Dead of Night (6 page)

The two pairs of panties found beneath Brianna’s right thigh were examined at the crime lab by Lisa Smyth-Roam and found to contain both male and female DNA profiles foreign to Brianna’s known DNA profile. Smyth-Roam also analyzed swabs that Dr. Clark had collected from the exterior surfaces of Brianna’s genitalia from which she identified a sperm fraction—further analysis by Smyth-Roam resulted in the identification of a complete male DNA profile. Not surprisingly, one of the thong panties found with Brianna’s body also contained the same unidentified suspect’s DNA profile, which had been established from two of the victims of the earlier attacks of UNR students and which also had been found on the outside rear doorknob of the house from which Brianna had been taken. For all that detectives knew at this point, their suspect’s DNA could very well be sitting in the Washoe County Crime Lab’s backlog of samples waiting to be entered into the system. It was, at the very least, frustrating that they could not get a hit on the suspect’s DNA. Investigators continued working under the theory that Reno had a serial rapist on its hands, and that he had now graduated to murder.

The black Pink Panther panties were not Brianna’s, and the detectives wondered to whom they had belonged. They also actively tried to determine to whom the unknown female DNA on them belonged, but there were no immediate hits. It was possible, they reasoned, that it belonged to yet another woman who might have been assaulted. Investigators also considered that the underwear could possibly have been stolen in a burglary. Police later placed photos of the thongs on a website about the case. They asked the owner to come forward because she might have information that could lead police to the man who killed Brianna. They emphasized that they really needed the woman’s help in finding their suspect.

“I would say this is a serial rapist,” Deputy Police Chief Jim Johns said at a news conference held shortly after the body found in the field had been positively identified as Brianna Denison. “We have two, probably three cases linked through DNA. The totality of the information in this case leads us to believe it is a sexually motivated crime. I’m worried this guy is still out there, and I’m worried somebody else is going to get hurt.”

Johns told reporters that investigators believed that their suspect lived somewhere near the UNR campus, located just north of Reno’s downtown casino district, and that because of his familiarity with the city, they were all but certain that he lived somewhere in Reno, if not near the campus. Johns also said that it was possible that the suspect’s workplace might be closer to the city’s southeast side, near where Brianna’s body was found. He said that publicity surrounding the case could result in the suspect stopping his attacks, but Johns added that investigators feared that he might strike again.

“Somewhere in our community there is a wife, a mom, a girlfriend, a sister who recognizes this suspect,” Johns said. “Likely, he looks like somebody you would least suspect, but that is the person who is responsible for this crime.”

Johns also said that investigators were still working under the presumption that the same person was responsible for the UNR attack in which he boldly raped a woman at gunpoint in the same parking garage where the campus police parked their cruisers. Johns said that he believed the “chances are very good” that police would catch the perpetrator.

“It could be tomorrow, next month, or next year,” he said. “We are going to find this suspect.”

Johns told the public that the community could be of great help in the identification and arrest of the suspect in the case. He asked that the community remain observant and, in particular, to look for changes in behavior of people they might know who matched the general description of the suspect, even if they did not believe the person being observed could be capable of such heinous crimes as had been committed in Reno. He said the signs that people should be looking for in potential suspects could be a change, such as if the person had suddenly become overly anxious or nervous, or someone who had suddenly quit his job or moved away from the area without explanation, or someone who had unexpectedly sold a vehicle that resembled or matched the description of the truck previously provided by Virgie Chin.

 

 

Meanwhile, investigators began talking publicly about offender profiles. Although they had been working with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) on producing a profile of the Reno serial sexual predator, who had now turned to murder, Reno police detectives and officials were also in contact with New Jersey psychotherapist and forensic social worker John Kelly.

Kelly described himself as a behavioral profiler whose firm, System to Apprehend Lethal Killers (S.T.A.L.K., Inc.), was in the process of preparing a profile report about Brianna’s killer for the detectives. Their motto, appropriately, was “Solving murders is our business.” Lieutenant Robert McDonald, however, was quick to point out that Kelly’s reports and opinions had not been solicited by Reno detectives.

Nonetheless, Kelly said that his concern focused on the fact that many serial killers were serial rapists before they began killing. Kelly said Brianna’s killer was likely a narcissistic egomaniac with a God complex, and that he was likely enjoying the attention he was getting on television and in newspapers, particularly since murdering Brianna. He likely also enjoyed the fear he had created within the community.

Kelly said that not only did the suspect have power sexually over someone, but now he had experienced power over life and death. Once he crossed that line, it was hard to go back. The suspect was definitely a budding serial killer, Kelly stated, and he said he didn’t think he was going to stop.

