Body Parts (17 page)

The woman’s body was faceup in the 60-degree stagnant water, bloated and discolored. But curiously, her face, upper chest, and one shoulder were black and swollen. Being in the cool water probably slowed the decomposition, but this uneven pattern of lividity—the dark purplish color on the skin where the blood settles after the heart stops beating—was unusual. She was red around the middle as if she’d been bent or folded in half after her death.

Initially, Jones thought that the decomposition in the blackened areas of the body might have been caused by being in the sun for a long time, with part of her shaded by the walnut tree, or possibly was accelerated by exposure to a man-made heat source. He also figured she’d been turned upside down and on her side after she died because her lips were swollen.

But Jones, who had been a homicide detective for three years, didn’t want to get locked into one theory about how she died. As the adrenaline flooded his body, he preferred to keep an open mind and let his thoughts go where they might.

As he wondered who she was and how she got into that ditch, he theorized that perhaps she was killed by an ex-boyfriend who’d gotten angry after they’d had sex. He wondered if the killer had stripped her body to make her death look like a rape. Or maybe, he thought, she’d died accidentally, scaring a friend into dumping her at the side of the road.

But most important, he wondered if they would be able to identify her. Without a name, she was just another Jane Doe, lost in the world of women who had gone missing.

The investigators collected about fifteen items from the scene, including a brown leather glove and a plastic royal blue tarp, both of which were floating near the body. They couldn’t be sure the glove was tied to the case, though, because all sorts of debris turned up in ditches.

They collected a white plastic bag that had blown and come to rest against some weeds about thirty yards away. It was marked with what looked like blood and the logo for Flying J, a national chain of truck stops. The bag was a good clue that the killer might’ve been a truck driver, a lead supported by the tire tracks left in the gravel. Given the rough and uneven surface, however, the tracks weren’t clear enough to identify the tire pattern by brand.

A brown-and-tan-plaid shirt, rolled up and turned inside out, was also found on the north bank, about six feet from the body.

Herrera saw a pattern in the soft dirt as if a burst of truck exhaust had scattered clumps of the victim’s auburn hair around the area, where investigators collected a yellow Bic lighter and some fallen leaves, also covered with a red substance that later proved to be the victim’s blood.

Because she was in the water, investigators had to call in the sheriff’s boat crew, who waded into the ditch in hip boots, slid the metal rescue basket underneath her, and pulled the gurney up the embankment by tying a rope around a tree. As they removed her body from the water, more clumps of her hair came off.

The body had no major visible wounds or bruises, which, after spending a year observing autopsies, struck Herrera as unusual for a woman who had been dumped, naked. He figured she’d probably been strangled.

She had a number of distinctive tattoos on her chest, right shoulder, and right ankle, but they were difficult to read because of the decomposed state of her skin.

The one over her right breast was written in cursive and spelled out “Ignacio.”

The tattoo over her left breast, which also was in cursive, clearly spelled out the name “Debra.” Above it, encircled with a squiggly design, some additional letters spelled
“Mi madre,”
which, in Spanish, means “my mother Debra.”

Finally, the victim had a tattoo of a ribbon going through a heart on her right shoulder, and some initials tattooed on her right ankle, which said “mi” in small letters and “NAC” in big cursive letters.

They bagged her hands to protect them for fingerprinting, loaded her body into the van about 4:50
P.M.
, and transported her to San Joaquin County Hospital for full-body X-rays. After that, they took her to the county morgue.

Jones and his wife, Vonda, had had plans to go to a friend’s party that night, so he called her from the car on his way back to the office to tell her to go on without him. It was already after 5:00
P.M.
and he knew how things went with a case like this. Better to be safe than sorry where the wife was concerned.

Back at the morgue, investigators were able to roll a set of fingerprints from the victim and enter them into the California ID system, which, on a good day, can take only thirty to sixty minutes to get a hit. Generally, these are people with criminal records, but the database also includes everyone in law enforcement, security guards, people with special security clearances, and even some journalists who have been issued press passes.

The autopsy was conducted the next morning by pathologist Dianne Vertes.

Dr. Vertes removed a silver ring with a heart pattern from the victim’s right index finger, a gold chain from her neck, and a friendship bracelet made of yarn from her right wrist, all of which she booked into evidence. She also took three vials of blood and a rape kit.

The victim had an abrasion on her right side near the rib cage and the skin of her neck was marked with a chainlike pattern that could have been made by the necklace, although there was no internal hemorrhaging underneath. Vertes also found an injury on the back of the victim’s head, but she couldn’t immediately tell if it was old or if she’d been struck or dropped there more recently.

Unfortunately, the autopsy didn’t change the fact that they still had no specific idea of how this young woman died, which was disappointing.

“We were hoping for something, a stab wound or something that said, yes, it was a homicide,” Jones said.

Nonetheless, he and his team still treated the case as a homicide, given the evidence at the death scene. The state of decomposition could have masked some findings, and they hoped the cause of death would become clearer once the toxicology tests came back. But until she knew more, Vertes preliminarily deemed it “homicidal violence of unknown ideology.”

In this case, the detectives were lucky that the victim had a criminal record; otherwise, she might have remained a Jane Doe.

