It had been a disappointing day.

They wouldn’t discover until the next day that Bergstrom, too, had been on the prowl that very afternoon, and that another young woman, this one a seventeen-year-old high school student, had joined his list of victims.

“I’d been driving around looking for someone and I saw her outside the apartment,” Bergstrom would say later. “She was pretty, short with curly blond hair.”

With his hard hat, sunglasses, clipboard, and test tubes, a smiling James Bergstrom knocked on the door of the Clear Lake-area town house apartment Jenny Karr shared with her family.

“I’m here to test the water,” he said. “It’ll just take a minute.”

The high school senior let him in.

Bergstrom was nervous and frustrated; later he’d describe himself as “out of control.” He knew he was growing careless when he didn’t even bother to return to the car to change, instead pulling on his ski mask in the girl’s bathroom. “I’d
been doing it for so long, I figured no one even cared,” he said later. “Maybe none of the women were even reporting.”

Jenny froze when Bergstrom came at her, knocking her down on the living room floor and tying her hands behind her. He pushed her up the stairs to a second-floor bedroom and attempted to rip her clothes off. She fought as he retied her hands, this time to a bed.

“You’re really getting me pissed off,” he growled through clenched teeth. “You don’t stop, I’m going to have to kill you.”

“You might as well kill me then,” the feisty Karr shouted, kicking hard with her still free legs. “Because I’m sure not going to let you rape me.”

When she heard Bergstrom unzipping his pants, Jenny twisted and kicked so violently, she threw him off balance enough to grab the gun’s barrel.

“You’re just going to have to shoot me,” she screamed.

Bergstrom gathered his things and ran from the room. He could still hear her screaming for help as he slammed the front door.

It was Sergeant Dunn who hand-carried the photo lineup to Clear Lake High School the next morning. A message was sent to pull Jenny out of her English class. When she arrived at the principal’s office, Dunn was impressed with the teenager’s composure. She glanced down at the photo spread and flinched. Dunn knew immediately she recognized Bergstrom. “He told me he was going to kill me,” Jenny said, pointing at Bergstrom’s photo. “I told him he was going to have to. I wasn’t going to let him rape me.”

Dunn called Gallier at home. It was his day off. “I think we’ve got him,” Dunn said. “This girl ID’d him.”

“Finally,” Gallier hissed, knowing the difference in this case was that Bergstrom had gone far enough to show intent.

Dunn drove Jenny downtown, where she recounted her story to Gallier. Under questioning, the girl held up well.
More than anything, she was angry. But every time she recounted Bergstrom’s threat to kill her, she cried.

“Jenny, Sergeant Dunn is going to take you home,” Gallier finally told her. “You’ve done well. I think you may have corralled this guy for us.”

Tonry was working a homicide investigation that Friday afternoon when Fidelibus, Gallier, and Dunn met in an HPD conference room to compare files one last time. Their best bet, they decided, was to package the two cases in which they had ID and could easily prove intent—Jenny Karr as an attempted sexual assault and Sandy Colyard’s case as a burglary. With Bergstrom still free, they wanted to do the bare minimum to get a felony warrant as quickly as possible. “We wanted to catch Bergstrom at work because we knew as soon as he got off, he’d be out looking for more victims,” Dunn explained later. “We needed to get him before he had the opportunity to hurt anyone else. This guy had been loose for too long.”

Dunn called the assistant DA he and Gallier had consulted the day before. “It sounds like you’ve got a case,” the prosecutor told him. “Get your stuff together and let’s go.” Fidelibus and Gallier headed to the criminal courts building to get the arrest warrant; Dunn left to pick up another officer in Clear Lake to set up surveillance on Bergstrom, anxious to move in as soon as they received the go-ahead.

At the courthouse, Gallier and Fidelibus sought out the assistant DA. They handed him the Karr and Colyard files and then held their breath. No one wanted a holdup when they were so close.

