Lost Girls (22 page)

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Authors: Caitlin Rother

BOOK: Lost Girls
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Around eleven, during a line search with a team of thirteen, starting at the trailhead at Moon Song Court, a second yellow-striped Adidas shoe was found in a streambed near a culvert off Duenda, below Poblado Road. The shoe turned up near an outlet from the storm drain just off Duenda and about one hundred yards south of where the panties had been found. After the heavy rains on Saturday, detectives figured the shoe had been dumped elsewhere, and had been carried down the drainage system to this area.
At 11:55
A.M.
, Shafer got a match between the semen on the panties and John Gardner's DNA on file, and immediately contacted the detectives.
 
 
Brent and Kelly King had been asking for a briefing from detectives every four hours, and they wanted it straight.
Around noon, Sergeant Brown, Lieutenant Dennis Brugos and Detective Johnson were taking the Kings on a tour they'd requested of the sites where the search teams had found Chelsea's belongings. Brown was giving them a bird's-eye view of the valley from the neighborhood up above, pointing out the various locations, when he got a call from Detective Pat O'Brien.
“I'm on the phone with the lab,” O'Brien said. “We got a name.”
“Hold on a sec,” Brown said as he backed out of the Kings' earshot and walked to his car.
Once Brown was in a safe zone, O'Brien continued. “We got a hit on a name that's a 290, and we have a confirmation that it's Chelsea,” he said, meaning they'd gotten a match linking Gardner's DNA with Chelsea's.
“Get everybody and meet me in the office in Kearny Mesa, and don't go to the command post,” Brown said.
He was worried that the media, posted around the clock at the park, would find out somehow about this big break. Detectives always had to pass through a gauntlet of cameras and satellite trucks as they left the command post, and the media also followed them by car. Brown was sure the photographers were watching their every move at the command center using telephoto lenses from the upper parking lot, because he'd seen such broadcasts on TV.
Brown needed to move fast, so he pulled Brugos aside and whispered, “We got a hit.” Then he apologized to the Kings. “We have to go. We have a lead,” he said. “The tour's over.”
The Kings seemed to understand and appreciate the urgency. “No, you need to do your work,” they said.
The ride to the command post with Brugos was intense, as Brown felt his body surge with adrenaline. With still no body yet, he and his team weren't even at the typical point in the case where they would normally start their work, and they'd already been up for more than twenty-four hours. But this case was different. “We were at the spent part and we hadn't even gotten to the pregame warm-up,” Brown said.
Acting as nonchalantly as possible, Brown dropped off Brugos at the command post to get his car, grabbed Detective Palmer and tried to keep his cool while gathering up his troops. He signaled what was up by winking at sheriff's captain Todd Frank, the de facto chief of police in Poway, and Commander Michael McNally, who was in charge of all sheriff's operations in the North County.
“Is everything going good?” Captain Frank asked.
“Yeah,” Brown said. “I think this is going to be a good day.”
 
 
Within moments, Dave Brown went into action and called investigative specialist Sandy Curry, a computer expert considered a detective without a gun. It was her job to do what Brown called an “information enema” on suspects, like Gardner, putting together a package with photos of the perp, details about his finances, places he'd lived, all his vehicles and any tattoos. While she went to work, Brown and his crew developed a game plan for bringing in John Gardner—and hopefully finding Chelsea King alive.
In less than an hour of searching, Curry came up with a list of four vehicles to which Gardner had had access, which the detectives then tried to locate for search, seizure and/or purchase. Ultimately they found them all: the black Nissan; a Pontiac, which was found totaled in a junkyard; a white Silverado pickup truck, which had been repossessed and purchased by someone in L.A.; and a gray Ford Focus, which also was found in L.A. with new owners. Because the testing was going to destroy the cars by ripping seats apart and tearing out the carpets, the FBI ended up buying the cars from the new owners. The junkyard donated the Pontiac to detectives.
“They don't want a serial killer car, anyway,” Brown said.
Brown asked Russ Moore, the sheriff's sergeant in charge of the Fugitive Task Force, to get his team together to discuss strategy. The task force consisted of sheriff's detectives and U.S. Marshals who wore shaggy hair and casual clothes, drove a variety of undercover cars to do surveillance and made most of the department's serious arrests.
“We wear shirts and ties,” Brown said. “We don't chase and tackle people. That's their job. They're good at it.”
The plan was for the fugitive detectives to set up surveillance and to try to gather intelligence at Cathy's condo in RB, and to sit outside and watch Linda's house in Lake Elsinore, and Gardner's last known apartment in Escondido—not knowing he hadn't lived there in months.
They hoped Gardner was holding Chelsea somewhere, had her tied up and held captive, perhaps right under his mother's nose. With exigent circumstances, meaning that Chelsea's life was in the balance, they had the right to search the residences without a warrant.
I don't give a shit about John Gardner,
Brown thought.
I want Chelsea.
Chapter 23
While John Gardner's mother and girlfriend were waiting for him at Cathy's condo in RB, he was walking around Lake Hodges. Gardner ended up at Hernandez' Hideaway in Del Dios, a tiny community within the city of Escondido on the north shore of the lake, where the locals know each other by name. For at least fifty years, this dimly lit Mexican restaurant-bar has been a neighborhood gathering place, where patrons can sit in a row of wood-backed swivel chairs at a faded red bar counter and watch TV, or in an adjacent room of tables and booths.
Gardner sat in the last seat at the end of the bar, in front of the cash register and three black refrigerated cabinets, each of which was painted with a festive Mexican theme and a caption: a pretty Latina waitress holding a platter of margaritas (
“Call me Margarita”
), a series of cartoon fruit characters with legs—two limes, a bunch of grapes and a giant strawberry—climbing up a ladder and jumping into a pitcher of margaritas (
Home of the Real Margarita
) and dancing tamales (
Some like it hot
). He ordered a beer and the special, a stuffed quesadilla, and sat calmly while he ate it.
“Never would have guessed,” Debbie, the bartender, said later. “He was very polite.”
Neither Debbie, who had worked at the bar for five years, nor any of the other regulars had seen him there before. She said she also didn't notice that his legs were wet or muddy, as the detectives later described. He stayed for about forty-five minutes, she said, then paid his bill around 4:15
P.M.
and walked out the opaque-windowed doors.
 