Kelly believed the killer likely participated in some sort of athletic activity, given the type of clothing he was described as wearing during his attacks. Rapists and sexual killers fantasized a lot about wielding power and control over their victims, Kelly said, and often became addicted to those fantasies. Stressful situations, such as a divorce or the loss of employment, often caused such individuals to cross the line. The way they dealt with stress was to stay in the fantasy all the time, Kelly said, adding that was very soothing for them and helped to take them out of the reality of what they were doing.

Such people, Kelly said, often began their aberrant behavior as voyeurs, often peeking into windows of unsuspecting victims. The victims in Reno’s cases, Kelly noted, were similar in appearance, and it seemed likely that their attacker had been watching them before striking. He also said that the killer was probably familiar with the area where he dumped Brianna’s body. That was the point at which they were most vulnerable, since they tended to go somewhere they believed was totally safe and familiar. They also had to have the ability to make sure no one was coming in either direction, Kelly added.

Kelly said that Brianna’s killer might be shorter than the average male. Since he was driving a truck with some height, Kelly said the killer might feel like he is a king sitting on a throne as he looked down on others. It could also explain why he chose victims who were not tall. Since the suspect was going after short women, Kelly said, that told him that the man wanted to make sure he had complete control. Kelly said that he didn’t believe the killer was very tall, or didn’t feel like he could control a taller victim.

Former New Orleans detective Larry Williams, who was working at the time of Brianna’s murder as a forensic security consultant, told the Reno cops that it was his opinion that the killer would likely continue raping women, perhaps without a desire to kill his victims. However, Williams said, that assailant might resort to murder if he lost control or otherwise believed he had no choice. If he believed he did not have a choice, Williams said, that rapist would not think twice about taking another life. Williams also believed the killer might be taking advantage of the naivete of younger college students.

“These students don’t think about all of the horrible things that can happen,” Williams said. “They are living in an area where things are positive, and they drop their guard. They are normally not concerned with the dark side of life.”

Reno police officials, however, emphasized that despite the profiles that others were doing of their killer, the FBI BSU profilers said that it was much too early to be calling Brianna’s murderer a serial killer or to speculate that he might become one. Lieutenant McDonald went a step further by stating that he did not necessarily agree with Kelly’s opinion, which was based largely on media reports, that their suspect was becoming a serial killer.

“There is no illusion that the suspect is a serial rapist, and he is clearly a murderer, but is he a serial killer?” McDonald asked. “We don’t know.... We’ve been calling him a serial rapist. It is what it is. You’ve got a guy here in four instances and all he’s trying to do is rape young women, all of them in good shape with long hair.... He certainly has a target group in mind.”

McDonald added that there had been a considerable amount of guessing about what happened in the sexual attacks and Brianna’s murder, and that much of the guessing had not been accurate and was mostly speculation.

“These speculations are creating a sense of a different individual than the one who we might be looking for,” McDonald said. “Although this person is a deviant, he probably wouldn’t appear as a monster in the community walking down the street. You wouldn’t recognize him as a deviant.”

 

 

Bridgette Denison later said that the detectives had told her that it was now their opinion that Brianna had not been abducted from the MacKay Court residence, as they had originally thought. She said that they now believed that Brianna was killed inside the house, and her body removed after death.

“They think he strangled her right then and there,” she said. “And it was a matter of seconds. That’s all I know. I did not want any more details.”

She issued a statement in which she thanked the community and the police for their help during the search for Brianna:
On March 29, 1988, Bridgette and Jeffrey Denison were given the incredible gift of their daughter Brianna. On January 20, 2008, she became the daughter of our entire community.... We ask once again that if there is anyone out there with information, we beg you to come forward. Now is the time.

Governor Jim Gibbons issued a statement of sympathy to the Denison family, asking the community to continue helping the police in their efforts to find the killer of Brianna Denison:
Brianna’s story has clearly captured the hearts of our entire community and state.

Even though the search for Brianna was now officially over, the Reno community continued to do its part in remembering the slain young woman by wearing blue ribbons and placing them on trees and other locations, as requested by her family. It was not long before the local Walmart stores, craft shops, and other retail outlets sold out of the royal blue ribbon, Brianna’s favorite color, which many people began referring to as “Bri Blue.” Now that her body had been found, the search for Brianna’s killer had quickly become the focus of the community.

“Now we’re on a manhunt,” Brianna’s mother said.

There were still a lot of questions that the detectives hoped they would soon be able to answer. If Brianna was killed in the MacKay Court house, did her killer rape her there before killing her? If so, why had no one in the adjacent bedroom heard anything? Or did he kill her and then rape her corpse, perhaps at a different location? At what point did the killer remove her clothing? She was reported to have been wearing sweatpants and a light top when she went to bed on the couch. Where were her clothes? Had he kept the clothing items as souvenirs or as a trophy of his kill? Or had he disposed of them at a still-undetermined location? And what happened to the teddy bear that Brianna was using to prop up her pillow? It was nowhere to be found. It had, after all, been reported by Virgie Chin that a child’s shoe was on the floorboard of his truck. Had he given the teddy bear to a child, perhaps his own? As Jenkins and his colleagues prepared to continue moving forward in their search for Brianna’s killer, it became obvious that the answers to many of their questions might be difficult to obtain—if they could ever hope to obtain them at all.