To their relief, the prosecutor smiled up at them. “I think you’ve got enough for your warrant, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s go see a judge.”

As Fidelibus and Gallier talked to the judge, Dunn drove to Devoe & Raynolds with HPD Sergeant Victor Rodriguez in an unmarked squad car. The afternoon had dwindled away and it was nearly 4:30
P.M.
, Bergstrom’s quitting time, when the call finally came in on the police radio from Gallier.

“The ink’s not even dry yet, but we’ve got the warrant on both counts,” Gallier beamed. “Pick him up and let’s rope him in.”

“You guys took long enough,” Dunn laughed. “Let’s get him.”

Dunn entered Devoe & Raynolds’ main office just after four that afternoon, flashed his badge to the glassed-in receptionist, and said, “I’m Sergeant Charles Dunn, HPD, and I’d like to talk to James Bergstrom.”

Surprised that a police officer would be asking for James, the woman stuck her head into a nearby office, and a supervisor came out and shook Dunn’s hand.

“I hear you’re looking for James Bergstrom,” the man said. “Is there a problem? What do you want him for?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Dunn replied. “We’d just like a few words with him.”

The supervisor told the receptionist to call James to the office. As he waited, Dunn saw workers in lab coats walking past the office. Word had spread quickly through the plant that the police were up front asking questions about James. Curious, the men scanned Dunn’s face for a clue. Dunn stared back, assessing not the workers but what they wore: white hard hats—just like the one Bergstrom had on in at least two of the assaults.

“Bergstrom’s already left for the day,” the supervisor finally returned to tell Dunn. “Can’t you give me some idea why you’re here?”

“No,” the officer snapped. “But thanks anyway.”

All Dunn could do now was head for James and Linda’s apartment at Painter’s Mill and wait. “It was just crazy. I was beside myself,” he’d say later. “I knew he was out stalking someone else, and there was nothing I could do.”

Actually James Bergstrom had been gone from Devoe & Raynolds for nearly an hour when Dunn entered the plant. Gino noticed he’d left when at 3:00
P.M.
Allen Gibson asked if his brother-in-law had gone home sick again.

“Gee, I don’t know,” Gino shrugged. “Could have.”

“He’s already missed two days this week.” Gibson frowned. “He’d better watch it or someone will start noticing.”

Getting in trouble at work was the last concern on James Bergstrom’s mind that afternoon. As he had for months, he thought of nothing but leaving the plant and getting out on the streets in his car. When he wasn’t stalking, he envisioned himself behind the wheel, rap music pounding, watching. He was the hunter stalking his prey. He enjoyed knowing that the women went about their lives as unaware of him as of a growing cancer. The element of surprise made the process more exciting. In James Bergstrom’s mind his quarry had long since stopped being individuals, women with children, husbands or boyfriends, family and friends. To him, they were barely human. He’d never hunted wild animals, but Bergstrom was sure this was how it felt.

Dunn was getting nervous. He and Rodriguez sat in their unmarked car outside the Bergstroms’ apartment waiting for their target to drive into the parking lot for more than an hour. The longer he waited, the more Dunn worried. Always in the back of his mind was the unspoken fear that as they sat idly by, Bergstrom attacked another victim. Another life damaged.
He’d threatened to kill that last girl,
Dunn thought.
Maybe this time he’ll be desperate enough to do it.

Gallier called twice to say he and Fidelibus were stuck in rush-hour traffic but on their way with the warrant.

“Have you got him yet?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Dunn said.

“He’ll be there,” Gallier assured him. There was no reason to believe Bergstrom had any idea about what was about to go down. Gallier anxiously anticipated, not Bergstrom’s possible escape, but what would happen once they had him under arrest. There was still no evidence tying him to any of the actual rapes. Though Karr’s case established intent and they could use it to package the cases, arguing Bergstrom had used a similar MO, it was at best a weak case, one easily dismantled by a competent defense attorney.