Her prints came up as twenty-five-year-old Lanett Deyon White, who had been arrested for forgery, commercial burglary, being under the influence of meth, public intoxication, and vandalism, starting in 1994.

Lanett was born on November 11, 1972, in Upland, California, the first of two children to Debra and Bill White. Debra had a difficult pregnancy with Lanett, who weighed nine pounds at birth.

At the time, the family was living in a duplex in Ontario, where Bill worked construction. Debra, who is part Cherokee, was born in Tennessee, and Bill, who is full-blooded Shawnee and Cherokee, was born in Oklahoma.

Debra stayed home to take care of Lanett, who, in her mother’s eyes, was a wonderful child, albeit a bit fussy.

As she grew up, Lanett liked the circus so much she even dressed as a bearded lady for her kindergarten class when it performed a mock circus.

Athletic from an early age, Lanett ran track at her elementary school and practiced karate for two and a half years, earning a third-degree brown belt. She quit before she earned a black belt, however, after losing a tournament fight to a boy. She didn’t think it was fair, girls having to compete against boys.

Bill and Debra used to take Lanett fishing at Guasti and Puddingstone Lakes almost every weekend, where her biggest catch was a two-pounder. She didn’t like to take the fish off the hook because she was scared it would bite her.

Lanett’s brother, Bill Jr., was born when she was thirteen, and she liked to play mother to him—dressing him up, cutting his hair, and fashioning it into pigtails. As they got older, the relationship took on a more typical sibling dynamic—fighting one minute and best friends the next. But they were always there for each other.

The family used to go to SeaWorld in San Diego and to drag races together. Lanett loved riding in her father’s hot rod, boating on the lake, and sometimes went to work with him, where she helped put up the drywall tape.

As Lanett grew into a teenager—reaching five feet ten inches and weight ranging from 130 to 165 pounds—she stopped going to school around the ninth grade, choosing instead to go to her aunt’s house or ride her bike. And, like a typical teenage girl, she got a little boy crazy, though perhaps a bit more enthusiastic than most.

In November 1988, the day after her sixteenth birthday, she had a daughter named Amanda, with Robert Dewester. Then, almost a year later, she had Carlos, named after his father, with whom she also had Michael, who was born in March 1995. Finally, she had David with Ignacio Herrera in January 1998.

Lanett liked to cook for her children, particularly Mexican food.

“She was really fun. Instead of a mother, she was more like a friend,” her daughter, Amanda, said later.

Lanett lived off and on with her parents, but no matter what, Debra later told authorities, she and Lanett remained best friends. Lanett would always be her precious little baby.

Lanett surely loved her family, but she also loved to have a good time. And she needed a way to pay for it.

She was twenty-one when she was first arrested. Chino police booked her into the West Valley Detention Center on September 28, 1994, for trying to cash a stolen check for $500 at the Vineyard National Bank.

Lanett initially told Officer R. Planas that she’d gotten the check from a woman she’d worked for named Mary and asked a friend, Araceli Aguilar, to cash it for her. After Planas took Lanett in for questioning and read her her rights, Lanett changed her story and said she’d gotten the check, already signed by a Christopher Gourlay, from a woman named Robin, who owed her money.

In October, Mary Gourlay called Chino police Detective K. Devey to report that another two stolen checks, totaling $816, had been cashed from her account. These were made out to Adriana Gallegos, again with the forged signature of Mary’s husband, who claimed he’d lost his checkbook and wallet several months earlier.

Adriana, who turned out to be the sister of Lanett’s ex-boyfriend Carlos, said she got the checks from Lanett, who had lived with her brother for about four years. The couple had been evicted from their apartment and had $2,000 in debts, which Carlos asked Lanett to share. Carlos asked Adriana to cash the two checks, allegedly payment from Lanett’s job, and then give him the money.

Lanett’s family said she had parties to sell home interior products, but police records show her as unemployed.

“It was so unusual for Lanett to have any money, as she never worked and didn’t have any means of obtaining a check,” Carlos’s other sister, Dulce, told police.

Devey tried unsuccessfully to reach Lanett by phone in January 1995, and again in early February, when he went to the apartment she shared with her parents in Chino.

On February 7, Devey put a “stop and hold” on Lanett and she was arrested by 4:00
P.M.
Police deemed Adriana and Araceli unsuspecting accomplices and didn’t arrest either of them.

Lanett was ultimately charged with two counts of commercial burglary, two counts of forging checks, and one count of being under the influence of methamphetamine. Through a plea bargain, she was sentenced to 120 days in jail and three years’ probation, but she was allowed to serve her time in a weekend program, from 7:00
P.M.
Friday until 7:00
P.M.
Sunday.

A month before she was to start her jail time in November 1995, she was arrested again for being under the influence of meth by an officer investigating a hit-and-run collision involving a black Camaro, which Lanett’s boyfriend said he’d loaned her.

During her arrest on the night of October 13, she admitted that she’d snorted “a little line” earlier that day. She was ineligible to enter a drug diversion program because of her prior conviction.

On Friday night, April 5, 1996—when she apparently should have been in jail—Lanett was arrested for public drunkenness outside Studebaker’s bar in Chino, where she’d been kicked out for attempting to hit her boyfriend. Lanett was crying and mumbling to herself when police arrived.