Chapter 8

On Friday night, February 22, 2008, a week after Brianna Denison’s body was found, an outdoor candlelight vigil was held at the industrial area location where her body had been found. A white cross had been placed in the field near the spot where Alberto Jimenez had stumbled upon the then-unidentified corpse, and mourners piled dozens of floral bouquets at the location. More than five hundred teddy bears had also been placed there, along with other stuffed animals and hundreds of blue ribbons as the large crowd of candle-bearing mourners paid their respects to the slain young woman. The mayor of Reno, Bob Cashell, along with a great number of the people that had been involved in the search effort, showed up.

“This is a great showing that this community is not going to cower to a monster like this,” Mayor Cashell told the crowd at one point.

Lauren Denison was there, along with other family members and friends. She said that they were all overwhelmed by the show of support.

“Here you have this horrible person who is still on the loose, and you just pray to God he won’t hurt or kill anyone else,” Lauren said. “On the other hand, you have this phenomenal outpouring from people. How wonderful.... It’s just so overwhelming.”

Schoolchildren placed a sign at the memorial that read:
You changed a community. You changed a nation. We will never forget you.

The following night, a celebration-of-life ceremony for Brianna called “Live, Love and Unite” was held at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center in honor of the slain coed. More than three thousand mourners attended to pay their respects to Brianna and her family; many of her loved ones vowed they would never forget her. More than twenty of her friends went onstage in front of the crowd, many of them crying, to pay homage to the girl they had loved.

“She was always an angel that protected us,” said Brianna’s best friend, Danielle DeTomaso. The two young women had been friends since they were in nursery school together. “Now she’s with her father watching over us, guiding us as we grow. Even though she’s not on earth, her spirit will live in our hearts forever.”

“Brianna is a strong and glorious masterpiece who touched lives the world over,” said a family friend, Jain Lemos, between tears.

Another good friend, Daneh Farahi, walked up to the microphone and tearfully said, “God needed an angel to watch over the rest of us, and he chose the best angel. While we cry because we miss her, we all now have an angel watching from above.”

Others spoke about Brianna’s kind heart.

“She always was concerned about others, giving and sacrificing what would be good for herself,” her cousin Ashley Zunino said.

Brianna’s aunt Lauren asked the group of mourners to keep Brianna in their hearts and minds as police searched for her killer. Lauren stated that “we have a job to do to bring this person to justice.”

Marc Klaas, who lost his daughter, Polly, to a murderer, was also there to pay his respects, having traveled to Reno from out of state. Klaas founded KlaasKids Foundation after his daughter, at the age of twelve, was abducted at knifepoint from her mother’s Petaluma, California, home during a slumber party on October 1, 1993, and was later strangled by Richard Allen Davis. Klaas obviously felt the need to be there because of the common bond he shared with the Denison family.

“Bri’s family has joined a fraternal legacy, but the price of admission is the loss of a child,” Marc Klaas said. He also told the crowd that they should be proud for coming together as a community. “You came out to take a stand against injustice and look evil in the face. Everyone across the country is watching how Reno has reacted to this.”

Appallingly, the Westboro Baptist Church staged one of its notorious protests at the memorial service. They garnered little attention and even less publicity for its efforts.

Toward the end of February 2008, the Reno detectives, working with the information they had so far put together about their suspect, decided to contact a legal brothel called the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, located about thirty miles south of Reno. They wanted to see if they could turn up any new leads. Everyone realized it was a long shot, but they took what descriptive information they had and contacted the brothel’s owner, Dennis Hof, to see if any of the girls who worked there had encountered anyone as a client who might fit the suspect’s general profile and description. Hof agreed to help the cops, and the Reno detectives went to the ranch and talked with the girls.

It turned out that one of the women told detectives about a regular client who appeared to fit the killer’s general profile, at least as police then knew it. The man in question had tried to choke the woman a few times during their sexual sessions, and it had frightened her terribly, although she had walked away basically unharmed afterward.

The woman agreed to lure the man back to the ranch, and investigators went undercover so they would be nearby in the event that the man became violent again. Little out of the ordinary occurred, but the woman retained the condom they had used, as well as a glass that the man used for a drink. She turned both over to the police. Detectives immediately sent the items off to the crime lab for DNA analysis but, unfortunately, no cigar—the DNA did not match that of their suspect. They had hit another dead end, despite making their best efforts.