“Get me a good confession and we can put this guy away for a long time,” the prosecutor had urged as the two officers ran from the courthouse. “Without it, he’ll be out in no time.”

As they drove down the freeway, Gallier wondered how Bergstrom would respond. He thought about the role-playing he and Fidelibus would both have to do to convince him to confess. “We couldn’t go up there angry and treat him like a disease. We basically had to think like a rapist thinks. We had to convince him that we understood him,” said Gallier. “We had to tell him that he was right, and that women are bitches and that they aren’t good for anything other than a piece of ass.”

Just after 5:30
P.M.
, Dunn recognized a brown Grand Prix with Bergstrom’s license plate number pull into the apartment complex parking lot. James drove past the two men in the unmarked car without noticing them. He was distracted, tired and frustrated. The afternoon had panned dry. When he’d found no likely victims, he’d tired of the game and driven past Eddie Smith’s apartment to see if his friend was home. When he wasn’t, Bergstrom decided to return to his apartment at Painter’s Mill to wait for his wife and daughter.

As James pulled into his parking space, Dunn maneuvered the unmarked squad car in behind him, parking him in. Both officers, guns drawn, approached Bergstrom from
opposite sides of the car. “Get out. Hands up,” Dunn shouted, holding out his badge. “Police.”

Bergstrom stepped out, his hands in the air. “What’s this all about?” he asked calmly.

Dunn looked down into the car and noticed a hard hat, clipboard, and test tube in the front passenger seat. “There are charges and a warrant on the way. Attempted sexual assault,” Dunn snapped, handcuffing Bergstrom’s wrists in front of him. “You have the right to remain silent…”

When he finished reading him his rights, Bergstrom immediately waived his right to an attorney. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He shrugged, avoiding Dunn’s steady gaze. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Mr. Bergstrom,” Dunn said, “you’re no longer in Washington State, and this time it won’t end up the same way.”

James appeared stunned, as if Dunn had slapped him.

“I’ve got this problem,” Bergstrom said, suddenly humbled. “I need help.”

“That’s obvious,” said Dunn, handing him a consent-to-search form for the car as Rodriguez radioed Gallier and Fidelibus that they had Bergstrom in custody.

“Should I sign this?” Bergstrom asked.

“You can cooperate or we can do this the hard way and get a search warrant,” Dunn said. “It’s up to you.”

Bergstrom hesitated, then signed the form. As Dunn watched his prisoner, Rodriguez searched the car. From the trunk, he pulled out a ski mask and a gun. At first Dunn thought the handgun was real, but on closer inspection he realized it was a convincing copy. Then Dunn ordered Bergstrom into the backseat of his squad car. “I knew how important that confession was,” he’d say later. “I didn’t want to do anything to start him talking and risk fouling it up.”

Gallier and Fidelibus pulled into Painter’s Mill ten minutes after Bergstrom’s arrest. They quickly picked Dunn’s
car out of the parking lot, and as they drove up, Gallier rolled down his window and Dunn filled the two detectives in on what had transpired. Then Gallier walked over to meet the man he’d been hunting for nearly three months.

“I just wanted to walk up and give him a hug and a thank you for the seventeen-year-old. The timing was phenomenal. Without her, we’d have gone ahead and filed and had practically nothing,” Gallier would say later. “But I couldn’t be cocky. I needed a confession. I treated him like he was just my little friend.”

“James,” Gallier said as he opened the car door and helped Bergstrom out of the backseat. “I’m Sergeant Rusty Gallier with the Houston Police Department.”

“Yeah, I recognize you,” Bergstrom said.

“Recognize me?”

“Yeah,” he explained. “I saw you on television last fall with that rapist, the one with all the lingerie. I used to watch all those reports to see how the other guys got caught.”

Gallier smiled.

“I know it looks bad, but keep your chin up,” he said, downplaying Bergstrom’s problems as he always did when he needed to get a suspect to talk. “At least you didn’t kill anybody.”