 
George Morgan, a lawyer who lived down the street from the bar, had gotten up around three o'clock that morning to go to the bathroom when he saw quads and searchlights moving around the mountain across the lake. Morgan couldn't believe so much activity was going on at that hour, especially in the pouring rain.
This is incredible,
he thought.
Figuring it had to be the search for the missing girl he'd heard about, he was so inspired that he decided to join the effort first thing.
“I've never seen such a public outpouring,” he said. “That touched me, and I'm not usually touched. So I felt compelled to be a part of it and get involved.”
He did exactly that, arriving home around three-thirty that afternoon. At 4:08
P.M.
, he heard the thunder of a helicopter landing on the asphalt parking area in front of his house and saw three guys jump out and take off down the street.
He'd seen the news choppers flying all over the area since Chelsea King had gone missing a few days earlier, but now that something was going on right outside his house, Morgan grabbed his binoculars to take a look off his back deck.
About eight minutes later, he saw a bunch of men and one woman surround a guy across from the bar down the street. Within moments, they had forced him to the ground.
Mike Kratz, an engineer for the city of Vista, had lived in the neighborhood for the past eighteen years. He decided to go down to the bar and grab a beer that afternoon.
When Kratz walked into the bar, he noticed a thirtyish man, sitting at the end of the counter. He got a very different feeling from him than the bartender had.
“He had this heavy hunched shoulder kind of bad vibe,” Kratz recalled, saying that the man, who he later learned was John Gardner, didn't seem like the kind of guy he'd feel comfortable approaching. “This wasn't a person I wanted to sit by.”
Kratz was sitting on the wall outside, around four o'clock, when a couple of friends came out and joined him. While they were chitchatting, a black SUV pulled into the parking lot off the patio, stopping abruptly at a skewed angle, then another black SUV shot up right behind it. Glancing back at the first SUV, Kratz saw a big guy with silver hair, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt, jump out, and he heard a man near the second SUV shout: “Freeze or I'll blow your f---ing brains out!”
Turning to see who was yelling, Kratz saw a physically fit, gray-haired man pointing a gun at Gardner. The first silver-haired man also had a weapon aimed at Gardner, when a metallic silver car drove up. Out jumped a third guy about Gardner's age, also wearing a plaid shirt. Gardner was now surrounded by a group of armed men shouting expletives at him and ordering him to put his hands up.
Gardner didn't try to run. He just stood on the white line at the edge of the two-lane Lake Drive, holding a couple of cigarettes that he'd bummed from the bartender and a patron.
“I don't think I'm the guy you want,” Gardner said.
“F---ing asshole!” one of the men yelled. “Get down on the ground!”
Not seeing anyone wearing a uniform, Kratz didn't know what to think.
Are these cops? Or is this some hit?
Kratz glanced around again, trying to find a safe escape route to avoid getting caught in the cross fire by a stray bullet. He ended up crouching behind the wall, leaving his beer sitting on top. When Kratz peeked up again, he saw the young guy on top of Gardner, whose face was now down on the asphalt, with a gun pointed at the back of his neck.
Kratz looked at his two buddies and laughed nervously. “They either got the guy who got that girl,” he said, “or they got the biggest drug king in North County.”
Only after another man came forward with a pair of handcuffs, which he gave to the guy on Gardner's back, and took off his shirt to reveal a black law enforcement vest, identifying him as a U.S. Marshal, did Kratz begin to relax.
Soon more cars with more men—and one woman—all dressed as if they were going hunting or fishing, drove up to circle Gardner with a protective barrier in case he tried to run. If they hadn't been carrying guns and pointing them at Gardner, they would have fit right into the neighborhood.
At their direction, Gardner stood up and emptied his pockets into a paper sack. Then they took him away.
 