Meanwhile, on Monday, March 3, 2008, Lieutenant Robert McDonald told reporters for the
Reno Gazette-Journal
and the Associated Press that there had been a mix-up of sorts on a pair of thong underwear that had been found with Brianna’s body. When her body was discovered, Reno police initially reported that the DNA of an unknown woman was found on the Pink Panther thong underwear, along with the DNA of the serial rapist they were hunting. But, according to McDonald, the DNA belonged to both an unknown female and an unknown male—not their suspect—and that the mix-up, due to somebody being “misinformed,” was “really not that big of a deal.” It had occurred when investigators made a misstatement to the media. He said that a forensic connection by DNA to Brianna and two previous attacks still existed and included “the abduction scene and the scene where Brianna was found.... From the beginning, the lab had stated the offender’s DNA was not on there. It was never an error made by the lab.”

“We are still certain he left the underwear,” McDonald added. “We are one hundred percent convinced the offender left the underwear there.... They weren’t left lying in the field by somebody else. Why it was left there? We don’t know. We don’t know if it was taunting. We don’t believe it was. They may have been left there by accident. . . .” McDonald urged citizens to come forward and identify the panties.

The lieutenant said that the investigators were attempting to determine if the unknown DNA belonged to another victim of an assault. He said that their suspect took a pair of women’s panties with him in at least one of the other attacks.

The officer also clarified that the serial rapist was linked by DNA to the sexual attacks of November 13 and December 16, 2007, and to the murder of Brianna Denison. He said that the rape by gunpoint of a student inside a UNR parking garage on October 22, 2007, did not have a forensic link to their suspect. Investigators, however, still believed it was connected to the other incidents. He added that DNA also linked the suspect to the attempted burglary of the December victim’s apartment a few hours before Brianna disappeared from the MacKay Court residence.

McDonald also said that investigators had received a preliminary profile from the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit that described their suspect as very likely being a younger, inconspicuous man who would blend well into the community. He would probably have little or no criminal history. He could be characterized as an introvert who liked to remain in the background. He would likely not be the type who would be seen by anyone as a monster.

Reno police officials added that their suspect seemed to be attacking petite young women with straight, long hair. The severity and violence associated with the attacks had escalated with each subsequent attack.

“He is someone’s boyfriend or husband, or the coworker you have coffee with,” McDonald said in describing the profile.

 

 

In the meantime, Washoe County Crime Laboratory director Renee Romero told the community that progress was being made in processing the backlog of more than three thousand DNA samples. She expected the backlog processing to be complete by mid-March. However, by Tuesday, March 4, 2008, there were no hits or positive DNA links to Brianna’s case or to the sexual attack cases from the samples that had already been entered into state and national databases. Investigators, however, remained hopeful that such a link would soon be found so that they could identify their suspect.

Two days later, on Thursday, March 6, 2008, Reno police had more to say about the panties found with Brianna’s body. According to Commander Leigha Struffert, the second pair of panties—not the dark-colored Pink Panther panties, but rather the pink ones—belonged to one of the UNR students who lived at the MacKay Court residence. Struffert said that tests showed that DNA on those panties belonged to their owner, whom police did not identify at that time, and to Brianna Denison and her killer. Struffert said that one of the girls who lived in the house had come forward and identified the thong panties as belonging to her. She said that investigators did not yet know how the panties came into the suspect’s possession, and that there was no evidence indicating that any of the roommates’ rooms had been burglarized.

Struffert also said that investigators were convinced that the killer had a panty fetish, a penchant for collecting some of his victims’ underwear. She said that he had taken a pair of underwear from a previous victim, although she would not disclose that victim’s identity, citing the fact that some information known only to the police and the perpetrator needed to be withheld. She said that investigators still needed the owner of the Pink Panther underwear to come forward, because she might have information that could be critical to the solving of the case. She asked that people who had been burglarized, but had not reported the burglary, come forward with their information. She asked that people who had lost underwear after doing their laundry at a Laundromat notify the police as well.

“The drive is to get the owner of the Pink Panther underwear to come forward,” she said.

Like McDonald had done, Struffert said that it was likely the suspect was known in the community and that he probably still lived in the area.

“It could be your father, brother, your boyfriend,” Struffert said in driving home her point. “There is something about this person that someone knows about that just isn’t right. We ask you to come forward.”

One thing seemed certain about the under wear—the rapist-turned-killer was collecting women’s thong panties. But why? Was he attempting to preserve souvenirs of what he was doing?

So far, Struffert said, investigators had received more than twenty-five hundred calls through the tip line and through regional and federal law enforcement sources. She also indicated that the heightened awareness that was experienced throughout the community had proven helpful to detectives. It was just a matter of time before a suspect was identified and apprehended. In the meantime, the city remained on high alert.