Bergstrom nodded in agreement.

Gallier touched Bergstrom on the arm, making physical contact. It was a ploy he used often with rapists. “I’m going to read you your rights again, James,” he said, his voice dripping with concern. “You listen carefully. But remember, you’re not that different from me or any other man. Lots of us have thought about doing what you did. You have the right to…”

When Gallier finished, Bergstrom again declined his right to an attorney. Gallier recorded the reading and his refusal in his notes. If he got a confession, all this would be paramount when Bergstrom’s defense attorney, as they all did, fought to keep his client’s confession from the jury’s ears.

“We’d like you to sign a consent to search the apartment, James,” Gallier said next.

“I don’t know,” Bergstrom said.

“James, we’ve been watching you for months,” Gallier said. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way. What’s it going to be?”

“Let’s do it the easy way,” Bergstrom said.

“Great.” Gallier smiled. “Now, why don’t you sign this and then take us in the apartment. Show us the clothes you wore when you did these things.”

Upstairs Bergstrom pulled out nearly everything he owned. All his shirts and warm-ups. “All this, James?” Gallier asked.

“Yeah,” said Bergstrom. “I think you’ll need it all.”

When they were finished in the apartment, Dunn loaded Bergstrom into the back of his car and drove him toward the Clear Lake Substation, where Fidelibus and Gallier planned to begin the interrogation.

Though Dunn attempted to change the subject, Bergstrom kept trying to confess in the car. “I’ve got this problem. It’s all I think about, twenty-four hours a day,” he said. “If I cooperate, will I get help?”

“Listen,” Dunn said. “I don’t know what’ll happen. I’m not Monty Hall and I can’t make a deal.”

At the substation, Dunn deposited Bergstrom in a glassed-in conference room.

“Want a Coke, James?” Gallier asked when he arrived.

“Sure,” he said. “Can I call my wife?”

“Of course,” Gallier said. “Go right ahead.”

James dialed the apartment, and when Linda didn’t answer, he left a message on the answering machine.

For the third time that afternoon, Gallier again read Bergstrom his Miranda rights and again James declined.

“So now, James,” said Gallier, with the niceties out of the way. “I think we need to have a little talk to find out what’s
going on here.” Gallier sensed Bergstrom would open up easily. This obsession had ruled his life, and yet he hadn’t spoken of it with anyone. Not even his best friends at the paint company knew what he was doing. “Then all of a sudden, I come along and I tell him I understand about him,” said Gallier later. “It’s a psychological game. Once you understand that, you don’t have to play by the rules. You handle enough cases, you can tell a rapist more about himself than he knows. I never coerce them. You’ve got to be careful not to cross that line. Do I lie to them and tell them what they’ve done isn’t so bad? Sure I lie. It’s not against the law to lie to a rapist.”

To James, Gallier said, “I think you should know something. I understand what you did. A lot of guys think about it. I have fantasies, too. I’ve always wondered what it was like to take a shoestring and put a mask on so that nobody would know. To tie the woman’s hands. Feel her arms shivering. I tie the knot tight,” Gallier said, watching James’s eyes glaze over as he slipped into his fantasy world. “The only difference between you and me is that you had the balls to go out and do it.”

Fidelibus sat at a typewriter and hit the keys with a steady clack clack as Gallier and James talked. Gallier began the conversation with the attacks he was most certain of, a triangle where the top consisted of those cases in which they had identification.

“Let’s start with that little blond Clear Lake girl you did yesterday,” Gallier said.

“I knew she saw my face,” Bergstrom said. “I noticed her when she was coming home…”

Gallier listened attentively, rearing up angrily against Bergstrom each time he strayed from the facts.

“You’re not playing straight with me, James,” Gallier said, fuming if his account didn’t ring true. “I thought we understood each other, but you’re not telling the truth.”