 
By 5:00
P.M.
, John Gardner was back at sheriff's headquarters on Ridgehaven Court, where Detectives Scott Enyeart and Pat O'Brien interviewed him after getting some legal advice from Bob Amador, the DA's liaison with the sheriff's department. Deputy District Attorney Kristen Spieler was there to watch the questioning as well.
Because they were still hoping to find Chelsea alive, Amador told detectives they didn't need to Mirandize him just yet. That meant they couldn't ask him questions about the crime or where he was Thursday night when Chelsea went missing. They had to focus on her whereabouts to determine if she was safe somewhere.
“Where is Chelsea King?” Enyeart demanded. “What did you do with her?”
“I don't know her,” Gardner replied.
Gardner claimed he'd had four or five beers, and the detectives could smell the alcohol on him. But he wasn't blotto, nor did he act like a slurring, stumbling drunk. He was more like a combative, angry caged animal, which wasn't the best condition to get good information out of him.
Asked why his pants were wet and muddy, he said he fell near the restaurant, and decided it was better to be wet than muddy when going inside for lunch, so he washed himself off in the lake.
“We were thinking he moved the body, got her into the water, or got her out of the water,” Brown said later, acknowledging, however, that Gardner's rationale did make sense.
As the lead interviewer, Enyeart hammered at Gardner to give up Chelsea's whereabouts, but he couldn't get him to admit anything. Gardner tried to get control of the interview, and sensing the more laid-back O'Brien seemed more reasonable, Gardner often directed his answers to the calmer detective. But they were getting nowhere.
“We know you had something to do with her disappearance,” they said. “What did you do with her?”
Gardner continued to deny coming into contact with Chelsea, saying all he knew about her case had come from watching TV. His emotions were extreme—calm one minute, angry the next, punctuated with eruptions of inappropriate laughter. He seemed to think his arrest was humorous and yet offensive, as if he were thinking,
How dare you even consider me a suspect?
“We have your DNA,” Enyeart said. “How do you think we linked you to Chelsea?”
But that didn't faze him either.
Every time they tried to make him believe they knew he was guilty, he tried to turn it around as if
he
were the victim. Detectives had wrongfully arrested him in 2000 for a crime he didn't commit and lied about having his DNA linking him to the molestation and assault of his thirteen-year-old neighbor, he said, so he didn't believe Enyeart and O'Brien now. He also had been mistreated in prison, he said, and he hated cops because of that too.
Enyeart thrust a photo of Chelsea in front of Gardner, hoping to get a reaction. “Where is she?” he asked.
Gardner looked at the picture briefly, then pushed it away. “I've never seen that girl before,” he said.
When Enyeart tried again, Gardner refused to even look at the image—denying, denying, denying.
Realizing they were getting nowhere, Enyeart and O'Brien left the room to consult with Amador while others watched Gardner on the closed-circuit video. While they were gone, Gardner looked at Chelsea's photo again.
“Bitch,” he said, flipping it to the side.
To Sergeant Brown, this behavior was quite telling. “Who talks to a photo?” he said later. “It was like he knew her.”
Gardner finally did admit to being in the park, but he still denied killing Chelsea. Then he said something that was altogether unprovoked, which shocked the detectives: “I suppose you're going to point the finger at me for that Amber girl too,” he said.
But even after bringing her up, Gardner wouldn't pronounce her last name properly, laughing as he rolled back in his chair. The detectives were still convinced he was guilty because of the DNA, but they could see they weren't going to pull anything more out of him that night.
“Nope, he won't crack,” Amador told Brown.
Giving up, the detectives read him his rights and had him processed—his pubic hairs combed, his genitals swabbed, an extensive set of “major case” fingerprints taken, the dirt under his nails collected and his hairs pulled.
In his belongings, he had seventy-six dollars, a cell phone, a silver folding knife, an Albuterol inhaler, a package of antihistamines, two Bic lighters, two Camel Crush cigarettes, some decongestant spray, a transit day pass dated February 20 (good for buses and trains throughout the county), a pair of sunglasses and some Axe deodorant spray.
At that point, all they could do was keep looking for Chelsea and evidence proving what he might have done to her, so O'Brien got to work preparing search warrants. Once Gardner was in jail, the media would find out everything they could legally get their hands on.
The race was on for the detectives to gather what information they could before crucial details got out and Gardner's friends and family got a chance to screw up the case against him. Little did they know that more than one hundred witnesses would come forward once Gardner's face appeared on the TV news, announcing his arrest.
“At approximately four-twenty this afternoon, investigators with the Fugitive Task Force arrested thirty-year-old John Albert Gardner,” Sheriff Gore announced at a news conference that evening.
 
 
As soon as Gardner was in custody, Brown wanted to make contact with Candice Moncayo to see if she could identify him as her attacker. With the help of a local representative of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Palmer e-mailed a six-pack, including Gardner's photo, to the agency's local rep, who sent it to police in Colorado Springs.
Brown wanted to get this ID under his belt
before
Gardner was booked and his face was plastered all over TV. This way, defense attorneys couldn't say the victim had identified him because she'd seen him on the news.

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